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.