image is shakily focused on the blade more than the various features of the walls around them. In the background, it is barely possible to catch the obvious signage in the Romanesque metal walls. The writing comes into focus enough to reveal an unknown set of syllables.]
So it's not a lightsaber, apparently. It's a "mana blade." It's still really cool.
"Shouldn't you be filming the cages?"
[The camera swings around to show a clear material that looks a bit like glass, but it is obvious by the way Rudyard Holt is thumping on it experimentally that it is something else entirely. Beyond is a wide room empty of furniture and facilities. Small raised bits of metal line along the bottom of the windows.]
So, is this something like a zoo?
"I'd suggest something more like a research facility."
[The camera moves over toward Lydia as she speaks and then towards where the redheaded woman is focusing.]
So there's Aislin, what's she doing?
"Hmm, oh, I think she's contacting someone."
"Tell them to bring down some more ordnance," Rudyard suggested. "Reinforcements might be helpful as well."
[Suddenly the red-headed woman with the loads of tattoos seems to explode into a puff of smoke, vanishing from view. Lydia barely bats an eye as Rudyard and Darring turn toward the sight with a bit of surprise. The camera slips around, pointing directly in Aeryn's face.]
Monster wolves, chickens turning people into stone, teleportation, lightsabers, well...mana blades...this is amazing!
[There is another burst of smoke and the camera whirls to see it dissipating and revealing Aislin returned with two more members of the security team as well as Detective Malcolm Reynolds baring assault rifles, a squad support weapon, and assorted other goodies. Chief Holt accepts the light machine gun and swings the carbine to his back.]
"Thank you, chaps, that's the sort of gift package a man can appreciate."
"Yeah, the captain and I were a bit impressed with your armory."
"Well, never can be too careful passing near the South Sea, pirates, Burmese military. You know the sort. Did you bring any torches?"
Torches?
[Aeryn turns the camera back to herself. With a confused expression.]
I know this is kind of going all Tolkien and stuff, but why would you even have torches?
"It's British for flashlight."
[The camera whirls to point at Officer Darring]
Oh, huh.
[Aeryn points the camera back at herself, face filling the screen.]
I guess you do learn something new everyday.
[The camera turns back toward the others as they're point toward either end of the hallway they're all in.]
"Two ways to go, and I think we might be better off getting somewhere just a little bit more defensible."
"Yeah, you're calling these cages, and I see they have doors in the back. And there's quite a few just in this room alone."
"Well, in lacking anything else, might as well head....that way."
[Amaya suggests, pointing toward one end of the area. There's a bit more discussion as Aeryn's camera sweeps from person to person jerkily, sometimes interspersed with her own commentary before they decide to go with that and head on toward the suggested direction. The camera eventually comes to T-section.]
That doesn't look happy over there.
[The camera swings around to one end of the corridor where there is wall covered in aggressive looking symbols of red and yellow with triangular and other sharp-pointed corners. The camera zooms in to show a line through the center of the barrier, revealing it as a pair of doors rather than a wall.]
"I think we're going to go the other way first."
[The camera shakes as Aeryn moves, probably looking in the other direction, before swinging the camera back around to see where Aslin was gesturing down the hall toward another set of doors though one of them was broken and twisted on its side. A soft glow of indistinct color spilling out of the crack in the bottom. People began to walk cautiously in that direction.]
"Okay, this is a tight fit. Should we start trying to wedge it open a bit more?"
[Aeryn turned the camera toward Rudyard as he spoke.]
"Let's wait a bit before we make openings wider."
[And the camera whipped toward Detective Reynolds. At the edge of the camera, Amaya started to move toward the opening and examine it.]
"I think I can get through."
"Careful, don't get yourself too far ahead."
[Amaya tries to slip through the gap, but can't quite get through the hole herself, she stands up a bit and takes a breath.]
"Okay, I'm going to go away for a little bit. Sorry for anything she does."
"What?"
[And then the black furred ears and tails lightened until they were white and Amaya's body shrunk down somewhat until she'd taken Akiko's form.]
