goneawayworld | ENDGAME

Innocent people around the rig need protection from Jorgmund's liquidation squads, the rank and file mercenary soldiers the rig employs for less "exceptional" circumstances than the kinds of odd missions that had been reserved for the New Hires.

One good thing is that at least the rig's normal employees aren't going down with a fight. Many have stockpiled weapons of their owns, especially those who worked for the rig with the Bey, before Jorgmund took over. Even mid-level bureaucrats are angrily joining the fight after finding out about FOX. More than one liquidator has been clocked with a thrown Swingline stapler.

But they'll all still need help and there are innocent people that need protecting. They won't be able to survive unless the New Hires shift the odds in their favor.

[Note: Players can do this as 1 thread or create their own threads if they have specific goals in mind.]

[ The Rig has descended into chaos since the announcement, which isn’t really a surprise considering the extent of Jorgmund’s depravity. Which… they’ve decided to cover up with more depravity and death.

Robbie is ostensibly making his way to the lab, but he keeps getting sidetracked by staff skirmishes. He’s currently helping the accounting department defend their office from a liquidation squad that’s trying to storm the room. There are two furniture barricades, one blocking the door and the other at the start of the furniture blockade where half a dozen clerks are arming themselves with exactos and cubicle toys.

He’s standing in the middle of no man’s land because he honestly doesn’t care anymore.

From the noise in the hallway, the squad is trying to ram through the door. ]

For the record, you’re all complacent, complicit pricks.

[ “We gave you a box cutter!” someone snipes defensively. “No one’s making you stand out there!”

Robbie spares a glare back at the barricade. ]

Oh, yeah, that makes it better! Sorry your friend died, now do you want the Koosh ball or the zen fountain to take out the evil overlords ‘cause if you don’t we’re going to get shot too and you’ll feel even sprocking worse!

The banging on the door keeps going for a few moments as the squad outside tries to beat their way through. Then there's a shout and the sound of something being slammed into the sides of the hall.

After another moment, there's a...rather polite knock, actually. "It's safe!" Sam shouts from the other side. "I should be able to shield us long enough to get out of here."

“That was anti-climatic.” Robbie starts to push aside what’s blocking the door, puts his back into it for about six seconds, and stops.

The staffers, who were beginning to creep out from their hiding places, hit the ground when Robbie blasts the furniture to the side.

It feels good, hitting something, since he’s expecting to find absolutely nothing to do on the other side of the door. “Get out of here to where exactly?”

The bits of furniture actually bounce back a bit from the door. "There are others fighting. We fall back to them, get these guys to relative safety with better weaponry and then I, at least, go back out to find more people to bring in."

Sam hasn't worked much with Robbie much, but he recognizes his voice as another New Hire. Whether he'd want to come looking for others or not, he's not certain. But the option is there.

There is a grunt as the soldiers get back on their feet, unleashing some bullets against his shield. "These guys are really annoying the fuck out of me."

Sam intends on purposely going to find more employees and saving them? Robbie looks back at the accounting team, who look… scared. They look like they know that their coworkers are ready, willing, and able to kill them. But they weren’t innocent.

They had Brainy’s blood on their hands. He doesn’t want to help them.

But he… can’t let them get mowed down by automatic weaponry. Dammit.

“Can you let me out on their side?” Robbie thumbs towards the recovering liquidators on the other side of the TK shield. “I can get them to stay down for awhile.”

Like hours. Or more.

The question makes him frown a moment, then nod. "I'll have to take it down and build it back up." He cracks a half smile. "My fine control is non-existent."

Which is why the liquidators look like so many bowling pins, really.

There's no glow to it like there would be in Robbie's world. Just a slightly shimmering wall of force that collapses when Sam drops his hand.

That is an important thing to note. Most of the telekinetics that Robbie knows wouldn't have to drop the whole shield. "Don't worry - I've got you covered."

Speaking of bowling... his original plan was to bowl them all over with energy balls, but the fact that it might take some time for the shield to go up behind him again overrides that. But without the visible effect, he misses the lowering by about 2 seconds, and one of the recovering baddies takes a hipshot from the floor. The bullet finds Robbie's arm, and there's a sort of screamed grunt.

