2/5 Cui 2018/10/28(Sun)10:49 No. 908566 ID: 8a614b
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>check if he's turned on by this
It's taken me up until now to realise we're all running around naked. Yes, I mean, I already knew this but it's only sunk in now with all the other fucked up stuff going on that I, a naked, uh, I guess I count as a woman, am grappling a naked belenos man, and this does have some uncomfortably erotic undertones to it. Fuck, fuck fuck fuck I can't believe I'm seriously analysing this right now. Fuck.
I'm going to draw the line at checking out his groin because nothing good is going to result from that.
Had no problem rubbing dried blood off of Beanna, just need to maintain that distance from myself. Detach, float away, act without thinking.
I've never really thought of myself as a sexual being before even though I know it's weird for mikliks to keep hold of a specific biological sex for this long but truth be told well no I'm not going to go into my reasons I don't have to justify myself to anyone and fuck this train of thought make it be dead moving on moving on

>ask what his eyes do and what his skillset is
"Now. Tell me exactly what those eyes let you see, and what you're actually good for."
I consider twisting his arm more but every action I consider now is poisoned, POISONED
"Yes! Yes the eyes! I was lying! They're not cutting edge tech! They're cheap and thrown together and I wasn't hiding them because I wanted to keep things secret, I'm ashamed of them! Look at me, I look like a fucking freak! I can't look at myself in a mirror anymore without my goggles and they're gone now! That's why I had that blindfold and why I spun that story!"
"If you're ashamed of them, why did you replace your eyes with them?"
"Do... do you like them?"
"No, that's not what I said, they're hideous, I was asking why you even went through with this."
I almost feel him recoil from what I just said.
"I had a rare degenerative eye disease. I decided I wasn't going to just wait to slowly turn blind so I went with what I could afford and hacked myself together a new set of eye replacements! I can see visual spectrum as well as partly into infrared and ultraviolet, but I've also got a structural scan array I managed to get on the black market. I was planning to save up and work towards rehousing them into something that looked more like normal eyes, but, well, do you know how much it costs to get to something that passes for normal? And then there'd be awkward questions, and I'd need documents to tell people I was going blind and that I wasn't getting into some messed up stuff, and honestly the goggles seemed like an alright fix and now I don't have my goggles anymore."
"You didn't look approachable with the goggles, either."
"That was by choice! I could have toned it down but I wanted to look... I wanted to look aloof and mysterious!"
"Oh wow, you're pathetic."

He shuts up, and I start feeling... huh. I start feeling him sobbing. His chin probably can't be buried any further into his chest.

"That wasn't an invitation to embarass yourself any further, Rellze."
"I've lost everything," is all he can say between gasping sobs.
"I don't have a violin small enough for you. You didn't tell me what you're useful for yet. Keep talking."
"Nothing," he blurts. "I'm not useful for anything or anyone. Just kill me now and get it over with."
"No." I smack him with my tail lightly for good measure and march him forwards. "Take me to the neumono."

I let go of his arms. He brings his hands up to his face. When he doesn't start walking, I nudge him forwards, and he gets the message.

At least I can safely say for definite that I do not find the sight of someone sobbing their pathetic heart out even a little endearing, let alone arousing.
It's more annoying than satisfying. Fuck, I hope I'm not feeling pity for this trainwreck.

3/5 Cui 2018/10/28(Sun)10:49 No. 908567 ID: 8a614b
File 154074898750.png - (21.15KB , 800x600 , sp-31.png )

>go to the neumono corpse
"Come on, pull yourself together. Fuck, you were telling me I needed you to keep going? If I wasn't here, you'd be a broken heap of tears waiting to get eaten by something."
"I just-- I just-- uh-- I wanted-- I didn't want any of this-- I thought--"

Ugggghhhhh.

"Listen. Rellze. You've alive. Your arms and legs work. You know what state I found Beanna in? She was a broken bleeding wreck. So no, you haven't lost everything. There's still a lot you have left to lose. Get it together, we have things to do."
"I don't-- I don't know if I can see what's left of Karei again--"
"You saw it once. There's nothing new to see. Trust me, I'm well aware of this. Let's go."

We navigate, and Rellze does eventually pull himself together.

Instead of fear or rage I feel a disdain for this belenosian who thought he could appeal to me by revealing my weaknesses.

"So, what are your skills?"
"Robotics, mostly. Overspecialised. Useless in a survival situation, really."
"Trust me, my biotechnological prowess is serving me about as well as your robotics knowledge. That can't be all you have. I'm a ninth-branch practitioner of the Soaring Grassblade art. Would have advanced further if... well, things happened."
"Soaring Grassblade? Is that your martial art? I read about that in your journal and had no idea what it was otherwise."
"How did you get into my files?"
"I... uh... I like being places I'm not supposed to be," mutters Rellze sheepishly. "I might be a bit of an amateur urban explorer. I've yet to find a lock I couldn't outsmart."
"That's a useful skill to know," I say, and shake my head. "Not here, though. Have yet to see a lock that looks like a lock. Anything more relevant to our situation?"
"I, uh... I made that blindfold out of what few scraps of fabric I had on me when I woke up here."
"You chose to cover your eyes over your crotch?"
"Well, I, uh, er, I mean, to be honest, I, uh..." I think I can feel him blushing from here. "Yes, I'd rather people see that over what my eyes look like unobscured."
"Still, I mean, I'm used to... compromising with available materials, if that makes any sense, but none of the stuff here seems useful. It's all weird purple alien flesh and I've seen it covering Fip, and--"
"Hold up. Fip's covered in purple?"
"Oh. Yeah, last I saw him he wasn't happy about it. Kept muttering something about 'stupid purple vines' and 'not listening anymore'. Also 'shut up Adam' one time."

I'm taken aback enough that I stumble and trip over a raised vine or vein in the floor.

"He wouldn't talk to me, though. Kept telling me to go bother someone else because he had to figure something out, and that was the last I saw of him. He was acting kinda odd."
"When did you last see him?"
"Before I got to Karei's remains."
"Then we'll keep going that way."

