Welcome to Gaia! ::

Paul resisted for as long as he could, and as long as Paul could was some time - but this... this freak? This person? What the hell was he? This was going rapidly downhill, the same way his gun was. Paul considered drawing a handgun as 'Dr.' Terrian spoke, but resisted the impulse - obviously this one was... less than human. More than human. Both. And at the same time there was something even stranger about him. Some... air about him. A presence. Paul felt like he knew what it was.

It was grace, and it was insanity, that was what it had to be. A sick, twisted combination, both of which he had already displayed.

"Yeah. I have a few questions. Just who the ******** do you think you are, first of all? You break into my house, you take away my defense, and you proceed to inform me that you're not to be trusted. Why the hell should I even accept this... order?

"That leads me to the next point. What's in it for me, and who's gonna protect my house? I mean, moral dilemma and all, I got to protect the children, but hell. I need my pay, and I need someone to keep this place together. I'm not leaving it unless you can prove to me it'll be in decent hands.

"Finally, who the hell are these kids? What am I gonna be fighting? You might want to inform me of this. I need to know what I'm going to be fighting or I'll bring the wrong weapons. And if you feel like I'm up and roaring to go places, I think you don't know me very well. Just tell me."

The truth was, Paul wasn't sure how he felt about this. Now, the first question was a very, very sincere one. Paul had an overwhelming desire to see if he could plant a knife in Raoul/cindy/Shiva/Galileo's throat. He suspected he could not, but it would be worth the effort. Beyond that, though, it was more a question of how much he could milk out of the guy. If he was going to save children, that changed things. The Minutemen could protect his house - they were wise enough to know what to do with the weapons, if Paul could choose the right ones. However, if there was food to be purchased...

The final question was the most important. Paul needed to know where he was going, what he was facing, and what he would want. How much could he carry? Would he be traveling or would he be packing up as much as he could carry and transporting it with him? This was critical and the b*****d couldn't tell him.

The doctor tried to answer the questions as they were presented, but couldn't seem to get a word in edgewise. He sighed melodramatically. "You have so many questions. I thought kids these days were full of gusto and such. Ah, well. Come on up here." Backing up and not really waiting to see if Paul would accept his invitation, Terrian began answering what had been asked.

"I think - and I stress that word - I think that I am incredible. Awesome. Rad. And besides, I didn't break into your house. I substantiated here. There's a difference. You should accept this 'piece of friendly advice' because I don't want the world to end. My world, anyway. Someone else's world invariably ends when mine fails to, and the same is true for any given individual. You see, the universe is infinitely and independently created at every moment of - OW. Damnit!" he cursed to the air. He brushed a little at his hair and started again.

"And yeah, I guess the Minutemen can protect the house - shouldn't be hard. Or I could. But like I said, I'm not to be trusted, and believe me, there's a good reason for me saying that. But check with Zoidberg, there." He squinted in consideration and pursed his lips, tapping his chin. "He should be able to tell that I haven't lied yet. Should." Terrian's face cleared. "So give the Minutemen a call, let 'em know you have enough ammo to supply Asia..." He winced. "The Asia of seven years ago, actually, for their own civil war.

"The kids are important. They matter... quite a lot. You'll know them when you see them, I promise. And Hell if I know who or what you'll be fighting. Almost literally anything is a possibility, at this point. God knows what they've come up with. Not that that's who you'll be fighting," he amended quickly, not seeming to notice he hadn't pointed to any specifics.

"Anyway, I've overextended my welcome. I'm leaving, now - you take care." With that, Terrian vanished with a pop as the air rushed to fill the space he had vacated. A moment later, he reappeared, with another pop. "Right - your phone lines have been cut. I'll - I'll go fix that. You have twenty minutes to make your calls to the Minutemen." And finally, a third pop. Zoidberg could feel an odd kind of pressure lift from him as a powerfully negative change in ethereal flux appeared and started stabilizing itself around the home. This was a common phenomenon with ether usage; ether existed in a field, and much like magnetic flux, when disrupted by any force, it would slowly stabilize itself once the stressor had been removed. Psychic pokémon could generally feel this field, to an extent.

Paul was left with his twenty minutes to make calls, and the rest of the night to wonder what the hell he would be up against the coming day and how the hell he was getting there.

---

“So what’re we gonna do?”

“Whaddaya mean, what’re we gonna do? We gotta help ‘em. They die, we die. Simple as that.”

“No way, man! I’m not stickin’ my neck out for those assholes. I say we stay the ******** outta this.”

“Oh, come on! They’re human beings, just like us…”

“‘Just like us’? The ******** you talkin’ about? We need to get in there and just start grabbin’!”

