Kosak Durar, After The End:
"Alright... come on then!"
Kosak charges the worm and demonstrates proper punching technique on it.
You charge at the worm. It strikes at you with its head, trying to either swallow you or smash you into a pulp. Or both.
You respond with a well placed punch to head that sends it reeling and causes you to slide backwards from the recoil. Your hand is covered in gore and now there's a significant part of the worm's head missing.
"Now, see why this was a bad idea and why you shouldn't do it again?"The worm screeches and tries to encircle you, slithering its giant body around you to try and reduce your mobility. Maybe even crush you. Smart. But that won't save it.
It pulls its head back, getting ready for another strike.
*sigh* "What did I just say?"You grab the head as it flies towards you. The worm pushes futilely against you, but you bend your knees and do your best not to slip in the blood. You hold your ground as you start pulling your hands further and further apart. You keep pulling until the worm's mouth splits apart, causing a grotesque permanent smile to appear on it. But the thing is still alive, still thrashing around and trying to kill you, its body getting dangerously close to crushing you.
"Damn invertebrates. Curse your ability to survive."
<After The End>
Poke a hat out the door. Then should that not draw fire, make a run for it. Get out of the structure.
((Okay, what's happening here anyway?))
Considering that you're about a hundred floors off the ground, exiting the cannon through that door might not be such a good idea., since you wouldn't be able to go very far. Well, no, that's a lie, you'd be able to go quite far. But there would probably be a sudden stop at the end.
After the end
Let's try to get in the car. Don't want to attract too much attention, after all.
You bang the side door of the van until it opens, allowing you to enter it.
"What the hell is going on out there?" one of the two men with guns inside it ask.
"Things went badly. We're the only ones left." you respond.
They don't seem very excited about that. They're more... surprised and scared and trapped.
You notice a strange buzzing noise outside.
"What the hell is that noise?" one of the men asks.
You also want to know what the hell is going on. So you send a vortex outside to see. One of the advantages of not using your human eyes. The one who asked the question shivers as the vortex passes next to him.
Outside... first thing you see is that your opponent is catching up to you, now driving a heavily modified vehicle.
The second thing you notice is the sphere of metal moving around high above you, lightning up everything with the fire of its hover-engines and its dozens of searchlights, occasionally pointing its guns and missiles at whatever catches its attention.
Crap. A drone. They sent a frigging drone. Talk about overkill. Well, let's hope it focuses on the right target.
John, After The End
"I apologize for the inconvenience, ma'am, but I must borrow your car. Stay quiet and I won't hurt you, and I'll give the car back when I am done; you can keep the improvements. Help me, and I might be able to help you too! Get in my way, and... well, I think you get the idea." John idly gestured toward his weapon. "So which is it?"
Regardless of her answer, speed up and bear down on my target; take pot shots if I get close, improve the car more if I don't (I'm thinking an armored front, maybe a nice firing port). If she interferes, blast her (failing that, the car seat could always detach and fall out the driver door.)
She is quite compliant, nodding vigorously as she shrinks away from you, fastens her newly-repaired seatbelt and grips her door's handlebar tightly. Can't blame her for not antagonizing the probably crazy man with the big gun who just transformed her car.
You push the pedal to the metal and send the car screaming forward, shoving other cars out of the way. Your passenger emits frightened gasps with every collision. With that speed, you easily manage to get back in visual range of your target. You could try shooting, or keep focusing on driving and getting even closer.
<Svajoklis, After the End>
Have a quick look around, is there a vent we could get through? If not;
1)Throw a CS canister in the coridoor, slightly towards where we came from and where the darn terminator expy is to create a smoke cover.
2)Throw a flashbang at where the terminator expy is.
3)Wait until flashbang goes off and run with the two helpers behind me.
"I have a plan, I'll make some distractions and the we run, I'll go first so you'll know if my distractions were shit."
You motion for the man to close the door and give you some time to look around and explain your plan.
There is indeed a vent, but it is armoured and barely big enough to hold a small child. Pretty much what you would expect from an armoury.
The other two with you agree with your plan. They are not at all eager to volunteer to go in your stead. I mean, sure, nobody would, but you'd expect them to at least show some emotion-
Your train of thought is cut off by the door getting blown off and flying into the room. That's your cue to leave.
You pull the pins out of a CS canister and a flashbang and throw both outside. They quickly explode, filling the corridor with smoke and your ears with ringing.
Now all you have to do is run outside. Just run outside. Run blind. Right past that killer robot. That just sent an armoured door flying like it was nothing. Yep.
...
Oh gods, you're going to die.
Go to the door. Keep firing at it as I advance, wouldn't want them to have any bright ideas like 'let's run away'. Once I reach the door, exchange my crossbow for a sword and blast the door off. Commence murder.
You get a slightly smaller shield and a significantly bigger sword, more like an oversized cleaver. You pull your sword behind your back and then make a powerful overhead slash, cutting a deep gash in the door and getting it stuck on the floor and then immediately blasting it apart with a telekinetic blast. You don't even get a second to recover before something explodes in front of your face, overloading your sight and hearing.
You're not really sure what's going on, so you decide to respond in the most logical way. Fire everything.
