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[OOC: Yes, I had fun writing this and making Delun out to be a complete dork. If you're bored, the spoilers should provide a good read. If you don't care, read the last little bit of the second spoiler and the non-spoiler stuff and you're all set. Anywho, this takes place on Metellos around nightfall, so around 8PM-ish.]
"Oh balls!" Del cried as he sailed right past the truck. He flailed desperately as if it would somehow help him reach the truck, failed in his attempt, and went plummeting towards terra firma!
Just as the hour or so of his life that he could remember flashed before his eyes, Lady Luck decided to intervene on his behalf. Though he'd missed the first truck, a smelly, nasty garbage truck happened to be passing in the lane beneath the first truck. Delun fell right into the open back of that truck, and his fall was rather nicely cushioned by several tons of garbage bags and random household debris.
The impact knocked the wind out of him, but left the feline alive and, aside from a mortal wound to his pride and a sore backside, relatively uninjured.
He eventually hauled himself to his feet and jumped off the truck the moment it slowed down to pick up its next load of garbage. After brushing himself off as best he could, the feline took in his surroundings. The truck had stopped in a seedier part of the city - he was so far down he could barely even see the sky. Night was falling, and a maelstrom of rain was descending upon the city. His ears flattened - his fur had only just finished drying after his escape from cryo, the last thing he wanted to do was get it sopping wet again.
"Gorramit," he grumbled. "If I'm not getting shot down, frozen, and dumped into garbage trucks, I'm getting rained on. Man, talk about hitting rock bottom..."
After moping for a few seconds longer, the feline struck off down the crowded street. He didn't know where he was going or why he was going there, he just knew that he needed to get away from the main skylanes before the guards from the hospital came a-lookin' for him. More importantly, he had to get off the streets before the rain came and soaked him to the bone again, and he had to figure out a way to get some food and shelter. Figuring out why he was being held and who he was would have to wait - survival came first.
Cryostasis pods were not the most comfortable of places - this Delun knew all too well.
Their interiors were lined with cold-resistant contoured foam, sprayed with a sand-like material to give them traction. The walls were thick sandwiches of plasteel, circuitry, tubing, and insulation. Thick glass windows eliminated any privacy the pod's occupant might have otherwise enjoyed. They were cramped, too, with little more than an inch of two of 'wiggle room' for most pods, forcing occupants to stay in a single rigid position.
And then there was the cold. The freezing, all-encompassing biting cold. It chilled the pod's victim to his very soul, immersing him in a bath of supercold gel that served as his source of oxygen and nutrients while his body was in stasis. Even once the pod's occupant was 'thawed', the gel was still freezing cold and immensely uncomfortable.
It'd made Del's life miserable for hours on end. He had spent the last few hours drifting in and out of consciousness, as the lingering effects of cryostasis and sedatives took their toll on his body. He had made a few feeble attempts to force the pod open, but cold-induced weakness had stymied his best efforts and so he had been left with no choice but to bide his time.
Once his strength returned, he did his best to knock the door open. It wasn't terribly difficult; he wedged his knees against the door and simply pushed. Vast strength quickly overcame flimsy plasteel hinges, and the door popped open and clattered forward onto the floor. A wave of disgusting blue glop - cryostasis gel - crashed onto the door, and Del followed suit.
The feline pitched forward onto his hands and knees, then slumped onto one shoulder. Cryogel still filled his lungs, and his body's response was to purge it with a crippling coughing spree. After spending a minute curled up on the floor hacking his lungs out, Delun staggered to his feet and examined his surroundings.
The area wasn't exactly interesting. Four white walls, a hideous lime green tile floor, and a ceiling that was boring and featureless in every way imaginable. Computer terminals and a door-sized medical scanner were stuffed off into one corner. An examination table sat in the center of the room, with a handful of surgical trolleys surrounding it and a powerful surgical light assembly hovering over the table. He spotted a wheeled gurney propped up against a wall, and white metal cabinets with frosted glass doors lined every wall from one side to the other.
"Erf... This is kinda bleak. Okay, what do I need first?" Del asked aloud. He padded towards a cabinet at random and pried it open. Pills. "Pills here," he grumbled, slamming the door shut. "Those won't do me any good right now. How about... Pants. Dry pants. A shirt. Towel. Something to defend myself with. That's a good start," he decided. A quick search yielded a pile of gray scrubs, which he used as impromptu towels to dry off with. He saved one set to wear. Miraculously they fit, even though they looked to have been designed for someone a good deal smaller than himself.
He also found a scalpel, which he decided he'd keep handy. Just in case. After placing the scalpel in its sheath and tucking it into the breast pocket of his shirt, he abandoned the room and poked his head out into the corridor outside the room.
