[D-Class Mission] Inquisition of Ignis

Blitz watched as Leo collected some of the blood. "Or it's also possible that someone got injured nearby and made their way to the airlock to escape, potentially." Blitz watched as Leo took a sample of the blood with some gauze, then pressed it against the wall, and surprisingly, the blood caused the wall to melt away. "Now that's surprising." Blitz said. "It makes a degree of sense that it would repel anyone not of their own race, but to have it peel back when one of their own approaches is admittedly clever."

What was also surprising was the thing behind the melted wall - a corpse of one of the aliens they had come there to find. "Ooo, that's several kinds of unfortunate. Though it kinda rules out my theory about a random creature being responsible for all this - a creature wouldn't leave a bullet wound." Blitz looked away for a minute as Leo messed with the wound, then glanced back as he declared his findings. "Interesting, if a bit gross." Blitz said. "Suppose that means hitting them over the head would be more effective than it would be with humans." Blitz glanced to the side of the corpse, however, and walked up to grab something he saw - a weapon of some kind. "Looks they were carrying weapons of their own," Blitz said, picking up what looked like a pistol of some kind with a nozzle-like end. Blitz stepped back out into the hallway, aimed it down the hall, and pulled the trigger on it, and a blast of water shot out, then splashed onto the floor with a hissing steam noise. "Boiling water, or something more potent. Which means that whatever shot him in the head wasn't from one of these, at least. It's stranger still if he was killed with a human weapon - the only humans here should be us."

Blitz followed the duo into the circular room with the branching paths, noting the consoles. "I could probably try to hack those, but given what happened when I tried that on the walls, not sure it would accomplish much as a result. Or that what might happened if I decided to mess with it anyway would be something we wanted - one of those might be keeping the atmosphere in here somewhat pleasant compared to the outside."

Leo merely chuckled at Blitz's recoil to his actions, pulling out a small notepad and writing a few notes about the body in elegant cursive before nodding. "That should be correct, in theory, although they may have some other adaptations that offset the lack of a true skeleton," he replied.

From where Blitz had fired the pistol was part of the floor carved away, revealing something that almost looked like wiring beneath it. Leo bent down to examine it, knowing he would find nothing of actual use although the cyan fluid found within glass tubes certainly wasn't what he had been expecting. Perhaps it was instead some kind of piping? Though he couldn't really fathom why the things would be so small, then, even with his lack of knowledge when it came to technology. None of the liquid appeared to have leaked from the containers, however, although he supposed it could have simply been vaporized.

Concluding nothing else, he moved to where Blitz, and Eris, were glancing over the consoles. Far from knowing whatever the hell the buttons did, Leo's attention instead moved to the characters found on various toggles, shapes and geometric patterns that were clearly some sort of language although he had no idea what any of it said. It was unfortunate that the device was not something he could actually understand, otherwise Leo might have been able to match some of the letters to words in Fioran, but nevertheless he copied them down in the correct order, figuring if nothing else they could be used to identify more things written in the same script.

"Yes, let's not put the entire base at jeopardy. Seeing their weapons at least resemble our own to some degree, perhaps if we run across a defense system you can try hacking into that," Eris offered. Turning her attention to the halls that branched off from the room they were in, she started off in the direction of the central passage before pausing as a clang was heard echoing from the one to her right. Clearing her throat, she pointed in the sound's direction. "There's something alive down that corridor."

"No doubt they received some kind of compensation from mother nature to make up for their more giving frames," Blitz said with a nod. "The concept of evolution might have taken time to be proven on Earthland, but I'd be amazed if it didn't also apply out here on other planets. The exception, perhaps, being the planet we're on right now," he added with a slight smile.

The stuff that Blitz fired from the alien gun was no joke, it seemed - not only was it caustic in nature to some degree, it was potent enough to eat through the floor and right to the wiring underneath, which largely seemed to remain unscathed, either due to some superb insulation on the wiring and tubes themselves, or because eating through the upper layers of flooring had burned through most of the acidic weapon's payload. "Seems the walls weren't the only thing hiding a few secrets - no doubt this whole place is rigged in some fashion with their technology, if they can make the walls disappear and reappear as needed." Blitz said.

They continued down the hall, Eris agreeing that messing with the unknown consoles would be a bad idea without having a clear idea what they were supposed to do - fair chance that one of them kept the oxygen levels at agreeable levels. They were about to head down one of the main tunnels from the room they had been in, when a noise came from one of the others, somewhere off to the right of the tunnel they had initially chosen. "Alive, alright, but the question is whether or not said life-form is hostile or not." Blitz said. "So what's the plan? Do we go in an investigate, or try to force whatever is in there to meet us out here in proper lighting? The former could be an ambush, and I'm not convinced that there's anything friendly around here, despite that wound we found earlier on the alien."

