Prison Break [IC]

[TheOneHawk]

Spoiler: Kyoni, Kokozori, Bertrand

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The day starts much the same as any other, a loud reveille just after sunrise waking you after not enough hours of sleep signalling that breakfast, such as it is, would soon be served. After a meal of gruel and overcooked scrambled eggs you're put to work at a series of menial tasks, cooking, laundry and repairs, all under the watchful eyes of heavily armed guards. While the treatment isn't cruel, you know from experience that the punishment for disobedience or unruly behavior is swift and painful. It isn't until you're returned to your cell for the night that something breaks from the pattern you've grown accustomed to.

The guard that delivers your dinner is not one you've seen before, a short young man with shoulder length blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. When he reaches your cell, he looks directly into your eyes and taps on the bottom of the tray twice before giving you the meal of thin soup and bread. Once he's moved on, it's easy to see that there is an envelope attached to the bottom of the tray addressed to you.

Spoiler: Kyoni's letter

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Inside the envelope you find a letter written on thick parchment in an elegant cursive script, as well as a thin skeleton key.

Spoiler: Kokozori's letter

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Inside the envelope you find a letter written on thick parchment in an elegant cursive script, as well as a thin skeleton key.

Spoiler: Bertrand's letter

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Inside the envelope you find a letter written on thick parchment in an elegant cursive script, as well as a thin skeleton key.

After a few hours, you see the same new guard show up again. He shows the woman watching your cellblock a paper and while she looks confused, she takes it and leaves, heading up the ladder to the main deck and out of sight. A few minutes later, the blonde man follows suit leaving the area unwatched.

Spoiler: Selene

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The day starts much the same as any other, a loud reveille just after sunrise waking you after not enough hours of sleep signalling that breakfast, such as it is, would soon be served. After a meal of gruel and overcooked scrambled eggs is delivered through the slit in your steel door you're mostly ignored for the day, with naught but your raccoon and the footsteps of a patrolling guard in the hall for company. It's not until dinner comes that something breaks from the pattern you've grown accustomed to.

Every day since your arrival in solitary, meal delivery has been a silent affair, but today is different. You hear voices out in the hall, one belonging to a guard you've known for years, and one you don't recognize at all. When your dinner is handed through the slit in the door, you see the guard tap on the bottom of the tray twice before handing it to you, then a few minutes later you hear his footsteps fading and none replacing them. Attached to the bottom of the tray is a letter addressed to you.

Spoiler: Selene's letter

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Inside the envelope you find a letter written on thick parchment in an elegant cursive script, as well as a thin skeleton key.

As promised, after a few hours of complete silence, you hear footsteps again. They approach at a quick pace, then pause and a bell rings for a few seconds before the footsteps retreat again.

[QuidEst]

Kyoni drifted through the days with an easy smile. They called this a prison, but compared to the foggy nothingness of her long imprisonment, it was a world unto itself. Certainly, she knew it wouldn't stay that way, but for now she was content to enjoy it. They had such interesting people here for company- even an aasimar. That was intriguing enough for her to behave herself.

Of course, then her pet project got put in solitary. They didn't send in anything reflective enough to hold an image so she could simply give herself visitation rights by way of her likeness, so by the time the blond man showed up, she was already considering how to make an exit. Three others- hopefully her project was one of them. That did complicate matters slightly. Normally she'd just disguise herself as one of the guards and stroll out, but the others would attack if they saw a guard wandering around when there wasn't supposed to be one. She'd have to rely on invisibility if it came to that.

If any of the guards saw her smiling during the day, that was nothing out of the ordinary. A few hours later, it was time to show herself out.

[Bhaakon]

You're just going to trust a piece of paper? The voice unwanted gnaws at the back of Bertrand's man.And favors...undefined favors are never good. If it weren' terribly dishonorable, I'd suggest you trade this to the warden for leniency. Actually, you probably should. Who knows what nonsense these other escapees have been up to.


"Oh, shut up." The man mutters, running a hand through his thinning, greasy mop. It was difficult to hide the patch of bare flesh without proper toiletries in this hulk. He's kill for a proper comb, some scissors, and even just some soot to even out the greys. "I can always back out." By this point he'd been talking to himself so much that no one would think twice of his blathering.

Yeah...they all say they. Next thing you know you're trading your name for a trashy love poem.

Bertrand answers by crumpling the note and swallowing it.

---------------------------------

Even with the warning, seeing the guards clear out of their own accord rather catches Bertrand by surprise. Not so surprised that he can't take advantage, of course. One did not become and master of improve by failing to take advantage of the unexpected, be it a bumbled line, a trip on stage, or a drunken heckler tossing out the kind of one-liners that only seem clever to the monumentally inebriated. Bertrand closes his eyes and taps the power, well, they'd been coming along slowly up until now, but he'd had nothing but time to practice since his incarceration. He quietly dissolves into a flesh-colored cloud of Bertrand, a misty form that slips out into the hall with the ease of a...

