multiversallogs | The City at Large & Mission Alpha

Entry tags:

The City at Large & Mission Alpha

Who: OPEN to all residents.
What: The ant-situation is changing!
Where: Throughout the city.
When: NOW. This thread will likely cover a few days.
Warnings: To be updated.

Dear Mission Alpha,

It is your undeniable privilege to bring back as many of the so-called 'crow pearls' as possible to the Temple. Any temple. No one important cares how you do it, just get it done. Try to be substantial about it, let's say more than 50, hmm? The actual task here is to deprive our deranged ant-friends of as many pearls as possible, but no one is going to be rewarded for stories like 'oh we absolutely threw two tons of pearls down the whirlpool, we swear on our broodmother's grave', okay? Okay. Peachy. Bring me the pearls, chop chop.

Your totally sweet gods have decided to lend you some ...boons I guess, however that goes, to aid you in your quest. Useful objects. For you, my gifted pilferers and negotiators:

A Skeleton Key - it will open any unwarded lock. It will not open warded locks. That means magical locks. No magical locks will be opened with this key. Unless the magic is broken first. Good luck with that.

Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card - I realize no one has bothered to build proper jail cells in Our City yet so it's more of a Fend-off-The-Local-Authorities-Free Card but that's not as catchy. Think of it as An Official Voucher From the Gods that says you're on Official Twelve Point Business and can't be arrested right now. Keep it for the Sheriffs as it might not have the desired effect the Militia.

Privacy Ward or App For Your CiD - Well you don't want to get caught leaking signals and communication everywhere, do you.

It is a week and some change after the ants first noticeably began their labour and it seems they have finished rebuilding their houses. It's hard to see exactly what is going on from the ground, but the brave few who have ventured into and up the hives or climbed neighbouring buildings get a good enough view. The rooftops are now crowned with organic spires, much like malformed and undernourished termite nests reaching for the heavens. They are not the best constructs, some of them have broken off or imploded, but the majority of the spires stand.

Then one morning, individual ants are seen climbing to the very top of their towers. They then sit still, mandibles locked and antennae arched. It's hours before any change becomes noticeable, and by then it's too late. The ants have sprouted strange fleshy fungal tentacles, all filled to the bursting with spores.

Soon there after, reports come in from all across the city about people acting out of character; some have become catatonic or violent after brief a period of sickness. Individuals have been seen entering the ant-occupied buildings to help defend the ants against intruders, others have attempted to climb high points in the city or thrown themselves in the rivers.

Once again the City is under siege, but this time the enemy is invisible.

Threaded | Flat

Nazca hadn't been involved in any direct theft of any size in a long, long time. Her father had made sure she had the fundamentals of course, but more useful skills came from the outings in which she'd demanded Locke take her along. Sometimes they went with Jean, but more often without, and despite the danger facing Baedal, a part of her is delighted to find her old skills aren't failing her.

The hardest part is finding the pearls to take. But she's better for having something to do.

And she is fiercely trying to ignore the dream she had and what it meant. That would do her no good, and a mission from the gods was the priority.

Cassandra was looking for something, but she couldn't remember what. Before, it had been a word. Vaguely, some small part of her mind told her that she had found her word and didn't need to look for it anymore. The bigger question, it seemed, was what she was looking for now. She remembered something...something about a dream. But dreams were so complicated and so ephemeral, and she wanted something else, something she could hold in her hand.

There was a word for that, wasn't there?

Yes, there was. It started with a sound. A sort of clicking sound. Like the word Titan or the word terror. She tried out the sound in her mouth a few times. The word was lost to her, but the sound...it felt right somehow. She clicked a few more times, smiling. Her chapped lips broke and bled, but she didn't seem to notice it.

She continued wandering, her white dress sticking to her back with perspiration. There was a lot of noise around her, but she couldn't seem to understand it. Oh well, just as well, she supposed. No one really understood her anyway.

Le Mat had given him a rough location, and Lucius had alerted Hellsing that he would be away from his post. Now he was hunting for her, alert and wand ready, and praying he could get her to safety before becoming infected himself.

Now and then he calls her name, and wishes she was wearing the twin of his wedding ring, which might make her a bit quicker to locate.

Eddie has been plugging away at decrypting the list he and Mike found in one of the ant houses. It's exactly the sort of thing he can really throw himself into. The usefulness of the results really isn't important to him. It's enough that this is a good challenge and he can do this.

However, as events unfold, and he and everyone else sees what's happening in the city - and he hears all about the reports coming in, at the newspaper offices - it sinks in that he was in one of these ant houses and the ants are filling the whole city with fungus and... oh god. No, he won't be having anything to do with that, thank you very much.

He was very eager to get himself hidden away in the nearest temple he could reach, and is not about to leave safety, not to help out some gods, not to help out his cohort, not for anything. He has already had his brush with things growing in his brain that weren't supposed to be there, and that was plenty enough.

It wouldn't do to sit around acting terrified, though. He squishes that right down, and is instead simply a ball of nervous energy, set on planning and constructing defenses that may or may not be superfluous. They'll need to keep the ants as far back as possible. The uninfected will need a safe path, and hey, it's another challenge to tackle, and a very, very welcome distraction from what's actually going on.

At the moment, he is sitting with his back against a corner, going over the writing in one notebook and drafting something else out on a pad of graph paper. The pen scratches along the paper at a manic pace, and he is oblivious to anything going on past the upper edge of the page.

Just beyond the edges of the Hellsing wards, Sebastian can be found beside a horse and cart, checking both over to make sure they're up to whatever task comes their way. He knows the harness and tackle are in good condition and while he's generally unfamiliar with horsemanship, the basics shouldn't be too different from thestrals, right?

In any event, after he's sent out his coordinates Deucalion will probably find him checking to make sure the cart itself is sturdy and able to travel well over what might become rough road.

Edited 2011-07-20 15:04 (UTC)

A city in chaos doesn't make for the warmest of welcomes, and Narcissa discards the idea of bothering with the CiD for now; she knows how it works, at least, but from what she hears outside the walls of the Valhalla, now is not the-

Wait.

In the act of tucking the CiD away in her purse, wand in her hand in its place, she stops by a window and listens, straining, for the voice she thought she heard a moment before. There- yes- someone else's hand prevents her opening the window and she takes a sharp step backwards, driving her heel into his foot and her wand up under his chin.

"Oh, sir. Do excuse me."

That was Bellatrix out there.

I fear I may be unwell.

I've a screaming headache unlike anything I've had in years.

I'll keep you up to date if anything changes.

[Continues from here.]

Jim considers this. "'Necessary force.' Yeah. I can do that."

He makes sure he's got a good grip on Martel--it's a manly grip, the kind men use when they don't want their ass to fall off a warhorse, that's all.

"Show me where and I'll do it. I'll cover you while you bring the thing down."

Threaded | Flat

[Location: Various throughout the city]

[Location: Near the Valhalla Inn]

[For Narcissa]

[Location: A Temple]