Sanctuary: Panacea

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel all but growled as he tried to re-adjust his aim. The trees and Gaian Knight were at least confusing the Grue pack, though they were still clearly dangerous. And getting rather annoying. That they quickly tore into a couple of the trees was worrisome; at least Fleur's powers seemed to be working well enough she ought to be able to summon more soon.

"I'm getting tired of these-"

His quip died on his lips as his shot went wide. Again. He grit his teeth in frustration.

'I've half a mind to club these gits silly with one of their own....'

[Electra]

Fleur watched with growing anger as the Grue continued to lay waste, smashing her trees into splinters, trying to hurt her friends. She ignored the feeble attack one launched on her, merely shoving it back out of arm's reach so it wouldn't block her view. How dare they attack her friends, hijack the mind of a friendly android, put innocent children at risk? How dare they try to unleash plague and death here, in a place that was just beginning to bloom with life again? They didn't even belong here. They were intruders, on a world that wasn't even theirs. It was hers.

"This is my world," Fleur snapped at the Grue, her voice as close to threatening as it ever got. "You don't start anything on my world you don't want me to finish. This is OVER!" At once, the walls seemed to bristle with spiky, cactus like plants, each one covered in dozens of spines the length of a man's finger.They began to move in waves, shaking up and down, each movement flinging needles in surprisingly precise arcs towards the nearest marauding Grue. Within seconds, two of the unlucky aliens looked like cacti themselves, pierced with hundreds of needles and with no fight left in them anymore.

While the cacti disposed of one Grue, the trees concentrated on another. While one stood back to prevent the shapeshifter from escaping,the other reached out with leafy branches and smashed them into the Grue's head and body, grabbing it up in what seemed for a moment like a leafy embrace. Instead, a second later, it flung the loathsome alien away, knocking it into its last remaining fellow. Both of them tumbled directly into the cactus wall, which helpfully extended plenty of binding vines to hold them in place. Just like that, the battle was over, the villains subdued, and the cavern looking like an inside-out Chia pet. Fleur looked around. "What on earth are we going to do about the captain?"

[Fox]

"Thanks," Gaian Knight said, slumping back into a chair that pulled itself together just in time to catch him. He looked tired, a little nauseous, and a whole lot worse for wear, but he was alive, and not too seriously-injured, and some days that counted for a lot. "I'm not sure, to be honest, but there has to be someone who can un...whatever...him. And fix him up, while they're at it...Daedalus, maybe, or that Lab place."

He leaned back a bit, trying to get his head back together as the adrenaline wore off. Why do the ones with claws always have something nasty in them? Is it some kind of package deal? "We also need to figure out what we can do about...uh -" - he gestured at the still-rock-entombed coffins - "- those. I guess the captain might know better about them than we do, but we can't just leave them here to spew more sickness into the air next time some idiot comes in here with a pickaxe. Or, heaven forbid, if there are more Grue hiding out there somewhere."

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel took a couple solid steps back as the walls came alive with rather...hostile...plants. He was thankful Fleur wasn't mad at him, at least! Once the proverbial dust had settled, he walked over to the still-bound Android Captain. He calmly reached down, grasped his spear, and (with one leg braced on the pile of plant matter, plastic, and metal) used both hands to pry it from the ineffectual robot's grip, before it flashed down out of sight (to its ring form). He stepped back and looked around.

"I didn't really understand his instructions. I guess...stick him in another dimension until we can get someone with more expertise in? Maybe we should have the Lab recommend a couple disease specialists. Though..."

He glanced back at the Captain.

"He said Penny somehow held the cure and the ability to neutralize the other two..."

At this point he was bone tired and really just wanted to take a long soak and a nap, but there wasn't really time, not when the whole planet was at stake.

[Electra]

Fleur layered a few more coatings of vine over the android captain for good measure, then went to have a look at Gaian Knight. Already the cactus were beginning to shrink away back into the walls, replaced with friendlier broad-leafed vines that snaked up the walls and fanned a gentle breeze through the cavern. "I was thinking perhaps we could send him off to the Lab. Miss Americana was my obstetrician backup when Amaryllis was born, but I know her specialty is robotics and prosthetics. Between her and the other bright minds over there, I'm sure they can get him fixed up and working sanely again. When he's back on his feet, he can tell us what to do with the viruses."

