((Oops, forgot to post an action.))
WMD, After the End
Charge faster. Decontamination devices can't activate if there are none near me. Go for the big boom.
Hmm... Well, there's also the swarm of flesh eating
bacteria nanomachines going rampant around here, so let's just roll to see if you get to sterilize them before they eat you alive. I'll assume you try to control yourself to accumulate energy as quickly as possible to give you a chance for a bonus. Now, let's see...
You try as hard as you can to force yourself to explode as quickly as possible. You're getting very close. You start to get lightheaded. You falter and a wave of energy escapes, causing everything to rise from the ground and freeze in mid air. A few moments more and you are ready. For a few moments, everything is light. When the light fades, you are human, still floating in mid air above a giant crater. You can see that the surrounding area is filled with strange effects. A cloud that's producing a heavy downpour of rain. A green shell-less snail that is carving rune-like symbols on the crater walls. A forest of purple spikes. Alarms are going off in the distance.
You remain there for a few moments, floating in place. Then you start slowly falling downwards, towards the ground. Something feels weird. You cough. You see drops of blood floating away from you in slow motion. You slam against the ground with a bit more force than you would like. You cough some more. Your insides really hurt.
Kosak Durar, After The End:
"Thank you. Now if you excuse me, I have punching to do."
Let's see. If the heart is no longer covered in spikes(was it ever?), Kosak climbs up the trunk he's currently on, reaches the heart, and starts hitting it. If it's still covered in spikes... Kosak attempts to sever the trunk he's currently on, perhaps pulling the same trick as previous(if possible) to reach another trunk.
You reach up, grab hold of the "flesh" and struggle to get up. The flesh is writhing, as if it is trying to fight you off. You manage to climb it anyway. You start punching at the heart, trying to breach its outer layer. The mechanofluid rises all around you and the heart. It's starting to create a shell, like an oyster threatening to trap you. You manage to breach the heart's outer layer, but don't manage to get much further.
"I dunno, some way you can get him to not be an asshat, or get me to not be his...Plaything. Also, that was hyperbole earlier, for the record, but good grief, you really don't give a carp, do you, Charlie. Damn narcissists."
"Not until you give me a reason to, I'm afraid." *shrugs again and returns to watching TV*<Please, don't mind him. He's not usually like that. And he really does care about you->"Noidon't." he says, not turning away from the TV.
<You really should just give him a bit more time. He's not good at making friends. But I'm sure that you can be great friends in time.>Every other entity in the bar laughs.
<What? I believe it. Everything worth having takes time and effort.>
Rune waits, in the domain of death, to be pulled back to wherever the hell the entities wanted him next.
Rune does not sleep. He waits.
Perhaps you'd like to go for a more cooperative mission next? I think something like that might be fun.
Anyway, if you want to dick around with the rest, you're back in the Staging Area.
He passes by you without noticing you.
((How bad did he roll? Did he somehow get negative dice? Because failing to find Saevus is hard to do.))
Saevus, After the End
Let the armored guy leave. Then, if no one else appears, desummon the ballista and get an automatic crossbow and shield. Find some stairs and get a few stories down. Try to keep myself out of sight. If happen upon lone soldiers, kill them.
Try to figure out where the other contestants might be.
He's a big armoured dude (meaning his sight is obscured and you can hear him coming and prepare), coming out of darkness into a brightly lit place (which also means your runes are harder to see) filled with noise and water and thick fruit bearing foliage. And you don't even have to breathe, you can stand completely still. And he didn't pass right next to you, he was some distance away. Really, there couldn't be a better place to hide.
Anyway, you wait for a while, letting them pass you by. When you think it's safe to move, you start heading towards the lobby. You come upon a lone soldier on the way there. He must have been guarding the way to the lobby, but he is currently doing something in one of the corners of those pump rooms, having left his rifle besides him. You approach him from behind and get ready to stab him. You thrust forward... and miss, instead severely sounding the wall in front of him. The man is startled, jumping backwards and trying to turn around to face you. He tries to yell and push you back. You manage to get your hand around his neck and slam him against the wall. He struggles, trying to reach his rifle, but it's just out of reach. You keep pushing until he passes out. You let him fall face-first into the water.
