Empour

ZONES: -system offline-

Kayla Kirby

Suddenly, Ellie was walking towards her, directly towards her. It was like nothing ever got in his way, as though everything just KNEW he was coming and got out of the way hours beforehand. He was standing over her in an instant, far faster than he had been walking.

“What do you think you’re wearing?” He called out as he approached. Not in a blaring, authoritative way, but… well, stern but fair. He stood before Kayla and awaited an answer.

To Kayla, though, it may as well have been as though he was demanding it at gunpoint. She struggled to answer the looming form and sank back into her seat a little.

“My, uh, my uniform...” she let out, softly. Hopefully she could get out of this alive.

“No, that’s…” He paused for a moment. “A… Miz, Miza- look, I can’t remember the name, the point is... that’s not what I had set up in all your personal bathrooms. I’m sorry if you prefer what you’ve got on now but, you have got to change into one of the ones I gave you. Wanna know why?”

Kayla’s lack of response was taken for an affirmative.

“All these uniforms are made out of the same synthetic fibers.” Eli responded, “They’ve all got physical signatures recognized on my personal network, which the service bots operate on. So they normally won’t recognize anyone not wearing one. And given the sensitive nature of this, uh, operation? They will take drastic action if it happens repeatedly. So far it looks like you managed to confuse their sensors, but please. For both your sake and mine, go change. Okay?”

Once again, Kayla didn’t respond. Eli would normally have waited for a response, but at that moment, someone called for him. He did a double-take and turned back to Kayla. “I mean it.” He said, nodding, and finally turning away, leaving her all by her lonesome.

It was probably too quiet to hear, but Kayla mumbled out as he walked away, “But I can’t take it off...”
The suit couldn’t be taken off by normal means, which is why it was so important that it cleaned itself, and her while it was at it. The only part of her body that Kayla had to wash when she bathed was her head and her hands. She would have to figure out how to get the robots to not beat her up somehow..

Kayla’s panic was fading, and for once in what felt like ages she let herself relax. Everyone around her were in good discussion, and she wasn’t going to be kicked out of the.. club? There was no reason to be scared. At all. She would just have to talk to the ruler of the robots and get them to not beat her up. That’s all.

She looked around. There were lots of people, but nobody seemed to want to talk to her. Who should she talk to?

ZONES: -system offline-

Kayla Kirby

Kayla felt like she was going to sleep very quickly for a few seconds, but then she was suddenly rapidly being brought back into the world. Except.. she wasn’t on the reddish stone that made up the streets of the city anymore. She was sitting in a very comfortable chair, and a good third of her vision was clear again. So she didn’t have the mask on anymore, good. At least people could see her face now. Kayla looked down.

Kayla was in the dress she wore in REM sleep for some reason, and a few of the other people in the room were staring at her. Kayla’s face heated up so fast it looked like someone put a mask on, and she fervently tried to get her suit back to being the uniform everyone else was wearing. It flipped around between all of the colors in her panic, and she couldn’t remember what the number hers had had was, but eventually she settled for the red 128. Hopefully nobody noticed the multicolored blur that accompanied her changing styles. Normally in this situation, she would want to talk to as many people as possible so she could get to know them, but right now, she just hoped nobody would notice her.

ZONES: -system offline-

Kayla Kirby

Holding the ring was hard, really hard. The agriculture was resisting, resisting a lot. Every time Kayla tried to bring the ring in close enough to start choking him, it started getting out of control. It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced, and that was scary. Henry was staring at her as she did it, holding half of an agriculture in his massive hands. Meanwhile, the monster itself was just clawing it its neck. Kayla’s hold was obviously causing it some serious distress even if she couldn’t finish the thing.

The hold, though, was tiring even when she wasn’t trying to choke him. She would have to end this quickly, if she was to win this fight.

Suddenly, Henry roared, and swung the agricultural corpse at the sickly one. The noise startled Kayla so much that she let go of the ring completely, letting the agriculture fall to the ground. It didn’t have much time to recover, though, as the assault corpse hit it, knocking it over. Kayla, seeing her chance to get superiority back, shot a wave of invisible magic at the fallen zappy.

However, her foe was quick. Right after she launched the wave, it pointed its own hand at her, and shot a blast of its own. The two arcane projectiles collided, but rather than stopping each other, Kayla’s attack suddenly became vibrant, red, and very visible, and it didn’t stop moving. The electric attack was devoured completely by the red cloud, which continued straight on, and covered the upper half of the monster. A terrible scream sounded for a second, before fading away rapidly. The glowing cloud lingered for a few moments, before fading to invisible again.

