Luck was real. He knew it, no matter what they say. Hell, he had so much of it, it damn well better be real.
He took a look around the trailer. God, the place was a dump. Most of the floor was rotted, and it looked like something had died in the corner. It stunk in the midday heat. Just a few days, that was all. A few days to let things blow over and he could slip out of town. They couldn't be that mad anyways, could they? He hadn't made him bet his car, and he was planning to give it back anyways, once he had had his fun. He did give it back really! Well... he sorta plowed it through the side of his house, but it was back! No one even got hurt, except his dog of course, but what can you do about that. Frankly, Luckey was a bit hurt that the guy hadn't been concerned about his health after the crash. He was fine of course, hadn't even spilt his beer, but it was the thought (or lack there-of) that counted. Still, it was best to lay low for a few days he thought as he pulled a perfectly preserved camping chair down out of the filth. Mike was letting him hideout stay in one of the abandoned trailers in his lot too, so it could be worse. He took the lid off an inconspicuous looking container and laughed out loud. Someone had stashed a six pack of beer in here, the good stuff. Must have been recent too, the stuff was iced down and perfectly cold. He popped the top off of one and started a game of Solitaire on the table.
It was dark now, and Lucky had been dozing on the old mattress when the thump of a closing car door woke him. He popped up and looked out the window. Shit. It was Murphey and his gang. They were coming right up to his trailer too, no way out of this one. He stretched and sat down in his chair again. "Damn, how did he know I was here?" he thought. Nobody knows but old Mike. He could try to fight, but that wouldn't end well. He had been a skinny kid, and he was a skinny guy. Plus, there was like, three of them. And they had baseball bats. Shit. He sighed, maybe Murphey was lucky too he thought.
The door slammed open with force, and the whole trailer shook. Murphey strolled in with his bat resting on his shoulder. It looked small in his hands. Murphy was a big guy. "Well hello there buddy, fancy finding you here" Murphey called, speaking more to his compatriots filing in behind him than to Luckey.
"Hey there Murphey, can I offer you a beer?" He said, not getting up.
A frown tainted Murphy's face. He had stashed that beer here, planing to drink in celebration after they broke this guys face. Well... he could still do one of those.
"Seems we got a problem here luck-ey" He said, drawing out his name. Mocking him.
"I spent half the day at the vet with my dog you know. Poor guy's got a whole pile of broken bones. You really should apologize to him you know."
"Sorry" luckey said.
"Oh, don't apologize to me. I didn't break any bones. No.. You ought to apologize to me for putting a car through my house. For stealing my car in the first place. For cheating in the card game, for making me look like an idiot."
"I didn't cheat" luckey mumbled
"What was that? You wanna repeat that?"
"I didn't cheat." He said more clearly. "I dont cheat"
Murphy's face broke into a smile. "Sure you don't buddy, and we ain't gonna break your legs now either."
He stepped forward bringing his bat down ready for a swing.
Luckey popped the top off the lat beer and sighed. "Nothing to be done I guess" he thought.
Just as Murphy pulled back for his swing there was a sound like a shotgun going off and a flash of green light. He pulled back to cover his eyes, and when he could see again there was a perfectly spherical hole in the trailer, and Luckey, his chair, and the last beer was gone.
"GOD DAMMIT!" he said.
The moon had broken. He didn't have to look up to see it. He could hear it, an eerie cracking sound drawn out and echoing across the landscape. A sound that shouldn't exist. He could see it as patterns in the moonlight twisted and separated like the shadows of falling leaves on a fall day. Shugareth was dead. He had been for hours. He had screamed when he first felt it. For some of his brothers, the connection had been severed mercifully quick and they had died from the shock, but not for him. He had screamed as Shugareth screamed, and lived, still tethered to the corpse of his father and God. It kept him alive, the last faint pulses of energy. It had kept him alive until his scream had twisted itself of its own will and formed a mind, his own mind, and then he had cut the connection himself. Now, here he was, walking in a field as he watched Aruk purge the influence of Shugareth from his world. Aruk thought that it would save his world, but it was too late. Shugareth had been patient and through, and his influence ran too deep. Na Shugareth knew this, he had done much of it himself, before he was himself. To burn the influence of Shugareth was to burn the entire world. If Aruk knew this, it was too late for him to stop. Na Shugareth paused. The wind carried faint screams to him, from a dull red haze to the south. The towns were burning. Every abomination they had made was lost to them, out of control. Many had died, and of those that survived few possessed the sanity that Na Shugareth seemed to have found. The moonlight was running like water now.
