Let the Stars Fall Down IC

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Mana yawned and stretched a bit, pushing herself into a sitting position. There was too much noise from people doing things to stay asleep. "Morning," she managed, only half-coherently. She looked blearily around the room at the others, and it took a while for things to sink in, but once they did, she quickly snapped into being that much more alert. "It wasn't me," she protested without missing a beat. "I didn't wake up hungry in the middle of the night or anything."

"I wouldn't eat something we're supposed to deliver anyway. Especially not weird raw meat." She got out of bed and stretched a bit. "Mmmm.... I don't know what likely happened, but we can probably rule out a few things. And I get the feeling we should really go meet with out client anyway. Someone has to explain what happened, and if we can ask just what that cargo was, it might explain something."

She went over to the cargo crates to examine them more closely. If they've been tampered with somehow, here might be some indication somewhere.
 
"A lovely morning to all of you!" Replied the AI, Brent's voice working as some kind of signal, the gynoid body was now completely booted up. "See, if you had spent some more mahz on this junk body we could have totally watched a sleeping montage of our lovely crew and solve the mystery of the morning! Also, I can vouch for Mana, unless her appetite tripled, because it apparently doubled last night, she did not do it." As ever in high spirits the AI now turned her attention towards Auric.

"Option Number Eight: Curious and ambitious as ever, Mr. Oktania took the meat for his own research and tries to put the blame on someone else! Don't worry though we still love you."

With a morning full of mysteries, impending adventures and a little bit of snark there was just one thing missing to make it perfect! "How did you sleep Mana? Does anything feel off?" With that, she also gave an evil glare over the rest of the crew.
 
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"Doubt Auric would take all the meat for his experimental research," Brent chided lightly, "And I doubt Mana would have eaten it either, cause there wouldn't exactly be a slime trail if she used her Xeno for that, so that's two suspects knocked out…"

A little more awake now, Brent slid his feet off the bed and jammed them into his shoes. Standing up, he did a few morning calisthenics, mumbled a few customary 'good mornings', before getting back to business once more.

First off…

"Asano, please, you're the only one who would assault Mana in her sleep. That's why you have such a shitty sleep-mode, after all."

Second off…

"Mana, the client isn't scheduled to arrive in two days, so I doubt we'll be able to contact them."

Third off…

"And Auric, why would you even do that? I'm not paying for your hospital fees."

And finally…

"Asgharro, as the latest member of our crew, what do you think we should do? You know the whole missing cargo, slimy trail, and mysterious circumstances thing."

Well, it WAS a pretty dire situation, but they had a pretty obvious path to follow, and it wasn't like a suspicious person carrying three cratefuls of meat would be particularly inconspicuous the first place. After the initial shock had followed, it looked like everything was just fine~
~
Mana would, unfortunately, find nothing wrong with the mechanical crates. Indeed, there was no sign at all of any virus or application altering the program. Everything looked like it was functioning as intended.
 
"I'm fine," Mana answered Asano, her voice a bit muffled since she had gotten on hands and knees to stick her head into one of the crates and look around inside it. "Nothing out of place or anything. The only thing that really feels off is the whole cargo suddenly disappearing." She stood back up. "I don't think anything's really tampered with these either. It's like they're working just fine. Which means..." she paused for a while in thought. "...Gosh, i hope it doesn't mean they were set to open and everything now, when the delivery's not for a couple days. That would be bad."

"Actually, where'd we pick this stuff up again? I get the impression our best course of action is to just follow the trail and hope we find our missing cargo, but it can't hurt to run back over anything that might say what's going on." She paced around a bit, either anxious or lost in thought. It would definitely look bad if they didn't have anything to show for it when their client finally showed up. But something about the whole situation seemed wrong. A bunch of meat doesn't just grow legs and walk away, but what sort of thing leaves a weird slimy trail when it leaves, and can sneak in and out of the room without doing anything to the door? And isn't some gooey monster from a show.
 
"I did that for a good reason. Specifically, because the slime tastes a lot like half-thawed meat. Which rules out any potential non-delicacy thieves," added Auric. He paused for a moment.
"Wait, what kind of experimental research would I do with frozen meat, anyway? I'm not that kind of doctor, I'm a temporal..." he began, and continued to rant on in such a way that causes even me to lose interest. When he eventually finished, he did so with, "And my name is Oktonia."

