Timemaster
Damycles
Izurich
Villamvihar
FunnierPrez
Crimson Flame
Lildear18
PrinceAlexus
Drifting PollenFilm Those Freaks - No Pleasure Cruise II
Midna and Jr’s @DracoLunaris, Geralt’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN, Level 8 Goldlewis (77/80)
Word Count: 4502 (+5) (+2 rapport each)
Without further ado, the bug-eyed monster lunged forward, lashing out with scythe-like arms like those of a praying mantis. Goldlewis performed a backdash to get some distance, then turned to go, trying not to obstruct Junior’s line of sight. Realistically, he towered over this critter and, contrary to Geralt’s exclamation, didn’t think it would be difficult to fight. But they both knew by now that trouncing these creatures would not be in the spirit of the competition, so it was time to give their hypothetical audience a show. If this gawking beast chased them into the bowels of the ship, their relief from escaping would give way to ominous tension–it was a perfect way to provide buildup, as long as the Seekers didn’t actually lose their way.
After noting the monster’s speed, Goldlewis set off at a brisk jog, just fast enough to continuously build up distance between himself and his pursuer. “C’mon, this way! Stick together!” he hollered, loud enough to convey a sense of urgency. While he considered keeping quiet to avoid alerting more monsters, he figured that more freaks would make a better film, and that the team could handle whatever came their way. So he fled, he made a big show of pulling down cabinets and toppling piled objects to try and trip up the eye beast. How effective it was didn’t really matter; it just needed to look frantic and dramatic. In fact, accidentally crushing the critter posed a bigger issue. Of course, all this theatricality came at a price, and the team’s mad dash through the depths of the cruise ship quickly got more dangerous.
Despite having stubby short legs and an equally short body, Jr was more than capable of keeping up with this, the prince even leaping over obstructions with impressive bounds. Still, running away from something and filming it turned out to be rather trickier than doing the 400 meter hurdles. This led to a dramatic moment where Midna grabbed Jr by the hand and physically hauled him out of the way of the leaping beast with an ”I got you!” after the prince stumbled on some loose debris while backstepping away from it.
The princess then parried a scything talon using the boom mic of all things, before they both broke off in a sprint again to try and get some ground.
Geralt kept an easy pace with the others, sometimes allowing them ahead of her, other times taking the lead in the ‘frantic’ chase with the monster. She was ahead of the group when the thing caught up to the group, and with Midna keeping Junior out of harm’s way, she grabbed a chair to toss behind them to try and trip the thing up. “Go, go!” She called, turning around only to stop short when she saw what looked like another Seeker, only wearing a lot of equipment. “Looks like somebody spent a lot of tokens.” She mumbled, before rolling her eyes. “We ran into another group.” Geralt told the others, “Not sure where the others on their team are, though.”
Behind her, Goldlewis slid to a stop, glancing over his shoulder. It looked like the four had managed to lose their bug-eyed pursuer. Either that hurled chair from Geralt did the trick to dissuade, or the lack of light in its eyes made it lose interest. Regardless, it was still around here somewhere, so the team would need to be more careful about where they pointed their flashlights, if the batteries weren’t spent after their sprint through the cruise ship’s belly. After making sure he couldn’t see the monster anywhere, Goldlewis turned his attention toward the person Geralt pointed out up ahead, trying to tell who it was. After dashing through the cluttered cargo bay, they’d wound up in an area dominated by towering shipping containers that obstructed the sight lines. Having heard the Witcher’s voice, the lone wanderer seemed to be heading over. The darkness obscured the details, but Goldlewis could see a standard-issue diving helmet and a glowing face within, though the features looked unrecognizably simplistic. Just as the veteran was beginning to wonder, a series of sounds echoed through the cargo corridor that dispelled all doubt.
BLEEP! ”Looks like we got one!” BLOOP! The voice was loud, harsh, heavily distorted by static, and bookended by alarming technological tones. BLEEP! ”Whoa, a whole crew of ‘em! How about a hundred, chat? Hundred likes each? Yeah, let’s get ‘em!” BLOOP! Then the stranger brandished a hefty rod, which came to life with a violent electric crackle. In its light, Goldlewis could see the stranger fully, a juggernaut as big as he was in a heavy suit with three oxygen tanks and a camera trained on his targets. The emoticon face in its helmet wore a fixed expression of gleeful malice as the stream sniper stomped forward. BLEEP! ”You’re MINE!” BLOOP!
