TheEmpOfMankind
THE GREAT MANPEROR
- Location
- Golden Toilet On Terra
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
GOTTA LOOT DA STUF DOUGH! NEED IT FER DA BOYZ SHOOTAS!
I binged this, I actually love this fic. Can't wait to see more.
Project: Gamer Ver. 2 (Young Justice/Gamer/Multicross OC)
- Thread starter Mister Ficser
- Start date
I binged this, I actually love this fic. Can't wait to see more.
Fusing one of those spells into a weapon has a rather significant effect. It hits harder than the associated Dark Souls weapon enchantment spell but lacks a variety of other properties.
Dark (FF12) for example would cause Dark damage, but it would not cause the weapon to inflict Profane damage which is significantly more damaging to deities and immortals alike.
Using Holy instead of Holy Weapon will cause significantly greater Holy based damage but it won't have the self-regenerative effect nor will it actively sever the connection between a necromancer and their puppet.
Basically the actual attack or healing spells become 'Cast on hit' whereas the X-weapon spells change the nature of the weapon and often have more effects.
As to Scry- Alchemist actually picked it up way back when he was still pretending to be Leslie near the start of the story. It's good for finding things you already know about but falls pretty flat for discovering new things.
He wants to find Lex Luthor and see what he's doing? Might have a few misfires but overall not too bad.
Discover the identity of someone who's been committing crimes without leaving evidence? Shit outta luck, buddy.
I was actually thinking of a way to level it at work not too long ago. I might work that into the next arc, too, now that I'm thinking on it.
And I'm so glad to hear that, Emperor! I've been cleaning up the next chapter so it'll be ready soon!
Dark (FF12) for example would cause Dark damage, but it would not cause the weapon to inflict Profane damage which is significantly more damaging to deities and immortals alike.
Using Holy instead of Holy Weapon will cause significantly greater Holy based damage but it won't have the self-regenerative effect nor will it actively sever the connection between a necromancer and their puppet.
Basically the actual attack or healing spells become 'Cast on hit' whereas the X-weapon spells change the nature of the weapon and often have more effects.
As to Scry- Alchemist actually picked it up way back when he was still pretending to be Leslie near the start of the story. It's good for finding things you already know about but falls pretty flat for discovering new things.
He wants to find Lex Luthor and see what he's doing? Might have a few misfires but overall not too bad.
Discover the identity of someone who's been committing crimes without leaving evidence? Shit outta luck, buddy.
I was actually thinking of a way to level it at work not too long ago. I might work that into the next arc, too, now that I'm thinking on it.
And I'm so glad to hear that, Emperor! I've been cleaning up the next chapter so it'll be ready soon!
- Location
- United States
The magic food is because they were dieing from not getting enough food to fuel the broken super speed. Alchemist giving that food is technically bad for the experiment since the magic could affect things more then just being better food.
That's why Alchemist gives kid flash the ring of sustenance which is supposed to replace all food and water requirements of an adult adventurer. The fact kid flash still has to eat is a sigh of just how bad his situation is.
MaimakteriAnn
(Verified Sleepy)
- Location
- Enormous And Round Terran Homeworld
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Dr
What's this "instead of" you speak of? Holy+darkja sword is go. Also drain, osmose (or just rasp since mp costs are zero. Or both for maximum mp damage). Also would fusing the dark souls weapon enchantments into a weapon instead of casting them on it get around limits on how many you can have active at a time?
punster lv1
Killjoy - cheerful shitposter - ignorant pedant
That's not what I meant. Back in the campfire scene, Wally said that he wanted to use Barry's formula in the hope of correcting his but that he couldn't because Barry and Iris won't let him buy the ingredients. Alchemist said fuck that and offered to buy the ingredient and then said he wanted to test things on mice first. I thought that meant that at some point they'd be giving the Barry formula to the Wally expy to see if it would get better, which I don't remember happening. So I was asking if I misremembered, misunderstood or missed some scenes. (Or option d all the above)
Honestly I haven't gotten around to dealing with it yet but I'll offer a bit of a spoiler.
Every recipe for the Speed Formula (The Super-Treadmill doesn't count) induces a high-energy reaction. Wally mentioned that his even hospitalized him for a bit.
The effect it had on the mice wasn't shown, so it's my bad for leaving a hole there.
But trying to use another formula on Pinky may well have killed it in the condition it was in. Which, yes, would have been a valuable data point but also inhumane and a waste of resources.
I'll have Alchemist experiment with things a bit and get back to you.
As to Rasp- Not sure how to implement that one, actually. In the mainline game it's available in, it's taught off the lingering essence of a soul kept from proper death. Shiva and Zona Seeker magicite specifically. There is a version from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance though. I'll have to think about its implementation and if I can work it into things as they are.
Thozmp
Gets my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.
Huh. I was always under the impression that the whole turning into a rock that imparts knowledge was just a natural thing that happened to Espers, but being biologically immortal it just didn't happen often until the Empire came along. I found it an interesting concept that I've always wanted to implement.
It wasn't really explored in the game and I understand that.
There's only so much you can do at a time after all.
Even after the death of their mortal bodies, the 'Soul' of the Esper in the Magicite had some measure of awareness of what went on around it. Ramuh had one more line after he became a Magicite and it was implied that Terra's father, Maduin, was actively doing something to interact with his daughter and share his memories.
Then, at the end of the game, they can finally pass on when the magic binding them to the mortal plane is gone.
Maduin maintained his physical form for close to two decades of torture after Madeline's death and still couldn't help his daughter until after he passed. Then he was forced to linger, kept from his wife even after death.
...Alright. I'm just gonna put this back in the fridge with the rest of the horror. Next to the logic.
There's only so much you can do at a time after all.
Even after the death of their mortal bodies, the 'Soul' of the Esper in the Magicite had some measure of awareness of what went on around it. Ramuh had one more line after he became a Magicite and it was implied that Terra's father, Maduin, was actively doing something to interact with his daughter and share his memories.
Then, at the end of the game, they can finally pass on when the magic binding them to the mortal plane is gone.
Maduin maintained his physical form for close to two decades of torture after Madeline's death and still couldn't help his daughter until after he passed. Then he was forced to linger, kept from his wife even after death.
...Alright. I'm just gonna put this back in the fridge with the rest of the horror. Next to the logic.
MaimakteriAnn
(Verified Sleepy)
- Location
- Enormous And Round Terran Homeworld
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Dr
Probably get given an energy mace with an mp damage effect and have to reverse engineer it or separate the physical existence of it out in order to learn the spell. I'm all for Ivalician things turning up more. Our boy needs to get breath attacks in the 3 basic (FF) elements, as well as the confusion/sonic breath from his dragoon class.
Dragonheart and Wyrmkiller would have been incredibly useful against the Dovakin too.
EDUT: Also Magic Hammer (blue magic) predates rasp, so that is also an option. I think it's appeared in more games too, so it's probably got more ways to access it. Actually, FFV and FFVII versions of magic hammer on one item would wreck caster's mana pools really fast. Fractional damage + fixed damage.
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Even after the death of their mortal bodies, the 'Soul' of the Esper in the Magicite had some measure of awareness of what went on around it. Ramuh had one more line after he became a Magicite and it was implied that Terra's father, Maduin, was actively doing something to interact with his daughter and share his memories.
Then, at the end of the game, they can finally pass on when the magic binding them to the mortal plane is gone.
Maduin maintained his physical form for close to two decades of torture after Madeline's death and still couldn't help his daughter until after he passed. Then he was forced to linger, kept from his wife even after death.
[/QUOTE]
Didn't Terra manage to talk to Maduin one last time after they killed Kefka when he told her she could live on as a magicless human if she had a strong enough to her human friends?
It's been a while since I beat FFIIIUS.
I vaguely recall a history teacher saying that in the 19th century and before, people really did try to reuse the bricks and the nails salvaged from a burned out building. Nails and screws were far more expensive as they often had to be made by hand by a blacksmith, so they'd re-use them whenever possible.
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I don't know about bricks specifically, but a lot of old stone buildings had their stones taken and used for other things. It's what happened to the Colosseum.
- Location
- Alabama
@Mister Ficser
I'm really glad you're such a chill writer man.
Feels like I just got trolled on another story by mentioning one in story inconsistency that I wasn't even complaining about, and the author freaked the hell out.
Yet here you are going over issues we have and theories calmly and efficiently.
I'm really glad you're such a chill writer man.
Feels like I just got trolled on another story by mentioning one in story inconsistency that I wasn't even complaining about, and the author freaked the hell out.
Yet here you are going over issues we have and theories calmly and efficiently.
Bricks Tend to also get reused, though it was mainly in repaving roads. Usually Cobblestone since it was a mostly free resource that required little reprep and suffered less damage from a disaster. I don't think anyone would be crazy enough to use fired/baked bricks in a building after a fire unless seriously desperate.
Chapter 120
Project: Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build 1.2.0
Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
_________________________________________________________________________
Closing in on Kalm after rushing out of Junon, Alchemist had to wonder something...
How in the ever loving Hell had Yuffie managed to keep up with them?
His little group had hitched a ride by truck, with him and Vincent sitting in the bed while Jinx and Lucrecia sat in the cab... And Yuffie had been at Fort Condor before them. Waiting to show Jinx she 'Really is a super-cool ninja! See!?'.
They'd spent a night there, well, on the outskirts. Fort Condor was in the process of standing down now that Midgar and Wutai had a ceasefire. The group hadn't been allowed near the reactor, and Alchemist hadn't pushed, simply asking for directions to a safe location to set up camp for the night.
He actually wasn't sure what the proper name for Fort Condor was. The Condor wasn't there yet, after all.
He'd tried to send Yuffie back to Junon... But caught sight of her midway through the Mythril Mine and, at that point, he really only had a few options.
Either take her with them and try to be a responsible adult for a feral little rich kid, or... Don't.
He had to make a decision quickly, though. She was currently on the back of an insect-like creature, an Ark Dragon.
It wasn't actually a dragon. Its hissing and spitting were just normal hissing and spitting.
"Yuffie!" Jinx was shouting at the girl, attached to the back of the bucking bug. "Let go! I'll catch-"
Alchemist simply cast teleport, pulling the girl off the bug. The creature tried to lunge at them, but didn't make it far before a bullet from Vincent had its insides on the outside.
"Hey!" The little ninja struggled in his grip. "Let me go! I saw a Materia at the top of the vine and you just killed my ride!"
"You... Are aware that it would've tried to kill you the second it was able?" He kept one hand on the scruff of her greasy shirt while he was browsing through his inventory with the other. He usually considered what he was thinking to be kind of garish, but the girl was doing her best to get killed.
"Nuh-uh!" The girl disagreed.
It easily drowned out Alchemist going "Ah-hah!"
It might have been something of an abuse of Serren's Swift Girding, but he focused on the 'Armor' as he cast it and Yuffie was instantly wearing a-
Child safety harness, attached to a leash.
He handed to lead over to Jinx, who was struggling to decide if she wanted to complain or laugh.
"You." Alchemist had to inhale slowly to keep from losing his temper when the excitable girl almost knocked Jinx over. "Are more energetic than both of the dogs. Put together."
Ash and Cinder, who had been happily watching from the back with Lucrecia, seemed to nod in agreement.
"Well obviously!" The girl was fiddling with the harness, but the release latch was on the back and out of reach. "I'm ninja-princess Yuffie! That's, like, twenty times more energy than normal-princess Yuffie, and easily a hundred times better than any normal ninja-Yuffie!"
"Why have you been following us so far, anyway 'Ninja-Princess' Yuffie?" Jinx asked her as they continued through the derelict mine.
"So I can learn all of your secrets and find all of your Materia and use them to take down Shinra for the honor of Wutai!" Yuffie tried to launch herself into a pose, but fell short.
At the end of the child leash.
Alchemist snorted, even as he used Icy Spear to kill the various monsters thinking to sneak up on them. She was following them because Jinx offered the girl a meal, and she probably didn't understand that they would be happy to keep feeding her even without the enthusiasm or her needing to show off her ninja skills.
"Yuffie?" Alchemist really shouldn't do this. She was a child, the war wasn't her fault, and she was too young to understand that nationalism was a wasted effort. That patriots couldn't be trusted. "I could do more damage to Shinra over the course of three days with about two-hundred gil than Wutai managed during the entire war."
"Nuh-uh!" The littlest ninja shouted, sticking her tongue out at him. "Wutai is going to take Shinra down! We're all-"
She proceeded to make up some nonsensical martial arts poses and tried to jump around, almost pulling Jinx over and falling down herself in the middle of a kick-flip.
"Should... I be doing something?" Jinx asked him, unsure what to do with the little spaz-child.
"Nah. She'll tire herself out soon enough." Hopefully. They were near the exit, and that meant the Midgar Marsh was on the other side. Filled with massive serpents that could, and would, cast massively powerful fire magic.
