Tammy and Jessie pass through the hallway, with Tammy having sense to put on the brakes just before entering the back room. "That's right nya," Tammy says. "Hitsugi kept telling me not to run so fast indoors. Guess she had a point when I kept running into her in the Manor, literally nya."
The time Tammy paused allows Jessie to recollect herself and let go of the cat girl's arm. "Miss Elizabeth, Miss Junko, are you okay?" Jessie asks as she enters the back room where the others are. Tammy casually walks in and whistles upon sight of the robotic arm near that room's chessboard. "Is that yours, Junko, or did someone steal your design nya?" the cat girl asks about the robotic arm.
TMINE:(T=F:17,S:0/10);(J=F:6,S:4/20)
"Yeah nothing terrible has happened so far." says Junko who lets out a small laugh at the next question. "Nope I had nothing to do with this one, everyone gets so nervous whenever I mention I'd like to work on robotics after that laundry press incident I usually don't try it." she shrugs "Still not sure why you all got so put out, that turned out all right, and I even managed to lure the thing outside before I blew it up."
edited 28th Jan '15 8:03:00 PM by Barzark
F:41 S:0/30
Control Room
Once all the maids had gathered in the control room something rather odd happened: the robot arm began moving again. Moving much faster than it had before, it began rearranging the remaining game pieces. cunning roll: Beat an 8 to recognize the pattern forming as.................................... the game that was taking place against the Mechanical Turk on the chess board in the hallway, earlier - except that several pieces are now missing.edited 30th Jan '15 8:56:28 AM by Alhazred23
H:44F(8/30)S|G:19F(0/10)S
"Hmmmm..." says Junko as the arm does it's work.
cunning roll 2x3=6
"Well that probably means something but it's lost on me at the moment..." she shrugs.
F:41 S:0/30
Show an affirming flame
Cunning of 4. Great.
"I've got nothing," admitted Elizabeth. "It doesn't look like it's going to completely reset?"
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
(Tammy rolls 2 x Cunning 2 = 4, while Jessie rolls 5 x Cunning 2 = 10.) "Th- This pattern is...!" Tammy exclaims as she and Jessie look at the board, then the cat girl asks, "What IS this pattern nya?" Jessie face faults upon hearing the question.
"Please try to think," Jessie says as she stands back up. "It looks like the turk's setup from the main hall, minus a few pieces. But something about this doesn't seem right to me. Hold a minute please, while I examine it further." (Jessie rolls 3 x Cunning 2 = 6 for whether she notices anything else about the pattern on the chessboard.)
edited 3rd Feb '15 6:28:43 PM by 1jimbo10
TMINE:(T=F:17,S:0/10);(J=F:6,S:4/20)
"Fair enough." says Junko with a shrug. "I get the feeling I'm missing something here. Oh well can't win em all."
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Control Room
There was clearly something significant about the familiar new arrangement (by some universal law of ominous plot twists, if nothing else). Unfortunately, Jessie was unable to discern what it could be. Perhaps the minion upstairs would be able to explain? He'd seemed awfully grave about every little change to the game with the Turk. Of course, acquiring him would entail navigating across the chess board again, in both directions...edited 9th Feb '15 8:10:46 AM by Alhazred23
H:44F(8/30)S|G:19F(0/10)S
"So..." says Junko, "Anyone got an idea what our next move is? We going to work on figuring this out or go forward and hope for the best? Personally I'm all for option two but I'm used to making things up as I go along."
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Show an affirming flame
"I wish I knew," said Elizabeth. The prospect of having to navigate back did not appeal, especially when they were potentially chasing somebody who seemed to have been operating the board just a moment ago.
Well, potentially. "Then again, there seems to be someone here who wants us to move onward."
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
"Terrible," Jessie muses. "This setup troubles me, but I can't make out why. And we don't have time for a piece-by-piece analysis."
"Think that guy with the turk would know how this is troubling you nya?" Tammy asks. Jessie replies, "Perhaps; But even if I take the most direct route by phasing through every wall on the way, it'll still take time that we don't have."
