[Player Log Start!]
[Log Holder: Lucky Paine]
[Level: 1, Sub-Level: 6 & 7]
Lucky had begun interrogating Burks as soon as possible.
“What do we do with him?” Tench asked, “We have to figure something out. And soon.”
“And how is my plan wrong?” She asked, turning around to seek support from Ben, “You are in agreement, yeah?”
Ben fidgeted uncertainly, “Uh… do you know how to torture someone?”
“Ben!” Tench cried, “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve heard it isn’t a very good way to get information from someone.” Ben explained, “And leaves permanent damage on a person.”
“Wow, could never have guessed.” Tench drawled, looking completely unimpressed by this information, “That’s why it’s called torture.”
“Is there a plan you had for extracting information?” Lucky interjected, “Maybe a better form of torture?”
Ben’s eyes lit up, “Have you heard of waterboarding?” Lucky hadn’t heard of it, but it interested her. Though the idea of where they were meant to procure this water was of mild concern to her. How effective was this method? Immediately she was burning with a hundred questions.
“Ben. No. Please.” Tench whispered, “You’re better than this.”
“Fine, fine.” Ben sighed, “Besides, he looks just about ready to piss himself. Maybe he’ll spill everything no torture necessary?” Her gaze went past Lucky and towards the chair behind her, where Burks had been belted down, looking terrified.
The second the attention moved back to him, he nodded frantically, “Yes, oh, absolutely. Tell you everything, no trouble. Just like how I said in the start, right?”
“I don’t believe you.” Lucky told him plainly. He flushed with color, though whether from indignancy or guilt, it was uncertain.
“You take me for a liar?” He scoffed, “I would never!”
“So, tell me, how did you end up stranded in Wayside?” Ben asked, “He’s been reticent about the details of that interaction.”
Oh, she’s good. That was a very good ploy. Burks couldn’t know how much they knew, and the temptation to change the events of his greatest embarrassment should be strong. It was a perfectly spun trap. Lucky was in awe of this woman.
“Uhh… well…” Burks struggled to summon up the words, “That is to say…”
“We’re waiting.” Lucky tilted her head towards where one of her pointier legs was.
He gulped, “It was an assignment.” He blurted out, “Developers usually just let us do whatever we want, but this time, they sent me an assignment pointing me towards Eleanor Monroe.”
Ben jumped slightly at the name, “Eleanor Monroe? You know her? What happened to her.”
“I don’t know.” Burks croaked, “Please. I swear. Maybe one of the others know, but for how buddy buddy they keep us, they don’t really want us talking about our work to each other.”
“Wow, toxic work environment. You should unionize.” Ben noted, “But, whatever, keep going about Jared and what you were doing with Eleanor.”
“Right…” Burks nodded, arms wriggling in their restraints, but they were unshakeable and he had to abandon that attempt, “See, the thing is that I was simply supposed to check up on her. This was after the world ended. Roiland led that one, created a big splash. One of our most effective apocalypses, if I had to guess.” Lucky curled her lip at his nonchalant way of speaking, and he quickly got back on track, “So, here’s the thing. The woman? She isn’t there anymore. We’ve been keeping an eye on her before this, so we had a good handle on her movements, but this wasn’t just a disappearance because the entire world has been razed to the ground. She’s just gone.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” Ben asked. Lucky wanted to ask why exactly she was so obsessed with this woman, but she held back that thought. Best to present a united front. People like Burks thrived off any perceived discord.
“It means she wasn’t in that Realm.” Burks replied, “And she didn’t use System Consoles, corrupted or otherwise, to make the jump. I could have found her, I think. Looked through all the Realms being controlled by the System one by one, it isn’t hard, but then- that was the boy came. Jared Caliber.”
There we go. The meat of the story.
“I should’ve seen what was coming.” Burks shuddered, his eyes a hundred miles away, “He had eyes like the Devil, even with such little power at his disposal. He got me to play a game of cards with him.”
“The child.” Tench took that moment to interject, looking bewildered, “He must have been, what, thirteen?”
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“Have you seen little children? They’re creepy as fuck!”
“You’re meant to be destroying the world or something, aren’t you?”
“And you can see how good that’s going, huh?” He gestured around him, “Wow. So much destruction.”
“I do not believe now is the time to be making light of the situation. And I mean this to all of you.” Lucky frowned, making sure to capture the other two under the light of that gaze.
“Sorry.” Ben quickly apologized, “I just… lost track. Sometimes you gotta crack wise, or lose your sanity. Those are the only options.”
“I can give you another option if you’re not willing to shut up.” She promised them.
They both pales and shook their heads. Lucky leaned back into her chair with a self-satisfied grin, “Continue, Burks.”
Burks shook his head helplessly, “What more is there to say? I’m sure you’ve understood all of it. We played cards. I lost. And, during that time, I took off my jacket because of how hot it was. Next thing I knew, he was running off with it, and all the valuables inside it.”
“Including your Console and Compulsion Card.” Lucky concluded, “You need to stop putting it in the outside pockets. Get something more discreet.”
