Shadows on the Green [Dark Data]

[Kelly MacAryn]

Kelly didn't hear X - a feline-faced ape with silver plumage on its shoulders had the psychic's head gripped tight in its beefy hands, and was screaming at him about four inches from his face. Its hot breath reeked of carrion and bird-seed. He charged a psychokinetic bolt and shoved it point-blank straight up the monster's ear-canal. The creature's skull exploded, and Kelly staggered back, wiping unmentionable goo from his face. 

The traveler was having a bad time. His plan to lay down some supporting fire for X had been preempted by the sudden arrival of six man-sized serpents with muscular humanoid torsos, and octopus tentacles erupting from their shoulders. They had arisen from the among the thick tangle of ankle-high undergrowth, their green-and-black scales blending perfectly - and as if that weren't enough, the fresh legion of abominations which had come storming out of the trees had made things even more complicated. Without his weapon, it had taken all of Kelly's considerable skill just to keep from being overwhelmed. 

The liberator had ducked and dodged and vaulted through an ever-shifting landscape of threats and targets, simian fists, eyes and throats, beaks and grasping octopoid suckers. He'd struck viciously and precisely with his hands and his feet and - a couple of times - his teeth. He'd twisted monstrous, hairy limbs and kicked out knees and maneuvered falling opponents into the legs of their fellows. The traveler's world had become dominated by the scent of sweat and blood, feathers and hair, and the hum of psychokinetic force. It was monotonous and vibrant and terrible, a gyroscope of frantic action spinning on the lip of a cliff - and even with the psychic's superhuman powers of survival and his newfound regenerative qualities, the cuts, punctures and lacerations had begun to pile up.

Fortunately, an end was in sight. Kelly may not have been able to hear X, but he could see what the android was doing - and more importantly, in between desperate bursts of horrible violence, he'd seen how Plant Man was responding. 

His reactions have gotten slower, his tactics have gotten less sophisticated - and he's making mistakes. He was down for a while that time. It follows that damage he's healed is having an effect after all - His capacity to regenerate isn't unlimited.

And the fire... 

As Plant Man staggered X made a valiant attempt to press the attack, firing his remaining buster in an effort to interrupt whatever the enemy had planned, but a barrage of thorns erupted from the darkloid's shoulders with a thunderous bang, knocking the liberator to the ground.

Kelly ducked under the claws of a swooping chiropteran raptor, blasted a frog-monster out of the air - and finally spotted his staff, lying half-concealed among a patch of thoroughly-trampled foliage. He reached out with his mind and it leaped into his hands, impacting his palms with a satisfying slap. The moment of distraction cost him a lacerated ear and a deep cut on his calf - but it was an acceptable price. The weapon whirled in his grip as he carved himself some breathing room.

I don't think that's the entire solution - I doubt its hot enough to spread quickly in such lush conditions, but I can think of another use for it. 

Plant Man glared at X and raised his hands, gritting his teeth with effort. The android tried to rise, only to be struck again by another barrage of thorns. The earth rumbled, and a tree-root as thick as a bus, trailing dirt and lesser tendrils, began to tear itself out of the ground amidst a cascade of shifting soil. Slowly it rose up, looming over the reploid and the fiery fruits of his labor. 

Monsters scattered. The intent was obvious.

Kelly made his move, escaping in one fell swoop from the tangle of twisted creatures that surrounded him: He leaped skyward and lashed out with his staff, knocking bat-faced eagles from the sky as he covered thirty feet of distance in a single spiraling jump. No sooner had the psychic hit the ground than he shifted his neural processes into faster realms of thought and action. Ivy, ferns and thistles crunched beneath his boots as he made an accelerated dash toward the darkloid commander. 

Plant Man saw him coming. The gargantuan tree-root sagged as its master's attention shifted, and he lashed out with his shrieking vines. Kelly's staff rang, bending alarmingly as he caught and deflected the impacts, the shock of it sending veins of jangling numbness up his arms. 

This is probably unwise. 

He pushed himself further. Already moving a little slowly relative to his accelerated experience, the world ground to a very near halt as he skidded to a stop before the evil android, plants twisting and snapping around his ankles. Even his own motion was painfully slow, unable to keep up with his racing thoughts as he drew back his staff, shifting his grip towards one end and holding it beside his hip in a low stance. He coiled his body like a spring, twisting his hips and his feet, and calculated the angle of impact for what he had in mind.

Other than Kelly, only Plant Man moved, though at a crawl. He hesitated, a look of realization, then horror rippling across his pinched features. His whips began to strike, but the moment of indecision cost him dearly.  

Power flared, flattening the foliage around the psychic's feet, and an invisible psychokinetic construct burst into being around his body, an ethereal catapult designed with one purpose, one action in mind. His quarterstaff flashed, up and around in a vicious twisting arc. 

Barely more than a blur of mahogany and black iron, the staff sheared through the striking vines as though they didn't exist, and impacted with plant-man's shoulder. It kept going, buckling his vegetable flesh clear through to his sternum and shearing his arm off entirely. The sheer impact propelled him backwards and down at an angle, shrieking in disbelief as he hit the earth like a comet, and bounced...

Right into X's merry bonfire. 

 

Kelly used his special move, Combat Acceleration.
Kelly used T1 Super Attack: Oppositional Rotation. 0 Order points remaining. 

1015 words.