DreamerGhostYou run past your pursuer. You can see his light for a moment, like lighting frozen in a cloud, before your eyes fill with tears and your throat starts to burn. The blurry light intensifies and then explodes with force. And then again. And again. The blasts send ripples through the air, creating vortexes, causing the gas to churn and spread even more.
You feel the wind against your back, you hear a cry of pain, something slamming against a wall behind you.
Looks like going first was a good idea after all. It wasn't ready for you.
Now all you have to do is find your way to the elevators... while half blind. Having a map of this place in your mind certainly helps, but not being able to see doesn't. Well, I mean, you can see, but not very clearly, your eyes are full of tears. You couldn't resist rubbing them with your hands to try and relieve yourself from the discomfort, but that somehow made it worse.
And... you can still hear it, still following you. And only one set of footsteps following you and that one limping.
Hawk132Your blade slashes through the air, creating eddies of spinning colorful gas. It slashes through the flesh, sending a spray of blood flying. The lifeless head bounces against the ground, still wearing a wide-eyed shocked expression. You look at it, taking in its features through the gas, under the light of your runes. Hm. Not him.
Instead of pulling your sword out of the ground, you simply let go of it and form a new one in your hands. The hunt goes on.
Bear-rune grimaces. He removes the leg, converting it to biomass. He then attempts to grow a new leg. At the same time, he attempts to coat his entire body in a thin chitinous layer, with joints of course. He generates eye covers similar to those a frog utilizes when entering water, transparent but effective. He roars furiously, and unleashes a brutal melee attack on his opponent.
You shift your flesh around the injury, moving it like water. You free your leg and repair it, but it's a sloppy job. You do a much better job repairing and protecting your eyes. You attack with vicious abandon but you somehow manage to only hit the armour.
It looks like you're not the only one who can do shapeshifting tricks. Your opponent is also changing. He starts retracting his tentacles, releasing his hold on the environment. On the one hand, this reduces his armour. On the other hand, it allows him to start slowly moving around and increases his weaponry. Some of that stuff growing on him look completely absurd. Who puts a bone buzzsaw on a tentacle? How do you call that? The buzzsaw whip?
WMD, After the End
"So much for talking it out."
Activate walker. Keep my distance. Fire all the things for real this time if my opponent gets close.
Transformation in progress. Please stand by...
In the meantime, here's a message from our sponsors:
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Disclaimer: Three-headed Joe Ltd. and its affiliates bear no responsibility for you actually dropping dead due to events including but not limited to misuse of equipment, proper use of equipment, Solar Flares, dirty peasants, sky leopards or Death. Limited time offer only applies to certain products. Filthy Rifundians may pay extra, be enslaved or eaten.
A.L.A.N.
Grin vacuously while my buddy's talked to.
You summon a pair of sunglasses and stand behind Rickman, grinning and waving like an overeager manager with his new star.
Campaign, Ike!
"Disaster!" Ike points all around him. "AlienNest?"
Ask. Also, hand Irine Nik's orb.
Rickman looks at you for several seconds.
"AlienNest." it responds, but it speaks slowly, like it's uncertain.
Irine seems a bit out of it right now, like she's in some sort of trance. She's not responding to external stimuli and you think she's glowing slightly. Maybe it's a foxgirl thing. Maybe she found some strange leaves and decided to eat them. Whatever it is, you decide to hold on to the sphere for now and give it to her when she wakes up.
Hmm... Now would be a perfect oportunity for you to put her in a silly pose.
<Might as well go ahead and do it then. just a moment.>
I sit down where I am behind Ike.
<Ready.>
<Cool. Just relax and let me help. Don't worry, I'll be gentle, you won't feel a thing.>You can feel the warmth of his influence expanding outwards through your bond. It continues expanding, enveloping both your mind and your body. It's a pleasent warmth, but also a bit... weird. Kinda feels like that time you swallowed some fire and tried to control it in your stomach- I mean, what you imagine that would feel like. You'd certainly never do something that silly, not even if you were bored and wanted to test the limits of your abilities.
You feel his mind getting closer and closer to yours, close enough that you can strongly feel the surface of his thoughts. In a way, it reminds you of that time you helped River in the Relay World. Which you guess is appropriate, since you are doing similar things. But in other ways, it's much different. With River, you were mostly a conduit, a bystander. His mind was doing most of the work, making it look easy. This is a lot more involved. You can feel your minds working together to make sense of what extrasensory data you're getting. It's... a bit more tiring, but also more pleasant in a way. Or maybe that's just because this is D instead of River. After all, River's influence does tend to feel a bit more... distant and cold and dark. Even when he's doing that Sight thing to you. Then again, you felt much closer to River then than you do with Roger now-
<So. Soul.> Roger sends, taking you out of your contemplation and setting your focus back to the task at hand.
Your minds are choosing to interpret this as an image. A great structure with fuzzy edges, many of them extending outwards, beyond your perception. Its core is slightly oblong, with a few gaps in it, kinda like a grand statue that has almost finished being assembled. It looks... You aren't really sure. You weren't sure what you were expecting. You had knowledge about your soul, but you're not sure how much it applies now, or if you are in any position to be able to understand and use it. After all, that was at a different time, at a different place, when you were still whole, still linked to the greater you in the world.
