Group-Yukkuri
Jacob flinches and takes a step back as he sees Pikachu, before falling over and laughing heartily as he picks himself up and leads you into the metal entryway and down a spiral staircase which seems to go on forever.
"Hahaha, that's right, the instructors told me that one of you had some sort of monster as a pet. Pikachu, wasn't it? I'm a bit of a dog person myself, although I bet that the science department's gonna be all over you once they find out. Speaking of which..."
You've reached the bottom of the stairs, and are now standing in the center of a large circular room roughly the size of a baseball field, which appears to have been carved directly into the bedrock, although bits of it are reinforced with heavy metal plates here and there, and there are five evenly-spaced tunnels leading out from it. Several people are milling about here, some of them with hot meals, and there seems to be a four-man squad exiting one of the tunnels with weapons in hand, ready for a mission.
"Welcome to the Node, where you'll be spending the few moments of free time that new recruits get! Now, there's not too much to do in here other than just hanging out, but you see all of those tunnels? Those lead to the other areas of the base, which include the science, rookie, veteran, armory, and civilian sections. The signs that tell you which is which are currently being repainted, but you can generally tell where's where by who's going through the tunnels. For example, the science section over there is always surrounded by researchers in labcoats, while the veteran's section always has a couple of fancy-uniformed officers standing outside. If you see anyone come running through a tunnel, then they're probably either a rookie like you or they're heading to the armory before a mission, and it's usually easy enough to tell by the look in their eyes. Finally, there's the civilian section, which always has a few kids outside wanting to see the soldiers. Sometimes the head honchos and executives are there too, although they almost never step foot outside unless they're offering a special job. Anyways, meals are served in the rookie or veteran sections, depending on your rank, so we should probably head over to the rookie section and not keep Sasha waiting any longer."
You follow Jacob through one of the tunnels into what you presume is the rookie section, and all the way down to the end of the tunnel, which is lined with numbered doors on both sides. At the end of the tunnel, a tall brown-haired woman in her late twenties is waiting by a cart piled high with grilled steaks.
"So, here are all of your rooms! Harvey and Urist, you've got room 101. Kyle and Red, you can have 102. 103 is my old room from my training days, so I hope nobody minds if I take it fo-"
The woman with the cart begins to whistle innocently before purposely pushing it over Jacob's foot.
"Argh, what the hell was that for, Sasha?"
"Oh, sorry about that. Evidently you and your group aren't hungry, so I'm just gonna take this cart to the civilian sector before it grows cold."
"Hey, no need to get snarky with me. I was just gonna show off the rooms before we have some dinner. Rookies, this is Sasha Greene, slicer specialist and tactical genius. Now anyways, if 103's mine, then room 104 goes to Sophia and... wait a second. One, two, three, four, five... oh shit."
Sasha laughs for a moment before noticing what's going on and sighing deeply.
"You already lost one, didn't you?"
"Shhhh! If anyone finds out about this, Arkwright's gonna mount my head on his wall! Argh, I'm so screwed!"
"Calm down, will you? You're the one making all the noise about it. Just head back to the surface and find her before she gets anywhere. If you move now, you might even find her before something else does."
"But-"
"Every second you spend stammering at me is another second that a monster could've found her. I'll keep an eye on the food if you want, but you and your rookies had better get a move on."
Jacob nods, and his expression becomes one of deadly seriousness.
"Right. Alright squad, we're headed to the armory. Just follow me, and tell me what class of weapon you want as we're moving. We're gonna be pretending that this is a routine mission, so we only have about an hour until people will get suspicious. Hopefully we'll be able to find her before then, and without running into any monsters. Now, let's get going."
With that, Jacob starts to run back through the tunnel, without pausing to see if you're following.
"You'd better follow him. It's almost impossible to conduct a search with only one person, and even harder to defend an unarmed person without any backup. I'll be sure to save you some steaks for when you get back. Oh, and if I were you, I'd steer clear of any caves you might find. We've had reports of a new monster species that likes to sleep in them, and from what I've heard, it's a pretty nasty one."
Yukkuri
Taking advantage of the distraction provided by Pikachu, you quickly sneak around to the other side of the entrance dome and wait until you can hear the squad heading inside before running across the plain, looking for anything that could possibly be used as a weapon. Something shiny catches your eye on a hill about a mile away, and you rush to the spot to find an old sword from the early age of monsters lying atop an old grave. The headstone's far too weathered to be read, but the blade fits nicely in your hand, and its extremely light weight leads you to believe that it's made of superhardened steel, which although able to cut through monster hide has the unfortunate flaw of corroding upon contact with mana, which limits its usefulness. Still, it's better than nothing, and you give it a few test swings as you look from the top of your bleak grey hill at the equally bleak grey plains around you. Fortunately, there don't seem to be any monsters nearby, although the sun's setting rather quickly. It might be a good idea to find some shelter while you can still see where you're going.
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Topic: Manaburn: An Apocalyptic Monster-Hunting RPG: Back at the base (Read 9906 times)