He recomposed himself in a few seconds. "Mana, while you're over there, can you check to see if you can tell how long ago those opened? If we're not too far off, we might just be able to chase them down, which would be an awful lot more convenient than detective work. In the meantime, I'm going to see how far this trail goes before somebody realised that it wasn't walking on its own." And with that, he left the room before anyone could tell him that he was taking the non-presence of a food delivery far too seriously.
 
"Me? Assaulting someone in his, or her, sleep? If anything I am your loyal and trusty guardian against the forces of darkness that come with the night! Also, if worst comes to worst, we can just buy new meat!" After all, they were supposed to consider it normal meat, no? Or was she supposed to run around in circles and panic? Whatever the case was, Asano decided to follow Auric. "And Mr. Oktovia, since I am clearly not such a genius as you, I obviously wouldn't know what kind of research you would do. Of course, going through my database there is the possibility of..." And just like him, the gynoid was going through just as much of a boring list as the time guy did. Really, the things one could do with meat in the name of science seemed endless...and scary.
 
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"The way I see it, it doesn't matter how long ago those crates opened, so long as we have that trail of gooey meat to follow" Asgharro said absent-mindedly while changing his socks for a pair that weren't smothered in sticky alien meat goop. "I think our best shot is to kit up and get moving, see if we can't follow the trail along the upper colonies. We may bump into someone who saw something as well." With that done, Asgharro hopped off the bed and stretched his back, feeling the little pops and cracks that told him everything was shifting back to where it should be.

"I dunno about you guys, but there's more useful things to be doing than listening to these two go it at like little children. Anyone up for a wonder round Kroil, see the sights, one of which will hopefully be a large pile of meat?"
 
If Mana did decide to go check out the timestamp on when the box would open, she'd find out that it had opened five hours ago.

"Well then," Brent said, clapping his hands together, "Sounds like Mana and Ash have got the right idea. Asano, if you want to argue with Auric, feel free to. If it's some sort of wild animal with the ability to open up locks, feel like we'd be fine without you two, yeah?"

With that, the young captain waved, and began following the trail of slime, translucent against the light of the morning sun.

Despite being a relatively cheap-looking motel, it was a very well-illuminated one, full of large windows that allowed for the light of an artificially-simulated sun to light up the hallways. The trail grew darker as it went over the rust-red carpets of the corridors, before making sloppily splash-like imprints as it got to the stairs. Apparently, whatever had moved all that meat had pushed the lumps down the staircase. As the group made it onto ground floor, they would see that the trail lead to the unoccupied kitchen, a faint smell of food still in the air.

"So...Mana...are you sure you didn't?"
 
"Hm...looks like these things were opened something around 5 hours ago," Mana commented, no longer poking around inside the containers and checking the outside again. "Also, man, the inside of those things already doesn't smell the greatest."

She looked over to the others in time to see the Captain walk off following the trail. "H-hey! don't just go wandering off on your own!" She quickly got her own rear in gear to follow along, careful not to step in the goo. She kept her eyes to the trail on the floor as she followed it, and almost bumped into Brent when he stopped near the kitchen.

"Of course I'm sure I didn't do anything. I don't sleepwalk or anything, so I'd know. Is this still about the food thing?" She scratched her head. She'd definitely remember if she dragged a bunch of meat all the way down stairs and such. And she probably wouldn't have taken all of it anyway. She could finish a steak ,but not several crates of them. "There's no way I could eat that much in one sitting anyway. But...maybe our culprit is lurking right there..."

She cautiously approached the door to the kitchen and nudged it open to peek inside.
 
Auric stopped tracing the trail once he reached a large pair of double doors. He stood up straight again, trying to find any indication of what the (apparently very cold) room was beyond. He didn't need to look much further than the words marked on the left door.

FOOD STORAGE

Well, that'd be a walk-in freezer then. From his experience, walk-in freezers tended not to have very many doors, which meant that it would be perfect for springing a trap if the trail had been bait. Fortunately, Auric had seen his fair share of practical jokes in his time, so he knew what to expect. He shut his eyes and focused, drawing a small metal baton and pointing it towards the door. In a single instant, invisible and intangible processors hummed silently as waves of energy poured from the tip of the stick, ignoring the presence of the doors and reverberating off of the inside of the room until it all spilled back towards Auric, with an enormous network of incorporeal transistors analysed it and translated it into sensory information. It was as if Auric had shone a torch through a veil and observed the result. He could see inside the room, sense every object and its edges and ridges.

