Campaign
Campaign, Ike!
"Struggling doesn't help... screaming doesn't help... hm..."
"Aha!"
Struggle while screaming terribly. Summon up some of that survivor strength. Get the adrenaline going! This not giving a shit business doesn't seem to be paying off at the moment.
Failing that, look forward to bright future as murderslave to a yellow land octopus. It's a healthy yellow land octopus, right?
It is indeed a healthy yellowish-white land octopus, none of those pesky second rate knock-offs. So you'd indeed be serving the best.
You once again attempt to push the thing away from you. You put everything you have in it. But whatever it is doing, it seems to be making you weaker. You manage to use your legs to push it back and keep it away from you but you can't disentangle yourself fully.
Help Ike! Get that thing off him!
Theri finally reaches Ike and strikes the creature grabbing him with a running kick strong enough to push it back a couple of metres, freeing Ike in the process.
"That's it girl! Bend it like Beckham."However before the two of them can do much more, there is the sound of explosions, one after the other. The ground starts shaking like in an earthquake, making it impossible to stand. There is the sound of rocks falling. Bright red light is coming from the Portal room, lighting the hallway.
That doesn't feel good.
Nikolai, Campaign
"Oh fuck. GET BEHIND ME!"
Remove my breastplate. Enlarge, strengthen, and repair it into a huge wall of metal to hide behind. Hide behind it and hope to not die.
You cower behind your armour and enlarge it to the best of your ability, creating a small double metal wall for you to hide behind, hoping it will protect you.
And you are right to fear for your life. Explosions start happening, one after the other, causing your ears to hurt, deafening you, making everything shake. The light and heat coming from the door is strong enough to make you want to run away, even though the vibrations make that impossible. You can see bands of fire forming in the air out of nothing, slowly going through the air like rings of water in zero-g. You briefly wonder what would happen if you didn't had that wall between you and that doorway.
"Damn it Ike, you angered the humour gods!"This doesn't sound good.
Irine, Campaign
I target the area the slabs are in, and redirect the force of their explosions away from us. If I have to choose between remaining conscious and us all dying from this chain of bombs, I'm going to overwork myself to keep us all alive.
((DAF, I hope you noticed Paris's comment about the walls and floor. gonna need your help here and Irine isn't up for talking or coordination right now.))
Physically, i'm walking, stumbling, crawling, etc. towards putting a nice big thick wall between me and what is about to happen. I'd prefer for it to be putting me near teammates too, but honestly, right now I just need the protection.
If I already have cover / once I get cover / once I'm sure I can't make it in time then I curl up in a ball with my tails wrapped around me.
if a parasite grabs me then I still am focused on deflecting the explosions, if it attempts to actually take me over then I change to my full-fox form, letting the vast difference in my volume deal with my parasite problem, and keep trying to keep the explosions from killing us all.
Campaign
Zechariah had to keep going. He was probably exhausting himself to the point that he might collapse, but there was no way that he was letting even a single person die here. Not now, not before they had even started.
If he let anyone die, he was letting his Shadow win. He couldn't have that happen. That's not what he had fought for so long to accept and combine with.
This wasn't going to end with his Shadow. This was going to end with him and him alone.
"Get down and in cover, now! There's no more time!"
Have all of my focus go to forming a solid crystal wall to contain the explosion, or at least to redirect it away from our group. After the inevitable explosion and if I am still conscious, try to move anyone who is still in the room into the hallway. If not, get the hell out of there myself.
Zechariah helps pull Irene back, further into the hallway as both of them do their best to contain the inevitable explosions. They can't see what happens next, but they're close enough they can make a reasonable assumption. They manage to protect themselves. Despite the unbearable heat, the deafening noise, the blinding light and the shaking, they remain alive. But it is a short-lived victory.
The wall, despite its thickness, can't take any more. It begins crumbling, thus accelerating the rate of destruction. The slabs begin falling to the floor and disappearing in bursts of light and fire, like a wall of dominoes made out of nitroglycerin and napalm. The floor gives out, large sections of it falling, revealing what lies below.
This doesn't look good.
GGGGGGHKLGLKNNNNNNNNNN
Remember those painkillers I summoned a while ago? Take a few of those if I still have them,,which I think I do. Then summon a skateboard, get down on my belly on it, River on my back, and accelerate myself with my arms toward safety.
((I'm pretty sure you stuffed those down a corpse's throat and didn't bother retrieving them after River was done with the body.))
You summon a gigantic skateboard which looks more like something made for moving furniture than for people to stand on. Taking your leg off the wheel is more work (and pain) than you'd like. Eventually you manage to get on it and start wheeling away, just as the wall starts collapsing. You don't manage to get far. The floor starts falling apart. One of your wheels gets stuck in one of the gaps forming between the blocks making up the floor. You try to move forward but you can't.
The floor can't take any more. You feel weightless. You fall.
The room below is gigantic, probably spanning the entirety of the tower or more, meaning that if you don't hit anything on the way down, you'll be falling for several seconds. You briefly wonder if that's enough time for your life to appear before your eyes. Still, hitting something has a very high possibility of happening, considering that there are bridges joining opposite sides and even rooms held in place by stone supports coming out of the walls.
Then there's the red thing that takes up most of the room. You can't see its features clearly, for the light it emits is so bright you can only look at it with half-closed eyes. It has an organic quality to it, looking much like blood vessels extending from a main artery or vines that have spread everywhere, grabbing columns and bridges to support themselves, thus creating a contrast with the highly symmetrical nature of the architecture. You can see a thicker part running through its centre, like the trunk of a tree.
