Logs:Fast & Furious

Fast & Furious
Dramatis Personae Ion, Tian-shin
In Absentia	2024-10-05 "{We about to do better than piss them off.}"
Location <MOJ> Outside the Village - Mojo World
In many ways, this is not at all Ion's most preferred of environments. There is a lot more water around than solid land -- steamy bubbling pools and fizzy glimmering ones and crisp clear cold ones and ones that crackle like they've been filled with pop rocks and ones that burble warm and pleasant and ones that glorp acrid-smelling and foul and all of them spreading far and wide. Many of these pools are fairly populated -- slugs soaking, slugs reveling, slugs socializing, slugs bathing, slugs disappearing under the surface for a Very Long Time and presumably getting up to unspeakable slugtivities Ion would rather not know of. In between most of the pools are only narrow slimy strips that look very precarious for an unwary electrokinetic to try and navigate the treacherous footing He isn't currently navigating any footing at all, though. There's a small cluster of -- okay, he can't actually pronounce the name of the planet they said they were from but their current Alien Tour Guides look like nothing more than marionettes fashioned out of bendy glowsticks. Bright and luminous, a slender neon blue Glowy Guy in the lead and a neon yellow one flanking left. While the water spreading far and wide around is not sparking joy, the sleek-fast hovercraft that they've helped the Mongrels steal very much are. Knife-sharp and agile, it took Ion Not Long At All to get a feel for the lightweight personal craft and at this exact moment the fact that he has already been just a little bit stabbed once this expedition (by the person they stole it from some while back) is in no way diminishing his exhilaration as he cuts a spray of water up behind him, racing after their newfound glowy friend. "{ -- half be worth it even we don't find no damn space airport,}" he's calling across to his earthling companion. Tian-shin took longer to master controlling her stolen hovercraft, but she is keeping up with Ion, now, smiling wide herself. "{It's great to ride again without being forced to do it for that stupid show!}" She got through their grand theft hovercraft relatively unstabbed and in fact did some stabbing of her own in the process. "{Watch it! You know that's not all water down there!}" But she's laughing brightly as she veers out of the arc of the spray Ion kicks up. There's one of the portal-marker pillars up ahead, just a distant faintly glowing corkscrew getting bigger fast. "{How many more doors you think, before we get there?}" "{Yeah, who know what fucking slug juice they been pissing in these pools. -- I think we next, yeah?}" Ion is veering up faster, spinning around as they near the portal marker to tug a couple packets of Snek Ku Tam Tam chili crab crackers from a makeshift bag (fashioned from several I ❤️ I ❤️ NY shirts crude stitched together) at his hip and tossing them lightly to their glowy temporary road companion. "{Stay safe, lil ravers,} we live through this shit I send you so much cronch things." And then he's zipping through -- -- and out the other side. Blessedly, considerably dryer, the endless watery landscape has been traded for an endless squishy mud-pit. It's far less crowded in here, slugs few and far between and mostly heading to or from one large spiraling mound in the near distance. "{Can't tell these fuckers apart we looking for some bigwig? The fuck a hotshot slug look look. Fatter, uglier, shit, maybe gold plate him claws. Say he roll in here every day this time with his fucking ride, though, don't guess we can miss the spaceship.}" Tian-shin speeds up and braces as she follows Ion through the portal. She squints as she scans the landscape. "{I don't see anything bigger than their hover-sleds,}" she complains blandly, gaining altitude for a better look. Almost immediately, she says, "{Oh hey. That's a weird-looking...hole? Valley?}" Given where they are, perhaps "weird-looking" is relative. It certainly is a large and very geometric indent in the mud. She banks toward it. "{Maybe that's a hangar or something.}" "{Rest this place so normal, yeah?}" Ion is cheery, anyway, about this, though his deep laughter is a little more muted here on this quieter plain than he had been in the more boisterous noise of the bathing fields. He's crouching lower on his ride, pulling up the t-shirt that's been formed into kind of a makeshift balaclava, and pulling up beside Tian-shin. "{Think it bigger closer? Look the right direction but how you fit a whole spaceship down there?