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goneawayworld2021-04-22 08:47 pm
piper90npcs) wrote in goneawayworld2021-04-22 08:47 pm
Entry tags:
It's Honestly a Terrible Plan
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.
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.
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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.
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Are you hitting on me, soldier?
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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...]
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[And now the flirting is too obvious to ignore.]
You miserable maggot.
Just look at you! Do you think I would waste my time on a member of he got-damned Lollipop Guild? Do you think I would frivolously fritter away my amorous intentions on someone like you? You look like God started building you and then gave up halfway!
[The fact that he's being hit on isn't actually the issue.]
I have been railed by a far better class of homosexual than you! Real men! Men how have seen the broiled heart of war itself! Men who have lost both eyes and yet are able to shoot down anything that makes a sound from a hundred paces!
[He bends down to pick up the deathbot.]
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I'll have you know God made me in His image like He did anyone else, and that I ain't homosexual. Christ, you're getting it all wrong, ain't you? Let me help you with that.
[And the second Planker bends down, Dan grabs him. He's fairly certain that he can't hold Planker for long - dude's built like an industrial power plant - but Stacia said she only needs a moment, and this is what backup's for.]
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[When Dan moves to grab Planker, Stacia taps into her Rage for speed and lunges from hiding with her magic key in hand. She'd showed Dan what part of Planker's neck she'd need to access so he wouldn't inadvertently block it, and a keyhole has manifested there, just as she'd expected it too. At least the key's handle is long enough that she can handle it like a knife, jabbing it home with her whole fist instead of just her fingertips.]
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[She manages to get the key in and he stops, frozen in place still slightly bowed over.]
[An apparition of him appears nearby, and so does a door. It's a metal door, covered in chains and padlocks. The padlocks unlock automatically.]
- Sam hill is going on here?!
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I'm cracking your mind like a goddamned book and taking every secret I care to put my grabby little mitts on. You can't do a thing to stop me, and even better? You won't even remember that you've been compromised. That is what's going on here.
[Gloating is a little tacky and probably going to unsettle Dan, but it feels so good after a year of biting her tongue and taking abuse from this fuckstick. Besides, pissing him off will keep his attention on her rather than having him chase the others around trying to distract them.]
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[Some magical bullshit is it? Or Stuff-related?]
You'll pay for this. You mark my words.
[After all, he doesn't have to make it easy for them in his head.]
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If Dan believed justice was about things being even, he'd be more comfortable with this. After all, Planker's a sadist, and more than that, he won't be the only person having his mind violated this month in the face of those memory storms. And Dan's definitely been plenty free with availing himself to people's secrets, homes, purses, but that's usually been when he's soloing something and could decide when enough was enough.
He steps away from Planker, the real one, watching to see if he's truly frozen. Planker doesn't move, and the ghost version's arm goes right through Stacia. Dan gives Stacia a shrug, but keeps his eye on their flesh and blood target instead of the illusory one. While he's at it, he grabs some of the robot's little razor flechettes and tucks them down his sock for later.]
Don't reckon he can do much to us like this. He turned me down for being short. What kind of shallow horseshit is that?
[He doesn't actually expect an answer.]
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He can't do much, no. And clearly he has terrible taste in men.
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[It's a rhetorical statement, he knows he wouldn't be hearing Dan and Stacia talking like this if it wasn't time. Alloran approaches, stalk eyes on scan for new complications, changing the focus of his enormous main eyes from his actual target to ghost-Planker to the door back to the body. He's more focused than usual, more present; it's good to have something to do, and if this whole scheme seems a bit... hastily contrived, he's spent more than twenty years thinking only of the worst plans he can construct, so he doesn't have any more useful contributions.]
<Now, which one is - no, I know. This could put him in a trance for about half a minute after I let go, I don't know what Stacia's key does to that kind of thing.>
[Esplin liked to kiss people with Alloran's palms to acquire them, claiming them like they were dear friends. Alloran is not about that life. He extends his tail in an unhurried arc and presses the flat of his blade to Planker's forearm. It's been over a year since he's done this, but it works as it always has. It feels like almost nothing on his end, just the slightest suggestion of something flowing out of him and then back in, over the course of several seconds. There's no feeling of wrongness.
He exhales just audibly as he pulls back and gets a few steps away.]
<No allergy, just as well. Now, morphing is a remarkably ugly process that you all might prefer not to watch, but it's harmless.>
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Like Alloran, Dan uses touch to use his power, in this case to catch people's emotions when he touches them. The physical Planker in front of him doesn't reflect the anger of the illusion taking swings at Stacia. Dan just feels blankness.] You and me, Blue.
