Shadowrun: Imugi
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
... Damn that's perfect. How do you always know what music to assign an update, Tenfold? I can never match music to writing. Tell me your secrets, cactus fucker o.o
Whirling night, that's an image and a half. This is a real talent, Tenfold. This kind of description, it, it's not really descriptive, it's more a rough sketch that distills the atmosphere of a narrative. I can go weeks without your stuff, and then as soon as a new update drops and I read something like this, it's like being picked up and chokeslammed back into an awareness of, oh, right, we're doing this.
I wish I could articulate why this stood out to me as such a great passage. It's just so... Agh. Congrats, Tenfold, you stumped me in the best way.
Gotta say, for all that I think this is the wrong answer, I am kind of glad it's the one we went for given @Omicron's commentary.
It's, it's not surprising at this point, but nonetheless I am glad to see Christoph speak up for himself and clearly have something to fight for.
Which brings me to the vote.
...
It's really no choice at all for me, is it? I've always loved the night. Always had great night vision, always understood why people are afraid of the night only on an intellectual level. I used to go camping and enjoy the night-time. Not the night sky - it's nice, but no, for me it's the darkness. I always, always hated the rote association of darkness with evil. For me, the darkness is secrecy, privacy, passion, wonder. Good things. Of course I'm voting like this. How can I not?
[X] Open your eyes, look out into the blackness and see what it has to show you. Gaze into the endless night.
[X] Open your eyes, look out into the blackness and see what it has to show you. Gaze into the endless night.
Also, this remains a quest that keeps getting me into introspective self-reflection on uh many things. Even when my brain doesn't even want to.
So remember that time I had a really, er, strong reaction on one of the updates? I didn't have a succinct enough way to express it then, but I guess I do have one now: Too fucking real.
Also, this remains a quest that keeps getting me into introspective self-reflection on uh many things. Even when my brain doesn't even want to.
- Location
- In my Lair, on my Hoard
[X] Open your eyes, look out into the blackness and see what it has to show you. Gaze into the endless night.
paradoxdragon
Immersed in Dreams
- Location
- Someplace or another
[X] Open your eyes, look out into the blackness and see what it has to show you. Gaze into the endless night.
Act One Part Sixty Five: I Walk Into Empty
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You've become nocturnal by nature, flipped your circadian rhythms and fucked up your body's natural cycles beyond easy repair. You live in that neon darkness now: beneath a sky scorched out by light pollution, in shadows stained every shade of a digital rainbow. And so you know, better than most, better than all but a few how bright the night can be. How Pyongyang burns like a concrete pyre, a steel-and-glass bonfire. Megastructures rising from the gutted mountains, lit up by the shine of storefronts and tri-d screens and the windows of countless skyscrapers. The glow reflected in the gunmetal skin of the magnarails as they wind between the buildings, captured in the midnight blue depths of the Taedong River as it rushes through the city center on its way to the sea. The sidewalks and MTR stations are riots of color and augmented chrome. Your soot-black and lustrous gold just another few splotches in that glittering, gasoline-skim palette.
The night is where you live now. The night is where you work, the night is where play, where you've made your home and it's a place -a location- as much as it's a simple span of hours. There are parts of Pyongyang that don't exist in the daylight. There are people here who disappear in the sunlight. You should know shouldn't you? You're one of them now, SINless and free.
But this is different. This is something else. A passing similarity but it's just that, a similarity and the connection is thin at best. It-
...Do you remember that Winter in New Brunswick? You sort of do, you weren't that old and the memory lives in that blurry, uncertain, part of your brain that holds everything before the age of fourteen. Slices of impression, scraps of recollection, all arranged in a crude timeline with pictures and sounds and scents overlapping; with huge chunks missing.
But you do remember enough, bits and pieces. You remember standing behind the sliding glass doors, wrapped up in a beige blanket. The fabric that kind of soft, almost slippery, polyester; faux-fleece. You remember looking out over the narrow slip of a balcony, barely big enough for you to stand out on by yourself, and staring at the sea. At the iron-and-ink thunderheads sweeping in over the Atlantic.
You remember the way the storm raged and howled when it hit, hammering the apartment complex with hail and half-frozen rain. The wind rising until it screamed like a subway line blasting right past your window while you hunkered beneath the covers; comforter drawn up over your head. The block lost power at some point in the night and you woke up in the early hours of the morning to switched off digital displays, the hallway lamps that filtered beneath the doorframe gone, the candy colored stars that ringed your laptop and baby's-first-PDA dead and dark. Countless, constant companions gone, your nightlights burned out, leaving behind a world swathed in soft, blue-tinged shadow
It's like that.
A world in shades of grey, in pitch black and snowy haze. A world done in charcoal smears, countertop and tabletops and projector mounts sketched out with swift, deft strokes and then smudged with the artist's thumb. Distorted by design, leaving everything a suggestion, an impression, drawn from memory and expectation; the two filling in the blanks where sharper details should be.
The breakroom tri-d flickers and shows nothing now, the larger cavern behind you with its repeating rooms is gone. The doorway opening onto a yawning, sucking void. All you have to see by is a silvery shine; a little like moonlight, a little like distant starlight filtering through a window. A pale, cold glow that creeps in through the corners of the kitchenette.
God you're freezing. You're hardly ever cold anymore but this just seeps inside you.
You can feel the ache in your jaw, feel the sliced-gum sensation as it crawls into your ruined mouth. As it kisses the tips of hidden fangs, buried in that pink bed, waiting to replace shed teeth. Rows of razor enamel throbbing in tandem. Try to work your lungs, force out a sound. Nothing comes, it's like you're screaming underwater. Screaming just inside your head.
All around you the conference room is dissolving, coming undone and falling apart at the seams. Section by section, panel by panel, neatly split off and peeled away; floating free in the void as the argent gleam flares a little brighter. As something starts writhing, squirming through the cracks in the room's construction. Something thicker than just shadow, something viscous and wet and so much worse than mere water. Drywall bubbling and blackening where it touches, as it forks and divides and spreads like the roots of some twisted tree, like arterial conduits and branching blood vessels. Cilia filaments digging into the places where the light bleeds through, into the lines between the tile, into the seams. Working together to pry it apart. Their slick surface rippling, twitching and ticcing like there's a colony of worms just beneath the tarry flesh. The collective greedily devouring this hollow shell, this empty dream.
But it's not completely empty is it? Because he's here with you too.
He sits across from where you were just a second ago, back to the the breakroom tri-d. Leaning on the rear two legs of his chair; arms across his chest. He wears a shirt stained filthy, like it was soaked through with crude oil; the edge has more in common with an ink splatter than with fabric. White pants and a white coat and his shoulders and legs are skinnier than yours, slimmer than yours, even though if he was standing he'd be about your height.
The edge of his coat sits in a puddle. More tendrils slithering up the back, woven in with the moon-pale material; a tainted tracery so much like vines, so much like veins. His sleeves are stained and you think it might be by his own skin because there's not an exposed part that doesn't gleam a glossy-wet obsidian. Golden fire kindles within you, coursing through the false layers and shared spaces of your body. Tongues of flame wavering and dancing as patches of flesh ignite, the heat inside escaping it's still so small, so...fragile. Like a lantern in a hurricane.
The figure twitches towards you, noticing you noticing him for the first time. He doesn't have a face. In the darkness beneath that cowl there's just a mask, like an elaborate tri-d tattoo but somehow more material, more real. Semi-solid pixels, squares the size of a thumbnail, white as snow and cream and ice and frothing, foaming waves. White as polished canines and blind eyes and bleak, exposed bone. Different gradients, different hues; the edges are flickering, fading, glitching in and out and artificacting. But you can still see the jagged, angular design: a snake skull on liquid black.
SerpentOfEden leans forward, the legs chair legs softly clicking on the linoleum as he sits up straight. The sound hollow and tinny, as if filtered through shitty speakers. The wall behind you is breaking up, shattering in slow motion. The thigh-thick tentacles are pushing through, sliding across the floor, reaching towards you. He holds up a hand and the movement stops.
"H-h-hey Chris," he says softly, "you really are a brave kinda guy huh? I wish I was more like you you know-know-know? You wouldn't have listened to the Seonwoo and their fuckdolls, to Hisaya and his p-p-precious pocket cult. You wouldn't have been so scared of Lung and L-"
A hitch. A catch in his chest. A hairline fracture in his words. He has to start again, to force the name out, his voice thick with emotion.
"L-Lofwyr."
The golden fire in you flares a little brighter.
"Hah. Yeah. It's kind of l-l-like that isn't it? Still...I couldn't have come here like you did. J-j-just to find answers, knowing I might die. And isn't that just the funniest thing Chris? Considering how I went out in the end," elbows on a table that's dissolving in front of you, fast-rotting as flakes fall like Autumn leaves, as they curl up and float away; cloth rustling as he tilts his head, snake-mask shining, "That's my dirty secret Chris, I used to be like them too-too-too. I thought I was a soldier, making that sacrifice, doing the one thing anyone's ever needed me for. I thought that I understood. But God isn't a general Chris, and I'm not a soldier. Just a signal. A lucid dream."
A pause, contemplative.