[Mega Man X]

The entire forest seemed to reel in shock and fear from Plant Man's screams. The Darkloid burned in agony, his latent wounds scorched shut before he even got a ghost of a chance to mend them. As mutant animals and living trees all descended upon the intruders, their master set about rapidly pulling himself free of the flames.

X had no power to stop the evil Navi from what he was doing, considering how the blue bomber was practically nailed to the ground by buckshot thorns. With another heave of exhausted servos, a good chunk of the spikes snapped loose from X's redoubled shell of armor. The android didn't need any sort of diagnostic systems to tell how damaged and drained he felt- the only fact that pushed him on was the assurance that Plant Man was much the same, and yet even worse.

The Mega Man pushed himself from the earth, leaving the descending shadow of a gigantic root to pursue his quarry. Kelly understood the tension of the situation just as well, and looked to carve an opening for them both.

As the hordes of beasts came upon them, the psychic took hold of the bonfire's smoldering pieces and flung them into the crowd, hoping some fear of fire could be instilled. It succeeded in searing upon the more fluffed and furred of his target, and even set alight the particularly greasy coat of one of the twisted gorillas. X attempted to blast away the rest with his one functional Buster, the other arm having shifted back to a hand for steadier aiming.

"Listen," Kelly ordered, nudging away the android with a mote of his mental power, "Forget about this rabble. We need to finish off Plant Man."

Yes, the traveler was right. The agent of Nebula was by far the source of this battleground- the twisted animals and living plants would surely buckle without their glorious leader. And now that Kelly created a golden opportunity to end this fight, the liberators had to do it now. A fine idiom said to strike while the iron is hot, and this situation was entirely too on-the-nose to pass up.

X tuned on his heel, kicking up loose earth and grass shavings as he rushed after the Darkloid. Predictably, the criminal Navi scrambled off to the far side of the clearing, his once-pristine body now a burnt mess. The Maverick Hunter rattled off several shots, but his weak aim couldn't even hit the evasive plantoid.

With the broad side of his great tree between himself and the intruders, Plant Man rooted himself in the untouched half of the meadow and set about mending himself. But while Plant Man proved to have some life in him yet, his body remained short one arm and his vines bore drooping black ends. Even across the field, Kelly and X could tell how strained the process was, how inefficiently he sucked the life out of the grass and the flowers. By the time he was finished, the liberators stood at the edge of a tiny wasteland 20 meters in diameter. The newly regenerated arm practically fell limp at his side, and the burn wounds were not healed whatsoever.

The damage was still clearly dealt, and the Darkloid couldn't possibly muster another attempt at regeneration after that gross display. X brandished his Buster and held it at the ready, pouring what was left of his battery into preparing another charge shot.

ALERT: Low Power
Core Power Status... 20% charge
Power to MBuster-XVII: 34% use

"It's over, Maverick!" The Maverick Hunter announced, as his profession oft did, "Give up, while you're still able!"

Plant Man, as such terrorists also oft did, started laughing. A deranged, sinister laugh, as he plunged his thorny tendrils into the ground with devious intent. "You think I have no choice but to surrender?" he asked, obviously rhetorical, as the earth began to tremble with movement, "I am the will of this forest and everything within it! I cannot be destroyed!"

Kelly saw the attack coming before it rent the earth below them. He leapt into the air as a dozen lashing vines exploded from the mulch, sending X recoiling in shock. But before the traveler could start falling again, a gigantic falcon tore through the air and slammed into the psychic, throwing off his flight path. The two of them wrestled over each other as X struggled against the mass of vines, shoving his Buster free to unleash one last attack.

ALERT: Low Power
Core Power Status... 15% charge
Power to MBuster-XVII: 47% use
Power-saving mode on.

It was all the android could manage to release that final charge shot, blazing through three of the tendrils and towards Plant Man.

789 words, according to Wordcounter.net. I'm running on creative fumes right now, so my regret is that I couldn't put more effort into this ending.

[Nebula]

As that last blast shredded through Plant Man's torso, all the vines and beasts stopped in mid-air. The hawk harassing Kelly froze, and fell to the ground, its wings frozen as if in shock. The vegetation around his feet was recoiling and withering into dust.

"NO."

The robot gazed in horror at the two Liberators.

"YOU-YOU-YOU CHEA-CHEATED-CHEATED."

The vines slipped off of Plant Man's forearms, growing alarmingly brown, until Plant Man had no arms at all. The dying robot continued to stammer.

"I AM-AM-AM LIFE. YOU CANNOT-CANNOT KILL LIFE. HOW CAN THERE BE NO MORE LIFE?"

The legs withered and unraveled, revealing wires and metal bones. Then the torso began to lose shape, sagging uselessly on the rotting ground. 

"BUT-BUT I WAS PROMISED."

Finally, the head sank deep beneath the bones. X and Kelly stood for a few seconds, their victory palpable in the eerie silence of the forest. The tickling feeling in their bones faded, and leaves from the canopy above fluttered down silently. Strange, one could swear that instead of a sky, there was simply... nothing there. It was as if they were gazing at the ceiling of existence. 

"Let's go," X said, his voice distorted from the damage and low power levels.

The pair turned back. They started limping towards the Gate when a large shriek echoed through the trees, as if the whole world was screaming in pain. The roots they stood on began to snake along the dirt, swirling in a spiral that covered the ground. The spiral caved in, and the vines and roots formed the rough shape of a mouth, nose and eyes.

