epidemiology | EVENT ★ PREPARE FOR TROUBLE

EVENT ★ PREPARE FOR TROUBLE

READY

After two weeks en route, the Mothership (maybe you should come up with a new name for it?) arrives at the rendezvous point. ALASTAIR technicians rift aboard and get to work, scurrying about the captured vessel to fiddle with controls and levers and buttons. After roughly a half hour, there's a flash of light --

And the Mothership is moored to Oska, tethered to the fragmented universe by strands of magitek and now safely encapsulated in the cloaking barrier keeping Oska hidden from prying eyes. Though Zymandis at large is no longer a problem, there must be teams still out there who are undoubtedly angry about losing their home base, so keeping the barrier up is a matter of safety.

Once they're ready, Audentes can disembark the Mothership via teleportation pads, beaming them directly to Oska's courtyard. There is already a line forming here of curious ALASTAIR recruits looking to teleport up to the Mothership and look around, and in fact, if you think Oska is a little more crowded than usual . . . you'd be right.

Usually only occupied by support staff and the occasional off-duty team or two, Oska is bustling with activity, similar to the sort of crowds seen at the Nondenominational Winter Celebration or Recollection Day. Except now, there is no revelry nor merriment, only a lot of people preparing for something very big on the horizon.

SET

While Audentes was off capturing the Mothership, it seems as though the TIMELINE.exe has calculated the most likely location of its twin, Zymandis's Timeline machine. Rift technicians are double-checking his work to ensure it's somewhere that recruits can safely rift to, but they're hopeful that they'll be able to deploy teams shortly to make short work of Zymandis's mechanical heart.

In the meantime, the technologically gifted are requested to help ALASTAIR scientists and engineers devise an upgrade for the TIMELINE.exe; if his calculations are correct and Zymandis's machine is where he says it is, it's important that its operating system is overridden with the new TIMELINE.exe 1.0.03 file. Otherwise there will be a chance that the universe-purging operating system that Zymandis follows will survive and all the efforts ALASTAIR has made through the centuries will be for naught.

For those who don't know their way around a motherboard, there's plenty of things to do -- with how many teams are in Oska, preparing for what is hopefully the final battle against Zymandis, you're likely to run into a familiar face or two. If socializing isn't in your wheelhouse, hone your skills in the courtyard or, for a bigger challenge, in the training room.

ALASTAIR support staff could also use assistance in the medical center or greenhouse, preparing vials, potions, and tinctures for use in the battle ahead. And if you're feeling really altruistic, stop by the kitchens to prepare some food for the one thousand Zymandis prisoners now filling the dungeons.

You didn't forget about the prisoners, did you? Of the captured Zymandis agents, only a small portion of them have agreed to join ALASTAIR. The rest are either too deadset in their belief in the Zymandis Timeline machine, or they're too distrusting of ALASTAIR to even consider joining up. The dungeons of Oska castle have not been used for their intended purpose in centuries -- prisoners are usually given a simple, heavily-guarded room somewhere in the castle -- but with this many prisoners, there's really nowhere else to put them all. Perhaps if someone were to be kind to them, they might change their mind about joining ALASTAIR's cause.

There's a lot to do and a lot to prepare for, so don't forget the relaxing opportunities that Oska has to offer: the baby squidges are due back on Zeta-12 soon for their maturation ceremony, so give them a warm goodbye while you can; the hotsprings is always a good place to relax one's muscles after a warm day; and the library is available for those who like to settle in with a good book in a dimly-lit room.

Most importantly, take advantage of this time in Oska. You'll need all the preparation you can get.

OOC NOTES

Welcome back to Oska! If you have any questions about this log, please direct them to the game FAQ. You may also submit mission ideas or player plots at any time.

Guest characters will be admitted to the comms until 14 October 23:59 UTC, so there's still time to sign up! We're excited to see some familiar faces and can't wait for you to be a part of the season finale.

We're in the home stretch now, so if you haven't taken the time to review our updated schedule, please do!

