[Roleplay - Drop-in] Murder-Free II: The City's Portaling Revengeance

[Cassie]

Exterior

The cube Moon strikes turns motionless after it.

"The God Complex is not a game, it's a place. Right here. As for what nyou ask, reaper lady...Nyi once found myself in a mansion, with other murdergame hosts...truly a sign of a flourishing harvest, or so it seems..."

---

Somewhere Deep In The Complex...

A heated discussion ensues.

"NO NO NO NO NO, I HAVE PROOF THAT THAT ELDRITCH MAN PICCY IS THE BOMBER HERE!" Hank J. Wimbleton yells furiously.

"And what could it be, Wannabe Meister Wimbleton!?" Princess Sweetheart retorts mockingly.

"Assume me Meister again-"

"Ugh...we've already expended more than half of our lockdown phase and this has not gone anywhere conclusive!" Klug complains.

"Goddammit...if I was the Bomber, I would've used it long ago! This prison complex is already driving me up and over the wall too many times by now!" Piccy, a...mess of body parts forming a vaguely humanoid shape sighs in distress and tiredness.

The air of the trial is in high tension, everyone figuring out in a heated fashion on who to eliminate.

[Despair's Archon of Memes]

Meanwhile, in the Arch-Mages' Mansion (the Magenta Portal)...

...Hm... This does not bode well....

A mysterious robed figure is looking through the security camera footage of Junko and Monaca's recent visit...

---

MURDERGAME DATABASE UPDATE: CIRNO (Now confirmed: DEAD)

Another robed individual is sitting in front of the secret room... As the computer's database receives the new update regarding the status of a murdergame participant...

Shame... I thought for sure that the fairy would survive...

[Florien]

Cyan Portal: In Pursuit of an Adventurer.

Kellensea is surprisingly quick, despite her heavy armor. Keeping up is a challenge, even as she rapidly responds to questions, both real and anticipated.

Oh, it's not a "hole in the space-time continuum", whatever that means. That's a planar engine thermal injector. There might be a second one around here somewhere still. These were some of the first ones built, you know. I think Blackrock institute has something similar now, though theirs uses the ocean directly for the steam and coolant. Don't know what they're doing about salt buildup.

Kellensea starts heading up a flight of stairs, but keeps talking.

I don't remember where they keep the coolant injector. Obviously they have one, but where it is, I couldn't tell you. They've probably changed the locks, I doubt this charm will work to get us anywhere. But it looks nice.

From her vast array of bracelets she shows off what looks like a golden sans-serif capital "I" on a chain. (Or possibly a lowercase L).

Tore that off of her after we finished her off. The rest took her other stuff. This used to be the master passkey for the place. I always meant to come back and strip it out, I was too sick at the time with the side effects to carry much out. I never did come back though, and they've probably changed the locks. I'd change the locks.

Into another hallway, where she passes through a jammed-open door which would otherwise require an ID card, while she starts diverging from the original topic.

Yeah, so Etiri or whatever her preferred indiless was, best arcane engineer... certainly in my lifetime, possibly in centuries. Shame we had to kill her, really. The planar engine idea was made viable by her. Before her, no one figured out how to adequately harness the planar engine idea. I...

A passageway up ahead is blocked by tons of rock fallen from the ceiling.

Uhhm... This way.

Kellensea turns around and starts heading down a different passageway, and enters an enormous warehouse that extends an incredible distance down. Walkways line the walls, and enormous shelves extend far below, crates and boxes and a series of flashing red lights along the ceiling, heralding "evacuation" according to the nearby poster.

Okay, so this wasn't where I was intending to go. Let's... try... that way.

Down a flight of metal slats posing as stairs above a drop of easily a hundred feet. Across another rickety walkway held up by flimsy-looking supports. Into another tunnel. And then she starts talking about her life again. She seems quite incapable of stopping or, at very least, realizing when stopping would be a good idea.

Riiiiight. Alright. Where was I? Never mind. Point is, Etiri is dead, along with twenty like her. Most by us, some by others. Oh, and Vauterson got away and we don't talk about Corwhey. Twenty-one out of twenty-four isn't bad. Can't think why we spared Klezoros though. We did get his little thing though. Got it right here. I was the one in charge of keeping trophies. Always liked trophies.

She shows off a small gold coat-button with what looks like the symbol for micrometers on it while making a turn into a second tunnel.

I have a few more of the portable ones on me now. Some of them were rather big, I left those at the hotel or back at my base at home from before I ended up in this mess.

As she heads up a flight of stairs, she flashes a couple ID cards with attached pins, and a necklace with what looks like an E on it.

