Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

There's very little rest even for the rescue team you took out, for a little bit. Nattie's troops had their asses run through the fucking metaphorical taffy machine, and between their medics and your doctors you're pretty sure if any of them tried to man a post in the first couple of days they'd get shot by their physician. Or something. A doctor shooting you for failing to get well seems a bit extreme, but also they're very scary when they get like that. You get the fucking business from 'em too, and content yourself with light duties. For the moment.

There are a lot more people than supplies at first, and that means double, triple time for the cooks and very cautious raids in the opposite direction from IU-SBC. No one leaves in teams smaller than six, and they're gone for hours at a time, having to move past the initial freeway drag to smash-and-grab other locations. Blessedly, it appears that most smaller fast food locations don't manifest a Corporate, or if they do it's pretty easy to spot from outside (one is reported in the window of a drive-thru, waving a sign that says MAY I TAKE YOUR ORDER? with what the team describes as 'desperate depression' in its body language), and the resulting bounty of frozen meats and various frozen potato products helps tank what would otherwise be the complete decimation of your accumulated food stores. You also get reports of a hydroponics store, the sort of place that sells supplies for growing plants indoors, which has - against all odds - not become some strange glass jungle of various kinds of cannabis, but instead has grown into a self-sustaining glass garden similar to your roof garden, and from this are fresh vegetables and strawberries taken. Why strawberries? No grapes, no berry-berries, no watermelons or anything. Do people just really like strawberries that much? Are they somehow easier to grow indoors? Does your body have useful skills that are not killing (which you have mixed feelings about) or forklifts (which are amazing)?

Hrm.

Morning of the third day, you're informed that Nattie is asking after you. She's being prepped for surgery (to wit, they gotta take her fucking leg off), and is looking to talk before she gets the good shit looted from the University infirmary, and by 'the good shit' we evidently mean 'the very bad shit but for the gap between what we have and what we need did the gods invent alcohol'. Note to fucking self, find some morphine.

"Hey," Nattie murmurs when you slip into the breakroom that has been converted into your fledgling community's impromptu infirmary, Jill along with you to help translate the things other people say to you that don't make sense. "I never did thank you properly. For saving my ass. Captain's still out of contact, but I know she's gonna make sure we don't get caught out like that again."

Mm. You try to keep a little frown off your face, so you shrug instead, a little helplessly. "You needed help," you answer, which should settle the matter but from the look on Nattie's face it sure doesn't.

"...Miss -" she begins.

Jill clears her throat. "We didn't get the chance to get inta that earlier but Orchid's living that it/its life. Everyone gets it wrong the first time."

"No idea why," you mutter, an exasperated edge on the words. Jill and Nattie are giving you identical Looks, and you throw your hands up in surrender. "Look, whatever - Nattie, while you're still sober I wanted to ask your help in something that I'm hoping isn't a brutal march all the way to the bay. There's some kinda science team stuck down below Salt Bay, they need help."

Nattie frowns, then blinks, then - "Oh son of a bitch, Station 104. Of course they didn't get the chance to evacuate - they're still alive down there?"

You open your mouth to ask how Nattie knows them when Jill(???) interrupts: "Oh gods, I'd forgotten about those guys! I saw a documentary about them - how'd they even get in touch with you, flower?"

You close your mouth.

You open your mouth very carefully: "Doctor Heller can sort of, but not really, possess the spiders. We got in touch when I did the thing I do." Which is not narrowing it down at all, but nameless instinct suggests to you that perhaps explaining your abilities to Natalie Bellman, Civilian Rescue, is not amongst your top 10 plans of all time. "In any event they can't seem to get back out? I assume they had a submersible at one point and uh, don't. Doctor Heller's unconscious so whatever she coulda done about this needs to be translated into what she can do with like...glass dogs and whatever spiders haven't regained their free will."

