<span style='width:100%;font-weight:bold; font-size:10px'>Out of Character</span> <table class=ooc><tr><td>For Kathtak01's Tazzy and my Fester. Private, no exceptions (unless you've got a character in Space Ops in which case feel free to PM me), but feel free to look. & as to how they'll interact, perhaps there's a program (star-trek-like) which they can use to connect visually and auditorily to speak because one of them breaks some code of space ettiquette. Or something of that manner. Tria 14th Early Morning 81378 Rated PG-15 for language. Festy is in her bipedal form. Two FYI's: 1.This is a big post. 2.I'm making most of this up as I go along. Let me know what you think. </td></tr></table> Great rolling waves of steam rose from the jungle floor. The thick and dewy moisture that had percipitated the previous muggy night was now evaporating in the chinks of sun that filtered through the ropey green vine cover. Indeed, the "floor" wasn't really a floor at all, but rather thick and springy leaves, vines, roots, and peat that created a bouncy, comfortable carpeting along the ground. The jungle was in thick and heady bloom today, the waves of scents, both good and bad, overwhelming to any traveller. To this particular pendragon's fine olfactory senses, a smell of sweet and damp decay was twining through the air, mating with a tropical flower's sweet, fruity aroma. Also there was the outright stink of rotting flesh, melding with the sugary smell of an Onye tree. The rubbery green vegetation and dark, smooth trees positively dripped with sweet sap and dew, dampening the fur of the one walking in the jungle with sticky juices, salty sweat, and cool water. Fester Lovcat Scorpium Shatz was beginning to wish very much that she hadn't worn the tight, horizontally striped, long-sleeved top that now adorned her bodice. She also felt sweat begin to dampen her legs beneath tight, olive-colored boot-cut pants. Certainly her feet baked in the clunky, heavy-treaded leather military boots she wore. "Fu-uck," the 16-year-old said cynically, but she knew she'd hardly have to endure the heat for long. "Why endure it at all?" she asked a nearby tree roughly, and promptly pulled the shirt from her body, revealing a bright red sports bra. Slinging the damp black-and-white bit of clothing over her shoulder, along with her canvas bag, she stretched. Festy walked on, swinging her shoulders as if there was someone to impress. But she did not do this conciously; her instinct was to strut like a fucking peacock, and who cared if there was nobody else in the world to see? Unfortunately for Festy she did not have to travel far. She was now on a dirt path rather than a sproingy mass of plans and peat and humus earth, and no briars scratched at her legs and torso now. The path took a sudden, almost 90-degree turn to the right. The green-haired femme followed it obediently, taking a deep breath of the suddenly cooler air. Her followed trail suddenly took a rise along an impossibly tree-choked hill which rose, inexplicably, up before her. The path forked and Festy took the right side with an air of easy practice, weaving along with it and taking the turns almost before they occurred in the path. The top of the sudden rise, while close, was covered with trees and it was literally impossible to see to the top. But there--! Through a gap in the trees, something vivid and blue sparkled. Magi Lake. For Festy was in a corner of Vivuli Jungle that bordered on the majestic water body. A few moments later, the femme had reached the top of the hill. Instead of rising up to a large, wildlife-rich, rounded top and then descending gradually below, the tip of the tiny mountain was chopped off, leaving a level, flat, and clear surface. There were no trees around it; there were not even a few blades of grass. There was only a flat, ice-smooth black asphalt platform, with white writing in huge lettering across the middle of it. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>PF Q-45 m.