Atop the ziggurat, a colossal figure looms - a sphinx-like creature with a man-like torso replacing the head of a leonine body, with a pair of majestic wings sprouting from somewhere on the back, and adorned in once-regal armor - gilded and inlaid with glowing gems - that has been blasted and warped by continuous assault. He roars in anger as the rift above the ziggurat twists and contorts, occasionally whipping out tendrils that shoot off into the sky or into the ground before snapping violently back again. Wherever the edges strike, the air shimmers, and physical matter buckles and warps.
A nightmarish steed circles around the giant, with two women on its back - while just behind it, the after-image of an illusory duplicate fades away along with a magical crystal that just shattered. Also airborne is a great ice wyvern with cybernetic components more appropriate to a modern-day police skimmer, with a heroic police officer on its back. Down on the ground, a small group of soldiers and an electronics expert are outside the rim of crystals, accompanied by a giant fox-like creature, as they watch a robotic power-lifter blaze along, setting explosive charges on the remaining protective crystals.
Somewhere across the field, amidst the smoke and the rubble of a large section of earth that was lifted and dropped back again, a raven-haired young woman and an older gentleman, both in combat fatigues, extract themselves from the wreckage ... and above them is a magical knight riding a bear fashioned of stone and lava, riding upon a magical cloud. They cast wary glances up at the magical warrior, but so far it seems not to have noticed them - lost in a stupor, and gazing vacantly over to another part of the battlefield - where a scantily-clad woman garbed in vines and flowers is sprawled amidst the wreckage.
Randall's voice crackles over the comms over the drone of Mara's turbines. "Those red crystals must be holding the synecdoche open. We need to bring the rest down. And I've got just one rocket left. Recommendations, folks?"
"The vortex is going nuts after one of those was broken," Holly points out. "If we take them out, it has to be all at once!"
"We think outside the circle, or box, or ... well, whatever!" Jason remarks into his comm unit. "I have a cunning plan! No, really! Ever see the old vid clips of opera singers breaking glasses by hitting a certain note when singing? Well ... if I can get to the car, I might be able to tear out its horn and electronics, then require it to the pwer suystem. Then it's just a matter of cycling up the frequencies until I find the one that harmonizes with the lattice structure of those crystals. Then just overload the sound system and watch 'em pop!"
"Better get Inari earplugs first," Holly replies. "Want me and the kid to keep Blake distracted?"
"Wait, can you use Mara's megaphone and speaker for that?" Randall suggests. "Let me land and pick you up."
"Either way I can save you the hike."
"Well, I'll likely blow whatever I use. Not suer Mara would appreciate that!" Jason points out, "But the more power and speakers, the better."
Inari looks to Jason. "How long will that take?" Then, she looks at the distant downed aircar, and narrows her eyes in contemplation. "For sound, you do not need a real car. If you wish, I can provide a false one."
"No, but I need real electronics, I think, to require it to get me a phase lock circuit I can use to cycle up the scale," Jason comments, "Or just one really big fake speaker I can hook to the circuit. Maybe I can repurpose something in Randall's saddlebag. Building a phase cycler is easy. It's just a timer circuit, a capacitor and inductor to smooth the waveform, and an op-amp output to the output line. The speaker and amp setup then boost it and project it."
"I ... I will not let you vex me further!" Blake bellows out. "Ninsun's Mending!" he shouts, and the clouds above him part, and glittering light shines down ... though where it is crossed by the distorting effects of the rift, it warps visibly. His already-self-mending wounds are suddenly healed all the more quickly, and even his armor begins to melt and flow, reforming itself back into something resembling its earlier grandeur. But ... there's still something just a bit wrong. His face isn't quite back to the way it should be - one eye is just noticeably higher than the other and of a different shade, and his lip is warped into a permanent snarl on one side that shows maligned teeth. His armor is no longer symmetrical in design, looking in parts as if it had been stretched like a plastic toy left in the sun for too long.
"Madre de Dios," Randall says.
"The warping must be due to the missing crystal!" Holly says over the com system.
"Inari, can you summon a really large directional speaker to specs? The cone needs to be ..." Jason says, then has to pause to do a quick calculation, "Approximately this wide with a slope like so. If you can well, don't suommon it quite yet, but be ready to!" He shows said drawing to the kitsune as he continues, "That should get the sound wave to cover the field before us fairly well." The hacker then starts digging through his bag of junk to fins what parts he has at hand. "Rectifier bridge. Low pass filter, broken hairdryer. What? Oh, no, nickel heater core. "Ah, ye olde 555 timer IC, misc capacitors, right, right!"
"RIU, go to the car and show me its condition? I want to see what opower circuits we have and if there's a workable alternator..." Jason orders the dragon.
The wyvern lifts into the air as Blake's attention is focused on his own wounds. Her snarl is like a thousand icicles shattering as a hard wind shakes the forest, but she heels to Randall's unspoken guidance, swooping over and around to the ground where Randall stops to offer Jason a hand up. "You all set here? I don't want to stay on the ground too long - sitting targets and all that."
Inari's eyes widen. "Yes! I can! During one of my plots against Blake, I put together a rock band composed of fellow monsters, and ..." She looks momentarily sad, then just nods. "I can do that, yes. It won't be 'real,' but even sound and light created by an illusion is real in its own way."
RIU-Vision comes back to Jason, as the little dragon shoots at top speed across the battlefield toward the downed hovercar. He relays back a quick survey of the car, flipping through different sensor scans. It would appear that the vehicle was put down and abandoned, and subsequently partly overgrown by the manifested vegetation, but the damage is largely superficial. It's a luxury model, complete with all the usual features appropriate to a modern businessman - perhaps this vehicle was owned by a corporate type surveying the park just as things went weird - without any unique features of note.
Inari looks up at the ice wyvern warily. There's just no way that the huge fox can fit on the back. She concentrates, closing her eyes....
