315/Dawning of an Endless Night

Dawning of an Endless Night
Date of Scene:	31 July 2014
Location:	The Secret World <TSW>
Synopsis:	Strange interference turns out to be a signal, leading a group of Elites to discover a strange new world... with old, terrible dangers.
Cast of Characters:	Kotone Yamakawa, Staren, 151, 472, Blurr, Riva Banari, Wuyin Tsai, Inga, 526

---

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Seemingly random communication devices in the Multiverse experience minor, barely-notable interference over the course of several minutes: moments of dropped calls and desynchronizing signals, with weird, buzzing static filling the gaps in rhythmic patterns. The magically-inclined who hear it get a sense of something like a bug flying too close to an ear.

The interference becomes more prevalent for another couple minutes, with the static clearing slightly. A distinct, distracting beat fills the gap in the airwaves, oddly easily identifiable as Morse code for anyone devoting attention to listening. The tones repeat several times: LISTEN. LISTEN. LISTEN. Another hiss and buzz follows; a sudden string of beats resolving into numbers. Coordinates for a warpgate?

There gap gradually lessens until the interference vanishes completely, compensated for or petering out into silence. Until it stops, the same beat, the same word starts to repeat: DRAUG. DRAUG. DRAUG. DRAUG.

The distinct, definite 'interference' leads here: to a warpgate inside a new, altogether different world.

Exiting the gate opens into what looks like the air... except there's no sky, and no ground. Travellers find themselves standing on long wooden branches, twisting off towards the trunk of an enormous tree that ascends and descends seemingly infinitely until it vanishes from sight. The geometries in here are strange, and play tricks on the eyes and senses. It's unpleasant, but strangely honey-scented. The sourceless light is soft and warm, but the entire place is just hard to process.

Fortunately, you don't have to process it very long.

Space warps. A single step carries the travellers from the warpgate down the branch, hurtling forward at breakneck speeds. In a matter of seconds, they're deposited on a completely different platform, directly in front of a portal that seems to lead to... somewhere else. Radios give off another second of the weird interference. It's coming from in there.

The other side of the portal is... normal? The path ascends from a short tunnel filled with greenery, with bees buzzing around the aperture and going about their bumbling business. It opens to what looks like a broken Viking longship sticking out of a rocky mountainside, the bottom dropped out of one side with a short fall leading to a grassy clearing. A path leads out of it, into the woods and to what looks like a paved road.

It's late afternoon by local time, but the sky is filled with a dense grey fog, blotting out the sunlight and making it seem even dimmer than usual. The air is cool, and would probably be a sunny day if it weren't for the fog.

There's no sign of who -- or what -- sent the signal. There is, however, movement in the trees across the street. They /look/ human shaped, shuffling around...

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley is transported to a strange dimension of branches that carry her from place to place. She is not sure what to make of this, so she doesn't overthink it. She follows the signal to where it guides her, her steps purposeful and her face showing her battle-readiness. She brought her longsword and her daggers, as well as the Armor Journal, prepared for a physical melee that will test her mettle. Leather armor protects her diminutive form, under a layer of black robes.
    When she steps out into the tunnel, she notices several things. One: Bees. Buzzing. It distracts her, because she's a perceptive girl, but she doesn't remark on it. She instead follows the path. The path leads her steady gait toward a paved road. She considers the environment around her, and then squints past the trees. She readies herself for combat by finding a spot in the open so that she isn't caught by anything coming around a tree or out of the ground. That is, she stands on the paved road, and hopes that it isn't a busy path.
    She's waits for one or more of the shapes to come to her. She isn't in a rush to draw too much attention. It's a shame she bleeds mana like a stuck dragon, though, which might make her very conspicuous to a bunch of seemingly magical undead creatures.

Black Tailmon (526) has posed:
Curiousity killed the cat, or so they say.

But in this case, it didn't...

Wandering through portals in search of that annoying buzzing signal finds a certain ebon-coated, feline, digimon clinging to the underside of a twisting World-Tree branch. Enormous ears go flat, almost as soon as the scent of honey hits her nose, and then...

Space begins to warp...

"...eeeeeEEEEE... UNF!"

Anyone standing nearby that open tunnel just might catch a glimpse of a beast rolling by across the grass if they happened to be looking -down-. Being that she's less than two feet high, though, even on her hindlegs... she'd be easy to miss. Round and fluffy, black with splashes of dark purple and red, the creature rolls for a few feet before sitting up. It's yellow irised eyes flutter open and closed momentarily, pupils dialating as they adjust to the light... and its tail sways lazily in the foggy air...

"...Well, this is decidedly creepy..."

"...I like it!"

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr had been sitting at his workstation on the Ark-32, doing a routine check of surveillance probes when a strange signal pops up on the comms arrays. He runs some checks, cross-referencing the patterns with any known communication codes and it seems to have a similiarity to Morse code, the primitive electronic pulses the humans used for long-distance communication, at least according to the database.

    He runs tracking algorithms, and is eventually able to trace it to its source, an uncharted planet several light hours from here. Well it's not too far, he might as well investigate, right? He could use the warpgates but he barely fit in those in vehicle mode so needless to say they are somewhat uncomfortable. Thus, he opts to orbital bounce from a stealth craft in geosynchronous orbit, though the dense fog over the area makes getting a lock on a stable location somewhat difficult.

    Oh well, here goes nothing...

    The bounce lights up and sends the Autobot down to the surface, landing him in a seemingly normal grassy area. But in his line of work, there's always more than meets the eye. Especially if there are weird signals involved. Well hopefully a scan will help shed some more light on the situation. So as soon as he touches down, he begins scanning the area, especially in the direction the movement is coming from.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa had the sense when hearing about what might be here from the signal to pack a little more than she normally does, thankfully she's cleared to access the XCOM armory, the rifle is slung across her back nicely enough and she's carrying a few other things as she steps through the warp gate. She finds her self in a strnge palce. She looks at this alien place, She got nothing she's making to to have this loaded for external memory later. She however follow the path and soon she doesn't need to know where she is too long. She's now somewher that has the ruin of a long ship. Thatmakes her pause and kneel down to get a look as others arrive. She then moves to rise up and get out of the caves.

"Seems I'm not the only one here."

Inga has posed:
A woman is standing in the middle of the paved road, hunching slightly over a long walking staff carved from ash and inscribed with a set of elder futhark runes. The woman is cloaked, the wool a dark grey, hood concealing her face as she taps with her staff at the pavement. Slowly she ambles forward, following the double yellow line, tracing it with her staff cautiously, as if expecting for it to come up and bite her. A braid of white falls from the confines of her hood as she leans down to inspect the yellow lines more closely once she is fairly sure it is indeed stationary, and not likely to eat her.

The bent woman straightens somewhat as she hears something from the bushes, turning her head to reveal a suprisingly youthful face, dark green eyes widening as she sees the creatures spot her and begin to race toward her, their mouths filled with bloody teeth, the pallor of the skin decidely /wrong/.

A hand reaches toward her belt, a long knife being pulled from its sheath. She touches the iron of the blade to her lips, then quickly brings it down to stab into her other hand, staff cradled in the crook of her arm. Blood blossoms. The woman reaches up and moves her bloodied hand around herself, the blood billowing outward with a soft crimson glow that creates a protective barrier around her.

"Draugr! Get away from me!" she cries, knife in one hand, staff in the other.

She can't run.

'Oh gods, I'm going to die,' she thinks.

The zombies run toward her and the woman screams, flicking her bleeding hand outward again, her blood splashing one of the creatures, burning its decaying flesh like acid.

But they're still coming.

Inga screams.

Dimentio (472) has posed:
Dimentio heard the frequency on the radio, and the humming of bees is what got him interested in it. Listening in to find the warpgate coordinates, he was able to convince one of his allies to join him, he'd possibly need her power for something /this/ ominous.

Which is why a creepy clown and a tiny green little girl are hurtling through the trees and portals, landing harmlessly somewhere 'normal'. Mimi lands on Dimentio's head, his disembodied hands calmly removing her as she pouts. Dimentio then proceeds to grab her, as the two teleport forward several times (beats walking!). But when they spot the source of the disturbance, they quickly teleport away...? Guess they're not going to be doing anything after all.

Also, one of those draugr that just appeared seems kind of weird, isn't it? Especially since it's not giving off any magic, atleast near the level of the other draugr.

Staren has posed:
    Staren's getting ready to head out when it comes to his attention that Draug is a kind of undead. So, there's to be zombies, are there? Staren prepares for combat, then...