</span> It was property of the Ramathian military, and Fester's other half called it her home. There was, on the edge of the platform, a medium-sized concrete structure with "Q-45: 6820.121 mf:v" painted on it in black stencil-letters. It was seamless, except for one wall, which was of pure, slat-like scales of metal. This was the wall that faced directly into the platform. Festy reached into the bag she'd brought and took out a smooth, shining, round crystal ball about the size of a small marble. Popping it into her mouth waited a moment, swirling it about. Then she spat out a good quantity of clear liquid. Grimacing, she strode over to the side of the building. Aside from the letters, it was unmarked, but close inspection revealed a tiny hole in the wall. Fester pressed her lips around the hole and breathed once into it. A tinny beep echoed in the chirping, rustling jungle. The metallic wall slid upwards, like a garage door. Inside of the dark, one-floored storage building, there was a ship. Vullyos. Vullyos had been given to Festy when she was 13, a premature gift to say the least. The Ramathian Military had signed her into the Space Ops forces when she was 14. This had been her base; this was her landing pad, and her ship's home. She knew its coordinates in both Cosmic and Ramathian Common notation, as well as Military Notation. Stellar intersparse: 47235.99, S-star nine-oh-six; 780, 234; alpha kappa ceta, omega pi charles eighty, she thought, rattling off the base's locale in all three "languages". It was a habit of hers. Fester was elated for the first time in a long time; the first time since her roommates in Janardan had left. She walked into the cool concrete shadows to her ship. Vullyos's full, 30-foot form gleamed in the stony, damp garage. Her wings were folded in. The ship was styled like a needle-nosed fighter jet, though it was, of course, infinitely different in its workings. There were no messy sparks, gas, fuels, or smoke. There was just cool crystal, glass, metal, and computer chips, and of course the milky magicka, given by Fronima. She wasted no time in supplying the ship its power, digging into the canvas bag yet again and drawing forth a crystal. Walking towards Vullyos's stern, she found the small hole there and punched in the password. The lock was mechanical, not magickal, and so it opened without power. A circle of metal on the ship's surface slid aside, revealing a hole perfectly angled to house the crystal Fester held. She pushed it inside, and worked the password again. The metal slid back. Now Festy moved with purpose, walking up to the hatch. A small screen, before unnoticable, now lit up below the clear glass hatch. She punched her name into it, as well as her army ID number. A man's voice said, "<span style='color:blue'>Welcome, Scorpium.</span>" "Hey, 37," Festy told it, over the hiss of the opening hatch. She braced her hands on the ship's sides and vaulted over, into the cockpit. The leather seat was not too soft, but a definite comfort. But her work to start the ship was far from done. Pulling the other crystal from the sack, she set it into the hole straight before her on the crowded control panel and dashboard. Instantly the field guide screen, the radar, the side and back-view vision screens, and the weapons centre lit up, flickering to life. The oxygen and hydrogen metres leapt up to their normal locations, and the dials of air pressure and Fronima power-level spun crazily 'till they settled into the appropriate levels. But Festy knew she couldn't fly the ship yet. The ship computer, 37, said, "<span style='color:blue'>Scorpium zero-six-chu-iota-upsilon, please verify identity using retinal and paw scanners.</span>" Obediently, Festy layed her hand across the blue screen and felt a heat which almost burnt her hand. When she took her paw away a second later, there was an orange sillhouette of her mitt upon the screen. "<span style='color:blue'>Accepted. Scorpium, please provide your eye for the retinal.</span>" Fester smiled at the computer's unique choice of wording as usual, but bent her head forward to press her eye to a little tube. The view she saw consisted of another blue screen, this one reading "don't blink, fuckahh". It was her own custom message. A blinding, searing-hot light moved in a bar along her eyeball, making her eye water and sting. But she kept it open and the scan completed. "<span style='color:blue'>Accepted. Enjoy your flight, Scorpium zero-six-chu--</span>" But Festy rolled her eyes profusely and ignored Thirty, saying, "K. Kthanks." and letting her hand flit to the steering wheel. She reached down and pulled Vullyos into "TERRA". The needle-nosed vehicle wasn't at all made for the earth, but three tiny pairs of wheels had to be used for brief takeoff and landing purposes. They descended now at the touch of a button, and Festy pressed the acceleration pedal down with her foot, ever-so-slightly. As if moving over gravel, Vullyos rolled along, out onto the slickly smooth black asphalt. The heat there was unbearable, so she reached above her and flicked on the air. Instantly mini-weather environs that existed in tubes between the inner and outer walls of the ship cooled, sending off waves of frosty air. Sighing in comfort, Festy reached down and pulled her shirt back on. Then she reached over to the oxygen levels and touched the keypad, bringing the fresh-air release up a touch. She checked to the side of her (where the back-view live-feed camera screen was) and saw that nothing was behind her. She looked out of the cockpit and to the digital mirrors and checked that all was clear. There was no making sense of the radar now; too many trees. She'd check that when she got up in the air. "Fresh and clear, preparing for grounds-away," she told 37, knowing it was impossible to maintain the air-pressure levels manually and that the computer would take care of it. "<span style='color:blue'>Scorpium, confirm?