goneawayworld | ENDGAME

Entry tags:

ENDGAME - STOP THE RIG

Who: Anyone that wants in.
What: Busting the rig open
Where: Multiple Places
When: After Saturday exploded the situation
Warnings/Notes: Probably violence.

The end is near.

The signal for the nanochains is temporarily blocked but it won't last forever. Several things need to be done in a very short amount of time to end this thing in a way that isn't disastrous.

Aren't you all tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go apeshit?

[Note: All threads will be treated like a "splash page" where people just do the occasional tag to throw an action into the fray. There will be no tag order, please just tag the most recent tag on the thread.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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."

The massive sword comes down, metal humming, as it hurtles forward with no restraint. It is only at the very last moment that the edge diverts, like some terribly burdensome oar, narrowly missing Saturday and slamming full force into the ground next to her.

The ground splits wide open, cracking with a loud thunk, trembling with the force of it. The sword had landed a mere few inches away from her, enough to dust Saturday with the shockwave of debris that had violently kicked up in response.

A wicked, clawed hand reaches up to grip at his helmet, leaving little scratch marks on inky surface. It was his iron hand, moving as a living one would.

He stays frozen in place, hunched forward, staggered. Whatever murderous rage had possessed him appears to be paused as he struggles against it. Inside him, the black beast roars with the force of the ocean depths, and the helmet’s jaws gnash together. Something had glimpsed through the armor’s red fog.

War. Peace. Enemy. Friend. Kill. Protect.

Surr… render..

Saturday holds her ground, though her legs shake with the cement as it shatters. Guts is crouching down, head in one hand, groaning like the clash of armies. She lowers her arm slowly, watching.

"Guts? Come back to us, chummer. It's okay. No harm done. The beast in your armor isn't all you are. Remember - " she seizes on something, anything. " - remember you got people. If you went away I'd be pissed, and sad. So would Loken, an' Dan, an' all your friends back home. Gettin' mad can keep us safe but not this time. Not when there's no enemy in the room. Real enemy is upstairs, on the roof. Save the fight for them!"

And, slowly, she reaches towards his helmet. He keeps trying to claw it off; she can't help thinking that's important.

"Lemme help. You're not in this alone."

He manages to retain himself enough for her hand to touch the steel jaws unharmed, but the armor would draw her in as soon as fingers touched metal. The physical quickly dissolves into an ethereal blackness. A sense of floating, of a noiseless astral nothingness with no direction. An empty void.

And then beneath (or above) appears the outer tendrils of a massive vortex of hellfire, burning and raging wildly in all directions. With light comes heat, and sparks. It's a consciousness twisted so far out of itself that all that's left is an enraged and soulful howling into the ethereal nothingness all around.

At the center of it roars the hound, a shimmering figure in the flames.

Saturday yells when the helmet takes her. She can't help it. It's cold, the kind of cold that burns right down to the bone. When she catches her breath, the void is around her, above her, below her. Everywhere. She feels - nothing, none of the ripples of the worldweb and the creatures moving through it. Dead -

For a moment she thinks she might be, and has to choke back a scream. Then she orients herself, and sees the inferno, the hound in the inferno.

Aw, shit

"Guts!" she cries out, into the black. "Guts! I'm here! Where are you! Guts!"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ENDGAME - STOP THE RIG

Re: going apeshit (w/ loken + saturday)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject