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anaplasiamemes2025-02-25 04:05 pm
anaplasiamod) wrote in anaplasiamemes2025-02-25 04:05 pm
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test drive meme 《 1
「INTRO」
【 CW 〗
Prompt 1: mild mouth and teeth trauma, viral zombies, waterlogged skin, risk of infection
Prompt 2: petrification, shatter damage, npc death
Prompt 3: corpses, gore, corpse puppetry, decapitation, spiders (sort of, think spider/crustacean)
Prompt 4: corpses, chest trauma, spider-like dead creatures, implied fatal parasitism
Everyone comes to Uruk the same way. A void-like portal appears and a cage of metallic goo springs forth from it, dragging you through a dark abyss. For the briefest moment, you catch a glimpse of the impossible, the void between worlds, somehow colorless, somehow devoid of light and dark. For a brief moment, you see a strange black spot in the distance. Then, looming up close, a massive dark structure.
Then...darkness. Cold.
You suddenly wake to the sound of blaring klaxons. This area of the city still has warning alarms - not every area does. This particular section of the city looks more like the internal area of a ship or space colony than some other sections of the city do.
A run-down derelict ship, that is. With rusty grates in places, cords dangling from exposed conduits, access panels askew. Only some of the light panels are functioning. Others are flickering ominously - or entirely dead. Some of the hatch-like doors are broken open entirely, smashed inward by something strong. Others are shut solidly - though they can possibly be pried open. Others keep trying to slam shut over and over but can't because of debris in the way.
Smeared handprints in a suspicious red-brown are visible on some walls and doors and there are some places where brown-red stains are smeared along the floors.There is legit a thing called color theory.
Something crawls under your skin. Metal is threaded through your flesh, clamped onto your spine. A strange metallic suit ripples over your skin, alien and almost alive.
The sound of the klaxons turns off, though the ambient red lighting still flashes from the lights that are still functional. In front of you is a strange little alcove, ripped off from a location that was transposed into this place, a covered dugout-type area with benches. They're covered in weapons. You'll have your choice from bladed weapons, blunt weapons, bows and quivers, and projectile small arms.
Better lock and load. You're on an express elevator to hell, going down.
ISHTAR
An AI figure projects from a janky projector, four-armed, her teal skin and eyes glowing. The image flickers and warps occasionally and the sound crackles but stays steady.《Congratulations! You've been chosen as a potential Vesper, a prospective agent of the city of Uruk. I am Ishtar, an artificial intelligence, here to guide you! You've been provided useful augmentations, including a universal translator and an environmental suit called an Enki suit.》Her voice is far too chipper for the situation, more like a summer camp counselor or a customer service agent than a stoic superintelligence.《Your Enki suit will be particularly useful. For now, it will offer full environmental protection when it detects dangerous conditions in your environment. In the future, if you're chosen as an agent of Uruk, you'll have far more conscious control. You'll also find that you've been given a helpful colored jersey.》They're extremely cheap mesh, in either red or blue for each person. She got the idea for the jerseys after finding an entire high school displaced to the city. From now on, any new arrivals to her "tests" will always wear them so everyone will know who's new.《You and other prospective Vespers will all be rated on your performance. The team color that performs best under test conditions will be given a special reward! I've learned from systems I've scraped that in some worlds, it's called a "piz-za party"!》She pronounces it "piz-zuh."《Good news! Right now, while your bodies are in flux from residual dimensional resonance, I'll also be able to revive you from death an unlimited number of times! While this won't be possible in all circumstances in the future, for now, barring unique conditions that I specify in situ, I'll be able to bring you back from the brink of mortal oblivion as many times as you need.》There's a pop noise, and a sound byte of a bunch of excited kids calling out "Yaaaay!" Holographic confetti flies up around her, a random bit of fun she found on a random displaced computer system. It's festive! That makes everything better, right?《To avoid skewing test results, please try your best not to die. The city of Uruk thanks you for your cooperation! I look forward to working with you!》
PROMPTS
1 【 WATER IS PATIENT 〗
The area you're in is strangely wet, the humidity high, water dripping down walls in places. It doesn't seem like it's excessively moldy. It's just moist everywhere; curiously, the water damage seems new.《Urgent! It is critical that you pay attention at this time. You are now approaching a pandemic isolation area. The intruders here are infected with an unfamiliar and highly contagious pathogen, and through unknown methods of fusion, they can issue large amounts of infectious fluids from their bodies. I am currently unable to cure or revive someone who is infected with this virus, so suit integrity must be maintained at all times. Sterilizing suit patches have been provided, but they must cover a perforation in the suits within 5 seconds of a suit breach or you will succumb.》When you turn the corner, there they are. The irises of their eyes are unnaturally light, bright eyes seemingly seeing nothing. Their skin glistens with constant clammy moisture. Their mouths are all wrong; the lips and the skin around their mouths waterlogged and cracked like gator scales. That's probably because of the water constantly spilling over black teeth down their fronts to the floor. The water never ends; it just keeps pouring from their mouths endlessly, like they're forever drowning.
