4.5
So, okay. Okay. Need to do...
something about the tinkertech horror show. Before it's activated, ideally. Which is a problem since I'm out of stuff and already blew up my
entire bag of stolen stuff and -you know, I might've blown up the lair when I set all that off. Might not even be an
option to go back there.
Wonderful. Fucking wonderful.
I move to rub at my forehead tiredly, hit my mask. Ugh. I'm sweaty, too. Tired... hungry, now that I think about it. I'm feeling nauseous at this point, which could be any
number of things that are going on. For all I know I've got some infection from one of my injuries or... whatever. Haven't exactly put a lot of effort into my health since the Simurgh showed up.
I make sure to retrieve the little red wagon of stuff I've already collected. Don't want all the effort I put into it to go to waste because I'm too derp. Then I dig around in the apartments for snacks -stuff like pop-tarts I can just open up and eat, no need to cook it or anything. I end up focusing on plainer foods for a bit, as the first chocolate pop-tart I bite into makes the nausea
worse. Fortunately, plain isn't hard to come by. Unfortunately, I have trouble eating all that much, too screwed-up all around to cope with food particularly.
After I've spent a few minutes recuperating, I add some snacks to the wagon, and then make my way to the rooftop to scout my surroundings. Maybe I'll spot a workable hideout while I'm up there, and if nothing else figuring out where the phasing jerks are most concentrated is a worthwhile benefit.
As a result, I get to see the tinkertech device have...
something done to it. Like an inverted version of one of the phase zombies triggering its effect? Huh. Thank everything. I... didn't actually have any new ideas for what to do. I'd hoped food and a few minutes rest might help me think, but no, I've had no new ideas.
I start looking around, trying to make a determination for where to go from here, but the Simurgh catches my eye: it begins ascending, quite rapidly at that.
I stare at it until long after it's become such a small point in the sky that I'm not sure I'm not imagining it still being visible.
… really?
That was... anti-climactic. I guess it considered itself foiled now that its tinkertech plan was foiled? (Or the device's true goal accomplished, but, ugh, fuckin' Simurgh. Let's just... not go there) I... well, I'd not dared hope it would get killed here, not
really, but I was expecting more fanfare? There's not even cheering or anything from people that I can tell.
Then I remember my suspicion that once the Simurgh leaves things will get
really bad, since for some reason most of the trapped people seem to be lying low.
Which means I need to
rush to find a lair.
Goody.
I look around, but nothing jumps out at me as an obvious... Best Buy or Walmart or whatever. Gotta be
something somewhere, but I'm not seeing anything from this rooftop. So instead I head back indoors to retrieve my little kid's wagon of stuff and then go outside with it and just... wander. Which is a fucking terrible plan, but I'm not in any condition to come up with a
better plan. Too tired, too sick, too
everything.
The initial few minutes are kind of peaceful. With no looming Simurgh, no aerial battle as capes try to drive it off, etc, it's just... quiet, aside from distant screams and other far-away signs that things aren't so peaceful. But so long as they're
distant and don't sound like they're getting closer, I can mostly ignore them. Not like there wasn't that kind of stuff going on when the Simurgh was around. I just didn't pay it much attention is all.
God there are a lot of bodies, though. I'm not looking forward to these rotting and turning the place into a giant pit of disease. I'm going to need to try to do something about that, and hopefully other people will deal with it -
not via cannibalism, that's
not how you control corpse-based disease hazards. Fortunately, this is America, so
proooobably basically nobody is sufficiently psychologically comfortable with the idea of "food doesn't actually just come from a grocery store fairy" for that to be a problem. On the other hand, modern people seem to be bad about underestimating disease, which makes no fucking sense to me but whatever. Have to worry that Brockton Bay's survivors won't think to torch the corpses... even without Simurgh interference making people crazy and/or stupid.
I should probably start working on plans to combat disease once I'm set up and defensible. Also need to keep in mind the potential for rotting corpses to contaminate any water source I end up using. Even piping isn't necessarily safe, so if the water systems are still functioning for some reason, that won't automatically mean that the water is a good idea to use.
