maskormenacelogs | 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…

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"No. I'm going to keep trying to find more civilians." She pauses from her examinations to look at him a moment. "My powers may not be very useful on the moon, but I've got some training that should help."

A few more civilians come into her peripheral vision and her head snaps in the direction of the movement. She relaxes just a little.

"Also, I'm pretty fast, so I can bait the robots to give others time to escape."

She might have sounded just a little proud of this. After all, she'd worried that she'd lost some of her speed during the 'forest hobo' months, so being able to act as bait was a good sign.

"What kind of training?" Luther asks. He sounds... surprisingly okay about the prospect of just letting a sixteen-year-old go into battle, his question more like a gentle tactical curiosity: understanding her capabilities, how far she can push. How far he could trust this kid in a battle. (Knowing, of course, exactly how dangerous even teenagers could be when well-trained.)

"You can summarise," he adds after a second, because there's still movement all around them, and they might not have time for a full detailed rundown. Or not everyone wants to spill their life story to a stranger, let alone in these conditions. "Just need to know how well you can hold your own, if we're going to be fighting alongside each other. I'm Luther, by the way."

No doubt, either, that he's planning on sticking by her side now. Luther doesn't intend on leaving her alone, without backup.

"Various types, but the skills that will be useful in this scenario include scouting, agility, and the ability to keep moving through pain." She honestly had a hard time imagining people who didn't have at least a little pain in their everyday life. It just seemed unrealistic for people to not at least have hands that hurt all the time. "I'm not as fast as the cat bots for long-term running, but I can turn faster than they can and outsmart them so that they lose track of me."

She keeps her eyes on the people coming closer. She notices someone has some injuries and frowns. She'd make bets that the injury had happened very, very recently based on how little blood there was for the size of the wound. At least, the size she assumed the wound was. The hard part was figuring out if it has come from one of the bots, or if it had been from something else.

"I'm also good at keeping an eye on the surroundings, signaling allies the situation, and I'm pretty good at getting people calm enough to evacuate them, if tonight's been any example."

"Good. Those are good skillsets." Even the ability to keep moving through pain. Someone raised in a normal environment, a better environment, might have flinched at hearing a sixteen-year-old list that as something she could do -- it's not something you're supposed to aspire towards -- but as far as Luther's concerned, it's just a part of life. His father had broken and reforged and broken and reforged them, applying immense pressure until coal turned into diamond. (Or snapped, and broke.)

"Have you ever fought robots bef—"

He's big and clumsy, and unlike Ruby, not the best at scouting or being the lookout. He's not paying enough attention when another bot comes leaping down the hall towards him.

It was almost relaxing to have someone act like this was normal. Later she might think 'oh, hm, that's maybe odd?' but in this situation it was good to not get a strange look for things that were normal to her. It meant less having to explain things that weren't relevant to what was going on, and more time to express things that could be used to formulate plans, or at the very least give the conversation partners a rough idea of their strengths and weaknesses.

There was a twinge of comfort in the questions being about what she can do, not why she could do them, or if she was qualified.

It was good for them both that she was so focused on their surroundings. The moment the bot came into her (admittedly limited) field of vision she called an alert.

"To your left!"

She took this moment to get a little behind him - not completely shielded, in case she needed to act as a distraction, but far enough she'd not be in the way.

To your left and that sudden, sharp call made him react with an immediacy that came from muscle memory. Luther didn't think about it at all, just spun around in time for the bot to collide with his chest, its talons scrabbling and trying to rear back and get a good angle to claw him. There was the exhale of Luther's breath being driven out of him, his boots sliding back along the floor of the corridor -- and then he recovered, more quickly thanks to her warning, slamming the robo-lizard down onto said floor. He wrangled it over to the nearest hatch, employing his strength like a wrestler to shove it through and then hammer on the button to slide the hatch shut behind it.

A few distant whumps as it tried slamming itself against the door over and over. He sighed, touched the torn edge of his jacket.

"Thank you, miss...?

As she watched him make quick work of the lizardbot she kept looking to each side to make sure there weren't more, or that no one needed immediate care. She couldn't help but be impressed, even when her stomach did a little flip at the idea of being in the airlock herself. This guy was efficient at what he did, and she liked that in a partner in arms.

"Ruby. You?"

If it wasn't clear already that she was used to being on lookout, the fact that a couple civilians turning the corner ripped her attention to them, even as she'd been about ready to look away, probably should have. She relaxed when she realised based on their clothing they were probably from the cooking staff, and that none of them looked injured.

"Luther." And on the heels of that sharp competence, the instinctive way Ruby spins right back into being lookout, Number One makes a quick decision. To use the resources at his disposal, and accept a useful combatant where he can: "Alright. If you want to find more civilians, then let's do that. I'll take point, and you keep an eye on our six, and the sides. Shout if you see anyone, and we'll get them to the Porter. Sound good?"

What surprises him more about all this, really, is how easy it is to slide back into those old habits. Team leader, delivering orders. But the civilians are what matter -- they're what he's always been raised and taught to think of as his priority -- so the fact that she's hell-bent on saving them aligns nicely with Luther's own goals, right about now.

"Sounds good. If you see anyone, let me know. My prescription is out of date, so you might see people I don't since I'm mostly relying on movement speed for anything too far away to see clearly."

With that said, she got into position, not once stopping her lookout.

She had a good feeling about this partnership. This person was competent, and he was taking the actions she would if she were leader of a group. And he was more suited for them, being in a position to actually physically withstand the attacks of the robots.

This was definitely going to work out for the best.

COME ON AND SLAM

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could poss fade out on them heading out and being bamfs together?

Sounds great to me BD