Tunnelling Temtesh - a WipEout themed Roleplay

[Challenger #001]

Deep Below Temtesh Bay, the Dark Secrets of the F9000 lay in wait. Are you skilled enough to find just what happened thirty years ago?

With the board becoming a little quiet of late, and the last RP thread not kicking off, I've decided to start a new one, and see how we take it. So I'll keep it as clean as I can with the rules. Anyone can post in, and you can play any character you like from the 'Factions' listed below.

The Setup:
It has been nearly thirty years since the devastating collapse of Temtesh Bay during the F9000 'Fusion' leagues that killed several pilots and trapped many ships. Now, research says that the mines are (mostly) safe to enter once again and the majority of teams with interest in the old leagues are back with different agendas. Unfortunately, the Temtesh Bay mines are property of Triakis Industries, and they're not happy about people sneaking about.

How to Play:
Your character has received instructions from high up in the company to either join an expedition or do some private reconnaissance into the Temtesh mines. You must attempt to achieve your goals set to you by your boss, and escape without alerting Triakis. Your objectives will depend on what faction you are working for:

FEISAR - FEISAR's experimental rockets were the devices that brought the mine down. It is imperative that nobody else finds these rockets - find any active or inactive ones you can and get them out.
Piranha - Myimna Tsarong's wingmate, Jann Shlaudecker was killed in the mine blast, and his body never recovered. It is your job to find Jann's body, or at the very least the remnants of his Swiftkiller Piranha
Auricom - Something fishy went on with the cheapness of the mine fixings. Costs were cut and back alley deals kept this race active. Find evidence of this in the mine offices below the surface.
Xios - eG-r blew their ships when they were trapped in the rubble to remove any evidence found later, but did they finish the job? Find any remnants of the eG-r craft and find out what they're doing on their half of the EG-X ship with this old technology if they kept it.

You write out your posts indicating what your character is doing, attempting to navigate their way into the mines and complete their mission. Any time a skill check is needed (say you finish your post and get to a crumbling ladder and need to climb it/you need to stun a guard), make a note at the end of your post. I will roll a dice on my end from one to twenty to measure your character's success in the venture. Here's an example.



Sampsa Kovalainen

Sampsa dropped into a low crouch as he rolled out of the rusted ventilation shaft. It had been his best access point into the mines, a cut off section from Triakis' own circulation systems. He glanced to where he'd come out and cursed under his breath - he was on a high outcropping of rock with only a rope bridge leading to the other side. The years hadn't been kind, and he didn't fancy it looked too good.

[Skillcheck!]

I will roll a D20. In the case of 10, Sampsa would get across fine, and the next post by Sampsa's player would indicate as much. If I got a 20, Sampsa leaps across the bridge with ease, and probably can pick up something useful at the other side, like a piece of rope. If I got a 5, the rope bridge snaps and Sampsa would have to either lower himself down or climb up it or take another route. On a roll of a 1, the bridge snaps and Sampsa falls to his doom, and he's gone from the play.

All characters enter the game wearing whatever you would consider 'standard' tunnelling or mountaineering wear in the colour of their faction, and carrying a stun baton and a PDA with which to review their objectives (AND NOTHING ELSE). Extra equipment will be doled out in the RP. Indicate what affiliation your character has (Xios, FEISAR, Piranha or Auricom) with the colour of their name at the top of your post. (See mine for example - Xios character.) Your post should ideally take up five lines and have good grammar and punctuation.

I will take the role of DM, and any Triakis members down in the mines. All Triakis guards have a stun baton and a PDA with which to call for help or alert if they discover someone on patrol. You can duel with a guard using a skill check, and I will give you the results of the duel in my response post.

Unless anyone has any further questions... begin!

[trackripper]

Ge Liang Zhu dropped down into the mine courtesy of a rusting ladder, a haunting reminder that the place had collapsed once before and was by no means a safe place, despite what Triakis Industries had said. Even if the mine was stable, Ge still knew the dangers of being caught by a guard patrol. Still, as Jann's close friend and team mate, as well as being the son of one of the older mechanics for the once-Chinese company, he was prepared to take that risk if it meant recovering his body and what remained of the Swiftkiller ship, which was valuable to Piranha as it contained technologies which were lost when the company suffered hugely after the fall of the F9000. It also wouldn't do to have Piranha's secret ship designs fall into rival hands... Ge stopped pondering and swore. There was torchlight up ahead and there were no spaces to hide. Assuming his best innocent lost face, he prepared to face the person who would soon come into view.

[skillcheck]

OOC: I hope everything's ok so far, I don't know the history of the leagues that well...

[Challenger #001]

(Looking good, TR. Piranha was Chinese a long time ago, so probably great-grandson or grandson rather than son, but good going.)

