[Nexus] AMEN XLV: The Zoo

[Hattish Thing]

Main Room

Captain Clegg stands here. Forgotten. Where'd all the members go? Eh...'Ello? People? Are there any people 'ere, where'd ye all go? I wanna join! I'm no' 'ere t' kill anybody. 'Ello? Anybody 'ere?! Eh? Now he's wandering about, searching for members.

[happyturtle]

Main Room with Beargons

"We're all right here, just where we were a minute ago! Geez, I sent a plot clone to the meeting, because we still have a beargon to wrangle, so this scene isn't done! And anyway, I already pointed you to Ilpholin's office. Go there if you want to join." Darcy points again.

Meeting Room

Darcy opens her mouth. Shuts it. Uses her shapeshifting control to keep her face from showing what she is feeling.

Which is utterly horrified. She knew Ilpholin had to do questionable things to take and keep AMEN. But this... this goes beyond that. Ilpholin had said her goal was to redirect AMEN's destructiveness, but this isn't redirection. This is direction. Ilpholin is threatening to make AMEN effective.

Moff lifts a hand. "Can we test all this on the henchies first? Especially the 'super vaccine' that we'll all have and the Riverbunch won't?"

Another Moff leans back in his chair. "No way. We're supposed to have the super vaccine fail so that we get hoist by our own picard. It'll be poetic justice and work with the Narrative and all that. It'll be AWESOME."

The first Moff kicks the back leg of Moff's chair and sends him crashing to the floor. "You're only saying that because you're perving on Picard, when everyone knows Kirk is the better captain."

"Shut up!"

"No you shut up!"

This is why you don't let more than one Moff into the meeting.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Main Room]

The door ferret makes a ferret-y noise at Clegg.

Yeah, good ol' Jeremy the ferret is still here!

And he's decided he wants to sit on Clegg's head. And tries to do just that.

*****

[Meeting Room]

Wallace growls threateningly at the Moffs. To be precise, one head growls at each of the two of 'em. In bear-language, the growl translates to "Stop fighting!" but the general meaning of the growl is hopefully rather obvious.

Isabelle ignores the Moffs. She's quite content to leave Wallace to sit on them if they don't behave. "I suppose I could supply some big tough animals of some sort to help out if things go wrong. Something like Wallace. Or maybe Alfred? Wait, have I introduced you to Alfred? I don't think I have..."

[Slii Arhem]

Meeting Room

"Alfred is a bit cuddly to be using for such grunt work, although I suppose he'd be very well suited for getting in and out of areas of Riverside unseen." Not that Wallace isn't cuddly when he's not being an angry bear or made of razor fur, but he's usually always one of those two things.

"Testing the antigen's effectiveness at preventing a musk creeper from taking over a host seems logical. Can I assume one of you two are volunteering for the procedure? It would all have to be supervised by our resident hunky werewolf doctor that I keep chained up in the basement under normal circumstances so I can have him all to myself. I shudder to think what could happen if I left you alone with him, nude on an operating table while he runs his hands over you to check your pulse and other such medically things. He's been so pent up lately." That was utterly cruel, horrifyingly blunt, and somehow even more evil than her plan to hold a cure for Riverside over the population's head after infecting them. Naturally, Shayan says it all in an utter deadpan, since she somehow doubts making any effort at inflection would convince the Moffs any more than what she's already said.

"Apart from those tests, it will take perhaps a few weeks and a supply of fresh corpses to crossbreed the creeper in a manner that I deem sufficient, and far less time to have a Riverside-ready fungal antigen that will die off after a preset time. The super-vaccine is already complete, I would just need to change its method of transfer through the body to creeper affected areas and ensure it doesn't mutate into a deadly strain on its own." Turning a creeper vine into a mushroom-based sporeflinger will take more time than the other two combined, and she can work on all three at once.

"One thing comes to mind though. Without an actual creeper to direct them with its pollen, musk zombies are quite aimless and don't tend to attack people on their own volition. Should I try to alter that behavior somehow, or should we look at potentially implanting someone expendable or a foolhardy enemy with a normal creeper, thus letting them control the zombies and giving everyone a scapegoat to fight against? It may be sufficient to turn everyone into lethargic yellow vegetables, but it would be especially potent if they actually acted like hungering undead. If we did use someone inside the organization, they would have to 'go rogue' and steal my research to use against us, in which case we would be seen cleaning up our own mess, which would lend to the believability of our presence there."

