The hero's boon received

[srwu_npc]

[Route split explanation]
The characters are now split into two groups that cannot interact with each other. Characters are on route A by default. However people who participated in the mission "the Boon" are now on route B. Characters who did not participate in the mission, but their players decide that they were somewhere around the Discovery when the mission happened (just offscreen) can also be on route B.

[1 - route A, mingle/reaction prompt]
The Discovery has launched into space.

The ancient stone building raised from the earth, freed from the cave that sheltered it for thousands of years. It's no building - but a giant cathedral-like starship. A starship that quickly rose through the atmosphere and before anyone could stop it, took its place on Earth's orbit.

Now it's floating in space, slowly circling the planet and not responding to any signals, seemingly lifeless. Something has obviously happened inside, something possibly not good at all - but there's just only one little problem preventing anyone from getting in close to investigate what has happened.

The Seekers, the Guardians (of Past, Present and Future) - even one of those was a very formidable foe. Now there are many, floating around the Discovery and, as an observation probe found out, attacking everything that comes close.

How much worse are things going to get?


"I'm assuming command of Unity Group."

Here's a message from Lee Linjun.

"Your little game, where the organisation continued to exist and pretend nothing's wrong despite not even having an acting officer, moved on for long enough. As long as it only affects internal affairs I couldn't care less, but now the stakes are simply too high."

"You know well what happened. The alien known as the Lady has made her move. She has the power to affect reality itself and wants nothing less than to subjugate humanity, it's not too late to stop her but we need to act, and we need to act RIGHT NOW. Her vessel, what we all used to know as Discovery, is now in Earth orbit - but not for long. Using the Shirogane's Tronium Cannon, I'm going to take it out."

"The only problem is the Lady's grunts on the way. That's where you come in. I've sent a similar message to UN Spacy, the ESUN military, anyone who still has a space force. We're gathering a fleet, and then we strike."

"I hope to see you there too, Unity Group. Not even for your own sake. This is a crisis where individual lives and organisations no longer matter. This is for the sake of humankind itself. Lee Linjun, out."

[2 - also route A]

"You're better not thinking about ceding leadership to that pompous buffoon."


"Not in a million years. A state of emergency or not, his actions have no legal authority to them. Unity Group remains independent and we can do whatever we decide. But..."


"But what do we decide to do, indeed, hmm? Ladies, gentlemen..."

Commander Huffman turns to anyone present - and this time the UG leaders do not even meet behind a door. This is in an open area, with UG members' input requested, and welcome.

"What do you believe we should do?"

[3 - route B, talking with NPCs and/or mingle prompt]
"Hey."


"Are you alive?"

Woken up by SSR's Viletta Vadim, you come by inside your machines' cockpit. The surroundings are the Discovery - dark but normal looking, without crazy time-space twisting shenanigans. The Lady or her minions are not here, nor is Loni or his friends. Neither is the Grunbein...

It almost feels like a dream. But it was no dream. Your unit's damage is proof of that.


"Something's different. A lot of the Discovery's systems lied dormant, and now they've activated for some reason. If only I knew how to actually operate them... but there's a reason getting Professor Dupond out to safety was a priority."

Suddenly you have more company as two more familiar SSR units approach. One is the Gunleon you saw fight the Seeker, while the other...


"Bad news guys, there's some kind of barrier blocking the exit. Even Gunleon can't break it and believe me, I tried."


"Even radio doesn't work... Does it mean we're trapped here?"


"..."


"At least the immediate area seems safe. But it looks like we will all have to work together if we're to break out of here."

Comments

2

[dignity_kept]

I'm happy to hear you are not intending to cede control to Linjun, sir. [The tone in Kagura's voices leaves little doubt that she would be insubordinating pretty hard right now if it wasn't the case]

What does the UN council have to say? Unity is still an UN peacekeeping force under UN jurisdiction, whereas the SSR - and by inference, that pompous lackwit - is not.