We reach a large, wide open cavern, like many other identical caverns in this incredibly indistinct maze of tunnels.
I see a pile of strange insectoid purple critters congregating in a heap in the middle, each about the size of, hm, a watermelon.

4/5 Cui 2018/10/28(Sun)10:49 No. 908568 ID: 8a614b
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"Stay back," I say to my current dead weight companion.
"What are you planning?"
"Xenobiology."
"What does that mean--"

A quick whip with my tail reminds him not to question my methods.

I approach the pile of insects but they all scatter before I can get to them, leaving... Karei, devoid of any clothing or possessions.
Covered in purple goop. No. It's more like he's... glued together.

He stands up, eyes closed, and opens them, looking directly at me first.
I distinctly remember Karei not having purple irises. He certainly stared holes into me enough for me notice a detail like that.
...oh, right, and the whites of his eyes were, uh, white. Not purple. Welp.
His face is emotionally blank. He looks at me like a bored service clerk.

"Murderer," he whispers to me, sepulchural tones echoing around the cavern and through my skull.
Yeah. Okay, no. I don't know what's going on but this is Beanna all over again. "You aren't Karei, whatever you are."
"Stand down, Cui. Or I will take you back to your holding cell."
"Rellze told me you were torn to pieces. Even neumono don't come back from that."
"I was given a second chance. I will make sure you never harm anyone again."
"You read the report. You're afraid of me, Karei. I always knew you were. Raise a single hand against me and I can guarantee it ends poorly for you."
"I have come back from death, Cui. I am no longer afraid."
"You sound nothing like he did, by the way."

The neumono tenses up, his uncharacteristically neutral face suddenly twisted in a very familiar scowl. "What are you talking about?? I'm Karei!"
"A fascinating hypothesis, and one I disagree with."
"I don't have time for your wretched mind games, criminal!"
"So, you're fungus programmed to believe you're a neumono, correct? I've heard of some similar properties of Astreneus fauna, fungal farms that can be programmed in such a way."
"I-- what-- no, I'm Karei! I'm Karei, shut up! I-- I cheated death, I'm me, I'm me!"
"You sound like you have some doubts."
"Karei?" asks an incredibly confused Rellze.
"See! Rellze knows it's me! Rellze, tell this insane overgrown flower that it's me--"

5/5 Cui 2018/10/28(Sun)10:50 No. 908569 ID: 8a614b
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I'm already charging forward.
The only variable I need to adjust for is whether I want my first blow to incapacitate, or if I should break him into the pieces he was supposed to already be in.

>>908566
Not everyone can do surgery on their own face unassisted. Even if his augmented eyes aren't as good as he originally tried to claim, and are downright ugly, he still pulled off something most people can't!

>I wanted to look aloof and mysterious!
He thinks like an edgy teenager and he's hot for you. Despair.

>>908569
One thing you might need to account for is this purple stuff is completely outside your past experiences- and your eye might not process weaknesses in it correctly.

>whether I want my first blow to incapacitate, or if I should break him into the pieces he was supposed to already be in
Well, if we're doing xenobiology, he/it is a more interesting specimen alive than not.

>>908566
>Fuck, I hope I'm not feeling pity for this trainwreck.
Yes, you are indeed feeling pity.

>>908567
>Also 'shut up Adam' one time.
Maybe that voice you heard earlier that you knew wasn’t Flukebiter, was actually Adam’s voice?

If it was, then when did that yich eater learn how to use telepathy? Or did he always have it and you never knew about it because you always avoided him?

>>908568
If that asshole, Flukebiter, was still here, he’d probably be able to tell you about those insects and this purple stuff that’s gluing Karei together.

But nooooo, he had to be a bitch and whine at you for pushing one button incorrectly and then he left.

>>908569
Try to incapacitate him, so you can study this purple stuff.

Maybe you can remove it by throwing him in the river, the same way you removed the purple stuff from Beanna?

>>908569
Just take out their eyes. They reassemble so it's pointless to rip them to bits.

Also, continue pointing out that they're a blob of alien protoplasm using a dead Neumono's memories. Emotional injury is likely more effective than just stabbing them.

Waitwaitwait wait. Important question.

Assuming whoever assigned Karei actually wanted you contained, what counter did he have for your speed and martial arts style? More importantly, how might being a fungus monster have made that worse?

Incapacitate if there's anything left of Karei listening then he may appreciate it, if he comes out whole from any experimentation you do. Neumono make excellent meat shields.

Yes I know it's unlikely, just neumono are weird with all of them being their brain, maybe there's something left that's aware of what's going on, rather than the purple fungus stuff.

Try incapacitating. It's remotely possible that the purple stuff suffered weird interaction with the aggressive neumono biology, and enough of Karei's nervous system survived.

Still, tell him you don't remember whether you actually chopped him up, but if you did, you stand by it.

1/4 Cui 2018/10/28(Sun)16:49 No. 908625 ID: 8a614b
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>he's hot for you, despair
Honestly can't even sum up the will to care enough for despair.

>yes you are feeling pity
Then I need to stop and get my head back into the situation.

>telepathic yich eater
That's a ridiculous notion, yich eaters aren't telepathic.

>take him down alive
I do want to understand this all-encompassing purple goo and what it can do to an infected subject.
Alive it is.

>what were karei's countermeasures
A neumono is never going to match my trained speed with my enhanced reflexes, and my two hearts supplement my stamina by just a tiny enough fraction that I tire less easily than other mikliks would.
However, Karei is also trained in snow style combat. Accepting the inevitability of being hit in order to entrap the enemy.
A physical spar between us would involve a very difficult hit and run scenario. I'd have to make sure I wore him down over time because one moment too long and he'd have me in his grasp, and his raw strength would easily overpower me.
Put simply, and I'm aware how this probably constitutes some form of poetic justice, Karei was trained and specialised in the neumono martial art of tearing one's opponents to pieces.
And unlike me, he wouldn't need to use fanciful alien technology to find where the seams lie. I know my miklik body wouldn't last long against the honed fury of a snow art neumono practitioner.

