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

"I am a woman," she reminds him gently, "so I will outlive the men in my life by a decade. But I know that is nothing to what you are facing."

No, there's little she can offer from her own experience, so she draws upon the wisdom of the Mancers once more.

"Vyctorius ended her book of poems with words of advice to her descendants: do not cut yourself off from the young. It maybe have felt like yesterday that they were babes, but they will shock you with how quickly they are able to look you eye to eye and utter insights that pierce through your decades of wisdom. Love again and again, for each new generation will support you with the loss of the ones who are withered by time. The wounds on a human's soul can only be healed through gentle companionship."

She dishes out those morsels at the same time with wisdom and with ignorance, and it's the oddest juxaposition. She can't know, and she knows that she can't know, but here's someone on her world who can and does... or who could and did. And at the same time, isn't it true enough that Evan doesn't even know yet? Not really?

He groans, laughs in the midst of the noise, brings both wet hands up to rub his eyes and shove hair out of his face. "How is it that I'm getting more... more pertinent advice about this here than I ever did at home?" There's exasperation in his tone, and hurt. "I, I can't even... imagine.... it all seems so unlikely."

In a way this is easier while he can't look at her. His expression gnarls into a grimace, and then smooths again. "It's so easy at home to half forget I'm not human."

"Our perceptions are shaped by the way we are raised. It is difficult to shape a habit of thought off." Ahhh, but she feels like she's just spouting platitudes. She shifts back so she continue her wringing task.

"I am going to hang this up now, if you wish to avoid looking at me." She warns him as she stands, having sufficiently wrung out his top. "But you can look if you desire!"

Her little tease doesn't fall well: he's too deeply mired in the thick of his own discomfort, too caught by thoughts he doesn't want to be having. It takes a second to sink in, and then he reflexively shrugs. "Um, let me know when it's safe again, I guess."

He looks down at his pants; really, the only part of his outfit he hasn't cleaned that still needs it are his shorts, and... and. If he wasn't comfortable shucking them around her before, he certainly isn't now. Suddenly he sees an out for himself, from that and from this conversation.

"Serene," he calls, "do you mind if I borrow the soap for a few minutes? I want to wash the rest of my stuff... um, around the bend." There's a more secluded bit of water he'd been considering initially, one that should shield him from her eyes, and give him a little bit of distance from her implacably discomfiting words.

She looks back over her shoulder at him, unsurprised that he'd want privacy.

"Of course... Wait, no!"

She sits in the water and pats her hair down over her breasts, for it's curling away from her body as it dries.

"It's safe to move now." She calls back once she's made sure she won't flash anything to inviting at him.

He starts, and then stops again when she rescinds permission, feeling the strange hitch of abbreviated motion. He pauses, takes a breath as she arranges herself, and then when she finally offers that last, he picks the soap up from care from the rock he'd stowed it on and clutches it carefully as he begins to wade away. There's a malaise lingering that he wants to wash away, as much as he wants to wash his clothes.

As he wades by he glances at the squidges, who are still eddying about one another and squalling and splashing like children. Imber squeaks and makes to paddle after him, but Evan shoos the squidge back to his friend, which Imber at least seems to understand. He's lucky, for once, that the young alien seems to prefer the company of its clutchmates, even to his keeper.

Privacy, even brief, is a huge relief. He finds himself shaky; how odd, and how odd to have talked to Serene about those particular worries. The only other person he'd done so with had been Mel, when the elf had implacably pursued the subject, and then when Evan had explained Mel had offered, of all things, comfort. What, had he expected the same kind of comfort from Serene? Certainly not; he would have had a whole different set of problems if she'd tried to hug him while as bare as she was. No, Serene seemed more a fixer -- and it had been strange, so strange, to be faced with sympathy and of all things advice.

By the time he's stripped down and is soaping up his shorts, he's resolved that it had been nothing more than nerves that had sent him so shaky and into such retreat. Nerves, at sharing secrets he's too accustomed to keeping close to his chest.

The rest, he decides, there's no need to grapple with now.

When he's done scrubbing out the dark fabric of his shorts, he regards them for a moment. He's cleaned his pants, too, and they he'll carry back to drape on a sun-soaked rock too, but... no. He'll suffer through wet underwear until he can steam-dry them. He steps back into the small concessions to modesty and pulls the wet cotton up to settle around his hips again. It clings, but he hardly notices; preoccupied, he begins sloshing back through the water to round the bend to join her again, distractedly expecting that his wading noise will catch her attention before he arrives.