“Right, like the Pack’s just gonna ignore us.”

“I say we go in guns blazin’ and ******** it all up!”

Shouts of argument bounded around the campsite like BB’s in a metal trashcan. Rave was with them, leaning against his chopper and spooning baked beans out of a tin can. The evening around them was quiet in deference to their raucous noise, but the wind blew across the dusty plains all the same. An hour or two ago, one of the scouts had spotted the Pack making a slow but sure beeline for Glenville from its west, and that was what had sparked this debate. It would hit by the afternoon after next at the earliest.

This was a motorcycle gang in its basest form. A very slight sense of community meant that they shared most of what they picked up during raids on the surviving cities. For now, they were on their way to Cliffshire after a raid many miles north of Glenville. In general, they avoided Glenville because of its level of preparation; there were eighteen of them now, but there had once been forty, before Glenville. The old leader’s eyes had gotten far larger than his mouth.

He had a pretty big mouth, too, Rave thought with a smirk. They had to make a decision soon - their planning for getting supplies was customarily extremely tight, because even raids did not guarantee enough food and other supplies to last more than a few days. Or, they could just wait until defenses were down. Or, they could-

“You ******** come up with somethin’ to do before I blast you all to Hell,” barked the new leader. She had a Remington in her hands and murder in her eyes. Well, her eye. The other had been gouged out by a pidgeotto. That she had turned into gumbo the following evening. “I say we ******** those ‘civil’ bastards right the hell up. You got until morning to decide if yer comin’ with me; we’ll hit the Cliffs in the morning and sit tight 'til we can steal what’s left of Glenville. The rest of you can do whatever the hell you want; you ain't getting even a can of nasty-a** lima beans if you back out.”

---

“Mademoiselle Elian?” a soft, gentlemanly voice asked. In the blink of an eye, a third mental signature had appeared in her small room in the hospital. “First things first: you can’t trust me. Anyway, you know you two are my favorite, right?” A hand picked up hers and politely kissed the back of it. Had she been able to see, she would have observed bright blue eyes under swinging, black hair. An unforgettable, sable hat with a red feather had been swept off the intruder's head a moment before so he could bow to her and Aislin.

“I apologize for intruding like this on such a pleasant evening, but I fear I have something very important to tell you. May I sit?” He indicated the bed in the room. It was a decently maintained space on the second floor of the hospital, with a small writing desk, a call button, the necessary machines for measuring vital signs if anything were to happen to her, a small plant of some kind in the window, and other, minor niceties.

Once seated, he looked at her for a moment, bit his lip in consternation, and asked, “Before we get to those things that are more grave than I would like them to be, how are you? How are the wounds?”

---

((At this point, I would like to apologize to the players for the upcoming time distortion - it's necessary so I don't leave a lot of you hanging in the ether unnecessarily, and it will solve itself in a relatively short number of posts. Those of you in the evening of the first day, continue posting there until it's obvious to move on. Those of you in the morning of the second day... there's nothing really to be cautious of.))

---

The three Glenvillian young-uns - Gerard, Juno, and Talia - all found themselves the next morning at the threshold into the Oaks' larger, more spacious laboratory at the university. The specialized area was behind a padlocked and keypad-entry doorway in one corner of the copious, vaguely sterile room. Tables were set up with beakers, racks of vials, scattered pokéballs and bubbling liquids in flasks, and tremendous machines that could have been for anything. Standing amidst it all before the children and their guardians were the two brothers Oak and their pokémon. They appeared to be trying to maintain a happy disposition, but every now and then, it failed. Both were blatantly fatigued, and were holding steaming mugs of coffee in front of them.

Edward cleared his throat. "Good morning, everyone." Sigmund looked briefly at him and scratched his head nervously. The younger brother was less comfortable than Edward with this. "Thank you all for coming. I apologize for having to take you away from what you were doing."

"We apologize," Sigmund amended, with another glance at his brother. His xatu shot him a sardonic look from his perch on his shoulder. Grimstrip stuck his tongue out at Sigmund.

Edward continued. "We have a... a strange and difficult thing to ask of you. First, we owe you some information. The Pack - you know, the largest one. If you haven't been told about it, it's for your own peace of mind. It's... it's quite a large pack, and it's headed towards Glenville. It ought to be banging on the gates tomorrow some time.

"Well, we recently received word from our late mother that we needed to find the three of you-" he indicated the children - "and get you in touch with some of her contemporaries in the southern cities. Riverdale, Cliffshire, and, unfortunately, Woodmount. What I mean-"

"I should explain," Sigmund interrupted. "We recently decoded a disk left to us by Dr. Beatrice - our mother. It's not like - like she came back from the dead." He offered a small smile.

