Outside 43: Where the sun hurts your eyes and burns your skin

[Deathkeeper]

Entrance to a Wreck

Nick nods.
"Salamagundi station? I know about that one. Others are a bit of a need to know basis.
Right now you can get it out safely or we can try to save more of your people. I should be doing the latter, but I can't force you to do one or the other, especially after what just happened. I can't make you take any risks for me. If you want I can give you directions and you can head straight to a safehouse now." he says gently to the catperson.

[Recaiden]

[Entrance to a Wreck]

"That'll be the one."
The linesman nods eagerly.

"I'll take getting there as fast as possible. Omiko will get out eventually, and the box is the only other important thing."
He looks back inside worriedly.
"Good luck."

[Deathkeeper]

Entrance to a Wreck

"I understand, kid. Can you tell me what's in the box? As long as I'm sure it isn't something destructive I can call you a car to pick you up and get you where you wanna go. Otherwise, can you tell me what I need to be looking for and avoiding if I want to find any more people? Sad to say if I head into another area and I see more supernatural clowns I might have to declare this over my head." he says sadly.

[Recaiden]

[Entrance to a Wreck]

"You're looking for a city. You're avoiding needlers, machines with the four circles on them, and really anything not in these uniforms."
He taps himself on the chest.
"The box has data. Important things."
The linesman's head shakes and he turns to look outside again, drawing a shaky breath.

[Deathkeeper]

Entrance to a Wreck

Nick sighs.
"Would you like for me to wait here with you until the car arrives?" he offers the poor, clearly frightened boy.

[Recaiden]

[Entrance to a Wreck]

The linesman shivers, looks around uncertainly, and nods.
"Please."

[Deathkeeper]

Entrance to a Wreck

Nick shakes his head and settles down outside as he calls his squadcar. Within about fifteen minutes the flying car speeds into view and settles down on the grass, opening its door.
"Climb in, kid. Just tell it your name and where you want to go, and it should take you there. I've unlocked it for you, but I can track it if something unseemly happens. Good luck."

[Recaiden]

[Entrance to a Wreck]

The linesman cowers inside, not looking at the outside view of the swamp and meadows.
But when the car arrives he forces himself to his feet and carefully goes to it.

He gives it a name and a request for a spaceport to Salmagundi Station, and off they go.

There's just Nick and the swamp and the slowly sinking wreck.

[Deathkeeper]

Entrance to a Wreck

Nick gives a long, exhausted sigh. Curse his need to help people. He heads back into the wreck, in the opposite direction of the clown hole if possible, and looks for another way in or at least a good spot to make a cut.

[Recaiden]

[Entrance to a Wreck]

Nick finds a way in. Avoiding the clown hole, going past where the devalogist was, he finds a nice empty space to cut down through. No corpses, no spikes, nothing.

[Deathkeeper]

Inside a Wreck

Nick steels himself and makes his cuts. He can't keep doing this over and over, but the break gave him some time to recharge. He won't be getting dizzy for a while yet.

[Recaiden]

[Entrance to a Wreck]

Nick is rewarded with a hallway opened beneath him. One direction ends in a sheer drop at a slight backwards angle. The other leads to what looks to be a cafeteria. Deserted, abandoned, fallen to pieces.

[Deathkeeper]

Inside a Wreck

Nick pads through the cafeteria, looking for an exit, his helmet creating a map of his progress. The place looks old and unused. Probably not anyone around here.

[Recaiden]

[Inside a Wreck]

Entrance to the kitchens over there, another entrance opposite the one he entered by. Another entrance opposite the kitchens, across the cafeteria longways. After maybe 20 seconds, a clamor starts up. Pots and pans banging from the kitchen.

[Deathkeeper]

Inside a Wreck

Nick regrets having his helmet restrict his ear-perking, even if there's no practical detriment to it. It just doesn't feel right, not being able to do that. He checks his gun, then heads into the kitchen to investigate the noise.

[Recaiden]

[Inside a Wreck]

Through the large opening between the kitchen and the cafeteria, one can see cooking implements and plates scattered everywhere.
Depending on his other sense, he might detect breathing, the warmth of a living thing, happy humming, and those oily spikes that killed the people in the entryway.

And inside there's a frustrated little round robot trying to put dishes back in place on the shelves, and an orange-hued female needler grabbing them off the shelves and banging on them before throwing them to the ground.

[Deathkeeper]

Inside a Wreck

"Hey. You shouldn't stay here. There's a way out." Nick says to the needler.
Please be reasonable. Please be reasonable. Please be reasonable.

[Recaiden]

[Inside a Wreck]

The needler tosses a bowl at Nick. Not very hard or fast. Just tossing it to him. Then she just watches him.
The robot takes this advantage to collect a whole stack of bowls and put them on their shelf with its little telescope arms.

How ambitious is Nick?

[Deathkeeper]

Inside a Wreck

Nick catches the bowl and sets it down on the floor.
"You should leave. Sky, outside." he tells her, waving his claws in a way that indicates Outside.
Oh boy. Whatever in here made a godlike being want to send his evil clown squad? There seems to be nothing but death and a very boring kind of madness here.
Nothing even remotely enjoyable, like the Fortuna flavor of madness. And even then, he likes that sort of thing in her and not much else.

