DEPLOYMENT 20: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

[walking_nuke]

[It's been almost a full week since that Mr. Grey tasked the townsfolk with finding the Librarian's mementos. Six days since Virginia led the household into one of the portals, plus the hell raven she inexplicably won over—which turned sour quickly and forced their retreat back through the portal when somebody grabbed the memento. Virginia died in the first few moments of that, blown apart by bombers passing overhead.]

[As frustrated and angry as it made Balin to have Virginia die so senselessly like that, again—he'd seen Mayfield bring her back from the dead once before. So she ought to be back good as new the next day, right? Caesar came back that way, even if he was an amnesiac for a little while. Yet when Virginia didn't come back, Balin grew concerned. The week passed, day after day—and still no sign of Virginia, until this morning.]

[And she wasn't herself.]

[She didn't dress as she normally does. She didn't behave as she normally did—she was acting just like the other droned women of Mayfield ... and none of her belongings that the town had given back to her were around anymore. The garage-turned-stable was empty. The weapons and equipment she'd kept on her person had vanished ... so this was really it. Virginia had been droned for good.]

[It's the first time that Balin has experienced the permanent droning of someone he knows. While he's met plenty of people in town, rarely does he hear when the town disposes of them. This time, he's had front row seats—and it's left him feeling a little darker and a little meaner than usual.]

[ACTION - A (847 Goldberg, Morning/Late Morning, OPEN TO ALL)]

[Balin's stepping out of the house to go check the mail. He's wearing his red Mech Armor suit as usual—getting into the habit of wearing it most of time outside again, with the way things in town were shaping up. He's not enthused about going to work today, and is contemplating taking a day of as he goes to check the mail.]

[He was expecting the usual junk mail, but who knows, maybe Mr. Grey had left another note for everyone. He's much more surprised when he pulls out a thick packet envelope and two smaller ones, all addressed to him.]

[ACTION - B (Hospital and Downtown Mayfield, Late Morning/Afternoon, OPEN TO ALL)]

[Well, going to work is officially off the table for today. What Balin found in those envelopes has made him driven. He's checking around town for sources of scrap metal—or disposable, purchasable metal items—so he'll be hitting up the construction site, the hardware store, and possibly the Greased Lightning Garage. After he's collected enough metal he'll head over to the Hospital to try and find a doctor there. Mordin Solus, if he can find him—but anybody involved with the medical laboratories will do. Failing that entirely, he'll just see if the Workstation can handle a direct sample ...]

[ACTION - C (847 Goldberg, Afternoon/Early Evening, HOUSEMATES/GUESTS)]

[By hook or by crook, Balin's returned home with the supplies he needs to get to work. He's fired up the workstation and (after making doubly sure that Caesar's yandere-streak-under-the-influence didn't result in any actual damage or tampering with the system) has started fabricating ... something. Taking one of the paper-thin yet not paper schematics, inserting it into the workstation, and processing his haul of scrap metal and organic samples into ... what looks like sand at first, but upon closer inspection are actually microscopic machines.]

[ACTION - D (Mayfield Outskirts, Early Evening/Evening, OPEN TO ALL)]

[It's another lovely evening in Mayfield. The sky always looks wonderful when the suns are setting—wait, suns?]

[Yeah, suns. Over on the horizon, there is a bright mushroom-shaped explosion rising up from the distant outskirts. For the folks who had been in Mayfield last Thanksgiving, it looks rather similar to that mushroom cloud. Yet it doesn't last nearly as long, burning itself out and not leaving a cloud of debris in its wake. Gazing upon it won't blind you or hurt your eyes, though it is pretty bright. There's no sudden city-destroying blast wave or intense heat either, yet there is a muted, distant explosion that sounds more like listening to a nuke go off on the television or over the radio than as it would experiencing the real thing.]

[And for those who can sense magic, psychic, or spiritual energies, they'll feel something akin to a bomb with a lit fuse—prior to the explosion, a somewhat low-level build-up of energies, then spiking as the explosion happens.]

[Feel like checking it out?]

Comments

D

[perfectsymmetry]

[Well, this kid is curious, and will be hopping on his motorcycle and driving towards it. He can't sense magic, but it's obvious it wasn't a real blast either. Curiosity always gets the better of him.]