[Skillcheck - 18]

"Anything?" asked one slightly muffled voice through its' rebreather. A muffled curse came from a deeper voice, and Ge would get his first look at the men and women Triakis had sent down. Both the searchers were dressed in slightly baggy orange clothing, bright and obvious to their colleagues in these dark mines. A small triangular badge was sewn onto the various pockets the two guards wore, though they only carried torches and stun batons. The grenade bandoliers and holsters for weapons were empty.

"I told you this is a waste of time," snapped the big man, turning his flashlight off and hastily trying to stuff it into his belt. "Nobody's fool enough to come down here," he muttered. His female colleague made a disgusted sound through her rebreather but seemed to assent. She flipped open her PDA and keyed open a link to the surface.

"Hobbs and Ervine. No activity reported in this sector. Over." The two Triakis members strode away into the distance, leaving Hobbs' flashlight lying on the ground where it had slipped off his belt.

[trackripper]

Ge breathed a sigh of relief he didn't know he was holding. That was too close. Good thing that the guards just didn't believe anyone was thick enough to come down here. But Ge had an agenda, so...
He moved further into the facility, looking out for the telltale orange uniforms. Well at least that bit was easy enough, wearing orange, the Triakis guards stood out like a sore thumb, he on the other hand, was dressed in black combat gear from head to toe, with the red and yellow Piranha insignia on the left breast pocket. He hadn't come unarmed either: he had a short sword if he needed it, passed down through the generations of his family, although he hoped it wouldn't come to that. Ducking away from yet another orange patrol, he went further.
'Wait, hang on, wasn't I here just a few minutes ago...? Damn, don't tell me I'm lost...'
Ge checked his electronic map, only to find no signal on it whatsoever. Suddenly he saw movement in a tunnel to his right, but it wasn't orange...
'Was that a FEISAR logo I just saw...?!'

[UB3R~JKP]

Ben Denso Looks around "Where are these damned rockets..." . He hits away the various Boulder fragments around him and finds a ledge to sit on, he takes out his phone and dials a number...

"Maria? Hi, Any Luck? ....You've found one? Good, good. Watch out though, Ive been tracking some foreign transmissions from other teams. I've encrypted my signal, you might do well to do the same. ...Bye." *CLICK*

He keeps walking and comes across a shattered piece of ship.

"Uh-oh, this is bad..."

[F.E.I.S.A.R]

Don Work walked with a controlled breathing rhythm. He was only ten when he saw the Temtesh Bay Disaster. What haunted him was that Auricom had a close shave with that,and the withdrawal from the F9000 was actually a happy event for him. He sighed at that thought,then opened up the PDA,and went to an applet with the word "OBJECTIVES".

OBJECTIVES
-Locate underground offices of the defunct F9000/Overtel
-Gather Evidence from the offices.

He went through his memory,trying to recall what he saw on Seconds From Disaster,or at least what he thought he saw. Given the severity of the collapse,the offices could have been destroyed. However,the possibility and probability of the offices being supported with seemingly-indestructible support pillars,and thus the offices surviving the collapse,was also there.

As he walked,he saw a red piece of metal,or at least still having some red on it,with an "R",but it was not preceeded by an "I",it was preceeded by a "-(dash)"

Then,he heard footsteps getting closer...and given the slightly muffled sounds,they were Australian..

(Skillcheck)

[Challenger #001]

The pair of Triakis employees who'd just turned away from Ge's hiding place suddenly paused.

"Did you hear that?" asked Hobbs, his thickly muscled hand going to his shock baton. Ervine nodded, her baton already out as they pounded away down the corridor in the direction of Denso's voice. The Scotsman's loud voice had carried up the tunnels and the two Triakis members were sprinting towards where they'd heard his voice.

"This is Ervine and Hobbs. Voices heard in our sector, not Australian accent. Investigating - please send back up units!" the woman called out into her PDA. Up ahead in the research centre the military squad called home, a sextet of guards were leaping into the corridors, likely as not making it harder for the lives of the FEISAR and Piranha pilots. Even as Ervine and Hobbs clattered into the corridor they'd heard the voices, they blinked at the sight of an upturned, ripped piece of purple and white nose.

"Hobbs and Ervine," said the man into his own PDA. "We've found a G-tech."

---

[F.E.I.S.A.R. Skillcheck - 19]

The voices grew louder, but it seemed that only one of them was talking with any kind of regularity. The others were simply interjecting at points, uninterested and obviously tired.

"You have no idea just how much power these things had! It was Johnson's ship that brought down the mine, we're pretty sure. Beneto was in the pits as the mine went down, so it can't have been his rockets. It was those triple-things that FEISAR had developed, and the lot of them went straight into a support beam."

"Did Johnson get out?" asked one of the guards as they came into view, not even glancing at Don's hiding place behind a rock.

