"Yeah, let's deal with the big one first and then we can worry about dabbing the rest on the citizens." Luca nodded towards Smith Jr as he found an empty canister the size of a fire extinguisher and a tank compression device. It worked by attaching the canister to one end of the device and putting what you wanted in it into a hopper.
Luca attached the tank to the business end of the device and grabbed the white Motiva from Smith's apparatuses. He poured it into the hopper of the device, sealed it shut and pushed a button. He heard some odd hissing as the device measured that Smith had created approximately 750 mls of Motiva White. An enormous and fatal dose for an individual, but for the population of a small town, it might do.
The fact that it was so simple to operate was out of necessity for Nepleslia. When your doctor kept on changing week by week because they wound up with gunshot wounds or dead, you had to make your equipment easy to use with clear instructions for the next idiot that has to use them.
There was no time to train a new doctor on how to use everything, and if they couldn't figure it out themselves or didn't know how beforehand, they probably were better off left where you found them.
"Luca I'm touching down near your location." John's voice could be heard in Scott and Luca's earpieces. He could be heard mumbling as the sound of the
Big Bird's STL engines were roaring outside. "Tch... I'll drop a ladder down for you and Scott - its too packed for me to land."
The cylinder of compressed Motiva White was now fully pressurised and ready to be 'distributed'. Luca handed the Cylinder to Scott and walked outside and looked up with a smile.
"I'll handle the explosives, you first." He pushed Scott towards the Ladder that had fallen down from the open loading ramp of the
Big Bird hovering above.
As Luca watched Scott climb the ladder and secured the explosives he'd found, he felt an ache in his kidneys and gasped. He staggered towards the ladder and hung on as his legs gave out beneath him and his vision blurred. He grunted and staggered back onto his feet.
He patted his front pocket for a pill the Lorath witch had left him. Just one and - as he understood - he'd be able to keep going for long enough to see this to the end. Hopefully. As his vision levelled with the horizon,
he blinked several times and saw an outline of her come into focus.
She was walking closer, every step
she took stained the ground with the blood of the weak and unworthy. Luca's ears were ringing with
her voice and the beating of his heart as he fumbled for the pill and held it before him before swallowing it in one gulp.
She held her hand out towards Luca as though
she was offering a way out of all of the pain. Luca kept on gripping the ladder as though he'd fall even though he was still on the ground.
Her fingers curled, beckoning him to leave it all behind and pass on into the other world.
"Luca, what's taking you so long? Scott's here!" John yelled through his earpiece, his voice fuzzed. "Hurry! Its getting bigger!"
She then tried to reach towards him and grab the detonator. They would go out together. Luca tried to grab her arms and wrestle her away but they kept slipping slick with blood.
"TOGETHER."
The pill reacted with his system and he felt the aches and pains subside,
she and the blood faded away like whispers in the wind and Luca's vision returned to reality. He took a deep breath and looked up. "
Hold your horses, I'm coming!"
He tapped his earpiece. "Aiesu, Luca here," he was sending her a short message through his earpiece as he started climbing the ladder, "I have one request if I don't survive this: send as much Motiva White as you can procure here in case I fuck up. Hugs and kisses." He was referring to
Motiva Negative, but to Luca and Scott's understanding, it was just White Motiva, or Motiva White since that's how Aiesu described the substance to them.
That cloud wasn't going to disperse itself. Luca was swinging in the wind as he kept climbing up against the weather and rumbling thunder. A hand crept across the top of the loading ramp, followed by an arm, followed by the rest of Luca. His wounded eye appeared to be bleeding and tinged with an unnatural orange colour.
"What took you so long?" John asked as he leaned in to help him up, grabbing his hand and pulling him on the deck. "Shit, you're bleeding."
"I'm fine." Luca replied hoarsely, "we'll worry about that when this is over!"
-
MEANWHILE, BACK AT SARGASSO...
Lina blinked. Just who did she let into her town, drink her beer and give her money to get an air raid siren going?
"I don't know - you can't be serious." Lina crossed her arms as she tried to mull over what she heard. "That sounds like something out of a crappy action film."
Then she took a few moments to consider just who she had transported there this morning. A woman with a metal arm who could destroy anything with a punch, an engineer and her freespacer buddy, a gartagen pervert who loved to peep on her, a pint-sized inventor, a smoothly dressed doctor, the Kohanian, that rogue and that other guy who flew everything.
Finally, him. Washed up like her but still doing what he did best. When she first saw him stagger into his bar that evening with his daughter, she mistook him for another vagrant who'd ended up carrying the baby from a relationship. As time went on, she saw what a man over the edge with nothing to gain or lose.
"Shit, we have to warn everyone! Peachtree, get the word out: Everyone stay indoors and waterproof yourselves!" She turned around and took the bar's phone off of the hook and dialled a number. She heard a ringing and a click. "Karl, its Lina. Spread the word, get everyone indoors and waterproofed. Tell Takeyama and Neppie too!"
"Gotcha, Princess." Click.
Lina turned around to spot the new girl still standing there: "Well? What are you waiting for, an invitation? Go!" She shooed them away before turning around to make more calls.
"Shakes? Oh, hey Tony, Lina here, I've got bad news..."
-
"What's his problem?" Aoi asked Bronzi and Seiren as she started looking through the medical supplies and clean food supplies that she had. She had enough to keep her charges fed for a week. Most of it was non-perishable stuff that couldn't possibly have been infected by the tainted water. "I know, Neko, illegal, Nepleslia, sue me. I'm illegal on Yamatai too. They'll want my head on a stick."
She put her fingernail into a can of baked beans and started cutting the lid open. "But, if I go willingly revert, what happens? I can't ply my beautiful art any more." She flicked the lid off of the can and started drinking the beans straight from the can.
"Hungry?" She asked of the team that remained. There were plenty more non-perishables, including tinned fried just-about-anything-you-could-name and canned drinks and junk food. It certainly wasn't healthy but it wasn't going to make you lose your mind either. That said, most Nepleslians didn't give a dick about healthiness in their food. More crunch and more grease gave it more flavour.
-
Zeta looked out across the burning pool and across the iron cover that had stretched across it and found the closing mechanisms to be jammed with some manner of jimmy bar.
"This is just the beginning." The Lorath pinned by Enzo gloated with a thick accent, baring his sharp teeth. He took a moment to make a wheezy chuckle. "I saw you start the fire while you went picking that corpse like a
magpie. What if I told a little bird about it?" The irony of a Lorath calling a Nepleslian a bird was not lost, and he started cackling again.
