Tergonaut

Pariah Online | Season One

L a n d o n

---

• Tʜᴇ Dᴜɴɢᴇᴏɴ •

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Landon gave a gamely grin from his position nearer the middle of the group as he replied, "Believe me, Elly, I don't want to have to be bandaged up any more than you have to, either!" Then he winked after he raised his goggles off of his eyes onto his forehead. "Though you're welcome to lay hands on me anytime!"

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mirage smirking at his remark as she finished rearranging her gear. Good, she thinks it's funny and not scuzzy, thought Landon to himself with just a touch of guilt. At least she has a good sense of humor...and excellent aim. It had been thanks to Mirage's fast reaction to the goblin archers that had saved Landon from getting more hurt than he might otherwise have been; she had nailed one of the archers with a shot just as it loosed an arrow at him, and it threw off the arrow enough so that it only grazed his ear instead of piercing his head. That had been close! Far too close for comfort, and Landon had angrily snapped off an explosive bolt from his wrist-mounted crossbow that knocked a few of the archers off their feet and threw them off-balance long enough for the party to regroup and protect themselves more readily from the ranged attackers.

Landon remembered the brief but intense sensation of friction as the arrow had skidded past his ear, and the pain had brought tears to his eyes as well as caused him to drop the cigarette from his lips in surprise. That hurt! He'd been in some groups that hadn't been as good, and gotten damaged plenty from all kinds of attacks, but this was the first time in Pariah that he could remember the pain feeling so utterly real. He actually contemplated whether or not he'd wake up in the real world with an actual skid mark on his ear.

Mirage had been the only one close enough to notice the startled jump he had made when he had been grazed, but she hadn't remarked yet. She had been awfully quiet, in fact, since the earlier incident with Graves; Landon guessed that the archer was still feeling self-conscious from what had happened. But he liked that she was handling it gracefully, not letting it interfere with her work in the dungeon, even though she had been badly shaken by the extreme overreaction from Graves.

In a low voice, he said in a more serious tone to Mirage, "Thanks for th' save earlier." And he smiled at her, and she smiled back, and that sent a little shiver of delight up his spine. Nice smile, he thought as he turned to his own gear, where he rearranged which bolts he had at hand in his quiver. He'd have to be smarter for the next round, and he couldn't rely on pretty women to save his backside forever - no matter how motivating his rear could be!

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

The underground security system recorded the demise of the last drone segment's transponder signal. It did this mutely, with no emotion, as it sat in the darkness and examined the data it had received. The entire battle had lasted only a matter of minutes, with a full and decisive victory by the intruders. There was no sense of loss; in fact, the system viewed this as a successful outcome. An outcome that would now change the way it would welcome the intruders.

Several of them demonstrated special powers, but all of them had shown a ferocious "will-to-survive" that marked them differently from the typical person of even such a world as Faiza. The system wasn't aware that its creator had proposed a theory about the idea that there are PCs and NPCs - Powered Citizens and Non-Powered Citizens. The idea behind this theory was that PCs, even ones that didn't have outright powers or abilities that differentiated themselves from "regular" people were still defined by a fierce drive to change the world around them, even if they themselves were not aware of this motivation. NPCs, meanwhile, usually faded into the background and served to create a foundation of "normalcy" that was the perfect environment for PCs to enter and manipulate as they saw fit. The system also wasn't aware that it was technically "politically incorrect" to classify individuals by some nebulous sense of narrative, and was part of the reason the creator had been rejected by society at large. But these factors were of no real importance.

What was important was that flags had been triggered. If the intruders had been marked as NPCs, the system would have continued to drive them away with increasing countermeasures until they left. But since they were clearly PCs, the system waited to see what would happen next. Waited with the infinite patience of a computer with no imagination or understanding of its own purpose beyond its programmed parameters. There would be no barring of the gate, no shutting of the door; they would be welcome to enter, as was planned by the creator.

---

Nora stood at the door to her room, a breathing mask apparatus over her mouth and nose. Her eyes stung a little, dazed though they were as she surveyed the damage the robots had wrought during the attack, but the lodge's built-in sprinkler systems were already diluting the strong chemicals in the air.

Unlike conventional sprinklers that used only water, the lodge was equipped with hidden nozzle sprayers and a complicated array of sensors that could detect not just fires, but other forms of environmental hazards such as a buildup of noxious gases or toxic substances, as well as discern the source of a fire and determine if it was electrical, chemical or otherwise. Then, a computerized series of chemical tanks would add to the spray of water just enough of whatever was needed to help neutralize the threat, or if water would only make the situation worse, a flame-retardant soluble liquid was used instead.

The best part was, it was all non-toxic, washed out easily with a little water and evaporated quickly. And, it was lemon-scented.

Nora's mind recalled these facts, which before they had known only clinically from having read over the lodge's safety equipment. Now she was seeing it in action as the spray from the sprinklers soaked into the carpet around the mezzanine. She wasn't exactly sure which chemicals were being used now, but it was effectively breaking down the intense capsaicin foam into a harmless bubbling mix. A secondary mist was being laid down by the sprinklers to counteract the peppery smell from the air. Without any effort on her part, cleanup was already occurring, and she stood there, suddenly a little warm with the adrenaline running through her system, dampened by the discharge from the sprinklers, and almost giddy with the excitement that had torn her from a strange dream that she half-remembered.

I should take at least one of those drones for study, she thought, musing comfortably with this impulse for understanding. It would be so much nicer if that was all she had to do, merely sit back and analyze.

Then her sense of responsibility kicked in as she gave a quick start, blinked her eyes, and strode to the mezzanine railing to try to look at everyone at once. Her glasses shone with tiny lights as she examined the scene while her hands rested on the wooden rail. Jane and Sam were over in the laundry room, with Jane visibly in shock as she laughed in the odd white noise silence of the sprinklers, and Sam was trying to see if she was okay (in his boxers, but at least he had those on, thought Nora as she blushed a little and moved her gaze quickly on). Ashley had left by the front door, which still was open to the warm night air outside. Boxcar still crouched by a couch downstairs, watching intently at Jaiden, who sat in the middle of a mess of crushed drones and, despite the holes in his clothes and her own memory of the spraying blood from earlier, Jaiden was remarkably unbloodied, though he did look a little like he had just woken up.

In a single sweep of her light blue eyes, she analyzed the situation. No serious injuries, she thought in review. The regenerative abilities of both Jaiden and Ashley are functioning better than their reports indicated. The drones no longer present a threat. Aside from possible trauma and adrenaline...it looks like everyone is okay.

Then Nora thought of the door, and realized they would not be okay if even one more of those robots came through. This was my fault, she thought matter-of-factually, and she gripped the rail more tightly with her hands in a rare show of anger as her brow furrowed. If I had insisted on checking out what was down there earlier, or at least had gone down there to take a look for myself, this wouldn't have happened. We could have sealed the door, or taken the fight to the drone, instead of being ambushed like this. Ambushed!

Another wave of frigid ice went through her. There wasn't anything stopping the same thing from happening, if it hadn't already begun. She had to get help, and fast, if-

Get help from who, sister? she berated herself mentally. If I call Cybertronics like this, they'll just fire me outright instead of being polite and shunting me out of the way! And that's if they don't just shut down the entire lodge project, and these guys will all be kicked out...nope, no more waiting, no more hesitation, I should have taken care of it in the first place!

Nora went back into her room and gathered a few things - some slippers for her bare feet, a few tools that she slipped into the pockets of her labcoat - and came out and went immediately down the stairs and towards the rec room and its yawning door into the basement, trusting that Sam would be able to help Jane out for now, and that all of the others would be all right. The transponder for Boxcar's collar swung about on her neck as she moved with definite purpose. She felt guilty about just leaving the others so quickly, but she knew time was of the essence - and she was also terrified that if she didn't do this now, she'd chicken out.

Boxcar, finally able to draw his eyes away from Jaiden, fell into step behind Nora silently. Nora only barely acknowledged his presence - she knew he wouldn't be able to stay away from her anyway with the shock collar, and she felt reassured having his company.

When she entered the basement and switched on the light, Nora stood there for a moment, hesitation creeping into her heart again. She stared at the open door, which led into a dark hallway that looked like a gate to the Abyss in the dimness of the single lightbulb above her head. The basement was cooler than the upstairs areas had been, but she could swear she felt a chill breeze rising from the depths of whatever laid below the lodge.

Then she tightened her grip on one of the tools in her pocket to stop her hand from shaking. "Let's go," was all she said, and she started forward into the automatically-lighted hallway, with Boxcar at her heels.

"Shouldn't we stuff something in the way of the door? In case it closes on us again," said Boxcar, sounding very nonchalant.