And then there's a shockwave of blue energy that hurls the liquidators backward into the very solid metal wall, with a collection of soft clangs and thumps. They'll... probably get up later. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Robbie manages to ask, "Anybody want some guns? I know... I'm one short."

Edited 2021-09-13 20:33 (UTC)

He'd never been telekinetic long enough for anything more than the broad strokes. Literally, really. His telekinesis tended to be better for throwing things around and shielding.

Sam lets out a breath and goes forward, picking up a gun of his own. He checks it over before patting one of the liquidators down for a holster.

He's trying to be better about actually using them.

"Do you need us to find a medic? I can field dress it, but I'll need some cloth. Anybody feel like giving up your suit jacket to the cause?"

The fact that he pulls back the slide to check the chamber and lets it forward with a loud 'click' is only coincidence. Not intimidation. Really.

Examining his arm isn’t easy inside the jumpsuit - not without stripping - but the growing singular stain on the suit does mean that there’s no exit wound. He can’t remember if that’s better or worse in the short term. Worse in the long run, but they don’t have a long run to worry about.

“It’s fine,” Robbie says quietly as his good hand grips his bicep tightly to put pressure on it. Which hurts, Jesus it hurts, but he’s still upright. He’s not in danger of passing out, but it would be nice to stay that way. “Wouldn’t want them to have to recognize that we’re human beings that bleed.”

Robbie doesn’t miss that Sam knows how to do something with a gun. He thought he didn’t care what the others did to Jorgmund at this point, but his heart sinks at the confident click. “… they’re following orders just as much as these idiots were.”

Shit, he absolutely loathes himself for that. And he hates himself for not taking the protest further.

He's never hidden that he knows his way around a gun. He just...didn't show up with one, that's all.

Sam eyes Robbie for a moment, looking him over before nodding. "All right. I'll trust you to know your limits." Which, if he knew Robbie well, isn't something he'd probably say. But he doesn't and this is where they're at right now.

Besides. He knows it's not the same, but he remembers too well how far around the bend he went when Dean went to Hell.

At the reminder, though, Sam raises an eyebrow before slipping the holster on his belt. Better to use a belt holster than a shoulder. He's a bit too broad for that. "They are. But it's also self-defense. I'm not planning to kill anybody. Just not going to let any of us get killed, either."

[A squad of Jorgmund goons moves down a hallway looking for any New Hires or less than completely obedient employees to take out.]

[Ahead of them the lights slowly start flickering and dying out one by one. Moving with the encroaching darkness is a beast with blue-purple fire held in its mouth and a figure with a flaming sword, his black armor just barely visible in the firelight.

[As the goons in front take aim a panel peels off the wall and slams into them. As they try to recover their guns fall apart in their hands. The last of the lights goes dark.]

Edited 2021-09-12 22:45 (UTC)

There are innocent people among the workers of the rig. People who had nothing to do with the operations that now brings the wrath of the New Hires onto them. It's those people who Shelley focuses on, for the most part. After all, she knows really well how little the interns and the bureaucrats tend to be involved.

"Psst! Hey!"

It's not the first time Shelley sees someone gasp or get startled when she arrives. Every time she hurriedly has to gesture she's not there to cause harm! She just is really concerned with all these normal employees' safety.

"Come along! This is a warzone! Let's go to a safer place!"

Now if only she knew where a safer place was -- but probably not right there in the open. There goes Shelley, trying to take a couple of the normal rank-and-file through an empty hall. When someone appears around the corner she stops, pretty much about to grab onto the pair following her to hide them in her usual bubble. It's only when she realizes she recognizes who appeared that she relaxes just a little bit.

"These two need shelter, stat! Probably not a supply closet? Also, if you have a spare weapon I'd be so grateful, the ol' fisticuffs are outmatched here!"

Leaving aside that Shelley's 'fisticuffs', so to say, aren't all that great!

((cw: please mind the extra violence))

A familiar battle cry rings distantly through a brief quiet in the fighting. He knew that voice. It hits Guts all at once - both the realization that Saturday was within reach and the deep fear that he might still be too slow to get to her. Was Loken still with her? Was she alone?

