CoLC crossover RP, main thread

Ravine

There was a look of alarm on Garrett's face as the Predator, unfazed by the gas, proceeded to shine some sort of red light on him. He leapt desperately off to the side, just in time that the plasma blast didn't hit him in the chest; but it still painfully burned his left arm, making him shout in pain.

...Meanwhile, behind the now-visible Predator's back, something suddenly appeared... a certain white-and-green onion creature, infuriatingly familiar to Garrett. The ethereal filcher, seeing the Predator distracted by fighting those two, decided to take a gamble on adding another trinket to its hoard. Gingerly it reached an arm towards one of the Predator's items. However, the filcher would find out it wasn't quite stealthy enough, and the alien would notice it almost immediately.

Eve | Cave of Progress | Something's Going To Happen

Eve looked back at Rex. "It's exhausting," she replied with a small shrug, but a very small one, since she was still holding Cole. It really was. She was keeping her nanomachines in a constant state of activity. She looked down at Cole, briefly sobered by his words. "It's... we don't..." she took a breath, composing herself. "We don't hate each other, Cole. We just don't get along sometimes." Occasionally she forgot that Cole had looked inside her head, seen who she was. "...as for the rest..." Eve shook her head, deciding not to continue talking. "Anyway, we just need to work out our problems in a non-aggressive way sometimes." She looked at Rean, and shook her head. "We stay together," she said with authority. "Despite our various issues with one another, Rex and I have fought together in the past. It generally works out." She narrowed her eyes. "Rean, was that a pun? "

Edited by secretlyasuperhero on Jul 21st 2018 at 11:09:32 PM

With Garrett wounded, the predator started to turn his attention back towards Absol, but stopped to suddenly reach out and grab the wrist of the filcher. With a quick yank to get the filcher off balance, the predator ran his spear through the beast entirely, hoisted it up slightly, then brought a leg up and gave the filcher a mighty kick to send it hurtling off the spear and into the chasm of the ravine.

With the distraction taken care of, the predator turned to face Absol, and spun the spear around to hold in a defensive, ready posture.

Edited by FirockFinion on Jul 21st 2018 at 4:39:27 AM

Meet The Plop

Lucario's aura search would find that there wasn't a soul beyond them anywhere in the corridors or in the circular room... or at least not on their level. However, something was above them... and now it was quickly falling down to meet them.

Two cried out in a warning as the creature dropped from the stone ceiling, narrowly missing them. A glob of liquid meat and matter fluid like a wave, covered in nothing but eyes and maws, it stared at the unfortunate three with all of its eyeballs, those deep inside, those within maws upon maws and those on thin stalks, staring in complete silence.

Then it started making sounds, and each of the maws produced a different sound; a monstrous cacophony of wails, belches, cries, groans and everything else that sounded like they could belong to a crowd of most various individuals both human and monstrous, scattered about in pitch, tone and volume. A pregnant woman, a grieving child, an anguished warrior, a melting monster... all of that now started slithering towards the party with no rhyme and reason and all maddening, intent on consumption.

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Jul 21st 2018 at 12:43:11 PM

Taking a deep breath, Riley forced himself to relax. When he pulled his hand away from his face, he examined the blaziken thoughtfully. "We're going to keep exploring, I'm sure we'll run into your trainer soon," he reassured him.

Bergree brought his attention back to the door, an elevator, actually. He hummed in thought as he examined it, but it didn't take long for him to shake his head. "Mechanical work has never really been my job."

And once again, Lucario's abilities proved to be invaluable. Apparently they were fighting a ventriloquist who just wanted to screw with them. Well, then if it wanted a fight, he'd give it a fight.

He avoided the monster and growled, not letting himself be frightened by such an appearance. Instead, he immediately used Bone Rush again, charging at the creature and trying to slash at it.

Well, fortunately Swords Dance managed to give him the power boost he needed, so he felt reasonably confident that he'd be able to do some damage to the creature.

Unfortunately for Absol, it was also protecting itself, so that meant it'd be harder to actually land a decent hit. He couldn't exactly get close enough for any of his other moves, though, so he went back to jumping backwards and using Psycho Cut.

Once the woman lowered her weapon, Salamence raised himself slightly back up. He still was a little confused and wary, but more eager to actually communicate.

