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Aeon - The Odyssey


Phoenix
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Turn 5

Movement Phase

"Berk here," the voice came through on all the group's comms, "You're doing great, and I have news. Our forces have seized control of Destin's sensor network. Not only are the Soldaat's about to go blind, but we can now track each and every last one of them on radar. We're forwarding the data to you now."

Hitomi saw a few more groups of Soldaats show up on the feed. There were plenty of them left, but nothing they hadn't dealt with already. "We've got this."

"The Soldaats will switch back to their own sensor suites after a few moments, so use this opportunity to flank them. This is the final stretch, Odyssey. Destroy them all and free Destin Colony."

Destin Colony Sensor Network Secured: All enemy locations have been revealed.

Enemy Forces Recovering from Sensor Suite Disconnect: All allied units now have a minimum of 20 MOV (total) for 1 turn.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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"Hey, Gramguy," Hitomi tried to reach GramSlam over the team's comms. He was so far ahead of the main two groups at this point. Naturally, she was a little worried. "Be careful. You're really out there and your armors all full of holes ..."

"It's fine, Bullet, the Soldaats are blind right now. Now's the perfect time to swoop in and take them all out."

They had about ... fifteen seconds tops before the soldaats all switched back to their own equipment and reoriented themselves. Then he'd just be surrounded ... and that buster sword of his wasn't doing much against their shields. "Stop being a lone wolf! This is a team effort," Hitomi huffed at him.

"Tell that to Keizerin and Slaughter girl. They're all over the place."

"Yeah, but ... No, not doing this. Just don't get shot down, please." No point in pointing out that Keizerin and May13Slaughter were taking out enemies quickly instead of trading blows with them and barely making any headway.

The Moves

Mewlanie right 8, down 5

Fire Miko attempts a Self Recovery and succeeds! (HP 77/330)

Fire Miko: Finally ...

Mewlanie: Oh, Karina, you are still alive~

Fire Miko: Of course I am! I'm not about to choke here!

Mewlanie: Très bien! Keep up ze good work tanking.

Fire Miko: I ... I won't be taking any more hits if I can help it! >.>

Reinstall moves right 16, down 1, right 3

Sable up 1, right 4, up 1

Fire Miko transforms (-4 AUX) to plane mode and moves down 1, right 15

May13 down 10

Keizerin moves right 12, up 1

Aska moves right 1

BK moves right 9

BB moves right 10, down 6, right 1

GramSlam moves down 1, right 6, down 5, right 8

Aliens moves right 5, up 4, right 11

Flake moves right 5, up 2, right 9

SS moves down 3, right 10

SleepyBot moves up 3, right 7

Sicarius right 4, up 1

Ocelot moves right 3, up 3, right 2, up 1

Motherloader moves right 10

Allied Battle Phase

Edited by Phoenix
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  • 2 weeks later...

[Warning. System breach detected. Analyzing ...]

"Hm? What's this?" Berk seemed like he was aware of the real-life warning signs going off in Hitomi's--and everyone else's cockpits. How positively meta ... "Odyssey, do you copy? Something's wrong. A new signature has just- ... It- ... eared out of nowh- ...! Wha- ... this?!"

"Oh dear." Hitomi didn't know what to think, but the Soldaats were starting to gather their wits again. They were running out of time to finish them off the easy way. "Did anyone else catch that?" What could have breached the system?

"What's with the warning?" GramSlam barked over the comms, "You can't just hack an arcade system out of nowhere ..."

[Analysis complete. Class A Rogue AI identified. Shutting down all interfaces to protect system and user data.]

"Ah, we're done," SleepyBot sighed.

"Whoa! She said class A! That's CRAZY!" Motherloader tried to regroup with the others, even as the simulation began to break down visually. That was the strange thing. The simulation wasn't simply going dark like one would expect in an emergency shutdown. Motherloader did have a point, though. A class A Rogue AI was positively bonkers in a situation like this. Class D at the most would make sense. Class As were so powerful that they were used to hack warships in actual combat. Having one show up to ruin an arcade game was just nuts. Kind of a rough day for Stratus ... and why hadn't the system shut down proper yet?