The longer I walk the more I hear signs of other people skulking around. None of the screaming lunatic types, not yet, and thankfully most people are... terrible at stealth, frankly. Makes it easy for me to sneak past where possible, even with the wagon making noise as I drag it.
The first time someone spots me in spite of my efforts has me tense, uncertain how I'm going to defend myself. No tools at all, no time to make anything. It ends up being a moot point -they slowly back away and duck out of sight, clearly scared to confront me.
Oh yeah. I am a costumed person, so obviously a parahuman, one most people aren't familiar with.
I'm not willing to just trust in this, though. For all I know the Simurgh has hacked a bunch of people to go ballistic if they see me. I can't actually expect reasonable behavior -especially since there's the phasing, exploding zombies, which are
clearly not concerned with personal survival and not interested in rational discourse. And they're
all infectious, so unless some factor I'm unaware of limits their potential to spread, it really shouldn't take all that long for most of the remaining population to be reduced to just the zombies.
Kind of wishing I'd offed the originator when I had the chance. I could've done it, would've missed out on testing a bomb type on the Simurgh, but... ugh. Risking myself short-term in hopes of long-term gains isn't so good a strategy when I can't just load a save. Not much use to going for a better future if you don't
have a future. Need to work on that habit.
To be fair, I wasn't expecting an exotic plague...
Ugh, whatever.
I continue to skulk around the city, trying to not look as nervous as I am, increase the likelihood of people interpreting me as a Scary Cape, Don't Mess With, rather than as a Scared Cape, Kill While Still Vulnerable. It seems to work okay, or at least other people are disinclined to mess with me for
some reason.
When capes occasionally fly overhead, I try to be inconspicuous without looking like I'm trying to do that. I find myself wondering how much longer that's going to keep happening. At least Alexandria isn't on my case again. That was
not fun, and I still worry Contessa will step through and end me for having removed a chunk of Alexandria's leg, no chance of doing anything because fuck you PtV is dumb bullshit. Fucking hate the idea of existing in a world Contessa exists in. Hopefully the Simurgh dust is shield enough. I mean, that would be kind of dumb, and there's that "models" thing, but I can hope. Would be kind of ironic, I think. Somehow. Okay maybe not, I'm tired and just... ugh.
Then a metal dude turns a corner, spots me, and starts
jogging at me. Fuck.
I turn and dart off to one side, but I stumble when the motion reminds me of the wagon I'm dragging by virtue of some of the stuff slewing its way out of the thing. Shit. I
need as much of this stuff as possible.
Metal dude calls out, "I'm just here to talk!" I snort, because
yeah right, and try to find a balance between speed and stability of the wagon while fleeing. Then he yells, "I don't tire, you know!"
… shit.
I pull to a stop and watch him, backing away a little when he gets closer than I'd prefer. I want some room to flee if he lunges at me. To my surprise, he comes to a halt once I start backing up. Usually people try to
match me, completely negating the
point of backing away from them.
Disgruntled, I bite out, "
What."
Very seriously, he says, "Oni Lady-"
Oh come fucking on "-I'm here to deliver a message to you."
Wait. What?
Slowly, not at my best and just plain puzzled, I say, "That doesn't make sense."
He shrugs, and there's a brief metal-on-metal screech, which confuses me because other than the muted clanking as his feet have hit the (Simurgh dust-coated) ground, his movement has been no louder than a flesh-and-blood human. Then he says, "I volunteered, if that helps any." After a pause he adds, "I'm also as safe from the Simurgh's plots as you can get. Safer than even a drone would be."
I'm about to say
it doesn't when a glowing woman, flying below rooftop height, comes into my line of sight and
very obviously spots us and heads our way. My heart rate picks way up again, because I
recognize her from earlier -it's her of the DNA beams, Purity. I'm basically helpless against her, and I wouldn't want to go up against her
with bombs. Running won't help. She'll just kill me. Metal man here is probably fucking useless as even a distraction.
Which leaves
talking to the racist who... oh god. I think she's been here
the whole fight.