"NOOOOO MOOOORE LIIIIIFE" the giant floor-face bellowed. 

The mouth opened agape, and a swarm of horrifying half-creatures screamed out of it, wasps with toucan beaks and ladybugs with armadillo shells and sharp pincers. From further within the depths, vines lashed out like a thousand leafy tongues, clearly wishing to drag the Liberators into the mouth. Deep in its maw, the two Liberators could see the same nothingness that blanketed the trees. To add to the horror, the face was rapidly growing in size, already seeming to consist of half a mile of forest floor, and the forest, almost impossibly, was shrinking. 

Good job! You defeated Plant Ma- oh never mind he's the ground now. On top of it all, the realm is collapsing, and he's trying to take you down with him. The ground in front of you is a giant face, and creatures are coming out of its mouth and nostrils (again, up to you what they are), but these animals are less logical and more... jumbled together.

X takes 9 damage, Kelly takes 4.

You have 9 days to post two posts each. Get out of there!

[Kelly MacAryn]

Vines whipped through the suddenly-stale air, grasping wildly at the Liberators' weary limbs as a legion out of nightmares spilled forth from the void beneath the earth.

Kelly turned away from the gaping maw, estimating the location of the gate that had brought him here - quietly hoping that he'd find it open. The traveler plunged towards the rapidly-withering treeline. His hobnailed boots pounded across the writhing blanket of roots that had erupted from the soil. He ignored the viscous squelch of the half-closed hole in his midsection and the growing ache in his head, pushing aside the cloying familiarity of it all and forcing his muscles into coordinated action. He'd made it through the frantic chaos of battle with his body more-or-less intact this time, but his mental reserves had been severely taxed. The psychic doubted he could even bend a spoon right now, let alone more strenuous psychokinetic displays. 

It was an improvement over the outcome at Darkshire, but still less than ideal...

Analyze later. Right now, escape the collapsing pocket-continuum.  

Something slammed into the traveler's back, and all around him rubbery pink orbs hit the ground, bounced and rolled, tentacles lashing and beaks flaring.  Pseudopods wrapped around his neck as a four-lobed, chitinous orifice screamed in his ear. He stumbled and nearly fell, tripping over the shifting ground - and then a vine caught his leg, and he went down, twisting as he tumbled so that the beast on his back took the brunt of the fall. 

The impact seemed to stun it momentarily. Kelly abandoned his quarterstaff, using both hands to haul the misshapen creature of his shoulders and toss it aside. 

Next problem...

The psychic was being dragged back towards the inexorably widening maw of the nothingness that had once been Plant Man, facing an oncoming hoard of biological mistakes. Before his eyes the massive tree that had stood at the center of it all plunged into the gullet of the abyss and vanished; Part of him protested that it shouldn't have been possible - the perspective was all wrong. A swarm of giant hornets with two sets of wings and wriggling human fingers for eyes overtook a group of hobbling tripods that resembled nothing so much as the unholy unions of elephant skulls and enormous buckets of squid. 

X ran past him, damaged components sparking wildly within his ruined azure armor as the megaman affected a sort of galloping limp. He spared a single buster shot to sever the vine around Kelly's ankle.

It would have been a good time for a pithy observation if they weren't both about to die. As it was, the android simply continued his escape while Kelly spun and scrambled, sprinting to catch up as swarms of mutated insects and tumor-riddled bat-winged fish dove towards him, spitting acid and bile against a descending backdrop of nonexistence. 

The scene was well past sinister at this point, firmly in the realm of the surreal. Distances flexed and changed with every passing moment as the empty sky grew lower and soil was overtaken by cancerous tree-roots, strangling each other like the folds of some massive, sinister brain. Kelly leapt over a thing with the shape of a spider and the gaunt, eyeless features of a man, closing the distance between himself and his fleeing ally. Catching up, the psychic grabbed X by the reploid's good arm and began to pull him along, grimacing as something caustic fell from the sky and soaked what was left of his shirt. Wisps of chemical smog stung his nose. 

As the two triumphant Liberators passed the shrinking treeline, the ground shook, accompanied by a massive, shuddering groan. Kelly could feel claws and tentacles tickling his calves through the shreds of his jeans, lashing at the back of his knees and plucking at his shirt. The horde was hot on their heels. 

To either side of them the forest disintegrated, withering like a time-lapse photograph of a perfect ecological disaster - verdant abundance turning brown and brittle, then grey, crumbling as they charged down the path. A group of the vicious masked fetishes that had harried the Liberators on the way into the stronghold ran past screaming, their flesh falling from their bones in calcified chunks. 

A sourceless wind began to howl. The air filled with sand, and the sour, fuzzy smell of mold as the quality of the light turned gangrenous and dim. 

"I think," said Kelly through gritted teeth, not risking even a backward glance as he half-dragged his less-nimble partner, "that this situation may be getting out of hand." 

761 words. (wordcounter)

[Mega Man X]

X was only faintly aware of the pain that racked through his battered form. Damaged components, severed wires, and strained servos all seemed to groan in dull complaint to the android's central nervous system. Being a living machine came with at least of couple of benefits, however, and the most prominent currently would be the ability to tune his own senses on a dime. A lack of pain meant a lack of mental inhibitions and distractions.

Of course, that didn't change the fact of how X was horrifically wounded and struggling to even run at his maximum clonking pace. At least the robot remained in one largely functional piece, for now. If nothing else, it meant he could try and devise a plan while running for dear life.

