Roll 6
Knee the mage in the back of the head and fly him back up the the facility.
Tell me, can you hear me from down here?
[10 vs 10] Already in stealth, naturally, you approach the magical ghost from behind, outside of his field of view. However, the glowing orbs around him begin to flash different colors.
Mage: My, what colors! What? There is danger afoot?
He begins scanning his surroundings, forcing you to crawl in the brush. Eventually he stops scanning--in a direction different from your own.
[2 vs 2] During your second attempt, the motes and faeries grow more and more restless as you get closer. The magus is, however, now conditioned to ignore them seeing as there was no danger. By simply avoiding him and baiting the orbs into signaling danger more often, you are able to make him ignore them outright.
He
is trying to catch them, after all. Odd how they would signal danger to him like that...
[16 vs 3 -> +1 Ambusher skill] During your third approach, the orbs grow furious. But unfortunately the magus does not react to them this time, and you are able to safely deliver a blow to the target's head. [12] Your wings can carry him easily, though you suffer a small penalty to your flight speed.
[2 vs 11] As you prepare to fly though, you find that you've been caught in an ambush of your own. Black webs and tendrils emerge from your surroundings and wrap themselves around your body. You would be stuck now.
...[14] If you weren't able to just walk out of it effortlessly. The tendrils slip away. This is a rather high-end psyche ability called "Dark Snare", so you aren't entirely sure how you were able to walk out of it so easily. The figure behind you, dressed in hussar wings and bearskin garb, shouts in frustration, and a spectral wolf in the distance howls indignantly.
"Curse everything! Tell me, what did you do? Why am I but a phantasm?"...'Asmodel' descends upon stairs from the portal in the sky, which has moved much closer than it was before. He is simply your reflection this time, although his dress matches your ghost's former wear. He also keeps his odd eye.
"Most curious. I will take the magus into our chambers shortly, but this... this is something I have never seen happen, though I've theorized it to be possible..."The angel vanishes from existence, as does the magus you just knocked out.
"Okay, I'm ready for the command. Any advice?"
Wait for the word to go and start firing on the targets from right to left, and also practice driving and firing if possible.
[16 -> +1 Gunnery skill] You shoot rather well! You drop the targets closest to your front with relative ease, missing only a few times. The man/ghost called Ares speaks to you through the vehicle radio, presumably to compliment you on your fine aiming skills--
"You seem to control the targeting computer well enough," he mentions.
"I can't really say the same for the others."The other tanks are four in total: two heavy tanks like your own, one light tank with jump jets, and one medium tank hunter with a low profile and a salvo of rockets instead of a turret.
They didn't seem to do so well from what you can tell. There are many craters in the ground past their targets, wheras all of your shots at least hit the board and thus fragmented.
"Alight, weapons locked for now. Let the drones clean up."The drones do clean up, rather meticulously in fact, disguising the fact that there were ever craters in the ground by sprinkling them with artificial snow.
"They'll cover your tracks and follow your advance, you can hide them in your chassis if you like. Call on them for repairs if you get damaged." says Ares.
"I apologize for the rush, but we have to roll out soon. The ExoCore satellite is just about to pass from our field of view. They use beamed communications so we can't intercept their communications, but they can intercept ours with the satellite. However, once the satellite passes we have about an hour to move without them being able to react on a strategic level."I look down at the stairs, then study the stars and planets, seeing if they're familiar to me. Then, I look around and see if I can find any sources of light. Either way, go down the stairs, but try to remember which way the light was if I saw it.
These stars and planets seem... familiar, though you're not sure where this feeling of deja-vu is coming from. The network doesn't have 'stars,' per se, but rather 'planes,' which are organized in a 3D patchwork of connections. They can be flown between, along with the associated dangers, but the actual work is a dark abyss to your knowledge. This... is different. Something about it feels alive.
[2] You have no sources of light with you aside from the stars. The tower is, however, ambiently lit quite well. The same cannot be said of its interior, though you should easily be able to find your way back by just going up.
You descend the stairs and stare face-first into the maws of a great and horrifying monst--wait, you recognize it. She is a dragon, over two meters in length, with razor-like limbs and claws, and a set of spindly, almost skeletal wings. It seems to be clinging to the wall, and inspects your face before speaking.
