Avatar of BlessedWrath
  • Last Seen: 6 yrs ago
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    1. BlessedWrath 10 yrs ago

Status

Recent Statuses

6 yrs ago
Current For the same reason it was able to gather its power, I will not bow to it. Freedom is for everyone; not just the loudest voice.
1 like
6 yrs ago
In the wise words of Ebeneezer Scrooge: "Bah humbug."
1 like
6 yrs ago
Sometimes, "cheap" is the most expensive thing you can do.
2 likes
7 yrs ago
Back in the RP Pool. If you have an idea (and it's not 100% smut) messag me! ^_^
2 likes
7 yrs ago
If you can't support your argument...you don't have an argument.
3 likes

Bio

I return from a long hiatus, in the hopes that roleplaying has once again returned to the art of inclusive storytelling. Prove me right and I will stay. Prove me wrong and I will go.

Most Recent Posts

Sam just knelt there, sopping wet and silently staring at the clothing materializer. The occasional spark echoed from within the sealed chamber, and the bright red blinking of 'Fatal Error No. L57-T' intermittently lit up her face. The overhead lights had all gone out after the blast, giving her half-second silhouette a surrealism typically reserved for alien monster movies. She'd laughed once, but it echoed in her mind, over and over again.

"It never ends." She shook her head. Another awkward silence followed, and it seemed like she would never move again. Finally, she took a deep, shuddering breath and hauled herself to her feet. She turned to face the man in the boxers. For a moment, it seemed like she had something to say, but, failing to find the words, brushed past him. She headed straight for her room and began to collect her things.
Sam surrendered to a coughing fit as Ashley made her exit. It was becoming difficult to see, now that the expanding capsaicin foam had had enough time to work its magic. The fumes which resulted from the chemical reaction on contact with air had not been a great priority for Sam, who had admittedly designed the chemical for maximum debilitating effect; in fact, she had considered the secondary effect of airborne respiratory irritants an unintended benefit until now. But she had not fought in close quarters with any target which lasted this long before, nor had she remained in any combat area for long enough to witness the effects this burning miasma would have; Sam's mind would have invariably been focused on retreat. Certainly, she had never been in the position of having to defend others. Now, with blurred vision and watery eyes which refused to stay open, the only thing she could see in the gloom were the two remaining sensor eyes prowling ever closer to Nora's doorway.

One of the drones rocked violently to the side, a severed drone leg bouncing off its metal skin with a hollow clang. It knocked into its partner, forcing both drones to regain balance, after which both relocated their tracking systems to follow the trajectory of the leg back to its source. Sam's footfalls were the only sounds then, hammering the floorboards of the mezzanine, propelling her at the highest speed she could achieve. She readied another leg and swung as she entered melee range.

Both drones leapt in unison, their legs uncoiling with enough force to leave inches-deep depressions in the hardwood flooring. One dug into the wall while the other rebounded off the ceiling and landed in a defensive posture. Sam tossed a split-second glance over her shoulder as she continued for the laundry room. As she expected, her assault had prioritized her as a higher threat than Nora.

"Great. Now I have your attention."

Sam went into a baseball slide near the staircase and, grabbing the banister with her free hand, used her momentum to fling herself around the corner. She stumbled coming out of the slide, but managed to slip into the laundry room and slam the door behind her. The drones, wary of their new target, advanced slowly, running their sensors over the frame and hardware which held it shut.

"Now what, genius?" Sam demanded of the image in the mirror. She threw open cabinets, drawers, anything which might contain useful components for a quick and dirty solution to her...problem. She found laundry detergent, cleaning chemicals, an old toolbox she felt certain would have been used for maintaining the washing equipment... Finally, her hand curled around an older model flashlight. She recognized the general design, having used something very similar back on Earth. With just a few more items, it would serve well enough.

She dropped her gloves on the tile floor and fumbled with the catch on her multi-tool belt sheath. The tool resembled a Swiss Army knife, but built into a pair of sturdy, stainless steel pliers, which she employed to make quick work of the material holding the power source of one of her gloves in place. Once the battery pack had been removed, she set to work emptying the flashlight of its internals. Outside, she could hear the drones working on the door. They were probing it; testing it, to determine if there was any risk in simply breaching it, as they had done to Nora's door.

