maskormenacelogs | COME ON AND SLAM

Entry tags:

COME ON AND SLAM

WHO: Everyone! Especially YOU!
WHERE: The International Moon Research Base, Mare Nubium, THE MOON
WHEN: April 18th, all day
WHAT: Aegis Force, the government-funded imPort peacekeeping team, is hosting this month's Swear-In to promote their ideals of teamwork and cooperation! Come compete and spectate in the SPACE SLAM, the sporting event that's out of this world! Also featuring a LUNAR DISCO, a DIPLOMATIC EVENT, and a BATTLE AGAINST ATTACKING ROBOTS! Wait, what was that last one?
WARNINGS: Violence, awkward locker rooms. Any questions or issues, hit up the OOC post!

PART I: THE SWEAR-IN

Welcome to the Moon, imPorts! You arrive through the Porter in the base's atrium dome, designed in a futuristic style that emphasizes sleek, spotless white surfaces. You will immediately notice how much less you weigh here in the Moon's low-gravity environment- be careful jumping, or you may hit the ceiling!

Before you can get to the main event, you'll have to pass through strict security comparable to an airport experience (if the airport was surrounded by merciless vacuum and filled with flammable oxygen). Any weapons will have to be surrendered and locked up by base personnel during the event, unless you can convince officials to make an exception. Once past security, airlock tunnels will lead to the Base's other domes, where the main body of the Swear-In will be today.

The RESIDENCE dome is the largest of the interlinked habitable bubbles that make up the main Moon Base, holding tourist hotels, staff apartments, restaurants, and even a grassy park beneath a glass dome offering a view of the Earth above. Crowds are thick today, as plenty of people have flocked to the Moon to behold the heavily-advertised SPACE SLAM. The Slam is an Aegis-sponsored live-streamed sporting event, game show and fundraiser where imPorts assemble themselves into teams of 2 - 6 characters and compete in different challenges, held in hotel gyms and in the park. Giant screens and bright holo-displays notify of the different causes benefiting from today’s event, including the Endeavor Centre, SELF, and HOPE. Participating characters can choose any or all of:

1. Basketball - but of course. A court has been set up, and the stands are packed with cheering fans. Two teams face off and try to get the ball through each other’s hoops!
2. Battle Royale - the obligatory superhero sparring fight, available in free-for-all and team-vs.-team editions. Square off against with your rivals in an open arena and show the world who’s the toughest- just don’t kill or seriously maim anybody in the fray, or you’ll be disqualified!
3. Low-gravity laser tag - the less violent alternative to the Battle Royale, again in free-for-all or team-vs-team options. Grab your vest and plastic light gun and bounce your way into the neon-lit Zap Zone for a match!
4. Irritation Lane - a particularly challenging event, part demolition derby, part go-karting race. Your team must choose and customize their own ground vehicle(s) in a garage with sixty minutes to spare, working from pre-existing chassis like rugged old-fashioned moon buggies, light and fast hover cycles, and the massive heavy-footed Lunar Construction Mech. Decorate and modify your creations as you please and outfit them with nonlethal weapons like glue-foam missiles, EMP mines, net launchers, and smoke screens. Then put on a space suit and face your rivals in a thrilling race around the track that’s been constructed outside the base, complete with soaring low-gravity jumps and daring shortcuts through twisty, narrow canyons!
5. Charades - livestreamed to the entire planet so EVERYONE can see you choking as you try to think of how to mime a banana without looking like a pervert.
6. Competitive karaoke - livestreamed to the entire planet so EVERYONE can see you choking as you try to hit those high notes on ‘Don’t Stop Believing.’
7. Cooking contest - hop into a futuristic, well-stocked kitchen in one of the hotels with your team and roll up your sleeves. You’ve got an hour to whip up a dish that will impress, after which you’ll share your creation with other Swear-In attendees. The more delicious your cooking, the more votes you’ll get when it comes time for judging!
8. Dance-off - does your team have the moves to win over the audience? Put together a killer routine and show what you’ve got!
9. Bouncy castle endurance contest - A massive bouncy castle awaits in a huge room on one of the lower floors of the dome, with protective pads covering the walls and floors and ceilings. Get on the castle with your teammates and jump, jump, jump sky-high in the lowered gravity! Keep jumping no matter what, even if the opposing team tries to knock you off the castle. The team with the last people still bouncing wins this contest!
10. Lunar volleyball - the moondust on the moon’s surface is kind of like sand, isn’t it? At any rate, someone has set up a net outside the Residence dome and space suits are available for those who want to see how hard they can spike a ball in low-gravity.

Holographic and force field technology is in play during these events to ensure everyone's safety in the fragile environment of the Moon Base. Teams of metahumans are also competing, if you want to play out your team playing against NPCs. Before and after your matches, you may want to huddle with your team to discuss strategy and get psyched, engage in some trash talk with your rivals to get in their heads, and give interviews to clustering reporters about how you and your teammates are going to play hard, you know, just give it your very best. Locker rooms are also available for you and your teammates to get changed and shower in, which may or may not be excruciatingly awkward for you. Good luck and have fun, imPorts!

Once you’ve had your fill of the adrenaline of the Space Slam, why not move into the Embassy Dome for a more relaxing and mingle-friendly time? A LUNAR DISCO is happening in the gorgeous Grand Ballroom at the dome’s top level, with huge windows offering a gorgeous view of the cosmos, music to groove to across the marble floor, and a spread of free appropriately-themed snacks and drinks. Among the refreshments is finger food from The Nickel, and Abigail Hobbs will be playing the harpsichord. If you feel like you need to get outside for some (lack of) air, you can also step away for a moonwalk tour, ambling across the desolate gray lunar landscape in a space suit or a clear sealed 'hamster ball' under the supervision of base staff.

You may also find yourself on the Earth Viewing Deck, an elegant lounge dominated by a vast window view of the Earth, with soft music, low lighting, and private alcoves for personal conversation. Here is where the political aspect of the Swear-In comes into play. Not only is there a desk staffed by a government official where you can declare yourself Registered or Unsettled, but there are also optional conversation-starting name tags available with prompts like ‘I’m (INSERT FACTION/ALLEGIANCE HERE), ask me why’ or ‘I am a (INSERT SPECIES/PROFESSION/OTHER RELEVANT IDENTITY HERE), ask me anything’ or ‘I’m (REGISTERED/UNSETTLED), change my mind!’ The goal of this event is encouraging imPorts to talk to each other and resolve issues within their community peacefully and proactively, easing possible disputes before they end up making more work for Aegis.

PART II: ROBOT ATTACK!!
Things run smoothly until late in the evening of the event, when the buzz is immediately killed by a shrill siren, cutting through conversation and competition alike. A hushed silence falls over the gathering, broken by nervous murmuring. Those with experience in these things already know what’s happening: a Swear-In is about to go to hell again.

An eerily calm announcement sounds over the base’s PA system: ”Red Alert. Red Alert. Hostile forces closing on base perimeter. Lockdown protocol now in effect. All civilians are directed to proceed in a calm and orderly manner to the Atrium Porter for evacuation to Earth. All security staff and heroes to your emergency stations. This is not a drill.”

The announcement repeats once, and then the siren resumes. Time to make a decision, imPorts. Are you a civilian who will be evacuating with other noncombatants? Or are you a hero who will stay behind and defend the Moon Base from the oncoming assault?

If you’re evacuating, you can still help to guide and assist the streams of civilians- scientists, VIPs, reporters, tourists, some of them panicking- back to the overcrowded Porter. Once you’re safely back on Earth via the Porter base of your choosing, there’ll be little left to do but huddle with others and wait for news of the crisis unfolding far above the sky, as bits and pieces of information trickle in from the news and social media.

Those of you who choose to buy time for the evacuation by staying to defend the base will find yourselves in a dire situation. Because the Moon Base was built for tourism, science, and diplomacy as a symbol of peace, and thus has no real defenses. It has sensors though, and base staff report at least fifty contacts approaching from all around the base, most of them headed for the Science Dome, home of the base’s labs, lecture hall, and archives, with maybe ten minutes before they arrive. Barely enough time to retrieve your gear (if any) from security and come up with a plan!

First, you’ll have to decide where to make your stand. Will you don a space suit and venture onto the lunar surface in unarmed buggies and shuttles, trying to intercept the enemies before they reach the base itself? Your daring may spare damage to the base and its inhabitants, but out there on the bleak grey dust of the Moon most of you will be only one suit rupture away from a terrible death! You’ll be safer defending from within the base itself, where at least there’s shelter.

The oncoming robots come in two varieties: beefy KILLER ROBOT SPACE LIZARDs, and more subtle COPYCAT DROIDS. The lizards are seven feet long, tough and armoured, equipped with razor teeth and claws, an electric tail, and laser-beam eyes. They also lay ACID-BOMB EGGS that characters will have to disable or dispose of before they burst, corroding the Moon Base still further and causing structural damage. But they're really just the demolition crew for the base, and not that dangerous to imPorts compared to the smaller cats.