[Reinholdt]

Ilpholin's Office

Over here where Darcy's pointing Clegg.

Meeting Room

Zefir can always stay behind and guard the base with Becky.

"Loathe as I am to say it, Moff's right. One of them is. We should test these strains on the henchmen before proceeding." Also, I think Ilpholin finds Picard hotter, but doesn't add fuel to the Moff fire.

"And it never hurts to have back-up ready. ANd no, I haven't met Alfred."

"Fresh corpses are easy to get and never in short supply here. As for a Leader Creeper... does anyone here want to play that pivotal role and control the plant zombies?" Maybe get that Clegg guy to do it should he sign up, or a mobster should no AMENite prove willing.

[Hattish Thing]

Main Room-Ilpholin's Room

Clegg never really liked small animals, save perhaps when they're baked up in a nice pie. Actually...he likes humans in pies just as well, he's not picky. He did, afctr all, collect his last pay check in human corpses. The ferret jumps on his head. Clegg just sighs. You'd think considering his hair was so disgusting, nothing would wanna sit on him, but...eh. He places his big hat on his head, torn up faded navy with a grizzly black feather. 'Ello again, ye filthy little fleshbag 'o' furry deliciousness. He'll notice Darcy (Heh.) and walk to Ilpholin's office. Greetin's. Be this th' office 'o' Ilpholin Xar'cha?

[happyturtle]

Meeting

Wallace's growls don't have much effect, but Shayan knows what buttons to hit on the Moffs.

"S-sure!" "We're in." "Definitely." "Unless he looks like Michael J Fox in Teen Wolf." "That would be seriously not cool"

[Mindfreak]

Meeting Room
Megan's robotic owl is here, though a bit hidden. Its simply there to send video feed of the meeting to Megan who, as usual, has thrown herself into her work and is unable to leave her lab.
Megan doesn't want to miss out on the meeting, after all.

[The Bushranger]

(Don't you mean noticed Darcy? After all, Darcy isn't the one with the full moon...)

(Anyway:)


[Meeting Room]

"Can we not test them on Pink?" Becky suggests.

[Zefir]

Meeting Room

Protecting the base? That's not nessassary. The mecho panther prove to be enougth to beat everything and after all Zefir has nothing in the base to care of. Not even his staff. He yawns again, this time on prupose.

"And what is it you want to find in this place?"

Defnitly a question asked out of nowhere, but Zefir can't imagine that this action is just for ground controll.

[Lord Magtok]

Meeting Room

Magtok rolls his eyes at Becky. He refrains from actually saying anything about her unrequited infatuation with Pink, though. No need for anymore confrontation and drama with her.

"Should I add a pharmacy to the Riverside MagMart in advance? Medical science wouldn't be anything new, strange, or out of character for me, whereas plant plagues would. Meanwhile, AMEN suddenly having the cure would strongly imply we created the plague in the first place, and make our machinations all a little too obvious to the people in charge of Riverside.

Speaking of, information control. Now, I'm not saying I think anyone here is a spy, or we should go on witch hunts to keep this meeting classified, but we've had bad experiences with that sort of thing before. Does anyone have any ideas to prevent each and every last person in this room from becoming some twisted, blood-sucking ghoul's lingerie-clad pet? Because that's what the Tenebras do with their prisoners of war, if you weren't aware."

That last bit is complete lie, based on absolutely nothing whatsoever. However, with the vampires in Riverside being as mysterious as they are, and Magtok being the only one with experience in dealing with those guys, it certainly sounds plausible, doesn't it?

[UncleWolf]

Meeting Room

Cin, having been here the entire time of course, snorts at the Moffs. "I believe she's referring to me." He says with a small grin before frowning in thought and looking at Ilpholin and Shayan. "What is to be done about those who are still immune or have regenerative properties too great for the plague to deal with? Is there any contingency plan about such, or are we to play ignorance and act like it's a good thing? Chances are that those in power will be those who are the most likely to be able to resist it."

[BladeofObliviom]

[Meeting Room]

Nymphdrows are hard to read indeed. Cyrus can be almost as inscrutable, when he wants to be, but he usually isn't. This is one of those moments where he definitely isn't.

"Really, Mags? I'll have to visit them sometime, then. I like their style."

Wait, what?