Sam stabbed the power pack with the needle-sharp drone leg and jammed it into the flashlight's empty casing. She took a deep breath and came away from the door, just as one of the drones thrust one of its legs through it. They punched two more holes before Sam made it to the wash sink, where she set to work filling a small plastic bag with water. She spun the bag and curled the opening around itself, to prevent premature release of the liquid, then used the pliers to bend the end of the battery contact spring on the flashlight's tailcap. She screwed it tightly shut and whirled to face the door, just as it came off its hinges.

"Come and get me, fuckers..." she growled, holding the flashlight in front of her. She hadn't realized she was backing up until she bumped into the Clothing Materializer. Its door whizzed open and yet another idea came to her. This thing wasn't made of wood. It might just hold up a little better against the drones...especially if they were damaged.

She waited as they advanced, still trembling from the adrenaline, anticipating a grisly death. The drones flanked her before preparing to strike. It seemed they had learned from their earlier failure, brought on by Sam's divide-and-conquer approach. They crouched and Sam felt every muscle in her legs tense up.

When they finally leapt, Sam kicked off of the base of the Clothing Materializer into a low, sprawling slide. She slammed the tailcap of the flashlight against the floor, the impact causing the bag of water inside to burst. She could feel the lithium reacting with the water instantly; a strange fizzing vibration in the casing of the flashlight. She threw the flashlight into the chamber with them and scrambled to her feet just as they turned to face her. Without a second to spare, Sam brought her palm down on the 'door close' button, sealing her enemies inside.

Just moments after the muffled 'boom', the Lodge's fire suppression system finally kicked on, though Sam could not determine whether it had been from the mist, Ashley's lightning, or from her improvised explosive device. Whatever the cause, she visibly relaxed when she picked up the sight and sound of electric arcing from the edges of the materializer's door frame. At first, she said nothing; she simply sighed. Then, gradually sinking to her knees, arms limp and fingers brushing the floor, she just laughed.

Despite the sickening noises which rose from the lower level, Sam's attention remained on the two blinded drones which lashed the air in front of them in the vain hopes of making contact with their target. The expanding capsaicin-based foam had completely obscured their sensor eyes, which told Sam plenty about how their targeting systems and optics were set up; they clearly had no contingencies for active scan which would penetrate any semi-solid matter. That information seemed like it lost some value when the two halted their desperate flailing and, seemingly in complete sync with one another, pitched forward on their forelegs and began scraping their sensor eyes against the narrow band of carpeting which ran the length of the mezzanine.

Sam backed away, uncertain of any course of action which might carry with it a chance for survival. She could hit them again with a Shrieker, but she'd seen what that had done to even those members of her group without enhanced senses. The foam had been a desperation move on her part, and had already served its only purpose by allowing her to position herself to deliver the one killing blow she'd managed. That victory now seemed shallow as she found herself flanked.

"Guys!" She shouted, attempting to maintain composure. "Go for the eyes! It's your best chance to crack 'em!"

With that, she backpedaled past Ashley and made for the laundry room. She had absolutely no idea what she was going to so, but she knew it had to be something. Hopefully, a ritzy place like this valued the concept of a fully-stocked cleaning closet.
Sam took a knee and caught the gloves like a short-range pass. The irony of such a method did not escape her -she had hated every second of P.E.- but she put it out of her mind. With one eye on the approaching drone Ashley warned of, Sam did not have the luxury of taking the time to even don her weapons, let alone waxing poetic about the futility of fitness programs at either her old schools or the facility. Instead, she had to discover a method for deploying her weapons in a manner which would have some kind of effect on her assailants. Ashley's lightning-enhanced punches had only weakened them; she'd had to physically destroy their bodies before...

"Bingo." Sam smirked knowingly. She surveyed the area near Ashley and locked eyes on a dismembered drone leg, still twitching from the last electrical impulses from its CPU. She lunged for it and wrapped her gloves around the longest, straightest portion, briefly struggling against its flailing. Her hair whipped across her face as she snapped her head back to locate the approaching drone.

Sam planted her right foot and came out of her crouch like an animal. She launched herself into a twisting lunge, swiveling at the hips, and brought the pointed end of the drone's leg into a hammer-fisted swing. She dumped her lungs into a primal war cry, absolutely ignorant of the fact she'd even mustered any vocalization at all. Teeth clenched, Sam threw her body weight into the swing and drove the pointed end of the leg directly into the approaching drone's sensor eye.

