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Fool's Adventures: A Demon's Souls/Buffy the Vampire Slayer Quest

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[x] Refuse the offer and play with Jenny. Push through the hesitation and see what's on the other side.
 
Okay let's see the tally.

Thanks for voting everyone! Looks like we're refusing the offer.
Adhoc vote count started by BungieONI on Apr 16, 2019 at 2:03 PM, finished with 1578 posts and 24 votes.
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Episode 8, Part 9 “Approach”
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    • Episode 8, Part 9
    "Approach"    ​

    The facility rose up out of the dimly lit night bedecked in glowing lights like gemstones and glitter. But to you it was a beast crouched and huddled in the dark, bright spots dotting its hide, as you drove closer to it like a fish in the sea nearing a sleeping whale. Its tall and thin windows looked out like dark pits from gray walls and reminded you some of your old home.

    Your hair twisting and ornament caressing slowed as you pondered your decision. Conviction of a sort bubbled in your mind as you decided to refuse. You waited to speak until you were stopped in an alleyway and looking up at Annie as she opened your door.

    "No. Not her Annie. Not yet." You said quietly as you shook your head. She blinked. Then her expression became whimsical. Quirking an eyebrow and smiling halfheartedly, obviously caught between several conflicting emotions. She nodded, adjusting her shotgun on its shoulder strap.

    "Okay my lady." She said just as quietly. And that was that. You both stood shoulder to shoulder in the shade cast by a building corner, some form of warehouse, blocking the nearest cast iron streetlight's dim yellow glow. The facility was ahead of you and on your right and left was a street running along one side of the place. You had gotten here first, having left first so you just took the time to wait. And watch.

    It was surprisingly quiet. You're not particularly familiar with human industry or science but the closest example from your castle and kingdom had people out on guard at the very least. This place, did not.

    When you looked over to your left you found Annie scanning the building carefully. Her face was expressionless as her eyes tracked from one side of it to the other. Then back to you. When she saw your look she quirked an eyebrow and spoke.

    "There should be at least a guard in the gate house over there." She said as she raised her gloved hand to point. At the little box you could just see near the far corner of the fenced campus from your location near the corner on the other end of the street. "There are cameras, which is why I parked here out of sight of them, but I'm doubtful people are paying attention." She pointed at slowly rotating devices placed along the fence on tall poles and the walls of the building.

    Not exactly… hmm, it actually is surprising, displeasingly so. Why do you continue to disappoint Moloch?

    You frowned.

    "The cult has likely fully taken over." You said as you looked over the site and greed slipped into your thoughts like meat sliding down your throat. "Is there anything of worth to me in there?" You continued.

    Annie became thoughtful, a quiet hmm beside you as she thought it over. She shrugged.

    "Calax is a big tech company. There may be political leverage or classified data related to military projects. And considering what the Hellmouth means, perhaps more." She said calmly.

    You took that in and fell silent.

    Several more minutes passed before you saw Giles' car putter past the other end of the alley you were in before disappearing out of sight. You started walking, crossing the street and striding through the thickened shadows under the fence with Annie at your heels. You saw the Slayer and her posse sneaking, very badly, towards the gate from the opposite side down the street. You waited behind a corner of the gatehouse in the shade it cast and watched them come up the side wall. When they were nearby and looking around for you, you walked out. Annie waved behind you before turning to examine the gatehouse door. Xander and Buffy waved back as the three humans sidled over to you, glancing nervously at the cameras.

    "When we get in we're splitting up right?" Buffy asked. You smiled and nodded. She began speaking again, "How…?"

    Klang-crash.

    Annie had shouldered her way into the gate house, crumpling the doorknob and splintering the frame. A klaxon started from within the gatehouse and distantly you heard one in the facility. "Tar chugam a chumhacht Myhnegon!" You heard her say as she walked in. Turning to look inside the four of you saw her jam her gloved hand into the control panel, in a shower of sparks while muttering her activation incantation. Distant thunder rumbled far above you as electricity was sucked into the glove from the controls. This silenced the nearest klaxon with alacrity. The gate shuddered behind you and then started rolling open about a foot. She looked up at the interested looks then gestured out to the gate for the benefit of the humans.