    Staren currently has the appearance of, well, himself, but in some unusual armor. The famous (well, in his world) Triax BLUE armor (ironically painted red) with its distinctive round pauldrons with little round indentations in them, though without the built-in arm weapons it's usually paired with. There's also a tail covered in segmented metal. Instead of the distinctive skeletal faceplate, though, is a simple helmet with a transparent, full-face visor. This isn't a hulking cyborg body, so instead of exposed metal, a bit of synthflesh is visible at his neck between the helmet and the chestplate. In addition, his trusty magic messenger bag is slung over his left shoulder to hang at his right side, in an armored carrying case that's strapped in place so it won't bounce around when he's fighting. His signature laser pistol and beam saber are also holstered at his hip, and what looks like some kind of assault rifle with scope and underbarrel grenade launcher is slung over his back.

BLUE Cyborg Reference -

BLUE Cyborg picture -

Staren steps out of the gate and wooooah. He crouches down low, holding his hand to the branch below. "What... a world tree?" He looks around and... ooof that made it worse. It's weird -- there's no headache for the robot body, or the like, so it's more like... he just can't process what he's seeing. Still... the branch is present enough. Carefully, he stands up, and takes another step forward--

    Wooooooooooah

    Staren tries to steady himself, arms and tail stretching out for balance, but... it's not like he lost it in the first place. Scans of the portal reveal it as the origin of the strange signal. He hesitates. He tries turning around and stepping again, to see if it returns him to the warpgate -- whether it does or not, he's come this far, so he steps back up to the portal and through it.

    Finally, reality's back. Staren lets out a deep breath he didn't realize he was holding in. And here are... bees. Ooookay. Staren frowns slightly. Getting stung would be unpleasant, if he had returned to his organic body. But... like this, he has nothing to fear from bees, so he moves on. A boat? A crashed viking boat by woods and a... paved road. That tells him something about this world. He thinks. Actually on reflection, a paved road and a viking ship could mean anything really. He wonders if he'll look out of place here... well, if he sees other people, he can activate Iianor's illusion spell.

    Oh hey, there are other people now! Well. Human shapes. Shuffling around.

    This is not Staren's first zombie apocalypse. He draws his laser rifle and waits with Ainsley, watching, waiting. Of course, if they sense living things, he won't show up, but if they sense some kind of spirit or soul or magic, who knows? Ainsley gets a nod of greeting, the others get curious looks.

    Wait. There's a woman there! He opens his mouth to speak, hesitates. Could she be one of them? He's about to scan for lifesigns when the zombies--sorry, draugr--rush her. Well, this seems pretty straightforward. Staren levels his laser rifle and starts shooting zombies.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Stepping back propels Staren back towards the Warpgate. It looks like he can come and go, though he gets the feeling he shouldn't stick around very long in here. It's... disconcerting.

Passing through the fog, even teleporting, is uniquely uncomfortable. Blurr appears, but there's a film of moisture on him, apparently normal. He feels /dirty/, though, simply /unclean/. The scan reveals that the road winds up towards a town, with the forest extending over a ridge on the other side of the road. There are a great number of people(?) moving through it in various directions. Some of the shapes are larger.

More of the shapes start to come out of the woods. They're humans, with the complexion you'd expect from corpses and with black, filmy eyes. They make wordless sounds as they approach, rushing out of the woods at a laboring run, arms outstretched and mouths open. Inga is directly in their path, and they're coming from all directions /except/ from where the portal is.

A gunshot rings out. One of the undead drops, pitching over from a shot to the head. A man steps out from behind one of the trees, holding an old lever-action rifle and wearing a stetson. He takes aim at the next, but only seems to be firing when they stray too close to the path to the portal.

"Well? You all just gonna stand there, or are you gonna get in there?" He seems to be speaking to the collected group of you.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa can hear the scream of someone calling out, that gets Kotone to unshoulder the rifle and make sure it's ready. She mutterss a bit and hopes the choice to bring reaper rounds was a good idea. She sees a woman strangely dresse and dealing with something that ignores the laws nature as Kotone's world knows them. She brings up the rifle takes a deep breath and calls out.

"DOWN!"

She gives Inga second to make suyre she's clear she'll line up a shot and fire a short burst with the battle rifle. The reaper rounds hopefully will do what they were made to do against thse Draugr whatevde those /things are/ wait is that a barrier of blood? What is this? The unknown man is right she'll snap off another controlled burst, must not panic, oddly XCOM's helped with the zombie factor given their own zombie problems.

Staren has posed:
    Staren tries to help pick off draugr approaching Inga. "Lady, get over here!" he shouts. And then... some guy shows up. "In where? The portal? We just came /out/ of it! ...Although, maybe going back in would be a good idea all the same..."

    Staren notices that Kotone has joined the fight! "So... finally decided to fight, huh? Mmh. I hope it's the right thing for you..."

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley's head snapped toward Inga as she heard the scream. The lizard girl frowned a frown that reptiles seem a little cartoonish doing. A shuffle of her feet precedes the soft metallic hum of the wood-aligned longsword being drawn from its scabbard, and then she begins to rush toward the undead, grimacing at the idea of having to fight so many of them. She really doesn't have a lot of mana and can't waste it on lightning spells if a good old sword strike will do the job.

    The scholar lizard seems to have rolled with this situation pretty quickly. Very little shock was given toward the draugr, the witch, the incoming allies or curious parties, or the bizarre warpgate hub she just travelled through. In fact, she was already moving to help before that man with the rifle took any shots. She didn't waste time gawking.

    Instead, her eyes glow a faint red as she tries to chop an undead creature up with violet sword swings! She isn't a master swordswoman so she'll probably be picking off undead much slower than the others would. Curiously, she manages to avoid getting mobbed, somehow moving about the battlefield as if she's perfectly aware of her direct surroundings at all times. An uncanny creature, if not as effective as most everyone else here. She tries to focus on the ones trying to get close to Inga.

Black Tailmon (526) has posed:
Tailmon's furr bristles, tail lashing angrily at the air, in response to the rifle-bearing mans inquiry. "...I take orders from no one!" Her eyes glow a subtle red hue, an aura of red seems to leak out from her that covers her entire form... and then it drops off sharply again...

The Digimon's eyes snap shut tightly. Exhale. Rage would be wholy inappropriate right now, might spoil any potential for fun there is to be had if everyone starts shooting at her too!

"...but... I suppose I can play along!" Her momentarily icy exterior melts almost on a whimsy, as she decides that there is fun to be had in this too! Killing things is her speciality anyway...

...Breaking off into a full sprint toward a grouping of the undead a moment later, the tiny feline leaps into the air and shouts, "CAT LASER!!!", before emitting a pair of bright purple energy beams from her eyes that cut through the air like a knife through hot butter!

Riva Banari has posed:
There is a gunshot that cuts through the air as Inga shields against the undead. Tracking back the sizzling greenish bullet reveals a new arrival from the Agartha portal, a woman in a low-ranking Templar uniform. She's holding a pair of pistols, with thin, gleaming circuitry pulsing along the barrels.

"Sorry I'm late." says Riva. "I thought I'd have to go overland farther to find the infestation." She looks to one side and the other as she realizes who's present. "THANKS FOR COMING! LET'S GO!" She yells, immediately diving into the middle of the undead to try to peel them away from the yelling Inga. "I don't know who you are, but if you can't fight, fall back!" Riva calls. She spins, seemingly instinctively winging bullets in a circle around her as she unleashes bullet spam.

There is a purple beam that fires past her and Riva pauses to look past the zombies, blinking. "Did you just yell 'cat laser'?" She asks, her astonishment costing her a valuable second.

Dimentio (472) has posed:
As soon as Mimi realizes there's other people there attacking, she quickly breaks her ruse, sadly drawing aggro from the real draugr. "HEY! Who do you think you're SHOOTING AT?~", the..draugr shouted, before it was suddenly yanked by an invisible force away from the attack of another draugr. A ripple in the air reveals a purple, yellow, and black clown, smiling as he stares at the Southener. "Well well, what a party you're having here, eh?~". Mimi takes the time to return to little girl form, as Dimentio hums.

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr pulls in the information from the scan and files it away in his memory banks. Hmm...road leads to a town, more forest, a ridge, town is populated. The shapes appear to be human but at this distance he can't quite tell. There's a feeling of being dirty after the orbital bounce, which makes him a bit uneasy but he brushes it off quickly and looks around at the other members of the Union, recognizing Kotone. Oh, that cybernetic human that went to crazy lengths to help a stranger, huh. He has a few questions for her, but right now a human lady is being attacked by um...mutated humans? Maybe? He's not really sure what they are. He's heard of Cybertronian 'zombies' (sparkeaters') but not human ones.