As reinforcements flood the corridors, Guts in that moment accepts the embrace of the armor’s steel jaws. He couldn't afford to have his vision or his grip falter him now. He would not be too late this time. The black armor encases him, and his world becomes a dull roar of gunfire and chaos.

From there, the hallways transform from heated battleground to swift and bloody massacre. Where his sword was too large to swing, the armor's steel teeth and claws tear through soldiers' armor and flesh with increasing savagery. The walls crater with the force of the bodies slammed into it. Bullets ring where they ricochet wildly or lodge into the armor plates. The corridors scream with utter mayhem.

An unearthly metallic howl echoes back, possibly as an answer or simply a cry of wild rage. He had a dull sense of which direction to leap, from the winding labyrinth of corridors to an expansive room. The source of the voice. The place he needed to go.

The hallway behind him becomes eerily quiet as he reaches the last remaining thing in the way. Black claws hook into the gaps of a large metal door, catching it just before the hydraulics lock it shut entirely. He is dimly aware of the damaging strain on his body as the metal begins to creak, slowly prying open the entrance to allow himself entry.

The soldier pulls the pin on his grenade. Saturday skewers his hand to his chest, scooping up the fallen explosive and hurling it high through the vast cargo bay in the same moment. It detonates midair, and she sees in the soldier's eyes that he understands his gambit's failed before she jerks her blade sideways and severs his heart. He falls choking on his own blood.

And then she turns to the next one - who isn't there. She turns, and turns again, checking all sides. There's something animal in her movements. And then -

She steps out of her killer flow like a freediver breaking surface. The bodies lay where they fell; a half-dozen Jorgmund kill squads, intercepted on their way up from the belly of the Rig. Loken is there, still standing, painted bloody red. She glances down at herself.

That makes two of them, actually.

"Shit. Well, least I can get my own clothes back after this - "

The vast steel doors begin to creak. Saturday is already moving silently towards Loken, away from them.

"Something behind it," she murmurs. Her preternatural sense of space can't makes sense of it. Whatever is slowly prying those doors open is - familiar, and alien; shaped like a friend and also like her worst nightmare. "Something weird."

Loken takes a defensive stance, lining up his bolter on the doors, waiting carefully for what comes, "We can't get further into the rig until we deal with this, one way or another."

His helm's autosenses focus in on the pried doors. "Whatever it is, it's not acting like a kill squad. A stuff emanation this far in?"

The sound of their voices percolate like a familiar echo, alerting him to their places around the corner.

Through the red streaks of the cursed helmet, Loken's bolter glints brightest in his vision, the figure holding it cloudy and faceless. Sword gripped in his other hand, the massive slab is hurled forward like a steel missile towards this threat.

He leaps with unnatural speed, a dark blur lagging intentionally behind the weapon, causing the door to slam shut once it was no longer held in place.

"Lots of emotion flying around, an' we just blew up a processing facility," Saturday reminds Loken, voice low. "Could well be somethin' like that - an' who knows what the execs will do in a corner. You be ready for the breach; I'll line up on the flank."

She pads softly around to the side of the door, finding a nice piece of cover to explode from in a nearby crate.

The steel missile hurtles in. Loken considers firing a bolter round, realizes while the incoming slab will cause kinetic shock and damage, his best bet is actually to weather it, so he lowers the bolter and leans into the slab with an audible CLANG. He is still driven to his knees, but draws Mournitall, a sword he once lent to Guts in a rough moment during their fights with Stuff creatures. He doesn't activate the disruptor field, but rises to an en garde position, waiting stoically as Guts blurs towards him, a black and red monstrosity that seems almost familiar, like something he faced back in his own world. But it doesn't make him angry, or feel contempt. Instead... there's just a hint of his own fate reflected back at him. So he prepares himself to deflect an attack, instead.

The beast in black follows soon after its thrown weapon, grasping the hilt of the Dragonslayer to wrench it back and rest it over his shoulder in one smooth motion. He does not attempt to guard in turn. In fact, his stance is unlike anything Guts had assumed in the many training sessions he's had with Loken or Saturday over the last year. He instead crouches forward like an animal tensed to pounce, black cape pouring out behind him acting as the tattered tail.