“How are you people figuring out my secret?” He swore, “No one should know to look for these things at all! I shouldn’t be having to avoid set dressing NPCs in the first place.”
“Sometimes we get convenient caches of information to be able to make educated decisions for ourselves.” Lucky snapped, before reality hit her. Of course, Jared had to have had an informant. Just like they had had. Who was it? Where did they go? What did they hope to accomplish by bringing Jared into the fold like this?
Unfortunately, none of these were answers Burks was likely to know the answer to. They had to pick out something that he could actually respond to. And none of that was coming to their mind. Lucky sighed, shifting her spiderchair, wincing as they jostled her knees in their rocking back and forth in an effort to get her to the door.
“Where are you going?” Tench asked, worriedly.
“Outside.” Lucky laughed bitterly, “Need some fresh air. And space.”
“I’m sure we’ve got a fresh batch of air in the making.” Ben told her, only half-joking, and wow, wasn’t that upsetting? Lucky nodded and bid her adieu, backing away into the tunnels, which for all their tendency to clank and echo, at least pressed down on her, warming her up with the comfort that no one could sneak up on her in this space.
She wished that she could say that it didn’t require much thought to drift over to the exit, but that was a lie. Puppeting more than eight legs independently to help her climb took an outrageous amount of brainpower. No matter how much she practiced, the act of walking would never not require constant thought and presence.
But, she was not mentally all there during her short journey, she could admit that freely. She was too focused on this story that she couldn’t help that she was intruding on. What else was she supposed outside of this? When she was no longer [Party(Main)]’s trusted Tracklands Guide, and instead had to venture forth on her own power.
What would she do then? Where was she supposed to go?
Ever since the Game had started for her, she hadn’t been given an Objective of any sort. No ‘Save the World’, no ‘Become the Apocalypse’, just nothing. That missing plot point itched at her brain. What could it mean for her? For the path she would have to take?
She looked at the tablet in the pocket of one armrest, her reflection prominent on the blank screen. Her hand shifted towards the rosary kept wound on one side of the armrest. Please, someone help her understand where she needed to be.
The exit door was approaching, and if she wanted to open it, it had to be before she got too close, otherwise the claws wouldn’t have the space to open it. But she didn’t. Just cramped right up close to the tiny window, and looked out into the wasteland where the tiny army they had amassed worked hard to establish this Safe Zone.
A dream that resonated just as much as it had with Lucky herself, because it was so unheard of. Having the freedom to simply exist with people without worrying what everyone was demanding from them, or what would have to be sacrificed for every moment of reprieve, it was a dream to them. The Tracklands were a place that forced one to make themselves indispensable to the people higher up, to play down your struggles and your pain for the comfort of them. And the ones who shunned that system, were shunned in return.
They’d all experienced that treatment. And this offer, to make the system they envisioned from the ground up, it was the dream for them all. The perfect rallying cry.
And Lucky was just sitting inside, letting it happen. Genevieve’s smarmy face flashed across her mind, and she ran her hands over the controls, backing the chair away to get the chair open. Quickly clamping on her oxygen mask before a single wisp could get near her, she marched outside on her little skittering spider-legs.
She made a beeline for the largest support beam in the area. Coincidentally, it was also the one with the most kids were gathered around. Funny how that worked out. They all looked up when the shadow fell over their sight.
“Lucky!” Melinda exclaimed, “What’re you doing out here? I thought you were working on our machinery inside?”
“I was.” Lucky confirmed, “I just wanted to check something out before I did that. Could you move to the side? This might save a lot of time in the building process.” The kids nodded, quickly parting ways and giving her easy access to the thick metal pillar. She laid her right hand on it, closing her eyes as she pressed down, pretending that she was checking the firmness of the spire. What she was actually sensing was something completely different, and a lot more wondrous.
[Applying Mechanical Affinity!]
It was like a switch had been flipped. Like someone had installed one of her prized suctions into her, and now all her floaty insides were being sucked out, and sent… where? She cracked her eyes to solve that mystery. In front of her was the brightest white light she had ever seen, emanating from her hands.
The light was crawling over the walls, over large metallic structures which were rising up from the main spire, building on top of one another in a terrifying fractal of cogs and arches and spires. There were a thousand shifting patterns, enough to drive a man crazy from making connections, all lined by those blistering lights that originated from their hands and traveled through the entire metal structure.
Then, the light dulled, leaving them trapped in the dark dome, with only one exit left, a door framed with large swooping swirls, topped off with a giant golden clock that ticked forward.
“Woah.” Everyone whispered, looking up at the giant dome they were standing in.
“Lucky, how’d you do that?” Melinda asked, looking close to tears.
Lucky smiled to themself, “With a gift.” They explained, moving to cover their tablet with a hand.
They were powerful after all. And could fight anything off. The Harbingers should watch out, because Burks wasn’t the only person she could destroy anymore.
If only she could get a handle on how these powers were supposed to work. But then, she was gunning for them. All of them.
[Player Log End!]