Skyside 7: The Big Pizza in the Sky

[Ironsmith]

[Black Abyss Body Shop]

"I don't think so. That zombie didn't look too bright; it probably doesn't even have enough of a sense of self-preservation for you to be much of a deterrent. Hell, its hand fell off while I was in there and it didn't seem to be particularly bothered by it." Which, now that Rose said it out loud, was super gross. "No, I think we should focus our efforts on finding a place to stay tonight. Any ideas?"

[Recaiden]

[Tempest Row]

"I am sorry. I do not have any currency." Haia apologizes. "Is there any other way I could help you?" She looks around for another way to acquire food for the man. It's worth noting that she does not yet know whether theft is illegal here, or for that matter, what would be considered theft.

Okay, a standard dismissal. Half of everyone says they don't have any money, even if they obviously do. So- Oh, she still wants to help?
Well, there's a man selling food from that cart a little way down the road. Now, stealing sandwiches from the cart is illegal. Not illegal in the sense that any official law-enforcement might punish you for it, but it would technically violate some statutes that nobody bothers to enforce. And more importantly, it would violate an unwritten agreement about who gets robbed around here.
"Well, you got anything else to give?" "Maybe you could get some food and bring it back?" "Or you, uh, there's somebody I was looking for, maybe you could help me find them?"

[Ironsmith]

[Tempest Row]

Okay, a standard dismissal. Half of everyone says they don't have any money, even if they obviously do. So- Oh, she still wants to help?
Well, there's a man selling food from that cart a little way down the road. Now, stealing sandwiches from the cart is illegal. Not illegal in the sense that any official law-enforcement might punish you for it, but it would technically violate some statutes that nobody bothers to enforce. And more importantly, it would violate an unwritten agreement about who gets robbed around here.
"Well, you got anything else to give?" "Maybe you could get some food and bring it back?" "Or you, uh, there's somebody I was looking for, maybe you could help me find them?"

[Tempest Row]

Haia blinks and hums a little, processing the myriad of inputs. "Unfortunately, I do not have any edibles or valuables on my person at this time." She says. "However, if you have a specific item or person you would like me to retrieve, I will do so." Failing that, she could just grab a sandwich from the cart. While the man probably had adequate signage to indicate he was a vendor by the standards of Skyside, street markets were a few hundred years out of season by Haia's time and she had no way of recognizing them. As such, all she saw was "free" food.

[Shadowcaller]

SPAAAAAAAACE!

The Determination swelling around Zee heartens the other Gunners, and combined with Minerva... being Minerva, the rookie Gunner also goes back to fighting, pulling her pistol out and loosing shots at the Patriarch. The solid-shot lacks the punch to get through the xenos alpha's thick chitin, muscle and bone, so it's still standing from those. Zee's own attack, as well as the bolter shells from Minerva's gun, are more effective; one of its lower arms is blasted off, and it's bleeding from several large wounds to its abdomen and chest.

It charges the wall and carves into it with razor-sharp claws and howls as the wall's ablative properties show themselves, wire lashing out at the monster and preventing it from cutting through the wall, so instead it gets as close ot the wall as possible, where the angle makes it hard to hit, and starts ripping into the floor, aiming to go under the wall that it can't go through.

[SPAAAAAAAACE!]

"Everyone back up!" Zee yells as she scoots away from the wall, popping the back of her longarm open and letting it vent a jet of plasma for several seconds before snapping it shut again.

There!

Big gun is in the 'reloaded'.

Hopefully she'll have time to shoulder it for another shot by the time the big genestealer is done smashing up through the floor.

"Spread out! Make it harder for it to catch a bunch of people together."

Think tactically!

Be strong!

Don't fear!

Be glad there isn't a commissar around or he might be shooting someone to improve moral!

[SPAAAAAAAACE!]

