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RP: ISC Phoenix [Side Job] - It's In The Blood

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Luca

The Ultimate Badass
🎖️ Game Master
THIS TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE PROLOGUE AND MISSION 1

... (No Lyrics)

The Miner had finally sought medical attention and was at Dr. Shakes' place. All the good Doctor had given the wayward asteroid smasher was something to stem the bleeding and a day to sit down and rest at the clinic for a little. What the doctor couldn't quite put his finger on was why there was a Kohanian in his office. "Can I help you, sir?" The doctor asked, leaning over the counter and tapping a pen against his desk.

Dr. Shakes had bleary red hair, a patchy beard and a pair of thin-rimmed spectacles that were once plated gold - or a gold imitation. His labcoat had many stains of red on it, but he took pride in showing a wall with a series of photos of 'satisfied customers'. It seemed as though this man did his job properly rather than taking advantage of his abilities. His clinic didn't speak volumes about him though, it would barely be sanitary by Nepleslian standards, and completely off-limits by Yamataian standards.

The Kohanian approached the Dr. from the shadows, "Human, I am searching for an answer." Panther said as he pulled his bloody tissue wrapper from his coat pocket. Though he looked past the Dr. and saw the Miner, feeling that he just took unnecessary precautions. "I will need items to check that human's blood." The assassin explained as he nodded in the Miner's direction.

"And why should I trust you with my equipment?" Dr. Shakes said, as one of his assistants walked by and couldn't stop staring at the new arrival, even passing Panther a whistle. "Wait a minute-" Dr. Shakes leaned in and tilted his head at Panther. "You're one of those mercs that's been showing up recently at Lina's."

"And he's adorbs!" One of the passing med staff called out. There were only two of them aside from Dr. Shakes and the other one was in the back running pathology. She seemed to be an upbeat girl, listening to something on a pair of headphones and hopping to the beat - making her pink hair jiggle to the beat.

She was wearing stripey tights under a pleated skirt and an Aethersperm T-Shirt beneath her labcoat. "Can we let him in, pleeeeeeease?" She pleaded to her employer doctor, her blue eyes fluttering.

Dr. Shakes then conceded: "Alright then; Aimee, you have nothing better to do." Her face lit up as she took a side step towards the Kohanian. "Keep an eye on him and make sure he cleans up after himself."

"Yay~!" Aimee squealed with joy as the door into the rest of the clinic buzzed open for the Kohanian. Ahead of him he could see a spartan operation area, and a long table devoted entirely to pathology, with which a more conservatively dressed looking man was busy running some tests. The offhand pathologist didn't pay attention to either Aimee or Panther.

Meanwhile, the Miner was lying down on a cot behind Dr. Shakes and passing time by reading some dirty literature. He looked up at the Kohanian and raised an eyebrow before looking back down at his dirty literature. His nostrils were stuffed with tissues and there was a bandage over his broken nose. He could be heard breathing through his mouth.
 
Re: [Side Job] - Its In The Blood

Still crisply dressed, he followed the two in shortly.

"Excuse me, 'Panther' - that's your name right?," Scott asked politely, giving the Doctor and the Nurse present a friendly wave and smile in greeting. "Sorry I'm a little late, but I had to check with Luca for a few things. You wanted to do a blood test on this guy, right?" The younger brother of the Smiths dressed and looked quite like his elder, but, was distinctly in better spirits. "I just wanna know what are you looking for in specific, you know?" he went on, rubbing the back of his head with a faint nervousness.

"Unless it's something bright as day, we're probably just better off bringing a fresh sample to compare to whatever pathogen or chem we find later on," the sharply dressed young man explained sheepishly.
 
Re: [Side Job] - Its In The Blood

Panther wasn't sure how to handle the hyper human female, but gladly turned to Smith as someone who is serious enough for Panther to speak to. "Human, I was not sure he was going to be nearby," said the assassin as he agreed with Smith, "Since miner is here that is a better solution."

He turned to the girl and asked, "You have something to hold these?" Panther reached into his grey hoody and pulled out a flask with some green fluid. He held up a poison that he knew would react to what he thought could be affecting the miner.
 
Aimee motioned to some sterile, empty syringes in containment. "Uh, what's that in the flask, anyway?" She tilted her head as she looked at the green liquid. "Is it safe?"

Meanwhile, the pathologist who was running tests looked over to Scott and said: "I could do with your assistance, kid." He replied as he watched plasma and blood cells separate and become distinct in the Miner's Blood.