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[He's here, ostensibly, to relax. It feels as though things have begun to shift and change at an alarming rate, recently, feelings that had remained much the same over days and weeks and months of being here suddenly beginning to dissolve and collapse and transmute into something else. Going from believing he needs to get out of this place to accepting he'd never leave to finding that he doesn't want to has been a sudden and accelerated thing, made concrete in him only in the moment he'd seen the tapestry, seen the change in his ring. This is his home now. Oska. ALASTAIR.

He feels tired. Mentally drained, not from the fighting nor the return journey but from the exertion felt within his mind, the monumental shift in perspective required to lead him to this. And so he's here to relax, and to think, and in some ways to quietly mourn. Mourn everything he'll be leaving behind him-- as dark and twisted and cold as his world and his small miserable life has always been, it had still been his.

It attests to just how lost inside his own head he really is that he doesn't notice the sizable horse-lady lying at the water's edge until he's almost beside her. Hopefully she won't be too scandalised to find him wearing only a towel around his wait, pale flesh on display, the cold bite of the collar around his neck now starkly, cruelly visible. Doggishly, he tilts his head.]

Every time we run into each other, it seems to be a less than ideal situation.

[He says, and then manufactures a smile for her.]

Are you quite all right?

[Her own lack of focus is to blame as well. Her mental capacity to accept all of the insane things that have occurred since she joined ALASTAIR had almost been eclipsed by physical exhaustion for the first time since her recruitment. The chaos of the capture of the Mothership, her work killing beasts that had been released on the crew... it had taken its toll.

But there was one thing she'd learned about Oska, and that was that she had to expect men might appear at these hot springs, and so though she'd stripped off her bandages, the deer hide wrap she usually wore about her waist, her leather harnesses, and her outer shirt... she's kept herself decent with her inner black shirt still on.

As long as he wears a towel, she can accept it. It covered more than the loinclothes of her world's human men at festival or field did, anyway. ... She does take great care not to cast her eyes down, however.

He smiles. Sort of.]

Perhaps we are accursed.

[There's more resignation than fire in that comment, however. His question, though, she leaves without answer. At least not a verbal one- her half healed wounds would speak for themselves. The ones on her shoulder and chest in the shape of claws, on her leg in the shape of teeth.]

[She doesn't answer the question, but he does notice the wounds, eventually. Eyes on her face (he's a gentleman, you see), it's the scent of them that first begins to insinuate itself against his senses, something raw but healing. A scent he doesn't altogether dislike.

His eyes leave her face then, even has he barks out a laugh, and he takes in the claw marks that decorate her flesh. The shape that teeth have left behind. Inside him something stirs, turns over. The sensation of something panting right behind him, or perhaps inside his own head. He ignores it though, as he always does unless he's in the heated throes of a fight. Kerberos can wait.]

Accursed. Well. I'd say it's a fitting enough description. Of me, at least.

[He stands there then, hands on narrow hips-- he had been planning to remove the towel as it happens, slide into the water and stay there for hours. Now he isn't so sure. Feels self-conscious, suddenly. Focuses on her, instead.]

You should get those looked at. How tiresome it must be, to heal so slowly.

[Fitting enough for them all, perhaps.

Hayame has been wounded before, has been cut by blade and scratched by rocks, but the beasts of the Mothership had been tenacious, been all matter of alien shapes and horrific make. Both like and unlike what she'd needed to be careful of in her own world.

Wolves. Bears. Boars.

Her gaze slips to the new forming scar tissue across her equine chest, hand slipping down to put slight pressure near the healing wound, checking for lingering swelling.]

I have treated them.

[By her definition, anyway. Slowly, he says, but she would choose slowly over the creeping, crawling feel of invasive magic any day. (But for how long?)]

I will not beg a sorcerer to cast upon me and control my body.

[How strange, that so many seemed to think that fine.]

[He gives her a look, then. Considering, head tilted in that canine gesture of his. But then he's shrugging his narrow shoulders, moves closer to the water's edge. Perhaps, for now, he'll content himself with dipping his legs, only. Slides fluidly into a sitting position, legs submerged to the knee. Back to her now, the collar gleams dully, the savage scar that runs from nape to tail in plain view.