He still hadn't decided if he was going to try and fight his way through, or try to teleport the group across. It depended on how much he could see, really.
He tuned back in as Yuffie seemed to be winding down. "-and Shinra will be all like, 'we're so sorry, you're so amazing and powerful and pretty, Ninja-Princess Yuffie. We'll give back everything we stole, here's all this money and we'll give you a diamond pony!' and I'll be like 'I, Ninja-Princess Yuffie, humbly accept your token of surrender!' and then I'll be all like 'Now off with their heads!' 'cuz I'm a princess and they were all a bunch of brain-dead meanie heads and-"
"One thing, real quick." Alchemist interrupted the girl.
He was going to pretend he didn't hear Vincent in the back go 'Oh thank god.'
"What's that?" The girl, only nine or ten years old, asked him.
"I think I have the perfect name for your diamond pony." He really did!
"I bet it can't beat the name 'Princess Sparkle Glitterpants the Third'!" Oh, this sweet summer child.
Alchemist cleared his throat and said-
"Butt stallion." No laughter, no grin. He was dead serious.
The group went completely silent. Even the monsters in the cave were deathly still...
"Oh god dammit." Until Lucrecia ruined it, giggling at the inane image. "You're what she'll grow up to be, aren't you!"
-----
They only really stayed in Kalm long enough for Alchemist to tell Yuffie 'No' about buying her a new Steal Materia. He didn't care what she did with her old one, he wasn't going to help a child kleptomaniac. Who didn't have a secure place to keep the loot.
After that was Midgar and... It was almost akin to voluntarily walking into Hell. The ground was literally rotting underfoot and the smell in the air, like magic that had gone rancid, mixed with oil and metal.
Even looking at the place, the megacity was surrounded by a haze of smog and there was a palpable aura of malaise.
"Wow." Jinx said looking up and up and up. "This place sucks."
Succinct and incredibly telling, considering she used to be homeless in Gotham.
"I don't know..." Lucrecia was looking up, too. "I went to college here. It's kind of nostalgic, and you never really forget that old Midgar smell."
"Bad?" Yuffie asked. "You never forget this bad smell? 'Cuz I already want to. We're not even in the city yet, I already think it smells sick."
"That's just the smell of the reactors, you'll get used to it soon enough." Lucrecia commented, stepping into a short queue to get on a train going topside.
"Yay." Alchemist cheerfully deadpanned. "And what are the health-risks associated with inhaling burnt magical smog?"
"According to the study conducted by Shinra back in my day?" Vincent spoke up, finally, with a sardonic grin just barely visible over the hem of his cloak. "There are no health risks."
"Yep. Great. Fantastic. The company that has an entire division of kooky assassins, thinks guard rails are overrated and that Alien DNA is the next best thing to Crispr are telling us that inhaling planetary lifeblood is good for us. I would ask if people believe that, but I don't think it matters." They moved forward in the queue, Alchemist ignoring the people staring at him with practiced ease.
"I'm pretty sure that's what they said during the board meeting." Vincent joked. Possibly...
It didn't really sound like a joke.
Yuffie climbed up the dour man without resistance, settling herself to sit up on his shoulder.
"Soo..." The little ninja drawled. "You said you could take down Shinra in three days on a budget of two-hundred gil, didn't ya?"
"I did indeed say that." Alchemist agreed, continuing to ignore the increasingly nervous glances people were sending his way.
"And I still don't think you can do that, so I propose we make a bet!" She leaned forward, over Vincent's head and tried to stick her finger in Alchemist's face.
"Honestly?" He poked her finger with his and gently pushed her back until Vincent wasn't leaning over. "I'm just amazed you can think."
"Rude!" She huffed, getting a giggle out of the other two girls. "If you win, I'll give you a full and proper Wutai noble title! And if you lose... I get all your Materia!"
"Huh." Alchemist brought his hand up to cup his chin in thought. "That actually sounds... Pretty bad, I'll pass."
"Hey!" She tried to swipe at him, almost knocking Vincent over. "C'mon, I'm serious! I could totally get my dad to name you a Danshaku!"
"That'd be a lot of work, though." Alchemist stepped back when the girl tried to grab at his face.
"Ugh! Fine!" She crossed her arms and pouted.
It was absurdly adorable.
"No!" She shouted after a second, pointing at Alchemist's face. "It's not fine! You're gonna teach me! If you really think you're some kind of hotshot, I want to learn!"
"Alright." He could have her shadow him for the first step, he supposed. "I hope you enjoy dumpster-diving."
Alchemist pulled out his own PHS and started browsing the internet while they waited... Or at least, it looked like he was.
~~To: Jinx~~
~~Gonna need you and Vincent to help out. I've got the infiltration part down, but I need to know where the local weapons depots are. At least the three closest to the Shinra HQ. Don't plan to hit them yet, but when I actually start causing problems I want their army to have to count every bullet.~~
A few seconds later, while his search for local contractors was loading, he got a response.
~~From: Jinx~~
~~ k ~~
Well, that was about what he'd been expecting.
Once everyone had settled on the train to go into Midgar proper, Yuffie was sitting down next to him. She'd had to hop off of Vincent's shoulders or he wouldn't have gotten through the door. Her legs were hanging off the seat, not yet long enough to reach the floor, swinging back and forth.
"Hey, uh..." She sounded a lot quieter, more nervous when she was surrounded by a lot of other people in a small, crowded space. "So you were joking about the dumpster diving, right?"
"Oh, no." It was actually incredibly important. Well, not the trash itself. But rather finding a piece of paper in the trash. "Dead serious."
"Ugh." She whined. "I was afraid of that!"
"I'm sure some of your tutors tried to explain to you about how information gathering is critical to missions?" If she were one of the Young Justice kids, he wouldn't even bother explaining this to them.
That's what Batman was for.
"What's information got to do with trash!?" That was the real question, wasn't it?
"You'd be surprised how many critical 'Shred immediately' papers end up in the garbage. Receipts, invoices, order forms... They're usually not very important by themselves, but with enough of them you can predict what someone will do, based on the things that they have done. It can also be used to- Well, I'll explain it after we get what we need." Alchemist cut off, reminiscing about some of the things he'd watched on the internet. Documentaries and guides on how things had been done in the past, or how to do things he'd never really been interested in.
Like breaking and entering. It had completely blown his mind when he discovered some of the 'Top Rated' security firms used the same three keys for everything, for the past forty years. And that he could literally purchase that set of keys for about ten dollars.
He could have broken into half of Hollywood for ten dollars... Or stolen most of the cabs in New York with one key.
And now he was going to teach a ninja about metadata.
The world of Gaia was not ready for the kind of evil he would teach this girl.
-----
Jinx was tired when she walked back into the demi-plane well after night fell.
She and Vincent had canvassed a good part of the inner ring of the city and noted there were about five storehouses roughly equidistant from the main Shinra building. It was more than Alchemist had asked after, but there wasn't anything wrong with being thorough.
She stepped to the side to let Vincent through and had to stop.
Next to the cabin door was a line of rope, extending out a few meters and into the space Alchemist had roped off to make room for -yet another- cabin to connect to a pole. And on that line was a handful of clothes. Some sort of green sash, a sleeveless white shirt, some panties and a pair of shorts.
Yuffie's clothes. The outfit she'd refused to change out of since they'd met her.
Well, she'd already been curious, but now she was even more so.
She circled around the cabin, just breathing in the clean air and appreciating not being in the loud, miserable city just beyond the door. As she was passing the ground wire leading into the soil from the electric system, she noticed Alchemist had added a new addition.
The wire fed into a bracer, one with three Materia slots, all filled. A green and blue one were paired together, with a purple one sitting in the lone disconnected slot.
Well, that was another question for the list.
Jinx stepped into the doorway and removed her shoes, taking a look around to see what people were up to.
Vincent and Lucrecia were sitting at the bar and eating. Little fried bits of dough filled with vegetables and chocobo chunks. Some kind of a local flavor that neither one of them had gotten for something like twenty-five years.
Yuffie was conked out on the couch, a spelltome in her lap. She was also wearing some actual pajamas. Sky blue, and covered with that little winged bear-cat thing with a red pom-pom on its head. Her hair was damp and slightly matted, meaning she'd probably just gotten done showering.
Jinx wasn't going to say anything, she'd smelled worse, but the girl had been getting pretty rank.
Alchemist, the last person to mention, was sitting on a chair in the living area to the side of the couch Yuffie was sleeping on and had a handful of papers in front of him and a book of his own on his lap.
Jinx grabbed the last seat in the living room and sat down herself, her feet feeling especially relieved that the day was over.
"Did you have any luck?" She said, quietly enough to not wake up the little ninja.
"Loads, actually." Alchemist set his book aside, letting Jinx get a better look at it.
Molded, torn, worm-eaten and just downright falling apart.
He shuffled through the papers for a second before handing a few to her.
Looking at them... Jinx could see they were listed as being from various businesses. Plumbing, electric, HVAC specialists?
"What's an HVAC?" She asked, not recognizing the term.
"Heating, ventilation and air conditioning." He grinned at her before pulling another sheet out of his inventory and handing it to her. "And that right there is going to be my golden ticket on getting into the building."
It was an order request form, though it had a coffee stain covering the signature. It requested maintenance be performed on a 'Smelly vent' in 'Shinra main office, floor 66, executive meeting room' with a small note in the bottom that said 'Scarlet is complaining that it smells like a bathroom. Someone better fix it before she decides to make it worse'.
"How's this going to work? Don't they have their own maintenance team or something? They're really big and all." It would kind of defeat the purpose of trying to sneak in if they caught him right at the front door.
"A general team, probably. I used to be a janitor, so I've got some experience in how these guys operate. Usually the 'Boss' is a pretty good handyman, and he's got a team that can do some general maintenance under him. Plunging toilets, vacuuming, sweeping and just general work. Anything bigger than that though?" Alchemist tapped on the paper in her hands. "They have to hire someone from outside. A master electrician is stupidly expensive, so keeping one on-staff is usually too costly. Same thing for most services, honestly."
That made sense, she guessed.
"Between my golden ticket there and the equipment I picked up today, they probably won't even look at me twice. Got a hi-visibility vest, a hardhat, one of those big clipboards you can keep documents in and a half-ladder that can extend to full size." He seemed pretty confident that he could sneak in with that kind of equipment.
Jinx had really been expecting black suits and nunchucks or shuriken or something. Ninja stuff.
"Okay." He was just going to walk through the front door and expect them to let him in. He had some confidence, she definitely couldn't argue that. She had one more thing she'd like to ask about that, but there were a few other things that she wanted to talk about before she forgot. "What did you do with the power line outside? I saw it going into some Materia instead of the ground."
"Oh, that! A small experiment. I had the Elemental Materia I bought, and the one we found on the mountain hooked into my gauntlet, alongside a Thunder Materia when we got the rewards from Jenova and her kin. So I got a bunch of baby Materia, and decided to try something with one of the mastered ones. Out there, I've got a mastered Elemental Materia hooked up to a Thunder Materia, so it's taking in the waste energy and converting it to HP. Technically. Except I also got the HP to MP Materia from a cave on the other side of the mountains near Corel... So I found a way to convert electricity into magic." He snorted after taking a breath, a smile on his face. "And it used crystals. Because of course it did."
She got the feeling she was missing something, there.
Moving on, she picked up the book he'd been reading and checked the face.
Worm-Eaten and blank, no name to be found.
"What are you reading?" She checked the first page instead, very gently turning the brittle paper.
"It's called Basic Attack Symbols." Alchemist cast a spell and the cracks that had formed in the paper sealed together with some golden sparkles. It returned to... Being brittle and worm-eaten. "The spells are a nice touch, unlike the ones from Tamriel they will actually grow with me... But that's not really the point."
"I can tell you're just doing this because you want to explain what you're doing, so please, continue." Jinx just grinned at the almost guilty look on Alchemist's face.
"Symbology, the magic system this teaches, works kind of like a programming language and goes all the way from basic stuff like this to invading the realm of the gods. That'd be like a post-doctorate project compared to-" He pointed at the book."-something you learn in kindergarten."
"Huh." That was kind of interesting. It sounded like a lot of work though. "Have you had any luck?"
"I literally just started today, I'm not even all the way through the book yet." Oh. Well. "It seems interesting, though. It works kind of like an assembly line, with each individual symbol 'Assembling' a part of the spell."
That was actually an interesting analogy. She could sort of see how that would make it simple to learn... And at the same time, she'd watched a documentary once on an automobile assembly line and seen how big they could get, how complex the vehicles really were.
Letting that thought ruminate in the back of her mind, she wondered if she should try and learn it herself. Though, he said he was just using it as a starting point to see if he could do much with the magic system itself...
Well, she'd figure it out later.
