Long Game 85/Anonymous Game 12: Do Kandra Dream of Electric Sparrows?

[Mauve Crocodile]

do nooottt lik how the dragonfliger grouping me ands vulture together. That don't even make sense. Vulture was trying to get i killed D1 how that make us on samesies team if scavenger bird is evil???

Finds it intristing i seem to be only comms speshlist and i claimsed d1 and still live. Indicates evils are using PMs but if that's the case i gots no leads cuz no one's pming me is sad :((((((((( so's just be careful of people using lotsa pms, peeps.

Also I not paying attention enuff to have thoughts bout this swan exe goin on. I thoughts swan mighta been a good target to convert but now opinion seem to be they started evil?? They saved me life d1 though so i going to abstain. I still grateful to be living.

[Indigo Weasel]

Swan

[Kasimir]

And now the Day is done.

But have you chosen wisely?

[Kasimir]

Night Three: Swan Song

Blue Team went deeper into the facility, with the mistrunner team scouting along the corridors of the building. Deeper in, the lights overhead cast hard-edged shadows on the flooring, and every shadow seemed to conceal a potential enemy.

But there was no one there.

Still, Kesed could not shake the pervasive feeling of being watched, that itchy prickling feeling between his shoulder-blades. Whyren’s lips were pressed in a tight line; he grimaced and started each time someone moved too quickly. The knowledge that they were moving deeper into the facility and didn’t know what they might find there had everyone on edge.

They passed labs and meeting rooms and supply closets, all of which were hauntingly empty. Some fallen bodies; Kesed winced. All of them were security officers. One or two of them wore the patches that marked them as from Red Team. They’d all been cut down by gunfire.

But they had to keep moving. There was no sight of what opposition Red Team or the other Heron security officers had met.

Which meant that whatever had happened, Kesed thought, though he was already beginning to form a very clear picture of that ‘whatever’, it had taken everyone by surprise. There had been confusion. The security teams hadn’t been able to offer strong or concerted resistance.

And all of that pointed to one likely inference, even though Kesed knew there wasn’t enough evidence—yet—to say for sure.

SynthKandra.

The containment breach had been one in a lethal chain of dominoes that had tipped over and led to the security lockdown, and the compromise of an entire Heron facility.

Didn’t it make sense, though? They’d created the SynthKandra, Whyren and himself, a long time ago. An idea they’d nursed over drinks, with a touch of desperation: the need for a challenge, the need to prove themselves and to make their own names. You had to make something of yourself, if you wanted to survive in this world of profit-margins and numbers and board meetings and research funding.

And this was what they’d decided on.

They’d designed the perfect spies, the perfect saboteurs. In a way, Kesed was minded of the tale of the scorpion and the frog.

Of course Project Replicant had backfired, in the end. Or perhaps it’d worked too well. They’d created the perfect saboteurs. And the saboteurs had acted to bring down the facility from within.

After all, it was in their nature.

You could never be more than you were.

 

 

Whyren wanted a drink.

Fallen bodies, here and there. Kesed had a pair of mistrunners tag them for the recovery teams, and pressed on. Labs empty, experiments and projects terminated abruptly. It was as though they were walking through a frozen slice of time: a moment caught in amber, one shining bead in a string of beads that made up a day in the Heron Industries research facility.

But there were the bodies.

Most of them fallen, blood drying in thick, sticky patches. Whyren walked around them. He’d lost any squeamishness he’d had over the course of Project Replicant. But there was something uncomfortable about seeing all that gore in a place that had become home to him.

He tapped Kesed on the shoulder and started when he ended up on the floor, pinned, with the muzzle of a gun shoved against his back.

“Fierfek,” Whyren managed. 

So damned fast.

He wondered if that was how the others felt, betrayed and gunned down within their own labs. Within the facility. If they’d even had a chance at all. They hadn’t seen it coming, but even if they had, would they have had a chance?

“Goddamnit, Whyren,” Kesed cursed, and then let up. “Don’t startle me like this. Not in here.”

Painfully, feeling as though his arm had been wrenched out of its socket, Whyren staggered to his feet, eschewing the helping hand that Kesed offered. “The hell was that?” he managed. “When did you get so jumpy?”

Kesed’s eyes hardened. “We’re walking through a facility under security lockdown with an unknown number of hostile infiltrators, Whyren. Do try to remember that.”

“As if I could forget,” Whyren muttered. It was the only reason they were here, speaking. The only reason Whyren was confronted again and again with memories, and old sins long hidden. Staring him in the face with tired, dark eyes and that tight angry line of his mouth that Whyren knew too well from nights of arguments.

