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Astheneia
Topic Started: Jan 24 2008, 10:59 AM (1,069 Views)
~Scout~
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Artificial
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
((Okay, let's try this again, since last time SOMEONE deleted this thread when I put it up.

First 8 pages.))
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+Aiko+
Roffel House!

13:04:43

The clock was ticking. Even Aiko was beginning to feel the strain of fear. Not even she could survive a nuclear explosion. She fought down the primitive emotion, channeling it into a form she could use more effectively. Ignore the clock, she had to ignore the clock.

She couldn’t.

The engine room was a mess. Globs of Aesthenia covered the walls and floors, holding cowlings and miscellaneous hardware out of Aiko’s way. Sweat dripped from Aiko’s brow as she forced her way through another safeguard, fighting to get at the extremely dangerous, naked Jump drive beneath. One mistake here would spell doom for them all. One misstep, and the Jump drive would act like a tlezer cannon, a weapon of mass destruction that was actually based off Jump drive technology. There was no room for error.

I’Sra worked just as furiously. Twilight had connected his ship to the hull of Asthenia’s vessel, and it was up to the Luminoth and the Ing to get the dark field working correctly. It was up to Aiko and Salmana to make sure that the odd energy flows weren’t going to make the Jump drive itself go crazy.

09:55:23

“Asthenia, I need you to input coordinates into the Jump drive before the dark field goes up! The sensors won’t be able to see through the dark field, and I’m disengaging all the safeties on the drive that would normally prevent it from Jumping blind. Salmana, I’m going to slowly start feeding energy into the drive so we’re just short of critical, that way all we have to do is give it that last megawatt of energy to initiate the Jump when those nukes detonate. I need you to monitor the drive and make sure it doesn’t do anything funky.”

Aiko paused a second to kick a heavy metal cover out of the way, which accidentally landed on a glob of Asthenia. Oh well, it wasn’t like Asthenia didn’t have enough spares to make up for the minor energy. “I’Sra, Twilight, how’s that field coming?”

(OOC: THERE! >.>)
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+CEMP+
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Salmana listened attentively. She did not seem to show worry, and was simply focused on increasing her chances of survival. Everyone around her were simply a tools that she did not have any control over; tools that could, over time, become an obstacle. Yes, they had the same goal for now, but for how long afterwords.

An obstacle against what? the thought spawning from her mind without her will at all. She could understand, to an extent, that spontanious thought was natural, even for the Scurge. She knew it happened more regularly with individuals than the Scurge, but it happened. It helped their ability to adapt, but only by a bit. They relied on the assimilated creatures in their mass to enable them to learn and adapt.

Spontanious thoughts were not exactely what a Scurge often enjoyed. Salmana was no exception. It was rather irrititating that her train of thought was interrupted by ideas that did not matter to her present situation. Lately, it had been happening a lot, and not just with her thoughts, but with her actions. And then there those feelings.

Still, despite her annoyance, but she could not help but think of her goals. Or at least, her lack of goals. Once again, it irritated her, created this...feeling inside her that made her want to scream for no reason, as though she were in pain; and at the same time, as though she was screaming at another creature.

The description of how this feeling was affecting her made her feel bemused. Why such an irrational action would be taken by an individual confounded her. All she knew, though, was that she was...she was caught in a nightmare. Again, she did not understand her description of her weakness, nor where the idea to use such a noun came in the first place.

But the fact remained, she did not have any goals to follow, it was a fact that was creating the unerving motivation. She needed to focus in staying alive, even Scurge had survuvial instincts, and the reminder of danger was what triggered them, allowing her to refocus herself.

She simply nodded in response to Aiko, "We understand," knowing what the phrase 'funky' meant. The purple globs floated over the jumpdrive, eventually became scattered all over it. She began feeling the energy being destributed to the drive, noting the frequency and amount.

If only Siguatsu and I were one again.
"I believe that the human spirit is indomitable. If you endeavor to achieve, it will happen given enough resolve. It may not be immediate, and often your greater dreams is something you will not achieve within your own lifetime. The effort you put forth to anything transcends yourself, for there is no futility even in death."
— Monty Oum
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~Scout~
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((Okay, I’m done with stalling this for any longer. If anybody has any objections to any autoing I might do to forward the plot, please tell me.))