    "Door's open." She said gaily.

    "Um." Xander says, one finger raised. Then he seems to think better of it, "Okay then."

    Buffy looked at Xander and then Giles, then after a moment of raised eyebrows they shrugged. Moving to the gate the Slayer looked it over and seeing no indication of it being electrified started to push it to the sound of intense grinding and grunts of effort. Annie deigned to help as well and put her hands above the Slayer's, being taller than her by a good margin. The two girls got it open with only moderate effort, before Xander could do more than step towards them to help. Then everyone was slipping inside and heading towards the front doors. Entrance was gained courtesy of Buffy kicking the front double doors open before Annie could open them herself.

    "Oh… there's two of them. Wonderful." Giles said very quietly behind you, unnoticed by anyone else.

    Seeming mildly miffed Annie stepped up beside you and Buffy as you strode into the brightly lit and sterile white halls. The lights flickered slightly when you stepped fully inside. Hmpf. Ignoring the posturing from Moloch you looked to Buffy and spoke, "We'll head that way." You pointed to a door set midway down the hall on the right. There was another across from it and one down at the far left corner. You fully intended to stay well clear of this girl and her friends. You wanted to kill something after this fiasco so far.

    She smiled. "Cool deal Witchy Woman, good hunting! Come on guys!" She said excitedly as she spun in place and backed away from you to the other door across the hall, waving at her friends. And so you parted with a minimum of fuss.

    With a sigh you pressed on into the facility.

    Like the outside it was silent. Deeply so. Annie was tense beside you, her gloved hand clenching spasmodically as she kept a wary eye on the corners. Her shotgun was now unslung from her shoulder and gripped in her left hand loosely. You were silent, walking down the halls with your two hands clasped at your waist with a queenly grace. The air was dead in here.

    Stale and unmoving and rottenly sweet.

    The walls ate the sound of Annie's steps, dampening their echoes as you walked down the gleaming white tunnel. It was almost the quietest place you had found in this world you realized. The only place quieter was your sanctum when you so willed it. You could hear Annie's heartbeat. Thumpa-thump, thumpa-thump to your left. It was thumping quickly in its excitement.

    You heard no others nearby, even as you neared the next set of doors. They were one of two, located on the left side of the hall a third of the way down. The others were at the far end and their frosted windows were dark. The atmosphere was frankly eerie. It reminded you of home. Both of them.

    Annie stepped forward and after a quick glance through the dimly lit frosted glass pushed through with her gun raised. You found an empty room full of storage racks and carts full of cleaning supplies. Maintenance then. Oddly not labeled. You stepped back out of the door and looked to either side. On the left at head height you found a discoloured patch of wall, brighter and with cracks around the edges where something seems to have been ripped away. Looking around the hall you note that other similar marks and tiny screw holes dot the walls, where other signs might have been.

    You're not sure why he would go to this much effort to confuse you. You knew he was within this place, his taste was on the air. Annie came out and shook her head, walking down toward the other doors at the end of the hall. When you pushed it open you found the room dark and gloomy. No lights of any kind were on, though that was not really an obstacle for your eyes as you wove through the long tables of some abandoned eating hall.

    At the far end was another door, sitting straight ahead. In the darkness you were carefully followed by Annie, who you could hear quietly rummaging in her jacket as leather hissed over her metal hand. The next hall, through the door led into a dark square shaped lounge area with three doors in each of its walls. The space was broken up by couches and appliances and counters along the edges of the room. A click heralded a thin beam of light as Annie lit a flashlight and passed it over the doors. Looking at her and the tense hunch to her shoulders you considered for a moment, before deciding letting her go would be more fun.

    You gestured at the far door across from you. "I'll go right. Good hunting Annie." You said. She looked at you with a flicker of concern creasing her brow before smiling, baring teeth.

    "Good hunting my lady." She said happily as she shouldered through the door and disappeared behind it.

    You drifted serenely through your door and tasted the air for humans. You were hungry and annoyed. Never a good combination. The darkness swallowed you up eagerly.

    Now what would you find? This is a meta vote.
    [] A cult circle of insane scientists working over a generator to make it explode.
    [] An important scientist cackling about how It was ready and going to kill you.