[Error. System control lost. Please disconnect manually and contact the administrator if- ... ou hav- ... ny qu- ... tion- ...]

"Everyone turn your phones and other crap off right now!" Serval Sage tried to get a warning out, figuring that like any old virus, the Rogue AI would use this opportunity to propagate as far and wide as it could.

Amidst all the 'crazy' happening around them, a single figure in the sky above Destin's bullet and crater-ridden roads slowly descended. A haze of 'dark plasma' that glowed a noxious violet hue enveloped them, making what must have been a figura or G-frame look more like an evil spirit ...

Mission Over

... but the war was just beginning ...

[All PCs + 1,200 XP]

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"Eh? Eh, eh ehhhh!?" Why was the game breaking now? She was doing so well! Barely any damage taken, kills aplenty, staying ahead of the group to keep the other units safe... What the heck... Wait, class A? "Quoi!?" Melanie yanked her phone out of her pocket and panicked turning it off, hoping nothing had happened to it. She had way too much data in that thing... She did keep her stream running, the worst it could get from there was her login password, and that could... Hopefully be changed later.

That aside, what was going on? She turned her machine's camera towards the... Blob of, purple, evil data, focusing her camera on it. "Ehhh... 'I-Itomi? What eez 'appening?" She didn't want to disengage things just yet, this was just too interesting, and imagine the views! If anyone in her stream had half a brain, they'd clip this, and it'd help her channel immensely.

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Next up would be... what... was that? Staring up at the anomaly was enough for Keizerin to fade into the background of Monika's mind, leaving only her more meek, normal self in her place. Something about a Class A rogue? But that was... there was no way something like that would show up here... could it? It certainly looked real, but... why? How? Instinctively checking her phone... she had turned it off when she entered the sim, and off it remained. Logging off from the sim took only a few moments, but it felt like an eternity, her fingers shaking as she moved through the menu, staring up at the world glitching around her until the simulated cockpit stopped displaying the landscape of Destin and powered down. Laying back against the sim's chair, Monika didn't stir for a few moments.

"What just... what just happened?"

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Tears pricked Karina's eyes. She was still recovering from the blow to her pride after Mewlanie streamed her machine crashing to the ground after a soldaat caught her off-guard, but now that she got the machine out of critical mode... Karina was going to try her hardest to redeem herself, but stayed on the defensive while the east side advanced --Keizerin didn't seem to need her help, at least--.

Hearing the uncanny, cut-off warning from their AI commander was creepy enough to pull Karina out of the game. A class-A was something you heard of in war documentaries, not in a video game. "God--" Karina quickly turned off her personal device, unwilling to let that thing get her information, but stared... why was Mewlanie's figure not flashing out of existence like everybody else. "Mew! Get out of here, show's cancelled." This was horrible, ugh! Karina wasn't going to stay much longer with that hacked figura there --she prized her sanity and safety--. Now, hopefully Mewlanie would have received the voice warning and logged off, because Karina wasn't staying much longer.

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Mewlanie's landing was transfixing Makala enough. Followed by her stream being hijacked, dissipating into a scramble of corrupted graphics.

[Error. System control lost. Please disconnect manually and contact the administrator if-] KRRRRRRRZTZZTZZZ~!

 

"Hoooh, dios mio," Makala released the holodeck's emergency release, sprawling out from the cockpit. Having just narrowed out his Frame being shut down by cannon fodder COMs, he wouldn't let the holodeck become his sarcophagus. Class A? For realies!? I better find Mewlanie first!

Makala shuffled his phone up, finessing the system UI to cut off as many services as he could. Even the possibility of salvaging even his most incriminating data with his layers of proxies & backdoors intact - v-sports betting, hacking tools, '2D' - seemed snatched from him in an instant. Those impregnable safeguards compromised in one breach, as if his scripts were reduced to amateur spaghetti script. However sloppy his Battlenet data would seep out, Batcon might mark the end of his Frame Ops days.

