DISTRICT Z
"Tyrant? Coward?" Tormo scoffed.
"Your minds are far too small to comprehend my nature. Threaten me if you must. Scream and hate and wail. It will do you no good. I'll be waiting for our next meeting, 'Champions'. I'll save you a drink..."
Tormo had played his final card. Bluffs. Extortion. Blackmail. They had all failed him. District Z was a ghost town. The slamming doors and crashing doors gave one an impression that the region was haunted my a poltergeist, perhaps, but there was nothing living- nor unliving, for that matter- to oppose the Champions. No matter how frantically they ran, the streets seemed to stretch on forever. Even Sam and Yashamaru immense speed, the journey was neither short nor soothing. A thick cloud of dust settled in the air like fallout. It settled upon the streets like snow. The gray haze consumed the dead streets.
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It was hard to see. Hard to breathe. Your sense played tricks on you. You could have sworn that you heard something stirring. Stalking. A beastly cry gurgled in the distance. It was too far away to pose a threat. The haze was already hiding your tracks and disguising your scent. It was no greater threat than the District's sensory siege. But the thought of another being wandering the same ghostly streets as you? It was as unpleasant as the fallen Nemesis' stench.
The creator
had to have died, right? It had been crushed under a falling elevator. It had been pounded through a street and a sewer. It had fallen an unknowable distance. It couldn't have survived... It couldn't have...
Time Remaining: 20 hours remaining// Current Time: 2:00am
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The Power Plant was coated in a thick layer of dust and soot. It was still. Unusually so. The only sound that could be heard in its proximity was the gentle hum of an underground generator. The earth trembled a little underfoot. The building itself had clearly seen better days. It's signs were faded and plain. Its paint was peeling. Its walls were cracks and crumbling. But it kept producing power. It hadn't stopped fulfilling its purpose, not even in the lifetimes since it had been 'decommissioned'.
The doors were open. The locks had long since rusted away. The trickster had no more tricks. The lobby contained a single chair. A figure with a domed skull sat upon it, oblivious to his guests. His legs were crossed. A rusted OBLIVION energy can sat in his hand. A flickering television set sat in front of him. The previous day's CotA highlights played on loop in front of him.
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All that was left to do was step inside.
All the Champions had to do was step inside and finish the job.
@Atomic Knight @Jeremi @Yun Lee @Takumi
CASINO
A second wind filled the gamblers. With valiant shouts and raised fits, the mob became a militia.
An out manned, out gunned militia.
Marianne imbedded a fraction of the hope she had found within the gamblers. With it, they became brave, proud men and women.
Right up until the bitter end.
Rabbit scrambled to his feet, dragging Marianne forward in the process.
"Come on!" He yelled over the broken cries in the next room over. "Come on, we need to--"
[BEEP]
His foot clipped the edge of a holographic table. An image hummed to life.
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"Hello? Hello?" Jyuto cried.
"Can you hear us? Can you--?" He whipped his head back around to face Marianne's.
"It's a long-distance communicator, Mari! We can call for help! Maybe Prudence's PMCs can't help us, but if we can get a massage off world--" He started waving his arms before the hologram.
"S-O-S! S-O-S! My name is Jyuto Iruma! I'm here with Marriane von Edmund! We're trapped in the Silver Ball Casino on Planet Prudence! We're requesting immediate evacuation! We're under attack! The dead are walking! The city's turning against us! I know this sounds like a hoax but you have to---"
Jyuto stopped mid-sentence. He ran his fingers through the image of the Hutt. He remained still. Stoic. Unflinching. It was all so...
UnHuttlike.
"I don't understand... Hello? Hello? Can you... Can you hear us? See us?" He slapped the central console. Jabba's face started to quiver and shake. But his expression didn't change. He didn't even blink.
"I don't understand..." He ran his fingers through his hair.
"It's a fake... It's just an image-projector dressed up to look like comminutor. With something like this, you could... you could create a digital puppet... I don't understand..."
Jyuto hammered a few keys on projector's base, imputing secret command.
[BEEP] [BEEP] [BEEP]
[CREATING EMERGENCY LOG]
[TIME REMAINING: 2 MINUTES]
"Shit!" Jyuto spat.
"We need that log! This could blow this whole thing open! If the Hutts are involved, this could change everything... and if someone is pretending to be a Hutt--"
[CRASH]
The barricade came tumbling down. The 'Risen' flooded into the casino en masse. The Slot Machines stopped shooting. They had served their purpose. They demonic creatures feasted upon the fallen gamblers. Their bodies were desecrated and discarded. The flesh of the dead was sated their hunger, sure... but the flesh of the living?
