Stairdweller

The Continental

There was interest on the interest check, but then for some reason I was the only one who came over here. Anyway, I have no interest whatsoever in taking in any kind of leadership role.

Cybrolix – Cybernetic Mystery Adventure (EnA)

Hey guys. Sorry for never actually posting a character sheet when I said I would. I've been a little busier with other threads than I thought I would be, and things have gotten away from me.

Diving into The Abyss - A Shattered World

Yeah, I wanted to let Agent Sonne post before I did again, that way I could get the paper signing over in one post instead of having to do two of them.

The Continental

@korbanjaro was concerned about the lack of interest when I showed up, which was kind of a while ago. We'll see, I suppose.

Diving into The Abyss - A Shattered World

Alright, so, where are we now? How's everyone else doing?

Candlewick [CLOSED]

I live under the stairs.

ZONES: -system offline-

Ready! I'll just be over here eating raw flesh meat until then.

ZONES: -system offline-

Lenora Puglisevic

@ScarlettWaters16

"I don't think they are aggressive," Nora argued. Bird-girl was huge. Taller than a human with an even wider wingspan, her spread pinions easily blocked Lenora's view of the feast in question. She could still feel them moving around back there, though, with that internal awareness she had that let her pinpoint the movements of living things. "You are free to leave if you find this situation frightening," she said neutrally. "I will warn you if I see them dragging out any large pots. Go or stay as you wish."

Nora pitched forward and somersaulted under Jazz's wing, using her non-metal hand to part the enormous secondary flight feathers. She was not known for her ability to respect personal space. On the far side, she used her long arm to toss herself back onto her feet. Now that she could see the Denizens again, they seemed politely confused. The smoky black figures continued to take turns eating raw chunks of aggressor, though several were also keeping an eye on Nora and Jazz as they chewed or awaited their turns. One of them made a beckoning gesture.

"See? They're friendly." Lenora walked right up to one side of the Aggressor corpse. She flared her nostrils, filtering the air for any relevant scents. She wasn't used to this zone yet; the urban environment was very different from the maze-factory she'd learned how to use her senses in. A lot of the information she got didn't mean anything to her. She tried to visually categorize the corpse - helpfully dissected for her - and could make out layers of tissue and bone, as well as organs both familiar and unknown. She wasn't sure if she couldn't recognise them because they were partially eaten, or just because this was an alien creature in an alternate dimension.

One of the denizens beside her seemed to notice her intent examination, and helpfully reached into the torso wound, ripping off a strip of abdominal wall muscle. It offered the chunk to the human. Fascinated, Nora took the freshly liberated meat. Up close it looked like... well, raw meat. It also smelled like meat. She licked it - it tasted organic, like animal cells, with varying amounts of salts, vitamins, minerals - in general, meat components. "Thank you," she said, looking up at the Denizens again. Several of them seemed to be looking at her. Expectantly. It seemed pretty clear to Nora what they wanted her to do. She looked down at the Aggressor-flesh, then back up.

Then she shrugged and took a bite.

---

E.A. "Bobby" Smith

Bobby trotted through the red city, his long, cloven-hoofed legs carrying him quickly and easily along the deserted streets. He actually thought that he liked this form better than his bigger, scarier, regular shape. The hands were super handy, for one thing. He could jump well, and use his powerful claws to grab onto just about anything he wanted. Just because he could, Bobby threw himself at the side of a three-story building and began scaling the side, claws digging into the metal and stone like soft cheese. When he got to the top, he easily flipped himself over the low wall around the edge of the building's flat roof.

The roof seemed to have an abandoned garden atop it. There were rows of dead, brown plants growing in planters, some of them producing withered webs of vines that trailed forlornly across the rooftop. There were also some rusted chairs, a glass-topped table, and a plethora of the usual rooftop things like vents and aerials and pipes and such. It had probably been a pretty nice place to hang out, before whoever lived here had abandoned it. There was also a door in a little shack that looked like the entrance to a stairwell. It was locked. Although Bobby could probably have broken through it with his razor-claws, he decided to respect the privacy of anyone who might still be living in the building. Figuring that this was as much as he could do here, Bobby hopped up on the wall on the far side of the roof.

Below him, one of the flaming red Aggressors - a small one, not much bigger than an average human - was prowling along the alleyway, probably looking for someone to mug or whatever it was these things did with their time. A fang-filled grin spread across Bobby's face. Time to try out hunting as a biped. He leapt from the roof, hitting the wall across the alley about half-way down, digging his claws into the bricks to halt his fall. Below him, the Aggressor looked up just in time to see Bobby vaulting off the wall in a fifteen foot drop directly onto it's own head. The Zoner pinned it face down with his - hocks? he didn't actually know what that joint was called - and pulled back a clawed hand for a killing strike at the spine.

