Powder Miner

"Wh-whuh--" Getting jumped around in time and seeing... herself... work was super weird, and frankly enough to dizzy Satomi more than a little, but it was so useful that the young samurai didn't even stand around and gawk, she just got to disassembling. A LOT of disassembling. Satomi uses Structural Disassembly four more times, twice on the Western Boats and twice on the Eastern Boats.

Nader was mostly quiet during the arguing around Leo and the fight between Aquila and Sha'tith -- though he personally disapproved of the dawdling, he could be using the time to reflect on the last battle. And that's what he did, finishing trains of thought that he'd had yesterday. The fact of the matter was that that battle with the insane Australians had been the first time Nader had had to really move and fight in that armor since he had first made it back in 1935. The experience shambling along yesterday had given him idea of how to move in the armor far more efficiently, and that in and of itself paid several dividends. Not only would, with the rust knocked off, his movements be quicker and more precise, but he could better position himself against incoming attacks, he could better punch if he really needed to, and he would probably even be able to make a wider spray when firing a burst of his machine gun. Less unwieldiness, it seemed, was quite useful. Nader spends 8 Merit, 6 on raising his RES by 1 point and DEX by 2 points, 1 on upgrading the M3 Sorraia, and 1 on upgrading Heavy Metal Blow!

Navin Mhasalkar The very sudden appearance of someone right next to him initially gets a sharply surprised look from Navin, but he calms down when he sees that it's just one of the others, and one of the more familiar ones, at that. "Hello, miss Powderbelle. Come to check in, I see. I... do believe that things went well. I did have some difficulty at certain points (though I do not believe I will be sharing the specifics), but miss Saigai said that I seemed to have helped in some way, and I do have to thank you for the advice to actually go and apologize to her. It was... a very meaningful conversation. As to your other question, uh..." Empi had gone and twisted that word to the point that Navin actually hadn't understood her. "...I am honestly rather confused by what you are trying to ask." Isobel Low Isobel winced when she got the warning message from LOTUS, but spoke to Sachi in as comforting a tone as she could manage anyway. "I'll listen, don't worry about that -- I wasn't known back home for ignoring people, and I'm not planning on starting now. That said, and I apologize for this, you may have to hurry. It sounds like preparations are about to start for the next battles."

LOTUS "While I had more meant that I wanted brief information about the members of the group that you two arrived with, so that the other squad leaders and I know precisely how to assign you to battles, that is useful information too. Now, given the amount of time that we've spent here... I think I am going to call the other squad leaders over so that we can start parceling up the teams. If you could provide some information on what the other new arrivals can do, that would be fantastic, but otherwise I suppose that I can find a way around it. Also, hmm, never did find a way to get connected to the rest of the uplink. Going to need to try a bit more after these next battles, or it might start to get bad for me." LOTUS sent a radio message out to Lexiel, Ghost, and Isobel: <"If you're talking with anyone, you will need to start to wrap it up. We're going to want to begin to get our teams ready for the next round of battles -- judging by the previous scrying time, I predict that we will want to be ready soon. Isobel, you have a little longer since I don't quite need you to provide leadership here, but I will still want you to be back before we separate off into our squads, for obvious reasons."> Perlita Diaz "Well, then this whole thing went and separated us all... I'd be crushed if not for the fact that at least one of my friends also got brought with me... though... I guess the rest of you haven't been so lucky, sorry."

At first, Satomi was rather significantly distracted by the fact that the bay has turned a blinding gold color, which caused her to shout a "Ah! What?! Kami!" and squint, her already-poor eyesight blurry for a moment until she stopped being dazzled by the sudden burst of goldness and light. "Bah... nothing to do but keep working... but... seriously... what?" Using the one of the last remaining floating boats, Satomi got herself (and all of the metal plates she had got from the disassembly, piled up in the back) over to another cluster of boats, and using her sword and some of the pieces of salvage and tools left behind, Satomi began to work on disassembling these boats, too. Satomi uses Structural Disassembly on the Central Boats! Loadout:

Nader had slept in his armor, and he found himself with little aches and pains because of it -- but not enough to seriously slow him down, especially considering the magnitude of the task that had been laid in front of him. Talon intended to destroy these peoples' home for no good reason? Well, then they would benefit from having someone there to blow Talon's heads off when they came up to do so. "I'm not very fast, so I don't know that it would be a good idea for me to try to launch an outside attack. But if you can find me an area on the pipeline to defend, I should be able to do so very well. Besides, I can sympathize with defending one's home. Put me down for the pipeline battle."