The problem was that X couldn't think of anything.

Nothing could compare to the nightmare that the Liberators found themselves in. All of the twisted existence around the two fleeing figures seemed to shrink and distort as it died, as if the entirety of this pocket universe intended to collapse into a singularity. The bleak plants and terrifying animals all decayed rapidly as they were drawn closer to the metaphorical event horizon, creating the illusion that X and Kelly were running through space and time to escape their end. No amount of training or simulations could have prepared for this, and the blue bomber found himself at a loss of how to ensure their odds of escape.

"I agree," X replied to his weary partner as he tugged the robot along, "This has definitely gotten out of control."

A giant beetle with human legs and an anteater snout tore through the remnants of underbrush, nearly colliding with the running Liberators. The Mega Man offered a clumsy attempt to swat the chimera away, only to stumble forward as a chunk of earth cracked beneath him. Kelly relented in his escape, sparing a mere moment to turn and yank at his ally's arm with both hands. However, the psychic's own footing began to crumble as well, the ground shifting and loosening as it prepared to fall away into nothingness.

In a moment of doubt, Kelly glanced into the yawning maw of the abyss and witnessed it gaze back in fury. The mutant insect faltered and then fell apart, flesh and hide melting off of it in black-rotted pieces.

A small swarm of insectoids each branding dog heads and different kinds of wings attempted to replace the dying creature. With no intention to stay and let them act, X pushed on the forest floor to desperately force himself upright. The psychic traveler turned again, using his movement to heave the robot's arm like a shotput. Lurching forward, the two of them fought to regain their pace, now with the edge of the world nipping at their heels with every footfall.

As if to prove that yes, it could get worse, the Liberators began to feel the world itself incline. Their battle became an uphill one, as the miniature universe began to dip and sink away into the growing void. The few nightmarish hybrids that still relied on solid ground began to to tumble and slip from the slant of the ground, turning them into victims of the abyss.

Despite the conditions, X couldn't bring himself to be worried about the tilting world. Instead, he feared the living maw of the void behind them, how it seemed to grow against the shrinking world, consuming exponentially more of the pocket dimension at a time. it seemed as if every moment threatened to break apart more and more of the earth until entire yards of the crust would be torn off at a time. Much to the android's dismay, his suspicions were confirmed by the sounds of a large crack coming from up ahead.

Large plates of the earth were breaking apart into islands, the very integrity of the ground as a whole becoming severed. The one the Liberators stood on began to sink and fall away into the waiting, angry face of the abyss. As their hope of an exit began to disappear from view, the two of them both bent their legs and leaped up as high as they could manage, landing on what solid whole of the forest remained.

The robot and human could barely start moving forward again when a new crack resounded. X could practically feel his burning heart drop, the calamity growing too big to keep running from. Thinking fast, the blue bomber's eye-cameras darted to the side and devised a spontaneous plan. "The trees!" he shouted, mustering another leap up into the canopy. Even dying and petrified trees could manage to be reasonably sturdy- they would only need a second each to use them as stepping stools.

Bringing his knees to his chest, X hit the trunk of a former redwood with all fours. Though the bark crunched weakly underfoot, the spine of the tree remained solid enough to withstand the impact. In the next moment, the android twisted his upper body and kicked away from the trunk, landing into another one at an angle. The dance of jumping from tree to tree proved a little awkward, especially for the stiff robot, but it was a necessity. This portion of the earth the Liberators lay in was falling away, and they needed the height of the trees in order to reach the edge.

Without a moment to lose, Kelly followed along, keeping pace with X's macabre acrobatics. Their limbs strained with the effort, but as the horizon they were racing for flew out of sight, they bit through the pain.

939 words - Wordcounter.net

[Kelly MacAryn]

They weren't going to make it. 

The falling section of forest-floor was nearly vertical, and Kelly was fairly certain that only the increasingly unreliability of basic laws of force, distance and time had prevented the entire slab of firmament from breaking off already, plunging him and X into the void along with it. The two Liberators needed to clear the lip of the widening pit before this senescent, demented reality remembered they should be dead, and although they were making progress by literal leaps and bounds the psychic doubted they could cover the remaining distance in time.

A change of approach was needed. 

We need to stop treating these trees like platforms - I doubt they're going to be intact enough to support our full weight for more than a couple more seconds anyway... 

The traveler spared a critical half-second to study the arrangement of disintegrating trunks between him and his goal - and then he resumed his acrobatic ascent, but at a slightly altered angle - aiming not to alight upon a higher trunk, but rather to approach at an angle. 

Kelly bent his knees, twisted his body in the air and kicked off the side of the tree he'd chosen, launching himself higher without pausing or settling. 

"X!" he yelled, sinking to the ankles into sawdust and rot as he impacted the graying ruins of his next waypoint. He felt  it crumble as pushed off, pinballing higher. "Jump reflexively! Don't pause!" 

There wasn't time to look back. The traveler's hair streamed behind him in the wind of his passage, an unbound mess sticky with mud and gore. The pain, though abundant was merely academic, but the dry air felt cold against his wounds. For a couple of seconds, it was nearly peaceful - his goal was simple, the process was clear. All that was left to Kelly was the execution, moving a well-honed body with satisfying precision born of long-accustomed use as he blazed a rapid path to the edge.

