Game On! (IC)

[Fox]

[bg=#555555]"Vampire escaped,"[/bg] Dragonfly informed the man, frowning. It still bothered her...but at least he didn't have female captives to 'wed'. As far as she knew, anyway. [bg=#555555]"But you should be better prepared, now. Will take him some time to recover, anyway."[/bg]

She took a moment to tap a finger against her leg, trying to focus more on the problems at hand and less on the surrounding celebrations. [bg=#555555]"Would appreciate access to maps. Still need to get home somehow - would be good to have better idea of where I am. Phrase...'lay of the land'. Local features. Anyone who could help."[/bg]

[Raveled]

On the bottom-most level of the space station, all corridors lead to a central room, which was itself composed of circular tiers descending towards a round, transparent viewport. The levels were crowded with computer terminals and there was a corpse at every station. Some were unmarked, at least where Ironclad could see, and some wore the signs of violent death openly. all had been dead for quite some time, at least long enough for the blood to dry and pool, and few of the corpses the heroine passed looked stiff.

That's how she tried to view the room, coolly and with a scientist's detachment, but she just couldn't. The magnitude of death -- easily a hundred bodies, each one mutilated in a unique and horrifying way -- was overwhelming. She felt hysteria creeping over her, and as a last-ditch effort she cut off all her visual feeds and hunkered down inside her armor. Images flashed in front of her eyes, not from the space station but from Jessica's personal files. There were pictures of people she cared about, like Blake and Mara; people she emulated, like Miss Americana and Daedalus; and her own personal triumphs, like the Lab and her armor in all its evolutions. One face that ran through every set was that of Malcolm Dawes. Despite her complicated feelings towards her grandfather at the moment, she knew that he wouldn't be cowering in a corner while a crime of this enormity when unpunished.

The young heroine took strength from that, pushing her fear and unease into a small corner of her mind, letting her anger and outrage come to the fore. Ironclad reactivated her external sensors, only to see a pair of pale blue eyes, only inches away from her face. "Well, well, well," said a motherly voice just as close. "Who has come to visit Granny?"

[Raveled]

GM

Dragonfly got a room in the keep, and true to the king's word it was soon filled with scrolls and leather-bound parchments. The young genius studied the material, but far too many of the authors and cartographers seemed more interested in adventurous fabrications than the facts. Of course, given what the heroine had already gone through, perhaps "Here Be Dragons" wasn't an exaggeration.

One story grabbed her attention, though. The Temple of Door was apparently constructed over a dimensional rift, and an order of mystical warrior-monks protected the rift. Unfortunately nothing had been heard from them in generations, and the last three accounts she had read all ended with the author setting out for the fabled temple, and never being heard from again.

[Fox]

Sighing, Dragonfly took one last look at the maps and notes on the 'Temple of Door'. [bg=#555555]"People go, don't come back...great. Probably opened a door to somewhere they shouldn't have. Happens. Have to be ready for it, though. Mmh...."[/bg] The heroine glanced in the general direction of the celebrations, wondering if she should go say goodbye...but decided against it; she really didn't know these people, and if this was supposed to be a race she suspected that stubborn dragons and apparently immortal vampires had put her behind. That the decision also saved her from having to socialize was, surely, just a side benefit.

So, she simply found the nearest window and jumped out, wings flaring to life and sweeping her up into the sky toward this Temple of Door (or, at least, as 'toward' as the relatively primitive maps and journals could direct her).

[Raveled]

GM

Dragonfly tumbled out the window before her wings caught on whatever they pushed against (it certainly wasn't air) and propelled her forwards. Freed of passengers, she was again free to push her suit to its limits; the world blurred all around her and the castle quickly receded past the horizon. No doubt the inhabitants would make up some story about how she disappeared in the middle of the night, or how she vanished in smoke before the king, or how she called a dragon to ride off into the sunset. It was none of the heroine's concern: she had her own problems. Like trying to anticipate what was at the Temple of the Door.

The map and descriptions lead her high into a mountain range, over sharp peaks and through narrow passes. She had to double-back a few times as she passed a sharp turn without noticing it, but before long was standing in front of the temple entrance. It was a pair of huge doors, each thirty feet tall and just as wide, apparently set into the middle of the mountain itself. Surprisingly, the cyclopean doors opened with the merest touch of Dragonfly's gauntleted hand, revealing an unlit hallway of dressed stone that plunged into the mountainside.