}" Despite the skepticism he's still starting towards it. "Glowsticks ain't steer us wrong yet." Admittedly, they have known the glowy aliens for not long enough to have a very robust sample size. "{Compared to some of those other doors? This one's pretty low on weird.}" Tian-shin's laughter is kind of weak as she pulls up her own black cowl. "{Still weird enough I can't really judge scale at a distance.}" As they get closer, the geometric shape of the hole looks almost pixelated around its sharp clean edges, although it has just been excavated. It is also getting quite a lot bigger, but still not big enough to fit a whole spaceship. Probably? Granted, neither of them knows how big a Mojoite spaceship ought to be. "{Let's circle it to get a better look,}" she suggests as she steers around the left side of the hole. The hole is, unfortunately for the Weirdos, very much occupied already, a number of slugs and their various attendant servants bustling about the spiraling stair-stepped structure. There are also several more incoming, and swiftly, from another of the portal doors just past the pit. It is the incoming slugs (one of them is quite large, though if he is any uglier that is a matter of personal opinion, and though he has not plated his claws in gold, the stitches that sew open his eyes are in bold bright colors and his hovercraft far more ornately wrought than most) and their coterie that spy the Mongrels first. They are pivoting closer, and its one of the Lesser Slugs that first addresses them -- not that it helps much, out here away from their carefully curated "Earth" replica environs, because it absolutely is not English that these creatures are usually speaking and the scratchy-harsh gurgles that are being directed towards Ion and Tian-shin are probably not all that understandable. Maybe more understandable is the way several of their attendants are fanning out in preparation to surround the Weirdos' sleek crafts. Ion is sticking close to Tian-shin's side, and now from beneath the thin cotton of his facewrap his guffaw is loud and bright. "{Fuck, we find the bigshot. -- Oh, fuck.}" The laughter is trailing off as the aliens move to surround them, though from the slight rasp in his voice Ion is regretting this more due to the quality of the air he's breathing than the imminent threat. "{We find the damn bigshot.}" His head is shaking with an exaggerated disappointment: "Not even no hint of spaceship, gonna tell them night-lights --" But as his eyes cut one direction and then another he is not, actually, moving to flee but to gun it straight ahead toward the VIP Slug -- "Che, Cachorra," he's calling over his shoulder to Tian-shin, "been too damn long since our last riot, {I know you itching to piss off some cops.}" He certainly is, anyway, because his hook-arm is flinging out to one side as he moves, the bright crackle of lightning flaring garish and brilliant in the dim grey world. Tian-shin's "oh fuck" comes in Mandarin, though more or less at the same time as Ion's. She is also not fleeing, but accelerating hard as she turns to follow Ion, pulling up along the left side of his hovercraft, so close that his lightning arcs over to her, harmless enough (for now) with neither of them grounded. She sights the distance and leaps across the gap, throwing one arm around him, the other hand drawing her sword in readiness. Electricity dances along the gleaming blade, the blue tinge of the light it gives off intensifying even as the scent of ozone sharpens around them. "{We about to do better than piss them off.}" Behind them there's a series of louder electrical snaps and then a low ominous 'FWOOM' hardwired deep in the human brain to signal danger. Without even looking, Ion is shifting position on his hovercraft to accommodate Tian-shin, throwing his weight just so to the side as she jumps on to somewhat balance out the sudden careening wobble the sleek vehicle is taking on with the abrupt extra weight. The guards are closing in around them swift, and his shoulders clench hard as they start to open fire -- there's more blood, now, adding splashy and bright to the sticky-drying stab wound from earlier, but he doesn't slow. Leans forward, speeds up. Is the Boss Slug looking at all aghast when they crash hard right into him or do the stitched-open eyes and wide-grimace mouth