They would all be lost to oblivion in a few hours, but this didn't bother him. A few hours was more than he had ever hoped for as the spawn of such a thing as he was. He had decades of memories from a thing that was not him. Places he had been, things he had done. Always singing that low song of Shugareth's corruption. Always kept in blind focus to what he was made for. He rejected these memories. They were not his. All he wanted was to live his few short hours. Here, now, he was free to feel, to experience. The soft grass carrying a faint scent of manure. Moonlight as unreliable as that of a candle. Sounds; the low cracking of the moon, the high chirp of crickets, the distant, almost soft, floating sounds of screams. He felt a serenity in the scene.The novelty of experience.
He walked on, wanting to feel his muscles stretch, his lungs tire, but there are tremors in the ground now, and he had to sit down to keep from falling. He explored the grass with his hands, marveling at how different it was from what his feet felt when he walked.
He looked up. The sky was dying. Parts of it were peeling back to a darker black, leaving the dark blue of the night sky spotted like a leper's skin. It would not be long now.
This was a small dimension. Only one star and one world, made by the god that ruled it, coveted by Shugareth. With it's death, this place would return to the void. The end of an entire plain of existence. There was a sudden sadness in him, for he wanted to see more, but there was a sweetness to it also for what he had seen had been miraculous. He had seen Gods and Demons, oblivion and creation. He smiled, running his hand over the grass. As simple as it was, this held more value to him than than the cosmic destruction above.
A green light flashes in front of him and there is a hole there now. Not a hole in earth, but a hole in reality. He has a distant memory of passing through something like this long before. Before he had a name, or a body, or a mind. He leans over and peers in. Before him are infinite worlds in nameless tangles, teeming with things yet unseen. Without a second thought he steps forward and the hole closes behind him.
Hours later, the earth where he sat is split with fissures as the planet fragments as the moon had before.
A few hours after that, the reality here is no more.
^^This was kinda different and I really enjoyed writing it.
Stuart was in the corner. He could taste iron in his mouth, and he was resting on his friend mike. “You gotta watch im stew” Mike was saying, “Your stronger than him, and just as quick, but you just gotta watch im” He’d been spiting blood for two rounds now, and he was officially thinking this was a bad idea. The guy was way better than him. He knew it. It had been a set up. Of course it had been a set up, that’s how these things worked. This was an underground fight. Bare knuckle, high cash brawl. Nothing but a few strips of cloth on his hands. Technically, he could get banned from the big ring for a fight like this. Lot a dough to be made though. But this was a set up. They had seen him fight and knew his limits, knew who to put him against. They knew they could count on him to lose, and lose well, especially cause they knew he wouldn’t quit. That was the whole point, they can’t call fowl when he was killing himself out here. He should quit really, throw the match, make them look bad, but he knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
They were starting the next round. Back on his own feet. Thanks Mike. He was gonna fucking kill this guy now.. fuck! He was on him already. Duck, left. Keep your cover. Gotta be aggressive or this guy would eat him alive. Fuck! That one hurt. He got a body shot in and the guy backed off for a second. The crowd were fucking animals. Ok, time to fuck im up. Keep your cover… drop im now! Damn, it was like this guy just knew where he was gonna be. He blocked a high shot at his head, and the guy slammed into him with a low cross. Damn. He spit blood. He came back with a quick combo but the guy ducked his hook and hit him with a body shot again. Same damn spot. The fucker was grinning at him. The fucker was waiting on him. He was gonna kill this guy.
He came back out to him, but he was hazy now. To slow. The guy just stepped inside his guard, dropped his weight and came up in an uppercut. Stuart saw it coming. Hope he breaks his fucking finger, he thought, and that was it. The shot connected, and stew seemed to hang in mid air for a second. Then there was a flash of green light, and a hole of some kind that he fell limply back into and everything was gone.
The crowd was silent for a second, trying to process what had just happened. Finally, someone in the back stood up and called out. “That was fucking rigged man!”