[Fox]

After her experiences in the vampire's home Dragonfly advanced uncharacteristically slowly, peering around the hallway as she went with every sense her body and suit afforded her...though the somewhat slim pickings there reminded her that she really should make some more upgrades. file for later - doors in good condition? - supposedly no word for generations - implies good construction - maintenance? magic? - lack of light - remaining human residents unlikely on large scale - select survivors, non-human residents, true abandonment....

[Raveled]

Ironclad moved back and saw that those pale blue eye were set in a kindly, wrinkled face. The woman really did look like a grandmother from an after school special, or a made-for-TV Christmas movie. The effect was marred somewhat by her being in a lab coat instead of a chintz house dress; it was ruined worse, though, by the dried blood on her arms, all the way up to her elbows.

She gave the heroine a warm smile and reached out as to cup Ironclad's helmeted face. The young woman started backwards, taking to the air and circling around until she was floating in the middle of the room above the drop. "Who are you," she demanded. "What happened here? What is this place?"

The old woman moved to the edge of the railing and gripped it, still smiling at Ironclad. "This is a research station," she said, voice still calm. "Our universe was running out of energy, see? Well, we didn't want to just sit around and wait for the end, so we started stealing energy from neighboring galaxies. And when that wasn't enough, we started looking for other universes to siphon off of."

Ironclad blinked at resisted the urge to look at the ceiling. "So... the alien I fought? All the remains I came across? They were trying to attack because you were stealing their energy? But then, what about the robots?"

"Well, the robots were there to protect us, of course! Once we were attacked though, the Science Council felt time was running out and authorized us to begin taking more... unorthodox approaches." Granny peered down at the central viewport, and after a moment's hesitation so did Ironclad. The station itself was slowly rotating and orbiting the burned-out planet, so the view of sweeping through the local starscape. After a few seconds of searching the young genius saw it: a hole in space, like the whole thing was a backdrop in a cheap play that someone had snipped away. Through it she could see more space, purple gasses, and a gray and grim planet covered in screaming faces that had to be miles across. A line of burning something cut across the view, a column of fiery devastation that had to be on a planetary scale. With a start the heroine realized that this was a hole cut directly into the Terminus.

"It's beautiful," Granny said, shocking the heroine out of her reverie. "I knew there was no point to prolonging our joining with the Ending, so I went around and I... freed everyone of their worries!" She held up her blood-drenched arms and smiled at the heroine. "Now that you're here, I'll do the same to you. I promise, the end will be quick." The woman's eyes went totally black in a heartbeat and she fixed Ironclad's eyes, even through her helmet. "Now feel the End come upon you!"

[Raveled]

GM

As Dragonfly moved deeper into the temple, she expected the daylight to fade and leave her in total darkness. She was half right -- a few turns away from the entrance and the light from outside was cut off. Surprisingly though, she could still see, even without her suit's sensors enhancing things. She couldn't determine a particular source of the light; it seemed to come from everywhere, from the stones and the air itself. No doubt it was some magical residue, some kind of arcane spill-over from the dimensional rift.

With the pervasive glow aiding her Dragonfly moved deeper into the complex. Most of it seemed to be triangular passages cut into the stone of the mountain, seven or eight feet tall. The short heroine moved through them easily, though it would've been a tight squeeze walking shoulder to should with anyone. Occasionally she moved through much larger chambers, perfect hemispheres fifty feet across. Each of these were decorated in odd designs that didn't seem to be art but certainly weren't any language she knew. In the center of each was a large prism and an intricate gold stand; on the ceiling was a pentagram made of two overlapping triangles with a man-sized central opening. It was likely some precise mystical arrangement, beyond Dragonfly's ken of arcane ritual. The young genius could make a guess, though, that the frame was supposed to be upright, not knocked into a corner; that the crystal was supposed to be in the stand and, from her experience with magic, probably glowing. Each one she saw was a dull, milky white like scuffed quartz, and they all had some long crack or some part of themselves shattered.

The heroine wandered through the temple, unable to divine any internal pattern to the placement of the chambers but finding each one similarly vandalized. In time she heard a noise other than the humming of her suit or her own metal boots scuffing against the stone. It was coming from far ahead, a high, atonal whine or humming that danced on the edge of audibility. She edged forward and peered into the next large chamber. This one was different from the others -- the stand was intact, the crystal was properly placed, and the whole spectrum of light (and other electromagnetic energy) was shining from it. There was one other difference that took the heroine a minute to notice. A squamous slimy thing was shuffling around the edges of the chamber. It seemed to be, impossibly enough, all tentacle, just a sluggish ball of pseudopods that glistened wetly in the light of the central crystal. It was the source of the atonal whining, and unless Dragonfly missed her guess the thing was basking in the energy.

