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 Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 9:01 pm
((After is fine by me, though with Kalis having gone through some changes since, the timing of our first foray into the city was definitely before HoH. So if everyone's alright with that, I'm good...
I'll make an actual post tomorrow, but Owle would have watched over Kalis till he was better, then told him she'd catch up to him at the Firebrand...and stay in Agrippina. If he returns to the city after HoH, he'll have no idea how the hell she managed to beat him here, cause he definitely left her behind at the hotel/Firebrand/wherever.))
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Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:01 pm
Now that they no longer were in the city, Drake could be found in silent meditation at the edge of the camp, his blade unsheathed and laid across his crossed legs. He had already taken his noontime meal and was now enjoying not being surrounded by hostile beings that wished to transform him into a mindless drone...and the sunshine. His armor, given a good scrubbing to remove the ichor of the strange beings, rests beside him in the sun as he lets his mind drift.
Drake: What is the source of this plague?
A question he cannot answer. However, his mind continually returns to it, making his meditation less peaceful and more frustrating. With a dissatisfied grunt, he slowly pulls himself upright, clutching his sword. He begins to slowly move through several combat forms, focusing on the precision of the form and removing the question from his mind...for now.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 3:51 am
It seemed everyone else had made it out of the city. There were SURVIVORS after all. Yet, here we found our star, wading in sludge, and pistol held high. Nothing but disgusting corpses surrounding him, mutilated and deformed.. spent casings littered the ground as well... But he was alive. SURVIVORS after all. His radio was dead, nothing but constant static. He only had a single supply pack, which was currently strapped to his back. He'd been mainly using the handgun for now, reserving the rifle for emergencies. SURVIVORS. He had to complete the mission. SURVIVOR. He had to get out of this city. Level 2: Out of the muck and into the trash.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 6:59 am
Owle had ridden the motorcycle right up to the barricade, sending a mental message of who they were and that Kalis needed help fast ahead of her. As of yet none of the zombies they'd encountered out here had been remotely human or capable of telepathy, so, while a psychic in their midst creeped some of the men out, they let them back into the camp. A few even recognized her as one of the healers from before, but no one really seemed comfortable around her now that they knew she was a telepath.
"Stop looking at my naked wife!"
Owle had stopped in her tracks when the man yelled at her, thoroughly confused.
"Those were private moments, dammit! You can't just barge into my head and stare!"
After a few very awkward moments while Owle tried to explain she wasn't reading his thoughts, nor was she interested in naked women especially, the shifter finally found it wisest to just run.
"Yeah, you'd better run!"
They seemed to accept her better among the medical tents...perhaps it was Kalis's calm example. For as long as he stood there, recovering, she stayed by his side, doing whatever she could to make him more comfortable, even if that meant just sitting and talking with him. Or maybe it was because they needed all the help they could get in there, and Owle was eager and willing to do what she could. She knew the basics of caring for minor wounds, and as she spent her days in the camp they taught her more and more advanced treatments. Many of these required the aid of the state of the art tools they had for the job, but Owle made a point of asking how one might treat such a wound in the field, far from any medical center. The doctors and nurses looked at her like she was crazy, but they explained as best they could.
If/when Kalis left, she declined to go with him. She made up some excuse about how flying would be faster, and she would meet him back at the Firebrand. She was well aware that there was another version of her back at the Firebrand, unaware of anything that was happening to her here. Eventually the two would merge back together, but not yet. Owle was needed here, in these medical tents...and she wasn't going to leave a place she could learn so much from.
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Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 8:19 pm
Commander McCraig was a military man all his life, and the fact he was now in charge of Agrippina's defence made him wonder if that was worth it. At his age he should have been more worried about retirement and not the containment of cities. But he had also made his career out of making the best of bad situations, and goddamn this was a bad situation.
The creatures had gotten at least twice as aggressive and three times as tactical. He actually had to try now rather than just have his men shoot down a wave after wave of cannon fodder. He needed to know how this new threat worked.
That was why he was personally standing guard with the other men today. He was wearing full battle armour, without helmet of course. As all video game logic tells us this meant he was important and not stupid as it does in real life. Every line on his face was deep set, his brow furrowed to the degree it put a plowed field to shame. His cropped hair was only falling from its stark black into grey in a few places, but it had already receded quite a ways back. But as with any man that just refuses to care about balding, all that hair seemed to sprout back in his eyebrows and bushy black moustache. He was clutching his assault rifle closely, ready to fire at a moments notice.
