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Depending on how strong this thing is, Plan: The Power of Friendship seems likely to either have our whip sword torn from our grip (or out of whatever we use it to latch to) or we lose a leg. Basically, we should probably do something to try to make it let go.

[X] Plan: Hopefully not down the monster hole
-[X] Grab back hold of Aletta
-[X] Attack the main body with your funnels
-[X] Use the whip sword to try to stop yourself from sliding
 
Ziggrrauglurr said:
I think the other us is either an AI or an ascended being... and this is our family coming to get us, is different from the Macrophage and the Quiet, it's here for US, and it's not from our reality. The other us wanted to hijack control, to run away...

[X] Plan: The Power of Friendship

I like it, I was gonna say do only the 2 first actions, but the telemetry is a good Idea.
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The Macrophage is the post human combat platform.

It appears to have been on course for an intercept before we woke up and utilised the command system, but that doesn't rule out our presence being a, or even the, causative factor.

This could be a rescue mission.

It could also be a hit while we're meat-trapped.

[X] Plan: The Power of Friendship

We can't end up down the hole of Monstro because then we are fucked. The more time the group spends apart the less time we have to figure out how to either get the ship ready to move and out of the system before Macrophage arrives, or go head to head and try to drive it off.

A thought occurs, actually.

If the Crown Of Thorns currently guest starring from Blindsight is a Macrophage....

....maybe the Quiet are its little siblings.

Microphages.
 
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BiopunkOtrera said:
"I'll stay." Mirareki says. "Sorry Luyu but I think this is actually my area."

Luyu gives her a long look, then shrugs. "Okay. I got this." The two Luyus step forward to check the mess of dead, their own pet machines by their side..

You push yourself to your feet and don't even wobble. "I'm okay. Really I am. You guys should finish with the bridge."

"What'd you actually do, Stella?" Mirareki says. "That sound you made. It– crashed them like a computer. The whole swarm seized up and all the bits of it with it."

You push your visor back and rub your face. The air smells of smoke. There's more than a few rads in the air, but nothing that your system won't easily tolerate. Right now you don't care.

"I think–" You struggle with it. "I think there's something else in my head with me."

Mirareki frowns, lips showing in the clear bottom part of her combat mask. She seems like she wants to say something, but then doesn't.
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I think Mirareki knows something about this situation. And her specialization is posthumans, so that would support the theory that the macrophage is Stella's "Family". But oh boy, this poor ship is being attacked by how many forces at once now? The Quiet, the contamination, the crown of thorns, and also this geometric squid.

[X] Plan: Hopefully not down the monster hole
-[X] Grab back hold of Aletta
-[X] Attack the main body with your funnels
-[X] Use the whip sword to try to stop yourself from sliding
 
Okay, so we're finally ready with an update lol. Voting ends in about an hour. We'll try to schedule it more precisely next time, even if both of us have a little less time from now on.
 
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  • Voting
    • Scheduled vote count started by Peel on Jul 19, 2022 at 7:00 PM, finished with 46 posts and 27 votes.
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  • Voting
    • Interval 7: Sense
  • Threadmarks
    • C/W: sensory overload, brief suicidal ideation

    -[X] Grab back hold of Aletta
    -[X] Use the whip sword to try to stop yourself from sliding
    -[X] Send telemetry about what's happening to you up to those above so they can help

    You reach out and grab Aletta's outstretched hand. You're sliding through chaos, a discordant, twisted soundscape of heavy lights and the smell of bright colours.

    "St—a? Stella! Can y–- hear us?" Luyu's voice is distorted. You're not sure if it's the transmission or the sensory whirlwind beating down on you.

    "I hear you!" You call up. "Prepare for upload!" You hit the telemetry link and start sending data then slam your sword into where you think the wall must be. It cuts down, leaving a long trial of sparks as it cuts through a-diamond and metal. Your thoughts are almost choked by the fear overflowing from your other self. You jerk to a stop, stretched out in a straining rope of force running through the thing to your leg to your arm to the sword to the wall. Everything is suspended for a moment as the kaleidoscope turns.

    Aletta looks down at you, completely calm. "I'm sorry," she says. "There's nothing I can do. We'll get to you."

    She's only wearing a tac-suit, not a boarding shell.

    She jumps, swelling her suit into impact mode as she clears the vortex. As the vortex implodes, and your overlay fills with error codes as illegible things prise inside the funnels and weapons and shell. The sword breaks.

    Strange shapes whip out of the chaos below and pull you into darkness.

