Seaside 6: Six at the Beach

[bc56]

Lost Beach

The container is significantly lighter than the robot. On inspection, it is revealed to be a small, watertight safe with a combination lock. Lugging and carrying the items they found, June and Selekhael can now leave the ruined observatory.

[5a Violista]

[Lost Beach]

A safe! That's interesting.

June, after getting her things and the apron back on, carries the safe. "So I think our best chance of opening this up is that robot," she says. "He might know the combo."

Then, she thinks about other options, just in case that doesn't work. "I guess I could probably just brute-force it. It seems like a really well-made lock and it's not old and damaged, so it might be a little hard, but I'm sure I could get it done with enough time."
June thinks a bit more. "Unless you're, like, really good at opening locks."

[bc56]

Lost Beach

"Uh, no I'm not? Let's, uh, bring it back with us." Selekhael answers. She drags the old robot out of the observatory and starts pulling it along the beach, leaving deep grooves in the sand behind her paw prints.

[5a Violista]

[Lost Beach]

June nods.

She takes the thing there, carrying it the whole way instead of dragging it (only taking a few breaks here and there to catch her breath).

And!
Luckily, the bridge and the door are there. So much easier than trying to fly it up.

When they get there, their first obstacle is the ladder.

"..."
"Oh! Wait, what if instead, we use that elevator pulley thing? That'd be a lot easier than trying to get it up the ladder. Do you think these would fit on it?" June takes the safe over to look for the hole in the wall. Then she checks whether it (and also the old robot) would fit into the dumbwaiter.

[bc56]

Lost Beach

The safe fits in the dumbwaiter easily. The robot doesn't. "Maybe we could find a pulley to lift it up the ladder? There's lots of machinery around." Selekhael wonders. "Or we could take it apart and send it up piece by piece."

[5a Violista]

[Lost Beach]

"Oh! Yes! A pulley would be perfect!" June says, a little jealous that she wasn't the one who came up with that idea.

She puts the safe into the dumbwaiter. "To be honest, I'd rather not take it apart until it's up there, just because that would make it harder to find the right parts we need or fit them back together." Plus, they're all rusted. Rusted things are so hard to take apart.

"So." She goes over to the ladder. "I'll pull the box up there. And while I'm up there, I'll look for ropes and pulleys and things up there. You can look for them down here."

[Vahnavoi]

Forgotten Pirate Cove

"I be guessin' twere a magical potion. They be useful things, but fragile. Pity ye stepped on it, could perchance be useful. How 'zackly does yer foot feel? This squiddy won't have grabbed it 'less it's been in the bag afore. It be an anti-theft device, I reckon. Prob'ly some way t' turn it off." Unfortunately, Frigate doesn't know how. He does lower the squid back into the knapsack, so it lets go of his hand and uncoils its tentacles from its wrist.

The swordsman wriggles his foot. "It feels like its trying to take two steps for every one the other takes. Feels weird." He sets his foot down and shrugs. "The mask's probably useless, so toss it. What did you say about the pocket watch? That it didn't belong to the same person?" He rubs his chin contemplatively.

"... while I was underground, one thing bothered me. It seemed long abandoned, that place. But not in a disorderly manner. So, that knapsack... sort of felt like it didn't belong. I wonder... maybe another explorer got there before me. But I never found out what happened to them. "

[Recaiden]

The mime actually doesn't leave his motorcycle. He drives it forward a little so that Anchor isn't in the direct path between him and the tree part.
And...
He presses a button!
Two hookshots shoot out of the front of his motorcycle, and dig into the tree part.

Then, he drives, going between the part of the tree and the other part. However! He slows down enough because he's not going to say anything to her, so he has to get close enough to grab her attention and gesture. He gestures that he's got it taken care of and that she doesn't have to worry about that; it's light enough that his motorcycle can handle it.

After gesturing, he starts to drive through to flip the motorcycle around and pull it in reverse farther down the road.
But,
Feeling suddenly dazed, he judges that it's probably best to not to go quite so fast. Operating heavy machinery while under the influence (of magic) is generally bad. The motorcycle slows to a practical stop and he puts a foot down and a hand against his head in hopes that helps.