For a moment he forgot about retirement, this was the ******** life.
~-------------------~
For David though, life wouldn't be that idealised. The sewers smelled the only way flesh recycled and killed a second time could: rank. And then there was the silence, the all consuming silence. Only a heartbeat, footsteps and the dripping of water. God knows these sewers had driven quite a few desperate evacuees insane.
And god help the creatures they became.
Then the silence broke. A quickly snuffed out scream, just a half moment and it was gone. Unfinished, no, more like it never existed in the first place.
Not too far down the sewers a man that had once owned a drycleaners was being torn apart by a pack of monsters. Yes a pack. They even looked like dogs, maybe even wolves, only all their fur had long fallen off. With bare grey flesh exposed all one could see was thick veins, tendrils hanging limp to the ground, and a scattered trace of spines along the creatures back.
Then one looked up and the true horror was exposed. The creatures head looked vaguely canine, but there was no snarling snout. Just a hole punctuated by teeth, and two fleshy mandibles constantly shovelling flesh down into the creature.
These mutants were designed to sniff out remanning survivors. Their senses were far superior of even a throughbred hunting dog, hearing and smell nearing perfection. That isn't even counting the fact they were mentally connected to the rest of the pack, and every other monstrous organism, through the viral link.
These were the hunter's pack dogs... But where was the hunter?
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Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:01 pm
Whuppawhuppawhuppawhuppa...
"THAT'S ******** AWESOME!" Stryphe yelled to be heard of the A~E chopper. Honestly, the pilot could hear the demon-man just fine.
"No," The pilot shook his head, "that's not awesome. And if you keep screaming I'll have half a mind to drop your a** off right here."
"Well," The demon-man shrugged, "just look at the damn thing. Honestly, if that was in a movie, you'd think it was cool."
"Take this mission seriously, Stryphe."
"Jake!" Stryphe wrapped his arm around the top of the pilots seat and leaned into the cockpit, "You're a little nervous, aren't you?" Stryphe pointed towards what he could only guess was once that Aggrippina A~E building. "Find that s**t intimidating, don't you? Could swat us down like a bug, just look at it."
"That's it, Stryphe, I've got a wife and kids and you're go-"
"Fly, Jake."
"..."
They were less than a mile away from the hideously infected A~E building. Stryphe'd been breifed on the details by Joseph's secretary, though he'd hardly been listening. In one ear out the other. If he really knew what was in store for him and how much danger he was truely in, he'd be feeling a lot more like Jake right now.
Regardless, they'd be over the building in a couple seconds.
"If those ******** things start going Giant Squid on this ship I'm out. Jump on my mark."
Stryphe whipped around and carefully stomped to the back of the chopper, picking up a chute and his halberd. He wore his usual outfit, only instead of a leather jacket, he was garbed in a bomber jacket. It was appropriate.
"Ready when you are," He said, standing in the open side hatch of the chopper, holding onto an inside railing with his left hand and giving the back of Jake's head a nod.
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Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:25 pm
Of course the building wouldn't go giant squid on them. The building had a whole city to do that for it... Once it evened the altitude difference of course. First, let's remind Stryphe of his mission shall we: Claire Fontaine "Now listen, I only have the patience to say this briefly and the time to say it once. We need you to recover some data from our office in Saint Agrippina. Just take this data disk, load the main storage hard drive onto it, and we'll worry about cracking the passwords and all that. That's not the hard part. Something has over run the city of Saint Agrippina, and for some reason Joseph refuses to let anybody but you go in there. He insists you'll know how to handle it. That being said it's dangerous in there, and we haven't been able to get a task force to the tower. So, I hope to God Joseph is right about you. Once you do this we owe you the favour you've been wanting so desperately. No more of this trashing office crap, we just help each other from now on. It was about this time an infected human was shambling across a street somewhere. That cocoon is of no interest, just a bag of flesh that will some day become the raw material for what would threaten the helicopter. They were like coiled snakes asleep on the rooftops, bile seeping out of the gaping holes that were their mouths. They laid dormant, waiting for the viral connection to give them warning that something was coming, something along the lines of a helicopter. The second the heli crossed into range each of the tubes would stand at attention. Changing from lazy worms into fleshy cannons trained at the whirlybird. Then with an uncanny accuracy they fired upon the machine. Stryphe and the pilot would soon find a barrage of viral projectiles zooming towards them. They amounted to two meter long barbed spears, hard and fast enough to tear through the helicopter like a tin can.
