14993/This Might Bother People

This Might Bother People
Date of Scene:	24 May 2023
Location:	Lemurian Castle Lands
Synopsis:	Diana and Cassie are forced to do something they don't want to ever have to do. The nature of war is as diseased, and cruel, as the Brood itself.
Cast of Characters:	Diana Prince, Cassie Sandsmark

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Diana Prince has posed:
The Amazons had steadily been increasing in numbers over the course of the past several weeks, there are now 400 of them on-site near the Lemurian castle. They have a sizable tent-village built up too, with training grounds specifically designed for the Amazon needs, a little community has begun to form, and bonds have begun to form with some of the locals too.

Diana was out on patrol with Cassie, and their contingent of riders when they'd arrived back at the camp just about ten minutes ago. Diana and Cassie had split up as the Princess had gone to speak to the Captain...

Now, about five minutes after they split up, Diana appears at wherever Cassie had gone off to, and speaks to her in a solemn tone. "Come with me." She tells her sister, still wearing her armor, still covered in some of the filth of the patrol, her dark hair tied back in a tight braid, her armor dirtied and in need of some upkeep, but apparently....

Something had come up that requires their immediate attention.

Diana leads Cassie through the campsite toward the stables, where a quarantine area had been setup in a dark corner of one of the large stable tents.

In the dark corner, one of the Kanga's, one known as Flyer, is laying on the ground, wheezing heavily. His body is covered in Brood infection, his eyes are starting to turn...

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
It has been an unfortunately common thing in recent years, for the Amazons to deploy beyond the island to help defend the world at large. Often, they've faced stiff cultural divides with their new allies. But here? Not so much!

Even if the cultural antecedents are somewhat different, there is quite a deal that is similar in how they fight: shield walls and spears, ranks of archers, exotic cavalry? None of these are unfamiliar to them. Of course, none are nearly so individually strong or skillful as the Amazons, but they offer the Amazons something they've rarely had to make use of: proper numbers. And so Amazons officers train squadrons of Lemurians, organize them to field the larger formations to support Amazon vanguards. All in all, it's something to see, as they all train on the vast fields beyond the impressive walled city and its towering central keep.

Cassie, too, has fit in well. Between her childhood as the archeologist's daughter and her recent life as a junior Amazon, she's acquired quite the familiarity and ease with cultures of antiquity. And while Lemurians may be a little more out there, they count! Thus she's transitioned quite easily to the quaint Medieval-esque streets of the castle town, and to the joint patrols with their new allies. The fact that they have dinosaur-riding cavalry has obvious garnered GREAT interest from the Kanga-enthusiast, as well...

Unfortunately, it does bear risks, as she sees today.

Cassie is dismounted with a pair of those dino-knights, discussing whatever insights from the day's patrol, when Diana comes to fetch her. Quickly enough, they make their way to the stable, where the sense of foreboding grows before the reality finally stands in front of her. "Oh no... when did it happen?"

Diana Prince has posed:
Flyer was one of the more popular Kanga in the herd. He was very good natured, very loving and very capable on the battlefield. He could easily be considered a 'Captain Kanga Battleroo' if such a thing existed.

Cassie's question gets Diana to look away from the infected Kanga, her brow had been furrowed at the sight of the worsening infectious degredation that the animal was experiencing. She looks to Cassie, her expression lightening some as she shakes her head. "I was told about it this morning." Diana admitted to her much younger sister. "I told them to double the efforts in healing... but." She looks over to the Stablemaster Amazon warrior, a woman named Jepsa who speaks up, her voice smoky in a way that is rather similar to Diana's own.

"We treated in every way that we have available. The medicines were not working at all." She explains to both Diana and Cassie, her raven hued hair tied back but many strands loose around her face showing her disheveled state from all of this work likely. She looks to Flyer, then back to them and steps closer. "I am afraid there's nothing left we can do. We have to... stop it before it risks spreading whatever strain this is to the rest of the pack." She says it low, but the intentions are clear.

Diana looks to her, nods a single time before she regards Cassie. "Your lasso." Diana tells her as she opens the pen to Flyer's stall, and steps in to it, cautiously moving toward the lounging creature which seems to be struggling to breathe.

It's an odd breathing pattern, like it's two separate creatures trying to breathe at the same time, one sounding natural and 'right' and the other ... sounding anything but.

Diana draws in a light breath, stepping carefully toward it, and reaching her left hand out to stroke it over Flyer's head where there is still a patch of natural looking fur. The Kanga looks up to Diana, and makes a wimpering sound, laced with pain and that same strange dual presence of another within it.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Cassie's expression quickly turns pretty bleak. She's definitely one of 'those' people: she can go to war alongside her fellow Amazons, fight invasions of hostile aliens or undead spewed from the underworld, and face the fact that she may lose sisters along the way.

But cute animals? It's tough!

Her skin pales a bit, and as Diana announces the inevitability of the situation, she swallows and gives a glum nod. "I guess there's no choice." She looks, at first, like she might step back, but doesn't. She stands, waits a moment. However, as she looks to Cassie with that request, something pretty rare in their whole mentor-student history happens: she balks!

"Wait, what? Why?" She blinks once, and then looks down reflexively, to where her weapon is ready on her belt. "Wouldn't that really hurt? And I don't, I'm not sure I can even..." The lasso responds to ANGER, given where she got it. It's effective because the young woman has such a temper. At war, she can channel that, make it a disciplined force rather than a purely chaotic one.

But now? She's feeling nothing but despair, quite the opposite!

