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Post by supesman on May 1, 2022 15:05:00 GMT
"You're gonna give yourself a cramp if you chug it down that fast every time you panic." Zack said, taking his water bottle back. If there was one thing he was an expert in it was surviving the physical and mental aftermath of extreme stress and exertion. "Not to mention you're probably gonna have to go in a bush before we get back to town." Zack explained, placing his hand over his visor to shield from the sunlight as he looked out for the landmarks he always used to direct himself back toward Rosewood.
"That guy is going down and I'll do it with my bare hands if I have to." Marigold said, snarling as she remembered the Omegamon getting the drop on them and buzzing her wings in an angry gesture.
"He had us locked down, there's no way he hadn't been watching the entire time. He must have known that threatening you specifically was the only way to get the outcome he wanted. He said he'd been observing Marigold and me so he knew that trying to pull the same thing with me would only lead to a fight breaking out." Zack said, arms crossed over his chest, one hand rubbing the chin of his helmet as he paced back and forth, kicking up dirt and grass with the tips of his boots as he reached down and pulled his digivice free of its locked position on the side of the custom made footwear, a sharp click and a dying buzz resounding through the air as the hard light heel of his boot powered down.
"Why leave the vial behind? Is it a test? A temptation? He did say he thought Kai and he weren't so different." She said, quoting the old trope that the Omegamon seemed to be leaning on, also pacing back and forth in the air.
"I think he's got you pegged wrong there, Kai. At least, I hope so, considering the fact that you're law and order to the core I can't imagine you being all that much help in peddling violently lethal smack. Right?" Zack said, pulling off one of his gloves and extending his hand to Kai. With a digimon he wouldn't have bothered with the gesture of removing his glove but for a human the feeling of a person's skin on her own and the offer of help to stand might do her some good, especially with how shaken the general seemed to be after the confrontation. She still had a lot to learn it seemed.
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Post by Kai Aizawa on May 3, 2022 8:34:06 GMT
"Yeah, Marigiold is right, it's probably a test or temptation." Tera said as she had to agree with Marigiold about the dark Omegamon's aims and intentions. However Kai would see another argument that she did not want to go into at the moment as she was distracted with Kai."No use fretting, there was no way we would be able to outplay his strategy." She said before she would stand up slowly.
She would see the vial in her hand and realize she should probably put it away. She pulled out her infinicube from her backpack and tried to place it gently inside, but as she approached the box, the dual ended vial began to rapidly shake in her hand as it got close to being placed inside. Kai immediately put it away. "That's weird, aside from living things and another infinicube, never seen anything react like that." Tera said as Kai would pack the vial into her backpack. "That rare?" She said a bit confused before she would start to look around.
"We'll investigate it later. For now, we should probably look for any clues or traces left behind. It didn't happen this time it seems, but when the Wisemon was on this stuff going berserk, glitches in the world were appearing around and even the sky turned red in the area around. None 0f the clearly dramatic stuff happened this time." Kai said trying to forget about Omegamon for now, not wanting to unpack the experience from the depths of her mind quite yet.
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Post by supesman on May 3, 2022 14:46:22 GMT
"Maybe...god help me...maybe whatever's in that vial is alive, or...at least it used to be." Zack said as he saw the violent reaction the cube had to the vial. After all, if the only other thing that anybody had seen react to it like that was a living thing than there was no reason to believe that the circumstances had changed. Any good investigation followed where the clue led, not where the people investigated wanted them to...or where they didn't want them too in this case.
"The formula may be self perpetuating. Perhaps the reason they need to keep giving it out is because the glitch energy itself is part and parcel of the drug. It would explain why they were giving out free samples to low rent customers. Generally killing your clientele is bad business for pushers, they want addicts not corpses. They could be trying to perfect the formula without the most violent of the side effects." Marigold hunted around to see what kind of clues they could find. She and Zack may not be on the level of Sherlock Holmes but they certainly weren't slouches at this either.
"If they can create a version of this drug with none of the lethality and all of the punch...a digital super soldier serum." Zack paused in his searching, narrowing his eyes at the implication even as he fell back on his old frames of reference to try and wrap his mind around it. The energy, the power the Dogmon had held...it made him shiver.
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Post by Kai Aizawa on May 6, 2022 0:28:40 GMT
"Well more then that, for a while Dogmon was King of the Hill against multiple Ultimate's at once. Dogmon's a Champion form. Wisemons are normally Mega and one was able to open rifts in reality on this stuff. Think about the firepower of that dark Omegamon if he had it? Or anyone else on that level. A normal Omegamon can slash away an army with the pressure of their sword, on this stuff, they'd be splitting a lot more then armies." Tera said as she was thinking other ways that the drug could be used. Kai was silent as she was processing the information in her head, skeptical as she would be thinking over every possible scenario.
