Gamzee & Tavros: Engage Shenanigans

days in the past...

BUT NOT FUCKING MANY...

A couple dozen humans meandered about like busy little ants in the facility at the bottom of the hill. Boring little humans WITH THEIR SINGLE FUCKING COLORED BLOOD... Gamzee shook his head to dislodge the thought. No... we're all humans. Got to keep it together. His partner, the ex-rustblood and ex-cripple, Tavros Nitram, shot him a nervous look. Must of picked up on those rage vibes he just let slip.

"iS CoOl mAn, I'm CoOl. SorRy."

Tavros nodded at him. He was still in control. That was good. He'd need him to cut loose in a short while, but too soon and the whole plan was wrecked. Turning back to his binoculars, he surveyed the scene in the valley below. A factory, built on the side of the river, about 25 miles north of New Orleans. The factory had a large concrete loading dock, designed for loading products onto shipping barges for easy transport up or down river.

It was a Skaianet factory.

While components of the Reality Anchor were manufactured over seas, the assembly and software imaging were performed at factories like this one, with the completed units being shipped out to secure warehouses. In security terms, Scratch had deemed this to be the weakest link in the production chain. So he'd deployed them. Team Rodeo Clown.

After some... circumstances... immediately following their exodus from Skaianet, Tavros and Gamzee had actually met Scratch, or at least, someone claiming to be him. He'd done something to Gamzee to give him better control of his mental faculties. He was... different... not entirely himself... but with good control over his rage... as least until he threw out a trigger phrase Scratch had given him. Afterward Scratch had given them special instructions. They were to stay mobile, carrying out tasks from Scratch as assigned. A burglary here, a "disappearance" there... he let Gamzee handle the dirty work. He remained quite good at it. But this factory heist was going to be their biggest challenge by far.

"TaV-BrOs, DrOp tHe mUtHaFuCkInG DaYdReAmS AnD HeLp mE PlAn tHiS OuT." Gamzee halted his recollection. He pushed the irony of Gamzee complaining about daydreaming and examined the factory more closely. There were three apparent ways in: gates from the north and south sides, and bay doors on the riverside which lead out to loading docks. These were the only doors that were open, but the dock was fenced in and populated by numerous workers loading crates onto a skimmer barge, a high tech boat used for shipping: capacity of a cargo barge and the agility of a speedboat. It would probably be easiest to just steal the boat with it's cargo instead of stealing the cargo on it's own.

"wE SHOULD JUST STEAL THE BOAT." Tavros told him. "wE'LL GET SCRATCH TO MEET US SOMEWHERE UP RIVER."

"SoUnDs lIkE A GoOd tImE..."

"tHERE'S A LOT OF PEOPLE DOWN THERE," He quickly recounted through his binoculars. "tHE WORKERS, pLUS FOUR ARMED GUARDS ON THE DOCKS AND TWO ON THE BOAT ITSELF."

"EaSy."

"yOU BRING THE TOY CHEST?"

"YoU MuThAfUcKiN KnOw iT!"

"oK, hERE'S THE PLAN."

With a small amount of trial and error, Gamzee was able to boost Tavros up to a second story window, where Tavros used a pair of gadgets from "The Toy Chest", a black backpack full of espionage and breaking tools that Scratch had put together for them.

"oK, gO WAIT FOR THE SIGNAL."

"YoU GoT It bRo. bUt dOn't tAkE ToO FuCkInG LoNg oR I'Ll gEt aLl wAtErLoGgEd aNd sHiT." He left the window, leaving Tavros alone inside.

His entry had been facilitated by two "toys", the "All-Clear", a device that locked onto the frequency of alarm signals and transmits a dummy signal to override the alarm, and a laser torch, to make a clean cut through the glass. A third, a hand-held stunner which Gamzee dubbed "The Joybuzzer", was already on his person. A fourth gadget, "The Stork", had been put into position before they'd begun. Now it was all in the timing. Tavros wasted no time reenacting a classic maneuver he'd seen in many Alternian and human movies, the knockout-costume-switch. A press of the joybuzzer to the back of the man's neck took him out silently, and let Tavros pull the porter's jumpsuit over his regular clothes. From there, it was fairly simple to blend and find himself pushing an empty crate on a dolly into the staging area for loading. Finding one of the crates to be loaded, and carefully observing everyone around him to make sure he wasn't noticed, he swapped it's label onto his empty crate, then hid himself inside it.

