Black Temple: Deserters

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Spoiler
By Bagofnuts


By One





By shadowPhoenix


By Jovian




By crepuscularDissembler


By Aryogaton


By Pharmacy


By ODK

Woah, that was a long one.
You sure this is the right place?


Dᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ǫᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏᴜʀ ᴏʀᴅᴇʀs?
No, no! I'm just saying.
This is like, the least prepared Earth I have ever seen. They must be a couple of thousand years behind home.
What are they even going to do, throw rocks at us?
Aᴘᴘᴇᴀʀᴀɴᴄᴇs ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ᴅᴇᴄᴇɪᴠɪɴɢ.
Well you can colour me deceived, if this is a trap then it's a bloody good one. They don't even have any defence satellites!
Tʜᴇʀᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ sᴛɪʟʟ ʙᴇ Tʜᴇ Tʀᴏʟʟᴋɪɴ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴅ ᴡɪᴛʜ.
Well that's hardly a surprise is it? They're literally everywhere.
Cᴇᴀsᴇ ᴛʜᴇsᴇ ǫᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴs. Cᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍɪssɪᴏɴ ᴀs ᴏʀᴅᴇʀᴇᴅ.


Yeah ok fine, I'm going. Could do with a bit of a holiday anyway.
Not that this is going to take particularly long.

...well come on then, you heard the man! Let's make some noise!

_________________________________________________

Your name is Robert Walker, and you should really be asleep.
In your line of work (as a fireman) you are used to napping through the dawn hours (though really you haven't needed nearly as much sleep recently as you used to) and working through the night, ever prepared to be woken at early hours to deal with an emergency.
Usually when you are woken early it is by your pager and to deal with something important, like a fire.
This morning it's your alarm clock.


The thing shouldn't even be going off because obviously you wouldn't set your alarm clock to go off one hour after you go to sleep and also because it's meant to stop automatically after about thirty seconds, but it doesn't show any sign of shutting up any time soon.

You should probably do something about that.






Hi this is my adventure.
200+ accumulated images lie in spoilers below, brought over from the MSPA Forums. If for some reason you don't want to read those there is also a summary at the bottom as the first post that is not hidden in spoilers, though you might miss out a few details.
For instance; Who the hell is that talking to you?

Thanks for reading!

---

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Spoiler
You walk over to the cabinet upon which rests your alarm clock, for some reason deciding to bring along one of your fire axes.
You've never actually needed to use one of these on the job which is why they are hung on the wall, why you think they will be appropriate for dealing with a faulty clock you don't know.
You try pressing the button to manually stop it from ringing but it just ignores you and keeps on making a racket.

Despite having already established that it is the alarm clock, you turn around and check your fire alarm anyway.
It's not ringing and besides it makes a completely different noise, but you learned on the job that you can't be too careful.
Except when checking a fire alarm that you already know certainly isn't ringing, you guess that probably could be taken as slightly too careful.


Alright, enough is enough! You do the obvious and unplug the clock from the wall.
This has about as much effect as pressing the button; none at all. The clock doesn't contain any batteries and now isn't recieving any power but it's still ringing all on its own.

While you hold the infuriating device and hope against hope that it will shut itself off, you try to calm yourself by examining the posters on the far wall.
They were both given to you by a friend, the same friend that gave you this alarm clock actually, and to be honest you aren't incredibly fond of them. It would be rude to turn down a gift however, and besides, it's better than a blank wall.
The one on the right is for some game he's interested in. You aren't really that sure of the details but you're pretty certain it's not going to come out for another couple of months. He's probably going to try and rope you in to play it with him despite the fact that you are universally terrible at all video games.
You are secretly quite thankful that the both of you run quite obscure computers and it'll probably take him a while to port the game over to what you're running, which bring us over to the other poster; an advert for "COAT-OS", a highly specialised operating system for the type of computer the both of you have to run. It was programmed completely by your friend who is pretty good at computers and mechanics and things like that, and to be honest you think this poster is not a very good advert.
It's more creepy than appealing, now that you look at it, and it doesn't really contain any useful information at all.
Still, you couldn't tell that to your friend, it would be rude and he takes criticism badly.


You attempt to out-stare the poster. Neither of you ever need to blink.
This could end up going on for quite some time.


You briefly contemplate the Cybernetic Implants that allow you to hold your own in a staring contest against an opponent without eyes.
Or more accurately, Cybernetic Body. Really it could be argued that most of the rest of your body is the implant.
You are made of SAND (Wasn't it obvious?). This is what makes you such a good fireman and is why you generally don't really need an axe; your heavy sand fists are generally enough to break down any door that needs breaking.
Your conciousness is stored in the metal half of your face and wirelessly communicates with the manacles on your limbs to hold your body in shape and stop you from collapsing into a pile on the floor through the power of nanotechnology. They also rather conveniently colour you in as if you weren't made of sand, but you can drop the illusion at any time.
Your left eye is a green glass ball and it's what you see out of, the right one is purely decorative.

You could explain just what happened to put you into this regrettable state but those are painful memories that you'd rather not relive right now.
And besides, that would be far too easy.


You decide you have wasted enough time ogling posters and remeniscing and just stick the alarm clock in the bucket.
This is something of an improvement.
You did briefly entertain thoughts of smashing it with an axe but you already hung it back up because you felt silly carrying an axe around your apartment. And anyway, the clock was a gift. You can't just break gifts. It would be rude.
While the muted sound of ringing is now tolerable this is hardly a permanent solution. The clock isn't recieving any power and yet it still insists that it's time for you to get up, you really need to find some way of fixing it or perhaps just silencing it without breaking it.


You decide to consult the papers on your desk for advice, despite the fact that they're your papers and you know they don't contain any.
It's mostly boring stuff like bills, a shopping list and a bank statement, nothing really worth mentioning.
You tend to fold bits of the sheets you are done with into quarters and draw on them when you're bored, which if you are filling in paperwork means all the time.
This one is a picture of you and your very best friend, although as he's also basically your only friend that's not as much as a compliment as it sounds. Sometimes you wish your friend wasn't quite so difficult to draw, even if he's only a stick person.
And on this one it looks like a picture of an alien invasion or something else equally stupid that couldn't possibly ever happen. You're not really the world's greatest artist so you aren't exactly certain any more of exactly what it was meant to be when you were drawing it.


You then try plugging your alarm clock into your head which has about as much success as you might expect, considering that data isn't transferred through the electrical cord.


You decide to stop messing around and just ask your friend to fix it for you. Admittedly this is probably just what you should have done straight away without any prompting at all, you're hopeless at dealing with machines.
You activate your computer.


Your vision is replaced by a loading screen.
There's probably a way to do this without blocking out your only eye and making yourself completely blind but you don't know what it is.


You find yourself on the desktop, made up mostly of a background that you are sure took your friend no more than five minutes to draw (but you can't ask him in case he didn't!) that you also don't know how to change and a bunch of completely unlabeled icons.
You're sure the guy who wrote the operating system thought that all of the labels were totally self explanatory but you don't actually have a clue what half of them do, in fact you can't even remember which one opens his chat program.


You go ahead and click on a whole load of random things.


This doesn't look like the right one.


This isn't it either, you don't actually know how to upload music into your head so you only have the one song your friend preloaded for you.
You aren't exactly sure why he thought you'd enjoy Rick Astley, it's not really your kind of music.


Ah here we go. Your friend seems to be online, how convenient.
That's a joke, he's always online.


CHATLOG:

Show Content

SpoilerRW: Hey, Coat
RW: You there?
MC: Of course I'm here, when am I not here?
RW: Well I just thought it would be polite to make sure
MC: Well I'm not set to busy or away or anything, am I?
RW: I can never remember what those different icons stand for
MC: Well that's hardly my problem is it!!!
MC: Haven't figured out how to change your username either I see.
RW: Why would I want to do that?
MC: You can't just use your real name!
MC: What if someone you didn't know found it and used it to steal your bank details or something?
MC: Also it looks stupid!
RW: But you're the only person on my friends list
MC: But still! I'm pretty sure it's the law or something that you have to have some weird nonsense as a username
MC: Although you've hardly picked useful initials for it
MC: I can't really think of how to fit your interests into the letters R and W
MC: What do you even DO apart from wander around burning buildings anyway
RW: Well
RW: Not much to be honest
RW: Watch TV
RW: Talk to you
RW: Sleep
MC: Damn that's pretty depressing
RW: It's not so bad
MC: Yeah but you're just saying that because you don't want to be a burden or something stupid like that
MC: I need to find you some more friends or something
RW: No no I'm perfectly happy, honest
MC: Suuure you are
MC: God you're so nice and polite all the time
MC: It makes me feel sick!!!
RW: Sorry
MC: Don't say that!
MC: You're still doing it!
RW: I can't really help it
MC: Oh whatever
MC: I'm guessing you aren't just here to chat
MC: Because it's like an hour after you'd usually go to sleep
RW: Yeah I've got a bit of a problem I could do with some help with
MC: Wait don't tell me
MC: Your clock is broken
MC: It's stuck at 8 AM
MC: The alarm won't stop ringing despite the fact that you didn't even set the alarm to 8 AM
MC: It doesn't even stop if you unplug it
RW: Yeah
RW: Wow how did you know?
MC: Oh God
MC: Don't even fucking ask

CHATLOG:
RW: Oh
RW: It's not just my clock then?
MC: It is so much just not your clock
MC: You wouldn't even believe how fucking not just your clock it is
RW: Uhh
MC: I am seriously contemplating building a time machine
MC: Finding out whatever genius decided to invent this piece of shit
MC: And shove one of these fucking alarm clocks down his throat
MC: No, two alarm clocks
MC: Five alarm clocks
MC: I don't know how many alarm clocks I can fit in a time machine but I'm just going to stuff in as many as can
RW: I thought you said a working time machine was impossible after your last one exploded
MC: I was just frustrated
MC: I'll get it eventually
RW: But if you invent a time machine wouldn't you have seen yourself from the future
MC: I made a pact with myself
MC: If I ever invent a time machine I am not going to tell myself how to do it because that would be really really stupid
RW: So uh
RW: Can you fix my clock
MC: I have absolutely no idea what is wrong with your clock
MC: I have a workshop full of other people's clocks right here and they're all flipping out and I have no idea why
MC: Please do not bring your clock here
MC: If hear one more of these things in my life I swear I will go insane
RW: Oh
RW: Well thanks anyway I guess
MC: Don't mention it
MC: No seriously don't
MC: I didn't do anything you don't need to thank me
RW: Oh sorry
MC: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

You can now BE THAT GUY
Or just carry on being Robert I mean maybe there's something interesting hiding under his bed or something, you haven't looked


You empty all of your drawers, feeling a sudden strange urge to remove everything even remotely useful from your apartment.
Despite having like seven drawers you don't actually keep a whole load of stuff in there.


You stick the TAPE, FIRST AID KIT, KEYS, WALLET and FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS in your inventory and decide to leave the RECEIPTS, PAPERWORK and DRAWINGS where they are because there's not much point taking them with you.
You also bring the BUCKET which now also contains your clock again and one of the AXEs for good measure.


Now that you've finished stuffing yourself with random objects you decide to stick your head out of the window to see how many other people have broken clocks.
From the noise, it seems like quite a few.
There are a lot of people down on the street too, presumably woken up by the racket. More than you'd usually expect on a Sunday morning anyway.
You're suprised you didn't hear it until you opened the window, but most people around here do tend to have very thick, soundproof double glazing. It can be pretty loud outside even at night time here in uh...
Here in...
You know, you've suddenly forgotten what the city is even called despite living here for your entire life. How stupid of you!
What was it again?


While you ponder you decide to be the OTHER GUY and introduce yourself to thin air.
Your name is METAL COAT and you chose it for yourself (not having ever known your parents). It is a true and accurate name, and a good example of your skill at naming things.
Naming things is but one of your many skills however it would be pointless to list them all here because you excel at EVERYTHING (although you are particularly proud of your affinity for building and maintaining complex machinery).
You have a tendency to speak your mind and "help" other people with their problems even when they haven't asked you to (or have specifically told you that they don't even have any problems) because clearly you are smarter than them and know better than they do. You are incredibly popular have many friends who are suitaly impressed by your clear superiority and you are definitely not prone to wild, violent mood swings.
Also it turns out that you're a really biased and unreliable narrator, who knew?

You are currently standing in your workshop on your mechanical spider legs, surrounded by several self-built pieces of machinery that have been there the whole time as well as many malfunctioning clocks that you are being paid to repair. You would use this opportunity to rapidly spout insults about their creator and his incompetence but it just so happens that you made all of them yourself and then put them up for sale in your shop.
Obviously the only conclusion you can draw from this is that all of the people you sold them to have been tampering with them somehow because nothing you built could possibly break down on its own.


You "Scan" the broken clock you're being paid to fix and locate the problem.


You use your tube arm to "Repair" it.


It's not beeping any more.

Quickly! Build a new clock!
And see where you get your parts from, if you don't make them all from scratch.

No! You can rebuild it!
You have the technology!


Nanotechnology.


While you have great technical knowhow, it always helps to also have millions of tiny robots that can do the hard work for you.


See? Good as new!
And it's not ringing now either!


This is bullshit

There is only one possible cause. Your nanobots.

> MC: Diagnose nanobots.

It... It's not you is it?
I mean, some kind of virus? Simply a programming flaw you overlooked? One oddly specific one, targetting only clocks?
No, this can't be true. You are and always will be 100% perfect in every single way. There can be no room for doubt!
And besides you didn't personally build every clock in the city. I mean you made a fair few but from the sounds of things out there it's more like "every clock ever" than "every clock made by Metal Coat."


For the first time you can remember you are honestly stumped.
You have checked these things inside and out, taken them apart, rebuilt them, even built new ones. They aren't even recieving power and yet they are still going!
The only reasonable explanation you can think of is that someone is beaming power through the air and setting all the alarms off remotely, but why they would do this is about as mysterious as how.
All they have done is woken a bunch of people up! Some people get up on Sundays anyway! This is more of a very minor annoyance than an evil plot!
I mean God, seriously WAITAMINUTE

Did they... did they all just stop by themselves when you were monologuing?
For some reason this enrages you more than their continued beeping (and to be honest you'd sort of tuned it out by now).
You felt like you were getting somewhere! Ok, maybe that's a lie, but you probably would have worked it out eventually! Maybe you would anyway! It's possible! There's a slight chance that you might have stumbled across what was going on! Perhaps!

You hope you'll still get paid for this.

!!!! Of course. Your ego. You need to learn humility and acceptance.

Can it be that you solved the clock riddle... with love?

