Life had been a grueling since the discovery of the Covenant tissue sample. On top of all the work she had to do normally, she was trying to process the illegal samples in a timely fashion without getting caught. She can’t remember what a solid 7 hours of sleep even feels like anymore. However, she finally had some genome sequencing DNA. And on top of that, there were all the observation notes on the tissue and cell samples. Too bad normal cell samples had a hayflick’s limit. It meant she had to be more careful with them... So, she had some stuff stored away for future use.


On the other end of the spectrum, there was the tree. A great deal less dangerous, but still interesting its own right. It’s ability to withstand the cold temperatures was something just about anyone in any major university was working on.


She gets home from work, she calls Ashley. “Are you busy this evening? Because I finally have data worth sharing from what we got at Shibuya. Also, we need to find a good, safe way of storing everything we get. I keep getting nervous about people snooping around.”

Ashley had been at home as well although he had been working on a massive project. Several sparks of electricity could be heard as he was building something. In the room there several blueprints of several devices along with several theories. He stops after a few minutes and hears his phone go off and sees the number and picks up the phone. "Hey Taika.......I see, well why don't you come to my home for dinner. I am sure its been a long time since you had a home cooked meal. Plus we can work out something for those things. Plus you can see my personal workshop" he said since it would give them a bit of down time. Since he had been working for awhile and needed a break. Plus it would be the first time he showed his personal lab and workshop.

“There’s nothing wrong with the way I eat…” Taika says defensively. However, she can’t help but look at the trashcan in her home. It was overflowing with mostly fast food boxes from when she remembered that she needed to consume food to continue living. It was a little disgusting if she thought about it. “Actually, maybe you’re right…”

She holds the phone between her head and her shoulder as she gathers up her research notebook. It was sort of nice to have a private research notebook again. However, when she wasn’t being watched over, she tended to write in her native languages. “Where do you live? Hey, you don’t happen to know Finnish or Swedish, do you? Otherwise, I’m gonna have to translate pretty much everything I wrote down.”

Ashley thought for a moment on Taika's remark on knowing those languages. "No but I could scan it on to my computer and get it translated. The languages I know of are German, English, French, Japanise, and a small bit of itallian" he said as most of those counties were around Switzerland. So those two were out of his league of knowlage. But he could wing it if he could at this point and time. "Here is my address [Insert Address]" he said and the location of the place was off base but somewhere close to it. So if there was a emergency at the base he could haul ass and get there.

"I think I made something of a breakthrough on one of my projects. And I think it can be useable. So come on over quickly as you can. I will see you later" he said and then hung up the phone and went to make himself a bit presentable.

“I hope translation software has gotten better these days,” Taika replies to the idea of running in through the computer. Mostly, she’s unsure what it will do with technical stuff, and if it will translate well.

She jots down the address quickly, “Yeah, you’re not too far away from me. Let me just get my things together, and I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”


In reality, it takes more like 30 minutes as she tries to organize everything together. She refers to a few different academic papers in her notes, and realizes that she has to print those out if she wants any hope of her journals make any sense to someone who wasn’t her. She puts them all in folder, grabs her journal, and makes her way down to the address given to her.

She knocks on the door, and greets Ash with “Dinner isn’t cold, is it?”

Ashley's home was off base as he wanted something normal for his sister. It looked more or less a standard suburban home. There would be a vechical outside, it was a off road pick up truck. Painted a bright green to stand it out against the bleak white and grey of the currant world. Ashley opens the door to greet Taika. "Welcome to my abode, and dinner is still cooking. Its a sheperd's pie, I figured something warm and hearty would be a good meal" he said and ushered Taika into his home. The inside was well lit and warm compared to the outside of his house. The furnishings were modern most of it was a guys touch but there were a few things that had touches of a female around the house.

"Would you want to get down to what you found. Or do you want to wait for the food to be ready" he asked and Ashley was dressed in a long sleeve shirt and some jeans with some socks on his feat. Not too afraid of the cold and was pretty casualy dressed for the moment.