"If the door closes, then that means whatever is down here can't get at the others," Nora said...then realized how awful a picture that sentence painted, leaving them trapped down here, and she giggled nervously.

"Okay, but if we reach a spot where the corridor ends suddenly, don't say anything about a 'dead-end' all right?" grumbled Boxcar. "Place gives me the creeps already."

So the two began to descend the stairs at the end of the short hallway, lights automatically clicking on as they went, detected by various motion sensors and other electronic eyes that scanned ceaselessly and without conscious thought.

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

Nora's mind instantly grasped what Jane asked for, and she darted over to the back of the desk chair where she had laid her white labcoat. Her hand snaked into the side pocket, found the gloves, and she yanked them out as she turned back toward the doorway where Jane was just getting to her feet. "Catch!" she called out, and then gave the gloves a forceful underhanded toss toward Jane.

Once the gloves were out of her hands, Nora whipped the labcoat itself on over her shoulders with a flourish, and she felt a little more protected. One of the drones skittered toward her, wobbling back and forth in an evasive maneuver. Nora took the chair itself into her hands and swung it, clumsily - it was only luck that she tagged the small drone with the end of one of the chair legs, sending it spinning dizzyingly back into the hallway out of her room.

Meanwhile, Boxcar downstairs was still shaking off the effects of the Shrieker after he got his battered and bruised body back up to his full four feet at the bottom of the stairs. That had hurt! And he wasn't much for the skittering things that scattered from above, a few of them hopping down the stairs or outright over the edge of the mezzanine, through the openings in the railing.

One of the drones flew at him from the stairs, its pointed legs aimed right for his face. Boxcar reacted with his honed animal instincts and reflexes, and darted to the side just at the last moment. He grabbed the legs of the drone in his teeth and gave it a whirl before letting it go, where it launched into the rec room and bounced on the floor in there. It wobbled up to its feet, but Boxcar tipped over a stack of weights it had landed next to, and the clattering weights fell and crushed the drone underneath with a satisfying scream of twisted metal.

Boxcar got back to the living room, but as he perceived the fallen Jaiden and the three drones that surrounded him, just as the wolf was about to growl a warning, he felt a jolt of raw animal fear strike through him and he recoiled with a whimper. It wasn't the drones he was afraid of, as he sensed a rising primal danger coming from Jaiden's blood-spattered hole-riddled body that didn't make sense, yet was there all the same. He wanted to go up the stairs and help with the fight, but he had a certain inkling that he did not want to get in Jaiden's way, so he dove for cover behind one of the couches and poked his nose around the corner to keep an eye on how things were going.

Pariah Online | Season One

Yosh!

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

Nora sat on a chair in an office. In front of her, three of her superiors sat or stood behind a desk, with the light from the window at their backs casting their forms into silhouette to Nora's eyes. She had to adjust her glasses and squint to look at them, and the scene had a vaguely sinister air that she couldn't put her finger on.

"So, do you accept the assignment?" asked the foremost among them, a red-haired woman in a black business suit. Even though Nora could not see her freckled, leering, smirking face, this woman exuded a confidence that was almost terrifying in its overbearing strength.

Nora gulped as she felt the wall close in behind her and to her sides. It was so unnerving, and she wished desperately that she was back in her lab. There was something wrong here, and it bothered her that she couldn't figure out what it was. Maybe it was how tall everyone else in the room seemed to be getting - no, it wasn't them, it was the entire viewpoint, the room itself curling around her vision like a fish-eyed lens. She felt yanked backward by an invisible hand, and then the room tilted and she found herself falling, falling...

She stopped, and suddenly she was floating alone in darkness, the sense of vertigo gone completely as if she'd suddenly been set upright water, though she could breathe just fine in the weightlessness. Nora tried to adjust her glasses, but she found they weren't there; and with a glance downward at herself, she realized she didn't have anything else on. Her skin, pale as it was, practically radiated light to the point where she could hardly stand to look at herself for the glare. She tried in vain to cover herself, suddenly embarrassed even though she was apparently and entirely alone. Even a labcoat would have been better than nothing, and probably far more comforting to her than anything else anyway...

-DO NOT OPEN THE SARCOPHAGUS-

The voice that spoke was so deep and all-encompassing that Nora twisted around in her spot to glance behind herself trying to spot the source of it. "Who's there?" she asked, all self-conscious thoughts gone as her curiosity was piqued. "What sarcophagus?"

