We seem to have lost contact with the Control Tower [Grinding Noises][Part II] (871)

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.

Return Entire thread Next 100 posts Last 50 posts
Name: Link:
Leave these fields empty (spam trap):
More options...
Verification: