World Tree MUSH

    After a harrowing arrival aboard the Nijiura space station, being attacked by something monstrous from the vents and having the only viable shuttlecraft sealed away behind a quarantine blast door, things have only gotten worse. According to Alty, from her vantage point in the control room, oxygen is on the verge of running out, and that means a trip to Hydroponics is in order to see what's wrong with the trees and oxygen recycling systems stored there.
    Having found a smallside room where the group could rest and relax for at least a few minutes before setting off to deal with this problem, Alty spent her time scouring maps and the layoud of the ship.
    The room itself is little more than a small employee break room, but there's a drink and a snack vending machine, and there were several radios set on a charger that should make keeping in contact easy aside from Alty blaring herself over the public announcement system and risk calling the attention of something nasty.
    "Okay." The shinki's voice crackles faintly before the radio properly attenuates her signal and clears up, "It looks like there's a path to Hydroponics through Engineering, but considering the state the station is in after just a few days we don't know what condition it's in. There's a shorter path through medical, but there are a few locked doors in the way I don't have access to. I can get most of them out of the way but maybe Sundance might have a better chance with them than I would right now. If you find any access codes along the way send them to me, we'll need every key we can get here. ... That said, I'll be watching your progress from the cameras, I'll try to keep an eye out for you guys but..." She trails off somewhat. "Well. I'd probably be more useful in here than out there anyway."

Serrah rips the front off the vending machine, grabs a candy bar, and leans against the wall. "Nice work, Alty," she says, gesturing with the candy bar. "Hm ... I can probably be in front of the group, or whatever. My turning-into-a-shadow thing ... probably won't mess with my radio." She manages a lopsided smirk as she tears open the wrapper. "But unless those monster-things have flamethrowers or divine magic, I can scout ahead a little ways, sight unseen. Just to make sure it's safe for everyone else," she adds quickly.

    "It's fine," Hyouka replies without skipping a beat. "Stay safe in there." She'd been quite shaken by almost losing the little shinki already. No need to keep her in further danger.

    The cyborg fortunately doesn't need any of the radios; she's got basic functionality along that line built right into her body. "We can try the shorter route, I suppose; if Sundance can't open any doors, we can always see if I can just smash them open." She's trying to sound relatively nonchalant, but to someone who's used to being in crisis situations like this, it's probably obvious she's a little tense - especially after having the backpack snagged right off her back.

    Free snacks are the best snacks. Cayde peruses the selection once Serrah's taken care of that pesky cover. "Ain't nothing Sundance can't crack," he says confidently, picking up a bag of chips. "We come across any codes, we'll shoot 'em over. Anyway, like Hyouka said, you're good where you are, then it's probably better you stick there until we figure our way through this so we can all get out in one piece."

    Sundance hovers over one of the radios, her vertices twitching as she syncs up with the radio frequency before bobbing a nod at the hooded Exo. Cayde in turn flashes her a thumbs-up, ripping into the chip bag so he can pop a few into his mouth. 

    "Whenever we're all set to go..." he says, glancing at the others. "Which way we thinkin'? Engineering or medical?" He's all for going the direct route but with with their current party he has to be mindful of how the rest might fair.

  For Ecco, the downtime had mostly involved studying their immediate surroundings. If they're going to be trapped here, they might as well figure out what they can. All sonar had told him was that the walls were solid, the metal was stout, and oh, hey, Alty is talking to them.

  The bottlenose arches his head up toward the speakers, listening to the message all the way through. When Alty finishes, he pulls himself into upright high-posture, clapping his jaws loudly in assent. "Roger that-t."

  Turning on his tail, he aims a burst of sonar down the hall, refreshing his mental map of the area. Not that anything's moved. For now, he'll just file on after the group, whichever area the majority seems to be headed towards. If they need to smash any doors open, he might be able to charge them.

