Hook, Line, and Sinker

Hook, Line, and Sinker
Part of Ships In The Night
Date 2085-11-29 GM Sleevey Location Seattle, SSC Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Phototaxis Friendly Fire Spirit	SSC	Bloody Mountain Gangers
Asura	Mystic Adept Master Adept Apprentice	Bloody Mountain Chief Bloody Mountain Gangers
Casualties and losses
Asura got dented a LOT, but is still alive	A fire spirit lost a duel of the fates	Chief died, others ran

Summary

An incredibly desperate runner is offered a chance to find the answers she seeks. This is the first step of many into the unknown she will take.

Background

Asura has only been able to remember her life up to about 2 years ago, from when she was picked up by the Knight Errant and made an officer under her adoptive father, Captain Marcus Avera. But that was not where she belonged. Frequent visions she didn't understand and a blank spot where a whole second life was before her, she left for Seattle and worked independently to try and find leads. And this led to Phototaxis-A runner who, despite the worrying attitude, had a means by which to at least find a way to get started hunting down answers.

Phototaxis suggested that the metal woman find her something to use psychometry on, try to find some sort of lead into the ex officer's past, and then let the brunette do the actual searching herself. And so, Asura settled upon letting Phototaxis search through the imprints on something from her past-a small little tea set Asura has had for a while, dearly beloved and cared for. Perhaps there would be something there they could use. So upon a rainy night after some months of preparation, mentally and physically, for the events to come, Asura arrived at the conjurer's abode to allow her a chance to peer within. Phototaxis led her inside the fortress she had made out of this abandoned factory, into a central sort of laboratory. Asura tenderly, dutifully removed the tea set from the box she carried it in and set it down in the center, and Phototaxis began working. After some initial prodding by the moth to get a feel, the layers of positive emotion and care layered over it through the years, when something peculiar sticks out at her. Something...foreign, like a drop in a pond, rippling out. Left there, it seems, by something or someone.

So Phototaxis took a look

What followed was a series of memories from Asura's perspective. Or, rather, an Asura from before she was brutalized so badly she lost her memories and replaced her body. And in all of these vision, warm and joyful, was a woman with white hair and red eyes. First, it was the two of them enjoying a lovely, scenic picnic together. Then, they danced together in a ballroom, holding each other close. Then...she was in a hospital bed, apparently injured from being hit by a truck, with the red-eyed woman by her bedside, hand in hand. Very gently, the woman asked her if she remembered anything. And PT began trying to find answers. The woman says that she'll show her the answers she seeks, which leads to...concerning changes. First, they are shifted to another location. Some sort of building, with crystals decorating the halls and bodies in these strange spacesuits that doubled as armor and with even more crystals embedded in them. the woman led her down, with memories seeming to skip ahead until they were in front of some sort of vault door, which opened into a bright light that the woman encouraged her walk through for her answers. Somewhat skeptical but unable to determine the honesty of the white haired woman, PT did as she was told. This led to another memory skip, and then she was trapped in a room with absolutely no light save for a single, heavy spotlight beaming down at her and the door she walked through. The Red Eyed Woman slides upon a viewport, infuriated by the intruder, and as Phototaxis grappled with the situation and demanded answers in a frightened fury, a version of herself in that same spacesuit and with crystals growing out of her approached, snapping her neck. The vision ended then. After Phototaxis gave...some, of the information discovered there to Asura and prepared herself for another dive to discover what in the hell was going on with a psychometry being apparently controlled, she dove back in. But rather than a repeating vision, Phototaxis was back in that room, under that spotlight, stuck in a dead body, and feeling herself become nothing as time passed for a while until she was let out again. Oddest of the phenomena here was when PT tried to inspect the aura of the woman in the memories-because what she saw was Asura's aura.

With some new information but no major lead yet, Asura packed up and went home, with Phototaxis summoning a spirit to tail her and find her dwelling, which Asura did not find, who kept an eye out to see if anything happened in the night. Nothing happened on the Astral, and Asura went to bed.