"Like a wet fart through a thin sheet." His companion points out. Now manifest, mostly, Tove floats out of the cell in her incorporeal form. "Watch out for strong winds and potpourri."

[ylvathrall]

Selene passes the day happily enough, curled up in the corner of the room with her raccoon and something that could almost be a hedgehog made of dust and darkness to talk to. She sleeps, wakes, and sleeps again, waiting for the telltale sound of the bell.

When it comes, though, she's more than ready to move. She's deeply tired of this, of this tiny cell and not being able to see any of her other friends. She's tired and scared and maybe, just maybe, more than a touch angry.

At the sound, she stares at the door, feeling it with her mind rather than her hands and reaching for the small pieces of the lock. As she begins sliding them around, feeling for the correct configuration, she hears a voice in the back of her mind, sly and satisfied. I like this plan. Let's hurry and meet the others, Chara says to her, in a mental voice much like her own.

Spoiler: OOC

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Taking 20 for a 35 on disable device.

[Lethia]

When Koko first heard the tapping and saw the edge of the letter under her dinner tray, she couldn't care less. Food. Gods, how she loved food. Even this slop fills her mouth with subtle beefy warmth and every tiny sliver of vegetable gooshes delightfully between her teeth. She sighs happily, swallowing the rest of the small amount of basically broth in one go. Dropping the bowl with an uncaring clatter, Koko sniffs the bread. Mold. Her nose wrinkles disdainfully but she shoves it into her mouth any way. Beggars can't be choosers, prisoners can't be hungry if they want to have the energy to escape. A week of this wet Hell was one week too long.

Eventually turning her attention to the mysterious letter, she scans it quizzedly.

Huff. Hrmph. Yeah right. As if! Who does this benefactor think they are? She crumbles the letter and tosses it into her chamber pot.However, seeing as the guards are taken care of... Might as well go along with it for now.

Slipping the skeleton key into her sock, Koko smooths her coal black hair behind her horns and steadies her shoulders. With a last glance around her cramped cell, she grips the slightly damp bars of her cell door, grunts quietly and pushes. What starts as a laughable attempt to bend iron suddenly becomes much more serious when Kokozori Sger calls upon her pitborn heritage. Muscles cord and snap as they bulge ever onward until her already thick frame is twice the size. Grunting again, louder, she shoves at the door with all of the pent up frustration and anger of a raging half demon.

Spoiler: OOC

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(1D20+7)[25]
17/18 Rage

[TheOneHawk]

Spoiler: Selene

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After a couple minutes of concentration, the lock finally gives way and the door to your cell swings open a couple of inches. Outside the door, the hallway is completely silent and empty, except for a ladder about 30 feet down the hall to your right.

Spoiler: Bertrand, Kokozori and Kyoni

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Kyoni's attempt with the skeleton key proves futile, the well designed lock stymieing even repeated attempts to unlock it. Bertrand and Kokozori have substantially more success, however,
with Bertrand simply rematerializing in the hall and Kokozori shoving the bars of her cell so hard they buckle and rip off their hinges, banging to the ground loudly. This immediately attracts the attention of the other prisoners, most of whom drop their various pastimes to jump at the bars of their own cells, threatening, yelling or begging for release. In spite of this cacophony, the guards remain notably absent.

[QuidEst]

Bravo. Keys that didn't work. And of course, it'd be oh-so-believable if she claimed to be one of the four. Fortunately, there were several options. She retrieved her copy of the letter from its hiding place, and cast a simple spell to make it float prominently outside of her cell. That should do the trick. She took a seat cross-legged in a meditative pose with her back against the wall. That was more for a good impression than any necessity. Her body would be out of use temporarily. Even tied down to a new weaker host, her image had power.

She opened her eyes in Selene's locket. Too dark to see anything, but that wasn't the point. She hadn't activated this connection in solitary, not knowing when the woman would be monitored. Under the circumstances, it seemed safe enough. "Selene, dear?" she said, speaking loudly to be heard through the narrow aperature of the locket. "I think it's time to move on. If you could stop by my cell, I'll meet you there. We'll head out together."

Spoiler: OoC

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Unseen Servant
Activate implanted image (one of two in the locket).

[ylvathrall]

Selene smiles and nods, not realizing or not caring that Kyoni can't see her. In calm silence she walks towards the ladder, drawing power and aether around her. Her raccoon floats silently beside her, fading from sight at the same time she does.

It's easy as a thought to drift up through the air next to the ladder, heading for the maximum security level that she used to call home.

