tushanshu_logs | Continental turtle shift

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Continental turtle shift - catch-all

All preparations over the last few weeks culminate into one day. Maps have been made and studied, plans set. The turtle has been awash in workers, both kedan and Foreigner alike, building off technological plans and testing magical means, the shell practically humming with the activity of its occupants.

Now everyone is in their places: The scouts in the waters in front by wing and by ship, keeping wary eyes on the horizon ahead, the movers and those who plan to help steer at the far rear of the shell edge. The two groups are separated by miles, but messengers between the two will do their best to convey and coordinate information.

In spite of the tension in the air, the atmosphere remains determinedly cheerful – hopeful that this will be the solution. Hopefully within a double handful of days, the idea of a sinking turtle will fade like the remnants of a nightmare.

((ooc: This is a catch-all for the grand turtle move! Please post to either the first thread to play something within the first five days before the fog hits, or to the second . . . where things start to go less than smoothly. Please read the relevant ooc post for details))

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And they’re off! As the appointed time clicks into place, the anticipation and quiet explodes into activity. Foreigners and kedan take to their assigned jobs. For the first five days, all will run exactly (or almost exactly) as planned, with shifts coordinated like clockwork, letting tired magic users, scouts, and messengers take rests while renewed ones take their places. Technicians run in shifts as well, keeping an eye on their machinery, watching for signs of error, breakage, or overheating.

For those taking a rest or assigned to improving morale, tents have been pitched along the shell edge near both head and rear, and a number of fires stay lit throughout the night. Delicious smells rise from the fires as a number of individuals show off their cooking prowess. Some tell stories – both old and newly-made – some play music, some dance. The important thing is to keep minds and spirits buoyant in the face of the great uncertainty in front of them . . . and that they have had to wrest fate from the being who normally would have been taking care of them all, now silent and slowly sinking beneath their feet.

Duke hadn't been entirely honest about his ability with magic. He did say he could cast about a hundred of this spell in a sitting. That was still true - if someone was counting the flares of green light that signaled the end of his modified spell, it was ten over a hundred - or perhaps about twenty minutes - before he dropped his arm to his side and paced in a circle.

But what 'one sitting' meant, or how he would need to recover from doing something like that, that... was the part he left vague on purpose. It takes him about a minute to turn right back to the device Kaiba had set up and begin sending wind in that direction again.

... Someone might need to convince him to take an actual break. He seems to be convinced that's all the break he needs - just long enough to restore his magic.

Gene has been assisting Duke with the wind portion of the turtle move; using the white ring for something so relatively easy doesn't drain him very quickly with the rest of them to shore it up. But Duke seems to be pushing himself very hard for someone whose magic comes from inside him and not a magical implement.

"Have you had anything to eat?" Gene asks during one of Duke's pacing sessions.

Duke takes another two steps before he registers wait, that was aimed at him. He'd been counting how long until his magic refilled.

So his blank stare might be an answer. What does food have to do with this?

"... When I woke."

Lapis has never had a steady stomach for grand resistance maneuvers, not that she can recall. She fights to ignore the whispers that haunt the edges of her waking thoughts: This won’t work, it will make things worse somehow, only disaster will result. The whispers have only increased as she’s tested the limits of her own power and found that they aren’t what they should be – what they always have been. She’s not able to give nearly as much as she’s promised – a discovery that nearly makes her rule out her role entirely.

She clings to the idea that there are too many people involved now to stop. Kedan and Foreigners have been mobilized; to try to stop would be like tossing herself in the way of an oncoming boulder, and to even try would be to sentence herself to the crush of its path. She tries to focus on the one thing that’s driven her to date: To stand and be trapped by an inevitable fate is an impossibility. Even if the very worst should happen, at least it will be a fate made by choice.

She can be found in the first few days in two ways:

1. Taking her shift. Even if she's not as powerful as she should have been, Lapis raises great waves that surge through the water. Her control is excellent; the water does exactly what she demands of it, even though at times she's manipulating waves several stories high.

2. Just outside of the circle of tents fires when off her shift, watching the children play (if they're awake themselves) with a half-absent, almost dreamy expression.

Once people are off and moving on their individual roles, Pepper mostly works on relaying communications between the scouting group,the movers, and the steerers at the far edge of the shell. She's also got shift schedules on her HUD, so she can tell people when they need to stop for rest. 'Need' because it would appear some of the participants are rather stubborn about taking breaks, even if it's for their own good.

Pepper is one of those stubborn people, as it turns out, and she falls asleep in the armor once or twice during the first five days. Autopilot is a useful feature. Basically, if she's not airborne she's passed out to sleep for a few hours.

