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+--- Thread: [4-12] The Mines (/showthread.php?tid=4681)
RE: [4-] The Darkness Below (Team Robo Phoenix) - Amaterasu - 07-20-2016
"Amaterasu protect us..." Fiara whispered when in the light of Marcus's torch and her Blasters she saw the enormous being all around them, whispering to them. The voices dug into her mind like moles with burning claws, like tendrils outfitted with hooks. She felt something warm on her cheeks and realized that the crust on her ears had broken open and the blood was dripping again. The weight of the being was making her limbs heavy and her movements sluggish, it made her want to walk towards the wall of flesh around her and hug it, let her little body sink into it and become a part of the greater conglomerate of souls that waited for her. They were reaching their hands out for her, wanted her to join them.
A deafening bang tore her from being fully lulled in by the voice. Okor's weapon, that gun that he wielded... there was danger! She screamed and flayed her arms around at the invisible tendrils reaching out to subjugate her mind, and though she hit nothing she was now awake. The voice was losing its power over her. But it had not given up.
"Amaterasu, giver of life and mother to us all, grant me strength in this dire time of need... guide my hand so that I may slay this Akuma and release these poor souls from the torment of their unlife." She began with a whisper but her broken voice regained its strength with every word that rolled over her tongue until she shouted the final words into the room around her. Okor and Marcus were nowhere to be seen, but there were flesh-beings and walls where none had been before. They had been separated. All the better.
With a confident grin she slammed her fists together and watched as the flames around her wrists flared up to full size, illuminating a wide area around her. Creatures were coming at her, the walls were reaching out, the ground writhed beneath her feet as if wanting to swallow her or throw her off balance. But she feared them no longer, for their voices had lost its power over her. They'd wanted to subjugate her, and they had failed. Now they resorted to violence, and that was a language that she could speak too. Oh boy, she was glad that she'd reloaded her Phoenix Blasters earlier. Now she could use those extra shells.
With all the power she could muster she leapt into the air just as the first flesh-beings closed in on her and reached their arms out to grab or slash at her. A few of them crashed into each other with the disgusting sound of flesh slapping against flesh, others were smarter and stayed away. In midair Fiara flipped herself upside down and reared up her fist... then came crashing back down, fist first for her strongest attack. Quake Slam.
The clicking sound of the right hand's Phoenix Blasters' pump-action mechanism automatically ejecting a shell and loading a new one in was drowned by the pained screams of the monster when the enormous force of Fiara's punch hit the fleshy ground and sunk deep in whilst the force of the explosion sent the flesh-beings flying away from her. The impact created a wave that traveled outwards from Fiara's location, throwing the other ones off their balance for long enough that the girl could get to her feet and prepare her next strike. She leapt over the head of two of the humanlike monsters and slammed her Phoenix Blaster against where one of the tendrils emerged. The strike itself wasn't sufficient to do much damage, but the shell fired from such close range tore muscles and tendons apart in a gory display and another inhuman scream was heard as the being lost its limb. Not that it seemed to matter though, as the sheer size of it combined with its ability to just spawn more tendrils meant that Fiara's hit was little more than a scratch, a delay.
The Phoenix plunged her fist into the opening she had created and yelled off the top of her lungs as she tore out whatever she could grasp with her blood-soaked hands. The tormented souls must be what sustained this whole monster, she had to pull a few from its grasp. She got three handfuls of bones and flesh before the flesh-beings got to her and reached out to grab her, thus forcing her to back away. Whilst escaping their grasp she slammed her fists down upon one of them and spreaded its featureless head across its companions in a gory explosion. That was their weakness... they may be spawned at will but their bones, their muscles were hastily made and lacked the essential support of bones. They weren't boneless but not as stable as a being with a fully human skeleton either. And that's what made them weak.
When she landed she found herself immediately surrounded and this time did not escape safely. Two of the humanoids slashed at her with their bone-nails and cut into her arm and waist, making her scream in pain before she turned their respective limbs into red mist with another two hits. The distraction created by such was long enough for her to leap over them and escape to a less crowded part of the room where she stood her ground by kicking away a tendril. Somewhere beyond the walls and meat she could hear the sounds of her friends fighting and wondered how they were faring. With any luck Okor's... state would present itself as a blessing in this situation. The Blight on his body and weapons could spread through the entire flesh-monster and kill it. What she wondered was if they would hold out for that long. They were INSIDE the monster, and it dwarfed all three of them. Even Vision and the Syntech employees wouldn't have made a big difference... she gritted her teeth as she fired a pair of Rifle Punches at one of the tendrils but as suspected they did next to nothing at that distance, besides scorching its surface and flinching it. Was that it? Was she going to see her end here?
How dare you even think that! You are the Phoenix, you are the barrier that stands between man and monster. If you do not kill it here, now, today it is going to draw others into itself... and YOU will be responsible for it. Destroy it, Fiara! End it here and now!
With a battlecry she threw herself at what she percieved as a gigantic eye that stuck out of one of the walls and hit it with all the strength her left hand could muster. A pained screech following the bang of her Phoenix Blaster, louder than the ones before, revealed that she'd hit a sensitive spot. Good. Now if only she could find more of them...
Quote:1152 words according to MS Word.
Fiara has used Quake Slam and used 1 SP.
Phoenix Blaster mags:
8/12 left
7/12 right
RE: [4-] The Darkness Below (Team Robo Phoenix) - Marcus Wright - 07-21-2016
Marcus held the blazing torch, leading the way but checking to see if Fiara and Okor was close by. The darkness seemed like it could've gone on forever. To pass the time and distract the others from fear, the young phoenix chanted a short little prayer to her god, Amaterasu. At least, what the terminator could make out of her chant. But Marcus described the situation as relaxing even to a android. It forced him to think back on when he had ever said a prayer or even picked up a bible.
He swore it was many smooth voices, sweet as candy calling to him in heated whispers. The voices called to the terminator telling him to join them and stop struggling. It took a bit longer but the blast of Okor’s gun forced him to stop and come back to reality. Fiara was even being tempted but her prayers seemed to help her out of this predicament.
Skynet or the Ascension… none of them would control him again.
Marcus held the torch, and pickaxe nearby in his other mechanical hand. He held a collection of various things he had collected over time. His false eyes were glued to what awaited them below: the fleshy abomination named “Ascension.”
The torch showed the mine was covered with sickening, flesh-like tentacles. Corpses scattered the floor like a war battlefield. In the middle of the mine was the main problem. This collaborated glob was full of humans or in this case, horrible disfigured humanoids who would suffer the rest of their days in a fate worse than death. Nobody would wish that on their worst enemy.
The dark general had shown his anger as flesh and tentacles flew in bloody gobs, covering the mine with bits and pieces of skin. Just before Marcus was able to bash the creature’s skull in with the pickaxe he had picked up earlier, Nurgle’s champion was now standing covered in soot and ash. Marcus slammed the pickaxe in the creature’s skull with a sickening thud. After taking a deep breath, he immediately focused his attention in on Okor’s new form. Whatever pieces left to burn on Okor’’s armor were almost immediately turned to firey ash as the Marine turned into a firey beast meant to kill.
Make that two creatures meant to kill. One half human and one burning fire, what made them different? One could control themselves while the other was in a total rampage. That’s what makes the strength of the human heart.
The pickaxe would be stomped on over and over until the damned creature was dead..
Marcus when he was pissed, couldn’t be bargained with, couldn’t be reasoned with, didn’t feel pity, remorse or fear. Right now, any unfortunate creatures, humanoid or not was in his path were equal problems.
Marcus lifted one of the humanoids by the neck and squeezed while the squeel of the strange creature died by his own hands.
