World Tree MUSH

    Since outworlders provide a reasonable cover for the endemic supernatural events that need to be kept hidden from the native denizens of this iteration of Earth, they've been contracted to find out just why there are so many large spider webs appearing on Angel Island. Thick strands of spider silk, as big around as a person's arm, began appearing around the same time as the rat problem in San Jose was at epidemic levels. Then, a week ago, the corpses started turning up; wrapped in the webbing, dessicated. Freakish things too, thought by the local authorities to be non-human or semi-human outworlders.
    The state park's port is pretty empty this time of year, and the fog obscures the sunset that would otherwise be filled with liquid golds, dusky purples, and pinkish reds.

    EARLIER:

    "I mean it. Stay on board the ship this time. Stay. Onboard. The ship."
    The argument is entirely one sided. A man in silver armor talks down to a small creature no larger than a toddler with green skin, large ears, and fuzzy silver hair.
    "Where I'm going is probably very dangerous." The man re-iterates very pointedly. "You can't follow me this time, so just stay on the Razor Crest alright? Okay. Good talk. Glad you understand." He says, fully prepared to leave the youngling aboard the starship as the ship's exit ramp descends and he stands in the exit waiting to step down.
    Only for the little womprat to be right there standing at his side. He almost doesn't notice at first. Before he looks down and spots the Child next to him.
    The Mandalorian sighs.
    "Fine." He says, giving up entirely.

    NOW:

    Having taken up the job from the local authorites, the Razor Crest touches down some distance away, in San Francisco proper, the beskar-clad mercenary opting to ride a boat to the Angel Island docks and stepping off with... A small floating cradle at his side, the Child peeking out curiously as the Mando's heavy bootsteps touch down on the docks, the clink-clink of spurs sounding off with each footfall. He pauses here, knowing one other is on their way, and to see if they'll be the only ones exploring this supposedly spider infested island.

  Honestly, the only reason Juno Eclipse is here is because her erstwhile travelling companion and fellow anti-Imperialist, the Mandalorian, is also here. Leaving the Rogue Shadow behind had been a simple matter of bringing the ship down from orbit at Angel Island's docks: Juno has some kind of co-pilot, because after she's loped stiffly down the cargo hatch ramp, the ship lifts off again with a swirl of debris and mist. It shimmers out of view as it rises. The electronic whine of its ion drives are soon lost to the mist.

  Otherwise, the approximate chance of Juno wanting to deal with this is 'nope.'

  By the time she's reached the bottom of the ramp, Juno's managed to shove both blaster pistols into their holsters at each hip, shrug into her reinforced jacket, and thumbed the comm unit at her ear to make a final check with PROXY, aboard the ship. She turns, regarding the dreary port with an unimpressed eye.

  Much like the Mandalorian, she'd taken the job from local authorities, operating under a callsign. The old general lopes over when she see the tall man in beskar armour, lifting a hand to flag him down. Her hands slip into her pockets as she falls into step at his side, shaking her head. "I'm leaving the Rogue Shadow waiting in orbit. A word from me and PROXY will bring it back down, if you need to get back to the Razor Crest fast," she offers, to the bounty hunter. Juno frowns, then, looking over her shoulder. It's quiet, the look seems to say; too quiet.

    And meanwhile, here's a scruffily-dressed outworlder who can fly.

    Serrah is looking out-of-sorts today. At the very least, she looks like she is badly in need of coffee. This is even considering the fact that she is, this very minute, carrying a cup of coffee. Her baseball bag at her hip, wearing a black leather jacket and a rainbow skort, her red eyes occasionally getting squinty.

    Nevertheless, she has decided to fly over the water to Angel Island's docks. Under her own power.

    She lands heavily, nearly spilling her coffee, and nods in greeting to everyone else present. "I'm pretty sure the answer is gonna be 'giant spiders'," she says without preamble. "This is ... this is not, it should be said, like, a very deep mystery." She shrugs, and gets out a baseball. "I mean, I'm still ready to 'solve' it, of course," she adds, tossing it into the air and catching it.