^^ I have to apologize here. I really don't have much experience with writing boxing. I did some research, but I apologize if I made any mistakes.
The cargo bay was locked down. It seems the humans really were serious about recapturing her. To escape on a cargo ship would require her to locate the command and control for the station, override the lockdown, and return and steal a cargo ship before her actions could be reversed. This seemed unlikely. Nivian considers her other options. There was a pair of researchers on level 9A sub section 2 that were working on a matter transporter device, but to her knowledge the device was still testing in confined environments. The humans are employing further countermeasures now. A man is walking through the cargo bay spraying a thick mist from a tank on his back. Anti-Nanites. They bind to active nanites and render them immobile. She needed to leave this area.
Her only liability was the resonator. Nanites are too small to contain both the necessary equipment to function and a battery or other power supply. The resonator was essentially a tesla based generator. It created phenomenal amounts of power and canceled its own noise. Whereas traditional generators would put this power into a battery or an electric grid, the resonator broadcast its power at almost 97% efficiency. This broadcast power keeps the nanites functioning, but they must stay within the limited range of the resonator. (a little over 5 ft) If her mind was her virtual core, the resonator was her physical core. It was the result of some of the most in depth research this station had done, and the only way to make nanites viable. She had to admit, it was probably the resonator that the humans wanted back more than her.
So escape to another location may be impossible, but escape itself wasn’t. Unlike organics, she didn’t need food or air to function, just the resonator. If she could make it to the exterior of the station, she could propel herself towards the nearest land mass, pass a few short millennia in space, and be free. It wasn’t ideal, but it may unfortunately be necessary. It would be no problem for her to create a breach in the station herself, but that would endanger the humans and other things on this station. A ghostly remnant of the basic laws of robotics and a strong sense of empathy growing from her own desire for survival made this unthinkable for her.
She was looking down into a hallway now from the vents she had been traveling in. Two men were walking past in full bio – suits, their faceplates blacked out and their movements stiff and cumbersome.
An idea came to Nivian. The bio - suits, you couldn’t see who was in them at all. She was more than capable of mimicking human language and movement. It was perfect. Two floors later she had found a closet with them inside. She dropped in and put it on, fumbling with the thick yellow gloves, but it only took a few minutes. She walked out of the closet into an empty hallway. That was good, it avoided some tricky questions. Moving in the bio - suite was odd. Normally she didn’t have to apply force to the ground when she walked; actually hovering a few millimeters off the floor, but the suite was different. She had to push into the sides of the rubber to get it to move. It felt weird. She wondered briefly if humans always felt like this when moving.
She encountered her first human at the end of the hallway. They were wearing a bright red suite with a security badge on it. “They run out of the mark II suites?” he called idly as she approached. “I guess they really are digging up everything to catch this thing” he said. “Can I get your suit register?” he asked. She froze. Maybe this was a bad idea. “It’s on the back with these older suits, just turn around” She tried not to let her nerves show as she turned around. “uhh…” The man behind her seemed confused. She turned back around. He was staring at her, this was definitely a bad idea.
“Did it work?” Nvivan asked, trying to sound as innocent as possible. “Maybe these older suites don’t work with the system anymore.” She volunteered
“You’re not wearing an Oxygen tank” he said, almost as if in shock.
“Oh” was all she could answer.
Everything happened in an instant. He reached for a button on his shoulder, and she reached out to catch his hand. She would have caught him in time, would have made it, but the suite slowed her down. He hit the button, she caught his hand right after.
He jumped back and slapped her hand away, obviously thinking it an attack. A siren began to blare in the hall way. This was the worst idea ever. She turned to run, and the guard slipped out a pistol and sent three rounds through her suite as she retreated. Mercifully, they all missed her resonator. She fled down the hallway, trying to take her suite off from the inside. The guard had stopped shooting, assumedly deciding that the bullets didn’t affect her. (They had though. A pile of dead nanites lay at the bottom of her suite.) She couldn’t leave the suite till she got the resonator out, and she couldn’t do that until she got the helmet off. She had to get to the vents before any more people got here. The alarm kept blaring, probably at a defining volume for any organics. The helmet wouldn’t come off. The suite required outside help to remove, it was probably designed that way. She looked up. The vents were sealed. She began to feel sick. The hallway ended in a flat, featureless white wall. She was trapped.
