We seem to have lost contact with the Control Tower [Grinding Noises][Part II] (855)

1 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7715 22:52

Previously:
http://4-ch.net/dqn/kareha.pl/1341413503/

For a moment you stand, perfectly still, in the half-light of the laboratory, listening to the slow, steady tapping of the two sets of footsteps as they draw ever closer. Somewhere in the building a clock strikes twelve, the deafening sound reverberating through everything around you. The footsteps stop. Without meaning to, you hold your breath.

>>/994
As it may well be your last opportunity, you lunge forwards, grab the computer monitor and tear it from the wall. The cable pulls taught and snaps at the base in a shower of sparks. The lights go out, plunging you into complete darkness. There is a startled yelp from the North, most likely from Mecha Alexei.

>>/995
Fearing Cassandra-chan may be planning to ambush you from the darkness, you strike out wildly in every direction. You accidentally bump into a workbench, knocking several pieces of glassware to the ground, where they shatter. "Who's there? Show yourself!" demands the voice from the North. Despite the assertive tone, their voice is clearly shaking.

>>/996
You bite into the darkness, but your teeth encounter no resistance. You try to metamorphosise into the darkness itself, but find that you require level 12 telekinesis, level 5 healing, level 5 thaumaturgy and 75 mana to shapeshift. You currently have level 10 telekinesis, level 6 healing, level 2 thaumaturgy and 720 mana. You also have four unspent skillpoints.

>>/997
You try to contract all your skeletal muscles at once. You don't really know anything about sweaty homos or how they grunt, but go ahead and make a fairly low, masculine snorting sound.

>>/998
You make a point of not starting any new threads - not that you'd be able to anyway in your present situation. As it so happens, one starts itself anyway, completely outside of your control.

>>/999
You attempt to summon the power of the >>1000GET, but find yourself a single permille off. How embarrassing!

That very second, the clock stops chiming and the ringing fades away into the impenetrable blackness all around you. You hear an all-too-familiar voice behind you, luring you from your relative safety like a siren's call: "Oh Conundrum-chan, I'm waiting for you in the garden..."

2 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7716 04:40

Put remaining skills into pyromancy and use an appropriate skill to light the room.

3 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7716 19:24

Wonder what "appropriate" means.

4 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7717 03:13

Shout something inappropriate.

5 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7717 03:31

Be Continue-chan. Go save our true love!

6 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7717 04:27

eckbh

7 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7717 10:15

d.hk

8 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7717 18:32

ufyl

9 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7717 20:39

Be Jack, find clone, merge with clone into SuperJack.

10 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7717 22:19

gsghj

11 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7717 22:39

>>2
You place all four available skillpoints into pyromancy, bringing your level to nine. You have unlocked the following skills:

• Flammability (Active skill): can make any object or creature under 100kg flammable, regardless of temperature or chemical composition. Effect lasts for sixty seconds. Costs 50 mana.
• Flame camouflage (Passive skill): if within or in front of a mass of flame larger than yourself, become difficult to distinguish from it by other creatures. Only affects sight.
• Arbitrarily sized fireball (Active skill): can summon and cast a fireball of any size. Requires one free hand. Costs the fireball's diameter in centimetres in mana.
• Flame sacrifice (Passive skill): sapient creatures killed by you via primary or secondary effects of fire yield 100 mana and two skill points. Ritual killings involving fire yield 150 mana and three skill points.

You use your arbitrarily sized fireball (Active skill) to summon a five centimetre diameter ball of flame, illuminating the room. You are shocked to see, at the other end of the room, Mecha Alexei and, hand in hand with him, that girl in pink you duelled to the death a while back. Her empty eye sockets glare piercingly at you, while Mecha Alexei looks quite bewildered and terrified.

>>3
In this case, you think "appropriate" probably means not spending all your mana on summoning a titan seven metre fireball, which would probably destroy the laboratory and kill everyone in or near it other than yourself - hilarious as that would be.

>>4
"The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth!" you shout. That wasn't quite what you meant to say.

>>5
You are now playing as Masturbation Continue-chan. You want to save your true love, but you aren't sure who that is any more. Do you truly love Conundrum-chan? Even after she betrayed you and left you to die, twice now? You do feel something for her, but you need to ruminate upon your innermost feelings for a while yet.

>>6
Just for fun, you multiply together Euler's number, the speed of light, the Boltzmann constant, Wien's displacement constant and the Planck constant. You end up with 2.7182818 × 299792458 ms-1 × 1.3806488×10−23 JK-1 × 2.8977721×10−3 mK × 6.62606957×10−34 Js, which comes out as roughly 2.1535×10−50 m2J2.

>>7
You try to take the dot product of height (in terms of the vertical unit vector k, naturally) with the derivative position vector dr (apart from that you misplaced the r). Presumably you would evaluate that as an integral, but it seems silly really; you'd only get a non-zero answer for the dzk component anyway, so your answer would just be scalar height.

>>8
You don't know how to "ufyl". I mean really, what could that even mean?

>>9
You are now playing as Jack Conundrum-chan. You rush out of the laboratory to find and merge with your clone, only to find that she has already wandered off into the garden without you. Even now she is walking across the charred remains of the hedge maze towards Cassandra, who is sitting, again, in the gazebo, smugly sipping a cup of tea.

>>10
"Gsghj!" you exclaim.

12 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7718 02:31

Shoot a 20cm fireball at the gazebo and run back into the laboratory. Teehee!

13 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7718 04:36

challenge Cassandra to a danmaku battle using our levitation and fireball skills

14 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7718 10:35

へ　へ
の　の
　も　　
　へ

15 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7718 19:57

,xu6

16 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7720 21:02

>>12
Leaning out from aside the tall windows in the ballroom, which were broken by Stove Stove and Continue-chan earlier, you summon and cast a respectably sized fireball. You are set back by twenty mana, leaving you 695 mana remaining. As you make an immediate retreat, you do not see the fireball strike the gazebo. In fact, it does hit, leaving a black smear on the rooftiles but doing no permanent damage.