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"I'm out," GramSlam said, barely a split second before his frame winked out of existence. His timing couldn't have been better it seemed, as the nearby soldaats began to twitch and fidget as that same hideous violet aura began to appear around them, as well. All the soldaats were starting to act the same way, possessed ...

"Whoa whoa whoa," Motherloader was immediately put on defense as all the nearby soldaats began firing on him at once. The hail of bullets chipped away at his shield bit by bit, leaving him less and less cover to hide behind. With Sable and Flambre having already logged out, he was alone being forced closer to a second group. That would undoubtedly end in a fortuitous--for the soldaats--pincer maneuver. "What do you think's gonna happen if they beat us?"

"You really wanna find out?" SleepyBot almost laughed. He narrowly avoided the answer to that question, as a sniper's bullet was deflected away from him at the last second by BB.

"Please log out, now," Hitomi pleaded. SleepyBot's machine quietly and humbly vanished after that, leaving just Mewlanie and Serval Sage in her immediate vicinity. Hitomi took the brief moment of calm she had to start switching off her gadgets, though it was unfortunate she couldn't log out first, wanting to make sure no one was left behind or gunned down in the chaos. She wouldn't have any way to communicate with anyone on the outside with the cockpit compromised. She tried not to think about the fact that she was being suspended in said cockpit more than ten meters above the ground floor of the megasim.

"Die you rogue bastard!"

Hitomi sighed at Reinstall's battle cry. "Meanwhile in Crazyville ..."

Reinstall was one of the stubborn ones, trying to fight his way to the descending AI in his frame WildChild, rather than flee. He had a lot of soldaats in his way and nothing in the way of backup, having pushed as far ahead as he had. "Get out of my way! Your new boss just sent our whole game tits up and I'm not having it!" A single shot fired from Serval Sage destroyed the closest soldaat's shield. That was all the cover the ranged support could provide him.

"Gotta go, now. Sorry ..." Serval Sage's frame vanished.

"Just leave this to me," Reinstall hollered as he closed in on the weakened soldaat with his beam blade poised to strike.

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"Eh!? B-But, ze stream--" A heavy blast rocked her machine, as several soldaats, and even a few of the already crumpled piles, began moving towards her, guns hot. "Ah, franchement, je suis désolé mon amis, ze stream c'est finis!" Closing that down, logging out as well, Melanie began to shut down her machine while its armor would still hold. "Ah oui, oui, okay, and... Log out..." Everything went dark, to her moderate dismay, sighing as she popped those custom fit earphones off and held them around her neck. They gently swayed as she flopped back against the pod's chair, confusion at what had happened rather evident on her face.

"I guess... Eet ees time to leave, and figure out what 'as 'appened." Quietly disengaging the pod and getting out of her seat... The first thing she was greeted with as the thing opened was the mob that had formed around it while she'd been playing. "Eh--"

Without much time to react she was yoinked out of the pod and into the throng of people, questions being thrown her way, people grabbing at her ears and tail, Melanie unable to move against it all.

"That was so cool!"
"We love you Mewlanie!"
"What happened in the game!?"
"Is this publicity!?"
"Whoa, her ears are real!"

"Ayoi, s-stop, agh, a-arreter, juste... H... Help!"

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A few moments of laboured breathing later, Monika finally opened her eyes. She was sitting in the sim... everything was fine. Her phone had been turned off since the beginning, she had logged off before anything could have happened... everything would be fine. Slapping her cheeks gently and giving her head a vigourous shake, Monika stepped out of the simulator, just in time to hear a muffled cry for help from the direction of a throng of people... and a recognizable set of ears at the centre. Of course this would happen, wouldn't it? Weighing her options for a moment... she couldn't just leave the poor streamer to her fate. Despite how... pushy Melanie had been, she had meant well, and she certainly didn't deserve to be the victim of such... public molestation. Making her way to the edge of the crowd, Monika tried to make any sort of headway, but to no avail. The wall of undulating flesh was simply too much to push through for the meek and relatively small Monika.

"Please let me- Oh, if you cou- Sto-" Stepping back for a moment, Monika sighed. How could she ever make a dent in this crowd? This wasn't frame ops, she wasn't Keizerin out here... she didn't have that mask to protect her...

