Post-Mission Eleven: The Darker Neck(o) of the Woods

club24

Well-Known Member
Starlight Forest

Eden was at the forest's edge and looked to Shasse and Muyomi behind her while asking, "Are you two ready?"

Shasse nodded, her hand resting on the grip of her LATR in case of any trouble, she had a rough idea of why they had come back to the same place where not so long ago one of the crew had almost been eaten by some strange tar monster, but had agreed to come more out of curiosity.

Clad in a Mindy and with a lot of stamina, Eden began moving through the forest with Muyomi at her back and Shasse close behind while they hovered through the trees. There was a lot to take in, plants of all sorts of colors and shapes were blooming and hanging while many animals made themselves known with soft and shrill calls.

Keeping her head on a swivel the little blue neko easily kept pace checking the forest floor around them as they moved looking for any signs of the strange creatures or other potential threats, the last time she had visited a forest it had almost killed her but was no where near as spooky. Shasse shivered within her armour despite it not being cold, something about the atmosphere unsettled her but she kept moving staying focused on the mission, "Shosa, what course of action are we to take if one of those things appears?"

"Explore it further," Eden answered as they moved through it.

"Understood." Shasse replied eyeing a suspicous looking puddle of inky liquid as it bubbled quietly off to one side, she hadn't been present when Gravity was eaten during the team's battle here and had only heard of the creatures appearance through descriptions given in debriefing. Since coming to Ayenee they knew very little about the life residing on the planet so the decision to go after the creatures they encountered scouting was understandable, that and Shasse was always looking for an excuse to get out and fly freely.

"So were the others too afraid to come back and look for it again?" she asked wondering why there was only 3 of them investigating these potentially lethal monsters.

"This is a threat that we feel would be mitigated best by a small force," Eden replied as she zoned in on the puddle of oozy liquid. "You're seeing that, too, girls?"

"Yeah looks mighty suspicious and mighty gross, think it's one of those things?" Shasse had stopped and shouldered her rifle using the scope to get a better view without needed to move too close. "Certainly looks like sticky black ooze."

"Certainly does. We need samples to take back. How we do that is by going in... Are you ready?" Eden asked again.

"Can't be any worse that crashing into a tree, lets do it!" The overly eager soldier was already moving towards the ooze having switched from the rifle mode to SMG for close quarters, as she arced down towards it a particularly large bubble came to the surface and made a loud pop startling her as she landed causing a slight stumble.

Eden caught Shasse's elbow and looked to Muyomi, speaking, "We need to get closer, Peio, would you mind?"

The teal haired and Mindy-wearing Neko took careful steps forward and when nothing explosively shot out of the tar pit, she knelt close to the bubbling brackish black surface.

Eden watched with trepidation as she let go of Shasse, whose elbow she had been holding and said, "Good job, Peio..."

Being caught by Eden the small neko was able to barely escape face-planting into a potential monster, taking a moment to steady her breathing Shasse trained her weapon on the tar pit ready to open fire at a moments notice. "Thank you, shosa. It's still a little early to go tar diving for me anyway."

Her guard lowered slightly when nothing attacked Muyomi who had moved in close, it seemed like it may just be a normal tar pit after all. "Guess it was harmless after all then."

Muyomi moved in her butt pack and took out a few color coded vials with their screw on caps and a pipette.

Eden looked to Shasse, saying, "I want you close to her while she gets those samples. If anything comes out, you have her front and I'll have your back."

"I'm on it!" scooting closer to her squad mate Shasse took a kneeling position and kept the tar within her field of view while checking the surrounding trees and shrubs with her weapon sighted and ready. "So how much of this stuff do we need?"

"Just a tad bi-AAAHHH!" Muyomi started to say her sentence before halting as she dropped the pipette and vial into the tar liquid and they sizzled, disintegrating. The Neko clutched her chest and began trying to tear at her Mindy suit as Eden rushed forward from her position.