"He did, his ship didn't. Rescue pilots picked him and Belmondo out of the end of the mines. Some of them didn't make it though... the two eG-r ships got blown in the tunnel, and we lost the two G-Techs, a Piranha, Kirovski's Tigron and what I think was Wollfe's Xios," the scientist said as he came into view, a pair of goggles on his eyes and a white lab coat slung over his orange jump suit.

"They got the Tigron and Xios out. But the G-Techs, the Piranha are still in here. As are bits of the eG-r," he said as he crouched to pick one of the bits that Don had looked at. One of the soldiers crouched forward to give a closer look at it.

"Do we take this back to the labs?" he asked. The scientist nodded.

"Yep. You guys come with me to the surface, get another patrol down. I know, I know," he said exasperatedly at the look on the second guard's face. "No guard patrols down here for fifteen minutes if we're switching over. But it's not like anyone here," he added, as the three headed off. Don was now left in an empty tunnel, without the risk of detection for a while.

[UB3R~JKP]

Ben Denso was hiding under a broken piece of ship, the damage had completely destroyed any livery so it was unidentifiable.

"Heh, really need to be a bit quieter!" He chuckled "Otherwise those Pommies might find me..." He jumped down when the coast was clear and continued to walk through the mines. Ben was patriotic as always, instead of wearing a suit on duty, he was wearing his Scotland Football Jersey and Sweatpants. This kind of 'casualness' about him wasn't admirable at all to the uppers. However, his talent preceded his appearance and that's all they cared about.

"Right...what's this?" He picks up a small mobile-phone esque device, and examines it. "Password locked...aha, so, it seems our good friends EG-r are also here.."

He attempts to find the password.

[Skillcheck]

[Challenger #001]

[UB3R~JKP Skillcheck - 9]

The small device flashed twice, before scrolling across the screen came a series of small-case Chinese characters, flashing brightly in red before Denso's eyes. Password failed.

The red metal casing of the PDA seemed to mock Denso, not responding to any more touches and all the instructions coming up in Chinese. As the voices of the guards came closer, a flashlight beam came on, sweeping about the darkened tunnel - though they were mostly focussing on the hulk of the G-Tech.

(Other posters, do feel free to post, and you can have multiple members working for the same faction. Just try not to trip over each other too much. ;) You don't have to wait for me to post to keep going. We'll try and keep 2 or 3 posts in between mine.)

[trackripper]

Ge Liang Zhu had followed the unknown FEISAR member since he saw the flash of the logo, and had seen him pick up a PDA, only to place it back where he found it and move on. Intrigued as to what other teams were doing down in these mines, he decided to follow the FEISAR member, only to stop when the instructions on the PDA came up in Chinese and caught his eye.

"eG-r? Password? Hmm... Password hint: Those that hide when others crouch..."

eG-r sure were stupid to leave password hints lying about, Ge thought, it's not like the only Chinese people in the world were at eG-r... Ge typed in what he thought was the password and waited for the PDA to clear it.

OOC: Chal, can I claim that my character knows the password from the hint? If not then:

[skillcheck]

[UB3R~JKP]

Ben Denso cursed as he climbed up the rusty ladders to the make-shift canteen. Although he was told to be as stealthy as possible, he was hungry and that order meant nothing to him when his stomach was grumbling. He sat down and thought about the failed password attempt:

"I'm such an idiot, That was a simple system, no encryption whatsoever. God...that's embarrassing."

"...What you moaning about now?" A blonde girl who appeared to be in her late teens inquired. She was wearing some FEISAR attire; a blue t-shirt and yellow tracksuit bottoms.

"You know Maria, I would never know what team you are here with!" Denso joked. She hit him playfully and stole a chip from his plate.

"So, any luck with the missiles?"
"Natta. I also found a EG-r device, tried to unlock it, got locked out. I felt the presence of someone behind me so I decided against bashing it off my head until it spat out it's secrets. What about the one you located?"

"I...uh, you see..." She looked down ashamed of herself "I left it there. I-I...it's not my field and.."

"It's okay...I get it. I'll go locate it and take care of it later, okay?" He gave her a reassuring smile.

She laughed awkwardly and opened a small rucksack, revealing some Ship fragments. "Anyway...I found these ship fragments."

Ben looked into the bag interested and pointed at the rucksack, talking with food in his mouth "That's experimental, and most importantly illegal craft material."

"Ugh, don't talk with your mouth open. Anyways , yeah I know." She stood up. "I'm going to do some tests and see if I can figure out who it belongs to, once again, all remnants of the team livery have dissolved...don't do anything stupid, Denso...Even if that small brain of yours thinks it's a good idea." She walked off as Ben waved.

Ben and Maria were childhood friends, ever since Ben was 9 and Maria was 5, they both aspired to be pilots but realized their skills were in the more dirty side of things. Being part of the AG world was enough for them.

"You'd think she was the older one." He continued to eat, unphased by the fact some agents could easily locate him.