"Waterson, Thompson, Teppei, make your way to the north side of the ziggurat. If you see an opportunity, set timed explosives on those red crystals, synchronized to go off simultaneously. But he can kill you in one squash, so wait for him to be distracted," Randall says. "Holly, Tracer, you're distraction. Try very hard not to get hit. He could turn you into road jam."
Poof! A much smaller fox leaps onto the back of the ice wyvern.
Jason's head tilts a bit. "Hah, luxury car. It should have a high powered music amp then. Perfect!" he cackles. Quickly grasping Randall's hand, he hops onto Mara. "Lets get over there. We need to keep the new band, Fracture, alive." Okay, so he's good at building stuff ... but names and puns, wow, he's bad.
"I'll work up some protection first, count on it," Holly replies.
"Fracture? Get off this bike," Randall says to Jason, wincing at the punnery.
"On our way!" Waterson reports back. The soldiers move in, making the best use of cover that they can - but it's going to be a long dash for them, compared to how fast the others are buzzing about on the backs of wyverns and flying nightmares.
Randall adds, "Once you set the charges, take cover underground!"
"We've got another airstrike coming in... One minute thirty," the police officer says concernedly. With so much destruction, it's pretty clear going now, so they should be able to get there in time. But only just.
The general's voice comes across the com. "We're still here. Any orders for us? Should we converge on the ziggurat?"
Two more of the floating crystals explode violently, sending shards flying in all directions - the first one a little more forcefully than the second. Blake lets out another roar of rage.
Randall ponders, looking across the battlefield. They've got guns but... "Check on Jenny," he suggests. "Move her over to the tunnel if you can."
Akiko's voice comes across the radio. "I think I saw where she went down. We'll head that way."
"Okay then," Holly intones, and recites, "Magical Fairy Princess Armor Bubble of Protection!" She pulls a pink plastic bottle from her pocket, with a colorful Magical Girl figure on it. The bubble wand she pulls from it has a star-shaped loop at the end, which produces a really big bubble when she blows through it. The bubble expands to create a translucent shell around Fuseli.
"If she's still alive..." Randall's voice trails off. She came down hard, but she might have had magical armor.
"Sorry about that," Holly says to Tracer. "But it had to be something that would fit in my pocket. Now let's go buzz Blake some more. Gotta keep him focused skywards."
Tracer's lower lip quivers. "This is just ... so ... so wrong!" Fuseli, meanwhile, takes it like a champ, and circles on around Blake again.
"You always clapped during The Wizard of Oz when the Good Witch showed up in her magic bubble," Holly points out.
"Holly, when you get a chance, send Nick to help get Jenny out of the line of fire," Randall says, recalling that voodoo doll. It might work... Pray to the sainted Mary that whatever Holly did to Nick still holds.
"I have to be on top of him to do that," Holly notes. "After we get Blake's attention."
Randall spurs Mara into the air, now that Jason and Inari are on-board and secured. "Right, right. First things first."
The rippling warp lashes out another tendril, shooting out toward the southwest portion of the garden. Part of the outer wall melts and collapses, while several trees in the orchard grow uncontrollably until they splinter under their own weight and quickly wither.
"We can do this, everyone, just play it cool and don't draw his fire, but if he turns your way, run," Randall says over the comlink, trying to keep his voice steady. "Feet are your friends!"
"Judgement of Lugalbanda!" Blake cries out, and the clouds momentarily part, revealing a burning red glow through them. A spotlight shines down on the speeding power-loader robot (still in quadruped/tracked mode, sending dirt clods up in its wake), making its way toward the next protective crystal.
"Hey Blake!" Holly yells as Fuseli flies past Blake's nose. "Your mascara is running! Thhhhhhhpt!"
Randall chokes as the line comes crisp and clear over his comm. "Ooh, well, he is kind of overcompensating," he chuckles.
The red spotlight abruptly wavers, missing its robotic target wildly. A column of flame comes down from the heavens, incinerating a thin line of destruction that is caught whipping over the battlefield as Blake swats ineffectually at his tormentor.
"Yes, well," Jason quips "He sure seemed a bit catty when we got him into that fight with the security guard..."
"You never did get to make squeaky squirrel noises at her," Randall comments as they swoop down toward the aircar.
"Oohhhhh! Now you've done it!" Tracer cries out, as the beam of destruction weaves its way up the back of the ziggurat, on a wild chase after the nightmare.
The nightmare manages to dodge and weave. "Fuseli ... that way!" Tracer calls out, and the nightmare obligingly sweeps low next to one of the smaller inner crystals....
"I know! I'm heartbroken!" Jason claims.
Like a hot wire cutting through foam, the beam weaves a path of destruction across the ziggurat, while Blake froths and screams profanities (apparently the WHITE'S content filters are not active in this zone). When it finally takes out the crystal, however, he snaps out of it, and the beam vanishes. "No!" he cries, stammering. "I didn't do that. You tricked me! You traitor! Traitor!"
"Blake, Blake," Randall says almost sympathetically though he's unlikely to be heard from here without switching on the megaphone. "Take a step back, think about responsible use of power. Do you really trust yourself with the power to create a universe when you can't even use a simple magic spell right?"
Mara whooshes to a landing next to the abandoned luxury aircar. "Everyone off," Randall calls out. "Call when you want a pickup again."
The rift above the ziggurat is now even more violent and unstable. Blake begins to look more distorted.
The wyvern gives the aircar a disdainful look. It only used to be posh. Now how's your fancy real leather upholstery doing compared to her gear?
"Nice flying," Holly tells Tracer. "Too bad I lost the aircar; two more years and you could have gotten a license. That is.. uh.. the other you."
*** Edit above 'already there' lines
Randall guides Mara to the south as she picks up speed. "Hang on," he advises Jason and the Inari-lap-fox.
Tracer smiles self-consciously to herself, perhaps forgiving Holly just a little bit for the pretty-pony armor spell, but she doesn't look back. "That was close. I'm not sure if I can pull that stunt off another time...."