They are forever drowning. They will always be forever drowning.
They seem to be messing with what are probably water pipes, recessed into a wall, movements a staccato of clumsiness, yet filled with purpose. With instinct.
They have only one instinct: to spread. To infect.
When they realize they're not alone, they all turn as one. They see people to infect, people that might interfere, and all start to arm themselves with whatever is on hand, as if they have experience with the challenge of bypassing the Enki suits - something that should be no shock when a few of them are wearing torn suits, sometimes with helmets that cause the water from their mouths to pool inside before cascading out through cracks and shattered visors. They know that to break into the suits, they must be gouged open, cut, that helmets must be broken.《They are called the Flood. They have a biological imperative to infect others. There are failsafes, permanent cut offs to the city's water systems, that must be engaged to quarantine the water supply of this section, or they will spread infected water to your prospective habitation area - and to the habitation areas of other survivors.》There are innocent people out there apparently - or might be. An admission she'd prefer to keep closer to the vest, but she needs help and everyone needs to know the stakes.《You have holographic map systems that will guide you to the failsafe cut offs. They must be stopped - at all costs.》Not an easy prospect. Even if you find the rooms on your holographic maps, the water main failsafes have complicated shut off instructions, with lots of handles to turn. The door seals of the rooms also won't last long under a barrage of high pressure water before shorting out.
The infected are also near close to dead so bullets will barely do anything to them. Much greater damage is necessary to take them down. And as more appear around another corner, it's clear this small group isn't alone. There is a swarm in here with you. And while they're uncoordinated, when they break into a run, they're extremely fast.
The ones that don't arm themselves with weapons like crowbars, knives from nearby habitation areas, or jagged broken pipes, turn and hold up their hands, water gushing forth from them as if shooting from a firehose. Your suit's helmet automatically forms just in time. The force of the water is almost enough to knock you off your feet.
It's extremely apparent that if you develop a single tear in your suit, a single crack in your helmet, the water will find its way in and if it does, it takes just a single. Tiny. Drop.
Water is patient, after all. Water just waits. Wears down the cliff tops, the mountains. The whole of the world. Water always wins.
2 【 HEART OF STONE 〗
It's too late to save her. It's already too late, the minute you lay eyes on her. A young woman, dressed in a mix of clothing - an Enki suit, like yours, but also other threadbare clothing over top, like a tattered utility vest, a tool belt with various tools.
She's already dead the second she runs into view up ahead, nearly skidding as she tries to take the corner into the hall you're in.
"Oh gods! Oh gods no!" Something lurches into view, its form roiling with uncertainty, moving like out of control springs tightly coiled together. It looks only like the idea of a human, if the idea were held in the mind of some unearthly being, shifting like water.
The saddest part is it doesn't even catch her body, her vest, or even her wrist. She has a large wrench still held in her hand - a weapon she didn't want to relinquish, not in this section plagued with threats. Perhaps she was even trying to reach the water main shut offs, coming at the problem of the Flood from another direction, sent from some other place in this vast city. The humanoid shape catches hold of the wrench and instantly a strange effect spreads through the wrench up to her arm. First the wrench rusts and dissolves into dust. She drops it as her hand starts to blacken and change, hardening into something rough, hard, and flaky. Her fingers curl up like a dead spider and then freeze in place.
She still staggers away from the being, even though distance won't save her now. It's still reaching towards her, grasping for her, but even if it doesn't touch her again, it's already over.
She screams in agony and terror as her body transforms, in places seemingly doing it from the inside out now, blackening, flaking, as her flesh turns into black carbon. She staggers with stiffening legs.
She sounds young. She looks young. 18 at most.
"Help me! I don't want to die!" she sobs when she see you. "I don't want to die! I don't want to -"
But it's too late. Her face is frozen in a rictus of terror as she staggers, trips on frozen legs. Her eyes are unfrozen just long enough to widen in horror at her mistake - at the fact her own momentum has doomed her even faster. She's leaning too far forward, her body weight on a leg that can no longer support her. It snaps above the knee and she goes down. The last thing that changes are her eyes, wild with terror, fixed on the floor that's rapidly coming to meet her.