It’s a nice place. It’s actually far nicer than the small apartment that she got for herself. However, she can’t help but wonder why a single person would need all this room though. As the door opens, Taika notices the smell of food before Ash’s presence. She probably shouldn’t be waiting so late to eat she thinks to herself. “Thanks for inviting me over,” she says, following him inside the house.

There was definitely the presence of another individual in the house. Wife maybe? How would that introduction work? Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just here to share my findings on the scientific work that we obtained illegally… by the way, your husband will totally be wanted for some serious crimes if this comes out, so hush hush. That wouldn’t go smoothly at all.

She shrugs, “There’s no real rush, and dinner sounds great.” She takes out her folder of papers and hands it to him, “By the way, I brought a present. Scientific literature. I used a few of these as the basis for my methods. They could be helpful to look at it.”

Ashley nods his head in thanks and took the files "Alright then, lets go to the dinner table" he said and led her to a nice table that was near the kitchen. There would be a nice framed picture near by and it was very recent. One was Ashley dressed in his lab outfit and a teenager girl next to him all smiles. They were related in some degree, the best guess for anyone would be that they would be siblings. Ashley shuts off the oven and brings out a cassirol dish that had something with a flaky top on it. It was also layered with a lot of yummy stuff.

"Lets let that cool off for a bit, can I get you a drink. Perhaps some wine or something else" he asked an opend a cabinate and gets a bottle of wine out. Plus a glass for himself for his meal, since he was at home and needed something to chill him out a bit. "I am excited to see what you have discovered" he said sitting down at the table.

Taika continues following him throughout the house to the kitchen. She always took careful note of her surroundings even when she wasn’t in any particular danger. Just an odd habit. She sees the picture and figures that explains the female presence around the house. She also notices the place is pretty much picture perfect for a house. Was Ash type A or super domestic? When he comes out with the casseroles, she thinks maybe it is a bit of both.

“I normally drink something stiffer,” she jokes. Last time, she had any alcohol was after winning that derby awhile back. And she admittedly, drank a little too much then. Time much time at work since then. “Wine is fine though. Thank you.”

“I ran some experiments on the skin tissue we got. It regenerated for quite some time, so I thought maybe this stuff is immortal. Ended up wasting time with that though since the cells reached a Hayflick’s limit. Was sort of bummed, so I did some gene sequencing to figure out more about it. Also, made some cDNA libraries on some RNA extracted. First, I should mention that it wasn’t human. I mean it was close to be human, but not quite. There are a bunch of genes and proteins that I have never seen before. No clue what they do. It sort of gave off similar energy to things with KOES, but not quite the same. More like a corrupting agent than something that is corrupted…”

“Whatever it was, it was at least a Class 3, but I’d say it was higher than that.”

Ashley nods as Taika went through her explanations on what she found out. "If its the corrupting agent then it might be far above a class 3. It might be a class five.....there are theories and rumors that say that Class Five Covenent maybe able to corrupt things." he said and then gets another glass and fills both up and gets a plate and some silverware. Ashley then starting plating. "Lets eat for now though, there are a few things I need to tell you after this" he said to Taika as he began to eat the dinner that he made.

Taika scarfs down her food perhaps a little too fast. She’s pretty quiet throughout the meal, and acts like she hasn’t seen real food in a long time. “Thanks for this again.”

“Hmmm… class five… in Tokyo,” she thinks on that for a few moments. “You’d think we would have been a little alerted to that.”

“However, I guess it makes sense, considering the bombshell I figured out after that. Those cells. They lacked mitochondria. Different set of organelles entirely. I haven’t quite pieced together a mechanism for how they worked. And it was tough just trying to get decent electron micrograph pictures of them.”

“I mean, it is possible that the specimen was part of a new species of humanoid that evolved past it. It’s also possible that maybe the title of humanoid isn’t accurate at all. All eukaryotes on Earth have mitochondria. Every single one. Since our earliest single celled ancestor ingested another single celled organism and the two began a symbiotic relationship. Mitochondria even have their own set of DNA which we’ve used to learn tons about our earliest ancestors. So… it’s possible that the specimen doesn’t exactly come from earth and that life just evolves along similar plans.”

