HF RPG 2.5

IC: Cobra Shard - Internal Pleading

Shard sat very still and silent as the Hero craft drew nearer to The Starwhale, internally begging the cosmos to let just one of his missions actually go well.

OOC: I asked this in the Discussion topic already, but to answer Klanadack's question: what GM posts are the Mekron group waiting on? I thought they were waiting on other players. Or were you looking for a timeskip?

IC: Hero Ships

Bulk and Nex initialised docking procedures on the Starwhale, magnetising to the larger ship. They opened communication between the two ships.

"All right, Heroes, here's the plan," said Bulk. "We're going to fan out in pairs and search the ship. Report back with anything you find, and try and get any hostages out of harm's way."

"And no more posing as villains," added Nex. "Seriously, I'm pretty sure it's not going to work twice. I'm honestly surprised it worked once."

~

IC: Villain Friend Ship

On the other side of the ship, the villains were also docking. XPlode stood beside the pilot's seat.

"Well, here we are," he said nonchalantly. "I suppose the smartest thing to do, with Heroes on the way, is attempt to sneak off with as much loot as we can, and leave whoever took over the ship for the Heroes to sort out."

~

OOC: The Above Two ICs: In Which I Reveal I Have No Idea How The Docking Situation Would Work So Just Pretend It's Working

Apparently self-healing hulls are a thing in some ships in Hero Factory lore, so I'm guessing cutting into a wall is probably fine. Probably.

~

IC: Nathaniel Zib - Hero Factory

Zib flagged Plume down immediately. "Plume! There you are. It looks like the other Heroes have reached the Starwhale, which also seems to be the target of the villains Gyro climbed on board with. With any luck, he'll still be with them."

IC: Andrea Plume
^{Location: Rush back to dropship}

"Relay the co-ordinates to my ship immediately! I'm going there!" Andrea turned around and flew off, hurrying as fast as she could back to her ship.

IC: Gabriel Bliss and Cobra Shard - The Starwhale

Bliss unstrapped his seatbelt, stood, and cracked his knuckle joints, the motors making a really terrible cracking sound as he did so. "Okay. Let's get this over with."

Shard nervously hefted his Splinter Cannon.

IC: Flynn Flames

I unseated myself and made my way to the Hero ships exit. In spite of how off I felt I was still eager to do my duty as a hero and hopefully rescue Gyro. There was also the ongoing mystery of what had happened in the Starwhale? That investigator in the dock needed avenging and whoever was responsible was likely on the ship right now. I had to press on.

IC Kat:

"Plume, wait! I've been flying around all day, and dealt with a troublemaker, I need a charge before we leave!"

I looked at Zib, my face full of worry.

IC: Andrea Plume
^{Location: Mission Control}
"You can charge on the way there! Come on!" Andrea came to a screeching halt near the doorway, turning around to look at Kat with an expression of impatience and high stress.

IC: Gabriel Bliss - The Starwhale

Bliss stepped off the Hero landing craft and took the first step into the strange whaleship, looking around. Didn't look to be anything super unusual in the area they'd docked to, but then again, he could be missing something. "Seems safe enough," he said quietly to those behind. "But watch yourselves in here. Stick together, alright? We don't know what other guests have come to the party."

IC: Nathaniel Zib - Hero Factory

"Now just hold on!" Zib said quickly. "Scarlet is right. Both of you need to be fully charged before going on any sort of mission. Gyro has a whole ship full of Heroes after him- well, after the ship, but still. He'll be just as fine with you two turning up a few minutes later compared to you two turning up low on charge."

IC: Andrea Plume
^{Location: Mission Control}
"I'm already on full charge! Transmit those scrapping co-ordinates to my ship right now!"

IC: Whipcrack (Villain Friend Ship)

"Right," grins Whipcrack, coughing violently, "Though I - *cough* - have to admit - *cough* - I would prefer it if we did run into the Heroes."

A crazy light glimmers in his eye. "I do love watching them die."

OOC: Apologies to everyone, completely forgot I had to post D:

IC: Nathaniel Zib and Quadal - Hero Factory

"That's not how it works, Plume."

Quadal was setting about scanning Scarlet for power level. Zib checked the results. "Head down to the core charge chamber, Scarlet. Thank you for cooperating."

Quadal floated over to Plume, waving the scanner questioningly.

~

IC: XPlode and GyRotor - Villain Friend Ship

Gyro tried not to draw any attention to himself from Whipcrack's remark.

XPlode opened the entryway. "Indeed. This way, friends. Including you, Rotor. I've had you on guard duty long enough, don't you think?"

Gyro stood and, with a moment's hesitation, followed XPlode. "Was almost starting to get comfortable in there."

The interior of the ship, at the Villain entryway, was near deserted. There were doors, but many of them appeared to lead into storerooms for janitorial supplies or other such boring commodities. The hallway they stood in extended on either side some way.

