video; un: fiona

[cachemoney]

[Fiona is a little out of breath, like she just hustled very quickly away from somewhere. Which she did, but that's neither here nor there. The background behind her is some innocuous wood panelling; she's in a house.]

Okay. So. Crunch time. Things are getting nuts out there, if you didn't notice. We are gonna wind up super screwed if we don't hop to figuring out what the hell to do.

[She holds up a vial. It has some alien writing on it, as well as a familiar symbol on the label.]

We found this inside the hospital. A shit-ton of them, actually. So who wants to find out what Zymandis asshole is responsible for this mess and beat an antidote out of them?



[ ooc. PS, maya, hanzo, and mccree might show up in your threads. feel free to threadjack as well! ]

Comments

[feytality]

Zymandis would do all of this just to get us here...?

[She looks p. horrified]

[predomination]

It's not as clear-cut as that right now, but considering this timeline is set to be destroyed anyway, I can't imagine it would bother them that much to use these people to their advantage and not care what happened.

The Qorral were equally disposable to them last mission.

[feytality]

....

That's awful. What happened on the last mission?

[predomination]

Their Taraxa infiltrators "infected" a number of the Qorral by taking them as hosts, hollowing out their brains, and using their bodies as they saw fit, enabling them to better destroy the core of the planet and disrupt that Timeline. We figured this out a bit too late, but not late enough that we weren't able to put a stop to them. The fact that Zymandis were bested by a group who, up until then, had no knowledge of them likely stung a bit.

It's hard to imagine them not wanting to retaliate even a bit- whether they planned it from the start is of no consequence, in the end. Once they know we're here- and they likely do by now- they'll probably try and trip us up while they still have an advantage. It's precisely why we can't simply hunt them down like dogs.

[feytality]

I heard a little about that. The hosts... you guys saved a few of them, right? [But they're missing memories]

[It is heartening to know, though, that even at a clear disadvantage, they were ablt to beat Zymandis......... hopefully without much murder]

R-Right, I agree. So... what do we do?

[predomination]

In a sense. [the quiet defeat in his tone suggests there's not much to that. their victory in Perdition's Rest was a bittersweet one, and he'd so hoped for a better option this time.]

We find a way to track Percy-san's movements. He clearly made camp in the sewers, judging from what other people have noticed, and may be harboring and caring for infected there, which means he might not be willing to give up his post entirely while he still has an investment down there.

[feytality]

[Maya's only learning about all these crazy adventures now... Koltira keeps talking about murder, why is Audentes like this]

Do you think that's where his base of operations is...? Maybe, if we find out how he's doing this to them, we can reverse it....

[Trying to be optimistic here]

[predomination]

That's what myself, Sonia-san, Sieglinde-san, and Peter-san are working on- a cure for the virus and a vaccination to prevent it from spreading. The rest of this we have to rely on everyone else keeping their heads on straight to not lose sight of why we're here.

[feytality]

....I think we might have some trouble with that part. [considering all the talk of torture and murder and whatever]

Hey, um... I'm not really good at science or anything, but is there anything I can do to help? [She's already donated blood, but she wants to do Something]

[predomination]

I've noticed. We've kept the more impulsive of our team distracted before, however.

[in a way.] We just need to focus their attention elsewhere!

[he's really grateful for the willingness to help, and the handful of people investigating are really working their butts off.] Hmm. Let's see. There's a lot of places we need support. What are your skills?

[feytality]

How...? [That would be great, lil miss shounen here isn't up to all that.] Um... spirit channeling...... Kind of. [There's a bit of a pause here as the severity of the situation's cutting through her bluster and she doesn't really have any confidence in any of her skills--]

B-But other things too! Like.. investigating, and butt-kicking, and persuasion, and... some law experience!

[predomination]

[well lookit that.] We do still need a lot of investigating... There's a definite rabbit hole here, but we don't yet know how deep it goes.

[feytality]

Right.... we gotta find out what Percy's been up to. We already checked out the hospital, though.... [She was part of the group who found the Zymandis stuff] but I didn't really get the Zymandis stuff until now.

[predomination]

The problem is that because Zymandis employs Taraxa, they could have taken anyone in town as a host before we got here, and I still think there might be something to the mayor at the very least. Also, if Percy-san is still operating in the sewers, there's that...

[feytality]

How did you guys figure out who was Taraxa in the last mission?

I guess we gotta go back to the sewers, then....

[predomination]

They were operating as a group we assumed we're just cultists, but there were Taraxa in the town under our very noses we didn't realize were there until we did some investigating.

[hahaha don't give bad news so cheerfully, Urahara.] So it's mostly luck unless you can scan brains. I had started working on a device back in Oska to potentially key into Taraxa bio- patterns and pick them out of a population, but it's nowhere near the prototype stage.

[feytality]

[Maya's all about giving bad news cheerfully, so she doesn't mind] That's it? No slug test or anything? We can't poke into their ears and see if anything comes out?

[predomination]

The only ways we've found to extract them would be painful even to people who aren't playing host to them. It's not really something we can just subject a massive amount of people to.

[feytality]

What about putting salt in their ears?

[predomination]

[.... well.]

Um. Well. I don't think anyone's tried that one.

[it probably won't work, but she's so cute. why would he crush her dreams.]

[feytality]

[how did you get "she's so cute" out of that, Urahara...]

Then let's be the first! If there are any gross bugs in there, that'll send 'em packing!

[predomination]

[his pseudo-daughter uses a bazooka as a weapon, so... he's got some problems.]

I'll leave the weaponization of all the salt shakers in Woodhurst to you, Maya-san~

[feytality]

[evidently.]

You can count on me! No slugs are hanging out in people's brains on my watch!