OPEN PLAYER PLOT: OPERATION LOST BOYS

[forcevisions]

WHO: Anyone
WHERE: A research outpost not far from New Amsterdam proper
WHEN: November 28
WHAT: The Displaced arrive to save the captured Morningstar agents, including one of their own.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Violence, mentions of interrogation/torture, etc.

> DEPARTURE BY TRAIN Early in the day on November 28th, Prompto and Poe will conspire to get an out-of-service train car onto the same tracks where the Displaced were guided by Cassius earlier this month. By all measures, the train car doesn't look operational. There are telling dents in the side, and it does not appear to be powered on. Yet those involved in the rescue operation already assembled are climbing on board like they know that this is their ride. Inside, the train is fairly battered. Some of the seats on the far wall seem to have been damaged when the train collided with something during the EMP, and the rattling of the crash took out some of the internal handrails as well. Once everyone is settled, though, the car begins to move. At the front of the car, Poe uses his power to move the train car on the tracks and out of the city. As they hit a checkpoint, the car doesn't slow down to be inspected; instead, it accelerates and blows right through the barrier, which makes for a pronounced jolt for all the passengers inside. Once the train is rolling outside of the city limits, the Displaced can grab scrambler masks that have been provided by Morningstar for use in infiltrating the outpost when they arrive. It is imperative, El suggests, that they don't allow their identities to be compromised. They will also remind the Displaced to keep this project under wraps, lest Morningstar as a whole has its operations compromised. This is a good time to solidify any plans about what to do when the outpost is reached. The train ride won't be especially long, but long enough for some tension to settle over the car. > INFILTRATE THE OUTPOST The outpost they arrive at is a less grimy version of what the Displaced saw earlier in November. The interior is almost identical to what was present there, with some wings repurposed as jailing sites. There are bright, fluorescent lights with white walls and a sterile smell throughout. Even cleaned up, these labs do not recognize any of those that the Displaced may have seen in their dreams. The description below is borrowed from the arrival log for reference: The building is six stories tall. The first floor has a lobby/waiting area, a cafeteria, and some office spaces. The second floor is the dormitory floor, which is where the employees would usually sleep if they chose to stay at the facility while working rather than returning to the city in between shifts. This is where the new arrivals woke up. Floors three through five are dedicated to lab spaces, which is where the actual research work is usually done. Most of these laboratories are going to be locked, but that won't stop Displaced from breaking into them if they want. Some of the lab rooms also have exam rooms. Displaced will be able to swipe lab equipment and medical supplies, such as syringes, vials/beakers, first aid supplies, scalpels, bandages, multi-lens microscopes, etc. The top floor is dedicated to offices for higher-ranked scientists, so think of it as the C suite. All floors also have bathrooms, of course, and the dormitory wing also has showers. ✦ Notably, this outpost is also empty of scientists. However, stoic soldiers stand guard at every door. These well-armed warriors are with the UNA, who has taken over the outpost. These soldiers are not an easy fight. In the fights with UNA soldiers, PCs might die and need to be revived in New Prague by Morningstar. ✧ DISTRACTION: Some of the PCs may choose to deal with the UNA by attempting to distract them using wit, charm, or apparent helplessness. PCs may search for a way to draw attention away from some of these doors to let others sneak past. ✧ INFILTRATION: Those who sneak past will find the jailing areas similarly guarded, and eventually, stealth and quiet infiltration is no longer an option. Rey and the other Morningstar agents are being held in well-secured cells, and UNA soldiers must be engaged in order to get past them. ✦ Inside the jailing sites, they find the missing agents in terrible shape. These Morningstar operatives have gone through extreme interrogation, and if they can get persuaded to talk sense--or talk at all--they might impart on their rescuers that the subject of that interrogation was most recently about the blue technology. However, most are catatonic, seemingly unaware of who they are or where they are, and some react negatively and violently toward anyone who displays the blue glow in front of them as the result of a conditioned response. ✧ Agents from the September raids will explain that Rey's arrival worsened the interrogation. Some of these agents may admit to confessing that Morningstar started helping a new group that emerged. It was clear in their interrogation that