trans_9 | Mission 01 - Recovery: Group 4

They come across an area that opens up a bit to the sun. Despite being somewhat overgrown, it is undoubtedly a grove of some kind of cultivated tree--perhaps an orchard of fruit trees?

There is a distinctly pungent smell, at least, somewhat sickly sweet, that might remind one of fruit.

Worf approaches very, very cautiously, scanning the grove with his tricorder in an attempt to get a reading on...well, whatever they were. One couldn't be too careful on an alien planet, after all!

Leon was a bit less cautious as he moved through the trees. A few of these all spread out everywhere, he could accept. But this kind of set up was not-quite-random.

"'No sentient life'... right."

He glanced up at the fruit.

"Any way we can check if these are harmful?" Well, any way without potentially sacrificing one of them.

River raises an eyebrow at Leon, and then glances about the orchard with a bemused expression. "I understand the food on board is questionable at best, but eating the local flora on alien planets is generally a bad idea..."

Javert nods. He's never had the experience of eating alien food, but River makes sense. "Whether it is 'revealed' to be harmless or not, I believe I will pass."

He's just fine with the organic slop, thanks.

"Though it's possible we may not want to stay here very long-- in case the harvesters return." Whatever they may be.

"Agreed. I wonder, though, if it would be advisable for us to obtain a sample. Perhaps there's equipment on the ship to test it properly, and there might be a chance that the fruits have a medical usage or other beneficial application?"

Billy leans forward slightly to study the plantlife, imagining what it might taste like. "But I have to question whether we could take the sample safely, or even if we're permitted to do so. Maybe it would be best to abandon that thought and proceed to the pod." He sounds somewhat reluctant about that, though. Wouldn't it be awesome to study all the cool plants?

Worf blinked, looking rather...surprised at the readings his tricorder was giving him. Well, good to know that little tidbit of information. He held up a hand, glancing at the other members of his party.

"Do not touch the fruit. They seem to be chemical explosives of some type. Which means we must be very careful with our weapons here as well."

"Bombs?" Organic explosives? That was new.

And Leon had to admit a certain curiosity about their range. But now wasn't the time to test them.

"Why would someone plant so many of these close together, especially if they knew what they could do? It would be like walking through..."

Oh shit.

"...a minefield," he finished, quietly.

"We just walked into some kind of defensive perimeter..." He was mostly thinking out loud, but it was the only conclusion that made any kind of sense to him. This place was like a minefield, only the bombs were hanging over their heads, not beneath their feet. He drew his knife out, as it was less prone to setting off explosives than his guns were, and took a more solid look around.

Edited 2009-05-23 21:06 (UTC)

That is a good point, Leon. Although, a bit late. The fruit that Billy is examining suddenly busts, releasing some kind of pungent smelling gas into his face. And, like a chain reaction of one mine setting off the next, the explosion of the fruit billy had been examining set off another and that one another and that one set off two more.

And with each explosion, more gas was released in the grove. Sweet. Ripe. Pungent. Gas. After inhaling it in, the team members would then begin to hallucinate.

Worf's first reaction is to dive to the ground the second the fruit bursts. His second is to draw his mek'leth (wouldn't want to set off any more, would we?). Of course, the fact that they're gas means that diving for cover doesn't really help anything. He begins hacking and coughing, trying to avoid taking deep breaths.

"We must get out of this grove! F-forw--" A hacking cough. "Forward or back!" And now he's seeing things. He's on the Defiant. Earth. The Borg cube is attacking and they have to defeat it.

"Lieutenant! Fire all forward torpedoes!"

"Ack!" All thoughts about methodical analysis forgotten, Billy stumbles backward and hits the ground hard as the hallucinogen hits with full force.

"Have to...escape...no! There's too many of them!" Not fruit, but the lethal-looking fish with sword-sharp teeth that appear to be bearing down on him. Suddenly he's underwater, unable to breathe and reduced to blindly struggling against the imaginary predators on the ground.

"Shit!" Leon covered his mouth and nose, though he had already inhaled some of the gas by then.

"Push forward!" Leon did just that, or tried to before the gas finally got to him. And suddenly, he could feel them running through his veins, hundreds of thousands plaga parasites. He could feel the main one squeezing at his innards, the way it did when Saddler was around. ~~That can't be right. Hadn't he gotten rid of it?~~ He could hear the ganado cursing in spanish as they came for his head, and he could hear the zealots chanting as they approached.

