AW [Secret World] Luminocity

[A_Bibor_Farkas]

Tower stood still in the middle of the carnage. Her separate colored eyes glazed over. Lost in the realization the creatures did not seem to notice her. Her small hands shook looking around to the rest of the group."I...moon....I'm sorry...." her words trailed of slightly, Tower's eyes closed as she shook her head stumbling back as if struck. Her eyes raised to the group with a bright tinge"we need to go now. These OIF bastards are going to use us as pawns let's show them how poorly they have made a mistake." she grabbed quickly grabbed the rope, looping around her waist as she began to Rappel to the lower floor. Making steps protrude where the sections of the building were still seen. Finally reaching to the next floor. The small twinge in her mind reminding the young AUGUR that something else is still lurking the halls.

 

[Big Dicc Marty]

"Dissapointment." Justice spit, having watched as Mollay fell, as Blue insulted their performance. The same experience as them? He fell through the world! Blue just ran off alone and that map Justice memorized earlier means nothing to him anymore. What is this? What is this hell? He was studying biology books, now... Reality is broken? He got thrown in with the big boys and honestly, that support position was real nice.

"Is this what it takes to get back to a normal life?" Justice turned to the rest as his holster comforted the used pistol. He opened his arms, "Excuse me but, the fuck are we doing? I ain't sign up for no damn fallin' through the world." His arms dropped as he took a deep sigh. He was one of the oldest there, at least compared to the likes of little Tower. Okay... Dad... Think... "We got a plan to get through this 'er just go with Blue? He looks real happy to be off an' slaughterin'. Moon is..." Justice stepped away towards the door and looked up. "Runnin' off too. Joy."

 

[LavaLung]

"N-N-Normal l-l-life!?" Moon stuttered after listening to Justice's tirade, her face now wide-eyed, her mouth struggling to hold back laughter...

It failed. She burst out with a shrill, lunatic laugh. So intense, it silenced itself by threatening to choke her.

"I-s-sisisis it not obvious! H-he couldn't take it!" Her hand made a deft movement, highlighting how it was the only show of emotion that Blue had given them, before the macabre humour in her guts doubled her over again. Still laughing irately, the pale waif had to put her hands on her knees to stabilize herself. "N-n-normal?... This is it! This must have been what we were constructed for! This is why our m-m-minds don't make any sense!... This is the real life! This is what happens ww-w-hen we poke our heads... yonder, outside the c-c-curtain!..."

Where was she getting this emotion from... was this... her own?...

Hands grasped the rope sternly. The laugh was muted by her putting the pistol sideways in her teeth.

Without further hesitation, she slid down and abseiled into the black.

What was the point in being afraid? If space actually worked this way, then it had always been all around them.

Was it really the unknown? Or was this home?

 

[Gunhand4171]

"Oww..." Judgement cursed, bring a hand up to his eyes. Attempting to peer into the abyss caused the AUGUR to develop an ear splitting headache. "I can't see through it." He explained. Then Blue just up and left... plus the others were starting to get antsy.

Moving over to Moon, Judge placed a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, you're okay. Deep breaths." He instructed calmly. Looking towards the others he added. "We need to calm down. Forget Blue. Forget the monsters for a minute and just breathe."

After a couple more seconds he started speaking again. "Justice is right, we need a plan. I see three options. First off, we try back tracking to the surface and get the hell out of dodge. Second, we move further into the compound and try to find Kay. Third, we try going down that." He said pointing down the hole that gave him a migraine. "I'm not a huge fan of the third option, however if we can complete Blue and Black's mission then maybe the monsters will dissipate.

 

[Soresu]

Hermit stood at the precipice of that abyss. Her mind reeled to be so close. Her vision, if one were to try and ask, could only be put into the vaguest of terms. It was akin to seeing a swirling mass going down a drain. An optical illusion played on her enhanced mind still grappling with whatever was going on. Even Moon and Judge went on ignored for now. She hadn't followed Tower. Not yet. Instead standing there an index finger resting below her bottom lip, thumb cupping the bottom of her chin. Monsters, not native to the old homeworld. Parasitic organisms latched onto them. A reactor that shouldn't theoretically exist yet. How'd they even manage something so complex so fast?

