Anyone Get The Number Of That Tank?

Participants:

elisabeth2_icon.gif graeme_icon.gif milena_icon.gif warren_icon.gif

Scene Title Anyone Get The Number Of That Tank?
Synopsis Maybe the Hindenburg wasn't the best example — though certainly appropriate enough.
Date Feb 17, 2011

The Dome


While this was by no means announced to any of the news crews that typically camp around the outside of the Queens portion of the dome, at around noon the cops begin putting up police tape, wrapping it around bars and such to keep people a good thirty feet away from the dome.

People have no idea why until a tank with a police car escort in the front and back begins rolling down the street. On the front where one might find the cannon, is instead a massive drill that's nearly half the length of the tank itself, and thick enough to almost touch the tires.

The front escort turns around, and they both fall back to the only real opening in the barrier of tape. When people ask questions, they're simply told that it's a government operation and that they should stay back for their own safety. People in the dome are told the same.

"Alright, looks like it's do or die." Warren states to Elisabeth inside of the tank, not wearing the suit he's typically seen in. Instead, today he's wearing his usual brown boots, green camo cargo pants, a black tanktop, and an army helmet to match said pants.

Eyes shift to their mirror-like silver, and he's rapidly beginning to press buttons, no longer focused on Elisabeth. "When I hit the drill power, that's when I want you to start."

Elisabeth's watching through the tiny portholes the tank offers, and she asks quietly, "Talk to me about what frequencies you think you need and for how long. And how long to hold them. Though I don't require my voice, sometimes focusing it is easier when it's what I use. It's a more… instinctive use."

Milena quietly pinches the bridge of her nose.

She's not frustrated with Warren specifically. Well, she is, but it's more with the role she's been given in all this. And truthfully, she's more frustrated with herself for psyching herself up for the whole thing - which took some doing, because she was almost terrified - only to be handed a video camera.

Though not in the tank, she's ready near the dome. Her hair's tied back in a messy pony tail to keep it out of the way of the lens as she heroically presses the record button.

Then stops, sighs, and hits stop in order to remove the lens cap.

…Before heroically hitting record again!

"Take this." Warren reaches into his pocket, holding out a piece of paper that essentially lays out the frequencies mathematically. "I needed someone to quickly come up with frequencies outside of the ranges I had buttons for, when I learned that you could control them on your own. But I essentially want you to start at the lowest frequency that'll cause the drill to begin resonating, holding it for thirty seconds, then going up to the next frequency, until we're at the highest you can safely go within your limits."

That said, he dramatically raises his hand, then slams his silvery latex-covered mechanical fist into the piece of glass covering the large red button. Why was the drill's power button large, red, and inside of a breakable piece of glass? Who knows.

When the drill starts, it's like a very loud vacuum cleaner, the tank making a slow and steady approach to the dome in order to give Elisabeth time. "You might want to make sure you're strapped in, this is going to be a rough ride."

Graeme was well, exploring, when the caution tape went up, but so far he doesn't really seem bothered. Instead, he's sitting on the roof of a parked SUV, without much care as to whose it is. The vantage point allows him to see what's going on, over the people who're gathered, and he shakes his head at the noise, jumping down and walking over to the edge of the caution tape, ignoring the protests from some others gathered as he does so. And then he plugs his ears.

Slanting him a look as she takes the paper, Elisabeth rolls her eyes. She has no clue what the math there says. Not one. What the black-clad blonde does do, however, is tighten the strap that holds her down to her seat. She pulls herself as upright as she can go, and from the side pocket of her pants comes…. an iPod of all things. She slants a grin at Warren, somewhat cheeky actually. And she waits until he has the drill exactly where he wants it.

Soundtrack for fun, anyone? A very techno beat slides from the iPod, one earbud in her ear while the other remains open so that she can hear orders given. As the drill first touches the dome, Elisabeth closes her eyes and leans her head back as if losing herself in the music. And in some ways, that's exactly what she's doing — seeking the lowest harmonic frequency and enhancing its wavelengths to hold what needs to be held in place for Warren. Almost under her breath, she sings with the beat. "~~Standing there alone, the ship is waiting. All systems are go. Are you sure?….~~"

Milli is not sitting on a parked SUV. She's trying to figure out why her heroic video is recording in sepia, and why the date is flashing 12-12-1999 in the corner of the camera. If Warren were here, he'd know exactly what to do to fix the evil recording device. She's not sure whether that's irony or some sort of twisted coincidence. Alanis Morisette would say the former, and so Milena goes with the latter.

And that's when it happens. With the push of one button, an awesome fade out effect occurs, and the world is doomed.

