Snake in the Grass Part 2
"They let humans in the GP now?" Sasheem scoffed, folding his arms. He looked over the cliffside, as the breeze blasted his antennae back. "And an old one at that? They must be gettin' depserate."
"Buddy, let me be the first to tell you, they let [B]anybody[/B] in the GP now," the Old Man chuckled. "But I'm not just anybody. I was hired for very speific talents. My ability to perfectly analyze a situation and figure out what needs to be done to put an end to said situation."
"Right, some kinda spy grandpa," Sasheem muttered. It had been at least a week since he decided to take the Old Man up on his offer of a mission. HE had no interest in such, things. The Snake School had just re-opened...but in the following days the only "prospects" that bothered to show up was that persistent woman and her brat son. Sasheem shoulda left them to perish a couple years ago but now he was definitely suffering the consequences of misguided notions such as heroism or mercy.
He got fed up eventually and now here he was...forced to play the hero of Earth yet again. As usual. "So, you gonna tell me just what the hell is going on now?"
"Time is unraveling by the seams," the Old Man answered.
"Don't we have people for that now?" Sasheem raised a brow. "Who's screwed up this time, anyway?"
"We do have people, yes...but they're all more than a little tied up right now," the agent responded. "We don't know who's pulling the strings, but we've identified a key figure. A familiar face to you."
"Familiar..?" Sasheem asked, his face scrunching up. "Most of Sasheem's enemies end up dead. Someone break outta the afterlife or somethin'?"
"Not quite...look below you," the agent pointed down below the cliff. At a city now colored in gleaming yellow and orange with pearly spots of white. A veritable cheddary metropolis.
"It's....it's made of cheese," Sasheem said in surprise, his head cocking to the side. Only one capable of this to his knowledge would be a Majin. It wasn't Auroc was it?!
"It's not Auroc," the Old Man smirked.
"Hey, how did y-"
"But they were once related, I suppose. He and our current target," the agent continued. "Code Named....Bio-Jagam."
Time Period 1: One Month In
[QUOTE=Cleric of Hell’s Brigade;5539291]Jinzi grimaces.
“Meagan heard about what happened, she’s actually in talks with the Namekian’s and helping them right now. Still, all that in such a short period of time.......”
He nods and then walks out into the rebuilt Geofront once more.
“Wilhelm’s been moved down here with Karis’ pod. Once Ochazuke is available we had planned on opening it, Wilhelm insisted since he helped solve the problem of its kicking g mechanism. Anyways, he’s been doing research for me down here and trust me, we both want to see what you brought us.”[/QUOTE]
[I]Pat-pat-pat...[/I]
"Hah! Well that's good to hear," he said, "I keep forgetting it's usually the exception that Guardians talk to one another. Glad she's got that covered while we're all a little spread thin."
As he listened to Jinzi outlining the situation, Zaofan's fingers rummaged around in the breastpocket of his jacket. [I]Ah there they are.[/I]
"Really now? That's fantastic news! I'll be sure to let Ochazuke know about Karis. Right now he's uh...well, he went back into space," Zaofan said, "Who'd have figured, huh?"
These were indeed strange times they were all living in. One thing after another, it seemed that as the days ticked down to the next year, they had a fixed amount of time to get these affairs in order.
Crossing the regenerative green under the Geofront's artificial sky, it was a pang of regret that he couldn't take the time to take the familiar sight in, for all of them had work to do.
"...so I gotta be honest. I'm not sure what sort of condition this guy is in, but we should probably quarantine him or...something," he said, "Though worst comes to worst, well, that's why I'm here."
In his hand Zaofan produced two capsules. He opened the first, containing the [B]Judge's Rifle[/B], and passed it to Wilhelm to inspect.
"This is the weapon that took down Held, Evangeline, the Namekian Elder, and who knows who else. He did it under orders from this Forger fellow, and somehow he managed to pull off a simultaneous strike across the universe."