She shatters when she hits the floor, into dust and pieces that look like charcoal, enough volume to fill the human body. The second she does, the creature that grabbed her suddenly blips out of existence.
But more of them are coming, rounding the corner into the hallway. They don't have eyes but if they did, they'd be locked onto you.
Fighting them isn't impossible but it'll takes a great deal of damage to make them finally break down, and after seeing how even just touching the wrench caused the girl to be consumed, it's perhaps unwise to hit them with any object you're still holding on to.
They don't talk, they simply reach out for you, break into a sprint with legs that never tire.
One of them is yours. One of them is meant to be your shadow. Dragging you into the dark. Together.
They were made for you.
As you move in the hallways around you, you'll find mounds of charcoal and dust, sometimes in the vague shapes of arms and heads. Sometimes there are two broken columns sticking up off the floor with a shattered mess of charcoal in front of them.
Depending on the stances of the victims, it seems that sometimes the lower legs miraculously stayed upright when the attached bodies broke off and shattered.
3 【 BAD TRAVELING 〗
The journey through the halls isn't exactly a fun one when there's so much uncertainty and it's about to get even less fun. A bad journey. A face peeks out from a doorway. An actual person.
But something isn't quite right. His eyes are open but strangely clouded over and his skin is a mottled gray. And the way he's leaning out into the hall seems almost too horizontal, an unnatural angle, head lolling.
"Help." His voice is distorted, granite crunching, echoing. "Help."
Something is wrong.
"Help."
Something is definitely wrong.
What's wrong is the fact his mouth is barely moving - and something is writhing at his neck, the only thing making his jaw move at all. What's wrong is all the splattered blood on his clothes.
The man shakes as if something has jerked his entire body around, as if flailing it to get their attention, but it quickly becomes clear that he's not the one initiating the movement - because his body is already so broken and damaged it can't take the strain.
His head falls off and rolls across the floor.
The body retreats and then a massive chitinous leg steps out into the hallway, followed by more equally massive legs, followed by a hulking shelled body, the size of a small car. The creature looks like some terrible mix of crab, scorpion, and spider, claws large enough to snap someone in half, barbed tail held tense. Its drooling maw is edged with jagged teeth.
The man that was dangling around the corner is not a man. It's half of a man, speared on the creature's claw and infiltrated with tentacles like a deranged puppet. Somehow the creature was speaking through the corpse, using it for its voice. But without its head, the body is useless now - and the jig is up. The Thanapod can't use it as a decoy to lure someone close anymore. The body is flung so hard it slams into the hallway wall and falls down in a crumpled heap, leaving a bloody smear on the metal wall.
And then the beast surges forwards, covering an alarming amount of ground quickly, claws outstretched, teeth snapping, stinger held menacingly, its legs clattering against the metal floor in thundering metallic tapping noises.
Every so often, something lights up under its shell, a phosphorescent glow just barely visible through the thinnest parts of the chitin. Whenever it does that, something strange happens - any implants start to malfunction slightly. The suits glitch out and bare patches open up, weapons sometimes melt away, translation briefly glitches. The creature is doing something, giving out some kind of field affecting the technology.
What's worse is weapons won't affect it easily. While bullets will crack the shell slightly, they won't go all the way through. Its joints may present a better target, however. Or it may be best to avoid a fight altogether - especially since this creature may not be operating alone.
And mind the tail. The stinger's venom is strong enough to kill a grown adult.
4 【 DINNER PARTY 〗
You must be so exhausted after fighting, and screaming, and running. So much running.《Good news! I have found a safe location for you to rest! At least for now.》It is actually somewhat safe. There are no current threats there, the doors are lockable to anything human-sized, watertight to keep out the Flood's infected water, and too small for the crab creatures to fit through. It won't stay safe forever, though. Eventually something or the other may break the door down. But for now, it's a place you can find temporary respite - and aren't your muscles burning by now? Don't you need to catch your breath?《While there was a threat here in the past, my internal sensors indicate it is long gone. I also have functional hard light projectors here so I was able to bring in refreshment.》Holographic hard-light tentacles allowed her to move the food and drinks in: little tins with pull tabs that have slices of a fruit vaguely resembling mandarin oranges, and little foil pouches with alien writing on them. The pouches come with little straws that can be used to puncture them; some kind of juice is inside.
