It's Honestly a Terrible Plan

[piper90npcs]

Who: Almost everyone
What: Dan uses his stripper powers for good, Stacia teaches everyone a brainhack, just about everyone throws a riot. Operation Honeyplank is a go.
Where: All around the Rig
When: After some network plotting.
Warnings/Notes: Attempted seduction, brain hacking, violence, likelihood of swearing.

The Rig is large and city-like enough that it never truly sleeps, and that is all the more true now that it's disgustingly humid all the time. It's the last dinner shift and even the workaholic execs are starting to call it a night, but the ambient noise keeps everyone aware that there's still life all around them, that the Rig is something of an organism as much as a vehicle.

In the mess hall, people are starting to clear off their plates and the hires on bus duty are wiping down tables. Some are lingering around the tables chit-chatting, mostly speculating about just how cruel and dangerous Planker's new obstacle test, which he boasted about to them at the end of their last session, is going to be tomorrow. Some are on chore duty and doing dishes. Some are starting to head back to their rooms.

And others are setting up to, as Madonna says, start causing a commotion.

Comments

I'm Just Saying You Have a Sexy Brain

[hallelujahjunction]

[OOC: Dan and Planker doing a few tags until the rest of the brain heist team comes and does their thing.]

[If things get desperate I'll just become a stripper is something people say when they aren't actually thinking of how hard it is to command someone's attention enough to get them to make rash decisions with their wallets. Pretty faces and beautiful bodies are a dime a dozen. People who can be persuasive but not pushy, attentive without seeming invasive, who can convince you the fantasy they're selling you is worth pretending you can live in - those are people of rare skill.

As one of those skilled people, Dan knows that just because something started as an impulsive gag decision doesn't mean that it can be sloppy, and as such for several days prior he's been paying even more attention to Planker than usual, documenting which cruelties bring the brightest twinkles to Planker's eyes. Dan observes and catalogues everything he can, and determines that while straight-up seduction is the way he's going to try getting Planker alone, he has to be willing and able to pivot on a dime to something less salacious if Planker isn't vibing that way.

Dan had, naturally, been originally throwing around the idea as a lark, assuming that people would warn him against trying to seduce their psychopathic steroid-addled whip-cracker, that he'd do it anyway, that it'd probably be not particularly pleasant but at least would shake up the crushing boredom. He didn't expect or want it to become a plan with backup, but especially in light of knowing what experiments the Jorg had scientists doing, Dan's can't see a justifiable reason not to try and do everything possible to defang the Jorg.

So now a whole posse of people is involved, and there are contingencies about riots and Alloran shapeshifting to keep anyone from looking for Planker while Planker's out, and Dan's headed to the one of the equipment rooms of the training room, all freshly-cologned and bright-eyed, to find Planker right where he knew he would: giddily preparing some kind of torture device for tomorrow's activities.

Planker appears to be going through a box of small vacuum-like robots that shoot little sprays of razorblades at people. Dan walks in just in time to see Planker activate one, which zips around the room and pyew-pyews some deadly flechettes into a target.]

Are those for the course tomorrow? [Dan leans against the doorway, biting his lip and oohing appropriately.] I mean, are those for the course tomorrow, sir?

[piper90npcs]

Of course they're for the course tomorrow. It's not rocket surgery, is it! I'll make real soldiers out of you panty-waists yet.

[It's like he just lifted an impression wholesale from army movies. R. Lee Ermey would be proud.]

[hallelujahjunction]

[Dan slips into the room, under the extremely fake pretense of wanting to take a good look at the robot layered over the pretense of being attracted to Planker. It brings him right to the edge of Planker's personal bubble.]

You think you will? Because, I don't know...I feel like you didn't give us quite enough individualized attention for that yesterday.

[He moves in about an inch closer, casually. Shrugs off the the shoulder of his jacket as if by accident. Considers what angle Stacia will have to approach from; due to her height Dan will need to get Planker kneeling or sitting.

He reaches over to touch one of the little blades sticking out of the robot, brushing his hand against Planker's wrist as he does.]

Maybe I should just exercise my body a little more tonight. You could give me pointers.

[piper90npcs]

[Planker looks down at the hand that brushed his wrist with disdain.]

Are you hitting on me, soldier?

[hallelujahjunction]

[Well, somehow the guy's either more simple or less simple than Dan anticipated, but it means time to pivot. Good thing Dan loves him some improvisation.]

Not at all, Sarge. [Is Planker a Sergeant? Is that even a thing here? Dan's disdain for the military and any other organized structure of people-organizing means that titles go in one ear and out the other unless he's got a reason to care, and now he realizes he probably should have paid attention.] Just real clumsy. You ain't noticed?

