Nebula 24 | Video

[fivemilesdeep]

[About an hour after everyone's unceremonious return, the video feed clicks on to show Ryo in the dining car, looking serious.]

Three things:

One: Is everyone okay?

Two: There's food in the dining car, and coffee and tea and hot chocolate. Come get something to eat if you need it.

Three: What happened?

[OOC: ICP and in-person replies are great, threadjacking is great, everything is great! Go nuts.]

Comments

[yondu]

The ones that didn't get kidnapped ended up in a hamster maze for a few days, had to make sense of a manufactured mystery where shit kept not addin' up.

My takeaways? They got a way to turn off anything special about us. Don't know if it's fiddlin' with the SCA settings or a spanning device or what, but they pretty successfully shut us down. I was expectin' that to happen sooner or later. I was just hopin' I could figure out how if it happened.

Other takeaway, they got access to some sort of cloakin' tech that leaves shit completely invisible. Not even a waver in the air. A lot better than those devices we got from Anan that once. So if they decided to slip somethin' on board it might be a good long time before its noticed.

[fivemilesdeep]

[Ryo's expression changes as Yondu talks, abruptly falling as he mentions powers being turned off. He'd been upset that he hadn't been able to go on the mission - he'd wanted to help - but now some small part of him is grateful. He'd have been a panicky mess and he knows it.]

[But...the Void Ministry still knows how to turn off their powers. And how to turn something completely invisible. There are ways around that, but not having powers would make that difficult, and the possibility that something is on board with them-]

How do we know that they didn't?

[He is so, so scared right now and trying so, so hard not to be.]

[yondu]

We don't.

[It's not got him a panicky mess or anything, but it's got his paranoia up.]

I'd say somethin' woulda been hard to slip on with us 'cause it was all knees an' elbows in the luggage car and somebody probably woulda felt it. Whatever was invisible could still be felt. I threw some salt for it to go through, and it left these sorta messy salt trails. Tore up a keyboard to scatter as a warnin' system too. They had to go through the keys to get from one side of a hall to another.

So if it's invisible, it's still tactile.

I ain't real confident in nothin' at the moment.

[fivemilesdeep]

[...yeah that's really not helping with the "so, so scared" thing. He may need to go find Otoha in a minute, if only to lean on someone he knows will protect him and feel better.]

[But for now, he tries his best to swallow his fear and keep going.]

The things that were invisible - were they alive? Were they thinking? Do you know?

[Would he be able to Sense them, if one of them made it on board the train?]

[yondu]

I don't think they were alive. They weren't aimin' to kill and all their damage was stun damage. I've taken that kinda damage before from security batons. Real straightforward shutdown material rather than anythin' meant to last. They also patrolled. They'd follow big noises an' come find ya, attack you if they saw you, but stuck to different routes. Vegeta said it felt mechanical when he hit one.

[He will not tell it whipped Vegeta's ass because he is a good friend.]

But that doesn't mean the tech was restricted to whatever those were. [Could be integrated into armor or devices or anything. No one was able to get a sample.]

I still had a wrench in my pocket when I came on board so I guess I should have that checked out. Feels like a normal wrench but now I feel the need to make sure it ain't gonna sprout legs. I wonder if Q'uila's available...

That's another thing. There was a lotta stuff that didn't make no sense. Outside of there not bein' blood. Like who the hell keeps paper records on a space station? Why put a wrench in a locked box? Why not let the things follow us into rooms if they wanted to keep up the 'y'all might get caught' illusion?

/JACK

[securityconsultant]

We need to be sure.

[THANKS FOR GETTING IT EVEN MORE PARANOID, YONDU]

[yondu]

I can check cars usin' my fin, but if it's somethin' on the small side- like smaller than a briefcase -I might have trouble noticin' it. An' I can only check one at a time and not private rooms. I'm sure some of the wizard folks can do sorta... mist spells? Somethin'? I dunno but maybe that'd make a difference.

[He is paranoid enough to want to check.]

Kickin' myself for not tryin' harder to rip one of them things apart. Even if I got shocked into next week it'd have been worth it.

[He'd even talked to Siebren about setting up traps and made a lure for them, too. If he'd tried harder and grabbed enough people they could have done it! Except they were being watched, and they weren't giving them the chance.]

[securityconsultant]

I'll get more drones from the train. If I can get a bigger fleet, so long as it can't hide from the sensors I use, I'll find it.

[It...doesn't sound optimistic, but at least it sounds confident? It knows what it can do, it just doesn't know what the other can do.]

...maybe one of those 'wizard folks' might be able to do something to one of them to help me scan, I don't know. [Worth a shot!]

[fivemilesdeep]

[This really isn't doing anything for Ryo's calm, but he can't do nothing.]

If it's alive and it thinks for itself, I should be able to Sense it. If you need someone who can pick up on magic or change how your drones work... [He shakes his head.] I don't know - maybe Caleb?

[yondu]

Been a long time since I had to do a strip search for devices or untoward parties but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Do every kinda thing to look for it. Here or elsewhere, if we ever get a chance to get our hands on that cloakin' tech we need to figure out a way to neutralize it.

[securityconsultant]

Doubling or tripling up our scans is a minimum at this point. And if we find it, we either contain it, or if we can't, we destroy it.

[That's not a suggestion.]

[yondu]

Yeah, I'll breathe a lot easier after a good solid look around. Probably gonna do it each time the train stops at this rate.

[Even if there's not now, it could happen.]

And a few minutes later

[yondu]

I just realized who these bastards are. Not that they're Ministry, specifically what system they're from. I got a pretty good idea anyway.

Gonna bring you some shit to check, just to be sure.