Campaign, Ike!
<Okay, so he's either going to go for a dramatic resurrection under the empowering yellow light of the morning sun or he's going off to find a pointier rock to smash the sphere against, or a deeper hole to drop it into. That'd suck, since it would mean that me going for the not-hidden fruit first would have directly resulted in someone's complete annihilation.>
Follow Mr. Beetle and watch what he does. If he tries to do harm to the sphere, either attempt to peacefully dissuade him or catch it if he lets go of it in the process.
Also, file Skullflail under "things I'm going to make in the near future".
You make a note to self to keep an eye out for the most thick-headed man you can find. Does it have to be a natural human skull or would
other things also work?
<Let's hope it's the first one. I don't think he'd really kill someone like her in cold blood like that. Then again, I have no way of telling if he is still himself.>Making your way out the hole, you find that he has already started climbing out of the 'crater', quickly moving towards the centre of the city. He can move surprisingly fast and jump across large gaps, as if his body is much lighter than yours. Not that it's much trouble for you to keep up.
<I'm really hoping he has not read Lord of the Rings. Because, you know, volcano and object containing someone's soul.>You continue moving deeper into the city. The destruction is even more severe here. You haven't seen anything, living or dead for a while. From time to time you come across wide rubble-filled depressions on the ground that emit hot air and foul smelling smoke that you have to either go around or find a collapsed building intact enough to act as a bridge and as limited protection from the gases. Occasionally a tremor occurs, usually followed by release of light or fire from somewhere near ground zero. Luckily, no tremors occur while you are crossing a 'bridge'.
The most interesting moment of the trip so far is when you hear a buzzing, like the one made by a
transformer. It sounds like it's coming from somewhere in front of you, the direction you're travelling towards but much further away. Scanning the horizon, you spot the source of the noise. It's a ball made of jagged lines of dim light extending out from a common starting point, slowly moving around above the city in apparently random, semi-circular trajectories, like a UFO. The moment you spot it he grabs you from the wire around your neck and pulls you to cover. It continues moving around for about a minute before it descends and the noise dies down.
<Oh great, another weird magical flying thing. I think I'll call that a Discoball. Unless you have a better idea for a name. But why go for something like Wraith or Skylight when you can call it Discoball? Oh, and we can call the small ones Baubles to keep with the theme. You know, balls.>
<Heh, balls.>It's getting late in the afternoon when you reach the area close to ground zero. It's even hotter here, and all this physical exercise isn't helping. You can't help sweating all the time. You really wish you had some water to drink.
Occasionally you come across one of those floating points of light, but they don't seem to do anything other than getting out of your way and keeping their distance. He doesn't pay much attention to them.
There's the feeling of something vibrating in the air, like a quiet infrasonic noise coming from all around you.
<Do͘ ͘yo̷u ̷t͡h͞in̴k͘ m̨a̧ǵi̢c͝al҉ r͏a͜d͠ia͝tion pois̛o͏n͢ìng̡ i̶s̵ ą t͘hi͝ńg͟ ͠i͠n ̧t̢his w̢o̢rl̨d̡? Be̛c͜ause̡ t͞his ̀d̀o͞e͞sn'͜t͏ f͘ȩel go̶ǫd.̵ T͟hi̡ng͟s͠ ar͠e ͡ligh͠t͟in͜ǵ u̶p ̢ìn͝ he͠re̕.>He sounds quieter now, with echoes, like when he first started talking to you. As you instinctively try to remain quiet to hear what he's saying (even though that makes no sense with telepathy), you manage to hear something else. A buzzing, like the one that occurred when that ball thing was flying around.
You've reached a point close enough to the explosion that there are no rubble around, having all been pushed away, leaving little cover, except for the parts of the ground that have collapsed, creating trenches, the foundations of buildings and the occasional hole in the ground. Part of the ground has been pushed away and vaporized, creating a ring of stone and glass-like dirt surrounding the site of the explosion. There are much more of those points of light floating around here. You can see lava dripping into the ring on the side closer to the volcano (that side is higher, the one you're on is lower).
He turns around and pushes, trying to get you to sit behind a small slab of rock you assume to be part of the foundation of a building. He then turns around and starts walking towards the crater.
((I assumed you'd just keep following, so I did that to keep things moving.))
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Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1140869 times)