John, After the End
All the bots open fire on Saevus. Don't let go of the hooks. He's weakened; let's see if we can finish him off now with massed fire.
Meanwhile, I take some cover away from both Saevus and the cane-root thing. Focus on patching that hit I just took; a stabilizing quick fix is priority over a permanent fix if that's all I have time for. I don't need to keel over before the fight is finished.
Saevus, After the End
Summon more axes to cut through the cables. Desummon the knife. Get a shield and take the rod. Unless the cane needs two hands to wield properly. Immediately pull John to me with the blingcannon. Since he's in melee range, it'd be a shame to let him go. Preferably, get him to fall over in front of me. Bonus points for making him into cover.
Actually, if John is in summoning range and I managed to drop him to the ground, and I can do this on top of other actions - summon some super heavy hammers on top of him. Only do so if they will drop from high enough to do some damage.
Figure out how the cane works. Hit John with it. Or try 'firing' it at him somehow, if he's not in melee range. If he got away and the rod does not fire, once I'm free - charge at John at try to hit him with it. Blast anything in my way at him as well. If there's a bot on the way, try smacking it with the rod.
With a sudden explosion of speed, perhaps powered by fear and the will to survive, Saevus rips himself free of his restraints. He spins around, using one arm to cut through them with a giant axe while using his golden arm to pull John towards him. The wave of telekinetic energy is weak, only managing to stagger John as he tries to regain his balance. But Saevus keeps spinning, the axe disappearing from his arm just in time for him to pickup the cane from the ground.
He presses the button on its base. His aim is way off, but it turns out he doesn't have to worry about that. A dome of writhing goo explodes out of the top of the cane as it empties it contents. The wave smashes into anything it comes across. John, still staggered, tries to dive for cover but in his confusion only manages to fall forward. The goo hits him head first, shoving him back, covering his entire suit in the sticky material. The wave continues until it hits the wall of the room. All of the bots that were behind John are moving spasmodically and erratically, as if their motors are firing at random.
However more than half of them are still operational. With their attempts to restrain Saevus no longer interfering with their aim, they manage to keep their concentrated laser beams on him as he moves. Most of the heat was focused on his golden shoulder, making it glow and partially melting it. The joints of his armour have fused from the heat and cannot move and the runes there no longer light up with multi-coloured light.
There is some sort of magical power source nearby, radiating energy and increasing your available power. However, even that is not enough to offset your damaged runes and heavy power usage. You're bleeding too much power. If you keep up like that, you might not be able to remain conscious for more than a couple of turns. Then again, if you manage to kill him during those turns, it might be worth it.
You feel the goo moving with purpose, trying to worm its way through your armour and into the more important parts of your suit. Your layered armour keeps most of it away, but the antenna providing you your enhanced sight has been infected, the black material crawling and spreading through it and its systems. You manage to concentrate on your technomancy and keep the black goo away from vital systems, its presence causing only mild distortions in your visions as it tries to take over.
The bots that were hit by the goo do not appear to be responding to your commands anymore.
"Ho ho ho what was I doing again? Oh right, nonspecific mischef, ho ho ho!"
Be jolly! Also attempt to plant as many Bill And Ted cuttings as I feasibly can without hurting the plant too much. Claim to inquiring others that I'm growing spinach if questioned.
Summon plant food and stuff too. Gotta have the best care for my plant.
And Rickman too. Hey, maybe Bill And Ted's an alien plant! That would make sense, he turned the kid into an alien!
You stand at the driver seat of the wagon and whip the nuca dragging it while asking it to light the way with its bright red nose. It tries to spit sparks at you instead. Eh, close enough.
You plant parts of your plant along the road. You have no doubt that this dry environment and its temperature extremes are exactly what they require to grow. The men traveling with you just laugh when you infrorm them what you are doing.
You summon a fridgefull of some rather bland sandwiches and a bit of water bottles for your expanding group of human, animal, alien, and (possibly alien) plant friends. The men comment that they taste nothing like sand witches and wonder why this food has such a funny name.
"Um, I'd like to stop before the statues Ike. I don't want to get caught in them in a trap in the dark"
"You'd rather be caught in a trap in an open field with no place to hide? Don't be silly now, we've got a long road ahead and precious little daylight to waste! We'll see if we can make it through before nightfall, and if not we'll rest under the cover of magnificent works of sculpture. Wonder how big they get out there?"
Going to continue forth!
You keep moving forward, through the field of statues. You move through them as quickly, carefully and as quietly as you can, with your ears and nose ready to pick up anything out of the ordinary. Your eyes cannot be trusted, as in the little light provided by the moon and Irine's sword you wouldn't be able to tell what's a statue and what's not. It's not easy to keep the men quiet, motivated and alert. Some have fallen asleep, others are commenting the landscape as this is the first time they see it, others still are complaining about not stopping and being cold. At least the road is mostly clear, with only the occasional broken statue or pieces of stone laying by the side of the road. You're not surprised. Some of them look really old, their details almost completely eroded, while others appear to have been shoved into whatever tiny spaces could fit them, creating walls and barriers.
...
You've been walking for a while now and there's no sign of the field ending. You've been forced to stop twice now, once to pick up some people who had the stupid idea to try to sneak off and prey to the statue of some god or another and another to stop an argument about whether or not you should stop and camp before it became a fight. The third time you stop is because you've reached the source of the stench of dead and rotten.
This area is like a small clearing, a wide open space surrounding a boulder. Or, at least, at first you think it's a boulder. But as you get a better sense of it through repeated pings, you realize it was some sort of arch that the road went through. The area around is filled with broken chunks of rock, as if something not only destroyed the arch but also caused part of it to explode. There's an extraordinary amount of blood around but not many bodies. In fact, there's too few bodies. Could a scavenger have eaten them already? Some large animal did pass through here, judging by some of the marks and scents in the surrounding area, but you've never encountered that smell before.
You briefly consider waking up the boy clinging to Theri so that it can give you more information but decide against it. There probably isn't much it can tell you that you can't find out yourself plus you'd like to avoid any more drama-related delays if possible.So you simply memorize the scent of whatever thing was here and continue on your way, taking some time to carefully move your wagons around the broken arch.
...
Finally, as the moon starts getting close to the horizon, the statues start thinning out and becoming smaller until they disappear completely. You've reached the other side. And nothing killed you, you still have as many limbs as you had when you entered. What you don't have is morale. Sleep deprivation and scenes of horrible murder have left you and your men tired and cranky, no relationship to the jolly group of adventures that left the village this morning.
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Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1141780 times)