"I'm not seeing much in his blood right now, so we move to plan B: Experimentation." He sighed. "We've got a several samples of his blood to work with in storage." He pointed to one of the two mini-fridges down by his feet, which had large red letters on it: 'PATHOLOGY BLOOD' the other one had 'SNACKS' written on it in blue.

Investigating the pathology fridge had samples and units of chemicals in containment upon date labelled trays and suspended in racks. Each vial and tray had a label. It wasn't difficult to find the most recent blood samples from the Miner - whose identity was confirmed as 'Jock Q. Umbridge'.

"So what are you guys doing in Sargasso anyway?" The pathologist inquired, "This place is a dead end for medical careers."

"I heard that, Tony!" Dr. Shakes piped up.
 
"Yes," Panther replied, not wanting to divulge the information of what happens when it enters someone's bloodstream. He only knew it would react to certain elements of a drug he knew of that can affect the mind, while also being safe to being in contact with unless digested.

The assassin placed that vial and two others onto vial holders. He made necessary precautions of retracting his claws to put gloves on and preparing a syringe. "This one, I know only reacts to poison that takes over an insect spirit," explained Panther, as he started with the least likely result, the green vial he had shown the girl earlier.
 
Smith nodded once at the pathologist's request.

"Just chasing what looks like a dead end," he explained without explaining to the man. "Either way, got nowhere to go, so I thought I might as well tag along with this group," elaborating a little bit and giving him a lighthearted grin. The sharply dressed Nepleslian peered over his glasses at the collected samples, as well as the arrangement of snack and sample fridges.

"I'd go for introducing the blood to flash cloned cerebral matter of the same blood type, or better, a whole brain. But. I'm not sure what options we got here," Smith commented, explaining what he had in mind to the pathologist as the gears in his mind went to turning and grinding into work. At Panther's detailing of his poison however, the younger Smith's attention perked.

"Insect Spirits? The only things I think of when I hear 'insect' these days is 'Mishhu'," he went to say with a hint of surprise. "You're not thinking its something to do with them, is it?" Scott asked, raising an eyebrow.
 
"Mishhu... no," stated Panther shaking his head, "Insect spirits, I think you humans call, mind." Panther's ears seemed to twitch as he tried to think of a way to explain himself, "With no mind, the insect has no spirit. A certain mushroom I am aware of infects insect's spirit, mind, spore makes fluid to find itself good home."

Panther picked up the vial containing the green fluid and sucked it up into the syringe, "This poison, I know reacts and defeats that spore. If so, the human's blood should change color, unless it does not then it is not in the human's blood." The assassin took a vial of blood and injected it with the green poison and set it aside.

He looked over at the other two which he knew would be a little more difficult to test. The soda pop colored one was a fast acting acid that could damage weak armor or melt skin. The other one is a water colored one was capable of burning somebodies nose or insides if someone decided if they were thirsty.
 
Smith listened very, very carefully.

Because, to the average Nepleslian, it would have sounded like a load of tree hugging, spiritual bullshit which would have then elicited angry, if not outright furious replies. Of course, such anger and fury would have been equal parts hatred of 'tree hugging' as it was commonly referred to, as well as outright incomprehension. In many or most cases, it was very true to say that 'nature' did not hold a very dear place in Nepleslian hearts.

Rather, they simply did not care.

This was, of course, also reflected in how Nepleslia dealt with Panther's folk, as well as their world. Business, and just that. There was admittedly little business even to be had at this point at Panther's home world, or much resources to exploit, so they fell to the wayside. The movie industry however, often picked them up and went running, but for entirely different reasons; Nepleslians just loved technology 'curbstomping the ever living shit' out of traitors with anti-human sentiment that went about 'going native'. The details of why are difficult to explain, but, there they where.

With a little more thought though, most intelligent individuals would figure that it was likely tied into Anti-Yamataian and Anti-Nekovalkyrja sentiment in particular due to their physical nature, as well as their use of some organic technology. Provided they bothered to think about movies so much of course. Through the movies, public sentiment was influenced this way to some degree.

Due to this, the average Nepleslian would angrily respond to Panther's well intended words with a misconstrued anger resulting from not truly understanding popular films' intent or message and taking it out on the wrong people. Scott Smith however, though rather normal, was still his own young man, and therefore distinctly different from the norm yet still being one of the norm for a number of reasons. First, he just liked the action, with the nationalistic propaganda slipped into the films going right over his head when watched when he was younger. Second, he was a person with Post-Highschool Education.

In a sense, it was his job to think.

So, Scott listened very carefully as he went about working himself, made sense out of what Panther said, and considered it. Digging out a good find out of a dusty box, he carefully worded a question.