There was nothing in all the solid, palpable darkness around her that could have said anything, yet once again, she heard it speak. Muffled somehow, it was still louder than anything she had ever heard before, yet it didn't hurt her ears.

-IT SHOULD NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY, NOR COME TO PASS, ELSE THERE WILL BE BLOOD AND SORROW TO PAY-

"You know, this cryptic prophecy stuff would be a lot easier to understand if you'd be more specific," said Nora with just a hint of testiness as she reached up to adjust glasses that weren't there. On some elemental level of her soul, she knew something important was happening, but her analytical mind could not process the information she was being given, like so much white noise on a working radio, and she hated this kind of disconnect in her understanding.

-THIS IS ALL THAT CAN BE DONE - YOU ARE IN DANGER, YOU MUST-

-A W A K E N-

* * *

Nora gasped as she woke with a start and shot up to an upright sitting position - just in time to hear the voice of Sam screeching to warn everyone to wake up. She glanced to the side and saw Jaiden push himself to his feet (What is he doing in my room?!) and start to shout a reply back, but the door slammed open and a multi-legged metal nightmare launched itself at him with wickedly-pointed legs. Red blood spattered across Nora's long-sleeved pajamas - the fuzzy dark blue ones, covered with yellow atom symbols and physics equations - as well as her face, and she yanked her glasses away from her face and desperately wiped them off on her bedcovers even as she saw the blurry outline of Jaiden being thrown out of the room. She surmised, through a strangely calm detachment that kept her from screaming or freaking out even as she tasted the coppery tang of blood on her lips, that she heard the door of her room snap from its hinges from the impact of Jaiden's body as he flew out into the hall and, in what would have been comic except for all the red liquid spurting everywhere, flipped over the railing to fall to the main floor.

She had her glasses clean and back on just in time to see the robotic creature turn its laser-guided eyes to her, and she sat paralyzed as her mind tried to grapple with what was happening. Gone was her dream that she had just had, and now she only thought: Am I going to die?

She shut her eyes and screamed.

Then she stopped as her scream was drowned out by a ferocious roar of anger, and Nora opened her eyes to see the drone whirl to face the source of the noise, which was a huge, muscular wolf-like humanoid - a werewolf, she thought dazedly. Without hesitating, the werewolf (who was wearing a swimsuit that clung tightly to her - yes, her - well-built and furry frame) lunged forward and grabbed the "head" segment of the drone with a single immense hand, claws digging into the metal with a screech of protest. Then, with a single fluid motion like an Olympian performing the hammer throw, the werewolf (Is that...Ashley?) swung the drone around and launched it out the bedroom door, then sprang forward herself to give chase.

Outside the door, she heard Boxcar bark out "What in blazes is going on up there?!" as his claws clicked noisily up the stairs toward the racket. The drone landed hard against the mezzanine railing, and for a moment, Nora thought she saw the orb-shaped sections briefly separate from each other before a minuscule jolt of electro-magnetism between each segment brought them all back together - just in time for a roll of duct tape to circle around the drone like a modern-day bola. A small sphere was attached to the tape, and it made a dull gonging noise against the machine as the two collided, stuck fast by the tape. Then Ashley's muscular bulk was in the doorway, and Nora could hardly see what was going on as lightning flashed across the surface of her fur as she punched and swung her arms, each bolt of electricity leaving lingering trails of light in the relative darkness of the lodge at night.

And in the next moment, she couldn't hear what was going on, either.

Nora fruitlessly covered her ears with her hands, though somehow through the din, she heard the simultaneous yelp of Boxcar and Ashley, and heard Boxcar tumble down the stairs while she saw Ashley recoil back with her massive paws clamped over her ears. The blonde scientist had heard many a loud noise in her days testing massive, powerful guns and rockets, but none of that prepared her for the auditory torture that lashed across her body's cells like a spiked whip.

Then it was over, and Nora took a sharp intake of air as she realized she had been holding her breath against the noise. She focused back onto the drone and she finally reacted by doing a quick gesture to activate her glasses. A Heads-Up Display lit up in her field of vision and instantly poured streams of data from passive sensors built into the lenses, recording and analyzing as she saw the robot drone curl and uncurl like an injured caterpillar on the floor outside her room. It moved jerkily, its round sections heavily dented, scratched and scorched in places where Ashley had raked it with claws, knuckles and lightning. The burnt ozone smell of electric discharge filled the air around it as it wriggled and spasmed...