The other capsule, he passed to Jinzi.
"This one, we'll have to be careful with. Inside here are the remains of [B]The Judge[/B] himself."
Time Period 3: 7 Months In
[QUOTE=Sub-Zero MKA;5536256]Sarada took a deep sigh. "I wish everyone shared that sentiment." She tried, but she couldn't hold it back anymore. "I don't think Inanna's coming back." She hadn't spoken to her much on that day before she disappeared, but she could see it in her body language. She could [I]feel[/I] it. She was hurt, deeply. "We're supposed to be her friends and hardly no one tried to understand why she did what she did." Sarada was the only one that she could remember. She was angry at first, but knew that Inanna [I]usually[/I] didn't do things for no reason. Even if they were reasons conjured from her own knotted mind. Sarada knew that if her wife kept something from her, it was for a reason. She didn't like it and wanted it to stop, but it was what it was.
"And Parsley was in the same boat she was in and she threw her under the fucking bus! She just stood there and let her take the blame for everything!"
Her fingers sunk into the table.
"People not being around anymore goes beyond them dying or disappearing. We pushed away one of the people who's been here since the beginning, been reliable and always had our backs. For what? A mistake? A lapse in judgment? Being too proud to apologize?"
Hearing her say that made her realize that they may have done the same to Asha'rah. She kept that to herself until she could think about it more, but it did make her question her feelings on the fallen goddess.
She sighed again. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it seem like [I]you[/I] had done those things. I don't think you were even there when it all went down." He may have been helping "Totoma" at the time. "I guess I'm biased," she muttered, her eyes drifting to the floor. "I don't know."[/QUOTE]
Zaofan's lips parted and his teeth pressed together when Sarada's fingers dug into the table. [I]I'll make a note to Kai to patch that up...[/I]
"Hey, now, I was there, you know," he said, "Though uh...yeah I kinda wiped out after pulling Totoma out from the brink, but still, that's no excuse for standing by and saying nothing. We're all involved in this together, we motley mortals."
Pressing his lips together, he thought very carefully about his next words. Sarada was talking it out, trying to understand and process all these pent-up feelings, and he'd listen.
"We're all in this together. All the same, you'll have to refresh my memory about what everyone else seems to be missing, because all I remember is some guff that, from all indications, we can't change the outcome the way things are going."
Now, he'd had his misgivings when anyone put him off with open, hostile disrespect, but ever since the day he faced down The Sherriff in a quickdraw, he'd had ample time to reflect on sacrifice, and how far he'd be willing to go.
"Now I'm not sure if she was necessarily telling us that, as a friend, so to speak," he said, "But she had to have known that we wouldn't stand by to bear her problems in silence. You least of all."
Of course, the mention of Parsley withholding things as well was entirely new to him, especially on the heels of her whisking off to...some place just a moment ago. [I]Lotta secrets being hushed up...[/I]
"Ah, we're of a kind. I don't think I've ever had the pleasure to be surrounded by this many folks who respond so poorly to being told they [I]can't[/I] do something," he smiled, "But if it's us against the universe, we need to be able to lean on each other all the more, you know what I mean? And that means we don't give up on each other."
[QUOTE]When Zaofan started to reminisce about Master Balon and his new Dragon School students, Sarada felt a smile tug on her lips. She had only met him once - twice if she decided to include his alt-timeline self during the tournament - but he was a good man. What Battersea did to him years ago was vile and only provided another piece of evidence on an already insurmountable mountain of evidence on what an unrepentant piece of literal **** Battersea was. He was gone and Balon was able to rebuild, it seemed.
"No worries. I'm glad things are progressing nicely with those ten schools of yours." She had heard encountered them briefly when she took Mais to see the Bedlam brothers months ago. Whatever she knew, she heard from Zaofan and Ochazuke. It sounded interesting, but she already had her own fighting style and really had no time to learn another one.
