Illuminating the Past

"Ayyyy! How's it going buddy?" Bee called as he walked down the street towards the convoy.

Nacho the Heracross trundled alongside him, but something in the air had the big bug tensed like an toddler with an iPad in his hands. Every few steps he turned, pausing as he looked down a side street or sniffed the air. Something was off here. The air was too sweet. The sunshine too bright. The plants here didn't call to him with pollen, then whispered siren songs and promises of eternal slumber in rooftop graves. Gravel crunched nearby and he spun around, carapace flashing, but there was nothing.

Big Bee was blissfully unaware of this looming horror and was already helping Orion break into the car. "I don't have my multi-tool, but maybe we can find some sort of Swiss-army-rock?" Bee suggested. "Oh hey Nacho! Don't wander off buddy, we should all stick together until we know the area, okay?"

Nacho stood in a wide stance with his back to Big Bee. He was on guard duty, and wanted to get out of the open as quick as possible. The air was moving strangely; quivering like the pulse of Rock Star right before a solo started.

He backed up a little and- BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM -with desperate speed he used Arm Thrust to smash through the side window on the unmarked car. Was it a military vehicle? Private? A remnant of some ancient escape attempt by an unknown political figure? It didn't matter. All that mattered was that they could get to the lanyard now.

"Thanks buddy!" Big Bee said, reaching in to grab it. He grasped the item and yanked, but his shirt got caught on the broken window and as he pulled back it snagged, tearing and then gashing his arm. "Oh dammit that smarts!" Bee said, jamming his hand against the cut. Blood flowed differently in game, but even on Reduced the throb of pain and the scent of iron were present. "This place is already more dangerous than the Steppes!" Bee joked, dropping the stained lanyard into Orion's hand. "Gimme back Yamna, amirite?"

The gang filed in, Bee and his Beetle, Foxy flying solo for the moment.  Orion found himself releasing the breath he didn't realize he was holding.

"Your wish is my command there Bee."  He would reach into his pocket and throw out a ball, unleashing Argos the Yanma.  The floating drone like fly quickly scanned the surroundings, homing in Foxy as she worked on dressing Bee's arm.  It would hover nearby, vibrating it's wings slightly.

"Activating Healing Protocols."

Droning slightly, the fly's wings began to resonate in a strange harmony healing Bee in the mystical ways of game mechanics.  When it was done, it's emotionless eyes turned to Orion.  

"Scout around and see if you can find any electric locks that are still working."  Orion would command, motioning to the Lanyard.  "Something that this would go to." The fly let out an affirmative tone before wordlessly and soundlessly gliding off into the city district to explore.  Orion found himself dwelling on Foxy's words, his gaze dancing over the front vehicle carefully.  "I'm not sure if they were trying to get out, or get somewhere near."  His gaze lifted up and followed the direction they seemed to be trying to go.  "That seems like it goes deeper into the city, not...out?  Either way."

He would pause and turn back towards the two of them, a smile replacing the worried look that had been lurking on his face.  No time for frowns when he was hanging with these clowns.  "Welcome, to the first Bandannadito Brodown of the new town!  Who knows what's about to go down?  Maybe we find a military compound?  Asylum for the mentally unsound?  Some fucked up Dog pound, located underground? The lost, soon to be found!"  

He'd give em both a shoulder pat and a brofist before continuing.  "You guys seen anything else around?"

orioncayge and Big Bee chattered, and M’Foxy kept quiet, through the hug, through the healing, through the rhymes. Theron was walking ahead, towards the quest marker-

And he couldn’t be of much help. She couldn’t just- just ask him questions, like normal. Bee and Orion would think she- something was wrong with her.

Which, uh, something was.

“If north and south exist, things directly perpendicular to them exist, too. They might not have been named or needed before humans, but it existed, with or without us.” She said, only half listening to what Bee was saying.

She kept her gaze up, as they walked, instead of on the road of wasted metal and shattered glass. Theron had skipped ahead, high up by the marker, a speck of darkness against the darkness. “So, we have to get up there, right?” She asked, pointing up to a maze of beams and signs.

“So where do we start…” M’Foxy asked, half to herself, eyes skimming over the surfaces. Taking a breath, M’Foxy drew up her screens, searching- focusing on one of the long vents. She just had to unclip it from the building on one end, and mess with the collision on the other-

“But as years creep to age- there’s a hole in the ark.” She said, the metal swinging down into a ramp, leading up into the precarious pathways. “After y’all.” She said.

