Look around. See if I can't find anything that looks like an entrance to this 'Flight of Fantasy' thing. Didn't the aliens mention it too, now that I think about it? They said that an entrance will appear when I need it and I certainly do feel like I need it. Try to will it into existence maybe?
If I find the entrance, run in there. Try to pick a moment in which I'm not being watched too much.
You begin to look around, trying to find an entrance to this practically abstract location. You have a name, and not much else really. No idea what the place looks like, no idea where it is. In other words, you have no idea what an entrance would even look like, let alone where it would be once it magically appears. But you look for it anyway, because that's how magic works, isn't it? A bunch of arbitrary crap that flies in the face of all reason. And soon enough, you find it.
It was right in front of you. You stare at the plating of the soldier before you, looking into one the small gaps between two of the pieces. And as you look at them more, it no longer seems so small. Soon, you find that you can't take your eyes off of it, or perhaps it is now so large that no matter where you look, you can only see more of the gap and not even a single trace of the plates that outline it.
You are no longer where you once were. Indeed, to the soldier standing guard over you, and cameras built into their exoskeleton, you just vanished. The ghost of a dead soldier, returned to the grave.
Outlines trace their way into the darkness, followed by details, colors, and finally, light. You are in a gothic cathedral, sitting on a surprisingly comfortable pew (seriously, it's softer than it should be ans you have plenty of leg space) and facing an enormous stained glass mural depicting a skeleton being impaled by a radiant scythe while giving precisely zero fucks. Arranged on a desk folding out from the back of the pew in front of you, are six colorful fliers, not unlike those you would find in a travel agency. Strangely, aside from the names and locations at the front of each, they consist entirely of pictures.
The brochure depicts the frame that killed you and the rest of your squad. Sort of. Its arms have been replaced with those missing from the dismembered frames and wields both their heavy cannons. Also, it's damaged head has been replaced with a luchadore mask. It is standing in the middle of a giant wrestling ring, opening fire upon its assailant who is about to connect with an elbow drop. Said assailant being a grim mockery of a LUPUS frame, assembled out of reanimated bones that bear runic inscriptions. It is also wearing a luchadore mask and appears to be wielding an enormous ladle wreathed in green discharges, identical to those that your 'candy tin' conjured.
The photo shows the interior of a streetscape enclosed inside a larger gothic building. The substructures here are low-rise and appear to be carved from solid crystalline rock, though there is no way in hell they actually are carved, seeing as they are clearly supersized cabinets filled with servers. Standing in the center of the image is, uh. Well, you can see some of its skeleton, and its far too sturdy to have come from a human, even if its general figure implies otherwise. Tentacles and lamprey mouths coil around bare metallic bones, acting as substitutes for flesh. Growth-stunted limbs for which there are no names grasp blindly outwards. Draped around it is a cloak seemingly made of pure darkness, lined with inward facing spines. The being's eyes glow blood red, the only real vibrancy in its otherwise monochrome form.
The picture shows several headless figures in light armor painted with urban camouflage. They are riding, uh, they look like the bastard child of a motorbike and cruise missile. Streamlined with pointed noses, with an air intake protruding from below at an angle. The one in front has thrown, some sort of short rod, from which an intense, lance-like explosion is erupting from. Those behind them are wielding whip like weapons comprised of thinner, disjointed rods. In the background, you chained figures silhouetted by the ceiling lights, and what appear to be wheel-wielding skeletons lurking in the alleyways.
Uh. This one seems to just have a bunch of illustrations of random weird shit, stitched together rather poorly through an image processing program. There seems to be some hideous, winged lady with snakes for hair (or maybe her head is covered in snakes, it's hard to say which) having her head chopped off by some guy with a mirror, and a fucking winged horse is erupting from her neck. This image is copied and pasted numerous times to take up most of the space. What remains is filled out by another similarly edited image where a lady in rudimentary armor is exploding (as in, they literally added a generic image of one of those cinematic explosions onto it) out of the head of a statue of some half-naked bearded guy.
Well, it certainly does depict the skyline of Floor 3 quite faithfully. Though there's a violent tempest raging above, bringing down a torrential downpour. Beneath the eye of the storm is a spire-like skyscraper without a doubt taller than all the other buildings, and yet in spite of that, it isn't getting struck by lightning like you think it would. Another oddity about this building is that it's the only one with all its lights on, though you can't really make out what's inside. Circling above, are enormous tentacled birds formed of ice, with sickle-like claws that trail with arcs of energy. In the foreground is a LATRANS frame getting blown out of the air by numerous bolts of lightning that arc from raindrop to raindrop, converging onto it from every direction.