That's... Colinsi Lauer the... second? and Ldrina K. Whitetower. Ambushed the pair of them outside a restaurant. Shame they were traitors, I'd have liked to know them better if they weren't on the list. And this necklace, that was from some guy. This guy, can you believe he had the gall to be a priest of Vels when he was on her list, then try to claim sanctuary in her temple WHILE ON HER LIST AND IT BEING HIS TEMPLE? And he was on the other list too, so that turned out about how one would expect.

She seems weirdly proud of her "trophies" pried from her dead enemies, and not particularly bothered about the "and then we killed them" parts of her stories. If it wasn't already obvious to everyone, her problems run deep. She keeps talking even as she passes through a cafeteria on a landing and climbs the next flight of stairs.

And... we're here. The... well, this is the only way I remember going.

She pushes open a door and emerges in what appears to be a basement with an open door to the outside. The walls are badly-plastered brick, the plaster having mostly flaked off. Water damage is significant to the military issue bunk beds stored down here. Crates marked "weaponry" sit, open, with no contents. The light shining in from outside is quite blinding. The tunnels below felt extremely brightly lit, but apparently they were dim compared to the outside. Kellensea walks up the stairs to the outside and...

That's... not what I expected, I'll give it that.

[Caret]

Cyan ~  Into The Light
Doof eventually catches up to Kellensea, and then collapses on his knees in exhaustion. "Phew! You're a pretty hard one to keep up with!" Doof says, before he gets back on his knees and heads outside along with Kellensea. "Now... ARGH! IT'S THE HIDEOUS LIGHT OF THE DAYSTAR!"

[Kennifer]

-Hotel-

"AUUUUUGH FUUUUUCK. Ugh, my head..."

Kennifer is back here now, after... who the fuck knows how long she was in Siberia anyway what with the timey wimey bull shit. Fuck that weird time bullshit, right? And she's clutching the side of her head, looking to be in agony.

She glances around, nervously? Uncomfortably, at least... to see if anyone's there.

...and then she sees the portals and...

no, she's not going into those, not by a long shot, not after those rifts...

"What the fuck... what the... UGH."

Instead she just kinda sinks to her knees, then into a sitting position, still holding the side of her head, and just... fucking starts sobbing.

[Florien]

Cyan: Surface.

...SO! Who are we sacrificing to the madness beneath the world first? Because clearly, we're going to need to do that with how things are going.

Kellensea is obviously joking. Her entire body twitches in some kind of hyper-exaggerated wink to drive home that point. But the fact remains, the sky appears to not exist. Where there should be the sky, there is instead an incredibly bright white dome-thing over the area.

Well, I guess we know what they evacuated from now. And here I was assuming it was our portal appearing. Nope, guess it was a much bigger deal. Well, bigger physically. I don't know if this is actually a major issue. There's way too many things this could be. Worst case scenario, it's an enormous swarm of theoretical microdeconstructors preparing to tear apart the very world and everything else too, they've already infected us and gotten into the hotel and everywhere, and we're all going to die. But it's probably not that, unless technology has advanced far beyond what is probably possible while I was gone. Everything visible looks vaguely familiar at least.

Kellensea indicates a large house off down a path, across some kind of moat. A little ruined gun emplacement is just across the moat. There's a couple rows of trees on fenced in hills along the path to the huge house's door.

That's familiar, at very least. Etiri's mansion. Population... about thirty officially, closer to a couple hundred really when I was here, who knows what it's up to now. I mean, single digits, probably. Everyone should have evacuated, but what it was before they did. You know what I mean. Fun fact: Legally, this is adventurer jurisdiction. Means that most of the land... well, not visible from here what with this dome, but outside of this place is tombs for younger adventurers to ransack. I did a lot of that back with my party when were younger and not government operatives yet. Good times, really. Been that way for... centuries, at least. Lots of tombs out here, pretty much all of them hidden.

[Caret]

Cyan ~ Surface

Doof scopes at the landscape around him, wondering what's up with the dome in the air"Oh, so the morally ambiguous scientists who ran this place evacuated because of that huge light-emitting dome in the air?"

Doof asks. "I wonder what kind of schemes the scientists here were brewing up, because I certainly wasn't planning a Dome in the Sky Inator at any point in my career in evillogy!"

[Cassie]

Hotel

Moona takes quick notice at Kennifer.

"U-uh...hello? Are you okay?"

[Florien]

Cyan: Surface

Well, last time I was here, it was a general-purpose facility outside guild control. Supposed to be the big counter to Blackrock, the guild facility. Less in the way of restrictions on research, less of a publish-or-perish climate, and less Zezezulix with her claws in everything. Of course, that didn't work out so great. Made a lot of enemies that way, so they needed better combat spells and equipment to repulse them, which led to more damaging accidents because there was no oversight or restrictions. The lack of a publish-or-perish thing was a good idea though... But the point is, who knows what they were doing? It's general-purpose! Who knows if this is even RELATED to what they're doing! Could be a guild thing. Could be a government crackdown. Could be a joint operation. Could be this place was torn from the very ground and hurled into a different plane of existence!

