You know what I'm doing it. If it looks like it might win I'll have to think harder, but I think we're safe from that.
[X] Leave, but first...
- Give Moth a hug
While Lucy can hear THE VOICE, she's not consciously processing it, leaving her with more of a general feeling of disquiet than any conscious knowledge that she heard anything.
[x] Owen and Mars - Moth? - both have their Gambits activated, making the next attack on Owen deadly... to Moth. And it auto-connects.
-[x] Leave, but use your last free Soteriology Gambit on Moth to make sure it doesn't happen.
[x] Owen and Mars - Moth? - both have their Gambits activated, making the next attack on Owen deadly... to Moth. And it auto-connects.
-[x] Leave, but use your last free Soteriology Gambit on Moth to make sure it doesn't happen.
-[x] apologize that we can't help more and wish he and the cat stay safe.
"People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict." - Lemony Snicket.
INTERLUDE: DR. GENEVA
In a spacious office that seems much less spacious for the assortment of mechanical devices in various state of dissassembly strewn around it, with one door barricaded and the other one opening into some sort of auditorium, a tall, skinny man in a bloodstained white coat with an unruly mop of black hair atop his head is alone, sitting at a desk. His feet are up on the desk in a way he knows full well is both rude and unhygenic, and are taking up all of the free space on the desk not already taken up by a collection of knives, a computer monitor, and an assortment of handheld puzzles made out of metal, plastic, and wood.
A phone is ringing on his desk, and has been ringing for the last thirty minutes. The tall man is ignoring the phone, and knows exactly how annoying it must be to be on the other end of the phone and receive no answer from someone they know full well can reach the phone. Instead of answering, he gives a security camera a jaunty little wave and busies himself solving a Rubik's cube. The phone stops ringing.
A few seconds later, the phone begins to ring again. The man in the white coat yawns, stretches languidly, and finally reaches over to pick up the receiver with his long, slender fingers.
"Dr. Geneva," the voice on the other side of the phone begins; It is a male voice, with an upper-class English accent, dripping with the sort of friendliness that only exists to remind the listener of the potential for unfriendliness. The voice is about to continue when the man in the white coat interrupts it in a sing-song voice, with a curious accent that's some mixture of East Asian and Central European.
"Hello, Jack. So nice of you to call. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one putting any work into this relationship."
"Dr. Geneva, I really don't think it's the time for games, do you?"
Idly, as if on autopilot, the man in the white coat puts the (solved) Rubik's cube down and pulls a surgical scalpel from an inside pocket of his coat, twirling it around his fingers without looking at it. "Mr. Brighton," he replies, "I already know what time it is, and I don't recall asking for a subscription to the Speaking Clock."
"Don't fuck with me, you prick," the voice on the other side of the phone growls like a furious animal, all pretense of civilization lost for an instant before there are a few seconds of silence and he resumes with a touch more composure. "Might I remind you, my good man, that we had a deal? And may I, perhaps, go so far as to suggest that letting Helsinki through your wing unscathed was a glaring act of de facto betrayal?"
The man in the coat smirks, a smile like a knife wound. "Ah, yes. Well, I'm going to have to tell you, Jack, I really don't think that the reality of this situation is living up to your pitch. Besides, what can I say, he surrendered himself into my care. I'm hardly going to harm a patient, you know. I'm a man of medicine."
"Like hell you are, Fukui. You're an unscrupulous sociopath, and both you and I know that you don't have a moral bone in your body."
"Using my real name, wow, that's definitely a breach of security clearance. Naughty naughty. Perhaps I ought to report you to Dr. One Night In Paris so that she can tell you you're grounded. Besides," the scalpel is twirled quicker, moving fast enough that the blade, thin and razor-sharp, is a blur. "I actually know a lot more than you about the bones of the human body, Herr Brighton."
There's a moment of silence, and then a sigh from the other end of the phone, one expressing a mixture of mild irritation and the sort of disappointment one can only feel when they had no expectations to begin with. "This isn't funny, Geneva."
"It's very funny. I think it's hilarious."
"Is this it, then. Am I not going to be able to get a serious word out of you?"
"Well, let me see… after you betray me and leave me for dead, the only serious thing you are getting out of me, Mr. Brighton, is that I hope your ridiculous plan backfires and kills you horribly, and painfully." This last word is punctuated by the man in the white coat driving the scalpel into the table in a movement so fast it would be difficult to follow with the naked eye.