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Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 11:34 pm
"House wins", words met with a chorus of disapproval and one loud groan. No action was taken beyond that as one sad group shuffled off to the watch and another sat down.
Their 'playing area' was a round table errected in one of the mess tents. All chairs were too occupied for use, so they instead used empty, and thus overturned ammo boxes. Their reason for picking this particular tent? Some company had taken the liberty of dropping off a drink machine for the soldiers.
"Basic rules and all. No ******** around. Place your bets."
Was followed shortly after by another.
"House wins, I assure you that I will enjoy your paycheck Mr. Cabella." Tweak was well into action as he snapped the cards back into his deck and pulled the money towards him. Or at least he would have were it not for the fist impacting the table right onto the betting pile. Tweak winced more at the damage to the money then potential offender.
"You ******** cheated!"
Everyone knows how this situation looked and sounded. No real need to get all descriptive with it. Two big guys, dealer looking bored and shrugging as he slipped a few bills from under the fist. Shrugging did not really do anything to sedate the angry fellow, but Tweak would have cared a whole lot ******** off. Not my problem your hand sucked dipshit." Situation only gets worse.
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Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 1:46 pm
"Fly, Jake."
"What?!"
"GO!" And that was all before Stryphe leapt from the chopper. He was able to tell the virus had made a move, but it was difficult to keep track of the deadly barbs while they were in the air. No matter- Stryphe would protect both himself and ensure Jake's escape.
"Jake!" Stryphe wrapped his arm around the top of the pilots seat and leaned into the cockpit, "You're a little nervous, aren't you?" Stryphe pointed towards what he could only guess was once that Aggrippina A~E building. "Find that s**t intimidating, don't you? Could swat us down like a bug, just look at it."
"That's it, Stryphe, I've got a wife and kids and you're go-"
"Fly, Jake."
"..."
Stryphe would nearly fully curl into a fetal position; his halberd crossed in front of him, still held in his right hand. Just as the barbs were about to slice through both him and the fleeing helicopter, Stryphe would bloom and it would seem his movement rippled the air around him, only once. That single rippled, in the blink of an eye, would expand outward.
The barbs, each and every one of them, would be intercepted by this wave of energy. They would not be knocked away- instead they would hit and sink, as if they'd been fired into an extremely dense wall of sludge. The rippled would continue to expand for a moment before dissapating entirely, leaving the barbs to fall harmlessly back down into the infected city.
"Pulse of The Watcher," He said lightly, smirking to himself. There would be no counterattack in store from this heighth- it had been made clear to Stryphe that damaging the building was bad. Not to say the building itself was of any value, but something inside was extremely crucial to the mission. Risking it was unnacceptable.
Ready for anything, he turned his body towards the infected A~E building and straightened out, maximizing the speed of his descent.
"Bring it on..."
((Next post I'll be making contact with the building. Left you a post to shoot some more stuff or mention whatever your sick mind sees fit.))
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Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 5:39 pm
This wasn't the first time that the primary defences missed an agile airborne target. No single organism was infallible, but the more involved the smaller the chance of failure. One picked up the slack of another or sunk into subservience when the time arose. If the multitudes could do this, rather than bicker and fall apart, then the chance of failure would be less than 1%. This was what Twelve depended on.
No mater who faced him, and no matter how many allies they had, they were individuals. Individuals were doomed to fail.
Twelve on the other hand... Even alone it was a multitude.
Thus the wormlike cannons that had fused to the city itself realigned and released a second volley towards the helicopter. While they wouldn't "know" it as a human sniper would, they were at the very least aware that they had a better chance to strike down Jake's whirlybird than the falling demon. Some part of the organic machine that was the Agrippina infection a creature had calculated that even with Jake's ability to manoeuvre, the other target wasn't even worth the shot.
