Iron Aegis(adventure thread)
Jun 30, 2015 1:26:52 GMT -8
Post by JW% on Jun 30, 2015 1:26:52 GMT -8
The sign in/discussion thread is here: tsdcv3.proboards.com/thread/5894/iron-aegis-characters-discussions
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Jonathan Winslow felt like he had just been punched in the face. His nose was rubbed raw and bleeding a little, and he tasted blood, either from a split lip or biting his tongue. Felt like both. His head ached, he was dizzy, and trying to put together how he ended up here. He had just enough time to look up at his rear view mirror and see the grill of the truck coming at him. There had been traffic coming toward him, no chance to turn. The impact had thrown him forward, airbag deployed and...
How had the front of his car ended up wrapped around a tree?
Despite double vision that was certainly what had happened. There was a tall, reasonably thick, tree right in front of him, with no sign of the oncoming car, the truck that had hit him, the road, or even the city he had been driving in. This was some kind of forest. Primeval almost. He couldn't identify the kind of trees. Not from the shape of their trunk, or the way they branched, or their few leaves, or the moss on them. That bothered him more than it probably should, given that he knew very little about trees. He had no idea where he was.
He had to force his door open, the edge of it was bent just enough that it stuck. Some of his light brown hair got in his face as he put a full effort into shoving, and he stroked the shoulder length locks out after he had freed himself. Yes, there was damage to the back of the car, just as expected. The rear bumper was shoved up to practically behind the broken rear window, the trunk crumpled in on itself to the point that he suspected none of the equipment in it for changing a tire or putting snow chains or jumping the battery would still be usable, even assuming he could get at them.
His body was already sore from the impact, he know he'd have a bruise across his chest from the seat belt, and his legs felt like they'd hit something as well. Still, there was nothing to be done about it until he knew where he was. He couldn't even see how the car could have gotten here, the angle of the impact said that it would have to have gone through a tree behind it. It was dark, but that could have been from the thick canopy rather than the sun having gone down.
Shaking his head he started to walk to explore the area.
He wasn't sure how long he walked, though he was reasonably sure he could go back to the car if he wanted to, fetch the water bottle he always kept in it or something if he needed, but he knew that the soreness in his body was increasing even as the stiffness decreased. The moss covered ground was surprisingly even and devoid of underbrush, though there were some thick patches that were practically impassible. Made the whole place feel a little surreal to him even before he stumbled on the walk path. A concrete path, old and cracked, but usable. Like a path in a park. Well, it was a start at least.
He followed the path to what looked like some kind of park informational center. The building had once had large windows, a dome roof, and a shape that was probably a pentagon, excluding the spherical center. Or maybe an octogon? Hard to tell through the trees, but as the path made it's way to the structure he could see more clearly. The place was in total disuse, and looked like it had been destroyed. The windows were all shattered, if any sign of glass was still present at all. The doors had been forced open, and sections of the wall had been torn or fallen off. The signs of weather damage showed all the vandalism was long since passed.
The place vaguely reminded him of something. As he came closer he decided that the sun was going down. There was an open enough area around that showed the sky, but it was dim. Nothing more to do about it. At least this place was sort of shelter. He checked a plaque as he came in. "Vestibule Asphodel" John read, frowning and not understanding the reference, but assuming that this was the name of the place. The rest of the building looked like some sort of display or park side museum. In fact, he started to remember being somewhere like this before. A museum... he had volunteered at one for a summer job back when he was much younger. There had been large stuffed animals on display, showing examples of local wildlife. Not so much in this. The inside looked like it had been looted. There was a knocked over vending machine, and beyond that several pedestals that were empty.
Most of the plaques were too destroyed, but the one in the center was marked "V.I.R.G.I.L.", all capital letters and probably an acronym for... whatever had been on the plateform before it had been torn up. Bolts sunk into the concrete implied something, but only very little.
And that was when the howl echoed through the forest. John's head came up. He looked back and realized how dark the woods had gotten, even though there was still light coming in through open roof, but not out in the trees. And now he saw dark shapes moving in between the tree trunks. Very large shapes if he wasn't mistaken.