“You’d better remember that,” Kesed snapped. It was cursedly unfair that Whyren still knew the anger for what it concealed: worry, fear, concern. “I’d rather not an accident happen to you.”

“Will it?” Whyren challenged.

And there, at last, they had come to the meat of it. Because if it wasn’t Kesed, it was someone on this team. Whyren had no doubt of that. Not when he was the only researcher out of the facility when the containment breach happened. Not when Sandhya had hinted as much, that there were questions to be answered. That this bloody foolhardy run was as much a test of his loyalties as anything else.

That he suspected if he ran, here and now, Kesed or one of Blue Team or one of the mistrunners would put a bullet through him and end him, without remorse.

Is it you, then? he wanted to ask.

He thought to himself that such sentiment was beneath him. But there was that lingering promise of death, for that moment, in Kesed’s eyes. When he’d put Whyren down on the ground in that instant.

Was that how the others had felt?

Whyren didn’t know. But it was an uncomfortable thought, all the same. Weighing on his conscience like coins for the ferryman.

Kesed frowned at him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, tartly. “My job is to make sure the lockdown is terminated. This means keeping you safe.”

But he never once denied it.

 

 

“Look at this,” Vulture breathed.

Bodies lay on the floor of the lab, and the workbenches were riddled with bullet holes. Debris was scattered all over the floor. 

Atari frowned down at the tableau. A firefight had occurred here. They’d picked up signs of resistance sporadically within the facility, but this was the biggest site they’d identified so far. He looked about the lab, but all was still. A quick infra-red scan showed no sign of life, or ambush, though he supposed that for all he knew, SynthKandra could control their core temperatures.

His hand went to the hilt of the plasma blade holstered at his side. A curious choice that enough mistrunners had remarked on. Most people went monofilament these days. Plasma blades were only good for limited use, then you had to swap the cores out in order to get them to work again. Expensive. But useful when you needed to cauterise what you cut. Useful when dealing with opposition that could regenerate, or shapeshift.

“Looks secure,” he said, aloud.

Weasel was bent over the bodies, searching them. Thing was, Atari wasn’t sure about Weasel. Call it instinct, perhaps, but he’d learned that after years running the mists, instinct as powerful as this was something you didn’t ignore. 

Weasel had been…off.

It was a nagging sensation that grew more and more insistent, the more Atari watched the mistrunner. The more he thought it over. 

Maybe it was the way Weasel moved. A quicksilver, feline grace that hadn’t been there before. Maybe it was the way Weasel had shifted, subtly. Weasel had become louder, more willing to make his opinion known. The edge of his harsh foreign accent had softened, in the wrong places.

Or the right places, if you were thinking what Atari was.

That one of them had been replaced.

Atari knew all about killing. And getting into places he shouldn’t be. It was part of his core skill-set and what made him so valuable to prospective employers. He knew how to obscure data trails on the Cognitive Matrix and to fuzz identities and to create azbantium-solid cover identities within a couple of keystrokes. He had connections, people who could reach into secure databases, and quietly wipe or modify the information there, enough to be able to pass a deep background check.

Everything about his instincts said there was something wrong with Weasel: that Weasel wasn’t who he said he was.

Atari took a step forward, hand going to the hilt of his plasma blade. He weighed the consequences of striking here and now. He had to be certain. And if he did, he had to strike decisively. No holding back. Weasel had to be taken down.

Someone’s hand closed about his wrist.

Atari lashed out with his elbow, driving it behind him and hearing a muffled exclamation. He broke free of the hold and reached for his Penrod Silencer.

A gunshot.

Too fast, Atari thought.

Too damned fast.

Weasel’s eyes met his, mocking, knowing, even as the life bled from him in a rush of cold death. The gun was still in his hand. Another gunshot. And a third.

“Sorry,” said the mistrunner who’d attacked him. Jack. Jack Ladrian, Atari thought, tiredly. Or maybe it was Vulture. “But I don’t for a second think there’s more than one infiltrator running on this crew.”

He’d been on too many runs to count. Seen too many things.

Liked running with Smokers. Good for hiding Allomancers on your crew. Thing was, sometimes, crews had a tendency to get jumpy around Smokers. Felt that too many Smokers meant that your crew was compromised. 

Foolishness, that. Might as well lie about facing koloss on a job. Wasn’t such a thing.

Atari closed his eyes.

The last of his copper faded to nothingness.

 

 

Coral Swan was lynched! He was a Mistrunner Infiltrator!

Quote

Coral Swan (4): Chartreuse Penguin, Salmon Meerkat, Indigo Weasel, Ivory Dragonfly, Amber Vulture
Indigo Weasel (1): Coral Swan, Melon Dingo

The Night has begun! It will end on 4th May, at 0100hrs SGT [=GMT+8]! PMs remain open!

