epidemiology | EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

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EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

BENDED TIME

As outlined in the OOC post, things start to slow down and grow quiet in Oska for a few days as the bugs crawl away and slowly disappear. But then the cocoons hatch. Fully grown temporal insects claw their way out of them, each about the size and temperament of raging bulls.

They come out far more aggressive and eager to fight, are are willing to take on anything that moves with jaws and claws alike. Except, of course, another insect — when two of them encounter each other, they enter into a mating dance and then slip away into another dimension, leaving behind only the temporary ghosts of years gone by. If you can’t find a way to pierce that thick shell to take one down, better find another one to pair it off with instead. Just try not to get bit while leading them around and find yourself suddenly 5 years old again.

The insects aren’t the only thing going on in Oska, though. As it turns out, unicorns really hate this adult form of the temporal insects, and will start kicking their way out of their stalls in the stables to get at the insects in an attempt to impale or trample them. According to Uruz they’re gallant warriors, but not always quite cut out to take on a bug, and can easily get themselves hurt or killed. She would really appreciate recruits taking a moment to recapture any stray unicorns they may come across and leading them back to the stables. Try to avoid any insects on the way, or you’ll find yourself suddenly fighting insect and irate unicorn, which is no one’s idea of a good time.

The lake is getting more active, too. All the fighting has woken up something in the depths of it. Dark red tentacles sometimes creep up onto shore — and don’t worry, this time they don’t belong to a sea goddess. The tentacles don’t attack unless attacked, and can in fact be quite agreeable. Nodes along the length of them act as primitive eyes, which see well enough to interact with anyone nearby. They’re also all a little peckish. Toss a tentacle a bit of food and watch it curl around and ingest it using tiny mouths on the underside. It might even be willing to play a few rounds of fetch or slap a bug into the sky for you if you put it in a good mood with a morsel of food.

The senior ALASTAIR members can be seen out and about and doing their part, too. Uruz and Dagny fight as a team, centaur and elf, sometimes fighting back to back and sometimes as mount and rider. They’ll stop and lend a hand, but the cats are a little less generous. Cherenkov and Crowley fight inseparably and use magic and science in deadly combination to ward off and destroy the bugs, but can usually only be seen darting on their way from one place to another. They have a lot of magitek to repair in the destructive wake of the insects. Pomarr, neither as senior nor as invested in actively picking off the bugs, offers shelter near a tentacle-free portion of the lake, calling down storms to toss away bugs for her and anyone in the vicinity.

OOC NOTES

This log spans a week ICly. Characters will find themselves beginning to understand each other again as the bugs first vanish, as the effects of the cats’ work on the magitek pays off. The translation problem will be completely fixed by the time the cocoons hatch. All of the bugs will have been killed or shipped off by the sixth day, leaving the last day before their departure to the next mission blissfully relaxing. Any temporally misplaced recruits will be back to normal by the last day, as well.

A reminder to anyone still texting: the texting feature of magitek jewelry operates based on thought! There are no physical keyboards, recruits merely think the message that they’d like to send to another recruit.

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Who?

[ This alien, on the flipside, is exactly the height she was always supposed to be, which means she's looking down at Keith with an uncharacteristic bemusement. He doesn't seem like any kind of physical threat -- at least not to her, clearly the only individual whose input matters -- and his statement isn't delivered with the conviction that would make immediate anger or posturing necessary. The entire color scheme of the interaction is gross and clashing from top to bottom. ]

They can't be much of an empire if you actually want this place.

[Wow, she is both really tall and really orange. It's not that he has never seen an orange alien before, but she is really orange. He looks up toward her with widening eyes, seeming to only realize that he was speaking to someone who could step on him and squash him like a bug.

He clears his throat after a moment and tries to pull himself up to make himself look more intimidating. Spoilers: he probably fails.]

It's not really the place that matters. It's what's in it. The tech they have could make anyone unstoppable. [If they used it correctly. Or had any control over it. Or ... things that Keith wouldn't be in charge of handling anyway.]

Maybe you just need to think bigger.

Everything seems bigger from a low vantage point.

[ DID SHE REALLY JUST... or was she just being figuratively insulting? It can be both. ]

So you're not just desperate -- you're technologically incompetent too. Just because they're keeping it under wraps doesn't mean it's unique. [ Which is total bullshit, but she figures nothing here is really that different than a warp pad, and she's never concerned herself with the intricacies of what Gem technology can or can't do -- there's never been much of a need. Jasper actually makes the "tch" noise when she shrugs. ] No wonder I've never heard of you.

The Galra aren't technologically incompetent. [That's actually part of the problem: they seem to be light years ahead of anyone else, including the people on the planet where he grew up. It's why Shiro's mission got messed up. And it's why Voltron can only manage so much after ten thousand years.

It's clear that she's riled him up (and the short comment probably didn't help, let's be real).]

They—[errrrr, wait a second.] We want to take everything over. And if the multiverse is real, then we should be getting on that.

Obviously. So we're thinking bigger for a reason.

Everyone else got the same debriefing, you know. I'm still not impressed.

