[closed]

[rememberyousoon]

Who: Nilin and Miriel
Where: An empty lot in Glendale
When: Backdated to right after this post, so sometime during the few days between the kidnappings and the rescues.
What: Nilin was trying to bring Miriel some "specimens," but things have gone a bit wrong.
Warnings: Gross monsters probably

The monsters were troubling enough on their own. Having to find the tracking chip was an entirely different story. She had to stop a few times while she gagged. Still, it had been too easy to punch them until they stopped moving, so she had to power through this. She did her best not to tear them apart too much, both for Miriel's sake and her own, but once she found each of the tracking chips, she closed her gloved fist over them and zapped them until she was sure they were dead beyond repair. Then she took out her phone and sent Miriel another text:

'Destroyed the chips. You still want these things?'

Comments

[sciencewizard]

Miriel hated being late. It was one of the only things she hated, along with sloppy work and being compared to her mother. Unfortunately, she was late right now. As she was preparing to leave to collect the specimens Nilin gathered for her, a group of cyborgs attacked her late mother's old house, which Miriel now used as her lab and magical study space. Luckily, she saw them coming. It didn't take too long to take them down, but the clean-up was much longer than she would have liked.

It quickly became evident, as she was dragging the cyborg corpses to the basement, that there had to be a tracking chip inside the cyborg she originally captured. Why else would a group of cyborgs go out of their way to climb into the mountainous area outside of Los Angeles? Even considering tracking chips, it was strange that the creatures would want to rescue their brethren when no critical information was contained in its body, but it did explain how they found her lab. Digging around in the original specimen's body – after killing it, of course – did, in fact, reveal a tracking chip. In more time than was ideal, she found chips in all of the others too. Though she would have liked to trace the creatures back to a solid location by leaving both their tracking chip and a tracking spell of her own inside one specimen's body, she couldn't afford to be even later than she already was. She simply took the chips with her, overloaded them with electricity, and threw them out the car window on the way.

Throughout this cyborg tracking chip ordeal, Miriel became increasingly glad that she gave Nilin her phone number. When Nilin first texted her to check where she was, Miriel was able to tell her about the cyborg attack and the tracking chips. She instructed Nilin to search for the tracking chips in particular areas of the specimens she collected while Miriel drove over to the meeting location. Her phone beeped out the alert for a new text. She usually was staunchly against texting while driving, but seeing as how the streets were empty, she decided it was alright. She checked the text and responded:

Yes. Thank you. I will be there shortly.

After another five minutes of driving, Miriel got to the parking lot. She parked neatly next to Nilin and stepped out of her car. "Please excuse the lateness of my arrival," she said. "As I informed you, I was...delayed."

[rememberyousoon]

"It's fine," Nilin said, giving her a brief and half-hearted smile. She still felt a bit light-headed, and the sheen of a cold sweat was still on her forehead, but she wasn't the type to let on how much it had gotten to her. So she stood up straight and avoided looking at the corpses she had just dug through.

Miriel showing up provided a distraction, at least. She could tell the woman was clinical, but her neat haircut and body language sealed the deal. Nilin felt an instant comfort, suspecting Miriel wasn't the type to be overly familiar. That's how Nilin liked it. She only hoped that her suspicions were right and that Miriel wouldn't ask how she was feeling or why she had done any of this in the first place.

"I'm just glad you weren't hurt."

[sciencewizard]

"I may have been, had I not seen them, or had they been greater in number. As it stands, I am fortunate that my carelessness merely damaged my furniture and some equipment."

She should have known that there was a tracking chip in the specimen's body. She had even mentioned tracking chips to another person on the Watch. If she had not been so hesitant to open up the specimen, she could have found it. Of course, she may have had to remove the tracking chip immediately after the specimen's capture to avoid having a recovery squad sent after it. She would simply have to not make that mistake again.

"I hope that acquiring these specimens and locating their tracking chips did not prove to be a problem," Miriel said, as if only finding the chips could be a problem and not the actual 'digging through corpses' part of the process.

[rememberyousoon]

Nilin glanced down at the corpses and immediately regretted it, but she didn't let on that she was nauseous. She wasn't even sure why this was getting to her so much, but it made her stomach turn unpleasantly to think of any part of it.

"No, not at all," she replied, her voice a bit heavy. "I just wish I knew who did this to them. I'd like to see how they like having their body pulled apart."

She didn't really want to pull anyone's body apart, but she would certainly like to scramble their memories a little bit, put them out of commission with a good shock to their nervous system and a few broken limbs.

[sciencewizard]

Miriel stayed quiet for a few moments. She hadn't truly thought about how these creatures may have had normal lives before whoever or whatever was behind this did this to them. It was easier to regard them as monsters, as specimens. Though it was fine to have some degree of sympathy, Miriel didn't need emotion getting in the way while cutting into their brains.

"This is likely either the work of someone or something quite sadistic," she concluded, analytical as always, "or it is the work of an unfeeling being. I believe it is closer to the latter. Undoubtedly, the mastermind has no regard for any life that is not that of a human without superhuman abilities." She paused, more out of pensiveness than hesitation. "They must be stopped."

[rememberyousoon]

Nilin sighed. "Well, I hope these will get you little closer." She didn't want to spend too much time reminding Miriel or herself how messed up all of this was. At least when she was punching them her focus was on preventing them from hurting anyone. She didn't have the stomach to actually think about examining them. Lucky there were people like Miriel to take a closer look in case there might be a clue there.

"In the meantime I'll still be trying to keep them off the street as much as I can."

[sciencewizard]

"That is good. As far as we are aware, they pose a threat to the superpowered community that cannot be overlooked." Miriel had been attacked twice by these creatures, and she had only defeated them because she was powerful and prepared. There were undoubtedly others with less power and less preparation, and who knows what would happen to them if they were attacked. Would the creatures kill them? Would they capture them? Did they have a mission to fulfill? Time would only tell.

"Through your encounters with them, have you been able to learn more information regarding how they function, and whether they tend to prioritize certain objectives, strategies, or weapons in battle?" Miriel asks. "My experiences with them in this sense are likely more limited than yours."

[rememberyousoon]

She considered this for a moment, her eyebrows knitting together in concentration. Nilin hasn't taken a lot of time to think about how the creatures were acting, beyond what she had to do to make them stop. She certainly wanted to get to the bottom of everything, but the monsters were useless for interrogating and following them had been an exercise in futility. She had noticed a couple basic things, though.

"Well, only one of them has actually attacked me. The rest didn't bother until I started punching them. I didn't give them much chance to see me before that, but I get the sense that I'm not what they're after."

She said it without a hint of guilt. Being in less danger just meant she could be a little more aggressive. Some of the monsters were certainly strong enough to take her down, but she could avoid those easy enough and call in for back up when she needed to.

"The one that did attack me seemed more interested in restraint than harm. It tried to grab my arms instead of going for my head or vital organs. I'm lucky it wasn't one of the big ones or I'd be who knows where right now."