wrfmlogsarchive | Something fishy's going on around here...

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ren,
roxas

Something fishy's going on around here...

Who: Ren and Roxas
What: Time to compare notes on what they've dug up on some of the latest world issues.
Where: Atlantica
Status: In progress.

It had been a few days since Seph had dropped Ren off on Atlantica's surface, and so far, the most she had to show for it was a bad case of food poisoning. She had been severely tempted to just forget about her meeting with Roxas and just spend the day curled up in bed, cursing whatever agent of Darkness had caused this mess.

In the end, Refugee-grade stubbornness won out, so Ren staggered out to the designated meeting spot, albeit a little later than she had originally planned. Hopefully, Roxas would have found more pieces to the puzzle by now than she had.

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On sight, it was obvious that Roxas was sick as well. Not that he would comment on it. There were more important things going on. So it was that headed for the agreed upon meeting place, also a bit late.

His illness was only one cause for his being late. The other cause was a run in with some Heartless on the way. Still, he was there and he had a little bit of information at least.

Ren managed a wan smile when she met Roxas along Atlantica's shoreline. "Local cuisine's not agreeing with you either, huh?" she asked, though it was more of a rhetorical question than anything else.

"I haven't been able to find out much," Ren admitted. To be fair, getting sick had put a damper on her investigations, but she doubted she'd have been able to find much more even if she were healthy. "Whatever's killing the fish is affecting the food supply, too. It's worse if you eat fish, but it doesn't seem to be limiting itself to that."

"I think it might be the water," Roxas replied, "Nothing tastes right or smells right and underwater the fish and merpeople alike are reporting serious problems breathing."

He paused a moment, to collect his thoughts. In all honesty, he hadn't been able to poke around as much as he'd wanted to. Being sick and having to deal with a lot of Heartless as he was trying to look around had made things difficult.

"I thought the Heartless might have something to do with it, but there really aren't more of them here than one would expect. They are a little more aggressive, though. Other than that, I haven't really found any clues, but I was thinking of looking around some more."

"The water, huh..." As much as Ren hated to admit it, it made sense. It explained why people were still getting sick even without eating the fish, and everything else. "I feel like we're stuck in an episode of Captain Planet," Ren said dryly.

She cringed as her stomach suddenly cramped up, as if it were trying to spite her. "Alright. I'll see if I can't find any clues that could point to a cause or a remedy up here," she promised. Somehow, she doubted she'd be able to find much, but it was better than doing nothing.

"I don't quite get that reference, but I don't feel like looking up either," Roxas replied, "That's beside the point anyway. Let's... see what other clues we can dig up and meet back here, ok?"

"It was a cartoon from the '90s about a superhero who... yeah, never mind, it's not important right now," Ren said sheepishly.

She nodded and tucked her hair back behind her ear. "Yeah, okay. The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the better. When do you want to meet up again?"

"Never mind... maybe I'll look if I have some free time." For all the pop culture of Earth that he had looked up, there was a lot more he hadn't... and quite a bit he probably wasn't going to either, for varying reasons.

As to the question of when they should meet again, he sighed and thought for a moment. They both had a lot of area to cover and it was probably going to be slow going with them both being sick. Still, maybe updating a little more often might provide some leads to follow up on... hopefully.

"Day after tomorrow, maybe?"

"Fair warning, it tends to focus more on preaching environmentalism than telling a good story," Ren said. Her conscience refused to let her attempt to introduce the theme song to Roxas' head the way it was now stuck in hers.

She nodded and glanced back toward the castle and the town that surrounded it. The two of them needed to find a solution, fast. If the water really was contaminated, then neither the humans nor the merfolk would probably last very long unless something was done.

"Alright. Same time, same place?"

"Uh-huh... right..."

Frankly, Roxas was amazed that any one was still able to function. How long had this situation been going on? He felt like finding a corner to curl up in an be miserable after only a few days, but the people of this world had been dealing with it longer.

"Yeah. I'll let you know if I find anything that needs more urgent attention."

"Yeah, same here." Ren nodded grimly and stood up, taking a moment to brush the sand off of her skirt.

She still wanted to just lapse into a coma or something to get out of feeling this miserable, but there was work to be done. Ah well, no rest for the weary, and all that rot.

"You be careful out there," she warned before heading back to town. Roxas was fully capable of looking after himself, sure, but mother hen instincts were hard to quash. And in times like these, they were especially active.

"I will," Roxas replied.

He wanted to go curl up in a little ball of misery himself, but there was too much to do. His first order of business was to see if he could get a little cooperation out of King Triton. The Sea King had been all but openly hostile since Roxas had arrived and he had a feeling he knew why, but now was not the time. He had to get some answers.

