AW [Secret World] Luminocity

[LavaLung]

Moon seemed the most attached to Hermit's approach, looming behind them forebodingly, and attempting to backseat-sense what psychic waves the smaller woman was projecting. BioPsychokniesis and clairvoyance actually felt weirdly similar; Both were based in quantum pockets of constant, rolling potential energy, expanding forever outwards... Both held the data of their future vector within them, from the very start.

The tall waif knew the key to this was internal visualisation, but how did you visualise something that should be impossible? That breaks all of the rules that they had practiced with, up until that point?

A crunching sound. Their boots had encountered some of Blue's spent shells.

An idea.

Holding one hand up was if swearing an oath, eyes glazed over like a sleepwalker, Moon raised her pistol much too casually and began blasting away. The shots were rhythmic and timely, pounding and punctual. They made sure not to hit Judgement, but other than that, the attack was ruthless and clinical.

"...We need to focus... Establish the line..." The words were like a whisper into Hermit's ear. Allowing her senses to also be open, so that they might both form some kind of psychic array with their comrade. "What is... The pulse that makes it's flesh return?... From whence does it flow?..."

She wasn't trying to brute force the thing to death with gunfire. For every shot, there was an added scan, trying to isolate the exact moment a spark of energy began to regenerate the flesh. If they could figure that out, they could follow that energy right back to the source.

 

[Char]

Office

The room filled with the burbling-burping like vibrations of the creature as the inquisitive psychics plied their trade. While Judgement clung to its legs and Justice strained to keep it off the ground the others began to investigate.

Moons shots passed through it with as much resistance as one might expect from a charged rail-fired munition but as she expanded deeper more questions than answers came to the fore. Each round passed through the body and out the other side, but unlike a human body where the wound expands and implodes back into itself from the vacuum and passage of the round; The bullet simply passed its near diameter and barely expanded before sealing almost completely up with the exception of a small blemish and indentation.

The Body of the creature was also completely foreign to the psychics. It was not, at a glance, at all a carbon-based lifeform like themselves and the thick-rubbery flesh of its body refused to yield to them as it stood beyond their current understanding. The revelation came from the hyper-cogitation and advanced perceptual abilities that quickly ruled out possible scenarios until contact with the skin-flesh of it rendered a deeper understanding.

It was a hyphae/fungi organism; A literal living mushroom lifeform. The thick and rubberous form of its body closing up the wounds naturally as compared to any innate healing ability; It was naturally immune to ballistic trauma.

The body was closer to a soft fungi mixed with a rubber cork-like material that move through a hyper-advanced form of contorting polymer chains in the body as it coiled up in its equilibrium state. When is stretched, it coils and uncoils individual chain segments; Its stiffness lengthens the the inter-atomic bonds of its matter and creates movement as compared to a nervous system and electrical signals.

It, in essence, felt no pain and its entire body was hypothetically one giant brain lacking organs, bones, nerves, blood, or bones. The only exception was a clear-ish fluid that occasionally secreted thick jelly-like moisture on the skin as the body absorbed moisture and removed the excess and the calcitrant-like growths on the still wide and whipping tongue and mouth.

A mouth and tongue which, unlike the rest of the body, was carbon-based and upon closer look was unnaturally grafted to the rest of the body and expanded into the depths of the mushroom-humanoid body where it became obscured by the unnatural and foreign nature of the xeroform.

It was a mushroom man with a parasitic growth burrowed into its body as a head.

"I already shot it" Blue stood rather impatiently to the side as if Justice and Moon shooting with the former in panic and the latter in probing experimentation was counterproductive.

"How do I kill it?"

As it flailed in the air the creature nearly swiped Judgement with one of its hands; The sphincter-like digits retracted afterwards to reveal black, glistening hooked claws two inches long that hooked like a bill as they missed the psychics face and continued to wiggle about in a pantomime of a man on a ledge struggling to keep ones balance in the way it waved about while its legs were locked together.

At the doorway Blacks' weapon clicked as the safety was taken off.

