Like a submarine [salvaging, open]

[upupatomway]

Who: Atom, Donnie, Nephenee, whoever else wants a salvage thread
What: Exploring the Imperial ships crashed in battle in search of ether stones
Where: Wrecked imperial ship
When: End of month
Warnings: bodies of dead imperials that became fish food


[ Notes: 5 comments are required to obtain a material
-If anyone would prefer a thread exploring one of the ships that is either floating or crashed online instead, go right ahead and write the different location into your starting reply. ]


Atom looks perfectly calm for a rather small person ready to dive into deep ocean waters. He stands at the edge of the boat deck using his visual scanners to get an idea of how close they are to the sunken Imperial air ship. His clothes are folded neatly in a pile with his sandals stacked on a barrel save for a pair of black shorts. No need to get his clothes wet and dirty unnecessarily or add to the underwater drag.

"As you know, I don't need air. But if anything goes amiss on your end, please signal to me that you need to go up for air." He gestures upward and then towards his mouth to show them what he means. "I can help you swim back to the surface quickly. If it's urgent, I'll grab you around the middle and use my jets to speed up. If you're going up for another reason, just point upward."

Comments

[upupatomway]

Atom doesn't give the hole quite as much thought in terms of the power that made it. He's too used to the strength of some robots and weapons in his world that would make this kind of thing easy. But he does wonder who was onboard when the ship went down. Hopefully no slaves or servants. Hopefully the ether stones that powered the engine meant nobody was required for shoveling coal into a furnace.

Atom also turns on the lights in his eyes, shining a beam ahead. He looks at the structure of the room they entered, trying to get a better idea of what they were looking at exactly. It's sideways, but it's clear they came up through the bottom of the ship into the floor of a hallway. There are multiple doors to various chambers along the hall, which is at a T where they are now.

[purplexing]

That question is one Donnie's purposely avoiding. He doesn't want to think about where all the people went...or if they might still be aboard, somewhere.

Donnie holds his own light out as he looks around once they're inside. Things should be a lot easier to get to given their entry point. After consulting his mental map, he points down the corridor before starting to swim ahead.

At least his experience with Imperials has given him some useful insight on how their airships are structured, but when it comes to standard features, most are built the same. Nobility just likes to add in extra rooms for comfort and ridiculous things like private libraries that they don't allow anyone else to touch.

[upupatomway]

Atom sees Donnie pointing the way and gives a thumbs up of acknowledgment. He follows closely behind him, his eye lights making Donnie's shadow stretch out in front of them. Curious, Atom takes visual scans of doors they approach and broken ceiling lights.

Ahead in the hall, one door was open. Atom magnifies his vision to look closer and sees something there in the doorway, blocking it from closing. Fish scales gleam as the light falls on a school of them, but they're spooked by the light and withdraw like a silver curtain. Atom's AI recognizes, perhaps too late, what the fish had been so interested in. He reaches out a hand to grab for Donnie's shoulder in an attempt to get his attention turned back towards him before he can see the human skeleton wedged in the slanted doorway that was nearly picked clean by the sea life.

At least it was wearing the rags of what was colored like an Imperial uniform?

[purplexing]

It's funny how easily one can let such details such as nature itself slip from one's mind. Donnie's come across hungry fish but usually their meals were bite-sized and fish-shaped. As it is, he finds the amassing of so many within the hold curious until Atom grabs him. By the widening of his eyes it seems it's too late to keep him from completely catching at most a glimpse of a skeletal arm past the shifting, gleaming bodies.

The turtlekin brings a hand up, pressing tightly against his lips as he tries to fight down a wave of nausea. Now's definitely not a great time to feel sick.

[upupatomway]

Unfortunately they hadn't foreseen the need for a signal meaning Wait here. Atom gives a tug on Donnie's shoulder to encourage him to turn away from the remains, and then tries to catch his attention and wave both hands in front of him downward towards the ground like a person trying to signal for another to sit or lay down. Hopefully he gets the idea. Or maybe he is feeling to disturbed to move- the poor guy looks... sick? That would be a normal reaction for humans. Maybe turtlekin too.

