lets_do_the_timeloop | FIGHTY PREPLAY - Blackreef, Monday Afternoon

FIGHTY PREPLAY - Blackreef, Monday Afternoon

Welcome to the preplay for the big fight, which will go up on Monday afternoon European time!

This one's pretty straightforward: you guys will be fighting goons and Julianna while Egor skips around and takes potshots. Egor has the power to turn invisible, buuut your buddy Colt has set up devices all around the perimeter that disrupt his invisibility.

Two of you, as the RNG dictates, will finally corner Egor near one of these devices and take him out.

Now, that's not what fixes the time loop. What fixes the time loop is Egor and Colt and Julianna dying. Luckily, Colt is on your side, and he'll take care of the rest, so a few minutes after Egor goes down, you'll all find yourself catapulted back to Fandom as the time loop ends.

One last thing: you can still die here, if you want. Anyone who dies before the loop shuts down will wake up on the island on Tuesday morning, as healthy as they were when they woke up on Monday morning. Let me know in the OOC if you want an NPC to, ahem, arrange that for you.

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Wait. That's gunfire.

Every last cultist on the island has gathered by Egor's lab, a series of shipping containers tweaked and remodeled to form isolated buildings full of equipment. Here and there, strange machines rise from the ground, casting a faint aura around themselves.

Atop one container stands Julianna, her sniper rifle aimed across the gap at... Colt, pistols drawn, standing on top of another container.

They are also shooting. It's a thing today. And--

And that's...

OKAY THAT'S SEVERAL PEOPLE WITH GUNS AND KNIVES RUNNING AT YOU.

Edited 2021-12-15 17:12 (UTC)

"You know, a few Fridays ago and this was an interesting change of pace," Steve said, pulling his weapon from his thigh holster and aiming, "but now I'm getting really tired of killing the same people all the time."

Goose drew out both blasters and aimed them ready to fire, “let’s get this party started,” he grinned, someone had been hanging around Doc for too long, he was starting to get into the one liners a bit too much.

"THAT'S JUST WHAT I WAS THINKING!" bellowed an ebulliant fellow in a teal-and-grey mask. "EAT LEAD!"

Someone had been watching too many films.

But someone was also firing a pistol in Goose's general direction with maniacal glee, which was probably a more pressing issue.

“If that’s the way you want to play,” Goose laughed, eyes glinting as he started to return blaster fire.

He shouldn’t be that gleeful about being in a shootout.

Blaster bolts shot past the man... mostly by sheer luck. He jumped to the side, and it happened to be the right side. "Ha!" he yelled.

And shot at Goose's... head. Yes. Head.

(That bullet was absolutely going for Goose's hat.)

“Hey!” Goose protested when the bullet hit his hat and blew it off, “you did not just shoot my hat!”

Priorities Goose.

He let out a roar and continued returning fire.

Edited 2021-12-16 18:16 (UTC)

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Jon waited. He ducked behind some equipment. Then he got one cultist's attention.

"Tell me your story."

The woman in the half-red mask clutched her blade tighter within her fists at those words. She had to keep fighting! Had to protect-- had to. Not fall for.

"I came to Blackreef because my children got hurt and it was my fault," she said helplessly.

"Tell me what happened," Jon ordered, watching her with unblinking eyes. "Tell me everything."

Edited 2021-12-16 19:09 (UTC)

Oh. She should, shouldn't she? Tell him everything.

"I was just going into the supermarket to get some groceries. They were supposed to be safe in the car," she started. The story wasn't-- long, just short, and cruel, as so much of life was.

"...And as I was sitting there in that hospital," she said, glad her expression wasn't clear behind the mask, "I realized that the worst thing about life is... the threat that it might end."

Jon smiled. "The End is patient and gentle. The End can be a mercy. There are so many worse things."

He would hate himself for this if these people weren't trying to keep them caged in time. A large part of him hated himself for it anyway. The rest was always hungry, and waiting to drink in pain and fear.

He met her eyes. "Do you know how your children felt in that moment? Let me show you."

He had that knowledge. And what he had, he could share.

Edited 2021-12-17 16:30 (UTC)

Re: LEROY JENKINS!

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intheeyeofthebeholding - 2021-12-19 17:33 (UTC) - Expand

"It's about goddamn time," Rosa muttered, mostly to herself, and, look at that, someone wasn't so keen on being quiet anymore.