the UNA was not involved in the June firefight because they only then put together that the Displaced were involved in it. They're only aware because they were tasked with cleaning up after it. ✧ Some of the agents taken during the raids will still be resentful of the Displaced, and this will help convince the UNA that the Displaced are separate from Morningstar. Once the agents are freed, the Displaced can make their way back to the exit of the outpost, where Poe Dameron waits in an armored truck liberated from the UNA. This flying truck is meant to transfer large numbers of UNA soldiers for load-outs, so despite the Displaced and rescued agents' numbers, it will be sufficiently spacious to fit them all. Though it flies, it's smarter to stay low in the interest of staying off trackers on their way to New Prague, where they can hopefully wait out the heat of pursuit by the UNA. > NEW PRAGUE When they arrived in New Prague, El contacts local Morningstar agents to escort them to a safehouse. Notably, El will warn the Displaced that no other parts of Morningstar know about zeir identity as an AI. El is hoping that the Displaced will keep their secret, but is more concerned with helping than with keeping them separate from the New Prague Morningstar chapter. These Morningstar agents will bring the Displaced to an abandoned chain convenience store at the edge of town, Zesco. The convenience store is located near the edge of the city, and it's meant to be a temporary stop. The upper part of the store is just an empty space, though there is a wall where it's clear that there were once icee machines. All of the Morningstar agents will be held under an abandoned convenience store. ✦ The inside of the safehouse is like most safehouses, but since it's meant to be temporary, there aren't any clothes or food in place to help someone out. There will be Morningstar agents who come in to supply these things throughout the stay, showing up about an hour in to help out. ✧ It will be apparent that this safehouse is not one of the ones that's typically used in New Prague, but instead one of the miscellaneous ones that they've had around. Unlike New Amsterdam, most of the safehouses in New Prague weren't compromised. Of course, there is a high likelihood that this safehouse will be decommissioned after all of this. ✧ Notably, the New Prague agents are all quite impressed that the missing New Amsterdam agents were able to be saved at all—previously, NPC Morningstar cells had believed rescue to be impossible. ✧ Anyone who kept their scrambler mask on during the infiltration of the outpost is allowed to leave the safehouse and explore New Prague. Anyone else … can do that if they want, but it's not a good idea! The safehouse won't be fun, but jail will be worse. Please reach out to the mods if you do this. ✦ Beyond the safehouse, New Prague is a large, beautiful city housing around 30 million people. Unlike many of its brethren, it pays homage to the "Old" Prague in a number of ways: there are impractical cobblestone streets, and the architecture adheres to an older, gothic style throughout the city. In fact, there are ordinances that demand the city continues to look as if it harkens to an older past and time. Above all else, New Prague is very green: there are trees everywhere. Throughout the city, there is a large, man-made river that cuts through to the underground, causing there to be beautiful falls underneath the main city itself. This river is called the New Vitava River, once again paying homage to the Prague of Old. The New Vitava River is maintained to the degree that there is no littering in it, and there are strict local rules about doing anything lewd in it. (That includes using it as a toilet. Don't do that!) There are bridges all over the city to easily cross from one side to another, and all public transit has been constructed to adhere to the river and also offer its citizens views of it on the regular. ✧ The weather here is just as extreme as it is in New Amsterdam, so anyone who's not been checking the news will find that the world really was screwed over by Cassius. ✧ Food throughout the city is just as eclectic as it is anywhere else. Visually, it looks like they want to remember Prague, but culturally, it's just as varied. This isn't an Eastern European city in anything but aesthetic. > THE RETURN The train ride back to New Amsterdam will resemble the ride to and from New Tokyo, but it is a considerably shorter trip. There is no stop for the train at New Amsterdam, so they will need to devise a way to get off the train without dying in the process - this will be difficult, but not impossible. This should not be too much of a surprise, as some of the New Prague Morningstar agents will join them on this train ride, and will explain the situation. Once they're outside the city, these agents will get them back into the city, as they've done this rodeo before. They can sneak in easily through the opening made by Cassius earlier in the month, which if it has been found, has not yet been addressed.