And then the segments all separated, and Nora saw at least a dozen strobing laser beams radiate out in all directions as each segment - an identical match to the "head" with their own laser sensors and a quad of pointed legs - fell away from the others. While a few of the lasers were missing from damaged sockets, and a couple of the segments teetered precariously on bent or twisted legs, most of the segments appeared to be somehow still functional after the barrage of attacks laid into them. And what was more, they were independently tracking targets now, and aiming to leap towards a different lodger each, a few of them rolling down the stairs to attack Boxcar and Jaiden while the others sprang toward the people on the upper floor.

Nora threw off her covers and reached for the blue tab transponder necklace. Her ears still rang from the noise of just a minute ago, and she knew that Boxcar and Ashley in particular were probably suffering from the effects even more poignantly than she'd ever personally know, but she had sat out of enough of the fight.

"Th-they're damaged and malfunctioning," she stammered as she felt a wave of lightheadedness roll through her as she stood in her bare feet on the carpet of her room. Yet, somehow, her adrenaline turned her blood ice cold instead of heating it up as the increased pulse rate should have done. Icy calm gave her a detached strength to face the situation head-on. "Don't let up, they won't take much more of this!"

The readout on her glasses told her that the majority of the segments were not going to take much more punishment, and the fight wasn't over yet.

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

Howdy there, @Nightknight! I'm in the Mountain timezone in the USA. I also disabled the link to the chat so that we wouldn't have any random unwanted folks joining - I will send you a temporary link by PM so you can join us in the Discord. I'll give it a day's worth of time; let me know if you missed it or need a longer time delay on the link expiration.

It may be easier to discuss the RP and how to bring your character in on the Discord, but I still encourage you to post up your CS in the OOC when you can so it'll be easier to review and compare.

Thank you for your interest in the RP! I'll send that link to you right away.

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

For anyone still looking to join this RP, refer to the past coupla posts.

Regarding the current situation with the robot drone in the RP IC: I'm gonna lay down some basic rules so that you can proceed with the RP without needing to wait for a reaction from me after each post.

You are allowed to hit, strike, and damage the drone in your own posts. This is meant to be the first combat encounter, so it shouldn't be terribly difficult to defeat - if the characters team up against the drone. But for the first post or so, only one of your characters will be involved, and the others may only react if they become aware of the disturbance.

I have not specified exactly whose room just got invaded by a multi-legged night visitor. This was on purpose; whoever wishes to may have the drone attack their character first, then everyone else will follow suit with their reactions. I may even allow whoever else posts next to put the drone in Nora's room, if that is desired; Nora will naturally scream her head off for help if this occurs, though Boxcar will already be protecting her from the drone (and will likely be the reason she wasn't suckerpunched to begin with). He's ill-equipped to defeat the drone on his own, though, so hopefully your characters will be rushing to join the fray! Then you can just react to that instead.

The drone has no long-range attacks, it is melee-only and makes use of small, sharp, pointed legs to stab or slice with. While individual strikes may not do more than draw a little blood, if it manages to get a critical hit in, or if it is allowed to make multiple attacks, it will certainly cause a lot of pain and open a lot of wounds. The drone is actually a series of individual robots magnetized together, and if struck with enough force at any of its "joints" will cause it to separate into different segments. And the more it separates, the more characters it can engage simultaneously, as each orb can function independently of all the others! However, it is only moderately intelligent, and could likely be tricked into a trap or teamed up on, and each individual sphere is only lightly armored.

Make it a fun but short battle; remember that the lodgers aren't yet a team, so they don't automatically know what other members of the group will do. This is a chance for roleplaying out the limitations of trying to use superpowers without having time to coordinate ahead of time or even get to know each other well enough to get an idea of what each of you can do. Try to leave enough drone segments for everyone to get a part of the fight in; once everyone has had a chance to post at least once for the fight, then anyone can end it after that (though if you are having lots of fun with the fighting and end up taking more posts, this is okay as well).

Get ready! FIGHT!

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

Boxcar liked being petted or patted, but he didn't like being surprised - or if the patting was too hard to be comfortable or nice. Jaiden did both of those things, plus his hostile smell set off Boxcar's instincts, so he did snap at the offending hand. Jaiden's hand pulled away in the nick of time, however, as if he had expected Boxcar's reaction.