Jun isn't an offworlder, but he definitely wants to help. So here he is. Despite the fact that just the idea of having to investigate spiders has him low-key freaked out already. And it's not helped by the fact that there are CORPSES that have been found. But it makes sense, isn't that how spiders eat?

Anyway, yeah. He's here! He is of course in his transformed state -- that of a young Japanese man with long blue-black hair and blue eyes. He's dressed in a white and blue outfit with a lot of gold accents, an outfit that's clearly Asian in origin. He arrives via flying in over the water (he may or may not have actually been UNDER the water at some point) and landing lightly on the dock. He doesn't make noise when he lands.

Juno looks pretty normal, more or less, and he offers a nod of greeting. Seeing the Mandalorian however, that gets a blink... and then the floating green baby with the giant ears. And then he's fighting a grin.

Serrah's appearance gets a nod of greeting as well. And her words? "Oh yeah, I'm definitely not thrilled," he notes. "But it's my home, kinda, so..." He shrugs a bit.

There's a young girl with silver armor in knight-armor currently investigating the island and the dead bodies. Those who have met her before would instantly recognize Shield Maiden. She's knelt before the fallen warriors and is paying tribute to them but hasn't noticed any of the others yet.

 Meanwhile, Benedicta lands on the island have grown bird wings to propel her across the bay safely. The al-mir'aj girl's horn instantly glows yellow and she looks uneasy as she's detected a familar presence.

     Not far behind Benedicta is a red, fluffy jackal of the anthropomorphic variety, wearing a long black shirt with jagged red trim, whom some may recognize as Damian. He needs no wings to fly, simply sailing through the air with his limbs dangling lazily beneath him, coming not to a landing but a hover a foot or two above the ground next to the horned bunny. "Soooo, spiders, huh? Big ones too. I wonder if I could infiltrate their ranks in spider form, take over as their king, lead a spider uprising..." he remarks, a wicked grin starting to spread across his face.

    The fog brings out the unseen phantasms of the island, echoes of the misery and anguish from its time as a plague isolation ward and immigration center. Only those sensitive to the flow of spirits and magics directly pick up on the unthinking emanations, but it lends an unsettling air to the place. The thick trees on the slopes of Mount Livermore only add to the haunting gloom.
    It's not too far before the giant spider webs are spotted. One might walk into a ropy strand if not watching where one is going.

    And there's Juno.
    "The Razor Crest is in the city, not far from the docks." The Mandalorian replies on the status of his own ship. "We'll be counting on you if we need a quick evac." 
    When Jun arrives without making a sound, the beskar-clad mercenary's hand snaps for his blaster, but relents and calms when he sees that he's not faced with some kind of terrible water monster, but another man who's probably here for the same reason he is. That T-visored helmer dips in a faint, silent, nod of greeting, while others arrive, before he turns to the island proper.
    The Child however, grows discontent. All it takes is a disturbance in The Force; the sensation of the unthinking spirits putting the little sprog on edge with a tiny whine that gets a silent but concerned look from that T visor.
    But there's no point in lingering, as he reaches up to the side of his helmet and taps it.
    Immediately his vision is in shades of dull blues and bright oranges, thermal sensor array making it easy to pick the others out by their heat signatures-- or lack of them in Shield Maiden's case. ... And anything else that might lurk in the gloom.

>> SUMMARY[The Mandalorian] >> Predator style thermal vision.

  It doesn't take Force-sensitivity to notice there's something wrong with this island. When echoes linger strongly enough even the mundane can sense that something is off. While she might not pick up on the exact nature of the phantasms or the impressions lingering here, Juno can still feel that creepy feeling when something supernatural is just plumb off.

  "The Rogue Shadow has you covered for a quick exfil." Juno's mouth twitches. It's almost a smile. "On that I'd stake my reputation. I've staked my life on it plenty of times, and that ship's never let me down."

