Powder Miner

Navin watches slightly bemused as the young boy speaks enthusiastically and gesticulates wildly; when Laver falls to the ground and sends sand everywhere, a charmed Navin allows himself a smile and extends a jumpsuited arm to offer to help him up. "Well, Laver, my name's Navin, and it's nice to meet you. Saving worlds from eldritch terrors certainly sounds within my duties as a defender, so I suppose it's a good thing that I ended up here." Navin turns to Masaru as the man talks, casually noting his giant sword but evidently not finding it to be that out of the ordinary. "Ahhhh, I see. Well, it really is a good thing that I appeared here however I did, then, because I'll do my utmost to be of aid in taking these world-crossing creatures down." Once Laver gets up, Navin strides over to Masaru and shakes his hand modestly, before placing his hands together and bowing slightly. "My name is Navin Gopinath Mhasalkar, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance as well. Would I be correct in understanding, then, that the people who know exactly what's going on aren't here at the moment?"

A Different Dimension Altogether A brown-skinned man sat inside the International Union of Heroes building, wiping at his face and curly hair with a towel another hero had generously given him to clean up the sweat with. The Flame of Maharashtra as the media called him, or Navin Gopinath Mhasalkar as he called himself, was awaiting a debriefing and reflecting upon the fight he and a couple of other Indian heroes had just had with a monster terrorizing Mumbai. The being had been a ten-foot-tall humanoid covered in insect-like carapace plates... but that sort of monster wasn't uncommon these days, so Navin didn't really think it was the appearance that matted. What mattered was that this monster had been quite the tough one, to use a bit of understatement. Navin was fairly proficient at breaking through armor, given his history with heavily armored aliens, but this thing had been tough, and it had taken Navin's strongest explosion punch and fellow hero Captain Chaudhri's nailing that same spot with a thrown car to bring it down. Navin finished wiping the sweat off of his head, and placed the towel down on a nearby table, sitting a bit straighter in his chair. He supposed he was lucky that it had decided to show up in Mumbai -- showing up in his home state, in a place that was familiar territory and where he had compatriots he knew how to fight with, meant that the fight hadn't had any casualties. Navin recognized that it could have. The heroes of the world had grown pretty adept at teaming up and fighting together, but danger was always present and the International Union of Heroes had had to invest quite a bit of money into medical facilities. Navin considered himself a defender and had dealt with far, far worse conditions in the past, so such a dangerous occupation as being a superhero didn't terribly frighten the man, but he was thankful for the home field advantage nonetheless. He didn't think it would last. Navin was one of the more active heroes in the IUH, and he often found himself careening around the world in some IUH squad or another to fight whatever crisis arose, and he knew that it probably wouldn't be long before another threat drew him out of Maharashtra to yet another faraway place-- Castle: Entrance Hall Quite suddenly, yet another newcomer popped into place in the entrance hall of the castle the Trespasser-fighters had commandeered as their mobile base. He was a (somewhat sweaty) brown-skinned man with medium-length, curly hair, wearing a white jumpsuit with equally white armored plates -- but with thick streaks of saffron-color making their occasional way across the outfit, as well as a fist-sized stylized purple flower printed over his right breast. Oh, and he was also in a sitting position, finding himself suddenly staggering and catching himself with a hand to the ground in order not to fall over on his rear end. Pulling himself to a proper standing position, the man looked around at the stone walls, blinked, looked at the eclectic variety of people surrounding him, blinked again, and then quietly and questioningly said something in a foreign language that wouldn't be understood unless someone in the entry hall actually happened to understand Marathi. He took a second look at the people around him, noting the variety and that they were likely not Indian, and spoke again in English, speaking in a voice with a gentle, if confused, tone and modest volume. "Ah, my apologies, I'm likely not in Maharashtra anymore... or perhaps India, for that matter. So... this is different." He gestured at the castle walls around him and the world outside the entryway. "I closed my eyes for a few moments, and suddenly I have found myself somewhere completely other than where I had been. This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened to me -- but I don't suppose any of you are in the same suddenly displaced situation? And would any of you by chance know where we are?"

LOTUS chimes in. "Yeeeah, gonna need to know who you are, like we said. Base caution here." Isobel moves gently over to Symmetra's cell, walks up to the bars, and taps the symbol on her communicator to show it off to the Indian woman: the Overwatch logo. "...hey. We came to help."

When the wind blows through the shaft, Isobel lets out a surprised squeak, instinctively crossing her arms over her chest before realizing that she isn't gonna warm herself up much over her apron, so she slips her arms under her apron, walking with her arms huddled to herself. LOTUS' reaction is a lot more, uh, emphatic. "What the FUCK was that?! I'm already tired of this extrasensory bullshit. When we find whoever the wise guy is who's doing this, I hope we kick his ass."