    Once the team has rested up enough, it's time to get moving. Time is at a premium right now with oxygen on the line and that means they can't spend too long preparing. Opting to let Jessica remain in the break room in the event any survivors wander by or another shuttle docks, the door to the break room opens and the party is once again in the atrium, with a perfect view of space and the planet Novo-VII looming overhead through the thick panes of glass.
    From her vantage point in the control room, Alty pings a few of the local information kiosks to pull up a hologram display of the medical sector and how to navigate it, before the group comes across... The sealed doors to Medical.
    There's a blast door down and in the way, and a faint scuffling can be heard behind it.
    "Mmmmm it was locked from the inside. I can rescind the lockdown though, give me a second." Alty chirrups into the radio before the blast shield raises and leads into a dark path, something clattering in the distance, a clinking echo of movement as the lights flicker to life and reveal a message written in blood on the wall further in.
    'Keep inside' it reads ominously.
    "I'll uh. Let you decide if you want to shut the door behind you." Alty mumbles as the hall progresses, lights flickering, before leading to a reception room.
    Chairs are overturned, a table lays broken on its side, shattered glass crunches underfoot as the reception room's lights sputter and die for a moment, emergency light finally kicking on and bathing the room in a dull red, illuminating an ajar door that leads further into the medical ward with a trail of blood leading into it. Like a body had been dragged that way.

    Hyouka sticks close to the others on their jaunt towards medical, although she does take care to remain in front of the group; Serrah can scout ahead stealthily, but everyone else here is a big, obvious target, and she's hardy enough to take a few hits if something comes at them straight on. "Hmm. Maybe we should shut the door behind us," the cyborg muses. "Whatever's in here, that way it stays in here." At that, DARGN chimes in, "Other creatures have already had their run of the station. Unless whatever's in here is especially large and dangerous, it's unlikely closing the doors would hinder anyone but us." Hyouka frowns a little. She can't think of a rebuttal to that. "That trail over there..."

Serrah reforms from shadow, and grimaces at the sight of the blood. She's not disgusted by it; as before, she's trying to have that reaction in order to (try to) slow the drain on her humanity. "Well, Alty can open it right back up if she closes it behind us, can't she?" she says. "Like. As fast as she did just now?" She hesitates, and then melts back into that shadowy shape and flows forward after the blood-trail in order to see what's up (if anything).

    "Well. That's reassuring."

    This is exactly why Cayde's opted to unholster his gun the moment they'd set out. With things in the vents and who-knows-what going on in the rest of the station to initiate a quarantine, he feels better having his Ace of Spades in hand. He doesn't have to say a word as he and Sundance come to some agreement, resulting in the Ghost's dissipating back into the safety of her Guardian. 

    "Close 'em," he says, referring to the doors once they step within. There's no turning back now. "Whatever's in here, at least closed doors'll slow 'em down, and we don't needa give Jessica more thngs to worry about." A smirk. "Not to say we can't clean house if it comes down to it."

    He glances over towards the trail as well, squinting as he methodically checks the chamber of his hand cannon. He starts quietly after Serrah. Something was in here. The question is whether it still is or not...

  The dolphin drifts along, riding the slipstream of air just behind the group. Aside from the intermittent clicking emitting from his brow, he's eerily silent for something so big. The occasional flick of his tail propels him along with ease.

  He slows as the air starts to taste strange. That's definitely not fish blood. It has the ferric stink of human blood. At least in the water it dissipates a little more, but this is oxygen. Gross. His attention swivels to the overturned furniture, flickering in the red emergency lighting. The dolphin twists to survey the room and eyeing the command writ in blood.

  The bottlenose doesn't shiver, but he does work his jaws sideways in what looks like a slightly nervous gesture. Something Very Big is loose somewhere on the station.

  "I wonder if a shark-k could wear a harnessssss like mine," he muses absently. At least he doesn't have to walk over broken glass. He just sort of floats over it, although he does drift lower, twisting his head to eye the mess. Looking up again, he turns, pointing his nose to the far corners of the room and clicking methodically.

  Is that Something Very Big still in here...?