"So you think it's a mushroom's spore, which you're familiar with then?" the young man asked, starting up a small, antiquated flash-cloning device he managed to find. "Well, that'd probably make things a lot easier if it was your shroom, but, how'd you come to know about it in the first place?" He had to admit to himself that it was a curiosity, even as he removed the paper thin 'slice' of living brain tissue from the machine, and carefully combined to it a drop of the miner's blood in a sealed biohazard work box to see if the brain tissue would react.

The young man watched the slightly dusty monitors as Panther would hopefully reply - because admittedly, if he looked at the fellow too long, Scott knew he'd just start remembering his favorite scenes from the movies.

Tall blue cat-people, forest elves and their teddy-bear like munchkin friends - they all burned the same when exposed to a flamethrower.

Magnificently.
 
When Panther applied his poison into the blood sample, he was able to observe the following things. He'd watch the blood start to thin, clinging less and less to the sides of the vial and slowly turning an unhealthy shade of purple, eventually segueing into black and becoming useless as a vessel with which to transport red blood cells.

The way it worked was by tricking the white blood cells present inside the blood to degenerate and work against red blood cells and plasma, effectively weaponising one's body against them. Ingenious and made with no formal or practical knowledge - but still deadly. The observable effects were just like killing someone by injecting pure nicotine into someone's arteries while they were asleep.

Scott's more refined way of testing for a result was culled from previous knowledge and observable, repeatable responses of chemistry. There was a strange reaction when Scott saw the brain tissue interact with the blood, it wasn't being fully absorbed - there were patches inside the tissue where the blood refused to go. But why would the Blood do it? Wouldn't it be a fault of the brain that the blood is unable to get there?

Perhaps where Panther came from, there was little written components to his way of dealing with poisons and medicine - it was an oral history passed down from generation to generation. In Scott's case however, he had centuries of accumulated, scientific knowledge to draw from, and theories that were constantly shifting and being challenged by newer theories.

In the end though - what was most important at the end of the day was that they both worked. In both schools of thought there was an element of initial trial and error early on, there was the succession of knowledge, and there was reverence to the elders. In Scott's case he had to thank men and women responsible for medical breakthroughs and their highly praised theorems to read from, while Panther was paying respect to his immediate teachers and elders, and their elders before them.
 
They had both found it.

It didn't really matter how, but they had both found it. Isolating the agent was going to be a real bitch, Scott knew, and making an antidote or - he suddenly felt like bringing a palm to his forehead. "Uh, Panther, I don't mean to sound like an idiot or anything, but, do you happen to have a cure for the spore too?" he asked a little hesitantly. "If you do, I could probably try replicating it," the younger Smith suggested.

No need to go through scientific hoops and hurdles to find an antidote or cure if traditions already had it. But what science could do, was both refine and mass produce it, he knew.
 
"I'm an assassin, not a scientist," stated Panther as he observed both reactions with great interest. Panther's mind went through the many different experiments with poisons and antidotes trying to find a reason within his knowledge why his poison would react as it would. As for the brain, he wasn't knowledgeable in that area and would wait for the human to make a reasonable judgement.

"There is no cure, human," Panther explained, "my people found very little use in using something that only controlled bugs. The blood is tainted by something, though I may need to return with more to try on the blood."

He then turned to Scott and asked, "The blood needs more work, what about that?" Panther pointed at the brain, the name was on the tip of his tongue but forgotten.
 
Scott bit his thumb in thought, nodding to Panther's reply.

It was a habit he sometimes had, and one that his siblings sometimes made fun of. But, they weren't here.

Obviously, it made sense that the Kohanian didn't know much else about the thing, whatever it was. A spore? A parasitic spore? Ideally, he'd be able to isolate the causative agent, but, for now, all he had was the reaction recording of the brain tissue. From that, this younger Smith knew he might be able to devise a way to slow down or hinder the effects, but stop it?

Unlikely.

But, the blood - Panther kept focusing on this. 'What about the blood? What can I do about that?' he wondered. The blood had come from the Miner, who saw it all happen and made it out. He was even a carrier of it by the looks of the results, having the spore perhaps be blood borne in him. But what was so special about this one man?

"He's a carrier, that's for certain, but he's not spreading it around I think - it's either blood borne, or that and bodily fluids," Smith stated the fact. "At the same time, it's not affecting him I don't think." The young man turned to Panther. "Mind if I look at that? If I take a closer look at that too, maybe I can figure out some way to mess up whatever the Spore does."