However, he's also now a patchwork of neumono and creeping purple jelly, so we'll see how he approaches this situation.
Either way, his guard is down and I'm making the first strike--

2/4 Cui 2018/10/28(Sun)16:50 No. 908627 ID: 8a614b
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--and it connects with a vulnerable point on his chest before he has a chance to react.
He definitely saw me coming, the musculature tensed even as I ran over, but he was too distracted to form a coherent defense.
Sloppy form. Unimpressive--

"Poor choice," says the Karei thing as he catches my right hand with his right as I pull it back.
My quick dash past him is brought to a screeching halt as I slip, tail flying between my legs.
He grabs my tail with his left hand.
My legs flail.

I'm thrown to the floor after a single clumsy spin by Karei.
I'm scraped up by the surprisingly rough floor here, and damn it smarts.

I'm quickly on my feet and turn back to him. I clear distance between us.
"Letting go of me was a mistake," I say, as I regain my posture.

Rellze watches both of us, uselessly, hands raised like he's trying to decide whether or not to get involved, so I just ignore him completely.

"I don't remember turning you into pulp, but I stand by it."
"A stick insect like you rip me apart? No, monster, come closer if you want to understand that technique."
"I'm impressed," I say, wincing. Ugh, I must have taken that fall harder than I thought. Hope nothing's broken. "You almost sound like Karei."

That works. He loses his cool, drops his guard and charges at me.
Not the strength of his fighting style, nor of his neumono physiology.
I focus on a lateral structural weakness among his fungal cracks, and dart past him, making sure to tilt and smack into it as I do.

He abruptly stops and sweeps at where my legs are going to be, and I have to throw the opening away to avoid taking the hit.
I know I can't afford to take a blow here, I can't fight like a neumono.

3/4 Cui 2018/10/28(Sun)16:51 No. 908629 ID: 8a614b
File 154077067222.png - (24.72KB , 800x600 , sp-36.png )

We start circling each other.

"I'm actually surprised, Cui. I never figured a science nerd like yourself would know anything about unarmed combat."
"I'm surprised a fungal mass knows what a nerd is."
"Okay, seriously, time out." He pauses and straightens himself up, not breaking eye contact with me. "I'm all for having this climactic showdown I've been expecting us to have ever since you were put under my watch, but do you need to keep throwing all this bullshit at me about me not being Karei?"
I also don't drop my guard, but I keep on the watch for any sudden movements. "You were torn to pieces, Rellze told me that, and then I see you under a pile of insects, and you're glued back together with weird purple alien matter. Yeah, I don't think you're truly Karei--"
"Shut up shut up shut UP!!" yells Karei, his voice slowly losing the strange foreign warbling edge it had. "I was never turned into a pile of chunks, alright?! I was pretty badly maimed, yes, and thought I was going to bleed out, sure, but I guess that idiot belenos over there decided to make it sound like I was vernaut food! No idea why!"

Rellze looks over at me and nervously shrugs.

"What the fuck, Rellze," I shout over.
"I didn't exactly examine the dead body very well," he says back. "I wanted to be away from whatever made it."
"You basically said I did it, Rellze!"
"I-- I thought you'd be all 'yes, it was me, that was what I do to my enemies' or something about it!"

"Okay, so Rellze is an idiot," says Karei. "Good to know. I never did get to know him very well and now I'm kinda glad."
"You don't know the half of it," I say, as I sprint forward again to take advantage of his lack of focus.
"Oh, you cheap bitch! Bastard! Whichever you are! You're cheap!!" yells Karei as he raises his guard.

I stop and throw all my momentum into a spinning roundhouse kick aimed for his head.
"AGH!"
Well, okay, it hit--
He drops his guard and grabs me by the shoulders.
Shouldn't have paused to confirm. Should have moved away. Fuck. Fuck. One slip up. One slip up is all he needs.

"Oh, that was a mistake, Cui," he says, moving his grip closer to my neck and tightening his grip and ow ow OW OW FUCK FUCK
"FUCK! FUCK FUCK OW AAGH AAAAAGGGHHHHH"
"...Cui!" yells Rellze who continues to do nothing like the useless fuck he is.

4/4 Cui 2018/10/28(Sun)16:51 No. 908630 ID: 8a614b
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Karei knees me in the stomach and I double over, winded.

"You are so incredibly fucking lucky, Cui," says Karei, sweeping my legs from under me, "that I don't want you dead right now."
I fall back and only just barely break my fall with my arms to stop from smacking my head into the cavern floor.
I don't respond, because I'm still trying to get my breath back.

Karei walks over to me, and doesn't so much help me stand as drag me up to my feet.
He looks me dead in the eyes. Even with his neumono eyes clearly substituted by or overtaken with this purple goop, the stare is 100% the killing glare Karei has shown me time and time again.
"Because, unlike you, Cui," he says, while I gasp for air, "I'm not a murderer. Now. Come quietly along with me, and remember this lesson."
"You cheating fucker, you were never that fast before," I manage to wheeze out.
"Cheating implies rules, and you got enough cheap shots in yourself. Under different circumstances, I'd say good match, but not here. You're an incredibly frustrating person to pin down. You lash out and run. You fight like a coward."
"I don't have anything to prove to anyone," I say.
"No, no, you fight for survival, I'm sure. I fight for the protection of others. A greater and nobler cause."
"Oh for fuck's sakes, I did not want to hear your self-aggrandizing bullshit about noble causes and honour in battle--"

Karei twists my arm behind me and I yelp in pain.
"Show a little more respect to me, perhaps? Is that too difficult for you?"

Rellze watches me and I swear to fucking anything around if he's so much as thinking this is some sort of karmic turnaround for me I am going to actually break his stupid artificial eyes and make him choke on them

"Fine! Fine! I yield! Take me back to the promised cell, warden!"
"That's... an improvement, I guess. Rellze, come on. We're finding a way out of here."
"I... uh... okay," says Rellze, who I regret not killing earlier.

"I need to restrain the prisoner, you take point, you'll see better than I can," says Karei, twisting my arms behind my back.
Rellze looks at me and the position I'm in, but says nothing.

"Okay, I guess. Wait. Wait, did you already know about my eyes--"
"Yes, Rellze, I was in charge of security, I had to know these things. Whatever, let's just keep going."
"...Where?"

