It's the dawn, you'll see (Ch. 3b: Day 2, pt. II) [Finale]

Mie · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:00 pm

It was stupid; she really could have kicked herself for it, but the justification was there. She was tired, physically and mentally taxed to poverty. And sore, and bruised, and hungry, and -- oh, yes, -- tired, and the machine she had wailed upon with such enthusiasm initially just sat there, and how long was one supposed to kick a broken toaster around when it had long ago stopped doing anything?

It was stupid. But Jam's attack had ebbed into suspicious idleness, as she bent her ear toward the psychotic rantings of the disembodied puppet master. As her teammates, worse for wear than herself, engaged the final obstruction between them and victory, the monkey, too, had allowed a distraction she shouldn't have, and joined the descent on the console's last line of defense.

Maybe somewhere in all the tired, she'd known she shouldn't have turned her back on the Gizoid, as the speed with which she whirled about and charged back toward it was nothing short of uncanny, and her expectorated, resonant bark of a "NO," fell disjointedly in place with what should have been the tail end of Rock's bellow. Her attack on the thing resumed with a renewed fervor, and it spoke volumes about the whiter primate's electrical tolerance that she held nothing back. Jam's shield constricted, searing white-hot around her forearms as she hurled her entire self into every impact for as long as she could, fighting, clawing her way up toward the chest cavity, until first being clocked in the face with a glancing blow from the other simian's flying helmet, and then the Gizoid's oversized, metal hand.

She managed to hang on through the first hit, the second not so much, but she righted herself before even landing, and hit the ground already flying back toward it, straight into to stinging backhand, that, frankly, she should have seen coming. A raw, frustrated roar ripped from her throat, as her attempts continued with somehow progressively declining success. She may have started to get dangerously desperate for ground, were it not for what happened next: Jam very nearly tripped, as she hesitated mid-lunge, while the Gizoid spasmed and writhed in a visceral reenactment of Rock's day; it might have been macabre, were it not played out by a robot, but something about the scene was still mildly painful to watch.

Even as the remnants of the crystal practically evaporated around them, the reddish girl hesitated, uncertain of what to do, but not yet willing to let her guard down for a second time; she hung back, waiting.

psikeout · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:30 pm

The gizoid scrap metal rustled with coarse schlinks, and clanks, and tinks. It was actually... silent for a moment. It seemed that, for the moment, not even the echidna had anything to say.

... Then, laughter.

It was scornful, and coming from Rock, a little creepy. He seemed really, twistedly amused. It wasn't quite belly-laughing or anything, but his ragged, raspy, over-stressed voice wasn't far from it.

A black-gloved hand emerged from the debris, shoving some aside as he struggled to sit up and get loose.

"Picked the wrong one to copy today!"

Mie · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 11:15 pm

Just like that, the tension was broken. Jam's previously anxious expression gave way to a cautious, but still evidently relieved grin. In one simultaneous reaction, her shield dissipated with a faint *pop*, and the stress visibly rolled off her back and shoulders, which slumped and slouched a little before the punch-hued primate bounded forward in a what was initially a zealous burst of speed, but slowed to a modest canter by the time she reached the other monkey.

Stooping to shove at scrap and robot innards, once adequately unearthed, she pulled Rock's arm around her shoulder before throwing both of hers around his chest, and gingerly pulling him to his feet.

"Missing anything new?" she asked lightly.

Sheff · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 11:32 pm

Geoff had been too busy smashing fists into the echidna's barrier during the time the Gizoid made its foolish final draw. As the brief chaos of Rock being taken for prisoner occurring behind him, the crystal bearing hedgehog dug away at the cover of his own trademarked substance, pointed limbs of rock chipping away at the defense. His arms swung with great, fiery motions, his eyes nearly blank as he focused on his objective.

That's when the metallic screech of tearing metal forced his attention elsewhere, yet still finding himself near an eruption of powdered crystal as it all disintegrated beside him. As he covered his eyes with a crystallized arm for a brief moment, he soon enough heard the raspy laugh of the primate, followed closely by his loud, strangely mocking comment. Looking back, he saw the Gizoid in ruins, and he couldn't help but flash a victorious smile.

However, the fight wasn't finished, and with the green rock dome now gone in flash with loss of the robot, he turned to peer at whatever lay beyond, prepared to fight.