Two twisted creatures emerged from a nest attached to what used to be a beautiful piece of overhanging architecture. They were like large wasps, small and fast, but with sickly bulbous abdomens that seemed on the verge of explosion. Truth be told, they were. These creatures knew their place, to fly into evasive targets and explode. To any other creature these wasps would be seen as honoured martyrs...
The insect creatures spiralled towards Stryphe, and if the demon let them they would continue spiralling... Right past him and then they would hunt down the helicopter like organic homing missiles.
----------------
He knew they were coming. McCraig just had the feeling, the kind of feeling only old hats at fighting get. That knot somewhere between your stomach and your lungs that screamed "you're probably going to die". McCraig hated the dread that the feeling entailed, but somewhere he also loved the exhilaration it brought.
Then it came. Not a wave of zombies like before but something sailing through the air.
"Gah! Arterially!" The commander shouted to the troops on the front line. But it was a useless warning, the projectile was lobbed straight into the midst of the camp.
Most nearby were aware at the powers of their enemy and ran like hell. There were a few unfortunate, even stupid, souls that decided to investigate what was now in the centre of the camp. A sac of gray flesh, pulsing veins causing it do jiggle like the least appetising batch of jello ever made. Four off-duity solders circled around the now dormant projectile.
"Make sure nobody is near that thing!"
But McCraig could only bark orders so fast, as his words reached the four a single man decided to touch the mysterious experiences. Most people would consider themselves lucky if they didn't die after poking something. That man wasn't amongst those. As the gray flesh ruptured and sprayed the four with acidic bile that man wished his last action was that prod.
They fell to the ground, each one of them retching, wriggling, and screaming. Tearing at their faces and arms with their nails in a desperate attempt to end the pain. Their suffering so intense they would rather tear their own skin off than feel anything else. The bile was fast acting though, it would eat down to muscle before anyone even noticed the next wave rising over the horizon.
Everyone except McCraig.
While everyone else looked in horror he and his troops were raising their sights to their eyes.
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Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 6:49 pm
Everything was calm up until that point. Gabe had just finished cleaning his gun, slamming a fresh clip into the assault rifle and patting it as if he were more proud of the weapon than he would be his own children. Then, all of a sudden, a lot of screaming, and people rushing out of the tent.
Gabriel was quick to react, slinging the gun over his shoulder and busting it out of the tent as if he were being called to arms. And soon, he was.
He didn't even have time to check on the screaming, poor souls as klaxons blared warning of an incoming attack. As a result, Gabe sprinted towards the gates, attempting to take up a position somewhere near the gate. No luck, there was already a fairly thick line of armored soldiers ahead of him, so it seemed that the mercenary was going to have to take a backseat.
So he did the only thing a suicidal adventurer was apt to do in such a situation. He stepped away from the gate, and started clambering up one of the towers. Quickly up the ladder, he was pulled up by one of the men already positioned atop the tower, where he quickly unslung the rifle and shouldered it, sighting down the barrel of the weapon.
"Looks like fun..."
He whispered to the man, his temporary partner, who had pulled him up. He was a skinny, tall soldier with a sniper rifle and a ciggarette hanging loosely on his bottom lip. He didn't bother to respond to Gabe, and instead sighted down his rifle, popping off a shot in an attempt to thin the crowd out before the rest of the defense force would open fire.
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Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 9:47 pm
In the middle of the fourth form he had begun, the urgent shout of a commanding officer caught Drake's attention. With his usual steady pace, he reattaches his armor as a giant lump of what appeared to be congealed gravy lands in the midst of the camp. He pulls on the last piece of armor as bile sprays from the pulsing mass and strides towards it, his single eye narrowed as he watches the soldiers tear themselves to death. He growls something under his breath...and the growl sounds as though it is a part of a language in and of itself. The blade of his katana shimmers and seems to take on a silver sheen as he approaches the vile mutation...then with a roar too deep to have come from human lungs, he swings the katana in an arc to end with its point jabbing at the monstrosity. A cone of some sort of shimmering substance flies at the thing, taking warmth from the air in its wake...
((Your call if it hits or not, Joseph.))