    Well anyway they look like they're about to eat her alive or something, so with a low hum the blasters come out of arm compartments and the high-energy photons come out of the blasters, and are totally -not- invisible like Staren's. And not silent either, likely a lot louder in fact, given how much larger he is than most. BOOM BOOM BOOM PEW PEW PEW.

Inga has posed:
A giant blue beam of light shoots down from the sky, and Inga would most certainly stare a lot longer if she wasn't about to be mauled by the undead. She does however, perhaps believe Thor himself has come down to smite her enemies, and she is all for it.

The undead continue to rush toward her, at least until they seem to simply /explode/ in front of her. Gore flies spectacularly, splashing the road, her clothes, her shocked face. She's no stranger to blood and violence...but this? She's never seen anything quite like this.

The next sounds send her jumping back, almost tripping over herself. It is almost like thunder, but not at all like thunder at the same time. As another zombie's brains get blasted, Inga's wide eyes turn toward the strangely dressed man in the /very/ odd hat. Her expression is completely uncomprehending. It isn't that she doesn't understand his words, she does, but simply being faced with such utter madness. There is all too much to process at once.

Someone yells "DOWN!" This at least, she can understand. The cloaked woman falls to the road, hands up to shield herself from whatever it is that is coming next.

Loud Things happen. That is about as much sense of this all as Inga can make for the moment.

She looks up toward Staren, who seems to be calling her over. Between him and the draugr, well, she suppose she'll take him.

Another appears, Riva, and calls to her as well. Igna gets up, a painfully slow process when surrounded by zombies, and moves about as quickly as she can toward the others.

Someone is yelling "CAT SOMETHING SOMETHING!"

Surely, she's lost her mind.

Once behind the warriors, as that's what they must be, Inga tries to get a hold of herself. What is this awful place!? Why have the gods brought her here!? So many questions, but they will never be answered unless she lives through is!

"Freyja guide me, and if I fall save a place for me in your hall," she whispers, placing her staff down. She kneels then, her head falling back to look toward the sky, words of power flowing from her lips as she begins the curse. The long knife is in her hand again, and without flinching Inga slices deep into the underside of her arm, blood spraying from the opened vein--but one of the zombies seems to start steaming, then falls over, presumably dead.

Again, anyway.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
"The /fight/, kid, not the -- damnation," he growls. Another one comes out of the woods, perilously close to the path to the gateway. The man seems slightly irritated, but turns to take care of it. He leaves the bigger group to the cluster of heroes and otherwise -- and spares the clown a glance, too. "Just another day on Solomon Island," he remarks.

Kotone's rifle rounds perforate the hell out of the undead. Exit wounds are wet and messy, but it takes several bursts for one to go down. Whatever kinds of undead these are, they're /tough/. Staren's laser rifle, meanwhile, does a little bit better, with chunks of necrotized flesh superheating and exploding off of the creatures. Covering fire lets Inga get closer.

Cats apparently have lasers, and they work about as well as the invisible kind, thinning the herd even further. The gathering group of them slowly gets cut down, even as more stream out of the woods -- right into Riva and Ainsley, whose combined bullet storming and furious swordplay leaves punctured, diced chunks of meat all over the ground. It looks swords work just as well as guns. Maybe a little better.

One more small group starts to approach down the street... and runs directly into blaster fire from something much larger than them. The photon blasts knock them flat on their asses, smoldering and burning, and the blood spray keeps them and a straggler there for good.

The undead stop swarming... at least for the moment. Sensors and super senses can detect more of them further up the road, but they're a ways off. They can also detect something small approaching from the woods, with something much larger moving directly behind it.

The man with the rifle looks at the group, peering quizzically at the less human members of the party. "Well now. Ain't that somethin'." He thumbs his hat. "Welcome to Kingsmouth town, folks. Jack Boone's my name; I'm s'posed to watch this here path for newcomers, but I reckon they didn't expect folk like you." He gives Riva in particular a nod. "I'm leavin' this to you, Templar. I've got dinner cooking. I'll be around if you need me."

Boone turns and starts back into the nearby trees. There's a tiny camp tucked away back there with clear sight on the path to the portal.

Staren has posed:
    Seriously did that cat just yell 'cat laser' and shoot a cat laser, that was... that was something, alright. Staren stares at tailmon for a split-second before looking back to the fight, but soon the zombie herd seems to have thinned out. The strange lady is spewing blood all over which is kind of weird but it seems to be working for her? Maybe she's a mutant with acid blood powers. But how does she keep from hurting herself with blood loss?

    Such a question may have to wait a moment, because there are more pressing ones.

    Staren turns to Riva -- this is the first time he's seen the new UEF ally in person.

    "So, what is going on? What is this place, why are zombies here, what is Hat Guy over there talking about, what are we doing?" As Staren switches from firing a barrage of lasers to a barrage of questions, he ejects the JA-12's e-clip and loads in a fresh one -- it looks much like a modern pistol magazine, except the battery port is in the butt of the gun, because the place where ammo would normally go is occupied by an internal spare battery instead.

Blurr has posed:
    The screwed up humans get blasted down pretty easily. Blurr didn't expect them to be very durable, they certainly didn't look it. Well organics in general just aren't as durable period. He keeps scanning ahead, and picks up on more of the zombies coming, though he's not worried about them, they're moving pretty slowly and given how they took to the lasers he doesn't think they're much of a threat.

    But what's -that-? Something bigger is coming. He glances at Boone, and was about to ask him some questions when the guy just takes off. "Hey now wait an astrosecond--!" And he's gone. Well he'd better not be yelling at them later for blowing up something that wasn't supposed to be blown up...hmph. The speedster doesn't like not really knowing anything about this particular situation. "There's something moving a few kliks from here, I think. I'm gonna go check it out." And with that, there's the that famous sound of shifting gears and metal as the Autobot folds up into a sleek-looking hover racer and speeds off into the woods to get a closer look at whatever's coming.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley ends her sword play by pulling out a cloth to clean the sword she had just been using. The blade, despite being used to cut through a bunch of undead, seems to be in just as pristine of condition as when she drew it from the scabbard. She doesn't put it away yet, simply making a face at the blood and ichor that slops off the metal. She doesn't like undead very much. She shrugs at Boone's quizzical look, not having a very good explanation for herself and so she abstains from commenting.
    She turns her attention over to Blurr, and grunts in affirmation of his words. When he darts off to investigate, she breaks off from the group in a jog toward where Blurr is going so she can help him out, holding the hilt of the longsword in both hands so that she doesn't drop the weapon if she stumbles. She didn't even spare a How Do You Do to the others of the group! In fact, she leaves a lot of the questions to Staren, who is eager to learn. She, on the other hand, is used to the idea of a hostile world full of very dangerous beasties.
    "Wait up!" she shouts over to him, a little distraught at the idea of someone running off ahead by themselves. She doesn't want Blurr to get hurt!

Inga has posed:
The undead hoard seems to have been taken care of, at least for a small time. A precious lull.

Inga looks toward Jack Boone with wide eyes, her knife poised above her bloody mess of an arm, ready apparently to draw more. Oddly enough, the wounds she had only just inflicted upon herself to work her magic are already sealing themselves up, her flesh knitting back together before their eyes. The knife is set down, her chest heaving with panicked breaths. She has so many questions she doesn't even know where to begin.

Just as she is about to ask this Jack fellow some questions, her turns to leave, motioning toward one of the women. Inga's eyes fix on her, a hundred questions floating through her head, but what finally comes out of her mouth is this; "Shield-maiden, have you come from the world tree?"

She looks around at the others then, choking as she sees a lizard person with a sword--finally, a familiar weapon, and it is being wielded by a /lizard person!?/ Alright, alright. A lizard person. Yes, alright. Inga thinks she can deal with this, maybe. It isn't so strange, is it? Perhaps she is one of the vettir that guards this forest? Yes, alright. She can deal with this...calm down...

Then she sees Blurr. "BY THE GODS WHAT IS THAT THING!?"

Staren has posed:
    While awaiting a reply, Staren checks whether the local tech level has reached the constant radio waves of radio stations, cell phones, and sattelites. Hmm. Dead air, but unidentifiable transmissions coming from somewhere...

