Re: Intense Struggle Season 2! (Round 1: Training Facility ONX)
07-25-2010, 01:55 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
Marcus groaned. It seemed as there was nothing more sensible to do, seeing as he had just dropped God-knows-how-far down into a dark pit that was strangely gooey and sticky. He was feeling an extraordinary amount of pain which he supposed usually came with falling down great lengths into the great unknown. Also, there was a death-robot crushing his ribs.
The robot seemed to be worse off than he was, having basically fallen apart as soon as it hit the ground. Looking at it, Marcus was quite surprised that he wasn't dead right now. Exposed wires sparked threateningly but were too far away to be any danger. They illuminated the walls slightly allowing him to at least see in this near-complete darkness. The armored man could see that the walls, though almost completely covered in green goop, were definitely made of metal. It seemed whatever had bored its way under the facility had slathered everything with something that smoothed down the metal as it went so that there were no jagged pieces jutting out. He stared up, quite an easy feat since he was pinned down on his back, and found that although he could definitely see the hole they fell through, it certainly was quite high up, too high to even attempt to climb to. Besides, the walls were smooth. Beneath him, the ground still shook, presumably because of the giant creature burrowing its way around.
With a little effort, he shoved the hefty arms off his ribcage and wriggled his legs from underneath the useless sparking hunk of metal. Though his toughened skin let him escape without a scrape, he still gained a limp. It was probably not a good idea to walk around with a limp but, well, Marcus didn't exactly want to stick around in a tunnel made by what seemed to be a giant, green-goo-spewing, metal-devouring worm. As he stood apprehensively, wondering which way to go, he heard a weak 'help' come from nearby. Further investigation revealed the bird girl who had suddenly jumped in to help them.
The (he didn't exactly want to say 'primitively') strangely-clad woman was only pinned down by one arm, but another still held her feathery wing in a tight grip. Her headdress had fallen beside her, showing off her soft, short hair, but her goggles had managed to continue to tenaciously cover her eyes. She was definitely bleeding slightly, though the lighting wasn't quite stable enough for him to judge where, and although she was trying hard not to grimace, possibly out of pride, Marcus could tell that she was in great pain.
It was quite easy for him to pull the metal claw so that it released its death grip. As soon as Sarika moved her arm out of the way, Marcus let go and it snapped shut again with a loud clank. "You okay?" he grunted as the woman rubbed her wounded arm tenderly and stuffed her headdress back on top of her hair.
"Yes," she snapped back as she attempted to stand up. She failed miserably and reluctantly amended her previous statement; "No. I, er, my arm's broken. And possibly a leg. And...maybe a rib," she muttered darkly as though resenting herself for breaking her bones. "Um. Can you...carry me...?"
It wasn't exactly polite to just kill someone who just helped you out fighting a killer robot moments before, so Marcus just shrugged and picked her up bridal style. This seemed to make her flustered. "Um, maybe not like this..."
"D'ya want me to sling you over my shoulder?"
"No."
"No other way to carry you then. In any case, I don't see how we're going anywhere. It looks pitch dark either way." Seeing that she was going to be nestled in the man's arms for possibly quite a while, Sarika shifted a little and rested her broken arm on her chest. Marcus couldn't help but notice how light she was. She probably would have felt very soft if it weren't for all the slime covering her.
"Weren't there others up there?" she asked. "There was Lillian. And I saw someone else."
"If they were going to help, they'd have come down by now, don't you think? Besides," Marcus added, a hint of bitterness sneaking into his tone. "I don't think that Dekowin girl would even bother trying."
There was only a short pause before Sarika said, still sounding determined, "Then let's go. Let's see if we can find another way out through these tunnels." She lifted her staff to slightly touch the walls, presumably to feel if the tunnel suddenly turned or forked or something, Marcus guessed.
"Pitch black, remember?"
"Hey, future vision. Let's go forward. I think that's the way we would have gone in the first place if we were still up there."
Marcus tried not to roll his eyes and instead patiently said, "I don't think future vision works well if you can't see what's going on."
"I can manage," she replied, sounding as stubborn as before.
"How far can you see in the future anyways?"
There was a worryingly vague "Depends."
Marcus gave a skeptical grunt.
"The gods tend to know what I need to see and I trust them fully to tell me," Sarika retorted, sounding as firm as before but also rather defensive. "They do what's best!"
"So the best thing for you was to fall down this hole and break various bones?" It probably wasn't a good thing to do to start talking such a touchy subject as religion, but Marcus couldn't help himself. Sarika huffed.
