World Tree MUSH

    At long last, an attempt to actually fix the most severe problem with the Warden is going to be attempted... somehow. The Exploration deck is huge, like all the decks on this ship, but it also is the most organized for something like this. The fuzzy little Chi-Turr and the androids working together on this have built up a reasonable base camp, which is abuzz with activity because it looks like the asteroid is stirring to life again.

    Anyone who has come to help and hasn't already gotten a briefing should know the basics now. That the asteroid contains strange aliens, and more importantly, has a radiation hazard! The android in charge has laid out a quick diagram of what is known. "While we've encountered numerous hull breaches that can be used to penetrate the asteroid, we really have three major options. Here, near the main breach, and here, off to the side at an exit that hasn't been used lately. All the rest are either high in radiation or have had radiation in them within the last year." He taps the bulk of the asteroid. "Of course, we have several scout craft, in addition to any spacecraft you may have. One of these could be used to attack from a different angle and try to penetrate in and see what sort of organization they have. But, that would only work once, maybe twice, then the surprise would wear off. None of us are trained to pilot that craft but maybe some of you can."

    The little furred Chi-Turr with the cane is also there, and adds, "For this mission we're sending a few with you as support, if you want, but it's a scouting mission. If you see an opportunity to do damage, by all means take it, but gathering information about their methods of attack and so on is much more important. So we'll leave the choice to all of you on how to attack."

  Agent Anneka Stojespal of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division is also here. Today she's wearing a fieldwork outfit, which means a white long-sleeved shirt tucked into black slacks and a SHIELD windbreaker. She has a black SHIELD cap over long, loose red hair; the eyepatch is firmly in place. An ICER pistol loaded with potent sedative rounds is holstered at the small of her back.

  The android is regarded thoughtfully as he comments on scout craft. Yes hello this is... "Pilot." Anneka raises a hand, palm flat. "Might be able to fly them for you. Will need to look at them for a few seconds."

    Circe has been concentrating on trying to come up with a poison to target these aliens, and prevent their being able to take over the other races. It's one of the many times when she would probably have a lot easier time were she willing to make the poison lethal; she is not, and so is stuck trying to come up with something much more specific and difficult.

    "I'm a pilot, in the sense that I can usually tell an autopilot AI where I need to go and it will go there." She offers, which may not be the most useful skillset but is at least the truth.

    Samus Aran is once again here.
    Going over the map with the android in charge, the power armored woman folds her arms across her chest before tapping a finger to the side exit.
    "If it hasn't been used that's likely our best shot to get in undetected." She considers.
    "Or I can attack it with my gunship." She also considers, before her helmet shifts enough to regard Anneka, a new face to this mission but one Samus recognizes from when the woman's world blossomed some time ago, offering the woman a nod of greeting.

Daisy looks thoughtful and sits back on her tail, using it as a seat. Assuming the air is safe, she pulls off her helmet, which causes her hair to pop back into place with such force it really should have made a 'boing' sound. She then spends a full minute and a half meticulously pressing it down and using hair pins (aka bobby pins) to secure her pink ODSP beret in place. She sets her cannon down next to her on the floor "I'm just here to keep folks from being hurt with the power of superior firepower, guv." She says. "I'll let the more experienced people decide how we're gonna do it." 
She beams, pulling a flask from her belt and offering it around, along with a folding mug. She pours herself a cup, and takes a sup. "Oh, where the fuck are my manners?" She pulls out a second folding mug, and offers it around. "Tea, anyone?"

    Yahiko chuckles at the idea of him flying a spacecraft. "I'm not really sure I could operate a train, let alone something that flies," he points out. And yeah, he is dressed as an ancient samurai with sword and all. At least in this area he's wearing the metal sword, though.

    If he were still in his youth he might try the front door, but now? "I agree, we should go through the side, see if we can gather any information without running into any of these creatures. The Warden-person didn't say we had to kill the aliens, just get the rock off the ship, right?"

    The furred gentleman sniffs suspiciously, then declines, "Not right now." He looks intrigued, though. But then he says, "Yeah, that's what we figured, too. So why don't you folks go through the side exit, we'll stage a quick attack up front and then withdraw, as a diversion."

    And so it looks like that idea is set! One of the androids leads the group to the 'side entrance' but it's mainly just a tear in the hull with a rocky jut pushing into the ship, which has a rough hole in it. The hole has been 'sealed' with some kind of organic gel, but it's been torn and frayed so much it can be pushed through now. The air inside has a faintly metallic smell wafting out, but does seem breathable. It looks to be the end of a long tube angled slightly upward.