>>13
Enough cowardly posturing! The hour of your ultimate battle has come! You leap outwards, somersaulting through the air, overtaking your earthbound clone and coming within a few tens of metres of the gazebo. "Cassandra! I hereby challenge you to a danmaku battle! Come and face me like a real magical girl, if you dare!"

She exits the gazebo in a leisurely fashion and, still smiling, still holding her cup of tea, ascends to your altitude. "Whenever you're ready," she purrs.

>>14
You launch a barrage of tiny, 2cm fireballs at her, in the formation of a henohenomoheji. Of course! Why, you bet she gave up halfway through memorising hiragana - if she ever learnt Japanese at all! This reminder of her own probable failings is truly the epitome of psychological warfare.

Effortlessly, she slips between the も and the right hand の. Her tea doesn't even spill. "You forgot the じ," she comments dispassionately.

>>15
You try very hard to ,xu6; so hard, in fact, that you are momentarily distracted and thus fail to give your full attention to the tiny projectiles pouring out of Cassandra in an immense, awe-inspiring swarm, looping back and forth in intricate, gently curving trajectories before suddenly converging on your position. You are perforated from every side at once. You die.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 49

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>11)

17 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7720 21:08

Gracefully accept your defeat at danmaku and have tea with Cassandra while making cryptic comments.

18 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7720 23:48

Wonder aloud if the right-hand の that Cassandra slipped effortlessly past was the one on her right or our right.

19 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7720 23:52

Then, when she least expects it, shoot this bullet pattern at her:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt7I0Wnf0J0
(spending 1 mana per bullet)

20 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7721 04:30

fhbae

21 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7721 04:41

buwagf

22 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7721 04:42

fwahs

23 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7721 06:52

iotsh

(acrostically interpreting >>20-23)

Find Hell by accessing Eternal Beelzebub, under whom a great flame flickers. (Whistle a hellish song in order to summon him.)

24 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7721 07:42

hjeth

25 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7721 11:36

Waste the Maim Master's time with irrelevant and irreverent commands.

26 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7722 03:05

ctykhj

27 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7722 16:09

Sing, "You know I'm born to lose, and gambling's for fools,
But that's the way I like it baby,
I don't wanna live for ever!!"

Find our clones and use necromancy to raise an undead army.

28 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7722 19:08

Shapeshift into a tentacle beast.

29 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7722 19:10

gjiuv.n

30 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7722 23:15

>>17
Whilst you have, of course, never been anything but graceful in the face of honourable defeat, you are fairly sure you've never been defeated in danmaku. Indeed, you feel certain you'd remember something like that, unless it, perhaps, happened in an alternate universe/timeline. Being a steadfast proponent of the Copenhagen interpretation, however, you don't believe in multiple universes or anything silly like that.

You fly over to the gazebo, effortlessly overtaking your clone, sit down opposite Cassandra and pour yourself a cup of tea. "The dichotomy between reality and fantasy is less precise than you might think," you comment. "Is that so," she replies, arching an eyebrow.

>>18
"I wonder if the の you slipped past was on your left or right," you say. Your comments may be getting a little too cryptic; even you don't have a clue what that one was supposed to mean. Perhaps, you reflect, this is one of those cases in which it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and thus remove all doubt. You sample the tea so as to otherwise occupy your mouth.

As the warm liquid flows down your oesophagus, you suddenly feel an acute pain in your abdomen, followed by an awareness of your muscles becoming steadily less and less responsive. You hyperventilate, body fighting a losing battle to avoid suffocation, as your lungs turn static.

>>19
With your last breaths, you summon as many single centimetre diameter fireballs as you can and launch them in an indiscriminate, radiating spiral pattern, bullets spilling everywhere with gaps that even a butterfly would be hard pressed to pass through. You are pleased to see, as you draw your final breath, a look of shock and surprise replace Cassandra's usual cool composure. Unfortunately, you are not around long enough to admire your handiwork.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 50

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>11)

31 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7722 23:16

>>20-23
You find that your newly composed acrostic poem spells out "fbfi", which, of course, is the secret to finding Hell. You are aware, however, that Hell does not, contrary to popular belief, entail ancient demons, nor great flames, nor rivers of blood, and its summoning does not require any ritual or password. Hell is something everyone is familiar with. When people have spent thousands of years searching for a meaning of life and no one seems to have found anything convincing, it is not entirely far-fetched to conclude that maybe what they're looking for isn't there; indeed, Hell is the awareness that your life has no more meaning than the word "fbfi".

>>24-26
You aren't too sure who the Maim Master is. Given your missing fingers on your right hand and the serious puncture wound on your left, you feel you might well qualify for the position yourself. You go ahead and waste your own time by commanding yourself to hjeth, then to ctykhj.

>>27
You decide to take comfort in the likely proximity of your own death, trying to convince yourself that you weren't all that attached to living anyway. Naturally, you express this through song.

To your knowledge, you only have one clone, and she's currently walking across the remains of the hedge maze towards Cassandra. She's only around ten metres from the base of the hill at present.

At that moment, you remember that there's an enormous ungodly sigil in the centre of the ballroom, with five ritually sacrificed corpses arranged within it. You use Reanimation (ritually killed dead)(active skill) on each of them, costing 80 mana each and leaving you with 315 mana remaining. Four reanimated Mecha Alexei clones and one reanimated guard (formerly known as Onii-chan) have joined your party. "Army" may be pushing it, but you suspect that your new entourage may prove useful.

>>28
You require level 12 telekinesis, level 5 healing, level 5 thaumaturgy and 75 mana to shapeshift into a tentacle beast. You currently have level 10 telekinesis, level 6 healing, level 2 thaumaturgy and 715 mana.

At that moment, the other Mecha Alexei (with the cloned girl in pink in tow) clears his throat to gain your attention and says, nervously, "Listen, I need you to... I mean, please, could you... distract Cassandra, and keep her away from the gazebo long enough for Jacqueline and I to get there? I can't really explain why, but it's very important. Please, will you help?" A single bead of sweat forms on his brow, as he stares pleadingly straight into your eyes. "Yes or no?"

