maskormenacelogs | Boys and girls of every age, Wouldn't you like to see something strange

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Boys and girls of every age, Wouldn't you like to see something strange

WHO: Imports
WHERE: Helix Station, Maurtia Falls
WHEN: Evening of 10/16
WHAT: Swear-In Ceremony, with a bonus Haunted House!
WARNINGS: Violence and other spoopy stuff.

The Festival

An orange moon slowly burns into life as the sun begins the last few moment's of it's descent, washing the sky in beautiful splashes of fading twilight hues. The white walls the Helix Station glow in the warm autumn light as throngs of costumed children and their families parade through the large front gate and into the festively decorated courtyard within.

Laughter and squeals of anticipation and delight ring out from the gaggle of children in a never ending chorus as their attentions dance between the kitsch decorations of gremlins and skeletons, to the ImPort Heroes in attendance. But at least the parents and guardians seem to be doing a good job of keeping the beaming or bashful kids from bothering ImPorts too much as you make your way into the facility. Though do be prepared for an autograph request or three. Unlike some of the previous Swear-Ins, this is no media circus. While there may be a reporter or two in the crowd, asking for a few quick shots with imports and their adoring fans, this gathering is for you and your new rosy cheeked best friends. Just a bit of seasonal fun and the added benefit of helping a local children's hospital by contributing to their charity.

STALLS

Colorfully decorated stalls line the exterior of the courtyard, offering the attendees a wide variety of activities, entertainment, and gifts. While most of the stalls are managed by groups or individual imports contributing with their time and goodwill (mostly), several also offer refreshments and snacks manned by droids or volunteers from the hospital staff or children's family.

A few honorable mentions of ImPort run stalls:

-Hazel and the Doctor's Face Paintings
-Kanaya and Helena's Fangtastic Bobbing for Apples
-Manolo and Sabriel's Performance Cake Walk
-Stan's Photo Booth of Terror (And extortion)
-Lucifer's Mystic Magic Mirror of Mystery
-Fraiser and Kowalski's Totally Scary Puppy Petting Zoo

And of course there's also a stall with informative pamphlets and a chipper Government representative ready to register any willing imports and talk about the benefits inherent to doing so.

There are also plenty of open stalls if you want to add to festivities!

HAUNTED HOUSE

Just inside the main building, the lobby area and adjacent rooms open into the main area of the Haunted House. Despite the spooky imagery and haunting ambiance, this floor is rather tame. There may be a few motion sensor activated skeletons that pop up and startling the careless, but otherwise it's all kid friendly.

This however is NOT the case with the upper floors. Which prohibit native participation completely. If that doesn't chill your blood then the fact that you have to stop by a booth near the elevator to "check in" and received a warning that only those that are seeking a true test of terror should enter, might.

However the droid representative will NOT offer any additional information to imports, save that all participants will be given thirty minutes to escape before "time is up". They will NOT be telling anyone that:

-Immediately upon exiting the elevator, you will find yourself seeped in power dampening fog, leaving you de-powered.
-That the upper floors are inhabited by wandering animatronics with monstrous appearances that are programmed to hunt the imports trying to find their way out.
-As the thiry minutes tick by, the animatronics will become faster and hunt the imports with more tenacity and ever increasing perception. Early in the hunt it's possible to hide or avoid most animatronics. This becomes less effective as time goes by.
-Any imports that are unable to escape the animatronics will NOT be hurt. When an import is captured they will be hauled to a secret exit which ends in a shoot that deposits the character outside, near Stan's Photo booth. (Who might just have a series of photos depicting your character in various compromising states of terror.) However the participating imports will be unaware of the lack of danger they are in until this happens. Which means you might even see some imports being hauled off kicking and screaming into the darkness.

Imports that manage to evade the animatronics long enough to find their way out of the maze of corridors and rooms will find themselves in the haunted house lobby, where they will be presented with a plush version of one of the monsters that had been hunting them. Not so scary now, huh?

Attack on Helix Station

Just after midnight as the festivities hit full swing, several masked men slip over the wall and into the facility. While mostly concealed, to any ImPorts sharp enough to notice them, it quickly becomes apparent that these men are armed to the teeth and full of bad intentions. Moving with precision, skill before any import can alert the others, the gunmen take up positions to cause as much damage as possible. However as they ready their weapons an alarm blares through out the facility. In that brief moment of confusion the gunmen hesitate. And in the span of that hesitation, several security droids suddenly march out into the facility through side doors hefting snub nosed weapons cradled in their arms.

An electric blue flash suddenly illuminates the courtyard as a blast from one of the droid's stun weapons strikes one of the gunmen, who crumples.

And then chaos erupts.