Shasse's head snapped towards Muyomi as she attached the gun to her suit freeing her hands, moving to her side as Eden was doing. She looked for any signs that the tar had made its way onto her suit and asked Muyomi, "What's wrong. did any get onto the mindy?"

"Not that!" Muyomi screamed into comms and Eden was at their side and had her hands underneath Muyomi's armpits and hooked around her chest.

The Shosa shouted to Shasse, "Get her legs!" as she picked up her upper body.

Without needing to reply Shasse did as she was told picking up the other neko by the legs helping Eden move her away from the tar pit. She hadn't seen anything attack her and Muyomi herself had denied it so what then had caused the outburst.

Bringing Muyomi away from the tar pit quickly, the two of them would see on their HUD Muyomi's vitals dropping drastically.

"We need to find what's doing this!" Eden said to Shasse. "Her suit is not compromised from my diagnostics. Check her suit visually while I scan further!" Then, she looked to Muyomi as she put a hand on her helmet, "We're going to get you through this!"

"Hai!" Shasse replied already checking over the mindy suit starting with the stomach and chest areas where the pain seemed to be coming from from thanks to the scrabbling hands of Muyomi. As she had done before there seemed to be no compromise to the suit and so she began checking over the arms and legs next, soon followed by the helmet.

Eden turned to Shasse, "I'm seeing that she is undergoing hemosynthetic arrest! This is not normal and nothing we're qualified to do, but..." Eden said, opening up Muyomi's suit for her so that her helmet was off and the two of them could see the contorted look of pain on Muyomi's unconscious face.

"I'll give her my hemosynth now," Eden said, about to take off her own helmet by putting both hands at her neck, elbows raised.

"Hemosynthetic arrest? That definitely sounds too complicated for me, I'll keep checking the mindy but I haven't seen anything suggesting a breach yet." Shasse spoke quickly checking the sides, she didn't want to try moving her while Eden worked and once completing the check she instead tried to stop Muyomi from moving about too much.

"I've seen this from my experience, but never in this time period" Eden said, referring to the Temple of the Stars but saying nothing more. "This is Ayenee."

"If you've seen it before, you know how to deal with it right? We can save her from this and get her back to the Kaiyo." Shasse was a little panicked at not knowing how to handle the situation, she wasn't a medic and there was no enemies to shoot at either.

"I don't have experience with it nor did I see any life saving practices being used with it, just many Nekovalkyrja dying from it a long time ago, Shasse. This is not the time nor place to learn. Let's bring her back to the fort, then," Eden said as she took off her helmet fully and set it aside.

"Understood, I'll grab her legs again, can we risk trying to teleport with her?" Shasse knew that the teleporter in a mindy could be used to effectively transport people as Sacre had performed the action multiple times, but she didn't understand them enough to know if two people could both use it to transport one other.

"A Mindy canno-..." Eden faltered in her words and stooped over Muyomi's body.

"Shosa! What's happening, is something wrong?!" Shasse's panic rose as she heard the first officer stop mid sentence.

Eden shook her head and wirelesssly told her through their digital minds, "Emiko-hei...! We'll die if you don't—" She was cut off as her head stooped down lower and she slowly turned he face to look at Shasse with golden eyes that were quickly filling with pained tears. Beneath the hood of her black bangs, she whispered in awe, "It feels so warm..."

Shasse didn't understand what was happening to her two companions, grabbing each of them by the arm she dragged them away from the tar pit, convinced it must be something near it at least that was causing whatever this was.

"Eden, don't you die on me now." She spoke lightly slapping her face in an effort to snap her out of her current state.

The Shosa moved slowly under Shase's touch, yellow eyes blinking before going wide, "Muyomi!" She made to move to her sides to look for her.

"It's ok I brought her too, Eden what's happening to you?" Shasse kept tapping her in an effort to prevent the shosa from returning to her dazed state.

Muyomi was nearby, but still unconscious and Eden batted Shasse's hand away from her face to look at her and asked, "Is she breathing?"