And she dreamed.

The Meet

Asura's dream found her adrift in an endless ocean on a ratted, ruined raft. There were supplies there and a tattered sail, but that ship did not move from that spot. Asura found herself in her former body, whole but dehydrated, and she began to search around for anything of note. One such thing was something in the water-a chain. She took a look below the surface of the water, finding a reef of metahuman corpses and the chain going further and further down until it was all the way down embedded in a relatively fresh corpse. Having nothing else but a desire to get moving to guide her, Asura dove into the water, swimming down with help from the chain to latch onto for support, and slowly made her way down. She couldn't remove the chain from the body, so she simply moved the body up instead. She managed to swim up to the surface, body in tow, until she dumped it onto the raft. Sher then looked at its face and saw her own in there.

And then the scene changed. The raft became a wonderful ship, with multiple women in white veils and sarees on the decks. There was also the ringing of the bell, up at the front of the ship. Allured, Asura moved forward and asked politely what was going on. She has a back and forth with the figure, learning bits and pieces and, upon her revealing her face and red eyes, felt ashamed she couldn't remember exactly who she was. Asura pleaded with the White Haired Woman for answers, a way to find out more, to find her, to make things right. And so the woman obliged, and offered a means by which Asura could find her, given that the ignorant awakened knew nothing of magic anymore and needed another to probe for answers (Much to the red eyed woman's chagrin). She, along with the other figures who lifted their veils to show they had her face, wished Asura luck.

And the seeker awoke.

The Plan

When Asura awoke, the spirit that was spying on her had vanished with the rising sun, and she felt...something. Upon looking into the astral, Asura found a thread of white, weak and faint, threading through her heart and carrying the same signature as herself. Understanding this to lead...somewhere, and determined to find a way to her past, Asura prepared herself to move through the streets of Seattle without being bothered, gathered her weapons, and mounted up on her Yamaha Kaburaya. She had one shot at this.

The Run

The first part of Asura's journey took her through the streets of Seattle, where she was doing her utmost to blend in and seem too important and polite to be bothered by the officers watching the borders between sprawls. But this was not without complications. While maneuvering socially through the borders was easy enough, Asura encountered some rather opportunistic gangers from the Bloody Mountain Gang as she moved across the streets in Renton. They gave chase on motorcycle, 4 goons and their leader, and Asura was heavily outpaced by the multiple attackers bearing down upon her. However, her armored body and the argentum coat held firm, and once she managed to kill their leader the other gang members retreated. With that settled, she managed her way into Puyallup, with mostly superficial wounds after being shot so much. Going further south and tracking the thread of fate that anchored her into Puyallup, Asura barely managed to drive past a group of wizgangers who were near, but too busy to bother her. What did find her though was a very strange fire spirit, who seemed keen to just tail her for the time being. Asura, while she was suspicious for a moment, had better things to do than to just stop everyone looking at her funny, and continued to drive until she came right up against the border to the SSC. Looking into the thread, she saw that it lead up to Mt. Rainier well into the border. Knowing she wasn't going to be able to enter the territory legally, Asura contacted a smuggler she knew through Bolt named Cascade, and after paying her practically all her remaining on hand cash arranged for her to get her into and out of the SSC through her smuggling tricks. During the hour they had, Asura called down the friendly little fire spirit to have a chat. She realized it was asked to spy on her, which should have bothered her more, but considering she doubted there'd be anything there for someone else to intrude upon and that this was going to be a rather lonely journey otherwise, Asura let the little flame follow along closely as long as it stayed out of trouble. It helped to have company.

