revivalproject | Ghostriders In the Sky [Catch-All Event Log]

"Most people back home are clearly idiots," she dismisses. Because Cal's clearly a teddy bear and a mama bear in one.

Actually, maybe they don't like Cal because they want to hurt people.

"You're moving so easily here. It's insane. How are you doing it? Tips?"

Nothing he's saying dissuades Leo from his boobytrapped idea, and he's about to say as much, when suddenly Donnie is yelling.

Leo ducks again, flattening himself out as much as he can against the floor - which isn't much, with his shell, but he's just going to have to hope it can tank any potential laser blasts.

"Can you turn it off!?" he shouts, even though, out here in space, the lasers are not that loud.

The turtle hadn't meant to cause offense, and didn't seem to clock that he'd sparked off any sort of uncertainties. He tapped through settings on his goggles, trying to find some hidden puzzle piece that he was convinced had to be there.

"What do you mean, I literally just stepped in here like not even five minutes ago," he said testily, not that he was annoyed at Tony so much as this conundrum they were left with. Still, he cycled the question in his head before figuring out what Tony's point was then.

"-all the more reason to have found residual ninpō, so definitely not Leo."

"Not from here!" Donnie yelps, keeping his head down as several shots go flying past them, but at least they don't seem terribly well-aimed.

"I'm not even sure what's firing at us! But I think they might be automated. Turning them off might mean having to get closer, and I don't think they're going to give us much of a chance."

But maybe he can shut them down permanently. "How about fighting lasers with lasers? -cover me, I may be making myself a big target but unfortunately I didn't think to bring the Harpoon Ray," he says, his ninpō flaring brightly in the dark hall as he forms a laser rifle like the one equipped in his tech-bō.

Cover him!? Yeah, okay.

Leo doesn't know how he's supposed to cover Donnie from lasers, exactly, but he moves to crouch over him anyway, eyes scanning the dark hall for any threats.

"Dude, you should always bring the Harpoon Ray!" he scolds. They're on a space adventure, after all!

But Donnie's mystic tech can make anything he knows how to put together, so Leo tells himself it's all about to be fine - even as he has to duck his head in his shell to avoid another laser blast.

Donnie tries not to breathe in too quickly, as much as reflex tries to prompt him to. But the last thing he needs to do is waste it by coughing it all out again.

"Thanks," he says quietly, his head feeling a bit better. It's inevitable that it's temporary, but they just need to be smart about things. He nods. They can make it. But it's still not going to be fun.

Donnie seemed confident about exonerating his brother from mischief, so Tony relaxed incrementally with another wary glance toward the door where the kid was less likely to burst through, and risked sidling around the table. Not very far, still to the side of it, but closer than he had been. "Okay," he accepted, hand up already to count out the possibilities left to them on his fingers, "Billy can teleport. Jon can tell things to do what he wants. Tommy can move faster than light--or fast enough to phase through matter. All allegedly, of course. One of them must want to mess with you." Or they wanted to mess with Tony, which seemed more likely, but would be much more difficult to parse, and uncharacteristically (for all of them) unkind to involve Donnie, so Tony very quickly did not want to ponder that possibility too deeply.

"I didn't want to get it scuffed!" Typical.

At least the weapon is something he knows, and it doesn't take too long for the final pieces to slot into place. Which is probably good because those lasers are starting to get a little closer with each shot.

Donnie takes aim and fires immediately after another goes off, rewarded with the muffled sound of a small explosion and a brief flare as it impacts with something down the hall. He squeezes off another with similar results, but it seems there's at least one more thing still capable of firing at them as another shot goes flying in retaliation.

"That is...actually quite the list of potential culprits but at the same time, I've only ever talked to one of them extensively, and even with the impressive abilities everyone has, there is the question of why. And after everything that's happened back on Agra Ten, I doubt anyone wants to go through that much trouble finding a workaround of getting into otherwise locked quarters."

Donnie paused at that, suddenly uncertain.

"...can those be bypassed?" He supposed when it came down to superpowers then what really would stop anyone? Oh great, something else to be paranoid about.

"What can I say? This is my jam. -that's what the kids say these days, right?"

Cayde waits a moment before he says anything, keeping against the wall as a couple more lasers streak past.