[Recaiden]

[Inside a Wreck]

The needler scampers over, a bowl in her hand, and knocks on it with her knuckles. She drops the bowl and tries to knock on Nick's armor the same way.

Madness and a little bit of curiosity.

The robot starts getting every last bit of flatware put away.

[Deathkeeper]

Inside a Wreck

Nick's shoulder plate is ceramic and should make a satisfying knocking sound.
Nick decides that he has had enough of this and attempts to back away, out of the room, and explore some other door.

[Recaiden]

[Inside a Wreck]

The needler follows him, bounding along on all fours.

Which door would Nick like to try?

[Deathkeeper]

Inside a Wreck

Nick looks at the needler following him. "Go out that way." he says, pointing to the way he came in. He doubts she'll understand him, though.
He tries the door opposite the kitchen.

[Recaiden]

[Inside a Wreck]

The needler looks in the direction Nick points, then back to him. No motion to leave at all. As he moves to cross the cafeteria, she lopes along after him, hopping onto and between the demolished furnishings.

Out the opposite door he finds a dusty all, disturbed by one set of booted humanoid footprints. A rectangular alcove to the right holds a heavy trapdoor-style hatch. Further ahead, a number of tiny frisbee-like robots in various states past complete inoperability litter the ground.

[Deathkeeper]

Inside a Wreck

Of course she does.
Nick doesn't trust the hatch. Not with the warnings about the hold and other parts of the ship that the Linesman provided. For now, despite the destruction, he chooses to follow the hallway.

[Recaiden]

[Inside a Wreck]

The needler pauses for a moment to investigate the hatch herself. After messing around with it a short while, little needles sprout all around the join between it and the floor, quickly growing into larger spikes.

Down the hallway is a heavy blast door, pried open just enough to fit a catperson in a bulky spacesuit through. Within there are assembly lines, autohammers, things for pouring, things for bending, things for cutting, all sort of industrial mechanisms now still and silent. The footsteps continue through here and to a sort of unwalled elevator or lift in the center of the room.

[Deathkeeper]

Inside a Wreck

Nick is not paying attention to the needler and is instead following the footsteps, and if the lift is still powered on will ride it to continue that path. Otherwise he might have to use his wings or try another path...

[ThirdEmperor]

[Outside Outside - King's Road]

Achka stumbles as the voice overtakes him, as the ashen world rises up in a thousand flecks dissolving to an ugly grit of gray where they tear past. His hooves falter on the bare, black ground, dragged forward by the words until he lands on his knees. Stamping his staff into the earth, the warrior pulls himself up again. The foul taste of the wasteland sticks to his tongue and his nostrils.

Another echo, dragging him on. "Aye, Achka! What's your's!?" He shouts, and the words blow back into his throat with a whirl of choking soot, coughing, lost in the great voice pulling him to the rusted gates. His protesting footsteps are dragged into a streak of mud.

An arm to his face, catching the bitter wind and its grit, Achka glances back to the driver. He yells something, blown away long before it ever reaches. The look and the crude motion he makes are enough.

And then the worst is passed, and the man can hear his own breath as he sucks in clean air, a hand landing on his chest as he's allowed to stop, feeling the terrified heaving beneath his fingers. Achka makes his own steps then, and they are slow ones. The blood has fled his knuckles where he grips the wooden staff, and he takes it in both, some small comfort as he heads into the darkness between the doors.

[Cyber Punk]

That hallway leads to a small empty room with bare slightly dusty shelves. It's littered with empty plastic boxes.

The spike does not easily move when pulled. Seems like there's a lot more of the thing under the floor.

[Inside a Wreck]

"Brother, see-saw!" Dixie calls out to Currant, who's currently scanning the hallway.
"Be right there!" He points at the room, then grabs two plastic boxes for future use. Are they portable?

Currant soon returns to his sister's side. "Pull the skeleton, Dixie." She nods and attempts to do so, while he himself runs over to the handle-less door and investigates it for any means of opening.

[Recaiden]

[Inside a Wreck]

The footsteps go to the lift, apparently to and from, actually, several times. There's still enough power to lift it up and down very slowly. Well, it will lift him down just fine. Up is not guaranteed.

The needler makes an excited sound and jumps onto the lift after Nick, the added weight dropping it an extra inch with a disturbing lurch. It descends into a room that can only be called cavernous. There aren't lights here, even emergency ones, and the place is a twisting labyrinth of boxes and beams and crates and cells and containers and hull plates, all crashed and fallen and jumbled. Looks like it was some sort of warehouse space? But if nothing else, it did take Nick down a considerable distance.

---

Sure are! Easily portable, actually. Not good for carrying anything big, but they even lock together when you stack them. Boxes!
The handleless door does not look like it's meant to open from this side. There's no visible means of doing so.

And the skeleton comes right off. Goes to pieces, it does.