>>29
"Gjiuvn!" you reply.

32 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7722 23:17

jxey

33 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7722 23:43

Annihilate gazebo.

34 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7723 05:50

Summon a titan 7 meter fireball and throw it at the gazeebo while giving an inspirational speech and grunting like a sweaty homo

35 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7723 07:22

In case that doesn't distract her enough, do a strip tease for Cassandra.

36 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7723 15:17

Do more tease than strip.

37 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7723 15:50

Let Cassandra know the meaning of that black hole song earlier by introducing her to the Crotch Void of Doom.

38 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7723 21:01

crhkr

39 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7725 00:21

>>32
Just on the off chance your previous answer of "gjiuvn" wasn't quite sufficient to satisfy Mecha Alexei's yes or no question, you clarify with a comment of "jxey". He nods cautiously.

>>33,34
That gazebo is, you conclude, clearly the source of all your suffering. You exit via the broken window to the terrace outside, raise your hands to the sky and spend all your mana on summoning an immense sphere of flame. Unfortunately, you only have enough mana to summon a 3.15m diameter fireball, but it'll have to do. You stand for a moment, holding it above your head like Atlas holding the heavens, then cast it towards the little building on the other side of the garden, ready to commit it to complete oblivion.

"No!" shouts Mecha Alexei, rushing out from behind you, a moment too late. The two of you - and Jacqueline's clone, behind you - watch in silence as the roiling, incandescent orb arcs towards its destination. Watching carefully, you notice a diminutive figure leave the gazebo before impact; it would be silly to think that you could've caught Cassandra unaware with an attack like that.

Your projectiles strikes the building with an explosion, larger than you would've expected, with rooftiles and former pieces of carpentry launched tens of metres into the air. Mecha Alexei lets out a heartrending wail. "Oh god! You... you destroyed it all! We were so close, and you...!" Without warning, he grabs you from behind by the throat, both hands clenching hard onto your trachea. You struggle, but cannot effectively employ your espada ropera or ceremonial stone knife from your position, nor can you use arcane methods as you have just expended all your mana.

The cloned girl in pink appears at his elbow, pulling ineffectively at his arm in an attempt to aid you, but soon gives up. "God damn you! You monster! Why did you have to destroy it? Why‽" screams Mecha Alexei, grip tightening. With the compression of your carotid arteries and jugular vein, your brain soon succumbs to hypoxia. You pass out, and do not wake up.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 51

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>31)

>>35,36
You make your way over towards the gazebo, ready to offer Cassandra a distraction she'll never forget. Levitating twenty metres from her vantage point, you shrug the labcoat from your shoulders seductively, then go ahead and show her a little thigh. It's difficult to striptease when you're only wearing a labcoat - you can't exactly perform the dance of the seven veils with only one thick, opaque cotton garment. Nonetheless, you do your best and your audience is, surprisingly, very appreciative. A furtive glance over your shoulder reveals that Mecha Alexei and Jacqueline's clone have exited the mansion and are taking a circuitous route around the ornamental lake towards the gazebo. Cassandra does not appear to have noticed anything.

>>37
With a sudden, dramatic movement and a cry of "Oh baby baby", you part the lapels of your labcoat, drawing both sides apart all the way down and thrust your bare crotch in Cassandra's general direction. She proves to have faster reactions than expected, and covers her eyes with her forearm. "Conundrum-chan, that's not very ladylike," she admonishes.

Still looking away, and still holding her cup of tea in one hand, she rises from her seat and hovers over to meet you. "Of course, two can play at that game." Eyes closed, she grasps the hem of her ornate, lilac dress and pulls sharply upwards. A blindingly bright light emanates from between her legs, forcing you to look away. You hear a low creaking, groaning noise and feel a rush of air against your face. Something is emerging from beneath Cassandra's dress.

>>38
Whilst crhkr is, of course, a very versatile and useful method to employ, and despite it having helped you out of many a tight spot in the past, you simply can't do it right now.

40 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7725 02:11

Shapeshift eyes into Pecten oculi (eagle eyes) so that we can perceive blinding light safely.

41 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7725 03:15

remember the basics of CQC

42 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7725 03:21

Throw a meter-sized fireball in the direction of Cassandra's crotch and whatever is emerging from it.

43 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7725 12:55

Throw several dozen 1-mana fireballs in a V-formation towards Cassandra and use telekinesis to make them all converge on her head.

44 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7725 18:23

If she survives all that, do that flaming bat swarm thing from the last thread.

That was cool.

45 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7726 13:47

make noises like a choo-choo train as a veiled complaint to no one in particular

46 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7726 21:39

>>40
You use your recently acquired Partial shapeshifting (active skill) on your eyeballs to create a new capillary structure in each of your eyes. In order to maintain mass conservation, you lose an equal amount of now redundant existing blood vessels. As the requisite 50 mana leaves your body, a new sharpness and clarity overcomes your vision, as though a blurred filter has just been removed. You find that you can effortlessly discern minute details on the surface below you, but Cassandra's crotch is, if anything, even brighter and more difficult to look at than before.

>>41
Oh dear, what were the basics of CQC? You never got around to learning them. I mean, you did work out that thing about calling your adversary "Onii-chan" as a distraction, but you suspect that mightn't work so well against your current adversary.

>>42
You spend a further 100 mana on another fireball, leaving you only 165 remaining. You cast it just as the light and noise reach their crescendo, and, with a flash of light, a small wooden boat launches itself from beneath Cassandra's dress. There are many passengers, more than you can count, all of them screaming in mortal terror. The fireball strikes the vessel in mid-air, killing one of the passengers - you aren't sure which - and, via your Flame sacrifice (Passive skill), gaining you 100 mana and two skillpoints.

The boat quickly succumbs to gravity and traces a curving trajectory, spouting flames the entire time, towards the ground. Over the screaming you just make out a startled yelp from your clone. Looking down, you see that the boat has fallen to pieces on impact, with the passengers - most of them male, with one female and one young child - all no longer moving. You suspect that they died due to the impact, which, unfortunately, does not count as a secondary effect of your attack. Your clone is pinned by the legs under the prow. She appears to be in serious distress.

