"Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating..." (Part 4: The Best-Laid Plans)

[meat_mooks]

At some time during the night, while some were still sleeping, and some were awake and wandering around the hotel common rooms--a massive explosion rocked the hotel the group was staying in

Comments

Guy Fawkes

[galilee_npcs]

Upon teleporting, the Stacy crew members would lose consciousness (if they were capable), then regain it to find themselves bound by what looked like vines of energy coming from a socket in the floor. In Zetta's case, he likely would've been trapped immediately right after teleportation. All powers would be nullified. This was something like the technology the Galileans used on the clones to restrain them.

They were in a place that looked like it was actually underground. Clearly the clone underground took that a little literally. They were in a badly lit room, and standing guard over them was a young man, branded with a clone mark. He was blonde and angry-looking, and somewhat twitchy, but considering he was holding a nasty-looking energy weapon of some sort in his hands, that twitchiness was likely not a good thing.

[Posting Order: Guy Fawkes, Nightwing, The Doctor, Lash, Zetta, Guy, Nightwing, etc.]

[galilee_npcs]

"You wanted to get in contact with the CLF, you got your chance. I'm gonna be honest; I don't trust any of you yet to not backstab us. We've had others pretend to be on our side and screw us over before."

Guy liked getting straight to the point.

"Name's Guy Fawkes. You'll be untied when Moses says it's okay, but until then, let's just talk. What are your plans regarding us?"

[goddamnwingman]

In all honesty, Dick had woken up in worse situations. At least here, nobody was cackling over him and there wasn't any gloating going on.

Of course, judging by the energy vines, it wouldn't be as easy to break out of as most of those had been, either.

Dick tested the bonds first, then allowed himself to relax and look over the twitchy guy. "That's an interesting name," he said evenly. "Though perhaps not the best history behind it in my own world.

"I'm Dick Grayson. Lt. Commander of the Transmigration 9." No reason to keep that much information back, after all. He wanted to be as honest as possible. "At the moment, my main concern has been getting my people out of this situation without anybody else getting hurt. Other than that, I wanted to know more about what was happening here on the planet, see if there wasn't a way to bring the conflict to an end peacefully." A moment, then he sighed. "Of course, even if we tried that, we wouldn't be able to stay long enough to see it through. The ship's not going to wait that long."

[makeherblue]

He shouldn't be surprised.

After all, the Doctor had a rather exciting lifestyle and that tended to mean aside from occasionally getting chased, shot at, and then chased some more for good measure, you also happened to get knocked out every now and then.

But it was always still surprising to jerk awake and realize oh, you were tied up all over again and at least this time the ropes weren't chafing like the last time with Mother Reda. They were, however, distractingly glowy, the Doctor fidgeting where he'd been lying with a grunt as he strained his head to get a better look around, licking his chapped lips. Ah. Underground hideaway, guns pointed at them, their captor scowling at them (did they always have to scowl? Maybe it was simply one of those Things one had to do on guard duty), and the Doctor wasn't liking how twitchy this fella was. Twitchy meant twitchy trigger finger. The Doctor kept still, presenting himself as a reasonable man who didn't really need to get shot for no reason at all

[things_go_boom]

At the Doctor's last comment, Lash couldn't help but twitch a bit, knowing full well that the timelord would have found the place rather ransacked and devoid of food. That quickly passed as she returned to her first impression upon waking up here after initial confusion of how the heck she had even ended up in this situation; anger.

Lash had never been tied up before, and this was made worse but not knowing how they had done it in the first place. Her! Black Hole's Wunderkind! Tied up like an amateur. She hated being helpless and loathed that feeling with every fiber of her being. Lash kept trying to subtly get out of her bounds when Guy wasn't looking at her, and when he did, she looked like she'd try strangle him if she got the chance. You've had others pretend to be on your side and screw you before? Well if you tied them all up like this, no wonder they betrayed you, you dumb oaf!Still, it was with a surprisingly amount of restraint when she spoke, knowing full well that there there only seemed to be a group of four of them here

[i_am_the_bafo]

He was the strongest creature in the cosmos! The badass freaking Overlord! Escaping from these pathetic restraints would be nothing!

...if he had arms, damn it.

Well, they'd blocked his ability to Invite, which wasn't surprising, but they couldn't block his DEF stat from being awesome, so he wasn't particularly concerned.

"Huh, and here you all thought I was gonna be undiplomatic and cause an incident," he said to his colleagues.

To the guy who had the general opinion he was calling the shots, Zetta continued, "The name's Zetta. I'm the most badass freakin' Overlord in the cosmos. I'm going to be honest here. I am slightly less inclined to friendliness with you guys than I was before you kidnapped me. Out of curiosity, how did we end up being your top choices to sack-and-grab, and not the guys with the dollar coins in their foreheads who are probably the most likely to be on your side sight unseen

[galilee_npcs]

Guy didn't lower the gun one centimeter, eyes narrowing.

