Zone C -- Megacity One

[Handsome Jack]

Now that my insides aren't cooking anymore, I drag myself over to the Syntech crate that had been parachuted in to see what kinda goodies might be inside. Taking hold of the lid, I pry the hard plastic shell open and excitedly peer inside. Hate to say it, but I spent the next few minutes trying to find the REST of it before giving up with a sigh. Karl Jak sure knows how to disappoint a guy.

Flopping down onto the night-air cooled asphalt, I figure this is as good a place to sleep as any. But before my eyes can close...

“So... you just gonna lay down there and die, boy?”

Gero. I forgot he throw a radio in me with these tattoos. I sigh before I answer him.

“And what exxactly is going to kill me, Popss? Afraid I'll catch my death of cold lying under the sstarss?”

“Not quite,” he replies. “Just concerned that you haven't entered a Safehouse yet and your collar is set to explode in... oh... a few hours.”

“Oh, no big de- Wait... what?”

“It's becoming increasingly difficult to continue to acknowledge that I made you...” I hear him mutter before he explains himself. “You didn't pay attention at all, did you? You collar will explode at midnight, boy. Unless you make haste to a Safehouse. Sooooo... go ahead an lie in the middle of the street, I don't care anymore. If you're too stupid to actually read the rules, I'm done talking to you.”

With that the line goes dead, but I'm already on my feet and, after quickly checking the direction on my tablet, making haste to the Safehouse. Also pretty pissed Pops called me stupid, but it's my own fault this time. Ain't really even pissed at him (well... ok, yeah I am); mostly just at myself.

Moving from C16 to C21

[Handsome Jack]

Apparently, my destination is some kind of big ol' office building in the center of the city. The tablet lets me know I'm heading in the right direction, but with all the large buildings around I'm not sure if... Oh wait. There it is. The tallest, gaudiest building in the area. Of course. Near the apex, large golden letters proclaim it to be the 'Drumpf' Tower. I don't know who this Drumpf guy is, but he sounds like a huge chode. Like the kinda guy who would run for election on promises of jailing his opponents and building an unfeasible wall.

I put my imagined toupee'd man out of mind and focus on the task of getting to safe ground before my head is popped like the cork from a wine bottle. I mean... I could PROBABLY heal from it (thanks Piccolo), but it'd hurt like hell. Actually... I decide to look that shit up. As much as I hate to say it, Pops was probably right about me not paying enough attention. All I saw was, “get items, win game” and ignored everything else.

First thing I notice is that I only win if I get these... “quest items”. Well... fuck. And how the hell am I supposed to... Oh wait. He tells us when he's dropping one. Aaaaaaaand... I missed the first one. Fuck my life.

Second thing I notice is that I sure as hell CAN'T heal from an exploded head. Some kind of magical Syntech mumbojumbo. Guess Pops was right to get on my ass about dipping into a Safehouse.

Last thing I notice is that Karl Jak posted some kind of “ranking” for the people participating in his little game. I scroll through it. Don't really recognize any of these names until I happen upon my own. And wouldn't you know it, just like my Pops, Karl Jak knows just how to piss me off too. Fortunately, I'm at my destination, so I duck inside and start writing up a reply to the jackass.

Moving from C21 to Safehouse C

[Karl Jak]

End Day 1

Begin Day 2 – Early Morning

[Corporal Light]

Woah…

He had exited the tunnel an hour ago. It had weirded him out how he had been able to get from a reasonably high altitude all the way to ground level just by traversing the innards of the mountain, but he couldn’t complain. It was a shortcut, and it had definitely saved him days of travel time. But as he passed through a final forest and into Zone C, he had to stop to admire what he saw.

In front of him was a massive, desolate city. Gigantic, glittering skyscrapers pierced the heavens, blue and silver in coloring. Abandoned cars laid strewn all over the dull, cracked roads. There were stores, gas stations, warehouses and office buildings on every corner. He likely would have been able to see more of the city from the small hill he stood on if it wasn’t for the wispy, silvery fog blocking his vision. In the distance, he could hear the waves of the ocean scrape against the coast, pounding into it with the ferocity of a wild animal savaging its prey. But aside from the beat of the coastline waters, the entire city was as silent and as a cold as a corpse. And this corpse looked like it had been picked clean long ago. Nothing but the wind, the fog, and the sea inhabited this place.

