Gently, but with undeniable will divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. (Pt. 5: Chances)

[cityship]

The plan was...well, it wasn't simple, but it sort of was.

While the CLF attacked multiple Clone Processing centers to distract the government, the group with the CLF would target one particular one in the region that'd once been New Jersey. The group with the government would offer their services in putting down their own people.

In the center, they'd split up into several groups. One would fight a fake fight, create a massive diversion, and blow up the room where the samples their DNA were being kept in the process. Another group would secure a teleporter pad. That team would teleport out other teams to steal a ship, steal some med tech to teleport to said ship, and steal a medical database. Another team would go to the main command center and hack into the government mainframe to down the sensornet around the planet so they could escape. And Nightwing himself would accompany the clones to upload the harvested memories to the Mother Brains, left unguarded because of the diversionary fighting, and make sure that was all they did.

Meanwhile, there'd be a standing order for all teams to avoid killing other crewmates, and avoid killing guards unless absolutely necessary.

It was a complicated plan. If a single part fouled up, they might find themselves dead, trapped, or worse. But if it worked, it'd work pretty spectacularly and leave them with medtech, a medical database, the clones helped, and possibly a grateful Council depending on how the fight went, because of the ones seemingly aiding the government.

In some worlds, things that were a million-to-one-chance (exactly a million-to-one) by their nature had to work. Let's hope this world is one of them, eh, mission crew?

[ooc: Only comment to threads if it says they are open here. All threads: OPEN. Characters may get injuries up to and including 7 on the Injury Scale (scroll to the bottom). Any higher, and they must ask permission of the plot-runners, just to make sure everyone isn't immobilized without enough people to help move them.]

Comments

[thewunderkind]

Lash stuck out her tongue at him, but she was grinning. That was a good sign, if anything. "Then I'll just wear another bathing suit instead, Overlord. Or at least something not from this store." So that wasn't a...complete no, if anything. She held up the skirt again.

"We are taking it," she added with a nod, amused at how his mode had changed the minute she brought it out. At the mention of her tattoo, however, she looked down and poked at it with her other hand.

"Oh!" she turned her head at the dark purple lights. "Tee hee, I hadn't even noticed they were UV lights." She looked down again, and turned so he could have a better view of it. "See, at the bottom they put our name. This is why no one in Black Hole ever had huge ones. The barcode is scanned as you enter any building to confirm your identity, or alert who is coming. Wrong barcode, and you were either shot or arrested for questioning. Most people would be happier getting shot, trust me. And at the top is the Black Hole symbol!" She grinned, looking into another clothing rack. "Because the tattoos are only visible in UV light, they weren't detectable to the naked eye. That way, we could easily sneak into their bases without being suspects." Unless they had a supply of blacklights. "However, they couldn't sneak in our bases and let's just say very few people were brave enough to copy a full code tattoo into their own skin."

She spun around one of the jewelery racks, her eyes searching for something that looked at least nice or maybe deadly enough to use as a weapon. Most of these were terrible fake diamond incrusted 'babyoll' and 'sexy' necklaces that probably weighed a few pounds.

"Black Hole was always about efficiency and being better than the other nati...ooh!" Her attention was suddenly shifted to something else. "This one is a gun..." she held it up to admire it better.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"You can't always wear a bathing suit around the ship," he said. That would just be weird.

He watched her move as she talked about the tattoo, a dark and inscrutable look on his face. Whatever she might say or however fine she might be about that tattoo, it didn't make him happier about it. The fact remained that she had been permanently marked. Even he, of all the people in the cosmos the one who could most claim the right to do that, wouldn't have ever gone down that path.

He was mad enough to grind teeth.

[thewunderkind]

At the sound, Lash put down the fake diamond gun and looked around for a few seconds, confused. She hadn't been looking at Zetta during most of her tattoo spiel.

"Did you hear that? It sounded like a creaking door!"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Huh?" Zetta stopped being pissed to look up and around, both to the front and the back doors of the shop.

[thewunderkind]

"Never mind." She had already run up to the door to look outside. There didn't seem to be any more security guards. "It was a really weird sound. Maybe it was just one of the display cases being rusty."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"I didn't hear anything," Zetta said, reliably self-unaware. "I don't think we've got anything more to deal with besides those -- what the hell is that necklace?! That thing is terrible!"

[thewunderkind]

"Everything in the store is terrible," the wunderkind snickered, agreeing with him. "I guess in a usually peaceful utopia you just end up glamorizing violence and weapons."

She tried to imagine Neotanks with diamond and rubies and burst out laughing. What a terrible fighting hazard.

"That, or being sad is the new in, if all these depressing shirts are any indication."

Lash. Judging an entire world by a single clothing store.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Hey, they'd had plenty of other experiences with this world to judge it by! ALL OF THEM WERE BAD!