"Hi! Everybody! I'm back and I'll be right back!"
[Almost immediately the thinner fox girl skittered through the hole and popped into the other room.]
"There's a bunch of circles here, like Amaya was helping you with."
"Right, give me a moment."
Can I get some water? Thanks
[Aislin vanished into a puff of smoke as the demoness teleported into the next room and the camera was set down on the floor, catching a flash of Aeryn accepting a bottle of water from Officer Darring. The camera settled on the ground, catching the final wisps of smoke in the pale veridian glow in the other room. Aislin was already walking around and examining things lookng excited.]
"This is steerage! We can control this shard's direction from here."
"Wait a minute, what?"
[As the discussion continued, the camera was focused as Akiko looked around the various pedestals standing up in the center of the various glowing circles. Cautiously, she stepped into the glow to look at one closer and reached out to press something. Suddenly the ground underneath them started to shift and the camera clattered down along the tilting floor, catching an image of Aeryn trying to grab for it as it tumbled into the next room.]
"What did you push!?"
"I didn't know it was a button. It looked like stone."
[The camera continued to tumble catching Aislin reaching Akiko's position, lost them and then caught sight of the dissipating smoke from where Aislin teleported them both away. the camera hit the far wall and wedged against an outcropping. It stopped moving for a few seconds before the door was pried up by Reynolds and Rudyard, allowing them to come swooping in. Aeryn immediately moved for the camera and picked it up as everybody else looked around the room.]
"Did Aislin teleport them? Or did something else happen?"
[The camera twisted about as Aeryn looked it over for damage, catching flashes of Lydia looking about and analyzing things before as the others looked for danger. Then the camera stabilized as Lydia held onto one of the pedestals and started vaguely glowing blue as a trickle of blood slipped out of her nose. Suddenly several of the circles crack with a loud sound and the vague feeling of the ground shifting under them comes to a slow end and slowly leveling out again.]
"Where is that girl? Hey, you, you've got that Ashvatha phone. Try and call Aislin."
"What is this place?"
"It's steerage, to keep the shard in a desired position. Ashvattha has a much larger room with about twenty people on duty at any given time to monitor it."
"What kinds of people?"
"Mostly Gods, some Demons, humans every so often. People."
"So did Gods make this?"
"No, this light isn't Mana. It's not Chi either, not quite, it's got a lot of cream to it, so close to Glamour too. So, I'm thinking this is some sort of intermediary step between humans and sidhe."
[As Aeryn is still checking out her camera, Detective Reynolds gets on the phone as Rudyard and Lydia talk. Past them in the other corridor near that other door, the camera catches a brief flash of pale veridian light.]
Umm, there's something going on at the other room. There was a flash of light.
[A thunderous noise whipped through the area as something slammed into the door on the other end of the corridor. The security crew move into a quick defensive position, directing weapons toward the other end. Above them, a vaguely feminine voice began speaking some strange, unknown language in a calm and soothing tone.]
"You might want to get back down here, something's happening!"
[The far door slammed open, twisting into pieces as a massive rhinoceros-like reptilian creature charging ahead towards the group. Something popped out of the wall and covered the creature in a net of green-white energy. It roared in annoyance and pain before thrashing about and tearing away the net causing it to dissipate into nothing.]
What the hell is that!?
[Rudyard turned his machine gun on the monster, riddling it with bullets as Lydia placed herself at the side of the door, in position to wait for the monster to attack. A burst of smoke caused Aeryn to yelp and dodge to the side before she recognized Akiko and Aislin returning. Suddenly all sound from the corridor came to a stop as the monster started gasping for breath.]
"Don't go into that corridor if you want to keep breathing."
"Let's see what I can do."
[An amber colored light builds around Akiko a moment before a sudden flame whips up between the group and the monster. Lydia's voice picks up, causing the camera to switch to her.]
"It's a beast. Most of that size is created psychically."
"Oh, so it might be able to get bigger then?"