"You're going up against her y'know. And s-s-she's so much stronger than her father or her mother; than her children. She might hurt you. Even kill you. B-b-but then again...you've never needed saving before have you Chris? Still, you might tonight. It might even be me y'know? Wouldn't that be funny Chris? If after everything I get to be the one who saves you?"
He motions and the tentacles wrap around your legs and snake around your chest and loop around your throat and you can feel the space around you ripping, tearing. A jagged maw of distorted gravity, a silvery halo as the Astral folds open like the petals of a fanged flower.
"Sssseeya Chris."
And then the jaws close around you. And it slides beneath your skin and beneath your scales and it's touch is like the mud scraped from the bottom of the ocean floor, those drowned places where the sun hasn't shone for a million, million years and alien, volcanic spires spear up into the black, wreathed in red-lipped worms. Specks of bioluminescent life floating like constellations in the night as the pressure bears you down. There are certain shared features between the far reaches of space and those places, fathoms deep beneath the waves. There are certain constants between the lonely places of the Sixth World.
You're starting to understand now, aren't you?
God was always here.
And then you're falling through the air and and sucking in a shuddering breath as you hit the ground. Splayed on all fours, back-bent legs behind you and hands planted like forepaws; tail lashing over your hips. All catlike grace and instinctive balance.
Right in the middle of the security station.
Chairs quietly creak as Knight Errant troopers slowly turn from the wall of monitors look at you. The door to the hotbox swings shut with a muffled thump, the duty officer standing beside it with a can of soycaf in hand. A shaman sits cross legged on a low couch, trancing as they probe the Astral for the source of the incursion. It's not a large room honestly, a suite sealed off with armored blast doors; with just enough space for everybody to stretch their legs and just enough amenities that they don't go insane. You're not farther than three feet from any of them and in those close quarters the silence is profound.
"Wh-" someone starts.
And then you pick up the shaman with your tail and bodily slam him into the officer.
It goes fast after that. It's not a fight, not really, that implies some equal exchange, some equivalency. It implies that you don't hit a trooper so hard with your hand curled around a flashbang that you fracture her visor. It suggests that you don't drop the grenade at your own feet and let the metallic ping, the magnesium flare, rip through the room. It, by definition, means that tagging the prone and groaning bodies with your shocksword is more than a literal afterthought, your mind distracted, something in you disturbed and unsettled.
Loop your tail around the trooper sitting limp in their chair and roll them away from their work station. Pull the small cartridge from your utility belt and pop the glassy, translucent chip from it's protective foam layer. Nyx made it, crafted it with the aid of whatever latticed processors she has slaved to her brain. It takes longer for you to find the input jack and slot it in than it does for the malware to run. The virus. The thing. You don't- You don't actually understand how it works you just watch the upload bar shoot across the screen, the golden lines of your uniform fading, cooling. Your visor slipping back into that bloody scarlet hue as you hunt and peck your way across the keyboards. Scanning through sub-menus for the controls for the drone vents. And it helps that this too is almost familiar and you've been here before.
The progress bar chimes complete and the program auto-executes. You finally figure out the floor you want and open the slatted shutters, letting Tyrhand in. And then that's-
...It.
That's everything.
After the party, the climb, the infiltration through the Astral, that's your job done with a few keystrokes. Fenrir's drone'll be here in a matter of minutes to take control of this from you, for you, to hook you back into the encrypted network. Leaving you free to pace and prowl, to wait for Jingsheng to play his part and the rest of the team to give you the all-clear for extraction. The Loup-Garou and the cyberzombie in the depths of the foundations, spliced into the systems, your own mission control.
You rest your weight at the command console, knuckles popping like firecrackers as your skin-suit slowly heals, closing over the molten rents and exposed anatomy. Thinking about what you saw, what SerpentOfEden said. You hesitate, you carefully move a still-smoking forearm away from the haptic interface and start typing, calling up camera feeds. There, Jingsheng already in Park's office. He must have been nearby, waiting for the go signal from Nyx. And there the party still in full swing, the close protection crews on the edges expanded, every patrol doubled. And there the empty central atrium on floor 105, Jingsheng's floor, the elevator doors opening and Seonwoo Mi-ran stepping out, surrounded by Ares-supplied bodyguards.
Hands flex and curl, claws punching through the metal desk with a tortured shriek.
You stare, wide-eyed. Whipping your head around, towards the faint humming coming from the vents only for an alert to flash up onscreen and drag you back. Seaonwoo Sang-jun on his way to the 100th floor, to your floor, moving the security station to ready status and requesting a report when he arrives. The sound you make is somewhere between a piping cry and a panicked snarl. Resonating deep in your chest and utterly inhuman.
