Rbz2: The Orange Menace
General Summary
Unfortunately, the plan works too well. Benesh manages to gas everyone, which makes getting their friends out a lot more troublesome. Fortunately, Reinhard starts coming to and, after some prodding, is able to help carry the others out the back entrance. Even as he does, though, he notices that the grey patch on his arm is growing ever bigger...
The crew thinks they are home free as they burst out the service entrance of the pub. But to their surprise, they find a lone figure in a well-tailored suit waiting for them. The figure is also missing an arm.
"Get in," she says as she hops into a cargo tractor with a bucket trailer.
Benesh is about to object, but his indignity is outdone by his curisoity, for now.
Things take a grimmer turn as they make their exit. More of the Cerberus locals emerge onto the street, visibly mutated, and run at the tractor as they make their get away. A grim sight out of a bad horror vid.
Director Cassidy Khosla, as she later identifies herself, brings them to a secluded scrapyard. Parking between a pair of stripped starship hulls, she gets out to confront the crew just as the crew is about to do the same. There's a Plague spreading through the station. She's hacked off her own arm to stem the infection and the crew being the most recent arrivals, perhaps they weren't infected yet. And she badly wants passage off the station. But Quinn and Benesh aren't willing to abandon everyone just yet, and no one trusts her more further than they can throw her. Echo's glowcat reacts oddly to her presence as well. She might seem scared and relieved, but the glowcat reads "deeply satisfied"... The crew manage to talk her down. Clearly, she knows more than she lets on. Give them a chance to save the station. If they can't, then they can all escape together. Cassidy has her doubts but agrees. They help bandage her wounds and Benesh surrepticiously scans her with his detector -- somehow, she's entirely fungus-free! More than that, there's something in her blood that looks unusual.
Besides that, they have a lead now. Cassidy leads the way to some kind of lab facility. She says that this was where it started, "Patient zero." On the way, however, they are waylaid by perhaps Patients A-Hundred-and-Some as several partially... tree-formed colonist lunge out of an alleyway to grab their trailer. A short struggle ensues where Reinhard, Quinn and Saskia hack their way through tree limbs before hopping back on the trailer.
They arrive at the lab before long. What they find beyond the freight entrance gives them pause -- a double doored airlock setup and a bunch of hazmat suits, leading into what looked like the service catwalks over enormous aquariums. "Well, when I see a rack of hazmat suits, I'm not going any further until I put these on." No one disagrees. As they're donning the suit, Echo has a thought as he searches his archives for this peculiar setup. He gets a disturbing find -- an old article celebrating the opening of the lab and thanking generous donations from a Cassidy Koshkla. Real sus. The group enters and, in true horror vid fashion, peer over the sides of the catwalk one by one. Only Reinhard catches glimpse of some kind of crab like creature at the bottom of the tank before it seems to fade out of view. Peculiar. The group spread out to seach the premises. There were a bunch of data terminals, so Echo and Benesh head for those, while Saskia sneaks off down one of the side catwalks. Alone. She finds some kind orange growth wedged in cracks lining the walls. She reaches out to touch it only for the mold to spray all over her face. Fortunately, she's in a hazmat suit, but perhaps not for long as the spores begin to hiss and sizzle as it begins to dissolve her faceplate!
While this was happen, Quinn gleans a prophetic vision through a moment of meditation -- two races of fungus locked in vicious warfare. Perhaps this could be the solution we seek?
But Saskia has more pressing concerns. She stumbles back toward the group, looking for something to wash off the spores. Reinhard finds her and tries to scrape the spores from her visor. At just that moment, more of the orange slimes plunk down from the ceiling onto the catwalks, growing into spiked humanoid forms! Suddenly, the crew finds themselves fighting for their lives!
Having seen the acidic action of the slime molds on Saskia's visor, Benesh grabs a nearby fire extinguisher and turns it on the slimes. It proves violently effective, bursting the mold forms in a hissing reaction.
Reinhard attacks the slimes in a more old fashion way -- expert swordsmanship rendering the mold forms into inert clumps.
Quinn charges the molds with his sharpened shovel in hand, but the shovel cuts through the forms with hardly any resistance, and he ends up cutting opening his own suit.
"Don't breathe!" Benesh shouts, unhelpfully. But he turns his extinguisher spray on Quinn and pushes the molds back from the Healer.
Saskia finds a presssure washer and blasts the mold from her face plate before turning it on the mold forms. She and Reinhard make quick work of the remaining forms.
But the slime molds were not done yet. Several chunks of the mold drop into the tank below and disburst within the water. They find the camouflaged crab-thing. Orange spores begin to attack the creature, outlining its frantic form in an orange glow as the creature lets out a distressed wail. The crew look on, transfixed, as it desperately tries to climb out of the tank before succumbing to the spores.
Director Cassidy Khosla, as she later identifies herself, brings them to a secluded scrapyard. Parking between a pair of stripped starship hulls, she gets out to confront the crew just as the crew is about to do the same. There's a Plague spreading through the station. She's hacked off her own arm to stem the infection and the crew being the most recent arrivals, perhaps they weren't infected yet. And she badly wants passage off the station. But Quinn and Benesh aren't willing to abandon everyone just yet, and no one trusts her more further than they can throw her. Echo's glowcat reacts oddly to her presence as well. She might seem scared and relieved, but the glowcat reads "deeply satisfied"... The crew manage to talk her down. Clearly, she knows more than she lets on. Give them a chance to save the station. If they can't, then they can all escape together. Cassidy has her doubts but agrees. They help bandage her wounds and Benesh surrepticiously scans her with his detector -- somehow, she's entirely fungus-free! More than that, there's something in her blood that looks unusual.
Besides that, they have a lead now. Cassidy leads the way to some kind of lab facility. She says that this was where it started, "Patient zero." On the way, however, they are waylaid by perhaps Patients A-Hundred-and-Some as several partially... tree-formed colonist lunge out of an alleyway to grab their trailer. A short struggle ensues where Reinhard, Quinn and Saskia hack their way through tree limbs before hopping back on the trailer.
They arrive at the lab before long. What they find beyond the freight entrance gives them pause -- a double doored airlock setup and a bunch of hazmat suits, leading into what looked like the service catwalks over enormous aquariums. "Well, when I see a rack of hazmat suits, I'm not going any further until I put these on." No one disagrees. As they're donning the suit, Echo has a thought as he searches his archives for this peculiar setup. He gets a disturbing find -- an old article celebrating the opening of the lab and thanking generous donations from a Cassidy Koshkla. Real sus. The group enters and, in true horror vid fashion, peer over the sides of the catwalk one by one. Only Reinhard catches glimpse of some kind of crab like creature at the bottom of the tank before it seems to fade out of view. Peculiar. The group spread out to seach the premises. There were a bunch of data terminals, so Echo and Benesh head for those, while Saskia sneaks off down one of the side catwalks. Alone. She finds some kind orange growth wedged in cracks lining the walls. She reaches out to touch it only for the mold to spray all over her face. Fortunately, she's in a hazmat suit, but perhaps not for long as the spores begin to hiss and sizzle as it begins to dissolve her faceplate!
Report Date
05 Jun 2021
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