View source for Balina/Journal/2010/November 21-22

Threw myself a little too hard into training drills. I can always switch in more daughters when they tire out, but I only have so much energy myself. Went to the pub to try and relax, ended up shooing off entirely too many people being entirely too nice. Not much of note. Talk about hands and feet, talk about daughters. Idle pub banter. Selene did have her children, and, to my eternal surprise, they're aging slowly. First time I've held a baby in quite a few years; felt like I was holding a bomb until I managed to relax. Cute little winglywolves, spitting images of their mother. Weird.<br><br>
This stopped once Cilan came in. Gathered up Apo, Rihko, and myself, and told us that she needs our help finding some device that, supposedly, can control all the nanites, everywhere. I guess it was supposed to be an unspoken agreement that it needs to be destroyed; I was the Boromir who harbored secret desires to use it. Apo was needed for her fighting, Rihko for her electronics experience, and me for, surprise, my nose. We took one of Sorien's better-prepared buses, and headed out.<br><br>
I dozed as best as I could, which didn't amount to much, until we met Sienna, a gryphon acquaintence of Cilan's at a Hard Rock Cafe near the edge of the city. Place was in good shape; seems that shi lived there. The instructions were... vague. A big chunk of Yosemite was circled, and somewhere in there was a facility we knew nothing about that guarded what is supposedly the greatest piece of tech this post-apocalyptic world possesses. I hate to admit it, but I got excited. It's a bit post-modern, but sounds a lot like looking for lost, sacred treasure, doesn't it?<br><br>
Got a bit more sleep on the way there, but we had to abandon the bus once we hit a river. As we split up into ground and air teams, I got a whiff of something new. Sulfurous, fiery, but with that same tinge of wrong and that same lurching hunger that told me that Balinawolf was about to take charge. I followed it to a crater, part of which was exposing a bit of the bunker we were looking for. Cilan went in, so I jump in afterward.<br><br>
Whoops, long fall, broken leg, Cilan wastes energy outside the bubble to heal me. We continue to explore, and find a bio lab. I got pretty excited, but the only thing we turned up were notes pointing to the place being the birthplace of an RSX project to use viruses in much the same way as nanites are used now. Interesting, but not very functionally useful. Power was out, so most containment was blown.<br><br>
Worked our way down, came across one of those big huge heavy vault doors that told us that's what we were after. Rihko did her voodoo, and despite a brief alarm, the door got opened. To my great shock and disappointment, it appeared that whatever made the ersatz entrance had also broken its way down into the vault, as well. Worse, it had taken almost everything of value. I found a few trinkets (some clear capsules, sort of like cold medicine, as well as a handheld computer with a dead battery), and Sienna spilled... something on Cilan. Never did find out what. I lost any and all trust for hir at that point; it was the most obvious 'accident' I'd ever seen, even if it did appear to be harmless.<br><br>
We went up through the monster-provided hole (Selene and Sienna ferried the rest of us up, Cilan's wings being terribly ragged from fixing me earlier), and poked around a little more. I found some vials that smelled of the divine, pocketed them for later. Continued on, followed the trail on out.<br><br>
That's when the dragon attacked. Obviously the thing I was smelling, but it was far, far larger than it should have been, given that it was apparently supposed to have fit into the facility. We're talking eyes the size of a normal Balina. Selene and Cilan made the mistake of direct attacks, and Selene got wolf-napped for her trouble. Brief scattering as we all chased in our own ways, eventually trailing it to a cave only accessible via an underwater tunnel. By the time Rihko and I caught up, there was a Cilan rapidly turning into a dragon, Sienna was sneaking around, and Apo was apparently being courted. I did what any sane icewolf would do, and waited off to the side.<br><br>
That's when Sienna decided to be an idiot. I spotted her skulking around, nabbing a few unidentified things, then trying to abscond. Rihko and I gave chase, I glanced off, Rihko tackled her. Sienna did the most unbelievably stupid thing possible, and stabbed Rihko in an attempt to escape. As it turns out, I can swallow a gryphon head whole. Took a little work, but I managed it.
Cilan made short work of the dragon, though for obvious reasons, I wasn't in a great position to watch. She was also, for obvious reasons, distraught that I sort of ate her one last link to the times before the apocalypse. She went into her own little never-never-land, and we took a look at what Sienna thought was more important than not getting eaten. This amounted to two encrypted CDs and a bunch of vials. We couldn't read the discs, but we used the vials to make a vaccine against whatever junk (that it turned out Sienna infected Cilan with) was in Cilan's system, preventing her from shifting back.<br><br>
While Rihko and Selene were digging through the gear, I powered up that PDA and found a *lot* of useful information. The virus research here was almost certainly concurrent with the nanite research, abandoned when the nanites did the job. Zephyr's hand was in this, and the data was remarkably complete. I mused at the time that this was information that would get us killed, then laughed it off and got to work.<br><br>
It took six hours, and during that time Selene had to convince Cilan that she *did* want to be changed back. Unsurprisingly, being a big monster is addictive and the embodiment of perfection and blah blah blah. Kaiju words if I'd ever heard them. Thankfully, my own intervention was not actively required (even if it was offered), and we managed to get Cilan at least back to normal, even if she's still a carrier. Packed things up, went home.<br><br>
Then we all died.<br>
At least, sort of. Cilan, Rihko, and myself got headshot, while Selene dodged the first one and got hit in the heart, instead. When I came to, Cilan was a dragon again, Selene was recovering nicely, Rihko was almost comatose with rage, and there was a pile of goo that used to be a person. And the PDA. By some miracle, I salvaged the memory chip out of the mess (it appears it flew clear when Cilan dragoned out and smashed our murderer. She then apparently went out and ate said murderer's accomplices. I rather regret that we killed everyone we knew was involved, but hopefully that means we got everyone.<br><br>
Dealt with the fallout in the pub as best as we could. I told about half the story, then had to go chat with Rihko elsewhere about it for a while as Selene finished. I'm going to have to take some time to analyze everything I got away with, but even if Cilan won on kills, I won on loot.<br><br>
Total haul:
*2 CDs of encrypted data
*A handful of clear, possibly medicinal capsules
*A PDA's memory full of juicy secrets
*Some vials that smell positively DIVINE
*Leftover virus juice that Sienna was carrying