This one shows a small group of NEE and System League soldiers fighting alongside each other. They appear to have fortified their position inside a building and are opening fire upon a group of well, they'll basically just masses of raw meat with glowing yellow eyes, three gazelle horns and lamprey mouths. The volley of fire seems to be working in keeping the charging monstrosities at bay, though the soldiers themselves certainly don't look like they're having a good day at work.
Sitting to one side at the front of the building is the alien monolith-kiosk thing. Its screen lights up with one of those waving emoticons you'd find on a social media site.
Ryles sighs.
"Both, most likely."
Go to the center of the bar and get a drink that won't knock me off my feet.
You get a good ol' fashioned beer that, of course, tastes like beer. It obviously doesn't knock you off your feet seeing as it's basically yellowy water when you get down to percentages. The chatter continues around you, now beginning to transition from (mostly) credible news to far from credible rumors, which is sounding more and more ridiculous, such as demons invading the frontline because why the fuck not, and someone's girlfriend's ex-boyfriend's colleagues' friend's CO that turned into some sort of action hero by wall-running in a cursed frame and almost single-handedly driving off a System League assault on one of the maintenance facilities.
So, you just going to sit here and try to drown me in liquor?
Or are you going to go do something more, exciting?
Such as blackmail. Seriously. Pick a person. Any person.
I'll give you something to talk about. See how they react.
You want to know that you aren't crazy right?
This ought to prove it to you.
Or going to a warzone via a Japanese gameshow run by skeletons appointed by God?
You have one of their matches after all.
To handler: "At this point, I don't really care who I join so long as I'm alive, mostly human, and not brainwashed."
James got rather irritated at the helmet's poor quality. It may however be the only thing keeping him alive if the reactor is much of a problem. It was thus a gamble, if he decided to try to improve it.
Peculiar, this new "internal monologue", whatever it was.
Goodness. Anyway, if only he hadn't burned Memento Mori. With that, he could have determined whether or not it would be a good idea to tinker with the helmet, or wear or not wear it to the reactor... decisions, decisions.
Did he even have to fix the reactor, anyway?
James wanted to live. But no. He was something different now. His voice had changed in recognition of that. And this monologue had appeared in recognition of that also.
James was something different now. Something better. Supposedly, he had magic words he could speak to produce powerful effects. But he had no idea how to use them, and his handler(?) couldn't help with that, for some reason.
Why not, James couldn't fathom. But he had Memento Mori. The ability to see where he would more likely die.
But could he change that, with his own decisions? Could he change that...
That was a question, indeed. But that was irrelevant now... he had a task. And he might successfully escape doing it. But what else was there? What purpose was there to his life now?
And with that, James realized it- he was special, for once. He radiated a tad bit of Awesome. He had 3 handguns(1 supertech), a cool(not) looking helmet, magic powers, a cool handler... magic powers and words...
His physical capabilities were better than ever before, for certain. Not as good James would have preferred, but good.
James had to face facts. He wanted to live, to go on being mundane, to be a technician once again. But that was past. He was special now. And that would never change(he hoped it would, but it didn't seem to be changing anytime soon).
Maybe that was why he shut down- his unconscious needed time to process a realization it had made.
But now his consciousness had made that very same realization too.
There was a single word that could accurately pick James out from the vast majority of this world's other inhabitants.
And that word was very simple, only 4 letters: hero. James was a hero now.
He saw what needed doing, and he realized that he was the man for the job.
One of the only men for the job, really.
It was time.
James nodded to himself after finishing his proper internal monologue. He switched a single bullet from the handgun with 12 bullets to the other with 10(he wanted a little evenness, but perhaps he was just stalling himself). Then he donned the helmet(horrible though it was), flicked the safeties off the two bullet using pistols(if they had safeties), and went to face his new life.
And with that, James headed towards the facility. Wherever. Danger didn't matter so much now. It was good to know where it was, though, but it didn't matter so much now. He was going to win.
And with that, James thought to himself, "Job one. Let's do this."
Your pistols do indeed have safeties. You walk into the building, through the shattered remains of the glass doors.
"Mostly human"?
So you aren't ENTIRELY opposed to a little bit of augmentation then?
In that case, when this little matter's resolved, see if you can weasel out an
infusion or transmutation unit out as payment. Not sure if they've got one.
But it's worth a shot.
As you may be happy to hear, we can resurrect you in the event of death.
Still, I wouldn't recommend dying, it is still painful for the most part.
In case you want another fire axe that won't even break, one of our, 'contacts'
by the broadest definitions of such a term, has you covered.
Enjoy your doubtlessly fruitful future as a heroic axe murderer.
Preferably by killing whatever left this horrid mess.
A duplicate of your fire-axe lodges itself in your mind, like the grimoire.
((Bound Weapon - Fire Axe gained!))
