Between The Darkness And The Light

"Huh. Better than my idea of just taking them down with us."

After a few minutes, he repeats, "I think I can get rid of that thing attached to Shein. Maybe kill it, too."

The only thing Lucas and Esteban seem to want is some time together. Not necessarily in private. Actually, they don't seem to care, but they do check each other over to make sure there's nothing wrong. Beyond that, they just seem content to be in the same location.

***********************************

Shein nods slightly. "Good. If I find Arren, I might end up having him killed. This thing seems to think he's a threat to it." He sighs, then shakes his head. "There is nothing short of getting this thing off."

*******************************

The Vorlon ship lands and the Vorlon on board leaves the ship. The ship, however, doesn't stick around. It takes off almost as if it had a mind of its own and doesn't want to be studied. The Vorlon doesn't seem to care that it's being followed. It just heads off toward where Arren is located. If they try to stop it, it ignores them. If it's fired upon, any energy weapons seems to be absorbed into the bulky suit it wears. Projectiles just bounce off. Lasers are counted in the energy weapon category. In any case, once it gets to Arren, Arren seems to recognise it as the same one that had approached the Rutians after the initial incident that started this little chain of events.

Thorgood takes the bait. "How?" he asks.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Lucas and Esteban are given a different villa on the Sister Planet. There are a few rangers guarding the paths into the place, but there is nothing resembling a group intended to keep them there. Teresa does ask them to remain where we can find them though; Thorgood will want to talk to them about how Lucas killed his controller creature.

It was probably implied that they shouldn't kill anyone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Burninites would not fire on the Vorlon. They would simply continue to ask it to stop, and/or explain itself.

When the Vorlon doesn't stop, but its destination becomes obvious, they radio ahead to the guards of the villa that they're coming, just in case anyone wanted to leave.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jenova nods. "We can try if you'd like," she says.

He starts vibrating his whole body and walks through the door, phasing through the door and walks back through.

"It took me a lot of practice, but I have conscious control over damn near every molecule in my body and I can transfer it to a limited range. Furthermore, I can either phase through objects harmlessly or make them explode. So, for example, if I wanted to kill you right now, I could phase my hand through your head, grab your brain, make that phase through your skull, and pull it out. I could then make your brain explode. Simple."

Shein is silent for a moment, then nods. "I just have to stay drunk. Like I said, it can't hold it's liquor. Knocks it out."

******************************

Lucas and Esteban are both grateful for the hiding place. They'll stay put and they won't kill anyone either, but they do request blood being sent to them so they don't have to go out hunting and be seen. They're trying to hide from the bad guys.

******************************

Arren and Kennah stay put and just wait for the Vorlon. They both seem to trust him. When the Vorlon finally arrives, he talks in riddles again, but to Arren. Kennah is pretty much ignored. If Arren understands the Vorlon, he's not sharing, though from the confused look, he's probably as clueless as everyone else that's listening.

Thorgood sighs. "Well, let's check if that will work first," he says. He beckons Dmitri to follow him, and teleports them outside the villa given to Lucas and Esteban. Teresa had some blood procured for them already, so there will be no need for hunting.

Thorgood knocks at the door.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Mind if I call Thorgood in with a bio-researcher?" Jenova asks. "They might be able to come up with a way to keep it asleep or kill it."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Well, the Vorlon is ignored by the guards, though Jenova ordered them to just beam it somewhere else if it does something dangerous.

Esteban lets Thorgood and Dmitri inside. Lucas isn't in a position to talk at the moment. He's rather catatonic even though he's wandering around. He's not focusing on anything or anyone and he is bumping into things. Hopefully he's explained all of it to Esteban, who is completely lucid at the moment.

***********************

Shein shakes his head to Jenova. "I don't mind." He pulls his jacket back up, hiding the thing on his shoulder for now. "If there's a way to keep it asleep, I'll take it. If there's a way to kill it, I'll take that too." He downs another drink. "Just as long as I don't pass out before things are taken care of."

************************

The Vorlon doesn't do anything dangerous. After 'talking' to Arren, he just stays there looking cryptic.

He follows, along with Svetlana, who has been there the whole time.

I'll pretend to know both who Svetlana is, and how you can look cryptic.

Thorgood frowns at Lucas. "This isn't a good sign," he says. It's framed as a question at Esteban. Before an answer can happen though, Thorgood presses more buttons and has them all teleported to where Shein is being kept.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"I hope you don't," Jenova says as she looks at her comlink. "Because it looks like your occupational forces on Esoteric figured out who made their prisoner vanish. Your parasitic friend might not like that too much!'"

Thorgood, Dmitri, Svetlana, Lucas, and Esteban appear. Apparently, Thorgood didn't need a bio-researcher.

Esteban barely has enough time to shrug and start to respond. "Well, he told me..." And he's cut off with the beaming.

**********************

Shein just starts laughing at the thought of his parasitic friend not liking something. He laughs even more when the others beam in. No, it probably wouldn't like this one bit.

And Esteban finishes his comment, "...exactly what went wrong."

"Don't you just hate it when that happens?" asks Dmitri while chuckling.