"I'm thinking that maybe this should be something that 'one of us cooked up' but 'a rogue agent' was responsible for releasing it. Then, we look better by the fact that we at least appear to be ultimately doing good and cleaning up our own messes, if only because we're spiting said 'rogue agent' by foiling their nefarious plans. Magtok can profit a bit off of selling the suppressants, and we can build a nice power base right there in the middle of Riverside."

Yes, he actually makes air quotes when talking.

"And while I'd imagine that, as mentioned, the water would be a poor vector for most plants or fungi, I wouldn't be so quick to discount Magtok's suggestion. Miss Shayan, is there perhaps a chemical or poison that would help your bioweapon spread effectively, if it were distributed inside the population at large?"

He seems... ...oddly excited about this, seeming just glad to be doing something at all.

[Slii Arhem]

Meeting Room

"The creeper vine originally evolved as a symbiote before it became a predator, and that's reflected in how it adapts to its host when they're zombified. Immune systems and regeneration doesn't fight it off, white magic doesn't "cure" it, it instead fools such countermeasures into thinking it is a normal part of the body. There is a short period where it is vulnerable to being purged from the body before it has fully symbiosed and undermined the immune system, but after that point it would be very difficult to get rid off entirely because of its tenacious regrowth." Shayan makes her own fingerquotes to match Cyrus.

"To that end, I can't imagine poisons would be effective, but something to cause an increase in physical contact between people certainly would. The spores would transmit most directly through mucus membranes, and the gestation period before the afflicted are converted could be up to a day, so the more people the person touches in that time the faster it will spread."

"I do hope that whatever profits Magtok makes off the cure will include some manner of royalties to fund further research. My lab's stipend has been stretched fairly thin."

[Earl of Purple]

Meeting Room

"Vrocks have spores with some interesting effects. I can acquire some for you, if you'd like. The effects are predominantly physical rather than mental, though, and mostly superficial. I would advise against using the river as a vector again- it's too soon after the partypocalypse; people are going to be filtering their water more and such to prevent it from happening again. As always, Ilpholin, for this you have my loyalty. I can supply any air support we need- spraying the streets from aeroplanes at night, fighting the gargoyles of that flying city, and so on." Nephrim continues grasping her rucksack with a death grip.

[Mindfreak]

Meeting Room
Megan robotic owl looks at Shayan.
"If water is going to be a poor conductor of this fungus, why don't we just do it in the food supplies that are already in the city and those that are being brought into the city? Perhaps put a man on whatever people may check in coming shipments, if there is one? They could contaminate it there."
The owl paused for a moment as Megan thought for a bit.
"I also offer my services in whatever you may need from me. Robots, weapons, tools...I can do it."
And biology. But that is one of her lesser used subjects.

[Gullara]

Main Room with Beargons

"Fine. Then I'm going to tell Ilpholin you aren't allowed to have any more gold," Darcy says to Koro.

[Main Room with Beargons]

Koro snorts at her. As if Ilpholin is the boss of him. If he wants gold, he'll have gold. As if to demonstrate this, he puts his head down on his paws and prepares to settle in for a while.

[Reinholdt]

Main Room-Ilpholin's Room

Clegg never really liked small animals, save perhaps when they're baked up in a nice pie. Actually...he likes humans in pies just as well, he's not picky. He did, afctr all, collect his last pay check in human corpses. The ferret jumps on his head. Clegg just sighs. You'd think considering his hair was so disgusting, nothing would wanna sit on him, but...eh. He places his big hat on his head, torn up faded navy with a grizzly black feather. 'Ello again, ye filthy little fleshbag 'o' furry deliciousness. He'll notice Darcy (Heh.) and walk to Ilpholin's office. Greetin's. Be this th' office 'o' Ilpholin Xar'cha?

Ilpholin's Office

The door will open for him to let him in. "Yes, this is." Ilpholin says sitting behind the desk. She motions for one of the empty chairs.

[Meeting Room]

"Depends on how well the tests go." Ilpholin tells Becky. That's all she'll promise in those regards.

"A foothold in one of the two biggest cities in the Nexus is prize enough." She replies to Zefir.

"When we arrive Megan, we'll need your robots and expertise for building up rapidly and forming at least a forward base." She replies to the owl.

"And yes, a Magpharmacy would be helpful, and yes I expect a good amount of profits to go back to Shayan should this all work out well. We'll discuss details on that later."

Shifting gears to Cin, she responds. "Act like it's a good thing. The goal here is not to utterly decimate the population and those in power, but simply keep those in power busy enough that we can move in relatively uncontested. The plague should be a means, not an end."