"I don't think they want to do this for profit. No, they named themselves Neo Dialus, after the other group they mentioned, Transcendental Dial. Drug dealers wouldn't name themselves besides a few aliases to refer to people. They have an end goal, one this drug would help them reach. This drug, may just be a component to a grander plan. That robot Digimon, said they were after two specific areas to conquer." Kai said as she recounted all the information that was shared as she was trying to derive a hypothesis. "So what, they just want two specific sites, weird. What could they want, I'm lost as the brainy one kept going on about a two ingredient formula-" Tera said as she inadvertently stumbled upon the answer. "Ooh..." She said realizing everything in retrospect.
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Post by supesman on May 6, 2022 13:27:31 GMT
"Supply." Marigold said to Tera as they put together the same two pieces at around the same time as they correlated the two different statements they had overheard. "This insane drug, powerful enough to be a king maker in any conflict or contest has two ingredients, most likely very rare and hard to come by. The only way to keep the drug on hand is to guarantee supply by clamping down on the places where each ingredient is produced and holding on tight." Marigold snarled at the thought because she couldn't argue that it was intelligent. Fiendishly so, the villains had only barely tripped up by letting two different snippets of information get loose that just so happened to line up with each other.
'The question is, where? We've got them theoretically pinned down to two sites of attack but we have nothing to go on as to where, when or how." Zack said, his boots beginning to wear a circle into the grass as he paced around and around a tree stump, steam nearly coming out of his ears. "Unless we can get someone to analyze the sample we have and find out what's in it and I, unfortunately, don't know that kind of super digimon chemist, do you?" He said, being a tad sarcastic but honestly asking Kai and her crew. It seemed that this was the kind of problem that had gotten unreasonably big underneath everyone's noses and it was going to take every resource they could bring to bear in order to stop it before anyone else died.
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Post by Kai Aizawa on May 8, 2022 7:36:36 GMT
"I wouldn't say we got no idea as to how, think about it. They're able to get at least some form of the two substances, maybe diluted or synthetic variants or something,
strong enough to work." She said as she would start to put it together as she saw how the group operated. "Can easily amass a squad of disposable soldiers hooked on this stuff, with the promise of more or some of the original. If we didn't know where the stash was, Omegamon would never have revealed himself to us, which suggests they enjoy a relatively controlled playing field. This way when they need to get involved, their enemies show their hand and are exhausted so he can come in for the final blow at full power."" Kai said as she was starting to put herself in Omegamon Zwart D's shoes about the whole situation, seeing the logic of how it would be easier to let erratic and potential ticking time bombs weaken prey and expose their weaknesses.
"So what your saying is even if he didn't take you hostage, he was counting on Dogmon to push us to show our skills, and die by explosion to weaken us. Weird, that whole warrior talk made it seem like he'd be above that." Tera said as she thought that was a contradiction. Kai shrugged at the response as she was trying her best with the details she had access to. "Probably cause he can control his combative impulses and see the mission through outside of his own needs. Explains why he didn't react to you at all after watching you deviate from plan." Kai explained as she would hear Tera grumble as she was struggling to even respond to that scathing comment.
"As for studying, I am going to take this sample to Deeplane, let the Council's Research and Development department examine it. Odds are I may be able to learn more about this Neo Dialus. I don't think it's unfair to assume part of their business is in the Dark Area at the moment." Kai explained as she was yet to meet anyone from the Deeplane Council's research and development, but she was a bit nervous about explaining this to Amelie when the time would come.
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Post by supesman on May 8, 2022 14:17:44 GMT
"Well if he wanted us to run in without too much thinking before hand, setting off a monster that was starting to hurt people is a good way to do it. Though whether or not he planned for dad and I's intervention, had a contingency for it or just thought on his feet when we showed up is anybody's guess." Marigold said. It was hard for someone to plan for Zack and Marigold to show up, after all, hard to track the vigilantes who usually travelled under the radar and only made a real show of their intervention when they had actually arrived. "It really does point to them having us bugged somehow. But how...and where?" She said, looking over her shoulder without actually finding much. The information this cabal had gathered on Zack was easy enough to explain, the man made a show of himself everywhere he went and that wasn't likely to change, how they had gotten such an easy peg on Kai and her crew though was another matter entirely they seemed to travel much more under the radar than the father daughter team who made it a point of pride to piss off every punk, thug and lowlife they could get their hands on.
