text | un: redlion

[secondnature]

[This message shows up about an hour after their arrival in the Mothership. Keith has had it made clear to him that if he doesn't handle this appropriately, then some of the people who have volunteered will take care of it themselves. If there's any better reason to step up (to be the leader his team back home believes he can be), this is it. It's text because they can't risk being overheard.]

Hey. Some of you don't know what the taraxa are, or what that has to do with our mission. I thought I'd begin there, and then make it clear what we're doing here with that.

A year ago, we had a mission on Perdition's Rest. That's when our team first learned about Zymandis and their goals. They utilize taraxa agents. These agents are slugs that take over someone's mind against their will. The person loses themselves, but ALASTAIR has developed a means to get most of them back. The problem is that they're a part of a hive mind led by the Mother. They can communicate with each other so long as she's active.

That should make our goal here clear.

1. We need to identify the location of the Mother and take her out. This is a necessary casualty to save as many of the hosts' lives as we can.

2. We need to identify taraxa agents. Kal and Rhys both have means to scan for taraxa-affected brains. Work with them if you need someone confirmed. Once they're confirmed and the Mother is down, we put them to sleep until we can rift them back to Oska. We'll need to find a safe place to gather the bodies.

3. Once the Mother is identified, we take her out, and then we head for the rest of the taraxa agents.

We need to work quickly.

And I KNOW some of you will think we're better off killing the hosts than risking Oska, but that's stupid. They never asked for this! Plus, we put down a Zymandis force before. We'll do it again. So don't even try it. I already remember all that from last year. Trust me. I've heard it all before.

So, let's do this the right way this time.

[It wouldn't be Keith without the little bit of abrasiveness at the end.]

Comments

[dbag]

Oh, my god, you're so take-charge right now.

[secondnature]

Someone has to, right?

[dbag]

Sooo, since you're the leader of this ragtag group of misfits right now. What's the plan for "putting them to sleep"? Not everybody is cool and badass enough to have their own drone.

un: gamora

[zenwhoberi]

[she reads, takes in the new information that wasn't present in the dossier she'd been given, and considers for a time. if there's anyone sympathetic to the sentiment, it's her; there are always people caught in the crossfire of a situation like this against their will.

but nothing is simple.]

I agree that we should try to save as many of the hosts as we can. However, we should also prepare for the possibility that saving them might not be possible.

[("if he ends up being evil, we'll just kill him."

there's a certain pragmatism of the assassin that she will always follow.)]

[secondnature]

I know. We messed it up the first time.

[That's a very succinct summary to cover "no one trusted ALASTAIR to do anything, so they decided to try it all themselves and killed a bunch of hosts in the process." It might not even have been as bad as Keith says it was, but Keith tends to conflate things.

(And he's also conveniently glossing over how it got their homebase attacked last time.)]

I'm spearheading this this time to do things the right way. I have to try.

[zenwhoberi]

[she doesn't know the person on the other end of this communication, knows almost nothing about them, really, but she finds the conviction to be something worthy of respect. (reminds her of peter, in a way; always willing to try, even when the odds seem insurmountable, which is a thought that gets promptly shoved to the side.)]

If some try to attack in the process, they may leave you with no choice.

[aka, please be willing to defend yourself and don't be a self-sacrificial idiot if your life is on the line. general you for anyone reading this, btw]

I can subdue small numbers on my own until we have a better solution. That may buy some time.

[you have her sword. so to speak.]

TEXT | un: p.parker

[webdesigned]

( Peter thinks that this is the right way to go about it, he just thinks they maybe could have had this conversation before arrival. because as it is? they don't have a lot of freedom to make these plans happen. )

theyve got everything we need to make tranquilizers, but with the numbers we are looking at? that might not be enough

maybe there is research on the taxara around here that we can use to our advantage. if we get control of the queen we can get control of all the infected, right? maybe we need to focus more on her than on everyone.

[secondnature]

Identifying her has to be our first action no matter what. If we put down the other hosts, they'll know because they'll still be linked up to her through their system.

[It's a weird way of putting it, but ... it works.]