That didn't happen. Instead, there was a burst of fire and a horrible burnt hair stink, and Bobby rolled away, his legs and one forearm moderately singed. "Balls!" he swore. He hadn't been aware that they could do that. He leapt to his feet, narrowly avoiding a hurled ball of fire. The Aggressor wasn't as small up close as it had seemed from three stories up - it had clearly been walking hunched over. And close up, it didn't seem... right. It was skinny and oddly shaped, its torso too long for its limbs, with a face that looked like something from a cautionary tale about cut-rate cosmetic surgery. And it was hurling blobs of fire that splattered and popped like even-more-painful bacon fat when they landed near Bobby. As he wove back and forth, one of the projectiles hit a wall beside him at eye level and sent a burning streamer across his face. He rubbed it off with the back of his hand, but not before it raised a line of blisters. "A'right, you're gonna die," he snapped.

Bobby dove in low at a angle across the Agressor's path, intentionally overshooting and coming up to a crouch slightly behind and to the right of his opponent. It turned to flame at him, but didn't complete the spin before Bobby stabbed at the back of its knee, his claws grinding on bone. Hamstrung, the Aggressor went down like a sack of hammers, and Bobby was on it in an instant. He didn't give it a chance to burn him this time; instead he slashed wildly at its neck and chest until it stopped moving and exposed bone glistened in its wounds. Then he levered himself to his feet, shaking as much fluid off his arms as he could manage. "Well, that was entertaining," he groused. He felt a little uncomfortable, looking at the seriously mangled corpse; overkill wasn't usually his style.

As he contemplated his work, a door opened in the building he had previously been on the roof of. Two denizens cautiously emerged, gestured incomprehensibly at Bobby before dragging the misshapen Aggressor corpse inside with them, and closing the door. "Huh." Bobby said aloud. Then, louder, "you're welcome!"

Candlewick [CLOSED]

Hey, I saw that and was like "has that always been there? Am I crazy?"

ZONES: -system offline-

Lenora Puglisevic

@ScarlettWaters16

Lenora looked sideways at the red barrier and reached out a hand to tap at it. She didn't actually touch it, instead hovering her hand nervously over the surface. After a moment, she decided that if she was in for the penny, she might as well be in for the pound. If she had come this far - following the video instructions, volunteering in the cafeteria, sitting in the stasis chair - then there was no advantage in baulking at a weird mental portal room. So, she squared her shoulders and walked through the wall and into the red city beyond.

The blonde stumbled as she walked through, as her centre of gravity changed from one step to the next. She was about the same height in both forms, but her real-world form was much bulkier. In the dream-world, she was all long gangly limbs, uncomfortably spider-like in her layered grey poly-urethane costume. There was also the imbalance created by her one skeletal, over-long metal arm. Lenora was normally more comfortable in her own flesh and metal than this, though. As soon as she entered Zone 1, she was aware of the malfunctions.

Her senses were duller than they were supposed to be - though still much better than in the waking world. The static was a problem, though. Her copper eye was not displaying correctly, throwing static across her field of vision. She really wished she had an eyelid on that side so that she could close it and concentrate on her silver eye.

She was tapping at the eye in question when the bird-woman asked if anyone wanted to go exploring. Maybe there was something stuck in the socket, shorting out the electrical signals? Static vision really distracting.

"I think exploring will be a good use for my time," she said, nodding sharply at the Zone 2er. She started jogging into the city, holding her long arm folded in front of her chest so that the swinging didn't throw off her balance as she ran. "I would like to get a closer look at some of the Denizens," she called.

Putting action to her words, the cyborg jogged off between two buildings, one a long low warehouse looking structure and the other a multi-story building, like a small office building. Nora didn't spare any thoughts for things like "property damage" or "trespassing." They had never really been issues in her home Zone, and she didn't plan to let them become such here. So, she didn't hesitate before ripping one of the big red metal doors off its hinges with her long arm and skittering in after tossing it to the side.

Perhaps she should have hesitated. The sight before her was just bizarre, even by the standards of how this day had been going so far. There was a huge, high ceilinged room immediately inside the door she had violated. The room was populated by at least a dozen denizens - their smoky outlines made them kind of hard to count - and one of the burning red aggressors. The dark, smoky forms were gathered around the larger one, which was on the ground and not moving. And as she watched, fascinated, one of them ripped a chunk of meat away from a gaping wound across the aggressor's abdomen and... ate it? It was kind of hard to tell, with their foggy outlines. Two more of the denizens ripped chunks off, one tearing a long strip from one of the aggressor's arms while the other one dug both hands into the abdominal wound. They were definately eating it.

Fascinated, she moved closer. She was dying to know what an aggressor's innards looked like.