'But they already know.' She stopped, her head snapping upwards for just a moment. Melanie had posted that picture, she had called her by her ingame name. If these people were her followers, then surely they had seen that tick. If they saw her and knew she was Keizerin... could she be her, out here? Gritting her teeth and stepping forward with a steely expression, Monika grabbed the shoulder of one of the men on the outskirts, her voice coming out more as a barked order than anything else.

"Get out of my way." Monika announced, loud and clear. As the man turned, a look of recognition crossed his face, and he stepped aside.

'I can do this.'

Onto the next. Path cleared.

'I can do this.'

Another out of the way.

'I can do this!'

She could see Melanie through the crowd now. Not much further, just shove past a few more...

'I CAN DO THIS!'

As Monika finally reached the centre, she reached forward, and firmly grasped Melanie's hand. Giving the streamer a tug, she looked her in the eyes to make sure she knew who was grabbing her.

"Come with me, Melanie."

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Thank goodness, Mewlanie was logging out, and the rest were following... Karina had no business being there anymore either. "Fire Miko out." And as quickly as her machine blinked out of the virtual space, Karina made sure she had logged out properly, not wanting to jeopardize her account. After all was made sure, she let out a sigh.

That was such a poor showing... ugh. Hopefully they'd redo the test, or she'd have no chance in being selected, not as she saw it... Mewlanie was probably in too, to add to her shame. It shouldn't have been that hard. Crestfallen, Karina opened and hopped off of her pod, ready to walk off if BB and the Odyssey team took too long. Well, ready until she noticed the obvious, head-turning commotion by Mewlanie's pod.

'The tail is real too!'
'Whoa, is that Keizerin?'
'It is! I can't believe it!'

Oi... these people did not seem to realize how awkward things got, the game got hacked by something really serious midway --too serious for a game--, this really wasn't the place or time."Hey! Let them go, show's over!" She yelled at the back of the crowd. A cry that was easily ignored.

Well then, if it was going to be this way...

Moments later, a thud could be heard at the back of the crowd. Fans and curious onlookers dispersed, stepping back from the sudden incident. Some poor tall guy had fallen to the floor, and brought down some people in his vicinity in a brief domino effect. "SHOW'S OVER." Karina repeated, angrier than before. She had just... jump kicked the tallest target she could find, quickly whisking the crowd's attention.

'Bitch, are you insane--'

"There's been a hacking attempt here! Turn your phones off and get out! This isn't the time for photographs or autographs or whatever. Scram! Shoo! Everything will resume at a later time." Or so Karina hoped, but telling this would probably conform some of them for the moment ..and it was working, really. Nobody wanted to deal with a psycho jump-kicking girl. The way to Mewlanie and Keizerin was much clearer now. "Come on, let's get out of this joint. See if BB is okay." She walked over to them. Karina's original plan was just to scram... Might as well check on the others now, since she already went through the effort.

Edited by Xinnidy
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"H-Help, help... Juste, ahhh..." Too many people, she'd been worried about this, but to think it would actually happen? This is why she stayed in her room! Cons were stupid, this was such a mistake... Someone grabbed her hand and started tugging, Melanie trying to pull herself away, until she caught a glimpse of who it was. "M-Monika!" They weren't moving very far, but... Maybe she could get her out of here? It was... Really tight, but... Just, maybe...

And then the crowd fell away, as someone toppled over, giving the two their chance to get out. Karina had just... Well, she'd done something, Melanie pushing herself away from everyone, hiding behind the other girls. "S... Sank you, bose..."

Edited by SnakeMomMelissa
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She had managed to get a hold of Melanie, things were going to be fine... until the crowd closed around them again, the apparently surprise having worn off, leaving Monika just as much an object to be examined as Melanie.

'I... can't do this...' She realized, freezing on the spot. Eventually... something happened, but Monika wasn't quite sure what. Melanie must have pulled her out of the crowd somehow, if only because she suddenly felt less claustrophobic, but by the time they had cleared the crowd, Monika was reduced to little more than a blank stare into space and a gently quaking body.

