WFF Series 2: Remember Your Black Day [IC, CLOSED]

by **Turmenista** » Mon Aug 12, 2019 6:36 pm

[- OOC THREAD -] | [- IC THREAD INDEX -]

CO-OP(s): Valefontaine

Collab with Valefontaine
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S1E1
"Prelude"

Introductions

Rocko’s Diner is the best diner in town. Be sure to try some of Ms. Goldeneye's apple pie while you're there.

The Diner will serve as an excellent place for introductions for the first after-class session of the Scary Movies Club.

_{DATE: 4:45 PM - October 23, A.C. 424 | POV: Johnny Run-the-Jewels J.C. Funny Valentine | LOCATION: Attonfield, Trinity | FSE}

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A drive through town never got old—at least, not to Johnny Valentine. Attonfield was one of those places that was photogenic all of the time, yet, tragically underappreciated by both tourists and the cosmopolitan bigwigs on the East and West coast. As far as he was concerned, there was truly no place like Attonfield in the F-S-E, and it definitely beat life back in Nephi. From what little he remembered about the former Oesterran state, he knew that it was dry and relatively flat, whereas Attonfield was more hilly, Trinity fir trees stretching off for miles in every direction around the small city.

Johnny Run-the-Jewels J.C. Funny Valentine

He wasn’t going to head off into the woods today—that was reserved for Junior NORPRO, or the National Reserve Officer Training Program, a preparatory program for high school students that intended to participate in the Senior NORPRO in college for an officer commission in the Federal Armed Forces. Johnny and the other Junior NORPRO cadets at Colonel Harrison Skydreamer High School often disliked the long treks through the woods—especially the night escapades when all one had was the stars that weren’t blotted out by light pollution to navigate themselves. He also wasn’t in the mood to go into the woods anytime soon after watching Dark Woods, an ultraviolent and surreal tale about a mass murderer that terrorized a small rural town in the mountains, not unlike Attonfield…

He wasn’t here for any of that. Instead, he was here to take his friend, Jonah Waaaves Cudi J.T. Strieter, to the diner in town. Rocko’s Diner, to be exact, which was the best diner in possibly the entirety of the state of Trinity due to its legendary apple pie and coffee. He’d met the stoner at school and, rather than bully him into submission, grew to respect the guy due to their common interests. Eventually, he had been introduced to Jonah’s group, the so-called “Scary Movies Club,” which was planning their first official meeting at the diner. He wasn’t too much of a scary movie fan himself or a big conspiracy theorist, but if it was something other than getting yelled at to do meaningless chores at home or go innawoods for a bit, he’d take it.

Much to Johnny’s dismay, he found out pretty early on that Jonah pretty much needed transportation everywhere around town, at least to places that weren’t within walking distance, like school and the diner. Already he was beginning to regret taking him in his pristine Pontillac Steelix pickup truck, from the moment Jonah lit up a marijuana joint and promptly began smoking it, to the moment he put his feet on the dashboard. Johnny wrinkled his nose in disgust at the stench, but soldiered through it. “DUDE! I just got this cleaned yesterday..”

Jonah snickered in his usual mellow, slow voice. “Woops. I’m unironically sorry for smoking in your car, Johnny. Also, thanks for the ride.”

Jonah Waaaves Cudi J.T. Strieter.

“Next time, uhh, don’t do that in my car.” He poked a finger at his friend as if he were a parent scolding their child. “Anyways, who else are we supposed to be meeting at the diner? Just the Sinican girl and the black guy?”

“Uhhh, their names are Liang and Jeremiah, if you forgot.” Jonah said in a matter-of-fact tone. “You met them once, remember?”

“Ohhh. Right.” He nodded. Jeremiah So-The-Flies-Don't-Come C.K. Saba was some scrawny black kid who had some practically supernatural aura to him—that is, he could make nearly anyone’s day ten times better if they bothered talking to him and endured his talks about comic books and movies and the like. Liang, meanwhile, was a Sinican girl who, for lack of a better word, had some interesting interests, namely, scary movies and conspiracy theories.

Rocko's Diner.

After about five more minutes of driving, they finally made their way to the diner in town, which was a few blocks down from the movie theater, currently playing some modernized reboots of some cheesy 380s action flicks, some surreal drama by the old but genius avant-garde director Daniel Lymnch Hiatus Kaiyote, and, of course, some horror movies. The diner, on the other hand, was easy to spot by the bright neon sign outside and the all-permeating scent of apple pie. Although it wasn’t as famous as five star restaurants in Torch City that were visited by Presidents, it definitely took the spot as the best diner in town, let alone the state. Not only was it a good place to eat, especially breakfast, but it was just a nice place to meet up, like now.

He unceremoniously parked his car at the front of the diner and went inside, the smell of apple pie practically irresistible now. At the center of the diner was the signature horseshoe-shaped lunch counter, the chrome and vinyl stools harkening back to the days of the 360s and 370s when this aesthetic was popular. A jukebox was situated by the door, several booths lining both walls as they entered. Behind the lunch counter, currently tending to two gruff-looking policemen, was Ms. Goldeneye herself, the blonde-haired owner of the diner, who had inherited it from her mother, who had inherited it from her mother’s mother, and so on. She was assisted by a squad of waitresses wearing matching outfits, including Ms. Goldeneye’s daughter herself, Maurine, talking to some leather jacket-wearing biker who kept commenting about her blonde hair.

As they made their way over to one of the booths, Jonah flashed a grin to Maureen, who matched it with a confused, but friendly smile. Johnny couldn’t help but chuckle at his pitiful attempt to swoon her. “Retard.”

“Woh?”

“It’s like you do this to everyone, y’know? I first thought you were gonna do it to Ms. Goldeneye, too.”

“What? Are you implying I like Ms. Goldeneye?” Jonah guffawed, then went quiet abruptly as they made their way to the booth. Sure enough, it was already occupied by two people: Liang and Jeremiah, the latter of whom was currently going on about his comic books.

“So...this is the ‘Scary Movies Club,’ huh?” Johnny asked rather dramatically as he made his way into the booth. “And we picked a nice place to meet...a diner.” Of course, he meant it all out of naivete and fun—in his mind, any good ‘Scary Movie Club’ would’ve chosen some place more...well, scary to meet up, like a cemetary or a spooky abandoned building.”

The leader of the Scary Movies Club, Liang World-is-Yours Phantasm K. Shiya, was quick to nod. "That's right! You've come to the right place for... well, I think you already get the idea." She offered a cheeky smile. "I'd pick somewhere more dramatic for our first meet — like the old Lowther House up north outta town — but curfew's been an extra pain in the ass lately..."

“Curfew?” Johnny repeated the word as he took his seat. “Either my folks have had their heads under a rock, or I just got home always before the curfew. What’s tha quick rundown?”

"Seven PM to seven AM, everyone stays indoors. Wasn't always like this—" Shiya paused, as if for dramatic effect, leaning in. "..word is, it's got something to do with that creepy lab up in Dysnome." Dysnome, of course, was Attonfield's northern neighbor, a government-mandated 'closed city' that acted as a model community and additionally doubled as means to house the personnel that operated the Dysnome Site. The Dysnome Site was something of an enigma, largely veiled in classified talk. What was known is that it hosted six high-power nuclear reactors, powering much of the region, and housed the Dysnome National Laboratory, a place that was the target of a few conspiracy theories. Whenever something weird happened in Attonfield, everyone was quick to blame the lab. That's just how it'd always been...

“Oh.. that place.” Johnny nodded, as if he understood everything that she said. In reality, he only understood a good half of it. “I’ve heard a few stories, hikers going missing ‘n all that. What do y’all think is behind it? What do you think they’re hiding in there with the lab?”

“The way I see it,” Jeremiah began suddenly, as if he were paying attention to the conversation while also looking over his comic books. “There’s something beyond our paygrade going on over there that the government is trying to cover up. In one of my comics, there was this city called Cathay that had a Tokamak reactor, like the one Arcadia had, and they were doing some experiments there...it’s not that far-fetched from what’s here. I mean, Six high-powered nuclear reactors? That’s enough to power a lot...maybe even some device that could be used to turn the tide of a war, access some unknown energy particle, the list can go on and on.”

“Alright… I’ll pretend I understood that.” Johnny said sarcastically. “And you, Jonah. What do you think is in there?”

The stoner shrugged. “Probably just some reactors the Feds don’t want people touching. It’s not like you can just walk into a reactor like that, obviously. I hear the mummies shoot people on sight at theirs and the Aenarans just straight up arrest you at this one plant, where if you don’t stop driving on this road, the snipers’ll shoot your wheels out.”

"You can't walk into Dysnome period. Either y'know someone from Dysnome or you've got authorization from the DOE to get in... always found that weird." Shiya thought aloud, noting the rather ominous mystique the city carried. "Anyways, I'm ramblin's on is all... you hear about the new Blood Camp movie? Part 8... how many sequels of hockey masks and machete-slashin' can you get at this point? Either way — watching it might be one of the next meetups."

“Blood Camp?” Movies like those were practically so watered down in horror tropes that they weren’t all that scary to someone like Johnny, who wasn’t much of a big horror fan himself. “I’m a big guy, I’ve kinda been wanting to see it myself. I can handle all the gore and stuff in those movies.”

“Are you serious?” Jeremiah scoffed. “Art-house slow-buildup horror movies are way better than that hack-and-slash garbage. At least, in my opinion.”

“That, or you’re too scared to sit through the jumpscares.” Johnny taunted. “Anyways, yeah. I saw a poster for it when I was driving here, too. We all can go see it after school..”

"Well, there's also that new TV series about the Arcadia Liquidators.." Shiya was referring to the soldiers and foreign prisoners of war that had been given the task of cleaning Arcadia after the destruction of its Tokamak reactor during and after the Transatlantic War. It had been akin to a war — between man and an invisible destructive force that had so terribly brought the Euphemian state of Turmenista to ruin. Not that any of those at this table had been there — it'd happened long before their time. "...might stream that one later tonight, actually."

It seemed as if a lightbulb went off in Johnny’s head upon hearing those words. The story of the brave liquidators and horrifying events of the Arcadia cleanup were still fresh in everyone’s minds even some 30 years after the harrowing events known as the Desolation of Arcadia. “I’ve been wanting to stream that show, too. Maybe, if we’re all tired of the same old hack and slash and hockey mask mess that is Blood Camp, we all could watch that..”

"Sounds like a plan." Shiya agreed. "'fore that, though, we ought to get us-selves something to eat..."

“Damn right.” As if on cue, Ms. Goldeneye approached their table, notepad in hand. “Ready to order, guys?”

“You know, Ms. Goldeneye, I think I could use a nice piece of apple pie and some coffee, no sugar, how I always like it.” Johnny responded, his hunger taking over his thinking as he counted down the minutes for their food to arrive. When it finally did, it was exactly how he had expected it: delicious-looking and smelling as always. Without wasting any time, Johnny took a piece of the pie and ate it, savoring the taste for a moment. “Hot DAMN, that pie is good!”

by **Valefontaine** » Mon Aug 12, 2019 9:49 pm

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S1E2
"Prelude - ISB"

Introductions

Competing closely in the field for 'best pies in town' with Rocko's Diner, the Minuteman Cafe is known for its 'damn fine coffee', its hospitality and unparalleled apple pie. With the formation of the Midwestern Special Investigative Group demands a meeting beforehand, perhaps...

_{DATE: 9:03 AM - October 24, A.C. 424 | POV: Special Agent Ian Pet-Sematary Leatherface "King" Voorhees C. Smith | LOCATION: Attonfield, Trinity | FSE}

Something was amiss in quaint Trinity state.

That was the gist of things that'd brought the Internal Security Bureau to the town of Attonfield. 26,785 inhabitants, pristine golf courses, and the idyllic small town allure — there were a thousand other small towns like these across the country, yet they all carried to themselves an individual uniqueness you could find nowhere else.

ISB Special Agent Ian Pet-Sematary Leatherface "King" Voorhees C. Smith

For ISB Special Agent Ian Pet-Sematary Leatherface "King" Voorhees C. Smith, it was a hell of a lot better than the same monotonous big city bustle of Torch City. He was far now from the light pollution, the smog, the neverending glow of electronic billboards and their monotonous slogans. It was places like these where he felt the soul of Euphemie truly thrived — small town Euphemia that seemed encapsulated with the values and aesthetics of present and past simultaneously. It was something of an eternal time trap. Venturing out of Torch City would often bring one to these 'time traps', an inherent nostalgia to a time that had never been yet always had been — some would use the old term 'Hiraeth' to describe the nostalgic feeling these small towns had, and there were few better words to describe it.

Smith had been called in to work with the Midwestern Special Investigative Group to look into two domestic terrorists that were suspected to be active in the area. ISB Most Wanted #35-421AC Wayne Iridescence Flamagra J. Tha Carter and ISB Most Wanted #01-421AC Andrew The-Ghost-In-You Axl D. Fernow were former special forces — Presidential Order and Army, respectively.

Wayne Iridescence Flamagra J. Tha Carter and Andrew The-Ghost-In-You Axl D. Fernow, the elusive leaders of the so-called Dysnome County Cell.

One was a Kirocentric, mentally unstable veteran suspected of being heavily armed and dangerous, the other a highly intelligent, calculating bombmaker who had been responsible for the 421 Taris Bridge Bombing, which had killed dozens of innocent civilians and FRNO military personnel. Both men were believed to now operate in the area.

What had merited the establishment of MSIG, however, was not solely the presence of two highly-wanted terrorists near Dysnome County, where the eponymous Dysnome Site was located. A minor incident at Dysnome National Laboratory the previous year had resulted in unforeseen effects... effects that were to be closely monitored, recorded and kept out of the eyes of the public. Truth be told, however, Smith hadn't been told what had occurred, or what to look for.

Smith would be working under Special Agent Biron Crystal-Castles "C.C." Badalamenti — the man he intended to meet at the cafe this morning. Familiarizing himself with his coworker would be vital to... whatever was truly going on in Attonfield.

The diner itself carried a unique aura to it that gave it the same flair as similarly-styled buildings in the 370s and 380s, jukebox near the door and chrome and vinyl seats included. At this hour, the diner was mostly inhabited by truckers and people getting ready for work, but there was one outlier sitting alone in a booth, reading something out of an old, worn-down notebook. It wouldn’t take long for Smith to figure out that this was Biron, or “C.C.,” as the bureau called him. Although quite young, he already had an interesting record behind him, including working in an inter-agency task force in Turmenista during the race crisis, and leading several cases regarding Carter and his antics in dealing with seedy groups across the atlantic, like the Tayari Action Front in Avalon.

"I suppose this is the first time we've met face-to-face," Smith began, seating himself opposite Biron. "Ian Pet-Sematary Leatherface "King" Voorhees C. Smith. Same job as you. I'd summarize my work in saying I did a few things in old Awenyddion here and there and stopped a few Organization terrorist types, and a serial killer or two." He was, of course, referring to the aberrant anarchic ruin that was Awenyddion — thirty years prior an oasis of suspected supernatural quality, now a blemished wasteland that scarred the face of the Ophiric continent. It was reduced to little beyond a resource haven, strip-mined by Euphemian multinationals for what little worth remained. Resistance from locals was aptly and easily suppressed by private militaries pertaining to said mining concerns... but that wasn't why he'd been there, no. There were things unfathomable to the public that had to be kept at bay, contained— lest a hysteria of a scale yet unseen were to overtake the world in reaction to the terrible truths. There were corners of Tsion better left unperturbed, and the former Awenyddion was one of them. There were many things that Smith knew that few other men alive knew, and coping with the notions of what lurked beyond the veil of normality wasn't always easy.

I’m Biron Crystal-Castles Badalamenti. They call me C.C.

“I’m Biron Crystal-Castles Badalamenti. They call me C.C.” It became readily evident just by the young agent’s accent that he wasn’t from these parts—or even Euphemie in general. Rather, he hailed from Victoria, if the accent, appearance, and demeanor of the enigmatic agent didn’t say enough. “I can’t say I’ve met another agent who worked in Awenyddion or anything of that magnitude. I did, however, work on one case in Turmenista, one the suits told me was “off the books,” so to speak.”

"Entire nation's coming apart at the seams since Turmenista. The Organization, petty ethno-nationalists, serial killers, and mass murderers have got the country on edge. Probably the worst hysteria since the Days of Rage..." Smith, of course, referred to the terrorism and ethnic strife that had ravaged through Euphemie in the 390s, preceding the Transatlantic War. It was something only a man like President Neworder had been able to stop, thanks in part to the unification of the country amidst the war. Yet slowly Euphemie seemed to be receding into that time, and the man in office was certainly no President Neworder, even if he'd pacified Turmenista by federal order.

“So it seems. I thought Turmenista was bad… but here? Bloody hell, it’s like there’s an Organization rifle behind every blade of grass in these parts, not to mention the shit I’ve been getting about being the only Victorian in town. Anyways..” He set his notebook to his side and took a sip of his coffee. “You try the coffee here? I normally get my coffee with sugar, but this...this is some damn good coffee, even when black.”

"I'll have mine black as well." Smith concurred, eyes slowly wandering to the front of the café. One of the waiters approached after taking notice of Smith, the ISB agent taking a moment to notice the short skirt and other appealing features of the woman that approached.

"Welcome to the Minuteman Café! Do you intend to order, sir?"

His eyes studied the menu on the table rather quickly — intuition and quick thinking were his strong suits. "Coffee, black. Croissant on the menu, spoonful of cinnamon."

The woman in question was quick to jot down notes, momentarily pausing as she studied the two. "You two from out of town? —forgive me, I'm just curious. Attonfield don't get much outsiders."

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” Biron replied cordially. “Both of us are from Torch City.

The mention of the eastern megalopolis seemed to catch the girl's interest. "I figured..—anyways, I'll get right to your order!"

It certainly seemed these places were a lot more lax — friendly, even — than the monotonous dime a dozen fast food places that were practically at every corner of Torch City's vast hyperurbanized streets.

"The atmosphere of this place... certainly flows a lot smoother than Torch. Good for the soul to get away from that living, breathing monster of a city once in awhile." Smith noted, leaning back in his booth as he anticipated his coffee.

Biron nodded as he took a sip from his coffee. “It’s definitely a break, yes. I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, though, but I wouldn’t call it an ‘escape.’ We still have a job to do—that is, finding these Organization types and bringing them to justice, or just compromising them to a permanent end. Compared to the others I’ve tracked in Turmenista, though, these two most wanted guys are some of the more skilled and dangerous ones.”

"They're former special forces. They understand what it's like to operate behind enemy lines, because that's exactly what they did back in Pristio." Smith studied the café, his thoughts wandering back to the locals. "You think they might have a few 'associates' in this town?"

The Organization is perfect for a country like Euphemie—it’s well spread out, highly-organized, and knows our weak points. Infrastructure, public utilities, you name it.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they do.” Biron answered. “It harkens back to the old mantra that I said earlier: “We must have a rifle behind every blade of grass.” The Organization is perfect for a country like Euphemie—it’s well spread out, highly-organized, and knows our weak points. Infrastructure, public utilities, you name it. From what I’ve learned in Turmenista, one truck bomb can go a long way.”

"The line between peace and a civil war gets blurrier by the day..." Smith quietly lamented.

It didn't take long for the waitress to return, setting down the plate and the cup of coffee. "Thank you, sir— do be careful, it's hot.." With that, she took her leave, though Smith had taken a mental note of the woman's nametag — 'Claire'. Getting familiar with the area would certainly entail keeping a few locals in mind.

"Thank you," The ISB agent took a moment to take a sip from his cup, proceeding to try the croissant. "Mm.. they certainly don't have as much charm back in Torch."

“It all seems too.. industrial, over there. Misses that “homey” feeling you can only find in certain shows and the like.” Biron nodded. “Anyways, we’ve got two baddies we’re supposed to be looking for, as you know...not to mention our secondary job of monitoring the site. ISB Most Wanted #35-421AC Wayne Iridescence Flamagra J. Tha Carter and ISB Most Wanted #01-421AC Andrew The-Ghost-In-You Axl D. Fernow are believed to be hiding somewhere in Attonfield, right under the noses of about 26,000 innocent people. If I’m going to put two and two together, I’d say their target is something big...something like the Dysnome National Laboratory. We both know what would happen if an event of that scale were to happen in a facility with not one, not two, but six nuclear reactors.”

"The national security threat is quite clear. Motive matters little to them either; I'm sure they'll come up with a moralized excuse as they always do." Smith paused, finishing his croissant before his attention turned to the coffee. "First order of business ought to be combing through public records — if they're hiding out somewhere in this town, we'll be able to track down some form of residence eventually. If they're off the grid, though..." He raised an eyebrow at the thought, pondering their opponent's tactic. "..we might have some problems. Cat and mouse — us against them. They can't live in the wild forever if that's the case, someone'll know their whereabouts.."

“I’m sure of it.” Biron replied. “I wouldn’t trust anyone at first sight, though. Not even the law enforcement. My best bet is that they’re using the city itself to hide—the countryside would be too obvious of a hiding place, as big as it is, and it’s not stopping the Bureau from...reallocating some of its funding towards a precision strike wherever they please. Believe me, it’s been used in Arcadia. Didn’t work.” He took another sip from his coffee mug. “So, yes. Public records first, then the people. These folks seem like the kind that don’t take too kindly to the feds poking around asking questions, however.”

Smith nodded in agreement. "Small enough that word gets around, too. Our 'most wanted' probably have a headstart already... but that's nothing to worry about just yet. Curfew runs from seven to seven, that's our ideal window to get around in this place without drawing unwanted attention."

Finishing his coffee, Smith gestured for the check, setting down a few extra federal dollars as a tip. "I'll be on my way. Sightseeing, meditation — keep the energies in check. You can call me once you've got something planned."

“Alright, then.” Biron nodded. “See you in a bit.”

It went without saying that there was something amiss in this place — beyond just the domestic terrorists. The veil of reality in Attonfield and nearby Dysnome, Smith felt, was thinner, narrower than other places. He could only feel something terribly grand was taking place behind the scenes at the Dysnome Site, something their Organization targets might know about... and he intended to find out.

by **Turmenista** » Tue Aug 13, 2019 4:51 pm

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S1E3
"Afternoon Beatdown"

Introductions

The Scary Movies Club is spending their Saturday out at the Attonfield Mall. With plenty to talk about and quite a few places to shop, surely there'll be room for interesting things to occur...

_{DATE: 2:02 PM - October 25, A.C. 424 | POV: Johnny Run-the-Jewels J.C. Funny Valentine | LOCATION: Attonfield, Trinity | FSE}

“So.. it’s Saturday…”

“Yes… Jonah, it’s Saturday…” Johnny sighed.

Once again, he had to give another member of the Scary Movies Club a ride to their go-to meet-up spot, Rocko’s Diner. Saturdays provided some respite in light of a busy week at school full of tests and typical high school drama, and days like these were quite rare in the long term. A clear day like today could be well-spent going out on a hike through the woods or out at places like the mall, skating rink, or movie theater, rather than sulking inside and shitposting on Aurelianet or the pretentious LKI forums on his computer.

Just in case, Johnny had brought along his cyberdeck with him in case he was bored, but how could you ever get bored at the mall? Besides, all he was doing now was just bringing Jonah to the mall for the Club’s meet up that surely wouldn’t take too long. After that was over, he did hear Maurine was holding a party near the lake...the same party he had wanted to go to for quite some time.

For now, though, let’s see what these knuckleheads are up to first...

Attonfield Mall was built atop the remains of the Astrocircus mall, built by the world-famous 390s musician of the same name, who hailed from the small town. Some concerns about bankruptcy and Astrocircus’s own controversial suicide brought about the purchasing of the mall by Orstein Urban Planning, who renovated it into the aptly-named Attonfield Mall and greatly expanded it with various retail brands and stores. It was the only place in Attonfield that had both a comic book shop and video game store, as well as high-end stores like Tucci™, Evonna’s Secret™, and Theraud™. This turned the mall into little more than a modernized metaphorical mecca for consumerists, tech enthusiasts, and families alike.

Parking his Pontillac pickup truck by the entrance, the two made their way inside and were immediately bombarded by various sounds, smells, and sights from people talking all around them. Ahead of the pair was a cross-shaped intersection with various food carts and small stands, as well as a large fountain and places for people to sit in the center. Straight ahead was the largest store in the mall, Shoals, a massive multinational chain that transformed its stores into little more than modernized, mechanized retail stores.

