07.17.2019 End of Line

End of Line
Arcadia helps Saskia fend off a data-creature.
Players	Saskia, Arcadia
Location	Abandoned underground parking lot.
Spheres	Mage

Continued in 7.19.2019 Override Protocol.

A low thrum is coming from the entrances of this parking lot, like the dull bass beat of an invisible rave. It thuds the air with pressure in waves, again, and again. Whump, whump, whump.

Whump, whump, whump.

Whatever it is, people on the street above don't seem to notice anything at all, they go about their night in blissful ignorance of the calamity about to unleash just under their feet (underground parking lot). From within, delving further into this strange abyss of absent motors comes a yelling German. Words cry out into the air, vibrating with a thrum of power. "...OMNIS IMMUNDUS SPIRITUS, OMNIS SATANICA POTESTAS..." A brief pause, "UHH- Shit head!" A sound of thrashing, "OMNIS INCURSIO INFERNALIS ADVERSARII!" They seem to forget the words mid-way through, but picks up the lost time rather quicky. Inside, Saskia is standing under the dim flickering light of a lamp- standing within an intricate marked circle of Solomon, sprayed on the ground with spray- paint. In one hand is held aloft her bastard sword, in her other is a strange looking rod etched with runes along the shaft. All her shouting is directed towards a creature about twenty feet away from her, something you can't quite put your eye on for more than a few moments before going cross- eyed. All abstract shapes and sizes, like a visual glitch, an artifact. It forms a vague human shape as Saskia shouts her invocations at it, and offers a response.

"BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT." It whines out like static, or a modem. "VZOOOOOORP- FLOOOOOP RUURHUHRUUUH." It throws up its arms, as lights start to burst and pop throughout the parking garage in a spray of sparks...

Cady steps off the bus as she realizes she's definitely not in the part of town she was hoping for. She sets her feet down with a sigh, and goes to find a bus stop at which the bus she was actually hoping to catch stops at. And then, there's the ominous thrum. Uninteresting at first, but as the sound increases ever so slightly in volume Cad y starts to get curious. She slips into a back alley to try and determine what the source of the signal is. She slides a hand along her forearm and her pupils dilate as the search algorithms run. A few moments pass and Cady snaps back to reality with a deep gasp and a couple of fervent blinks. She furrows her brow before stepping out of the alley to head towards an old parking garage.

She meticulously surveys the landscape of abandoned machinery as she delves deeper into the parking lot, taking each step with great caution. That is, until she hears yelling. She's fairly certain she recognizes that voice, and starts moving quicker towards the source of it. The light flickers to reveal Saskia, and Cady is initially confused before she hears the sounds of whatever creature it is that she's facing off against. "What the fuck are you doing here?!" She shouts, and it's unclear whether she's addressing Saskia or the creature. Her brow furrows as she's unable to focus on the thing in the distance, and she waggles her fingers as if warming up before setting her hands out in front of her as if there's a keyboard there. For Cady, of course, there is an actual keyboard there, and she executes a few quick keystrokes. Lines of diagnostics data flash across her periphery, and with her full attention focused on it she addresses Saskia without looking at her. "Okay. Bad news, we are probably gonna die unless we figure out where this thing's anchored at. Good news is, it's somewhere in here. Need to run more diagnostics, try not to die. Need to run more diagnostics." Her voice is cold and calculating as she processes the influx of data.

Saskia continues to call out her invocations of banishment, her Latin words given with her thick German accent fill the air. Apparently, with useless magic, as her words seem to have no visible effect other than to piss off the abstract data-creature. She continues to call out her banishment regardless, "Quem inferi tremunt! Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura-" Her words are cut short as the figure of Cady slips into the garage, and makes herself known. "WHAT!" She calls out over her shoulder, suprised and confused for a moment as another actor enters the stage. It throws off her invocation, and her attention. "Cady! What in zee' hells- UAGH!" She cries out, as the electric static zapping the light bulbs around the parking light reaches their crescendo. A blue-white bolt of crackling electricity arcs from one of the power lines, streaking straight towards Saskia in a flash of light. "UEGH!" As she throws up her sword as a lightning rod, the bolt CRASHES into the sword- dropping her rod in her left hand and latching both around the hilt of her sword as she strains to absorb the power. "SHICSEE!" She swears, as the data-creature cackles in binary from where it stands. Its arms, if you can call them arms, wave and glitch around in a circle- the being begins to flicker in and out of sight, but never seems to move from its spot.