The excited celebrity-worship(???? QUESTION MARK??????) becomes a sorta 'oof, fuck' frowning and Jill and Nattie looking at each other. The Threshold soldier speaks up first: "Throwback...might be able to help with that. It's not as if we'd get nothing for hitting the warehouses and shipyards either..." She closes her eyes and hisses; her injured leg twitches. "Heh. Maybe I can get a fucking peg leg while I'm there."

"Hey," Jill reproaches.

"Fuck off, I'm not giving you shit," Nattie snaps back. "I'd kick ass and take names with prosthetics like yours, but you know what I did in the time before Impact? Looked up everything it takes to make things like that. If Corporate and the pigs dropped dead right now and we could hire the dragon to fly cross-country for us I'd still be fucked for at least five years, twenty if we can't find a convenient prosthetic surgeon who's not dead. Goddamn squadcar..."

Jill's frown intensifies. You step up, try to put a hand on her shoulder, and she shakes you off, eyes locked on Nattie. "Yeah? That what you think? You're such a badass that you could get a new leg, learn it instantly, and go back to killing slashers?"

Hey...

What's that smell? Your eyes flick around the room, afraid of an electrical fire at first, but no, the scent's not quite right for - it's Jill's legs. The blades are starting to glow, smoking faintly against the floor.

"Come off it," Nattie says in exhaustion. "I can talk mad shit about how long my dick is but I can't fuckin' prove it, can I?"

You're not entirely certain why Jill looks so fuckin' mad but she claps her hand to Nattie's and pulls the soldier half-upright, staring her down. Her body is shaking, and you're not sure if it's violence or outrage or what. The tile is blackening beneath Jill's blades, and you should probably -

"Congratulations," Jill whispers. "Welcome to the dick-measuring contest."

Nattie's injured leg shatters, falls away like the glass from a mirror's frame (sharp chunks of it slide over each other, crashing to the floor, splintering into shards), but rather than nothing on the other side there's a leg remarkably like Jill's. You can see blood flowing through it in little glass veins, rushing in to the pace of Nattie's heartbeat. You're about to ask Jill how she did that when she, and Nattie, both fall unconscious.

You fret.

You dither.

And ultimately you just sorta turn Jill's head aside so she's not pressing her mouth and nose into the cot, and tiptoe backwards out of the room.

* * * *

Your theory that hanging out with the spiders will help persuade people to be normal about them is proven correct fairly quickly. There are some things to smooth over, though, among them correcting the spider-women's assumption that they need to take their shirts off to get requests fulfilled if someone can't understand their attempts to communicate. In this you have both Sasha and Charles as firm allies, and Charles proves remarkably talented at reading Barbarian Pantomime(tm), which gets the two of you called on a lot to help mediate difficulties.

Can you imagine if you'd just avoided that area? Or come in guns blazing? The man from Threshold had welcomed you to this world, and apologized that it would be 'a fixer-upper'. You should pay that forward.

...You will pay that forward.

* * * *

The Threshold Internal app rings the morning that Hoch should be arriving at this position; you, Nattie, Sasha, and Jill sit down around your phone as you answer, which instantly produces the voice of the Captain. "Sound off if you're not dead."

Nattie presses the button. "Sorry Captain, I'm afraid I died like six times."

Karl's voice: "More like sixty-nine times, ayyyy."

Sasha and Nattie start laughing, and you blink at them both. Hoch's voice, full of relief, cuts in: "You need an escort?"

Nattie gives you a look, makes sure no one's finger is on the button, and says, "Well...do I? We could stick around while preparations are made, but we're gonna have to move in force to get to the Bay."

Choose 1
[ ] Keep Project Throwback around for a couple weeks while you recover and make preparations
[ ] Send them on ahead to help scavenge for solutions and resources while you rest and prepare for a couple weeks.

You shake your head without a word. Nattie puts her finger on the button: "Negative, Hoch. We're gonna stay, get patched up, and help these folks sock away some supplies. Gods only know the city's still got plenty of to pillage, and they did kinda save our lives. I'll pass the books along to you to be taken to HQ, maybe borrow your medics, and that'll be that."

Silence, for a long moment.

The voice that is yours: "Hoch, text me your position. Out."

