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 Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 10:53 pm
"Couple o' miles, I guess, if you straightened all those hairpin turns and such into a straight line." Penn watched Sin drag in more bodies -she'd have to buy one of those industrial refrigerators so the bodies don't rot and stink up the cabin- onto the ship. There was a bit of a glimmer in Sin's eye and you can easily tell he's excited.
"Finding his ship would be a better start. Get rid of the hay and you'll eventually find the needle."
From here on out, Penn would have to avoid the Port more. If anyone saw a three-man airship gathering dead bodies at the Run and spread rumors... there's not a lot of ships with a build like the Charon; and even fewer ships having a red-headed horned captain with a blue-skinned shipmate. Unless there was a ship that had a red and blue oni on it, but that's just a different story right there.
She hung up and began to pull another body in.
Wait. Only one surfer died. Where did the other bodies...
...oh boy.
"Uh, Sin, can you check which way the current's flowing?"
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 7:20 am
"I'm starting to wonder whether this was the brightest of ideas... Oh, darn, again! Wait, I'm comin' over there!"
Beatrice left her small annex, and barged through the mess that was her cabin, out on deck. Leaning recklessly over the Hawk's rail, she peered over to Seraphim's vessel. There didn't seem to be any crew at all, aside from a single companion of someone she presumed was Seraphim. They made quite the colourful couple, speaking rather literally. Beatrice could see that even from this distance. She frowned, and shouted across the small distance between the two ships:
"'Ey, all 'em bodies, what'd you planned to do with them?"
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Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 9:05 pm
Penn was shaken out of her stupor and looked up. It was the captain of that large ship. She asked what herself and Sin would do with the bodies gathered up. This wasn't the first time Penn told a little white lie, but she didn't want the captain to know that her shipmate was a flesh-eating undead. Not until she was ready, at least.
"Gonna send 'em to the morgue," she shouted back, "maybe get some identification on them, too. If they have families, well, I ain't spreading the news about that tragedy."
The demon sighed. Hopefully the human didn't inquire anything further than that.
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Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 2:33 am
"So you are, huh?" Beatrice had to chuckle at the thought of the poor morgue suddenly getting a good dozen of half-compressed bodies delivered to them. She had already begun shrugging off the tragedy's impact on her mind. Can't let those things rot for too long. "I'm sure that's gonna be interesting! What will you say to them?"
She didn't really like the thought of them leaving, though, with or without corpses. She felt, somehow, that Seraphim here were up to something that may be of interest, whether it was concerning Captain Donovan or something else. In fact, Beatrice began pondering, this whole canyon may be an awful lot more entertaining than it seemed. Maybe a closer inspection would be in order...?
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Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:32 am
"They were sky surfing in the Devil's Run. Each and every one of them crashed into the walls. That's my story and I'm sticking to it." Another white lie. Death was a concept known very well to Penn; she herself died multiple times, and every time always "respawning" in some location in the Inferno. Souls of the damned and of the innocent alike were everyday things back home.
"And by the way, do you know which way the water current's flowing?" Penn's ship still floated just a few inches above the water, but it seemed to have risen in such a short amount of time.
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Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 2:48 pm
Beatrice shook her head and muttered to herself. It might just be her way of looking at things, and her quickly thrown-together perception of the Run, but judging from the stories that she'd heard during her brief visit to the port, it sure didn't sound like a place you'd go salvage dead sky surfers. In fact, it didn't seem like a place where you'd go sky surfing in the first place. Although, she had to admit, she wouldn't even consider to go sky surfing at all, no matter what the place. Seraphim's new query saved her the trouble of coming up with an adequate response. Instead, she looked down, puzzled for a while at the site of the actually rather strong stream below.
"Uh, downstream, I guess. You'd like to think it flows outta the actual canyon, huh? Unless, of course, there's a small lake in here somewhere that I've yet to hear 'bout."
It seemed to be following the passage out of the canyon. She peered, but felt her eyes fickle. Should've had her glasses close. But who wants to admit mediocre eyesight?
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Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 1:26 am
Current Time: 6:57 a.m.
Current Weather: cloudy, soon to clear up Downstream, huh. Penn checked her corpse load -six bodies, all of them blueish, skinny, and soaked to the bone- and told the captain of that large ship, "I've got suspicions, and if they're right, well... I'll be heading upstream, then! She shook her hands to rid herself of that water that smelled of death and mud, activating the controls of the Charon. Soon it was moving at a quick pace, and once it escaped the larger ship's shadow, it just as soon rose into the air to fly around the large ship and then settle back down into the Run moving upstream. The ship was now moving at slightly faster than Cruise speed, following the "trail" of other corpses. Up ahead was a large wreck, the tip of its bow angled at perhaps a perfect 45 degrees. A perfect slope, in other words. There were more bodies. Some of them were face-up and seemed to be gutted. Most were face-down, either with their entrails floating up around them or with large holes in the back of their heads. "...well."
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Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 6:55 am
"Suspicions, now? What's--"
She stopped as the Charon began moving out of the way. Seraphim probably wouldn't pay attention to her shouting now, so instead she headed back to her small cabin annex, and turned to the miserable old radio again, picking up the communication with the other ship.
"Oi, you, I'm gonna tag along. And while I do, would you perhaps mind sharing some of your interesting suspicion theories?"
Not waiting for a reply, and in fact not knowing whether Seraphim actually listened or not, she fired up the Hawk's engines, and began steering the ship along the canyon floor, a fair bit behind the other vessel.
