hexarchate_rpg | Move 21 [fixed numbering error] (at long last) (chapter 1.21)

yhlee posting in

Move 21

[GM note: PROFUSE apologies for how late this move is. The month of May got eaten by non-negotiable writing commitments and then health issues. So sorry!]

For easy reference:
- Move 20 Recap [wiki]
- the escape plan [wiki];
- Station Moongray timeline [wiki].

(Thanks to

zuhrovet for keeping this stuff updated for everyone's convenience.)

Year 361, Month Three, Day Seventeen (Monday), ~07:25

Confrontation at Administrator Nirai Paerani Shan's Office
Sulen and Virmad are facing off against Administrator Shan, having dumped a (friendly!) baby mothling (Crowned-With-Eyes) and faked evidence of Remi's "heresy" onto her desk, as per this thread from Move 19.

Shan makes a brief show of checking the faked datacube for the evidence, but she's clearly feeling pressured with two Rahal standing right there and it doesn't appear she finds anything out of order in the "evidence." "All right," Shan says. She pulls up an appropriate form on one of her data slates and signs over Remi and the mothlings to Sulen and Virmad's custody, then outputs it to a data cube and hands it to them. "Do you require assistance locating Nirai Remi? Or would you prefer to handle that yourselves?" Her expression is resigned.

On the "Bumblebee"

- Mikodez is in Sasha's bedroom, following this thread from Move 19. He is currently alone, trapped, and recuperating, apparently having dozed off.

- Sasha and Iawa have made preparations to talk to Mikodez (see above) as per this thread from Move 19. They have agreed to meet outside Sasha's bedroom and confront Mikodez together.

- Alaric is still currently closeted with Gerae (and Fluffy), continuing this thread from Move 19. Gerae looks abashed at Alaric's critique of heptarchate social control methods and says, "You're obviously very knowledgeable about us and our methods. Are you a scholar? I hadn't realized your team did research." (He's clearly fishing for more information about the Merry Crew he has fallen in with.) Meanwhile, Fluffy curls up on his forearm and appears to doze.

NPCs:
- Ashari is in their office.

- Kaliyan is still manning the cockpit in preparation for escape.

- Yehan graciously thanks Sasha for the box of Remy's journals and begins scanning them into the grid for further analysis; this is a process that can largely be automated so she has set the grid up to alert her if anything looks like it requires her immediate attention, and goes to get some more tea.

- Ankat is keeping an eye on Istradez, who is still woozy and concussed, as per this thread from Move 19. He is available if anyone needs an extra pair of hands.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

pengwern

Mikodez yanks Sasha's ankle and pulls as he bounds to his feet, twisting it to the side.

From:

zuhrovet

"Fucking fox." Sasha punches Mishka in the nose.

From:

vass

When Sasha unexpectedly kicks Avrayen in the face, Iawa initially freezes like a beetle in a spiderweb. No, wrong analogy, Sasha hasn't bitten her. She's just staring, taking in the data. Avrayen fights back, in clear and obvious self-defense, and Sasha starts yelling insults about his signifier (Iawa doesn't know what Avrayen's signifier is, but she'd already figured it was Ninefox Something.)

Thoughts are whirring through her head. Some of them she'd immediately dismiss as unrealistic even for a drama plot, but this whole situation had already left realistic behind some time ago. Avrayen's augment contained a virus that infected Sasha's mind, triggering a killing rage? Sasha just discovered that she's yet another long-lost sibling of Avrayen's, and this naturally occasioned more violence?

As the fight continues, Iawa gets her limbs back under control. She steps back, out of the range of fighting and observation, and quickly takes two sedative patches out of her first aid kit. The second is in case Avrayen keeps fighting after Sasha goes down.

She realises this is the point where she needs to commit to either grabbing Avrayen and trying to escape the Wasp with him (hoping he won't take her for a foe too and try to kill her), or trust that things are not as absolutely insane as they appear and that both Sasha and Avrayen will get a fair hearing and Iawa herself won't be harmed for intervening.

And, well, she still doesn't have a plan for successfully leaving. So she plunges into the fray and aims for the nearest patch of bare skin on both opponents.

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha's twisting as Iawa approaches, getting ready for another strike, because she wants to grab Mishka's arm and that means he needs to let go of her. She's not sure what happens next, but she's abruptly certain that she can't maintain her balance, so she hugs Mishka and falls over.

Eight hells. Something's really wrong. She manages to say, "Grid, contingency blue local." She's not tracking well enough to direct foam.

The room's sprinkler system starts blasting water from the ceiling.

From:

pengwern

Mikodez puts a vicious elbow in somewhere and lunges forward to headbutt Sasha. At last, a good use for his height, but it makes very little difference now that they're on the ground.

"What do you have against this face--?" He only gets out half a sentence before the sprinklers start, but he uses the opportunity to get clear and try to shut his augment down again, colliding into the table on the way. There's no especial need for him to survive, of course. Augment sabotage is annoying and frequently drawn out.

From:

vass

The elbow gets Iawa right in the solar plexus. She folds over and staggers forward, which puts her just near enough to catch and patch Avrayen when he bumps into the table.

Wheezing, she watches him drop to the ground, too winded to try to break his fall.

Once she's more or less got her breath back, she calls Ashari on her lokki. "I'm in Sasha's room. How soon can you get here? Interrogation got way out of hand. I've sedated her and Avrayen. They'll wake up in about five minutes. [Out of seven. She lost two catching her breath.]