While you're getting ready to leave, something causes the entire structure to move. You feel a wave of magical energy passing through the immaterial realm and pushing against you, momentarily giving you a small boost but also disorienting you with its chaotic energies. It feels like it's coming from the... well, you're not really sure which way is which down here. You'll just call that direction North, you decide.
Well, might as well try that for lack of any better obvious objective.
Head in that direction. Is it walking distance or do I need a ride? If I have to go back near the tower, head around instead.
Regardless, focus less on traveling now and more on self-improvement. Get some armor going on (I'm thinking something W40k Space Marine-esque in terms of scale) of general-protective nature... maybe focused a bit toward the weapons I've seen used by the locals. Also, a nice sensor package. Those are always useful.
Focus on that first; I'll do weapons in a bit. If I have to stop to do this, fine, but get behind/under something first.
And yes, this is all integrated to the cyborg-body I've become.
It's on an artificial hill close to the edge of the city. At least that's what your intel told you, you haven't seen it and you know what they say about military intelligence. You... don't really know much about it. The few sonar scans you managed to make with your insertion vehicle before it was destroyed didn't reveal anything. You could walk, but it might take an hour or two to reach it, maybe more depending on any obstacles you meet along the way. A vehicle might be the best idea. Preferably something that won't attract too much attention. Or something quick enough that by the time attracting attention becomes an issue you're already gone.
You manage to get several layers of spaced armour, a whipple shield made out of hundreds of pieces of scrap, fabric and hinges. The way they move and adjust to your pose makes you look kinda lizard-ish, as if you're covered in scales. They should protect you from any single powerful strike, but a hail of bullets or a strong impact by something massive will pose a problem. You make a mental note to avoid getting into robo-brawls and look both ways before you cross the street.
Your attempt to gain sensors goes less well. All you get is half of a dirty and broken toy binocular. A telescope now, you suppose. You clean the lenses a bit and look through it, using your ability to adjust the position of the lenses and improve its resolution. It works. Better than nothing.
In fact, you use said binocular to look in the distance after a flash of light illuminates the entire cavern. The shockwave comes soon after.
Ike stares blankly for a few moments.
"So, big monster, you probably killed it, the day is saved. And maybe Irine died horribly. Again. Business as usual."
He shrugs.
"Eh. Probably should move along in the not too distant future if she doesn't turn up. Wonder where River is, by that same token. We got people to resurrect, y'know."
Pausing, he wonders if there's something else to address, looking at the wall for a good long moment, then looks at Theri again, patting her on the shoulder with a reassuring look on his face.
"Anyway, well done, whatever your name was. I'm sure that you probably helped do something that may or may not have been actually useful. At ease, toodles and what have you."
Mandatory checkup done, now to start preparing for the journey out. Being General of the People isn't really as fun as you'd think. We were going... westward? Anyway, get some mules or aesthetically different yet functionally the same fantasy equivalents to use as mounts! If they have any, that is. Going places on foot sucks the big one for sure.
Oh, and get Alan in there with Theri to make sure she doesn't get up to any more world saving business from the comfort of her recuperation room.
No. Don't listen to the pet shop boys. You're supposed to go east.
Unless you want to go west. I'm not going to stop you.
By asking around and finding various people who are willing to give you stuff for free or in exchange for Alan-food, you manage to get two mules (one young, one old) and enough money/supplies to trade for a third one, should you wish to do so. You could also go for something like those magic cow things, try and do something like an oxcart.
Well, Alan
has proven his ability as a babysitter. I suppose that makes sense.
((Goodness, I'm enjoying this!))