[trackripper]

OOC: To keep this flowing I'm assuming that it's ok for me to guess the correct password and get in due to the hint...

Ge Liang Zhu breathed a sigh of relief as the eG-r PDA accepted his password of 龙, or Dragon.

"Talk about lack of security, blowing up ships due to paranoia is a bit useless if you leave such lax security systems..."

However, Ge soon realised why the security was so simple: It had no data on eG-r at all, in fact, it was simply a radar scanner that pinged for fellow eG-r pilots or members of the team. Weirdly, it was showing 1 dot at the far side of the mine.

"Did one eG-r pilot survive?! After 30 years?!"

[Challenger #001]

(Ideally I would have wanted you to wait for me to finish it, but I'll let you off with a -5 modifier to your next skillcheck trackripper. Also, all OOC chatter in italics please.)

The device pinged slow and soft in rhythmic circles, highlighting a little dot. Without a touch from Ge, the screen began to unfold in a 3D grid of blue lines, the blood red dot flashing brightly about twenty metres deeper into the ground and a little further off to the side. Slowly though, more information began to filter onto the screen.

An icon showing the Black Box of eG-r ship 1 pinged towards the far side of the mine. Not surprising - Cheung had always been the better pilot as compared to Reece, so having the second pilot further towards the entrance of the mine wasn't a surprise. No black box icon was indicated for Reece's ship. Instead, another dot was pulsing near the second wrecked eG-r ship, close to where the Auricom logo was pulsing on Ge's PDA. As the Chinaman looked on at the pulsing red dot, a small information tag flickered up. Amongst a collection of vital signs, a few columns would appear to Ge's eyes clear as day.

'P. Cheung. Status - Hibernation.'

"Hey you!" Not that he had much time to reflect on it as a young Australian woman flashed a light in his face, the two Triakis guards having been attracted by the binging and the lights of the eG-r tracker. "What're you doing... Piranha boy?" she asked as her torch picked out the angry red fish face on his lapel. Her stun baton crackled to life with a blue flash. Her friend was calling for backup, and for an additional rocket to be saved for Piranha next race.

[trackripper]

'Oh *BLEEP*!'
Ge ran, taking the PDA with him, thinking it would be of use as a map of the mines, but the Triakis guards obviously knew these tunnels better than he did, and right now, he didn't have time to think where he was going.

"Come on, come on..."

He entered a narrow section of the tunnel, just enough room for single file movement.

'This should give me a slight advantage here...'

He turned round with his stun baton already scything down from above his head, hoping to take out one of the Triakis guards before they became trouble and used numbers against him.

[skillcheck :cold]

[Challenger #001]

[trackripper Skillcheck - 7 (-5=2)]

The baton was caught on another crackling stave as the female guard from before brought her weapon up to deflect. If there was one thing Triakis had perfected (if not their shields) it was their stun batons. They'd begun selling them before the F9000 even began and by now they held a massive market share in it. Amelia Ervine was not equipped with some mall cop's stun stick, and she'd been trained how to use it.

The butt of the baton was jabbed into Ge's midsection - muffled by the jumpsuit he was wearing but enough to send him falling backwards. Ervine's boot came out to impact Ge's chest and he flew backwards, tumbling into a part of the mines not fully stable. Amelia swore and scrambled back as the piece of floor that Ge had collapsed onto began to crumble, and all at once the piece of red rock detached from the corridor and began to crumble away, tumbling into the distance. Ervine winced as she waited for the crushing sound... but only a deep splash resonated. She swore. The Piranha guy could still be alive down there, and closer to the buried ships. Assuming he could get out.

[trackripper]

"..."

*passes out*

"...Huh? Where am I? Oh I feel dizzy..."

*passes out again*

"...ouch. OK, that was a bad idea."

Ge Liang Zhu knew he was lucky. Scratch that, he knew the chances of him landing at the bottom of that cavern without serious injury and without a piece of rock crushing him were nil. Well, virtually nil.

"OK, right arm good, left arm good, left leg good, right leg good, let's get u... AHH! Chest not so good..."

Turns out he had a bruise on his chest, probably from when the Triakis guard kicked him down. Damn they had hard boots! He took both his Piranha PDA and the eG-r one out to check if they worked: the eG-r one had survived the fall, however, the Piranha one was not so lucky, crushed under his body when he impacted with the ground.

He booted up the eG-r PDA to check his location, and found to his surprise that the mine collapse had done him some good. So he was nowhere closer to finding his teammate's body or his ship, but he was closer to the mystery with the eG-r pilot in hibernation.

Deciding that completing the primary Piranha objectives was down to dumb luck anyway, he slowly moved up into a sitting position and began digging and poking away at the debris with his baton, which had accompanied him when he fell. Freeing himself could take a while.

[UB3R~JKP]

Ben Denso overhears what's going on below.