  Oh. People are arriving. The others earn polite nods from Juno as they trickle in. Serrah earns a moment more of staring, if only because the girl is off-handedly familiar. There isn't time to think about it too heavily, though, and she looks to Jun, frowning. Flight, and also some nice threads, too. Fancy. Benedicta and Damian earn a brief glance, but Juno doesn't seem too weirded-out. Alien races are pretty normal in her neck of the woods.

  She glances back to the hills again, spinning a blaster pistol by its trigger guard and holstering it, eyes drifting over to Mando to check his read on the situation. Somewhere between one breath and the next she's stepped a little closer to the floating crib. "Quiet, now." It's not unsympathetic, but it's a little terse. "Don't worry. You're safe with us." She believes that, and maybe sensing that might soothe the poor little guy. As soon as Mando reaches up to toggle his visor's thermal filters, though, she sighs, looking down at her blasters again.

  "You can see these things better than I can," she comments, low. "Take point. I'll follow your lead." Both blasters slip out of their holsters, and she thumbs them to active, red lights winking on. "I'll keep an eye on the little one, too."

    Serrah frowns at Jun's comment; while she does have a home now (thanks, Hyouka and Alty!), she's still stuck outside her homeworld. But she seems to get back under control quickly enough. "Fair enough," she says finally, taking a sip of coffee.

    She nods in greeting to Benedicta and Damian, then hesitates, glancing over at the Mandalorian and furrowing her brow when he nearly draws on Jun before relaxing when he settles down. And as they walk, her frown returns ... but now it's at the sensations of darkness. Hmm. Since she's slightly a creature of darkness herself, it's ... odd, and she's learned to be worried about things.

    Her gaze shifts to Juno. "Hey, uh, have we met before?" she asks, in the tone of voice of someone who somewhat trying to distract themself, as she walks straight towards a strand of webbing. "I think it was when I was a human --"

    Inches from walking right into the strand, she ... is suddenly several feet back from where she was before, staring at the strand, and a splash of coffee flies out from where her cup was the previous instant and lands on the ground. The transition is as abrupt as a video skipping ahead. "... Welp!" She chortles; adrenaline is no substitute for sleeping properly, but at least it somewhat takes the edge off of it. "Okay, shutting up now, time to keep my eyes peeled ..." She tosses the baseball into the air and catches it again, as if trying to do so threateningly.

Jun is in the 'definitely spooked' camp -- he doesn't seem to be able to sense these emanations, but he looks uneasy. The spider webs get a digusted look from him, and he deals with them by generally staying away from them. Should he require to get past one and can't move around it, he'll deal with it by shooting a thin stream of steam from his fingers at it.

The whine from the little green guy, though, that gets a look. And Jun's fighting a smile again. little thing is way cuter than they have any right to be. Could be a good thing to distract him from all the ICK around here!

Hearing Damian's voice, Shield-Maiden turns around upon hearing him. "That plan wouldn't work, their leader would know right away. I know we've fought in the past and I still don't care much for you, but we have a larger problem at the moment. Baroness Spider has declared all out-war again Sybil and the San Francisco branch of the Obsidian Cabal. She sent one of her assassins after my queen...she's alive but in no condition to fight right now. Those you see before you weren't as lucky."

 Benedicta can't help but to frown upon hearing that, "As much as I dislike Sybil I can't let crazy spider lady run loose either. Once she's done with her civil war she'll likely go after Beacon next. There's also no telling how the Order might react to this either." She knows she can't let this get any further out of hand.

     "Pfeh. You guys again, huh? At least you're not the ones behind it... so far." Damian flippantly responds to Shield-Maiden, floating off toward the webs to give them some closer inspection. A snap of his fingers brings a torch to hand- and not the British term for a flashlight either, but an actual pitch-and-wood torch from ye olden times. "Gotta keep with the atmosphere, y'know?" he explains, grinning back at the group.