"We should be there in two shakes of a drake's tail." The police officer checks the rocket launcher is safetied and not likely to go off accidentally. With one shot left, he doesn't want to waste it.
"Right, well, I'm going to work on my phase circuit so it's ready when we get there! You better believe this bugger is going to go to eleven!" Jason cackles as he pulls out the timer and starts fiddling as he hunches over so the wind is buffeted by Randall. It's rather impressive that he can cold-solder points while on the back of a wyvern, really. "RIU, Think you can project a holo image of me at the base of one of the crystals on the ziggurat? Think he would be dumb enough to attack it?" the hacker asks the dragon while his fingers do the circuit dance.
"Let's head for Nick," Holly tells Tracer, pointing towards the hovering lava-bear. "We can make another attack on Blake after the last of the big crystals are down."
The little dragon, still airborne, looks up to give Jason a momentary video-feed of the approaching ice wyvern and its riders, then toward the ziggurat. The video bobs up and down, and then the dragon shoots off toward his new objective....
"I'd had thoughts about getting you to hack those inner crystals somehow," Randall confesses to Jason as they fly, and he draws his assault rifle and loads it with an explosive grenade. "But at this rate they just aren't going to last."
"Nick? Oh, you mean ... ?" Tracer turns the nightmare toward the bear-riding knight, quickly catching on. "Onward, Fuseli!" The nightmare bobs and weaves to get out of reach of Blake's (immediate) wrath, and wings over toward the seemingly paralyzed (but still hovering) warrior.
Randall says concernedly into the comlink, "That vortex's getting worse."
"Yeah, every anchor crystal we take out makes it more chaotic," Holly replies, and asks Tracer, "How did you get here? Through the vortex or through one of the staging areas?"
"Waterson, Thompson, Teppei, belay those orders," Randall decides. "Pull back! Get underground and away from here ASAP. There's too much collateral damage, and if what Jason's working on works, we should be able to shatter the last crystals."
"You'll be backup if the third airstrike doesn't clear everything out," Randall adds. "Just stay put once you're at a safe distance and under cover."
Another explosion goes off, as the power-loader robot continues with its mission, shattering the second-to-last crystal ... but as it reaches the very last crystal, it comes to a halt. On Jason's heads-up-display (in the section rigged to show the status of his demolitions program), an error message displays. It looks like the robot must have encountered some unanticipated obstacles, and while trying to recalculate its movement, ended up disoriented, and this tripped a safety procedure in its onboard operating systems - forcing it into standby mode until a human operator can check on it.
"Crap, the bot has jammed!" Jason growls. "I'll send RIU to check it after the projector experiment is over!"
The ground near the robot is warped noticeably, bubbling and collapsing - no doubt having something to do with the navigational error. The rift's lashing attacks have struck so tantalizingly close to the remaining crystal - but not close enough. Another lash of the rift strikes out dangerously close to where Akiko and the General are converging upon the fallen form of Jenny.
"EMF effect from that vortex strike?" Randall wonders.
"No!" Nick cries out, finally snapping out of his daze as he sees reality tearing itself apart around Jenny. He goads his bear, and they rush toward her fallen form....
Randall, having been looking around for the General and Akiko, snaps into his com, "Don't try to get in between them! General, Akiko, pull back and go underground."
"The bear guy is moving!" Akiko cries out over her communicator. "He's coming after us!"
"Did you need the robot after this?" Randall asks. "If not, I can take care of it... A grenade in the right place ought to do it."
"A hard reboot, as it were."
"Well, I want to blow that last crystal, but I don't care how! The robot was just keeping us out of danger," Jason points out.
"Ea, Fountain of Wisdom - Deny yourself to my foes!" Blake cries out, as a rippling wave flies out from him, across the battlefield. As it passes the crystals, they momentarily dim - momentarily - and the path of still rippling destruction momentarily loses some of its unnatural intensity. It would seem that this effect has some sort of impact upon magic....
"Right. I'll drop you off and then go take care of it," Randall says. "What was that?"
A wave hits Fuseli, and Tracer lets out a scream. "No! I won't let you!" The nightmare seems to very briefly turn translucent, but then returns to its full form.
"What was that? A massive dispel wave?" Holly asks Tracer.
The video feed from RIU momentarily is interrupted, but quickly returns. Status indicates he's still invisible - and flying.
Suddenly, there is an explosion of golden fur, with Randall and Jason at ground zero - but especially Jason - as Inari ceases to be a little fox.
"Whoa!" Randall grapples for control with one hand, the other on the carrying strap for his rifle.
"Ack!" goes Jason as he flails and tries to maintain the grip on his electronics! "This is not like my fantasies!"
"You had fantasies about--?" Randall can't help but ask.
"What?!" Inari - now much larger - cries out from where she's clinging for dear life from Mara's tail.
Mara instinctively increases her thruster output to compensate for the extra weight. She roars with surprise.
"Looks like whatever he threw," Randall wheezes into the comm as he gets things back on an even keel. "It dispelled Inari's shrink spell on herself. What about your spell on Nick, Holly? Could it break it and make him go back to being brainwashed?"
Nick, meanwhile, shoots across the battlefield, and descends upon the remains of the shattered crystal where Jenny's prone form lies. Despite Akiko's panicked cry, it appears that he is paying no attention to her or the general - at least, not yet. "No! No ... My lady ... my ... no ... Jenny." He leaps off the back of the bear, and rushes over to her broken form.
"I don't know that my spell is still active anymore," Holly replies. "Nick is on the move towards Jenny anyway, so I can't get in range to test it. Going to try and annoy Blake some more instead."
Randall says, "Affirmative. Don't get killed. And Mother of God, I hope he picks the right person to blame for this mess, Blake, not us."
"RIU, deploy the holo of me! You should still be configured for it! Just have me at the base of the northwest crystal looking like I'm deploying a large chunk of explosive! Make it .... obvious!" Jason orders.