Normally he didn't find this a concern. Certainly he was a city boy, but he wasn't completely unfamiliar with wild animals. The idea that they were more afraid of him than he was of them had always been good guiding advice. This however only worked when the creatures in question were not larger than people. Really, when the creature was larger than you, making it afraid could be more harmful to you than keeping it calm.
With a slow motion he started looking around the building for an office or restroom, or something that he could lock himself in for the night. He was a little worried that he didn't find one, and worse whatever was approaching seemed to be large enough to push the smaller trees aside, let alone the underbrush he had trouble with before.
What was worse was that there seemed to be three such beasts circling the building. He could see the large shapes in the trees creeping forward not just towards the main doors he had entered, but the side windows as well. There didn't look to be any cover besides this skeleton of an old building.
"Okay then..." He said mostly to himself, though also the idea of making sound might be enough to startle the predators. While he hadn't found anything that could provide all that much cover, he had found a few old broken pipes. He grabbed one, gave it a hard shove, and pulled it out of the wall with a small crumbling chunk of concrete. "... think I'll give this one to you for free?"
Not the reaction he had hoped for. One of the creatures seemed to go from slow stalking motion to a rapid charging motion. He managed to get a look at it as it burst from the trees and made the lunge across the threshold of the building. A stab of fear struck his heart as something about the shape, a sort of bulky wolf multiplied many times over in size, was familiar to him. It was a beast that haunted his nightmares as a child. Yet he was now an adult, and that stab of adrenaline simply meant that he swung his metal club at the creatures nose as it came at him.
For all the good it did him. He was a mouse fighting a bear. The wolf beast slammed her shoulders into the sides of the building and narrowly missed him with a snap of it's jaws, catching instead the metal pipe. He felt it wrenched from his hands moments before the muzzle of the beast caught him in the side and flung him across the room.
He saw the other beasts entering the building as he hit the wooden floor of some kind of plateform. There was the wolf beast, and some kind of big cat creature. And then his vision was swallowed up in the darkness as the floor broke underneath him and he plummeted downward. After a second he realized he was falling much further than simply an unseen basement, and he seemed to be sliding on something rough, yet metallic. Like a large drainage pipe. He tried to twist himself so he wasn't falling head first at least, but he still slid into the depths where even the sun was silent.
Then light came to him. At first a faint light, like that of an alarm clock glowing on the desk. He tried to get up and move towards it and found a chair. More lights came on and he gradually made out that this was a cockpit area. Memories failed to materialize, but nostalgia flooded him. He sat in the chair and flipped switches and turned dials. They felt so natural in his hands... these switches and dials, they were on his grandmothers old organ above the keys. He used to tune it for her when he was little and she would play... the pedals at his feet reminded him of an earth mover he had used in a job... the joystick an old video game he had played with his father... the smell from the vents the old car his mother drove him to school in... this wasn't simply a cockpit, this was tender moments from his life. Little moments, all jumbled together. A screen in front of him recited a biblical verse, first Corinthians two fifteen. "The Righteous judges all things, but is to be judged by no one."
"Iron aegis system activate. Warkinger Jay, Launch!"
The side of the mountain exploded outward. The three beasts dashed over to see what the cause was. Each of them looked down from above and saw it. A huge form that wasn't quite humanoid with massive horns on the side of the head, the forearms easily twice as bulky and large as the upper arms, the whole shape a little more rounded and bulky than human.
The leopardess was the first to leap at the target this time, bounding off of the cliffside to plung into the dust where the figure was only somewhat visible. It's claws raked against the monsters shoulders, throwing sparks into the air as it hit metal.
Inside the cockpit Jonathan felt the claws rake against his soul. He looked over his shoulder, the giant robot frame he now rode in turning it's massive horned head. "Is your hunger without limit?" John shouted, the massive hands of the mecha reaching up at his command and gripping the cat on his shoulder. With a motion ponderous only because of the size, the great machine leaned forward, pitching the cat beast over it's shoulder and slamming it into the ground, shattering a few trees. "You who have grown so large and become such a terror, you think it feast, that my body will end your hunger?"