I feel more fucked than I have at any point tonight, which feels faintly... unfair? I stood up to
Alexandria and attacked
the Simurgh and have repeatedly pissed off
Lung and had to deal with Coil's hax and I'm pretty sure I'm going to die to a character who was barely relevant to canon, however powerful she might have been. Not even one so little covered that the lack of information on them is what gets me killed. Just... wrong place, wrong time.
Metal dude finally notices that I'm not looking at him, but past him, or maybe notices Purity's approaching glow. Whatever the case, he stops with trying to talk bullshit at me and turns to face her. To my surprise, he very calmly nods once she lands nearby and says, "Ma'am."
She demands, "
Where is my son." without bothering to really acknowledge him.
I shift uneasily, but the metal guy
holds out a hand in a handshake (Purity is surprised, I think, though it's hard to tell with her glow up. I
think I catch her recoiling a little, anyway) and says, "I'm Weld, here to help. You'll forgive me for not knowing who your son is, miss?..."
My brain finally goes
Oh. Metal guy. Weld. Duh. while Purity introduces herself seemingly reflexively, including accepting the handshake. She shakes herself, regains her focus for a moment, and I consider edging away while their attention is on each other, but I don't think I'm remotely enough of a ninja to sneak the wagon away and I'd probably fuck up even if I abandoned the wagon and
ugh. Once she's introduced herself, Purity's face twists up, and she says, "Please, they've already killed my precious daughter, I
can't lose my son too."
Weld claps his hands together with a
clink and magnanimously says "Well ma'am, the PRT will do everything in its power to ensure he's safe."
Purity goes very still when he says
the PRT and
now I start edging away from Weld because I think I know where this is going.
She vaporizes him.
It... takes a while for him to be reduced to a metal skeleton, with him first trying to escape the beam, failing, and then moving to slam into Purity, but she just flies into the air and keeps the beam focused on him. The beam runs down after a minute, quiet enough for me to hear her screaming abuse at his still-standing skeleton, but I've been backing away this whole time and take the opportunity of her starting the beam back up to take things at a run, hoping that either the noise will cover me or her crazy will cover me. Or both. Both works.
Fucking hell, I need a place to hide. And sleep.
It occurs to me that
just earlier I was thinking to myself that I need to stop trying to optimize my future by taking risks with my present, and the fuck am I doing? Wandering around, trying to find
~the perfect hideout~ while unarmed and burdened by this wagon of shit I do, admittedly,
really actually need... but still. What I can and
should do is find a short-term place to hole up, get some sleep, eat,
tinker, and
then go looking for a more long-term hideout when I'm
rested and
armed.
Once I'm a block or so away from Purity and have broken line of sight, I duck into pretty much the first apartment-type building I find -the door thankfully open- and make my way to... the second floor, I decide. First floor is too convenient to potential looters, but I really just need to get sleep, so I shouldn't go hiding on a higher floor. Takes too long, takes too much energy, and also anybody trying to hide has good odds of selecting the top floor for maximum distance from the ground floor entrance, so my attempt to find a place to sleep might turn into a fight I'm not ready for if I
do try to go to the top.
So I go to the second floor, close the door of an abandoned apartment
quietly, and go to lay down in... the kitchen is what I end up using, just because I don't want to go to the bedroom, too obvious, and I can sleep hidden from the door, using the kitchen thingamabob as a visual barrier. It takes a long time to fall asleep, probably in part because I'm half-expecting to never wake up again if I fall asleep under these circumstances.
Still, I eventually drift off...
--------------------------------------------------------------------
When I wake up, I feel like crap. Not exactly surprising. After a second I wake up enough to wonder if I was woken by something in the building, rather than just having gotten enough sleep, and I tense up and listen in. I can hear... something moving, somewhere. Having difficulty placing direction and nature. Not bugs. Human? Might be a dog, though it's an unusually quiet dog if it's a dog. I'm not thrilled at the idea of it being a dog. Then again, I'm not thrilled with the idea of it being a human either. Well, mostly I'm worried about the possibility of a
parahuman, but while I've gotten some sleep now and feel
less crap than I did earlier, I've not actually got
gear. An unpowered human with a baseball bat could still kill me pretty easily.