She occasionally feeds some of her music across the radio when people need some cheering up, or a break from her somewhat monotonous status updates.

Skulduggery's at the rear of the shell, contributing the manipulation of both water and air to the feat of steering Asti across the ocean. Controlling both at once limits how strong either element can be, but with so many people working together it hardly matters - and Skulduggery more than makes up for it by his ability to keep going for days without taking a break.

Pepper presumably can't say the same, and she's one of the few back-and-forth messengers who can make round trips in less than twelve hours. So while she's a very useful asset, you don't need to be a genius to see when she's pushing herself past her limits. Fortunately, Skulduggery is a genius.

"Pepper," he calls out after she lands at one point, a few days into the move. "Do you have a minute?"

Communication between the groups wasn't exactly instantaneous, so updates were a few hours old by the time Pepper gets back to the turtle. Despite being tired she can usually recall all the details without much trouble, and the suit's computer can make up for any minor omissions.

"Hey, Skul," Pepper says as brightly as possible, stifling a yawn as the faceplate retracts. She looks tired, but she's trying to cover it with relentless cheer, as if it's somehow a substitute for caffeine or actual sleep. "I've got several minutes, in fact. What's up? Need a relief pitcher?"

The armour reminds Skulduggery a little of the Engineer, apart from being a brighter colour and having a makeshift face set into its head. It was a little unnerving the first time he saw the face plate retract to reveal Pepper's insatiable grin - the Engineer, after all, was a robot with a lopsided smile painted onto its smooth, empty metal head - but Skulduggery's seen it often enough now that he doesn't give the sight a second thought.

"A relief pitcher?" he asks, head tilted to the side. Then he shakes his head. "No. I was wondering when the last time you slept was."

"Uh." Pepper has to think about that one for a moment. Technically: "I caught a few hours in the suit on the way back from the scout group," she says after a moment. Suit naps did not equal proper sleep, but she's pretending otherwise. "I think I was in bed at one point a day or two ago," she adds unconvincingly. "Why?"

Caught a few hours in the suit.

"Why?" Skulduggery looks at Pepper. Blank and expressionless his skull may be, but the tilt of his head and the tone of his voice communicates his disbelief quite well, especially if one has known him for any decent length of time. "Because you look like you're running on adrenaline and determination. Which bed?"

Skul's incredulity at her reply is not lost on Pepper. She does her best not to visibly cringe.

"Mine," she replies a little defensively. That might make it closer to four days ago. "Are you telling me to go to sleep? That's my dad's job, and only because I'm still seventeen back home."

Admittedly, though, Pepper is pretty tired. It's part of the reason she's kept moving, because it makes it harder for her to fall asleep.

"We're kind of short-handed on the communication front," she adds, as if that's a good excuse.

"We're short-handed on every front," Skulduggery points out. "Communication is going to be more vital the closer we get. We're certainly going to need you when we land, and we're going to need you bright and alert. If you haven't slept since we started this whole venture, you're not alert, whether you have the suit to help you or not. And no," Skulduggery adds with one hand raised before Pepper can interject, "sleeping in the suit while you're flying doesn't count."

Arguing seems like the obvious strategy here, and she certainly wants to. But despite telling Skul that he's not her dad, she can't help but be reminded of him. It's a lecture, certainly, but the concern is genuine.

And as annoying as it is to admit, he's right. Pepper needs to sleep, properly, if she's going to be of use.

"It counts as napping," she counters with a sigh, reaching up to pull off her helmet. "But fine, dad. I could use a shower and a couple hours of shuteye." Pepper stifles another yawn. "What about you? Don't you need a break some time?"

He might not need to sleep, but no one's energy was bottomless.

On the fifth day, the fog settles in, dank and cold. And that’s when things begin to go wrong. Tech begins to spurt, fizzle . . . and magic does the same. Doggedly all push onward, though murmurings and whispers start to skirt the edges of the fires. The fog is a bad omen.

This is nothing, however, compared to the sixth day when the turtle strikes the shoal.

The impact ripples through the shell like a mallet thundering against a bell. The resulting earthquake and its vibrations slam through the shell surface, and for a few minutes it may seem as though the world may never stop shaking.

All efforts at moving the turtle cease as the attention of all is pulled towards the cause of the quake and the damage left in its wake.

A) Late on the fifth day, deep in fog; crash-landing

This fog is terrible. It's making it next to impossible for Pepper to do her job - she can't see for crap, the armor's sensors can't seem to penetrate the mass of air, and her radio is on the fritz to boot. The first few hours were just annoying, but it's become infuriating. In short, she's Not Happy.