Akiko calls over the com, "Uhm ... Jason ... oh no! Look out!"
Sure enough, an image of Jason winks into view near the northwestern crystal, right along with a case about the size of a small kitchen trash-can. The faux-hacker pops open the panel, which conveniently swings upward ... making the large radiation symbol quite visible to anyone above. As the image works, ominous red lights start blinking all over the device. Ah, if there were only the stereotypical female voice, declaring 'Danger, danger!' and it would be complete.
"I'm fine, Akiko. That's a fake me," Jason babbles in the communicator. "And not the other fake me you saved, its a fake, fake me!"
"Give me your cape, Tracer," Holly asks her pseudo-daughter.
"What for?" Tracer reflexively asks, but she has the sense of priorities enough to unclasp it and hand it back to her. "I'm going to need a new one, aren't I?"
"I'll give it back," Holly says, and drapes it over the front of Fuseli's saddle. Then she calls out, "Hey Tracer! Watch me pull a gimble-mounted laser mini-gun out of my hat! I mean, your cape!"
Holly lifts the cape a bit, and then pulls it away to reveal another video-game looking weapon mounted to the saddle. "Here," she says, handing the cape back."
Tracer takes the cape back, momentarily surprised - but even more so when she sees Fuseli's new "accessory." "By the Light!"
And after quickly stuffing his electronics into a jacket pocket, Jason leans back and tries to grab a hold of Inari to make sure she doesn't fall! The irony of this moment is not lost on Jason.
"Look out!" Tracer cries, as she goads Fuseli into a dive to avoid a rippling extension of the undulating rift.
Randall calls back to Jason and Inari, "Hang on, we're going in!" Mara banks around and lands next to the aircar, her hip-mounted thrusters pivoting around and blowing dust and loose grass up from the ground. Her wings flap once, twice, and she turns her head warily toward Blake. Frost wisps from her nostrils. The police officer wipes sweat from his brow - or tries to. His armored glove bonks into his kevlar helmet which bears the CERT logo. "Ow. See if you can get this thing in the air, you'll have a better chance there!"
Akiko casts a worried glance at the not-really-Jason, then focuses on getting herself to safer ground. The general does likewise, leaving Nick to his grief.
Inari leaps off, and touches down on the ground next to the aircar. She sniffs at it tentatively. "If this thing can fly, I'm riding on the top - not inside. I don't want to risk getting hit by another dispel wave in an enclosed space."
"Right! Time to unleash some aural feedback on Mister Ugly," Jason quips as he releases his grip on Inari's feet, then slides off the bike. "Right, I need protection while I work! Get the speaker in place, Inari, I've got to get the audio amp out of the jar, some jumper cables, and find the bloody alternator in it! Time to abuse some electronics!"
The com line crackles, with Waterson's voice. "We are inside the crystal perimeter," he reports. "Still approaching target."
Randall points out as they get off, "Won't the speaker be hard on your ears?" He breaks off at the report. "Belay that, I say again, get back to the tunnel and under cover! There's too much collateral damage!"
Suddenly, the earth erupts just a bit to the east of the grounded aircar, as a lash of chaos whips through the air, distorting everything in its path. Pieces of broken crystal turn into molten orbs that float in the air, breaking apart and popping together again at random. Flying through that space could be hazardous.
"-oger that! Chang--" crackles the voice over the com unit. The interference is getting worse.
"Depends on if we have to get close, Inari. I'd rather not go airborne if we can avoid it!" Jason says as he pops both the trunk and hood. "Right, power points are there. Jumper cables, check. Audio amp should be under the seat. I can use spare wire to link the phase circuit to the amp input... Holy frotz!" The hacker can't help but duck down behind the car when nearby earth explodes!
Randall yipes! Mara reacts instinctively, shielding the car and her rider with her wide-spread wings.
************** Round X4 - Allies (45), Jason (39), Holly (21), Bad (16), Randall (8)
Over the com, the general's voice crackles, "-ing for the far ha-" ... "-arped beyond all-" ... "-seem to notice yet-"
"I say again, if you're on the ground, get under cover and away," Randall repeats into his com. He backs Mara away a safe distance from the aircar so their takeoff won't blow dust all over Jason's work, but his mind fills in what the General is saying. The ground's warped beyond all recognition. Nick doesn't seem to notice yet. "Don't draw attention to yourself!"
Jason shakes his head. "Right, don't focus on the kablooies!" And so the hacker turns into a manic blur of running around. Cables are yanked and drawn from the car, hanging about like some sort of demented electronic spaghetti. "Direct power line to the amp, check! Feeder line out for connection to phase circuit, check, drive lines for Inari, check! Extra sticker for the nob that says eleven, check!" the hacker babbles as he works like a maniac. The poor luxury sedan is, well ... the old phrase 'hooptie' has meaning here. It's starting to look like a nightmare. "I'll be ready soon, get the speaker ready, Inari!"
The aircar starts up and purrs like a kitten (metaphorically speaking, that is). Inari looks to be in awe. "That shouldn't be possible. I know I have no room to talk whatsoever, but ... really. That's incredible."
"The impossible, Jason does immediately, the difficult takes a little longer," Randall quips.
"We're in a world where a Picasso lion is trying to kill us, nothing is impossible!" Jason quips.
"You have renewed my faith in the power of technology," Inari says, as she leaps onto the back of the car. The air around her shimmers.
"Dig your claws in, Inari, we're going airborne!" Jason declares as he hops into the car and fires it up. A rush of air and dust explodes out from beneath the car as it lurches. "Time to break a few noise ordinances!"
Inari vanishes, to be replaced by a rather gaudy and unwieldy-looking set of amps and speakers strapped to the aircar's roof. On the car's HUD, a fox head icon appears with the logo, "Inari." "Just an illusion," comes the broadcast fox's voice inside the cockpit, "but my illusions work better when I have something real to work with."