These bad kitties are prowling for imPorts, and will fire energy beams at them from their heads, attempting to steal their ~~talent~~ powers. If the beam strikes true, not only is the imPort de-powered until the Copycat is destroyed, but the Copycat will also morph into liquid metal and shift into a metallic copy of the imPort in question, complete with their powers and any specialized gear they may have, which they'll immediately use to wreak havoc on imPorts and natives alike. Get ready to experience firsthand what it’s like to be powerless in the face of a superpowered attacker!

As lasers flash, heroes smash, and robots explode, the Moon Base will begin taking damage despite the best efforts of characters. Injured staff will cry out for assistance and rescue, falling debris will threaten to pin people to the floor, hull breaches will threaten to drain the base’s oxygen and blow people out into space, and fires and explosions will wrack the Science Dome in particular as the robots try to detonate its volatile experiments and power sources to wipe out the entire base!

By the end of the fray everyone at the Moon Base will have been evacuated alive if not necessarily uninjured while all robots are disabled. However, there will have been heavy damage to the Science Dome in particular. Your characters can get started on repair and recovery if they want to stick around. Either way, the bravery shown by imPorts defending the Swear-In will result in EVERYONE being declared a winner at the Space Slam!

In the aftermath, characters will be able to glean more information about what just happened and why. It appears the robots ‘hatched’ from pods buried around the perimeter of the base in response to an activation signal. Apparently these pods have been lying in wait for over a year, while the Moon Base itself was still under construction as a highly-public imPort-led project! Those who are familiar with the history of the Otherworld Technologies Organization (OTO) may find familiarity in the design of the robots and pods. It would hardly be the first time the more extreme OTO elements were alleged to have pitted their killer machines against imPorts and civilians alike…

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

"Hold on," he says, and closes his eyes.

A moment later, a kind of window will open in Allison's field of vision, notifying her that a new text message has arrived in her personal Network inbox: Hi Allison. This is Jacob. I'm accessing the Network to message you directly through the mental link. It works through the nanites in our tattoos.

And he holds up his wrist to demonstrate, even though the 'REGISTERED HERO' tattoo is currently obscured by the armour he's wearing.

Damn it!

[Jacob curses, first at the sword vanishing, then at Lucina dangling from the pipes. He lunges forward, reversing the jump he just took away from the robot to float back toward the hole, and grabs hold of a broken strut with one hand while his other reaches downward and glows blue.]

I'll get it! Just hold on! Tell me if you start to slip!

[He knows the sword is more than a weapon to Lucina, and he's going to get it back for her if at all possible. He catches a glimpse of Falchion floating below, tumbling end-over-end, and snags it in a mass effect field. Now glowing with blue energy, the sword starts to rise back upwards as Jacob Pulls it against the current of the wind, gritting his teeth.]

Just a little more...!

"Not right now," he says, then sighs. "Just got off the comms with the Porter bases down on Earth. All evacuees are safe and accounted for, but there are some seriously unhappy people down there."

Not that Jacob can blame them. He invited them all to a day of games and spectacle and networking, not a space battle. And he had put his guarantee- his team's guarantee- on their safety. He knows that Aegis and the other imPorts have achieved a feat of arms here, preserving the Moon Base against a numerically superior enemy that had the element of surprise without any deaths, but that probably doesn't count for much to the people who had to flee for their lives.

[Jacob raises an eyebrow at the sword, then lets it go. He has so many other things to worry about right now.]

No problem. You okay?

[The lizard is still twitching and spasming as it falls slowly to the ground, not fully shut down yet despite being almost bisected. Jacob offhandedly shoots it a couple more times, just to make sure.]

"Good thinking, Voltage!"

Jacob doesn't use Max's code name often, but this is the first time they've been in a real, life-or-death battle together as members of Aegis. Now is the time if there ever was one. He's about to say something more, but then he spots the shape bursting from the ground to Max's left and swivels around to engage.

"Watch out, hostile on your left!"

Just as the mech begins to pounce, the space around it distorts and it is suddenly yanked upwards, floating into the air and glowing blue as Jacob ensnares it with a biotic mass effect field.

We haven't got much time left in this round. So I'm taking every shot I can!

[he said, standing there smirking at the other. That was one HELL of a lucky shot. He wasn't even sure if he was going to hit anyone or not.]

[He ghosted, slinking back through a wall before calling out]

Times a ticking. Better get that last shot in if you can.