It was as abandoned as the room he was in, but in far better shape. He stepped out and stood perfectly still for a moment. His ears flicked this way and that, rotating like miniature radar dishes in an effort to pick up any stray sounds. He heard muffled voices to his left; he went right.
His sojourn down the hallway was cut short in less than fifty feet when he came across, of all things, a nurse's station. Del froze in mid-stride - he didn't know where he was or why he was locked up in cryostasis. The chances of him making it past the duty nurses were slim to nil!
He swallowed his fear and started towards the door out of the ward he'd woken up in. He walked right past the station - the nurse on duty didn't even look up from her computer when the giant tiger strode past. He bit back a sigh of relief until he'd pushed his way through the doors and out into the main corridor. "That was easier than I'd thought it'd be," he muttered to himself.
Their interiors were lined with cold-resistant contoured foam, sprayed with a sand-like material to give them traction. The walls were thick sandwiches of plasteel, circuitry, tubing, and insulation. Thick glass windows eliminated any privacy the pod's occupant might have otherwise enjoyed. They were cramped, too, with little more than an inch of two of 'wiggle room' for most pods, forcing occupants to stay in a single rigid position.
And then there was the cold. The freezing, all-encompassing biting cold. It chilled the pod's victim to his very soul, immersing him in a bath of supercold gel that served as his source of oxygen and nutrients while his body was in stasis. Even once the pod's occupant was 'thawed', the gel was still freezing cold and immensely uncomfortable.
It'd made Del's life miserable for hours on end. He had spent the last few hours drifting in and out of consciousness, as the lingering effects of cryostasis and sedatives took their toll on his body. He had made a few feeble attempts to force the pod open, but cold-induced weakness had stymied his best efforts and so he had been left with no choice but to bide his time.
Once his strength returned, he did his best to knock the door open. It wasn't terribly difficult; he wedged his knees against the door and simply pushed. Vast strength quickly overcame flimsy plasteel hinges, and the door popped open and clattered forward onto the floor. A wave of disgusting blue glop - cryostasis gel - crashed onto the door, and Del followed suit.
The feline pitched forward onto his hands and knees, then slumped onto one shoulder. Cryogel still filled his lungs, and his body's response was to purge it with a crippling coughing spree. After spending a minute curled up on the floor hacking his lungs out, Delun staggered to his feet and examined his surroundings.
The area wasn't exactly interesting. Four white walls, a hideous lime green tile floor, and a ceiling that was boring and featureless in every way imaginable. Computer terminals and a door-sized medical scanner were stuffed off into one corner. An examination table sat in the center of the room, with a handful of surgical trolleys surrounding it and a powerful surgical light assembly hovering over the table. He spotted a wheeled gurney propped up against a wall, and white metal cabinets with frosted glass doors lined every wall from one side to the other.
"Erf... This is kinda bleak. Okay, what do I need first?" Del asked aloud. He padded towards a cabinet at random and pried it open. Pills. "Pills here," he grumbled, slamming the door shut. "Those won't do me any good right now. How about... Pants. Dry pants. A shirt. Towel. Something to defend myself with. That's a good start," he decided. A quick search yielded a pile of gray scrubs, which he used as impromptu towels to dry off with. He saved one set to wear. Miraculously they fit, even though they looked to have been designed for someone a good deal smaller than himself.
He also found a scalpel, which he decided he'd keep handy. Just in case. After placing the scalpel in its sheath and tucking it into the breast pocket of his shirt, he abandoned the room and poked his head out into the corridor outside the room.
It was as abandoned as the room he was in, but in far better shape. He stepped out and stood perfectly still for a moment. His ears flicked this way and that, rotating like miniature radar dishes in an effort to pick up any stray sounds. He heard muffled voices to his left; he went right.
His sojourn down the hallway was cut short in less than fifty feet when he came across, of all things, a nurse's station. Del froze in mid-stride - he didn't know where he was or why he was locked up in cryostasis. The chances of him making it past the duty nurses were slim to nil!
He swallowed his fear and started towards the door out of the ward he'd woken up in. He walked right past the station - the nurse on duty didn't even look up from her computer when the giant tiger strode past. He bit back a sigh of relief until he'd pushed his way through the doors and out into the main corridor. "That was easier than I'd thought it'd be," he muttered to himself.
Del stole a glance back at the sign above the door. Research Ward - was he a test subject? The thought twisted his stomach up in knots and he decided not to dwell on it. He whipped around and took off, heading for the nearest stairwell. He made his way down to the first floor and poked his head out of the stairwell. He was hoping that the lobby would be bustling with activity, to make his escape a bit easier - instead, the exact opposite was true. The only people in the lobby, aside from the receptionist, was a pair of security guards.