    ***

    The door crunched shut behind you as you adjusted your red hair with your metal glove and adjusted your grip on your flashlight. You weren't going to shoot with one hand, you weren't that strong or nutty even with lightning in the other hand, but you needed light all the same and there wasn't a whole lot in your glove. Even after my little sideshow. You grumbled, ironically wishing people ran their electricity higher.

    Would higher voltage give me… wait, no Annie this is dumb. It's magic, it probably doesn't care how the electricity works.

    The hall you were in was abandoned, again. Just a tunnel of sporadically illuminated white walls. The silence was obnoxious. There was a distinct feeling of sarcastically daring a gribbly to jump out at you lurking in your pretty skull. I mean, seriously. Is it possible to get more horror movie without blood oozing from the walls? You mused.

    The hall here was rather long in your opinion. Just heading deep into the facility like a train tunnel. I hope it doesn't go all the way to the other side. Your feet would start rebelling by then and that'd just be embarrassing. Turning a left corner led you into a maze of halls, which were all dark as pitch outside your flashlight. And still proceeding deeper.

    You kinda wished there was something to listen for. At least if you heard ominous chanting or something you could go towards it.

    Booooorrring. Bleh.

    It must be five more minutes of walking through the twisting halls and almost getting lost before you notice something. Many little things, like a discarded laptop on the floor, notebooks. Scraps of paper. Things like that in the corners, like they were dropped in a hurry.

    Not exactly what you wanted, you can't follow it for one, but something. You head deeper inside. Eventually after three more turns left, right and left again you've found a door. Nothing particularly unusual about it except for the loose pile of paper that's ended up jammed under the corner. Easing it open carefully and mindful of the noise of crumpling paper you see a room. Well lit and spacious with lots of blinking computer stations and another door at the far end of its rectangular shape, across from this one. Not a server room, just lots of almost cubicles. Papers lie strewn about the desks and countertops, along with wires, loose bolts and tools and half empty coffee cups.

    As you walk through the field of workstations a diagram near the far side of the room catches your eye with its hastily drawn lines and shaky curves. It looks… you're not sure what it is. Something mechanical and oblong and full of gears and motors, but the freaky sharp edged runes scrawled around it sort of preclude anything not demony.

    Seeing nothing else of interest you grab it and fold it up to stick in a pocket and then shoulder though the door into a brightly lit hallway with a glass wall on one side and an, airlock. Yep that's an airlock door. Um. Looking past the airlock to your left you scan down the length of the glass wall to your left and then tense. There's a dude in the glass walled… clean room you guess is what this would be.

    Its kinda not clean now though. Not with El Señor in there hunched over and writing on the linoleum floor in his own blood.

    You blink.

    Before you can decide to do anything but stare at him gormlessly he twists and looks at you. Funnily enough his face is not fucked up in any fashion, excepting the insane expression twisting his brows and making his lips flap about. His arms are messed up though, scratched and torn flesh mingling with the shredded sleeves of his lab coat and he started to get up. Shit. You raise your gun, glove going to the trigger as he charges for the glass.

    Krash!

    He leaps through it and comes for you in a lunge. Glass shards fly around him and several bounce off your metal arm harmlessly before a weight slams you onto the ground. Your spine flares in pain and you are stunned breathless.

    "Have to take you to my love! That's what he wants!" The scientist shouts above you as he straddles your legs. Nope, not having any of this. Your fist crunches into his gut to the crackle of ribs.

    "Tar frim!" Your shout scrapes your breathless throat and the flash of lightning leaping from your knuckles sends him flopping backward off your legs to crack his head messily against the tile. Standing up you find him staring blankly at nothing as blood pools beneath his brown hair. You give him a solid kick in the head, knocking his lights out. Or killing him. You're not totally sure but your slamming heart doesn't really care. If he's alive you can present him to Latria as a snack. If not ah well. Them's the breaks when an idiot attacks you.

    "George? Oh who are you?" You look up at the door opening in the far end of the hall and a huge guy walking through in a lab coat. What? Was he a linebacker?! The dude has to be nearly seven feet tall and bearing a massive black beard down to his chest. His face twists in a rage filled snarl.

