Session 134: Explosive Decompression Headache

Previously, Across the Horizon...
Once, they thought they were still on the Starfall.
Ever since learning they were not, the line has consistently shifted further and further away from normalcy.
Now that they have learned the truth -- that they are on a ship abandoned for three hundred years, a mobile scientific facility staffed by Alternan researchers who perished at the same time as the shattering of the Great Crystal and the rest of their empire, a ship orbiting the satellite Nox, Ducorde's own moon, a ship adrift in space -- they are faced with a new trial.
They are not alone aboard the ship.
And unlike the alien lifeforms that passively observed them before, this one is anything but passive.
We join our brave adventurers in two separate rooms as the struggle begins...
**
Bast eyes the intercom with the unwelcome and unwelcoming noises. "...what now."
"Ohhhhhhkay, this is bad. Don't touch anything unless you can read the instructions, okay?" Linnet is frozen flat against the wall of the tiny locked cockpit.
On the other side of the door from the trapped duo, Yves looks thoughtful. "So, I'm thinking we have two obvious routes of approach to a stuck door. One of them is to attempt to negotiate with it as a reasonable being. The other is explosives."
Luca is looking around with haste that has not yet become desperation. "Nothing has instructions! This whole ship assumes we know what we're supposed to do."
Bast, Orrey, and Yves have gathered in the aisle connecting the Cockpit, Captain's Quarters, Officer's Quarters, and other rooms of great interest. No room is of greater interest than the one at the top of a small stairway, though, labeled Airlock Chamber.
"Exactly. And we don't, so maybe don't go poking stuff until we figure out which one says Vent Into Space and which one says Mute."
"Bit early for explosives." Bast makes his way up the stairs to get a closer look at the now-sealed airlock hatch.
An alarmed Linnet shouts through the door, "WE NEED PLENTY OF WARNING IF YOU'RE USING EXPLOSIVES."
Within the Airlock Chamber, Linnet and Luca are cut off from the rest of their friends, though if explosives continue to get mentioned someone is sure to lose points.
“Prybar?” Orrey asks helpfully.
The intercom continues to cackle in a macabre and delighted fashion.
"Gonna see if we can avoid damaging things." Bast glances at the intercom. "For now."
Linnet thumps the intercom in irritation.
"So, negotiation. And/or prybar." Yves nods firmly, and starts rummaging through his satchel. "I don't know if I actually have any levers on me, so maybe we should start by figuring out what it is that the door wants out of this situation."
Bast knocks on the hatch. "Any levers or buttons on your side of this thing?"
Luca calls through, "So many buttons! None of them labeled and at least one probably opens the outer door!"
"...alright, maybe don't poke any of them yet, I'm going to check out the cockpit." Bast all but flies down the stairs and heads off.
"If you start poking them, hold onto something solid and attached securely to the ship at large, and hold your breath," Yves suggests.
Linnet's head thunks into an open patch of wall. "Yves, you endearingly brainy muppet, it's a door. Not everything needs a therapy session. If, so help me Shiva, you manage to literally talk a door off its hinges, we will have to see about changing your job classification, but in the meantime, zot or cut bait!"
"So," Luca says to Linnet, quiet enough not to pass through the door. "I know they mean well. But should we put on the suits just in case?"
"That's the first good idea I've heard since we got in here." Linnet wriggles into a suit and tucks her hair in behind her.
"Oh, I can zot! Sure, if that's helpful," Yves says, all helpfully. And accordingly zots the door. Just. You know. A little bit. Experimentally.
In the cockpit, Bast hops up into the pilot's seat and glances over the controls, trying to make sense of the Alternan-scaled-and-labeled console.
Luca lends any required assistance necessary to fit wings into a spacesuit, then dons their own after figuring out how to mount a sword outside it.
With a bit more force behind it this time, Linnet thumps the wailing intercom again. "SHUT. UP. We do NOT need this crap from you right now."
"Try asking it what it feels like today!" Yves suggests from the other side of the door. Which he just zapped. Politely! He is, in fact, giving little zaps like he's just nudging a sleeping crewmember awake to ask them for help in cleaning up whatever he did most recently with the water feature. C'mon, door. Pay attention.
The intercom's crackle shifts to a hiss, and not a mechanical hiss, but like someone or something hissing into a microphone.
"If you're trying to creep us out, it's working! What do you WANT?" Linnet almost yells at the intercom. It's probably not transmitting, but you never know.
"stop yelling," replies the petulant intercom.
As Yves gently zots the hatch in the corridor Bast left behind, a green light suddenly comes on by a switch on the cockpit panel. Bast gives it a moment's consideration, shrugs, and presses it.