Instead, she started pulling papers out of the inventory. Crude maps Vincent had helped to draw showing things like doorways and likely patrol routes. She was about to start explaining them, when something Alchemist had said earlier reared up in her mind.
"Hey, Alchemist?" She started, looking over at the slumbering child on the couch. "How much did all of your gear for the infiltration cost you?"
He grinned, his eyes full of mischief.
"One-hundred and ninety-nine gil."
-----
Getting started had been easy enough. He'd said he would walk right through the front door, and he had.
Ladder under one arm, clipboard attached to his belt and a sack of simple, common tools in his other hand, he walked right up to the front desk. The woman, some young bottle-blond had been looking at him oddly since he walked right in.
"'Scuse me, miss? Supposed to be fixin' some vent up on..." He made a show of putting his tools down on the ground and pulling his clipboard off his belt to look at it. "Floor sixty-six?"
"I apologize, sir, but floors sixty and up are restricted." The long-suffering look she sent him was one he was well used to. That was the same look he'd gotten pretty often in his last life any time he had to deal with the office staff at his manufacturing job.
"That's why I'm talkin' to you though, ain' it?" He handed over the clipboard, coffee stained request form right on top. Underneath of it would be carbon-copy paper sheets listing a 'Alchemic Solutions: HVAC Department'.
She read over it, noting that the work order actually did have the phone number for the In-Building Maintenance division, though the signature on the bottom was impossible to make out, being a scribble covered in dried coffee.
"Please hold. I need to call this in." A bit more secure than he'd expected honestly... But not too surprising. Military was about the only group that he'd ever heard of that was harder to trick with just a vest and a ladder.
"Take your time, sweety. I'm billin' you guys for every minute after all." Well, he'd be handing them an invoice at least. Without an actual bank account he couldn't do much with it, but it would help sell the distraction.
While she was busy getting things figured out, another Alchemist formed just a bit out of sight. With a quick application of adjustable disguise, a mousy-looking office worker disappeared up the stairs to the next floor.
There was a lot of things all throughout the building that he'd need to find, up top and down below. He knew there was a less restricted Research and Development division on floor twenty, an advanced weapons research lab around floor forty-five...
And Deepground SOLDIERs somewhere deep, deep, deep below the skyscraper. Filled with monsters like Nero the Sable, Azul the Cerulean and their nihilist leader, Weiss the Immaculate.
The man Hojo had implanted with Omega WEAPON.
Hopefully that hadn't happened yet. Without Vincent having full control over Chaos, fighting him would fall to Alchemist and he... Just, really just didn't want to do that.
Either way, there was going to be blood on his hands and he still hadn't figured out how to deal with that. He hadn't told Jinx about it yet, but... He didn't want to put that on her. Or worse.
Have her offer to help him.
"Alright sir." The receptionist finally spoke up to Alchemist the First. "An escort will be along shortly from the Maintenance Division. You will follow them to the work area, and only to the work area. If you try to go anywhere without supervision you will be detained and questioned. Is that understood?"
"Yeah, yeah. I know how it goes. I do my job, I get paid. I don't know nothin'. I don't see nothin'. I don't tell no one nothin'. I signed the confidentiality paperwork already." Well, that was a bald-faced lie.
"Very good. Feel free to wait in the sitting area upstairs. Please make sure to hold on to your badge." So saying, she handed him a little plastic card that said 'Visitor'.
He just stuck it into his breast pocket, leaned over and lifted the ladder he'd brought with him.
-----
Alchemist the Second, still in the guise of a typical office worker, hit the button in the elevator he'd hopped in to so it would take him to the twentieth floor.
Quite frankly, while this was kind of exciting, it was a task he didn't really want to do. Unfortunately, he'd tried to Scry for various things he knew of that could have been in Shinra's possession but had only gotten fuzzy results.
Apparently the building was filled with either lead pipes or lead paint. Either way, lots of lead and that interfered with a lot of divination spells or skills. He'd managed some general ideas, but everything had been so fuzzy it was almost a wasted effort.
-----
Alchemist One waited for about twenty minutes before his escort arrived. A wiry, red headed man wearing a beige jumpsuit. A pair of goggles up in his hair, a stun baton poorly hidden in a thigh pocket.
Reno. A member of the Turks.
They, correctly, thought he might be a spy! Either this gambit had been pulled in the past, or they were just generally paranoid at the moment.
Alchemist almost felt bad. He was going to just completely waste this mans time.
"You the escort?" He asked the redhead, already sure of his answer.
"Yep. You here about some vent or somethin'?" Alchemist stood up and once again picked up his ladder.
"That's what the boss said, got the paper iffen you wanna see it." Reno just waved him off and lead them to a different elevator than Alchemist the second had used.
This one was a round glass tube, an express elevator that wouldn't activate without an approved keycard.
-----
Alchemist the Second, having had no luck in Research and Development, swapped his disguise to a wiry, blond teen and pulled a tray out of his inventory. One he quickly populated with cups of coffee. His next destination was Advanced Weaponry, floor forty-five.
-----
On floor sixty-six, Alchemist the First waited for Reno to take lead. He wasn't in a hurry after all. Still, it didn't take long before he was in the center meeting room. A very expensive carpet under foot, chairs that looked to be custom made all situated around a rich, dark wooden table.
He could see his reflection in the polish on it.
And, yes, the room smelled like a toilet.
"Hoo! Geeze! Alright, I can definitely see why we need an expert!" Reno tried to wave his hand in front of his face to clear out the smell, but it had fully saturated the room.
"Oh yeah." Alchemist agreed with him. He sort of wondered who the hell had eaten what the hell, because he was pretty sure the only time a human was supposed to make this kind of stench was after death.
-----
Palmer, a balding, obese older man wearing a mustard suit stepped out of the bathroom stall he'd just made use of and headed straight for the door. Skipping past the sinks.
His tummy had been giving him so much trouble lately!
Ah well, nothing a spot of tea couldn't fix. Tea with lemon, and sugar, and lard!
-----
But pushed that thought out of his mind. Some mysteries were better left unsolved.
"Alright." Alchemist began unfolding the ladder he'd been carrying this entire time. "Let's get this show started, eh?"
He climbed up and pushed the vent grate to the side, climbing in.
He'd briefly worried about it collapsing under his weight... But then he remembered it had somehow held up Cloud, his absurd compensator sword, Tifa and Barret all at once.
It was... Surprisingly roomy, up in the vents.
"Budge over, buddy. Gotta do my own report on what you do, so I gotta watch." Reno slapped Alchemist's leg, and the wizard moved forward to let the smaller man in.
"Friggin' perv." Alchemist shot back at him, getting a choked half-laugh in return.
He stuck a finger in his mouth and then pulled it back out, holding it up in the air. Once he knew where the vent was pushing the air from, he started heading in that direction.
-----
Alchemist the Second, now with a tray bereft of coffee, made a mental note of the location. Advanced Weaponry had yielded some positive results that he was definitely going to be revisiting later. They had actually been studying a variety of confiscated and experimental weapons and armor.
He once more changed his disguise, donning a lab coat and slicked down brown hair. His next goal? Finding the basement and finding the Materia research division, which should be on its way further and further down until he manages to find both Deepground and Reactor Zero.
-----
"Yeah, this here's yer problem." Alchemist the First had ended up leading Reno through the vents, around a corner to a fan. "Also, apparently, someone left a Materia here. Some kinda purple one. Here, you want it?"
"Nah, bro. Keep it. Call it a bonus or somethin'." Reno was gagging behind him, the smell inside the vents was actually worse than it had been in the conference room.
~~Item Acquired! ~~
~~ HP Plus Materia X 1! ~~
"Alright. Anyway here's the issue, bub. Whatever jackass installed this fan? It's backwards. Supposed ta be pushing air outta the building, but it's pullin' it in. Wouldn' be too big a deal, but this vent's also connected to your shitter. So's it's pushing it all down the vent the way we came and grabbin' the air from your toilet to bring along wit' it. Ain't a hard fix, but it's gonna be a bit of a bitch 'cuz of the space we got." Alchemist rapped a knuckle against the case of the fan that was blowing cold air into his face.
"If it's not a hard fix, how come nobody's come and fixed it yet?" Reno asked, starting to shimmy his way back when he saw Alchemist's ass start heading his way.
"'Cuz ain't nobody come up in here and looked! That little magic ball's prolly been here since the place was built." As much as this sucked for Reno, it sucked for Alchemist too. "Gotta figure out where the damn switch box is so we can shut off the fan so's I can turn it around. Unless you want me lookin' at your blueprints, that's all on you buddy."
That alone could take another hour, considering he doubted these guys bothered with updating their records every time they had to rewire something for Hojo, just upstairs.
"Yeah, yeah. I hear ya." Reno grumbled. "Lemme call my boss."
Idly, Alchemist wondered how long he could draw this little charade out for.
Probably another two hours, easily.
-----
It had taken a bit of doing, but Alchemist the Second had found his way downstairs.
Mostly by stealing the credentials off a member of the infantry that was following Scarlet around like a dog and shifting his disguise into a faceless mook.
He inhaled slowly as the digital panel in the elevator changed to give him access to the basement floors. Wetting his lips, he pressed the button for B-Thirteen, Materia Research and Development.
He was calm. He was in control. He didn't know what he was doing and neither did anybody else...
So why was he starting to feel nervous?
-----
It took almost three hours for the repairman that Reno was stuck watching to finish dealing with the vent problem.
Most of it had been spent waiting for the actual Building Maintenance team to hunt down the right junction box to shut off the power to the fan so the guy could work on it.
The actual amount of time the guy spent working only totaled up to, like, thirty minutes. Forty at the most.
The guy had gone to the bathroom twice in that time... But Reno had followed him and he'd just used a urinal, washed his hands and come back to wait.
This was the weirdest unscheduled 'Repairman' that they'd ever had to deal with. The guy had actually come in, done the job, explained what he was doing when Reno asked and then handed him the bill.
He was still trying to explain this to Tseng and the man just wasn't meshing with it.
"Look, I'm saying the guy actually did the work he said he'd be doing. I was watching him the whole time, never took my eyes off him!" And it was starting to irritate the redhead.
"We've dealt with this exact same scenario a dozen times, Reno. The 'Repairman' never just 'Does his job'." Tseng, filling in for Verdot, seemed to insist that there was something amiss, something he'd missed. "So we need to find out where, exactly, he was and what he did. Directly over the board room would be the perfect location to place a bomb, or some form of bug."
"I've looked. Cisnei looked. Maintenance deconstructed and rebuilt the fan from the ground up. Unless you think he dropped a camera in one of the urinals, there's nothing there!" Reno understood where Tseng was coming from. He really did. But this was practically the same as calling Reno incompetent!
"And did you check the urinals?" Reno had to keep from groaning. Tseng was always too serious!
"...Yes." And didn't it burn to admit that part. "Same story, nothing there either. The guy literally came in and did the work he said he'd do."
Tseng raised one very thin eyebrow. The equivalent of him shouting 'I don't believe it!'.
"Yeah, I know, alright?" Reno raised his hands in front of him in mock surrender. "It's weird. This scheme always falls apart when it comes time to do the real work, I know. The vents work right, so it doesn't smell like Palmer on hot dog night anymore. The guy actually might have been a repairman. Any luck on the work order?"
"...So far, no. Calling the PHS number, we get sent to voicemail for an 'Alchemic Solutions Repair Services' but nobody has answered so far. No internet presence, but that's not unusual for one or two man businesses in Midgar." Tseng placed both his hands on the desk in front of him, held together in a loose fist. "And you're certain he left nothing behind?"
"Actually..." Reno began fishing in his pants pocket for a moment before he held his hand out, palm up. "He did forget one thing..."
-----
Alchemist, back in the demi-plane, was double checking his equipment. He'd had a near-miss with Rosso the Crimson after he found his way to the Deepground levels, but everything else had gone reasonably smooth.
He was putting everything from his disguise away and stopped to double check the list he'd made.
One thing was missing.
He looked through everything again, but still-
"Where the hell is my ten millimeter socket?!"
-----
Alchemist had waited until the others had fallen asleep.
Ash was whining at him as he neared the exit, but he couldn't put it off. Not for long at least.
But... For a moment, just one.
He crouched down and put his hands around her head, rubbing the black wolf-dogs ears before bringing his forehead against hers.
"I'm scared." He whispered to her, afraid to admit it. He had to say it, had to tell someone but that didn't mean he enjoyed it. "I've never tried something like this before."
He'd killed one person already. Sindri hadn't been planned, at least, but her life was still on his mind. The ones he was planning on hunting down during the confusion he'd cause?
There were no authorities he could hand them over to. He could capture them and keep them in his inventory indefinitely, but that really wasn't much different to ending their lives. It just meant there'd be the added risk of their potential escape, somehow.
And even if he did capture them, then hand them over to Wutai or Avalanche, they'd just torture and then kill the people on his list, except for the one person that most deserved it.
