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The Time After

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[X] Fight with the power of the voice
Free powers! What could possibly go wrong?
 
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Chapter 5: Combat
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    [X] Fight with the power of the voice

    "Guys. Run." You say.

    "Wh-" Annette starts to say. The first of the creatures leaps at you, its blade flicking up like a scythe to come down on you. You step forward, fingers closing on the hilt of a sword that isn't there. You step into the draw, a perfectly executed Iaijutsu with empty hands. The creature falls apart around the blow, read blood and colorful ichor spraying backward out of the cut. Your blade fills in behind it, a long, curved Japanese style sword.

    Your friends gape, eyes wide as the scene fills in around them. The monsters standing poised, your sword in hand, the one cut in two. Beyond the edges of the area, the world seems frozen. You can see the individual motes of dust frozen in the air.

    Neither Doug nor Annette are running, they're more frozen with panic. The monsters seem pretty much the same, and you take the head off a second before the rest can recover.

    You have grown so strong little sister!     The voice sounds ecstatic. You've fought in more wars? You've defeated men? Show me what you can do!

    Two of the creatures leap at you at once, you step to the side, jumping back so that the two impede one another, then slash one across the flank. It howls and stumbles, then the other one jumps over its head, blade swinging up. You run up the wounded one and impale it through the stomach. It falls away, taking your sword with it, but you have another, forming out of the air next to you to stab up into the one you're standing on's head.

    The last one takes deep breaths, its muscular chest inflating and deflating heavily, making a strange wheezing noise. Its arms are corded with muscle, the blade bound too it as if by biological hausers. You're sure you've killed worse before, but you can't remember what. It charges in at you, blade whipping towards you in a short arc. You watch its legs, see one lift and then lift the blade up and aside. The creature gasps as you plant both blades in its stomach. It gurgles, clutches at itself, then staggers a couple of paces back and falls over.

    You stand, panting.

    "Holy shit." Doug mutters. "Holy shit Alice, how did you..."

    "Where did that sword even come from?" Annette asks. "And where'd it go?"

    Your swords, and the bodies have all vanished. Even the blood is gone. But so is the incredible, oppressive sense of wrongness that hung over the entire campus. You stumble back and sit down on one of the benches next to the library. To your surprise, it's Doug who approaches you first. "Hey." He says. "Are you okay?"

    "I--" you take a deep breath. "I don't know. I just needed a sword, and I had one." You take another deep breath and let it out. "You both saw... those things right?"

    "The monsters?" Annette says, her voice a little hysterical. "Yeah. Yeah. I saw the monsters." She takes a deep, deliberate breath. "Do you think-- do you think this is to do with the cult? Or something else?"

    "They were waiting just where I was going to meet her." Doug says. "If Alice hadn't been here then--" he takes a deep breath. "Should we call the police?"

    "And tell them what?" Annette is calming. She sits down on the other side of you. "That we got attacked by invisible monsters? They'd think we were crazy." She looks over at the notice board to one side. "We've got to keep investigating I think. And stay close to Alice."

    "You guys should go home and get safe." You say, out of duty more than anything because the last thing you want is to be alone right now."

    "No way." Annette says. "For all we know those things are waiting for us in our dorm. The only safe place is near you." She makes a gesture at the bulletin board and it begins to spin out a jumble of augmented reality notes and messages. "Doug, come help me check this."

    Doug goes and looks the board over. You sit, pretending to yourself you're acting as sentry rather than trying to calm your own freaked out nerves. You try speaking to the voice a few times but you don't get anything in return. You start to spiral a little, thinking about the dream, worrying what you made a deal with. What happened to you back then?

    "Alice, we've got something."

    You walk over to see the message, pulled out and projected onto the three of your overlay.

    "Doug: Had to blow meeting you. I shouldn't have brought you into this at all. I'm sorry."

    "It's been previously viewed once." Annette pulls up a programming layer. "I can track the device that sent it with a bit of luck." She does something, then sighs. "Alright, I've got it. It's not moving though, so she could have just tossed it after sending the message. Overlays are so cheap you can buy a handful of ones that can do just pure AR at this point."

    "What about the one who viewed it?" Doug asks. "That could be the people tracking her."

    What to do?
    [ ] Track her overlay
    [ ] Track the overlay that also read the message
    [ ] Head to the address Doug rented her in case she's there.
     
