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DeadManWalking
Duke of the Mostly Dead
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 Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 4:43 pm Post subject: WorldTech |
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Yes, i know, lots of posts in Linear. Sue me. I've been having some idearium overflow problems.
This is a story i've been nursing for a while; not quite sure whether it'll turn out storygame or linear, so i figure linear just to play it safe.
Well here goes.
Three figures, weapons bared, surrounded the mound, on which knelt a fourth. Next to the fourth on the hill, stood a standard, a white sun on a red background. Surrounding them stood about a dozen others, all with their own weapons out and bloody.
The four figures were an interesting bunch. The shortest of the three, coming in at about five feet, was short and stocky, but bulging with muscle. He carried a double-sided axe with vines engraved on the blade and a wooden haft about twenty inches long. Despite the weight of the axe-head, the figure carried it casually in one hand.
He also had the head of a tiger. Orange and black fur covered his head, going down his back, complete with the stripes. His entire body was covered with at least a fuzz, and where feet should have been were paws. Even his hands were covered lightly with stripes. He wore no armor, displaying the prominent muscles, including a rather enhanced six-pack. The only concession to decency was a pair of tattered leather pants, which covered his legs only to his knees.
To his right, stood a taller, and more ordinary, if at least in appearance, man. He wore red robes which hid all but his hands and face, and carried no weapons but a pair of panpipes. His skin, or what could be seen of it, was tanned to perfection. The only thing that truly stood out about him was a tattoo over his left eye, of three upside-down triangles. Each triangle were connected to each other triangle by a point, creating a bigger triangle with a hole in the middle, from which his left eye stared balefully out at the surrounding foes.
The third point of the triangle was a woman, stood at about five foot five, and wore a full set of armor. It glistened silver in the sun, the armor craftily angled so that anyone looking at her would always have some of the light reflecting into their eyes. So skillfully was the armor designed to capture the light that it almost seemed to glow on its own. Her gauntleted hands held a huge two-sided broadsword. It was a plain sword, made for practicality, its only assumption of glitz being a ruby pommel in which a single rune was inscribed. She wore no helmet, and had her hair piled up in a complex arrangement, filled with pins and various pieces of foliage. Her pulled-up hairstyle revealed her ears, only one of which was pointed. Her eyes were similarly mismatched, one shining purple, the other a dull brown.
The fourth, and last, member of the group knelt on the mound which the three guarded. His heavily gilded crossbow swung back and forth as he targeted various members of the opposing forces, the crosshairs always settling for a moment at various chinks in armor before moving on the next. His blue eyes squinted as he peered down the barrel, selecting his target. His peculiarity was obvious, mostly because he had cut off the sleeve of his padded leather armor to show it. His right arm was completely black, from shoulder to fingertips. It was a sharp contrast to the rest of his skin, which was an almost vampiric white.
Their opponents were an equally motley crew, with various oddities standing out, and various weapons and armors. Almost every single one was armed with a different type of weapon. None of them, however, had long-range weapons, and all of them were seriously regretting this right now.
The Tiger-Head growled to his companions in a whisper that could be heard a mile away.
“How much longer do we have to hold the hill for before they lose?”
The woman cocked her head, her eyes glazing for a second before she spoke.
“About half an hour more.”
The Tall one with the tattoo piped in now, his voice surprisingly high.
“Half an hour? That’s boring. We could just stand here and we’d win. At least the last bunch tried to attack. These guys aren’t even trying!”
Tiger-Head growled again.
“Quit your whining Jeffrey. You signed on for this, didn’t you? Didn’t you even listen to what that guy in the cloak said before you agreed?”
The Black Armed one also started contributing.
“Oh come on Josh. You know we just sign on to these things because you do. You’re the only one who ever listens, besides Amanda. And she’s almost never with us anyways. By the way, which of those guys do you think is in charge?”
“Well you guys SHOULD listen. I’m starting to get tired of having to tell you two what’s going on. And it’s the guy on the weird lizard thing, I think. Over to my left, behind the one with the spikes. He’s a little far out though. You sure you can hit him Spez? You aren’t called Spez the Spaz for nothing.”
“Thanks. But I think I know what I’m doing. And I was only Spez the Spaz after you guys convinced me to use that hugeass axe. Now that was a horrible idea for a backup weapon.”
A crossbow quarrel flew through the air to catch the giant lizard mount in the eye, causing it to topple. Its rider, a fully-armored knight, lowered his shield slightly as he attempted to stop himself from falling onto the ground. A second crossbow bolt found a crevice in the black armor revealed by the shifting of the shield, and disappeared almost entirely into it. The knight grunted, and abandoned his shield, inspecting the wound.
“See? Not a bad shot, if I do say so myself.”
Amanda spoke.