Tyrhand drifts in behind you, all sleek, curved armor and spinning blades. Tracing a lazy circuit through the air before pausing, blue optics burning as it studies you, drinks in the feeds behind you. Fenrir's icon appears in the corner of your HUD. And you can barely think, barely process it because you need to not be here you need to move but you still have to tell him-
What are you going to tell him?
[ ] Tell him you're going to the 105th floor, to intercept Mi-ran before she can find Jingsheng. You don't know what she is or how she tracked him but right now you need to buy him all the time you can. To protect him as best you can. You don't know what she really is but you got a good look at her other body, her real body, and you can tell she's not combat oriented. Not like you are.
[ ] Tell him you're staying on the 100th floor, to ambush Sang-jun before he realizes what's wrong. You don't think he knows what his sister's doing; his message is curt and concerned, not panicked so you'd have the upper hand in the first strike. But you don't know what his true form is and you have no idea what he's capable of. And you'll have to trust Jingsheng to take care of himself.
The night is where you live now. The night is where you work, the night is where play, where you've made your home and it's a place -a location- as much as it's a simple span of hours. There are parts of Pyongyang that don't exist in the daylight. There are people here who disappear in the sunlight. You should know shouldn't you? You're one of them now, SINless and free.
But this is different. This is something else. A passing similarity but it's just that, a similarity and the connection is thin at best. It-
...Do you remember that Winter in New Brunswick? You sort of do, you weren't that old and the memory lives in that blurry, uncertain, part of your brain that holds everything before the age of fourteen. Slices of impression, scraps of recollection, all arranged in a crude timeline with pictures and sounds and scents overlapping; with huge chunks missing.
But you do remember enough, bits and pieces. You remember standing behind the sliding glass doors, wrapped up in a beige blanket. The fabric that kind of soft, almost slippery, polyester; faux-fleece. You remember looking out over the narrow slip of a balcony, barely big enough for you to stand out on by yourself, and staring at the sea. At the iron-and-ink thunderheads sweeping in over the Atlantic.
You remember the way the storm raged and howled when it hit, hammering the apartment complex with hail and half-frozen rain. The wind rising until it screamed like a subway line blasting right past your window while you hunkered beneath the covers; comforter drawn up over your head. The block lost power at some point in the night and you woke up in the early hours of the morning to switched off digital displays, the hallway lamps that filtered beneath the doorframe gone, the candy colored stars that ringed your laptop and baby's-first-PDA dead and dark. Countless, constant companions gone, your nightlights burned out, leaving behind a world swathed in soft, blue-tinged shadow
It's like that.
A world in shades of grey, in pitch black and snowy haze. A world done in charcoal smears, countertop and tabletops and projector mounts sketched out with swift, deft strokes and then smudged with the artist's thumb. Distorted by design, leaving everything a suggestion, an impression, drawn from memory and expectation; the two filling in the blanks where sharper details should be.
The breakroom tri-d flickers and shows nothing now, the larger cavern behind you with its repeating rooms is gone. The doorway opening onto a yawning, sucking void. All you have to see by is a silvery shine; a little like moonlight, a little like distant starlight filtering through a window. A pale, cold glow that creeps in through the corners of the kitchenette.
the moon the moon the moon,
there's something you're supposed to remember about the moon
there's something you're supposed to remember about the moon
God you're freezing. You're hardly ever cold anymore but this just seeps inside you.
there's a rabbit in the moon
You can feel the ache in your jaw, feel the sliced-gum sensation as it crawls into your ruined mouth. As it kisses the tips of hidden fangs, buried in that pink bed, waiting to replace shed teeth. Rows of razor enamel throbbing in tandem. Try to work your lungs, force out a sound. Nothing comes, it's like you're screaming underwater. Screaming just inside your head.
All around you the conference room is dissolving, coming undone and falling apart at the seams. Section by section, panel by panel, neatly split off and peeled away; floating free in the void as the argent gleam flares a little brighter. As something starts writhing, squirming through the cracks in the room's construction. Something thicker than just shadow, something viscous and wet and so much worse than mere water. Drywall bubbling and blackening where it touches, as it forks and divides and spreads like the roots of some twisted tree, like arterial conduits and branching blood vessels. Cilia filaments digging into the places where the light bleeds through, into the lines between the tile, into the seams. Working together to pry it apart. Their slick surface rippling, twitching and ticcing like there's a colony of worms just beneath the tarry flesh. The collective greedily devouring this hollow shell, this empty dream.
But it's not completely empty is it? Because he's here with you too.