    "The atmosphere is not quite like our own, but should be fine as long as you don't spend too long in there. You may get short of breath if you exert yourself too much," the android explains. "Good luck."

    The tube is tall enough to stand up in for anyone here, but it may be easier to crawl up it at that slope, or at least lean into it and use hands on the sides. The rocky sides are almost glassy-smooth, but with faint ridges so they aren't slippery.

    'Aida' - the name Circe has been going by here - will sigh as she takes a look up the passageway. "This isn't the worst environment we've been in on the ship, but I wish it was and those others hadn't happened." She was somewhat radiation resistant, but it was only slightly more so than a normal human if she didn't want to have to track down a new body.

    She'll push through the gel and start climbing up the sides, showing what might be a shocking amount of agility for those who have seen her utterly avoid physical effort when and where possible.

    "I wonder why they don't post guards? Or just keep attacking?" Yahiko asks aloud, but he quiets down once they're ready to sneak in. He'll push on through without much hesitation, looking up the tunnel and then getting into climbing it. If there's one thing he does have, it's agility and athleticism.

    It worries him that there's so little resistance here, but maybe they just haven't encountered it yet. "I wonder if this can be slid down as an escape route?"

    To the side entrance then. Pushing past the gel, Samus places her hand on the nearby wall and starts her ascent, taking point for the group; arm cannon raised and primed. She should be fine with her suit's air supply in regards to getting short of breath, but she does pause briefly.
    "Good question." Murmured at Yahiko's musing about guards and attacks.
    "Probably, in a pinch." She adds at the thought of sliding down.

  The pilot listens, seemingly intently, to the warnings. Breathable air, check. Don't stick around too long, check. Radiation, check. Bad for upper respiratory function, check check. Sounds like Anneka isn't going to be spending too long in there, if she can help it. Just as well. If she can get to the ship she can just chill out there.

  It takes a little struggling to get up the tube, but Anneka manages to get going without holding up the line.

  "Won't be able to stay long." The pilot's grunt is a little winded, because that tube-climb was kind of rough. Her accent is even stronger; some kind of vague almost-Eastern European, almost-Slavic. "Not equipped for radiation." No superpowers, here.

  Circe is eyed a moment when she manages to get right through the tunnel, lickety-split, and Anneka arches her brow. Hmmm.

Daisy picks up her cannon and follows. WHen they get to the tube, she takes a few sniffs of the air and makes a face, pulling her beret off, briefly liberating her hair before trapping it once again under her helmet. She watches Aida go up the slope and frowns. "If it wasn't so narrow I'd fly up that." She sighs and slings up her cannon, testing the friction of the surface for a moment with her toe before frowning and just climbing up with the others. "If it was smoother I could glide up under thrust and give folks a tow. Ah well." She shrugs. 

She glances at Anneka a moment. "I got oxygen if you need." She says, motioning to her helmet. "I can pull the faceplate off and give you some if you need it. It's shaped for my face, but it'll still give you more oxygen than you'd have without it so you can recover a bit."

    The air does seem like... a little thinner, more like up at a high altitude though. Certainly not to the point of crippling and wheezing, but maybe not the sort of situation where the more mortal sorts want to go jumping around and spending a ton of time on high-intensity movements. Climbing the tunnel is a little wearying but not horrible.

    It also doesn't last too long before it... 'opens up' into a larger chamber. It looks like this place is catacombs, basically, with a few exits. Several smaller tunnels, too small to crawl through, are probably vents, while three larger tunnels split off. No guards, like Yahiko noticed, but the central tunnel has another little film of gunk over it, and two large purple mushrooms flanking the doorway. The other two are open, curving away quickly, but look flat.

    Yahiko stretches arms over head as he emerges and looks around. "Well, I think we can guess that the middle door is the one with important stuff in it. But I don't like the look of those mushrooms. Look too much like guardians, you know?"

    And sessile guardians are probably pretty bad, he reasons.

    He looks around. "Anyone good with handling this stuff?"

Daisy shrugs "Kinda new." She admits to Yahiko. "So I'll take your word for it." She says. "I could see if I can get in just the same. I've done a bit of B&E in my time." She grins.

  Well, since the Victorian rocket possum is offering oxygen, that's a good reason to stay close. Anneka falls into step behind Daisy, drawing her ICER and checking its power level. "Oh. Thanks. Might take you up on that."

