thisavrou_log | Ploiatos Log

Who: This lot and whoever else wants in
When: Backdated to November 14
Where: ILR (Ploiatos' room and beyond)
What: Threat-killing! (Y'know, back when we had a ship to save.)
Warnings: Violence, creepy skele-zombie-virus death, and whatever you bring to the party.

It's been spreading for weeks. The power failures. The static. The sick, sparking weight that lingers in the air, dragging at limbs and draining the life from those who linger long enough to feel it. Corruption, acrid and tangible, eating away at the Moira and its crew.

All of it, centered on one being. Whatever Crewman Ploiatos may have been before his transformation, the damage he's doing now is impossible to miss--and, next to nothing to what might result if he escaped. The Mirtis' first rampage killed nearly all of the original ship's crew. His second was stopped only by a trick, a trap, and quick containment. But now? Containment's failed. The walls are literally crumbling apart, and some doors are better opened on your own terms.

Strategies have been made. Equipment prepared. Noncombatants are moved safely out of range, barriers literal and figurative built to keep the creature in range of those capable of harming it. But when it comes to a creature with impossible speed, a disabling touch, and the ability to drain or rot whatever it gets near?

It's safe to say most plans are a rough guideline.

[[OOC: Huge apologies to everyone involved for the late post. As the plot's very much resolved at this point, handwaving is fine-- this is just to give the option for those who want to backthread. Toss in your own starters, or tag around!]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[There's only so long Elizabeth can stand outside of Ploiatos' door, waiting for the rest of the volunteers to arrive, and only so many times she can check her weaponry and gear before it looks like she's trying to ignore the elephant in the room and avoid talking to Rinzler. But she imagines he must feel pretty vindicated right at this point-- and given they had more than butted heads over this very issue he has a right to be.]

[But how does she bring that up? Just drop it right out in the open? Bring it up? 'Remember that time we exchanged several long tirades about whether or not to do something about this issue? Maybe you don't, I mean, it was literally the only interaction the two of us had until right now.']

[She sighs and rolls her eyes to herself. These things are so hard.]

You were right. [Just dropping it into the open it is.] We should have done something about this before... right now.

[The user's arrival is noted with more wariness than satisfaction—for all that the current batch of admins had approved the task, this one had made her opposition more than clear, before. He's anticipating some kind of address. Or interruption. When she finally speaks, Rinzler's helmet swivels toward the words, frame braced...

...only to still, noise skipping a beat with sheer surprise.

That? He hadn't expected.

The program's stare lingers for several moments. No sign of sarcasm. No grudge that he can read. Eyes slide sideways under the mask, checking their status, before Rinzler ducks his head in a short nod (he was right), and reaches for his communicator.]

Derezz: not a problem?

[Not that it would stop him if it were.]

[...did she just... surprise him? Elizabeth stares back when there's no immediate response, wondering if she needs to clarify or maybe reassure him that this isn't some human-joke. But he seems to understand, if that nod is anything to go by. So she nods back, just a minimal thing, brief and almost imperceptible but a reassurance that they've somehow reached a common ground.]

[She looks at the communicator and a resigned shadow passes over her expression before she nods again.] Doesn't seem like we have a choice now. Save the ship, or let him run rampant after destroying it.

[When they had first argued, Elizabeth's upset had come from a hypothetical place where she still had her tear abilities. Now, though, she has them. There's nothing hypothetical anymore, and she has to approach this from a practical point of view. Should she be exterminated if she was tearing apart the Moira?]

[Probably. Maybe? The situations aren't the same, maybe that would change the outcome, but how could she be sure? So she just has to keep it under wraps and away from the majority of the crew.]

[Surprise would be an understatement. Since leaving his home system, Rinzler's met brave users and weak ones, cowards and liars and a rare few with enough merit to know. But he's never heard one concede superiority in such a direct, uncomplicated way. Least of all to him.