They weren’t here to shop for expensive clothes, appliances, or even peruse the food court—at least, not yet. “If I were a member of the Scary Movies Club… which, well, I am,” Johnny placed a hand on his chin. “I’d be there.”

He pointed to a shop which depicted a large neon sign underneath a large picture most comic book fans would recognize instantly: the invincible rock monster Magnus fighting the superhero Stellar, a cosmopolitan Floriana-born superhero who was the child of a Top General and a hero for humanity with his plasma manipulation powers. Although he was criticized for coming off as the living embodiment of the “perfect guy” trope, his powers and flashy battles thankfully counteracted his low character development.

As expected, the Scary Movies Club's members were inside, Shiya standing between the aisles stacked to the brim with comic books and Sinican manhua. Of course, it was easy to spot her by her signature orange jacket vest, Euphemian flag patch embroidered on. Another curious matter was the fact she always wore a black glove over her left hand... strange.

Head honcho of the 'Scary Movies Club' is Liang World-is-Yours Phantasm K. Shiya, a sophomore at Colonel Harrison Skydreamer High School in Attonfield, Trinity. She carries a reputation around school due to the radiation scars on her left hand, among the few 'Rad Children' in town. For someone who runs a horror movie club, she seems to be an almost overqualified talent, though...

“Shiya.” Johnny entered the store, a tad bit overwhelmed from the amount of comics and manhua around him..including the more racy versions of the Sinican comics that were currently being perused by two large men. “Where’s the nerd at? Jeremiah got here before you did?”

"Sup...—nah, he isn't here yet." Shiya replied, setting aside an edition of Kenata's Bizarre Escapades. The disinterested look on her face regarding the comic book had a few obvious connotations — it was widely known that it was more fight scenes and loosely connected social interactions than a coherent plot. The eccentric author in question had cranked out hundreds of volumes, though only a month's worth of plot had actually passed in the story.

“Huh. I could’ve sworn the dude called me at the same time I was leaving. Doesn’t he live, like, a walking distance from here?” Johnny shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe he’s late, or just ran into some trouble on the way here.”

“Trouble?” Jonah asked out of the blue. “I’m sure of it. Some weak little scrawny guy like Jeremiah walking around all alone is easy picking among the likes of retards like Dillinger.”

The name rang a bell in Johnny’s mind, Alex All-Day-Long Acidrap Eternal V. Dillinger was, effectively, public enemy number one at Colonel H. Skydreamer high. Not only was he failing Euphemian class, but he had also been kicked off the football team, losing his spot as the team captain for a failed drug test. This turned him into a rather sadistic bully who enjoyed picking on people like Jeremiah. Backed up by his physically imposing stature and own clique out of Baldonville, a “shithole mini-town” adjacent to Attonfield, there weren’t a lot of people who were brave enough to go up against him.

Leader of the Baldonville Gang is Alex All-Day-Long Acidrap Eternal V. Dillinger, a rather sadistic bully who has little in mind beyond gridiron and abusing those weaker than him. He was captain of the Attonfield Avengers, the football team of Colonel H. Skydreamer High School, before being kicked out due to failing a drug test.

“If I were a stupid idiot like Dillinger...Jeremiah would be easy pickings.” He looked at the others of the Club, as if they all knew what was going on. “Anyone care to help me find the nerd before Dillinger does?”

"That's what I had in mind," Shiya agreed, nodding. It seemed their usual comic book antics had been cut short by whatever was going on, the 'leader' of the Scary Movies Club quickly leading the way out.

The mall was large—surely, Jeremiah could’ve been anywhere inside and they wouldn’t even know it. The only other place that Johnny knew the nerd would frequent, at least, off the top of his head, was the computer store, located on roughly the opposite side of the mall from the comic store. It was adjacent to the food court, and, as such, the smells of fresh food was ever-present in the area, along with crying children, talking families, and advertisements on small television screens promoting the latest video game. There was also a sort of “alley” towards the backrooms, though, most of these areas were abandoned to be used for new stores, or just neglected by the construction teams.

Sure enough, there were some people in these backrooms...as a matter of fact, both Jeremiah and Dillinger were here, the latter of whom had currently held up the former against the wall with a signature heirloom of his: a pocket knife. Of course, Jeremiah was book smart and knew that anything done against him would spawn a shitstorm of an intervention by the police, but he still had good reason to be afraid.

Johnny saw this as an opportunity to step in and break up the fight, stepping into the backrooms and looking down at Dillinger. “Alex Dillinger. Picking on people who aren’t your size again, huh? Better yet, where’s your little crew of rednecks?”

“I should be asking the same thing about you and your group of dorks.” Dillinger replied quickly, diverting his attention away from the black nerd and towards the NORPRO cadet and the others. Although quickly realizing he had been outnumbered, he didn’t seem any bit disturbed by his odds. “Oh? I see the gook girl with the glove is here, too. The one all the Atomicists swoon over..you ever gonna tell me what’s under that glove of yours?”

"About as much a mystery as whatever pig-shit you've got for a brain in that head of yours," Shiya quipped, folding her arms.

“I don’t care if you’re some gook girl that’ll scramble my brains with that rad-hand, or even a girl at all.” She seemed to have struck a nerve when Dillinger finally moved away from Jeremiah and began stepping towards the larger group, specifically towards Shiya. “I’ll still beat your ass regardless. I don’t discriminate.”

Shiya raised an eyebrow at the threat, managing a chuckle. "Oh?—"

Without warning, Johnny swung a wide haymaker right onto the side of Dillinger’s face, hitting him with a rather comical thonk that sounded more like a stock wet smack sound out of an action movie. While it certainly sounded powerful and looked as if it definitely was, Dillinger only turned to Johnny after being blindsided, touching the side of his face, as if nothing significant had ever happened. “You..”

In response, he swung out a punch of his own that Johnny was simply too late to block. The punch was hard—practically sending him into the wall beside Shiya. Jonah made no indication on whether or not he was going to fight, but, judging by Dillinger’s movements, he was going for the Sinican next.

"仆街!" With a swift movement, Shiya had sent the bully staggering back through the consumerist thoroughfare, leaving him at the edge of a flowing fountain behind. His attempt to block the hard swing had been easily seen through, leaving Dillinger clutching at his jaw.

Johnny took the opportunity to make his move, running towards Dillinger intending to strike him with a punch. However, halfway through the swing, he feigned, moving into a kick that the former football captain saw through like a glass screen, blocking it with his hands just as the kick would’ve hit him in the chest.

"Let's settle this," Shiya spoke up, casting aside her glove as she approached, fighting posture apparent. As one might expect, her left hand was radiation-scarred, which made her among the few 'Rad Children' in Attonfield. With a sharp cry she sent her fist bearing down in a swift left hook that had shocking — quite literally — results, briefly jolting Dillinger before sending him somersaulting backwards comically into the fountain, a loud splash ensuing.

The group all looked at the fountain in unison, as if they all had witnessed something absolutely hilarious. Jonah, for one, looked into the fountain at the bully, whose face was above the water. “DUDE! You got knocked the fuck out—HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“Is he gonna be alright?” Jeremiah asked, regaining his composure after being sidelined from that whole experience.

"..yeah, no worry. Just kicked his ass is all." Shiya commented, slipping the glove back on as she looked down on Dillinger.

“He looked like he was hit with one of those stun batons, y’know, before he...went swimming.” Johnny muttered, turning to Shiya, as if he were connecting the pieces in his head. “Was that, y’know.. you?”

"Oh, that's nothing..." She shrugged, offering little commentary on just what had taken place. If there wasn't a slight aura of mystique to the leader of the 'Scary Movies Club' before, there certainly was now.

“...Anyways…” Johnny unceremoniously turned to Jeremiah. “Nerd, new rule going ahead: Don’t go anywhere alone. I’ve got a bit of a strange feeling that this won’t be the first time we come across Alex Dillinger, let alone AleX Dillinger alone.”

“A-alright.” Jeremiah seemed a bit nervous from something, but overall was happy to at least be out of that predicament.

Shiya's attention seemed focus on the bystanders that'd witnessed the brief scuffle. "...I don't want to deal with the sheriff again this month... how about we high-tail outta here and watch some movies back at my place? I got Send Me Back to the Abyss II on datacassette..." She did make sure, though, to drag Dillinger out of the fountain, carefully leaving him on the ground beside.

“That one’s by Lymnch, right?” Johnny asked. “If it beats staying here before the sheriff arrives, I’m all for it. I hear there are two Feds crawling around town anyways—it’s bad enough that they are here.”

Shiya's room.

It hadn't taken long for them to get away from Attonfield mall, Shiya's room decorated with rock band posters, horror movie posters and pictures of places she'd been. A small, bulky television set was the centerpiece of the room, art-house surrealist ultraviolence unfolding on the glowing screen as the Scary Movies Club watched on from their host's bed — she'd gone downstairs to grab some popcorn and soda.

Amid all the gory hyperrealistic display of violence on the television, Johnny still was thinking about that strange hand of Shiya’s—that is, that strange shocking sensation that had overcame Dillinger promptly before he was sent into the fountain. He knew stories of pilots that could predict the future or people who could read minds, but never did he hear about any stories related to something like this.

“Anyone else found it a bit... weird, that Dilligner did that thing? He seriously looked like he was hit by a taser or something.” He commented out of the blue, in the middle of an avant-garde scene of the main protagonist walking through a room with a black and white checkered floor.

“Yeah.” Jonah muttered. “Don’t know what overcame Dillinger—maybe she did that martial art shit that army specops know. You know, the one that paralyzes people.”

“That’s the Shannan method, that originates from Sinica.” Jeremiah said. “At least, I’m pretty sure it is. Are you trying to be a racist by saying that, Jonah?”

“Are you trying to be a racist by implying I would say something like that?” Jonah retorted.

“Touche..” They returned to watching the movie right as Shiya came in with the popcorn, and at the best scene...a strange, little man was talking to the main protagonist, the main villain floating in air beside him as if he were levitating.

“I’ll bargain his soul for that coat of yours!” The little man said, perhaps the strangest line in the whole movie.

"I've seen this part a dozen times, always end up catching something interesting hidden behind it all.." Shiya mused, setting down the bowl of popcorn and Nitro-Cola™ by the bedside as she joined the rest of the group in watching the movie.

“Yeah, this part is pretty weird.” Jonah commented. “I remember I watched this while high and swore I could see Detective Travis Stargazing’s face in the whole frame for the entire scene...weird.” He chuckled, as if everyone were supposed to agree with him. “Really weird…”

"Reminds me of that time I tripped acid watching Blood Camp..." Already she was eating popcorn, gaze fixed on the glow of the television screen.

“I always wondered if there was a monster in this movie.” Johnny said, watching the detective navigate his way through labyrinthine corridors of red curtains and black and white checkerboard floors. “You know, there’s the mass murderer and all, but there’s no monster. No cryptid, spooky spirit..”

“That’s the whole point.” Jeremiah said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Not every horror movie has to have a big scary monster or evil spirit or mass-murderer. Some, like this one, rely on the fear factor and fear of the unknown..”

"Speaking of," Shiya thought aloud. "You heard about the weird sightings up north by the old Lowther House?"

“What haven’t we heard,” Jonah muttered, eliciting an eyebrow raise from Johnny. “Wait, that place? I don’t think I’ve been over there at all. Care to give me the quick rundown?”

"Lowther family used to live up there — way way back, like pre-Calamity I'm talkin' about here... after the bombs fell most of Attonfield got destroyed 'cause of a few silos that were around here... but they survived. The father, uh, John Lowther, ended up going insane and killin' his family for food... lasted him a few months before he killed himself too. When soldiers combed through the town they found his body, walls written in blood... yadda yadda. Was a pretty big house, so the militia ended up using it as a barracks — was a pretty big house — where strange things kept on happenin'... four-hundred years later it's still standing, passed down from unlucky owner to unlucky owner. Last person who tried to buy it a few years back put it up for sale immediately after... town's considering just turning the damn place into a museum. Lately urbexin' types have been seeing real weird shit in the area lately — might have to do with whatever's going on in Dysnome." Shiya gave a rather brief rundown of the town's own 'urban legend' of a place, an incredibly old, 'haunted' mansion that played upon the fears of those who lived in town.

“Oh yeah… Now that I think about it...I think I know which place you’re talkin’a ‘bout.” Johnny nodded. “I think someone tried to have a party there but it was shutdown when someone saw something in the woods.”

“Scary movie club goes ghost hunting?” Jeremiah asked sarcastically. Actually...that didn’t sound like that bad of an idea in the first place..

“I think we know where we’re going to next,” Johnny turned to Shiya. “Of course, we can make it there in back in time for the curfew..right?”

"We're the Scary Movies Club... 'course we'd go someplace scary. Who's up for it?" Shiya seemed to pose a curious idea to the group...

“I’m down.” Johnny almost immediately said. “Don’t got anything else to do all day, and it beats sitting at home and shitposting on Aurelianet or those LKI nerds.”

“I’ll go, too.” Jonah said. “Which means…” He turned to Jeremiah, who was too invested into the movie to be paying any attention to the conversation. “Huh—wha? Oh, uh, I guess I’ll go.”

"Friday, meet at the mall again. Buy cameras if you don't got one already... it'll be a hell of an adventure." Shiya proposed.

“Sounds like a plan.” Johnny said, returning to the movie. While the protagonist debated with the strange little man to some strange-sounding jazz in the background, Johnny was already thinking about the meetup at the mall for next week. Again, he’d only heard stories and rumors from such a creepy house, and it was definitely out of his comfort zone going to an otherwise restricted and off-limit place, but it was better than sitting at home all day. Besides, this little group that he called his friends...they weren’t all that bad—in fact, they were turning out to be some very interesting people.

by **Valefontaine** » Tue Aug 13, 2019 11:13 pm

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

S1E4
"Mission 1 - Leads"

Introductions

The Attonfield strip mall is an area frequented by the older populace of Attonfield for its affordable shopping opportunities and easy-to-access nature. It's home to the Vangelis Pharmacy, a Pizza Smut, and Cap's Gun Shop just to name a few locations of interest.

The mission is simple: observe a target of interest pertaining to current Organization activity in Attonfield.

Observing people of interest is a textbook job of the Internal Security of Bureau, be it wanted criminals, terrorists, or suspects in investigations.

_{DATE: 9:03 AM - October 26, A.C. 424 | POV: Special Agent Ian Pet-Sematary Leatherface "King" Voorhees C. Smith | LOCATION: Attonfield, Trinity | FSE}

“Welcome back to the Minuteman cafe, where we’re always ready to serve you the best Attonfield has!” The cheery owner of the diner welcomed the two Bureau agents in as they took their regular seats in the third booth from the door on the left. Soon, a waitress came over to serve them their usual: coffee and croissants. “You two gentlemen having your usual for breakfast?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Biron nodded. “The usual for me. Gallian toast sounds nice today.”

“And you, sir?” She turned to Agent Smith. “The usual fine for you today?”

"Change it up — coffee black and an apple pie." Smith replied, eyes briefly studying the menu.

As she left, a smile on her face, Biron immediately revealed his notebook from his side, flipping through the strange cipher-covered pages, some depicting bizarre drawings of aliens with suction cups for feet, and multiple-tendril-like arms with crab pincer-like appendages for hands. “Don’t worry about all this, Smith. it’s mostly just flavor art. This cult loves their ciphers, and I just took it upon myself to solve it after they were busted about a year ago by the BLF.”

"Oh, I've seen worse." Smith reassured with a hearty chuckle.

“At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if there actually are beings of extra-terrestrial origin out there.” Biron reached a certain page within the notebook, revealing a avila folder that he passed discreetly to Smith. “This is what we’re here for, mate. Bureau mailed it to me today. Take a look.”

"Wonder what the Bureau's got for us," Smith took a moment to quickly study the contents within.

The folder was like any other ISB document, with a remarkably small number of redactions and black ink today. In the upper right corner, parallel to the ISB logo, were two new additions: some small art of a white horse, the tell-tale sign of a “White Horse” case—codename in the Bureau for especially bizarre cases that elicited the creation of groups like the Midwestern Special Investigative Group—and an image of a grungy-looking guy in his late 20s and early 30s.

Former Naval Intelligence operative and white hat hacker "Thomas Bradley" has assisted the bureau many times in cyber-investigations.

“I don’t think you’ve met the man in the picture. Neither have I. That’s Thomas Bradley, a white hat hacker and former Naval Intelligence operative who’s worked alongside the Bureau for quite some time. Mostly, he pertains to cyber-investigations and tracking arms smuggling, like how he helped me in Turmenista. He’s not why we’re here, though. Much of what we know from today’s mission is coming from him for our eyes only, so it’s pretty hush-hush stuff.”

If he were to look further down the briefing, Smith would see an image of a middle-aged white woman with blonde hair. She seemed normal enough… so why was she in the briefing?

“We may have our first lead on our hands today,” Biron explained. “That woman right there is named Annie Vangelis, a mother of two who go to the Colonel H. Skydreamer High School. She owns a small pharmacy in the strip mall of the same name, but if you look down further on the sheet, you’ll see she’s involved in some pretty shady dealings online.

"Dealings online?" Smith whispered, suspiciously raising a brow — his intrigue had been piqued. The two words implied a few shady things, to which his mind could only wander as his eyes navigated the document before him.

Before Smith was an attached screenshot from an online BBS board. The contents, simply put, were incriminating enough.

Well...it’s surely something...

“Anyways, the high-ups in the Bureau think that Annie isn’t as innocent as she seems,” Biron explained. “The information we have on her says she’s got a degree in chemistry...combine that with easy-to-access chemicals, prescription drugs...and you’ve got a domestic terrorist right here in Attonfield. Or, at least, a supplier.”

"Little more than a bioweapons lab, right under everyone's noses..." Smith noted, studying the user's Organization signature. "We have a warrant?"

Biron nodded. “Technically, yes, when it comes to these Organization types, of course. However, some of the powers that be in the Bureau are not so sure some innocent pharmacy worker in small town Euphemia is worth getting the door to her house kicked down. For now, they want us to observe her, ask her a few questions about her dealings with the Organization—of course, we “don’t know” she’s with them. I myself planned on bugging her place of work and her house and going back after a while.”

He placed a finger on his temple. “You know what they say: in order to catch a terrorist, you have to think like one.”

Annie Starship Roundabout J. Vangelis, mother of two, owns and operates the small Vangelis Pharmacy in town, but the Bureau suspects she isn't as innocent as she seems.

"We certainly have the equipment to do such a thing, yes." Smith nodded in agreement. "The National Security Act of '92 also gives us a fair bit of breathing room in this regard as well."

“I’ve got all the equipment we need,” Biron said. “Electronic microphone bugs, covert cameras, wiretaps, you name it, I’ve got it. Black bag training covers placing everything, all we need to worry about now is making sure she says what we want to hear.”

"Gather something worthwhile and file it back to Serondequot, I figure." Smith proposed, smirking. "Once we get the greenlight, it's a matter of speaking to the BLF and the county judge and surrounding 'em."

“Yep.” Biron took the file once Smith was finished reading it. “Whatever we find that could connect her to our two most wanted, or the Organization in general, will be used against her. If she tells the truth, I’m certain the worst will be just some jail time at the worst. If not..” His voice trailed away as he saw the waitress exit the kitchen, bringing them their food. “Right on time, it seems. You two gentlemen look hungry! Here’s your apple pie and Gallian toast.”

"I take it the Missus is single," Smith thought aloud, observing the house from the passenger door of the modified black Pontillac™ Firestorm sedan, darkened windows keeping outsiders discreet to the interior of the vehicle.

“You aren’t wrong.” Biron said, sighing. “Husband left to pursue security work overseas. Guess he never came back. She’s still got two kids here, both sophomores at Skydreamer High. It’d be a shame if she did actually turn out to be with those Organization types...kids and all.”

A relatively innocent neighborhood with a dark secret...

The house was pretty much like any other in the neighborhood, not too shabby for someone like Ms. Vangelis. No cars were out front, thus confirming their suspicions were out, and all of the lights were out. “I assume she works 9 to 5, and her kids must still be at school...so, we should be in the clear.”

"Yeah, that ought to be right," Smith nodded in assent. "Wouldn't want to scare some innocent bystanders..." he trailed off, thinking to something. "Skydreamer High, huh? I heard some students got in a scuffle at the mall. Scared the living daylights out of this kid, talking about some... electric 'super-powers' or something. Certainly domestic terrorism isn't the least weird thing about this place."

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to look into it ourselves.” Biron shrugged his shoulders as he scanned the house one more time visually.

Smith opened the passenger door of the vehicle, momentarily pausing to take in the cool, damp morning air. "I simply can't get over the energy in this place. Far better than Torch..."

“Small towns have it good, y’know?” Biron nodded in agreement. “My home town in Victoria was turned into little more than an extension of the city—all the island was urbanized by the time I got settled in to TC. Shame I couldn’t enjoy the countryside while it lasted.”

"I'm much more accustomed to the ocean — I'm from Uehl, Smith Island. Got nothing to do with my name, though..." Smith chuckled. "The air of the sea cleanses the lungs — couldn't really say the same about Torch's smog." Following Biron to the front of the house, Smith studied the frontal facade — nothing beyond the ordinary for a house of the sort.

The front door of the house was decorated with an embroidered doormat of the Vangelis family, a heart surrounding the names ”ANNIE” and...something that was roughly torn out and replaced with just a blank patch of fabric. “Seems like she didn’t take too kindly to her husband leaving.”

"No kidding.." Smith muttered.

Checking beneath the doormat for the old spare key trick didn’t work—either Annie knew the feds would come, or just never bothered with that tactic at all. Biron checked their surroundings once again and reached into the black bag for some lock picking tools, placing them into the lock and working his magic. About a minute passed before a click was heard behind the door; afterwards, Biron stepped up, methodically removed the lockpicking tools and put them away, and simply opened the door.

Much like with any new house, this one had its own distinct smell of something that had been baked, perhaps a cake of some sorts? Biron made his way to the kitchen, noting the smell to be similar to that of a bakery. “So, I guess what she’s posted is true: she bakes as a hobby. I can only hope that “Yellow Cake Delight” she mentioned isn’t the kind of yellowcake I’m thinking of.”

"I take it you've got the bugs," Smith presumed.

“Aye.” Biron nodded, pulling on a pair of black latex gloves. “I’d look around for anything of interest, Organization paraphernalia, whatever. I’m thinking the phone here...the kitchen itself..” his voice trailed off as he looked up at the ceiling, pointing to it. “And her bedroom. That’s where I’ll put them.”

"I'll see if there's anything of note on this floor," Smith tapped his foot on the floor, muttering to himself. "No basement, either. We're in luck, I suppose..."

“I’d say upstairs in her room,” Biron murmured, reaching into his black bag and tinkering with the kitchen cellphone, his work mostly covered up by his body. The bug went into the phone easy enough, and would be programmed to transmit whatever was said in any call back to him. The microphone bugs were similar enough: place them in spots nobody would ever look, like light fixtures and inside of some certain appliances, and they would also transmit audio feed back to Biron’s cyberdeck.

Biron turned away from the kitchen telephone. “I’ve bugged the phone and the kitchen...that only leaves one more spot. Bedroom. Found anything interesting down here yet, Smith?”

"..seems she keeps it 'kid-friendly' on the first floor," Smith replied, pulling away from one of several closets that were on the ground floor as she approached the staircase.

“She’s definitely got something upstairs,” Biron nodded. “Next place we’ll check out and bug is her bedroom.”

Upstairs was pretty much normal, containing three bedrooms: two for the kids, and one for Annie herself, presumably. All of the doors were unlocked and open, but the contents of the kids’ rooms weren’t of either agent’s concern. Inside of Annie’s room was a king-sized bed, a phone and dresser beside it, and a closet in one corner. The bathroom wasn’t too interesting, only containing prescription drugs and daily allergy medication, nothing out of the ordinary. What piqued Biron’s interest was the closet, open slightly ajar so that something was visible, but only just barely.

“I’ll go bug the phones and the room,” Biron said, already beginning to do that as he began tinkering with the phone beside Annie’s bed. “Check out that closet, would you?”

"Yeah.. let's see here." Nodding, Smith walked over to the closet door, carefully opening it. Clearing his throat in surprise, he took a few steps back as if to accentuate the revelation — an ATR-M73 'tankbuster' anti-materiel rifle, 25x137mm depleted uranium rounds neatly stacked adjacent to the rifle. "..what in Congress' name?!"

“Wha-” Biron stepped over after bugging the phone, then stopped, jaw agape at the sight of the weapon just hiding in the closet. “By Ouriel… looks like we’ve found something big..”