"Hmm, just what we need..." He gets up and returns back into the mine, where he can see Maria analyzing some fallen debris.

"Get sidetracked?"

Embarrassed she put down the debris. "Umm, no! I just thought I found some more...ship parts. Did you hear that?"

He nodded "Aye, think we better 'vamos' before our good Triakis Militant Friends get here, eh?" She looked at him and nodded intently.

"The missiles are only a bit away from here, well, they were." Ben had a quick scan around him, although he had the feeling there was someone following them.

"I'm getting too paranoid..."
"getting? Now there's ignorance." She chuckled in disbelief.

They arrived in a small isolated cabin that had a burnt out missile right in the centre.

"Here, there it is." She pointed

"Mmmmkay, let's see..." He took out a small 'Livency Detector' and scanned the missile
"Yup, still active...right, now I need to recall some Defusing skills I learned at the base..." He knelt down and began the process.

"Oh Boy..." Maria said weary.

[Skill-check!]

[XR_GTR]

Mark Anderson finds himself lost in the mines after his PDA's batteries are emptied from overuse.

"This sucks. The PDA is dead and I'm completely lost. There has to be some other way to find the mine's offices..."

Although Mark enjoyed exploring caves and coral reefs in the little spare time he had, his poor sense of direction frequently led him to getting sidetracked from his original path.

While that was no problem in his little nature expeditions, down in the mines, where one wrong step would mean bumping into a guard; or worse, getting crushed by a rock formation, Mark found himself at anything but ease.

Mark was certain that the offices were definitely far off from his location.

(Mark goes into deep thought for a few moments.)

As Mark stood still in his thoughts, a shadowy figure scuttled around the corner. Once Mark spotted the figure, Mark had the sudden impulse to simply walk up and ask whoever the figure might be.

"Excuse me..." Mark said quietly.

[Skill-check!]

[Challenger #001]

[Skillcheck UB3R~JKP - 12]

The missile lay there inert in Ben's hands as he ran his hands over the smooth surface, the yellow paint a little discoloured and faded after so many years, though not touched by rust or verdigris. The dimly flashing green light on the side of the missile that indicated that it was in its' active phase soon blinked to blue. FEISAR's colour coding for its' Super Missiles had been easy enough for everyone to understand - Green for Armed, Blue for Disarmed, Red for Active and Yellow for 'Error 404 - Explosives not found'.

With a deactivated missile now in his hands, Denso's only issue was trying to draw the two-metre long cylinder out of the entrance of the mines. And dodging the guards.

---

[Skillcheck XR_GTR - 17]

(I was unsure exactly what you were skillchecking for, so I decided to make it based on who you met down there and how harmless they were)

A bespectacled figure poked its' head round the corner, and let out a soft yelp at the sight of the young man in the navy blue jumpsuit.

"Ah! Goodness, what are you doing down here? Did Auricom get rights to these mines? I thought these were still Triakis property," the woman mumbled as she righted her massive orange-tinted goggles. The dusty white labcoat she was wearing indicated she'd been down here for a while. After a short pause, she approached Mark and offered a gloved hand.

"Maria Mowell - Research and Development. We were sent down here when the mine first opened to do some tracking down of the old mine offices. No luck so far on my half. What about yourself? What brings one of our rivals to the mines?" asked the scatterbrained scientist.

[UB3R~JKP]

"Yes! There's the blue-light...surprising it worked if I'm honest!" Ben Denso said proudly
"Nobody installs confidence quite like you Ben." She said sarcastically.

He picked it up and looked at it. "Man, you forget just how big these things are..."
"We ain't got a rucksack big enough for that, that's for sure..." Maria pondered "...and with with guards everywhere, how are we going to get it out!?"

He went into a strong thought train blanking out the mine around him...much to Maria's disdain, visible with a deep sigh and curse under her breath.

Suddenly his eyes lit up: "AHA! I know what we're gonna do, we're gonna use you as a distraction!"

"THAT'S YOUR BIG IDEA!? A DISTRACTION!?" Maria lambasted
Ben nodded not seeing the problem; "Look, you keep those guards busy and Ill sneak past through the rocks scattered around, I'll carry the rocket on my back, look!" He picked up some rope and attached it to his back;
"You likey?"

She agreed reluctantly. "Fine...but with any luck that thing will send you flying to another planet or something, I mean only an idiot would attach a Rocket to his back for crying out loud!"

Ben smirked "Hey, it's deactivated...I think, now...GO! I'll be following close behind, I don't care how you distract 'em , just do it, Aye?"
She puffed her hair out of her face and led the way

[Skill-Check!]

[XR_GTR]

Mark Anderson nervously states "They just wanted me to check the place out. They told me it might be a really cool place to explore."

Maria giggled. "That's it? They basically just gave you a day off work?"