Kellensea seems weirdly excited at the prospect of "torn from the very ground and hurled into a different plane of existence".

Anyway, it's possible. Or maybe they evacuated because of something else and this is part of their defense system. Completely aside from that, they've left their stuff unattended, and this is the part where we take the free stuff they've left unattended and use it to further our own goals!

She runs off towards the mansion at full tilt, crossing the river/moat thing, then suddenly diverts rightwards and runs towards the ruined gun platform instead, clambering in through the hole in the wall. It's not entirely clear why she did that.

[SmilyCube112]

Hotel/Indigo Portal

Leone decides it'd be a good idea to go through the Indigo portal to check out the VR lab, and Bakugo just follows her through it. The three of them look deeper into the facility, with Leone eventually finding the main servers one floor down, in the basement, so she brings the other two there.
"Why the FUCK did you bring us here?!"
"I thought that this might be a good way to find out who owns this place, as well as who made all this technology."
"She haes a guid point, yit kin ony o' us actually search thae blasted newfanglt contraptions?"
"Then find someone who can, shit-for-brains!"

With that, Leone decides to head back to the hotel and asks those in Moona's group if any of them are good with technology.

---

Complex Exterior

Moon was just reeling from all that, and Calli was relieved nothing else really happened with the cube. But, they did listen to Glasya, and decided to stay with the feline and their friend for the time being.

[Caret]

Cyan ~ Surface
"Hey, you're in the same ballpark as I am!" Doof says. "This place appears to be abandoned, and that makes the perfect place for me to grab their belongings and use them for inator parts which equates to a greater output of new inator, which means I'll be back in business in no tine! IT'S TIME TO RANSACK THIS ABANDONED PLACE!"

Excited, Doof charges into the house in search of parts suitable for complex machines.

[Florien]

Cyan: The Artillery Bastion Storage.

NO WAIT...

Doof runs right between the two botanical islands and narrowly avoids getting shot by an unseen attacker by sheer luck, the bullet striking the ground nearby. Apparently Kellensea forgot to give a reason why she veered off suddenly like that.

Second Hostile confirmed. Light Equipment, Possible Spellcaster. Rearming.

GET IN HERE! QUICKLY! THEY'RE IN DEFENSIVE POSITIONS! DON'T GO IN THERE!

Primary Hostile active. Under Flagpole. No Line of Sight.

Kellensea makes no move to get out and save Doof from the unseen attacker, but does strongly encourage him to come to where she is, even if that involves running back past the botanical islands and not into the house proper. She quickly ducks back into the ruin before the attacker can get a clear shot at her.

[wingedcatgirl]

Cyan - Surface
"Whoa! Slow down, Doof!"

Vivi Elakha uses

RescueInstantly draws target party member to your side.

.

Vivi, who has been keeping her eye on both Kellensea and Doof and is about halfway between the two, does a magic to pull Doof out of the fire he just ran into.

Finch Elakha changes to warrior.

"Is it tank time? I think it's tank time." the boy declares with a bloodthirsty grin, pulling out an axe.

... uses

Defianceit's the tank stance lol

.

[Kennifer]

-Hotel-

"I'm... really not okay at all. You're not here to hurt me, are you? I mean I... I killed... I didn't want to, I promise..."

Kennifer cringes. She's still clutching the side of her head, too.

[Caret]

Cyan ~ ESCAPE!

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA- oh, thanks for the save." Doof says "This place isn't abandoned as originally thought, which means that they know we're here now and judging from their reactions, there are probably OUT FOR OUR HEADS! QUICK! We must get back to the hotel as soon as possible before it's too late! RUN!" Doof immediately dashes back into the complex and starts searching for Deep Storage 2 Lead for the portal leading back.

[Cassie]

Deep In The Complex...

"...Y'know what? Fuck this game! I'm getting outta here! GRAVITY STRIKE!!"

Aside from the other three being taken aback that Klug wanted to get out of this place the most and committing to it, Klug casts a spell that causes the whole Complex to rumble.

Suddenly a portion of the roof collapses.

"...HOLY SHIT! GUYS WE GOT A WAY OUT LETS GO!!!" Hank yells frantically, rapidly climbing up and over the hole, wrecking any and all things that came to stand in his way.

Sweetheart, Piccy, and Klug follow soon after.

"But don't think this'll absolve you of your shit right away, alright?" Sweetheart says to Klug.

---

Exterior

As Glasya explains a lot of the stuff about the God Complex and the murdergame The Turned Tables (which includes their motive for killing Frankie and Shoehorn, their current opinion on the Warden and their interest in TM Awe, the tremor from Klug's Gravity strike hits the group.

"NYAO! What's that!? I've never felt something like that in the God Complex!"