Strangely enough, he stays still after the violent entrance. Hesitating? Perhaps evaluating what to do next. The helmet's gaze is fixed on Mournitall, familiarity barely reaching through the haze of the armor's od. He appears to be unaware of Saturday behind her cover. He does not stay still for long.

The armor's metal teeth grind together as he leaps high into the air, as if gravity no longer held sway over him at all. Making use of the extra height the cargo bay allowed, the attack slams down onto this foe with even greater force and momentum.

Saturday's senses are screaming. Unfortunately, they're not screaming anything useful. She knows the monster that's just burst in among them, she just can't - it's not - who is this, and why does every line of them feel familiar and safe while the rest of them screams danger - ?

The creature roars, crocodialian maw gaping full of sharp teeth, and Saturday finally gets a good look at its eyes.

"Oh, fuck."

Guts. Guts is racing towards Loken, Guts is out of his mind, Guts has the fucking armor on and it's alive, awake and twining around him with its nasty astral tentacles and that was why she couldn't see him. It's eating him alive.

"Loken, disengage!"

Saturday shrieks out the order as she races towards the clashing titans, heart in her throat. Loken isn't Awakened, he can't see what's really happening, he'll make it worse by fighting -

"It's Guts! He's out of his head! Disengage! Disengage! DISENGAGE!"

Easier said than done. Loken sweeps Mournitall up to meet the Dragon Slayer. Cthonian iron against the great heap of steel. Sparks shower everywhere as the thinner blade intercepts the tremendous mass, and for half a heartbeat they lock, as though momentum itself no longer exists, then seemingly all at once Loken is forced back and down, an explosion of splinters kicked up as he is hurled bodily through two shipping crates full of assorted rig gear, overalls which spill out around him in an absurd mass. His helm is dented, and the armor makes grinding noises as he rises. "Nowhere to run. I've been this man before."

He squares up on his seemingly possessed friend.

The lupine helmet twitches in the direction of Saturday's voice, making brief eye contact. Rather than change tack, it tears itself away from her to focus on the faceless, masked target ahead. With a hollow growl that could have only come from the throat of the armor, he pursues in his maddened daze.

The next leap dents the ground beneath the armor's boots, closing the distance between them in an instant and bringing a ferocious barrage of sword strikes upon his enemy. Low, high, punishing slams of that massive blade onto Loken's sword in an attempt to simply shatter the thing in between him and the object of his ire. Each strike becomes less the deft stroke of a weapon and more like a cannon blast unleashed directly on whatever metal found itself beneath its edge.

"Jesus goddamn - did I call a goddmned retreat, I said disenfuckinggage - " Saturday chokes back a line of rapid-fire abuse that would make a drill sergeant blush. Better to save her breath - later they can talk about why an orderly regroup beats a last stand any day.

The way they're tossing each other around is impressive; it'd be more so if she didn't need to make them stop. Options, options, what are the options - pneumatic door - revise that, nonlethal options - usefully heavy objects conveniently suspended above their heads - maybe a fire suppression system, one of the ones with foam - no joy. And nothing big enough to even really slow them down.

For a moment, she stands stock-still, looking paralyzed.

And then she makes up her mind. When you can't do the smart thing, do the dangerous one. Guts and Loken break apart, panting, and ready for another clash. That's when she makes her move, racing towards the momentary lull as they raise their swords. The blades reach the apex of their arc and begin to cut.

Then she's between them, glaring at Guts, eyes wide and dark and furious. Her back is to Loken - she trusts him to stop - arms outspread as if to protect a space marine five times her size. Guts looms in front of her, shrouded in darkness, blade not even twitching as he begins his downstroke.

"This stops now!" she roars. Her gaze finds his and holds it, fearless.

Loken lowers his blade. He is silent for a long moment.

His eyeslits locked with the wolf helm, and he says, very gently.

"It took friends to bring me back too, when I was lost in anger. Come on Guts, we have work yet to do. And people to return to."

ENDGAME - STOP THE RIG

LIQUIDATION

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Re: LIQUIDATION

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going apeshit (w/ loken + saturday)

Re: going apeshit (w/ loken + saturday)

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