The Andrews' Place, TX (Nightwolf)

[Galadare]

Nightwolf,

You arrive at the address Beamer gave you, only to find yourself at a burned out ranch house in the middle of nowhere. A little ways behind the ruins of the house is an ancient, rundown barn that looks like it collapsed years ago. A holographic police line surrounds the ruin, warning you to keep out or face prosecution for "obstruction of justice", and "tampering with evidence". The line itself is fractured due to its emitters being partially buried in dust. The ground is clear of human tracks, and any evidence of a police investigation has long since been obliterated by the desert wind.

The house's storm cellar stands open, and the door suffered enough damage in the fire that it could never be properly closed anyway. The barn's doors, while largely intact, are laying on the ground in front of their frame. The hinges had been rusted inoperative before someone cut through them, and pulled the doors down.

[Nightwolf]

Upon discovering the ruins of the Andrew's place, the only words Nightwolf is able to say is, "Dang!" Nightwolf than proceeds to first check out the cellar noting to also take a look at the barn despite the police line. Whatever investigation had been going on, it's clear they are likely no very concerned with it any more. It also might be worth it for her to get some idea what happened here just in case it has anything to do with the package Tower gave her.

Besides, it's more likely for her to find something that escaped the fire in the cellar that might be of use to her. Even if all that might be is some food. It would also be a good place for someone to hide, if there was anyone left in this place asuming anyone that was here wasn't long gone already.

[Galadare]

The cellar is a wreck. The main floor of the ranch-house collapsed into it during the fire, leaving very little room to maneuver. As you search the place, it becomes obvious that the Police never got a chance to do a really thorough investigation of their own. Soot covers the floor and the only tracks, other than your own, belong to small predators, and the even smaller rodents they were no doubt hunting.

All the shelves, provisions and knickknacks stored in the cellar were either damaged in the fire or crushed in the collapse of the upper floors. In fact, you don't even notice the seam until you are about to give up.

On your way out you notice a small mark in the soot underneath the remains of several jars that exploded in the heat of the fire. Their contents, which appear to have been some form of homemade jam are charred beyond use, but the caramelized mess reveals a tiny groove that makes a right turn before both arms disappear under the rubble.

[Nightwolf]

Nightwolf looks a little disappointed at what's left of the food storage. Then she eyes the groove thoughtfully. Then she begins to see if she can clear enough of the rubble that she can follow the groove without having any more of the house collapse on top of her.

[Galadare]

(OOC: I'm sorry Nightwolf. It appears that I forgot to actually post it again. Boy do I feel smart. I'll use the quick reply so I can't fake myself out again. I'll just have appologize to Lironah for all of the inevitable spelling errrors.)

Clearing away the debris, you discover that the groove is part of the seam around a small trap door. With a little time you are able to pry it open to find a small cache containing half a dozen bottles of homemade barbecue sauce. Handwritten labels glued on the side of each glass jar identify its contents as being "Pirate Pete's Positively Palatable Picante Sauce". The sauce appears to be untouched by the fire, making its "palatability" solely dependent upon Pirate Pete's mysterious recipie.

[Nightwolf]

Nightwolf (to herself): "I was kind of hopping for a secret tunnel or the like or perhaps real food, but what the heck. If it's not spoiled it's better than nothing at all."

Nightwolf shrugs her shoulders. She makes certain that the trap door isn't going to close behind her. She makes sure to put debris on the trapdoor after she has it open to keep it that way.

She then descends into the space below. Nightwolf takes the first bottle and opens it. She sniffs it, and if it smells okay then she proceeds to down the stuff straight out of the jar like one might chug a bottle of milk.

Nightwolf will carefully swallow down the sauce just in case there is something more solid than sauce in there, something that someone for some reason might have hide there. She also chugs the sauce at a constant rate to help herself keep from gagging.

Nightwolf will drink the whole first jar down despite how hot the sauce might be until she can't any more, she starts gagging, becomes too full to continue, or finds something suspicious in the sauce before she swallows, or begins to chock on something hidden in the sauce. She does this in one go if possible.

After she has finished the first jar of sauce she'll peal of the liable and see if there is anything of interest on the back, on the bottom of the jar or on the jar's lid.

Then Nightwolf will gather up bunch more of the sauce and place them into her backpack.

Nightwolf (Mumbling to herself): "It's not the best stuff, but it's still got some nourishing qualities to it. It'll have to do for rations. With my luck it's likely to be drugged or something. Maybe if I'm really luckily this sauce can double for food and drink. I'll have to keep myself hydrated as I cross this dessert."

Nightwolf also ponders for a moment who Pirate Pete was and why the Andrews had so much of his homemade picante sauce. She wonders why it was all in a room beneath a trap door and if she didn't just drink poison or something else particularly nasty.

The whole time she is down in the room under the trap door she listens carefully in case despite all other evidence she isn't alone at the house. If she hears anything above her she'll quickly get back up out of the room with the trapdoor and investigate the noise.