"I never said they completely controlled everything. I don't believe in predetermination." Marcus wasn't quite sure if it was paradoxical for someone with future sight to not believe in predetermination and so didn't say anything. "In any case, even though I fell, they sent you with me, or at least let you fall as well instead of the other woman. Now do you think she's as likely to help me as you are?"
"No," Marcus said without pause. "She'd probably leave you behind. Maybe even just kill you for being useless."
"See?" Sarika said smugly. "Hora watches closely over her followers. The deities dutifully try to pull strings to make everything turn out as best as it can. Now let's go."
It was still hard for the bulky man to bring himself to walk away from the only source of light (even if it was very irregular). "...How will we know if you're seeing too far in the future?"
There was a slight pause and quite suddenly, Sarika ordered, "Raise your right arm." A little confused, Marcus did so, letting Sarika's legs swing low and almost dropping her in the process. "I'm now seeing maybe a few seconds ahead, twenty maybe. I'll let you know if anything important happens. Yes, I know it is, but I still can hear, can't I?"
"But it's still dark--" Marcus paused, feeling slightly odd, as though he was experiencing deja-vu but not quite. Deja-faux?
"I'm sure we'll scream quite clearly if something goes horribly wrong," Sarika continued as though this was the most normal thing in the world to say. "Let's go already."
"Right," Marcus muttered, still a bit worried as he started into the darkness, wondering if there would be one of those moments where he would try stepping somewhere and the floor would be lower than expected and he would have a mini-heart attack. He hated those.
It was very silent except for the squelching under his boots.
"Hora is the 'top god' in my religion," said Sarika.
"Who's Hora?" Marcus asked before he could bite it back.
"I suppose if anything, she's the goddess of justice. She's stern but fair and open-minded. Karura and Garuda are the main ones that try to manipulate the world by her decrees. Reward and retribution and punishment and so on. Chaos, on the other side, tries to manipulate the world to its destruction and--Well, you're the one that asked in the first place."
"I didn't want a whole theology lecture," Marcus snapped. It seemed to him sharp retorts lost their edge when the one to whom you are retorting already knew what you were going to say ahead of time.
"I can wait for a bit before answering," Sarika said helpfully.
"Look, it's hard to keep up a conversation when..." Marcus trailed off once he realized his complaint had already registered.
"It's annoying when you stop in the middle of sentences you just said," the bird-woman continued.
"Really?" Said the muscular man before the previous sentence wound it's weird-time-shenanigan-tendrils across his brain. "...Wait, what?"
"I'm not entirely sure if you want to hear me explain. It's stuff about hearing things and then remembering hearing them differently...sort of, kind of...like an ice-cream headache...and yes, I can pause so I won't keep answering things you've said before you've said them. Gonna feel weird," she muttered.
"That'd be nice."
"You're welcome."
Another awkward pause and more squelching. Sarika's staff started trailing lower as her arm got tired.
Marcus could feel her tense right as he started to say, "So if you can see the future, how did you get caught by that robot arm in the first place?"
"Oh yes, look into the future while fighting, what a brilliant idea, especially since nobody can possibly decide to do something else as a result of me preemptively dodging a non-existent att--ACK!" Marcus froze at the sudden squawk, almost stumbling over.
"What is it," he questioned sharply right as Sarika said, "Hole in the ground, we fell through it, or almost did, or did in another universe or whatever." Despite the flippant tone, Marcus could tell she was still trying to calm down after seeing a possible future where she possibly could have died. Or at least had her other leg broken. "I guess this thing made more tunnels than just across. Go around."
Marcus shifted forward carefully and soon after felt the hole Sarika had talked about. Feet hanging a little over the edge, he started to sidle around until Sarika's feet touched the wall. It seemed the hole completely spanned the whole tunnel.
"What do we do?" the prophet said nervously. Marcus paused for a moment.
The obvious solution was to jump, but not only did he know how far he would have to jump, he had no clue how high the ceiling was and if he would just hit his head trying to do so. Also, he still couldn't see a thing and it honestly didn't seem very smart, jumping over holes you wouldn't have known were there if it weren't for having a friend with precognition powers.
Actually...
"I am going to jump, although I think you already know that. I will jump in a minute or so."
"Yes, I knew that," Sarika snapped. "And that's a horrible idea--oh. Uh, we made it across but--" That was all Marcus needed to hear. He backed up, making sure to count the steps, before running full speed, leaping right at the edge of the hole as Sarika babbled nervously, "butit'snotacomfortablelanding--"
"What?" Marcus shouted back right as he landed on his limping leg. It buckled and he fell over, dropping Sarika and rolling a ways before they stopped. It turned out that even knowing the outcome didn't make the jump any less scarier and he recollected himself on the slimy floor before getting up and carefully shuffling around until he came across the bird-woman. "Uh, sorry," he said, picking her up again. "You still have your stuff, right?"