[More bullets from Detective Reynolds and the security staff poured into the thing as it charged forward, leaping and shrinking to about the size of a cat. Lydia whipped out with her mana blade from her prepared position and smashed into it, tossing the beast back into the vacuum Aislin held in the corridor.]
"Or shrink."
[A bolt of red energy like some sort of laser whipped out to strike the monster, prompting the camera to point at Aislin where the snake like thing latched onto her arm barely finished lashing out with the blast of red, Demonic life-force from its mouth. Bullets continued to fire and the monster grunted, grew back into its original size and charged out of the corridor down through the halls away from the fight.]
Is it gone?
[A sound of a resounding crash came from deeper in the facility.]
"At least for now. So what happened here?"
"That girl pushed a button, that's what happened!"
[As Lydia came forward to confront Akiko, a device appeared out of the ceiling and covered her with what appeared to be fire retardant foam.]
"Why'd you have to bring Chaos Incarnate down here?"
"To be fair, I brought the engineer down here."
"I don't think you can get one without the other."
[Aeryn's camera played a bit more tennis-necking as it flipped between one person and another before coming back to Detective Reynolds for the last statement. In the background there was another flash of light. This time Rudyard and his team noticed it.]
"I think perhaps we should take a look at that other room for a bit."
[The illusory fire vanished and the sound returned to the corridor as they moved on, though suddenly, Lydia's appearance changed somewhat. Her bone structure seemed to become more Arabian though her hair remained blonde and the colors of her eyes turned a much deeper blue edging on indigo. Detective Reynolds did a double-take as Aislin's eyes widened.]
"Well that's an unusual and somewhat terrifying fetish."
"I was trying to read desires of this place, not turn into a sexy version of Nirvana's general."
"I am making sure this memory never ever gets into the general mindscape."
"Agreed."
[As they said that, Detective Reynolds held out his phone and snapped a picture of the foam covered, busty version of Urd Jotundottir just before Lydia returned to her normal appearance and gave hm a look.]
"Shall we get on with business then, or just wait for the next creature?"
[With the matter settled, they moved on to find another lab filled with canisters of some sort in the midst of even more circles. One of the canisters was smashed open while fluid was draining out of another.]
"These are the sort of devices we use to gestate a homonculus in Nirvana."
[Lydia nodded in response to Aislin's statement.]
"Yeah, but these are for making animals not people. And they look automated."
"Whatever just gestated slipped out of the top here, look a hole that goes up outside."
[Aeryn's camera moved forward to get an image of the top of the canister from which fluid was draining. As Detective Reynolds had pointed out, it did indeed have a hole in the roof that had slipped open. The smashed canister did likewise, but obviously that monster had left a different way.]
"Let's hope that nothing this machine makes can fly."
[Aeryn whipped to turn the camera back to Rudyard.]
"Why would that be a problem? The airship is....ohhhh."
[Turning the camera to Akiko and then Aislin as the tattooed Demoness came into frame.]
"Why do you say these things?"
"Let's just start looking for a way to shut this down before it makes something else."
[Akiko's form shifted back into Amaya who raised her hand.]
"I can do that. I've studied circles before, and this stuff looks like it's close to the quartz humans use. So I can do this."
"Are we sure we want her dismantling this?"
"She's probably the best suited."
"Go ahead and try but do it carefully."
[Amaya nodded, black ears twitching as she turned to her tools and started dismantling things. It seemed to be going fairly well before the sound of that vaguely feminine voice returned and suddenly an image of several symbols switching rapidly between them appeared with bright flashing red lights?]
"Is that...is that a countdown?"
"What did you do?"
"I don't know?! I was just taking things apart so the circles wouldn't make more monsters!"
[The image switches to a presentation of a large underground complex filling with gas and then being incinerated. Lydia watches, sparks of blue light between her fingers.]
"Okay, okay, it's numbers but not a countdown, it's a measure of density of gas in the facility. Some sort of biological cleansing protocol. When the gas gets high enough, it'll incinerate everything inside."
"And the numbers keep dipping because this facility is full of holes and leaking gas to the outside. Which means we can't just leave or it'll incinerate the whole forest above."