The girl quivered her lips a little in further thought, closing her eyes from whatever it was she'd been seeing.

"We shouldn't leave our own behind," her voice was small but audible enough to them. "But if he's going after Black and Miss Kay, and Tower's gone down. She's the closer of the two." Hermit rubbed at the side of her head, eyes shut, muttering something to herself in too low a voice to capture. But what was wafting off of her was intense concentration as she began to pace back and forth. Sometimes some of the First Generation acted in such a manner, more likely for instability's sake than anything. Or were lost to their thoughts as this girl so often was. She held her hands out, moving them back and forth like the Augur did when screwing around with puzzle cubes. Either she had finally gone off the rails, or whatever she'd been mulling over was reaching a critical point.

When her eyes popped open, Hermit went to the rappel line and gave it a tug to let Tower know she wanted it next.

 

[Char]

Rapelling down into absolute nothingness what not nearly as terrifying as it might have first seemed.

The ability to use telekinesis to anchor and also lighten oneself made the trip down alot more secure than sliding down a rope as thick as ones finger may have seemed. Seperated from the light cast by the hall the world around Moon and then Hermit was not the endless dark sea of the unknown but instead felt oddly small around them as if the inconceivable shapes in the darkness were both close enough to touch and also not so grand as to be beyond comprehension but might instead be as small as large insects magnified via a scope like there was still some sort of film or window separating them from this unknown; The zoo or aquarium glass that kept the fish segregated from the visitors.

It was still surreal, however. The trip down took longer than their sense of calculation anticipated to an entire order of magnitude and either looking up or down made it seem like the distance was that much greater as to be miles compared to feet as both building and room seemed so very far.

But somehow the rope reached all the way, and by the time Moon made it to the ceiling, she was able to stand atop metal support girders usually made to reinforce this underground portion from the weight of the land above but instead was just a comb of metal that cut off into the darkness. Underneath the actual next layer was missing partially where it was separated from its other side by whatever phenomena was taking place and through it they could look into a skewed visage of the interior of some kind of open area with whirring and humming machines and pipes that seemed far too distant as whatever magnifying effect told them that what should be ten or so feet to the floor looked more like fifty even if their minds knew it to be false.

There was a dent in some kind of duct in the portion Mollay had fallen through; Much too light for someone who looked like they fell over seventy feet and instead looked like barely a fraction as much with the aluminum ducting looking as if he had barely fallen more than a few meters onto it.

Though there was no sign of the man himself.

The room was open below them, and there was a clear distortion to perspective in the open void to the point that even when one of them concentrated they could still hear Judgement and Justice as if they were barely right above their heads...

 

[Gunhand4171]

Judgement looked to Hermit and sighed. He guessed they were doing this. Espically since two of them had already gone down the hole. Moving over to the hole, he took hold of the rope gripping it tightly.

After Hermit had made her way down, Judge closed off his senses to avoid the ear splitting headache it caused him to look at the void. However it meant he couldn't see at all.

"Hey Hermit... can you guide me down?" The AUGUR asked as he slowly made his way down the rope, with no idea how far down it went... even though the other two down there knew it was a fairly short drop.

 

[Soresu]

Hermit's descent complete, the Augur unclipped herself from the harness, waiting to see if anymore took the bait. As she did, the girl rubbed at her temples, then her scalp while performing some of the breathing exercises instilled in her. Anything to help with the pounding in her head. Only Judge's voice broke her concentration, squinting at the rope.

"A little more," she called, taking hold of the rope and giving it the barest of shakes to give him a tactile indication of how close he was.

"You're almost here," her voice growing louder.

 

[Char]

Cautiously sliding between support girders, insulation, and stray cable that despite being severed cleanly still had a detectable current passing through it and to its severed counterpart above the young Psychics were able to slip into the room one by one after a concerning if harrowing ordeal of a descent that was remarkably shorter than it looked from the offset as the distance was somehow skewed and warped.