Suddenly, a brilliant idea occurred to him. Using one of his claws, he did his best to draw a picture of Riley, making sure to include his hat and hair so that the woman would be able to get a good idea of who his actual trainer was.

Once he was done, he stepped back to allow her to see his masterpiece that looked like an untalented 12-year-old had drawn it while bored out of his mind in math class.

As Metagross stood to follow, a rather well maintained eyeball rolled across its surface. In fact, it seemed that Metagross kept its body stable rather well, as it wasn't getting the eye off of it on its own.

Edited by Skooter910 on Jul 21st 2018 at 8:14:22 AM

Ben looked at the mysterious door intently, scratching his head in confusion.

"I don't have a clue what any of this is supposed to be. If I was Grey Matter I'd probably know. Once the watch is back online I could go Upgrade and maybe open that door or activate this stuff," he pointed out. He sighed in irritation, looking at his phone, which was again yelling at him that there was no signal.

"Stupid cave. If we had signal this would be so much easier. And we saw some giant spiders on the way over here, who knows what sort of things are attacking my friends?!" He leaned on the rock wall, groaning. "This place stinks. Like even more than normal." Ben thought for a moment and his eyes widened. He looked at Hercules.

"Hey Hercules!" said Ben. "You're super strong. Why don't you try and pry that door open? Maybe you can open it and we can get in that way."

Edited by AllHailThrall on Jul 21st 2018 at 6:21:22 AM

The group then came across a metal door which Herc himself had no idea what it was for, Ben then suggested that Hercules should pry open said door with his super strength alone. Now that was something he could get behind, Herc then cracked his knuckles and then approached the metal door.

“Leave this one to me.” Herc then said to everyone present as he was walking towards the door, once he had done this he then rubbed his hands in preparation and then put both hands on the frame of the door and then gripped hard and with his strength he then tried to pry open the door.

Edited by TheStarscream759 on Jul 21st 2018 at 12:08:12 PM

Ravine

The filcher barely had time to react as the Predator suddenly turned and stabbed at it; it was dead before it could even think about vanishing into safety.

While the Predator was busying himself with this grisly task, Garrett—still hissing from pain and leaning against the wall—used the moment of distraction to toss a small oil flask at near the Predator's feet.

Edited by Korodzik on Jul 21st 2018 at 3:26:30 PM

Tunnels of Triumph Over Terrarian Troubles

Ursaring's use of aerial ace worked to break apart the remaining mother slimes. Given their nature, though, that just meant there was now many baby slimes formed of the gelatinous chunks they had broken into. As if they sensed exactly how screwed they'd be if they didn't leave, the slimes showed an unheard of level of self preservation and started hopping away. This wasn't a game where every creature would mindlessly attack with no regard for its own life, after all.

"Good bear thing!" Caboose cooed after seeing the work this good boy just did. Cute animals doing cute things like cutting up other life forms was fun! "And you didn't run away even though you didn't do anything so that's pretty neat," he praised Cascabell, sounding completely sincere despite how that praise was so faint it might as well be nonexistent.

Silanea seemed curious about his animal friends. Was she jealous? Caboose knew he would be envious if someone had a posse of cute animal things. "We just ran into each other. Like how most good friendships start!" he answered, despite her claims that she didn't care anymore. He'd follow along when she started moving again.

"Yeah, I swear. It's mostly jokes that get out of hand" Rex tried to assure Cole "I... tend to have a problem with those"

For example, he was pretty much ready to crack a joke about Eve's nanites having such a hard time generating light when, according to her, they were supposed to be more efficient than the version he had in his body.

As for Rean's plan... well, Rex couldn't exactly say he wasn't against it. If they spread out they would cover more ground and more easily find other people but the city on top of the current day conditions would make regrouping a logistical nightmare. So yeah, he agreed with Eve. That's what we call progress.

"Let's just stick together for now"

"Alright, just, I'm gonna walk over here" Anna-Rose muttered after Lewis' indignant comment. Fastanook was faring far less well, as his much more sensitive sense of smell compounded with the hangover was really doing a number on him. He was staggering along, heavily dry heaving; probably only not throwing up because he didn't have anything to currently throw up.

"Oh by the Clockwork's turning gears, just kill me already, uuuuggghhhhh" Fastanook muttered as he followed along.