[And with that, he very convincingly hip-checks the edge of the table, leaving the robot to tumble noisily to the ground. Oh no...]

BRAIN QUEST

[goneawaymod]

When they all step through, they get separated into two pairs, with only a vague sense of where the door to escape is.

The way out can only be found again by going deeper.

The door to Planker's mind opens to a space that looks like the inside of an army base.

Minus the people. Just rooms and rooms of empty barracks and offices.

An every room is minutely off-kilter, the different parts and objects inside it subtly disproportionate.

Kerrigan and Stacia

[goneawaymod]

Kerrigan and Stacia find themselves in the mess hall of the base with a sandy floor. It's in a relatively small tent. The area is off-color, desaturated.

The end of the tent has a circular area carved out of it, one that's carved partly into the ground. Chairs and tables have collapsed from being chopped apart.

This scenario has odd, unnatural things in it, like food trays floating above tables, gently rotating around.

Re: Kerrigan and Stacia

[credit_not_blame]

"Well," Stacia says, nonplussed. "This looks Stuff-y. How fun."

She considers prodding at one of the floating trays, but restrains herself for the moment. It looks like digging through Planker's brain is going to require a little more gymnastic thinking. Fortunately, Stacia has a psychic handy.

"Kerrigan, is this anything like what you're used to?"

[zerg_rush]

Kerrigan, on the other hand, taps one of the rotating food trays as an experiment, trying to stop its rotation.

"This is too...metaphorical?" she says, shaking her head, her tone rising with uncertainty as she tries to come up with a way to explain telepathic sensations. "It should be more, I don't know, visceral? The same as calling up your own memories feels, just...not yours."

This is weird and she doesn't like it.

[piper90npcs]

There is noise beyond the doorway of the mess tent, a dull roar of vague origin. As they get closer the noise differentiates to something more specific. Screams and explosions and the rat-a-tat-tat of weapons fire.

Beyond the opening in the curtain is a place where shimmering waves of Stuff have changed the landscape, waives of Unreality sweeping over what was once an army camp that was far away from the front.

To be inside "war" as a concept is different than to be in a war, and yet in terms of the way it smells, the way it sounds, the horror piled upon horror, it’s a distinction without difference. You usually don’t know where your enemy is coming from in the middle of combat anyway; this time, the enemy is just everywhere and anywhere all at once.

It’s a battlefield, and a battalion of soldiers is pinned down under rains of bullet fire. They hunker behind tanks and supply trucks and dikes. An officer tries to yell commands at his soldiers, and is thrown to the ground dead as a half his body is torn to shreds by a grenade.

It’s hard to breathe. Chemical gas rams up against the acid stink of gunpowder and body odor and then gets steamrolled by the overwhelming, unique and impossible-to-mistake stench of death. Flecks of ash flit around in the air, riding plumes of smoke that would look majestic if they could just be mistaken for clouds instead of vehicles burning with shrieking people trapped inside. It’s hard to hear, too, with the cries of the wounded and the terrified, with radio reporter chatter and shouted orders and explosion and gunshot after gunshot, periodic rains of clumped earth and worse down.

The soldiers are wearing a confusing blend of uniforms. A good portion of them look like they're wearing the fatigues of soldiers from the early 21st century. But others wear uniforms from a variety of countries and time periods. Phantom soldiers wearing red coats clash with World War I doughboys in gas masks, pouring out of trenches in numbers that should be impossible. Members of a RAF regiment leans out from behind the wreckage of several downed Spitfires as they fire at Grande Armée chasseurs with muskets.

Soldiers drop as if hit by sniper-fire, but the bullets have simply appeared inside them. Limbs vanish, blown off by invisible grenades. Body parts stick up out of the ground in all stages of decay, from the freshly amputated to the remnants of unearthed mass graves. Puddles of blood soak into the soil more slowly than they can be filled by new deaths. A tank tips over sideways, but it’s no longer a tank but a tank-shaped mass of bodies melded together and melded with weapons, rifles where arms should be and landmines for heads.

A young dying man, missing both legs below the knee, looks at Kerrigan and Stacia and opens his mouth to scream, but all that comes out is the chak-chak-chak of artillery fire and a glob of blood and motor oil.

Bunny and Wash

[goneawaymod]

Bunny and Wash find themselves in an empty barracks, but something is wrong with it. The stiff blankets all wind upwards towards the ceiling, like blood floating upward through water.

