ic A Walk in the Park (IC)

[Electra]

"Attack anything in gold that escapes my trap," Fleur told the trees quietly, trusting they'd understand. While the trees were busily uprooting themselves, Stesha sorted another handful of seeds from her pouch and scattered it into the grated flooring, watching them disappear among the thick cables of bundled wire that carried power throughout the engine room. Vines quickly began to choke out the cables, zooming thorugh the floor with a destination obviously in mind. Within seconds, they'd reached the pack gold-shirted engineers, and all at once burst seemingly from everywhere. Vines exploding from the floor, dropping from the ceiling, popping out of the access tubes she'd seeded on the way here. In seconds, the entire group was enmeshed in writhing green, with only the occasional arm or leg visible from the outside. 

 

One especially agile gold-shirt on the edge of the group managed to leap clear of the questing vines, racing away and leaving his fellows behind without a qualm. He had just enough time to look smug before the trees were upon him, surrounding him and bashing him to the ground with their strong wooden limbs. He might have been better off staying trapped. 

[Raveled]

Fleur's animated forest made short work of the engineering crew, and Blue Jay felt a little safer engaging the head mechanic again. She sent another volley of arrows down at him, and while they tore at his gold suit he didn't seem too badly hurt by the barrage. Gazer, for his part, turned his monocular gaze on the green-haired plant-controller. However before his power could find a hold in her one of her leafy bodyguards stepped in. Gazer's eye bored into the bark, but it seemed that his abilities only worked on flesh, not chlorophyll.

[Electra]

With most of the engineering crew entangled by the mass of plant life, the only visible remaining threat was the horrific cyclopean chief engineer. Blue Jay had him in her sights, though, and seemed to be doing a pretty good job peppering him with arrows. There was time to deal with a little housekeeping. Waving her hands, Fleur sent all the trapped pirates to the safe confinement of the green space between dimensions. She left the unconscious one on the floor for the moment; he didn't look like he'd be getting up any time soon. "Smash every console and computer," she instructed the trees. "Rip out the wires if you find them." Keeping her eyes on Blue Jay, she remained crouched behind a partition for the moment, waiting for an opportunity to help out. 

[Raveled]

Jay stood up at the railing again and sighted on the head engineer once again. She drew back, paused -- and had a line of fire trace across her cheek. Jay gasped and fell back, slapping her free hand against her cheek and coming away with her palm bloody. She looked down at her bow, only to find that the line had snapped clean through! She started swearing in three languages as she glanced back up at Gazer -- just in time to lock eyes with him and remember not to do so. She clamped her eyes shut and turned away, already digging for a fresh bowstring.

[Electra]

The chief engineer may have lost his gun and most of his crew, but he certainly wasn't giving up the fight. Fleur opened a flower that released a cloud of opiate pollen at him, but he dodged away before it could touch him. She sighed with frustration. This was taking too much time, and even though alarms were shrilling and sparks were flying everywhere, she couldn't be sure that the ship wasn't still operative. "You three, keep breaking things," she ordered three of her trees. "You two, defend Blue Jay and I!" The trees, at least, seemed impervious to whatever mental weapon their foe kept trying to bring to bear.

[Raveled]

Blue Jay took a knee behind the leafy barricade and dug into a pocket. She came up with a length of wire around a spool, quickly unhooked the snapped bowstring, and stripped out the damaged one. Then it was a job to hook the new bowstring on and begin threading it through the gears and pulleys of her bow. She kept up a constant commentary, and while Fleur couldn't understand the language she was sure that it wasn't words she would want her daughter to hear.

 

Gazer dove and rolled, evading Fleur's bouquet of knock-out pollen. He stood and aimed his eye at the group again, but the spaceship suddenly lurched mightily and he was thrown over the bannister and into the engineering pit itself. His head hit a console, and his eye closed and he went still. Before the heroes could savor their success, a booming voice came over the loudspeakers and filled the room. "Arrr! This be yer captain here. I'll be taking the parlay of our landlubberin' boarders in the rearward galley. At once, ye scurvy dogs!"

[Electra]

Stesha made a face as she listened to the loudspeaker. "What on earth was that supposed to mean?" she demanded aloud, then began to parse through it. "Landlubbering boarders, I'm guessing that's us. Taking the parley... it's been a long time since I watched a pirate movie, but I guess that means he wants to negotiate? And a galley is a kitchen," she finished with slightly more confidence. "So he wants to meet us in the kitchen to negotiate?" She pursed her lips. "It sounds like a trap. What do you think?" she asked Blue Jay. 