Shasse nodded, "She's still going through that, hemosynthetic arrest as far as I can tell but it looks like she's losing the fight, we have to get her away from here and get her help. Can you move ok?"

Eden shook her head, "No."

Shasse's expression was getting more worried beneath her helmet and she grimaced hearing that single word, "Hang in there, I'll fly both of you back and Sacre or Miles or Care can help you."

Eden nodded as she looked at Muyomi more fully now and she could see that the extra time that Muyomi had been under the influence of whatever was around that area had worn on her to the extent that she was not stirring.

"Hurry, Emiko-hei," Eden said as she looked to Shasse.

Shasse grabbed each of them around the waist with each arm, a strange sight considering her size, before moving to fly them out of the forst and back towards the fort, "Just hold on a little longer, maybe it will wear off when we leave the forest."

“You can save her you know, not too difficult a feat either.” The voice seemed to come from behind the blue neko but as she turned there was no figures to be seen, she tried to ignore it and continue with her path upwards when it spoke again, “In fact I have the tools you need right here.”

“Who are you, or where are you?” the confusion in her voice was evident as the words of an unseen man filtered into her mind while she spun trying to determine its source.

“You can’t see me and your friends can’t hear me because I’m only giving you the chance to save her now, just drop your friends and retrieve the present I left for you beneath that stone you see the one?” Shasse didn’t understand how all the magic in Ayenee worked but she did know that this seemed like a good way to help her companion which was enough incentive for her, touching ack down she placed Eden and Muyomi on the floor and moved back towards the tar pit.

Eden called out to the Neko, "Emiko-hei...! Emiko-hei, we need to go back to the—" her own pain gripped her and she looked on as Shasse quickly hurried towards a small rock protruding from the ground near the tar pit they had stopped at earlier.

"No no, I heard a voice. There was a man and he told me how to help her, I just need to find it..." Shasse spoke between ragged breaths as she hefted the stone from its resting place and scrabbled around in the dirt.

Eden's forehead crinkled and she began putting her hands on Muyomi's teal-haired head next to her and then looked to her before casting a worried look towards Shasse.

"Good good, it should be just beneath the surface there not too hard to find."

"And this will help me save her?" She didn't stop brushing dirt and roots away as she spoke slowly unearthing a small wooden box which had miraculously avoided rotting for the time it appeared to have been buried. As Shasse dug up the small item the voice seemed to grow excited, "Yes yes, that's the one. Now the item in there is designed to remove curses which I'm afraid to say is what has afflicted your poor friend, so just take it over to her and pierce her chest with it to complete the removal."

Shasse simply nodded as she opened the box and pulled out a small wooden doll, that strangely resembled her own appearance however in her mad rush she didn't notice. "Eden I need you to move, I have to stab her with this and it will remove the curse." The blue neko spoke almost forcefully to her superior as she returned to the pair lying on the floor.

"I-" Eden began, but there was little to say, except, "I learned of dark magic like this in the castle of the Darkfire Clan, Emiko-hei..." Her pain gripped her and she winced, then continued, "Be careful!"

Shasse was already kneeling over the form of Muyomi trying to get at her through the mindy armour, trying to remove it would take time so she simply pulled and pushed at the suit near the chest area to make a hole.

"Have to stop the curse, have to stop it." She mumbled as she managed to pull it open with a screech of metal twisting and bending where it shouldn't, "Eden can you help me hold her down, I don't want to miss."

Eden's hands were quick to move to Muyomi's body and she held down the center of the unconscious, cursed Neko, saying, "I have her!"

Trembling, Shasse looked at the strange doll once more before raising it up above the hole in the mindy she'd made, "Please for give me for the pain I'm about to cause Muyomi." she whispered before bringing the doll down and puncturing the nekos skin with it around the centre of her chest.