Karei pauses.

"Well, Cui. Anything you want to share about possible exits you've come across?"
"If I found any exits do you think I'd be here right now?"
"Well, did you find anyone else?"

Do I tell them about Beanna?

well you could tell them that you thought you heard the yich earlier but couldn't see them.

Yeah why not. It should mess up that idiot psychics plans if everyone is alive and hanging out at the regen pod.

Plus fungus creep can see what sort of mess he is now.

>>908630
"I found a healing pod. One that I was going to try using on you when I heard you got gibbed. That's why we came looking for you, for the record. Guess this is what good deeds gets me."

If you don't tell them about Beanna and if she either gets out or they find her in there, you'll get a broken arm or worse because you didn't take the opportunity to come clean.

"I found Beanna earlier, covered in purple goop growing tentacles and eyestalks. She was being mindcontrolled and attacked me. We fought, I won and some fucking alien psychic dickbag made me stash her in some kind of healing pod before she bled to death."

>>908630
Tell them about Beanna to distract them and let them know it's probably they can save her from the machine if they handle it right.

...Also make it clear you were given very bad instructions on how to use the machine.

Not good. Your implant recognizes that the purple fluid makeshift veins are Karei's greatest vulnerable components, but it can't recognize the fact that those veins are doing a great job buffing all the fleshy bits so that THEY can hold the veins in place. If you want to make an impact, you'll need to go against your implants and tear him apart by the dull bits. If that's possible at this point.

May as well tell him about Beanna. Keep his mind occupied as long as possible.

>>908629
>Shouldn't have paused to confirm. Should have moved away.
No shit, dumbass. That’s entirely your fault.

>>908630
Wait, he’s a neumono and neumono enjoy fighting. Which means.....if you feel something poking you in the back, then you just turned him on by fighting him!

Ask him if he’s even looked at himself? Can’t he see that he’s been glued together by a foreign alien substance that might be slowly taking control over his body right now? You’re the xenobiologist, he should let you examine that purple stuff to see if it’s harmful or just some weird glue that’s keeping him alive because he was supposedly torn into bloody chunks!

We're not running a pod people support group over here. Let's head in the direction of Fip instead.

>>908663
Also, yes, tell them about Beanna.

Not sure if you should mention Flukebiter or not. Because him giving you bad instructions on how to use the healing pod would be a convenient way to explain whatever happened to Beanna in the healing pod isn’t entirely your fault.

>That's a ridiculous notion, yich eaters aren't telepathic.
Neither are mikliks, normally. But Flukebiter was able to get into your head, right? And she mentioned having other options? Therefore someone else around here has something.

>"I was never turned into a pile of chunks, alright?! I was pretty badly maimed, yes, and thought I was going to bleed out, sure, but I guess that idiot belenos over there decided to make it sound like I was vernaut food! No idea why!"
Can your weird eye tell how deep the seams in his body go? There's a big difference between glued together chunks and plastered over cuts.

>Do I tell them about Beanna?
You mentioned her to Rellze, who might stop being incompetent enough at some point to remember, so not telling will only make you look bad.

"Found Beanna, filled with tentacles that made her crazy. Beat her up, she started acting like herself again, stuck her in what an unreliable alien claimed was a healing pod because she'd have bled out otherwise. Protip: it's probably healing the alien stuff too, so she might be crazy when we find her again."

"Useless over there said he saw Fip covered in purple stuff and not acting like himself either."

"So yeah, there's some context on why I hit you, purple-eyes."

"Wait, what have I actually done wrong here, besides attacking you on suspicion of being an undead fungus monster? I'm pretty sure that's not a violation of my parole. If anything, defending the crew from xenoflora is actually in my job description."

>>908663
>Ask to examine him
This!

If he gets suspicious of your intentions, then explain to him that, out of the 3 of you currently here, he's the one that's best suited for combat against any possible hostiles that we may encounter here!

Then tell him that he's right, you want to survive. And the best way to survive is to make sure the neumono isn't going to be negatively affected by the purple stuff that's covering him!

Yes, tell them, include details. That should excuse your earlier hostility and suspicion, given you though Karei was under the control of an alien fungus. They may be confused as to why you tried to help her, which may be an opportunity to chance their opinion of you, or at least plant the seeds of that idea.

A theory on that by the way: Maybe the decentralised brain and overcharged neumono immune system meant that all the fungus managed to do was pull Karei together, and then his immune system kicked the shit out of it. Meaning that that's Karei and not a fungus puppet. Got to show him a mirror if we ever find one here though, as he's somehow not noticed all the purple lines going through him.

Don't lie on the chance that flukebiter is talking to any of them, as that psychic sourpuss may rat you out. Which is something you don't want in a survival situation and with a broken collarbone.

Ehh, may as well mention her. It is a good practical example of exactly how extremely compromised someone who is glued together with purple slush(they were either sliced into chunks or someone went over their entire surface with a scalpel, the former, while ridiculous, is less so) is. One look at her "join the collective" speech should demonstrate the problem, and she seemed plenty hateful towards the mind control when she was lucid, so she should testify to the evils of purple sludge regardless. Undermining neumono is always good!

1/3 Cui 2018/10/31(Wed)03:58 No. 909044 ID: 456cbb
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>yich eater
"Well, I thought I heard the yich eater earlier, but I couldn't see them."
"Ugh, Adam. Well, that's four out of six."
"I think Pip's around too," says Rellze.
"Five. Beanna?"

>tell him about beanna
"Well. I think she's alive. I saw her covered in purple goop growing tentacles and eyestalks, and she attacked me while screaming something about being as one, then I tore off the tentacles and eyestalks and then she was bleeding badly, and then an alien voice in my head told me to take her to a healing pod and now she's possibly being further infected with a malevolent alien biomass because I was given terrible instructions."

Karei stares at me.