[srwu_mods]

"For now? Believe it or not but there's only silence. People at ESUN are either running around in a mad scramble, too busy to give us orders - or they assume we will do as usual."

[dignity_kept]

[All of Kagura's voices sigh]

Sounds familiar. We'll have to cobble something together then.

Do we have any news about the team that was there during the attack on the Discovery? The report was rather spotty on what happened out there.

[srwu_mods]

"All contact's been lost shortly after they went in. Communication's met with radio silence, and that didn't change even after Discovery took off to space."

"For all is known, we can't even be sure if they're still alive."

[dignity_kept]

Very well then. Give me the tactical surveillance analysis. We'll have to mount an extraction operation quick enough that Linjun doesn't get to use his giant penis compensator before everyone is home free.

[srwu_mods]

"Sounds like an idea. Now we only need to do something about the large number of powerful enemies surrounding Discovery."

"They're the kind our task forces faced one at a time and struggled against. Now, there's at least a dozen all in one place."

[dignity_kept]

What do we have about their combat stats? Speed, firepower, that kind of thing?

Either way, it seems obvious this is going to require a multi-team cordinated effort. Maybe a large force running interference and keeping these things busy while a smaller team commences an infiltration and extraction. A thing I learned in the Executors is that individually powerful things generally have SOME limits to how many places they can project force simultaneously.

2

[totallyhonest]

Unity Group is like an actual official intergovernmental organization right? Like, it's under United Nations or something? Why is this even a discussion. Someone can't just make an announcement saying "hey, I'm the head of WHO now" or something like that, right?

[srwu_mods]

"Don't get me wrong. The question isn't whether we give in to Linjun's demands or not, no one here has any inclination towards that."

"The question is, what's our next course of action?"

[totallyhonest]

Why is that even a question as well? Is all of Unity group's planner are captured in discovery or something? We do what we usually do when a massive world-ending enemy fleet is threathening earth! This isn't the first time it happened. There's that Unicorn thing, and that Wulgaru thing, and that Zentradi thing, and the answer was always the same. We gather a big fleet and we kick the enemy's butt! I don't even know why that SSR guy can just suddenly pop out and say things like it's what always been done.

[srwu_mods]

"The squad we lost inside does not concern you?"

[totallyhonest]

Why does one thing exclude the other? Can't we gather enough fleet to destroy the surrounding fleet, and mount a rescue operation in the meantime or something? Isn't that what we always do? Sheesh, seriously, it's like I'm the only one who follow Unity Group modus operandi!

[srwu_mods]

"Allow me to let you in on a secret, ms Wallach."

"The Unity Group does not have a fleet at its disposal."

[totallyhonest]

...The Macross?

Even discounting that, what did we use against the Unicorn and The Wulgaru then?

I'm not saying that Unity Group secretly hide a massive fleet under their bed or something, but we can coordinate those massive fleets before right? Why do suddenly we can't do that now and just let Lee Linjun do what we used to do before?

[srwu_mods]

"Unicron, the Wulgaru, the Zentradi and Balmarians - these are the threats Earth faced with a large unified fleet. But because of them, we don't really have a large unified fleet anymore. Damage and casualties have accumulated, and ESUN is very... cautious in deploying what it still has remaining."

"At the very least the council is silent now, so will it ever deploy the fleet? And if it will, are they going to listen to us or Linjun? Who can tell, hmm."

3

[empress_without_a_throne]

"Trapped" feels too pessimistic...

Whatever happened... I'd like to believe the Lady didn't get what she wanted, and that we're not out of this just yet.

[not_a_prize]

I don't think we have the priveledge of not being involved, even if we wanted to.

[Peola grimaces, looking like she was about to start punching things.]

What are we going to do now though...

[actuallyselfish]

"Start digging?" Dido suggests, head bandaged from all the throwing around earlier.

"Or maybe look for one of the depots left by the science teams. Maybe there's a way we could take control of the Discovery's systems..."

[srwu_npc3]

"If there was a way out of this by force, Travis would've done it by now."


