mdk

The Final Hazard

@Terminal

Luca's face went white before the pavise knight even addressed him. "Wait," he said softly. "She's the biometric pass?" That would mean that his suicide stunt was even dumber than before, which was a difficult bar to clear. Jesus Luca you're such a moron. As if to accentuate that thought, Luca asked no further questions about his role -- he was too distracted by the realization that he'd almost thrown his life away on the shaky, misguided, and foolhardy assumption that he was somehow special. The bolt in his hands felt heavy.

The Final Hazard

"Hey, you! You're standing too close to the line, get closer in to the rest of us. You don't want to be stuck between the folding walls."

@Terminal

Snapped out of his random delusions of significance by the sharp order, Luca immediately bounded towards the others. I'm such an idiot, he thought privately. "Sorry, I'm...." an idiot -- but don't say that out loud, stupid!! "Sorry."

His movement -- though late, and a little awkward for that fact -- was nevertheless remarkably spry and efficient. Watching him take a scolding and spring into action was something akin to watching spider monkeys deftly conquer a forest canopy. It was at once impressive and perfectly, naturally mundane; as though in both mind and body, this was his life's calling -- to recover from oblivious stasis with sudden bursts of competence.

The Final Hazard

Luca was relieved to see Donny return to the fold. He took a quick stock of his other allies. Amelie's condition was not lost on him, though he certainly couldn't explain it. The knight -- Fortune, if he remembered correctly -- was arming himself, which seemed wise. Luca only clasped the bolt he'd stolen, but that was about as much combat as he was good for anyway. He watched each and every one of his companions, fancying himself a shepherd for a moment while he stood about harmlessly and helplessly waiting for the authority figures to tell him what to do next. The idea that he could even think of himself as a protector was, at best, laughable -- but all the same, they'd come this far together, and as long as nothing else made sense, Luca found in these strangers a curious endearment. He didn't think it consciously, but if push came to shove, he would do what he could to help any of them.

Except perhaps Donny, but then, Donny certainly didn't seem to need Luca's sort of help.

The Final Hazard

"Whomever I decided to accompany me is not important right now. Let's just take our leave and move on. Waiting here has simply resulted in the situation getting worse and I want answers."

@Bright_Ops

Luca agreed. He took the arrow away from his throat, but held on to it, both for the meager sense of control it offered and for the sake of satisfying his curiosity. The pavise knight had referenced golems -- is that what this was? He'd never seen molecules turned to such a chaotic purpose. Mass reactions in randomized growth patterns, no discernible induction unless... Well. It was wild and disconcerting, especially since so much of the technology among these naturals felt so antique. There was something very wrong with this world -- and that made him question all the strangeness he'd written off earlier. Gravity fluctuations -- but it didn't seem like an artificial well. The delusions, the multiplying corpses -- for the first time, Luca was really thinking about all of the oddness. He decided to get to the bottom of it.

He also decided that weaponized golems were the least of his concerns. If he was going to figure things out, it would be best to start from the beginning. This all started with a name on a plaque, now nestled in his pocket -- Platter Aesch. And after that name, the companions in the limousine, and the red-headed.....

Shit. Where had that psychopath gone off to? He was just..... right there..... Okay that's spooky. Luca imagined Donny smirking in a shadow somewhere, pulling a railgun out of his ass or something and gunning down the whole gathering of strangers with a smug one-liner and like a ridiculously cool drag on a weird-shaped cigarette. "Donny!" he yelled. "Hey, we're, uh..... we're cool, right? Let's, uh, let's get out of here..... without..... murder......"

No sign of him. Luca looked at the rest of his gaggle. "Did anybody see where he went? I think Aesch is expecting both.... I mean, all of us."

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

<Snipped quote by mdk>

No comment. If such information was available, it was likely obfuscated by an aspect of the narration.

@Terminal

Noted -- and I think I see what you're talking about, heh..... Alright. I'll hold off on any bio-technical difficulties until they're directed. For internal consistency, if we ever get into some kind of wrinkle where time and consciousness are out of sync, that's the sort of thing that would trigger some kind of, idunno, adrenal error code or something. Haven't really sorted out how best to handle that, but I guess there's no point crossing that bridge just yet.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

@terminal -- It's hard to tell definitively from the layout of the latest post. Is the dimensional funkiness meant to be perceptible to anyone other than Donny and Amielle? My impression is that those were experienced only (or just primarily?) by the two characters affected.

I'm asking because if Luca was meant to perceive all that, I'd have to make some decisions about how/if the clockwork biotech would be affected. Reasonably speaking, they're, I mean, they're built on clocks, so if the clocks start going crazy, I need to address that somehow.

The Final Hazard

"Okay," he said, "play-time is over. Donny, Hierco, no more teasing each other, please. And you," he motioned to the ticking boy with the bolt aimed at his neck, "don't do anything foolish, okay?" He looked at the group, including the pavise knights. "Maybe it's time we all talk like civilized people, without any weapons raised at each other and without any more deaths. Everybody agree?"

@WiseDragonGirl

It was a good thing he said it, because Luca was about to blurt out an unthinking response to the male knight about how he had no idea who any of these people were, nobody knew what the hell was going on and what kind of outfit were they running here anyway... but that might have upset the calm, and he thought better of it once Andy spoke. But he didn't let down his suicide routine just yet.

He looked towards the male pavise knight, since he seemed -- for the moment at least -- the more reasonable of the two. "Who are you and what do you want from me?" He blinked. "I mean, from us." Then Luca's grip on the arrow tightened. Shit. Priority one. "I mean, you need to take us to an infirmary. Now. We have wounded, thanks to you." Luca was referring to a delusion he'd had moments earlier in which two of his fellow passengers were murdered right before his eyes. It didn't particularly matter that those two were, in (current?) reality, more or less fine -- they were on a strange celestial body and a visit to an infirmary should have been standard protocol anyway. Luca was simply in a mood to make demands.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

@Terminal Consider Luca's life effectively wagered.

The Final Hazard

Once Luca and and Ariett reached cover, the boy had a sudden moment of clarity. I'm the glim. He didn't know what a glim was, but he knew what it meant. "Wait here," he said.

He poked his head out in time to see Fortune and Amelie stricken with the metal. In his mind, based on his experience so far, he assumed they were going to die shortly -- of course, if he were thinking clearly, he would have recognized that Ariett was not at all dead even though she had also been stricken. But his confusion on the matter only served to give him extra motivation. I have to stop this now. I'm the glim. Be the glim.

They need me.

'They,' in this final thought, did not refer to his comrades. It referred to their assailants.

Luca broke cover and ran towards the pavise knights. One of their number had fallen, with an arrow in the visor. He ran at her corpse and slid into it, quickly locating among her armaments an arrow bearing the electroplating compound cylinder. He snatched it up and bolted to his feet.

"HEY!" he shouted, hoping to get everyone's attention -- which admittedly might have been difficult amidst the continuing battle. "HEY!!!"

He held the arrow an inch away from his own throat.

"Knock it off! Or the next one to die is your biometric pass!" Priority one is to protect human life. "I mean it!" He was almost certain that he really did mean it.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

Posted. If we live I think Luca can get everyone out of this.