Minerva would glare at Zee if she wasn't busy focusing on the fight. She was about to issue that order yet here Zee was, a psyker, thinking she was some kind of field commander.
"Form a line behind me!" She adds while continuing to fire at the xeno until the clip is empty. Then she's going to drop the bolter, drag it back with her with to push it behind her. "And someone grab that!" Then she's going to switch to her mace but rather than holding it like one would hold a melee weapon she's holding it as a gun.

The reason will become clear once/if the xeno comes closer as the flames coming out of the head of the mace suddenly expand outward into a thick torrent which is going to engulf the creature in fire. The mace is doubling as a heavy flamer, it only had one clip but that should be enough to burn this foul monster.

[Recaiden]

[Tempest Row]

"Nah, there's- there's no way you'd be able to find him, a stranger, right?" The beggar shakes his head. Foolish to bring it up, really.
"Just, anything you can do would help, miss."

[Earl of Purple]

SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!

The Gunners get away from the wall and are very happy to let Minerva take the lead here. They do all carry melee weapons, but... they also don't want to get into melee with something that can rip through metal walls without slowing down. Their sergeant pulls out their Ripper and revs that to begin with, but everyone else pulls out a combat knife, extendable baton or a tyre-iron axe, though the flame-thrower guy would prefer to keep his heavy weapon ready.

As the Patriarch emerges from tunnelling under Zee's wall, it's washed in flames- first from Minerva's mace-flamer, then the Gunners' flamer joins in. The beast roars again, another wave of panic washing over the mortals, but far weaker than before, and the thing collapses in a heap of charred chitin and cooked meat. Despite all this, it's still alive, though possibly not for long, and it's playing possum.

[Rebonack]

[SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!]

That filthy psyker having ideas.

Ah well.

As far as Zee's concerned this was a complete success. The cover did its job and aside from some mental trauma no one in their group was hurt.

And all three of the gene stealers are dead.

Or, well, mostly dead.

Zee levels her reloaded rifle at the beast.

"Playing possum? Cute. Mind your eyes, everyone."

Then she fires from a respectful distance at the burning alien. As wounded as it is already a direct hit from the particle accelerator will probably be resulting in catastrophically lethal damage.

[Ironsmith]

[Tempest Row]

"Nah, there's- there's no way you'd be able to find him, a stranger, right?" The beggar shakes his head. Foolish to bring it up, really.
"Just, anything you can do would help, miss."

[Tempest Row]

He had a point. At maximum functionality, with a network to connect to, Haia probably could find the person he was looking for, and relatively easily at that. Disconnected from any other devices, however, Haia was probably worse at finding people than anyone else would be. As such, all she could really do was get them sandwiches.

She takes a moment to count up the beggars, then walks up to the sandwich stand, scoops up a corresponding amount of sandwiches, and returns to the beggars, not acting at all like she'd done anything wrong.

[Deathkeeper]

Black Abyss Body Shop

Krayger leans back in his chair.
”Not really, no. I’ve steered clear of this place ever since our office got blown up. Besides, this is your op. You wouldn’t have me at all to give you hints normally. But I could maybe text one of our agents who helps out around here.” he flicks at the large phone in his pocket. It looks a little old-fashioned.

[Ironsmith]

[Leaving Black Abyss Body Shop]

"Yeah. Go ahead and do that." Rose mutters, taking the controls and trying not to sound irritated. Krayger was, in a sense, right; if she were a full-on MERC member, he probably wouldn't be here to call on for finding a place to stay. On the other hand, she didn't really need much of one in the first place; there was enough room in the shuttle for a sleeping pod, so as long as she had somewhere to park, she had somewhere to spend the night; ergo, going to an inn or wherever would be strictly for Krayger's benefit, so from her perspective, asking him to find one amounted to requesting he pull his own weight.

...It was unreasonable of her to expect him to know that, though. But being reasonable wasn't necessarily her strong suit. Especially with her ego already bruised from her first zombie encounter and Krayger's subsequent dismissal of it. It's a wonder she's keeping as calm as she is.

"Let me know if you find anything. Until then, we're just doing loops around the city." Rose mumbles.

[Shadowcaller]

[SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!]

