Log:Ghosts of Mars, Scene 2

Ghosts of Mars 2014/08/20 	 Paragon Pleiades Anthony Quinn|Q Spirit Star Girl 2

The reinforced door falls under the combined might of Wasp and Spirit. On the other side of the wall are two more red skinned aliens, surprised to see the door burst open.

The design of this room is similar to the previous one - roughly 30m by 30m, and 3-4m at the tallest point. The cross section it ovoid, and the room become less tall by the extreme sides. There are two exits, one to the trap room and one leading further into the ship. There's a central walk space that leads from one door to the other. On both sides of the walkway, a number of tubes stand connecting the floor to the ceiling. The tubes contain the missing scientists, apparently held it some kind of suspended animation.

With the door busted open, the energy rays from the first room power down. But the two aliens swarm to attack.

Spirit steps out into the next room, relaxing a little now that the energy rays are powered down. "If any of you have medical skill...tend to Wasp. She took a beating, bouncing off that door." He reaches out a hand and light strands move to wind around the heavy alien.

Spirit's strand of light extend from his fingertips, wrapping around the heavier of the two aliens.

The smaller of the two aliens floats towards Pleiades and tries to swipe at her with a limb that lashes out and cracks like a whip.

Pleiades is sent skidding back on her skates, but manages to keep her balance.

The heavy Martian is bound temporarily by Spirit's energy field. However, it turns translucent and simply passed through them. It floats towards Spirit and reaches a tendril towards its chest.

Spirit manages to avoid the insubstantial alien's tendril. "Huh...I may have trouble affecting this one. I can probably blind it, but that's about it."

Pleiades grins, "Don't worry, we just have to work as a team!"

Paragon looks to Wasp and moves to aid her, but the willowy alien could pose a threat, so she interposes herself solidly between Wasp and the Willowy alien. "If you really wish to continue violence instead of surrendering, I'll oblige you. But we really just want our people back," she says firmly. She winds her arm back and prepares to swat away the willowy Martian off to the side of the death trap room.

The willowy martian's form twist, bending just out of the way of Paragon's strike.

In his current suit of armor Quinn's weaponry selections are highly limited. Being designed for exploration it only has a minimal compliment of weapons. Given the quickness of the willowy martian he selects his quantum bolts, setting the aperture to a wide beam diffusion in order to try and catch the speedy alien.

Q's blast connects with the willowy alien, but it's able to shift its form to turn a solid hit, into a glancing one. It tumbles backward through the air, shifting form so that it's right-side up again.

The willowy martian floats towards Pleia. It tries to circle around her, then constrict like a giant snake.

Pleiades struggles against the constricting alien, keeping it from doing significant damage, but not being able to wrest free of it.

Spirit figures it's time for a change of opponents. He pivots, firing a focus laser from his glowing outstretched fist at the alien that has Pleiades grabbed.

Spirit's blast strikes the willowy alien, with enough force to tear it from its hold on Pleia. The alien flies backwards into a wall of the structure and falls to the ground in a pile.

Spirit winces a little bit. "Hope I didn't hit it too hard. I don't want to kill these guys. Just incapacitate them."

Pleiades grins, "Thanks Spirit! Everyone strike on my cue!"

Spirit looks to the remaining alien. "You might want to surrender now. We won't hurt you."

The heavy spins and turns on Spirit, it becomes solid and tries to hit him as hard as it can.

Spirit manages to avoid the attack, just a bit too fast for the alien. "Don't say I didn't give you a chance."

Pleiades smiles, "Oh well. Panzerfaust, Hammer Knuckle!" A triangle of runes appears beneath her skates and a standing shockwaves builds around her gauntlet as she skates forward and tries to slug the alien!

It's like hitting the heavy bag, only, heavier. The alien lift off the ground and tumbles backwards a couple of meters, landing with a solid thud.

Paragon lets out a quiet sigh. "I wish you wouldn't force me to do this," she says with reluctance as she leaps for the heavier martian and draws her fist back, aiming to slam the Martian downward.

Paragon's fist connects, smushing the alien down into the floor, hard.

He may not have much in the way of armaments, but the suit is still plenty strong and tough. Tougher even than his normal suit. Boot jets roar in the confined space of the ship as Quinn streaks toward the downed alien, attempting to drive him deeper into the deck.

Wham! Finally the heavy alien stops moving.

Spirit looks around for further opponents, and then looks back toward the others, "Anyone have any medical skill?" He heads over to check out Wasp's condition.

Pleiades nods, "I'm trained as an emergency medical specialist." She goes to check on Wasp.

Quinn gives a shake of his head. "Not really my bag," he says, "all those guts and organs and squishy bits."

Spirit nods to Pleiades, "Thanks. I'll keep out of the way." He starts to look around for a way to free the scientists.

Pang! The sound of something striking metal comes from overhead, a grate leading into a space above the ceiling.

Paragon walks over to Quinn and offers him a hand up. And then her head cranes upward to follow the sound in the ceiling.

Paragon's head cranes upward to follow the sound in the ceiling, her eyes adjusting to a smaller diameter for a moment before expanding again. "What's that?"

"Hey! It's me!" a voice says from up there. It sounds like Star Girl.

Spirit looks at the controls..."Alien script. Wonderful. We might need to find Star Girl." He looks up at the sound, trying to figure out what it is. "Speak of the devil."

Having never met Star Girl before, Paragon's hands are still curled into fists and her stance becomes defensive. She raises her fists up slightly. "Are you sure, Spirit?"