"Hear something, incoming," she stated with an icy tone.

 

[LavaLung]

The more that Moon glimpsed about the nature of the creature, the less she felt like it was a good idea that Justice was even touching it. This had gone way past the point of feeling like one of those hoax horror recordings supposedly recovered from a dead body, and right into the territory of an almost laughable hysteria. She wasn't paralyzed by fear anymore, because the situation felt delusional, not 'real' by any normal definition.

She reloaded her pistol and just kept shooting- aiming for the strange tongue and mouth now, as awkward of a target as it was- but more just trying to distract and a subdue it at this point, rather than even expecting to do permanent damage.

"Fungal creature. Some kind of parasitic infection, forming the voracious maw." Moon's wistful words responded to Blue. Her tone was far too clinical and blank, considering it was punctuated by almost constant gunfire. She looked like she was daydreaming still. "Perhaps we should... Find a source of fire? Radiation? Electric shock? Acid?..."

"Forsooth, I gleam that we were not provisioned for this venture."

 

[Wolf626]

"Wait, it's a giant mushroom?! Oh man, this is just like the fungaloids of the Ronan adventure, Devil in the Bowl!" exclaimed Magician, geeking out a bit even as dodged the claws of the creature with Judgement. Which was good. Geeking out was preferrable to being paralyzed with fear. The young Lusiad's mind was a whirlwind of ideas, some plausible, some less so. Hard to find enough soap, listerine or bleach in the current situations.

Then an idea struck Magician. And he smiled. A smile that bordered on madness. To his fellow Augurs, he said, "I have a plan! Keep it pinned in the room as long as possible!" Turning to the closest soldier, he spoke. "Trooper! Are there water sprinklers in that room and can we trigger them? I need water! And lots of it on that thing?! H2O! We're gonna chemistry this b-word to hell!"

 

[Soresu]

"Liquifactive necrosis," Hermit's eyes sparkled behind the tinted lenses of her glasses. "We have a carbon-based lifeform. And a fungal form of life." the young Augur flexed her fingers concentrating on the parasitic lifeform more than the fungal one it had been grafted to. She was going to pit them against each other. Let one infect the other. Turnabout is fair play after all.

"Once this starts, if it works, that thing will get gooey quick. And I don't know what the mushroom part will do in response. The cascade should do it some harm. Best I can do on short notice." waving off at Magician.

"Don't start in on Ronan. Not now. Cave of the Bat Babies was better. And hurry up with the water stuff while I work on this already. It might propagate cell death it faster." Hermit snapped the first part murmuring the latter. "I don't think I've ever given something cellular necrosis before between a fungus person and a face-hugger."

 

[Char]

With moons concentrated fire the first breakthrough came to the fore as one of the hyper-kinetic mass driver rounds sheered a groove through the long and writhing tongue analog. As soon as the bullet grazed the bio-organic flesh a spurt of yellow-orange fluid spurted out from the wound with the consistency of coagulating blood; Causing the tongue to retract back rapidly into the body as the petal-like mouth closed shut like a protective iris and the body began to spasm randomly against non-existent bindings.

The second was less a breakthrough but more shedding light on the hosts biology as Hermit began irritating and degrading the hosts body at concentrated points at a near cellular level. It was slow and unpleasable at current without more practice with a more familiar subject but at a few distinct points the bark-brown corkflesh began to turn a darker brown-black and show a visible sheen as the flesh softened and loosened and began weeping a clear viscous syrupy fluid that wept from the afflicted area and emitted a rank mildew and rot smell.

Magicians action took the longest as the only non-augurs being the two liquidators seemingly ignored him for their own situational duties causing him to look elswhere.

There wasnt a centralized sprinkler system, but with some perceptual snooping there was a central line of some kind too thick to budge with his powers but was just under their feet; Allowing him to simply break away the laminate flooring and baseboards and expose the line before simply shaping the thick polymer pipes surface into a chute where it could spray a controlled stream.