“You didn’t hit any vital spots though. All that’s going to do is slow him down some. That shield was pretty much just for show. You don’t need a shield for fighting when you’ve got full plate armor.”
“Just watch. You just gotta love the new poison mod.”
Even as the three watched, (Jeffrey keeping watch in the opposite direction, in case anyone decided to sneak up) the knight stumbled and fell to the ground.
After a couple seconds, he faded from view, as did the corpse of the lizard.
Joshua grunted.
“Huh. Fast fade. Must be a lot of players on this server.”
Amanda, looking back to her side, nodded.
“Probably because of those guys. See that dust cloud? Most likely reinforcements. And from the size, even with NPs, we might not be able to hold the hill.”
Josh took a few steps over to her side and looked, before glancing thoughtfully around.
“Well, with the leader gone these guys are just a bunch of low-levelers. We could probably take them down and still have time to set up an ambush or something for those others.”
Spez took a look around, and picked another of those around them off, as the rest frantically tried to stay behind cover.
“Well there looks to be maybe nine now. But they’re all either laying low in that ditch over there or behind that rock ledge. Maybe four or five in each hiding place.”
“Well, how ‘bout this? Amanda and I run out this way and take both ends of the ditch. We could probably kill at least one each before they even got up, and then we’d be about even in numbers whether these guys are low-levelers or not. For the guys behind the boulders, all Jeff needs to do is play a bit of music, they go scrambling the other way, and you shoot them. You can get all of them before they can warn the others, right?”
“Probably.”
“And you’ve got the music you need, Jeff?”
“Yup.”
“Well then let’s get going before they realize we’ve stopped watching them.”
Amanda and Joshua ran towards both ends of the ditch, almost reaching it before the first head popped up to see what was going on. However, they moved so quickly that even as they reached the ditch, the five warriors there were only just starting to get up. Joshua was able to lop off the head of a blonde barbarian, and kick the second in line off balance before she could bring the head of her halberd up. This was followed up quickly with the haft of the axe to the face, effectively removing the now unconscious brunette from the following proceedings. Joshua saw that Amanda matched him almost blow for blow, taking out two on the other side just as fast as he did.
Which left a rather frightened fighter between them.
His spear whipped back and forth, as if trying to decide which of the two fighters was the more dangerous. It seemed to decide on Joshua, and its wielder took two steps toward him before the blade of a large broadsword sprouted from the middle of his chest. With an unintelligible word from Amanda, the broadsword burst into flame, causing the fighter to fade immediately.
Joshua raised an eyebrow.
“That wasn’t a bit of overkill at all, was it?”
Amanda grinned.
“But you have to admit it looked awesome.”
Joshua was forced to agree.
The two warriors returned to the mound after searching the ground for any valuable items (unlikely based on the level of the killees, but still, you never knew) just in time to see Spez snipe the last panicking ambushee. She collapsed to the ground, fading almost immediately just as all the other had done. Jeffrey returned to the group, wiping off his panpipes and putting them away. A lingering aura of dark menace surrounded him, though the summer sun eroded at it quickly.
The four viewed the dust cloud, which was much larger than they had thought it.
Josh broke the silence as they watched seventy screaming newbs yelling as they ran straight at the four.
“So… you guys think we should log out about now?”
“Discretion is the better part of valor.”
“Definitely”
“Couldn’t’ve said it better myself.”
“Meet you guys in RL?”
“Or we could just go on to the next world we were going to try.”
“That works for me.”
“Eh, I’m a little tired of gaming now. I think I’ll just go play solitaire a couple hundred times.”
“Oh come on Jeff, one loss isn’t going to kill your gaming record.”
“Easy for you to say, Spez. Your rec’s already at like 30%.”
“HEY! People! How ‘bout we stop arguing before the newbs flood us and we die? Jeez. What is with guys and arguing at the worst possible times? Let’s just log off now and go over to that new FPS?”
The four logged off, their avatars vanishing suddenly, just as a large crowd of new players crowded the mound, bewildered, but content at their uncontested victory.
~~~
For a brief second, Josh found himself in cyberspace, surrounded by whirling digits and numbers. He never found himself used to this space where he had no body, and even a short time could sometimes send him into a panic. This was part of the reason he’d never been a good coder.
Why wasn’t he going into the next world? He’d made sure to get the address in before he logged out.
His chest would’ve tightened if he could feel it, but he couldn’t. He tried to clench his fists, chew his cheek, anything to show he was alive, but he couldn’t feel anything. He just floated watching the numbers whizz by, and he couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t remember if he was alive, and…
Blip.
~~~
He spawned in the next world, inside an uncomfortably tight battle suit, the discomfort almost a relief in comparison to bodiless cyberspace.