Something had happened that sent every poor soul in the city packing. For the first time in his life, Clarke felt completely, totally alone.

Taking a deep breath, holding his torch in front of him to ward off the cutting wind, he entered the city.

He found himself walking on a broken up sidewalk with no other aim other than to find Zone C1. He passed by tall lampposts with their golden lights turned off and the green paint on their poles flaking off at the seams. He entered trash-filled alleyways with graffiti of various insignias and gang-signs decorating the brick walls of the buildings. The fog never dissipated; in fact, it only seemed to grow thicker and all-consuming as he moved deeper and deeper into the old relic that was once a thriving megalopolis.

Eventually, his tablet vibrated again. He inspected it. He was in Zone C1.

Satisfied, he looked up into the sky. Past the mist, the sun was coming up in the cyan sky, but there was no sign of any item drop.

Looks like I gotta wait a little bit longer...

He sought out a place to rest up. Somewhere in a large, open area and where he could more easily look up into the sky to see the item drop down. After a bit of searching, he found a Filler-Up Station. Cars parked alongside rusted up, brownish gas tanks, with a massive, phony advertisement sign of a man from the 1960s leaning up against his shiny, brand new car hanging from the roof of the station, it was more than suitable for his task. He entered the joint.

Passing through fallen shelves, clouds of dust accumulated from seemingly years of abandonment, leaving it derelict and devoid of any life, he moved to the back of the station. A ladder stood attached to the wall, rust covering the handles but otherwise looked intact. He climbed up the ladder and moved onto the rooftop.

Seating himself next to a defunct air conditioner unit, he stared up into the sky and began the waiting game. That item would drop eventually, and when he did, he was going to nab it.

Team Space Man (Isaac) --- In C1, waiting for the Item Drop.

[Karl Jak]

End Day 2 – Early Morning

Begin Day 2 – Morning (6 AM to 12 PM, since people were discussing this in the box recently)

This phase ends at 4:30 CDT on June 20th

[Corporal Light]

As luck would have it, he didn’t have to go very far to get the item. In fact, he didn’t have to go anywhere at all.

He had looked up into the sky after finishing up one of his tofu cakes that he had received as a ration absentmindedly, half-expecting to see a box with a balloon attached to it floating in the breeze towards a warehouse close by or something. He hadn’t been prepared for a massive, metal package to plummet towards the rooftop, blotting out the sun on the way down.

He scrambled out of the way of the oncoming care package. The box careened into an air conditioner unit, flattening it with an ear-splitting crunch. The building rumbled for a few moments , the force of the impact destabilizing the derelict gas station before the shockwave subsided.
 
A part of him had to wonder what kind of present Jak and his friends would have had inside such a thing that would require it to be put inside something as heavy and armored as the thing they had sent down. Careful, so as not to invite another potential quake, he walked up to the box. One side of it had caved into the dusty air conditioner unit, causing the other to stick up into the air like a flagpole. It had grooves along every corner of the box, with two handles attached to the sides for ease of lifting. Gripping the handles, he steadily pulled the box out of the whitened unit and set it down with a shallow clunk.

He brushed away some layers of dirt that had coated the lid upon landing, revealing the neon-green Syntech logo and a crimson button. Cautious, he tapped the button.

He flinched as the lid popped open, steam shooting out from the sides. Machinery whizzed and whirred as a small, black platform rose from inside, revealing its contents: a single, silvery piece of papyrus, and a red cylinder with a long string of wick attached to one end.

He frowned. He had expected some armor, or perhaps a more obvious looking weapon. This was just a note and what looked like a candle. He grabbed the note, bringing it up to his face to read it.

“Congrats! You’re the honorary DYNAMITE KID! Go get ‘em, boy/girl/alien/troll/thing. XOXO - Karl Jak.”

His eyes widened. Humans hadn’t used stuff like dynamite in ages, as plasma energy and more efficient and stable chemicals had rendered black powder next to useless in modern times. No wonder it was inside such a heavily sealed package; the last thing Karl and his goons would want is to have the thing explode in their contestants face upon opening the box.

He reached for the explosive stick, wrapping his fingers around it with the care of a father comforting a fragile baby. He slipped open his knapsack and slithered the dynamite inside. Hopefully nothing would ignite the wick and make the thing blow up.

He sighed. Mission accomplished, he just got his first item. Now to find about a million more.