"Well now you've saved her, you should feel proud of yourself doing such a noble deed as exchanging your life for hers." The voice returned with the same cocky tone as Shasse pulled the wooden carving from Muyomi's chest and tried to patch the wound with her own hemosynth seeing as though she'd just ripped open the mindy.

"What do you mean mine for her-" It was then that she noticed the resemblance the doll bore to herself and noticed a strange colour spreading in its eyes, "Wait, what's going on what did you do to me?!"

Eden was crying out to Shasse, now, "No! Emiko-hei... Don't!" She lunged towards Shasse and then grabbed at the doll, saying, "You took on the curse!"

Shasse's eyes widened under her helmet as she felt an odd sensation in them as though something was changing, "Oh no, Eden how, why is this happening, I wanted to help her!"

"And you did so well too, anyway enjoy the curse you have willingly taken upon yourself, don't forget to take some blood once a week or so and don't lose that doll if you wish to stay sane." The voice seemed to fade away as a rustling sound eminated from a nearby shrub and a large black bird took flight, cawing as it went.

Eden processed the imagery and then said, "Shasse, I want you to be ready for some information to enter you digital mind. Shasse, are you with me?"

Shasse nodded at Eden unable to form any words as her mouth just opened and closed without speaking, she collapsed on the floor and sat stunned at what had just happened.

Eden transferred what she had learned from one half of a book from the Darkfire Clan's library and said, "I think this pertains to you and your blood curse. Please, know your life will be forever changed, unless you do something about it. And soon. I have given you the tools," Eden said as she bent to pick up Shasse's Mindy-clad form. She held the blue-skinned Nelovalkyrja in her arms and said. "Now you must do something with them..."

The blue neko's mind raced to process all the information it received from Eden as she remained still, allowing herself to be picked up. It had been foolish of her to trust the voice and as a result her life was now so much different. It appeared that the blood curse was only curable if you could find the vampire who'd placed it on you, or the objective look-a-like, neither of which would be an easy task.

"Eden," she croaked finally forcing her trembling mouth to speak, "I don't know if I can, how could I find this vampire within a day with no idea how they even operate?" Shasse let out a small sob while she clutched the strange doll, she remembered to voice had told her to keep hold of the doll and to have blood at least once a week. From the images and info Eden had shown her it seemed this would stop her from losing her mind to the hunger. "What about Muyomi?" she asked moving her head to look over at the other neko.

Eden looked to Muyomi and then back at Shasse, "My suit has been monitoring her vitals. She just needs a good shake to wake up. What worries me is your state. Let's get you inside." The Shosa spoke out to Muyomi in comms a few times before the Neko woke and Eden, still holding Shasse, pointed upwards and to the fort, where she began to go. She asked, "Hanging in there, Shasse?" Then added, "I don't know how you'll do this, Shasse, but I know you won't be alone."

"Y-yeah I'm a little better, just trying to grasp the situation. The voice that spoke to me must have been the vampire who set the curse, but he did tell me I need to keep the doll with me and take some blood at least once a week to stay sane." Shasse shuddered at the thought of having to drink the blood of someone else, "Eden, we need to tell Hoshi right? Being the captain and all but, could we not tell the crew just yet I want to try figuring this out before telling them."

Eden nodded, "Higher ups will need to know, but you have my promise that nobody on the Kaiyo but us need to know."

"Thank you, I'd rather not start a panic or be singled out just yeat when I don't even understand it or know what I'll do about it." Shasse had managed to calm down and had started thinking over the situation, "And I think I can fly myself now if you don't want to carry me any longer."

"We'll see how you do..." Eden said, loosening her grip on Shasse so that the other Nekovalkyrja could fly freely.

Shasse engaged her own Mindy's flight and followed along behind Eden, her head was still spinning and she thought the medbay would be her first stop. "Requesting permission to be dismissed, my head is still shaken up and I'd like to go rest for a bit and get a general checkup if that's ok..."

"It is," Eden said warmly. "Let's get you indoors..."
 
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