Once he's waded round the corner she considers the clothes she's draped out to dry. She's spread her belongings widely and if he decides to wash his blankets as well then there will be no room to drape them in the sunshine through the trees.

She'll be helpful, she decides, and dry some of her clothing to clear a space for him. She pulls on her still-wet uniform vest, thinking that she's disturbed him enough by being too bare, and sets about assembling a little fire to toast her undergarments to dryness. As much as she enjoys frolicking in the water it is perhaps time for her to put away playing in favour of continuing their mission.

Lilac and Imber's splashing masks his approach; her ears are cocked for him calling out to her, and so she's knelt down on the shore with her back to him, building a little circle of pebbled to contain the fire she plans to set.

He's lost in his own thoughts, which are eddying down far less dark paths but still demand attention. It's enough to keep him distracted as he slogs around the corner, as he gets far enough out from the safety of cover that he can't back off quickly when he looks up and spots her.

The small boon of the shirt she's put on is entirely wiped away by the way she's bending. Evan does not look away nearly in time to avoid seeing much more than he ever meant to of her backside -- more than just her backside.

He turns in the water quickly, straight-backed, and immediately feeling the heavy heat of a blush rise on his cheeks, fit to steam himself dry. Whether she'd strictly meant to or not, Serene has managed to entirely derail him from his heavy thoughts.

As addled with embarrassment as he is, all he can think to do is press out a tense, "er, I'm, uh, coming back around." As if she won't spot immediately that he's done more than that already.

She jerks up to a straight back kneel, for his voice is in completely the wrong spot. A glance over her shoulder confirms that he's far nearer than he ought to be, and she blushes as she realises what sight must have made him blush if he'd approached her from his direction.

"Did you just look at my flower?" She jumps back into the water, crouching to cover her lower half, her knees pressed tightly together. "That's your fault entirely for walking round without warning!"

"Your fl--" but as he's asking the metaphor clarifies and he feels the red on his cheeks deepening all the way through crimson. The fact that his back is turned to her is small consolation: he's sure even his back is red.

Oh, god, and she sounds mortified herself. "I thought you'd hear me coming," he justifies urgently. "I'm sorry!"

"As long as you know that wasn't deliberate." Her embarrassment pales in comparison to his. Mercy, she didn't know a human could turn that colour of scarlet so far along their skin. Frowning, she wades out to him and touches his shoulder, gentling her tone.

"I want to dry some of my clothes to make room for your blankets. Will you come and supervise my fire? I do not want to set my clothes alight." In truth, she's more worried about getting distracted and moved by her fire enough that she'll deliberately let go of control, but framing her fear as that of a new apprentice feels less provocative and more like an offer of forgiveness.

She lets go before he can answer and begins her wade back, letting him have a little space to recover. "It is safe to turn!" She calls over her shoulder, as she's keeping her knees bent to cover herself below her waist.

Her consoling touch sends further mortification crawling along his skin, startled as he is by it, and he ferociously tamps down that reaction. He grabs for the forgiveness in the offer she extends, taking deep breaths and allowing for the fact that she's not running him off, that she doesn't even sound truly angry.

"Alright," he offers, and then takes the moment he needs to continue cooling down as she wades away. By the time she's at the shore he's... well, he's still crimson, but he's cooling rather than heating up. He turns, looking chagrined, but approaches the shore with a willingness that true mortification wouldn't have allowed for.

"Yeah," he reiterates, looking at her with apology still in his eyes. Is she not wearing underwear still? Hell, though, he isn't going to look too hard. Wading from the water, he drips as he approaches the fire, glad in the heat of the jungle for once to only be clad in his soaked shorts.

He resolves, even, to do what he can to dry her clothes faster. It's the least he can do after causing the both of them such a terribly embarrassing moment, and violating her privacy in such a way. He huffs again, glancing at her as he hunkers down by the fire. "Uh... thanks."

She sits in the water by the shore, looking at his face and not any of the rest of him. She's still a smidge pink on the cheeks but her embarrassment is fading into amusement at his reaction.

"There's nothing to thank me for. We are helping each other equally."

As much as she's tempted to tease she bites down on the urge, for what they have right now is a delicate friendship and she's exerting effort into being gentle so as not to send him back into his shell after so delicately drawing him out. With one last eye-crinkling smile she turns her attention to her little fire circle and lights up a flame.

This way at least they can sink into a rhythm of mentor and acolyte and find peace concentrating on a task together. No matter how they unbalance or embarrass each other, they have proven capable of working side by side. For Serene, that's a good sign that one day they may reach more solid ground together.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

EVENT ★ ZETA-12 FINAL WEEK

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