The interior of the room itself was small. Perhaps only twenty feet long and ten across it was a breaker-station with two walls lined with heavy-duty flip-breakers all miscellaneously labeled and humming with activity. With the exception of a single flipped breaker over some pumping system none of them seemed to be disconnected by their surge protectors which only cemented that somehow the two facilities were still connected somehow.

Speaking of, to look up the way they came revealed the above facilities underside with all the same of what they saw coming down as normally burried infastructure was hanging scarily above their heads without falling.

But what was not noticeable, was Mollay.

There was a dent in some ductwork where he had clearly broken his fall, but he had clearly not been hurt or incapacitated and had moved out through the only door. There was no sense of him psychically but what was felt was a feeling of different pressure than even before; Like being in a submarine or capsule underwater and knowing that the depths are want to crush you even if they are held at bay.

They had progressed deeper into the proverbial deep end and subconsciously knew that their psychic cogitations as AUGURs was the ballast keeping the pressure from crushing them mentally as it had at a glance damaged Blue's mind in some way.

From the memorized map and context clues they knew they were on the same level now as their objective; The powerplant, and not only that but they were perhaps only a few dozen meters from it to what would otherwise be their west.

There was a sound, distant, but noticeable as somewhere deeper in their part of the facility something opened power with a constant staccato of automatic weapons fire in clipped bursts. From remembering Mollays loadout it was something larger and with alot more ammo than his carbine and too far away for him to have made it so far. But there was clearly other survivors down here. Without a map of the restricted zone like this it was unclear as to where and not longer than a moment after it started the firing ebbed away into silence.

Then all there was, was the humming of the breakers and the psychics left to their own devices to decide what to do next.

 

[LavaLung]

Deeper into the void, Moon's ears grasped at the distant sounds, bodily drifting towards the electronic-clad walls. The inexplicable spores were dusting every surface here, so she didn't actually plant her face against it, instead just drifting her head around in a slow figure of eight, looking like a concerned gazelle with the gun still in her teeth.

Gave up trying to use the sensor on the gun- She realised her mind could visualise the swirling, gusting flow of the aberrant matter around her like an ocean current.

Was it alive? Was it even real, physical matter?

Were these circuit breakers standard issue, or some kind of mad science project? She wasn't qualified to discern that either.

"...Wires got their own power... It's like the Carrington event..." A look over to Judgement, then Hermit, voice a warbling whisper as always. "Know anything about power stuff? We gonna be able to turn this thing off, without Blue here?"

No real time to stand around pondering it. Was time real here?

"I'll go first. You'll mind less if I'm the one who gets killed."

Expanding their senses to the point they were barely using their eyes, Moon readied their pistol and advanced. She was trying to detect the familiar aspect of the human form moving around out there- Or the more mushroom like, abhorrent intruders...

 

[Gunhand4171]

Once Judgement was back on solid ground, he reached out once more with his senses and took in his surroundings. At Moon's comment the bald boy shook his head. "Moon you know that's not true. We do care about you." He then placed a hand on Hermit's shoulder for balance. "As to your original question, there's only one way to find out and that's to find it."

Judge tilted his head up slightly but didn't look directly at the anomaly above them. "Let's move guys. We don't want to get seperated." He called out to the others before following behind Moon.

 

[Wolf626]

"Hey, that sounds like somebody's out there. Maybe it's Blue?" said Magician, breaking his silence. He had been silent so far, thinking. "If I'm not mistaken, we're in the powerplant right? The source of all this eldritch chickanery should be nearby."

"Yeah, Moon! You might be weird, but you're one of us!" he exclaimed, smiling at his teammate. "I definitely like you more than Blue, that's for sure!"

"Alright, guys, from how I see it, we've got one only way to go." Magician said, as he pointed to the only door. "Good thinking Judge, never split the party! Especially just before a boss fight."