"I like your style," Jason says. Boy does he have a huge grin.
"Right, you're on the north two inner crystals, see if you can shatter 'em at the same time. I'll get the southern crystal," Randall says. "And then the fur will really fly."
"Jason's airborne," Holly tells Tracer. "Time to singe Blake some." She swings the laser MG around to aim at Blakes head, and flips its fire selector to full auto.
Accelerated particle beam blasts erupt from the rapid-firing gun, blasting through the armor, melting it in several places. The armor starts to seal itself, but the barrage of damage is too great - past a certain point, it seems that the armor just gives up. However, the wounds that actually got through to Blake himself seem to be largely superficial - and the wounds quickly seal themselves up (though they still leave noticeable distortions, leaving large and ugly scars). The remaining floating protective crystal shines just a little less brightly.
"Wow," Tracer says, in awe, but she quickly gets back to the business of making sure they don't get smashed in Blake's thrashing-about.
"You get to keep this gun too," Holly promises Tracer. "You'll need it when you take command of the Light's massed armies."
"Oh yeah," Tracer says. "I'm liking this deal even better now." She grins widely, though she has the look of one who still just can't let Holly see it.
Remembering herself, Tracer says, "Fuseli, I think Blake's going to want payback for that. Veil of Phantoms!"
Randall lifts Mara off into the air, VTOL-style, just as the shots rip into Blake. "Whatever you just did, it's draining the energy from the last big crystal," he reports. "He can't have much left in reserve."
A ghostly haze surrounds the nightmare and its passengers, with several phantom versions of itself faintly visible and confusing the matter of keeping track of Holly's exact whereabouts.
Blake roars, but this time his fury carries more than a little hint of fear. "You can't. You can't! Good will prevail. I will prevail!" He fumbles for words, even as he lashes blindly about with his wings, tail and massive arms. Then, he settles upon the sight of Jason setting the explosives. "No! NO! I won't let you!"
Randall says quietly to Jason, "Bets on how much overkill he does?"
"I hope a lot," Jason quips over the comm.
"Shining Tower of Ascension!" Blake cries out, but nothing happens. "Avenging Wings of the Gods!" he cries, more desperately. "Redemption ... Redemption of Gilgamesh!" he screams. But the gods don't seem to be dishing out magical goodies to him right now.
"Not so much here," Randall observes. "If he does another one of those flame gouts, he might hit our people on the ground."
The wyvern rotates her thrusters and blasts off toward the east, banking south to avoid the vortex. She roars, once again airborne! Randall checks his assault rifle, then starts sighting it in.
"Jason, head for the northern crystals, play them some of dat funky music," Randall says over the comm as he targets the surviving shield crystal. Not close enough to shoot with any certainty yet.
"On it," Jason says and sends the Aircar towards the northern crystals!
Almost as if the warp were anticipating the threat posed by Randall and Mara, and seeking to stave him off, a rippling tendril shoots out and rips asunder a portion of the gardens, catching up pieces of shattered crystal and twisting them until they stretch and grow, contorting into convoluted, glowing blue spirals that look like oversized marvels of blown glass. The effect is curiously beautiful compared to the more disturbing results when the rift hits more recognizable targets.
And then, the heart of the rift expands outward, overlapping Blake. "No! No, I am your champion! You can't ... you ... rarrrrgh!" As the rift overlaps with him, his body bubbles and warps. Lesions appear, then hairs turn into feathers, spines, scales. A rib protrudes and then begins to turn into a chitinous tentacle. He keeps his head free of the distortion field, but an unpleasantly green mucus pours from the corner of his misshapen mouth. Although this level of distortion should be fatal for any normal living creature, whatever magic has made him possible keeps him alive - at least for the time being - and there's no indication that he's any less dangerous to anyone who gets within his reach.
"Keep an eye out for the chaos vortex," Randall says into the comlink. He can appreciate the beauty of the sculpture it just made... But the fact it appeared right in between him and the crystal makes him awfully nervous.
This is followed by a heartfelt "Great Zork" as the rift reaches out to clasp Blake.
"Wow, reality is starting to reflect his soul," Jason remarks as he winces at the sight of Blake. "That's just..."
"All things shall change," an unseen choir sings from the rift. "You cannot escape this truth! You must embrace it. The truth shall embrace you!" It sounds like the voice of the WHITE, though the voices are discordant and keening.
"What the - did you hear that, Jason?" Randall says into his com.
**************** Round X5 - Holly (53), Randall (43), Jason (39), Allies (29), Bad (15), Environment (0).
There's considerable interference. The further Jason gets from Randall, the more there is - even the laser-line communications are being disrupted by the lashing tendrils of chaos that momentarily interpose themselves.
"Yes, and I'm trying not to think about it. I don't want to end up some twisted mess of a monster," Jason remarks grimly into the comm. "r ... worse ... I ..."
"We have to ... rift," Randall's voice says broken up by the static. "... lining up ... crystal now." The wyvern is swooping across the southern part of the park, undeterred by the wild lashing of the vortex.
After blowing another bubble from her bubble-wand to reinforce the armor bubble around Fuseli, Holly feels drained. "That's it for my magic, unless.." She reaches out towards the chaotic vortex next to Blake, and declares, "By the Power of Greyskull! I have the Power!"
"Are you crazy?" Tracer cries out. "What are you doing?" But it's too late. The vortex seems to take the invitation, as a tendril shoots out to intercept the nightmare and its riders....
And then, for a moment, Holly's surroundings change, as if her reality were but a film, and it was torn open to reveal a greater existence beyond - an existence of limitless possibilities, a place where wishes can be fulfilled - at no cost, surely! But then, even as she is awash with this vision, she can see Blake transformed - a mishmash of Blakes, rather, superimposed upon each other. There is the plastic-looking Blake that she saw through the security camera, and which he surely must have seen any time he looked in a mirror. There's, somewhere in that mass, an ideal Blake - the hero of his dream world. And in another, a fat, pathetic fellow, minus all the plastic enhancements, past the prime of his life and unable to force reality into the shape he wanted when he was younger....