While she talks, she gets a large folded cotton square out of her first aid kit, the sort that can be adapted to be a sling or a bandage or padding or a wad for stanching blood. She snips a few inches in the centre of one side and then rips it in half. She uses the two rectangles to bind up Sasha and Avrayen's hands as best she can.

[Once they regain consciousness, Iawa's best effort at restraints ought to hold either of those two, oh... seconds. And that's assuming neither of them has sedative resistance Iawa didn't allow for. Which does sound like a thing the Shuos might do.]

She uses whatever time remains checking for head wounds and neck injuries.

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha wakes up once on the floor by herself. Water's still pouring from the ceiling, and she probably doesn't want to drown, so she signs to the grid to cancel the sprinklers and, saint of vines, the grid registers the command.

When she wakes up again, Iawa's talking. Sasha's shirt is soaked and sticking to her body, and she's shivering. She has lost track of the cable ties she was holding, somewhere. She has more in her pocket, but she doesn't like losing things. Also, there's something wrong with her wrists.

Sasha opens her eyes. She still doesn't want to move her head very quickly, but Iawa's the only person standing. She asks, "Iawa, are you Shuos too?"

Fuck. That's not how you resist an interrogation. No need to bind Sasha into hell; she's halfway there on her own.

[Sasha has no particular resistance to this sedative, but the edge of the patch overlaps with the edge of her shirtsleeve, so she's not quite getting a full dose. Teasing out the relative influence of Iawa's aim and Sasha's exotic power on this state of affairs would presumably take some effort.]

From:

vass

"No, I'm not Shuos. I thought you were Nirai, not Shuos."

Iawa has occasionally been accused of being quick on the uptake, but only in theoretical settings. [She has also forgotten that Sasha's not Nirai either.]

"Wait, you mean Avrayen's a Shuos?" At this point she notices Sasha's condition. "Barb, you're freezing." [Iawa has not noticed this herself, since she hasn't had a lot of experience doing this and doesn't swear much anyway, but when she's in medic mode she swears like a Vidona.]

She gets a shock blanket out of the first aid kit [it'd be Mylar in our world, but Sasha can have one that's gently self-heating] and cautiously wraps it around Sasha without trying to get the wet clothes off. In the process, she sees what happened to the patch. Oops. Well, at least right now Sasha doesn't seem to be fighting.

"Avrayen's still sedated, but probably only for two or three more minutes. I've called Ashari. How are you feeling now?"

Edited Date: 2018-06-14 12:13 pm (UTC)

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha would tense when Iawa touches her, if she weren't already shuddering with her whole body. But Iawa neither tries to hurt her nor engages in the sort of possessive stroking favored by Ashari and Sasha's mother, which in her experience usually means pain later. And the warmth feels good. Maybe things aren't completely fucked.

"Yes, Mishka is Shuos. Current, not former. Need to restrain him better." Assuming whatever's wrapping Sasha's wrists is also around Mishka's, that is. "There are cable ties in the pocket by my knee. Could you get his ankles? And his wrists again?"

From:

yhlee

The room chooses this moment to admit Ashari, who is dressed to the nines. The door vanishes behind them. They look down their nose at Sasha, then at Mikodez, then at Iawa, then back at Sasha. "Well, well, well," Ashari says. "This is not how a well-conducted investigation goes. Please tell me we've learned something useful about the puppy?" ["Puppy" is clearly referring to Mikodez.]

There's a faint blue spark in their eyes. They're clearly ready to enthrall--someone--if things go even more south. And in case that's not enough, they're trimming their nails using a dagger with the ease of long practice.

[If anyone is taking anti-enthrallment precautions, let me know. Ashari will probably be very amused.]

From:

vass

Iawa unconsciously stands up straighter: she has certain reflex responses to an Andan with that look in their eyes.

"Thank you for coming so quickly," she says, meeting Ashari's gaze unflinchingly.

[Ashari doesn't have to enthrall Iawa -- Sasha or Mikodez would probably be both more plot-appropriate and funnier. But they can if they feel like it (thus generously offering Sasha and Mikodez an attack of opportunity?) and making ill-considered stands for poorly thought through reasons is kind of Iawa's thing.]

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha makes an effort to concentrate and sits up, keeping her hands underneath the blanket. She has to shut her eyes for a moment after that, but when she opens them nothing is spinning.

"I regret my failure and will pay what penalty you require of me," she tells Ashari, seriously. "About the foxling. Two things. First, I have control of his augment and am copying the data. The bulk of the storage is used by Shuos files. They're all encrypted, all the same size. Not the sort of thing Academy dropouts keep. My guess is they're recordings. So that's at least two spies, the kid and whoever prevented our side from checking his augment."

On the bright side, now that she's explained she read the augment data, she doesn't have to pretend she doesn't know Mishka's name. "Second thing. I'm sure you know Mikodez and his 'cousin' are brothers. But I don't think Mishka knew, until tonight. One of the things he did, when he was wandering the station on his own, is find a gene scanner and run some tests."

From:

pengwern

Mikodez flops over and rests his chin on folded knuckles, and speaks from behind Sasha's back. So focused on Ashari, the both of them!

"And...?" He draws out the word. "Keep going. I don't know everything on my augment either."

From:

zuhrovet

White stars of hell, the child is a good liar. Sasha keeps her mouth shut and concentrates on freeing her hands.

[What would people think of starting a new thread? We're past the edge of my laptop screen, now.]