Hearing the others' suggestions, Jessie motions toward the door. "Yes, we probably should move on," The ghost says. "I fear we may be in too deep to back out now."
edited 9th Feb '15 7:54:37 AM by 1jimbo10
TMINE:(T=F:17,S:0/10);(J=F:6,S:4/20)
The hallway beyond the door was still full of vertigo-inducing, inky black darkness when Jessie poked her head around the corner. Not even her perpetual soft glow seemed to help, as she could barely see her own hand in front of her face, much less anyone else's. She knew the (closed?) door back to the well-lit chess room should be twenty feet to her left, and that there was long, straight hall leading on to the right.
Elizabeth: When Elizabeth enters the hall her tracking program indicates that the suspect went right. Unfortunately, the light of the phone's screen does not seem to be able to pierce the darkness by more than a foot; clearly unnatural.
Tammy: Tammy can see just fine. The hallway is spartan, straight, and very long, though her night vision is mostly black and white so she can't tell if the concrete walls are painted or not.
Junko: Junko is sure she has an invention that would let her see in this darkness. She is equally sure that she would only be able to use it for about 5 seconds per minute without lighting her hair on fire.
H:44F(8/30)S|G:19F(0/10)S
"Just once I'd like to see one of these kinds of places be well lite," groans Junok, "all this atomospheric darkness makes moving around a pain...it's gonna be like going to Grandpa's all over again...Let's see..." she starts digging around in her pockets. "Oh lovely...Well the good new is I brought my seeing eye helmet, the bad news is it's the model six." she pauses before realizing that nobody but Tammy would know why that's a bad thing, "It's bad cause it tends to break down a lot and when it does it sets my hair on fire every time...I suppose we could use me as a torch that way but I'd rather not, took a month for my hair to grow back last time and I didn't bring my instawig."
F:41 S:0/30
Show an affirming flame
"You know, I'm really, really hoping the master turns these kinds of things off during daily life, because I'm starting to get really bloody sick of this kind of game," muttered Elizabeth, dialing up the brightness of her display glasses to maximum, and turning to face the direction the person had gone...then again, if they'd gone around a corner or to another room, the signal wouldn't tell them. Ah, well. "Okay. Everyone follow me?" She raised the phone above her head. "Unless they have a better plan than 'feel your way along the wall', in which case please speak up before I step in a mousetrap or land mine or something."
Adventure, huh. Distantly she thought of Berenice's collection of various incendiaries, explosives, and/or similar devices, and heaved a sigh. When she'd thought of adventure she wouldn't have imagined stumbling forward through a magical fog while hoping that supervillainy meant not putting down simple traps when complex ones were possible (if only because complex traps could usually be finessed, whereas there weren't many ways of arguing with a beartrap)...
Someone was going to owe her an explanation or three after all of this.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
"It may be in monochrome, but I can see fine in the dark nya," Tammy says. "We may want to hold hands so we don't get separated nya." No sooner then she says that, the cat girl feels a tug on her tail. "NYA!" Turning her head with a start, she sees a translucent hand on her tail. "Jessie! What did I tell you about the tail nya?"
"S- Sorry," Jessie muses. "It's just... This hall's so dark, my glow is actually interfering with my eyesight." Tammy sighs in disgust as she reaches with her right arm, clenching Jessie's hand off her tail in into her hand.
Hearing Junko mention her device, Jessie asks, "Sixth model? And it breaks down a lot? How did the first five go then?" Tammy quickly replies, "Trust me. You don't want to know nya." Seeing Elizabeth tweak her shades a bit, the cat girl then extends her left arm toward Junko. "You may want to take my hand, Junko, so you don't overuse your device nya."
edited 13th Feb '15 7:47:20 AM by 1jimbo10
TMINE:(T=F:17,S:0/10);(J=F:6,S:4/20)
With a crisp, reflexive motion of deeply ingrained maid training (or at least proper English manners), Elizabeth shut the door behind them as they exited the room, dropping the ambient light level to exactly zero. When Tammy turned around at the click of the lock she could no longer even make out the outline of the door - though to be fair, it was a secret door, and they'd probably only found it the first time because it was ajar.
edited 13th Feb '15 2:50:26 PM by Alhazred23
H:44F(8/30)S|G:19F(0/10)S
"Good idea." says Junko taking the offered hand. "I'd rather not use it at all if I can avoid it, I'm trying to remember why I'm carrying this particular one...probably I was hoping I'd get a chance to try fixing it. Gotta remember to start carrying number nine with me it works the best out of this particular line, seven and eight both work fine but they tend to bite people if they get to close. Me especially."