With both her bolter and mace having to get reloaded, Minerva still had the mace itself and her hand-flamer as back-ups. Of course, with the creature seemingly dead she's going to back away and retrive her bolter from whoever picked it up. She was about to order the others to burn the bodies but she supposed Zee's abilities would do just as well.
She looks away and starts reloading her bolter. Something she already had done many times already with her eyes closed.
Once Zee is done she will gesture gesture for the others to start moving again. "We've done well, but we need to keep moving or all our efforts will be for naught." Normally she would have burned all the corpses with her handflamer but there simply wasn't time for that now.

[Earl of Purple]

SPAAAAAACE!

The tech-priestess uses the opportunity whilst the mortals are reloading to crack open the servitor, revealing the ammo bay for one of its stormbolters. She'll take it out, and hand it to Minerva. It probably holds five hundred shells, and is very heavy. The priestess is only able to hold it because she's augmented her arms and shoulders, and replaced her legs with a magnetic repellor system. "ZX-Þ89 no longer needs this, and you may need it. I'd take the stormbolter as well, but it requires wiring to a cerebral system to fire and we do not have time to install it." And they lack the facilities to cut Minerva open so she can replace an arm or two with it.

The Patriarch is executed before it has a chance to jump out at Minerva and the others as they pass. Even if they don't burn it, their aim is to destroy the ship.

"It is not far, now. It won't take us long." Unless Minerva or Zee have anything to do before hand, it'll take them five minutes before the tech-priestess and her servoskull stop before what is, apparently, a blank wall and chant binharic opening codes at it. The wall slides open and reveals beyond a control room, filled with the scent of old incense and holy oils, a large, grimy window makes up the far wall, and the whole chamber is slightly but significantly irradiated. There's several control panels, but no actual buttons or levers; she hovers over to one of the control blocks and the wall on the opposite side of the corridor opens, too. Beyond isn't a train station, just the monorail line itself. There's a train there, but no platform.

[Rebonack]

[SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!]

Zee is probably not going to bother with burning any bodies. They are, after all, in a hurry.

Gotta get out of here before the ship explodes on them.

She really has no idea how big of an explosion we're talking here, but judging fro the size of the ship probably really REALLY big.

After all, this space ship is...

Well.

Comparable to how big she is at this point.

It was definitely bigger than she was when she first started on this little escapade but she has had AMPLE time to grow since then.

Is putting on that much weight so quickly healthy?

Zee's got no idea what is considered 'healthy' for an empyrean she has mostly just been flying by the seat of her pants. She knows that she has been accruing power at a pretty startling rate and that's probably why someone tapped her to head back to the Nexus. The price of a Bronze Host empyrean being able to wander around the mortal world *awake* is astronomical. She should probably try to figure out who footed the bill, and why...

Anyway!

Blowing stuff up.

"Get the countdown rolling and let's blow they popcicle stand," Zee declares in a suitably action hero-y way.

[Deathkeeper]

Leaving Black Abyss Auto Shop

Krayger's phone vibrates.
"There's a secure, affordable place a few blocks from where we were. There's also a fancier place up the road if you think it suits the personas better." he proposes while staring down at the screen.
Were she to voice her complaints he would probably tell her that she wouldn't need to get her ego bruised by his dismissal if she hadn't been so darn green about all of this. He could think of at least four different angles to salvage this but it's not his op so he's letting her play this extra cautious.
And really, one zombie? He stands by what he said. She's drawing attention to herself by being a lone woman walking around in Skyside who's not packing a weapon or at least a karate lesson.

[Ironsmith]

[Leaving Black Abyss Auto Shop]

"That first one sounds good enough. At least for the moment." Rose replies, punching in the appropriate coordinates for the auto-pilot as soon as Krayger relays them. "We're not quite playing Aunt Pennybags and her butler here. 'Quite' being the operative term. We could splurge for a night without it being suspicious if you would prefer." She shrugs. "Makes no difference to me. What's it gonna be, beefcake?"