Isobel smiles gratefully at the Vishkar guards before she leaves the barracks; that had gone even more well than she could have possibly envisioned. She didn't have to kill anyone. Once she left with Wyvis, she spoke to LOTUS, obviously feeling smug. "That's what I thought I was doing. I knew there was no way all these guys deserved to get blown up like that..." "Yeah, yeah... don't get counting on luck like that. It gets people killed." Though this dampens her enthusiasm just a little, Isobel is still incredibly happy that things turned out as well as they did, and she marches proudly towards the elevator with Wyvis.

"Well," LOTUS stated, audible only to those in the radio channel, "Now would be the time to set that bomb." Isobel looked at the sleeping guards, and as she watched them snore, the full reality of what the plan called for them to do hit her. Oh God... that would kill all these guards. So many people, and they would just... Isobel barely avoided a gasp as she processed this. She had never killed anyone -- Isobel was not a violent person, and she didn't like death... especially because the people here wouldn't just be able to get clones. That'd be it. Isobel couldn't do that to a bunch of people who probably didn't deserve it, and she didn't think Sachi was the type to either. So Isobel took to action as quietly yet as resolutely as she could, and she looked around for handcuffs -- if she found them, she would start clipping them around the guards' wrists. With a slightly weary voice, LOTUS spoke over the radio again. "And what do you think you're doing, Isobel? This is much riskier than just letting Sachi plant the bomb."

Isobel gave Sachi a nervous smile, and flashed a thumbsup, if a little bit of a weak one. "Don't worry about me, alright? I'm not hurt. And LOTUS isn't either, being a pAI and all." LOTUS evidently didn't feel the need to reply, continuing to scan the hallway as they moved, the little eyedots on his screen shifting this way and that to indicate that. Still, the rest of the emoticon on the screen was a tight frown -- the mission had gone thoroughly out of the bounds of initial intel, and though that was to be expected, the degree it had gone out of said bounds was irksome at best and catastrophic at worst. He knew that they were being played with -- and worried that if whatever was doing so got serious, then survival would be a difficult prospect.

Isobel lands more gracefully than Wyvis does, considering that she was already swinging for the wall -- that just puts her feet on the ground, now, though she does flail a little bit. She lets out a breath before responding quietly to Wyvis: "Well, I guess there is that..." Isobel begins to walk behind Wyvis, though perhaps more warily than the mage, as she walks looking around nervously and getting ready to dodge anything that might come her way. LOTUS, meanwhile, does his usual thing and communicates over the radio. "Alright, well, there's no other way to put this other than that my team just had gravity shift on us. Have the other teams experienced the same thing, or is it just us? This essentially confirms the presence of magic, and therefore an utterly unknown variable, too. Be careful."

"Right! Well, good thing I've got this thing then!" Isobel taps the orcish contraption on her wrist twice before trailing off, then walking into the shaft and aiming the Golden Chaingun at a point higher up in the shaft, allowing the point to sink into the wall and then for the chain to pull her up. "Alright, status report from the lower team. We've secured the data with no further complications, and are now heading upwards through the elevator shaft."

While Isobel busies herself with the flash drive, LOTUS responds to the slimegirl, and everyone else on the team's radio. "I do not recommend attempting to hit the labs. I'm not quite sure what's going on, but something is playing with us here -- we entered the basement and, and this is a serious report, music started playing before a boulder came rolling down on us. Things are getting unpredictable, so I do not recommend drawing attention while solo. I would recommend waiting for the roof team to enter the building and joining them, but they haven't reported yet so I couldn't tell you what that wait would be." Something occurs to Isobel. "Hey... while I work on this, can you two check for alternate exits? That, uh, boulder blocked the staircase off and all."

Isobel slips her hand downwards, pulling her sleeve back and untying the bandanna she had tied over the device on her wrist -- uncovered from its hiding place was the Golden Chaingun Mar had given to her, a relatively thin item of metal and golden stone encircling her wrist that would allow her to shoot out chains of mana. "Haha, right, well, here goes then!" And she follows Sachi right on down. Isobel pulls herself off of the ground, sweating a bit and with a baffled expression. The first words out of the normally quiet botanist's mouth are "What the hell was that?! There was -- there was music playing! Someone is messing with us!" LOTUS seems to share similar sentiments -- he's displaying an angry face but with multiple question marks also on his display. "Ugh... well... let's hope this isn't trapped too." And Isobel moves to plug the flash drive into the USB ports.