He spun and his fist connected with the side of the head of the canine as it also jumped at him. "Then let me end it! Face me and you'll never hunger for flesh again!" Even as he finished the first swing, knocking the wolf on it's side, he brought his other arm up to deliever a second blow to the feral monster.
The leopardess and lioness circled, then the lioness jumped and his massive iron gauntlet came up, blocking the claws with it's heavily shielded fore arms. Then the oversized robotic arm snapped backward, striking the edge of plated armor against the face of the leopardess who was trying to leap at his neck from behind. As the leopardess stumbled back from the backhanded blow, John moved the Warkinger to face the Lioness, spreading the heavy arms and revealing the chest of the robot to be armored in a japanese style, as though the whole upper chest were wearing a giant skull, or perhaps the head of a giant dragon.
"Dragons eyes AFLAME!" He ordered, pulling the trigger on the joystick in his hands. The eyes of the dragon, the chest plate for the robot, flared to life and the night was blotted out as blinding flames crackled and lept at the beast, the short lived beams burning the creature painfully, causing it to roar and then flee from the struggle.
That didn't stop the wolf from leaping again and sinking it's teeth into the spread arms. John rocked back, slamming the beast through trees with the swing, and finally pushing it down to the ground. The beast still snarled and struggled, trying to bite through the armor, and on John's wrist a red spot appeared. No skin broke, but then again the jaws couldn't pierce the armor. He raised his other arm and slammed it into the beasts head.
"Fatal..." On the joystick John's thumb flipped open a cover. The massive peumatic piledriver built into the mecha's forearms slammed back. He jabbed his thumb down on the button revealed beneath the cover. "IMPACT!" The piledriver slammed downward, transfering the energy of it's impact through the heavy armor plating of the fist, and the beasts skull crunched, it's jaw releasing his trapped arm.
Warkinger Jay stood up and swept the clearing it had made with the fight. Inside John flipped dials and adjusted the sensors to see if there was anything else. The beasts still alive were fleeing, the battle was won.
Down the mountain side, beyond the forest, there lay a city of Limbo. He could see it in the distance, the few lights in the windows. In that direction John travelled...
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Jonathan Winslow felt like he had just been punched in the face. His nose was rubbed raw and bleeding a little, and he tasted blood, either from a split lip or biting his tongue. Felt like both. His head ached, he was dizzy, and trying to put together how he ended up here. He had just enough time to look up at his rear view mirror and see the grill of the truck coming at him. There had been traffic coming toward him, no chance to turn. The impact had thrown him forward, airbag deployed and...
How had the front of his car ended up wrapped around a tree?
Despite double vision that was certainly what had happened. There was a tall, reasonably thick, tree right in front of him, with no sign of the oncoming car, the truck that had hit him, the road, or even the city he had been driving in. This was some kind of forest. Primeval almost. He couldn't identify the kind of trees. Not from the shape of their trunk, or the way they branched, or their few leaves, or the moss on them. That bothered him more than it probably should, given that he knew very little about trees. He had no idea where he was.
He had to force his door open, the edge of it was bent just enough that it stuck. Some of his light brown hair got in his face as he put a full effort into shoving, and he stroked the shoulder length locks out after he had freed himself. Yes, there was damage to the back of the car, just as expected. The rear bumper was shoved up to practically behind the broken rear window, the trunk crumpled in on itself to the point that he suspected none of the equipment in it for changing a tire or putting snow chains or jumping the battery would still be usable, even assuming he could get at them.
His body was already sore from the impact, he know he'd have a bruise across his chest from the seat belt, and his legs felt like they'd hit something as well. Still, there was nothing to be done about it until he knew where he was. He couldn't even see how the car could have gotten here, the angle of the impact said that it would have to have gone through a tree behind it. It was dark, but that could have been from the thick canopy rather than the sun having gone down.
Shaking his head he started to walk to explore the area.
