trans_9 | Here's the deal these days: They know exactly who we are. They know exactly where we live.

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Here's the deal these days: They know exactly who we are. They know exactly where we live.

Cybil is currently talking with Jaime Reyes about the possibility of hacking the ship's systems. Just a normal day on the meatship, a normal conversation in one of the cold zones, where there are no working sensors, about getting the hell OFF the ship, or turning the big bitch around.

"Do you think we could have our resident tech nerds build something to bridge the gap from technological to the more organic parts of her systems?"

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Dammit, did you not see the "He's dead, Jim" in strikeouts the first time, Mia? He'll allow her her denial, though, if she needs it to function right now.

He briefly checks her scans to see if she looks alright, and hmmphs at what he sees, but releases the restraints.

"Try to rouse Superboy if you can."

Mia rubs where the restraints were, then moves over to Superboy. "Yo, Kon! No time for slacking off now!" She tries shaking him, to no immediate avail.

A pause, to think.

"Wonder Woman's giving dollar lapdances." She says crisply into his ear.

"Mmmph zznnrg--what, I have a dollar somewhere..." he says faintly, starting awake suddenly, if groggily, and looking around. "Where...?"

Where he's sitting, Brainy rolls his eyes.

Mia shakes her head. "Up and at 'em. We've got evil brain slugs to fight."

The IV and whatnot is retracted from his arm.

"I'm up, I'm up--I'm bleeding."

His arm is bleeding a bit where the IV thingy'd been stuck. Through his skin.

"Whuh oh."

He stumbles to his feet, groggily, and tries to fly--nada.

"Can't fly either." He looks to Speedy. "I don't hold sunlight as well as Kal and Kara. I was already pretty much out of juice, unless that magical kid is around to charge me up again."

"Kryptonite leeches yellow sunlight from Kryptonian cells. Until you're exposed to a viable solar energy source, you'll be powerless."

Mia eyes Brainy flatly. "Not having powers doesn't make you powerless."

Go ahead, try her on this one.

She helps Kon steady himself. "Easy there super-hormone."

"My hormones are only super because everything about me is super," he winces. "Like, you know, I'm in a super amount of pain right now. I hate kryptonite. Pain should not come in such handy-dandy, easy-to-carry, glowy rock form."

That's when the Medbay doors are blasted open, and half of the rest of the crew busts into MedBay.

They'll detect that Kate is a Controller, but she's restrained on a bed. The others aren't. Sam has a skin-seal bandage around his bullet-shot head, and Brainiac 5 is sitting there plinking away at a holo-screen.

Telepathically, his mind reads a blank (but then that could just be his natural resistance to telepathy). On the bots' sensors, however, there's likely a blip...

Brainy immediately pops up a shield around him and his patient's bed.

"Do you mind? I'm trying to monitor a very delicate biochemical situation here."

And of course there's Ax, who saw Brainy get infested.

< Dox! >

His main eyes narrow into slits and his tail arches high over his head.

The image of an Andalite warrior is somewhat damaged by the little girl riding him like a pony.

"Yes, that is my name. Very astute," says Brainy, still concentrating on his work. "Now please direct your keen intellect to what I'm doing here. I have a patient who has experienced perforating head trauma, and am battling ischemic cascade, chemical reaction by chemical reaction, in an attempt to prevent him from waking up with the IQ of a Winathian yerb-root. Kate is restrained, Superboy and Speedy are alive and uninfested, and you can ask the both of them if I've assisted them or harmed them, which they will answer that I've assisted them."

"...Yeah, he kinda helped."

"Ax, can someone be immune or is it a trick?"

< The hosts can occasionally wrest control away from the Yeerk, > Ax said, not taking his main eyes off of Brainy. < But only for brief moments. What is your game, Yeerk? >

After making several efforts to scan Brainy--and failing--Lyta shook her head as she looked over to Cybil and Ax. "I'm not getting anything from him, at all. But Connor and Murphy were the same way. It's like someone flipped a switch and turned off their brains. I can't even pick up any stray surface thoughts."

Brainy rolls his eyes.

"I'm immune to most telepathic intrusion. And is it that difficult to conceive that physiological and psychological differences from most humanoids would make it impossible for a neural parasite to wrest control of an individual's mind?"

He sighs. "Hold on, if I'm to cause it to remove itself, I need to verify that I've uncovered all available vital intel from it."

He needs to concentrate for a moment.

Edited 2009-02-28 09:27 (UTC)

Well, there were the Hawjabrans, whose brains were spread out through their bodies...

< None that would allow the host to take control of the Yeerk, certainly. >

Also, Brainy had tried to shoot him. It had only been dumb luck that he had missed, and that Ax hadn't been crushed in the debris.

Wait. 'Dumb luck'?

Brainy doesn't do anything dumb. Even his luck is smart.

"None?"

He grabs a beaker and fills it with a mild solution that won't hurt what it's about to contain.

"I'm releasing my hold on your motor control and letting you go now. If you know what's good for you, you won't risk my ire by attempting to control me again, Erzak-1172. You know what will be done to you again if you do."

Apparently, this simple threat is enough. As Brainy leans his ear over the flask, a gray slug squirms its way out and falls in it with a plop.

...It then proceeds to curl up in the bottom corner of the flask.

He looks to Ax. "You were saying?"

Edited 2009-02-28 09:44 (UTC)

"...That's nasty."

Chris stares at the flask from behind the cover of the other who have newly entered the Med Bay. Now that he's standing, an astute eye (eg. those of quite a few here) might notice that though he's standing normally, one leg of his plant-suit is gnarled across the surface, like it might be from some sealed-up injury.

"Still nothing," Lyta said after making another attempt at scanning Brainy, only to come up with the same result. A pseudo-validation that Brainy was telling the truth, perhaps?

She looked over at the other crew members that had been strapped down to the tables in the medbay. Finally, her eyes settled on the unconscious Sam.

"What happened to him?" she asked Brainy. "Ax said he was one of the infested."

"Forget that fucking fucker!" If anyone had forgotten the lung power of either of the currently enslaved twins, Murphy's yeerk was about to remind them. He didn't struggle - much - just yelled.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ! What the fuck did ye fuckin' do, ya great fuckin' green bastard?!"

Apparently the host's language had rubbed off on the yeerk. Poor bastard. "Fuck you, ya goddamn fuckin' bastard! Swear to fuckin' God! Ya fuckin' freak!"

"You do know that such foul language is the sign of an inferior mind, yes?" says Brainy calmly.

And no, he is not explaining how his brain works so that you know how he reversed the control.

Turning back to Lyta, he goes on, "As I said, I'm immune to most telepathic influence. Most Coluans are telepathically-resistant," Brainy says, putting the flask on the tray, and turning back to his work on Sam. He finally drops his shield. "As I've also said, he has perforating head trauma. A bullet wound to the temple. Judging from the damage, likely self-inflicted. The Yeerk is gone. Perhaps it wanted to avoid capture and decided to deal a greater blow to us than merely surrendering."

A suicide attack in every sense of the work.

"He's not the only casaulty--Blue Beetle's body may still be in the Statuary. I suggest it be recovered lest the Yeerks attempt to recover his scarab from it. They could devise any number of sinister uses for it."

Nice way, again, to break the news, Brainy.

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