The Niraya Complex [NSFW, GORE]

@NyantaStarhunt  
She seems just as curious of their surroundings, though turning back at him, she looks lively right into his eyes.
 
“I do, in fact, I frequent the aquaculture aquariums for live stuff. Over there, looky,”
 
Pointing to where the souk street connects to an open-doored building,
 
they see someone exit with an odd container, bearing within it a live fish.

@Coriolanus  
They are lucky there were not more of my kind with me, especially not my….hmmm, the word you would use would be “Brother”? I believe. He is much larger than i am, and nigh unstoppable.

@Jinx  
“Hmmm… I dunno, Ev. The last time stuff crawled out en-masse of the White Zone we all believed the end had come a second time around. That is till we watched’em all march and dive into the Walker Lake up northwest and disappear…”
 
“When we went to go see what was going on down in those surreal waters, well,”
 
The acoustic/tactile hologram-beads he keeps reassemble into the air again between pinched sasers, amalgamating into a surreal image of someone in diving gear, standing upon something organic-like…
 

 
“…It’s still down there, too, to this day, sometimes with a few tumbleweed-bots working through or rearranging its insides. We call it Jehovah’s Corpse… I figure it must be braindead, though. If whatever’s festering inside Niraya were to give a go with the same thing however, I think the results would be alot more, well, animate.”

Name: Quake  
Age: ???  
Gender: Stated male, sounds male  
Appearance: standing at a massive 40 feet tall and toting a massive astromag cannon quake represents the apex of killing in the world.  
Talents: tactical genius, massive size and heavy armor, astromag cannon, various other things  
Disadvantages: massive size, bloodlust, antisocial, excessively brutal

@Coriolanus  
There are few things that can stop quake. If we are to proceed into this zone we will need him.

@Coriolanus  
He nods, tucking it away for the safest of keeping. “Of course. I won’t let anything happen to it. Hopefully we won’t need to make too much use of it…thank you. Heheh, never thought you’d give me a drawing of your own,” he smirks, making reference to his own practice of returning with doodles.

@Jinx  
“I meeeeeean, there are people who routinely move through every zone except nearest to the Arc Dome: the Washoe, Shoshone, and Paiute native tribes. Granted, there’s something very odd about them, what with being able to read people’s minds without the related cybernetics, or those creepy EM-absorbent cloaks they wear, even though I’ve seen’em creep right through a horde of zombies and killing machines, and even acknowledging eachother’s presence, as if they were trying to keep hidden from something else watching’em… Despite that, they’re ridiculously helpful, and they can get pretty darn close to Souterain too…”
 
“That being said, I doubt stealth and ominously friendly guides are enough to actually get us into the complex.”
 
“If you can find him, and if he’s willing to help, I guess that’s where your ‘brother’ could fall into play.” ^%>->%
 
 
@EclecticInspiration  
“I used to be good at that too, mostly for cartography though n’ the like, but then, well, after this happened,” Grinning proudly, he presents the back of his dominant right handpaw, showing Benko the large, nasty scar he’s always had running down from between his ring and middle finger to his wrist.
 
“Got split wide-open by some cannibal’s machete going for my head. Luckily, we had doctors back then too as skilled as Anna. Lost the delicate control of the fingers, but at least I was saved from amputation. Sure I’d go fix it too, but by the time this happened I’d figure it was time to settle down, plus I’d get to have a badass scar for stories.”
 
“As for those hideaways, I think in the bolt-holes, people used to pass time during storms or danger too by things like drawing; I swear there’s a ton of old sketches people left laying around in drawers in some of those spots. It’s like Val made it a point to have art material, books, and the like stocked within’em, to keep hiding folks comfortably distracted I suppose, what with all the danger they’d be in those holes for a while, and for good reasons…”
 
“I mean, Jesus, boah,” ^<.<
 
“Val even raided a nuclear silo once just for soundproof tiles, so he could line the walls with’em in of some of them hideaways, practically for hiding better, but the reason he said he did was so friends of his could safely play instruments for music.”