    The bodies that Shield Maiden is investigating also radiate magic, though the nature of it varies from corpse to corpse, with little commonality to it. There are, thankfully, not a LOT of corpses as the group investigates the fog-laden forest.
    The Mandalorian would see it first, as a warm coocooned person hanging from a web, wriggling. The others would notice the movement as being very out of place. Even the local deer avoid the webbed areas.

    The Child eases somewhat, Juno's cool, calm, tone helping assuage the little sprog, but not entirely. This place is, frankly, spooky as hell and no place for a child.
    Knowing that he can rely on Juno is good. It's not a bad feeling, having someone that seems alright vouching to watch your back for you. That T-visored helm dips in a nod once again as The Mandalorian taks point. He only pauses to give Shield Maiden a pointed and skeptical toned: "Baroness Spider?"
    That doesn't sound ominous at all.
     But then... He spots something.
    "Hold it." The beskar-clade merc whispers to the group in a harsh, hushed, tone, slowly and cautiously approaching the squirming cocoon. His blaster is slowly drawn in case anything tries to surprise him, but in his other hand he draws a knife; the blade humming to life and vibrating at a high frequency to massively augment its cutting power.
    "I'm gonna cut it down. Cover me." He relays, the vibroblade easing over webbing with a whisper of a hiss as he tries to cut the cocoon open.

  The hail from Serrah brings Juno's head to swivel around, blinking at the girl. There's something perhaps unsettlingly owlish about the gesture, and the flatness in her eyes suggests she's thinking hard to try and place the face and the voice. She knows she's run across this one before, somewhere, but where was it? In the end she can only shake her head. "I could swear you're familiar, but I can't recall where I've seen you, just now..."

  Right now, she's more concerned with not being ambushed by giant spiders, because unlike her metallic co-pilot, she is not actually armoured in any real capacity. Her jacket is made of reinforced leather, with reinforced leather shoulder pads, but if her mathematic calculations on the proportion of those webs are correct, it won't stop fangs that big. No way.

  She turns, though, to eye the Child. He's something of an emotional barometer, she's found. If there's something causing discomfort in the immediate area, he's quite sensitive to it. She doesn't reach out to pat at him, because she doesn't want to get her hand shot off by the Mandalorian, but she does lean a little closer. "It's all right. Easy, now."

  Hold it, the Mandalorian orders, and Juno freezes in her tracks. Both blasters half-raise, and she frowns, eyes darting as she tries in vain to pierce the fog around them while the others investigate the cocoon. Her head tilts at the familiar sound of a vibroblade's high-frequency whine, almost inaudible, but she maintains her sharp-eyed vigil. Best not disturb the others while they're dealing with a potentially hostile Cocoon-Thing, either.

    Serrah puts a comforting hand on Jun's shoulder for the brief moment he looks uneasy, but then her head jerks around to face Shield-Maiden, and for a second, she's holding her baseball at the ready. As Shield-Maiden speaks, though, she lets out an exasperated exhale. "Right, then," she says. She smirks faintly. "All righty, kiddo. You're kind of a wildcard, but I don't have any objections ..."

    Her voice trails off as Mando goes for the slice with his vibroblade. Her night vision is still better than a humans, but not as good as a vampire's. "Uh ..." She elects not to interrupt Juno while she's on watch, instead electing to go silent for now.

"I'm partly to blame...if I hadn't gone to Mass; the assassin would have never reached Sybil." Shel can't help but to admit once Damian brings it up. Benedicta tries to place a hand on the girl's shoulder but the celtic seal on her arm begins to glow black and she pulls away.

 "You're really going to have to tell me what your deal is one of these days. Were you a square during the Crusades or something?" Her attention turns the webbed victim, "Yeah, grey spider-woman with six arms, ran into her once before."

 "She also has the ability to control wind,"

 Shield-Maiden adds to Benedicta's comment. "So she's not a beast mage like me then. What did a spider bite a radoactive zepplin or something? Oh crap, they're not going to explode in a cloud of spiders or something right?" The al-miraj takes cover behind one of the trees.