No that's stupid

You wander out to the shop front with the clocks, pondering as you do so.
You do a lot of pondering and tend to be quite long winded, but it's your brain and you can do what you want inside its private walls, thank you very much.


The only real reason you can think of that someone would have set off all of these clocks, other than some stupid prank, is to get the attention of everyone in the city at once, but surely there are easier ways of doing that?
Or... well, maybe not actually now that you think about it. What with the somewhat volatile nature of a significant portion of the inhabitants, people have sort of gotten used to explosions or the sounds of combat outside as people run around showboating and playing superhero like they all seem to love to do. Hell, an average resident could probably sleep through an earthquake centred on their own home provided that the bed landed somewhere safe.
But if you want to keep whatever job you have, you can't really afford to tune out the sound of your alarm clock!
But... nothing else has happened yet. You mean, whoever it was has certainly succeeded in waking a lot of people up but they seem to be taking their time with step two. Took them about half an hour to turn the clocks off, to start with.
And honestly, why the hell would you want to attract everyone's attention? You can't think of a reason that this would be to anyone's benefit and if you are up to something nefarious you probably want to do it in secret unless you think you're immortal or something...

The store itself is about as nicely painted and elaborately decorated as your workshop, which is to say absolutely perfect in every single way.
The only thing that could possibly improve it would be a few more of your own creations scattered about, but you tend not to actually leave too much stock in the storefront. People coming to your store generally just want you to fix something or fill a certain request, there are very few window shoppers. Most of your income comes from large company contracts rather than the store, it's just something you do for fun (although while you would never admit it, your somewhat blunt manner of speaking and occasional hostility to the idea of actually selling anything mean that you generally tend to run your shop at a loss rather than a profit).
Most of your stuff is stored in the extensive warren of rooms you've bored underneath the city, linking in to several miles of handy abandoned underground rail network tunnels. You may or may not have asked permission before connecting this to your house.
You take a moment to fondly regard what you've left lying around on the shelves. It's all excellent. All of it! Everything is perfectly crafted and works at 100% efficiency!
Well... except maybe that box shaped robot with the arms. In fact yeah, you'll admit it, he's pretty terrible. You've had that for years and nobody has ever even shown even the slightest bit of interest in it and you honestly don't know what you were thinking when you built it.

All of this exposition had you quite distracted, so it's taken you some time to realise that you're completely alone in the shop.
All of your customers seem to have wandered off somewhere, which presumably means that they have gone outside and figured out that the clocks have all just fixed themselves, so they probably aren't going to pay you.
Damn.


You briefly consider doing all manner of things to your robot but then realise that this would be a complete waste of time and that instead you should probably go and find your customers.
It turns out that they are all standing outside, looking at the sky.
You try to attract their attention but they seem pretty rapt. You wonder what's up there that could be more impressive than yourself.


Oh hey yeah that is pretty interesting.


Suddenly you are Robert again, a few minutes in the past. Your clock has thankfully just stopped ringing all by itself, as have all the ones outside.
You still can't quite remember where you live but you're sure you'll get it eventually.
Now that it's 8 AM and you're awake you don't really feel that it's likely you're going to get back to sleep, maybe you should go help Coat in his shop or something. He tends to get more business when you're around and running the till just because you have less of a tendency to shout at customers and insult them.
Since your clock stopped beeping there have been some buzzing noises coming from the next room, or perhaps they were there all along but you couldn't hear them.

MC: Head back inside. Arm yourself.

a
You already have arms, dumbass!
(And... one of them is already a gun.)

More arms, that is. And more guns.

Yeah you can basically reshape your body as the circumstances require, as long as you don't try and change into something larger than your available supply of METAL.
Maybe you forgot to mention that earlier.

You're not quite sure that these circumstances actually require drill tentacles and a missile pod though.
Although it's not like you would know that because you haven't seen what they are yet! We'd better get back to Robert in order to see what is actually going on here.


You set off for Coat's place. He definitely does not like to be kept waiting, so it is therefore fortunate that you have not told him that you are coming and he isn't expecting you.
Or maybe he is expecting you, there isn't a whole load of other things you would be doing and "hang around at his place" is pretty much the one thing you do in your spare time. Maybe you should hurry up.
It's lucky your room is also right next to a lift. It is completely irrelevant that nobody else is around to use it because you don't make up anywhere near the reccomended weight limit all by yourself because that would be stupid and unrealistic.


Hum hum hum


Huh, the TV in the building's entrance seems to be broken (although you suppose that's hardly a suprise as it's out in the public entrance to an apartment block).

> Examine the TV for a little while, just in case anything else shows up on the screen.

For a moment you thought you saw...
But no, there's nothing there. Must still be half asleep.

Turn off the TV and go outside.

You're not actually sure you can turn off the TV but you're fine with heading out.
It's what you were doing anyway before you got sidetracked staring at static.


You aren't the only person hanging around on the street, a goblin and a dwarf are in heated discussion about something in their own weird, underground language.
You aren't exactly sure why the two species even have a shared language considering that outside the city the two groups don't seem to be that friendly towards eachother, however racial incidents within the walls are pretty low so it is nice to see two such former foes having a conversation without reaching for their axes.
While humans are still a majority species, you'd feel pretty safe saying you probably live in the most multicultural city on the planet. Yes, it's a pretty colourful place here in...
Here in uh...

It dawns on you that you still can't remember what your home city is called.

The reason that goblins and dwarf share a language,that insults are useless if the other don't understand them

That was actually going to be my explanation if anyone ever asked


Ah yes that's it!
You remember clearly what your city is called now!
However you are interrupted from exclaiming it out loud by the sudden appearance of a huge, glowing rectangle that suddenly appears out of thin air in front of you. You can see many more of them around the street, they seem to be pretty much everywhere.


The screen slowly fades from a pulsing red to a pretty suprisingly clear (considering it's projected onto thin air) picture of a girl on a rather foreboding black throne. She looks about young enough to be your daughter, or would do if you were actually capable of having children.
Her voice is clear and confident as she addresses the population.

"Citizens of Ziel! Hello!
I apologise for that little racket we caused earlier, but it's the most reliable way we've found to get the attention of just about everyone and there's a couple of thinks I need to tell you. When I'm done you can all go back to sleep if you want, but I would advise that you listen for now or you may end up paying for it later.
My name is Brianna Ironcrown and I am your planet's representative from The Black Temple of the Great Prophet Ragnar's Holy Empire of Sacred Humanity, and I come bearing good news!

Your planet is now officially a member of our wide and propserous kingdom! Hooray for you!

Now, you may be a little worried at this news but let me put your minds at rest. There's no need to throw around ugly words like invasion and there really shouldn't be very many changes to how you live your lives right now, in fact if they cooperate we'll even permit you to keep your existing governments!
There's just a couple of small things that are going to have to change a little bit. First of all your lovely hometown of Ziel is now the new Planetary capital and we're going to set up a little embassy somewhere convenient. Second of all, we need to round up everyone who isn't a pureblooded human and then kill them.
We'll be sending a couple of our enforcers down to take a look at just how bad the infestation is in just a few minutes. Don't try and hide, because we will find you!

Ok, that's all for now! See you again soon!
The message ends abruptly and the screens vanish, leaving crowds staring blankly at concrete walls up and down the city.
For a few seconds everything, everywhere is completely silent.

And then it isn't.


Music Credit: Kommisar of 8bit Collective
(The preloader is currently broken and I don't have flash installed to fix it so give it 30 seconds so the music stay in sync)


You are now Metal Coat.
A couple of these falling pod things have smashed through the roof of your shop. You do not appreciate it.
You suppose given the circumstances it might be a good idea to meet up with some of your friends for safety in numbers.
Obviously they're the ones who need your protection, you're just doing this as a good deed.


Oh wait you can't because they've all blocked you.
The fools! They'll regret that now when there are aliens battering down their door and they don't have any charged particle beams to protect themselves with!
At least there's still one guy. Why does he even continue to put up with you anyway?
Is is pity? Can he just not figure out how the ignore function works? It can't be anything else because let's face it, you're basically a huge dick.


Oh but he's gone offline, that's just perfect.
What kind of stupid, irresponsible person goes offline at a time like this?
What an asshole.


What are you looking at?


Oh yeah! You are going to reverse engineer the hell out of whatever this thing is.


It didn't work.
They're made of some alloy your bots haven't encountered before which shouldn't really be a huge problem, but they also seemed to be held off by some kind of invisible force.
Could be some kind of forcefield but you consider yourself something of a technological master and those things usually give off some pretty easily detectable radiation, which these aren't. How strange!
Also they're sort of pulsing, how long have they been doing that?





You know actually for all its looks that wasn't a particularly powerful explosion, it just sort of ripped the ground up a bit and what the hell is that


The screen thingy reappears.
Hi again guys!
Looks like there might have been a small misunderstanding here so I'm just going to try and clear that up a little bit.
You see generally we show up somewhere and everyone is all too happy to let us perform for them the unfortunate but necessary task of purging all inferior sentient species, obviously it's not something we enjoy but someone has to do it!
Evidently that's not really going to happen here is it? Your tolerance is inspiring, if perhaps misplaced, not that I would ever dare to question it.
In this case, we've decided to give you a compromise instead. Nobody has to die! Isn't that generous?
The new plan is, we'll just round up all of your weird looking friends in a couple of specially designated cities somewhere under one of our special supression fields, where they can happily live out the rest of their lives doing whatever it is that they do, but unable to have kids. Then they don't need to submit to our humane but mandatory extermination process and we eventually end up with a mutant-free planet. Everyone wins!
You may well have already met one of our enforcers. Don't mind the ghoulish appearance, they are very friendly and will only use lethal force if you decide not to accompany them to an evaluation point for some strange reason.

Well, now that we've gotten over that minor bump in our relationship, I'm sure we can go back to being best of friends.
See you again soon!

This doesn't sound like such a great deal to you.
Well, the children thing doesn't really apply in your case but gathering everyone in one place seems awfully suspicious.
Also there's the whole underlying racism thing going on there, you don't really appreciate that either to be honest.

Don't attack it yet.

Grudgingly you decide to maybe try diplomacy or something first.
Hey so uh, that's you she was talking about right?
"Eeengggrtth."
You can't talk can you. It's probably those ridiculous big teeth. I can't see why anyone would possible need teeth that big. Can you even close your mouth?
"Nyyygaarrgh."
Why would you send people who can't talk? What possible use is that? Seriously?
First there's the alarm clocks. Then an annoying teenager with a high pitched voice appears in mid air and tells people to kill me. Now an incomprehensible moron who fell from the sky in a can is trying to get me to walk compliantly into a gas chamber.
THIS IS JUST STUPID! THIS IS NOT HOW YOU CONQUER A PLANET!
WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS?!
"Gath!"

Shoot it

Yeah you've held back your frustration long enough!
Unfortunately he's pretty fast.


Not quite fast enough.


Wait where are those lights coming from?


Oh GOD DAMN IT they've got into your gun stock.
You were going to sell those!


At least they seem to be enjoying themselves

There is an easy way around this!

1) from under your foot, invisibly send a "root" into the sewers.
2) hollow yourself out, transferring the mass through the root into the sewers. Also transfer your mind there, leaving an empty shell.
3) make the mass in the sewers as identical to a normal human body as possible
4) give the shell above basic articulation and non-AI dummy programming to come along peacefully to the concentration camps.
5) Walk out of the sewers and act like a perfectly normal human
6) ???
7) survival

A whole load of completely impractical plans suddenly zoom through your head.
You decide to run through your own operational specifications just because you've apparently forgotten them yourself.
You are mostly composed of tiny nanomachines, capable of resolving themselves into a solid or detaching from eachother and moving around as a kind of controlled mass of liquid metal. This very handily allows you to rebuild or repair yourself on the fly, and do the same to pretty much any other kind of metal you can get into physical contact with.
That said, you can't produce metal from thin air. Being of Gnomish descent before events led you to encase yourself in a body of steel, you are significantly shorter than a human and couldn't possibly reform yourself in such a way that you would become that tall without also having really unconvincing stick-limbs, so disgusing yourself as one is pretty much out of the question, let alone doing so while also leaving a hollow shell in the size of your previous form in place.
Also while very strong, you're not quite strong enough to burrow through solid concrete stealthily, so that's out too.
There are many other limitations to this technology, but you're sure you can't have suddenly forgotten any of the rest, so you won't bother explaining them!

Also humans are ugly. Just look at that guy up there, who would honestly want to look like that?
You're clearly much better off with the tiny body and the spider legs.

>Turn the weapons off.They didn't paid for them.

Your cameras can show you that they're inside and have some of your guns and are firing them around the room pretty much at random. Usually that would make them look pretty stupid but honestly you're quite impressed they've figured out even that much, those things come with a pretty thick instruction manual.
Unfortunately you never thought of adding any kind of remote kill-switch to your weapons in case someone stole them, it never really occured to you. Just like it never occured to you to take the batteries out before putting them on display.

Usually the highly visible mutliple weapons systems dangling from the roof and rotating to track every customer's every movement is enough to put off any potential thieves. Unfortunately they were attached to the same roof that your unwanted guests made a big hole in as they landed, and they happen to have disconnected the main power node and sent every last one of them offline. How terribly inconvenient

Engage arsenal mode. Shoot everything.

They've already trashed half the place and you can fix it yourself later. Filling what's left with missiles seems like pretty much the only sensible option.


It uh... seems you forgot to fill up on FUEL and are in fact all out.
While you are personally capable of walking around without a fuel source, generating your energy through a combination of digestion, respiration, photosynthesis and the city's mains power grid, to fire any kind of motorised projectile obviously requires some kind of propellant fuel. The most popular kind at the moment handily also doubles as being extremely flammable or, under the right conditions, highly explosive which perfectly suits your requirements for shooting it people.
But you don't have any so you can't.


Lasers still work though.
Unforunately the other one seems to be taking this as his cue to flee further into your house.


These guys don't really seem like the supersoldiers you expected, how did they expect to deal with a city of superheroes with these?
Looks there's even bits another dead one in the bottom of this can thing he arrived in. Perhaps two of them in fact, they must have been stuffed in like sardines.
They'd better not have gotten into the tunnels...

Do you happen to have a flamethrower, MC? If so, go Kurt Russell on that waking head.

FLAMETHROWER FLAMETHROWER FLAMETHROWER FLAMETHROWER FLAMETHROWER


Oh right yeah
You don't have any fuel

Perspective: change right before the good part.

You try your best to shift the perspective elsewhere.


Huh nope, doesn't look like there's anything interesting going on here. Guess we'll go back to Metal Coat.

