The Staging AreaJohn closes his eyes as he feels the information coming his way. This is really more than he had hoped for- the secrets of the machine, laid bare before his eyes. Then the world caught fire.
"What the hell? Are you trying to get us all killed?"
Summon up a lava suit and get in, checking to make sure it's functional first. Failing that, hop in the water and head downstream (hopefully without plummeting over waterfalls.)
You start the process of summoning a lava suit. But then you reconsider. Why summon a lava suit, when you can summon an extreme conditions exoskeleton?
The monstrous mech slowly begins forming in front of you, its limbs and torso thick with non-reactive plating, electrical and heat insulation, radiation shielding, temperature regulation pipes and EMF shielded electric motors and electronics. It takes some time for you to summon it, so by the time it's ready, the flames have already fully surrounded the rock you are building this on.
After checking to make sure there's nothing wrong with it (there is nothing, nothing you can sense anyway) you hurriedly get in and seal the exoskeleton behind you, certain that someone would have to dip you inside a volcano for you to feel any heat in here. Just in time too, as the external cameras are showing fire and fireballs everywhere.
There is of course the problem that this thing is so cramped you can't do anything in it, its speed and reaction times are extremely slow and its thick claw-like hands are unable to handle anything more delicate than a boulder. But, like those intelligence agencies always said to justify their actions, you have to give up some of your freedoms in order to remain safe.
WELL SCREW YOU YOU'RE ORANGE AND YOU'RE GETTING A SONG
Equip the most flamboyant pair of shoes, top hat, and cane possible. Begin tap dancing while singing:
Bears suck~
They're horrible when pickled
Bears SUCK
THEY KILL YOU WHEN THEY'RE TICKLED
But they have a vulnerability unmatched by any mortal creature due entirely in part to their horrific spawning place beyond the stars....
BUT I WON'T TELL YOU
because you suck
Thou art as frivolous as a duck
No shut up
A duck is totally frivolous
I don't know what that word means, but I assume that it's your fault~
YOU SHOULD FEEL ASHAMED
Hebebebebebeskibbidydoobadeedoo
That was the call of repel bears just in case you forgot
Because the point of this song is...
BEARS........
SSSSUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK!!
Finish it off with a snazzy pose.
You equip the most eye-hurtingly bright and colorful combination of cane, shoes and top hat you can find and proceed to sing the bear song with your best
singing voice, twisting your cane and dancing elegantly while the world literally burns around you.
Well done. Your entity would feel proud for you if it was capable of feeling basic human emotions.
You finish your performance by throwing your cane in the air, jumping and then doing jazz hands!
If Ike is close enough to hear Alan, applaud.
If the fires start to get close, test if I can imagine some sort of barrier in the way.
You applaud Alan while chanting
"Encore! Encore!" Alan catches his cane, does a small bow and tips his hat while thanking all the lizard overlords for the inspiration they provided him.
Angel is still in breakdown mode. "Psychological," not "Dancing".
It's hard to resist the urge to join Alan with your own breakdown dancing. His moves are so mesmerising...
Eria look at the fires before finding a rock and start 'sun'bathing.(Cold-blooded after all) "Thank, Irine."
You sit down and chill, enjoying the heat, completely oblivious to whatever all this yelling and crying is about.
You take a deep breath, hold it for a moment and then exhale.
Aaahhh... I love the smell of psychological breakdowns in the morning.
Use my power to get to the roof. Turn a shelf into a Tsar Shelf. See if that's tall enough to break through the ceiling and climb.
You can't even focus hard enough to transform the shelf. Must be disorientation.
For the sake of progress, let's say you try again.
You strain so hard you think you might have a stroke but you still can't focus enough to transform the object.
Let's try a third time.
You manage to grow the shelf to about half the length required to reach the ceiling, but you loose your concentration halfway through the process, leaving you with a Semi-Tsar shelf.
This is getting ridiculous. Let's try again.
You accidentally shove the shelf while trying to use your ability, breaking one of its legs and causing it to collapse on you. Strangely, this causes you no pain, only a minor discomfort.
You try to lift the shelf off of you but you aren't strong enough.
"Hihihihihi..." You hear laughter echoing throughout the abandoned supermarket.
I think Xantalos may have found some competition for his position as unluckiest player of the game.
The Staging Area contd."Ahh, so it's one of those evil opposites thing, eh? I know that stuff. I can understand that and how it could lead to misunderstandings. In fact, once, in one of the worlds I had traveled to, there was this superhero who could enchant donkeys called the Great Ass. Heh, yeah, that guy had a good sense of humor. Too bad he was killed by the Big Rip." *chuckles* "And, anyway, a crazed villain who thought the Great Ass was his arch-nemesis or something misunderstood the origin of his name, so, you won't believe this, the guy started calling himself-..." the entity stops mid sentence. "Ooohh crap." he adds with an almost musical tone after a moment. He doesn't speak for the minute of quiet after that.
"Evil opposite... yeah... I guess." Zechariah contemplates this while Drake tells his story of the otherwordly donkey enchanter, until Drake stops. "Hm? What happened?"
Zechariah looks up to see flames emerging from a portal and Irine looking quite visibly enraged right about now. This image hit him hard. It reminded him of a time that seemed so long ago, yet was as vivid as the dawn itself in his mind.
...that was it.
There was only one person who Artemis had that he loved so dearly in this world. One person who he could call family, who had disappeared a decade ago, and he would only get to see for half an hour more.
There he was, burning in a column of fire, screaming for his life, calling out for his son. Artemis' own father was being killed by the one person Artemis hated the most, his former commander.
"This is what happens, Artemis. This is what happens when you attempt to mess with fate. None of your powers can save your father, and none of your powers can save your nation. We will destroy you."