Spoiler: OOC

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Activating telekinetic invisibility, raccoon is floating as an effect of overflow. Using self telekinesis to move up without touching the ladder.

[Lethia]

With a shudder, Koko's form returns to normal. She shakes her hands and cracks her knuckles, smiling sublimely at the pain the change brings on. The hoots and hollers of the surrounding prisoners grows to a cacophony as she struts out of the cell. Pausing for a moment she poses, kissing her biceps and wiggling her fingers in a wave. The pleading washes over her like an ocean wave over the prison ships. She's indifferent. Time to find the other three losers conned into this.

There were two now, floating down the hall. Ghost man and ghost woman? Incorporial spirit people? Who knew. She walks up to poke a finger into the arm of the nearest apparition. It passes through the misty, insubstantial shoulder and she shrugs.
"You get a letter?", she grunts noncommittally, to make her presence known.

[QuidEst]

"Well, I'm going to go return to my body. Sounds like there's somebody out there. See you soon," Kyoni said before shutting off the connection to the amulet. Back in her cell, her eyes opened once more, and she picked herself up to lean calmly against the bars, waiting her turn while the unseen servant patiently presented the epistle of exodus.

[Bhaakon]

"That was most disagreeably rude." Bertrand mutters indignantly as he rematerializes, prodding his shoulder to make sure the women's finger hadn't knocked anything out of alignment. The magic was rather new to him, after all. Just like his unwanted cellmate. "One ought not go about poking people just because they aren't all there."

Tove just lets out a harrumph and turns so that her long glaive cuts right through Bertrand, Koko, and the wall of the prison without so much as leaving a scratch.

Once his outfit--threadbare though it may be--is straightened, Bertrand answers the woman's question. "Yes, I did get the letter, though our savior didn't see fit to provide names. I am Bertrand Pryce. Yes, that Bertrand Pryce. And no, no autographs, please."

"Wait...you're literate? Then why did you make me read the letter aloud?" his accompanying apparition observes with wonder in proportion to this strange prodigy.

"I did not..you know very well...that is an utter fabrication! Foul slander!" Bertrand sputters. "Nevermind! Shall we find the wardens office with the alacrity suggested by our anonymous benefactor?" Not waiting for an answer, Bertrand makes for ladder, climbing it half way before noticing the trapdoor blocking the exit.

"Er...would you mind a bit of scouting? I'd rather not get kicked in the face, what with it paying my bills."

Tove rolls her eyes, but does, eventually, push her head up through the obstruction for a view.

[Lethia]

Rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness, Koko follows suit. If you can't beat them because they can go incorporial, join them. For now.

On her way towards the ladder she notices a copy of the letter she got floating strangely in front of one of the cells. With a careless huff she walks past it. If whoever was in there couldn't get out on their own, what use would they be?

[QuidEst]

Kyoni stared at the tall tiefling. First of all, this arrangement was too good to be true. Second of all, if she didn't do something now, it would be too good to be true. "It would be a good idea to let me out," she said, laying her voice thick with enchantments to compel compliance. "It'll be worth the trouble." That was just layered thick with regular suggestion.

Spoiler: Action

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Stare for -2 penalty on will saves. DC 17 for Suggestion. If the suggestion counts as particularly reasonable, it's at -1 or -2.

[Lethia]

A quiet voice, heavy with power, brings Koko's footsteps to a standstill. She appears to consider for a moment before turning, and looks deeply into the barely lit cell. "With such a pretty voice, I'm sure it would be." Her eyes adjust and dark vision brings to life the face of a beautiful young fox woman sitting cross legged in the back of the cell.

"Why hello there." Koko grins, reaching into her sock. With a flourish she produces the skeleton key hiding there, and shoves it into the lock. "Don't you worry, if this doesn't work, I'll rip the door off."

(1d20+10)[18]

[TheOneHawk]

Spoiler: Selene

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You reach the next deck up in a matter of seconds, just in time for two misty looking figures to walk past you, oblivious, and start climbing the ladder as it continues up to the main deck. A short distance down the hall you can see a letter similar to the one you found floating outside one of the few cells that doesn't currently have hands reaching through it or grasping its bars. A large demonic looking woman stands in front of the cell, struggling with a key.

Spoiler: Tove

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Outside, the deck appears to be completely deserted, though you can see the shadows of a pair of pacing guards on each of the adjacent ships.

Spoiler: Kyoni, Kokozori

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Kokozori's key slides into the hole but fails to turn, no matter how hard she tries.

[ylvathrall]

Selene approaches the door, floating above the floor effortlessly, and returns to visibility less than ten feet away from Koko. "Let me," she says, eyes focused on the floor. "I can make it open." She then looks at the door. "Hello," she says. "It's good to see you again." With no more greeting than that, her focus narrows on the lock, and she begins to feel at it, probing the mechanism for vulnerabilities.