The sight of the zombie’s remains were horrifying. The entire top half of the body was black char, and thinner than any being, living or dead, had any right to be. Kayla suddenly felt a wave of nausea, and her consciousness faded rapidly. She fell backwards, and suddenly felt everything vanish.

ZONES: -system offline-

@UrbanEvolution

Kayla Kirby

Kayla was swordfighting. This agriculture was the most difficult one yet, even more so than the hulking monster she had been chased by only moments before. This one obviously knew its way around a sword(1), and try as she might, Kayla couldn’t land a hit on him. The zombie was having similar difficulty, and kept missing due to Kayla’s size. Of course, when the agriculture DID land a hit on her, it certainly hurt, but didn’t do any lasting damage. It seemed like her suit was impervious to being cut.
Kayla pulled off a particularly awesome move in which she ducked forwards to avoid a swipe and slashed at its legs, which it dodged by leaping backwards.
Suddenly, as they stared at each other, catching their breath, a voice rang out in her head. "Kayla, knock it off with the sword and just Vader strangle or something!" Eli’s voice said in a very exasperated fashion, as though he had been watching this fight for a while now and was getting sick of the stalemate.
Vader Strangle? that sounded familiar, what was a vader? Vader, strangle, vader, stra-
Realization flooded through Kayla’s mind as an image of a dark man in a cape and helmet choking a man in midair appeared.

Kayla imitated it. She formed a hard ring of neon around the agriculture’s neck, and lifted it upwards, careful not to let it slip around his head. The monster dropped its sword in surprise, as it was lifted slowly off of the ground. Then, she compressed the ring, making it close tighter and tighter around its neck. It struggled for a minute, before going limp. This agriculture was smart, though, so it could be a trap. Kayla kept it floating a few feet away from her as she moved over to where Henry was. He had decimated the zombies around him, and was looking up at the ones remaining on the fortifications. Kayla made the floating agriculture slap him in the back, getting his attention. He turned, saw the zombie floating there, and ripped it in half instantly, before noticing Kayla.

(1)Note, they’re of equal skill with the sword, which is to say that they both have all the proficiency of an action film nerd that watched a lot of sword fighting scenes in their time. No, I’m not going to explain how the aggressor has that knowledge. Use your imagination.

ZONES: -system offline-

Kayla Kirby

The only thing that filled Kayla’s mind when she was falling from the rooftop was terror. There was no room to ask herself why her magic hadn’t worked, no room to ask what the heck had yanked her off the building. There was only oh god I’m falling help oh god I’m gonna die oh god oh god-
Crack

Suddenly, her fall was broken, as was whatever it was she landed on. It let out a roar of pain that sounded very familiar. Henry left before Kayla could get up. The side she landed on hurt, but not really that badly. Henry must have been surprisingly soft. By the time she was on her feet again, Henry was surrounded by flaming agriculture-zombies. There were no others in sight, but Kayla didn’t want to go looking for them. She was supposed to help fight the flameys, and Henry definitely looked like he could use some help.

Kayla half-ran, half-stumbled her way over, and shot a jet at one of the pipe-armed ones, which was facing henry’s back. The magic, yet again, didn’t show up. Additionally, Kayla suddenly lurched forwards, as the mysterious yanker-force pulled her again. She wasn’t on top of a building this time though, so her mask took the brunt of her faceplant.

She got up again, and tried getting closer to the brawl. If her powers were just going to fling her across the ground, then she would have to help with her bare hands instead.
For a moment, Kayla wondered where the pipe Henry had given her had gone. It would certainly be handy right about now. Kayla was about halfway there, when all of the monsters were suddenly bathed in fire. Kayla skidded to a halt- she didn’t want to go near Henry if he could breathe fire, not when he was fighting anyway. She would have to find someone else to-

Suddenly, Kayla was knocked over, with a searing pain in her left arm. She spun around on the floor, and found a flaming janice-zombie with a massive sword standing over her, pulling the sword back over its head for another swing. Almost reflexively, Kayla shot a massive jet of magic at it, hoping it would, for once so far, work.