    "You shouldn't be here! You'll have to see the master." His hand comes out from behind the door frame wielding a wrench which he raises with a guttural scream as he runs at you.

    "Fuck you man." You say as you line him up and pull. You ever trusty shotgun booms and his legs explode into ribbons of flesh and boney chunks all hanging together as blood paints the floor and door behind him. You walk up to him as he screams and reaches for his legs. You give him a boot to the head.

    "Fuck your master too while I'm at it." You say conversationally. You look up at the ceiling.

    "You hear that Moloch? I think you're a cunt humper who deserves what's coming for you!" Disparagement deployed you proceed.

    The next room is empty of crazy scientists. And most everything else because it seems to be a four way intersection. Left as you look over the barrel of your shotgun is empty besides flickering fluorescent lights and a turn to the right down the way. In front of you is a straight hall and a turn right. There's a sparking hole in the ceiling about where you guess an emergency exit sign would have been before the vandalism of the scientists. Going right is a straight shot and all the lights are strong. That way should be Latria and when you hold your breath and listen you can hear faint giggling.

    Well she has that well in hand. Left is best then!

    Matching thought to action you walk down the left and around the corner, finding another maze. The walls and floor lurch around you as a distant digital roar of inchoate fury blasts into your ears and one of the light fixtures falls in a splash of glass shards. Stumbling, you reach out with your glove and catch yourself on the wall drywall coming apart slightly under your claws.

    Fuck was that?

    Indeed Annie, indeed. Anyway the vote for Latria is a test of meta votes. Whatever you vote for exists and whatever doesn't, does not.

    Vote will close on Sunday at 6:00 PM UTC. You're all great by the way!
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] An important scientist cackling about how It was ready and going to kill you.

    Hopefully this is Moloch. It's time to stop playing with or food.
     
    [X] An important scientist cackling about how It was ready and going to kill you.

    A weapon to surpass Latria Gear.
     
    Last edited:
    [X] A cult circle of insane scientists working over a generator to make it explode.
     
    adaer said:
    I like that Annie has accepted having the Gauntlet as a permanent part of her enough that she's mentally referring to the clawed fingers as her claws.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Yep! That's why I put that in there.

    Vote is now closed. Thanks for voting everyone!

    E: looks like the important scientist and It has won.
    Adhoc vote count started by BungieONI on Apr 28, 2019 at 2:40 PM, finished with 18 posts and 15 votes.
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    Episode 8, Part 10 “Boss Fight”
  • Threadmarks
    • Episode 8, Part 10
    "Boss Fight"    ​


    "What did she do to Max!?" A woman scientist shouted at her male colleague as they ran away from you. He just screamed as he raced forward, away from her and you. The man and woman were rather fun to chase if you would speak honestly to anyone. Which you don't, generally.

    However, there's no one around to share this insight with so you just drifted serenely after them, your disappointment in Moloch palpable.

    He's been even sloppier than I thought, the first man I ran into was devout. These ones… are not.

    You sighed. Everything about this frustrated some part of you.

    You put it out of your mind. The turns and doors led you deeper into the facility following the errant scientist, at points paralleling what you thought was Annie's likeliest course and at times going somewhere completely different. The scientists had gotten out of sight now, at least mortal sight. You could follow their Souls through the walls.

    Which led you to standing in front of this unmarked door in a completely unremarkable hall. You were strongly tempted to play with them but your overbearing annoyance with the entire concept of Moloch and his lackeys had you raising your two right hands and blowing holes through the door. More screaming ensued as you stuck your arms through the smoking holes and ripped the door out of the frame in a splintering of wood and bending metal.

    The woman and man were backed up into the room, wielding a length of pipe and a broom respectively. You hissed and your hands reached out to them as you lunged.

    Screaming rattled out from the closet as you devoured their Souls.

    You are left holding up the coat of the man in your left hands you let it drop on top of the broom he held, the woman's coat held in your other hand following. The blood spatter at your feet expands slowly on the floor to stain the coats.