    And then acid blood mutant lady speaks up. Oh hey her wounds self-heal. That explains that!

    Staren scratches his head, a completely useless gesture when he's wearing a helmet. "We /did/ come through something that looked like a world tree of some sort..."

    AND THEN BLUR RUNS OFF OR RATHER RIDES OFF OR SPEEDS OFF OKAY LET'S GO WITH ROLLS OFF "HEY! Wait up, come back here!"

    AND THEN THE ACID BLOOD LADY IS SHOUTING! Staren jumps to some conclusions and shouts back, "A race of intelligent golems that come from the stars! It's alright, he's friendly!"

Black Tailmon (526) has posed:
On the 'tail' end of a rather violent EYE LASER attack, the diminuitive black feline with hilariously large ears thuds against the ground and tucks into a roll before springing back onto its paws. She then darts away from the walking dead again with her tail standing on end.

The attempt to remove herself from direct contact with the fiends leads her to scamper right up a tree trunk, daintily padding across a limb to sit amongst the leaves and peer down with curious yellow eyes.

"...Hmm..." She eyes what's left of the undead throngs, then the gathered group of heroic types, and ponders inwardly whether there might be a way to 'shake things up' a bit. Her tail hangs down off the branch, flicking to and fro lazily, as her ears listen to what the others nearby might be saying to each other. An ear cants sideways, as Blurr departs suddenly, too... her eyes following him into the distance without a word.

"...Nutmeg...", a random word falls out of the cat's fanged maw almost as soon as it finally opens. "...This is boring... I did not come here to play peacekeeper. This is against my very ethos!" Most of this is said very quietly, but still not unmissable if one were particularly sensitive to sound. "...Blood flows like wine..." Pupils dialate again. "...but it doesn't matter, they're already dead! Killing them is a courtesy."

Yep, she's talking to herself up there but not much besides yet.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva tips her head to Boone. She sure as hell isn't going to gainsay the man. She looks around at the nastiness around them. Dimentio gets a narrowed eye. "I wouldn't call it a party. It's basically been nonstop hell here for a while. Are you here to help?" She asks the pair, before getting ambushed by Staren, getting bombarded with questions. "Zombie hordes and worse, no idea, I was working on finding it out before I was reassigned to primary operations with the Union, and most people who come in here don't pack the kind of firepower you guys are running with. Seriously, is that a laser cannon? Don't answer that, I'm feeling inadequate at the moment."

She turns to gesture towards Blurr as he runs off, but she sighs. "Well, I guess if anyone can handle running off by themselves, he can."

She turns to look over to Inga as she asks something of her as well. "I'm... Riva. I'm not a Valkyrie, if that's what you're asking, but I did come here through Agartha. Um..." She looks over at Blurr as Inga yells, or rather the retreating form of Blurr. "Looks like a robot." She says offhandedly, and then looks back to Inga.

Then squints harder. "Wait. You look like you're from the Middle Ages or something. Um... This is going to take a lot of explaining, and we can't do it out here."

Riva gestures in the direction that Blurr and Ainsley ran off to. "Okay, if the zombies are this bad here, they're probably worse near the Police Station. That's where everyone is holed up. There might be a major assault in progress, and we'll probably be needed to break it. Come on, we can talk on the way."

Riva begins jogging down the street, strewn with wrecked and abandoned vehicles and the occasional corpse, though these seem inanimate for the moment.

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr notices Ainsley calling out to him, and swervies sharply, doubling back toward her. Within seconds he's in front of her with his doors open, inviting her in. He's so fast that he doesn't really loose -that- much time going back to pick her up. That is, if she's willing to get in.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa sees the zombie go down but it does take several shots eatch. These things were made to try and deal with alien's armour alloys. Given how many rounds the things took? Is troublesome but she lowers her weapon and reloads as quickly a she's able. Inga however has got the covering fire she needed.

She looks to the man as he calls out.

"Thanks sir and I get you."

s She looks to STaren for a moment.

"Yes, what of it?"

She gives him a but ogf a look before she notices Blur for a moment.

"Ya I saw some movement ahead likely more of those things."

She looks to Inga for a moment with her weapon lowered and tries to size her up for a moment.

"A alien known as a transformer. Are you all right miss?"

She watches Blurr run off and has to wonder if she's going to need to glue him together again.

"I see, and I feel the same way seriously directed energy weapons. Oh I'm Kotone and that's an idea head there and talk once we got some cover."

She'll fall in keeping alert and looking a bit jumpy.

"I came to check out some strange signals I picked up and a new warp gate..."

She wonders though the Doc wanting samples is that a /good/ idea?

Black Tailmon (526) has posed:
Suddenly, ... everyone is running off again!

"...Wait for me!"

She leaps from the tree again, trotting away after the others at a brisk pace. Oh fine! Maybe there'll be fun wherever this lot is going, there's nothing but smelly undead here anyway!

Inga has posed:
Inga looks to Staren, obviously completely lost. "A WHAT from the WHERE?" she replies.

Then, to Black Tailmon. A slow blink, followed by her breathing growing quicker again. No, can't go there. Look to Riva. She's human, and talking to you, making ever-so-slightly more sense.

"Zombies?" she asks, her mouth forming the word awkwardly. "You mean the draugr? The dead, risen from their graves?"

More questions. "...Middle Ages? What are you talking about? I am from Midgard...which of the nine worlds is this?"

Riva says she will answer questions on the way to some...station? Under seige? A Hall, perhaps?

Then Riva is up and running.

Running.

Inga looks to her walking stick, frowning deeply.

She looks to Kotone then, blinking. "Alright? No, no I am not alright," she beings, then looks off toward Riva, beginning to limp her way after the woman as quickly as she can manage, which really doesn't come close to Riva's running speed. "No, not alright--but I will be. The gods have brought me here, there must be a reason," she continues.

"What...is a robot? You keep using words I do not understand to explain /other/ words I do not understand! And I cannot move that fast! Kindly slow down!" she calls to Riva.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Speaking of shaking things up.

Blurr, uh, blurs off into the woods. Ainsley follows. Blurr can track the big thing pretty easily; it's heading towards the Agartha portal, following the thing in front of it that appears to be zig-zagging up, down and around hills. He's detecting some high-energy discharges, too. It's tough to tell from what.

Ainsley, being less swift than a speeding hovercar, spots a few other things moving in the woods: glowing balls of green light, bobbing around in the distance. They flicker like lantern light, practically beckoning her to follow. She is almost certainly smart enough not to chase the will-o'-wisps into the woods, though, right?

The smaller object bursts from the brush. It's... a person, and not a zombified one. He's wearing a black hoodie, open and hood down, with jeans, sneakers and what appears to be some kind of straight sword in his hand. He's running at full tilt towards the road, only slowing to throw himself to the side --

-- as the ground erupts, some kind of spined shell or coral formation ripping out of it with a surge of mud and seawater. The larger figure appears just as abruptly, barreling through the treeline with an angered bellow right on his heels. It's at least fifteen feet tall, some kind of horrible hybrid between man and crab, with enormous, monstrous claws and one intact human arm emerging from its still human-like torso.

The man it's chasing stumbles when he sees the vehicle and the lizard woman. He loses his footing, but shouts, short on breath, "Draug! Go!" and manages to get back to it -- just in time for the draug to catch up to him, swinging one enormous claw into his back. He's swept off his feet and hurled into the air.

He drops out of it directly in the path of the group headed down the street. He hits the top of a car on the side of the road, denting it inward and then bouncing onto the pavement. There's a sickening /snap/ during his landing, and he lies in a sprawl in the dirt off to the side of the street.

Oh, aaand the car alarm is going off. It's /loud/. And... attention-grabbing.

Staren has posed:
    Staren is about to correct Riva and point out that it is a laser /rifle/, which is actually a weird thing to call it because it's not like the barrel is actually /rifled/ and even if it were that wouldn't do anything to a laser, what would spinning a laser even do anyway, when she says not to answer and leaves him with his mouth hanging open.

    Fine, he won't tell them it's a JA-12 laser rifle with semiauto and burstfire modes, 30 shots per e-clip, 30 more in an internal battery, underbarrel grenade launcher with 4-round tube magazine, that he's also carrying his twin beam sabers and laser pistol and that the armor has built into it six mini-missile launch ports in the shoulders and four micromissiles in each forearm, and that's not even getting to the magic bag which contains several plasma grenades, two mad science revolvers, a conventional pistol with magic exploding rounds and silver rounds, and a micromissile pistol.