So, we've got to find her. But to find her, we need to know where she's hiding.

[webdesigned]

if its anything like perdition they will be protecting her

maybe we can track by that, but it probably wouldnt be enough to identify on her own

is it possible she still has the same form she did then? or would she take a new host after being compromised?

@kansas [ text ]

[signifies]

Thanks, Keith.

I'm working on numbers. I'll have shift details soon.

[secondnature]

Glad to hear it.

Thanks.

[signifies]

Do we have any way to put them to sleep and/or extract on site?

un: blake

[unburdening]

This is a good idea.

[ this: the message, but also the plan. he'd like to save the mother too if it's possible, but if killing her will save the rest? he can live with that. ]

Once we have a place to keep the sleeping agents, there should be some kind of rotation to keep an eye on them. Make sure they don't wake up, and make sure no one besides us finds them. One guard could be too obvious, and too risky.

[secondnature]

I've been thinking about that. If the numbers are high enough, we might need sleeping quarters.

What if we take one of theirs? It's like hiding in plain sight.

[It's worth a shot, and it means that it's meant to be a private place. If they do this stealthily enough, it might work.]

[unburdening]

I like it. If we need to, we can take more, split them up.

text; un: hound (I'm still on hiatus but shhh)

[ofobedience]

Utilising one of the identified hosts' rooms for storage is likely the best plan. And should anyone seem inclined to put down the hosts before we've had a chance to attempt saving them first, I'll intervene.

[Aggressively. He feels like he needs this somehow, to put this to rest. And should their attempts to extract the hosts fail, he'll be the first to switch to Plan B. Anything is better than the fate they've succumbed to-- this he knows.]

And as I've said before, I'm prepared to deal with the Mother, when the time comes.

[Is planning on focusing his efforts on trying to locate her.]

[secondnature]

I like the idea of one of their rooms, too. Hiding in plain sight.

[It isn't a bad plan. It's both too obvious, and not obvious enough. He likes it.]

Focus on finding the Mother. We can't move on anything else until we do. Some of them seem to be talking about her.

I think.

Or they really like their moms.

text; un: cardmaster

[fateality]

I caught word of a place for folks to relax that might not be so easily... accessible.

In any case, I plan on finding out much as I can. I'll keep the rest of you posted if I hear anything useful.

[secondnature]

What kind of place is that?

[Keith: still bad at social mores, still bad at reading between lines. The more things change, the more they stay the same.]

un: shitpost king

[hedonistic]

[Kagari's still a bit salty about this whole issue, but knowing the hosts can be recovered to their original state does change things a little. So he attempts a message; it's not exactly cordial, but it's quite a bit less hostile than he's ever been with Keith, at least.]

i'm guessing you're gonna ignore this just because it's me but i'm gonna put it out there anyway
can we at least idk break their legs or something in case they wake up before the medical staff are done with them
it's not like the hosts are gonna feel it and they have the magic/tech to fix them right up afterward

okay i'm done go ahead and tell me how terrible i am now

[secondnature]

Did you read anything we talked about before you said this? Just curious.

text: d.grayson

[batmantled]

So I know I'm still playing catch up here, but I am kind of wondering why we're already counting the queen's host expendable.

Any viable solution for freeing the rest of the taraxa should apply across the board.

[ he's... guessing. Seriously hoping. ]

[secondnature]

Because that's all we knew before.

I know differently now. We have to keep her under. It's risky, but it's doable. The circumstances have changed.

And it might help to know that she can be kept under. If she has guards around her, we can knock them all out at once.

[Lloyd cleared up some things. They can do this the way to help the Mother's host. He just didn't see it as possible before.]

text; un; chocobro

[argenteums]

[ He frowns, paying attention as he reads this... the hells. He's not ready at all. ]

... Wait, wait, wait, so what if we get taken over by this t...taraxa thing. Will we even know?!

[secondnature]

It wasn't a problem before.

And we were sleeping outside for part of it exposed.

[It's a reasonable fear, and one he had thought of before. But that was a while ago, so he feels comfortable saying they'll probably be fine.]