[Nexus] Remnant HQ

[happyturtle]

Infirmary >> Edijar's Place

"It's a deal," she says. Charity accepts the bandaging, gives Bugs a kiss on the cheek, and heads for home, hoping that Edijar is still asleep.

[UncleWolf]

Edijar's Place

Edijar is still asleep, somewhat peacefully, as he hasn't moved very much.

[happyturtle]

Edijar's Place

Charity slips under the covers and curls up with him, trying to be careful not to wake him.

[UncleWolf]

Edijar's Place

Edijar stirs slightly, turning around to wrap an arm around Charity and keep her close before falling back to sleep.

[Rebonack]

[Mess Hall]

"Well... Maybe I would go in to look for green chili sauce? Or maybe come in at night to get a snack? Or something."

Yes.

Something!

"I just want to make sure I don't upset anyone by mistake. I want to make as good of an impression as I can."

Good first impressions are always a plus.

Especially on new jobs!

"I'm also not sure whether or not I'm going to have to run back to the teleportation chamber. If I vanish all of a sudden you can have the rest of my tacos."

[happyturtle]

Mess Hall

"But someone could go in the kitchen and poison the food for the whole base. That's why it's restricted," Sunny says. "If you need a snack after hours, there are vending machines."

There are always vending machines.

[Rebonack]

[Mess Hall]

Jeany just...

Sort of...

Sits there for a few moments.

Looks down at her tacos.

"...has someone tried to poison the food here before?"

That sounds like a pretty serious concern!

The Tyranid isn't sure if she can even get poisoned by things that would hurt humans anymore. But better safe than sorry, right?

[happyturtle]

Mess Hall

Sunny starts to answer that she doesn't know, but before she does, a tough looking suit of power armour suddenly decloaks next to the pair. "Internal security is classified." Missy says.

What, you didn't think they were just going to let a bioweapon wander around the base unsupervised, terrorizing the cook and interrogating the engineer did you?

[Rebonack]

[Mess Hall]

Jeany was patiently waiting for a reply from Sunny when suddenly!

Giant suit of armor beside her!

Unyielding scary voice!

The jeanstealer "Meep!"s in sufficiently comical fashion and suddenly flickers out of view. Normally she uses her color-changing bio-morph to make her hands and face skin-tone. Why would she do that?

Because it's not easy being green blue.

So...

Yeah.

Jeany suddenly went invisible.

Except for her orange eyes. Which now look like they're just kinda floating in mid-air.

"Uuh...." she pokes at herself a few times, causing ripples of color to flow across her body. "I'm not completely sure how to turn this off..."

[Murska]

Gunther nods as he examines the weapon. I see. Well done, soldier. Put your report on paper and bring it to my adjutant; I want some people to read it.

[Quarters]

"Will do, sir."

...still no food... maybe the desert was better. At least you could eat whenever you wished, so long as you found the food. In here, you're not even being given the chance to go look for it.

However, there was paper. Writing a report was boring, but at least it was writing. Which is almost like reading, but kind of inverted, right? It felt like years since he'd had a book.

[happyturtle]

Mess Hall

"Don't worry, I can still see you," the suit of armour says. Her voice sounds like Missy's normal voice, just fed through a speaker. No spooky distortion added or anything!

"Hi Missy," Sunny says with a wave.

[Morty]

[Quarters]

Alright then. Dismissed, soldier. The officer nods.

[Rebonack]

[Mess Hall]

Missy is scary all on her own! She doesn't need any voice distortion.

"I can't though. This is really weird," Jeany replies somewhat nervously. She takes a few deep breaths to calm herself down before slowly flickering back into view again.

Once visible she breaths a sigh of relief.

And then casts a curious glance back at Missy.

"Have you been following me the whole time?"

A beat.

"Eerr... and should I call you 'Missy' or 'Sir'? I mean Ma'am."

It's obvious that Jeany is new at this.

[happyturtle]

Mess Hall

"Internal security is classified," Missy says. "You're a civvie. Call me whatever you like."

[Murska]

[Recon HQ] --> [Mess Hall]

Finally! There it is! The Holy Grail! For this he has struggled!

The food is somewhere within this space.