---

Hotel

Moona's face goes dim. "N-no, no. I don't know who you are, but I do know what it feels to have killed."

She takes a look at her scars.

"...don't worry. I'm sure not everyone will be out for your blood for this."

[Kennifer]

-Hotel-

"I had to... if I didn't, it would've been far worse than what ended up happening..." She sounded like she... REALLY didn't want to elaborate on this.

She pulls her hand away from the side of her head. Okay, yeah, that looks like it HAD to be painful. The gash in the side of her head isn't bleeding any more but there's scarring, including what looks like a burn scar.

"I've been in several of those games and... first time I died in one. I was... okay with being executed. Didn't want to live with what I did. And now I'm back here, and..."

Kennifer tries not to start sobbing again.

"...why are there portals now, they remind me of the fucking game in Siberia and I don't like them..."

[SmilyCube112]

Complex

Moon and Calli also feel that strike, and are now curious as to what had happened. Moon takes another look inside to see the damage caused to the place, so she comes back up to report this to those on the rooftop.

---

Indigo Portal - Server Room

Angel, for the time being, has stuck some barriers around the server, and also around Bakugo, because he tried blowing up the servers. Thanks to the barriers, the servers took no damage from the blasts.

---

Hotel

Leone is back here, looking for those who are good with technology.

[Florien]

Cyan: Under Fire Above Ground

Two more targets. No uniform between them. It's a party. Tell my husband I love him if I don't make it back.

Kellensea groans as Doof runs out of the building and back into the complex.

Ugh. NO! Don't run back! We can... oh well, that's him gone. We'll find him later. Maybe.

Possible Spellcaster Retreating.

While it's not quite possible to determine the direction of the radio-voiced person by the sound alone, the next shot, fired at Finch, (which hits but doesn't deal significant damage due to the whole "ready to tank" thing) gives away the attacker. They're up in one of the trees, and wearing some kind of full-body camouflage, with artificial leaves almost matching the tree attached to a uniform almost the same color as the tree trunk. They're holding some kind of weird firearm with a bunch of levers on the side.

Hit. Target Still Standing. Rearming.

Kellensea swings out, a crossbow she brought in hand, and fires a bolt. It misses the attacker and embeds in the tree trunk with a "chok".

Fire returned. Get ready.

[Caret]

Cyan ~ Back To The Hotel
After minutes of panicked searching throughout the complex, Doofenshmirtz finally makes it back to Deep Storage 2 Lead, and
"Phew, I almost thought I was a goner for a moment there! YOU CAN'T STOP ME FROM LEAVING YOUR STUPID DIMENSION, SUCKERS!" Doof boasts, before throwing himself into the cyan portal...

Hotel ~ Outside
...and back into here. "Woo! I'M ALIVE! WOOT WOOT!" says Doof. "That was not one of my greatest moments, but hey, I made it out of that weird base, at least!"

Meanwhile, Bow can be seen running out of the yellow portal... soaking wet, with her cape wrapped tightly around her. "S-so... I just got c-caught in a huge r-rainstorm while I was n-napping in the c-clouds, s-so don't go in the y-yellow p-portal right now." You can tell from Bow's voice that she is simply done ft the moment.

[Cassie]

Complex

Suddenly, a large, car-sized arachnid automaton with a human head bursts out of the roof the group stood on, blasting bullets at them.

"NYAO!!!" Glasya quickly jumps the moment the roof beneath them buckles, quickly noticing the arachnid automaton and pouncing on it.

"WATCH OUT!"

---

Hotel

"B-back here? You've been here before or something?"

[Kennifer]

-Hotel-

Kennifer nods, then winces and clutches her head again.

"Yeah. Not from dying, though. I was in... a couple other killing games. I was kind of having an okay time here, well... USUALLY... and then I got thrown into that other game and forced to..."

[Cassie]

"Damn...I've been to one of those before...and I started killing in a frenzy as I desperately tried to get out of that place with that game's stupid incentive. I never made it out." She shows Kennifer her thousands of scalpel scars, the marks now faded, but its lines still clear enough for Kennifer to notice.

[Kennifer]

-Hotel-

"I made it out of the other ones, but not this last one. Can't say I didn't have it coming... I did... kill five people. Well, three people and two sapient mice if we're being specific."

Wincing, she moved her hand again to give Moona a better view of the nasty gash in the side of her head.

"I didn't want to kill. I honestly didn't, and I regret it. And I always will... I just hope I don't end up in another one of those twisted killing games."

[SmilyCube112]

Hotel

Leone notices the people who've returned to the Hotel, and sees them in pain, so walks up to them and says to them "Yikes, you're not hurt too badly, are you? Because I've been looking for someone to have a look at some servers I found with some friends of mine. Don't worry, there's no need to worry about fighting anyone or anything - Just taking a look at some technology."