Mud follows the troop extending his tremor sense. He remembers the big worms of that Dune movie and wonders if these snakes could get bigger.
Before they start moving again, Pulse pantomimes by raising her hands, and saying "Up!" To Aegis, in the hopes of getting another piggy back ride.
Once they slow down and Blaze shares the bird's eye view, Pulse shakes her head. ::You shouldn't scout ahead alone. Whatever is up there, the snakes are afraid of it. We should stay close enough to intervene.::
Aegis is fine with carrying Pulse as they move forward, still fully powered up she likely would not even notice the weight. ::Afraid or just avoiding? Maybe it has something to do with how they hunt, if the target signals like Pulse they might have just found the frequency to make them leave.:: or they've just found a way to kill them enough to keep them away, which with their luck was more likely. ::He can still scout it, just stay close. Violet, can you follow as a middleman between us?::
::You mean stay in the middle where it's relatively safer? Sure.::
Feeling a little more than useless in this entire situation, Violet once again keeps her head on a swivel and continues along with the group.
::Right, pulling back…::
Blaze pulled back closer to his struggling group, but stayed ahead and above, wary of any extreme tree movement that might indicate another attack.
Blaze flies ahead, doing a short scouting run, from higher up in the air. Looking down, he is somewhat surprised to see... not much. There's a clearing alright, no trees at all, nearly a quarter mile across. However, he's unable to see anything in the clearing besides what looks like a junk yard. There are metal sheets like tin roof sheets, but they are at random angles, pots, pans, strands of copper wire, what look like flattened out kettles, tire rims, every conceivable bit of metal one could think of seems to have been spread out and placed in the clearing.
On second look though, he realizes that there's stuff under the metal, and begins to realize that the layer of metal is about 30 feet above the surface of the ground. However, it's blocking his vision of what ever is under it, due to how it's layed out. The openings are no more than a handspan at a time, and spread out all over, making it all but impossible to figure out what is under the metal.
Well this looked different. He wasn't exactly sure what he was looking at.
::Um…guys?:: He sent. ::I think I've found something significant here. My best guess is that it's some sort of…roof made out of scrap metal. Not sure exactly what it's covering, but it looks to be about 30 feet off the ground.::
::Neat. I was looking into magnetic chaff clouds for a possible power... so something made of the right metal at the right angles could totally play havoc with radar. It'd explain the less brain-stabbing of that direction. I vote we keep going that way, cause less ice-pick.:: Pulse responds mentally from her perch on Aegis's back.
Mud shrugs and follows along.
"I think I should take a look alone, maybe Blaze could do overwatch from the air." With the beatings most people had taken Aegis didn't want to risk getting caught in a bad position again but She could get out a lot easier than most.
With Aegis taking the lead, and Blaze doing aerial overview, the group approaches the clearing.
Upon getting within line of sight, Aegis sees what looks like chain link fence stretched from tree to tree. However, it doesn't look like it was originally there, it looks hastily secured to the trees. Additionally, there's wires strung through it, copper wires with the insulation stripped off. Old pans, forks, bits of metal, are all tied on to the fencing. The fence goes off in each direction around the clearing from where she stands, haphazardly attached from tree to tree, wherever they could attach it. It goes up 30 feet, and then meets more metal stuff strung overhead. It's hard to tell, but Aegis thinks she sees buildings 30 or 40 ft inside the circle of fencing. But there's a lot of undergrowth plus the fence and it's metal hang-me-ons blocking line of sight.
Aegis takes a moment to look over the area trying to figure out if the random scrap hanging on the fence was made to hide whatever was in here or to work as an alarm against people that bump into it.
"I'm going to see what I can find, I'll pull back if I run into trouble so stay close."
If no one objects Aegis would turn de-solid and make her way through the fencing.
::Be careful. Don't take any risks. I mean it.::
Mud shrugs in pain. "I think I can tunnel us underneath if Aegis gives us the all clear."
Aegis phases through the fence, and tries to sneak closer to the center of the clearing.
However, as she does so, she's not in the least bit stealthy. She has a brief glimpse of what looks like a village built out of a combination of wood and bits of left over materials from other projects around the area, even boat hulls for roofs. Then a small girl playing with a soccer ball with two other children screams and points at Aegis. "Madre de Dios, es un fantasma!"
All three children look at her with huge eyes full of fear and then run toward a building screaming "Es un fantasma!", while adults around the village begin gathering up weapons and looking in her direction!