Once Cascade arrived, she helped Asura situate herself inside of a smuggling compartment shielded from the inside against scanners, along with using some powers such as concealment and the like, to make their trip as smooth as possible. Beyond a close call with a rigger doing a scan over all the shipping boxes and the discomfort of being stuffed inside a box, they made it as close to Mt Rainier as the smuggler extraordinaire was willing to take her, which was fine. Asura couldn't take her bike up the lava flows, and so she and her fiery companion had to make the trek on foot. Rain hitting the incredibly hot terrain caused a fine mist to hang low to the ground, and the trek itself was a danger in and of itself. Asura had to keep moving to keep her boots from melting, her armor had to be half worn in order to withstand the horrid temperatures, and the journey itself was still long. While she was able to sneak past some threats, others were far closer than she would've liked-some kind of sniper had noticed her when she was getting closer to the mountain, and she needed to sacrifice her micro transceiver in order to make a good enough distraction to sneak through the mists. Then, as she began her trek up the volcano proper, she was unknowingly spotted by a mystic adept and his adept apprentice, who began making preparations to ambush Asura as she neared her destination. The fight was nearly enough to do her in-she is a hard person to kill, but outnumbered 3 to 1 by the two adepts and a fire spirit, things were looking rather bleak for the desperate seeker. However, magic from something she did not understand began to lend her aid, and the little fire spirit-whether out of obligation or compassion she doesn't know or care-actually managed to put quite a number on the opposing spirit and give Asura an opening to deal with it. After the apprentice succumbed to Fear with her ally's assistance, Asura made a mad dash for the cave entrance as the old man fired upon her, but she managed to escape in the end. It cost her the shotgun she had carried with her for 2 years during her service...but she found what she was looking for.

The cave-a source of flowing lava that was dark besides it-seemed like nothing at first beyond a massive background count...until she made her way further inside. Then the lava gave way to crystals, unnaturally sharp and dangerous, growing all over. Further and further she went, until she found one large room with more of those bodies in suits she didn't quite recognize. Some were standing deathly still but apparently alive with auras, the others dead. And more auras...in the crystals. She didn't understand it. She didn't need to. She didn't care. She felt powers try to enter into her mind. She pushed through them. She had one goal in mind. The thread lead into a massive pit with more of the crystals, and Asura carefully scaled them down. Again, more desperately, the power tried to enter her mind. Asura did not care. Not about the bodies of metahumans all around her. Not about the things trying to take part of her mind. Just the thread. The thread that lead her into one more cavern, and to Her. She found her. Overjoyed, she slowly trekked in, and the red eyed woman stirred. She was gentle, and kind. Revealed her real aura to the woman whose body was gone. Showed she was a powerful spirit. Called herself Bezaisen ("弁財船"), and Asura Ikari ("いかり"). That was all that mattered, she said. For a moment, Asura thought her troubles were over. But...this was not reality. Just a reflection. An Alchera, as the Red Eyed Woman called it. A vision of the metaplane that was home to the Crystalline Entities. While at first she was broken by the revelation that this was not real, it was swiftly replaced by a determination to set things right. She swore this would not be the last time they met. That she would free her. And as the Alchera faded, Asura was left in a rather small cavern with lava flowing out and her companion playing in it, and a lock of white hair tied in a bundle with a red ribbon. She had one goal in mind now.

Aftermath

The master and apprentice, while initially hostile and planning to ambush Asura as she left the cavern, had some second thoughts as the crystals in the mountain vanished. While the apprentice was reluctant, the master requested she parley with them, and Asura was not about to pass up the chance to do this without violence. She explained herself to them, let the master probe her mind (prompting him to grumble about how she is full of problems and mysteries), and on the premise that she leave and never return, they would let her go for somehow dealing with...all that.

So, Asura left. Met up with Cascade again, and went back home to Seattle. She needed time to prepare, and rest. The next voyage was on the horizon.

Rewards

17 RVP thanks to time

- Initiation Discount

- 15 Karma

- 6 CDP

- 1 lock of white hair bound in a red ribbon (if DNA or material link tested, perfect match with Asura)

- A destination

Game Quotes

"You are very hard to kill" - the Apprentice "It's what I was made for" - Asura

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Asura

"...That nearly killed me. Several times. I need to be better. I WILL be better. I will see this through."