I am the forever DM.
I want to escape from this prison.
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There is no escape. Only pain and suffering as your campaign is slowly, methodically, and unstoppably dismantled.
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Bold of you to assume my campaigns have dismantled. Every game I’ve run has finished. 
Waiting for Sonus and OraNui to break that streak though.
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Chapter 9
–
With one swift motion you swung your curled fist through the staff door, sending it flying across the room. The rest of the party shuffled around you, entering what appeared to be the lamest employee lounge you had ever witnessed. One chair, one table, a counter with a coffee machine, and a cabinet with three styrofoam cups. No wonder Ghid had such a negative reputation.
Cordax flipped his knife out and began carving out the bottom of one of the styrofoam cups while Krelikan did a sweep of the room. “No fingerprints unidentified. Thirteen different areas with identified prints of Zero, two areas with identified prints of Bird.”
“They made it here, at least.” Pakari mumbled as Cordax finished making a mess of the area he was standing in with styrofoam shavings and grabbed the second cup. “Means they either came in through the factory entrance or they locked the door behind them. Cordax, will you stop that?”
Cordax, who was holding the knife in his mouth and making woodpecker-esqe stabbing motions at the cup, looked up at the sound of his name and made some garbled response due to there being a knife in his mouth. You took one step towards him and he spat the knife out, getting up and dusting the layer of styrofoam pellets off of his body. “Okay, okay, jeez.”
“So what now?” Wild yapped, making impatient figure eight motions around the back of Krelikan’s head. “Only way we can proceed is through the factory area since the observation deck is totaled.”
Winger wordlessly moved towards the factory door and, after tugging on the doorknob, stepped to the side and folded his arms. “Go ahead, gorilla.”
The door flew down the hallway far enough to almost reach the door at the other end. The smell of metal immediately reached your mind, and the sight through the door was quite explanatory. There was a number of conveyor belts, large industrial crates, forklifts, distillers - all left to rot. Corax bolted to the railing and gawked at the massive view, before stepping tentatively back and colliding with Krelikan, who was moving towards the end of the hallway without the slightest glance towards Cordax or the machinery.
“Vent.” Krelikan stopped directly under a large air vent in the wall, just above his height with the cover missing. For you it was easy to see inside, and it extended into darkness before ending in a sheer ninety degree drop. A very inefficient design.
“Scan it for fingerprints.” Pakari began, then moved to the door at the end of the hallway and pushed it open. “So that’s one less door to deal with. Krelikan?”
Krelikan was standing still, facing the wall. “I will require Monopoly’s assistance in reaching the vent.”
“Alright, you stay with him until he’s finished.” Pakari looked about. “Where’s Racie?”
You looked around. Yes, she was nowhere to be found. Funny how that works. “Wait! I know!” Cordax raised his hand. “She must’ve went back to the tour booth to get a map! Then she’d know how to get to the observation deck, which she would’ve known was broken, so she wouldn’t, hang on…”
Cordax scratched at his scalp while everyone in the room stared at him. “Okay, no I have no idea. Stop staring at me like that.”
Pakari ushered the rest of the party along and you were left alone with Krelikan, who fixed two determined yellow eyes upon you for a solid minute and a half before lunging at your throat.
The attack hadn’t caught you by surprise as much as the sudden severity of it did. Mouth pieces from inside the angular head jutted outwards and attempted to rip the metallic columns supporting your head into pieces - a serious threat to you, because you would likely stop existing if he succeeded. Therefore, any erring to the side of caution to avoid detection would have to be ignored in favor of making Krelikan very, very sorry.
And yet that would be easier said than done, as Krelikan, upon finding his mouth pieces damaged, stabbed down into your stomach with blades so large and so elaborate you had supreme difficulty believing they had been hidden in his forearms the entire time. It didn’t do any good, of course, because your coat was so puffy it caught the attack before it made it anywhere near your vital organs. Didn’t mean you liked the feeling of it, though.
Using leverage, you flipped the robot over your head, but he was back up almost instantly, and you definitely did not have the time to move out of the way as he rushed into you, stabbing down into where a normal person would have trapezius muscles and lifting you above his head. Then to your immense surprise, he gave you a moment to evaluate your plans by breaking into a monologue.
“I saw the footage on that camera before you even projected it.” The gears in his head whirred, as from your current angle you could see the exact type of joint holding his collar bone in place. “The security was no match for my intellect. You think I wouldn’t notice Zero stuffing his body into the closet? There has been murder committed, Monopoly, and you are hardly in a position to surrender adequately, but I will accept it.”
Swinging one leg down, you did not have the agility to kick him in the face nor the intent to. All you needed was to just touch his collar bone… Ah, excellent. With the slightest contact you twisted yourself, forcing the elbows to bend slightly, and then completely destroyed the collar joint with the toe of your boot, which forced both of his arms to collapse. Kicking off him, the blades slid out of your shoulders with incredible ease and you landed back on your feet in a ready position.
“I knew. I didn’t think you’d be so willing to die that you’d leave yourself alone, however.”
Even without working arms Krelikan was extremely dangerous. His mechanical feet had enough force behind them to knock out a rhino, and as you soon saw, enough force to easily fracture concrete as his wild swings missed you entirely, smashing into the wall. The moment one of those swings was partially trapped in the wall - the third swing, to be precise - you rushed in, pinning Krelikan in your grip as you inverted his knee. Once you had him in your grasp the fight was over, as without use of his arms he was defenseless from your attack, as you gripped his face in one hand and with the other turned him into a Krelikan-ish rectangle.