Edward quieted down any questions that had risen. "Please... we know this doesn't make much sense, now. Unfortunately, we can't spare the adults. We need as many hands to stay here as we can get for the upcoming battle. We're sending the children out for their own protection, and because instructions on the disk we decoded say that bringing something in particular into direct contact with the gee- with her old colleagues, is of dire importance to the survival of not just Glenville, but the known world. The scientists will be ready for your arrival, and we can spare exactly one of our own to accompany one of you."

"We thought Juno would be most benefitted by an escort, but that's... really up to you. And we won't send you alone! We have specially-bred pokémon, engineered by us our mother herself, to help you along, and protect you. They're old enough to function as guardians, but not so old they won't bond quickly." He pulled three bright, polished pokéballs out of the pocket of his lab coat. "There's one for each of you, but before we give them out - do you have any questions? I know this is all confusing; we've probably forgotten to mention some stuff." He smiled nervously.

Juno walked beside Naya and was looking around. She was in awe at the university and the Oaks' laboratory. She had been surprised to see two other kids around her age there. Huh. Well then it means I'm not in trouble. She listened to the Oak brothers as they explained (somewhat) the situation. After hearing that they'd be working with Cliffshire, Juno flinched. That place?! No good can come from there. Juno snapped her head up at the sound of having an escort. I'm 15 years old, thank you very much. But if they're offering me somebody, then I guess I'm the youngest one here.

She looked at the brothers with some amount of skepticism. Naya didn't raise fools, and she'd be damned if she didn't learn everything she needed to know and why to work with Cliffshire. "Thank you for the escort, but I'd rather that person stay with Naya and my siblings. I'd feel much better knowing that they were safe." Naya would have berated her about refusing the help, but it wasn't the place to do so.

Looking from one brother to the next, she asked, "Um, what exactly are we supposed to do? And where specifically are we supposed to go?" Saving the world was an important task (without it sounding cliched as heck), but it wouldn't matter much if they didn't know what to do.

ooc: sorry it's so late. I have most of my stuff on "subscribed" I forgot this one couldn't be added that way!!!

Talia found her ears were listening but her eyes moving carefully, taking details in. It was her way of coping in situations. Finding her mind overly occupied, she was unusually quiet and glad that the younger girl to her right had asked that question.
She took her in, her own mind filling with questions. They wanted to send one of them with an escourt because they could only spare one. Wouldn't they be going together? They could give them a pokemon each, and quite frankly that was amazing, but why couldn't the three of them stick together.
But that though was pushed out by an exiting thought. She was going to get a pokemon. A real pokemon of her own. An experiment, granted, but still...
All these thoughts gave Talia a lightly lost look which might have made her look unsure of what was going on.

This man was indeed strange, his mutterings and whispers easily reaching Elian’s heightened sense of hearing. Although research on her miraculous survival was one thing, Elian guessed that this stranger wasn’t just interested in how she survived. Her implications at “physical changes” could be vague enough to cover just about anything that had changed since her injury, but mostly (and most apparent to the doctors puzzled by this), Elian was referring to her hair. What was left of her brunette locks was now faded or completely hidden underneath strands of white hair, seeming to be more of a tone rather than an elderly grey. This, strange occurrence, was new to the doctors and scientists that had studied her, for no brain injury had ever been known to cause sudden change of hair color. It was also a tad uneven, the surgeons having to remove most of her hair for the initial treatment, but it was hardly noticeable anymore as Elian layered it properly.

The rest of Elian however, seemed normal. Her skin had turned rather fair from remaining indoors, but it was far from sickly. Elian had a normal frame, and stood a bit taller than the average woman, but not by far. Her soft features were normally complimented with a smile, but rarely did she smile anymore, for long anyway, and her eyes were faded from the blindness that her injury had caused.

“K-kidnapped?!” She blurted out, almost a little too loudly as their awkward silence ensued. Indeed, the clinic was brimming with life as employees and patients alike created the usual amount of white noise that filled Elian’s room, but even then, it did nothing to distract the silence from becoming a problem. All she could do for the moment was continue to listen to this, Dr. Terrian, and hope that his motives were more righteous than these supposed kidnappers.

“I… Well, yes! There’s things I need to know!” She said, sounding almost as anxious as Dr. Terrian had as both the Espeon and Elian blinked. Her pale eyes were now focused on him, staring, his form showing as bright as day as Elian decided to stop hiding her strange talent (as she figured, this man should know, especially if he’s spoken with Andrej). “Who is going to try and kidnap me, and why?!” She started, Aislin shifting once more in her lap, as if waiting for the questions to be answered impatiently. “That, and why should I believe anything you say? You’re the one that told me not to trust you, right?!”