    "Mmmmm okay." Alty whispers over the radio, and a second later the blast doors come back down at Cayde's suggestion. All the better to keep whatever is in Medical inside rather than be allowed to wander. "E-eh... I'd rather not think about floating sharks." She mumbles. "But I'm not reading any life signs from further in. You should be clear but be careful."
    The bloody trail leads on into the next room, though there's no sign of a body to go with it. The room itself seems to have been... A disaster. There are beds hastily strewn into several rows, the sheets all rumpled, bloodied, and tattered. Some of the beds have restraints attached to them, and all of them are broken, and there are dark brown footprints of congealed blood almost everywhere.
    There were once a lot of bodies in this room. There are none now.
    A dull 'thunk... thunk... thunk... thunk...' can be heard against the glass panel that takes up most of the wall, the silhouette of a man, thumping his head against the glass repeatedly. Before he smashes through, shattering the glass and sprawling into the room, very still and very dead.

Serrah's shadow pauses. "What, sharks aren't that bad," says her voice. "... or ... wait, are they in your world? Your respective worlds?" she adds, at Alty's comment. "Okay, uh, a bunch of people were dead here, but -- uh, guys, there's a guy thumping against the window, looking very dead -- shit!" When the glass shatters, Serrah reflexively stops time; from the outside perspective, it looks like the shadow vanishes and Serrah appears instantaneously back in the room right in front of Cayde, peering back the way she came. "... yeah, uh, there's something in there," she says dryly, pointing.

    After just a few moments of the unsettling task that is following a trail of blood, Hyouka decides to quietly - or at least, as quietly as she can - engage the FISTEAU units, transforming her forearms into those huge gauntlets. Her colossal fists remain clenched, and the further they go, the more unsettled she becomes. And when they finally reach the room full of carnage? She stops entirely, quietly agape. "Wh... what happened he-" Her words are cut off by the man hitting his head against the glass-

    -and then she lets out a yelp when he breaks through, jumping back a pace in alarm. "Oh my- wh- what is... what?" she mutters, horrified. After a few seconds, however, DARGN speaks up, her tone more serious than usual. "Alty. You said that you read no life signs further in. Does that mean an error in the sensors, or was this man moving despite being a corpse?"

    "You mean they don't already? Here I was starting to think it was a trend wherever you're from," Cayde murmurs as he glances at Ecco. He hasn't been taking the dolphin's actions for granted, mostly because if there's something he's picked up that they haven't yet, Cayde would very much like to know.

    The sound of thumping has him bringing his hand cannon up, optics narrowing at the vague shape behind the glass. "Dead things shouldn't be moving," he says, his finger half depressing the trigger when suddenly the glass gives and the figure comes sprawling through. "Those're dangerous questions, DARGN."

    He blinks, looking at Serrah as she suddenly seems to reappear. Something in there, huh?

    The Hunter Vanguard steps towards the limp body, pausing to nudge it with his foot, his gun trained on it as he leans closer towards the broken glass to get a look inside. "You gettin' anything, Sundance..?" 

  "Good thing humans never started messing with shark-k genes." Ecco's words are almost a mumble, but the slight warble in his tone suggests that he's more unsettled than he's letting on. Then again, dolphins aren't really good at expressing themselves when they have faces that can't move. His voice drops even quieter. "That'ssss not horrifying at-t-t all..."

  He twists his head to eye the ground every so often, following the blood trail slowly. The bloody footprints in particular in particular are eyed, and the thumping gets Ecco's attention. He picks his head up and swivels it around at the sound. His jaw falls open, acting like a dowsing rod for the sound as it swings towards it. Sharp conical teeth gleam red in the emergency lights.

  Then they're joined by a stranger. A dead stranger. Ecco squawks, a blare of alarm that bounces off the walls in the enclosed space, darting around the body in a show of unthinking agility, clicking as he scans the dead body, which is... yep. Very dead. No pulse. Lots of blood. Wow, that's really starting to taste horrible.

  He's still clicking a lot, even as his sonar confirms the man is dead. In fact, once he's confirmed the man is dead (which a deaf fin could do, really), he starts clicking more. Definitely unsettled, verging on horrified-and-trying-not-to-be.

  The fact that Cayde-6 said something to him registers, eventually. Ecco swivels his jaw around a little before clapping it shut. "Yeah, no, just-t-t dolphins, sssso far. Tursiops amicus, the friendly bottlenose. Though not all of us are bottlenosessss." He glances around, clicking compulsively; checking his sonar every half a second. In fact, he's pretty much constantly sweeping the area behind the broken glass. It's better than eyes!