Atom moves to swim past Donnie, towards the skeleton. A shove to the skeleton down through the doorway would allow the door to close, and it would be out of sight.

[purplexing]

At least Donnie doesn't need any encouragement there, giving a quick nod, swimming closer to the wall just to have something against his shell as he folds his arms tight against his plastron.

It's just a natural process Donnie, circle of life, nothing new there, you see fish and sea creatures eating things all the time and sometimes they're still moving, you've eaten them- NO no, not thinking about what they've been eating, not at all, it's fine, everything's fine, Raph's eaten more disgusting things certainly...

He's squeezed his eyes shut as he tries to get a grip on himself, forcefully trying to keep his thoughts from drifting to the funeral. Slowly he lifts his head, looking back over when he hears the door being closed.

[upupatomway]

Atom makes sure the skeleton and all its clothes clear the doorway, and the door closes with a thump. Atom wipes his hands against each other to loosen any dirt from the deed, and turns back to check on Donnie, dimming his eye lights to avoid blinding him. A couple of bold fish are curious enough to try poking at Atom's lit up head but find that it isn't food; clearly they'd stand no chance with an angler fish. Atom laughs in his head and smiles, but he shoos them away in case it's too much of a reminder that they had an actual meal a moment ago.

Atom gives Donnie a thumbs up and looks at him with an unsure smile. He points at him then gives a thumbs up and a thumbs down, then tilts his head. How are you? Good or not?

[purplexing]

One can't really take deep breaths to calm down when they're underwater, so Donnie has to improvise. His meditation attempts have never really been very good, but he tries to distract himself by going through multiplication tables.

His own smile is clearly forced, even less unsure than Atom's, but he gives a hesitant thumbs-up. If he heads back up now, he knows he'll just end up thinking about Things again. He just has to keep focused on mission-mode.

...and hope they don't run into any more remains, although he'd at least think he's a little more prepared for it now.

[upupatomway]

Atom hopes Donnie isn't pushing himself for his sake. Making a return trip wasn't so bad, or Atom could try using the map on his own. But since he got a thumbs up, he nods at him and turns to look down the hall and shine a light ahead. This time, he'll look out for swarms of hungry fish as a warning sign.

Thankfully, they are getting close to the engine room. Donnie will see ahead that the ceiling is covered in tubing that was meant to protect wires where lines converged on the power source. The metal door to the room is shut. Luckily it hasn't been underwater long enough to be covered in barnacles and certainly not for rust.

[purplexing]

If there's one thing Donnie hates to be, it's a burden. He doesn't like feeling useless, and here he'd said he'd help. At least he feels like he's gotten himself together, and the sooner they leave this particular area, the better.

His eyes flick towards the tubing, the promise of their destination prompting him to swim ahead. He inspects the door before moving to give it a tug, relieved to feel it budge, but it's going to take both of them to get open. Giving it another pull, he looks to Atom before gesturing with his head for him to grab the edge of the doorway to help.

[upupatomway]

Atom swims closer and grabs onto another part of the door, joining him to tug on it. The door opens easily for them, and Atom pokes his head through the opening to check ahead for any more bodies. Thankfully, it looks clear. If anyone had gone running for the engine room during the battle, they hadn't reached it in time. Maybe that was where the guy in the hall was heading.

Atom swims inside and takes a closer look at the engine and machinery itself. He's reminded of certain video game settings where everything is made of copper pipes. From what he had heard, ether stones are supposed to glow. They must have been covered or inside a part of the engine; he doesn't see any suggestion of a glow yet.

[purplexing]

Donnie slips in after, looking around. He pulls a small device, flipping the cover open to reveal an embedded little ether stone, holding it up as he moves towards the main machinery itself. Even before then it starts to glow brighter, some kind of energy detecting device. Donnie smiles in relief as he glances at it. At least that means the ether stones used here are still intact.