These creatures… were beyond saving. Once the one creature was dead, He threw them aside like some rag doll back at the other creatures. Those creatures not consumed by the general’s flames were disposed of by Marcus.
One war replaced with another. Was that what the machine man was actually good for?
Somewhere within, Marcus was still man in that machine body.
A man who thinks he’s human but a machine in reality.
The terminator was able to pull himself up, a coat surrounding a semi metallic body. He got on the lift, avoiding Okor's firey inferno.
Quote:587/2400 words
RE: [4-] The Darkness Below (Team Robo Phoenix) - Karl Jak - 07-21-2016
Face to Face
Okor, Fiara, Marcus Wright vs The Ascended
Okor, Fiara, Marcus Wright vs The Ascended
War.
The war around Marcus, Okor, and Fiara was on that—counter to the old saying—continually changed. Manifestations of the many ‘souls’ that comprised the living mass rose and fell in various deformed shapes and sizes around the trio. Fireballs and atomic bursts roared through the underground chamber as the two primes and their secondary companion rallied against what should have otherwise been overwhelming odds.
Humanoid shrieks bombarded the group as they cut down everything in their paths. Separated by the size of the chamber, the Dean of Security, his diseased flesh burned away by fires of his own creation, slaughtered anything and all things that rose to confront him.
None could stand against the vengeful revenant.
On the other side of the chamber, Fiara and Marcus found themselves fighting for their lives. The Terminator swung a heavy iron pickax as if it weighed nothing in his mechanically-augmented fists. A few yards away, the phoenix used her agility to her advantage as she punished the monstrosity that sought to devour them. Anytime she had an opening, she would lash out with her hands and tear apart whatever she could close her ichor-drenched fingers around.
Unfortunately for Fiara, a glancing blow struck her in the side of the head as she turned to bring her blasters to bear on a fleshy construct rising out from the nearest wall. The impact shattered her equilibrium and sent her stumbling sideways. She could feel something wet on the side of her head as she dropped to her knees on the moist, sweaty flesh that comprised the cave’s floor. The phoenix’s vision was out of focus, but when she lifted her head, she could see a hulking mass of flesh, teeth, and claws skittering toward her from the darkness. She tried to force herself to stand or lift an arm, but her head was ringing too much to let her focus.
“I’m sorry, Amaterasu…”
Fiara’s head sagged down as she anticipated the embrace of claws or teeth, but instead, she heard an abominable shriek and felt warm blood splash against her face and chest. Lifting her head, she saw that her would-be killer had a pickaxe through the side of its chest and a second hand clamped its neck. Before she could cause for celebration, Fiara lowered her gaze and saw that the creature’s barbed tail had tore clear through the Terminator’s ribcage and out through the base of his spine.
“Garbage,” Marcus rasped as he dropped the corpse and tore its tail from his chest.
The Terminator, bloody pickaxe still in hand, took a step toward rejoining the fight near Okor when the strength of his mechanical body failed. His legs caved, and he lost his grip on the pickax, which silently struck the flesh ground moments before the machine’s knees.
Although he didn’t acknowledge it, Marcus knew he had saved the life of his new acquaintance.
As the light faded from his eyes, he died knowing that he was good for something more than killing.
Quote:End of Round 8
Marcus Wright is dead and will respawn at the Nexus in 7 days.
Fiara takes 2 points of Accumulated Damage and suffered a (5 point) serious injury (fractured skull)
Okor takes 2 points of Accumulated Damage
Okor – Kill this thing in glorious, burning Okor fashion. Feel free to milk the violence for as long as you want (within reason XD) Tell me once you do so I can update your pair with a prize.
Okor+Fiara -> You know where the exit is (unless for some reason one of you feels compelled to head back to the plane wreckage).
RE: [4-] The Darkness Below (Team Robo Phoenix) - Okor - 07-21-2016
Quiet, little mortal.
The words pierced the blaze that was his mind, the thought momentary quelling the hatred he had manifested about himself.
Why do you oppose me? You are but an insignificant little… Morsel, to my glory. Why do you resist, when you can have everything you could ever want? You care nothing for this realm, for the lesser beings that inhabit it. Join with me, and Ascend.
A snarl and a bolter round heralded his reply, a Serpentine monstrosity skull vanishing in a cloud of red mist and ivory shrapnel. ”Because this world is… Wrong. I want no part of it." An armoured shoulder rammed into the twisted torso of another abomination, a phosphex round detonating within its maw as the barrel of the pistol shattered its crooked teeth. ”But like hell I’d let you claim Dominion over it.”
The horde was thinning. Great rents ran down his side, twisted talons impaled his torso, and the soul-fuelled fire consuming his body slowly dimmed. But unlikely the mockeries of man left broken behind him, he still remained standing.
You would dare, mortal?
From the darkness came a figure, an emaciated posthuman corpse, its face frozen in a scream of both terror and ecstasy, blood running in crimson streams down the ragged beard cultivated before its death. Too many limbs extended from it, giving it the appearance of some abominable arachnid come to entrap and ensnare the wayward souls open this island. Within its sunken chest laid a perfect sphere of Omnillium, black tendrils slowly pulsing a steady rhythm, the massacre’s instinctual beat, a hundred hearts all beating in a fearful and impassioned chorus.
”Do you not know what I am?” A dozen mouths tore themselves open in the carcasses carpeting the cavern, gibbering the entity’s thoughts. The people of the Omniverse, united under a singular purpose.
A thousand cowering nations worship me, chanting my name in praise! Know my title before you fall, Paladin of a False God! Kneel bef-”
Crack.
A shot pierced the silence, the rocket-propelled rad-round detonating inside the rotting umbilical cord that bound the spirit to its cavern, its deformed host falling to the quivering floor, its minions suffering the ravages of their transformation, now lacking its will to sustain them. ”Shut up.” A dozen limbs scrabbled against the slimy surface, attempting to drag its corporeal form away from the Legionnaire. ”You speak of glory, of worlds underneath your heel…” A heavy boot slammed down upon a leg, splintering the bone and pinning the Demon to the ground, forcing it let loose a warp-spawned screech of agony. ”... But here you are, cowering beneath the earth, hiding with your spawn. You never reached for the stars, in fear of being scorched by the sun.” A talon, burnt black by the conjured flame of Okor’s hatred, wrapped around the spindly throat of the aspiring arch-demon, lifting them from their prone position, a wet snap heralding the severing of the trapped leg, ebon ichor flowing from the wound.
The cavern wall shivered as the maimed mad god was pressed against it, the burning eye of Okor glaring into their glazed orbs, consuming the entirety of their attention. Even the long-rotten eyes of the Flesh’s host were tinged by fear, the limbo-bound corpse in front of them promising a torment that would reach beyond the petty boundaries of life and death.
”But you’re in luck today, whelp. For displaying the… arrogance to assume yourself above me, I shall show you what it is like to burn.”
A withered tongue flapped within an atrophied jaw, broken teeth babbling through rivers of blood for mercy. ”Anything… You want…”
”I want your skull, pathetic wretch.”
A cry of despair was cut off as claws pierced its skin, sliding through flesh as they wrapped themselves around a rib, wrenching it from its rightful place in a spray of vitae. With a vicious thrust, the bone was driven through a sunken eye socket, plunging the ivory blade into the diseased brain
His talons dug into the cranium of the carcass, determined to deny it any semblance of rest. Flesh strained and ripped under the pressure applied by the Ancient Warrior, performing motions perfected after centuries of being none too picky where the next meal came from. With a final surge of strength, the spinal cord came free, proving that despite appearances, the Ascended did possess a backbone. A similar show of brutality tore the diseased core from its torso, strands of corrupted flesh falling from the parasitic power as it was extracted. It took only the destruction of a few teeth to ram the orb into the jaw, infested ivory serving as the receptacle of absolute power.