Yes, you have in fact been given the Uruk equivalent of orange slices and a Capri sun.
In a room with quite a few dead bodies.
There's a long table here. It doesn't seem to be a dining table, though. Maybe some kind of fancy meeting table. Data pads are scattered around it, and dying holographic projectors show broken and glitching holograms, maps of sections of the city.
Sitting in chairs on both sides of the table are ten dead bodies, five on each side of the table, dried out and nearly mummified. Each of them had their hands bound to their chair behind their backs and their feet bound to the legs. They all seem to have died from some kind of massive chest trauma.
But instead of being caved in by something like a weapon, what's left of their chests and rib cages looks exploded outward.
Next to each of them on the floor is the skeleton of a some kind of insect-like long-tailed creature, curled up like a dead spider. And in front of each, set on the table like a feast, is the dried out husk of a massive leathery egg, the tops of them all cracked open.
A feast fit for a king, clearly.
Enjoy your juice box! You're doing such a good job!
5 【 WILD CARD 〗
Have a scenario idea that doesn't fit under the others? Do you want to combine threats and have your character deal with the suit-sabotaging crabs and the water zombies at the same time? Go crazy! Do whatever you want.
ENVIRONMENT
Combat isn't the only resolution to threats in the scenarios. The environment allows for escape, traps, and other hazards that can be directed at the enemies in the TDM.
For instance, there are hatches, tunnels, and maintenance tubes to escape through, with many interconnected rooms and hallways. Some of them are too small for the Thanapods to fit through or would force the human-sized enemies single file. There are storage spaces to potentially hide in, rooms that can be sealed off, some of which are watertight and/or have heavy enough doors to keep enemies out or at least slow them down before door seals are broken. Some of these rooms need to be hacked open or hacked to be sealed, but the option is there.
Maintenance areas can provide obstacles and platforms to climb up that are difficult or impossible for enemies to navigate. There are engine-like crushing mechanisms from machinery of unknown purpose, hydraulic presses, or compactors to trick them into climbing into, as well as obvious incinerator shafts to knock enemies down to their deaths, heat radiating up from the fires below.
Wall access panels can sometimes house breakable pipes of scalding steam, flammable materials that can be ignited with a spark, or dangerous super-cooled coolant that can instantly freeze enemies. In some places, these pipes are even clearly labeled as such.
Handheld tools left behind by maintenance workers can sometimes provide more damage than normal weapons, like plasma cutters, advanced welding devices, and high-speed saws.
GAME INFO
DETAILS
⌲ Powers and Belongings: All canon powers will be suppressed and characters will no longer have any personal belongings. If apped, they'll receive back the single belonging they're allowed to keep.
⌲ Implants: All characters will have the Base Implant, as it's required to provide the Enki suits, but players can hold off on primary and secondary implants if they're still deciding between them. If using primary or secondary implants, they'll still be janky and a little difficult to use as they need further calibration before characters' intro into the game.
⌲ Weapons: Weapons can be bladed weapons, chain weapons, blunt weapons, projectile small arms, or equivalent non-conventional weaponry like sports equipment. If you're not sure if a weapon would be an option to choose from, feel free to ask under the comment below.
⌲ Flood Infection: Flood infection is incurable and Ishtar can't heal someone with it, even with more flexibility in the revival options during the TDM. It's therefore recommended to not have your character get infected unless you want to kill them off.
⌲ Repair Patches: The repair patches provided can potentially save someone from Flood infection in the case of a suit breach by squirting in suit sealant, as well as a heavy duty disinfectant, sterilizing the skin. If there is an open wound under the breach, this will sting badly but sterilize the wound. A suit patch must be used within 5 seconds of a breach or it will be too late and the virus will spread through the body. Characters will have a chest belt with pouches containing the suit patches, which are in pen-like hypospray-esque pressurized holders. Jamming the end of the device into the breach will release the pressurized, disinfecting seal automatically.
⌲ Deaths: Provided the death isn't by Flood infection, being turned to carbon by the creatures in the second prompt, or total vaporization, characters can temporarily be revived of all deaths, even brain injuries. This entails Ishtar dragging the body off with hard-light tentacles for revival elsewhere, grabbing their weapons with them, and then sliding them back into the situation out of a tank with their thread partner (or another partner) when they're revived, handing them back their belongings. After their first TDM posts, apped characters will forever be locked into the maximum 2 deaths rule and that includes if they participate in future TDMs.