"I'll have to take some time off when she gets back," she said. "There's no telling how long she'll be at nerd boot camp with that creation god."[/QUOTE]
"Heh, well, if these are going to be our last few months to do anything-," Zaofan started, then corrected his course, "-[I]and assuredly they won't be[/I], Ochazuke and I are going to leave the Earth in a better place than it was. Been a few thousand years coming, really, when That Man showed up."
Zaofan raised his eyebrows with a small grin.
"But with Alakazah out of the picture, we're finally able to rebuild. We've got the tools, and we've got the talent!"
Every Star in the Sky is an Enemy (Month 2)
[QUOTE=grampagen;5532875]"That must be it then," Ochazuke said, "Dr. Char Banner Gero's prize, the [B]Big Ghetti Star[/B]."
"Helmsman, stay close," Ulysses said as he rose, "We'll send down a survey team at once."[/QUOTE]
The Penelope hung above the stratosphere of this place, the standby lights in the underside of its hull the only manmade illumination here as the runabout craft descended to the planetoid below. The metalloid sphere hung itself here in isolation and the surface caught the faint light of distant stars as Ulysses structured the mission to come.
"Alright, listen up! It's got a breathable atmosphere, but we're not taking any chances until we get a further analysis! Until we know for sure the rebreathers can keep things out, everyone's on the emergency air supply."
"But that'll cut assessment time."
"It'll be enough to set up transponders for the first pass. The rest will be down to time. In the meantime you know the drill."
"Right. Sample collection, intelligent life-"
"There's not a single ki signature on the surface."
The Crane peered out the window as he affixed the helm to his spacesuit. "It is doubtful that there is anything organic down there. No, what we're after is something else entirely."
Ulysses tilt his head, then punched in a sequence into the console. From the runabout craft four transponder satellites took off, and began mapping the planetoid surface across the equator and pole-to-pole. He'd been promised
"Starting the inital readings. The thing isn't rotating so we'll have to wing it a bit to establish the prime meridian. For now that'll make all the data relative to our initial position. Are we picking up on anything as we move along?"
"There seems to be something beneath the surface. If we bank over by the northeast vector, we might be able to get a closer look at it. See how the surface has split a bit?"
The uniform surface of the Big Ghetti Star was a long gridwork of soldered metal plates without gaps stretching far into the horizon. The surface structure neatly arrayed in rows of grey metal hexagons tiled for miles in each direction, mechanical and uniform, but for the dark burn scar that cut a narrow chasm across the planetoid.
U: "Be hard to miss, just about everything else has been polished except there. Right, let's move in for a closer look."
The runabout slowly made its descent, the dull chrome of the surface below blackened here on the far side. With nothing but a sky of endless night about them, the only light source came from the craft itself and the machinery the Navigators had brought with them. Leaving the pilot aboard, Ulysses, Ochazuke, and three others exit the ramp leaving the airlock.
"...god damn, it's cold," the Captain said, "...thankfully it seems the rebreathers are working after all to process the air."
A welcome sign to be sure, but for the Navigators, it was met with a collective groan. Now that they were no longer running the clock, there was work to be done.
The crew got underway with the beginnings of a map, two surveying the elevation at this level and another pinged their relative position for building the three-dimensional picture from their landing site as the satellites stole away far above. The scan of the surface continued the Captain and the Crane moved further into the upturned metal of something that appeared to be an impact crater, pouring outward in jagged projections.
"What happened to this thing to get it fried on this side?" Firing up his beam sabre, Ulysses struck out at one and severed a small spike of it. "Now that is some sturdy composition," he mused, "Wonder what it's made of, the cross-section practically broke off clean. Solid, lightweight..."
Wheeling his head around, the Nevadian found his companion stooped over a smoothed pocket of porous material. It was as if it had bubbled and then cooled in an instant. Ochazuke crouched and rest his hand upon it.
"...do I want to know?"
"I presume your equipment has come across some energy reading," Ochazuke remarked as he brushed his hand there against the ground. "It pulses through the sphere's surface through channels leading..."