Hanging from the ceiling and lying on the floor was meat of the mammalian and reptilian variety. It could hypothetically replace the meat they'd lost, but there was something else, and it looked alive. It also looked like a bunch of sausages. A breathing bunch, lying in wait for something to come through the door. He'd hazard a guess and say that this thing was the reason that quite a lot of the meat was apparently half-eaten and lying on the floor. And that was not supposed to live in freezers either. He sighed, shrugged, and decided to take care of the most likely culprit for the crew's distinct lack of cargo.

The door swung open as he strolled in, with the mass of tendrils dropping on to him as he did. Clearly, it thought it had surprised him. Catching what little glimpse he could of the beast, it looked to be about 300 kilograms, so a good deal of force was in order. From just over the top of his head, he fired off a directed blast of compressed nitrogen into the beast's gaping mouth at an angle, hurling it across the room with a loud thud and the clattering of containers. Clearly, he'd underestimated its weight a little, because he'd aimed to either pierce its skull or smash it into the wall, and neither had happened.

The creature was serpentine, long and scaled, with a mouth large enough to swallow cattle whole. It was covered in tentacles, more than Auric could count in limited time, but enough for him to shudder at the thought of Mana taking it on.
"Oh look, a tunnel snake," he observed. "I heard that you guys rule."
He pointed his baton towards the gigantic snake, ready to fire another blast of compressed air if it moved towards him.
 
At the sounds of combat, Asgharro dashed past Mana into the kitchen. Whatever was going on in there, at least some of it was probably unfriendly, and someone or something could use some backup.

It certainly caught him by surprise to find that the kitchen was empty. Asgharro stood there feeling rather stupid. He'd dashed in to save...an empty room. Great.

As he stood there, nonplussed and a little embarrassed, Auric's voice filtered through from the walk in freezer. Asgharro grabbed a chef's knife from a nearby table and ran to the doorway, where he saw Auric pointing a...stick of some kind at a slavering mess of tentacled flesh. In a bid to save his newfound comrade from the consequences of attacking a space tentacle monster with a stick, Asgharro lunged at the creature, hacking the blade down towards the creature's neck.
 
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Standing besides Auric as he did his scientific mojo joho the gynoid made a big yawning sound, just to proof a point, after all, she did follow him all the way here. "Hey what are you..." THough before she could say anything more the scientist decided to take things on his own and initiate his battle against the mid-boss. And considering it wasn't as one-sided against him as the AI might have wished, she kept calm. "'I've unwillingly saw enough things to know where this is going." Did it eat...circuits and metal too? Maybe, whatever the case was, the freezer wasn't exactly THAT BIG and just as the AI wanted to suggest something the new crew-member lunged heroic into the improvised tentacle pit. "Just because you are new doesn't mean you have to be suicidal!" Considering this was a kitchen she now took a step back, surely there would be something akin to be capable of getting tinkered into a house-made flamethrower?
 
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"Oh good god."

Standing at the backline while everyone else tried to do something useful, the only thing on the honorable Captain Brent's mind was…WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT THING!?! It looked vaguely like a gearpillar, one of those freakish monstrosities that those biotech dudes made their mechs out of, but at the same time…it was like it was scrambled up into an eldritch tentacle beast that came straight out of a horror movie. Needless to say, against such a monster when they had no firepower…Brent could only wince as he backed away from the melee inside the walk-in freezer. There was an easy solution to all this, of course, but he didn't like to show his cards so easily.

After a bit, the Captain just decided that, hey, this would be a good opportunity to assess the combat potential of his new crew.
~
The monster wriggled madly as its first attack was thwarted by an invisible blast of air. Recoiling at an almost impossible angle, it nevertheless didn't appear to be significantly harmed by Auric's attack. In fact, it wasn't apprehensive at all at the face of his power. Lurching forward once again, its face split apart like a flower, stretching out for a bite of the Kirito-lookalike…only for its tender mouthpieces to be met with another blast of air, so strong that its three jaws folded all the way backwards.