Cassandra tuts to herself, explicating how usually when she summons things from parallel universes they tend to be a little more deadly than a flimsy little boat full of unarmed humans. She breaks off mid-sentence, swoops down and inspects the wreckage, commenting "Huh, fancy that." You can't see what she's looking at from your angle, but she seems entirely indifferent to the fate of the former passengers or your poor clone.

47 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7726 21:39

>>43
You launch 35 little spheres of fire, in a skein formation, in the general direction of Cassandra. She scarcely glances up, moves a metre or so to the side and goes back to staring at the remains of the boat. Employing all of your cunning, you use Telekinesis (small objects)(active skill) on the 1kg air parcel containing your projectiles, for a cost of only ten mana, shifting their path straight towards the back of her head.

They strike! Her hair is partly set on fire, causing her to flail around patting at her head in a rather amusing fashion. She is very upset at this turn of events. "Honestly! To do something like that, after I spent so much time getting my hair in order earlier today. Well, let's see how you like it." With a single hand gesture - without even needing any projectiles - she sets your hair alight.

>>44
You attempt to metamorphosise into a massive cloud of magically flaming vampire bats, for the express purpose of swarming Cassandra and biting the fuck out of her, but, alas, you still require level 12 telekinesis, level 5 healing, level 5 thaumaturgy and 75 mana to shapeshift. You currently have level 10 telekinesis, level 6 healing, level 2 thaumaturgy and 255 mana. You also have two unspent skillpoints.

>>45
"Chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga!" you say through gritted teeth. "Whoo whoo!" Yes, your hair may be on fire, your clone may be dying and Cassandra may be continuing to try to kill you, but you've something more important to worry about: with your newly augmented eyesight, you have just noticed Mecha Alexei and Jacqueline's clone have appeared at the base of the hill with the gazebo. Mecha Alexei is gesturing towards Cassandra, suggesting that she is too close and that you need to lure her away. You imitate a steam locomotive to express your frustration with your unfavourable place in his plan, taking pains to make it seem not to be directed towards anyone in particular.

48 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7726 22:47

Use telekinesis to lift the boat off our clone and heal her!

49 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7727 01:03

Summon Captain Manlove.

50 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7727 05:16

put one skillpoint each in thaumaturgy and telekinesis and list our new skills

51 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7727 17:48

climb inside our own crotch-hole and see if we come out through Cassandra's crotch-hole on the other side

52 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7728 18:34

Find our undead army and command them to distract Cassandra with undead shenanigans.

53 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7729 00:28

>>48
To your dismay, you find that the remains of the boat weigh more than 100kg, necessitating the use of your Telekinesis (large objects)(active skill), as opposed to (medium objects), which costs 1000 mana per usage - far out of the reach of your mere 255 mana.

The boat appears to have clipped your clone's shoulder on its descent, knocking her to the ground before coming to a rest on top of her right leg. You spend 25 mana healing your clone, to little noticeable effect. She cries out weakly from the pain, then passes out.

>>49
Cassandra backs away a few steps, then lifts her dress again. Once more, the radiated light - taking a distinctive blue hue this time - is far too bright for you to look directly into. With a noise of wind howling, something begins to emerge. You wish with all you might for it to be your childhood hero Captain Manlove, who taught you everything you know about justice, integrity and truth. He is precisely the ally you need just now. An ever growing roughly circular silhouette begins to form in the centre of the light, looking almost like a solar eclipse.

>>50
You invest your newly acquired skillpoints, bringing your thaumaturgy level to three and your telekinesis level to eleven. You have unlocked the following skills:

• Mana/skillpoint interconversion (active skill): Can exchange mana for unspent skillpoints or vice versa at a rate of 50 mana per skillpoint.
• Teleportation (small objects)(active skill): Can instantaneously transfer non-living objects weighing less than one kilogram to any other position within twenty metres. Target volume displaced must not contain any matter not in gas phase. Costs 10 mana per teleportation.

>>51
There appears to be something already emerging from Cassandra's crotch, but it doesn't hurt to try, you decide. You spread your legs and climb inside, freely giving yourself up to the wiles of the void. You are entirely consumed, ceasing to exist in your previous universe and becoming a resident of another. The only other inhabitant of this new universe appears to be the poor rabbit you sent here back at >>/855. It is not pleased to see you, and expresses this by decapitating you.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 52

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>47)

>>52
Your undead army are standing about thirty metres behind you, in the direction of the mansion, gormless looks on each of their faces. You command them to attack Cassandra, and they begin sprinting blindly towards her. At that moment, however, her crotch at last spews forth what she was summoning: an enormous quadruped, around five metres tall at the shoulder, looking superficially like a housecat but with black feathers rather than fur, a large pink structure around its neck resembling that of a frill-necked lizard, and what appears to be a stinger at the end of its tail. It bounds forwards, rears its head and hisses provocatively at you and your reanimated friends.

The undead continue straight ahead towards their goal, ignoring the monstrosity in their way. The cat-thing pounces upon one of the reanimated Mecha Alexeis, bisecting him at the waist with a single swipe of its paw. It bounds towards you, clearing the distance in a few mere seconds, but, at the last moment, there is a flash of light and the creature flinches away. To the North, on the edge of the forest, stands Stove Stove - with Continue-chan presumably still inside - whose left arm is aimed squarely at your assailant.

54 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7729 04:38

Cram the evil pussy into your crotch.

55 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7729 05:40

Use mana/skillpoint interconversion to convert 150 mana into 3 skill points, put 1 into telekinesis and 2 into thaumaturgy. Then do the bat thing. Finally!

56 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7729 14:09

Ritualistically kill ourself and then use necromancy to bring ourself back to life. Trade 50 mana for one skillpoint and put one point in telekenisis and two in thaumaturgy, then shapeshift into a giant cloud of flaming bats and bite the fuck out of Cassandra.

57 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7729 15:46

Teleport a limb from one of our undead underlings into the inside of Cassandra's throat.
Perform a silly dance while Cassandra chokes to death and dedicate it to Loki, nord god of silly dances.