    And then Inga tears apart Staren's assumptions. "Uh..." man, where does he even start? "A friendly machine?" He nods, "Yes, we call things like that zombies. And there are actually a whole /lotta/ Midgards, some of us from other ones." As he sees Inga start falling behind, he approaches. "A robot is a... a self-moving machine that runs on the power of controlled lightning. It's... I'd be happy to explain, but we're in a hurry now and I don't know where you're starting from. I'm sure you'll pick things up as we go along. Speaking of picking up, may I carry you?" He slings the rifle over his back and holds out his arms.

    And then a car alarm goes off and he freezes as he remembers the Earth-1960 crisis. Hoo boy. "We gotta /move/! Fast!" If she lets him, he picks her up and starts running. Once he's close enough to see the crab-draugr, he stops and shouts, "TAN-- CHARG-- SPECIAL INFECTED! Are we fighting or running?!"

Blurr has posed:
    The signal keeps getting stronger, and Blurr is picking up on some pretty significant energy discharges as well. He presses forward, moving toward the signal...

    Until, giant hybrid human-crustacean looking thing.

    Hm....okay, still not QUITE as ugly as that other reptile thing he'd seen on that planet they called Lordran. That one had bones on the -outside- of its body, for the love of Primus. Also it isn't as big, maybe it's the size of Bumblebee. Still, it's attacking an unfortunate human and appears to have been eating them. He transforms, metal shifting again as matter is pushed out of subspace and he stands up into his biped form and more lasers go off, this time in the crab-thing's direction.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva looks back as Inga calls to her, and then she realizes the issue. He stops. "Oh. I'm... sorry." She lookd down, guilt flashing across her face as she slows to match Inga's speed. "Yes, the undead. They're here and causing a lot of problems." Riva explains. "I hear reports of worse things elsewhere in the island but there isn't much to go on. Just scattered words about other creatures and such. We've been working on securing this area first, since it's where the most people are in danger." Inga asksa bout Midgard, and Riva blinks, and then consults her phone for several seconds. "Um... How can I explain this. This is also Midgard." She answers, confusion crossing her face. "Just... Well, you might need to explain more about where you're from before I can find a way to explain it."

And then the assault leader shows itself. The commotion causes Riva to look up over the hill. "OH HELL! IT'S A BIG ONE!" Riva points. "Those guys command the lesser ones! Take it out and maybe we can buy some- EEEEK!" Riva ducks, falling to the ground as the man goes flying past her and smashes into a car.

The alarm goes off, and Riva scrambles to her feet. "OH MY GOD! YOU! THAT GUY! WUYIN!" She scrabbles at the broken guy and checks for a pulse. "Christ, you're still alive." She pulls out a can. "Everyone! Focus on the giant crab thing! I'll cover your backs!" She opens the can with a hiss, forces Wuyin's mouth open, and begins pouring it in as her other hand points a pistol at the sudden incoming zombie horde. "Get up, get up, get up dammit!" She says to apparently no one in particular.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    The lizard girl is already winded from running when she spots the man running from the enormous Draug-- and then knocked well off his feet and slammed against a car. The sight of someone bodily thrown like that makes her heart skip a beat. Someone innocent, or presumably so, someone who just got hurt quite abruptly. The sound of the alarm slices into her common sense. She doesn't have any medical skills, even if she wished she did, and so she disregards the limp form of the man.
    Instead she charges and leaps up onto the top of the car, and senses where the battery is in it. She SLAMS the longsword through the hood of the car and ends up grounding out the battery with the sword... which results in a surge of visible electricity climbing up her body. She channels this electrical charge with mana, hopping back from the hood and standing on top of the car, the sword grasped in one hand as electricity funnels into the weapon rapidly.
    And then she points at the huge Draugr... and unleashes a torrent of electricity towards it. Very loud electricity.

    So loud that you can't hear the hot-blooded Spanish voice over it, as Ainsley lets out a string of curses in regret from the very reckless spell she just initiated.

Black Tailmon (526) has posed:
Well, it -was- boring... until THAT happened!

The agile black cat leaps from the street, directly into the impression left atop the car, literally just seconds after that -poor- thrown human emits a sickening snapping sound and bounces onto the pavement below! She doesn't seem to pay Ainsley much mind, though, as the lizard woman joins her. She's too busy eyeing Wuyin, even as Riva runs toward him.

"...Oooh... that sounded lovely..." Her right ear cants, tiny face peeks over the side. "...Are you okay...?" She asks, amused. "...You're not okay...", there's an almost sadistically pleased coo from her, tail flitting in the air softly above her head. "...Not dead yet. ... Aren't you a strong one..." Her voice dips into a throaty purr, before she turns her attention away again and leaps onto the hood to stare at yonder crustacean... thing. Even as the car alarm continues to scream in the backdrop... and begins to die out as Ainsley drains the battery... she seems content to ignore it.

"...THAT, however, is the most HIDEOUS thing I have ever seen!" She pauses here, eyes wandering a little... "...Okay, maybe not."

...and then she leaps from the hood, darting into the distance with the rest of the party. "Suddenly, I have a reason to kill you! Hehehe...!"

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa is keeping with the group as they go, she's got the rifle ready as she keeps a steady pace with the entire group as they move along the high way. She looks at the guy running. She sees a huge thing chasing him. She stares for a moment and she's going to start moving. Wait what just happened? Oh god that guy's dead. Things just got bad she redies the rifle again and keeps moving now.

"Like Vikings! Staren worry about it later, they got a crab thing to kill. The reaper rounds were made to deal with things like this and she lines up trying to keep in mind her training as she opens fire again on it in controlled bursts.

Inga has posed:
Inga blinks at Staren, her face growing slightly red--with frustration. "You are still doing it. What is a 'machine'?" she asks, because at this point she just /has/ to. Controlled lightning? This she can sort of grasp, but...

Inga looks suddenly affronted. "Carry me!?" she replies, but only a second passes before she sighs heavily and nods her head in consent to this strange man covered in metal. She will allow herself to be picked up, unable to resist the urge of poking at his armor. "It is so /solid/. Not at all like mail. How was such a thing forged? What do you mean many midgards? That is ridiculous," she continues.

Then; "--and thank you, for your assistance, warrior--by Freyja! Do you have a /tail/!?"

Then, a horrible sound. Inga reaches up to cover her ears, assaulted by the horrible inearthly noise of a car alarm.

As if that wasn't bad enough, she then catches sight of the Draug.

She swears the Old Norse equivalent of "OH SHIT!"

Someone is hurt, terribly hurt. Training kicks in. Experience. "Set me down by him!" she tells Staren, and assuming he complies, she knees by Wuyin and brings out her knife again, pricking her hand and reaching down to wipe her bloodied palm down his face.

Amazingly, this actually heals him.

Silly Templar, you need /blood/ to heal.

"Upsala. I am from Upsala," she answers Riva.

Then, lightning. It is deafening. It shakes her very bones. But it is /familiar/. She smiles for the first time today.

A gasp then, as Inga's eyes roll upward. She speaks, eye white, wide... "The story is encoded in seagull cries. The seagulls eat the bloated bodies, and in the alchemy of their bellies those dead secrets fuse to the essence of the birds!"

A sound like a seabird cry comes from her throat. "Can you decipher it, sweetling? No? Those vestigial bits have not fully developed yet- your skill is in its pupa stage - but they spasm when you hear the ranting of the gulls. We can decipher. The gory story drips into the tides, one part per million, and still we can taste it!" she cries--echoing the mad rambling of Wuyin exactly.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Blurr gets to unleash the first volley. The photon bolts don't seem to do the job, or have the same effect here; they burn the carapace of the man-creature-thing, swinging its claws in the path, and ellicit a sudden shoulder-rush of a counter-attck. It's much stronger than even its size would indicate, and even at a disadvantage in height, it makes up for it with brute force.

It crests the rise, visible from the path between the groups. The dead come with it. They cluster in the forests, running for the sound. Ainsley neatly solves that problem, draining the battery and unleashing a thunderous sound and a deadly bolt. The lightning hammers into it, driving the massive Draug back a step. The smell of burned fish fills the air immediately.