[Dan isn't about to blame Alloran's morphing for being unpleasant. You can't hold it against a being that their natural powers are unappetizing any more than you can castigate the whole human species for their bodily functions being being as unappealing as belching. Nature doesn't design for human aesthetic appreciation, with some exceptions; people are just wired to find beauty in places they weren't intended to, sometimes. When natural things are lovely across species and type, it's so often a happy accident of the sapient brain, not that the world was made with being pleasant and alluring to humans as a goal.
Thus, if Dan finds this "remarkably ugly", well, that's on him, not on Alloran.]
If you don't mind me watching, Alloran, I can't say I ain't curious.
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[He's mostly addressing Stacia, but he lets the others hear it too.
Moving slowly and carefully to minimize the sounds of his hoofsteps, he puts a few more feet between him and the door. Alloran made sure he was seen heading to quarters and slipped away in housecat morph, and he doesn't intend any passersby to recognize the sound of a six hundred plus pound hooved quadruped on these floors. He doesn't think anyone in Jorgumand knows he can just acquire and morph new people this casually but it would be best to avoid that question altogether.
Well, no use putting this off. He sighs. Without vocal chords or a humanlike upper respiratory system it's a barely audible exhalation, much more a visual gesture - his big tripartate nostrils slit and gape, his furry sides expand and contract.]
<You and me, then. Go ahead, if that's what you want. My wife can make this beautiful. I can only make it quick.>
[Dan has a lovely sentiment. As Stacia might point out, though, there's nothing natural about morphing - it's not anything to do with what he is, but something that was done to him. The process of funneling his mass away as new mass is projected and knit is arbitrary and unpleasant.
The first change is his fur going flat and melting back into his skin. It's blue, paler on most of his body than on his nose and the insides of his hands, and it gets paler still as its texture changes, keeping the cool undertones of his blood. After that it gets more liquid and erratic as great lumps of his body mass rapidly vanish and leave skin-covered divots. At one point, when the bones in his forelegs dissolve and he has no tail to help compensate, he reels awkwardly on his hind legs and falls, grunting with the impact. It looks like it should be agonizing. Sounds like it, too, with soft but distinct sloshes and dragging and the crunch and pop of bones adjusting, and as his airway changes more audible uneven, effortful breathing. It looks a bit like a better-lit, not always as gooey babadont in action.
The last change is that blue tinge flickering in a wave into red as short hair sprouts. Then he's Planker, mostly. The texture of his skin isn't quite correct, though it's only really evident to Dan, who's this close and saw the real deal this recently. This morph is more specifically Planker, if he moisturized at all, sitting butt-naked on the floor.]
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Dan realizes pretty immediately that he regrets his impulse to watch Alloran transform, but really, it isn't the visuals that upset him, and it's not that it's "gross". It's the sounds of organs rearranging and disappearing and appearing, bones cracking and contorting, that Dan remembers as if it were yesterday, as if it were five minutes ago, happening to each of his siblings as they perished. For a moment, he feels a cold sweat come over his body, and as if his extremities have all gone numb, his ears ringing, and he reminds himself that he's here, on a mission, here on the Rig. Trauma is a fact, a thing that happened. It's not the present.
He spaces out enough that he doesn't move fast enough to help keep Alloran from falling over when his forelegs dissolve, but the grunt snaps him out of it and Dan rushes over to Alloran's side as the last of the changes settle in.] Sorry, sorry, should have been paying more attention. You alright?
[There are few people Dan wants two of on this world as little as Planker, but he knows that a form is just a form. A vessel. He's spent decades kicking it with werewolves and is in a longterm committed relationship with a form-changing Easter Bunny. Any weirdness is dispelled within half a second in his mind, and a task at hand is well-appreciated instead of letting himself get sucked back into terrible memories.
He holds a hand to help Alloran up, a hand ready to catch Alloran if, as Dan suspects, the shift from quadrupedal to bipedal is a little rocky. When Alloran's on his feet, Dan holds a large workout towel out to him for modesty until they can find a large enough spare uniform.]
This ain't your first time posing as a human being, is it?
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[He can use thought-speech regardless of morph or morph progression, which may be useful. Alloran looks at the offered hand with incomprehension for a second, then he grimaces and takes it without trying to be fiddly and avoid palm contact, allowing himself to be pulled upright. The callus patterns are almost completely accurate, and there's no feeling of pain or distress, just resolve and distaste. He does stagger a step or two when he's upright, but that's all.]
