Tunnelling Temtesh - a WipEout themed Roleplay

[XR_GTR]

Mark Anderson nervously states "They just wanted me to check the place out. They told me it might be a really cool place to explore."

Maria giggled. "That's it? They basically just gave you a day off work?"

Mark chuckled back. "Well, I'm kinda looking for an office so I can get my PDA recharged and get some potato chips and soda. I don't get how you dudes survive down here. I just wanna go home and play some video games."

Unfortunately for Mark, his Gamestation X back in America would have to wait, because he was a long way from even exiting the mines, not to mention that his employers would be rather upset if he didn't find even just one office.

[trackripper]

Ge Liang Zhu finally broke through the wall of debris blocking the cavern in front of him and sighed.

"I really could do with a medkit right now."

The bruise on his chest was hindering some of his movement, not to mention the myriad of scratches, some deeper than others, over his hands and face. Nevertheless, he took out the eG-r PDA and checked his position again. This cavern led to the wrecked eG-r ship.

He set off at a slow limp, using the cavern walls as supports. Well at least guards weren't a problem anymore down here, he seriously doubted that Triakis would have access to this bit of the mine if it took a tunnel collapsing to expose and discover the cavern. The blip on the PDA flashed faster and faster, with a more incessant beeping. Then, as he rounded the corner...

The wrecked hull of the eG-r ship was torn, sheared off completely from the cockpit and rear engine section, the livery barely recognizable from 30 years of corrosion. There was a body lying not far off the ship, and it was in the position which P. Cheung was on his PDA. However, this was not what caught his eye. Next to the presumed body of P. Cheung was something else.

If the faint colours of red and yellow were anything to go by: he'd just found Jann's Swiftkiller.

'Oh for f***'s sake! Why do I have to see torchlight now?!'

[skillcheck]

[Challenger #001]

[Skillcheck UB3R~JKP - 2]

"FEISAR agent! Stop right where you are!" cried out a voice as Denso finished tying the rocket to his back. A trio of Triakis guards had burst out of the way the two members of the European squad had come from. The captain of the squadron that had been called in as backup hadn't missed the rusted old ladder and sent a trio of his men up. It hadn't been hard to trace the scuffs and marks in the dust where the two had run away and into the deeper parts of the mines.

"He's got a Scottish flag on, mate," scowled one of the guards, spinning his stun baton in a gloved grip. "He's Icaras."

"We'll have to see about that," purred a dark voice from behind the guards. A thick-set man shouldered his way out from between his men, blocking off the only escape route to the surface. He held a stun pistol in his hand, and rather than a combat suit he was in a standard issue Triakis flight suit, mostly orange but with the distinctive camouflage markings around the lower arms and legs. Anyone who'd followed the FX350 season would have recognised him as Harding and Stephenson's third pilot, now relegated to a test role.

"I don't quite appreciate you two taking what's ours. If we can't have it, neither can you," crooned the Brazilian ex pilot. Joao Acosta lowered his stun pistol and let loose a firm blast at Denso. The shot missed the man but collided with the rocket on his back. The light went from blue to yellow, flashing erratically. And then it turned red.

----

(XR - no playing of my NPCs. -2 to your next skillcheck roll)

Mrs Mowell narrowed her eyes at Mark, taking off her spectacles to peer at him closer.

"Now I'm beginning to wonder if you're just a lost kid playing about here," she snapped. "Potato chips and soda? What sort of envoy are you from Auricom?" She opened up her own PDA and gave a little alert to her superiors. "I've got a young intruder in the mines here... I think we need to take him up top and get in touch with Auricom. He's wearing one of their outfits... could be a thief."

----

[Skillcheck trackripper - 19]

The cavern that Ge had entered was once an underground pool of sorts, stalactites and stalagmites dotted about the ceiling and floor, the soft drip of water the only sound beside the Chinaman's breathing at first. However, as Ge followed further into the chamber, he'd see the results of the Temtesh disaster.

Shlaudecker's Piranha had got off worst in the explosion - having been on one of the lower routes when the supports had come crumbling down, it had sent the Swiftkiller rocketing into the lower reaches of the mine and crashing through several layers of rock. The nose of the craft was buckled and twisted almost all the way up to the cockpit and engine. The open-air cockpit gave a pretty violent view of what had happened to the German pilot - the glass was stained brown with age-old blood and the figure in the cockpit was hunched forward in a way that no living person would be able to replicate.

Shlaudecker's skeleton was still dressed in his faded Piranha overalls, though his helmet was cracked open at the front with the force of the impact into the stone walls. When you're sent at over nine hundred kilometres an hour into a solid wall of Australian sandstone, there's only one result despite what Overtel had promised safety-wise. His dog tags had fallen out of his outfit and glinted in tarnished silver on the front of his race suit, the chain still draped over his skeletal shoulders.