"If we didn't have a warrant before..." Smith trailed off. "Don't disturb it. We have to find verifiable connections to the Organization first. You ought to send a picture of the weapon to our friends in the other Bureau, though..." He was, of course, referring to the Bureau of Lasers and Firearms, which was responsible for enforcing the (rather lax) firearm laws of the Federal States of Euphemie. A 25mm tank-killing anti-materiel rifle was ostensibly crossing the line, though.

“I’ve got a contact, alright. Special Agent Bauhaus P. Floyd of the BLF, practically a poet, the way the bloke speaks.” Biron reached into his black bag to reveal his Watchman, a portable and covert camera used by both the Central Bureau of Intelligence and Internal Security Bureau, and well-respected for its reliability. He took a few photos of the weapon, then gingerly closed the closet once more, leaving it in roughly the same slightly ajar position it was in before. “As if this isn’t already incriminating, we’ve yet to check out her place of work, but I think the only thing we’ll be able to do is just question her. I guess we’re done here.”

"Fair enough. Let's see what she's selling..." Smith cynically joked, waiting by the door out of the bedroom. Seeing as how he was done with the bedroom for now, Smith made his way out of the room, leaving their bugs—and their findings—behind them, as they proceeded down the stairs.

Unlike the much “newer” and more illustrious Attonfield Mall, the Attonfield Strip Mall was much more popular among the older residents of the town, as most of the stores in the strip mall were relatively close to one another proximity-wise, and all easy to access, being not too far away from the suburbs that the two agents had just came from. To name a few stores in the area, there was Cap’s Gun Shop, a Pizza Smut restaurant of the already international chain, and, of course, Vangelis Pharmacy, a family-owned venture that served the city. Though, knowing Annie Vangelis’s track record, it wouldn’t be too surprising to either agent if it turned out to be little more than a front for trafficking bioweapons, illegal drugs, and the like.

The entrance of the Attonfield Strip Mall.

The drugstore was the third shop down on the strip, wedged between a small clothing store specializing specifically in tuxedos, be it for marriages or proms, as well as a so-called “bird shop” that not only sold birds, but also sold bird baths, bird feeders, and other paraphernalia related to avians, including binoculars. Upon first glance, it certainly seemed normal, but that was if one didn’t account for Annie’s strange online behavior and even stranger possessions at home.

“I take it she won’t know we’re coming, but we aren’t here to arrest her and all,” Biron explained, eyeing down the store. Currently, no customers were inside.

"We're just interested in buying some recreational coke... and asking a few questions." Smith suggested the cover story, glancing over to the store before stepping out. Biron followed him in as they entered the store, a jingle of a bell coinciding with their entry.

Towards the front of the store, Annie was talking to one of her workers about item stocks, then turned to the two agents as they entered. “Oh—Gentlemen! Welcome! I presume you’re from out of town, right? The two agents folks have been talking about?”

“Aye, ma’am.” Biron said. “Annie, is it? I’m Special Agent Biron Crystal-Castles Badalamenti, but you can call me “C.C.” This is my partner, Special Agent Ian Pet-Sematary Leatherface "King" Voorhees C. Smith. We’re with the ISB—do you mind if we ask you a few questions pertaining to you and your business? Don’t worry, you aren’t in trouble...”

Annie seemed scared, as if she knew the two agents knew of her own little secrets. “O-oh— Fred, why don’t you go on break for a while while I talk to the two agents?” She asked her worker, who shrugged, nodded, and then unceremoniously left the store. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but my business is lawful!” She seemed genuinely surprised at this point. “Is there something you need to know about? Where we get our products? History? I can answer anything you need, agents.”

"Oh, we were just interested in buying some rec-coke... wouldn't mind asking a few questions, though." Smith spoke up. His body language seemed to assert his presence in the room, leaning by the front desk as he studied the shelves' contents.

Still scared, she made her way around the counter towards the two agents. “Well, if it was questions you came here for..ask away…!” She laughed awkwardly, inspecting the recreational cocaine and prescription drugs that Special Agent Smith was looking over. “If you were wondering where we get our product from, it’s all legal, licensed and approved by the state of Trinity. Here, we only sell the best in Attonfield!”

“What else do you sell here?” Biron asked innocently, though, she seemed to buy their alibi that they were here only to shop. “Well.. it’s a drugstore. Your usual vitamins, prescription drugs, OTCs.. anything you could ask for. Why do you ask?”

"You got twenty grams, rec-coke?" Smith asked.

“Oh—” she seemed flustered by that question for a second. “Yes. I do. Twenty grams, yes..” As she went to work on collecting the cocaine behind the counter, Biron “inspected” a few more of the shelf’s contents, discreetly placing some audio bugs in blind spots and behind bottles of OTC medication that hadn’t been touched for quite some time.

After a while, she came back to the counter with a rez-loc bag, placing it onto a scale beside the cash register. “Yes.. that’s twenty grams. Anything else you gentlemen needed? A few more questions?”

“Yes.. just one, actually..” Biron placed his hands in his pocket. “Miss Vangelis, I understand you and your estranged husband are separated, but have you or your husband ever been involved with any...how do I put it, seedy individuals?”

“S-seedy?” She asked. “What do you mean, seedy? I mean, the most seedy I’ve got was when the Feds were combing for Akhmanari spies during the election...but that was just stupid..”

“I mean the domestic terrorist types.” Biron said emotionlessly. Again, she seemed as if she was buying into their excuse. “Like those Organization weirdos? Well, before he left just one day..he did talk to some of those types of people. Heart Mother or Heart Brother..something like that. I never met them, but he spoke to me all about them. He was just as crazy as they were… I even thought he’d go on to become one of those Hesslerist Nelson Mafia types..”

"..Heartland Brotherhood.." Smith quietly muttered to himself, quickly putting together just what the man's connections had been.

“Something like that. Agent Smith, Agent Badalamenti...I…I don’t know where my husband is, or if he’ll ever return, honest.” She seemed to get a little teary from those words, her voice faltering. “He..he just.. up and left me and the kids. I’ve had to…” She paused, her voice on the verge of breaking. “Take care of Grace and little Jane all by myself ever since..”

"..sorry if we've brought up, er, bad memories. Thank you for your time, ma'am." Smith nodded, handing the money in payment for the recreational cocaine.

“Th-thank you, Agents.” She sniffed, bringing the money over to the cashier. “You two have a nice day, okay?”

As they left and began walking towards the car, Biron swore he could hear Miss Vangelis beginning to wail over something in the background. “Normally, it’s the wife leaving with the kids, but this? Bloody hell, she’s broken. I wouldn’t be surprised if she resorted to less-than-legal tactics to make a living..but I’m not entirely sure she’s telling the truth just yet.”

"I'm not entirely onboard with her story." Smith replied, stopping to light his cigarette as they approached the car. "I'll let the bugs do the talking for her."

“I guess we’ll just have to wait until she talks. If she’s with the Organization, or, at least, a “friendly,” to them, she’ll definitely report this. Either way, as sad of a story she’s got, we’ve still got to treat this gun situation seriously, let alone the rumors of her business being a front company.”

Once they went back into the car, Biron reached into his black bag and pulled out his cyberdeck, which was little more than a modernized, portable computer consisting of a full-sized keyboard and small screen. Turning on the device revealed a glowing LCD display not too unlike a typical desktop computer, though obviously sized down due to the smaller screen. Biron’s fingers on the keyboard sounded like machine gun fire as he typed in a few commands into the console, opening up a small window where each bug was being monitored. Sure enough, the audio bug he placed in the store had gone off, the car’s interior filled with the sound of Annie crying over something, constantly sobbing the name “Carter,” perhaps her husband’s name.

The crying abruptly cut out as they looked into the store. From behind their tinted windows, they could see Annie was currently dialing some number on the phone rather frantically. She put the phone to her ear and waited, both the Agents and Annie waiting for something to happen.

“Hello…? Hello?” Annie’s voice came from Biron’s cyberdeck, originating from the bug he put in the store. “It’s me, Annie. Yes, Annie.. I.. th- Yes, I’m okay, but no, not that!” She snapped. “The… the Feds are here in town, two of them… and they know, oh God, they know..” Her voice once again seemed to be faltering as she rubbed her eyes. “I think they know about the gun at my house—I don’t know about the store...but-of course not. I just… I don’t think I could’ve kept doing this for long..” She sniffed. “They’d find out anyways..I just had to do something to take care of Grace and little Jane somehow..”

After she paused, she nodded, sighing and sniffling. “Okay..” She hung up the phone, Biron tapping something on his his cyberdeck as she placed her hands on her face, crying about something once more.

The Victorian ISB agent turned to his partner. “That’s a rather incriminating recording...now..” he paused, as if for dramatic effect as he revealed his Xandle xMP 8 smartphone. “I’m going to need to make a call.”

BLF Special Agent Bauhaus P. Floyd

He dialed the number and put the phone on speaker phone. A few seconds later, a jovial voice appeared on the line. “Floyd speaking. Biron? How are you handling things over in Trinity? Right now, I feel as fine as a piece of marinated meat right now, roasting over an open fire for twelve hours and seasoned to perfection.”

“Yeah, yeah..” Biron muttered. “Look, I think I’m going to need to make a ca-”

He paused, Floyd sounding confused on the other end. “Biron?”

Biron suddenly drew his service sidearm, spotting Annie put something into her mouth and bite down hard. “Floyd, get the BLF here to Attonfield, post haste! We’re going to need a warrant on an Annie Vangelis, NOW!”

“Okay, Biron, I will, but-” Before the BLF could answer, Biron had already removed himself from his seat and burst out of the car, motioning for his partner to follow.

"Don't want our suspect doing anything dangerous," Smith noted, his Executor .50 pistol drawn.

Hurriedly he kicked the door in, glass shattering as the fragile metal frame swung wildly about, the ISB agent quickly aiming his weapon about. "ISB! DON'T MOVE!"

The very few others that were inside, be it workers of Annie’s, or just stray customers, all placed their hands in the air...but Annie was nowhere to be found. Biron made an immediate right and vaulted over the counter, bobbing his head and weapon about as he searched the rear of the store. Between storage rooms containing countless numbers of prescription medication was a small office in the back of the store, the door slightly ajar.

Biron kicked the door open with ease and scanned the room...only then finding Annie, still as a mannequin and on the floor, in front of a computer, foaming at the mouth. Her eyes were wet with tears.

"SHIT!" Smith bellowed, having come up on the scene moments after Biron himself. "Get our techie types to track the source of that goddamn call. Word spreads in these towns like wildfire!"

“I’ll do that..” Biron sighed, lowering and eventually holstering his Executor .50 pistol as he made his way over to the computer, to the social media page that was before him. “While we’re at it...I don’t see why we couldn’t take a look at her browsing history.”

The sight of Annie lying there, though was enough to truly disturb Agent Badalamenti, and surely his partner. He was right, word of Annie’s death would spread through town like a plague, and even if it was covered up as just some accident. And having to tell the kids...well… that would be an entirely different beast itself.

"The screen..." Smith gestured to the glowing computer monitor by the woman's corpse.

It seems a true patriot never compromises their comrades...

Sure enough, their suspicions were correct: this was, in fact, Annie’s account..but just how deep did the Organization rabbit hole go? Surely, there were countless Organization sycophants and supporters online, but folks like Annie, who were actual members, were as rare to come across as a precious metal. Annie just seemed to be unique in that she was borderline on the verge of quitting...and had she confessed, there was the potential of a fate better than life imprisonment or the electric chair.

These were all hypotheticals, though, hypotheticals of an eventuality that, sadly, would never come. Biron closed Annie’s glazed open eyes and stood up from her body, sighing. “I’ll call it in, get the nerds on tracing that call...and get to looking over her browsing history myself. It’s gonna be a long night.”

"Got it." Nodding, Smith silently took his leave — being met with distraught, scared looks as he exited the room and made his walk out of the pharmacy. Biron was right — there was going to be problems investigating the Organization's activity in town at this rate. With a population that was either helpful or hostile to the Feds in town, perhaps their two most wanteds had chosen well in making Attonfield their base of operations...

by **Turmenista** » Thu Aug 15, 2019 12:25 am

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

S1E5
"Urbex"

Introductions

The Scary Movies Club is venturing into the 'Sepia Forest', north of Attonfield, to look into the supposedly haunted Lowther Estate and discover what secrets it might hold. Truth be told, Sepia Forest now encompasses where much of Attonfield originally used to be over 400 years ago. The nuclear exchange of the Calamity had laid old Attonfield to waste, leaving its ruined shopping malls, abandoned homes and eerily silent schools to be reclaimed by nature. The Lowther Estate resides at the outskirts of Sepia Forest, and has switched hands over the centuries from owner to owner — nobody really seems to keep it for long.

The Lowther Estate, commonly referred to as the Lowther House, was built in 72 Before Calamity (BC) by Anthony Lowther, which would pass on to his grandson John Lowther. During the events of the Calamity, John Lowther and his family survived the initial atomic blast, though John would be driven insane and murder his family, cannibalizing them to survive. Since then, the Lowther Estate has carried to its name a history only of terror and fear, its walls said to be haunted by the tormented souls of the Lowther family, and a few of the owners who'd befallen a similar fate.

The backyard of the Lowther House leads on deeper into the forest, where the ruined remains of old Attonfield reside, and it is here that the overgrowth of nature truly thrives.

_{DATE: 3:45 PM - October 31, A.C. 424 | POV: Johnny Run-the-Jewels J.C. Funny Valentine | LOCATION: Attonfield, Trinity | FSE}

As per the plan they established on Saturday, the Scary Movies were going to be meeting up at the mall before their little trip up to the strange and bizarre ‘Sepia Forest’ north of Attonfield. They chose the perfect time to go anyways—that is, today was Horror Day, a holiday devoted to the spirits of the dead and things that went bump in the night, or just one big and deep capitalist strategy to bring up sales of spooky decorations and candy.

Attonfield Mall is busier than ever with Horror Day shopping.

As usual, someone needed a ride—it just wasn’t Jonah today. Thank Fern. Today, it was Jeremiah. The nerd had been more on edge than usual after his encounter with Dillinger on Saturday, and ever since, he just never went out alone, at least, not without a member of the Club. Due to Johnny’s so-called status as “The Muscle” of the group and connections to the more popular types at school, people like Jeremiah had at least some immunity and protection when they went out, as opposed to none.

Jeremiah didn’t say much aside from going on long-winded rants about consumerism, neocolonialism in Medeuropa by Akhmanar and Gallia, and other topics Johnny simply couldn’t pay attention to for the life of him. When he brought up the Dysnome laboratory, though, that’s what caught Johnny’s attention.

“So you really think they’re doing some super secret energy shit there?” Johnny asked out of the blue, to which Jeremiah only chuckled. “Uh, yeah. I think they totally are. You know, just having one reactor is enough to power a large chunk of a city, or even a nuclear-powered ship. But six nuclear reactors? That has to be powering something huge. I remember reading about things like the Luxor Arrays and Sanjari wonder-weapons from the 390s, they practically made entire cities go dark when they fired..”

Jeremiah So-The-Flies-Don't-Come C.K. Saba

“So you think they’re testing some high-powered weapons there?” Johnny said, unsurprised.

“That, or trying to access something we can’t get from regular means. Six nuclear reactors like that would be huge on energy output—theoretically speaking, that energy could be used to find new things, like alternative sources of energy. Mostly it’s just theoretical stuff like particle accelerators and wormholes...but, like, the possibilities are endless.”

“I’m going to go ahead and pretend like I understood that..” Johnny muttered, unceremoniously pulling up to the mall. As usual, it was packed—as if it wasn’t already thanks to the holiday. “Jonah and Shiya should be somewhere by the entrance, I guess.”

“You brought a camera, Johnny?” Jeremiah asked.

“Yeah.” Johnny said. “But… y’know.. I’m just saying, dude. Apparently there are Feds in the town...they’ll find out if we’re past curfew. We’re fucked if they do.”

“Statistically, I don’t think the Feds will care about what we do.” Jeremiah said, reassuringly. “At worst.. A reprimanding by our parents, but two agents aren’t all that bad.”

The NORPRO cadet shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

The eagle fountain at Attonfield mall, now occasionally called 'kick-ass fountain'...

Standing by the fountain where she'd delivered a rightful asskicking to Dillinger a few days before, Shiya was loitering aimlessly, bubble of pink bubblegum popping as she took notice of the other two. Jonah wasn't far by, of course, []. "Sup?" Shiya approached, giving Johnny a light fist-bump as it seemed the rest of the Club had gotten together by now.

“Yo.” Johnny answered. “I guess we can safely say that Dillinger hasn’t shown his ugly retard face here again...guess we gave him a proper asskicking that day, huh?”

"No kidding." Shiya slyly smirked, clearly proud of what she'd pulled off that day. Her attention, of course, shifted to the subject of why they were here. "We ready to roll?"

“Yeah.” Johnny said, smiling. “Honest, I’m pretty excited for this. Think we’re gonna see some spooky ghosts up there? Maybe a cryptid or some homeless junkie? Who knows!”

As they began walking, Johnny noticed a few faces from Skydreamer high in the mall, mostly girls, all with the same worried look on their face, a telltale sign they knew something he didn’t. Figuring they’d know something, he turned back to the group, realizing he was in the front. “Something happen that I didn’t hear about? Everyone looks like they’ve seen a ghost.”

"You know the Vangelis kids?" Shiya asked. "Their mom got caught with ties to some Organization stuff — had a big anti-tank gun in her house. Killed herself to avoid the Feds."

Johnny’s eyes widened, his jaw agape. “Oh, her? My dad always used to go to her pharmacy to pick up some recreational weed and shit. Always thought there was something off about her..”

Jonah sighed. “Damn… shame, too. She was kinda hot, though.”

“The fuck?” Johnny narrowed his eyes at the stoner.

Shiya ignored Jonah's... more mature tastes, continuing. "Yeah. Her two kids are gettin' no breaks now. They've been out of school since it happened, and well... whereever they go they get shit on for what their mother was doing behind the scenes."

“Damn. Sucks for them.” Johnny muttered. “Last time I heard, they were going through some tough times, husband leavin’ her and all. If she’s with those Organization hick, though, who knows that kind of stuff she was involved with?”

"Just glad she didn't end up killing a bunch of innocent people or whatever..." She shrugged, tucking her hands in her pockets as she looked about, presumably in wait for them to get moving.

“How far away of a drive is it?” Jonah asked out of context. “I’ve kind of got the munchies right now..y’know.”

"Dysnome's like thirty-one miles out, the forest ought to be like ten or twelve or so. It's where Attonfield used to be, actually — before the Calamity, that is." Shiya explained, beginning toward one of the large exits of the mall. "I don't even have a driver's license yet, though... so this one's on you guys."

“Well, I’ve got space in my car..and a license.” Johnny said. “Just don’t be like Jonah here and stink it up with weed or put your feet everywhere...I like to keep my car nice. Speaking of which…” his attention then turned to the stoner of the group. “I don’t see why we couldn’t get some grub before we get going. After all...there is a food court..”

"Oh, uh— sure thing. I've already ate though... might get some ice-cream or whatever." It didn't take long for Shiya to discard her bubble-gum and get onboard with the food court idea, following the rest of the gang...

The Sepia Forest encompassed much of what'd originally been Attonfield preceding the Calamity. Most of the parts leading up to the vast forests were newly-built mansions and refurbished 'historic' houses, largely preferred by rich white people to the typical suburbia of Attonfield proper. Most of these 'rich white folk' houses had a fair amount of spaciousness to them, to the extent that most of them were far apart from one another. Money couldn't buy everything, but it could buy peace and solitude.

"The Lowther House is a bit further in... trail should be somewhere 'round here. Fell into disrepair when the last owner packed up his bags, put it up for sale and left... after his wife and three kids disappeared."

“Shouldn’t be that hard to spot anyways,” Jonah noted, the area around them becoming less “open” and more “foresty”—that is, some buildings began to become overgrown, either by owner’s choice or neglect. Areas like these predated the Calamity itself, with some of these houses being the oldest in Euphemie that weren’t touched by the nukes in those days.

Johnny kept his eye out on the road, eventually sighting a dirt path on the backroad they were taking that led into some sort of nature reserve. Of course, cars were permitted to drive through here, but people had to take care when treading by foot as to not disturb the wildlife offroad. “I think this is our turn up here..” Johnny said, turning down the radio for the whole atmospheric effect of everything. “Now entering the Sepia Forest...untouched since the Calamity. Y’all think they got some irradiated cryptids in there? Spooky Organization types?” Johnny laughed, rather awkwardly though, given no one else liked his joke. “If I’m gonna be honest...this does seem like the set up to a slasher horror. Teens go into the woods lookin’ for stuff..”

“The likelihood of us finding anything you just mentioned is practically non-existent,” Jeremiah said.

The forest seemed to still carry about it the occasional overgrown ruins of streets long, long gone. Amidst tall grass, the occasional remains of sidewalks and asphalt streets were faintly visible, giving vague indication of what'd once been the original Attonfield. The drive through the woods gave them a view of what'd once been, now entirely dominated by nature.

It was certainly nothing that Johnny had prepared for—at the very least, his car could handle the overgrown road, but this place looked as if it were an entire new world within a forest, few amounts of outside light actually coming inside to the ruins of the town. “I feel as if navigating out of this is gonna be a bitch,” he commented to no one in particular. “Where exactly is this house anyways?”

"..further in.." Shiya cryptically noted, attention set ahead as she leaned forward from the passenger set to get a better look. Navigating the narrow dirt path, only the faintest of the afternoon sunlight's rays pierced the canopy above, casting shadows that seemed to toy at the imagination as they drew nearer to the sight. "So, you brought that camera on you, right?"

Everyone seemed to nod in unison, Johnny reaching into the glove box to present the portable camera in question. “I got it. For cheap, too. Anything we should be lookin’ for right now?”

"The house, of course. We're technically on the outskirts of old Attonfield, if we go through the backyard of the Lowther House we might be able to get a better look at the ruins... but that comes later." Shiya grinned. "As for me," She plugged her Capchat™ Spectagons to her ICM MC-888 Smartphone, putting the sunglasses on. "I'll be able to take pics with this."

“You thinking of sharing some of those pictures?” Johnny suggested, continuing down the road. The lack of music and spooky atmosphere did prove to be quite photogenic, but he had to worry about driving for now.

Shiya shrugged. "If we find something, hell yeah. If we don't, maybe the Scary Movies Club can start an archive of its own..."

The Lowther House.

Soon, much of old Attonfield was behind them, something looming not too far away in the distance. It was, for all intensive purposes, a house, but given the size of it and grand scale, it was more of an estate than just one singular house. In a moment they were presented with the ancient structure in all its glory, right there before them. The rotting metal gate lay slightly ajar, the house surrounded at both sides by trees as far as the eye could see. The vast field that comprised the 'front yard' was overtaken by plants and tall grass, which served as further reminder that nobody had been to this place in years — save for the occasional druggie or vandal, but the point still stood.

"This is gonna be epic..." Shiya commented, looking on at the old estate.

“And creepy...” Johnny said in an overly-dramatized voice as he parked the car out front, much to the chagrin of Jonah, who looked about the place much like any character about to enter a haunted house in a horror movie. “I picked the wrong time to go to this place high, man.”

“The worst we’ll come across is a giant rat.” Jeremiah said abruptly.

“Giant whatnow?!” This caused both Jeremiah and Johnny to laugh at Jonah’s paranoid nature, watching the stoner run to the back of the truck. “I swear on Fern, if there’s a giant rat in there..”

Shiya would be first to step out, arms folded as she waited for the others to get out as well. "Get that camera rolling... this is our first time in the spotlight."

Johnny tinkered with the camera for a bit. “Ah, fuck, how do I use this—”

Click

“There we go.” A red light on the side of the portable recorder indicated that it was recording, Johnny holding a thumbs up, as if to tell them without words.”

"I'm Liang World-is-Yours Phantasm K. Shiya here with the Scary Movies Club, today we're visiting..." Shiya dramatically gestured upward, the camera panning up to bring the grand estate into perspective. "The ol' Lowther House. Anyone who moves in leaves after a few months... if they survive. Time to find out if those rumors are as true as they say. Last owner of the house put it up for sale a few years back after his wife and kids vanished... is this place really a gateway to evil beyond our imagination? Or is the prospect of renovating a five-hundred year old house simply too much for those who dare buy it?"

The front door of the house was as creepy as most front doors on any abandoned house got, for the most part. Johnny followed Shiya and the others as they made their way up to the front door, preemptively taking a look inside himself.