The water hit the flailing body. While the water did nothing on the surface it was now present and testing the limits of their water-resistant new uniforms~

 

[Gunhand4171]

Judgment let out a frustrated grunt as he held the abomination down. He was now being soaked by the hose Magician had popped free. 'I'm so going to make him pay for this...' he thought. As he held it down he pushed his gun into the beasts side and unloaded the clip at point blank range. "Would you just die already!" He cursed.

His attention was split between present and future. He was waiting for just a moment before Magician would flash fry this damn thing. 'Come on... do it!' He pleaded in his mind. He wanted nothing more than for this thing to explode into tiny pieces.

 

[Wolf626]

Magician would've let out a tirade of epic proportions at the liquidators, if the situation wasn't so desperate. And if he wasn't so focused on his job. As the water sprayed the office, Magician used his telekinesis to try and funnel the water into the creature and away from him and the others.

"Necro-what? What you have necromancy powers? Why did noboby tell me?!" he snarked at Hermit, before continuing. "Well, let's see what gets it first, cellular infection or incineration."

Backing away slowly, he joined Judgement, replying to him with a tired smile. "Don't rush me sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles." He then turned to the others.

"Pull back! We need to get clear from the office!" he shouted before turning to the one person this whole plan hinged upon. The lynchpin. Who so happened to change personalities on the flip of a coin. Or the roll of a die.

"Tower! I need you! I know you don't care much for me, but I need the best matter shaper and that's you." he spoke between deep breaths, focusing his attention to the office where despite his best efforts he couldn't keep the growing deluge from leaking outside of the office. "I need you to keep the hydrogen and oxygen molecules of the water separate! That way the water will became a super flammable fuel and we can torch this bastard!"

Shifting back to Tower's mismatched eyes, he smiled softly. "Help me Tower, you're our only hope."

 

[LavaLung]

Expecting Moon to stick to a plan was maybe a bit much- They were channelling everyone else's emotions as always, and since the team was irate, fearfully damp and disgusted, it all formed a sort of grotesque murderous soup in the ghostly, feyish woman's brain. Somehow knowing what Hermit was talking about doing, but not understanding half the implication of the words, that just made it worse.

Were they going to run out of ammo before this thing stopped regenerating? How was water going to help? Were these guns even water-proof!?

Ice cold water ran down their spine as their blood boiled over, causing them to fire faster and faster until there was nothing left in the clip again-

Magician's destruction of the floor had reached the apex now- So she just started picking up the heavy ceramic tiles and lobbing them into the chest of the creature inside. One- two- three- four-

Getting further and further until she had backed up to the counter- Ghoulishly jumping up and onto the surface, silhouetted by the failing electric lights-

Then she started throwing the secretary's computer monitors, the communications console, and any large piece of wood they could telekinetically wrench off.

 

[Soresu]

Hermit had been so fixated on her task. Bending her will into starting the veritable riot of a war between the parasite and fungal whatever's tissues. It had begun working, liquefactive necrosis had begun taking hold. The syrupy liquid seeping from the thing and stench searing her nostrils as she might be plied. Or so it would have remained. A hail of water droplets smacked her from the top of her head and cascaded to her feet. Thoroughly soaking her. Hearing Magician, she knew then why in the hell she was soaked through.

Her concentration faltered, then re-doubled, only for Moon to appear to be going apeshit and throw everything in the room at the monstrosity. Shards of glass nicked her skin from the electric lights once more a flicker of attention drawn away. The wounds healed rapidly with each nick, cut, and finally, a computer monitor smashed into her side. Pain wobbled her, the water-slick floor roaring toward her. With a little cry of startled panic, Hermit felt pain jolt into her shoulder having fallen on her side. Intense pain radiated in her shoulder and down her arm.

Spasms in her muscles caused brief but more intense pain. Hermit let forth a small whimper at each twitch while rolling onto her back. The shoulder had dislocated. But, the Augur managed to push herself up into a seated position with her other arm. Gave Magician a baleful look and kicked fitfully at the floor, unable to gain traction enough to get to her feet the old-fashioned way.

