[network] @crescent; to die historic on the furry road [open]

[lancingintherain]

[usually, the worst thing about waking up is remembering how hungry she is. But this morning, as Day 45 breaks cold and overcast as usual, the worst thing about waking up is remembering that last night, her friend got literally eaten by a monster.

She has to warn people. She couldn't save Mami, but maybe she can help others. So once she's mostly talked herself down from numb grief and fear, she turns on her tablet's video function. At first, it's aiming at a wooden tabletop, but she tilts it to show a drawing. For having been drawn last night in the dark in the hazy, panicky aftermath of mortal peril, it's pretty decent:



She clears her throat and starts to speak, her voice low and breaking despite her efforts to keep it steady.]

Four days ago, I was traveling with Alphonse Elric's group. We were attacked by this monster here. [a gray-furred, four-fingered hand moves into the video to tap at the top left of the picture with one sharp claw.] It was... well, if you've seen Alphonse, you know how tall he is. This one was taller. It had... light, instead of skin. Like what we see on the videos, sometimes. I'm not explaining it quite right, but... we got away.

[she swallows, then takes a shaky breath and points to the drawing on the right.]

Mami Tomoe and I—she's a young human girl; some of you have met her—we were on our own, yesterday. This monster attacked us last night. We—I tried to...

[she breaks off, planting her hand flat on the table to stop it from shaking. When she speaks again, her voice is hard.]

...It swallowed her. It ate her whole. That's what they do. Now we know.

[she points to the bottom drawing.]

It said things to me, before it—before it ate her. Spoke right into my head. "I want it"; "I am here"; I wrote down what I could remember. And there's something else. All of the other monsters I've seen have looked, well, they've looked human, or something like it. But this one... oh, it's easiest to just show it.

[the video swings dizzyingly as she picks up the tablet, and she taps on the screen to turn the camera. At once, the view of the tabletop and wall becomes a view of her very inhuman face, framed by her pale, tangled hair and large ears. Her eyes are tired, and her muzzle is streaked with dark, dried blood.]

...It looked like me. Like one of my people. But it... it ran on all fours, like an animal. ...I don't know what any of it means. But one thing's the same—and if anyone who's just arrived is watching this, you'd better listen. [her voice turns cold, and she looks straight into the camera.] If you see a monster, you run, got it? You run away as fast as you can, and get inside, and block the door. There's no fighting them. No fighting them at all.

[OOC: HOT GOLLY DAMN, there are enough threads here to feed a whole village of cute, thread-starved orphans. I'm capping the number of threads where it is. No more replies please, you beautiful people.]

Comments

[lancingintherain]

...Oh. Then it really is the first of its kind, here—or nobody's heard one speak before. Could be that the monsters always could.

[she keeps just kinda looking between the tablet screen and the wood grain of the table, completely oblivious to the conversation and freakout happening behind the scenes on his end. But her brow creases and one ear pricks forward in puzzlement as something else he said sinks in:]

...And I'm... I'm fine. The blood's from last night. But—what do you mean, "before"? Before the attack?

[the fuq u talking about bro]

[deus_ex_phs]

[Kunsel blows out a breath, glad that Zack picked up on the same things he had and doesn't need Kunsel to spell his worries out.]

So, what does that mean? That it's not likely she's a clone? I talked to a woman who was another race here, but you think Freya's another species entirely?

[He could just ask Freya, he knows, but if he's right, there's no way to phrase the question without sounding insulting, and if he's wrong and they're dealing with an abnormally intelligent clone, then he hardly expects her to come out and admit it.

So the only option is to dig for information without tipping her off to what he's looking for.]

There are monsters in my world that have limited speech. Very limited. They're not very common either. I meant that I haven't run into anything like them here. At least until what you described.

Yes, before the attack. Just because you weren't injured in the most recent attack doesn't mean you might not still be injured. I've known too many people who deflect like that to get that by me.

Is there anything wrong?

action; > audio; @dreamsnhonor

[heroproceeding]

[ Zack can be a lot of things: impulsive, reckless, and dense still remain albeit not as prevalent as they used to be back when he was SOLDIER Second and rushing off to play hero at the end of the Wutai conflict. But he's dealt with more than his fair share of those clones. There's no way he couldn't have missed the parallel, even if it makes him feel sick to consider the possibility that those projects or projects of similar intention would be used here.

