Track 05: Color
A scream cut through me and vibrates everything around me. Glass shatters and objects too light and too close to the edge fall off every surface. It chills me to the bone and cuts me to the quick. There’s genuine pain in that lament. Like a grieving roar. What kind of creature could make that sound? It’s a completely inhuman sound slathered in completely human emotions. Grief. A wave of grief. My eyes well up with tightly held back tears. Some part of it has moved me and I have no idea what that is.
Us. Quick and curt, there’s a break in the communication like he’s done talking. Your distraction gave us the means to take out a target, and now they’re blind to us. We can now move with impunity.
The Sleeper. They are a powerful psychic species who sends out pulses of psionic energy to locate all sentient creatures in an area; They need to be kept cold or the gasses in their body will expand and end up exploding.
Yup. The self satisfied energy filters through the connection. The fact that he’s oddly proud reminds me that I don’t know the person sitting in my head at all really and they could be a sociopath.
The world shakes below me again as I leave the sound studio. I hear stomping, roiling masses below. Danger coming to find me. A chill runs up my spine.
Yeah… That’s why you got to meet up with the others ASAP.
Hold.
It’s thunder now, as the volume rises as it gets closer and closer. I can hear it coming down the hall. It’s right behind the double doors. I can pick out each individual footfall. There’s so many. The grunts and roars, gurgles and fwumps. A cacophony of miscellaneous, menacing sounds.
Hold
Double doors at the end of the hall burst open, smashing the doors off their hinges. Black mist spreads out before every nightmare ever conceived. Churning fog chokes out light and even the heavy LED bulbs flicker like old fluorescents. The cold only seems to get colder and condensation collects on every metal surface and begins to drip down.
Baba Yaga, Slenderman, the monster under your bed. I think I even see Cthulhu, all arrayed, waiting for a chance to pounce, stalking me from the shadows. I can hear the blood in my ears and feel my chest tighten. They’re waiting for me to be afraid. I see the terror in this. The Cold dredging up from some long frozen grave. It wants me to run. They want to use that against me. I’m stronger than that... But I could still use that backup.
“They’re only constructs. They’re only constructs.” I say to myself, trying to be my own hype person. I pull two CDs from the Meteormaker 67 and I slide into a fighting stance. Time to stand and fight. I’m not gonna run.
They’re here… Kohl says in a creepy way, aping of that one movie I forget the name of.
Out of the gloom, something sparkles, cutting pinpricks into in it. A glimmer, then a glow, a shine, and then a miraculous flash! Multicolored rainbow lights rend the darkness and something the size shape of a person slows and stops before me.
As my eyes adjust slowly to see, the shape of the person in front of me begins to come into focus. Wreathed in a corona, a young black person stands with a head full of dancing light spun into curls which were currently flowing around their head, oscillating with rainbow colors. As if there was a constant head wind, their hair moves in ways that are incongruent in any place other than video games. Their eyes are a luminous blue, which changes like their hair but always choosing a compliment as they look around, glowing from within.
The fact they are wearing actual clothes didn’t escape my attention either. Jeans, glorious jeans, and worn in T-shirt with the Thundercats logo on it. Glowing gloves stood out on their light brown skin. Their psylink was a simple black circlet that they wear more like a headband pushing back their hair, and of course, wearing Jordan’s. It’s official. This was the flyest nigga in the apocalypse.
“Hey Composer,” they dodge as a tentacle sweeps out toward him from behind, jumping over it and sending a blast of light back at it. “I’m Neon. Agender. Groovy to meet you.”
The calvary has arrived! Kohl cheers.
“H-hey.” It’s weak. I know it is. They know it is. The weird nightmare constructs back there, know it is too. I am just floored by the look of them. Someone who just doesn’t seem human.
“Wanna take the creep squad out and link up with our third musketeer?” Neon says.
“So what do you do?” I say, weapons ready.
“This!” Neon gets into a runner’s stance. The glow comes from inside them, starting low in their feet and rises through their body. Like a starting gun that no one else hears goes off and Neon has gone off like a rocket. Blazing through the dark, the gauntlets fire off light darts into the mass of nightmares. The light darts shoot out from their gauntlets. “I got these off an alien I took out early. Think it was one of those Kaveski, tiny little dudes. Turns out that guy didn’t know what he had. I snapped it up, and the RNG gods told me it was a growth weapon. How cool is that?!”