</span>" "Upsilon, Epsilon, Sigma." "<span style='color:blue'>Beginning auto-pressure regulator now.</span>" Like an eager bird, Fester's hand flittered to the joystick. "Begin mission."
<font color=orange size=2>Out of Character</font> Again, here's my "lovely" excuse for a <s>half-</s><font color="red">finished</font> post, one of which I am desperately (as you can probably see) trying to match up to yours, which is wonderful. You are obviously much more adept at this stuff than I am. : ) Note: I've since discovered that I HATE seeing a hell of alot of my writing on one post. Like, despise it. Like, I think "I might just shoot myself if I ever think so high of me again" kind of hate. Thus, my following posts will most DEFINATELY no be of this length. More like, "'k i suk' said Tazzy. 'letz raip.' And then he blew up the planet out of spite. The End!!!!" Edit: I just realised that that made no sense. : ) I must have been tired. <font color=orange size=2>Out of Character</font> “FUCKING HELL!" Gloved hands slammed against the upright machina plumbing inside a roughly 5x5 foot trunk, rattling the already groaning engine. “Piece of shit, what’s wrong with you?" Tazzy, who prided himself on knowing pretty much everything in this area of technology, could not for the life of him get this blasted thing to work. No matter what he did, no matter how much he swore and pleaded and shouted out ill-conceived blasphemies, the engine would not—could not—rise from her state of superior degradation. In the three hours since he had made a forced, modestly smooth landing (considering his surroundings), the engine’s erratic noises had gone from spouting high-pitches rah-pah-pahs¸ to low groans, to silence, to startling feedback, to useless revving, back to silence, and, finally, to scratching inhuman noises that resembled fierce wind and rain crashing through a forest of screaming, legless babies. Vivid, yes, but disturbingly factual. In all honesty, Carrion was getting more than a little irritated with it all. It had been going on for the past twenty minutes, and he was beginning to need some sort of headache pill. Or possibly horse tranquilizers. In any case, he had realised quite some time ago that he was in the middle of a deep, dark jungle, and however clichéd it might have seemed in his (surprisingly intricate) experience, big scary creatures liked to hang out in these sorts of places. Despite his disagreeable habits and common first impressions regarding this older male, Carrion was, in actual fact, quite intelligent, or at least intelligent enough to realise that being in the middle of an alien land with an obstructively loud engine was not the safest of states to be in. And he might not even have minded it so much, because most of the time he really enjoyed toying with anything mechanical. Only, the parts he was toying with weren’t his. They weren’t part of his original design. This was all the government’s fault, he thought darkly as he slumped to his knees, bent on checking the tubes and wires that hung from the base of the ship. Generic-brand adhesive and several slates of curved metal stuck most of it together, or at least that’s what he told everyone. Having many reliable (if only in theory) connections throughout the black market had its perks, and Carrion made sure he took advantage of every single one. Of course, the inspection agency hadn’t believed the former, innocent-enough story he had to them, at least not until he performed a serious of tests for them, which he pretty much breathed through. Even so, he was pretty sure they didn’t trust him even after that, and Carrion was positive that them finding several strictly illegal bits of machina (among other things) inside the workings of the trunk didn’t help much. Of course, he pleaded the innocent bystander. ‘I don’t even know what that is! I swear, I have absolutely no idea how that mutated rat got inside fuel tank.’ Needless to say, it had absolutely no effect on the shaking heads of the Board for the Dutiful Inspection of Ramathian Space Crafts, seeing how it was painfully obvious he had made the thing himself. And that was why, two months after the custodian’s unsuccessful application to be rid of the rank of Space Cadet (“We’re already too short of soldiers, dumbass."), Tazzy was lying on his back, monkey wrench in hand, trying to tighten a particularly loose piece of “regulation" machina. It was, apparently, government-approved, and marked with read paint: C-BETA:5201 6M5 29. These were the model date and serial number that every legal piece of regime technology, and the only difference, Tazzy might have told you, that separated theirs from his own creation, and the only reason he had gone through a month of refinishing his “otherwise perfect" ship. “Yep," he sighed glumly, staring hopelessly at the tinkered- and re-tinkered-with wire, “it’s definitely the government’s fault." His ship’s general look was definitely the least legislative part. Generic Ramathian vessels were commonly long and gleaming, made to impress the enemy (or so Carrion gathered), whereas Tazzy’s was flatter than norm, only getting taller near the rear, somewhat like an earthen racing car. The engine also expanded into the back, increasing the thrust rate. The ship was meant to exuberate short, quick bursts of speed, rather than heave long distances of lesser momentum. This made his ship excellent for surprise attacks, as well as short-range races. Of course, long, quick flights could always be a bit of a problem; though that is why the male had it designed that his guns (extending all the way from the back of the twenty or twenty-five foot long plane) were meant for incredible distances. Either way, he had it covered, and was quite proud of his baby. Except for now, of course. Terrible twos? Maybe, he cooed inwardly, relishing in the momentary amusement. Then he had to wonder if ships actually thought abstractly. Hey, anything was possible. His ship was pretty much solidly Fronima-based: the guns (which recuperated the mystery of tai flames), the power, the transfiguration, the communication unit… the list went on. But… what was that? Carrion stared in complete shock at something probably seven feet away from his nose. A dangling end of wire, with a small hulk of rubber hanging off the end of it, was hanging just out of reach. Two small metal nubs pointed accusingly towards the ground. A plug. A plug was undone. If only he was that flexible, the male would have kicked himself, shoved his foot up his ass without a second thought—like there obviously wasn’t something up there already. “A goddamn plug," he mumbled in partial dramatisation, and felt hot red creeping up his cheeks, despite the fact that no one was around. This was so beneath him. Shaking the embarrassed numbness from his bones, the dropped down to his knees and crawled briefly towards the unplugged device. He felt the blush rising even further to his eyes as he took the plastic and shoved it forcefully back into the little piece of metal, the two parts connecting with an infuriating click. He scowled at it, despising the stupid little piece. Roughly, he grabbed something that resembled duct tape from his pocket and proceeded slathering several layers of it onto and around the socket (perhaps a dozen or two). Of course it was unnecessary, the amount. One small piece of this evidently unsupervised bonding agent would do for years. He just hated the goddamn thing. He glared with satisfaction as the tape melted into a gooey green substance around the plug, immediately hardening. “You, my lovely fucking useless plug, ain’t goin’ nowhere." Not bothering to figure out why the device was out in the first place, Carrion crawled out from under his craft and stood up, rubbing his knees. Roots and rocks and stray sticks weren’t exactly the softest things to be lying on. He stored the tape back into his pocket, and pulled out, from the same fold of cloth, a package of oddly innocent cigarettes. Reason? He might have been a junkie, but he wasn’t stupid enough to fly stoned. Coffin nails usually grossed him out to the point of vomit, but he felt, as he pulled out a lighter to set fire to the end of one, that he deserved it, especially after this hair-raising ordeal. Cancer stick hanging relatively safely off his bottom lip, one thumb hooking off his pant line, he moseyed on some ten feet towards the hatch, and punched in several numbers (the keypad also being a generous addition from the Inspectors. Something about safety and security, he remembered vaguely. He also remembered being as high as the sky that day). Of course, he couldn’t do this until he reached inside his thigh pockets and pulled out a scrunched up piece of paper. His excuse for a very bad memory was chicken