[Raveled]

"It's always a trap," Blue Jay agreed as she finished threading the bowstring and hooked it up to the opposite arm. She took up her bow and tested the pull, nodding curtly to herself as it met her standards. "But I don't know where else we should go," she admitted. "If we want to stop the ship..." She looked at the towering, crackling power plants. "I don't know if your trees can even do anything to the engines. I've never even seen engines that big before." She closed her eyes for a moment as she thought. "In movies, these places usually have big air ducts with fans in them to crawl around in."

[Electra]

"We must be doing something, to them," Fleur pointed out, "or we'd be much further off the ground by now. And they'd have no reason to even suggest a parley." Fleur thought for a moment. "All right, if the trees bend down a bit, they can fit through the corridors as well and guard our backs as we go. I'll put some vines into the air vents and bring them along with us, so they're clogged up and no one can sneak through them, and so we have a little more ammunition to work with, if it comes to that. If everything starts going bad, you stay close to me and we'll just teleport right back to the surface, okay?" 

 

She motioned to the trees, who stopped their smashing work and fell into line like a pack of obedient dogs. With all of them in one cluster, it was a bit awkward to move, but anyone trying to surprise them would indeed have a hard time attacking past all that wood and bark. 

[Raveled]

Jay was not used to moving in such a close formation and it made her vaguely claustrophobic, but she knew that Fleur was trying to make her feel more comfortable so she didn't speak up. As the pair existed the engineering section green lights appeared on the floor and sped off into the distance, winking and waiting for the group at a turning. They followed the lights and took a twisting path through the ship, down two levels and all the way to the other side of the ship before the lights left them in front of another large, sealed door. Jay looked at Fleur, shrugged, and opened it.

The galley was a long, open space, a second-level balcony blocked off by waist-high partitions, and benches stacked to wither side of the room to make a wide-open space. In the middle was the snake pirate from the forest, a figure in a blackened NASA spacesuit, and a humanoid squid dressed in a long, dark coat and a wide hat. The squid-man hooked his hands in his wide belt and sauntered forward like he owned the entire room. "Avast, landlubbers," he called out. "Allow this humble captain to welcome ye to the good ship Scarlet Fever! And then may I be askin', why do you feel possessed to be making such a bother o' yerselves aboard me ship?"

[Electra]

Stesha walked into the galley, the trees following behind her and spreading into a semi-circle as the room opened out. Even if pirates jumped from the balcony, at least they wouldn't be able to jump on her and Tona from behind! "My name is Fleur de Joie," she responded with firm politeness, "and Sanctuary is my world. You trespassed there, stole my property, and when I attempted to speak with your crew members about it, I was informed that you and your crew are pirates, and that your intent was to plunder the entire world." 

 

She gave the snake pirate a look at that, and continued. "As a hero by trade, I don't hold with piracy, of my world or any other. Since you and your crew seemed far more interested in fighting than talking, coming aboard your ship and stopping you seemed the most expedient method." 

[Raveled]

"Yar how do you expect pirates to act, missy?" the cephalpoid humanoid asked. "We came, we saw, we wanted -- and so we took! Yar har har!" The captain shook with laughter, as Jay scanned the upper walkways. This was simply too obvious of a setup.

"They'll take us from above," she whispered, pitching her voice low so hopefully only Fleur would hear her. "I'll take the ones up-top, so you can focus on the three in front of us."

Meanwhile, the captain had reigned in his humor. "So how d'ye reckon we square this, lass? We cannae give ye back the beasties, but we can tell ye how good they tasted if that's what's worrying ye!"

[Electra]

"No," Fleur murmured back to Tona, "stay close to me. If they attack, we'll teleport to a more defensible position. This is a bad room to fight in." 

 

Raising her voice, she addressed the jovial captain. "The first thing you'll do," she said evenly, like a teacher talking to an unruly five-year-old, "is provide compensation for the valuable animals that you destroyed, and other damage that your pirates did to my planet. You'll allow my engineer to disable your long-range weapons systems and alter your mapping software so that you will neither be able to attack us from space or find the way back with your pirate friends. You will also give me your word, for whatever that is worth, that you will never return to Sanctuary, or attempt to cause harm to any of its inhabitants. In return," she continued implacably, "I will release your ship, and any of your crew members who wish to be repatriated to you." 