Oh, that's pretty cool, the motorcycle hooks. And he's even actually helping.
Anchor wishes she had time to get this guy's story.
Be easier if he weren't a mime.

But, when he slows the machine, Anchor comes up beside him, also puts a hand towards his head. In her case, this is so she can materializes dark cables (ropes, not chains, after all she's not a paladin) that try to coil around his hands and feet. And if that works she'll quickly tie him up further, by hand in addition to the magic.

[Earl of Purple]

Forgotten Pirate Cove

"Mayhaps a potion o' speed, then. Try rubbin' yer feet together. See if ye can transfer the potion t' both." It might be a bit late, however, and should have been done sooner. Depends on how dry the potion is; this might even speed up the time until it wears off instead. "Hmm. Curious, for sure. Did ye search everywhere, down there?" No, he didn't. There were other corridors that the swordsman didn't take. Earl has a map, if Vahnavoi wants to see it.

Frigate does throw the mask aside, though the squid tries to catch it and fails.

[5a Violista]

Being a mime does make lots of things more difficult, doesn't it?

The mime gets coiled up and tied up pretty quickly. He's very committed to being a mime, apparently, so he doesn't shout out - but he does have the look of betrayal on his face. You don't have to take out the competition! They're all getting payed the same regardless of how many left there are!


The sounds of the caravan can be heard from here. It's still behind a turn so they can't see here, and. . .
All of a sudden, the sound of fighting there can be heard. It's not Zophiel, but instead...it's that Tough Guy, shouting something that's indistinct at this distance. The carts have to stop for a moment (you can tell from here because the sudden sounds of horses followed by the wheels sliding and stopping).

Looks like her set-up has bought her some time here with the mime.

[Recaiden]

Talking is a really great skill to have.

Anchor gives the mime an apologetic smile. Silly guy, it's not about the money.
But then she drags him off to the side of the road, behind the fallen tree.
And she wheels the motorcycle away to the other side of the road, into the woods a bit, before turning it off, silently thanking the tough guy for causing such a disturbance.

Then she casually crumbles away some more of the fallen log, just like she did at the beginning, so the caravan really could get through. Finally she gives the unicorn a pat and hops back on to ride along the road back towards the sounds of fighting.
"Here we go!"

[Vahnavoi]

[Forgotten Pirate Cove - on a ship back to a forgotten village]

The swordsman shakes his head. "No. There was a crossroads fairly close to the entrance, I only walked through one branch. Plus I'm fairly sure there's a second way in or out, but I didn't find it. I stopped when I found a large sacrificial chamber. It had a few dead bodies in it, old enough for only bones to be left... I'm not sure if the owner of that knapsack ever went there. I found it... the knapsack... in an underground shrine of sorts. It had this tripartite statue in it... four faceless humanoids staring away from a ball of light, conjoined at the wrists. By faceless, I mean they had tooth-filled holes where their faces should've been. The sacrifical chamber had a similar statue, just with them facing inwards towards an altar. I feel I've seen that kind of statue before, but the name just doesn't come to me... "

[Lord Magtok]

Moonwell Convergence

[Moonwell Convergence]

Geneva COULD lecture them about how they need to take better care of the communicators. She builds each one of them! And replacing them takes time!

But now isn't a great time for lecturing.

Now is a great time for not running into a mountain.

Thus?

A pink psychokinetic will shimmer into view around Lazarus, gently lifting her into the air to bob along near Geneva like a ghoul-filled balloon.

~Okay, let's get out of here,~ Geneva says, sparing a glance down toward the (ruined?) moonwell.

She'll follow Anika and Awen out, matching their pace. It doesn't look like they're in any more immediate danger but the situation is rapidly evolving.