Then there are other forms - borrowing elements of fiction, doubtless culled from video games he'd played, movies he'd seen, and whatever lurid fantasies he had come up with - imagining his self-image myriad ways. The leonine demigod entity is but one of many possibilities - but none of them reigns supreme over the other. Together, they form a convoluted mass, raging with each other - tearing each other apart. There are no boundaries. There is no focus.
Into all of this, Holly is hit with the realization that without focus - without a specific goal in mind, without something to aim for, she might suffer a similar fate. Fortunately, however, she's lived far more of her life in the real world than Blake ever did.
In all of that chaos, Holly turns away from Blake's miasma of dreams to something she can really focus on: Tracy, and even Mark. That's my reality. My anchor, and my strength! And nothing in this world or any other is going to keep me from it, she tells herself.
A burning light builds up around Holly. She is treated to visions of her loved ones - but she knows them for what they are - reflections of her wishes, not phantoms to be chased after in this chaotic reality. With renewed vigor, she pulls free from the chaos ... and finds herself on the back of a nightmare, behind Tracer, dodging the thrashing blows of Blake and the tendrils of the chaos vortex. She feels reinvigorated, and despite what seemed like hours, maybe even days passing - here, it is as if no time has passed at all.
Over the intercom, Randall's voice. "... hit Holly! Holly! Trac... ...kay? Please re..."
******** Note to GW: Power Surge played. Holly back to full power points!
"Wow," Holly says, and calmly switches the ray gun over to single shot, full power, before taking aim at the distant crystal pillar while Fuseli dodges about.
It's a perfect shot. The particle beam hits the remaining crystal, and pierces right through its solid exterior, and then fills it with a spreading glow that radiates outward, following a complex latticework ... until the glow intensifies and the crystal bursts into countless sparkling particles.
"Okay, let's put some distance between us and Blake," Holly tells Tracer, still in a bit of a daze. "When those other crystals go, the world is going to have a hangover."
Blake makes a gurgling scream. As the rift has encompassed him, now when ripples appear in the rift, his own physical form is caught up in it: the tendrils of chaos now have physical substance - impossibly elongated sections of gilded armor or organic bits of Blake. It's not pretty.
As the laser cannon slams home, Randall's voice crackles over the comm, "Good sh... ... Bla..." What he meant becomes clear as Mara shifts her course, winging agilely upward and over to give him a clear shot at his head. If that's a head. It's hard to tell. He aims his assault rifle and fires.
The chorus cries out, "We have sensed a strong mind, a strong will. Come to us with your dreams and possibilities. We will make them real. Be our champion. Do not be turned off by what has gone awry - the failings of those before you. Join us - become that which you wish to be. Usher in a new age for the world. You require only sufficient imagination, strong will, and strong heart."
Blake - as much as it is possible for him to do so in his state - has a hurt look of betrayal on his face at the sound of the WHITE's voice.
The voice gives Randall pause, and then he narrows his eyes. Megaphone on. "You confuse the rule of law with the rule of might. Law is only a common bond between people if all agree to live under its rule. And frankly, seeing what you've done with Blake... No thanks." The grenade launcher attachment kachunks! with a venting of high-pressure gas.
The grenade shoots through the air, briefly passing through rippling curtains of chaos - and thin membranes of elongated Blake-flesh, as he loses even more of his corporeal structure - but it stays true to its course. There's a blossom of shrapnel and fire as the grenade hits Blake up side the head. The force knocks him to the side, where he falls further into the shifting planes of chaos. His face stretches and distorts further, one eye and part of his cheek turning to look slightly inward.
"... shot clear, go in, ..." comes Randall's voice over the comm.
The WHITE sings/pleads, "General Irongrip, the Empire is yours to command. This world is awash with chaos - a chaos that produces such impure hearts revealed by the grotesque form you see before you. Your heart, surely, is stronger than this man's. In your hand, a new reign of order could come to be. Come to the Light. There is hope for even one like you, born of the realm of Darkness."
There's an angry-sounding voice over the com system - no doubt that of the general - but it's rendered largely unintelligible by the interference. Akiko can be heard to chime in as well.
"RIU, pull out, cover your ears, and take cover," Jason mentally orders the little dragon. His fingers flick over the controls and there's a crackle and the ominous smell of ozone as Jason brings the hacked and spliced audio system to power. "Cover your ears, Inari, this is going to be unpleasant," he says as he turns the phase circuit on. A shrill one rips out throughout the air before the car, the smoke twisting and curling in its wake. He knows he's at a distance, but perhaps, just perhaps he can find the harmonics as he flies towards the crystals on the ziggurat. His finger slides with methodical precision over the simple slide-potentiometer, causing the pitch of the noise to shift. His eyes are fixed ahead, on the crystals, as he watches for signs of vibration...
"Nick Fry, Champion of Earth!" the WHITE cries out. "Your simple goodness is a virtue. Come to us, and Jenny shall live again! Blake shall abuse his power no more. You are the true hero of this saga. Yours is the true love. We know that more than anyone else, for we have watched you. Come - while there is still time!"
"Do you want to be Empress of the Diadem, Tracer?" Holly asks the Ranger she's riding with. "Really, really want it?"
Tracer looks uncertain. "It sounds nice," she says, "but ..." She momentarily turns to look back, but then focuses ahead - away from the chaos in the heart of the ziggurat. "The Diadem seems so small now. I don't know where I want to be. I wish ..." She shakes her head. "I want to ask Tracy. I want to ask Tracy what I think, after all. I ... I'm sorry. I'm not really your daughter. I'm not real at all. I'm just a lie."
"Don't think I can get a signal through to an outside cell tower for that," Holly notes. "But you do need to choose if you want to live on. You can grow still, in the Diadem, I think. But time is short if you want to go back."