Armed security guards.
He cursed his bad luck and doubled back. He wasn't about to pit a scalpel against a pistol - he wasn't that crazy. "Maybe there's a vehicle depot on the roof. Worth checking out," Del muttered to himself. The feline headed up to the roof, but the stairwell door at the top was locked to prevent random people and patients from wandering to the roof and falling off. The lock was no match for Delun; a sharp blow with his shoulder warped the door outwards, and it was child's play from there on to simply bend the door out of his way.
It made a nasty racket, however. The sound prompted Delun to hurry up and scurry through the opening he'd made. No sense sticking around to wait for security to pop in and investigate the noise, after all!
A brief tour of the roof dashed his hopes of finding a depot. All that was there was a small landing pad for aerial ambulances... Upon which a small speeder was parked. "Now things are looking up!"
He opened the pilot's door of the open-cockpit speeder and pried open the control panel. Luckily for him, it was an older vehicle that relied on the use of a key to activate its systems. Rigging the wiring was child's play, even if he did zap himself a couple times by accident.
The speeder hummed to life. Del whooped triumphantly and slid into the pilot's seat. It was a tinge small for him, but he didn't care. He was getting out of that hospital - he didn't know why he wanted out, but something just told him that he needed to go. There was something that just didn't sit quite right about that place, mostly the fact that he had been in stasis in the research ward.
Unfortunately for him, lady luck still wasn't on his side; as he turned the speeder around and stepped on the accelerator, a pair of guards from inside the hospital came crawling out of the damaged door. The moment they spotted him, they started shooting; no warning, no call for surrender, nothing. One second the sky was clear, the next it was filled with sizzling lances of crimson energy!
He jammed the accelerator and off he went, but it was too little too late. A handful of energy bolts splashed across the tail end of the speeder. One particularly lucky bolt hit the primary repulsorlift, and it all went downhill from there. The repulsorlift exploded in a pint-sized gray-orange fireball, causing the speeder to buck and lurch momentarily before plummeting straight down.
The hospital, as fate would have it, had been in the center of a floating city over the world of Metellos; deep urban canyons and dense speeder traffic surrounded the hospital, creating a terrifyingly thick mess that Del was going to fall right smack dab into the center of.
The little vehicle careened through the skylanes as it continued its lazy descent. The remaining repulsorlifts were able to keep some semblance of control, but it was still losing altitude at an alarmingly fast rate. Del had a feeling that if he didn't try to crash land the little craft soon, it'd end up going so fast by the time it reached the bottom of the concrete canyon that the impact would kill him.
He jockied the little craft around and aimed it for the first side passage he found. It was little more than a service tunnel passing through a skyscraper, but it'd have to do. The speeder raced along, hurtling right for the hole; for a fleeting moment, Delun thought he was going to make it! Unfortunately, the speeder had other plans; as he came within a few hundred yards of the passage, a second explosion rocked the little speeder and it veered off-course, completely out of control.
Del clung to the controls for dear life. The speeder was corkscrewing down to the bottom of the canyon, belching fire and smoke out its rear end all the way down. He just knew that it was going to explode when it hit the bottom - the reactant tanks for the vehicle's engine would rupture and detonate, and that'd be the end of it. He'd go up in a cloud of fire and shrapnel. He had to find a way out before that happened, he had to find a way to live!
The speeder's lurching course took it straight towards an aerial truck of some kind. Delun was out of options - it was either a painful belly flop on the roof of the truck, or the undoubtedly messy landing at the bottom of the canyon. He chose to bellyflop.
He waited until the speeder was close, then leaped for all he was worth. The feline sailed out of the dying speeder and across the skylane, arcing right towards the truck.
Problem: He missed.
It was an impossible leap to make; jumping from a speeding out-of-control craft right onto another speeding craft. He didn't just miss by a few inches, he missed by a few yards.
Armed security guards.
He cursed his bad luck and doubled back. He wasn't about to pit a scalpel against a pistol - he wasn't that crazy. "Maybe there's a vehicle depot on the roof. Worth checking out," Del muttered to himself. The feline headed up to the roof, but the stairwell door at the top was locked to prevent random people and patients from wandering to the roof and falling off. The lock was no match for Delun; a sharp blow with his shoulder warped the door outwards, and it was child's play from there on to simply bend the door out of his way.
It made a nasty racket, however. The sound prompted Delun to hurry up and scurry through the opening he'd made. No sense sticking around to wait for security to pop in and investigate the noise, after all!
A brief tour of the roof dashed his hopes of finding a depot. All that was there was a small landing pad for aerial ambulances... Upon which a small speeder was parked. "Now things are looking up!"
