legionmissions | Welcome to Murderworld

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Welcome to Murderworld - [modplot] [Arena Start]

Who| Everyone in Murderworld plot
What| Arena Start
Where| All throughout the Arena
When| N/a
Warnings/Notes| Just the usual psycho supervillain monologue stuff

They all wake up scattered throughout Murderworld, some of them alone, some of them with partners, some of them clustered together. Each will find themselves in strange new surrounds. None of them will have any recollection of how they got there. One minute they were on their spy mission, then there was the feeling of being stunned from behind.

They awaken at the exact same time as their captor gives their nervous systems a jolt via the nanites in the air. For a moment, they just hear a man's jeering

"Wakey wakey."

When they're all awake, the voice continues on.

"You know, I'm jealous of you Legionnaires. After this, you're going to go down in infamy. Footage of your every move is being streamed live to Harrub's political and financial elite, and after that daring attempt at spying and what I'm sure will be your equally daring attempts at escape and rescue, this is going to be an arena they never forget."

Near each of them, a huge, colorful hologram sparks to life, revealing the image of a man.

"Who's the badass bogeyman with his own planetoid?"

"Now I know what you're wondering. The four W's. Who am I? Oh, I'm just someone that fell through that space rift on Phelolu and got recruited by parties with certain...interests. Since then, I've been working for the Harrubian government. The name's Arcade."

"What is this? This happens to be my best work yet. The Harrubians in charge used to get rid of political dissidents and their families the old-fashioned way -- with a bullet to the back of the melon and a shallow, unmarked grave -- but I've spiced things up. Now they fight for their lives in my arenas -- a little idea I got from a series of kids' books I read in the pen. Once a month, a sizable number of Harrubian deplorables enter, and by the end of the month, only one leaves."

"'Why me?' you're probably asking, but you already know the answer to that one. You nosed in just a little too much around Harrub and now the Harrubian government wants you gone. Lucky for them and unlucky for you, a few members of the UP council wanted you gone just as much and tipped them off about your spying. Politicians, amirite? Can't live with 'em -- and in your case, Legionnaires, that's especially true. The UP biting the hand that protects them, when this isn't even your home universe -- that has got to hurt."

"Where are you? This is my master work. See, I really love watching people die -- I'm a little sick in the head, what're you gonna do? For years, I used to build these elaborate superhero death traps, but my dead-superhero-to-deathtrap ratio was embarrassingly low. So when I got pulled into this universe, I decided to shake things up a bit. This planetoid is filled with my mercenary Tributes that...help things along, as well as traps, monsters, dangerous terrain, and paranoid dissidents so desperate to save their own miserable lives they'll knock your brains out with a rock over a hunk of cheese."

"An impenetrable shield is around the entire arena, blocking off all communication and attempts at escape. You're completely cut off. Only the Harrubian government knows you're here. Nobody's coming to get you, and even if they tried, trust me, they wouldn't even know where to look. You want food? You want medicine, you want water? It's all here but you'll have to fight for it.'

"The arena started 10 days ago and there are are 20 left. One way or another, in 20 days, only one of you Legionnaires or political dissidents is walking out alive -- admittedly, the lucky winner will be walking out into being locked in some hole-in-the-ground Harrubian political prison for the rest of your natural life, but you'll still be far less defunct than everyone else."

"Kill or be killed, it'll be great. Now, I know what you're thinking: 'you can't make me kill my friends or innocent Harrubians.' That's true, I can't make you do anything, and there wouldn't be much fun if I could. But life's a game, kids -- you're either playing or you're losing it. This game will crack you open and let the real you out. The you that you keep crammed down where nobody else can see."

His voice goes extra sinister.

"Deep down maybe a few of you are real, genuine, big damn heroes, I'll grant you that. But the rest? Cowards. Liars. Cheats. Thieves. And at least one natural born bone-and-gristle killer or two. So, remember, kids: play unfair, get messy, and make mistakes -- preferably some fatal ones, they're great for the ratings."

Arcade turns away from whatever is filming him for the hologram, and then turns back.