The sea creature bellows in pain, arcs of electric blue playing across the surface of the body. It's slowed enough to allow Kotone to start unloading on it, but even the reaper rounds are having a hard time penetrating. Her controlled bursts plant a few into the fleshier parts of it, spurts of dark fluid spraying from the body. It gradually rights itself, turning towards the group and lifting a claw --

The man on the ground -- Wuyin, according to Riva -- isn't dead. He's seriously injured, and should probably be rushed to a hospital, but he's not dead. He manages to partially roll onto his back, which allows two things: one, Black Tailmon to tease/mock him, and two, Riva to pour a can of something down his throat. He swallows some, and starts coughing. He speaks.

"The story is encoded in seagull cries," he groans. His head lolls. "The seagulls eat... the bloated bodies, and in the alchemy of -- of their bellies... those dead secrets fuse to the essence of the --" There's a brief, pained pause. He sucks in another breath "-- the birds." He quiets, mostly because he's suddenly focused on downing whatever it is Riva's got. It's emptied in short order.

Blood gets smeared over his face. His eyes start to come back into focus. There's a more dull-sounding 'pop,' and he shouts a clearly-pained curse in some dialect of Chinese. He rolls over onto the arm that /didn't/ look messed up, propping himself up and reaching for something on his belt. His hand closes around some kind of metallic idol clipped to his belt, a weird, twisted shape.

A fireball springs from his other hand. He hurls it like a shotput at the draug, a tremendous explosion surrounding it in magical flame. It's unbalanced, very slightly, and more of the carapace is burned off to show the terrible pulsating flesh beneath. It roars, slamming its claws into the ground.

A shockwave erupts from the Draug. A ripple of dirt is thrown into the air, and a tree behind it topples. The car is thrown off it's wheels and sent airborne, and explosions of briny, water-driven force burst from the ground. Wuyin throws himself to the side, ending up between them, soaked and muddy but otherwise unharmed, but the wave continues for a good twenty feet in every direction, cracking the pavement, breaking branches and quite possibly throwing our heroes around like rag-dolls.

The upside is that that slowed most of the zombies down. The few that weren't sent flying start pulling their way closer, focused on the group. There's maybe a half-dozen of them closing from every side, unfeeling and hungry.

Staren has posed:
    What is a machine? Oh for the love of-- Anyway, Staren's about to set Inga down where he stands, when she asks to be brought to Wu. Staren runs over and sets her down, but there's no time to watch her do her thing -- there is a CRAB ZOMBIE/SPECIAL INFECTED/DRAUGR BOSS right over there! Since they're fighting, Staren attempts to make it VERY DEAD. Before he even takes time to draw his rifle again, out from his shoulder fires a mini-missile. It's not a very large thing, a cylinder several inches long and maybe about five pounds, but the high-tech explosives it carries pack a punch -- it flies right up to the monster and then explodes unless it's smashed first or something. Against things like, say, trees or cars or creatures without the protection of high technology, aura, or supernatural power, it simply turns everything in a 30-ft diameter sphere into ash.

    Unfortunately, this creature is probably one of those things. But it's a start! Staren readies his rifle... and then sees that other zombies are approaching! He tries to get away from the big one while shooting down the little ones before they can get close to his allies!

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley is bucked right up into the air with the force of the car. It /hurts/! She shouts from the pain, but somehow managed to maintain her grip on the sword! A similar POP goes off from her direction, as one of her legs feels the consequences of the attack. She had managed to leap off the vehicle before she got /too/ hurt, but she's going to have a helluva time standing on that leg later... which she might have to do soon, because she can't fly without her Harness!
    She lets out a cry of surprise, but then sucks in a breath, the electricity surging from the sword and into her body.

    She stops in the air, for a split second. She pivots.

    And then she releases the charge to propel herself TOWARD the Draug Heavy like some kind of madwoman, as the dust clears from Staren's attack. More accurately, she tries to end up behind it, and bury the sword into its shell so that she can press her other hand against its back around where a spine should be, since it still has a roughly human shape... and emit even more lightning into it. But this lightning is the kind of pulse used to incapacity, rather than damage. That's right, she's attempting to seize up its muscles completely and make it ripe for the vicious killing that her allies are itching to perform on it.

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr curses when the thing seems to have stronger armor than he had bargained for. And then it starts charging at him, attempting to slam its shoulder into thim. But come on, the speedster isn't called 'Blurr' for nothing, gotta be faster than -that- to hit him. He dodges the shoulder-rush, jumping quickly out of the way, only to nearly lose his footing when a the thing creates a shockwave by slamming its claws into the ground. He -really- tries not to fall, because he could fall on top of someone smaller. Like the cat-person. Thing. Whoever that was. He -does-, however, aim to step on the smaller ...messed up things. Zombies, people were calling them.

    A ruined car is flying, so he attempts to grab it and throw it at the monster, so that it doesn't land on anyone else who could get hurt by it. Also, a bunch of people seem to be rambling about seagulls and pupas, and it doesn't make any sense whatsoever so they'll just have to figure out where the things came from -after- they kill the big crustacean-human monstrosity.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva blinks as Inga shows her healing drink up with some good old fashioned blood magic. "Ummm... Thanks!" She says to Inga, and then pitches the empty can at an incoming zombie. It beans the zombie in the head, moments before a bullet punches through it and smacks into the undead's head, dropping the minor undead.

She feels the rumble, and looks down, blinking as she seems to feel an incoming assault. She throws herself to the side, but the edge of the detonation catches her, flinging her into the nearby road in a tumbling, painful impact. "AGH!" She yells, eloquently, as she lies there, trying to focus and get her senses back in order. She rolls to her feet, and then looks over to Inga. "Uppsala, huh?" She thinks for a moment, but she doesn't have time to do research because ZOMBIES AND DRAUG. She looks up at the unusual comments from Wuyin, and then glances over at Inga as she follows suit with a strangely familiar cadence. She opens her mouth, and then utters a portentious announcement herself: "Okay, this just got even weirder than normal."

However, she advances on the lesser zombies, firing a volley of bullets before snapping one pistol to the side, firing a beam-blast of energy from her pistol that seems to ricochet and rebound among a chain of enemies, damaging those it hits.

At the detonation of the plasma missile, Riva looks over her shoulder and yells, "YEAH! THAT'S THE SPIRIT! I think." She thinks for a moment. "Um... Be careful!"

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa catches that Inga claims she's from Upsala and makes a sticky of that mentally. But that's when she starts speaking strangly and crypticaly what the heck is going on but she's got a zombie Mr. Krabs to worry about here. The creature keeps taking the rounds she's putting into it. It seems Wu isn't dead and he's using some form of magic. That's just something that still takes a lot to get used too and she keeps on shooting at the unead she keeps popping off shots trying to bring them down.

Black Tailmon (526) has posed:
Tailmon's dart for the angry undead crustacean is preempted by a suddenly falling claw, which craters against the earth like Thor's hammer! She deftly manages to roll aside, missing being flattened by literal hairs... but that's only the beginning of it. There's a sudden eruption of water from the very ground beneath her paws, and it pretty effectively sweeps her off of her feet, throwing her skyward, and thwarts any attempt she may having been planning on the Draugr's life!

"BAUGH!" Hissing noises and spitting of water escapes her, as she soars through the air! To make matters worse, she crashes into a nearby tree... face first... before falling into the drink! After a few moments, she surfaces, shouting interspersed with gasps of air. "I... HATE... WATER!"

The moment a zombie is within range, the soaked furball leaps toward its back! Scrambling up its back side, kicking off its head, she attempts to play skip the stones with several others... before launching herself through the air at the Draugr!

"CAT CLAWS!"

She attempts to swipe at any potentially exposed areas she can, even if its that thick carapace, with her oversized false forepaws! The actual attack itself, as would be readily apparent within moments, isn't so much the nails themselves... as the violet streaks of energy that scream forth through the air afterward!

Inga has posed:
Flashback.

She's eight years old, traveling from Upsala to a nearby village to help the others, to continue her training and perhaps read the omens. Pausing by the river, bending to wash her face. A flash flood, the river flooding, sweeping her away...

Inga can't quite get out a scream before the ground shakes, water erupting in a wave that surges toward her. Inga tries to grab onto something, namely Riva, but she's swept away too quickly, her head disappearing beneath the water, arms flailing. She's weighed down by her clothing, the heavy wool and long skirt tangling her legs.

Eventually she resurfaces...but by then she's unconscious.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
A lot of violence happens in a very short amount of time.

Staren reduces the area immediately around the big Draug to scorched earth and ashes immediately. The Draug is, unfortunately, one of the things he's worried about. When the flash is gone, the Draug is still standing, albeit smaller; the blast flat-out removed most of the outer shell of the thing, leaving it a roaring, clawed mess of burns and fury.