"Ashley!" Where the hell was Ashley? ~~Was she part of the group?~~ He kept moving through the village ~~how the hell did he end up back in Spain?~~, trying to find her again. They were closing in on him, though. He could hear them so clearly now, they were practically on top of him. He could practically smell...

He could practically smell...

...fruit? All he could smell was fruit.

This was all wrong. That scent shouldn't be here. Zombies don't smell like fruit. It was the only coherent though he had, so his brain latched on to it. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth ~~he was wearing regular clothes again?~~ trying to block out the scent that shouldn't be there as he stumbled around.

Javert covered his mouth as soon as the gas appeared, trying to block the worst affects. Unfortunately, this only lasted a short time as he could not help inhaling at least a small amount, and more when he began to cough.

And suddenly, the air was not filled with gas, but with smoke and muzzle-flashes, on the streets of Paris once more, staring dead to rights at the escaped convict Jean Valjean. Javert stared down at his old-- enemy? Was Valjean his enemy, now?

This wasn't the time nor place to have another moral quandary. It was time to escape-- but how?

And why was the air not full of the scent of gunpowder, but fruit?

Worf hacks and coughs as he struggles to maintain his balance. The Defiant is beign rocked by weaponsfire from the Borg and he's not sure how much more damage the ship can take. For that matter, why does his bridge smell like fruit? No matter! He shots to his Ops officer. "REPORT!"

The young human is probably scared out of his mind, but he replies. "SHields are down, weapons are offline." Worf slams a fist into his captain's seat control panel (which feels strangely like dirt) and curses.

"Perhaps today is a good day to die! Prepare for RAMMING SPEED!" The Enterprise is supposed to show up now, right? Wait, why is he thinking that? He's fighting the Borg now. Except...hasn't this happened before? The fruit! It must have something to do with the pungent smell of fruit. If only he could figure out what it was....

Leon closed his eyes, since he couldn't trust them any more. "There are no zombies. There are no Ganado," he kept telling himself. If there were, they would never smell like fruit. And they'd be all over him by now.

He could hear people yelling, among dozens of other noises in the background. It was hard to distinguish what was real and what wasn't.

That fruit smell was still in his nose, but breathing through his shirt (well, the plant suit) was lessening the scent.

He felt around blindly, feeling mostly tree bark and branches in his path. So he was in a forest of some kind. That notion seemed familiar to him. He was in a forest....

He was in a forest. There was more, but his thoughts were all a haze at the moment. Why couldn't he think straight right now? He needed to clear his head.

At least he could trust what he could touch. He kept moving forward, carefully as not trip himself up or slam into anything. He didn't bother stopping until he finally got to a point to where the scent of the fruit wasn't nearly as intense. Somehow, that seemed an important detail to him.

In the midst of his struggle against the piranhas clawing at him from every side, exhaustion stilled Billy's flailing for a moment. For just a fleeting second, he dimly recognized three things that were inconsistent about the surrounding environment:

1. The 'water' was unusually hard, almost like...what was it...earth.
2. His olfactory receptors were functional underwater, and detected a strangely familiar scent.
3. Stranger still, he could breathe if he concentrated, and no salt water rushed in.

This is illogical, isn't it, he thought. Suddenly, one mean looking fish seemed to snap at him from behind, and he clawed his way through the 'water' in a panic. The water was the toughest he'd ever tried to swim in, but putting some temporary distance between him and the threat had helped some. In fact, maybe the fog clouding his head lifted a little. If he concentrated hard he could feel his surroundings wavering. But the predators were still coming.

There wasn't much time to think about it. Billy clawed forward in a single direction, hanging on to hope that everything would start to make sense again if he just kept moving.

Javert, who had quickly become involved in another battle between Valjean's substantial strength and his own quickness, made attempts to rationalize events.

For one, this was not how events had come to pass on the barricade. He should be tied up or set free by now. (He wasn't sure why his mind was telling him he'd been here before, but he was one to listen to it.)

