CantonTown, Atillian: Season 1, Episode 1

[Rex Yangtree]

Rex slipped the pistol into it's holster then caught the rifle.

This is business now. He rolled to a prone position, high up on the ramp;
the angle high enough to keep most of his body from the shooting of the rebels by
the upper edge of the cargo deck;
if that's what they are
but low enough to give him some room to shoot.
could be pirates, or mudders..ha, or some shenanigans of Maggie.
for now though.

they're targets.

He squirmed a bit, the money in his jacket making things a bit bulky.

ah zâo gâo, a ship finally comes, and they argue with the old boss, then the mysterious baddies I could have been fighting all this time finally show up.
Yangree lined up a shot, looking over their armor, then began to fire methodically at the 'rebels'.
if that be the right target...
well, they are the ones shooting at me.

though Maggie... seems... no, that'd not be right.






zâo gâo = terrible bad luck

[Rahl]

The deal looked to be going south. Rahl kept quiet, pretending to mull over the Magistrate's offer. Without thought, without awareness, Fu-Xing's whisper urged him to move. As always, Rahl obeyed the silent holy voice of the luck god.

"FREEDOM FOR THE PEOPLE!"

Gunfire came out of nowhere, the stray shot ricocheting mere feet from the Captain. Screams from the cargo as two of Higgins' men dropped, dead. Instinctively, Rahl got low and looked around fast, checking on his crew. To Diyu with Higgins and his rules; as soon as The Breeze got the locker open, Rahl saw mechanic and pilot both vanish on the catwalks, headed for the ship's guns. Too late to give any orders, he settled for arming himself, pushing a slave aside with the butt of his rifle and silently hoping that Reggie and The Breeze would have sense enough to go to the wing turrets. The blaster nestled in the ship's stern would do no good unless they were on top of the gorram boat.

Bringing the cargo to order would do no good; each seemed concerned over his own skin, but knew better than to leave the ship. Normally, it would be a good sign; in this case, all it did was provide more obstacles. Knocking down those laborers he passed, Rahl resisted the urge to swear as he grabbed the Magistrate and threw him to the deck. "Stay low; get behind those boxes," he snapped, pointing to the unopened crates of tools sitting behind the cargo.

Not bothering to see if the Magistrate obeyed, Rahl resumed firing, cursing that the strangers were so well hidden. Huen-dahns knew the area. Rutt.

"Put the gun down." The feel of a gun barrel at the base of his neck, voice dripping with hatred. Fu-Xing, help your servant...

Rahl turned slowly, rolled his eyes. "I don't have time for this, Evan." Would this kid never give up? What the rutt was the crew doing? At the look in Evan's eyes, desparate, near-crazed, Rahl briefly regretted his words as the laborers nearby began to eye him like hungry wolves eying an injured animal. A few were armed, had made it past him in the chaos. The bullets flying outside ceased to matter as Rahl lowered his gun, determind not to drop it.

For the moment, the wheel had come full circle.

Higgin's GMed with permission. Adam? Maynard? Myra? Anybody alive out there?

[Adam Man]

His master had ordered him to the rear of the cargo bay…and that was where he had stayed.

“Keep in the shadows,” he had said.

“Don’t let the cargo escape,” he had said.

“Watch our backs,” he had said.

Adam cared little for the rest of his Master’s crew, so his eyes remained fixed on Rahl, as the Captain spoke with the newcomers. Since his brain couldn’t process more than one task at a time, he simply stood.

"FREEDOM FOR THE PEOPLE!"

Adam smelled the battle a second before the gunfire erupted. Closing his eyes, the warlord of the Pit inhaled deeply, drinking in the tangy aroma of fear and bloodshed, and as it always did, the smell of battle sent his feeble mind elsewhere...




It was their first appearance in the Witching Hour Match, the main event fight of the Pit. He and Evil had risen through the ranks of the other gladiators…killed seven and maimed dozens on their quest for survival. The fans adored them and many cheered from the stands, wearing “Rutt the Garden Give Us the Pit” Evil and Adam t-shirts, but as much as they loved the couple, the masses loved blood more. Win, lose, or draw, they knew the Mans would deliver.

With a thick leather cord, the head referee lashed Adam’s right hand to Evil’s left…a move designed to hinder the competitors and force teamwork. Across from them, the reigning champions, The War Pigs, were tied together as well. The Pigs had ruled the Pit for time uncounted, and neither man seemed to be slowing in the least. To face these men was to face Death itself…for none who walked into a Witching Hour match against the Pigs ever walked out.

New Vegas gave the mixed-gendered Adam and Evil odds of 8 to 1.

The underground CoreCast, Pit Stop, had already written their obituaries, but the broadcasters felt the Mans would at least try and make it entertaining.

Evil’s eyes bored holes into their opponents, while Adam dimly waved to the crowd…reveling in the roars that followed. The Amazon turned to her husband…and slapped him, which brought a chorus of ‘ooohhhss’ from the masses.

“They do not exist, my love…it is just us four. Me, you and the War Pigs,” Evil held up their bound hands, “We must fight, Adam…fight like we’ve never fought before because if they are given any quarter, they will kill us both. Do you understand?”

Adam nodded dumbly.

Unconvinced Evil continued,
“Listen to me, my love, from this moment forward, when we fight we fight for our lives. If we ever lose, we won’t be together anymore…” Adam’s head jerked as his feeble mind comprehended the idea of losing Evil, “From now until the end of time when you smell battle, my love, fight…fight for me.”





Back in the cargo bay of the Atillian, Adam’s eyes opened, and his sluggish mind repeated one clear thought…

Fight…fight for me.

Roaring like a barbarian of old, the massive Adam Man sprung from the shadows. He had but one objective to achieve, protect his Master…just as Evil had told him to do.

The Warlord didn’t move through the crowd of slaves as much as he reaped. Massive arms swung first one way and then the other, sweeping the cargo from his path…until he stood behind the crowd surrounding Rahl.

Twin hammer punches dropped two of the armed slaves, and as Evan spun toward the commotion, Adam caught his gun hand by the wrist and hoisted the much smaller man off the ground.

His eyes turned to his Masters’s.

“Break him,” hissed Rahl.

With a slight flex of his right hand, Evan’s ulna and radius snapped, and two inches of bone pierced the skin of his forearm. As the man screamed, Adam pistoned a kick into one of the recovering slaves, prompting the rest to flee rather than fight. With his immediate threats gone, his eyes tracked lazily back to the still airborne Evan, but as he looked at his opponent, he noticed something terrifying.

His right wrist wasn’t wrapped in leather…he wasn’t connected to Evil.

His dim mind could only process one thing at a time, and poor Adam had forgotten that his love was not aboard the Atillian…all he knew was the Evil was missing.

His eyes narrowed to slits, and he screamed in Evan’s face,
”Where’s EVIL! Show me EVIL!!”

Met only with Evan’s terrified screams, Adam hoisted the man over his head and thundered him down across his bent knee.

Dropping to all fours, he screamed into Evan’s lifeless eyes,
”Show me EVIL!!!”

With his opponent slain, the Warlord of the Pit remembered where he was, stood, and moved in front of Rahl.

The tears in his eyes made the Cargo Bay blur, so he wiped them away with one blood drenched hand.


<<Rahl GM'd with permission>>

[Rex Yangtree]

Rex took measured aim at any rebels with guns, or slaves picking up weapons; and moving them to bear against the ship; or, at that point, toward him.

There was a sound behind him, not good, diverting attention front and rear;
'fore and aft now, we be shipboard' some old sergeant's voice called out from long ago.

A bullet ricocheted in front of him and thumbed into his chest. A big stack of small credit bills took the brunt of it, he was pretty sure it hadn't even broken the skin.

Despite the shooting in front of him, he had to look behind, and there saw a man assaulting the captain and a man assaulting the man assaulting the captain. Chaos of a battle or fog of war, there was not much doubt in Major Yangtee's mind. Insanity marked the larger assailant.

between it now Chwen, but he smiled just a little,
. . . and you get what you wish for . .

He returned to direct fire toward the outside. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and wired a shiver down his spine.

I might be shooting in the wrong direction after all.




chwen = dumbass

[BIR]

Outside the ship, two masked figures fell with echoed screams, only to be dragged back into cover by their comrades.

Over the ships com, the voice continued, "WORKERS, IF YOU VALUE YOUR FREEDOM, THEN RUN!"

Scattered slaves glanced around themselves in horror and indecision. A few tried to fight, rampaging the open weapons locker and retrieving guns. The ragged blond giant snagged one, raised him over his head and brought the dark haired youth down over his knee, breaking his back, the dead broken body tossed aside.

That was all it took. The terrified and abused lost souls, faced with the nightmare that was Adam on one side and the certainty of slavery in muddy pits on the other, ran.

BIR returned fire to the cargo bay, cautiously, avoiding fleeing men and women while attempting to preserve the lives of those inside who were shooting to kill. Murder wasn't the goal.

Not all of the slaves would make it out. But they wouldn't all need to. Every live saved was one more converted to the cause. The Resistance had begun.

[Reggie Hopkins]

Reggie cursed under his breath as he saw the cargo running out of the bay, scattering in every direction. No way to set off those explosives without further diminishing whatever price the Captain had cut.

He brought the guns on the turret to bear and focused on a pair of the masked gunmen, spraying them with a burst of fire. The bullets kicked up a thick cloud of dust and dirt and he couldn't tell whether he had scored a hit or not. Seeing another line of gunfire burst up from within the haze, he cackled somewhat dementedly and strafed another round of bullets across the position. Alright, so he might wind up hitting a slave or two in all the chaos. He could live with it. Blasting away, he thought that if nothing else, this was doing a rutting great job of working the anger out of his system.

[Rex Yangtree]

Rex rolled out of the way of the short lived stampede of the slave exodus. As he layed on his back out of the line of fire, a couple of the fleeing slaves kicked at him. He continued checking his chest for a wound, but only finding a very sore spot, the money had stopped the bullet.

He narrowed his eyes and stared hard at the slaves wasting what little energy they had using their legs on him. "Fly away little birds." They did.

As the slaves thinned out and away, he pulled out a few tightly bound bills of credits. The slug had gone through the center of the pack, a prominant planet gone, a hole remained.

"God save Ariel and all her princesses," he rolled back into his shooting position, looking for more rebels. Someone, from somewhere, fired away with a bigger gun. "Not bloody fair at all, using the heavies on these irregulars." he mumbled, not actually feeling anything of the sort.

He fired off a couple more shots at a couple rebels that looked to know what they were doing, then turned to get a quick look at the cargo deck, looked for Maggie Higgins, the ship's crew, and the case of money.

[Alekzander]

Alekzander's ears perked at the sound of sudden gunfire. He paused for a moment, and then shrugged, continuing off to his dorm with disjointed boredom.

Let someone else deal with it, the Magistrate had given him the week off anyways.

[The Breeze]

The quad-blaster was already bellyaching about the auto-targeting being shut down before her butt even hit the seat. Well duh, they were off, she'd disabled the rutting things forever and a day ago, they were so smack-gorramit annoying! She didn't need a rutting computer telling her she could only hit the ground cause of gravity!

She didn't even bother to disable the message, just let it buzz by the bottom of the manual laser scope as she maneuvered the heavy gun about to fire. The Mandarin characters turned turned the dusty mud-field into a familiar haze of green and gold numbers, so could only barely-sorta make out Goliath raising seven different types of hell all over the slaves' pigus. It was pretty shiny looking, and it made her grin as she sent a short, controlled burst of fire in front of a knot of escapees to herd them back in the direction of the cargo bay doors. A few intrepid souls tried to make it past the line of fire but The Breeze was always one step ahead, nipping at their heels like a sheepdog. "BONZAI!" She screamed in joy, utterly forgetting her anger in pure delight.

[BIR]

The turret blasters added to the mad confusion of the scene. Dirt kicked up, the raw stench of the highly organic swamp dust filling the air in a gag-inducing could.

Only five fighters remained standing, the rest dragged back into the cane breaks, their fates uncertain.

Mandy, only twenty-one, the fire of revolution, the determined madness of freedom in her eyes, in the set of her pox-scarred face, screamed in defiance, yanking the mask from her face.

With a howl, she rallied a spitting round of fire towards the turret gun holding back the slaves, then from her belt she pulled two black cylinders, three inches long, and heavy in the hand.

Inside the tupe, a simple piece of pipe, were two chemicals used in the extraction of the precious galadonium from Higgin's Moon's soil, seperated by a thin piece of plastic. A hard shake broke the plastic, and a twist uncoiled the lid.

The first, she threw with surprising accuracy towards the gun-turret that held back the unfortunate slaves.

Screaming at the slaves to run, she threw the second into the cargo bay.

The gas of the chemicals, completely harmless unless you already had a lung condition, filled the cargo bay of Atillian, a choking white fog that reeked of sour milk and rotten eggs.

Mandy, barely pausing in her headlong run to change clips, raced between the slaves and the gunfire, her only thought for their freedom. Her wild scream unleashed the wild recklessness of revolution; "RUN!, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

[Magistrate Higgins]

He was not afraid.
He was not afraid.
A man did not become terrified in the face of a little gunfire.

The Magistrate's eyes were wide and white as he glanced over the crate of tools behind which he was hiding.

God. The huge man tore through the armed slaves like a lunatic! No, Not like a lunatic. AS a lunatic.

As the lifeless body of the darkhaired one was tossed aside, Higgins found his voice, yelling to Rahl over the mad hubbub, "I hope you know I'm not paying for that one!"

[Vuida Negra]

Vuida's Room

Going through her bags, she was looking for something to wear. Vuida was planning on wearing a fancy outfit for her, and Maynard's next meeting. There just something to him. All she really knew was that she wanted more. So much more.

As she stood there studying her outfits, Vuida began to remember the way he had touched her. Vuida began to breath heavy. Walking to her door she switched the lock on, and gingerly made her way over to her bed.

[Rex Yangtree]

Rex saw the rebel toss the first grenade toward the turret, though the turret itself was out of his line of sight. He took aim, she looked to be ready to toss one in his direction.
not today sweetheart, but a running slave stepped in front of his sight and took a bullet for her, not intentionally, but it all worked for the devoted little revolutionary. Girl's got the hot karma.

The grenade bounced past Rex into the cargo hold, rolled away from him.
Too far for some foolish grab and toss, or kick at it and pray for the best.

But it also stopped rolling close enough,
smoking could still be shrapnel, ruttin hell,
done in by a civvie tossed homemade can a nails...
He curled and covered his head with his arm the best he could, but
it's poison, and by the smell, not even that.

Yangtree crawled down the ramp and rolled off to the mud, slid the rifle back to a firing position, took a good aim at the retreating grenadier.
He let her go, free to get to cover in the cane.
give em hell girlie, if there's any more in there like you Maggie Higgin's is in for a long fight
He moved closer to the cargo ramp to get a feel for the scene of the attack.

Good thing I just quit, I'd fire my pigu if I was still running security for this ratrut.

[The Breeze]

The Breeze half-slid, half-fell to a graceless heap at the bottom of the ladder with a scream, trailing putrid white smoke behind her as she tried to crawl away, dry-heaving on the backwash of her own breath. "Cao ni ma!" She cursed in dusgust, retching. "Shu ma nyaow!" That grenade felt like it'd been shoved right up her nose!

[Rahl]

Rahl stood aside, watching with something like joy as Adam dropped Evan's broken form to the deck. "I hope you know I'm not paying for that one!" The Magistrate, still cowering behind the crate of tools. "You're not even gorram paying for what I brought, apparently," the Captain shot back. It wasn't the smartest thing to say when caught up in the moment. Before a response could come, before the noise outside died down, as Adam stood before him and gunfire continued to rain down, the gas bomb was hurled into the cargo bay.

As the stink of rotten eggs and sour milk filled the bay, bare feet faded in the distance - the cargo was running, a final scream echoing from the resistance fighters that had pinned the Jester down. Despite the cloying smoke, Rahl had one focus in the moment: Magistrate Higgins. No way was he escaping with all the coin.

Through the fog, Rahl moved towards the crate based on memory, issuing orders as he went and plucking a gun from the deck. "Whoever wants to talk about passage, stay put until this gorram go-se clears out. Whoever's free, help get the bodies off my floor. Find my pilot and my mechanic once they're finished working and get them down here and I don't want anymore gorram slaves running off my ship! Magistrate..." Smoke clinging briefly to the Captain's clothes, he ignored it, stepping clear as he approached the box. "I delivered laborers. They're on your moon; now you get to find them." He aimed the gun squarely at the richly-dressed man's head. "I did the job; I get paid. You owe me some coin."