There are a few seconds of silence. When the voice on the other end of the phone replies, the warmth, the forced, bristling joviality, has been turned up another octave. "Be reasonable, Geneva, for God's sake. Ankara's off in some corner of her own maze, bleeding to death, Paris is holed up in her bunker waiting for her demise to come to her, my idiot brother's mad as a hatter - I'm the only one here offering you a way out."
The owner of the voice on the other end of the phone awaits a response from the man in the bloodstained coat - and he awaits one for an awkward period of time, and is on the point of hanging up when he hears the faintest sound come through the receiver - the sound of a viola, and faint singing, so off-key and grating it can't be anything other than deliberate.
"My father makes book on the corner,
My mother makes illicit gin.
My sister sells kisses to sailors,
My God how the money rolls in!"
Disgusted and furious, the man on the other side of the phone hangs up before he can hear the next verse.
In his office, the man in the white coat puts his viola down, grinning to himself. "Well, that went well."
*******
GAIA
A girl floats in a glass tube full of clear fluid, tubes supplying a variety of vividly coloured fluids to her as she sleeps. A brown-haired man puts a hand on the glass and smiles fondly at her. "Almost ready," he whispers, smiling gently. "We're almost ready."
[x] Owen and Mars - Moth? - both have their Gambits activated, making the next attack on Owen deadly... to Moth. And it auto-connects.
-[x] Leave, but use your last free Soteriology Gambit on Moth to make sure it doesn't happen.
-[x] apologize that we can't help more and wish he and the cat stay safe.
-[X] Make sure he understands that we'll be coming back. Next time, when we're ready, we'll be running straight towards him! And we'll fix things!
As the elevator doors slide open, Mars screams that terrible scream again, the shrill, high-pitched fear of a child combined with the deafening roar of something else, something impossibly huge and impossibly angry. The ground seems to shake before Mars' feet as it charges directly towards Owen, who's glowing with a green light, the air around him almost humming with power, every molecule a coiled spring.
As Kala shimmers back in existence inside the elevator and you begin to move backwards, Owen stays where he is, a fierceness in his eyes you haven't seen before. He's not backing down, it seems, not even as the red veins across the back of Mars begin to bubble and burst, red fluid leaking out into the air in a fine mist, one that renders the world a red and furious haze. You feel like you're blind and death and on fire and in darkness all at once, and that terrible roar once more shakes you until you feel like your bones are shattering, until you feel like the world is ending, or maybe it has ended and you're experiencing your last moment of consciousness before everything is fire and ash and—
And then there's a crash, and you can see again, you can see Owen fall to the floor, the possibilites that coiled around him like snakes gone - Mars is on the other side of the room, crystalline armour damaged, weakly getting to its feet - weakly, but faster than Owen, and before you can do anything it's lumbering towards him, more furious than ever, swinging a razor-sharp claw at him as he stumbles to wake up and—
He stumbles furious damaged snakes a crash ash and fire and the world is ending shattering humming angry huge - a child.
And before Owen can release the crackling energy, you grab his arm and pull him bodily away from Mars, stepping into the elevator and taking him with you. The moment you grip him, he loses all resistance, meekly following as you yank him backwards, calling out, "Stay safe, Moth! Look after that cat! And give her a name, because all of the ideas I had were terribly silly! I promise we won't all be too long, and," your confidence, briefly faltering, picks itself back up again, twice as strong, and you offer Mars a grin, "And you can trust me, because a JUNIOR SLEUTH always keeps her word!"
And then the elevator doors close. Owen collapses against the side, finally seeming to notice that he's bleeding. Mari slams the "up" button with so much force you're almost surprised it doesn't break, and then, after a few seconds, throws her arms around you. "None of you," she says, like an empress issuing a royal decree, "Should ever be so bloody stupid and put yourselves in so much bloody danger ever again."
The moment is so poignant that it's not even ruined when tinny, irritating elevator music kicks in. In fact, the look of annoyance on Mari's face actually gets you to laugh - Owen soon follows, and, after glaring at you for a few seconds, even Mari sees the funny side. Although she's silent, from her shaking shoulders and wide grin, you're pretty sure Kala's laughing too.
[WHOLE PARTY: +25 ÉLAN]
You're alive. Moth's alive, you're certain of it now, somewhere inside that creature. Somewhere, in your heart, looking at your friends laughing over some silly elevator music, you feel like maybe things are going to turn out fine.