scratched onto the yellowing scrap: - <font face=times size=2>1 then 2 then - 9 then 5 - press enter - T then O then Q - press enter - then put in my stupid artificial codenames which are: high kappa putty dung - press code validation</font> <font face=courrier>"Welcome, Tazzy Carrion,"</font> the faint female voice crooned as soon as he was seated in a duct taped-together plush seat, claw raking at the stuffing (which, in more than a couple places, was bursting at the seams) boredly. He could definitely have done without this annoying woman droning at him every time he got into the car. As the mechanical voice continued monotonously, he wondered if there were any personality drives he could install, or create one of his own (shouldn’t be that hard, really. Add a deeper voice, more seducing… Hell, then he might not mind coming into it every day). <font face=courrier>"Please look into the retinal screen and—"</font> "Fuck off," he told it promptly, not about to abide by its silly, useless commands. It was him, wasn’t it? <font face=courrier>“Oral examination, passed. Prepare for take-off, Betelgeuse."</font> The inside tint of the windows lifted, giving him a clear view of thick, thick vegetation, nothing much else. He could tell, though, that there was an opening above him, because that’s the direction he made his partial crash-land through, smooth as ever. "Vodka?" he asked innocently as he begin pushing several buttons, preparing, as the computer commanded, for lift-off. He ignored its other statements (‘Air pressure stabilizing, basic command centre rebooting, transfiguration centre loading, blah, blah, blah.’), and either the word got jumbled up in the process of repeated spillage of information, or it was an auto-response stimulated by the more amusing side of the government, but, instead of alcohol pouring through the beverage machine, hot, black, strong coffee drizzled out from the nozzle. This caused the palm of Tazzy’s gloved, bandaged hand to lift up and land relatively stiffly against his forehead. He grinned despite himself, though, and, instructing the gentle voice “Immediate take-off," the wide shuttle lifted straight into the air, crashing heedlessly through whatever foliage he hadn’t managed to shatter beforehand. A flick of a finger, and the simulation fresh air blasted around the duo-person cockpit, making his long lime bangs flap around his face. He smiled. It was all he could get, shut up in a window-locked machine. Still, his fingers settled comfortably into the grooves of his handlebars—similar to those on a motorbike, only line with more buttons and toggles—and he leaned back into the junkyard cushion. The sky was his playpen. As he took another drag of the slowly disintegrating cigarette, blowing the smoke through the corners of his lips, he felt he deserved this. Didn’t he?
<span style='width:100%;font-weight:bold; font-size:10px'>Out of Character</span> <table class=ooc><tr><td>K. Then let's try some nice, lovely, easy posting. Bwee. & I never</td></tr></table> Vullyos rattled along at 130 mph. Fester's lips twisted into a half-grin; her dangerous teeth were slick and visible on the left side of her mouth. The femme pressed the accelorater ever forward, and the trees on the other side of the were sharp and detailed and she could almost see the dewdrops on them. Other than the hot-gleaming tree-trunks the world was a speeding smudge, and she knew it was time for Vullyos to turn his face to his natural element once again. So her fingers, dark and quick, lightly flicked from the accelorator to the joystick. Implausibly, though smoothly, the metallic shape began to tilt upwards. Just as its impact with the trees seemed inevitable, Festy nosed Vullyos higher, and its smooth belly cleared the trees. As was her tradition, the mossy-haired female turned around to look at the black streak that was the runway. It dropped away at a rate that would have soured anyone's belly, but Fester just turned around again, swooping her vehicle down over the trees and then banking around, heading East rather than North. The sun was a white-noise burn in her eyes. She opened the glove compartment and fished around one-handed until she found a pair of aviator-style vintage sunglasses. These she shoved onto her nose and, blinking, continued flight. There was a break in the endless carpet of jungle canopy ahead of her, and she crouched over the joystick, controlling it effortlessly; Vullyos shot forward, and the the sky and earth buzzed together as the ship dropped into a hurling roll. The femme rose out of the deathspin and flew higher. She spoke quickly to 37, "Prepare to glide. Just as she cleared the trees, her