 

[Char]

Bellow.

The breaker room led simply into a smaller room barely larger than a walk in closet. Stacked tool-cubbords full of zipties, fuses, cables both thick and thin, and miscellaneous maintenance items were the only occupants. Through another open door was a larger room with a vaulted ceiling of familiar duct work and more shelves and cupboards of electrical tools and devices as they entered a clear maintenance room.

Little there seemed of any immediate help, but on a wooden work surface was several pieces of seemingly unrelated equipment. It was the Augurs ability to hyper-cogitate their surroundings that immediately drew the eye and upon surface examination found that several pieces of seemingly unknown electrical equipment had been taken apart abnormally due to the fringed edges where it was too-neatly separated like a knife through butter they were too smooth to have been severed and removed at a subatomic level.

Another Augur had been present and dismantled the matter of the metal casings of the devices to some ends. There was little indicator as to what until they left the two double-doors and into a tile-laid hall that went in several directions and faced the very elevator they would have come down if not for their shortcut.

Besides the door, and one way down the two-way hall were small, palm-sized disks that Three of Swords had been making at the columbary. A simple recollection to the just-examined dismantled metal showed it was made of the same titanium material and the same dimensions.

But to get close enough to examine it was to sense the almost negligible change to its surface as its surface temperature changed by a couple of degrees and vibrated at a frequency that could not be heard but still perceived.

With little time to study it further the quiet but still perceptible clackclackclackclack of an OIA jackhammer with its magnetically driven munitions sounded just down the hall and around the corner and then was followed by another, and another.

And then as if it had been too quiet before the loud echo of an automatic gas-driven weapon broke the almost comically quiet mass drivers and drowned out the burbling burping of whatever abomination had just run afoul of whatever survivors were present.

"Clear." Somebody could just be heard shouting followed by three more affirmations and then a "Control." As a handful more jackhammer shots were heard ensuring their targets' demise.

There were now the sounds of thudding boots on tile moving away from them and towards their intended objective if their sense of direction could be trusted.

However it may have been missed with the quieter jackhammers, whoever had just opened up with a Caliburn had not gone unnoticed as a multitude of burbling and burping sounds in a large group could be heard the other direction as the slapping of raw myclopian flesh on tile could be heard fast approaching as abominations were drawn towards the sound, and by extension, them.

 

[Gunhand4171]

Judgement head turned imperceptibly towards the jack hammering sounds.

"People up ahead." Expanding his mind, he attempted to peer further ahead. "Come on we should try and link up with them, whoever they are." He said, making his way down the hall. They needed to hurry up and go home already.

 

[Big Dicc Marty]

Justice took a deep breath. Going down wasn't necessarily his idea and he started to resent the hell of fungus and that still ticking ache from inhaling spores earlier. It doesn't matter in reality, his baseline protects him, but Justice hated the invasive feeling. He'll have to petition for a gas mask next time he gets to go on a mission with all of the... cool kids. Goddess did he yearn for that support role now, back before he got assigned here.

But now he was here, the vivace of jackhammers and adagio of wet plapping from the other way.

"Magician." Justice spoke. He needed an ease for the growing discomfort and stress of possibly dying here by a horde of surprisingly resilient fungi.

"You are a damn nerd."

Justice looked at the two options and chose, "Agreed, let's go regroup with teammates." He openly made the choice for the group seeing as there were not many good ones. Besides, the quicker this little objective is complete, the quicker they get out of there. Justice began walking with a mag check and assessment of how many more he has. Dad used to task him to hunt with as little ammo as possible, as many kills brought back as possible. Each bullet saved and each critter brought back meant he got a treat. He can do that. Old times sake.

 

[Char]

Lower Levels i

Right about the time they decided to advance in the safest direction was the same moment their consistent adversaries came onto the scene.

Like all the abominations thus far they seemed completely unique to one another and asymmetrical in their designs as first one, then a second plapped around the corner with the wet slap of bare fungi-feet and paused as they often did to expose the petals of their face and flash their parasite body and its sensory organs.