Ainsley, though, is closer. It swings a massive crab claw at her -- or, rather, where she would be if she couldn't turn in mid-air. It overextends, unbalanced by the loss of mass, and it becomes easy for her to get behind it and on top of it. The electricity seizes it, the entire body of the thing spasming and then freezing in a distinctly uncomfortable-looking way from the voltage.

Blurr snatches the car out of the air and redirects it, stomping at zombies as he goes. They squish nicely. The car slams into the front and side of the Draug, pitching it over in the other direction. It catches itself with one claw, barely able to move it while being electrified, lower to the ground and sort of hunched over. Carapace is broken and pushed inward, chunks of it digging into tough or clammy flesh.

The rest of the dead finally arrive, just in time to eat a few bouncing bullets. Anima shells ricochet, ripping through the undead and leaving satisfyingly-large holes in them. The bullet-beam shears off limbs, cutting them to pieces -- pieces which the injured Wuyin does not intend to let close, making a gesture and creating a field of icy cold around them. Their limbs start to seize up, momentarily freezing them in place for more punishment.

Staren's extra gunfire goes that way. He lays into them, and Black Tailmon hops onto them. The bodies crumple while the cat skips between them, kicking them in the back of the head and getting into position onto the big guy. She tears off the last pieces of the carapace and drives violet streaks of energy into and through it, rending vulnerable flesh. It's torn to ribbons, its midsection a mass of raw meat.

It's still moving. A vertical slit in it's chest twitches, bloodied and... breathing? It's hard to say. The Draug slowly, very slowly, starts to move forward, despite all that punishment.

Fortunately, X-COM specializes in preventing things just like this from continuing to function. The heavy-caliber rounds pour into the now-exposed creature, the staccato sound of controlled rifle fire echoing down the now largely-empty stretch of road. The massive creature's body shakes, over and over and over again.

It pitches forward. One by one, the remaining undead do, too. They hit the ground with a wheezing or gurgling or hissing exhalation, and they stay there.

A moment passes.

Wuyin remarks, sounding a little beat, "Well, that went well."

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva, too late, realizes her mistake. She could dodge out of the way of the attack.

The strange Viking woman could not. Her mind flashes back to what she had learned moments before the Draugr appeared. The staff. The request to slow down. "NO!" Riva yells, watching Inga get swept away. "DAMN, DAMN, DAMN!" She hisses, rage and guilt flushing her face as she screams, "YOU UNDEAD BASTARDS! WHY?" She rips her blade out of her scabbard, the blade flaring as Anima pours into it, responnding to her demands. She turns to prepare to kill the crap out of the Draugr leader, but it falls to the combined arms of the multiverse. She looks around.

Things are a lot more quiet.

She doesn't put the sword away. "I'm going to go find her. Wuyin, you take them to the police station and brief them. Try not to confuse them too much."

She begins running off, trying to find the strange woman by running into the water and looking around for her. And possibly double-murdering every single horror in the way.

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr watches with satisfaction as the crab thing goes down for the last time. Well, now that that's taken care of...he would have to agree with Staren. Question time.

    "Yeah, what's going on here? Do we know where these things first started popping up? When? Maybe on the shoreline somewhere? I could search underwater for evidence of some kind of operation near the point of origin I mean we've got to start somewhere."

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley had to ride out the violence of everyone else attacking the Draug, and boy is she glad that they were so thorough with it. When it finally goes down -- and it sure goes down -- Ainsley is left standing awkwardly atop the corpse of a huge crab-person abomination that very much held up against things that very few living creatures can properly endure. She is probably justified in being very, very skeptical about how dead it really is, holding the sword by the hilt with both hands, wheezing, using the weapon to support herself.
    Her eyes remain locked on the creature, more afraid of it waking up than disgusted by how mangled and burnt it became over the course of the fight.
    And then she is finally satisified after a minute or two, pulling the longsword out. She puffs a breath of relaxation, looking toward Wuyin and Riva in turn. She also looks toward the direction Inga vanished in, the wave of water having left an obvious trail, frowning over in that direction for a moment or two, but confident that someone can handle that, however much damage the blood mage managed to collect between glances.
    "My name is Ainsley," she says to the two natives of this world that are still awake. "This sort of crisis happens a lot, then?" she wonders at them, grimacing at the idea of hordes of undead surging through a populated area. Though she figures it's the job of these folk to prevent that sort of thing when it becomes a threat, creating a relaxing rock in the storm of worry.
    She pokes the corpse a couple of times with the sword, making EXTRA sure that it's dead. "You know," she mentions, "Draug are supposed to drive men mad by their proximity."

    Ainsley, having dropped that unsettling knowledge, starts looking for firewood. "We should probably burn these, just to be sure."

Staren has posed:
    Staren dodges water jets while shooting zombies! Eventually there's a wave and he... activates his wings and flies over. Cheater.

    Zombie Status: ALL DEAD. Again.

    "Is everybody alright?" Staren looks around. "Hey guy! You're alive!" But-- where's the old lady? He looks to Riva, expression hardening. "...If you find her within a couple of hours, call me." And then he stands up straight and turns to Wuyin, shouldering his rifle and removing his helmet to look at the man. "So. What's going on? You guys have been spouting cryptic messages about seagulls. I mean, it's not like the draugr are going to stop rising just because we beat the draugr boss." He considers that for a moment. "Are they?" Hey, some places in the Multiverse...

    "Burn them? I could use another missile... Oh, I'm Staren by the way."

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva Banari waves acknowledgement to Staren as she runs off. She'll call him in a little while, letting him know she found her unconscious and will be taking her to medical care.

Black Tailmon (526) has posed:
In the moments following that things fall, along with its lesser brethren, the tiniest member of this particular party scampers away again to lick her proverbial wounds.

...

More like, lick her wounded ego.

Shivering in a tiny ball of wet fur, and anger, the Digimon stares ruefully at its shredded corpse with yellowed eyes narrowed. "...Seven hells are not enough for you... such ugliness deserves pain unending..." She mumbling to herself, even as she quivers... her fur drenched to the point of hilarity. "...Pain and more pain upon your filthy, ill-begotten, soul until your cries reach the heavens themselves and all the gods laughter..." She stops. ... There's a long pause. ... "...I hate being wet. ... In fact I hate all of this. I've had absolutely zero fun since I've arrived, maybe I..." She eyes the others. No. Even she's not crazy enough for -that- suicide.

"...Maybe later." She mumbles to herself, before turning to walk off quietly... attempting to slip away... hopefully without notice.

"...Maybe I'll go torture the seagulls over there. ... Make them think they're fish..."

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa watches as they manage to take all the other things down and lowers the weapon, she takes a second to reload it, as you never know. She look to see where Inga went to she sees Riva running off to help her that should handl things right? She looks about nervously expecting there to be more.

"I'm fine, I still worry if those things are infectious."

She does seem pretty concerned about that but she looks at Staren.

"We have thing out of HP lovecraft crawling about, people being cryptic does not shock me at all."

She looks to BT For a moment at her.

"...Those gulls are likely carrying some bad mojo if what the strange lady sad is right.

"Hey I hope Riva can handle ... getting that lady all right. I'm not wanting to chew through more ammo if someone's already on it."

She's not heartless she just knows she could be a liablity.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Wuyin sketches a vague salute before Riva runs off. He pulls himself back to his feet, finding a non-toppled, non-disintegrated tree nearby for him to lean on. He's in rough shape. "I'll show you to the survivors as soon as I am... more mobile."

He nods at each of them in turn, and casts a curious glance at the angry and irritable feline. He'll have to watch out for that one. "My name is Wuyin," he replies. "You can call me Wu if you prefer. Seagulls? I... must have been hit harder than I thought. I don't usually /say/ that sort of thing, it is usually confined to my head --"

He shakes the aforementioned head and then looks around. He spots what he's looking for, and starts shuffling over towards it: his sword, stuck at the base of a tree nearby. It must have gotten thrown when he did. "The woman will be fine. She's one of us -- I'm sure of it. Heals quick." He glances at Staren, and shakes his head. "No. They are not. That is just one of many."

He gets to his sword. He picks it up, checking it over. Satisfied, he returns it to its scabbard at his belt. "They come out of the water. The fog. I would not say this is a crisis that happens often... at least, this sort. Things are usually somewhat more... subtle. Whole islands rarely find themselves enshrouded in a mysterious fog, and then cut off from the outside world." He starts down the street again, gesturing for them to follow. He pauses a second.