"I held on to them so hard that my staff is probably fused to my hand now," Sarika said dryly. It seemed the more frightened she got, the more she sounded like she didn't care.
"Good, I guess," he said, continuing to walk.
"You're an idiot."
"I've heard worse."
More silence. More squelching.
"I think we're about to see some light up ahead," Sarika announced just as Marcus detected a slight change in the darkness. It was definitely still dark, but at least it was lighter than complete darkness.
"Great," he replied, walking a little faster, eager to actually see things now.
"Er, judging from our future conversation, it's not that great." Sarika winced behind her goggles. "And just saying that gave me the biggest future-changing-related-ice-cream-headache I've ever had."
"Oh really?"
"Don't sound so amused."
As they arrived at where the light was coming from, Marcus could see why the possible-future-them thought it wasn't that great. There was light, yes, and even with a little light, he could see fine. He could also see the grid structure above them that was considerably out of reach. He wasn't sure, but it seemed that part of it rose up to possibly be used as jumping platforms to go across the gap that was giving them light.
After a little hesitation, Marcus asked, "What were we about to say? Or uh, was never going to?"
"I believe it was something about this possibly being the seemingly-bottomless pits we had encountered in earlier rooms that had served as a 'test' or something like that."
"Yeah," Marcus nodded. "That seems like something I would have thought of."
"There's no way up here, so let's just go already."
"The dark is only going to seem so much darker after this light," Marcus sighed.
"Yeah, yeah."
Squelch squelch squelch.
"Actually, I just remembered something," Sarika suddenly said.
"Hm?"
"I was planning on asking everybody to ally with me against that Monitor guy."
"Really? That doesn't seem...well, all that likely for us to win."
"Yes," Sarika said, agitated, "but this is the sort of thing Hora's against! She'll find a way to stop this stupid 'game,' I'm sure. That Monitor may be some sort of weird, advanced robot, but he's only machine! We can defeat him, somehow!"
Marcus thought for a bit as he continued walking. "I'm sure you already know my answer, but I suppose I'd be willing to help. If you can figure out a way to actually be able to attack him."
Sarika seemed contented by this and fell silent. Marcus continued walking.
Squelch squelch squelch.
Marcus groaned. It seemed as there was nothing more sensible to do, seeing as he had just dropped God-knows-how-far down into a dark pit that was strangely gooey and sticky. He was feeling an extraordinary amount of pain which he supposed usually came with falling down great lengths into the great unknown. Also, there was a death-robot crushing his ribs.
The robot seemed to be worse off than he was, having basically fallen apart as soon as it hit the ground. Looking at it, Marcus was quite surprised that he wasn't dead right now. Exposed wires sparked threateningly but were too far away to be any danger. They illuminated the walls slightly allowing him to at least see in this near-complete darkness. The armored man could see that the walls, though almost completely covered in green goop, were definitely made of metal. It seemed whatever had bored its way under the facility had slathered everything with something that smoothed down the metal as it went so that there were no jagged pieces jutting out. He stared up, quite an easy feat since he was pinned down on his back, and found that although he could definitely see the hole they fell through, it certainly was quite high up, too high to even attempt to climb to. Besides, the walls were smooth. Beneath him, the ground still shook, presumably because of the giant creature burrowing its way around.
With a little effort, he shoved the hefty arms off his ribcage and wriggled his legs from underneath the useless sparking hunk of metal. Though his toughened skin let him escape without a scrape, he still gained a limp. It was probably not a good idea to walk around with a limp but, well, Marcus didn't exactly want to stick around in a tunnel made by what seemed to be a giant, green-goo-spewing, metal-devouring worm. As he stood apprehensively, wondering which way to go, he heard a weak 'help' come from nearby. Further investigation revealed the bird girl who had suddenly jumped in to help them.
The (he didn't exactly want to say 'primitively') strangely-clad woman was only pinned down by one arm, but another still held her feathery wing in a tight grip. Her headdress had fallen beside her, showing off her soft, short hair, but her goggles had managed to continue to tenaciously cover her eyes. She was definitely bleeding slightly, though the lighting wasn't quite stable enough for him to judge where, and although she was trying hard not to grimace, possibly out of pride, Marcus could tell that she was in great pain.
It was quite easy for him to pull the metal claw so that it released its death grip. As soon as Sarika moved her arm out of the way, Marcus let go and it snapped shut again with a loud clank. "You okay?" he grunted as the woman rubbed her wounded arm tenderly and stuffed her headdress back on top of her hair.