"Show our skills...but why? Just so that he can take a measure of his enemy? Why reveal themselves through Dogmon's rampage unless our intervention was somehow required. What do they gain from putting themselves out in the open for people that are going to try and stop them? Do they need you for something? Were we already getting too close to the truth?" Zack sighed, rubbing his temples. For every single question they found a good enough answer for they ended up with at least three others to try and wrap their minds around. He didn't like the feeling of being toyed with, especially by the bad guys who were rushing toward some kind of very violent, very harmful plan. "Make sure you keep us in the loop of what you find. I wanna pay that guy back by taking a chunk of his smug self satisfaction out of his teeth." Zack said, punching his opposite palm. The gauntlet had been thrown at his feet and he was never one to walk away from a challenge, especially by a bad guy so arrogant that it set his teeth on edge.
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Post by Kai Aizawa on May 20, 2022 3:45:49 GMT
"Well, using Dogmon as a public display for a sample makes a lot of sense really. Dogmon was a nobody, then suddenly gaining that power made him known. Odds are Neo Dialus knew they wouldn't remain a secret totally, it would be inevitable that they'd be exposed even in the slightest amount, which is also what they need to help entice potential buyers. They wanted Dogmon to go on a rampage before stopped, so word would spread making others who crave power more am meanable in the long run." Kai explained as she saw how valuable the idea of a public display could be, making others more willing when they are sought out. She can imagine that any number of Digimon in this world would be excited by the prospect of tripling their power even if it meant a likely chance of damaging their very core in the process.
"So basically they wanted a publicity stunt to help entice future buyers or pawns and used the rumor mill to get someone like us here to put him down and be able to say they were strong." Tera said simplifying the entire explanation into a singular sentence as she was barely catching up with the overload of information of Kai's explanation. "In a sense, yes. They took nearly every downside they would inevitably be dealt and take the actions necessary to control them, only if Datamon wasn't so, talkative, they might have succeeded in remaining more cloaked as mysterious figures."
Kai shrugged off the thoughts for the moment as she would carefully rethink over every detail at
a later point where she could freely write her thoughts."For the moment, any further speculation can't provide anything that doesn't get too far out into speculation. For now, I think it's safe to assume everyone needs to recover." She said before she would hold Tera's mouth closed with one hand as she could tell Tera was about to object. "I'm sure Marigold's got a few wounds from the explosion, you chomped into Zack's shoulder which I'm sure he'll feel sooner or later. I need to lay down after nearly having a heart attack. Solarmon and the Missies are out cold, and you took a lot of hits yourself." She said assertively as she was not willing to let Tera's lack of danger sense get her in danger this time around before she would turn to face the other two.
"Thank you both for coming out on such short notice." She said as she would bow to him, forcefully dragging a muffled complaining Tera into a weird floating bow in the process.
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Post by supesman on May 20, 2022 13:35:03 GMT
"He wasn't a nobody." Zack said, pausing the conversaiton with a hard brake in that special moral centered way that he saw the world. he looked to the crater where the Dogmon had once stood, where a living, thinking being had once been living and now was no longer there. "He wasn't. He had people that cared about him. Somewhere. Works good, bad or indifferent that will go unfinished without him. We can't let ourselves start thinking like they do, in terms of power level and the violence it allows. They're not uplifting nobodies and making them stronger, they're stealing the souls of people who never had any need or business fighting like this.' Zack said, like his soul was bubbling to a steaming his at the core of his body. he meant what he said, someone was going to pay for this and he was going to make sure that he was there when it happened.
"I know, dad, I know. But Kai's right. We can't do anything about it right now and that bite on your shoulder is gonna start to sting when your adrenaline wears off." Marigold tried to calm her father. She knew how single minded he could get, especially when people had been hurt but he wouldn't be any good to anybody collapsing onto his face in the middle of a field because he'd kept working until he dropped. "Let's get a bandage on it at least and try to think about our next move. If they're moving this kind of junk through the black market you know as well as I do that we have some people that we can lean on to figure out where, how and when." She said, gingerly placing one of her forelimbs on the shoulder that HADN'T been used as an emergancy evacuation handle.
"Coming out for stuff like this is what we do, Kai. Even if you don't agree with what I do with my life you'll never have trouble getting me to show up when people are in danger. Keep my number and call the second you find anything, day or night I PROMISE you there is nothing more important going on." Zack said, permitting himself to lean up against Marigold for support. He was starting to feel what she was talking about, that swallowing emptyness as his stomach finally dropped out and the warm numbness of his veins started to get replaced by an empty cold that would soon be filled with the aches and pains of a body pushed to the limit. he removed his helmet, rubbing his have with one of his gloved, trembling hands.
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