He sits across from where you were just a second ago, back to the the breakroom tri-d. Leaning on the rear two legs of his chair; arms across his chest. He wears a shirt stained filthy, like it was soaked through with crude oil; the edge has more in common with an ink splatter than with fabric. White pants and a white coat and his shoulders and legs are skinnier than yours, slimmer than yours, even though if he was standing he'd be about your height.
The edge of his coat sits in a puddle. More tendrils slithering up the back, woven in with the moon-pale material; a tainted tracery so much like vines, so much like veins. His sleeves are stained and you think it might be by his own skin because there's not an exposed part that doesn't gleam a glossy-wet obsidian. Golden fire kindles within you, coursing through the false layers and shared spaces of your body. Tongues of flame wavering and dancing as patches of flesh ignite, the heat inside escaping it's still so small, so...fragile. Like a lantern in a hurricane.
The figure twitches towards you, noticing you noticing him for the first time. He doesn't have a face. In the darkness beneath that cowl there's just a mask, like an elaborate tri-d tattoo but somehow more material, more real. Semi-solid pixels, squares the size of a thumbnail, white as snow and cream and ice and frothing, foaming waves. White as polished canines and blind eyes and bleak, exposed bone. Different gradients, different hues; the edges are flickering, fading, glitching in and out and artificacting. But you can still see the jagged, angular design: a snake skull on liquid black.
SerpentOfEden leans forward, the legs chair legs softly clicking on the linoleum as he sits up straight. The sound hollow and tinny, as if filtered through shitty speakers. The wall behind you is breaking up, shattering in slow motion. The thigh-thick tentacles are pushing through, sliding across the floor, reaching towards you. He holds up a hand and the movement stops.
"H-h-hey Chris," he says softly, "you really are a brave kinda guy huh? I wish I was more like you you know-know-know? You wouldn't have listened to the Seonwoo and their fuckdolls, to Hisaya and his p-p-precious pocket cult. You wouldn't have been so scared of Lung and L-"
A hitch. A catch in his chest. A hairline fracture in his words. He has to start again, to force the name out, his voice thick with emotion.
"L-Lofwyr."
The golden fire in you flares a little brighter.
"Hah. Yeah. It's kind of l-l-like that isn't it? Still...I couldn't have come here like you did. J-j-just to find answers, knowing I might die. And isn't that just the funniest thing Chris? Considering how I went out in the end," elbows on a table that's dissolving in front of you, fast-rotting as flakes fall like Autumn leaves, as they curl up and float away; cloth rustling as he tilts his head, snake-mask shining, "That's my dirty secret Chris, I used to be like them too-too-too. I thought I was a soldier, making that sacrifice, doing the one thing anyone's ever needed me for. I thought that I understood. But God isn't a general Chris, and I'm not a soldier. Just a signal. A lucid dream."
A pause, contemplative.
"You're going up against her y'know. And s-s-she's so much stronger than her father or her mother; than her children. She might hurt you. Even kill you. B-b-but then again...you've never needed saving before have you Chris? Still, you might tonight. It might even be me y'know? Wouldn't that be funny Chris? If after everything I get to be the one who saves you?"
He motions and the tentacles wrap around your legs and snake around your chest and loop around your throat and you can feel the space around you ripping, tearing. A jagged maw of distorted gravity, a silvery halo as the Astral folds open like the petals of a fanged flower.
"Sssseeya Chris."
And then the jaws close around you. And it slides beneath your skin and beneath your scales and it's touch is like the mud scraped from the bottom of the ocean floor, those drowned places where the sun hasn't shone for a million, million years and alien, volcanic spires spear up into the black, wreathed in red-lipped worms. Specks of bioluminescent life floating like constellations in the night as the pressure bears you down. There are certain shared features between the far reaches of space and those places, fathoms deep beneath the waves. There are certain constants between the lonely places of the Sixth World.
You're starting to understand now, aren't you?
you remember them don't you?
you remember the hungry sky every time you spread your wings and soar.
mom loves you. dad does too. god loves you most of all. they think about you a lot.
they still dream of you.
do you dream of them too?
you remember the hungry sky every time you spread your wings and soar.
mom loves you. dad does too. god loves you most of all. they think about you a lot.
they still dream of you.
do you dream of them too?
God was always here.
And then you're falling through the air and and sucking in a shuddering breath as you hit the ground. Splayed on all fours, back-bent legs behind you and hands planted like forepaws; tail lashing over your hips. All catlike grace and instinctive balance.
Right in the middle of the security station.
