Robin encaged

Leo and I visited Robin at lunch yesterday. We brought her some food. The guards felt the need to look through it before they let me give it to her, like I was going to hide a lockpick in her mashed potatoes or something. Christ almighty.

The conversation that came after was awkward, like most of my chats with Robin these days. She used to be so carefree. Now... well, now she's got the end of the world to think about, and the thought's been drilled into her head that it's her fault.

I can't say I blame her for feeling unhappy.

On an unrelated note, nobody at ARC reads this blog. They don't know it exists, actually.

I'm starting to get a bit of an idea.

Modernism

Leo and I have been so goddamn busy lately. Where did our lives go? We were just two stupid kids, and then everything turned into a nightmare.

But I guess that's not true, is it? Leo was hunted by the Manufactured Newborn long before I met him. The only thing that kept him safe was the presence of the shadiest Men in Black ripoffs around. I guess this world's just rotten all the way through. Time to throw it out, right?

...Well, that's not really right either.

Honestly, I'm just trying to figure out how to combine "things suck so much right now" and "things used to suck so much" in a way that results in any sort of positive worldview.

Where Seattle used to be

It's not a secret that ARC realizes that the forest showed up when the Newborn died. Still, nobody is willing to admit it. It's too tenuous a connection. Bullshit. I realize correlation doesn't always imply causality, but it's not like this happens often enough that we can just write it off as a coincidence. Plus, in the Sumerian translations, it mentioned at least once that there was a forest at war with a tower of wires. I don't think that's a coincidence either.

Leo's taken to calling it the Emerald Web. Got kind of a nice ring to it, I guess, even if it's a bit cutesy for the forest that destroyed Seattle.

The Forest

On our way into KRAKEN headquarters, Locke got taken by the wires the Newborn had summoned. I never knew him that well, but... well. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Jenn seemed freaked out, more than I've ever seen her before, but she kept going. Robin was with us, and she seemed just as tense.

I think Robin was starting to feel... I don't know. Irrational. Panicked. Overwhelmed. Long story short, someone from AMU dropped a strange dagger made of wood on our way into the basement of KRAKEN's compound.

Robin tried stabbing the Newborn with the dagger. The Newborn stopped shifting around and consuming everything. It just howled, and then it started to sprout horrible, thorny roots from where Robin had stabbed it. The Newborn's wires started growing fragile and snapping, the ones that hadn't already been crushed by the roots, anyways.

Naturally, we all turned tail and ran as fast as we could. We got outside to see that the roots were quickly overtaking the tower, causing it to crumble and grow crooked, destroying everything the Newborn had made of it in the Newborn's brief time in our reality.

Seattle is just gone, by the way. The Forest has basically overtaken the entire city. It's gone wild overnight, like a Ghibli movie on a bad trip.

Jenn says the guys over at STAB are looking into it, but obviously we're not. It's not like we have the money for hazmat suits, and even if we did, there's not much reason to think they'd help against whatever that plant is. I'm almost surprised STAB is sending anyone in themselves, but I guess they've got enough people on the payroll for some of them to be expendable.

I know that got dark, but these are dark times. An entire city is gone because of my friend.

But I don't know how much of it was her fault. We were all under stress back in Seattle. It was a chaotic mess back there.

We were stressed. Now we're just scared.

The raid

Alright, that was... interesting.

I'm alive. That's point one. I'm alive, Leo's alive, Robin's alive, Jenn's alive. We're all doing about as well as could be reasonably expected. Probably better. But that's just us. It's not true of everyone.

First of all, we ended up having to team up with AMU. That was Jenn's idea. Well, technically Jenn asked AMU what they were doing there, and when it became clear that AMU was trying to stop KRAKEN like we were, she suggested the two groups team up. At that point, we were joined by AMU forces, those being three squads of what they called Martyrs. Those were the same types of people as the ones who had raided the ARC base back before Leo and I joined. They were also the non-KRAKEN people Jenn had reported seeing at Solville, the place KRAKEN had hidden the books they stole from AMU.

Boy, that's a lot of acronyms.

Anyways, after that, one of the AMU cars was sent in. I think it was armored or reinforced somehow, because even after KRAKEN started firing at it, it just plowed through. KRAKEN decided to get serious and brought out a helicopter. Where the hell did they get a helicopter?

One way or another, a lightning bolt struck the helicopter out of nowhere, causing it to crash into a Martyr with an omega symbol on his hoodie. He didn't survive.

We did what we could, but it wasn't enough.

We heard a rumble from the earth. Tendrils of metal and flesh and bone erupted from the building.

We had failed. I had failed. I should've done more to help, but it was too late by then.

The Newborn had arrived. The golden age had come.

KRAKEN headquarters

We've arrived at Seattle.

We're waiting on the signal to raid KRAKEN headquarters. I don't really know why there's anything more to it than just going in and getting things done, if we're going to do anything.

Maybe that's just nerves talking, though. Right now, I'm really anxious to get in, get things done, and get out. And by "get things done," I mean "beat the shit out of some monsters."

Seattle

Will and Adrian, the KRAKEN members we captured at the raid a while back, told us something interesting. Apparently, KRAKEN has moved their books to Seattle. AMU is planning on going there, as is a Newborn servant named Genome and someone ARC thinks could be involved called Kareena.

 

Speaking of Genome, they've stated that Seattle is where KRAKEN is going to summon the Newborn. I don't see any reason to trust them, and neither does the rest of ARC, but considering how many people are headed there, we're planning on sending several people there just to make sure things don't go totally to hell. Myself included, despite the fact that I've mostly been assisting Jenn with research and logging so far.

 

Not sure why. I guess Leo, Robin, and I have, admittedly, glommed onto Jenn's team- or, rather, Locke's team. See, Jenn doesn't work alone, despite coming off for all the world like she would (I say this affectionately). Rather, she's part of an ARC task force made up of her, Daisy, Jameson Wells, Samuel Navarre, and their leader, William Locke, who for whatever reason everyone just calls Locke. Jenn and Daisy seem to have taken to us, at any rate.

 

So, yeah. I guess we're just... going along because they are.