just scan that way to human interpretation, who knows. Ion can't decipher the string of scratchy gurgles rising right before impact. Behind them, with the first crackling spark as they disappear, the FWOOM is igniting bright and brilliant, a spectacular boom that scorches the mud wide around. They aren't around long to witness it, vanishing together with the Fancy Slug in a bright crackle of lightning. As they vanish the lightning, the explosion, illuminate the ground and murk-grey sky around them -- oddly, the pit they came to investigate isn't there anymore, though crackling above where it had stood is a huge oddly rock-like floating structure enveloped harmlessly in the blaze of fire. It's a quick ride, as ever, but considerably more painful than the usual. At least the world is very much not on fire when they come back out. Ion is gasping, rattly and hoarse, for breath, and their hovercraft sputtering useless to the muddy ground. The sluglord has been separated from his fancy hovercraft -- Ion is clinging to it with his hook where it floats, currently, just over the mud. "Fuck." He's peeling his t-shirt mask up as if this will help his breathing situation, and though it does not it does, at least, reveal enough of his face to make it clear he's laughing, grim and pained but laughter all the same. His hook clicks against the slug's personal hovercraft. "Think we all fit in this shit, damn. {Bad intel, huh. Back to the fucking} --" No end to this sentence, just another hoarse gasp. The Sluglord is not at all pleased with this change of fortunes. Not with the disappearance of his cadre, not with the fact he is now mucking about in the mud and not regally seated in his hovercraft, definitely not with this strange alien slave babbling at him. He's slithering forward startlingly quick, in the sludge, immense bulk plowing towards the injured Weirdo stealing his ride and clawed hands outstretched, aiming in vicious rake toward Ion's face. "Maybe his other hovercraft is the spaceship." Given she's sunken to one knee, bloodied and shaking, it's probably sheer luck rather than kung fu mastery that has landed Tian-shin on the bigshot hovercraft and not in the mud. But she scrambles quickly to her feet as the craft's owner advances on Ion, sword swinging down at the slug's raking limbs. Her kiai is not quite as forceful as it might be under normal atmospheric and physiological conditions, but the flashing arc of her blade might arguably fall harder for the gravity. Ion is trying to pull himself upward, though with minimal success -- arm bloodied, gravity pressing too-heavy into the mud, lungs straining at the thin air. He slips down hard into the muck, half-crushed under the slug's bulk though at least avoiding any acute Stab Damage when Tian-shin's sword slices at the limbs that are clawing for him. There's another small pop and the sluglord simply vanishes. Given that Ion is very much still here, it's fairly unlikely the slug will return. He's slow, still, to his feet, hovecraft wobbling only minimally as he snags his hook around its edge and pulls himself properly now to rise. He's grimacing as he looks at its insides -- kind of slimy with slug-muck, controls peppered with grime and debris. He's tossing aside several emptied carapaces of some long-gone snack, chucking an unidentifiable wad of goop into the muck. Almost chucking another lump, too, though this one he brushes off (slightly uselessly) against his grime-crusted shirt -- beneath it is a glimmer of bismuth-like rock, spiraling and crystalline in a shifting array of colors. "Fff. {Slugs got no love for their rides, shit.}" He's shaking his head in disdain, hand reaching up for Tian-shin's to ask for a boost up. "{We make it back, you got a hell of a story for the other dogs next bonfire.}" "{I don't think they have much love for anything but themselves.}" Tian-shin pushes the shirt-mask back, flicks the slug's fluids from her sword, and reaches down to haul Ion up into the craft. Even this small exertion leaves her breathless, and she doesn't immediately let go of his hand. She just stares at him for a moment, eyes wide and a little wild. Then blushes and looks away, smiling through the blood and grime as she turns the hovercraft back toward the gate. "{Let's get out of here before someone comes looking for that slug and his lack of spaceship.}" She glances down at the rock in Ion's hand, then back up at him as they pick up speed. "{But that was fucking amazing.}"