[Deathkeeper]

Leaving Black Abyss Body Shop

"I've slept in enough holes to be fine anywhere. And I'm not going to make you shell out the extra cash for something like that. If we're going to splurge I'd make it on dinner. I'm no good at being fancy anyway." he mumbles.
Though maybe Rose disagrees if she did like him in that collared shirt.

[5a Violista]

Klaus's Minibus

June is glad that, at the very least, everyone else is pretending to not have noticed her embarrassment.

"I see," June says, looking into the coffee mug. "I've never liked that stuff. It always smells like...burnt."

June carefully looks at the outfit, being especially careful with her claws when she moves it around. She doesn't want to tear it before even trying it on!
"Really like the color," she says. "Pockets are nice, too" referring to the sidearm-places. She looks at the top part, trying to imagine putting it on without using her fingers. The wing-cape-thing looks pretty clever, she thinks. A lot better than her old shirt, which was just...torn.

With her hand curled, she rubs her knuckle across her neck-gills...they seem hardly noticeable, so that's fine. "Those wheel things are really clever, too. Like how the support at the hip and waist works. So do I use my tail to move around, or do the wheels have some kind of motor or something?" she asks, trying to imagine getting around on it.

"But it looks really nice. Might wear it to a dance, or something. You moonlight as a fashionista, is my guess."

Final question she has, though. "How heavy is it?" she asks trying to find a way to grab it to lift, without digging in her claws into it. "This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I don't really know how to take off flying from the ground. Need about...my height of distance to the ground to fly, and," She shows off her biceps and forearms. They're pretty normal for a female athlete. "Pretty decent at pull-ups, but I need to know if I should also do weight training, like wearing a turtle shell or weights in my suitcoat or ankle weights or something."

[Ironsmith]

Leaving Black Abyss Body Shop

"I've slept in enough holes to be fine anywhere. And I'm not going to make you shell out the extra cash for something like that. If we're going to splurge I'd make it on dinner. I'm no good at being fancy anyway." he mumbles.
Though maybe Rose disagrees if she did like him in that collared shirt.

[Leaving Black Abyss Body Shop]

"Whatever. They're your bedbugs." Rose shrugs as she steps away from the console, once again moving to the back of the shuttle to print off a series of metal parts.

"...Auto-pilot says we'll be there in about twenty minutes. Care to tell me about yourself in the meantime?"

Klaus's Minibus

June is glad that, at the very least, everyone else is pretending to not have noticed her embarrassment.

"I see," June says, looking into the coffee mug. "I've never liked that stuff. It always smells like...burnt."

June carefully looks at the outfit, being especially careful with her claws when she moves it around. She doesn't want to tear it before even trying it on!
"Really like the color," she says. "Pockets are nice, too" referring to the sidearm-places. She looks at the top part, trying to imagine putting it on without using her fingers. The wing-cape-thing looks pretty clever, she thinks. A lot better than her old shirt, which was just...torn.

With her hand curled, she rubs her knuckle across her neck-gills...they seem hardly noticeable, so that's fine. "Those wheel things are really clever, too. Like how the support at the hip and waist works. So do I use my tail to move around, or do the wheels have some kind of motor or something?" she asks, trying to imagine getting around on it.

"But it looks really nice. Might wear it to a dance, or something. You moonlight as a fashionista, is my guess."

Final question she has, though. "How heavy is it?" she asks trying to find a way to grab it to lift, without digging in her claws into it. "This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I don't really know how to take off flying from the ground. Need about...my height of distance to the ground to fly, and," She shows off her biceps and forearms. They're pretty normal for a female athlete. "Pretty decent at pull-ups, but I need to know if I should also do weight training, like wearing a turtle shell or weights in my suitcoat or ankle weights or something."

[Klaus's Minibus]

Quire swells up a little with pride when June gives her approval. Of course he'd done a good job. That's what he'd set out to do. But it never hurt to hear that his beneficiaries agreed with that analysis.

"The wheels are mechanical." He begins. "Nearly frictionless, so you primarily have to focus on how your weight is shifted. It'll be tempting to keep scooting along with your tail; don't. At best, you'll move a little slower than you otherwise would. At worst, you'll run over your own fins."