"Wait, why can't we just leave?"
"We've got renewable oxygen, animals for food, lots of space to stretch, and maybe we can repair the steerage. This looks like a great place to park the Sol Suna and help search for the way home."
"I'd like to note, ma'am, those animals aren't exactly the least dangerous things around."
"True, good thing we have some people on hand to deal with that. Anyway, as to the gas...."
[Aislin took a deep breath and held out her hands which flashed with a red-energy. The holographic symbols all rapidly dropped to show the same symbols in each of six spaces. Momentarily, the symbols would flicker up and then drop to the same blank symbols again.]
"How long can you hold that?"
"Uh, maybe a couple of hours."
"You, make yourself useful and turn off the cleansing."
"Okay, okay! I'm doing it!"
[Amaya rapidly set about looking for signs of active power and disconnecting it, finally resulting in the hologram showing a different set of symbols accompanied by the same soothing, feminine voice, and then vanishing.]
"Okay, that's going to get annoying?"
"I don't know how to turn off the voice. Detective Reynolds."
"Not the voice itself. But not understanding it."
"Oh, well, we'll have to look into that. For now, let's see about tethering to the Sol Suna and deciding where we go from here."
[The camera turned back around to face Aeryn as she smiled and looked deeply relieved.]
Well, looks like we survived!
Back to the Airship Lost index - Gameplay Notes - Yukimura Amaya's Perspective
That doesn't look happy over there.
[The camera swings around to one end of the corridor where there is wall covered in aggressive looking symbols of red and yellow with triangular and other sharp-pointed corners. The camera zooms in to show a line through the center of the barrier, revealing it as a pair of doors rather than a wall.]
"I think we're going to go the other way first."
[The camera shakes as Aeryn moves, probably looking in the other direction, before swinging the camera back around to see where Aslin was gesturing down the hall toward another set of doors though one of them was broken and twisted on its side. A soft glow of indistinct color spilling out of the crack in the bottom. People began to walk cautiously in that direction.]
"Okay, this is a tight fit. Should we start trying to wedge it open a bit more?"
[Aeryn turned the camera toward Rudyard as he spoke.]
"Let's wait a bit before we make openings wider."
[And the camera whipped toward Detective Reynolds. At the edge of the camera, Amaya started to move toward the opening and examine it.]
"I think I can get through."
"Careful, don't get yourself too far ahead."
[Amaya tries to slip through the gap, but can't quite get through the hole herself, she stands up a bit and takes a breath.]
"Okay, I'm going to go away for a little bit. Sorry for anything she does."
"What?"
[And then the black furred ears and tails lightened until they were white and Amaya's body shrunk down somewhat until she'd taken Akiko's form.]
"Hi! Everybody! I'm back and I'll be right back!"
[Almost immediately the thinner fox girl skittered through the hole and popped into the other room.]
"There's a bunch of circles here, like Amaya was helping you with."
"Right, give me a moment."
Can I get some water? Thanks
[Aislin vanished into a puff of smoke as the demoness teleported into the next room and the camera was set down on the floor, catching a flash of Aeryn accepting a bottle of water from Officer Darring. The camera settled on the ground, catching the final wisps of smoke in the pale veridian glow in the other room. Aislin was already walking around and examining things lookng excited.]
"This is steerage! We can control this shard's direction from here."
"Wait a minute, what?"
[As the discussion continued, the camera was focused as Akiko looked around the various pedestals standing up in the center of the various glowing circles. Cautiously, she stepped into the glow to look at one closer and reached out to press something. Suddenly the ground underneath them started to shift and the camera clattered down along the tilting floor, catching an image of Aeryn trying to grab for it as it tumbled into the next room.]
"What did you push!?"
"I didn't know it was a button. It looked like stone."
[The camera continued to tumble catching Aislin reaching Akiko's position, lost them and then caught sight of the dissipating smoke from where Aislin teleported them both away. the camera hit the far wall and wedged against an outcropping. It stopped moving for a few seconds before the door was pried up by Reynolds and Rudyard, allowing them to come swooping in. Aeryn immediately moved for the camera and picked it up as everybody else looked around the room.]