"Oh, and before I forget... Welcome to Murderworld."

He holds his hands up and makes finger guns at the camera. The holograms of Arcade explode into a million pieces and fade away, leaving all the Legionnaires to face the dangerous forces around them.

[ooc: Player can use this post to establish their characters' initial reactions to arriving in the arena, but otherwise, threading for the plot will take place in posts players make for themselves.]

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Damn is right. Unless Reaper’s been hanging out with—who knows—prodigious hackers, or something, 76 doesn’t expect either of them to be much good here. Their talents mostly lie in pointing guns at things and shooting, not hacking into alien computer consoles. They don’t exactly have the time to brute force this thing, either.

76 takes a few quick steps back to the first door, peering back out into the hallway, visor active and scanning for any movement or heat. Having left the strange room of robots behind, he mostly comes up empty.

“What are you expecting to get rushed by? Just work on it. I’ll keep an eye out.”

Maybe he has, maybe he hasn't! You'll never know!!! Either way, he is this close to smashing the keypad with his fist.

"Something's with those robots." Doesn't feel right. He didn't stick around long enough to suss things out, which might've been a bit of a rookie mistake but who knows what would've happened if he'd just stuck it out?

"Give me a sequence." He growls out an order, natural as day, almost irritatingly so. The feeling is deftly ignored as he punches in yet another wrong code. He wonders if there'll be an error message or consequences for too many mistakes.

The roll of his eyes is practically audible. 76 is keeping his gaze trained where they came from, and his visor readout is holding steady. Nothing of note, not even the robots that Reaper seems so concerned about.

He doesn’t have to look to know that Reaper isn’t having very much luck, and supplying his own sequence of numbers is probably not going to yield different results. They’re probably thinking about this the wrong way.

“Is there a backdoor? Something you can circumvent?”

Maybe they should just punch the console?

Frustration mounts, invisibly so.

"No."

Nothing that's open, anyway. He's still trying to get the locked one open as it is. As if he'd been reading 76's mind, he balls his claws up into a fist and smashes it into the keypad. It sparks noisily, crumbling pathetically as its rusty shattered components clatter to the floor and something within the walls give away with a click.

They can't seriously be that lucky... and yet, here they are. One can only hope there's nothing on the other side.

Oh. Well.

“That’s one way to do it.”

Seems too easy, however, given the fact that the whole console was password-protected. 76 knows Reaper more than well enough to see that he’s suspicious, too, but what choice do they have but to press on?

“After you.”

The doorway is dark, as if there's nothing lit up at all on the other side. It's just a gaping maw of pitch blackness, and even as one who lords over shadows... this seems a bit much. He doesn't just step into an unlit doorway with no visuals, despite having little to no choice.

Not that it really matters much. As soon as he shifts his stance a little, letting out a quiet grumble under his breath, he hears a creak. His trigger finger itches for just a split second, mental alarms blaring inside his ears, and it takes everything that he has to keep from shooting at the thing that suddenly comes barreling out from the darkness.

He snarls loudly as a mannequin monster hurls itself at him and attempts to pin him down, its multiple limbs both metallic and some flesh, dangle about above him like a creepy mobile. It snaps its head up to stare at Jack, the soulless doll-like expression boring into him as its head tilts in slow but jolting motions.

Things that would be easy: leaving Reaper to die.

But 76 is already springing into action before his mind catches up with him, an automatic response to a teammate being ambushed and pinned. The nice thing, he guesses, is that he doesn’t have to worry about accidentally hitting his temporary teammate—he’ll just regenerate, right? Is that how it works?

His rifle is leveled in one fluid motion, and he’s already unloading the clip. If anything, he can give Reaper the chance to extricate himself. Do the ghost thing, dude!

Well technically YEAH he'll regenerate, that is if he can dissipate in time. If he gets hit while solid, he'll be pissed. Fortunately, he figures 76 will shoot the first threat he sees with wild abandon and he's banking on that, so ghost thing it is.