Satomi sighed kind of glumly, and then nodded. Well, unless someone died she supposed she hadn't really failed... but she was not going to make any sort of attempt to do that again, that was for sure. "Well... I cannot let this get in the way of performing my Duty. Time to get back to work, then." Satomi made her way towards one of the boats, pulling out her wakizashi and looking at the wreckage and its weakpoints herself; the flashy strategy earlier had worked, but... maybe it was time to just buckle down and do some good old-fashioned engineering, that way she wouldn't end up maiming everyone like a fuck-up. So, she got to work manually on disassembly... Try to make the following trick: Structural Disassembly (Trick): (INT+CON)d2 damage done to an inanimate structure. Can not be used in a hostile situation. Has a chance of providing useful scrap.

All of a sudden, everything exploded. And then, before she could really process what was going on, Satomi felt a blinding pain in her stomach, tears coming to the corners of her eyes just from the sudden shock of the pain. The fact that she felt a sudden wave of nausea didn't help either, and though she managed to avoid being sick, it felt like a temporary thing. That didn't stop her from speaking when Kusuke started approaching her, though. "Th-this is my fault, rgh..." She had to pause for a moment so as not to throw up. "I... I had be--" It was at that point that Kusuke promptly warped her back in time, removing the problem of the awful gut wound altogether. Satomi took a shaky breath. "This is all my fault, I had been getting distracted earlier and I didn't really know what I was doing as much as I acted like, I-- I had just come up with some destructive calculations, and I didn't think..." Satomi won't do anything for now, while the situation settles down a bit.

Satomi clutched her notebook even tighter for a moment when Kusuke put his hand on her shoulder (something that she looked torn between throwing off and letting stay), but she didn't burst into tears or anything -- still, if Kusuke looked very closely, he could see Satomi getting a little bit misty-eyed for a few moment. "Th... thank you for apologizing, at least. I..." Satomi struggled a moment with the idea of potentially showing weakness before she continued. "I was kinda of terrified at the idea of this conversation because I didn't know if I'd get yelled at again, and I don't know what Mirri's going to do when I have it with her, but... it... it makes things a little less hard if that's one less person that hates me." "I didn't bring up suicide, though, I brought up seppuku, which is different. And I didn't really suggest that I go through with it. Even if you didn't mean it, I guess..."

Satomi wrung her hands and nodded a couple of times. Okay. Okay. She could give him the benefit of the doubt on that first part. But the second part caused her frustration to flare again, and whatever calmness she might have been gathering kind of went out the window. "I... I never said anything about anyone not being human, though! K-kami, I can barely remember the-- the exact wording, it's almost a blur, but... I never said anything about people being "soulless objects" or dehumanizing, or, or anything such as that, all I meant was that if you're not in Rokugan, you're not in the Celestial Order, and so that means that you don't reincarnate! And-- maybe-- I think that, yes, I really could be wrong about that, with everyone else saying so, now, b-but..." The emotion in her voice distinctly thickened as she spoke this next part. "Before... before yesterday, I hadn't even heard of anyone saying otherwise, when Arminius said he had taken soul pieces from someone, I, I just didn't understand. I didn't even know that people would get so angry about it, or that it would even be more than a little offensive, because I didn't even know that this was something people disagreed on! I-- I was suddenly in a world where I didn't understand anything about what anything was, or what people thought about souls and things, and what would enrage them-- and-- and I have been stumbling blindly this entire time, just trying to make sense of things one thing at a time! And I was trying to explain, but I didn't understand myself, and then suddenly I was being screamed at and then told to kill myself, and then I was being c-choked, and I was still figuring out why and-- and--" She cut off, not really being able to summon more words, but the notebook in Satomi's hands was shaking from how tightly she was gripping it.