"Did Aislin teleport them? Or did something else happen?"
[The camera twisted about as Aeryn looked it over for damage, catching flashes of Lydia looking about and analyzing things before as the others looked for danger. Then the camera stabilized as Lydia held onto one of the pedestals and started vaguely glowing blue as a trickle of blood slipped out of her nose. Suddenly several of the circles crack with a loud sound and the vague feeling of the ground shifting under them comes to a slow end and slowly leveling out again.]
"Where is that girl? Hey, you, you've got that Ashvatha phone. Try and call Aislin."
"What is this place?"
"It's steerage, to keep the shard in a desired position. Ashvattha has a much larger room with about twenty people on duty at any given time to monitor it."
"What kinds of people?"
"Mostly Gods, some Demons, humans every so often. People."
"So did Gods make this?"
"No, this light isn't Mana. It's not Chi either, not quite, it's got a lot of cream to it, so close to Glamour too. So, I'm thinking this is some sort of intermediary step between humans and sidhe."
[As Aeryn is still checking out her camera, Detective Reynolds gets on the phone as Rudyard and Lydia talk. Past them in the other corridor near that other door, the camera catches a brief flash of pale veridian light.]
Umm, there's something going on at the other room. There was a flash of light.
[A thunderous noise whipped through the area as something slammed into the door on the other end of the corridor. The security crew move into a quick defensive position, directing weapons toward the other end. Above them, a vaguely feminine voice began speaking some strange, unknown language in a calm and soothing tone.]
"You might want to get back down here, something's happening!"
[The far door slammed open, twisting into pieces as a massive rhinoceros-like reptilian creature charging ahead towards the group. Something popped out of the wall and covered the creature in a net of green-white energy. It roared in annoyance and pain before thrashing about and tearing away the net causing it to dissipate into nothing.]
What the hell is that!?
[Rudyard turned his machine gun on the monster, riddling it with bullets as Lydia placed herself at the side of the door, in position to wait for the monster to attack. A burst of smoke caused Aeryn to yelp and dodge to the side before she recognized Akiko and Aislin returning. Suddenly all sound from the corridor came to a stop as the monster started gasping for breath.]
"Don't go into that corridor if you want to keep breathing."
"Let's see what I can do."
[An amber colored light builds around Akiko a moment before a sudden flame whips up between the group and the monster. Lydia's voice picks up, causing the camera to switch to her.]
"It's a beast. Most of that size is created psychically."
"Oh, so it might be able to get bigger then?"
[More bullets from Detective Reynolds and the security staff poured into the thing as it charged forward, leaping and shrinking to about the size of a cat. Lydia whipped out with her mana blade from her prepared position and smashed into it, tossing the beast back into the vacuum Aislin held in the corridor.]
"Or shrink."
[A bolt of red energy like some sort of laser whipped out to strike the monster, prompting the camera to point at Aislin where the snake like thing latched onto her arm barely finished lashing out with the blast of red, Demonic life-force from its mouth. Bullets continued to fire and the monster grunted, grew back into its original size and charged out of the corridor down through the halls away from the fight.]
Is it gone?
[A sound of a resounding crash came from deeper in the facility.]
"At least for now. So what happened here?"
"That girl pushed a button, that's what happened!"
[As Lydia came forward to confront Akiko, a device appeared out of the ceiling and covered her with what appeared to be fire retardant foam.]
"Why'd you have to bring Chaos Incarnate down here?"
"To be fair, I brought the engineer down here."
"I don't think you can get one without the other."
[Aeryn's camera played a bit more tennis-necking as it flipped between one person and another before coming back to Detective Reynolds for the last statement. In the background there was another flash of light. This time Rudyard and his team noticed it.]
"I think perhaps we should take a look at that other room for a bit."
[The illusory fire vanished and the sound returned to the corridor as they moved on, though suddenly, Lydia's appearance changed somewhat. Her bone structure seemed to become more Arabian though her hair remained blonde and the colors of her eyes turned a much deeper blue edging on indigo. Detective Reynolds did a double-take as Aislin's eyes widened.]