They continued along, with not much going on, until there were voices echoing from somewhere ahead. "More people?" Anna-Rose said, looking hopeful.

Up ahead the tunnel opened up into a large cavern, lit with tree-sized mushrooms that let off a blue glow, and patches of crystals that let off a mild, yellow glow. The cavern floor was shaped like a large bowl, gently sloping down to a center where a structure built like a military bunker was jutting out of the ground. There was a gathering of people, and signs that a battle had already taken place, with dead creatures that seemed like mutated gorilla things being pushed off to one side. The people included Wells, one other militia member, some civilians, Valentina, and Brother Darturian, or as Makoto would remember him, the guy from the estate just outside the cinema.

"Hello?" Anna-Rose called out.

"Hey! Over here!" the spare militia member called back, waving an arm.

Towards the other side of the cavern, Silanea came slithering out another tunnel entrance, letting the ethereal blade dissipate now that there were other light sources; Swishee was following, still waddling along, not really caring about Cascabel on her bill. "Lieutenant Wells!" Silanea called when she recognized the man. Wells looked over and gave a nod, but said nothing just yet. He was in front of the bunker's large, reinforced door, while Valentina was closely inspecting it. Darturien, looking over and seeing Silanea, quietly moved around the corner of the bunker out of her sight.

There was groaning of old metal and unpowered mechanisms being forced to move as Hercules started trying to force the door open with his godly strength. Soon the door was opened enough to peek in, seeing that beyond the door was not in fact an elevator, but instead a decrepit looking corridor; with no light inside, it was hard to make out details with just the light sources they had on their side going through the crack.

"Oh, not an elevator" Bergree muttered, peeking in. "Still, this seems worth exploring, don't you think? This is the only thing I've seen today that wasn't just more caves" the drider mentioned.

From somewhere above the pit and echoing from another tunnel came shrill calls of some inhuman creatures, almost like barking. "Uh oh... That sounds like goblins" Bergree commented. Ace narrowed his eyes, looking up towards the top of the pit without fear.

The predator made a move to one side to dodge the psycho cut, nearly slipping and falling from the oil spilled on the floor. The predator glanced down at it, then at Garrett. The predator gave another annoyed growl, and grabbed the disc blade weapon from his side, throwing it out at Garrett in a wide boomerang style trajectory.

"What are you doing?" the woman muttered, thinking out loud. "Oh? You can't talk, but you can write?" she wondered, to get a better look at Salamence's work, her enthusiasm lowering once she saw it was just a drawing.

"Oh... But that's..." the woman said, noticing the very crude hat. "So, that's not me, or that other guy. Somebody else? I don't understand" she went on, looking at Salamence again.

Edited by FirockFinion on Jul 21st 2018 at 10:58:52 AM

Bunker In the Cavern- My Job Here Is Done

Makoto was quiet as the small group moved down the tunnel, focusing on making sure that no other monster caught them off guard. At the other end of the tunnel was an even larger cavern, and it wasn't empty like the last one. Yellow crystal and bigger glowing mushrooms lit this area up, and she turned off her flashlight momentarily. She could see corpses of ape creatures near a bunker-like structure at the bottom of a large slope, along with a collection of people that she could recognize, including Wells, the man from the manor, and Valentina. Silanea entered the cavern from another direction, increasing the size of the crowd. Well...it was probably safer here for the rest of the people she'd been “leading”, and she was already getting uncomfortable here.

“...You should probably stay with them, they can keep you alive better than I could,” Makoto said to Fastanook, Anna-Rose, Lewis, and Morty, though she didn't make eye contact with any of the four. Lewis knew more about the pokemon anyway, so maybe Metagross should stay there. “I'm going to...go look for other people.” She turned and went to sit on her motorcycle, which was already pointing back towards the tunnel.

Cole was silent for a long while, looking between Rex and Eve, then to Rean, with an expression that was...somewhat inscrutable. But finally he just nodded a little, sighing softly. "...all right. I will try to stay out of the way and...be quiet. Th-thank you for trying to not fight. This is all...a-a-awful enough with...w-without..."

He sniffled again, body huffing at the apparent effort to not break into tears again, but then just wiped at his eyes, nodding. "L-let's get moving..."

Gon, checking his gear:

So far, Gon was able to secure his beam rifle aside from his baseball cap and the facemask worn over his nose and mouth.