"Nobody home..." Shiya chuckled, noting their rather decrepit surroundings in the main hall and taking a few pictures with her Spectagons. The walls were adorned with several pictures covered in dust, along with relics from before even the Calamity itself. Johnny made sure to pass over some of these, noting their age and pristine quality. “Interesting.. Looks like one of those fancy..whaddyacallems. Nice. Oh, and.” He panned the camera over to Jonah. “No rats so far.”

“Fuck you.” the stoner grumbled.

“See anything important yet?” Johnny asked the group aloud, still looking over some of the old relics of the main hall.

"..guess the last owner tried to renovate. That's not a picture of the Lowther family..." Shiya noted, her attention set at the centerpiece of the room — a photo of a family, fairly worn by now. A man, a wife and three children were standing for the photo, the camera quality and fashion implying something of the late 410s, further giving it a dated, eerie feel. "Let's go check out the dining room—"

Without warning, the ground shook, sending the family photo crashing to the floor. A startled yelp escaped Shiya as she jumped back, taken off-guard. Hurrying to one of the windows, she noted a few trees outside had been felled by the tremor. Coming to a realization, she nervously laughed to herself. "Nothing, guys... just an... earthquake, I guess? We haven't had one in what, eight years? ..please cut the part with me screamin' when we're done recording."

“Isn’t Trinity supposed to be a...I don’t know, geologically stable state?” Jeremiah asked. “Normally these quakes..you’d hear about them in Oesterra, not here..”

“You think the guys at the lab did it?” Jonah jokingly chuckled, setting the picture back up onto the centerpiece.

"When in doubt, blame the Site..." Shiya joked, nervously beginning towards the dining room.

The dining room, like the main hall, was covered in dust and cobwebs that had collected over the last century or so. Obviously, there was no food, but there was something scurrying around in the darkness: a large, black rat that darted past the group’s feet, disappearing into a small hole in the wall behind them.

“There’s our first rat.” Jeremiah snickered, much to Jonah’s chagrin as the stoner jumped back in fear. “What the FUCK!! A RAT!”

“Yeah... just a rat.” Johnny said, inspecting the dusted-over utensils. “And a bunch of dusted-old shit.

"Nothing important here... cobwebs sure give me the creeps, though." Shiya remarked, looking to the doors in the room. It seemed a staircase led up, presumably to where the bedrooms were. The walk upstairs was an awkward one — Shiya couldn't shake off a weird feeling of unease ever since the tremor. It was like an earthquake, yes — but something about it was primordially guttural in a way she couldn't explain. It'd been as if something in her just knew it'd come from the north — from Dysnome.

The first door was a large bedroom, presumably the room of John Lowther and his wife. To say the least, going into the room of the man who supposedly went postal and murdered his entire family was...an experience. Johnny took point and opened the room door, surveying it with the camera. “So… John Lowther’s room.”

It'd been clearly renovated by the last owner, seemingly untouched by vandals or anything of the sort. Not even a smidge of graffiti on the walls inside, it seemed. The sheets were similarly in disarray, the mattress stained with mold spots. Drawers had been cleared, either by the last owner or burglars, and here and there old clothes lay about on the carpet flooring. There was a stillness in the air that seemed to linger in this place... as if the madness that'd consumed John Lowther those centuries ago still lurked behind the thinned veil of reality.

"You think someone's used this bed since the last owners packed up and left?" Shiya joked, hands tucked in her vest — presumably she'd noticed the strange aura this room possessed as well.

Johnny reached down, picking up something on the ground that resembled a needle. Holding it up to the light of the camera confirmed that it was, in fact, a needle, likely for heroin, ketamine, or some other illicit drug. “Knowing this is lying around...and the condition of this place..” He panned the camera around the room, pausing for dramatic effect. “I wouldn’t be so surprised.”

“Can we get out of this room already?” Jonah muttered. “Definitely picked the wrong time to go out high...If I see another rat come out at me, I swear..”

"Next place on the Lowther House tour... Anna Lowther's bedroom." Shiya regained her composure as they left, giving her usual photogenic smile to the camera. "Last woman who used this bedroom disappeared, along with the three kids... what clues might remain in here? It was here that John Lowther brutally murdered and ate the flesh of his wife four centuries ago, after all..."

Expecting for an army of rats to pour out of the front door, Johnny slowly pushed the door open, bracing for the overwhelming tide of rats to overtake the group. Luckily, this never came...

The room was as once might expect — filled with stale-smelling air, an unusual cold stillness within the room. The bed had been violently overturned, inverted Ourielist crosses painted upon the walls. Whatever had been in the closets had been either stolen or discarded on the floor, one of the closet doors hanging off one of its hinges. Like the walls, they'd been vandalized too, graffiti marking the doors with expletives. A few used needles were sitting about on the floor, and in an even-less pleasant corner of the room, a few used condoms surrounded by a sickening gathering of mold.

“Now that is spooky.” Johnny joked. “I mean… who the fuck would want to do it in here?”

“Junkies, man.” Jonah said. “They’ll do anything, anywhere. All I can tell you..”

"That's fucking gross..." Shiya remarked, looking away from the corner and backing out of the room.

He didn’t feel like sticking in the room for long—after all, this, supposedly, was the “kill-room” that John Lowther had done his heinous deed in.

The last room on this floor was the room of the Lowther kids. Not surprisingly, it was relatively untouched from how the last owner left it, either out of respect for the kids or knowing how atrocious something like the last room was. There was no graffiti on the walls, no mice, no signs of life...almost as if whoever was in it, one day, had just disappeared. Of course, this gave the room a bit of an eerie aura to it…”

"Why is it that nobody's touched this room or Mr. Lowther's? Kinda gives me the creeps..." Shiya commented, perusing the eerie scene inside. There were a few kids' toys scattered about the floor, though she was familiar enough with horror tropes to not touch them, merely kneeling down to get a better look. "Last owner had three kids. Every one of 'em disappeared..."

“Crazy..” Johnny muttered, getting a few of the dusted-over and old pre-Calamity and 350s-era toys in the camera frame. “I don’t wanna stay in here for long..this room’s giving me the creeps. Also could’ve swore I saw something.”

“Woh?” Jonah, eyes wide, began whipping his head around.

“Nothing.” Johnny smiled. “Just a joke.”

"..right, let's get out of here." Shiya got up, a mild look of concern on her face — maybe the unease of the whole place had finally kicked in for her.

“While we’re up here...I guess we could look at the attic.” Johnny suggested, stepping out of the room and looking up. Sure enough, access to the attic was as easy as pulling down the attic access door and climbing in. Like most attics of houses like this, it was big, full of miscellaneous cardboard boxes, dust, more dust, and—

For a moment it was as if he were presented with the sheer insignificance of humanity in the universal equation, the briefest glimpse of a writhing, wretched form amidst the boxes. Its unseemly form seemed to struggle against the firmament of reality, its movements seemingly in defiance of the laws of physics. Vaguely human hands were vestigial almost, ligaments torn as tendril-like protrusions emerged from what'd once been wrists. These tendril-like protrusions seemed to merge with surrounding objects, grotesquely seeming as if they were... pumping something into the dusty boxes around. Eyes — or at least masses resembling them — seemed to turn their gaze to Johnny, blinking.

“Oh sh-What the fuck?” Johnny immediately descended down the ladder, bobbing his head around. “Okay… I think I saw something. And it wasn’t a rat.”

This warranted a look of simultaneous excitement and fear from Shiya. "D—did you catch it on camera? What was it?"

“I’m pretty sure I got it on the camera...but I swear on Fern, I fucking saw something. I don’t know what it was..but I saw something.”

"..lemmegetalookatthis..." Shiya muttered, nabbing the camera from Johnny's hands and beginning up the ladder. Peering into the attic, she glanced down with a confused look about her face. "..I don't see anything up here, Johnny. Sure you're not... paranoid?

“I swear I saw something—it was on the fucking recording, too..” Johnny shuddered. “It was fucking moving..”

"Well, I've just got dusty old boxes up here... what did you see?" Shiya asked, turning the camera around to give a few funny faces to to-be viewers…

“It was fucking moving… squirming around… it didn’t look human at all.”

"There's literally just boxes up here... come look." Shiya seemed confused by whatever Johnny was getting at. The worst he saw up there, at least, when he came back up, was just an odd-looking coat in the corner hanging up somewhere that vaguely looked like a human. “It- it was- it was just there..”

"Yeah, yeah..." Shiya rolled her eyes, beginning down the attic. "Basement next?" She asked, handing the camera back to Johnny.

“I guess…” Johnny muttered, stepping down from the ladder and sighing. “Let’s go to the basement next.”

Below the first floor was a long, dark, and imposing stairwell down to the basement...like most basements, it was damp, dark, and quiet. Not even the mice were about here.

It seemed not even the last homeowners had touched this place — it was ancient, perhaps in the same state it'd been in the days of the Lowther household. It'd been heavily vandalized, yes, but the long-rotted foodstores and rifles sitting about told a story not just of the Lowther family's attempt to survive the nuclear holocaust, but the building's brief use as a barracks by militias during the Civil War.

"Goddamn..." Shiya muttered, looking about. The flashlight did come useful here...

“You think the Organization types used a place like this as a base?” Johnny asked, inspecting one of the rifles. “Springhorn Sentinel...an old kind. Really old, pre-Calamity, even.”

"Only collectors and idiots would use a musket^[1] like that." Shiya noted, kneeling down to get a better look at the rifles.

“Back then, you had to make do with what you could.” Johnny explained. “Shame these are, like, rotted and shit.”

"Judging by the dust, rust n' rot, I don't think the terrorists were up in here recently... probably just crackheads and the ghosts of wars past..." Backing away from the rifles, Shiya took a moment to note their surroundings. A faded Euphemian flag on the wall had seemingly survived the centuries, most vandals seemingly having at least an ounce of patriotism. It was disrespectful to overdose before the flag, after all.

Johnny practically stood up at attention in front of the flag, saluting it half-dramatically..and half sincerely. “God save the FSE.”

He turned around to the group, the flag behind him. “Well, that just leaves us with one more space in the back...the backyard.”

"Wonder if the Lowthers had a pooch..." Shiya mused, beginning back out of the basement. Their brief tour of the house had seemingly turned up nothing — at least, that's what everybody but Johnny thought.

The backyard was, as one would expect, overgrown, degraded, and creepy. Something moved about among a rusted over playset: a small black rat that darted around for a moment, trying to find some cover from the open.

“Another rat, Jonah,” Jeremiah said.

“Shut up!” The stoner looked about the yard.

"Guess there's nothing much to see here..." Shiya commented, beginning down the backyard. It certainly did lead somewhere though — the ruins of old Attonfield.

“Huh… what else is in town that y’all might want to look for?” Johnny asked, motioning for the others. “There has to be something in the town aside from just empty old buildings.”

"You heard of the Pit?" Shiya questioned, tucking her hands back into her vest as they wandered the forest trail.

“Can’t say I have.” He answered. “Only heard about the old house up here. Wanna give me a quick rundown?”

"The Pit's what they call the old Paradise Mall. Since all of its surface levels got vaporized in the nuke, well... it's basically a huge dark pit, abandoned escalators leading you belowground through a bunch of long-abandoned shops. You ever heard of the Backrooms?" Paradise Mall was built in 11 BC and had quickly grown to be the breathing consumerist heart of old Attonfield, the subterranean levels of its ancient concrete structure surviving the nuclear obliteration of centuries past. Due to the fact most of its aboveground levels were swept away, overtaken by nature in the centuries since then, it is recognized as 'the Pit' for rather obvious reasons. Despite decaying structural stability, the site remains popular among urbexers, though eerie rumors about the shopping mall's lower levels — and a fabled 'backrooms' — gave the ancient shopping centre an ominous, foreboding background.

The Pit.

“Backrooms, huh? Sounds fun...a little spooky, maybe, but fun. I don’t want to be down there for long.. Structural instability and all…”

Soon enough, after quite a brief hike through the woods, they’d reached old Attonfield and the fabled Pit, a large, sunken place that was built partially into the ground, just as she had described.

"Long way down," Shiya noted, glancing down the sizeable pit of concrete and overgrown storefronts below. Murky waters had gathered at the lowest depths of the Pit, a few fish visibly moving amidst the waters below. "The stairway probably won't break..."

“That’s quite reassuring.” Jonah said aloud, making his way down the steps behind Shiya, Johnny, and Jeremiah. The lowest section that wasn’t covered in water was below them, a winding set of corridors going off into nowhere in an intersection behind the stairs.

“Are these the backrooms?” Jeremiah asked out loud, scanning the area with his flashlight.

"..they say if you go deep enough, you'll find a place with nothing but plain yellow walls and old carpet flooring... you know those kind of rooms. Somehow we've all been to places like that at some point in our lives..." She trailed off, perusing the abandoned thoroughfare of derelict storefronts and graffiti-filled junkie-corners.

A loud CLANG caught the group's attention as something in one of the derelict, ancient stores was overturned, Shiya's attention quickly turning to the source — a large brown rat, scurrying off to the next shop.

“OH SHIT! A RAT!” Jonah shrieked, practically leaping back into Jeremiah’s arms. Johnny couldn’t control his laughter, cackling at Jonah’s reaction to the rat.

"At this point, you screamin's scaring me more than the rats themselves..." Shiya rolled her eyes, turning back around to begin for the stairway when suddenly another tremor shook the derelict subterranean corridors of the mall. "—oh FUCK!"

Was it another tremor, or was it the mall itself about to collapse in on itself? Either way, Johnny wasn’t going to take any chances and darted past, beckoning for the group to follow him. “Time to get the FUCK out, now!”

The Pits rumbled around them, perhaps a few parts of the old, derelict mall were about to collapse. Fortunately for the group, they made their way out as the rumbling subsided, though, the Pit remained intact. As soon as they were out, Johnny looked back at the old, abandoned mall, a mixed look of fear, excitement, and surprise in his eyes. “Again?”

"..am I the only one that thinks it's coming from, well... Dysnome?" Shiya questioned, catching her breath as they got a fair distance away from the Pit — none of them seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of the subterranean space caving in under them.

“Like I said…geologically stable..” Jeremiah reminded them, looking out towards the remnants of old Attonfield. “What...what time is it? I think we should get out of here..”

Shiya looked up to the sky, a pallor about her features as she swore under her breath. "Shit... like, six or something. Yeah, six thirty-five..." It might've been her mind running wild, but it seemed the forest had gone eerily quiet since the second tremor. Gone was the melodical song of the bird, the hum of cicadas, the occasional buzz of a mosquito. Pure silence — yet deafening therein.

“We’ve still got some time left before the curfew..” Johnny noted, disturbed a bit by the quiet.

"You been to the Overlook before? It's got a clear view on Dysnome..." Shiya suggested, looking back to the rest of the group.

Still a bit disappointed that he was the more “normal” members of the group, Johnny shook his head. “Nope. A view on Dysnome, though? That sounds nice..”

"If whatever the hell's going on is coming from there..." Shiya trailed off. "We might be able to get a good look from there. Only place you really can — feds bought out every other hill and mountain overlooking the closed town."

The hike up the hill was challenging enough in the darkness and with the overbearing sense of dread looming in the background. However, the group soon made their way up the hill without any major problems, and, sure enough, they were met with a panoramic view of the land...and the closed city of Dysnome itself.

"..shame none of us brought binoculars. Can't help but wonder what the hell's going on out there..." Shiya trailed off, reminding herself of the camera rolling. "City of mysteries, city of the unknown... Dysnome. Its reactors power the tri-state area, but what's really going on over there? We probably won't ever find out, of course."

Johnny kept recording the city, the light pollution having blotted out many of the stars in the sky. Although it was lit up as if it was a Yuletide tree and definitely populated. “Wonder where the lab is in all that..light.”

"The cooling towers should be easy to spot..." She trailed off, looking on. Not far from Dysnome proper lay the Dysnome Site, cooling towers and buildings of varying purpose surrounding the site. With the sun slowly setting in the west, it was easy to see by the lights that the place was quite busy — perhaps too busy if the lights were to be seen from this elevated point. It was a fair distance away — about twenty-five or so miles between them and the valley below. "There they are. You getting this?"

“Yeah.. I see it..” Johnny noted, looking at the monolithic concrete towers. “Holy shit.. That site is massive.”

"Six reactors," Shiya repeated, watching the site. There was an almost tranquil eerieness to it all — a light gust blew northward as she eyed the facility in the distance. "That should—"

It seemingly illuminated the horizon as it erupted: an orange fireball, coursing vertically into the evening sky as a beam of bluish-white light coursed upward, bright glow piercing into the clouds above. The shockwave seemed to reverberate through the forests surrounding the distant facility, soon followed by an earthshattering BOOM — audible even from where they stood.

"Oh FUCK!" Shiya tripped backwards in surprise at what'd just unfolded on the horizon, quickly steadying herself as she looked on at the sight.

"S44FA reactor cores don't explode."

“What the FUCK?!” Johnny covered his eyes from the massive light show, a sullen sense of fear overtaking him as he watched the fireball and strange beam of light over at the facility. “What in the FUCK just happened?!”

"I— I don't fuckin' know— shit, I'm not standing here long enough to find out!" Evidently, Shiya drew the line at whatever had just taken place. Not to mention, they still had a curfew that they needed to follow. Already, Johnny was getting ready to leave, only taking one last look at the light show behind them before turning around to leave. “We need to go..”

It was a rather hectic run through the woods and back to Johnny’s car, with the strange lights in the sky and the beam of light—still visible even as they reached the Pontillac pickup truck. By the time everyone was in the truck, Johnny floored it, bolting away from the site and leaving the forest behind them.

“What the FUCK was that?!” Johnny screamed, blatantly disobeying the speed limit as they began their drive back towards Attonfield.

"..I don't fuckin' know. If I knew I'd probably be more worried..." Shiya replied. As one might expect, a few parts of Attonfield had been left in the dark by the incident in Dysnome, power out to an extent in the city. "W—where the hell do we go now? This shit's sure to end up on the news..."

“We still have time to get back home..” Johnny murmured, looking at the sight in the background. “But… the fucking lab… the fucking lab just blew up.. I can’t believe it.”

It seemed the leader of the 'Scary Movies Club' was at a loss for words, quietly shaking her head as she looked on at the distant glowing light in the rear-view mirror. "..whose house we going to? I.. don't want to think too much about what just happened."

“My house.” Johnny volunteered out of the blue, still focusing on driving. “He’s lenient about the curfew, parties and all...but I’ll have to worry about his wrath once I get you guys in there… we just need to get the fuck out of here..”

“I think we’re already dead..” Jeremiah muttered, anxiously looking back at the glowing facility in the background. “Radiation, you know..”

"—shut up!" Shiya raised her voice, still visibly distraught at what they'd just witnessed — and whatever would come after. Regardless of what it was, Johnny knew they had a very slim window to get back into the town. Even if they did make it...would the curfew even matter at this point? Surely tremors like these would be felt even all the way in Attonfield, let alone a massive explosion.

Whatever the case, the Scary Movies Club had definitely seen some things most people wouldn’t believe in—a glowing and exploding reactor? Nuclear reactors like these exploding were practically a myth in the FSE, let alone anywhere. How could a reactor like this just explode out of the blue...and what exactly did it have to do with that thing he saw up in the attic?

Johnny’s house appeared ahead just as the curfew began, the radio making the usual public service announcement announcing the daily curfew. They’d made it just in the nick of time...but having to explain this to his parents would be a pain in his ass, as understanding as they were. As he pulled into the driveway, he parked his car unceremoniously out front, stopping physically and mentally for a moment, as if to comprehend what just happened.

“What.. the.. FUCK.” He turned around to the others, Jonah having been speechless for the entirety of the event. “Reactor exploded...wh-how could it have done that? Like… they don’t just normally explode like that, do they?”

"..something had to have happened." Shiya skittishly replied. "I dunno—something went wrong, or... maybe it had to do with those tremors, I don't know. I guess the fact I don't taste metal means we haven't been i—irradiated, right?"

“Fuck, man, just don’t think about it..” Johnny said. “I think the best thing we need to do is just not think about it.. We’re alive..”

A sight like that surely was something that they all couldn’t forget so easily. Despite seeming beautiful and colorful, the amount of death and destruction that would surely come from such a disaster was astronomical..they were just lucky that they were still alive. The same couldn’t be said for the thousands of people who lived in Dysnome and the hundreds who worked on-site, however…

"we're friends, and that means something to me."

There was a solemn silence among the group, Shiya stepping out first to look at the glowing beam in the far distance. Turning back around, she began an impromptu speech to the group. "I want us to, uh... make a promise... that no matter what happens, we'll stick together through this. Whatever happened out there I feel like we weren't supposed to see. That doesn't mean we just, uh... cower away in fear. We're a club, and club-mates stand up for one another... and above all that we're friends, and that means something to me."

Johnny kept quiet for a moment as Jeremiah stirred in his seat. “I won’t bail on you on this one, Shiya. If anyone asks...we were never there.”

“Damn right.” Johnny added. “Listen..if any asshole like Dillinger comes around and tries to fuck with us, or if people go asking around...I’ll be there. For all of you.” He paused for a moment. “I may seem like that popular jock “tough guy” or an asshole at times, but you guys are my friends—friends don’t leave each other behind.”

He turned to his house, unbuckling his seatbelt. “And that’s a...that’s a promise, alright? Believe me on this one, alright? ...Now, let’s just hope that they my parents don’t chimp out about about meeting you all..”

Klaxons blared in the background as Wes EARFQUAKE Hold-My-Liquor D. Hirasawa marched down the hallways, pushing the doors in on the control room. The look on his face was enough to confirm he was seething with rage, judging all of the engineers in the room with dark, aggressive eyes. “So, ‘S44FA reactors don’t explode.’ Well..you all are fucking LIARS! ALL OF YOU!”

The control room of the Dysnome Site's nuclear power plant.

The chief engineer, Mitch I-Want-It-That-Way Kodak B. Sheffield, was mildly taken aback by the disruption, turning around in confusion. "Are you implying this wasn't another tremor from the laboratory?" He paused, shaking his head. "He's delusional, get him out of here." Of course, there'd been a string of mild 'incidents' coming from the Dysnome National Laboratory, which was part of the Dysnome Site — a few seismic disruptions in the past few hours alone — but this one had caused a catastrophic power surge that had seemingly severed the control room's contact with Reactor 1. Still the technicians in the room were attempting to restore systems that'd failed amid the surge, silent curses muttered as any semblance of feed to the first reactor proved fruitless.

“Delusional?” Wes scoffed in disbelief, emphasizing his sweat-drenched jumpsuit. “I was just there, Chief.. The reactor… is GONE. G-O-N-E. I don’t know how it happened—maybe, some pressure buildup, negligence on someone’s part, SOMETHING, but the fact of the matter is that the reactor is GONE. There’s NOTHING there...not even the hallway.”

He collapsed into an empty office chair, sulking. It became clear his face was reddened, not from blushing, though. “I don’t even know how long I have left.”

"S44FA reactors cannot explode..." Sheffield repeated, staggering over in confusion. "..get him to the infirmary. Now!"

“You just signed your DEATHWISH!” Wes retorted as he was forced up and out of his seat by one of the larger engineers in the room. “You’re all dead! Dead, dead, DEAD, and WE CAUSED IT!”

"Does anyone else... taste metal?" One of the engineers raised their head, visibly nervous.

"The core cannot explode from a power surge." The chief engineer repeated once more, looking around to the engineers present in the room. "It must've been those fuckheads at the laboratory. Why does their work demand so much electricity, anyway?"

"All attempts at restoring contact with the Dysnome National Laboratory have thus far failed, sir." One of the engineers reported, setting a phone down.

“Maybe.. Because the reactor is gone!” Wes, still in the room but held back by two large engineers, shouted at the chief. “If the laboratory is gone, who knows what kind of shit’s happened that we can’t even grasp..I checked it myself..if the cameras were operational, or if you’d get up off your ass, Mitch, I’d show you that Reactor 1 blew up.”

"Remove him from the room." Sheffield ordered, returning his attention to the camera feeds — half of them were still reduced to static—one of them, adjacent to the now non-existent reactor room cutting out to static for only a brief moment. "And get me on the line with the Governor."

As he was pushed out of the room, Wes was joined by another engineer, a certain Alec Radon SCRAM Dosimeter J. Darski. Wes turned to the man and shakily reached for a cigarette in his white jumpsuit, offering it to the engineer. “You’re one of those Atomicist types, right? You could say I saw the face of your ‘God’ in there.. I don’t even know how much I have left..but if the chief won’t believe it from me..maybe he’ll believe it from you.”