"Aw— Awww!" the heroic film-maker mutters as she eyes the tank. On one hand, makin Warren angry would probably alleviate some of the tension that's been happening between them. On the other, it's nice to be depended on by someone, and so her next eyeline target is the SUV-dwelling stranger who approacheth.

"God dammit, do you know how to work this thing?" she asks. The discomfort is evident in her eyes. People are horrible. Every other person in the world besides herself are awful to each other. And yet, she needs to figure out how to make the camera record without fading in and out.

"…if you could make it record in colour, too, that would be spectacular."

"Nice voice." Warren says before the drill finally touches the barrier, sound bouncing through the hollowed and unseen openings inside the drill, causing it to vibrate until it hits the dome. Then the resonance is being tranferred into the field when the impact steadies the drill, but the barrier is no longer invisible, large blue waves rippling out across the wall for at least twenty or so feet. "Keep going!"

"Video camera, sure," Graeme says, cautiously unplugging his ears. "I can get it working, and then just don't press anything. Colour should be a setting on the menu …" He's not terrible with electronic things, provided he's standing still long enough not to drop them. "C'mon." He nods his head for Milena to give it to him.

~~Control is not convinced, but the computer has the evidence. No need to abort, the countdown starts….~~

Elisabeth's voice is picking out the stronger, lighter notes but her ability is adjusting the frequencies as she feels the feedback coming from the drill. Oh dear God. She leans forward in the seat, her focus entirely on what she's doing. The wavelengths of sound, of the bounceback, of the drill itself….

Forced suddenly to stop singing, the music continues to play because it gives her a sense of the timing structure of what she's going, but Elisabeth's tension ratchets up. It doesn't feel right. "Warren??" What the fuck's happening?

"Hurry, hurry," she says, handing over the camera and glancing toward the tank again. There's already Stuff happening. As the drill collides with the dome, Milena's free hand flies to the ear that's closest to it. Even so, she's probably going to be deaf for the rest of her life now. "What the hell are you doing?" she asks, even though he's not present at the moment.

Graeme frowns at the camera in his hands, tapping through the menu. It's definitely older than most electronics, but he manages to get it to record again, in colour this time. The flashing datestamp? Isn't fixed. "Ignore the datestamp," he says, handing it back to Milena. "And … don't touch it again, until you want to stop recording?" That said, maybe they've got the right idea. Graeme pulls his phone from his pocket, and taps the video application in order to get his own video.

"Ten second intervals, until you get to the highest frequency. The dome is doing that strange blue effect again, which won't be good. We're safe in here, but we have to push it faster, try to bring this thing to the limit!" Warren is starting to flick switches up, and the drill seems to get faster. There are news reporters filming as well, but Warren needs his own recording. "I have a trump card."

~~The count goes on. 4, 3, 2, 1…~~ Elisabeth takes a breath and pushes it harder. The stab of hurt behind her eyes is not as intense as it used to be, but this is definitely a workout of her power. The blonde adds her voice back in for the focus. "Earth below us, drifting falling, floating weightless…." And what she's doing goes up and up and up the ranges into the higher pitches and frequencies. Her control is tight, and she can feel where the shift is needed… not every 10 seconds. He said faster — every second, she raises it again, taking it higher and higher, only slowing the escalation in spots where it feels like the field may actually be responding. He wants the highest ranges she can hit, Elisabeth will give it to him.

Keeping one hand on her ear, Milena takes the camera back, making sure not to have any sort of physical contact with Graeme in the process. Not pushing any buttons seems to work well enough, and Warren will be able to have his recording.

"Now!" Warren didn't warn Elisabeth about this particular part, but this would be the trump card. "I'll turn on the nitro." Yeah, this tank has nitro. He grabs what looks like a crystal doorknob, then pulls it. Elisabeth will hear something pop behind the vehicle, and everyone outside will see a piece of the armor in the back suddenly fly off to reveal five turbines going across the back.

Inside and outside, people can hear the turbines all beginning to start, then a loud explosion when fire rips from the back and sends the tank with its drill even harder into the dome. The blue rippling speeds up, appearing to be at the threshold of something, and Elisabeth may be able to sense that something is a bit off about the sound vibrations resonating into the field. "Hold on tight!"

Graeme shrugs, a bit. "You're welcome." He's not bothered to plug his ears again, yet, but this is a bit loud, and then the explosion of fire and he does do so, with one hand. He shakes his head, and walks along the line set out by the caution tape, biting his lower lip.

Nearly as soon as he says it, Elisabeth feels the wrong coming down the pipe. "Shut it down! Shut it down FAST!" She //can't stop doing what she's doing — what are the chances that the dome itself will splice through the tank and into them???