  The agent is breathing hard, but not too badly. For now, she'll just catch her breath while the others decide where to go. (She's probably really just tagging along because she wants to see the ship.)

    Those mushrooms look ominous. Samus' head dips in a nod of agreement when Yahiko says they're a little too much like guardians.
    "Let me check." The Hunter says, beginning a slow, cautious approach towards the mushrooms, arm cannon raised.
    If they prove to just be strange but normal flora she'll try to pass through the film.
    But if they prove to be hostile she's at least prepared to start firing.
    Worse comes to worst her armor should hopefully soak anything thrown her way.
    Hopefully.

    Circe's body is, by human standards, quite resilient. But not so much by the standards of her kind. She'll sniff at the air a bit, shaking her head. "It's not exactly the most appealing place around, is it?" She'll say, with a sigh. She's going to approach the mushrooms as well, a little behind Samus, not looking to see if they're 'hostile' so much as checking to see if they're biologically dangerous, hiding any sorts of infectious parasites, or that kind of thing.

    She's going to accomplish this from a distance by having her robotic snake slide down off of her arm and go take a closer look, though she rather hopes it isn't destroyed in the process.

    It's pretty obvious, isn't it? And what are the mushrooms there for? They're big... like four feet tall, probably, which is big for a mushroom. And approaching them they can be seen to be faintly pulsing. Something glistens in the gill slits, and atop the caps, a bluish fluid can be seen seeping out, very slowly. Just a faint ooze.

    As Samus approaches, the caps pulse a little, but all that happens is more of that blue fluid rolls out... and the expert like Circe can tell that it's responding to... something. Not the robot snake, at least not greatly, but that ooze is a biological agent. Probably acidic, definitely toxic.

    Circe will humm to herself, uncertain just what the effects of that ooze are going to be, but pulling the snake back and to around her wrist before it can touch any of the blue fluid. Then, just out of a sort of professional curiousity, she'll give a glance in Samus' direction.

    "Seems safe from toxins, I think. Maybe a little acidic."

    She doesn't think it's lethal, and she wants to find out what it is that it does!

    'Seems safe from toxins' Circe says.
    Samus glances over her shoulder at the woman for a beat before looking back to the mushrooms. Swapping from her combat visor mode to her scanner she runs a quick scan of the growths and what does she find?
    Toxic.
    Definitely toxic.
    Wordlessly Samus takes aim, the barrel of her arm-cannon splitting as a blue-tipped missile warhead locks into place, and she unleashes two shots in quick succession.
    Ice missiles are considered a less than lethal option when it comes to her armaments; designed to flash freeze anything they impact with a generous amount of chemicals and coolants, and they quickly set to work against the mushrooms.
    "Just to be sure." She says, tone dead and words glib.
    Samus is on to you, Circe.

Daisy peers at the mushrooms. "Nah that don't look healthy." She says in disagreement with Aida. When Samus fires the missiles Daisy blinks and looks between her and Aida, blinking, then shrugging. She unslings her huge cannon and scans the team's back, glancing around occasionally to make sure Anneka is still with her. "That's a neat gun." She tells Samus. "D'ya know if whoever you get them off does 27-mil shells too? Might look into getting some of them."

    "I just use a sword," Yahiko points out, but doesn't feel like he's left out of this. Hand on the hilt, he is looking about, to see if alarms are triggered or something.

    Freezing the mushrooms is... surprising. But he muses, "How long will that hold?" His blade drawn, he walks forward... flipping it around so that the sharp edge can be used, to carefully cut an opening in the film. "We shouldn't stay long."

  The mushrooms are eyed, dubiously. Anneka looks less than pleased, and she makes a point of keeping her distance. A far distance. So far away, in fact, that she's probably not in any danger of spores even if it exploded.

  She glances at the mushrooms, and then down at her ICER. Yeah, no, she's pretty much outclassed in terms of equipment, here. The ICER is shoved back into its holster. Might as well leave the firepower to the others, and start taking notes! Swapping her weapon for some kind of agency-issued scanner, she spends her time poking at its screen and occasionally glancing at their surroundings.

  Well, she is a field agent, technically, and gathering data is earning her keep! Anneka isn't stupid, though. She's making a point of keeping an eye on her surroundings. (Literally. She only has the one.)

  To Daisy, she flashes a thumbs-up the next time the possum looks over. Still here, still on her feet. So far.

  "Hunh." Frozen mushrooms. That blue eye slides over to Samus. "Handy trick."