Hojo was just too valuable. Supposedly knew too much. Everyone considered the madman a resource instead of a rabid dog.
He wrapped his arms around the growing pup in an awkward hug. She whined at him again, but he didn't let go.
Not until the trembling in his arms stopped.
He stood up and took a step towards the door, a strange, light feeling in his chest. Ash tried to rush out the door ahead of him, but he stopped her and picked the pup up.
"I'll be back soon, hon." He set her down inside the doorway, noises and smells coming in from Midgar. "Sooner begun, sooner done."
There was a quiet click as the door closed, leaving him alone in a back alley in Midgar.
He took a slow, trembling breath and cast Haste, hitting himself with a truly massive speedboost. One final check to his equipment, making sure he'd attached the Balor barrel to the Hydra, and that he'd socketed in the Destruct Materia taken from the Shinra Mansion paired with Added Effect, from Cosmo Canyon.
He'd actually gotten lucky, fusing the Supernova Long Barrel into the Balor had transferred the boosts and weight reduction while giving him back the materials he'd used. He couldn't think of a reason he'd want a spare Supernova Long Barrel, but he might figure something out later.
He let himself nod once. The combination would break through magical shields like they weren't even there. Occasionally it might even have an instant Death effect on vulnerable targets.
Armor? Check.
Weapon? Check.
Steal Materia? Check.
Other Materia? Also check.
Everything was ready. He was as ready as he could force himself to be.
He raised his right hand, snapped his fingers and cast Teleport. The first time of many tonight.
-----
Heidegger wasn't a man that woke up easily.
Or happily.
And to bad news?
"What are we paying you idiots for!" He boomed, rushing through the halls in the Shinra main office as one of his aides was relaying the problems to him.
Someone had robbed not just one, or two, or even three of the Shinra Security Forces armories.
They'd raided all five that serviced the main facility!
Everything had been stolen! Guns, bullets, swords, Materia and grenades! The robot sentries had all been fried, the cameras had barely caught anything! Sometimes a black wisp of a figure before the camera was destroyed!
Whatever group was doing it had to be large and well coordinated, there had to be saboteurs to have orchestrated such a massive attack on them!
"Sir! So far the perpetrators still haven't been fo-" His aide cut off when Heidegger buried his fist into the mans gut, dropping him to the ground and taking the tablet he'd been reading from.
He continued alone into the conference room, Scarlet, Lazard and President Shinra already present.
Hojo was late, if he was going to show up at all.
"Well?" President Shinra had barely waited for him to sit down. "Why haven't your men managed to catch these thieves?"
"We're hunting ghosts!" Heidegger slammed his fists into the table. "They knew the patrol routes of the security forces, they knew where the cameras were and they've disabled all of the security! Either by destroying it or outright bypassing it!"
Regardless of his many failings, Heidegger could read pretty damned quickly. The summary on his former aides tablet of what was missing or destroyed was staggering.
"They've taken literally everything! Even the spare uniforms and sidearms from the barracks!" And that was upsetting for a variety of other reasons. Like the fact that the thieves had managed to sneak around all of the men, could have killed all of them without a single one waking up.
And they'd settled for stealing everything around his men instead.
That was as much a message as anything else. A declaration of what this group could have done, how well trained their operatives were!
"How did you let this happen, Heidegger?" Scarlet, wicked Scarlet, had leaned forward. She was almost spilling out of her dress, but that hardly mattered. She was actually focused on what was going on, rather than just what she could get out of it. She understood what it meant.
"Let it happen?! These bastards must have been planning this for weeks! They couldn't have accomplished this without inside help!" SOLDIER getting sick, Hojo's experiments dying en masse and now his army was disarmed?! "Almost every department has been hit!"
He was calming down, now. Noticing the patterns, now.
"Almost every department has been hit." He repeated, looking to Lazard, then Hojo's empty seat. "SOLDIER, the Science Department, Security... Which one is next?"
The great bearded bastard looked at Scarlet first, then to Veld's empty seat.
He, like everyone else, paid no attention to the empty seat reserved for the head of Urban Planning.
-----
Down below, deep and far below, Alchemist stood at the precipice of Reactor Zero.
He had a plan, and security around the reactor was painfully lax.
The first part involved downing an awful Extract of Twin Form.
Keeping his stomach bile down as a clone formed next to him, made of magic, mud and blood he began step two.
Alchemist and his copy both cast Bilocation. A grand total of four Alchemists.
A great and terrible nightmare...
They each spread out to points roughly equidistant around the lip of the mako pool, and then began step three.
Using a combination of Conversion and Transmutation, they created massive iron pillars from the almost bottomless collection of garbage in his inventory. Reaching high, up into the caverns above them. They were barely able to stand upright on their own, and honestly wouldn't if not for being anchored well below the ground.
Step four involved wrapping each pillar with copper wire, technically starting at the top before slowly, slowly (For him) coiling back down to him on the ground level.
Step five...
"Ka-" Said Alchemist-One.
"Me-" Continued Alchemist-Two.
"Ha-" Chanted Alchemist-Three.
"Me-" Alchemist-Four kept going.
"HA!" They all shouted together, casting Lightning Storm at roughly the same time.
The stream of impossibly strong electricity from each copy quickly charged, and then overcharged his makeshift electromagnets. Their fields quickly and dangerously combining as they expanded rapidly!
The computers controlling the reactor quickly died. Then the ones higher up in the Shinra building proper.
If someone had been fast enough, or recording with a very good camera, they could have actually watched as Shinra went dark.
Floor, after floor, after floor. Starting from the ground and quickly climbing up to the very top.
The four Alchemists quickly rejoined at the 'throne' overlooking the Mako.
They shared no words, they had no need to do so.
They were, after all, of the same mind.
-----
Nero the Sable was the only member of Deepground capable of acting freely in the dark.
He didn't know why everything had shut off, but the entire facility was pitch black. Not even the emergency lights had activated.
Weiss and Rosso were both with him, trying in vain to find the emergency power controls for their floor. So far, though, they'd had no success.
Every digital screen was black and none of them were familiar with the non-combat operations that went on around them.
There was a subtle shift in the air, something they all felt before there was a muffled shout back in the direction of the main facility.
Nero turned to Weiss, waiting expectantly for his brother to tell him what to do.
Waiting for instructions that never came.
In the inky blackness, Nero could still see. In the inky blackness, he saw a man appear, his edges blurred and pointing a very large rifle directly at his leaders head.
"Wei-" He started, but got no further before the intruder had pulled the trigger.
Weiss the Immaculate was a phenomenally fast individual. His enhancements in preparation for being bound to a being of great power had ensured that.
Whoever the intruder was, though, he wasn't using a normal weapon. The retort of the gun happened so fast, Nero hadn't been sure it happened at all!
All he knew for sure what that Weiss was now sporting a very massive hole going through his skull!
Rosso the Crimson had only just started to turn when she was turned into a toad. A toad!
Nero started to step forward, the appendages on his back beginning to unfold when the intruder stepped forward in a flash, crushing Rosso underfoot and grabbed Nero's face!
The last things the rabid dog of a man heard, before the corrupted mako in his blood began to boil, was the man saying "Holy!".
-----
Basement floor Thirteen was the advanced Materia research division.
Though better known in some circles as 'Scarlet's Playground'. The woman delighted in watching as her dedicated scientists struggled to push their equipment to the limit to form new, strange Materia.
Under normal circumstances, they would be working on a variety of things. One very exciting prospect being the 'Huge Materia' project. Though, they were still waiting on news from Material Sciences about creating a containment chamber that could withstand the pressure necessary to condense enough Mako into the appropriate density and purity.
Under current circumstances, they were analyzing and cataloguing Materia that were thought to be relevant to the now former war effort. They were also, unfortunately, forced to add even more to their plate with the analysis of Materia confiscated from Wutai with the new ceasefire.
Regardless of what the scientists were supposed to be doing, it was close to two in the morning and everybody had gone home.
Meaning the Alchemist who was ripping open cabinets and pulling everything loose was completely unopposed.
He'd been planning to just teleport any interlopers to the main lobby, but this worked, too.
~~ New Items: Get! ~~
~~ Double Cut Materia X 1! ~~
~~ Hades Materia X 1! ~~
~~ Shield Materia X 1! ~~
~~ Non-functional projects confiscated anyway X many ~~
-----
Being an intern for Shinra had looked like such a good job!
On paper.
And then Markus had actually gotten the job! And discovered that it really, really sucked.
'Come work for Shinra! It's the best way to serve Midgar against the terrors of Wutai!'. Yeah. No.
All he'd done all day since joining up was swing around weapons confiscated from Wutai, or subject himself to low-level attacks to make sure that newly made equipment worked as intended.
Advanced weapons division his ass!
Still...
Holding one of the new models of pistol in hand had him feeling a lot better, ever since the lights went out. All the way up on the forty-fifth floor, they didn't get much light coming up from the city, and his phone had died as well.
He considered trying the emergency stairwell, but he'd stumbled his way to the door and taken a look. The lights were dead, as far up and down as he could see.
Going down forty-four flights of stairs, in the dark... It seemed like a bad idea.
Like, a really bad idea.
Possibly worse than coming here to work in the first place.
There was a crash in one of the side rooms, and Markus jumped! His finger on the trigger guard almost slipping in to the deceptively simple piece of metal inside before he got a hold of himself.
It was fine. Just fine. Probably just a spear or, or something got put away wrong and fell over!
That was all!
He jumped again when he heard a door slam shut.
"Hello?!" Markus called out, into the darkness.
But nobody came.
Markus wrapped both hands firmly around the pistol grip and brought it up to a ready position, peering into the darkness that had swallowed up the floor.
If he got out of this, he didn't care what kind of overtime he was promised, he wasn't doing anymore graveyard shifts!
He heard rapid footsteps and brought the gun down! ...But there was nothing there.
"Who's out there?!" He'd heard rumors about the building, after dark.
About some evil ghoul with shining eyes that would make people disappear.
But he'd thought they were just rumors!
He heard another noise, this time a door slamming shut and more footsteps.
Panicking, Markus slammed himself against a wall opposite the windows and frantically looked around, his eyes wide.
He felt a cold sweat dripping down his forehead. His knees were quaking. He was barely holding on to his bladder.
"I-I'm warning you!" He shouted into the darkness. "I'm armed! I know how to use-"
He was cut off when a shadow just blinked into existence in front of him. Its hand wrapped around the gun in his hands.
"Ah!" It said, and it was surprisingly chipper. "I've been looking everywhere for that!"
"Wha-what the?! Who the hell are-" Markus was cut off before he could even finish asking the figure anything when he found himself standing in the lobby.
Hand still held out as though to shoot, but his gun was nowhere to be found...
~~ New Items: Get! ~~
~~ Greatsword- Heaven's Cloud ~~
~~ Gun- Outsider ~~
~~ Spear- Glow Lance ~~
~~ Shuriken- Conformer ~~
~~ Glove- Master Fist ~~
~~ Bracer- Escort Guard ~~
~~ Bracer- Ziedrich ~~
~~ Bracer- Minerva Guard ~~
~~ Accessory- Touph Righ ~~
-----
Hojo sat in his lab, his breathing shallow. Across from him was Hollander, suffering a rather similar issue.
Unlike Hojo, however, the lesser scientist had failed to realize what his symptoms indicated until the damage had begun to accumulate. Where Hojo was simply tired and suffering a variety of minor issues, Hollander had turned yellow.
Some of their enhancements had remained from the experiments they'd performed on themselves. It, like with their Soldier subjects, limited the extreme damage to something that was survivable. Miserable, but at least it wasn't lethal for them.
Neither of them liked each other, both competing to get more funding, more personnel, more samples from Shinra... But in the complete absence of light or help, the two had chosen to keep each other company.
Sitting in the main observation deck over the testing area, a gas-powered Bunsen burner providing light for the two of them, they were recounting stories of their successes.
That came to a sudden halt when they heard gunshots ringing out from a few floors below.
"...I don't suppose that would be our security team, dealing with whomever is the cause of this, would it?" Hollander asked of Hojo, leaning forward until his elbows were on his knees.
"...No." Hojo had his head tilted to the side, listening intently. "Unless they've begun utilizing anti-monster rounds in high-caliber weaponry."
Hojo had dabbled in quite a few fields, picking and choosing the armaments given to the Deepground soldiers himself. He'd actually taken the time to observe and properly test the various sizes and types of ammunition across the vast catalogue on offer by Shinra.
"Well..." Hollander was distinctly less involved in many of Shinra's deeper secrets. It was part of what kept Hojo so confident that the man, aping Hojo's experiments, would never be able to replace him. "Hopefully they won't be able to make it to the labs, then."
"This is the most secure section of the facility." Hojo observed, though he neither agreed nor disagreed. "Breaching it would pose a significant expenditure of effort."