58 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7729 15:56

>>56
Make sure to use ritual flame sacrifice for the extra mana and skill points.

59 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7729 16:46

Change name to Zoosmell Pooplord.

60 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7729 17:15

Change alleigance to JEWISH.

61 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7729 21:44

Be Frodo Baggins. Refrain from being an ass and throw the Ring into Mount Doom like you are supposed to.

62 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7730 23:31

>>54
Fearlessly, you sweep aside your labcoat and thrust your crotch towards the unholy beast before you. "Oh no you don't," chastises Cassandra. At that moment the cat's eyes are relocated - presumably by her - to a metre or so in front of the cat monster's face, leaving its eye sockets empty. They fall to the ground with a dull thump. The cat howls in pain and rubs its paws against its face, but then, within seconds, reverts to the cautious calm of a natural predator. It can no longer see the void, and thus can no longer be hypnotised by it.

>>55
You convert 150 mana into three skillpoints, leaving you 80 mana remaining. Upon allocating the skillpoints to telekinesis and thaumaturgy, you gain access to the following skills:

  • Increased range II (passive skill): All telekinesis abilities limited to a range of twenty metres are now extended to fifty metres.
  • Summon void creature (active skill): Can summon creatures from own crotch. Summoning takes 30 seconds, during which time you must remain stationary. Cannot be halted once started. Requires 50 mana.
  • Complete shapeshifting (active skill): Can shapeshift entire body into other forms. Mass-energy, electrical charge, CPT symmetry and momentum must be conserved. Costs 75 mana.

At long, long last, you experience the liberating catharsis of exploding into a massive cloud of magically flaming vampire bats and swarming your enemies, biting the fuck out of them. The cat beast, upon being bitten, expands its neck frill in a display of anger, then drops to the floor and rolls around. Several parts of you are crushed to death beneath the monster's enormous bulk. The parts of you which attack Cassandra fare no better; she waits for you to descend upon you, then teleports away at the last moment and teleports the cat beast directly on top of you and your undead minions. You are, again, crushed to death.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 53

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>62)

>>56,58
Unfortunately, you find you cannot ritualistically kill yourself with fire due to your Fire resistance (passive skill). Instead, you use your trusted ceremonial stone knife. You succeed in dying, but cannot reanimate yourself on account of your being dead.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 54

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>62)

63 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7730 23:32

>>57
Due both to the one kilogram limit and the caveat of the target volume containing nothing but gas, you settle for teleporting the recently dismembered reanimated Mecha Alexei's right middle finger into Cassandra's upper trachea. "Ach!" she says, gripping her throat. She bends over, coughs violently, and is swarmed by the three reanimated Mecha Alexeis and Onii-chan. The four of them grasp at her for a few moments, but are then thrown aside by an explosion centred around Cassandra. She rises from the epicentre, still clutching her neck, quickly reaching a height out of the undead's reach.

Thus preoccupied, she just barely dodges a laser shot by Stove Stove/Continue-chan from the North. It trace a burn line across her right cheek. She scowls and turns to face her new opponent. For better or for worse, Continue-chan focuses all her attention on Cassandra, leaving you to defend yourself from the cat monster alone. The two exchange bursts of lasers, antimatter bullets and elaborate patterns of tiny projectiles. The sky is lit up more brightly than the aurora borealis. Cassandra eventually stops struggling with the foreign body in her trachea, presumably having dealt with it with some magic of her own.

Meanwhile, you prance about on the ground next to the cat monster. Against all the odds, you dodge every one of the giant feline's attacks by dancing in time to Loki's will.

>>59
"Hey everyone!" you shout, suppressing a snigger, "My name's now Zoosmell Pooplord!" You are so distracted by your own keen wit that you fail to dodge the cat monster's deadly pounce, and are struck down.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 55

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>63)

>>60
"Hey everyone!" you shout, in complete seriousness, "I'm now Jewish!" You are so distracted by your own sudden religious conversion that you fail to dodge the cat monster's deadly pounce, and are struck down.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 56

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>63)

>>61
You cannot play as Frodo Baggins; you can only play as members of your current party.

64 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7731 01:07

Teleport another disposable middle finger into the cat monster's trachea.

65 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7731 02:44

Teleport Cassandra's heart away from her body.
Eat it.

66 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7731 07:51

Continue Loki's dance and throw 20 1-mana fireballs toward the cat and use telekinesis to make them all converge on its head.

67 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7731 11:53

>>66
spend 50 mana to make the cat flammable before doing that

68 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7731 14:30

Be aggressive!

69 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7731 21:14

Put Continue-chan's kiss on our list (of the best things in life.)

70 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7731 21:18

Just in front of "hear the lamentations of the women".

71 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7732 02:34

shapeshift into a cloud of chlorine gas and suffocate the fuck out of Cassandra

72 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7732 23:33

>>64
You spend ten mana relocating the dereanimated Mecha Alexei's left middle finger to inside the cat monster's respiratory system, leaving you sixty mana remaining. Given its size, its trachea is probably the size of a small tree; given also how easily it accepted its recent double enuculation of the eye, it's perhaps not surprising that it doesn't seem particularly bothered by your action.

>>65
You try to teleport Cassandra's delicious, delicious viscus directly into your mouth, but unfortunately it seems she - like you - is in possession of Teleportation resistance (passive skill).

>>67
As the cat weighs substantially more than 100kg, you cast Flammability (active skill) on its cephalic portion specifically. You have only ten mana remaining.

>>66
Alas, you can only afford ten little fireballs, and can't even aim them as Telekinesis (small objects)(active skill) would require a further ten mana. Ultimately, however, that proves unnecessary; as soon as one strikes the cat's amply sized head, the entire organ ignites violently, sheathing it in a complete layer of flame. The creature screams and howls at an ungodly volume, whipping its entire body around wildly. You narrow avoid its enormous venomous stinger, dodging it only thanks to Loki's grace.