Yves nods at the intercom. That seems like a reasonable request, sure. He shoves his zappy hands back into his coat pockets.
The door to the Airlock Chamber clicks.
The screen inside the Airlock Chamber grays itself out, the Complete? Y N vanishing.
The door swings open, and a helmeted head peers out. "Oh hey it worked!"
"Eugh," growls the intercom.
Luca struggles for a moment, then pops the helmet free. "They were inside. We figured that it was probably a good idea to put them on for safety. Have you been hearing the voice out here too?"
Yves peers at the intercom. "See, talking! Talking works. It's... okay maybe someone else should do the talking stuff now that words are happening, that's not really my area of expertise, right? Uh. Right. Yes."
"Well, stop scaring the pants off everyone! Hmph. Who are you?" Linnet sees everyone else over her shoulder and waves.
Yves waves back. From about two yards away, admittedly.
The intercom is silent. There is a faint crackle in the air, that weighty silence last heard when Marina asked the kitchen what happened to her seed stash and Linnet wondered if she could get away with just not answering. (She couldn't.) They are still being heard, whether or not the presence on the other end is replying.
"Look, I'm sorry I yelled. It's been rather a day. Please, won't you at least tell us who you are? We're not here to invade, we're just trying to get home."
The intercom yawns. "you're boring me now."
"By the Twelve, if we have to be near death to be boring, we need to get this whomever a new hobby," Orrey says.
Yves holds up his hands, lightning dancing on his fingertips, with an optimistic little look at Linnet in case she wants to call in that sort of interest for the intercom.
Linnet holds up a hand. For now.
"I'm sure we don't hold a candle to all the fun you've been having since everyone went to pieces." Bast leans against the wall next to the intercom, leisurely going through his tools.
"it was quiet then," the intercom agrees. "not even any screaming."
"Well that's something of a comfort," Luca admits. "For them, at least. And you've been here since?"
"mm-hm." The two syllables come out over the course of fifteen languid seconds.
Luca winces. "Whuf. That must have been profoundly boring."
Yves sidles into the room Luca and Linnet just came out of, now that the door is open and all, to sort of poke around quietly inside. He has a rather disparaging look for those suits. Not meant to accommodate proper ears at all.
"it's so nice to sleep, though. then you came to bother me."
"One could argue that the bothering began with the unearthly cackling, but we do apologize for disturbing your sleep. How can we be sufficiently amusing, friend?" Linnet does her best to mute the sarcasm.
"And failing that," Luca adds, "we will conclude our business swiftly and with minimal disturbance so that you may return to your rest."
"you could twitch a little. spasms are nice. or feed me. i'm not hungry. but i could eat." The intercom's sentences start to develop gaps between them.
"...can you see us, or is the twitching purely audio input?" Linnet asks.
"i can see you. you're the one with all the dangling things."
"...just me?"
"all of you. one of you has big ears. one is short and has a ball on his head. the other two are boring."
"Okay. Well, if you can see us, can you direct us to an exit that doesn't vent into space?"
Luca looks at Orrey with a "should we be offended?" expression on their face.
Orrey nods an emphatic yes.
Luca gives the intercom an offended look.
Another yawn. "no. find it yourself. if you starve to death, the propagators will eat you. something good will come of it."
"What do you eat?" Yves asks, fishing through his satchel. "Because if it's cinnamon rolls--actually, I think I ate all of mine, but Linnet usually has more."
Orrey glances at Bast. "Any idea where whoever they are is hiding?"
"Are the propagators the ones with the teeth and the casual relationship with dimensionality?" Luca asks.
"anything left out," the intercom answers Yves. Luca gets the second answer. "mm-hm. they're quiet and boring. i like them."
"What happened to everyone else who used to be here with you?" Linnet asks.
Luca looks mildly confused. "But you said we're boring. Is it because we're not quiet, then?"
To Orrey, Bast replies "Could be some room we haven't found yet, but if they've been up here all this time I doubt this is a stowaway...survivor." He gives the intercom a long, contemplative look.
"Someone Hades-like, then?" Orrey asks.
"If there's another throne made of bodies," Yves whispers, "everyone play it cool this time, okay?"
"I was thinking more Fayth."
Linnet glares at Yves; if looks could kill, Thunderbun would be seriously smoking right now.
Orrey nods agreement to Bast.