[Fox]

What she really wanted to was to just walk into the room firing, but she knew that was some frustration and tiredness talking; instead, Dragonfly frowned at the tentacled...the tentacled...what in the world (worlds?) was that thing? Whatever it was, she was glad she wore full-body sealed armor. But as far as she could tell it hadn't seen her yet, so she stayed where she was, as hidden as possible while keeping an eye on it and the room. Dragons may be awfully persistent and vampires may not want to admit defeat, but this thing...she didn't have a clue what this thing was, and she was willing to take the time to gain as much of an advantage as was possible.

[Raveled]

Ironclad felt a cold, sinking sensation steal over her mind, cooling her rage and bringing her anxieties, and the horrors she had seen, to the fore. She curled into a ball and slowly descended to the transparent viewport. Soon enough she was curled into a fetal position there, utterly frozen by indecision and the scale of the death before her; death she had been utterly unable to stop. She was terrible; she was useless; she was a failure as a hero, as an engineer, as a basic human being. She was alone. The best thing she could do was to wait for the Terminus to swallow this station and this universe whole. Better yet, she could deactivate her armor and wait for Granny to finish her -- so she did just that.

As the powered suit dissolved and disappeared in a flash of light, banished again to the interdimensional hiding place, the cold air of the station brushed against Jessica's skin for the first time. It was a shock and enough of one to startle her out of her stupor. She looked down at her hands and saw the silver ring there, twisted where it was supposed to lock in with another band. Of course someone loved her, and cared for her! This Terminus-empowered psychopath was turning her own worst fears against her! That suddenly realization shattered Granny's last hold on her mind, and the heroine armored back up and sped to the top tier once again.

"You're in for a surprise," she told the old woman with the bloody hands. "I'm not some shrinking violet of a research assistant, or an old man who's spent his entire life working in a lab! I'm Jessica Parker. I'm Ironclad. I'm barely an adult and I've handled worse terrors than you. I live in a world where gods and monsters walk among mortals, and I designed and built a suit of armor to make me the equal of any of them. If you think I'm going to lay down and let you walk all over me, lady, you've got a hell of a wake-up call coming!" The heroine brought her gauntleted hands around and let loose with a powerful blast from her wrist guns. It caught Granny full on the chest and slammed the old woman back against the wall, where she slid to the ground and sat there, head lolling loosely.

[Raveled]

GM

Dragonfly crouched in the doorway, watching the betentacled thing creep around the room. Several times it broke off of its circuit of the chamber to pass close to the crystal; each time it grew a little dimmer. That wasn't just a supposition, either; the heroine was able to track that with her suit, measuring the loss of several lumens each time the creature passed closer to the crystal. It was easy to decide that, with each pass, the inscrutable beast was draining power from the mystic crystal. That put Dragonfly in a pickle. This temple was her best bet for getting home, and she hadn't found any other intact crystal chambers. Tactical instinct told her to stay back and plan out the encounter, but if she waited that long would there be enough power to get her home?

[Raveled]

Ironclad flew forward and slammed into Granny, forcing the air out of the other woman's lungs. She easily picked up the older woman up and floated back to the center of the room. "I should drop you right now," she said flatly. "Crack that viewport and chuck you out into space. I don't know if your powers come from the Terminus somehow or because you're a strain of humanity from near the heat death of the universe, but I'm betting that you never evolved the ability to breath in space." Ironclad hung there for a few seconds, the barely-conscious woman in her grip. "But I'm not going to do that. Because I'm the hero. I'm just gonna knock you out and let you sit here, all alone, while your precious Terminus comes in and eats your world."

[Fox]

Dragonfly swore, though she made sure to do so only in her own head - no telling how well that thing could hear. There was just never quite enough time to put together a good plan.... probably Quirk's fault - maybe circumstance? - going to blame Quirk anyway - more satisfying

She waited until the thing had turned away from her (in as much as she could even tell what direction it was facing; it was moving away from her, anyway) before stepping out into the doorway, raising an armored hand, and launching a twisting distortion toward the tentacled mass. [bg=#555555]"Am sorry if you're intelligent, reasoning. Diplomacy hasn't been working today. Willing to try if you are, but have to assume you aren't."[/bg]

[Raveled]

Dragonfly's attack from hiding hit the betentacled thing in its central mass, sending it skidding back several feet in its slick path. The whining increased in volume and pitch, reverberating around the open room until it passed the limit of her hearing. The creature suddenly extended more tentacles, though from where Dragonfly couldn't tell. It swiftly went from basketball-sized to a good sever or eight feet across at full extension.

