epidemiology | EVENT ★ ZETA-12 FINAL WEEK

EVENT ★ ZETA-12 FINAL WEEK

ZETA-12: FINAL WEEK

After team Audentes makes it out of the desert in more or less one piece, they'll begin to notice the environment changing once again. After the sparseness of the sands and canyons, vegetation and water once again become more common; eventually, they've found a lush jungle with plants and rivers both plentiful. And like the changing environment, the squidges once again begin to transform.

Please select an evolution according to your choice. Please note, you must have submitted your choice to the thread in the previous logs in order for your squidge to evolve.

For those who encountered the cave:

If they went into the cave, their squidge has taken on one of the following features: a fox-like tail, an armadillo snout (with tongue!), or enhanced sense of smell.

However, if they stayed above, their squidge has one of these: a beak, a prehensile tail, or enhanced sense of hearing.

THE JUNGLE (WEEK 6)

The jungle air is thick with humidity, light barely filtering down past the dense canopy of leaves overhead. Unlike the forest back at the beginning of the journey here, the climate in the jungle is almost stifling, so recruits may want to look for refreshing Rainbow Berries to snack on and keep their energy up -- but keep an eye out for the Lucifer's Poppy, as its effects can cause the journey to reach an abrupt end.

Rivers wind through the jungle, with waterfalls ending in relaxing pools where recruits can try to beat the heat and spend some extra time with their squidges as the journey's end approaches. Like the other biomes, there are no creatures here -- no birds, no bugs, no jungle cats -- but that doesn't mean that recruits can leave their guard down entirely. Apart from various poison plants (such as the Beezlebulb and the Malboro) other hazards to look out for include slippery, moss-covered ground cover that may cause a hapless recruit to lose their footing, and the dangers of heat exhaustion.

Unlike the previous biomes, there is no major choice for recruits to make here. Instead, they must bathe their squidge in the Wellspring, a bubbling, faintly glowing pool of water in the depths of the jungle. The Wellspring is responsible for triggering the squidges' final transformation and allowing them to grow into adulthood.

In order for squidges to evolve into an adult, squidge parents must have completed a certain amount of tasks during the Zeta-12 mission. If these tasks were not completed, the squidge will not evolve and will remain in its larval stage. The evolution form can be found on this post.

Squidges who successfully evolve into adults will grow in size, anywhere between 122-183cm (4-6'). They will loosely retain their rounded shapes, their limbs and torsos elongating, and any physical transformations will also grow with their size. In adulthood, squidges are less needy and frightened than in their larval stage, and generally have a calm demeanor (with exceptions made if they happened to pick up an aggressive trait along the journey, of course). Their language remains a wordless burbling, but they can communicate with their caregivers through gestures.

After bathing their squidges in the Wellspring, regardless of the success of evolutions, recruits should prepare to depart Zeta-12 with the knowledge that their alien children are better, stronger, and smarter for the time they spent together.

Fyletto

OOC NOTES

This log lasts ICly for one week, and OOCly for 1.5 weeks. Once the mission is completed and the squidges are bathed in the Wellspring, recruits will have until August 20th to say goodbye and let their alien wards leave the metaphorical nest.

Direct questions about the Zeta-12 mission here.

And don't forget about the bounty board! After August 20th, Zeta-12 bounties will no longer be completable.

Please remember to fill out your squidge success form! Participation is required to pass AC this month. If you have any questions about the form, please direct them here. Forms must be completed by August 31th, 23:59 UTC.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She's glad when he sits down; she won't have to be chasing him through the jungle with his screaming squidge in her arms trying to toss his responsibility back to him.

"After a month of this we need the luxury more than ever." She calls out to his back. "When I get back to Oska I'm going to climb into the hotsprings until I'm melted and then climb into my bed and hug my pillows in the hope I'll never be parted from them again."

She's still washing as she chatters to him, rinsing and wringing her sock out. She gives it a glance and a sniff and decides that's a good enough job.

"I'm just hanging my sock to dry." She warns him so he won't hop away as she stands.

"Ahhh. Thanks for the heads up." He listens for the direction she's coming from, and studiously turns his head, although his mind is on just how much she may or may not be wearing. It's Shrodinger's nudity, he thinks, and almost laughs at himself, wrinkling his nose and snorting.