Now with her focus no longer on the thing now weeping pus and a stench so foul it almost caused her to retch. The thin girl 'pushed' herself up telekinetically to her feet, left arm dangling at her side while her right hand came close to closing. And cold-cocking Magician full-on in the face before remembering their current predicament.

"Moon," croaked the now injured Hermit, feeling the swirling torrent of chaotic emotion fomenting in her fellow's mind. "Calm down," another response, this one in a strained placative tone. Oh, she hurt. But concern was there now. And wanting to get this whole damned scenario behind her. To heal her injury. Her negative emotions are those of being wet. And mad, and vengeful she buried under her insular layers of emotional warding. All that remained was concern if laced with physical hurt. But even then she tried dampening that.

While Magician's crackbrained scheme began, Hermit seized the initiative. And made to seize at Moon. Going to wrap the emotionally stricken Augur up in a blanket of telekinetic force, gentle, not enough to hurt. But to pull them off their feet. To float them. To bring them along. She had no way of knowing whether that worked or not since everything was happening so fast.

If they made it out alive. Judge could yell and scream at her for days afterward. But Magician's entire action figure collection was going to end up as one giant pile of plastic.

 

[Char]

While everyone began losing their absolute shit and turning on each other it finally became apparent that things had gone a bit quiet; Enough that a certain lack of a burbling-burping sound from a freakish abomination of nature drew some attention.

The mycolecean analog wad stopped moving finally. Its surface was squished and pierced and punctured a hundred times over by vinyl tiles and broken plastic and faux-composite. While much of it was in all the same places it had been shot and crushed before a paticularly jagged piece of tile was still sticking through the chest and actually seemed to dribble off a yellow-orange blood that also pooled in the now open through as the petals of its mouth unfurled and the organic tounge hung lazily off the side and would have seemed to have sloughed out of the throat all together if it wasnt pierced through with the vinyl.

It became apparent that the parasitic relationship between the carbon and mycolecean bodies was codependent or, more likely, that the carbon-based organic tounge was a more insidious and insular parasite that the calcium growths puncturing its body into the mushroom chest cavity would imply after rooting itself was invasive.

The body was just a vessel for the parasitic lifeform controlling it from within...

It had only taken almost three full minutes to discover this, and luckily no new threat had come in that time despite the inordinate amount of noise the young psychics had made.

"Pretty small target." Black surmised after giving her best 'is this really the time for that, you two?' look to hermit and moon when it became clear the seriousness of the situation had yet to sink in.

"Cut off the head." Blue nodded, still half way into the hall himself.

"We'll have to at this rate." Black nodded as the reading on her emotions as she scanned over the group made it seem like getting the hell out of the building wasn't now the immediate priority. She reaffirmed this to everyone's dismay a moment later.

"No contact over the net and despite reaching the ZPR there's still no sign of a shutdown which means we'll need to continue with the mission. With this thing here and whatever else caused all the shooting a few minutes ago likely being the same or other unknown organisms..."

"Quarantine procedures." Blue reaffirmed, making it clear that nothing would be leaving the building for the time being.

"He's right." Black tightened her gasmask a little bit more and looked over the group one final time. "Do whatever you have to do to ready yourselves now. Because when we start moving we arent stopping until we make the objective no matter what gets in our way; We need your heads in the game."

And then as if the previous silence was an indicator of the entities death the new silence was foreshadowing something else entirely.

"Where's Hierophant?"

 

[Gunhand4171]

Judgement had to let go of the monster as Moon threw an unending number of objects the beast. Rolling away, the AUGUR took several deep breaths. Hearing Blue and Black's proclamation, he groaned in disappointment. Judge wanted nothing more than to be out of this place. It was apparent that he needed so much more training. His Precognition has been less than helpful so far, he needed to see farther.

Then, it hit Judgement just as it probably did for the other AUGURs. With everyone so fixated on the abomination, they had lost sight of her.

He was on his feet in an instant. Judgment needed to find her, and he needed to do it now. "Can anyone sense her?" He asked the others, worry tinging his voice as he attempted to expand his consciousness.