I sit up as quietly as I can, trying to triangulate the noise by moving my head back and forth. It takes me a minute to remember that this is some kind of apartment building and this is basically guaranteed to do nothing except confirm the sound is coming through the door. Which it is. Shock.
It takes me a minute to remember where my pile of crap is in this apartment. My initial impulse is to start pulling stuff from it and get me tinkertech, but I hesitate before actually committing to that when it occurs to me that I need to be
careful and not make noise and I struggle enough with the tinker fugues I can't really trust myself to actually pull that off. Maybe if I was
faster that wouldn't be a concern, but it takes me a couple minutes to make even a quick, simple bomb. That's too slow if there's somebody wandering around with a gun. "When seconds count, the cops are only minutes away," only replace 'the cops' with 'my next tinkertech device.'
Iffy plan.
I've been continuing to listen while thinking, and there's someone talking. Two people, in fact, which is sort of reassuring. One person talking to themselves would be a lot more likely to be a deranged lunatic who cannot be reasoned with. Two people implies they're at least capable of cooperating and communicating with each other. Which... doesn't prevent them from having been reprogrammed to hunt and kill me in specific.
Still.
Probably less screwball.
I can't make out actual words, but I can work out tone. They're cautious in a casual sort of way. Like, they're not
specifically expecting anyone to hear them, but they're trying to keep their voices down on general principle. Not quiet
enough, in my opinion, but I've run into worse. I
think they're scavenging? I'm periodically hearing... rustling, or clanking, or something. Stuff running into other stuff. Loading a bag? A box? Can't work it out. I'm... pretty confident they're not intending to stay here, though. Might be wrong.
Doesn't mean it's safe for me to just wait them out, though. If they come in here and attack me, I'm basically fucked.
Carefully,
carefully, I move to go looking for weapons. I'm sort of hoping to find a loaded pistol somewhere, but even just something to hit people with would be a big improvement. I wince a little at every sound I make. I'm quieter than most people, but I've never achieved the total silence I want. I push a bedroom door open, wincing at the tiny creak it make-
-and that's when Oni Lee appears behind me and slits my throat.
Okay, not
exactly. It's what he tried to do, but my costume's neck piece is some kind of uncomfortable rubber tubing that's tough enough the knife didn't reach my flesh at all. Which itself indicates he wasn't using the mono-molecular knife for whatever reason (Lost it?), thank
god.
I have an impulse to pull a Taylor and drop to the ground and play dead. I dismiss the impulse because no, that's fucking stupid. Shadow Stalker is an idiot for falling for that in canon -if you slit someone's throat, they don't drop like a sack of potatoes and go silent. They
bleed all over the place, they make
horrifying sounds as air tries to go in and out of a hole in their throat that's spraying blood as well, and they're probably going to be flailing until they're weak from blood loss or asphyxiation. As far as I know, you only just
drop and stop moving if your heart or brain are destroyed. Oni Lee's done this a million times, he's
got to know better.
So I reject that as a dumb plan with barely a moment's thought and go for trying to smack him with an elbow. I technically succeed, but there's abruptly another Oni Lee in front of me going for a stab so said success is pretty pointless. I try to sort of twist so the new Oni Lee is stabbing the old Oni Lee, but he's too canny for that and the knife smoothly cuts through one of the straps of my armor. Ooooh shit. I kick out at new Oni Lee as old Oni Lee collapses into ash behind me, but new Oni Lee is apparently already old Oni Lee because quite abruptly a body is
landing on me from above, knocking me to the floor, pinning me, and calmly starting to cut at my armor's weak points.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
Emergency measures!
Use words!
"I thought we were on the same side or something?" I go for laconic. Not sure how well it works.
Oni Lee grunts. To my surprise, this is followed by a real response. "You are a traitor. You will die." Okay, plan: Talk At Him is a bust.
Distantly, I can hear the two people I heard earlier scrambling to get away. No idea what they think they're hearing, but apparently they want nothing to do with it. I try to roll over, but Oni Lee blocks that, because of course he does. I try to kick at him, but this is completely the wrong position to put power behind such a kick. (Though to my surprise I have the flexibility for my feet to make contact with his back, briefly) I abruptly relax, collapsing to the floor, but Oni Lee rides it out with an unimpressed grunt.