<Looks good, but we don't want to just mess with it. We don't want a blunt tool. We want the deeper stuff.>You go in deeper. The details begin expanding, getting bigger and more complex until you can no longer hold them all in your minds. You are forced to focus on a small part to be able to wrap your senses around it.
As you keep going, you encounter a thin layer of something. It's quite simple, almost transparent in a way, but very expansive.
<Ah, see? The soulsphere mechanic.>You guess that makes sense. After all, it has to be able to interact with your soul somehow. So it has to be close to it.
<A few simple sensors. Time-delay. It's actually pretty simple. Except for those inner parts...>It is indeed very simple. You can identify those parts even before D names them. Simple but large, sturdy looking and with a lot of repetition, a lot of redundancy. There are hundreds of tiny tendrils extending inwards and outwards from it, towards your soul and away from it. Probably meant to sense the conditions inside and around you, to trigger the change in case you... well, in case you die.
<Hmmm... Looks like it stores energy from your body AND soul. Might be related to the weakness experienced after a revival.>Oh, yes, now that he mentions it, it does seem like some of the tendrils are meant for transferring energy instead of sensing it. Most of them go to simple storage areas but a few seem to head towards the core of the layer (after passing several layers of protection).
<Oh, that looks familiar. It's.. oh, it's an S0 fragment. Damn, that thing is everywhere these days. It's turning into a damn virus, I'm telling you.>You can't make much sense of the thing at the core, but it does indeed feel related to
him, or at least it has traces of its energy. It seems a lot more familiar to D.
<Hm. Best not to mess with that.>Sounds like a good idea. You can already see some of the tendrils reacting to your probing. Messing with the thing that could end up saving your life sounds like a bad idea, especially if it has safeguards meant to protect you from hostile action. Or to kill you before you can fall to enemy hands.
<Anyway, enough sightseeing. Let's go look at what we're here for.>You dive deeper into the structure- your soul. You're starting to understand just how huge this place really is. The bubble of your perception is just a tiny ant on a mountain. You're having trouble even getting an overview of it. It was a fuzzy structure from far away and now it's a mosaic that extends in all directions. And you still haven't reached the surface.
<Nice. Looking good babe.> D comments.
You sense his comment is sincere. Something about what he is seeing and this experience in general is very pleasent to him for some reason.
<Ah, cool. See? Restart markers. Nice to see she's getting better.> he comments while indicating some tiny orbs of energy embedded in parts of your soul. They feel like
her. And even though they are rare, they appear to be spread out in various places throughout your soul.
You zoom around, skimming through the gigantic formations of interconnected energy, looking for something familiar. The weirdness has receded by now, just a faintly remembered thought in the back of your mind. D stops occasionally, examining one particular structure or another, mostly focusing on trying to make sense of the core formations.
<So... This thing is probably... fire control? Got a few strong connections to the outside. Then again, everything is related to fire control with you... Mind connection...? Yes. So not worth following down. Maybe up? No, that would be worse, probably leads to the core.>This is taking longer than you expected. D is doing his best to find paths and connections, to make sense of all this, but he really seems lost. You're doing your best to help with what you know and what you remember, but it doesn't appear to be helping. Maybe it's because you're partially viewing this through his eyes or maybe you really have changed. Maybe it's because D really is a lot weaker in this state than he's comfortable letting on. Or maybe it's just normal for a being to have trouble looking into itself. After all, you wouldn't expect the average human to be able to cut someone else's body open and be able to figure out how it works.
<Phew. This place is pretty huge. Now let's see... We're looking for things related to the body... And last thing was hearing, so we're getting closer. Hm. Wonder if she's put any body data here... probably not, your body already had a great deal of magic in it. Unless it needed repairs, but... No, need something... I knew I should had taken that left turn at Albuquerque... Oh, maybe I can sense her energy. Look for large concentrations, spillover from the repairs. That should at least give us a sense of direction. Or maybe his energy. Even if the damage was healed, there should be traces left. Let's see...>Something deep within D's soul calls out, the vibration spreading through your bond. And then there is... One could describe it as a ringing, a resonance. It is as helpful as D implied. Parts of your soul light up for a brief moment, shining through the fuzziness, their structures becoming more apparent in this white noise-like field.
<Cool. I think I have a better idea about where we're going now.>((I'll pause for a while, both because I'd like to keep this from getting too long and to give you a chance to act.))
Edit: Crap, I missed Tiruin. Sorry Tiruin. I'll write a quick one from my phone. I'll try to give a better response next time. Got to try to sleep now. Good luck with your finals. And sorry.
((Finals till Wednesday T_T))
Get updated and help others around me :I Also is River OK? Check on him if possible!
You haven't seen River ever since he left the General's house. You think it might be the longest time you've been away from each other ever since you met.
It's strange. Every time he was gone, even though he was away, you still felt like he was somehow... there. Close to you. But now... You can't tell exactly when that feeling stopped, but you're certain you haven't even felt his presence. You haven't felt that connection or whatever that feeling was. Not today.
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