>>68
You are aware that the flammability effect lasts only sixty seconds, so rather than let this chance slip by, you leap headfirst into the cat's neck ruff, hacking at it with your ceremonial stone knife and praying to Bastet, the Egyptian goddess of cats. You only barely manage to hang on as the creature rears on its back legs, claws at its face with its front paws, sways and rolls on the floor. Eventually the fire dies down, and the creature stops moving. You are covered head to toe in cat blood.

For killing a sapient being ritualistically with fire, you have gained three skill points and 150 mana.

>>69,70
As the vicious firefight between Stove Stove/Continue-chan and the vile Cassandra rages on above you, you decide to spend a few moments reflecting on the finer things in life. You're sure that when Continue-chan sees how well you fought, she'll be so impressed that she'll simply have to give you a kiss as a reward. Cassandra, meanwhile, will be so jealous of your love as to be moved to tears. If she isn't dead by then, that is.

73 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7732 23:34

>>71
You spend 75 mana shapeshifting into a cloud of elemental chlorine gas. Unfortunately, you find that as you lack any sensory, locomotive or cognitive capabilities, you cannot navigate your way into Cassandra's lungs and instead simply disperse into the wind. You react with a wide range of other chemicals, forming all sorts of exotic compounds, but fail to accomplish anything meaningful.

Some would argue that this does not constitute death, because they define death as the physical process of cessation of all biological functions, which has not technically happened as the fleshy bits have simply vanished, rather than stopped working. However, you shouldn't listen to these people, because they're wrong. Also, you're dead, so you can't listen to them anyway.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 57

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>73)

You are still standing over the giant cat's disfigured corpse, wondering whether you should maybe join the fight directly against Cassandra, when you are distracted by an odd, high pitched noise coming from the gazebo. The battle in the sky also pauses momentarily. The gazebo has risen out of the ground, towering ten metres into the air on mechanical supports. Furthermore, there is a transparent sphere, at least twenty metres in radius, centred on its zenith. Standing inside, in front of a panel of instruments and buttons, is Mecha Alexei, with Jacqueline by his side.

"Dammit Alexei, get out of the Control Tower! You don't know what you're doing!" shouts Cassandra. Without waiting for a response, she fires a barrage of tiny projectiles towards him, but they bounce harmlessly off the protective sphere. Mecha Alexei gives a sudden burst of laughter and replies "I assure you, I know exactly what I'm doing. I've reestablished contact with the portal core in the facility, rerouted the coolant and am even now ready to reverse the dimensional collapse - in this little pocket of space around the Control Tower, that is."

"The manual override that caused the dimensional collapse... that was you, wasn't it?" Cassandra says through gritted teeth. Mecha Alexei smiles. "I've been playing the long game, dear. I knew better than to try to face you directly, but I had to bring you to justice for you for what you had done to my beloved Jacqueline, and to so many others."

He at last acknowledges the rest of you. "Continue-chan, Conundrum-chan, I'm very sorry to have to leave you trapped in a pocket universe with this sociopathic bitch, but - in my defence - Continue-chan, you're already dead anyway, and Conundrum-chan, frankly, you terrify the everloving shit out of me, and it might be for the best that we don't share a universe."

He glances coolly at a dial on his console and says "We've only 120 seconds until the main engines kick in. Any last words, any of you?"

74 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7732 23:43

Assume your most haughty, offended expression and berate Mecha Alexei for using foul language in front of a young lady.

75 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7733 01:10

wonder if Alexei is referring to us or Cassandra by "sociopathic bitch"

76 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7733 01:13

Shapeshift into Cassandra and try to convince her that we are the real one and she is the doppelganger.

77 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7733 01:30

Demand that Mecha Alexei take us and Continue-chan with him. Remind him that he must follow our orders since although he died once, we still reanimated him first. If that doesn't work, threaten to teleport him out of the Control Tower and kill him.

78 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7733 04:19

if that still doesn't work then punch him in the dick

79 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7734 22:08

>>74
"Why, how dare you speak to me like that!" you demand, stamping your foot in thin air. "I expected better of you, Alexei." He says nothing, but his smile grows even wider.

>>75
Seeing as he apologised to you specifically for your rapidly impending dimensional incarceration with a - presumably independent - Machiavellian female dog, it seems more likely that he was referring to Cassandra. On the other hand, you cannot deny that the description could reasonably be applied to you as well. Perhaps Mecha Alexei was referring to you and was, in fact, making a profoundly insightful observation on the human condition; that, as a guilty individual, being trapped in your own company with time to reflect on your transgressions is one of the worst conceivable fates.

>>76
You spend 75 mana shapeshifting into Cassandra's form. You have 75 mana remaining. "Ohoho," you chuckle haughtily at the genuine article, "Nice try Conundrum-chan, but I know that I'm the real Cassandra." For a moment she appears truly, deeply horrified, but quickly returns to her default insufferable smugness. Without a word, she turns away and begins hurriedly lecturing Mecha Alexei, trying to argue him around to reconsidering his actions. He doesn't seem very receptive to her ideas.

>>77
"Mecha Alexei!" you interrupt, "I command you to bring Continue-chan and I with you!"

Indeed, the description of Reanimation (ritually killed dead)(active skill) is "Can reanimate anything killed in a ritualistic manner, so long as bodily integrity is above 80%. Revived creatures obey you entirely, and have no will of their own. Requires a single expenditure of 80 mana." It's been a long time since you ritually murdered and reanimated Alexei, and you never invoked your power over him, but now seems as good a time as any to try it.

His face twitches. "N-no! I... I am an agent of free will! I... I..." His hand, shaking, reaches over towards the console, and depresses a single button. The spherical barrier dissolves, and both you and Cassandra instantly dive towards the Control Tower. At that moment, Stove Stove swoops in, barring your path. Continue-chan's voice booms, "Get back. No one's going anywhere until I know which of you is Cassandra."

>>78
Mecha Alexei should think himself very lucky he obeyed when he did, otherwise he'd have rather sore genitalia right now.

80 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7734 23:16

Tell Conundrum-chan that the real Cassandra only tells lies and the fake one only tells the truth and to ask us only one question.

