(CLOSED) My hands are tied, for all I've seen has changed my mind

[alittlesweptup]

Date & Time: Forward-dated to Nov. 16 0300hrs through Nov.19th ~0230hrs
Location: Observatory, East Loading Bay, Transporter Room, Various (read: everywhere)
Characters: Pro-Initiative and Mutineer action teams
Summary: With mutineers occupying the transporter room and vital base systems hamstrung, Pro-Initiative forces work against mutineer teams to bring those systems back online and reach the transporter room.
Warnings: None yet (will update as necessary...because lbr ‘none yet’ isn’t going to last long)
Notes: All threads, with the exception of the Transporter Room B, are open for posting beginning now. Transporter Room B will kick off on Nov.16th proper in order to incorporate decision making from earlier action team’s choices and to maintain tonal cohesion. Community wide mingle log for the mutiny will go up on Nov. 16th.

[At 0300hrs on November 16th, things suddenly go wrong. The network cuts out, lighting abruptly goes from artificially sterile to the unsettling flickering of red emergency lighting. Furniture, supplies and even Transports suddenly find themselves untethered from the ground as the base’s gravity regulation abruptly shuts down; moreover, it isn’t long before Transports begin to realize they’ve been locked off from anything but the housing(/restrooms), vr and cafeteria sections of the base. Not long after:

Click-HHHSSSHK-click!

A woman’s voice speaks over the moon base’s PA system, echoing through the dark corridors and off the odds and ends gently floating through them thanks to the lack of gravity regulation. The voice is rich and accented, with a certain practiced ease to it - one that sharpens to a point the longer she talks:]

Testing. Testing-- are we good? Christ, I'm not echoing, am I? No?

All right good. Listen up, fellow transports. As you might have noticed, some of the base's general systems have gone offline: this, I assure you, is absolutely intentional. There's no need to panic.

So moving on from the understandably frustrating to the even more frustrating, I'm sure you all have also noticed the fact that we're currently all stuck-- starving and defenseless-- on the bloody moon. In a base that was, up until a few days ago, overrun with zombies. And before that, thousands of lives were bombed right out of existence, and before that, an entire world-- and before that we were all still being thrown at the United Earth for the sake of dying off repeatedly in a war we never stood a chance or had a say in. Transports have been treated like pawns since day one, and I'm sorry, but we don't deserve it.

If we're giving up our lives and our freedom, I'd say it's about time we earned ourselves a little equality.

We deserve a say in what goes on in this fight, and with that in mind, a few of us have decided to hold onto the transporter for a while. Just until the Initiative agrees to treat us like people instead of ammunition. Trust me, we’re not here to hurt anyone; none of this has to end badly. But it does need to end. Things have got to change. And if this is what it takes? This is what it’s going to be.

We need your help; please don’t make it any harder for us.

[The PA clicks off, pitching the base once more into complete radio silence.

Over the course of the next four days, pro-Initiative transports gather their resources and individuals form impromptu (or well planned) teams to bring these systems back online and out of the hands of mutineers so they can ultimately reach the transporter room and set things to right -- whatever that “right” may be.]

Comments

LIGHTING | NOV 18

[alittlesweptup]

[With comms back online, being able to see what you’re doing might be a good step forward - it’ll help with recon and go a long way to establishing a sense of normalcy on the base for anyone not directly involved in the conflict.

With lighting back on, the click-hiss-click of the PA system coming on as a result is probably familiar. There’s a beat - a sharp intake of breath from the other end - and then the same woman who’s been addressing the base for the past two announcements speaks. This is the last message they’ll send out, though they likely don’t know it yet.]

We get it, okay? You want to do the right thing; you want to be the hero. So just-- just stop for two seconds and think about how much you need this change. How much we all need this change. Stopping us now won't make anything better, I promise you that. Worlds have been destroyed thanks to their carelessness-- their own bloody city wiped out and left behind-- you can't seriously think we should be answering to them without a say in what goes on.

[And here a man’s voice breaks in for the first time. It’s heavily accented, likely distinct enough that anyone familiar with Cutter will recognize it. His voice is also clipped - raw - clearly tired:]

Look, obviously this isn’t the way we’d prefer to do this - but there’s no time for anything else. There’s a bloody UE rover out there - if they don’t know we’re here already, they will soon. We can either do this now, get our foot in the door and get enough of a voice to fix things, or we risk being wiped off the map by the UE. Or we go back to status quo, somehow pull together our shit long enough to get back down on the island and-- then what? Because don’t try to sell it to me that the Initiative will learn from their mistakes and if we wait until we’re downstairs again, when there’s time for diplomacy, they’ll be back to outnumbering us and we’ll have nothing. We’ll have frittered away our only bargaining chips.