Dart
Ability Type: Mutable/Ranged/
Dream Cost: 3
Level 1: Shoot a small missile. Dart is a vehicle for certain types of poisons, acids, diseases, toxins, and potions. When this attack hits, apply the secondary effect. Damage. 1-4
“That’s so cool!” I follow up their attacks with my spawning Beat after Beat in to the fray tagging the same targets they hit. The old witch sent dark bolts of energy, which I dodge while sending out my spell, too. I cast Shot, super charging one of my Beats with a brilliant red glow. It makes a beeline for the old witch part. Splitting her in half at the chest and sending it further into the rest of the Stygian mass, blowing apart tentacles, savaging the monsters behind her.
I watch as Neon runs up the wall, a trail of dazzling light following in the wake of them until they’re running on the ceiling. Each step of the way they rain down small flechettes of lumens as they get closer, twin light daggers appear in both hands. At the top of their arch, they spin like a tornado and dive into the mess of fears. Each tries to leave their general area and avoiding their light, but it’s inevitable. Neon fights like a dancer, like all movement is effortless. Every movement is perfectly choreographed. It gives me an idea.
Arms: Energy Weapon
Ability Type: Power-up/Energy
Dream Cost: 4
Level 1: Create a weapon using your energy. This weapon lasts until you fall unconscious or the day is over. This weapon is a one handed weapon and must be modeled after a weapon you’ve seen before.
Kinetic Fighting
Ability Type: Kinetic/ Melee
Dream Cost: 3
Level 1: Melee attack with Force damage. 1-6
“Time the up the tempo.” Each projectile accompanied by a note, and we were really improvising. I could feel our minds connect to Kohl, and somehow that let me know exactly what they were going to do next. In between their moves and in the holes of their vicious offense, I blast, throwing musical destruction.
A beast looking like the combination of an eagle and raptor, with talons outstretched, is about to lacerate Neon from behind. I intercept by sending one her way and following up another two directed at her beak. They hit, giving Neon an opening. Seeing it off-balance, they swivel backwards for a coup de grâce.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see something move and when I turn my head to look, and see a black tentacle running across the ground. I pull out a chakram and just as I’m about to throw another tentacle snakes out of my blind spot wrapping around me, breaking my concentration. It constricts. The full weight of this creature crushes around me. My health points drop one after another. 11, 10, 9… My HP just keeps dropping. I struggle against it though, I can’t get enough breath even to sing. It flips me upside down so all the blood rushes to my head. 6, 5, 4… HP still dropping.
“N-Neon!” I gasp, the last of my air calling out to them.
“Oh, shit!” Neon dashes over, givin the juke to the werewolf and a spin move off of slenderman. In one blink, they are right in front. Slamming their light daggers together to make a short sword. The other black tentacle reaches out to grab them. Waiting until the last minute slashing the tentacle holding me and flipping over the one who was going to jump them in one fell swoop. I fall and I try not to fall on my head, so I rotate a bit in the air by shifting my body weight. I don’t end up fall smoothly and land on my hands and knees gasping for breath.
With only one point added to reflexes, it seems to help me a little. I am not a parkour athlete, it just seems to give me a better idea about how my body works and letting me understand the space around me. The way Neon moves, they must have a bunch of points in it as well as whatever gives them that super speed. I wonder what kind of build he’s going for. I mean definitely high attack stats and high mobility, so maybe a rouge or another skirmisher of some type. With my build tending towards mage, we’re doing a lot of DPS. What we need is a tank or a healer. I look at my hit points on my Heads Up Display. Definitely a healer.
It’s a construct aberration. They have a core. If you can get there, you can end it in one hit.
As I pick myself off the ground, the pain in my ribs tells me they’re broken. Just by the movement, I know I have bruises all over. “Goddamn it! It hurts!”
“You got any juice still?”
“No, I’m nearing empty.”
“I got something for that.” Neon flips a coin-sized tablet at me. “It’s roughly translated to being called a wake-me-up. Put it under your tongue.”
“Am I about to take alien meth?”
“Do you want to die instead?”
I put the tablet under my tongue and I felt like I woke up from the best nap with… broken ribs, but beggars can’t be choosers. Long, deep breath. I winch at the pain. Slapping my face.
“Neon? Let’s fuck this son of squid up!”
I bring out Twin Beat and boost it using Shot, and I prime Echo.