He then curses quietly to himself when he sees her claws. He should've printed out gloves. Even if disguising her claws was more or less pointless, there was utility value to giving her some way of sheathing her claws. He'd have to remedy that soon.

"I could tell you the whole gown weighs about a kilo and a half, but I've found relying only on numbers isn't quite descriptive enough for that kind of thing. If you want an idea as to how it will affect your flight, I would suggest trying it on. Bodice, cape, skirt, in that order." He politely turns his back and folds his arms behind him; more a courteous gesture than anything, given her current state of undress.

[Deathkeeper]

LBABS

Hm. It sounds an awful lot like she did have an opinion on where to go but decided not to voice them and is now annoyed that she didn't get what she wanted. Krayger hates when people act like that.
"What do you want to know? I don't think my life is quite as exciting as someone else's. And my skillset is mostly straight-forward."
That last part is mostly a lie but it's one he tells himself just as much as anyone else.

[5a Violista]

Klaus's Minibus

It's okay.
June didn't even consider sheathing the claws as a possibility. The only thing she was thinking of was somehow making the clothing cut- and pierce-proof.

One-and-a-half doesn't sound like a lot of weight. She's pretty sure she could carry a person if she had to (with difficulty and a limited distance) so one-and-a-half seems pretty reasonable.

Appreciating the courteous gesture, she starts putting on the fancy outfit. "So do I control the wheels by leaning, and it senses the weight differential?" she asks to occupy the time while changing. That's probably how she would make it.

Soon enough, she's changed, and has the bikini top folded and in the palm of her hand (since swimsuit and a bodice both occupy the same mental-space of 'underclothes') but is wearing everything else.

She eyes the minibus, trying to determine if it's big enough and sturdy enough to get on top of to take off from.

[Recaiden]

[Tempest Row]

He had a point. At maximum functionality, with a network to connect to, Haia probably could find the person he was looking for, and relatively easily at that. Disconnected from any other devices, however, Haia was probably worse at finding people than anyone else would be. As such, all she could really do was get them sandwiches.

She takes a moment to count up the beggars, then walks up to the sandwich stand, scoops up a corresponding amount of sandwiches, and returns to the beggars, not acting at all like she'd done anything wrong.

Haia steals a half dozen sandwiches so brazenly that for a few moments there's no reaction.
She's already given one out to a beggar before the vendor can cry out "Hey! You can't take those!" and started to step towards her.

Meanwhile, Hunter turns to ask Haia about a coil, and finds that the machine isn't there.

[Ironsmith]

LBABS

Hm. It sounds an awful lot like she did have an opinion on where to go but decided not to voice them and is now annoyed that she didn't get what she wanted. Krayger hates when people act like that.
"What do you want to know? I don't think my life is quite as exciting as someone else's. And my skillset is mostly straight-forward."
That last part is mostly a lie but it's one he tells himself just as much as anyone else.

[LBABS]

"Anything, really. You got any family? Friends you'd consider family? What do you like to do for fun? Favorite color, food, whatever. Honestly, I'm just trying to make small talk." Rose shrugs. "I don't know about you, but I hate the idea of just sitting here in silence for the next twenty minutes while we go from A to B." She examines the parts she printed out, taking a mental inventory of them and making sure she had everything she needed when they arrived.

Klaus's Minibus

It's okay.
June didn't even consider sheathing the claws as a possibility. The only thing she was thinking of was somehow making the clothing cut- and pierce-proof.

One-and-a-half doesn't sound like a lot of weight. She's pretty sure she could carry a person if she had to (with difficulty and a limited distance) so one-and-a-half seems pretty reasonable.

Appreciating the courteous gesture, she starts putting on the fancy outfit. "So do I control the wheels by leaning, and it senses the weight differential?" she asks to occupy the time while changing. That's probably how she would make it.

Soon enough, she's changed, and has the bikini top folded and in the palm of her hand (since swimsuit and a bodice both occupy the same mental-space of 'underclothes') but is wearing everything else.