"Nice one!" Bee said to M'Foxy as the way forward clanged down in front of them. A bridge was a bridge was a bridge, and they'd need all the bridged that could get if they wanted to get to the other side of this mess. "I mean I don't think they're saying Magenta isn't a thing, right? Because otherwise you could just paint all your clothes with magenta paint and you'd be invisible, right?"

The next marker was down and across , on the other side of a rusted chasm. Bee tilted his head, looking through the smashed remains of multiple buildings. It was like a cluster of skyscrapers had all collapsed at once, slumping together towards the epicenter of an earthquake, or some underground explosion. And now they were heading down into the crater. What had happened here?

Nacho took off behind Argos, buzzing ahead of the group as he scouted paths through the tangled maze. It was much safer to test the weight limit on a rust-eaten girder when you could just fly away if it collapsed.

"So what do you think happened here?" Bee asked, taking a tentative step down into the growing fog. "It's like if they hollowed out a building and then filled it with another building's skeleton. Either of you ever do any urbex? Urban exploration? There was this old hospital in my hometown and my cousin and I went in there one weekend. Scariest thing I've ever done. We ran after after we heard something following us. It was probably just a rat though." He reached the end of the girder and stepped lightly onto a chunky platform protruding from the wall. The cement was slick here, and he tread carefully. The situation reminded him of exploring the water treatment plant in Mistra. He didn't need to ask Orion if he remembered.

"What about you M'Foxy? Ever seen a ghost?"

"I mean, I've done a little bit of Urbex, though I don't know about any spooky hospitals.  Lotta buildings that either never got fully built or got fucked up during the Black Valentine riots out in the edge.  Me and the cousins spent a lot of time dickin around, but its always been in big groups so it was more like a party than anything else."

The gang continued to navigate the dilapidated buildings as they grew closer and closer to whatever Argos had found, the dragonfly hovered impatiently by the door, occasionally letting out the high pitched chirp as if to say "hurry up".  Orion would scan the surroundings, all of this ghost talk putting him slightly on edge. 

"I imagine Bee was talking more like scary spirits or poltergeists, some exorcist shit or conjured creatures.  But you do have a point, there is a reason they call places like this ghostowns..."  

A gust of wind blew by sending a chill down the fighter's spine, his gaze shooting over his shoulder out of sheer instinct.  It felt like something was watching them, but all signs pointed to otherwise.  He'd yet to see anything, not so much a soul save for the gang alongside him.  Either he was paranoid or the phantom prying eyes were pulling out all the stops to prevent perception.  

"Either way this place is fucking creepy.  The city looks well enough, broken down but not entirely rubble.  Something happened that dealt with the people, but didn't flatten everything.  That rules out BIG natural disasters like a meteor, earthquake, fire, flood, et cetera.  Could have been a plague but you'd think you'd see the remains of checkpoints or somethin, the government trying to control it, but so far as I've seen nothing.  It feels like everyone just got...raptured."

His mind vacillated from concern for the city and it's people and reminding himself that this was a game, a work of fiction convincingly coded by a bunch of nerds hopped up on Code Red or Cola clacking away at their computers actively casually cracking away at the line between man and god.  Was this world real?  Was the world his comatose body currently laid in real?  

Was anything real?

He didn't have much more time for this train of thought as the trio closed in on closed doors, a simple card reader poking out of the wall with a flickering red light.  

"Well, which one of yall wants to do the honors?"

M'Foxy followed after orioncayge and Big Bee, looking around at the strange architecture. Strange hallways, stranger ramps- They meant nothing here, to him, but maybe that wasn't the case for a different person- or a different perspective. She shook her head, looking around the column chamber's pathways.

A lot of signs, a lot of options. Theron was quiet, in a way that made M'Foxy a little more uncomfortable. "We have no idea what's in the vats... The crystal garden sounds interesting, but- I-" M'Foxy paused, glancing at the two there, before continuing. "I can get access to their data center through the server room- We'll know what they were working on. And, maybe, why were' here."

Physically, not cosmically.

She glanced over at Orion. "Ooor, we could do the stupid thing, and split up. There's absolutely no way that could go wrong in a dark spooky building, in a video game."