When they burbled and started staggering and then striding forwards a larger mass of close to seven abominations turned the corner and spread out as some seemed to expose their organs to sense out their surroundings while others locked onto the burbling-burping of the front most abominations; Revealing it as some kind of hunting frequency the others were sensitive to allowing them to follow or coordinate without constantly sensing their surroundings.

With a total of nine enemies the odds were more than against them and at a fast jog and sprint they were able to close the distance to the far corner down the hall and take it at speed. With each of the strange metal disks from the Three of Swords they passed they could sense the vibrations and slight heat and psychic emanations when passed but as they were could not yet sus out their purpose.

When they turned the corner they opened up to another double-wide hallway with closed adjoining doors on the sides and a dark tint from damaged lighting that they could see clear enough in. Not too far ahead was two corpses from abominations and just about to turn another corner was a group of three OIA agents with the one of rearguard calling a halt at noticing them.

There was a gesture and some kind of sound through the muffle of his gasmask that was lost in the sound of approaching contacts which the three of them clearly heard as well. When they other two turned, one had the identifiable profile of Mollay who made a frantic gesture for them to run to his group.

Behind them the abominations had closed a considerable gap and were perhapse only ten or fifteen feet away and closing. With twice that to safety and the three men raising their guns the psychics only made it a quarter of the distance before the first abominations against nature turned the corner at a near sprint and the front two lunged towards the group.

With friendlies in the way and unable to avoid friendly fire the psychics were caught too slow and unable to be supported as death closed in on them with more right behindit.

 

[LavaLung]

"Augurs..." Was all Moon had time to say, processing the weird correlation of their collective name, the tools that were apparently being used to fight the enemy, and the disgruntling fact that they had been laid into some kind of deep, pseudo-physical pit possibly intentionally.

She actually smiled, just a little, a dour and wounded sort of thing- An acknowledgement that Judgement and Magician said that they cared, even if she was still confused if her doubt was her own brain, or secret emotions on the part of the others. The pale waif guessed she had no choice but just to trust it. "Thou art verily my friends."

The motivation was required, because what they had to do next was drastic.

It was going to hurt.

Moon embraced the fact that her internal energy was biokinesis, and not some mystical precognition, some clean and pleasant ghostly eavesdropping.

Their tall form hunched over as they concentrated on rapidly increasing their bone structure and muscle mass, attempting to stretch out the fundamentals of their bodily composition. The improvised, forced genesis brought screaming agony writhing within every cell of their body, reforming into a towering thing with rippling flesh of pale ivory and black embedded veins. The horrid noises started with her official fatigues ripping apart, and then progressed to the low and gut-wrenching clunk of relocating bones.

She was thankful that her hair covered her face. Moon was certain she was crying tears of blood.

No time to finish. No time to confirm this abhorrent process was not killing her.

They took one of the severed jackhammer components from the trolley and hurled it towards the centre chest of the closest charging aggressor, and then prepared to find the next heaviest object they could physically pry off of the walls...

 

[Wolf626]

"Of course I am. I'm the nerd to end all nerds." Magician huffed at Justice. He smiled tentatively at Moon and opened his mouth to say more when he saw the number of fungus monsters heading their way. "Oh nuts."

"What to do we do? Should we make a run for it? Or... or Moon can just grow to super size and start the new augur baseball team." the augur said, as he watched the biokinetic's grotesque power at play.

Drawing his pistol for the first time, Magician remembered his training. He held his weapon with two hands, firmed his stance and aimed down the sights. The fungi weren't hard to miss. He squeezed the trigger and spat thunder.

"Come on guys, down the hallway! Let's go!"

 

[Gunhand4171]

Oh this was bad... Moon had began fighting off the monsters and Magician was providing covering fire. He then sensed friendlies further down the hallway. "Fighting retreat! Cover Moon while we make our way back to Mollay!" Judgment called. With all his friends around him, trying to fire his gun with his... visual impairment... would not go well. Instead he expanded his conscious as far as he could go and tried to see further into the future. He then began calling out the monsters' movements to the other AUGURs.