"I don't have to understand the complexities of something to screw it all up," he grinned.
 
"If its of any interest to you two, our patient did mention that he stopped to have something to eat at Handler's Reach before he left." Tony chipped in his two cents as he waited for some fluids to separate, and others to dilute. "Said he had a hot dog, beer shake and fries before heading here."

He rolled his eyes at the patient's choice of diet before continuing. "Says he felt lightheaded for a bit, but said it passed after staying here for a couple of nights." He then shrugged as he heard a chirp from one of the machines. He inspected the materials, which pertained to another patient in Sargasso and sighed, mumbling under his breath: "Could've just been a dodgy shake, shit always gives me a headache."
 
Panther nodded at Scott's question as he tried to put peices of the puzzle together. "Does that tell you anything?" he asked since he was no brain surgeon.

Panther scuffed at the idea Tony had chipped in, "If a human was to easily lose their minds from a bad meal, I feel that they would lose their minds everywhere..." but as Panther followed the contradiction, he wondered if this could be a product of poison.

The assassin pulled out a dark green fluid from his hoody and prepared it for a test. "This should be slow poison that carries only by the blood. If it travels by eating, then this poison should act faster."
 
The younger Smith gave himself a grim smile.

"Great, another thing to factor in and worry about." He already knew that isolating a disease was tough, but he had to worry about possible transmission through food too? Then again, what if it was the food, or something in it that helped him fight it off? Some burger joints did cater to military and para-military who were always looking for an extra edge by putting chems in the food after all. And the beer shake? He shook his head and genuinely smiled. "Man, that would be a funny - finding out that the booze did the trick to cure it," Scott smirked.

"Yeah, I can see it, but not much else - with a lot of elbow grease, or better equipment, I might be able to isolate it out of this muck. It's here. But, good luck getting any real results from that though," He admitted. "It takes time to understand something completely, and we don't have time." Searching through a few labeled shelves, he grabbed a few bottles, shaking them at the Doctor to show what was being taken.

"My guess, is that we should just bombard it with as many anti-fungal medications we can and hope for the best." He stopped cold as he turned around to see yet another deadly vial procured out of the Kohanian's hoodie. "Damn - you weren't kidding about the assassin part. So...uh," the Nepleslian trailed off. "What are you going to do with that exactly?" Scott asked, not quite sure what Panther's reasoning was.
 
Scott and Panther's communicators rung, and a message played:
"Scott, Panther, any progress?" Luca asked the two via a longer distance line. "We're finding weird shit here. I'll get the others to send you photos and I'll get John to drop you both off here when you're ready."

"Guys, send photos and whatever data you can to Scott and Panther."
Communicator said:
(8 Days ago) @passion_blossom: We found this awesome place - we can do whatever we want here! Aoi showed us!
Their communicators then had the following exchange attached to them, sent by Echelon, the Phoenix team's Freespacer and living Comms. line.
Research said:
On another note, he mused on the fact that her snot was. . . blue. That's not any normal colour, not one bit. Using his built-in handy-dandy Yamataian telepathy, he called out to Echelon. "Can you do a search for things that would cause snot to turn blue in yamatians and nepleslians?"

"S0UNDS L1K3 W1TCHCR4FT. S34RCH1NG... S34RCH1NG..."

"1 TH1NK 1T C0ULD B3 4N 0V3RD0S3 0F L0R4TH DRUGS... L00K." Echelon sent a picture to Seiren of someone passed out with what looked like blue coming out of their nostrils and mouth.

"Well, it's worth a shot. Could you open your mouth for a sec? Say, 'aaa,'" he requested, pointing to his mouth and sticking out his tongue. She opened her mouth and made the requisite 'aaa' and he spotted flecks of blue on her gums, and in the flesh of her cheeks and the back of her mouth. Seiren could see that it was a while since she'd eaten.

"Tell me what you can remember, as far back as you can go," Seiren asked the girl, probing further. He sent a second message to Echelon, this time asking, "Could you research if any of those drugs cause memory loss? And whether less severe doses leave flecks of blue in their mouth and stuff?"

"4LL 0F '3M D0, 1T'S G0NNA B3 L1K3 F1ND1NG 4 N33DL3 1N 4 N33DL3ST4CK..."
"Y0U'R3 W3LC0M3." She responded at the end of that block of information before cutting the link and leaving them with the attached data and photographs that Seiren had seen.
 
Scott felt like putting his hand to his face. Hell, he did.