    That done and your anger soothed infinitesimally you move on. The halls are a maze of the same bare white walls and glaring white lights. The slick tile hisses under the trailing mantle you wear. Sometimes you walk, sometimes you float but all the same it looks like you make no progress to anywhere.

    What you feel tells you otherwise. Deeper in the maze you can feel Annie, and distantly you know that Buffy and her gang have split up for some reason. You don't care enough to parse them out, when instead you can taste the Souls everywhere else in the facility. Spread across its many floors it is like submersion in the sea, like the sea in your memories, full of glowing plants and fish. With yourself as the moonglow in the waters.

    And somewhere in that moonglow you taste an interesting Soul, which smells deeply of sweet flowers and a lover's perfume. Those scents overwhelming the possessed Soul and leaving only a vague trace of who they were before. Probably the most extreme progression of Moloch taking over someone that you've encountered so far in your limited experience.

    Two tall doors with pipes running above them and push bars hide the Soul from you. Through the doors you can faintly hear ranting. A wave of your hand forces the doors open with a sizzle of burning metal and stepping through you find yourself in a tall room at least four times your height, lit in the strobing light of a klaxon on concrete walls.

    "What!? Who...oh. You." Says a bedraggled pale man standing on a catwalk spanning the center of the room at twice your height. That catwalk also splits off in two places to his right and left and wraps around a huge brown tank festooned with "Explosive" and "Flammable" labels, which the pipes you had vaguely been following flow into at the top. The rest of the room is square and there is a door on the far end much like the one you just opened.

    On either side of the tank are piles of metal and… scrap? You aren't sure what they are and look at the man. He's of middling height, hair long and scraggly from lack of care, the blonde darkened by grease. His eyes are green and intent on you. He huffs at your silence and, finishing wiping his hands on a dirty rag, absently tosses it down to the floor below.

    Crossing his arms he leans against the control panel behind him, filled with dials and a few levers. Likely to do with the tank behind him.

    You fold your hands behind your back and smirk. "I see my name precedes me, as it should. Who are you, servant?" You ask with a sardonic lilt.

    He snorts. "Pretentious bitch much?" You let the insult wash over you, so utterly beneath you as to deserve no response. "My master has told me about you." He leans forward, a light in his eyes as he steps up to the railing.

    "A monster in human flesh, as far from humanity as it could be. Conniving and evil to the core. Unlike my master who is good at heart and who loves humans." He says calmly, with that mad light in his eye. You don't find it particularly untrue, barring the lies Moloch told him about himself, as all manipulator's are wont to do.

    You tap a finger on your chin and hum. "Hmm yes. I am evil and I'm sure the Slayer would love to kill me if she knew. I also don't care." You say nonchalantly and fling a bolt at him, your annoyance simmering.

    What a petty man. You think, as he ducks away from your white-blue arrow which burns past a pipe and impacts the ceiling with a pop.

    "Kill it Hounds! Attack!" He shouts and the piles of scrap jolt up and lunge forward, trying to get around you as you turn in place to track the four of them as they circle you. Assemblies on their backs rotate and reveal barrels, which the sight of causes you to start dancing out of firing range.

    Chatta-BANG-BANG-BANG.

    Bullets fly all around you, clipping your dress as gunsmoke fills your nose with acridity.

    "Do you like them!? I would have called them Hunds but German names for mad science is honestly in bad taste these days." The man shouts as he laughs raggedly above you.

    You ignore him as your shot punches through one of the four machine dogs, melting a hole through its torso. It keeps going to your surprise, forcing you to duck behind a pillar of the catwalk, flecks of concrete and bright gold sparks flying past your hair as the dogs flank you.

    Of some concern to you, some of the bullets ping off the central tank and dent the outside. Turning around the pillar you fling another two arrows and melt through their "heads". The cylindrical assemblies with camera and red lights melt under your Soul, pieces of metal falling away, and the things keep going. What?

    They have you surrounded as their guns chatter and whir. You have a single instant to react. You pop into three of yourselves, your mirrors unfolding from nothing and your Soul. One leaps for the pillar in the momentary confusion of the machines. The other two, yourself and your mirror, launch a fusillade at one of the undamaged creatures, melting through the gun and spine and legs which seems to finally kill it. Three left.