Still, he trembled for a second, remembering the horrible disembodiment, before checking out his weapons.
“You ok?”
Josh looked up to see a slight figure, barely five feet. Its armor was light, consisting of metal plating in various shades of grey. If it stood still, the blending grays became one with its background. However, its right arm was totally black.
Spez’s avatar in this world.
A helmet covered his face, but even if he could see it, it wouldn’t matter. It changed a lot. Everyone always changed the face a lot. Still, the way you could tell was always that one distinguishing feature.
Spez carried what looked like a high-powered sniper rifle. Josh couldn’t really tell. He usually went with Fantasy Worlds. This world had been Amanda’s idea.
Spez caught him glancing at the sniper rifle.
“Nice ennit? It’s what the crossbow got translated as. I kinda like it this way. Although it’s still shit in a close combat fight.”
“Only one weapon?”
‘Nah, apparently this arm is some kinda miniature black hole generator. And since the restrictions on this world are different from Fantasy, those are the only weapons. Thank god. I always hated it when some newb carried around like thirty knives. What’ve you got?”
Josh pulled up the specs on his helmet screen, preferring to stay in this world than reenter cyberspace to check the core data, however brief it would be. He’d never been that good with getting info out of cyberspace anyway.
A miniature version of him appeared, a short stocky man in light orange and black armor. Engulfing his head was a stylized version of a tiger’s. It looked cool, but it cut down some on his peripheral vision. Spez’s helmet was essentially one big visor.
Josh changed the helmet, choosing from a couple other options.
The helmet changed so that the Tiger seemed to be eating Josh, meaning that he looked out of its mouth instead of its eyes. It didn’t look as cool, but at least he could see.
Then he checked his weapons.
He had… a shotgun and a machine pistol. Not bad. Shotguns were more his thing, but he could see situations in which a machine pistol might be handy.
“Hey you guys!”
He and Spez looked up to see two women running toward them.
One was heavily armored, as far as he could tell, with a silvery sheen that caught the light and threw it into people’s faces. She carried some kind of contraption strapped to her back, and he saw a pistol on her thigh. Her visor was simply a round silver orb, with two dots on it, set in a larger holder, similar to Spez’s. The dot on the right was purple, and the other brown. On the right side of her helmet, something like a wing popped out, slanting back to gleam in the sun.
So Amanda used heavy armor even in FPS’s.
The second person was less heavily armored. Much less heavily armored. She wore a skintight matte black suit, and her face was uncovered. Her eyes were like a cats, and her ears were halfway up her head, and pointed. She also seemed to have a tail, which the skintight suit accounted for. She didn’t seem to have any weapons, except for what looked like claws.
Amanda spoke.
“Hey guys! This is Teresa! She and I usually hang out on this world. Apparently, she did some coding work here that she’s quite proud of. “
Teresa grinned and waved a paw.
Both Spez and Josh introduced themselves, but before they could say anything more, Amanda interrupted.
“Where’s Jeff? Didn’t he agree to join us?”
The two looked around for their friend.
“Huh. I guess he actually did go and play solitaire.”
Amanda shook her head.
“That guy needs to learn that a few losses aren’t everything. I mean, one time we were on this underwater server, and…”
Someone logged in right next to them, and Josh turned to look. They had already moved away from the spawn point, and for someone to log in right next to them meant that someone was probably trying to.
A dog-headed armor suit looked back at him dolefully. The armor was black, but what stood out (beside the dog head) was that the entire right arm was a cannon.
That meant it was corn_DogE56. Or Cog, as they called him. Cog was one of those people who did some part time policing for WorldTech, so he got a customizable screenname and a bit more leeway with his avatars. Spez had done that for a while as well, but he said he quit because he really didn’t like having the dog head. He, Amanda, and Josh had known Cog for a while, and sometimes got some work from him.
Cog gave all four a bow, then went straight to business.
“We got a Player Killer that needs to be taken care of.”
They shot him a quizzical look.
PKers were nothing special. You got plenty of those in lots of places, people who decided that instead of killing monsters or the like decided it would be more fun to take down others when they didn’t expect it. Most confined themselves to PvP worlds, where it was allowed, but some just went and did it anywhere and people complained. And since adjusting the code to simply throw people like that out was too much work, WorldTech had had to hire people to police the worlds. These guys were called the Bouncers, but everyone just called them Hounds, because of the required dog head in the avatars. There business was taking care of glitches in worlds, and hunting down Pkers. Unfortunately some PKers got pretty powerful, which was when a Hound called in some of the more powerful players.
Josh became the unofficial spokesman of the group, as Teresa didn’t know Cog at all and of the three others, Josh knew him the best.
“Where? Somewhere we’ve been before? Or one of the new worlds?”
Cog hesitated a second before answering.
