Player Plot: It's Die Hard on a Ship

[desertbloomed]

Who: Closed to those who (before this posting) signed up for the plot. Feel free to comment to the Job Interview thread even if you haven't!
When: On or around early-mid November.
Where: In the sky! On the Pravoka Interviews take place at Ashelia's apartment in Lavode.
What: It's Die Hard on a ship.
Warnings/Notes: Violence, cussing. Okay, all done! Tag in, y'all! Please reemeber to tag yourselves :) Yippie ki-yay, mofos!

Loading up the ship seems to be going smoothly enough, despite the harried look on Lady-Captain Ashelia’s face. She walks to and fro, Kupozencrantz struggling to stay by her side, as she refers once, twice, three, four, more times to her iMog slate. She makes a call - and after a short discussion, appears to acquiesce. Loading and boarding seems to proceed apace. The crew is signed in, inventory is checked and double checked, and the maiden voyage of the Pravoka under Lady-Captain Ashelia B’nargin Dalmasca is on her way.

The atmosphere on the ship is calm and easygoing; there’s a lot of cargo to guard, but a lot of people to guard it. The meals are generous, just on this side of lavish, the mattresses in the (albeit cramped) bunks are surprisingly soft and fluffy (is that memory foam? Does memory foam exist on Vaikuntha?) and the air circulation would put some spas to shame. It’s a more or less pleasant time. Until it isn’t.



Shortly before midnight, with the crew scattered about the ship, the lights are cut. Radar and monitoring equipment just shuts down. The ship shakes and groans and, depending on where you are, footsteps can be heard. Hushed voices. Then, you smell something. Or do you? Before you can react, everything goes black. Blacker. More black.

When you come to, you have no idea where you are for a good couple minutes. The room spins around you. You try to move, but find you can’t move your arms. They’re tied behind you, or to the arms of another one of your companions, or above you...are you in the brig? No, you realize as you feel yourself sinking into the plush mattress beneath you. Not the brig at all. Regardless, your next course of action is clear: get free, figure out who did this, and make them pay.

Comments

[modelcivilian]

The arrow might miss, but an attack is an attack against a swordmaster - and the ranger was plenty close enough to activate the still active Enhanced Counter. There's no blade to draw, but did use Parkour to dart up the wall and deliver a roundhouse kick at his assailant to knock him back into the door.

[topgun_textiles]

Chairs and windy things! The berserker hauls ass through the door and Kanji grit his teeth in fury.

Wait, slates! Whose were they? They needed to go back to their owners. He scooped them up on his way to the door, narrowly dodging a fired arrow, and pressed their activation buttons. All he needed to do was see the desktop backgrou-

This one was his. He knew that adorable Carbuncle background anywhere. He immediately flicked to the Asterisk program and activated his recently-mastered Berserker.

"I'm goin' on ahead for the other slates!" He called, and held out the other activated slate. Anyone recognize this background??

"Whoever this belongs to, come get it!" Anybody with even a sliver of recognition in their eyes, into their hands the slate goes.

Because Kanji is a goddamn hurricane through the closed door, rattled Ranger in the way or no.

[wind_in_my_ears]

The other slate would be pretty easy to tell the owner of--it's a bad photograph of Klonoa and a green-pommed moogle, overexposed with poor framing, but you only really need half his face to know who it belongs to.

"Oh, I think that's mine!" He says, taking the other slate as he--

uh

Klonoa glances side to side, trying to figure out who they're pursuing, but once Kanji starts barreling down towards the ranger he... winces. Ohhh, this looks like it's gonna hurt...

[hashtagdaddy]

This wannabe pirate thinks he can just run away from a fight?

Gladio lets out an angry bellow and chases the berserker again, fully intent on drawing some blood. Because he needs his slate and he needs a weapon. Once all this is over he'll find his weapon, but right now he'll take what he can grab.

Bursting through the door, he immediately casts Saint Cross just in case there are any other unfriendlies lying in wait.

Sure, he's pissed. But he's trained his entire life for all sorts of battles. He's not about to barge into a room with no knowledge of who or what is inside of it without at least throwing an attack out blindly or putting up a defense.

"Where d'ya think you're going, asshole?! Come back and fight you coward!"

[desertbloomed]

The ranger is barely able to roll out of the way before Kanji and Gladiolus barrel past. He groans, head spinning from Adrien's attack.

Even in the few seconds it took for Kanji and Gladiolus to pursue him, he's been able to get rid of the slates somewhere. He turns, raising his axe to attack the Heroes - but is hit by the Saint Cross. Snarling as he enters the berserk state, he charges at them, swinging his axe at Gladio.

The galley is quite large, with many tables and chairs strewn about. Opposite of the door the party is charging in from is the kitchen, barely visible in the dim light behind a waist-high wall. Above, the room is ringed with a metal walkway circling the perimeter of the room, the stairs up to which are located in a corner of the room, on the same wall as the kitchen. On this second level waits a gunslinger, who lets loose a Concentrated Trigger Happy attack at Gladiolus; no critical hits, thankfully, but no misses either.

Also hit by the Saint Cross are a paladin and black mage, despite sustaining damage, waste no time in firing back. The paladin moves forward, looking to engage Kanji directly, opening with a Shock Break combo. The black mage raises his staff shakily, letting fly a Focused Thundaga at Kanji.

[topgun_textiles]

"Hrgh...!" Well, that was a ton all at once, but fine. Now it's getting interesting! The Shock Break combo was met with the handle of his hammer, thrown back with a grin. That's it, rile him up...

His vision was briefly white as lightning coursed through him, and briefly he realized what Shadows felt like when he called up his persona. Good. Least he knew it hurt. The growl that left him was that of a lion as he entered a berserk state, and he shoved past that paladin.

Get the squishy ones first, weaken the tank's resolve. He lunged for the black mage with a Fell Cleave.

[modelcivilian]

He'll be back for the Ranger in a moment - he heard gunfire. Gunslinger? Most likely...

Dashing to join the others, his eyes darted around the room and soon noticed the Gunslinger hidden away of course on the second floor for optimal firing range. Well, just like the Ranger, it was time to make it clear distance and vantage point did not matter. Adrien does not need to take a conventional way to ascend to the second floor, bypassing the combat on the first floor by racing up the wall and leaping out to punch the Gunslinger.

[wind_in_my_ears]

Klonoa winces as he watches Kanji and Gladiolus both get hit. This isn't the best situation. He'll focus all the white magic he can muster to hit Gladiolus first. Cure!

"Stay steady, I'm working on you, too! We'll all get through this!" Klonoa shouts out at Kanji as he starts charging up the healing once more...

[hashtagdaddy]

Gladio grunts when the guy with the axe he wants goes into Berserker and starts swinging at him. And he grunts again when he's hit by the Gunslinger.

Dodging axe swings and trying to block them with a broken leg of a chair leaves little room for him to avoid the volley of bullets, but he keeps fighting and manages to land a few hits on the pirate. At this point, it's personal and he really wants that axe.

So when he feels the magic of a Cure spell wash over him, Gladio shouts a quick "Thanks!" to Klonoa before focusing his attacks on the pressure points in the pirate's arm (thank the Gods for all his human anatomy and physiology training). If he hits them hard enough, no amount of berserker strength can stop the body's natural reaction to having those locations repeatedly slammed.