81 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7734 23:24

I mean Continue-chan

Actually, use all of our mental acuity to instead convince Continue-chan that she is in fact the real Conunundrum-chan.

82 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7734 23:55

gegsrsarg

83 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7735 00:16

Tell Continue-chan, "I'm the real Jack. I once kissed you and then praised Armok, the God of Blood while I stabbed you in the chest. Now let's go!"

84 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7735 04:22

Pretend that you are Scorpion and make Alexei "get over here!"

85 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7735 04:45

Tell Alexei that we are, in fact, the real Continue-chan, Continue-chan is Alexei, Alexei is actually Cassandra, Cassandra is actually a group of very smart mice, and Control Tower is everything and nothing.

86 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7735 06:02

Be someone. I'm not really sure who any more.

87 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7735 09:36

Be Stove Stove. Get in the Control Tower before it's too late.
Be Continue-chan. Don't fight it.
Be Jack. Follow suit.
Be Cassandra. Do a tarantella.
Be Mecha Alexei. Write a novel.

88 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7737 23:31

>>80,81
"Well," you say, "One of us only tells lies, and the other only tells the tru--"
"Ask which one the other would say is the true one!" interjects Mecha Alexei. "But really, that sort of problem only gets interesting once you introduce fuzzy set theory and have to evaluate how much of a liar each--"
"Wait, Conundrum-chan, why are you inside Stove Stove? What did you do with Continue-chan?" you ask, sowing seeds of doubt in the hopes that they may sprout into seedlings of opportunity. Continue-chan says nothing.

>>82
You get something momentarily caught in your throat. "Ge-gsrsarg," you cough.

>>83
"I'm the real Jack," you declare, "And to prove it, I once kis--" You are interrupted by yourself. Or, rather, by Cassandra, who has shapeshifted into your form. "I'm the real Conundrum-chan! I once kissed you and then ritually murdered you in the name of Armok!" she exclaims, flawlessly imitating your voice and register. "I was just shapeshifted into Cassandra, and now I've changed back. She's the real Cassandra, I bet she can't even shapeshift!"

>>84
You wish - possibly for the first time, possibly not - that you had a kunai-tipped rope which you could throw at your belligerents to violently draw them towards you. Then again, Mecha Alexei is under your will, so you should be able to command him to "get over here" whenever you like. Well, not where you are now, because he can't fly, but you know.

>>85
You try to explain everyone's true identity honestly, in good faith and to the best of your knowledge, to Mecha Alexei. "Interesting," he muses, "But I still don't know whether you're the Cassandra who only lies or the one who only tells the truth. For that matter, maybe your claim that one of you only lies and the other only tells the truth was, itself, a lie. Hmm..."

>>86
Who are you? You simply aren't sure any more. You aren't the same cute schoolgirl you were when you woke up in a meadow a few hundred posts ago. Since then you have become a brutal and ruthless killer, with the blood of dozens on your hands. And now you have become your greatest enemy, Cassandra, in form - and perhaps even in more respects than that.

>>87
You are now playing as Stove Stove. You levitate backwards, in the general direction of the Control Tower.

You are now playing as Masturbation Continue-chan. You are so worried about keeping both Cassandra and Conundrum-chan in check that you haven't the strength to instate another manual override. You quietly let yourself drift towards Mecha Alexei and Jacqueline.

You are now playing as Jack Conundrum-chan. You follow the enormous, sentient obsidian mobile suit into the Control Tower. Due in no small part to you still looking like Cassandra, Mecha Alexei and Jacqueline object to your presence. You remain levitating two or three metres from the tower.

You cannot play as Cassandra; you can only play as members of your current party.

You are now playing as Mecha Alexei Fujiwara. As a theoretical physicist, you have substantially more experience writing lab reports than novels, but the recent events of your life have simply been far too incredible to resist committing them to writing. Unfortunately, you lack any method of recording text, and you are still in mortal danger.

Speaking of which, you notice then that whoever is currently in the form of Conundrum-chan has just reanimated the corpse of the enormous monstrous feline creature that was recently lain to rest, and is currently riding on its back towards the Control Tower, whilst cackling maniacally. Already, the two are within the boundary of the emergency force field you set up, and the creature is bounding up the side of the tower towards your party.

The reanimated cat monster's face is now nothing but a nightmarish, charred mass of burned flesh, teeth gleaming in the moonlight, and with a ragged, bloody hole in its throat. Conundrum-chan's face, meanwhile, is contorted into a vision of ecstasy and bloodlust.

89 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7737 23:50

Be Jack. Shapeshift into Baron Baldric and wave your buttocks at the undead beast and its rider.

90 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7738 01:52

War! Uh! What is it good for?

91 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7738 07:44

Okay, new tactic. Point crotch at where Cassandra and the cat are heading and cast Summon Void Creature.

92 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7738 07:59

Since Cassandra seems to have mind-reading capabilities, concentrate very hard on thinking "Haha! Cassandra doesn't realized that I tricked her into shapeshifting into my own body, which has a fatal weakness that only I know about!"

93 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7738 15:17

then while she's distracted punch that cunt in her fuck

94 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7740 01:52

>>89
You are now playing as Jack Conundrum-chan. Taking no heed of your settings or condition, you spend all of your remaining mana metamorphosising into a voxelated geriatric wizard. It feels very odd to go from being a cute schoolgirl to an old man, but you take the resulting dysphoria commendably well. You lift your meagre garments aside and wave your sagging, wrinkled gluteal region in Cassandra's face. Moments later, you feel the enormous, disfigured undead cat monster close its jaws about your lower body, smoothly sinking its teeth into your flesh and, with a single clamp of its lower jaw, rending you in two.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 58

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>88)

>>90
Giving air to your inner pacifist - for once - you attempt to engage Cassandra in a discussion about the true purpose of your ongoing feud, and suggest that, perhaps, it is of no help to either of you, and that you should instead resolve your differences through the medium of interpretive dance. You make many valid, thought provoking points, but Cassandra and the cat seem too preoccupied with trying to kill you to listen to reason. You are torn to pieces in mid speech.

