The PPC Roleplay Board - Latest posts

Alex waved at Yakov. "Alex Dives, recently-promoted DoSAT tech. Never been in the field but I keep bugging my sister to take me."

"Not until we think you can handle yourself," Zeb said firmly. He looked at Yakov and grimaced. "If I'd known what that would've felt like..." He shuddered and looked down. "Still feel horrible about offing that one agent, but... I mean, it was kill or be killed, wasn't it...?"

"Ah, but I'm sure my absolute lack of charisma and horrible-ish looks would've won both of you over in a matter of moments." He chuckled and pulled a two-fingered salute. "Yakov Minin, DoI. Pleased to meetcha both! I was one of the poor blokes who fell victim to the Single Tear poisoning spree. For the record, it was kinda sweet and burned like fire on the way down."

"Maybe, maybe not. I get the feeling it would have depended on the circumstances of us meeting in the arena."

Alex, for his part, shook his head. "Sorry, I would've just tried to take you out. Only person I'd be willing to form alliances with are people I trust. And no offense, but I don't know you."

Yakov slid in next to the two agents.

"I'm sitting in this corner now. This corner is nice and cool and not full of Tacitus being toxic." He uncorked his flask of Firewhiskey and took a long draught from it. After putting down his flask on the table, he grabbed himself a napkin and wiped his mouth. "Saw you guys out there in the field, by the way. Good show, guys. A pity we didn't get to meet face-to-face, eh? 'Coulda formed an alliance and wrecked the rest of these fools."

"However, zere ist an Ambipom in DoSAT who owed me ein leetle favour, und zis vas it! I am likink it very much!" The Doktor took a drink from the Tequila Sunrise he was floating in and sighed contentedly. "As for zer tournament, vell, if I vas sad about zer incident vizz zer umbrellas I vould not be havink one in mein cocktail!"

He paused, momentarily deep in thought. "Mein freund, zere should be ein large beach towel in zer leetle box on zer back. If you vould be so good as to fetch it? I vill dry mein self off und ve can embrace like zer friends ve are! If, er, if you are beink amenable to such things, zat ist to say." The Doktor went pink at this.

Well, more pink than usual.

Which was actually rather difficult, come to that.

The Aviator's voice was dry. "But then again, whatever. Not like you prolly won't be able to find out from asking other people." The dryness quickly turned to bitterness.

Morgan waved at the stage. "Those two - oh, they've gone - were just the presenters, I think. The real brains behind Nutmeg goes by 'Undis Closed', and I don't think anyone's figured out who he is." She laughed harshly. "Not like anyone other than the Real Monitor has tried, I guess, and we all know what they're like."

She looked down at the table for a moment, then snuck a glance at the Aviator. "D'you mind if I ask you a question?"

The Aviator grimaced and took another large gulp. "Too real. I don't care how much fun my brother had, I'm never doing this again. Whoever thought this was a good idea is getting introduced to the business end of a flamethrower if I find them."

Kaitlyn threw herself out of her seat and attempted to glomp the mobile aquarium. "Wow! It's been ages since we saw each other! That was right before you and Alleb-" She stopped, looking abruptly dejected. "Well... y'know. With the umbrellas."

The Floater shook herself and stepped back. "Wow! I like the ride! Did you build it yourself?" She reached back for the table and grabbed her drink, then plucked one of the mushrooms from the glass and popped it into her mouth. "Ith'th very impreththive."

"What, you think I was scared? I don't do scared." She downed the drink and looked for Kaitlyn, but the Floater was talking to a steampunk tank. "I was absolutely fine the whole time."

The Time Lady paused, staring at her glass. "But if there had been a problem..." She grimaced. "Let's just say that I've regenerated twice in the PPC, and both times were in the PPC - right here in HQ. I wasn't too keen on the prospect of a third one, and it was so..." Morgan stopped, shook her head, and dropped into a whisper. "So real."

An enormous rattletrap conveyance juddered through the party at Rudi's. It looked like nothing so much as a small, fractal electricity pylon growing out of a digger chassis, and a small orangey-red ball was perched precariously on top at about head height. As it got closer to Not-Really-All-That-Much-Of-A-Team Huinesoronot-Appearing-In-This-Game (which was a bit of a mouthful even by German standards), it became clear that the ball on the top was a bowl. With a pink thing floating in it. Looking very, very happy.