One final leap barely carried the traveler up the black wall of a retreating cliff, criss-crossed by broken tree-roots. The toe of his boot caught the edge, and he pushed off, launching himself forward into a sprint across refreshingly flat ground.  

Kelly frowned. The level terrain was the only thing reassuring about his surroundings. Behind him, as though from a great distance, he heard something crumble. 

The forest was gone. The sky was unnervingly black - and seemed lower somehow, felt as though it lacked a sense of depth, descending as he watched. The ground was utterly flat as far as he could see, with no sign that a forest had ever stood there save for the twisted tree-roots beneath the traveler's pounding feet - and even those seemed squashed into a state of fading two-dimensionality.

A single point of green light gleamed on the horizon, flickering softly. 

Kelly risked a look over his shoulder. 

There was Nothing there. 
It was chasing him. 

There may have been another silhouette against the dark, a tiny Something against the void, but it was hard to judge at a glance. 

I guess I'll just have to hope that's X back there. At this point, that's all I can do for him. 

The traveler redoubled his efforts, ignoring the subtle numbness that was beginning to creep into his legs, and the odd stillness in the air. The only sound in the world was the hollow clack of his heels on what had become a non-surface which almost reminded him of the Nexus. 

The portal was growing closer, a circle of withered vines with a welcoming picture in the center, the only source of light in a cancerous reality he'd helped to kill - was it only minutes ago? It felt like he'd been running for days.

Time flowed like half-congealed mollasses. Kelly ran in front of himself, and behind himself, jostling for position with phantoms. He could see X ahead of him, a shadow against the portal's light, but but also off to the side, cast by its brilliance in shades of green. The gate was close, but he could feel a tingle - an almost familiar lack as the last anchors of ontological certainty began to slip away. 

The gate was in front of him. Kelly went through the gate.

He'd just arrived. He saw X go through the gate.

Plant Man Attacked, and Hornet-Man died. 

Kelly alighted on a tree branch. It was a charging Moose. X fired his buster Cannon. 

Kelly went through the gate. 

Kelly lost his staff. He lost his staff again. 

X ripped the lens out of his buster.

Plant Man caught on fire. X's blue armor steamed as caustic fluid ate its way in. 

Kelly went through the gate.

Kelly got stabbed in the stomach.

Enough of this bullshit. 

You've been here before. 

Something happened then, a trick of perspective that Kelly couldn't quite articulate, and he chose to be the Kelly MacAryn that was going through the gate. 

Natural light stung his eyes. The smell of chlorophyll, moss, and stone washed over him. Kelly stumbled and fell on the cool granite floor of the little stone temple at the center of Nebula's deserted base in the Tangled Green. 

 

866 words (wordcounter). 

[Mega Man X]

Just as training entailed. Kick from wall to wall, surface to surface. Climb your way up, always look ahead, be aware of your surrounds, do not hesitate. A series of advice, memories from the past, loaded into X's stream of consciousness. Perhaps it was an attempt to reinforce his ability even by the smallest degree. Perhaps it meant to serve as a distraction from to the living hell descending in depth around him. X couldn't be sure of this himself-

No, rather, he couldn't afford to be sure. Every fiber of his being wanted to escape this place, and to devote any one piece of himself to any objective otherwise would be a waste of time and effort.

The debris of the forest fell away into nothingness as X made his final leap towards the edge of what remained. His left arm swung desperately for the surface, managing to reach over the precipice and hold fast. Commanding his right arm to act, the damaged limb heaved itself up lethargically, fingers twitching with virtual arthritis. The digits dug into the mess of roots and grit nonetheless, letting the android yank his body away from the abyss.

X did not spare a single moment to rest or confirm himself, pushing against the ground and running with all his might. The Mega Man bore no intention of dying, not while other places such as this existed. They needed to be destroyed. This was a responsibility to see through to the bitter end!

Yet how weak could the robot manage to be right now, reduced to nothing but an X-Buster and his own wits? All those upgrades, those accumulations of new equipment and abilities over time swept away in a single moment. How could he afford to defend anyone if he could not defend himself?

The blue bomber's boot hit the ground, and the ground broke away. X lost his balance, stumbled, and hit the ground with his hands. X did not spare a single moment to rest or confirm himself, pushing against the ground and running with all his might.

This had already happened.

The forest around the Liberators was no longer real. Yet X could still somehow observe it, see the animated idols in their last moments against him. He witnessed Hornet man charging, unleashing all his energy into a storm of shockwaves.

The illusions fell away as the android acknowledged them, and the truth became clear. A lone portal, a twisting and unstable vortex, an escape from this nightmare. Earth and sky were naught but mere solid images, meeting in a horizon that bent and stretched. X ran, sprinted through the shrinking tunnel, as if the pocket universe were being sucked through some inter-dimensional straw.

How would he ever make it? Even such a simple ability as the dash boosters would be more than enough- the android would kill to have that back right now!

Plant Man appeared- rather, the images of his vines did. They crept at the edge of X's vision, a silhouette stark against the twisting world he sought to escape. Cries and shouts echoed out from behind, willing the android to give in, to die, to cease his opposition.

His wits would simply have to make do.

In his right arm, the X-Buster formed. Among a nigh-overwhelming glare of red lights in his eyes, another warning appeared.

ALERT: Power Critical!
Core Power Status... 11%

The robot would use it all, if he had to.

One second. The moments stretched to incredible lengths, as the fabric of existence began to tear under the pressure. The alert blared again. Hornet Man buzzed in shrill defiance. Plant Man screamed.