Comments

[gasping]

[ their relationship (if you can call it that) is... not the most straight-forward one. hope knows caroline from what the blonde now knows is many (many) years into her future, a future in which caroline has grown up in all but her looks —she's graduated high school, gone on to college, and started a school named after a family that is surprisingly not represented in new amsterdam anymore. hope is, also, the daughter of a man that caroline knows she is in love with in said future — but possibly not with?

there's the whole complication of klaus may or may not be dead in said future, too, but nobody's really talking about that. nobody's really talking about anything. and, though she's curious, caroline's definitely not going to be the one to broach any of those subjects now. not when the promise of sunshine and shopping and possibly snacks are all available outside the safehouse doors.

so why not, right? she likes hope. they don't have to think about all the weird timeline shenanigans or the "i thought you were my daughter for five seconds and now i'm even more confused" thoughts in caroline's head. they can just shop, and talk, and be normal for once.

or try to, at least. ]

You have to promise to be honest with me if something makes me look disgusting.

[ a promise neither elena nor bonnie were ever any good at keeping. ]

[tribridfreakshow]

[None of Hope's relationships with anyone, other than maybe her Mom, had ever been considered straight-forward, so there's almost something like a comfort in that. There were no expectations of her, in a way, no history to drag emotional baggage into whatever happened between them here, where they're separated by so much time.

No one's asking her about the future so she doesn't bring it up either; it's not going to help any of them to know what hasn't happened yet (to them, anyway), and she doesn't want to risk reliving it herself by speaking on her own memories. She feels like she'd have to knock on wood for the rest of time.

She just wants things to stay the way they are for now. It's easier that way, for everyone.]

Deal, but that means you have to believe me if I say that it doesn't.

[To her credit, Hope isn't one to sugarcoat things. It's honestly a good thing that Caroline would want the truth because that's exactly what she'd get.]

[gasping]

Duh. [ the look caroline shoots her can be easily summed up as as if! a page out of cher horowitz's book, really, even before you add in the lowkey hair flip over one shoulder. ] If you think I look gross, so will everybody else. I'd be mad if you lied to me and I looked stupid.

[ not that... caroline would really ever look horrible. a little ridiculous, maybe, or a little out of her element, but it's pretty hard to make her look outright bad. she knows that, too, which helps soften the statement. ]

What about you? Can you handle the cold hard truth?

[tribridfreakshow]

I don't think you could look gross if you tried, but I swear I'll tell you if something doesn't work on you.

[Everyone had a different body type, after all. Not even Caroline Forbes could look perfect in everything.

Caroline's question has her grinning over at her.]

There's not much I hate more than being lied to. Besides, anything anyone could say about my clothes? I've heard worse.

[gasping]

[ maybe that's something they have in common, then. not wanting to be lied to or left out of the loop, not wanting to be underestimated — though it's said in reference to clothes and brutal honesty, hope's easy admission makes caroline wonder. that else has been said about hope? ]

Like what?

[ beyond the girl's name (and half her immediate family), caroline realizes she doesn't know much about hope — or about the school she supposedly founded in the future. what was its purpose? why was caroline considered qualified to found it, let alone run its day-to-day operations? she's never had any interest in teaching — or tutoring, for that matter. if hope's not a vampire... well, what is she? ]

Sorry, I realize that's, like, super rude. But I just... [ a small shrug of her shoulders ] I feel like you know so much about me and I don't know anything about anybody.

[tribridfreakshow]

It's not rude. All you have to do is ask. I just...don't want to tell you things you don't want to know.

[That's only part of it, of course. There's also the fact that most people are perfectly happy making assumptions about her instead of getting to know her. Then again, she doesn't really let people do that, either.]

But, anyway, to answer your question, um....freak of nature? Psychopath? The Harbinger of the Apocalypse? People have been trying to kill me since before I was born so...

[She trails off, lips twisting together as she realizes this converastion has taken a really dark turn.]

My grandmother practically invented dark magic. My mom was a werewolf alpha. And my dad is a hybrid and an original vampire. [She looks over at Caroline, her expression almost apologetic.] I'm kind of a mess.

[gasping]

[ the frown that curves caroline's mouth into a dramatic arch isn't out of distaste for witches or werewolves or whatever "original vampires" are — it's out of distaste and empathy for hope herself, and the shitty treatment she's apparently gotten from people who can't follow the golden rule. if you don't have anything nice to say...

not that caroline herself always followed it, but that's not the point. the point is, caroline doesn't think it's fair that people should call hope nasty things like freak just because her situation is complicated. ]

I don't... know very much about any of that.

[ it's a bit of an embarrassed admission. should she know? she hasn't been a vampire very long, and it's not as if damon was ever very forthcoming about supernatural lore. and stefan was a little busy trying to teach caroline to manage her 'murder innocent people' urges with bunny hunting classes and cleaning up after her mistakes, so... vampire 101 probably got left behind. but talking to hope (and, by extension, klaus and kol) sometimes makes her feel like she should have paid more attention. or asked better questions. ]

I don't even know what I'm not supposed to know. I mean, I've only been... [ a shrug. time is a questionable thing. ] A couple months?