Until just recently, the labs had played host to a nightmarish medley of monsters. Some captured and experimented on, others incubated and grown in vats. Each and every one, however, had been incredibly dangerous under the appropriate circumstances.
And now the majority of them had expired, quite often due to Mako toxicity and organ failure.
The specimens that hadn't been tampered with were still viable, so it was clearly an issue in the enhancement process rather than an outside factor.
Considering what all had occurred and which specimen had made it through almost entirely intact? Hojo had been left wondering if this was, perhaps, some inexplicable plan initiated by the Jenova entity. He had no idea what, exactly, it might be planning with Sephiroth but he was now the single strongest being on the Planet.
At least as far as he was aware.
"I suppose you're rather pleased with yourself, skipping the meeting the Boss called, aren't you?" Hollander accused, interrupting Hojo's mumbling.
The much thinner, greasy little man glared at him before grunting with a solid "Hmph!".
There was a moment of silence as the two simply stared at the solid, constant flame. Neither of them really 'there' in the building but rather thinking of something else.
"If you must know." Hojo reached up and adjusted his glasses. "I wasn't made aware of any meeting until only a scant few minutes before the outage. Unlike buffoons such as Heidegger, I'm actually responsible for completing my own work."
Yes, he had assistants. Yes, he delegated as much scut work to them as he possibly could. Reviewing, analyzing and comprehending test results was still something he had to do personally though.
"How magnanimous!" Hollander mocked. "The great Hojo, working shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow with the rest of us! Taking time away from your magnum opus to help us little scientists!"
Hojo wrinkled his nose, an ugl(ier)y look on his face.
"The only reason you're even tolerated, you binge-eating halfwit, is that your adolescent ideas are at least novel in their execution, if not their idiocy!" It should be noted that neither of the men were at their best, both suffering the effects of the loss of J-Cells in their bodies.
"And you're an unimaginative hack using iterative experiments to make up for your lack of inspiration!" Hollander stood up, slamming his hands down on the table. "If you weren't still cribbing from Gast's notes, Sephiroth would have fallen apart more than a decade ago!"
The burner had been knocked to the side, the flames reflecting off of black platemail being completely ignored.
"As though you've any right to complain! Angeal and Genesis both are incomplete and likely to fail any day now!" Hojo stood up to shout at the larger, fatter man.
"And what do you know about that!?" Hollander shouted in his face. "Do you know who has to perform the autopsies on your Makonoids?! Me! Every single time, it's been me! I can practically reverse engineer your process just by-"
Hollander was cut off when a bullet went in one ear and out the other.
Hojo had frozen in place, staring as his long time rival died directly in front of him.
He had just enough time to turn and stare at the perpetrator, a large man in black armor lit up by the dim light of the gas flame.
"Wha-" Was the very last thing he ever said before he joined Hollander in the Life Stream.
The very last thing that went through his mind? A fifty caliber bullet.
~~ Key Item Recovered ~~
~~ Ifalna's Remains ~~
Character sheet courtesy of the amazing Memzak!
I don't know what I've done but I broke the character sheet after Perks. I'll work on it when I'm back from work. I appreciate your patience!
Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
_________________________________________________________________________
Closing in on Kalm after rushing out of Junon, Alchemist had to wonder something...
How in the ever loving Hell had Yuffie managed to keep up with them?
His little group had hitched a ride by truck, with him and Vincent sitting in the bed while Jinx and Lucrecia sat in the cab... And Yuffie had been at Fort Condor before them. Waiting to show Jinx she 'Really is a super-cool ninja! See!?'.
They'd spent a night there, well, on the outskirts. Fort Condor was in the process of standing down now that Midgar and Wutai had a ceasefire. The group hadn't been allowed near the reactor, and Alchemist hadn't pushed, simply asking for directions to a safe location to set up camp for the night.
He actually wasn't sure what the proper name for Fort Condor was. The Condor wasn't there yet, after all.
He'd tried to send Yuffie back to Junon... But caught sight of her midway through the Mythril Mine and, at that point, he really only had a few options.
Either take her with them and try to be a responsible adult for a feral little rich kid, or... Don't.
He had to make a decision quickly, though. She was currently on the back of an insect-like creature, an Ark Dragon.
It wasn't actually a dragon. Its hissing and spitting were just normal hissing and spitting.
"Yuffie!" Jinx was shouting at the girl, attached to the back of the bucking bug. "Let go! I'll catch-"
Alchemist simply cast teleport, pulling the girl off the bug. The creature tried to lunge at them, but didn't make it far before a bullet from Vincent had its insides on the outside.
"Hey!" The little ninja struggled in his grip. "Let me go! I saw a Materia at the top of the vine and you just killed my ride!"
"You... Are aware that it would've tried to kill you the second it was able?" He kept one hand on the scruff of her greasy shirt while he was browsing through his inventory with the other. He usually considered what he was thinking to be kind of garish, but the girl was doing her best to get killed.
"Nuh-uh!" The girl disagreed.
It easily drowned out Alchemist going "Ah-hah!"
It might have been something of an abuse of Serren's Swift Girding, but he focused on the 'Armor' as he cast it and Yuffie was instantly wearing a-
Child safety harness, attached to a leash.
He handed to lead over to Jinx, who was struggling to decide if she wanted to complain or laugh.
"You." Alchemist had to inhale slowly to keep from losing his temper when the excitable girl almost knocked Jinx over. "Are more energetic than both of the dogs. Put together."
Ash and Cinder, who had been happily watching from the back with Lucrecia, seemed to nod in agreement.
"Well obviously!" The girl was fiddling with the harness, but the release latch was on the back and out of reach. "I'm ninja-princess Yuffie! That's, like, twenty times more energy than normal-princess Yuffie, and easily a hundred times better than any normal ninja-Yuffie!"
"Why have you been following us so far, anyway 'Ninja-Princess' Yuffie?" Jinx asked her as they continued through the derelict mine.
"So I can learn all of your secrets and find all of your Materia and use them to take down Shinra for the honor of Wutai!" Yuffie tried to launch herself into a pose, but fell short.
At the end of the child leash.
Alchemist snorted, even as he used Icy Spear to kill the various monsters thinking to sneak up on them. She was following them because Jinx offered the girl a meal, and she probably didn't understand that they would be happy to keep feeding her even without the enthusiasm or her needing to show off her ninja skills.
"Yuffie?" Alchemist really shouldn't do this. She was a child, the war wasn't her fault, and she was too young to understand that nationalism was a wasted effort. That patriots couldn't be trusted. "I could do more damage to Shinra over the course of three days with about two-hundred gil than Wutai managed during the entire war."
"Nuh-uh!" The littlest ninja shouted, sticking her tongue out at him. "Wutai is going to take Shinra down! We're all-"
She proceeded to make up some nonsensical martial arts poses and tried to jump around, almost pulling Jinx over and falling down herself in the middle of a kick-flip.
"Should... I be doing something?" Jinx asked him, unsure what to do with the little spaz-child.
"Nah. She'll tire herself out soon enough." Hopefully. They were near the exit, and that meant the Midgar Marsh was on the other side. Filled with massive serpents that could, and would, cast massively powerful fire magic.
He still hadn't decided if he was going to try and fight his way through, or try to teleport the group across. It depended on how much he could see, really.
He tuned back in as Yuffie seemed to be winding down. "-and Shinra will be all like, 'we're so sorry, you're so amazing and powerful and pretty, Ninja-Princess Yuffie. We'll give back everything we stole, here's all this money and we'll give you a diamond pony!' and I'll be like 'I, Ninja-Princess Yuffie, humbly accept your token of surrender!' and then I'll be all like 'Now off with their heads!' 'cuz I'm a princess and they were all a bunch of brain-dead meanie heads and-"
"One thing, real quick." Alchemist interrupted the girl.
He was going to pretend he didn't hear Vincent in the back go 'Oh thank god.'
"What's that?" The girl, only nine or ten years old, asked him.
"I think I have the perfect name for your diamond pony." He really did!
"I bet it can't beat the name 'Princess Sparkle Glitterpants the Third'!" Oh, this sweet summer child.
Alchemist cleared his throat and said-
"Butt stallion." No laughter, no grin. He was dead serious.
The group went completely silent. Even the monsters in the cave were deathly still...
"Oh god dammit." Until Lucrecia ruined it, giggling at the inane image. "You're what she'll grow up to be, aren't you!"
-----
They only really stayed in Kalm long enough for Alchemist to tell Yuffie 'No' about buying her a new Steal Materia. He didn't care what she did with her old one, he wasn't going to help a child kleptomaniac. Who didn't have a secure place to keep the loot.
After that was Midgar and... It was almost akin to voluntarily walking into Hell. The ground was literally rotting underfoot and the smell in the air, like magic that had gone rancid, mixed with oil and metal.
Even looking at the place, the megacity was surrounded by a haze of smog and there was a palpable aura of malaise.
"Wow." Jinx said looking up and up and up. "This place sucks."
Succinct and incredibly telling, considering she used to be homeless in Gotham.
"I don't know..." Lucrecia was looking up, too. "I went to college here. It's kind of nostalgic, and you never really forget that old Midgar smell."
"Bad?" Yuffie asked. "You never forget this bad smell? 'Cuz I already want to. We're not even in the city yet, I already think it smells sick."
"That's just the smell of the reactors, you'll get used to it soon enough." Lucrecia commented, stepping into a short queue to get on a train going topside.
"Yay." Alchemist cheerfully deadpanned. "And what are the health-risks associated with inhaling burnt magical smog?"
"According to the study conducted by Shinra back in my day?" Vincent spoke up, finally, with a sardonic grin just barely visible over the hem of his cloak. "There are no health risks."
"Yep. Great. Fantastic. The company that has an entire division of kooky assassins, thinks guard rails are overrated and that Alien DNA is the next best thing to Crispr are telling us that inhaling planetary lifeblood is good for us. I would ask if people believe that, but I don't think it matters." They moved forward in the queue, Alchemist ignoring the people staring at him with practiced ease.
"I'm pretty sure that's what they said during the board meeting." Vincent joked. Possibly...
It didn't really sound like a joke.
Yuffie climbed up the dour man without resistance, settling herself to sit up on his shoulder.
"Soo..." The little ninja drawled. "You said you could take down Shinra in three days on a budget of two-hundred gil, didn't ya?"
"I did indeed say that." Alchemist agreed, continuing to ignore the increasingly nervous glances people were sending his way.
"And I still don't think you can do that, so I propose we make a bet!" She leaned forward, over Vincent's head and tried to stick her finger in Alchemist's face.
"Honestly?" He poked her finger with his and gently pushed her back until Vincent wasn't leaning over. "I'm just amazed you can think."
"Rude!" She huffed, getting a giggle out of the other two girls. "If you win, I'll give you a full and proper Wutai noble title! And if you lose... I get all your Materia!"
"Huh." Alchemist brought his hand up to cup his chin in thought. "That actually sounds... Pretty bad, I'll pass."
"Hey!" She tried to swipe at him, almost knocking Vincent over. "C'mon, I'm serious! I could totally get my dad to name you a Danshaku!"
"That'd be a lot of work, though." Alchemist stepped back when the girl tried to grab at his face.
"Ugh! Fine!" She crossed her arms and pouted.
It was absurdly adorable.
"No!" She shouted after a second, pointing at Alchemist's face. "It's not fine! You're gonna teach me! If you really think you're some kind of hotshot, I want to learn!"
"Alright." He could have her shadow him for the first step, he supposed. "I hope you enjoy dumpster-diving."
Alchemist pulled out his own PHS and started browsing the internet while they waited... Or at least, it looked like he was.
~~To: Jinx~~
~~Gonna need you and Vincent to help out. I've got the infiltration part down, but I need to know where the local weapons depots are. At least the three closest to the Shinra HQ. Don't plan to hit them yet, but when I actually start causing problems I want their army to have to count every bullet.~~
A few seconds later, while his search for local contractors was loading, he got a response.
~~From: Jinx~~
~~ k ~~
Well, that was about what he'd been expecting.
Once everyone had settled on the train to go into Midgar proper, Yuffie was sitting down next to him. She'd had to hop off of Vincent's shoulders or he wouldn't have gotten through the door. Her legs were hanging off the seat, not yet long enough to reach the floor, swinging back and forth.
"Hey, uh..." She sounded a lot quieter, more nervous when she was surrounded by a lot of other people in a small, crowded space. "So you were joking about the dumpster diving, right?"
"Oh, no." It was actually incredibly important. Well, not the trash itself. But rather finding a piece of paper in the trash. "Dead serious."
"Ugh." She whined. "I was afraid of that!"
"I'm sure some of your tutors tried to explain to you about how information gathering is critical to missions?" If she were one of the Young Justice kids, he wouldn't even bother explaining this to them.
That's what Batman was for.
"What's information got to do with trash!?" That was the real question, wasn't it?
