nexus_crossings | The Calm Before The Storm

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The Calm Before The Storm

Something's been bothering Kinner. There's a visible unhappiness in the little cook's expression, even beyond his usual gruff attitude. He sits in the Plaza, thinking, for once not manning his fish shop. He's going after the Thing soon, and he's not completely sure what to make of that. He knows exactly how dangerous the alien is. Even if the Thing where he'll be going isn't exactly the same creature, it's close enough. In some ways, it sounds even worse. But he can't give up with lives on the line.

He's got a better idea of what to expect than most, but that's a small comfort. After all, the Thing incapacitated and devoured Kinner alive, without much of a fight. This time he'll be better armed and better prepared, but still. He's not exactly thrilled about facing the creature, even with help. And, he realizes with a hint of sickness, he'll be putting his new friends in danger, too.

Kinner, when push comes to shove, isn't scared to look death in the face, and it's Palmer's world, but it's everyone else he's afraid for. Horvath. Alex. Blaze and Ghost. Prometheus. Cricket. Cricket most of all, since the others have magic or other quirks to protect them. Cricket doesn't. Kinner would rather he die than Cricket.

At the very least, he won't make an easy meal this time.

"Have you ever had somethin' you didn't want to do," he finally asks, voice trembling a little, "but you had to do it anyway? Were you scared?"

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He considers this, and it’s telling that he has to think about it at all. There have been so many battles and encounters. “I’ve run up against a few eldritch things, and one can never be quite certain where they come from, so I can’t be sure.”

Horvath settles and stretches out his leg a little, getting more comfortable. His ankle seems to be stuck at a ninety-degree angle. “The Nexus has put me into contact with all manner of peoples and beings, and it’s been educational. I feel that the information on this creature is limited, but I’ve collected some extra aglaophotis to bring along just in case.”

Kinner can't help but agree. He's learned a lot during his time in the Nexus, not just about the Thing but about the universe in general. It's a very big universe for one small, slightly nervous cook. But Kinner's adaptable, he thinks. He's thrived in this bizarre multidimensional hub, and that's the best he can do.

"It's a shapeshifter. That's the most important thing about it." The next logical step is to kill his fear by, in turn, killing the Thing. If he can do that, even indirectly, Kinner won't be the same man who entered the Nexus. "Aglaophotis? What's that, if you don't mind me askin'? Is it some kinda magical thing from your world?" He's curious if it's a weapon that can injure the Thing.

Adaptability is absolutely the key to thriving in the Nexus, but it’s not a quality that everyone possesses, so Kinner may be doing better than he realizes. Horvath thrived here once, then walked away for a while, and ultimately that hasn’t done him any favors.

“Aglaophotis seems to be found on many worlds, it’s distilled from a rare herb and it’s very effective against eldritch beings, historically. Now there are different kinds of shapeshifters. It only turned into living beings, as far as you saw? So it couldn’t become, for instance, a table or a chair?” That’s an important distinction.

"Yes - the Thing can only turn into living creatures. The way it works is that it absorbs animals and uses their mass to make a copy out of...whatever it's made of. I don't know if it can assimilate plants. It's not a chance I'd take." Not that Antarctica has much in the way of growing plants, anyway, or maybe animals just suited the Thing's purposes better.

If the Thing could turn into seemingly innocuous household objects to approach its targets, that would have made it even worse. Kinner thanks his lucky stars, whichever they may be, that's not what he's dealing with now.

“That’s informative, though.” Horvath considers, nodding. “That would imply that despite changing forms, it needs to breathe, perhaps requires a circulatory system, and if so then those are things that may be exploited.” If it does need to breathe, then in theory it can be suffocated, and if it needs a circulatory system then it might be capable of bleeding out. It’s a brutal but practical perspective, going into battle.

Also it’s nice to know the furniture isn’t likely to rise up and attack them.

"It was able to survive being frozen in the ice for a while, longer than a human would've." Kinner's no scientist, and only Blair studied the Thing to his fullest capacity. "We're not sure it has organs the way people do. It copies organs when it copies people, we think, but they're not the real thing. Blair thought it was made of protoplasm, maybe a group of smaller creatures working together and thinking as one, each cell with its own intelligence."

By the nature of the organism, it would be very difficult to study safely.

“Well, that’s certainly a trait shared by some life forms on earth, like some frogs and fish.” Horvath is not a scientist, precisely, but the way he thinks is not so different from one. “You said it’s susceptible to fire, but did you have a chance to observe how it reacts? Would the threat of fire potentially cause it to reveal itself?” He doesn’t have a solid plan, but he does have some strategies in mind.

“And I do need to know exactly how many people are going on this quest, beforehand. I want to have a charm with a shield spell for each person. That should prevent accidents for at least a bit.” He can’t make them active for but so long, because that takes power, but it’s a good preventative.

"Yes - I think being threatened might help. Doc Copper was designing a test to help identify Things before I died, and it was somethin' about applying heat to tissue. Each cell of the Thing's its own creature, so it'll react and try to survive. We can trick it into exposing itself that way, though it's probably gonna attack once we've exposed it, just as a warning to you."

"There's me, Palmer, you, Blaze, Ghost, Cricket, Prometheus, and Alex Mason. That's eight of us." Kinner's curious about shield spells, especially given his lack of experience with magic, but he imagines he'll learn more through observation. "Must be spells for all kinds of situations, huh?"

He nods at the listing of names, although none of those people are familiar to him. A lot of the regulars seem to have changed, since he was here last. Eight is a lot, but he'll divide his efforts evenly between that number and just see how far it gets him.