He wasn't sure how long he walked, though he was reasonably sure he could go back to the car if he wanted to, fetch the water bottle he always kept in it or something if he needed, but he knew that the soreness in his body was increasing even as the stiffness decreased. The moss covered ground was surprisingly even and devoid of underbrush, though there were some thick patches that were practically impassible. Made the whole place feel a little surreal to him even before he stumbled on the walk path. A concrete path, old and cracked, but usable. Like a path in a park. Well, it was a start at least.
He followed the path to what looked like some kind of park informational center. The building had once had large windows, a dome roof, and a shape that was probably a pentagon, excluding the spherical center. Or maybe an octogon? Hard to tell through the trees, but as the path made it's way to the structure he could see more clearly. The place was in total disuse, and looked like it had been destroyed. The windows were all shattered, if any sign of glass was still present at all. The doors had been forced open, and sections of the wall had been torn or fallen off. The signs of weather damage showed all the vandalism was long since passed.
The place vaguely reminded him of something. As he came closer he decided that the sun was going down. There was an open enough area around that showed the sky, but it was dim. Nothing more to do about it. At least this place was sort of shelter. He checked a plaque as he came in. "Vestibule Asphodel" John read, frowning and not understanding the reference, but assuming that this was the name of the place. The rest of the building looked like some sort of display or park side museum. In fact, he started to remember being somewhere like this before. A museum... he had volunteered at one for a summer job back when he was much younger. There had been large stuffed animals on display, showing examples of local wildlife. Not so much in this. The inside looked like it had been looted. There was a knocked over vending machine, and beyond that several pedestals that were empty.
Most of the plaques were too destroyed, but the one in the center was marked "V.I.R.G.I.L.", all capital letters and probably an acronym for... whatever had been on the plateform before it had been torn up. Bolts sunk into the concrete implied something, but only very little.
And that was when the howl echoed through the forest. John's head came up. He looked back and realized how dark the woods had gotten, even though there was still light coming in through open roof, but not out in the trees. And now he saw dark shapes moving in between the tree trunks. Very large shapes if he wasn't mistaken.
Normally he didn't find this a concern. Certainly he was a city boy, but he wasn't completely unfamiliar with wild animals. The idea that they were more afraid of him than he was of them had always been good guiding advice. This however only worked when the creatures in question were not larger than people. Really, when the creature was larger than you, making it afraid could be more harmful to you than keeping it calm.
With a slow motion he started looking around the building for an office or restroom, or something that he could lock himself in for the night. He was a little worried that he didn't find one, and worse whatever was approaching seemed to be large enough to push the smaller trees aside, let alone the underbrush he had trouble with before.
What was worse was that there seemed to be three such beasts circling the building. He could see the large shapes in the trees creeping forward not just towards the main doors he had entered, but the side windows as well. There didn't look to be any cover besides this skeleton of an old building.
"Okay then..." He said mostly to himself, though also the idea of making sound might be enough to startle the predators. While he hadn't found anything that could provide all that much cover, he had found a few old broken pipes. He grabbed one, gave it a hard shove, and pulled it out of the wall with a small crumbling chunk of concrete. "... think I'll give this one to you for free?"
Not the reaction he had hoped for. One of the creatures seemed to go from slow stalking motion to a rapid charging motion. He managed to get a look at it as it burst from the trees and made the lunge across the threshold of the building. A stab of fear struck his heart as something about the shape, a sort of bulky wolf multiplied many times over in size, was familiar to him. It was a beast that haunted his nightmares as a child. Yet he was now an adult, and that stab of adrenaline simply meant that he swung his metal club at the creatures nose as it came at him.
For all the good it did him. He was a mouse fighting a bear. The wolf beast slammed her shoulders into the sides of the building and narrowly missed him with a snap of it's jaws, catching instead the metal pipe. He felt it wrenched from his hands moments before the muzzle of the beast caught him in the side and flung him across the room.
He saw the other beasts entering the building as he hit the wooden floor of some kind of plateform. There was the wolf beast, and some kind of big cat creature. And then his vision was swallowed up in the darkness as the floor broke underneath him and he plummeted downward. After a second he realized he was falling much further than simply an unseen basement, and he seemed to be sliding on something rough, yet metallic. Like a large drainage pipe. He tried to twist himself so he wasn't falling head first at least, but he still slid into the depths where even the sun was silent.