ship's wings exploded forth in length. His movement felt more stable and now he was moving steadily enough for Festy to look with leisure out over the spectacle which was Magi Lake. Even the cynical and seen-it-all Fester could never fail to be amazed by the sight. It was something straight out of a novel, or straight out of someone's favourite, always-remembered, most vivid dream. The water glowed a golden, murky green, and the sunlight crashed down upon it with all the painful force of life. The muddy banks were spotted with movement and colour, and the trees shivered lightly in the warm breezes as the feathered things rode the slipstreams easily. Though the light burned her eyes, Fester removed her sunglasses and let her eyes be seared by the loving brilliance of the Lake. She took in a deep breath of the cool air, then slid the glasses back on and gripped the joystick again, this time easing it backwards so that her ship skimmed dangerously close to the water. Her fingers touched to the Oxygen Gauge and upped the Nitrogen output just a bit. Then she pulled her ship up. Breathing slightly quickly off the high of flying, she said softly, "Thank God there's nobody here watching, because I look like a dipshit of the first degree. A niotie who's just started flying. A-- oh fuck it..." And she pulled up again, because in her ramblings she had let go of the slender joystick. Fester moved her ship upwards then, to a level at which sinking in the Lake was not a danger. Then she set the ship on vocal autopilot and left 37 to its work. "Hover until released by vocal command," She mumbled to the ship computer. The brisk masculine voice obliged. Festy ran the tips of her fingers over the touchpad on her radar. She cast an eye down towards the glimmering olive water and wondered, not for the first time, what behemoth creature was floating lazily about in its depths? So on this whim, she extended the reach of her radar downwards 100 feet and found herself momentarily fascinated with what was there. There were tiny red clouds undulating through the system's reach of vision. She assmued these were large schools of small fish. Then the supersonic ping yelped out once again. This time a strangely shaped blip floated quickly across the screen for a fleeting second-- and then it was gone. Fester's nostrils flared and she thought of the unknown. How she could never know the unknown. Sighing after a moment of intro-, retro-, in- and other spections, she brought the radar's reach back up to normal levels. "Bah," she said for no reason, and reached behind her to a small safe of sorts. In these bulletproof, soundproof, lightsound compartments most pilots kept spare handweapons, liscences, and perhaps some important emergency equipment. The contents of this particular safe, though, spilled out over the small cockpit floor. Jewelry, phone numbers, doodles, computer chips, a slap-bracelet, and a Ziggy Marley CD all clattered onto the corrugated metal. Rolling her eyes, Fester left them all there and rummaged deeper in the locker 'till she found an unopened bag of potato chips. Ripping it open with a blissful smile, she crunched on a handful of the greasy, salty chips. Still munching, she opened her eyes and looked at the radar. There was a large, steadily moving splotch somewhere to her right. Stopping her chewing, she reached out one finger and prodded the blip, leaving a greasy smudge over the red shape. "37. Identify," she said, looking to the ship ID screen. "<span style='color:blue'>Scorpium, scanning databases now.[/color" Fester reached into the bag and nibbled two more chips while keeping her eyes glued to the screen. All known army ships blinked through the screen in a second, followed by the classified ones, and then Fester's personal database of encountered vehicles. After that came basic pleasure ships of all sorts, and then all enemy vehicles. There were no matches. The femme's frown was apparent. "Tune into the Swaraj base's data files." Her computer did so and finally, after about 5 minutes of scanning, a match was found. A ratty, pieced-together ship appeared onscreen. "Ship: handmade from pieces of a Jetta fighter, gov't issue 2355. Other components unknown. No liscence offered. No owner known.[/color" Fester gritted her teeth. "Can you pick up a signal for onboard communication?" "Negative, Scorpium.</span>" The smoke-furred female threw down the bag of crisps. "If he's using goverment-issue parts for an unliscenced ship, then he's obviously doing something wrong. Release from hover and autopilot." 37 did just that, and Fester gripped the joystick. Keeping her eye on the radar, she whipped the fighter around. "Rar."