He loops the audio once, but it doesn't change or go away. Even the followup is simple, none of the pretenses of before. Users loved to flaunt their moral righteousness over his function—as if being willing to let others suffer made them better than those who went against the threat. Hadn't this one come to lecture him on something similar, when he was trapped inside their cells? She'd thought he was as bad as the virus, just for being willing to kill back.

No choice. Rinzler's fingers curl against the holographic keys, a flicker of bitterness edging through his lights.]

Never did.

[Not with a virus.]

[Can they go back to the part where he was surprised? Elizabeth liked the part where he wasn't shoving her face in it.]

Yes, well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. I had a point to make, I tried to make it, the situation is different now. [For her and the ship.] ...If only the part where the Moira is literally falling apart under our feet, and don't tell me you expected this would happen because even out in space, even after everything that's happened on this ship, this is incredibly bizarre.

[Sorry not sorry, Elizabeth. On the bright side, that comment gets less smugness and more a long... incredulous... stare.]

Virus.

[Which is to say, no, this is exactly what they do to functioning systems. Corrupted structures, infections and conversions... a full system crash if they aren't stopped. If he had access to his own disk, he'd show her the files, but this is absolutely, exactly what would happen where he's from. Glowy power-draining rot across the ground included.]

[And here's a clash of cultures: one is a computer program, the other had never touched a thing like it until she'd arrived on the Moira. As far as she's concerned, a 'virus' is a microbe that causes sickness. Elizabeth nods.]

I know, this may seem like it makes perfect sense to you, but I haven't seen anything like this before. This defies every bit of chemistry and pathology I studied for years, it defies every definition I've ever known of "virus". I figured you were saying he would break out and kill everyone, like a microbe. Not...

[She gestures to the floor.]

[Chemistry? Rinzler's familiar with the term, and... vaguely aware that users have their own, different kinds of virus. He's still not sure why she would have expected him to be referencing anything of that sort. The black mask ducks inward, the closest to self-reference Rinzler gets.]

Program.

[And if she doesn't know what that means... no, glitch that, even if she does know,]

Recommend: upgrading language library.

[Program...]

[It's hard for her to put together immediately, mostly because despite having lived on the Moira for over a year, she's still not wholly caught-up on technology and its terminology. But program--]

[She knows what that is, and Rinzler using words like 'virus' and 'threat' and always using text and electronic tones to communicate is suddenly making a lot of sense. If he behaves like a more mechanical version of Manasseh, or a higher version of her library catalog, that goes a long way to helping Elizabeth understand.]

And I'm an outdated human. I could be the grandmother, great-grandmother, and so on, of a lot of people on this ship. The toaster was invented the year I was born.

[And yet somehow, they were having this conversation about terminology without shouting. Or. Italicizing.]

[She looks sideways at him, eyebrows raised in appraisal, chewing over a thought.]

You're probably right. I will if you will.

[Toaster is unfamiliar, but the intent of her words is easy enough to parse. The challenge, on the other hand, only earns a derisive skip of static and an incline of the black mask. Why does she think he spends so much time in and out of the ship's library? (And the reference section in particular?)

When he got here, Rinzler didn't understand one user term in three. This is improvement.

If he's still more than a little skeptical at her excuses, there's no point looping arguments. The user's admitted some degree of fault (and that on its own is a small miracle). What matters is preparing for the threat.]

Your combat functions?

[Does he? Huh. She's never noticed, but he does tend to slip around pretty quietly...]

[But Elizabeth seems pretty satisfied, even if the subject was changed rather abruptly. At least it feels like he listened to her point, even if he didn't speak to it directly.]

Guns. [She holds up a handgun and indicates the rifle on her back-- firearms she procured from her unexpected trip into Rapture. There's also a nerve disruptor on her belt, courtesy of Miles.]

And sedatives. [She unhooks a compact crossbow from her belt as well, and unloads the first dart to show him-- it's basically an arrow with a syringe at the front.] It's never been tested on him, obviously, but at the very least we can hope it'll slow his reaction time. Give everyone else a chance to get their hits in.

Ploiatos Log

For Rinzler

/murdercats on in

Murdercat, murdercat, does whatever a murdercat does

Like headtilting, apparently.

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