“He’s in RL.”
Teresa gasped.
Josh was surprised as well, but didn’t say anything.
RL was Real World, the first of the virtual worlds that our lives were made up of. It was the one the most resembled life before the transfer to complete digital, where most of those who had been adults before the transfer spent most of their time, and there were hundreds of restrictions and firewalls. Most of the rules restricted any weapons and stopped people from getting hurt. You’d have to be a major hacker to just transport in anything that was considered a weapon, let alone use it to kill someone.
This was big leagues.
Spez spoke.
“How did he get in with a weapon? Those defenses and restrictions are nasty. I remember trying to ‘port in a sword out of curiosity, and it took everything I had just to stop the wards from cocooning me. I didn’t even get to bring in the sword.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that part. I am on duty. Honestly, we have no idea how he got in. It shouldn’t be possible. We’ve got some of our best coders working on it now, but so far we got nothing.”
Josh once again took up the spokesman position.
“What kind of weapon is he using? And how can we help? We’re not allowed weapons either.”
“We don’t actually know. After he broke through, we managed to trap him there. So now he’s stuck in RL with whatever the weapon is. Your job would be to help me flush him out. After we figure out who he is. He’s put up firewalls of his own to stop us booting him from the world or transporting him into a cell somewhere, and Them up there think it’ll be faster just to have people PK him back, then mess up the resurrection coding so he can’t log back in until we let him. He’ll be trapped in cyberspace while we figure out what he did. Plus, it’ll be more satisfying. Apparently his first kill was a ninety year old woman or something like that.”
“That doesn’t answer how we’re gonna manage to get weapons in.”
“You’ll become temporary Bouncers, meaning we’ll give you a couple weapons. Although I gotta warn ya, if you do something too big and flashy, and you PK a bystander, management is gonna be pissed at me, and I’ll be pissed at you. Management would prefer I give you all penknives and peashooters, but since we don’t know what the PKers armed with, I’ll be pretending I missed that rule. But if a passerby gets croaked, I WILL be feeding you to bloodsucking octopi. And I’ll be making sure that you stay alive and inside that reach and cancel log out functions for at least a week. Seriously.”
He glared at them, daring any of them to laugh, before continuing.
“So, you three in?”
Teresa piped in.
“Make that four. No way I’m missing this.”
The other three also said yes.
Cog hesitated, eyeing Teresa for a second, before Amanda spoke.
“I can vouch for her on this one. If you really need it, I’ll babysit.”
Cog assented, over Teresa’s protests about taking care of herself. A clipboard appeared in his hand, and Josh got a glimpse of what looked like Times New Roman typing itself onto the clipboard. He presented to the four a contract, which Josh scanned and signed. The others did likewise, and returned their copies to Cog.
Cog examined the signatures, then the contracts dissolved into white smoke.
“Ok, we’re good on the authorization part. I’ll pass out weapons when we get there.”
They logged out of the FPS and headed to RL.
And that's what i got so far. Hope you enjoyed it, any comments or criticisms are welcome.
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When the dead walk, the living run.
Last edited by DeadManWalking on Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:14 pm; edited 1 time in total
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vgmaster
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| Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:07 pm Post subject: |
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So did that guys tattoo look something like THIS!?
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But sometimes they don't make sense,
Refrigerator."
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DeadManWalking
Duke of the Mostly Dead
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| Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:09 pm Post subject: |
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excpet that it's upside down.
The character is a copycat, obviously. He saw the symbol in an obscure oldworld game and took it for his own.
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When the dead walk, the living run.
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DeadManWalking
Duke of the Mostly Dead
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| Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 8:35 pm Post subject: |
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Another segment.
The period of discombobulation was much shorter for Josh this time; he’d logged into RL enough that it was almost instantaneous. Still, he was glad to see the sun, shining bright above them.
He heard giggling, and saw Teresa, now wearing a t-shirt and shorts, although still a catgirl, pointing at his clothes with a claw.
He looked down to find himself wearing what looked like a tutu and boxers. His signature baseball cap was still there though, with it’s tiger head logo.
Spez sidled up beside him, blue eyes sheepish, wearing a black one-sleeved shirt that cut off at his left shoulder. “Would now be a bad time to mention that I hacked your settings a bit back? I’m kinda regretting that now.”
Amanda snickered, her purple and brown eyes laughing. She wore a thick leather jacket and blue jeans. She had a large silvery necklace, ending with a crystal that managed to refract light in every direction.
Only Cog didn’t laugh. He frowned at Spez, his dog’s face (which he wore even here) becoming even more droopy, then paused as he reset Josh’s settings for him. Josh’s clothes returned to normal, a khaki and a sweatshirt. Cog’d been a friend of Joshua’s long enough to know about his phobia.
