Krakoa: Deeper

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The X-Men arrive on the island of Krakoa to begin their investigation, and discover some very troubling things.


The island of Krakoa was not very big, only a few miles in radius. It may have once been teeming with life, as evidenced by the overgrown trees and brush burying what might have been half-paved roads. Shiro stepped off the small boat that had taken him, Cain, and Clarice from Okinawa. His first thought was to check that he was secure in his hazmat suit, even though the technicians who had dressed had repeatedly checked already. Something was still nagging him about this situation.

Oh thank heavens for dry land. Clarice had been acutely seasick the entire boat ride from Okinawa and was quite happy if she never had to ride on a boat again. Next time, she was getting dramamine. "What's wrong with this picture?" Clarice asked as she looked around, her stomach settling into quiet mission jitters instead of sea sickness.

Cain checked the seal again on his helmet, then looked at his map. "Okay," he said over the built-in radio. "We stick together, everyone keeps an eye out. No one goes off on their own. Sunfire, stick to the ground. No need to go spooking anyone here if we ain't got to. Looks like there was some kind of settlement about a klick to the north, we oughta start heading that way."

"This does not appear to be too old," Shiro remarked, pointing at the path beneath them. "Damaged by time, but wide enough that maybe it was appropriate for cars? But the island is too small to hold a city, or any actual settlement, really."

"This island isn't located anywhere useful either," the island was remote, even for a remote island. Clarice really wanted to scratch her nose. Why was it that she didn't need to scratch it when she wasn't in the suit? "I just hope this island isn't, like, alive or something. Other than the plants."

Stepping up from the beach brought them to their first signs of life. Or rather, ex-life, as the bodies of the Japanese "rescue team" lay just beyond the tide markers. Cain knelt by one of the bodies, less interested in the bloated, black-veined face than the uniform the dead man was wearing.

"This ain't a humanitarian group," Cain growled, "these guys were military. And armed, too. What the fuck kind of place is this?"

Shiro knelt down beside Cain, who still towered over him and cast a shadow on him. "Rikujou Jieitai. Army. But this emblem?" He reached out slowly to turn over one of the corpses and get a look at the patch on his jacket. "I do not recognize it. I do not know which branch they are from."

Ew. Decomp. Clarice had never been so happy to have a hazmat suit on as she was now, "Well, their gear is missing. Unless it's normal for army guys to show up on a so-called deserted island with no equipment." She resisted the urge to try to close their eyes. They had been almost completely forced out of the sockets like some cartoon character. It wasn't very funny right now. "We need to take them back with us, if we can. Lead coffins or something. Give them a proper funeral."

Cain nodded. "Mark 'em and we'll make a pickup on the way back. We need to keep moving and..."

He stopped, noticing what lay just over a sand dune. About the size of a bathtub, dull silver, with two fins still visible from where it had apparently crashed in the small underbrush. "Shit on me..." he breathed. "That's a bomb."

"You need to incorporate new curses into your vocabulary." There was no malice to Shiro's tone, though, he was so entranced by the undetonated weapon. "Mitte, the trefoil. It is a radioactive bomb. But Japan does not have nuclear weapons. What is it?"

"Whoa. Wait just a minute. That's a NUCLEAR BOMB?" Clarice practically screamed the last two words doing her best to stay calm, the dead men forgotten. It was only marginally working until her brain caught up with her emotions, "Wait....why hasn't it exploded? It's not going to now, right? I mean, fuckaduck, I don't do nukes!"

"Looks like a dud," Cain said, walking around it. "Shiro, c'mere and tell me what this says here."

Shiro began to glow as he slowly approached the bomb, the personal force field growing brighter with every step forward. He wasn't going to take any chances with this. "Anou, it says that it is a microwave bomb, developed by . . . I cannot read that part. Too damaged by the delivery, I suppose." He blinked, then looked up at Cain, confused. "Why would they need a microwave bomb?"

Clarice had stayed away from the bomb although it wouldn't matter if it exploded, "I'm already purple, I don't need to glow in the dark!" she called over their headsets.

Cain shook his head, taking a few steps away, then stopping. "Oh no," he said quietly. "I know what this is. They dropped a bomb here, and it didn't go off. They send a team in and they wind up dead. Whatever they stuck out here on this island, it's something they're scared of. We are in it deep, deep as it gets."