[walking_nuke]

[Driving in the direction of the blast will take him out to a road bordering a field that looks like it's already been subject to a lot of bombing already—there's bits of earth piled up in shallow craters, and in one instance, what looks like a shallow trench made from a line of such. In the middle of that field there's some wisps of black smoke rising into the air.]

[Near the roadside there's a sign that looks like it was made out of a scrap of sheet metal and stenciled with spray paint.]

[perfectsymmetry]

[Crowe blinks at the sign. "Allied Free Sentients"? Was that the people of Mayfield? Crowe hopped off the Ducati and walked it along with him, looking around for any clues. Debris? A blast site? A culprit? Whatever it is, he's hoping it's not something that will cause a similar explosion while he's nearby.]

[walking_nuke]

[Once Crowe's in the field proper he'll see that the smoke plumes are coming from a set of wooden planks sticking out of the ground, arranged in a grid-like layout that covers a 20 square meter area. Or at least, they were arranged in a grid pattern. Now the pattern they form looks more like a circular checkerboard, as every other plank in the pattern appears to have been reduced to ash to a radius of 20 meters.]

[None of the other planks are damaged at all, looking like they were freshly taken from a lumber yard. In fact, the grass in this grid of planks, even those around the ones turned to ash, is completely undisturbed.]

[perfectsymmetry]

[He looks over this for a few moments, utterly perplexed. Finally, he speaks up, calling to the area around him.]

Ah... Is anyone here?

[walking_nuke]

[As if in response to Crowe's calling out, there's some footsteps coming from an area off to the side, near a tree line bordering the field.]

Yo.

[It's Balin—wearing his red suit of Mech Armor.]

Action B

[doofenstrudel]

[You are not the only one at the hardware store today, Balin! Dr. Doofenshmirtz is there, labcoat-clad and tossing tools and bits and bobs and odds and ends into a cart as he checks items off a list.]

Alright, so far so good... now, wire stripper, I need a wire stripper... eh?

[And he spotted Balin, a very obviously actual-person resident of Mayfield doing just about the same thing as him.]

Hey! Have you seen the wire strippers?

[walking_nuke]

[Balin looks up from where he was considering bins of various washers, wingnuts, and bolts. ... Huh. Is this guy some kind of scientist or doctor?]

They oughta be down over by'a rest of'a wirin' supplies, but I ain't checked.

[Balin glances back at the bins for a second ... they'd work, if he couldn't find any big chunks of scrap metal ...]

[doofenstrudel]

I've checked but I haven't spotted one. Perhaps I missed it. Or someone else got the last one... [He shoots a dark look to the left, then to the right. Was someone here conspiring against him?

Then he takes notice of Balin and his bin-staring.]

...what, you suddenly need a lot of nuts and bolts?

[walking_nuke]

Not so much that, just'a metal.

[Balin shakes his head, mostly in regard to his own thoughts. There doesn't seem to be enough here for the job ... Maybe he could try making off with a steal beam from the construction site? But then he'd have no way of portioning it down for the workstation, much less getting it inside the house ...]

[doofenstrudel]

Eh? Just the metal?

[Now Doofenshmirtz's curiosity is piqued.]

Nuts and bolts aren't a very efficient way of getting metal. Unless you're going to be melting it down, or... or you do have a lot of things you need to bolt together. Just what do you need metal for?

[walking_nuke]

[Balin turns this over in his mind for a moment. Should he be forthcoming with someone he doesn't know? Well ... if the "reality" of this town is as virtual as he thinks it is, and if things are coming to a head as Mr. Grey indicated, is there really a need to be secretive anymore?]

[So, Balin turns to look over at Doof directly.]

I've got a workstation that'a that'a town sent to me a while back. It can fabricate stuff from raw materials if I've got'a right schematics on hand.

C

[commentboxtroll]

[There's some commotion up on the second floor of the house, which can only mean someone's finally bothering to return to the world of the living waking. The first indication is the drone Virginia asking if her poor, dear son is feeling any better and that it's a shame such a bright boy is missing school today, in that unnatural, cheery voice. There is no reply, because Caesar is doing what he has been doing ever since the day after they got back from the wasteland.

He's ignoring she even exists.

It's been difficult, but he forges onward with it.

He might as well be flying down the stairs in the hurry he's in to put her out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind. It doesn't help that she calls after him to be more careful rushing down two steps at a time like that! From there, it sounds like he's making for the front door, which shouldn't be a surprise. He's been avoiding everyone else since then, too, even Balin, so who knows where he'll be off to again if he makes it to the exit.]