Then her HUD begins to flicker.

"Warning: system malfunction." the computer chimes unhelpfully.

"What kind of malfunctioning?" Pepper demands, her stomach doing flip-flops as she suddenly drops a few feet in the air.

"Unknown. Warning: system failure imminent."

"That is not good. Broadcast to all the radios," she orders, panic seeping into her voice. She makes a distress call that she hopes transmits audibly, and then her suit goes dark, and she's falling from several hundred feet in the air towards the ocean below.

"Reboot! Reboot!" No response. "Oh, this is bad, this is bad, this is very, very b-"

Pepper blacks out momentarily when she slams into the surface of the water - thanking Tony profusely when she does wake up. The suit took the brunt of the impact, but she can tell she's going to be one big bruise tomorrow.

If someone finds her, or the suit restarts, that is. It's hard to tell, but it feels like she's sinking.

B) Sixth day and beyond

Pepper is sore, and she should probably be checked for a concussion, but there are other people who have a lot worse to deal with. Her aches and pains and bruises can wait. The city itself is in need of a lot of TLC. She puts on the most positive front that she can and switches from logistics of moving to logistics of earthquake response.

The suit is still acting strangely, but it's operable enough most of the time that she'll be wearing it while working on damage control and repairs around the city. She knows next to nothing about construction, but she can follow directions as well as transmit them. Pepper will not, however, consent to flying again until the fog clears.

There's a distress call that Gene gets bits and pieces of, and it sounds like-- "Pepper," he says, and teleports in her direction. The fog seems to have thrown off his precision; he's about fifteen feet in the air and a hundred feet away. And he can't see her. It's dark and the fog is everywhere and the whole surface of the sea is all white caps and dark troughs, making it difficult to see the color scheme of the Rescue armor.

"Pepper? Pepper!"

Pepper has started to think through her options, none of which seems particularly ideal. The life support system seems to be functional, but that's mostly just a guess because she hasn't started to feel like she's suffocating yet. If she is sinking, how much trouble she's in depends on how deep the water is, and how much pressure the suit can withstand. Even a few feet down her ears pop, but she doesn't seem to be moving very quickly. Pepper reminds herself to tell Tony to put windows in this thing at some point.

"This is brilliant," she mutters, her head throbbing slightly. "I'm probably not even going to drown at this rate, I'm going to be crushed, and that's just disgusting. Oh, and now I'm talking to myself, great. Perfect. Beautiful."

Surely there has to be something she can do.

"Come on!" she shouts angrily into the darkness, moving her arms slightly. She can move. Not well, but she can kind of move. That's a positive. Pepper tries to make swimming motions, but it's like slogging through thick mud. "Wake up!"

As if on command, the suit lights flare on for just a moment, before going out again.

There's a flicker of light that catches Gene's eye, and he turns towards it. "Pepper! Pepper, can you hear me?"

Although the suit lights are still out, the brief flicker prompt Pepper to try rebooting the armor again. It doesn't fully respond, but a corner of the HUD blinks on - emergency power only for now, but it's enough for basic radio communication. Thank goodness for low amp technology.

"-per, can you... me?"

"Gene!" So her distress call worked. "I'm sinking and the suit won't boot up all the way!"

Had he seen the lights? Maybe she can get the armor to respond now, and she reroutes the available emergency power into lighting up the chest piece. Pepper still can't see around her, but she's pretty sure she's glowing under the waves, and hopefully there's enough power to make her visible.

Gene swears. "Pepper, hold on, I'm going to try something." He holds his hand out and the blue ring lights up, and the water dips where the light in Pepper's chest piece is shining. Not enough to reveal her, but enough for her to try and swim to the surface.

Gene's a little bit shocked - the rings usually work better for him than this. What's going on?

Pepper knows that Gene has control over water with the rings - or at least he should. She's expecting that he'll pull her out of the water in the same way he'd trapped Tony once, but nothing of the kind happens.

Whatever affected the suit in the first place seems to be wearing off, but far more slowly than she'd like. All she knows is that she doesn't want to be moving down, and the only way to safety is up.

The emergency power makes moving the suit a little easier, but the armor still weighs a lot more than she does, so it's slow going. It's also tiring, and her soon-to-be bruises are making themselves very much known.

It doesn't matter. She's not dying out here.

"I don't suppose you brought some rope?" she asks over the crackling radio, breathing heavily.

Edited 2015-12-07 16:17 (UTC)

Gene swears. "Let me try that again." He focuses, clenching his fists, and the light from the blue ring flickers - and momentarily sputters out.