"Yes," she snapped back as she attempted to stand up. She failed miserably and reluctantly amended her previous statement; "No. I, er, my arm's broken. And possibly a leg. And...maybe a rib," she muttered darkly as though resenting herself for breaking her bones. "Um. Can you...carry me...?"
It wasn't exactly polite to just kill someone who just helped you out fighting a killer robot moments before, so Marcus just shrugged and picked her up bridal style. This seemed to make her flustered. "Um, maybe not like this..."
"D'ya want me to sling you over my shoulder?"
"No."
"No other way to carry you then. In any case, I don't see how we're going anywhere. It looks pitch dark either way." Seeing that she was going to be nestled in the man's arms for possibly quite a while, Sarika shifted a little and rested her broken arm on her chest. Marcus couldn't help but notice how light she was. She probably would have felt very soft if it weren't for all the slime covering her.
"Weren't there others up there?" she asked. "There was Lillian. And I saw someone else."
"If they were going to help, they'd have come down by now, don't you think? Besides," Marcus added, a hint of bitterness sneaking into his tone. "I don't think that Dekowin girl would even bother trying."
There was only a short pause before Sarika said, still sounding determined, "Then let's go. Let's see if we can find another way out through these tunnels." She lifted her staff to slightly touch the walls, presumably to feel if the tunnel suddenly turned or forked or something, Marcus guessed.
"Pitch black, remember?"
"Hey, future vision. Let's go forward. I think that's the way we would have gone in the first place if we were still up there."
Marcus tried not to roll his eyes and instead patiently said, "I don't think future vision works well if you can't see what's going on."
"I can manage," she replied, sounding as stubborn as before.
"How far can you see in the future anyways?"
There was a worryingly vague "Depends."
Marcus gave a skeptical grunt.
"The gods tend to know what I need to see and I trust them fully to tell me," Sarika retorted, sounding as firm as before but also rather defensive. "They do what's best!"
"So the best thing for you was to fall down this hole and break various bones?" It probably wasn't a good thing to do to start talking such a touchy subject as religion, but Marcus couldn't help himself. Sarika huffed.
"I never said they completely controlled everything. I don't believe in predetermination." Marcus wasn't quite sure if it was paradoxical for someone with future sight to not believe in predetermination and so didn't say anything. "In any case, even though I fell, they sent you with me, or at least let you fall as well instead of the other woman. Now do you think she's as likely to help me as you are?"
"No," Marcus said without pause. "She'd probably leave you behind. Maybe even just kill you for being useless."
"See?" Sarika said smugly. "Hora watches closely over her followers. The deities dutifully try to pull strings to make everything turn out as best as it can. Now let's go."
It was still hard for the bulky man to bring himself to walk away from the only source of light (even if it was very irregular). "...How will we know if you're seeing too far in the future?"
There was a slight pause and quite suddenly, Sarika ordered, "Raise your right arm." A little confused, Marcus did so, letting Sarika's legs swing low and almost dropping her in the process. "I'm now seeing maybe a few seconds ahead, twenty maybe. I'll let you know if anything important happens. Yes, I know it is, but I still can hear, can't I?"
"But it's still dark--" Marcus paused, feeling slightly odd, as though he was experiencing deja-vu but not quite. Deja-faux?
"I'm sure we'll scream quite clearly if something goes horribly wrong," Sarika continued as though this was the most normal thing in the world to say. "Let's go already."
"Right," Marcus muttered, still a bit worried as he started into the darkness, wondering if there would be one of those moments where he would try stepping somewhere and the floor would be lower than expected and he would have a mini-heart attack. He hated those.
It was very silent except for the squelching under his boots.
"Hora is the 'top god' in my religion," said Sarika.
"Who's Hora?" Marcus asked before he could bite it back.
"I suppose if anything, she's the goddess of justice. She's stern but fair and open-minded. Karura and Garuda are the main ones that try to manipulate the world by her decrees. Reward and retribution and punishment and so on. Chaos, on the other side, tries to manipulate the world to its destruction and--Well, you're the one that asked in the first place."
"I didn't want a whole theology lecture," Marcus snapped. It seemed to him sharp retorts lost their edge when the one to whom you are retorting already knew what you were going to say ahead of time.
"I can wait for a bit before answering," Sarika said helpfully.
"Look, it's hard to keep up a conversation when..." Marcus trailed off once he realized his complaint had already registered.
"It's annoying when you stop in the middle of sentences you just said," the bird-woman continued.
"Really?" Said the muscular man before the previous sentence wound it's weird-time-shenanigan-tendrils across his brain. "...Wait, what?"