[ the span of time between them, too, is daunting. what hope knows, if only by who she knows and who she doesn't, is tempting information. there are questions caroline desperately wants to ask ― about herself, about elena and bonnie, about stefan and damon and tyler and matt and everyone else in mystic falls. about her mom. but she isn't sure how to ask them. or what she would do with that information even if she had it. ]

I feel like you know more about this stuff than I do.

[tribridfreakshow]

Oh...wow. [Only a couple of months? That's just...weird to think about. The Caroline she knows is perfectly put together pretty much at all times. She was one hundred percent firmly in the know and had everything under control.] Does that make us about the same age? You look...basically the same, so it's hard to tell.

[There are a lot of things that are unfair and Hope has had to learn that the very, very hard way. She's just had to learn to live with it.]

I've had to. I've been this way my entire life. [A beat.] Well, the witchy parts, anyway. I didn't trigger my werewolf curse until I was fifteen.

[She gives Caroline a sheepish, but gentle, smile.]

If it makes you feel any better? I still don't know everything about...me. But if you have like vampire questions? Werewolf or witch questions? I can definitely answer those.

[gasping]

I would have been eighteen in October. [ which makes no sense if you pay attention to tvd timelines, but season two is 2010 and she was born in 1992 so that's my math and i'm sticking to it!!! ] I mean, I'm dead, so... [ she shrugs, a lazy lift of one shoulder as her attention transitions to a rack of clothes in the shop, a pale peach sweater pulled out and held against her torso. too light. not the right color. caroline puts it back. ] I'm basically stuck in a filler year for the rest of my life.

[ it's a whiny complaint, and one that doesn't carry much weight, either. caroline hasn't told anyone — beyond those that already know, of course, the ones who share their hometown love of mystic falls — her real age. most people assume she's in her early twenties, and she doesn't correct them. ]

My friend Tyler's a werewolf. [ is he still her friend? she's kind of up in the air on that. ] But I don't... I don't know very much about it. About anything, actually. People ask me how this stuff works and I don't even know what to tell them.

[ her nose scrunches a bit. ]

Like, why does my blood heal people?

[ and why does it feel the way it does when she does it? ]

[tribridfreakshow]

[Hope stands next to her at the rack, idly looking through the different pieces, but she's not particularly focused on it.

The name Tyler doesn't really ring a bell, though she's probably read about him in one of Ric's texts at some point.]

My grandma created the first vampires, the Originials, with a spell that used the blood of the doppelganger as its catalyst. Basically, it's magic that keeping you alive and immortal, which means your blood also has magic in it.

[She says all this quietly, so that other random shoppers can't overhear her. Caroline's hearing will pick it up easily.]

It's that magic that heals someone else when you give it to them. It's also what turns them into a vampire if they die before the magic wears off.

[She glances over at the other girl to see if that made any sense at all to her.]

I have that same magic in my blood, even if I haven't been through transition.

[Yet.]

[gasping]

Oh.

[ it does make sense. not logically — but in the same way that human blood makes you stronger than bunny blood makes sense. of course witch magic would be responsible for the weird supernatural glitch that was healing-slash-siring blood. it's responsible for caroline's daylight ring, too, so why not? ]

Do you ever feel like you're totally crazy for just... all of this?

[ to be standing in a clothing store just casually talking about witches and werewolves and vampires, like those things weren't just urban legends for caroline even days before her death?

she can't even really address the absolute bonkers concept that hope says haven't been through transition like it's a thing she knows for sure will happen. is she just casually sipping on a reserve of vampire blood just in case? ]

[tribridfreakshow]

[She knows it will happen because it's just the way her blood is, and she'll die someday. Knowing how her life has gone and what she does on the daily, it'll probably happen sooner rather than later and then tada, transition time.

She gives Caroline what she hopes is a sympathetic smile.]

I feel at least a little bit crazy pretty much all of the time.

[If that's any consolation.]

Any other burning questions?

[gasping]

[ it's probably not the answer that a therapist would approve of, but for caroline, it is pretty reassuring. when she'd woken up here in new amsterdam, she'd felt very much alone — and though damon had come and gone, he hadn't exactly been much support. if anything, he'd made her feel crazier, less in control.

but hope makes her feel like she has a friend. somebody who knows the truth, and who isn't judging her for it. it's a bit of a novel feeling — but then, even caroline's friends back home never quite managed that much. bonnie and elena always held her at arms' length, tyler sold her out to his werewolf buddies, and matt... well, matt didn't want to remember her. ]

Not yet. [ but it's more of not knowing what to ask. ] But I will totally ring the supernatural hotline if I think of anything.