There was no sound of a crack, though, and its elastic body reached onwards, unimpeded by blunt force…when a blade slid into its fleshy exterior. Red blood oozed from the slash, and for a moment there, it almost looked like the long cut was effective. Then, one of the whip-like tentacles of the beast swung backwards, lashing towards Asgharro's face, with enough force that he'd be sent spinning if it connected.

Soon afterwards, the wound that Asgharro inflicted would bubble, and then disappear, healed in an instant.

Meanwhile, Mana's just standing there in fear of a magical girl's worst enemy, the tentacle monster, and Asano-17 would find herself a few small cans of natural gas, apparently used to blowtorch food, inside one of the many cabinets of the kitchen.
 
Asgharro saw the tentacle coming, but it whipped round too fast to allow him to dodge it. Asgharro instead threw himself backwards, covering his face with his arms, in an attempt to lessen the impact. It still knocked him the wind out of him, and left him lying on the floor. Gasping for breath, he propped himself up, just in time to see the flesh around the wound he'd inflicted begin to heal. "Motherfucker!" Asgharro swore, venting his frustration. Knives wouldn't work, and his power didn't exactly play well with allies. He would be an onlooker, to all intents and purposes.

A clatter from behind him caused him to snap his head round, prepared for another threat. As it turns out, it was just Asano hauling some gas canisters onto a table. Wait. Gas. Kitchen. Cooking. Fire.

Asgharro could have hugged the psychotic AI then and there. Instead he took his cue and got to work. He went searching the kitchen for any gas-powered appliance that he could...appropriate parts from.
 
"Oh, you've got to be freaking kidding," were the first words out of Mana's mouth when she saw the creature everyone else was fighting. She wasn't trained to deal with things like strange fleshy tentacled monsters. She took a step back in hesitation, something almost instinctual telling her she shouldn't get involved with this whatsoever. But, she couldn't just let her comrades down and leave them to fend for themselves. "Damn it, how are we even supposed to fight something like this?"

While he others began gathering a means to get a good fire going, Mana stepped further into the freezer, keeping an eye on the creature but doing her best to get a better look at the surrounding area. She didn't want to just run in there with her bare hands, or even a knife. Quite frankly, she really didn't want to touch something like that or get within reach of it either. The whole thing was just glistening in the light...wait, lights! That's it! Mana glanced up to double check, then shouted a warning to Auric, just in case. "Danger above!"

Mana lashed out with telekinetic force, ripping the light fixture above the monster loose and sending it falling down in a shower of sparks and broken glass. Hopefully, they could just play off the damage as part of the fight, if anyone asked...
 
Seeing the wound bubble and heal from nothing less than a Kroilan knife in that little time triggered a mental search for answers from the physicist.

Axolotls. Hypothetical yet plausible neotenous amphibians used in biomedicine models for their astounding healing factor. Capable of regenerating entire limbs even in adulthood.

Sponges. Primitive, nonsentient aquatic animals, can literally be ground to a fine paste and still heal themselves.

Hemolymph. Major chemical in the circulatory system of arthropod blood, allowing multiple things to happen, chiefly the transport of nutrients. This allows a cockroach to heal a wound in the time it takes a mammal to bleed to death from it.

Auric frowned internally. That explained where the meat had gone. The creature had some kind of enhanced hemolymph in an open circulatory system which had been frozen by the low temperatures. It then pieced itself back together when the boxes opened.

The only reason, then, that the boxes would have opened was for that to happen, since the meat wouldn't be able to force the crates open while they were still in half-dead pieces. Meaning that their employer had planned for it to occur. So since that made the axolotlian serpent a living biological weapon, either this was the only one, in which case this thing was going to be nigh-impossible to kill; or there were more, in which case security had to be warned.

Either way, this thing could not be reasoned with. Ergo, it was okay to kill it so he-- uh, they-- could tackle the problem. And it would not be killed through conventional me--
R-9 Pilot said:
"Danger above!"
Click to expand...
Auric instinctively blasted himself backwards with compressed air, avoiding the falling chunk of ceiling, and in exchange probably cracking a rib or two.
"Shit!" he spat, pulling his body to its feet. "S[spoili]hitting[/spoili] s[spoili]patfucking[/spoili] n[spoili]ettlecunts[/spoili]!"
It wasn't aimed at anyone in particular, he was simply trying to vent his pain by shouting. Naturally, his ribs being the thing injured, it didn't work very well.
The bludgeoning and cutting was not going to work. All the force in the world was not stopping this thing from reconstructing itself. The wound would always seal, one way or another.