It took about ten minutes for one of the other porters to stumble across the crate. And like a dutiful employee, he grabbed the dolly and started wheeling it towards the boat. He didn't move. He tried not to breathe. He felt the crate come to a stop and felt the floor sway lightly beneath him. He was on the boat. He let himself breath a sigh of relief. The hard part was over. For him anyway. Now it was Gamzee's turn. He pulled out his phone, opening an app.

"fLY PUPA, FLY."

"The Stork" was a small UAV drone, able to sustain it's own weight plus five pounds, operable via a simple app. Controlling it use his thumbs and subtle tilts of the phones sensors, Tavros watched the onboard camera feed as the drone hovered over the fence and onto the loading dock, and then started a gradual descent. Just before it hit eye-level, the relatively silent drone was finally noticed by one of the workers, who with more confusion than fear, got the others attention. A circle quickly formed around it of curious workers and mildly concerned guards. The drone was relatively unremarkable... it was a hobbyist model anyone could buy or build. The point of concern was it's payload: a box, one-square foot and wrapped in purple wrapping paper.

There was a moment of silence. And then a song. The melody of "Pop Goes the Weasel" startled a couple of the workers and raised the eyebrows of others. At the conclusion, the lid of the box sprung open, startling them. It was a jack in the box. But rather than the head of a clown, attached to the end of the spring was a plastic baby doll, impaled with a knife in it's stomach and fake blood all over it. A disgusted murmur came from them as one of the guards approached it.

"Relax, it's fake." The guard nudged the lifeless doll with the butt of his rifle. "Someone's idea of a sick joke." And this was valid reasoning. They were supposed to think this was a joke... and then let their guard down. And then... Tavros pressed a button.

With a violent hiss, a cloud of thick black smoke erupted from the box, blinding everyone who'd gathered around. No one had expected it. No one had time to cover their mouths or nose or eyes. And into this cloud of gas, Gamzee Makara emerged from the river, wearing a gas mask and wielding two massive knifes. With surgical precision, he began to drop anyone in the cloud with a weapon. And some without weapons, because really, who was gonna know? The sounds of the blades rending flesh was drowned out... because as soon as they'd inhaled the gas... they'd begun to laugh. Sweet music of death. He grinned, and slashed at someone's throat, sending a cascade of bodily fluid into the air. humans had only one blood color... BUT RED WAS MUTHAFUCKING PRETTY.

The plan had been, from the beginning, about a layered distraction. The whole stunt with the UAV was misdirection to set the guards on the dock up for Gamzee. And Gamzee was misdirection himself... for the guards on the boat. They'd been out of range of the smoke cloud and unaffected by the laughing gas, and they could tell something was going on inside the cloud, from the all the screams and wails of Gamzee's victims. But they couldn't see to shoot at him... not without risking hitting the workers and guards in the cloud with him. All they could do is watch carefully and aim their guns at the cloud, ready to shoot anything that charged out at them. They were watching so intently in fact, that they didn't hear Tavros climb out of his crate and sneak up behind them. Joybuzzers to the neck.

THE GAS RUSE WAS A... DISTACTION

i HAVE the boat

"gAMZEE!" Tavros shouted into the cloud as he rolled the unconscious guards down the ramp, minus their guns. "wE GOT IT, C'MON!" He really hoped he wasn't too far gone to listen. He heard one of the laughing voices approach the boat... not Gamzee's laugh, that was distinctive, this was one of the nervous, terrified laughs of someone caught in the gas. Gamzee emerged from the cloud, mask still on, dragging one of the guards behind him.

