Terminal

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

Less than an hour remains, and not yet everyone has posted.

Enough of the cut-short broken universe post remains that I can use it with only some midling modification. There is a bit of a running trend of last minute posts thus far, but I almost hope I have the chance to use the material.

The Final Hazard

"I don't want to be here. My name is Kael, I'm the student of the Ranger Cruallassar, I don't know why I'm here or where here is, and only have a vague idea of how I got here...but I would really like to know these things, or to go home. Whichever comes first, I'm not picky. And if going home means doing whatever these other people are here to do, then that is fine by me. It's nice to meet you...I hope."

@Cruallassar

"What the lad meant to say was that he was evoked in order to lend assistance to Sir Fortune in rescuing the Duke." The pavise knight interjected, shooting a scowl at the young ranger. "I can vouch for him - but that is it. There is no way you are having me head into that death trap. I did not sign up for this - and I don't owe you that much."

"No, but you and your partner together did." Aesch said with pained twist of his head and a grimace aimed vaguely in the knight's direction. "Her debt still has yet to be paid back. The burden falls to you. If you do not like it, I can always have a word with the district attorney's office." The pavise knight grit his teeth, the fingers of his left hand clenching tightly - but he kept silent.

"I really need a cup of coffee before doing anything else." It didn't matter to him if people would follow him or remain behind for a chat. All he wanted was to find Tafans and go home, but not before he had a good cup of coffee. And the best chance of locating either was in the university.

@WiseDragonGirl

@WiseDragonGirl
"Oh? And how do you plan to get inside? You have not been invited in and your biometric data is not in the registry." Aesch called back to Andreas' retreating form, without even turning his head to look at the departing doctor. "Get back here you pedant. I know pediatric care is not the most cerebral of medical studies, but one would expect you to have a modicum of common sense."

As Andreas distanced himself from the group, the tenuous finger of coherent space surrounding Aesch's personal entourage extended out further, following the doctor as a small spherical area of influence. With every step he took though, the distorted and hyper-compressed spatial disturbance surrounding them all encroached upon the slim thread of sanity between Aesch and Andreas. If he took but another step, the thread would be wholly severed. There was nothing stopping him from separating from the group were he to proceed - and though it was hard to make out admist the tangle of jumbled gothic architecture up ahead, Andreas swore he could see the dark outline of a vaguely humanoid form beckoning to him, obscured in many parts by intersections and overlays of stonework.

"I was informed that there were innocent people trapped in the university by a situation that has gone horribly wrong and it is my duty of a knight of the lady to try and rescue as many of them as possible... and failing that avenge their deaths. If you are not inclined to give us a more full picture of the warp blasted mess we are heading into, then please kindly point us towards our entry point and allow us to find out what is in there ourselves."

@Bright_Ops

"Ayuh, coffee first, and a laundromat. If yuh ain' noticed, we went through a real double skunkin' jus' go get intah a position tah save yah hide. Ah wanna tawlk privately with yah as well Mistah Aesh. Ah'm thah kinda fella who don't move lessin' he knows what he's in for. A'course yah could say Ah shouldn't expect any unfahseen problems, but, well... Odd thing. Ah find mahself both drench'd in blood, an' not quite skippah tah take yah at your word, frahnd."

@Doc Doctor

@Bright_Ops@Doc Doctor
"Yes, yes, I was just getting there." Aesch rolled his head again with the same pained expression - the motion seemed to one of habit. "You may well prefer your current clothes as they are rather than getting them cleaned, unless the thought of wiping off a stain before stepping into a septic pit appeals to you so much." Aesch sniffed scornfully to punctuate the statement. "It's all very simple. The University was hosting a symposium. One of the first presentations was to be made by one Leona Olypmia Cetona, doctor of theoretical physics and specifically of recently deregulated Allineation studies." Aesch idly raised his right hand and pointed straight up into the horribly twisted sky as he spoke, as though in reference. "Prematurely deregulated, as it turns out. She used her own presentation slot in order to stage her own ascension scheme. She apparently made something called a..." Aesch trailed off, and glanced meaningfully at the still-fallen man to his right, staring off into space where his comrade's head was busy drifting off. "Wilkins, boy, are you still there?"