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Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:38 pm
Joseph Brown ~-------------------~ For David though, life wouldn't be that idealized. The sewers smelled the only way flesh recycled and killed a second time could: rank. And then there was the silence, the all consuming silence. Only a heartbeat, footsteps and the dripping of water. God knows these sewers had driven quite a few desperate evacuees insane. And god help the creatures they became. Then the silence broke. A quickly snuffed out scream, just a half moment and it was gone. Unfinished, no, more like it never existed in the first place. Not too far down the sewers a man that had once owned a dry cleaners was being torn apart by a pack of monsters. Yes a pack. They even looked like dogs, maybe even wolves, only all their fur had long fallen off. With bare grey flesh exposed all one could see was thick veins, tendrils hanging limp to the ground, and a scattered trace of spines along the creatures back. Then one looked up and the true horror was exposed. The creatures head looked vaguely canine, but there was no snarling snout. Just a hole punctuated by teeth, and two fleshy mandibles constantly shoveling flesh down into the creature. These mutants were designed to sniff out remaining survivors. Their senses were far superior of even a thoroughbred hunting dog, hearing and smell nearing perfection. That isn't even counting the fact they were mentally connected to the rest of the pack, and every other monstrous organism, through the viral link. These were the hunter's pack dogs... But where was the hunter? The sound reverberated throughout the sewers, and it only served to add to the chilling ambiance of the environment. Which wasn't much to speak of. David's first foray into this damned place had apparently served no other purpose than as a literal tutorial, showing him first hand the kind of crap he was going to see... as if the mechanical rocket launching monster had not been enough. Maybe he should have been looking for the BFG left behind in the chopper...? However, he had no choice but to keep pushing forward, and find a way out of this muck and back onto the surface. He didn't even have a map of the pla--- "...?" David's shoulder lamps hit the side of the sewer wall, and there, grimly tacked onto the side was what appeared to be... a map. It was even labeled [Sewers - Level b1]. "....." He snatched it off the wall, half expecting to find some special herbs or ammo crates lying around as well. With that done, David began hiking it further up the sewers, deciding against every single part of his body that was screaming 'NO' to check it out. It wasn't like he could just find a typewriter or Access point for his PDA and save his mission progress with HQ after all. Sloshing through the muck, he took tight hold of his main rifle, chainsaw bayonet and all.
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Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 10:50 pm
His eyes narrowed at the second volley. The hornest had registered somewhere in his mind, but those would be dealt with later- now was time to take evasive action. His defensive capabilies were momentarily sapped.
He straightened out, flying down towards the building like an arrow. His hand shot out in a slight sweep, snagging one of the barbs- the only one he was truely in danger from- out of midair. The rest shot past him.
TUNK- TUNKTUNKTUNK!
Move your a**, Jake.
The demon-man swung his halberd from right to left, aiming to wipe out both the living missiles.
SHK!
One had been sliced clean in half. Unfortunately, Stryphe could do nothing about the second creature- had it been aiming for him, it would have been caught in the sweeping blade of the massive halberd. The viral insect barely came within range. It zipped by and Stryphe whirled around in midair, hand outstretched in an attempt to warn the pilot of the helicopter.
"Jaaaaake!"
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Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 10:23 am
Hearing the yelling and screaming, Brody woke from a fitful sleep, and dreams of candy and unicorns and ponys and rape. Sitting up, he noticed first off that people seems to be gone, as well as one end of the tent looking somewhat munched. Uncertain of what the hell was going on, and worried by the sudden lack of personel in the tent, he grabbed his gun off the table and slid out of bed. After waiting a moment and understanding that the screams weren't really moving, he set the gun down quickly and started throwing clothes on. An new-ish pair of millitary issue pants had been left on the table, as well as a slightly used jacket, but he was able to find his old coat stuffed under the bed. It was a little roughed up, missing the right sleave and having quite a few tears on that side, but nothing that couldn't be fixed later. Throwing on the offered pants, pulling on his old shoes, making sure the knife was still there, and slipping into his old jacket, he picked the gun back up and slid it into the pocket conveniently situated on his thigh, followed be his belt and rapier.
Properly dressed, and hearing a loud yell, Brody moved quickly out of the tent, and cautiously towards the commotion. Which happened to be at the other end of the tent. Seeing Drake throw something at the grey blob, Brody stepped back a bit and looked at the writhing figures. Deciding that the unfortunate four would not live through it anyways, and that if they did, they would probably be zombies, he pulled out his gun and shot each of them.
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