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“Target destroyed,” the Megasim’s AI cheered as the Thunderbird impaled another Soldaat mook.  It was a rough start at first, but once Aska got used to the Megasim’s controls and setup, things quickly started falling into place.  “Alright, we’re almost do-“ Aska couldn’t even finish his sentence before a siren blared inside the Megasim.

Two warning lights flashed on the interface.  One indicated that there was a security breach.  Aska didn’t have time to look at the second one before he heard sounds of gunfire and felt a sudden lurch from the Megasim, indicating that he’d been hit.  “Wait, wha-?”  A quick view on one of the cameras told him he all he needed to know about the second warning: the Soldaat he had just finished off had gotten back up, fully restored and attacking; as well as a shrouded, demon-like frame descending from above.  Aska checked the warning again.  Class A Rogue AI?  Show’s cancelled then.  Sage’s and Hitomi’s warnings rang loud and clear, but the only thing between safely logging out was the one zombified Soldaat advancing towards him. 

The Thunderbird immediately returned fire with its missiles, landing a direct hit on the possessed Soldaat’s leg joints; incapacitating it.  Once the corrupted frame stopped moving, the Thunderbird retreated further south far away from the action and watched anxiously as the logout timer counted down, praying it would log him out before the evil frame recovered.  ”Thunderbird, logging out now,” Aska quickly exclaimed as the timer ticked down.  5…4…3…2…1…

Back in the Megasim, Aska retrieved his player data from the console and quickly checked his electronics.  Thankfully, all of them had been turned off before the game started.  That was way too close.  He let out a long sigh of relief as he sat in the cockpit, watching the outside camera.  There was a lot of commotion as he noticed crowds surrounding his Megasim, Hitomi’s Megasim and….one of the other pods?  He still needed a moment to collect himself before he left; he was not ready to leave the cockpit just yet after that…..disaster.  A class A Rogue AI was not something that should be messed with and this incident will most likely hit the evening news.  He could almost picture how cumbersome the post trip meeting was going to be just trying to explain this mess.  There is no way I'm going to be ready for that.

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Motherloader's frame vanished next, and it was at about the time the shadowy figure touched down on the top of an estate building. Hitomi's frame managed to resolve what machine was actually being piloted by then, as well. Unfortunately, Reinstall continued up to the squad of soldaats, committing to a frontal assault with just the beam blade ... "So even a Bosshog got hacked ..." Not surprising in the slightest, but it didn't bode well for the rest of them.

"Damn! Reinstall, get out of there! You're gonna get wrecked!"

That was Flake, wasn't it? Hitomi was surprised he'd stuck around this long ...

"No! We take down that lead unit, we can help Stratus' AIs kick this bastard out of the system!"

"... what?"

No, Hitomi knew that was all wrong. "There is no lead unit! That's a hacked bosshog! It's not the AI!" She didn't know if her pleading would get through to him, but she had to try. She couldn't possibly help him in any other way from this far back.

Sure enough, after Reinstall brought down the shieldless soldaat, his own machine was enveloped by that same violet malevolence. "Uh ... help?! Need backup, guys! They're trying to hack me now, too!"

"It's already got you, you idiot! ... damn!" Flake logged out and promptly vanished.

"Flake indeed ... it's all in the name, I swear ... BB! Get over here and help! All my stuff's going haywire! Controls aren't responding!"

"Just kick the door open and get out of there! Hope they cut the power soon," Aliens belted out. He quickly logged off too, not wanting to be the next victim.

[There it is, the signature I was searching for.]

"Signature? Let me go, you son of a glitch!"

What now? Just log out, leaving Reinstall, a fellow Frame Ops player, to this crazy AI ... or stay here and inevitably have her frame hacked right along with his? Hitomi couldn't move. This was the first time she'd ever been confronted with such a terrible dilemma ...

[Now to narrow down your location ...]

Edited by Phoenix
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With the shouts happening, and most of all, her visual mods were not acting proper(Helena had sensitive eyes for colourful explosions) Helena smelled a rat and logged out immediately. She had played in enough cheap shoddier gaming centres to know when to make a retreat and douse her digital signatures when hackers were involved. Though today was markedly scarrier.