---

Ironclad shook the Terminus fanatic in her grip, hard. "You never give up," she scolded the woman. "Never. Not when the Terminus breaks through, not when there's Omegadrones in the sky, not when the Tyrant himself is standing in front of you, demanding that you --- why are you laughing?"

Granny was indeed laughing weakly in Ironclad's grasp. "The Terminus didn't find us. We found it and I opened the hole. Now I'm waiting for the end."

[Raveled]

Ironclad gaped behind her armor, shocked at the other woman's betrayal. "You... you're mad. You're absolutely insane. This is a power that destroys universes, and you invited it in!?" She flew back to the nearest console, dropping Granny off and forcing the corpse away. The computer language was unfamiliar, but her powers let her interface directly on a binary level. The firewalls and anti-intrusion countermeasures were child's play compared to what was just on her armor; apparently in the future hackers had gone the way of the dodo. In moments she had wrestled control of the station's dimensional apparatus away from the computers and powered it down. She looked out through the station's many sensors and noted with satisfaction that the window to the Terminus was dwindling rapidly. Within seconds it had closed entirely, and the only record was a smear of anomalous radiation.

Ironclad's attention was on the space outside, not the control room, so she was unaware of Granny sneaking up behind her. When the fanatic bounced her helmet off the console though, that got the heroine's attention. She replied with a short jab that failed to connect, but sent the other woman dancing back several steps. "I just saved your universe," Ironclad told the woman. "A little appreciation would be nice!"

[Fox]

The thing's expansion gave Dragonfly a moment's pause, but at this point she had to assume that if it had ever been friendly, it certainly wasn't now. also - probably knows the area better than I do - less blind? - can't retreat and leave it here anyway - mmh - hopefully not worse than the dragon or vampire

She kept her distance, a careful eye (and her targeting and warning suite) on the creature as she pressed the attack: her left hand came up and sent a twisted shockwave into as close to the center of mass of the waving tendrils as she could manage. [bg=#555555]"Just want to go home,"[/bg] she tiredly admitted to the creature, though she was mostly talking to herself. [bg=#555555]"Long day. Want my couch, wine, Ellie. Maybe not in combination or order. But would settle, at least, for somewhere not stuck with blacksmiths and castles."[/bg]

[Raveled]

The cthuloid evaded the attack nimbly, tentacles whipping as it spun. The amorphous thing launched itself through the air and hit Dragonfly square on. The heroine tried to push it away with a buzzing shield of dimensional energies, but the creature's tentacles lashed around her and before long she was entirely engulfed, unable to move or see for the squishy mass surrounding her.

---

Granny's fighting style was untrained and ferocious. She swung at Ironclad wildly, almost randomly, her nails striking sparks from the heroine's armor but failing to do much else. "It was perfect! It was beautiful! It was the end of all and I was going to be its bride!"

Ironclad fended off the madwoman until she saw an opening, then retaliated with a straight jab that broke the woman's nose and slammed her against a bulkhead. "You were going to be eaten up," she shot back. "Like so many after-dinner mints. The Terminus can't be reasoned with, it's pure destruction! If you want to go kill yourself, at least don't take others down with you!"

[Fox]

Dragonfly had just enough time to mentally kick herself for relaxing too much, and then the thing was on her, tentacles everywhere. well - thankfully not everywhere - glad I switched to armor She struggled for a moment, in the hopes that the thing wasn't quite as strong as it looked, but no such luck: she was well and truly bound up in the creature's grip.

Or would have been, if she hadn't been sure to add something to her suit for just such an occasion - added, in fact, before it was even a suit. One moment she was trapped in a mass of squishy tendrils, and the next space collapsed around her, a rift on the other side of the room dropping her on her feet. She'd barely landed before she unleashed a twisting, writhing attack back at the thing. probably a quip here - opportunity - 'bad touch'?

[Raveled]

The tentacle beast constricted back into itself as Dragonfly disappeared, the heroine's blast flashing overhead and blasting the wall behind it. The creature dashed across the room, moving too fast for the armor's sensors to properly follow. It shoved itself into Dragonfly's personal space and squirted a thick stream of -- ink? Of something dark and vision-obscuring all over the armor's helmet.

---

Ironclad stepped back from Granny, shifting power away from her servos and into her wrist blasters. "You are a sick, sick woman," she said. "Your universe may be ending, but that's no reason to invite the end of all creation in for a snack! You always fight, until the very bitter end!" The armored heroine raised her gauntlets and fired a supercharged burst that lit up the entire control room. "Never, ever give up."