I've been mangling myself into your tiny bipedal bodies for a year, even if I haven't actively been trying to pass. Before that the slug controlling my body felt the need to do it now and then. I was there, I remember.
[The voice? Is right. The tone? Is almost right, maybe a little too sardonic and insufficiently aggressive. The way he forms the words? Too imprecise, and that's an urban Cali accent right there.
He's seen enough by now to know to tie the towel around his waist, fumbling a bit with clumsy human fingers and a task he's not personally familiar with.]
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If you don't mind me saying, your accent's a little off. [Dan switches into an uncanny imitation of Planker, which would be perfect except for the fact that Dan can't mask that distinct airy rasp his voice has that always makes it sound as if he's on day two of a nasty case of strep throat.] Can you imitate this accent or might would you rather I could do all the talking? I might could pretend I have to be your assistant all night because I couldn't do ten pullups during training.
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Sonic-talk. You're right.
[He scowls and it is very much a Planker scowl, with that tension in his lower eyelids, the way his shoulders draw and hands tighten. There's a second when that glare is aimed over Dan's shoulder - gaze is important to Andalites, Alloran usually only makes brief main eye contact unless the matter is important enough, and even if he looks people in the eye longer while in human morph it doesn't come naturally - before he adjusts. This isn't quite the same body, and the inbuilt personality Alloran is working through and around is distinct. All the same, facial and body language aren't difficult to fake in morph.]
I can talk, but I will slip if I have to make a fucking speech. It's your lucky day, you get to do more of the jawing off.
[A split second of hesitation on the profanity there, but it's not like he hasn't heard enough of it.]
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Without drawing attention to it, Dan goes through a transformation of his own, having been watching observing Alloran doing all this, the areas that come naturally versus those that are clearly against Alloran's nature. He doesn't know Alloran's culture, but when he breaks eye contact with Alloran it's in an attempt to respect it.
He gets down on his knees and puts his ear to the floor, listens for footsteps or noises outside in the hallway and decides there are none. The people to protect Planker's body should be here soon - they had to stagger the arrivals so there wasn't just a bunch of hires wandering around in a cluster the night Planker died.
Christ. You just teed me up with that "jawing off" line, and I want it noted that I'm way too much of a gentleman to take a swing at dirty jokes. [He grins.] Alright, what do I need to know to help you blend?
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Yeah, yeah, you mouth-people put them on everything.
Specify. I'm not going to try and mingle with his close contacts here, assuming there's anyone who tolerates him that much. In and out.
[...that one's intentional.]
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[That's fair. Dan rephrases.] What's the one thing you're struggling with most right now? Balance, facial expressions, verbal...?
[Most of Alloran's imitations of the body language, at least, seem pretty normal.]
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I can walk or run, but I am not going to be able to get physical like this and be the least bit convincing. And I'll admit to being anxious. [With this extremely out-of-character admission he flashes a bared-tooth grin with no warmth in it. Alloran may be overdoing it at this point. In his favored human morph his tendency is to underemote.] It's been twenty-five years since I tried something like this, and that went to shit in a tin minute.
[is that really a phrase planker or anyone else has ever used?]
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Lucky for you I ain't been anxious a day in my life. Just stick with me. [That's a lie, since Dan's typically about two seconds from crawling out of his own skin, but Dan's quite good at covering up for that with a "whatever goes" ambient sunniness.] I'll let the next shift some in to watch the body.
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[This is kind of meant as a compliment? Alloran's usually been suppressing his own belligerent side because things are exhausting so much of the time and it's not worth it.]
You do that. I think I know where the right clothes are. But you might have to help me if we're going to do this quickly, I've only ever put on the shit the company has us wear.
[Esplin morphed human many times and usually wore more clothing than could come with the morph, but he had various assistants for that part. Alloran knows what elements go where but knowing and doing are different things, and while he's mastered walking, the standing-on-one-leg part of the process is gonna be tricky and something might be inside out.]
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[Whether it's a compliment or a criticism, Dan beams in response, checks in with the people who'll guard the static, frozen Planker, and brings back a Rig uniform that looks the right size.]
Hot tip, put your clothes on while you're set down and I'll help you out. [Dan sits down and pats the floor, undoing the zipper and buckle for the coverall; he's noticed that Andalite hands have more fingers and that dealing with human hands probably feels, at best, like trying to do your fine motor skills while wearing bulky oversized gloves with some of your fingers stuck together.]
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