~

IC: Hero Ships - Connected to Starwhale

On the Hero side, the ship was similarly deserted. However, they appeared to be in a hall containing crew quarters. It was eerily quiet.

~

IC: Preston Stormer, Chief Drax, Ken Render, Mara Quiver - Mekron City

Stormer checked his messages, cursed, and said, "They've found the Starwhale. What are those kids doing over there...?"

He started to stalk towards the direction the other Heroes had disappeared to. To Jade, he said, "Good work. Wrap it up, we have a place to be."

Drax motioned to some of his fellow officers, who followed him. "What's going on?"

"They found the runaway ship. We'll clean up here and act as backup. Seems like there are some criminals on the same course."

"What about my city? There's criminals prowling around the place, and there's no way they're just dropping in for no reason."

Stormer turned to the Heroes gathered around the Police Station. "Stay here and help Chief Drax with any other trouble that comes his way."

Render nodded, having found a place to sit and was doing some idle work on some doodad in his pocket, and Quiver mumbled "Y-Yes" from where she was watching his work.

Stormer turned back to Drax. "Problem solved."

"... Right."

~

IC: Black Phantom - Mass Post Grand Whamma Slam

He listened to Corroder, and sighed softly to himself. If he wanted something done right...

"Very well. I'll see what I can do."

He had had no intention of revealing himself, of course. He had better things to do than to dance around in front of a group of Heroes. But, he did need Corroder back. If anything else, he needed to ensure she wouldn't be spilling all the details of his plans at the first opportunity. He sighed again, and started the trek towards the fight.

OOC: I can't remember where Black Phantom was or what he was doing, admittedly, but gosh darn it I will post >:U

~

IC: Quark Qrew - Meanwhile

Quark looked into the smoking, screeching wreck that was her engine. She cursed a few times, clicked her helmet over her head, and then unleashed the more colourful end of her vocabulary into the confines of the transparent dome.

Thumper leaned down to Flood. "Do you think we're in trouble?"

"Well, rationally, no. We didn't intentionally upset the balance of the ship when Quark was trying to do a complicated manoeuvre around an asteroid belt, and it wouldn't have done so if not for that gravity stabiliser snapping. And, we weren't the ones to hit the ship itself."

"Mostly."

"Yes, mostly, though I doubt you could have helped being thrown forwards by the ship spinning. So, technically, we're not in trouble. But, I think it would be best to stay out of Quark's way for now, nonetheless."

Thumper watched Quark throw a wrench at a nearby rock, still cursing up a storm from the muffled sound that emanated from her helmet. "I guess. I feel bad, though. What an unlucky break."

"Nice pun."

"Huh?"

Flood glanced at her. "You know, you said 'unlucky break'. And something had broken."

"Yeah," Thumper replied, confused. "It wasn't lucky that it broke, so it can't be a lucky break."

"No, the saying... Never mind." He stepped backwards to inspect her back plating where she'd flown into the console. "Do you want some help with your back? I can see some shards sticking in the seams."

"Huh? Oh, I hadn't noticed. Yes, please. I'm sure Quark will be happy to have pieces of it returned to her! She might even be able to fix it."

Flood's gaze fixated on what looked to be a very complex component of something, bent and mangled by the movements of Thumper's plating. "... Maybe..."

IC: Andrea Plume
^{Location: Mission Control}

Andrea frowned heavily. "I've got nothing to hide. I'm on sufficient charge to complete this mission! Just scan me to confirm and transmit the co-ordinates to my ship!"

IC: Gabriel Bliss and Cobra Shard - The Starwhale

Bliss began making his way cautiously down the hallway, peering into any open doors for any signs of life.

Shard, as usual, decided to head up the rear and moved to the back of the Hero group.

IC Kat:

I nodded gratefully, and rushed off to charge.

IC Jade:

She touched down near the police HQ, the rear bay opening. "Delivery!"

IC: Wilhelm Gorn- Mekron Police HQ

Gorn emerged from the dropship, leading a bound Corroder to the gathering of heroes and officers.

"The pizza's here. Who ordered the acid-spewing psychopath?"

IC: Jason Ferro- The Starwhale

Ferro boarded the Starwhale, and began looking for anything out of the ordinary in the initial area, beyond the obvious lack of a crew.

IC: Flynn Flames

I followed after Ferro into the eerily silent Starwhale.

"So do we know how many crew members there are? Is the ship supposed to feel this empty or has something gone horribly wrong?"

IC: Nathaniel Zib and Quadal - Hero Factory

"Then stop making such a fuss and slowing everyone down. You could have been in your ship by now."

Quadal scanned Plume, and twittered in confirmation of Plume's claims. Zib gave Plume a look. "See? That wasn't that hard."

