TotMGV:G2: Return to Rio (Subplot)

[DragonRage]

"If you hit the barracks on the third floor first, and somehow incapacitated or trapped the guards inside, that would greatly increase their response time," Genji suggests, "Then even if you had to destroy turrets and raise alarms, you could accomplish your goals before Vishkar's forces arrived if you were disciplined and swift."

[StormLord]

"You," Friedhold looks over at Bridgett, "You said something about the helicopters having rockets right?" He then looks over at Genji and says "Do you think those rockets would be enough to take out the third floor barracks?"

[ElfCollaborator]

Sachi, for her part, is rather lost during all this.

 

She was no planner, after all. That had been her sister's job; and after her, her allies. Sachi was simply a blunt instrument to be wielded; a shield for her allies. She was rather concerned that the plan didn't involve anything familiar to her or that could play to her rather limited strengths; that is, the battlefield, or the middle of a pitched fight. Not stealth.

 

If Mio were here, she'd have chomped at the bit. This would probably have been nothing for her.

 

But she wasn't. All they had was Sachi.

Edited March 22, 2017 by ElfCollaborator

[DragonRage]

"It is possible," Genji says, "Ana is certified to fly a helicopter.  But we do not know the explosive yield of the rockets.  They might not penetrate deep enough.  Or they might cause serious structural damage to the tower.  However, if you could somehow get one of them inside the barracks and set it off, that would eliminate the guards inside while containing the blast with the barracks walls, which are thicker and tougher than most of building."

[StormLord]

Friedhold thinks for a while then ask no one in particular: "Hmm, I guess the next question is how would one go about hijacking a helicopter?"

 

([OOC] Honestly I'm more than a tad hesitant to google that one.)

[StormLord]

After thinking for a while with no response he looks back over to Genji "I believe we could sneak a bomb in if we had something we could disguise as this 'fast food' so that it doesn't have to go through the metal detector."

 

He then looks toward the center of the room and addresses everyone "This is my plan: We send in our four people in as guards, they stay in the lobby for a minute or two waiting for the 'food' to be delivered by another one of our people, then they proceed to the third floor barracks while the delivery person meets up with the rest of the group.  Once in the barracks the guard team will place the disguised bomb somewhere before continuing father up the tower and then detonating the bomb when clear.  While the first team does this the second team will be working with Ana" He gestures over to her, "to hijack a helicopter, and once we've picked up the person who made the bomb delivery we'll use the helicopter to drop most of the group off on the top of the tower.  That should only be very shortly after the bomb goes off, the two groups will make their way through the tower and meet on the thirteenth floor to rescue Symmetra.  We should either send the second group with a bomb like the first or one of the rockets to blow a hole in the outer wall of the prison block so the they can be picked up by the helicopter.  I believe that you" He points to Bridgett, "and I should stay behind with Ana, me to maintain an invisibility field, and you in case we must enter combat with the other helicopters." Friedhold takes a step back, "Any questions or suggestions?"

[Code: PIRULUK]

Kagari, having largely remained silent, spoke up now.

 

"Are we certain that explosives will be able to do damage to a building that's literally made out of light? And even if it did, wouldn't an explosion big enough to damage the building risk harm to our captured friend?"

 

She turned to the AI.

 

"As for your previous inquiry, Lotus, I can, in fact, freely move in any body of water."

[Powder Miner]

"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."

[StormLord]

"Fascinating...well I must say that your interpretation of the plan is far more detailed then mine.  Tell me AI, how large of a building does it take to house processing unit such as yours?"

[Powder Miner]

"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!"

[StormLord]

"Hmm, interesting.  Twenty-sixth century you say?  It seems I must not be the only time-traveler here."  He then stands up strait, stretches some, and says:"Now that we've got the plan sorted out I suggest that we all quickly take whatever rest or preparations needed before the mission to come." Friedhold begins to run his hand through his hair before quickly pulling it out with a disgusted look on his face.  He seemed to have gotten a slight smear of either blackish grime or old blood on his fingers.  He sighs and says quietly:"And it seems like I'm going to need yet another shower...and a haircut." He speaks louder this time, directed toward Ana and Genji:"Oh, and would either of you know of a fresh corpse or two no one would miss?  Or someone at hand who could use a few new holes, I'm not gong to be picky."

[DragonRage]

Friedhold's statements get some disturbed looks, until he explains what he's actually planning.  He is then directed to a slaughterhouse where he collects 4 Adam through the power of quantity over quality.  He is also able to clean up.  Once everything is prepared, the group gets into position as darkness falls, and begins the infiltration.