Goldlewis gritted his teeth, raising his fists. Unfortunately, this assailant wasn’t the only problem drawn by all the ruckus. As he prepared to fight, or take cues from Junior, he became aware of another sound: the increasingly loud whir of a blender. Whatever the source was, it was only seconds away.
“Junior! Might have to fight our way out of this one! What’s the call?” Geralt asked, looking around for the source of that horrid noise, ready to knock it away with Aard if Junior told her to.
”uhhh, the other player is fair game, keep avoiding the monster?” Jr suggested, before preparing to flick on the camera once they were sure as to what they were doing.
Minda at least was up for it, saying that the steam sniper ”Seems more obnoxious than scary” before opening a portal and summoning up her Darknut minion to do battle for her while she kept operating their boom mic. At her mental command, the armored undead put itself squarely in the path of the sniper, shields raised, putting both a steel bulwark and an energy barrier in between it and them.
With all the cargo containers around the team was already dealing with the cruise ship’s cramped confines, but once the Darknut arrived it almost completely occupied what little open space they had. “Gah, what in the-” Goldlewis tried to distance himself from the behemoth so that he wouldn’t end up as collateral damage once it took action, but luckily it only attempted to bar the interloper’s way. It worked well, not budging beneath a flurry of blows from the stream sniper’s shock stick, but the Darknut’s mere presence amongst them left the Seekers completely separated.
With the Darknut taking the Stream Sniper’s attention, Geralt refocused her efforts on trying to find the unseen new monster, with little success.
After a moment, their assailant gave up. BLEEP! ”Hah, these guys are no fun. Don’t worry chat, we’ll be back before they know it.” BLOOP! By the time the undead roadblock removed its shields, the stream sniper had disappeared, but the filmmakers had something else to worry about. From a narrow gap between two cargo containers dashed a mannequin with a whisk for a head, its beaters whirring at high speed. It sped toward Junior, charging in a fast but perfectly straight line. Separated -and practically pinned down- by the Darknut, neither Goldlewis nor Geralt could get over to help him.
No way back, no way to the sides, it seemed like the prince was about to become blended roadkill. Yet rather than panic or fear, he, of all things, ran towards it. As he did, he formed a spear of metal, seemingly trying to counter charge it, only to drive said spear into the ground at the last moment, and using it to pole vault over the whisk faced freak. It wasn’t a clean jump, the whisk struck and ate his vaulting pole, causing him to botch the landing, landing on his spiky back and losing grip of the camera, which went tumbling across the ground away from him.
”Down with you” Mida commanded as this occurred, sending her darknut back down into a portal and freeing up the gents to move once more.
“Grab Junior!” Geralt shouted as she exploded into a sprint, skidding to a stop before the mannequin and casting the Sign of Aard, an explosive burst of telekinetic force launching it backwards. “Good thinking with that spear, kid.” She commented, backing away from the whisk-faced mannequin monster, hand still up in a wary posture.
The moment the Darknut got stowed away, Goldlewis took action. Firing his shotgauntlets behind him, he reached the fallen Koopa with a burst of speed, then reached down and unceremoniously flipped Junior back into his feet. Next on his list of priorities was the camera, but he glanced at the group’s attacker first. Luckily, the whisk monster appeared to be very clumsy, good for hurling itself in straight lines and not much else. Geralt’s Sign had flung it against a cargo container, and it still had yet to pick itself up.
“You good, kid?” Goldlewis patted Junior on the head, then turned to collect the camera. It lay a few dozen feet away back toward the cluttered area, blinking with a teal light. Trusting in Geralt to have their back as the whisk geared itself up for another charge, he went over and stooped to retrieve the device, not noticing it was still on and wasting film. “Got it!” He held it out for Junior to take, not noticing the hole in the ceiling nearby, nor the large, dark figure standing up there.
Jr gave an insistent ”I’m good” followed by a ”Thanks” with a thumbs up as he got the camera back. He settled it back into his hand, did a little hiss of an inhale at the amount of tape that must have been wasted staring at nothing, and then happened to pan up and catch a flash of light on what looked to be a pair of glasses adorning the figure staring down at them.
Midna meanwhile turned at a sound that was approaching her and Geralt and let out a gasp as she came face to face with the stream sniper. Its electrical weapon lunging towards her, the momentary spike of fear letting it slip past her guard, the stun prod jamming straight into her gut- to absolutely no effect as her body earthed the lighting with no harm to her.