A little like last time, this chapter beginning is split into two parts, with the next part to be posted early next week, after I've dealt with the preposterous amount of work looming over me I've allowed to accumulate for this weekend. We'll finally be back to our regularly-scheduled puzzle solving! So, look forward to that, I guess. I'm sorry for the wait, and must once again profess myself grateful to all my readers for putting up with my terrible consistency!
Can they even be called factions anymore if each consists of exactly one person?
Nothing like a set of knives to make your desk look homely, Geneva. The best I could say about you is that I like your sense of humor more than Jack's.
And it looks like we'll have to drop by and say hello if we want to see Klaus in one piece. Stay safe and classy, Helsinki, your best disciple is on her way!
I like Geneva. He's kind of hilarious and being contrary for the sake of being contrary.
Oh shit my kick for horrible murderous figures has been kickstarted. I'm really curious to see how he'd interact with the kids, even if it'd be horrible.
Also, he has a viola. And he likes puzzles. Hm....
While the sociopathy is different, Lucy actually has some serious similarities in hobbies with him. I wonder how an appeal to similar sensibilities would work out lmao.
I like Geneva. He's kind of hilarious and being contrary for the sake of being contrary.
Oh shit my kick for horrible murderous figures has been kickstarted. I'm really curious to see how he'd interact with the kids, even if it'd be horrible.
Also, he has a viola. And he likes puzzles. Hm....
While the sociopathy is different, Lucy actually has some serious similarities in hobbies with him. I wonder how an appeal to similar sensibilities would work out lmao.
Blah, blah, I'm a trainwreck of a human as always, but I remain committed to at least being the most consistently inconsistent quest-runner on this site. Expect Chapter 4 to continue sometime this week!
Not even close. Avalanche had his quest that updates "monthy" lie dead for a full year.
Still, As long as you keep writing then we'll keep coming back.
Man, you know you love something when you're seriously considering fully comic-fying it....only one other work has gotten me to that point (Fairy Tail fanfic rewrite Phantom Girl best personal canon cough cough haha)
(Though I'd be dubious about how likely I'd finish such a project.....)
Man, you know you love something when you're seriously considering fully comic-fying it....only one other work has gotten me to that point (Fairy Tail fanfic rewrite Phantom Girl best personal canon cough cough haha)
(Though I'd be dubious about how likely I'd finish such a project.....)
The elevator, after making you sit through what felt like Brahms' entire body of work filtered through the lens of Muzak, finally comes to a stop, the doors opening haltingly with an extremely unpleasant grinding sound. A shower of sparks and the distinct smell of smoke clue you in to the fact that you're not going to be going back down on it any time soon. The room in front of you is, quite frankly, a mess, and you resist the urge to tsk at the disarray because you're really too polite for that sort of thing.
Behind you, Mari makes a loud tsk sound.
You appear to be in a SMALL WAITING ROOM, opposite a sturdy-looking DOOR, hooked up to... well, you don't want to sound ALARMIST, so you'll call it a POSSIBLY IMPROVISED POTENTIALLY EXPLOSIVE, DEFINITELY A DEVICE, or a PIPE DAD for short. A white MEDICAL COAT is on the floor, stained with BLOOD, and an INTERCOM SPEAKER next to the DOOR is giving out bursts of PATCHY STATIC. To your LEFT is a VENDING MACHINE, and a RECEPTIONIST'S DESK, and to your RIGHT is an UNCOMFORTABLE-LOOKING COUCH and a bubbling but curiously sparsely populated AQUARIUM. A TABLE with a small STRONGBOX and several OLD MAGAZINES on it takes up the centre of the room.
A sign above the exit reads TO MEDICAL BAY. Looking around at the nasty scratches that Owen acquired during your fight with Mars, you feel like that might be somewhere you want to be.
[] Write-in: Solve the puzzle!
Can you believe it, this quest is back. This is a quest that can never die, apparently. I apologise yet again for this unconscionably long delay, but at least we're back to our regularly scheduled puzzle nonsense now.
[X] Examine the MEDICAL COAT. Search the pockets! How much blood exactly is on it! Is it creepy cool, or just creepy? Search for hidden pockets!
[X] Examine the RECEPTIONIST'S DESK. Any drawers with interesting things? Any hidden drawers?
[X] Take a moment to go around and offer hugs to your fellow kids. If Mari is still about that NO-HUG LIFE, then maybe an air-hug will be okay.
