What's Behind Door Number One?

[on_repeat]

WHO: Echo & YOU-SA OTA
WHERE: The Agrii Ship
WHAT: Lost
WHEN: Yes Now-ish
WARNINGS: TBD but I'm pretty sure it's N/A. Will update as needed.

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His initial disorientation quickly subsided the moment he realized nothing was familiar.

It was huge, yes. But oh, it was different – very different from the Venator-class Republic Cruiser Echo was used to living on between missions. Through the dark visor of his helmet, he looked up, scrutinizing the lines running along the corridors, the shape of the bulkheads, the lights. However, it soon dawned on him that he would have to learn where everything was before any further venturing was done.

"Which means we're back to square one," he muttered under a breath, shouldering his blaster while he stood there to figure out his next move. And after staring down the way at the nearest door, he sighed. "Well. Looks like I got the time. A little exploring won't kill me..."


* * *

His first point of inspection:

"Large an' empty. I wonder what could've been held in here."


* * *

Second point of inspection:

"Inventory," he almost snorted through his vocabulator. The thrill in his tone (or lack thereof) was evident. "Always loads of fun."


* * *

A third point of inspection:

"...What is this, a refresher?"


* * *

Hits and misses were plenty the more he looked around, but for some reason, it wasn't boring him. Wherever he ended up next, he was sure to find something interesting.

Comments

[deal_me_in]

"Nothin' wrong with multitasking," Cayde countered, his metal features somehow conveying a crooked grin.

"That's a lotta numbers," he continued as he pumped Echo's hand in a brisk handshake. After all, there was no reason to feel awkward about doing completely normal things like ventilation crawls. "Echo, huh? So when you're in a room and someone's lookin' for you, do you get a lot of 'Is there an Echo in here?'"

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Echo stood corrected: no droid he had seen had any flexible facial parts. None of them ever expressed anything to Cayde's degree because they were never built that way.

Because he was still trying to process this, he had never been more thankful to have his helmet hiding his own facial features. And it only got more complicated with the Exo's laid-back attitude. He almost felt his eyes glaze over with that line, though, stifling a groan between two of those enthusiastic pumps.

"Don't remind me. I think I lost count," he sighed. "Are you always like this?"

[deal_me_in]

The Exo chuckled, the sound, like his voice, containing just the slightest tinniness not too unlike a droid, but his demeanor and way of speech in general was far more humanlike, organic as his movements.

"Always like what?" he asked, the glint in his eye surely just the result of catching those glowing optics at just the right angle, but either way it added a telling layer when paired with his words. Letting his hand drop away, he rested it at his hip, just above the holstered weapon there.

Comparatively, Echo wore more armor than he did. Cayde took that in as he made his silent assessment, stroking his chin with his free hand. "You a soldier, then? The numbers, the armor...the stiffness. Just has 'soldier' written all over it."

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Gloved fingers reflexively flex a few times, almost as if Echo needed to regain feeling in them after that handshake. And despite eyeing Cayde for dodging the question, he couldn't help but chuff a faint laugh.

"Soldier, yes," the clone nodded, his helmet canting slightly to one side. His shoulders just naturally seem to sit rigid and square. "I'd take offense to that stiff comment if I could." He did take note of Cayde's holster, however, giving it another glance before indicating as much. "And you're no civilian."

[deal_me_in]

Cayde raised his hands halfway in a sort of 'guilty as charged' gesture. "Yeah, not really," he confirmed, shrugging as he let his hands drop again. "When'd you get here? I thought the thingy was gone."

'Thingy', he realized, was probably not a very helpful term. He swirled his fingers about in the air as though a visual aid would help. It did not.

"-on second thought, if you just appeared like the rest of us then you probably wouldn't know where all was the origin point, would you?"

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"Just recently." Echo shook his head. "I can't explain how, but I was given a once-over and left alone for the most part..."