Astheneia went through final checks of the jump sequence. “Is everyone ready?”

Aiko, from the engine room, gave the green light. Fiera, from the bridge, informed Astheneia that the jump coordinates were set. Twilight had set up the dark field, and the luminoth had the annihilator prepared. Solethen was sitting next to the wall still, barely noting anything that was happening.

00:01:03

“Initiate the jump,” Astheneia said coldly.

The energy levels on the ship spiked, which was quickly masked by the dark field. The input coordinates were set, and the drive itself powered up. In a blinding flash of light the ship disappeared, with barely forty-five seconds left on the clock.

Forty-five seconds later, the nukes collided with each other and went off. The light was so bright that Astheneia could see it from the planet below, where it was night. Astheneia collected itself and hid away. The only thing it could do was hope that the ship would find a safe haven.

Many light-years away, the ship came out of jump. All around it were hulks of ships, scoring present on their hull plating, no lights emitting from any of them, all motionless. Clouds of debris floated around many of the larger ships. They had come out in an ancient battlefield, only a graveyard now.

“All right, I want somebody to tell us where this ship came out of jump, right now,” Astheneia said. “We’re out of that nasty other place, so we’re safe from harm, at least for now. I have no idea as to how long the supplies on this ship will last us, but we should have enough food and water to last us a while, and if worst comes to worst, anybody who needs to eat can take a chunk of me.”

Astheneia mentally sighed and sank down into a puddle on the floor. The past half an hour had been extremely stressful for it. The prospect of any part of it being nuked had been a chilling reminder that it was going to be eliminated sooner or later. Once the ship was destroyed, it knew, somebody would have to cleanse the planet, and that would be the end of Astheneia.

It could no longer feel its counterpart on the planet. It felt as if a huge chunk of its mind had been ripped out. It hadn’t lost any knowledge, but it could no longer watch what was going on at the planet. It was unable to see the cities, or the wildlife, or the sprawling forests. It was gone now.

“That was hard,” Astheneia said in the bridge, where Fiera was. “I hope I never have to do that again.”

Elsewhere, a glob of Astheneia touched Solethen. “We made the jump, so we’re no longer at risk of being nuked.”

“I’m glad that annihilator worked,” K-Tri said to Twilight and I-Sra. “I didn’t know what we were doing, but if we hadn’t, then we’d surely be tracked to here.” The luminoth sat cross-legged on the ground. “I need to rest.”

In the engine room, Astheneia looked on. It said nothing for a period of time. Finally, it spoke.

“This is all your fault,” it said to Aiko.
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~Pie Boy~
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A glob of horrible green slime landed on Solethen, who had been in a panic-induced trance while the ship split open with panic all around him. It shook him, and he was immediately sure it was an airborne parasite that would infiltrate his nervous system and kill him within days. He jumped and attempted to bat it off.

He came to his senses while still in mid-flight.

"Oh," he said, landing. "It's just you."

The Astheneia said, "We made the jump, so we're no longer at risk of being nuked."

"Well, great. I assume now we're in Federation space, which puts me at high risk of execution as an armed Zalamath military official with no papers. Not to mention the fact that there's apparently an X Parasite on the ship, which means that I probably won't even have to be executed!" he spat. "But thanks for helping me avoid the fiery death outcome."

He looked around the ship. "Though I'm a little confused as to why you even had to spend so much time preparing. If we jumped into Federation space and it was a Zalamath ship that launched the nukes, it's not like they could have followed us even if they knew the nukes hadn't hit us. We have a treaty with the Feds. You could have jumped as soon as you knew the nukes were coming."
Edited by Pie Boy, Mar 25 2008, 12:04 AM.
"Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."

-Walter Kovacs
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~Twilight~
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Just... Kind of out there...
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After he had announced that the dark energy field was set up Twilight walked back inside his ship and sat down on the floor, crossing his arms in concentration. As the jump drive of the ship began to charge Twilight focused the dark energy towards the output where it would be channeled to its next destination, although it took more power than he had expected as the atmosphere inside the ship began to shrink, and eventually there was no dark energy left inside the ship except what made him up, yet he continued to focus, channeling his own energy into the annhilator.

As the jump was inniciated Twilight collapsed on the floor of his ship, some sort of smoke or steam emmiting from the spaces in his armor.