"The Atom is eternal, it encompasses all of us... it lives and breathes. Its mercy and generosity comes in the form of the energy it gives us," replied Darski. "I'll take a look."

“Alright..” Wes placed his cigarette into his mouth and lit it. “As if my face wasn’t evidence enough. Let’s go then.”

His step was limped as he led the Atomicist engineer through the darkened corridors, a few tremors taking over the building from several smaller explosions and the structural integrity of the facility breaking. Technically, they were safe, but the same couldn’t be said for Wes...and his unfortunate ally that were goign to inspect Reactor Number 1. Through the glass windows of the corridor they could see the silhouette of the National Laboratory just across the vast complex that comprised the Dysnome Site. Its lights were off — perhaps the power there had gone out with the surge.

“As if they couldn’t just walk out and see it from there..” Wes muttered. “You know, the amount of radiation that’s spilling into the air...the people of Dysnome..”

"We are insignificant before the great might of the Atom," Darski agreed. "We live at its mercy."

He couldn’t bring himself to running the numbers in his head. At the end of the hallway, hidden in a hazy cloud of smoke, was a red warning light of some large blast door that led into the reactor room. The door opened as easily as one would’ve expected from some massive lead door, opening painstakingly slow to allow the two engineers in.

Before them, they would’ve normally seen the reactor room, much like in any S44FA reactor. However, what they saw instead was a mangled mess of metal, wires, and glowing light. Hellish yellow balefires licked up towards the ceiling, buffeting both of them with heat and the sensation of pins and needles in their face.

The living, breathing heart of death.

They both looked down into the reactor and saw that, simply put, it was missing—in fact, practically half of the room was missing. Instead, there was a pit of glowing yellow light and fire, almost white, even. It was something that the both of them weren’t prepared for...not even the Atomicist, whose face was already red. Wes only looked at the engineer, a deadpan look in his eyes confirming that he was, in fact, accepting of his fate.

"..where is the reactor?!" Darski looked on at the glow, the primordial terror in his eyes giving indication enough he now knew he was a dead man. It was something of resignation and utter fear, that of a man who knew full well what fate awaited him now.

“...Gone.” Wes said plainly.

"Goddamn son of a..." Swearing under his breath, Darski took off and hurried back inside once more, waiting for Wes to shut the blast door. He did so, pushing the door until it closed as hard as he could, then suddenly jolting away from his, hissing in pain. “The fuckin door—hot to the touch!”

BANG

The noise sent both of them stumbling back in shock as part of the door buckled inwards like a dent in a car. “I’m sure that’s not how pressure acts like that..”

BANG

Scratching...and plinking noises, like the sound of rain or hail against a roof, was heard on the door as it caved in once more. Before them, the door shook and caved outwards as if something were ramming it forcefully..from the inside.

"Now's a good time to run!" Darski yelled, dragging Wes back to his feet as the two nuclear engineers hurried back down the corridor.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

The National Laboratory was within view again, the corridor's shattered glass windows giving a clear view of the darkened complex. It had changed — something had blown a hole through the roof, an unnatural blue glow from within emanating through the breach. Military vehicles were scattered outside the facility, but that's how it'd been for the past few hours. Either two of the dead men walking could only be left to wonder just what had triggered the devastating power surge that'd caused the incident in the first place.

"Come on!" Darski slipped, collapsing momentarily before recovering.

“Do you hear that…?” Wes asked.

"..that's why I'm fucking running!"

“No.. listen!” Wes said. Over the klaxons blaring in the background, the staccato of gunfire could be heard...along with strange, inhuman screeches of something clearly not of this world. Unfathomable its calls were akin to aeons past, guttural and bone-chilling in its wails.

"...it must be the radiation. We're going mad!"

“Darski.. I think we might already be dead..” Wes panted. Eventually, they made their way back to the control room...at least, part of them did. They were bleeding all over from cuts that appeared from nowhere, their faces red and hot to the touch. When they actually entered the room itself, they were met with dozens of pairs of eyes, all looking upon them as if they were ghosts.

“Believe me yet?” Wes snapped.

The chief engineer had been on the phone with Trinity Governor Robert Desley Tepper Flowerboy M. Aerosmith, his gaze now set on the two bleeding dead-men-walking.

“It's worse than we thought, sir.” Darski said grimly. “Reactor one is gone.”

“And… and there are sounds, coming from the laboratory,” Wes added. “The reactor blast door caved in as if something were hitting it from the inside.”

"The moment that blast door caves in, billions of particles of radioactive dust will flood our section of the plant—"

"I want all non-essential personnel keeping that door shut until I say otherwise. The governor's organizing a response — there is to be no mass hysteria, news of the incident out of Dysnome will remain classified." Sheffield ordered.

"What response, sir?" Darski questioned.

"Officials from the Department of Energy, some National Guard—" Sheffield was cut off.

"Where do you think the dust from this reactor goes?!" Darski shouted. "Every MINUTE we speak, unfathomable amounts of irradiated particles fill the air... the Atom punishes our—"

"CUT IT with your religious nonsense! I want all capable personnel barricading the door to Reactor One. The firefighters, the military, they will put out the blaze..." He trailed off, seemingly trying to assure himself moreso than anyone else in the room. Already a few of the non-essential engineers had headed off to the task of keeping the blast door sealed, leaving only those tasked with overseeing the other five reactors of the facility.

As the fire blazed on, the klaxons continued to blare. Every single camera, at this point, was either a grainy mess or completely offline, the only evidence of the core’s absence being a strange glowing yellow light at the end of the remaining camera, that abruptly cut off after a few seconds, allowing Wes to see what he could only describe as a thing briefly take up the camera before the feed cut out. Whatever it was...whatever had happened to the reactor in the first place, was a freak accident, yes, but they would all surely pay for it. The things they were testing in the laboratory, however secret they were, were either offline or loose, and soon, Dysnome would pay the price for the reactor’s folly.

Maybe he was right—after looking into the reactor, or, at least, whatever remained of it.. maybe they were just dead men walking… This building was going to be their grave, and, before they knew it, the grim reaper of radiation would be seeping in to kill them off one by one. All they could do now was rely on a mixture of courage, prayer, and a little bit of luck to not only save themselves, but also as many people as they could.

Though… at this rate...was it even really worth saving a town already doomed to die?

CONTEXT NOTES

1 - musket - (euphemian informal) An especially old rifle, usually older than two-hundred years.

by **Turmenista** » Thu Aug 15, 2019 9:43 pm

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

S1E6
"Mission 2 - Answers"

Introductions

Sometimes the enemy knows a little more than they let on — to which asking a few questions becomes important. Wayne Iridescence Flamagra J. Tha Carter is an Organization terrorist and former Presidential Order soldier, and your target today. Coming home a disillusioned hero from Pristio, Carter, who trained amongside Special Forces and held a Civil Engineering degree, became a dangerous Kirocentrist terrorist capable of causing large-scale havoc both on civilian infrastructure and secure military sites. He has connections to Kirocentrist terrorist organizations in Avalon like the Tayari Action Front, and was responsible for directly arming the Weather Overground against Euphemian Federal troops and Turmenista National Guard in Arcadia. He gained widespread notoriety in the Bureau with the assassination of Governor Kenny Degrassi in late 423, which only exacerbated the race war in Turmenista before the Federal Intervention.

Wayne found refuge in the town of Attonfield after being on the run from authorities in Turmenista for over three years. As opposed to his partner, Andrew The-Ghost-In-You Axl D. Fernow, Carter prefers to handle his operations himself, though his elusive nature allows him to remain one step ahead of the authorities even after seemingly popping up out of nowhere.

With intel from the last mission and a bit of careful, precise tracking, we've narrowed the suspect's location to Pinegrove Street, northern Attonfield.

Pinegrove Street is a quaint suburb neighborhood in the northern end of Attonfield. Although unassuming at first, this little street has a lot of history behind it, being one of the first and only areas in the state of Trinity with a high-income, upper-middle class black population. It owes its origins before the Turmenistan Annexation of A.C. 141, when a small group of Turmenistans would move from their previously independent homeland to mainland Euphemie, settling in what is now Old Attonfield. The small Turmenistan community in Attonfield is mostly situated in this neighborhood.

_{DATE: 7:28 PM - October 31, A.C. 424 | POV: Special Agent Ian Pet-Sematary Leatherface "King" Voorhees C. Smith | LOCATION: Attonfield, Trinity | FSE}

“It seems the late Annie Vangelis wasn’t as discreet in making sure her breadcrumbs were cleaned up as she seemed,” Biron said over their usual at the Minuteman: a cup of black coffee and croissants. “Still, the town’s definitely been shaken by her death, but I’ve got a bit of a feeling that this isn’t the only strange thing that’s going to happen to Attonfield…for obvious reasons.”

There was an aura of unease over the town, as if the people subconsciously knew what was going on, but, at the same time, were left completely in the dark, in some places, literally so. Of course, something else had taken place — the fading beam of light in the distance serving as a reminder that something up northeast in Dysnome was clearly not right. Unlike the townspeople, both agents had been informed of what'd taken place — an explosion of sorts that had completely destroyed Reactor 1 of the Dysnome Site. Biron already suspected it to be the work of the Organization, to which the traced phone-call of the late Annie Vangelis acted as their lead on the two Organization ringleaders hidden in the city.

"Hiding in plain sight. Pinegrove Street..." Smith muttered, trailing off as he looked on at the beam. There was an almost cosmic feeling of terror that came from the anomalous light in the distance, and a few of the townsfolk were troubled as well — albeit oblivious to what'd happened. A media blackout was in place in the counties surrounding Dysnome until a proper military response, along with an evacuation, could be organized. "Man's probably celebrating his 'victory' with his peers..."

“Damn right he is,” Biron muttered. “Bloody bastard. I knew they had something to do with this. There’s no other explanation, mate: knowing the security at that site and the size of that explosion it’s gotta be Tha Carter’s work..”

Biron obviously seemed to have at least a personal stake in this, or just a vendetta against Carter. The notorious Kirocentrist terrorist was responsible for a number of attacks both on Euphemian infrastructure and federal troops that were deployed to Turmenista, and had made friends with the most unlikely of allies: the schizoid Organization terrorist Andrew Fernow, the man behind the Taris Bridge Bombing in 421. Carter had a bit of Organization clout to his name as well: along with being an arms smuggler that bridged the Avalonian Tayari Action Front to the Turmenistan Weather Overground insurrectionists, he was personally behind the assassination of Governor Kenny "Ken" Whitewoods Garden Piano-Man O'Donnell Degrassi, the National Republican governor of Turmenista..at least, he was governor, until he received a lobotomy via a .50 caliber sniper round to the temple and was compromised to a permanent end.

"Carter's the closest we can get to figuring out where Andrew Fernow is." Smith agreed, nodding as he took a sip of coffee. Outside the eerie beam of light still decorated the horizon, a reminder of what'd happened in Dysnome. Attonfield folk were still blissfully unaware, though.

“I’m no nuclear engineer, but you think the radiation will reach a town like Attonfield?” Biron asked. “I heard stories from the Arcadia “liquidators,” just being over there was practically a death sentence..now I have to imagine what it would be like to be over there. You’re pretty much sitting in your grave at that point. One large, metal and concrete grave.”

"If it was that bad, they'd evacuate this place." Smith shrugged. "We shouldn't talk about what happened, though... that's not publically known to anyone else in this town."

“Right.” Biron nodded, watching everyone else in the cafe suspiciously...even the waitress that often served them, Claire. “Anyways, Special Agent Bauhaus P. Floyd filled out that search warrant with the BLF, turned out that Annie was, in fact, using her business as a front company not just for arms smuggling, but bioweapons as well. Glad we caught her while we were here...but it seemed as if she wanted out. Tragic.”

"As expected." Smith nodded. "They just think they're patriots, doing the right thing against a government they see as having turned its back on the people."

“The line between a revolutionary insurrection and a crime syndicate blurs with each passing day.” Biron muttered. “So… Tha Carter. Wayne Iridescence Flamagra J. Tha Carter.” He said the name again, lingering over it. “I know a warrant isn’t necessarily required with these types, but I take it you’ve done the liberty of getting one for us?”

"The National Security Act of 392 means we don't exactly need a warrant for a domestic terror threat like this, but I've taken the liberty of acquiring one anyway." Smith explained. "Causes less outrage when it reaches the press, most times..."

“Right.” Biron said. “What we know is simple: Carter has been using the Turmenistan community in the Pinegrove Street neighborhood as a hiding spot, right under everyone’s nose. We’ve traced the origin of the call to be house number 2077. It’s only a matter of going to the house, scoping it out...and entering it. He should be home at this hour.”

"As long as he doesn't expect us, there probably won't be much of a fight — but do remember, he's ex-special forces." Smith noted, with Biron nodding in agreement. “You’re right, Smith. He could have anything under his sleeve..let alone on his door.”

They knew what they had to do—Pinegrove Street was an area with an already high number of Turmenistan nationals, many of whom had been in Attonfield well before the Annexation of Turmenista three centuries prior. A raid in an area like this, happening so suddenly and at such a pivotal moment would likely garner a few looks from the more conservative and less-friendly residents of Pinegrove Street. Still, what needed to be done had to be done—if the own authorities weren’t willing to go looking for Organization terrorists, the Feds had to pull in their weight.

“We’ll leave now,” said Biron, placing the money on the table as the two ISB agents left unceremoniously. In the background, the strange beam of light towards the north glowed ominously, casting an ethereal veil of light in the sky from the site that continued even as they left the Minuteman cafe.

Pinegrove Street, simply put, was the black Euphemian’s dream, a model town that showed how successful even a minority in Euphemie could become. It owed its origins to the neighborhood of the same name in old Attonfield, and was one of the oldest, if not the oldest, black communities in the state of Trinity. Unlike other communities in states like Tucker, Torch City, and even Turmenista, Pinegrove Street wasn’t occupied primarily by Imalakian-Euphemians or Kir-Euphemians, but by the ancestors of Turmenistan nationals and Turmenistan-Euphemians. It carried a similar aesthetic to the neighborhoods of Turmenista in cities like Louisa, Tosaki, and Arcadia. Palm trees grew in front of nearly every front yard, high-end cars like Pontillacs, Argents, and Pristian supercars lining each driveway of every house..all of whom were built with that same cozy, island aesthetic—large front lawns, flower gardens, and the like. Given they were operating past curfew, the only suspicious glances came from neighboring house windows.

House number 2077.

“He certainly chose a nice place to hide..” Biron commented as their car pulled up to the house in question, house number 2077, which had a large palm tree in the front yard.

"Must have money to match — or Fernow's got his finances covered. Either way," Smith carefully observed the front facade of the house, drawing his Executor .50 from the glove compartment. "..I don't think he'd take kindly to people breaking in — Fed or not."

“That’s why I came prepared. I’m gonna go for the back, to the trunk of my car. Once I get my things out, we’re going in, clearing the place. Whatever happens, we’ve got the warrant to back us up..”

After deducing that the coast was clear, for the most part, Biron tapped his chest twice, as if to emphasize the bulletproof vest he had underneath his suit. “Alright. Let’s do it.”

He unceremoniously left the car at the same time Special Agent Smith did, moving to the back of the Pontillac™ Firestorm sedan. The trunk opened, revealing the usual duty gear for ISB agents: tactical vests, racks for fire extinguishers, medical gear, and, of course, guns. The largest rack contained a SMG-M64B1 that Biron grabbed, quickly unfolding the stock and pulling the slide back and releasing it, a distinct click coming from the SMG. “Not taking any chances with this bastard. For all I know, he could have an LMG in there..”

"Right, of course." Smith nodded. "We going in the loud way, or the quiet way?"

“Quiet.” Biron said. “We’ll lockpick the door as usual, enter...maybe catch him in the act.” They bounded across the street and towards the front door of house number 2077. Biron once again reached into his black bag to reveal his lockpicking kit, gingerly picking the lock before them. After a while, a click came from the door. Trying it, the door suddenly opened slowly, allowing Biron to lead the way inside, SMG-M64B1 scanning the living room as the made his way in.

"Clear." Smith noted in a hushed tone, scanning their surroundings with Executor pistol drawn.

“Alright.. Let’s move upstairs,” Biron whispered, pointing his weapon up the stairs first. It quickly became evident as they headed upstairs that they weren’t alone in the house...and for good reason. Coming from one of the doors was a haze of blue light..and some ranting in the background, by someone they both knew very well…

“The lamp of freedom in Euphemie is dying, brothers and sisters, and soon, it will be completely extinguished!” The voice of Wayne Iridescence Flamagra J. Tha Carter could be heard in the main bedroom, presumably speaking from little more than a ham radio set to Organization sycophants and operatives throughout Trinity state. “This is why we must ACT NOW. The New Order started by NEWORDER: they buy our own politicians and cheat us while we gag and cough in Turmenista and Tucker and Axiom. They siphon our homeland of Imalakia, Turmenista, Kir… sucking it dry of its natural beauty and its people, planting artificial drugs and DISEASES through front companies like ANDERS and Clancy. Well, to all you NEW ORDER sycophants and to the TRUE TERRORISTS of the Federal States, the darkest pits of hell await you! ALL OF YOU MOFUCKAS!”

Biron remained quiet for a moment as he considered his rant, taking the time to stack up onto the door as Tha Carter continued. “New Ophirika was our hope, extinguished by George Fern and his imperialist and degenerate views of the future. When he was still alive, he once stated himself in a speech:”

Us living as we do upside down
And the new word to have is revolution
People don't even want to hear the preacher
Spill or spiel because Eden’s whole card has been thoroughly piqued
And Euphemie is now blood and tears instead of blood and tears
The youngsters who were programmed to continue
Fucking up woke up one night digging
Paul Jones and Nat Cole as the good guys
Euphemie stripped for bed and we had not all yet closed our eyes
The signs of truth were tattooed across her often entered vagina
We learned to our amazement untold tale of scandal
Two long centuries buried in the musty vault
Hosed down daily with a gagging perfume
Euphemie was a bastard, the illegitimate daughter of the mother country
Whose legs were then spread around the world
And a rapist known as freedom, free doom
Democracy, liberty, and justice were revolutionary code names that preceded
The bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling
In the mother country's crotch
What does Eden say about soul?
All I want is a good home and a wife
And children and some food to feed them every night
After all is said and done build a new route to Tangaliro if they'll have you
Who will survive in Euphemie?
Who will survive in Euphemie?

“I think it’s time we decided this.” He finished dramatically. Biron took this moment to count down with his fingers, counting down from five. Once he reached zero, he raised his leg and kicked open the door, bursting through without warning. “ISB! PUT YOUR BLOODY HANDS IN THE AIR!”

Without warning, Wayne reached for something on his desk and whipped around, causing Biron to let off a shot from his SMG, missing the Organization terrorist narrowly. Smith had reacted quickly to his partner's blunder, the thunderous BANG of the .50 Executor instantly ripping the Organization terrorist's left hand to pieces, viscera and blood scattering itself on the wall in the aftermath of the thunderous shot.

“AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!” Wayne practically flopped against his desk, knocking over computer and radio equipment and pill bottles alike. He clenched the fleshy mass that was once his left hand, wrapping it with his now-bloodied shirt, as if to stop the bleeding. “You motherfucker! You fuckin’ honkey motherfucker! FUCK YOU!!”

“We’ve found you.” Biron held the man down and began cuffing him. You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law..”

“As if my rights matter to you racist ass clowns,” Wayne spat, stomping his leg on the ground in pain. “Motherfucker—! Just give me the bullet, ‘cause I’m just like my ancestors. They knew the bullet and the ocean was better than bondage under you fuckers.”

"Your talk of equality matters little when you've set upon the tri-state area an indiscriminate killer. Why did you target the Dysnome Site?" Smith demanded answers from the Organization terrorist, gun pointed towards the man in case he made any sudden moves.

“The Dysn-nigga, what?!” A genuine sense of disbelief had filled the Kirocentric terrorist as they mentioned the reactor. “That...the fuck? That was all YOU, motherfuckas! You did that shit to yourself, not me!”

"Like hell I'd believe such a thing. Look out the goddamn window!" Smith gestured to the faint ethereal glow in the north, just out the window. It was getting weaker by now, but something had undeniably happened…

“The fuc-” Wayne paused, his eyes widening as he watched the glow outside, towards Dysnome. “You mother f-NO! Y’all fucked up bad, bad, bad, bad, not good! Do you Fed motherfuckers even know what was in there? All the conspiracies? The rumors? The truths?”

Smith scoffed. "We assume you and your terrorist friends were 'looking into it'... would be a great reason to attack the site. Steal some lab samples too, while you're at it, show the world what's going on behind closed doors?"

“You all are dumb, but I didn’t know y’all motherfuckers was extra dumb..” Wayne winced, panting. “Fucking hurts… oh, it hurts… damn it..” After regaining his composure, he looked back at the two agents. “Did you motherfuckers think we were gonna hit the lab? There’s a small fuckin’ army there.. No way we’d be able to do anything. That was all them, all their fault.. Believe me..”

Smith shot a suspicious glance to Biron in turn. Was Wayne really telling the truth when all fingers seemingly pointed to the most obvious answer? The Victorian ISB agent couldn’t tell…

“What do you mean you don’t know anything? I don’t believe you.” Biron held his knee down onto the man’s back as he continued writhing in pain. “I DON’T FUCKING KNOW, FED! I DON’T FUCKING KNOW! I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON THERE! I DON’T! Why the fuck can you stupid ass honkeys not LISTEN?! I. DON’T. KNOW!!”

“...You don’t know anything, huh?” Biron rolled his eyes. “What do you think about this, Smith?”

"Somehow I don't think a terrorist group operating right by Dysnome wouldn't have a clue about what's inside — or a plan regarding it."

“Are you fucking STUPID?! Agh—sunova— I just said I don’t know anything!” Wayne grunted. “I don’t know anything...You all put this reactor and lab shit on yourselves...now all the conspiracies’ll come out..the radiation..the things. You all are fucked.”

“Cry me a river.” Biron hissed, forcing the man up onto his feet and forcing him towards the door. "Wayne Iridescence Flamagra J. Tha Carter, you are under arrest for terroristic acts against the Federal States of Euphemie, the assassination of Governor Degrassi, and countless other heinous charges.”

“The nigga was a Hesslerist white supremacist piece of shit anyways! Motherfucker had it coming!” Wayne shouted as he was forced downstairs and towards the front door. If he kept yelling at this rate, the shitshow from the public would be insane…

As they left the house, it was as if the air went still: doors in the neighborhood opened up and families came out, several pairs of eyes locked on the group. Wayne was shouting up a hell of a storm, spouting back racist remarks and epithets towards the two agents as he writhed in their control. A few of the residents began shouting as well, not just at the Organization terrorist...but at the agents themselves, damning the Feds as they forced the man into their vehicle.

“Sounds like we’ve stirred up quite the wasp's nest..” Biron muttered, watching the veritable crowd form.

“Yes! YES! You see this?!” Wayne shouted. “These fuckin’ Feds are in your STREETS, in your NEIGHBORHOOD, taking your brothers and sisters, just like this! I’ll be a martyr—a fuckin’ MARTYR for all of you! The revolution will not be televised! It’s already HAPPENING! DAMA FONTO!^[1]”

The crowd reacted accordingly, insults thrown towards the two Federal agents.

"..this bullshit.." Smith muttered under his breath, dragging their VIP into the back as he called it in.

It'd been three hours since the initial explosion, and little seemed to be improving regarding the situation. The doors to Reactor 1 had been barricaded and welded shut, and calls to practically every government agency in the state capital of Paradox, Trinity had been made.

The control room was running semi-optimally — as optimally as it could be in this situation, anyway. Most camera feeds had been lost in the past few hours, effectively restricting the typical omniscience the room offered to only the surrounding halls. Staff operating the other five reactors had been ordered to stand down and remain where they were in order to avoid the very obvious radiation risks that resided in and around the area of Reactor 1.

“Fuckin A.. This shit looks mangled.. People too.” Sheck Off-Da-Zoinkys JID Scott turned to his friend, Clark Grover Side-Nigga G. Haas, as they marched down the hallway towards the control room, entering the room unceremoniously. The chief engineer, Mitch I-Want-It-That-Way Kodak B. Sheffield, was clearly disheveled, slamming the phone down as he turned around to face the security officers. "We haven't had a response from Reactor 2 in the past thirty minutes, but everything here shows the reactor is fine. Take a look and see what's up — might've fried our communication equipment."