The suited man turned to look at Aesch blankly for a moment, his face still chalk-white in pallor. "Sir?" He inquired hoarsely.

"The gizmo the doctor made." Aesch rolled his head again with another grimace.

"Oh. A fractal analogue iteration transistor, sir." The man said, fully righting himself and assuming a kneeling stance, facing both Ariett and his deceased's associates body. "More colloquially referred to as an Allineator."

"Yes, that." Aesch continued impatiently. "Intelligence is limited, but Leona somehow used the Allineator whatsit to hijack the symposium. She started by killing the hundred or so visitors attending her presentation. Then the guards. The the university staff. She kept on going - apparently the University's security measures have not been able to stop her. All the good they've done is stop her from getting out, but they've also trapped everyone still alive inside with her. Including," Aesch turned his gaze to Fortune with a wary expression. "One Duke Aldric De Palenbergo of many other names I do not have the reverence to recite in full. We know he's still alive, for the moment, due to his guest pass and biometric data having been used little more than fifteen minutes ago."

@Holmishire
"Your jobs are as follows." He looked to Ariett. "You, Ms. Deveca, are the only person who has a guest pass and biometric data registered with the university. Your little team will need you to stand by and open any locked doors for them - at least, those you can find which your limited privileges can open at all."

He turned then to look at Donny. "You need to find Dr. Leona and deal with her, and shut down the Allineator. Preferably, destroy it once that's done. Do not destroy it before turning it off, my techies inform me that would be bad." He waved irritably before addressing Fortune.

"Finally, you and Dr. Bansing will be responsible for locating and rescuing the Duke, whatever condition he might be in. As a secondary priority, you are to provide medical assistance to any wounded you find inside. I understand one of Dr. Bansing's patients is currently inside, some...uh..."

"A Kanuri boy sir. He's the one who called out using the emergency line before it was cut." The suited man to Aesch's left said. "Tafans was his name. He claimed to have observed Leona's use of the Allineator first hand."

"Right, so he's also a priority as the only confirmed survivor of her initial massacre." Aesch carried on. "Find and rescue him too. If he can't be saved, try to pump him for anything useful at least."

"The boy is dead; he was trying to save us when the… slug started spinning." She sighed, turning to the male pavise knight. "Does this mean you'll be coming with us? Though you've never given us your name."

@Holmishire

"Then unless your evoked help happens to know anything about molecular golem interfaces, I suppose you're rather in a spot of trouble." Aesch replied dryly. "Make do."

"This whole thing is utter trash." The pavise knight complained loudly, seeming to ignore the inquiry as to his name. "I mean, I'll go in if only for the sake of covering Hiecro's debt - and helping out these poor bastards - but do you honestly expect us to make any difference? How come you don't just send in the army or something? Now that Deveca is here, you should have access through that one wing, right?"

"Well in case you had not all noticed, certain other powers have taken advantage of Dr. Leona's power play." Aesch replied sourly. "All of my men are currently busy keeping the university grounds secure, and my influence with the militia has been...curtailed." He drummed his fingers in irritation. "Certain other parties want Leona to escape the university. Hence why your limousine was intercepted. And why if I send anybody else with you, certain busybodies will slip through the cracks - and then we all lose. So yes, it is just you five. And if you fail, I will cut my losses and just burn the whole university to the ground."

The Final Hazard

"I don't know what twisted world you've dragged us into, but a lot of people died to get us here, your man included. So I beg of you, please, just tell us what we need to do to get out of here." Though monotone at first, her words were filled with anger by the time she fell silent.

@Holmishire

@Holmishire
The prone man grasped at Ariett's arm as she dislodged the twisted wrack of ceramic that had been Hiecro from his body. "Hyperion's blessings upon you." He whispered hoarsely, losing his grip in the next moment and turning on his side, supporting himself with one arm. He looked badly shaken - and his features paled as he saw his compatriot's severed head drifting up and away through the air, having bounced lightly off the ground and now left drifting in the distorted gravity. The blood seeping from its stump and that of its former body, rather than forming up into globules, instead seemed to be taking every opportunity to diverge and spread in every direction. A small stream of it splattered itself across the still living man's cheek as he looked on in stunned silence.