The term 'thingy' and its related hand gestures were pretty vague, but as Cayde reworded his thoughts, the ARC Trooper frowned. "No. And if that's the case, does that mean we an' any of the others who ended up here have been left to figure it all out?"

[deal_me_in]

"Pretty much," the Exo confirmed. "So all the pink guys with the four arms, the three eyes and the fangs? This is their ship. Everyone else, what few there are- brought in same as you. Different times, different places. From what I understand, most end up on the planet the Agrii- that's the pink ones- call home. Me an' Tony got pulled in when everyone was sent on a vacation. Didn't mind that one bit, it's been a long time since I've had anything I could call a vacation. 'course then I find out there's a catch to it. Always a catch."

He shrugged, then glanced up at the grill of the ventilation shaft as it still dangled open. Regarding it a moment, he then looked to Echo, back and forth.

"...hey, c'mere and gimmee a hand for a sec?" he asked, waving the trooper over. It'd just be plain sloppy to leave things like that.

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"Agrii. Got it." This was more of a crash course in learning the basics, but it still had some similarities to all of the accelerated learning the clone went through. Of course, with Cayde at the helm it was more like being taught by a much nicer, easygoing bounty hunter who did what he wanted. "But different times and places? How is that even possible?" It was more of a rhetorical question at that point, seeing how they already had no real leads to how it all worked, but the mind, it boggled.

Also, he had to visibly pause as the Exo went on a small tangent about his own experience with appearing. "...What's a vacation?"

Minor things, though. The grill was now a present matter they (yes, they) needed to take care of. Echo grunted, but he complied, stepping forward and putting his blaster down on the floor. "Need a boost?"

[deal_me_in]

Cayde held up a finger at that. "Ah, but that, my friend, is the glimmer-bullion question." Which was to say, there weren't any readily available answers.

And then he almost sputtered when the clone asked what a vacation was. Echo would be given a long, hard stare before the Exo finally broke his silence with, "...you're kidding, right? Not kidding." He whistled. "You must be super devoted to the cause. I guess lookin' at it that way, talk about vacations aren't really to be expected. There's fighting and then there's not. Vacation? It's a break. A well-deserved break where you get some time off to do whatever the hell you want. Me? I don't really get vacations either. Being Hunter Vanguard's a twenty-four, seven, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year kinda deal and then some."

He however brightened as Echo caught on really fast with what he had in mind. "I love it when I don't have to explain myself. Yes please- no comments on the weight- I'm metal in here, okay?" he said preemptively as he waited for the man to get into position.

[on_repeat]

If only he'd been kind of kidding. "It's a nice thought," said Echo as he got himself situated, "but there's no chance of that happening any time soon. Not when we're in the middle of a war that's spread across most of the galaxy." Although now he was curious. "Hunter Vanguard, though – I never would've pegged you as someone who'd be in that kind of position."

Knees bent and fingers interwoven to form a foothold, he prepped for the imminent Cayde-step. "I'll try my best not to," he replied, half-grinning behind the visor. The joking, however brief, turned back to business. "Ready when you are."

[deal_me_in]

"I would've never pegged me someone in that kinda position," Cayde laughed, shrugging. "But I've been stuck with it for how long now so I guess I should be over that. I'd rather be out on the field though. But now I'm here and have never thought I'd have so much free time than what I knew what to do with."

He bounced a bit where he stood, tipping his head with a look at Echo with that comment before he shook his head. "Alrighty, here we go!" he said, hiking a foot up to plant between the ARC Trooper's hands, pushing off and up as he outstretched his arms to reach the grate above.

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"Hup!" Despite the weight expectancy, the action fell into place like clockwork, force and leverage working in tandem with each other, muscles tensing so that Cayde met the grate at the perfect height. Although warned, he made sure to focus more on being steady than on how much the Exo actually weighed.

"So you didn't choose it?" Echo asked, looking up at Cayde. "Field work sounds more fitting."