His corroded gauntlet closed around the vertebrae of unholy flail, the strength promised by every scarred bone enveloping his senses. At this point, it was nothing more than himself, a Daemon-bone weapon forged of ten millennia of malice, and last he checked, a wounded secondary and a false-man.
Hells, he’d had worse Odds.
He pulped the dying abominations under his feet, each step casually defiling the unlife that had enfolded them as he made his way back to start of his slaughter.
”Fiara! Marcus! Report!”
RE: [4-] The Darkness Below (Team Robo Phoenix) - Amaterasu - 07-24-2016
Fiara's mind was not unlike a raging storm of emotions. The strongest of them were fear and despair because of how she felt - half-dead, expecting the creature around them to recover from the throwback it had suffered at Marcus's hands, and for the little time that the metal-man had bought her to tick away unused. Marcus had defeated ONE of these things, but Izanagi knows how many more it could summon.
There was also sadness - deep, terrible sadness at Marcus's gruesome death, his body laying there right besides her, face down and motionless. And anger. She wanted to bring up the powers of her lineage, the purging flames of... well, Purgatory, and to burn this abomination to the ground until not even ashes remained. Except of course that she couldn't. Her parent, Moegami, could but he wasn't here. Amaterasu could, but she wasn't here either. Yes, she knew, in the back of her head, that Marcus was not truly dead if what Okor had said was true. But that didn't come to her mind right now.
The relief of Marcus having saved her from certain death was also there, somewhere. In the back of her head. Mostly obscured by despair and fear. Kind of like a candlelight in some catacombs.
The cocktail of emotions made her look indifferent, stoic almost, to any outsider that may have watched the Phoenix Girl laying there. The raging flames around her wrist were the only hint at what was going on within her.
Why had she not been hit yet, she began to wonder. Shouldn't the abomination have struck the final blow by now? Had it decided to let her bleed out? That would be an error, because she could feel her head slowly recovering, feeling a bit better... if it left her too long maybe she could retaliate. But no, she couldn't imagine that being the truth. On another note, why had the flesh stopped moving beneath her feet, and on the walls? Why was there no more sounds of flesh rubbing against flesh, of wet footsteps causing goosebump-inducing - and honestly, somewhat lewd, if you interpreted them that way - sounds when the independant flesh-golems moved around on the surface of its host?
Splat. Shloooorp... splat. Shloooorp... splat. The new sound made her groan and slowly get on her knees, looking up. Those were the sounds of a pair of heavy boots making minced meat where they stepped, and though they weren't coming from within her field of view she knew whose feet they belonged to before she heard the voice.
”Fiara! Marcus! Report!”
"We're here! We're... ouch!" She could not finish that sentence - or really, go beyond starting it - due to a sharp pain striking her skull. But the Plague Marine's footsteps were coming closer so she could afford to lower her voice so as not to put so much strain on her jaw and still make herself heard. "I'm... okay. Marcus... I don't think he made it. Okor, he... these creatures... he saved me and was impaled, but then they stopped moving. I don't..."
Okor reached down, grabbed Marcus’s body by the shoulder to turn him onto his back and examined him for only a few moments before nodding. "He's gone. And you are not 'okay'."
"I'm fine, I told you!" She raised her voice and immediately regretted it as another sharp pain nearly made her fall sideways. Luckily she reacted fast enough and caught herself with her hands. Okor didn't reply, he just stood there and stared her down from the expressionless eyeholes of his rusty helmet. Had he not worn it, the gaze could probably not have been any more intense. Fiara crumbled before it like an old cookie. "Fine, I'm not... my head's throbbing and hurting like hell. I've taken a blow from one of these things, and... fell down." She hated to admit it. She was feeling like more of a burden than an aid to the towering warrior who... was he even hurt? His armor was so scarred and rusted, his body such a mess ravaged by disease and age that she couldn't make out if there were any recent injuries. Or if there were, if they even affected Okor at all. Maybe he would still live even if you cut his head off. She wouldn't put it beyond him. "You killed this... thing, didn't you?"
Okor had taken two steps away from her and had bent down, grabbing the construct that had impaled Marcus. He was tearing pieces out of it, seemingly searching for something. "I did... it's gone now."
"Great..." She decided not to even ask why he was mutilating that body and deactivated her blasters to hide the flames, then remembered that they needed reloading. So she activated one, ejected the empty shells, replaced them with fresh ones and deactivated it again, then did the same on the other side. "Listen, I'm sorry! I didn't mean for Marcus to go like this!"
"He saved you", remarked Okor over his shoulder. He stopped tearing the body apart and picked something out. "You are mortal, as I told you... Marcus however will be back before long."
"Yes, but not here! Not with us, just like Vision! He'd be of more help to you than I would!"
"Be quiet for a moment." He turned around and held up a red piece of something. Plastic, as it turned out, with a white cross in a circle painted on its surface. "And tell me, where did this thing come from?"
"Uh... over from that wall right there. Right next to that outcropping with the severed tentacle", replied Fiara. Okor's words had gotten her off-guard and she had no idea why he'd asked her that. The Plague Marine however stepped over to the indicated spot and began to tear the walls apart with his fists, utilizing the rips and tears that Fiara's and Marcus's efforts had created. Before long he produced a red box covered in innards. It was missing its lid, but the red plastic piece he had found matched the rest of its appearance. He brought it over and threw it Fiara's way.
"Use this to patch yourself up." He walked over to Marcus again and began searching him for something as Fiara examined the box's contents. Some of it had spilled out but it was... medical supplies. She had seen some in the Dunes, she had seen bandits use them as she had snuck up on or past them, so she knew how they worked. Well, for the most part. She still needed Okor to point out what each bottle contained, but the Plague Marine kept his hands from touching the actual items, let alone helping Fiara. A real doctor could probably have made better use of it all, but Fiara was able to patch her head up, disinfecting the injuries, washing the blood off and applying a salve of sorts that made her feel better almost immediately. She gave a relieved sigh as it took effect, then finished her self-treatment by wrapping her head from the forehead up into a tight protection of bandages and cotton for cushioning.
"Thank you..." she murmured as she finished. "You know, I don't think anyone I've ever met has given me as many mixed feelings as you. You're... different. I just wanted to get that off my chest."
There were two alive people in this place. You do the math to who she spoke to.
Quote:1.251 words according to MS Word.
Fiara has reloaded her Phoenix Blasters (12/12 on both sides)
RE: [4-] The Darkness Below (Team Robo Phoenix) - Karl Jak - 07-25-2016
End of Round 9
They had little time to relax.
Marcus hadn’t even bled out when the two survivors heard the noises overhead. Up in the darkness of the mines, both could hear the clear thump of boots on the metal catwalks. But among the chorus of steps, they heard the screech of grating steel and faint growls that conveyed only false pretenses of humanity.
“We have company,” Okor whispered as he lifted his head to the hatch that led out into the rest of the mining complex. The marine knew they had to get up from that hatch if they didn’t want to be bottled into this flesh crypt and overwhelmed by numbers. “We need to move. Elevator at the top.”
RE: [4-] The Darkness Below (Team Robo Phoenix) - Karl Jak - 07-26-2016
Quote:Arturia and Carmelita can post arriving at the Mines when they please. Your trip here can take whatever number of posts you please. When you arrive, you'll find a few shacks. A central, permanent building will house all the mining company records, personnel files, and what seems to be a giant empty shaft.
There are no signs of life here, but there looks like there was some sort of scuffle recently, as things are disheveled and tossed around. The empty shaft is actually a lift, but it seems like the lift is underground. There's is a nearby switch to bring it back to the surface.
Explore as you please. Go down if you please.
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Carmelita - 07-26-2016
The trek along the road was long, dark and arduous.