"Shouldn't we just, can't we, I don't know. There should be something we could give him to eat or something? Like, uh, I guess that's kind of how they do it at the vet."

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana continued to lightly stroke that patch of natural fur still on Flyer's head as it seemed to lean in to the touch, the rest of its body mostly covered in the chitin that was commonly found on the insect variety of these Brood creatures, with the worst parts of it actually leaking out on to the ground beneath where Flyer is lounging.

The Princess looks away from the beastt's eyes toward Cassie again. "Do not charge it. Just... prepare to hold it steady." She explains. "And we cannot use an ingested method. It will likely just fight it off now, as it has the medications." Which could be debated, but there is evidence to suggest that these creatures have a powerful resistance to outside influences, save for fire, and blade...

Diana's hand moves down to her hip where she pulls a long silvery blade from a sheath on the back of her harness where it normally hangs right there on the small of Diana's back.

She keeps it behind her back as she looks back to Flyer's eyes, the creature eyeing the two women back as its natural pupils start to turn a grim yellow.

It's then that Diana pulls the dagger around, and when the face of Flyer sees the blade it starts to move... it starts to try to stand up...

And the need for that lasso, even uncharged, becomes more clear.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Well, at least THAT explanation seems to put Cassie at ease. At least as much so as she can be, in the situation. ELECTROCUTING a kanga was definitely pretty far up there on lists of horrifying images.

Instead, she's left with a more mundane but still very bleak one.

Stepping forward rather than backing away like she had been, she reaches down to uncoil her lasso from her belt, a more deliberate action than the normal quick-flick lasso tricks that she might normally employ. This is just somehow, well, a little more solemn, drawing it out, loop by by loop. No doubt, she thinks they have a little more time here than they do, to secure the creature. To give it a dignified, loving goodbye.

But they don't!

"Diana, careful!" Now, Cassie does move with haste, snapping into a more grounded stance as she snaps her arm and flicks her wrist to cast the lasso forward, open-end first, aimed over Flyer's head. This close, at least, it's hard to miss. When the loop settles, she immediately pulls back to cinch it and then provide some pull in the other direction, tension in the opposite direction of her mentor.

Diana Prince has posed:
Some time later.

Diana is stepping out of the stable tent. She'd cleaned her hands and her dagger, and was in the process of sliding it back in to the sheath on her back. She had tears in her eyes, and her hand was raising up to touch the top of her browline with the back of her half gloved hand.

The Stablemaster halts this though, grabbing Diana's wrist and smirking at her. "Stop that." She tells the Princess, taking a moment to use a towel drenched in the healing waters of Themyscira to clean Diana's hands off, then take her gloves from the Princess' hands. "I will have these treated and returned to you." She tells Diana who offers a light smile.

"Thank you, Jep..." Diana says softly to the dark haired woman who nods and steps off back toward her station beside the Stable Tent.

Diana moves then to sit down on a wooden bench aside the tent, her right leg extending out while her left just stands there on the grass, and for the first time in a long time... Wonder Woman just sits on a bench and looks rather beaten. It'd be a Hell of a photo to take, if one were not aware of the context of 'why' and just came across the sight.

But in the moment, Diana doesn't care. She just sits there on the bench and now raises her clean hands up to her cheeks to rub her fingers across them, to push away some of the tears of what she just had to do.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Cassie emerges a few steps after her, still gripping her lasso. And as she just... stands there near the entrance of the stable, it crackles with energy. After all that prior fuss about it, now she's not even trying, perhaps not even realizing she's doing it at all. It really does answer the call of anger, focused or otherwise.

On the upside, that probably means they don't need to try and clean it, or anything?

It takes a few moments, and a reassuring touch from one of the knights that had come with her - obviously someone who Cassie has befriended in her time here - to snap her out of it. Cassie blinks, and looks down, and the sizzling crackles of energy die away, at least for the moment. "Ah, sorry, I kinda zoned out there, I just-"

Despite how heartbroken she obviously is, Cassie has a different kind of reaction. "Fuck! Fuck this shit! These gods-damned glorified cockroach fucking vermin assholes!" Yep, in this situation, she rants and rages, curses and fumes. And while a last look toward Diana might seek out some kind of reassurance or understanding...

...there's no chance of it, with how dejected she looks, even that consistent beacon of hope extinguished. Instead, she turns the other way, and storms off. "I'm going to make these things wish they stayed genocided."

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana remains leaning back on the bench, watching the jungle in the far off horizon. It's Cassie's profanity-laden tirade that draws her eyes back on to the young blonde woman to her right. She stares flatly at her. Some part of her, normally, might say something about such a string of curse words, but not right now, not after what the two of them just did.

But it had to be them. This was their responsibility as dictated by their standing within the soldiers stationed here, or at least that is how Diana would perceive their standing to be.

Diana just watches Cassie storm off though, and her normal intention might include going after her.

But not now, she knew the young woman needed to decompress...

Instead, the Princess looks once more toward the jungle, all the way past the grasslands, the edge of the jungle looms. Dark shadows stretching out away from the tree line, a distant flying dinosaur barely visible in the particle-filled evening sky.

Diana stares back, for several silent moments before she sits up again, her back straight, her bare hands going to her armored knees. She draws in a long breath, and turns her face toward the dying sunlight of the evening, feeling its warmth wash across her cheeks and the moisture from her freshly cleaned hands. Then she rises up in a fluid motion of her natural grace, and walks toward it with her confident stride returning.