"You'd be surprised how many critical 'Shred immediately' papers end up in the garbage. Receipts, invoices, order forms... They're usually not very important by themselves, but with enough of them you can predict what someone will do, based on the things that they have done. It can also be used to- Well, I'll explain it after we get what we need." Alchemist cut off, reminiscing about some of the things he'd watched on the internet. Documentaries and guides on how things had been done in the past, or how to do things he'd never really been interested in.
Like breaking and entering. It had completely blown his mind when he discovered some of the 'Top Rated' security firms used the same three keys for everything, for the past forty years. And that he could literally purchase that set of keys for about ten dollars.
He could have broken into half of Hollywood for ten dollars... Or stolen most of the cabs in New York with one key.
And now he was going to teach a ninja about metadata.
The world of Gaia was not ready for the kind of evil he would teach this girl.
-----
Jinx was tired when she walked back into the demi-plane well after night fell.
She and Vincent had canvassed a good part of the inner ring of the city and noted there were about five storehouses roughly equidistant from the main Shinra building. It was more than Alchemist had asked after, but there wasn't anything wrong with being thorough.
She stepped to the side to let Vincent through and had to stop.
Next to the cabin door was a line of rope, extending out a few meters and into the space Alchemist had roped off to make room for -yet another- cabin to connect to a pole. And on that line was a handful of clothes. Some sort of green sash, a sleeveless white shirt, some panties and a pair of shorts.
Yuffie's clothes. The outfit she'd refused to change out of since they'd met her.
Well, she'd already been curious, but now she was even more so.
She circled around the cabin, just breathing in the clean air and appreciating not being in the loud, miserable city just beyond the door. As she was passing the ground wire leading into the soil from the electric system, she noticed Alchemist had added a new addition.
The wire fed into a bracer, one with three Materia slots, all filled. A green and blue one were paired together, with a purple one sitting in the lone disconnected slot.
Well, that was another question for the list.
Jinx stepped into the doorway and removed her shoes, taking a look around to see what people were up to.
Vincent and Lucrecia were sitting at the bar and eating. Little fried bits of dough filled with vegetables and chocobo chunks. Some kind of a local flavor that neither one of them had gotten for something like twenty-five years.
Yuffie was conked out on the couch, a spelltome in her lap. She was also wearing some actual pajamas. Sky blue, and covered with that little winged bear-cat thing with a red pom-pom on its head. Her hair was damp and slightly matted, meaning she'd probably just gotten done showering.
Jinx wasn't going to say anything, she'd smelled worse, but the girl had been getting pretty rank.
Alchemist, the last person to mention, was sitting on a chair in the living area to the side of the couch Yuffie was sleeping on and had a handful of papers in front of him and a book of his own on his lap.
Jinx grabbed the last seat in the living room and sat down herself, her feet feeling especially relieved that the day was over.
"Did you have any luck?" She said, quietly enough to not wake up the little ninja.
"Loads, actually." Alchemist set his book aside, letting Jinx get a better look at it.
Molded, torn, worm-eaten and just downright falling apart.
He shuffled through the papers for a second before handing a few to her.
Looking at them... Jinx could see they were listed as being from various businesses. Plumbing, electric, HVAC specialists?
"What's an HVAC?" She asked, not recognizing the term.
"Heating, ventilation and air conditioning." He grinned at her before pulling another sheet out of his inventory and handing it to her. "And that right there is going to be my golden ticket on getting into the building."
It was an order request form, though it had a coffee stain covering the signature. It requested maintenance be performed on a 'Smelly vent' in 'Shinra main office, floor 66, executive meeting room' with a small note in the bottom that said 'Scarlet is complaining that it smells like a bathroom. Someone better fix it before she decides to make it worse'.
"How's this going to work? Don't they have their own maintenance team or something? They're really big and all." It would kind of defeat the purpose of trying to sneak in if they caught him right at the front door.
"A general team, probably. I used to be a janitor, so I've got some experience in how these guys operate. Usually the 'Boss' is a pretty good handyman, and he's got a team that can do some general maintenance under him. Plunging toilets, vacuuming, sweeping and just general work. Anything bigger than that though?" Alchemist tapped on the paper in her hands. "They have to hire someone from outside. A master electrician is stupidly expensive, so keeping one on-staff is usually too costly. Same thing for most services, honestly."
That made sense, she guessed.
"Between my golden ticket there and the equipment I picked up today, they probably won't even look at me twice. Got a hi-visibility vest, a hardhat, one of those big clipboards you can keep documents in and a half-ladder that can extend to full size." He seemed pretty confident that he could sneak in with that kind of equipment.
Jinx had really been expecting black suits and nunchucks or shuriken or something. Ninja stuff.
"Okay." He was just going to walk through the front door and expect them to let him in. He had some confidence, she definitely couldn't argue that. She had one more thing she'd like to ask about that, but there were a few other things that she wanted to talk about before she forgot. "What did you do with the power line outside? I saw it going into some Materia instead of the ground."
"Oh, that! A small experiment. I had the Elemental Materia I bought, and the one we found on the mountain hooked into my gauntlet, alongside a Thunder Materia when we got the rewards from Jenova and her kin. So I got a bunch of baby Materia, and decided to try something with one of the mastered ones. Out there, I've got a mastered Elemental Materia hooked up to a Thunder Materia, so it's taking in the waste energy and converting it to HP. Technically. Except I also got the HP to MP Materia from a cave on the other side of the mountains near Corel... So I found a way to convert electricity into magic." He snorted after taking a breath, a smile on his face. "And it used crystals. Because of course it did."
She got the feeling she was missing something, there.
Moving on, she picked up the book he'd been reading and checked the face.
Worm-Eaten and blank, no name to be found.
"What are you reading?" She checked the first page instead, very gently turning the brittle paper.
"It's called Basic Attack Symbols." Alchemist cast a spell and the cracks that had formed in the paper sealed together with some golden sparkles. It returned to... Being brittle and worm-eaten. "The spells are a nice touch, unlike the ones from Tamriel they will actually grow with me... But that's not really the point."
"I can tell you're just doing this because you want to explain what you're doing, so please, continue." Jinx just grinned at the almost guilty look on Alchemist's face.
"Symbology, the magic system this teaches, works kind of like a programming language and goes all the way from basic stuff like this to invading the realm of the gods. That'd be like a post-doctorate project compared to-" He pointed at the book."-something you learn in kindergarten."
"Huh." That was kind of interesting. It sounded like a lot of work though. "Have you had any luck?"
"I literally just started today, I'm not even all the way through the book yet." Oh. Well. "It seems interesting, though. It works kind of like an assembly line, with each individual symbol 'Assembling' a part of the spell."
That was actually an interesting analogy. She could sort of see how that would make it simple to learn... And at the same time, she'd watched a documentary once on an automobile assembly line and seen how big they could get, how complex the vehicles really were.
Letting that thought ruminate in the back of her mind, she wondered if she should try and learn it herself. Though, he said he was just using it as a starting point to see if he could do much with the magic system itself...
Well, she'd figure it out later.
Instead, she started pulling papers out of the inventory. Crude maps Vincent had helped to draw showing things like doorways and likely patrol routes. She was about to start explaining them, when something Alchemist had said earlier reared up in her mind.
"Hey, Alchemist?" She started, looking over at the slumbering child on the couch. "How much did all of your gear for the infiltration cost you?"
He grinned, his eyes full of mischief.
"One-hundred and ninety-nine gil."
-----
Getting started had been easy enough. He'd said he would walk right through the front door, and he had.
Ladder under one arm, clipboard attached to his belt and a sack of simple, common tools in his other hand, he walked right up to the front desk. The woman, some young bottle-blond had been looking at him oddly since he walked right in.
"'Scuse me, miss? Supposed to be fixin' some vent up on..." He made a show of putting his tools down on the ground and pulling his clipboard off his belt to look at it. "Floor sixty-six?"
"I apologize, sir, but floors sixty and up are restricted." The long-suffering look she sent him was one he was well used to. That was the same look he'd gotten pretty often in his last life any time he had to deal with the office staff at his manufacturing job.
"That's why I'm talkin' to you though, ain' it?" He handed over the clipboard, coffee stained request form right on top. Underneath of it would be carbon-copy paper sheets listing a 'Alchemic Solutions: HVAC Department'.
She read over it, noting that the work order actually did have the phone number for the In-Building Maintenance division, though the signature on the bottom was impossible to make out, being a scribble covered in dried coffee.
"Please hold. I need to call this in." A bit more secure than he'd expected honestly... But not too surprising. Military was about the only group that he'd ever heard of that was harder to trick with just a vest and a ladder.
"Take your time, sweety. I'm billin' you guys for every minute after all." Well, he'd be handing them an invoice at least. Without an actual bank account he couldn't do much with it, but it would help sell the distraction.
While she was busy getting things figured out, another Alchemist formed just a bit out of sight. With a quick application of adjustable disguise, a mousy-looking office worker disappeared up the stairs to the next floor.
There was a lot of things all throughout the building that he'd need to find, up top and down below. He knew there was a less restricted Research and Development division on floor twenty, an advanced weapons research lab around floor forty-five...
And Deepground SOLDIERs somewhere deep, deep, deep below the skyscraper. Filled with monsters like Nero the Sable, Azul the Cerulean and their nihilist leader, Weiss the Immaculate.
The man Hojo had implanted with Omega WEAPON.
Hopefully that hadn't happened yet. Without Vincent having full control over Chaos, fighting him would fall to Alchemist and he... Just, really just didn't want to do that.
Either way, there was going to be blood on his hands and he still hadn't figured out how to deal with that. He hadn't told Jinx about it yet, but... He didn't want to put that on her. Or worse.
Have her offer to help him.
"Alright sir." The receptionist finally spoke up to Alchemist the First. "An escort will be along shortly from the Maintenance Division. You will follow them to the work area, and only to the work area. If you try to go anywhere without supervision you will be detained and questioned. Is that understood?"
"Yeah, yeah. I know how it goes. I do my job, I get paid. I don't know nothin'. I don't see nothin'. I don't tell no one nothin'. I signed the confidentiality paperwork already." Well, that was a bald-faced lie.
"Very good. Feel free to wait in the sitting area upstairs. Please make sure to hold on to your badge." So saying, she handed him a little plastic card that said 'Visitor'.
He just stuck it into his breast pocket, leaned over and lifted the ladder he'd brought with him.
-----
Alchemist the Second, still in the guise of a typical office worker, hit the button in the elevator he'd hopped in to so it would take him to the twentieth floor.
Quite frankly, while this was kind of exciting, it was a task he didn't really want to do. Unfortunately, he'd tried to Scry for various things he knew of that could have been in Shinra's possession but had only gotten fuzzy results.
Apparently the building was filled with either lead pipes or lead paint. Either way, lots of lead and that interfered with a lot of divination spells or skills. He'd managed some general ideas, but everything had been so fuzzy it was almost a wasted effort.
-----
Alchemist One waited for about twenty minutes before his escort arrived. A wiry, red headed man wearing a beige jumpsuit. A pair of goggles up in his hair, a stun baton poorly hidden in a thigh pocket.
Reno. A member of the Turks.
They, correctly, thought he might be a spy! Either this gambit had been pulled in the past, or they were just generally paranoid at the moment.
Alchemist almost felt bad. He was going to just completely waste this mans time.
"You the escort?" He asked the redhead, already sure of his answer.
"Yep. You here about some vent or somethin'?" Alchemist stood up and once again picked up his ladder.
"That's what the boss said, got the paper iffen you wanna see it." Reno just waved him off and lead them to a different elevator than Alchemist the second had used.
This one was a round glass tube, an express elevator that wouldn't activate without an approved keycard.
-----
Alchemist the Second, having had no luck in Research and Development, swapped his disguise to a wiry, blond teen and pulled a tray out of his inventory. One he quickly populated with cups of coffee. His next destination was Advanced Weaponry, floor forty-five.
-----
On floor sixty-six, Alchemist the First waited for Reno to take lead. He wasn't in a hurry after all. Still, it didn't take long before he was in the center meeting room. A very expensive carpet under foot, chairs that looked to be custom made all situated around a rich, dark wooden table.
He could see his reflection in the polish on it.
And, yes, the room smelled like a toilet.
"Hoo! Geeze! Alright, I can definitely see why we need an expert!" Reno tried to wave his hand in front of his face to clear out the smell, but it had fully saturated the room.
"Oh yeah." Alchemist agreed with him. He sort of wondered who the hell had eaten what the hell, because he was pretty sure the only time a human was supposed to make this kind of stench was after death.
-----
Palmer, a balding, obese older man wearing a mustard suit stepped out of the bathroom stall he'd just made use of and headed straight for the door. Skipping past the sinks.
His tummy had been giving him so much trouble lately!
Ah well, nothing a spot of tea couldn't fix. Tea with lemon, and sugar, and lard!