Jenova raises an eyebrow quizzically, but doesn't comment. Thorgood probably didn't do that on purpose anyway.

"What went wrong?" Thorgood asks. "We'll try to avoid making the same mistake."

He looks to Shein for permission to examine the parasite, then realizes how drunk he is and decides that consent is implied.

Teresa appears. "I heard something is wrong with Lucas!" she exclaims.

Shein sees Thorgood coming and just removes his jacket again and pulls his shirt down. He may be drunk, but he seems aware of why he's here and how important it is to get this thing off.

Esteban shrugs. "What Lucas told me was that it couldn't fuse to his nervous system because he's clinically dead. It killed the keeper. Each time they tried to attach one, it died."

Lucas just walks into a wall, not seeming to recognise it's there. This doesn't alarm Esteban at all.

Esteban glances to Teresa. "Nothing's wrong with him. This isn't a side effect. He goes through times like this. Give him a few more minutes and he'll snap out of it."

Dmitri waits for permission from Thorgood to try.

Well, Thorgood is prodding the thing, looking to see where it connects with the skin. He pulls out a handheld device to try to see its insides. Thorgood probably won't suggest that option at this point, since Esteban has pointed out that the parasite is connected to the nervous system in some way. Shein said he'd destroyed it before, but it came back. Plus, Thorgood would much rather Dmitri come up with a way to defeat the Rutian military while he comes up with a way to defeat the evil parasite of doom.

He's come up with two possible ways to knock out a parasite that connected with Shein's tissue.
1) Zap Shein repeatedly with electrical pulses to short out his nervous system temporarily and see if that would cause the organism to retreat.
2) Find some form of radiation that would harm the organism, but not Shein.

The first could kill Shein, and the second could take years. Consequently, Thorgood is thinking frantically and not looking happy.

"Oh," Teresa says, looking at the same time relieved and sympathetic. (That sentence was in reference to Lucas' condition, in case you were wondering.) Jenova is looking at Teresa out of the corner of her eye wondering how she knew what was going on in the room.

"Did you try having Arren kill it?" Jenova asks Shein.

Shein blinks at Jenova for a moment, then shakes his head. "He doesn't know about it." He shrugs. "I'm telling you, there's no way to kill it. It always comes back. Always comes back."

Esteban wanders to Lucas' side and guides him away from the wall where he was about to run into it. He forces Lucas to sit, then does over to poke at the thing as well. "Lucas said it couldn't connect, which means the neural pathways may have to completely shut down to remove it." He shrugs. "If Lucas would snap out of it, he could probably give you a much more detailed analysis."

And Lucas does snap out of it. "The Keeper can't survive with a dead host. From the time they attached it to the time it died, it took approximately four minutes each time. They lost ten of them with me. I felt it try and connect each time. Each time I just laughed while they couldn't figure it out." He smirks, clearly pleased with himself.

(OOC: Pass.)

"Four minutes is just about the amount of time we could relatively safely stop your heart, then revive you," Thorgood says to Shein. "Any longer than that, and you'd suffer brain damage."

"And what if we can't restart his heart?" Jenova asks.

"We can," Thorgood replies quickly.

"I think that we should try..." Jenova starts, but glances at Shein. "to use Arren," she finishes mouthing while facing away from Shein "before we try anything that could kill him."

Lucas just listens to the possible solution, then shrugs. "You gotta remember that I don't really have brain activity. I don't know whether it was the lack of a pulse or the lack of brain activity that killed it. If you stop his heart and it doesn't die in that four minutes, when you bring Shein back from the brink, that keeper is gonna be pissed. I don't mean mildly pissed, I mean extremely pissed. If it doesn't work, Shein will attack you afterward. He won't be the one in control though. Just having those things attached to me gave me enough insight as to how they work, but not how to kill them and be sure they're dead. At least not on a living host."

Shein still seems to find all this amusing. He's giggling. What do you expect? He's drunk.

Esteban stops poking at the Keeper and looks at Shein. "Whatever the choice is, I'd say it should be Shein's, but he's, well, too drunk to care. If he's like me, he'll agree to anything at the moment." He looks at the others. "Considering I'm technically his only family member here, wouldn't that make the decision mine?" He has no clue Kennah is in hiding around here.

Bored, Dmitri leans back and phases part of himself through the wall.

"Certainly not!" Thorgood objects loudly. "This is M-"

Thorgood is cut off when Jenova quietly clears her throat. She goes on in a much more politely reserved voice. "I assure you, we are in no danger in this room from Shein himself," she says. "The weapons Shein's guard has have been disabled, and we have our own non-lethals that we'd deploy quickly if the organism got out of hand." ('We' probably means her. She used to be special ops after all.)

She pauses to glance in Thorgood's direction. "Suffice to say that there are other family members we could contact," she says to Esteban. "For now, if we're all in agreement, the decision will be Thorgood's, since he's the scientist here, and therefore the most likely to be able to come up with a good way to do this."

"Thank you," Thorgood grumbles at the same time that Teresa objects; "Lucas is more qualified than -"

They're both forestalled when Jenova holds up an open hand. It's times like these that one is thankful that Jenova is the mature one. And they say Earl won some arguments. I rather doubt it.