  Her eye flicks back to Yahiko when he makes his observation. "We should not stay long," she echoes, in agreement; her tone is dubious. This place is kind of unsettling.

    Well, that seems to have worked for now. And if there is an alarm going off, it's silent! The blade slits down the entrance, opening it up to a room with a musty smell of mold. A quick check on filters shows it's not toxic, but probably not something anyone wants to breathe in for long either.

    As for what's inside? It's a large, domed room... full of mushrooms and fungi. All different colors, sealed in domes of some wobbly, bubble-like material that doubles as glass. Some of them, the blue ones, are glowing with a familiar look like radiation. They're all in various stages of growth, and are mounted on bases that look detachable.

    It's a surreal sight, but since some of them are also oozing some of the same blue fluid, it's pretty obvious what this place is. This is their weapons manufacturing, or one of them.

    It is a handy trick, isn't it?
    "Should hold for long enough." Samus replies to Yahiko as she lowers her weapon.
    "It's one of a kind." Added to Daisy as the party enters the next chamber and...
    There are mushrooms everywhere.
    Samus' scanner goes to town investigating each kind before she reaches a conclusion.
    "These are for their weapons." She says, before pausing briefly.
    "I can wipe this room off the map if we want. But if we do that we'll have to get out, fast."

Daisy peers around the room, blinking. "It reminds me of a drug lab." She says softly. Samus' answer gets a slight pout from the possum behind her mask, and a slight sag. "It's a - oh! Yeah, they've probably got more but anything we can do to slow down or reduce the supply I'm all for."

    Aida will give Samus a frown. "..Of course. Safety first, I guess. Though someone could slip on all of that ice, you know. It's a real hazard."

    Is she sulking? Yes, absolutely.

    She'll glance around the room that's behind that, shaking her head as Samus makes that offer. "I think that's a bad idea. You might make something go aerosol and then we have to worry about spores growing in our throats everywhere we go that it could have spread to."

    "What weird weapons," Yahiko muses. "And this place is huge. This can't be the only... oh." He nods, "Yeah, it makes sense now. They're growing these here, then they send them right out that tube we crawled through. I mean, why carry them through the entire place when you can grow them right where you need to send them?"

    He sheaths his sword, which isn't really built to be slicing things up anyway. "I'm not so up on how all this works so you can do it if you want, just give us time to get away."

Daisy looks to Aida/Circe. "If she's thinking what I think she is, high heat should destroy the spores." She pauses. "We should probably not be in the same room though all the same."

    "Start running back the way we came." Samus says. "And slide right down and out the exit ramp.
    That. That sure is a warning as the Hunter suddenly rolls into a ball.
    Her armor becomes an honest to God sphere.
    And the sphere starts to move, leaving a smaller, beeping, sphere in its place as Samus starts rolling toward the exit.
    She's got places to go.
    Got to follow her rainbow.
    Especially as she leaves behind a Power Bomb, with a high heat, high explosive yield that's more than enough to damage a starship; let alone the internals of an asteroid.

>> GAME >> Samus Aran spends an Edge for: Power Bomb

    Aida, who really wanted a chance to study these bioweapons more, will grumble. "Fine, don't listen to your experts. I don't know why you even invite me along for these things."

    She's a faster runner than you would think to look at her, too. Though most of her family would be mocking her twofold now; once for running away at all, and once for being slower than them.

    Well if there's one thing that Yahiko knows how to do, it's run! "When Kenshin told me the answer to defeating a larger force was to run, I'm not sure he meant this!" And off he goes! Rushing after the others and... well... guess he gets to see if that tunnel can operate as a slide now!

Daisy also joins in Attack Pattern Brave Sir Robin, acting a bit as rear-guard to make sure everyone gets out. She's the last one on the slide and rides it like a skateboard, wooping on the way down.

    It's a good present to leave behind, that beeping noise and all. As the tunnel is jumped into and the group begins to slide, tumbling downward, the dull roar of the explosion can be heard! With all the tunnels, it goes in some weird directions, but fortunately this one is now sloped DOWNWARD, so other than a stifling heat and a brief loss of oxygen that leaves some of the group gasping, there's no real damage.

    That lack of air is only for a moment though, and when the group erupts out of the end, it's nice and breezy and cool... even if it was warm before, it feels cool after that! No sound of panic is there, but the faint rumble can be heard saying that there was more of an effect than just the mushrooms. The Chi-Turr are there, instead of an android, and one remarks, "Well, I guess you got SOMETHING done, huh?"