Chairs quietly creak as Knight Errant troopers slowly turn from the wall of monitors look at you. The door to the hotbox swings shut with a muffled thump, the duty officer standing beside it with a can of soycaf in hand. A shaman sits cross legged on a low couch, trancing as they probe the Astral for the source of the incursion. It's not a large room honestly, a suite sealed off with armored blast doors; with just enough space for everybody to stretch their legs and just enough amenities that they don't go insane. You're not farther than three feet from any of them and in those close quarters the silence is profound.
"Wh-" someone starts.
And then you pick up the shaman with your tail and bodily slam him into the officer.
It goes fast after that. It's not a fight, not really, that implies some equal exchange, some equivalency. It implies that you don't hit a trooper so hard with your hand curled around a flashbang that you fracture her visor. It suggests that you don't drop the grenade at your own feet and let the metallic ping, the magnesium flare, rip through the room. It, by definition, means that tagging the prone and groaning bodies with your shocksword is more than a literal afterthought, your mind distracted, something in you disturbed and unsettled.
Loop your tail around the trooper sitting limp in their chair and roll them away from their work station. Pull the small cartridge from your utility belt and pop the glassy, translucent chip from it's protective foam layer. Nyx made it, crafted it with the aid of whatever latticed processors she has slaved to her brain. It takes longer for you to find the input jack and slot it in than it does for the malware to run. The virus. The thing. You don't- You don't actually understand how it works you just watch the upload bar shoot across the screen, the golden lines of your uniform fading, cooling. Your visor slipping back into that bloody scarlet hue as you hunt and peck your way across the keyboards. Scanning through sub-menus for the controls for the drone vents. And it helps that this too is almost familiar and you've been here before.
The progress bar chimes complete and the program auto-executes. You finally figure out the floor you want and open the slatted shutters, letting Tyrhand in. And then that's-
...It.
That's everything.
After the party, the climb, the infiltration through the Astral, that's your job done with a few keystrokes. Fenrir's drone'll be here in a matter of minutes to take control of this from you, for you, to hook you back into the encrypted network. Leaving you free to pace and prowl, to wait for Jingsheng to play his part and the rest of the team to give you the all-clear for extraction. The Loup-Garou and the cyberzombie in the depths of the foundations, spliced into the systems, your own mission control.
You rest your weight at the command console, knuckles popping like firecrackers as your skin-suit slowly heals, closing over the molten rents and exposed anatomy. Thinking about what you saw, what SerpentOfEden said. You hesitate, you carefully move a still-smoking forearm away from the haptic interface and start typing, calling up camera feeds. There, Jingsheng already in Park's office. He must have been nearby, waiting for the go signal from Nyx. And there the party still in full swing, the close protection crews on the edges expanded, every patrol doubled. And there the empty central atrium on floor 105, Jingsheng's floor, the elevator doors opening and Seonwoo Mi-ran stepping out, surrounded by Ares-supplied bodyguards.
Hands flex and curl, claws punching through the metal desk with a tortured shriek.
You stare, wide-eyed. Whipping your head around, towards the faint humming coming from the vents only for an alert to flash up onscreen and drag you back. Seaonwoo Sang-jun on his way to the 100th floor, to your floor, moving the security station to ready status and requesting a report when he arrives. The sound you make is somewhere between a piping cry and a panicked snarl. Resonating deep in your chest and utterly inhuman.
Tyrhand drifts in behind you, all sleek, curved armor and spinning blades. Tracing a lazy circuit through the air before pausing, blue optics burning as it studies you, drinks in the feeds behind you. Fenrir's icon appears in the corner of your HUD. And you can barely think, barely process it because you need to not be here you need to move but you still have to tell him-
What are you going to tell him?
[ ] Tell him you're going to the 105th floor, to intercept Mi-ran before she can find Jingsheng. You don't know what she is or how she tracked him but right now you need to buy him all the time you can. To protect him as best you can. You don't know what she really is but you got a good look at her other body, her real body, and you can tell she's not combat oriented. Not like you are.
[ ] Tell him you're staying on the 100th floor, to ambush Sang-jun before he realizes what's wrong. You don't think he knows what his sister's doing; his message is curt and concerned, not panicked so you'd have the upper hand in the first strike. But you don't know what his true form is and you have no idea what he's capable of. And you'll have to trust Jingsheng to take care of himself.
[X] Tell him you're going to the 105th floor, to intercept Mi-ran before she can find Jingsheng. You don't know what she is or how she tracked him but right now you need to buy him all the time you can. To protect him as best you can. You don't know what she really is but you got a good look at her other body, her real body, and you can tell she's not combat oriented. Not like you are.
Evaunit02mark1
S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.