"In that regards, we aren't horribly concerned about whether they suspect us or not. Just need to have enough doubt there to make it not worth doing anything about. Having someone steal the research from us more than explains why we even have a cure." Ilpholin says glancing to Magtok.

"In terms of distribution, I don't see water as particularly viable for this fungus thing, but I don't think we need to limit ourselves either. We can go both the vermin and the food route. I don't want to do airborne. I considered, but it's too conspicuous." Back in the early formations of this plan, Ilpholin had asked Isabelle about creating an airborne delivery system.

"Information is a problem, but unless someone has a suggestion about it, the best thing we can do is move this along as quickly as possible." Short of quarantining everyone until this thing's ready, she can't see what else there is to do about it.

"We still have the issue of who is going to be our 'traitor' and Leader Creeper." Ilpholin says, without the use of air quotes.

[ThirdEmperor]

Meeting Room

I have an idea, for how to keep anyone from ratting us out. But, er, I don't think anyone would like it." The Cat Burglar offers, nervously fiddling with the hem of his gloves as he looks around at the other villains at the table. No, not much hope any of them will like his idea at all. "See, I know this guy, he can work magic into a contract so that breaking it causes all sorts of bad things. Death, even."

[Hattish Thing]

Ilpholin's Office

Clegg sits down, seaweed dripping down his undead face. He opens his mouth revealing his sharp, cruel teeth. Sea parasites crawl around in his mouth, and the occasional crab crawls out to nestle in his hair. He wears his faded, soggy, and moldy navy/gold coat. He sets his wooden leg on the floor, and adjusts his fingerless gloves. I be Captain Clegg Thenadier. I am 'ere t' join AMEN...I 'eard abou' some kin' 'o' meetin'? Some kin' 'o' special job I coul' 'elp wit'? Anyway...I wan' t' join. M'a sea ghoul. 'Poligies fer th' smell. I wan' t' offer me skills t' th' place, mostly fer beneifit later in life...I can offer combat skills, stealth due t' me years 'o' bein' a vigilante, contacts with people....and soon, me own ship.

[Earl of Purple]

Meeting Room

"I can control a Leader Creeper, or another patsy to 'steal' the research. My mind control doesn't need to be a sledgehammer; it can be a scalpel. I just prefer the sledgehammer." Nephrim's got several thousand years of practice. I can't remember if it's two or five thousand years she's existed for, though.

[ThePhantom]

[Main Room with Beargons]

Mr E throws up his hands.

"Fine, be that way."

He has more important things to do, like getting back to his room to spy on the meeting going on. Let the beargon stay in the main room.

[happyturtle]

Main Room with Beargons

Darcy sits in front of Koro and glares at him.

Glaaaaaaares.

And waits for Ilpholin to return and help.

Meeting Room

The Moffs, having gotten sight of Cin, turn their chairs to ogle him for the rest of the meeting.

[Reinholdt]

Ilpholin's Office

"Very well." Ilpholin will offer Clegg a form to fill out.

[Meeting]

Mr. E should just come be there. They could use any extra input.

"Actually... that's the perfect candidate Nephrim." Looking immediately to Dam'bul. "It should be him." He's controllable should he try to actually betray AMEN, and after they eliminate him, he can return with an entirely new look with no one the wiser. Plus he seems already willing to do the plant thing.

[Zefir]

[Meeting Room]

Zefir just shrugs. He still assumes there is something she wants, but he won't get it. Not here. And one of the only ways to get that would be to seduce her.

"Well after al we should prepare a scapegoat. As mentioned people will know who did it if the disease comes out of nowhere and AMEN runs into the scene to cure them all."

"There are a few things I would suggest. If possible we sell weapon to some of the gangs in riverside. That way the government may assume that it was an accident they caused. Or we try to play out the big groups against each other. We would just need them to think the other party did this to rise there might in the city."

[Earl of Purple]

Meeting

"Dam'Bul, you just volunteered. Congratulations." Nephrim smiles cruelly at him, continuing to keep a tight grip upon her rucksack.
"OK. I'm up for it." Dam'Bul is usually up for anything, because that way it feels less like being forced when Nephrim invariably forces him to do it. Or so he tells himself; he still hates her.

[Slii Arhem]

Spoiler

Show

Atlantis- Lab

"No? Not even vast birds with no need to land? Ones easier to domesticate than the ones already in the Clouded Void, anyway." Pazuzu, as Demon Lord of the Air, has no land in His territory. Or very little of it, and most has been heavily fortified, hollowed out and turned into an airport, factory or palace.