Then my armor finally gives way and
that causes Oni Lee to loose his balance for a moment and I
push off the ground and he falls over and for a second I'm thinking I'll run but then I remember this is Oni Lee and instead I lunge for him, he's already rolling to his feet, I jump and slam into his back and throw my right arm around the front of his head to cover his eyes and he starts slashing at the arm but the armor is taking it and I get my
other arm around his throat and he's falling forward toward the ground and I think he's trying to cause me to be launched over him but I just tighten both of my grips and we hit the ground and Oni Lee makes an unpleasant sound as my arm around his throat digs in and he's
made a mistake he can't cut at me anymore, the knife went skittering away and his arm made an even more unpleasant sound.
I'd sag in relief except I still need to kill him. (Why isn't he exploding on me? It's the obvious thing to do, so why isn't he? Shit) I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish at this point, but he's moving oddly underneath me -ohshit he's trying to get his legs under him, he can jump like that, I use my newly-discovered flexibility to swing my lower body up and back and then
pull my lower body back down so it slams into him and he staggers, one leg slipping off to one side, and his hands are starting to clutch convulsively at my arms and he's making these really
ugly choking sounds and he's
still trying to get his legs underneath him so I repeat the slam from earlier, and he... does
something, but I think he's too weakened because nothing comes of it that I can tell so I think he failed.
My arms are sore by the time he slumps. I'm not willing to assume he's actually unconscious, though. He's way too skilled for me to assume that, and I don't actually have any real experience or knowledge when it comes to this kind of stuff. So, rather awkwardly, I maintain my lock over his throat and eyes and awkwardly push us both over toward where his knife has ended up. This takes... entirely too long.
Once there, I experimentally move my left arm away from his throat. Just a bit. No reaction. I hesitate, still half-expecting a trick, but finally bite the bullet and lunge with my left hand for the knife. My heart rate spikes when Oni Lee moves, but then I realize it's just his body settling, not
conscious motion.
Then I slit his throat.
(This is not nearly as smooth or easy as it sounds, and it's
utterly disgusting)
I keep his eyes covered with my arm, glance around. Bag, paper bag, abandoned on the kitchen floor. I drag his bleeding body over, and awkwardly make the exchange, bag going over until it covers the upper portion of his face and
then arm being removed. Then the bag goes the rest of the way down.
Then I breath a sigh of relief. He's probably not dead-dead yet, but he will be shortly, and even if he wakes up before he dies, blood loss should prevent him from getting the paper bag off.
… when I was plotting how to kill Oni Lee, this is not at
all how I thought it would go.
Now that the whole thing is over, I realize I'm... feeling almost human. I must've gotten a decent amount of sleep after all.
I lock the front door and start tinkering.
----------------------------------------------------
All right,
now I'm armed and ready to take on threats on my way to finding a place to lair long-term. A dozen relatively standard fragmentation grenades, one black hole bomb, three freezing bombs, and two bombs that temporarily... reverse time? That can't
possibly be what they'll actually do, but I still have a conviction it's what they'll do. I made them while thinking I wanted some less-than-lethal options for if combat gets too close, so presumably they're safe for me to drop on top of myself. Either that or my shard has no idea what I wanted and I'll die if I try that.
That done, I find a mirror and more closely examine what's been done to my costume. It turns out what I've lost is an outer layer of stiff, thick body armor that I'd
thought was more directly integrated with the under-layer of more flexible stuff, but no Oni Lee cutting at stuff separated the two. Closer examination of the arms and legs reveals they have a broadly similar setup, and they haven't lost their outer layer of stuff in the combat, which is probably why he couldn't cut up my arms. Kind of worrying that he already knew what his knife would be able to cut through and what it wouldn't, though. Makes me think he'd been thinking about killing me for a while. The Simurgh attacking might have
prevented him from successfully killing me, because it wouldn't have been
remotely this half-assed if he'd done it under non-Endbringer circumstances. Probably just one day I'd have gone to sleep and not woken up. (Or woken up amid an explosion)
Happy thought, right? Right. (Should I be grateful to the Simurgh? Would it even
care?)