The first hour of walking was filled with the creaking of trees and numerous false alarms. The two didn’t dare use their main source of light, that being Carmelita’s shock pistol, for fear of being spotted, and so the two navigated by what little light was shed by the moon as clouds scudded across the sky.
As they entered their second hour of walking, Arturia held up her weary arm and gestured for Carmelita to cloak as she hid in the ditch at the side of the road. The sound of footsteps ahead made the two clutch their weapons tightly and peer into the darkness.
Closer and closer the footsteps sounded, a squelching, water in a waterproof boot sound, the footsteps getting closer and closer. As the two were sure it would round the corner ahead of them, the sound of footsteps vanished.
At this point they waited, ten minutes passing before they got back on the road. As they did so, they suddenly heard the faint squelching of footprints yet again, and returned hurriedly to their hiding places. This repeated once more before the two decided to confront the source and hope it was friendly.
What they found was an automatic agricultural sprinkler rolling up and down the field next to the road. As it moved, the sound of water swishing in the pipe made the squelching noise. With an irritated outlook, the two pressed on.
The road they followed began winding up the side of a hill, and the steep incline at some points led the two wounded women to take a breather, the exhaustion catching up to them. About halfway up the two of them looked back at the town. For some reason, the town looked a lot smaller from here than they knew it was.
“I am going to arrest Karl Jak after this is over so hard his head’ll spin,” Carmelita muttered angrily, holding her aching head up with a hand on her knee.
Arturia heard and looks across at her.
“You plan to arrest him?” the knight asked, leaning on a fence post.
“I originally wanted to investigate how he had access to the Imperial database, under suspicions of corruption. Now though, I just want to throw every charge at the book at the creator of this horrid place until something sticks.”
Arturia had nothing to say to that, ad a few minutes later they hoisted themselves to their weary feet and continued trudging up the road.
A light was breaking over the hills as they reached the top of the pass, snug between trees. Arturia frowned.
“That is not daylight. Something is on fire.”
“Let’s hope it isn’t the mine.”
They continued on their way, and after another hour of walking and the fading of the light they’d spotted, they finally reached the mine.
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Okor - 07-27-2016
Talons steeped in corruption and blood clenched around the scavenged weapon, wrapping themselves around the twisted spine of the aspiring god. ”Don’t… thank me yet, Fiara. Do you hear them… scurry?” The scratch of claws on stone echoed around them, the chittering horde of foul spawn being vomited up from the bowels of the earth growing ever closer. His single eye looked past his wounded ally, bandages wrapped around her cracked skull stained red with the blood of both herself and the foe, staring blankly into the darkness. ”I hear the clatter of claw upon the Earth’s bones, I smell the cancerous stench of their corruption.” Jaundiced hide pulled back, sable sabres of shattered teeth dripping with rot beneath the rusted iron of his helmet, a necrotized tongue running along his fangs. ”I can taste their fear.”
The corroded ceramite of his pauldrons began to move, the reformed flesh beneath his armour already reinfested after his earlier cremation, twin hearts pounding beneath his fused ribcage. The Phoenix struggled to keep up, every scratch upon her body weeping blood, despite her efforts to repair the damage. “You just charged into a cavern of those… things, and now you’re going in again? Do you have a death wish?!”
”Probably. But that is not the point, young… one.”
“You were put here to learn, to create, to inspire. To live.”
The clatter of claws on stone intensified, a many-faced, hunchbacked freak of magic leaping from the shadows, its seven maws baring to reveal leech-like rings of teeth, scraps of flesh lodged between the needle-like points.
The skull of its god crashed down upon it, its own cranium splintering as the Omnillium-infused weight sent shards of bone flying through the air, the Daemon-touched orb greedily drinking the blood of its former supplicant.
”I was created to kill.”
With a flick of his wasted wrist, he dragged the head of his flail from the corpse, his other hand depressing the trigger of his bolter, driving a radioactive round into the still-twitching corpse, howls of rage and agony echoing from deeper within these damned catacombs.
Think.
Their Deity had been slain and defiled. This meant either unthinking rage, or silent despair as their miserable existence lost all meaning. Clearly, they had chosen the former.
They were men once. Whatever entity had swayed them into their service had warped them, twisted the pure human form into a mockery of life, and sent its abominations out to kill and add to its own mass and power. Each ex-Cultist was undoubtedly mad beyond redemption, and given by its earlier telepathic messages, it was constantly guiding its minions. All they had known had been ripped away a second time, their ascension denied, left as monsters far from the sight of humanity.
Perhaps he could sympathize. He’d lost his chance at the life of a Mortal, and the life of a conquering Hero, forever damned to tear down the Empire he built.
His grin stretched ever-wider as he sent a shell down the tunnel, the green flame of the self-propelled ballistic briefly illumining the tunnel, revealing the dilated crimson pupils of the amalgamation before them, before burst against the masses of deadened flesh. Limbs bonded to the amorphous mass of meat twitched, each atrophied appendage seeking the lives of the god-slayers, a thousand twisted faces opening in an ear-piercing screech of undying hatred. Pseudopods of rotting muscle reached out, pulling the seemingly unending tide of corpses forwards towards what seemed to be the final survivors of the crash.
But at least he was sane.
He took a step backwards, another shell falling to the ground, noxious smoke pouring from the spent cartridge. ”Fiara. Get to the elevator.”
“What in Izanagi’s’s name is that thing?!” Screamed Fiara, sending a shell shooting down the corridor, carving a bloody rent in its flesh, watching helplessly as a tide of tissue flowed over it, ensuring its mass remained suitably massive.
”Rejects,” hissed Okor, crushing a small rock beneath his weight as he continued his rate of fire. ”All the… cultists too broken in mind or body to remain an individual. It is every… lost and damned soul among them.”
Another blast from the mythical creature severed an arm, the limb flying from its position atop the abomination, only to be reabsorbed as it passed back over it, a wordless roar of thoughtless rage echoing throughout the caverns. “How are we going to kill it?” asked Fiara, having seen far too much of the Death Guard’s commitment to slaughter to doubt his will to end the beast.
”We’d need more fire and explosives than I… brought. Too much flesh to cut, too few fire-based weapons, and not nearly enough grenades.” He snarled as his clip ran empty, the hollow magazine dropping into the darkness as he turned to run as fast as his rot would carry him.
”Fall back, regroup, and find heavy weapons.” The shame of retreat suffused his soul. While there was no point in throwing his life away against a foe clearly in an advantageous position, to show the enemy his back was an unforgivable offence against his pride. The fluorescent lights of the lift were not far now, the rift in the earth above it promising a reprise from their relentless attacker.
Fiara easily kept pace, for, even wounded, there were very few mortals alive who were slower than the eternal warriors of Nurgle. “Wait… The elevator! Is it heavy enough to crush this Oni?”
Nurgle’s chosen stumbled briefly, internally berating himself for failing to come up with the idea himself. ”Have to get there first.” He growled, the skull of the aspiring deity bouncing on his hip as he continued his dash forward. The rusted rails were tantalizingly close, the promised salvation above them just outside of his grasp. He risked one last shot, tearing the mag-locked pistol from his side and letting loose a phosphex round, the infernal flames blossoming as they began to eat away at the Abominable creation, eliciting a screech of torment.
Any reason within the remnants needed to be annihilated for the plan to work. It needed to be tortured, goaded, driven forward into its own demise to ensure its annihilation.
And if there was good thing Mortation’s Sons excelled at, it was drawing enemy fire.
”I have drunk the blood of your god! Come forth and… reclaim it!”
Quote:1115 Words according to google docs.
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - 2B - 07-28-2016
The mines.