"I'm kinda wondering the same thing," he said with a calm voice right after Ariett fell silent, frowning at the bodyless head. "Things went bad pretty much from the beginning and it has been going downhill ever since," he added and he looked at the man in the wheelchair, noticing the eyelid, the drip and the tubes. "Are you the one who called for us?"

@WiseDragonGirl

Kael gets his bearings, looking at the new people...then at Donny. "Don't kill them...him...them any more...let's no one kill anyone. I've seen more people killed in the last hour than in my entire life, let's not try adding to it."

@Cruallassar

The man furrowed his eyebrows and turned back to look at the passengers with a pain expression as he drew in a deep and ragged breath. "I didn't..." He began weakly, his eyes still clouded over with confusion and horror. A brief instant passed, and then a spark flashed across his withered features before he recovered. His frame stiffered as he sat up straighter, his expression hardening somewhat. His eyes were still wide and wild, but he seemed more present than he had been a moment ago.

"I did not bring you here." He said crossly. "You were sent here. This whole mess is your doing. None of this would have happened if you lot just had just left well enough alone." Another brief pause as he motioned to the men on the left with a trembling hand, one of whom began moving to lend assistance to both Ariett and the man she had moved to free. The motion of his arm briefly pulled the fabric of his shirt even further off of his chest, revealing the full extent of his condition. A large swath of silver metal covered the surface of most of his chest, the metal conforming precisely to the haggard contour of his ribcage, and sprouting directly from the center of his sternum was a small starburst-shaped weed of silver, metallic spines. Surrounding it was an elaborate set of etched lines and shapes seemingly carved into the metal's surface, forming a rectangular portrait of linework across his upper chest centered around the flower of metal in the center. Up close, the design was not wholly dissimilar from the kind one might have found on an ornate silver platter. Apart from the jutting silver spines in the center of his chest, the linework was only broken in a few places by surgical tubing that punctured through the surface, most of them filled and thick with deep, carmine blood - weaving back down through the man's shirt, possibly to some unseen filtration device in the wheelchair.

"My name is Aesch. Not my given name you understand, given my line of work. I will make things simple for all of you. You need to go into the university and do what you were sent do do. Then you can all kindly leave..." The man paused again, his head sagging abruptly mid-speech. The second man to his left bent down and offered him a small handkerchief, which he meekly accepted and used to dab at his wet, red lips hidden within his scraggly beard. The cloth came away thoroughly stained through with blood, which Aesch then tucked away in a small zipper-bag hanging from the side of his wheelchair. Its side was emblazoned with a biohazard symbol, and a glimpse within revealed a multitude of bloodsoaked rags.

"...kindly leave-" Aesch began again, "and things will settle down again."

"Begging your pardon Platter, but I am going to be leaving now." The pavise knight interrupted. He seemed curiously unperturbed by his partner's gruesome death and by the detritus that had completely coated his armor - though, given it was slowly fading away as though being scoured by some unseen force, perhaps he had good reason not to care. "My debt is paid."

@Cruallassar
"It was paid up until you botched what was supposed to be a simple escort job you oaf." Aesch snarled. "Where in Hades' name is the golem technician? And you-" He turned his gaze towards Kael, though it would have been more accurate to say that he turned his gaze to stare at some distant patch of space behind Kael, whose head incidentally happened to be in the way. "...Who in the world are you? You are not supposed to be here..." His left arm twitched, as if he were about to raise it. The man standing to attention to Aesch's left was giving Kael a bug-eyed look, and his fingers twitched faintly.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

Oh drat, and here I was halfway through writing my horribly broken and fractured world post. I must begin anew.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

Just a touch over an hour remains. Not everyone who has been tagged has posted yet.

Sad to say, but things are about to become decidedly impossible. In more than one sense.

The Final Hazard

He decided on the female knight that had taken delight in executing the helpless and tried to kill Amelie earlier; If her own gods refused to protect her for her dishonorable behavior, that was on her and no one else. The choice made, he closed his eyes and continued to pray.