There'd been nothing like this, back there. The only water he'd ever seen until that terrifying moment on the beach of Nalawi had been confined to showers, or the murky dark underground 'river' that was really little more than a sewer. Funny then, how something that had instilled fear in him on first arriving with ALASTAIR could be almost a comfort now.]

And why is that?

[He asks it mildly, but not without interest. He has no experience with such things, after all-- assisted healing. Can't imagine what it might be like.]

Is it an unpleasant sensation?

[Hayame knew he was a warrior. He had to be. She may not have seen him in a true battle, but she has smelled the scent of danger that roiled off of him, had seen his aim and skill with weapons at her training. Without any cultural concept of human experimentation, she can only see the scar along his spine as a terrifying wound to have survived. He was either blessed... or cursed.]

It is as if their very spirit invades your own.

[Without meaning to, she shudders at the recollection, a full body movement that goes from top of human head to tail, ripples the water around her. She can still recall the sight of her slim left foreleg, broken in the prison ship crash, bone protruding from the dun hide and the blood-

But there is no scar there, despite how she had attempted to prepare herself for death.]

As if it takes control and forces from you a thing unnatural, undoing the act as if you could then pretend it had never happened.

[As if they were gods, to take away the mortality of men. But they weren't. Couldn't be. And what good could come from such hubris, such unnatural defiance?]

[Cursed-- well. Had she spoken such a thought aloud he would have laughed, would have agreed. Cursed is certainly the word. Or was, when his world had been filled with only violence and the rapid onset of mental fracturing, when every moment of every day had been punctuated by the knowledge that someday soon She would have no more use for him and what then? A fate worse than death, the dog-shaped mask, canon fodder.

But such thoughts aren't on him now. Instead he quietly considers her words, mulls them over. Undoing an act as if you could then pretend it hard never happened-- now that is something he knows. The scar he bears is savage and stark but he should be littered with countless others, his skin a patchwork of ugly marks that attest to the brutality of his existence, but aside from the marks along his Spine and up around the collar his skin is marble-white and flawless, unnaturally perfect.

A thing unnatural. Well.]

What does it feel like, then, as your own wounds close so slowly? Is it painful, for days and weeks on end?

[There is pain when he heals, when he regrows flesh and bone, but it's such a transient thing, over and done in the blink of an eye, that it hardly matters.]

[He asks as if he does not know, and that is enough to draw her gaze back to his scars, as if unsure that's what they were suddenly. Had her eyes deceived her? Was he attempting to mock her with such words?

But her look back at his scars don't actually bring her an answer, and Hayame instead narrows her eyes a moment before she presses a wet hand to her forehead, massaging briefly between her eyes. It must be the steam.]

Are you so wily in battle that you do not know?

[He does laugh this time, the sound of it bright and barking, and he turns to glace over his shoulder at her (sunglasses still in evidence despite his lack of clothes otherwise), flashes a smile.]

Oh, hardly. Though perhaps I could be, were there a need for it. I suppose that's one of the flaws in a specimen like myself-- we tend to go through rather than around. Why avoid injury if we have no reason to fear it? I suppose the pain keeps us from becoming entirely complacent, keeps us on our toes, but one can grow accustomed to pain.

[He shrugs, then. Looks away again, out across the water.]

A thing unnatural, you said. Well, that's what I am. Created for strength and speed and endurance-- my wounds last only moments, and then as you say, the act is undone and I can pretend it never happened.

[What good could come of such hubris, indeed. None, is the answer. Only terrible things, abominations like himself.]

[Sunglasses... really, Giovanni? It's almost more grating than the fact that he laughs- but not more so than the fact that she can't actually follow his explanation until he gets to the end.

Though even then... it's difficult. Her world has no science like many others seem to, and the idea of scientific experiment, of humans made unnatural through such work... she doesn't have a concept for it. Nor for drugs, or any other form of enhancement beyond diet and training.