    Two of the Hounds turn to the mirror climbing up the pillar, digging her nails into the concrete as she climbs, and fire in a wave of tracers and gun smoke. The third fires in an arc and forces the two other parts of you to leap aside. One to its left, one to its right. You end up standing in front of the tank for just a moment, which is a horrible idea. Wait… no it isn't. Heh.

    You leap over the thing gracefully as your mirror dives onto it, and directs the gun at the tank as the machine tries to shoot your leaping form. Landing behind your mirror, there is a staccato of hot metal striking metal and then the hissing of gas followed very quickly by a large Whumpf! It picks you up and sends you twisting back out through the door, smacking into it with a spine juddering crack, the burning air pushing at and surrounding you.

    You hear tearing metal and a scream of horror from the man as the explosion sends you even further, flying down the hall as a few pieces of the machines shoot past you. The heat makes your skin prickle and the ground sears as you bounce off of it, leaving dents in the linoleum flooring. The crunch of your impacts however are muffled by the cracking and groaning of the building as the pipes overhead hiss and bend and pop and the lights flicker.

    Clawing a hand through the wall you force yourself to a stop, turning and facing down almost the entirety of the hallway towards the now bent outward doors. The pipes and lights and sparking wires hang down from the ceiling like entrails and broken bones. Fire coats the floor. Brushing down your hair you find it unharmed. Standing up with a slight crackle of shifting vertebrae, mild warmth on your thigh from an ember on your skirt is patted out nonchalantly as you survey your work. The air tingles at your throat, poisonous and of no concern to you and your lack of lungs beyond bags used for speech. Still, you smile.

    The mirror is gone and so is the man, with the tank now marred with a burning rent as large as you. Metal pieces are strewn about the hall from your enemies. And you're mostly unharmed. The stiffness in your spine cracks its way out as you float down the hall, avoiding the flames. The entire room is burning when you re-enter it. The man is nowhere to be found, his body hidden by the flames. Where is his Soul?

    Looking around for it you find it trying to flee and fade away. Now now, none of that. You think as you snatch it up in clawed hands and inhale it. With that you proceed. The hall on the other side of the tank room is also torn apart similarly to the other. You can hear the building groaning and shifting around you. Supports must have been damaged by the explosion. And the fire is spreading.

    No matter.

    You don't care about anything in here except for Moloch, his retainers and your knight. Where is she?

    You wonder and look around, as you settle to the ground lightly, something which is becoming easier and easier as you get stronger. Soon you'll be able to fly again. There you are.

    She's not far. Neither is a Soul so twisted by Moloch that it is Moloch.

    Oh. She's dying.

    You sprinted down the hall, your mantle surging after you in a snapping curtain. Too slow! You run faster and anger dogs your heels. Walls collapsed in your path as you didn't stop for them, burning through them with your Soul left to run amok.

    ***

    You were running down the hall, your red hair probably glinting in the lights as you lope deeper into the facility. You were also not lost.
    No, seriously you weren't. These halls were just confusing and samey and there weren't any handy cultists for you to interrogate.

    Fuck, I'm lost.

    Your sigh forces you to slow and your lope winds down to a trudge as you run a hand over your metal arm, and flexing your fingers. It tingled. Probably because you hadn't held a charge this long before.

    So you're stuck in a maze, lost and looking for a demon. What to do…

    You sigh and pick a direction at the next intersection. Left.

    And you keep picking left, hoping it would lead you deeper into the facility. For what must be almost half an hour even. And your frustration is reaching its peak. You can barely hear yourself think over the screaming growl of frustration in your head.

    Then the lights go out.

    You stop, left leg in the air. When the lights don't return in a moment like they have before you carefully set that foot down with a click. Paradoxically you can feel yourself blinking in the pitch black, as if that would help. You sigh and your frustration bleeds out of you, leaving your innards feeling stretched.

    Okay. We'll play it like that then Moloch.

    You inhale, that stretched feeling disappearing and replaced with a chill. Walking forward does not change the darkness around you, so you listen. To your clicking steps clacking off the linoleum, their faint echoes off the walls. But mostly you feel how your body moves. Using your own sense of yourself to keep walking straight.

