ten_fwd | Problems of the U // Team 9's Feeling Fine!

The last place he wanted to be when the earth shook like that was underground. But maybe, just maybe, after that first shake that was all they were in for.

It was not to be. As the world came down around them, he ducked and covered his head. Through the dust and falling rocks, he didn't see that fairly sizable stone coming down toward him. He let out a shout of pain when it made impact. He rolled over onto his side and scrambled away from the rock, in case more were coming. Fortunately, it was a glancing blow. A stone that size could have hurt him a lot worse if it had hit him squarely.

He stayed curled up until the shaking stopped, and the last pebbles settled. He patted his vest. It didn't seem like anything critical had been damaged.

Time to see how the others had fared. He called out to the room at large. "Oi--ow!" he wrapped his arm around his chest. Okay, that really hurt. The black of his vest and pants was muted by the settling dust as he pushed himself to his feet. "Everyone alright?"

He had someone else to check on, too. He pulled out the Stag Phone, jabbed a button and put it to his head. He was rewarded with a loud, shrill shriek and he jerked it from his head. Okay, that was weird. He started pushing pseudo memories into it, the flying blue Bat Shot, and the skittering yellow Spider Shock. "Go find anyone else in trouble," he told them.

While he did that, he experimented a bit with breathing in a way that wasn't painful while he looked around the smaller space that had been the large main room. Nothing but rocks. He took a few steps around the rock that had wounded him. "Anyone else out there?"

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"Thanks."

Dylan eyes the lance as Shotaro takes it, but the guy shows no sign of guessing that rather than a light, it's really the weapon that the Commonwealth issued to the High Guard, a weapon so powerful and versatile that Dylan rarely has to carry anything else and that they're in high demand among the thugs that have snatched their own little bits of the world out of the wreck of the Commonwealth.

While Shotaro steadies the light from the lance, Dylan steps forward to study the pattern of the rockfall, running his hands over the rocks, trying to work out where the stresses fall, which rocks he'll be able to move and which are actually holding up other parts of the cave.

Some Argosy engineers would be really useful right about now. They used to get sent in on earthquake relief. Which means that as much experience as Dylan has with picking up after earthquakes, this part of it is hardly his forte.

He turns his head when Shotaro speaks, and he sees one of those little bots he'd seen earlier apparently reporting back to him.

"What's it doing?" he asks, nodding towards it.

In other situations, Shotaro would just transform and blow a hole in the ceiling and be done with it. But there were way too many people down here for him to take with him in the ensuing, inevitable collapse, they were way too far down for him to actually do any breaking through, and there was no guarantee that whatever kind of earth was above them could actually be broken through in that way. That time he'd taken Akiko and that museum curator through the ceiling of that excavation site was more cut and dry than this.

"I've had them looking for anyone else trapped," he replied. "And any other ways out of here other than those elevators. The good news is we're not entirely sealed in. There's some gaps in the rock, but the bad news is they're too small for the Gadgets to get through. More good news, is that there's no people on the other side, other than who we're trying to get to now."

He was just full of good news. He sighed, though. "I don't have all of them, though. If I had a couple more we might be able to send messages through and get a better idea of just where to cut. They're not as well-behaved as the others, they tend to do their own thing. So when Q grabbed me up, I only had what I had on me." He sighed a little.

"I'm glad you at least had those." He shakes his head. "I could have been more useful if I'd had my bracers with me, but they're back on the Enterprise."

Which is what he gets for going onto an alien planet not expecting trouble just because he's incognito and in another universe. That was stupid. Far more stupid than is characteristic of him.

Shotaro, though, seems to have filled some of that gap with his handy little bots... What did he call them? Gadgets.

"This is going to be a lot easier knowing just what we're looking for. Though we are going to have to be really careful with these rocks."

All the earthquake relief he's worked in the past has been backed up by the powerful sensors and scanners not only of the Andromeda but of the equipment it carries for just this sort of thing. Which, engineers or no engineers, would have made this much easier. But there's no point in dwelling on what they don't have; they need to make the best of what they do, and that means turning back to the collapsed rocks with his pickaxe.

It's hard to tell what's holding what up. It's not designed for it, but if he were less uneasy about the instability of the cave roof above them, he could easily rig an overload in the power source on his lance to help clear some of the rock, but here and now, that would be the worst sort of counterproductive. The dangerous sort.

Eventually, though, he thinks he's worked out the best way through the rocks, and he takes a swing, carefully aimed, but with the full power of his Heavy Worlder strength behind it.

It doesn't take him long to either break or move the rock he's working at. He really is stronger than he looks, and after a moment, he glances back at Shotaro.

"So what do you think? Do I pass?"

Edited 2014-08-27 03:35 (UTC)

He was glad the confession he'd made earlier had gone well. No one seemed weirded out by it. But then considering the rest of them seemed pretty used to this outer-space thing, they'd probably seen weirder.

But watching Dylan work brought obvious surprise to Shotaro's face. "Whoa..." He was a big guy, but that was more than he'd even expected from him. "Yeah, with flying colors. I've never seen a normal human do anything like that before."

"Well," he replies, cocking his head and giving the self-confessed detective and hero a grin, eyebrows raised as he leans one hand against the rock wall for a moment, "I'm not exactly a normal human."

The guy looks surprised, certainly, and Dylan weighs everything Julian had told him in his mind again before he shrugs. There are times for keeping tactical secrets; that's as ingrained in him as the words una salus victus or the command codes that give him authority aboard the Andromeda.

It's just as important to know when the right time is to give up information you've been holding close, and when it jeopardizes the mission is that time.

"I'm the sort of human who survives on worlds with heavy gravity. Which means I'm a lot stronger than any normal human my size." And a lot heavier.

And with a metabolism that runs a hell of a lot faster, which could wind up being a problem. But one step at a time.

Problems of the U // Team 9's Feeling Fine!

Re: Shotaro and Dylan

Re: Shotaro and Dylan

Re: Shotaro and Dylan

Re: Shotaro and Dylan

Re: Shotaro and Dylan