Two seconds. It was now too late. X estimated that at his current rate of travel, it was now impossible to reach the swindling portal in time before it disappeared. Plant Man's voice rang out again, practically begging X to die.

Three seconds. The android bent, and threw himself forward in a last flying jump. He twisted his body around, laying flat, looking back into the abyss. X's cameras stared for a moment too long, and beheld a million gazes in return, the sights of a thousand hands filling his vision.

He took aim. He fired his last shot.

And he prayed the recoil would be enough to send him through the gap.

722 words, 1661 total this round - Wordcounter.net

[Nebula]

As the Mega Man soared through the air, unbeknownst to him, a single vine, like the crooked finger of a cadaver, reached out to him from the base of the "lip." It stretched and wrapped around the android's ankle. With a heart-wrenching jerk, the vine yanked on the android's leg and stopped his forward momentum.
 
Or, it should be said, it did so a long time ago.
 
The escaping version of X was using the recoil from his gun, ducking instinctively in mid-air at the sight of another version of Kelly being strangled by a tree right behind him. Time was slowing down, nearing an end, and the mouth reduced to one part of a lip made of decomposed mammal carcasses.
 
The sky was on top of him now, making him slightly regret taking to the air. But his calculations were absolute. There was no way to run this. Whether his little stunt would save him?
 
Calculations inconclusive.
 
Dammit.
 
But he had thirteen minutes to finish his calculations, he gathered, from the speed that he was moving at.
 
On the other side of the portal, Kelly waited anxiously. There were strange plants he hadn't noticed around the portal that were slowly rotting into dust. Other minions were similarly disintegrating, shrieking as they fell. The psychic eyed them suspiciously, looking out for any Dark-affected minions too big to fully rot quickly enough.
 
Where was X? He was right behind him.
 
Twelve minutes passed. Calculations insisted negative three minutes had passed, and that there were still twenty minutes to go. X didn't notice the discrepancy in his calculations. He was glancing nervously at the encroaching void.
 
Then the portal exploded.
 
Kelly flinched, but no shrapnel studded his body. Whatever it was made of, the opening had simply vanished, despite its explosive destruction. For those who were watching despite the bright light, it would have seemed to have eaten itself, famished for existence. X was nowhere to be seen.
 
The psychic's heart sank.
 
"X?"
 
He stepped forward, tentatively stepping into where the portal was moments ago.
 
"X!"
 
Nobody responded. The forest was its normal, noisy self again. Birds sang, bugs rattled, wildlife brimming the canopy of the forest with noisy life.
 
And from that same canopy dive-bombed the Blue Bomber.
 
On his way down, he collided with two thin branches, turning the wood into dust and splinters as they shattered beneath his metallic frame. The android continued to fall, concerningly fast. Suddenly, the timer on his destination told him he had two seconds until collision.
 
Kelly reached out with his mind and X began to slow down, though not completely stopped. When he landed, it was no longer bone-shattering, but bone-bruising.
 
X stared at the ceiling of the forest, sunlight trickling past the leaves. He blinked once. In one afternoon, he encountered a living tree filled with hundreds of spiders, an army of monstrous half-beasts, and two (very) tough Mavericks. One of them turned into the very Earth, and the universe then ate itself. He saw incomprehensible nothingness, a place where there was not even vacuum. Time itself had slowed in an attempt to kill him.
 
"Ow," X said.
 
Kelly smiled. "Me too."
 
X lifted his head slightly and looked at where the portal had been. He lowered it again.
 
They had won.

Congrats! You destroyed Nebula's army in the Tangled Green and liberated it. Now you can move to another Dark Data thread, or take five and do something else (after all, one of you is missing an arm).

Thanks for being patient, folks.

[Mega Man X]

What an ordeal to go through.

With his left arm and his legs, X scooted himself backward, treading loose dirt under his beaten armor. After about a meter of dragging and pushing with what function he could still get from his limbs, the android finally hit a tree head-first, where he could prop himself up into a sitting position. There, the robot would stop and reflect.

[spoiler]>run diagnosis

Core Power status... 9% remaining
Power Saving Mode - Enabled
MBuster-XVII status... 23% power use
Nano-Regen status... Error - Offline

Major Damage to Right Fore-Arm & Lower Torso
Minor Damage to Right Shoulder & Left Shoulder & Left Knee & Right Knee
Estimated Shell Integrity... 70%

High Priority - Recharge necessary due to low power.
Medium Priority - Repairs required due to substantial damage.

You have [3] new software updates available!
- mimic.exe (Active Variable Weapon System)
- hornetman.exe (unrecognized)
- plantman.exe (unrecognized)[/spoiler]

All things considered, X appeared to rather fortunate. Despite wandering into a war woefully under-equipped, the Mega Man had managed to aid an experienced traveler in eradicating the presence of a powerful, twisted organization. To this, he had much to thank- that very traveler in question, the protection of the Liberator Aid upon his left hand, and perhaps some aspect of quantum physics he was not familiar with. The latter seemed like the only sort of explanation X could muster regarding just how he managed to escape the collapsing Nebula Space the way he did. The first two, however, were self-explanatory.

"How are you doing, Kelly?" X inquired out of polity. "I'm in no condition to keep fighting, at the moment."