Normally the duo would have taken this arrival as a chance to rest, settling down to hydrate, feed and sleep if possible. But even if they had had all the money in the world - probably like Karl Jak did - they would not have been able to afford such luxury. Time was simply a luxury they didn’t possess anymore.
Their bodies exhausted, spent and aching, there was nothing left to energize them. The dynamical duo of law enforcement and ruling was driven by the insane strength of their willpower alone. They had a goal to achieve, and there was naught that could stop them, not now that they’d managed to reach their goal.
Despite having reached the mines, the fire in the distance burned still; perhaps naught but a hallucination, or a another facet of the madness of this island. Frankly, they could care less, they had a job to do.
Their surroundings seemed to not host any signs of life, the cold breeze of night air brushing past them as they walked silently amidst the shacks. With closer inspection, the shacks held nothing of value or interest to them. It was almost as if they were there just to have them waste some of their already limited time. If anything, they could both read the signs from boxes, chairs, pickaxes, mining carts that were all tossed around, crushed and splintered. There’d been some kind of a tussle here; recently.
“Main building.” Arturia and Carmelita both stated in unison, their hastened steps pushing within the larger, still intact building. The entrance they’d taken had taken them straight to the main hall, leaving them to witness a gaping hole in the ground.
“Mining shaft, by the looks of it.” Carmelita stated, pointing toward a pole with a switch on it. By her judgement, it was probably whatever controlled the elevator, even if there was no elevator in sight. Then again, knowing this wretched island, the cage, or platform, was currently rusting away at the bottom of the pit.
By the time the officer finished her investigation of the main hall, Arturia’s resolve had taken her to the nearby room, clearly intended for the overseers; containing a bunch of file cabinets and a few tables. As she went through them, the knight was slowly figuring out what they were; Listings of personnel that worked in the mines, records of shipments to the town, quantities mined, daily logs. And… Aha!
The workers; rather than having lived on the island for all their lives, were ported here from elsewhere.. Trafficking, perhaps? Tax evasion in terms of wages? From what little Arturia knew of modern law, she knew Carmelita was about to have something tangible to throw towards Karl.
And there was one more interesting bit; The facility had recently struck into a vein of pure Omnilium. Not only that, but the crew had started losing their minds; going insane.. Hearing voices.
Her hearing caught the vixen entering, turning her gaze from the papers to face the other. “As you say.. It’s your lucky day.. The workers aren’t from here. They’ve been shipped from elsewhere. And even more so; the monster we fought, the syringes we have, the syringe that….we used…… The corruption began here. They found pure Omnilium and began mining it, they went insane.”
“....Mierda. Why do they always have to dig too greedily and too deeply..?” the officer muttered, before raising her voice once more. “So, what shall we do?”
“There is no mention of the escape pods here; And I doubt they would be down in the shaft.. The signs of battle outside, would indicate someone has already went down.. Shall we wait and see what emerges, or leave and hope to find clues toward the pods in the vicinity?”
The question hung in the air as the pair glanced toward the gaping elevator shaft, wondering whatever was going on at the bottom of it.
Quote:664 words without quote. My other post for this round is in the town thread.
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Amaterasu - 07-28-2016
"Have to get there first." Okor's words seemed... frustrated, but Fiara realized that this was the moment for her to shine. Okor, Marcus and Vision were better fighters, stronger than her, but she was fast. And these... things, they were slow. They wouldn't catch her.
"I'll get in the elevator and get it to crush as many of these abominations as possible! You make your way over and we'll get the hell out of here!" For once it was her giving the “orders”, though she doubted not that Okor would take that position back up very soon. Might as well make the best of it while it lasted. She trusted the giant with fighting his way out just fine, he needed not her help. At least, not if that help consisted in blasting away a part of this monstrosity. He needed her to call that elevator and crush it underneath.
She began a run like she had never done before: with the Phoenix Blasters illuminating the way around her she ran straight towards the elevator and waited until the last second, when the abomination spawned hands and reached them out to grasp her, to jump over its heads. Most of them were still half present, some with eyeless sockets, others blankly staring at her, but their skulls were solid. They didn’t melt into the thing below them as fast as their flesh did, and that was her advantage. As soon as she was above the being she resorted to the acrobacy training that her father had taught her as part of her martial arts courses: dodging more grasping hands and biting mouths she used the heads and limbs of the indescribable thing beneath her as a surface to place her hands or feet on for just long enough to restore her momentum and advance. Occasionally she flipped herself forward to change her position, to dodge a grasping hand that would otherwise have tugged her into the awaiting mass beneath her and undoubtedly caused her gruesome death, other times she adjusted her position to get a better footing or to push herself up with her hand. Thrice the grasping hands were able to get her, and thrice she blasted them off with her Phoenix Blaster, severing the hand at the arm or wrist without missing a beat.
In the aftermath she could not have explained, let alone demonstrated, how she had performed this feat with only scratches and a few flesh wounds of nails and sharp bones digging into her skin. Everything in her memories was a blur, an adrenaline-fueled chain of movements and reflexes where it mattered not where she was, who she was and why she was doing this. All that mattered was the elevator shaft beyond the abomination, and her survival. She couldn’t remember, because keeping those memories for the future at that time would’ve meant to waste precious resources on things other than concentrating on the task at hand.
Eventually there were no more heads or arms before her, she simply landed on the ground with a thud, briefly recovered, then sprinted for the elevator shaft delimited by four rusty metal walls and a sliding door. The elevator itself seemed to be stuck a few meters up the shaft, but its bottom could be reached with a good jump. She pried the door open, cutting her hands with the bad-quality and rusted iron pieces, but at this point she took no notice of such - the adrenaline was rushing through her veins, pumping into her head, numbing pain and blurting out the noises behind her. Once she could she slid through the crack and forced it further open with her feet as well to create as big an opening for the incoming monster as possible. She was closer than Okor, and the Plague Marine was a dangerous opponent, armed to the teeth and capable of taking a huge chunk out of it before going down - she however was small and weak, a delicious treat. The abomination turned away from Okor and came towards her in some mixture of crawling, walking and sliding like a snail, creating noises that made the Phoenix retch. She leapt up and hit the bottom of the elevator, opening the emergency trapdoor in the floor and climbing into the cabin like a little monkey. And she looked through said door, seeing the abomination flood into the space beneath the elevator and start climbing its walls to reach for its prey.
“Ya know, Okor, you’re not quite right when you say I’m not made to kill”, she mumbled under her breath as she watched it draw closer. Then she mashed the button with an upside-down triangle on it and listened to the creaking of the old mechanisms as the elevator began to move. “Because I live to kill Oni, like this one!” The elevator rattled and descended, driven by mechanisms, and the monstrosity did something not unlike screaming as the metal plates came down on it. A freight elevator designed to carry massive amounts of ores, of coal and of raw Omnilium, to carry boxes full of supplies and tools, of structures to create underground housing... a technological beast with a motor that could lift or lower it with several tons of content. The abomination screamed, cried and writhed about as bones began breaking and tissue was squished against more tissue, forcing it against the walls of the elevator shaft under the ever-increasing force. Fiara had to cover her ears and couldn’t bear looking at the gory spectacle beneath.
On the other hand she didn’t indulge in illusions - the elevator wasn’t made to crush things, it was made to lift them. The mechanical setup would undoubtedly be geared towards weights pulling it down, rather than resistance from below. They would hurt that beast, but not kill it. “Okor, come fast! Let’s get out before the machine jams!” she yelled as she writhed the elevator doors open. Luckily those were just metal wire fence like the door at the entrance, and there was enough of an opening between the elevator door and the cabin door for Okor to squeeze through. While waiting for him she slammed her fist against the downwards button over and over, as if that would help.
Quote:1.051 words in MS Word.
