multiversallogs | Mission Delta

Entry tags:

Mission Delta

Who: List forthcoming.
What: Getting a lantern.
Where: Spatters.
When: NOW. This thread will likely cover a few days.
Warnings: To be updated.

Dear Mission Delta,

So you're going in to Spatters to deal with actual people. Actual confrontation how about that. Well don't feel too bad or too glad, these guys hardly count as Citizens but that's on them. They have apparently collected a significant number of neat and cleverful things, all of which you may keep should you come across them. All exempt for the lantern your gods require of course. Don't come back without it.

Your boons for this mission are as follow:

A Weapons Cache - I haven't personally gone through every single item in this collection but I am told they are for pacification and non-lethal if you hold them right. Who knows what happens if you hold them wrong.

Ward Breaking Talismans - You will not be kept safe from hexes, but you will be able to break through most protective spells and also bonus: you can touch the talisman to objects and people to see if they are what they seem to be. Pretty useful.

Spatters is in a constant sad state of affairs. It's not a neighbourhood into which respectable citizens often travel, and it is easy to see why; there seem to be mostly cracked houses and smashed windows, half-tents and shanties made up by discarded materials. This is where Baedal's rejects end up, the half-wits, the psychotics who cannot function in the City and those who can't deal with shifted reality. It's also a home to those who have business they wish to keep out of the public eye. Man-eaters and predators of different stripes are known to stalk Spatters. The streets are eerily empty, but perhaps the people here are so used to hiding that they hardly ever seen.

The House have a building in the area, and it is not far away from the basement that has been pointed out as host to the Candlelighter hideout. The place is likely to be occupied, and the occupants are likely to expect hostile company.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Njoki turns to Alan and ticks off a series of factitious side-effects, "Dry mouth, boils, the condition known as hotdog finger, protruding eyes, but nothing else of note. If you've got your own magic, it might make a bump in your power; if not, you should be fine unless you've allergies to clover."

It's not that she's impatient to head off to death and glory, but there's a sense of restlessness to her. Since arriving in Baedal Ki has made an effort to get in touch with the city and its spirits and the upset of the fungal plague is bothering her on an instinctual level. When this is all said and done, there is going to be a lot of dead bodies to clear away.

Youko nods her head to Arthur's remark - the gun is from the supplies in the crate, so the ammunition is non-lethal, most likely tranquilisers of some kind, and it's not a model she recognises; but that doesn't make the ammunition any less valuable, really, and under the circumstances, it's certainly better than packing standard bullets. Which is one reason she didn't visit the Hellsing armoury before coming - though they have resources, she'd rather not waste them, not when alternatives are provided, and she can generally do without anyway.

She takes her turn selecting an anklet and tying it in place, slipping it inside her boot to make sure it stays safe, and applies a little of the salve to her eyes as instructed. "Thank you," she directs, quietly, to Njoki, before asking more generally, "Are we prepared, then?"

"Ah - just - a minute," Robin says. She dutifully swings her leg up and props the heel of her boot against the table, leaning forward in a bend to untie it; boot untied, she turns and scoots her butt against the table to yank it off, grunting as she does so. This reveals one threadbare-as-sin sock, which she wriggles her toes inside experimentally before visibly deciding "buggere this for a larke" and just taking the damn thing off completely and stuffing it in a pocket (as one does) for safe-keeping, next to the stick she picked up from the weapons cache. She palms an anklet and slips it into place against her skin, blinking at the sensation of it; wriggle wriggle, go her toes.

After a moment of internal decision, on goes the boot again, sans sock. Which leaves the problem of the jar and the salve inside. "Hah," she says, more of an exhale than an actual audible vocalization, then, louder: "What kind of bump?"

"'Blow stuff up,' hm," he remarks aside somewhere back there. A look would probably have been sufficient to convey that's relevant to his interests – as is the delightful rapport Remy is developing with everyone's favorite stick in the mud, but surely there will be other opportunities to express his camaraderie there.

As for weapons, he's indecisive, apparently. While Arthur makes his selections, Eames is doing a bit more rifling around and putting things back before he reaches down to the bottom and comes out with something a few evolutionary steps removed from a tear gas launcher. That'll do. (Yes, all right, he'll bring this dinky little phaser-looking thing too, if he must.)

Meanwhile, he's glad some of the others are so eager to slather unknown substances on their eyes – really, it makes his decision easier. Eames takes an anklet, but puts a dip of salve into a handkerchief for now. If no one has gone blind by the time they reach the Spatters, maybe he'll use it. Naturally, then, he doesn't look as if he begrudges Robin a little hesitance.

Listening quietly to all this, Rachel feels exactly ninety-seven per cent more useless than she did upon arriving. She's in with a group of people who seem to have, like, actual experience doing this kind of thing, or who at least have relevant skill sets. She's got nothing. And it's probably compounded by the fact that she doesn't want to say what she does have up her sleeve, or use it, ever, so she must seem like even more dead weight.

Still, she puts on her bravest face as she rummages around in the crate. She chooses several devices that approximate flashlights, stowing them all in her bag. No guns, no knives, just lights.