Please do not post until I have reserved the second post in this thread.

@Azure Mouse, @Oxblood Beagle - inactivity warnings for both of you. Your last recorded post was on Day Two. Failure to post by Day Four means you will be filter-killed or replaced by a pinch-hitter Night Four.

Edited May 6, 2022 by <kel>

[Kasimir]

Rule Clarifications:

Spoiler

stuff

Player List:

Spoiler

1. @Chartreuse Penguin - Jack Ladrian
2. Magenta Albatross - Mistrunner Infiltrator
3. @Salmon Meerkat - Vel
4. @Mauve Crocodile
5. Coral Swan - Atari Mistrunner Infiltrator
6. @Melon Dingo - AuRel
7. @Indigo Weasel
8. @Azure Mouse - Hauer
9. Emerald Falcon - SynthKandra Field Operative
10. @Charcoal Hyena
11. @Oxblood Beagle
12. @Amethyst Scorpion
13. Fuchsia Ostrich - Cody Eight SynthKandra Hacker
14. @Ivory Dragonfly
15. @Amber Vulture

[Indigo Weasel]

After hours of hard work and almost missing the deadline, here are my reads:

Kandra: Ivory Dragonfly, Salmon Meerkat
Tasty Animals: Mauve Crocodile, Indigo Weasel, Azure Mouse, Charcoal Hyena, Oxblood Beagle, Amber Vulture
 

Edited May 2, 2022 by Indigo Weasel

[Chartreuse Penguin]

Idk even know what to think about that

@Amber Vulture you elim read me and yet followed me onto Swan easier than I’d have thought— why did you seem to prefer Swan over me when I’d have guessed the opposite by a large margin?

Edit: Weasel, where am I on your list?

Edited May 2, 2022 by Chartreuse Penguin

[Amber Vulture]

Should’ve listened to my gut and stuck with the Penguin train.

sorry Swan

the elim team is Penguin Weasel Dragonfly there you go 

[Chartreuse Penguin]

13 minutes ago, Amber Vulture said:

Should’ve listened to my gut and stuck with the Penguin train.

sorry Swan

the elim team is Penguin Weasel Dragonfly there you go 

What’s a case on me that doesn’t apply to you as well? :P.

[Amethyst Scorpion]

Amber is still on my shortlist of killing

Penguin is there too

[Indigo Weasel]

1 hour ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

Edit: Weasel, where am I on your list?

[Mauve Crocodile]

13 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

What’s a case on me that doesn’t apply to you as well? :P.

Thassss not good logickses 4 dese gamezzzz. Limmmmy-lims kan totes do samesies stuff as villlllly-vills (i regrets this choice of name cuz vill can be an abbbrevriateiashun of villain and thassss kinda opposietrary what i meens) so u gotsta look at more thannn wut is done and y n how n stuffs lik that.

Not sayin you r or not limmmmy-limmm heree. Jus sayin that logick be badddd and don't make me think gudddd of u.

[Chartreuse Penguin]

2 minutes ago, Mauve Crocodile said:

Thassss not good logickses 4 dese gamezzzz. Limmmmy-lims kan totes do samesies stuff as villlllly-vills (i regrets this choice of name cuz vill can be an abbbrevriateiashun of villain and thassss kinda opposietrary what i meens) so u gotsta look at more thannn wut is done and y n how n stuffs lik that.

Not sayin you r or not limmmmy-limmm heree. Jus sayin that logick be badddd and don't make me think gudddd of u.

Sure, but if a case applies to multiple people you gotta be willing to vote all of them equally as much, imo. It gets selective and inconsistent if you don't. Looking at the why makes it different but Vulture didn't really do that.

[Amethyst Scorpion]

36 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

What’s a case on me that doesn’t apply to you as well? :P.

Bad post

[Amber Vulture]

43 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

What’s a case on me that doesn’t apply to you as well? :P.

At EoD you?? PM’d me reasons?? to change my vote to Swan? I’m nearly sure you’re evil 

[Mauve Crocodile]

12 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

Sure, but if a case applies to multiple people you gotta be willing to vote all of them equally as much, imo. It gets selective and inconsistent if you don't. Looking at the why makes it different but Vulture didn't really do that.

Y wuddd vulture look at the why between u and them tho?????? If scavenger bird townnssie, they wudddnt need to look at y they did sumthin and compear/cuntrast differencs to say they donts lik u. Others wud, but not scavenger birb.