He almost pissed his pants upon feeling his knapsack vibrate. Opening it up, he saw that his tablet had picked up another item drop somewhere else in Zone C, with the specific location being C8. It had also pinpointed drops in Zone B and a rather close one in Zone E and D.

He briefly considered traversing the oceans o Zone D and the mountains of Zone E to get to those items, but quickly decided against it. As much as he loved his RIG, it wasn’t THAT well suited for travel, and he would much rather try to investigate an abandoned, post-apocalyptic city of old than the chopping floodplains or the snow-covered mountains.

He slid down the ladder, careful not to jostle his bag too much, and set forth to C8.

Item Obtained! (DYNAMITE)

Team Space Man (Isaac) --- Moving from C1 to C2.

[Corporal Light]

The road he had decided to follow had swerved upward into a highway, supported by massive pillars underneath the concrete that served as the ground he walked on. Cars laid motionless, parked end to end in a line that stretched deeper and deeper into the city. Out of curiosity, he had looked into a few of them. Brown leather seats, checkered dice hanging over the rear-view mirror, flapping in the wind as the breeze rang hollow in the air and through the open windows. They were the most vintage vehicles of the vintage vehicles, and he only found more of them as he traversed the highway. Grime-covered billboards with garish scratched paint loomed overhead, advertising various products with an overly cheery style. Cartoonish men, women and children with gigantic, plastic smiles over a grainy, filmy green hill with a perfectly proportioned maple tree on the top of it, ostensibly promoting hair products or cars or something else no one was around to actually buy. He half expected to hear the faint, hypnotizing spell of smooth jazz to erupt from the radios of any of the cars he walked past at any given second.

He was like a time traveler, observing the past from the mindset of the future. The overly lavish and bright shell of what appeared to be a fun and happy era of careless materialism and the enjoyment of being alive, now reduced to nothing more than a stained, filth-ridden carcass. He wondered what it was like when the city had people in it, when the corpse he was desecrating of its goods was alive and well. He could just imagine the sounds and the sights: the jazz, the rhythm of the white-collar worker on commute, the honking of car horns, the orange glow of the street lights as night fell over the silver skyscrapers, the sudden stillness as all noise ground to a halt, as if the city itself had gone to sleep with its citizens. As he looked around, he could see and hear it all.

But there was no time to dwell. He had to keep moving and focus on the item drop. He kept following the cars, descending down as the highway reached a tipping point and formed a hill right into the heart of the city.

Team Space Man (Isaac) -- Moving from C2 to C20

[Karl Jak]

End Day 2 - Morning

Begin Day 2 - Afternoon (12 pm to 6 pm)

This phase began 3 hours ago and will run until 430 PM CDT on June 21st

[The Future Warrior]

In a flash of light, the colosseum was gone. Graowr blinked once, looking around in a daze, trying to register where she'd ended up now. "Where...?" All of the windows and glass soon enough alerted her. "Oh! The safehouse in the city again!" she exclaimed, hopping up to her feet and rushing over to one of the windows. She peered out of it curiously, looking out over the city for a good little while. "How long...was that fight?" It looked like a lot of time had passed, the sky having gone from late evening to late morning in seemingly the blink of an eye. It had only felt like a few minutes at most, but...wow. Time sure did fly!

She turned away from the window, scurrying toward the doors of the place and bringing a hand to her chest to reach in and pull out her tablet again. Thankfully, despite the stress of the fight, it wasn't damaged. She turned it on, flipping through various little updates and this and that. Item drops, notifications of fights and which ones had been claimed. Only one of them was left, at the moment. "Just one left...and it's pretty close by!" She nodded to herself. It was in a direction she hadn't gone yet, so this was going to be a double opportunity.

She shoved the tablet back into place and dusted herself off, righting her scarf and tugging her gloves back on tight as she dashed away, headed for the main entrance. She passed Cell, who she gave a dirty look. She also passed Archer, who she didn't pause to talk with, but her head did snap around and pull a one eighty to face him as she ran. "Hey! You were pretty good up there! Maybe we can fight again, sometime! See ya!" And in a flash, she was gone, out the door and into the fog and mists of the city.

Graowr: Moving from Safehouse C to Sub-Zone C21

[Sterling Archer]

Following the fancy light show, I found my self once again teleported forcibly on the Nausea Express, this time entering the station with a good deal more baggage. Both in physical gift form and in painful head-scrambling form. The things I do for entertainment. Both mine, and the audience at home.