Though no people are visible, there are shadows on the walls of the tent, of soldiers being strangled by those blankets.

Re: Bunny and Wash

[parannoyed]

"Oh that's not terrifying at all," Wash says sarcastically.

Perfectly normal. Shadows of people being strangled.

He definitely doesn't like the fact he has no access to a gun in here.

No armor, either.

[bringinghopewithme]

Bunny wordlessly hands Wash one of his pair of oak branches. It's not a gun, but Wash surely knows what to do with a big stick.

"Think this is something that actually happened, or just what he likes to think about?"

He's looking around for Stacia, in the meanwhile, dismayed that they've all been separated. At least, he can't hear any trace of her or Kerrigan or anyone outside of Planker's mind still.

THE MUSCLE - Wrath, Carolina, Aidan Price

[goneawaymod]

While the others go through the weird freaky magic door near Planker's frozen body, someone needs to keep watch.

[pain_train]

Wrath is back to being entirely businesslike, which means she isn't the best to keep covert watch; she looks too much like she's guarding something. But she's absolutely alert, ready to jump anyone or anything that gets too close. She might not have any weapons, but she doesn't need them. She's got her hands.

[myagents]

Price doesn't have weapons either, but he has lasers as noospheric powers so that will help. Most people forget way too often that he could take them down easily with a good old burning laser in the face, no matter how big they are, but he hasn't yet because he's nice. While one's reaction to him would be wariness because he could be planning something, he doesn't look like a threat. If it weren't for the lasers he would be comparatively defenseless against most opponents, and that will also help. No one expects someone physically weak to be doing this.

He gives Wrath a faint smile when he sees her. He's glad that she was nice to him, and although he knows it can't possibly last, he decides not to say anything just to enjoy this a little longer.

[pain_train]

What Price gets is a very businesslike nod, one guard to another. Wrath doesn't say anything else, because this isn't the kind of duty that invites chatter, and she's entirely focused on the fact that she has a job to do.

[myagents]

Price looks around warily and then whispers to her.

"Is anyone else here?"

RIOT - OPEN

[goneawaymod]

The signal is given. The people in the late-evening dinner shift know what to do. Those that haven't been given warning might enjoy the surprise opportunity to trash shit.

[greyerrant]

Loken stands up, obviously a signal that someone should feign being mad at him as well, thighs bumping into the table and knocking it back a bit, enough to upset several meal trays if anyone is sitting near by.

[garmr]

So it looks like there's about to be a Huge Guy fight, because one of those knocked over trays has Guts slowly standing up to meet him. Whatever it is he's pretend-mad about, he's got a pretty convincing 'I'm going to kill you' face about it.

"If that's how you really feel, no point in really talkin' it out more."

He'll flip the table at Loken. With all of its contents.

[greyerrant]

Loken is thoroughly splattered, and snarls, taking an exaggerated moment of wipe off the nastiness that is Jorgmund cooking, then lunges at Guts, leading with a fist to the face, an obvious haymaker so Guts can dodge, bind, or otherwise deal with it, obviously loath to actually injure his friend but anxious to make it look good.

[fuckingaqua]

[ Truly nobody involved in any parts of these missions has struggled as deeply as Tucker, who had to sit through a dinner shift wanting to throw stuff around but not being allowed to yet. Then again, who isn't generally always ready for an excuse to flip some tables around here?

Anyway, he immediately starts throwing stuff around.

He was on bus duty, so he's got himself a nice plastic tub full of trays and utensils and whatnot, which he immediately chucks as a whole at the nearest wall. For good measure, he then climbs onto a table and kicks a couple of trays away from people who may or may not actually be done yet.

Look, if he gets punched mid-riot for the good of the mission, which as he understands it is to be as distracting and pot-stirring as possible, so be it. Speaking of: ]

Who wants to break shit until we get a union rep!?

[poor_unlucky_girl]

[Jennifer, of course, is a little slow in processing what is going on and is startled by a spoonful of what looks like mashed potatoes being flung right between her eyes. Then she hears Tucker's enthusiastic invite to mess things up and she tries to contribute. Key word here is 'tries'.]

Oh! Oh! Like this?

[She grabs a random mug and throws it, but instead of breaking once it hits the floor it just makes a clanging sound and remains completely intact.]

[fuckingaqua]

[ Oh. Ohhhhh, wow. That might've been the worst throw. Ever. Of all time.

Tucker's not partial to turns of phrase like bless her heart, but frankly, bless her heart. ]

Meh, I'll give that a C+. If you can't get it to break, it should at least hit someone when you throw it.