And then he sighs, shoulders slumping a bit. The water feels divine on his feet, and the idea of actually washing his clothes... The uniform itself is mostly self-cleaning, but that's just the outers. He has to admit, his shorts, his socks, they could all really use a wash, and wouldn't a rinse-out help the uniform too?

Besides... it calls back. With a half grin on his face, he tells her, "I might take you up on that after all, I mean, the washing. You know, the first nice thing anyone ever did for me here was to lend me soap? I mean among the Audentes, not on this planet."

"Really? Then some kindnesses really are universal. I only ever travelled once without soap and those were miserable days."

With her sock draped on a rock besides the other she pads over to him, crouching to place the soap by him before retreating back to her shallow seat in the water again.

"If we work together we can get the task done sooner." She instructs. "You will soap and wash and I will wring and drape." She's got no intention of touching his crusty pit-sweat, but she's got enough of a read on his personality to know that he won't hand her anything that isn't thoroughly cleaned.

"Oh, hey, really?" He sounds mildly surprised, turning to retrieve the soap once he hears her retreat to a safe distance. He cracks a grin, further good humor settling even more of his fret. "Well, you're one up on Ramir then, she only offered soap, not soap and help with the laundry."

The young man shrugs off his pack, reaching to drop it on some higher rocks, and unwraps the fabric sling that's become such a part of his outfit. When he picks up the soap and bends over the bit of water he can reach, he starts with his socks, easy targets that they. He's not quite ready yet to address the logistics of how he's going to find a way to wash his shorts without ending up entirely naked.

"You know, I like camping as much as the next guy," he confesses as he works, "but I admit I've been dreaming of being back at Oska. Clean laundry on demand. The kitchens." He sighs.

"I am? Now that makes my competitive heart feel glad." Not that she's got anything against Ramir, she's a woman Serene can respect, but winning any competition is a good feeling.

Now that she's no longer scrubbing she turns her attention to the two squidges, patting them and making them giggle as they play. Lilac clambers onto her cross-legged lap and stands on her knee, squeaking proudly for Imber's attention before flopping face first into the water. The little squidge has obviously picked up some of her carer's personality tics.

Serene's glad that Evan has his back turned when he mentions the kitchens, for she grimaces reflexively. She knows what sort of fare most people are missing and it still disgusts her, but after the blowout with Meallan she's trying to be more careful about voicing her opinions.

"I do miss those nut bars." She admits, taking the tactful route. "I've been pining for them since I ate the last one. The native roots and leaves just aren't filling in the same way. When we get back to Oska I'm going to feast on nutmeat and wine."

"You know what I miss? That I didn't think I would miss this much?" Evan, too, remembers Serene's particular dietary predilections (how could he forget?), and the moment the word 'kitchens' had slipped from his tongue he'd caught himself, reminded himself to tread carefully here. "Bread. Toast. Toast and jam -- oh, or toast and peanut butter. Bagels." He groans, and then laughs.

Scrubbing soap into his socks, and then scrubbing his socks together to loosen the dirt quickly becomes an automatic, almost meditative action. There's enough dirt in them that he has to do it several times, and even then, the swamp has stained the white garments irreparably. It takes several repetitions of scrubbing for him to admit to this, though, and sigh.

"I think these are done," he offers, not turning but waving one of the socks in the water.

"You eat bread on earth?" That surprises her and delights her in equal measure, for she'd honestly assumed that earth humans would eshew such delicious staples in favour of some sort of corpse-based substitution. She chatters as she wades over to grab the socks from him.

"My mentor's wife is a baker and she taught me how to make bread. Elliot would make me come in the family before dawn to knead dough as a 'grounding exercise' before I began my practice."

For all that she's still stinging from his failure to ensure it would be possible for her to get a place with the guard she still had fond memories of those early morning routines.

"I never minded, for the work was relaxing and Anne would feed me fresh rolls with onion pickle when we took our break. Ahh, you bastard, you've got me wanting those rolls."

She doesn't go back to sit in her spot in the water, for she'd only get the socks wet again. Instead she goes to sit on the rocks off to his right, leaving some space as a token to his shyness as she wrings the socks out.

He laughs. "Good, you can suffer the cravings along with me.