Black smoke billows out from beneath the monster in a hurry, and the creature staggers from the sudden loss of mass beneath it as it's pelted with pulse ammunition. It screeches, scuttling back quickly into the darkness, but before it can slip away into the shadows, Reaper is already shadow stepping behind it. He grabs at a rod of metal sticking out from the walls, wrenching it off in one strong pull and wrings it around one of its necks. The only one that's attached to the body, anyway.

He chokes it, digging the sharper edge of it into the base of its neck to try and snap it off. Even as its many arms try to grab at him in hopes of throwing him off, he isn't worried. Annoyingly enough, he's not.

Edited (fixing things doop doo) 2016-11-10 03:43 (UTC)

There we go—not that 76 is exactly comfortable with the fact that Reaper can dissolve and re-form at will, but anything to get out from under that monster. He keeps firing, visor locking on to what he hopes is a vulnerable part of the thing, knowing he doesn’t have to be concerned for Reaper’s proximity to it.

Not that it matters after a moment as Reaper teleports behind, though 76 isn’t sure if trying to choke the thing will have any effect.

He loads up his trio of rockets instead, bursting forth in their helix pattern from the muzzle of his rifle, exploding in a cloud of smoke and flame. It rears back, screeching, unable to properly respond to their two-pronged assault.

Even as he knows the rockets are coming, that slight shift in stance to aim the rifle to accommodate its trajectory, he doesn't move. His grip only tightens around the bar, wrenching it harder against the joint of its neck, feeling the give of the hard material threaten to break. It's not a softer, resilient material of muscles, bone, and skin, so the right amount of pressure– especially as it rears back reflexively from being shot at by rockets– gives Reaper the perfect moment to effectively snap its head off. He also goes flying, what with the impact of the rockets, but he dissolves into a flurry of smoke before he can hit the ground.

The mangled body and detached head of the monster lay in pieces, twitching here and there as life rapidly escapes. Reaper rematerializes in front of Soldier 76.

He stares past 76, mostly focusing on the door, but it still does look like he's just staring at the solider. Shifting forward a few steps, he kicks past the rubble and grabs his tarp. That original metallic clanging of footsteps from outside is picking up speed, as if it had picked up on the violence, and he can hear them gaining. But he says nothing as he simply turns and heads for the end of the dark hallway. Say nothing of the fact that despite hating each other, they still can fight alongside each other like they'd never forgotten. How could they? It's practically ingrained into their muscle memory at this point.

It’s hard not to recognize the way they move around each other almost flawlessly, finishing each other’s sentences—if sentences were punches and kicks and gunfire. They don’t miss a beat, anticipating where the other would be before they even think to move there, filling in blanks and fighting together so seamlessly and efficiently that he could swear it’s twenty years ago.

But it isn’t, and as soon as the creature hits the ground (presumably dead), he’s reminded of the reality of the situation. This isn’t Reyes—it’s Reaper, coalescing from smoke in front of him, staring through the mask like he’s deciding whether or not this temporary alliance is worth keeping.

There’s a lot that 76 could say, he thinks, but when Reaper pivots and heads back towards the door, he doesn’t. They don’t need to say anything at all, even if this is just a temporary truce forged in the interest of staying alive.

He follows anyway, without question.

He is extremely tempted to say something. Make a quip about their situation. It would be easy, he thinks, and 76 doesn't deserve such sweet silence from him. He could make this a little more unbearable for him but, ...meh. Too much effort for something that probably wouldn't be worth it in the end. He's too busy navigating the dark anyway.

Watch your six, he thinks. The sliding door on the other hand is unlocked when he tugs on the door handle, albeit a bit rusty. It shrieks for a moment as it's slid open, remembers he's also holding the tarp still, and flings it open wide. The room is a dead-end from the looks of it. It's not very well-lit, but there's a buzzing fluorescent bulb flickering weakly on the ceiling above them. Between them and the ceiling that the light is attached to is a layer of crisscrossing bars. Like a cage. He's not sure why there's bars on the ceiling, but he can only gather that there might be something up there.

"The walls," he starts slowly, examining one of the corners, "Aren't connected."