@Coriolanus  
*
 
“That journey sounds extreme but I understand folks would want to dissociate pretty badly when life’s lookin’ stressful. It’s good to know people still play. All I know is guitar and those are too clunky to carry…and finding strings for ‘em,” he shakes his head, semi-floppy ratt ears following his head movement, “not very practical. Drawing though- art’s always been a part of people. It’s easy-enough to do.”

@Coriolanus  
he laughs at this sight and is perplexed thats a suitcase for fish hahah. he meows out and smiles alright well my dear.
 
I do have an idea of all that I will need to cook for us, just gotta figure out what those ingredients are

@Coriolanus  
I only require a transmitter to summon him.

@Coriolanus  
“not what meant but i’ll just stop harping on the matter. your little gloopy friend there i could probably get some work done with… or absorb him to become able to turn into gloop myself… one or the other, if you are gonna throw it out anyways…”

@Cerebrate  
“I fear what goes on in his gloopy mind, that is, if he even thinks the same way you or I do…” ^%>->%
 
“Be warned though, Val once said he saw creatures alot like it slinking around in the lifeline facilities out there. They’re savant enough at times to do things like, say… operate radios, and even jam simple remote-controlled drones, but Val also described their demeanor as a sort of ‘tactical animosity’, which explains the tentacle-barbs…” Pulling the curtain back, she waves her hand in front of the glass, provoking the creature inside. “See those toenail-clipping lookin’ things?” Pointing at clusters of stingers extending against the glass.
 
“Sooo, yeah, forewarning about releasing’em. Feel free do do with’em as you wish, though; my lab is yours.”
 
 
@Jinx  
The sable doge pulls at an antenna peaked over his shoulder, tearing a handheld transceiver off a patch of velcro on his back. With a few button-presses, far above them toward the town’s center, the light on a monolithic radio tower turns red to green.
 
He then hands the transceiver to Ev; “You’re live my friend, give it a shot.”
 
 
@NyantaStarhunt  
“Lesgo take a look.” ^%<-<%
 
Leading him indoors, they’re greeted to the sight of large aquariums lining the walls, all organized into different sections for different species, stacking up toward the ceiling and accessible by library-like staircases and scaffolding…  

 
“…Desert’s the last place you’d expect fish, amrite?”
 
 
@EclecticInspiration  
“Eeeeeeeeh… you said ‘stressful’, and while living life on a razor’s edge out there certainly is so… it’s weird. Most of the people I knew back then, including myself, sorta, well… would it make sense to say we’d always wished it sucked more? It was ‘cozy’ in alot of ways, like napping comfortably in a bolt-hole, as the back-then flocks of decapitating chainsaw drones buzzed by… Also, in a ways, we felt it peeled away all pretense, showing how eachother really were when it counted most.”

@Coriolanus  
he smiles and takes her paw into his nodding that it is but I am happy to hear you guys have some.
 
he starts looking for his fish that he needs

@Coriolanus  
ev takes the microphone and begins to speak in the language that heard him speaking in the cave when they first encountered him. Within moments a much deeper voice returned words in that language, prompting ev to hand the microphone back
 
He will arrive by nightfall.

@Coriolanus  
“hmm, additional precautions will be required but i do have an implanted Zellzünder to vaporize myself and gloops… if you return to a massive scorch mark, could you tell grimm to pick me up at seven?”

@Jinx  
“Excellent.”
 
“Well…”
 
Coughs.
 
“…” ^_{<_<}
 
“…Wanna go exterminate the ‘Romanesco’, or the ‘Seethe’?”
 
 
@NyantaStarhunt  
Browsing through fishtanks in the bustling market, they find all sorts of species in non-exhaustive droves; Lahontan cutthroat trout, mountain whitefish, Great Basin redband trout, silver perch, striped bass, channel catfish, largemouth bass, rainbow trout, among many others…
 
 
@Cerebrate @Jinx  
Preparing to visit the souks with Nyanta, she gives him a keycard to the lab removed from a small backpack, along with a notebook filled with passwords to accessing the computers.
 