... Or not. As he approached the palace he noticed some things drifting down from above. Closer inspection showed them to be dead fish and they seemed to be oozing something. Roxas didn't look any closer than that. He could only assume it had something to do with the darkness and whatever was poisoning the water. Curious, he approached some seaweed and other under sea plants. A merman noticed his interest in the plants and informed him that some plankton feeding whales had reported some 'odd flavors' in there meals. There were tiny plants among plankton, but somehow Roxas doubted it had started wholesale with plants. It could just have been that plants had been affected first.

"Maybe the Keyhole..." Even if the issue wasn't exclusive to Atlantica, the Keyhole might still provide a clue. The trick was getting to it, as Heartless always sought out a world's Keyhole, whether it was locked or not. He wasn't disappointed in that. There were some Heartless around... there was also a very angry King Triton there. Great. Still, at least he wasn't clearing out the Heartless alone. Not that he there was any good reason to clear them out besides helping King Triton out a bit. The Keyhole seemed to be okay and offered no new clues and the only information King Triton had for him was that the sickness had started a few days before he'd arrived.

All in all, he found very little. It was obvious that the underlying cause seemed to be an influx of darkness, but he had no way of finding where it was coming from. If he was lucky, maybe Ren had found something.

For her part, Ren had been speaking to just about anyone who would answer her about their experiences and hypotheses on the matter.

One of the more promising theories came from a pair of doctors who had been examining some of the dead fish. They had shown her a sample of a strange purple gunk that had oozed from the fishes' gills and said it was probably evidence of some kind of sinister poison.

Ren was starting to get her own ideas about what exactly this "poison" was made of, though. The day after she had met Roxas, she felt even worse than before, to the point where it was a test of will just to stay standing. It wasn't until after she got back to her room and realized that she had accidentally left Alexander's summon gem behind that morning that she started to feel better--still miserable, mind you, but much more manageable.

Maybe the Darkness really was behind this mess, then. But that still left the issue of how Ren and Roxas were going to stop it. It probably wouldn't be as simple as chlorinating a swimming pool, to say the least. Maybe a large burst of Light-based magic could negate it, the way Alexander and Roxas' own affinity seemed to be protecting the two of them. The question was, how were they going to pull something like that off?

Having very little to show, Roxas headed back to the beach to meet Ren. His report would be very small indeed. He wanted to ask for help, but he also didn't want to put anyone else at risk of getting sick here and they were guaranteed to get sick if they came.

He was early getting to the meeting point this time.

After double-checking that she did, in fact, have Alexander's gem on her person before she left, Ren made her way back to the beach. She desperately hoped that Roxas had a plan of action by now, especially after receiving word that two people had died from the effects of this poison late last night and earlier this morning.

"Any luck?" she asked when she saw Roxas waiting for her. The look on his face wasn't too promising, but she had to try.

"Very little. Whatever it is, it seems to have a lot to do with darkness and that it started not long before I got here. The Keyhole seems to be fine, but I'm thinking of keeping an eye on it. Whatever's causing this might still go for it."

He could say that, but he wasn't sure of his ability to protect the Keyhole or to stop whatever was causing all this. Besides being alone at the moment, he was sick and getting worse. He'd been lucky so far with Heartless battles, but against something of a boss level...

Maybe he'd call for reinforcements once he was sure of what it was they were looking for. No sense in anyone else being exposed this darkness or poison or whatever the hell it was for too long.

Ren nodded as she sat down and made herself comfortable. "Yeah, that sounds about right," she agreed. "The general consensus is that there's some kind of darkness-based poison in the water."

She sighed and glanced over Roxas' shoulder at the water behind him. It still looked harmless enough at first glance, but to think that it was being used to doom an entire world's population to a slow death... "This is the siege of Doma all over again," she muttered softly.

"Good thinking on watching out for the Keyhole, Roxas," Ren said, trying to find something positive to cling to. "I think I'm gonna post on the comm and ask the others if they have any ideas on how to clean up this mess. Maybe we'll be able to figure something out before more people have to die."

"Doma? Never mind. I'll look that up another time," he replied, "And, I figured I should check the Keyhole, since it's usually a target when a problem on a world is related to darkness." Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be part of it this time, but there was no justifiable reason to leave it unguarded either.

In the meantime, he supposed he could poke around a little more. He hadn't been talking to people much because they'd been taking a leaf out of their king's book and not trusting him much. With any luck, between that and Ren's message to the others, they might have a lead.

"Long story short, this complete maniac decides that it's taking too long to defeat this castle stronghold, so he poisons its water supply, killing everyone inside, including some of his own men," Ren explained, suppressing a shudder. Kefka as one of their enemies, now there was a scary thought.

"I'll go get on that message, though," she said as she got up. "Call me if anything comes up."

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Something fishy's going on around here...

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