1873/Caged

Caged
Date of Scene:	07 August 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	342, 292, Kian t'Kaeh

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Panthro (342) has posed:
When he wakes up, he'll be extremely annoyed and upset, at least, once the ketamine hangover goes away. But he won't be violent until he knows for sure what's happening, because Panthro is not a foolish Thunderan. You don't survive being captured by Jackalmen and escaping from 100 kilometers behind enemy lines, while stealing part of their ultimate weapon, by being too abrupt.

Norris Charles is a dealer of living things. He started out selling people for work purposes -- they wanted to come to America to work, he wanted the money they paid him to get into America, and he got an extra profit from 'indenturing' them to rather wealthy clients who needed absolutely loyal and inexpensive labor. Then when Los Migros found his operation, he escaped just in time, changed his name, and began transporting animals instead. Small animals, large animals, didn't matter as long as someone would pay premium prices. But then he got caught and spent half of his personal accumulation of cash, bribing some officials in certain African coastal countries, and he would've ended up in Interpol's kind (not) clutches if it weren't for the strange girl whose strangeness was more than her hair and eyes and lack of a nose and scales for skin, but included her ability to swap places with things ... and she swapped him out of their jail, and left behind a small exploding present he'd made. He almost felt bad when he sold her to Kraven the Hunter to use as a retriever. And since then he's had a sort of talent for finding aliens, mutants, metahumans, anyone who doesn't quite BELONG, and he has paired that with his talent for finding a BUYER. And just now, he's found someone who wants a panther who walks like a man, but not the one whose powers come from jungle drugs.

Norris is almost beside himself with greed. And he's got feelers out for clients who want to buy the other ones.

Lion-O (292) has posed:
Panthro's disappearance had immediately concerned the Lord of the Thundercats and the other dwellers of the lair. It was not like Panthro not to check in, and even stranger for him not to answer his communicator when hailed.

Something was definitely up. Search parties were organized and soon the felines were canvassing the nearby area.

Lion-O, of course, went alone. Even after admonishing the rest of the cats to team up, he went on with the assurance that the Sword of Omens would alert him, should he be in danger.

That was then. Brief recollection clouds the waking lion's mind- approaching a being who was clearly an alien, or one of those 'mutants', for information. He had wings, and people with wings often saw things from a higher vantage point.

That's when the sword began to growl. And, almost immediately, the sting by his neck came. He remembers roaring and turning around, only to feel haf a dozen other stings hitting him.

And then, darkness.

He groans, in his semi-consciousness he reaches down to his side to grasp the sword.

There is no sword. There is no shield. His upper armor is gone, as well.

He opens his eyes, and shuts them again right away, groaning. Headache. Very powerful headache. But he's also uncomfortable and cramped.

He's in a box.

"...'nthro....?" he mutters, still half awake and half asleep.

Kian t'Kaeh has posed:
    It is a disadvantage to Kian that he is of such a small frame; one dart would have sufficed to put him under, and he took two. It's as well that he was on the ground talking to the huge cat-person; a fall would have made matters worse.
    It is, however, an advantage that he has a fast metabolism, and the soporific wears off quicker than it would a human of his stature. Not the muzzy-headedness, though. That lingers.
    The hard floor, that's not really too disconcerting. More than once he'd fallen asleep lying on one of the exposed decks of his home, watching the stars overhead. He opens one eye. Except it's never this dark.
    Bad dream. Or weird dream. Go back to sleep, Kian. Except....
    He sits up, or tries to, and bangs his head. Feels... what feels like an unnaturally close ceiling. With more than a little trepidation, he summons up just enough of his powers to glow dimly blue, and looks around himself, and sees... walls. Everywhere.
    That's when the screaming and pounding starts.

Panthro (342) has posed:
"not so loud," Panthro whispers to Lion-O. His whiskers are throbbing. His fur ITCHES. No, not the fell, not the skin beneath. The fur itself. If he had a tail it would be lashing around like crazy.

His left eye is missing from its socket, the special cybernetic eyeball that looks like a real eyeball, and reveals the weird metal socket that it fits into, which is currently empty. The eyeball also itches, and all he can see through it is a sort of gray static.

There's a collar around his neck that has looped sections running below his arms and the harness he wears most places is not where it should be. And of course all his personal gear is somewhere else. He can 'feel' it nearby in a locked box. He can also feel the machines that live in his blood as they go into emergency mode. But with Lion-O nearby and that bird scent also nearby, he isn't sure it's safe for him to give in to the 'gear'.

