[open] If Santa Claus isn't coming to town, we have to go and find him.

[theearth]

Attention! By popular vote the Big Finale has been postponed!

Who: Everyone!
What: As announced, the NSCG+friends have been called to Lapland! There, they travel North, hunt down some kidnappers and finally discover...
When: 13th-19th 24th of January after Toushiro and Dani's post.
Where: Lapland
Warnings: Abduction of children, scary Santa Clauses, violence, one instance of (not graphically described) brutally murdered reindeer



On the David Graibiger and Monika Hallbach will greet the numbered in Rovaniemi and together they will all get on a bus northwards. Up there, they will all room in a few cabins, each with two four-person-bedrooms; food will be provided and the beds are made, but they'll have to cook for themselves. TV is available in the living room/kitchen of each cabin, but the internet connection sucks. Up there, they will be taught how to drive a car in the snow, how to drive a snowmobile, how to shoot a rifle if they have no combat power (for self defense). They will then be tasked with one of the following things:

1. People with combat powers: Go out there and hunt down the kidnappers! If those people seek for long enough, they will find:
- Haggard, wild looking old men with unkempt beards who are either dressed in red santa's clothes or have been jammed into green fur suits, their faces painted green with what appears to be markers. These men are feral: They will run away but, if attacked, use hands and teeth to fight, and not be afraid of injuring a person in any way. They are superhumanly strong, but seem to be incapable of human speech - they can seemingly neither speak nor understand what is said.
If a child of up to 14 years is with the group, they are much more likely to find one of these as the beings are seeking out children. They will try to get their hands on and run away with the child in question.

2. People without combat powers: They will be sent on various trips to look at sightings, talk to people, etc. These include, but are not limited to:
- Talk to the parents of abandoned children. There isn't much information to be had from the conversations themselves, but keen numbered will realized that there are vermini in the bedrooms of the vanished children...
- Checking out a flock of reindeer that was bitten to death - yet whatever killed them doesn't seem to have eaten anything. Disturbingly enough, the brave researcher will realize that these were human teeth that killed them...
- Checking out an abandoned excavation site. The only description is that the mad guy who just recently started it (no, nobody knows who he was or why he did it or how he got the permission) hasn't be seen in almost a month now and the workers left for Christmas and didn't return after it. The place is full of vermini, but vermedi can also be found. What they will find too is a letter in Russian, written by the two last guards of the place, in which they resign from their spot, quoting that none of their tasks, which they describe as "watching lunatics and guarding the rise of a monster", was in the job description and that they just aren't paid enough. If someone wants to try, these guards can be tracked down, just comment to the Lapland plot post and ask for more information.

3. Everyone:
- Captured not!santas and not!grinches, after having been tied up or locked up or something similar, need to be watched. And questioned, but really, they will only be violent and still not say a thing or show intelligence above a scared badger. The only way to get any information out of them will be to set one free and hope that they lead the numbered to the place that they live in, but through trial and error one who attempts that will realize that they'll only return there once their mission of kidnapping a child is accomplished.

4 And last but not least
- Much more MUNDANE and nothing that they will strictly be tasked with but: Cooking! Fighting over the shower, throwing things at the snoring person in the next bed. Learning how to shoot, learning driving, petting reindeer, fun in the snow, do you want to build a snowman... go wild!


Please start your own threads and head over to the Lapland plot post if you have questions, need more information on something, want an NPC, want more tasks, etc.

Comments

[savethenpcs]

[Toushirou is too fast, and they won't reach him before he is in sight of Dani... just in time to see the grinch catch up with Dani and jump at her, thin but muscular arms covered with cheap red fabric and hands with long, sharp fingernails grasping for her, the face of an old man with a beard and absolutely crazy eyes suddenly quite close under the santa hat that has been tied to his head with a string under his chin.]

[icy_heavens]

[Unsurprisingly, it's the scream that gets his attention first. Well, crap.]