Seafarinhare · Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 5:33 pm

Needless to say, after managing to turn the tables in their favor, Wild Badge was feeling fairly awesome. He watched as his Awesome Beam paved the way for Jam and Rock to get in and do their thing...

But then Rock got grabbed. Oh no! He jumped out from his perch, and was prepared to do some damage of his own, but it became unnecessary very quickly. Without warning, the robot collapsed, leaving Rock laughing in it's disassembled heap.

This was kind of disturbing to watch. Not just because of Rock's condition making his laughter a bit wry, but..it was Rock. He seemed typically devoid of a sense of humor, as far as Hoji was concerned, and regardless of the circumstances, it was disarming to see him amused with more than just a silent smirk.

That just left the mad-man who was behind this whole mess. Hoji stopped by Geoff's side, ready to face the final boss's final form.

"Glad to see everyone's in one piece." He said, shooting a glance toward Geoff.

Greens · Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:42 pm

What was at first an irritated grimace quickly transformed into a horrified stare with matching, whispered gasp. What was at first a tired, drowsy looking serval abruptly became a violent storm of yellow arms. His eyes were steeply furrowed, yet wide as dinner plates all the same, and his steep frown suddenly seemed only an inch below his nose. Even through the tornado of cards that followed , Ace made not a sound but for the short, but steady puffs of breath given with his savage attack.

But all too quickly, the surge of vigor was stopped in its tracks, and replaced with a subtle, wearied grin.

At first it seemed like he huffed out a long sigh, but as he suddenly dropped down to a single knee, it quickly became evident that it was merely the first in a long series of pants as he weakly shook his head in relief.

NPC · Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 9:30 pm

Silence.

A sound like a sigh—not a disappointed or frustrated one, but one entirely distraught—came from above, electronically distorted.

The machine before them was huge, and atop a pedestal. A long flight of stone stairs, with elaborate, embedded steel patterns, led up the gigantic stone slabs of the platform, which was shaped almost like a huge, tiered cake. Pipes and tubes, some transparent, some not, were arranged in organized, yet disorienting patterns, purposeful but complex. Some surged with fluids, while others were dark, opaque conduits. Pointed stone obelisks jutted upward from each plateau of the miniature tower-within-a-tower. An artistic blending of machine and architecture, the entire structure was an utterly imposing cathedral of technology, crowned by a a great, sharp spire, underneath which rested but a simple glass bubble.

There was no opposition anymore. The walk all the way to the glass canopy was entirely unobstructed.

Vivid blue light glowed through a hazy, nearly opaque fluid from within. It was only by drawing near that shapes became clearer, and a silhouette took form.

It was not the silhouette of an echidna, or any living thing. It was organs, and the faintest remnants of musculature, atrophied and thin—as ectomorphic as something could become while still existing, the soft tissues were backed or protected by no bone, and were as transparent as the water, floating like the flesh of a jellyfish. Lungs; a heart that didn't beat; cord-like tendrils, the nerves of a spine no longer present.

And, at the top of it all, where there should have been a skull and a head, there was—lingering loosely at one side, a sunken face with no nose, no jaw, and milky, lifeless eyes hung. The back of the head as gone, exposing the only part of the lifeform that remained intact: a brain.

It was swollen—oversized, as large as a brain could get before it looked like it would either become a cartoon, or just plain burst. Hemorrhaged, covered with tumors, jutting with wires and tubes, discolored, white as a sheet, but splotchy and grey in places as if burnt or even decaying, the lumpy mass was the only thing that still functioned—still showed signs of life.

If they could move their eyes away and look above the window, they would see that this living mind was right below the true heart of the "artificial mind" it had spoken of so much. The entire, towering spire that stood above was covered with indecipherable displays—text that seemed to glow straight out of stone, and symbolic representations, almost like graphs and meters, but uninterpretable to modern eyes.

The voice came both through that, and through a small, reverberating panel immediately under the "tank" itself. It sounded much quieter and more resigned than before.

"This machine couldn't calculate everything after all... ahah. Oh..."

There was another artificial sound, like a breath and sigh. The echidna certainly no longer breathed, but it was just a remnant of speech pattern.