"Well that's an unusual and somewhat terrifying fetish."
"I was trying to read desires of this place, not turn into a sexy version of Nirvana's general."
"I am making sure this memory never ever gets into the general mindscape."
"Agreed."
[As they said that, Detective Reynolds held out his phone and snapped a picture of the foam covered, busty version of Urd Jotundottir just before Lydia returned to her normal appearance and gave hm a look.]
"Shall we get on with business then, or just wait for the next creature?"
[With the matter settled, they moved on to find another lab filled with canisters of some sort in the midst of even more circles. One of the canisters was smashed open while fluid was draining out of another.]
"These are the sort of devices we use to gestate a homonculus in Nirvana."
[Lydia nodded in response to Aislin's statement.]
"Yeah, but these are for making animals not people. And they look automated."
"Whatever just gestated slipped out of the top here, look a hole that goes up outside."
[Aeryn's camera moved forward to get an image of the top of the canister from which fluid was draining. As Detective Reynolds had pointed out, it did indeed have a hole in the roof that had slipped open. The smashed canister did likewise, but obviously that monster had left a different way.]
"Let's hope that nothing this machine makes can fly."
[Aeryn whipped to turn the camera back to Rudyard.]
"Why would that be a problem? The airship is....ohhhh."
[Turning the camera to Akiko and then Aislin as the tattooed Demoness came into frame.]
"Why do you say these things?"
"Let's just start looking for a way to shut this down before it makes something else."
[Akiko's form shifted back into Amaya who raised her hand.]
"I can do that. I've studied circles before, and this stuff looks like it's close to the quartz humans use. So I can do this."
"Are we sure we want her dismantling this?"
"She's probably the best suited."
"Go ahead and try but do it carefully."
[Amaya nodded, black ears twitching as she turned to her tools and started dismantling things. It seemed to be going fairly well before the sound of that vaguely feminine voice returned and suddenly an image of several symbols switching rapidly between them appeared with bright flashing red lights?]
"Is that...is that a countdown?"
"What did you do?"
"I don't know?! I was just taking things apart so the circles wouldn't make more monsters!"
[The image switches to a presentation of a large underground complex filling with gas and then being incinerated. Lydia watches, sparks of blue light between her fingers.]
"Okay, okay, it's numbers but not a countdown, it's a measure of density of gas in the facility. Some sort of biological cleansing protocol. When the gas gets high enough, it'll incinerate everything inside."
"And the numbers keep dipping because this facility is full of holes and leaking gas to the outside. Which means we can't just leave or it'll incinerate the whole forest above."
"Wait, why can't we just leave?"
"We've got renewable oxygen, animals for food, lots of space to stretch, and maybe we can repair the steerage. This looks like a great place to park the Sol Suna and help search for the way home."
"I'd like to note, ma'am, those animals aren't exactly the least dangerous things around."
"True, good thing we have some people on hand to deal with that. Anyway, as to the gas...."
[Aislin took a deep breath and held out her hands which flashed with a red-energy. The holographic symbols all rapidly dropped to show the same symbols in each of six spaces. Momentarily, the symbols would flicker up and then drop to the same blank symbols again.]
"How long can you hold that?"
"Uh, maybe a couple of hours."
"You, make yourself useful and turn off the cleansing."
"Okay, okay! I'm doing it!"
[Amaya rapidly set about looking for signs of active power and disconnecting it, finally resulting in the hologram showing a different set of symbols accompanied by the same soothing, feminine voice, and then vanishing.]
"Okay, that's going to get annoying?"
"I don't know how to turn off the voice. Detective Reynolds."
"Not the voice itself. But not understanding it."
"Oh, well, we'll have to look into that. For now, let's see about tethering to the Sol Suna and deciding where we go from here."
[The camera turned back around to face Aeryn as she smiled and looked deeply relieved.]
Well, looks like we survived!
Back to the Airship Lost index - Gameplay Notes - Yukimura Amaya's Perspective
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