His silvery prosthetic arm glittered as he seemingly pulled a backpack from nowhere, dropping it on the ground in front of him with a clunk, before opening it.
He pulled out several objects, passing them one by one to us.
“Are you shitting me? A BB gun?”
Cog looked up at Spez. “While I think Corporate is being a little ridiculous with peashooters, I think that they’re right in theory. They just took it a bit too far. I don’t want you killing anyone.”
“But how’m I gonna kill the PKer with a BB gun? I mean, this isn’t gonna do much!”
“Well I’m not going to give you a real gun! Corporate would have my ass on a platter. Just be thankful I didn’t give you a slingshot.”
Spez tossed the BB gun back at Cog, who caught it in a metal fist. “I could do more with a slingshot.”
Cog shrugged, pulled one out of the backpack that Josh could’ve sworn was empty a moment ago. “Fine by me then.”
Joshua examined the brass knuckles he had gotten, slipped them onto his fist. They fit perfectly.
He looked up in time to see Cog hand Amanda a metal baseball bat. She took it, swung it around a bit to test for balance.
Cog turned to Teresa, handed her a black plastic knife. “Wasn’t sure what you wanted to use, so I got this. It’s a shocknife. The edge applies an electric shock.”
Teresa accepted the knife, put it into a sheath in her belt that Josh hadn’st seen a second ago.
He really needed to learn coding.
“Shall we head out?”
Cog didn’t wait for them to answer before strolling out into the street. Joshua slipped his hands, along with the bronze knuckles, into the pocket of the khakis. He didn’t want to alarm anyone. Teresa pulled her T-shirt out over the sheath, hiding it, and Spez hid the slingshot somewhere. Amanda just walked out casually with the baseball bat over one shoulder.
The four caught up with Cog quickly, following him as he walked purposefully into the suburban district of the City.
He stopped at a picturesque street, put a finger to his lips, pointed down the street to an alleyway between two houses.
Quietly, he outlined his plan, using hand-signals.
Because Teresa and Josh had the most easily hidable weapons, they would walk past the alley, to get a look at what they were dealing with. Spez would take a seat on the other side of the street, slingshot at the ready, in case the PKer came out after them. For the same reason, Amanda would be waiting beside the entrance of the alley. Cog himself would be near Amanda.
Josh and Teresa walked by, Josh taking the position nearer the alley. He was careful not to look in, to alert anyone, letting Teresa use him as a shield so she could peek in without arousing suspicion. They almost passed the alleyway without incident.
“Hey Josh!”
Joshua looked up to see Jeffrey in the window of one of the houses, waving at him. Shit. He couldn’t tell him to stop, couldn’t wave back lest he attract the PKer’s attention.
“Who’s the chick? I didn’t know you had a giiiiiirrlfriend!”
Josh wasn’t sure which was worse, the fact that Jeffrey was ruining the plan or that he was being so immature right now.
Thankfully, Spez, thinking quick, managed to put a stone right past Jeffrey’s left ear to smash into the wall behind, making him duck his head back into the room with a yelp.
But the damage was done.
Josh more felt than saw the dagger slashing at his head, ducked, and tried to punch the charging body in the stomach. He heard the blade whistle over his head, heard Teresa scream, felt his fist connect with something.
He stumbled back, saw his opponent retching, took the opportunity to try and knee him in the face.
It worked, and Josh followed up with a couple more hits from the bronze knuckle, the fight going entirely his way until…
The teenager dodged his fist, slashed at him with what looked like an antique knife or something, a weapon that would not have been out of place in most of the Fantasy Worlds Joshua played. He jumped back, avoiding the knife, felt his back hit a street sign, and…
Watched the teenager have his head smashed in by Cog’s prosthetic fist.
The teenager faded out, although the weapon he had used stayed behind.
Spez jogged over to them, shouting something. Josh noticed that Amanda was just standing there with the baseball bat, her face horrified. Even Cog looked shaken.
Joshua looked around.
“Where’s Teresa?”
Amanda looked even more stricken.
Cog hesitated, started to say something, then picked up the dagger.
It was an ornately crafted dagger, the seven-inch blade a grey color with wavy patterns where the blood groove usually was. The handguard was not very long, only about an inch long to either side of the blade. The handle was made of some black material, with carvings on it that were hard to make out entirely, with gold inlaid patterns around it. The hilt was in the shape of a kind of curving cone, ending in a knob.
Cog stabbed the sign Joshua had backed up into. It… pixelated, becoming just large blocks before folding sideways and simply disappearing. A hole in the sidewalk was all that remained to show its existence.
Josh looked at the hole, looked back at his shaken companions. “What was that?”
(This is where the third section starts. Can't believe i forgot to put the second section up.)