  And also he's waiting for something to jump out of it, because that's kind of what happens in those human horror movies, isn't it? And then the dolphin gives a mighty squeal, muscles standing out along his torso and flukes quivering.

  "There'ssssssss a lot-t-t more back-k-k there! And they're moving! T-T-Towards ussss...!"

  Anything else is lost to the inhuman range of clicks, squeals, and whistles about ten times above the range of most conventional human hearing. The delphinic equivalent of horrified gibbering, probably.

    "U-uh. Uh!" Over the radio even Alty can be heard cowering. Much as she wants to hide from the camera screen though she sticks to her duty, when DARGN's question and tone shake her back into reading her reports.
    "It- it could have been an error, the station is in shambles..." She says hopefully before pausing. "Wait... That's... Not right..."
    Sundance will pick up on it before Alty, Ecco will voice it first, and Cayde will see them before anyone else. The slight shuffle of motion in the room beyond. The soft sussurstion of hospital gowns over flesh. Amid it all is a soft, almost breathless, whisper that seems to scratch at the mind more than be heard by the ears.
    Join us in the depths...
    That's when the first pair of glowing blue eyes open in the darkness of the room beyond. And then another pair. And another. And another.
    And then the body on the floor is trying to grab Cayde by the ankles while the rest of them start to come crawling into the room.
    There is a ping from a nearby door.
    "There! That door will get you out, but I don't have access to it!"

    As if things weren't horrifying enough, Ecco suddenly goes into panic mode. "More?!" Hyouka yelps, turning to face straight at the shattered window area - lines of blue light surge to life along her gauntlets, the glow of water-elemental mana surging into the fist weapons. She's tense, not really moving at all, at least at first; then the soft sound of shuffling movement, the glow of blue eyes... and a whispered invitation brushes at her mind. For a second, the cyborg clutches at her head with one huge gauntlet. "Kh... no, no I absolutely will not!" she yells, voice taut and anxious.

    The door. The door is their ticket out. But her hands are still huge gauntlets, practically useless for manipulating small buttons. "Someone get that, I'll..." She pauses, regarding the shambling corpses. "...I'll just hold them off and wish I brought my fire crystal!" With that, she's moving forward, focusing first on the body that's coming after Cayde. Only when she's sure he's safe, will Hyouka turn her attention to the rest of them.

Serrah tilts her head at Cayde. "What?" she says. "I'm just stopping time." She glances between Cayde and Hyouka. "Probably some sort of undead," she says. "This looks like ... I don't want to say a textbook zombie, but ..."

She looks more startled than horrified at Ecco's warning and the zombies' sudden attack. "Yyyyep, zombies," she says, almost conversationally. "Sorry, weird voice, someone else already has claim to me, and I don't want him, either!"

She reaches into the sports bag at her hip to grab some baseballs. "Okay, uh ..." She stops time, throws some baseballs at the zombies at a hundred miles an hour, and resumes time; it looks on the outside like baseballs just appeared in midair, and Serrah is by the door. "On it, coach!" she calls back to Hyouka, jabbing at the buttons to open the door. "Okay! Let's move!" she calls back.

    "Dangit!" He knew he should've shot the thing for good measure. The Exo kicks out of reflex, but his hand cannon's aimed through the broken glass at the myriad of targets that have suddenly blossomed in the eerie darkness. He fires off rounds rapidly, jerking back once Hyouka's intervened with the one at his feet. The cyborg gets a salute with his gun, but he's quickly back to firing as the bodies continue to stream in.

    "Sundance, get the- Oh, we good? Everyone, get gone!" he shouts, the Ace of Spades punctuating his words. "Sundance, get Alty those codes so she can seal these things off behind us!" 

    His Ghost flickers back into existence and then vanishes again in a sparkling light as she slips into the door console to do so.