[Raveled]

The captain chuckled, but his expression was anything but friendly. "Now, lass. Ye must think this through. We be pirates, see? Giving things away... isn't exactly our style. In fact." The captain stepped back and the two other visible pirates stepped up. The one in the NASA suit raised his arm and a jet of white-hot fire erupted from the suit's wrist, quickly washing over Fleur's leafy guardians as they lumbered forward to take the brunt of the blow! Jay let out a truncated scream as the plant controller grabbed the archer and the entire group reappeared in the engineering room.

Jay her scream off and took a moment to compose herself, as the tree beasts pulled flaming branches and leaves off themselves and stomped out the fires. "Okay," she squeaked, then swallowed and said started speaking again in a more normal tone. "Okay. So, the pirates are mad and we can't trust them. Duh. So what are we going to do next?"

Edited March 15, 2013 by Raveled

[Electra]

Looking rather put out, Fleur brushed a few cinders off her cowl and looked around the engine room. "My reflexes are off today," she muttered. "I really ought to start putting in a little more practice time." She flicked her fingers, and some of the vines scattered around the engine room began moving again, wrapping themselves around consoles and computers, mummifying them and disappearing them like hungry little plant beasts, leaving nothing but holes in the decking in their wake. The trees began exploring, getting a good look at the engine room and the surrounding area, smashing anything that dared be lit up in their path. 

 

"They obviously have no intention of negotiating, and a fairly good idea where we are. Why don't you find a good perch where you can pick off anyone who comes in, and I'll work on putting their engineering room out of their reach. If I really need to, I'll pop out their battery," she added, nodding towards the massive engine core, now being ringed by vines like a green and blue barber pole, "but I'm not entirely certain what that will do. I'd like to force them to ground, rather than crashing the ship, if at all possible. But the less functional it is, the better." She closed her eyes, and for a moment all plant movement ceased. "We're about a hundred feet in the air right now. The ship surely has some kind of inertial dampening and would probably survive the crash, but we don't know for sure." 

[Raveled]

Blue Jay shook her head. Most of Fleur's plan flew over her head; those massive things over there were batteries? Like in her own commlink or flashlight? In any case, she knew all about sniping from a perch, though usually she was preparing to ambush someone who had no idea she was up there, not defend a place from an attacker who knew where she was. After some consideration, she settled on climbing an equipment rack stacked with hull plates. The entrance wouldn't be easy to cover; there were five doors, scattered over several levels of gantries and catwalks. She and Fleur had entered through the topmost one, but there was no way to tell which one the pirates would use. Maybe all of them at once.

As Fleur's plants snuck through the conduits and accessways, dislodging any case lies in their way, electrical sparks would sometimes emit from the lights or from wall panels, and at one point the lights went out entirely. For a heartbeat or two the room was only illuminated by the glow of the power generators, but then red emergency lighting came on where the walls met the floor and ceiling.

Fleur's vines crept up the massive power generators, but the heat and energy contained in them cookies the plants to cinders. They persevered at the insistence of the Fleur, however, and eventually they were only browning; and in time, the outermost layers were green and healthy and were being covered by even more vines.

Blue Jay's attention was drawn away from the strange sight of power plants bigger than her dorm building being turned green and leafy, when a lower door woodshed open and a pirate stuck his head in. Jay has an arrow to hand and she quickly struck the pirate in the ear with blunted shaft. He retreated, howling, and Jay drew and nocked again. "Fleur," she shouted down to the floor. "They're starting to come in!"

[Electra]

Eventually the strength of the trees was exhausted, as might be expected of trees asked to walk around on their roots. They made their way over to the door nearest the power core and collapsed into a pile of lumber and leaves that quite obscured the door. In front of a second door, a flower yawned wide and disgorged a very large and heavy wall console recently uprooted from the other side of the room. "Good," Fleur called, actually seeming rather exhilarated as she hurried over to the rack where Tona was perched. "Tell your captain we're ready to discuss the terms of his surrender," she shouted through the door the first pirate had tried. "He's got sixty seconds to come in here alone or this power core is going on an interdimensional vacation!" 