"I'm not entirely sure if you want to hear me explain. It's stuff about hearing things and then remembering hearing them differently...sort of, kind of...like an ice-cream headache...and yes, I can pause so I won't keep answering things you've said before you've said them. Gonna feel weird," she muttered.
"That'd be nice."
"You're welcome."
Another awkward pause and more squelching. Sarika's staff started trailing lower as her arm got tired.
Marcus could feel her tense right as he started to say, "So if you can see the future, how did you get caught by that robot arm in the first place?"
"Oh yes, look into the future while fighting, what a brilliant idea, especially since nobody can possibly decide to do something else as a result of me preemptively dodging a non-existent att--ACK!" Marcus froze at the sudden squawk, almost stumbling over.
"What is it," he questioned sharply right as Sarika said, "Hole in the ground, we fell through it, or almost did, or did in another universe or whatever." Despite the flippant tone, Marcus could tell she was still trying to calm down after seeing a possible future where she possibly could have died. Or at least had her other leg broken. "I guess this thing made more tunnels than just across. Go around."
Marcus shifted forward carefully and soon after felt the hole Sarika had talked about. Feet hanging a little over the edge, he started to sidle around until Sarika's feet touched the wall. It seemed the hole completely spanned the whole tunnel.
"What do we do?" the prophet said nervously. Marcus paused for a moment.
The obvious solution was to jump, but not only did he know how far he would have to jump, he had no clue how high the ceiling was and if he would just hit his head trying to do so. Also, he still couldn't see a thing and it honestly didn't seem very smart, jumping over holes you wouldn't have known were there if it weren't for having a friend with precognition powers.
Actually...
"I am going to jump, although I think you already know that. I will jump in a minute or so."
"Yes, I knew that," Sarika snapped. "And that's a horrible idea--oh. Uh, we made it across but--" That was all Marcus needed to hear. He backed up, making sure to count the steps, before running full speed, leaping right at the edge of the hole as Sarika babbled nervously, "butit'snotacomfortablelanding--"
"What?" Marcus shouted back right as he landed on his limping leg. It buckled and he fell over, dropping Sarika and rolling a ways before they stopped. It turned out that even knowing the outcome didn't make the jump any less scarier and he recollected himself on the slimy floor before getting up and carefully shuffling around until he came across the bird-woman. "Uh, sorry," he said, picking her up again. "You still have your stuff, right?"
"I held on to them so hard that my staff is probably fused to my hand now," Sarika said dryly. It seemed the more frightened she got, the more she sounded like she didn't care.
"Good, I guess," he said, continuing to walk.
"You're an idiot."
"I've heard worse."
More silence. More squelching.
"I think we're about to see some light up ahead," Sarika announced just as Marcus detected a slight change in the darkness. It was definitely still dark, but at least it was lighter than complete darkness.
"Great," he replied, walking a little faster, eager to actually see things now.
"Er, judging from our future conversation, it's not that great." Sarika winced behind her goggles. "And just saying that gave me the biggest future-changing-related-ice-cream-headache I've ever had."
"Oh really?"
"Don't sound so amused."
As they arrived at where the light was coming from, Marcus could see why the possible-future-them thought it wasn't that great. There was light, yes, and even with a little light, he could see fine. He could also see the grid structure above them that was considerably out of reach. He wasn't sure, but it seemed that part of it rose up to possibly be used as jumping platforms to go across the gap that was giving them light.
After a little hesitation, Marcus asked, "What were we about to say? Or uh, was never going to?"
"I believe it was something about this possibly being the seemingly-bottomless pits we had encountered in earlier rooms that had served as a 'test' or something like that."
"Yeah," Marcus nodded. "That seems like something I would have thought of."
"There's no way up here, so let's just go already."
"The dark is only going to seem so much darker after this light," Marcus sighed.
"Yeah, yeah."
Squelch squelch squelch.
"Actually, I just remembered something," Sarika suddenly said.
"Hm?"
"I was planning on asking everybody to ally with me against that Monitor guy."
"Really? That doesn't seem...well, all that likely for us to win."
"Yes," Sarika said, agitated, "but this is the sort of thing Hora's against! She'll find a way to stop this stupid 'game,' I'm sure. That Monitor may be some sort of weird, advanced robot, but he's only machine! We can defeat him, somehow!"
Marcus thought for a bit as he continued walking. "I'm sure you already know my answer, but I suppose I'd be willing to help. If you can figure out a way to actually be able to attack him."
Sarika seemed contented by this and fell silent. Marcus continued walking.
Squelch squelch squelch.