“Well, good to ssee you again,” a familiar voice rasped. I sat up and glanced groggily across the room at the large roachman from back at the Colosseum. “Or it would be, if you hadn’t blasted half of my fucking face off.” He spasmed as he finished the sentence, electricity arcing across his bug armor.

I smirked sheepishly, rubbing the back of my head. “Yeah, I did do that huh? If it makes you feel any better, Gumby gave me one hell of a bell-ring.” I received only a one-eyed glare in response. “Iiii’m guessing that doesn’t help. Well hey, you did try to blow me up with ball of light and stab me with your weird tail thing.”

At that moment, the third member of our brawl dashed by, cheerily spinning her head around like that girl in The Exorcist and bidding us good tidings. It is impossible to make things like this up.

“She lookss cheery,” Cell noted, bringing a clawed hand gingerly to his eye. “Pleasse tell me you broke ssomething of herss.”

“I shot her and pistol-whipped her a bunch,” I recalled. “But she’s LITERALLY made of rubber or something. Hard to actually break anything.” I pulled out my tablet and ran a quick scan of the perimeter, noting an item somewhat closeby. “Say, there’s an item in the direction she’s going. Wanna head in that direction too? From what these updates say it looks like everyone is more or less roving in packs. Plus, what would be more interesting to the viewing audience than the three of us buddying up?”

Cell paused for a moment. “Ssure.”

"Alright, but you gotta cover up that hole. It's absolutely horrific to look at."

Buddying with Cell and moving from Safehouse C to C21 to meet up with Graowr.

[The Future Warrior]

Her energetic rush of movement carried her out of the safehouse in a blur and for a good few blocks before it petered out. Much as no lasting damage had been done up in the colosseum, she still hurt from it all. In fact, pretty much her everything was sore. It forced her to slow down from an all-out run to a brisk jog, wincing now and then as she went. Eventually, even that bled away, leaving her to just stumble along to a stop. "Ow ow ow..." One hand came up to massage at the side of her head where she'd been shot. "...stings a lot...when did guns and stuff get so strong?"

The dull pain spreading out from the shotgun blasts she'd taken wasn't helping either. She didn't have lungs to be damaged or make her breathing labored, but still...she was feeling the effects of it all. Like being short of breath. She took the opportunity to rest and let the pain ease off, sitting down on a damp bench on the roadside and checking her tablet and map again. She was definitely headed in the right direction, at the least! At this pace, she should be able to get there before the sun hit noon!

...of course, her pleasant mood was interrupted by a sudden hissing voice calling out "Sspotted her!" and the swift approach of more than one pair of footsteps.

She sprang up, flipping back over the bench and landing in a protective, defensive crouch, peering through the fog warily. Her eyes first landed on the towering, green form of Cell, leering at her with one eye. Shortly following after him, looking somewhat unsteady, was Archer. "It's you guys again!" she said after a moment. "Were you...following me?"

"Oh, uh...yeah. I guess you could say that," the not-so-secret agent offered as he jogged up into easier talking range. "Whoo...gimme a second. Give her the spiel, bug-man..."

Cell's one remaining eye narrowed, turning to focus on the majin. "Sso, let'ss make thiss short..." he started. "...item drop just up ahead. Lot of people around the island teaming up. We don't wanna roll alone. And it'd be a good show for the folkss at home if we joined up."

The majin seemed to be considering this, her eyes darting from one of her former opponents to the other several times. "....well..." Finally, she straightened up, back to a regular standing posture. "...okay then! I guess there is safety in numbers, in a place like this! Until we have to fight again in the Colosseum or get separated or something, we can work together!" She did lift a hand to point at Cell. "Gonna be keeping an eye on you, though."

"Real fuckin' ffffffffUNNY!" the insect-man snarled, his voice rising into a frantic hiss of pain as electricity arced across his body, leaving him sizzling and smoking.

"Great! Then let's go, the item's this way!" She brought her tablet up to check, spinning around to point off in the proper direction, and breaking off into a brisk run.

"Does she ever run out of energy?" Archer puffed as he started after her.

"Thiss was your idea," Cell reminded him, loping along after.

Teamup: Colosseum Bros (Archer, Cell, Graowr)
Moving from C21 to C17

[The Future Warrior]

Silence was the predominant and prevailing aspect of the new group's companionship for a good while. It wasn't until the largest of the buildings, towering and looming overhead, started to become more infrequent and grow shorter, that someone finally spoke up to break the silence. And it was Archer. "Do you actually have any idea where we're going?"