Continue being the mandatory amount of silly. Provide the entertainment for everything all over the place. Even if not necessary.
Make sure Nikolai gets revived for maximum synergy, he was a cool dude.
To get Nikolai revived, you need at the very least a fairly competent magic user. Preferably someone highly skilled, someone that you can trust and in the vicinity of a good magical power source.
[...]
((I don't know if you remember this from the last time I mentioned it, but Irine is emotionally wired the same way I am. I counterbalance anger/pain and sorrow against each other to keep myself functional when I'm at or near overload point.))[...]
((Woo, then Irine or you won't mind in a bad way if I get to hug you! 
More the bonus to consoling skills! \o/))
Pausing, he wonders if there's something else to address, looking at the wall for a good long moment, then looks at Theri again, patting her on the shoulder with a reassuring look on his face.
"Anyway, well done, whatever your name was. I'm sure that you probably helped do something that may or may not have been actually useful. At ease, toodles and what have you."
Being calmed by Ike, and knowing it was really him given his own...unique quirks, his behavior gave Theri more calm and joy than if he said anything otherwise. She loved his bluntness, as he made it humorous.
For all the time spent here, from River's meeting back in the wolf den, to meeting Irine and the rest after running down a cliff with River, she didn't have any regrets.
Although she did wonder if the stove she left cooking either burned down the place, or had its firewood kindled away. She had a shrine to tend to, too. She hoped the others would pick up her duties, now that she thought about it.
It was quite some time that she actually did think about this, and she was partly surprised by...her own lack of surprise at this tiny revelation. It was time to think, and heal.
Recuperate. Do some meditation too for inner calm, and keep a positive attitude to help my own perception of healing--try to think about River; try to think about Irine.
Positive attitude is easy. Meditation... not so much. Not when Alan is around. Let me give you an example.
One day Zechariah is woken up from his guard duty by Alan yelling something. He enters the room, finding him pointing at a nest full of relatively large eggs.
"I'm telling you, that's not possible." Theri says, her voice still weak and whisper-like.
"And I'm telling you, they're mine. I'm a mum now. I'm going to love them, and care for them-""Alan, Alan." she tries to grab his attention but he either doesn't hear her or doesn't care, continuing on.
"-and feed them, and protect them, and pet them and-""Alan, you're male. Males don't carry eggs. And-""Penguins do!""Excuse me?""Penguins. They carry them between their legs."And now he can't stop imagining Alan in a tux, walking like a penguin.
"That's... That's not- Look you're not a penguin. You're a human. Humans don't lay eggs. You probably just summoned them in your sleep.""How do you know? It's my body. I choose what I do with it. Maybe I want to be a penguin. Maybe I'm secretly a lizard overlord."Well, he's certainly making as much noise as a chicken that's just laid an egg. Wonder if there's such a thing as a chicken overlord...
"Besides, what other explanation is there? Someone came into the room and put a bunch of eggs under my bed? That's totally ridiculous. Am I right Rickman?""Haw! RidiculousAlan." the bird on the window caws in response.
"See? Exactly. Now excuse me, I have to take care of my eggs." Alan says with a smile of satisfaction.
"DangerAlan. EggsAlan." the bird exclaims as it flies into the room and close to Alan, sending gusts of wind around the room.
The others state at Alan intently, then at the bird, then back at Alan...
"So you don't have a comment about that?"Alan stares blankly at them for several seconds as the cogs in his head turn.
"About what?" he finally responds.
"About the bird?"Several more seconds of blank staring follow.
"...Bird is the word?""No. You know, that thing?" he says pointing at the bird.
"Oh. That's not a bird. That's Rickman the Alien."While the others are trying to recover from their surprise, the healer's assistant approaches and enters the room. You can hear her shouting before she even enters the room.
"What in the name of Akrios is going on in here? What is all that noise? What is that thing? No filthy animals near my patients. Get it out! Shoo! Shoo!"