After giving Kusuke a set of instructions that would probably last long enough for her to speak, Satomi took in a deep breath and then began to speak, in a tone that came out way more laden with yesterday's sorrow and frustration and confusion than she thought it would, thick with it. "I... how did you mean it? Because, if, if you're saying... said, I suppose, that I should join a mountain of thousands of corpses that "died for their twisted beliefs", what does that say about what you evidently think of my clan, the people who have the "twisted beliefs"? I... people in my clan, the Crab Clan, they do die, sometimes thousands in a day in the great battles, and it's just to keep the rest of the Empire alive. Twisted beliefs... kkh. If you talk about m-"mountains of corpses", then, then who am I supposed to think you want me to kill myself and join?"

Satomi approached Kusuke hesitantly, the look on her face showcasing a mixture of anxiety and frustration at having to work with him and having to hope he didn't snap at her again the day after... all of what had happened yesterday had happened, but to be frank that ability of his was just far too useful to pass up for deconstruction like this, especially with that new destructive move of his, even if she would have to hope that shrapnel didn't mess her up too badly. "Um... look. Your ability... I think it might work well if I provided some guidance on where it could be best used, given my knowledge. So, even if... yesterday... I think that we should... cooperate, on this." She got a little bit halting and sullen there, at the end, but still, she stood there waiting for a response, fidgeting. Satomi uses Helping Hand: Structural Deconstruction, specifying Kusuke, and the North Boats if a target must be specified. Loadout:

While at the boat graveyard and waiting for the others (and really uncomfortably glancing at Kusuke every now and then when she didn't think he was looking), Satomi had decided to prepare for the work there herself, glancing at the boats in front of her and taking out her notebook. While she had planned to start taking notes on the composition and structure of the boats, from what she had seen... she soon found herself looking at the notes she had written on Dragon's dragon while barely able to stay awake, and considering the blurry memories of what Dragon was using last night... the mechanisms that clearly must have went into its movement, the wings of fire, they were fascinating and she found herself trying hard to remember what-- Oh, uh, yeah, she was doing something. Shaking her head to clear herself out of her fascination for dragon's machine (and not entirely succeeding, whoops), Satomi scrawled down a general set of ideas on what to do to disassemble the boats more effectively, aaaaand then even merely a few of minutes after finishing (and then glancing uncomfortably at Kusuke again a couple of times) she looked down at her notes and only half remembered her thought process. Uh oh. (Level 1) (Trick) (Consumable) Helping Hand: "Structural Deconstruction": The user has come up with a strategy that they feel... uhh... yeah, allies can... yeah. Sure. (Level 1) An unknown but effective effect occurs when used against constructs with nearby allies. Specify an ally when using.

Navin sat there for a while as Mitsurugi finished crying her eyes out, and then as she turned to him and spoke. He looked at her tear-reddened eyes and shifted a little nervously when she locked gazes with him, but her words actually did help reassure him that apparently he had helped, which was a relief -- the entire encounter had been something of a difficult experience, but if he had done right by the unfortunate goddess then, well, the difficulties were worth it. "Ah, it is fine, Miss Saigai. I am... satisfied to be of help." Wording wasn't always his strong suit in English, but that was probably fine. Still, Mitsurugi was heading over to another portion of the basement to try to compose herself for the rest of the battle, and Navin took that as his cue to leave -- he doubted that his presence would be particularly copacetic to her getting into emotional shape to be fighting. So, he stepped out the doorway, and left the basement, before leaving the barracks totally... then just kind of hovering outside, thinking about the whole encounter.

