Ride Rupert to Conundrum-chan!
ride through the jungle on a brontosaurus with no name
be certain that said brontosaurus is Brobdingnagian.
>>525
May as well travel in style, you reflect. Indeed, arriving on brontosaurusback should provide a good topic of light conversation, and perhaps allow you to avoid the thorny issue of the fact that you declared love for one another and kissed passionately last time you met. Of course, you weren't in your right mind then. It goes without saying that you don't really feel that way about her - how absurd! I mean, a girl loving another girl? That's not normal!
Shaking your head briskly, you mount Rupert and embark westwards, making sure to trample a few grunt corpses on the way for good measure. Jack and Theodore appear to have prudently taken your advice and already made themselves scarce. You march inexorably through the moonlit trees until arriving at the riverbank. Unfortunately, the Palriga Canal, though majestic, has blocked off that particular route to Conundrum-chan's previous residence in the underground cloning facility - not to mention, there's no way Rupert would fit down there.
Well, it'll take more than that to stop you. You will your pantagruelian steed onwards into the thick, dark waters. After some initial hesitation, he wades slowly into the river, just barely resisting the forceful currents and swirling eddies.
>>526
You wish you could, but the only brontosaurus available has already been nomenclated. In fact, you rather suspect the task to be impossible, as even an ostensibly nameless brontosaurus would implicitly be called the brontosaurus with no name. Indeed, the word brontosaurus is itself, in a sense, a name.
>>527
Though fairly average sized amongst Sauropoda, Rupert towers uncontested above all other fauna in the area. He is like an anachronism born of some primordial time ruled by gods and titans. You rub his scaly neck affectionately.
After what seems an eternity, you arrive at the opposite bank, and then at the small clearing with the odd white building where you landed with the jetpacks back at >>410. Sitting in front of the building you find that man - what did he call himself again? Aaron, that was it - sitting before a modest campfire. Jimmy is lying curled up in his lap, fast asleep.
"Ariadne! Thank goodness you're here!" he exclaims as soon as he sees you, "Something terrible has happened underground. Conundrum-chan is... well, you'd better see for yourself..." He trails off uncertainly. You're not sure you trust this man, after he shamelessly took advantage of your amnesia to masquerade as your father. He's probably one of these detestable lolicon types.
Express all of our conflicting feelings in the form of a song.
Sing a song that uses the phrase "Brobdingnagian brontosaurus" liberally in the lyrics.
Take an apple juice break.
Get off Rupert and go inside.
Be Aaron. As soon as Ariadne has gone a few steps inside, throw Jimmy at her and shut the door behind them, then run as fast as possible in the other direction.
Apologize for all the racially insensitive references towards the noble people of Brobdingnag in this story.
>>532
Unable to admit your own apprehension at descending into the foreboding depths, you stall for time by exclaiming how very parched your throat is, and how you'd like a nice drink of apple juice before starting anything new. Aaron asks you to wait there and disappears indoors. He returns thirty seconds later holding an unmarked plastic bottle of water, which he offers to you proudly.
You smack it from his hands, onto the ground. "Does this look like apple juice to you?" you demand. He stares dejectedly down at his feet and mumbles some vague apology.
>>533
Well, that's enough of that, you decide. Leaving Rupert behind - you're quite sure he can fend for himself - you slowly make your way into the building, Aaron following nervously a few steps behind.
You cannot play as Aaron; you can only play as members of your current party.
As soon as you've gone a few steps inside, you wrench Jimmy from Aaron's grip, throw her in the air, slam the outer door shut behind yourselves and, narrowly avoiding the yowling mass of fur and claws now descending from the ceiling, run along the corridor and down the spiral staircase. You keep running, feet tapping away against the narrow stone steps, corkscrewing ever downwards. You don't look back.
Breathing hard, you finally emerge into the cloning facility. A cursory glance reveals no more of the cloning pods have been opened since you were last here. The waters of the Palriga Canal are flowing steadily from the mouth of the northeast tunnel down to the southeast. You notice that the door on the south wall that was previously padlocked shut is currently ajar. Curiosity piqued, you crane your neck around the edge and peek inside. It's very bright inside, but, straining your eyes, you manage to make out - my god, it's-- !
You hear footsteps approaching behind you. You turn to see Aaron, with a strange smile on his lips. Before your very eyes, his form blurs and transforms into that of Jack Conundrum-chan. Ah yes, you forgot she had that ability. Still smiling, she takes a step closer and says, simply, "Sorry Cassie-chan, but there's been a change of plans."
>>534
"I-I'm sorry" you manage to stammer out. Then, all at once, Conundrum-chan makes a violent movement too fast for you to decipher, you see a flash of light and feel a burst of pain, and then all is dark and silent. You cannot feel or sense a thing. This state continues for a while; you aren't sure how long. It seems like only a second or two, yet you awaken with that unmistakeable lethargic, contented feeling after sleeping for longer than normal.
You open your eyes. You find yourself sat at a large round table with a white tablecloth. The table is laden with frilly doilies, various tea making paraphernalia, small plates of biscuits, cakes, sandwiches, fresh and dried fruit, and other such innocent niceties. Sat opposite you, next to one another, are Alexei and Jacqueline. Two seats over to their right is Aaron - perhaps the real one, this time. They are each dressed in fine, smart clothing - suits and evening dresses, as appropriate - with clean, well styled hair, and beautiful, unblemished appearances. The only exception is Jacqueline, who has a white bandage wrapped tightly around her face covering both eyes. They are all smiling warmly.
Looking around, you appear to be in the base of a wooded glen. A small stream gurgles nearby. Birds sing from the branches. The sun shines from amidst wisps of cirrus and clumps of cumulus. A light, cool breeze blows intermittently. The serenity is almost surreal.