[ She doesn't miss the slip-up, but doesn't think on it either. Even if she bothered to come to the idea that this Galra doesn't consider himself part of the empire, she would conclude that that's just another sign of their inferiority. They must be too weak to command the respect and obedience of their citizens -- and too weak to eliminate dissenters.

She decides to switch gears. ]

Tell me, then. When the mighty Galra empire extends its reach into other universes, how many should we expect?

Why would we bother with a census? Just trust that we have the means to do what's necessary. If we can take over one universe, then we can easily come up with the numbers to do multiple ones. Think billions. Trillions.

[Think: he just made up a bunch of numbers and bad logic. While it's likely true that the Galra don't have a census, he never thought to ask how many of them there were. Coran and Allura definitely had no idea, and it wouldn't make sense that they went up against the entire fleet that one time.

Obviously, he's seen more of it since then, but—

He knows that still wasn't all of it.

(Maybe they breed like rabbits. This would also be a thing Keith doesn't know, for the record.)]

Tch. If it's worth anything, somebody knows.

[ She couldn't name the precise number of gems herself, to be fair, but that's not her job! It probably isn't Keith's (in the privacy of Jasper's space racist utilitarian mind, "Galra's") either -- she assumes that he's either trying to (poorly) conceal the element of surprise, or simply putting a better face on his own ignorance. He's shaming his empire in the process, but what else would she have cause to expect? Because she personally has never reacted negatively at Homeworld's expense, ever, in her life.

Her eyes narrow and she tips her chin a little, as if to make her looking down at him even more intensely obvious than it already is. ]

Will they all look like you.

[Naturally, he takes offense to her question. Why wouldn't he? It's a simple question, and not at all one that could be taken that way if the person (alien?) in question wasn't reactive in general. But this is already a conversation where he's on the defensive, so he absolutely assumes that she's judging him.

He is a little small for a Galra, anyway. That's the important part.]

No. They're much bigger. [Not that size matters!]

And they have a lot of monsters they can pull out at a moment's notice. So, you might not even see them first. [Truthfully, Haggar only uses the monsters as a diversion these days since they almost always eventually get beaten by the remaining Voltron paladins.

But just the same. This giant woman has no way of knowing that.]

Whatever distractions you use to do the fighting for you are irrelevant. The strength of any empire is nothing if it doesn't extend to direct combat.

[ Big words from someone who's totally cool with wrangling monsters and using technology whenever it gives her an advantage! It's good to know he's a runt, at least. ]

You're staking your claim with nothing and no one to back it up. [ She sounds like she's only just processing this as something beyond massive stupidity. ] No compromise -- at least you've got that.

[ The idea that a member of a large, spacefaring empire would in fact be this upfront about their intentions, to the point of volunteering information she hasn't even asked for, is a little strange, but she doesn't bother thinking about it further. Clearly the Galra is also intent on coming out on top of this weird posture-off! ]

Uh—yeah, no compromise. [He considers this for a long moment and decides that it's enough to work with right now. Explaining exactly what the Galra are capable of doesn't mean that they can be stopped. If Voltron was (is) having a hard time, then it doesn't matter.

Oh, they have secret coordinates and all of that, but they've shown more than enough times that they don't scramble when being found out. It doesn't faze them in the least.

Which, in reality, is really annoying to Keith. He wishes he could see another way to fight them.]

There'll be others here soon enough. [He hopes not. Aside from being really bad at this and probably getting reprimanded, they would probably wipe the ground with everyone who's here. That would be bad. Maybe he should stop being ineffectual so that they keep thinking the Galra are a threat if they do ever show up ... But then, he might get a reprimand for not trying. Ugh, being a paladin was much easier.] That'll be who backs me up. In the meantime, I'm confident in my claim.

[ Jasper barks a sudden laugh at the last of it. That much, at least, she knows is bluster, though she doesn't correctly identify the reasoning behind it. ]

Did you come here on purpose, Galra? Was it your mission to claim this scrap of a world? Do your superiors even know you're gone?

No one shows up here on purpose, but of course they'll show up once they notice I'm missing. [That really blows his entire argument out of the water. Actually, it blows everything out of the water, but whatever. He doesn't add anything to it to make it sound more concrete in his head.]

Yeah?

[ There's a slight, slight undertone there. Jasper might not have wanted any rescue mission when she was stranded on earth, as focused as she was and still is on destroying Rose Quartz, but the fact remains that (to her knowledge) Homeworld hasn't deployed one regardless. If they can't find her, an Era 1 soldier, someone who they actually need, on a planet they already have mapped, they're certainly not going to do it in this middle-of-nowhere reality. Nobody is coming for her, and they're not coming for him either. Bravado or not, she won't let it slide. ]

And who are you to command such attention?

A Voltron paladin. There's another one around who can pilot my lion—I won't lie about that. But he's got nothing on me and they know it. They wouldn't wanna risk losing me. [This particular piece of bragging is the first bit of truth he's said the entire time. Zarkon had decided to recognize him, to see him for what he was: a new era of paladins. He wanted to bring back most of the old ones, but Keith's zeal for fighting was something that couldn't be overlooked, especially once they uncovered the reality of his identity.

It's just the ... everything else, down to the grossness of being recognized by Zarkon, that gets under his skin.]

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EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

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