Artemis merely stood there with a thousand-yard stare, shivering with an odd cold. I felt something change within him. A hope that had been revived has just been twisted so far it can never come back. I felt my conscious mind slip out of control as he merged his own mind with mine. The air crackled with bright Amethyst energy. Artemis balled his hands into fists, and silently snarled.
He finally snapped. Screaming into the darkness of the night, a flurry of heliotrope-colored crystals broke out of the ground around him, swirling up into the sky and enveloping Artemis within a bright, malevolent light. After the crystals settled in the air, all that was left of the physical Artemis was a being made of pure darkness and pure amethyst light at the same time. He was there and not there. All that could be seen was an outline of his body and face, with the amethyst color of his Guardian state. He sprouted wings of the same outline of his body, crooked and jagged with a crystalline material.
Artemis Dimikaelo was not the first Guardian to use his Zero Form. He was, however, the first Guardian to do this with another person. I, Zechariah Dimikaelo, merged minds with him to form the Edge: a fine line between light and darkness that we both crossed at the same time. A line which Artemis would use to rupture the fabric of spacetime itself.
And which he would use to destroy the existence of a civilization in the timeframe of 42 seconds, with Zechariah to credit for it even being possible.
Zechariah had seen this rage before, and he couldn't let it get out of hand. The only way Zechariah had survived this before was due to the dice rolling ever so luckily in his favor; otherwise, he would had lost his mind forever. He didn't want that to happen here.
"Irine, NO!"
Zechariah focused as much energy as possible, his eyes glowing with his wings. He begins running in Irine's direction with his staff up.
Use my light power to summon a storm of crystals around Irine to get her attention and hopefully calm her down, before things start getting out of hand.
((May I ask how exactly a storm of crystals is supposed to calm somebody down? I get the distraction part, but I think it would be more like trading being upset because of A for being upset because of B.))
Noticing the yelling behind him, Bryan turns around and sees fire consuming an area of the staging area. "What in the world?" he yells. Seems that last mission was pretty traumatic. He starts to move towards the flames. Change the staging area to a rocky wasteland, without fuel. If the fires persist see if I can use telekinesis to put them out somehow
Zechariah manages to throw some light shards towards Irene but she doesn't seem to mind that much.
Bryan's and Irene's powers and willpowers collide with roughly equal measure. The Staging Area remains unchanged but her expanding area of fire... well, stops being expanding but remains an area of fire. Jets of fire rise towards the sky where her pyrokinesis meets his telekinesis.
As the entity finishes his reply, I stand there and stare at him for a second before I notice that I've been growling the entire time he was speaking. After another four seconds of me standing there, staring at him, I finally speak.
"You are no more innocent by being the one that gave the order than if you killed every single person that died today with your own hands. Nor does standing by and allowing it to happen cleanse you from being an accessory to this in any way. It is not that you cannot act, but that you choose not to act. I at least tried to save her, and to do with her life what she would have wished had she retained her will. Strange as it sounds, my hands are cleaner than yours. I may have failed, but I at least tried as best as I was able. You might as well have done the deed yourself."
I cross my arms
"Welcome to godhood youngling. Enjoy being a murderer, you're going to be doing it again soon enough. Either grow up and admit it, or give up and abandon your position. If you can't manage either one, then you have no right to have that kind of power in the first place. Attempting to pass the blame on is pathetic."
I spit on him, and prepare myself to immolate it if he tries the classic trick of redirecting it back at me.
"Now then, the terms of the game included our host's survival if we completed our objectives. As you yourself said, the objectives were completed. It was repeatedly stated that it doesn't matter how the objectives were completed. As such, I am owed the survival of my host. And you have failed to deliver. This is a breach of contract."
Check
"Irine, NO!"
Zechariah focused as much energy as possible, his eyes glowing with his wings. He begins running in Irine's direction with his staff up.
Use my light power to summon a storm of crystals around Irine to get her attention and hopefully calm her down, before things start getting out of hand.
this is completely ignored. I am fully aware that I cannot be harmed here, and I still have cards to play.
The spit disintegrates into red haze and then dissapears before it reaches him.
"Yeah, because your good intentions are aaall that matters in this world." responds the entity sarcastically.
"And do you honestly think I care about the death of a single human? Or a thousand humans? Do you know how many humans have died during the time it took me to utter this sentence? Should I perhaps go about saving everyone until the universe is nothing more than clusters of humans floating in space? Or is it simply the humans you know about that you so hypocritically 'care' for? Was it like that in your world, I wonder? Was your inadequacy there equal in measure to the one you displayed here? Is that how you managed to end up here? How many people did your failures let down there?" He lets that question linger for a moment.
"Anyway, I made no such promise. In fact, he informed you of the exact opposite. That your host's sacrifice may be required to complete the mission. Of course, nobody would had died if only you had been competent and followed the directions given to you, now would they? Although, believe me, screwing up the mission in just the perfect way did make my job many times easier. This world is closer to freedom than ever."
"I suppose I should thank you for that." he adds in that smug voice of his, making a small mock-bow of respect.
((No, really, I don't remember saying that. If I did, then consider this
him just being an asshole.
And GWG, don't you dare say "slippery slope".))
So, we've got some volunteers for the Amethyst mission. Those are in no particular order:
- Lenglon
- Harry Baldman
- Alarith
- Xantalos
- DarkArtemisFowl
- GreatWyrmGold
- NAV
If you want to be in that list or if you don't want to be in that list, say so now. I'm rolling next turn to see who gets left behind to participate in the other normal mission I'll be running simultaneously.
Poll
15 (42.9%)
Author
Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1125246 times)