    As Hyouka turns her pummelling power upon the undead, she'll find them heinously easy to break... Individually. But for every punch she delivers with those mighty gauntlets, the smell of wet rot only worsens. Basballs pelt them and crack skulls and bones, and bullets work just as well, before Serrah starts prodding at the keypad.
    The problem is that they come in droves. It's like every body in the medical ward is after the team, and when the door finally opens as they're just about to be overrun, Alty slams it shut behind the group with a resounding THUD.
    Only to leave them in an empty morgue, every refridgerated container left open and empty. But the door on the other side leads on out, and eventually they reach the railway system that connects Medical to Hydroponics.
    "The rails are out so you'll have to walk it. Sorry." Alty mutters over the radio, and it's a half hour walk in near pitch blackness before they finally reach the next station.
    The door opens up into a humid chamber, plantlife grows in glass cases, and dull lighting illuminates them from within, casting ominous shadows over the gunmetal walls.
    "The forest and air recyclers should be in the next room. Be careful, I don't have camera access in there for some reason."

    Every swing, Hyouka grimaces a little harder. It's disgusting, it's disturbing, and she has absolutely the wrong element for dealing with these. If Cayde, Serrah and Ecco weren't here, she's not sure what she'd do. But even with them present, the rising tide of zombies is slowly going to swallow them up- but the door opens, and she's able to dive through. Only when it's closed again does the elf relax, slumping down against the wall for a moment. "Haaah... that was... ugh. Is... is everyone okay?" Somehow, a morgue being their temporary safe haven feels almost morbid, but as long as everyone's alright, that's what matters.

    Compared to that horror, a walk on the rails is positively relaxing. Hyouka's not disengaging her gauntlets yet, though, for multiple reasons. They stay in place the entire half hour walk, and she enters the hydroponics chamber fists-first, keeping them up in a careful guard. "You watch, we're going to open the door and find some kind of monster plant..."

Serrah focuses on Cayde for a moment. "Oh, I was gonna just smash the controls, but that works too!" She slams the door shut as soon as everyone's through, and once again melts into the shadows ...

She's silent on the rails, aside from various 'all clear' reports, until right after they reach the door. And she's ... honestly looking kind of unsettled as they enter the hydroponics chamber. "You know what," she says, "what with that voice ... I'm no longer convinced I'm actually any safer from being zombied than the rest of you guys."

She grimaces at Hyouka's comment. "Jesus," she says. "I'd say 'don't jinx it', but at this point that's probably par for the course."

    They weren't Thrall, thankfully, but that didn't make dealign with them any better. With the numbers of them only seeming to increase rather than the opposite, Cayde's all the more thankful Alty's got them locked in behind them. "I'm fine. Any more surprises?" He's not asking anyone in particular, but this has thus far been far from the lovely station tour they'd all been promised.

    The Exo doesn't mind the walk, but he's not silent about it either. "Right, so that voice thing wasn't my imagination then. I'm liking this less and less. That ain't normal." A scowl pulls at his metal features. "Just what all's going on here..?"

    He keeps to the rear of the group, on the chance that any of the dead things might somehow have gotten loose, knowing that at least everyone in their group's capable should something else pop up from up front. 

    "Or something with teeth," he suggests on the heels of Hyouka's comment as he follows them inside now that they've reached their destination, his weapon at the ready, Sundance continuing to monitor things in the background. "Yeah, I'd say either way, we're past screwed at this point."

  There are no bubbles to disturb, but seeing several hundred pounds of iron-tough cetacean muscle thrashing in a panic is probably enough for most people to keep their distance. Ecco is beyond logic at this point, but he manages to reel himself back in, quivering and clicking compulsively.

  Join us in the depths, they say, and the clicking gets louder and faster.

  Ecco doesn't even think; he whirls, doubling in on the length of his body, and charges straight for the door that Alty indicates. And with a hollow, resounding boom, twists at the last minute and slams his body against it.

    The door slams open under the force of Ecco's body careening into it at speed, slamming in and through to the next room. This room was clearly a place not meant for the general public, but only for skilled engineers and botanists, considering how vast it is and the rows and rows of... Slowly withering trees.
    The scent of wet rot is the worst in here, and the source of both the dying trees and the scent might be the vast tree-like structure formed of some kind of... Gangrenous flesh. Tentacles flail slowly from its trunk and slither up the walls, crushing several of the cameras on the walls. It's huge, spanning from floor to ceiling where it clings to the steel overhead and gets into the vents, various tentacles connecting it to each normal tree and sapping them slowly.

    One step inside, two, three. Hyouka slowly, cautiously, lowers her gauntlets.

    Then utters a soft, disgusted, "I don't think I've ever been so unhappy to be right."

    But still, the glow of mana is already starting to light up her gauntlets again. "I'm just going to start smashing it. Cayde, Serrah, if you spot anything you think I should smash urgently, let me know." Right now, she's in even less of a state than usual to make any actual planning, or even forethought; it's easier if she doesn't think about what she's doing, about the horrid feeling of smashing those zombies, or the awful situation in general - just swing fists. Just swing fists. Adding a water element to her attacks isn't going to help much, but at least it's something other than raw impact, right? Granted, the sheer weight of water should add a little of that, too...

>> SUMMARY[Hyouka Kiyama] >> Too disgusted to fight smart. Someone else be smart for me please. :(

Serrah has an answer to Cayde's question: "An undead infestation, duh," she says. "It's just a question of what's causing it."

She jumps back slightly at Ecco's sudden charge, and frowns. "Hey, uh ..." She looks like she's not sure how to phrase it. "... y-you okay ... dude ...?"

She makes a face at the flesh-plant-monster. "Okay," she says, rising off the ground. "I don't care what kind of instincts or lack of empathy I have as a vampire, this shit is just nasty."

She grabs her sports bag, and once again does the thing where she stops time and throws a bunch of baseballs at once -- careful to avoid throwing anything at Hyouka. "... I'm ... not sure where to aim either???"

>> SUMMARY[Serrah Delany] >> Serrah does the Worldy thing.

    "You know what I meant!" is the Exo's huffing retort back at Serrah. But now they're inside. "At least we're not trying to get the drop on anything," Cayde notes, given Ecco's flashy entrance in. Not that what they find on the other side any better. "Yep, I'm with you on that one Hyouka," he can't help but agree. "I'm giving this place one star, do not recommend."

    He doesn't waste time in firing a few shots as he darts off to one side, looking around for any weak spots. "Eeeyuch, where'd they pick this thing up?!" He has so many questions. "Uuuh, think we know why the cameras are out in here, Alty. And why the air circulation's gone to hell," he adds over the radio frequency, shouting to be heard over the sound of his gun's report. 

    "Speaking of vampires? It looks like this thing's sucking everything else dry. Would burning it be a bad thing or..?" He hesitates as a memory flickers in his head, one of his oldest ones. Yeah, he'd rather not be indebted to someone else for wrecking a space station- although wouldn't they be doing someone a favor in this case? It's got vampiric plants and -zombies-.

    "Does it have any roots? A base? Sundance!"

    //...I think I have something-// the Ghost reports. //You're going to have to go deep.//

    "Figures," Cayde grumbles before looking over at the others as Sundance details her findings. "-there's some kind of core or something inside. Think you can get to it, Hyouka? Serrah, let's start gutting these roots- Ecco! Keep those tentacles off us!"

  The bottlenose bulls through the door and slews to one side, whistling in pain. It's true he's big, heavy, and more or less made of muscle, but slamming one's own torso into an even bigger, heavier, and more solid metal wall is gonna hurt.

  Shaking himself, Ecco turns, facing each corner of the room and emitting sonar-clicks; so high-pitched and rapid that they sound like squeaking. What else is hiding in there? Is it going to jump out at them? "Blech-ch-ch--!" The air sure tastes terrible in here.

  That's until his sonar reveals him what's hiding in the shadows.

  "Ifni! Ssssquid!" Ecco's alarmed squeal is the first thing he can think of, and it's so high-pitched it's barely coherent as a word. The piercing whistle echoes, brassy, in the close confines of the chamber.

  He loops down and around, kicking his flukes in a dizzying show of aerobatics. Being able to bend his body almost in two makes it a little easier to avoid flailing tentacles, but it doesn't stop him from bouncing painfully off the occasional limb. They're inexorable as glaciers where they move, too massive to yield to Ecco's own weight and heft.