"Lucas, help from you would be appreciated. Esteban, you can be consulted as well if you'd like. Thorgood, I do expect you to be working, not staring at me like a looby," Jenova finishes.

Thorgood rolls his eyes and presses a few buttons. A table resembling an operation table appears, though a body shaped depression is evident on the table, and it's lit up.

"Help me get him on the table," Thorgood says.

Esteban actually stops Lucas from picking Shein up to get him to the table. "Woah, wait. I'll agree that Thorgood is a good scientist and maybe even a competent doctor, but this is the life of the Rutian Emperor here. If the decision is Thorgood's alone, I'm beginning to think we should take Shein back to Dreva and deal with the problem there. Not to mention that you said there are other family members you can contact. Arren isn't here, which means he's with Kennah, which also means that they got sent away or left on Dreva. One of the two. If it's the former, that means you have contact with them. If it's the latter, that means you have contact with them. If I'm not going to be allowed to make decisions with his inability to decide for himself, then you'd better notify Kennah of what's going on and let her make those choices after it's been thoroughly explained. Or do you not have such patient rights laws here? Shein might be grateful that you got that thing off if anything works, but he could just as easily be pissed that Kennah wasn't notified and allowed to make decisions on his behalf. Or myself, for that matter."

Lucas looked ready to argue with Esteban until the reasoning started in. Lucas just shuts his mouth and waits for the response. He probably thinks Esteban has a valid point, considering Shein is family to him.

Shein is of no help. He just downs another drink before Lucas can stop him. He doesn't even comment, though he does look oddly at Esteban when Kennah is mentioned. If it sank in, there's no real sign.

Thorgood looks like he was about to exclaim that it's just a scanner, but Jenova's look silences him.

Jenova frowns. For their own safety, Jenova had been keeping the secret of Arren and Kennah's location as closely as possible. However, Esteban does raise good points. For future reference, such laws do exist in Burnination, but the emperor of the largest military power in the galaxy being under foreign mind control is kind of an extenuating circumstance.

Jenova beckons for Esteban to move away from Shein and follow her to the other side of the room, but she does motion for Thorgood to wait for Esteban to be pacified before moving Shein. Once there, Jenova says, "I'm sorry that we're proceeding seemingly with no regard, but we would contact Kennah before making any decisions that could put Shein's life in danger. Do not let on to anyone that we have Arren and Shein's family in Burnination; we wish to keep such information from Shein's keeper."

Jenova pulls out her comlink and hands it to Esteban. "This button will put you into contact with Kennah," she says. "We will abide by any decision she makes. I had meant that the decisions concerning which options to pursue to try to remove the thing should be up to Thorgood. The decision whether or not to pursue such options once they have been chosen will be up to her."

"You can let him bring in other medical professionals if he wants," Thorgood calls from across the room. "The more the merrier. If anyone can be considered a 'professional' on this matter."

Esteban listens, then nods. "I see." He glances to Lucas and nods again. To Jenova, "I think I can speak for her in this in order to keep up appearances. If something occurs that I'm torn on, I'll leave and contact her, then convey her decision."

Lucas, the fifteen year old sometimes brat, just picks Shein up and puts him on the table/scanner.

Shein wrinkles his nose, but doesn't complain. He's still too out of it to complain.

Esteban looks at Thorgood for a moment. "The only 'professional' we have on this matter is Lucas."

Lucas smirks, then shrugs. "When it comes to that thing being attached to vampires, I guess I am. For mortals, I'm not. If all else fails, there's one option that I know won't." He doesn't voice it. "But I'd rather it not come to that." He glances at Esteban.

Esteban is silent for a moment, head tilted. A second later, he figures it out. "Oh no, we are not going there."

Lucas shrugs again. "Well, that'd be up to Kennah really. Since no one seems to know where the hell she is, it's not going to happen." He glances to Jenova. "We have excellent hearing. Did I ever tell you that? I overheard my guards at one point talking about how Kennah and the rest of Shein's family disappeared. Oddest thing really." Okay, so that was his way of telling Jenova that he heard all of that. "They also talked about the fact that the Keeper couldn't latch on to me. Kept saying that they'd give it a couple more tries and if it didn't work, they were going to kill me." He glances to Teresa. "You showed up just in time."

(OOC: I assumed a few things about Shein's health here. I can change them if need be. I assumed health would be great because of the spice.)

Teresa smiles at the acknowledgment of her rescue. Jenova decides that she's going to have to have ANOTHER discussion about staying away from strange alien creatures.

Thorgood nods when Esteban addresses him, but he's staring at an output screen that appeared out of the side of the table when Shein was placed on it.

Teresa wrinkles her forehead in mock ignorance when Lucas mentions the last resort. Jenova just frowns.

"Looks like Shein is in perfect health, if you discount the damage he's trying to cause in his liver with this drinking habit, and the fact that there's an abnormal organism attached to his body," Thorgood comments.

A projected screen of the organism appears above the table when Thorgood presses a few buttons. Thorgood examines the thing, looking for the best way to go about severing and killing it.