Saskia, unfortunately, is unable to fully deflect the bolt. The energy becomes too much and overwhelms her defenses, and she is blasted clean off her feet and away from her protective circle. She flies directly into one of the concrete pillars beside Cady with a deafening crack, her skin wisping with smoke and her clothes all burned and busted up from the electric.

Her boots remain in the circle, absent feet. It literally blew her socks off.

"I was in the neighborhood." Cady says nonchalantly as she continues to study the data in front of her. Her eyes dart over to Saskia as she's flung off towards the concrete pillar, but she quickly returns to her number crunching. She hits return and suddenly there's a loud, screeching buzz that fills the parking lot. Hundreds of flashing red error messages pop up before her and she grabs her head in agony as she squints at the creature. Wiping away a bit of blood from under her nose with the sleeve of her shirt she looks back at Saskia again and cringes before moving towards the creature. "Okay, you fuck." She mutters as she extends a hand towards it. It lights up and emits a whirring sound which quickly rises in pitch as a bolt of energy is discharged from it. Perhaps hopeful it'd have a larger effect, Cady staggers a few steps backwards as her expression shifts to one of actual fear. "Shit. That's bad." She says slowly to herself as she continues backing away, tapping fervently at the display on her forearm.

The bolt of energy from Cady's sub-dermals streaks through the air, scoring a hit right in the center of this data-beast. It blasts away a little bit of its abstract form, pixels seem to de- rez around the middle and remain absent- the creature reforms itself around it and lets out a piercing screech. It does not seem to be able to move from its current spot, as much as it tries to, it looks like someone trying to run on the spot connected to the wall by a bungee cord. It lets out another machine code screech- and flickers like a refreshing screen.

It lashes out another arm, the power cables above crackle with electric- another bolt arcs out from above, streaking towards Arcadia...

Meanwhile, Saskia lays there slumped up against the pillar, her eyes wide, but still very much conscious and alert if not studded. Small wisps of smoke continue to dance off her exposed skin, a little charged in patches through her ruined clothes. "Lord damn it, that was-" She calls out, her hearing shot through as her voice is louder than usual. "Exhilarating!" She claims, blows out her cheeks and throws herself upwards and beside Cady. A singed hand snatches against a small circular talisman tied around her neck, it seems to be a necklace of miniature shields. It's all burned up and melted, and she snatches it off her neck to toss to the ground.

She blinks rapidly as Cady fires off her TECHNOSORCERY "Gott in himmel, Cady- You came just in... how you say, zee' nick of TIME?" She calls out, her eyes darting around the expanse to locate her sword. Oh, it's still in her hand, her fingers latched electric tight on it as the energy coursed through her nerves. "Vunderful." She breathes out a huff, and watches the creature through her azure eyes. "It's protecting something, I'm not sure what, it's giving off some bad juju- came up on my scrying map, I have NO idea what ziss' thing is. No creature of the Umbra zat' I know of... resistant to invocations of banishment." She huffs at the air, her chest heaving, muscles clenching. Quite annoyed.

Suddenly she throws up her free hand, her fingers weaving through the air in a mystical fashion. Her tongue chants words of power in Enochian, "ZET, PERUM!" She calls out, as she rushes forwards towards it. She uses her sword to etch a few quick markings on the ground in a semi-circle around the creature. It takes her only a few seconds before she's able to dart backwards. The glyphs she etches glow softly, and seem to diminish its electrical power.