Returning your attention to the table, you find that all three present are looking at you. "So glad you could join us, Cassandra! Or was it Ariadne?" says Alexei jovially. "At any rate, would you like a cup of tea?" "B-but you're dead..." you object. Indeed, you vividly recall seeing him explode and die horribly. "Well yes, we're all dead here." he concedes. "Anyway, tea?"
Say that you would prefer apple juice.
take the res sickness and revive at the spirit healer
Become a guiding spirit for Jack Aaronova.
put face firmly between dead man's buttocks
deeply inhale
get shot nine times for your money
Rub the dead man's buttocks to summon the genie of the butt (this butt).
>>536
You decide to play along for now. First of all, you never managed to take that apple juice break you wanted. You politely request some nice cloudy apple juice, which Alexei kindly obliges, citing your earlier demand back at >>401,404. "Hope this makes up for my singing, eh?" He jokes, handing you a tall glass containing an opaque green liquid, which you cautiously sip at.
It is wonderful. Cool enough to refresh, but not so cold as to impair the taste; thick, but not fibrous; full and deep in flavour, with hints of citrus. If you were an apple, to become part of a juice like this is all you could ever wish for. Before you know it you've emptied the entire glass.
>>537
You close your eyes and hope that some kind soul will come by your lifeless corpse, heal your spirit and resuscitate you - I mean, who wouldn't want to perform mouth-to-mouth on such a beautiful, alluring young lady as yourself? You wouldn't even mind if this caused some sort of abstract illness, just so long as you could be alive again. You aren't ready for the afterlife just yet.
>>538
As your revival doesn't appear to be forthcoming, you open your eyes again. Aaron is just concluding a joke or story of some sort that you weren't listening to. "...So then he bursts in, shouting "Look everyone, I just proved the Jacobian conjecture!"" The three burst into peals of laughter, Alexei slapping his knee enthusiastically. Sensing an opening in the conversation, you enquire as to how you might go about influencing the world of the living, perhaps specifically that Aaronova girl.
They casually admit that they don't know about anything like that. "Now that we're in paradise," counters Aaron, "Why worry about past lives? Here, have a scone instead. The clotted cream is to die for!"
>>539
Politely declining, you decide more drastic measures are needed to verify that you really have joined the ranks of the dead. Vision is easily fooled; olfaction less so. Aaron looks quite living - for that matter, you didn't even know he was dead until you met him here - and you didn't see Jacqueline die either. You choose to focus on Alexei, as he is most certain to be dead.
You rise from your seat and demand that Alexei follow suit. Ignoring the impropriety of your actions, you crouch and take a deep breath of his derrière. It smells like fresh laundry drying outside on a windy day. Well, at any rate, he doesn't smell like the reanimated corpse of an eccentric theoretical physicist, so you can safely discard that idea.
>>540
Perhaps, you hypothesise, if you die here, you'll go back to the real world? Well, it's not like you've any better ideas. Unfortunately, nobody is willing - or able - to shoot you repeatedly, not even with the promise of monetary reimbursement.
>>541
You give Alexei's backside a gentle pat and fondle, just for good measure. He clears his throat uncomfortably and returns to his seat. No genies emerge.
It seems you're here for the long haul. Maybe you could try interrogating the locals, or reconnoitring the surroundings, or coming to peace with your past sins, or just gorging yourself on light confectionery.
Go find the ghosts of Vladimir Lenin and Kim il Sung and join with them to lead a Socialist revolution and install ourself as Chairman for Life of the People's Republic of Heaven.
Ask for a cigarette.
Follow the stream upstream, back to the world of the living.
>>543
Now that you think about it, if this really is the afterlife then it ought to be a little better populated. I mean, not just the famous historical figures, but you distinctly recall brutally murdering several grunts. Perhaps the other dead are elsewhere in this place, or perhaps they went to a different afterlife. You decide to go off searching to see for yourself. Who knows? Perhaps you might happen across some famous communist dictators.
Turning your back on the tea party, you head into the woods, climbing generally uphill and out of the little valley. The trees are sparsely set, and their branches allow plenty of sunlight through. The forest floor is littered with pine needles and patches of clover. You wander for about an hour, finding several grassy clearings, banks of wildflowers, songbirds, colourful insects, wild rabbits and other such lovely things, but nothing human. Disappointed, you return to where you started. The three of them are still sitting around just as they were when you left.
Ghosts or no ghosts, it's time to take a stand. "Comrades!" you entreat, banging a fist on the table, "It is time for a revolution! No longer shall we suffer at the hands of the bourgeoisie; under my benevolent rule we shall live in a fair and equal paradise, which I hereby name the People's Republic of Heaven!" Alexei laughs and toasts to your success, apparently happy with the arrangement. Aaron objects, in mock seriousness, to the name of your new state, saying that he thinks it seems more like Elysium or perhaps the Asphodel Meadows rather than Heaven. Jacqueline smiles warmly, but says nothing.
>>544
You decide to exercise your new power. Best to start simple, though. Your demand for a cigarette is met with troubled glances, as none present seem to possess anything of the sort, but after a moment's head scratching you notice one perched on the edge of the saucer in front of you. How odd, you don't remember seeing it there earlier.
>>545
Happy that your budding communist utopia can govern itself in your absence, you decide to go for a second expedition, this time to the source of the little brook nearby. You follow it upwards through patches of forest and small fields of bracken, then through rocky outcroppings and alpine meadows. You find its source: a small waterfall - little more than a trickle down the side of a cliff - above a round mountain lake, no more than ten metres across. The surface of the water is perfectly still, reflecting the open sky. It's very pretty, even if it isn't what you were looking for.