I baxxx to jussss wanting to stabbbbs u till ded. Do noooottttt lik thisss hole thing. Screeeeems off limmmm saying "i nots doin anything other people who village doing y u not stabs them i totes gud"

[Chartreuse Penguin]

2 minutes ago, Amber Vulture said:

At EoD you?? PM’d me reasons?? to change my vote to Swan? I’m nearly sure you’re evil 

It wasn't to convince you, it was to make sure I wasn't crazy for thinking it meant e!Swan.

(I'm a Smoker as well).

What world does e!me claim that to you, knowing you just said you were confident in an elim Smoker and knowing Swan's flip? It doesn't happen.

[Oxblood Beagle]

Hey guys, sorry I didn't get in for the vote. I did intend to, I'm just a bit busy here to do much analysis.

[Mauve Crocodile]

1 minute ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

It wasn't to convince you, it was to make sure I wasn't crazy for thinking it meant e!Swan.

(I'm a Smoker as well).

What world does e!me claim that to you, knowing you just said you were confident in an elim Smoker and knowing Swan's flip? It doesn't happen.

It dussss in IKYK so limmmy lim can say eggsactly that.

Also this easy to claim now after swan be ded.

[Chartreuse Penguin]

2 minutes ago, Mauve Crocodile said:

Also this easy to claim now after swan be ded.

How is it an easy claim when I'm pretty sure most people weren't thinking 3 village smokers and Vulture seems convinced there's an evil one? All signs point to the third smoker being evil. It's partially why I kept my vote on Swan (to kel's dismay :P). But you can see last turn when I asked about the Smokers, it was a bit of a soft because I was trying to figure out if I was wrong in assuming 2 village Smokers. I ended up just claiming to Vulture anyway but it was a bad path to go down because distro

If you think I'm lying about the claim idk what to say about that, scan me, manip me, whatever, it'll be vanilla village and the manip wouldn't work :P.

I hope tomorrow isn't lylo cause I think we lose if it is, everyone seems to be in agreement that I'm evil

[Amethyst Scorpion]

All we're getting from Penguin is faulty reasoning, nice

Probably going to push them the hardest tomorrow.

[Chartreuse Penguin]

5 minutes ago, Amethyst Scorpion said:

All we're getting from Penguin is faulty reasoning, nice

Probably going to push them the hardest tomorrow.

Please explain what's faulty, otherwise this isn't very helpful

You're already pushing me the hardest :D.

[Amethyst Scorpion]

Just now, Chartreuse Penguin said:

Please explain what's faulty, otherwise this isn't very helpful

You're already pushing me the hardest :D.

Strange view

The whole "well x did this too why aren't they a wolf" is a standard argument that is used often by Elims and isn't logical because not everyone is held to the same set of rules and it's not a thing that is only applicable when meta on players is present, you can simply tell when you profile them in game and decide what kind of player they seem to be and whatnot.

[Mauve Crocodile]

42 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

It wasn't to convince you

 

34 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

How is it an easy claim when I'm pretty sure most people weren't thinking 3 village smokers

Fliipppity flop those quotes. Easy to claim you weren't trying to convins scavenger birb to stabs and only making sure you sane when now swans is ded. I gots no comments bout number of smokeys cept mayyyyyybbbeeee don't make sumpshuns bout that cuz some gms be trolls and kel is totes troll. Kel's whole schtick is trollloolllollllollllollll.

[Chartreuse Penguin]

16 minutes ago, Mauve Crocodile said:

Fliipppity flop those quotes. Easy to claim you weren't trying to convins scavenger birb to stabs and only making sure you sane when now swans is ded. I gots no comments bout number of smokeys cept mayyyyyybbbeeee don't make sumpshuns bout that cuz some gms be trolls and kel is totes troll. Kel's whole schtick is trollloolllollllollllollll.

Ah, I see. Yeah, you just have to trust me there :P.

My game plan next cycle is to direct the majority of my attention towards relooking at the previous turns and forming some kind of solve attempt, and ideally a very low amount of attention towards the votes I'll likely receive. I feel like there's nothing further I can do to change minds, except for saying that I'll be turning my coppercloud off tonight (if that's something I can do) so if there are any scanners (doubtful, but hey) you can go ahead and scan me- even that though probably wouldn't be accepted due to the Ostrich episode :P. Idk, maybe I'm overestimating the amount of suspicion that's been thrown on me from everyone, but I'd rather get exed and supply something that might be useful rather than spend 48 hours arguing and then get exed anyway :P.

Or you can surprise me and form a different train. That'd be nice.

Edit: Guess my coppercloud is locked in for tonight since it was on yesterday, but a scan would still show as vanilla village.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Chartreuse Penguin