-----
But pushed that thought out of his mind. Some mysteries were better left unsolved.
"Alright." Alchemist began unfolding the ladder he'd been carrying this entire time. "Let's get this show started, eh?"
He climbed up and pushed the vent grate to the side, climbing in.
He'd briefly worried about it collapsing under his weight... But then he remembered it had somehow held up Cloud, his absurd compensator sword, Tifa and Barret all at once.
It was... Surprisingly roomy, up in the vents.
"Budge over, buddy. Gotta do my own report on what you do, so I gotta watch." Reno slapped Alchemist's leg, and the wizard moved forward to let the smaller man in.
"Friggin' perv." Alchemist shot back at him, getting a choked half-laugh in return.
He stuck a finger in his mouth and then pulled it back out, holding it up in the air. Once he knew where the vent was pushing the air from, he started heading in that direction.
-----
Alchemist the Second, now with a tray bereft of coffee, made a mental note of the location. Advanced Weaponry had yielded some positive results that he was definitely going to be revisiting later. They had actually been studying a variety of confiscated and experimental weapons and armor.
He once more changed his disguise, donning a lab coat and slicked down brown hair. His next goal? Finding the basement and finding the Materia research division, which should be on its way further and further down until he manages to find both Deepground and Reactor Zero.
-----
"Yeah, this here's yer problem." Alchemist the First had ended up leading Reno through the vents, around a corner to a fan. "Also, apparently, someone left a Materia here. Some kinda purple one. Here, you want it?"
"Nah, bro. Keep it. Call it a bonus or somethin'." Reno was gagging behind him, the smell inside the vents was actually worse than it had been in the conference room.
~~Item Acquired! ~~
~~ HP Plus Materia X 1! ~~
"Alright. Anyway here's the issue, bub. Whatever jackass installed this fan? It's backwards. Supposed ta be pushing air outta the building, but it's pullin' it in. Wouldn' be too big a deal, but this vent's also connected to your shitter. So's it's pushing it all down the vent the way we came and grabbin' the air from your toilet to bring along wit' it. Ain't a hard fix, but it's gonna be a bit of a bitch 'cuz of the space we got." Alchemist rapped a knuckle against the case of the fan that was blowing cold air into his face.
"If it's not a hard fix, how come nobody's come and fixed it yet?" Reno asked, starting to shimmy his way back when he saw Alchemist's ass start heading his way.
"'Cuz ain't nobody come up in here and looked! That little magic ball's prolly been here since the place was built." As much as this sucked for Reno, it sucked for Alchemist too. "Gotta figure out where the damn switch box is so we can shut off the fan so's I can turn it around. Unless you want me lookin' at your blueprints, that's all on you buddy."
That alone could take another hour, considering he doubted these guys bothered with updating their records every time they had to rewire something for Hojo, just upstairs.
"Yeah, yeah. I hear ya." Reno grumbled. "Lemme call my boss."
Idly, Alchemist wondered how long he could draw this little charade out for.
Probably another two hours, easily.
-----
It had taken a bit of doing, but Alchemist the Second had found his way downstairs.
Mostly by stealing the credentials off a member of the infantry that was following Scarlet around like a dog and shifting his disguise into a faceless mook.
He inhaled slowly as the digital panel in the elevator changed to give him access to the basement floors. Wetting his lips, he pressed the button for B-Thirteen, Materia Research and Development.
He was calm. He was in control. He didn't know what he was doing and neither did anybody else...
So why was he starting to feel nervous?
-----
It took almost three hours for the repairman that Reno was stuck watching to finish dealing with the vent problem.
Most of it had been spent waiting for the actual Building Maintenance team to hunt down the right junction box to shut off the power to the fan so the guy could work on it.
The actual amount of time the guy spent working only totaled up to, like, thirty minutes. Forty at the most.
The guy had gone to the bathroom twice in that time... But Reno had followed him and he'd just used a urinal, washed his hands and come back to wait.
This was the weirdest unscheduled 'Repairman' that they'd ever had to deal with. The guy had actually come in, done the job, explained what he was doing when Reno asked and then handed him the bill.
He was still trying to explain this to Tseng and the man just wasn't meshing with it.
"Look, I'm saying the guy actually did the work he said he'd be doing. I was watching him the whole time, never took my eyes off him!" And it was starting to irritate the redhead.
"We've dealt with this exact same scenario a dozen times, Reno. The 'Repairman' never just 'Does his job'." Tseng, filling in for Verdot, seemed to insist that there was something amiss, something he'd missed. "So we need to find out where, exactly, he was and what he did. Directly over the board room would be the perfect location to place a bomb, or some form of bug."
"I've looked. Cisnei looked. Maintenance deconstructed and rebuilt the fan from the ground up. Unless you think he dropped a camera in one of the urinals, there's nothing there!" Reno understood where Tseng was coming from. He really did. But this was practically the same as calling Reno incompetent!
"And did you check the urinals?" Reno had to keep from groaning. Tseng was always too serious!
"...Yes." And didn't it burn to admit that part. "Same story, nothing there either. The guy literally came in and did the work he said he'd do."
Tseng raised one very thin eyebrow. The equivalent of him shouting 'I don't believe it!'.
"Yeah, I know, alright?" Reno raised his hands in front of him in mock surrender. "It's weird. This scheme always falls apart when it comes time to do the real work, I know. The vents work right, so it doesn't smell like Palmer on hot dog night anymore. The guy actually might have been a repairman. Any luck on the work order?"
"...So far, no. Calling the PHS number, we get sent to voicemail for an 'Alchemic Solutions Repair Services' but nobody has answered so far. No internet presence, but that's not unusual for one or two man businesses in Midgar." Tseng placed both his hands on the desk in front of him, held together in a loose fist. "And you're certain he left nothing behind?"
"Actually..." Reno began fishing in his pants pocket for a moment before he held his hand out, palm up. "He did forget one thing..."
-----
Alchemist, back in the demi-plane, was double checking his equipment. He'd had a near-miss with Rosso the Crimson after he found his way to the Deepground levels, but everything else had gone reasonably smooth.
He was putting everything from his disguise away and stopped to double check the list he'd made.
One thing was missing.
He looked through everything again, but still-
"Where the hell is my ten millimeter socket?!"
-----
Alchemist had waited until the others had fallen asleep.
Ash was whining at him as he neared the exit, but he couldn't put it off. Not for long at least.
But... For a moment, just one.
He crouched down and put his hands around her head, rubbing the black wolf-dogs ears before bringing his forehead against hers.
"I'm scared." He whispered to her, afraid to admit it. He had to say it, had to tell someone but that didn't mean he enjoyed it. "I've never tried something like this before."
He'd killed one person already. Sindri hadn't been planned, at least, but her life was still on his mind. The ones he was planning on hunting down during the confusion he'd cause?
There were no authorities he could hand them over to. He could capture them and keep them in his inventory indefinitely, but that really wasn't much different to ending their lives. It just meant there'd be the added risk of their potential escape, somehow.
And even if he did capture them, then hand them over to Wutai or Avalanche, they'd just torture and then kill the people on his list, except for the one person that most deserved it.
Hojo was just too valuable. Supposedly knew too much. Everyone considered the madman a resource instead of a rabid dog.
He wrapped his arms around the growing pup in an awkward hug. She whined at him again, but he didn't let go.
Not until the trembling in his arms stopped.
He stood up and took a step towards the door, a strange, light feeling in his chest. Ash tried to rush out the door ahead of him, but he stopped her and picked the pup up.
"I'll be back soon, hon." He set her down inside the doorway, noises and smells coming in from Midgar. "Sooner begun, sooner done."
There was a quiet click as the door closed, leaving him alone in a back alley in Midgar.
He took a slow, trembling breath and cast Haste, hitting himself with a truly massive speedboost. One final check to his equipment, making sure he'd attached the Balor barrel to the Hydra, and that he'd socketed in the Destruct Materia taken from the Shinra Mansion paired with Added Effect, from Cosmo Canyon.
He'd actually gotten lucky, fusing the Supernova Long Barrel into the Balor had transferred the boosts and weight reduction while giving him back the materials he'd used. He couldn't think of a reason he'd want a spare Supernova Long Barrel, but he might figure something out later.
He let himself nod once. The combination would break through magical shields like they weren't even there. Occasionally it might even have an instant Death effect on vulnerable targets.
Armor? Check.
Weapon? Check.
Steal Materia? Check.
Other Materia? Also check.
Everything was ready. He was as ready as he could force himself to be.
He raised his right hand, snapped his fingers and cast Teleport. The first time of many tonight.
-----
Heidegger wasn't a man that woke up easily.
Or happily.
And to bad news?
"What are we paying you idiots for!" He boomed, rushing through the halls in the Shinra main office as one of his aides was relaying the problems to him.
Someone had robbed not just one, or two, or even three of the Shinra Security Forces armories.
They'd raided all five that serviced the main facility!
Everything had been stolen! Guns, bullets, swords, Materia and grenades! The robot sentries had all been fried, the cameras had barely caught anything! Sometimes a black wisp of a figure before the camera was destroyed!
Whatever group was doing it had to be large and well coordinated, there had to be saboteurs to have orchestrated such a massive attack on them!
"Sir! So far the perpetrators still haven't been fo-" His aide cut off when Heidegger buried his fist into the mans gut, dropping him to the ground and taking the tablet he'd been reading from.
He continued alone into the conference room, Scarlet, Lazard and President Shinra already present.
Hojo was late, if he was going to show up at all.
"Well?" President Shinra had barely waited for him to sit down. "Why haven't your men managed to catch these thieves?"
"We're hunting ghosts!" Heidegger slammed his fists into the table. "They knew the patrol routes of the security forces, they knew where the cameras were and they've disabled all of the security! Either by destroying it or outright bypassing it!"
Regardless of his many failings, Heidegger could read pretty damned quickly. The summary on his former aides tablet of what was missing or destroyed was staggering.
"They've taken literally everything! Even the spare uniforms and sidearms from the barracks!" And that was upsetting for a variety of other reasons. Like the fact that the thieves had managed to sneak around all of the men, could have killed all of them without a single one waking up.
And they'd settled for stealing everything around his men instead.
That was as much a message as anything else. A declaration of what this group could have done, how well trained their operatives were!
"How did you let this happen, Heidegger?" Scarlet, wicked Scarlet, had leaned forward. She was almost spilling out of her dress, but that hardly mattered. She was actually focused on what was going on, rather than just what she could get out of it. She understood what it meant.
"Let it happen?! These bastards must have been planning this for weeks! They couldn't have accomplished this without inside help!" SOLDIER getting sick, Hojo's experiments dying en masse and now his army was disarmed?! "Almost every department has been hit!"
He was calming down, now. Noticing the patterns, now.
"Almost every department has been hit." He repeated, looking to Lazard, then Hojo's empty seat. "SOLDIER, the Science Department, Security... Which one is next?"
The great bearded bastard looked at Scarlet first, then to Veld's empty seat.
He, like everyone else, paid no attention to the empty seat reserved for the head of Urban Planning.
-----
Down below, deep and far below, Alchemist stood at the precipice of Reactor Zero.
He had a plan, and security around the reactor was painfully lax.
The first part involved downing an awful Extract of Twin Form.
Keeping his stomach bile down as a clone formed next to him, made of magic, mud and blood he began step two.
Alchemist and his copy both cast Bilocation. A grand total of four Alchemists.
A great and terrible nightmare...
They each spread out to points roughly equidistant around the lip of the mako pool, and then began step three.
Using a combination of Conversion and Transmutation, they created massive iron pillars from the almost bottomless collection of garbage in his inventory. Reaching high, up into the caverns above them. They were barely able to stand upright on their own, and honestly wouldn't if not for being anchored well below the ground.
Step four involved wrapping each pillar with copper wire, technically starting at the top before slowly, slowly (For him) coiling back down to him on the ground level.
Step five...
"Ka-" Said Alchemist-One.
"Me-" Continued Alchemist-Two.
"Ha-" Chanted Alchemist-Three.
"Me-" Alchemist-Four kept going.
"HA!" They all shouted together, casting Lightning Storm at roughly the same time.
The stream of impossibly strong electricity from each copy quickly charged, and then overcharged his makeshift electromagnets. Their fields quickly and dangerously combining as they expanded rapidly!
The computers controlling the reactor quickly died. Then the ones higher up in the Shinra building proper.
If someone had been fast enough, or recording with a very good camera, they could have actually watched as Shinra went dark.
Floor, after floor, after floor. Starting from the ground and quickly climbing up to the very top.
The four Alchemists quickly rejoined at the 'throne' overlooking the Mako.
They shared no words, they had no need to do so.
They were, after all, of the same mind.
-----
Nero the Sable was the only member of Deepground capable of acting freely in the dark.
He didn't know why everything had shut off, but the entire facility was pitch black. Not even the emergency lights had activated.