"It looks advanced, whatever it is. I can't even tell if it's running on magic or some unknown technology. Either way it's not a great sign for us," Leo replied.

For the moment the sound that had come from nearby was a more pressing threat, however. Eris looked down the hallway with a finger on her chin, tapping her face for a few moments before responding to Blitz. "I would send Arecaceae serpentes to scout, but it's pretty much useless in the dark. Do you want to draw whatever is down there out?" With her question did she turn to Leo, clearly addressing him.

A brief sigh emanated from his throat, then a shrug. "Yeah, I'll do it. You two just wait here, and don't shoot me with magic by accident, or with that thing. If you have to choose, shoot me with magic over that thing." He gestured toward the weapon Blitz had fired, joking about its capacities although his concern was at least partly genuine. The aliens at the gala had been using Earthland technology, that much had already been discerned, but if a handgun could carve into floors that likely had a pretty high tensile strength, given the environment, well that was not a plus for humanity.

"Leo, just go." He cracked a grin, offering a brief wave before he crept into the darkness of the passage, footfalls leaving a lighter sound than what his previous steps had been, though those hadn't been particularly distinct in the first place. From his back did Leo draw his swords, edges glinting with lethality. Soon he was out of sight of Eris and Blitz, as the corridor slowly curved to his right. Though he was not certain, he placed the angle somewhere around 180 degrees in total, which would certainly account for the long hallway. That was one hell of an echo then, as he emerged in a room that appeared to be an archive of some time, another alien found by the opening, also dead though its injuries were a lot less obvious than the other. Eyes narrowing, he quickly determined it to be blunt force trauma, to the head nonetheless, seeming to prove Blitz's theory.

Upon concluding such and glancing about the room, he jogged back to the others. "There's another room, and another dead alien. Given that it seemed to have died by significant concussive force, I'm guessing our killer is just ahead of us. I didn't see them in the vicinity, however."

"You're not wrong that it's advanced, but that's just in comparison to what we know about it," Blitz said, ever the inventor. "From their perspective, it could be rather simple, or use a power source that does most of the coding work for them. Like a battery with pre-set functions built into it. But sadly, we haven't the time to poke and prod at it right now. Maybe I'll grab a section or two on the way out." Blitz said, looking thoughtful.

Blitz also brought up the question of what to do about the noise down the other hall, with Leo eventually offering to scout ahead briefly after Eris mentioned that her lock-picking snake wouldn't be able to see well in that light. "I promise to not use the super-soaker or anything too harmful until you're out of the firing area," Blitz said with a slight smile, in the same partial-joking manner that Leo had made the request with. The young man walked down the hall until he was around the corner and out of sight, leaving Blitz and Eris alone, however briefly. "Either whatever made that noise has moved on, or he started the galaxy's most quiet fight around the next corner," Blitz said after a moment with a slight grin.

After a moment or two, however, Leo returned, updating them that there was another body, one crushed by force instead of shot, and that the killer likely wasn't far ahead of them. "From the sounds we briefly heard earlier, I'm guessing we didn't miss them by much. The question is whether or not we want to meet said fellow. Just because they're slaying aliens doesn't necessarily mean they're fond of humans. They could just have it out for anything that moves, and stumbled across an alien outpost before they encountered a human settlement. I'm hoping that's not the case, but we've got very little to go on right now." Blitz added.

As they followed Leo down the corridor after his return, Blitz glanced at the body as they came across it. "Looks like someone wanted to field-test my theory back there, well before it made it into any sort of book," Blitz noted.

"I wouldn't put it past him, but it's likely the former," Eris replied as they waited for Leo's return, her words being proven true as he gestured with his head back toward the hallway. Circling back, he led them down the dark passage until there came upon another room, which it was at that point he noted it had the same luminescence as before, although that was somewhat strange as the corridor itself hadn't possessed such a quality.

Of course, the question of another party being tangled up in such a small outpost was perplexing, especially with no way to tell what sort of firearm the first alien had been killed with, and a smack on the head wasn't much in the way of evidence either. "It would probably be best for us to steer clear of any other party that might be here, chances are they aren't too buddy-buddy with the Alliance, and by extent our organizations, if they came here despite our claim on the mission," Leo said in response to Blitz. "You do make an interesting point, though, whoever or whatever killed both of them knew where to aim. Either they're quite keen on anatomical observations, or they have prior knowledge."

The newest corpse had a similar weapon to what Blitz had picked up, although there was also a sheath containing something that appeared to be a knife. More familiar with the latter, he picked it up and drew it for a second, the blade appearing rather innocuous, before tucking it into his belt. Eris stole a few glances at the pistol before deciding against it, while weapons were generally self-explanatory that was not something she wanted to accidentally misfire. Having stumbled upon an area that appeared to be filled with files, Leo began to scan the area as a whole, falling upon a desk with documents stacked upon it.