Two, Valjean was, for his various faults, not an exceptionally violent man. Javert had the suspicion the man apologized to insects he unwittingly stepped on. Javert was much larger and more persistent than insects. He wasn't sure if that was in his favour, but it was true.

Three, Javert was dead. More or less. (He was?) There was no Valjean in hell, just living, breathing organic ships, or so he seemed to remember. Ergo, he was not possibly locked in a battle with a physically stunted grizzly bear.

Four, Valjean had never in his life smelled of fruit.

This is ridiculous, and I'm an ass. Javert thought, annoyed. All right; he had surmised something fishy was going on here. Now what in the blazes to do about it?

If this was some sort of lesson from his subconscious, he knew what he ought to do, right away; turn away from Valjean and simply...walk away. Give up. The issue remained, however, that he was in the middle of Paris. Well, he would simply have to decide where to go.

He backed away from the image of his oldest rival and walked on. Valjean chased him, of course, but he had much shorter legs.

His brain could work better, once he got more fresh air. He opened his eyes to find himself in the bombed out hallway of the WilPharma research center. ~~Apparently he walked all the way there from Spain.~~

It took a few minutes, but the hallucinations were beginning to fade, and he could start thinking of ways to get everyone else out of there. He could yell for everyone, but odds are they wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between his voice and their own imagination. Not to mention that if there was anyone out there, it would give away their position.

He was going to have to go get them. Luckily, rescuing people was what he did best.

He cut off a sleeve of his plant suit and wrapped that around his head, over his mouth and nose. It wouldn't provide much protection (thought it made him look like a ninja!), but as long as he was quick about it, he hoped he wouldn't get caught up in it again.

So, back into the woods he went to find and gather the others.

Worf was busily hacking at Borg drones with his mek'leth. In other words, he was stumbling around, swinging his blade at random as he envisioned the Enterprise, corridors filled with Borg drones. They had to defend the ship! Wait...he had just been on the defiant a moment ago. How was he on the Enterprise all of a sudden? He stumbled. That smell of fruit was still there, but less pungent now. What did that mean...?

Smile for the camera, Worf.

Leon didn't want to waste a flash grenade, the only non-lethal weapon he had, as he had a short supply, so he had to improvise a bit. He used his knife to briefly lock blades with the mek'leth, then used the camera on his PDA to quickly flash a bright light right in Worf's eyes.

Hopefully, the interruption could break through the hallucinations, because he did not want to get into a protracted battle with Worf. One would end up dead, the other would be severely injured, and that wouldn't be good for the mission.

"Commander Worf, it's Leon. We need to get out of here."

Worf struggled for a moment, trying to overcome the drone when...when it spoke and there was bright, almost blinding flash of light. Leon? Right! Leon was one of the humans on the strange away team. They had been in that orchard...the exploding fruit. That must be what was going on! He forced his mek'leth to his side and nodded, covering his mouth with his hand.

"Let's go!" He begins heading towards the edge of the orchard. They needed to get out of here before more fruit decided to pop on them.

Leon only stuck with Worf until they were near the edge of the grove. Luckily, none of the fruit there had exploded yet, so it was safe for him to take a few breaths of fresh air. The plantsuit skin was making a decent filter, but he knew it could only block out so much of the gas.

"You go on ahead, I still need to get the others."

With that, Leon went back into the grove, to track down and retrieve the remaining wayward members of their group.

Edited 2009-05-29 06:15 (UTC)

Javert was walking steadily through the grove, but he didn't seem to realize it. In his mind, he was in a thousand different places- Paris, Montreuil-sur-Mer, Toulon, the Russian front.

Still, if his expression was anything to go by, he had ceased panicking and moved on to a feirce, stubborn annoyance. None of this was right, and so it was meaningless.

He was likely an easy target for herding out.

Leon used the same tactic when he caught up to Javert. Minus the knife, though, but definitely a camera flash point blank in the eyes. He grabbed the man by his shoulder.

"Javert! Come on, this way out."

Javert jumped slightly, startled. Oh. Orchard. Grove. Exploding fruit. That explained quite a bit.

He nodded sharply and started moving, out from the influence of the gas. Javert copied Leon, not bothering to cut a piece off but simply pulling the plantsuit collar over his nose and mouth to protect him as he ran.

Mission 01 - Recovery: Group 4

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