This whole time there’s been two options to how this moon base nonsense ends: either the UE crushes us, or we get back to Exsilium and return to cowtowing to whatever the Initiative demands until they land us back in a situation just like this one.

Now there’s a third option.

[The first voice returns, nearly talking over the man’s last point.]

It might not be the way you'd go about it but this is the only shot we've got at pulling this off, before the Initiative is staffed enough to keep us away from their toys.

Don’t let it be for nothing.

[There’s a click and a hiss as the PA system switches off.]

[hellosailor]

[When your characters arrive at the main lighting control panel, what they’re greeted with is a real mess. It’s plain that this was no accidental power failure, where there was once a neat bundle of wires and a line of fuses, there is now chaos; the wires have been severed, with foot-long chunks missing, and the fuses have all been pulled out (a few lie smashed on the floor). It’s nothing catastrophic; anyone with basic electrical skill could fix it, but they would need replacement wire and new fuses. Until those things are found the lights will stay off.

The Supply Closet located below the cafeteria, where things like spare fuses would normally be found, is in mild disarray. The place hasn’t been tossed exactly, but someone was clearly looking for something. And they found it, because there aren't any fuses or wires in sight.

As it turns out, they have been hidden. The wires are located in one of the kitchen’s fridges. The fuses can be found in a locked stall in the Northwest bathroom.

Meanwhile, at the torn-up panel, a sound can be heard in the dimly-lit distance.]

[pilot]

[ the swearing precedes the man. a pinched, angry look adorns han's face. this has not been a good day, gaiz. all his hard work. ruined. by his hand. while others helped. ]

You listening? When I find out who was responsible, I'm gonna use you for target practice!

[ when he spots others near the panel, his look darkens. han's hand floats by his blaster as he braces himself against a wall. ]

Talk. Who are you?

[iciclerain]

[This day has been just awful, and Han's arrival doesn't really improve the situation. Asch turns from the panel when he hears Han swearing and tenses up when the bounty hunter lets his hand hover near his blaster. Asch himself doesn't reach for his weapon, but only because he knows from his experiences with Legretta that even his fastest draw will be several times too slow to matter.]

We're here to fix the lights. [Asch doesn't offer his name--not yet, at least. He thinks that Han is vastly more interested in explanations that introductions.] And you?

[unmasking]

Still not sure why we needed to put everyone in danger on the base in order to make a point. [Peter's muttering to himself as he looks over the fuses, wires, mentally cataloging what needs to be fixed. When Han Solo shows up—Han Freaking Solo!—he's got to force himself to finish his list in his head. Peter figures that if he dismantled his webshooters, he could make something to fix some of this, but he doesn't think dismantling his webshooters is a good idea right now. They have plans involving them.

He resists answering Asch's question, even if it's hard to believe that someone wouldn't know who Hana Solo was. Interdimensional whatever, and they just didn't make Star Wars universal? That's a crime!]

And I've got this covered. [He places a hand on his head, what a pain.] ... Mostly.

[pilot]

I'm the one who's been fixing the lights since we got here, buddy. [ if they were any closer, han would be prodding a finger into asch's chest. he settles for an unimpressed glare. ] And the doors and the life support and the gravity and I don't appreciate my hard work being undone.

[ as if deciding they're not a threat, he lets his hand drift away from the blaster. han moves closer, trying to glimpse the panel proper. ]

You carry fuses on you, kid? [ it's a sign of how long he's been traveling that peter's getup doesn't even merit blinking. ] You're gonna need 'em. I was just at the supply closet; it's been cleaned out. Whoever did this knew what they were doing. [ aheh. ]

[iciclerain]

[Han doesn't look like he's going for his weapon anymore, so Asch steps aside and lets him pass. He could still attack, but Asch doesn't see any bladed weapons on him--and if he's there to fix the lights then there's nothing to worry about. The news of the cleaned out supply comment makes him frown.]

Damnit. [Stupid mutineers. Asch considers the new information for a moment before he speaks again.] The lights can be fixed, so mutineers obviously don't want the base crippled permanently. If they didn't destroy the panel, then I doubt they destroyed the replacement parts. [Asch lets out an irritated huff.] We'll just have to find them.

[unmasking]

But if they took them, wouldn't they be with them?

[Peter's definitely caught in to the absence of the fuses, and he didn't even know where to look, so he's glad this guy bought him some time. His slow down and come up with a solution kind of mindset begins to kick into gear. Lack of fuses, hidden fuses, this place isn't even running that well, and Peter's still annoyed at the point in time where they lacked gravity. That's one thing that can really mess with a guy who sticks to walls.]