There's something odd about the reflection, though. Whilst the blue parts should be solid colour - with, at most, a slight gradient - the more you look, the more you begin to notice faint lines, or seams in the texture. You cannot tell for certain whether it is the outline of something under the water, or faint ripples on the surface, or even the reflection of something in the sky.
Put the cigarette between your lips. Don't light it, just hold it there and waggle it from time to time.
Pee on reflection of sky in lake.
Dive in and go as deep as possible. Breathe in.
go to space through the lake using gap wizardry
>>547
Now that you no longer need to worry about dying slowly and painfully of cancer, you decide you may as well try one of these little bundles of addiction and carcinogenesis. Well, when you say "try", you're not sure you really want to inhale all that foul smelling smoke; you'd rather just stick it in your mouth and look cool. So you do.
>>548
Whilst slipping off your pantsu, you ponder your own sudden desire to defile that which is tranquil, questioning whether it is simply a reflexive retaliation against the saccharine toothlessness of your new environment, or the directionless rebellion common to teenage girls, or some deeper animalistic cruelty of the human psyche, or perhaps just that you drank all that apple juice earlier and it has to come out somehow.
You squat in place and relieve yourself into the lake. Ripples play on the surface as your efflux joins the clear mountain waters. Bladder emptied, you breathe a sigh of satisfaction and put your pantsu back on.
>>549
Throwing all caution to the wind, still fully clothed, you take a run up and dive headfirst into the lake. Thankfully, it proves to be amply deep enough. It is bracingly cold, but the sensation is not unpleasant. You keep diving, pushing, kicking ever deeper, towards whatever lies at the bottom. You keep going for several metres; much deeper than the lake really has any right to be. You open your eyes, but the light doesn't reach this far down. Lungs burning, you press on, waiting for your arms to brush against that silty surface which must be just in front of you, but the moment doesn't come.
You realise you already haven't enough breath to get all the way back to the surface. Whether deliberately or by instinct you aren't sure, but you suddenly and sharply inhale through your mouth. The freezing lake water shoots into your mouth, down your trachea and into your lungs. You try to cough but cannot. You flail about, suddenly unaware even which way is up, suffocating in slow agony. Eventually all goes dark. In your final moments you think you hear a mechanical voice saying something about errors or exceptions or ejection or something like that.
>>550
You return to consciousness, unsure how much time has passed. You fill your lungs in one deep, panicked breath, but find yourself in air and in no danger of drowning anyway. You open your eyes and slowly sit up, sore all over and with a dull headache. You are in a small square room, much like the office with the cloning console where you confessed to Conundrum-chan (what were you thinking‽).
In the centre of the room is an obsidian cube, with various cables emerging from its upper face. Lying splayed out around it are the unconscious bodies of Jacqueline, Alexei and Aaron, each with cables leading into their mouth, ears and nostrils, and with what appears to be electroencephalography apparatus attached to their scalps. Another, thicker cable leads away to the southwest corner of the wall and disappears behind a shelf.
With a start, you realise that you are still plugged in yourself, and immediately extract all the nodes from your facial orifices. More bizarrely still, your clothes are still damp, and there is even the soggy remains of a cigarette lodged in the corner of your mouth. Free for now, you decide to take a look around.
There are shelves on three sides of the room, each covered in unmarked cardboard boxes. A bare halogen light bulb dangles from the ceiling. On the north wall is a thick set steel door. You try the handle, but it is locked; if this is where you think it is, it's probably padlocked from the other side.
Well, this isn't space, but your miraculous teleportation certainly does seem like some sort of wizardry.
Carefully attempt to disconnect Alexei from the machine, removing the apparatuses one by one.
>>552
You cautiously tug the cables from Alexei's mouth, nose and ears, as though pulling spaghetti from a live electrical socket. Besides some slight facial twitches, there is no response. Breath held nervously, you peel away the net of sensors on his head. He remains lying exactly as before, eyes closed, breathing shallowly.
Just as you are fearing you might've done some permanent damage, his eyelids flutter open and he sits up, cradling his head and muttering something incomprehensible. He looks blearily around at the small room. "B-but..." he begins, as though protesting that reality itself is being unfair. He stares at you, then at the palms of his hands, then down at Jacqueline.
"Dammit, no!" he barks suddenly. Before you can stop him, he roughly wraps the EEG sensors over his scalp and shoves the cables back into his face. As the last one strikes home, he loses consciousness and collapses back onto the floor. Well, you can't entirely blame him.
Draw penises on unconscious people's cheeks, then begin exploring the rest of the area.
Look for a ventilation grate
>>554
You begin investigate the boxes on the shelves, seeking some sort of drawing implement for mischievous purposes. Many of them are empty, or contain nothing but wrapping paper or bubble wrap. Those that aren't empty contain generic mining/spelunking paraphernalia, or vacuum packed rations. Finally, you happen across a single biro, with its end chewed, in amongst a pile of risk assessment forms. You duly decorate the cheeks of the three dreamers with little phalli. That'll teach them to live in a false reality!
Feeling fulfilled, you turn back to searching the shelves - after all, there isn't much else to explore around here. After a while, you realise, firstly, that all the boxes show signs of having been opened, and secondly, judging by the tool-shaped depressions in the linings of some of the boxes, everything potentially useful appears to have been removed. There's a lot of paperwork, stationery, rock samples and suchlike, but not much of any practical use. You do, however, still have in your inventory your trusty geologist's hammer, the stone sickle you crafted earlier, and that odd white gun thing Jack gave you back at >>504.