"You're right," Tracer says. "We were warned that in this realm of life, we could live, but beyond, there is no magic ... we cannot thrive. We are too connected to the Light. If you shut off the path to the Diadrem ... this is going to go away, isn't it? It couldn't possibly sustain itself if the Light isn't there to keep it."
"That's right," Holly says. "But you aren't just a copy, Tracer. You've got some of my daughter's hopes and dreams and ambitions in you."
On Jason's HUD, the Inari icon lights up brightly, along with several power status bars. Inari lets out a scream that sounds more appropriate to some 80s glam rocker than to a giant fox, and the sound resonates with the car's top-of-the-line system.
Floating paper-thin membranes of warped flesh tear asunder under the assault. Behind them, the crystals vibrate, glowing brightly - and then shattering, shooting particles into the sky, which then melt and form as they hit the chaos streams. The ziggurat itself shakes and then begins to shatter, as the vortex swallows it up and begins twisting it into spirals and turns, melding with Blake's form - no longer recognizable as such.
The tendrils of chaos that were reaching out into the sky and to distant parts of the city suddenly whip back upon themselves. Sections of the garden wall fall down anew. Rocks, twisted metal, trees and less identifiable materials snap back in their wake.
"Hurry, we have to reach one of those tendrils before they're gone," Holly urges Tracer.
"There is yet time!" the WHITE screams out. "Come to me! If the link is sundered, all those gathered here shall perish! They cannot survive without the Light! We require a champion!"
"Fine!" Holly yells out. "I'll make you a deal you can't refuse, WHITE!"
Jason really, really, really, wishes he had ear plugs. Even the counter-wave dampers in the helmet to suppress gunfire are not helping enough. The hacker winces in pain as the 'luxury' car vibrates worse than a worn-out massage bed at a cut-rate hotel. Even his teeth feel like they're shaking. So ... it takes a bit for him to actually cut the power to the amp systems. The shower of blue sparks and the horrid stench of burning plastic soon follow.
Strong winds converge upon the shrinking rift, kicking up smoke, dust, even drawing down the storm clouds from the sky - as a cyclone begins to form.
Randall turns up his megaphone. "EVACUATE THE AREA," he announces. "GET UNDER COVER! This is not a drill! Nick! Help me get everyone clear!"
Around the city, new sources of light appear. One of the garden gates blasts open, and through it is a scene of a storm-tossed city - but it's not the same sky. Between two trees, a rippling, starry expanse appears. Past one of the crumbling walls, a tower door reveals the interior of a ruined palace far more spacious than the tower's exterior would justify.
RIU, pull out, cover your ears, and take cover, Jason mentally orders the little dragon. His fingers flick over the controls and there's a crackle and the ominous smell of ozone.
*** Note to GW: Fix duplicate line above....
RIU shoots back to the luxury aircar, thump-thumping on the hood. Although he's still mostly invisible - only a faint shimmering outline visible occasionally in the flashes of lightning - his claws can be heard scrabbling and sliding over the dinged-up metal, as he digs into any crevice he can to find purchase.
Randall's eyes widen. The crystals were what were holding the synecdoche in place... But now that they're gone, it's going to snap. Like a rubberband. Slinging the assault rifle behind his back, he dives Mara down to join Waterson, Teppiu, and Thompson. "Get on, quick! Just pile on, grab hold as best as you can. We've got to get out of here."
"Come to us! Come to us now!" the WHITE cries out.
"Jason, see if you can get Akiko and the General," he police officer adds into the comm.
The soldiers clamber on, and pull latches from their combat webbing to snap onto support bars on Mara's frame, since that's about as secure of a grip as they can hope for. Waterson checks the others and gives Randall the thumbs-up sign.
Jason fights with the controls of the air car as he tries to bring it about and get out of there. "That was ... I can't believe that worked! I am going to have a terrible headache in an hour," the hacker complains. "Inari, RIU, I assume neither of you want to go back to the Diadem?" he asks as he scans the ground for Akiko and the General. Thinking he sees them, the hacker kicks the car's accelerator and launches off in that direction.
The ice wyvern's turbines whine loudly. This is more weight than Mara usually carry, but then again, she's grown up some from her bike days. She glances toward the vortex, lets out a shattering roar, and then leaps into the air on muscles and thrusters.
"I would far rather take my chances here," Inari says over Jason's car's interior sound system, though it's crackling and a bit distorted. "The Diadem holds nothing for me."
"Head for the vortex, Tracer," Holly says over the din. "You've got to go be the Champion. Just remember; life is messy. It needs chaos. That's what inspires people to dream and try for something better." She starts patting down her own pockets, saying, "I know I had a flying carpet in one of these."
RIU just sends Jason a sensation best translated as "Wheeeeeeee!" as the aircar gets going, with its new dragon hood ornament in place.
"But what about you?" Tracer asks. "Are you coming with me? Or ... your friends ... Tracy. ... Where should I put you down?"
As the luxury aircar swoops down, the general gets up and waves his hands back and forth. Akiko shields her eyes with one hand, and waves with the other, then giggles when she gets sight of RIU (who has let the Invisibility field go so he can focus on clinging on for dear life) on the hood.
Finding a carpet that conveniently fit in one of her pockets, Holly unfolds it and ties it around her shoulders like a cape. "I've got my own way down. I can't show the WHITE how to be a parent, so I'm depending on you, Tracer. Make me proud!" She hugs the girl from behind, and then jumps off of Fuseli.
"Mother!" Tracer cries out. "I-" But her cry is lost on the wind. The vortex continues to shrink, and she loses no time - she dives on Fuseli's back into the swirling chaos, eyes closed and concentrating - or perhaps even praying - as she faces the unknown.
"Goodbye, daughter," Holly whispers, and then makes a superhero arm-thrust-out pose and flies towards the others as fast as she can. No telling when the magic will run out, and she wants to be on stable ground when it happens. Or at least on the air car.