All Cog did was shrug. His eyes fixed on the spot where Josh guessed Teresa had been, he fiddled with the dagger nervously, broodingly.
“Will…she be all right?” Amanda asked, nervously. “I mean, she just got PK’ed; she should be able to log in any second now, right?”
Cog didn’t say anything, his eyes dark as he shifted his gaze to the hole in the ground, the only sign that the street sign had ever existed.
Spez spoke, putting a comforting arm around Amanda. “She’ll probably be fine. I mean, that’s what happens when you die, you respawn.” He shot a glance at Cog that Amanda didn’t catch, although Josh read volumes in the pessimistic peek.
He’d never seen something like that before. When you died, the physics engine and the biology simulations went on right up ‘til the server faded the body out. How long before the fade depended on how many users on that server, and so on. But pixelated like that?
Cog finally spoke, putting in a small box that appeared from the air. “I need to check something out. You guys get going; I’ll be sending the creds to your accounts in a bit.”
He logged out before anyone could say another word.
Spez shrugged, spoke with a false cheeriness. “Well, while we’re waiting for Theresa to log back on, why don’t we go kill something? Maybe we can convince Jeff to get on that FPS PVP server. It’d be amusing to see him try to figure out how to shoot, dodge, AND whine all at the same time. Either he clams up or gets shot. And either way we don’t have to listen to him for a bit. Sound good?”
Josh opened his mouth to say something about the seriousness of this situation, but shut it at a warning glance from Spez. Josh saw Amanda’s face finally, managing to finally get over his own shock of what had happened. She looked terrible. Josh shut his mouth, put on a smile and said something about agreeing with Spez.
But still, as before they logged off, he couldn’t help looking back at the hole in the otherwise perfectly level pavement.
Comments and Criticisms please.
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When the dead walk, the living run.
Last edited by DeadManWalking on Fri Mar 06, 2009 10:04 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Reasoner
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| Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 8:47 pm Post subject: |
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OMG, black box of DOOM!...
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DeadManWalking
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| Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 10:02 pm Post subject: |
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Whoops. I just realized i posted segments one and three without the segment two.
Give me a sec to fix that.
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DeadManWalking
Duke of the Mostly Dead
Joined: 24 May 2006
Topics: 30
Posts: 1005
Items
Legends
Fables
Strata-gems
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| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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well. Here's the next bit. Sorry for the delay, to all my readers (erm. Yeah. A bit optimistic)
I had a busy time recently.
Bullets whizzed by overhead. A familiar figure in a tiger-head armor ducked behind a small concrete wall, which, as far as he and the rest could see, had been built only for the use it was being put to currently, cover.
Which was interesting, since this map was supposedly just an office building.
Masked invaders, all wearing the same uniform, all with identical dark eyes and mechanical steps wield submachine pistols, trying to get into the building for… what was the reason? It didn’t really matter to Josh anyways; he was too busy fighting off the endless waves of baddies.
He fired wildly over the top of the small concrete wall with the machine pistol, not even bothering to check his ammo. He had plenty. There was a huge pile of ammo inside the lobby of the building and in other vital points, and he’d taken the liberty of moving generous quantities of both shotgun shells and machine gun ammo out next to him. Yet another feature not usually in your average high-rise office building.
Someone needed to put more thought into context.
Still, Josh thought, it wasn’t as if there was a lot of thought in this world in general. I mean, all you did was kill things.
“Josh!” Josh looked up to see Amanda’s orblike helmet. “You paying attention? You’ve already taken out that wave. Stop wasting ammo!”
He let go of the trigger, glance over the wall to check if he had indeed done as Amanda said, reloaded his gun.
“What exactly is the point of this again?” He wondered, this time aloud.
“We’re defending the building, remember?”
“Yes, I got that bit. But why? All that’s in that building is a bunch of ammo and some empty desks. And they have more than enough ammo, the way they keep shooting at us. And it isn’t all that challenging, them just running up and shooting at us the same way over and ov-“
A loud bang split the air, and Josh whirled around to see a nearly headless and now definitely unmasked terrorist plop to the ground. He looked back at the building, where Spez was stationed at one of the windows.
“You were saying?”
“Well… Just shush.”
Josh peeked over the small concrete wall, checking for the next wave to attack-
“Gahholyshit!”
Josh stumbled backwards, spraying bullets wildly at the masked man on the other side of the barrier.
Bullets peppered his armor as well, from a similar weapon, but the simple fact that he was wearing armor while his opponent didn’t, meant that the impacts stopped long before any permanent harm was done. If Josh had been watching the armor, he would have noticed the metal slowly growing back together, almost organically.
IF he had been watching. Unfortunately, the various terrorists hidden behind the various concrete barriers chose that moment to reveal themselves, and Josh had to do a quick roll to go into the doorway of a what appeared to be the a security booth.