Just as you are considering abandoning your search, you find, in a small box at the back of one of the shelves, concealed by a layer of wax paper, four long, cylindrical red objects. Initially you mistake them for candles, before noticing the long fuses emerging from their tips. They appear to be sticks of dynamite.
>>555
You inspect the walls behind each of the shelves, searching for the ever convenient human sized ventilation duct. You find that the cable leading from the cube in the centre of the room towards the southwest corner continues into a hole at the base of the wall, heading westwards. The hole is only five centimetres in diameter, and you can barely fit your hand in it. There is a very slight airflow coming from it, and, pressing your eye to the opening, you can see light coming from the other end.
use one of the pickaxes to mine through to the other side of the wall
grow penis
Take dynamite. Put one of the sticks in the hole at the base of the wall. Stand far away and shoot it with the white gun thing.
Collect the most wieldly severed limb to use as a bludgeoning weapon.
NOOOOO NOT AARON! :'( Aaron was the true protagonist. The everyman. The one with whom we pitiful, wretched mortals could most sympathize. And now he is limbless.
Put skill points into geokinesis. Rock and roll.
summon our stand and strike a fabulous homoerotic pose
remove game cartridge, insert Cho Aniki.
If the previous game featured Batman, insert it into the anus of an AVGN actor.
>>561
You crawl over to the midst of the carnage and take Jacqueline's lower left leg. The femur has snapped just below the knee, with much of the flesh blasted from the bone, leaving a handle of sorts. There's still some burnt scraps of that gaudy pink dress she was wearing clinging to the skin. There isn't really enough space to hold with both hands, so you're not sure how effective it'd be as a bludgeoning weapon, but in terms of psychological warfare it should prove quite effective.
>>562
You choke back a sob as you pass by the mutilated corpse of your foster father. You try to remind yourself of the time he almost killed you back at >>295,300 but somehow you can't bring yourself to hate him. He was an idiot and a coward, but an honest, well meaning, loveable one. He didn't deserve this.
So as to make sure his death wasn't entirely in vain, you use the skill point you gained from him - as well as that from Jacqueline - to further your own skills in geological manipulation. You thereby unlock the following skills:
You rock from side to side and do a forward roll. You still feel a little dazed from the explosion - you hope it isn't concussion - and end up falling over into Aaron's remains. If you weren't covered in blood enough before, you certainly are now.
>>563
You summon your balance and get to your feet. From your standing position you can see, in the next room, a body lying half buried in debris. It's Conundrum-chan. Next to, around, and on top of her lie the shattered remains of the desk and computer terminal that were on the south wall of the room. Various of the shelves have also collapsed and spilled their contents.
At the sight of her, your heart skips, and you cannot help but clasp your hands together, tilt your head slightly to one side and sigh longingly. Memories of that long, passionate kiss you shared with her flit through your head. If your life were a yuri manga, you'd probably be surrounded by illustrations of roses in bloom and sparkles right now.
>>564
No! What are you doing‽ Besides the fact that you are definitely not sexually attracted to that girl, she's clearly injured and needs your help. You cast aside your playful, toying mentality as though it were some simple removable module, replacing it with feelings of brotherly love. You stumble through the rubble and fallen masonry to her side, and survey her predicament.
It seems the desk fell onto her. Though this shielded her from much of the blast, it and the remains of the computer have her pinned to the ground. You pull her to safety and inspect her wounds. She is bleeding fairly severely from both thighs, with more minor lacerations to her chest, face and right arm. Her left arm is badly crushed and probably broken. Two fingers are missing from her right hand, but judging by the scar tissue this is clearly an old wound. She is unconscious, breathing shallowly and fitfully. Her pulse is fast.
As a true aniki, you feel you should treat her injuries, but you aren't quite sure how. If there were any medical supplies here, they're probably destroyed by now. You might be able to obtain water to wash her wounds from the Palriga, but you don't know how clean it would be. Alternatively, the door out is open, and she did betray you, after all. You could just leave her behind.
>>565
Whatever your previous thoughts, you're fairly certain they didn't involve any masked vigilantes with chiropterophilia.
Go ahead and clean Jack's wounds, then bandage with the shredded clothing if possible. Encourage her with an admonition of "Don't die, poopy head."
Search broken computer for wires to use as a tourniquet for Jack's wounds. Cut them with Jack's ceremonial stone knife if she still has it, otherwise make a small knife by using stone sharpening on one of the bits of shrapnel.
Actually Batman would've been a chiropterophobic, according to the backstory.
Lysandre's Trump Card
Make sacrifices to the mighty elder god, Yoghurt-Sweettooth.
>>567
Finding no clean water or disinfectant in the vicinity, you search further afield. You step outside the open door into the large square room with all the cloning pods. The Palriga has clearly been busy in your absence, and the room is flooded to about ten centimetres deep. The water surface is perfectly still, and the reflections of the overhead lights are neatly reticulated on the other side. Something about the scene seems subtly wrong to you. You feel a faint tug at some thread of memory, before you suddenly realise that all several hundred of the cloning pods are empty.
Well, there's nothing you can do about that now. Through cupped hands you bring back some of the water and wash away the blood and dust from Conundrum-chan's wounds. With effort, you tear off two strips of your petticoats and wrap them around the wounds on her legs. They are instantly soaked through with blood. "Don't die, poopy-head!" you whisper urgently in her ear. Her head shifts to one side, she coughs up a globule of blood and phlegm, and replies, weakly, "No, you're a poopy-head."