He tucks the device away so he can inspect the casing of the engine, looking for the right panel to open up.

Six of the stones have been added to the crowd resources btw

[upupatomway]

Atom watches, and stares at the ether stone on Donnie's sensor device as it changes from dim to a bright solid light. Donnie is smiling, moving on to a specific part of the engine, which seems promising. Atom paddles over to the opposite side of the row of panels he's examining, curious, and starts lifting them to see what is inside.

Their underwater mission to one of the largest ships wrecked in the battle is about to pay off. Lifting the panels makes light stream out into the dark room. Going through the row and lifting all the panels will reveal multiple large and bright ether stones still safely wedged into their holding docks. A careful hand can pull them out from between the metal coils keeping them in place. In total there are seven stones. All are easily large enough to power armors, and some might even be large and brilliant enough to make ships fly.

Sweet - we can make an infinity gauntlet now

[purplexing]

Not that it needed to be confirmed, but Donnie gives Atom a thumbs-up after inspecting the state of the stones. They all look to be in good condition.

He makes sure that all the power's deactivated, tapping a finger at one of the stones in testing, but it looks like they've been sitting here a good while. Patting around at his belt, he pulls out a roll of folded canvas, giving it a flick to unfurl it before he sets it on the flattest surface available. Donnie holds up a finger, then goes to carefully remove one of the ether stones, bringing it over to the canvas to set. He mimics putting the rest along with it before folding the end over and then the other, rolling his hands over each other in indication of how they'd close it up for transport.

[upupatomway]

Atom smiles and gives Donnie a thumbs-up in return. He doesn't know exactly how lucky this find was, but it sure looks good. Donnie pulls out supplies and Atom watches to see what he's doing. A demonstration. Atom gives him another thumbs-up to say he understands.

He turns to the closest stone and gently pulls it out from its dock, pulling the coils back to release it. Besides the glowing it looks like an ordinary rock, but better safe than sorry when estimating how rough to be with it. He pauses to look over the stone once it's out, admiring the light blue color, before placing it on the canvas as instructed and moving on to the next one.

[purplexing]

Donnie nods and starts to resume removal of the stones closer to his side, glad he doesn't have to explain more than once. While he hasn't done much specific maintenance on airships, he's shadowed Corsair engineers and helped them with ether stone installations, so he knows his way around an engine. He'd greedily soaked up anything and everything they were willing to teach him that the Imperials would not.

Between the two of them it doesn't take too long to get the stones resituated in two rows, one over the other. Once the last one's been placed, the turtlekin folds over one side of the canvas to cover the first half, and then the other so they don't fall against each other or out of place when they roll the thing up and bind it in twine.

[upupatomway]

Atom swims to position himself across from Donnie and reaches for the canvas once he's done with the initial folds. He starts carefully rolling it from his side, looking to see what pace Donnie takes the task at so he can match it and meet neatly in the middle. He's reminded faintly of folding a cloth to carry snacks or a bento box for trips out of the city he had gone on with friends at home.

[purplexing]

Again Donnie flashes him a thumbs-up once that's done. Securing it takes no time at all. He gives the package a pat, gesturing in silent question between them as to who should carry it. Otherwise, it looks like they're about done in here.

winding off?

[upupatomway]

Donnie already has a lantern to carry, so Atom volunteers to carry the package, tapping his chest and then holding out his arms to receive it. If they go back the way they came, they'll be above surface and able to talk soon. He is already eager to look at the stones closer and ask if any of them might work for his installation.

Okay!

[purplexing]

With something of a shrug, the turtlekin nods, scooping the bundle up to pass over to Atom's awaiting arms. He gathers his own things, taking one last look around for anything they might have missed before he gives one more nod and a thumbs-up, ready to follow the other's lead out.