Well, you can't see too well, thanks to the damn helmet, but it seems that the floor is utterly littered with, well, it's as if someone took a bunch of metal statues of dogs, shot them repeatedly with a cannon, and then haphazardly placed them in messy piles. The broken pieces seem to leak some sort of viscous purple fluid. It seems that this new life of yours involves some very angry janitors. Strewn in lesser numbers amidst the debris are corpses that you can only presume to be human. By and large, the majority of them seem to have died from bloodloss, judging by the numerous bite wounds and chunks of missing flesh. However, some of them appear to have broken bones, one of them seems to have had their face sanded off (thankfully the helmet's camera feed is too poor to let you see much other than the noticeably missing mass). Two of them however, look like they were punched to death by a frame or something seeing as they've been utterly pulverized in numerous locations with extreme force.
There are two sets of doors both of which have been left wide open, the one at the back of the room leads further into the factory, whilst the one to the right opens to what were more furnished rooms, offices or administration perhaps?
Check surroundings for dangers and sprint to the building on right when it seems safe enough. Talky stuff with soldiers.
"What's the situation?"
Spellings: 3d 72 -M. Since Red can cover me talking to her, maybe she can cover result of the spell so it hopefully doesn't startle anyone.
"We're waiting for evac, doesn't really matter whose shows up first. A bunch of unidentified units showed up and attacked us, so we figured we might as well band together and drive them off. Well, more things showed up and now we're hiding from the thing down there."They gesture down the stairs.
"It's fast, so not too sure if they stairs will do much good. It's armored too. Has, some sort of glowing spear. It's backed by other things as well, walking strobelights basically. Makes hitting it even harder."Another soldier glances at you
"Say, what's a civilian like you doing here on the frontlines anyway? You able to shoot well? Because any more manpower is definitely welcome. And it ain't like you're going to fare any better out there than if you were with us.""Your cute lil' tiara's reacting to them, princess. I'm detecting increased field activity, that just so happens to be on top of all of the people here. Could be anything from combat augmentations, to making them fantasize about you. Want me to do a scan? I can narrow down the possibilities a bit. Or do you want to save it for whatever they're hiding from?"[COMP: 4/4] It seems that Red doesn't need to, seeing as nothing actually happens.
"Okay... I'm going to assume this is all actually happening even though I would really prefer it weren't." Vaguely looks for their toolbox, accidentally summoning the copy. "Uh."
Play around with the toolbox summoning. How fast can it appear, where can it appear, stuff like that. Try shooting the gun into a wall, too.
It appears seemingly instantaneously, but it can only be conjured into your hand. If you let it go, it vanishes after a while, though the 'timer' seems to reset if you grab it again. You can also dismiss it at will, and you cannot summon more than one instance of it.
Firing the gun, you find that it has no recoil at all. You'd think it's a good thing, but it also means that you really don't get much feedback from firing at all. Were it not for the gauge displaying the number of active bullets, the strange hallucinatory lines you see that mark the projected trajectories and the shrinking circles that represent the delay until the next shot can be fired. You put a shot into the wall, dealing negligible damage. Seriously, it's not much of bullet hole, it just slams into and barely buries itself in.
Then, you pull the other trigger. There's a slight, nearly imperceptibly small delay. Then, gauge resets to show no active bullets and place you shot pretty much explodes. It isn't too large an explosion, nor was it particularly energetic. There's no flash of light or anything like that. No, here a nice chunk of the wall around the bullet, and the bullet itself seem to just turn into powder and fly out, leaving behind a crater.
"I could get down with burninating some of those asshole bees, that's for sure. Oh shit, what's that burning stuff I just made? Sounds like your area of expertise. Can I make a gun that shoots that crap? I might have to try some more magic shit."
Run up the ramp to the high exit in the east.
If I am being followed and the danger is near: (I assume the exit has some sort of chokepoint) Face the exit chokepoint and 1d 8b to block it.
Otherwise 0e 80 at a convenient wall past the exit and just keep going.
You could. You could also just fire it at foes. You've already found two attack functions after all.
Even if they aren't the easiest to aim. Or just summon it near flammable things and start an inferno.
The hissing of the black substance turns into a crackle as the sand ignites with ruby flames where the powder touches it. You begin running up the ramp noting the trails of footprints that go up and down is length when you notice something shimmering at the top. Which, probably isn't signifying anything pleasant.
It seems to be a person. A mostly-invisible person made out of some sort of mostly-invisible substance that shimmers energetically. A mostly-invisible person that is now adopting a side-on stance that showcases its fists of poorly-defined form but definite power. And you know, the fact that it wants to murder you. But you probably already knew that. Everything here wants to murder you, so it isn't much of a huge surprise.
Oh god damnit.