Look, she'd just spent about a month in a convent surrounded by nun. She was going to shoot at literally anything that moved that wasn't someone from the island, and she was going to love every moment of it.

Steve came up on her other side and smiled as he fired. "Why are we always meeting like this?"

It was a good thing most people's attention was (hopefully) on the battle at hand; it would make that tiny suggestion of a smirk in the corner of Rosa's mouth that much less noticeable, as she took this small respite for banter to also reload.

"Well," she said, and, now reloaded, aimed smoothly to fire off another two shots into the chest of...well, not the nearest guard, that was obviously too easy, but the third bullet that followed was for that one, to be sure... "Someone around here's got to know what they're doing."

Rosa thinking he knew what he was doing was high praise, indeed, and Steve took the compliment for what it was as he also took out some of their opponents. "The way they just disappear is disconcerting," he admitted.

Not that he loved the thud and spatter parts--he wasn't a psychopath--but it at least reminded him of the consequences of his actions.

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And that was all the cue Yasha needed to really tap into that seemingly endless pool of anger she kept bottled up. She unsheathed Magician's Judge with an honest-to-gods feral snarl as foam began to form at the corners of her mouth and she slipped into the cold blankness where kill and protect were the only things she knew.

Now those massive skeletal wings unfurled out of nowhere, her eyes and hair went completely black for a moment, and the light in her immediate vicinity seemed to dim and give off a faint aura of fear.

She found herself a position where she could stay between their ranged fighters and the attacking cultists as best she could, bellowing a wordless roar of challenge. Try to keep them physically occupied or otherwise distracted enough to give her allies time and space to take clear shots, pick out vulnerable areas: that was her job, just like it was with the Nein. It wasn't quite the same without Beau here to team up with her, and she didn't really know what kind of battle synergy this team had yet, but she could hold her own and shrug off a good amount of damage. It was just what she did, and what she intended to do now.

Edited 2021-12-19 17:10 (UTC)

"What... what's that?!" screeched a woman holding a machete. Her friend in the blue mask took a step back.

"Something really messed up," he said, gripping his gun tight.

"KILL IT WITH FIRE!" A woman in green dashed past both of them, right at Yasha, shotgun in hand. They shrugged and followed.

Was it the dead-looking giant bat wings? Or the flecks of foam that went flying from Yasha's mouth as she spun in their direction and slashed down toward the shotgun with her sword?

Because it was pretty messed up, she wouldn't argue.

She bellowed another roar, just about right in the woman's face.

It roughly translated as "bring it," if you spoke Incoherent Barbarian Battle Noises.

"Ahahahhhhh." The strangled noise that came out of the woman's mouth was almost a laugh, if you squinted right. She dropped the two halves of her shotgun and stumbled back. "Fire, fire, fire, fire," she shrieked, scrambling away from Yasha as quickly as she'd run towards the barbarian in the first place.

"Crap," yelled the man, and opened fire as the third woman ran closer with her machete.

It had been a long time since Jules had let her war-gift out to play for real.

(Using it to summon snacks from the common room kitchenettes did not count)

She strung an arrow, aimed it at a cultist, and directed it to find its mark.

It had been a long, long time since Illyana had been allowed to cut-loose with her powers in an offensive-fashion.

Stepping Discs winked in-and-out of existence all up-and-down the battlefield, as she blipped around, a whirlwind of hair and horns and spells slung from her fingers.

It was sort of poetic, the way they just winked out of existence as they died, since they were never meant to be here at all.

"Hey, Julianna!" Colt bellowed, flinging himself to the edge of the roof. "Smile! I'm about to win this!"

He opened fire across the gap separating them with reckless abandon.

Only to drop off the side of the roof seconds later, her bullet pinging off the metal behind him.

"Oh fuck you, you haven't won anything!" Julianna yelled. "Argh! Stupid Colt!"

Now where was he? She stared through the reticule of her rifle, trying to find him in the middle of all the chaos. "Come on, come on..."

She knew she should have stayed away, made sure he wouldn't be able to take a crack at her. But she could never resist a good shootout.

Rey was snapping to attention right away, lightsaber on. She'd been playing nicer than she probably should have been till now, but they were almost through this and anyone shooting at her was fair game.

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