Mark chuckled back. "Well, I'm kinda looking for an office so I can get my PDA recharged and get some potato chips and soda. I don't get how you dudes survive down here. I just wanna go home and play some video games."

Unfortunately for Mark, his Gamestation X back in America would have to wait, because he was a long way from even exiting the mines, not to mention that his employers would be rather upset if he didn't find even just one office.

[trackripper]

Ge Liang Zhu finally broke through the wall of debris blocking the cavern in front of him and sighed.

"I really could do with a medkit right now."

The bruise on his chest was hindering some of his movement, not to mention the myriad of scratches, some deeper than others, over his hands and face. Nevertheless, he took out the eG-r PDA and checked his position again. This cavern led to the wrecked eG-r ship.

He set off at a slow limp, using the cavern walls as supports. Well at least guards weren't a problem anymore down here, he seriously doubted that Triakis would have access to this bit of the mine if it took a tunnel collapsing to expose and discover the cavern. The blip on the PDA flashed faster and faster, with a more incessant beeping. Then, as he rounded the corner...

The wrecked hull of the eG-r ship was torn, sheared off completely from the cockpit and rear engine section, the livery barely recognizable from 30 years of corrosion. There was a body lying not far off the ship, and it was in the position which P. Cheung was on his PDA. However, this was not what caught his eye. Next to the presumed body of P. Cheung was something else.

If the faint colours of red and yellow were anything to go by: he'd just found Jann's Swiftkiller.

'Oh for f***'s sake! Why do I have to see torchlight now?!'

[skillcheck]

[Challenger #001]

[Skillcheck UB3R~JKP - 2]

"FEISAR agent! Stop right where you are!" cried out a voice as Denso finished tying the rocket to his back. A trio of Triakis guards had burst out of the way the two members of the European squad had come from. The captain of the squadron that had been called in as backup hadn't missed the rusted old ladder and sent a trio of his men up. It hadn't been hard to trace the scuffs and marks in the dust where the two had run away and into the deeper parts of the mines.

"He's got a Scottish flag on, mate," scowled one of the guards, spinning his stun baton in a gloved grip. "He's Icaras."

"We'll have to see about that," purred a dark voice from behind the guards. A thick-set man shouldered his way out from between his men, blocking off the only escape route to the surface. He held a stun pistol in his hand, and rather than a combat suit he was in a standard issue Triakis flight suit, mostly orange but with the distinctive camouflage markings around the lower arms and legs. Anyone who'd followed the FX350 season would have recognised him as Harding and Stephenson's third pilot, now relegated to a test role.

"I don't quite appreciate you two taking what's ours. If we can't have it, neither can you," crooned the Brazilian ex pilot. Joao Acosta lowered his stun pistol and let loose a firm blast at Denso. The shot missed the man but collided with the rocket on his back. The light went from blue to yellow, flashing erratically. And then it turned red.

----

(XR - no playing of my NPCs. -2 to your next skillcheck roll)

Mrs Mowell narrowed her eyes at Mark, taking off her spectacles to peer at him closer.

"Now I'm beginning to wonder if you're just a lost kid playing about here," she snapped. "Potato chips and soda? What sort of envoy are you from Auricom?" She opened up her own PDA and gave a little alert to her superiors. "I've got a young intruder in the mines here... I think we need to take him up top and get in touch with Auricom. He's wearing one of their outfits... could be a thief."

----

[Skillcheck trackripper - 19]

The cavern that Ge had entered was once an underground pool of sorts, stalactites and stalagmites dotted about the ceiling and floor, the soft drip of water the only sound beside the Chinaman's breathing at first. However, as Ge followed further into the chamber, he'd see the results of the Temtesh disaster.

Shlaudecker's Piranha had got off worst in the explosion - having been on one of the lower routes when the supports had come crumbling down, it had sent the Swiftkiller rocketing into the lower reaches of the mine and crashing through several layers of rock. The nose of the craft was buckled and twisted almost all the way up to the cockpit and engine. The open-air cockpit gave a pretty violent view of what had happened to the German pilot - the glass was stained brown with age-old blood and the figure in the cockpit was hunched forward in a way that no living person would be able to replicate.

Shlaudecker's skeleton was still dressed in his faded Piranha overalls, though his helmet was cracked open at the front with the force of the impact into the stone walls. When you're sent at over nine hundred kilometres an hour into a solid wall of Australian sandstone, there's only one result despite what Overtel had promised safety-wise. His dog tags had fallen out of his outfit and glinted in tarnished silver on the front of his race suit, the chain still draped over his skeletal shoulders.

However, the Swiftkiller was not alone in its' tomb. The detonation of Paul Cheung's eG-r had not had quite the effect that the team had wanted - sure, the ship was buried many miles underground, but it hadn't removed every last bit of evidence. The hull of the claret-and-white ship was upended in a pool, currently being used as a home for a collection of pale ghost crabs. The other sign of life however was that of a crumpled body lying against a wall on the far side of the chamber in a tattered and torn suit matching his ship.

