Percival Phoenix and the Strangers from Afar
From the surface of a small planet, uninhabited by any sentient life and given only a cursory name by a single deep space exploration team before they moved on to chart bigger, more study-worthy phenomena, a signal pulsed forth at intervals. Like the heart of a hibernating animal, it was faint, slow, and unheard. For many years, it waited
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Great rock formations loomed up toward the violet sky; three moons circled the sky overhead. And in the distance, ominous grey stormclouds gathered around a massive mountain, striking the earth with brilliant flashes of lightning.
[Feel free to snark and react to the weird surroundings. Anwei, Sakura, and Zouichi will appear at the tail end.]
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Besides, he's just a tiny bit worried about Zouichi. Even if Zou's totally capable of taking care of himself, that doesn't mean Stacy wouldn't leave without him. Anwei and Sakura, too, and whomever that other chick is that he doesn't know. It hasn't helped his mood.
"Is it storming? Of course it's storming," he mutters, not stepping out of the shuttle until Chase and Jaime go first. "This looks like a great spot to get eaten by subterranean worms or find an evil Mars Rover, guys."
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That something has happened to Anwei and some others isn't promising - but as usual, he's pretty sure he can handle it.
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"That's weird. I'm not picking them up on my DNA scanner. But they have to be near by, right? Maybe something on the planet is messing with it." A pause.
"What is this, Star Trek?"
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He looks around at the landscape again, squinting at the storm cloud. Knowing their luck, that's exactly where they're headed. "Not necessarily. They could have been whisked out of here, teleported or whatever. For all we know it's Sand People or there's a big green pipe that leads to Candy Koopa somewhere in this wasteland."
He checks the communicator Zouichi gave him back on Epicurea. Nothing. It's not communicating with its other half. And that abandoned shuttle does not look like a good sign. Howard wonders if it's a sixth sense or just general paranoia that gives him a sense of the willies looking at it.
"Either of you guys want to poke your head in the shuttle? Would've been nice if they left a note."
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"Guessing we might not want to hang out too long though. That storm'll destroy any tracks... single file or no." he adds, in response to the Sand People bit.
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What could take down a ninja, a synthetic human, a Living People and whatever Lash was? Either something very fast, or something that didn't attack with physical attacks.
Howard presses an ear to the ground. Nothing. He gets back up. "You see anything in there, Thor?"
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None of it seems to concern him much. He does go a little more into stealth mode - surprisingly good at it for someone that big, as he enters the shuttle - but there's not a lot of looking out to do.
"Well, you might want to check the readouts and stuff." Seeing as he can't. "Just in case they left some sign of what took 'em out... but no one home here."
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Which makes Howard want to stay in the shuttles, but there's a job to be done here, and Stacy might disappear them if they don't succeed. Besides, he really should find Zou. He pokes his head out of the shuttle.
"Yo, Bugman, you see anything?"
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"Blue Beetle. And no, I don't see anything. No signs of life. It's weird. It's like they just disappeared." He slowly drops back down onto the ground next to the other two, looking more than a little disgruntled.
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Not the first time, but still odd. Thankfully, he's no slouch as a tracker this way either. He also has a hunch, by the rules of dramatic timing, that if he starts in the direction of the storm, he might just be off to a good start. Its always the way he'd lose the trail the fastest. He has no fancy sensors - just good senses and plenty of training at this... you know, unlike basic literacy, which he leaves to the other two.
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Howard slings his med pack over his shoulder and trots after Chase, figuring the same thing of the storm; after all, they did just discover that a creepy clock was deaging people. Apparently cliches exist for a reason.
He notices some color up top one of the plateaus, though. He runs up behind Chase and attempts to tap his shoulder, more just tapping his bicep. "Hey, that bubblegum pink look like anyone to you?"
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". . .Sakura, right?"
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"What the #$!!?"
"&(@#?"
"No #@&)!%& way. I'm being $#@&!(& ceonsored."
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It wasn't hard to hear her scream as she hugged that cliff all the closer. "Percival, where are you?!"
Probably not precisely what at least Howard was expecting to see.
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