His other clothes are still on him.

Good. What else did I miss?

Gon looked around and saw that there's a bag in the corner.

He saw that it looked familiar. To visually make the confirmation, he walked closer and closer while he shouldered the rifle.

Can't afford to get any nasty surprises and all...

Riley stepped back to let Hercules get the door open with his bare hands, whistling in respect as he managed it. "Impressive," he said before turning his attention to what was behind the door, which was in fact not an elevator.

"It seems like the best bet to find something." True, it was possible the corridor would just shift them somewhere else again, but it was also possible that it led to something important.

Before they could decide, though, something started coming closer. "Goblins?" he repeated, curiously. Only one way to really find out what they were before they descended. Riley scanned the room with his aura, trying to get a good look at the creatures.

Once Absol landed, he sighed in annoyance at seeing the Predator evade his attack. It was slightly heartening to see it slip on some sort of oil, even if it didn't quite solve anything.

Deciding to just take the opportunity presented, as soon as the Predator's back was turned, Absol ran at it and jumped, aiming to use Night Slash while it was still distracted.

The woman figured out that Riley was a different person, which was good. To really get his point across, Salamence pointed at the picture, then back at himself. Carefully, he sat back on his haunches enough that he could lift one of his forelegs and mime shading his eyes while sweeping his head back and forth as if looking for something.

At Caboose's words of encouragement, Ursaring perked up slightly and rumbled happily. It wasn't as nice as when Riley complimented him, but it was still nice.

He followed the group, sniffing around in the hopes that he'd stumble across Riley and they'd all be able to be friends together. Sadly, that was not the case. Instead, they found a cave with a bunch of lighted mushrooms. With his smelling abilities, he was able to pick up on the stench coming from the other side of the cave pretty quickly, and he gagged slightly once he did.

Cascabel stared at Caboose with an unamused expression, apparently not taking the compliment as such. Oh well. It otherwise remained contently seated atop Swishee, before perking its head up as the group came upon the large cavern area and rushing off.

Hey, it was that Fastanook guy with the militia. The guy looked and sounded like he wanted to lay down and die for a while, in a way I'd seen infrequently but had learned about and memorized the look of. "Are you hung over?" That was going to be awkward to explain to the rest of his guys if he saw them. "If we find any drinkable water you should have some. Most of the problems are from dehydration." I resisted the urge to give a supportive pat, figuring he understandably wouldn't want to be touched by a walking puddle of viscera.

I kept walking, drifting toward the back of the group for...safety reasons, before we hit a larger section of cavern already filled to the brim with people.

Yeah that didn't feel a little suffocating.

I stood back, still a bit in the tunnel, just scanning the place. There was a distinctly not naturally occurring door at the bottom, and in the crowd a handful of familiar faces, a few randos, some gorilla(?) corpses, and...the cleric...?

As I'd taken to eying the familiar stranger, gun hand twitching, a loud rattling squeak sounded out, quickly growing louder...I looked up in time to see Cascabel launching itself toward me, colliding like a bullet for the shuppet equivalent of a glomp...only to pull away in disgust upon realizing I was a total mess.

I giggled. "Glad to see you too. Believe me, you don't want to know."

After a few seconds of watching it aggressively groom itself, I turned around to where Makoto was already starting to make off again. Well meaning as I assumed she was advising the rest of us to stay, I wasn't all that into it. "I don't know. I don't really trust a crowd this big, I notice they tend to erupt in chaos sooner or later. Here, at least. You don't mind if..." I shuffled for Cascabel's pokéball.

Ben shrugged, nodding. "I guess," Ben told him, before glancing up to the noises they were hearing. "We should get inside and shut the door before these ugly things get over here. I don't think goblins would be able to open the door."

Ben looked up towards the drider. "Bergree, you can see in the dark, right? You should lead the way. Let us know if anything dangerous is down that tunnel. Anyone who has a light source should be up front too."

"What? You're not staying? But what about safety in numbers?" Anna-Rose asked Makoto, confused.

Wells and the other militia member may not have opted to call out to Makoto, but someone else did after recognizing her. "Hey! Makoto!" Silanea yelled out, starting to slither across the cavern towards them. "Is Rex with you? Have you seen him?" the lamia asked, pausing in front of the bunker to stare at Valentina.