LOTUS speaks up pretty quickly after he cracks the lock. "Right. Well, Sachi, you should go first, I think. I can't guarantee this is going to go quietly, but we need to get this part of the mission done and you are the one most suited to take point."

Isobel stares at the note for a moment, with an "O-oh. Well... at least we don't need to worry about being spotted by cameras, guys, so we don't need to put up the act. But... Uh, hey, LOTUS, why don't you just tell everyone." LOTUS' screen pops an expression up now that the cameras are confirmed not to be present, one with a raised eyebrow. "Well, that's fantastic." The Personal AI speaks into the Overwatch radio channel. "Well, two things. First of all, change of plans, the bottom floor team is going to try to make its way into the basement; secondly, there's a chance that our initial mission parameters have gone beyond fucky here. The cameras are disabled and there's a post-it note suggesting that we check if the "Deep Ones" have chewed through the cables. Either there's some sort of Vishkar joker, or we do have some genuinely eldritch problems on our hands. My personal experience and what Isobel and I saw and smelled at the top of the tower would provide some credence to the possibility of the latter." And off the radio: "Come on, let's look for the basement. It's a primary objective." "Right..." Isobel begins to look for a way down.

Struck with the empty, utterly unguarded lobby, LOTUS (with his screen's facial expression blank so he just looks like some sort of nondescript tablet) begins to speak on the radio -- and since he doesn't need to directly speak to do so, this makes no noise outside of the Overwatch team's radio channel. "Teams, if you are able to do so, I want you to give me a status report. I'll give the bottom floor team's status... we've gone in unmolested, but there's absolutely noone here. This would make for an ideal situation, but I am not entirely trustful of it. Wyvis, I want you to pretend to be giving Sachi, in her guise as the delivery girl, a hard time for a moment in case we're being surveilled; the lack of other guards might mean we're out of place may mean we're doomed to break our cover anyway but I want to at least see if we can't wait here for a little bit for Kagari to do her thing. Isobel, take us around the room to check for cameras." Nervously, Isobel does exactly that, checking the room over for cameras while trying her best to seem like she's just idly pacing.

Sheet for my secondary character:

"There's a server farm back in my dimension that provides processing power and temporary housing for my consciousness and those of 30 other AIs, but I've not managed to successfully link to it ever since I ended up getting teleported out of it. At the moment, I'm entirely in this chassis. That's 26th century technology for you." "Sometimes I feel a little bit like a cavewoman in comparison with my job, hahaha. But we've figured out plants that grow in a day, so I guess botany is pretty advanced in the 2550s too!"

"Alright. Well, Friedhold, I like certain elements of the plan, but there are a couple of adjustments needed because you're missing a couple of the objectives here. First off, there's a server farm in the basement that we need to raid to prove that Vishkar's been up to bad things -- we were given a flash drive to get into their systems, and we could otherwise try to grab the CEO from her office on the top floor. Secondly, and less importantly in this context, they've got weapons research going on on the thirtieth floor, and if the top team manages to loot that it would be good news for us. I'm not sure Kagari's abilities would be best utilized by your plan, especially given these objectives. She can infiltrate through the water system, and this is an absolutely invaluable advantage that we cannot afford to waste. It's my opinion that we should just send Isobel and I and Wyvis in in uniform, and have them wait for the delivery-person. Then the delivery-person should come in. Sachi, I want you to be our delivery girl here, because I don't think either Wyvis or me and Isobel are particularly tough, and when things inevitably go bad I want someone who's capable of taking a hit there to help our survivability. Now, Kagari, you've got a very important part in what I've got planned. While Isobel, Wyvis, and Sachi stall in the lobby, I want you to head through the pipes into the basement (carrying an ID as you move if you can) and see if you can get into the system, preferably with Genji's aid in getting through unscathed or in getting in if there aren't any opportunities. I'm aware that the aid he can provide us is limited, but that is an absolutely vital part of the plan. If this proves impossible, tell us over the radio and the three of us in the lobby will move to support -- this might put the bomb plan by the wayside, but getting that evidence fast is more important. However, if things go well or at least passably, the three of us will then head up to the barracks and perform the bomb delivery part of the plan as Friedhold specified, assuming we have a bomb that can do so. After the basement operation completes, Kagari, I want you to continue to use the pipes to bounce between teams and provide aid as needed. The bottom team will do their best to move up the tower towards the thirteenth floor with minimal combat at this point, and we'll try to figure out a way in. Nyahiro, Bridgett, Venus, Friedhold, Hikari, you're going to be part of the top team. I mostly agree with Friedhold for this part of the plan, but I'm going to elaborate a bit: you are all more or less the shock team. Since you don't have IDs and all that, you are going to be operating while the alarm has gone off, which more or less means I expect you to tear shit up and fight people, and since you have more people it would be preferable if you could keep some of the heat off of my team. You should in fact work with Ana to hijack a helicopter, and that helicopter should in fact be used to drop you off. When you do this depends on how things go in the basement. If things go well, I want you to come in just before the bomb goes off and things go into chaos. If the alarm goes off I want you to drop in as soon as you can after the alarm goes off. Now, the CEO's office is at the roof, so that'll be your initial strike zone; if you can, secure the CEO and give her to Ana, who will then get the helicopter off the roof and, if possible, provide some sniper support. Genji and Ana, I expect your roles to be a bit more organic and probably a bit more off the cuff; I don't feel I can effectively plan your actions beyond what we need done initially, though it's likely Genji will be of more aid to the bottom team and Ana to the top team. Anyway, once the CEO is secured or isn't secured, fight your way down to floor 30 and loot the weapons; if you need help, Kagari can be sent up to give you a bit more muscle. Once you've got some extra bang, head down to the thirteenth floor and we'll get Symmetra out. Now, exiting is something I don't feel I can plan yet; we'll have to see how things go. I don't trust the idea of an air extraction, because I know that the helicopter the top team will be stealing is not their only air asset, but we're going to have to see then. The whole team will be together at that point, anyway, so we should be able to exert enough force to get out, especially if Genji and Ana can provide support at that point in time."