Wuyin gestures at the body, making a flicking motion. There's a flicker of light in his hand, and another ball of flame leaps off of it. It engulfs the corpse, burning it much more readily now that it's dead. "Toss some fuel on. It should be enough. No more madness-inducing than when they are alive, unless you're a scientific sort." He starts rummaging through the pocket of his hoodie, as if looking for something. It shouldn't be deep enough to take long.

Staren has posed:
    "Nice to meet you Wu, I'm Staren." He offers a handshake, then listens to all this, notes that none of it was about how to /fix the problem/... and then just gets completely sidetracked by the last thing Wu says.

    "Why, what do they do to scientific sorts?"

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr listens to what Wu is saying, and begins to get rather irritated. None of that actually helps -fix- this problem. "I know they come out of the water, Wuyin but you've got to get a little specific than that, where did they first start appearing on the island? I'm assuming it was somewhere along the shoreline? And when did the fog first appear? Are they coming of the water, or the fog? Or both? Has anyone studied them? How are we supposed to solve this problem without knowing its source?"

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa Says "Because they fly in the face of how we think we know nature works? I only took biology in highschool, and I know these things shouldn't work..well on my world."

She admit she looks back anbd forth for a moment.

"Contain, then study big guy."

She gives Staren a look for a moment.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
He shakes the extended hand. He's no savage. "Confound them, mostly." He casts a glance at Kotone, smiling and nodding very slightly. "I have heard the Orochi Group is attempting to study them, but I haven't spoken much to their contingent in town. They are... cagey about their research."

He looks up at Blurr. He doesn't quite frown; his expression simply becomes serious and unamused. He pulls something out of his pocket and slips it on. It's... 3D glasses? Kind of odd. They look sturdier than the disposable kind.

"I would tell you," he finally says, "or at least tell you that I knew... but I don't know. I am here to look into the same thing. Why did they come here? Why now? What is the source of the fog, and what about it is killing people? I have a few hints, of course -- whispers from things that see much, know more and share what they please and when they please -- but..."

He shrugs his shoulders, his hand going back in his pocket. "Not enough. Not yet."

Wuyin pulls out a wrapped thing and opens one end. He begins walking and eating. It looks like... a... taco? Well, he's leading at least...

Staren has posed:
    Staren blinks at Kotone. "Oh right... she wanted us to bring back specimins..." He looks at the corpse. "How are we gonna move this thing through the portal and tree?" He sighs. "People always seem to assume scientists can't handle anything from outside their own world just 'cuz the rules are different. Why is that? I mean... I was raised in a city of magic, for cryin' out loud, in a world full of the supernatural..." he shakes his head. "Ah, sorry Wu. It's... been a problematic subject in the past." He paces back and forth. "Seagulls... They eat the dead, some kind of magical organism incubates inside them, and then--? I don't see how we get from there to reanimated dead..." When Kotone suggests canceling the quest for samples, he looks at her and shrugs.

Blurr has posed:
    "So the fog is killing people?" Blurr asks, sounding confused. "What does that have to do with those creatures?" No, he still doesn't get the zombie thing. "And who are you getting the hints from? Maybe we just need to be a little more...persuasive with them." And by persuasive of course he just means threatening. Because if they're making people go crazy like that, then they can't be up to any good.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa Says "Magic tends to do that as I'm finding out."

She looks to Staren

"We might want to look into these other people's data they already have hardware here I suspect from what hr said. Staren did you not hear what was said the gulls are likely infested ergo do you want to risk dragging something from here without proper containment and if we're dealing with magic we want someone to cover that."

She pauses for a moment

"It might be an idea to do resarch here rather than dragging it out of here."

She looks to Blurr

"Your welcome by the way big guy..."

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr glances down at Kotone. "Er, thanks, Kotone. For...what you did. But really you shouldn't have done it. You -do- know it could have killed you and you're just lucky you didn't suffer any processor damage from it."

    A pause. "You went awfully far for someone you barely knew."

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
"You will not be taking the body through Agartha," Wuyin says. "Perhaps --" Kotone basically says what he's thinking. He nods his head in her direction. "I do not want to take the risk of any sort of infection spreading out of here, especially to Agartha. The World-Tree is... /significant/, you understand."

He shrugs. "There's no problem. I expected it. You are not the only scientist to be frustrated that someone believes they are incapable of deducing the cause of a paranormal event through scientific means. If you can, by all means, do so. I would like to hear the results."

He eats his taco. His delicious, delicious taco. He's got more of a spring in his step as moments pass. "The fog is killing people, or something /in/ the fog is killing people. The undead are killing people. The draug are killing people. The only thing I have not seen kill people are the other /people/ here. And, I must say, in a town with a population as small as this one, I would not be unsurprised if we ran out of both people and their undead kin before the source was found."

Wuyin shakes his head. He looks over his shoulder at Blurr. "They speak when they choose to speak, and they watch and listen always. Sometimes I just need the proper trigger, or location. They cannot be forced to divulge what they know. How do you threaten a force you cannot perceive, much less touch?"

Staren has posed:
    Staren nods. "But... we've been in contact with them." He takes a few steps back from the corpse. "We've touched the fog. So have you. /We/ could be infected." He doesn't sound /that/ worried, though.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa says "I can get the concept I think. We had stories and myths about such things. Generally bad things happening to the tree means bad news for everything."

She looks to Wu for a moment and she nods for a moment, it seems they have a soultion to the problem, and he eyes the taco, she wants a Taco damn it.

"I had barruiers that should have done me well enough and I had a dummy barrier on. I'm not that daft, but you were bleeding out on the floor and I didn't think duct tape would be enough."

Looks at Staren.

"Which is why we're going to go through Decon buyt damn it if I got to get a new body, I'm going to be unhappy."

Blurr has posed:
    "Barrier or no barrier, it could have killed you." Blurr shakes his head. But that's done and over with, he's not going to make an issue out of it, since she seems to be fine now.

    "How do you threaten a force you can't perceive? But you are perceiving it, when you get the hints you're talking about. It has to be coming from somewhere, and there has to be a way to track it, we just have to time it right."

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
"You may be, yes," Wu agrees. The way he said that... he sounds sure that he couldn't be infected with whatever this is.

"Or perhaps I am merely perceiving its echoes," he posits. "It stands at the far end of a cave consisting of dimensions I cannot interact with. It shouts. The sound travels, taking its time to reach where I stand. By the time I hear it and acknowledge its presence, the source is elsewhere. Maybe elsewhen." He spreads his hands helplessly.

Then he takes another bite of his taco.

Blurr has posed:
    "Maybe," Blurr folds his arms. "But I think it's at least worth trying to pursue that lead. The other consideration is searching the surrounding waters for anything unusual that might point to this. Maybe a research facility, or something else. Either way whatever's making them is bound to have some kind of recognizable energy signature. Oh, and studying this thing." He says, pointing to the dead man-crustacean. He looks thoughtful. "If the fog is killing people, it's more than just water in the air. Maybe there's some kind of toxin in it?"

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
"I will certainly see what I can suss out. Ask the Templar who ran off into the woods the next time you see her, maybe; she may have uncovered a few things of her own. We could compare notes." He finishes off his taco, producing a napkin to wipe his fingers off on. The trash goes... somewhere. A too-deep pocket. Not too unusual.

"I would be very surprised if you found something like that. These things are much older than that. The origin is most likely magical. I cannot say for sure," he appends, shrugging, "and there may be things beneath the water to find, but..." He trails off.

Surprisingly, the native isn't too confident on the chances of random interlopers in solving the problem faster than he can.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa Says "Still good to see you walking and talling Blurr."

She smiles a little bit and looks back to Wu for a moment as he gives some information.

"So we're dealing with something that's pretty alien to us and this is the best way for them to give information? That's my buest guess."

Staren has posed:
    "Well, I still hope it's not contagious, and I'll check us for bugs all the same." <<Dawn, load the microbe-scanning program.>> <<Loaded and ready for transfer.>> Staren reaches into his ever-useful magic bag and pulls out a tiny little spraycan. He shakes it up, which probably isn't necessary, but he's mentally tired. He sprays some on himself, then on Kotone if she lets him, then on the corpse, and pockets it. <<Execute.>> And the nanites begin to search for and categorize microbes, just in case of anything... weird. "Now, how to scan in detail for magic, hmm..." Staren puts the spraycan back in his bag, and holds his hand to his forehead. "I don't know. I've been awake for too long, I think. Need to sleep, or something like it..."