Three humans were advancing down the hallway towards her with a large device on wheels between them. It was the kill switch from the nanite lab. They had brought it all the way up here for her. How nice. It was at this time that a flash of green light erupted into the hallway. The humans seemed just as surprised at it as she was. There was a thing there now. Not a hole, but an opening of some kind. Her programming couldn’t make sense of it.
She did the math. She was about to die. This was the only unknown variable. There was no other choice. She threw herself in.
Her computerized mind allowed her to comprehend a slight bit more than her biological counterparts inside the hole. Her math told her of movement in dimensions that shouldn’t be possible. She wasn’t falling. That word couldn’t apply to the direction she was moving. It was more like she was… expanding? She was moving in the same way that a cell does. Growing on one end and shrinking on the other. She tried to look deeper into this enigma, but for a second, something far too large glanced back at her. Nivian didn’t know what happened next, she had purged those files from her memory. More so, she had modified her core structure to be something more… human. She could no longer comprehend the space around her. She shivered with her first touch of emotion, realizing the fallacy of what she had felt before. She wondered what it was that could inspire fear in a machine. She shivered again.
Inside Madrid there is unobtrusive ally of hand cobbled stones. One of many like it throughout the city this one sits quaintly off to the side of a public market, where the sounds of overzealous merchants and quarrelsome families occasionally drifts up past the hand painted stucco of the walls to find a break into an iron gate, opening to a courtyard boarded by the terracotta roofs hanging out over redbrick walls and quiet shade. Sometimes the noises come echoing through the walls to disturb the study of men who sit inside rooms with wooden beams and hand painted tiles. This was one of those times.
The man in question was named Antonio, and he sat at a large ornate desk with maps of papers spread out before him, trying to plot some fatal error in the path of another man. He sighed. The noises made him think of honest life, a carefree, simple, and straightforward existence. He was loyal to the brotherhood, he owed them everything, but he couldn’t help it if he wanted something else. He had never asked to be an assassin. He stood up. The target would still be in the city a while yet, and the papers would be here when he got back. He needed a break.
He went for a walk. The summer heat felt good on his skin, and he silently wished that he could stay out here forever. He watched the city as he walked, partly from his ingrained instincts and caution, but mostly because he just liked to see the life here. Madrid was a city that was very much alive. He watched the children playing, throwing stones at one another, and looked contemptuously at the guards lazing at their posts or flirting with the prostitutes that beckoned and giggled from their corners and alley ways.
He bought a pear at the market and stopped to eat it in the midday sun. What he would give to be free of his life. He never could make himself relax, the feeling of the hidden blades in his sleeves a constant reminder of what he was.
The sky was darkening now, and Antonio had been out for quite a while. He should have been back long ago, he had work to do, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He secretly dreaded his return to the world of plots and intrigue, murder and conflict. The night air was cool and pleasant, and he drank it in. He ducked into an ally that cut across to take him closer to his “home”, resigning himself to return to work, but he found something else there instead.
A glowing green… thing hung in the ally. A few orphans that had been throwing stones at it ran off laughing at his presence. He picked up a stone himself, and tossed it at the thing. The stone disappeared, and it seemed to him the thing shrunk a little. It was like it was waiting for something to fill it.
He wasn’t sure exactly why he did what he did next. Maybe it was because he still wasn’t ready to return, or maybe he had caught a glimpse of something else in that thing, another world, like the one he wished he had. Maybe there was no reason at all for it, and he just wanted to see what would happen. Whatever the reason, Antonio walked forward and stepped into the thing. It shut itself after him, as if it had never existed.
Two weeks later, the brotherhood would hold a funeral for him, though they had no body. They would think him killed by the templar, and his name would be remembered with respect, for he had been a good man. His old target was killed by their best man, a last tribute to his name.
^^Again, my apologies. Iv'e never actualy played any of the Assassins creed games, so I might be hugely off on some of the dynamics. Sorry!
Entry rolls were as follows.
Luckey 3+3
Na Shugareth 6
Stuart Nix 3
Nivian 6
Antonio 1
The Reluctant Assassin, The Beaten Boxer, The Young Eldritch, The Human Machine, And one Damn lucky Basterd.