"You bake?" There's a certain electricity to the air as he tries and in large part succeeds in ignoring the fact that she's maybe-naked. Managing to studiously avoid looking her way, he can mostly banter with her like this is just another evening around the campfire, and the question he asks sounds delighted. "My mom has tried to make bread from scratch a couple of times. It's almost never not a disaster. My dad did it once and it was perfect, but I think he just did that to tease mom."

With his socks passed along the assembly line of washing, he takes the sling he'd unwrapped from himself and begins in on it.

"Only bread, I am a truly mediocre cook in all other areas." She admits, laughing at his tale. "Your family sound quite something! I would love to come for a visit just to watch the interplay between you all."

She's not unaware of the tension, not with how he keeps his back turned to her and speaks over his shoulder without looking. It had only been two weeks since she'd touched him and he'd admitted he found her attractive and that night still plays on her mind, for he'd been so very sincere in rejecting her generous offer. She's respecting his turning away but makes no effort to hide herself as she twists and drapes his wrung socks on a bare part of the rocks behind her.

"My brother is ridiculously perfect at whatever he tries. I love him but he's such a golden boy! I'll never invite him to come and make bread just in case he masters that skill in the first try too."

"Oh," Evan groans empathy as he scrubs. The wrap is taking more soap and more time than the socks did, stained and well-used as the length of cloth is. "That's my dad, in our family. It's not even necessarily that he's good at every individual thing that he tries, he's just good at upstaging people." He speaks with a grudging but sincere fondness, swishing the wrap around in the water after one scrub. The water that comes off of it is grey.

"What's your brother like?" he asks, curious, once again having to catch himself from glancing her way.

He's taking his time, not that she'd complain about being thorough when it comes to cleanliness, so she pads over to the squidges to tickle them again.

"My brother is Lord Leon Blaze Charlord the Sixth." She states his full name grandly, using the most proper precise Gallian elocution that she'd been taught. "The current Lord Charlord and a rising star in the Royal Courts of Justice. He's three years older than me, half a hand taller than me and he's the prettier of us two by far. Urgh, Evan, he's too handsome! Every woman friend I make, every one of them ends up a giggling mess when he smiles at him, and most of the men do too! He's this nexus of charm and good looks and intelligence and... urgh!" She splashes the water just to vent that disgust and then laughs.

"I love him." She sounds so fond. "Even if Celeste and I have had to jointly ban him from speaking to any of our girlfriends I love him. When I came home he, ahh, he helped me out so much. I was a mess, but he saved me." Her voice is growing quieter as she recalls the delicate past. "He was a dilettante at university enjoying being away from mama's overprotective gaze, but after I returned he threw everything into making sure I would be safe and well, even though I was more a snarling feral creature than the sweet little sister he remembered. That is what led him to his current role, for he decided he wanted to be the voice for the voiceless who were accused of wrong. He's my inspiration."

She falls silent then, finding herself unexpectedly struggling with how much she misses him.

Edited 2016-08-13 23:54 (UTC)

Again Evan is reminded that Serene is such a creature of extremes. He hasn't forgotten how she's struggled with her own squidge, had troubles bonding with it, but she speaks with such fondness of her big brother that it catches him off-guard. He starts to glance at her sympathetically, then remembers himself and aborts the motion before he catches more than a glimpse of her pale self.

"Your brother sounds like an admirable person," he offers, serious for her ache. Her story piques his curiosity, too; he's heard in bits and pieces about her return home, but this makes it sound like a much more dire thing than when she had first mentioned it to him. Perhaps, he wonders, connected to the loved ones she had told him about? "It must be nice to have a brother that's got your back like that."

If he shades a hair wistful, he's just thinking of Cassie, of the days when she had his back.

"He is and it is." She agrees, feeling wistful for an entirely different reason.

Ahh, and though the topic is prickling her she finds she wants to speak more. She sighs and lays back in the water to the delight of the two squidges, who immediately start clambering onto her belly so they can roll off again.

"I have a little sister too, Celeste Shimmer. She was born after I left home and so I only first met her four years ago. We had no idea what to make of each other until she realised I could act as her living doll to dress up and plait and put make up on. She took it upon herself to teach me how to be pretty like a proper lady rather than stride about in pants and a man's shirt. She's an adorable little girl, shorter than you with hair as long as mine but as straight as a silken thread. Sieglinde reminds me of her with how she peers redfaced at boys."