Yet another terrorist greeted him.
A kick knocked the machine pistol from Josh’s hand, followed by another spray of bullets from close range.
Josh desperately swiped at the terrorists face with his hand, the armor adding enough weight to the blow that the terrorist’s head simply snapped around, and the man crumpled to the ground. Josh looked around for his machine pistol, saw it about three feet outside the door, was discouraged very quickly by the large amount of bullets impacting the doorframe.
Josh went for the masked man’s gun, but bullets started whizzing into the doorway, impacting around the body and wall. Josh was forced to back away from the doorway.
Josh got out the shotgun, firing it a couple times in the vague direction of the door while searching for another way out of the small security building.
All that surrounded him was spiderwebbed bulletproof glass windows, through which he caught glimpses of masked men advancing past him, while others seemed to be waiting for him to come out.
Well this was going well.
How had the masked men managed to launch an ambush like that? The tactics they’d shown thus far had been… well frankly disappointing. But suddenly to just ambush Josh and his friends like that…. What happened?
Josh was forced to duck as an explosive impact smashed into one of the windows. Miraculously, the window survived, but the frame didn’t, and the whole mess of spider-cracked glass just popped in with an explosive force.
A hail of bullets sped through the empty window frame, forcing Josh to keep his head down.
Which meant he didn’t see the masked man walk in the door until he had a gun pointed at his head. Josh rolled desperately, shotgun abandoned.
His hand found something, a hard something, and instinctively he threw it at the masked man.
The spider-cracked glass sheet that had once been the window flew through the air like a Frisbee despite its size, sliced across the masked man’s throat before he could do anything.
Josh stared, amazed at his luck, but not for long.
A thought hit him.
Thirty seconds later, Josh huddled between a shield created of the bulletproof glass sheet and another small concrete wall with sparks jumping from his left hand. He had broken out from the room quickly, not even trying to take down the men set to watch his little hut, going instead for the men who didn’t yet know he was out.
He’d managed to bring down three before the others turned on him. Which meant the odds were only about twenty to three. Which wasn’t too bad, just not that good. Or it would have been better if he still had his machine pistol. While the shotgun was insanely powerful, it lacked range. And ammo. Josh had neglected to actually place ammos in any of his pockets, simply because he hadn’t thought to. He did have the large pile of ammo he had moved, but that was kind of useless at this point.
Josh counted shots in his head. One in the guard’s hut. One each for the first two kills. And two for the third. Which left three shells left in the shotgun.
Great. Josh wished he had had time to grab the machine guns of the terrorists, but there had been a lot of ducking and running once fire starting coming from both sides. And the pure inefficiency of having to actually hold the glass sheet meant that a lot of bullets had found his hand. He couldn’t move two of his left fingers at all, and a third was sparking alarmingly.
Josh peeked around the concrete wall, noting the three terrorists keeping him pinned down, just as two gunshots rang simultaneously. One was the loud crack of Spez’s sniper rifle. The other was the deep boom of Amanda’s pistol, which was a, as she put it, Freaking-Huge Caliber. Her bullet went through the neck of one of the men, nearly separating his head from his body.
The third terrorists whirled around, the machine pistol like sounding a tinny rattling soon ended by another deep boom.
Josh scrambled to his feet, keeping the makeshift glass shield between him and this pursuers, ran towards the concrete wall Amanda was behind.
His one glance behind made his eyes open even wider and his legs pump even faster.
He leapt over, abandoning the makeshift shield as he frantically somersaulted over the small partition, slamming his panting self backwards into the concrete.
“Oh how smart. Throw away a portable shield. You’re really just genius at these FPS’s aren’t you?”
Josh used what little breath he’d obtained in his few frantic seconds of panting to gasp, “They’ve got an RPG.”
“A role-playing game? Jeez, they’re AI and its an FPS; you need to broaden your int-“
Josh rolled his eyes, ignoring the fact that Amanda probably wouldn’t see it through his visor.
“Not that, the German thing. With the rockets and the explosions.”
Amanda paused, and very quietly went, “Oh.”
Then, in a much more, shit-just-hit-the-fan kind of voice, she said, “OH”
Josh looked up over the concrete to see the familiar conelike explosive whirling through the air on a plume of smoke, headed straight for their little wall.
Josh could’ve sworn he saw grins on two terrorists as the RPG whizzed over their heads.
The crack of Spez’s sniper rifle was just the precursor to an amazing sight. The explosive detonated in midair, flames engulfing several AI.
“Holy crap.” Josh breathed.
Amanda grabbed his arm and started sprinting towards the front door.
Halfway there, they caught sight of a spectacle in Spez’s window. A darkness grew there, sucking in all the light, and the window and the brick grew warped.