Slice that head in half. Nobody sneaks up on you.

Right ok, you've fully ascertained that there was not a smaller head hidden inside of this one.
Now what?
You could go look for Robert, despite having no idea where in the city he is, or you could go stop those aliens from messing around in your house with all of your valuable and dangerous equipment while waiting for him to get himself back online.

>Inspect eye/flesh/cells/genes/components. What the hell are these things?

You like to think of yourself as a mechanic not a doctor, although you are intimately familiar with the workings of the nervous system of your own species.
There was also that one time you had to learn some pretty important bits of human biology really really quickly, although it didn't quite end up the way you'd planned. The subject in question hasn't complained since though, so you think you can count that as a win.
That said, you certainly don't know enough about the cellular makeup of an alien species to pass comment on it, and while you have some pretty impressive zoom in those eyes of yours it's not quite enough to have a peek at the DNA.
Knowing your enemy is a good idea though, here's a recap of what you think you've learned so far:

The whole body is wrapped in bandages despite apparently not concealing any kind of wound, this is true for all the three you've seen so far.
You've also not seen one with a left eye, despite the one you just uh... examined having another eye socket, bandaged over and empty. You can't think of any possible reasons for this at present.
The head itself is pretty swollen compared to the rest of the body, as is the eye. It's also apparently perfectly capable of living without the rest of its body for at least a little while, and it managed to grow five fully functioning limbs while you had your back turned which is a pretty impressive feat by anyone's reckoning.
Skull seemed to be absent, presumably the thick carapace acting as some kind of exoskeleton or something. It was still pretty tough to cut through but not impossible.
They also seemed to have plenty of blood.

One of the things that worries you most is that it appeared to be missing bits of its brain before you opened it up and removed the rest. You're not yet sure what the implications of this are but it's sort of creeps you out.

grab the eye for later inspection and go inside.
Also, are the moster crates still raining down or was it just one huge volley of them?

You decide to pocket the eye for... some reason. It matches the wallpaper in your inventory.
A quick glance skywards (and a quick listen anywherewards) reveals that there's still a scattering of those pods crashing down around the city, although it seems like fewer than a couple of minutes ago.
There was also a pretty impressive lightshow from over towards city centre a while ago but that seems to have died down too.

It's a pain but these guys are clearly pretty incompetent. You're reasonably certain it's just going to be a matter of clearing the bastards out of your house and then holding the fort until some organised force comes and cleans the rest of them out for you.


Speaking of which, it's high time you got down to clearing out your place.
Robert clearly doesn't need or want saving because if he did he'd turn his messenger on. There is clearly no reason why he would not be able to have his messenger on in an emergency. Having his messenger off clearly means he's just an asshole who is blocking you from talking to him at this vital point.

Your "guests" haven't made too much of a mess of your shop apart from completely wrecking the security system, you don't immediately noticed anything important having gone missing anyway.
The one you "killed" earlier also seems to have made a recovery, although you're pretty sure you can tell which way he went.
At this point you could either follow him into the living area or go backstage and into the tunnels. Your basement is... extensive to say the least, and you really hope they haven't found the entrance because that's where most of your stuff is.

> Wait, how can you rebuild things that are made from a all sorts of different materials if your nanobots aren't the kind that can sense and rearrange anything on the molecular level and thus would probably automatically sequence any DNA they came in contact with in the process of deconstructing it?

> Refuel and restock your body.

Yeah, nanobots are small. Very small in fact. That is sort of the point of nanomachines actually. Yours are at about 6 nanometres long which puts them at about twice the size of a strand of DNA.
The main problem though with nanobots is (obviously) processor size. You'd no more install a program for charting the entire makeup of a strand of DNA onto one than you would install World of Warcraft. There's simply not enough space in there and (until now) it really wasn't something you ever wanted or needed them to do.
That and while you know a bit about DNA it's not really your area of expertise, you wouldn't really know what to do with the data even if you had it.
Mostly all your machines know how to do is move around, identify materials that they know how to use, how to form shapes as a team and how to make more nanobots. And even adding that much was sort of pushing it.

Also you don't keep rocket fuel in the kitchen that would just be ridiculous.

>Follow them into the living area.

The trail leads into the kitchen, which is sort of predictably decorated in your favourite colour; dull gray (although someone seems to have been adding a few splashes of vibrancy in the form of pools of crimson liquid. How much blood does this thing even have?). The windows appear to let a little light in but actually they're just disguised screens, projecting a view as if you were pretty high up rather than on the ground floor.
Your species are a little uh... vertically challenged. Obviously you don't have a problem with your height but on the occasions where you invite similarly sized guests over it sometimes makes them feel better to feel taller like that.
You just can't be bothered to change the windows back afterwards. Obviously. That's the reason.


Some kind of projectile flies past your head, presumably fired by someone you couldn't see because the panel was too small.


It's followed by two more, sure is fortunate that you're basically immune to bullets. They haven't even penetrated the surface.


Those weren't bullets.
Clearly he has his own weapons too.

You were best at dealing with these guys when using your NANOTECH, at least until you get some fuel, because evidently the best guns will require fuel.

The space mummy seems to have regenerative abilities. Rip and tear.

What with his regeneration it does seem like it's going to be more vulnerable to blades and heat than anything else.
Your laser generates a fine amount of heat, however apparently it doesn't last long enough for heat radiation to set those pretty inflammable looking bandages alight, so you'll go with blades.
You swap your cannon arm into an extending grappling hook/claw for reeling opponents into slicing range, it would probably be sensible to swap your almost useless pincer arm into some form of melee weapon too but you just can't decide what sort at the moment.

Nanotech his guns into something more useful to you and more harmful to him.

Hm, you should disarm him first.
>Try to shoot off his hands, so he drops the weapons he is holding.

The gun unfortunately seems to be made out of the same sort of stuff those pods are, your tiny friends scuttle uselessly across its impenetrable surface, so you just settle for yanking it out of his grip.
Interestingly it... also doesn't appear to have any kind of trigger.


You stick it in your inventory along with that eyeball


The lack of trigger doesn't stop him from firing the other one at you, but this time you are prepared.
Reacting quickly you shift the consistency of your torso and the dart is merely slowed by it rather than stopping.
It hits the wall somewhere behind you, although it hasn't exploded yet.
Now that you've crept a bit closer it's probably time to decide upon the best weapon to dismember him with.

> Just turn yourself into a spread-out tangle of tentacles with wicked blades of ALL kinds in the end of them, and no central critical parts to aim for.

You really wish you could, an infinitely adaptable sentient mass of ever-changing tools is what you'd assume the far, far future of what your technology will give rise to. Unfortunately you're not sure that's going to happen even during your significantly extended lifespan, your pitiful meat brain can't really cope.
It took you several years just to train yourself to use six limbs instead of the two completely useless legs you were born with (you keep them around for sentimental reasons and also because you look somewhat more stupid without them), any more than that takes a whole lot of concentration and isn't really feasible when there's someone shooting at you.
You could do it outside because basically you were in absolutely no danger at all, and someone might have been looking who you could show off to! You would never admit it to anyone, but you secretly love being the centre of attention. Maybe you're compensating for your height?
Also your brain has to go somewhere, you still have a couple of the old meat organs inside there although most of them have become obsolete, so anything you transformed into would still have to have a vulnerable core at least. What a shame!


Instead you go for this.
Honestly you aren't exactly sure how a buzzsaw made of swords would work so you settled for just a sword with a buzzsaw stuck on it.
You won't pretend swordcraft is your area of expertise, you know a lot more about guns, but anything heavy and sharp should do the trick really right? Especially if bits of it are spinning at 3000 rotations per minute.






You guess as a test of new hardware you could call this a success



Damnably inconvenient having to chop them up so much though, you've made a bit of a mess. Probably going to have to disinfect your whole kitchen before you invite anyone over for dinner, it's fortunate nobody ever wants to come and eat dinner with you.
The saw worked pretty good though.

>Destroy the other monsters.

You saw one come up here to the bedroom but it's gone. You think you might have an idea where it went though, which is a pain because those holographic windows certainly aren't cheap.
Your bedroom is uh... sort of neglected. It's probably been more than a month since you last came up here. Sleep isn't something you really need very much of these days, nor do you have time for it.

Robert sometimes jokes that this is why you're always so grumpy. It's a joke because clearly you are never grumpy.

Look outside and see how well your neighbors are doing against the alien menace.

You haul yourself up to the window, which given your height is not quite as easy as it might sound, and take a look outside.
Honestly you can't really say you like much of what you see. The bandage guys aren't much of a problem for you but your immediate neighbours aren't doing too well. Maybe this whole thing isn't going to be as short as you initially believed.

But... as unlike Metal Coat we are gifted with the power of omnipresence, why watch it from a window when we could experience it first hand?


Now where did we leave off?


Ah right.


For a moment there you were almost certain that thing was going to hit you!
Guess you just aren't as good at judging distances with one eye as you thought you were, as it clearly didn't.


You cast your own eye around to look for any eyes, projectiles or monitors, but the only ones you can see are on the picture of a face upon this thing that landed on the goblin and also on the dwarf's face (although you had to zoom in to see them between the helmet and the beard).


Look at him crouched there on the ground, he's clearly mourning for his poor, crushed friend.

TRANSLATED FROM UNDERTONGUE
"This wallet should probably about cover what that bastard owed me"


Brave little soul.

TRANSLATED FROM UNDERTONGUE
"Surface dweller idiot."

> Dwarf: Be spontaneously consumed by !!FUN!!.

Our heroes are wholly consumed by the terrible fires of Armok!
This tragic nature of this event is eclipsed only by how much it completely fails to actually happen!

>Look around. Have these things horribly crushed anyone else?

There's another a little further down the street although thankfully it doesn't appear to have landed on anyone. One of your neighbours is poking it thoughtfully.

> Contact Metal Coat.

That's a great idea but for some reason your messenger program isn't working right now.
Maybe one of these buttons will fix it.


Huh, you always wondered how to do that.

Creatures: emerge

"Argh!"

Robert: try to command the creatures. You do look slightly similar to the ensignia on thier suitcase-pod-transport thing

"What are you doing?! You can't eat that guy!
Stop it!!"
He isn't listening and to be frank you are a little horrified at what is suddenly happening.




"You just saved my life!"
"I hope I didn't hit him too hard! Concussion can cause serious brain injury..."
"He was trying to eat me. I don't care if he has concussion! Didn't you hear? They're here to kill all of us!
Except you perhaps, I mean you look pretty human to me... I mean apart from that whole weird arm thing you just did."
"I am human!"
"I didn't know humans could do that."


You are distracted from this no doubt thrilling topic of conversation and also the issue of how that guy can talk with tentacles for a mouth by a friendly message that pretty much everyone else has already heard.
The proposed compromise does not sound particularly nice to you, you would rather like children although you are completely incapable of having them. Of course being a human hopefully they wouldn't put you in one of those camps anyway, right? I mean, you're clearly a human. You look just like one.
It still doesn't sound good for most of the other residents of the city though, and presumably they are talking about more than just your home town here.

>Find Metalcoat and organize a rebellion!

>Try to help other people regroup and organize. Without a structured defense, the city will fall under this STEEL REHN.

> Organize guerilla force. Acquire DUEDLY FIREARMS from Metal Coat. RESIST THE INVADERS AT ALL COSTS
> Oh, and recruit that tentacle-mouthed guy. He owes you.

Well... you suppose that would probably be the right thing to do in this situation.
You're not sure you're cut out to be leader material but Coat is certainly good at ordering people around, maybe if you just gather up as many people as you can and take them to him he can take over. He has guns too, and a big underground place you can all hole up in.
I mean it's obviously not safe out here what with metal boxes falling from the sky and the contents coming out and trying to eat people.

You are about to ask the Ceph his name (and gender, you're not even entirely sure he's male or if Ceph can be male) and whether he wants to come along with you (you're only a few streets away from Coat's house anyway) when your train of thought is suddenly interrupted.

Show Content

Spoiler
"I would have to advise you against that idea."
The voice cuts through the intermediary stages of travelling through the air as sound waves and then into your ears and just pops directly into your head.


"She might not sound it, but I can assure you our esteemed leader is entirely sincere with her offer of protection, nobody who enters the reproductive field will be harmed. You look human anyway, so you especially have nothing to fear!
And I must also apologise for the actions of my subordinate there. If it gives you any comfort, he would have let go quite quickly anyway. Not actually able to digest meat, you understand. I can have him executed if you so desire.
Nevertheless, while I as a non human am evidently inferior to yourself, I must insist that the both of you come with me. Once you have taken a few genetic tests you'll be released to do whatever you want, but these tests are not optional even for a first class citizen."

It looks like organising the revolution might take you a little more time than you thought.

Ask him why he's inferior when he has those psychic powers of his.

>Ask him why he works for a genocidal human-supremacist empire if he's not even human to begin with.

There is a small flaw in these questions.
You used the word "work".
This implies that I was given a choice.

>Punch him in the helmet to establish fuck you.

Yeah... What he just said has removed any inclination you had to do that.
Now you're feeling even more guilty about that guy you knocked out.

Failing that, pick up tentacle man and run like hell.

You don't need to grab him because he had the idea first.
The attempt fails spectacularly.


By your reckoning if you make a break for it now you can probably make it past the unconcious guy and to the other side of the street while they are distracted, from there... find a manhole or something?
Things are swiftly getting out of your control, you honestly don't know where you can go that would be particularly safe.
And of course that would involve leaving the Ceph behind, he still looks like he's breathing (and you never even found out his name!) You know a bit of first aid although not much about bullet wounds or on his particular species, but maybe you could help him? That would mean you'd have to go with the invaders of course, although presumably they would have brought some sort of medical service with them to doctor themselves, they might be able to help him more than you can.

Which way do you go?

Actually, work just means work. It has nothing to do with choice. Slaves are considered to be working, too, when they're...working.

You consider pointing out his foolish error in word meaning but decide there are probably more important things to do with your time.

Either option is going to leave a bad impression in the long run. Speaking of runs, you should probably just flee - at least that way you might have some chance of finding Metal Coat.

Despite feeling no small amount of guilt... you're pretty sure there's not a lot you can do to help that guy. He's got multiple wounds and you have no first aid supplies with you or anything, even if there was some way you could take him with you it probably wouldn't do much to save him, so you use the time he's bought to make a break for it yourself.
You think they've noticed you, but you've managed to make it a little further than your unfortunate companion did.

Go for the sewers!

You round a corner and drop down a manhole, pulling it closed behind you. Hopefully you were fast enough that they didn't notice, and it'll be a while before they think of looking down here.