"No pressure, right? It sucks to admit it, but maybe Gunleon's power isn't enough here."


"Anyway we can't give up. Onodera's right. If the Lady got what she wanted, I'm sure there'd be more fanfare rather than what we have now. The Discovery's ancient, but its designs are not that alien. That means there must be something in here we can figure out how to work."

[majestic_keiki]

[A voice who hadn't been with everyone else during the mission cuts in.]

Maybe, but it might be somewhere we can't reach without breaking through some walls. Are the internal walls breakable? I can try see if the various sensors of Purple-2 can find anything, but with the jamming we'll probably have to rely on physically searching the place.

[srwu_npc]

"I'm about to find out."


"That's the spirit! Don't give up Darling!"


"Ah, please wait...!"

But Rand listens not, and the Gunleon slams its wrench into a nearest wall.


"There we go. Did I overdo it?"

The whole wall collapses, revealing another section of the Discovery.

[herodrawing]

Guys, you gotta see this! A wall just came down!

[Red Five peeks in from the other side.]

Oh.

[majestic_keiki]

...You're here as well, Izuru? I know I went in to try to maintain communication between the inside and the outside, but where did you come from?

[herodrawing]

I heard Ange and some other SSR guys had trouble, so I came to help...

[majestic_keiki]

Ah...And now we're all stuck here. But at least we're together.

Let's see if there are others here and what we can find to get out.

[actuallyselfish]

"As long as you're here, Izuru...did you see any strange rooms or weird phenomena on the way inside the Discovery?"

[majestic_keiki]

Is there anything here that isn't weird or strange in some way? At least enough to not be clear whether it'll help us get out.

[empress_without_a_throne]

Maybe... but Viletta was just saying that the designs aren't "that" alien. And if there's something in this section of the ship you didn't see anything like in yours, or vice-versa... that could be our next lead.

[herodrawing]

There was mostly stone where I was but, do you remember that large hall? With the clones and the TSEN like teleporter. It had machinery, right? Maybe it's active now.

[majestic_keiki]

We don't have a lot of time and I'm not sure any of us can easily tell what an unfamiliar machine does without taking it apart and studying it more closely. Or trying to use it, but I'm not sure hitting random buttons is going to be a safe move.

But that corridor might be it, seems like something familiar enough that we know its similar to something we know.

[not_a_prize]

Worse comes to worse we just hit something until it works. Maybe it won't be safe like you said Kei... but we don't have much time either.

[Something you also said. Meaning that some risks are probably best taken...]

I dunno if its going to stay this quiet for long... something weird's happening. Just get that feeling ever since after the fight.

[cloningblues]

Of course something weird is happening. Strange reality warps and the Lady summoning lots of strong enemies out of nowhere should've been a clue.

[Blue One appears in sight.]

The good news is, none of these enemies are present anymore, at least in the nearby areas. I hope it stays this way.

[majestic_keiki]

Yeah. Makes it safer to search for a way out. Seems like the TSEN are our best bet, even if I'd prefer a door.

2

[a_monetized_mind]

Well...I suppose we'll have to bust in, rescue our team, disable the ship, then bail before the tronium cannons start firing.

You know, basic stuff.
[Said in the tone of someone who is wholly unprepared to do this thing.]

[srwu_mods]

"That's not going to be easy or basic. Look at the enemy outlines from recordings we got before the probes got wrecked."

"Our teams faced this type of foe before. One at a time, and it was still a challenge. Now there's a dozen, at least."

[a_monetized_mind]

I was being sarcastic.

But, seriously-There's no law that says we have to beat those guys, right? Just the ship behind them.

...The rescue part will be hardest, but we've got stuff that can crack it, right? I mean, if nothing else, Doomstar and I could...mm.

[srwu_mods]

"It's hard to tell sometimes."

"Right, no matter what some people believe it's not a fight where you need to wipe out all enemies. Just make sure they don't wipe out our team back while it proceeds with the extraction."

"That's the hard part."