trans_9 | Mission 01 - Recovery: Group 4

Billy drifts to the middle of their lineup as they walk, frowning at the snapped twigs and matted underbrush they step past along their way. The sense for danger he'd developed as a Ranger tells him that something feels wrong, like they're succeeding too easily. Stacy's claim of 'No sentient lifeforms' on the planet is starting to ring a little hollow to his ears, if his brief stint with the Angel Grove Campfire Scouts had taught him anything about the art of trailblazing. Of course, this could easily be a natural state of the planet, or the byproduct of a being that did not mean them harm, but Billy decides to seek the opinions of the team.

"Hey...fellas? I thought I should note that I've observed an unusually high density of broken twigs concentrated along our path. Unusual by Earth's standards, anyway." His voice is soft, almost hesitant to bring this up for fear of being branded as one who worries too much.

"Unusual by most any standard," Leon chimed in. He wasn't on point, but he was near the front of the group. "Something made this path... but I haven't seen any tracks to give us an idea of what did, or which direction it was heading at the time."

Worf, as the leader, was naturally in front, phaser in one hand and tricorder in the other. He glanced back over his shoulder, nodding his agreement with the sentiments expressed by Billy and Leon.

"We should be cautious. Although Stacy claimed there was no sentient life, this trail seems too simple. Stay alert."

"Personally," Javert spoke up in a quiet drawl, "I'm loath to trust anything 'Stacy' says."

He's picking his way carefully through the damaged undergrowth, a pistol in each hand. Eventually the man will move beyond single-shot weapons, but today is not that day.

Wednesday's 'voice' comes over the comm rings.

«Be careful, everyone. The tracks I'm seeing suggest much larger creatures than I'd normally expect in this terrain. Certainly not normal wildlife.»

"Perhaps survivors from the escape pods?"

"Figures..." Leon muttered quietly under his breath when Wednesday's message came in. Leon always seemed to constantly get into fights with things far bigger than he is, for some reason.

«Acknowledged. We'll keep our eyes peeled and call in if we get a visual.»

He looked down the path, then back the other way.

"Assuming the crash site is ahead of us, any survivors would have made this path going the other way, away from the pod."

"Affirmative. Which means it's within the realm of possibility that something could have moved or damaged the pod. Perhaps it's even waiting for us."

Billy's staring at the patterns in the broken-in terrain while walking, trying to calculate the scale of wildlife they might face. Could it be a creature with many legs? No legs? As big as an elephant? Skyscraper sized, on par with the after-effects of the monster growth spells he loathed so much? Or worse, even bigger.

Pushing his apprehension down, he reaches back and brushes his fingers against his morpher.

"It is better knowing something may be waiting than going in blind." He says, determined. "The forewarning is...convenient."

Javert, having been the only person here to not have fought anything but other people in his life, still seems rather calm and blank-faced.

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.

Mission 01 - Recovery: Group 4

Trailing Along With The Pod Scouts

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First Obstacle

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