"Of course! The map said it was just up ahead, here!" Graowr answered. "I just checked it a minute ago!"

"That was ten minutess ago," Cell rasped, shaking his head. "We're probably going in ccircless..."

"Hey!" The small blue creature's head snapped around to stare at the giant green cockroach indignantly. "I just checked the map again!" She held her tablet up, tapping at it for emphasis. "And it says we're going the right way! The item drop should be just up ahead!"

"Hey, hey, hold on here! Let's not get riled up." Archer shuffled up ahead to get in between bug-man and gum-girl, holding up a hand to each of them. "Not gonna find it without a clear head, okay?"

Cell just gave a dismissive grunt, stalking on ahead with his long stride and muttering something under his breath.

The azure demon's head just slowly swiveled around to watch him go. "Yeah. I guess so. We're supposed to be working together and stuff." She nodded, looking back down at the map. "But with all these buildings around here how are we gonna find where the item landed?"

"They come crasshing in by air drop!" Cell shouted back. "Look for the crater. Or a building with a hole in it."

"Talk about convenient, huh?" the secret agent just shook his head at the absurdity of it.

"It does make it pretty easy, I guess! Let's get looking!" And she stowed her tablet away again, dashing off with a burst of renewed energy to commence her search, bounding away and leaping up for the rooftops to scour from there.

"What'd I get myself into...?" Archer groaned, hustling on ahead to do his best at searching from the ground.

Teamup: Colosseum Bros (Archer, Cell, Graowr)
Moving from C17 to C8
Searching for item drop

[Corporal Light]

He was getting the feeling he had unintentionally entered the seediest part of the city. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time he had stumbled across that sort of thing while living in the metropolises of the colonies. He once had to ask for directions to a CEC corporate building from  the owner of a strip club back on the New Horizon Colonies, a situation he had made a point to try not to get into after that ordeal. And yet, here he was, stumbling his way through the dusty ruins of a 1950s capitol city, and now traversing its underbelly. It was either that, or the classy exterior that had pervaded everything up until that moment was merely a guise for what the city was truly like within.

The skyscrapers that had been small, seemingly miniscule things that served only as paint to the background of the abandoned city had increased exponentially in size until they stood, towering over him at every turn. The gas stations and warehouses had been replaced with apartments and offices of various sizes, each with the flair and pizzazz of a washed-out, grey shoebox. The graffiti that vandalized the alleyways had become more frequent and, much to Isaac’s distress, more evangelical in nature, spouting off quotes from several different religious scriptures, most of which he had never even heard of before. He passed by neon signs detailing pictures for bars and the legs of scantily-clad women hung over pubs and strip clubs. He considered checking them out, if only to see what a strip club from the 1900s actually looked like back in the day, but quickly decided it would just be a waste of his time.

Yet despite it all, he just couldn’t get over the silence. He should have been hearing the sound of a saxophone blaring in the streets, the faint pounding of kick drums and club beats from the nightclubs, the rhythmic taps of the citizens as they went about their daily lives. That’s how literally every history book described life back then: a day full of busy work, and a night full of fun.

Perhaps it was less history and more a result of him getting overly-excited about something as mundane as a car, or a pub, or the footsteps of the crowd on commute. It was like space, in a sense: it was completely outside human control, perception, or any real “knowledge.” All humans had were relics, treasures from the past with no real context to them aside from the context we gave to them. The picture formed in the process could have been entirely wrong, but no human could ever be sure. But it wasn’t just that. At least space had meaning. It was the void ships used to travel from planet to planet. The past, however, had no inherent meaning to it, no real “value” to it that could be measured. It relied on human’s thirst for knowledge, their natural curiosity, to be significant in the face of the future, of ambition. Without that, it meant nothing, and could be forgotten with ease.

Most past things could, anyway.

He brushed the thought out of his mind and continued on.

Team Space Man (Isaac) -- Moving from C20 to C21

[Sterling Archer]

“So you’re less an alien and more a...robot?” I inquired, clicking a pair of magazines into my MP 40.

“Don’t lump me in with thosse ssoullesss losserss, thiss iss all natural,” Cell replied, running his ebony nails across his chest in a way I was not entirely comfortable with. “What part of ‘bio-android’ are you not undersstanding?”