Paul Cheung's head was encased in some kind of smoky green glass, filled with a fluid of some unknown sort. A metallic mask covered his mouth and nose, keeping him fed and aired most likely in his state of hibernation. The eG-r ships had tried to meld human with machine, and Cheung was one of the best examples. It seemed that in his near death status, the cybernetic parts of his body had taken over and kept him alive for a hopeful rescue from his team. The flashlight that Ge saw was the blinking distress signal on the front of the man's chest.

[UB3R~JKP]

Ben Denso "You idiots! ****ing hell, look what you've done!" He unstrapped the rocket from his back. "Just because you're not good enough to cut it as a pilot doesn't mean you have to be such a hard bi-" He suddenly jolted and punched the 2 guards straight in the face and kicked them in the teeth. Now he was standing in front of the 3rd pilot.
"Not exactly a stun baton but it'll do...Now going to tell me what business brings you down here, Or if you're gonna be tough...lets play chicken, eh?" He picked the rocket back up from the ground and aimed it at him. "You wouldn't happen to have any metal on you...would ya? Aye? Oh...well, better hurry before this thing locks on."


[Skillcheck]

[XR_GTR]

As Maria alerted her superiors, Mark had realised just how much trouble he had dug himself into.

Mark thought to himself. 'Are you kidding yourself, Mark!? POTATO CHIPS AND SODA!? What does this look like to you, some gravboard shop back at home? Come on dude, this is Triakis we're dealing with here! Get serious!'

With that thought in mind, Mark stopped joking around with the Triakis worker.
"Whoa, chill out ma'am. I'm not here to steal anything. My boss told me Auricom forgot some of their documents in one of these offices, that's all. The potato chips and soda thing was just a joke!"

This was serious. And Mark's chances of getting away with his little white lie seemed to be slim to none.

[Skill-check] :cold

(OOC: I'm dead meat :cold)

[trackripper]

Ge Liang Zhu gasped at what he saw. Both his primary objectives were here, recovering Jann's body and the Swiftkiller Piranha. However there was a problem.

Normally recovering them wouldn't be difficult, he'd just call more Piranha personnel down, however, he'd been sent in mostly alone, the back up was above ground, and now he was caved in deep inside the mines with no one for help. Moving Jann's body was hard in itself, as the man deserved no less than official honours in the private Piranha cemetery, but with the Swiftkiller needing moving too, well, it looked pretty daunting.

As his mind wandered, so did his eyes, and suddenly he realised he wasn't alone. Paul Cheung was down here too, in a vegetative state yes, but he might be of some help if he woke up. However, Ge had no idea how the hibernation system on Cheung's head worked. Walking up to it, he examined it. Well at least there wasn't a language barrier, but the few lines of text on the helmet didn't say much about how to remove it and revive the person.

He had no other choice though, he couldn't do this alone. Flipping Cheung's body gently onto its front, he examined the wiring that went from the helmet into his body through the back of his neck. Then he took a deep breath, pressed a button on the helmet labelled 'Remove Safely' and pulled the wires out. The fluid began draining out from inside the helment. Now he had to wait to see if he had done it right.

[skillcheck]

OOC: I'm going to be away for a week and a bit, so if the skillcheck permits, someone can RP Paul Cheung, but otherwise, my character's gonna be on hiatus for a bit.

[Challenger #001]

[Skillcheck UB3R~JKP - 12]

Acosta's eyes went wide as the men before him were knocked aside, leaving just one guard behind him and the angry Scot before him wielding a FEISAR super rocket. The comparison to another certain explosives-happy man from Ullapool crossed his mind temporarily before he began to back away slowly. His stun pistol still was raised though, pointing at the man standing before him before suddenly the missile seemed to realise it wanted free.

It burst out of Ben's hands and went shooting through the gap between Joao and his crony, vanishing into the tunnel beyond. The burly Brazilian looked like he was going to make a dive for it, but the rocket clattered to the floor and lay motionless, the red light still blinking.

"A dud," the Triakis pilot murmured, glaring back at Ben as he got to his feet. "Nice try buddy. Missiles always have used targeting systems - never just metal seekers." His friend vanished back into the corridor to pick up the missile and take it back to base as he blocked the way for Ben, his friends picking themselves up.

"Now then... are you going to be nice and easy, or are we going to have to wring the info out of you?" he asked icily.

---

[Skillcheck XR_GTR - 3(-2=1)]

Maria's eyes narrowed even further as she closed her spectacles and loomed before the boy. Even at over fifty, the scientist made for an imposing form as she glared at him. "In offices buried underground for thirty years? Offices that never belonged to Auricom in the first place?"

A quartet of men soon turned up behind Mark, their eyebrows raising at the sight of the young boy wandering around, obviously unprepared and unthinking.