"If you're making gas attacks, even if it's for a good cause or whatever, I'm going to be blunt with you, that's a chemical weapon. But that said, I don't want anyone putting small machines into my bloodstream, no matter who they are. I'm not even taking my armor off thanks to my constant and rampant paranoia, as you can see, so why in the world would I let people inject things into me?" Nader's tone shifted from wary to weary towards the second half of that, and then he shrugged, little clanking sounds sounding out as he did. "But, yes, the JDJ does sound like a special kind of wonderful. I wonder if I could, given the chance to experiment with metallurgy, and probably given a lot of resources, come up with a lighter version... well, probably not meaningfully lighter. .95 cal is, well, a lot."

Nader looks in Contagion's direction, but once again the mask makes any pointed look he could have been giving him rather invisible. "I'm not particularly fond of the idea of a man who makes chemical weapons putting a bunch of whatever a nanobot is into my bloodstream, if I'm going to be frank here. I want my bloodstream left alone, thank you very much, it's my bloodstream."

LOTUS The expression on LOTUS' screen turns into a little ":/" at Lucky's rant, and didn't go away with Press' explanation. "Well... looks like I'm going to have to wait for you to experience it first-hand at this rate. More. Because you already saw Lexiel at the least. Well, I can use you anyway, I suppose. Can you tell me what the specialties of the people on your little team are? I could use some information about the new arrivals to make the process of assigning the next teams a lot better -- and considering how close things got, we need what we can get in terms of precision." Perlita Diaz "Okayyy, uh, that's kind of a long story. So, like... you're not born with them. All of the group in the world Gabriel and I came from before, you know... this whole stuff happened..." Perlita gestured around her at the fort and the others of the smaller multiversal team that she could see, with a forming frown, "...except for our leader got it because we were getting involved in some, like... it's weird, but stuff from what might be aliens, in Roswell no less, who are messing with humanity in ways that we haven't really figured out except that it's been making people more hostile and xenophobic, and-- oohhh, gosh, this is hard to explain on even the surface level. But basically they have these, like, little secret areas they make and if you have a Persona or some sort of criteria we don't know and you get caught up in it, you can enter these little places... except they're full of these murderous things called Shadows that you kinda have to have a Persona to fight. Basically, though, most of the people in the group (uh, that's not the little multiverse group we're in now, but the one from my and Gabe's world) got kinda caught up at some point, but got rescued, and when we made the leap of faith to trust the group and, uh, lock hands and everything, we got our Personas awakened."

Nadine's mention of this apparent .95 caliber gun got Nader to suddenly throw his head back (at least as far as he could in the armor, which was in all fairness most of his range of motion thanks to his revisions) and begin to laugh raucously. "No, you are not serious, point ninety five caliber? That's wonderful. I mean, I can only imagine what unholy monstrous masterpiece could possibly fire .95. That's amazing! It would be impossible to lift and would probably break through my rail on firing, but it sounds like something I would love to get my hands on for no other reason than to get my hands on it."

Navin Mhasalkar Perhaps predictably, Navin was a little stunned once the metaphorical floodgates and Mitsurugi just began to cry and cry and cry. He had, he found, been totally unprepared for this -- the goddess had been crying earlier, but that was nothing compared to how the woman was completely breaking down now. In fact, Navin was once again panicking internally (and failing to keep this entirely off of his expression): he had been trying to make things better, but something about his hand on her shoulder or something he'd said seemed to have made things a lot worse, to make her like this. However, despite looking somewhat like a deer in the headlights, Navin didn't end up removing his hand from her shoulder, and he didn't end up saying anything for the minutes where Mitsurugi just let everything out, her messy sobs being the only sound in the room. When she spoke again, Navin's initial waver revealed that he was still a little bit shaken by the effect he seemed to have had on her, but nonetheless his words were genuine: "You... you do not need to apologize for having difficulty, not with that." Isobel Low At this time, the botanist entered the barracks, pulling Sachi behind her as she guided the younger (but not actually shorter) girl into the building. Isobel brought Sachi to a corner of the barracks that looked out of the way (specifically, a smaller training room of some variety that didn't appear to have had much use), figuring that in her current condition someone just barging in would probably make things a lot worse. She closed the door (which this room actually appeared to have, at least a thin sliding one) behind them, and then she sat down on the ground, expecting Sachi to join her. "...here, you needed someone to talk to? I'm here."