~What happened in there? Aside from killing the pilot.~

"More wholesale demon slaughter and instinct kicking in for a while. Awen probably has a better perspective on it. Hey, I don't look inexplicably corrupted by demon gunk or anything, do I?" Saint Laz answers the question with another question. In retrospect, biting into demons is probably not a good idea, and maybe we'll be more careful next time, but at the same time, she doesn't feel like there's a foul evil presence guiding her towards violence and depravity and evil. No more so than she usually does, I mean. So with that in mind, she's probably not tainted by infernal energies. I mean, someone would be asking her why she looks so spiky and why her voice dropped an octave if something like that actually happened, so everything's got to be fine, right?

[bc56]

Lost Beach

Up in the workshop, June finds a pulley but no rope. That's lucky, because Selekhael comes back up a few minutes later with a rope and no pulley. "Will rope work, uh, on its own?"

[5a Violista]

[Coast Crawling]

But even if the mime had shouted out, nobody would've recognized his voice anyway.

The mime and the motorcycle are taken care of. (And, fun fact: if Anchor hadn't dealt with the mime right then, he would have run into Zophiel shortly after.)

Mr. Sunglasses is glad to see Anchor back: "Hey," he says agologetically, gesturing backwards. "Sorry to impose on you again just after you doing that. Is there any way you could stop this? If it goes on for much longer, it might delay us too much."

Looking back, Anchor will be able to see all the stopped carts, and the labcoat lady looking...well, she would have been more amused if Anchor hadn't gone and fixed up her faulty stitches. She looks rather grumpy and has relocated to another cart away from the fighting and would rather be left out of all of this.

And she'll see that one of the horses from a mermaid-cart is already dead (luckily each cart has two horses so not that bad of a thing) - it's been cut open - and if it weren't already obvious who had done it then the blood all over the knife guy would be another clue. Because one of his arms is already broken, the knife guy has to focus most of his attention on dodging - if his other arm breaks then that would make it harder for him to do anything. However, his toes are holding onto a knife too and that's something that seems to help during kicks. He's also responding to the tough guy insulting him by saying something that would probably need prior context to make sense.

The tough guy, meanwhile, only has a couple new cuts. He seems to be having a great time.
He manages to wind up and land a punch on the knife guy's already-broken arm. The punch is powerful enough to launch the knife-guy backwards, and he is stopped only because he just hit another horse. The horse panics and jolts forwards (and because of the uneven load because the other horse wasn't moving) it starts to pull off the road. If this continues on for much longer, it seems likely the cart might break down which could cause some problems with the delivery.


[Lost Beach]

June shakes her head: "Well, it could work," she says, "but it would make it really hard."

She bites her lip, and then holds the pulley out in front of her. "But! Luckily!" A grin breaks out on her face. "We don't have to worry about that."

[Recaiden]

"Road is cleared." Anchor reports as she rides up.

And then she takes in the scene. She was gone for a few minutes and the knife nut already butchered a horse? And what are they saying? What could possibly have been said to make that seem like a reasonable response. But she can't help notice, is he knife-kick-boxing? That's pretty cool.

"I think I can warp up the fight." She replies to Mr. Sunglasses, and flips open her spellbook. She has a little preparation time to work with here, and it seems like a great opportunity with all the guards in disarray. The faster this concludes, the less time the mime has to get free and the others to catch on. She finds the spell she needs and begins to speak, keeping one pointing hand aimed at the knife guy as black sparkling lights dance around the spellbook's pages.

But then as she speaks the last phrase, she snaps her hand to point at Mr. Sunglasses and the black sparks follow, trying to dive into him and seize control of his skeleton.
"But you know, I don't think I will."

[Earl of Purple]

Forgotten Pirate Cove, Back to Town

"Linked gods wi' fanged mouths where there faces do be... Not any deity I'm familiar with. Don't rule out much. Certainly not very friendly soundin', 'specially wi' the sacrificial altar." There's a lot of gods, however, and if they aren't interested in war or the ocean, then Frigate's not particularly interested in them at all.

[bc56]

Lost Beach

"Oh, that's great!"

One pulleying later, the broken robot is in the workshop. "Ooh, uh, this might take a while to get apart." "Do not be worried. My operational lifetime exceeds the necessary time by at least 7 orders of magnitude." "How much is that?"