Of course you immediately realise the flaw in your cunning plan, it's pitch black and you have no idea how to get around in the sewers.
Also it's damp and you hate water, it is pretty deadly to you in large quantities as it clumps all your sand together so you can't move it.
Better make sure not to fall in.


Well that's slightly better.

Find out where the nearest safe (and hopefully dry) place is and lie low there for a while.

Try to leave the city : follow the flow of water.

Not having regularly entered the sewers you actually have no idea how you would find a safe or dry place, but following the flow of water to reach an exit does sound like a sensible idea. You could just pick directions at random but it seems safer to follow a theme, there are miles of tunnels under this city and not all of them sewers, a man could get lost for months down here.
As you begin to worry about whether you'll ever see daylight again (despite the ladder you entered by still being in plain view behind you) you are distracted by a little icon in the bottom of your vision, your internet connection seems to have been re-established.

MC: Well it's about time you showed up!

RW: Sorry

MC: What kind of stupid idea is signing out of your messenger program in the middle of an emergency?

RW: The signal just cut out for a while, I couldn't get anything even though I was right outside my house.

MC: Don't be ridiculous, my wireless never fails.

RW: Did you say something about coming to pick me up?

MC: Well actually I'm a bit busy right at this moment, I thought you were dead or something you see so I've started doing something else...

RW: Oh
RW: You see because I'm sort of stuck in the sewers at the moment

MC: Well if you hang on in there for about half an hour or so then I might have finished up, although I can't promise anything


You didn't think Metal Coat was just going to sit there staring out of a window until you got back did you? He's a busy man, got a lot of things to do. While you were away he cleared the rest of those freaks out of his shop and the basement workshop, although there may well be some left further ahead. The amount of mess they could create in such a short period of time is simply staggering.
This is the blast door leading to the main hub of your own personal section of the tunnels under the city, mostly converted from an old subway station that was damaged in an explosion and never brought back into working order. The door is wide open and you aren't the one who opened it, meaning that some of these idiots are already crawling around in your stuff down there, but fortunately you have a plan to deal with it, complete with hastily drawn map.


Ziel is right on the edge of a desert, and although situated very close to deposits of incredibly valuable minerals the founders wanted it to be more than a mining town, and thus implemented a set of laws that were very lenient. Companies that set up shop in Ziel are subject to far fewer safety and ethics checks than pretty much anywhere else which allows them to bring in a lot of money, also bringing in population and commerce. This combined with its convenient closeness to rare elements with intriguing properties allowed it to quickly grow into a centre of scientific advancement, although not one of particularly laudable morals.
This is how you have several barrels of incredibly toxic chemicals hidden in a series of tunnels under your house. Many of them are waste products from your own tinkerings or are useful for synthesising other chemicals but a couple are hooked up specifically to fumigate your whole tunnel system just in case anything like this ever happened.

Thing is, even with the rather loose morals of your home city people generally aren't going to appreciate it if flesh-melting toxins suddenly start billowing out of their cellar, so you're going to have to check for leaks first. The Ziel police force is a joke but some of the vigilantes out there are pretty well armed and it'd probably lose you some business. And some people would die too, that would be a shame.
So first you're going to have to go round and make sure all of the old subway tunnels are still properly sealed before gassing all the remaining aliens to death.


After Metal Coat finishes his detailed explanation on how he is going to gas all the aliens in his house to death using substances of dubious origin you didn't even know he had you are left with something of a dilemma.
Your first thought is that it's pretty rude of him to just abandon you down here, but then again are you really worth rescuing? I mean evidently he can cope pretty well enough on his own and you'd just be a drain of resources. Besides he seemed to think what he was doing was pretty important, what if there's important stuff hidden down there that should never fall into the wrong hands? You're not quite sure what kind of deadliness Coat is capable of at his worst but evidently he doesn't think being able to kill everything in a large collection of winding tunnels under his house with the flick of a switch is anything particularly out of the ordinary.
But what do you do until he's done? You could keep wandering around down here until you find a way out and then try and make it to his house on foot or you could just sit around being useless and hope nobody has followed you.
There really are a lot of tunnels down here though, it's pretty unlikely that anyone would ever find you.

> MC: fab a few flying eyes and send them a-scouting for leaks. No need to go there in person when you got nanotech.

Remember to put in more stringent security measures for your blast doors when this all blows over. Something's very wrong if a lobotomized idiot can figure out how to open them.

You've built many a flying eye in your time, got plenty in reserve too. You could whip up a batch in minutes right now, problem is that no matter how fast you can fabricate metal objects it still takes a fair amount of time to program them. You can't transmit your brainwaves into anything that you aren't in direct physical contact with, and you don't keep any AI-Eye controllers on your person.
Whenever you want to build a new one for whatever reason it's easy enough just to go to a computer, you try to keep the hard drives within your own body just for essentials because as they have your life support routines in them you don't ever want to have to fumble around looking for something to delete if you ever need more space in a hurry.
On top of that, you generally leave your spying for other people's houses so it didn't seem like something you wouldn't just be able to do from your specially designed terminal. The terminal that's in the garage. The garage that's right on the other side of where you need to go.

The thing about security is actually slightly more worrying now that you start to think about it. You're not sure how you could have made these doors more secure.
There are no external controls at all, the bolts are inside the door and cannot be accessed from the outside. You can open them because you can just stick your arm into the door and will it to open but you've never seen anyone else with machines quite like yours. They're just too beautiful for you to ever give them away to anyone else.
And yet the doors are lying open and appear to be completely undamaged.

Metal: Equip yourself with more blades. If there's anything that videogames and movies have taught you, it's that diagonal lifts will be swarmed with enemies as soon as they start moving.

Oh, no need for blades.
You have better plans.
Now, what kind of armaments do you think would be more appropriate?

Rob:Pace and think (and see the guy)

AHHGGFRGAGAAGHAGHRGRHRGHAGAHAGAAA

Aliens: Realize that you don't get paid enough for this. Keep doing it anyway because you're mindless drones and nobody cares about how much you get paid.

SPLOOSH
Words drip very slowly through your mind, it's been a long time since they have. Being immersed in water sends your memory back to when you still had a clear memory, you haven't been able to think very clearly at all since then. Did you lose something back then? Something definitely feels wrong...
These thoughts do not please you but of course your teeth are too big for you to frown.


A voice in your head tells you it's ok, everything's fine, nothing is missing, just shut up and swim.
The voice is very convincing.
You put all thoughts of the past from your mind.

Rob:Ask if the sewer connects to anypaet of the network under his house.

His answer isn't very helpful
Also you feel kind of guilty about pushing that guy into a river of who knows what, although he seems to be able to swim at least

>MC: Use a FLAMETHROWERRRR

If video games have taught you anything it's that you'll get attacked by a horde of enemies any time now and have to engage them in a dramatic moving lift battle, so something that can spew flames in all directions onto foes covered in inflammable, dry bandages sounds like a pretty good idea.


They should be here any moment now...


Any moment now...


Huh.
The entrance hall is devoid of anything of interest, as it's mainly used for hauling things onto the lift you don't really want it too cluttered up.
Your left arm is a flamethrower. Your right arm is a grappling arm, with a smaller flamethrower in its palm. Obvious exits are through the second pair of ominously opened doors to the left or to the firmly shut ones to the north.

>Robert: Stretch out, and see if you can push the crettinous critter underwater without immersing yourself.

You guess you probably don't want him coming back after you, maybe if you just sort of reach over and...


Some form of sewer crocodile beats you to it


The wrestling pair float away, carried by some unspeakable current.
You've honestly been extremely lucky so far with these things, you should probably get yourself more prepared next time you see one.
Just... once you remember how to move again.

MC: Go to the shut doors first. Obviously you want to make sure that what seems safe is safe before walking into what's obviously less safe.

Seems like someone's already sealed that one for you.
Doesn't really look like there's any way you're going to be going through here, fortunately that was mostly where you stored junk you never wanted to look at again rather than anything useful.
Might be a while before you can be bothered to clear it out.

>The open doors. Something's been roaming in your lair and you have to make it pay.

The other door leads to where your tunnels link in with an abandoned subway station.
It was damaged by an explosion about eight or so years ago, and apparently it cost more to repair than it earned anyway, so what with being close to the end of the line in any case the powers that be decided just to shut it down rather than rebuild.


You didn't exactly ask permission to build here, so you've just sort of added extra rooms yourself rather than place anything in this area. Then if anyone complains you can just say you didn't change anything, except that your cleaning machines have possibly made it sparklier than it ever was when it was in use.
You're no lawyer but that has to be a permissable excuse, right?
Besides there's a big set of heavy train tracks in a big ditch in the middle, and another through a wall. They take up a fair amount of the usable space and you don't want to bother removing them any more than they did.

There's no sign of them here either, maybe that one that got crushed by the cave in was the only one who came down.

> better take out your fire-ax in case of future encounters with those alien things.

You forgot you were even carrying this.
Honestly you aren't sure you want to use it, could you kill someone? I mean I guess they are trying to kill you, and that guy getting eaten by a crocodile was probably also your fault anyway, but that one guy did say they were pretty much being forced. Not that he had any reason to tell you the truth.
Well, you'll keep it to hand. Maybe it'd scare a couple away?
It's probably for the best that you find a way out now though, you only really ducked down here to get out of sight and well... if at least one of them found you presumably there's more down here. You'll at least know where you're going if you reach a ladder and get out.
Just have to find one first.

>_Metal Coat: Examine the posters

Ugh, AMP.

This city is notorious for shady business ethics but if there was some kind of "low moral standards in science" prize AMP would win it, probably by bribing the judges. They are rumoured to do things considered unpleasant even by the already low standards around here. They sell clones and cryogenics to the rich, they market barely legal drugs and stimulants and a couple of very unfortunate slip ups imply they're almost certainly working on bioweapons. Problem is most of their more morally questionable projects are run by two teams, one of which uses the research for something marketable to the public and the other one working secretly on the real deal, just in case their riches aren't enough to send away any annoying inspectors.
Hell, a lot of people hate them because they have literally created their own species in order to sell them as pets.

Plus they're in direct competition with you. You make prosthetic limbs and organs, they grow completely new ones in tanks. How are you meant to compete with that?
You used to have the market covered on "Your hand is now also a gun" but you've heard they're close to cracking that one too. Very frustrating.

But all that said, Robert hates AMP even more than you do and he hardly hates anything.
You can hardly blame him though, is parents used to work there.

"Used" being the most important word in that sentence.


You aren't really the type that often goes to the cinema, and even if you were this poster said "coming soon" eight years ago, so it won't be in theatres any more. Your species' short lifespan and somewhat unique process of mental development means that while it was actually playing you were probably incapable of watching it at the time anyway.
You looked it up on the internet though just because it is hung up on what is now your wall, it gained a tiny cult following but was panned by critics for being full of plotholes and incomprehensible references that only a miniscule fraction of the audience would appreciate.
What a suprise(!)


Who the hell names their product "Worm Soda"?
What part of "Enormous, territorial sand-dweller" yells "Thirst-quenching soft drink" to you?
They might be among the main sources of income and tourism to the city but they're also probably the reason the enormous desert surrounding the place exists in the first place! That's the opposite of thirst-quenching!
It's no wonder you've never seen this drink on sale, probably went bust a couple of weeks after printing these adverts.

Short lifespan ? :c Tell us more !

Being smaller as a species generally means living faster (although there are some exceptions), so your kind tend to measure their age in seasons rather than years. Your given age is thirty five but in years you're about four times younger than that.
You're pretty sure that your incredible mechanical augmentations have increased your lifespan by a significant period of time though, as they are much more reliable than fleshy sacks of meat. Not even your race's creator can match your genius!

Of course the only way to find out if this is actually true is to live a long time and see if you die.

>MetalCoat : go check up on your really worthy equipment.

You seem to have found the intruders, though they have shoved your equipment out of the way to make room for an extraordinarily pleased-looking device filled with green liquid.
There's another of those bandaged ghoul thingies and a shorter floating guy whose limbs don't extend much further past the joint. They haven't noticed you because the little one is talking to that ridiculous girl commander of theirs on another floating screen, although she appears to have removed her hat.
You're not human yourself and you can tell there's something a little off about her. It's probably the shark teeth and enormous red eyes.

"Have you finished sealing those surface tunnels yet? We need every manhole locked down if we want to clear this accursed undercity and you were meant to be finished an hour ago. The stuff'll be useless if it floats up into the city, never mind the fact that we'd be gassing ourselves."

"Alas most glorious one, we may require another few minutes. These tunnels run further than even our most generous of estimates, I am not sure we even have the right quantity of neurotoxin... and our entry opened yet more holes to the surface. Why could we not just teleport in?"

"Are you questioning my tactical wisdom?"

"Of course not, no! I would never dare!"

"Damn right you wouldn't. Now you had better hurry it up if you want time to get out of there before I turn that stuff on. Clock's ticking."

Apparently they have already done most of your work for you. You decide to treat the fact that your plan was essentially the same as that of the evil invading force (apart from the target) as completely unimportant.
So do you kill them now or just tiptoe out, do a bit of extra sealing for them and let them gas themselves?

>Rob: Keep on going then.....

You found another manhole, feels like there's something heavy on top though.
Hold on...


There we go!


Ah.
This perhaps was not the best place to emerge.

Robert: Run like hell.

"A subhuman!
You are luckier than you know to be leaving those tunnels now, we were just about to weld them closed. Come calmly with us and you will not be harmed."

Yeah running sounds more attractive that what he is suggesting.
They said that before, and then... you had to leave that guy behind.

Robert: oh my goodness that one has heads growing out of its body.

"Don't just sit there watching, grab him!"




"Useless freeloaders..."


"You just can't get the help these days, have to do everything myself."


"I'm afraid you're not going anywhere."

>MC: just tiptoe out and let them finish up

"Come, we'd better hurry and seal the last passages to that shop, then we can leave through the tunnels."
Truly you are a master of stealth.


Now you can get another look at this machine.
The interface seems surprisingly simple, although maybe that's because you're clearly just far more intelligent than these invaders.
Five minutes seems like it'll be fine for your purposes. Whatever this stuff is probably isn't going to hurt you even if you don't quite leave in time but there's no point taking unnecessary risks.

And of course the gas would be released into the undercity and kill people. You'd be unlikely to lose any clients, most people who live down here do so because they can't afford to live upstairs or else have some other reason to avoid society, but it'd probably hit your property value pretty hard.


Now you just need to make sure their stuff doesn't leave your basement and then you can head off. Probably best to leave via the garage, considering they headed off in the other direction.
Wait what was this seriously their cunning method for locking all of your doors to the other tunnels open?
Put a big pile of rocks in the middle so they don't close?