"...did... did you finally go completely psychotic?" Karei makes sure he has a tighter grip on my arms. "Alien voices in your head?"
"Have you seen what you look like?"
"So I'm covered in a weird purple patchwork of lines, whatever, what was that about alien voices in your head?"
"Well, his name is Flukebiter and he's some kind of telepathic alien... thing. Actually, I was looking for you to throw your chunks into said healing pod to see if that did anything for you, so this is what I get for my good intentions, huh?"
"Bullshit," says Karei.
"Actually that's the same story she gave to me, kinda," says Rellze, meekly. "Also Pip was covered in weird tentacles and eyestalks too."
"That's ridiculous, but we're in a ridiculous situation," says Karei.
"They look a lot like the eyes you have right now," I add helpfully.
"Wh-- my eyes are fine! I'd have noticed something weird about them by now!"
"When was the last time you looked in a mirror?"
"I'm not falling for whatever ploy you're trying to use to get away from me, Cui!"
"It's honestly not a ploy, why would I lie about something so irrelevant?"

"Y-yeah, your eyes are kinda, uh, kinda purple," says Rellze, who seems determined not to aggravate either of us and in doing so is making us both look down on him more.
"Well, fine. Take me to this 'healing pod', and if this is a trap, I will not be nearly as merciful as I'm being now."
"Careful, neumono, I'm fragile, I break easily. I know your kind don't remember this too well."
"I'll be extra careful," says Karei, twisting my arm a tiny smidgen more.

We head backwards to where I last found the pod, and I boredly call out directions. Rellze corrects me a few times, which only annoys me further.

"Here it is, the pod."

2/3 Cui 2018/10/31(Wed)03:58 No. 909045 ID: 456cbb
File 154098350090.png - (164.92KB , 800x600 , techdiffs.png )

Karei doesn't say anything for a minute.

"Okay, so you did find a weird alien pod. Credit where it's due."
"Beanna's inside, currently being... well, I was told it would heal her. Except then I pushed the wrong button so it might be covering her with more purple goop. Neither the operation nor intent of the... I guess I'll call it a machine were explained to me."
"Or you fed Beanna to a weird alien plant," says Karei. "Can we back up for a second and focus on that 'weird alien voice'?"
~Hey so I'm back,~ says Flukebiter, at the worst possible moment, ~Turns out you're the only one who can both hear me and also has any sense left. So I'm actually stuck with you after all. Maybe you learned to be less obnoxious while I was gone.~
"Oh good. It's back."
"What's back?"
"Flukebiter." I sigh.
"Okay, so I'm not interested in your psychotic delusion's name, I'm more interested in whether it's telling you to kill anyone right now. I'm not a psych worker, Cui, I'm in charge of making sure you don't go berserk and kill us all, and this isn't a promising sign--"

An apparition of Flukebiter appears next to me in an abrupt flash around us, and stares directly at Karei.
Rellze yelps and staggers backwards.
~And the annoying thing is the red one has a latent paraspacial sensitivity, too, but attuned the wrong *direction*. The *frequency* isn't right and the *taste* is incredibly *close* like *technology bird*. Attuned to what, I'm not sure. Something not here. A master signal elsewhere? Is this species eusocial? And then there's a very weak purple *taste* like all the other things here. That one's fading fast, though.~
My head hurts as Flukebiter's efforts to telepathically communicate certain concepts bounce off my brain entirely.
~...yeah, I should have guessed you couldn't grasp those concepts. Welp.~

"Hello, Flukebiter," I say, more out of protocol than any sort of friendly greeting intent. "Please stop thinking nonsense into my head."
"Is this the alien voice you were talking about?" says Karei.
"Yeah, although I thought the visions were just in my head."
"If they are, they're shared," says Karei, glaring at the phantom Flukebiter.
"Is that an alien ghost??" ask Rellze, backing up against the wall.
"No, unfortunately this thorn in my side is alive," I say. "And apparently can't talk to anyone but me."
"Well," says Karei, "isn't that convenient. Let's say I believe you now. Tell it to raise one of those... arms? Tentacles?"

Flukebiter looks directly at Karei in an annoyed manner and raises one of his arms. The sound of annoyed clicks and squeaks comes from Flukebiter's general direction.
"...oh," says Karei.

3/3 Cui 2018/10/31(Wed)03:58 No. 909046 ID: 456cbb
File 154098352780.png - (164.92KB , 800x600 , techdiffs.png )

~Please tell him the communication barrier is one way while you're conscious.~
~Wait, how are you hearing him?~
~Via you. Don't focus on the how or why too much, it makes it harder to read you-- I said don't! Stop focusing on it! Agh!~

Karei and Rellze stare in confusion as I glare into Flukebiter and think as hard as I can about all the sense this entire situation isn't making. Flukebiter's phantom avatar writhes in discomfort as he stares just as scornfully back at me.

~You are the absolute worst at tech support, by the way!~
~You need to not keep jumping into things!~
~I'm sorry, who's reliant on who here?~
~You literally can't leave without me, so I'd say it's mutual. Much like our annoyance.~
~So, if you can apparently just manifest yourself as an image, why didn't you do that earlier?~
~No projectors available. I've been directing some of the few maintenance servitors that haven't been infected.~
~It's not weird 'paraspacial' absurdity?~
~Do you have any idea how much focus it takes to just talk like this? Manifesting an image isn't something you can just casually do! You'd have to be an incredibly powerful and skilled paraspacial manipulator to just make images out of thin air like that!~

"Are you going to just keep staring at the weird alien hologram thing," says Karei, "or are you going to offer any more explanation about the whole thing?"
Flukebiter waves a tendril at him, and makes a few dismissive clicks.
Karei looks annoyed. "You said you can talk to this thing, right, Cui? Can you translate?"
"Yeah."

"...are you going to?"
~YES SAY YES SAY YES PLEASE SAY YES~
"I'm thinking about it."
~YOU ARE THE WORST, CUI, THE WORST~
"Thinking about it?! Cui, this thing told you how to use the pods, it could probably tell us how to get out of here!"
~I CAN IN FACT DO THAT AND AM VERY VERY WILLING TO TELL ALL OF YOU HOW TO FREE ALL OF YOU AND MYSELF FROM THIS NIGHTMARE REALM I'VE CAUSED DUE TO MY OWN MISTAKES OKAY~
"I'm not sure it's going to be very cooperative," I say.
"Really?"
~CUI PLEASE I AM DESPERATE I HAVE NO OTHER OPTIONS~

Well, the way I see it, there's limited options here.
I can't just pretend not to know what Flukebiter's saying, I gave that away.
I can't clam up or Karei will know I'm being deliberately non-compliant, which won't make him very happy. And I just know he'll have some breaking point where his professionalism falls to the wayside and he just tries to end me.
Flukebiter's also obviously capable of understanding what they're saying via me, and I don't have enough spite in me to sabotage my own senses just to get one up over him.
So that leaves, what, two options?