 

Team Quiet (Isobel, Wyvis, and Sachi)

The ground floor team gets in with no problems.  How?  The guards are missing for some reason...  Regardless, you have a public elevator shaft, some stairs, and a mysteriously empty lobby to work with.

 

Team Ninja (Kagari and Genji)

Kagari slips into the pipes with the flash drive, without being detected as far as she can tell.  She swims deep into the facility, heading down as far as she can manage, assuming that this will let her out close to the basement.  Unfortunately for her, as she starts to head down, she runs into what she can only assume is a security feature, if a bizarre one.  No alarms go off, and she isn't hurt in any way, but she experiences a sudden bout of disorientation that would have left her quite seasick if she had internal organs.  Unable to figure out which way is 'down', Kagari follows the strongest currents, for lack of a better idea, and comes out of a sink in some kind of chemistry lab.  She doesn't know exactly what floor she's on, but the view out the windows suggests she's closer to the top than the bottom.

 

Elsewhere in the tower, a couple guards mysteriously fall off a balcony for no discernible reason.

 

Team Loud (Friedhold, Ana, Hikari, Bridgett, Nyahiro, and Venus)

The top team sneaks into Vishkar's airfield, where Ana and Nyahiro easily and quietly fork or dart any guards that get in the way as you approach a refueling helicopter.  Once there, Friedhold and Venus dispatch the pilot, gunner, and crew.  Friedhold's Little Sister is able to harvest another 2 Adam from the bodies before you take off.  Unfortunately for you, as you approach the building, the other helicopters, alerted by somebody you missed at the airfield, are ready to intercept.  Forewarned and prepared to deal with helicopters, Bridgett is able to down one with her Valkyrie Breaker spell.  Hikari drops a second with a clutch Helix Rocket that shreds the machine's tail rotor with a lucky shot.  Unfortunately, that leaves one helicopter.  On the bright side, it does buy you enough time to reach the rooftop and spread out, ready to deal with the war machine.  Ana knows how to fly a helicopter, but she admits that she's no combat pilot.

Combat Time!  Bring that chopper down!

Spoiler

Bridgett:  18

Hikari:  13

Nyahiro: 13

Friedhold:  13

Ana Amari:  9

Vishkar Chopper: 7

Venus:  5

 

Edited March 27, 2017 by DragonRage

[StormLord]

As you climb out of the helicopter something small flits past your vision, those who look closely may also notice dozens of quarter sized lumps forming on Friedhold's arms.  by the time the group is on the helipad and scattering for cover there are what seems like a hundred abnormally large and agitated wasps, hornets, and bees, swarming around Friedhlod's left hand and arm.  Then no more than a couple seconds later Friedhold makes an openhanded gesture at the helicopter with his palm up and the entire swarm if not flying already lifts off and makes its way toward the helicopter with a ferocious buzzing.

 

I'm using "Insect Swarm II" 2d4 poison damage each turn, for 6 turns, -10 Eve(now at 6/16).  I'm going with the insects are either attacking the pilot or just crawling under the helicopter's armor and tearing up anything they can.

Edited March 27, 2017 by StormLord

[Powder Miner]

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.

[Noir]

Venus

 

The active, airborne craft before Venus was a first for his eyes, exciting him as easily as it startled his attention. It's mechanism, at a glance, seemed simple enough, however -- two sets of rotating blades, on top and on the rear end, were what kept the mass of metal aloft. It was a practical invention for flight, no doubt -- yet with such a conspicuous weak spot, too. An enticed smile emerged, hidden from the hem of his mask, as he withdrew Whisper and allowed the vorfruede of the performance to spread within him. No longer was the novaturient artist subject to the bored, dull days of acquiescent silence when the group was in panning of the mission; images of the beauty that would come from his art on the imminent destruction of the helicopter inspired his action -- action that he would see to only being perfect, no more and no less.

 

Venus fires a Basic Attack at the helicopter's main Rotor Mast. 

[Code: PIRULUK]

Kagari groaned and shook her head. What was that? That couldn't have been mental interference, her bodily structure should have been too different to be affected by any kind of interference employed by inhabitants of this largely-human world. Gravity manipulation? Possibly. It did remind her of that one time a Gravity Paragon attempted to kill her by massively increasing the gravity in the space she was on. Of course, that hadn't worked. She'd just flattened herself on the floor and waited for the mage to run out of mana.

 

Shaking herself out of her recollections, she looked around. Odd place, this was. She shifted her right ear into the shape of the radio headset she had previously ingested, using it as a conduit to transmit magical signals into radio signals, such that she could send messages without actually speaking.

 

"Something went wrong. I'm up. High up. Might have been some form of gravity manipulation, but I can't be too sure. I'm near the top of the building right now. Looks like some kind of lab. Not sure what it's for, but I'll investigate it. Might find something helpful. You'll need to find another route into the basement."

