Mission 01 - Recovery: Group 5

[cityship]

Chief, Brainiac 5, Leela, Cale, Bri, Paco, Samus, and Allen took the fifth pod. The ground beneath their feet slowly became softer and more squishy, undoubtedly to the grave annoyance of those wearing armor. Marshland, perhaps? It was definitely something they should keep an eye on. Who knew if there was quicksand or something like it, and marshes

Comments

[flunkingspanish]

Paco had unsheathed his stick and was poking at the ground in front of him to make sure it was stable before he stepped on it. He was also trying his best to keep an eye out for anything crawly in the area, but if anything could get past Chief, Samus, and Brainybot's sensors, he probably wasn't going to spot it either.

[spartanjohn_117]

The Chief has taken point, and gave the order to watch footing a ways back after he noticed his boots sinking into the mud more than usual. It's annoying, but could be worse. Most of his concern is for the way ahead, watching and listening for any signs of movement (the motion detector helping this effort) with the occasional check to the scanner to maintain their heading. All in all, this seems to be going pretty well from the outset.

[twelvevoltman]

Let it be known that Allen once went on an epic adventure, but he purposefully avoided the swamps back then and he's kind of wishing he could now.

"You know, I'd hate for this to color anyone's perceptions of my levels of toughness and endurance and beer-can-crushing manliness, but I think the ground just farted. Is it too late for me to switch with group 4?"

[gogopowersuit]

"Yes. Keep moving."

Like Samus is one to talk. She'd take underground caverns, Space Pirate outposts, or even trekking through hot lava over mud any day of the week. She liked to keep her suit looking clean, thank you very much.

She was just glad she wasn't wearing the Gravity Suit and sinking faster.

First Obstacle

[cityship]

As they're walking, it starts slow. Glowing bugs start flitting around them, most noticeably, flitting around B5 and the people in energy suits, although they seem to be flitting around all of them a little bit.

Are they fireflies of some kind?

Or perhaps something a little less harmless?

Re: First Obstacle

[gogopowersuit]

Scanning... scanning... scanning...

Unknown life form

Samus holds her hand out, palm up, and watches the bugs flutter around her hand.

"My scanner can't identify these."

Re: First Obstacle

[spartanjohn_117]

"I've never seen anything like them before. Whatever they are, they make our position obvious." The Chief didn't exactly major in xenobiology. "You have a scanner?"

He doesn't waste time and effort trying to wave them away, they're probably like... space gnats or something. There's nothing you can do about gnats of any kind.

Re: First Obstacle

[twelvevoltman]

Aww hell no. Mega-fireflies? In a mysterious swamp? Hell no.

"Alright, it goes without saying that nobody is going to follow any of these things if they start looking like they're going to lead us somewhere, right? Trust me on this one. I've been to too many dream worlds of magic to discount mysterious glowing swamp-gnats as a potential threat."

He doesn't wave away the ones that are clustering around his head, but starts fiddling with his omnicom as he attempts to get a lock on one for a good scanning.

"They're clustering at different rates," he says, eying Brainy and Leela, who both have a sizable cluster.

Second Obstacle

[cityship]

As they go through the swamp, they likely hear strange click-clacking noises. Almost like some sort of insects communicating with other insects.

Re: Second Obstacle

[mapquest_titan]

Cale came to a halt as they came upon an area that seemed to be reverberating with loud, incessant, insect-like chatter. His brow creased. "What is that?" he asked, a quizzical expression on his face.

Re: Second Obstacle

[cityship]

LAND-crabs! Two of them come shuffling out of the murk, immediately attacking the group. Roughly five feet tall, they were clicking their pincers threateningly and territorially.

Re: Second Obstacle

[mapquest_titan]

"Never mind. Sorry I asked," Cale piped up.

[First Discovery]

[cityship]

They come across something...odd, as the swamp gets...swampier.

Right in the middle of the swamp is a giant round object. It looks organic in nature--in fact, not weirdly different from the stuff on Stacy.

The shell is hard though, chitinous. Despite its green color, it's perhaps similar to their crewmate Blue Beetle's armor. The area around it is flattened, as if it were dropped from a great height, but life has started to fill in again. The giant pod is draped with vines.

This pod, however, is NOT the pod they're looking for. The ship is still a ways off.

This is...something different.

The oddest thing about it is that for something dropped from some great height that stayed intact, there's an odd number of tiny, tiny holes all over its surface.

How strange.

Re: [First Discovery]

[spartanjohn_117]

The Chief is first to notice the thing. He stops a bit back from it, wary of approaching the unknown object, and holds up one arm to signal the rest of the team to stop.

"Before we close on an unidentified, possibly deadly object: does anyone here know what that might be?"

Without even thinking about it, the action being so natural to him, the Chief flicks on his suit's vision enhancement and binoculars in on the object to get a better look at it without getting too close. If it were just him on his own, he'd probably approach. But he has a group to protect.

Re: [First Discovery]

[brainy_bot]

Having just found a unidentified, possibly deadly object, Brainiac 5... flies right on over to it and starts scanning it with a device created from his right forearm.

"Hmmm... interesting..." he murmurs.

Re: [First Discovery]

[gogopowersuit]

Samus scanned it, more to store the object in her suit's memory than to find out anything about it. It obviously wasn't Space Pirate technology, so her suit of course labeled it as an "unidentified object."

She notices something strange about this pod, "Do you see the holes?"

Third Obstacle

[cityship]

The swamp gets deeper and deeper and more mucky, but the odd thing is they keep coming across occasional clear, blueish-purple pools of water--springs.

Best stay out of those--there could be sinkholes. Those suckers go down into aquifer, after all.

Sometimes there's occasional spurts of dry land to walk on, but the grass there is rather high.

It kinda...sucks. It's just miserable-going.

There's flies, too. Large, bright-red and iridescent blue four-winged things, like stubby dragonflies. They do bite a little.

Re: Third Obstacle

[daaayum]

"All you robo-people and robo-suit people are lucky y'all don't have skin exposed," says Leela, swatting away more of the local wildlife. "Or skin at all. These damn things are nippy."

Re: Third Obstacle

[mapquest_titan]

Cale glared over his shoulder at Leela (yes, he's still mad) and shook his head. "Is that all you do is whine?" he said in a rather high-pitched, mockingly girlish voice.

Re: Third Obstacle

[daaayum]

"It's called making conversation. We just had to fight off glowbugs and giant alien crabs. I'm just trying to break the ice."

Silence always unnerves her. All those nights alone on the plains and in the desert, she'd sometimes sung and talked to herself a bit, if it was safe enough.

It isn't that she minds being alone--she's a loner at heart. Those times had been peaceful and beautiful. It's more that she misses what's always supposed to be there when everything goes quiet--her best friend chattering away and humming and singing like a bird.

She'd gotten so used to Irene being there. She's still not used to her being gone.

That's why she hates silence.