One, I can speak for Flukebiter fairly and as clearly as possible.
Two, I speak for Flukebiter and twist and change everything he wants to say to suit me better, as there's nothing he can really do to stop me. Shouldn't have told me I was his only shot right after abandoning me, the idiot.

There might be something else I'm not seeing right now.

>>909046

>not seeing something

The fact that Flukebiter might - and probably eventually will - figure out ways to communicate that will incriminate you? It already has a projector, so that's a FORM of communication, if perhaps unbearably primitive and inadequate to it.

I mean, it's right there, and Karei is already suspicious of you. Your best bet to get 'im off your back is to play it cool and straight and only lie about things Flukebiter doesn't find important enough to correct you on and/or when it isn't around.

Tell Karei you'll translate if he releases you and lets you do your actual goddamn job from now - which includes attempting to cure him and Beanna from an OBVIOUS ALIEN AND MIND-ALTERING INFECTION that somehow just isn't taking as well on him so far (interesting, isn't it?). Shouldn't bring that shit home.

"Up front, it sounds 'sincere', but I don't know if we can trust it. It's kind of a mess emotionally, saying it's responsible for all of this, whatever this is. I'll still translate, but only if you release me. I'm not that interested in killing you right now, believe it or not. Despite being purpl'd up, you're still way saner than Beanna was and if we can figure out how you're resisting, I might be able to do something to help."

Tell Flukey you'll translate - as long as it keeps the answers coming. If it wants you to be honest to these guys, it should repay the favour~

Ask why the heck you got trapped here with amnesia in the first place. If it doesn't actually know - then it has to give its best guess.

Ask Flukey about this 'infection' that he might possibly probably definitely have unleashed here upon all of you. Seeing as, apparently, this is its place?

Ask Flukebiter when Beanna's healing will be done, so you can dismember and then heal her properly (which of course she's not gonna appreciate, but eeeeh maybe you can get Karei to do it so the grievance is spread out).

>One, I can speak for Flukebiter fairly and as clearly as possible.
The problem with option two is the others will suspect it, and Flukebiter will be aware of it, and therefore have a solid reason to betray you at the first opportunity.

Introductions!

Right. Guys, here's Flukebiter. To their detriment, they're terrible at instructions and seems to struggle with the basic concept that an alien would be ignorant of an alien environment or technology and are easily frustrated. To their advantage, they claim to genuinely want to cooperate, and has complained several times that I am a terrible person. So an idiot, but there's hope. Probably.

Flukebiter, this is either Karei, my joyless jailer, or a fungus that thinks it is. That's Rellze, a roboticist with terrible taste and worse sense.

>>909046
Just speak for Flukebiter. They did promise to get us out of here. We can always rip them in half later if they completely fuck us over.

>>909046
Speak for Flukebiter fairly and as clearly as possible. And make sure you tell Karei and Rellze that they don’t need to tell you to tell Flukebiter something, he can hear them as long as you’re conscious, he just can’t speak directly to them.

Let’s start with introductions, this is Karei, who you were told was ripped into bloody chunks but has now been glued back together with this purple stuff from a swarm of insects that was completely covering him. You’re still not sure if it’s really Karei or something that thinks it’s Karei.

And this is Rellze, who just recently revealed that he’s got a crush on you and may possibly have feelings for you. If Karei calls bullshit, tell him that you also have a hard time believing it.

Now that you’ve got that outta the way, let’s focus on Beanna, who Flukebiter said is currently getting covered in more of that purple stuff. Is there anyway we can stop that from happening before the pod is finished healing Beanna or are we going to have to repeat the process of pulling the purple stuff off of her and putting her back in the healing pod?

We should deal with the pomi in the pod first, so she doesn't pop out and attack mid-conversation.

I would say to be truthful and not deliberately misleading, but brief. You are not here to be a glorified communicator and everyone here is likely to try to control you in some-or-other unpleasant way. Information control is useful, an endless network of lies to track is a risk, hassle, and probably unnecessary.
Truthful, but mostly need-to-know.

It is important to note that Fluk has control of maintenance and projection across some part of this place, which is a lot of influence. Expect traps and automated weapons and such in any confrontation...

Ask about the nudity. I mean, seriously, there is no way that you were ALL naked when this happened, and clothing isn't all that different from flesh, and confiscating your equipment just to leave you scattered around with no restraints is just weird.

Flu can apparently tap your senses. It is unlikely that your weakness-vision(weavis) will stay secret for long, and Fluk might already know depending upon how secretly Flu can joyride you and how many of the facility's sensors Fluk can access. Then again, Flu did have a "my left/your left" issue. That sounds more like external senses than first-person...

"Literally can't leave without me" is also interesting...

>>909139
>It is unlikely that your weakness-vision(weavis) will stay secret for long, and Fluk might already know
Speaking of people that already know about that, Cui, you said you kept that a secret, but Rellze said that he knows about it because he got access to your files. Do you know who else had access to your files? Karei did. Which means that he most likely also knows about your flower eye and what it can do.

Basically, the thing you’ve been trying to keep secret, probably isn’t as secret as you think it is. Whoever had access to your files knows about you eye, so it might not even be worth the effort to try and keep it secret anymore.

Give Cliffs Notes of the truth - Karei doesn't like you stalling and neither does Flukebiter.

1/2 Cui 2018/11/04(Sun)12:57 No. 909585 ID: 8a614b
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>everyone knows about your eye.
Ugghhh. Frustrating but most likely true. Well, then. Guess I'll still have the advantage of surprise if I play my cards right.

>translate fairly
I guess that has the lowest chance of coming back to bite me.