[X] Tell him you're going to the 105th floor, to intercept Mi-ran before she can find Jingsheng. You don't know what she is or how she tracked him but right now you need to buy him all the time you can. To protect him as best you can. You don't know what she really is but you got a good look at her other body, her real body, and you can tell she's not combat oriented. Not like you are.
- Location
- Italy
[X] Tell him you're going to the 105th floor, to intercept Mi-ran before she can find Jingsheng. You don't know what she is or how she tracked him but right now you need to buy him all the time you can. To protect him as best you can. You don't know what she really is but you got a good look at her other body, her real body, and you can tell she's not combat oriented. Not like you are.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
these paragraphs are so cyberpunk i just grew wraparound shades and a leather jacket with a neon light strip on the collar
Jjjeeeez did I ever tell you you've got a real flair for the atmospheric? Probably, but it bears repeating every time. You've got it captured so well I'm practically there.
i see you there ruvik/ruiner/someone else whose name i can't recall right now you can't hide from me you piece of shit
Man there is a certain Something about this scene. I mean it's definitely great how it feels like a terrible horrible no-good very bad nightmare and how it weaves back in what I've been saying about dragons being descended Horrors but what I like the most is that through all his blatant evil bad guy villain signposting Serpent is just... I think he's been pretty much trustworthy with us, y'know? I think Christoph pretty much is his only friend and the dude is demonstrably a lot like Christoph in a lot of ways, only instead of getting turned into a glorious golden scalie fuckmachine he just got suicide-bombed and swallowed up by a #corruption doujin. The family's Horror-tainted themselves so they're ostensibly on the same side but he still sounds more concerned about Christoph's safety than any of the dumb evil shit they're doing.
I mean, ultimately I'm sure either he dies or Christoph does in the grand scheme of the story and 'saving' him seems pretty out of the question at this point but I'll be sad when the guy goes. He's just a guy that got ground up by the gears of a system way bigger than him. It's just the corpse got stuck and sprouted hellmold from space. As of Event Horizon.
I kind of love how at this point getting dumped straight into an enemy encounter out of a cutscene isn't even a meaningful threat to Christoph. He is a glorious golden murder-drake and I love him.
Hmmmmmmmm
Okay so, here's the thing. The 'obvious' choice is to immediately drop the mission and run screaming and hollering for our boyfriend (gomenosorry jingsheng i still have you registered in my head as jiaolong i had to doublecheck who you were sumimascuse me) and fight the lady but I feel like being contrarian right now.
[ ] Tell him you're going to the 105th floor, to intercept Mi-ran before she can find Jingsheng. You don't know what she is or how she tracked him but right now you need to buy him all the time you can. To protect him as best you can. You don't know what she really is but you got a good look at her other body, her real body, and you can tell she's not combat oriented. Not like you are.
Mi-ran has a bunch of bodyguards with her but she's not combat-specced, Christoph narrates so himself. She has some kind of astral or other supernatural sense but that seemed to ping mostly off of her shared nature with Christoph, and thanks to the Drake thing being well out of the bag I highly doubt Jingsheng is also one and hiding it arbitrarily so I don't think he'll ping to her for that. Ultimately what we have to keep in mind that he's a Shadowrunner with plenty of runs under his belt and that's not nothing, plus he's got Fenrir and Nyx in his corner waiting to pounce if he does get caught. I genuinely put his odds of surviving unassisted as Pretty Good.
[X] Tell him you're staying on the 100th floor, to ambush Sang-jun before he realizes what's wrong. You don't think he knows what his sister's doing; his message is curt and concerned, not panicked so you'd have the upper hand in the first strike. But you don't know what his true form is and you have no idea what he's capable of. And you'll have to trust Jingsheng to take care of himself.
Now this I wanna see for multiple reasons. One being that we get to see Sang-jun's true form and what he's capable of, and uh... well if anyone can take a severe ass-beating in this equation it's Christoph so I feel confident making him the crash-test dummy. The worst-case scenario with going after Jingsheng is that Sang-jun also finds out something's wrong and runs downstairs to join in at the worst possible time like that one fucking orc captain with the most inconvenient possible immunities in Shadow of Wardor. If Christoph engages him here, that's both of them tied up in situations of rrroughly equal strength.
Also there's a nonzero chance that if Christoph winds up truly outmatched by Sang-jun for whatever reason Serpent of Eden'll step in to save the day like he mentioned. Possibly while flexing his big huge muscles and talking about how large his goodick is.
[X] Tell him you're staying on the 100th floor, to ambush Sang-jun before he realizes what's wrong. You don't think he knows what his sister's doing; his message is curt and concerned, not panicked so you'd have the upper hand in the first strike. But you don't know what his true form is and you have no idea what he's capable of. And you'll have to trust Jingsheng to take care of himself.