Cady taps her forearm again to end the recording, now having a sample of the creature's vocals. The crackle from the power cable catches her attention, and she looks at it for long enough to tell it's bad news. Her fight or flight response kicks in, favoring flight pretty heavily as she sprints away from the cable just in time to avoid the arc of energy that springs from it. "It's probably not a coincidence..." She grumbles in response to Saskia before grimacing as she looks at the creature again. Moving a hand to tap her temple, her pupils dilate as her vision starts filling with various windows and terminals. "Let's see." She says as she uploads the vocal sample, decrypting it before using it along with another few input parameters to start scanning the repositories for what it could be. She remains motionless for a good few moments as the data compiles, but eventually there is a blip on one of the many virtual windows in front of her.

"Fuck. This should've been obvious." Her eyes finally refocus on the physical world and she blinks a few times as she readjusts. "Okay." She looks over at Saskia. "This is a CERBERUS V4.8 security protocol, third revision. Some idiot probably broke it not knowing what they were doing." She follows Saskia with her eyes as she darts off towards creature, wetting her lips as she notices where the holographic projectors are located.

"Alright, you see that big box of junk behind it? Not supposed to look like that." She looks up at a projector behind it, and her nose wrinkles as she once again starts typing on her virtual keyboard. "I think I got this." As she starts tapping away, a message in bright green monospaced letters starts typing itself in the air right by the projector.

FETCHING <...src/rotes/encode>

ROTE VERSION 2.3.1

BEGIN ENCODE TO <...dw/root/home>...

...ENCODE COMPLETE!

The projector disperses into ones and zeros, deconstructing itself bit by bit. After it's entirely gone, Cady staggers backwards, slowly massaging her temples as she watches the now projectorless data-creature.

"A cerber-WHAT!" Saskia calls out, abysmally perplexed. "From the dark Umbra?! Or Penumbra dimensions..." She mumbles to herself, trying to work it out as her sword is held aloft in a defensive posture. She watches over her wards on the ground, locking the creature into a Faraday cage to prevent any more electrical attacks zapping right at them. She steels herself regardless, even though she's still not fully sure of what this thing actually is- but she lets Cady take the lead, she seems to know what the metaphorical crack is. She takes a step back, and off to Cady's side, her sword lowering to cover the pair of them in a defensive arc. "...Do vat' you need to do then, technobabbler." She states with a serious tongue, and narrowed eyebrows. She does look quite ridiculous in this moment, her skin all marked with comical black burns- her clothes torn and shredded from the electrical blast.

"I see it, I see the box!" She calls out, pleased, "I'll blast it into the sixth dim-" She's about to say, but Cady is already tap tapping away.

The projector disperses thusly into a melting pot of one and zeros. The CERBERUS Sentry Program is not at all happy about the turn of events, it flickers, jolts and shutters- vanishing out of sight before recompiling about a hundred times in a futile effort to retain its manifestation. It screeches out, "ERROR- ERROR- PRIMARY SOURCE NOT FOUND. SCANNING. SCANNING." It cries in a piercing machine voice, "SOURCE NOT FOUND. //END OF LINE//." It reconstructs bit by bit, losing its form from top to bottom... until just a pair of feet are left. The voice continues, sharper, more desperate. "INITIATING FAILSAFE. INITIATING FAILSAFE. INITIATING FAILSAFEEEE-BBZZZZRRRZZZZT." It crackles, and splits apart into falling pixels. "TARGET ACQUIRED."

The last photons of its existence twist and twirl- streaking towards Cady through the air, flowing right into her and into her technology. The voice crackles out through her implants, "BZZZTT- INJECTING DEATH KNELL VIRUS." Cady would feel a sharp pain through her body, as her technology conflicts with the failsafe- and Cady's mind along with the remnants of the sentinel are transported into the Digital Web...

TO BE CONTINUED...

//END OF LINE//