”Still getting used to that” Midna said after blinking in surprise while the stream sniper recovered just a moment later BLEEP! ”Hah! Caught you off guard, didn’t I?” BLOOP!
”Big words for someone about to taste their own medicine” she retorted, as the boom mic flared to electrical life, and she swiped back to deliver her own stunning strike. The moment it took her to charge however was enough for the stream sniper to step away from the improvised weapon
BLEEP! ”And this is why I built all my gear custom chat!” BLOOP! it said as a parting shot, before slipping away again.
”That arrogant psychopath!” Midna seethed, itching to go after him, but that was right when Jr called out ”Watch out!” as the dark bespectacled figure shot a harpoon down at Junior, only for Goldlewis to lunge forward and shield him with his own body. The next instant, the spear struck him and began to reel him up into the air.
“Hurrk!” the veteran gasped in pain, dragged upward by his own suit jacket. Even after his fusions shrunk him down a touch, Goldlewis was a mountain of a man, and to haul him off his feet like that took monstrous strength. As he swung his arms, grasping for the cable attached to him, he caught only a fleeting glimpse of the creature who’d snared him: a bulky figure in a rumpled, scratch coat like a huge burlap sack, with only two fearsome red eyes visible inside its hood. The hefty harpoon gun in its grasp creaked and groaned in protest as it lifted Goldlewis higher, inch by inch. “Grrrrhhh…help me already, doggone it!”
Of course, it was right then that the two snailmen reappeared on the scene, practically walking arm in arm as they neared Junior’s position.
”That is the worst timing!” Jr complained, forming and firing metal shards at them, only for the light impacts to hardly slow them down at all, forcing him to backpedal as he rapidly tried to come up with a solution to the situation. Midna meanwhile stepped into a shadow and then appeared out of one to the harpooner, promptly driving the butt of boom mic into it, discharging electricity she’d attempted to spend on the stream sniper and causing thunder to clap deafeningly through the cruise ship. The blast flung the ghoulish thing into the wall and knocked the harpoon gun from its nerveless hands, causing Goldlewis to fall.
Down below, Geralt had jumped in to help Junior with the snails while the koopa fumbled with his gear in order to disentangle his paintbrush from its straps. Far from the most dangerous creatures the witcher had dealt with, Geralt could push them back with swift strikes from her long limbs at no real danger to herself. Still, they provided a deadly distraction, and once Midna disappeared from view the team’s dogged harasser emerged once more. BLEEP! ”There goes miss shockproof and here are three juicy targets! Let me see some tasers in the chat!” BLOOP! Right after Goldlewis fell, landing on top of one snailman, the stream sniper struck.
He slammed his baton into Geralt as she turned, and despite her defensive posture, the shock stick walloped her with a massive payload of electricity. It sent her sprawling, momentarily paralyzed, and the sniper erupted with distorted laughter. BLEEP ”Hahaha, got ‘er good! Pogs in the chat, guys!” BLOOP! Rather than press the attack, he looked up at the pad dangling from his rig, his expression gleeful in its electronic light.
Goldlewis got to his feet, albeit with the snail he’d seemingly crushed not just alive and well, but holding tight and actively draining his life. He hooked his hands beneath Geralt’s arms and quickly dragged her backward away from her assailant. The sniper himself, he left for Midna, straight from one bailout to the next.
The boom mic came lancing down from on high, striking the sniper like a javelin, though, bereft of charge as it mostly just knocked them off balance for a moment. That was all jr needed however, as he swiped his paintbrush at the streamer, coating his camera’s lens with neon blue electrical goop.
Unseen to him, but very alarming to the steamer, the monitor it was using to, well, monitor its own stream showed a combination of blue goop and static as the slime and shocks played havoc with its equipment. BLEEP ”Just some minor technical difficulties chat! Don’t go anywhere I’ll fix it stat!” BLOOP! the streamer almost begged as his viewer count started going down. With his hands full of camera and shock stick, and with both royals presenting too much of a threat for him to consider disarming himself to wipe the camera clean, the only option it had was the one it took: bailing to find a safe spot for camera maintenance.
”Yeah that’s right, run!” Jr called after him, making sure to get the beasted stream sniper on film, its humiliating response to having its footage interfered with having been perfectly picked up and amplified by Midna’s tossed boom mic.