There's a tiny gap between the points where the walls would normally meet, and something about that bothers him. It's almost like it's meant for moving the entire wall forward. His mind immediately thinks of an outdated car crusher. More red flags. It's not that he thinks the walls will crush them right away, but you just never know with this kooky nuthouse of a place.

"Looks like a trap. The trigger's unknown." No sense in hanging around to find out if that's the case. Though in the back of his mind, he knows they'll have to face that scraggly pack of omnics they saw earlier the moment they backtrack to the original hallway.

Reaper staying silent is a small mercy, but 76 knows they’re thinking the same thing. He’s not sure how to feel about that, but he guesses he’ll have to sort it out later, when they’re not trapped in a murder arena. The unfortunate thing is that they work extremely well together, so if they’ve really and truly set aside their differences (however momentarily), there’s no one else 76 would rather be working alongside.

Betrayal and attempted murder aside, of course.

He comes to the conclusion about the room around the same time Reaper does, noticing the minute gap—something an untrained individual wouldn’t even hope to catch. The mechanism becomes clear just scanning the place. Walk in, get crushed, quickly, or maybe slowly if the other door closes behind them. Pedestrian.

“Floor panel?”

Pressure trigger, maybe. 76 isn’t keen on finding out, but maybe they can set the thing off without stepping inside it.

“If the wall moves, there might be something behind them.”

Inner workings. An escape route they’re not supposed to be able to find.

"Care to find out?"

There's a hint of wry amusement, turning his head just a touch towards 76 as he gestures towards the door. Unlike 76, Reaper can at least ghost himself out of there should the walls move too quickly.

But all jokes aside, whether 76 responds to the question or not, he's already rummaging through his tarp for the heavy Death Arena book. The stupid thing might actually come in handy.

“After you.”

76 isn’t certain of the extent of Reaper’s abilities, but he knows now is not the time to test them. It’s only when he starts rummaging through the tarp that 76 remembers he even had it in the first place. What is he…keeping in there?

“A book.”

Not a bad idea, really. It looks heavy—what sort of gets him is what’s on the cover.

The basic commentary has him tilting the book in his grip, his head tilt following suit. He lets out a dry scoff, feeling the weight to see just how hard he'd have to throw the thing down.

"Scrapbook," he corrects. "My first Death Arena."

He says it with little humor, and turns towards the room. Tossing it upwards to give it some momentum, he lets it slam heavily onto the steel plated floor.

76’s eyebrows crest over the top of his visor, arched in both skepticism and surprise. He wants to ask where the heck he got that—please don’t say it’s something you made and brought for yourself, Gabe. He’s trying to have faith in you.

There will be time to ask about that later, if he remembers. For now, all he can do is heft his rifle and have it at the ready as the heavy book comes crashing down on what he’s sure are pressure plates.

He knows what you're thinking!!! Those stupid gray eyebrows are hard to miss and he tries not to bristle at the fact that Jack Morrison may be, once again, thinking about some dumb bullshit. Though he says nothing as he prepares for what may happen next.

As the weight makes the thin steel plates shudder, just a layer over the real foundation of the floor, the mechanisms in the wall begin to creak and groan loudly. It masks the sound of the robots slowly closing in on them, making way more noise than they should be. The speed of the crushing isn't instantaneous—age and rust had seen to it that it at least work for its desired result. The pistons push the wall plates of thick steel in sharp, jolting movements, scraping metal shrieking as they finally collide in three increments.

The resulting sound is a boom so deafening that even Reaper has to turn his head slightly in what normally would've been a wince. He looks behind, past 76, at the door before peering into the room behind the plates.

"Wipe that dumb look off your face and check the other side."

He's not sure what's happened to the book, but he can only assume that it at least got shredded up pretty good considering it'd been laying horizontal. There are no visible doors on ground level on his side, but there seems to be a hole on the ceiling.

"One ventilation entrance above."

Yep, there it goes. It doesn't happen as predictably as he anticipated, but he can only imagine that if they stepped in there first, they'd be dead now. So there's that.