"I cannot say what— I— ... This... You should—"

It sounded like he kept getting cut off.

...

"Ugh."

...

"You wouldn't— wouldn't— ... believe it even if I could, would you? You wouldn't, not now." m!

psikeout · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:09 am

"Jus' another lil' piece'a my sanity, s'all," Rock had jocularly replied to Jam as she helped him up, and he gave her a couple quick pats on the shoulder in thanks.

The amusement died when they caught up with the rest some fifteen or twenty seconds later, though.

The device was like some solemn monument to loss of will and life, and its contents, despite their glowing brightness, only doubled the already-palpable gloom that hung in the air.

Rock glanced at Jam, but said nothing yet.

Mie · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:34 am

Jam took her shoulder-pat thanks as her cue to disengage, yet still seemed to hover just on the verge of resuming support, should the need arise; she kept close, but fussed no more over the whiter primate's condition. Upon reaching the landing, she physically recoiled. It was a subtle, knee-jerk reaction, but Rock was near enough to notice her fractions-of-a-centimeter flinch.

She traded his glance with an unsettled one of her own, but surprised herself when hers was the voice to first speak up and respond to its probably rhetorical question.

"What's there to believe?" she asked, her tone a well-composed mask of neutrality. "You took our people, man. Even if it wasn't us, this would've happened eventually."

NPC · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 2:27 am

The echidna's ability to communicate started to break down. It became jerky and choppy, with strange pauses.

"Armies—all outside. Not in. Why?"

"Artificial mind. Regulate, I, it. Am regulated, I, it by. One destroyed—one unregulated left."

"Communicate. Syntax clear cannot, regulated else."

Just as quickly as he had spouted those strange lines, his voice returned to normal, and he stated plainly, with normal inflection, "If you are too ignorant to understand this, it makes no difference to me. Executed correctly or incorrectly, I will at last have my relief. You may not forgive or understand, but my conscience — the scraps that remain of it, it will be clean." m!

Greens · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 2:02 pm

Despite his wounds (which had clearly been not helped by his recent raucous card-throwing) Ace found his way up the stairs alongside the others. He took long, slow breaths, audible through his black nose, but said nothing throughout. When he at last encountered what awaited him there-- the driving force behind this long series of madness-- he almost seemed as perturbed as he was underwhelmed. To think a floating mass of organs and nerves could cause all this havoc.

At first, he spoke no words. The look he gave was almost surveying in nature; Not quite looking down his nose at the echidna's remains, but undoubtedly evaluating it, if nothing else.

...But when the creature gave off his strange message, Ace slumped in exasperated bewilderment with mouth hung wide, eying it as if it has just wasted its final request on a chip butty sandwich. But soon enough, it was shaken off.

"Well I'm real glad you're okay with all this," he spoke stiffly, unmoved by its complacency, and irritated with its cryptic words. "So where's our relief, huh? What about the people you kidnapped?"

NPC · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:12 pm

"Can't— won't let them go for nothing in return," he responded lowly. "We won't be left here to rot with nothing."

psikeout · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:59 pm

Rock meanwhile stared up at the massive, ancient computer towering over the degenerated ancient's throne, or tomb, or whichever it may have been. He had been eying it ever since the echidna gave them his weird, scrambled up, syntactically-broken statement. He still remained at the back of the group and said nothing, though.

Mie · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 10:35 pm

"No less than you had," interjected the smaller of the primates. Her tone was cold, but not detached, with a progressively growing note of tangible vindictiveness.

"Doesn' change the fact that they weren't yours to take; I don't give a damn how much you think the ends justify the means -- nothing gives you or anyone the right to kidnap people to experiment on."

NPC · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 10:50 pm

"Too ignorant," said the echidna. "Should have known better than to expect anything of you primitive mongrels. This is done. We are done. You aren't going to leave."

Clanking feet suddenly blasted in a full-force stampede from far, far below, echoing through the humongous tower like a beastly roar. At the bottom of the stairs and beyond, sections of the hexagonal floor all around the core began to lower down to go collect what sounded like an entire army of Gizoids on the ground floor. When those platforms returned, they'd doubtlessly be carrying trouble, and a lot of it.

It's the dawn, you'll see (Ch. 3b: Day 2, pt. II) [Finale]

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