She eyes the minibus, trying to determine if it's big enough and sturdy enough to get on top of to take off from.

[Klaus's Minibus]

"Pretty much. It's mostly just Newtonian kinematics at work." Quire turns back around when she's done getting dressed, handing her a hand-drawn map with a noticeable X marking a certain intersection of streets. "I've got a job for you, while we're talking. This map here will take you to a place called the Temple of Lead. Or rather, it'll take you to what used to be the Temple of Lead." He chuckles a little to himself. "Anyway, I want you to go there and make sure nobody else has moved in. If someone has shown up, don't engage them. I've got teams scouting out other locations in this part of town; we'll just find somewhere else to set up shop. Take Fifi and Sam with you; no sense in going out there all alone. I'll expect you back in a few hours."

[Tempest Row]

Haia steals a half dozen sandwiches so brazenly that for a few moments there's no reaction.
She's already given one out to a beggar before the vendor can cry out "Hey! You can't take those!" and started to step towards her.

Meanwhile, Hunter turns to ask Haia about a coil, and finds that the machine isn't there.

[Tempest Row]

Haia stops. That didn't quite make sense. Of course she could take the sandwiches. She just did, after all.

Oh, wait. He meant she wasn't allowed to take them, didn't he?

"Is there a problem, sir?" Haia asks innocently, continuing to hand out sandwiches like the answer was "no, not at all". If the man makes any attempt at violence on her, she won't initially resist, but obviously, it won't be terribly effective.

[5a Violista]

Klaus's Minibus

June starts now wondering how effective it would be at going uphill.

She replaces what's in her hand with the map, and looks at it. She could fly there, she thinks...but if she flies the whole way, she won't be able to figure out the quirks of the dress or getting a feel for it.
. . .
It's a tough decision.

Going with others, though, quickly narrows down what she should do. 'Walk', of course.

June nods.
"Temple of Lead. Check it out, see if anyone's there, back out if there are."
Seems simple enough.

She backs up, looking for Fifi and Sam, to go with them (and hope one of them knows the best way past the mines that were laid out earlier).

[Earl of Purple]

Klaus' Minibus --> Temple of Lead

The Temple of Lead was a warehouse, but it appears to have recently exploded. The roof is missing, but the stout walls still stand. The shutter doors have been blasted to pieces, and shards of metal from the roof and the doors lie around. There's also splintered boxes, some spilling bullets out across the street and pavement nearby, as well as sandbag barricades and burnt-out cars.

Nobody's inside the old warehouse-turned-bullet factory, but out the front there's a small gunfight going on. A tracked robot with a spherical torso, dragging a length of insulated cable behind it and mounting a blank head made from scrap that has a long, pointed snout and a pair of large ears is standing in the middle of road. Lightning bolts arc from a copper two-pronged fork on the automaton's front at two people sheltering amongst the fallen boxes and sandbags. They're both human, a young man in dirty and soot-stained clothes erratically fires an assault rifle with a chair leg stock, a woman in mechanic's overalls and crude riveted metal plating firing a hand-cranked laser weapon shielding behind a flipped car. Neither weapon seems able to damage the robot save cosmetically, and the robot's lightning projector keeps grounding itself in the flipped car wreck.

The teenage merboy is Blake, he's sixteen, sold to slavers by a group of raiders in exchange for a barrel of cheap alcohol. The older merman is Fred, he doesn't want to talk about how he came to be a slave. The mermaids- not Wings- are Milly and Molly, they are twins, aged twenty-ish, and they were sold to slavers by a family to get out of gambling debt. All four of them were human, once. The red-haired half-elf is Sasha, she was sold by her husband on their honeymoon; apparently, he had cold feet. The full-elf is Asturielle, she was caught by the slavers trying to free other slaves. Fifi was gene-engineered and sold by her creator to fund further gene-mod experiments. Samantha was caught stealing from a shop in Skyside, and is grateful-ish- that the shopkeeper decided to sell her rather than execute her. The kor is named Makaru, he was a refugee from his homeworld that the Guild tricked into slavery. Wallowglum was enslaved because he didn't fight back. The half-orc is nineteen, named Garry, he was sold by his step-mother so he wouldn't compete with his half-siblings. The drow goes by Shadow, he was sold by a priestess. The goblin is named Blinkum, his mother was a slave, and he's eager to do whatever because he's not used to being free.

