A Game of Gods: Infinities

Cletus sighed and holstered his gun. He was having a hard time believing that a duck and a man in pajamas were having to talk him down.

"Jail. Don't make any alterations to the technology. We don't know how it works."

edited 20th Apr '12 6:53:59 PM by Krautman

...and that's terrible.

"I am not a fool, Cletus."
Jail calmly turned around and went into the castle.

Jack raised an eyebrow.

"Using such creatures as weapons seems unwise at best, given how easily they appear to have escaped and the risk they now pose to us, if as you say, we will now face nests of them. However, we must use whatever means we can to face our imprisonment here. I have only one question to ask: are they intelligent? That is to say, are they aware? Or are they merely animals?"

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. -Lao Tzu

Stranger laughed. "Risk? Fuzzles ain't gunna cause no risk to me, 'sides the nests ain't, too hard to spot."

Stranger lunged down to grab a Fuzzle that was attempting to make a break for it through his legs. It growled at him and bared its teeth until he did the same back, shoving it into his bag he continued. "They might be, smart. Then again, It don't really matter to me. Any of ma, ammo could be but it gets the job done, thats all that matters."

"Yes. They are the means by which I remain in control of these Four Fiends. I simply need you to undo the damage, so that I can interact with the physical world again."

"And burn it!"

"And enslave it's people!"

"And bring down all that they have accomplished!"

Things are going to be much more difficult now that they're awake again, Garland thought to himself. Out loud, he said "No. All I need now is battle with strong opponents. It is all life is going to give me. I might as well enjoy it."

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.

The Fuzzles didn't even reach Mehir, though the ash from the one he burned to crisp drifted around. He returned the scroll to his pouch and looked around.
Seeing Grey approaching him, the Summoner patiently waited till the reploid was close.
"Of course, Grey," he said. "And I'll try to answer it to the best of my ability."

The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground

"What... what were those things?"

"Yup. That tasted purple."

Fluttershy narrowed her eyes and carefully watched as Antoz walked away. She was glad the bug creature was leaving, but the pegasus was not naive enough to think she just scared him off. However, she did not care either. All that mattered was that these small balls of fur were safe.

After the Makuta was out of eyesight, the pegasus sighed in relief. She relaxed a bit and then gently placed the fuzzles on the ground. "Are all you alright?" she softly asked the creatures.

"Well before, I did it with reckless abandon. Now I can't control myself!" ~ Jesse Cox, 2014

Grey had been rather distracted by the antics of Duck Dodgers, not to mention the brief stand-off between Cletus and Jail. In the latter case, he wasn't sure whose side to take: both men had done their best to help save his world, although Jail seemed a little unusual while Cletus was very trigger happy. He strangely found it hard to believe that Jail had less than good intentions, but at the same time the fact that he had been betrayed twice by people he thought were good friends*

helped temper any naivety on his part. Tearing his eyes away as Mehir replied, Grey steeled himself.

Well, now or never... Grey thought.

"Right... I wanted to ask two things. First of all, do you have any idea of what caused those fire pillars?" asked Grey. Taking a deep breath, he said, "And... well... you know how Master Thomas said he'd give me upgrades? I'm worried that he might have installed something while I was unconscious."

Grey paused, feeling rather foolish for baring his concerns. "...What could we do about that?"

Locking you up on radar since '09

Rey winced a bit, but started forward, hesitantly reaching out towards the chains. "I'll try to help you..." -"But don't think this makes us friends or anything."

"How long have you been like this?"

Easing back into life one step at a time

Cletus thought for a second, removing his helmet. It was getting stuffy in there anyway.

"...Well, I guess we could do a datadump and fork through it for anything out of place. But we'd need a backup of your previous software."

edited 21st Apr '12 12:15:12 PM by Krautman

...and that's terrible.

Mehir smiled. "The pillars of fire? That would be me and Jail," he said, sounding like a little boy that was given a new, interesting toy. "A while back, in the world where we were turned into girls — surely you remember it? — Tyrell, the fire adept, gave me a few notes containing fire spells from his own magic system; while I rested in Legion's headquarters — that was, if I recall correctly, after we've bested Atlas and the rest of the Missile base team went to help the other team defeat Thetis — I translated the notes into my own language. The first pair of flame pillars was the result of me casting a spell of my own — an incantation of power, to be precise — which I modified so that it uses this foreign system."
The Summoner's smile widened. "It worked spectacularly well. The second pair was Jail casting the same spell, modified for his magic system. It also worked well."
He paused, hesitating and rubbing his beard. "Regarding the... upgrades... I don't know. I'm not an artificer; I don't know mechanical things well (I'm still dumbfounded by the fact that your Plane has such advanced technology). Perhaps the good doctor can help? I'd tell you to ask the Doctor, but he seems to have vanished without a trace."

The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground

Grey turned his attention to Cletus. "...I see. I'm worried that you might not have the experience to do it, and... I'm not sure I like the idea of possibly losing my data if something goes wrong, since I'm not sure we even have something to store it on. And what if he installed a device or something? We don't even have the equipment to open me up... I think."

