A Game of Gods: A Multiversal Challenge

Narumi sighed. "What's the worst that can happen?" He said as he entered the portal.

Jack, as he was bound to do, entered the portal at a walking pace. Whatever lay beyond, he was certain it would be dangerous. But yet, there might be opportunity also. He did not fear the sense of innate wrongness the portal exuded, or the whisperings at the back of his mind. He had faced such things before. Whatever demons lay in waiting, they would be beaten. Moreover, he had noted Ravage's comment and thought perhaps the Predacon knew of an advantage to be gained here. That alone was reason enough for him to brave this challenge.

edited 17th May '11 11:57:45 AM by RedCedar

Mason didn't enter the portal.
"Need to conserve ammo. Want the Nomads to feel every last one of these bullets."

Well, here we go...

-Isaac enters the portal, followed by the Dullahan. Strangely enough, after the last of the armor vanishes, Isaac's body is hurtled backwards, landing a short distance away.-

What? What the?

-Isaac tries again, only to be thrown out again.-

Is... is this supposed to happen?

-Isaac tries one more time, to the same result.-

Why am I singled out?

Mason walked over to the TV and turned it on.
Seeing that there was more people in this challenge than went into the portal, his jaw dropped.
He ran headfirst into the portal, but was repelled by it.
Looking again, he spotted a Dalek.
"SHIT."
He grabbed the Doctor, shoved his weapons into the Doctors coat pockets, which are bigger on the inside, and shoved him in.

edited 17th May '11 12:13:55 PM by GeekCodeRed

"We'll just stay here for now."

Durant told the others.

"Great idea." Michael said. "Nothing that we can do for now perhaps."

"Hmmm..." The Black Stig murmured.

At that moment a large spectral hand reached out of the portal and swatted Hope away, sending him crashing into the wall.

Mason went over and sat next to Luxanna.
"You not going either?"

Rey sighed softly, stretching one last time, then headed into the portal, muttering something unhappy-sounding in Spanish as he went.

The first thing Ravage noticed as his senses slowly returned to him and his higher faculties came online was that it was particularly cold. Frigid fingers of icy cold pressed in on him from all sides, and an intense lethargy had suffused his chassis; he tried to open his optics, but found that he could not for something was pressing against their lids, holding them in place. Nor, for that matter, could he move; the transmetal panther felt as though he were trapped within a mould of some sort, a sensation that reminded him greatly of those solar cycles when he had first come online all those eons ago—a protoform, half-built yet self-aware, trapped within a press whose coolant systems had malfunctioned.

He was dimly aware of a distant voice speaking, muffled and unintelligible; then suddenly a low hiss filled his audio receptors, and warmth began to flow across his body. The ice was no longer pressing against his body, and suddenly he could open his optics—he was in a tube of some sort, a Spartan construct of metal, plastic and transparisteel, and as he watched part of it swung up with a hiss of escaping gas, revealing what lay beyond.

“Attention, staff,” a smooth, lightly-accented feminine voice called from speakers set somewhere above the Predacon’s field of vision. “Your presence is required in the Emergency Cryogenic Suspension Ward. Thaw procedure is now complete; patients are regaining consciousness and may require medical attention.”

Ravage paid the automated message little heed, busying himself with his surveillance of the immediate environment. He was in a long, rectangular chamber whose white walls and soothing, pastel colours indicated something of a medical nature. The wall across from him was lined with a row of twelve cylindrical pods whose glass surfaces were covered in a fine layer of frost; they were propped up at an angle, as if they could recede into the wall or floor at a moment’s notice should the need arise, and an array of small lights and diodes along the sides and base of these tubes painted a clear picture of their occupants’ physical states and health. Clearly, these were cryo-tubes of some sort, and a quick glance to the left and right confirmed that Ravage himself sat within one such tube, one of twelve which occupied his wall; six more occupied the shorter wall to the left, while the wall to the right was given over to a fairly large and complex blast door of some sort.

Even as he turned his gaze in the door’s direction, the ratcheting of gears and the hiss of hydraulics reached his audio receptors, and the door split lengthwise into two halves which receded into the frame along the floor and ceiling; on the other side was a much smaller room—an airlock or decontamination chamber of some sort—and a pair of humanoid figures in all-encompassing white smocks strode calmly into the Emergency Cryogenic Suspension Ward. One held what appeared to be a small clipboard or computer in his hands, and the other was tinkering with a small device which resembled a human penlight; both wore highly-reflective and featureless gold visors over their faces, and they looked up at Ravage in unison as they entered.

“Ah, you’re awake,” said one of the physicians, his voice muffled and tinny from whatever filters and apparatus were concealed behind that opaque visor. “Most unusual; perhaps your tube requires repairs to its CPU. Try to relax, sir; we shall attend to you shortly.”