This is insulting.

Robert: Release your human form and turn completely into sand, this will increase the surface area of your contact with the shield. Hopefully he ends up overexerting himself trying to keep the barrier up!

You try exactly that and from the fireworks it looks like it's probably working.
"Stop that!
Look, I know this looks bad for you but until now there was no reason for me to kill you and so I wasn't going to. We need to take you to the Temple where you'll be checked and then assigned a new Citizenship Ranking and then you'll almost certainly be allowed to live while you don't make any trouble, you at least [i]look human enough.
If you persist in giving me a headache I can keep this thing up long enough to find out how you die and then do that. Hell, if that doesn't work I could just drop you back in that sewer, we're pumping it full of neurotoxins in a couple of minutes, you'd either die of that or starve to death as we weld closed all the exits."[/i]

...you'd rather sit in a bubble than die. He sounds like he knows what he's doing, it probably wouldn't take that long.
You reluctantly do as he asks.

> Hope for Deus Ex Machina - Demi-Deities are purportedly living in the area, yes?

Well there are certainly people around with abilities far in advance of your boring old human, you can't think you've met anyone else made of sand (and you weren't born that way) but people probably wouldn't bat an eyelid if you told them and around here it would seem odd to try and keep it a secret.

And of course, not everyone in this town was even born on this planet.
And unless that kid from earlier was lying, those certain individuals seem to be the ones under the most threat.


Some of them don't need a whole lot of provocation to violate the earth airspace treaty, and this counts as a hell of a lot more than a bit of provocation in anyone's book.






...


But it doesn't look like you can expect any help from that quarter right now.

>Pulverize the rocks to ease frustration

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


Actually that does make feel a lot better.
Now that's dealt with it's probably about time you left, you doubt that whatever they have would affect you at all but there's no point taking risks.
You can take the back door out.


It's fortunate that you keep the car gassed up, stocked with imperishable food and supplies and loaded onto the launch rails just in case you ever do need to make a quick getaway for whatever reason, not that this is in any way paranoid or suspicious.


Even Robert, who usually knows better than to question your obvious genius, occasionally expressed doubts as to the practicality of driving a treaded, windowless, armoured box around town.
Well, we'll see who's crazy now!


"Hey it's me again!
I'm not sure if you noticed, but a few minutes ago we were very rudely attacked by someone who was sticking their nose in where they weren't wanted.
I have to say I found this quite upsetting, considering the restraint we've shown so far! And thus I have a couple of announcements to make.

First of all! If anyone else decides they want to waste their ammunition against my invincible defences then we'll have to start executing hostages! We don't want to, but we also don't want your weaponry richocheting around and killing harmless civilians, so this seems like the only ethical choice.

Secondly! For the increased defence of our citizens and to stop the unprepared and woefully misinformed from wandering out into the desert and dying of dehydration, we'll be raising our force barriers around the city in five minutes time! They don't get on well with electricity, so if you've got anything electronic around the outskirts it might be best to turn it off, that's what the five minutes grace time is for! Only, it's getting closer to four now so you'd better hurry up.
That should be all for now I think, have a pleasant day!"


"Why is it dark? The dome shouldn't be up yet..."


"Hurry up and get in, didn't you hear what she just said?
I can't be bothered to spend the short time it would take to make something to circumvent those forcefields and I don't like our new mayor very much, so we're going on holiday."
"Wait, just the two of us? Can't we bring anyone else?"
"No time! Leaving!"
















































But enough about those losers!
Isn't it about time we paid some attention to the Most Important Character?
We are currently sitting in our somewhat uncomfortable chair and bored out of our skull. Conquering the world and oppressing all non-human sentient races is a lot less exciting than it sounds, believe me! Or... us.
We've had a guy sitting outside our control room for about half an hour now but we think you can leave him waiting a while longer. We did call him ourselves and tell him to get up here as quickly as possible but we're clearly far too busy doing absolutely nothing to see him right now.

>Examine your throne room.

We briefly consider wandering around the room but it's largely pointless, there's only one interesting thing in here and we're it.
We can see everything exciting from this chair (and if we couldn't we can make it glide around the floor as we please, unfortunately the novelty of that wore off years ago).
There's a bunch of power cores around the edge of the room, stacked up in a huge cylinder reaching up to the edge of sight and also down under the floor, and the main controller in the middle of the room behind your chair.
The Control Room also doubles as the Engine Room and triples as the Power Generator, the technology is pretty versatile even if it does require a bit of a convoluted setup.

We don't need any terminals or fancy screens, everything you are required for in here is just routed directly from your brain into the hat into the main controller into the power cores without having to move a muscle.
We do tend to wave our hands around a bit for dramatic effect, it just feels better that way.

Precious is probably also in here somewhere, he likes crawling around in the rafters. He's like our personal bodyguard, not that we've ever been in any danger ever at all.
Can't be a very satisfying job, but he doesn't mind.

Outside is mostly just taken up by cloneries for the Amputees. Who would have thought breeding an army would take up so much space?


Woah woah woah woah wait wait stop STOP STOPSTOPSTOP

Why are there so many of you?!
This isn't good this isn't good. There's only meant to be four voices in here and I don't recognise any of you!
It can't be time yet I'm not ready I have plans the plans there isn't time they aren't finished!

...
Ok calm down.
Maybe I was wrong, this can't be a symptom, I know I've got a couple of years left, at least. Fishbowl Girl would show signs before me and she's a-ok.
Still, don't really want The Hat listening in on this, if I answer your questions will you go away?
Here goes then..."

>Exposit on why you have [URL="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily"] more teeth than the Osmond family[/URL], all canines, despite calling yourself human.

> exposit on why your eyes and hair are both red because that is not a human trait at all! o:

Aren't you feeling alone ? So far we didn't met much human-like people around you, only cyborg and alien slaves.
Why invading locations so much Humans, anyway?

Out of curiosity, about how old is Brianna?

Ugh straight away with the long questions, you'd think what with hanging around in my head you could rummage around for this stuff without having to ask.

Back on Earth, being human is like a religion. Apparently at some point in the past the planet was bombarded with mutagens from space or something, wrecked the ecology and nearly wiped out civilisation until some aliens following the trail gave them a hand. There were strings attached though, lots of them, and they didn't really like that. On top of which, the weird space chemicals were messing with their genetics something fierce, in ways they didn't really understand at all.
Then a man met God, and God told him that there was only one species worth being in this universe. So after a thousand years of interplanetary war his forces finally managed to annihilate both those who helped them in their hour of need and their own children. Not yet content, Ragnar (their new Prophet-King) started sending out conquest parties to teach everyone else that they should have been born with a different number of limbs. And so here I am!

I've never been anywhere near Earth (well, not that Earth, clearly I'm pretty close to the one we're all on now) and, for that matter, have barely had any contact with humans at all. I'm a mutant, I am the enemy, but unfortunately it turns out that some mutations are too useful to do without. I have to look presentably human, but also obvious enough that I'd never be mistaken for the real deal.
I am broken goods, an inferior product, unwanted, trash. They keep me around because they need me, otherwise I'd be dead too.
I have sisters but we've not met in person for years and they're pretty absorbed with their work, the only people I talk to on a regular basis are my Bodyguard, my Assassin, my Computer, my Self and my Hat.
So yeah, you'd probably find it a bit lonely. I'm not a wimp though, I can take it.

And for the record, it's rude to ask a lady her age!
Also it's a complicated question and I don't know the answer.

>Tell us more about the Amputees

They're mutants too, obviously. Intentional ones, heretical as that sounds.
Humans are holy you see, so it would be blasphemous to expect any of them to risk their lives in battle.

Conveniently, mutants aren't holy at all so if they manage to die in battle for the causes of mankind that's probably the closest they can get to heaven.
Which is nowhere near close enough because they're not humans.
The name is some awful idea of a pun, and it's not even a good one because I'm pretty sure lobotomy doesn't count as amputation at all.

Look behind you.

Why would I look behind me? We both know there's nothing worth looking at back there.

Okay admit it you're just the puppet of the large alien thing in the tnak behind you. .

Hahahahahahahaha!

I am seconding all suggestings involving casual murder.
It is a dirty world out there and a mass geneocidal chick like you needs to keep your murder cred as high as possible.
Gotta make more corpses.

> Just torture a couple more aliens, why don't you

Finally some good ideas. God, why did you two even let the other voices come with you?
Unfortunately the closest I've ever actually been to a battle is watching it through someone else's eyes. I'd love to do something hands on but honestly I don't get to do a lot more than fly a big fancy ship around and administrate. It is awful.
Thousands die at my command but I've never been outside this black box. My sisters get all the luck.

Does "Precious" have any special abilities that set him apart from others of his kind?

He's far more lovable.

And of course, what is that thing in the tank?

>What are the voices you normally hear? Oh dear I don't want to intrude!!

Ask your normal voices about the sudden influx.

Well obviously there's me, I mean I'm talking to you right now. Hell I thought it was only me in here until more than one of you suddenly piped up.
My hat likes giving me orders, it's basically the link back to good old Earth. It likes me to think that's here all the time listening and watching everything I do and it thinks I believed it when it said so, but recently I've figured out how to tell when it is listening.
For example right now it's asleep! If I'm honest I don't want you to meet eachother though, it probably wouldn't approve.
And when your hat doesn't approve of something then bad things happen.

Occasionally girly in that tank over there puts a word in, although usually she only speaks when spoken to. You don't really want your computer to talk back, I suppose, you just want it to turn the lights on or move three lightyears to the left.
When we cycle the tanks once a month to give her a bit of time to fix herself up before the acid's pumped back in she can be pretty chatty though.
I actually secretly sort of look forward to those days. We're actually probably closesly related enough to call eachother sisters! Although not quite as closely as I am to the ones I was talking about earlier.

The last voice is pretty quiet and it took me a while to realise he was there at all.
He doesn't say much though, he usually just tells me to kill people.
Can't hear him at the moment but a couple of you seem to be doing the job in his stead.

You are by far the noisiest voices I have ever heard I hope I am not going to have to put up with you forever.

But you are in charge! Why can't you just like open the door and murder whoever is on the other side? No one will know because he will be dead
It even has the bonus of looking like someone tried to kill you! That might have some unexpected perks, eh?

>Did you ever think that maybe humans weren't that great?

Well basically it's because my hat (or someone on the other end of my hat, I've never quite worked out if it has a mind of its own or is just a reciever connected to somewhere else) is listening to me and if I do anything stupid it will get angry.
Obviously when I was younger I just tried taking it off. It electrocuted me unconcious and then when I woke up it said it had made a new automatic routine to detonate itself if it ever detected the series of nerve impulses I used to lift my hands up to grab it.
So yeah.
That's not happening.

Okay what are your special abilities that makes you useful for that kind of conquest?

> So what exactly does make your mutation so useful?

> Precious obviously exists to ride. Use him as a mount whilst acting out imaginary scenes of killing filthy mutants.

>Ride Precious, RIDE TO GENOCI- I MEAN VICTORY!

Ride Precious.

>Ride Precious.

>Talk to Assassin! ask him or her to kill something :D

"Ah... Mistress? Am I interrupting something?"
"Carrion! About time you showed up! Must have been a good 45 minutes since I called you up here!"
"Yes, many apologies. I am afraid I was delayed by an unfortunate technical issue.
In your infinite wisdom it appears that you locked every entrance to this chamber and thus prevented me from getting in, it took me quite some time to pick the lock and gain your wonderful audience."
"And I don't remember giving you permission to do that either!"

Ask him what he wants.

"What do you want?"
"Mistress... you are the one who summoned me here."
"Yes, and now I am asking you what you want. Is that difficult for you to understand?"
"I wish only to serve you, of course."

we should observe his face with great detail using our body
and pretend that it is perfectly normal to get that close to a face while making vapid banter

see who breaks concentration first

"I did have a task for you actually, but during the wait for you to arrive it has slipped from my mind, I'm sure I'll remember eventually. You can't think what it might have been, can you?"
"I must say, I can't imagine there's any person or fortified position on this worm-blighted rock that would require my talents, so it remains a mystery to me too. Much like the question of why we're even still here at all, I expected us to have been done here very quickly."
"Are you implying I'm doing something wrong? Because I would have thought you knew better than that by now."
"I am sure the true extent of your grasp of tactical knowledge would surprise even me, mistress. I am certain that there surely must be some great reason behind the fact that so far we've spent several hours besieging a single city with our worst forces in the middle of a desert, the one city most full of possible insurrectionists who we need to gather up, instead of simply cutting the head off of the entire weakly-balanced global organisation in a single strike and inserting ourselves into the gap within a day as we have so many times before.
Whatever great scheme you have hatched is evidently beyond my understanding, perhaps the understanding of anyone."
"All part of the plan."

This psychological, personal space stuff would probably work a whole lot better if those eyes on his hat weren't just decoration.
I mean he can tell I'm getting closer through some weird psychic echolocation bullshit or something like that but it probably doesn't have quite the same effect or he'd already have been stunned by my incredible good looks.
Also my body thank you very much. I don't much like disembodied voices laying claim to pieces of my anatomy.

Teleport out of your hat.

"Hey, Girly/computer in the tank over there! Yes I'm talking to you. This is top secret, you can literally not even think about it while the hat is awake; if you can somehow manage to get that crown of her head while keeping her alive, I'll make sure you wn't have to live in a vat of acid any more, deal?"

Oh yeah, I had totally forgotten that I can teleport and never bothered trying to do it without my hat before.
Did you seriously not think the people who grew me in a tank specifically so that I could rip holes in space for them would forget I could rip holes in space?
Hat's made out of this weird stuff called Ercite. The Temple loves it, in fact pretty much everything in this place is made out of it, even the glass. Don't ask me how it works because it's not something anyone thought it was worth telling me, I don't even know how some of it's opaque and some of it's not, but as far as I can tell it's some kind of programmable psychic conductor alloy. As much sense as that makes, I'm no scientician.
So my hat increases the strength and range of my telekinesis, provides me with a direct mental link to the computer and then hijacks that link to lock itself onto all of my extraspacial movements and surround itself with a shield only slightly less intense than the one reflecting laser cannon fire right this second on the outside of the temple, so it is basically completely untouchable.

Which also means your other plan wouldn't work, and while I'm sure Fishtank over there can hear you the whole point of the nasty stuff she's floating is so she can't do anything sneaky like that. I mean I can as good as veto anything I don't want her to do anyway with my headwear but it always pays to be safe.
The hostility level is raised and lowered as we need more power for things and her remaining attention is captivated by the need to constantly repair what's being eaten.
Not exactly pleasant for her maybe, but it's better than what happens to the people outside.