  Then he attempts to batter at one with his flukes, and sink his teeth into what is almost assuredly going to be disgustingly rubbery and rotten. Ecco's past thinking. It's time for battle, now.

    It's a terrible time to be right. The massive tree-like structure of flesh and bile flails its tentacles menacingly as anyone approaches, and no sooner than Hyouka begins laying into it and Serrah hurls more baseballs and Cayde let's the Ace speak for him, it lets out a hollow wail of actual pain.
    But then it has a dolphin to swat. Ecco weaves and darts, and the flailing appendages whiff through the air where he was mere milliseconds after his passing, serving as a prime distraction for the others to try and sink their attacks in deep enough.
    Only for the thing to open up a vasy, blue, eye. Glowing eerily it stares, making that eerie almost whalesong like howl as it tries to smash the others with more appendages.
    That must be what Sundance found.

    Hyouka is forced on the defensive when that eye opens, lifting her gauntlets to guard her face while her body takes a beating. She's knocked around once, twice - on her own internal HUD, warnings start popping up, but for now, her body is hardy enough that nothing major is being done. However, seeing that eye, Hyouka realizes that it's what Cayde has directed her to; that realization sets in hard, and for a second or two, all she can do is give the Exo the most baleful, disgusted, put-upon look she can muster. It says everything it needs to on how she feels about this solution.

    But of course, she's going to do it.

    One hop up, then another, leaping from tentacle to tentacle. Hyouka can't quite make it look cool. Her body's coordination and jumping ability are good enough to pull it off, but every landing is wobbly, and once or twice she almost teeters over entirely. But she makes her way closer, closer, until she can haul back one big fist, flood it with as much water-elemental energy as she can muster, and drive it forward in one big water-splosive PUNCH.

    Please let the water punch keep her arm from getting too dirty, please let the water punch keep her arm from getting too dirty...

Serrah nods to Cayde. "Right!" she calls back. "Uhhh ... not gonna be able to stop time because I can't attack in melee while time's stopped -- AUGH!" As the eye appears, a tentacle hits her and sends her tumbling to the ground.

Her left arm is bent at an odd angle when she lands.

She looks at her arm and sort of hovers her way into an upriht sitting position. "Oh god damn it," she says, sounding more annoyed than pained. "Uh. Hmm." She shakes her head. "Guess I'm attacking from here, then!" She grabs her sports bag with one hand, and peers at it. "... One second ..." She holds the bag between her legs.

This time, when she stops time, only about half as many baseballs as usual go flying towards that eye.

>> SUMMARY[Serrah Delany] >> Ouch.

  Whalesong is met with the squawking battle cry of the bottlenose. He ducks and dodges those menacing tentacles, jerking left and right and up and down and any combination of the four as he races around and through the beast, squawking louder and louder. He doesn't bother to ram the tentacles -- biting them is a lot more effective, in this situation.

  Maybe more satisfying, too. There's a certain catharsis to lashing out blindly when you're scared out of your mind.

  Through it all, he's still squawking, a relentless ek-ek-ek-ek that somehow manages to sound disproportionately angry.

    For the record, Cayde was only responding to Hyouka's earlier inquiry. He hadn't been thinking of how gross it might be, because at this point when you're dealing with undead and creeping sentient goopy plants, everything is gross. 

    The Exo does catch that look, if for a moment, which he responds to with a shrug of 'What?!' It won't be until after the cyborg makes impact with the glowing eye thing that it'll dawn upon him. But in the meantime...

    They almost lose a vampire. Cayde winces as he looks over, his words dying in his mouth as he sees her arm. He works his jaw a few times, but with Serrah shrugging off the matter, Cayde shakes his head and continues firing, until bullets are spent and he's forced to whip out his Hunter's knife to slash at flailing tentacles instead.