    Soon you see a red light in the distance. Is that an emergency light…

    No, its too low.

    You fail to resist squinting as you raise your gloved hand and sling your shotgun off your shoulder into your other hand. The light is at head height and in the middle of the hall, you think. You aren't sure if its moving. You keep walking towards it, heart starting to slam and breathing to slow as you feel the adrenaline fluttering against the inner surface of your veins.

    You can't hear anything but your breath and the click clack of your footsteps and your heartbeat under them both. You're not sure how long you walked towards the light. You've lost track of the passage of time since you got lost. But it couldn't be long you think, when you watch the light waver and then slowly reveal a door. Its faint outline in the light reveals a frosted window through which the light shines, a knob and nothing else. Just a door.

    Letting out a breath you reach out slowly and jerk the knob, shoving the door open and then gripping your gun with both hands. The light shines on your face as the door smacks into the wall with a thud. The thing inside the room makes your breath hitch and your heart beat faster. The mechanical hiss of air pumps and iron pistons fills the air, in time with the breathing of the thing sitting on a throne of broken machines. The light emerges from an assemblage on its twitching chest, as pistons flex in and out, in and out of its sickly tanned chest.

    This… A part of you is justifiably horrified at this thing sitting in front of you like it just crawled off the set of Alien. But much more of you is… puzzled. No, that's not right. You step inside slowly, one foot in front of the other as you take in more details.

    A veritable forest of cables rise from the top of the thing, each as thick as two of your fingers. They descend into a frame, wrapped around something fleshy. From it sprouts two prongs. Horns. Its a helmet you realize.

    There's hair sprouting out from under it, around the edges, washed out in the faint light. Going past the fra- the helmet, you see some cables which descend into a widening of the thing sitting on the throne.. A torso and shoulders. Wrapped in cold steel. Pistons go in, pistons come out, in time with the breath. A gear turns in time with a… heart you supposed. Above that is a caged red klaxon light.

    The right hand is steel, no flesh to be seen, the arm exposed and the joining raw and swollen. The left is armored, but from the rounder shape and peek of cloth you know it clothes flesh. The legs are steel and flesh and turning joints in place of knees.

    Its a Machine-Man. A cyborg.

    A hiss of breath or released gas fills the silence of your momentary examination before it speaks.

    "Ah, my sweet wayward child. You've found me!" It chuckles, slowly raising its arms and clapping.

    "Moloch." You say, voice flat as your left finger tightens on the trigger. The thing nods, cables jostling above it, seeming joyful.

    "Indeed. And our little game of hide and seek is over now. You've found me!" He says flamboyantly, standing with the hiss of releasing cables and throwing out his arms like he wants to hug you.

    You pull the trigger. Bang! The buckshot rocks him back and a horrible feedback fills your ears, before suddenly cutting off. He lowers his arms slowly and a staticky sigh emanates from his hidden mouth.

    "My love, I love you. We were just playing a game weren't we?" The plaint- no no no.

    You shoot him. Again. Again. Again! And again!

    More shots follow as you empty the clip into him. The red light gutters out for a moment. Another sigh.

    Yellow lights shine in his eyes and the shadow of a bull mixed with a man charges at you, his roar filling your ears.

    You try to dodge out of the way, leaping left out of the doorframe. But he's fast, a fact made worse by the darkness reducing him to just a thundering charge and pulsing shadow. You feel a massive weight slam into your shins and send you spinning along the path of flight. You land in a sprawl on the ground and roll backwards, over and over as you feel through the ground and see the impacts as he smashes at you with his fists. Howling with effort you kip up backwards into a crouch, your abs screaming in protest at something you haven't done in years and raise your hand.

    "Tar Frim!" You shout! Light burns magnesium flare bright in your peripheral vision as a sudden wind flicks your bright red hair about before you close your eyes. KA-BOOOOOOM! Your vision goes white even through your closed lids as your lightning bolt races through the darkness.

    A howling shriek of digitized agony makes a feral grin bloom on your face. When you open your eyes you see a quickly fading cherry red distortion on Moloch's chest just below that spinning gear, melting some of the pistons to slag. Got you, you fuck.