Nath walks in and lets out a contented sigh. No-one ever said where to write that report, right? He can take care of getting a new uniform some other time.

[Rebonack]

[Mess Hall]

There's food in here!

Specifically there are a whole bunch of tacos over at that one table presently occupied by Jeany and Sunny (with Missy looming nearby).

There are probably some remains of taco-fixings at the food-counter, but Jeany hit it pretty hard.

She was hungry!

And she has high metabolism!

"...right," Jeany replies to the armor-clad woman. "Well. I'm Amil Wightson. I'm going to be handling the help hotline for Remnant. Nice to meet you Missy."

[Murska]

[Mess Hall]

Tacos? Woohoo! But so few... Nath glances around.

Okay, he could try and get himself food by waiting for ages. He could try and scrape together a bit from the emptied counter. Or he could... try to socialize in the hopes that he could snatch a taco or two.

First option. Takes too long.

Second option. The returns aren't good enough.

Third option. A good compromise.

All right. Nath waves and walks to the table with some food left, trying to act like he belongs and perhaps find an opportunity to tactfully snatch a taco. If that's even possible.

"Hello."

[happyturtle]

Mess Hall

"Carry on," Missy says. And the power armour vanishes as she reactivates her cloaking.

"Um, hi," Sunny says to rather scruffy looking man who just walked in.

[Murska]

[Mess Hall]

Ooh, a mysterious disappearance! Or, well, not so mysterious considering it was wearing a cloaking power armour. However, it probably means that the armoured person won't be eating, right? It would seem logical.

Therefore, there are more tacos. But it would be somewhat rude to just walk up and grab the tacos. Subtlety is key here. All right, mission is a go.

"I'm Nath. Just back from a botched assignment, and there appear to have been some changes in the infrastructure. Took me ages to find my way here." Not least because he was caught by some sword-toting guy and forced to debrief before breakfast. Regardless, Nath keeps a rather obviously fake smile plastered on his face.

[Rebonack]

[Mess Hall]

Jeany just stares at the place Missy was standing for a few moments. Squints at it a little to see if she can't see anyone. Huh. That lady is kind of scary. Can't read her at all...

And then someone new approaches.

After looking at the counter.

...oops.

As he draws near Jeany pushes a plate of tacos she hasn't started eating yet toward him.

"Ah, heh... Sorry about all the food being horded over here. I got a little carried away."

[Murska]

[Mess Hall]

Ooh! Nath's smile suddenly turns quite a bit more genuine. He happily pulls the plate in front of him. "Don't worry about-" and that's when his mouth is blocked by the food. Nom nom nom nom nom... that's actually pretty impressive for a human who cannot dislodge his jaw.

[happyturtle]

Mess Hall

Sunny will... sit and quietly finish her tacos, suddenly very shy and anxious to get back to the lab.

No, not her wedding planning. That's what a normal girl would be thinking of a few days before her wedding. Sunny is thinking of what adjustments she needs to make to the turbo encabulators.

[Rebonack]

[Mess Hall]

Huh.

The engineering got quiet all of a sudden. No doubt she's just busy thinking about how to reverse the polarity on the neutron couplings or something.

Nah, that would be silly to think about right now! She has a wedding coming up! No doubt her mind is just swimming with all the details that need to be covered.

Jeany smiles a bit at the thought of wedding planning. No doubt the nice young lady will be very happy.

And the guy seems to like the tacos.

"Eerrr. Glad you're enjoying them. I'm Amil, by the way. Amil Wightson. I'm going to be running the help-line here at Remnant and I've been trying to get to know as many of my co-workers as I can."

[Murska]

[Mess Hall]

With a personal record on finishing the plate, Nath cleans up after himself quickly before turning back to the other people.

"Hm."

He blinks for a moment. Something odd about both of them. Then again, it's not like that isn't true about pretty much everyone around here.

One of them seems to be of some weird species and another seems to be... shy? Really, there are people like that in the Nexus? He'd have to mark this up once he found somethingto write stuff down on.

After this short pause to gather his thoughts and evaluate his conversational partners, he continues.

"I'm Nathaniel Marath. Aiming to become an officer soon-ish. Again. Sorry for my manners, but it's been some time since I ate. I'm sorry if I interrupted something."