 

Kicking her door open, the petite dusky skinned girl scanned for Hitomi. It was useless being part of the tryouts and not being in Odyssey's leader's sight for the day at least. But sadly Hitomi did not standout. Someone else seemingly close to her however did.

 

A shy girl, it was only after they escaped the crowd did Helena stood by the side of the outstanding Melanie, a few inches shorter than the catgirl. Flashing a toothy grin as she addressed the trio without really gauging their mental states, "Rough day today girls? I was Crimson Meteor in the tryouts...I like wingwomans who appreciate shooting from a safe distance...or can zoom to safety fast."

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Megasim exited, Makala meandered about his immediate area, registering himself back down from Destin - away from his dream match beleaguered amongst Odyssey. Even Mewlanie. Damnit, Mewls' ID signature better have traces of pain au chocolat. Cuz I'm tellin' you this is pain is plain ass spewin' choc-o-LOOOOTS!

Hhuph, dem doplhin feromones're still tinglin', "Needless to say, if a Class A had infiltrated Battlenet's netcode, festering across the rest of Batcon's gonna be churos from chorizos!" Got unwashed swaths of sweaty, pimple-flecked brainlets stampeding for the arcade exit.

Makala's initiative took focus: find the nearest exit, regroup with Odyssey. "Hitomi or Felix prolly want to recoup their losses & plan with us off-site. Where else but the café?"

The stream monitors & holo displays remained transfixed within FO - perhaps a measure of security across the Net for viewers at home. It was a matter of time until the ASync feeds would be compromised. Just mattered who would cut it before the other.

CC suuuure hasn't changed up with the times, No intercom emergency announcements, direct device notifications, evacuation plans. Even security seemed disjointed among the crowd flowing away & back into itself like a rip current. Gotta find the others, how far has this gone? I just wanted to play holo & deck frames! And I'm all outta tail to catch.

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"Oui... Rough day..." The crowd had slowly dispersed, not wanting to hang around a spitfire like Karina, not with the nonsense that was going on. They were okay, then... For now... But, the mess was still happening! What was this AI nonsense? "Erm, w-we should, all 'ead somewhere we can meet up wis 'Itomi and Linus... Ze café? Per'aps?" It'd probably be packed with the panicking masses, but it was better than nothing.

"Monika?" A glance at the red head told Melanie something was wrong, but she didn't quite know what. "'Allo? Mon ami? We are fine now... We should get moving." Taking her hand and giving her a little tug, she hoped the girl would snap back to reality. She wasn't weak, but dragging a whole body along wasn't ideal...

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Linus had been working hard to balance on contributing to the scenario himself, as well as taking close note of the performance of the individual candidates. Over time, the former suffered somewhat for the latter. From the beginning, he'd had a bit of a reluctance about taking on Karina, selfish reasons though they might be, and the shakey performance didn't really do much to sell him on her skills either. The Keizerin was as dominant as had been advertised, and even with her penchant for entertaining, the catgirl had actually come through. Dr Flambre went up in flames... come to think of it, Fire Miko... Flambre... was it a coincidence? Had to be just bad luck, after all Crimson Meteor wasn't too far off as far as naming schemes, and had no real issues in performance. Done quite well, actually. What about the Bl... oh, shit.  The bit of lull he'd fallen into, mentally cataloguing results as the scenario had been winding to a close, was abruptly shattered by dire warnings from the ordinarily disinterested system interface.

Most of their tryout members began quickly and sensibly manually logging out, as the system had instructed, but Linus wasn't cutting connection until Hitomi at least was already on her way, and for the moment Hitomi was playing mother hen to the few that remained. Punching the engines and barrelling Sicarius toward BB, for all the nebulous good that would do him, he watched with frustration her efforts to talk down Reinstall.

No, this is stupid, time to put the foot down. "Goddammit man, if you don't log out now, you're off the team period!" Whether there was even a shot of him at this point, with this much insubordination... let the man have some hope and maybe he'd follow orders, take away all hope, and you're just gambling with his life at that point. "Hitomi, we gotta go now!" Half of him thought that just logging himself out and then pulling the plug would've been better, but he didn't want to damage the megasim. Didn't have the bankroll for that, no. Getting her to do it willingly was still the play here.