“The core concept, obviously.”

“So...” Graw muttered, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “You’re not a big ol’ buggy?”

Our tenuous alliance had moved through the vacant city streets toward our goal, eyes on our respective scanners. I, myself, wasn’t entirely convinced that the potty-mouthed xenomorph wouldn’t turn on us at any second, though if he did I had a pair of shells cocked and ready on the chance I’d need to offer him another facehole to match. The gummy gal on the other hand seemed to be remarkably positive about the situation, acting like a schoolyard child who had just been playfighting with a classmate.

“Hey, put these on,” I said, offering the insectoid a pair of dusty shades I had swiped from the safehouse. “That meathole is distracting.”

“Pah, like you can complain,” Cell snapped, snatching the aviators from my grip. “All you got wass a widdle headache.” He slide the sunglasses over his face, struggling to get the nose piece to rest on his rounded beak. “Better?”

I glanced at the macabre sight of mangled strips of pallid flesh dangling beneath the teardrop lenses, the tinted glass only barely obscuring the scorched hole. “Not at all. But...it’s different?”

“You look so cool!” Graw piped in, flashing a thumbs up. The viridian roach seemed less than convinced, despite her enthusiasm.

“Whatever. At leasst thesse are Dredd Shadess, ‘Ssunglasssess fit for a Judge’.  Only 5,000 Creditss, shipped Omniversse-wide. Available at your local MaxiMart and wherever premium apparel iss ssold.”

Just chatting. Still awaitin' dat item drop.

[MADBULL34]

The brawny cop passed through the edges of the oceanside wilderness, finally reaching the outskirts of Mega City One. He took a pause to catch his breath and take in the enormity of his new surroundings. The tough-as-nails lawman had spent a solid span of time along the sea, but his tanned face welcomed the sight of this concrete jungle.

Cautiously, the seasoned law enforcement officer began to walk along a main thoroughfare, his heels clacking against the pavement. The city was quiet, eerily quiet. The cop paused, the leather of his hip-holster squelching with the abrupt stop. His fingers lightly drummed on the wooden handle of his Smith & Wesson revolver, like a desperado standing in the barren main street of Dodge at high noon. Unlike the ocean and its surrounding wetlands, it seemed unnatural for the city to remain so empty. He felt uneasy, but waved away the moment’s hesitation then continued to walk briskly forward.  His eyes darted to and fro beneath the shade of his policeman’s cap, though not a single soul could be found.

City streets were like rivers, bisecting the deep canyons of tall buildings, all flowing to a central point at the heart of the metropolis where the towers touched the skies. Mad Bull grimaced at the discomfort he felt while traversing the empty sidewalk. A city was meant to feel alive, powered by the pulse, ambitions, transgressions and licentiousness of it's inhabitants. Devoid of living and breathing denizens, the area seemed a husk shed by Mankind; it was a discarded skin left only for carrion like him and the other Primes to fight over.

The longer he stared into Dante's Abyss, the more it's true emptiness stared back at him. The vapid, vile exploits of killers matched against killers was to be the droll pleasure of a faceless mass, administered by an equally faceless architect. Mad Bull's jaw clenched, his simple mind struggling to come to terms with this revelation.

Mad Bull moves from D3 to C2

[The Future Warrior]

"And so you, you're some kind of..." Archer started again after a few minutes of silent searching, glancing over at the shortest, gummiest member of their impromptu little alliance.

"I dunno, really!" Graowr responded with a shrug. "I guess I'm like some kind of magical demon-genie thing made from evil magic? Except I'm not evil! It's complicated and really weird, and it happened a long time ago!" She looked up at the sky, not that she could see it all that well through the perpetual shroud of fog. "I don't really remember much about how I was born or created or whatever, so I try not to think about it much."

Archer just pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah...sounds like a real fun story, alright, no doubt about it."

"And I thought my family hisstory was sstrange," Cell muttered. "But you take the cake, blueberry. Congratulationss."

"Oh, uh...yay?" She seemed honestly confused, blinking a few times. "I like cake, so that's pretty cool that I took it, but...where'd I take it from? I don't remember doing that."

A sudden smack-slap echoed through the empty city streets as secret agent and bio-android both introduced their palm to their respective faces.

"What?" The majin just stumbled to a stop, looking from one of them to the other. "What'd I say?"