Yeah, we'll see how many times that works, wise guy, thought Boxcar with a snuffling huff as he watched Jaiden go off into the woods behind the lodge.

Then, after listening to Sam, Boxcar's ears perked as he heard the sound of wolves off in the distance. Well, at least he had some company around here. Boxcar stretched and yawned. "I think I'll head inside too, catch some early shuteye. It's been kind of a long, weird day."

So Boxcar made his way inside with Sam, and the door closed behind the both of them.

* * *

Later, around midnight

The sky overhead, so far away from Segaso City or other sources of artificial illumination, was full of stars. The lodge sat in relative darkness, though Faiza's triple moons shone down at different angles and reflected across the lake like rippling clones of their skyward sisters. There was enough ambient light from the moons that it made it easy to see in the dark. As night fell, a cacophony of chirping insect noises rose from the grass and trees. The hooting of a nocturnal bird of prey occasionally sounded nearby, with just a shadow of an echo. And fireflies floated lazily about through the air, occasionally marking their locations with a glow from their abdomens, like airplanes signaling their location in the night.

Inside the lodge itself, the only lights still remaining on were a series of small glowing nightlights that gave pale illumination along the stairs and hallways, without being so bright that they would disturb anyone sleeping in the bedrooms or even out on the couches. Well, perhaps those, and any lights that any of the lodgers may have left on in their rooms; but the doors were so well-placed that no light escaped through the cracks in the doors as long as they were shut all the way. The background noise of the night life of bugs and animals outside could be heard through the window, if it were left open and the protective energy screen activated (to prevent bugs and other unwanted intruders from entering the window, but allowing air to move through); but it might almost be an eerie quiet if it were shut entirely, for those not used to sleeping without background noise.

Deep under the lodge, something stirred. Systems that had been put into temporary stasis booted online as they were triggered by the readings that the building's integrated sensors relayed down into the depths. Electronic life flared in a network of computer cores as the security system detected multiple red flags in the building above. Life forms, none of them identified as the Master, now resided in the lodge. This was not acceptable; the Master's secrets were to be protected at all costs, and there had even been a recorded breach of the main entrance earlier that day. Were it not for the delay programmed deliberately into the security system, there would already have been a reaction - but the Master had not wanted a response to just a temporary intruder who visited the lodge and left again after a few hours. A response that quick would only arouse suspicion and investigation. But now, there were not just visitors. There were residents, unauthorized and with apparent intent to infiltrate the Master's lair. That the Master had not had the foresight to place locks or require identification to open the door in the first place was not something this system questioned for an instant.

The security system, using data from the sensor network, determined that most of these invaders were asleep or at least in a mode of lesser activity. Now was an ideal time to strike, and either cause the invaders to vacate the lodge - or to cease functioning altogether. A sentry drone powered up inside of its storage bay, and the multi-legged and segmented drone crawled out of its hiding place with a programmed assignment. Each segment was a magnetized gunmetal sphere with two pairs of angular insect-like legs each and a pair of angry-looking glowing red sensor clusters facing forward. Like a robotic centipede, the drone crawled with tapping steps across the metallic panels of its subterranean home toward the hidden entrance to the secret lair.

The door in the basement of the lodge - the disguised door that Boxcar had accidentally stumbled upon earlier - slid open with hardly a whisper, and the drone crept along the cement floor with a clatter of robot limbs. It easily climbed the stairs and used its forelegs to open the door that led into the rec room. From here, the drone's pointed feet made less noise on the carpeting and wooden floors, as it became more cautious in its movements, moved with a deliberate slowness to avoid giving away its position by excessive sound or motion. It curled around the corner of the rec room door and began to climb the stairs, each sphere bobbing up in regular intervals as they mounted further upward, until the whole drone made a peculiar zigzag along the length of the stairs. Its blazing red sensor clusters stood out in the relative darkness of the lodge.

The drone hesitated only for the briefest of seconds at the top of the stairs before it chose one of the bedroom doors - it knew that it had picked one with one of the intruders inside, because it had access to the sensor information the security system provided it - and reared up like a snake, then latched onto the door handle with its four legs. A hatch opened on the front of the foremost sphere, and it deployed a tiny array of spike-like tools that it used to lock-pick the door. It opened the door with stealthy purpose, just enough for it to crawl around the door and slip inside.

