goneawayworld | I've got your name written here

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dan sagittarius

I've got your name written here

Who: Data and Saturday, Robbie and Rogue, assorted rescuers, and a really scary lady
What: Several New Hires get attacked by the murderer and gets some clues
Where: All over the rig.
When: After Catra and Wash are attacked and all the chitchat about what to do.
Warnings/Notes: Lots of injuries! Some pretty brutal beat downs.

The halls of the rig are deceptively empty lately. The lower level executives that sometimes used the same hallways to go to the Cafeteria and a few other places have been very careful about where they go lately, with only some of them daring to. Lower level workers like the janitorial staff do their work together in little groups, and nurses going to work in the infirmary travel in packs.

Gossip travels far and even if the ongoing attacks of rig executives have been downplayed, it's now widely known that several New Hires are recovering from injuries in the Infirmary, some of them serious.

The hallways are dangerous to travel alone. The New Hires know they should, at minimum, go in pairs, or larger groups if possible. But Jorgmund gets suspicious if groups of them walk around towards the evening, closer to lights out.

So it's pairs tonight, after a four person guard shift at the Infirmary, taking separate hallways to meander back to avoid Jorgmund cracking down on them. With others not far off from their routes back to their Quarters, just in case.

But not close enough to come right away.

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The big old rig made all sorts of sounds at night when the high traffic of the day quieted, sometimes steps echoed and other times the slow rocking of metal was enough to keep white noise going and other sounds faded away.

A sharp clang though caught her attention, feet hitting the floor hard maybe? "Robbie, no one told ya they be out an about this late did they?" She called to her patrol partner.

She hadn't heard anyone, and people had been pretty good about checking in given what all had been going on recently. "Ah heard something back here, come on."

She gestured ahead to one of the darkened sections, looked like a storage area really, could have just been gravity finally pulling something down. Or it could be someone who was up to something. Either way Rogue wasn't about to just sit back and wait for something to happen. She strode forward looking around in the weak light.

Saturday raises her arms in a stretch and cracks her neck dramatically.

"Ah, I'm starving... do you mind heading to the mess hall on the way? The night crew'll break the rules and feed us off-schedule," she explains to Data. "An' d'you want anything? Or do you not do food?"

Data, for his part, watches Saturday stretch with the same default fascination he reserves for... anyone doing anything. He's always invested.

He records the decibel level her neck-cracking reaches, just in case she wants that information for some reason in the future.

"I do not require food to survive. And since I can neither like nor dislike it, I have found it more efficient not to 'do food.'" No point using up the resources. Especially here, where said resources are far more limited. "A detour to the mess hall will not inconvenience me. I would like to familiarize myself with the night crew."

Familiarize himself with. Inflict his conversational skills upon on the regular for the foreseeable future. Either/or.

The bang didn’t strike Robbie as a overtly suspicious - clicks, clacks and clinks were a standard part of the background noise on the Rig. A clang didn’t spook anyone automatically.

“Nah, I think all the other campers are in their bunks.” He’s trailing about ten feet behind Rogue and habitually turns to walk backwards for a few steps to keep an eye on where they’ve been.

The clang did seem louder than normal. The Rig is so big that the source of a noise is usually indistinct, from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Everything this close to the Infirmary and quarters was worth checking out, though. That’s the whole point of a patrol.

He didn’t exactly like that Rogue was indicating a badly lit area with piles of stuff and jogged to close the gap between them, falling into step to her left.

“Right here,” he said quietly. He didn’t want to miss a second noise by talking over it. “It could just Niels pawing at stuff, but we should clear the area. You want to look in the dark, or I can light it up a bit?”

It’s a question, because bouncing energy balls are an imperfect light source, and a brighter room helps everyone in it. Even if it’s probably nothing, there’s definitely something stalking around the Rig. Robbie won’t stop being cautious without his patrol buddy’s consent.

"But you can taste it, right? 'Cause honestly you are missing out if you can but don't - I wouldn't eat the food here, though. It's pretty much just calories. Night crew lets me cook for myself, though - oh, I should make onigiri, Guts'll be hungry too."

She changes course abruptly. "C'mon, this way's faster. I'll introduce you."

edit cause html bad

Edited 2020-10-23 17:57 (UTC)

"I cannot taste in the traditional sense. I simply-- analyze chemical compounds."

The way the proverbial cookie crumbles. He still perks up at the last statement, following her change in course.

"Do you know them well?"

This throws Saturday for something of a loop; she befriends people by giving them things, being useful and good to them, and food is an easy way to do that. People like food, making it and eating it - all kinds of people, no matter how weird.

But apparently not AI people. Phooey.

"That's a shame," she says instead. "Food is great. I'm a big fan. An' I know them a bit, but I only found out they'll give us the run of the place a few days ago. Good thing, too, Jorg's got no fuckin' clue how much I need to eat."

She'd actually lost a few pounds on their rations, and it wasn't like she had any pounds to lose.