However, the Swiftkiller was not alone in its' tomb. The detonation of Paul Cheung's eG-r had not had quite the effect that the team had wanted - sure, the ship was buried many miles underground, but it hadn't removed every last bit of evidence. The hull of the claret-and-white ship was upended in a pool, currently being used as a home for a collection of pale ghost crabs. The other sign of life however was that of a crumpled body lying against a wall on the far side of the chamber in a tattered and torn suit matching his ship.

Paul Cheung's head was encased in some kind of smoky green glass, filled with a fluid of some unknown sort. A metallic mask covered his mouth and nose, keeping him fed and aired most likely in his state of hibernation. The eG-r ships had tried to meld human with machine, and Cheung was one of the best examples. It seemed that in his near death status, the cybernetic parts of his body had taken over and kept him alive for a hopeful rescue from his team. The flashlight that Ge saw was the blinking distress signal on the front of the man's chest.

[UB3R~JKP]

Ben Denso "You idiots! ****ing hell, look what you've done!" He unstrapped the rocket from his back. "Just because you're not good enough to cut it as a pilot doesn't mean you have to be such a hard bi-" He suddenly jolted and punched the 2 guards straight in the face and kicked them in the teeth. Now he was standing in front of the 3rd pilot.
"Not exactly a stun baton but it'll do...Now going to tell me what business brings you down here, Or if you're gonna be tough...lets play chicken, eh?" He picked the rocket back up from the ground and aimed it at him. "You wouldn't happen to have any metal on you...would ya? Aye? Oh...well, better hurry before this thing locks on."


[Skillcheck]

[XR_GTR]

As Maria alerted her superiors, Mark had realised just how much trouble he had dug himself into.

Mark thought to himself. 'Are you kidding yourself, Mark!? POTATO CHIPS AND SODA!? What does this look like to you, some gravboard shop back at home? Come on dude, this is Triakis we're dealing with here! Get serious!'

With that thought in mind, Mark stopped joking around with the Triakis worker.
"Whoa, chill out ma'am. I'm not here to steal anything. My boss told me Auricom forgot some of their documents in one of these offices, that's all. The potato chips and soda thing was just a joke!"

This was serious. And Mark's chances of getting away with his little white lie seemed to be slim to none.

[Skill-check]

(OOC: I'm dead meat )

[trackripper]

Ge Liang Zhu gasped at what he saw. Both his primary objectives were here, recovering Jann's body and the Swiftkiller Piranha. However there was a problem.

Normally recovering them wouldn't be difficult, he'd just call more Piranha personnel down, however, he'd been sent in mostly alone, the back up was above ground, and now he was caved in deep inside the mines with no one for help. Moving Jann's body was hard in itself, as the man deserved no less than official honours in the private Piranha cemetery, but with the Swiftkiller needing moving too, well, it looked pretty daunting.

As his mind wandered, so did his eyes, and suddenly he realised he wasn't alone. Paul Cheung was down here too, in a vegetative state yes, but he might be of some help if he woke up. However, Ge had no idea how the hibernation system on Cheung's head worked. Walking up to it, he examined it. Well at least there wasn't a language barrier, but the few lines of text on the helmet didn't say much about how to remove it and revive the person.

He had no other choice though, he couldn't do this alone. Flipping Cheung's body gently onto its front, he examined the wiring that went from the helmet into his body through the back of his neck. Then he took a deep breath, pressed a button on the helmet labelled 'Remove Safely' and pulled the wires out. The fluid began draining out from inside the helment. Now he had to wait to see if he had done it right.

[skillcheck]

OOC: I'm going to be away for a week and a bit, so if the skillcheck permits, someone can RP Paul Cheung, but otherwise, my character's gonna be on hiatus for a bit.

[Challenger #001]

[Skillcheck UB3R~JKP - 12]

Acosta's eyes went wide as the men before him were knocked aside, leaving just one guard behind him and the angry Scot before him wielding a FEISAR super rocket. The comparison to another certain explosives-happy man from Ullapool crossed his mind temporarily before he began to back away slowly. His stun pistol still was raised though, pointing at the man standing before him before suddenly the missile seemed to realise it wanted free.

It burst out of Ben's hands and went shooting through the gap between Joao and his crony, vanishing into the tunnel beyond. The burly Brazilian looked like he was going to make a dive for it, but the rocket clattered to the floor and lay motionless, the red light still blinking.

"A dud," the Triakis pilot murmured, glaring back at Ben as he got to his feet. "Nice try buddy. Missiles always have used targeting systems - never just metal seekers." His friend vanished back into the corridor to pick up the missile and take it back to base as he blocked the way for Ben, his friends picking themselves up.

"Now then... are you going to be nice and easy, or are we going to have to wring the info out of you?" he asked icily.

---

[Skillcheck XR_GTR - 3(-2=1)]

Maria's eyes narrowed even further as she closed her spectacles and loomed before the boy. Even at over fifty, the scientist made for an imposing form as she glared at him. "In offices buried underground for thirty years? Offices that never belonged to Auricom in the first place?"