So what do you usually do to spice up your conquesting routine ?

If there's nothing to do I tend to just sit around watching playbacks of planets we've messed up in the past.
Once we turned up at this place that we expected to be Earth but instead the whole place was just covered in ridiculous antler-headed children and their feral animal parents.
No idea where there real parents had gone, maybe they just grew in tanks too...
But anyway we burned them all and it was hilarious.


Oh shit shut up a minute.
Wʜʏ ɪs ᴛʜɪs Aʙʙᴇʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ sᴛɪʟʟ ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ sᴇʀᴠɪᴄᴇ? Yᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʙᴇᴇɴ ɪɴsᴛʀᴜᴄᴛᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ʀɪᴅ ᴏғ ʜɪᴍ.
He is too useful to get rid of! He's never failed a single assignment! I've not had a more efficient second hand before!
Hᴇ ɪs ɪɴsᴏʟᴇɴᴛ, sᴄʜᴇᴍɪɴɢ, ᴀʀʀᴏɢᴀɴᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ʜɪs ᴄᴏʟʟᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ғʀᴇᴀᴋs sᴘɪᴛs ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ғᴀᴄᴇ ᴏғ ᴏᴜʀ ᴅᴏᴄᴛʀɪɴᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴍᴀᴋᴇs ғᴏᴏʟs ᴏғ ᴜs. Hᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ʀᴇᴍᴏᴠᴇᴅ.
Yᴏᴜʀ ɪʟʟᴏɢɪᴄᴀʟ ᴀᴛᴛᴀᴄʜᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ɪɴғᴇʀɪᴏʀ ʙᴇɪɴɢs ɪs ᴅᴇɢʀᴀᴅɪɴɢ. Yᴏᴜ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴄᴇᴀsᴇ.
Ugh fine, whatever you want.


"Right I know what it was now. One of our Dragons has hit an unexpected complication and crashed itself into some ruins. I need you to go and pick up the central control unit for me and bring it back here. It contains... important information."
"...may I be allowed to make another observation?"
"Grudgingly. You're already sliding along thin ice and it's not like you have enough limbs to slow yourself down."
"As soon as the unit ceased function, the loss of signal will have attracted the attention of one of the Temple's Extractors, who will even now be heading down to remove the pilot. You are asking me to [i]race against one of the organisation's most potent and least restrained armoured units."[/i]
"Yep, that sounds like an accurate assessment! I'm glad I have picked someone so astute for this task! Obviously for such a dangerous and important assignment I couldn't use just anyone and you have just clearly demonstrated for me that you are just what this job needs. Congratulations!
We'll hand the assets over to the Extractor once I'm done with them, I just need to have a little look first.
Might want to get a move on too, Extractor might not have smelled it yet but it can't be long, you'll want a head start!"
"...right away."
"As soon as I've dismissed you of course."

Wʜᴀᴛ ɪs ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴏɪɴᴛ ᴏғ ᴛʜɪs? Jᴜsᴛ sᴇɴᴅɪɴɢ ʜɪᴍ ᴀᴡᴀʏ ᴏɴ ᴀ ᴘᴏɪɴᴛʟᴇss ᴛᴀsᴋ ɪs ɴᴏᴛ ᴇɴᴏᴜɢʜ. Hᴇ ɴᴇᴇᴅs ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴅᴇsᴛʀᴏʏᴇᴅ.
So if he fails to bring it back then he will be executed for failing and if he tries to get it before the Extractor does then it will kill him for me.
Tʜɪs ɪs ᴀ ᴡᴀsᴛᴇ ᴏғ ᴛɪᴍᴇ! Iᴛ ᴀᴄᴄᴏᴍᴘʟɪsʜᴇs ɴᴏᴛʜɪɴɢ! Wʜʏ ɴᴏᴛ sɪᴍᴘʟʏ ᴋɪʟʟ ʜɪᴍ ɴᴏᴡ?
Humour me. He can probably deal with some stragglers on the way or something. Plus this will also get rid of his "freak collection" that you hate so much.
...
Yᴏᴜʀ ʀᴇᴄᴇɴᴛ ᴘᴇʀғᴏʀᴍᴀɴᴄᴇ ɪs ʙᴇʟᴏᴡ ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʀᴇᴘᴇᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴅᴇғɪᴀɴᴄᴇ ɪs ᴅɪsᴛᴜʀʙɪɴɢ.
Oᴜʀ sᴛᴀᴛɪsᴛɪᴄs ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ʜɪɢʜᴇʀ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴄʟɪɴᴇ ᴛʜᴀɴ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴅᴇᴍᴏɴsᴛʀᴀᴛɪɴɢ ᴄᴜʀʀᴇɴᴛʟʏ, I ᴀᴍ sᴄʜᴇᴅᴜʟɪɴɢ ᴀ ᴘsʏᴄʜᴏʟᴏɢɪᴄᴀʟ ʀᴇᴠɪᴇᴡ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ɴᴇᴀʀ ғᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ.
Looking forward to it. Are you quite done now, so I can send my ex-minion on his suicide mission?

Hello?
Oh good he's buggered off.
Are you still here? I hope not, I certainly wouldn't want him to be right.
I'm too young to die yet.

Nope, we're all gone. Though, now that you think of it, perhaps chasing away the near-omniscient voices in your head, which, by the way, were trying to save you from you likely-immenent death (and long-past brainwashing) may have not been such a good idea after all!

This whole "get heroes from the planet I'm supposed to conquer save you through deliberate strategic incompetence" thing is pretty great! Just be careful, ok?

You...!
How dare you call me incompetent? And you honestly expected me to fall for such absolutely pathetic tricks? That is actually more insulting than the insults!
I just don't believe you, you break into my head uninvited making me worry that I'm starting to break down, almost start blabbering and tip off my hat that I might be about to break down so it just terminates me on the spot and now you're sitting in my head insulting me. What is that going to achieve?
I've done what you wanted for the most part so far! I've answered ridiculous questions that any sane person would already have known the answer to and-
"Do you want me to get rid of them for you?"
Wait can you even do that?
Shit girl, why didn't you speak up sooner? Kill them dead!
"You told me never to speak to you uninvited."
Yes yes whatever just do it. Go! Make it hurt!
Haha, good work you bunch of bastards. Looks like we won't be seeing each other again very soon or hopefully ever. I'd say I'll miss you but I really won't.
Have a nice life doing whatever it is disembodied voices do when they're stuck outside of everything, my life will be substantially longer and infinitely better without you around.

>You're a clever girl, I'm sure you can find a way to get the hat off and our voices out of your skull.

"It is working right? Because I'd look pretty fucking stupid if it turned out I was just ranting at them and they were still here.
Then I might just remember that you just spoke to me uninvited and interrupted me.
"Yes it's working."
"Ok right good."






WAIT


DO NOT THINK YOU HAVE SO EASILY ESCAPED MY NOTICE
YOUR MEDDLING IS NOT WELCOME HERE


CEASE YOUR INTERFERENCE WITH MY CHOSEN OR I WILL BE FORCED TO TAKE ACTION
YOUR PURPOSE IS DONE, YOU ARE NOW SURPLUS TO REQUIREMENTS
WE HAVE DEALT WITH YOUR KIND BEFORE, I CAN DO MORE THAN JUST PUSH YOU AWAY

THIS HAS BEEN YOUR ONLY WARNING






The interior of this vehicle was clearly not designed with passengers in mind, but you decide that your driver wouldn't appreciate your saying so.
"Are we there yet?"
"You're driving!"
"You're navigating!"
"There's no map back here, and your car doesn't have any windows. I'm not linked to your external cameras. I also don't have a map."
"God you are such a whiner...
I'll turn off my signal blocker so you can get on your GPS."


It looks like there are a couple of choices. This surprises you because you've never been out of the city, you'd assumed the desert would just be empty sand for miles upon miles.
Closest to you are some old world ruins. You can probably set up there for a good while without anyone bothering to look, although it might be a bit lonely and probably also a little bit dangerous, not only from collapse but from sandworms.
There's a worm hunting station a little way further ahead that might well be home to some actual people and supplies. Coat said he has his own supplies in the back but more couldn't hurt, right? Where there's other people there's always a chance
And of course you could always rejoin the one road through the desert, the only one protected from the worms and thus the only one that survives for any period of time. Following that you'll reach another city before too long but you're far more likely to be found by those invaders. How can you be invaded by humans anyway when you mostly all live here?
Honestly you're surprised you haven't been pursued since leaving the city. Hopefully that wasn't because of the jamming systems you just persuaded your friend into turning off.
"So come on, where are we going?"

Try to contact that evil glowy sigil-thing again, for teh lulz. Boast about our power, and to prove it, we're going to direct our avatars to single-handedly (and possibly accidentally) riposte the invasion. Be careful not to expose their location or anything, though...

Your attempt is a complete failure!
It looks like you have lost the ability to control where your view is pointed (if you ever had it), guess we'll just have to stick with Robert and Metal Coat for now.

Hunting Station might be your best bet. Whilst you're more open to being found there, as long as you're quick it shouldn't matter.
Whilst at the Hunting Station you could gather said supplies and ask for advise on how to deal with worms (or even get something which could help you against them) After all, neither of you look like you're expert worm hunters.

Obviously, caution is advised on the approach, and as soon as we gather who/what we can, we should flee for the ruins.

The ruins are apparently meant to be sort of lousy with Sandworms, what with their habit of eating architecture. The only reason the ruins are still there is because they're over the remains of places with particularly large amount of tunnels and water pipes under the surface, worms hate water and also tend to shy away from large empty spaces, even if those spaces are underground.
It therefore seems like it'd probably be practical to see if the guys who hunt worms for a living have any tips for you before you go and hide in some old buildings.

There doesn't appear to be anyone by the entrance but there's a lot of noise coming from around the back.


There are certainly a lot of people over here though. And machines.
It dawns on you that you don't really know how worm hunting works at all, maybe Coat does.
"Hey why is it darker over here?"
"Look up, genius."


The monstrous truck parked beside the buildings seems to have a floating sand island tethered to it by a series of thick cables. A bunch of little robots are crawling around on and inside it.
Well, they look little from down here but actually they're probably fairly large.

You aren't entirely sure how or why they've managed to pull an island over here but you do at least know where the things come from, they're a pretty common sight outside the city so it's no mystery.
Sandworms aren't terrestrial animals and are still only very vaguely understood by science, but they seem to mostly consist on a diet of rocks, masonry and each other. In order to protect their eggs from cannibalism, they cover them in thick shell of sand which is treated with chemicals that both bind the grains together and somehow makes the egg case float into the air. For a long time everyone assumed they trapped some form of lighter-than-air gas inside in large quantities, but as far as anyone has managed to find by actually breaking one apart, it's just sand and eggs the whole way through.
As soon as baby hatches, it eats all of its siblings and then the island itself, falling into the desert to annoy people who just want to build houses. Or live on the planet.

If you had to hazard a guess as to what one of them is doing here, you'd say that this is actually probably a much easier method of getting useful stuff from worms than tracking down and subduing adults.

And you'd be right, only because this is exposition from the point of view of a character we have to pretend that you aren't aware of that last part.


Your musing is cut short when the Foreman scuttles over to you and demands your attention, his voice crackling from a metal box stuck to his carapace.
He looks rather annoyed, but his species usually do.

"This one must inform you that you are trespassing on land that is not only private property but also a dangerous work site.
It advises you to return to your vehicle with haste, for its employer will take no responsibility for any harm that may befall you here."
"Are you threatening me?"
"This may be so, does it wish to find out?"
"Wait! We just wanted to warn you about what's happening in the city. Haven't you seen anything? You're not all that far away."

At these words the giant insect visibly calms down.

"It brings news? This one apologises.
It would not believe how many stupid tourists decide to wander into worm refinery, do they not know that this is a place of work?"
"No no we're just here to tell you what's going on, and maybe ask a few questions if that's alright with you."
"This one did wonder what was going on, it saw many lights in the sky, heard sounds of violence and even saw a great ship fall from the heavens.
Is it the rioting again? This one believes a greater police visibility is necessary. Place a Cys'tar warrior on every corner, then we shall see who dares defy the peace."
"It's not riots I'm afraid. We're being invaded.
All these screens appeared in the sky and said something about a Great Empire of Humanity, they're speciesist extremists as far as I could tell.
Then all these pods fell out of the sky and soldiers came out, they were talking about placing some kind of blockage around the city exits when we left. We're lucky to have got out at all, I think."
"It was all thanks to me."
"This one does not understand. There are no humans empires, how can they be invading?"
"I know as much as you. If it helps, we've only actually seen one person... uh, one human in their broadcasts. Their soldiers are something else I've not seen. I've not seen technology like any they used, in fact, although I'm no expert."
"Nope, he's right. Definitely alien."
"Did they dare break the great treaties? The wrath of our benefactors will be great indeed.
It surprises me that they are not here already.

We have weathered many riots in the desert, nobody remembers the worm hunters. We shall be safe here until retribution arrives."

Now that you've managed to avoid a fight, what do you think it would be smart to talk about?

God DAMN it's been a long time. Is anyone even still here? HELLO?

Ah good, I thought you'd all have wandered off by now. Might have laid it on a bit strong with the dissuasion technique from Old Fishtank back there, I only wanted you out of my room not gone altogether!
Can... can any of you remember what was going on? Like, I know technically I'm not supposed to know most of this yet (am I allowed to say yet? Is that a spoiler?) but let's just dispense with the formalities for a moment because I don't want to start reading out the wrong lines here thinking we're in act five when really we're only in act four. Damn, that would be embarassing.

Wait what?
We're only as far as act TWO? What kind of sluggish pace is this?!
Ok hang on, just let me get my crib notes here and we can both get caught up.

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Spoiler
Righty then. Starting out, character standing in a room (god how cliched) and his alarm clock is broken. Apparently he's a fireman called Robert (wait, did he always look like that?), got some kind of robot eye and some weird BDSM manacles or something on too, don't ask me why.

After dicking around in his house for an interminable length of time and thoroughly confusing everyone as to the genre of the following webcomic he establishes that his alarm clock will continue ringing regardless of the fact that it is not receiving power from anywhere and finally resorts to pestering his friend over the internet to fix his clock for him. Oh and in the lamest twist ever it turns out he's also made of sand, a fact that is subsequently utilised for almost nothing at all. Maybe it'll come up later? This script would be much different if I'd been writing it let me tell you.