He opened the pilot's door of the open-cockpit speeder and pried open the control panel. Luckily for him, it was an older vehicle that relied on the use of a key to activate its systems. Rigging the wiring was child's play, even if he did zap himself a couple times by accident.
The speeder hummed to life. Del whooped triumphantly and slid into the pilot's seat. It was a tinge small for him, but he didn't care. He was getting out of that hospital - he didn't know why he wanted out, but something just told him that he needed to go. There was something that just didn't sit quite right about that place, mostly the fact that he had been in stasis in the research ward.
Unfortunately for him, lady luck still wasn't on his side; as he turned the speeder around and stepped on the accelerator, a pair of guards from inside the hospital came crawling out of the damaged door. The moment they spotted him, they started shooting; no warning, no call for surrender, nothing. One second the sky was clear, the next it was filled with sizzling lances of crimson energy!
He jammed the accelerator and off he went, but it was too little too late. A handful of energy bolts splashed across the tail end of the speeder. One particularly lucky bolt hit the primary repulsorlift, and it all went downhill from there. The repulsorlift exploded in a pint-sized gray-orange fireball, causing the speeder to buck and lurch momentarily before plummeting straight down.
The hospital, as fate would have it, had been in the center of a floating city over the world of Metellos; deep urban canyons and dense speeder traffic surrounded the hospital, creating a terrifyingly thick mess that Del was going to fall right smack dab into the center of.
The little vehicle careened through the skylanes as it continued its lazy descent. The remaining repulsorlifts were able to keep some semblance of control, but it was still losing altitude at an alarmingly fast rate. Del had a feeling that if he didn't try to crash land the little craft soon, it'd end up going so fast by the time it reached the bottom of the concrete canyon that the impact would kill him.
He jockied the little craft around and aimed it for the first side passage he found. It was little more than a service tunnel passing through a skyscraper, but it'd have to do. The speeder raced along, hurtling right for the hole; for a fleeting moment, Delun thought he was going to make it! Unfortunately, the speeder had other plans; as he came within a few hundred yards of the passage, a second explosion rocked the little speeder and it veered off-course, completely out of control.
Del clung to the controls for dear life. The speeder was corkscrewing down to the bottom of the canyon, belching fire and smoke out its rear end all the way down. He just knew that it was going to explode when it hit the bottom - the reactant tanks for the vehicle's engine would rupture and detonate, and that'd be the end of it. He'd go up in a cloud of fire and shrapnel. He had to find a way out before that happened, he had to find a way to live!
The speeder's lurching course took it straight towards an aerial truck of some kind. Delun was out of options - it was either a painful belly flop on the roof of the truck, or the undoubtedly messy landing at the bottom of the canyon. He chose to bellyflop.
He waited until the speeder was close, then leaped for all he was worth. The feline sailed out of the dying speeder and across the skylane, arcing right towards the truck.
Problem: He missed.
It was an impossible leap to make; jumping from a speeding out-of-control craft right onto another speeding craft. He didn't just miss by a few inches, he missed by a few yards.
"Oh balls!" Del cried as he sailed right past the truck. He flailed desperately as if it would somehow help him reach the truck, failed in his attempt, and went plummeting towards terra firma!
Just as the hour or so of his life that he could remember flashed before his eyes, Lady Luck decided to intervene on his behalf. Though he'd missed the first truck, a smelly, nasty garbage truck happened to be passing in the lane beneath the first truck. Delun fell right into the open back of that truck, and his fall was rather nicely cushioned by several tons of garbage bags and random household debris.
The impact knocked the wind out of him, but left the feline alive and, aside from a mortal wound to his pride and a sore backside, relatively uninjured.
He eventually hauled himself to his feet and jumped off the truck the moment it slowed down to pick up its next load of garbage. After brushing himself off as best he could, the feline took in his surroundings. The truck had stopped in a seedier part of the city - he was so far down he could barely even see the sky. Night was falling, and a maelstrom of rain was descending upon the city. His ears flattened - his fur had only just finished drying after his escape from cryo, the last thing he wanted to do was get it sopping wet again.
"Gorramit," he grumbled. "If I'm not getting shot down, frozen, and dumped into garbage trucks, I'm getting rained on. Man, talk about hitting rock bottom..."
After moping for a few seconds longer, the feline struck off down the crowded street. He didn't know where he was going or why he was going there, he just knew that he needed to get away from the main skylanes before the guards from the hospital came a-lookin' for him. More importantly, he had to get off the streets before the rain came and soaked him to the bone again, and he had to figure out a way to get some food and shelter. Figuring out why he was being held and who he was would have to wait - survival came first.