@Bright_Ops

"That fucking gearhead was a proxy!" Hiecro exclaimed, eyes wide in shock, her voice barely audible over the sound of metal shearing through the air, one piece of shrapnel impacting against her armor and flattening itself in its futile effort to continue in the direction it had been going. Hiecro turned her head to look at Donny and gave him a cross look. "They said he was with you, fucker. Is that how it is? That why you've been murdering every-"

There was a sudden lurch in all of the passengers' stomachs at the same time as their ears popped. The details of the city below exploded into focus as the slug continued to descend, individual buildings unstretching and gaining sharp relief to accompany their decompressing edges and corners. Directly below them was wide, raised platform that looked to be made of concrete, painted with yellow lines and ringed by red, domed lights. Clearly a landing pad of some sort. The slug's velocity had slowed down tremendously, and thankfully it appeared that what Hiecro had insisted earlier was true. As the invisible sphere of force began to slow, its occupants slowed along with it despite being suspended within its interior.

At least, most of the passengers. Ironically, the only person not to slow along with the sphere and the other passengers was the very individual who had declared it would happen. With a gasp as the wind and words were knocked out of her, Hiecro seemingly flew straight up into the slug's roof - and with a curious scraping noise like sandpaper wearing against stone tiles, flakes of her armor began to pour from her frame like a cloud of cinders, each one visibly glowing with heat. The next moment, Hiecro was gone - the inner wall's rapid rotation adhering her to its surface with centrifugal force, reducing her form to a blurred, black, humanoid form that was rapidly crumpling in on itself as a mist of powdered, superheated ceramic flakes began to circulate around the edges of the slug's interior.

A few scant moments later, the flying pieces of shrapnel, bone, and the cascade of grisly charnel all lost their momentum, as though the invisible spinning wall was no longer spinning so violently. The crumpled armor that had contained Hiecro - now so warped and twisted that there was no doubt she had not survived, was dribbling gore from every small crack in the plate and seeping through the surviving chainmail as it eerily began to slow. Like a rushing rapid, the various debris - organic and not - rolled and dribbled to the bottom of the sphere, leaving only Hiecro's body to continue being swung about the slug's equator like a stone in a sling.

The slug slammed straight down onto the landing pad, unleashing a concussive shockwave of force akin to the one that had been produced when Hiecro and her partner had first landed by the remains of the limousine, flinging out a cloud of embers and grisly rain in every direction. The debris clattered, slapped, smacked, and splattered against the concrete, leaving the passengers to collapse atop it all along with Luca's decapitated chassis and Amelie's lobotomized corpse.

Hiecro's body, though, was flung out from them just as the wall of force that had been suspending it vanished, the twisted, wracked coffin soaring out through the air like a blade. The landing pad was situated in the middle of a wide, grassy field - distant buildings brought into immediate focus while the intervening space was compressed in upon itself, reducing so much turf and grass into an incomprehensible pea-green line of mess drawn in a rough circle around the landing zone. There was a single cobblestone path leading away from the landing site, where four individuals dressed in formal suits were standing in anticipation around a single, hunched figure ensconced in a wheel-chair and towing an I.V. drip. Directly behind them past the influence of the compressed space was the soaring front facade of the New Nemea School of Engineering, the details of the structure hopelessly mashed together until it resembled nothing more than a wall of chaotically intermingled gothic stonework, including gargoyles merged halfway into the sides of buttresses and further engulfed by elaborate archways. In every other direction, a blurred chainlink fence had been ensnared in the distant structures of residences and streets that surrounded the landing area. The only firm detail that could be discerned was in the relatively small patch of space immediately surrounding the passengers, with a small finger of wavering detail drawn across the air and ground extending out to encompass their welcoming committee.

They received far more than they had bargained for when Hiecro's twisted corpse, all wrapped in her malformed armor, twisted through the air like some hideous insect. One of the flattened legs cleanly decapitated the man standing to the wheelchair's right, while the bulk of its mass slammed into the unfortunate bystander who had been standing just beside him, toppling them to the ground with a shout of dismay as the headless corpse crumpled to its feet, blood briefly spraying in every direction before turning to a gurgling dribble.

