rubyrubyruby

Steel. Rock. Cavern. Steel. Rock. Squashed layer of disturbing contents. Steel. Rock. Honeycomb. Nothing but air baby. The ramp is a literal launch, and the two Wheelies driven by the sisters embrace it completely. Everyone's vehicle gets to go airborne. Those clever clogs releasing the nitro accelerant get ~much better~ air time and the G's. The landscape falling away from the Loonie leapers shows a panorama of forest and gravity is starting to reach up greedily at all that momentum. If one has their wits about them to note details, there's some interesting bits gleaned: They've come quite a distance from their starting position and the cliffside penitentiary is a speck. There are whole sections of jungle that have been previously blasted to hell. A graveyard of wrecked machine over yonder, buildings taken over by vines, craters with a faint diamond shimmer in their bowls. Hmmm...there's quite a bit of dust kicked up almost dead ahead, but some miles distant. The oppressive sun glinting off numerous things near the curve of the coast.
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Chiara and her two sisters are on the prowl. The visitors are still considered a novelty and have so far provided more gratifiable feedback than their fellow residents. So they've come looking for members of Femme Squad. Dressed in such a way that falls more in line with how some Xena'd it up when disembarking from the Beast. Hair pulled back and bound. Leathers and tight fittings. A few sheathed weapons. Backpacks and braces, baybeee. The dress code during the mess hall light and sound show was not like this: Adventure Time.
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The hosts of this maximum security cafeteria have found seats upon unpadded benches. They pull forth cutlery and wipe it down, and the people on stage pull on another layer of jumpsuits and zip them up. They're adorned with triangles. One of their number starts counting out a beat with her foot. It's soon taken up by the others once they're squared away. They walk and trudge in place to simulate a long trek. Humming is added. A dirge-like cadence falls in step with the rhythm.
Auntie walks carefully over towards the guests, her eyes smiling. Still half covering her mouth with her palm, like she's afraid of speaking in a non-covert manner. "Some of you have a staff, very good. They are so very old. From a long time ago. Perhaps you're not familiar with such things." To the side of the stage Issa is watching with a craggy pained look. He mumbles something to a young lad who sets up a ladder on the edge of the stage and ascends it. He bares his arms cups his hands together. A tattoo on the palms glows with a captured light. The day's light is enough to provide illumination into the hall, but there is enough windowless wall and ceiling to possess some shadows.
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Ruby clambers hand over hand up to the offered rope that Susan has lowered. With the mild choke hold around her neck from her Pathian passenger, she's not waiting on M&M but hauling ass. She's butted and pecked at by Felicans, but after Susan and Sid carved and smashed up a few, they've dive-bombed their old companions. An easier meal to be had in a cannibal act than risking themselves with the wall climbers. A hideous hissing and gullet flapping display ensues with wings outstretched. It doesn't last so long with the sun at its current zenith, and they have to hippity-hop from one foot to the other. Threats and bluffs finalized, the victors tear into fellow bird flesh. The edges of their beaks serrated with barbs to do some messy carving, just enough so their freakish gullets swallow the chunks. It's an act still playing out on the beach where the panicky looking spirals made by the crustaceans and insects get quickly scooped while their fellows go into the sea or the tree line.
The view from the top of the cliff, which is most definitely the wall of a compound, is pretty great. The Beast is clearly visible out there at anchor. The sun is a punishing thing to those without the benefit of Storm blood or a friend of firey things. It's shape has grow to a big molten yolk and its heat feels so focused, like someone up there was trying to burn ants with a magnifying glass. The windows seen on the way up the side of the cliff/wall were far too small for grown women and men to sneak through. If anyone peeked between fending off Felicans they would have seen small rooms that would drive a claustrophic person nuts. Sparsely furnished with painting on the walls and an attempt to maximize the space with shelves. The odd room has a complication of netting and nothing but. Bird droppings sometimes marr those sills.
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Now everybody, have you heard, if you're in the boat
Then oar strokings the word
Does take some rhythm,
Does take some style
Gotta thirst for rowin',
Drink your vial UH!
Stroke it, stroke it...etc etc.

The longboat trip to the mainland is unmolested. With such seaworthy people aboard, it is a swift journey anyways. Apart from individual's personal equipment, there is a heavy strongbox and a crate of perishable provisions. The latter selected from some recent much fresher and excellent supplies organized by the steel seal himself. Before long the keel is scraping against the sand and rock of the coastline.
Further up the beach is a treeline, and within are some of the continent's mix of plant and tree life. The trees at the edge are bent inwards at bad angles, but deeper are some stouter shielded specimens. Approximately 200 meters down the coast is where sheer cliffs begin, and a long ways up is that grey complex with too-small windows. This close, strands of rope or chain dangle from the windows but don't reach all the way to the beach. There are handholds though. Real sketchy looking handholds. And an assortment of damage due to the elements and possible cannon shot. It has a nice impregnable feel to it. Dotted along the beach are iron rings, like big door knockers of a fancy schmancy mansion. The sand underfoot is coarse and glitters when catching a certain angle of the sun. Like crushed glass after an auto accident.
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It's the big table! Bolted to the deck it has been prepared and given a quick wipe from a rag. The parchment stretched like a prisoner on a rack is relatively blank. Being chart paper it has lines carving it up into proper and orderly sections, but apart from the grain of the paper, not much is inked. But there are carvings of boats, small multi coloured shells and a number of coins of multiple realm denominations to serve as markers. There's probably been a bit of recon delivery up to this point, so everyone that risked their necks has had a chance to deliver some observations.
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Taking a step back, Clive detangles from the Barber Surgeon. Catching sight of the redness about her, he snorts a quick and quiet laugh while suppressing a grin that fights to come out. Two fingers come up to crack off a quick salute in Ruby's direction while he starts heading toward the railing, picking up steam as he goes. The water is surveyed and then the pirate leaps straight on over toward the water. His top end angles down, he forms up for a dive, and then there is a flash of rainbow as he transforms into the form of a very sleek and slippery seal, which hits the water with barely a splash!
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It's a bit of a shame that night is not long in coming, as daylight could shine more illumination on more points of interest. There's still enough to navigate by though, for the time being. With the efforts completed and still underway to mitigate the trouble of that last realm, the fleet coasts along at a stately pace as the moon dramatically rises. Ruby goes to the rail and peers at the calderas protruding from the sea. "Some femme or bloke's luck must be with us. We fill a lot 'o 'orizon with these sails." She tries to judge the distances between the trio of islands and barks for a course correction. "Need timely depth soundins! Make sure those 'oles plugged. Damage reports quick as you please!"

A welcomed change with the change of scenery is a noteable vitality returning to the weary sailors of the ships. It's trickling, but gaining momentum. Whether it will reverse the years added onto some sailors is too soon to say. Efforts made to rouse and keep people on their toes seems to have made a huge impact on those specific women and men. Crews that didn't have the mercy of such measures labour under a persistent fog that dogs them.
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While Begmadventures were transpiring, the fleet was left to maintain a stalwart course through the shadow sea. The brackish waters that the hulls carved through were initially seen as rather grim, but boring. Surely safe enough to leave the ships in formation while crews maintained ship-shapeness and kept momentum even if not of the shadow-crossing variety. Safe as houses after all the other series of and fathomable and unfathomable events.
After getting tipped off to an insidious phenomena involving the water by clever investigations, Ruby had trumped immediately back to the flagship still dressed in her partial Beggy garments, not even bothering to return to the rented hotel and abandoning any other personal effects. Trading the relatively stable footing of Begma's terra firma for a tilting deck, Ruby is hit in the face with an odd smell that somehow fouls up a perfume of the sea with human beings. She tries to take in everything at once and fails, having to force herself to prioritize her sitrep rather than indulge and get overwhelmed.
The Beast is a-creaking and popping with a sound like wetly exposed bones. Crew that are at their stations are clinging to them like shipwreck victims. They fight against what seems to be a horrendous case of ennui or fatigue. Ruby puts her trump of the Beast away and immediately nabs a poker hand of allies. Going off of Fancy Man Merri's last intentions, she puts his card last in her hand and concentrates on Sidonie and Wynter to contact and try and yank through. Trusting on the networking skills of over to contact others that are not in her deck.
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All that un-divided weapon loot has been deemed a greed-risk. Those things not secured by certain souls was bundled after a preliminary spooky assessment and then placed in a longboat. Destination: Forge Ark and armory...

Trusted women and men with muscles growing ontop of their muscles have manned the oars and are a-stroking between the sailing ships. The canvas covering the pile of weapons is all a-lumpy. The sight of them grows smaller against hte larger galleons and frigates, merrily singing dirty songs that bounce accoustically off the hulls they pass. They are saluted by crews they pass, sometimes joining in on a refrain.

The singing is supposed to hit the part about how the Lighthouse keeper of Cabra drunkenly mistaking his home's monstrous silhouette for something else, when the blurted ~OoooooAAAAH~ becomes a ~GAAAAaaaaah!~ There is a flailing of oars slashing at the water and the longboat careens towards one of the nearest galleons. They're just about to be obscured by the hull of another ship as longboat and Galleon trade paint and figures are making like monkeys for water and railing.
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