It scanned the room, ready to leap and attack with its pointed metal legs. Red targeting lasers created vibrant strobing dots that crawled across the floor and up the walls. Fear, tension, retreat - these were not a part of this drone's programming. It would not stop until it fulfilled its purpose, or was destroyed in the process.

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

Nora let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding after the door closed behind "Jane." She felt she had achieved a minor victory there, though now that she found herself standing alone in the hallway, she found herself wondering if she was doing the right thing.

Oh, stop it! she told herself with a shake of her head. She needs help, and it's not my business to pry into what brought her here. What's important is that I've done most of what I've reasonably been able to do to help her, and just hope that nothing forces me to bring her to the attention of my bosses.

She went downstairs and brought up the laptop, among the other things that they had recovered from the crash site. She laid the laptop right outside of the door to Sam's room, then took the metal-infused hoodie and threw that into a cycle in the washer/dryer. While that ran, she took Justin's glove - the one he had given her with the sample of the metallic goo - and brought that into her room.

A few minutes later, her suitcase was empty and all of her clothes were haphazardly hung up in her closet. Mostly she had white shirts, various colors of slacks, and several more of the white labcoats; there were only a very few other things she had to wear, and if she had not already had her science gear out on a desk by the room's window and was involved in transferring the goo from the glove into a safer container, she might have regretted that she had very little casual wear. As it was, Nora was in the middle of science! and that overtook just about all of her other concerns.

By the time the wash cycle finished for the jacket, Nora had safely contained the goo and had already run a few diagnostic scans on it with her portable equipment. Transferring the gathered data to her portable computer, she then sent that data over the commnet to her lab computer at Cybertronics. It would take time for the analysis to be completed, and she figured she may as well get that started as soon as possible. Once she had a better idea of what this goo was, then she could figure out what kinds of tests she could run on it for further experimentation.

She took off the apron and put that away, then swept on another labcoat, and she felt at ease again as she left her room. She took the hoodie - now washed and dried - and put it in a neatly folded pile on top of the laptop, then gently knocked on the door and called out, "I put your things just outside your room, Jane!" before she went back to her room and pulled out the blueprints she had been working on before being assigned to work here. Sure, she would go downstairs later to make sure everyone had dinner, and to clean up and put away things, make sure the lodge was all locked up...

Not very long later, she was slumped over her desk, snoozing and drooling a little on her (laminated) blueprints. It had been a very stressful day for Nora Minder already, and if today was any indication, this was only the start of it.

At one corner of the blueprints, the word "Rockbear" was printed...

* * *

Boxcar finished up his dinner and left Ashley and Jaiden to talk in the kitchen. While he wanted to get a better idea of what kind of wolf Ashley was under that human skin, he did not want to hang out too long around Jaiden. The young human man was...something felt wrong with him, something that offended Boxcar's animal instincts. A competing predator sort of smell. It was hard to say, exactly, what it was that bothered Boxcar, since it wasn't Boxcar's conscious speech-capable brain that was reacting to Jaiden. How could instincts speak words that the awake brain could translate? The wolf knew he could handle it better than any of his former brethren of the wild, but he still did not want to push it.

That, and he was curious about the flares of fiery essence that his nose detected outside. Sure enough, after he wrestled with the back door (grateful the handles in the lodge doors were long handles and not slick round doorknobs), he found Samuel out in the backyard behind the lodge, practicing some kind of...dance? That was Boxcar's first thought, though he thought he sensed something martial within the motions, meaning behind the gestures. He sat and watched for a few moments on the patio, panting quietly in the warm air outside the lodge. Whatever Sam was doing, it was relaxing to watch.

Boxcar's nose was able to predict each instance when Samuel was about to let out a burst of flames from his hands as he went through his motions. Each release let out a signal to Boxcar moments before it happened, almost like a bat's echolocation, though a bat's ears couldn't discern the smell of smoke and burnt oxygen like Boxcar could. Boxcar had little to no curiosity about his own power and how it worked; he only reacted to and trusted it like any of his other instincts.

He finally spoke up after a while. "Hey, Sam," he called out, "what're you doing? It looks kinda like a dance to me, but there's no music, and I don't think any dance partner you had would 'preciate the fireworks in the face. Is it exercise, or some kind of religious thing, or what?"

This was Boxcar's attempt at conversation, such as it was.

Pariah Online | Season One

Posted up my CS in the characters tab - I pretty much just ripped it from the old one, replaced the benchmarks with the new domains.