Two things followed Sam's attack. The cracked polycarbonate of the drone's sensor eye sparked briefly, just as the red glow began to die, and her shock gloves registered the sudden deceleration through their built-in accelerometers. She knew the impact would be enough to engage their capacitors, still charged from the earlier confrontation. With the trigger mechanism activated, the electrodes embedded in the palms of her gloves dumped their charge into the drone's leg...and straight into her attacker's circuitry. With a direct path to its internal wiring, the drone's hardened defenses against electrical overload had been completely bypassed. Its limbs locked and, with sparks flying from the hole in its electronic eye, it hinged backward on its hind legs and clanged helplessly to the floor.

"Yeah, bitch!" Sam bellowed, thrusting her fist into the air. She quickly reconsidered her premature celebration as the two remaining drones closed in.
Sam barely registered Nora's words over the clash. She grabbed her bag and whipped around to face the drone which, to her horror, had now disengaged multiple sections for individual targeting. Even worse, as her eyes swept across the length of the hall, she came to the realization that her attack hadn't just damaged their attacker. Boxcar's pitiable yelping and Ashley's roar of surprise now made much more sense to her. She let the bag's strap slide through her fingers until it slipped to the floor.

"I can't risk doing that again."

Now, where had that thought come from? In a house full of perfect strangers, more than half of them better equipped than to kill her with a gesture, the thought of continuing her sonic assault seemed somehow...wrong. It felt excessively sentimental to her, but she went with it. The plan, now, was to reach the others and regroup. There had to be a club, a wrench...something Sam could use against these technological terrors.

But there was a problem. Through the confusion of battle, for which Sam again "thanked" Adrenaline, she could pick out at least three sections of the drone skittering down the hall...directly toward her. One target was bad enough, but three? She stopped in her tracks. Her mind went blank.




Sam saw herself in that chair, again. It was terribly disturbing, being outside of one's body, but that feeling yielded to curiosity and anxiety. For a moment, she wondered if the drone had been a dream. This, then, would have been just another scene in the play her mind put on for her. Nightmare imagery was certainly not rare for her. But it didn't feel like a dream.

As she drew closer, again examining the exposed brain matter at the top of her head, she observed the tiny metal spiders again probing her neurons. They seemed to be focused on the back half. Stranger still, Sam could feel their pointed legs crawling around inside her head. It...was not painful.

One of the spiders seemed to be calling the others. It faced them, then set to work on a specific lobe. The others joined it. Sam could feel something change. She felt...




Sam's dilated eyes sharply refocused. She clenched her jaw and, leaving the bag behind, ran out into the hall. Nora still had the only weapon she could safely use against these things. Ashley had been throwing lightning-charged punches at the thing, and with tremendous success. Her shock gloves did not carry as intense a charge, but with the werewolf temporarily incapacitated, they would not have the luxury of relying on her to recover quickly.

The spider-like drone segments briefly reminded her of the creatures from her dream, but...they were different. These things were a clear and present danger. The dream had been frightening, but she hadn't gotten the feeling that she was unsafe with them. These attackers were another matter entirely.

She pumped her legs and charged. The three drone segments crouched in anticipation, no longer advancing. They appeared to be calculating a safe angle of counter-attack. Sam, knowing that an electronic system would never feel the pain, instead relied on the blinding effect of her capsaicin ejectors. She shoved her left sleeve upward and raked the device across their diminutive phalanx, splattering a thick, foaming substance across their sensor eyes. She leapt over them, trying for a Hollywood-style tuck-and-roll, but achieved only an unflattering bounce-and-slide.

"Doc!" She emptied her lungs with the effort to maximize volume, as she picked herself up. "Gloves!"
Jaiden's heavily armored body was a rag doll. The thing had rebuked his attack just as quickly as he made it, ejecting him from the room with ruthless efficiency. Sam's adrenaline-addled mind barely had the time to process the monstrous shape of Ashley's werewolf form surging into Nora's room before the situation spurred her into action.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit." Sam babbled, diving for her messenger bag. She hated adrenaline. It made her shaky, stupid, and weak. She second-guessed everything. It made her freeze up, spending more time analyzing options than taking advantage of them. Even if she had been able to react as quickly as the others did, that thing was clearly some kind of combat drone. What was tiny little Sam going to do with her bare fists? She needed weapons.