    It's too bad the cameras are out in the chamber. Alty would think that Hyouka looked cool at least.
    But what's more important is that eye.
    Ecco has the tentacles completely distracted, every bite and tear of those sharp, conical, teeth earning another cry of distress from the plant-like creature. Up until that eye has a power punching cyborg and a flurry of baseballs on a direct course for it.
    The pupil dilates briefly, before contracting into a small point, watching that huge fist and those baseballs on a course for it. The impact is... Unpleasant to say the least. And messy. A final shrill screech of pain as it thrashes its tentacles wild and blind before the tree-like monstrosity begins to droop and wilt and die on its own, each tentacle releasing the other trees and no longer sapping them or getting into the vents.
    "Is... Is it over? It sounds like it's over. Are you all okay?" Alty says over the comms. "If everything is handled... There's a pretty spacious room not far from there where you can get some rest before you come back. I should get some sleep, myself so let's all call it a day?"
    There's just one problem. That 'spacious' room Alty was talking about? It's about the size of a large closet.
    Okay, well it's 'spacious' for a shinki, anyway.

  At least the appendages are busy. Ecco continues wreaking merry havoc with them, darting in and out, sinking his teeth into them and ripping at them with brutal single-mindedness. He thrashes with his tail and torso, too, attempting to buck any tentacles that might be trying to grab at him. Even in his panicky thrashing he knows it's the end if even one of those tentacles manages to sink its suckers onto him.

  All he wanted to do was go to space and see some extraplanetary sights. Maybe he spent part of his childhood insanely jealous of all the dolphins who got to go on the expeditionary ship. Was wanting to go see space really so bad!? 

  Apparently. It brought him here.

  It takes him a few more seconds of tearing and thrashing to realise that the thing is dead, and that those broad tentacles have gone limp. No longer is the horror from the deeps trying to batter and grasp at its prey.

  Ecco spits out a disgusting piece of tentacle, clapping his jaws in abject disgust.

  "I think it-t-t'ssss dead," the bottlenose huffs, turning and clicking rapidly at the thing, feeling it out with sonar. No pulse. No muscle twitching or contractions. Nope, it's dead, Jim. Ecco turns on his tail, heading for the room that Alty indicates, with a flick of his tail. It might be a bit extra hasty to get him away from that horrific monstrosity a little faster.

  He'd really like to go hide in that room, and when the shaking stops, find out where they are and how much oxygen they've got left. That little problem still hasn't solved itself yet.

  Only he won't even fit in there.

  Ecco is really proud of himself for not wailing in despair. But he does droop his flukes pretty hard...

    "...Alty, dear, I'm..." Hyouka pauses, quietly scratching the back of her head - with the fist she didn't just use to smash an undead tentacle monster's eye. She's not sure how to break this to the poor shinki. Instinctively, she goes for the gentle but honest approach. "...we'll be able to manage for now, but this is a bit of a tight fit for people as big as we are."

    Cayde dances back, flailing and kicking away limp, shriveling tentacles as he watches things start to deflate. He glances over towards Hyouka and Serrah with all the intention of flashing a thumbs-up with his knife-hand, although now that he sees the problem with being in the immediate splash zone of punching an eye, he suddenly feels a little sheepish about the whole matter. ...but of course he's going to play it off and rally on because THAT WHAT HE DO! So THUMBSUP.

    "Good job, team! Yeah- we're..." He pauses, looking at the others. "-good. We're all good here. How're you?" At least Alty's not here. She might've drowned. Cayde's eyes track towards where Ecco's gone charging off. "Yeah, I think we found it. That's um. Probably not going to work but we'll figure something out. You stay put, we'll be back and out of this nightmare in no time."

    He wipes his blade off and stows it before reloading his hand cannon for future use. "I'mma have a look-see with Sundance and double-check that the airflow's all good. Then we can check at least one thing off our To-Do List." A look towards Serrah, accompanied by vague gesturing. "...also...are...you okay with the whole...arm thing?"

Serrah follows after a bit more slowly than the others, clutching her arm. She peers at the closet, and just sighs softly. "Scale, Alty," she mutters under her breath.

She deflates slightly at Cayde's comment. "... Not really," she says, sounding a bit cranky. "This might take a couple hours to heal, or it might take a couple days, depending on ... various stuff." A pause. "... Can someone get me a damn splint?"