A quartet of men soon turned up behind Mark, their eyebrows raising at the sight of the young boy wandering around, obviously unprepared and unthinking.

"C'mon kid," one of the burlier men said as he placed his hand on Mark's shoulder. "You come with us. You can explain yourself to Mr McNaughton," he said with reference to the chief of Triakis.

---

[Skillcheck trackripper - 11]

Cheung's suit did not seem to want to let its' owner get back into the world easily. The pale fluid that had kept the pilot in suspension for so long was ejected messily out of a pipe on his neck, the material splattering across the floor of the cavern in a gelatinous mess. The glass began to retract slowly, and the mask popped itself off Paul's face, leaving the Chinaman gasping for air as he lay there, his eyes still sealed shut. He was still adjusting to breathing actual air - stale and musty air from down in the bottom of the mines maybe, but it wasn't 30-year-old recycled stuff. He took a great breath, and opened his eyes.

He stared at Ge, his head tilting oddly in the same way a bird might cock its' head at a curiosity before it. His shoulders rolled lightly, breath coming in short gasps as he attempted to get his body back and functioning. He opens his mouth and through age-old, water-deprived lips, he speaks.

"They blew my ship... didn't they?" His dialect was a clipped, almost halting Chinese that Ge might have been able to place as being from the north-west of his homeland, near the Korean border. The dryness of his throat doesn't make it easy to tell though. "Water... please."

---

(If we can have more people included so I don't have to keep skillchecking, would be much appreciated. Also for anyone who wants to include themselves in the play, PLEASE try and make a decent character that actually looks like he might apply to this setting.)

[pask765]

Glencross Starling dropped into a crouch as he got off of a rusty ladder. It had been his safest entry point into the mines, a section near to where the support pillar that the FEISAR super missiles had hit. He glanced to where he'd come out and cursed under his breath - he was on a high outcropping of rock with only a rope bridge to the other side. The last 25 years hadn't been kind to him, and this didn't look too good.

[skillcheck]

[Challenger #001]

[Skillcheck pask765 - 12]

The ladder held as Glencross descended, even as it creaked dangerously against the rock face that it was anchored to. As the Auricom pilot got to the bottom, it gave one final groan as it eased back into position. Anyone trying to use the ladder next time would probably have some serious difficulties.

The zone of the missile impact was not far from where the FEISAR pilots had found the dud missile. The other two had gone off straight into the column - the supposedly solid steel and reinforced strut was buckled and torn, revealing a hollow interior. The strut had mostly slumped, causing a landslide of rock behind Johnson though the end of the cavern had got damaged severely as well. Only Khumala and Woolf had got out of the cave before it came down. Tsarong, Belmondo and Johnson had been lucky enough to be close to the surface though, the first rescued.

[pask765]

Glencross Starling stood on the outcropping for a little while remembering the close shave that Mishima's Van-Uber had as it had just entered the mines when the red flag signal to stop the race was given. He then took pictures of the supposedly solid steel strut's hollow interior on his PDA before he walked across the rope bridge.

[skillcheck - cross rope bridge]

[keg_11]

It's interesting no-one has done a Xios character yet. Might as well make one.

Henri Kinnunen managed to 'dig' his way into the mines from above. His training from the Finnish defence force did come in handy. Kinnunen had joined the new EG-X team after his military career had ended as an engineer and, on occasions, unnoficial test pilot. When the Finnish side of EG-X were curious about the neuro-link technology developed by their Chinese partners and believe that the old EG-R craft might have something to do with it.

Kinnunen had done stealth operations before, so he never used his torch and used his PDA only when absolutely necessary. After about 30 minutes of walking, he felt a hole in the middle of the path...with sound coming out of it. Using the rope he had, he tied one end to a half-buried rock and started to abseil his way down.

He didn't even get a few metres down before he heard voices from the tunnels above, and they sounded Australian.

[skillcheck!]

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

[UB3R~JKP Skillcheck - 9](Other posters, do feel free to post, and you can have multiple members working for the same faction. Just try not to trip over each other too much. You don't have to wait for me to post to keep going. We'll try and keep 2 or 3 posts in between mine.)

*literally trips over someone else*

I guess I should make a character, huh? Not sure where to start, though.

[keg_11]

(Other posters, do feel free to post, and you can have multiple members working for the same faction. Just try not to trip over each other too much. You don't have to wait for me to post to keep going. We'll try and keep 2 or 3 posts in between mine.)

Oh, so does this mean we can continue the RPG with someone else doing the skillchecks?

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Just to be frank, I really wish you didn't close your previous RP. I was really looking forward to it. I even made not one, but two characters for it.

[NeroIcaras]

[B]Mikar Valloninen [/B]scrabbled deeply through the wreckage of the G-Tech craft. He had seen somebody below him, and he was really scared. Inching his cold, sweaty fourteen year-old body across the wreck, he prayed it wouldn't give way.

(skillcheck)

[NeroIcaras]

Come on i need to know what happens!