"I will gladly leave the shooting and blowing up of things to those of you who actually know how to do it," she notes. "Has anyone here actually, like, been to the Spatters?"

"I have," says Arthur, ever so coolly... although the coolness is, perhaps, diminished by the momentary visibility of his skinny ankle and the argyle patterned sock surrounding it. Look, he's being polite about the anklets, okay. At least he doesn't have big boots to yank off or something. Actually, his shoes are very nice, for the record, if slightly incongruous with the rest of his wardrobe.

As he straightens up, dropping his foot off the chair and all (there was a convenient chair there, deal with it), he continues. "Imagine a combination of every run-down neighbourhood, every slum you've ever seen in a movie. Now make it weirder and uglier. That's where we're headed. You're with me, by the way." Yes, he wants Rachel on his team. Surely this is a shocking development.

And now, time to get bossy: "So are you," pointing briefly to Youko, "and you." His finger hangs in the air for a beat, pointed at Remy. "Try not to blow us up. We'll be checking out however many upper levels are inside the building, so I hope you three enjoy stairs as much as I do. The rest of you will accompany Mr. Eames throughout the ground floor and, if necessary, down to the basement. Grab a flashlight if you haven't already got one. Once the group's inside, one or two of you should stick by the entrance, make sure we don't get sealed in."

"What, why? Maybe I wanna hang out with that guy." He's pointing at Eames, by the way, because apparently making a nuisance out of himself is a time honored tradition. (It is.) Despite the protest, Remy appears to have no problem with the assignments, and he goes about setting up with Njoki's augments without any fuss, and looking like it's almost familiar. He doesn't go anywhere near the weapons box, though he does nab a talisman.

"How read up on the Candlelighters is everybody? Because this is probably gonna suck." He's thinking of Sentinels - not the steel monsters themselves, no, but the scanning technology. Who knows what these hateful people could have come up with out there, away from prying eyes.

Separating your two biggest fans, Arthur? Eames mouths 'I'm hurt' in his direction, though he doesn't look at all surprised. There are only so many of them with tactical experience, after all, and it makes sense to balance the teams. To Remy, he adds, "I suppose you'll just have to keep our fearless leader on his toes without me."

As for the rest, he'll let someone else answer, since he's lacking any particular expertise there.

"I've only heard the name before," Robin says, flicking her eyes to the expression on Remy's face, "why? What's wrong with them?"

(He let her out of that little cell they call a waiting room for new arrivals and he's a fellow Francophone, as far as Robin is concerned that means they bros: if he has something he wants to say, he's earned the courtesy of her listening.)

"Either it won't do you any good or it'll itch like hell," Njoki says with a shrug and looking at Robin. "If you're worried, skip it."

In any case, she repacks her supplies, relaces her boots, and examines a little bit of stitching running along the inside hems of her clothes. She doesn't expect to shift at any point in this expedition, but it doesn't hurt to be sure that she'll be able to keep her clothes with her no matter what happens.

"They're anti-non-humans, related to the local pseudo-Christian gig, House Ecumenal, though those guys kicked 'em out a while back. Looks like folks investigatin' think all evidence points towards them bein' behind this, and whatever invasion y'all had a couple of weeks back, with the creatures from the ground. Rumor has it they moved to the Spatters. If they're equipped well enough to pull this off, who knows what kind of headache we got waitin' out there."

Robin dips her head, shadowing her eyes, forcing out a tight, resigned smile. "Ah, these are Christian men and women, and they hate us," she says, quietly acknowledging her own non-human status for those paying attention. "How regrettable ..."

She doesn't sound terribly surprised. "I can protect our escape route -" she looks up, then - "they may attempt to trap us inside, and -" smiling, haha, isn't it funny to feel this way - "I'll feel much better knowing we can get out than in among the mass of them."

Hate coming from those who hide behind religion. Rachel's not fond of that; she's seen, back home, the kinds of things that result from those attitudes.

"I'd appreciate that," she says, in reply to Robin's offer. She realizes she's not the expert on anything here, but: "We can do the most awesome job ever at getting this thing, but it does no one any good if we get it and then we can't get out."

Huh. That's interesting about the cultists being responsible for the city's recent mess, but Arthur declines to do anything beyond continuing to look attentive. Not much of what he learned about them seems technically relevant to the task immediately at hand.

"That's the idea," he says to Rachel, tucking the holster into his shoulder bag—which he completely had this whole time, by the way, la la la—and then doing the same with the baton, the talisman, and soforth. Some people can get away with wandering around fully armed, but he's accustomed to hiding it, so hide it he shall.
Then, to Robin: "Take Alan with you. It seems unlikely we'll need to argue our way out of there, but you never know." You giant tourist, you.

"All right, let's move out. Those of you taking the train, spread out among the cars, act like you don't all know each other, just to be safe. Train stations are monitored, so don't group up there. We'll meet at [intersection near to, but not right on top of, the Candlelighter house]." He flicks the cuff from his wrist to glimpse his watch, announces the current time. "Let's give each other two hours to get there. If you're early, just hang tight. If you run into a snag, let me know, because if you turn up late we're going in without you."

One more sidelong look to Eames, and then he's off.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Mission Delta

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