"Damn it, Xander."
"What? I am just curious, miss."
Erika fell into deep thought as she tried to remember how the hell they knew about the Platonics. Were Platonics even real? Were they just a red herring to the jellyfish? She did not know.
And that fact that now she was in Cuba and not the Base made it all worse. Because the evacuation was rushed, they weren't able to take all the data with them.
"Anastasia, help me out here."
This was why historiography was so important, though their brains could operate like machines, they still had limits. Trying to find the two instances of Platonics in a 400000 years time frame was worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack. It was more like finding Jean when there was an attack on the Base.
"Hm?"
"You also keep records just like Jean right?"
She knew of only two historians, one of which lost their records, mostly because of her.
"Yes, but it is missing the first 200000 years."
"Should still be enough."
Anastasia suddenly handed her the book, surprising Erika.
"Look through it."
"Okay..."
Taking the book and almost dropping it on the floor, Erika tried her best to flip through the book, stone book. She gave up quite easily though.
"Argh damn it, I'll do that after this meeting. As the mind control is pretty much resolved, there is one more thing to address: the grade I jellyfish."
Erika suddenly looked at Jean.
"And well, being the most knowledgable about this, why don't you tell us more, Jean?"
Jean sighed, not knowing where to start, he told them about the Crab-V first, to be able to use later as a comparison.
"Let's talk about the grade V first. As all grade V's are, this one also loved the water, knowing that I lured it into the Baltic Sea. The grade V was quite terrifying, its limbs were replaced with tentacles, it had millions of eyes, it was also huge and worst yet, the terrain Zirtues were running away from it, leaving us no place to hide."
Terrain Zirtues were a classification of Zirtues that included: Underground, Air, Water and Mimicry. The underground ones were known to be very, very oblivious to all things above ground so hearing this, they knew how big of a threat the grade V was.
"I won't talk more about how it fights, I'll make a detailed report later. The moment it entered the Baltic sea though, was when all things went wrong."
Anastasia fled before this happened so she was also quite curious about the battle underwater, Jean even said the mother sent him into orbit.
"An air bubble, resembling a halo appeared over its carapace. Oh also, the eyes of the Zirtue also popped out. Merged together and created thousands of grade II's."
"I tried to attack the grade V but was blocked by the grade II's, which now had their own halos. Somehow, by looking at that, I lost both my arms and my sight."
"The moment I got my sight back, it was over, the mother was right in front of me."
"I had hoped for it to be just like the first mother, unmoving but this one was different, it smiled at me. IT SMILES."
Relaxing for a tiny bit, Jean continued with his story.
"Ah well, the mother sent my head into space, adaptation finally worked and I scored a hole on its head."
"Wait, wait, slow down."
Erika interrupted him.
"How can you just gloss over such an important detail?"
"Because I am not sure of what happened, I just know that it happened. Allow me to continue."
***
Jean then went on to tell all about his fight with the mother. From how he managed to get back to Earth, due to the nagging of a certain member to how the mother created its offsprings. He even told them about it speaking.
The reactions of the members were weaker than he thought, considering he almost died but oh well. They were still very concerned though.
"The sir is actually crazy."
Suddenly a screeching voice came from beside him, somehow sounding even worse than normal.
"Hey, let's fight."
The maggots on her face wriggled rhythmically expressing how eager she was.
"Come on, doesn't Ares have nothing to do?"
"Yeah, he's dead."
"Oh sorry. Wait, he's DEAD?"
"Apologise by fighting me, I shall accept nothing other than that. And yes, he died."
Jean tried to escape fighting the woman but his fate was sealed. Anastasia was relentless when trying to fight Jean, it seemed she got really excited after hearing that Jean had a successful adaptation.
"Alright."
The woman immediately returned to normal, even straightening her back. The other members were still discussing about the mother so Jean had nothing to do.
He sighed heavily and signalled for Anastasia to come with him. They used the stairs that led out of the place. It was currently nighttime so Jean had wanted this to also be a training session of sorts.
Looking behind him, he saw Anastasia crawling on all fours to climb the stairs.
"What are you doing?"
"Ceiling short."
It was true, even Jean was having quite a difficult time going up these stairs. He had even considered crawling just like Anastasia but by then, he had reached the surface.
Greeting him were thousands of crabs, which he killed to make space for his fight with Anastasia. She also helped him by 'eating' the Zirtues using her maggots and soon after, the whole area was cleared.
They walked far from the entrance of the place and they both sat down.
"Rules?"
"No killing."
Tension filled the air as both suddenly released some form of energy. The left had a mixture of orange and blue, the right had just red. They met in the middle with intense force, trying to push each other but none came on top.
Then it suddenly stopped, dissipating into the air.
"What does those do?"
"No idea."
"Then allow me to realise it for you."