We get a brief glimpse of his friend who is some kind of midget robot with spider legs and then Robert throws all of his belongings onto the floor and sticks his head out of the window for some reason, thus discovering that actually basically everyone's alarm clocks are going off constantly at the same time. It's as if someone wants to attract their attention! Perhaps someone far more deserving of their attention than anyone else we have seen in the comic so far???
Then perspective changes back to his friend again, who is revealed to be called “Metal Coat”, which frankly isn't even a real name.

He gets frustrated because he fancies himself as some kind of mechanical genius but can't even fix a broken clock and just starts shooting things, which at least does make them stop ringing. Then he puts them back together using the handwaved technology of nanomachines and they start ringing again. Don't worry little guy, you tried. Have a gold star.

After utterly failing at doing anything for several more minutes the clocks just stop on their own and he just sort of pretends it was his doing. Confident in a job well done, he heads out to his shop but notices that all of his customers have vanished. Following them outside he looks up to the sky and sees...!?
Well who knows, the perspective changes back to Robert in an utterly pointless cliffhanger.


Robert's exciting exploits involve riding a lift and then looking at a broken TV for a while. He leaves the building and meets some other worried citizens. That isn't particularly important though, what IS important is that we finally get a glimpse of an actual interesting character!
This stunningly beautiful individual is visible on many floating holographic screens that have suddenly and mysteriously appeared in the city, giving an eloquent speech about how she was regretfully responsible for waking everyone up early but thought it was necessary to do so in order to deliver the good news; as a representative of the “Black Temple” Foreign and Xeno Relationships Task Force I am authorised to inform them that their planet is now officially part of the Great Prophet Ragnar's Holy Empire of Sacred Humanity and the fact that they had previously never heard of this organisation or the fact that they may just need to round up everyone who isn't a pureblooded human and then kill them is really just a small thing and honestly nothing to worry about in the grand scheme of things.

Can you guess who that is yet?

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Spoiler

Now that we've thrown off any pretence of being some kind of investigative drama about people's clocks, things start to move a teensy bit faster! My speech over, I decide there's no point waiting around and release the troops. The public are caught in a state of honestly embarrassing overreaction and begin to panic as railgun-launched drop pods smash into the pavement and their houses and my giant octahedral flying fortress materialises overhead, teleporting a few useless and frankly fairly ugly buildings into the surrounding desert to make room for it to land.


We return to looking at Metal Coat who is angry that one of the pods has broken his expensive roof, and also angry that Robert isn't returning any of his instant messages. This is what we call dramatic irony because when we last left Robert he was about to be crushed by a plummeting metal cylinder (Did I not mention that?).
He attempts to deconstruct one of the things with his nanomachines but it's apparently made of some kind of alloy he has no effect on. How convenient! Then it explodes and some freaky one-eyed bandage guy comes out. This does not surprise you because I already told you that they were my drop pods but at the time it was meant to be a sudden and unexpected development!

It is it at this point that I, in a display of my limitless mercy, compassion and modesty, decide to take pity on the poor malformed inhabitants of the city that made the mistake of not being born human and decree that they will simply be rounded up and placed under a dampening field preventing them from having any kids, rather than being shot. Unless they try and run away of course, in which case they were basically asking for someone to shoot them.
For some reason this doesn't suit the little metal guy very well and he decides to engage my poor soldier, still dazed from re-entry, in mortal combat.

It moves fast but apparently not faster than lasers, and is decapitated almost instantly. What a bully!
Fortunately, while Coat is distracted by the other brave warriors that have infiltrated his store and started requisitioning vital weapons hardware for the war effort, its severed head grows a couple of extra limbs and springs to the attack!
...unfortunately it turns out that if you can't beat someone in a fight when you have your whole body then it's a lot harder when you're just a head and it is re-killed, serving only as an expositionary warning that downed enemy soldiers are liable to regenerate themselves into an entirely new threat.


Following this Coat wanders around his house for a bit and beats up a few more of my friends (who are only trying to help him to a facility where he will be fed and looked after for the rest of his life, for free I add!) but it wasn't really all that eventful so we'll skip over that bit and get back to Robert again. He's apparently still frozen in time in the act of “standing directly underneath a large, fast-moving object” but under mysterious circumstances it conveniently moves itself out of the way and crushes an innocent nearby bystander instead. He appears to be entirely unaware of this fact and walks off after allowing a dwarf to steal the poor victim's wallet.
He soon meets up with some of my little pets too, as one of them samples some of the local cuisine.

After rescuing the prospective meal and meets an incredibly polite Black Temple Enforcer, the first of his kind who demonstrates the ability to speak. What he does not demonstrate are limbs or a face, but we all have to make sacrifices sometimes, do we not?
The kindly telepathic individual reassures him that my offer of safety for non-humans was entirely genuine and besides, as Robert is a human he has absolutely nothing to fear anyway.
The dim-witted man apparently listens to none of this and leaps down a manhole as the guy he just rescues is gunned down for fleeing in the opposite direction. After briefly wandering through the sewer he emerges in the middle of a much larger platoon of soldiers and captured in a forcefield.


Metal Coat is worried that someone has broken into his secret underground lab that he illegally built in an abandoned subway system, and vindicated in his worries when the huge door is lying conspicuously open.
After using his time wisely to scrutinise some posters and decry Big Pharma, he discovers that my men have planted some kind of chemical bomb down here, with the intent of using it to flood the sewers and the intricate network of other underground tunnels running under the city with deadly neurotoxins. Sensible really, only criminals live underground right?
Unfortunately he reseals all of the tunnels and leaves through the garage, flooding only his own basement with deadly neurotoxins (which also inconveniently kills anyone who was still trying to loot his shop (inconvenient for me rather than him)).


Leaving through the garage, he picks up his armoured car and drives to Robert's rescue, conveniently flattening his jailor under the armoured treads. After smashing through several roadblocks they escape from the city (minutes before it is enclosed within a powerful forcefield) and into the surrounding desert.


We now reach the indisputably best part of the webcomic to date, the part in which (briefly) you control me! I take a brief look around my throne room (it's largely uninteresting compared to its chief occupant), drop a whole ton of exposition and introduce you to my favourite pet, Precious, who is as adorable as his name implies.


We also met my right hand man and master assassin, Carrion! I borrowed his hat for a while and then sent him on his final mission. Alas, as my superiors disliked his occasionally cavalier attitude towards scripture and his tendency to sometimes forget to be totally polite at all times, which I always though sort of amusing, they ordered me to make sure it was one from which he would never return.
Damn I wish you hadn't reminded me about that, I need to go and find another one now.

And then after that I got tired of listening to your annoying voices and kicked you out to go look at the boring people again.


When we last left them they were hanging around in a desert, visiting a mining station to deliver the wonderful news of humanity's salvation (and beg some extra supplies) before heading off like the cowards they are to hide from me in some convenient ruins.
Obviously I don't actually know that they are there yet but I'm sure I'll find a way.

And in this case I mean I'm literally sure because I'm holding the script right here, I've read the whole thing. Is that a spoiler too? It's probably not one you couldn't have guessed on your own let's be frank here.

So I guess that regretfully it's time for you to leave me and join the peasants again. I'm a busy girl, I can't spend all my time entertaining you.
People to kill and all that.
Try not to get too bored while you're waiting for me to pop up again!

Wait, what is the great treaty and who are the benefactors?

Wow, for a moment there you forgot what The Treaties were. Your education might have been a little spotty but you can guarantee that if you can hear the capital letters at the start of something that would otherwise be a pretty common word, it must be pretty widely known.
Without The Treaties you guess this desert would cover the entire planet and you wouldn't be alive. The terms might have been controversial (and remain so to this day) but without the intervention of the Troll Empire after the Cataclysm, human civilisation definitely wouldn't have lasted this long.
And if nobody had signed The Treaties then they would have just sat where they were and watched.

There were some more capital-letter words there, it's fortunate that you can remember what they all mean!

Absorb the desert into your body do it do it

You're trying your best not to do that!
You can't hold a whole lot more sand than you already are doing so you wouldn't get any larger and what you've got is conveniently uncontaminated by desert insects and worm eggs.
You have little desire to pick up passengers right now, plus you wouldn't fit in the car.

Ask about the number of people living mostly in the desert. Where should they go to make a living in there and warn them about the invasion ?

”There are no settlements in the desert. Only reinforced buildings such as this facility weather passing worms. There is little water and no food.
Only exception is Sand Goblins. This one sees them sometimes riding the small worms. Not sure what they eat, suspect they live in ruined city.
This is its destination, no? This one would advise you keep an eye out, for Sand Goblins are notorious bandits.”
”Sand Goblins are a myth! Nobody has ever provided any proof of their existence and they don't even make any sense!
What would a group of pre-industrial goblins be doing living in a desert? You said yourself that there isn't any food or water.”

The Foreman fixes him with a blank stare.
”This one has many goblins in its employ. They are industrious workers and tell me many secrets of Goblin ways.
This one thinks it knows little of Goblin society, also that it has done little but ask impetuous questions while committing illegal trespass on this one's facility.”

See if you can get them to organize some sort of defense in case those Black Temple folks do remember the worm hunters.

”It is persistent! This one still expresses grave doubt as to any danger posed by worm-farmers in desert.
Nevertheless it shall pose a guard and prepare the cellar as shelter. This one runs a good facility, the walls are strong enough to repel a mid-sized worm should it suddenly rekindle itself.
They shall easily repel enemy attack.

It is also not like we are unarmed, while they are not often necessary our vehicles are equipped with weaponry.”

You aren't totally convinced by that but it's probably the best you're getting.

He seems pretty proud, ask him about his species/people so he thinks you're interested. These types tend to like people who appreciate their history.

”This one is ashamed to be in exile. This one was outcast for killing broodmate during mating contest. This act brings shame to my brood and weakens the bloodline.
Atonement is found through difficult work for the benefit of brood. This one risks life daily in pursuit of worm extracts. These materials are not available on homeworld, which is unscarred by worm, desert or warfare.
Acquisition of materials benefits all of Cys'tar. This one may return home in seven more years.

This one will not be sad to never see Earth again.”

After that try and milk as much sandworm hunting tips out of him as possible - maybe ask for some supplies.

The Cys'tar rolls all of his eyes at once, a very impressive sight. It appears that he has given this speech many times in the past.
”It wishes to fight sandworms?
This is our advice to you, most worms will not pursue a person unless angered. They do not eat people.
Juvenile worm may decide it wants the car, in that case this one advises it abandons the vehicle and proceeds on foot back to nearest area of safety.
Adult worm will only eat car by accident, if it decides to do this then passengers already are dead. Large worms too big to outdrive in car.

Worms fear the road markers and the ruined city. If worm attacks, flee to there.
Do not attack worm because worm cannot be killed.”



”Deep inside sand is worm's real body, made of many spinning stone rings. It cannot be destroyed, only disabled temporarily.”
”There's no need to be patronising, we do live here.”
”To hunt worm we attract it with special apparatus, spray with fixative until sand hardens into solid trap, carry track to refinery and dissect to death with high-frequency laser array. We can take only small worms, and capture attracts bigger ones that want to eat it so speed is required.

It has no fixative, no hose and no laser array. If it fights worm, worm will not die and noise of fighting will make bigger worms appear.
And watch for riders.”
”I bet I could rig up a laser array...”
”It is welcome to try, this one will not attend tiny metal man's funeral.”

He makes no motions to get any supplies. Your welcome appears to be quickly wearing thin.


You say a few goodbyes and decide to leave before something bad happens. He might not have been willing to lend you anything but it feels good that you managed to warn them about the attack, they probably wouldn't have had any idea it was coming otherwise. Hopefully he'll take it to heart!
The worm advice at least will probably prove useful to know as well, although you aren't sure that Coat was actually listening to it. You might have to remind him before he tries driving directly at its mouth, guns blazing.
With any luck it won't happen anyway.

A few minutes later you're off towards the ruins again, where there'll be nothing to do but sit in an old apartment eating rations for a few weeks until the Trolls roll in and sorts everything out.
I mean, the invaders did blow up that cruiser but there's pretty much no way anyone could hold out against those guys.
You're surprised it's taken this long for them to show up really, would have thought they'd be in like a shot when someone broke the treaties.
You guess they just haven't realised what is going on yet, it feels like six or seven months have passed but you guess that really it's only been a few hours.
You're not worried though.
They're coming.
It's not like anything could have stopped them.
Right?



While our heroes undergo their undoubtedly boring and uneventful journey maybe it would make sense to look somewhere else.
Of course if that was true it would imply we were following anything in some kind of linear time frame which obviously isn't true because by the time any of the following events happen Robert and Coat have already arrived. Perhaps this is just another side-effect from that time that girl in the green tank forced your vision elsewhere, who knows?

A Black Temple agent sets off on what he knows full well is meant to be his final mission. With a boss like his, you don't have to be a mind reader to pick this kind of stuff up. Not that he isn't a mind reader.


Hell, maybe if he somehow completes this nigh-impossible task he can just retire instead of dying. Ha. Ha ha.
Not that it'd be a long retirement either way, he's getting on a bit. Might as well go out with a bang, right?

The job is to retrieve the drive core of a malfunctioning Temple vessel which really doesn't sound hard at all, the problem here being that when you get to the bigger and more complicated stuff the higher ups really don't want anyone else getting their hands on the technology. So much so that the entire Grey Temple division was formed just to keep their secrets... secret.
So he'll be racing against a force far more powerful than any that could be brought to bear by the cavemen on this dump of a planet with the only advantage that he doesn't quite have quite as far to walk. Whether they'll just calmly hand it over instead of pulling rank or opening fire even if he beats them to it is going to be the killing question.

Frankly he's not quite sure how far this interdepartmental conflict will go, would they lay siege to the HQ if he managed to deliver the goods there? It's be an interesting thing to find out.


Of course first he's going to need to go and gather his crew (he has a feeling this is not going to be a solo job). And requisition some kind of vehicle (let's hope the Troll Squad hasn't already snatched all the good ones).
The former are probably scattered around on various forms of guard duty and tracking them down could be a pain. His waving friend Meathook over there's the closest you could get to a right-hand man in these circumstances and probably knows where a fair few of them have got to, though the longer he's kept waiting the more of them are going to wander off. Unattended Amputees aren't the smartest or most dutiful bunch.
The latter isn't going anywhere but the various war engines certainly are, leave it too long and there'll only be crawlers and one-man craft left anyway. The agent's unfortunate lack of limbs mean he probably couldn't use half of the one-seaters in the first place, and they'd be unsuitable for transporting anything.
Decisions, decisions.

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SpoilerSorry about the sudden perspective switch, I'm swapping some things around to deal with some left over pacing issues.
Do have another look at the OP too, I added a couple of panels to it so it's a bit less misleading and maybe also looks nicer.