Seeing them as the clear and present danger the gunmen focus their fire on the advancing security bots, but as several defense turrets pop out from concealed slots in the walls, their position quickly becomes untenable. While strong in numbers, the gunmen scatter into groups through out the facility to take cover. A few of them drop smoke grenades to cover their escape, but the blinding cloud is short lived. As contaminates are detected in the air, several purifiers cleverly disguised within the decorations will activate, drawing in the smoke and laying the terrorists' movements bare.

As the gloom recedes, Revan stalks forward out of the smoke, a sheathed katana clenched in one hand
and his expression blazing as he marches towards the nearest group of soldiers.

"WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!" his voice booms strangely loud, carrying over the entire courtyard with the force and command power of someone used to leading warriors into battle. "IMPORTS!" With a fluid motion he withdraws the sword and tosses the scabbard aside.

Little did these bastards know that they were ready. With a small army of Imports, comprised of RISE and volunteer security forces, at his back Revan gave a flourish of his blade before dashing forward.

"TO ARMS!"

[ooc: More info as well as plotting posts can be found here!]

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Jaime's not really the sort for haunted houses. It's not that he's typically too scared by them - or at least he doesn't think he is, considering most of them just have silly plastic skeletons and rubber rodents - but this? A place that's just for imPorts? Jaime's always been a little too curious for his own good. He ventures in on his own, laughing a little at the cheesy lower floor before he finds his way to the top floor.

He sees that someone's already gone in here - whoever it is moves in a way that's a little too human to actually be an indication of someone waiting to pop out at him - so he cheerfully calls out, "See anything spooky yet?"

When Jaime's voice reaches his ears, Manolo lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. And to think he was actually scared a second ago...

"Not unless you count all this fog," he replies with a snort. "But hey, it definitely adds to the atmosphere, though, right?"

It's depowering fog, Jaime knows, because the Scarab has gone completely silent. That's not what he says out loud, however, because he doesn't feel like talking about how he knows, or rattling off that same, tired lie about what his powers really are. Instead, he looks around at the fog a little suspiciously, shrugs, and says, "I guess so! Do you have any idea why only we're allowed up here, and not the natives? I'm gonna be honest, I mostly wound up here 'cause I was curious."

If this is some sort of sinister trap, then he fell for it hook, line and sinker. He has a bad tendency of doing those sorts of things out of the simple desire to know more. It's probably lucky for him that no one who wishes serious physical harm on him has actually discovered that quite yet.

"The only way to find out is by going forward, right? Come on, you can keep my company so I won't be so scared."

He's joking about being scared now, but he'll be really embarrassed if he winds up actually being scared in front of Manolo.

Which he will. It's only a matter of time.

"Not a clue," Manolo laughs. "Looks like we came up here for the same reason." There's so much about this world he doesn't know, it's hard to help himself whenever he finds something new and fun. Who could blame him, though? He'd barely even left San Angel.

On the other hand, Manolo himself can be a bit too trusting about these things, but that thought doesn't even occur to him as he moves closer to his roommate.

"Of course," he says with a playful smirk. "I've seen things way creepier than this. We'll be fine!"

Seriously, this place is eerie, but not necessarily in a bad way.

"All right! Let's do this!"

This is creepier, but there's probably not that much to it, right? Some things will pop out at them, maybe, and there will be an actor or two designed to jump around and scare them. He hasn't visited too many haunted houses, but he's pretty sure that he gets the gist of them all. Jaime motions for Manolo to follow along as he walks straight down the hallway, into all that foggy darkness, and looks curiously at the decorations.

Absently, he reaches one hand out to run across the plastered mimicry of a brick wall, fake spider webs hanging from every conceivable surface. "They really went all out decorating this place," he says, voice full of confidence. "It must have taken them --"

Something grabs him. Of course something grabs him, though for now, it settles for grabbing onto his wrist before letting go, which doesn't stop Jaime from practically jumping back and into Manolo with a little, "Gah! Geez! They got, uh -- they got some kind of grabby machine here!"

Please excuse him, Manolo, as he backs up straight into you. He wants nothing to do with that grabby machine, though he's laughing now that the initial fright's over. "Man, that one really got me."

He's about to wholeheartedly agree with Jaime when a yelp from his roommate sends Manolo's heart straight into his throat. He balls his hand into a fist, ready to leap to the other's defense. Thankfully, it doesn't take long for the initial confusion to dissipate, especially once Jaime announces that it was just some kind of grabbing machine.

"Wow, don't scare me like that, amigo!" But he's laughing too, and he slings an arm around Jaime. "Guess this place is a little spookier than we thought."

Which is fine, really. It's supposed to be scary, and they all know it's fake in the end. All in good fun, right?

Suddenly a hand that's decidedly not Jaime's clamps onto his shoulder, and Manolo's laughter abruptly turns into a choked yell. Gripping onto his roommate tighter now, he shakes himself away from the weird machine and does his best to pull them both away. "Okay, guess this is the grabby-machine corner, maybe we should go somewhere else!"