Okay, now careful for the response. If it signifies he did interrupt something, he'll need to head somewhere else to write. However, he is far more interested about finally finding out something about what's been happening here, so perhaps these people can help. Then again, the... whatever it is that's speaking to him seems to be new here.

[happyturtle]

Mess Hall

"I'm Sunny. I'm an engineer," Sunny says.

[Rebonack]

[Mess Hall]

And now everyone knows each other.

Yay.

Jeany looks enough like a genestealer that should could probably be identified as one to someone familiar with the critters. Though she's gone out of her way to make herself look as human as possible.

It's very obvious that she isn't.

Like the lack of nose, for one.

"I don't... think anything was interrupted," Jeany comments, glancing over at Sunny questioningly. "I was just asking some silly questions about how things work around here and then Missy popped out of thin air to inform me that internal security issues are classified."

[Murska]

[Mess Hall]

Nath doesn't really know enough about genestealers to identify them. I mean, he tries to learn but Nexus has millions of species. He's only like, halfway through cataloguing them all. Kidding, he doesn't even try nowadays. There's limits to his curiosity, as difficult as it might be to imagine.

Sunny. Had he heard that name before? Maaaaybe? Better ignore that feeling if he isn't sure.

"Heh. They do that. I think it's just to make an impression, really.

I'm supposed to write a report about the past few week... er, months? I'm not actually sure. But I've got no idea what's happened here in the meanwhile. I can see someone did some radical restructuring but the entire hierarchical organization seems to have been altered and that seems to point to a larger upheaval, really."

[Rebonack]

[Mess Hall]

Well... That's actually kind of nice. If someone doesn't know what a Tyranid is then there's a good chance they won't assume that Jeany is going to help an alien race devour the whole planet.

That always makes conversations a little more awkward.

"I think you might be talking about the Vanishing?" Jeany suggests. "Several months back a sizable portion of the Empire just up and disappeared. No one has any clue why. This isn't the first time an army has just vanished from the Nexus, though. But this is the first time an army has vanished from the Nexus that has been established for so long."

There was this one time when a whole army of Protos showed up and then just poofed into nothing a week later.

Weird, huh?

[Murska]

[Mess Hall]

"Ah. That sounds... complicated. I think I will have to alter my analysis on the threat level of our possible opposition. And it also explains why communication links were so impossible to come by.

Still, several months? According to my estimates, that should be impossible. The conclusion I draw from that is that there is also some sort of a temporal anomaly, but I will have to find out more to make sure it is part of the normal Nexus cycle - if the tango has temporal technology then a potential war would most likely become quite a bit more complex. Plus it'd be likely it had already been waged. Wait... it might already have been waged. Several months, huh?"

Okay, I'm not sure if anybody can follow him at this point. What's he on about?

"Can either of you give me an estimate on the current mobilizeable battlegroup strength of whatever's left of the Empire, assuming a week of time to prepare?

Oh, and do we have any progress on the increase of piercing potential on our gunship XMR-14 missiles like I suggested? I would have to note that considering the enemy appears to utilize thermostatic mass redundancy armour, reliable spectral JC-imaging and either a high-altitude boson-based antigrav or possibly some sort of a formation aircushion covers, if we are to face the enemy on our terms we will need for our mobile combat platforms to consist of some form of disruption weaponry or just a ton of smart bombs. I don't think most of our CAS can take heavy-duty rail-ammunition."

Okay, that last part is technobabble. There are also mentions of advanced combat systems and stuff. From what an average person would gather, he's met some sort of a high-tech opponent who might be an enemy. Or something. Maybe he wants more tacos.

[Rebonack]

[Mess Hall]

Okay.

That guy just said a bunch of words.

So many words.

And Jeany had no idea what most of them meant.

Well, okay. He's talking about weapons of some kind. Yeah, that's clear. Missiles and rail weapons and bosons. And all sorts of stuff!

The jeanstealer coughs somewhat uncomfortably.

"I... uuh... I don't know anything about combat or troop straight or or how well missiles blow holes in things. I just answer the phone."

Jeany is so confused like this that she gets confused right into dead-time!