The man in the wheelchair looked between the jumbled mess on the landing pad and the collapsed heap of the fallen men entangled with Heicro's remains to his right in a mixture of shock and horror. He was an elderly individual who had the relative fortune of having kept most of his shock-white hair, keeping it slicked back in a wavy mane. He wore a modest, spark-like beard that looked to have only recently grown in, covering lips that were so red and wet it was as though blood was dribbling from them. His left eyelid hung in a peculiar fashion, as though paralyzed, atop a permanently quirked left cheekbone. He wore a plain button white-shirt, with a jungle of tubing and plastic braces running through it, connecting the man to the I.V. drip and running to more discrete areas along his wheelchair. The man's upper chest was wholly exposed, revealing a gleaming patch of silver running like a jagged scar down from the man's right shoulder and across his collarbone before blooming like a flower in the center of his chest.

"What is happening?!?" He cried out, his voice pained and filled with shock. His eyes were wide, but had an unfocused look to them that suggested them were always that way. "Wilkins, Berter, are you two alright? What is going on? What is that thing - get it away..."

@Cruallassar@Doc Doctor@Holmishire@WiseDragonGirl

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

... Oh, well.
_{Mildly regrets the sentiment of yesterday. Oh, well.}
Edit: I assume I'm exempt from having to post within two days even if I'm tagged like this?

@PlatinumSkink

You are exempt, mainly because you were tagged in quotation only.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

Terminal, if one can't do that, please kill her. Haha.

@PlatinumSkink

Wish granted.

Both Luca and Amelie have died. The roster has been updated accordingly.

The Final Hazard

"We were sent here to suffer, right?" he said, sounding so tart that he surprised himself.

@mdk

Hiecro's eyes widened, shock plain on her face as she whispered a single word.

"Proxy..."

He pushed her, and grabbed her by the wrist. He let his feet hang out behind him -- but Hiecro wasn't the one moving. Luca calculated everything as well as he could. He drifted backwards towards the spinning wall, with Hiecro acting as his anchor towards the center of the.... slug, was it? It didn't matter. He did the best he could. If it all worked out, then he'd wind up planting his feet on the revolving shield -- that might reduce the initial friction, or it might cause some spontaneous nuclear explosion. It might slow the rotation of the vessel, or it might splatter his bits all over the compartment like a Bycroff mine in a kindergarten.

@mdk

His shoes made contact with the invisible spinning wall first, and it was then that Luca was shown just how awful an idea this was. Without appreciably affecting his own momentum or trajectory, the invisible walls tore the soles straight from his shoes as though they were damp tissue paper, the rubbery mass proceeding to disintegrate and scatter across the interior of the sphere as little wisps of what looked like chewn-on off-color gum.

Then his actual feet hit the invisible spinning wall, rewarding him with but a split instant of pain and the realization that he was going to die. The flesh along the bottom of his feet was ground into a liquefied visceral paste instantly, and the moment his momentum carried something a touch more durable than mere flesh into the wall, his entire body was rocked by a massive force that instantly spun him head-over-heels, pinwheeling him just like the pavise had been. His actual trajectory did not change though - so they next thing to make contact with the invisible spinning wall was his head, roughly face-first.

117A9 Luca died then and there as the entirety of his head exploded in a stringy mess of gore entwining mechanical components, most of which were instantaneously broken apart, chipped, or shattered from their own impacts with the wall - right before they hit the invisible wall a second time and were flung out into the slug's interior. Thankfully, most of them immediately collided with the fully armored Hiecro - and completely stopped in place to float listlessly in the air, the whole of their velocity robbed. Hiecro herself, aside from her looked of dazed confusion, was utterly unharmed - though it did appear that the impacts had affected her trajectory somewhat, as she was now drifting back towards the center of the slug's interior.