Aegis holds her hands showing she is not armed and has no intention of attacking but she does stay de-solid just in case anyone tries to take a swing at her.
She would try to contract Violet via the mind-link if she is able. ::I think I found some locals, or at least some people. I think they just called me a phantom. I don't think any of them are metas but maybe Violet could get in here and translate?::
::I'm on my way.::
Violet vaults over the fence, if she can, and moves in to join Aegis.
She'll explain - if she can - that Aegis is not a phantom, but is in fact here to help.
Violet moves up and is stopped by the fencing, as there's no obvious way to bypass it, what with her being solid and all, and it going up 30 feet and then curving over to form a 'roof' over the village.
In the village, one of the men yells something at Aegis, which she doesn't understand. Another man, this one older, with a long white beard that contrasts strongly with his dark skin, begins chanting and shaking a stick with feathers and other bits at Aegis. Then he pulls a hand full of dust out of a bag on his hip, and blows it into Aegis's face.
::And now they are trying to curse me I think?:: Aegis coughed as the dust hit her lungs.
::They don't seem very threating, should I just leave?::
::Don't break the perimeter. It could be a Faraday Cage effect; if we break it, it might let all the snakes realize there are tasty vittles in there... if they built this in response to the Sneks, they likely have a magnetic meta or something similar. If we're going to dig our way in, dig deep, then back up, to hopefully displace their radar senses. You should probably come back this way, if they follow you, then they'll run into us, and then Violet can talk. We can't get in from out here without them showing us the door or us ruining their fortress of irony.::
Aegis feels fine for a few minutes after coughing, but then begins to feel odd, light-headed, and her vision begins to swim around the edges. Then the people standing around with the guns begin to look very strange, with elongated faces or enlarged ears, or their guns bend and twist randomly.
Mud attempts to tunnel under the fence without filling his tunnel, so the others can follow.
::We're coming.::
As the poison starts taking effect Aegis tries to keep her head on straight. ::Ok curse was some kind of drug, or meta maybe. Keep your distance from anyone trying to blow dust in your face.::
She would try to fall back while she still could, the guns would be useless against her so as long as she got distance from the dust she should be fine. While wobbly trees might cause some balancing issues she could just walk through them to get away. ::I'm trying to get back, they have guns. I don't know what they did to me but everything is spinning.::
::You can collapse this once we're in, right?:: Pulse asks, sticking close to the others as she looks up to Blaze, who hopefully has a better view of the current dangers - if any were incoming.
::Think so.::
::These people are scared. And armed. Let's not give them more reason to be afraid, if we can help it.::
Violet pauses, then...
::Does anyone speak Spanish? I can only speak something I can hear or see... Can anyone tell Aegis how to say 'I'm not a threat'?::
::Por que no las dos?:: Pulse offers, completely unhelpfully. ::I think they probably speak Portuguese, though. I learned 'No me Mate, Plx' from a nice BR on Tibia back in the before time, that was supposedly a magical way to get them to stop killing you. No idea what it actually means, or even how to pronounce it.:: she continues, a little more helpfully.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Aegis stumbles back into the group, staring at the ground to help keep her balance. "It's like a trip from discount acid." She says aloud. "I don't think they were able to follow me but we shouldn't stay here too long."
.
Aegis is weakened by the dust she got in her lungs while phasing, and somewhat weak. The group catches up with her quickly, and while the people in the village could have caught up with her easily, they do not come despite the group taking more than enough time for them to catch her.
Solid again, Aegis and the group slowly work around the perimeter of the fencing, and finally find a makeshift gate to the north of the village, near a small offshoot of the river that passes next to the village. The fencing is pushed out enough into the edges of the river for water to be pulled in, but only just.
Once able to see the villagers, the group makes out what seems like a disparate group, at least one 'villager' is wearing military clothing, several are wearing what looks like paramilitary garb, and the rest are wearing normal clothes with makeshift armor strapped on over it made out of motorcyle helmets or pans beaten into helmets, bits of ceramic tile twisted onto what looks like a catcher's protective plate, bits of pipe cut in half and strapped to arms and legs, each person has whatever they could fashion, it's almost something out of a post apocalyptic game.
The soldier and two of the paramilitary people, are in the lead as the group makes it to the gate. The soldier has a very large rifle pointed directly at Violet's face.
"¿Quién eres tú? ¡Identifícate antes de que te quite la maldita cara!