If my face would be visible if I would be identifiable in the photo:
Motion for the reporter to come over for a selfie with the murderbear and it's gallant (if obviously not in control) "handler".
Hope that the bear wants to eat it. It would likely have a small power source/battery and some complex internals (*nudge nudge bear*)
Other than that, I'd like to go see whats going down on floor 4. If I can coerce the bear to follow (with promises of delicious ferromagnetics). The really dumb part of me wants to try combining the magnetic Murderbear and the AI referenced in someone else's post.
If the bear won't budge/go towards floor 4 then head off myself. As much as I really want to keep him/it/her around I may just have to leave this little carnage-maker to his nap. (as much of a bad idea THAT probably is too)
If I find a nice quiet area without witnesses or security cameras say "f6 ff", ask my new friend to be lookout; No need for him to know my magic abilities explicitly... unless he is actually one of the System League agents/on the side of the handlers.
Keep an eye out for some non-military-affiliated clothes. Even just a jacket, although an engineers uniform of either side's would be perfect.
I have plans.
You probably could be identified through the photo. But then again you're also meant to be dead and left a rather confusing corpse in your apartment. The reporter happily complies, sauntering over as he- What's he doing with that camera? He's handing it over to someone else? He must've misunderstood, you just need to go explain the situation and then the bear can go- Wait, what's he holding? No! No! No! He's taking out a fucking phone! Well, the net result is that the bear is now munching on his phone, he's mildly embarrassed, and the person who was holding the camera is just taking photos while everyone else laughs. Foiled again it seems.
The bear, tired of being photographed decides to nest in the corner and sleep which makes your plan of attempting to tug it to your fun adventure a bit difficult. Oh well, you've still got Ropey. Floor 4 is a little worse for wear, but mostly recognizable even if the buildings lack power and bear definite battle scars. The soldiers are being rallied into various groups, from what you can make out from the shouting, most of their objectives seem to revolve around investigating areas populated by unidentified units, and bailing out their comrades from other unidentified units.
After finding a secluded alley you speak the words, with your squire watching the alley entrance and occasionally glancing back to watch you as you speak into thin air.
[COMP: 6] You feel the spell come together then fall flat causing a mild tingle and nothing else.
You realize you don't need to actually say the words, right?
"What are you doing exactly?"He gazes up and down at you.
"And, I've been meaning to ask you this earlier, but, what happened to your N-Y Syringe? Did you use it already? Or are you trialing one of the experimental ones like me?"There are no discarded jackets or anything similar that fit your criteria unfortunately. So far you can only find cardboard boxes and newspaper.
"Roger that. Hold position, I'll go check it out." Beirus responds over the radio. He heads up to the roof of the apartment building and walks over to the edge, sizing up the gap over the street.
Jump across to the roof of the other building if it is the same height or lower than the apartment, with a running start. Keep an eye out for that shadow thing my team saw. Wait for a bit on the roof to see if the thing shows itself. If not, clear the building from the top down with the ALCYONE drawn. If the other building is too tall or too far to jump, head back down through the apartment building and cross to the other building. If there is a lounge or something on the bottom floor, have a seat and see if the creature shows up. If not, clear the building from bottom to top.
Yeah, uh, you might not make the jump. Seriously. It's on the other side of the street and while you're fast, you're not
that fast. After all the exoskeleton is more of an endurance enhancement thing than a speed enhancement thing. So with your hopes and dreams foiled once again by the laws of physics (one day, one fucking day, you are going to have enough magical compatibility and knowledge to make physics your bitch, and you are going to relish it), you descend back down and cross the street. The downpour is, as torrential as before, if not more so.
You're about to enter the lobby when you catch a glimpse in the reflection of the glass doors. It's faint and the rain isn't helping much, but you're sure you see it. Namely because you know, you can do the whole 'stop time and look around while planning on how to murder people' thing. Peering out from the alleyway beside the building your were just in, hidden away from the view of your squad is, you know how when a droplet hits water and splashes back up? Well, imagine that, but much larger, and in the shape of a robed figure, its featureless face peering at you beneath its hood. In the skies above, diving down towards you are a small flock of those weird birds, they look sort of like icy, emaciated crows. They are still a fair ways off though.
Derek sees if he can find somewhere else to run away to.
Are you sure you want to do that? The chamber hasn't exactly changed, so you can always run further in and hopefully find other exits, take cover behind a pillar or try kiting those monstrosities away from the stairs.
Because right now, there are white hot pieces of metal heading towards your face at ludicrous speeds. And while you can just stand there and try looking for more ways out in the smog-choked darkness, your insurance provider is not going to be happy with you.
Author
Topic: Perplexicon - Down the Foxhole - Raining Mecha (Read 179581 times)