Set considered trying to weave through the scrum but dismissed it. If it failed, it would have become dangerously entangled with Bravo. So, it continued firing at the dull-witted robots.
Cursing his poor aim, Krizen tries once more!
With effort from Krizen and Soundbyte, one of the robots teeters and falls, splashing into the shallow, scummy water.
The other maintains it's single-minded assault, slamming a metallic fist into Bravo for 5 damage!
"GAH! Gonna feel that one in the morning," Bravo says as he fires again.
"Senseless, unaware, lackwits... Here are this one's credentials!" BLAM!
Heartened by his success, Krizen fires wildly (in a focused manner) at the oncoming robot.
Though invogorated by his intial success with the iyher machine, his attempt to meet the other in combat prooves margibay less effective.
In the saddest promotional reel ever, only Bravo manages to get a hit on the robot, but even that doesn’t do too much.
The robot seems to have combat prowess similar to the rest of the party, and swings a bit wide of Bravo.
Bravo narrows his eyes and fires again.
"I am NOT graceful today."
Soundbyte looks down at his hands, cocking his head to the side as he analysizes his performance.
"Would you like to try again?" He hefts his staff, and makes to jab it center mass towards the machine.
"DEACTIVATE YOU BAG OF BOLTS!!!" Set begins to rant, gesticulating wildly with its arms before firing off a seemingly random shot.
Krizen gives up on aiming carefully, closes his eyes, and points his nanite thrower in the direction he hopes the robot is in.
Though SET and Krizen seem to be as accurate as always, Bravo and Soundbyte manage to end this comedy of errors, with Soundbyte scoring the killing blow on the robot.
It falls, and the room is quiet again.
The SRO taps his staff onto the ground, harmless sparks coming loose from it's glowing pattern if circuitry. He regards the fallen machines
with what may've been remorse. "Game over."
Set glances down at the pistol in its hand, at the now harmless robots, then at the pistol again as the iris of its ocular sensor spirals open and shut. "The malfunctions of this environment are infecting everything..." It then shrugged, reloaded the pistol, and proceeded to search the fallen robots and environment for anything that might be useful.
Krizen eyes his nanite thrower, then holds it out grip-first to Soundbyte. "Soundbyte, could you check and see if anything is malfunctioning on this thing?" In a stage whisper he adds, "I would ask S.E.T., but their shots are as bad as mine!"
Bravo sighs as the fight ends.
"That could have gone worse."
The SRO takes the weapon in hand, turning it over while humming mechanically, analytically. "It appears to run on some form of electricity."
In order to satisfy the Goscow, he performs a small prayer in order to bless the weapon in some small, perhaps admittedly insignificant way.
"That could have gone worse."
"Indeed," replied SET. "If we're going to do badly, let us excel at it."
The SRO continued to search the room. If it found nothing, it proceeded to examine the doors.
Bravo lets out a small "Heh" at S.E.T.'s reply. That was actually pretty funny. He joins them in searching the room.
"I'm just glad my mom wasn't here to see this," Bravo comments as they look. "She'd have some choice words to say about my technique...Let's just say I had experience with drill-sergeants long before I even got to Basic."
The room is generally uninteresting, with nothing of value in the murky water covering part of it.
The door is locked, though a small keypad sits next to it which may provide access.
Soundbyte steps closer to the door, placing a hand against it and allowing his sensitive tactile sensors to compile a breath of data. Perhaps to detect movement on the other side, perhaps to notice structural oddities that may indicate the presence of a trap.
Bravo joins Soundbyte in tactical recon.
The door seems untrapped, though there seems to be no movement or noise on the other side.
Bravo, sensing no movement, opens the door and points his gun and flashlight inside.
Set takes a position on the opposite side the door, pistol at the ready.
:-p
If the door resists Bravo's efforts to open it, Set will look into circumventing the lock.
Bravo has no luck with opening it, but with a bit of technical skill from SET the door slides open.
Three large databanks sit inside the room, though a large screen sits in the middle of the central databank.
"Well, Cap? Kriz? Work your magic," Bravo says, keeping his light trained on the screen.
The shorter SRO dipped its head in a nod and gestured towards the central databank, "Krizen, take the first crack. Just watch out for more corrupted data."
Krizen cracks his knuckles and nods. "I can get this... " He sets to, fingers flying.
With a big of finagling, SET and Krizen are able to open the terminal, and with a bit of translation manage to find the command the end the lockdown.
The distant sound of the warning klaxon stops, and the facility is silent for a moment until the ghost appears from out of nowhere. It's muttering and twitching has stopped, and it stares at the party.
It's voice is vague and barely audible as it says,
With the facility lockdown ended, it doors to Octis are ready to be opened.
Bravo visibly relaxes and lowers his weapon when the ghost appears and thanks them.
"Um, you're welcome. May Pharasma's judgment for you be gentle and all that."
Then he turns to the others.
"Well, that's ONE problem solved."
Set stares at the spot occupied by the ghost, now empty once more. I wonder if I will make a ghost... When Bravo speaks, it jerks out of its reverie, focuses on the soldier for a few seconds, then adds, "This one supposes we should return to the corridor with the tentacles. Unless any of you need to rest or reload?"
"Doing that now, Cap," Bravo says as he reloads his gun. "Should probably assemble another grenade just in case. I think there's enough here that I could rig up an incendiary."