Senior Engineer Wes EARFQUAKE Hold-My-Liquor D. Hirasawa turned to the two men. “I’ll..take you there...I’m already a dead man myself.” The engineer coughed, wiping his hand on his coveralls—blood streaked down where he rubbed his hand. “Let’s go.”

The walk to Reactor 2 was quiet and uneventful, Sheck watching the senior engineer stumble a few times as they made their way over. “What do you think we’ll find over there, Clark?” Sheck asked.

"Hell if I know. All I know is something happened with the National Laboratory just across the Site, but that's above our paygrade. Only Pres-Order types were guarding those parts. Not the foreigner kinds, the sus kinds." Clark replied, beginning down the corridor. Both men were equipped with SMG-M64B1 submachine guns, though it was almost redundant working at a facility like this. Only issue came when the occasional kid from town would try to intrude on the Site, but that didn't seem to be much a problem anymore.

“Alright, nerd, how do we get in?” Sheck asked aloud as they approached the large doors to Reactor 2, resting his SMG against his shoulder. “What’s the deal with this one?”

“Give me a second..” Wes muttered, limping over to the door, grunting loudly. He began pulling the door open at painstakingly slow speeds, grunting as the metal groaned and scraped across the floor.

On the other side, it'd seemed as if everyone working at the reactor had simply up and left. The white noise of the S44FA reactor, a constant hum in the dimmed lighting of the space, was almost foreboding, the bluish glow of Kalagina Radiation from the core illuminating the dimly-lit space in a faint blue.

"..where the hell are the workers?" Clark complained, hand instictively moving over to the submachine gun slung over his shoulder — it was as if a primordial fight or flight response had gripped him, a stillness evident in the air. Despite the constant hum of the reactor, it was as if a deafening silence presided over them.

Yet there was one thing that'd been left behind — a hard hat, sitting on the floor. Sheck knelt down onto the ground and reached for the hard hat, finding it to be stuck to some sort of sticky adhesive-like substance, almost like melted candy.

"..must've hauled ass out of the reactor room," Clark commented, oblivious to what had caught Sheck's attention.

“Hey, can anyone tell me what the fuck this is?” Sheck announced, inspecting the hard hat. “Like… what the fuck—someome threw up or some shit?”

"Huh?" The security guard knelt down, squinting at the viscous substance. "I ain't fuckin' touching that. Let's keep moving. They might just be at the control room for Unit 2."

“Yeah..” Sheck muttered, stepping away from the hardhat.

The walk out of the reactor room would lead them to the next part of the facility, though as the blast doors were opened it became morbidly apparent just what'd taken place — a trail of blood led down the corridor, directly into the control room for the second reactor.

Immediately, Sheck unslung his SMG from his shoulder and flicked off the safety. “Oh, shit… Guys.. Blood..”

Clark took the lead, carefully opening the door to the control room. Nothing could describe how wrong it'd all felt — but that couldn't prepare him for what lay within. It could be described as nothing short of a massacre, the sight of... something feasting upon what remained of one of the workers, the occasional low gurgle escaping the ill-fated man that lay pinned there on the floor. No, it wasn't eating — it was something neither of the three men could aptly describe. The figure of what loomed above the dead man carried similarly disturbing aspects — there was something innately human about the thing, yet it wasn't. Certain limbs or appendages resembling limbs carried about them the paleness of skin, albeit mangled and torn, muscle visible. It was as if they were vestigial, though, protrusions and tendrils of flesh here and there trailing outward, the tendrils themselves seeming to peruse the last victim's lifeless form. The head, now vestigial, had been turned backward at a horridly inhuman angle, the same viscous fluid of the helmet dripping from the now-useless mouth of what'd certainly, at one point, once been a man.

The back, however, seemed the most grotesque, perhaps the least human aspect of the thing — as if something otherworldly had attached itself to the man's spine, tendrils buried into flesh as indescribable fluids were pumped into the figure of what'd once been a man.

“What in the fuck…?” Sheck’s eyes widened, glazed in a mixture of fear, shock, and surprise. He simply couldn’t bring himself to shoot the thing, let alone raise his weapon up.

A low guttural moan, something half-human and half-animalistic, escaped the thing as it turned around, tendrils withdrawing from its last victim to reveal the 'face' of the beast. It'd been one of the engineers at some point, white uniform now drenched in blood, ID card still dangling from the man's chest. The chest — it'd been split open, rib bones repurposed akin to teeth, organs missing as their biomass had seemingly been converted to comprise the tendrils that autonomously moved about before the monstrous thing. The true face of the creature — whatever inhuman thing had taken over the form of the poor man — had deeply sunken eyes, a proboscis protruding forward presumably as its mouth. The eyes, not akin to anything of a man's, lightly glimmered, akin to a deer's in headlights.

"Oh FUCK—" Clark immediately opened fire with his SMG-M64B1, desperately emptying his magazine into the creature. Yet it seemed that he could not fire well in his panic — or the thing seemed to weather through bullets as if they were insignificant.

With a shrill, deafening roar, it lunged forth, knocking aside computers as it struck down one of the awestricken guards — Clark. From a sharp blade protruding from where the radial bone of the thing's arm had once been, it'd separated Clark's right arm from his body, a scream escaping the guard before the tendrils lunged forward, piercing through his protective helmet. They seemed to pump more of the viscous fluid before they retracted, the brutalized guard being knocked aside by the beast as it set its focus on the other two men.

“Holy FUCK!” Sheck promptly began unloading on the monster without warning, small globules and bits from the abomination spraying against the wall as Wes immediately made a run for the door, leaving the security guard behind as he made his way around the large blast door. Shouting and crying came from the guard as Wes began pushing the door in, metal scraping against the ground as the massive door shut.

“WES!! YOU MOTHER FUCKER!!”

The creature seemed to briefly stagger back from the stream of bullets it'd endured, though it seemed things were about to get worse. The body of the engineer that'd been mauled by the derelict computers broke into a spasm — and quickly so too did Clark's. The spasms would bring the once-human things to their feet once more, frothing that viscous fluid, their eyes now carrying the same unsettling glow of the larger beast's. Protrusions of flesh erupted as bones were repurposed in seconds.

Three against one. It mattered little who'd lunged first — only that the terrified scream had been morbidly brief, the pack of horrors not relenting until but a disfigured mass remained. Paired with the infected blood spilled about the floor, this incoherent mess of dismembered limbs, organs and flesh would, in time, slowly begin to reconstitute itself as biomass upon the floors and walls...

“Oh God.. oh God..” Wes panted, practically limping down the same hallway he and Darski took yesterday. Everyone was so oblivious, almost blissfully so. He was lucky he bolted and locked the door shut when he could...whatever he saw that was in there, if it had its way with the others, would surely compromise the rest of the facility.

He limped towards the control room, practically stumbling inside before the rest of the engineers, where he proceeded towards a table, planted his hands on it, and vomited. This'd been enough to quickly cause an uproar in the room, most of the engineers staggering back at the scene.

"—my God!" Sheffield was, of course, taken aback by the sight, turning around in confusion. "Get him to the infirmary!" He ordered.

“I.. I saw something in there..” He said through laborious breaths. “Don’t go into Reactor 2..whatever you do. Burn this place to the ground...and whatever else came from the labs.” It didn't take long for a few of the other engineers to restrain the man, the chief engineer's attention turning to the displays. Reactor 2 seemed alright, steady electrical flow coming from the reactor in question.

"Where are the security guards that went with you?" Sheffield questioned.

“I’ll tell you where they are…” Wes suddenly snapped, marching towards the chief engineer and planting his finger on his chest. “They’re DEAD. Dead, dead, DEAD.” As if to emphasize his point, he repeatedly jabbed the man on his chest with his finger.

This had given the chief engineer a cold pause. "..dead? What's wrong with the reactor? It's reporting no anomalies, no leakage. There's no way it'd be able to kill anybody in such a timeframe, much less—"

“There’s something IN there.” He snapped. “I don’t know what it is, or if it’s from the labs, or the reactor, or the goddamn sky… something killed them..and I locked it in there. Oh God.. the squirming..” He suddenly stumbled backwards onto the ground, rocking his head back and forwards. “It was under their skin… oh my God..”

"I want all sections of the facility locked down until we know what the hell is going on," Sheffield ordered. "You — to the infirmary." He pointed a finger at Wes, before continuing. "Once the national guard arrives, we can relieve the Dysnome Fire Department of their duties in combatting the fires at Reactor 1."

Wes only grunted as he was promptly herded out of the control room, only looking back at the long, ominous corridor towards the reactors as he went the other way, towards the infirmary. Whatever he had found in there..whatever had consumed or killed the security guards and the men working in Reactor 2, was still out there...not to mention the thing that unsuccessfully tried to break through Reactor 1’s door. Whatever the case, the engineers working at the site were blissfully unaware of what was going on, and something in the back of Wes’s mind told him that they were hopeless to stop it.

CONTEXT NOTES

1 - "Dama Fonto" - An Imalako-Turmenistan expression, Dama Fonto (ˈdɑmə fwuntoˈ) literally means "Don't fuck with me." Commonly used to defend one's opinions or insult opponents.

by **Valefontaine** » Fri Aug 16, 2019 11:34 pm

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

S1E7
"Ghostbusters"

Introductions

After reviewing the footage taken from their urban exploration mission to the Lowther Estate on Horror Day, Johnny has concluded that, in fact, there was most definitely something in the attic with him. He has decided the thing needs to die before it potentially gets free and causes harm to the town, and what better way for the Scary Movie Club to do so than by beating it to death with baseball bats?

_{DATE: 11:35 AM - November 1, A.C. 424 | POV: Liang World-is-Yours Phantasm K. Shiya | LOCATION: Attonfield, Trinity | FSE}

The day since it'd happened had been a quiet one thus far, the citizenry of Attonfield left oblivious to what'd happened in Dysnome. The Scary Movies Club, however, knew what happened. Shiya herself had witnessed it with her own two eyes — one of the reactors, going up in a flaming blaze. It was certain now that whatever had happened in Dysnome had been covered up, everyone beyond the closed city left in the dark about what'd occurred. Already a few theories regarding the 'beam of light' that'd been witnessed in the northern horizon had emerged: from weather phenomena to military experiments, plenty of people were coming up with theories of their own by now.

Average sights of Attonfield suburbia.

Johnny's house was within walking distance of Shiya's own, and that was where she was headed — he'd called up the entire gang in the aftermath of their 'urbex' into the old Lowther House, and she could only presume it was something big — perhaps something to do with whatever Johnny claimed to have witnessed in the attic. This stroll through suburbia was made slightly awkward by the constant sight of military helicopters passing by, undoubtedly bound north to Dysnome. No explanation had been offered for these, either, but it took no genius to guess what was up, after what she'd seen.

As she stepped up to the door, she could hear barking on the inside from a large dog, along with the blasting of guitars from a speaker inside, along with the instantly-recognizable vocals of ASTROCIRCUS, the 390s Rock Star from Trinity himself. Apocalyptic and epic chords were mixed in with vocals from the famous psychedelic and progressive rock superstar, perhaps adding an eerie feel to an already eerie morning.

The lock on the door turned, and Shiya was met with not just Johnny, but his dog, a Teutonic Shepherd, who was posted up by the door, ceasing his barking. “Oh, man, Shiya—Harley, no!” He sounded surprised, leaning against the door while also trying to hold his dog back, a cheesy grin on his face. “Don’t tell me those other knuckleheads haven’t got here yet… they gotta be hiding somewhere. Jeremiah’s never late.”

"Came here on my own." She replied. "Dunno where the others are at... should be here soon I guess? Anyways— you mind, uh, telling me what that phone call was all about?

“Oh, that. Yeah. Come on in.” Johnny motioned with his hand, opening the door slightly. The dog followed them in as they made their way past the living room, Johnny’s cowboy hat-wearing father sprawled out on the couch, muttering about something to the two as they passed. Upstairs was the source of the loud music—Johnny’s room, to be exact. Shiya could see Johnny’s camera recorder was connected up to his own custom-built cyberdeck on the table, rendering some videos in the background. The music player’s LCD display indicated the song in question to be ASTROCIRCUS - IAMBIC STATUS, off the album THA CIRCUS.

“Sorry the music’s loud...kinda can’t work without it in the background! Anyways… let me see here..” He turned around to the Cyberdeck, typing up a storm for a couple seconds as he pulled a cord from his television, before plugging it into the cyberdeck’s side. “Should be rendered already. Anyways.. behold.”

It was the footage Johnny took up in the attic, though it was much more grainy than usual. As he clicked the Jerry-rigged “play” button on his cyberdeck, the footage began as normal, Johnny making his way up the ladder and into the attic as he did before.

“Now, watch this, Shiya..” he slowed the recording down, and as the camera made its way up and into the attic, something entered the frame, it’s form mostly covered with noise and static...but the shiny, singular eye was visible, blinking for a moment at Johnny before he’d eventually descend the ladder post haste.

“Now.. you.. you saw that shit, right?” He asked, scoffing. “I can’t be the only one who saw that up there, no way. That thing wasn’t human...let alone any animal I’ve ever seen.”

"..what the fuck is that?" Shiya raised an eyebrow, before leaning in to squint at the feed.

“That’s why I called you—” He paused, hearing the doorbell ring, Harley immediately bolting out of the room and barking in response. “...and them. I’ll be back in a second.”

He ran after his dog and answered the door, some brief conversations heard downstairs as Johnny rushed back into his room, Jonah, Jeremiah, and the dog in tow. “Okay.. I need y’all to take a look at this. Don’t panic when I show you it.”

“Is it a rat?” Jonah asked, eyes wide, to which Johnny shook his head. “Worse.” He rewound the tape, playing it from the beginning—at least, the beginning of the encounter. Both Jonah and Jeremiah’s eyes widened with surprise, curiosity, and horror, the camera giving them all a good view of the creature and its one, large eye, staring right back into the camera.

“Oh my God!” Jonah’s jaw dropped as he gasped. “What in the world is that?”

“That..” Johnny paused, as if for dramatic effect, stepping beside the TV. “Is why I called you guys here. Now.. I’ve been doing some deep digging online on Aurelianet and going on VPNs to the Medeuropan sites...some deep shit, yeah. All the paranormal threads say the same thing: things beyond our comprehension are going on in places throughout Tsion...you could say, people are trying to cover them up. Dysnome, the Neworder National Laboratory, Verson, Valley of the Dead, city of Har...it’s all a correlation: big government black-sites covering up strange creatures.”

"..that..." Shiya trailed off. She seemed to study the paused frame for a moment, a mixture of confusion and surprise about her features. "..what—...what do you plan on doing about it?"

“Well.. it’s simple..” Johnny turned to his bed, pulling out something long from underneath the bed. He picked it up, pulling the slide back and releasing it, giving off a resounding click-clack. “I’m gonna kill that thing before it gets to town.”

"You're bringing..." Shiya took a moment, studying his weapon of choice. "Johnny, are you seriously bringing that?"

“Of course.” Johnny said without hesitation. “It’s just a BASILISK R-15.. Y’know.. something legal. I’ve seen horror movies...you know monsters don’t go down easily from just a baseball bat or something like that..” He laughed awkwardly, the NORPRO cadet eyeing the group uneasily for a second. “Y’all...can’t seriously be considering something like that will go down from a few hits with a baseball bat..right?”

"I don't exactly have the money for a gun— what do you mean we're going to kill it?! We don't even know what it can do!" Shiya asked, confused.

“That’s what they said in CARNIVORE, but remember? They ended up shooting that thing to death.” Johnny placed a finger on the side of his temple. “Now..yeah.. You guys don’t exactly have the money to afford one of these—I just coincidentally had one… y’know, NORPRO and all.. But that’s okay. That’s fine. Maybe…” His voice trailed off. “Maybe we might be able to do something to it with, y’know..baseball bats. ..Maybe not.”

"Yeah, I could use a baseball bat—..." Shiya trailed off, shaking her head. "How again do we expect it'll even work, though?"

“I mean.. There was an eye on it,” Jeremiah noted, placing a hand on his chin. “Maybe it sees through that. Taking out the eye means it won’t be able to see anything..then we just club it to death?”

"Let's say it is there... let's say we're not in over our heads... maybe, yeah, sure. I'm no baseball person, though — if you wanna pull this off, we're going to the mall and grabbing ourselves some bats." Shiya proposed, studying the footage once again.

“Definitely. At least..” Johnny paused, pointing to the group and grinning. “You guys are. Go ahead and get the bats, hell, I’ll put some money forward so you can get me one..but this?” He pointed to his rifle. “This is the contingency plan.”

“I guess we’re going to the mall then..” Jonah grumbled. “At least I’m not high on this one, right? Yeah..”

A busy day at the Attonfield mall.

It was another busy day at the Attonfield mall, per usual, the gang walking past crowded shops and glowing electronic advertisements, distant mallsoft and consumerist jingles acting as background noise as they wandered about in search of the sporting goods store — where they were greeted by quite a few items on sale, including — thankfully — baseball bats. $39.99 was always better than $59.99, after all.

"So, let's say I wanna beat the shit out of something... which metal bat do I pick? They all look the same to me — which one won't dent from something like this?" Shiya's eyes were already set on the inside of the store, the aisles of sporting goods lined within.

“If you ask me…” Johnny strolled over to one of the baseball bats in question, a metal bat with a leather grip that he took up, wielding it like a sword for a moment. “This one seems about right for you. It’s one of those Denton Sluggers, y’know, the ones the gangs in Denton on Kole Island used. A classic, affordable, and reliable.”

Shiya took a moment to grip the bat, giving it a light 'test swing' before nodding. "Yeah... this'll do."

“Y’all picked out yours yet?” Johnny asked the others, Jonah motioning for a wooden bat. “You all are thinking too in the box. Put some nails in this bad boy and you’ve got yourself a pure weapon of mass destruction..”

“Or.. just go with a regular bat..” Jeremiah muttered, shrugging his shoulders as he picked out a relatively average-looking baseball bat.

“Anything else y’all think we might need?” Johnny asked, perusing the contents of the store.

"Kneepads? ..helmets, maybe? I'm not, like, gonna take any chances." Shiya proposed. "Don't know what the weird fuckin'... thing is capable of."

“Sure..” Johnny said. “Kneepads, helmets...anything else on this shopping list of ours? Flashlight batteries?”

Jonah and Jeremiah both shrugged. “I think we’re all set, then.”

FEDERAL ATOMICS uOS 19 v1.37
IN-CAR RADIO v2.8.8
CHANNEL 103.3 TUNES OF TRINITY

Now Playing...

©422-423 Federal Atomics Computing Division.
^{All Rights Reserved.}

This time, Johnny had at least tried to make the drive to the Lowther estate...lighthearted. Music playing in the background, Attonfield proper was far behind them, the Sepia Forest ahead of them...along with the gloomy skies of Dysnome and the still-glowing fire of the reactor far off in the distance as little more than a flickering speck of yellow light. Ominous, yes...but what of the people of Dysnome, or the lab workers? Were they all dead..or, worse..did something happen to them, turning them into one of those things?

"So, where do you think this thing came from?" Shiya questioned, smoking a cigarette by the open passenger window. "Dysnome lab? The house itself? Somewhere... else?"

“If you ask me, definitely the labs.” Johnny said without hesitation. “You know the kind of stuff they were trying to cover up in Verson and the Neworder National Laboratory? Remember, I did digging online...people said aliens. Other people said… well.. monsters.”

"You think they make these creatures themselves, or... well, bring them in? From where, I dunno..." She posed a curious question regarding whatever thing Johnny had witnessed in the mansion, watching the road ahead as a light puff escaped her lips.

“Uhhh… scientifically speaking… these things shouldn’t exist.” Jeremiah said out of the blue.

“Well, give us the quick rundown why, nerd.” Johnny retorted.

“Like..physically and biologically..that thing doesn’t look like anything natural, it’s mostly theoretical...but you saw how it moved in the recording. That’s nothing we’ve ever seen, not even like the creatures in the ocean like cuttlefish. It’s totally alien. If you wanna ask me...I think they brought it in from some other place. I don’t know how, but, in a time when we have stealth fighters, increasingly sentient AI, and six-reactor labs, “I don’t know” is going to be a good answer.”

Shiya discarded the cigarette, speaking up. "Weeeeell... it's on the recording... there's no real explanation for it. Unless you think Johnny here is screwing with us... knowing Johnny and knowing the weird shit that goes on at the site, I don't feel like he 'edited' anything.

"Damn right I didn’t edit shit.” Johnny snickered. “Besides, have you even seen that sort of technology in the the movies? Only a simp would actually fall for that sort of shit..”

Soon, they passed through the familiar woods of the Sepia Forest, the radio signal growing weaker as they went further and further into the woods. Dark trees began to replace the occasional cottage and country house as the signal abruptly cut out to static, leaving their trip towards the Lowther estate quiet...almost eerily quiet.

“Ah shit. Here we go..” Johnny muttered, instinctively slowing down as they entered the woods, the paved roads beginning to merge with bumpy, overgrown old roads.

"A bit too much like a horror movie, don't you think?" Shiya complained, noting the rather eerie nature of their surroundings. It seemed oddly more foreboding than it'd been before the explosion in Dysnome, ominously so. Perhaps Shiya's imagination was getting the better of her, or perhaps... the fabric of reality was thinner in this place. Even while driving there was an odd stillness in the air all around them, not unlike certain rooms of the Lowther House they'd been in before. Branches in their natural twistings among the trees seemed vaguely malevolent, despite the fact seemingly nothing had changed. It was as if the natural context of everything around them had been redefined since the incident, given a new, far more ominous meanings.

“Looks almost like the trees are breathing..” Jonah commented, nervously holding onto his baseball bat with a vice grip.

“You high right now?” Johnny said, as if to bring a modicum of optimism to the group, but Jonah shook his head. Maybe he was right...maybe the trees were breathing, and things were a little weird.

“Once we get into this spooky little house, we’re going straight to the attic.” Johnny said, their car unceremoniously rolling past the front gate and approaching the entrance of the estate, left in the same condition as the day before.

"Makes death-marches danceable." — Controversial 421 Soundster marketing campaign

"Actually, I've got something," Shiya reached into her backpack, producing a Clancy Entertainment Systems Soundster CE-7. "If we wanna do this the epic way, how about some music?"

“That’ll just alert the mons-”

“Yeah. Let’s do it!” Johnny said, smiling at the idea, much to Jeremiah’s chagrin. His Pontillac truck reached the front of the old, abandoned manor easy enough, the four stepping out to the music playing from Shiya’s CE-7. Johnny moved to the back of the truck and pulled the rifle case back to him, opening it and methodically taking the BASILISK R-15 out.

Bat in hand, Shiya would be first to the door, kicking it open and walking in, a thin veneer of dust loosely descending in the aftermath of the kick. "It's just as we left it yesterday," She noted, approaching the fallen pictureframe. "Let's head to the attic."

Flashlights all turned on at once as the Scary Movies Club entered the creepy manor, illuminating their way through the house. As opposed to wielding a baseball bat in one hand, flashlight in the other, Johnny had jury-rigged his flashlight onto his gun with tape, likening it to a proper military flashlight that would be mounted onto a weapon. He moved slowly but confidently, as if he had a purpose, but anyone looking closely enough at his eyes—and at how tightly he held his gun—knew he also had a bit of fear in him. Fear of the unknown, mostly, but also fear of what would happen if they weren’t successful in putting that thing down..

Getting the attic trapdoor open, Shiya led the way up the ladder, entering the attic. Her hype was quickly reduced to disappointment as it became apparent there was... nothing in the attic. "..guys, I don't see shit up here. C'mon up."

“Are you sure?” Jonah stuttered, checking his surroundings as Jeremiah and Johnny followed quickly in suit. “Are you sure that thing isn’t down here with us already..? Did it leave?”

As Johnny made his way into the attic, he scanned the area with his weapon, ensuring everyone was out of harm’s way. Although there were about four of them, Johnny couldn’t help but feel as if four people wasn’t enough. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this..”

"Yeah, I'm real scared of attic dust too..." Shiya cynically quipped, perusing the cardboard boxes in the attic.

Without warning, something suddenly materialized amidst the boxes, an inhuman screech escaping the unfathomable thing as its tendrils shot forward past Shiya, abruptly grasping Jeremiah by his limbs and lifting him into the air, two more tendrils seemingly posturing themselves in preparation to end his life.

“HOLY FUCK! HOLY FUCK!” Jonah screeched, almost dropping his bat as he backed up in shock.