Neon nods “Right in front of you, mate!” Neon slaps both of their hands together and sends an arm thick blast of light and the moment that finished following it up, making a sword and charging within them. Neon blasts a hole into the mass of it, completely afraid of the ray of light. For a second, I saw it, a tight wad of shadow built in response, a fleet of tentacles fly out to restrain him. Twin takes out two and while neon squares off against the rest. Echo slides past him and straight into the core.
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Once hit, the core sucks everything back in like a black hole. “Get Down!” I yell. As the core bulges and bucks trying to keep itself together. And for a second it settles down, just until it explodes. A geyser of black smoke and black ichor churns upward, painting the ceiling in pitch black.
“That sucked.” Neon says.
“Agreed.” I say
Yeah, I’m so glad I didn’t have to deal with that.
Neon and I look at each other and burst out laughing.
After everything pixelates away, floating in the air, there’s a CD. It twinkles there, calling to me. I know what it is without seeing one before. It’s more that a fragment. It’s a full enchantment. I walk over, feeling the pull of it vibrate within me. I reach out my hand to pick it up. Snapping into movement, it goes to my reaching hand, passes through it into me.
Congratulations, You have defeated Nightmare Construct Aberration!
5 EXP
Congratulations Enchanter!
You have collected your first true enchantment:
Dark Blade.
The Dark Blade Enchantment allows the user to add Shadow Magic to their attacks. This gives a -X to the target’s Reflex, making your deceptive attack easier to hit.
X= Power Rank
Current Rank: 1
Dark Blade sounds so cool and it will only get stronger as I get stronger. Being able to hit fast opponents will be a lot easier. I will admit I would like something more on the level of Twin but, I’m sure something like that would be way more powerful than I’m likely to find at level one. The fact it’s scalable is interesting. I wonder if all true enchantments are scalable.
“It’s a pretty cool enchantment. I just don’t think it’ll work well with your abilities.”
“That sucks,” Neon shrugs. “I don’t really have a weapon or anything to enchant, anyway.”
“Those gauntlets are badass, though.” I beam. “And your speed?! Holy shit! You’re a whole badass!”
“I just got lucky with the powers they gave me. It can’t do anything against some people but, I’m pretty happy with it.” They look down at the gauntlets and himself. “Who’d thunk? From partier to The Flash. Anyway, there’s other shit to worry about. Like if that’s a preview of what we’re gonna keep facing over here, then we might be in trouble, just the two of us.”
“I agree. Hope we level up soon cause that was fucked up. I need a movement ability or something. If I had something to get me out of danger like you do, then I’d be able to avoid being captured like that.”
“I also got tagged a lot more than I should have. Maybe something to help me dodge or something? Or a perception ability.” Neon says.
“We should get going. I think once they realized we got past what they have here, they’ll send something pretty potent.” I say looking around.
We’re making our way back down to the seventh floor. Neon says we have to get to Freeman Hall, the Engineering wing of the Sciences building. Making it all the way from the fifteenth floor took a while picking the most out of the way places possible. We were nowhere near any of the other patrolling Dominance. Kohl did the best he could. We still had a few skirmishes.
If you come across any syringes that look like they have cherry soda in it, that’s probably it. They’re not quite magical health potions, they’re called Nanos. Cause they have nanobots in them that help stitch up your insides.
Yeah, they were used on you during your examination. Me as well. Don’t worry about them staying inside you. Your body will get rid of them as soon as they’re done doing their job.
You’ll pass them like kidney stone accept much, much smaller. You’ll hardly notice.
We made it to Freeman Hall; the words hanging over the doorway it was just as state-of-the-art as the rest of the school and just as empty oddly though compared to the others it was completely dark. There were no LED lights and none of the floating screens were activated. It’s another ghost town.
“Do you want me to go ahead?” Neon asks. They are moving from foot to foot. They must be antsy now that things are moving at such a slow pace. “See if I can’t find him?”
“I’d be worried about you getting it a fight you couldn’t win alone. If anything came after you like the aberration and we’d be down a skirmisher.” I smile, trying to lessen the blow. “And if I’m completely selfish… I’m still not doing well and with everything going on, I don’t want to die.”
“Let me scout ahead. I can see if I can find a few Nanos to top you off.” They put their hands on my shoulder.
“O-okay, just come back. We’re not supposed to split the party.”
Neon creeps along the wall, turns a corner, quickly vanishing out of sight.
I prop myself in a chair by a floating screen. I try interacting with it, but it’s completely dead. Why is this the only place dead like this? Did someone cut the power? I get up, looking at the fire exit with a rough blueprint telling people where to go. If they upgraded to using solar cells, then the battery should be in a space like this. I tap a spot close to the end where a room was probably the size of a power depot. Something is happening here and I think the best idea is to check the battery.