Okay! Time to
explore!
----------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, wow, that wall went up surprisingly fast. I mean, it's clearly not
done yet, but it's already taller than a single-story building, mostly. I know it is, because I can
see some single-story buildings nearby it, which it is towering over.
I'm going to assume cape involvement and move on with my life.
In the time I slept, a
lot of chaos seems to have happened. There are
more bodies littering the streets than there were earlier, a lot of buildings have been broken into and looted -commercial buildings seem hit hardest- and to my surprise I'm seeing people moving in groups. Armed groups. Some of them seem to have already made
symbols: one group, for instance, has impromptu armbands depicting a red circle with a blue line through it, with the same image on a makeshift flag carried by the center member of the group. That particular group tightened up and eyed me warily when I spent too long looking at them in interest, so I moved on, but they're not the only group to do that.
Post-Simurgh politics?
Naturally, one of the groups I run into is a bunch of skinheads -some of whom have quite
obviously been shaved recently, not to mention incompetently- who have stopped bothering to pretend to hide that they're E88 gang members. Or maybe just ideologically aligned, given none of this particular group has any guns. They sneer, do stuff I suspect is supposed to be sexually evocative, and otherwise indicate they're coming for me and are going to do terrible, awful things to me.
I hold up one of my bombs, and the group visibly deflates. Oh, they jeer and sneer, but now they're moving
away, and nervously glancing at it while trying to look like they aren't.
It could be considered irony that the group I run into that
is a problem is actually a bunch of ABB gangers.
"Miss Bakuda, over here!"
Aaaah shit. I thought I was done with this!
Reluctantly, I turn to face the group of teen-to-twenty-somethings in ABB colors, one of them waving a flag (Read: bedsheet, hanging from a rake) with what I'm pretty sure is meant to be Lung's mask depicted on it. It's a sufficiently impressive likeness I find myself thinking
seriously, why is so much artistic talent being wasted on this gang?
Then I focus on actually interacting with these jerks.
"
What?" I'd say that I said this in my surliest tone, but really it's just my normal level of grump. This just happens to be higher than most people's level of grump, and more importantly is probably more grump than these ABB dudes (and dudettes) are expecting from me. After all,
~obviously~ I would love to be reunited with my gang, right? Right. (Wrong)
And yeah, there's a pause, some glancing back and forth. I notice it seems to be among the younger members of the group. The older ones take it in stride, no visible reaction.
… oh, right. Their primary boss is
Lung, their secondary boss is
Oni Lee, and I wasn't exactly a warm and friendly individual when I was actively cooperating with ABB interests. Of course they're inured to surly, irritable people on their side, at least out of the parahuman bosses. Of which I am one of.
Right.
… fuck.
"A Walmart's been secured, boss. Our little group-" The guy talking jerks a finger to indicate the half-dozen other ABB gangers with him. "-is out looking for peeps to bring back, get organized." He shrugs with one shoulder. "Wasn't 'specting to find capes, but hey, here ya are."
I squint at the guy talking. That's a fuckin' weird accent he's got. Is it a Brooklyn accent?... no, he doesn't sound like Harley, I'm pretty sure that's not it. Whatever. Not sure why his accent even bothers me. I mull over whether -no, no. I've got a promise from Eidolon that I'll have support in the quarantine zone. My biggest motive for not giving the ABB the middle finger has been how unlikely it's been that I'd manage to either stand on my own two feet successfully or integrate into another group. While I'm not going to
integrate with Cauldron, and I'm not precisely standing on my
own, I still don't really
need to bother putting up with the the ABB.
Which is good, because I don't want to be
any kind of racist, and I don't see myself successfully managing to navigate the social minefield of the ABB in the long-term anyway. It's worked out amazingly well so far, but... for one thing, Oni Lee is dead, and Lung is either gone or tainted by the Simurgh, and I have this
suspicion that their influence was a big factor in how well things were going. Very risky to try to keep leaning on that.
