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

[ She might usually put a little bit of thought into whether or not she should give Evan alcohol, at least a few seconds' worth... except she's recently dropped some off with a definitely too-young robot (if such a thing really exists) and his clearly already impulsive human buddy, and presently the only moral debate she has is whether she really wants to share her own stash.

In a moment she sighs and tosses her head, a come with me gesture, and steps back through the row of potted trees that she'd popped out of.

She did just that, apparently. It's just not on her at exactly this moment. ]

You hid it in here?

[In honesty, Evan is halfway asking so he can get a bead on exactly how deep into the bottles she is just now. Hunting bugs with Ramir had actually sounded a tempting prospect, as he's long since learned to hold his own against enemies like these bugs. However, she strikes him as the sort who might be good at hiding how drunk she is till she just straight passes out, and that'd be a pain to risk in a fight.

He follows along obediently.]

This would be a bad day to discover one of the more ambulatory plants here has taken a liking to hard liquor.

I didn't hide it, god, I just left it over here.

[ That's out in a mumble as she brushes past some sort of purple-leafed palm tree whose leaves twitch a little when they're touched. Around the other side of that is a little wooden side table she'd dragged over from somewhere and its accompanying outdoor patio furniture type chair. She gestures vaguely toward the metal flask, still sitting in the middle of the table. ]

Knock yourself out. Literally, I guess. It's that real strong shit from Nalawi — do you remember Nalawi? [ She hates asking things like that, and does it with an unhappy glance over at him. ]

Of course I remember Nalawi, [he shoots back,] I'm old, not addled.

[It's true enough, even if details have largely faded. Picking up the flask, he sniffs the contents and makes a noise, holding it away from his face again.] "Christ, I may have forgotten how much that smells like paint thinner, though. Those deer must have had harder stomachs than most humans I've met. [Yet for that fussing, he takes a drink, and not just a perfunctory sip, either.

Capping the flask again, he holds onto it for now, his attention apparently shifting entirely to Ramir.]

So who've you run into that's got you in such a mood?

[ Well, at least there's that. It can't have been that long for him, right? If he remembers stuff. Still, she doesn't look very pleased as she watches, still standing near to that weird, fleshy purple tree. The flask and its table and chair are all his. ]

Doesn't fucking matter, I dunno if you even know him. [ He does — or he did — but that's all the last thing Ramir wants to get into. She sighs. ] Distract me. You look like you got about a billion good stories in you, tell me one of those.

[Despite her dismissive response, Ramir's apparent misery does furnish Evan with suspicions, mostly in the direction of Sigma, and he earmarks the man as someone to look into finding later. Hell, though, even if that's not why Ramir's so bummed, it'd be nice to see the man again in any case...

That, however, is not the question of the moment. He cocks his head and leans his rump on the table rather than sit down properly.]

Do I? Here I didn't think I looked much different than I did the last time you saw me. [He tucks the flask into his pocket for now.] Hmm, stories....

How about the time I helped my sister trounce her ex in ritual combat? That was a shitshow of a day, for sure.

[ She'd correct him, that it's not the outside that looks like it's got a billion stories, and she's not so drunk that she can't see that — but honestly, why bother. The cloud around her mind is starting to fade again, too fast, like it aways does, and an explanation seems like too much effort. ]

That. Yes. [ That goes with a combo snap-and-point at him. ] Who was she dating? Why'd they break up? You gotta start with the juicy parts.

[He grins.] How is ritual combat against an ex not the juicy part?

[He settles in, leaning more heavily against the table. If Ramir wants for distraction, he'll offer up distraction.] Not dating; married. A red dragon named Relach. They broke up because he was an insufferable cunt and she finally noticed.

She'd started seeing him when she was, oh, got to have been twenty or so, and I'm fairly certain she did it half because it drove my dad crazy. Cassie -- my sister -- she used to live for that shit. The guy's name was Rel, and he was a transplant from Europe. He had been making himself into a shit-stirrer somewhere in France, and so they sent him off to the colony out in the Rockies to cool his head where the population density of humans wasn't so high. But he started hanging out with the little group of dragons in the city me and Cass grew up in, and she was sort of in with that group herself, and -- well. You know how these things go.

[He waves a hand, vaguely indicating the torrid details of hormone-addled young romance, which do seem to span so many worlds and species.]

She stuck it out for a solid five years after eloping with him, but it turns out dragon marriage contracts are harder to break than just setting them up in flames. He chased after her intermittently for another tennish years after that, demanding she take him back or fight him -- his clan had some ancient laws about ritual combat and divorce, and I mean, fighting a dragon's a hell of a prospect even for my sister, when Reds are impervious to fire. She had to conscript me and we had to get a little sneaky.

Now, I am not much more a fighter now than I was when I was here last. [He concedes that with a grin and a nod for old foibles.] But I am fairly good at pulling a trick or two. We knocked him out cold with a well-timed combination of a low roof and some weakened structural supports.

Knocked one of his incisors out, actually. [There's a wolfish smugness to his expression.] Cass took that and made a sword out of it, for all that she knew what the hell to do with a sword at that age. Still hangs above her mantle.

EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

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