"Alright, I'll see what I can do, on one condition. Keep your oversized neumono mitts off me and let me do my job."
Karei stares at me. "...The second you look like you're pulling any shady shit over us, you're tasting the floor."
"Understood. Now, this here is Flukebiter. While you can't hear him, he can hear you and can use me as a translator while I'm conscious, so keep that in mind, Karei."
"I'm sorry, what are you accusing me of now? Which one of us struck first?"
"Excuse me, which of us actually did the most damage?"
"I don't know, let's ask the Snowriven hive, shall we?"
"...how can you bear a grudge against me for something that didn't even affect you?"
"It did affect me." The moment Karei says this, his eyes widen as if he's just dropped some world-shattering secret by mistake. He immediately turns away from me.
"How?"
Karei goes quiet. "Doesn't matter. In the past."
"If that's true, then there's a fault with due process, because I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to have a jailer who started off wanting to rip me limb from limb--"
"In. The. Past. Drop it."

I decide antagonising Karei further is not helpful for my long-term survival. "...Moving along, Flukebiter is an alien responsible for this entire mess."
~Untrue! Partially, yes, but not wholly!~
"And is now protesting vehemently that he was only slightly responsible for this entire mess. Flukebiter, this is Rellze, a belenosian roboticist, with no spine, a crush on me, and a terrible idea of how to impress people, and this is Karei, a pile of purple fungus that thinks it's my jailer."
"I'm not... whatever."
"Have you looked in a mirror?"
"Let me know when you find one in this isolated alien cave, and I'll humour you."

Flukebiter visibly rolls his eyes in his projected avatar. ~I know, I know, what part of reading surface thoughts did you not understand? If you know who they are, I have a dim awareness of who they are.~
"Now he's chastising me for introducing you both because he evidently does not care."
~I hate that I'm reliant on you.~

>beanna
"Now, matters of greater urgency. Beanna is in this pod being deeply infected or something. How do we stop this?"
~I've never tried to interrupt a pod's healing program before, so I'd strongly recommend letting it finish and dealing with it as you did before.~
"Flukebiter is advising me to let the pod finish and then beat the crap out of Beanna and put her back in with the proper program."

Karei glares at Flukebiter, who looks the other way. "Okay. That's our only option?"
"Well, it was the only idea I had too."
"Very well. If that's our only option, stand aside. I'll deal with incapacitating her. I suspect I can be more merciful about it than you."
"Whatever makes you feel heroic, jailer," I mutter.
"I'm literally paid to make sure you don't cause any harm or suffering to anyone else," says Karei through gritted teeth, "and I'm not going to stand by while you get your kicks torturing the only good soul among us."

Rellze makes a noise.
"Yeah how about you stop worshipping mass murderers first and then I'll bump you up in the rankings," says Karei.
"It's not worship," says Rellze, meekly.

>nudity
Something else bothers me.
"Also, Flukebiter, why are we all naked?"
~Eh? What?~
"None of us have our clothes. Rellze had a blindfold for some reason."
"I didn't question that," says Rellze.
"Or our gear, or anything but ourselves, really, and I'm not even sure that's true for Karei."
Karei doesn't even respond this time.
~Nudity? Oh, lacking equipment. Hm. No clue. Honestly, when I first woke up after... things got bad, the only intact among you were already missing gear. I suspect maintenance drones may have taken it to the armory if it was just abandoned, but they wouldn't take coverings. Something else must have given the order. There's definitely maintenance servitors not listening to me anymore.~
I repeat this to the crowd.
"What something else?" asks an incredibly annoyed Karei, staring directly into Flukebiter's eyes.

There's a conspicuous pause.
~Let me explain the situation as I understand it. Let me start from the very beginning.~
I translate what Flukebiter explains to us as he uses the projectors to broadcast a swirling mess of images...

2/2 Flukebiter 2018/11/04(Sun)12:57 No. 909586 ID: 8a614b
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I am Flukebiter, genetic descendent of the master neno fi fleshweaver Origin, of Shadow Fleet, tendril unknown.
My mother, the beginner fleshweaver Voidsong of Shadow Fleet tendril 4356, was given instruction to produce descendents through an unconventional means. Biologically. Without genotype analysis, without loading sequences into the gestation chambers, but to bear offspring as though an animal rather than use the standard, perfected means of producing offspring. I do not know what act of disobedience carried such an unnecessary sentence, nor why such a wasteful and odd sentence was even considered, but the only fate intended for the offspring at the time was basic phenotype analysis and most likely recycling due to the baseline requirements for new kiter individuals. I unexpectedly met all criteria, and was permitted to live.

Look, I can't just explain what the Kiter Empire is to you, alright? Let me just summarise it as a big engine of conquest where there aren't really civilians, just minions.

However, unexpected trajectory changes for tendril 4356 led to mass casualties due to paraspacial feedback. There were magnitudes fewer neno fi available for the demands required, so all living neno fi, myself included, were salvaged and repurposed for whatever work needed to be done. By simple fact of there being fewer experienced fleshweavers, Voidsong found herself catapulted up in the ranks.

She held no compassion for me, however, naming me after something I had done when I was a newborn and, in her eyes, the act of a primitive mind lacking the most basic value conditioning of any reasonable kiter individual. She made sure I saw deployment wherever she didn't have to remember I existed.

No, shut up, this is important, I'm setting things up.

So I became tired of being seen as a disposable resource, and managed to get reassigned to another fleet tendril after more neno fi had been brought into action. Voidsong saw a chance to be rid of me forever, a constant reminder of a more powerless time, and leapt upon it, doing everything she could to make sure I was sent away.

I honed my skills within tendril 4312, and eventually joined the push forward into experimental new means for paraspacial traversal. For time immemorial, the Kiter Empire was locked within a single galaxy, forever having to slash and burn its way across it to continue existing. If we could travel to other galaxies, we could--

Okay! Okay! I'll get to the point! Yeesh!