>>568
Too busy trying to save her life to keep up your side of the conversation, you search the carcass of the computer for cables - of which there are quite a few. The ceremonial stone knife is, of course, in the possession of Jack Aaronova, not Jack Conundrum-chan. In its stead, you perform stone sharpening on a large flake of red stone, probably from one of the bricks in the wall. This costs you five mana, leaving 185 remaining. The makeshift knife cuts through the cables without any resistance, and you are soon wrapping them around her upper thighs.
You blush as you realise how close your hands are to Conundrum-chan's most private and most deadly body part, then sober up as you remind yourself this may well result in the eventual amputation of her legs. She coughs again, and continues: "Yes, you're the poopy-head here. I should've known you'd betray me. I could've just killed you, you know, and instead I gave you heaven" - she breaks off in a fit of coughing - "...And this is how you repay me?" She laughs bitterly.
>>569
Instead of remorse, or vindication, or sympathy, you instead feel only a vague uncertainty as to the true origins of Batman.
>>570
Though you have, until recently, played very well with the cards fate has dealt you, you have recently cast away and discarded a great many assets that may have proven more useful were they still in play. If only you had some way of shuffling them all back into your hand! You momentarily lament the inexorable passage of time and the permanence of our actions, but lack any practical course of action.
>>571
Unless... perhaps there's some arcane skill you can unlock that might offer you a trump card of sorts? Well, you tell yourself flippantly, it's not like you've got any better plans. Of course, unlocking skills requires skill points, and skill points require blood sacrifices. You stick your head outside, but it seems that the only sapient beings nearby are you and Conundrum-chan. So be it.
You stand over her, gripping the sharpened stone shard. "What, are you going to kill me?" she asks, half facetiously, half fearfully. "Praise Sweettooth!" you scream as loud as you can, slashing deep into her throat. Blood wells and erupts from the gash, and with a single gurgle, she falls to the ground, dead.
For killing a sapient being in a ritualistic manner, you have gained two skill points and 100 mana. You monster.
Collect five (if sufficient suitable pieces are available) suitably sized chunks of rubble and craft shurikens from them.
We've gone this far...might as well put skill points into geokinesis.
design penis
open character sheet
change allegiance to "Islamic State"
chant "allahu ackbar!"
Head toward the first sound we hear.
hack apart all the corpses of the people we just killed to make sure no one reanimates them later
What the fuck is going on here
>>573
There is certainly no shortage of bits of stone scattered about the room. You gather a few together and use your stone morphing (active skill) to convert them into five hira shuriken, setting you back by twenty mana. You have 265 mana remaining. You could probably sharpen them further with your stone sharpening (active skill), but, to be honest, they seem sharp enough to cause some damage as they are, so long as you throw them hard enough.
>>574
You increase your geokinesis level to eight, unlocking the following skills:
>>575
You spend a few moments thinking about penises. Perhaps, you reflect, they'd be less disagreeable if they were softer, and had frills, and nice abstract patterns on the surface. And maybe if, instead of being tools of penetration and fluid expulsion, they were instead just used for keeping things warm. After a few more changes in a similar vein, you find that you have accidentally designed a tea cosy instead.
>>576
Your character, being an abstract amalgamation of your attitudes, skills, beliefs and values, cannot be changed so suddenly by anything short of brain damage, and certainly doesn't come in sheets. You chant a few empty syllables into the equally empty space around you, but experience no response, either internal or external.
>>577
You hear a tapping outside, so faint you almost think it your imagination, and leave the stuffy little room to investigate. Outside, on the small metal walkway running along the southern edge of the room, you find Jimmy Sphincter. She looks up at you and cocks her head expectantly. Looking around, the room is otherwise just as you left it, with the many empty cloning pods and the flooding. There are small ripples playing on the otherwise still water surface. Presumably, Jimmy must have disturbed the water recently.
Then, to your dismay, you hear a scraping noise coming from the room you were just in.
>>578
Fearing the worst, you rush back to appraise the situation. To your surprise, there are no signs of movement in any of the dead, but rather the black stone cube in the room you were locked in earlier appears to be shifting back and forth slightly. It stops as soon as you come near. Still, you refuse to take any chances.
The corpses of Alexei, Aaron and Jacqueline are already about as hacked apart as they're going to get - indeed, you are still carrying Jacqueline's dismembered leg, for reasons you can't quite recall - but Conundrum-chan's body looks all too reanimateable. Using the stone shard, you hack off each of her limbs and throw them into the pile with all the other body parts. Not that being dismembered seems to have stopped things reanimating in the past, you realise.
>>579
Come to think of it, you aren't quite sure yourself.
destroy penis
throw limbs onto the stone cube
initiate an amorous allemande to the stone cube
Having finally peed and gotten rid of that nagging discomfort, and having cast off a previous reality paradigm in blood and gunpowder, and having furthermore found a few new religious beliefs, I find myself entirely lacking in any real direction.
I feel bound to merely repeat basic things ritualistically for a while until I can recover and try to understand myself better.
I am thirsty. I must drink. I must find apple juice. If there is no apple juice nearby I must drink water. I must drink as much as I can hold without vomiting, and I must wait for my stomach to empty and drink again.
The answers will come later.
I am Jack's herniated bladder.
Relax bum
SHOW ME
SHOYU
PUNCTUAL GOMEZ, PUNCTUAL GOMEZ
>>581
You wipe your mind of any knowledge of the male genitalia. Having already overcome amnesia, such a manipulation of your own memory proves almost trivial. You annihilate your every penile association, from Freudian psychoanalysis to anatomical nomenclature, until you have forgotten even what you are forgetting or why. You have destroyed, within yourself, the very essence of the penis. The penis no longer exists to you.
>>582
You shower the cube with giant pieces of bloody confetti. Nothing happens.
