Annotated 36-35
With potions of swiftness amping up the medics’ running and reloading abilities, this mission of mercy looks a lot more feasible. Especially with E-Merl’s illusions grabbing all the attention and giving them the element of surprise.
E-Merl’s original line was “Abracadon’tkillme!” But Flo left the note, This is so dumb. Is this too dumb? This feels dumb. And I don’t know whether the original line was mine or hers, but I agree, it would’ve been dumb. Not because we couldn’t use a little unpretentious humor right now, but E-Merl is (1) not actually putting himself at that much risk and (2) actually encouraging the berserkers to try and kill him. That’s the whole point!
Details to appreciate: Astoria’s power now glows berserker red.
This is astonishingly efficient.
Could the crisis have been almost completely avoided if Syr’Nj and her field-medic crew had been there from the start?
Or do they only quelch the berserking so quickly because the outbreak had already started to die out from berserkers killing one another?
Little of both. Syr’nj gas proven to be a problem silver but HR did a good job setting up the Cultist trap and turning Byron into a undead dirty bomb. Syr’nj may have made the difference but it’s really the fact she is leading a team of field medics, responding to the crisis at hand that’s making a difference. Think the only way this could have 100% have been avoided was if Byron never went into the woods in the first place… Which is why I will hate poor Bandit in a few pages.
Sorry for the poor gramer, my phone decided to hate me and auto correct everything before I noticed.
If Byron wasn’t available, couldn’t they have used another carrier?
This is a critical question, I think. Not that Bandit’s reaction or Syn’Nj’s reaction to that reaction would really be any different either way, but for at least parts of the audience.
I suspect that even if they had waited for Byron at the gates, and given him more than a few anti-berserk-shots, the demons would have leapt out and infected a bunch more people. There would have been a chance that they could have killed the field medics quicker than the other way round, and still produced a sizeable carnage — but having that much extra serum would definitely have given the peacemakers an edge.
I shudder to think what would have happened if Syr’Nj had not had the spontaneous idea to show up with a squad of medics and syringes. E-Merl sped up her arrival but if she had not already been prepared at that moment, they’d have been lucky to keep it from spreading to other places.
Yeah, seems less ideal to have the medics potentially get swamped in chaotic melee, compared to this scenario, where the medics get to surprise the baddies, and make a clean sweep from one end of the village to the other (zerkers aren’t much for sneaking about).
A little homage to Agent Smith, I see. “Me, me, me” “Me, too”