"That makes thing difficult, that it's sentient at such a microscopic level. I have to wonder if other means might have an effect, as well, but it's tricky to come up with something that won't harm us. Vibrational frequencies high enough to cause friction and heat wouldn't be pleasant for you or I, either, but it might produce a result without the need for an ignition source, if it comes to that." He's just thinking out loud, now.

Kinner thinks, puzzling over what he knows Copper said. There has to be a way to identify Things. Copper was developing a test, and he struggles to remember what that test could be. Something to do with blood, and heat...

"I think there is a way that doesn't involve vibration. Doc Copper thought a sample of blood or tissue from a person being tested and a hot wire might do the trick. The creature doesn't want to be touched by the wire, so it would have an instinctive reaction. That way, we know the person we took the sample from was infected by the Thing and can, uh, dispose of them." Not pleasant, but necessary. They wouldn't be human anymore.

“The difficultly with any of these methods of detection is that they’ll know- or can even anticipate the moment they’ll be detected. What we need is a way to reveal them that they can’t see coming, to give us the advantage on the situation.” He frowns, because he doesn’t have any concrete ideas on how to make that happen, and that frustrates him.

"That's true. It would be better if the Thing didn't know about the test, but We can tie everyone down, but we've gotta have a quick trigger finger when someone turns out to be infected. And it's a matter of when, not if. The Thing acts quickly and doesn't need much time at all to assimilate someone. There's also Venom. I gotta tell you about him. He's a creature very similar to the Thing in some ways, but he's on humanity's side."

Horvath can react from across a room, thanks to magic, but that’s still no guarantee of anything and he’s too seasoned a fighter to be overconfident, so he just nods. If he can come up with an effective test in time, then he’ll propose it, but if not then they’ll just have to make things work with what they’ve got.

“Is he coming along? I don’t want to endanger anyone with friendly fire, so to speak.”

"Yes - I think he will be. He's a creature called a symbiote - he can bond with humans. He's black, while the Thing is...pink-ish? The one in my world was blue, but Palmer's seems different. It doesn't have a true form." Palmer's Thing was more like a disease than a living creature.

For all Kinner's misgivings about Venom, the other alien seemed to know not to eat everybody in sight, and he trusted the symbiote not to eat anyone in Palmer's team.

“Well I can’t say that I’ve ever met anyone like that, but it would be useful to meet him at least slightly in advance, so I don’t end up targeting the wrong being.” If Venom is similar to what they’re hunting, it is pretty crucial to know how to tell them apart.

Kinner thinks - he doesn't neccesarily like Venom, but knows that the alien dislikes the Thing, might have some insight into how the creature thinks, and has something of a moral compass. "Venom's an interesting creature. I'll see if I can find him - he's hard to miss. Black gooey creature with too many teeth. Unlike the Thing, he can live outside a host for a while, and doesn't need to kill people."

“Goodness, I don’t think I’d miss that, if I saw it, but you’re implying he can also look like an ordinary human being? Or is that the host?” Horvath has been around the Nexus enough to be open and unquestioning of very strange and foreign life forms. ‘Doesn’t need to kill people’ sounds like a plus, but he also doesn’t bat an eye over the idea that there’s an alternative to that.

"He can bond with humans. At least that's how I understood what he told me, though I also think he has a preferred human host." Kinner's never met Eddie Brock, but knows he exists. "But yeah, he can pass as human if he needs to. I haven't seen him with his host, but I'm under the impression that Venom's host is a human being. If he comes with us, I'd likely ask him to hide to avoid frightening Palmer's team. They won't react well to seeing a creature like the Thing."

“Hmmmn. Even if he manages to look human enough- or perhaps especially if he does, I’d better have a good idea what he’s like to adapt my shields and other methods accordingly.” If Venom is too much like the Thing, then that means he’s at high risk for actually being mistaken for it. By those other than Horvath, too.

"He can...the way I got the sense of it is he can hide in a human's body, but he can take control of his host if he has to. In that sense, yeah, he's like the Thing. But he works with his host's permission, as far as I can tell." Kinner hasn't met Eddie, but he has a sense of how Venom's symbiosis works.

"Thank goodness for that. It sounded as if what we're hunting simply subsumes and destroys living beings, rather than working with them. They don't sound like alternates of each other, at least?" He's glad for that much, because alternates make everything confusing.

Kinner shakes his head. "No - Venom's not an alternate of the Thing. They're too different. Venom can talk, for one thing, and survive for a while ouside of a host. He's very chatty. I've wondered if his species is related to it somehow, though. Somewhere on the evolutionary tree."

"Around here, anything is possible." He smiles weakly. "I'll keep an eye out for him. Do you have any questions for me?" From their first conversation he gathered Kinner is something of a stranger to magic, so if he was at all worried or wondering about how Horvath works, he's ready to answer questions.

"Yes - I do." Kinner's curious, since he comes from a world where magic is only something from fantasy stories. "What kinds of magic can you, uh, do? I'm assuming you can set things on fire, and that'll be very important when we're dealing with the Thing. Are there limits to what you can do?"

Horvath lives in a world where, for most people, magic is also only a fantasy. Those who can do magic tend to hide it from the general public for the sake of their own safety, so he's not unused to these kind of questions from new apprentices.

"There are limits, of course. Matter is energy is matter. Magic is the ability to manipulate those forces, but everything comes from somewhere. I can't create something out of thin air, and there's always a cost to shaping the world around you. It's taxing, so I can only do what I have the strength to do, for as long as I have the strength to do it." He'll wear out eventually, and have to rest, is what he means.

The Calm Before The Storm

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