    *****
    Connecting
    Authorization?
    Password
    Denied
    open_sesame
    Denied
    OldApricotButchHegelian
    …Denied/Denied/Denied/Denied/Denied/Denied/Denied…
    Holy Nyx cloak your daughters in darkness
    Access Granted​


    Someone is screaming. It's not you.

    "Please! For fuck's sake! Just stop or kill me, please just kill me! - I'm not, I can't, I…"

    It's not even your other self. She's buried herself deep, as deep as she can.

    You get a glimpse as it prises the long-dead mask from your face. A wrecked lab space. Shattered beds and scientific equipment. A medical gravitometer that's been partly dissected. Bodies, maybe.. A forest of fractals has overgrown everything, in every colour in the dark and more besides. The screamer is hanging across from you, now quiet, breathing haggard, held limp and spreadeagle in the roots. A crystal fold over her eyes drinks from a dozen capillaries, tracing back to the thing hanging overhead. Involuted geometry, proceeding around itself.

    You hear the last of your armour hit the ground. The thing above you grows a stem, and a bud, and a flower that unfurls to an illegible inside that dips down toward your head.

    *****​

    A welter of images, screaming in from every part of the ship, pouring in to flood your mind, fill your skull, exhaust every experiential thread–

    You have to stop it. You have to–

    Concentrate. You know how to do this. Concentrate on one point. Find one stable place. Breath. Breath. You watch through electronic eyes, through cameras, you find your friends.

    Mirareki and Luyu rappel down the shaft, with one Luyu holding onto Reizay, the other aiming her rifle down the shaft. Their funnels hang around them, wired mode for electronic defense.

    "Priestess?" Luyu calls out.

    "I'm here."

    Camera switch. A better view. Aletta stands cooly in a crevice, her tac-suit in tatters from absorbing the high speed collision. Otherwise though she seems undamaged.

    "Do you still have a fix on her telemetry?" Luyu asks.

    "Yes." Aletta says. "It diverges from the shaft several decks below. There shaft continues beyond that but I think it's a blind. It's doing something to the signal, bouncing her all over the place but I was close enough to maintain some idea of where she is."

    "Alright." Luyu says. "So, we go after her."

    Mirareki nods, her poker face expression visible even through the ship camera. The other Luyu puts a firm hand on her shoulder. "Before that though, I think it's time to fess up. What do you know?"

    "What are you talking about?"

    "You're pretty good, but both the trio over there and I can see it. What do you know about what's happening to Stella?"

    Mirareki shakes her off, then takes a deep breath. "She's possessed. There's a posthuman inside her."

    *****​

    Everything is jumbled. You can feel a molecular battle being waged between the thing and the combat nanotech in your bloodstream.

    You stupid animals. imals. You couldn't even contain it. it. t.

    The other is somehow desperate. Flame flaring and guttering in the flood.

    She discarded you, you know? ? ? Such self loathing. I am the only reason that any of you remains. remains. I am kinder than your own self.

    You can taste the colours, hear the pain, see the other woman's screams. Sense the whole world.

    Find a point. Find a centre. Look again.

    *****​

    "Possessed?" Reizay protests. "That's ghost story stuff. That can't happen for real!"

    "It can." Mirareki looks down the shaft. "Obviously you can't run a whole posthuman on a human brain, but you can run a partial instantiation, or have an avatar minding a compression of the rest of the manifold, or you can meddle with the hardware to increase your scope if you have surgical access or control of the biosynthesis system during a resurrection. It's bad for the host but there's a lot of options."

    "So if this is a thing all supernature journalists know about, how come it's not more widely known to the public? I think a documentary of someone getting possessed would have done numbers." says Luyu. The other her keeps the shaft covered.

    Mirareki frowns, then takes a deep breath. "I'm not just a journalist. I'm in Firewatch."

    "Oh really?" Luyu laughs. "I should have fucking known."

    "Firewatch?" Aletta asks.

    "They're an X-risk mystery cult." Luyu says.

    "We exist," says Mirareki firmly, "to find threats to the Garden and create countermeasures, or, if we can't then at least warn people."

    Luyu opens her mouth to retort again but then makes a visible effort to restrain herself. "Even if she is possessed. We still need to get her back."

    "I don't disagree." Mirareki says. "I'll keep being honest though, I have no idea what that thing is. I've not seen it in any threat update… so I guess I get to make the update this time. Reizay, do you have that telemetry anymore localised?"

    It's a little shocking how easily they all agree to rescue you. Someone they hardly know. Someone who doesn't even recognize herself. You feel faintly disappointed in yourself for finding it surprising.

