trans_9 | Mission 01 - Recovery: Group 5

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Mission 01 - Recovery: Group 5

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 were generally home to some not-so-pleasant creatures...

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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.

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.

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?"

"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.

"Guh," Bri lets out, kicking one foot out to shake off the gunk. "This crap's gonna be stuck in my plating for ages."

Ah, the many joys of being a cyborg.

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.»

"Are they those bikini babes you were telling us about over the omnicoms earlier?" Paco muttered, glancing around warily in spite of his words.

Times like this, he really wished he had more than a stick.

"Of course there's giant monsters," Leela grumbles, her scythe and chain clenched in her hand as she walks carefully along the swampy ground. "And bikini babes don't leave trails."

She says this as if she has experience with it or something. Maybe she does. She's fought some weird-ass stuff in her time.

She says to Allen, "Hey, the ground farting is not that bad. For all you know, with the other groups, it'd be the trees farting or something."

"Don't you ever shut up?" Cale muttered under his breath as trudged with his team over the soft terrain. He cast a glare over his shoulder at Leela who was only a few feet behind him with her big weapon clutched in her hands.

"Do you ever stop being a cranky dick at the times where it's most inconvenient?" she says. "Excuse me, I was talking to my friend and to the other people here who don't act like cranky five-year-olds."

"Do you ever stop acting like Miss Know-It-All?" he countered.

"Do you ever stop falling back on grade-school insults?"

He glared at her again over his shoulder. "Shouldn't you be admiring someone's sword or something?" he spat back. "Look, he's got a stick--" he pointed at Paco. "--maybe you should ask him if you can hold it."

"If you keep sassing the warrior chick, she's going to put your head through a tree," Paco pointed out. "And then we'll have to carry your dumb, unconscious butt around so you don't get eaten by rodents of unusual size. Stacy probably takes away points if we let our teammates get eaten by ROUS."

"Ten-four on the head through a tree, good buddy. And Princess Bride ref. Nice." Leela grins. "ROUs are not nearly as cool when they're no longer fictional, though, lemme tell you what."

Brainiac 5 is pleased that he still has his Legionnaire standard flight ring, as unlike the ones manufactured by his counterpart here, it actually allows flight. The moment the ground becomes too difficult to walk on, he takes to the air and floats overhead under the pretence of 'scouting around'.

Cale shakes his head at Paco and Leela and continues forward, taking much larger steps in an effort to put some distance between himself and the annoying girl who always manages to be everywhere he is, especially when he doesn't want her to be.

"Bikini babes totally leave tracks," Allen argues, maintaining pace with Leela and Paco. "Especially if they're wearing sensible shoes. Sometimes they are."

He waits until Cale's a decent distance away before adding, more quietly, "Is that guy giving you problems? 'Cause as the closest thing you've got to family on this ship, I give you permission to knock him out even if it means we have to carry him back. And by 'carry' I mean 'drag through the mud.'"

"Pfft, I dunno, man. It's tempting," she says quietly enough to not be heard.

She shakes her head. "Believe me, I wouldn't have chosen this group with him on it. I just know I gotta be in the same one for some reason. Something's gonna go wrong. I dunno what or when, but it is."

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?

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

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

"My scanner can't identify these."

"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.

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.

"I've never seen anything like them either," Brainiac 5 admits. "While they are somewhat of an annoyance, hopefully they aren't dangerous. Though I do wonder why they are most drawn to us."

He watches one of them with a speculating look. "I'll try and take a closer look. The data might be interesting for one thing, not to mention it would be worth knowing if they have the potential to be a problem."

That said, he endeavours to wrap one of the insects in a forcefield with the idea of holding it still long enough to take a close look.

It turns out they're not insects. They're made of pure energy, and when he catches the one of them in his forcefield, it starts zapping energy from that forcefield. In fact, that's what they're doing. Subtly draining energy from them all in tiny amounts. Those with power suits or that are robotic produce more energy, ergo, the energy parasites are latching on in greater and greater numbers...

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Mission 01 - Recovery: Group 5

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First Obstacle

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