Then, turning to Shayan, Nephrim speaks again. "I have something that may help your experiments. It might not, but I offer it anyway. Spores from a vrock- a winged demon that gives off parasitic spores that grow into small vines when properly anchored. As for flight; sycamore trees and dandelions have managed it. They're the only plants that grow, because there's little to grow on and no gravity for much of it."

Meeting Room

"You already offered them to me before, in exchange for something I ultimately could not provide you, but I already know what fungoid I will crossbreed it with as the one I'm thinking off interacts well with the brain. Besides, vrock spores sprout vines along the host rather quickly as I understand it, and that would be a bit too obvious for our needs as the vines could be cured in the day before the infection becomes a part of the host. Dam'Bul has already been implanted with a creeper vine, so I will just have to teach him how to properly direct the musk zombies he'll be controlling beforehand. Generating the right pollen scents for each command is instinctual to the plant, but takes a measure of finesse when it's being controlled by a sentient being. I'll need a few live subjects to turn into musk zombies for that, corpses won't work for it as the planted seed would just lay dormant or turn into a creeper vine of its own rather than animating the body." Shayan stifles a yawn at the end of her latest explanation. All this hard thinking is putting a serious strain on her usually under-used brain.

"Food... if it were meat, the spores would readily attach to it but I'm afraid it would most likely turn yellow as the musk creepers do within a day of becoming infested. I'm not sure how I would design it to live off of other foods as well, but I might be able to create a dormant strain that could be added to breads that would begin to grow when it touched saliva. A vermin based attack is sadly one of the few ways I can see this being perpetrated within a reasonable time frame, the others would take too long to create if we want to do this as soon as possible."

[ThePhantom]

Mr. E should just come be there. They could use any extra input.

But that would be helping her, and right now Mr E doesn't want to do that. He heads back to his room, locks the door behind him, and goes to watch the meeting through the cameras.

[Reinholdt]

Meeting Room

"We want to keep this thing moving as fast as we can. Dam'bul is our scapegoat and getting the factions to bicker amongst themselves is a whole different game that we can do once we're in. We'll stick with the vermin plan only then." Sometimes keeping it simple is a good plan in and of itself.

Meeting Room

I have an idea, for how to keep anyone from ratting us out. But, er, I don't think anyone would like it." The Cat Burglar offers, nervously fiddling with the hem of his gloves as he looks around at the other villains at the table. No, not much hope any of them will like his idea at all. "See, I know this guy, he can work magic into a contract so that breaking it causes all sorts of bad things. Death, even."

She turns to the Cat Burglar. "I haven't heard any objections. How soon can you get him here?"

[The Alexandrian]

[Outside of Ilpholin's Office]

Clarissa is waiting here (or walking up to this location if Ilpholin is using that automatic door thing right now) to speak with Ilpholin about harassing Magtok while she was away! She's expecting to be punished, even though she is of the belief that she reacted to Maggy's provocations more or less appropriately even if she did take it a little bit too far for some people's tastes.

-------
[Meeting Room]

Activate the handwavium emitters!

The Hatter and Roxanne are here just for the record!

And Roxanne does have something to add to the conversation!

"I don't like the idea of having a third party that only one person present has heard of ever before holding that much power over AMENites. He might guarantee that our contract won't be broken, but what of his? Someone could easily use the power over every single one of our lives to compromise this organization, moreso than spies ever could hope to."

"Instead I submit that we act as cells. Each cell will have no clue as to what the other is doing save through what they are told on a need to know basis by Magtok and Ilpholin, as neither of them have any reason to be spies for someone else. We may have said too much already for cells to properly function as distribution has already been nailed down for the most part, but as Ilpholin said, if we act quickly, that shouldn't be much of an issue."

"Furthermore, I am of the opinion that the cure, unless extremely cheap and widely available in massive amounts very quickly, will require constant, heavy protection as the city will be in a state of upheaval with riots, looting, and more if a large percentage of the population is infected. It will be pure pandemonium and if we let our guard down the cure won't make it to the shelves of Magmart. Also, if we do not ensure that the city is quarantined or take certain measures against the fungus spreading beyond the districts we can possibly control as dictated by the range over which the lead creeper can exert control, we may soon find this outbreak hitting other parts of the Nexus and causing many problems for us, if only for a time."