"Sundance says there's five left, one on the ceiling and two on the floor, two on your side, on the wall. Roughly thirty feet ahead of us. I'll take care of the one on the ceiling, you just bowl your thing right down that side. If it don't take out the rest, I'll clean up."

Well, that's part of it. And then there's the whole Jedi thing, but that's what you get when the person in charge of the galactic government has it out for your kind.

"In this kind of place? Less is more. And the best way to do things is to try to think ahead. Moving is already hard, as you can tell. Go slowly and always be mindful of your next action- where you're going to use to push forward, what can you use ahead to stop yourself if needed. Your speed is determined by how much force you put into pushing yourself away from something, and it'll be consistent until you either hit something to stop yourself or something pushes you even harder."

If the culprit had used this method to transport something from behind the locked door, that still left them with the question of the intention, because it evidently hadn't been thievery, assuming the device had ended up where it was intended. Surely, a lock of any kind could be bypassed, Tony didn't care to debate the exact percentage of likelihood, so instead produced the most obvious conclusion to him, "Got you out of it." He raised his eyebrows meaningfully, waiting for Donnie to consider why anyone would want him out of his room, and if he should have been running five minutes ago to find out.

Ohhh he hated that he couldn't really refute that point, even if it still felt lacking for intention. But then again, maybe he'd annoyed someone? People didn't like when other people interfered with things? Maybe he'd gone too far with his evidence report, but Donnie was pretty sure most people hadn't even known he'd been gathering such things unless the doctor had namedropped him. But he didn't think she would, so then...

Was this some kind of lesson about privacy or something? Or maybe someone really was trying to get at him for some reason or another, maybe there was a new psycho on the ship!

His eyebrows shift between dubiousness as to the suggestion Tony made, to growing uncertainty the more his overthink cranked out potential reasons. It stuck on the latter as he chewed on his lower lip, suddenly bolting for the door because now he had to go and investigate, even though he knew he locked his room, that was just habit! except that he was now out of the room and maybe that was what someone wanted in the first place but why? Maybe this was all worry over nothing but you could never be too sure-!

Tony's eyes narrowed as he watched the gears turn in Donnie's head, just long enough that he started to doubt that the kid was going to reach the same conclusion and had just taken a breath to propose some alternatives and wave away the dumb idea when Donnie bolted. Tony remained where he was, mouth snapping shut to purse his lips as he bent over slowly like he could see Donnie's wake through the door as his footsteps echoed down the hall. A glance assured him that the mystery part was gone, and no new ones had shown up in its place. With a sigh, he considered the mess of the rest of the room, and how many boxes he would need to start packing.

Auuugh, he hates that it's a solid argument. Getting it scuffed would lower its value as a collectible!!

He watches as Donnie takes out two, but the lasers are still coming. He cringes as he narrowly avoids another one, then growls and pulls out his sword.

"Eat your own laser!" he snaps, before opening a portal in front of them - another opening just beside it but pointing the opposite direction.

Whether it had been the intent or not, Leo's glowing portal draws the attention of whatever's firing in their direction, and it does not seem to consider that maybe aiming at the glow will end with its demise.

The first return shot flies just past it, giving the briefest glimpse of some kind of spider-legged, mechanical silhouette before the next shot it fires flies right back at it.

"Bravo, Leo!" Donnie grins, holding a fist up towards his brother. "I think that's all of them, or at least I'm not picking up anything else around there for now."

It wasn't even fifteen minutes before those same previously quick-retreating footsteps became louder on a return route. If Tony had been bothering to track him in the cameras, he would have seen that Donnie hadn't stayed terribly long once he did get back to his room, almost immediately rushing back out.

He skidded past the doorway to the forge, scrambling back to throw himself bodily through it, his goggles askew, a hand gripping tightly the staff section he'd reclaimed from the workbench.

"I found it!" he blurted, looking even more like some deranged scientist as he pulled his goggles down and once again looked towards the bench.

Leo knocks his fist against Donnie's, then finally rises out of his crouch. He gives a showman's bow, hands outspread as he dips at the waist.

"Thank you, I know, I'm amazing." He turns to peer back down the hallway. "That was some sharp shooting too, Tex. This ship should know better than to mess with us!"

He yells that last part down the hallway - possibly ill-advised.