They're lucky in that the panels seem to have frozen in place now that they've been activated, though 76 isn't discounting the possibility that they'll replace themselves and crush them both in a new and interesting way.

There's a quip to be made here, about how Reaper can't see his face, but 76 lets it go in favor of entering the room and inspecting the ventilation shaft. He kind of wants to comment about how Reaper can just ghost his way up there, but he's already focused on the mission, and is using the now-exposed mechanisms to squeeze his way into the back area and start climbing up towards the maintenance shaft.

"Up here."

Quip or not, he does the ghosty thing anyway. After 76 worms his way in through the metal plates and starts climb, he disintegrates into a wispy streak, making a quick but full sweep of the room before flying up after 76. Seems this is their only exit.

It's unsure about how much room they'll have up here for the both of them, but he can at least stay in this form for a few seconds longer to figure that out. From what he could see below, the hole in the ceiling is past the grated ceiling, so everything is just a guess until he gets in there. It could be just a small tunnel for all he knows. Most ventilation shafts are.

Yeah, there it is. Look at this ghost asshole. The good news, he supposes, is that it’s going to be very hard to kill each other wedged up in some maintenance vents. Now that they seem to be out of immediate danger, 76 finds a moment to think about the true nature of Reaper’s powers. If there’s not enough room in the shaft for the two of them, can he just stay a spooky wraith cloud? Can he talk as a spooky wraith cloud?

76 guesses he’s going to find out soon enough as he wedges himself into the crawl space. He’s not at all a small man, but the shaft affords him at least a little room to move. They’ll be uncomfortably close, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about getting stuck.

“Any more ideas?”

He can't do anything as a spooky wraith cloud, unfortunately. Maybe that's fortunate for 76. The ventilation shaft makes for little elbow room, and the fact that he's carrying the bazooka and the syringes too (ditching the tarp, as the bazooka is strapped over and around his shoulder, and syringes tucked into one of his belts) only make it that much worse. It'd be nice if he could just ghost around forever, but it takes quite a bit of energy and focus.

"Keep moving." He snarls, his top half solidifying first, easing himself into the space so that he doesn't just wedge himself against the walls. He's got a little extra bulk on his shoulders, not including the weaponry.

The nearest exit will do. They don't have to move far. Just enough to get away from the room and into the next hallway. As they crawl along, they'll eventually come upon grates along the walls of their crawl space to see below them. Any place that's not a gaping hole or another trap room is ideal.

Edited 2016-11-19 03:33 (UTC)

All this gets very awkward very quickly, and the most 76 can do is press onward, making an attempt not to think about the closeness of their quarters, or the fact that Reaper is behind him. He's not claustrophobic, but this situation puts him on edge, so he aims to get out of it as soon as possible.

Which means that as soon as he sees an empty room through the grates, he's kicking it in, dropping down heavily to the floor below. Reckless, maybe, but better than staying in a ventilation shaft with Reyes. No booby traps activate, so he calls it like he sees it.

"Clear."

If Reaper is in any way uncomfortable, he doesn't make it known. He suspects 76 is, what with being up front, unable to see what Reaper may be doing. There's a sort of secret glee to that, knowing he is probably very uncomfortable. It's only confirmed when 76 knocks out the first grate they come across.

He dissolves into mist again, floating down swiftly after confirming that Jack hasn't been smashed to a pulp.

"Too cozy for you, Jack?" It almost sounds smug, as he gives the room a once over.

“Just a little.”

He doesn’t want to betray that discomfort, but come on. They’re trapped in a death arena, were just inches apart in a ventilation shaft, neither of them tried to kill the other, and 76 has no idea what to make of what just happened. He’s uncomfortable. He’s going to continue to be uncomfortable.

What he has confirmed, however, is that this truce is perhaps holding. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, though, and now that the has the chance, thinks it might be prudent to extricate himself from the situation.

“I think we should split up. Don’t make me regret it.”

(no subject)

fantasmaniac - 2016-11-21 07:37 (UTC) - Expand

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