 

[LavaLung]

Moon's attitude switched on a dime, directly affected by Hermit's single minded force of will. Even the act of lifting the tall woman off the ground was surprisingly easy, perhaps because the notion that it should happen, which made Moon's own internal powers assist in the action.

The disgruntling fact of having a job left half finished, and the lack of somewhere to actually run too, however, that complicated matters.

"...It's still breathing." Wispy tones remarked balefully, as her boots met solid ground once more.

Hierophant was also missing. All the more reason to deal with this quickly.

"...Give me a moment. This will hurt." Moon looked down upon Hermit with a residual seriousness and focus that seemed rather out of character, though the soft professionalism was certainly preferable. Almost regal. No amount of pleasant words or finesse would ease the motion the next motion they made, however, psychically glancing inside of Hermit's disjointed flesh and expertly popping her shoulder back into the socket. As casual as locking a sliding door bolt.

"...An augur is also a word for a tool, you know. A spinning tool for digging." She stroked the upper part of the smaller woman's back with sympathetic care. But her other hand then outstretched, pointing directly at the jagged piece of lino embedded in the beast's flesh. "Your telekinesis is much better than mine. Could you please remove the head of this anathema, my dearest?"

 

[Char]

"Am here." Kays' voice sounded just loud enough over the spray to be heard. Despite being able to hear her she seemed anything but present.

It took a moment of concentration to find her, as she was practically right where she was from the beginning but the eyes and even their perceptual senses seemed to gloss over her as she once again like their training session hid her presence psychically. She was sitting against a wall, cross-legged, with her hands in her lap and head tilted back ever so slightly as the near milky-whites of her eyes stared off into nothing.

"Lot of em out there." She stated, not quite eluding as to just how broad 'out there' was as she continued to project her senses outwards.

"Numbers?" Black asked, simply accepting Kay as she was for simplicity sake.

"Neh." Was her answer as she felt around until finding a nearby overturned chain to get herself back onto her feat. "No specifics like; Clusters, clumps, groups. All over the place and more."

"How." Blue growled, a demand more than a question. "How did we not notice them before?" Black expounded for him.

Kay simply shrugged, which made it less clear considering she wasn't even facing them and was looking blankly in a random direction off to the side.

"It doesn't matter now. What matters is we regroup with other elements and push towards the objective. How wont matter if something happens to that reactor; The objective stays the same." Black stated with finality as she shared a glance with Blue who nodded precisely but then looked dubiously over the group of haphazard psychics.

"We'll have to split up." Black decided against all logic the psychics could fathom but left no room for argument.

"Now that we know how to kill these things," Black started before looking to the group for confirmation. Blue shooting the almost dead creature in the exposed parasite tongue causing it to jerk and then go still all the confirmation she needed. "Now that we know how to kill them the main group will push to the lower floor and to the reactor to shut it down while another group collects any survivors on this floor; I'll need at least one of the bloodhounds- Yes Hierophant works- to find and guide them to us while we set up triage and organize a sweep."

Kay plopped herself down again, her usual inability to b quite at odds with her new sense of platitude as Black also stood over her waiting for Kay to reach out and find anyone surviving.

"The rest of you." Blue got their attention and leaned into the hallway, looking first down one direction and then the other before stepping out. "On me."

He started off down the hall.

And then came back a few seconds later to stick his head back in the room, taking in the sorry state of his charges.

"Now."

First floor

Blue made a slow enough pace for them to follow as he moved down the hall wordlessly. Staying close to the side of the hall and against the wall he stopped at every corner and paused them with a hand gesture before carefully looking around every corner. With judgments help they were able to avoid a roaming duo of their still-unnamed aggressive creatures but the pace was still agonizingly slow when each of the psychics and their near-photographic memories recalling the lobby map made it apparent that in almost ten minutes they had barely made it a quarter of the way to the closest descending stairs down into the deeper levels of the facility.