 

With that transmission, Kagari began to cautiously glance around her.

 

Kagari attempts to investigate the lab. What does she find?

[LucidRain]

Wyvis looks curiously around the lobby. "Hmm... all our friends must be at an important event! Come on, let us hurry, we do not want to be late." Wyvis whispers, as he walks rather briskly around to examine his options, then tries the public elevator shaft button once or twice, then checks the room for a friendly map or signs.

[ElfCollaborator]

Sachi stands around awkwardly in an ill-fitting delivery uniform. Still, she pokes Wyvis, whispering.

"Sshh....you're supposed to be y-yelling at me, remember?"

[Shamitako]

Nyahiro 40/40HP, Healthy, 8 turns to 26-Trauma

 

Nyahiro spun around and performed several strange poses, chanting a single word with each pose. ”サンチ。ピンチ。カオス。ビーム！！！” On the final word she stepped back for balance and pushed her hands forward, unleashing a shining white laser laced with crackling rainbow lighting from her palms towards the helicopter. The blast tickled at everyone's ears, whispering a strange, indecipherable chant into their minds. The beam slowly trickled away and Nyahiro returned to her full height, glancing momentarily towards Bridgett to see if senpai had noticed her.

 

Nyahiro fires her SPCB at the helicopter

 

Sanity Pinching Chaos Beam: A massive beam of pure insanity. Deals SYN[5]/2 damage to one enemy and [Check: 1d20+1.6SYN[5] vs. 1d20+CON ] nullifies the target's RES for two turns. 4 turn CD. "Sons of bitches, sons of bitches."

[DragonRage]

Team Quiet

Isobel and LOTUS check the lobby for cameras.  They find several, but the devices do not seem to be receiving power.  A cheery, yellow sticky note attached to one of them helpfully suggests that somebody ought to check if the Deep Ones have been chewing on the power cables again.

 

Everyone recieves Kagari's radio message.

 

Wyvis doesn't find any maps or signs.  It seems that if you don't know how to get somewhere, Vishkar assumes you aren't authorized to be there.  However, the elevator responds to the buttons, and soon arrives at the ground floor, doors gaping invitingly.

 

Team Ninja

Kagari discovers that she is in a chemistry lab, where Vishkar seems to be experimenting with replicating plastics through hard-light technology.  A cursory examination of the scientists notebooks left behind gives her some interesting information.  There are numerous references to "Project Snowball", "Project Raptora", "Project Stopwatch", and "Project Bulwark" being worked on in the military R&D labs two floors down.  Since Kagari knows from the briefing that the military R&D labs are on the 30th floor, she now knows she ended up on floor 32.  She also now knows that there are four active projects down there for the team to loot.

[Powder Miner]

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.

 

 

[DragonRage]

Team Quiet

Isobel and LOTUS carefully search the lobby, and eventually (int 19 vs 18) discover a hidden door.  LOTUS is able to crack the lock, revealing a tight spiral staircase that leads up and down.

[Powder Miner]

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."

[ElfCollaborator]

Sachi looks around instinctively, knowing full well the cameras are off, before pulling out her Terminal and transforming into her Hero form, shield and spear and all.

"R-right!"

She takes point, holding her shield up in front of her as she stands before LOTUS, before slowly and carefully walking down the stairs, shield held angled downwards.

Edited March 28, 2017 by ElfCollaborator

[DragonRage]

Team Quiet

Sachi begins her descent, and when she does not encounter danger, the others follow her.  As the group proceeds downwards, music begins playing, softly at first, but growing louder.  None of you recognise it, though, because Isobel and LOTUS are from the nonspecific spacefuture, Wyvis doesn't really know what a movie is, and Sachi is from a post-apocalyptic setting where lots of things have been lost.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Thus, it comes as a complete surprise to you all when a huge, spherical rock drops into the stairwell behind you and starts rolling downhill.  The three heroes sprint for the bottom.  Isobel's endurance and coordination fail her (str 5 vs 24) and Wyvis trips on the tight stairs (str 4 vs 13) but both times Sachi is able to pull them upright before they are crushed (str 19 vs 7) and the entire group dives to safety just before the boulder slams into the door-frame, neatly plugging it.

 

The group finds themselves in a large, open room filled with towers of electronics, covered in blinking lights.  A terminal at the far end of the room includes numerous screens, a keyboard, and a battery of USB ports.  You could probably get the data you need from here, and it looks like Sombra hasn't gotten in yet.

 

While the doorway is plugged, there is an elevator shaft leading upwards, one that does not correspond to the public lift.  You might be able to use this or climb the shaft to get out.

Edited March 28, 2017 by DragonRage