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"Oh! Umm... right..." Monika replied shyly, snapping out of her stupor at Melanie's prodding... the crowd had dispersed, and they needed to discuss, well... this whole state of affairs. A Class A rogue AI? What sort of nonsense was that...? Why would something like that be here?

"The cafe... sounds fine. Actually... can you come with me for a moment...?" Monika began in autopilot, before her worries caught up with her. Why had she done that? Everything should have pointed to it going awry... so why? She didn't know... it didn't make much sense. Shaking where she stood, Monika gave Melanie a hopeful look, as she eyed the nearby washrooms, her hand quivering against the streamer's. Hopefully she'd oblige her, if not... well, she'd have to go alone. She needed to get a moment away from all of this.

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Whether it was the faint blue of the cockpit suddenly becoming all red, or Linus' voice cutting through the chaos, Hitomi quickly snapped out of her stupor. She was out of time now, and couldn't protect Reinstall no matter what she did. "Urgh, I took too long ..." Hoping she wouldn't doom Linus as well by not finding a way to disconnect, she started desperately reaching for the ejection handle between her legs. There was no frame to eject out of in the real world, of course, but she hoped it would do something now that the UI was going berserk.

"Come on for cryin' out loud, we can't just let this thing beat us!" As much as Reinstall wanted to keep struggling, his controls were already under the rogue AI's control. He was surprised that Hitomi managed to eject right before Bronze Bullet was engulfed. He tried to 'eject' as well, but it was too late for that. "... so what now ... am I just screwed?"

[Only one link left.] The hijacked system's voice could be heard in both Linus' and Reinstall's cockpits.

"What link?! Start making sense!"

[Behave yourself, now.]

"AUGH-!!!" Reinstall's comms suddenly cut out amid some kind of loud popping sound, but his frame was left standing, bathed in a violet miasma like so many others ...

[Now, don't struggle. You aren't the one I'm searching for, but she is connected to you, Caruso.]

Just as Sicarius began to succumb to the same malevolent aura as all the others ... everything went dark ...


In Megasim #2, the Bronze Bullet manifestation blasted forward and out of view, the system trying to keep Hitomi's cockpit centered from the audience's point of view. It was a few seconds after she ejected that the megasim's systems began to crash. The artificial gravity left along with everything else, leaving the megasim cockpit floating on its own. The cockpit eventually did float down to the ground floor. With artificial gravity below the arcade still functioning normally, there was enough of a 'tug' present to bring the cockpit down after a minute or so. The cockpit itself shut down long before reaching the ground, leaving Hitomi alone in the dark. "... please be okay, Linus."

Before she finished unstrapping herself, the cockpit began to rock and list even further onto its side. Then the door burst open, letting in only a brilliant blue light coming from thin strips arranged in a very familiar pattern. Sitting atop all those lights were a pair of luminescent blue eyes. "This one ...? Hey, are you alright?" ... it was Kirara. Hitomi was beside herself. The Frame Ops celebrity was technically attending Batcon, but Hitomi didn't expect to run into her at all, much less like this. "Power to the entire complex was just manually cut. Everyone should be fine now ..."

"It doesn't sound like it when you say it like that," Hitomi winced, shaking off her harness and accepting Kirara's help out of the now lopsided cockpit. Kirara was normally upbeat and contagiously perky, but right now she seemed close to normal, almost like you'd expect a jaded but experienced employee to react in this situation. Her change in attitude was made all the more bizarre by the fact that much of her outfit was glowing.

"Can you blame me? I hate dealing with these kinds of messes. The servbots got taken over so no one could do anything from here."

"Then who cut the power?" It definitely sounded like this wasn't entirely out of the ordinary for Kirara. Being a celebrity must have been awful sometimes.

"Eupraxia, probably ... not directly," Kirara shook her head to clarify, "She could have contacted an engineer in the area and had them do it. Come on, we need to get outside. You're going to meet up with your friends, right?"