Confused, and now scared, this was Elian’s overall presence as she waited for this intruder, this, “Dr. Terrian” to start sharing information that he so easily managed to skim over.

Lexi turned the red and white sphere over in her hands, wondering what was inside. Whatever it was, she would be happy: it was hers, at least for now. Although…Aside from the fact that it was occupied, it looked brand new, which was really strange when almost everything was reused until it broke…and there was something else too... She wondered what the woman meant about the pokemon inside being her guardian or about her not being a ‘customary’ pokemon. The rest of that statement made her look at her feet though, blinking as her face turned as red as the top of the ball at the complement.

The invitation to food made her look up again though. Everything smelled so good, she would have gotten hungry even if she had just eaten. “Oh, yes please!” She went over to the table, shrinking the pokeball and putting it in her pocket, not knowing how much of a mess the creature inside would make if she let it loose at the table.

The Howards’ names seemed familiar, and Lexi was sure she’d run across them somewhere…had she read an article of theirs? She flinched slightly when she realized she had forgotten to introduce herself, and tried to make up for it when they were done. “I’m Alexis Hale…Lexi…Sorry about not saying it earlier. The last few hours seem so unlikely to be real that I’m still half expecting to wake up and find that it never happened.”

Terrian flinched as the twin pairs of seemingly luminous eyes locked their gazes on him. He should have known this would happen, after he had dealt with McCulloch. At least both of these had psychic pokémon who could verify the authenticity of what he was saying, and he informed her of that, then looked directly into Aislin's eyes as he spoke his next words, so she would be listening for honesty. "They will try to kidnap you, and may preempt my decision to remove you from Riverdale. This is a group known as the Exterminant. They believe that they have a divine mission - a religious cult, in shorter terms. Why they are after you is of particular interest, Oracle." The title resonated. Terrian continued.

"They gained access to your records by torturing one of the Oaks' colleagues; they would have gone after Andrej directly, if he were an easier target." He smirked at that. "None of the geezers Beatrice knew who survived the Calamity will go down easily. Anyway, the Exterminant is led by a man whose name even I have not managed to pin down, and is in a location that has also, somehow, remained rather elusive.

"My suggestion to you is to go quietly, and learn about them as much as possible. Access codes, detailed motivations, plans, anything. They're dangerous, Elian, but not to you. Play along with their games, and you'll be fine; if they get you, I swear that Dr. Bogdan and others will be after you without hesitation. Until they reach you, your greatest mode of contribution to the effort to stop this organization will be to infiltrate. The Exterminant worships you, Elian." He broke his gaze with the espeon and sat quietly, then, while the staff and patients continued failing to note his presence. It was as though their gazes slid away from the closed door of the room, like oil on glass.

---

"Oh, Lexi! That's right." The three sat down to dinner as Mrs. Howard began serving the plates - steamed vegetables, roasted chicken, cornbread; all the makings of a well-supplied, rural meal. After a prayer had been said, there was a short period of polite chatter before Billie, who appeared to be somewhat more forward-driven, started explaining why they had been hiding behind the illusion that was around their home.

"You see, Lexi, when the two of us were still active in the sciences, we were both studying the unowns, if you know much about them, and how they manipulate visual perceptions of reality. It stumped people for a long time, until a few scientists discovered that ether is a rather ubiquitous phenomenon, much like magnetism, and that it can interact with other fields.

"So as you may guess, psychic pokémon can manipulate light waves in mindbogglingly specific manners to produce illusions such as the one we are in, to protect ourselves. With the kind of knowledge we've gained in that field, we would be rather dangerous in Woodmount's hand, as would our pokémon.

"You're here because Dr. Oak needs us to give you the pokémon in that pokéball. She's a spearow, and due to their incredible work in pokénomics - the science lingo for pokémon genomics, you know - she has the incredible ability to utilize ether of the electric-type variety, despite her flying-type weaknesses to that element."

Her husband nodded. "Very impressive stuff."

"She doesn't want your long-winded rambling, Allan," Billie scolded, breaking off a chunk of cornbread and popping it in her mouth. "Give the girl a chance to take it all in, for goodness' sake."

---

After making his calls, McCulloch had some time to prepare - some. About an hour later, he picked up another strange figure on his video feeds, this one also clad all in black, standing cautiously outside the range of his field of artillery and explosives. The figure was decidedly more polite than Terrian had been. Standing respectively far away, he waved his hand and called out, "Mr. McCulloch? May have a moment of your time?"

((Sorry to pop in without an IC post. Is is morning yet for Jacob? I've... skimmed every post so far and haven't seen any cues. Man, y'all write a lot...))