~

OOC: to make up for my sporadic posts I hope you are all ready for some PUZZLE JAPERY

Villains will get puzzle japery once there are villain posts

~

IC: Starwhale, Hero Side

Bliss would find no open doors to peer into. This was a spaceship. Fancy sliding space doors were pretty much mandatory. He would, however, find three doors that had lit screens next to them. Each screen appeared to have a sentence, and a line underneath to type in an answer. One of these doors, the nearest one, had a crack in the screen. The second had a sticker on the door that kind of looked like a sheriff's star, and the third's door was dented.

Ferro would see signs of some sort of struggle- scratches and laser burns on the walls- but not an awful lot.

Nex leaned over to Bulk. "I guess these kids don't get the concept of fanning out in pairs..."

"It's fine," Bulk reassured him. "This might be for the best. We don't know what we're up against here."

"But we're not going to cover ground as fast like this, and we might have hostages to deal with!"

"Relax. Why would they decide to suddenly start threatening hostages for no reason?"

"Because they're the bad guys?"

Bulk shook his head. "Things aren't always like that, Nex. Now come on, looks like we might have some clues here."

~

IC: Ken Render, Assorted Police Officers, and Corroder - Police Station

"Right here, pardner," Render said, waving Gorn down. A few officers came to take Corroder inside, much to her obvious displeasure. Render said to Gorn, "They found th' ship, summa us are stayin' ta look out fer trouble, everyone else is goin' to th' ship. Y'all wrapped up over there, since y'all took that there villain over? Stormer's marchin' over in a right tussle, ayuh."

IC: Flynn Flames

I took a look at the scorch marks while following Ferro. I called out to him "Looks like there's been a fight in here, it seems to have been a weirdly small one considering the starhwhale was likely being raided"

IC: Jason Ferro- Starwhale

"Well, one sided fights tend to stay pretty small. If some of the crew members were in their quarters when they were attacked, they were probably either hiding or ambushed."

He continued moving further into the Starwhale, ever vigilant.

"Hopefully, the lack of corpses means that the crew was taken hostage, rather than killed."

IC: Flynn Flames

As we made our way deeper into the ship I began looking around the hallway for signs of how the battle went.

"I guess that's what happened then, which means whatever villain team is in here is large enough to completely overwhelm the crew of the Starwhale ... I should call the others"

I began inspecting the scratches and marks, then I turned on my communicator and set it to call the rest of my Hero team. "Flames calling in here, I see signs of a battle but nothing else here, what about you?"

IC: Gabriel Bliss - The Starwhale

"I found a couple doors that look like they still work, but I think they're password-locked..." he responded to Flames' transmission, still examining the screens. "Looks like some kind of action happened over here, too. One of these doors is all banged up,"

Bliss studied the dented door carefully, pulled out his sword, and began trying to gently pry it open.

IC: Flynn Flames

Looking through the communicator screen at Gabriel's attempt to pry the door open, I felt that it would be wise to warn him.

"Maybe you should try searching the doors first, someone may have left a password hint near them"

IC: Gabriel Bliss - Starwhale

"Right, uh, good call," Bliss postponed his door-prying and took another look over the doors, specifically searching for anything that might be a clue.

Hah! The sheriff star! Bliss typed "Sheriff" into the screen next to that door.

OOC: I'm a bit confused as to whether you guys split up or not. Either way, I'll give out this puzzle door japery.

IC: The Puzzle Doors

The door screens had sentences on them along with lines for the answers. Each sentence was some kind of hint. The one next to the sheriff star-spangled door had the following clue:

THOSE MOVIE NERDS CAN CHOOSE WHATEVER GOOFY SECURITY QUESTIONS THEY WANT BUT I'M TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY AND CHOOSING A GOOD AND SAFE SECURITY QUESTION.

'Sheriff' was accepted. Perhaps it was not such a good and safe security question after all. The door slid open, revealing a clean and prim living space. It was small, which was typical, but a glance around would probably tell the average Hero they were looking at the quarters of a member of security; a hat with 'SECURITY' was resting on the desk, along with a blaster holster. The blaster was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the rest of the uniform. Evidently, the guard left in a hurry from what was presumably their break.

There was a datapad resting on the desk, with some kind of log open. There were no signs of a struggle in here. The drawers were closed and locked, but they were small locks. The shelves were largely stacked with electronic books about different kinds of safety-oriented devices. There was a framed picture of a complex laser grid's inner workings magnetically attached to the wall.

OOC: We're in at least two teams, team Ferro and Flames, and  team Shard and Bliss.

IC: Flynn Flames

I called out to Ferro, who was essentially my partner for now.

"Hey Ferro! Bliss found some doorway's ... shall we go see if we can find something yet, like  a map?"