Once again pausing at an intersecting hall to peer around the group was able to stop and get their bearings. Lining the walls was more of the other Augurs discs every ten feet or so to no apparent end, but what was most apparent and noticeable to all of them was that the quality of the air had noticeably changed. There was visible brown spores giving the still lit hall a brown-yellow tint as HVAC systems and vents pushed them and cycled them through the air. They were each breathing them in but with their bodys baseline keeping them at a constant peak of health, and Blue in still good condition MOPP gear there was no sign as to if it was harmful or what the spores affected.

What was clear to them all, also, was that the halls had been empty of not only monsters but the air had been clean if a bit stagnant when they had entered...

Blue waved a hand back at them and carefully gestured them back and away from the intersection for reasons that became apparent when a distant burbling-burping sound could be heard before the slapping sound of bare feet on the tiled floor moved away.

"This is taking too long." Blue looked back at them and seemed to notice the spores himself as he drew a finger along a wall, disturbing them like dust and running it between two of his fingers before turning his attention back to them.

"Time is critical, we need to move faster." He clipped as the established feeling that their handler was not one for drawn-out sentences clearly expected some kind of psychic answer or solution to the situation.

Between them and the closest known staircase was at least several halls, interconnected and solo offices, wardrooms, meeting spaces, janitors closests, break rooms; The list went on from what they could all remember of the map. There was even some kind of utility or service elevator just a bit closer to them connected to some kind of larger maintenance/warehouse space for bringing equipment down to the lower level.

Beyond that there was the ever-present presence of the hostile entities always close enough for the least perceptual of them to sense while Judgement was able to sense them in one manner or another at a distance enough to know that Kay and Black were already making waves enough somewhere else on the floor to the point that not a few were actively moving in the same direction in some coordinated way.

 

[Wolf626]

Magician's hazel eyes blinked, staring dumbfoundedly at the sight before him. Dropping his hold on the water, he rubbed the back of his neck almost sheepishly.

"Well, guess that takes care of that." he eventually said. He turned to reply to Judgement when Kay called out. Magician kept quiet for the ensuing conversation, feeling a bit like a student being brought before the dean. Then they talked of splitting up and Magician couldn't believe it. He looked at Hermit and Judgement, his expression saying all.

First floor

Following Blue and the group, Magician thought of the map of the place. He agreed with Blue they were going too slow. If only there was a clear path to the elevator and stairs...
Wait. Maybe they'd just have to make one.

"What about this nearby office? We could matter shape the back wall into a doorway, go north for the breakroom, get access to the next hallway and get maintenance." Magician said, explaining his plan. Now came the bad news, "Of course, this means we have to face two of those things again. But as you said. Speed is critical."

 

[Gunhand4171]

Judgement sighed at the orders coming from Black's mouth. Splitting up was how all cheap horror stories started, just before everyone got killed. The whole situation was FUBAR.

First Floor:

Judge followed closely behind Blue, relaying everything he found as they moved. Listening to Magician's idea. "It be quick, but we also have to watch what's on the other side." He replied. "If the three in the meeting room sense us while we are breaking through, then we'll have even more trouble on our hands.

Looking back to Blue, an eyebrow raised. "Your call, in any event." He stated. "What do you want? Breach or head north. There's two more down the hall as well." Judgement added.

 

[LavaLung]

First Floor

Moon moved silently as a ghost, the pale woman expressionless and ghastly as they became slaved to the collective will of the group. If the focus was any stronger, they might well have started floating along behind them like a summoned demon.

"I sense the motive force. A human is close, and three more yonder." She remarked in that trademark wispy, half-sleep tone, one arm gesturing outwards in a way rather resembling a scarecrow. "They... could be other Augurs, you realise."

Was this 'reactor' even nuclear powered? The strange layout of the corridors played on her mind, looping and twisting back in on themselves. She didn't have to be psychic, to find monsters turning up here to be an odd coincidence, either. But what was really going on? How much did Black know that he wasn't telling them?

Her head turned and leered, feeling the urge to rest her forehead directly on the wall... but stopping themselves just short due to fear of contamination.