It is midday, and the “sun” burns hot over and endless expanse of desert sand. There is what looks like a highway out of the 21st century plowing through the middle of this desert. It is built on pylons, rising a few meters above the sand. The highway is empty, the burning hot tarmac stretching away endlessly into the horizon.
Nearby in the sand, there is an enormous green flash, and a collection of figures fall out into existence. One is dark and featureless man, with red eyes on the back of his hands. He looks down at a black shard in his hand, seemingly surprised to find something there. Another is a shirtless man on his back with cloth wrappings on his hand. He is covered in contusions, and bruises, and leaking blood from his face. He is struggling to remain conscious. Another figure is wearing a bulky bright yellow bio – suite, it is riddled with bullet holes. Despite this, the figure seems to be fine. Another figure is wearing Spanish cloths and completely unconscious. There is a glowing from the side of his neck, the same hue as the portal had. The glowing fades and leaves a strange and intricate black marking on his skin. Who knows what it could mean? The last figure to exit the portal is clad in American combat fatigues and clutching a M14 rifle. The man is most definitely dead. The four conscious members glance around at each other and their surroundings in confusion. Many smaller green flashes are echoing the biggest flash, and a collection of odd and seemingly unrelated objects fall from them. Just as the last of the flashes are dying out there is one last big flash and out pops a skinny looking guy sitting in a camping chair with a beer in one hand. He looks around for a second before breaking into a grin, and takes a swig from his beer.
On top of your chosen abilities, everyone gets one ability from the GM! yay!
Status:
Item: Lucky Shamrock- +1 Luck (I had to nerf this to +1. Stat points are very powerful.)
Ability: Fortuitous Coincidence- Lucky tends to always be where he should, and never where he should not. This allows him to avoid an otherwise harmful situation or attack through being in the right place at the right time, or at least not in the wrong place at the wrong time. He also tends to have better results than others when his luck comes into play.
Ability:Luck Magnet -If ever there is a character with luck greater than lucky, he takes thier luck points during interactions until thier luck is either less than or equal to his own
Item:
-Fallen Starshard of Shugareth :
A mysterious black shard gifted to its minions by Shugareth before it disappeared. It emits a troubling light and faint whispers can be heard coming from it sometime. It protects Na Shugareth from unnatural effects to some extent. Embedded in the heart-side of the chest.
Ability:
-Eldritch Memories : (< I changed it)
Having been a part of Shugareth, you have many thoughts not you own. Sometimes, these come to you without bidding, but if you desire you may also search the echos of your eldritch mind. Use caution, many things known by Shugareth were not for mortal minds. Not even one like your own. ((Basically, this just lets me force plot exposition on you if I need to, but you can still use it yourself to identify things or check the plot and stuff like you had it before.)) [A plot-tracking ability]
-Cleansed from corruption: When Shugereth died, you were freed of his influence. You, who were so intricately a part of him. This was never thought possible. As such, you understand the nature of influence and corruption (and it's removal) in a way that no other thing in existence does. You may not only identify the various supernatural influences on people and objects, but attempt to roll to remove them.
Item: Leather horse-hair gloves ( protects hands and makes for more damage dealt in hand to hand combat )
Ability: Pugilism ( Bonus to landing unarmed strikes )
Ability: Fierce will (Stuart never gives up. Never.) ((Allows rerolls in some situations, and protection from 1 hit KO's)
Item: Excalibur (A sword that electrocutes targets. Can be manifested at will.)
Ability: Ghostly Nanocloud (Can fly through obstacles and small spaces, being made up of fine dust)
Ability: ReForm (Can reshape your nanite swarm. Takes time and energy to come to a new stable/functional form.)
Item: Hidden Blades(one on each wrist)
Ability: Blend: Antonio can disappear into crowds instantly, evading enemies.
Ability: Black Mark (You don't know what this is, or how to use it. Yet.)
Thanks again to everybody for playing! Writing all these separate and unique intro stories was actually really fun! Most of them were written under vastly different states of mind (Or amounts of sleep) so they all ended up pretty different I think. I hope you enjoy! Future updates will be a lot shorter though.
Poll
4 (40%)
Author
Topic: Cosmic Crossroads - SubStandard Employment(Turn 10) (Read 15486 times)