She rummaged in her pouch and began pulling out what of her herbal remedies hadn't spilled on the floor earlier. "I think for the moment, I'll take Penny and Scraps to the village and try to settle them in with the families there. That would be less traumatic than taking them to Prime, I hope, and they'll be safe enough. Now Tarrant," she interrupted herself, holding out a small leaf-wrapped bundle to her fellow hero, "you eat this and let me put something on those bruises. They just beat the crap out of you, didn't they?" Over along the wall, the trees stood guard over a pile of unconscious Grue, ready to deliver a smack if necessary.

[Fox]

"Eh, I've had worse," Tarrant chuckled, pulling his goggles down around his neck and dutifully chewing on the leaf bundle. "Besides, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who took a couple blows, there - what's a couple new scars for a good cause?"

He sighed, wincing a little as he settled back against his chair and eyed the coffins. They might have looked like solid rock on the outside, but he could feel the void inside where the stone stopped, a void containing....well, he had no real idea. "Penny might be the cure, but I dunno if I'm comfortable expecting her to neutralize anything without knowing what that means. Not that I think the captain would do anything that could hurt her, but...I dunno. And that's kind of the problem, I guess - we just don't really know what any of that means."

[KnightDisciple]

"Miss Americana is good people, and yeah, she's a whiz with the techno-stuff. As for the cure...maybe we could get some mouth swabs and a small bit of blood drawn, and let some bio-tech-person figure out a wide-area cure? But..."

He looked around, his gaze lingering on the stone-encased capsules.

"Do we....need to stay here? Until it's cured? To not risk, well, killing everything? And...what do we do with the Grue? The, ah, organic ones, that is."

[Electra]

"Oh, I don't think so," Fleur replied. "As soon as Gaian Knight encased those crypts, I started cleansing the air. I don't think there's anything of the virus left at all, at least not nearby." For her part, Stesha was looking entirely back to normal, as if she had never been withered at all. "As for the Grue, we'll turn them over to the League. Who knows, maybe studying Grue who have been on some version of earth for decades will provide some valuable information for next time we have a large-scale problem." She finished her work on Gaian Knight, who now looked much better, even if he smelled like an herbal tea bag. "In any case, these crypts have been sealed for decades, apparently without incident. If GK will seal the chamber with rock so nobody can get in and bother it, we should buy a few days to get the Captain back in order.

Standing up, Fleur brushed her knees off with her hands, wincing a bit at her own bruises. One by one the collapsed Grue began to disappear, then finally the android captain as well. "We're going to take care of you and get you better," Fleur promised before popping him into the green space that existed between plant dimensions. When the mess of the fight was cleaned up, she opened a flower in the center of the room and brought the children back in, unwilling to leave them alone and afraid any longer than necessary. "Everything's going to be all right," she assured them immediately. "We were able to save your father, Penny, but he needs help from our doctors and scientists to get him back to normal."

[Supercape]

GM

With Scraps' and Penny safe and sound, and the temple of Panacea and Pandora buried and sealed under rock, all was well again in Pandora. It was, perhaps, slightly better than normal. Perhaps trace amounts of Pandora's plague had seeped out over the years, for the plants seemed to have just a slight more vitality to them, and grew just that fraction easier.

The Grue were silent - or rather, were vocal. It seemed whatever warped Genetic experimentation the real Captain had performed on them was not to be undone. They maintained a fanatic, rageful insanity. Where they the only members of the Cult of Pandora? Only time would tell. Scraps' had certainly seen at least one roaming the desolation of Sanctuary in his time, and rumours of the cult persisted.

Finally, there was the Captain. His android technology was highly advanced, but the super minds of the Lab, back on Earth Prime, were able to crack their mysteries. The failsafe subroutine in the Captain's brain could be at least surpressed, although not removed completely.

And now, Scraps' and Penny had a new home, and other children to play with. Although the mutation of Scraps' was a little off putting.

And there were always whispers about exactly who Penny was...

~ Fin ~