>>583
Well, you think to yourself, that is one handsome cube, especially when it's all covered in the blood and mutilated corpses of almost everyone you know. You invite it to join you in a formal dance, but it just vibrates momentarily then sits still. You try using some form of rock animation (active skill) to force it to dance one way or another, but it seems to have about two orders of magnitude too much mass. How bothersome.
>>584
You sigh quietly to yourself, thinking about how you've come to this point. Perhaps it would've been better just to stay in that virtual paradise. I mean, even if the companionship left something to be desired, the apple juice was simply divine... Alas, even if there was apple juice in this damned place at some point, it's long since been vaporised by your explosive escape.
Still, your mouth is dry, and your throat aches for lack of lubrication. You stagger away, into the main room, off the walkway and into the water. You begin by drinking it daintily from cupped hands, before leaning closer and lapping it like a dog, then just pressing your face below the surface and swallowing it down in thick gulps. The water is cool and refreshing, with an earthy, slightly metallic taste. You cannot stop drinking.
You close your eyes. You imagine the entire Palriga Canal flowing into your mouth. You consume, consume, your body nothing but a vessel. Through some combination of exhaustion, water intoxication and, perhaps, regret at killing everyone, you let your head sink into the wall and quietly pass out, face down in the closing water. Somewhere, from a great distance, a vaguely familiar voice says something about errors.
You awaken to a dull headache and a bitter taste in the back of your mouth. You open your eyes, and are immediately thrown by a wave of déjà vu. You are in the exact same room you woke up in last time, complete with the shelves, locked door, cube, cables, and Aaron, Alexei and Jacqueline, peacefully sleeping as though their limbs had been attached the whole time. Which they had, come to think of it.
That bitch! She put you in a simulation inside another simulation!
>>585
You cannot play as Jack's herniated bladder; you can only play as members of your current party.
>>586
You calm yourself down, reminding yourself that anger rarely helps solve problems like this. Having relaxed a little, you try to "bum" a "fag" from Aaron, as those wacky Americans would say (or rather, ask for a cigarette, as you did back at >>544,546). He remains obstinately unconscious.
>>587
You demand to be shown reality as it truly is, or you'll show everyone just what you're truly capable of. It's no empty threat. When no response is forthcoming in any punctual capacity, you decide to investigate for yourself, and soon find some discrepancies between this and your previous existence: when you awoke last time, you still had everything you had had in your inventory previously - in fact, your dress was still wet - whereas this time you have nothing but the (dry) clothes on your back. Unbidden, you think about how Conundrum-chan must've run her hands down your body while you were unconscious to find and confiscate all your concealed weaponry, wondering, perhaps, just how thorough her search might've been, before violently shaking the thought from your head.
Interestingly, your skills and mana seem to have carried over. You are unsure of the full philosophical implications of this fact.
Physically, the room seems to be the same as before; the door is still locked, the hole in the wall is still there, and the shelves and their contents are in the same positions you found them - including the dynamite.
Smoke dynamite like a cigar as if you are a Looney Toon.
Extinguish the fuse on the dynamite out at the last second by shoving it in Alexei's ass.
Praise Zardoz
Disregard software vegans, acquire hydration.
If it was merely a simulation, I have yet to quench my thirst.
Jesus is a friend of mine (I have a friend in Jesus)
I'd drink Gatorade, but I'm afraid that Brominated Vegetable Oil will slowly turn me into a bro.
Embrace your inner bro.
Embrace your innards, bro. They're with you for life.
>>591
Like a cartoon lunatic, you carefully pluck a single stick from the box and stick the end in your mouth. It tastes oily but sweet, with a burning undertone. It does not taste like the sort of thing one should put in one's mouth. Well, you've come this far... You blow a confident puff of air into the thick red stick, as though smoking a cigar, but find you have to clamp your lips onto it in order to keep it from falling out of your mouth. This pressure is enough to cause it to detonate, blowing you and everyone else in the room to smithereens.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 22
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>590)
>>592
You cannot be entirely certain whether you are now living in reality, or simply another nested simulation, so you decide that you had best be clear about precisely what sort of simulation you are or are not willing to participate in. You lecture the stone cube, as it seems as good an audience as any. You feel slightly uplifted, as though more in control, however slightly. Just as you are winding down, you remember to specify that you mean free as in freedom, not free as in free beer.
>>593
None of the fuses on any of the sticks of dynamite are lit, thankfully - that would be quite a predicament! - but nonetheless it doesn't hurt to be safe. You extinguish it in the most gratuitous and inappropriate manner imaginable: by pulling down Alexei's trousers and thrusting it between his buttocks. The dynamite, however, does not appear amenable to this course of events, and expresses this by violently detonating. Alexei explodes for the second time. Nothing is left of you but a smear of blood, hair and unidentifiable organic bits painting one side of the room.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 23
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>590)
>>594
"Wow, Zardoz!" you exclaim, just in case he happens to be listening, "You have such a lovely giant stone head! And your bellicist philosophy is so insightful! Keep up the good work, Zardoz!" There is no response.
>>595
All this Zardoz-praising is thirsty work, you find. You search high and low for some bottled water or something like that, without success. Your throat is a little dry, but you aren't quite at the point of resorting to bodily fluids for hydration.
>>596
You call upon your friend Jesus, to no avail. Well, if he were truly your friend, he wouldn't let you go thirsty and trapped in here as you are!
>>597
You think about what sort of fluids you'd like to drink. Those energy drinks are supposedly good for combating dehydration, you seem to recall, but there's something you find vaguely offputting about brominated vegetable oil. Those long, flexible strands dangling from the glycerol head, aliphatic but for their oversized, fuzzy bromine substituents - it's like a jellyfish waiting to sting. Who can guess what such a substance might do to you?