The movement is the thing that catches Jun's attention first, and he looks in that direction when he sees/hears it. He freezes (with a small, kind of humorous squeak), hoping it's not something coming after them. Fortunately the Mandalorian is on it, and he hangs back while the armored one deals with the issue.

Serrah's hand on his shoulder also gets a squeak, this time of surprise. But he offers a nod. "Thanks," he says quietly. And yes, he does kind of eye Shield-Maiden... and he's not going to let her get behind him where he can't see her... but he doesn't speak up against her being there either."

And then Benedicta says something about the possibility of the cocoon exploding. Jun pulls a disgusted face. "Oh God, I hope not," he replies. And then he summons a wall of water for protection. It's not a HUGE wall, but it's big enough that the small group here could conceivably take cover before any possible explosions occur... provided they move fast enough.

     "Huh." is all Damian can muster at Shel's admission. He'd love to dig at her more about it, but... this hardly seems like the right time to be antagonizing someone already in a dubious temporary alliance. "Well, spider lady with wind powers, that can't be too hard to deal with, right?" he says, his grin faltering slightly.

Nevertheless, the half-demon jackal fleis over to give the Mandalorian some light with his torch, not that he likely needs it. More importantly, if the cocoon does explode into spiders, the flame is ready at hand to be jabbed directly into the hopefully very flammable silken threads.

    The cocoon is cut open by the Mandalorian's vibroknife, spilling a person onto the fog-damped grass and leaves. Damian's torch reveals a bookish man, twitching and writhing under the influence of a poison. Ugly blotchy bruises cover his skin where it isn't covered by his clothes. There's a rich earthy smell from the man, and for those sensitive to the flow of magic, he is definitely a mage in the same manner as Shield Maiden or Benedicta. Though he seems to be more plant than human.

    Cutting smoothly by the light of Damian's torch, The Mandalorian frees the captive but that doesn't stop him from turning his blaster on the sprawled figure.
    So a man comes out of the cocoon. That's much more of a surprise than say... Spiders or something equally nasty. But the Mando puts his vibroblade away.
    "... So. Who is he?" He asks blithely, being unable to sense magic and such.
    "Someone should get him back to the docks. He'll only slow us down if we keep going from here." He does note, though.

  Juno keeps her focus on the mist beyond the periphery, always looking for a faint suggestion of form; a hint of movement. Any disturbance to swirl the dampness. So far it seems to be reasonably safe. There's nothing saying it'll stay that way, so she pays more attention to what's out there than the guy they just cut out of the cocoon in here. Evidently, she trusts Mandalorian to cover her six while she's busy trying to ensure nobody gets eaten by spiders.

  The old general doesn't bother answering the question. She doesn't know the answer. Besides, she's... busy trying to ensure nobody gets eaten by spiders. She's listening, though, just in case the identity of this guy is somehow important.

A twitching, writhing person usually means they're in some kind of distress. So when Jun sees that the cocoon did not in fact explode into spiders and death, he lets the wall drop and starts to walk over. In case someone wants to know why, he offers, "I can probably heal him... well, I can try, anyway."

And if he's not prevented from it, he'll start trying to heal the man. His powers are water-aligned, so if this guy is plant-based that should be especially helpful in trying to purge the poisons from his body.

    Serrah's face contorts as Benedicta raises that possibility. "Took the words right out of my mouth, Hisakawa," she says flatly. "Couldn't've put it beter myself ..."

    She takes a deep breath ... and then exhales with relief at the reveal of the fallen man. "Okay, good," she says. "My time-stopping is only good for running away from explosions of spiders."

    Serrah pauses at Mando's suggestion. "I ... might be able to carry him off," she says, stepping aside as Jun approaches the victim. "Although, I've never stopped time while carrying someone unconscious before ... but if he is conscious, I won't be able to go as far before time resumes ..."