"A bathroom. Shallow breaths. Hiding. Two abominations in attendance." Eyes flickered into her eyelids, seeing the unseeable. At least in terms of pulses, the movement of bodily fluids. "Magician's plan... sound... But if we go through the wall of the bathroom, we can..."

Hands held out, then parsed together, fingertips joining into a triangle.

"...recruit... an answer?..."

The gaunt woman got their Psypistol ready to act, then... was stung by Black's surface, human considerations. Her thumb popped the side-screen out, and took some gas readings from the strange spores in the air around them.

What if this became more dense the further into the facility they got? Was punching a hole in the wall a bad idea after all?

 

[Big Dicc Marty]

Justice cautiously approached the weird... thing that had been successfully dispatched by his teammates. He tried to focus on it's, hopefully, corpse, pulling together what each nerve's last breath was, it's final signals. He began to force his own energy and life into the thing, not enough to bring it from the dead, but enough to make those nerves work and respond. It was all a cacophony of pain that made him almost wince were it not for the prospect of strengthening himself. It is what he would have wanted, a strong son. Justice endured his own effects before raising one foot and stomping on the head. He wanted to know how that felt. Maybe this was what he needed to finally advance his biomancy beyond small restraints and healing scrapes and scabs.

Justice winced as he felt the awful crunch and squelch of liquid, bone and protein forcing out between the treads of his boot. As he felt the little voices of nerve endings abruptly... stop. Not inactive, not active, not there.

First Floor

Justice followed behind quietly, listening and heeding the words of his team as they tried to make sense of what mess they were entering. A pounding headache had formed from vicariously exposing himself to a small death, breaking his concentration each time his mind had to remind itself that it was still alive and feeling and every branch of it's being was safe. The attunement to himself that let him feel every spore in the air that caught in his throat, every million that traveled into his lungs, poisoned and infested the rich and healthy alveoli only to be repelled for it to happen all over again. Each breath was heavy and grainy, spores stealing saliva on his tongue as it landed in his wet mouth. He sneezed into his arm, the invisible force of wind revealed with the spores just as the HVAC and vents had constantly done. It was... uncomfortable. It was hard to keep focus with every little stimuli against every little hair on his exposed skin, even the attempts at calming a hastening breathing only made it worse as he felt himself to be sanded by little grains.

 

[Soresu]

Hermit felt a small pop of her shoulder as the group moved. Emitting only the faintest of a whimper. Her shoulder had gone back in place and mended itself quickly with her help. But with Blue pushing them, and the man wiping a finger against the spores, the girl wanted to admonish him for doing it. He didn’t know if they were poisonous. Toxic. Harmful. And he touched them.

“I understand their biology… better than before. I’ve been running it through my head.” she commented and then looked balefully at Magician. But seeing Justice’s distress, Hermit crept close. Placing a hand on his shoulder. Wearing a look of sympathy.

“Look inward, find a memory. One you are fond of, hold it, focus on it. Let your distress slip away. Your body will know what to do on its own. And if you need help. I’m here.” she finished with a gentle squeeze before speaking up.

“If we know how to kill them. And I understand their biological makeup. We can take them out more efficiently. If two are in that office Magician spoke of, we can hold one in place with Telekinetic force and pop the other and then the one being held.”

She knocked Justice on the shoulder with a small fist. “Or Justice and I can rupture every cell in the parasite’s bodies. It’d be taxing to do it quickly, though.”

“But if Moon is right, sir, and she senses a human presence, shouldn’t we extract them? They might be from one of the other teams and have intel we can use.”

 

[Char]

Blue disregarded Moon completely at first for Magicians idea without hesitation and a declaration of "Not our job."

His emotions read as fully believing it but shifted constantly due to thoughts none of them could likely interpret. And just as simply he blew off the welfare of ihs fellow man not even a few heartbeats later he changed his drive completely as Hermit made her own offering and the logic of it compelled.

"Do it." Short statements as always; The man didn't need to give them much to figure out their handlers simple but efficient thought process as it was.