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Carmelita - 07-28-2016
The two women took the time to rest, given that Carmelita wanted to look through the papers more. Not only was she meticulously taking photographic records of each sheet, she was also looking for any mention of places or things that might make the job of spreading a cure more easy. Her eyepieces flashed as she turned another sheet of paper.
The most immediate thing that leapt out at her headache beleaguered mind was that this place was mining pure omnilium. This omnilium was clearly the source of all of the madness that afflicted the island, and given the lack of containment beyond ‘stick it in a box’, she was guaranteed to get a charge of environmental contamination to stick. That, of course, let her open the floodgates to even more related charges…
Failure to handle biohazardous material was one. Judging by the superdisease they were dealing with (and Carmelita’s headache twinged as she reached these pages) the pure omnilium could definitely be classified as biohazardous, and that would be a definite addition to the list. Given that the hospital had had no idea what was causing this, then she could attach hazard communication failure on top of that, especially with the pages which specified that in events of poor reactions hush money was to be provided to shut up loud mouthed workers. She’d file that one under the white-collar crime section.
Reckless endangerment would also be a good catch all. It seemed to fit the entire island operation to a tee, and if they could get a cure and distribute it that one would have the support of the island’s population. Add in the orders to fund the local military base and police force in exchange for cracking down on the hospital or any other potential disruption to the omnilium shipping and Carmelita was confident she could add in corruption to the list.
Financially, she immediately noticed that the figures weren’t adding up. Official figures laid against the actual overheads she found in a filing cabinet, she found that a large amount of funds had been funneled into an equipment fund that was then split between Karl Jak and the overseer, which given the shares system of payment to the workforce meant that the two were embezzling the company. That that money then went towards bribing the local governing bodies to turn a blind eye to any unforeseen consequences meant that if she really stretched she could try and get them for money laundering as well.
The final stacks of paper dealt with the actual mining equipment. Thanks to the inappropriate handling of biohazardous material, the misappropriation of equipment funds and the generally illicit nature of swathes of the company's operations, it was unsurprising to Carmelita to find that she could find dozens of counts of health and safety non-compliance on the books. Collapsing tunnels, rusty lifts, poor mineshaft construction, everywhere corners were cut and consequently safety was undermined.
As she put away the final bit of paper, she sighed to herself. The main problem would be bringing Karl Jak to court, of course, given that the Omniverse wasn’t particularly law-abiding. She could choose to try the man in any justice system, provided she could actually make him or a company representative show up to take the charges, and actually extracting anything from him would be a nightmare.
As she shook her head she smiled wearily at Arturia, who had been patiently waiting for Carmelita to finish by sitting in a chair by the doorway.
“Thank you, Arturia. I’ll bleed that bastard dry if I can. Right then, let’s go and find these escape pods.”
As the two of them exited the room, they heard the faint sound of fighting. They turned to each other, nodding to confirm they’d heard it and turned to the shaft, advancing cautiously.
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Okor - 07-29-2016
Gears ground against each other, the shriek of metal on metal adding to the cacophony produced by the dying abomination, boneless limbs flailing as whatever remained of the minds trapped within its bulk struggled to realize their current situation. What few ravening abysses remained intact upon its exterior gibbered unintelligibly, torment and a rage that defied death itself streaming forth from its broken-toothed maws. Unable to accept its death and final failure, the beast continued to struggle, every fiber of its being bent towards inflicting death, each individual appendage hungering for blood.
Okor stepped over a flailing tentacle, his bolter barking as a shell detonated within the amalgamated flesh, spraying blood and fermented meat over the area, eliciting another cry of pain from the crippled creation. A titan-sized foot came down on the twitching remnants, pulping it beneath his mass as he pressed forward, crushing the dying beast beneath his tread. The metallic mesh grille that served as a barrier upon the lift was prevented from closing, the now-calloused fingers of Fiara holding it apart, the spasming aberration beneath the lift barely missing her delectable young flesh with its appendages.
”Move.” Spat the Plague Marine, warped and atrophied claws scrabbling at his warplate as he trampled over the remnants of the rampaging beast, his eye set upon the abandoned lift’s doorway, his four ravaged lungs greedily sucking in the lethal gasses within his air supply. His mythical companion stepped out of the way, the doors slamming shut and severing a half-decomposed tendril as, with no small amount of effort, Nurgle’s Chosen took flight. His decomposing arms crossed in front of him, an ingrained reflex that would nonetheless be ineffective, given his durability.
The grid gave way with a shriek, a pale imitation of the cry of rage and frustration issuing forth from beneath, the flesh-heap’s prey finally enacting their escape. Their method of ascension slowly began to rise, the maimed monstrosity’s many limbs failing to hold them in place, the sound of tearing flesh akin to a sweet melody, the creations of man overcoming the brute strength of the Daemonspawn.
Slowly, Okor forced himself to his feet, shards of steel embedded within his dessicated flesh. He felt the redistribution of weight upon the platform as Fiara moved to assist, only to think better of approaching the opaque, parasite-infested fluid slowly seeping from his open wounds. The horror still howled beneath them, the otherworldly screams echoing through the shaft.
A gear seared itself into his vision, the sigil emblazoning itself upon his corrupted heads-up-display, the crimson symbol clearly evident in the sea of static and warp-tainted stains through which Okor perceived the world. “Oko-” the clear and clipped tones of Colonel came across the vox, the hungering stone surrounding them consuming the conversation, denying them the luxury of communication, replacing it with naught but the ever-echoing reminders of their failures.
“Okor, this is Colonel. Do you read?”
The message forced his maw into a grin, sepulchral sabres of broken fangs dripping with toxins as he responded. He should have known the false-man would survive. He would not have thrown his lot in with the Institute if they were as weak a breed as the other Primes upon this damned Island. ”Ah, Colonel. You yet remain...alive, on this island?” He spoke, prying a spear of steel from his arm as they continued their ascension. ”What do you have to report?”
“In the company of another prime and a secondary. Survivors from the crash. Made it to a town, encountered difficulties. Undead, deformed and mutated people. Likely the town’s residents. Currently making an escape, headed toward possible escape from the island… What….what is your location?”
The Leprous Legionnaire snarled as he fired, driving a bullet into the beast below, the explosive rounds causing it to spasm as the pinnacle of destructive technology tore it apart, piece by piece. “We have encountered our own... mutations. We are in a mine of some sort... below the island’s surface. Heading to the surface on an elevator now.”
A thin tendril wrapped itself around the grille of the lift, pulses of flesh rippling along its length, adding to its girth as it attempted to drag the mechanism and its passengers down into the darkness down below, down into the Tartarus they had damned it to.
“Affirmative. Should we divert course to the mines, and join with you?”
”I will contact you again when we reach the...surface.” A heavy kick to the wiring demolished the structural integrity of the barrier, sending metal and meat alike spiralling down into the abyssal depths beneath. “We have...a nuisance to dispose of.” He snarled, taking stock of his ammunition. Far too low for his liking. A magazine and a half to expend against an entire island of prey.
Almost unfair to the mutant bastards.
“Understood.”
Okor turned to Fiara, watching the curious secondary sever another appendage, levering her superhuman strength to rip it bodily from its host. ”We need more… force to end this accursed thing.” He gestured to the winch above them, the grinding gears bringing them closer to the apex. ”When we reach our destination, destroy that. Let’s send this thing to hell as… carpeting.”
Quote:901 Words. 1806/2400 used.
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Karl Jak - 07-29-2016
End of Round 10
Quote:I assume that the four of you have some sort of meeting scene in mind. Once you get through that, just let me know and I'll give you some guiding focus (unless you already have a plan in mind or whatnot)
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - 2B - 07-30-2016
A blade stuck between stones, ground into dust. That was how Arturia would’ve described the screeching sound emanated from the humongous mining shaft as something seemed to be grinding to a halt.