"UhOh. MeanHuman. Hsss." Rickman says as he is shoved out the window, snapping his beak and hissing in a particularly un-birdlike way.
"And don't come back!" she adds as she slams the blinds shut behind him.
That done, she turns to Theri, doing a quick check of her bandages and sutures and making sure she is warm.
"You need to heal. You need to rest. You need a calm and clean environment. And the other patients need that too. So no more noise and no more animals!"
Just as quickly as she arrived, she leaves, closing the door behind her. A few seconds of silence follow before the conversation continues.
"Look, if they're your eggs, then who's the father?"That manages to give Alan pause as he considers the answer. He looks at Theri. Then at the eggs. Then at the window. Then back at Theri. Then he gasps and his eyes widen.
"Finally, he gets it.""You think Irine is the father?"*facepalm*
well if D didn't want me to mourn then he shouldn't have died! This is his fault, and I don't care that he doesn't like it. That's his problem, not mine. My friend died saving my life, there's NO WAY I'm not going to mourn him. He'll just have to deal with it.
((I don't know if you remember this from the last time I mentioned it, but Irine is emotionally wired the same way I am. I counterbalance anger/pain and sorrow against each other to keep myself functional when I'm at or near overload point. Irine is intentionally inducing agression into her mindset to keep herself functional.))
Well, it could also make sense in this world's magic. Some powerful emotions like anger feed and are fed by Fire, so when you're weak and you can't have a better emotion, it's better to be angry. I guess it's kinda like drinking alcohol to get warmer. It makes you feel better for a while, even if it's not a permanent solution.
My hair feels strange? what kind of strange?
I flick my tails forward and look at them, seeing if they or my fur seem different and if so, how. then I check the hair on my head, reaching behind me and pulling it in front of me so I can see it.
((Is my hair like Akari Taiyo's powered-up form's hair now?))
A quick googling tells me that that's close. Imagine them a bit more spiky and rigid though (kinda hairgel-like) and with a tendency to go upwards that makes them point backwards much of the time. Also, they're not fire, they're just a bit closer to orange and yellow and more shiny.
I also move near the chamber wall and block the light from the sword with my body, checking the shadows and such. am I glowing?
It's kinda like you're lit by a blacklight, like all light sources are also blacklights. Light produces more light than it should when it's reflected off your skin. In the dark the colours all look off. There's tiny bright patches all over. A bit shiny too.
((Funny fact: Lenglon knows her Greek mythology and recognizes the three Fates. Irine is from a world without the Greeks or their myths. she has no clue. she also doesn't know there's people at the top of the shaft she's in, so she doesn't know to send fire up there to signal them. as far as she knows, she's entirely alone.))
After checking on the state of my body, I slowly approach the sword, seeing how I feel as I approach it. I also am finding out if I can feel heat coming from it.
I... reach out towards it, but don't touch. do the flames surrounding it react to me? do they only encompass the blade or do they cover the hilt as well?
The light coming from the sword gets brighter. The flames rise up and their tongues touch your hand, as if they're caressing it. You can feel the power coming from it, like water seeping out of a dam that's ready to burst. You feel like the sword wants to be held.
It's pleasantly warm, not painfully hot. You don't think there's any danger you'll get burnt. Not unless it suddenly becomes hotter.
I stop here and think for a time. Biology is not what healed me and is keeping my alive right now. I might need to keep this sword with me at least until I can get some food/water. I look carefully at my surroundings and the sword, and pay close attention to how my body feels around it and about it. I'm looking for signs of if the sword is blessed or cursed or possessed or a trap or exactly what I need or whatever.
Well, there's certainly some form of intelligence in there. You can feel it somehow, there but just out of reach. When you put your hand close to it it's a bit like how you feel holding River's soulsphere, but with a completely different soul. However, you can't tell much about it. You can tell that it's powerful and that it wants to be used, but the same could be said about a smart car. The question is how smart is it and what are its intentions. Because the problems come when the smart car traps you in place on the driver's seat with the safety belt and threatens to strangle you with it until you drive it where it wants to be driven.
however, the decision I'm going to come to at the end of all this thinking is to leave the sword alone, for now.