[walking_nuke]

[Balin looks over his shoulder as Caesar comes running down the stairs. He can't really blame him for wanting to stay out of sight of what used to be Virginia. Rather than addressing him, he turns to look at Virignia's drone.]

Let 'em be. He's got a lot on his mind.

[It's never going to stop being weird dealing with Virgnia's drone, especially since the girl actually thinks of Caesar as her child.]

[commentboxtroll]

[That stops Virginia's drone from pursuing Caesar any farther. She stops on the staircase and looks at Balin, then gives a knowing and entirely out of place smile before saying something about how their son has grown if he's already having... girl problems.

Thankfully, she goes back upstairs after laughing at that all on her own.

Caesar's stopped at the door, watching her go. Once she's out of sight, his hand drops off of the door handle.]

...thanks.

If you got girl problems I feel for ya, son ...

[walking_nuke]

[Balin gave a half-hearted smile in response to "Virginia's" joking about girl troubles—if only to humor the drone. After she's headed upstairs though, Balin turns back to look at Caesar.]

No prob.

[He turns back to the workstation and collects some of the "sand" that it finished processing.]

99 problems and they're all drones...

[commentboxtroll]

[Without "mom" chasing him towards the door, he steps away from it and wanders over to see what Balin is up to instead. He remembers that thing all too well, but it's a small relief to see it is still working after he'd gotten into it. He hadn't really wanted to break it back then. Well, okay, he had, but that him was kind of... uh...

Y'know.]

What's that?

[He's looking over Balin's shoulder now, curious.]

Sand?

A

[idkmybfforin]

[There's been a lump of hell raven decorating the roof of the car Balin never uses on and off since Virginia's death. Every three days she would be droned, and flew back mindlessly to her assigned home, but always returned the next day like clockwork. Like a dog waiting for its owner. Satori, Koishi, Orin, Enkidu...Virginia, they all blended into one amorphous depressing feeling in her mind. It felt much emptier than usual now.

She didn't rampage like she had before. Lord Yatagarasu wanted to do that, but she wasn't listening. Didn't want to listen. Didn't want to move, either.

When Balin comes to check the mail, she doesn't even open her eyes.]

[walking_nuke]

[The sight of it makes Balin slow down to a stop a few paces from the mailbox. That makes a full six days since she'd been like this, doesn't it? No ... she was gone for a day. Probably that stupid auto-droning curfew he was told about last year, but either way ... Balin still doesn't get how this youkai so easily got attached to Virginia, and why she seems so loyal to her even after the town permanently droned her.]

Yo—you ever gonna get off'at thing?

[Come to think of it, has Utsuho even been taking care of herself? Has she been just lying here all day and night?]

[idkmybfforin]

[She doesn't move when addressed, not even to open her eyes.]

Not until Satori comes back.

[Okuu. Quiet. What?

Mayfield really is exploding.]

[walking_nuke]

[Oh. Wait, yeah—Balin has almost forgotten about that. Utsuho was Satori's pet. When exactly did she ... well, Balin supposes he can just ask.]

Satori, huh? How long's it been since she left?

[idkmybfforin]

Awhile ago. Recently. Before that. Months ago.

[There's enough of a pause between each of those that would imply each referred to a separate incident, rather than Okuu tripping over vocabulary. While that happened, it sounded rather different when it did.]

B - Greased Lightning Garage

[a_clockwork_melody]

[As it happens, Aurica is walking down this part of downtown today. Who could say what for, though? Sometimes she simply feels like wandering around.

Coming upon this part of town, she meets a man clad in red, apparently carrying a load of machine parts and scrap metal over a shoulder, possibly from some of the car wrecks and junk of that shop over there? She only stared — not necessarily at him, but the parts he was carrying — as he passed by.]

Sorry it's taken this long to tag back, month's been busy!

[walking_nuke]

[Out of the corner of his eye, Balin catches the girl rubbernecking him. It's enough that it makes him stop a few paces after passing by Aurica, turning around to face her.]

What's'a trouble?

It happens o\

[a_clockwork_melody]

♪ BGM: Overcoming the Trials (R)

What is this place? [She isn't going to address the stuff he's carrying out just yet. She looks over to where he came from to signal where she meant.]