He closes his eyes, leaving her even more confused for the beat of a moment. Tension radiating down her bones, a feeling so akin to the one right before a fight, that she hasn't felt as keenly in years as has had need of it in the last two weeks. Not knowing which direction or how, when, whether, what to hold for, look for. When it comes, it's so sudden and so unexpected -- the distortion in her vision, popping itself up, in midair -- Allison steps back.

The window comes with her, making her rock her weigh back on to the front of her heel instead of back again.
The words sharpening and opening, to fill that space. Like the communicator messages. Like a letter. Like --

It's impossible, making her blink, but then have to shift back when he raises his arm.
Instinct and awareness trained from all but birth refusing to stay locked.

Even if that's not entirely true, either, as in her surprise at it all, she ends up mouthing the only word filling her head: How?

Ashley winces. "Yeah, I bet. Talk about a PR shitstorm."

Which makes this confession so much harder, but she can't let Jacob or the team shoulder the blame for her mistake.

"It's my fault," she says quietly, her gaze steady on his. She hadn't wanted to say it with the potential to be overheard on comms before deciding how to handle the PR. "I'm a technopath, I've been up here before, I should have noticed the pods and looked into them instead of writing them off as background noise."

It had been her first thought when the news about the pods came in, and one that she's allowed to fester.

"Everyone is convinced they are doing the right thing. I know I was right when I destroyed the Hosnian planets even though many didn't agree," Hux pointed out, raising his eyebrows.

"You seem convinced that the right thing in your view is the right thing for everyone," he said thoughtfully as he looked back out the glass. "Let's hope you won't lose your job. That would be a terrible blow for you."

It's honestly a good question to ask this particular fellow - the way he's moving, it almost does seem like he's going with the civilians. However, Yusei shakes his head when he's addressed.

"Not exactly - my abilities are more suited for giving them cover while they evacuate, so I'm just trying to keep things running as smooth as possible."

So yeah, he's sticking around.

"Did you need something?"

A problem for when we send them all back to the scrapheap, then!

[It doesn't exactly feel great to be utterly unprepared for a surprise attack yet again. There's small relief in the fact that the moon base isn't oh, say, the last bastion of the human race, but hey it still stings. Cayde uses that anger, and calls the Golden Gun again.

He incinerates another line of lizards.]

Yusei still really hasn't got the hang of the finer bits of wind manipulation. But he's got the know-how to make a barrier, and the momentum in his veins means he's not going to run out of energy anytime soon. The result is a constantly whirling dome of glittering wind around his body, repelling the droids that try and come at him with the loud clanging and screeching of metal. Occasionally, he tries to contort the dome into something to strike the enemy with, but more often than not it's safer for him to keep the shield up.

That vigilance proves to be very helpful, as the invisible droid that Brandon's following with his camera ends up crashing right into the dome and bounces off - not injured enough to be taken out of the battle, but decidedly scuffed. Despite being invisible, it does make an audible sound that draws Yusei's attention. He knits his brows in confusion, unable to see what had hit his barrier.

"What the hell was that?!"

Ruby actively sought out her team mates, trying to figure out who she'd be working with on what games. She kept looking between her notes and the name tags of those nearby to the sign ups. Eventually she noticed the name 'Ben' and headed off in his direction, not realizing he was looking around just as much as she was.

"Hey! Hey! Are you on team Nova Blast?" She shouts ahead of herself.

[ 'I'm a CEO, ask me anything' says the badge, and the way he swaggered around the area -- it was pretty fucking clear that Tony Stark thought he was top shit.

Which, well, he always thought that, but making a point of talking to the unsettled folks... yeah, he was just looking to pick at strings that probably didn't really need to be picked at, but he was going to do it anyway. ]

So -- What's the reason you haven't registered? Some reason about the government, they're going to misuse your information... something like that?

Politcs aren't Cayde's strong suit, even if it's been part of his job description for some time. That being said, the view's enough to goad him into playing nice. Playing Ask Me Anything is better than a Council meeting any day of the week, and those don't have starside viewing.

He ambles up next to Nathan, a nametag reading "I am a Robot, Ask Me Anything" slapped on his chest, knocks back a drink, and sighs at the Earth.

"Never get tired of seein' that."

[ Ruby's hands go up quickly - she's unarmed, and next to her is a civilian holding his hand over his own mouth. ]

Ruby Nakamura. I was playing laser tag, and I was in Irritation Lane. I'm currently trying to help civilians escape, and I would really like to avoid being shot in the face.

