"Bishop, Feyri? Just wanted you to know I chucked Mesk down the elevator shaft for attaching my arm to my head instead of where it belonged." Jim attempted to remove the arm from his head.
You yank and tug and pull and twist and generally struggle to get the arm off your forehead, but you might as well be trying to tear steel I-beam in half. You sigh a bit and make plans for hurting mesk again. But more this time.
(I think you rolled 2 for that; the 4 was for pain.)
Correct, sir.
Mesk's eyes widened behind his faceplate as he recovered from the shock of being thrown down an elevator shaft. "Oh... shit."
He desperately patted his legs from his supine position on the floor, quickly coming to the inevitable conclusion. "I really hate this fucking elevator shaft... and you guys... why do you people keep destroying my limbs? Feyri? Are you going to rip off my arms? Is zombie Charro going to eat my face when... if... we get back? I mean, god damned... goat..."
He trailed off as he realized something. A light practically went off above his head.
"You know what, thank you, guys! When we get back, oh man, I'm gonna get my lower body removed and replaced with cybernetic medical goat leg prostheses! This could change everything! Nobody will ever want for medical care again! Wait, better make sure I'm not gonna die, first of all. Can't share this with the world if I'm dead!"
Check that I'm not gonna die from a suit rupture or bleeding. Ruminate excitedly on soon being the world's first cyborg-satyr kickboxing-doctor.
"Quick! Someone get down here and rip off my arms! Feyri, it's your turn to mutilate me. I'm gonna be famous!"
He begins chattering cheerily, in an undertone and mostly to himself, though the rest of the team occasionally hears worrying snatches of his monologue. "credit the collaborative effort of the team... spring-loaded feet... needle-fingered rocket-hands... jump ten meters into the air and land on his wounds hard enough to knock the bullet out..."
[Med:2+1] Uh..well, you don't feel like you're bleeding internally. Then again, you're not really sure what that feels like...plus you can't feel anything from just about bellybutton height down. Probably fine...probably.
(Gongratulations, your our first cripple! Snapped spine from being thrown down an elevator shaft, mark that down piecewise!)
"Oh lovely. Now we have to get him back upstairs again."
Bishop sighed in frustration before shrugging at Feyri.
"Right, let's go look at that door down there. I don't really want to be alone with that machine incase something goes wrong, so come on then."
Head downstairs, wait for Feyri at the bottom of the elevator and then head into the machine room cautiously, making sure to switch off all recieving radio signals aside from Mesk, Jim and Feyri, and have a good look at that machine from a good distance. Check how long we have left for the HDDSM to finish.
"Jim, does that arm work? If it does, I don't think it well for you to...remove it. It has a use and repairing it would take time.
Time you don't seem to have.
Mesk, I'm not a sadist. Nor will I ever be. I cleared that up with myself on my last mission. Just...stop demoralizing us, please. And stop talking about goats!"
Feyri kept all channels on 'on' just to be sure Charro was still alive. I mean, she could hear his breathing.
"You have my blade guarding your back, Bishop. Jim, keep a stalwart eye out for any movement. Whatever ghost or thing that made that noise must still be down there. Or my stress.
Meh."
Switch to Sabre, follow Bishop. Admire floor and ceiling.
Examine test chamber.
Bishop and Feryi both head back to the elevator platform and ride it down, cramped together in for several minutes, Bishop silent while Feyri spends most of the time belting out motivational speeches and one liners. Once at the bottom they both follow the hallway around to the test chamber and stand at the edge of the room while looking around.
The machine looks about as it always has, an enormous ring studded with what look like a dozen probes all pointing inward. The ring itself is held in place by a pair of mechanical arms which connect to the main body of the device, a base of untold numbers of squarish, black, electronic machines, like a tiny cityscape of black sky scrappers. Wires and cables burst from this base and wind up the arms till they attach to the probes on the ring.
Feyri takes a moment to examine the floor and ceiling.They're the same as the walls, white and featureless.
(Aw, I was kind of hoping it would have actually worked.)
"Hey, guys back at the ship? My lower body's kind of been destroyed, any chance I can place an order for a custom prosthesis while we're still down here?"
>No more giant penises. We had a sort of Arms Race once when one guy ordered himself a 14inch synth-flesh abomination and the guy after him had to order one that was 15 inches. It kept escalating till someone got their entire lower body replaced with a slithering, naga tail package that they actually got around on.
I had to vent the entire living quarters.