Act I: Mercurian Underground

[Carthrat]

Wordlessly, Arkian picks up the generator and gets ready to perform his task.

[Halbarad]

The button is pressed, and the tube begins to retract into the floor with a hiss of escaping air. The girl within begins to choke, her face quickly turning red, before Arkian manages to get the generator on her. Once it's in place, however, her breathing eases, still interspersed with intermittent coughs.'

Her eyes - a pale green, you note - flicker open a moment later, unfocused. "What..." she says groggily, speaking in rather thickly  accented Lunarian.

[Carthrat]

Arkian quickly covers the girl with his outermost robe, the woolen green texture clashing with her sky-blue hair.

He glances at Rowan, looking pretty lost; beyond reassuring sounds, he's not very clear on what he should do with the girl..

"Are you ok?" he asks, in even *more* accented Lunarian; he's not used to speaking it himself, only reading (and more recently, listening).

[Ebiris]

Finishing with the console, Rowan hurries over.  "We are from Luna," she says, her Lunarian painstakingly enunciated, "We will take you to our spaceship."

Returning to English, she turns to Arkian, "We'd best hurry - no telling when we'll get another tremor."

[Halbarad]

"From... Luna...?" the girl says, her Lunarian difficult to understand. She's shaking visibly, and Arkian notices that she's very cold, and shivering almost violently.

[Carthrat]

"Rowan, she's freezing!" says Arkian. "We'd best hurry back to the ship. I'll carry her; you better talk to Chris and get him to make ready."

Switching back to Lunarian, he starts whispering to the girl; "It's ok. Don't worry; we'll get your warmed up right away.."

Picking her up, he starts hurrying back to the ship.

[Ebiris]

Nodding, Rowan hurries after Arkian and his passenger, radioing the Silver Star. "Chris, this is Rowan. We're on our way back now,  with the girl we revived from the stasis tube."

Of course, you won't need a biologist or a doctor on Mercury... the summoner thinks with a bit of acid.

[Halbarad]

"You got her out okay? Awesome! Ship's ready to go, I think," Chris replies. "Arkian will know what to do better than me - the computer's reporting everything normal, but I don't have a clue how to pilot it. I radioed Michael, but he hasn't replied back yet - not sure if he's on his way or not."

The girl in Arkian's arms continues to shiver, although she does seem to be warming up - slowly. "Thank you," she says, closing her eyes as the pair race up the stairs and out of the building. Her hand clutches at the edge of Arkian's robe, the fingers slightly bluish and nearly translucent.

[Ebiris]

"Not replied?" Rowan repeats incredulously, slowing down her running as they exit the building. "Oh, damn. That tremor was probably caused by his cursed stone hand or something. Arkian, go on ahead - I'm going to look for Michael. Chris, do you have his last known position, or where he was planning to go?"

[Halbarad]

"Last time I heard from him, he was checking out some of the commercial areas downtown. Hang on a sec - you've got your map there, right? I'll transmit the position of the last radio signal I got from him."

On Rowan's belt, a small electronic datapad flashes a small green light a couple of times, the screen lighting up to show a spot marked with her own name and one with Michael's last known location, perhaps a quarter of a mile from your present location.

"Looks like he's not too far away from where you are now," Chris replies. "I can't tell anything about the conditions in that area though - if he DID cause that quake, there's no telling if he collapsed buildings or anything. Be careful."

[Ebiris]

"I will," Rowan affirms. "I'll check in again when I find something." Checking the map, she peels away from the departing Arkian and Juliana, heading towards the indicated area. And keeping a sharp eye out for any signs of recent destruction.

[Halbarad]

Things don't SEEM to be any more disastrous than anything else you've seen, as you speed through the underground streets of the colony. It takes you just a few minutes to arrive at Michael's last known location - some sort of bookstore, from the looks of things. The shop is still intact, and the door appears to have been forced open - whether recently or far in the past, it's hard to tell, as a lot of doors in the colony have been forced before you ever arrived.

[Ebiris]

"Michael?" Rowan tries on the radio, cautiously entering the bookstore as though afraid it may collapse any minute (because she is afraid of that, and that could happen). Admittedly the odds on the radio working are bad if Chris got no response, but it's at least worth a shot.

[Halbarad]

The bookstore looks stable enough structurally, although once you get inside things are a real mess. Michael doesn't reply to your radio message, but that doesn't matter much, as he's not hard to spot. Most of the short shelves in the store have been knocked over, and at the center of the collapse lies Michael, apparently unconscious as he's draped over one of the shelves.

[Ebiris]

Rowan hurries over to the unconscious man, quickly checking him over for injuries (and to ensure that he's even still breathing).

Not that she can do much if he needs first aid, what with a space suit and a force field in the way...