[X] Tell him you're staying on the 100th floor, to ambush Sang-jun before he realizes what's wrong. You don't think he knows what his sister's doing; his message is curt and concerned, not panicked so you'd have the upper hand in the first strike. But you don't know what his true form is and you have no idea what he's capable of. And you'll have to trust Jingsheng to take care of himself.
LupineVolt
Now with 200% more Puns
- Location
- Michigan
[X] Tell him you're staying on the 100th floor, to ambush Sang-jun before he realizes what's wrong. You don't think he knows what his sister's doing; his message is curt and concerned, not panicked so you'd have the upper hand in the first strike. But you don't know what his true form is and you have no idea what he's capable of. And you'll have to trust Jingsheng to take care of himself.
I am stuck on a tablet so I'm not going to get too heavily into how much I adored this update, with the slick atmospheric nature, the interplay of the elements and shadow, and the mounting excitement of a sudden new variable.
I will say that Zerban made a pretty good argument do going that way.
I am stuck on a tablet so I'm not going to get too heavily into how much I adored this update, with the slick atmospheric nature, the interplay of the elements and shadow, and the mounting excitement of a sudden new variable.
I will say that Zerban made a pretty good argument do going that way.
[X] Tell him you're staying on the 100th floor, to ambush Sang-jun before he realizes what's wrong. You don't think he knows what his sister's doing; his message is curt and concerned, not panicked so you'd have the upper hand in the first strike. But you don't know what his true form is and you have no idea what he's capable of. And you'll have to trust Jingsheng to take care of himself.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I mean, firstly, Mood. But also this is a surprisingly chill track for Christoph. Hmm.
aaaaa frozen teeth aaaaa
Pfft. Yeah Christoph the absent-minded murderblender just like, popping out of thin air and waving a terrible taloned paw before demolishing everybody like they aren't even there. Good show.
I'll be honest, I've kind of lost the thread of what's actually happening, but maaaan this is a pleasant ride to float along admiring the scenery.
[X] Tell him you're staying on the 100th floor, to ambush Sang-jun before he realizes what's wrong. You don't think he knows what his sister's doing; his message is curt and concerned, not panicked so you'd have the upper hand in the first strike. But you don't know what his true form is and you have no idea what he's capable of. And you'll have to trust Jingsheng to take care of himself.
Have some confidence in your smoothtalking boyfriend, Christoph.
- Location
- ?
[X] Tell him you're staying on the 100th floor, to ambush Sang-jun before he realizes what's wrong. You don't think he knows what his sister's doing; his message is curt and concerned, not panicked so you'd have the upper hand in the first strike. But you don't know what his true form is and you have no idea what he's capable of. And you'll have to trust Jingsheng to take care of himself.
Well, okay. I wanna have faith in boyfriend too.
Well, okay. I wanna have faith in boyfriend too.
- Location
- Dethklok
[X] Tell him you're going to the 105th floor, to intercept Mi-ran before she can find Jingsheng. You don't know what she is or how she tracked him but right now you need to buy him all the time you can. To protect him as best you can. You don't know what she really is but you got a good look at her other body, her real body, and you can tell she's not combat oriented. Not like you are.
I found the prose a little heavy to read, like there were too many words too close together. At least I had some difficulties to read this update. Or it's because I usually prefer in this story the fights and exploration/mundane life in Pyongyang rather than the magical visions and plots of otherwordly spirits.
I found the prose a little heavy to read, like there were too many words too close together. At least I had some difficulties to read this update. Or it's because I usually prefer in this story the fights and exploration/mundane life in Pyongyang rather than the magical visions and plots of otherwordly spirits.
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- Location
- Somewhere else
[X] Tell him you're staying on the 100th floor, to ambush Sang-jun before he realizes what's wrong. You don't think he knows what his sister's doing; his message is curt and concerned, not panicked so you'd have the upper hand in the first strike. But you don't know what his true form is and you have no idea what he's capable of. And you'll have to trust Jingsheng to take care of himself.
- Location
- In my Lair, on my Hoard
[X] Tell him you're going to the 105th floor, to intercept Mi-ran before she can find Jingsheng. You don't know what she is or how she tracked him but right now you need to buy him all the time you can. To protect him as best you can. You don't know what she really is but you got a good look at her other body, her real body, and you can tell she's not combat oriented. Not like you are.
[X] Tell him you're going to the 105th floor, to intercept Mi-ran before she can find Jingsheng. You don't know what she is or how she tracked him but right now you need to buy him all the time you can. To protect him as best you can. You don't know what she really is but you got a good look at her other body, her real body, and you can tell she's not combat oriented. Not like you are.