"Oh, it's me."
You see torchlight coming from further down the stairs, accompanied by only a single set of footsteps. The stairwell is devoid of hiding places, but the dragon is able to cling to the walls and ceiling. You could perhaps count on the figure not noticing you if he is wearing a hood.
Outside, the chances of hiding are more realistic. You could scale down the edge of the tower, and perhaps hide in a window. It is of fairly low-tech construction, with simplistic fortifications and a complete lack of guard rails.
"This... is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you."
If I can, leave the Divergents and go to Meat Factory.
The door is wide open. You leave--a female clerk shouts "Come again!" as you pass the threshold. Looking back, you realize that there are no female clerks present in the lobby, although there is a woman descending the stairs you came from.
...
In the Meat Factory building you discover a contorted hall of mirrors, reflecting your figure walking in multiple directions. You notice that one of the reflections, off in the distance, is acting strangely.
"The building has been crossed," it says, in your voice, then walks up.
"This one seems to lack lack awareness. He is a flesh torn between too worlds, unable to discern fact from fiction. But what is fiction? Is it a thought?"
It looks you straight in the eye.
"How can thoughts be fiction when the only thing one can be sure of is his thoughts?"
You feel a draft coming from a staircase a few meters ahead. The staircase appears to be levitating, but cuts off after a certain distance, as if obscured by a wall.
"Uh, apologies ma'am. I seem to have been thinking out loud there. I hope you didn't hear anything too odd in that."
They said my ghost had vanished as apposed to a normal divergence, so that is the result of it I guess. I should trek carefully to not alert the instructor, but I must know what that is about.
Get in the drivers seat, and try to slowly move in the direction of my ghost. Move slow enough that the instructor does not notice.
Driving Instructor: Hmm, alright. Oh! I see that you know how to drive it. Good, that just means...
A drone lifts off from the top of the halftrack, rising into the air and setting a couple of holographic traffic cones ahead of you.
Driving Instructor: Just drive along the course.
It seems an easy course, so you'll get a +1 to actually following the course.
But the retreating horseman seems an issue. It looks like the drone can't see him, or else the instructor would talk.
Sir Exarch stops his horse, and slowly returns to your vehicle after he sees you aren't fully committing.
"For shame. We have been together all this time. What is the matter? Do you not trust your own self?" he exhales a white vapor. The terrain around you is an icy plane, although for whatever reason the sky is black. You can still see the ground quite easily as if it were evening.
"But it seems I cannot yet take things into my own hands. So I ask of you: come with me, that we may discover a means to bring ourselves back together."
Traits:
Practical Learner ("Practical" Learning Threshold +1)
0 Armor (+0 to defending rolls)
0 Evasion (-0 to incoming attacker rolls)
Skills:
Unskilled
Status:
Healthy
Items:
Traits:
Practical Learner ("Practical" Learning Threshold +1)
0 Armor (+0 to defending rolls)
0 Evasion (-0 to incoming attacker rolls)
Skills:
Gunnery: +1 to all vehicle and mounted weapon attacks, excluding fixed-forward aircraft weapons
Status:
Healthy
Items:
Traits:
Fast Learner ("Abstract" Learning Threshold +0.5, "Practical" Learning Threshold +0.5)
0 Armor (+0 to defending rolls)
0 Evasion (-0 to incoming attacker rolls)
Skills:
Unskilled
Status:
Healthy
Items:
Traits:
Mostly Abstract Learner ("Abstract" Learning Threshold +0.9, "Practical" Learning Threshold +0.1)
0 Armor (+0 to defending rolls)
0 Evasion (-0 to incoming attacker rolls)
Skills:
Ambusher: +1/-1 to all attacks out of stealth
Status:
Healthy
Items:
Traits:
Abstract Learner ("Abstract" Learning Threshold +1)
0 Armor (+0 to defending rolls)
0 Evasion (-0 to incoming attacker rolls)
Skills:
Unskilled
Status:
Healthy
Items:
Author
Topic: You Are Cybernetic Avenger: Turn 8 (1/7/2016) (Read 8204 times)