[deal_me_in]

"Ooh, look'it you!" Cayde grinned, glancing down just briefly to comment before he looked back up and nudged the grate back into place with his fingers. "Boop."

He wouldn't stay there too long at least. Once the grate was secure, he hopped back to relieve Echo of his Exo burden. "Not really, no. Lost a bet." It was more or less true. He didn't feel like going into the gritty details. "Oh I loves me some field work. I'm a hands-on kinda guy," he said, making with the double finger-guns. Pew-pew!

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As Cayde returned to the ground, Echo shook out his hands, swinging his arms loosely before going to pick up his blaster again. "Must've been some bet." While he was still wondering about it, he was fine with a simple answer. For now.

His shoulders shake, his chuckling muffled within the filter of his vocabulator. "Same here. Otherwise ARC wouldn't stand for 'Advanced Recon Commando.'" And he gestured. "Exploring a ship pretty much counts as field work for the moment, right?"

[deal_me_in]

"Counts as much as anything else," Cayde agreed. "Advanced Recon, eh?" He eyed the blaster before making gimmee-hands at it, hoping to take a look at it. It didn't look fancy or anything like the models he knew back home, but this was obviously a military-issue weapon and it no less sparked his curiosity. At least it looked like a gun.

"I'm kinda surprised the Agrii let you keep that. But maybe given the scare they had not too long ago, they've gotten a little looser about their thoughts on allowing us to be armed."

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If Cayde knew his way around weapons, he could be trusted with a blaster. Although initially hesitant to the gimme-hand gesture the Exo openly displayed, the ARC Trooper eventually handed it over, folding his arms over his chestplate as he kept an eye on him.

"They were still pretty wary, from what I can recall," he said. "But that was the only thing I had on me. Everything else is missing, so I can't even reload if I suddenly run out of ammo.

"How bad was that scare? And what was involved?"

[deal_me_in]

His eyes seemed to brighten as he laid his hands on the blaster. He hefted it to get a feel for its weight, bringing it up to aim down its sights at the far wall before he lowered it again. He studied the lines, supposed the balance is decent, and held the weapon back out to the ARC Trooper.

"Yeah, that's the catch. I hadda improvise on bullets for my Ace of Spades here," he said, pulling out the worn hand cannon from its holster.

"Eh, was a false alarm, craftily staged by an unknown party." He gave his gun a spin. "The Agrii contacted us saying they were under attack. Kitted us out with weapons half of us couldn't even use, made us fly in ships that had no sort of jump engine or anything to boost for speed." That had been an agonizing trip for anyone who had the luxury of traveling vast reaches of space in a matter of minutes or hours. "And then when we got here the whole ship was deserted except for a handful of unknowns whom we pegged as the invaders. Turns out? They were just as confused as to what was happening as we were- someone transmatted 'em in, armed them and waited to see what would happen."

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Echo frowned. "Improvisation. Can't say it's been a strength of mine, but there's been some improvement since then." Even if his head had tilted down a few degrees in thought, the weapon was taken off of the Exo's hands all the same. "Although I'm not sure how I'm gonna replace plasma bolts..."

There was something vaguely familiar about a scare being staged – probably not even vague, considering he and his brothers had to deal with a situation that involved something to that extent when they were fresh from Kamino. "That would've ended terribly if it was the real thing," he agreed, feeling for those who would have been frustrated with faulty systems and complicated weapon mechanisms. But the rest of what Cayde told him was baffling. And twisted.

"...Strange. And suspicious. I don't like it."

[deal_me_in]

Tucking the hand cannon back into its place at his side, Cayde nodded emphatically. "Right?! Me neither. Could've gone all sorts of wrong if we weren't paying attention. We found them in the Green Room- which is kind of like the onboard greenhouse or something. I thought it was suspicious at the time but after bringing the Graq home it all makes sense that they'd be hanging around a place full of plants and trees."

And trying to spit on things. That was still a strange thing to him, but hey, weird alien cultures! "Good thing my pal Jon figured he'd play diplomat and try to talk to 'em first. Not that that worked out very well. Things happened, they freaked out- didn't look like they knew how to use the guns they were armed with or I scared them that badly, I don't know, anyway we opted to just knock them out over shooting 'em dead."

He stepped towards the doorway to the empty room, peeking outside. "The rest of the Agrii were missing from the ship, but turns out they'd been taken aboard the supposed enemy ships parked outside shooting at us. Those ships were suddenly rigged to self-destruct and we ended up having to ferry over two hundred Agrii and Graq from them before everything exploded. Which thankfully didn't do as much damage as it could have. Shields- my idea, thank you very much."

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A beat, and Echo looked back at Cayde. "You did good. You both gauged the situation and did what you felt was right, even if there were a few setbacks." Better to render unconscious whenever one could, but hostility was always a determining factor in making quick decisions.

Following Cayde back toward the door he first came through, he hung back a few feet, watching the Exo poke his head out like he was still doing a sneaking mission. "What a mess," he commented softly. Sure, Cayde was patting himself on the back for his idea, but it worked. "That was smart, though. Anything worse than that and you wouldn't be here telling the tale."

[deal_me_in]

"Boy I wish Zavala was here to hear you say that." The Exo was grinning even as he continued to look on outside, eventually easing out into the corridor and starting to walk along like he hadn't been doing any suspicious activity earlier.

"It seemed like a no-brainer to me. You got unidentified ships out there, missing crew here, only made sense to activate shields. Shooting them would've been my go-to option but they were sort of just...sitting out there. That and we weren't sure where the rest of the Agrii had been taken." It had helped immensely to have someone like Tony in the systems to let you know just how many were missing.

"So yeah, it was pretty busy. The resulting explosion was kind of anticlimactic. Whatever they shot at us with before then was worse. Knocked out all the systems, had internal shielding going haywire- what a mess."

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Not too far behind Cayde, Echo followed, casual in his stride. He still couldn't wrap his head around how the Exo was grinning like that. "Zavala a friend of yours?"

He did mean it. Well, maybe not the first option of shooting everything in sight, but the reconsideration of that option. Whatever everyone else missed during that stint, Cayde was sharp enough to take those details into account.

"I feel like you can't always avoid an anticlimatic turn of events," he added, looking down another corridor in passing. "Were you able to fix it all, at least?"

[deal_me_in]

"Eh, more or less. He's the Titan Vanguard," Cayde explained, gesticulating vaguely. "We don't always agree with methods."

Spinning around to face Echo as he continued to walk backwards, the Exo waffled his hand back and forth in that so-so kind of gesture. "Mostly? We're not getting fried by surprise force fields and life support's stable. All the main systems have been fixed, I think. From what I understand, there's been some changes in the engineering room. How that even figures in, or how something like that even happens? I have no clue. But I do not like it one bit."

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"Not unheard of," Echo replied with a shrug. "Having different methods can be infuriating if it's insisted upon, but it lends a different perspective on the matter if one's open to seeing it that way."

Concern did arise when Cayde described what was fixed and what wasn't. It was mostly better than still having failing systems, but those issues weren't something to sit on. "I could take a look if you want," he offered. "Might help to have a different set of eyes reviewing the issues that need tending to."

[deal_me_in]

The concern about the ship's systems have passed for the Exo as he continued along, spinning to face frontwards again as they continued to walk. He shrugged.

"Eh, it might," he replied, sounding like he believed exactly the opposite. "Another annoying thing about this place? There are some specialized things that you absolutely cannot do, let alone figure out, unless you get the information hot-wired into your brain." He tapped at the side of his head for emphasis, glancing over his shoulder with a scowl. Holding out a hand, he counted off on his fingers.

"Can't pilot a ship, can't shoot their fancy death tools, can't fix things, can't...communicate? Not sure about the specifics with that one. Where was I? Did I mention the not being able to use the weapons? Um...and plants, something about plants."