"—what the FUCK—" The sight of the thing, living and seemingly breathing before her, had left Shiya in shock, stepping back with her bat protectively raised. "W—what the FUCK is that thing?!"

CLICK-CLACK

“It’s about to be dead!” Johnny dramatically shouted, raising the gun at the sight of the thing and firing once, right at the center of mass. Thick, gory globules were ejected out from the creature, splattering strange ectoplasm against the wall as he prepared for another shot, steadying his aim. Jeremiah was dropped, the nerd practically rolling back to the group as he reached for his baseball bat, regaining his footing.

The shot had sent the creature recoiling back, tendrils returning to its floating form. It was still bleeding, viscous crimson ectoplasm scattering about the hardwood flooring of the attic as the monster propelled itself into the air, swiftly maneuvering into the darker corners of the ceiling.

"Ctygd'kelbh...mgah'n'ghft bthnkornah..." Incomprehensible guttural vocalizations escaped the horrid thing, and before Shiya could react it'd sent its tendrils shooting forward, swiftly disarming her and lifting her into the air, the bloodied creature emerging from the darkness once again to gaze not at her, but through her. Immediately Shiya resorted to desperately kicking and screaming as it effortlessly held her in place, its large eye — or rather, compound eye comprised of thousands of smaller eyes, seemed to study her. She could sense the malicious intent from the creature's unseemly stare, the effect furthered by the slow, careful approach of two tendrils that carried seemingly different characteristics — coated in a greyish viscous substance that could only give implication of something poisonous. "C—can I get a FUCKING hand up here?!" Shiya called to the others, still trying to kick free of the monster's grasp.

Loud screaming came from elsewhere in the attic, not necessarily from the monster currently holding onto Shiya..but from Jeremiah, who suddenly ran forwards, baseball bat high above his head as if he were holding a Utsanji Samurai sword. He swung downwards onto the monster’s center of mass once, then twice, then a third time, his bat becoming coated with the same ectoplasm that stained the walls after Johnny’s first shot.

Quickly it released her as it retreated to the dark corners of the attic, a pained yelp escaping Shiya as she roughly landed on the attic floor, reaching for her metal bat as she recovered from the quick scare. "Oh— oh my fuckin' GOD! —I thought I was gonna die..."

“That thing tried that on me, too..” Jeremiah panted, resting himself on a nearby bookshelf as he scanned the attic. “Wasn’t just gonna let it grab you like that..”

“Speaking of which..” Johnny pointed the rifle around the attic, trying to find their little creature. “Where the fuck is that thing…?”

Yet her relief would be short-lived, the cardboard box beside her abruptly... coming to life. Anyone who'd spent more than a cursory glance at tabletop games would've known a name for a creature of this sort. The cardboard gave way to reveal a horridly organic maw filled with tendrils and a large tongue, more of the viscous grey fluid of the floating creature dripping from the tendrils of the... box mimic.

Shiya could only loudly swear as she quickly backed away, bat raised. "You've got to be FUCKING KIDDING ME—" Immediately its tendrils lurched forward, catching Johnny and violently thrashing him about in the air — presumably knocked-out prey was easier to digest, given the gaping maw of the cardboard box-creature.

“Hoooly FUCK!” Johnny wailed, flailing his arms

Immediately Shiya charged the thing, yelling as she readied her bat — only for one of the tendrils to swing forth and unceremoniously knock her off her feet, a pained grumble escaping her as she recuperated her posture. It'd distracted the creature sufficiently, however, as it threw Johnny aside like a ragdoll, presumably seeking another target.

Shiya wasn't sure whether to see if Johnny was alright or fight the monster in that moment, though she quickly decided upon the former. Running over, she offered a hand, attention set on the monstrous horror in case it'd tried another attack. "C—c'mon, get up!"

“Thanks.. I-”

BONK

Jonah yelled in fury and cut off Johnny, wildly swinging his baseball bat about in the direction of the living cardboard box. Loose pieces of gore and viscera flew about as he visibly dented the creature occupying the box, a shrill cry escaping it as it reacted in the only way it knew how — sending a cluster of tendrils their way — and it'd quickly dawn on Shiya that it was headed towards her in particular.

"Not this again... oh FUCK!" Yelling, she swung and hoped she'd manage — a fleshy splat sounding out as she struck the mass of tendrils and cut them loose from the creature, repeatedly bashing the tentacles against the wooden floor until it was little more than a disgusting mass of viscera and fleshy pulp.

Her rage soon turned to the creature itself, now reduced to only a rather large, tongue-like appendage that seemed far less effective than the tendrils she'd destroyed. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!" Raising the bat, she swung down at the box-shaped creature, its growls reduced to pained shrieks as she refused to relent, the monster slowly reduced to a gory, beat-in pulp.

“Hot damn..” Johnny murmured, awe-struck at not only the death of the creature, but also Shiya’s fury. The group as a collective had become an ectoplasm-covered, sweaty, and shaky mess, all of whom looked down at the remains of the box-creature in a mixture of horror, anger..and satisfaction. “That’s one down..” Johnny said.

Sighing, Shiya stopped herself from throwing the bat down in victory, reminding herself that there was yet one more terrible creature lurking somewhere in the attic. "..where's the other one?" She asked between tired breaths, studying the shadows. "Flashlights. C'mon."

Johnny raised his weapon, flicking on the flashlight as the others did the same, filling the room with white light. Every single nook and cranny was covered...and still, the creature didn’t make itself shown. Perhaps it knew it was screwed...or just waiting for the perfect time for an ambush.

"..it run out somehow?" Shiya muttered, looking about.

A high-pitched shriek came from the darkness as it lunged again, tendrils latching on and gripping Jonah as it lifted him into the air, preparing to finish the job.

“JONAH!” Johnny shouted past the Stoner’s own screaming, aiming towards the eyeball-thing’s center of mass and firing once more. The round ripped through the monster’s eye like a hot knife through butter, the tentacles going limp and dropping Jonah to the floor as it recoiled backwards towards wherever it could move to in the room...that is, another corner. “Jonah, come over here! If I see that thing again, I’m mag-dumping it!”

Still in the open, Jonah looked up at Johnny, eyes wide as he practically forgot his bat, bolting towards his friends with the speed of a professional athlete. The creature lunged again, seemingly set on taking the stoner, to which Shiya was quick to intervene with a swift swing of her bat, yelling at the top of her lungs as she attacked the thing, sending gore and bits of otherworldly viscera flying as it hit the ground.

"SUCK ON THAT!" Shiya screamed — but she'd taken pride in the moment too early. With a guttural cry it brought itself back to floating above the ground, still set on fighting the group. Johnny brought his rifle up to his shoulder, shouting at the creature for it’s attention, before promptly empying the BASILISK R-15’s magazine towards the creature. It wove out of the way with ease, a stray tendril wrapping once more around Jonah’s ankle. Soon, the stoner found the world going upside down as he was lifted up off the ground, arms flailing for anything he could grab onto. “WHY ME AGAIN?!”

"..oh FUCK this!" Shiya threw the ectoplasm-drenched bat aside, removing the glove on her left hand as she sent a left hook swinging at the creature. The effects were immediate, the creature letting go of Jonah as it was reduced to a spasmatic mess, sparks flying as electricity coursed through its body, knocking it down. With the horror now seemingly at the end of its lifespan, its consciousness weak, Shiya reached for the bat again, swinging down repeatedly — not ceasing until what remained of the creature's form was little more than a disgusting mess of fleshy pulp, otherworldly brain matter and strangely-colored gore. With a final swing she dropped the bat with a loud clang, staggering back in exhaustion.

The group all loomed over what remained of the eyeball-monster thing, covered in a mixture of sweat, grime, dust, and eldritch ectoplasm.

"Hah... holy shit!" Shiya's initial bafflement was reduced to laughter as it slowly dawned on her that everything that'd just happened had, indeed, been very much real. Johnny stepped over the thing, poking at it with the smoking barrel of his rifle, then stepping backwards, grimacing. “We.. wh- we fucking did it! I told you guys we could fuckin’ kill it—CARNIVORE, remember? Oh my God, guys.. You guys are awesome..”

“It got blown the fuck out. HA! It got blown the fuck out.. But we lived..” Jonah practically hugged Jeremiah, Shiya, and Johnny all at the same time, much to the chagrin of the NORPRO cadet and the Nerd, who had remained awfully quiet during the whole endeavor.

"...y—yeah, and I think we all need a fucking shower." Shiya complained, the state of their clothes slowly dawning on her as she backed away, mildly disgusted. Johnny only turned to Jeremiah, who looked down at the strange monster with a strange sense of wonder.

“So, Jeremiah? What do you think?” Johnny asked, garnering a look from the nerd. “About what?”

“..About...the Scary Movies Club’s new title: Monster Killers. It ring nice with us?”

Jeremiah paused for a moment, a smile appearing on the nerd’s face as he rested his bat against his shoulder, a strange sense of heroism and accomplishment filling him...and everyone else for that matter. “We killed the unnatural, fought the unimaginable...and came out intact, at that..” He paused, as if for dramatic effect. “I think that rings real fuckin’ nice with us, dude.”

"I don't think we'll get new members if we call ourselves the Monster Killers Club... but I'm fine with that being an unofficial name." Shiya nodded in assent, her focus now being getting loose bits of ectoplasm off herself.

“Nah.. I’d consider it kinda like a boon, y’know? Like some added bit of flair to our name,” Johnny explained. “Like, ‘Join the Scary Movie Club: Kill Monsters on weekends, smoke weed and watch movies on the weekdays..’ I think it sounds pretty badass. Sucks that most of the other people I know aren’t into that sort of stuff..well..’cept for maybe Harley.”

"..sure, why not?" Shiya shrugged, chuckling. "I think... I think we can start getting used to this." Kneeling down to put her glove back on, she still couldn't help but raise her concerns, however. "..we fucking stink, man. I don't wanna track alien blood into my house..."

“Man… I don’t fuckin’ know how we’ll explain this..” Johnny sighed, looking about the attic

"Guess there's nothing wrong with taking a dip by the stream... fucking hell this is gross." Shiya was still discarding loose bits and pieces of the things they'd just slain, wiping away at her shirt in disgust. As they turned to leave the attic, laughing about the experience and how they’d have to explain this—if they even would have to explain it at all—Johnny took one last glance back at the attic and the mass of ichor that was once the mimic and the strange eyeball creature. There were not just one of them..but two.. This only begged the question: what exactly were the guys at the Dysnome National Laboratory doing, and how did those things somehow escape? Furthermore...how many more of those things were out there?

The nurse treating Wes had constantly insisted for the senior engineer to come visit after his rather lengthy exposure to the core not just once, but twice. It was a miracle that he was even alive...but the same couldn’t be said for Alec Radon SCRAM Dosimeter J. Darski, who was just barely clinging on to life. He didn’t even bother mentioning his close shave with whatever colony was currently occupying Reactor 2, let alone the even larger abomination that was Reactor 1. The man was probably one swing of its tendril away from a swift decapitation..but he didn’t want to become one of those things like he saw the other researchers had become.

Wes EARFQUAKE Hold-My-Liquor D. Hirasawa...a dead man walking.

All he had to do now was simple: keep quiet, hope the PO hurried it up with their recontainment efforts, and hope the fire was put out on the reactor. For every second they wasted, that was another life in Dysnome proper, let alone the state of Trinity itself, that was lost or damned to the radiation.

The nurse came in after what seemed like an hour of waiting, Wes constantly reminded of Darski’s condition in quarantine by the copious amount of bandages covering the man’s deteriorating body, as if the gamma radiation that had practically destroyed the man and halved his lifespan wasn’t bad enough. She came in silently, a dull, deadpan look on her face confirming his suspicions about his condition. “Well?”

“Sir..” she began. “You were exposed to deadly amounts of radiation—it’s a miracle that you’re even able to stand up and walk like this, unlike Darski. But, I’m afraid there’s not much else we can do. I’d say two weeks, at the most. I’m sorry.”

“At least it’s not two days.” Wes muttered, sitting up from the bed as he grabbed his belongings, including his ID card, a pack of cigarettes, and a flask that he probably shouldn’t have had. “Thanks for everything...I’ve got to go back to the control room now..”

His walk back to the control room was long and harrowing, the sight of the burning Reactor 1 off in the distance and its closed-off status serving as a grim memento to the men in the room that they were effectively trapped..or, hopeless. The town of Dysnome twinkled in the background, still oblivious to what was going on. In all this...where the hell was the army, let alone the Presidential Order? Why weren’t they done with the lab yet...and what exactly had the lab been doing?

They don’t fuckin’ pay me enough for this.. He sulked, turning the corner towards the control room.

Entering the control room, Wes would be greeted by the sight of two new faces — judging by the plain white labcoats and the two Presidential Order guards standing by them, they were regulators pertaining to the Department of Energy. It seemed the first of the governor's response had finally come.

“You’re the suits the DOE sent?” He asked, resting against one of the tables.

Doctor Frank Herbert Tunnel-Vision D. Elegia, FS Department of Energy.

"That's correct," One of the men spoke up, turning around. "Doctor Frank Herbert Tunnel-Vision D. Elegia, FS Department of Energy. Dysnome Investigative Taskforce. Your friend Darski informed us you witnessed the core not once — but twice." His partner turned to face the engineer, unlit cigarette resting in the confines of his left hand.

“Chris I-Got-A-Million Conlee S. Garner, Department of Energy, Dysnome Investigative Taskforce.”

“Well, Doctor Elegia, Dr. Garner..” Wes paused, dramatically, setting himself down in the seat next to the table, his movements slower than usual. “Yes..I saw the.. Well..” He trailed off for a moment. “I don’t even know if I should call it the core—there’s nothing left in there. Whatever’s left is probably just coagulated corium at the bottom of the reactor now..but I’ve seen things. Things you guys aren’t used to seeing, but those PO folks are. Reactor 1 had something in it that I locked in there—hopefully it died in the fire, but those outward dents, as if something were ramming it from the inside, that’s your proof. Reactor 2 is a wholly different fuckin’ story.”

"You would be surprised what I know," Elegia ominously replied, offering a plain smile. "The incident extends to much more than the reactor, that much is known currently. Nobody beyond the city of Dysnome have been informed to the nature of the accident at present — the President intends to make a speech and declassify the incident tomorrow — though what took place in the National Laboratory is beyond everyone's OPSEC. At present, however, the Federal Army is due to begin a comprehensive response in cleanup efforts — and the Presidential Order, of course."

“That’s just putting the lives of thousands of people in the Dysnome closed city in the hands of a bunch of soldiers and…psychopaths, at that.” Wes sighed in a half-hushed defeated tone. “At best.. and knowing what I saw in Reactor 2, I wouldn’t be opposed to just setting the place alight and leaving..or just hoping the Reactor 1 radiation kills all those things off. You know they don’t die that easily, right? Let alone.. do you even know what they are..?”

Silently Elegia led the engineer out of the control room, approaching the sealed blast door of the first reactor. "There are... things in the field of science better left unmeddled with. I can tell you've seen it." He noted. "They prey on humans, yes, which is why they've been a subject of interest since the war. What happened under your noses at the Dysnome National Laboratory was something... that would pose great reward to the Federal States military. Ambition, of course, is the great pit-fall of man. Ambition took precedence over safety, it'd seem. I will say, however, that the Presidential Order will not have major difficulty in clearing the second reactor when a full response force is organized. It is, however, not the only kind of entity released by the incident."

“So you’re telling me we were trying to weaponize these things?” Wes repeated, a mixture of disbelief and anger on his face as he paced around in a circle for a moment. “Give me a fuckin’ break… alright. You said that thing back there wasn’t the only one? What, are there more that I don’t know about?” He seemed to trail off as he finished, placing a hand on his chin. “Where do they even come from…?”

"We call it the interstice. A middle-ground of sorts beyond the scientifically-known bounds of this universe. There are several varieties of entities that come forth from it," Elegia noted. "Most can be categorized as either biological, ethereal, and psionic. The grey fluid they use, when injected, acts as a sort of virus that alters the host's biology. That's how they proliferate. The variety you encountered was of the biological sort — taking hosts and altering their DNA, creating biomass to create 'nests' of sorts... but there are different kinds. One of the ethereal variety was reported to have... somehow managed to breach containment from the Dysnome National Laboratory eight months prior. Those are far weaker, so much so they cannot really pose significant harm to local communities. Psionics — well, I don't think I need to explain. To put it simply, these creatures are intelligent and see us as prey, either to be devoured, enthralled or assimilated. They all have individual minds, they think — what lives in Reactor 2 is very much a conscious entity, and those it has 'taken' have been transformed biologically. As it stands, the Presidential Order and the Federal Army are due to arrive to deal with Reactor 1 — and the contamination coming from the Laboratory and Reactor 2. You are among the few men outside of OPSEC to have witnessed such a thing, and lived to tell the tale."

“So it’s a living, breathing thing...it knows what it’s doing.” Wes sighed, looking back at the Reactor 1 hallway, thinking back towards the door that was bolted shut and sealed, trapping whatever was inside of it to in what remained of Reactor 1 and the core. “I want to kill whatever was in Reactor 2,” He said, without remorse. “I want to kill it dead, make sure it doesn’t hurt any more of my men, or anyone, for that matter.”

"That's what the Presidential Order intends to do, yes." Elegia nodded. "We have no camera feed anymore, but it's fair to assume it's used the personnel it hasn't... infected... as biomass to build its nest. This biomass, of course, is going to need sustenance, as it's a living, breathing thing... — it's going to start hunting to expand the nest."

Wes shrugged after turning back to the two enigmatic regulators. “What do you want me to do? I’m the only one, at least on this site, who’s gone into Reactor 2 and lived...but only because I ran early.”

"We face the risk of Reactor 2 facing a similar fate as the first if we do not power it down. Tonight the Presidential Order will conduct its first expedition into the 'nest' to disable Reactor 2. You know the layout of the facility, so you'll be going with them. As for myself — I have to assist Dr. Garner in heading the efforts of the liquidators. All our drones thus far have only lasted a few minutes."

“That idiot Mitch greatly underestimated the amount of radiation that’s leaking from Reactor 1..” Wes muttered, looking at the two regulators. “Alright.. I’ll go with those PO guys..but I won’t hesitate to run if those psychos put me in danger or if my life depends on it. Nonetheless, that monstrosity in Reactor 2 needs to die.”

"It will. We've defeated things like those in Verson." He assured.

“Nothing’s going to get done if we have an anomaly making repair work impossible. One reactor is gone, we do not need a second to go critical.” Elegia’s partner elaborated. “As it is, the projected fallout patterns are... grim, to say the least.”

"Unlike the nuclear wars of the past, the fallout isn't expected to go away in a few decades or centuries — there will be locations deemed uninhabitable for millennia due to this." Elegia nodded. "Ignoring the anomalies, this is indeed the worst nuclear disaster in history."

“And the people don’t even know the truth… probably for the better.” Wes murmured, suddenly breaking into a coughing fit and wiping his hand over his coveralls, a slight stain of blood appearing on his chest. “Well.. let’s get to it, then. We’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do.”

"Of course." With a gesture, Elegia gave an impromptu 'greenlight' to a few Presidential Order personnel down the corridor to prepare for what was to come.

by **Forest State** » Sun Aug 18, 2019 3:54 am

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The war between Kael and Velezia is over, but at home, the Tsaoir clan prepares to fight a different battle - one against a northern rival that would sacrifice the rest of the country for its own gains if possible. As preparations begin for another great Kaelic clan war, Maura Tsaoir and others in her clan travel into enemy territory, in Galnoy...

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CHAPTER 2 – ACT 5: “THE WAR AT HOME”

Daernel, Federation of Kael
November 10th, 424

_______________________

“I think that the South Atlantic War, the war with Velezia… I think those were signs of changing times.”

The words came from none other than the Empress and Ceannasai of Kael, Maura Tsaoir, the first person in Kael to hold both an imperial title and a tribal title since the days when Erskine Faolain had reunified the country in the first place, before the northern lands of the country had been integrated. Back then, the title had been Emperor for a time, before Faolain’s successors further integrated the territory that the ruler had conquered… These days, however, it could be argued that Tsaoir’s empire was more impressive. It wasn’t the largest empire. In fact, other nations had gained more from Velezia than Kael, in terms of pure territory.

But Faolain had never been forced to take on a power and win to get his empire. No, that had been Kaels against Kaels, something that the Kaelic people were used to. Some people were in tune with it, some people weren’t, mainly foreigners making up the latter group, but the fact of the matter was that it took a Kael to beat a Kael. If anything, the only reason the war had been won in the first place was that Velezia had struck first and had unified the country for the first time in… Maybe for the first time since Victorian days. Because usually, it was each other that they had to worry about moreso than foreigners. Rival clans. Rival warlords. Rival gangs. That kind of thing. Not a foreign power with one of the largest military budgets in Ophir.

It was safe to say the war had definitely aided Maura Tsaoir in the end - she had started out distrusted as someone from an ethnic minority, the Lowlanders, who were looked upon strangely by both sides of the country. Now, she was simply known as the one who hadn’t just overseen the war effort, but had overseen Velezia’s total destruction at the hands of a multinational coalition, one which had only jumped into things as quickly and eagerly as they had because of Tsaoir’s decision to not just strike back from the shadows, but openly.

“Both a sign that we should avoid hiding from the rest of the world when it’s not necessary…” Tsaoir started, speaking to the others in the vehicle - her niece and protege, KIB agent Yvaine Tsaoir, and to her brother, Conor Tsaoir, the one that was in charge of many of their clan’s military assets. Not the same as what Airm Daernel Defense had, but still a somewhat threatening PMC when dealing with non state actors - namely, other clans. And of course, Conor carried military connections outside of the simple PMC. “And as a sign that our clan should continue to feed on blood. This time, however, the blood that I’m talking about isn’t that of another country.”

“What are you proposing?” Yvaine asked, raising an eyebrow and looking out the window as they continued through the city of Galnoy, aiming to head up into the mountains… It was a bit strange being here. The views here were more pro government ever since the Velezian attack but it was still the seat of power for the McNamara clan, the ones who had taken a huge popularity hit for opposing the government before the Velezian attack on Daernel and supporting the Las Playas Strategic Treaty publicly. Because of that support, the McNamaras had faced extreme backlash at home, their northern secessionist dream crushed by a renewed Kaelic nationalism up north - something that was entirely different from northern nationalism.

“That this idea of an independent north, and that this clan that has advocated for it and even supported our enemies during wartime,” Maura continued, reaching into her dark brown leather jacket and taking out a pistol to display to Yvaine, turning it over in her hand to show it from a couple of different angles. Really, she was a soldier at heart. They’d brought her into politics during her time with the Capital Guard, which had worked out being someone from a major clan and all, but they had never managed to take the soldier out of her.

She could still remember fighting in Canguari like it was yesterday, could still remember the days when she was well known for being a rising figure in her family’s Reapers PMC rather than as a politician, and she could remember when kill counts in the jungles and territorial gains in the cities were the objectives that mattered rather than budgets, party matters, and international relations meetings. That time in the jungles of Canguari, fighting the Florians and sometimes the Velezians, personally - it had changed her. She considered the changes to be for the better. She wouldn’t be the same person if she hadn’t fought there.

And that was perhaps why, even with larger things on her plate as the Empress and as the Ceannasai, she felt that something that needed her personal attention was clan warfare of all things.

“...Must be ruthlessly stamped out and crushed underfoot. Just as the Tsaoir clan and the growing Riley-Shae clan fed on Velezia, we will feed on the McNamaras,” Tsaoir stated with a slight smirk crossing her face, as she put the pistol back into her jacket. “They attempted to stir the public to rise up during a time when the country needed national loyalty more than ever. Because of that, I believe they can never be trusted in such a situation again, and due to that… As well as their support for terrorism… It’s time that we quit beating around the bush and cut the head off the snake.”

It was no secret that the McNamaras had long been connected to support for the Army of the Liberation of the North, the insurgency which had been suffering in recent years, not holding territory for some time in Kael and limiting their activities to terror attacks. Their bombs still went off every month, and they still took actions as individuals… But really, the group was just waiting for someone to come in and kill it, and taking out the McNamara clan entirely would do that. It was said their businesses often funneled money covertly to the ALN - something that would definitely stop if they repossessed the businesses that the family and their associates owned.