The psychic exhaled a breath, then replied, "I feel the same way. I think we deserve a rest." With a creak of his neck, the blue bomber nodded in agreement, but said nothing.

Some time passed. Without the automated recovery system that had been unlocked in Nebula Space, X's only current option for repair would be to operate on himself. The task would not be tedious to the machine if it were simple, but the severity of the damage ensured it would be quite complex. It occurred to X that he could possibly wish for his wounds to be healed simply with Omni's mysterious substance; however, there was no certainly of how long the process would take, or to what degree it would even prove effective.

So the android took another cursory look over the Dataverse, searching for information on potential townships or villages. The one that appeared most prominently, in advertisements and articles alike, called itself Ambrosia. X recognized the name, recalling a sign on a crossroads. Was that where Dr. Regal's assistant had been coming from? The few pictures of the place seen on the Dataverse painted a picture of a cheery, multi-colored, and bizarre town.

The android bore doubts that the citizens bore any ability to repair a complex machine such as himself. If X could simply get a roof over his head, however, he could probably fix himself up safely anyhow- however long that would take.

Regardless of the minute details, the Mega Man solidified his short-term future plans. With this new resolve, the metallic humanoid lifted his left hand, staring at the Liberator Aid strapped over the digits

>run clock starttimer
Timer loaded.
Timer started... [0:00.21]

X began to focus. He closed his eyes, and to the best of his ability, imagined an object to create. The processes of his digital brain worked to fill in each detail, every aspect of the thing he wished to make. Concepts such as the fine smoothness of the material, the firm weaving of the fibers, and the refined finish of the sheet all traveled through his thoughts. As only a machine could do, he mapped out the dimensions to perfectly suit his requirements, ensuring that not a thread would be out of place.

The sensation of a faint weight drifted through the robot's hand, and he seized it as his legs were blanketed.

>stoptimer
Timer stopped. [5:06.58]

X opened his eyes, beholding the traveling shawl he had created for himself. An earthen-red color stared back in prominence, the hem lined with a more defining crimson. Something large to cover up the unseemly scars while on the road. With that, the android leaned forward and hoisted himself up to his feet. Grabbing by the edge of the cloth, X lifted the shawl with his left hand and tossed it over and around his shoulders. Keeping the right arm inactive would help prevent it from damage, but it meant that X had to put in more work to shuffle on the clothing just right. When the fabric sat properly over his pauldrons, the android straightened himself out and turned to Kelly for an

"Let's not stay around here," the blue bomber advised aloud as Kelly turned his attention to him, "It's better that we rest in a proper town." The psychic did not respond at first, sitting on a chunk of ancient wall as if considering some invisible option.

"I appreciate it, but no thanks," Kelly said finally, after some deliberation. "There's some things I want to check before I leave. You can go on ahead." X gave this excuse a curious expression, questioning what exactly the traveler was referring to. Ultimately, he decided it was better not to press the issue. Their job here was done, and whatever Kelly intended to do beyond that should remain none of the Mega Man's business.

X pursed his lips, glancing around the ruins. He spied the gap in the trees where the Liberators had emerged here from, new vines draped over the opening. With slow, plodding steps, the android paced over the old cobblestone, towards the exit.

In the corner of his cameras, past the paused timer and the heads-up of the Liberator Aid, a corpse peeked. X took one more step and stopped, his neck whirring as he glanced at the sight. The body was well beyond rotten, turned dark and nearly picked clean by the elements. A large hole sat in the neck, where some object had penetrated it.

Steve.

"How long were we in that place?" X wondered, although he hadn't meant to do so aloud. If their escape had truly distorted time itself...

"I've noticed," Kelly began to speak, regarding the android's fears, "Here in the Omniverse, time seems to dilate in certain ways." Mega Man X was utterly perplexed by this observation, and when he turned side to look to the psychic, he continued, "I can't say for sure why, but I think it has something to do with the activity in certain areas. The more dramatic an occurrence, the more time bends around it."

The 300-year-old machine tried to make sense of this. After several moments, he gave up on using any sort of scientific explanation for it. The strange, twisted nature behind the Omniverse and its laws were becoming all too apparent- and the implications following them seemed even worse. "Are you suggesting that the people of the Omniverse all have some unconscious ability to distort time?" X inquired.

Kelly did not answer.

"We could've been in that space for months-" the robot hypothesized, trying to grasp the full scale of what was being revealed to him.

"It's probably better you didn't think about it," the psychic suggested.

"What about those people we tied up?" X asked, fearing the worst. "What about Steven?"

"X."

The android paused, locking eyes with Kelly. A softening quiet brewed between them, and X took the advice, throwing away his hypothetical thoughts. Finally, X mustered the ability to say something, "They didn't deserve to die."

Kelly's silence spoke volumes. After another moment, he offered a last response, "Sometimes, it's all you can do just to save yourself. And right now, your power core is flickering. If you're not careful, you might need saving."

X thought about this for a short while, then decided he would stop thinking for the time being. Right now, he had to act. The robot turned away, the ends of his cloak floating briefly on a small breeze. "I'm going to check on them."

"Go ahead." For how much the psychic seemed not to care, there might've been a hint of encouragement in his voice.

The blue bomber could not be certain of this. Whatever the case, Kelly deserved proper regards. Looking back one more time, X announced, "I'm glad we could work together. Should we meet again sometime in the future, I hope we can join forces once again."

Kelly once again said nothing. The android did not wait for a verbal response, and simply clomped out of the ruins and into the lush tangles of the forest again.