Then light came to him. At first a faint light, like that of an alarm clock glowing on the desk. He tried to get up and move towards it and found a chair. More lights came on and he gradually made out that this was a cockpit area. Memories failed to materialize, but nostalgia flooded him. He sat in the chair and flipped switches and turned dials. They felt so natural in his hands... these switches and dials, they were on his grandmothers old organ above the keys. He used to tune it for her when he was little and she would play... the pedals at his feet reminded him of an earth mover he had used in a job... the joystick an old video game he had played with his father... the smell from the vents the old car his mother drove him to school in... this wasn't simply a cockpit, this was tender moments from his life. Little moments, all jumbled together. A screen in front of him recited a biblical verse, first Corinthians two fifteen. "The Righteous judges all things, but is to be judged by no one."
"Iron aegis system activate. Warkinger Jay, Launch!"
The side of the mountain exploded outward. The three beasts dashed over to see what the cause was. Each of them looked down from above and saw it. A huge form that wasn't quite humanoid with massive horns on the side of the head, the forearms easily twice as bulky and large as the upper arms, the whole shape a little more rounded and bulky than human.
The leopardess was the first to leap at the target this time, bounding off of the cliffside to plung into the dust where the figure was only somewhat visible. It's claws raked against the monsters shoulders, throwing sparks into the air as it hit metal.
Inside the cockpit Jonathan felt the claws rake against his soul. He looked over his shoulder, the giant robot frame he now rode in turning it's massive horned head. "Is your hunger without limit?" John shouted, the massive hands of the mecha reaching up at his command and gripping the cat on his shoulder. With a motion ponderous only because of the size, the great machine leaned forward, pitching the cat beast over it's shoulder and slamming it into the ground, shattering a few trees. "You who have grown so large and become such a terror, you think it feast, that my body will end your hunger?"
He spun and his fist connected with the side of the head of the canine as it also jumped at him. "Then let me end it! Face me and you'll never hunger for flesh again!" Even as he finished the first swing, knocking the wolf on it's side, he brought his other arm up to deliever a second blow to the feral monster.
The leopardess and lioness circled, then the lioness jumped and his massive iron gauntlet came up, blocking the claws with it's heavily shielded fore arms. Then the oversized robotic arm snapped backward, striking the edge of plated armor against the face of the leopardess who was trying to leap at his neck from behind. As the leopardess stumbled back from the backhanded blow, John moved the Warkinger to face the Lioness, spreading the heavy arms and revealing the chest of the robot to be armored in a japanese style, as though the whole upper chest were wearing a giant skull, or perhaps the head of a giant dragon.
"Dragons eyes AFLAME!" He ordered, pulling the trigger on the joystick in his hands. The eyes of the dragon, the chest plate for the robot, flared to life and the night was blotted out as blinding flames crackled and lept at the beast, the short lived beams burning the creature painfully, causing it to roar and then flee from the struggle.
That didn't stop the wolf from leaping again and sinking it's teeth into the spread arms. John rocked back, slamming the beast through trees with the swing, and finally pushing it down to the ground. The beast still snarled and struggled, trying to bite through the armor, and on John's wrist a red spot appeared. No skin broke, but then again the jaws couldn't pierce the armor. He raised his other arm and slammed it into the beasts head.
"Fatal..." On the joystick John's thumb flipped open a cover. The massive peumatic piledriver built into the mecha's forearms slammed back. He jabbed his thumb down on the button revealed beneath the cover. "IMPACT!" The piledriver slammed downward, transfering the energy of it's impact through the heavy armor plating of the fist, and the beasts skull crunched, it's jaw releasing his trapped arm.
Warkinger Jay stood up and swept the clearing it had made with the fight. Inside John flipped dials and adjusted the sensors to see if there was anything else. The beasts still alive were fleeing, the battle was won.
Down the mountain side, beyond the forest, there lay a city of Limbo. He could see it in the distance, the few lights in the windows. In that direction John travelled...