    Reizay nods. "I think I've got where she is, or at least where her armour is. She's three decks down in an area that the ship lists as a private hospital."

    "A private hospital?" Luyu sneers. "The fuck is that River shit? Is it next to a fucking stock exchange?" Mirareki looks almost equally disgusted. Even Aletta looks a little sceptical.

    "I don't know. I didn't name it. The computer is full of all kinds of cult garbage." Reizay says. "To be fair, I think it's some kind of research site. It's not listed as admitting patients at all– well, it doesn't matter."

    She brings up a 3D. "It's built in between the bulkheads here. It looks like there's a few ways we could get in. There's a main entrance here which seems to have the majority of defences if they're still active, but is the easiest route. Second, we could go directly down the shaft, and follow the creatures route. That's likely going to have any surprised for it though. Finally there's a set of ship's utility lines under it, which I think I can open up."

    "There's also the question of what we prioritise." Mirareki says. "Do we want to try to get Stella first, or do we try to eliminate the creature before we get her? I think we can use the data she sent us to neutralise those wierd countermeasures its putting out– at least partially. And it would remove an obstacle in the road."

    "If she lasts that long." Luyu says. Mirareki turns on her and the big woman shrugs. "You could be right, but we would be leaving her."

    "We could also get surprised by that thing and end up back in the tanks."

    Which entrance does the team decide to use?
    [ ] Move through the main entrance: Quick route, risk of automated defences
    [ ] Follow the creature: Quickest route, risk of ambush by the creature
    [ ] Use the utility tunnel: slow route, low risk of ambushes

    What is the team's first objective?
    [ ] Destroy the snatcher
    [ ] Move immediately to rescue Stella
     
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    • Peel said:
    Someone is screaming. It's not you.

    "Please! For fuck's sake! Just stop or kill me, please just kill me! - I'm not, I can't, I…"

    It's not even your other self. She's buried herself deep, as deep as she can.
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    The first time Stella has really had awareness of her headmate! Which seems to have been an intentional point? Whoever it is rebuffed the mindwipe when it reached them but didn't push back otherwise.

    Peel said:
    …Denied/Denied/Denied/Denied/Denied/Denied/Denied…
    Holy Nyx cloak your daughters in darkness
    Access Granted​
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    More religious motifs, obviously - I'm kinda wondering what this password is opening up. Access to the other self? Letting her in or out?

    Peel said:
    Mirareki nods, her poker face expression visible even through the ship camera. The other Luyu puts a firm hand on her shoulder. "Before that though, I think it's time to fess up. What do you know?"

    "What are you talking about?"

    "You're pretty good, but both the trio over there and I can see it. What do you know about what's happening to Stella?"

    Mirareki shakes her off, then takes a deep breath. "She's possessed. There's a posthuman inside her."
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    Click to shrink...

    Interesting in that it reveals Mirareki has been sussing this out. With that and the whole mystery cult thing from later, that's some neat info on her deal.

    Peel said:
    The other is somehow desperate. Flame flaring and guttering in the flood.

    She discarded you, you know? ? ? Such self loathing. I am the only reason that any of you remains. remains. I am kinder than your own self.

    You can taste the colours, hear the pain, see the other woman's screams. Sense the whole world.
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    Lots to unpack here - "the other woman's" screams is distinct, and the "she" is kinda ambiguous. I wonder about that? Is the Stella we're playing not the original personality here? Was the body leftover as an empty shell intentionally? Why the mindwipe playing out like it did?
     
    [X] Move through the main entrance: Quick route, risk of automated defences
    [X] Destroy the snatcher

    I feel like Stella is not in immediate danger. So the crew should get rid of the creature first. And for the same reason they don't need to risk the quickest route. But they probably shouldn't take the slow route either.
     
    Personally thinking we could use a Setting Glossary, at least one that updates as Stella herself learns more to keep our connection to the character

    [X] Move through the main entrance: Quick route, risk of automated defences
    [X] Destroy the snatcher
     
    ArlequineLunaire said:
    Personally thinking we could use a Setting Glossary, at least one that updates as Stella herself learns more to keep our connection to the character
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    I'm planning to do that. If I get time over the weekend I'll try to put it up. That's what I'm going to use the intro post for. That and story so far.

    Edit: Though actually it'll probably be best to wait until the heroine gets access to unstructured time and an internet connection for most of it.
     
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    [X] Move through the main entrance: Quick route, risk of automated defences
    [X] Destroy the snatcher
     
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