"C'mon kid," one of the burlier men said as he placed his hand on Mark's shoulder. "You come with us. You can explain yourself to Mr McNaughton," he said with reference to the chief of Triakis.

---

[Skillcheck trackripper - 11]

Cheung's suit did not seem to want to let its' owner get back into the world easily. The pale fluid that had kept the pilot in suspension for so long was ejected messily out of a pipe on his neck, the material splattering across the floor of the cavern in a gelatinous mess. The glass began to retract slowly, and the mask popped itself off Paul's face, leaving the Chinaman gasping for air as he lay there, his eyes still sealed shut. He was still adjusting to breathing actual air - stale and musty air from down in the bottom of the mines maybe, but it wasn't 30-year-old recycled stuff. He took a great breath, and opened his eyes.

He stared at Ge, his head tilting oddly in the same way a bird might cock its' head at a curiosity before it. His shoulders rolled lightly, breath coming in short gasps as he attempted to get his body back and functioning. He opens his mouth and through age-old, water-deprived lips, he speaks.

"They blew my ship... didn't they?" His dialect was a clipped, almost halting Chinese that Ge might have been able to place as being from the north-west of his homeland, near the Korean border. The dryness of his throat doesn't make it easy to tell though. "Water... please."

---

(If we can have more people included so I don't have to keep skillchecking, would be much appreciated. Also for anyone who wants to include themselves in the play, PLEASE try and make a decent character that actually looks like he might apply to this setting.)

[pask765]

Glencross Starling dropped into a crouch as he got off of a rusty ladder. It had been his safest entry point into the mines, a section near to where the support pillar that the FEISAR super missiles had hit. He glanced to where he'd come out and cursed under his breath - he was on a high outcropping of rock with only a rope bridge to the other side. The last 25 years hadn't been kind to him, and this didn't look too good.

[skillcheck]

[Challenger #001]

[Skillcheck pask765 - 12]

The ladder held as Glencross descended, even as it creaked dangerously against the rock face that it was anchored to. As the Auricom pilot got to the bottom, it gave one final groan as it eased back into position. Anyone trying to use the ladder next time would probably have some serious difficulties.

The zone of the missile impact was not far from where the FEISAR pilots had found the dud missile. The other two had gone off straight into the column - the supposedly solid steel and reinforced strut was buckled and torn, revealing a hollow interior. The strut had mostly slumped, causing a landslide of rock behind Johnson though the end of the cavern had got damaged severely as well. Only Khumala and Woolf had got out of the cave before it came down. Tsarong, Belmondo and Johnson had been lucky enough to be close to the surface though, the first rescued.

[pask765]

Glencross Starling stood on the outcropping for a little while remembering the close shave that Mishima's Van-Uber had as it had just entered the mines when the red flag signal to stop the race was given. He then took pictures of the supposedly solid steel strut's hollow interior on his PDA before he walked across the rope bridge.

[skillcheck - cross rope bridge]

[keg_11]

It's interesting no-one has done a Xios character yet. Might as well make one.

Henri Kinnunen managed to 'dig' his way into the mines from above. His training from the Finnish defence force did come in handy. Kinnunen had joined the new EG-X team after his military career had ended as an engineer and, on occasions, unnoficial test pilot. When the Finnish side of EG-X were curious about the neuro-link technology developed by their Chinese partners and believe that the old EG-R craft might have something to do with it.

Kinnunen had done stealth operations before, so he never used his torch and used his PDA only when absolutely necessary. After about 30 minutes of walking, he felt a hole in the middle of the path...with sound coming out of it. Using the rope he had, he tied one end to a half-buried rock and started to abseil his way down.

He didn't even get a few metres down before he heard voices from the tunnels above, and they sounded Australian.

[skillcheck!]

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

[UB3R~JKP Skillcheck - 9](Other posters, do feel free to post, and you can have multiple members working for the same faction. Just try not to trip over each other too much. ;) You don't have to wait for me to post to keep going. We'll try and keep 2 or 3 posts in between mine.)

*literally trips over someone else*

I guess I should make a character, huh? Not sure where to start, though.

[keg_11]

(Other posters, do feel free to post, and you can have multiple members working for the same faction. Just try not to trip over each other too much. ;) You don't have to wait for me to post to keep going. We'll try and keep 2 or 3 posts in between mine.)

Oh, so does this mean we can continue the RPG with someone else doing the skillchecks? :D

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Just to be frank, I really wish you didn't close your previous RP. I was really looking forward to it. I even made not one, but two characters for it.

[NeroIcaras]

Mikar Valloninen scrabbled deeply through the wreckage of the G-Tech craft. He had seen somebody below him, and he was really scared. Inching his cold, sweaty fourteen year-old body across the wreck, he prayed it wouldn't give way.

(skillcheck)

[NeroIcaras]

Come on i need to know what happens!