--nother duplicate--

The woman hose pocket the AI device is resting in speaks up nervously. "Uh... is your arm disappearing there? Or... maybe turning invisible?"

"Because that's a one way ticket to Shitstorm Street. Assuming we take care of all the helicopters, we'd still have to deal with people shooting at us as we scaled, and we are talking about a large building -- climbing all of us up would be difficult. If we did break in, it wouldn't be a simple matter -- such an overt attack in a single area would ensure we'd have to fight off a sea of Vishkar security, and I can't be confident that we would pull that off, especially with so many variables unknown. Plus they've specifically made the prison area hard to get into -- there is nothing on the blueprints. We wouldn't be able to just charge in, so we'd probably get cut down searching for an in. That wouldn't work on multiple levels."

There's a long, modulating sigh from the portable AI device in his dry, electronic voice. "Well, you wouldn't be in here talking calmly if you weren't supposed to be, probably, so I guess that does make sense. The little girl too? She's even younger than that one demon child, I honestly have to wonder what whatever multiversal force that grabbed us was thinking. As for your suggestions; if we have laxatives that would be a good suggestion, and also a very funny one, but if we don't it is something of a moot point. As for the second suggestion, that would be extremely helpful but the problem we run into here is that the Vishkar building is extremely variable by nature; they can and do reshape the building with hard light during the day, and when I went over what we have of the building data I did not see one -- we can't effectively plan out anything of that sort. I'd prefer to set up a plan so that we never have to interact with the helicopters at all. Does anyone else have information about getting into the building? I've got methods to sneak four of us in, but with the information I have more is going to be harder. Especially the little girl."

Isobel kind of just stares, with a muttered "U-uh..." LOTUS is far more verbose. "Alright, I know that this whole team is, uh, "rag-tag" to begin with, but when you stride into the sensitive strategy meeting looking slightly like a scientist hobo and with a little girl, I'm going to have questions. Mind introducing yourself? And, uh, Genji, this guy is supposed to be here, right?"

"Hmm... I really do not like the idea of us filtering in piecemeal, but I'm starting to get an idea of how to do so -- specifically by getting the three of us with uniforms in, stealing Vishkar IDs and if we can another couple uniforms, and then having a "delivery guy" sneak in and get changed, at least for the first four. The more information I have to work with, the better, though. I would very much appreciate it if you all would share everything that you've learned. Kagari, a question; you said that you have the ability to get in through the water system. Do you have the ability to freely move around in the pipes? That could be useful for scouting, perhaps, or maybe couriering especially small items should we find the need."

"...hmm. Well, if you take magic that's eldritch bullshit enough where I'm from, you can achieve just about anything with it. But magic in general is very rare where I come from, especially magic that crazy, so I think I would have a hard time believing that Vishkar here somehow got into contact with whatever terrifying mystery beings use that kind of magic."

"Oh, I'm going to be one of the infiltrators...? Well, haha, I guess I'll have to not let you all down! Um, as for security, I didn't see any when I was there, I think they didn't want to attract attention to it." "I would still greatly recommend being cautious with it, of course. They do have their aerial patrols, and I would be unsurprised if they have at least some form of surveillance in the area. Still, putting sleeping substance in the water, if you can get enough of it, would at the very least be an excellent disruptor."