The walls remind one of sedimentary rock as there are layers, each with a slightly different shade of brown and slightly different decorations or angle, as if each group of floors was constructed by a different architect with a slightly different vision for the project. Yet they all retain their angular, blocky design, using curves only for (what you think are) decorations.
As you fall, you notice that the four things that created the portal extend below it, surrounded by now crumbling falsework, the cylindrical thing connected to the red network by a rather weak link. Pieces of rubble hit the network, causing cracks to form on it and a bright plasma-like substance to escape from within along with blindingly bright light.
A slab falls through the hole and hits part of the network with an explosion. The network begins moving and for a moment it looks like it has come alive. But a moment later you realize that the movement is a result of numerous explosions happening across its surface.
The heat becomes unbearable. Your lungs burn and your clothes catch fire. Looks like you'll die before you hit the ground.
EveryoneFor a second, there is only light and heat. Than nothing. The energy release is so great and it happens so quickly that your body is vaporized immediately, not giving you a chance to feel pain (or anything at all) before it cases to exist.
Congratulations, you are all dead. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Have some
music to go with the experience.
At least I managed to describe the tower a bit before it exploded, so not
all my world building was wasted.
Survival
Fly off in the direction of the police.
A lightning bolt from the imminent storm briefly illuminates the surrounding area as you pass over the men gathered near this side of the bridge. Some of them are searching nearby homes, while others are using whatever they can get their hands on to create makeshift barricades and fortifications.
A couple of them seem to notice you, for you can see one of them pointing up at you. Or maybe they're not pointing at you and are instead pointing at the storm clouds above you. Even so, they don't do anything about you and simply get back to doing whatever they were doing. Maybe they're just wondering what a bird like yourself is doing flying at this time of day and with this kind of weather.
Bryan survival
"Looks like being careful is out."
Head to the bridge as fast as possible.
Survival
John pounded the seat in front of him. "Move!"
Can I pull Saevus in from here? If so, do that and fix his legs. If not, do I still have that Tommy gun? Use it on the car that pulled its own weapon. If not, summon a loaded bazooka. If there's time, shoot it at the attacking car. Mind the backwash from that.
Survival
Attempt to pull myself into the car. Blast anything dangerous away. Oh, and hopefully get my legs fixed.
Not willing to get dragged along the road again, Saevus (in a display of uncharacteristic agility) quickly pulls himself into the car before Bryan has a chance to put in a gear. Good thing too, for what follows would not had been pleasant from his previous vantage point. It's hardly pleasant from the current.
Bryan punches it and the car's oversized motor happily obliges with a rumble. This is what this car was meant to do, after all. High speed in straight lines. The wheels spin once more and the car is launched forward, its 'nose' rising slightly due to the torque and Saevus' weight in the back. Bryan breaks for a split second and does some rapid turns of the wheel to counteract the momentary loss of friction but manages to maintain control. The other cars have trouble keeping up. You hear a few gunshots but it doesn't looks like anything was hit. Car is still moving and nobody screamed.
John digs himself out of his patchwork seat and stands behind Saevus, using him as cover as he prepares to work on his legs.
"Et tu, John?"John, not willing to try messing with magic unless necessary, begins summoning the necessary equipment, a welding mask forming on his head, while at the same time a small gas tank appears and gets tied around his arm with metal bands, with the welding tip and pilot flame getting attached to his index finger, along with various wires and tubes. It's a bit hard working in the enclosed space, but thankfully he manages to start the weld without setting the car on fire. Still, it's a bit hard working in here, so it might take a while.
Around the next bend, the eponymous bay of Kingdom bay docks becomes visible, with the dark figures of the shipping cranes and cargo ships obscuring the cityscape of down-town and more importantly for you, Allen bridge. Allen bridge is a vertical lift bridge on the part of the island that is closest to the mainland. The sea there has been artificially widened deepened to ensure bigger ships can approach the protected dock from that side, if you remember correctly, so that ships can approach from the side less exposed to the elements and thus easier to navigate in inclement weather.
And that's where the problem lies, for the bridge appears to be raised. Meaning that unless you can make the car fly or swim, you can't cross to the other side. Thunder strikes and illuminates the bridge and the docs for a few moments, as if to make the revelation more ominous.
So the question now is, are you going to try and get to Allen bridge and try to lower it or are you going to attempt to keep driving, aiming to get to the tunnel in the northern part of the island and hope it's unobstructed?
And if you choose to keep driving towards the tunnel, then how are you going to get there? The main road following the shoreline is faster, but there's little cover and it's much easier to get ambushed. Going through the island's centre would be more unpredictable and provide more cover, but it would take longer, plus you could accidentally end up near enemies anyway, if they're everywhere on the island.
Staging Area
Head to the right
The corridor to leads to 5 more doors, each of them very peculiar. You can see light created by fire coming under one of them, another is shaped like a hotel room door, another looks very heavily reinforced with metal. There are also stairs leading down.
You continue downstairs, where you find yourself in the ground floor of the inn, which I have previously described
here. The room is empty save for the man behind the counter who is blatantly ignoring you, instead focusing on his book.
You feel a tremor, as if the ground moved slightly for a second and then stopped, accompanied by the distant rumbling of thunder. And for that time, everything looks darker.
The man behind the counter looks up with a slightly concerned expression, as if he can see the sky through the ceiling.
"Well, that doesn't feel, sound or look good." he says to himself.
Poll
15 (42.9%)
Author
Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1151521 times)