Weiss and Rosso were both with him, trying in vain to find the emergency power controls for their floor. So far, though, they'd had no success.
Every digital screen was black and none of them were familiar with the non-combat operations that went on around them.
There was a subtle shift in the air, something they all felt before there was a muffled shout back in the direction of the main facility.
Nero turned to Weiss, waiting expectantly for his brother to tell him what to do.
Waiting for instructions that never came.
In the inky blackness, Nero could still see. In the inky blackness, he saw a man appear, his edges blurred and pointing a very large rifle directly at his leaders head.
"Wei-" He started, but got no further before the intruder had pulled the trigger.
Weiss the Immaculate was a phenomenally fast individual. His enhancements in preparation for being bound to a being of great power had ensured that.
Whoever the intruder was, though, he wasn't using a normal weapon. The retort of the gun happened so fast, Nero hadn't been sure it happened at all!
All he knew for sure what that Weiss was now sporting a very massive hole going through his skull!
Rosso the Crimson had only just started to turn when she was turned into a toad. A toad!
Nero started to step forward, the appendages on his back beginning to unfold when the intruder stepped forward in a flash, crushing Rosso underfoot and grabbed Nero's face!
The last things the rabid dog of a man heard, before the corrupted mako in his blood began to boil, was the man saying "Holy!".
-----
Basement floor Thirteen was the advanced Materia research division.
Though better known in some circles as 'Scarlet's Playground'. The woman delighted in watching as her dedicated scientists struggled to push their equipment to the limit to form new, strange Materia.
Under normal circumstances, they would be working on a variety of things. One very exciting prospect being the 'Huge Materia' project. Though, they were still waiting on news from Material Sciences about creating a containment chamber that could withstand the pressure necessary to condense enough Mako into the appropriate density and purity.
Under current circumstances, they were analyzing and cataloguing Materia that were thought to be relevant to the now former war effort. They were also, unfortunately, forced to add even more to their plate with the analysis of Materia confiscated from Wutai with the new ceasefire.
Regardless of what the scientists were supposed to be doing, it was close to two in the morning and everybody had gone home.
Meaning the Alchemist who was ripping open cabinets and pulling everything loose was completely unopposed.
He'd been planning to just teleport any interlopers to the main lobby, but this worked, too.
~~ New Items: Get! ~~
~~ Double Cut Materia X 1! ~~
~~ Hades Materia X 1! ~~
~~ Shield Materia X 1! ~~
~~ Non-functional projects confiscated anyway X many ~~
-----
Being an intern for Shinra had looked like such a good job!
On paper.
And then Markus had actually gotten the job! And discovered that it really, really sucked.
'Come work for Shinra! It's the best way to serve Midgar against the terrors of Wutai!'. Yeah. No.
All he'd done all day since joining up was swing around weapons confiscated from Wutai, or subject himself to low-level attacks to make sure that newly made equipment worked as intended.
Advanced weapons division his ass!
Still...
Holding one of the new models of pistol in hand had him feeling a lot better, ever since the lights went out. All the way up on the forty-fifth floor, they didn't get much light coming up from the city, and his phone had died as well.
He considered trying the emergency stairwell, but he'd stumbled his way to the door and taken a look. The lights were dead, as far up and down as he could see.
Going down forty-four flights of stairs, in the dark... It seemed like a bad idea.
Like, a really bad idea.
Possibly worse than coming here to work in the first place.
There was a crash in one of the side rooms, and Markus jumped! His finger on the trigger guard almost slipping in to the deceptively simple piece of metal inside before he got a hold of himself.
It was fine. Just fine. Probably just a spear or, or something got put away wrong and fell over!
That was all!
He jumped again when he heard a door slam shut.
"Hello?!" Markus called out, into the darkness.
But nobody came.
Markus wrapped both hands firmly around the pistol grip and brought it up to a ready position, peering into the darkness that had swallowed up the floor.
If he got out of this, he didn't care what kind of overtime he was promised, he wasn't doing anymore graveyard shifts!
He heard rapid footsteps and brought the gun down! ...But there was nothing there.
"Who's out there?!" He'd heard rumors about the building, after dark.
About some evil ghoul with shining eyes that would make people disappear.
But he'd thought they were just rumors!
He heard another noise, this time a door slamming shut and more footsteps.
Panicking, Markus slammed himself against a wall opposite the windows and frantically looked around, his eyes wide.
He felt a cold sweat dripping down his forehead. His knees were quaking. He was barely holding on to his bladder.
"I-I'm warning you!" He shouted into the darkness. "I'm armed! I know how to use-"
He was cut off when a shadow just blinked into existence in front of him. Its hand wrapped around the gun in his hands.
"Ah!" It said, and it was surprisingly chipper. "I've been looking everywhere for that!"
"Wha-what the?! Who the hell are-" Markus was cut off before he could even finish asking the figure anything when he found himself standing in the lobby.
Hand still held out as though to shoot, but his gun was nowhere to be found...
~~ New Items: Get! ~~
~~ Greatsword- Heaven's Cloud ~~
~~ Gun- Outsider ~~
~~ Spear- Glow Lance ~~
~~ Shuriken- Conformer ~~
~~ Glove- Master Fist ~~
~~ Bracer- Escort Guard ~~
~~ Bracer- Ziedrich ~~
~~ Bracer- Minerva Guard ~~
~~ Accessory- Touph Righ ~~
-----
Hojo sat in his lab, his breathing shallow. Across from him was Hollander, suffering a rather similar issue.
Unlike Hojo, however, the lesser scientist had failed to realize what his symptoms indicated until the damage had begun to accumulate. Where Hojo was simply tired and suffering a variety of minor issues, Hollander had turned yellow.
Some of their enhancements had remained from the experiments they'd performed on themselves. It, like with their Soldier subjects, limited the extreme damage to something that was survivable. Miserable, but at least it wasn't lethal for them.
Neither of them liked each other, both competing to get more funding, more personnel, more samples from Shinra... But in the complete absence of light or help, the two had chosen to keep each other company.
Sitting in the main observation deck over the testing area, a gas-powered Bunsen burner providing light for the two of them, they were recounting stories of their successes.
That came to a sudden halt when they heard gunshots ringing out from a few floors below.
"...I don't suppose that would be our security team, dealing with whomever is the cause of this, would it?" Hollander asked of Hojo, leaning forward until his elbows were on his knees.
"...No." Hojo had his head tilted to the side, listening intently. "Unless they've begun utilizing anti-monster rounds in high-caliber weaponry."
Hojo had dabbled in quite a few fields, picking and choosing the armaments given to the Deepground soldiers himself. He'd actually taken the time to observe and properly test the various sizes and types of ammunition across the vast catalogue on offer by Shinra.
"Well..." Hollander was distinctly less involved in many of Shinra's deeper secrets. It was part of what kept Hojo so confident that the man, aping Hojo's experiments, would never be able to replace him. "Hopefully they won't be able to make it to the labs, then."
"This is the most secure section of the facility." Hojo observed, though he neither agreed nor disagreed. "Breaching it would pose a significant expenditure of effort."
Until just recently, the labs had played host to a nightmarish medley of monsters. Some captured and experimented on, others incubated and grown in vats. Each and every one, however, had been incredibly dangerous under the appropriate circumstances.
And now the majority of them had expired, quite often due to Mako toxicity and organ failure.
The specimens that hadn't been tampered with were still viable, so it was clearly an issue in the enhancement process rather than an outside factor.
Considering what all had occurred and which specimen had made it through almost entirely intact? Hojo had been left wondering if this was, perhaps, some inexplicable plan initiated by the Jenova entity. He had no idea what, exactly, it might be planning with Sephiroth but he was now the single strongest being on the Planet.
At least as far as he was aware.
"I suppose you're rather pleased with yourself, skipping the meeting the Boss called, aren't you?" Hollander accused, interrupting Hojo's mumbling.
The much thinner, greasy little man glared at him before grunting with a solid "Hmph!".
There was a moment of silence as the two simply stared at the solid, constant flame. Neither of them really 'there' in the building but rather thinking of something else.
"If you must know." Hojo reached up and adjusted his glasses. "I wasn't made aware of any meeting until only a scant few minutes before the outage. Unlike buffoons such as Heidegger, I'm actually responsible for completing my own work."
Yes, he had assistants. Yes, he delegated as much scut work to them as he possibly could. Reviewing, analyzing and comprehending test results was still something he had to do personally though.
"How magnanimous!" Hollander mocked. "The great Hojo, working shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow with the rest of us! Taking time away from your magnum opus to help us little scientists!"
Hojo wrinkled his nose, an ugl(ier)y look on his face.
"The only reason you're even tolerated, you binge-eating halfwit, is that your adolescent ideas are at least novel in their execution, if not their idiocy!" It should be noted that neither of the men were at their best, both suffering the effects of the loss of J-Cells in their bodies.
"And you're an unimaginative hack using iterative experiments to make up for your lack of inspiration!" Hollander stood up, slamming his hands down on the table. "If you weren't still cribbing from Gast's notes, Sephiroth would have fallen apart more than a decade ago!"
The burner had been knocked to the side, the flames reflecting off of black platemail being completely ignored.
"As though you've any right to complain! Angeal and Genesis both are incomplete and likely to fail any day now!" Hojo stood up to shout at the larger, fatter man.
"And what do you know about that!?" Hollander shouted in his face. "Do you know who has to perform the autopsies on your Makonoids?! Me! Every single time, it's been me! I can practically reverse engineer your process just by-"
Hollander was cut off when a bullet went in one ear and out the other.
Hojo had frozen in place, staring as his long time rival died directly in front of him.
He had just enough time to turn and stare at the perpetrator, a large man in black armor lit up by the dim light of the gas flame.
"Wha-" Was the very last thing he ever said before he joined Hollander in the Life Stream.
The very last thing that went through his mind? A fifty caliber bullet.
~~ Key Item Recovered ~~
~~ Ifalna's Remains ~~
- Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build 1.2.0: Character Sheet
Character sheet courtesy of the amazing Memzak!
I don't know what I've done but I broke the character sheet after Perks. I'll work on it when I'm back from work. I appreciate your patience!
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- Location
- Australia
Aerith might really like to be able to bury her mother. Surprised she didn't turn into life stream energy on death but I suppose that might be Shinra technology screwing around there.
Longest chapter to date though? Congrats on hitting an enjoyable 11k chapter.
Longest chapter to date though? Congrats on hitting an enjoyable 11k chapter.
Get Alchemist all the therapy. He isn't trained for this, and he didn't have the enabler Gamer's Mind to make everything okay(somehow.)
Anyway. Some lighthearted parts, some very dark. Old school espionage, and a rather interesting look into services and maintenance.
I dunno how to feel about this chapter. Conflicted. Happy for the update, but yeah...
Thanks for sharing.
Anyway. Some lighthearted parts, some very dark. Old school espionage, and a rather interesting look into services and maintenance.
I dunno how to feel about this chapter. Conflicted. Happy for the update, but yeah...
Thanks for sharing.
- Location
- Isekai'd to this shitty world we're live in
@Mister Ficser you forgot to threadmark the chapter.
Also, where does Symbology come from? At first, I thought it was the Witcher, but then you mentioned using them as a programing language, and it reminded me of Fuinjutsu from Naruto.
Also, where does Symbology come from? At first, I thought it was the Witcher, but then you mentioned using them as a programing language, and it reminded me of Fuinjutsu from Naruto.
- Location
- Poland
I don't get it. Is it a pun? A refference? Tell me!
clonezero
Is it a bad thing if my t read list keeps growing?
It's from the Star Ocean Game series.
- Location
- The pits of Mania
Apparently a Borderlands reference or something? I never played Borderlands 1 or 2 myself.I don't get it. Is it a pun? A refference? Tell me!
In the FPS Borderlands 2 the main villain Handsome Jack buys a pony made of living diamonds to show off how rich he is to the Vault Hunters. After trying a few names he decides that Butt Stallion was a good name for her.I don't get it. Is it a pun? A refference? Tell me!
As Jack only talks to the player over the radio for much of the game this has little point.
Butt Stallion
Butt Stallion is Handsome Jack's diamond pony. Butt Stallion was first introduced on the Southern Shelf by Jack, during the mission Best Minion Ever. In an ECHO message to the Vault Hunters, Jack mentioned that he bought a pony made out of diamonds, then messages again to say that he was trying...
borderlands.fandom.com
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reference to borderland 2 beginning section >>> vault hunters AKA player survives assassination's attempt and Handsome Jack calls them and constantly taunts & shit talks them at one point he boasts he bought a living stallion made of diamonds and name him But Stallion in player honor cuz to him that's what we are at beginning of game a but of joke.I don't get it. Is it a pun? A refference? Tell me!
edit: nija'd
- Location
- Your pantry eating cheese
And just like that this fic became a horror fic. You dont know true horror till you loose your 10mm and cant find it.