X is departing from this thread into Ambrosia, where he can rest up and hopefully jump into another Dark Data event before long.

[Kelly MacAryn]

Kelly watched as the battered reploid pushed his way through the curtain of mosses and vines that concealed the rocky crevice which had granted them access to this cluster of hidden ruins, and disappeared into the narrow passage that lay beyond. The truth was, he had enjoyed working with X as well. The artificial warrior was skilled, competent and determined, with an acute tactical sense that had enabled the two of them to co-ordinate easily using only few words: in short, the ideal partner for a lightning-raid on a cancerous pocket-reality. 

There was more he would have liked to say to his erstwhile ally - contact information for one; a warrior of X's caliber was a useful sort of person to know. However, around the time they'd begun to discuss the darkspawn that the two of them had left tied up in the woods Kelly had begun to lose his ability to focus on the conversation; the moment he'd emerged from Nebula's collapsing gateway his extrasensory perceptions had returned in force, expanding further, into realms of pure thought - and an awe-inspiringly complicated process had started unfolding in his brain. 

It was slow, at first: a long-disused engine meshing its gears for the first time; a mighty assembly of frozen thoughts, structures, and associations grinding into purposeful motion under the stimulus of sudden telepathic feedback from X's neural network. As the cascade accelerated lights began snapping on in the darkened aeries of Kelly's shrouded mindscape, brilliant beacons in the fog, and by the time X began to say his farewell, his presence was largely eclipsed by the awakening taking place inside the psychic's own head. 

Wind whispered through the canopy that crowned the rock-face surrounding the clearing, bringing with it the smell of wet leaves and stones in the sun. Standing on the barren concourse between two crumbling, tree-spotted, terraced pyramids, the traveler pushed tangles of filthy hair away from his battered face with both hands, sweeping it back behind his ears. He gathered his thoughts, and sat down atop a stray block of weathered granite.  

The forest, the rocks, the clearing, and the ruins all fell away. Kelly was overcome by a feeling of emergence, as though he'd been wandering on the bottom of a deep, dark ocean, and all of a sudden he'd been thrust into the noonday sky, hovering above the waves. What was unfolding within him was more than just the power of telepathy; it was the associated knowledge, and the labrynthine structures of posthuman consciousness than came with it. 

The traveler understood, now, how he'd put established his haunt; how he'd fashioned the partition in his mind that processed danger and dealt with pain. He could see and understand the purpose and structure of his own psychic defenses - and glimpse the shadow of still-indecipherably complex mental forms interleaved within them. 

Even the churning wall of intangible mist that formed much of his history had grown less indistinct. With his returning insight into psychic matters, he could see patterns within the gyre, illuminated beneath the unforgiving gaze of his re-opened third eye. 

This isn't a matter of losing my internal index - its the opposite. Everything is misfiled: out of sequence, and a lot of the information is in formats I  still have no context for - missing senses, missing thought-forms. 

And there's SO damn much of it... 

Outside of his head,  Kelly was utterly still. A bird with long, radiant plumage, green and red and blue, landed on his battered shoulder and whistled twice. It began to pick at a twig stuck in his mud-and-gore-crusted hair with a long purple beak. 

Within the psychic's skull, days and weeks flashed before his mind's eye. He could still parse only brief impressions from his Reign, the pluripotent sense of deja-vu that the Darkchip fiasco inspired gnawing at him like a sneeze that refused to come; His centuries wandering, however, had grown clearer, the sections of continuous experience expanding, towers of clarity solidifiying within the roil like columns of dimly glowing crystal.

He remembered spending a year in a reality on the brink, alternately operating that world's only bookmobile and sabotaging a series of increasingly desperate attempts by the leaders of two large countries to start an apocalyptic war between their nations; He recalled two months stuck working on a railway chain-gang in the Republic of California: inhumanly strong and bulletproof, though without his pyschokinesis, but grateful for the isolation after a still-hazy bad time; He remembered learning the basics of defending his mind, frantically improvising while trapped on an desert planet ruled by six-lobed telepathic ammonites. 

Bit by bit, scattered across centuries, about twenty years filled themselves in - but though there were holes in it now, windows of clarity, the mist remained. Kelly's origins lay in shadow, and his recent pre-Omniverse history clawed and howled at the walls of its cage - but he knew a little more than he did before, and he was beginning to see a pattern.

The more powerful my mind becomes, the more of my past I'm capable of piecing together. I don't think its the entire solution - but even just getting back all of my wandering years would go a long way towards explaining why I am the way I am. All I need to do is continue to grow.  

As for the rest of it... that, I think, will require either a major push from a fresh, simmilar experience, or repeated, dedicated meditation. 

The psychic's eyes snapped open. The bird on his shoulder launched itself into the sky, startled by the sudden motion. 
All around him the forest teamed with life and energy - the heat of the sun on the pyramids, the concourse and the little stone temple, the electrochemical glow of a macaque's nervous-system, and the buzz of ten million tiny insect minds.

Kelly's hair, jeans, and every inch of exposed skin were filthy with caked-on mud, dried blood, plant debris, and sticky purple ichor. His shirt was in tatters, and completely leaving aside his multitudinous cuts and bruises, there was still a small, jagged hole in his midsection. 

I think that before I do anything else, I need to take a shower. 

And I think that is pretty much that. This thread, as they say, is a wrap.