After a while the door to the ship opened and Twilight emerged, although from how he was basically using the side of door to stand it was easy to tell he wasnt in a very good condition at the moment, which was evident if one looked inbetween the cracks of his worn-out armor, some of them seemingly completely empty inside.

"That took more energy than I had expected" Twilight said to the nearby Astheneia, though if anyone else was in the hangar bay they could have heard it too. If it wasnt for his suits voice device he wasnt sure he would have been able to utter a word at this point... "You dont happen to know where I could aquire some phazon? I used most of what I have when I prepared the dark field."
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+CEMP+
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Clockwork Master

Salmana closed her eyes, putting her full attention into the energy fluctuation of the drives. She was partially afraid to do so, because having all of her concentration on a single machine would leave her unaware of the world around her. She would be fairly vulnerable.

However, she knew that an attack would be very unlikely. Everyone else's attention was diverted to the jump drive itself, and to their survival. She knew that if she did not have full concentration, she would be dead anyways.

Her practice with the energy had gone steadily and had prepared her partially for the massive jolt of energy. Only a few second before the jump, her thoughts turned to Sigautsu - she had done so without realizing it.

With his mind, being a part of his collective conscious, this task would be less daunting. The energy would be completely under their control, like a person simply holding a gun and not a thrashing Mongoose. But as herself, she got this weird feeling like...she would not be able to do this; and, in fact, she feared doing this all together.

Why? She contemplated to herself, never having gone through this experience. Why, in the face of death, did she all of sudden not want to do this, as though she couldn't do this at all. It didn't make sense where if she at least tried, the chances of survival would be greater; she could barely think how she would make the situation worse.

And then Astheneia announced the jump.

Her entire mind snapped back into reality, her concentration flying back the energy flow of the jump drive. Her single, conscious mind did everything to grab hold of the wild energy flowing to the jump drive. The few seconds she spent concentrating were like an hour or two, and it was like she was wrangling the electrical flow with her mind. At first it was wild, and it almost slipped, but then it easily slipped into her grasp.

Every single wave pattern and frequency was suddenly, on an instinctive level, visible to her; in fact, it was like she had become a part of the electricity, aware of its state like she was aware of her body.

In the mere few seconds before the jump initiate, all the equipment used to read the input and output for the jump drive started showing weird, un-identifiable readings. Most read a completely unusual error, and the frequency was appearing as 'UNDEFINED', although readings showing any dangerous energy fluctuations at all.

At the same time, all the electrical cords that lead to the jump drive began to emit a bright, ominous, blue electrical glow. Even the jump drive itself began to glow - and everything that did suddenly, in a blink of an eye, sprouted these weird, bright blue tendrils that pulsed with the same glow. The tendrils hung all about the drives and cables like an infestation was occurring.

Contact with them only left a tingling a sensation, and, in fact, this stuff was solid; 'solid' as in you can grab it with your hand.

All of this happened very briefly, but it was enough to be noticed before the jumped commenced. After that, Salmana dropped her concentration and everything that was weird disappeared. As soon as she did, a massive migraine began pounding inside her head. She had never concentrated so hard, and there had been so many things to take control of.

She groaned, holding her head as the rush of pain pounded her brain in waves. As it did, memories that were not hers began to flash before her mind; memories that came with the strange, illogical sensation. Images of the scientists that had worked with Sigautsu; images of Sigautsu himself, all before he had attempted to break free from the lab; and the sensations of fear, struggle to resist assimilation.

It all waved passed her as the pain subsided. Her body wobbled as she tried to retain her balance, her mind temporarily becoming disoriented because of this. Fear of attack, however, managed to get her to focus herself. “Where are we? Are we…out of danger?” she asked, her disorientation showing in her voice. And then she added, “What…why Aiko’s fault? You don’t not make sense.”
"I believe that the human spirit is indomitable. If you endeavor to achieve, it will happen given enough resolve. It may not be immediate, and often your greater dreams is something you will not achieve within your own lifetime. The effort you put forth to anything transcends yourself, for there is no futility even in death."
— Monty Oum
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+Aiko+
Roffel House!

Aiko, Astheniea, and Salmana were intensely quiet in the engine room. Salmana was exhausted, Astheneia seemed to be in a state of shock, and Aiko was staring at sensor readouts on monitor recessed into the wall of the room. As if waiting for a command, the tension finally broke. Aiko leaned forward and rested her head against the monitor with a relieved sigh.