[ Okay. So. Maybe she was a little stressed, and when she was stressed, she got a little snarky. But her current evacuee, bless his little heart, had been particularly hard to keep from just running out into the middle of danger. At least for now she'd managed to keep her voice down to a whisper's volume instead of giving in to the urge to shout at the new arrival.

Honestly, having a gun in her face felt a little nostalgic, even if it was clearly not the type of gun she was used to. ]

"It's really fucking something, isn't it?"

Mitchell Hundred, in a suit that was just Nice Enough to make it to this party, was hovering at this moment, but if Allison had paid any attention, she'd have noticed the guy was making rounds, introducing himself to people, speaking up like a natural social butterfly.

Up close, though, the guy didn't really look the type. "Have you, uh, seen the world from this perspective before? It always makes me feel really... really small, you know?"

On one hand, during Laser tag she had wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing being away from cover so much. On the other hand, it turned out it worked very well for him, which surprised her because in her mind he was far too tall and thus too easy of a target to pull it off. In the end, she'd simply offered him a first bump after the rounds they both competed in before she wandered off to her next round.

When it was time for the building part of Irritation Lane she gave him a curious look, actually speaking to him for the first time.

"Too easy?" she inquired, looking more than a little out of her element as she glanced over all of the available materials.

She was not a mechanic. While she could do a lot of things with whatever she was given, working on a vehicle and expecting it to come out running even vaguely proper was a long-shot. Even hot wiring a relatively new vehicle was questionable when she was involved.

[ Who is the Daft Punk looking motherfucker at this party, and why does he prance around like he owns it? Woden -- who had something of a mysterious reputation, and a penchant for doing some pretty bad things, just hapepened to come to this swear-in in his full regalia, which meant neon lights and everything. ]

Neat trick -- Powers, or something else?

[ He asked, pointing at the glass. ]

Cayde's been having a time of it in the disco, working the room and hitting the dance floor. He takes a break from dancing to grab some drinks and a snack. He's worming his way through the crowd with a cocktail in one hand when he comes across Finn.

He's seen him around the base but hadn't found the time to make introductions. Well, no time like the present, especially when the present is a party.

"Heyyyy there, belated welcome to the team! Helluva party, huh?"

I don't know, take the piss out of it until it wants to shoot you?

[ Because Apollo sure wants to shoot Riptide right now!! He curls a fist against the glass wall; it's so unbelievably stupid to watch a droid run around with your powers and be entirely helpless to do anything about it. ]

You've got shielding against laser beams, right?

Space volleyball just isn't the same anyway...

[ It's weird, watching someone evade your own powerset. Apollo would almost want to give notes to the copycat droid, were it not Kirk that the copycat was trying to kill... that and the fact that it stole his powers.

But he doesn't waste Kirk's efforts; Apollo vaults out of cover and circles around the droid, closing in quickly with his makeshift club upraised as soon as the droid presents its back. He smashes the table leg across the droid's head, batting it with every fibre of his (disappointingly unpowered) muscles with an almighty CLANG.

Which only really serves to give the head unit a bit of a dent and piss the droid off. Apollo dives for cover with a muttered curse. ]

Nope, we need something bigger.

Same problem you get with every government sponsored law enforcement: the government bit.

[ He sips his drink - a fancy moon-themed cocktail that doesn't taste all that bad - and shrugs again. ]

I don't blame people for Registering, don't get me wrong. Free money, free housing, legal protection - it makes sense. Especially if you're from a world where you never had those things before.

Almost unbelievably so, [ Apollo replies softly, flashing a sidelong grin at the young man joining him by the glass. ]

I remember the first time I saw it. [ He laughs briefly, almost fondly. ] I thought it looked so fake! It was such an alien thing to see. And so weirdly small...

[ Apollo shakes his head thoughtfully and presses a hand against the glass. ]

More people should see it. I know that's easier said than done, of course. But I think it changes you, seeing your own world like that.

Sadly for that reference, Harry has never seen nor heard Daft Punk, but the man reminds him of the old movie Tron and brings a grin to Harry's face. He turns to fully face the man? and nods.

"A little of this, a little of that."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 10 of 54

COME ON AND SLAM

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

attack

no subject

base

Re: Ben Hargreeves ☂ | Registered Hero | OTA

earth viewing

Earth Viewing

Re: Boba Fett | Star Wars (Legends) | Unsettled

earth viewing deck

Team Void Challengers

swear-in

B

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Re: swear-in