"Nothing, nothing, just...don't worry about it. Please, don't." Archer held up both hands. "Let's just focus on finding that item drop. It should be around here—"

"Oh, think I found it!" Graowr exclaimed, looking down at her tablet and back up to a nearby building and dashing off in a blur.

"—some...where..." the secret agent trailed off, watching the blue girl run off. He glanced down at his tablet map and shrugged. "Yeah, okay, I guess it's that way."

"Plan to keep ssiting around and let her get all the good sstuff?" Cell rasped, leaping into action and blurring out of sight after the shortest, most energetic member of their group.

Archer didn't even give that one a response, just lurched into movement after the other two.

They both came upon Graowr rummaging through things, several boxes and assorted containers draped under a parachute of deep purple. "It's in one of these..." she mumbled to herself, discarding another one.

"Maybe the one the parachute's attached to?" Archer supplied helpfully.

"...oh! Yeah, that would make sense!" She shoved the majority of the objects aside, following the lines of the parachute down to a box. And without circumstance, she pried the lid off of it. "Let's see what we got!" A moment later, she was holding up...something that made both Cell and Archer recoil, a look of equal disgust on their faces. "Found it!" the blue gal said happily, hopping back up to her feet. "What...is it, though?"

"Ssomething that should likely never ssee the light of day..." the bug-droid hissed, looking away.

The agent just took a step back, shaking his head. "Let's just say it's better you don't know. Just don't let it get near anything you think is particularly valuable. The smell might rub off."

"Oh. Okay!" Cluelessly, the majin tore off a section of the parachute and bundled up the contents of the item drop in it, before depositing it in her backpack. "Alright! Let's get going again, then!"

[Corporal Light]

He licked his tongue along the surface of his parched lips, sucking every last bit of moisture from the arid skin. Concentrated pulses of pain pounded the sides of his head that no amount of teeth clenching or eye shutting could ward off. Despite the suffocating heat inside of his RIG, he didn’t sweat. Rather, he had been content with activating the air conditioning unit inside of his suit, which had been blasting tropical-smelling mist into his face for the majority of his travels. As he pressed the button to turn it back on, however, his heart sank.

“Error: Moisturizer fuel depleted. Please refuel at the nearest RIG station.”

It seemed his journey was going to have to be cut short. Sighing, he searched for a place he could visit to hydrate himself.  

That place turned out to be an ice cream parlor. The windows at the front had been cratered, and it was the hole left behind that caught Clark’s attention and caused him to go inside. Dust floated around the inside of the shop, but it was ineffective in masking the distinguishing features of the store. Red stools stood connected to the checker-patterned floor as a row alongside a silver counter-top packed with tall, empty glasses, napkins, a tip jar with a broken top, and a cash register laying on its side. A large machine with a dozen colored buttons on the front and a large scooper on the side sat behind the bar, rust plaguing the edges. Snow white tables and chairs laid strewn all over the parlor, having been knocked down by what Isaac could only assume to be a panicked mob given the general disarray as well as the singular, fist-sized rock settled in the center of the floor. A purple jukebox sat along the back wall of the parlor, the records it had held discarded onto the floor alongside several pieces of glass.

Isaac stared, transfixed. Most everything beforehand had implied something had happened, but there was never any obvious damage. Abandoned cars, discolored billboards, and misspelled graffiti propaganda had been the worst he had seen. But this store looked like it had been the victim of an outright riot.

He looked over to the counter, moving the thoughts to the back of his mind. He walked behind it and towards the machine. A quick press of one of the buttons left only a small droplet of liquid to fall out, but that trace was all he needed.

He pulled the machine out, small sparks of electricity arcing from the plugs as they were freed from their plug-ins. He slid the plug into a tiny socket on the back of his neck. Immediately, he felt a rush of cold, strawberry-smelling air shoot up into his face. A hologram materialized on his torso indicating that the moisturizer had been refilled.

“Thank goodness for modern technology,” he said as he removed the plug.

His knapsack vibrated. Curious, he removed the tablet and the spherical waterskin. Drinking from the canteen, he read the latest development on the competition.

“The Zone C8 Item Drop has been obtained!”

He blinked.

...What?

He gawked at the hologram that formed into visibility, removing the white highlight that showed an available item drop from the C8 zone. The rest of the available zones soon followed, leaving a green map before he turned it off.

...Well this was a massive waste of my time.