>>598
You embrace your inner onii-chan - that part of you that was always protective of your beloved imouto. Lacking any other suitable outlet, you fawn over the sleeping Jacqueline, before jealously separating her from Alexei and Aaron. They're not to sleep next to your little sister.
>>599
You hug yourself and, implicitly, the viscera lurking beneath your skin. You feel a warm appreciation for their various exotic and interrelated functions, from the biochemical to the genetic to the cellular to the organic level. You will, surely, be with them until death do you part.
Take dynamite. Shoot small westward hole with gun, first moving everybody as far away as possible. (And don't put dynamite in the hole this time.)
Make Samus Aran your role model
>>601
Firstly, you drag everyone's bodies as far from the hole in the wall as possible - which isn't very far, given it's a small space and they're all attached to the cube in the centre of the room. You cautiously lift the box of dynamite and carry it with you. You find that you are not in possession of any guns, meaning that that dastardly hole will have to go unshot for now.
>>602
Being trapped in this room is taking its toll on you, mentally speaking. You take some small comfort in the thought of a certain Samus Aran: a beautiful, brave and capable young lady, not entirely unlike yourself. If only you too had a full body power suit, you think to yourself, so you could morph ball your way through that little gap in the wall.
>>603
Well, if neither Zardoz nor Jesus are going to help you, perhaps that Gomez fellow might show up just in time? You hold your breath a moment in anticipation and, defying even your expectations, hear footsteps on the other side of the door, then the jangling of keys, then, at last, the door beginning to creak open...
If the door opens outward, burst through the door elbow-first to stun whoever is behind it, then run away as fast as possible.
If the door opens inward, wait behind it and slam it shut on the body of whoever's opening it, then run away as fast possible.
>>605
The door opens inwards only a centimetre or two, and a voice emerges - Conundrum-chan's, to be specific - "Cassandra, that's you, isn't it? I heard you talking to yourself from next door. I should've known I couldn't keep you occupied like that for long, but..." She trails off, then continues: "I... I just can't go through with it after all. I think there's a better way of settling this. Please, let me in, and we can talk this over."
Well, you're not falling for that one! You throw your weight against the door, slamming it shut. Conundrum-chan says, coldly, "I see, so that's how it is. As you wish." You hear the lock click shut again, then footsteps leading away. You try to run away, but find yourself still on the wrong side of the door. How inconvenient.
>>606
Why are you here? Is there a meaning to your existence at all? What should you be doing with your life? The answer comes to you all of a sudden in a blinding epiphany. Your life has two goals only: the kicking of asses and the busting of spines. Alas, there is not a single donkey to be found in this gloomy little room. You bust the spines of each of the three dreamers in turn, but they show no response, being still blithely oblivious.
You're getting a little sick of being stuck here. Surely, somewhere between your dynamite, geokinesis, sleeping companions and the fact that Conundrum-chan can apparently hear you, you must be able to contrive a cunning escape plan somehow.
Use geokinesis to make a blunt hammer weapon from shards of stone around the room. Use the hammer to violently smash all machinery in site.
Or in sight, whatever
Resort to bodily fluids for hydration.
>>608,609
They aren't really shards as such, but there are plenty of rock samples in the various boxes on the shelves. You take a fair sized slab of basalt and a long, crystalline lump of orthoclase, and use stone morphing (active skill) to fuse them together. This costs you twenty mana, leaving you 245 remaining. For such a makeshift weapon, it proves actually rather well weighted and comfortable to wield. Tightening your grip, you vow to destroy all machinery in situ.
Unfortunately, there isn't a much mechanical about upon which to release your Luddite rage. After careful consideration of the semantics involved, you decide the cables and apparatus attached to the sleepers doesn't strictly speaking count as machinery, and hence turn your attentions elsewhere. You crush the nibs of a few ball point pens, hammer a tape measure into oblivion, and are then left with nothing but the mechanism of the door. It resists even your most violent swings, reverberating loudly but suffering not even a dent.
You stop suddenly as you hear Conundrum-chan outside make a startled noise, then the sound of something falling over, a scream, and some bizarre inhuman shrieking noise. Your blood goes cold. What is happening? Is this your doing? After more sounds of struggle, you hear a strange flapping noise, something clumsily fiddling with the lock from the other side, then the door clicks open for the second time. Cautiously, you pull it open and look, hammer at the ready.
Hovering outside is that friendly red bird of yours! Gosh, you haven't seem in ages! "Oh Reginald," you exclaim, greeting him with an affectionate tickling under the chin, "Thank you so much!" He must've stolen the key from your captor and freed you himself. What a clever, loyal little creature he is. The room you emerge into is just as it was in the simulation - full of empty cloning pods, and flooded ankle deep.
>>610
You are indescribably relieved to be free, especially as you were getting rather thirsty in there. Now, at last, there's no chance you'll have to drink anything weird just to survive! Your mouth waters at the sight of the expanse of cool, gently glittering water before you. And yet... somehow, you can't help but feel slightly disappointed that you no longer have an excuse to drink your own fluids.
Just to settle the matter once and for all, you sharpen one edge of the hammer (setting you back by five mana) and use it to nick the edge of your hand. You suck the blood from the wound, letting the warm, slightly viscous, ferric tasting liquid spread through your mouth. Mmm. You could get used to that taste.
More importantly, you need to decide what to do next. To the east is a spiral staircase leading up to the surface. To the west is an open door leading to Conundrum-chan's office. Behind you, to the south, the three dreamers are still slumbering, along with that curious stone cube. Of the four subterranean tunnels leading into this room, the ones to the southwest and southeast appear to be flooded (but you could, hypothetically, still try to explore them), water is flowing steadily from the tunnel to the northeast, and the tunnel to the northwest alone looks comfortably traversable.