Spoiler: OOC

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Same as before, taking twenty on disable device.

[QuidEst]

Kyoni bowed her head in greeting, first to the new woman, and then to Selene. "You're both very kind, thank you. I do hope I can return the favor at some point," she said, smiling languidly. "And it's very good to see you again too, Selene. I've missed you. Kyoni Vasad, by the way," she added to the tiefling as she stepped out of the cell. "A pleasure to meet you, although more so when we're less pressed for time."

[Lethia]

Koko starts at the appearance of the aasimar, grasping her chest with a calloused grey hand.
"If you insist." Nodding her head to Kyoni she turns towards the ladder to see what the hold up was. "Kokozori Sger, by the way. Call me Koko."

[ylvathrall]

"The prisoner is 1964313 Selene," Selene says, the syllables rolling rapidly off her tongue before she stutters to a stop. "We should proceed up. There will be consequences if we are caught like this."

[Bhaakon]

After a moment, tove drifts down the ladder so that the trap door is no long decapitating her. "Ah, yes, THIS boat is empty. The one next to us, though..."

"Er...perhaps they've compensated so as to not notice anything on this ship?" Bertrand supplies, unconvinced.

"Or you could just crawl along the deck like a leech. You're rather used to that, aren't you? I'm sure you won't get more than a few dozen splinters."

[QuidEst]

"Koko, then," Kyoni said, sounding pleased. "And certainly, we shall proceed." She followed along behind Koko. "The two of you will stick out quite a bit. Well, me as well in my present form, but that's rather more flexible. When we get to shore, or earlier if needed, I'll disguise you both while we lay low. Like I said… useful."

[ylvathrall]

"It, it won't be necessary for me," Selene says. "I'm good at not being seen. You see?" As she speaks, she fades from view again, nothing left to show her presence but a faint flicker in the air.

[QuidEst]

Kyoni grinned broadly. "Excellent!" She gave a stretch, her form altering as she did to a young human woman with long black hair. "Koko, we can make you into a guard if you don't mind. Let's get our fourth member first, though, or we'll have to explain it all."

[Lethia]

Koko shifts her weight impatiently, turning back to Kyoni. "Guard works! That's practically my job, some say I'm rather good at it. You can illusion the uniform, and my horns away?" Frowning, she touches the start of the ridges above her eyebrows before shrugging. "I am willing, do what you wish to me." Koko grins brashly. "The other two are just up the ladder, they bicker like an old married couple. Dunno why there's two of 'em, you can ask! I didn't get a chance to, the more solid one talks too much."

[QuidEst]

Kyoni nodded, reaching out to rest one hand against Koko's cheek. "Just let me in, and I'll take care of it," she murmured. When she pulled her hand away, Koko's features had shifted to that of a human… or close enough to easily pass. There was a certain amount of grime that had to be applied to keep the appearance from being unusually beatific for a guard, but the job provided plenty of excuses for that. "I'll announce you to our companions, then, to avoid trouble." She slid around Koko and headed up the ladder. "Pleasant evening. I'm one of the others in our little venture. I've disguised Koko as a guard, so please don't be too alarmed."

[Bhaakon]

"Yes, well, my associate says the deck above is deserted, so all we need to do is avoid drawing attention from the next hulk over. That shouldn't be too difficult, I think. I'm not entirely unused to playacting. Just have your 'guard' friend pretend to be transporting a prisoner. I believe I'm already dressed for the part. This one," He nods at Tove, "can disappear entirely."

[ylvathrall]

"I can do that, too," Selene says, her voice seeming to come from thin air. "Should I get the trapdoor? I'm, um, I'm rather good with locks."

Spoiler: OOC

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Assuming no disagreement, another take 20 on the trapdoor lock.

[TheOneHawk]

When Selene goes to unlock the trapdoor, she finds the lock already open and pushes it open easily.

[ylvathrall]

Selene floats invisibly up the ladder, the trapdoor opening itself ahead of her. Once she is above deck, she pauses and takes a deep breath of fresh air for the first time in years, shuddering with pleasure. The sky is a foreign sight, and the feeling of wind through her fur almost makes her jump with surprise at the unfamiliar sensation.

After taking a few moments to readjust to being in the outside world once again, she moves to the side, clearing the ladder for those coming up behind her.

[Lethia]

Koko took a moment to admire the fine costume, straightening her shoulders and letting a gruffness come over her. Illusion or not, it felt good to be in a uniform and to have the semblance of a plan.
"Hurry up, Prisoners! Let's get over to the guard ship and have some fun." She urged the man on the ladder to follow Selene so she could climb up after.