Spirit nods. "I think it's likely her." He flies up to take a look at the grate, to see if it can be removed.

Spirit says, "I mean...sure...there was an alien who copied her and tried to kill us...but why would they do that again?"

Quinn nods to Paragon. "That's her," he says, "or if it isn't at least the aliens are learning not to say 'foolish humans, I'll destroy you all' when they are trying to impersonate her."

Pang! With a second kick, Star Girl is able to knock the grate loose and drop into the room. "Man, am I glad to see you guys..."

Pleiades frowns as she looks over Wasp. "She's not too bad off, I think I can help her. Panzefaust, load Zaubermunition!" Her gauntlet ejects a smoking brass casing. A runic circle appears beneath her and she punches the ground, sending a wave of blue-white light flashing outward to a distance of 8m. "Restoral Wave!"

"Well, I'd like to think of them as intelligent in some way. I mean, look at this place," Paragon motions around them. "And after maybe seeing three of their people knocked senseless, maybe they learned how to use deception a little more to their advantage."

Spirit lands again. "Star Girl...can you do anything about the scientists? I'm assuming you can read that."

"Three of them?" Star asks. "There were four of them when they jumped us." She stands and looks up at the opened grate. "Hop on down... I've got you." She raises her arms, readying to catch someone else from the crawlspace.

"We've only seen three of them," Quinn says, "Two skinny and one big. What does the missing one look like?"

Star nods to Spirit. "Be right there." She shrugs to Quinn. "I dunno... medium-ish?"

"Oh, great," Quinn says. "So it's like Goldilocks and the four aliens. This one will be juuuuuuuust right."

The last of the missing scientists drops down from the crawlspace. Star catches him.

Spirit walks over to Pleiades, and says to her quietly, "Thanks. She's going to be alright?"

Paragon finally lowers her fists and uncurls her fingers, seeing as how the danger seems to have passed for now. "Any idea of why they jumped you?"

Pleiades picks up Wasp. "Do you want me to scan for life-signs? I think I can tell a human from one of these non-Earth humans."

"After some time playing hide and seek with the aliens on their ship," Star says, "I got a chance to interface with their computer. Turns out they're out of gas. They were in stasis sleep, waiting for someone to mug for fuel."

Paragon's eyes dim slightly. "Awfully hostile way to ask for fuel," she comments as she look over at one of the aliens, folding her arms over her chestplate.

Spirit shakes his head, looking at the tubes, "Unless...they weren't asking. They might have been converting the people into fuel." He nods to Pleiades, "Please do."

Quinn sighs and facepalms with his massive gauntlet to his oversized faceplate. "Any idea what they need for fuel?" he asks.

Star walks over toward the middle of the room and holds her palm out, facing down ward. A control cylinder rises from the floor, stopping a few inches short of her hand. She looks over towards Spirit. "Turns out I can interface with their controls pretty well. It was a surprise for them as well."

Spirit nods to Star Girl, "Can you get them out of there?"

Pleiades calls up her Yggdrasil Scan again and looks around.

Paragon's fizzle at Spirit's comment. "What...who would -do- such a thing?" she murmurs in shock, sounding horrified at the prospect.

Star says to Quinn. "Not sure. I don't think we have a word for it." She then returns her concentration to the control cylinder. Some glowing light flare a swirl beneath the top surface of the cyclinder. "There. That should do it..." The stasis tubes begin to open up.

Spirit nods to Paragon. "It's conjecture at this point. We dont' have confirmation. But...there are a lot of alien races more than willing to do nasty things to sentient beings. Just like there are plenty of humans who would so as well. We just have to do what we can to stop them."

"Twentieth century Earth used dinosaurs for fuel," Quinn says. "Of course we waited until they were dead before we did that, but that was mostly for reasons of energy density. Before that we were happy to use whale oil, but honestly, my guess is that they were just shoving these guys in the tubes for safe keeping. This is probably the room they were asleep in."

Spirit nods to Quinn, and looks to Star Girl again, "Can you determine what the aliens were going to do with the scientists?" He starts to help the scientists out of the stasis tubes, reaching out with his power to move them one by one gently with a tendril of light to the floor.

The scientists are coming around and are weak, but generally ok.

Paragon takes a few moments to process the data presented by Quinn and Spirit, her eyes dimming again slightly. "Understood," she says quietly. Those were all things she would've never considered about Aliens. But Quinn's explanation makes it sound plausible. "Well, I can hope it really is conjecture," she says quietly, but it's clear she feels disturbed.

Star shakes her head. "Not sure, boss... Hey, whats the protocol with these aliens? Do we take them in, or turn them over to the Guild?"

Spirit says, "We take them into custody at Starguard. Then the politicians figure it out."

"How about we just call the remaining alien and have a quick talk," Quinn says. "It looks to me like they woke up surrounded but, what to them, were probably primitive savages. They panicked and grabbed a bunch while they figured out what to do. If we can get their ship fixed up and get them on their way we might not have any more trouble with them."

Pleiades dismisses her scan, "It looks clean to me, but they may have some way of fooling my spell."

Spirit nods, "Well..first priority would be to get the scientists out. Though...we might want to keep them quarantined until we can confirm identities."

Quinn nods in agreement with Spirit. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Also, one way or another we really need to find this fourth one who is running around. If they are malevolent then we don't want it running free and even if they aren't I think they've shown that their self-preservation instinct is more than strong enough to get them in trouble."

Paragon scratches at the back of her helm. "Well, if they can take on the form of others...the fourth one could be anywhere, right? Like back where we came in from?" she asks.