Who are you? Identify yourself before I blow your damn face off!
Violet smiles and calmly points to her team insignia on the chest of her uniform, and replies to the man (in Portuguese):
"We were sent to find out what was happening in this area," she says. "We're a rescue team."
She looks back at her friends and then gazes at the man. "We're here to save lives, sir. It looks like you might need help, here."
Over the mindlink, she'll make sure everyone is getting a live translation.
Still under the effects of the poison Aegis began leaning heavily against Pulse, if she let her. She wasn't entirely out of it but the twisting world around her made movement difficult. When the soldiers approached Aegis couldn't help but feel a little better at having guns pointed at them, she could deal with guns.
::Tell them to put the guns down or let me show them.:: Annoyed by the previous attack and a nursing a sore pride, The idea of putting an a~%&%$@ with a gun in his place was looking -real- nice.
As the Desolid Aegis moves to lean on her, Pulse shifts her focus to becoming 'solid' for Aegis, magnetizing her skin and armor to allow her to touch Pulse directly despite being normally untouchable. "You gonna be okay?" She asks, Aegis out loud, arm on her side as Aegis puts her arm over Pulse's shoulder. "Any chance you guys speak English so we can skip the translators?" she asks after Violet finishes.
The fact that she was covered in acid burns and bleeding while the guards pointed guns at them wasn't exactly promising on the diplomatic side of things.
"I'll be fine, just a little spinny. They hit me some kind of powder, it didn't care I wasn't solid." After Pulse mentions them speaking English she switches to their mind-link. ::Let's deal with this then lick our wounds.::
The soldier and the others look at the group, and seem suspicious. "
¿Equipo de rescate? ¿Cómo? Las señales de radio no pueden salir? ¿Cómo es que a nadie en tu grupo le falta algún miembro? Esas malditas serpientes eliminaron a todo mi equipo, ¿y simplemente te levantaste sin heridas?"
Rescue team? How? Radio signals can't get out? How come nobody in your group is missing any limbs? Those damn snakes took out my entire team, and you just waltz up with no wounds?
There's some grumbles from the villagers and the other paramilitary guys that seems to be agreeing with whatever the lead soldier said.
Many of the villagers have healing over wounds, many look like acid burns. One villager has a wrapped arm that ends a half-foot too short for where her hand should be.
"We're here precisely because there was no radio contact," Violet replies. "We've seen the snakes. We have the wounds to prove it. We're a Meta-Threat Response team. And we're here to help. Would you mind letting us in?"
The soldier looks to the villagers, and there is some mumbling, but it's quickly sorted out and one of the villagers nods. The soldier turns back, lowering his weapon. "Sí, puedes entrar. Date prisa, antes de que vuelvan las serpientes o la muerte."
Yes, you can enter. Hurry, before the snakes or death comes back.
The metal gate is opened, and the group is allowed to come into the village. The gate is quickly closed immediately behind them.
As soon as she enters, Pulse's senses are no longer bombarded by the snakes transmissions. In fact, she might as well be blind on the radio spectrum, no satellites, no radio stations, nothing.
The whole village is inside a makeshift Faraday cage. All the chicken wire and metal blocks the radio waves.
A dry, humorlous, breathy sound that could only be mistaken as laughter by her team mates who had heard similar sounds when there was humor and breath in Pulse's lungs escapes the form of the young adult as Violet translates. ::Point out that he has bad eyes. A quarter of my suit is in snake bodies and trees, and whether I look fine on the outside or not, I feel like I've been through a blender. And that if he thinks we look fine, he should see what we did to the guy who did it to us.::
As the others begin to enter the cage, Pulse pauses, uncertain she wants to go into the giant metal sphere that was making everyone invisible. What if she lured the snakes in? Besides, there was something she could totally do now that they'd found them and they weren't going to shoot her...
But ultimately, she heads in with the others. She seems relieved after the constant pressure of her brain being bombarded. "If they don't have any ideas for getting help, then I do. I don't know that it'll work, but I can probably throw out an SoS just by creating a huge hole in the snake noises... maybe they'll figure it out, maybe they won't. If I hit normal radio, then they'll hear it as static bursts amidst speech or music. Someone'll figure it out."
Aegis is too distracted by Pulse's comment to bother paying even a little attention to the other villagers. Maybe it was the shock of giant snakes attacking them, maybe it was the drugs still giving her burning man flashbacks, or a mixture of both but she'd forgotten not everyone was as sturdy as her.
As they move in she stops leaning against Pulse and drops her desolid form so she can return to normal while they are safe. The world blurred again as she shifted but she closed her eyes and focused, trying to reassure the others she was fine.
Come on you've had stronger stuff than this. Shake it off. She gave herself a mental pep talk before moving back beside Pulse, giving her something solid to lean against.
"If it's just getting a message back I could travel back on foot. It would be slow but the snakes can't touch me. It'll take me a long time but we won't be left hoping someone figures it out."
[dice=Perception]11-3d6
[dice=Electronics]13-3d6
Once the group is proven to be at least, non-hostile, the rest of the village comes out. There are more heavily wounded people who can't come out, but they are visible through open doorways and windows, heavily bandaged in bed. Some appear to be villagers, others appear to be soldiers or para-military.
One of the women, who has no apparent wounds on her, is holding a small child, about 3, who has a bandage on it's head that covers one eye, and it's corresponding arm is heavily bandaged. "¿Tienes medicina? Mi hija, ella fue quemada por el ácido. ¡Ella apenas se despierta, necesita ayuda! ¡Por favor ayúdala!"
Do you have medicine? My daughter, she was burned by acid. She barely wakes up, she needs help! Please help her!
Several other people approach and begin asking questions to the group.
"¿Estás realmente aquí para ayudarnos? ¿Puedes matar a las serpientes del diablo?"
"Hijo mío, está herido, no se despierta, ¿puedes ayudarlo? ¿Son ustedes médicos?"
"Mi esposa fue mordida, está muy enferma, su pierna es negra. Está embarazada, ¿puedes ayudarla? Por favor, ella necesita medicina mordedura de serpiente!"
"¿Conseguiste matar a alguna de esas malditas serpientes? ¡Simplemente encogen mis malditas balas como si fueran mosquitos!"
Did you manage to kill any of those damn snakes? They just shrug off my damn bullets like they were gnats!
My wife was bitten, she is very sick, her leg is black. She's pregnant, can you help her? Please, she needs snake bite medicine!
My son, he's hurt, he doesn't wake up, can you help him? Are you doctors?
Are you really here to help us? Can you kill the devil snakes?
Getting overrun with people and questions, even if she could only understand them from Violent translating, was quickly putting Aegis on the defensive. In her experience the mob mentality was a very dangerous thing and this wasn't the time or place for things to start going south. Despite her discomfort at the situation she doesn't show it and stands her ground as the people move closer, trying not to give an inch.
::I can't do anything for any of them. I don't think we'll be able to get any of them out of here safely so we'll need to bring back up here.::
::It's a shame their government didn't see fit to send us with literally anything of use. Just a radio in case I got KO'd, and which likely acted as bait for the snakes, anyway.: Pulse says, shaking her head, and blaming the situation since she didn't like dealing with the fact that everything was so screwed up. The snakes were nearly strong enough to kill them, 1v1, there were dozens remaining, she had no way of trying to communicate with them since she couldn't pick out isolated signals, she had little hope of communicating with the outside world... She pursed her lips inside of her armor, and headed back towards the door. It was clear that there was nothing she could do inside of their village, so all she could do was attempt to radio for an SOS from on top of their structure.
::I guess just tell them we're scouts, and I'm gonna go try to send a message in the form of static bursts.::
As she gets closer to where she'd come from, her inner strength gets the better of her outer emotions, however, Heroes should be Heroic. ::Tell them we've fought giant animals before, and that yes we killed a few... I don't know what to tell them about the medicine. I doubt we'd have been sent with antivenin even if they did send us with food or supplies.::
Violet answers the questions as best as she can, and will use her ability to increase her personal "aura" if necessary to make sure that the people remain calm and don't overwhelm the team.
She makes sure to tell the people in charge that the team is here to scout, locate, and report back. No one back in Civilization knows what's going on out here, and they weren't sent in with medical supplies of any kind, as (as far as the team was told) there aren't necessarily supposed to be civilians out here.
If Pulse will let her Aegis stops her from leaving by grabbing her hand. ::Don't go running off, these people are already jumpy. Wait for Violet to tell them what you're doing or they might attack and that won't end well for anyone.:: Assuming Violet tells them and they don't protect Aegis will follow Pulse outside to keep watch while she sends the message.
Aegis grabs Pulse and stops her from exiting the village while Vi is talking to the villagers.
Violet begins trying to reassure the villagers that they'll be doing their best to help.