Hypothetically explore the flooded rooms.
Drink water.
use geokinesis to make a stone scuba suit and explore the flooded rooms for real
Drink as much as you can, the thirst is the worst part of this endless nightmare.
>>612
You stare intently at the two yawning, unlit openings to the subaqueous world below. They betray no hint of their contents, but that doesn't mean you can't guess. You begin by hypothetically exploring the southwest tunnel, which, you imagine, after a short, narrow shaft leading down at a roughly 45 degree angle, opens into a now flooded ruin. The crumbling masonry whispers of illustrious temples and unknowably ancient rites. Deeper into the structure, further into the cold, clinging water, the architecture twists maddeningly in Escheresque contortions that confound the eye. You sink down twisting helical staircases, through ornate archways, past elaborate arabesques in tessellating or fractal patterns, until you lose all sense of direction or self. You drown in your own imagination.
>>613
Returning to reality, you bend down, cup your hands and swallow several mouthfuls of the cool water. It washes the blood from your hands and your throat, refreshing you inside and out.
>>614
You hear splashing behind you. Conundrum-chan is stumbling in your direction. One hand is clutching her right eye, from beneath which a line of blood is tracing its way down her cheek. She calls something after you, but you can't even make out the words. Reginald swoops back and forth around her, and she bats at him a little, but continues drawing steadily closer to you.
Well, this is awkward. You hope she doesn't want to kiss you again or something. I mean, it's not like you'd like that or anything. Eager to avoid such an emotionally turbulent reunion, you rush off towards the southeast tunnel, as heading towards the southwest would involve having to pass Conundrum-chan. Using your stone morphing (active skill), you morph a fair chunk of cavern wall into a modest, single tank diving suit. This costs you 140 mana, leaving you 100 mana remaining.
Being made of stone, the tube covering your mouth and nose is immobile, making it a little inconvenient. Similarly, you have no way of actually compressing the air in the tank, meaning it's more like just a single extra lungful of air on your back. Still, it's better than nothing. Very, very carefully, you submerge the box of dynamite, which you are still carrying for some bizarre suicidal reason, and dive with it beneath the surface, praying that the increase in pressure doesn't offend it enough to detonate.
You cannot see anything, and navigate by following the roof of the tunnel with the hand that isn't otherwise occupied. The tunnel levels out soon after passing underwater, then carries on more or less straight for about fifty metres. Just as you are desperately running out of air, it begins to rise again, and you see faint lights glimmering on the other side of a water surface just above you. You emerge, breath deeply, and pull yourself out onto the shore.
You are in a large, black space. You cannot see any walls or ceiling. There are odd luminescent little white bell shaped objects hanging from strands, looking much like larger, glowing versions of lilies of the valley. These illuminate a small lake, from which you have just emerged, surrounded by tall, organic shapes that tower away into the darkness above. The ground is everywhere covered in a thick layer of glistening moss, soft and damp to the touch, with little clusters of mushrooms or foliate coral-like structures. The air smells musty, with a faint undercurrent of overripe fruit.
A persistent breeze is blowing from the west. A narrow valley, bounded on both sides by the glowing organisms, winds away to the southeast. Everywhere else is thickly overgrown and more or less unlit, but the foliage seems especially thick, dark and foreboding to the north.
>>615
Ignoring your surroundings for now, you set down the miraculously unexploded box of dynamite and slurp greedily from the pool. You drink, drink, gulping it down but never quite quenching that itching dryness at the back of your throat, until you are interrupted by a rustling sound from the northeast.
Imitate the rustling sound.
Can we still hear grinding noises?
>>617
You lean over and grasp the base of a group of long, thin stalks, each of which terminates in a bulb shaped like a poppy bud. A brisk shake yields a rustling not dissimilar from the earlier. The rustling from the northeast comes again, this time louder - or possibly just closer? Your pulse quickens and you tighten your grip on the makeshift hammer, which is currently your only form of defence.
There are a few tense moments of silence, then, without warning, a huge, lumbering form emerges into the field of light. Being lit only by the feeble light of the luminescent bell things, you have trouble discerning its details, but it seems somewhat like a giant trilobite - at least the size of a small horse - with an elongated cephalon tapering to a single upturned point, and spines running the entire length of its back. It has more legs than you can count.
It rears up on its back legs, letting its forelegs dangle and waving its antennae back and forth. Its mouth flaps open and closed a few times, then it folds back down and slips into the pool, disappearing with a surprisingly subtle splash. It is immediately followed by another three of the same, two of which similarly sink beneath the surface. The last hesitates and turns to face you. It takes a few steps towards you, waving the horn on its head several times in what might be a provocative gesture.
You realise that the three that just entered the water must be on their way to the cloning facilities, meaning that Conundrum-chan and the dreamers are in danger! You are still wearing the diving equipment, so you could return right now if you tried. Alternatively, you could try to deal with the specimen currently threatening you - either by standing and fighting, or by evading it.
>>618
The trilobite creature is making odd clicking noises, though you can't even tell which of its all too many body parts the noise is coming from. Nothing seems to be grinding just now.
tame one of the trilobites and make it our mount
Throw the box of dynamite a the trilobite HORN.
Use Stone Morphing to carve 1 kg of rock (thus spending 20 mana) from the ceiling, splitting it into 100 10g bits, each bit with a sharp point pointing down, thus causing a deadly rock shower. Use rock diving suit as a shield. If that doesn't work, animate the rock bits and order them to stab the trilobites.
mount trilobite -t
Kill the GNUfag.