“Musn’t forget,” You mused as you ripped his mechanical eyes out of his sockets and tossed them over the railing. “Can’t have you contacting Pakari when you’re in the dark.” And with incredible dexterity you slid the considerably heavy Krelikan box into the vent and pushed it as far as you could, listening to the satisfying sound of it slipping over the edge and plummeting into the vent below, causing a loud crash.
You heard a door begin to close, but it wasn’t closed soon enough to stop you from reaching it, shoving your hand through the quickly shrinking gap, and grabbing Winger by the throat. “One word of suspicion to anyone. Yes?”
Winger nodded furiously, his body frozen with terror. You let him go and inspected the stomach of your coat. “Where’s Cordax?”
“That’s why I’m here.” Winger glared, feeling his throat as you realized one of the blades had managed to actually create a gash in your nice coat. “Cordax disappeared.”
12 Likes
wait how did you know that all I ever wear in public is puffy coats
I am deeply concerned
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May she Rest In Peace, knowing that she was not forgotten.
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No…
I knew this would happen, but I didn’t think it would be so soon. It wasn’t even a dagger.
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I mean you aren’t even dead, just angry
and a cube
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Yeah, I’m a robot so what even is death.
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ok that made me laugh
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I love how all I did this chapter was poking holes in cups and then leaving.
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Chapter 10
–
You approached Pakari with caution as he was clearly on edge, straining to listen. He shot his hand towards you in a halting motion, and continued following the ceiling with his eyes.
It was perfectly fine that you had to wait a few moments for him to be paranoid, as it gave you all the time you needed to consider the one hundred and eighteen different ways you could separate Cordax’s knee joint for being an idiot and running off. The upset this would cause in your plan would be monumental if he was not found again very soon.
There was the slightest of noise from the exposed ventilation duct above them, but not only did it seem far too small for anyone to actually fit inside, but Pakari didn’t seem to notice it in spite of his strained attention.
Wild, however, acted differently. A moment after the noise he shot up towards the vent and with a speed you hadn’t given him credit for cut it open. A jade hand shot out of the opening and nearly grabbed the flying speck, who zipped around the vent and flew back down to Pakari. Winger had his wrist blades primed. You… Folded your arms.
Two red lines squinted from out of the darkness and locked with your eyes, waiting for an answer. You gave him none.
“Name.” Pakari growled.
An almost elastic leg stretched down from the vent, impossibly thin and metallic, filled with holes solely for aesthetic design. The massive emerald foot spread flat on the ground, and following it was the rest of the mechanical form, hardly matching the length of the leg in terms of scale. The metallic spine arched out, reflecting the limited light in the room, and the head jutting forward out of the shoulders to complete the curve was flat and sinister, with the slit-like eyes peering deceptively around the room before locking on Pakari.
“Zero.” The figure hissed, its other leg extending down from its mechanical form. You were still very surprised that he managed to fit in a vent of that size. Winger was partially frozen with shock still, so you elbowed him sharply and walked up to Zero, standing uncomfortably close to him. “How many people did you arrive with?”
“Three others.” Zero glared, not intimidated by your tactics whatsoever. “You?”
You pretended to count on your fingers while with your other hand you directed three signals to Zero, your body masking the signs from the others. “Uhh, five. No wait, six. Three aren’t here right now.”
“Zero?” Pakari walked two steps forward. “What is this facility’s intended purpose?”
Zero paused for a moment. “There are monsters here. Ghid knew he was experimenting with monsters, and if they could escape they would essentially destroy the world city by city. So he built this cider factory to conceal it being a nuclear bunker. Only instead of protecting the inside from a nuclear blast, it’s meant to contain it.”
“You found Bird’s body? How mutilated was he?” Zero looked for an answer in the horrified eyes of his audience.
“Stabbed with his own limbs.” Wild murmured. “Whoever these monsters are, they have excellent aim. Whatever happened to that… Thing from the basement crypt you dragged all the way over here?”
“It’s in the next room.” Zero said, turning to lead the way. “I knew you were coming and I had to keep tabs on you. Any other questions before we continue?”
“I have one,” You raised your hand tentatively. “Did you happen to see a small yellow person with an incredibly irritating method for getting into trouble?”
“…Yes, but…” Zero began, staring at the floor. “I had to stop following him when I noticed you coming. He took the janitorial path, which…” His eyes slowly widened and he bolted to the door, smashing his thumb through the lock and ripping it off the door. As the rest of the party approached you had to pinch your wrist to stop from bursting into a flurry of vile speech as the reason for Zero’s sudden violent reaction was painfully obvious.
Cordax was standing on top of what appeared to be a closet, bolted down tight with a large quantity of locks, all of which had been cracked wide open. The reason why Cordax was brought along in this endeavor was due to his lockpicking prowess, and thanks to the laws of leverage - and his knife - all the government locks tacked over the bizarre piece of furniture were splintered and broken, and Pakari, with his arm outstretched and his mouth agape, was doing a pitifully bad job of stopping him from cracking the final one.
“Oh! Hi!” Cordax said as the final lock broke open and a soft green mist began to pour from the container. “I found the thing we were looking for!”
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I feel like everything is about to go wrong…
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idk maybe because it already did
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I eat it.
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This isn’t plorg, Cronk.
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Oh that reminds me, gotta continue the story for that.
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Dat’s not good.
I have so many questions right now.
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Be quiet you’re dead.
I feel that soon I will join you
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