The only thing she knows is what she herself was involved in.]

What did they breed your dam with?

[A demon?]

[A moment of silence then as her words settle into him, as their meaning asserts itself and temporarily shocks (the thought of it-- what blasphemy!) until finally breaking around another bout of laughter, louder this time. To think of anyone touching Her that way, to think of Her allowing it-- it leaves him with an odd feeling up behind his ribs, something hot and thick and almost (almost) angry. A form of sacrilege, that's what such an act would be.

But he says none of that, and when he speaks his words are light, all his internal gravity held in check.]

Oh, I highly doubt my dam would lower herself to such things. Not when there's DNA and test tubes and the like to achieve a far more potent result. As for where the rest of my genetic material hailed from...another researcher, I believe, although I'm hazy on the specifics. I'm the science project, not the scientist. Such information was never meant for me.

[Another moment of silence, and then he's glancing back over his shoulder again, expression thoughtful around the edges. In a rare moment of insight, he says--]

But I doubt any of this makes much sense to you, does it now. Just another one of those differences so vast as to be difficult to traverse. Our worlds, I mean, and all the things that separate them.

[He shrugs.]

I wasn't bred, I was made.

[Again, with that laughter. To cover how grating the sound is and how confusing the words he still uses, Hayame turns her head to attend to the hot springs and the reason she'd even come here in the first place. As he talks of DNA and test tubes and researchers, she reaches down to soak her hands in the hot water, warming them before she splashes a bit of it higher up on her flanks, runs her heated fingers along her shoulders.

She'd been tempted to remove the bindings around her chest, but. Certainly not in front of a man.

Hayame doesn't look back at him until he actually admits that to her, he speaks nonsense. ("Culture shock", was it?) She looks back away to formulate her response, trying to not reject what he says outright, despite how outlandish he sounds, how outside of her imaginative scope it is.]

How were you born, then?

[She tries to at least ground it in something. Tries to invision it- though all she has for unnatural births is the sorts of folk takes like boys born from peaches and girls from bamboo.]

[She's not alone in that respect, at least-- he wants to remove the towel, to sink neck-deep into the still, heated pools, to give himself over to comforting blankness for a while. But he's not about to do it whilst she's watching, already gets the idea that she'd likely disapprove.

So he remains where he is, poised at the edge, legs hanging over. Allows that to suffice for the moment, instead lapses into temporary silence as he considers how to answer her question in a way she might understand. Comes up short.

It's a difficult thing sometimes, all their differences. Something he's felt right down to the centre of himself often enough. Cutting him off, an isolation that drills down to the core. But it's something he's acclimating to, bit by bit. Can accept more readily than he once did.

He's not so sure she can say the same.]

I wasn't born at all. Not in the common understanding of it, at any rate. I was grown, I suppose you could call it. Inside a...

[Clearly she hadn't comprehended 'test tube', earlier, and he isn't sure what replacement he could use which she would understand. And so he shrugs. Smiles his crooked smile, almost (almost) apologetic.]

Have you ever visited the science labs? Here, or on the ship we captured? If not...well. I don't suppose it really matters. Sometimes it's best not to think too deeply on what one doesn't understand. I never have understood the talking skeletons, for example. And you're rather fantastical yourself.

[Her expression grows taut, debating for a moment whether she will take offense or not to his comments. She knew more than anyone how little she understood about worlds outside her own, about all this "science" and "technology"... but she still doesn't like to hear it on the lips of others.]

... grown as a plant is grown, you mean?

[She gives him the courtesy of attempting not to be cross, siding with the question in an attempt at understanding at least somewhat.]

I am hardly comparable to a talking skeleton. If you've confusion, I am sure it can be cleared up.

[At least she knew her own biology.]

[Her expression grows taut, sure, but he doesn't observe it, faced away as he is and therefore indifferent to her growing impatience with him, the effort it takes her to bite down on an acerbic response and offer something close to understanding instead. And so her answer comes, and he only shrugs his narrow shoulders, still somewhat at a loss by way of a better explanation.]