Her shaking hand curled around something round and pulled back a baseball-sized sphere of matte-grey metal. It took her a moment to recognize the device for what it was; another tip of the hat to the crippling effect of adrenaline on the inexperienced mind. Pieces of the puzzle began to force their way through the fog of war, and Sam made herself use them to build the start of a plan. She pressed her thumb against the active-capacitance sensor and worked at the settings until she found something useful.

Online...
Menu: Power, Settings, Activate

Menu Selected

Record Mode, Discharge Mode, Network Mode

Record Mode Activated

Select Record Mode: Frequency, Internal Stresses, Accelerometer Data, GPS Data

Internal Stresses Activated

Menu: Record Mode, Discharge Mode, Network Mode

Network Mode Activated. Syncing...

Sync Complete


The entire exchange lasted only a few seconds, as Sam was intimately familiar with her own creations. She had to be; there was no one else to hold accountable if the device failed in the field. Extensive testing was second nature to her. She also knew, from bitter experience, that the internal electromagnetic fields generated by the device could not be a guaranteed success. Non-magnetic alloys existed, after all. She'd had to select carefully from that list to create an outer shell which would not dampen the fields if she needed to use them. That meant that, for her plan to work, she needed an extra measure of insurance to make certain it would work. She grabbed a half-used roll of duct tape and discarded the bag.

Ashley's roar made her freeze in mid-step. She'd been certain that shape was just a stress-induced hallucination, but the roar sounded so vivid, so primal. She almost felt the vibrations in her chest. From somewhere in the back of her mind, Sam's inner voice reminded her that Jaiden might not be the only hulking beast in this motley crew.

"That, or another assassin. No time to worry about that now."

She took a deep breath and forced herself to run. Nora's doorway rushed up to meet her, and Sam couldn't help but regret how quickly. She never got the chance to duck inside, however. Multiple red streaks -after-images from the glow of the sensor eyes- blazed across her field of vision as it sailed through the air, smacking into the railing along the edge of the mezzanine. Its magnetized joints buckled as it curled backward over the railing from the force of impact, and Sam -for once- took advantage of the opportunity just as it presented itself. She jerked the end of the duct tape with her teeth, using her left hand as a spindle so that the roll would spin freely, and stuck the metal orb on the standing end, nearest the roll.

The urge to hesitate was stronger now, as she approached arm's reach. Those limbs looked deadly sharp. She clenched her fist and forced herself to lunge for its upper sections as it recovered from the impact of Ashley's throw. This would be her only chance. She had to act. She tagged one of the metal sections with the free end of the tape and, grabbing the other end, swung it hard. The weight of the roll caused it to whip around the drone three times, locking her device in place.

Sam kicked away from the thing, just as the werewolf came bounding out of the room. She did not bother to determine whether it was her or the drone this thing was after, instead retreating back to her room. Her hands would not stop shaking. She finally grasped another of the devices and remotely triggered her little surprise.

As it engaged, however, Sam remembered one crucial detail. In all of the chaos, she had neglected to warn her housemates of the primary function of her Shrieker device. She had just enough time to cover her ears with the noise-cancelling headphones designed to block the noise of the Shriekers before it tore through even the din of battle with a horrendous mechanical screech. The device cycled through every modulation and frequency in its range, finally settling on a particular tone before losing its charge. Sam had her information. She also had a plan of attack.
Night, if I see him before you do, I will let him know you're interested.
Earlier...

One corner of cloth slipped away, then another, and another. With that, Sam's eye caught sight of a familiar brushed-steel surface and a faux chrome logo which read "Toshiba". She didn't feel the corners of her mouth turn upward; an involuntary response she would not have doubted came from the familiarity she'd built with this specific machine. It seemed like she would just finish setting up the operating system and tweaking preferences, and would have to sacrifice yet another computer to one of countless unknowable factors ranging from compromised security to the need for a hasty hack-inspired solution to a problem which threatened her freedom or safety. This particular laptop had survived for much longer than the others, but that alone did not account for the feeling. This computer had allowed her to escape from not just one group of power-hungry criminals, but from her first-ever alien captors.