Satomi woke up and rubbed at her eyes -- as tired and loopy as she had gotten there, she had slept incredibly heavily, even if it had ended up being on the floor shortly after she'd entered the warehouse. There was a part of her a little annoyed at the thought of sleeping on her kimono on the floor, but she wasn't a little prissy Crane so she wouldn't get too put out about it. Crab had to make do all the time in pursuit of Duty, after all. Thinking too closely about bushido got her thinking about some of the events of yesterday, causing a frown to flicker across her expression, but she distracted herself by stepping outside and ending up starting a little as she saw the scorch marks. "Really? We got attacked?!" Satomi pursed her lips, a look of very real frustration and annoyance crossing her face this time. "How could they just do that to this building? Ohhh... if we have the time I have to repair it later. That's awful." She let out a little huffy sigh. "Still, I do have a different duty to do for now, I suppose. This boat graveyard... just let me get my hands on it, and I'll see what I can do!" And therefore she dashed off to the boat graveyard. Satomi will enter the encounter.

Nader heard Contagion speak about nanobot substances and bloodstreams, and he muttered to himself: "I should really make a gas mask sometime." But he got over himself quickly enough to respond to Nadine: "I don't usually do much with anything smaller than a rifle, considering my work on the Rabid Tiger Armor, but if I had to use a pistol, well, that sounds like the type of pistol I'd use, heh heh heh. And I actually do know metric, it's actually the official measurement system of Forenia, even if habit is still hard for me to break when it comes to that."

Dragon popped a joke of some sort, but even in her remarkably discombobulated state, Satomi knew both that she did not have the context for the joke but that she might want to pretend she did, so she let out a little titter that was... remarkably fake, fantastic. Well, maybe Satomi could just brush it off. Flipping the page on her notebook and readying her pen, Satomi asked: "Um, could you tell me where some of the shops that sell these are located? We are new to this city, after all. Uh, we meaning... you know."

Nader, still there, turns to Contagion when Contagion mentions masks -- and his reaction to it is completely inscrutable, because he is hidden behind his own mask. "They're pretty popular around here, masks, huh?" the armored man says in a somewhat jocular tone. He then turned his head towards Lucine. "And it doesn't look like you'll need those magazines, being around two gun engineers, after all. I may be from the 40s, which seems to be the past for you, but to be frank you can only take a gun so far, and I'm already accustomed to the little changes. Which, by the way, are great."

Nader's masked face turned to look at Nadine at her near collision with him (well, after he instinctively flinched, anyway). Watching her wide-eyed wonder at the collection of guns around her, Nader couldn't help but chuckle. "Now imagine being from the Second World War. This is a really interesting experience, I have to say. Almost all of the gun design is still recognizable, of course, even with guns in whatever the hell year this is. But it's the little bits that are fascinating -- not even massive changes, but they really improve the performance, and I'm practically contractually obligated to appreciate that."

Isobel Low "Alright, Sachi. Here, come on, then." Keeping her hand on Sachi's shoulder, Isobel gently leads Sachi out of the Courtyard and to the indoors areas of the fort, ushering her over to the Barracks. Perlita Diaz "Becaaaaaause, I don't want to get into this weird thing where we insist we're not as useful as each other or anything, and also if you talk about how you're not useful that's not true and that bothers me too. You well know that every member of the group contributed. Aw, now I'm gonna make myself sad. Ummm, I admit that I kinda had to do some research on her myself at first, but... OK, so I guess she kinda counts as, like... a cultural figure more than a historical one, but basically Joan Crawford was an actor famous in the 30s, and she was one of the really famous flappers, probably one of the couple most famous. Also, there's bunch of other honestly really sordid stuff that is kinda uncomfortable if I think about it too hard, but Iiii'm not gonna get into. Don't ask me what part of my personality she's supposed to represent, because honestly I don't really know myself, like... at all. I just know that my Persona is a part of me, it's kinda... well, I just knew when I got her."