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    • FBH said:
    What happened to you back then?
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    More like...
    FBH said:
    You have grown so strong little sister! The voice sounds ecstatic. You've fought in more wars? You've defeated men? Show me what you can do!
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    FBH said:
    You're sure you've killed worse before, but you can't remember what.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    ...who did you used to be?

    [X] Track her overlay

    She's the target. In an ideal universe, we completely don't interact with anyone else tracking her.
     
    This is a hard one...

    [X] Track the overlay that also read the message

    More of a chance they didn't drop it I expect, since they don't think they're the prey.
     
    Chapter 6: Pursuit
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    "Track the overlay that also read the message." You decide.

    "Are you sure? Isn't that likely to be the people who left... whatever those things were?" Doug asks.

    "Yes. But they've obviously got more resources than we do. Besides, if I was her I'd have dumped the overlay I used to leave that message. That's just basic communication security."

    Annette nods. "If she's being careful and knows anything all we'd be tracking down is a wastebin." She makes a few more gestures in the air, then pulls out her tablet and types rapidly. "Alright, got it. It's a while away. Over by the station."

    "We'll take the metro then." You head to the nearest train stop, climb up to the platform and join the others waiting there. It's starting to get busy. Doug is still peering around as if he expects the police to come charging in at any moment, but Annette seems calm. If the police were coming they'd be here by now. Indeed, looking back you can see people starting to filter back into the campus. The sense of dread and wrongness you all felt is gone now. You almost wonder if what you felt was all a dream.

    What absolute horseshit. No one awake has ever wondered if what they experienced was a dream. Maybe that they misremembered, but you can always tell reality, especially the kind of flashbulb reality of combat, adrenalin jagged into your memory. Over time it'll fade to impressions. Time will become fuzzy. It'll just be images and events, filed into the brain.

    The way the light struck one of those heavy French APCs.

    Elfesya's face as she laughed, holding a spliff in dirty fingers.

    A Turkish helicopter going in, tail gone, flaming bodies raining out the doors.

    The glitter of the moon on the helms of a crowd of charging knights, the beasts they rode--

    You blink. That last memory. What was that? You've got no place for it.

    Or, maybe you do. You reach out for the voice. Feel yourself touch something, then be gently pushed back. Not now little sister. You have much to do do you not?

    You do. You need to concentrate. You step aboard the metro line and look down at the city as it flows past. So much of this artificial city is under construction, everything so bright and so new. You love it, more than any place you've lived. Los Angeles is just two hundred miles of strip-malls and tired apartments. San Fransico has never come back from Silicon Valley's occupation that turned it into a theme park version of itself. But California City. Blisteringly modern California City, artificial babel of the New Green Deal. California City with its towers and its brass and its climbing greenery is where it's at.

    "We're here." Annette says. She has her tablet slung in her bag, but it's connected to her overlay.

    "Do you spot them?" You ask. She nods, not looking that way but sending a file, outlining a man in red. He's smartly dressed, in a light wait dark suit that honestly looks not lightweight enough for the heat outside. He's standing with four others, all men around one of the benches, a laptop open beside him. You can see a city map on it. The group has a purposeful look to them, an unhidden air of a group of people doing a task. Each man is wearing a pin on his tie, a complex design that makes you blink when you look at it too hard. A central symbol, tentacled and wierd, with a band of runes around it and more strange tentacles reaching in towards it.

    Your vision is really detailed all of a sudden. Is that being a bioroid, or something else?

    "What do we do?" Doug asks.

    "I'd love to get a hold of that laptop." Annette says. "That looks like a tactical map program.

    "We could just call the cops." Doug suggests.

    "And tell them what?" Annette asks.

    "That we have reason to believe my friend is missing and maybe these guys are involved?"

    "Or, we could just watch them for a while and see what they do." You say.

    [ ] Call the cops on them.
    [ ] Approach them and engage them in conversation while Annette steals their laptop
    [ ] Have Doug approach and engage them in conversation while you steal their laptop
    [ ] Watch them from close in so you can see their laptop screen
    [ ] Watch them from the station balcony so you're not spotted.
     
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    • I don't want to put Annette in more danger. And Doug doesn't seem the man to bluff them.

    [X] Watch them from close in so you can see their laptop screen
     
    3-vs-5 if anything goes wrong. I'd rather not chance anything that slides too far into "things go wrong" territory. Like trying to steal their stuff.

    [x] Watch them from close in so you can see their laptop screen
     
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