OOC: If pizza empowers you than I wonder what Pirate Pete's Positively Palatable Picante Sauce does.... It's okay at least you attempted to post that same post several times. I've done that myself on more than one occasion. It's the worst when the post you lost or discovered you didn't post like you thought you had happens to be a long post. I've lost page long post before that I had to then rewrite and repost. I know that pain. I understand, and I forgive you.

[Galadare]

Nightwolf:
As you down the contents of one of the bottles of "Pirate Pete's Positively Palatable Pepper Sause", a number of things happen to you. First, naturally, your eyes water and your tongue burns. Next your cheeks turn red. Then you begin to sweat. And finally, you find yourself choking on something round and hard that isn't quite small enough to swallow.

Upon spitting out the offending object, you find it to be a clear, blue, glass sphere of the kind used by modern computers to store data.

[Nightwolf]

After spitting out the unexpected object Nightwolf grins to herself and says to herself, "Nice." ;D She promptly cleans it up a bit and whips the tears from her eyes. She will then check the rest of the jar she was trying to drink just in case there is more of these sphere's in the sauce. If not, she finishes down that jar. She places the sphere safely in a pouch on her person where it isn't likely to fall out, get lost, or stolen easily. She then put the rest of the jars of sauce into her backpack as rations or in case they also have more glass spheres too.

Nightwolf returns to her hovercraft outside. She checks to see if they are still airing news and if she can get that. After listening/watching the news if she can get it or while she does so she is searching the craft to see if it doesn't have something that will read the storage device she just found. The news she hears, if any, makes Nightwolf's face turn grim again. She wouldn't have called the ape-men she'd fought and seen zombies, monsters or de-evolved unfortunates maybe. Nightwolf already had her own suspicions and thoughts about the ape-men and their link to the “sickness” that marooned her on this planet. In all honesty Nightwolf hadn't believed the sickness was really that since fought the ape-men. At first she had thought it was a bio-engineered plague, but since she fought the ape-man she was sure it was linked to them, likely as the cause of their condition.

Nightwolf was liking her stay on this planet less and less. The moment she has set foot on it and got caught up in the quarantine she'd known deep down that someone this illness wasn't natural. Now it she's certain that the illness wasn't put here to keep her hear, her original assessment when she arrived on the planet, but to attack the planet and others like it. They’re at war and no one knew it yet or by whom, and they are already loosing badly.

If Nightwolf can find something on the craft that will read the sphere, she'll put it in and try to see what is on it. If not, then she'll to figure how close the nearest city is and if that is closer than the military base that the soldiers were trying to get her to go to before she arrived at Beamer’s place.

Nightwolf wonders idling if Beamer is aware of the fact that his home has been burned to the ground, or of the data storage device hidden in the homemade Picante sauce, or even who the heck Pirate Pete is/was. She also speculates what kind of relationship those two might have.

[Galadare]

Nightwolf:
In the back seat of the car you find a media player compatable with the sphere. When you plug the sphere in and activate the device, a holographic projection appears before you. The subject is a man in his fifties wearing jeans and a tee shirt and chewing on a pipe. Aside from the metalic glint of an artificial eye and a cybernetic left hand; he bears a striking resemplance to a certain hot-shot, Skadian soldier with whom you've recently become aquainted.

"Hello, Jonny-boy. If yer seein' this, then I'm either dead or ye've heard about me legend'ry Sauce," the ghostly image chuckles, "I've got somethin' ter tell ye, boy. The Earth be in trouble. There be these goons who want to mutate all the birties and furries and fishies and make 'em inter monsters and such like. Think their gettin' revenge on behalf o' the Earth. Balderdash, says I. Me buddies Tower and Brown have all the details, go ter see 'em if'n ye haven't already." The image shakes his pipe at you, "But don'tcha be trusting the rest of me crew. Mutinous dogs be workin' fer 'Them'."

He pauses briefly as if collecting his thoughts. With a hint of a tear in his eye he continues, "The Earth be a lady boy. Fairest of all 'cept'n yer mother (giv'er a kiss fer me, aye). Now shove off! An' don't ferget the Code."

[Nightwolf]

Noghtwolf raises and eyebrow and nods thoughtfully to herself. Things where starting to make a bit more sense to her. Night wolf hides the data sphere on her person. She then checks the other jars for similar devices.

If she finds any more she'll watch them, and afterwards also hide them on her person.

After that she'll put back what is left of the sauce for later. Nightwolf will then head back to that military base that the patrol she met up with earlier had wanted her to go to. She figured that was her next best bet on finding Beamer, Tower being dead and all and Nightwolf is unsure about this Brown guy. This guy in the holo must have been Beamer's father, and it looks like it was meant for him anyway. It was beginning to look to her like she might actually have to trust some one for once, and that wasn't something she easily did, but with everything that was going on it was looking more and more like she didn't have much of a choice.

She had to find Beamer. The military base was the best place to sart looking since Beamer was a solider after all. She didn't like having to deal with the millitary.

Whenever, if ever, Nightwolf reaches the millitary base upon arrival she'll refuse to speak to anyone but Beamer, and she won't answer anyone's question either until she can speak with Beamer.