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Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 7:44 pm
He still did not pay any attention to anything, all he heard Penn say was just garble. Hey it might have been something important! Sin, start paying attention. Hnng.
He couldn’t even listen to his mind, just his stomach. And the stomach just said food.
Oh well.
Until "Gonna send 'em to the morgue” reached his ears. Such words! They caused Sinsario to violently whip his head toward Penn; ready to shout a bold “WHAT.” and complain. What. Why is she doing this. Is she serious? How. Why. No. She cannot be serious. She killed ‘em!
Alas he never said a word, for he quickly noticed Penn was looking upward and followed through. Oh. Some girl was talking to them from her own ship; apparently the shadow that loomed over them.
I see, she’s lying. Good thing he kept his mouth shut.
The girl above them uttered a chuckle at something Penn said, but he never heard what it was, as he decided that leaning over the ship and playing with the water again was better than saying anything at all. They hadn’t noticed him anyway.
All there was to hear was more garble.
Still, he said nothing and let her talk to the other girl. Penn did start moving the Charon again after more words, which startled him a little but it brought him back to reality. Sinsario kept his head down and fixated on the water, just some bodies; they have six and six is good.
Suddenly the amount bodies and organs in the water picked up. So many dead.
This. Was. Awesome!
“But uh…what the heck happened? “
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Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 10:15 am
"Well, I have two theories, Sinsario." She thought about it for a bit, muttering something under her breath and wiping off the sweat from between her eyes with her thumb. "One: this is one of those Hastings ships, and every single corpse here belongs to that cargo. Two: this is not a Hastings ship, but a regular -if large- ship that met an unfortunate end here. My guess is, either way, that captain is not here, whoever he is."
Penn heard the transmission from the Kinetic Hawk captain. In the mood for sharing her theory, she took out her radio transmitter and parroted her theory to that captain. Looking to her side, there was another part of this airship, and a man was impaled on it from the side. The wood was stained with mudwater and blood. Disgusting.
"So many bodies... this might have been a pirate raid."
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Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 12:26 pm
How dramatic.
“Wanna move the Charon closer to the wreck? If we can find this ship’s flag and logo, we can tell what sort of ship it was.” Sinsario pointed to what was left of the ship; surely they must have had some logo. “Better yet, do you even know what Hastings ships look like? They’d probably all have something in common with all their ship designs.”
It would explain a little, Hastings is a big company. Then again all Hastings cargos are probably insured against pirates and thus they’d give it to pirates without a fight. However, as a raid; they wouldn’t care. Not saying that non-company ships are spared too, this ship is big. Pirates would want it. “Shame they had to actually wreck the ship though, the pirates could have made plenty of money from selling it.” Ah well, he still would love to see the ship’s parts, it’ll be fun.
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Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:44 pm
The Hawk slowly caught up with the other ship, and Beatrice frowned as Seraphim's voice suggested a few valid backgrounds fitting the incident.
"Not that I guess it matters much, but I'm takin' a wild guess here at it bein' a Hastings one, then. I guess there's some way to make sure. Not that I can really see the details from here, but it sure does seem like a beating's been taken. This place known as a pirate's nest? In any case, I'm thrilled to take a closer look. What'cha think?"
The Hawk was moving close to the ground and, as she got up close enough to the wreckage, made a rather bumpy landing on the canyon floor. Beatrice kicked open a locker below the main control panel, and picked up one of the small pocket flasks waiting inside, preparing for an up-close examining of this forsaken place.
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Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 4:57 am
"I've bet on nothing except for one thing: either way, this captain isn't here. Keep the valuables for bargaining and dump the trash."
Penn landed her ship in the water. There, it bobbed quietly while Penn would try to find the ship's flag and logo on the suggestion of Sin. She stepped up to the ship's thin ledging, saying, "Maybe none of the ships have anything in common. If you don't give pirates a pattern, you can sufficiently throw them off. It doesn't stop them from jumping every other ship, though."
She leaped off to the nearest wrecked part of the ship, and then onto another. With these high-heeled boots on, she could smash one of her ankles at any moment, but she did her best to land on even ground... wherever it could be found. She would also have to find that flag, or check a uniform to see if it beared any logos.
It would take a while.
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Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 10:03 am
“No one will trust a company who has no similarities within itself.” While Penn hopped from pieces of wreck to pieces of wreck; Sinsario jumped into the water in case there was anything sunken had information. “Geeze, you like to walk on the wild side, don’tcha?” in reference to Penn’s hopping. “Well anyway, is the other girl coming or something?” It wouldn’t surprise him if she did. “Who is she? What’s she up to? Should we be cautious of her?” It’s best to know now instead of later. "What makes you say the captain isn't here?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2010 9:00 am
"Yes, I do. Hopping on heads in Cocytus was something of a game of mine when I was younger." Now standing on what appears to be the "bulk" of the ship, Penn grabs the nearest corpse and flips him over. He was a young man, maybe in his 20s. Checking his shirt for a logo or an emblem, there was nothing. There was, however, a rather large hole where part of his chest should be. "Maybe she will. She's the captain of a ship called the Kinetic Hawk. I've maintained contact with her for a while in the time you were still asleep."
Looking at a broken wooden pole where the flag's ship might have been hung, she climbs to the highest point to see if it was still hung there. Turns out it was, but the emblem on this flag...
"How do I know? A... a gut feeling I have."
The flag's emblem was a gold circle encasing a white bat's wing. The circle itself had writing inside, mostly in Latin, but the rune on top of the wing was unmistakable: Alba.
"A bad one."
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