Unless that's part of the plan. Make an easy job harder, keep us distracted. [After all, if someone can fix this, then they can probably go help out elsewhere.] So much for doing what needs to be done. I'm still lost on why we couldn't have tea and talk this over like friends.

[pilot]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it's because there is no tea. [ or decently timed showers. ]

Guess the first step would be finding out who did it. [ running around after an imaginary person with a pocket-load of fuses. excellent. this is going great already. ]

[iciclerain]

Someone staging an armed mutiny probably wasn't in the mood to talk in the first place. [Asch's tone is distinctly annoyed. There were better ways to push the Initiative into cooperating, but there's no sense in talking about it now.]

I'm sure they took some of it, but... [He's seen that storage room before. It's pretty big.] There's no way they could carry an entire supply closet with them, not in the middle of something like this. There might not be any spare wiring left, but there's going to be something we can work with. [Even if they have to disassemble the coffee machine--not that he thinks anyone will miss it.]

[devotedtothecore]

[ Chrysos was pretty inclined to share Han's mood from the moment he and the others got a good look at the control panel. The mutiny, and the intentions behind it, were deeply troubling. But this kind of damage was just ridiculous. ]

It doesn't matter who did it. [ For now. He eyes Peter and Han-- the other two standing there with some level of technical expertise, it seemed-- with an edge of wariness. ] What we are short of, we may be able to compensate for by salvaging from other parts of the facility. And if we focus on restoring lighting to essential areas for now, we won't need as many components.

[ Adding, as he folds his arms: ] Temporary fuses might be built until we locate the stolen ones.

[pilot]

Except using the wrong ones can short circuit the entire thing. First lesson about space stations, fire bad.

[ no seriously do not mess with his hard work or he s2g ]

Let's do this: you can come up with all the solutions you want but only I'm touching the panel, okay?

[unmasking]

No. We work together.

[It's not that he doesn't think Han can handle it, but it seems like they might be able to come up with something.]

He's got an idea about using what else. There's no chance of a fire. [He waves a hand at himself.] I'm good at this stuff, but we're going to want to keep people here to make sure they don't come back to shoot it. [Asch was right that they didn't want it to be permanent, but they definitely intended for there to be some damage.]

[iciclerain]

Than it's settled. [Asch might not 'know' either of them, but he's spent less time with Han than Spider-Man. If the superhero says there's no risk of fire, Asch will believe him.]

I won't be any help with the repairs with you two around-- [He nods to Han and Spider-Man both] --but I know the area around the cafeteria well enough, and I can handle myself in a fight. I'll go look for replacements.

[devotedtothecore]

[ Chrysos doesn't bother hiding his annoyance at Han's attitude-- does he think he's the only one who's been working on the power systems, or that it's a rank amateur running his mouth off here? ]

You're not the only one who knows this craft. [ Doesn't bother adding that he's been running and maintaining bigger facilities than this for years. Less advanced, sure, but from what he'd seen and tinkered with of the innards of this place, the natural principles-- the science-- were the same. ] I can assure you [ a tetchy growl in that word ] that fire would not be a possibility.

[ Peter's backing him up on the idea, at least, so Chrysos eases up a bit. (Though still scowling.) With a glance at Asch: ] I'll come with you. Two pairs of eyes are better than one.

Party in the dark! (I hope this is the right place to put this.)

[theflyingone]

[ Altaïr had had no qualms about impairing people's ability to see. If he stood still, he could "see" an enemy coming just fine. But a mutiny breeds misunderstandings, and he fears his other eyes may overlook true allies who would nevertheless attack him (with the best of intentions) if they knew of his involvement. Alliances are muddled and probably changing this very moment, and his gift does not lie. So he'd accepted this mission with no intention of marking anyone for death. Gone are the days when he would simply kill anyone in his way.

That doesn't mean the Assassin isn't prepared to defend himself. He does not intend to die in this dead, cratered place. He is accustomed to carrying his weapons on him at all times, and today is no different. Over the travel-worn robes he has kept his light leather armor, upon which throwing knives, a long knife, and a sword shine dully in their sheaths. He hopes he will not have to use the hidden blade in his left bracer. He uses that only to kill.

He melts into view under the dim light. He is visiting the scene of his crime, hoping to keep it in disrepair for as long as possible. Though he is actively on a mission, he does not appear to be causing trouble or spoiling for a fight. He favors discretion. If he can avoid being caught, all the better for him, his fellow Assassins, and the rest of the mutiny. Sometimes blending in trumps starting a fight.

So he plays the fool, scuffing his boots in contrast to his usual silent step, and hailing whoever has stopped to repair the lighting control panel. ]

What is that? I have never seen anything like it. Is it broken?