"A little light would be pretty good right about now." She nodded glad he was prepared, or able to have it on call anyway.

She paused and waited for him to be able to literally shed a little light on their situation.

His expression takes a turn for what could be called disapproval.

"I have noticed their failure to account for variances in required caloric intake. My attempts to move through the official channels of communication about the negative long-term effects of malnutrition have been unsuccessful so far."

Perhaps he will have to increase his efforts. Really stubborn Starfleet them right in the paperwork.

"I'm not gonna stop ya." She says this with an inkling of how stubborn he can be; she learned a lot from his choices under pressure. "Be careful, though. Don't get a rep for troublemakin'. I was at the range with Sagittarius the other day, the only targets they had were human-shaped with "Union Representative" on the chest. Our needs ain't a priority, here."

Although the mental image of any given Jorg employee vs Mr. Relentless here is, honestly, amazing. Unstoppable force, unmovable object, etc.

“And she said, let there be light.” There are more dramatic ways to do create the kinetic energy bubbles, but she’ll have to forgive him for being boring with it tonight. Flair is less contained, and usually involves him ricocheting around the room.

A couple dozen small orange balls, pop into existence at various heights and drop to the ground, where they bounce away slowly, scattering out from where he’s stanDing. They’re bright, but small and low, and they illuminate the ground well.

They also throw tall, inky black shadows onto the walls and ceiling, so it doesn’t making searching a dark area for a mystery sound less foreboding.

Long shadows, ghastly shadows. The light of the balls are really not the best if you don't want to feel like you're in an indie horror game, honestly. But given their lives lately, would anything else be as fitting?

There's another smell now. Burning, and a faint orange glow seeps under cracks of one of the side doors in the storage area, the records room for this storage area. The fire, whatever it is, is small, low to the ground, not enough to illuminate anything.

But there's another glow, of a computer monitor, bright enough to illuminate the shades that have been drawn over the office's window.

Medical arguments are usually a good start. Speaking of medical stuff-

There's a clattering noise, a sharp crack, mostly muffled by a door. Behind them, maybe ten feet, it was hard to notice from one direction but from this way it's easy to tell that the door's open. Just a crack, but it's there. The light inside is very faint, not enough to illuminate the hallway, not even for normal eyes. More just the brightness of a computer monitor set on night mode than anything else.

After that clatter and snap, though, there are no other loud noises. Merely the very, very faint tap tap tap of light fingers on keys.

Saturday freezes. She casts the net of her sense wide, tensing like a spider in the web of creation, waiting for the ripples of movement. And catches Data's eye, pressing a finger to her lips, pointing at the room, then gesturing, two fingered, for him to pay attention. If he hasn't already noticed.

"Though I dunno," she continues speaking, as if nothing is wrong. "If you argued it'll kill performance... maybe that'd work for those of us they value but you saw them running cost/benefit on people like, getting emergency treatment for critical damage."

That's a social cue even Data can understand. He nods his acknowledgement, turning sharp eyes towards the doorway as he responds.

"I believe it was the historical figure Franklin Delano Roosevelt who wrote, 'It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.'" Almost as an afterthought, Data adds: "I will simply have to find more 'something's to try."

Well, the lights didn't help quite as much as she'd hoped, the atmosphere was just about as bad as before except now shifting shadows added to it.

"Hey, ya smell something?" Rogue knew that scent.

"Fire!" Rogue looked frantically around for an extinguisher or something before she moved for the door, laying her palm against it to see if it felt hot.

"We need ta get this out!" There was something else going on in there too, but that would have to wait, fire in enclosed spaces was bad news for everyone.

He never said it was perfect. Technically, they can see better. It’s just a little creepy, but skulking around in the dark was always going to put Robbie on edge anyway.

His nose was picking up on the acrid smell, just as she mentioned it, and Robbie, whose eyes had initially been drawn to the glow behind the window, registers the faint glow from below the door. “Don’t test the door knob with your palm!”

They’re both stating the obvious, but that’s just what happens when something’s on fire. Everything gets announced with an exclamation point. Looking around the storage area - yes, there’s a glass panel in the wall. IN CASE OF EMERGENC BREAK G ASS. “There’s a fire extinguisher, hang on!”

The chain that should have a hammer dangling from it does not. Robbie grabs for the nearest small object in the store room - one of those desktop Zen fountains- and throws it through the glass. It occurs to him that this may be the only real use a desktop fountain has ever had.

“How hot’s the door?,” he calls over as he unhooks the extinguisher. “The fire looks small, so I think that means we’re okay to open it? No backdraft?”

"Ha, you sound like my pops." Saturday ghosts to the door, 'Ni-chan sliding into readiness. What Data sees is a sword-hilt emerging from the underside of her metal right wrist, which Saturday grasps; the blade falls from her forearm, which is also metal, as if it's being formed from the material of her arm. There's no compartment he can see; it wasn't stored inside her prosthetic, it somehow is the prosthetic.