The most beleaguered sigh this side of an actor having to practice a second day in a row tumbles from the intercom. "so many questions. the propagators are boring but they're quiet. they're not any fun but they leave me alone. you're not fun because you didn't die. or almost die. if you'd almost died that would have been really fun because then i could make you do it again. but you didn't, and you're asking me a bunch of questions. i'm not sure why i'm even talking to you. if i help you leave are any more people going to come back?"
Linnet huffs. "Not if we can help it."
Orrey makes sure Linnet doesn't see his expression of surprise at her response.
"if one of you goes outside the rest of you can leave."
"The sooner we find some answers, the sooner we get on our way. I'm thinking they won't be outside, though," Bast says.
Yves raises a hand enthusiastically. Then remembers the shape of those suits, and lowers that hand slowly again.
"The people who used to be here - what were they doing outside?" Linnet asks.
"don't care. dying. hopefully."
"If you like, we could make horrible death sounds occasionally while leaving. Would that work?"
Orrey shakes his head. "I think I'm done with this sort of conversation. Can we continue?"
"would you?" Linnet can hear the smile.
Linnet, ever the actress, does her best "stabbed and dying horribly onstage" sound into the mic, while collapsing dramatically to her knees.
Luca, who has been hanging around the actors too long, attempts a mournful wail.
The intercom purrs happily. "that's nice. appreciated. i'm glad you didn't die in the airlock because you can make that sound again later."
Bast deadpans "Oh no. The horror." into the intercom without moving from his spot by the wall.
Orrey turns and walks onwards, shaking his head. "I'm not painting any blood stains or mangled limbs."
"If you point us toward the exit, I promise to keep making the most horrible sounds I can think of right up until we leave you in peace."
Yves gives Linnet an enthusiastic thumbs up. He's gonna be enthusiastic about some aspect of talking to weird intercom voices, by golly.
"Was the door locking your idea, by the way, or is it just old?"
"i locked the door. i watched them run the ship. they couldn't find me before they died. i wanted you all to die too. you seem nice enough, though. you're going to leave, after all. you leave the way you came. why are you acting like you're so lost? you're all the same anyway."
Yves jots down a few notes, and transfers the thumbs up gesture toward the door. Good job with the murder, intercom voice! Maybe! "If they couldn't find you, we probably can't either," he says, "and we'll be on our way soon, but if you have any requests beyond death sounds, now's a good time to ask. Just in case it's easy to manage while we're going places. Long-lost friends in need of rescue? Enemies you need vengeance on? Riddle games? Maybe, uh, I don't know, how do you feel about lurking in dark corners? Some of my friends are really into that."
"Ix-nay on the evenge-ray," Linnet whispers at Yves.
Luca inquires, politely, "Could we, by the way, know your name?"
"if you could kill all the other people who've ever been on this ship, please," it says sleepily. "they hurt my friends and i want them to suffer for it."
"If we find them, we'll do our best. Who were your friends?"
"sabik was nice. he told me we'd be okay. they shouldn't have done that."
Bast gives Yves a Significant Look.
Yves writes this down, and stares at his notebook for a bit. "Diabolos told us about Sabik," he says. "Do you know Diabolos? One of my best friends. He didn't tell us all the details, but..." He chews on the corner of his lip, staring down at what he's written.
"diabolos?" The voice perks up.
Yves nods rapidly. "He's the one who likes lurking in dark corners! I painted up a corner of my room just for him. He's got the absolute best voice, and he's just, I mean, he's really amazing. Sometimes he helps me turn into a cloud of bats, which usually works pretty well and doesn't end in disaster. We made a deal, back when we first met and he was sinking ships, to help rescue one of his other friends, and he's been hanging out with us since."
Linnet uses her best talking-to-a-child voice. "If you give us your name, we can tell Diabolos we found you and that you're all right. He misses his friends too."
"Or do you have a way to come with us? It's not just Diabolos hanging out with us now," Bast says.
"but you hurt us. you take us apart and you twist what we do. you ripped sabik apart." Hope peeks around the corner of caution.
"We had nothing to do with the ghastly mess that is Sabik. We're just trying to remember him as he was." Linnet can't mask a note of severe upset left over from, well, encountering Sabik.
"The people who did that died a long time ago. We're mostly trying to fix what they screwed up," Bast says.
"You shouldn't just take my word for it, though," Yves says, absolutely radiating awkward sincerity. "I mean, we just got here, and how would you know? And I've been a sort of terrible person at times, so you have no way of knowing what kind of ethical stance I have these days, or--look, half a second." He digs through his satchel, and lifts up the mask of Diabolos. "Don't listen to me about this. Listen to him. He's the one who set us looking for Sabik in the first place, and... and I want to think it's because we've shown we're the sort of people who can be trusted to do that. And who will at least try to do the right thing, the right thing for people who were being hurt like this, and not just for some sort of greater good or empire or legacy or any of that nonsense."