F:41 S:0/30
Once the maids had clustered around Tammy the next logical step was to start moving down the corridor. As far as the catgirl could see they would be walking for at least 15 minutes if they kept at a relatively safe pace; there was a bend in the hall at that point that she couldn't see past. Everyone figure out who is holding hands, or tails or whatever and then everyone but Tammy make a Luck roll.
H:44F(8/30)S|G:19F(0/10)S
"So anything interesting so far or just a long dark hallway?" asks Junko.
luck roll=3x3=9
F:41 S:0/30
(As per the above request, Jessie rolls 2 x Luck 3 = 6.)
"Looks like a long corridor for now nya, but it turns after a while; At least, at the pace we're going nya," Tammy responds.
"Um, think you need to take my hand, Miss Elizabeth?" Jessie asks as she reaches out with her right hand.
TMINE:(T=F:17,S:0/10);(J=F:6,S:4/20)
Show an affirming flame
"Sure," said Elizabeth. "...at least I think that's your hand. Right?" Being the one who'd shut the door, she was tail-end Charlie, or tail-end Charlene as the case might be.
Luck = 4.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
About five minutes into their (mostly) blind march down the corridor Tammy noticed a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye, along with the distinctive and intimately familiar scrabble of tiny rodent claws on concrete. It was gone almost instantly, but a moment later Elizabeth felt something small and fuzzy weaving around her ankles.
H:44F(8/30)S|G:19F(0/10)S
Show an affirming flame
Elizabeth did not panic. There had to be a properly ladylike procedure for dealing with rodents; unfortunately, she couldn't think of anything. Her mother had always responded by jumping onto the nearest chair, screaming her lungs out, and flailing wildly with a broom. To Elizabeth that all seemed a little impractical, but, well, ladylike was ladylike, and Mum had always been very keen on teaching by example.
Given the lack of brooms and chairs, however, she had to take some other course of action, and she was still in the midst of deciding what that might be when the rodent brushed by her other foot. Now rather irritated, Elizabeth had to resist the urge to kick at it; chances were that she'd miss and kick out Jessie's leg instead. (See, Mum? My impulse control is perfectly fine!) Instead, she checked that her wards were keyed and that she had skin-to-skin contact with Jessie and presumably the rest of the maids by extension, and her free hand flickered to her phone and jabbed a few hotkeys for an extremely basic level-one summoning while she muttered something that roughly translated to "I summon thee, O demonic amoeba, ia, ia, the really tiny evil of minor inconvenience, and bind thee to mine service, and shalt it be thine honor to catch that little squeaky thing running around my ankles and inhabit its body..."
I rolled Will to see whether or not Elizabeth freaks out. She aced it at 6x4=24, which seems only appropriate given her Maid Types. For the magic attack, Skill = 18 [5 pips x 3 Skill + 3 Hard Work bonus] ...jesus, I've been rolling well...
edited 20th Feb '15 7:50:56 PM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Being closest to the wall at the moment, Jessie noticed in the light of her faint glow that the corner where the wall joined the ceiling had begun to weep a trickle of black slime. Meanwhile, Junko's elven ears pricked up at a whisper on the still air, a nonsense utterance sounding vaguely like, "tekeli-li."
edited 21st Feb '15 9:23:36 AM by Alhazred23
H:44F(8/30)S|G:19F(0/10)S
"Yeah. Some people just have to overdo everything." says Junko with a shrug. "Yeah off hand I'd say we're probably better off keeping things as they are, of course if we're lucky we won't have to mess with the thing on the way back, but gambling's never been my thing. And the last time I relied on luck I ended up stuck in the roof."
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