"He always says things like that, you know, failure is a lesson too, that sorta thing. Try again, fail better."

She leans against the side of the door, looking through the crack. She knows from earlier that Data is a deceptively heavy and grounded, but she doesn't know his response time. So in her mind, it's better for her to scout and risk drawing aggro; anything that notices her can run into the Data-shaped brick wall just outside.

The heat didn't register on her palm, so that meant the fire wasn't too bad at least not yet.

"Don' feel like much, we might'a caught it just in time." She waited until he got the extinguisher in his own unorthodox way.

"You ready, I'll open the door on the count of three." She gestured for him to find a safe place to stand when she went to open it. Given there was an active fire she wasn't about to whip the door open and cause a vacuum to draw the flame out.

"One...two....three." She turned the handle and pulled the door open.

How embarrassing is it to prepare for a blazing inferno, or at least the beginnings of one, only to find a small wastebasket fire, fed by papers? There's the requisite body, of course, head stuffed into a closed filing cabinet. And, of course, the murderer, casually tossing papers into the flaming wastebasket.

It's just as casually that her hand floats down to the gun on the desk next to her, drifting up at lightning speed. It coughs, four times. Once for Robbie's fire extinguisher, twice targeting each of their comm devices, as if she already knows where they are, and a final time aimed at Rogue's gut. The bullets scream as they fly, quite literally, wailing like lost children. The only interruption is when they hit an obstacle, their howls muffled as they chew through the walls and doors to clear a path to their targets.

Who has time for embarrassment? The scene in the office barely has time to register. A headless body and the subsequent blood. A figure standing over the smaller than feared fire. The over-sized gun.

And then the sound and speed of it comes rushing back in, and the room is filled with screaming from nowhere.

The first shot wrenches his fingers back as the impact rips the extinguisher from his hand, and the gushing white cloud of flame retardant particles from the fire extinguisher mushrooms around them as it skitters on the floor. The noise of it is lost under the sound of the second shot.

It’s already noticeably difficult see by the time the third shot wails away from the gun, but Robbie’s hands are stretching out towards the murderer when he feels the impact on his hip jerk his body to the side. It’s the communicator in his pocket taking the worst of the damage, but he only knows that he’s still standing.

The fourth shot coincides with Robbie sending a bright blue bolt of kinetic towards the shooter.

There's a woman, one of the doctors in fact. Not really one of the good ones, but they're few enough to be notable. She's been impaled, pinned to a wall by the legs of a chair. In the doing, someone's broken a shelf, odds and ends clattering to the floor in the office.

In a handy full-body mirror, the murderer can be seen. Wearing a fetishized fetish nurse outfit, the redhead taps at the keys with her index fingers, brow wrinkled in concentration as she hunts and pecks for each letter.

Her thoughts are clicking in as fast as the scene unfolds: a small fire, a dead body, a mess of papers, a person with a gun.

Oh that's a big gun, she'd seen people like Cable use gun that size, and her hand was going for her com about the same time it was shot off her hip, her jumpsuit taking a ragged tear but the skin beneath barely marred. Thankfully Reed Richards had planned ahead when he created clothing from unstable molecules and her gloves could stand, well probably more than she could with her reduced powers.

"Stop," Whatever else she might have been about to command of the assailant she was cut off as she gets a slug right in the midsection. Both her hands slap over her middle and her eyes went wide, she wasn't used to feeling when something hit her, let alone having it hurt like hell. She knew her nigh invulnerability had been tempered way down when she arrived but wasn't sure how far. Seeing blood on her gloves when she lifted them again let her know it was down far enough to matter.

Robbie was slinging energy but she didn't have that kind of power to work with, so she did what Rogue was always counted on to do, she ran in throwing punches with every ounce of power she could muster.

When in doubt, agility is usually the better option. And stealth. Neither of which are necessarily his greatest physical strengths.

"By that measure, your 'pops' sounds like my Captain." Not an unpleasant reminder in most cases. "Tenacity can be a valuable trait."

Data hangs back just enough to give Saturday room to step back quickly if needed-- it could still be some strange, innocuous misunderstanding, after all. Everything depends on what she finds. His hands go from politely folded behind his back to ready at his sides. Just in case.

That's their huckleberry, all right. Saturday ignore the blood, the corpse, pushing away emotional response. Right now, that's just scene dressing. Her grip tightens on 'ni-chan's hilt -

And then relaxes. She's got to know they're there, right? Her choices are either to believe she's better than anyone else on the rig - unlikely - or that everyone else got fooled somehow - super unlikely. If murderbabe is all she's been talked up to be, this is just an attempt to put Saturday off-balance, make her think she has a chance.

Or, if she genuinely doesn't know Saturday and Data are there, she's gonna be the one off balance. And if fighting's no good, then -

Saturday steps fully into the room, her blade retreating - it's not like it takes more than half a heartbeat to bring it out again - and spreads her arms wide, in open curiosity.

"Hey, lady," she asks, innocently curious. "So what's with all the murder?"

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