"There's a difference between being surprised and being scared!" Jaime protests, as if being afraid in a haunted house is somehow an affront to his dignity, but he's laughing anyway -- though his laughter quickly fades once Manolo lets out a yell. Jaime's not holding onto Manolo yet, but he sure isn't shying away from Manolo's arm around his shoulders, that's for sure.

"Yeah, uh, let's keep on going. I can't believe they're allowed to grab you like that! In haunted houses isn't that, like... against the rules, or something?" He pauses as they steer themselves away from the hallway, and he sticks one finger out to angrily chide one animatronic with a stern, "No."

He realizes that it's a robot, and that scolding it doesn't make much of a difference, but giving it the what-for makes him feel a little better.

After that moment of levity, another gust of fog enters the hallway, just as they enter a darkened fork in the road. One hallway appears to lead to some sort of facsimile of a swamp and the other, troublingly, is framed with doll heads. In the distance, there's a tinny, far-off sound of laughter, and the quiet clanking of approaching footsteps, though from which hallway it's coming from is a mystery.

"Uh... I'm thinking we should move away from the dolls. They're totally gonna start moving too."

Creepy fog? That he can deal with. He just doesn't want anything actually touching him. Judging by Jaime's reaction, most "haunted houses" aren't nearly so hands-on with their guests. Why was this one different?

On the surface, Jaime's suggestion to avoid the dolls sounded pretty reasonable. He almost agreed with him, but stopped short when he actually thought about the situation for a second.

"They're just heads, though, it's not like they can grab us!" Manolo pointed out. "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, right?"

Jaime gives Manolo what could only accurately be described as a tragic expression. Is Manolo right? Yes, probably. Does Jaime like it? Not at all. Maybe dolls are harmless, but they're unnerving as all get out, and he'd rather stay as far away from them as possible.

"But these devils are so creepy!" He protests, but it's clear that he's only saying it for the sake of saying it; as soon as he speaks, he's heading into the dreaded cavern of dolls, though he does reach out to poke one.

He probably wouldn't last long in a horror movie, but fortunately for him, this is no horror movie, and all that happens is the doll's eyes flying open as it lets out an eerie, high-pitched laugh. Jaime wrinkles his nose.

"I totally knew it was going to do that. C'mon, we'll go this way, but if we get grabbed by some doll, I'm blaming you."

"Hah, I didn't!" Manolo laughs. "Thank you for the demonstration. And hey, you don't have to listen to me, you know."

Of course, neither of them are all that keen on splitting up either, but that goes without saying. So they wander down the path together, and Manolo squints in a futile attempt to see what's ahead. "Wow, they really don't skimp on that fog..."

Once they reach the next area, though, he thinks he can make out the faint outline of a coffin in the middle of the room. "Do you think they've got someone hiding in that thing?"

"One hundred percent. There has to be something in there."

Jaime eyes the area around the coffin a little warily - it is, of course, framed by wildly twitching dolls that have no business staring at him like that - and plants his hands on his hips while he waits. He's not going to be taken by surprise, nosiree.

"Bet you that once we walk past it, something will pop out at us. Maybe if I just wave my hand in front of it..."

Will something pop out of the coffin? Perhaps, perhaps not. Either way, it's serving as a rather stunning distraction for another one of the animatronics creeping up behind them, deceptively quiet for a huge being of synthetics and metal.

Jaime sounds absolutely sure of himself, and Manolo doesn't have much reason to question his judgment. It totally makes sense, after all. Why else would they have a coffin just sitting in here? So, he curiously watches his roommate wave a hand in an attempt to trigger the trap, oblivious to the danger lurking behind them.

But then a blood-curdling scream pierces the air, a horrible sound coming from a few rooms away, and Manolo whips his head around -- just in time to come face-to-face with a horrendous creature.

"AHHH!!" He stumbles back, tripping on his own feet and painfully landing against the floor.

Landing on the floor seems to be the worst thing that Manolo could do. With a creak of metal and the churning of gears, the hulking animatronic beast leans over, bunny ears flopping in Manolo's face, and grabs onto Manolo's ankle.

That would be fine. A little too handsy for a haunted house, but fine. Things grab people sometimes, right?

Only this time, the animatronic doesn't stop there; instead, ankle wrapped in its grasp, it proceeds to try to physically drag Manolo away. Jaime jumps back with a shout of alarm, but it doesn't last long before he rushes up beside the animatron, yelling, "I don't think this is normal for a haunted house!" before he, unwisely, punches the thing.

He's not entirely sure what punching a machine made out of metal would do other than hurt him (ow, he mutters), but he made a valiant effort.

Part of him is warmed to see Jaime fearlessly throw himself at the robot for his sake, even if it's ultimately futile. But Manolo isn't the type to expect someone to save him, and he grits his teeth as he gives his robotic captor a defiant glare.