    Her voice trails off, and she sniffs the air. She isn't the most observant, and she's clearly sleep-deprived, but that smell is pretty obvious. "Wait," she says, gesturing from Jun to Benedicta to Shel. "Is he ... like you guys?"

There's an unpleasant look on Shield-Maiden's face as she sees who the man is. "You...why couldn't she have killed you..." She promptly kicks the man and the gullet around her neck glows back as seemingly prevents her from doing any worse. "I hate you! Why did Sybil decide to keep you alive?! Get him out of her, I don't want to see his face." The girl's voice manages to rise above a monotone for once as she looks away from the others.

 "Yeah, he is and man I've never seen her get that way before. I wonder if he knows what happened, because I don't think we're going to get anything else out of Shel right now." Benedicta decides it would be best to leave her alone right now.

     Damian also breathes a sigh of relief as it turns out to just be some guy in there, but it doesn't take a canine's sense of smell to notice the earthy scents coming from him, or the poison that seems to be coursing through his veins. "Yeesh, he's in rough shape. Water guy, you sure you can handle it?" he asks Jun, before Shel's reaction takes him completely off guard, nearly causing him to drop his torch. "Whoa, chill out! Dunno what this guy did to you, but I think he's suffering enough as is."

    Doctor Worm, the man in the cocoon, writhes less and less as Jun purifies the poison from his system. Being less meaty than most people, Baroness Spider's venom clearly did not affect him the same way. His unconscious form is kicked by Shield Maiden. Clearly he'll have to be detained and questioned at some point. But this seems to be a start of answers for what is going on.

    And Shield Maiden flies off the handle.
    "Whoah! Easy!" The Mandalorian hisses, training his blaster on her when she goes to kick the guy while he's down. But he most certainly doesn't stop Jun from working that healing magic.
    If anything it's fascinating, causing both the Mando and the Child to stare pretty raptly.

  Other than the periodically check the charge on her blaster pistols, Juno doesn't move very much. It's her eyes that are constantly in motion, scanning the area; glancing back over her shoulder at the proceedings only occasionally. Half-turning, she keeps one pistol aimed out at the fog, and the second swings around to train in Shield Maiden's direction. She doesn't shoot.

  Eventually that lone pistol swings back until both are trained out on the fog, searching. That's basically what she'll be doing until the Mandalorian decides to pack up this party, leave, and take the kid with him.

    Serrah takes half a step towards Shel, but she sighs softly as the girl stomps off. "Don't be too had on her," she says. "I ..." She frowns. "I'm probably projecting, but I've been dead like her before, and lemme tell you, it is not good for your mental health. -- Oh wait I know this guy!" She furrows her brow at Dr. Worm. "I ... almost did get bugs to the face from this clown."

    She rubs her eyes. "I ... did not get enough sleep last night to deal with all that ... infighting nonsense," she says hoarsely.

Suddenly that kick comes from the Shield-Maiden, and... well, let's just say it's lucky she backed off when she did -- few things aggravate Jun like someone attacking a helpless person. Particularly not when he's trying to heal them!

...Did his eyes flash slit-pupiled for just a second, or was that just a trick of the light...?

Well, either way, Jun gives an angry look at the girl, but doesn't bother to chastise her. His eneergy's focused on healing. Once the guy looks less like he's about to turn into a rotten head of lettuce, Jun will pause in his healing. "...I... think that did it?"

Shield-Maiden stares at the odd weapon pointed at her, it wouldn't likely banish her from her state of living death, but she back down. Instead she turns her head and her yellow eyes look at Damian before turning her attention turned toward the seal on Benedicta's right arm, "Demon, if you knew half of what he...augh..." She places her hands on her bevor as it glows black again. Not another word manages to escape from her mouth. She nods at Serrah though thankful for her sympathy.

 "Well, at least he won't be able to help Sybil any longer, it sounds like she's got bigger problems right now though." Benedicta can't help to wonder how bad her rival is off right now. She doesn't think Shield-Maiden would lie to her about that.