In Case of Emergency... (Open, FT/All, Read First Post!)

[Sunset]

Una Luxa...

"Transient, Royal... I am J'Hira," she replied. "Though could not we - could not I - be both? As fleeting in this dimension and in this time as the rain of photons that heralds the rainbow but as noble as the woman who holds out her hand to the beggar? August has brought me here and it would be to him that I would direct your questions for he is the one with the most knowledge of this place and where my being finds her place in it. But what of you? What shadow does your soul cast on this universe?"

While she talked, she lingered and while she lingered the gemstones flickered. Perhaps it was a pattern or perhaps it was some random expression of the primal that established a pattern but the sharp lavender flashes sought the woman's eyes and whether the facets sparkled before her iris fell on them or after who could say.

"He seeks safety in the house of his parents. Have you been offered that same respite by virtue of your birth?"

[Primordial Luxa]

Una Luxa...

"Transient, Royal... I am J'Hira," she replied. "Though could not we - could not I - be both? As fleeting in this dimension and in this time as the rain of photons that heralds the rainbow but as noble as the woman who holds out her hand to the beggar? August has brought me here and it would be to him that I would direct your questions for he is the one with the most knowledge of this place and where my being finds her place in it. But what of you? What shadow does your soul cast on this universe?"

While she talked, she lingered and while she lingered the gemstones flickered. Perhaps it was a pattern or perhaps it was some random expression of the primal that established a pattern but the sharp lavender flashes sought the woman's eyes and whether the facets sparkled before her iris fell on them or after who could say.

"He seeks safety in the house of his parents. Have you been offered that same respite by virtue of your birth?"

Una Luxa

"Yes, I live here, my shadow is the shadow of, " she said squinting with her oddly angled eyes. "August? How do you know my brother?" Her tone betrayed the fact that she didn't trust J'Hira and she took a forceful step forward, encouraging J'Hira to move back into August's room. She was not as tall as J'hira, but Elspeth was quite imposing, her body language and cold expression carrying a stern weight. Elspeth's eyes danced across J'Hira body taking in every aspect of her looking for the answer to her own question, even as she worked through it out loud.

"He is not in the habit of bringing strange women home without calling ahead. And now that I think about there is something off about you. Your clothes, they are not mundane, their an unnatural substance. Must cost at least three thousand thrones, yet that’s what you’re wearing into our house? That must be the cheapest thing you own. And if so that means you would have to be quite wealthy. Rich enough to own a Carn or a Carnelian, so where are they? Where is your protection?"

The girl blinked sharply as J'Hira's gems flickered, the first time J’Hira had seen her blink. She took another step forward and pointed at the aliens gems accusingly “Are those them? Or are those just more pieces for my brother's collection?”

[Molotov Cluster]

Molotov Cluster...

They say a picture is worth a thousand words... And a newspaper is full of both.

"And we'll just keep this on," Bond said aloud, his lips wrapped firmly around the flexible post-rubber mouthpiece of the re-breather that had been draped around his neck. A narrow lozenge-shaped apparatus, it was just about as comfortable to use as a snorkel tube but at least somewhat more stylish with the added functionality of a high-intensity light on one side and a thermal sensor on the other. Useful for navigating both the odd water-filled chamber aboard his previous employer and for picking out the relatively warm bodies of exothermic post-apocalyptic zombies. It also left his voice - picked up by a microphone inside the mouthpiece and relayed to a speaker on the outside - sounding even more robotic than his normal cadence; "Much must be sacrificed for style!"

Not that he was particularly stylish. The squared-off man wore a similarly angular and possibly metal breastplate under the regulation navy blue jacket that he'd acquired from an unattended locker. Similarly styled boots worn over the matching blue trousers (complete with an orange and white warning stripe down the outside seam) seemed to suggest something of an ass-kicker but beyond the martial traits common to those of his pressed profession his only particular skill was the will to survive.

Possibly to meet and mate with a similarly angular example of his own species, but that was driven more by biology than momentary need.

When the first of the strangely furry carnivores - it not being fair to call them cannibals as he was not of the same species - appeared, he simply shot it in the head. Thus was learned the lesson between space-age weaponry and zombies; Always bet on the one that makes a pretty crimson-rainbow splash as the head disintegrates and the remaining chunks of bone, brain, and flesh decorate the landscape in a particularly artistic manner. Hold up a template and one might have a Banksy but Bond was neither the renegade street artist nor the particularly inquisitive type. To poke around in the remains meant perhaps to get vital fluids on his hands - finger-less gloves being just as stereotypical to space pirates as peg legs and hooks to those of a terrestrial bent - and spreading fluids was a sure way to end up as something less than he already was. There wasn't a lot he could do even if he had dipped his digits in the goo - his marks had tended to those of the feminine (whatever passed for such among his species) or the type more broadly known as 'suckers'.

"Gross, but valuable data... Right?"

