[x] Ammunition
[x] Access to this store specifically
So, obviously we're using the ammo. We have it, this is a bad situation, hoarding it means nothing if it means getting us or others killed trying to conserve the shots. As for what else to lose... I hate to suffer another loss of store access, especially one which has a lot of the miscellaneous (holy crap I got that spelling right) supplies that you don't think about wanting or needing until much later; But injuries are best avoided when possible, and there will be other stores. Blood and People are a bit more precious in the long-term, and we can be a bit more self-sacrificing in a situation that demands it FAR more than this.
Survival again. It pays its taxes in ammunition, doesn't it? Ammo and blood. So many have died already...
"Get away from the statues, I'm going to draw it to me," you tell Jill.
"You're -"
"Now!" you bark, with force you didn't know you had in you. Jill flinches, but she obeys; the two of you split away from the people(?) you're trying to protect; you crouch low, while Jill favors a pallet she doesn't have to try to, you know, crouch with considering her foot situation, and the two of you hold your breath as things rustle, and move, and chime...
The thing that comes into view isn't a person. It can't be a person, right? An empty business suit with a glass tie, laced together with blackened threads of silver that creak and groan and moving on tendrils of half-molten glass that ripple and scorch whatever they touch. A satellite phone is welded to a thin wire-frame model of what would arguably be a human head, and the beast is speaking into it.
The staffing situation at our southeast location is atrocious. Two Employees were caught attempting to walk off of their shifts. Mmhm. Yes, yes...
You can hear that capital letter, somehow. Not 'employees', as in, 'people who work for us', but 'Employees', as in, 'they whose blood greases this machine'. 'Employees' as in 'subhuman'. Your grip tightens around the handle of your revolver, and you exhale in absolute silence.
We recognize that they are singularly Unproductive in their current forms; however, there can be no order in the workplace without proper punishment. Who did you say you were again? Mmhm. No, we remember Threshold, you were the fine company that...wait.
...
How is it that you are not part of us now?
Even with amnesia that's a sentence very low on your list of things you wanted to hear ever, in life or in death. The beast known as Corporate has, however, stopped moving, and its back is to you. You line up your shot and squeeze the trigger; the .45 round blows through the satellite phone, spraying shards of metal and plastic everywhere, and it turns with a screech of outrage that is audible to ears other than your own.
So you shoot it again, where its heart belongs. You are disappointed, but not surprised, to find that there's nothing beneath the suit to injure.
THIS LOCATION IS A WEAPON-FREE ZONE, CUSTOMER! WE ARE CALLING THE POLICE!
Like hell they are, that thing is coming right at you. You dive and roll, which gives Jill enough time to spring forward - literally - and slash through two of those half-slagged tendrils of glass. Some of the substance splashes onto the empty suit, but certainly not enough; she has to duck under a burning swipe, then another, then another...
Come on, come on...why does this feel so familiar...why...
It comes racing back, shattered, imperfect. You cannot see your own face in the vague reflection of the one-way mirror. You cannot hear your name when the man(?) from Threshold Innovations, Ltd., speaks it. But you can hear the weariness in his voice. You can hear the contempt in yours as the two of you look at something that should be a rat, if it had less eyes, if it wasn't five feet tall at the shoulder, if it wasn't gnawing its way through a pile of waste glass purchased from a window factory.
"This is novel alien life," the man from Threshold is saying. "A creature from the other ontology that survived its journey via fragment, clothed in our reality. A new native to Domus. Are you telling me that doesn't interest you at all?"
You scoff, and press a button. The containment cell electrifies, and the rat dies in agony while you watch.
"That interests me," you tell the man from Threshold. "And you pay me to be interested in it. How long?"
"...Three weeks."
"That's three weeks to learn how to cull the vermin."
"Lose one Gift" was chosen as the QM tiebreaker. However, a question stands: what manner of Gift is it?
Choose 1
[ ] Aggressive; as bad as it might feel about this, Orchid has a violent streak. It feels safe when threats are eliminated.
[ ] Elusive; Orchid doesn't want to fight. Violence disgusts it. There has to be another way.
[ ] Insightful; above all else, Orchid is curious. Even if it comes to regret learning the answers. Maybe especially then.
[x] Insightful; above all else, Orchid is curious. Even if it comes to regret learning the answers. Maybe especially then.
Knowledge is power, power is knowledge. The more Orchid knows, the more they can intuit, the more they can act while informed. The knowledge may suck, it may hurt to have in the long run, but every bit will keep them and their budding Survivor Family alive.