You decide to leave the sword be until you find a scroll of identify.
I slowly begin to leave the chamber, my flame orb lighting the way, and paying extremely close attention to how my body feels. If leaving the vicinity of the sword makes me weak, then I'm turning back. If I see something that looks like a gate that will slam shut behind me and lock me away from the sword, then I'm turning back, but if I don't have any reaction to leaving the sword's vicinity, and have no reason to worry that I might be unable to get back to it, then I'll explore for a bit, to learn more about this place that houses that sword. I especially look for anything I could read that would tell me about the sword back there, any statues, murals, etc. Anything that might tell me about where I am and what that sword, which I'm guessing is at the central / deepest area of this place, is all about.
You approach the doorway. There's no door there. You don't feel any worse than you already do when you enter the corridor, so you decide to keep exploring for a while.
There are a lot of skeletons lying around in this corridor. But closer inspection reveals that they are not actual skeletons. Just very good imitations. Even if you didn't know how a proper skeleton feels, you can see there's more skulls than torsos around here.
At the other end of the corridor there's a large stone door. There's a mechanism with counterweights, gears and springs in place there that is meant to remove the locks and open the door. You don't see anything physically connected to it from the other side of the door, so you assume it has a magical trigger. A closer inspection helps you identify the trigger, a glass tube filled with a grey sludge. It also reveals a physical trigger running across the ceiling and disappearing into holes that lead behind the walls of the sword's chamber. Maybe opening the door is meant to activate something more.
Other than that, there are several passages blocked by stone walls, a few that are blocked by locked doors and a few passages that are open, leading down other corridors. You pick the most important-looking one and go through it, one guarded by two giant humanoid statues with a sword and a shield instead of a left and right arm respectively. Down that corridor is a room with a sarcophagus in its centre. The top of the sarcophagus has been carved in the form of a bearded man in heavy armour. He is resting with his hands holding the sword close to his chest and his triangular shield covering his legs, as if to keep him warm in his sleep. You notice that his sword is the same as the one in the other chamber, although the quality of the carving pales in comparison to the original sword.
Each wall has a recess with a mural painted on it. The first shows an old man forging a blade, his face lit by the burning coals. A woman stands next to him, with her arm embracing him. They are looking at each other, smiling. Although he is surrounded by fire and darkness, the mural around him transitions to green fields and blue skies. On one side a girl is running around close to a forest, looking happy. On the other an old woman is sitting on a chair, working on something while staring at the horizon. You can't tell what she's holding, parts of the mural have faded and it wasn't in a very high definition to begin with.
The second shows a man in heavy armour engaged in bloody combat with man and beast alike. From the armour, you assume this must be the same person depicted by the sarcophagus at a younger age or at least someone related to him. The man is surrounded by the same women that were in the other mural, but this time their expressions are more stern. The girl is in front of the warrior, throwing her arms in front of her to protect herself from the attack of a dark monster, the same one the man is attacking. The woman, now also clad in armour, is jumping forward, diving into combat with nothing but her armoured fists. And the old woman is holding the man's shoulders as if to steady him or perhaps direct him. Closer inspection reveals small black circles forming a line between the man and the women, like a chain. You can't really tell what that is meant to symbolize. If this means that the man was forced into combat and slaughter by the women or if it was the other way around or if this all means something else. It's true what they say, that an image is worth a thousand words. The problem is actually reducing those words to the right sentence, the one the creator of the images intended.
The final mural shows a woman climbing a claw-shaped hill, the sun either rising or setting behind it. She's also wielding a sword. This is the simplest of the three murals, not much detail in it. Maybe they run out of time and had to rush it?
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