A Wee Bit O' the Fiction Options

[Kagetenshi]

My God. I had forgotten what it was like to see the sun. That was perhaps the most beautiful sunrise that I have ever seen.

We're pretty high up, maybe a hundred stories or more. Hawk's checking his map of Seattle to try to figure out which building we're in.

The gnawing hunger in my gut is getting harder to ignore. I'm going to raid the cubicles in search of something edible.

[Kagetenshi]

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.

We're in the motherfucking Renraku Arcology.

[Kagetenshi]

Why are we here? We can't be here. The place got sealed off six months ago. I mean, how would we have gotten in?

Right, through a secret fucking entrance in the sewers. The hydroponics in the basement, the ordinary offices, the massive elevators…

Fuck.

On the bright side, I did find three chocolate bars that weren't too stale. They didn't go very far after being split six ways, but it's better than nothing.

Cardinal just spotted someone moving across the cube farm.

[Kagetenshi]

Well, we caught up to him eventually. I think it was a him. It's hard to tell. He's been ripped apart just like the bodies we found down by the raccoons.

We're trying to work our way back to the elevator, but it sounds like whatever got this guy is still out there. Either that or the AC has serious problems.

[Kagetenshi]

I'm going to be away for the next week or so; expect further updates when I return.

~J

[Kagetenshi]

Back from my Aztlan vacation. If the Aztechnology corporate security forces ask after me, I was in Berlin the whole time.

~J

[Kagetenshi]

I spent some more time talking to Partridge. I really think I like him. We talked about death; he talked about all the people he's killed, and the people he's saved, and whether it all balances out in the end. I don't know, but I get the feeling he doesn't think so. Cardinal said some things that I need to think about, too.

It's strange thinking about it like that. Here I am so terrified of dying, but I've pushed people over that line before. I know I've killed at least four people, and another six probably… depending on how quick the Wagon got there, I may have killed over twenty people. I wanted to save animals, now I kill people.

Cardinal says that Bluejay used to be a cop before he left, disillusioned with the system (isn't it always the way?). Kite had been a top-notch programmer with Fuchi before she got sacked for refusing to sleep with a supervisor. Robin hit the wrong side of the law after torturing to death the person responsible for raping and killing her little sister. Phoenix was born poor, grew up on the streets in some gang or other, and fought his way out of more addictions than the zeroes on Damian Knight's bank account. He seems to know everyone. Hell, compared to them I'm starting to feel like I should have just sucked it up, done my five years' time, and gone straight.

Partridge says when he was younger, he killed a lot of people. It was like a game to him. He was untouchable, he even called himself the God of Death. Then he had most of his stomach emptied out by a SPAS in the hands of someone who knew how to use it. It took him eight months to leave the hospital and another five to handle any physical activity. He says he decided at some point during that, probably during the haze of pain and narcotics, to change his path. He's killed people since, I saw him do it as we were running, but he tries not to when he can, and is really more interested in keeping people alive. I asked him why he still runs the shadows, but he didn't answer.

Cardinal said that God will judge us by our intentions. I don't think that helps me any.

I wonder if there is a God?

[Kagetenshi]

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[Kagetenshi]

Dear diary,

School was fun today. The teacher quizzed us about Seattle! She asked where the power stations were, and what the policemen did to stop crime. I knew some of the right answers, but the others got the ones I didn't. I don't know anyone in class, so it's lonely, but I like the teacher. For homework today, she gave me some pictures of some friends and told me to write their names and everything I knew about them on a notecard, then put them all on a posterboard. This sure beats math.

[Kagetenshi]

Shit shit shit shit. What am I going to tell Valerie? How did this happen? Why did they fire me? I didn't do anything wrong, I always showed up on time… was it that snake Bernhard? But I wasn't a threat to him! I had nothing he wanted! And then they say Burton down in accounting came up with that plan before me? He stole it from me! I know he did! What am I going to do? We're going to have to sell the new house, Valerie's going to kill me… I just want to die…

[Kagetenshi]

Damn. Alone again, and out of ammo. Someone needs to get these plans to General Walker before dawn, though, and I'm the only man who can do it. Me and my trusty knife, with a thousand of the enemy ahead, many times that behind…

I like those odds.

[Kagetenshi]

So I'm sitting there playing cards with Abraham Lincoln, Alan Turing, John Nelson, Louis XIV, and Miles Lanier. It's a tight game, and everything's riding on it, when I see a card sticking out of Lanier's sleeve. I turn to him and ask hey man, I hope you aren't planning to slip in that ace up your sleeve. He laughs and takes the card out, putting it face-down on the table. You caught me, he says, but it's too late. He flicks the card over to me, and it hits a bump in the table and flips over, and I see it's not an ace, it's got this glowing picture of an old man in black clothing who you can barely see, he's giving off so much light, and on the corners it said DEUS.

[k1tsune]

(Beautiful, Jon. Keeps getting better. Makes me simultaneously fear and love having you as a GM.)

[Phaeton]

(Likewise. Except add "future" in front of GM...)

[Kagetenshi]

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[Kagetenshi]

No! No! Not again! Please, no, I'll do anything! Stop, stop, for the love of God stop! I… I'll do anythhing you ask for, anyyin gyuo wnat> justm kae it stop…

[Kagetenshi]

What the fuck is this place? Why are there people all around me jacked into the ceiling? Why do—

WHERE THE FUCK IS MY FOOT?

[Kagetenshi]

I've calmed down a little, I think. Hopping your way out of a room full of jacked-in zombies and then crawling across the floor of an office building gone horribly, horribly wrong will do that to you. It reminds me of my days as a beetlehead.