As the pair of law enforcement and judgement day glared toward the void in the floor, something the winch finally wrenched something above the ground. A slender, agile figure slinked out of the elevator, followed by whatever that could only be described as a battle tank. The larger figure roared commands, growling in frustration, before the loudest gun in existence began to sing the song of slaughter. The loud booms emanating from the weapon creating a cacophony with the clangs of bullets hitting metal. Of course to some - like Okor - it was a symphony. The most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
And just like that, with screeching, the elevator plummeted down into the depths as suddenly as it had appeared.
“See that Okor! I can do this!” Fiara bellowed victoriously, huffing and puffing with the adrenaline running through her body, as the Marine finally lowered his gun. It hadn’t occured to either of them that they had company.
------
In the chaos of their arrival, Arturia and Carmelita had made their approach, standing further in the hall, keeping their distance from the pair as Arturia called out.
“Fiara? Is that you? And if so, stay away from us. Whom is the one you travel with?” her tone of voice emanated calmness, no hostility. Still, a battle tank turned, lifting his bolter toward the pair, to which Carmelita responded with haste. “Lower your weapon! We aren’t here to attack, if we were, we would’ve already done so!”
Fiara looked up at the man, pushing the pairs agenda. “It’s fine, Okor! They’re friends!” Of course, she didn’t know Carmelita in the least, but she opted to trust Arturia’s judgement in the company she kept. As such, a bolter was slowly lowered. “...This is Okor.. But why must we stay away from you?” the girl asked, taking a step forth.
A collective backstep was taken by the lawful pair. “There’s a virus on this island, infected one of ours, as well as likely us. We are trying to find a facility of some kind to create a vaccine and an antidote. In case it is indeed contracted by vicinity, we wish not to infect you as well.” the officer explained.
Arturia wanted nothing more than to ally with the girl she’d sworn to work with to begin with, yet such wasn’t permitted for her. She refused to infect the girl by her presence and doom her, if she had managed to survive on her own until now.
“Plague?” the man of steel asked with a cough accompanying his fleeting inquiry “Death? Such is but a mere dessert.” his voice rasped, accompanied by less than healthy coughs. “Why not embrace disease, live with it? Feed it. You’ll find it’s a pleasant and empowering sensation.” the man spoke, a deep laugh emanating from somewhere within the armour.
“Oh, Arturia. I must give you something.” the phoenix suddenly voiced, as she threw a small tube across the air. “Catch!” she said with an electric laugh emanating from her.
With reflexes trained for combat, dulled by a sensation of battering ram within her head from the fever, the knight swung her hand across the air and caught the tube, taking a gander at it curiously.
“Deliver that to Amms in case something happens, okay?” the girl retorted with a smirk, only a resolute nod responded from the knight, as the tube was hidden away.
The four stood there, eyeing each other with curiousity as a single thought lingered in their minds. To ally, or not to ally?
Quote:635 according to site, not counting contents fo quote
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Carmelita - 08-01-2016
As the four of them stood on opposite sides of the room, Carmelita fiddled with the suitcase she held.
She recognised the man in the armour from the cafeteria back at Syntech, and she could assume the other woman was Fiara, the woman Arturia had been looking for. Deciding that introductions were in order she flashed her badge and introduced herself to them.
“Let’s get introductions out of the way. I am Inspector Fox-Cooper and my companion here is... goes by the title Saber. I believe we all flew here in the same plane.”
The young woman, dressed in a fairly modern style with some sort of wrist mounted weapon on each arm, looked at the hulking armoured figure by her side for a moment before turning and giving a slight inclination of the head in greeting.
“I am Fiara, and this-”
“Thank you, but I will... introduce myself,” came a deep, phlegmy voice. “I am Okor, chosen of... Nurgle. What purpose brings... you to the mine if you are... fleeing the blessed?”
Carmelita raised an eyebrow but passed over the comment, instead lifting the briefcase she held by her side.
“We fought a being that adapted to our every attempt to subdue it, and it was previously a scientist looking into the virus. We have here two doses of an inoculation we hope to use to cure the island, or at least return them to their senses long enough for treatment and aid to be brought here.”
The inspector paused as a thought struck her, and she turned to Arturia.
“We don’t know if the inoculation works.”
The king of knights turned towards her, puzzled.
“Of course not, we have only two doses, and both are too precious to lose.”
“But if Fiara, a secondary, is at risk from the virus, we could offer her the chance to-”
“No, we can’t afford to-”
“Hello! I’m right here!” Fiara shouted. “What are you two talking about?”
Carmelita turned back to the two across the room.
“We don’t know if the inoculation works, and you are the most at risk here from the disease, since you are a secondary instead of a prime. If you want to come with us, I’d ask you to use one of the syringes with care.”
Fiara nodded and pursed her lips in thought. As she did so, Arturia gave a small huff and looked at Okor, who was shaking gore off his weapons.
“What have you seen down in the mines?” she asked, eyeing the splatter as it coated the nearby wall. “I take it there are opponents to face down there as well?”
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Okor - 08-01-2016
A bile-ridden laugh greeted the question, the sickly sound echoing off the cavern walls. ”Not… Any more.” He hefted the corroded bulk of his bolter, softly snarling as he felt the lack of weight, the hollow emptiness where there should be the brass-clad radioactive rounds. ”Some aspirant aberrant corrupted the secondaries here.” He drew in a deep breath between sentences, the fungal spores and bacterial clusters drifting within his long-tainted tanks eagerly joining the corruption already within him. A claw drifted down to the bone-forged flail at his hip, running along the twisted vertebrae of the slain godling. It, and its brood is no longer a.... Problem.”
He locked his firearms to his flanks, the revered wargear no longer able to be used without due consideration, the distinct lack of ammunition weighing heavily on his mind. An entire island of cannon fodder, and he lacked the rounds to send them crawling back to hell. He looked back to the newcomers, tearing his eyes away from his beloved death-dealers. ”We should not linger. We know where the… foe lurks, and where our allies prosper. We cut our way through to them, and make our way off this damned island.”
His baleful oculus fell upon the wounds of the pair, the sweet stench of their blood wafting through the air, permeating the pestilential aegis of his armour. The scent called forth an immediate reaction, stimulants coursing through his veins, the irresistible call to battle intoxicating. He loomed over the comparatively compact companions, a single septic scimitar of a talon pointing towards the chest of Arturia, the only other one here who seemed to have come prepared for a fight. The only other wise man in this world of madness.
”You are wounded.” Spoke the Legionnaire, heedless of the tattered shreds of skin hanging from his flayed stomach. ”If you fear the… inconvenience of death in this realm, then remain in this crypt. I have an oath to uphold.” He pulled the flail from his side, its skeletal length falling over his massive shoulders. The corrupted Orb lodged in the skull of the former God slowly pulsed, drawing in the blood splattered across its ivory mount, adding to the dark stains swirling upon its shimmering surface. Leprous legs began to move, carrying the Death Guard towards the Town.
“Wait.”
His post-human bulk turned, overgrown bones creaking as he shifted, watching the knight and the Phoenix depart further into the mines together, before forcing himself to gaze at the unfortunate freak of nature before him. The half-human creature gazed up at him, the abominable blood leaking from her flawed veins to rancid to even consider consumption. A cruel fate, to be a beast granted the semblance and mind of man, but denied the purity of form and purpose. Rotten flesh beneath jaundiced hide worked in concert with his armour to cross his arms in front of his broad and hollow chest, glaring down at the anthropomorphic creature.
“Why are you doing this?” Queried the literal Vixen, lifting a bushy eyebrow, the muzzle entirely out of place on their perverse parody of a human body.