And uh
Thanks for coming back <3

I will do my best not to let you down again.

>Well, you may as well take Meathook with you to the docking bay or wherever it is you keep the vehicles. You can ask him about other recruits on the way.

If you get the whereabouts from Meathook, you could always send him to go get a vehicle while you round up the gang. Or vice versa, no real rush. Take it skeezy with these suicide missions.

Make sure to spread your swagger and woo any ladies before you go
NO REGRETS

Commandeer the most dangerous and destructive war engine you can find. Sounds like you will need it.

> how far is it? Could you just go there in a suitably aimed drop pod or something like it?

It's really not that far from the city, fortunately. It even had the decency to land in a nice sand-free zone so it's not going to have riled up the worms.
God those things are a pain, if there's one thing the Temple does right it's wiping those things and their creators out. “We've coincidentally shown up to help you just as you are faced by an insurmountable apocalypse” who even falls for that kind of rubbish?

But no, there's no way anyone is getting you into one of those death traps.

If you get the whereabouts from Meathook, you could always send him to go get a vehicle while you round up the gang. Or vice versa, no real rush. Take it skeezy with these suicide missions.

Yeah... if someone were to describe me and the rest of the Overseer class as the brains of the operation it would be almost literally true.
Looking at Carrion's pointy stumps it's easy to understand where the slave race's derogatory nickname comes from but in truth there's barely a soul among them that hasn't had some kind of body part removed. Just in most cases its in the head, rather than a more conventional amputation. Don't have to worry quite so much about a revolution if only a fifth of the population can think for themselves.

They're all smart enough to follow orders and Meathook's got a longer memory and a bit more cunning than most of them but you wouldn't trust him to pick out the right car if the one you ask for has already been taken out by someone else.
Truth is, most of the work after peppering the city with drop pods was rounding up lost soldiers rather than subduing the populace, once we got organised it wasn't much of a fight at all.

>Well, you may as well take Meathook with you to the docking bay or wherever it is you keep the vehicles. You can ask him about other recruits on the way.

That sounds sensible, it's probably just most efficient to drive around and keep everyone in the back rather than making them walk.

By the sounds of things most of them were just posted near the containment zone to watch people going in and make sure nobody hurts themselves too much in an attempt to escape, which is convenient because the main screening area is just down the hill in this park that got picked for a landing site.
Shambles and Legs appear to have been recruited to check out the AMP building though, which I suppose only makes sense.

Commandeer the most dangerous and destructive war engine you can find. Sounds like you will need it.

Most of the Temple's actual war machines are “unmanned” in that the pilot is an integral part of the vehicle and they also don't have passenger bays.
Actually the transport trucks have built-in drivers too but they are at least a bit more spacious... though there don't seem to be all that many of them parked here. A lot fewer than expected to be honest.

The one in charge of the loan of armoured vehicles is a good man, though a little over fond of heights. The instinct to crane your head up to look at something in the air, even with unseeing eyes, is a heavy and unwanted reminder.

”Greetings Lord Carrion. It is an honour as ever to serve you.”

“Don't call me lord, we are of equal rank. Besides, you know they don't appreciate it.”

“Alas this is true.
If it is transport you're after then I'm afraid I can't offer you much choice. Much of the armour remains in space for whatever reason and a good number of the vehicles we did get access to have already been taken. What's left is all yours, of course.
As far as I can tell plans are to just hole up in this city, do you know why we would do that?”

”You know that she doesn't tell me any more than she does anything else, your guess is as good as mine.
Heaven knows we could be done with this planet in a couple of days if she told us to, I have no idea what the delay is for.”

From the look of it we've still got “Fast, light and entirely unarmed”, “Slowish but almost completely impenetrable” and “Not too slow, not too heavily armoured, six extra guns”.
Take your pick.

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Spoiler

yes yes yes yes yes!
I'm actually kinda confused about what is happening right now with uh, what's its name, Carrion?
going on a mission to steal some tech from grey temple?

is that right?

Please do stop me if you are ever confused because from the position of the author it is hard to tell if I am hiding information so we can stay concise or if I am just generally being silly and leaving out things I should have let you know.
There are legitimate reasons to be confused at his point of the story!
The Black Temple is reportedly from Earth and is invading... Earth.
They have vastly more powerful techology than the general populace which for some reason they are not using.
Our current friend Carrion has been deputised to steal technology that pretty much already belongs to the Black Temple, before the guys who already have the job of keeping keeping the Temple's secrets secret (the Grey Temple) get there first and do away with it themselves.

Note: A lot of characters in the OP show up as squares on Android.

I guess Android doesn't support small caps
Not really much I think I can do about that one, I'll try and avoid using the character set too much in future I guess >_>

Eagle Time and MSPA Forums use very slightly different quote formatting but I am too lazy to change it for each one.

Let's play this like we play mario kart
Which means play as the mario mario

We choose Six Extra Guns every time.

Six extra guns, duh!

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SpoilerEnding updates with basically a set list of choices was a really dumb idea and I am going to stop doing it.

For a good long while the results were pretty much split identically depending on where the replies were posted too 0:
Technically it is a tie but two of the posts came in after I started drafting the update.

Fast but Unarmed: IIIII
Lots of Guns: IIIII
Turtle:

”Let's go with fast, we've got our own guns and to be honest if we need to shoot anything we're probably already going to be dead. Cloak and Dagger is my usual modus operandi.”
”You're entering dangerous territory? I didn't think this rathole even held such a place.”
”Probably best I don't talk too much about it.”

Just paint the one with the guns red, then it will go faster and have a load of big fuckoff guns.

I've always wanted a custom vehicle but apparently I'm not worth the expense.
We don't even keep paint around, Ercite black and green are all the colours the temple care about apparently.


”PleAse inDiCatE YouR DeSTinAtiON.”
This is why I travel “on foot” whenever possible, it's hard to forget that this could have been me.


Fortunately it's not far to the containment zone.
The easiest way to round people up usually turns out to just be walling off a section of the city and then figuring out who belongs on each side.

I may pity the drivers but I suppose it's still a better life than being a forcefield.


”Greetings sire.”
”I hope the day finds you well, great one.”
”Please stop with the honorifics. I'm just here to find my specialists...
Is that a gnome? As in, not a pet one?”
”We know you're fond of the things so we held onto it for a bit, he wasn't being very cooperative anyway. Got your man to restrain him for a while.”
”Looks like he bit someone.”
”Those teeth are sharp!”


”Enjoying yourself up there?”
“You freaks had better let me go right now!”
”I do hope he hasn't bitten you too, Spider. He seems a little stressed and we wouldn't want him growing any extra arms.”

”Can they even do that this fast?”
”Faster than you can, reduced surface area.”

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SpoilerPanel 3 was originally meant to be a gif too but I ran out of steam after messing up the frame movement speed calculations three times and made it a still image :beetip:

I still need to work on making cities look like they have people in, maybe more detailing on buildings such as windows would help but I'm not really very certain on that one.

AWWWWWWWWWWW, Isn't it cuuuuuuuute.

AWWWWWWWWWWW, Isn't it cuuuuuuuute.

Okay, so who do you have here, and what are they useful in?

It is a little, isn't it? Though maybe not so much at the moment... They were designed to be after all. That's what pets are for!
Not that this particular one would make a particularly good pet, haha.

Gnomes aren't really useful for anything but they are a special interest of mine. We're distantly related you see, and any opportunity to further knowledge of my own race is one to be treasured!
I have never actually been to an Earth this far back and it's a wonderful opportunity! Such a shame that I really don't have time to take advantage of it.

>Get Gnome, keep him from chewing anything metal, or worse, Ercite. Wouldn't want him developing some sort of metallic coating, would we?

Well... maybe I do have time for a short lecture!
Gnomes (or rather, domesticated ones) are most famous for their engineered ability to read DNA from any floating tissue particles in the air, reinterpret it into a usable form and then slowly alter their bodily structure over time. This requires organic material, and thus you can't turn yours into a robot by exposing it to mechanical parts! That would be absurd.
Iron isn't alive and Ercite... doesn't quite fulfil all the right criteria either.

Naturally this doesn't usually happen particularly quickly, there's a lot of dust and unrelated mess in the air that needs to be filtered out if it's going to fulfil any of the above promises and safe transformation takes time. In times of stress though, adapting to the environment becomes more important and DNA assumption quickens! This is sped up again by skin and especially body fluid contact rather than simple proximity.



Sequester biology (that being me and mine, let's not use derogatory slave race names among friends shall we?) is virulent enough on its own, the fact that it's so similar to the state the Gnome was “born” in and the fact that he's suspended several feet over the ground make it no wonder that he's picking up extra traits so quickly.

This particular specimen is clearly already aware of the stress-related effects on his own metabolism because Gnomes are not meant to be sapient. Insufficient testing means that they happen every so often under specific circumstances difficult to replicate in a lab, creating a race of individuals that are only ever grumpy, depressed or less intelligent than your average cat.

Personally I'm not sure this was actually unintentional on AMP's part but obviously I don't have many peers to discuss the point with. Our circumstances are not entirely dissimilar.

>Contemplate recruiting the gnome

Oh dear me no, whether or not we were ultimately engineered by the same parents I can't take anyone who isn't part of my squad out of the internment zone. I'm in enough trouble already!
Besides that, what help would he be? He's adaptable certainly but it's not like he'd be willing to follow the orders of his oppressors, and while my men were designed as soldiers his were just meant to be ethical lab-test specimens that someone realised they might be able to make money from with a bit of tinkering.

As a matter of fact I could probably tell you some more about that as well, it's pretty interesting actually I-



Ok maybe we don't have time for this.
”Any other time I would love to stay and have a chat with your prisoner but I'm in a bit of a hurry at the moment, have you seen my other associates?”


”Whiplash was patrolling the fences somewhere but we couldn't really figure out what to do with the other one, I think he's just going to be wandering around somewhere?
Look, I know you said no every other time I asked but are you sure you don't need any help on this mission? There's really not a lot to do here and you know you can trust me!”

”Well I appreciate the offer but ah... my team is a-”
”A specialised unit without room for the Temple's more “standard” troops, yeah ok...”

”Yes as I told you before.
There is also the fact that I am not certain that I will be coming back for this one, I need people I can trust here as well.
If “Our Glorious Leader” suddenly finds herself looking for a new hand I have put in several recommendations.”

”What? How could you possibly have a dangerous mission here? How can anything on this planet even be anything near a threat, let alone more dangerous than what I know you've been up to in the past? What would we do without you around?

”Probably best I don't tell you too much I'm afraid.”

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SpoilerOn MSPAFA I put some words about how I love all my readers for sticking with me despite the unjustifiably long time between posts but most of you already know how I'm an unreliable, worthless piece of shit from grand battles so I don't think I need to repeat it again HA HA

I still love you though

Well, do you have anything else here, or can we go on the probably suicide mission now?

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SpoilerI was busy

>Tell him liiiieeees

”Surely you can tell me something? The Temple aren't keeping some credible threat a secret from us are they? I'm sure you wouldn't just let them drop us in the fire by surprise!”
”Oh no it's nothing like that. There's not a huge list of dangerous things you'd find on this planet, hmm? I mean, apart from us.”
“Is it Trolls? I wouldn't put it past them to hide something valuable in a place that looked so pointless. What is it they've got?”
”I can't tell you anything else.”
“Don't worry, I've got the message. Good luck out there.”

I try not to lie when I don't have to, most of my kin are far too easy to mislead. I suppose that's a quality that is induced intentionally.
Frankly from what I've heard there aren't even as many trolls around the place as there usually are either, this planet really is tame. Just my luck that I'll be competing with what we brought with us instead...
Better get a move on.

Go look for the missing "men". Have you started to devise a way to evade your masters during this mission?

Not even really safe to think too loudly around here, there are ears everywhere.
Especially here.
Few of my brothers would turn me in voluntarily but I'd rather not expose them to decision regardless.

Wait, what's going on over there?

go find whiplash

Go find Mibbs as well.

“You think you're better than me? I could take every one of you, even with your stupid stun batons! I demand freedom!”


“Oof!”





At least some of my men are being put to good use and they're even both in one place, though they are making a bit of a spectacle of themselves.
I'm probably going to have to think of some way to attract their attention, though. Whiplash is never easy to deal with when he gets himself worked up like this.

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SpoilerOn MSPAFA this is where I reminded everyone to go vote in the awards but as Sol is already a judge it seems a bit pointless here.

Can you just use that duck as transportation?

> everything seems to be going smoothly here. Move along.

Air horn!

PUNCH HIM IN THE SNOUT TO ESTABLISH EQUAL OR SLIGHTLY HIGHER RANKING

Rude.

Ask that the vehicle fire a warning round.

Alas, we picked the one that doesn't have any guns.
If it helps I doubt it would have stopped him, he's been through active warzones before and they tend to be fairly loud.

Telekinetic wall?

I... can't actually make a “real” wall, or manifest any kind of impermable surface from thin air.
Our “gifts” are not distributed equally or indeed in any particularly predictable pattern, though I'm sure I could find someone who can. Making him think that there's a wall there is certainly possible though.


Unfortunately, he's pumped full of concentration-enhancing chemicals and fairly difficult to fool with illusions. The line he came from was designed solely for going as fast as possible, he has better reaction speeds than I could ever match.
This has the unfortunate side-effect of making him virtually impossible to directly control without flying him into walls and is probably also the reason that since they went out of production the only one left is the one kept safe in my employment.

That said, at his current speed I'm not sure if it's that he actually saw through me or that he just didn't have enough time to stop...



At least I've achieved half of my objective.
Did you enjoy yourself up there, Arms?

>Use your mind to calm him down

> Get down here

That didn't work either.

Throw your hat on the ground in disgust and frustration.

I'm not quite sure what to do now, acting up is all just a game for him but we're still on a fairly close schedule and he's not even the last guy we need to... oh.
Right. OK.


Yes yes you won. Very funny.
Don't do that again.

I'm getting worried about lost time now though. The AMP tower isn't that far away but... if I arrive first then this should be all I need. If I've been too slow though, I'm going to need all the firepower I can get...
Should I continue or head out?

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SpoilerWhoo more binary choices.
If you didn't catch it, your choice doubles as “are you bored of intermissions yet, we can get away from exposition and to the main characters if you want”.
This section hasn't actually been all that long in terms of panels or elapsed time in the comic... but has obviously been artificially lengthened in feeling because of the chronological space between posts so I don't know if people are tired of things that might seem slightly irrelevant if they're going to be that widely spaced.

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