Her hand stalled within a fraction of an inch from the latch which kept the display closed when not in use. A terrible thought clawed its way to the surface of her mind, and she carefully withdrew from the computer altogether. Sam's ability was, at times, unpredictable. Furthermore, it seemed to frequently trigger itself upon physical contact with new technologies, or even unfamiliar configurations of components she already knew. Without more information on the strange metallic liquid from that downed fighter, how could she risk making physical contact with any device it had come into contact with?

"Gloves," she told herself firmly, as if scolding a metal shop student who'd forgotten to put on safety glasses. "No unnecessary risks, here."

She resolved to slink out of her room and retrieve...what, exactly? Her shock gloves had been involuntarily relocated by "doctor" Minder, whom Sam still was not certain about, and who would certainly be asleep by now. Even if she'd been able to keep them, the gloves had no fingertips. Sam often cut off the tips of all her gloves, to preserve the mobility and dexterity needed to operate keyboards and other tools which required fine motor control. Even as she cracked the door to investigate the hall, she mentally kicked herself for not keeping at least one pair of gloves on-hand which had not been compromised.

The only option, she decided, was to determine whether any other area of the house might have some gloves available for use. Her first thought was of the kitchen, but as the stairs came into view, Sam recognized the general layout of a laundry room. Many people kept cleaning supplies in rooms like those, so it was worth a shot.

"They did in the facility, anyway..." Sam scowled, noting that some of her best ideas came from bad memories. It wasn't enough they'd taken away her formative years; now they couldn't even let her have the credit for her own genius. She swiped a pair of latex cleaning gloves from the laundry room and retreated back to her quarters.

Now," she mused, dropping into a cross-legged position in front of the damaged computer. "Let's take a peek under the hood."

She flipped open the display and checked the keyboard for damage. Everything appeared intact, but the power button did nothing. She rotated the device, inspecting every seam, until she settled on the exhaust vent for the CPU fan. The plastic grille covering the fan showed the same metallic goo as the ship. This substance had hardened, but was still tacky when Sam probed it with the tip of her gloved index finger. When she withdrew the fingertip, she noted the substance displayed a peculiar reluctance to let go.

On a hunch, Sam examined the glove at its point of contact. With the naked eye, it was hard to make out anything definite, but the material had definitely lost flexibility at that point; almost as if it had been hardened by some kind of epoxy. She made a mental note to have Nora examine it later, assuming she had access to any kind of powerful microscope. For now, she had to put it out of her mind and continue with her examination. She removed the back cover and hard drive, and went over the motherboard inch-by-inch.

What she saw made the hair on the back of her neck stand. The metallic liquid had entered through the CPU fan vent, but it hadn't stopped there. She saw evidence of movement along the PCB's copper traces, almost as if drawn across the board by capillary action. About ten percent of the board had been compromised by the substance, which appeared to be attempting to coat it completely. She retrieved one of her best jewelers' loupes from her messenger bag and took a closer look. Each and every component the liquid metal had made contact with had been fundamentally altered.

Sam straightened, jaw wide open, and let the loupe fall from her eye. What she saw was...impossible.




It had been hours. Sam paced, pausing occasionally to glare at the defunct computer. Should she risk trying to charge it? Would it work differently, or not at all? If it did do something, would that "something" end up being worth the risk? She tried to stifle a yawn, but lost the battle. Her limbs had a mind of their own, spreading into a luxurious stretch which made her long for the comfort of a soft bed and a warm blanket.

"Yeah, right." She stared at the bed, knowing it wouldn't help. The clock on the night stand read 12:28am. She would try for sleep, but it would not come for at least two or three more hours. It would only end with her staring at the ceiling, when she could be doing more important things than wishful thinking.

Naturally, the insomnia hadn't been the worst part of that deal. She had her suspicions that her ability was partly to blame, but some part of her knew it was more than that. One of the biggest drawbacks to an active imagination, she decided, had to be the fact it would never allow her to forget. It wouldn't be so bad, if those memories had been good ones. They weren't. Every failure, every fear, every dark and well-hidden worry that ever tugged at the back of her conscious mind lived in those hours. Plans, goals, dreams for the future...they all existed for mere seconds before being replaced by every possible thing that may ever go wrong for her.