It did, but not the way it usually did. Instead of incinerating the top half of his body, like it usually would, the monster was flung high into the air and to the right, far away from Kayla. Right as it reached the peak of its sudden flight, the agriculture’s torso suddenly let out a burst of sparks, smoke, and blood, accompanied by a loud bang from behind her. It then fell to the ground, and didn’t move any more. Another bang-burst, but out of the head this time.

Kayla got up, and picked up the sword that it dropped when she flung it. It was heavy, and she had no idea how to actually use it, but the grip fit her hand perfectly, and it had a sharp edge. It would work as a weapon, for sure.
If these were the agricultures she had been fighting for the shadow-people the entire time, she was glad she had kept her distance from them. These things were scary. Somehow, though, she didn’t feel nearly as intimidated as usual, though. Kayla looked around. There were a bunch of agricultures apparently too stupid to notice there was a fight going on, so she ran towards one that was alone, lifted the sword above her head, and let out an involuntary war cry out as she brought it down on the agriculture’s shoulder. It staggered, apparently surprised, and Kayla took advantage of said surprise to hit it again, and again, and again, until it just stopped moving altogether. The action left her bent over and panting, the sword was much heavier than it seemed.

After a moment of recovery, she attacked another one in the same fashion, with a little bit of difficulty this time. The knife it was using was useless against her suit, and it was dead before it could figure out why its attacks weren’t working. Kayla looked around. There were plenty more to defeat, and she was getting the hang of fighting them. She picked a duo of club-wielding brutes, and went ran towards them.

ZONES: -system offline-

@UrbanEvolution @Stairdweller @Twisted Fate

Kayla Kirby

Kayla was, frankly, overwhelmed. Everyone seemed to be asking her all sorts of questions at once, most of them being something along the lines of asking what kinds of powers she had, and how they would use them to help the shadow man in the funny hat. Well, this was her time to shine. She would show everyone just how cool her abilities were! All of the others were terrifying monsters, or turned into smoke, but she was the only one with real magical power!

Kayla gave her best smile, the same one that dazzled her classmates in what felt like weeks ago. “Okay, um, watch me! I can do this!” she said, running up to the edge of the roof.
She pointed her finger at one of the closer flaming agre.. agra.. agricultures that looked like it would be the easiest to hit, and let a jet of magic fly, putting special emphasis on the color and luminosity, so it would look really good.

Immediately, Kayla felt that something was wrong. She got no response from her orders to make it bright and golden, and nothing visible happened. For a second, Kayla felt the most ominous feeling, like the kind that you get when you see a closet door in a horror movie that you just KNOW is going to open. Kayla suddenly let out a very audible squeak, as she was ripped forward out of nowhere by something invisible wrapped around her chest, and plummeted down to the street three floors below.

ZONES: -system offline-

@UrbanEvolution

Kayla Kirby

The voice that appeared in her head was startling, but Keyla tried not to let it show. They were supposed to go help a denizen? That sounded okay, but how would they-
All of the sudden, Kayla was climbing up onto Henry’s back without even realizing what she was doing. She blinked hard for a second, and all of the sudden, they were moving. She let out a shout that was quickly stolen away by the wind, and ducked forwards to hang on tight. They climbed over walls, through alleys and streets, and finally up a vertical wall. The whole ordeal was very fast, windy, and overall exciting.

When the reached the top of the wall, Henry stopped going at his breakneck pace, and stood back up on his feet. This had the unfortunate side effect of flinging Kayla off his back and onto the ground behind him. It actually didn’t hurt that much for some reason, but it was startling. She started to stand up, and all of the sudden, there was a pair of very intimidating eyes ripping through the top of her head.

“And what do you do, Meal Armstrong?” the eyes asked. Kayla pulled herself up, and was about to respond, but the woman the eyes belonged to just charged on without her,"I'm gonna draw a map, a game plan per say, on the floor for us to follow. I need to know the niche you're gonna fill. I'm already carrying the weight for myself and twinkletoes up there," Twinkletoes? What? “I wanna know who I can count on and who I have to look out for. Big gu-” Henry interrupted her, and announced his name, to the woman’s obvious annoyance. Kayla inched her way behind Henry, while the woman asked, “Henry here looks alright. You two a tag team?"