”Don’t know what you did, but that sounded like you hit them where it hurts” Midna said as she appeared from the shadows once more to retrieve her very mistreated boom mic.
After helping Geralt to her feet, Goldlewis got her help to pry the annoying snail off his butt so they could kick it after the retreating stream sniper like an oversized football. That left one more ready to cause problems, though, and who knows what else on its way. “I think we got what we came for!” he barked, no longer feigning his urgency or worry. “Let’s hightail it back to base!”
”Gonna save the last little bit of film then” Jr replied, before cutting off their one very long running take ”Now let’s pull out the stops and get out of here!”
The team got moving as fast as they could, hurrying away from the danger-filled shipping zone back toward the cluttered cargo bay. Given the size and openness of the area, they didn’t need to worry too much about getting lost. In the distance, the distinctive warm, yellow glow of the diving bell’s interior light guided them onward. All they needed to do was get through the labyrinth of car wrecks, crates, and fences with the snails and the whisk behind them. Goldlewis and especially Geralt had both lost hit points, but they could still move unassisted, while Midna had to choose between sticking with a slower group or slipping through the shadows to get ahead on her own. If he hadn’t been so focused on the task at hand, the veteran might have thought to tell the princess to take the camera to safety, since its contents matter more right now than any one of them. Their oxygen was low, and their flashlight batteries were even lower; when the one belonging to Goldlewis ran out, he tossed it aside.
Midna didn’t really think of this either, because she associated the camera too hard with Jr in her head. As a result her plan was to move Jr faster, which she did by summoning her wolfos and having the prince get up onto its saddle. One hand on the handle, the other on the camera jr complained ”Why didn’t we do this in the first place!” because it made keeping on the move while filming a breeze.
About halfway through the junkyard maze, Geralt’s flashlight beam landed on a familiarly horrible shape. When the sputtering cone fell on the monster’s bulging eyes, it charged at the Witcher with a shriek, taking her by surprise. Its scythelike limbs gouged deep into her gear, taking advantage of her newfound weakness to slash damage to turn an opportunistic strike to a brutal wound. She stumbled with a curse and tripped over an engine block as she tried to dodge away. Her Aard sign blossomed in the darkness before the photophobic freak could finish her off, but the trip across the room wouldn’t stop the monster for long. Goldlewis slowed down, turning around. “Geralt!?”
BLEEP! ”Hehey, whoever sent that donation message, you were right on the money! Let’s f***ing get ‘em!” BLOOP!
The witcher winced as she tried to stand. “Go! I’ll hold them off!”
For a moment, Goldlewis froze. On a real battlefield this would have been a decision with deadly consequences, but if this was all just a game, he didn’t actually need to worry. Still, the fact that this game just about triggered his PTSD left him shaken. “If you say so, hoss. See ya on the other side!” he called back, hoping that Junior was capturing this drama.
As the distance grew and the lights faded, the last things the team running back to the diving bell saw from Geralt were a burst of incandescent flames, and the electric-blue tinge of the Streamer’s shock stick. A moment later, another set of deranged cackles echoed from where they had been, betraying Geralt’s fate.
Midna cursed under her breath, but the princess wasn’t affected particularly much by this. Jr meanwhile got a whole pile of flashbacks to the Maw and had to fight down an urge to go back for his fellow survivor. Had he not been sat atop Midna’s wolfos, he’d have slowed to a halt and been caught out, but as it stood, the twilight princess merely needed to stabilize him to keep him on her steed’s back, and let it do the rest.
With a burst of speed, the beast burst out of the ship and across the rickety bridge, followed a moment later by Midna and then, finally, Goldlewis, whom Midna slammed the door behind, right in the face of the scything eyeball creature. The veteran cranked the lever, and the Seekers were on their way.
When the diving bell’s climb came to an end and the door swung open, Geralt was already there, waiting for the others. Though he’d known that anyone eliminated down in the Old World would reappear up here from the beginning, Goldlewis still sighed in relief. “Heh. We weren’t separated all that long, I guess, but it’s good to see ya on the other side.” The Witcher hadn’t been the first comrade he’d been forced to leave behind, after all. He could only hope that all the others had wound up somewhere beautiful far above the clouds, as well. Returning from the crushing darkness below to this vibrant sky garden was a real breath of fresh air, and it helped drain away the tension and adrenaline pumping through him.