    Oh shit.

    You don't have time to react before he's on you and his foot impacts your stomach. You scream as you feel fluid forced up your throat and choke on it. Your spine slams into the floor, and lights up in a pillar of agony. Whirring pistons and bearing sounds herald his stomp, you just barely roll out of the way, and grab his other leg as it rose in another stomp. He's slower.

    Yanking     him over in a cascade of metal and flesh you chant, determination pushing down your screaming body's protests. "Tar chugam a chumhacht Myhnegon!" Your voice fills your ears as your glove glows white hot on his leg, pulling ropes of electricity from him.

    Whumpf! A distant explosion makes you both look to your right, and then Moloch seems to remember you grabbing onto him and he writhes inhumanly, catching you in your distraction.

    "AAAAAAGHHHHHHHH STOP STOP!" Moloch cries out in terror as you hang on for dear life. Then there is a crunch as he crushes your metal fingers beneath his leg, flailing hard enough to embed your gloved hand into the concrete. Interrupting you, though you feel no pain.

    "Haaaaaaaa!" You scream back at him as you pull and lean back away from his strike, his fingers tearing a path through your left cheek instead of taking your head off. Woozy at the sudden strike you back off, raising your hands instinctively. Your body knows how to fight after all you got yourself through years on the street. Your feet shuffle and you go with the flow.

    Its just you and this asshole metal freak in this pitch dark alley is all. You throw a punch with your metal? Your metal hand, sending his head twisting in response as your knuckles slam painlessly, for you, into his temple. Wild haymakers come your way and you twist left, forcing him to hit your right arm and pushing it forward as your feet dance and shuffle around his.

    Clang-Clang!

    A foot flies for your knee and you jerk back, rolling away from him. And popping back up, hopping back. Daddy taught me boxing after all. You sway, tasting blood in your teeth. The guy roars at you again. What was his name again?

    As you dodge another unskilled swing of steel claws you remember. Moloch.

    Something falls loose in your head.

    Your hand snakes out, "Tar frim!" Your hand brushes his passing wrist and a bolt of lightning judders into his body. Shaking your head to clear out the last of the fuzzies you go for him, lancing bolts of lightning into him your feet forcing themselves into his space as your hands pound into his body. He's gotten wise though and he bobs and weaves around them before launching into a bear hug.

    You have no time to dodge. So you lean, pushing your metal arm against his and stepping around him as his arms start to close. Your hand latches down onto his left shoulder like a cobra and with a shit eating grin you jam the last of your lightning into him.

    "Tar Frim!" You shout. Then you scream right along with him as his arms crush you, the pistons still working in his chest punching into your torso again and again and again.

    You vainly try to struggle out of his grip, the hissing of his breath blowing your hair back as you beat at him with your free hand. You can feel your ribs creaking as you scream and howl at him.

    "Ghurk!" Your screaming is cut off as the cyber demon's left hand wraps around your throat. Strangling you. You try to work your activation spell past straining lips and gnashing teeth but you have no air. Your right hand tugs uselessly at the thing choking the life out of you as he lifts you off your feet to have your feet twitch in the air.

    "What a fiesty woman." He chuckles to himself, lost in his own little world as his other hand comes up and places itself gently on top of your head, stilling your struggles even as you try and tear him away with weakening limbs. He's strong enough to break your neck with just a twist.

    "Do you love me? I can give you everything. All I want is your love." The demon says gently as your vision begins to fade and your feelings boil over.

    What do you feel as Moloch slowly kills you?

    [] You hate him, you hate him. So much, I hate him so much… you hate yourself for being weak. For failing your only friend.

    [] You are afraid. I don't want to fail. You are afraid of leaving your only friend.

    [] You are laughing as he chokes you. You got him. You hurt him. She will kill him. You laugh at this moron, food for your friend.

    Haaaave fuuuuun!

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    • [X] You are laughing as he chokes you. You got him. You hurt him. She will kill him. You laugh at this moron, food for your friend.
     
    [X] You are laughing as he chokes you. You got him. You hurt him. She will kill him. You laugh at this moron, food for your friend.
     
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