Heart Game: Hurricane - Run 5

[idolpro]

[At first, all is still; all is silent.]

[The only light is the light from your phone, where a checklist has taken over the screen. It reads:]

___ Make a change
___ Repair something
___ Protect something
___ Find the True Heart
___ Survive

[Then the light comes up, bright, and then brighter, and you are in…]

Comments

Re: HQ

[fleurescence]

Others have been here? Who? Where are they now?

Re: HQ

[offontherightfoot]

There have been a great many of them. Most of his team; some of yours. They've passed through and left their marks, and gone already.

Re: HQ

[fleurescence]

...Did they get attacked too?

Re: HQ

[offontherightfoot]

Yes. The survival rate is currently 90%.

Re: HQ

[fleurescence]

[90%........]

Who died?

Re: HQ

[offontherightfoot]

Alexander, of Baritones, and Requiem, of Zrael.

Their group was not together when the harbingers arrived, and they were not prepared.

Re: HQ

[fleurescence]

. . .

Alright. Then we'll stick together.

Where are the harbingers likely to attack from? I want to know the most vulnerable areas of this heart, where should we focus on protecting? And I want to know where to get those weapons you said we'll need, what are these harbingers weak points? Attack patterns? Any known information.

Re: HQ

[offontherightfoot]

All areas of the heart are vulnerable to the assault.

You can get weapons from R&D, east at the hallway.

They are weak to the kind of damage that hurts us: blades, or guns, or explosions, or blunt force. They don't seem to have much strategy, but they attempt mental intrusions.

Re: HQ

[fleurescence]

What kind of mental intrustions, and are there any ways to defend against them?

Re: HQ

[offontherightfoot]

They amplify your own worst impulses. If your mind is strong, you can fend them off.

R&D has devices that can help.

Re: HQ

[fleurescence]

[Nods]

So basically, I should go to them with questions about the fight.

Well! Let's get me hooked up and on our way.

Re: HQ

[offontherightfoot]

Lean forward, and I'll get started.

Re: HQ

[fleurescence]

[Leans forward!]

Re: HQ

[offontherightfoot]

[You feel fingers in the hair at the base of your skull, and then soft pressure and a click like cutlery on a metal pan.]

[In an instant, there's everything.]

[There's the city center and the routes through it and the danger level for expected incoming games. There's the vid feed over San Francisco, half standing, and the Tokyo-F dorms, and the rooftops, and everything beyond. There's current status and stability - damaged, but functional - and abilities (insufficient), and weapon specs.]

[There's the angle of the sun in winter, and the wind interference, and the systems diagnostics for the repairs on the room down the hall. There's audio being processed through the comms, and the programming for the interior temp controls (below recommended average), and a systems update running on twenty-three different systems simultaneously. There's 45 floating-point operations per second.]

[There's everything.]

[It's thrumming in the air and filling up your skin and clawing out the soft parts in your head to make room.]

[There's everything, and it just won't stop.]

[Right up until it does.]

[All at once, it flicks out like a light when the switch is flipped, and in its place there's just you, sitting in a metal chair again.]

[Gain +1 to all Wis rolls, permanently.]

Re: HQ

[fleurescence]

-Oh my gosh! That was so much, Prim was right! Can I turn just some of that on instead of all of it??

Re: HQ

[offontherightfoot]

It will fade to the background, now that it's finished. You don't have to sift through all of it all of the time.

Re: HQ

[fleurescence]

Oh, really?

[Tries to focus on that part about insufficient abilities tho, what is the current status?]

Re: HQ

[offontherightfoot]

Really.

[Sure enough, it's fading even now.]

[But she can access it, she finds, there in the background, a reedy pulse of not-good-enough anxiety that comes along with the simple status overlay.]