"Yeah, we're definitely taking this!" Zetta said. There was no real way to rip it up without taking out the entire mall, which they were still inside. So Zetta summoned a train of minions to start hurling the contents into that building he'd dropped outside.

[thewunderkind]

True enough. At least the hotel service was pretty speedy.

Lash poked her head out again to make sure the coast was clear, and looked over to the next store.

"CANDY!" she said a little too excitedly and loudly. The tattoo was beginning to disappear the farther she went from the store's blacklights.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Well. That was all right, then, though Zetta privately didn't think he'd ever forget seeing it.

Why did he have ominous shivers creeping down his spine? As his minions finished up their work, Zetta followed her in the arms of his leader-girl.

[thewunderkind]

He was right to fear. As they stepped into the candy store, it was easy to see it was one of the more popular places of the mall. Bright, white, and gigantic, it was filled to the brim with candies from every corner of the globe, in bright colors that hurt your eyes just looking at them.

Rows upon rows.

Lash hadn't had that much candy in her life, that was true. But the trip to the merchant planet and all those bowls of chocolate pudding had left her with a rather sweet tongue.

"We're taking everything."

Good thing they had taken some toothbrushes from the drug store. Lash was going to need a million of them.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"You sure? It's the only thi-- of course you're sure. What the hell was I thinking?"

Truth be told, Zetta didn't have much of a sweet tooth. Oh, he liked decadent desserts as much as any sane man, but rampant gorging on junk food wasn't his style.

And yet... the Overlord hadn't really protested.

[thewunderkind]

That was odd. Not that Lash was really noticing right now, looking at all the different candies that shone like multicolored diamonds. But her eyes dotted around trying to find at least a facsimile like the one she had found back on the merchant planet.

"Pop Rocks!" Yes, score! And these didn't have alien language over them. Mostly. She shoot a small packet of them and then stuffed a lot of it into her mouth.

She grinned at the Overlord as a bunch of tiny little fireworks came out of her mouth and the sound of popping and crackling.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Wait, how the hell are you doing that without severe gunpowder burns to the inside of your mouth?" Zetta demanded.

[thewunderkind]

Lash would probably say something about certain chemical reactions and probably 5000 years of perfecting candy down to an insane art but...

When she tried to explain, more fireworks and cracking came out.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"It probably says something that I find that oddly attractive. Want me to make some fireworks inside your brain and lower spine?" he said, lifting his eyebrows.

[thewunderkind]

Lash grinned, although her train of thought was probably not the same as what he was thinking right now. Sides, there were minions watching.

She looked at Zetta.

The remaining half packet.

Zetta.

She wondered how hard it would be to throw it right into his book mouth, but that would require good timing and...what the hell she just held on to the packet and threw out all of the remaining pieces inside at him.

Odds were one of them would find their mark.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"We could smash open some of these jars, and you lay down on the jellybeglark--"

Good shot, Lash! The book is now launching explosions instead of words!

[thewunderkind]

She let out a laugh that echoed in all the store, as the fireworks in her own mouth finally were starting to die out and she had regained the ability to speak. Lash let out a final sort of puff, and grinned at Zetta.

"Tee hee hee! This is pretty funny!" She then looked at some of the minions.

"Well...come on! Start packing, there's large plastic bags to carry the stuff everywhere."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Zetta told Lash some very choice things, the contents of which she would never know, as he was cursing about as effectively as a comic strip character.

Nevertheless, his minions obeyed either a mental command from the Overlord or Lash herself, because they jumped into action.

[thewunderkind]

That only got her to laugh louder. After looking around, she settled on the strangely colored lollipops that looked like tiny little bombs. Hey this one tasted like chocolate!

Wouldn't it be smarter just to have chocolate in that instant eh whatever.

This was a pretty huge candy store, but slowly it was getting drain of its resources. Taking out the lollipop, she spoke to Zetta after what seemed like a good enough time for the poprock's effects to have subsided. "Did you have another store in mind?"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Wench," Zetta grumbled. Surely not the worst word he could have called her.

"Even an Overlord has limits, and this is pretty much mine," he said. "I think we've gotten about all we can get. Not a bad haul, huh?"

[thewunderkind]

She took the insult in stride, anyway. Lash had a tendency to tune out certain things with people she liked, especially when she was teasing.

"Well we have food, clothing, building materials, underwear, pharmacy stuff and shoes. I'm pretty sure half the ship is going to be eating out of our hands if we plan this carefully, tee hee!"

Why was it that those two had ended up doing this?

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Whim.

"We should set up a shop! Uh, except there's no currency..." Huh, what WERE they gonna do with all this?

[thewunderkind]

"We could always exchange it for services," Lash replied, realizing that they now had really powerful bargaining tools. "Or a shop like you said, but like a renting shop! They'd do something for us in exchange for whatever they want, tee hee hee!"

Lash then realized that she didn't want that much. The tool shop already carried anything she'd want to get. Maybe she could get an extra coat or something made, but for the most part she had it pretty good.