The Undead existed to hunt...
They sniffed the air. They staggered around the Casino searching for the last of the survivors. All that stood between Jyuto and Marianne and certain death was a thin, crimson curtain. The zombies were hardly the brightest creatures on Prudence, but even they would find the pair before long. Jyuto refused to move. His eyes remained fixed on the projector's progress bar.
"C'monC'monC'monC'monC'mon..."
Marianne could make out the sight of a small trap door behind the VIP Bar. Perhaps it was a route to the casino's basement. Then again, the VIP area was designed to house the biggest and baddest gamblers in town. Jyuto had promised Marianne a way out... this had to be it, right?
45 Rabbit had abandoned all thought of escape. The projector has stolen his attention. He gripped the console tightly, praying that the Log would generate sooner.
A panicked cry ratted out of the wider casino.
"Oh Lady Luck! Please!" The blue haired boy cowered.
"Don't fail me now! Fuck! Luck! Come on! Your champion's in a tight... Fuck! Goddess? If you're out there, please!" The final survivor scurried away from the horde. He soon found himself in a corner with his back to the wall.
"Fuck! Goddess!"
@Yun Lee
MAYOR'S SUITE
Nemu turned her head away from the Champions for a moment. Her ears twitched as if some distant sound had stolen her attention away from her 'honored' guests.
"Yes. Wonderful. I agree." She muttered dismissively. "
There is something I must attend to. Doppo. Show them to the staging area."
"But Madame Mayor!" Doppo stammered, stepping away from his slumping spot on the wall.
"Isn't that the job o---"
In a flash of blue, the hologram vanished. Doppo was left reaching out towards
nothing. He waited for a moment or two, praying that the Mayor's other assistant would appear just as quickly as she had disappeared. She never arrived. Doppo silently unbuttoned his color to allow a little bit more air to reach his wet chest.
"If..." He swallowed hard.
"If you would be so kind as to... ah... please, follow me..."
STAGING AREA
Doppo didn't lead the Champions to a large, dramatic clearing. He didn't lead them into some militarized zone or deeply trenched district. The Mayor's assistant simply guided from alley to alley until they came upon a humble sewer grate in an all-too ordinary alley.
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A ground of Private Soldiers and poorly-armed volunteers had already gathered around the grate. Some were watching it eagerly. Others hung a little further back. These men- who, on the surface, might have appeared cowardly, as they leaded upon their rifles and avoided the eyes of their superiors- instead Ventress' pity. They were old. Desperate. They lacked the eager ignorance shared by their younger contemporaries. Some of them might have been old enough to remember the old B-C conflict that had devastated the slums long ago. They were being dragged into another war in the name of erased debts and all-too-good-to-be-true insurance payouts.
The soldiers either had no idea what they were getting into, or they tragically knew better, but had no choice but to accept their fates anyway.
"We can blame Tormo all we like," Ventress hummed to herself. She pulled her hood back over her head. She told herself that she did so to shelter herself from the rain. Deep down, she just wanted to hide her face. Deep down, she just wanted to hide her shame.
"But the choices we made... they were our own. Siding with Cluth. Betraying him for the Beggars. Attacking the Outpost. Destroying the Bridge. And now this... signing up for Nemu's debtor's army. We were offered deal after deal... and we kept saying yes, without a second thought. We just had to intervene. We just had to interfere. The promise of money and 'morality' brought us here." Ventress chuckled weakly.
"We thought that we could cheat. That we could free ourselves from Tormo's game. Instead... Instead we've brought the city to the brink of destruction by our own free will. Look upon our works, ye mighty, and despair... nothing remains 'round the decay---"
"Listen up, Rats!" A mercenary general howled over the rumble of the rain.
"I'm sure you've already felt the tremors down bellow! Hate to break it to you, Pansies, but these ain't ye usual earthquakes! Cluth's been using the power cores from his old war-bots the blast a straight path through our sewers! With half the city under martial law and the other half quarantined to mitigate the damage caused by Cluth's bioweapon, we reason to believe that this here grate will be the staging area of District C's attack. Remember: You're not just fighting for your lives! You're fighting for your way of life! Unless you want your kids eating garbage for their school lunches and praying to some whatever crap-guzzling Rat Gods those filth-bals worship, you better shoot to kill, you hear me? Don't show those tin-heads any mercy! We'll be drinking out of LW Droids heads tonight, boys! Let's give them hell! Any last questions? Any last prayers? Get 'em out now! Because I don't want to hear any whimpering once the shooting starts!
@Jeremi @Takumi @Capri @Ottonomous Ghost