⌲ Invites: The game is invite-only. First round invites are limited to people on the mod's friend list and anyone they want to invite in turn. However, after an initial app deadline for game start, apps will be rolling. If cap hasn't met, invites can be extended out to further players, or players can request a mod invite on the app. So even if you don't know someone that can invite you, you can feel free to play on the TDM.
⌲ Apps: For the very first app rush there will be a deadline and then a brief app closure for the starting events of the game. Apps will open on 3/5 and close on 3/14. This will allow the mods a week to process the initial apps for the game. Game start is on 3/17. Apps will open again on 3/17 and be rolling after that rather than cyclical, only closing if player cap is met, or for situational app closures for large plots.
no subject
What a fantastic plan. Ishtar dropped us off near the infected victims, who will stop at nothing to spread the infection, and wants us find and utilize the controls for the water system. While they chase us.
[ Brainy is incensed, if it’s not immediately clear, but if this is what he has to work with, fine.. He can ignore idiotic overlords as long as he has competent compatriots.
Locking the doors gets a nod. The infected are in the area, move at considerable speed, and have no compulsion to confirm if a target is friendly or neutral, the greater preventable risk for more individuals lies in allowing the infected to follow them easily. Anyone who currently has the infected between them and this room is at a greater individual risk.
He wishes they had greater numbers to work with. He hopes they don’t. ]
That was sarcasm, if Ishtar’s translation capabilities are as poor as their decision-making. Let’s go “vaguely this way”. We’re essentially leading the infected to the water controls that could allow access to the city’s main reservoirs. Try not to fall behind.
[ He’s already moving - and pulling up the map to see for himself. It’s not that he doesn’t trust the young man. Well, no, it’s exactly that. ]
no subject
If you have a better plan then feel free to throw it out there whenever.
[Dys shrugs and keeps moving, letting the alien guy take the lead. He turns his own map back off for now so they're not both distracted with their noses in it, and turns his attention outward instead. Sound echoes like crazy down these metal corridors. It's hard to pick it out over their own pounding footsteps, and there's ambient noise to sift through as well – the creaking of decrepit structures, the thrum of utilities running beneath everything – but there are other things moving through these halls as well.
It's probably not the best to add to the noise with chatter while he's trying to listen for threats. And it's not like Dys has ever been the chatty type, especially with strangers. But as they move, without the imminent threat of monsters right behind them now, it's hard to ignore the curiosity brimming up again. There's an alien just ahead of him, new and unlike either of the two whole sentient xenos he's previously encountered.]
So. Are you, uh...a Gardener?
[It's a reasonable guess, if they're still on Vertumna. Gardeners seemed to come in all kinds of forms, and Sym had a similar kind of "a little to the left of human" vibe.
Though...he doesn't even know if they're on Vertumna right now. It's a chilling thought. Certainly, none of this looks familiar. But the colony had only explored areas surrounding it, and there was a whole planet. It's not impossible to think this city is somewhere on it, maybe another remnant of the planet's previous civilization. And the alternative is that this isn't Vertumna, and that's...a lot to grapple with right now.]
no subject
[ He waves a hand airily. The AI has set them into an impossible situation; Ishtar is the reason they have nothing until Brainy receives confirmation otherwise. The measures that were taken to get them here - Ishtar could have asked for assistance and had the aide of the entire Legion of Superheroes at her disposal, with this kind of need.
Brainy's perfectly capable of keeping his nose in the holomap. It's not opaque, so there's no issue of visual obstruction. The noise levels can be monitored, the conversation followed, while walking and trying to wring any additional knowledge out of the map. Life signs. Population levels. Anything might be helpful.
There are some new sounds in the distance, like staccato beats against a metal door, and Brainy will pick up the pace slightly. He's in the lead, so it's only a matter of making sure the other doesn't fall behind. The warning was only to caution him against falling behind. Brainy doesn't intend to let that happen. ]
The suit's translation didn't catch the term - it used Gardener. Repeating in Interlac, Binary, Proverso, English, and Durlan: Gardener, Gardener, Gardener, Gardener, Gardener. I'm unfamiliar with Gardener as a proper noun. If you're asking if I keep a garden, no..
no subject
I get it. Stop saying Gardener.
[That's a no, then. He lapses into quiet again, evidently not seeing any point in explaining that one. For a few moments there's just their footsteps and the unsettling distant noises before Dys eventually tries again.]