“This is all your fault,” Astheniea said, to which Aiko laughed.

“Yes, that’s right, it’s my fault for saving your sorry ass,” she corrected. Leaning back, she stretched her arms over her head and then shook herself. “Everything looks great. Twilight and the Luminoth pulled through with their annihilator whatever thing, Salmana controlled the energy flux beautifully, and I kept the ship from ripping itself apart. Mmmm, what a nice day. Salmana, don't you worry about Astheneia. It's really saying thank you, at least it better be!"

Aiko slapped an Astheniea glob and Salmana’s shoulder at the same time in a very rare display of celebration. “Well done guys. We kicked major ass. So, where’s the food?”
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~Scout~
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Astheneia seemed a bit surprised by Aiko’s response to what it had said. It slowly coalesced into a slightly larger blob, about waist-height.

“I believe that there is some food left in the mess on this ship,” it said. “As an X parasite, I don’t see how that food would be useful to you, but if you want some, then by all means, take it.”

A different blob landed on Salmana’s shoulder. “It’s not really Aiko’s fault… I just needed some way to vent some pent-up anger. I am sorry if I startled you,” the blob whispered.

“Shall I lead the way to the mess hall, or do you think you can get there yourself? I would be more than happy to talk on more peaceful terms, now that we aren’t in danger of being blown to our component molecules,” Astheneia said to Aiko. “You’ve performed admirably in the time of need, and for that I thank you.”

* * *

“Egh, phazon…” K-Tri couldn’t help but groan. Astheneia ignored K-Tri’s outburst.

“I don’t think there is any phazon on this ship, Twilight. I don’t know how I can help you,” it said. “The other are meeting in the mess hall, though, so maybe you can find something there.”

* * *

“You won’t be executed, surely,” Astheneia said to Solethen. “I doubt that the Galactic Federation would care that you’re here, seeing as you didn’t bring yourself here, but you were brought here because of me. You may also rule out being killed by an X parasite, because currently she is content and will not try to eat you.”

Solethen’s next comment, however, took Astheneia by surprise.

“You mean… we didn’t have to go through any of that trouble?” Astheneia asked fiercely.

“DAMMIT!” every single cell of Astheneia on the ship seemed to cry in unison.
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~Twilight~
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Just... Kind of out there...
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OOC: I didnt know Astheneias cells could talk on their own... I thought they needed to form a "mouth" with all the necessary additions to talk, oh wells.

“Egh, phazon…” One of the Luminoth groaned, Twilight could understand his reaction, he knew what phazon did to most organisms, but to Ing it was a powerfull tool, and to Twilight it was necessary for him to stay in the world of light. Sure he could probably last for several months with just the crystal, but he needed to "recharge" the dark energies that made up most of his body, which slowly eroded away in the light world. Right now he was on a critical level.

“I don’t think there is any phazon on this ship, Twilight. I don’t know how I can help you,” it said. “The other are meeting in the mess hall, though, so maybe you can find something there.” Astheneia said, bringing his attention from the luminoth to the green organism. "I see, well atleast I've got enough to survive for now, I will be in my ship for a while, I need to rest" Twilight said as he turned back to his ship and tapped the controll panel on the side to make the hatch on the side open again before stepping back inside.

Once he was through the airlock of the lightbringer Luminoth ship Twilight slowly made his way to the storage area of the ship, using the walls to not fall over. Once he finally reached it he looked around for a second, spotting the box marked with a radioactive warning symbol. Nearly dragging himself up to it Twilight opened the lid, his helmet and upper side of the suit being hit with a poisonous blue glow from inside, in the box was a few litres of phazon in a liquid state.

Not hesitating for a moment Twilight put his armored hands into the phazon, scooping up a rather large amount of it as he then held his closed hands toghter, putting pressure on the phazon under them. As he moved his left hand away, the phazon that he now held in his right hand had become crystalized, being nearly the size of a average mans fist. 'Done... I guess this will do for re-establishing the dark field, although I wonder how long it is going to last' Twilight thought, standing back up after closing the lid once more, phazon piece in hand as he began to move towards the center of the ship, temporarily strengthened by the phazon.

OOC: Wheter it was loud or not Twilight didnt hear the yell inside the ship.
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