"Hop in, buckle up, and welcome to a fox motors original. Next stop, away from this place!" Jason shouts out the open window as he lands. Once the pair is onboard, he punches the accelerator again. The sound is absolutely terrible as he liberally abuses the car's navigation and thrusters ... but right now surviving is a bit more important!
In the middle of the garden, sections of the earth pull away, sucked into the vortex. A large section of rock pulls away - on it, Nick and his faithful bear. Nick cradles Jenny's form. He has removed his helmet, and looks up from her to look defiantly at the waves of chaos. Then, the flow takes him away - and there's no sign of them. With a flash, the vortex vanishes.
Randall flips the megaphone back on again. "This is Wyvern Flight One, now departing Chaos Central. Our next stop is Reality. Thank you for flying the friendly skies with Wyvern Flights!" Thrusters rotate smoothly, and then burst into blue flames as Mara hightails it after Jason.
The helmet HUD units show that full communications uplinks have been reestablished. The outside world isn't so far away anymore. Immediately, there's a flood of traffic accessible over the bands.
Remembering something, the police officer fishes around his harness and fishes up something. It's a small self-propelled flare. He hands it to Waterson, and a moment later a rocket bursts into the sky, dissolving away into a cloud of brightly glowing green and blue plasma.
As Holly heads for the ground, she hugs the BFG-9000 to her chest. I'm unemployed now. I wonder what this thing can sell for..
"Finally," Jason says to the passengers sitting in the back seat. "You're free. And I ... well, doesn't matter!"
"Mission successful," Randall reports over the com to headquarters. "We're coming home."
And so the world was saved, not that it was at all reported that way. The official narrative seems to involve a terrorist attack on Avatars LLC, claimed by a previously unheard-of organization, "Fracture," professing its intention to free millions of people from "enslaving themselves to a false reality."
The bulk of the Army of the Light managed to evacuate by leaping through "synecdoche" portals that briefly formed during the whiplash effect as the vortex closed in on itself. Not all made it, however ... but it seems that there is a residual effect in place within the heart of the "Incursion Zone": So long as they remain close to the heart, they do not suffer cellular breakdown - but beyond that point, all of the conjured materials - organic or otherwise - have broken down into black clouds and drifted away.
The original site for the Avatars theme park has been shut off from the public - and the specimen known as "Penny Arcadia" has been relocated to the new research and containment facility set up there. Fortunately, Akiko, the general, Inari, RIU and Mara have not suffered any degenerative effects from being away from the Diadem - though their overtly magical powers soon run dry once the connection has been severed.
As for Avatars LLC, after its initial collapse, it has opened up again under new management. After all, there was just too much demand for the old game. Players insist that the new game "just isn't the same" as the old one, even though it still manages to sport the highest level of immersion of any virtual reality game to date.
Back on the home front, Tracy seems to be torn between the fact that her online persona has been erased ... and that her persona has now suddenly become the star NPC in the revived setting.
Akiko has a family to go back to - and Inari seems to have found employment at the "Ground Zero" base to help keep its "guests" in line. The general has a new identity as a "Mr. Irons" working as a special consultant for the revamped Avatars LLC.
Sasha ... somehow managed to disappear in the midst of all the chaos. She had to have some sort of help, that much is for sure.
The Trudeau parents reconciled their past, so that Mark and Tracy moved back into the townhouse with Holly, who continued working for the new Avatars as VP of security. Her new office featured the BFG-9000 mounted on the wall next to her diplomas and certificates, and probably helped her be a little more intimidating as a result.
Jason for his part, returned to his home in the refurbished warehouse. The odd part was, it suddenly felt so simple and dull to him. Not to mention empty, even with his little dragon companion. So in true awkward fashion, he has tried to maintain contact with everyone that went through the nightmare of the virtual world. He's not that great with people even now, but hey, it's a start. On the more unusual front, rumor has it that his business has now become a side job and that is real focus is something secret and related to everything that had happened. What, though, is anyone's guess.
The police department never quite got over Randall's disappearance, or his reappearance with his 'new ride', a flying wyvern with animatronic bits. He was suspended from active duty whlie he cleared out the paperwork concerning the case - a positive recovery of Akiko Summers, an annotation to Sasha Knightley and that of the Frys, providing witness reports on the whole incident for CERT analysts. So it was with a sigh and a grin that he submitted his branch transfer request for the Cybercrime Emergency Response Team.
Sometime thereafter, Randall, Jason and Holly (and her family) received invitations to a special concert for a hot new band. There was some uncertainty about the name - there was a lot of buzz about how inappropriate and callous it was for a band to name itself after the terrorist organization responsible for the destruction of the original Avatars corporation and the corresponding loss of life. Press releases insisted some sort of gobbledygook about how the name was chosen in defiance of terrorism, to deny those criminals of their self-proclaimed identity - or some other psychobabble mishmash like that.
Randall double-checks the ticket to make sure it's nowhere near the Incursion Zone.
Akiko ended up meeting up them all - she'd been invited as well. But even stranger was when the lights came up on the stage, and the lead singer came out in what looked for the world like a full-body biosculpt of a golden vixen, decked out in an outfit somewhere between kimono and leather-punk rocker garb.... All right, so maybe life hasn't quite gotten back to normal just yet.
Holly can't help but laugh, and then immediately turn to her daughter and say, "No, you can't dress like that until you're 18 or grow a tail."
The laughter that comes from Jason is for once honest and without the the usual distrustful edge. Of course, it probably helps that a diminutive little dragon is perched on top of his head and giggling away as well. "Of all the things we've seen ... from space galleons to horrible monsters ... the one I would have never imagined possible, even with all the magic in the world," Jason wheezes between his bouts of laugher, "Is Inari in leather, silk, and singing. The terror, we've unleashed a monster upon our world!"
Randall, dressed in his pirate captain costume, wolf-whistles Inari. He grins to the others. "Better by far than the last one we came across, in my humble opinion."