"Damnit, this is Year 35! We have the InterNep!" he yelled in agony, arms raised in anger. "Sorry, Panther - should have thought if this before," Scott apologized, rubbing a temple. He then just pulled up an InterNep window and went straight for the most popular self-diagnosis site there was. "Since they got us the info, we'll just toss this into here and see what the online clinic's AI says," the younger Nepleslian explained.

"It's obviously not something common, but if anyone can pick their brains for anything and everything, it's an AI," he added, putting in all the info he had. Symptoms, check. Photos, check. Suspected infection route, check. Field findings, check. Pushing the enter key, he sent the report form away and into the bowels of the vast and infinitely mighty confines of the InterNep.

"Now, we wait. Though, if it doesn't work, I think we're, ahh, kinda screwed," he spoke over his shoulder to Panther.
 
The advantage that the modern doctor had over the Kohanian was access to a doctor's network that transcended boundaries, and was able to answer most of the questions directed towards it without too many problems - but it wasn't a crutch nor a toy. It was something to be used when you needed a second opinion in a hurry, delivering output that should be validated by a reliable third party.

With that in mind, Scott punched the data into the computer...
Code:
ANALYSING INPUT "dsc0442.jpg"...
ANALYSING INPUT "srec0334.wav"...
CROSS REFERENCING WITH EXISTING DATA...
...
NO DIRECT MATCHES FOUND. BROADENING MATCH CRITERIA.
...
1 MATCH(ES) FOUND.
TRANSLATING FROM LY'THIR TO TRADE
Case said:
A photo of a Lorath Llmanel Male, aged 33, found at a college shortly after exam period passed out in corridors. Subject appeared confused, tired and has red stains on nose and around mouth from bleeding. Subject was conscious, but confused, forgetful and heavily fatigued.

Pathology revealed the overwhelming presence of mnemonic drugs, including Motiva, Prime and lorath Suppressive Drugs. Further searches revealed an illegally acquired stash of Motiva. Subject was forced to go cold turkey from all state-altering substances for the period of six months, and further banned from any and all memory modification/mnemonic improvement stimulants while attending University.

Subject recovered, but dropped out of University earlier this year. Whereabouts currently unknown.
Sifting through photos and logs of this case, it was evident that most of the subject's problems were self inflicted. It was a little difficult for Scott to feel sorry for the subject in these documents - and the Lorath culture tended to place an unreasonably high value on mind altering substances. The Lorath's brain waves and endocrine readings were bizarre and improbable by Nepleslian standards - and even beyond the accepted Lorath boundaries and pushing his body over the edge.

Now, if only they could get the readings from the patients over in Handler's Reach - it wasn't like he could bring an entire pathology lab with him. He only had some strange data that was gotten from a fuzzy search. Scott knew that he had to verify what he'd gotten somehow, and he had to get his feet dirty to find out. John was on standby with a means of delivering the two medics.

"Hey, that shit costs me a fortune to keep!" Dr. Shakes crossed his arms. The cost for this service was steep unless you were pirating it and using a proxy connection, or piggybacking off of a more reputable hospital - like one of the many in Prime City - with the aid of a well-paid inside man to provide you with a key and obfuscate your tracks. "...er, did you two find what you were looking for?" Dr. Shakes coughed and smiled to the duo.
 
Panther looked over Scott's shoulder to check out his search. His cat like mind began to collect the data they have uncovered, This could be a drug that is eaten or drunk. Might contain drugs that erases the human spirit to better shape the person to their needs. Motiva might mean the use of pheromones to manipulate them in a zombie like manner assuming that someone is behind this.

Wondered if he should write to Luca, but before writing he wanted to make sure him and Scott were on the same page and said, "Scott, if someone is trying to brainwash these humans, it might to try to use them as zombies for a cause. What we know is these humans act without much of a spirit for themselves and may be a target to pheromones to control them."

"How should we continue?" Ended Panther with a question, since he wasn't sure how to go about for an antidote for an alien drug.
 
"Same as we have been - taking the best potshots we can while lighting as many candles in the dark as possible," Smith replied to the Kohanian.

The younger Nepleslian was rapidly picking and packing away key bits of portable medical kit as he did so. "Chances are, we're not going to find anything else here, and we're just plain lucky to get put on what might be the right track," he explained. "My bro always told me we could only prepare so much before we got to roll up our sleeves and get out there - not in so many words, but you know what I mean," Scott added. Tossing a duffel bag over his shoulder, he turned to address the doctor.

"Hope you don't mind - I heard Pavone pays well, so I'll see to tossing it back to you with interest!" he grinned.

He was already looking forward to 'getting onto the field'.
 
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