epidemiology | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ while Loki isn't exactly fearless, he's not anything other than reckless, either. he goes on poking the bug, making a face when his finger presses into its soft, slimy middle. ]

Gross. [ he says to himself, trying to wipe off what the dead bug left on his finger on the stone floor. it doesn't work out so well for him, so he wipes it on his pants. ] Huh? Ah, yes ... [ and he gets to his feet, he can hear the admonishments of his mother echoing in his head from being rude at lack of introductions. ]

Loki of Asgard. You have my thanks.

[Loki.

The Loki she knew did not look like this boy... when he was male. But then again, she had determined that this was no longer her time already, and so it went that there would be others displaced. Whether it meant he was displaced into the past or the future she could not guess, if he was even displaced at all, but... this was no to confuse him needlessly.]

It is nothing, Loki of Asgard. I am Lorelai Wolff.

[He'd been the one to teach her an illusion, once upon a time some decade ago, that shrouded her childish appearance in that of a woman's. She did not need to disguise herself so any longer... but she'd kept the name.]

Your finger, please.

[She's already pulling out a glove and snapping it at her wrist, uncapping a vial and readying a piece of gauze, gesturing for his hand before he wiped all that perfectly good sample off.]

Lorelai?

[ there was one of those in Asgard, and there were whispers of her in his past, but he never pursued them. he was a new Loki, one of not-the-past, and he wouldn't look back. ]

Er, nevermind. Have you knowledge of where we are?

[ he had been clearing bugs because he had known it the right thing to do, right? they were hurting people, or could seriously hurt people, and while Loki wanted to get home to Thor and Leah and Thori, he didn't mind the detour of heroics. she asks for his finger, and he feels as if it's payment for a debt, so he offers it without complaint. ]

That's right.

[She'd long suspected that name might have some significance to Loki, since he'd first suggested it to her so many years ago... but she hadn't considered it her place to pry then, and she especially didn't know, just taking his finger and cleaning the rest of the bug slime from it with her gauze before popping that sample into a vial.]

This is the castle of Oska, headquarters of ALASTAIR.

[Had he no memory, spawned upon this time with nothing to prepare him?]

Were you not briefed?

[ it's an echo of a prior life, rather than a memory of one forced into another body. it doesn't come as easily, as if the universe itself had decided to gamble a hand on his clean slate, whether or not it would pay was another story entirely.

Loki shakes off his finger, wiping it carelessly on his pants as she speaks. ]

Briefed? Er—no, I just sorta arrived, and then there were bugs all over. [ and between getting chased and not knowing where he was, he landed in the circumstances that carried him to her. his tone indicates he's not unused to the unusual. ] What's Oska? What's ALASTAIR? Why do they want me?

[ because no one needed Loki, tbh. ]

Hmm...

[Problematic, that. Seemed the temporal issues were pulling people in under ALASTAIR's radar, which meant... no briefings on this world, or their mission... perhaps she should consider herself lucky to be brought from the future- or rather, that she was still in ALASTAIR.]

Think of ALASTAIR as a force that maintains balance across worlds... and Oska as their headquarters.

[She'd explained this countless times now in her decade with the group, but breaking the news to new recruits never got easier, not really.]

Who they want may be irrelevant, but time has spit you up to join us nonetheless.

[ it's good that she took the sample, because his finger is beginning to burn a little bit. he frowns, looking at it, wiping a little more furiously before it disperses between actually being wiped off and his own regenerating physiology. ]

What do you mean, maintains balance? [ that sounds like a loaded phrase to him, subjective based on who and what decided balance was. ] Spit me up?

[ this has left him with more questions than answers. ]

[He was certainly right about that one. Clever even from a young age, she ought to have expected it.]

It means whatever their governing machine tells them is the way to maintain the balance of energy in the universe. In one world it may be to save a species, in another to murder a single soul.

[No matter how many missions she'd done, it still hadn't gotten to be something she accepted as "right"... but no matter her efforts, an alternative had yet to present itself. There was no helping it.]

I am afraid even I do not understand the variables that lead to one landing in ALASTAIR's employ... but now that you are here, you may need to make the best of it for now.

[Or for... however long this strange blending of past and future lasted.]

Balance of energy? [ more words. ] That sounds rather nebulous. [ he doesn't sound like he doesn't believe her, but there's a part of him that seems dubious about all the subjective terms being rolled out as an explanation. ]

Energy can mean a lot of things. [ of course, it's easier for him to push, to ask more questions. ] I want to help. [ he always does. ] But I want to make sure that I'm doing the right thing.

[ easy to say, harder to live up to, especially with who he is. ]

ALASTAIR is, sadly, not the type of organization that likes to deal in the black and white.

[Even a decade in their employ had brought her no closer to actually feeling as if she could judge what she was doing as "right", or "wrong"... as frustrating as that was. As she knew it could be to new recruits.

"New", in Loki's case.]

If you want to do what is right... it will be better to focus on helping the recruits themselves. With the bugs, perhaps... if you are careful.

[It was all the advice she could give.]

EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

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