Let's look at this rationally. What problems do I have, and what assets do I have to overcome these problems?

I'm lost, I've been separated from the only people I knew in this place, I'm unarmed, I have no food (though I think I was on an IV while I was in there… I don't even want to know what they were doing. My last five entries make no sense at all), and I'm missing my left leg below the knee, which, now that the shock is starting to wear off, is starting to hurt rather a lot.

Assets now.

…

I'm so fucked.

[Kagetenshi]

I made a makeshift crutch from some piping left in a maintenance closet. The place is crawling with these giant mechanical spider-things, and tiny ones as well. Every so often this thing that looks like an oversized bowling ball will roll through. None of them have paid any attention to me, thankfully.

It looks like someone patched up my leg.

…What the hell? This little kid with these creepy solid white eyes just walked in, gave me this weird look, and left. Who gave a kid that young cybereyes?

So my leg's gone. Well, my foot at least, and my lower leg up to mid-shin. If I ever make it out of here, I don't have the cash to grow a new one or even get a cyber replacement. I'm wanted for resisting arrest, firing on a Lone Star cruiser, and unlawful possession of paranimals, so I can't use my real SIN. My good fake SIN has probably been tied to the botched job by now, and my bad one stands up about as well as I do right now.

Heh. I even lost my emergency bullet.

Shit, there's a group of greeneyes in lab coats headed this way.

[Kagetenshi]

Someone's playing with us. That, or I'm hallucinating.

I woke up in what looks like a service elevator with the rest of the team. Hawk, Phoenix, Cardinal, Partridge, Raven, all of them. Our guns are here, too, and some new ones that someone must have picked up. They said I'd lost a leg to one of the raccoons and gone down, and they'd assumed I was dead; I don't blame them. Then, running around, they found this elevator and when it opened there I was. Thankfully, they found food. This is the first time in nearly a week my stomach has had something in it.

Speaking of my leg, someone replaced it while I was out. I think they did some other monkeying around my body, too. I can see better, hear better, I think I'm even reacting faster than I used to be. I don't know what they did to me, but it's got to be pretty impressive, as Partridge says it's been at most two days since they lost me.

It also doesn't feel right. None of it does. The artificial part of my leg itches like mad (is that even possible?) and I haven't gotten used to any of the rest of this yet. I think I know why people are usually kept under care for weeks or months after major body alteration. I've got little pink scars all over me, and my head is now shaved.

Hawk says the elevator is stuck between floors, but that someone on the emergency phone had told him to wait. Maybe we're getting out of here.

[The Question Man]

Awsome story chummer, keep up the great work (and write it up as an adventure later). ;)

QM

[Kagetenshi]

Thanks, I'll consider that :) I'm planning on making stats for the new drones at the end.

~J

[Kagetenshi]

Where the hell are we?

We came out into this antechamber that looked like a normal office hallway, but the carpet ends ten meters in either direction. So do the walls. After that, it becomes a fucking maze. The lights are flickering and shifting, and the sounds are just chilling. The scrape of metal on metal, shrieks, and a constant skittering sound…

The shrieking just stopped. Somehow, I'm less than comforted.

Hawk handed me a shotgun and a few handfuls of slugs. It's been a while since I last used a shotgun; hopefully I'm not too rusty.

Outside, everyone I know thinks Fuchi shut down the Arcology. None of us think that that's possible. Not even Lofwyr could have done all this. What the fuck happened?

[Kagetenshi]

This place is nightmare made solid.

We're resting while Partridge binds a slash across Cardinal's calf. We were walking through a narrow corridor when this little sawblade whips out of the wall. If he'd been a bit slower, he would've been neatly hamstrung. Raven blew apart a few of the raccoon-things, but now he's breathing heavily; he doesn't seem to be feeling very well. His shirt looks like it has fresh blood on it, but I know he wasn't hurt by the raccoons.

Most of these corridors are tiny, but crisscrossing them are these massive avenues. Shafts. I don't know what they are. The little corridors don't hold themselves to any notion of horizontality, but the big ones ignore it altogether. We just passed one that went straight up and down, and before it there was one that must have been slanted at a 60° angle, at least. They're big enough for a truck, for a couple of trucks.

There's a rumbling like thunder somewhere deep within this maze. The very floor shakes beneath our feet, and the walls groan as if to burst.

[Kagetenshi]

Raven is dead. We were running from some sort of spinning, twirling creature like a massive child's top, throwing spikes as it revolved, when he just stopped. He opened his mouth to speak, and blood poured out. He collapsed then and there, and by the time we managed to fight off the tops, he was dead. All the wounds that had closed over the past few days seem to have reopened; it looks like they never really healed. I don't know what could have caused this; magic, possibly, but Partridge says he was completely mundane and that his aura was fine until a few hours ago.

We're getting hammered by these little flying spheres. They look a bit like the ones that were rolling around outside, but these ones have some sort of extremely delicate propeller on top, making them tiny helicopters. The propeller is nearly impossible to see; at first, we had no idea what was keeping them aloft. It's not hard to down them, the propeller doesn't take abuse well, but they're practically silent, damn fast, and give a nasty shock up close. We're slowly getting tased to death.

At least we found some bigger weapons. Phoenix picked what looks to be a light machine gun off of a corpse that had been impaled by some spikes that shot out of the ground. This feels like an old video game gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The path up ahead is blocked by a large pit of some liquid that's bubbling unpleasantly. We're going to be taking one of the large corridors until we find another path.