This wasn’t a war between the government and a rogue family, interestingly enough. It was a war between families all the way through, the assets here might include tanks and jets but they wouldn’t be government owned, they were rather the result of oligarchs and their allies competing with each other to build the most dangerous private armies, to rack up the most guns, to present themselves as the biggest and the baddest… But at the end of the day, it was still just two families with no love lost between them as well as their more minor tributes, who would still bring plenty of guns and bodies on their own. It took Kaels to beat Kaels, and the Kaels were fighting with each other plenty, really. It was just easier to pay attention to some of the more obvious examples of the Kaels fighting - abroad as mercenaries, rather than at home in private disputes and the like.

The Tsaoirs claimed the McNamaras were traitors to the country and the McNamaras claimed that the Tsaoirs were traitors to their own causes for not pushing for independence for the Lowlands - either as their own country or as a part of an independent north which would be dominated by the McNamara clan. Neither side liked each other and when the Tsaoir clan had managed to get someone in the position of leader once again, the McNamara clan had kicked its efforts into sowing dissent into overdrive, using its holdings to influence media in the north and to push their secessionist ideals while railing against the number of southern corporations in the north, especially the state owned ones such as Airm Daernel, the national arms company that was backed largely by the Faolain clan who had helped to found it in the first place.

Maybe it would have worked, if the McNamara clan had been able to forsee the Velzian attack on Daernel. After the McNamaras had come out in support of the LPST before the attack happened, it served to give easy ammunition to their opponents and it cost them support even in their own strongholds. The McNamaras support terrorism and attacks on Kaelic civilians. That’s what they said, although most knew that supported terrorism already. Fact of the matter, though, was that this was the most open they had been about it and it came back to bite them because of it.

Some people could get over their anti government ideals - mainly people that were anti government themselves. But supporting an enemy country was too much. Most didn’t want to see Kael destroyed in Velezian cruise missile fire, but see it change from inside. And as such, their previous LPST support had practically signed their death wish and no redaction or followup statements could save them from that. No one cared about the statements they made under duress. They cared about the ones they had made back when they were being honest.

“We’re not visiting Galnoy on business. Well, I suppose we are, but you could say that the business we’re visiting Galnoy for is a massacre,” said Maura, reaching for another pistol and passing it to Yvaine. “You might want to take this if you haven’t already. Don’t walk around anywhere around here without a firearm, even if it seems like it’s a safe target. The enemy is everywhere, ‘round here. I’ve seen firefights with my own eyes in Galnoy before, in circumstances like these...”

She was interrupted by something that seemed very much like the start of a firefight in and of itself. The car screeched to a halt at the command of Conor, who picked up a rifle from the floor of the car in front of him and started shooting out of the now lowering widow, towards something at the side of the road. They were approaching the lodge where they would be staying in the mountains, one that was owned by their clan, but it looked like the enemy was already waiting for them. “Saw something by the side of the road,” said Conor, while continuing to shoot.

“What in the goddamn…”

Yvaine stepped out of the vehicle with the pistol in her hand and started spraying fire in the same direction as her father was shooting, catching a guerilla gunman in the head with a bullet just as he stood up, more shots being traded as Conor stopped to reload… Maura herself couldn’t even keep from getting involved, sliding across the car and moving to shoot through the window on the opposite side as Conor, bullets hitting the side of the car and missing before Maura replied with her own shots and took down one, and then two more gunmen, all of them wearing generic multicam and using some of the military weapons that were readily available in Kael, especially in the north where there were plenty of arms factories.

“Clear!” shouted Conor, the group quickly climbing back into the car and continuing towards the mountain lodge after beating the ambush. “Fuck, their intel must have found out you were on your way here… Or that someone important was on their way here.”

“Yeah well, I don’t think they liked what happened when they got me,” said Maura, reloading her pistol and handing another magazine off to Yvaine as they kept going down their path, eventually pulling into a parking lot as Conor climbed out of the passenger side with the AR-81 rifle to make sure that there were no more threats in the immediate area.

“Haven’t lost a step, sis,” Conor said, lowering the rifle as Maura stepped out, observing the scene for herself before deciding that she was satisfied, waving for the rest of the group to follow her into the building itself. Most leaders, they would have panicked under such situations, but the fact of the matter was that she was right where she was comfortable right now and she’d had no problems jumping into the fight - in fact, it was something she relished, she hadn’t gotten a chance to do something like this for a good while, not since she’d been in the military..

“Anyway,” she continued, looking over her shoulder as she opened the door to her family’s lodge, Yvaine and Conor and the driver of her the vehicle following after her, others coming out of the building from a front entrance to investigate the threat level in the area - if they knew this was a place of interest, the enemy could send further reinforcements, after all. Although, there was a machine gun emplacement as well as air defenses right here, it was a fairly fortified location when they knew that the enemy was coming. “This is part of the reason why the McNamara clan must be destroyed without mercy.”

“An ambush on our place in their territory was bold but expected. Now, though?” she asked as they got inside, coming to a lobby of sorts in the wooden building, the simple construction and rugged feel of the place contrasting with the wealth of the ones that owned it. “All they’ve done is further seal their own fate as the next target of the winning clan… And you, Yvaine, are going to be one of the ones to help me, to help us, with that.”

by **Valefontaine** » Mon Aug 19, 2019 11:55 am

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

S1E8
"Recruitment"

Introductions

The Scary Movies Club is always looking for new members, and it seems that a fellow student has shown interest in joining the club. They're oblivious to the more... crazy stuff that the club does, of course.

_{DATE: 11:35 AM - November 2, A.C. 424 | POV: Liang World-is-Yours Phantasm K. Shiya | LOCATION: Attonfield, Trinity | FSE}

Colonel Skydreamer High School was the typical oxymoronic contrasting mishmash of plain corridors and colorful lockers, sterile-smelling hallways and low hum of air-conditioning. For Shiya, there were few better places to hang out on a Sunday like this than school — especially given how things were out in town since the incident. No announcement had come, of course, but after a major Organization terrorist had been detained, talk among the townspeople was rife with suspicions of a large-scale terror attack in Dysnome.

Skydreamer High's corridors.

Shiya knew what'd happened — she'd seen the explosion in the distance, felt the tremors that preceded the incident. Nobody would believe her and her club-mates if any of them mentioned it, though.

There was sporadic extracurricular activity in school, given Sunday carried no real significance in Euphemian culture, save for Ourielists, which were a minority in the country. Shiya was spending a bit of time of her own there, on behalf of the club — there was always the off chance a new face would show up.

The Euphemian History classroom had been generously allocated for the Scary Movies Club for these occasions, Shiya chewing away at bubblegum as she leaned back in the teacher's chair, eyes set on the glow of the monitor as she idled on. No news online about the incident — not even an Aurelianet conspiracy theory or two. There was no way she'd simply just hallucinated it — everyone else in the Club knew what they saw.

But now wasn't the time to think about it — Shiya was alone on recruiting duty, waiting in case a curious student popped up with interest in joining the club.

"Wonder how Johnny and the others are doing..." She thought to herself, pencil twirling in one hand as her eyes glossed over her Aurelianet tabs on Webscape Navigator. "Wonder what I should get for lunch. MacArthur's? Maybe Rocko's?"

Per usual, there was literally nothing on the boards about what'd happened — and Shiya herself didn't want to take a chance and post anything about the Dysnome incident. A lot of libertarian-minded types considered the National Security Act of 392 a curtailing of civil liberties and personal freedoms, and Shiya was smart enough to know a place like Aurelianet had its fair share of feds watching. She took a cursory glance at her ICM MC-888 smartphone as she idled by, chatting away in boredom...

"Same bullshit." Shiya rolled her eyes, setting the phone aside and returning her attention to the computer screen. AureliaChat was far more versatile than CapChat — everyone knew what CapChat was really for, anyways — after all, that was why the messages deleted themselves...

"...I wonder if Johnny has a girlfriend... or is he—...? Anyways, I should get a job this winter break... gotta make money somehow. Won't be able to afford anything this Solstice if I don't—"

KNOCK KNOCK

Shiya was jolted to attention by a knock, the silhouette of a girl standing just outside the grated glass slit window of the door. "Door's open!" She called, curiously wondering just who it might've been. The club was, for the most part, a rather niche group, after all...

The knob turned, the door opening as the mysterious visitor revealed themselves. Shiya was greeted by the sight of one of the most popular faces in Skydreamer High — Jade Ixcoyotl Cat's-Eye C. Nielsen. "Yo, Shiya."

Jade Ixcoyotl Cat's-Eye C. Nielsen.

Jade was one of the more popular students, seemingly having a natural confidence about her. Even online she had a sizeable following as a blogger on Pictr and Vidport. It was almost a natural thing to have expected, given she occasionally reviewed horror movies on her channel. Such a thing called for a fair bit of charisma and allure, and that was exactly what Jade carried.

"Hey, what's up?" Shiya perked up, leaning forward with interest, mildly enamored by Jade's presence. They shared a few classes — AP Euphemian and Chemistry. She really hadn't talked much with her, but they'd certainly exchanged glances. Jade certainly seemed nicer and more 'chill' than a few of the more fixated of the school's impromptu upper social strata, not to insinuate that Shiya herself was introverted or antisocial... but she certainly didn't fixate on the needless complexities of high school drama.

"Saw the poster out in the hall... figured I'd check it out myself. Saw the promo supercut, too. I see there's quite a bit of adventure, crazy shit, all that — figured why the hell not. Johnny's in this club, right? We're friends." Jade seemingly invited herself in, finding a chair and bringing it over by the teacher's desk where Shiya sat by.

"So you want to join the Scary Movies Club..." Shiya grinned. "Well, as you might know I'm the president of the Scary Movies Club, and you really just have to, well... sign that paper over there." She gestured to a stack of papers by her table, printed response forms for any aspiring members that allowed them to provide basic introductions and list their knowledge on the genre.

"So, what exactly do you do? I mean, you watch scary movies and all... but I've heard there's more to it." Jade inquired, studying the document. Shiya kept documents meticulously organized, records on the Club's general activities kept back at her house — a bit more than her club really demanded, but she liked to keep things organized.

"..well," Shiya had a good idea as to what to say, given she'd memorized for these kinds of eventualities more than she'd like to admit. "We do go out to old abandoned places sometimes, yeah."

"Like?" Jade pressed, the mention of urbex catching the girl's eye rather quickly.

"We went out to the Sepia forest the other day. Urbex into old Attonfield, went into the Pit, looked around the Lowther House. Was.. pretty fun exploring there, we're probably going to do more of that soon enough. Maybe with a bit of weed next time." Shiya shrugged, though her aspiring new member seemed sufficiently intrigued. Drugs were a casual part of Euphemian culture — apparently it'd been controversial half a millennia ago, though. This boorish, prudish prohibitionism resided in the backlog of history, as it should have always been.

"Hell yeah, I'd be down... I'm 'in' the Club now, right?" Jade handed her the paper, Shiya briefly scanning through the responses as she got a more personal idea of just who exactly Jade was.

"Yeah," Her attention was particularly drawn to Jade's tastes. "Firewalk. I always did expect you'd be into something arthouse and avant-garde..."

"What gave it away?"

"I, uh, watch your videos..." Shiya shrugged. It went without saying, given the shared tastes.

"Always get something of a rush when I run into a subscriber. Firewalk is probably one of my favorite horror movies. It dives into not just the usual thrills and cheap scares, but the psychological buildup and the profound questions about our role not just in the Universe, but on this planet." Shiya could already see in Jade an excellent speaker for the Club. "So, anything the club up to today? Most groups I hang with can't really keep up..." It seemed she'd gotten right to the point.

"Well, we're watching Blood Camp tonight if you're interested.." Shiya suggested. Folding her arms, she figured it a good idea to throw a cheeky idea forth. "Maybe a bit of curfew violation, if anyone is onboard..." She smirked. They were clever and the police department was undermanned — it'd be pretty easy to evade curfew for a little urbexing, all things considered.

This'd warranted a wide grin from the new, aspiring member. "Sign me the fuck up!"

by **Turmenista** » Fri Aug 23, 2019 7:23 pm

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

S1E6
"Mission 2 - Answers"

Investigations

Not all is as it seems in quaint Attonfield. Shots were reported in the Lowther House in northern Attonfield, to which the Bureau suspects that our Organization straggler, Mr. Fernow, is training for an Amethyst Ridge-style last stand. Go to the Lowther House and investigate what happened.

_{DATE: 2:13 PM - November 2, A.C. 424 | POV: Special Agent Biron Crystal-Castles "C.C." Badalamenti | LOCATION: Attonfield, Trinity | FSE}

“Good evening, gentlemen! Welcome to the Minuteman dine—“

“Too late for that.” Biron gave a polite smile to Claire as he stepped up beside the bar, holding up two fingers. “Two coffees, please. To go. We’re in a bit of a hurry.”

Truth be told, they were in a hurry—they had places to be, people to talk to. One of those places was the Attonfield Sheriff department, the quaint building itself located not too far into town, but also easily accessible for anyone living inside. There, they were set to meet with Sheriff Perkins, who would be informing them of the matter at hand and how it could relate to the agents’ own investigations in town. While many of the towns people were suspicious of the Feds being here—and for good reason, knowing the death of Annie Vangelis, recent arrest of Wayne Tha Carter, and strange lights near Dysnome—Sheriff Howard Perkins was a breath of fresh and familiar air in an otherwise hostile environment, carrying with him that “homey” feeling of inland Euphemian comfort that few could match.

“Smith, you met the sheriff already?” Biron asked, already giving the waitress the requested amount of money as he took a sip from his coffee.”

"No, but if he's coming to us... he probably don't trust his own force with the job of investigating this Organization activity, I figure." Smith replied, eyes perusing the cafe with suspicion. It didn’t take long for both agents to catch sight of the familiar khaki and white color of a car belonging to the Attonfield Sheriff Department—and a rather archaic-looking Pontillac SUV at that, as with most cars in Attonfield. A native man with long brown hair appeared, exiting the car and making his way over to the front of the diner, entering unceremoniously. The man took off his cowboy hat and jacket as he entered, stepping over to the two men. “You are the...uhh… feds, I presume?”

Sheriff Howard Perkins, Attonfield Sheriff Department

"That'd be correct. Special Agent Ian Pet-Sematary Leatherface "King" Voorhees C. Smith. That's my partner, Biron Crystal-Castles "C.C." Badalamenti." Smith introduced himself, standing briefly to shake the sheriff's hand.

The native man took his right hand over the Ourielist cross necklace he had around his neck and gave the man a powerful handshake. “Sheriff Howard Perkins, Attonfield Sheriff Department. I came..uhh..on my own behalf, you see. I can’t really speak on my own Deputies, but they don’t really trust me. I don’t really trust them either, and I know you Fed types aren’t the most “open” about what you do. Coming in and arresting Wayne pissed off a lot of my deputies…”

He sat down on the bar stool besides the two, Claire practically sending him another coffee as if it were automatic. “What do, uh, you all know of the shooting at the old Lowther estate, up north near Dysnome?”

"If we knew, we would already be there. There's a big difference between kids shooting their parents' assault rifles for fun... and the Organization training out in the backwoods. We want to be sure first." Smith replied, nodding.

“I see.” He said, slowly. “Well… I think there’s still something interesting up there. None of my deputies trusted me enough to go up there, and I’m not really going up there myself with the current shitshow going on in town. I need some extra eyes and ears, and you guys are the only friendly faces I have. Simply put: check it out, tell me what you find. If it’s bad—one of those Organization type bad moments, I’ll need your help in setting up a perimeter. If not..we should be good.”

"Of course." Smith nodded.

“We’ll do whatever needs to be done.” Biron said. “Organization or otherwise, we’ll find out what’s going on.”

The sheriff only smiled in response, taking a sip from his coffee. “That’s good. Very good. Report back to me with anything you find—you’ve got my number, after all. As for me, I’ll be in the..area, dealing with some stupid reports of some “hairy monsters” out in the woods. You all wouldn’t believe the amount of stupid reports I get all the time.”

"Oh, there's no shortage of that.." Smith chuckled. "We'll take a look at the whole thing and get back to you if we turn up anything dangerous."

“Appreciate it, fellas. Be sure to call me with whatever you guys find up there.” Sheriff Perkins nodded, dipping his head down as a sign of respect while the two men left the cafe uneventfully, making their way over towards the car.

"I wouldn't trust my PD either, given how many... everyday folks seem to be sympathetic to the Org." Smith cynically noted. Biron could only nod in agreement to that statement. The entire town, whether he liked to admit it or not, seemed to be out for them all, especially after the controversial arrest of Wayne Tha Carter. Just how many Organization sycophants were in town, let alone actual members, and what did they truly have to do with the Dysnome incident?

The drive up to the Lowther Estate was quiet, but ominous, the sights of the forest all the more scary and imposing as they drove towards the house in question. The ruins were practically full of overturned, rusted cars and overgrown streets and buildings, but the Lowther House stood in the background of dark green and black, a hazy white fog all around them.

“So, you remember hearing about this place, Smith?” Biron asked. “‘Cause bloody hell, I remember reading about this...fuckin’ brutal.”

"Every small town ought to have their tourist traps, I suppose. My surprise is that the damn place didn't just collapse after sitting here all these years..." Smith noted, eyeing the house ahead as he drove nearer, the backdrop of overgrown grass and trees becoming ever the more oppressive as they neared.

“I don’t see any reason as to why the Organization wouldn’t use this as little more than a training ground for any siege...let alone something like a sabotage operation on the Dysnome site,” Biron noted, watching the place enlarge in the distance. “You really think they’d really try something like the Amethyst standoff, all those years in the future?”

"I don't know what Fernow's got planned. If he wants to start a war with the government, he's sure as hell gotten what he wanted." Smith replied. "The President's declassified the nature of the Incident to the public... and hell if he hasn't effectively declared a war on terror."

“Damn right. It’s just like how it was during the Days of Rage…” Biron nodded. “It’s Euphemian vs Euphemian, brother against brother, all the other combinations..”

Soon enough, their car pulled up to the Lowther Estate, which was more or less an entire community of small buildings than a proper, actual house. The rotting metal gate was open as if it were left open in a hurry, the tire marks of a Pontillac pickup truck visible in the ground.

“Okay..looks like we weren’t here alone,” Biron noted, inspecting the road, the ground, and the site itself. “What do you think, Smith? Tire marks? I’d say Pontillac truck. Don’t know the specifics, but it’s a start..”

"You know, I don't think Fernow's gonna have anything too... on-public-record. Kid's crazy, but he's smart. Could be someone working for him, though." Smith noted, kneeling down to study the dirt.

“Lots of boot tracks going here, there..” Biron said, muttering to himself. “Okay, looks as if multiple people came out...and went over to the door.” He reached into his coat pocket and flicked on a flashlight, shining it over the door. “Can’t see if the front door’s been used recently..”

"On my count," Smith raised a hand, taking point by the door. When they counted down to zero, Biron raised his leg and promptly kicked the door open, the ISB agent whipping out his weapon and scanning around, checking his corners. The first thing he noticed was that several things had been knocked down in the main atrium, kitchen, and living room, as if they were randomly thrown around. “Must’ve been the earthquake..or, might just be some unwanted guests. Don’t know which one it is.”

He silently looked over the rest of the hallway and main entrance, light illuminating the dark corners of the room. “Main entrance clear.” He announced softly.

"Nothing more than your usual vandals — and mother nature, I figure." Smith passively noted, eyes perusing their surroundings. Here and there graffiti vandalized the walls — Smith himself was a bit skeptical whether it could've really been the work of Organization types. Biron, on the other hand, wasn’t taking many chances, already kneeling down and inspecting something on the floor with his light, holstering his sidearm. “Found something: looks like markings from a boot from the dirt outside. Not sure which kind...but there were definitely people here. And recent, at that.”

He stood up from the site and continued through the house, slowly ascending some squeaky stairs to the upper floors. Immediately, he spotted something was off, pointing out the obvious at the end of the hallway. “Smith, attic ladder is down.”

"Someone was up here.." Nodding, Smith was quick to ascend the ladder into the attic, momentarily taken aback by the sheer amount of blood and viscera scattered about. Two dead... things lay there, beaten to a pulp. The stench was enough to make Biron wrinkle up his nose in disgust and gag, turning away from the sight. “What… in the name of Ouriel.. is that?”

"These creatures look familiar.." Smith noted, kneeling down to better analyze the withered fleshy corpse. "A Ctygd'kelbh. That... cardboard box-thing... we just call it a 'mimic'. I don't think Fernow was out here. Someone else did this."

“One of those things, huh?” Biron reached into his ISB jacket and pulled out a white sanitary mask, slipping on tight, matching white gloves. “I’ll get the forensics kit, care to give me the quick rundown on them? The ones I saw in Turmenista were, well.. not like these.”

"I encountered my fair share in Awenyddion," Smith explained. "They're not known to the general public, of course. These creatures are akin to... vermin in their world, like roaches or rats — but in this one, they're quite the dangerous predator. Usually they'll turn smaller objects into mimics — but if a human's around, they'll try to 'turn' them too. Of course... it's a weak creature," He looked down to one of the limp tentacles, still coated in a thin grey, viscous veneer. "The tendrils are too weak to pierce the flesh, so it'll usually pin its victim down and seek an orifice like the mouth to spread the corruption."

“Unnerving.” Biron said out loud exactly what he was thinking at the moment, his voice slightly muffled from the sanitary mask as he inspected the carnage before him. Whatever thing that had been killed was likely killed with a blunt object, practically mashed into a paste on the wooden floor and sticking to it like adhesive. He probed the gory sight with a tool from his evidence kit, noting that the viscera was slimy and gray, but still able to be removed from the floor. Disgusted, he stood up from what remained of the mimic, pulling his mask down for a second. “Cause of death here is obviously blunt force trauma...but what’s confusing me even more is why one of these things would be here..”

As he stepped over the remains of the eldritch cardboard box-creature to begin making his way over to the other corpse, Biron suddenly paused, squatting down to pick up something shiny off the ground. “Found something interesting, Smith… come take a look.” He gestured to the object with his free hand, a stray beam of light from the attic window briefly lighting up the shiny bullet casing. “.308 Lexicon.

"Civilian-grade. Might not be Organization after all... and I don't think Fernow would just come up here to shoot monsters." Smith commented, skeptically eyeing the bullet. "You think some hicks wound up... seeing something they shouldn't have, and killing it?"

“Hicks? I’d expected shotguns, to be honest. Maybe a hunter, one of those urban explorer types..or just some kids with nothing to do.” Biron stood up from the remains of the eyeball-creature he saw, wincing.

"Flesh looks seared..." Smith continued, squinting at the dead creature. "..electrocution?" It certainly did sound familiar to an incident that'd happened just recently — at the Attonfield mall, to be specific.

“You think it’s connected, or just a coincidence?” Biron asked, turning to his partner. “If that’s the case—if we’ve got some kids that are going around electrocuting shite, including this blob-thing...we’ve got an OPSEC breach on our hands—not to mention the very real possibility of more of these things roaming around.”

"That's what's got me worried." Smith concurred. "Someone in Attonfield has not only seen this thing, but managed to live to tell the tale... which isn't something we want."

“This is not good.” Biron said bluntly, pulling off his gloves and reaching for his smartphone. “What we might have to end up doing here, mate, is calling in another favor from Bauhaus P. Floyd. We need firearms purchases records from teenagers—we’ll need to narrow it down to whoever purchased .308 ammo...likely for a civilian mod AR or BASILISK long rifle. From there.. we’ll do a little talking to the kids. Any leads on the electrocutin’ perp yet?”

"What, I widen the search to people who've bought tasers in the past few years?" Smith shrugged. "Might not even be connected to our mall shocker... just in case, though, we ought to ask around and see whodunnit at the mall. From there, ask a few questions and narrow our search, I suppose."

“It was a kid that got electrocuted… so we’re better off askin’ the kid,” Biron said, placing his hands into his pockets. “Or, at least, until the kid can speak. Maybe question a few passersby, look through the cameras, anything we need to do.” He gave a sigh turning away from the gore in the attic. “For now, we just need to keep this out of the public eye. Cordon off the place, post up snipers here, turn away explorers, whatever we need to do.”

He turned around to the rest of the attic, placing his hands on his hips. If Biron’s intuition was correct, then the secret was out, and it would be inevitable before knowledge of things like monsters and “demons” became common knowledge to the public. He could only hope that word of went down at Dysnome stayed suppressed and censored, and that knowledge of these things they found up here in the attic—if there were, Ouriel forbid, more of these things, remained buried as well.

WFF Series 2: Remember Your Black Day [IC, CLOSED]

WFF Series 2: Remember Your Black Day [IC, CLOSED]

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