This probably had something to do with the overpowering smell of Tequila Sunrise coming from the bowl, as well as the dinky little cocktail umbrella poking from the top.

"Kaitlyn! Agent Kaitlyn! Ach ja, it ist beink most excellent to see you again, mein Freund!"

Lola took his hand, got to her feet, and knocked back her cocktail in a swift and obviously practiced motion. "I... wasn't technically from the primary XCOM universe. My homefic was a Mega Crossover and to this day I have no idea how many canons were involved in it. DIC's refusing to touch it with a barge pole. Let's just say that we had Minerva McGonagall instructing the psionics trainees and our best Assault trooper was Buffy the friggin' Vampire Slayer. We won in the end, though, and that's what matters - hey, random change of subject were you from a 'verse with Long War's rules? Because that was brutal."

She smiled. "Lola McCandless, DIA. My partner Algie's the guy trying to beat his memories of being blown up into submission. Normally he sticks to port, but he's from Regency England, they drank like half a dozen Irish stereotypes on a stag weekend in Prague. Don't think I ran into you during the Games, which is a shame. Would've been nice to meet someone else from the Com there, but better late than never, right?"

Algie was content to offer a genial handshake to both of the James Pittmans, or possibly Pittmen, he could see.

The Aviator rubbed her forehead and sighed. "Zeb wanted to have a bit of a challenge, y'know? Opponents smarter than Sues who just stand around while you read the charge list. And my brother's been itching to go into the field at least once to see what it's like. He jumped at the idea when the Games were announced, and... I let them talk me into it." She sighed again. "Not ever doing that again, not in this regeneration."

Looking around, she saw the bar was beginning to get more crowded rather than less, so she stood up, said "'Scuse me," and went to get a drink. Several minutes passed and she returned with a glass smelling strongly of ethanol. "Right," she said, sitting back down and taking a large gulp, "Where were we again? Oh, yeah. the Games." One of the Aviator's eyebrows went up. "For all you're talking about how it shook me up, it's really nothing I haven't seen before. You, on the other hand, you look kinda upset. Want to talk about what happened, or...?"

((Nah, no worries. Is cool. :) ))

Morgan sipped her drink. "I mean, I've spent the last week-ish running around betraying people I'd rather have worked with, and ended up getting killed by someone who-" She stopped, took a deep swig of the cocktail. "Well, whatever. I just... I feel a bit like, y'know... Rassilon. A bit."

She chuckled and glanced over her shoulder. "And I can't help but expect the Notary to show up and say that's a good thing... eh." She leant forward on the table. "But, look, I've not followed the papers, but even I know you've had a rough time of it lately. I have to ask: why did you volunteer to go into a killing ground?"

((Sorry for the weekend's delay. Also sorry for not having anything to say. ~hS is bad at RP))

"Yes, 'Single Tears'. I snatched a canteen from this Luxray," she said, pointing at Zeb, "Never thought he would keep that stuff inside." She shuddered, "I already saw people who were victims of mental attacks before, but drinking liquid despair... It makes up for a decent tie-in, though. I'm a 'Dresden Files' wizard, and my appartment and the office where I worked as a 'consultant' for the police were burned down by Fomors, who tracked me until I took a pretty crazy risk and ended up in this place. And if that Marquis was right about this 'uncertain canon status', I'm not even sure to see my family and my master again. Although I guess that I'm not the only one here with this sort of problem."

She then turned to more or less face Henry. "Hope for you that was only because of this wonderful simulation, because second place and shaky sanity kill. Very fast."

Richard carefully remained silent, busying himself pouring cups of coffee.

" Richard said you guys were taken out during the flood of Single Tears. Well, you may remember or not, I was too. Accepting that canteen after that happened definitely wasn't my best moment. Anyway, we were all just sharing how we ended up here in the PPC. Do you mind sharing your story?"

Meanwhile, Henry gave an awkward laught upon Marina's mention of his defeat. " Yeah, that wasn't my best moment either. In my defense, that game was sort of messing with my mind. It made me question my sanity and gave me nightmares plenty of times. Still, second place and same number of "kills" as the champion isn't all that, I guess."