So there I was, having recently taken control of a small scout ship after choosing to break away from the Kiter Empire-- oh, now I've skipped too far ahead? Tough! Stop interrupting me! Anyway, I successfully established control over the scout ship largely through purging the rest of the crew save for the servitors vital to keep it running. Well, I put a neno fi xenopropagandist named Toneshaper into a pod at her request as she was also interested in breaking away, but some neburi decided to kill her while she was helpless in the pod, so that might have something to do with why I just purged everyone else. ...I liked her, okay? A lot. I tried to fix her, but couldn't. Best I could do was keep her vital systems alive. ...so that's how I left her. A vegetable inside a pod, in vain hope I'd one day discover some miracle cure to neural fragmentation.

So now my plans were ruined, I had an experimental galaxy-crossing ship, and I was now trying to pour all my effort into something, anything that would fix her, while also working on a bioweapon to send back to the Kiter Empire as a farewell present. Well, more of a revenge thing, seeing as all of this could have been avoided if the Kiter Empire wasn't the horrible oppressive all-consuming murder engine it is.

Then some weird white pod abruptly tried to dock inside the ship. Well, more like it just interpenetrated the ship with no regard for space, and unsurprisingly the ship went completely haywire and I ended up crashlanding here. And then I was pretty sure I died.

But I came to, and after realising I was somehow unharmed despite everything, the entire ship was covered in the telltale purple of my bioweapon, which had clearly escaped containment, and most of the servitors had been eaten or infected with a weird purple fungus, and the strange white object was opened, and free of any contents.

Then the servitors decided I was badly damaged, which I wasn't, and put me back into some sort of freakish purple parody of a healing pod and moved me somewhere else, while some budding intellect told me it needed me to design things for it and it needed to grow but outside was too cold.

Meanwhile, some green thing with far too many legs is running around and I have no idea what they're doing other than ripping up anything they come across while using weird and primitive biotech tools to... I don't know, make a fort of some kind? No idea what's going on there. I tried to speak to it, but it might as well not be there in paraspace. Just like talking to a hole. Seems incredibly hostile against aliens.

And now said budding intellect is no longer budding, nor particularly sociable, and the last thing it said to me was 'you are no longer necessary' before cutting all contact with me.

So I'm wedged in some sort of healing pod that I still haven't located, and we're all stuck inside the rigid, frozen carcass of a Kiter ship on a frozen, icy world.

...Any further questions?

>Meanwhile, some green thing with far too many legs
Did they end in claw-like claspers on the end of comically narrow appendages? A long worm-like body structure with a head at one end, and possibly a bulb at the other?

If so, the creature you're describing is a salikai. They're... basically paranoid mad inventors as a species. Ripping up everything to build a fort makes sense for one of them.

>...Any further questions?
So we're all going to die because you build a bioweapon you can't control and killed everyone who could have been monitoring your ships collision detection sensors.

Blame pointing aside- what is your bioweapon supposed to do? So far as we can tell, it suborned Beanna (without killing her, somehow), and it either patched Rellze's injuries, or has replaced him while deluding itself into continuity of consciousness. Neither of those really seem like desirable features to build into a bioweapon? "Oh no, the enemy population is alive, but purple-veined and suffering from existential angst!"

Let the others ask their questions first, then make follow-up questions and comments.

"Draw us a rough approximation of the white object. Do you know where it last was in relation to where we are? - actually, scratch that. If you can, draw a map and note down points of interest as we talk."

"Any way to get your ship operational again and/or do we need to clear the infestation somehow?"

"Do you have a bead on what the other intelligence was after from the way it was talking to you? Also, did you get to see it and did it look like any of these [describe your missing companion(s?)]?"

"How do we operate your freaky evil empire technology without your assistance? (Seeing as you can't be in everyone's head all the time.)"

"The green thing seems Salikai-ish. If a salikai kidnapped us and did illegal experiments on us, that might explain our memory loss - and why Karei got cut up with prejudice. (Not me, in other words.) Doesn't explain what's going on with you."

>>909586
So what exactly do this bioweapon actually do?

>>909585
>"Very well. If that's our only option, stand aside. I'll deal with incapacitating her. I suspect I can be more merciful about it than you."
"On the other hand, I have the ability to see where the purple shit is, and how best to remove it without accidentally killing her."

>>909585
>"Very well. If that's our only option, stand aside. I'll deal with incapacitating her. I suspect I can be more merciful about it than you."
“All I did last time was throw her into the river and she pulled the purple stuff off herself. So do you plan on dragging her to the river, throwing her in it, and then carrying her back here?”

>>909586
That.... is the dumbest series of events ever. Also, tell the rest of the crew that Adam's gone crazy and stolen all our stuff.

Also, remind our jailor that you have magical purple-shit-detecting eyes.

Also, Flukebiter, why is your bioweapon hostile to its creator? Why would you NOT specifically include loyalty in its coding?!

>speak for Flukebiter fairly and as clearly as possible
I'm honestly going with this because I'm hoping that without you causing friction you'll be more and more ignored. Especially if you can actually find this guy and everyone starts focusing on him to get everyone out. Then while everyone is more worried about getting the hell out of here you escape not only from this place but also from you keepers.

You're already caught right now so might as well play nice fore now so people will start focusing on everything else and put you at the back of their mind. Plus if you twist things, once you actually get to Flukebiter he'll probably call you out which will probably bite you in the ass.

"Fluke, please describe what the 'green thing with too many legs looks like.' Do the 'legs' end in jagged looking claspers?"

>some budding intellect told me it needed me to design things for it and it needed to grow
Did you design your bioweapon with intelligence or sentience? Because that's what it sounds like.

On a hunch, it sounds like it's trying to grow, and the only thing stopping it from overrunning the planet is that you're on some sort of ice world hostile to biological life.

>...Any further questions?
Yeah. Escape now sounds like it will end in freezing to death, so what's the plan? What exactly are we supposed to do that will get us out of this mess of yours while fending off a rogue bioweapon, dealing with an isolationist salikai, and fighting amongst ourselves?
...How did we even get here? It doesn't sound like our dysfunctional group is in Kansas anymore.

...so this is all, at least partially, your fault?

So what was this bioweapon supposed to do and please tell me you at least had some way to counteract it incase it did ever breach contaminate and get lose.