He sighed. He knew he should have gone to the one in Zone E.

He felt like he should have been angry, vengeful even, but he just couldn’t muster up the energy to do so. He had entered the competition wanting to prove himself to any potential employees out in the Omniverse, but after getting his leg jacked up and his only ally leaving him, he had given that up a long time ago. Perhaps out of some stroke of luck, he’d reach the end and survive the whole ordeal, but even that was a crapshoot to end all crapshoots.

Taking another sip from his canteen, he exited the parlor and walked towards where he believed the safehouse was. He might as well just sit there and try to think of his next move. Maybe read the letter if he had time.

Team Space Man (Isaac) --- Moving from C21 to Safehouse C.

[MADBULL34]

Blue-clad legs dangled out the driver’s side door of an ancient dusty Buick parked on one of the many forgotten street corners leading maze-like throughout Mega City One.
 
CRUNCCHH!
 
Mad Bull ripped the plastic cover of the Buick’s steering column out, letting it echoingly clatter against the empty streets.  The immense bulk of the officer was wedged between the bottom of the dashboard and the car’s pedals as he tugged at clumps of wires now revealed along the steering column.  With a sharp tug the burly cop pulled out a bundle of coils.  He studied the wires for a moment before singling out the red and brown wires. His teeth stripped the insulating plastic cover off the two wires.
 
SPARKAAAA, FEKFEKFEK, GROWWWWL!
 
The officer sparked the two exposed wires together, and after a few embers of electricity jolted into the air, the car’s engine ignited and gave off a dusty roar.
 
“Yah ha!” Sergeant John Estes exclaimed.  Laboriously, the burly policeman got to his feet and sat comfortably into the driver’s seat.  The old Buick’s front seat had that springy, sofa-like quality that all long-gone Detroit studs used to feature.  Back in his youth, this was the sort of couch a man could lose his cherry on, and the memory of prior high school exploits in the back seat of similar vehicles filled his heart with a little twinge of nostalgia.
 
He fingered the clutch for moment, perhaps catching his bearings in the old vehicle or maybe reminiscing on what ol’ Maria Fonticello was wearing on their senior prom.  The seats were musty with age and the rusty frame was barely hanging onto itself after the decades of neglect (Maria could probably say the same these days…), yet the engine still managed to cough itself awake and putter. He closed the door with a sudden slam and took a quick glance at the fuel gauge.  
 
“Almost empty,” the cop muttered, “But I’ll betcha this ol’ girl’s got enough in her to get me where I need to go.”

Mad Bull moving from C2 to C16

[Karl Jak]

End Day 2 -- Afternoon

Start Day 2 -- Evening (6pm to midnight)

This phase will last until June 22nd at 430 PM CDT

[The Future Warrior]

Graowr had scarcely started moving again, bounding out of the building and back into the street, when another alert came across her tablet. And those of her two allies. "Oh, oh, oh! More item drops?!" she said excitedly, reaching for the device concealed in her chest. Pulling it out into the increasingly dimming light of evening on the island, she pressed and prodded buttons to bring up the map and alerts. She looked it over carefully, eyes flicking from one end of the map to the other.

"Two drops," Archer said aloud, voicing her thoughts.

"And at oppossite endss of the island." Cell supplied.

"They're both pretty far away..." Graowr whined.

"Yeah, but we're just about right smack in the middle of both. We could get to either one in just about the same time, if we really hustle." Archer was checking the map over in great detail, counting out the zones and approximating the distance. "The one up north is a little closer, but...lot of rough territory up there."

"Meanwhile, down ssouth, all we got is jungle, sswamp, flooded beach, and ranssacked tourisst resort," Cell added, poking over the map. "And we both know the territory down there." He fixed the blue girl with a stern, knowing glare.

"Hmm..." She tilted her head, looking from one end of the map to the other again. "Well...if we could get to both pretty quickly, then..." She held her tablet up, balancing it carefully on one finger, and gave it a spin. She let it go for a few seconds, before gently snatching it up with her other hand and holding it up to give it a look. The map was held upside-down, the drop at the furthest south point, in Zone D, staring her right in the eyes. "Looks like we're headed for the drop down in zone d!"

There was some brief muttering and conversing among the group, as they got their gear stored away and situated again, and they got underway.

Team: Colosseum Bros (Archer, Cell, Graowr)
Moving from C8 to C9