Then what planet are you from?
no subject
[ He pressed on to five anyway. You're welcome. ]
Colu. I suppose it would be of some merit to determine if there is an overlap in our origins, although it's evident that you're not Coluan. Colu is a member of the United Planets, and I am Brainiac 5 and a Legionnaire. If that has no meaning to you, we're further from home than I feared.
no subject
[He frowns at the guy's back as they run. "Brainiac" certainly sounds right, at least. Is that a name or a title or a descriptor or what?]
I'm from Vertumna. It's about twenty years plus a wormhole jaunt away from Earth, if you're ever heard of that one.
[Would even Earth be known to aliens at all? Vertumna is probably pretty backwater, and as far as he'd heard Earth hadn't made contact with alien life or sent out any other colony ships or anything. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise him if Earth was known and all the other sentient life had just avoided it deliberately. Humans kinda suck, and it sounded like the ones back on Earth were even worse somehow.]
no subject
[ Because he has not forgotten the goal of the water control system nor the threat of the infected behind. They are multitasking, and he turns a sharp corner at the next intersection. ]
I know every planet within 20 lightyears of Earth, not allowing for wormholes - I assume you mean stargates - and I've never heard of Vertumna. I would posit we're from different universes, or a universe that's branched. What year is it in the terran calendar?
no subject
No idea? We switched to using a new Vertumnan calendar when we landed. And according to that, the year is like...8, which sounds stupid.
[And also unhelpful, if this guy hasn't even heard of Vertumna. Tang or someone would probably know the equivalent Earth year, but he stopped going to classes as a preteen. Neither numbers or history are his strong suit.]
no subject
"8" is a useless answer, as there has to be a pre-arrival time for them to have restarted at 8. ]
It's 3001, and I don't know of any planet with a calendar year that is still in the single digits. Most of the UP has adopted the Earth calendar for intergalactic trading purposes: it's simpler to have a standardized time and year. I haven't heard the Flood in some time.
[ The last sentence takes a hard shift from blase and explanatory to concerned. ]
no subject
I've never heard of Earth doing intergalactic trade before. Not outside of holovids, anyway.
[He has no idea what to make of this discrepancy. But that's a mystery for later. The uneasy comment has Dys' brows furrowing and he slows to a stop to listen. Sure enough, there's no sound of banging on a sealed door or chasing footsteps. That should be a comfort.
But it's not entirely quiet. Dys hears...something, and it's coming from the wrong direction.]
...Is that a person?
[It sounds like a voice. Maybe. It's low and has an odd quality to it, like gravel in one's mouth.]
no subject
Brainy takes in a breath, about to launch into an explanation of that and a full breakdown of the United Planets - but instead holds it.
He hears it too. Deep, rasping, and throaty. It's too distanct to make out clearly, but the sounds could be speech. The noises don't carry as well as he'd expect if the speaker was looking for others or shouting a warning. Brainy holds out an arm to keep the other back. ]
It could be.
[ Keeping his own voice quiet, he glances back at Dys and shrugs. That's as close to "I don't know" as he wants to get. ]
no subject
This section of corridor is short with an open doorway at the end of it, the door bent and hanging ajar in a warped frame. The room inside is dark. There's another thud, and then a person-shaped silhouette peeks out around the doorframe back at him.
"Help."
The voice is understandable at this distance, if still gritty and garbled. But something's off. The figure's movements as it leans around the doorframe are...odd, almost limp. Dys pauses, brows knitting together. It's landing squarely in the uncanny valley and Dys definitely recognizes it as weird, but he doesn't quite have the capacity for the unease it would usually trigger. He frowns, and takes a cautious step around the corner.]
...Hello?
[He's at least got the sense to keep a hand on the hilt of the survival knife he'd grabbed. A lack of fear doesn't mean he trusts anyone or anything in this place. The figure up ahead doesn't answer, but they shift a bit to lean out further, and angle of their body strange and wrong.
Then all at once, they burst through the doorway – or something does, at least, a massive something that the person seems to be attached to. Its bulk rips through the already bent doorframe and tears the door the rest of the way off, and the metal of it crumples under the creature's weight. Dys only has time to register the size of the thing and the loosely crablike shape of it before it charges and he staggers backwards around the corner out of its path.
Yeah. That knife is feeling a lot less useful now.]
no subject
It's a good position to see the whole thing. The desecration puppetry isn't any more pleasant when your brain is fast enough to process what your eyes saw in that moment: a large, carapaced alien, wearing the torso of a sentient on an appendage. Which had spoken? They're not staying to ask questions.
He shoves Dys ahead, back the way they'd came. ]
There's an air vent thirty feet ahead. Go.