As he continued to call out warnings to each of them, he slowly walked backwards towards Mollay's postition. "Keep moving! We're almost there!"

 

[Char]

Shock was not something an Augur could drop into. So fine was their biological control that even as moons very muscles tore and ligaments stretched she was able to disassociate from it as her mental faculties processed what she was trying to do.

It was crude, ineffective, and unoptimized. The psychic equivalent of simply blowing air into a balloon the biokinetic energies were forced where they needed to go but inefficiently more effort was wasted than was gained. Every movement still burned like her body was a sloshing bag of too-hot water while the joints felt too tight and limbs refused to yet bend completely causing a rigid and unsettlingly inhuman posture.

The biomass did not come from nowhere, however. And her body screamed in alarm to sections of her conscious mind the mundane non-psychics would not be familiar with as thicker bone mass came with its own inherent fragility when stretched and the very marrow drawn from. What little fat already existed was not enough for the furnace of her body and layers of skin were shaved and parts of her very organs were sacrificed to the process. Her skin became pink and enflamed like it was burning, and everything non-essential from hair folicals to her very finger and toenails was broken down for the biomass.

All told it was several steps beyond what some of the biokinetic aligned first-generation Augurs had yet to attempt and the end result showed the follow of most of the shortcuts they would have refused to take...

The first of the wave of abominations not yet impaired reached what was moon. A misshapen hand reached out and dark-black carbonized claws expanded from the sphincters on its fingertips to hook under the already burning flesh against one arm as the petals of its face rapidly opened and the maw of teeth lunged forwards with the tounge like a barbed spear.

Only for a kinetic mass-driver round from Magician to punch right through the parasite and out the back of its head. As it fell Moon was able to reach a pipe on the wall with a large and heavy-looking metal wheel sealing its valves shut. It was faster to just twist it with telekinesis and within a second it spun off and eight pounds of solid steel was still spinning in mid-air as she brought it down with a muted thud on the next in line.

The wave seemed never-ending, however, and a dozen and half again more lingered and loitered behind a wall of their kind; Swiping at her in an attempt to grab and pull her into the swarm while burbling in anticipation . For every step back they advanced ever closer like a predator waiting to lunge on wounded prey, just out of reach of Moon who still blocked any outstanding volume of gunfire it was unlikely the abominations shared any preternatural intelligence but instead clung to a parasitic pack-hunting structure to wear down actual resistance.

There was still seemingly so far left to go, and the psychics would neither be able to escape such numbers nor had the collective ability to overcome them.

There were only halfway down the hall and some distance from Mollay and the other OIA troopers who had flattened themselves against either side of the halls walls while one with a heavy support caliburn covered them without firing, another wasripping some kind of strange putty from a large rectangular brick of some kind and pressing it against the walls, while another with the same remembered proportions of Mollay was moving at a pace that rivaled slow motion towards them like he was trying to sneak up on a sleeping animal while his Jackhammer smg was pointed in their direction and just past them.

Just between him and they were two doors; One on either side. By the context of the floors layout one was likely some kind of small storage closet while another likely led off into another large room like the last one they just left but by the bend of the hall was not likely to lead anywhere else.

After almost raking a set of claws across Moons wrist and getting a metal smack across the petals for it the Abominations stopped their advance and seemed to stay in place; Swaying but silent and intently focussed on them and them alone.

In unison, all sixteen abominations of all sizes slowly opened the petals of their faces and revealed the parasitic tongs that controlled them. In what could not have been rehearsed but somehow coordinated the monsters in unison released a sound and vibration to the air that was barely audible to the human perception but was akin to the dragging of steel mesh across wood like a scratching that filled the-

There was an intense and sudden bout of nausea amongst the psychics that started with the feeling of a heavy stone in their brains and vibrated the inner-ear canal to cause intense dizzyness and a sense of lightheadedness as the monsters performed some sort of coordinated sonic attack on them.