But of course, they would. Wouldn't they have?

And Freya's always hidden her face since the first time he's spoken to her. Always avoided video until now of all times. Why? The thought crossed his mind once that maybe she's just like them. Maybe she's trying to keep herself off the radar. But now, he's gotta wonder... He shakes his head slowly. His voice shrinks to something low and uneasy. ]

I don't think she is, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have used her. [ Who knows what they could have done to her considering what he's gone through there already? Who knows if they had ended up altering her? Just another little test to add to the numerous ones the administrator seems to like to pull on them. And maybe that's why she's been in hiding all this time? And now what if she had found out this on top of things?

He....

His tablet's on before Kunsel can protest with barely a skim through Kunsel's massive text to her. There's an ache to his tone, a not-so-subtle fear. ]

Frey, hey, come on. Talk to us. If something happened to you while you were here... You know I'll listen.

[lancingintherain]

[she's doing another re-read of Kunsel's message, her mouth moving a little as she parses the words, but she freezes when she hears Zack's voice.]

—Zack? You're there, too? I—give me... give me a minute. ...Thank you.

[she swallows and thinks hard, still looking and feeling puzzled and uneasy. She thinks she knows what they're asking, but something's telling her that they're not giving her the whole story.]

I... um. Well, there was that night only a couple of days after you and I had woken up, Zack—the day everyone saw that beacon in the sky, and the new button on the tablet. But you know about that already: the madness, the injection. And then the second injection, the night of that terrible thunderstorm. And... when I fell ill, in the hospital. That was the worst time yet. But...

...I'm not injured. Not anymore. As far as I know, at least.

[deus_ex_phs]

[Kunsel doesn't necessarily know the details of what Freya's referring to, but she's referring to it like something that Zack already knows about. That means that all the things she can remember as things that could have gone wrong for her recently are things that he can rule out. If those rounds of injections had caused anyone's appearance to change, any significant mutations, Zack would probably have heard about it at the time.

So. Freya accepts whatever she looks like as normal in her eyes. Kunsel releases a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. It's not definitive proof, but it's all the proof that they can get, and at some point you have to just trust people. She doesn't sound like she's trying to hide anything, just anxious and uncertain, sick at heart and maybe a little scared.

Besides, just what she is telling them is enough to worry about right now.

He doesn't bother replying through text, giving Zack a mildly exasperated look for turning his audio on, but since it's on now and they're sitting side by side, he might as well just talk.]

Yeah, Zack's here, too. I waved him over because what you're saying hits pretty close to home for us. This isn't the first time we've dealt with monsters that were cloned from someone else. [His voice is sober and serious, even a little bit grim.] The person who got cloned didn't always come out unscathed, either. That's why I asked about your condition.

[Well, that and worrying that she might be a clone, too, but that worry's been laid to rest as well as it can.]

[heroproceeding]

[ Everything Freya mentions... Nothing seems amiss. There's nothing he hasn't heard of before. The beacons... the madness that one night... the injections... and that storm. The hospital, he's heard about from Al... Talked possessions with him. But... although there's fear in her voice, there's also certainty about all this. If something bad had happened... Something they're considering... certainly, she would have been more reluctant to talk about it, right? Unless she's got a pretty good poker face...

Kunsel seems to be satisfied with what she has to say, too. Especially when he starts laying down the real talk. Zack ignores the look he gets. He understands why he's getting it, but this is Freya- his friend. Even if... he never expected to ever befriend a giant rat. At this point though... Well. There's a first for everything? ...So, he can't help but still stare at his tablet incredulously as Kunsel talks to her. But he's listening. Definitely listening. This is important.

And then shortly after Kunsel's finished talking, he tacks on: ] So, you're sure you're okay? They didn't do anything to you at the hospital? [ There's that edge to his voice again. He knows things had gotten really out of hand over there. And while Al had shared some details, he hadn't mentioned Freya's involvement... ]