"START THE MUTHAFUCKING BOAT!" He barked from behind the mask as he dragged the man on board, and Tavros was not about to argue. He ran to the boat's helm and tried to set it up for them to pull out of the dock. Gazmee threw the guard to the boat's floor, pinning him there by a death grip on his throat. The boat began to pull away, as the Gamzee ripped the mask off his face, revealing face paint... the kind you see at the circus, not a battlefield. And wild eyes. The most terrifying eyes the man had ever seen. And a gleeful grin. And three massive scars crossing the width of his face.

"you wanna hear about how I got these scars?" Gamzee whispered to him. The man had no breath with which to respond. "I SAID, DO YOU WANNA HEAR HOW I GOT THESE FUCKING SCARS!" The grip on his windpipe tightened even more, before relaxing just enough for him to gasp for air. He managed a weak nod... desperate enough for air to play along with the mad man. Gamzee moved in close and spoke directly into his ear. "it was a cat." He said anti-climatically before laughing. The guard did not laugh. "DON'T YOU GET IT?! That was the joke... IT'S NOT FUCKING FUNNY IF I HAVE TO EXPLAIN THE JO-" The grip on his throat was released, as he saw another teenage boy... this one short with a small black mohawk, having just shot the killer clown in the back of the neck with a pistol. He had no time to react before the gun was turned on him.

As Tavros guided the boat into an indoor dock at a warehouse, just as Scratch had instructed, he saw three men waiting for him... all wearing some form of green. He sized them up as he stepped off. The first, a man in a black suit with a green tie, began immediately and wordlessly offloading cargo. As he passed, Tavros noticed the buttons of his suit jacked were made from shiny silver quarters. The second, dressed in tan slacks and a t-shirt, but wearing a green hat stitched from many different materials, made his way towards Gamzee and the guard.

"i JUST USED TRANQUE ROUNDS. THE GUYS THROAT MIGHT BE CRUSHED THOUGH." Tavros informed him, and the man with the hat returned a nod. The third man, who wore black slacks, a white shirt, and a green vest over top of it, held a tablet computer out so Tavros could see the screen. The man grinned, and Tavros noticed he wore earrings made from d6 dice. The tablet screen turned on, displaying Scratch's logo.

"Very, very good Tavros." Scratch said in a half-mocking tone. "You've come so far from the meek boy who could neither kiss nor kill the girl. Boxcars would be so proud. If he was real that is."

"dONT PATRONIZE ME." Tavros ignored the cryptic statement. "wE'RE GONNA NEED ANOTHER STORK."

"I'll be sure to restock your spent equipment." Scratch assured. "But in all seriousness, good job. This equipment will prove invaluable to our cause."

"i DONT RECOGNIZE THESE GUYS." Tavros eyes darted at the men. "hOW MANY FLUNKIES DO YOU HAVE NOW?"

"Very nearly enough. Now, the guard you brought with you..."

"hE'S JUST A SECURITY GUARD, I DON'T THINK HE KNOWS ANYTHING. GAMZEE JUST SORT OF BROUGHT HIM ON IMPULSE."

"Oh don't worry, I'm sure I'll find some use for him." The man with the hat stepped off the bot, supporting a drowsy and staggering Gamzee.

"Aw mAn i gOt tHe wIcKeDeSt hEaDaChE..." He muttered.

"wHERE ARE WE HEADED NEXT?" Tavros asked Scratch.

"That's up in the air for the moment. For now, have a well-earned break." Scratch paused. "Quarters. Stitch. Die." He called his men to attention. "If you would be so kind as to make the arrangements."

"Yes sir." All three men spoke for the first time, in unison.

"Because we..." Stitch said.

"... are most excellent..." Die said.

"... hosts." Quarters said. Tavros had a disturbing feeling about this in his gut. Because that wasn't creepy. At all. Wow.

"tAv-BrOs?" Gamzee started as Tavros started supporting him as they left the dock.

"yEAH?"

"I CoUlD ReAlLy uSe a pIe rIgHt nOw."

"mE TOO BRO. LET'S GO GET SOME."

Nepeta: Wake Up