Kayla didn’t really know what she meant, and couldn’t think of a way to get out of this situation, so she said(with a slight stutter creeping in), “What do you mean? H-henry took me over here, we just met up and started talking, when the, uh, the voice told us to come over here,”

ZONES: -system offline-

@UrbanEvolution

Kayla Kirby

Kayla was confused, scared, and lying on the floor, too tired to move. She was exhausted because she had just spent the last few minutes trying with all her adrenaline-filled might to move that shelf, which had not budged an inch. She was scared, because she just heard the most terrifying roar in her life a few moments before. She was confused, because apparently the source of that roar was politely knocking on her door asking if she was okay, while moments before she had seen it devouring something dead and humanoid. In any case, she wasn’t in any position, both figuratively and literally, to let the monster in. It took her half a minute and quite a bit of courage, but she managed to squeak out a, “Come in,” before she could convince herself out of it.

ZONES: -system offline-

@UrbanEvolution
@Zombehs

Kayla Kirby

“Kid? Where are you?”
Kayla sat there for a while, taking deep breaths and trying to ignore the deep voice outside that kept calling for her. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this, especially if it was one of the big monster-people. Deep breaths.

Kayla didn’t know where she was, this was definitely an area of the city she hadn’t been in before. The buildings were all much smaller, and farther in-between. She didn’t know how to get to the area she knew- It could be anywhere, and she, at least, knew that this city was massi-

The scream was terrifying. It was unlike anything Kayla had ever heard, and sent shivers down her spine. That alone would have been enough for Kayla to brace herself even harder against the door she hadn’t realized had a perfectly usable deadbolt, but the fact that it had been so(from what she could tell) close, that was enough to make her leap up from the door, run to the back of the room, and hide behind the counter there, shivering. Then, the voice called out again.
“Scuba girl. I don’t know if you’re from this Zone, but that was a damn Aggressor death cry. Move it, or you’re on your own!”

Aggressor? Death Cry? What was he talking about? None of the flaming zombie people monsters she had fought in her dreams ever made screams like that. Aggressor, was that the name of them? She had just been calling them by what faces she imagined on them, followed by the suffix -zombie. Janice-zombie, Markuss-zombie. That sort of thing. The voice sounded worried- perhaps it wasn’t one of the monster-people?

Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
The vibrations started out soft, but became much more noticeable as whatever approached came closer. Or just started stomping. Something like that. The noise faded, and then stopped. Whatever had been approaching evidently went right past her. Or was faking it and was about to rip open the door and eat her. One of the two. Kayla compressed herself behind the counter a little more. She started hearing two people talking to each other, though it was muffled and she couldn’t tell what was saying. One of them was definitely the deep voice from before, and the other sounded like someone that had just gotten braces. Were they friendly? To Kayla’s experience, the girls with braces were usually very good friends. Kayla hadn’t seen anyone with braces in the tunnel, though...

Curiosity overcame her fear, though the potential prospect of a friend certainly helped. She made her way back to the door, which, most unhelpfully, swung inwards. She made the most of it, though, and cracked the door open, trying to see what was going on. Unfortunately, the angle she was able to see through didn’t reveal anything, so she was forced to open the door quite a bit more and stick her head out. She turned a bit, and spotted them about halfway down the block.

There was no girl with braces. There was only a massive, massive shirtless monster man that looked like it would love nothing more than to hunt, kill, skin, grill, and devour her, right after it was done eating its current victim. Additionally, there was a tall man in a cloak near him that was looking at him in disgust, but not running, or doing anything for that matter.

Kayla stared, stared in terror. Stared a little too long, because she saw, somehow, that the reptilian eyes of the monster crocodile had flicked from his meal to her. She couldn’t tell if he really saw her, because that snapped her out of it so fast she closed the door with a bit of her hair stuck in it. She reopened it and pulled it out, then shut it again.

Now, Kayla needed an escape. She needed to get out of this building, and go somewhere where the killer crocodile couldn’t find her. Her eyes darted around the room, and spotted a door, halfway hidden behind a shelf full of strange, multicolored glass cubes. In a flash, she was there, trying to pull the shelf away. It was extraordinarily heavy, even though it looked like it was made of simple glossy oak.

Try as she might, the shelf wouldn’t budge. By now though, Kayla was in a wild panic, and couldn’t find another way out of the shop. The stupid shelf just wouldn’t move!

ZONES: -system offline-

@Empour You fucking killed me at "Netflix machine".

@SepticGentleman

Oh crap, did I do that again? I had to fix that like three times in my application, I keep replacing nexus with netflix