Of course when Lion-O speaks, it's like daggers in his teeth and bones, even that faint whisper, and then the bird scent is revealed to be a bird PERSON who is undergoing something akin to the screaming fit of a Monkiian Howl-master berating his third ex-wife.

Panthro nearly goes unconscious again from the throbbing knife it sends into his ears.

Lion-O (292) has posed:
The screaming fit and the pounding only makes the pounding in Lion-O's head intensify. He groans and snaps closer to consciousness, taking stock of his surroundings, such as they are.

His ear twitches, thinking he just heard Panthro, but it's hard to tell with all of the noise. The absence of his gear and the presence of the restraints makes him growl. Quickly he reaches out by extending a foot, to test how solid the confinement he's in is. He pushes, letting his leg muscles apply steady force. As if he's gauging how resistent the material is before he risks kicking.

Kian t'Kaeh has posed:
    Nothing so tentative from Kian. He's banging around inside his crate desperately, and to no avail. He just doesn't have the physical strength to physically batter his way out.
    He falls quiet, not so much from fighting the panic as from fighting the blackness that threatens to claim him. Musn't go unconscious -- the Gods only know where he'll wake up!
    And presently, he starts yelling and pounding again -- it sounds like words, but not in English. He has nowhere near the presence of mind to call on what little English he's learned. Nnnh! If only he had the great strength he's heard that some have on this world! Or some sort of... oh, wait.
    It falls quiet.
    Someone with unspeakably sharp hearing might pick up the noise of someone shakily breathing deeply, every few breaths punctuated by a terrified sob, then more alien words, spoken as if in prayer.

Panthro (342) has posed:
The pain shifts. Panthro's hearing has been ungoverned, the amplifiers he doesn't tell anyone about are working at their top setting, but the machines in his blood are good a detecting problems. They begin grabbing and modifying and storing the ketamine into a small organ in his abdomen where they can use it in future combat situations. It's a ro-bear organ. They installed it when he returned so very broken from the war, and nobody but Panthro, Clawdius, and Jaga knew about how much of him was modified. Normally he doesn't even know himself, except in emergencies when the Eye demands his fullest committment to a situation.

So Panthro isn't really aware of it when things go quiet, when he hears the faint petition of the bird-man. He just knows that the enemy is not in the room, not nearby, his heartbeat hasn't been nearby for more than a half-hour, so now he can get out.

The box that holds Panthro is made from a seven-ply compressed wood that's interlaid with chicken wire. The corners are stuck together with a slightly flexible adhesive stripping that is used to keep human cargo planes from falling apart in flight. The door, however, has to be able to open, and he shifts his legs into position and his back and arms into place, and begins pushing. Pressure sensors activate and flood the box with a sleep-gas, but his nose and lungs have closed up, oxygen stored for the past hour until he can make this one massive exertion.

There's a PING! POING! CRAK! as the door pops partway off, and then he's falling back again, breathing shallowly, recovering. It's nearly gone.

Lion-O (292) has posed:
Lion-O's eyes widen. At the moment that he started pushing, he heard the hiss. He quickly draws in a breath and holds it- goodness knows he doesn't have Panthro's enhancements, so he has to work fast. He quickly contracts his legs and counts, before thrusting them together in a double blow, hoping that is enough to cause the material to bend and succumb. He has to get out before whatever that gas is does something to him.

He grunts, letting out a little bit of air. Darnit, he knows he should have paid more attention to Panthro about working on his core. He proceeds to kick harder and as fast as he can- or he's not going to get out at all!

Kian t'Kaeh has posed:
    When it happens, it happens with little warning, just a sharp screech like a hawk on the attack.
    The top and a fair chunk of the far side of Kian's crate just... isn't anymore, blasted away in a blaze of some sort of blue energy that, unchecked, will probably go through anything above as well -- ceiling, the next floor, repeat for a while. Reinforced wooden walls might withstand physical attacks, but not physics.
    And while Kian fears his powers, it's not as much as he fears enclosure. He hasn't let go like that before, not outside of a laboratory on his homeworld, while being studied.
    One can only hope there's nothing -- or no one -- stacked atop him. And Kian is making for the air while wood splinters are still flying.

Panthro (342) has posed:
Kian's coffin-like box was on top of a bunch of otherwise normal enough crates, none of them filled with living persons yet. However, the room itself is not in a building, it's in a vessel, and the vessel is one that was "acquired" from some of Norris Charles' earlier victims. It uses several systems that pretend to defy common physics in limited spaces; the cargo hold momentarily THRUMs with the splashed, dissipated energies, and the fastenings of the crates holding Lion-O and Panthro are abruptly degraded, while the faraday-cage construction stops the destructive components of the splash.