"Your people. Who do you count as your people, Lt. Commander? You have people on your ship that are clones. You brought some of them here, and allowed them to be branded." He knew the truth, actually, that the branding had been unexpected by the entire group and not very well received, but he wanted to test their reactions to the accusation.

"We're not here to talk about Davin or cake, and I don't give two shits about how 'badass' you claim to be. The others are alive. All of them. And as for why we grabbed you, you're the influential ones. You should thank us for that, by the way." He rolled one shoulder, almost casually. "You'd be dead otherwise."

"Someone blew up the hotel you were staying in. Negotiations with the government not going so well?"

[goddamnwingman]

Getting angry wasn't going to help. Dick had his training to fall back on in that respect, at least.

"I didn't allow my crew mates to be branded," Dick said, narrowing his eyes slightly and unable to quite keep a growl out of it. "They were pulled aside, the same as other members of the crew at the same time. It didn't occur to me that any group was different from the others.

"It probably should have. But it didn't click until we learned more about this planet and the government."

Then the rest of it sunk in and Dick stared before his brain kicked in. "What's the casualty report like? Are our people safe? What of the others? The staff and other guests?" Another moment, then, "And how can we be certain that you weren't behind it? You talk about not trusting us, but you've not exactly given us reason to either trust or believe you, either."

Camille asked me for us to skip her for this turn

[things_go_boom]

Lash also had her training to fall back on, but HA HA HA keeping her cool wasn't how she usually reacted. Still she was marvelously calm (were you taking notes about her behavior, Dick), grating her teeth and looking more like an angry, wild animal that was all bark and no bite. When she spokes it was polite, well thought out and-

"Hey, HEY! News check for you, moron." Okay, none of those things, really. It hadn't taken too long for her to throw all her interrogation training out of the window, and just flare up at his words. "We actually asked what to expect before we went down on the planet and the details were kept vague to us as much as possible. They distracted us while they did the branding. What, did you honestly really think we'd be the type to waltz over here and let some of our crew be pissed off for no reason? Yeah if you thought that, you're just as stupid as you look. And I sure as hell am not going to thank someone like you for tying me up and hoping we'd be happy to join your cause, idiot. And one more thing-" she took

[i_am_the_bafo]

Zetta will just let Lash's venom hang there for a moment.

While he appreciated it.

"I'd like to state for the record that I didn't blow up a damn thing, and I'd like my freaking medal now," he said for general consumption. "Look, if you think this is the best way to win us 'influential' people over to the cause, you might want to, oh, I don't know, think? You're not preventing us from betraying you! You're just making it more likely to happen later! Our damn group spent I don't know HOW long yelling about people getting kidnapped and branded against their will, and now you think kidnapping MORE of us is somehow going to inspire us to put aside our differences of opinion and unite behind your glorious freaking banner of revolution?!"

Despite being restrained, the book could get amazingly animated while ranting.

"Either you extend some trust or you don't. Whether you do or you don't, you're wasting our time and yours with this whole Master Villain I Have You Now My Pretties routine."

[galilee_npcs]

A young man walked into the room. He had a scar and a scowl on his face.

Silently, he walked over, deftly removed the gun from Guy's hands, careful to point the muzzle away from the group as he did it in case he accidentally let off a shot, then proceeded to slap Guy upside the head.

"You! Are! An imbecile!"

Either this anger of his was real or he deserved an Oscar.

"Can you fire someone from a resistance? Is that allowed? Because if so, it's an option I'd like to explore. What were you thinking? I explained how our guests were to be treated, and I trusted you to handle this with some--some moderation for once!"

[galilee_npcs]

"What would we have to gain by killing any of you? By blowing up a hotel? Nothing. We-"

Guy was stopped by Moses grabbing his gun and slapping him. He rounded on the man immediately. "What the hell are you doing, Moses? You know what happened last time we were so trusting. You remember the ones that got killed. I'm not about to let that happen again."

[galilee_npcs]

"You're also not going to get them to listen to a word we say. And look at them. Look at who we're dealing with here, with these people. Superboy, Fate T. Harlaown, Gaignun Kukai Jr.--from classic clone media--Nightwing, even Power Rangers. They say anything's possible with the Bleed, that everything's real somewhere, and here some of them are in the flesh. Real. Real people. People that might help us or at least not harm us if we just talk to them."

[galilee_npcs]

Guy crossed his arms over his chest, "Might. We don't know for sure, and we can talk to them just fine like this. If they're really willing to even consider helping us, they should understand the safety precautions we have to take."

[galilee_npcs]

"Right, except for that part where all anyone understands when they're being held at gunpoint is that they might get shot."

[galilee_npcs]

Guy opened his mouth as if he was about to continue his argument, but then he closed it, and scowled. Moses had him there.

The expression on his face was a strange one. There was anger, yes, but a bit of sadness, and frustration. It was obvious from his bitter tone, when he did speak, that arguments were a very common thing between them.

"Alright, fine, we'll do it your way. I sure as hell hope you're right about them."