He collects the bits of junk and one of the dead robots' power cores, builds it into a crude grenade and loads it into his gun's launcher.
"Even with all the water down here, when this thing blows the heat should cook the Octis good, if we do end up fighting it."
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The SRO nodded. "Fires in nautical or sealed environments can be extremely hazardous for those who require oxygen, but if you think it wise, 'kill it with fire' has always been a reliable extermination protocol for dangerous -- or merely undesirable -- biologicals." Its oculus cycled once. "So this one has been told..."
After visually surveying the status of the other members of the party and checking its own weaponry, Set stated, "This one will scout a short distance ahead and will message with any new hazards."
As it moved through the abandoned science station, Set began to quietly hum to itself:
We are two mariners
Our ships' sole survivors
In this belly of a whale
Its ribs are ceiling beams
Its guts are carpeting
I guess we have some time to kill
We are two mariners
Our ships' sole survivors
In this belly of a whale
Its ribs are ceiling beams
Its guts are carpeting
I guess we have some time to kill
You may not remember me
I was a child of three
And you, a lad of eighteen
But I remember you
And I will relay to you
How our histories interweave
At the time you were
A rake and a roustabout
Spending all your money
On the whores and hounds
Oh
You had a charming air
All cheap and debonair
My widowed mother found so sweet
And so she took you in
Her sheets still warm with him
Now filled with filth and foul disease
As time wore on you proved
A debt-ridden drunken mess
Leaving my mother
A poor consumptive wretch
Oh, oh
And then you disappeared
Your gambling arrears
The only thing you left behind
And then the magistrate
Reclaimed our small estate
And my poor mother lost her mind
Then, one day in spring
My dear sweet mother died
But before she did
I took her hand as she, dying, cried
Oh, oh
"Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole
Until he wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling of his grave"
It took me fifteen years
To swallow all my tears
Among the urchins in the street
Until a priory
Took pity and hired me
To keep their vestry nice and neat
But never once in the employ
Of these holy men
Did I ever once turn my mind
From the thought of revenge
Oh, oh
One night I overheard
The prior exchanging words
With a penitent whaler from the sea
The captain of his ship
Who matched you toe to tip
Was known for wanton cruelty
The following day
I shipped to sea with a privateer
And in the whistle of the wind
I could almost hear
Oh, oh
"Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole
Until he wakes up, naked
Clawing at the ceiling of his grave
There is one thing I must say to you
As you sail across the sea
Always, your mother will watch over you
As you avenge this wicked deed"
And then, that fateful night
We had you in our sight
After twenty months at sea
Your starboard flank abeam
I was getting my muskets clean
When came this rumbling from beneath
The ocean shook
The sky went black
And the captain quailed
And before us grew
The angry jaws
Of a giant whale
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Don't know how I survived
The crew all was chewed alive
I must have slipped between his teeth
But, oh, what providence
What divine intelligence
That you should survive as well as me
It gives my heart great joy
To see your eyes fill with fear
So lean in close and I will whisper
The last words you'll hear
Oh, oh
When the spirit was ready to depart for it's final rest, Soundbyte again recited the words hard-coded into his databanks. He may not have been a devotee of the Grave-Maiden, but one must always aim to pay their respects to the dead whenever possible. He finished with the words "Go with peace," tapping his staff to the ground with a small show of celestial light.
His respects paid, he followed behind the organic duo and his fellow SRO with purpose. The time they'd spent down here was nearly at an end, lest they not forget their purpose.
The party sloshes back through the facility, past ruined robots and many, many tendrils. Eventually they reach the door that Octis presumably waits behind.
Bravo takes point, waiting for S.E.T.'s okay before opening the door.
Krizen shivers at the sight of the ghost, and when it thanks them and vanishes, he shudders to himself. "Unnatural. But maybe he's finally gone?" Squaring his shoulders as much as his slight frame allows, he fingers the grip of his nanite thrower. "I am ready. Let's kill whatever we need to with whatever we need to, and get out of this underwater grave!"
Soundbyte holds his staff aloft with a gentle glow, ready to summon forth magic in the likely event of a violent confrontation. "Ready and willing."
With the others ready and the door before them, Set takes a position of cover at the side of the door before attempting to open it.
[ooc]In the event a roll is needed to open the door.[/dice]
The bars retract, and through the dim, flickering lights a macabre sight can be seen. Desiccated bodies lie strewn on the ground, improbably preserved yet riddled with Octis' tendrils. They're arrayed around a door to the right of the entrance, long-ruined rifles still clutched in bony fingers.
The unease that's permeated the base becomes almost a physical feeling, and a murmur that sounds like an approximate of speech starts to resonate in the minds (or processing units) of the party.
The words feel...wrong. Alien. Unbelievably so.
The door beckons.
Octis waits. Octis hungers.
"Well, skôr," Bravo says matter-of-factly. He begins cautiously approaching the door, waiting for one of the tendrils to jump up and try to grab him.
"Bow before your god..."
"To be proselytized in such a fashion is incredibly rude and inappropriate. This one already worships a deity. She promises huge booty..." Its iris closed and open again, "This one is afraid this will end with violence." A pause. "Good."
It then attempted to enter the room stealthily so as to obtain a tactical advantage in what was surely a looming fight of epic proportions. Can one kill a god?