"Let! Go! Of! Me!" Each shout is punctuated by a painful kick of his own, but to no avail. Ice-cold panic washes over Manolo as his hands scrape against the floor in a useless attempt to stop himself from getting dragged off.

"Jaime..." He throws a frantic look at his roommate. "Forget about me. Save yourself!"

"Nnnno, I'm not gonna do that, 'cause that's dumb."

Jaime's articulation, it seems, falters in the face of conflict. Either way, he seems a lot more busy glaring at the machine than actually looking at Manolo at this point, because he's busy trying to figure out how to beat up a machine without superpowers. Either way, he's not about to just coldly abandon Manolo to whatever's gone wrong in this haunted house.

"Look, he's strong, but he's slow, I just gotta... maybe..."

In an equally as unwise decision, Jaime literally flings himself at the thing, putting all his weight behind it in an attempt to knock it over. All that winds up happening is that Jaime inelegantly hangs off of its shoulders for a second, leaving Jaime to quietly lament, "I need to gain more weight." It looks about as ridiculous as it sounds, and once they get out, it's going to be one of many very, very silly pictures waiting for them.

Hopping off, he says, "Just hang on! I'll be right back!"

Bless Jaime, he's trying so hard to save Manolo from whatever fate awaits him. He can really admire that kind of determination, and for a second he thinks maybe they can actually find a way out of this.

"Don't worry," he says with a feeble laugh, reaching out to grab onto the table that holds the coffin they'd been looking at earlier. "I'm not in a hurry to go anywhere."

Scowling at the creature again, he making another valiant attempt to kick its arm away. "Get off, seriously!"

Jaime's gone for a little longer than he means to be. In the distance, there's the quiet noise of wood scraping against wood, then a thud, accompanied by a grunt. Jaime's plan becomes clear in the next minute as he comes charging in like a bat out of hell, carrying the top of the coffin with some difficulty; it's a little too big for him, a little too heavy. Nevertheless, the moment he gets close enough to the animatronic, he's hefting it into the air and swinging it with a little more strength than his thin frame would suggest he has.

It looks ridiculous, swinging a piece of wood wider than himself as if it's a baseball bat, and the difference in weight makes itself known as Jaime winds up toppling over and losing his balance immediately thereafter.

Happily, it had enough weight behind it to knock the animatronic down too, and Manolo soon finds himself freed from its grip as it falls onto its back.

"Hah! Take that, you ugly..."

God, he sucks at pithy catchphrases.

"...thing!"

Good one, Jaime.

Maybe it would seem ridiculous to anyone else, but Manolo thinks Jaime looks every bit like a courageous hero straight out of a corrido. He watches in awe as his roommate strikes their foe down with that large piece of wood, giving a shout of excitement when the thing actually lets him go.

"Yeah!" he pipes up as he scrambles to his feet. "I hope you enjoy those splinters in your ugly face!"

Turning to the other man with a grateful smile, he offers a hand to help him up from the floor. "You have saved my life, Jaime. Thank you!"

Well, at least Manolo has a similar level of pithyness when it comes to catchphrases as Jaime does. Ugly face doesn't have much of a better ring to it than ugly thing does, but for the time being, Jaime can live with it. He accepts Manolo's hand to haul himself up and says, "I sure hope I didn't just save your life, or else I'm gonna start wondering what those freaky things are actually here for... or where they're from."

He glances behind them, looking as the machine struggles to get back to its feet.

"But I'm not planning on sticking around to find out! C'mon, I'm ready to just run out of this place."

Unlike Jaime, though, Manolo thinks "ugly face" is plenty pithy, and he seems quite pleased that they got the last word in with that stupid robot. "Well, it was frightening, you stopped it -- I say you saved me," he responds with an easy smile.

Their attention, however, is drawn back to the animatronic, which looks like it's getting ready for a second round.

"Yes, I think so too," Manolo quietly agrees, motioning back toward the way they came. "Let's just...start looking for the exit."

"Then you're welcome," Jaime says easily enough, feeling good humour return to his bones now that he doesn't feel that they're in any immediate danger. It's not like the hulking thing tried throttling them firsthand or anything, so they're probably going to be okay -- but that doesn't mean that he's keen on investigating any further.

He bumps at Manolo with his shoulder, gesturing for them to go further down the hallway and just move as fast as they can. It would be plenty spooky for a normal haunted house, with all sorts of things popping out at them and building up the atmosphere. As it is? It just feels like child's play to Jaime, save for one or two times that the suddenness of the props startle him.

It's not long until they see a wink of light at the end of one hallway, signalling the end of this mess.

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Boys and girls of every age, Wouldn't you like to see something strange

B!

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I love Jaime so much lol

I LOVE BOTH THESE DWEEBS... they try so hard

THEY REALLY DO LMAO

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