He raised the pistol again, squinted at the sharp image that appeared above the barrel, and pressed the firing stud twice more. More data gouted into the air before the scientifically important bodies hit the ground with a meaty thump but this had provided another kind of data - they were attracted to loud noises. Particular Krrzrap and Krrzrap-Splort. More emerged from the solid-looking ruins and his best option was to take flight. Feet as fleet as fear (Rule 1: Cardio) took him on a dead run back the way he'd came and past the still-still K'Artash before a convenient turn presented itself and then another and then, seeing as if he was lost then his pursuers were as well, he slowed down a bit until another intersection presented both caution and opportunity.

"Large, imposing, government-looking building?" Bond looked from the street, where the requisite number of unholy monstrosities roamed, up and up over the many stories of shattered and whole windows to where the unfamiliar characters and more-familiar numbers were picked out in giant form along the very battlements. "What's important to them is important to me, right? Maybe some kind of government office, or a secret test facility responsible for the release of... Who am I kidding? I don't really care."

What he did care about was getting into the building and for that there was both a crowd of unmentionables and the obvious problem of access to worry about. Where they could not enter, neither could he; "Unless I could hotwire this thing..."

But the notion of standing exposed at the door while he shoved his hands into what was possibly a nest of raw current did not strike Bond as particularly wise. Rather it was that most utilitarian and regulatory necessary of structures that provided the key as he circled from alley to alley. A mop procured from a shattered storefront and then a creepy-crawly-sudden mad dash across enemy territory to the back of the building where, as fate and common sense would have it, the iron metal of a fire escape hung within reach of any super-human sports star or the swung head of his mop. The ladder rattled down, he scrambled up, and then crimson gore painted the ground as he capped a couple punks before hoisting the ladder again.

"And thus the bureaucracy triumphs. Witness the soul-grinding power of regulation and..." The fingers of one particularly spry zombie came a little too close to the bottom-most rung; "Whoops. Can't go monologue, can we?"

It was time to find a way inside and several floors of safety between here and there. He headed for the top.

As the man weaved in and out of the building, the mix of having to use the ladders and fire escape-esque staircases on the outside when the normal inside access to the next floor was impassible or completely non-existent and visa versa would undoubtedly cause some level of physical strain if he were any normal every day average person. And the various levels of the building filled with the mutated or zombified creatures that littered the area that would have to be battled or fled from were likely not much of help either.

But in the end, if by some miracle he made it out of the slowly crumbling building, passed all the things that wanted to eat him and all the broken glass and exposed infrastructure and other dangerous elements that could spell his doom, and somehow made it to the several story tall metal staircase barely clinging to the side of the building that lead from a fire escape door to the roof, he would be briefly met with nothing but the sounds and visions of nature and the view of a long since rusted helicopter oddly resembling something close to a multi-personnel carrier vertibird and slowly starting to sink into the roof below that was collapsing and falling apart below it more and more every day.

If he decided to stay up there for any decent period of time, to investigate what there was to see up there... the chopper slowly falling into an ever widening hole, the partially or mostly intact metal constructs often seen on top of large buildings and whatever secrets they may hide, the various bits and pieces of a crumbling building that could be found around there and the overgrowing nature still trying to consume the building after so long and having yet to fully complete its task, whatever one might expect to find in such a place. Then he might be lucky enough to come across something usefull, but more likely than not he would wind up mildly disappointed and rapidly find himself in a predicament which not many would find very pleasant.

But only time would tell what or who he would come across in the end.

[Sunset]

Demonsquid...

The heads were a clue, if a puzzling one. While the first could have been a child or young adult from the same species as that inhabited - at least currently - the ship and the mysterious bronze spheres, the others were an odd and eclectic mix. There was a Human; Recognisable as such, as well as those covered with both fur and scales. One next to thw other there seemed to be six different species, all secure in their bags and all somehow seemingly alive despite the absence of a better, lower half. Another oddity as well presented itself to the technicians; Aside from the first, all of the heads showed some sign of cybernetic enhancement with a datajack hidden just behind the temple or at the base of the skull while others had replacement eyes or subtle earrings that proved to be hearing enhancements or some other form of sensor. Much of this technology was materially similar and shared, to the familiar eye, an aesthetic with the standing monolith of the pod as well as the collars that kept them alive.

This led.to the inevitable conclusion that one was not completely connected to the other except by chance or providence. Perhaps the heads were sourced by some nomadic headhunter but the presence of the lone similarity made that less likely. Whatever their origins it was soon discovered that they could be woken, though perhaps only temporarily. A curved control panel on one side activated to the touch and an exploration of the controls uncovered an icon of a familiar head with eyes open wide and a bare smile. One seperate showed a power-down sequence and there was no line linking the two and thus the safe presumption that one could be done without the other. The hesitancy then would be the horrors perhaps revealed when they opened their lung-less mouths and sang their final destiny.

Reactivating the interior display was entirely a different matter. Two severed wires reconnected by nimble fingers was all it took and the display began to launch itself through a largely unnessecary and seemingly self-congratulatory boot sequence showing a corporate logo, a ship most unlike this one churning past some of the most impressive sights in space travel, and accompanied by a useless voice-over. When this had finished another video played automatically - a safety presentation detailing the many features of a pod that had clearly failed in some way - and then finally a control interface. Most notable were the six - not seven - face-shaped status icons to one side and the sudden uptick in neural activity among several of the bagged heads...