The ABB thugs shift uncomfortably. I assume I've been silent for too long. I consider literally flipping them off, but provoking them serves no real purpose for me. I can (probably) break from the group without making them hostile outright.
"I'm already situated." Which is arguably a lie, as I'm still looking for a place to hole up, but it
is true that I've got -probably- my direct physical needs handled for the foreseeable future.
An eyebrow goes up on Talky McWeirdAccent. "Tha's good, boss, good to hear. We could use some more space for the Boys-" I find it faintly amusing for him to say that when women are clearly a part of the ABB frontliners and
I'm Bakuda. "-truf be told. Lead on."
Dammit. I
really don't want to be putting up with this crap. Also, I have nowhere to lead them to.
Hmm. Maybe I should put up with them and hope they meatshield for me.
No, I
really don't want to be associated with the ABB anymore. And for all I know it's a Simurgh trap anyway. I mean,
anything can be a Simurgh trap, but minimizing contact with affected people worked okay (Well, better than
not doing so) in canon, so it
should work for me, here.
So no, I'm not doing that.
Instead, I raise an eyebrow -no idea if they can see me doing so, but whatever- and idly comment, "Are you
sure you really want a volatile maker of volatile bombs who's been Simurgh-ed 'defending'-" I do air quotes with my fingers and everything. "-your people? 'cause I see problems with this plan."
There's some shuffling and uncomfortable glances thrown about by the group. I'm kind of curious as to whether it's Simurgh influe-? Wait. She'd probably make them react differently to having this pointed out to them, if so. Never mind. Anyway, they're clearly having second thoughts... except for the guy doing the talking.
He shrugs. "Anybody's a risk. Ain't seein' no reason to be turnin' down an ally 'cause they
might flip out."
Aaaand now people are sort of nodding along. Nobody is explicitly
and verbally agreeing with him, but they're also not exactly acting like my point stands.
Fuckit.
I palm a freeze bomb, and hold it up, clear and visible. "I. Am. Not. Going. Back. 'kay?"
Weird Accent Guy sort of... rolls his eyes at me. "Yeah, sure. Whatever. Ya won't."
I sort of wave behind him with my other hand. You know, where the rest of the ABB folks used to be?
They ran. They know what's what.
Weird Accent Guy stares, apparently in shock (Surprised he didn't
hear them fleeing), and then turns back to me. I smile under the mask and wiggle the bomb a little and
now he's properly freaking out and running.
I don't relax until several minutes after he's out of sight.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally I manage, after three scares involving those
fucking explodey-zombies and burning a frag on what I
think was a Merchants group reveling in the chaos, to find a place that seems like a defensible little location that will hold me for a while.
It's a hotel, a high-ish class one. More entrances than I'd like, but fewer than some of the alternatives, and its parking lot is fenced off well enough that it helps limit traffic right out the gate. The actual people-sleep-here structure only has four entrances, one for each cardinal direction, though I'm worried about the windows on the ground floor. More of them are intact than I'd expect, all things considered...
What decides me is that it's clearly not popular after the local apocalypse. Not sure
why, but the Simurgh dust lacks more than a couple of footprint trails, and when I poke around inside -cautiously- I don't see or hear other people lurking about. Not even too many corpses -gonna need to get those out of here, and quick- to spoil things. It's got food, for at least a little bit, and it provides access to water, electronics for tinkering, and I can use... desks or whatever for other raw materials.
Plus an individual room is small and only has one door plus the window. On the top floor, that gives me something reasonably secure to sleep in, so long as I set up claymores or something at both entryways. And I can riddle other parts with traps semi-randomly, to fuck with would-be invaders who aren't sure where I'm operating from.
Some searching establishes that there are suites with built-in kitchens, even... though those are also the largest, most open ones, and I suspect other people would beeline to them for various reasons. Still, having the
option to cook my own food without having to wrestle my power into letting me make a goddamn hotplate is definitely nice.
Well.
Time to start making claymores from dirty dishes and televisions.
… so glamorous.
GDI Wildbow, consistency is not that hard.