Half a second later, everything went back to normal, and Amanda and Josh were treated to the wonderful sight of Spez jumping out of a window.
He was, of course, tethered to something, which swung him violently towards the wall. After only a fraction of a second spent right himself though, he frantically rappelled down the wall.
He was only halfway down when a tongue of flame burst from the window he had exited. Little bits of burning terrorist flew out with it. But the rope, or whatever it was Spez was using to rappel down accompanied them, so he went splat.
No seriously, it was a really tall building. And not a very pretty sight.
Slowly the building started to turn a very deep violet hue, from the ground up, as it registered the complete lack of non-AI in the building. Before it turned entirely purple however, the entire thing went FWOOM very dramatically and fell over. Which was an arresting, because, as already stated, the building was pretty tall.
Rather large red letters appeared in front of Josh Amanda, and the regenerated Spez, as the background faded away to green grid lines. They spelled, in a very blatant and very annoying way, Josh thought, “YOU HAVE LOST THE GAME.” This reminded him of something, but he couldn’t remember what exactly.
“Damn it,” Spez swore. “I lost. I can’t believe I lost. Wasn’t the objective not to let the terrorists destroy the building?”
Amanda snorted. “That doesn’t mean you can destroy the building yourself. And where did you get so much incendiary stuff anyway?”
“There’s this great little place down in that continent shaped like a mango. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
Spez put on hand on Amanda’s shoulder and one on Josh’s and did something.
The world evaporated into ones and zeros, briefly, enough to whet Josh’s fear, but not enough to make him panic.
When they appeared, they were wearing normal street clothes, Josh in his khakis and t-shirt, with the tiger cap, Amanda with her tough biker look and the sparkling prism necklace, Spez with his one sleeved black shirt.
The only way to describe the store was…kind of like a Home Depot with explosives and guns.
Spez said something indistinct, rushed off.
Amanda and Josh shrugged, started looking around.
They spent a bit of time looking, but Josh didn’t really find any weapons that much better than what he had, and he didn’t really feel like shopping for upgrades, while Amanda already had most of the upgrades she wanted, and was just looking for a couple of incendiary grenades that would give her “fiery funness” more range than the flamethrower. She also seemed tempted by miniature flaming bullets, but even she agreed that some things go too far.
So Amanda bought the grenades and they left through the front door, figuring that they might as well explore a bit while Spez shopped.
It was a beautiful day.
Suddenly some monstrosity lurched from behind well, behind nothing, but it looked like it had just come from behind a bush or something. Except there was nothing for it to have been behind.
It was indescribable. Fluorescent rainbows played on its iridescent skin, dazzling but for the huge amount of wobbling blubber it toted as it waddled towards the two. It had no face, persay, rather a large amount of facial features spread over a very large area which seemed to include almost its whole face.
“Holy shit on a…” Amanda went on to say a number of things that Josh was sure she hadn’t learned from her parents, at least not on purpose, even as her flamethrower appeared in her hands.
The flamethrower shot out a jet of blue-ish flame, nine feet long, under which the blubbery monstrosity pretty much incinerated.
“What just happened?” Spez said, as he exited the door.
Josh, looking at the ashes, said. “Very very extreme overkill, I think.”
Spez frowned. “There shouldn’t be any creatur-. Whoa. What’s that?”
Amanda looked closer at the ashes, poking something with the nozzle.
As Josh moved closer, ashes shifted away from the object of his friends’ gazes.
It was an ornately crafted dagger, the seven-inch blade a grey color with wavy patterns where the blood groove usually was. The handguard was not very long, only about an inch long to either side of the blade. The handle was made of some black material, with carvings on it that were hard to make out entirely, with gold inlaid patterns around it. The hilt was in the shape of a kind of curving cone, ending in a knob.
For a second, all three just stared at it, than recognition reached rosy fingers over the eastern hillside.
Then they recognized it.
Amanda grabbed it quickly, before Spez or Josh could take more than a few steps, and drew her arm back.
Spez, recognizing her intent, started to shout something, but gave up and leaped for the dagger instead.
Josh leaped for it too, but for a slightly different reason.
But neither of them made it. Amanda hurled the dagger away, so far, that it became a speck in the sky. Josh could’ve sworn he saw another speck join it up, but he couldn’t look closely because he had to stop Spez from shaking Amanda.
Both Josh and Spez burst out talking at once.
“We could’ve given that to Cog”
“That thing’s dangerous! You could destroy something.”
Both of them looked at each other, and shrugged, acknowledging each other’s points.
Amanda looked at her hand, where she sported a small burn. Then she fell to her knees crying. Spez rushed to her side, while Josh looked into the sky, searching for the specks he had seen.
_________________
When the dead walk, the living run.
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