Noise helped her to sleep, some times. She'd tried white noise machines, but most models were cheap enough that they usually skimped on the audio quality; she could pick out the exact point at which the file looped, which engaged her brain every time. Sam thought the irony a bit sadistic; that the intended client would end up counting the number of loops in a sound file instead of counting sheep. No man-made device helped. It was on those nights that she most missed the rain.

She sat on the bed and tried to imagine the sound of water on her window. The occasional rumble of thunder reminded her of storms, and she closed her eyes and treated herself to some dazzling displays of lightning. Her head descended softly into the pillow and, just for a moment, she could hear the rain again.

"Wait a minute." Sam's eyes shot open. The three moons shining through her window confirmed that, whatever it was she heard, was most definitely not rain. She strained her ears as she went to the window. Again, there was no rain. So, then...what was that sound?

Sam cracked her door again and put her eye through the slim opening. It seemed everyone had either gone down for the night, or was otherwise occupied elsewhere. That tapping sounded closer all the time. She widened the opening and, just as she took a step through, discovered its source.

The red glow of sensor eyes whipped around the banister to face Sam, even as she worked for the words to alert her housemates. The thing never stopped moving for an instant, each of its spherical segments scanning its surroundings in three-hundred-sixty degrees. It maintained a signal lock on her position, even as it set to work on one of the bedroom doors.

"...oh, SHIT!" Sam finally shouted. "What the fuck is that thing?! Wake up! Everybody, wake up!"
Weeks Prior

Sam found herself ducking down an alley. She ditched her cell phone, even as it ignited, and retrieved a freshly-booted netbook from her bag of tricks. They wouldn't get her thistime...

"Seriously?" Sam mouthed as her back hit the brick wall. Her fingers danced across the tiny keyboard, producing another symphony of ones and zeroes which threatened to secure her place in the record books. "These assholes seriously never heard of SQL Injection?"

The local emergency bands registered an infuriatingly soothing tune, at Sam's behest. It blanketed all frequencies typically used by emergency responders; including, but not limited to police, EMTs, and local anti-terrorism units. All in all, it was a rather catchy beat, Sam mused, as she entered in the final computations to initiate the self-destruct on this burner netbook. She wouldn't be using that algorithm again...

Sam ducked down an alley and crouched behind a dumpster. Her headset relayed the expectedly infuriating music, but yielded nothing else. She smiled at the fact she'd have to put up with this, rather than instructions to other field agents as to how her freedom might come to an end. She even took a moment to view one of their field units, reveling in the disarray her little stunt had created. Had they even yet realized why they could not communicate?

But the voice of reason took her again. It told her this situation could never be permanent, and if her freedom was ever to make that status, she had to leave...now. Sam tweaked the transmission slightly, allowing the network to broadcast a slight imperfection in the jamming signal which indicated an origin point two and a half miles to the northeast, then slinked past the patrol and into a sewer. The manhole cover had been orders of magnitude heavier than she predicted, and Sam made a mental note to thank Gugliermo Marconi for the few extra seconds she needed to disappear.




Sam broke from her reverie as she heard Nora's departure from the doorway. Her thoughts became a jumble as she attempted to sort out memory from memory. She put her ear to the door and confirmed that Nora had indeed left, then tried the knob. When it opened, Sam let out a sigh of relief. These were definitely not secure dorms. When she cast her eyes downward, she found herself confronted with a new problem.

"Oh, yeah, sure... the voice of reason taunted. "Go ahead. Touch it. I'd like to see this."

She scowled, remembering all her previous experiences with the selective nature of her ability, and went to retrieve the top cover of her bedclothes. Sam slept only with the thinnest sheet, anyway, so the comforter could be properly sacrificed to shield her from an unwanted episode. She netted the laptop with the thick blanket and gathered up all her belongings by scooping up the corners and carrying it inside her room like a hobo's bag. Her heel prompted the door shut as she headed for the bed.

"I know you did something...." Sam just stared at the bundle, unwilling to undo it and confront what awaited her. She must have knelt at that bedside for hours before her thumbs and forefingers delicately peeled away the protective layer to reveal what lay underneath.
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