"Underground," came Ulysses' sparse reply as he raised his arm, widening his single eye as the instrument began to ping with a rapid series of readings. The graphs were spiking.
Ochazuke stood and gestured. The gash wrought in the surface revealed more that a blemish, but a passage leading downward into a narrow cavern below the planetoid surface. The uniformity was undone, as if it had been molten then ceased partway.
"Captain to survey team, the Crane and I are going to do a little spelunking," Ulysses said over the comm. With the switch of a button, two floating globes floated next to him, projecting light around the area, with a third speeding ahead tracing a thin red ray that mapped out the space as it moved. "Shouldn't be long,"
Kicking off to flight, the two chased down the chasm, a wall of what had appeared to be previously boiling metal froze in its shape as they descended further. The shadows were broken where the illumination was cast, revealing more the hexagonal structure down these entrenched walls. The reflective gleam cast over it in striped bands.
"The structural integrity is impeccable," Ulysses remarked, "it's almost as if every granule is uniform and expansively modular."
Ah, to have the Shingan of the Unicorn Tribe, what wonders in the material they might have seen. As it was, he flew further into the ravine with the two suspensor lights guiding him, when Ochazuke suddenly seized him mid flight.
"Wait."
The orbital glow-globes stopped with them. There was nothing but silence there in the darkness, but for the echo of the laser array map that sped before them.
"There's something ahead of us, Captain," he said, silently pulling the both of them into a gradual descent, "Can you obtain a visual?"
Ulysses brought up the display, deciphering the realtime data feed into a holographic image. The array mechanism sped forward, its lights racing over the chasm walls about a mile ahead.
It was uniform as the rest had been, when suddenly the image capture became distorted. Peering down the distance, the remnants of the red light pierced the darkness. It was as if there was something it couldn't pick up, as if there was something moving.
"What the hell? It's as if there's no fixed position with the mapping array, like it can't lock onto anything static-"
Suddenly the visual ceased and the red light died.
Ochazuke finished the thought. "...like something's moving."
"I thought you said there wasn't anything living on here?!"
Soon the two of them set foot on the ground at the bottom of the canyon, the heavy boots of their spacesuits treading upon the turf. Ashen silver like broken moon dust kicked up under the light of the illumination spheres. Here at the bottom, they felt them slither underfoot with a brittle sound like cracked glass. The light cast itself over rows of steely spindle-fibres of twisted metal slithering at the base of the walls, crawling in a fluctuating ripple around them.
"Nothing which emits ki." The Crane's steeled gloves rose to guard.
"Captain to Runabout," Ulysses called out, "We've encountered a situation down here. Get ready for a rendezvous and evac-"
Suddenly a thin, red ray shone out in the dark. Projected from the far wall of twisted slag, it traced about their frames in an instant.
"What the hell? It's exactly like the laser mapping probe!"
In an instant the light retreated, and zither-strings coiling from the ground, feeding into the hexagon tiled walls. The shape began to twist and deform as a solid mass slowly began to emerge from it. Amorphous at first, its shape pulled free from its geometric enclosure; first a head, then limbs forked out as it took its first shambling steps forward, until Ulysses' illumination orbs glanced on it in full revealing a humanoid shape clad in the exact image of the Nevadian space suits. There was no face beyond the canopy of its helm, and it drew up its hand and reached forward.
"Ulysses to runabout, all hands on deck, we're getting out of here. Scramble!"
Checking his wrist-mounted computer, he kicked off to flight. One of the orbs traced him in his swift pace but a moment to slow and struck the wall, filling the cavern with a strobing light as hundreds of filaments shot out and raked across its glowing surface. As Ochazuke and Ulysses made their exit, a hollow thudding began to echo throughout the environs, and in the darkness elliptical lights began to fill the walls and chase after them on the flight path out. The walls sprang alive with countless mechanical feelers, grasping, shifting, moulding, but the Captain did not look back as they broke the surface and shot back to the runabout which stood quite inert in the clearing.