IC: Gabriel Bliss - Sheriff Room

Bliss looked closely a the laser grid diagram. He couldn't make head nor tail of it, being no mechanic, and decided to simply screenshot it and save the picture for later. "Got into one of the rooms," he informed his teammates over comms. "There's a bunch of important-looking stuff in here..." he picked up the datapad.

IC: Cobra Shard - Starwhale Corridor

Shard, meanwhile, was examining the door with the cracked security screen and scratching his head. He was bad at puzzle japery.

IC: Flynn Flames

Ferro didn't call back ... oh no. Aware of how easily a Hero like me could get lost in the starwhale I retrace my steps, coincidentally bumping into Cobra Shard.

"Hey!"

OOC: I gotta start writing reminders for myself to post here or something, I've been terrible. Also, thanks for the update, TIN!

~

IC: Cracked Screen

The sentence on this one was, presumably, a movie reference, from the context provided by the security guard's door. Depending on how keen Shard was on old robot movies from other cultures, he might have even seen or heard of this one.

"JOHNNY 5 IS ____ !!!"

~

OOC: Earth, while it likely won't appear in HF RPG, is a canon place in the Hero Factory universe. Presumably this means that they'd have access to our goofy robot movies. Well, that's the justification I'm using for not having actual puzzles here because I forgot that those were kind of required for puzzle japery.

~

IC: Security Datapad

The open log was a half-finished report of some kind, written by a Lochlan Keye, who presumably owned these living quarters. The gist of the document was that Keye had suspicions relating to a crew member who stepped down from his position on the ship at the last minute, and was interrupted mid-sentence by something.

OOC: I'm just gonna assume the Heroes have some form of internet connection available to them.

IC: Flynn Flames

Brushing past Shard, I took a look at the pad. "JOHNNY 5 IS ____ !!!" ... huh that must be some obscure reference. Opening up my communicator I log into the internet. Since it might take some time to find the reference I decided to make small talk.

"So Cobra, what's your impression of the starwhale?"

IC: Cobra Shard - Starwhale

He took a moment before answering. 'JOHNNY 5 IS ___'... The phrase seemed really familiar, but he was pretty sure he had no idea what the reference was.

"She's spooky," he finally replied. "I mean, she seems like a nice ship and all, but how'd she lose a crew this size?"

IC: Flynn Flames

"Yeah, it seems to have been a planned attack, there are a few signs of a fight but not many, whatever hit this place it did so quickly ... Ah!"

I looked at my communicator which had found the answer to the riddle. Turns out Johnny 5 was a robot who was alive ... which is weird because most bots I know are alive.

"The password is alive" I explain as I type the word into the keypad.

IC: Cobra Shard - Starwhale

"Johnny 5 is alive? Huh, weird. Sounds almost like it's a line from one of those terrible movies organics make about guys like us, doesn't it?" he grinned and shook his head. "I watched one or two of those back in my free time at the academy. So much no."

IC: Flynn Flames

"Well I guess it's a good I don't bother to watch those movies then, they usually come off as kinda botist anyway"

Hitting enter, I hope that the pad works and the door will open.

OOC: Unless stated otherwise, like inside a Faraday cage or something, the Heroes will likely have an Internet connection.

IC: Johnny 5 Door

That was the correct passcode, as it turned out. The door slid open to reveal a messy room, with movie posters stuck to the walls. Many of them featured robots in some way. There was a storage unit, where a strange, very soft rattling was emanating from, and a desk with the drawers thrown open and a lot of their contents thrown on the floor. Some were tossed aside, as if the pile had been searched through in a rush. Most of the contents were little figurines.

IC: Flynn Flames

Right, this room was ... weird. I'm not sure what to make of this and I don't think I can make a comment on it. Clearly someones been raiding it for something, and that something has likely been found, but it wouldn't hurt to check. I carefully make my way to the storage container, making sure not to step on any of the figurines. I gently open the storage container.

IC: ???

When Flames opened the container, he would be greeted with a shaking figure, hidden under a pile of sheets. From under the sheets, a voice squeaked, "N-No one's here! Better keep looking! Somewhere else!"

IC: Flynn Flames

Despite the fear in the civillians voice I couldn't help but smile a bit. I had found someone, and I could save them. Helping people was the reason for my being and now I had a chance to do it. My voice was calm and reassuring "Calm down I'm here to help, my name is Flynn Flames and ..." I pointed to my friend "this is Cobra Shard, we're from Hero Factory ... what's your name?"

IC: Cobra Shard - The Starwhale

Shard stared at the civilian hiding in the sheets, but no one could tell because of his visor. At least, he hoped no one could tell.

"S'up."

IC: Tony Sprocket - Cleverly Hiding

"Heroes?! Oh, thank goodness!!!" The blanket was rearranged to expose a small robot's head, staring up at them with hope. "I'm Tony. Tony Sprocket. Is everyone okay? Did you get rid of the bad guys already?"