Donnie smirks, in full agreement there. "Why thank you," he says as he gets up from the floor, pretending to blow off the end of his rifle.

There's a strange hum that sounds from behind them, the lights in the hallway flickering on briefly from that point before slowly cycling past their section, leaving them in darkness again as the light continues to move down each segment. It reveals the twitching mechanical bodies of several spider-legged robots before continuing on down until a point further, darkness once again filling the halls.

"Uh... That was weird..." Donnie frowns, trying not to sound anxious as he peers through his goggles. "It looked like...whatever power was available here was being pulled down the hall-

"...oh no."

His goggles pick up the energy spike just before more glowing red spheres come alive in the darkness, metal clicking against metal as multiple legs begin their approach.

Whether or not Tony was tracking did not diminish his surprise when Donnie went thundering by, then burst back in, leaving Tony frozen and waiting for the aftershocks to diminish before he risked glancing around again, looking for what about that presentation he was supposed to understand. He was kneeling on the floor by then, gathering the parts that had been shoved from the table, so maybe it was a problem of perspective again. "Yes," he eventually had to agree, "Last time you came in here. It was right there."

Donnie waved off the response as he came closer to inspect the space, pointing at a spot before he set the staff piece there. He lifted it again, frowning to himself.

"An energy reading. It's roughly the size of this segment. I found one back in my room where this had been, different position, same amount of energy. Whoever moved it was doing some very precise targeting, but that would mean knowing what they were aiming for and where it was. And be just as precise in where they'd set it, because there's no...excess trail indicating any other movement. It's just...gone from one spot and here the next."

He brought up his holoscreen off of his bracer computer, tapping through things before he sent over screencaps of the readings from his goggles to give Tony visuals of what they'd picked up. There were a couple of the segment itself and its readings, and then images of the silhouette of the staff segment glowing in indication of the readings, from presumably the place in his room aside from the worktable. The number levels between the images didn't seem to differ too much between them, the latter only slightly lower. They however matched the levels with the corresponding staff segment images.

"It's deteriorating, that's the only reason the levels are different, but given the numbers matched up between what I read from my room and the staff then, and the staff and this spot now, they are all very consistent, so this happened instantaneously. Who all's twiddling their thumbs around here and has that kind of control?"

It was an honest question, since Tony seemed to know a lot about the people around and the abilities they had. He'd already named several, so it had to be one of them maybe...? But that still left reasons unanswered.

While Donnie produced his findings, Tony carefully gathered himself up with a dainty pat for any lingering debris on his clothes, and took a cautious step closer then halted with a restrained lean to eye Donnie's data with his hands planted on his hips. He was a little surprised again, not expecting Donnie to have anything to ask of him after the presentation, and his focus darted between Donnie's face and the images as he rapidly searched for a more satisfying answer than the suggestions that he had produced before. "Billy," he decided to narrow the focus. Jon likely could, too, but Tony had already said probably too much about what he was capable of, and Billy was very cavalier about his powers. "He wiggles his fingers and can make things appear, disappear, wear a hat." The problem was, "I don't know why he would, though. I mean, he wouldn't." That was supposed to sound confident, but it came out a little sideways, and one of Tony's hands escaped to flip in the air, hedging. "He's the one that convinced me to come with you in the first place, he wouldn't be messing--The Agrii did it, too. Or, their systems. Popped you right into that pod."

Oh, of course there's more. What kind of space adventure would this be without that reveal?

"Uh, so... Do you have any kind of game plan for these guys?" Leo asks, readying his swords again.

The suggestion seemed to be taken into serious reconsideration. "Well he did threaten to teleport people over to him for a chat or something last time so maybe this is him being bored," Donnie shrugged.

"Anyway, Venidelosia said that the it isn't possible to use the matter transfer system aboard the ship itself, otherwise she said she would've done so to protect Ny Ak from being hurt, and it's a huge energy drain that involves rerouting unnecessary energy from the rest of the ship whenever it's even employed on our behalf, down on Agra Ten."

"We're at a disadvantage without any cover," Donnie observes as he monitors the approach. "I'm thinking their feet might be magnetized or something... Hey, can you pop some portals open over there?"

Ghostriders In the Sky [Catch-All Event Log]

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whoops, it appears my backslash got eaten

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