Her desire for familiar things is, itself, familiar; he feels the same wist deep in his belly, although in large part he keeps it at bay. His is not the most close-knit of families, and he's gone an entire semester without seeing his parents, he can handle a tour of duty with ALASTAIR, right? He wonders if it's different for her, having regained her family so comparatively recently.

Whatever the case, her description of her younger sister makes him grin. "I can just imagine that. She must look up to you." He rinses the wrap once more and then, examining it critically, passes it towards her, hooking it on a rock so she can get to it at her leisure without the thing drifting away on the pool's currents. "Is she responsible for the fancy getup you arrived in, then?"

"She used to, but lately she's been flouncing about and calling me an embarrassment." She mutters as she admits that, for those words are cutting in retrospect, given how her 'embarrassing' ways had shut her out of one career path and then another. "Yes, she chose the dress for my birthday last year."

She heaves herself out of the water, topping the delighted squidges, and scrapes her hair back over her breasts in a semblance of modesty before fetching his cloth to the shore for a wringing.

"You have a sister as well, don't you? She's more like your parents than yourself. What is her name again?"

"Cassandra. Cassie." Hearing the embarrassment in Serene's tone at her sister's disapproval, Evan's mouth pulls. He knows that feeling, along with the confusion and devastation of having a once-friendly sibling swap roles so drastically. But that's also the hurt of a younger child, which Serene most definitively is not. "And she's definitely more the sort to call me an embarrassment than to buy me fancy clothes." He looks away as she goes for the washed wrap, considering what to wash next.

The only things available are still on his body, and he suffers a moment of prohibitive shyness. But somehow it's the thought of Cassie that spurs him, of how she'd probably disdain him for his body-shyness. How she'd've probably laughed at him for turning down a romp for the sake of feelings.

He takes the hem of his shirt and, in the throes of a moment of pique, strips off both the under and the overshirt at once. Picking them apart after the fact, he dumps both in the water and begins to scrub at them.

He might not be looking at her but she looks over at him as he strips, brows raising, for she'd honestly expected him to make some sort of wiggly embarrassed attempt at shedding his underclothes without removing his outer layers here in the open.

"That's cruel of her." She replies as she watches him scrubbing. He's embarrassed, certainly, but she's having difficulty imagining seeing him as an outright embarrassment. "Does she at least offer to give you loving guidance to being a better person?"

The shirts, with their self-cleaning qualities, take less scrubbing and a lot less soap to deal with. He focuses on bits he's sweated on, and high-used areas like sleeves, and he's glad for the diversion as she speaks.

"Cassie?" He snorts. "I'm not sure I would take advice on how to be a better person from her. She's gone out of her way for years to thumb her nose at our parents whenever she can. I'm not sure there's a thing in our world that she has any respect for, these days."

But he can't sustain the ire, and it fades as he scrubs. His mouth pulls wryly as he listens to the splashing of the squidges, still playing like the children they are. "You know, for all that, I still miss her."

"I wonder if Celeste would say that about me?" She murmurs, grimacing. No, she still respected Elliot even if she had been cursing him, the Crown Prick, her father and all of Gallia when she'd last seen her sweet sister.

She glances at Evan's back and away again, biting her lip as she wrestles with herself.

"I lied to you the first time we met." She blurts out. "I'm not in the Royal Guard, nor am I preparing to join. I was rejected before I could take part in the tourney because of... of how I was raised before I returned home. I was refused a place at the university a year before for the same reason."

She's speaking evenly, carefully, afraid of reawakening her vitriol.

"If I am angry here for not completing this mission well it because I am afraid of history repeating itself. This is my last chance to prove I can do something meaningful with my life."

He almost glances at her, almost forgets himself and looks over his shoulder at the woman in the water. As he does manage to stop himself, the gesture merely becomes a stiffening of the spine, a straighter sit.

That's a hell of an admission and he's glad when she goes on and he has a moment to consider it. Any angle he looks at it, though, it makes his brow furrow, makes no sense to him.

"That's absurd," he protests, "I mean, what the -- what do they think you did, that they feel justified rejecting you out of hand?" The rest, he'll address later, but her tale sticks in his craw like sand, imagining the way universities back home would likely do the same with his applications, were he to come out as nonhuman.

And this is the part where he might have a reason to hate her. She hesitates, the words sticking in her throat, for she's come to value his quiet and competent friendship.