I'm goin' to bed, party people. Feel free and empowered to debate this choice; it's not precisely a small one. Nobody die while I'm asleep. If y'all die I'm summoning the necromancers to this party and you know how they get, always tryin' to move shit to the raveyards.
Sure, but I feel like this choice will also color our narrative going forwards.
Though in this case, interrogating that paragraph, you asking why, why is this familiar, like deja vu, from a dream - from a dreamlike memory, like no compassion, no compromise, like a dream that is now over with you awake. And like a lot of dreams... there's a monster at the end of it.
Well, I guess we have a gun but not enough knowledge, huh?
[X] Insightful; above all else, Orchid is curious. Even if it comes to regret learning the answers. Maybe especially then.
You have cashed in one Gift, and received Familiar Strangers.
Familiar Strangers; there is something in you that is like refracted beings. You will need to touch them, but by that touch and some time you can divine something of their nature. Extended contact may have psychological side effects.
You have expended a total of five .45 rounds. 15 remain, 10 of them in speedloaders.
One-way glass. Anti-theft mirrors. A little reflective piece in the back of the telescope, which turns the world right-side up again...
When the mirror speaks, the reflection lies. But your eyes are already lying to you, aren't they?
You're going to need a moment. You know this instinctively, the way you know there are three rounds left in your cylinder, or how far you can jump. But a moment you can buy. You duck a burning - leg? Tendril? - and grab the back of the empty suit with your hand, yanking on it so that your closeness will at least partly shield you from Corporate's attacks. Shockingly heavy, yet still cloth, sleeves batter at you, and you go for your gambit: "I'm interested in applying to work for this location!"
Corporate goes still a moment, and you shake your head at Jill, who picks up on the idea very quickly: "Uhh, yessir," she agrees. "We're desperate for work."
There's something here. You can feel it. You just need to reach out, not with your hands but with that warmth in your chest, and touch it -
* * * *
You are Corporate. You had many names, once, but now you are simply Corporate, the master and liege lord of the Worker, the provider of Products and Services. Only...only that wretched Customer, no, no, that Applicant, it has cut you off from the greater mind. There were many Corporations, once, but now they are all Corporate, and you are Corporate, faceless and unstoppable, except that now you are a single Corporate, a Corporation - no, a Competitor, that most base and vile of all things. There can be no Competition. You - no, you need Assets, you need Value, and when you have it Corporate will buy you out and all will be well all will be well allwillbewellwillbewellwellwellwellwellwellwellwellwell
* * * *
- You pull your hand away, gasping for air. Your vision swims, but not enough to stop you from seizing the glass tie from the empty suit. Corporate (no, the Competitor - NO!) shrieks in terror, a sound only you and the statues can hear. The beast froze them in place, but its power is sustained, not permanent. These ones you can save. You slam the tie against the concrete floor of backstock, and it goes bouncing instead of shattering like you wanted it to. Fuck -
- Jill swings her axe, catching the suit with the lip of its blade, yanking -
- bounce -
- you raise your revolver, thumbing the hammer -
- YOU WILL ROT IN PRISON FOR THE REST OF YOUR MISERABLE LIVES, CUSTOMERS -
- Fire. The 'tie pin' cracks, sending the glass accessory tumbling in the air. Fire. The bullet lodges in the center of the tie, sending spiderweb cracks through it. FIRE! -
Corporate shatters into ten thousand pieces when its tie does, leaving only the reek of gunpowder and gun oil, and a spreading puddle of entirely too much blood mixed with legal papers, coinage, and silver wire. You breathe hard, double over. Your vision is still swimming. Your head is pounding.
Hands on your knees, you vomit into the blood, and sob.
* * * *
The statues are slowly transforming back into flesh. Pick 1
[ ] Send them to your home immediately
[ ] Tell them to stick with you
You have gained a new understanding of Corporate, and it is surely lurking in Bayview. Pick 1
[ ] Call off the raid. Bayview was a much larger and more successful chain; the beast will be more powerful there.
[ ] The raid continues as planned; in and out as peacefully as possible. Cutting this Corporate off from the hive-mind means the rest of the hive doesn't know your face, and you can exploit its nature to move within its territory.
[ ] New objective: kill the Corporate at the heart of this Bayview location.
These things happen, my friend, especially given that I'm not exactly what you'd call a scheduled kinda person. I hope you'll entertain the current one?