"Why aren't the engines fired up, what the hell are you doing?" Ulysses shouted, "Sound off, where are you?"
Racing up the cargo ramp, the Nevadian slammed his hand on the bay door control, sealed the airlock, and tore his way onto the cockpit when he froze.
"This is not our vessel," he replied grimly.
Over the horizon just beyond the ashen ridge, surrounded by abandoned survey equipment, stood a ship, exactly duplicate in shape. From this distance the surface beneath the runabout shimmered, and a series of the bristling feelers began to drag it under. Slowly, it sank into the ground, and swiftly out of sight. And with it the realization that they were standing on a trap of wires and metal shelling.
As swiftly as thought, Ochazuke punched through the floor of the vessel, dragging Ulysses out despite his protests and pulled him away some distance.
"Are you insane? How the hell are we supposed to get off of this rock now?"
Snake in the Grass Part 3
"Just so you know, if you'd bothered to show up a week ago, there'd be a chance we could've avoided all this..." the Old agent sighed as they overlooked the city cloaked in cheese.
"..."
"But, I doubt you really care. You only showed up now to what? Satiate you're boredom."
"..."
"...Are you okay, son? You look like you're spacing out there," the Old man replied dully, beginning to light a cigarette.
"Nope, doesn't ring a bell," Sasheem shook his head after a moment.
"What doesn't?"
"No clue what a Bio-Jagam is."
"Well, he was just Jagam when you and yer friends tore him a new one," the old agent shrugged.
"Oh yeah, that narrows it down, grandpa," Sasheem snorted in retort. "You know how many asses we've kicked? 'Cause Sasheem sure doesn't. He's lost count! Hell, he doesn't even know how many idiots are left on the **** list. Seems like the numbers just keep on piling up!"
"He was a half-Threshling, half-Saiyan. Big chip on his shoulder they say."
"Huh, now that you mention it, that is kinda familiar...." Sasheem trailed off, wandering off towards a nearby boulder and zapping it with his antennae.
"What in Kami's name are ya doin'?!" the Old Agent threw up his arms, exasperated.
"Please don't bring her into this, Sasheem has enough headaches dealing with you," the Majin snapped back. "Anyway, you mentionin' a big chip reminded Sasheem he didn't eat third lunch yet, and thus..." he grabbed onto what was once a boulder and now a massive tortilla chip. "He's gonna get to dippin'"
"No, you idiot! This is a sensitive operation!" The agent spat, his cigarette falling to the ground. "Bio-Jagam has more power in a bio-dairological state than he could ever dream of before. You draw too much attention and you compromise everything!"
"Bah, fine, FINE! Have it your way, lung disease. But one way or another this chip is goin' in some goddamn cheese," Sasheem threatened.
The old agent shook his head and exhaled. "Okay, listen up. Three days ago, this sprawling muenster municipality here was cheesified overnight. Civilians trapped in their homes, some unable to even move. We sent in a GP field team to survey the area and they didn't come back."
"Killed that quick, huh?"
"Worse. Cheesified. Bio-Jagam's released spores into the atmosphere surrounding the city. The lab coats call it Chi-To Dust. For all we know he plans to expand his domain further until it encroaches the entire hemisphere. We need you to join a team that will infiltration the city stealthily to determine just what his plans are. We believe your Majin physiology will render you immune to the Chi-To dust's genetic manipulation."
"Wait..." Sasheem began to raise a brow in derision. "What team? It better not be those Katchin jackasses!"
"Oh, you better believe it, buddy," the old agent smirked.
Sasheem's hand slapped across his face, stretching his facial features down with it like a rubber band before they snapped back into place. "Sasheem hates those guys!" And they hated him. Today was gonna be a long day, Sasheem, just knew it. A thought that would end up being surprisingly literal, he would soon come to realize...