[Recaiden]

[Tempest Row]

Haia stops. That didn't quite make sense. Of course she could take the sandwiches. She just did, after all.

Oh, wait. He meant she wasn't allowed to take them, didn't he?

"Is there a problem, sir?" Haia asks innocently, continuing to hand out sandwiches like the answer was "no, not at all". If the man makes any attempt at violence on her, she won't initially resist, but obviously, it won't be terribly effective.

"Yes there's a problem! Were you planning to pay for those? I'm not running a charity here."
He doesn't try to harm her, just to snatch back the food that she hasn't yet handed out.

[Ironsmith]

[Tempest Row]

"Yes there's a problem! Were you planning to pay for those? I'm not running a charity here."
He doesn't try to harm her, just to snatch back the food that she hasn't yet handed out.

[Tempest Row]

"I did not believe you were." Haia replies coolly. "My apologies. I was unaware any compensation was required."

This is followed by a rather abrupt left jab, squared directly at the man's sternum, intending to wind him and knock him off his feet.

---

[Klaus's Minibus]

Which leaves Klaus alone on the minibus with his prisoner. No interference, no witnesses, nobody else present at all.

Finally.

Klaus has an honest smile on his face as he removes the gag from his prisoner's mouth. "Well, well, well... some night you've had, yeah?" He chuckles to himself. "Are you comfortable? Would you like anything to eat? Drink?" He takes a seat opposite the former driver and gives the man a friendly smile. This is how he would always start; hospitable, pleasant, setting an pattern for all future encounters. There would be time for business afterwards.

[Deathkeeper]

[LBABS]

"Anything, really. You got any family? Friends you'd consider family? What do you like to do for fun? Favorite color, food, whatever. Honestly, I'm just trying to make small talk." Rose shrugs. "I don't know about you, but I hate the idea of just sitting here in silence for the next twenty minutes while we go from A to B." She examines the parts she printed out, taking a mental inventory of them and making sure she had everything she needed when they arrived.

LBABS

"I've got a nephew. I read mostly, though I do own a computer. Koshal likes using it more than I do. I like red." Though that's partially since it was the color of his first crush's coat.
"You should meet the cook if you stick around. He's good. You'll like him." Krayger is not aware of Sam's odd tendency to make friends with pretty people, but it's certainly a thing.

[Ironsmith]

[LBABS -> Approaching a Hotel]

"'If'?" Rose replies with a raised eyebrow. "Look. The only thing that's in the air right now is whether I get full membership with MERC or not. And even then, I don't intend to go back having done any less than absolutely nailing this mission." She smiles. "So, yes, I'd love to meet your chef at some point. I'm sort of curious to see how you guys handle food without a Hotbox. It's a dying art back home."

[Deathkeeper]

Approaching a Hotel

Krayger shrugs.
"Hey, don't look at me like that. Some people become full members but don't bother sticking around the Base. Spend their pay settling down and only visit for new jobs.
And yeah, he's got training and everything. Just don't ask him to make pork. He doesn't like that."
Sam doesn't even like pigs that much.
It just feels weird.

[Ironsmith]

[Approaching a Hotel]

"That sounds suspiciously like there's a story there." Rose replies, turning one of the passenger chairs to face Krayger. "Guy got a problem with pigs or something? Or, wait, is he a pig?" She smirks a little. "You know, like an actual, literal pig and not just a bad date kind of pig. Although I think I might want to know that, too." She shrugs. "Never hurts to get to know your coworkers. Okay, well, usually it doesn't. You don't know if it does or doesn't until you know them, so it's sort of compulsory either way, is what I'm saying."