[Vahnavoi]

[Forgotten Pirate Cove, Back to Town]

"... I think we'd need a library to solve this mystery. But i doubt the village is large enough to have one " , the swordsman replies, then turns towards one of the sailors. "Or what do you say? You know your island better than me. Anyone with books on local gods or religions or such?"

[5a Violista]

[Coast Crawling]

This is definitely a lot more chaotic than Zophiel was expecting, but he's probably looking on from a distance trying to decide if he should wait or come in or what. He's not sure. He was going to wait until the caravan had passed by the fallen tree but since it's stopped before it even reached the tree, he figured he needed to assess what's going on.


The fight continues with only the occasional collateral damage.

"What? Why not? What's going on? What are you doing?" is what Mr. Sunglasses wants to say. Unfortunately, because the jawbone is included as part of the skeleton, that likely makes it harder to enunciate all his words, starting about halfway through his questions.


[Lost Beach]

"We have about a day," June informs the robot. "Maybe less, because there's other things we need to do too. Then, we've got to leave the island. Still have to figure out what's in this -" she gestures at the safe "- and maybe check out the ruins in the center of the island."

So, she reassures the robot: "So you don't have to worry about your operational timeline." Just whether or not they can get it done. Besides, it might get dark here pretty soon.

June kneels down next to the broken robot, and tries to figure out which tools it looks like they'll need, and then get them from the workbench or wherever else they are. "So, tell us what to do, then."

[Recaiden]

Anchor takes a moment to cheer on the tough guy. "Yeah, you've got him on the ropes! I mean, just don't let him get in a good kick!"
With a flick of her fingers, Mr. Sunglasses's skeleton (henceforth 'Sunglasses Skeleton') tries to get down on its hands and knees. Sunglasses guy can probably resist, he seems pretty tough. But it's not easy; you go your whole life with your bones just sitting around, usually.

She glances at labcoat lady. "You said you had me all figured out, right? Why don't you explain to the man what's going on? I mean, save me some time."

"Drivers, get down from your carts and start opening them up." she says, brandishing the spellbook.

[5a Violista]

Being cheered on, the tough guy gets hyped up even more. He cheers back and presses on the attack. He seems to be moving faster and punching even harder, now. He gets cut again, but it's just a small one and his blood loss isn't enough to cause any problems. Fortunately, all his previous cuts were sewn up properly. He manages to hit the knife guy again and knock him into a tree off the trail. He follows, of course.

Sunglasses guy tries to resist, but his skeleton's pretty tough. Sure, his muscles are too but he's been stuck doing administrative stuff recently and they've started to atrophy a little. If only his boss cared about his opinion more, he might have had more drive to resist.

The other drivers are hesitant, but after looking at the sunglasses guy, they get up and start to obey.

Seeing an opportunity, the labcoat lady hops off the cart. "Of course. See, from the start, she's been undermining this operation," she says. She grabs something from a labcoat pocket that glints in the dim light, and walks towards the driver of the cart she was on. She touches his chest, whispers something, and then the driver starts to look very scared and freeze in place.
The labcoat lady, holding some kind of thread in her hand, turns her attention away from the sunglasses guy and Anchor, and towards the thread.
"Lowering morale, instigating a fight, and if I'm right then she also took out our scout just ahead." She looks back at Anchor again. "I haven't figured out what her plans are afterwards, unfortunately."

[Earl of Purple]

Boat To Town, From Forgotten Pirate Cove

The nearest sailor on the fishing boat shakes their head. "Nope, no library or books on religion, not since the missionary died. Dunno where his books went. Mostly we worship the sea an' the sky, like our ancestors. Nobody needs to tell us how to do it." Might be a few exceptions, mostly amongst people who actually listened to the missionary.

[Recaiden]

"Absolutely right." Anchor chimes in. And the operation has become fairly undermined from her point of view.
She switches the spellbook to her other hand (sunglasses skeleton just holds itself in place for now) and dismounts the unicorn, who trots a few steps away, watching the scene extra-warily.