”That was, perhaps, a little too real at the end” Midna said as she pulled off her oversized helmet and let her hair flow free, her main magical asset having been constrained the entire game.
”I- yeah” Jr replied, before coughing a few times and asking ”anyway, we’re dead out of footage, so, now what?”
The team had no choice but to look around and figure it out. After reading the tutorial whiteboard inside, they found their way to the editing computer and through trial and error, managed to obtain a gleaming disc they could take to the TV set in the living room. Once Junior stuck the disc in the player, it uploaded the footage to both the big screen for them to watch and SpookTube, resulting in a cascade of live comments as the video played through. Goldlewis, totally at odds with this newfangled (or in his case, very oldfangled) technology, could only stand back in bafflement and watch as the video played through.
When the scuffle with the very first snailman started, a few comments reacted positively to it, but a lot poured in with a derisive tone. Apparently these critters were common fare, so widely recorded that every SpookTube veteran knew just how harmless they were. Everyone’s attempts to really sell the threat earned them some mockery.
Snail zombie! A Snailbie!
Ive heard they eat people :scared:
Not scariest I have seen but definitely snail
Wow these guys r makin a really big deal of it
Huh?? Its just a snail tho??
-2
Vod watchers skip this part
Next bit already
Scrubs lmao
Geralt blinked owlishly, then sighed. “Guess we’re not made for theater after all.” She joked, shrugging. “Though once we get to the end I wonder how they’ll feel.”
Goldlewis took a less self-deprecating approach. “How in the hell were we s’posed to know?” he grumbled. The viewers seemed to get a bit more excited when bigger threats appeared, at least.
thats more like it think they’ll get ganked?
Ngl running is prolly smart against the scythe bois
Oh shit stream sniper
Ugh snipers are the worst hope they kick his butt!!
That’s def ThunderThrasher, guys a ******* menace
Oh hey I watch that dude! He’s kinda a jerk tho
”Good, not just me who can’t stand that one” Midna commented
”Should have just taken him out on camera if people on here would have been happy to see that” Jr sad, hindsight being 20 20 and all, before snapping his fingers and going ”Rats, I could have just welded the monsters we didn’t like to walls”
Where’d that knight come from?
Yeah that’s it stonewall that jerk
Why didn’t they use that before? Throwing for content
Def throwing, boxing the others in
Look out its whisk head! Whisky business!!
Wait what, did he vault it?
There goes the camera
Did he get blended?
What kind of a name is junior lol
Oh good, there he is
point the camera at the action stupid, I wanna see the sniper fight!
At some point in their recording, the team had managed to attract so many monsters that the viewers couldn’t dismiss them any more. With snails, the stream sniper, the whisk, and the harpoon shooter all attacking at once, their video turned from a staged exaggeration to a frenetic fight to survive. As the battle turned into a chase to get back to the diving bell, the view count continued to climb, culminating in Geralt’s heroic sacrifice.
Omfg the sniper’s back
THUNDERTHRASHER RAID :electricity: THUNDERTHRASHER RAID :electricity:
Whaaaat? They’re just leaving her??
This sucks, why not the old fat guy
THUNDERTHRASHER RAID :electricity: THUNDERTHRASHER RAID :electricity:
THUNDERTHRASHER RAID :electricity: THUNDERTHRASHER RAID :electricity:
<User removed by moderator. Reason: spam>
Big woman too good for this world
Get up stupid!
Not fair, it shouldve been me
Get dunked on spammers
Eye guys are crazy overtuned
Did she die??? :brokenheart:
Goldlewis caught sight of one comment in particular from user PyraBestGirl: Nooo, friend Geralt! Even if just video, seeing friend left behind make Tora weep like babypon, meh. Poppi sad too! How could friends do this to Tora and Poppi??? His eyebrows went up as he recognized the names and linguistic style. “Wait, was that Tora? Who in sam hill gave that kid internet access?”
”Wait, so there’s people out there who are actually watching this and think its real?” Midna asked, having assumed this part of it was all an illusion as well
Jr was more confused, and frankly delighted, by the fact that Tora had a wifi connection up in the sky ”Who cares about that, the ship you came here on has internet!?”
Overall, despite the shaky start, things ended pretty well in terms of fear factor and emotional impact. Hopefully their earnings would stack up well against the others