The Sword of Omens, and Panthro's equipment, and Lion-O's claw-and-chestplate pair are in a now-unlocked cabinet, nearby.

The room itself, large enough to offset normal claustrophobia, is still not an open space, and while the bird-man can make it to the top of storage units, he won't be able to leave except by the cargo door, which is closed.

Lion-O (292) has posed:
Whether it is by his own strength or the power of the blast hitting the cage, or a combination of both, Lion-O finally manages to make it out of the cage, gasping for air and blinking, shielding his eyes from the falling splinters.

"By Jaga, what on Thundera..." he frowns and then looks again. There he is... that is the winged alien he had approached. He raises an arm to try to capture his attention, before he notices there is another crate nearby. One similar to the one he was in.

He growls and advances towards the crate, reaching for it to try and find the door, in order to tear it off. He doesn't know who is in there, but no Thundercat would let a captive languish in a prison like /that/.

Kian t'Kaeh has posed:
    Kian is limned in a blue glow, in a rare open display of powers, and which fades slightly as the mindless terror of enclosure releases its grip on him, but does not go out. While no longer in complete panic, he wants one thing and one thing only: open skies over his head.
    He perches atop a crate near the ceiling, looking around wildly for an obvious exit, not seeing any obvious one, oblivious to the actions of the leonine man below until his panic subsides further, and the first inklings of anger at whoever did this to him start to percolate up in the back of his mind.
    Wordlessly, he drops to the floor to help free whoever is in that crate. He's still *far* too unnerved to use his limited English.

Panthro (342) has posed:
In the crate, Panthro waits through the sudden noise outside, breathing slowly enough for his blood-machines to remove the ketamine gas as he inhales. There's a crash, another crash, and he hears Lion-O's voice. This won't do; he has to at least get out or he'll be forever declared The Damsel -- not that (for example) Cheetara was ever The Damsel... It's a ro-bear thing, really. The females like to pretend incompetence so they can be rescued. He focuses his energy into one last strike...

A black-furred paw-hand bursts through the door of the crate, only to withdraw and swipe around the opening fiercely, claws exposed, until they catch on the release latch and it's yanked into the 'open' position. The cover comes off, by now with the possible help of the Lord of the Thundercats and the Prince of Birds... well, Panthro will consider him such even if he's only the Commoner of Birds.

"Watch out. Our gear, in the cabinet there. The Procurator is off the ship, but he'll be back..." Panthro breaks down into coughing.

Lion-O (292) has posed:
"Don't talk," Lion-O commands Panthro, and it is a Command with the royal capital 'C.' Once he makes sure Panthro isn't going to suffocate, he moves to the cabinets to look for their gear. "Can you find others in boxes?" he says to Kian as he passes him, unawares that the bird man probably doesn't understand him. Yet.

Just as Panthro said, their gear is there. He exhales and quickly starts gearing up before grabbing Panthro's own to take to him.

Kian t'Kaeh has posed:
    Kian is not so settled that the appearance of a clawed fist busting out of the crate won't send him back to a high perch again, with a startled "/Kya/!" And then he remembers -- this must be the one being sought.
    And that these cat-people aren't the same as his legends of demons. He knows that. Intellectually. But that's not enough to keep him from being startled by them periodically anyway.
    He has no idea what has been said to him, and tries something in English: "Khat... had... t'ran-s'lator? To under-s'tan' eash other?" His accent is odd -- perhaps even by feline standards.

Panthro (342) has posed:
"Translator. Yeah, I have a translator," Panthro says, as Lion-O hands him his harness. The ... thing ... that Norris Charles forced him to wear is cut away with a rather-too-sharp claw, so he can put his //eye// back in place and his harness back where it goes. It connects up and he feels his internal feedback restored. That's ... a weakness. He needs to have internal back-ups. It'll be something to talk to the ro-bears about. RoBearBill at least.

"<You speak Aviak?>" he asks in one of the common Birdian dialects.

He's fastening his claw-chuks and re-engaging their micro-fabbers while he asks. They need to get off this ship. There aren't any others -- they were all sold at the last stop -- but this vessel will be heading for the equatorial countries soon, and the humans there, in some of the countries, were unaccountably more likely to rebel against civilization, to prey on their fellows.

"My King, we need to get to a position of security soon. This ship, it's stolen from another off-worlder, and the human who has it controlled is very dangerous. He has allies as well, some of them with powers beyond those of mortal Thundercat."