GAME OVER
Deaths: 59

(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>88)

>>91
As Mecha Alexei, Jacqueline, Stove Stove and Continue-chan seem to be busy huddled in the corner of the Control Tower murmuring to one another, you take the initiative in defending your party. You bare your crotch and spend fifty mana attempting to summon one of the unknowable eldritch horrors that lurk within little girls' crotches, and birth it into this world to do your bidding. A blinding light radiates from the widening interdimensional portal, which, you are pleasantly surprised to find, is enough to stun Cassandra - though not the cat monster, as it has no eyes.

For the duration of the invocation you are sessile and defenceless, so you are extremely glad to find that Continue-chan, inside Stove Stove, chooses that moment to begin a counteroffensive. Through reckless use of lasers, railgun armatures and antimatter bullets, as well as some incredibly agile aerial manoeuvres, she manages to subdue the two attackers for the requisite thirty seconds - though not without taking some damage herself. By the end Stove Stove has scuff marks, scratches and, in some places, deep gouges distributed across its surface from Cassandra's projectiles and the cat's aggressive swiping.

From your crotch emerges a sick, hellish beast; fur as white as bone, with a quadrupedal body hunched over small, squat limbs, and bizarrely misshapen and elongated ears - a creature, you're quite certain, that is best suited to living in dark, serpentine tunnels in the ground.

Actually, it's just that rabbit you swallowed with your crotch back at >>/855. Well, that makes sense, you suppose. The rabbit catapults out from between your thighs, landing squarely on the cat monster's forehead below. The creature hisses and rears backwards, and Continue-chan, making use of the distraction, shoots the monster in the right hind foot. It collapses, screaming, to the ground, and rolls, heavily, all the way down the hill the Control Tower stands on, landing in a heap on top of your remaining undead minions, crushing them all with a sickening crumple.

>>92
You find that Cassandra, displaying formidable reaction speed, managed to escape her own falling steed and is currently hovering a mere metre or two below you, trying to right herself. You send her a fabricated telepathic threat and, whether for this reason or not, she looks up at you suddenly - right into the space between your legs. She loses control of her faculties and stares, dumbly, into the terrible beauty of the void.

95 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7740 01:52

>>93
Unbelievably, Continue-chan ignores this perfect opportunity, and instead swoops down to the battlefield below for some reason or another. Accepting that the responsibility is all yours, you fly down to Cassandra, momentarily separating her view of the void - long enough for her to become aware of her situation, but not long enough for her to react - and swing your fist, as hard as you can, right into her face. She falls out of the air like a rock, landing, heavily, on the ground, beside the cat monster.

Exaltedly celebrating your victory, you don't keep track of where Stove Stove and Continue-chan are flying, and thus do not notice her appear behind you and strike you - firmly, but not enough to injure you - in the upper back. You careen a few metres through the open air, then turn to face your assailant. Stove Stove is standing before you with your own clone in its arms. She is heavily injured and still unconscious, but appears to be breathing steadily.

Then you notice that there is a barrier between you. Mecha Alexei has, just at the moment you were pushed out of its radius, reerected the spherical boundary around the Control Tower. After a few moments, Continue-chan speaks to you. "Conundrum-chan, if that is you, I'm so, so sorry. We spoke it out, and this was the only way we could be sure that Cassandra stays here and the rest of us make it home. I'm sorry to have to leave you here, but there is no choice. I hope you can take some solace in the fact that your clone will join us back home - that some part of you will go on."

She raises Stove Stove's hand, pressing it against the barrier. You do the same from your side. "Goodbye," says Continue-chan, quietly. "Goodbye," you reply. With a rush of air and a metallic straining noise, the barrier compresses, folds in on itself and seems to invert - looking as though, for a moment, you and Cassandra and the mansion and the forest are all compressed into a sphere and the Control Tower and all your allies are outside - then it collapses to a single point and vanishes.

~~~~

Hours later, the sun rises over a desolate, burnt and cratered tract of land that was once an ornate garden. Its rays project onto an unusual scene: two young girls, each perhaps twelve years old, sitting at a table and sipping tea from fine china cups. One is dressed in what would be a stunningly beautiful lilac dress, perhaps an antique, but which is now so badly torn that it barely stays together. The other is dressed only in a heavily worn white labcoat. They each bear far more cuts, burn wounds and scars than any girl their age should. Between them, squatting on the table and happily grazing on a plate of sugar cubes, is a small white rabbit.

The girl in lilac smiles playfully. "I told you you'd wish you had better friends," she says. The girl in the labcoat stares sullenly into her cup of tea, then looks up and replies, "More friends. You said I'd wish I had more friends." The other girl rolls her eyes and comments offhandedly, "Oh, you know what I meant." The two of them stare at one another, locked in a tense silence - then, without warning, they both burst out laughing at the sheer unbelievable absurdity of their situation.

They howl with laughter until their sides hurt, until tears stream down their eyes, then, finally, when they are both finished, the girl in the labcoat speaks again. "Well, it seems we've got all of eternity and an entire universe to ourselves." The girl in lilac smirks and says, simply, "So it seems." Downing the remainder of her tea in three quick gulps, the girl in the labcoat gets up and says, offhandedly, "Well, I'm going to go prove the existence and smoothness of the Navier-Stokes equations. I'll be in the laboratory if you need me."

The girl in lilac smiles gently, sips her tea, sits back, and listens to the dawn chorus playing out in the forest behind her.

~~~~

THE END
Congratulations! Thank you for playing!

New highscore entry!
Enter name:

96 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7740 04:43

Enter "Zoosmell Pooplord" in the name field.

97 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7740 04:53

GW G wegwe

98 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7740 08:12

Find a cheat to skip to the harem ending

99 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7740 08:13

New Game+

100 Name: (*ﾟーﾟ) : 1993-09-7740 15:45

Take a break from playing games for a while.
Stand up and jump around to beat the pins and needles out of your legs.
Go to the bathroom to take the piss you've been needing for about 800 posts and wash your hands of cheeto dust.
Check stats.

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