[Raveled]

Fleur blocked up two of the doors, and Blue Jay kept her sights moving across the remaining entrances. Fleur's ultimatum produced a silence from the pirates, and the young archer felt her nerves begin to fray as the seconds dragged on. She had envisioned this as a surgical strike to cripple the pirate ship; she hadn't considered that they would completely disable it like this! It all seemed unreal, and Jay didn't know how to handle it, so she was uneasy.

So when one door opened and the imposing figure of the captain stepped through, she almost loosed without thinking. The archer caught herself at the last moment, though, and for several heartbeats the two groups simply exchanged glares. Then the captain held up his tentacle-hands and began walking down the gantry towards the engineering floor. "We yield, lass. Dinnae destroy the ship; it be all we have to return home."

[Electra]

"Right now that's not something I'm particularly interested in," Fleur told the alien captain with chilly indifference, a very unusual attitude for the sociable plant controller. Up close, Tona could see the tiny cracks in the facade that said Stesha was enjoying herself playing cops and pirates. Maybe Sanctuary was just a boring place and she was happy for the excitement! "As you may recall, attempting to negotiate with you as equals failed  spectacularly. But if you make it convenient for me, you and your crew will all get to survive, which is more than I'm sure can be said for some of the people you've taken advantage of in the past. Now order your bridge crew to set down the ship, and your men to lay down their weapons." 

[Raveled]

"Aye, well here's the thing." The Captain scratched his chin in what must be a purely affected gesture. "The crew are a bit torn, you see. Some think you're a vessel o' an angry god come to punish them for a life of villainy and piracy." He grinned at Fleur before continuing. "The rest seem to favor their odds with rushin' ye, at least over dealing wit' all the angry bees outside. And as for turning things off, well." Kraken turned with his arms held out wide, taking in the wrecked ruined engineering section. "Ye blasted plants managed to sever most of the connections between the bridge and the engines. I suppose our chief engineer could land the ship safely -- oh, what's that o'er there?" Kraken picked his way almost daintily over the vines protruding from the floor to where the cyclopean engineer lay. "Well, let's have a look at what we have 'ere!"

"We weren't the ones who went looking for a fight," Blue Jay said, not entirely truthfully. "He shouldn't have tried to attack our minds!"

Kraken rounded on the archer, his face-tentacles standing out as he screamed at her, "Shut it, lassie! Unless ye've got a ship-mooring arrow on ye!"

Blue Jay was so shocked at the naked display of rage that she actually did shut her mouth sharply.

Edited March 26, 2013 by Raveled

[Electra]

"I'll tell you right now that rushing me won't get your crew anywhere," Fleur said evenly, rising on a coil of vine to move closer to Blue Jay. "I'd have you ask the thirteen members of your crew who tried it already, but they're currently indisposed. Safe, quite safe, but very far away from anything they could use to cause trouble. And even if by some small miracle you did manage to overwhelm me, I have several friends on this world who are even more powerful than I, and who would be very upset if anything bad were to happen to me or Blue Jay here. If you can't land the ship, I'm sure you can at least cut your engines. My plants already have a hold of you, they will put the ship safely back onto the ground."

 

With a flick of her hand, a trio of vines slid across the floor, bypassing the captain for the moment and securing themselves around the unconscious engineer. Umbrella-like leaves spread out and obscured the floor for a moment, and by the time they fell to a more normal position, the man was gone. "The call for disarmament stands," Fleur added. "Any aggressive move from you or your crew will result in severe consequences." 

[Raveled]

Kraken made an admirable pantomime of a man chewing an unpleasant dish, despite the fact that he probably didn't have teeth, as he considered Fleur's offer. Finally he held up one squidy hand and with the other pulled what looked to be a faithful reproduction of a flintlock pistol from his wide belt. "Ye won, lassie. I'll tell the lads to disarm, but first, let's get this tub on the ground." He approached the huge engines under Jay's watchful eye, quickly veering to one side before he came in vine-range of the netted generators. He operated a wall panel and extracted a yellow-painted cylinder, holding both ends of it. "This here's the little jewel that let us invade this dimension, by the way. Experimental Lor drive. With this, a soul can travel to any dimension they want to!" He paused and added, "Good-bye."