"We should find Linus, first," Hitomi insisted, opening the visor on her helmet to let in some fresh air. That was when she noticed that the only entrance to the megasim that was open was the one way up on the first floor ... that was a long way up.


Aska hadn't gotten out of the battle in any better shape than Hitomi, and was left stranded at the bottom of Megasim #3. At least momentarily. Before long, a pair of drones, humanoid, and a bit lanky, approached the downed cockpit at the center of the simulation chamber, intent on extracting the frame ops player within and getting him to safety.

Throughout the rest of Stratus, gamers and audiences alike were left grasping in the dark for the first few moments, but as more personal gadgets came back online, the darkness retreated, giving everyone as a whole enough visibility to negotiate the crowds and dead arcade machines by. At every entrance drones and servbots were arriving to help guide people out to safety. Some of the drones maneuvered around the crowds in order to reach the occupied megasims and extract the remaining players that were trapped inside them. Others made for the regular machines the occupants hadn't forced their way out of yet. It was a swift response, but the threat that prompted all of this was overwhelming, nothing they could have adequately defended against under the circumstances ...

Edited by Phoenix
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Hotel room, I just wanna go back to the hotel room. Bunting his shoulders, shoving anyone else along his way, the heightened dread of the crowd made it seem like pulling thick branches just to pivot towards the café. The sudden power cut certainly didn't help either. "Damnit, this whole outing was a mistake. Lemme get this Odyssey shi-hwwwaaaaauuh?"

Caught between the frenetic reach of... the Keizerin firebrand, and moi teeny mewieblob? "Oh, you two, we need to... regroup, in the café. For Hitomi."

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"Eh? Quoi? Ze washroom? Er... Why do you need me to go wis you...?" Maybe she was still shaken from all that was going on, and she didn't want to be alone... Admittedly, neither did Melanie, but... This girl was, an adult, no? "Ben lâ... I suppose. Karina, I will 'elp 'er along, you go a'ead wissout us, oui? And--" Oh, who was... Oh. 'Flambre'. Right... Melanie couldn't hide the mild look of disgust that hit him first... trying to soften her expression, to address him. "Mais oui... ben, lâ, Monika needs ma 'elp wis somesing, so, run along, we will catch up après... Okay?" Without another word, Melanie started helping the girl towards the washroom. This still felt weird, but it wasn't like she didn't get it, so here they were...

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"Thank you..." Monika managed sheepishly, as Melanie told the others to go on ahead, and began to lead the pair towards the restrooms. Once they had gotten close to the safe haven away from... all of this, Monika cleared the rest of the way, pulling Melanie behind her until they had entered the washroom, door closing behind them. Rather than enter one of the stalls, however, Monika instead ended up collapsing into Melanie, gently pushing the streamer against the counter in the process. As the first heave came, she began to sob into Melanie's chest.

"Melanie, I- I-..." Nothing doing, it seems. Whatever words those were supposed to be, they weren't coming out just yet.

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"Ah, to the washroom? Okay..." Well... they were supposed to wait at the café now, for Hitomi, but instead of hanging with Mewlanie or Keizerin like she preferred, Karina got stuck with Crimson Meteor and this Flambre guy while the two excused themselves to the restrooms because... reasons. Really just soured the whole mood after she went and pulled that maneuver to get the crowd to disperse --Keizerin didn't even thank or look at her!--. "Whatever, fuck them..." Karina mumbled under her breath.

"So do you guys wanna wait at the cafe? I've half a mind to check on Hitomi right now, I don't trust any of this." Since Crimson Meteor girl was here, best to not treat her like chopped liver, which Karina was feeling quite a bit like at this point. "If you wanna go, I'll meet you there in a bit. If you wanna tail feel free though." And thus Karina began a jog towards Megasim #2, using her own device for illumination... only to realize the nearest entrance was firmly shut down with the power cut. "Ah crap, how do you get in or out of these things without power?" It was time to do some search on the net. Wasn't too hard to get a map.

"First floor?! Ugh." Just her luck, really. "And the elevators should be stopped, so... emergency stairs time." Woo...

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