"Oh. Hello again, Valentina" Silanea said, just a little bitter in tone.

"You two know each other?" Wells asked simply.

"We're from the same world, and our people used to be enemies" Valentina answered, honest but still somewhat posh.

"That's a rather mild way to put it" Silanea muttered.

"Come now, that has been undone. So long as we're both still here, it was inevitable that we'd cross paths again. Hostility will not help either of us" Valentina said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm trying to determine whether or not I can get through this door" the sorceress added, turning her attention back to the bunker door.

At the respective tunnel entrances of the cavern, Fastanook was slowly making his way down towards the other militia members, and across from that, Swishee was staring intently at one of the crystal clusters.

"In my world, they're small humanoids with a rather bad reputation. I wouldn't say they're all bad, but it's definitely not undeserved" Bergree explained to Riley, then looked to Ben and gave a nod. "Certainly better than you can, while human" the drider answered Ben simply.

Reaching out with his aura sense, Riley could 'see' that there were indeed some beings that weren't human or pokemon, coming towards the cavern they were in through the adjacent tunnels. They seemed greedy and wicked, though not terribly courageous; like some of the more rough and tumble type of pokemon, only worse.

As for the door, Hercules could most certainly get it open wide enough for himself, Ben, Riley, and Ace to squeeze through one at a time, before the goblins would arrive. Unfortunately, Bergree was another matter, since his larger drider frame meant he needed more space, and with the difficulty the door was giving, Hercules might not be able to get it open wide enough for Bergree before the goblins arrived...

"That's you?" the woman first guessed incredulously when Salamence pointed to himself. "No, you're... Searching? For that person?" she added after his next action.

"... Well, I haven't seen anyone with a hat. Not today" the woman said simply.

Edited by FirockFinion on Jul 22nd 2018 at 5:53:18 AM

Giant Mushroom Cavern

Caboose was basically on autopilot following Silanea while his head was in the clouds thinking about whatever Caboose normally thought about. He started paying a bit more attention once they had walked out into the mushroom cavern with the sealed bunker entrance, but Michael J. Caboose was never truly lucid. "Neat, the entrance to a secret lab," he said to himself as he looked at the bunker for a moment before moving on. There was nothing else in his mind that could be in a bunker underground except for a lab.

He gave a token wave of acknowledgement to Valentina because he recognized her and didn't have a negative opinion of the wizard, but chose to not go over to her because she looked busy and there were neat things on the ground. After spending a few moments marveling at the cute worms, snails, and the like, the soldier noticed someone familiar.

Makoto was over by her motorcycle. Well, he noticed her because Silanea called out to her. Caboose walked over and started talking without even making sure she knew he was there first. "Have you seen Two anywhere? Or Yuna?" he asked after getting close enough to talk. "More importantly Yuna, she seemed like she was in one of those moods. You know, the ones where you throw yourself at dangerous stuff to stop hurting about bad stuff."

Edited by pillowmantis on Jul 22nd 2018 at 7:56:42 AM

"They at least don't seem too courageous," Riley reported, "if we're lucky, we'll just need to intimidate more than fight. Or we could just get out." Unfortunately, it seemed that Bergree wasn't exactly going to make it easy.

As satisfying as it was to get his point across, Salamence was disappointed to learn that the woman hadn't even seen Riley. He gave another high-pitched whine and childishly rubbed the picture in the sand out with one of his forelegs.

As disgusting as the smell was, there was an undercurrent of something familiar that Ursaring couldn't ignore. Bracing himself, he wandered over to the other side of the group, doing his best to breathe through his mouth.

Once he got close enough, he stopped walking and started to sprint. He stopped right in front of Metagross, excitedly roaring a greeting to his teammate. It wasn't the most... expressive of Pokemon, but he respected it all the same.

It was odd to see all of the gore covering it, though. Gently, he pushed the eyeball off of the top of it and started interrogating it, getting a very dry recitation of what had happened in return.

Obviously, the non-Pokemon in the area just got to hear a bunch of roaring and computer-ish noises, but Ursaring was getting a lot out of the conversation.

The other three members of the group decided to stick together instead of splitting up. Rean nodded. "Ok." Maybe things weren't as bad between them as he thought.