Kraken pressed a button on the drive, there was an explosion of coruscating light and a pressure wave that knocked Jay and Fleur to the ground. When they had picked themselves up again, Kraken was gone. Jay looked at the doors, where they could hear the sounds of angry pirates manning up to attack. She nocked an arrow and drew. "Any other plans," she said to Fleur, "I'd suggest trying them out."

Edited April 6, 2013 by Raveled

[Electra]

Fleur's face was stormy as she looked at the spot where Kraken had recently stood. "I really should know better than to negotiate with pirates," she said, more to herself than to Blue Jay. "They really don't have any good faith to give. I suppose now we'll give them something bigger to worry about. Let's take a few steps back and find some cover." Taking Blue Jay's arm, she escorted the younger woman behind a blank wall that had once contained a full bank of computers. This provided no shelter from the encroaching pirates outside, but did put a sturdy barrier between themselves and the engine. "Stay close," she instructed. "I'm not sure what this is going to do." She waved a hand, and suddenly the vast network of vines around the massive engine column all contracted inwards at once, looking rather disturbingly like the esophagus of an enormous snake swallowing a meal. In an instant, the ship's great power source was entirely gone, nothing but a lattice of plants in its place. 

[Raveled]

For once the room was almost entirely silent. Sure, there was the sound of the pirates outside and the ticking of cooling metal where the engines had rested, but the omnipresent throb of vast stores of energy was gone, and slowly all the whirring and buzzing and humming that indicated a working industrial complex of any size vanished into near-silence. Jay almost had time to enjoy it, before the ship fell out of the sky.

Of course no one would build a ship designed to travel the stars and land on planets without thinking about what would happen if it were to crash on a planet. Jay just had time to open her mouth and breath in for a scream when a crash field popped up everywhere in the ship, holding every thing and every occupant in a bubble of thick air, slowing their movements down to a crawl and making any potential hard knocks into vague pokes. Though the antiquated archer didn't know that; she just knew that she was being held in the air by something that was all around her and holding every strand of hair individually and in her mouth and down her throat and oh god oh god ohgod ohgod --

It didn't last a minute before the ship settled into the embrace of the huge, leafy tentacles Sanctuary had used to tether it in place, and once the ship registered a lack of sudden downward movement the crash field snapped off, letting Jay and a million other things crash to the ground. The young heroine struggled to her feet, coughing, trying to rid herself of the feeling of having a pressure without mass or heat or form down her throat. She nocked an arrow with sharp, jerky motions, glaring at the doors. Her adrenaline was up and this trip was getting on last nerve. "Alright," she said. "Let 'em come. I could use some violence right about now."

Fleur, however, had different problems to worry about. Through her plants all around the outside, she was able to watch as a number of giant dragon bees applied their most obvious feature to the hull of the ship, opening a hole and beginning to widen it. It would be a few minutes before the opening was big enough to allow even a small GDB to enter the ship, but would they be as interested in taking prisoners as Fleur was?

[Electra]

"Let's do it outside, Tona," Stesha said, suddenly sounding weary. "We'll have to round up all these pirates and send them back to Earth Prime, which means that if they won't surrender, we'll have to capture them one by one. Meantime, let's see if I can keep the bees from destroying the ship while we're in it." She touched the archer's arm, and suddenly they were back on the ground, at the foot of the massive tower of plant life holding the ship aloft. Stesha gave one clap of her hands, and suddenly the entire tower bloomed with red flowers, vivid as a summer sunset. "Enough!" she called, once she had the bees' undivided attention. "We've disabled the ship, you don't need to attack it anymore. Now we just need to round up the pirates. 

 

"NEED ZZZOME HELP WITH ZZHAT?" Beeatrizz asked convivially, whirling down to join the humans as the ship continued its slow sag earthwards. "ZZHEZE BAD ZZQUIZZY BIPEDZZ ARE ZHE MOZZT FUN WE'VE HAD IN MONZZZ." She seemed a bit disappointed that defending the hive was almost finished. 

 

"Why don't most of you fall back." Stesha suggested, "and make a perimeter in the air? That way if any of the pirates try to escape, you can stop them. We don't want any of them sneaking around after today. You and Curlbee stick around, you can help Blue Jay and I if the pirates get rowdy." As the ship touched down, more vines rose to meet it, creating a solid net that left only one exit open for use, and that one quite well-guarded.