He sighed even as the thought of having programming - or components - he didn't know of make his skin crawl. It was something he wanted to deal with as soon as possible, preferably before they were flung into the next world. "Guess that's what I get for being a one-of-a-kind reploid."

The young Mega Man then listened to Mehir's explanation. "Okay. I thought for a moment that Atlas or Prometheus had somehow gotten here. And that world... I still want to know why we had to fight them."

Any further thoughts were cut off as Mehir continued. Grey said, "Fine. He does seem like the best bet, since I guess he must have experience with technology - he's a doctor."

" Hey, wait a minute! What about me?!" Model A displayed his usual lack of tact as he entered the conversation. " That jerk could've modified me while I wasn't looking."

"We'll just have to get you checked with me, then," replied Grey. The Biometal was unable to come up with a response, at least if the leaden silence from Grey's pocket was any indication.

"See you later," said Grey, ambling toward Gunner's Castle as he did so. "Hopefully he won't find anything wrong, but I guess it's better to be safe than sorry."

Locking you up on radar since '09

"WOAH WOAH WOAH."

Cletus grabbed Grey's shoulder.

"Kid. Think about this. Do you really want to trust a guy who calls himself 'Jail'? Besides that, I wasn't kidding about him reminding me of the Think Tank. They knocked me out in the desert and dragged me to their base where they ripped out my heart, spine, and brain and replaced them with cybernetics."

...and that's terrible.

"They replaced your brain?," said Scorpion, who had been by Cletus and Grey for a short while without talking. "Then how in the Netherrealm did you survive? I have fought cyborgs before, and I know for a fact that they couldn't replace the subjects' internal organs or they would have died."

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

Grey stopped dead in his tracks as Cletus grabbed him. Pausing as he took in the courier's arguments, he belatedly responded, "...Names don't really mean much, do they? A bad guy with a good name is still a bad guy, and vice versa. He's really my only choice - I don't think anybody else has worked with technology as advanced as mine. Why do you distrust him, anyway? He helped just as much as anyone else when we were in my world... I can't just forget that."

Locking you up on radar since '09

"Because last time I trusted someone like that they turned around and tried to shoot me after I saved them from crucifixion. Time before that I got trapped in a chamber with them pumping in radioactive gasses. Before that? Shot in the head twice and left in a shallow grave."

edited 21st Apr '12 1:52:28 PM by Krautman

...and that's terrible.

The reploid's initial reaction was an almost impreceptible widening of his eyes, though he did his best to conceal it. When he finally spoke, he sounded as though he couldn't decide how to feel. "...I'm sorry, but I can't walk around without knowing for sure whether I'm safe or not. I don't want to endanger anybody in the middle of a mission - you've already seen the damage a Mega Man can do."

Trying to break free of Cletus's grip, Grey attempted to continue toward the castle.

Locking you up on radar since '09

"Wanderer," said Scorpion, "that still doesn't explain how your brain could be replaced without it killing you or wiping your identity out. Where I am from, cybernetics were perfected in 1995. For me, that's two years ago. I don't know what time you're from, but certainly cybernetics can't go that far.

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

Cletus let Grey go before turning to Scorpion.

"2272, and they just kept saying 'Tesla Coils' like it made any kind of sense. As for surviving it, I'm sure if I can survive being crushed by a collapsing tunnel, being shot in the head twice, and a point-blank hit from a missile, I don't have a right to complain about surviving having my brain removed."

edited 21st Apr '12 2:27:57 PM by Krautman

...and that's terrible.

"You wouldn't believe all the things that have happened to me in one-on-one combat," said Scorpion. "I have been stabbed, slashed, hit with lethal amounts of electricity, set on fire, punched across rooms, covered in acid, had a portion of my life force drained, deafened with ultrasonic screams, hit with lasers and various other energy blasts, shot thirty-seven times in a row, bludgeoned about the head, taken direct hits from grenades and homing missiles, had my own spear reflected back at me, smacked with a tomahawk, jumped on, collided into at sixty miles an hour, telekinetically thrown, kicked so far one way I started coming back the other way, hit with shurikens, blown into walls with gusts of wind, and been knocked out with someone else's leg while the leg was still bleeding. Not all in the same fight, of course, but it makes me wonder how I'm not dead yet. Maybe it's because I keep getting sent to the Netherrealm by curses and then breaking out."

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

"...Sounds like a pretty average fight for me. Except the Telekinesis, never met a psychic strong enough for that."

edited 21st Apr '12 3:18:01 PM by Krautman

...and that's terrible.

"Are you telling me science will get that far in just two hundred years?" said Scorpion. "And I thought it was in sci-fi territory in 1997..."

edited 21st Apr '12 3:37:22 PM by TestYourMight

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

Dodgers raised his finger:

"May I interject by saying I have no idea of what's going on?"

"Wait a minute. Aren't you Daffy Duck?" said Scorpion to Dodgers. This was purely a lucky guess, strung together out of half-remembered Looney Tunes merch he had seen in New York City once.

edited 21st Apr '12 4:16:30 PM by TestYourMight

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!