But there was another.

The blood's chemicals was causing this thing to heal itself. The wound would always seal.

Auric gripped his baton tightly, trying to focus through the echoes of pain. Slowly but surely, an electromagnetic field began to form around the silver rod's tip.

Auric was pissed off. This thing was going to die. One way or another.
 
Asano was ready to set the world on fire! Eh, the kitchen, no... just the freezer... fine, only the tentacle monster. Though somehow deep inside her the AI was really excited regarding the coming armageddon...maybe it had something to do with her original creator? Whatever. She had enough stuff that could burn nicely, all she needed was now some kind of heat-source...which Mana apparently provided by letting loose some cable clutter. "You are the best! And...stay away from that thing." Just to make sure, from all the research she did in regards to some anime topics Asano knew that this thing should be one of her natural enemies, and things could get even worse if a higher power decided to punish them. Oh my god what was she supposed to do if that BEAST decided to ravish Mana? No. She could not allow that. "Give me that!" She had to kill it, now. "I am going to kill you so hard that you will beg for death!" Taking two of the small canisters Asano walked closer to the beast and bit one of the cans open for the sake of sucking the gas into her, as apparently this combat gynoid body was also serving as a breathing simulator 2015. With that done, all she had to do was release her breath upon the tentacle monster...and hopefully the sparks were enough to ignite ALL THE THINGS.
 
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What Ass would find would be a bunch of fancy looking camping stoves, stacked up nicely. There was also a barbeque lighter, no doubt used to ignite grills whenever the cook wanted to make hot dogs or whatever.
~
There was a loud screech emitting from the monster's partially warped vocal cords as the telekinetically dislodged lights fell onto it. Wires snapped and sparked, glass shattered and cut, and filaments burned and scarred. The tentacle-blob-snake's body was embedded with hundreds of tiny glass shards, and the smell of nasty, burning flesh could be heard as it turned around, bristling. In that moment, its body seemed to expand, almost like that of a pufferfish, before it deflated and a thick, gooey stream of weird white stuff was shot out of its massive mouth, coming right at Mana.

Asano, in an attempt to protect Mana's purity, hopped into action! Blowing out all the butane gas she had stored in her system, she shot out a stream of volatile gas that, thank god, was ignited by one of the many sparks flitting about from the frayed wires. For a moment, there was a stream of blue fire, a brilliant flash that scattered whatever the beast had spat out.

But, in the next moment, it died out, and the monster leapt forwards, bring its entire weight upon Mana, tentacles extended in order to catch Asano as well.

"WAGRABLRABLRABLARBAL," it screeched.
 
"Hieeeeeeeee!" Mana grimaced and stepped backward, trying to get away from the monster. Her foot slipped out from under her on a pool of water...or slime, and she quickly went crashing to the ground to land painfully on her rear. She managed to get a leg up between her and the monster as it fell upon her, but she was definitely not in a good situation. "Get awaaaay," she shouted as she tried to push the slug-like creature off with her foot. "I'll never forgive you if you eat me, and I'll give you a terrible case of heartburn!"

The beast is now much closer to doing hideous things to Mana, not that she's not putting up a fight. She's pretty sure it just wants to eat her anyway, though it doesn't stop her from writhing in disgust and trying to squirm away from the creature before it can wrap a few too many tentacles around her and drag her into that oversized, toothy maw. She flailed around with a few punches, hoping to hit a vulnerable spot.
 
The attack was very effective! Or maybe not. As the beast suddenly lunged forwards, and much to Asano's demise, aimed at Mana. "Fuck you!" This was now not a question about trying to dodge the tentacles or whatever, but getting captured on purpose. Whatever those tentacles would do, she was a combat gynoid, so there was nothing to fear...right? And she had a second bottle of burnable gas in her palm anyways. "Die you ancient eldritch horror!" Getting ultimately caught by the tentacles, the AI tried to stick the bottle somewhere on top of the fleshy mass, away from Mana, using the pressure of her mechanical hand to burst the can open, hopefully igniting it as well!
 
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