Despite the noise, Milena keeps the camera trained on what's happening. Once, she mutters something about Warren being insane, and for a moment, she's actually able to believe that he is, indeed, completely off his rocker. Something is definitely happening with the dome, though, and she chances hitting a button in order to zoom in. Unfortunately, she pushes the button that makes the camera explode and everyone around her dies.

Only that last part doesn't happen. She manages to successfully get a close-up shot of the drill boring - or trying to bore - into the shield.

"Shit!" Warren starts trying to shut things down, but before he really gets the chance, there's a suddenly crack as a loud sonic boom smashes directly into the tank, sending it toppling over. But before it's completely upside down, white foam begins to cover the entire thing, including the drill, until it's quickly hardened into some sort of polyurethane-like material.

The crowds themselves are blown back a bit too, but are luckily far away to only suffer at most, a light fall. Within the tank, he's carefully unstrapping himself so he can turn over and land on the ceiling. Then walks over to help Elisabeth out of her now upside down seat.

"At the very least, we tried. The tank covered itself in polyurethane as a safety measure." Yes, he will never cease to find uses for polyurethane. "We'll be out of here in a moment.

He pulls his phone out, immediately dialing Milena's, and once she answers he says, "The polyurethane covering the tank is mixed with fragments of oak tree. I need you to use those to push the tank on its side, then crack the polyurethane so that the entrance is uncovered."

As she's recording, suddenly, the inexplicable happens! At some point, Milena's pretty sure she says something along the lines of 'what the hell,' and she also, at some point, dropped the arm holding the camera down to her side. After all, everything seems to be somewhat finished, since the tank is immobile now. If anyone were watching her, they'd be treated to the scene of a Ph.D.-holding astronomer staring blankly at a foam-covered tank. Fortunately for Milena, her blank stare is frigging dull, so no one cares.

When the phone rings, she hurries to answer it. "What? No, Warren!" she answers back. She's actually not particularly comfortable using her ability with the military around. Or the police. Or anyone else, really. She knows there are probably people here who would still want to hurt her for having a power. "You got yourself into it, get yourself out." At this point, it would probably more clearly drive her point home if she angrily hung up, or angrily threw the phone into a rock, shattering it into a billion pieces. Instead, she waits for Warren's reply.

Graeme ends up a few steps back, shaking his head several times in order to shake the remaining bit of sound from his ears. It's not terribly useful, and instead of paying attention to the now-foam covered drill, he reaches, helping those around him who weren't lucky enough to stay on their feet get up, with a hasty apology for the few who he actually bumped into. And then he walks back over to the line of caution tape, with near disregard for it's existence. Near but not quite.

The tank may be protected, but certain things that go on are somewhat out of the realm of protection that Warren can offer. The backlash of sound waves batters the audiokinetic in the tank nearly as hard as it batters the tank itself. The call he makes? She's oblivious to, struggling to clear her head. She coughs as the nosebleed floods the back of her throat because of her prone position, fighting to get out of the seatbelt that held her in. "Fuck," she hisses. The sound of Major Tom is somewhat incongruous now, the iPod still playing though her earbud is long gone.

Warren puts the phone on speaker, so Elisabeth can now hear Milena, when she's able to hear again, and Milena can hear Elisabeth. He unstraps Elisabeth and starts to carefully turn her upright, keeping an arm around her waist until she can hold herself. "Do you have to actually get near the tank to use your ability? There's no way you can use it without anyone noticing?"

Milena looks at the tank as Warren asks his question. "I could do it from where I'm at, but it would take a half hour for me to reach the tank," she replies quietly, looking around to see if anyone's listening. Honestly, she doesn't know how long it would take, but surely someone would notice if she spent five or ten minutes kneeling on the ground with her fingers pressed through the pavement.

"There's got to be another way to get you out of there," she says into the phone. "Are you hurt or anything? If you just sit tight for awhile, I can call someone. We can cut you out."

Graeme's close enough to hear bits and pieces of the conversation Milena's having, but there's caution tape in between, and he's not quite at the point of disregarding it, so he leans on the parking meter in front of him, watching.

Once she's on her feet, Elisabeth stabilizes quickly. She pinches the bridge of her nose to try to staunch the flow of blood from it. "What the fuck did you encase us in?" she asks of Warren. Because… almost anything can be vibrated loose. Really. She seeks out and finds the iPod to turn it off. "If it's just a shell, I should be able to crack it," she says tiredly.

"It's polyrurethane, so it's just a lot of hardened foam. Are you sure you can still use your ability?" Warren reaches into his pocket, offering her a handkerchief. "Milena, we'll figure something out. It'll take forever for emergency workers to get through. Just stay safe. If Elisabeth can't do it, maybe I can rig something up."