When the voice that is yours leaves the call, it ends instantly. Everyone looks around at each other, and then Nattie makes the mistake of trying to be the first to leave. Her blade slips out from under her, and the only reason she doesn't eat a face full of concrete is Jill catching the back of her collar and hauling her up.

"I told you to get a crutch," Jill says, wearily.

"And I told you that I'm the god-queen of big dick mountain," Nattie grumbles. She rests her head against Jill, and grumbles as she's led away.

Hrm.

You don't have to repress the emotions that causes in you, but you're not sure you understand them either. So we're gonna move on.

* * * *

Hoch calls ahead when his 'boys' are ten minutes out or so, and you inform the sentries in turn. You, Jill, Sasha, Nattie, and Chef Nettleson all form the current greeting party; the doctors are too busy, Charles is riding herd on the spiders at the moment, and Andrea's out on a raid of all things. You haven't really had time to meet-and-greet with the noncombatants of IU-SBC yet, but they're just inside your home, conspicuously watching the road into your home's parking lot.

It's not Hoch that you see first, not that you'd know if you did. No. This can't be anyone but her. Same height as you, long auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, an eyepatch over her right eye. She wears a long coat over the Threshold-issued body armor, with the left sleeve pinned up to her shoulder. She's...gorgeous, you think to yourself; cute like a little doll, with a slightly upturned nose and stunning blue eyes that remind you of the Bay on a clear day. Scars criss-cross her face, mementos of battle, and you gently touch your own face. That's one mystery solved; you'd wondered why some parts of your face feel different from others.

She doesn't come directly to you. When she notices some cars left in the lot, she smoothly changes direction, and looks inside. She makes a 'huh' kinda face before opening the car and slowly running her finger down the statue inside; it peels open, like a cocoon, and releases a shaking and terrified person. You can't hear what she says to it, but eventually she points it in the direction of your store, and it starts limping towards your home while people from inside rush out to meet it.

One car at a time, in no particular hurry, she releases the eight statues you hadn't known what to do about, with only minimal lacerations to show for their trouble. Up on the freeway exit, what can only be Hoch's forces gather and stay some distance away, leaning on cars and keeping their weapons away from their hands. At last, at long last, she walks directly towards you. Sasha bristles, and you put a hand on her shoulder, watching the woman with your face and your voice tuck her only hand into a pocket.

She ignores you completely, turning her head to Nattie. "That thing good on its word?"

Nattie nods. "Yes ma'am. Lost three of the wounded, but I'm not sure they coulda been saved. The wyrm's been stirred up -"

"Thanks, I hadn't noticed," this 'Captain' drawls, sarcastically. Her eyes slide to you, and she sighs. Doesn't seem to know what to say.

At the same time, both of you take out cigarettes, and light up, and if either of you comment on this you're both going to lose your dignity, so nothing is said about it. Nothing at all.

"This gonna be a problem?" you ask, in your softest voice.

And she takes a drag on her cigarette, burns halfway through it in one long pull, and exhales slowly. "You really have no idea what you did to me, do you?" When you shake your head, she chuckles and shakes hers. "Ain't that just the luck. You sleepin' with Nattie?"

"CAPTAIN!"

"No," you answer. "...Not with anyone yet. I still have things to figure - why?"

"Just wanted to figure out why the hell you're borrowing my men. But I'm not sure how much I care." A smaller puff on her cigarette. "...You just might be the only family I have left, which is pretty fucked. The old man would come back to life just to shit a brick if I killed you. Guess I owe him that much."

This conversation is going strange places. You're missing so much context. You keep trying to remember doing to her what she said you did to her but there's just nothing there. Not a damn thing from before that bathroom.

What do you want out of this conversation? Pick 2
[ ] Whatever this Captain thinks she knows about what you are
[ ] A promise to live and let live
[ ] Information on your shared(?) past
[ ] Information on the Captain's goals and plans
[ ] A promise to share resources as necessary
[ ] An explicit agreement that you can keep some of these college students to fill in your skill gaps in the community