When the labcoat lady looks away, Anchor draws her pistol and starts to point it in labcoat lady's direction.
"To be fair, the fight started before I got here. I mean, I just encouraged them to finish it."
In lieu of explaining herself any further, Anchor just starts shooting. She never liked the other surgeon anyway.
The mysterious thread is a little worrisome.

[bc56]

Lost Beach

It looks like they'll need screwdrivers and wrenches of various sizes. Fortunately, there are plenty right here. "First remove the damaged section from my chassis. Then disconnect the matching sections from the Version 7 Mechanized Personal Assistant. Some slight modification may be necessary in order to make a functional connection."

[5a Violista]

[Lost Beach]

June gets the various tools and moves them closer.

"Alright," she says. She looks at the parts, and instructs Selekhael to try to take off the parts from the rusted robot. "Meanwhile, I'll take them off from this one."

She works on taking off the damaged section.


[Coast Crawling]

Mr Sunglasses
is pretty sad. This whole thing failed and fell apart. He knew it was too rushed. He should have brought it up more, because now he's going to get blamed for all this. If he survives this, he's just going to go to another preemptively quit and find somewhere else to work. No way he's going to be the fall guy again.


Sadly, the bullets don't actually manage to hit labcoat lady.
The driver who she whispered to spontaneously decides to leap between them and take all the shots. Labcoat lady tells the driver, "Good job. I'll let you live." She lets go of the thread thing and - before her body shield has a chance to collapse to the ground and become useless - she goes around the covered wagon to grab somebody from it. While walking, she goes through her first aid kit and pulls out a couple syringes - which she licks the tips, before reaching through the curtains.


meanwhile
Briar, if still around, will be able to smell Zophiel and also notice that the fight between tough guy and knife guy is ending. Tough guy won! Knife guy has collapsed and is unable to continue. Tough guy, meanwhile, is extremely exhausted and low on blood and leans against a tree to recover.

And the paladin Zophiel is approaching the tough guy.

[Recaiden]

It really is a shame. And since Sunglasses Guy was there when Anchor signed on too, I'm sure he would catch a lot of the blame if there was a chance for it.

Sunglasses Skeleton is directed to scramble and crawl over towards the wagon where the driver was shot and the lady is reaching for a prisoner.

Huh. Earlier the driver looked more afraid of labcoat lady than anything else, but jumping in front of bullets is pretty drastic. Surely related to that thread she was holding. And she thinks her puppet is going to get to live after all this, after those wounds? That's some confidence.
And now the people in that wagon are in danger. Well, more danger. Well, at least a different danger than they started with.

Anchor flips the gun back into its holster and hops over to the special dog, reaching down to take off the dog's psychic suppressor, point at labcoat lady, and instruct,
"Get her, Briar!"
"I'll owe you plenty of treats after."
Clearly, leaving the dog to tag along unmentioned - nearly pretending it wasn't there - was all part of the plan, to have them go unnoticed until this critical moment.

[Vahnavoi]

Boat To Town, From Forgotten Pirate Cove

The nearest sailor on the fishing boat shakes their head. "Nope, no library or books on religion, not since the missionary died. Dunno where his books went. Mostly we worship the sea an' the sky, like our ancestors. Nobody needs to tell us how to do it." Might be a few exceptions, mostly amongst people who actually listened to the missionary.

"... I figured. Would've made things too easy... ", the swordsman mutters. He turns back to Frigate. "I suppose we really need to make our way to somewhere more... central."

[Earl of Purple]

Back to Town

"If'n we get the Smuggler's Mirror workin', we'll be able to go somewhere else. An attic, aye, but likely in a city. Smuggler's Mirrors be rare an' collectable." And they bypass most taxes and cargo checks, so merchants quite like them too.

[Vahnavoi]

[Back to town]

".... so, we need a password" , the swordsman muses. "You fished it out of a shipwreck, right? Does anyone know the name of that ship?" He looks at the sailors. "What about survivors? The wreck's pretty old, right? Have all those who were on board moved on? Or could they have descendants living around here? What about those pirates who had their base of operations there? "