“If anything happens, there’s a comprehensive, non-sapient, artificial intelligence service overseeing the lab that’ll lock things down, as well as shunt all wireless systems into an insular mode. If you, well, die of course, the nearest lifeline facility you’ll reinstantiate at is deeper into the unrefurbished parts of the town. Don’t worry though, Val keeps a small skeleton crew of technicians and guards to maintain and protect the place.”
 
“As for Grimm, tell her your… self?” She says, looking to the open holding-pen they’d left her in appearing now empty.
 
“…I’ll leave it to you to find her.” ^%’<___<% With that, she leaves the lab, bringing them to the present.  
_{(Anna’s now currently at the souk-marketplace with Nyanta)}

@Coriolanus  
The what?

the cats eyes shine at the catfish, whitefish and some salmon. So he goes.foreward and then suddenly remembers i bet my debit card won’t work any more huh

@Jinx  
“The ‘Romanesco’ was a self-repairing road some ways along toward Souterain. Nowadays, it’s, ehm… The road itself, it’s gone feral, and so is dangerous to travel near for the obvious reasons.”
 
“As for the ‘Seethe’, well, someone in their garage in the Armagosa valley went and messed around with solid light projectors, mostly so they could build ideal logic gates for a lightspeed-fast computer. The end result was some reservoir-full of churning solid light beneath his house. I think the wastewalkers are using it to guide them with decision-making on how to effectively attack New Pahrump.”
 
 
@NyantaStarhunt  
“Hmmm… I’ll pay, but let’s check it out.”
 
Bringing him to a working automated teller, his eye and fingerprint are scanned, giving him his balance; The total amount accrued, principal plus interest, from simple interest at a rate of 2.25% per year for 160 years is… $351,666.23.
 
Anna: “Damn… bank’s kept your account open the whole time.” ^_<.<

@Coriolanus  
“I think I get ya. Even though it’s pretty weird. Guess we’re weird people to want to be out there anyway. It’s not as cool as the adventures I’ve read or written about but it beats a desk job, I guess.”

@Coriolanus  
I think we should avoid this seethe until my brother arrives. His astromag cannon has the power to vaporize anything, prevent regeneration, and in some cases create micro singularities.
 
Let us go observe this romanesco.

@Jinx  
“You can see it from up there,”
 
He points, to the higher section of wall around the north part of the town, seen down a large street. Scaling up a closer section, then taking a train along it to where they need to, the dog hands Ev a large telescopic gunsight, then points to the lone road stretched across the dusk-lit desert, headed straight toward Amargosa valley…
 
Following up it visually, Eviscerator sees a stretch of verdantly-colored tarmac, branching off the flanks of its main road into rampant clusters of twisting, fractalized side trails… Close to its halfway-mark, the road seems to coalesce into a massive mound studded by fibonacci-sequential bumps upon whorling bumps… The landscape along beside it all appears unusually barren, lacking even soil…
 
“Anyone tries driving atop it, the damn thing’ll devour the vehicle and everyone in it to build more of itself. Writhes and grows after anything near it too. Thing’s feckin’ ravenous, it is.”
 
 
@EclecticInspiration  
“Keep trying, you’ll get your magnum opus out there one day. Mine was visiting Niraya’s old subsidiary in Europe. Thrilling as hell it was, crossing over the atlantic, what with all the nasty monsters these days… I’ll just say, biiiiiiiiig fish lurking in those deep waters.”

@Coriolanus  
What have you tried against it?

@Jinx  
“It’s literally eaten bullets fired into it. Blowing it apart works temporarily, but it eventually grows back like a starfish in about a week or so. Our eggheads even cooked up a ‘nanoferon’ cocktail to kill it at one point, but the thing just abscessed at the point of infection.”
 
“Only thing that seems to work is extreme heat, at least at four-hundred degrees celsius when the pavement itself catches fire, though we’d have to get to that bulbous center halfway down the road to kill it permanently.”

@Coriolanus  
ev raised his arm, it transforming to a widebeam laser cannon, and firing with the perfect width of the road begins to erase the road and a good hunk of dirt, forming lava in its path