“The new organelles give off the infectious energy patterns. It seems the specimen uses a different source of energy from ATP, and we can’t tolerate the presence of it in even small doses.”

She frowns, “Either way… sort of reminds of me of the Oxygen Catastrophe.”

(Timeskip)

After the meal Ashley gets up and looks at Taika "Well Taika I want to show you a few things in my workshop area. Your going to be shocked at what was given to me earlier today" he said as Kurio had showed up early that morning with something special. And he had been tight lipped about it. Done the less he was also going to show off something he had been working on as well. None the less things were going to get bumpy due to the fact they had saw the Shogun being brought out like that. They had a lot of work to get into in order to defeat the covenant. Perhaps even show up Jun at his own game on weaponry and equipment. As the Shogun seemed very out of place in this war.

“There was something I wanted to run by you though. The absence of mitochondria works well in our favor. One could feasibly engineer something to interfere with this unknown organelle. I just need to determine the mechanism of how it works. However, I was wondering whether I’d have your support with creating such a thing,” Taika asks, a little stiffly. The question doesn’t come out quite right. But how else does someone ask: Do you support the use of biological warfare? It was an effective means, but not a painless or quick one by any stretch of the imagination. While she was well aware of the moral debate, she couldn’t care less.

Her curiosity is piqued as Ash mentions his workshop again along with a mysterious present. His opinions on Jun’s work showed that he thought a little outside the box about things. “Hmmm… I never get given gifts. Lead the way. What kind of stuff do you work on normally, anyways? I’m guessing with opinions like ours that you don’t see eye to eye much with most people in R&D. They tend to like the make a bigger boom solution.”

Ashley though of the implacations of a bio weapon being used on the covenant. Normaly that would be something he would be against. But with the world looking as it is now, slowly decaying under a unending winter. He turns to Taika "Do it, with the world dieing right now. We all need to try something to stop the Covenant. Either new weapons or biological warfare, whatever we need to do for the survival of mankind and this planet" he said and let Taika down a starewell to the basement and opened the door. He flicks on the light and Taika would see a large work station with various tools and equipment on one side of the room. On another side was a white board that had several formulas and equations. And in one corner was a desk and a super high end computer set up. From the other corner was his own server network. The last area was a large roll cage with several racks and a massive safe.

The last thing in the room was a large table that had a few items on the top of it. One item looked like one of Ashley's combat blades. With a few other things here "Yeah, plus dealing with Pinkypie on a daily basis can do it to you. Most of my stuff has been fooling around with stuff or repairing junk and making it super useable. Give me a second to get the item that was given to me" said Ashley as he walked over to the roll cage and imputed a number that turned off the lock. Then went to the safe and did the combination and unlocked it. He opens it and grabs a thing that was rapped up in a cloth and sets on the table. "Don't freak out too much" he said and unwrapped the cloth. What was uncovered was a very large chunk of crystal that gave a mesmerizing glow.

It was the same glow that the crystal shards that they worked on a few days ago. There was a large grin on Ashley's face when he looked at the crystal.

Taika’s glad that her accomplice is not so morally opposed. “Maybe I can get some kind of model for it in the upcoming weeks. After that, we just need to determine possible candidates to target, and decide on a dissemination method.”

Upon getting to the workshop, she looks around the room. She maybe recognizes about half of the equipment, but the other half remains on mystery to her. The same holds true for the equations on the whiteboard.

“So basically you work on upgrading current equipment?” she asks while eyeing the blade as Ash went to toward the safe. She turns back to him when he says not to freak out too much. Her expression looks confused, “I’m pretty hard to freak out.”

Her eyes widen when he pulls out more of the crystals. “Ok. Where did you get those? Did you kill the Flamingo? I’d totally help you dispose of the body.”