Dani! [Not nearly so loud as her scream, but enough to let her know he's there. They've at least accomplished the getting-in-sight-of-each-other part of the plan. That much is good. Every instinct screams at him to speed up, to help her, and it's a real fight to keep it down and instead skid to a stop as if in shock.

[Dani can handle herself; he knows that. Just like he knows he can handle himself. This is the plan, no matter how much it goes against his natural inclinations.]

[prismaticdestruction]

[Seeing and hearing Toushirou almost got Dani to smile and relax before remembering she needed to play the part still. So instead of continuing to run, She 'trips' and tries to catch herself, letting herself be caught even though she wants to fight back and run more.

It would be alright..just let them grab you and take you to the others. Then they can be saved and things will be okay...}

[savethenpcs]

[The aren't gentle at all - the grinch tackles her to the ground and then rolls over, arms around her, and picks her up effortlessly. The santa has already skidded to a stop next to them and is now holding open a burlap bag, much like the ones that a santa in a mall would have with himself, into which the grinch will half lower, half stuff his captive.

Meanwhile, the two santas are catching up with Toushirou and slowing down a bit, approaching him from two sides now.]

[icy_heavens]

[He hates how much he has to repress his instincts in all this. For all that it's a simple plan, executing it is harder than he'd anticipated. She's fine, he has to remind himself.

[So he glances to each side in turn, seemingly unable to decide what he should do.

[He will be so damn glad when they can finally drop these pretenses.]

[prismaticdestruction]

[Dani at least keeps it up, struggling just enough to make it believable and pulls her wings in tighter. She really wanted to keep those from getting caught and possibly hurt in the long run.

Once she's in the bag, she stills and closes her eyes. Now she just had to wait and see where this was going to take them.]

[savethenpcs]

[The pair with Dani on them will take off straight away - though after a while one of them splits off in search of another victim.

The ride is rough and bumpy, and her weight doesn't seem to slow the being down at all. Finally, she's dropped on a... not exactly soft, but somewhat yielding surface. With hard parts. That starts to cry at the impact of her landing on it.

Yup, the bag with the young numbered in it has been set down none too gently on another child in a bag. Luckily, she'll be able to roll off the other child before she injures it, there is some free space next to them.]

[Toushiro will be grabbed and handled quite similarly - stuffed into a bag and carried away at a high speed. He will be set down on a hard, uneven and cold surface. Around him, the only sound is electric... as if a thousand blow driers have been turned up to maximum power. It is also uncomfortably hot.]

[icy_heavens]

[He makes a token effort of stuggling and kicking -- okay, not entirely token, but he's not busting out the powers, here -- before he's stuffed in the bag.

[When he's finally dropped, he feels how hard and uneven it is, but the cold doesn't register; he doesn't feel cold anymore. He irritably pries open the bag and pops his head out to get a look at his surroundings. And while the surrounding noises are bothersome, what he really takes notice of is the damned heat. Ugh. Yeah, he's at least exercising his power in about a foot radius around himself just to keep cool. Nothing freezes; he's had this power for a good year and a half and knows well how to control it.

[He scans the area.] Dani?

[savethenpcs]

[He stands in the middle of radiators. Electric stoves. Everything that may emit heat - including hair blowdriers. They are all aimed at a gigantic block of ice, of which only the tip seems to poke out of the solid rock beneath Toushiro's feet. Someone really wants that ice to melt.

But nobody is around. No grinches, no santas, no Dani.]

[prismaticdestruction]

[After that ride? She's more then willing to roll off of the other child she ended up on. Once she was off she started whispering quickly]

I'm sorry! It's okay...There are people coming to save you.

[After that, Dani decides to open the bag and peek around. Better to stop and double check what was going on. She'd comfort the kid she landed on once it was safe to come out. Besides, it also meant it was time to figure out the next step.

[savethenpcs]

[The bag is tied on top quite expertly, from the outside. She can't just open it and peek out. On the other hand, it is only a burlap bag. Normal human children can't just rip their way out of it, but...]