Even as his companion addressed Ravage, the second physician turned his attention back to the handheld computer and tapped at its surface with a stylus of some sort. Seconds later, the ward was filled with a deafening hiss as plumes of frigid gas vented from the base of the other cryo-tubes, and their lids swung open in unison as their occupants began to wake up…

edited 17th May '11 2:07:52 PM by SullenFrog

"...zzzzzzzzz...where'd you put that toilet?...zzzzzzzzzz...keep the change, it's not like I'm making a walnut..."

Gordon opened his eyes. His first few thoughts were Where the hell am I? Why do I feel like I've been asleep? What, exactly, is going on in this challenge?

A few seconds later, these questions were answered... at least partially, as he looked out from his slowly clearing vision into the cryogenics facility.

The physician with the handheld computer looked over in Gordon's direction, nodding in greeting. "Ah, Doctor Freeman; so glad to see you're awake. No doubt you're feeling a little disoriented at the moment; such feelings are pefectly normal after a flash freeze, not at all cause for concern."

The other physician walked over to the snoring form of Vezon, peeled one of the half-skakdi's eyes open and shone the penlight there, tracking the movements of his optics to see if they would respond to the light.

The moment Jack stepped through the portal, darkness fell. He did not know what happened next, or how long he spent in unknowing slumber. He caught a glimpse of his inner self, the figures of white light that were his parents, still smiling, urging him onwards. Then they were gone and he woke up. Normally, Jack was a fairly light sleeper and woke up in an instant. This time was different. Consciousness returned to him like a mountain stream awaking from the winter, each layer of ice slowly melting away, cracks rippling across the surface. He heard faint noises, hissing, metallic thumps, voices, all of them strange and out of focus. Then the ice cracked and he opened his eyes. The world was blurry and only reluctantly came into focus as he blinked at the strange room. The fingers of his sword hand twitched in a vain attempt to search for his weapon and he felt his lungs ache as he began breathing-when had he stopped-again, trying to speak and finding it impossible for now. This much he knew. Seeing the two white-suited figures moving about the room, he waited patiently for them to pass by, that he might ask them some of the questions that were burning in his mind.

Flandre's eyes flickered half open as the cryogenic pod opened up. She stumbled a bit, finding her coordination to be a bit off in her hazy state of mind. She stretched and flexed her fingers to try and wake her body up.

"zzzzz...no more of the penknife-" The light reached Vezon's eyes and he flailed about. "HSSSSSSSSS! BRIGHT LIGHT!"

-The Dullahan awakes to find itself surrounded by mists. Then the door to the cryotube opens, and it steps out.-

Sec awoke.
Which was uncharacteristic of him, as he never slept.
He opened the pod doors, got up and approached the nurse.
"DI-VULGE-THE-NAT-URE-OF-THIS-CHALL-ENGE-OR-YOU-SHALL-BE-EX-TER-MIN-A-TED!"

edited 17th May '11 2:22:32 PM by GeekCodeRed

Okay, so I was frozen. That explains a couple things...

Gordon flexed his fingers, and moved to get up. "Excuse me, I'm still a little out of it. Where are we?"

Sec turned to Gordon.
"YOU-ARE-NOT-OF-THIS-GROUP. STATE-YOUR-I-DENT-I-FI-CA-TION!"

-Zod emerged from his pod with a murderous look on his face-

I have had just about enough of this nonsense.

-he addressed the physician-

"You will tell me where I am now."

"Patience, Commander Zod," the computer-wielding physician said evenly. "I'm well aware that you're used to having things your way, but this is a civilian vessel and you are a passenger; we are not part of the EMSF, and we are not subordinate to you."

He turned to face Gordon then, tapping at the surface of his computer with his stylus. "Ah, so you are suffering from a loss of short-term memory; that too is not unusual when a flash freeze is involved. Simply put, doctor, you are on the civilian freighter Beel's Bowl, and we are just about to touch down at the Bifrost spaceport on Thor; you were heading there to give a dissertation on astrophysics, I believe."

The second physician, meanwhile, shut off his penlight as soon as Vezon began to flail about and placed a hand on the skakdi's shoulder in a soothing gesture. "Peace, friend; there was an accident, and you have been in suspended animation until very recently."

While this was going on, Ravage glanced about the ward in concern. Something wasn't quite right; he had heard Freeman's voice and located him rather quickly, but these others sounded decidedly unfamiliar...and yet at the same time, they spoke as if they had prior experience with the Nomad's challenges.

edited 17th May '11 2:35:07 PM by SullenFrog

Narumi's door opened a few minutes after Ravage's. Narumi fell to the floor. He then opened his eyes. "Why can't I move?" Narumi said. He felt the cold sting of the ice still attached to his body in the cryo chamber.

Vanitas was vaguely aware of the tube opening as he slowly came round.

Where've they put us this time?

Hope dropped out of the crater that had been made when he'd been backhanded into the wall, and fell limply to the floor. It was clear he was out of it, at least for the moment.

edited 17th May '11 2:34:58 PM by Deadbeatloser22

Flandre looked around, confused. She could tell who some of these people were, but some of them were strangers. She walked over to Zod to let him figure out what to do.