"When I didn't manifest, I was taken out of the magical program. I was... not useless, for I could still have carried Cinder's children once my frame stopped growing, and maybe we'd make pyromancers together." The thought still makes her cringe even now. Lowly, she adds "I sobbed the day I realised my breasts were coming in."

But that's a digression. She braces herself and continues.

"I was trained to be a soldier when I was eleven because the war was heating up and everyone had to be ready to fight. I volunteered to be on the kidnapping crew, because I wanted to prove myself while finding someone who'd take that fall for me. Cinder and the other failures followed me and we went to steal the children the Trustworthy wanted."

She's staring at his back hard, waiting for the moment when he whips around or walks away. Mercy, this is difficult to choke out.

"They died, and I led King Richard to the research grounds after I turned myself in. I was the hero who saved the noble heirs of half a dozen Gallian families for all of ten minutes before they named who'd taken them in the first place."

She has fed him the story of her youth in bits and pieces, at first with breezy, dismissive nostalgia, and then with an increasingly naked wariness that has crept up so slowly as to catch him by surprise. He settles in with pricked ears to listen to another installment.

It's more than he expected. His scrubbing slows as she speaks, stops entirely around the time she admits to the private horror of puberty. It's hard to comprehend, all of what she's saying, so far outside of his experience that he shudders to the very core to try and imagine it. Volunteering to kidnap children, to avoid being used as breeding stock? Kidnapping children at all?

He's already been told an inkling about how much the death of her compatriots had hurt her, the nature of what they'd been to her, and so he quakes again for the context around that loss.

"But you couldn't have been much more than a child yourself," he blurts, the first thought out of his mind as it eddies back over her words, "when you... did that work. If your, if you'd just hit puberty, you couldn't have..." He's staring hard at the washing in his hands. In one sense he's glad he's given the excuse not to look at her just now, as he doesn't have to try and figure out if his expression is too flat, if it's sympathetic enough. "They had to have acknowledged that, at least, that you were being used, that you were just a kid."

"I was acquitted of all of my crimes for that reason." She sounds dull. "But forgiveness is not forgetfulness and I was watched closely to make sure I wasn't going to slip back into my Xalian ways."

She wades towards him and stares down at him for a moment, tempted to wrap her arms about him for the comfort of holding someone. But no, she knows that would be wildly inappropriate, so she turns as she sits down so that they're back to back, drawing what comfort she can from their proximity.

"But I can't stand it. I don't want to be the quailing victim, I want to live, I want to be useful and vital and respected. I want to push myself to the limits, be they physical or intellectual, to become all that I have the potential to be. But that is seen as a Xalian trait, never mind that my brother is the same and he's seen as a respectable man. They are no less my captors than the Xalians were, for they want me to live in a golden-barred cage where I amuse myself by singing and playing the harp, showing off how sweet I can be. If I have any say in my fate then I will never return to Callierhoe."

Her speech, her fervour for claiming her rightful place among the best at whatever she chooses to do, lights a fire of empathy in him. He's eschewed so much in his life to be the best in his field, to finish top of his class, to get into and ace the program he's aiming for -- and while here, even, that drive has pushed him to be the best... well, the best that he can be at the things he's no good at.

He hears her move and does not look, but listens hard, marking her place and wondering if she's going to try and touch him. When she doesn't, he's a little surprised, even. He slowly begins to scrub the wrap again, gathering some more soap as he remembers the task.

"You wouldn't be the first," he tells her plainly. "I can't imagine your family wouldn't miss you, but if you decided to stay... there's certainly a precedent. And no one here is going to hold you back from being the best you can be." He believes that as he says it. For all ALASTAIR's mediocre management, they have supported their people at best, and at worst, left them to their own devices. "And it's good work, isn't it? Even the parts that are frustrating."

She winces and draws up her knees to her chest, hugging them tight.

"That is my only source of guilt. I am trying my best not to think of what my mother would go through if I do not return, for my disappearance the first time broke her. If I could send a letter back to the moment I vanished..."

But that's too hard to think about right now. She draws a deep breath and deliberately straightens up again, ripping her focus back to him.

"Do you want to go home?" She turns in the water to peer at the back of his neck. "You were, ahh, a second year computer scientist. How many years more must you study?"

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