[prismaticdestruction]

[Minor problem but Dani isn't normal. OBVIOUSLY. With a moment to think on that, she takes the side of the bag and pulls hard, to rip it open with her strength and so she can peek out and see where they have taken her to.

Besides...There was more that needed to be done before rescue could arrive.]

[savethenpcs]

[She is in the middle of a sea of burlap bags that all contain one child each - between 50 and 100 of them. The room is of a low but livable temperature, an insulated storage room with three doors. Nobody except for the children in the burlap bags seems to be around.]

[prismaticdestruction]

[Once she can see that there isn't anyone there but her and the other bagged children, it was time to get out and look about. Time to figure things out from the inside.]

Toushiro...?

[It was time to regroup..but where was he?]

[theearth]

[He won't be able to answer, but suddenly, someone just slams into one of the doors. The doorknob is turned, but apparently that door at least is locked.]

[prismaticdestruction]

[Dani jumps and immediately lays down to try and hide herself. Just in case someone did come in. Once she was sure it was safe again, she stands back up and forms her clones around her. Each of the 3 float to a different door and wait there, listening for anything that could happen.

With that, the original decides to tear open a small hole in the bag of the child she was tossed on. Better to at least see them and reassure who she could.]

Hey..It's okay...Rescue is on the way okay?

[savethenpcs]

[The clone on the door where the banging could be heard will hear someone - two someones - breathing on the other side, very obviously trying to deal with a lock or something of the kind, and then throw themselves against the door again.

The child jumps when a hole is torn in the back, and fearful dark eyes peer up at Dani. The boy cannot be older than her, probably younger. His eyes widen in surprise when he sees who she is, though he is still scared.]

Who are you?

[icy_heavens]

[Damn it, this isn't how it had been supposed to go. They'd decided to get caught together for a damned reason and now they're separated. He needs to find her.

[But all this . . . it's suspicious. Why do they want to melt that ice so badly? If it's something the enemy wants, then he's not going to allow it. But he should find Dani first, then get in touch with the others through the network. When that's done, he's going to freeze this whole damn room over and smash all these heat-generating devices to bits.

[He'd do it now, but he doesn't want to make too much noise and give himself away just yet. Not until he knows what's going on with Dani. For the moment, he just exercises his power further, attempting to reinforce and grow the block of ice. It should give them more time.]

[savethenpcs]

[The ice will behave like normal ice, he can grow it further without a problem.

He can hear someone slam into a wall above him, though the sound is low - it's located somewhere above and behind him.]

[icy_heavens]

[That should hold it for a while. His head jerks up at the sound. The hell was that? He needs to follow that noise. He scans around, looking for a door or hoping perhaps for a convenient ceiling hatch. Since, you know, blasting a hole straight through the ceiling just sounds really stupid.]

[savethenpcs]

[There are two doors, one vaguely under the sound, one on the opposite end of the room.]

[icy_heavens]

[Being someone who favours the direct approach if he can help it, he heads for the door closer to the sound. If it's locked, he'll freeze the locking mechanism in order to weaken it. And his next move would be to draw his sword and smash the brittle lock with the hilt.]

[theearth]

[Brittle lock hit by hilt will break!

Outside, he finds a staircase made of steel, the kind that is put together quickly but is fairly stable. It leads up a couple of flights and then ends at another door that is locked with a number code/card system and has no apparent lock except for the field to type the number into or swipe a card.]

[icy_heavens]

[He tests his footing on the stairs. They feel stable enough; he doesn't exactly weigh much, especially considering he shrunk at Christmas. He hurries up the stairs, stops at the door, and frowns. Tch. Stupid electronic locks. Anybody he could have lifted a card from would have been on the other side of the door, so that's out. What would they pick for a code?

[The only thing that comes to mind is the date of the pink light going off in this area. If this doesn't work, he might bite the bullet and just blow it open with a much more controlled casting of his explosive spell. But he's trying not to alert the whole damn place to his break-out yet.]

[savethenpcs]

[It won't work! But a little light just above the key field starts blinking rapidly.]