Re: Hathtotep Habisphere, 57,818 CE
Smoke Alarm was busybee eyespying the ball-and-spire tower and thinking up floorplans for how to hop-skip-jump up to the flying palace. It was much higherer than anything she had jumped up or down before. But, in the Habisphere, up and down were relative. She only had to pick and choose which. 'Okay, so we need to hop-skip-jump up top of the big balley thing...' she began to show-and-tell, '...And rememorise I said to outlook where the tower isn't... But no ball-games, no fly-posts, no jumping shorterer than you can land... Then I shoot the rope-gun there, you sonic the whatsit, then you alley-oop me, then... But we'll need to get thru the gravy-tea flip-flop, so...' She outlooked around, to make sure Trav was getting all this, then eyespied her all-ready with a sky-fly. 'Trav!' Smoke Alarm called accusingly.
Huffing, Smoke Alarm footed off up to the tower.
*
Rather yawnily, they took the alleviator up the ball-and-spire tower, listening to the muzak on the way like a slowpoke. But as soon as the doors cracked open, Smoke was out footing through the carrydoors, to much complaining from the rezzies, afore popping out of a top-floor window. She had an icehot outlook over the city from high up here, but didn't loiter to enjoy it. Climbering out, she launched her rope-gun up over the sphere – it catched on the toppermost spire, pulling taut. With the grapple, she scaled the rest of the way up to the big pointy pole, then shinnied up that too.
Briefly, the pole had a Blue Kang for a flag.
Figuring she was close enough now, Smoke Alarm fired the rope-gun again, this time for the edge of the floating sky-palace. The net was clearly there for catching things falling the other way, so it wasn't good for her, and she'd be on the wrong side of it anyhow. She outlooked up at the grapple's path, eyespying where it slowed and where it fasted up again. Once it got close enough to the palace's gravy-tea, it was no longer flying but instead was falling. The grapple fell down, down, and finally at the limit of its length snagged around the corner of one of the big strips that made up the sphere.
Then she hit retract.
Smoke Alarm was yanked off the pole and pulled thru the sky, wind rushing through her blue hair. 'Ice-hooooooot!' But it was only ticktocks afore she got to the where the gravy-tea changed over, from falling to the ground to falling to the sky-palace, where down became up and up and became down. Feeling herself enter the band of micro-gravy-tea, not feeling down or up, Smoke quickly switched off the retractor and became a slowpoke, gliding along on momentum alone, floating freely and pigtails bobbing. She still had only ticktocks to change over, afore she'd start falling, first slowly, then very fastly.
She needed more ticktocks. Catching hold of the rope-gun between her feet, Smoke Alarm fetched out a pair of spraypaint cans and fired them ahead of her like retro-rockets, slowing her descent until she was utterly stationary in the micro-gravy-tea. Smoke Alarm had grown up in the orbiting arcology of Paradise Towers, in its artificial gravy-tea, and had spent time on the ringworld of Arsuran; she wasn't unused to this stuff.
Stuffing the cans inside her shirt for now, she remote-released and retractored the cable and grapple, and loitered. With an outlook high over the city, it was really peaceful. She felt like a bird, flying free. She waved back to Traveller, who seemed to tagging along after her on her sky-fly.
Then the grapple shot back into her gun, sending her spinning wildly out of control. Holstering the rope-gun, Smoke Alarm quickly fished out her cans, fired them against the direction of rotation, until she stabilised and left a pretty flower air-scrawled for all to eyespy.
Coughing and eyes stinging against the fumes, Smoke changed tools again, and fired the rope-gun back up at the ball-and-spire tower where'd started. The grapple catched hold of the pole, but Smoke Alarm didn't intend to fly back. Instead, she tractored out the cable in one hand and fired out paint in the other, until she fell out of the micro-gravy-tea and into the cold embrace of the palace's artificial gravy-tea field, tugging hard on her again.
Thereafter, Smoke Alarm winched herself down to the palace, dropping the spraycan ahead of her. The cable wasn't quite long enough this time, so Smoke Alarm remote-released retractored the grapple, and dropped the rest of the way. A paint-spattered Blue Kang landed cat-like onto her feet, triumphant after her double-ended Indian rope trick. 'Tada!'
Finally, Smoke Alarm footed down the underside of the palace, until floor became wall and finally ceiling, leaping up into the air before being inverted and brought down into the net. 'Why didn't they just put gravy-tea on down here?' she said after she was done bouncing. She even lost-and-found her spraycan.
'Eyespy! Kalath and Sairen!' Bounding on the net, she footed after them...
17:33, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 32 using 4d6+15 with rolls of 6,5,2,4. coordination(5) + athletics(4) + Kang Fu(2) + jumping(2) + grappler(2) + SP.