”Why shouldn’t I?” Responded Nurgle’s Chosen, the worms and maggots within his ambulatory remains wriggling, consuming his constantly regenerating corpse. ”Is this not doing the Gods’ work?”
“You sure as hell aren’t what I’d call a good guy. They tend to have less skulls on their person.” They eyed the God-hammer slung over his shoulders, the severed heads upon his waist barely restraining the life-eating virus within.
”Point… Conceded. Tell me, Half-man, have you ever lost something… dear to you?”
Their blood still flowed. Slowly seeping from wounds, a sanguine offering to the Four Powers that sought dominion over reality. His twinned hearts pounded, speeding the stimulants through his system, focusing his attention on the subtle shifts of his subject. A brief instant in which they moved toward their weapons. A sharp intake of breath. An open wound of the mind, to be remembered when such a grotesque forgot their place.
“One: Don’t call me that. You look like you should leave three-quarters of yourself in the morgue.” They jabbed a claw-tipped finger at his chest, heedless of the pustules clustered around the cracks of the ceramite. “Two: What could someone like you lose? Let me guess, your deodorant? The only thing I’m enjoying about your company right now is that I can’t smell whatever the hell you two killed down there.”
”In the mists of Barbarus, I lost my kin. In the Legion’s Apothecarium, I sacrificed my humanity. Upon the surface of… Istvaan, I broke my bonds to the Imperium, and watched centuries of bloodshed wasted. In the grasp of hell itself, I lost my soul. On the walls of Terra, I saw myself severed from ten thousand brothers.” He snarled as he pressed his helmet closer to the animalistic arbitrator, the stench of his rot nearly overpowering her sensitive senses. ”And in Omni’s clutches, I have lost my war. If you think you know hate, you could not even begin to comprehend a hundredth of a hundredth of my wrath. The Smiling One has stolen everything I had left, but…” Carmelita was close enough to hear the sickly sound of his maw opening, the rancid strings of acid spit flowing and merging freely within the abyss. ”He will serve as a substitute. And if you still wish to know why I fight, Inspector Fox-Cooper,” he said, placing emphasis on each word of her title, still struggling to comprehend that the creature thought themselves his equal.
”I fight because I enjoy it. I fight because it’s all I can do. I break spines, not… bread. I shatter bones with my hands, not paint, I carve out hearts, not statues.”
“I slay our mutual foes, because I hate them. I hate their frailty, their greed, their sheer incompetence. There are a thousand simpering fools who aspire to rule this realm, and I carry a round for each of them. This damned world is a twisted parody of reality, and I refuse to allow the unworthy to inherit it.”
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Amaterasu - 08-01-2016
Fiara looked back and forth between Okor and the other two as the former spoke. She needed a moment... then the fox-woman adressed Okor directly and Fiara took the chance. She stepped away from the Plague Marine and looked at Saber. “Saber, can I have a word with you away from the others? Please?” When Saber nodded they took a few steps away into another part of the hall where Okor and Carmelita could still be heard, but not enough to make out words. She remained wary of coming close to the knight, always keeping a more than reasonable distance and making a point of such to Saber to show that she grasped the importance of the situation.
“Listen...” she spoke up as soon as they were at a “safe” distance. Neither noted the respective other’s injuries, though there was no way to not see them. “I can’t value my own life over that of everyone on the island. This... thing, the vaccine. Take it where you need to and use it to help everyone else. With two portions you got a higher likelihood of success.”
“One may be sufficient”, remarked Saber. “And you are a secondary for whom hope still exists. I doubt the island holds any whom still retain their sanity, aside the few of us that arrived. And even of those, we know not whom still even live. We may well be the last.”
“You got my scroll, didn’t you? It has everything Amaterasu needs to know. I don’t need to keep myself alive if you can bring it to her.” She held up a hand when Saber breathed in, clearly about to make a remark. “I’m not speaking about a mission or anything like that where I can “die peacefully” if the message is delivered, if you were thinking that. The scroll has a recollection of everything I have gone through up until entering this god-forsaken place, and I don’t need no memories of around here. Amaterasu can summon a new me with what she has on that scroll and find my parent.”
“I see. I promise to you that I’ll ensure ensure this scroll’s safe arrival into Amaterasu’s hands.”
“You can read it if you want... you know, in case that you lost it. I wouldn’t blame you, around this island anything is possible.”
“... it’s written in a language I don’t understand.”
“You can’t read... damnit.” She passed a hand over her face and sighed. “Didn’t think that through. Okay, just... if you were to lose it and I died, please tell Amaterasu that Moegami is sealed into the sky of a world that is all sun and sand. An endless desert. That’s the single essential thing that I need her to know.”
Saber nodded and changed subjects with that. “Who is the man of steel by the way?”
“Okor?” When met with a nod, Fiara shrugged. “He’s... I don’t know. I couldn’t say. We work together because we have to. He protects me because I am mortal, he says, and I... I don’t know, maybe I am of some help to him. The other two Primes of our group died, as well as all the Syntech employees that were with us.”
At Saber’s raised eyebrow, Fiara explained her view of Okor. “He’s dangerous, yet... he doesn’t kill me even when he could. I honestly don’t know why. But it’s better to be with him than to be alone.” She passed a hand through her hair, messing it up. “Just... try to steer clear of him if you meet him again. He’s not the good guy.” She looked at Carmelita and Okor then back at Saber. “You found yourself better allies it seems.”
“I should go back to her, actually. We cannot dally if we want to find a cure.” Saber tried to hide it but Fiara could see the pain in her eyes. Whatever it disease it was inside her, it was rapidly spreading, ticking her lifetime away like an hourglass running out of sand. Fiara muttered a curse, wishing she could help.
“Yes... I wonder if Okor has some plan of attack. We didn’t think of what we would do after escaping that Hellhole down there. We didn’t have any plan at all actually. But it seems that he has contact to some ally on the island.” She walked around in a broad arc around Saber, wishing that she could give her a brief hug to show how happy she was to see her back, but she couldn’t risk it. Marcus had died for her, she couldn’t throw her life away now. Slowly she began walking back to where Okor and Carmelita were speaking.
Quote:780/2400 words.
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Carmelita - 08-01-2016
Carmelita was internally furious.
She’d been furious before, of course. There was the time she’d discovered Sly hadn’t really had amnesia, for example, or when Neela had falsely testified about her activities and thrown her to the Contessa’s prisons. This, however, was a cold fury, one that sliced through her sickness-induced haziness and made her tongue sharp and her wit sharper. The being in front of her had made light of her loss and followed up by insulting her appearance.
“Whilst I’m certain that a decade or two without opportunity for violence would do wonders for the bitterness, we don’t have that luxury. I will find out how to turn the inoculation into a cure for this disease, and though I don’t have time to give you one for your psychopathy, I’ll save a place for you in a hermetically sealed cellblock for when I inevitably catch you doing something worse than self-defence.”
Okor gave a derogatory chuckle the tone of rolling gravel.
“Your potential for combat is pitiful, you wear no armour and you’re still spitting weak epithets. Go away, half-man, before I end up shooting you.”
“I. Am. A. Woman!”
Carmelita threw up her hands after that outburst, fuming at having been so thoroughly outmaneuvered, and stalked away, passing Fiara with a disciplined nod before reaching Arturia.
“Come on, they said they cleared the mines. Let’s go find those escape pods so we can turn them into a means of cure dispersal.”
With that, she grabbed a line of cable and began feeding it over the edge, every other turn glancing down and grasping her wedding ring with her free hand tightly and trying desperately to not think of her last few moments with Sly.
RE: [4-] The Mines (Assorted Parties) - Karl Jak - 08-02-2016
End of Round 11
Quote:Arturia has been eliminated from final prize contention.
-> Down the mines, back to the town, into the forest. As always, let me know what your plan is, and I will guide you along.