There's a long pause from Milena's end of the line. She closes her eyes, sighs, says "I hate you for making me do this," and hangs up. If there are people hurt in there, 'forever' would take just a bit too long.

So she steps over the caution tape. In the confusion, she's only told that she's 'not supposed to be behind the police line,' but no one actively tries to get her out of the area.

Once she's near the tank, she presses her fingers into the shell around the tank. It'd be much easier if she could just pull it apart with her hands, but that's not the way her ability works.

The oak shards are easy to find. With her eyes closed, she imagines the trees - roots at first, then branches - growing from each little piece. There's no real cause for her to be artistic, and so the oaks that grow from the tank are malformed and twisted, but they serve their purpose. Once the growth has started, she directs a branch, moving like the arm of a giant, to simply pull the tank over on its side like it was a toy truck.

Then, the branches turn and grow back into the shell. There's not much a tree can't accomplish - over years, they can ruin whole septic systems and destroy water lines. Milena's able to accomplish this demolition in a matter of minutes, though. The shell cracks, and then starts to shatter.

Graeme uses the parking meter to vault over the caution tape, but doesn't get much further, not yet. But he'd recognised the voice from the other side of Milena's telephone conversation, even if he'd only heard bits of it and couldn't understand the words from the other end. "The hell…" Graeme just watches, for the moment.

"I'm fine," Elisabeth growls at Warren. She closes her blue eyes and starts to work on the shell from the inside, setting up a hum in the very metal that surrounds them to help shake the foam to pieces while Milena's power causes the tree bits to grow and create cracks for her own power to rattle. And yes, the nosebleed continues, but standing on the ceiling of the tank and trapped within it in the company of Warren Ray, Liz doesn't really care. "We need to get them to turn us over properly," she says. "I hope you had a contingency."

More people start crossing the police line, and by the time the camera crews are trying to figure out what's going on, and police are close to being overwhelmed, the cameras don't really get what Milena's doing on film.

Warren finally kicks the lid when he hears the crack of the polyurethane and the tank is turned on its side. "Come on, we don't need the tank to be completely upright." The wheel of the lid is turned, lid opening, and he crawls out to Milena and the approaching crowd. "Elisabeth, I need you to do that persuasion thing, it'd be dangerous if they start taking pictures of her. I just need it long enough to get her a police escort."

There's no happy, welcoming greeting for Warren when he's safe and out of the tank. Milena knows he expected something like that to happen, or else he wouldn't have put chopped up bits of oak to put into the poly coating. He was bringing her along, expecting her to use her ability without telling her about that little part of his plan. Calculations she could have done. Science is her forte. All those things are normal, while breaking someone out of a tank with mutant oak trees is decidedly not.

It takes some time to free her hands once the plants are done growing, and she does her best to hide the fact that she's trapped with her coat.

Graeme's personally too busy to care about the other people who've crossed the police line, though he does give them an occasional glance. In general, though, the police are much more effective at crowd control than he is by himself. Instead, he crosses over to the opening of the tank, outright pushing several people aside, a frown on his face, and digs a folded handkerchief out of his pocket when he sees Liz. It's offered over, wordlessly.

Oh, just friggin' perfect. Elisabeth glares at Warren. Startled at the appearance of Graeme at her side, the blonde moves to take the second handkerchief with a small smile of thanks. Then she dabs at her nose and calls out to the group, "~Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll step to the side, I can give you a brief statement about the specifics of this attempt…. and as you saw, similar to yesterday's attempt, it went poorly. Everyone gather up over here, though. I need to keep this short, my head's ringing.~" She'll give a brief statement about what was going on with the drill and the resonance frequencies and how they'd hoped they might be able to disrupt the field itself. Abject failure, obviously. It will give Warren and his companion enough time to get out of view.

And after just a brief explanation, she plays on sympathies to excuse herself. Her nosebleed is done but she's looking a little pale and in definite need of painkillers. She leans a little on Graeme and murmurs, "I need you to get me out of here. My vision's fuzzing. And I still have things to do today. Please?"

"Alright, Milena, I'll take you to one of the police cars, I'll ride in the back with you." Warren is sure she doesn't want to be locked back there alone. But he's soon ushering her in the opposite direction of the crowd, making sure to stay away from the direct sight of the cameras.

With the corwd following Elisabeth, he discusses something with a cop, and is soon crawling in the back and motioning for Milena.

Today was a bit of a failure, but at least he learned something new.

The next attempt on the dome needs to be some sort of infinite energy loop!


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