Round 3 [closed]

[sunborne]

Characters: Daylight, Castiel, Cao Pi, Rosinante, Kuai Liang, Vanitas, Riku, Maes Hughes, and Bucky Barnes.
Location: Town hall.
Date/time: February 8. In the 'evening'.
Content: Townhall Meeting 3: This Time, It's Personal. (Or how Daylight and Cao Pi bring the others up to date on Dr. Solis.)
Warnings: Pending.

After some time has passed and information has been compiled and notes - so many notes! - have been reviewed and organised, Daylight decides it's time.

With the help of some spirits he's made friends with, he sends out sealed notes to those who are in the know of what's going on. It's a short and simple note, informing the recipient of a date, a place, and only five words:

Ready. We've got to talk.

Comments

[dadandgone]

Maes, having been furiously recording everything in his notes, pauses and looks over at Soldat. "True. And even the worlds that are different in detail have similar enough inhabitants." He looks at the room where, even with the giant figures of Rosinante and Daylight, they are all mostly human. Even when he'd be in service to Astoria's Circle the bulk of the people, while living vastly different lives, had mostly been from Earth or Earth-like worlds.

Soldat's questions are curious enough though. He flips through a few pages, thinking aloud as he hits on some of the important bits. "That's not a bad theory actually. We know from the information gathered in the dreams that the doctor knows something saw her and left the portal partially open. If it's something small enough then maybe you're right and something did get through that acted as a sort of...herald for all of this."

He taps his pen against his pages of notes, not really making eye contact, but still addressing Soldat, "Do we know how intelligent these creatures are anyway? Because that IS how most invasions work, you send in a scout party to set up networks and base camps and then bring in the rest of the army. These World Eaters are also apparently persistent. There's plenty of other worlds out there with probably way more light to consume...so why stick with this one in particular? It's dead here or mostly dead, so why not go on to better meals?"

Not that he wants to think about these things preying on more innocent worlds still alive, but it's a question that needs to be answered. Why are the world eaters coming back here? To finish a job undone? If they're just beasts that feed, that doesn't make sense. Coming back implies that they have more intelligence or something more to gain from completely wiping this place out. "Robin told me that the Lighthouse glows red because red is a light that is harder for them to see or track. Maybe there's something to that and what draws them?"

[worthallthis]

A logical extension of their own thought, that. If whatever brought them here to begin with is still here, it could be what's bringing them back when this is a very poor feeding ground. But even if it's true, if they're right, what could it be? Soldat shakes their head a little, working up to some words. At least Maes has a lot to say in the meantime, which helps. "If we could figure out that. What brought them. If it keeps bringing them back. Could use that."

The goal here is to stop them, right? Whatever brings them might be used to lure them into a trap, or keep them going back to a different dead world and not still-living ones.

They can't broach that yet, but they have to prove they're right or wrong first. "Portal is a machine. Might have logs. Recordings of things that went either way. Might be something there they missed." Because there are people here now who might look for different things. Smaller things. A virus or a small spirit-creature, or something technological.

[sunborne]

"Dr. Solis believes they were either attracted to the portal or, by sheer bad luck, chose this world at random when finding other worlds to feed on."

Personally, Day learns towards the former than the latter. Entering her world only a mere year or so after the first encounter is a timing he can't help but feel suspicious of. "She described them as hunting her and others down when we were talking but, at the same time, she doesn't think they're capable of, um, 'strategic attack' or anything like that."

Which makes sense. Day wonders why Beacon wasn't the first to get hit when the World Eaters came here. And with how often the town was able to reset without the World Eaters wising up to the tricks, they strike him as more beasts of some intelligence than mere forces of natures. (He's not sure how to feel about that revelation, though.)

The conversation does make him remember something very important- "They have tried to send messages to the World Eaters in the past." He goes on, explaining this a bit further, "Every time there's a reset, they send a message out to the World Eaters in an attempt to communicate with them. They haven't gotten a response so far."

[worthallthis]

Daylight is slightly easier to talk to, even if there are other people looking at them while they do it. Soldat keeps their eyes down, on their hands in their lap, but they can still speak. "Right. They have a language. Robin said so. The reset instruction is in their language. Can't have language without intelligence." Sure, you can be stupid, but still intelligent in a way that means an understanding of the world around you and personal feelings. "Couldn't have been luck. Too many worlds. Couldn't have been an individual, or they'd still be hunting her. Portal. Maybe. But why would a portal attract them. And why didn't they destroy, or stay to use it, it if it is what attracted them."

There's still something here they don't know about. Something that explains this, that the group of them is missing. Soldat really kinda wants to see those records, now.