I walk heel to toe to avoid making any noise. I don’t even hear the sound of air conditioning and now that I notice it, there’s no air anymore. It used to be frigid, now it’s almost hot. I’m actually sweating. I almost wish whoever decided to up the temp left the thermostat at spring day instead of Virginia summer.
When I get to the power room, the door is ajar and the electric lock has already been cracked. The screen is the only thing lit up, scrolling with broken code and flashing endless strings of binary. I reach out cautiously and turning the knob, making sure to it makes no noise, letting myself in.
The power room was a large, high-ceilinged room filled with liquid-cooled, crystalline servers 12ft tall. Translucent wires ran along the floor and ceiling leading to an eight foot tall solar battery, glowing softly in the dark room. It’s beautiful in a manufactured sort of way.
“I find myself… interested in your primitive race…” A smoke and ash voice slithers out of the gloom.
Fuck! Kohl’s voice slides into my head after it’s been so quiet I almost forgot he was there. Out of the dim light comes a snake woman holding a very large load in her right arms. Long, lithe body and gray-green scales come to a face shaped like an arrow. Her tongue darts out as she looks me over. Her chest is covered in white, armored chest plate that has a few blinking lights and a panel.
“Foul, Disrupters, must your kind always come out of the woodwork when we finally get things up and running.” She hisses her S’s and rolls her R’s, making for an interesting sound. As she comes out of the gloom, I see her holding the unconscious Neon. The color has completely drained from their hair, making it a snow-white. Seeing them still was a completely new thought, even though he’d only known him for like an hour.
“Who are you?”
“Vessel Caracour Elontra.” She preens “I found your little hummingbird flitting about. Naughty, Naughty. I wonder what he was up to, sneaking around and getting into my things.” Each word tingles down my spine, like an old untamed fear I didn’t know I have. “You, it’s so wonderful to see you awake. The studies I did on you, Composer, showed me just how true Aquilan’s assertations were. You were a fascinating test subject. Too bad I must kill you now.” She tosses Neon at my feet and pulls out this water gun looking pistol with a noxious looking green liquid sloshing in.
I hear Neon’s voice in my head. Kohl must be transferring it through our connection. Out of the corner of my eye, their body twitches, hands moving in excruciatingly slowly towards me. I resolve to keep her busy and attention on me.
“Aquilan, is she the person everyone is so afraid of?”
“Yes, you’re very lucky. It’s only me that gets to take you apart.” She smiles a long, cruel smile. “If it was her, you’d be screaming for days and days. And when you could scream no more, she’d make you watch everyone you know die screaming for days and days for it all to end. She is not the forgiving type.”
“So The Sleeper was important to her?”
“Ha!” she cackles, savoring the pain she’s inflicting just by her words. “You killed her mate.” As I hear those words, my stomach drops and my chest gets tight. Holy fuck!
“T-then that scream?” I feel the lance of a hypodermic needle in my leg. I cough to cover the grunt of pain. The press of the plunger makes my eyes water. That hurts.
“That was but the opening salvo.” The mirth is plain on her face. Reveling in the discomfort and fear on my face.
Now I’m not a good actor and I can’t cry on command or anything, thankfully I don’t need an Oscar worthy performance. She has me freaked out. The thought of whatever shook the entire building in her anguish, definitely has me shook. I drop my hands to the side to activate my inventory and as my hand goes behind my back, it’s full of Dark Blade enchanted beats.
“There’s no need to worry any longer. She levels the sloshing gun at me and pulls the trigger. I hesitate. Remembering what happened before. The gunshot that ended my whole life.
Just as I was about to get a face full of rotting green gas. A body transposes itself between me and the gas. Looking up, I see a beautiful form and a badass shield.
Neon’s Stats so far
Level 1 (Rank 1)
HP: 11
Dream: 11 (Currently 5)
Will: 2
Reflex: 4
Creativity: 1
Talent: 1
Power: 2
Durability: 1
Neon’s Abilities So Far
Skills:
Super Speed
Knowledge:
Utilities:
Arms: Energy Weapon
Damage: 1-6 added damage
Special Attacks:
Dart
Damage 3-6
Kinetic Fighting
Damage 3-8
With Elemental weapon 4-14
Neon’s Inventory
Weapons
Light Gauntlets (Tier 1)