While Magician and Hermit went ahead into the room and carefully began searching the wall in a convient spot where they wouldnt be blocked by pipes or inconvenient electrical wires as abundant as they were. While this went on Moon was able to get an accurate enough reading through their surface gas and humidity levels.

It wasn't in the gas readings, and the spores while visible were not made for the wideband scanning laser to read. But in the humidity levels, it was able to more accurately whittle down into more precise readings.

High fungus and moldspore mixed in with the surface moisture of unknown origin at 30% coefficient. It was simular and likely in the same family as their newly discovered hostile fauna but not originating from it. And at the rate it seemed to split and reproduce as the readings ticked up by negligent fractions of percent as it absorbed moisture to profligate it was likely a good idea for the base humans among them to keep their gasmasks on and not let unknown mold pathogens into their oxygen and moisture-filled lungs.

Bathroom-Office

Through the walls separating them it was of some considerable surprise to the sole occupant when tiles became unseated and fell to the floor and the young faces of augurs all gleaned through like curious rodents. He; By the shape of his build and the readable mental patterns was half way into drinking from the sink when it happened and jerked up abruptly causing the tap to go down the wrong pipe and cause a coughing fit.

"Ladys' grace!" He cursed between wracking coughs as a bunch of late teenagers and their Auditor filed into a generously sized restroom that was really only ever meant to fit one person at best. Finally getting everything under control as Blue entered he pulled his mask on and the two of them entered into the macho-male pasttime of most military men to just blow off the happening of an entire situation and ignore all social norms and propper etiquette and just grunt to each other like uncivilized apes.

"Status?"

"Fubar."

"Situation?"

"No contact with lower levels, you?"

"None. Quarantine."

"Understood, kill any yet?"

"One, you?"

"Resilient."

This went on for half a minute until Blue and Lackey #1 had somehow hashed out the entire situation and somehow already integrated him seemlessly into the group with as few actual words of syllables as possible. #1's name actually turned out to be Mollay and his team of four had been beset all of a sudden from an already cleared room somehow by three of the mushroom men. Enacting a fighting retreat Mollay was the pointsman and was too far ahead to double back before being cut off by two more and forced to run and hide in his current location before the group came along.

Differing to Blue, Mollay would take their rear and cover them.

With this decided Blue had them start on the next wall after Judgement was able to sense the two hostile nearby and opted to avoid unnecessary confrontation out of their way. Within moments of their combined effort they were in the breakroom which, with its heavier air conditioning was much more pleasant than the tight and muggy bathroom. It had little more than tables, chairs, a vending/drink machine, and an idle viewing screen with nothing more than the slowly spinning logo of the Babel Technology Solutions.

What the room did have was three doors.

One lead south towards the heavy psychic emanations that Kay was throwing off as she and Black ran about trying to also collect survivors with her stronger and more precise perception abilities. From what they could tell Kay was no more than a few rooms and hall over and was throwing around some serious weight to be noticeable from that range even to those with less developed perception powers, but the emotions they felt in her that she gave off didnt seem overly taxed or stressed so it was at least easy to assume the 1st generation Augur was holding up alright.

The second door, to their west, simply showed a wall that went in two directions as the hall split north and south with south being the path towards the elevators and stairs lower into the facility they were aiming for.

While all the doors had large windows in them, the only thing of note was found through the northern door. A hallways spread out for at least thirty feet; At the end of the hall right where it turned east was corpse of an OIA strike team member sprawled out into the hall with a sizeable pool of blood around him and clear arterial spray on the wall behind him. There was the corpse of one of the monsters barely visible on the other side of him.

Somewhere beyond him Judgement could barely feel the presence of other humans, their status unknown, but also at least 2-3 enemies practically on top of them.

Of the three doors they had two viable paths they could take. One leads to their objective, and one towards the unknown.

"Could use his ammo." Mollay suggested, with blues-only answer to look at the group and the photographic memories containing the route to their objective. If they chose the route directly towards their objective there was interfearence blocking even judgement from knowing what awaited them. If they chose the other path to aid/rescue/discover the fate of the two other humans was equally uncertain what awaited them.