In a sense. It's as good an analogy as any. And, after all, I'm no scientist myself.

[It's not as though he fully comprehends the intricacies of his creation. Doesn't much care-- accepts what he is, utterly.]

And no, I suppose you're right. At the very least, the fact of your existence makes more sense than a living skeleton's does. Quite possibly more so than mine, in a lot of ways. I only mean that there's nothing quite like you where I'm from.

[The fetish mutants come closest, but he's not about to say that out loud. Doesn't suppose he'd like it.]

[In a sense. Fine. She lets it die in favor of continuing to gently splash hot water over her flank, tail swishing in the onsen shallows.]

Many people have called me "centaur".

[She's trying, though. She is.]

You have none of those tales in your world?

[A moment of silence then, something akin to a thoughtful pause as he thinks it through, considers her question, comes up a blank. There's a hint of tension in the set of his shoulders, and though he faces away from her that doesn't prevent his features from rearranging themselves into the slightest frown.]

Not that I know of, or can recall. But then, there's a lot about my world that I know nothing of.

[Ah, yes. He lived as a mole or something, underground, he had said. It was difficult for her to recall the talks she'd had on that ship, the overpowering fear of the deep black taken over much of her senses.

But she vaguely remembers that.]

Well, I shall just be glad for less of that word being thrown about, then.

[People acting as if they knew something about it, as if they knew something about her just because they'd heard some stories about some creatures called "centaurs".]

Apparently "centaurs" have reputations to which I do not prescribe.

[Well, there's something that can be said for him, at least. He's grating, certainly, laughs in all the wrong places and can be a cocky little shit when the mood takes him, but one thing he doesn't do is to pretend to possess more knowledge than he actually has. Understands - in that one respect - his own limitations.

He glances back at her again then, lifts his chin in a detached gesture of curiosity.]

Oh? What kind of reputations?

[Clearly, he's heard nothing of the sort.]

[That brings a snort- at least, directed at others and not him.]

Savagery, drinking, and rape, apparently.

I see.

[Look, there's nothing wrong with a bit of savagery. It's almost expected of a warrior, isn't it? Surely she knows that, has felt it beat deep down in her chest during the throes of a fight.

The rest though-- he recalls their network conversation, the revilement she'd displayed over that one guy's brazen comments.]

Admittedly, that doesn't sound quite your style.

[Hayame likes to think that she is a warrior, not a brute, elegant and sophisticated in battle. (Even though she knows the truth of it, the jinba by their very natures perhaps were more savage, more animal-like than a normal human could ever be.)]

It is not.

[Hmmph!]

[Well...he wouldn't call himself a brute, not exactly, regardless of the fact that he can certainly be brutal. Brutal and savage, yes, more animal than man perhaps, but there's a beauty and an elegance to be found in such things, in the terrible and deadly carnage that comes from a worthy fight. Mother's aesthetic, and so - even if it had to be hammered down into his bones before he could accept it into himself - also his.

But that doesn't matter here, and once again he laughs, though perhaps more softly than before.]

There's no need to sulk. I believe you.

I am not sulking-

[Never mind that the retort came a bit too quickly to be anything but defensive.

Still, she knows an opportunity to potentially excuse herself in a way that might disguise her discomfort with the... male form when she sees it, hauling herself out of the onsen with a heave and creak of equine knees, steam rising off her dun hide.]

I was merely thinking that I have intruded upon your time here more than is my due.

[He could deny that, insist that she hasn't, and in truth he's found nothing intrusive or unpleasant about her company despite the cool aloof attitude that always radiates from her. If anything, it makes her presence easier to bear than many. But...but. Where she is discomforted by the male form, he's unwilling to bare it in her presence and ultimately he came here to soak in the springs. To lose himself to the water's numbing warmth. If she leaves, he can shed the towel and do just that.

So he only shrugs. Tosses her a vague kind of smile before turning back to face the softly steaming water.]

If you say so. Take care of yourself, now.

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kisha - 2017-11-26 05:51 (UTC) - Expand

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