The remainder of the metallic parts shot right past the passengers without hitting any of them, largely thanks to Hiecro having acted as a shield for most of them. They hit the internal wall again, and this time most of them were caught and adhered to it by the centrifugal force keeping the pavise in place and started to orbit the passengers along with it. A few, however, rebounded and shot off in new directions with additional velocity. The outer boundaries of the slug became filled with bits of flying shrapnel and metal, soundlessly impacting the unseen barrier around them all and then tearing through space with an audible sound akin to a razor slicing through air. Every few moments, one would bounce off at a particularly odd angle and shoot through the space the passengers occupied, with three near misses occurring in the first five seconds.

Instead he reached under the gap between himself and his breastplate in order to grasp two amulets that he kept there, holding one the first (a small symbol of a shield and spear) tightly as he softly prayed "Myrmidia, please do not allow one of your servants to perish in such a dishonorable manner as this." before grasping at the second talisman (a white dove in flight) and muttered a different prayer softly under his breath. "Shallya, please show your servant mercy and protect those who travel with me from harm."

@Bright_Ops

@Bright_Ops
Fortune was struck by an epiphany.

Not everyone could be saved.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl for him as a piece of metal drifted in front of his visor, doubtlessly careening through the slug faster than his eyes would normally have been able to follow. For that split instant of time though, he could see every edge and detail of the piece of metal as it flew straight past him. He could even tell where it was headed.

Amelie erected her sphere of power and anchored it to herself to prevent it from flying off, and she took in the slug and the other passengers into it. As to prevent their immediate death by slamming into something, she drastically slowed down the speed of their descent and the rotational speed of the slug, by manipulating the objective measure in relation to themselves. The intention was to slow it down enough for it to no longer be lethal to all of them in order to hit the ground softly, eventually. This while also slowing down the rotation to that of a gentle carousel, to ensure impacting it would not injure anyone.

@PlatinumSkink

As the sphere was erected, Amelie discovered several complications. The slug they were all traveling in appeared to be some convergence of multiple, layered, spatial forces akin to her own abilities. The invisible walls carrying the pavise shield around the interior, the ghastly remains of the bird the slug had collided with, and now Luca's mortal remains - each of them was bending space and time in a particular way. The relative velocity of the slug was actually incredibly slow. It was moving no faster than a leisurely pace. However, the walls were contorting space in such a way that its velocity relative to everything outside the affected area was super-sonic.

That was both bad and good. On one hand, it meant she did not have to worry about the slug's velocity. The moment it hit the ground, assuming the fields fell apart, the passengers would hit the ground with all the force of having missed the last step on a staircase. Hiecro had apparently known what she was talking about.

On the other hand, the interior of the slug was quickly filling to the brim with death, and if she could not find a way to slow down the spinning of the interior wall then they all might die from the shrapnel being thrown around anyway. That would be difficult though - it already appeared to be slowing down somewhat, and the speed of its rotation was apparently linked somehow to the external distortion of space. If she slowed it down now it might leave the slug to start falling at terminal velocity in regular space. Or it might cause the slug to vanished entirely somehow. Just to complicate things further, the interior wall's rotation was being affected by the movement of the layered walls between it and the exterior wall, meaning that even if she tried to slow it down, the other walls would keep it at a relatively stable velocity. So in order to slow the whole slug down, she would need to slow all of the layers of the slug at once, according to their different relative velocities. Which would be tricky, as they were not even actual objects but some strange ephemeral force tha-

Amelie never even saw the piece of metal that flew straight past Fortune's head before it shot straight through hers, exiting the back of her skull and causing a spray of hair, torn skin, shattered bone fragments, gray matter, and visceral fluid to surge out, most of it making contact with the interior wall and starting to create a wet, fluid cascade of gore-soaked debris continuously rebounding and spinning around the passengers.

Fortune's own perspective was still crawling along, slowly. As if time itself had deigned to show him the finer details of curious moments like this one. He had been forced to watch as the ballistic shard of metal had torn through the air and impacted Amelie's head.

The epiphany came to him again. Not everyone could be saved. Nearly everyone who remained within the damned, invisible carriage could be saved by the grace of his faith. Nearly. He was then burdened with a singularly divine decision. It was his alone to make.

One of the remaining passengers could not be saved. All but one of the remaining passengers would live.

Who would he permit to die?