His control of the water slips away from him, and he grits his teeth and focuses, and the ring glows again, stronger than before. Then the water dips again, and a globe - a wobbly globe - with Pepper inside rises up from the surface of the sea, hovering about five feet over it.

He hovers closer, trying to get to her.

The sudden movement up is startling - her stomach feels like it's somewhere around her ankles - but it must mean that Gene managed to lift her out of the water. Pepper cuts the suit lights in favor of trying to get the HUD to work. She'd really like to be able to see what's going on right now.

It cooperates just enough to give her a flickering, stuttering view of the world outside the armor, which is apparently quite watery but also definitely not a hundred feet under the ocean. It doesn't really tell her anything, but it's enormously comforting.

"Alright!" she whoops. "Gene Khan to the rescue! You're stealing my moves," she teases.

Relief is starting to flood in now that she's no longer sinking. Assuming, of course, Gene can get them back to shore safely. Which shouldn't be a problem. She really hopes it won't be a problem.

"I could always drop you, if you like," Gene teases right back, bringing the wavering globe of water hovering towards him.

"What happened?"

"Don't you dare." It's said in jest, but there's real worry there - not that Pepper thinks he'd drop her, she'd just really rather not repeat this experience.

"I don't know. The suit's been acting up since we moved into this stupid fog and then it just sort of died. Mid-air. I barely had any warning to call for help before I hit the water. Hard. Ow, by the way." She sounds as much puzzled as irritated. "I guess this makes three times you've saved my life. Is there a gift you normally give someone when they do that? I don't think they make Hallmark cards for it."

Enjolras had attempted to help with logistics and planning, but, after a point, there'd been only so much for him to do, and he'd bowed out in favor of letting more experienced people work with the turtle's actual move. Which means that he is actually in town when the real trouble starts to happen, hanging around his favorite cafe in Wood, when SOMETHING slams through the ground, and, seconds later, once he thinks things might be all right, a shelf containing some books, a few unlit candles in a nice display, and some unused mugs and pitchers near his table comes crashing down, pinning him directly beneath it, as everything goes black.

Between five and ten minutes later, Enjolras opens his eyes, and finds he cannot remember a damned thing about where he is, what he was doing, and how and why he's now burried beneath a good portion of the barric...No. Old memory. He does recall that, as fuzzy as his mind currently is. The barricade belongs to Paris, to the old world. This coffee shop belongs to his kedan family, though why it's broken up like this, why things are trapping him in between several layers of heavy broken wood, shards of pottery and decorative metal, and why the few things he can make out are fuzzy beyond belief, with the world spinning around him, he cannot recall.

There's a sharp tinge of iron in the air, along with chocolate and peppermint, and he tastes all of those things too, though the iron is the strongest, now. He doesn't like it much and struggles to get free, though he finds that he can hardly move at all. There's a strange mix of being numbed and in pain, and floating, but rooted to the ground at the same time. He's...not getting out of this alone, surely, and if he's not doing so, he's not sure about any of the others either.

"HARU!" He shouts, tries to shout, the name of his little kedan 'brother' who'd been on counter duty at the moment, but his voice sounds small and tinny in his ears, and he can't be certain anyone can hear him, "Please, Haru was at the counter. Where the heavy equipment is. And the hot drunks. He might have been burnt..."

What actually comes out for others to hear though is a garbled mixture, sounding more like "Haru...count...heave...burnded..."

Not exactly helping anyone much here, is he?

Edited 2015-12-04 09:49 (UTC)

As time passes, Skulduggery finds it more and more difficult to stay in one piece. At first, he doesn't even realise it; so many facets of his existence need completely different kinds of control that he barely notices when something goes wrong until it goes really wrong. But as the sun rises on the sixth day of moving the turtle, he notices he's expending a lot of his energy (mental energy? physical energy? he was never actually clear on that) just to stay, for lack of a better word, alive.

Then the shellquake ripples across the turtle. Skulduggery was several metres in the air at the time to get a better vantage point. He felt the vibrations through the air, but didn't have enough time to react before his magic faltered and he fell to the ground.

Then he picks himself up and walks away before realising anything is missing.

The result? An hour or two later, Skulduggery's wandering through the brush, searching for his right arm, which he imagines must have popped out of his shoulder socket when he fell. The problem is that he's not sure exactly where he fell. So he's just wandering.

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Continental turtle shift - catch-all

First five days - before the fog

Duke | Wind Magic

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Lapis Lazuli

Pepper | Logistics and Communication

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Sixth day - quake and aftermath

Pepper

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Re: Sixth day - quake and aftermath

Skulduggery | OTA!