Linnet just silently moves out of Yves' way and prays as hard as she can to...whoever's listening, really.
Yves's shadow spreads its wings, then folds them protectively around the Speaker.
The intercom mumbles something incoherent, then clicks off.
A bit of the ceiling pops open.
A small black blur drops out of the ceiling onto the floor onto all fours. It twitches its shoulders, the motion adjusting the purple cape draped around its spindly form. A black tail tipped in white fur flicks back and forth as it paces in front of Diabolos's shadow, and then it sits. Two ears swivel to the sides to listen to sounds no one else present can hear. A thin golden crown balances perfectly atop its head.
It then stands on two legs, not three feet tall, and fixes massive, inquisitive green eyes on Yves. It blinks them, once, and then turns to Luca. "you're not so boring after all," it says with casual disdain.
"i am cait sith."
"What do you know, Thunderbun, it worked." Linnet ruffles Yves' ears affectionately, then bows to Cait Sith. "Thank you for the royal welcome, O Royalty of Felines." (This is her way of covering that she can't tell a boy cat from a girl cat at first glance.)
Yves gives an awkward little bow alongside Linnet. "That crown is amazing," he says. "Oh! You should meet everyone. Bast's the captain even though he doesn't usually wear the hat, Orrey draws things, Luca and Linnet you've already met." He indicates people as he names them.
Luca bows. "It was the mournful wail, wasn't it. I've been getting lessons."
Orrey eyes the murdercat suspiciously from down the hall.
Cait Sith sees no reason to acknowledge the boring person's existence. They smooth the fur on their cheek back with one paw. "everyone else should be entertaining too," they say confidently.
"Welcome to the company." Bast gives the newcomer a nod and most of a smile. "Nice hiding spot, I have a friend I think you'd get along with. So you know this ship pretty well?"
"mm-hm." The acknowledgement comes with its own tic, an involuntary languid stretch. "i wasn't lying earlier. did leave out something important, though." They are not bothered in the slightest by this admission.
"...something that's going to get us all killed in not-so-entertaining ways?" Linnet asks.
Yves has slipped the Diabolos mask back into his satchel, with an affectionate little pat.
"no." Their whiskers twitch. "the ship doesn't have enough power to send you back now. you have to fix the generator to generate enough."
"Oh. Well, our resident wrench whiz should be able to wrangle something, right?" Linnet turns to Bast. "And if it needs juice, Yves, just redo your zot. We've had far worse problems." Like a ship full of crystal corpses stranded 300 years back in time, or whatever we're doing here...
"Bast is the captain and an amazing engineer," Yves tells the murdercat. "...I do lightning. Other things too! I would offer you some drugs, but I'm not actually sure how any of them would interact with your physiology, so we should probably table that idea for now."
"Yves, honey, please pause the helping."
"I'll take a look, sure. Where is it?" Bask asks.
A short trip later...
They stand in the unchecked room on the lowest level of the Hangar, past where they last saw the Propagators. Before them is a pile of wreckage, mangled machinery and shredded wires. "i did that," Cait Sith says with a satisfied smile.
"What did it do to deserve such a thorough mangling?" Linnet asks.
Bast looks pained as he kneels to begin sorting out the wreckage, but does not complain.
"Oh that's definitely been done," Yves says, in mild admiration.
Orrey asks "What did it look like before the massive demolition?"
"it let people leave. i wanted them to come and starve and scream and beg and plead and die." Cait Sith inspects their claws. "no one ever came. until you. i hope you can fix it. if you can't, i'll live, so please make it fun for me until you expire." They walk over toward a pile of refuse that is arranged, more or less, in a circle. After circling it three times, once holding their paws behind their back with a curious tilt of the head, they hop into the middle of the circle and curl up into a ball. "good luck."
"Why did they build this ship, anyway?" Bast asks as he begins matching up pieces by what remains of shapes and weld seams.
"control," they say after a yawn.
"Bast, do you want help? ...of some quality?" Linnet asks.
"Out here, though? Why was down on the ground not enough?" Bast examines the frayed ends of two pieces of wire, then sighs dejectedly and tosses both over his shoulder.
"Some people... There's no such thing as enough." Yves stares down at the wreckage, shoulders hunched in.
Linnet shrugs out of the spacesuit and sits down by Cait Sith, offering a hand for scritches should they be desired.
Cait Sith shrugs. "humans."
Having said it all, they go to sleep.