The energy blast slammed into the elderly researcher and punched her through the wall -- through several of them, in fact. Ironclad followed her trajectory until she stopped moving and lay there, still. The heroine made to move forward and check on her, but she never got the chance. Weird motes of energy appeared from nowhere and swirled around her, until they obscured the entire room in a whirlwind of white.

[Fox]

Dragonfly swore as ink hit her helmet, casting some colorful doubts on the ancestry of the tentacled creature, the unknown builders of these halls, and the residents of this dimension at large. She didn't even bother trying to clear her lenses by hand - in theory they'd clear themselves given enough time, but she wasn't sure she had that time. She'd have to improvise.

A moment's thought to run through what she had to work with and she brought up her radio system, just about turning it inside-out even as she deployed her wings. Four blades of neon blue sprouted from her back, flickering and emitting a soft hum as she made some quick, untested alterations to that system too. Not her best work ever, but it seemed to work - with her wings emitting a very select radio signal and her helmet receiving it, her vision filled with a crude radar model of the room.

Not a perfect one, though, as she discovered as soon as she tried to use it to target her foe. More swearing, then, and she started making adjustments.

[Raveled]

GM

With her newly-aligned sensors, Dragonfly could see the tentacle ball start climbing the walls, moving on the curved surface as easily as it had on the ground. It lashed out suddenly, obviously hoping that this new angle of attack would grant it some advantage over the heroine but it was sorely mistaken. Its tentacles whipped out and Dragonfly slid between them nimbly, leaving the fleshy tendrils to slap against the stone wetly. It emitted an annoyed-sounding whine, shuffling its mass as it prepared a new attack.

[Fox]

needs work - adjust - rounding error? - data loss in conversion of - dodge! Only a year or so's experience fighting criminals gave her the reflexes to dodge those tentacles, as it was a few seconds later that she realized her new radio-based sense was picking up everything around her - including up above, where the tentacles had come from. She'd seen it climb up there, but without the warning of seeing everything in a sphere around her....

Still, the radar certainly seemed to be working now. Like any good scientist should (well, probably should have the first time), she gave it a good test: taking her time to adjust to the flow of information filling her visor, the heroine built a large distortion and waited until she had a solid bead on her enemy before releasing it.

[Raveled]

Dragonfly's patience rewarded her, when the extra-large space-time distortion hit the tentacle-thing squarely in the middle of its mass. The creature squealed as it fell from the wall, striking the floor with a wet sound and slowly spreading out. In a moment the heroine realized it wasn't just relaxing -- the thing was actually dissolving, whatever force had held it together unraveling now. Even as she realized this, a swarm of white motes percolated through the walls and swirled around her, eventually surrounding her in a blizzard of white light and noise.

For several minutes she was cut off from the world, and when the motes receded Dragonfly noticed she wasn't standing in the temple anymore. She was standing in a rather nicely appointed parlor, her armor nowhere to be seen. Dark wood paneling gleamed from the walls, and threw back her reflection badly distorted. In a moment she noticed that she wasn't alone. Ironclad was there, and so was Quirk, still dressed in his long robe and seated in a high-backed chair. The cowl was pushed back and he was grinning at the two heroines. "That was too cool," he enthused. With a wave of his hand he summoned two more chair, identical to his own, the trio forming an equilateral triangle. "Sit down, sit down!"

[Fox]

After a bit of disorientation, Mara glanced between Jessica, Quirk, and the room. She was quiet for a moment, head turning to take in the room and the chairs; she frowned a bit and rubbed one of her arms where a gauntlet had been only seconds before. beat the final boss? - not fast enough - Jessica beat me - mmh

"Will stand," she finally replied, giving Quirk an awfully cold eye after everything she'd just been through. "Don't trust you to not have chairs over trap doors to giant spiderwebs or minotaurs."

[Raveled]

Quirk's face fell, and when he spoke his tone was dejected. "I would never do that," he protested. "I sent you on the best adventure ever!"

"You said it was going to be a game," Jessica pointed out. She walked behind one of the chairs and gripped the back, but didn't sit down.

"It was!" Quirk jumped up and started fencing with his shadow. "It had excitement, love, discovery, and real danger!"

"Games don't have real danger," Jessica said. "Games don't have real people dying."

Quirk sagged again. "But... but I sent you where people needed your help!"

Jessica paused. She really couldn't argue against that, but she didn't want to let this (all-powerful, but still) childlike troublemaker off the hook. She glanced at Mara, hoping for some backup.