Then Eve caught on to the pun Rean made. "Uh...well..." Rean stammered, looking away from Eve. Shoot, I hoped she wouldn't catch that!

"It was, but uh... You know what? Let's get going." Rean continued, heading further down the tunnel.

Bunker In the Cavern- One Side-quest Completed

“...If you want to follow, you can,” Makoto said to Lewis. “I just thought that it’d be more secure here in a place like this than going through more tunnels. We won’t be able to communicate with phones or radios if we get into trouble.” A strange, floating cloth creature was hanging around Lewis now, though it didn’t look or act dangerous to her. “The bigger numbers are in here,” she said to Anna-Rose. “I’m more suited to searching than protecting a large amount of people, and since the tunnels also seem to be shifting, you may not run into another group like this again. If I get into a fight, I can at least run faster.” Before she could turn and try to leave, Silanea called for her, drawing some attention from Caboose who had just entered the cavern. Well there went her plan of not being recognized.

“No, not since yesterday!” she called back to Silanea. She partially wanted to go so she could get back to searching for him. Caboose was looking for someone else though, though the way he explained it just made her more worried. More reasons to keep looking for stranded people.

“So you were separated from them too? Sorry, I haven’t seen them either, but I’ll keep an eye out for them, okay?” she said to him. “I’ll make sure Yuna is staying safe if I run into her.” What she could only call a literal bear came up to them next, and roared at Metagross. Instead of attacking, it began to…talk with it. Huh. “Oh, is that your friend, Metagross? You should stay together then,” she said, a little more cheered up by actually accomplishing something.

"Can I just say," pointed out Morty as he began nervously backing away from the group, heading towards Lewis and Matoko as they split back off from the others, "that nowhere in the history of anywhere has trying to open a sealed bunker in the middle of an underground cavern surrounded by dead aliens been a good idea? Ever?"

"Okay," said Rick as he dropped into a crouch, "Remember when I said that we go for the kneecaps? Change of plan." He swung his halberd at the nearest eyeball as it oozed closer, a mudslide of living flesh.

"Anyone here got ice powers? Some way to freeze this thing solid? Because that would *uuurp* that would really come in handy," he pointed out.

Cole stuttered while thanking Eve and Rex for trying not to put their rivalry above the group's survival. Only time would tell if they keep their words but it seemed the kid was more than enough pressure to keep things together for now.

"Cheer up, it won't be long before we find someone friendly in these caves" Rex told him.

Just a few meters away, the tunnel lead to another underground section. While still looking as uninviting as the rest of the cave system, the mere fact it already was more open was—to Rex—a sign that things were definitely going to get better. The place was so big in fact, that his build wasn't able to illuminate it in its entirety.

And despite its initial barren look, after taking a few more steps inside the chamber, Rex started to notice that this wasn't just like any other cave. Semi-transparent pieces of cloth hung from several parts of the cave, sometimes sticking to walls and sealing the entrance of a couple of upper tunnels. A few bats were unfortunate enough to stick to them and be unable to leave, as much as they struggled to fly with their tiny wings. Meanwhile, on the ground, what could only be described as yellow mushrooms grew in patches all over the rocky surface of the cave. The byproducts of their existence being gases so dense they stayed close to the ground and covered part of it. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they were probably the ones making the place smell of sulfur and ammonia.

"Well, this is... different" his breath condensed and appeared as a puff of white smoke as Rex spoke. Even while wearing gloves and a jacket, he could feel the temperature dropping and shivered in response.

"Looking on the bright side, I'm not hungry anymore"

Oh huh Silanea was coming over here. Yep as good a time as any to bail. I gave a "Can't say I've seen any of them either," just to not be rude, before turning around after Makoto again.

"Yeah I'm with the kid on this one." I crept up behind her. "If nothing else crowds like to devolve into drama even when literally nothing's happening and I don't want to have to watch my back through that, y'know. I can already feel the tension radiating from this hive..."

Now where'd I put that ball...ah! There it was. "Alright, in with you." Figuring I didn't want to babysit the little guy on top of everything else, I drew the ultra ball and called it back. It let out a little chirp, like it just thought of something, before being returned to energy again. Too bad, we could go over it later, right.

Speaking of pokémon, some ursaring came up to the metagross for what sounded like casual conversation. Guess they were familiar. Well, maybe the big blue metal machine would want to stay put then.