trans_9 | Mission 01 - Recovery: Group 4

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.

"Keep going straight ahead," he instructed Javert when they neared the edge of the grove. "You'll catch up to Worf. The others are still lost in in there somewhere."

And he was going to go get them.

As for the too-curious scientist who had started the whole mess, he had recently discovered that he could walk underwater. Billy's still unsteady on his feet, but he's finally moving. Not necessarily in the right direction. The monsters in his head continue to lash at him, and he continues to fight, but everything is wrong somehow.

Why is he still smelling fruit? The craziness around him wavers if he moves in a certain direction, but he's too disoriented right now to accomplish that quickly.

And apparently there are bright flashy lights underwater! And a ninja, who apparently can speak just fine despite all the water.

"Snap out of it, Billy! We need to get out of here."

Startled, the boy prepares to swing a fist until his rational thoughts resurface, causing him to stop. That flash...no, something's definitely wrong. Memories of what he'd been doing before the assault resurface all at once. A plant had fired a gas with a scent resembling fruit in his face, triggering the others, and the gas must've had hallucinogenic properties. Grasping onto that and forcing his mind to perceive reality, he sees the field and recognizes Leon calling him. By some miracle he'd managed to not lose his glasses, but his senses are still a little foggy.

"Which way? Behind you?" Billy's brain is still too muddled to form his usual sentences of sesquipedalian loquaciousness.

"Yeah, follow me." Not that Leon gave Billy much of a choice. The kid had seemed a bit unsteady on his feet, so Leon had half pulled him along for a little bit.

It was nothing against Billy, it was just that Leon couldn't afford to spend much longer there, but he couldn't account for the entire team yet.

"Keep going straight. Worf and Javert should be in the clearing up ahead. I'll catch up to you guys in a moment."

Billy did mind being tugged along like a wayward child, of course, but that indignation was overridden by the urgency of the situation. They were extremely lucky he hadn't triggered anything worse than a hallucinogen, he was beginning to realize.

"Right." With that, Billy carefully made his way over to the others, head lowered in shame. He turned to watch Leon in the distance as he cleared his head with uneven breaths, mind working to hammer out an apology for his severe lapse in judgment.

Fortunately, it's only a passing effect. When surrounded by fresh air, eventually they'll find their vision clearing, the paranoia slowly coming under control, the quaking horror abating.

One thing they'll note here near there the trees, once their vision clears, is a sign they didn't notice when coming in--it hadn't been posted near the woods where they entered, likely because that particular sign had rotted away. This one was rusted and worn down, but newer, so it was still there.

Once their vision clears, they'll be able to read it.

WARNING: Zengi fruit grove. Zengi fruit requires trained pickers to remove, as fruit can be explosive and emit hallucinogenic gas when overripe, and therefore trespassing is not only illegal, but dangerous.

TRESPASSING IS ILLEGAL. REMOVAL OF FRUIT FROM THIS ORCHARD IS THEFT.

ALL TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

They weren't even biological weapons. They nearly just got KOed by a commercial fruit orchard.

Good going, guys.

As they walk, Billy drifts to the back of the group. He inspects the ground for traps to the best of his ability, keeps his arms close to his sides, and his head lowered. He knows very well what easily could have happened, and he's not about to forgive himself for causing that disaster any time soon.

"I...I apologize for recklessly activating the fruit's explosive reaction. We were extremely fortunate that the explosions did nothing but release fumes, and that they were nothing more dangerous than hallucinogens. With the slightest shift in the scenario, I could have easily ended our lives." His voice is grave. He'd made numerous mistakes as a Power Ranger, sure, but he had never been the direct cause of any of their near-losses before.

"I will not act irrationally and endanger all of you again. I don't expect your trust, but I will do everything in my power to keep us alive." Words are words, no matter how strong the conviction behind them, but it's the best he has to offer right now.

This time, the shamed Blue Ranger stands rigidly as he reads the sign. No leaning, no poking, no breathing funny, nothing that could potentially trigger any bizarre thingamajigs that might be hanging around it.

"Someone's made their living on this land before, but where have they gone?" Despite the overwhelming guilt he's grappling with, Billy still has a knack for pointing out the obvious.

Worf stands to one side, arms crossed in his usual unhappy and/or grumpy fashion. He wasn't thrilled they had almost been taken out by fruit of all things (such an unworthy death). And he especially wasn't happy that recklessness on the part of one the team members had gotten them in such trouble. But...the boy seemed sincere in his apology, so Worf simply nodded at him.

"Everyone makes mistakes, Billy. Just be more cautious next time." That's the extent of his admonishment. He examines the sign, frowns, then looks off in the direction of their pod. This doesn't seem right.

"Perhaps Stacy or the people who created her had something to do with this? Either way, we do not have time to stand around speculating, we must continue" He suits actions to words and sets off in the direction of the pod again.

Mission 01 - Recovery: Group 4

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