"Seems you were right, the people who organized this mess are paying. And this idea makes me pretty hungry. But are you sure about this coffee? Because they said to me it's diluted." "Aboslutely certain. I already tried it several times, and a cup of the 'pure' version can incapacitates normal people for three days," Richard said. He then turned his hand at the people from te other table. "These are Sergio Turbo, Nikki Cherryfloower and Corolla, ex-Floaters, and the two other people are our ex-district comrades, Henry Asclepe and Aiko Kimura, Floaters too." "Greetings," Marina said, her head sightly bowing, "Nice to meet you. And congratulations to Mister Death-By-Chivalry for his performance."

"I was just a bit character in a badfic Sergio got assigned several years ago. I was supposed to be a Generic Casualty, but I managed to cling to life long enough for him to notice me, and so I was brought to Medical, patched up, and assigned as his partner."

"As you can guess by my appearance, I was a Sakura replacement from a crossover fanfiction including Card Captor Sakura," Nikki explained, "and when that fic was abandoned I ended up being dragged across several other fic in need of a Sakura replacement, ended up losing a good chunk of my memories, and ultimately I fell in the PPC through a plothole. I then ran into Sergio and Corolla, and ended up working with them."

"Me?" Sergio asked, "Well, I'm a badfic recruit. Plain and simple."

"You're definitely XCOM trained," James said. He had pushed through to a clear patch of bar next to Algie and Lola while they were chatting. "I'm pretty sure bein' able to say something pithy and inspiring at any given moment was required for anyone lookin' to get to the highest ranks."

The bartender set down two glasses — one lowball glass quarter-filled with amber liquid, the other a pint filled with beer — down in front of James. He ignored them, instead offering his hand out to the fallen Lola in a gesture that was half-handshake, half-helping hand. "Name's James Pittman. Don't think we've gotten a proper introduction before now, Field Commander."

how exactly agents that came from World One ended up in this place." Aiko responded cheerfully, " As for myself, i have a lot of history around here. Me and Anju, my Digipartner, got rescued from a Digimon AU badfic where we each the daughters of two canons. After that, we spent about six years growing up in the Nursery, where we eventually went through agent training before each us sadly went our separate ways. So that's how I ended up in Floaters, partnered with Henry."

At this point, Henry decided to chime in, " And I pretty much ended here throught a plot hole after the unfinished fic I came from got deleted. As a result I don't remember much of my life before I came here, just that I used to play as a Beater in the Gryffindor Quidditch team and that I came from a family of Healers. But because I had only gone throught basic training, I ended up in Floaters instead of Medical."

" Anyway, I think I will leave asking about your partner when she gets here, so for now, I will just ask these three, " Aiko said while turning her attention back to Sergio's group, " What about you? How did you all ended here? I have heard a lot about you guys, but I don't think I ever heard about details like that."

"I was a history student back in World One, and i answered an annoucement I found on Internet. Although I didn't suspect anything about this place until II saw the portal they opened in my appartment. It took them what, five minutes at most once I had sent my message for 'more information'. Then I ended up in the Marquis' office, was sent to training, and began to discover this place. Guess I should have been more careful with reading things before accepting them. Same thing with this mess, the flyer I saw for it made thinking about a training event... How did it go for you then?"

said Aiko, " For example, how did you end up working here in the PPC, Richard?"

"It's a real problem, I always end up searching for any scrap of information if something catch my eyes," Richard said, before waving his hand at Marina to let her know where he was. He then went back to the people at the table. "But I think I monoplized the conversation enough here. So, what do you want to speak about?"

((No more, Sergio. Didn't want to put you in a delicate situation.))

"There was a bit of mess involving the Madoka Magica continuum, and in the end when everything went into place we kinda ended up with Madoka and Homura being cloned." Sergio explained.

"The way how it happened is rather complicated, actually," Corolla said, "We still haven't understood it fully. Nevertheless, the Flowers weren't that happy about that. That's why I ended up in DoSAT, actually."

"And I wasn't so happy about how the Sunflower treated us for letting that happen - like we could have done something about it - and for how we dealt with the whole incident. That's one of the reasons why I handed in my flash patch." Sergio continued.

"Besides, the two of us really wanted a chance at a normal life, just like Kuroko herself did - and obviously Aya followed her," Nikki completed, "though we remained in contact with Corolla and other people inside, and aside from a little mess Sergio made with a mail he shouldn't have sent we managed to remain in decent terms with the Flowers."

Sergio facepalmed. "Can we please forget about that?"