His eyes poured over the sheets, noticing that several notes had recently been inked under the margins. They were recognizable scripts, textbooks that appeared to have been acquired in some way, and open was a Fioran one recounting distant times in a way that he seemed jarringly acquainted with. He puzzled over it for a moment before flipping to the front cover, a laugh emanating from his throat. That was why, his own name stared back at him. In any case, it was the thin paper that had been overlaid on the page that more so caught his interest, it appeared to be a translation of the text into the alien language Leo had copied down before.

Upon seeing him pause in his search, Eris glanced over his shoulder, looking down at the page. "Well, I'll be damned," she muttered, leafing through the pages already set aside. He pointed to a jumble of symbols that repeated throughout the page.

"Time is... however you pronounce that. It's unfortunate that this isn't complete, but it's still fantastic," Leo remarked, copying the word he had seen into his notepad along with its meaning.

Blitz merely grinned at Eris' comment before following Leo down the hall to see the alien who'd lost a fight rather recently to blunt-force trauma. "Staking a claim on the mission would cause most people to keep their hands off, but given that aliens attacked the Gala and the President, it's also possible that someone's on a vigilante-justice kind of mission of their own." Blitz pointed out. "The types who think 'they're after aliens anyway, and the planet is uninhabited, we're basically doing them a favor' - you know, that well-intentioned, but badly-planned kind of thinking. I'd be surprised if it was on a planet this remote, but anything else is going to be more problematic to deal with."

Leo did note that Blitz's earlier observation was correct, and slightly odd that the newcomer was aware. "It might be that they just noticed their structure was similar to that of a human's, and went for the head. They might not have the protection of skeletal structure up there, but it's commonly perceived as a lethal target on nearby every species. Makes sense to go for it first."

Blitz saw Leo grab something from the fallen alien - unlike the last one, this one had a knife instead of a gun, which might have explained why the intruder got close enough to strike the alien with something. "Good catch on that knife, but I'd be careful where you keep it sheathed - for all we know, it has the same acidic properties as the gun imbued into the blade - or at least something else designed to be a bit on the nasty side of things," Blitz added. "If their guns can melt through floors, then they're not picky about how their targets end up, so at the very least, be wary of poison on that thing." As Eris wasn't going for the other weapon, though, Blitz picked it up - he didn't want to try and fumble to reload a weapon with acidic ammo, but he could at least dual-wield them for a bit.

Blitz followed them into the next room, full of files and folders of various kinds. "Old fashioned pen and paper....guess hacking's out, we'll have to search the old-fashioned way." Blitz said, looking over a few papers. After a few pages, he realized Leo and Eris were both looking at the same paper, and Blitz walked over, curious what could have caught both their attentions. In front of them was text, but in Fiorian languages. "Huh. Guess the aliens wanted some light reading while they were on guard duty here." Blitz looked over the page while Leo scribbled something down, then he paused. "Uh, Leo? This might be an odd time to ask, but....what's your last name again?" he said, one finger on the part of the print with Leo's name bolded on it.

She let out a chuckle as Blitz made a counter to Leo's thoughts about their newest potential enemy. "He's saying don't overthink it too much," Eris said, patting the back of his shoulder in which he blushed to the ever lightest degree, rubbing the back of his neck.

"That's fair."

At Blitz's comment about the knife he had picked up was Leo's typical composure restored, however, a small burst of laughter as he thought perhaps the metal mage would think twice about instructing him in the different implementations of blades if he only saw Leo's collection of them. "Of course, it's quite easy to transfer lethal toxics by way of the bloodstream; if they bothered with a knife in the first place it's either simply used for utility or it's more effective in close range than the pistol, which is an impressive feat."

Continuing to flip through the pages, he didn't even pause as Blitz posed his query. "Aglaeca," he muttered, partly because he wasn't really paying attention although more significantly a force of habit that had been engrained into his memory. It didn't matter now, the rest of his blood relatives were ancient history, and those who knew the horrid truth were as well. Still, alone it only stood as a reminder of such. It occured to Leo a few moments later why Blitz was asking, not anything to be concerned about thankfully, in which he hastily added a few words. "Yes, I wrote it, but that's not anything interesting. It's the translation, if given to an expert they'd likely be able to start a compilation of words, perhaps even determine how this language's grammatical structure works."

Eris pointed at another set of symbols that had a frequent presence on the pages. "I believe these refer to Fiore," she stated. He copied down the glyphs, next to those he had already taken note of.

"That's a useful one... given the time period there should be plenty of references to battles and war in general, do you see any translations for those?"

After a few more minutes of flipping about, Eris eventually shook her head. "There's a lot of different words used, there's a lot of different words you used. I wouldn't say anything for certain, unfortunately, but hey, they even translated the names. That's Arlan," she replied, in which he shook his head with a brief sigh, writing down the dead king's moniker anyway.