I HOLD TRUTH LIKE A TORCH-- SHADOWS FLICKER BEFORE ME.

[foolishwren]

Who: Heather Mason and ANYONE IN GOLDENROD CITY. Anyone.
Where: Goldenrod City
When: In the thick of the Missingo glitching.
Summary: "And this glitch? Basically, the end of the world."
So, weird shit happens in Johto. That much has come to be expected. But everything else at least had an explanation Heather could buy. The Unown and their crystal flood? Crazy haunted stuff from those old Ruins. The nightmarish fog? Turns out ghosts are jerks no matter what world you're in.
This? According to Otacon, it's just the end of the line.
Well, Heather's stopped the end of the world once. Might not be her place to do so again if that's what this is, but at the very least, she doesn't want to go down without a fight. So she's taking to the pixelated streets both in search of others who didn't wind up pixelated monstrosities, AND in search of the missing numbers that caused this.
And guess what? She found a steel pipe.
Rating: PG-13 for language and pixelated violence.
Log:

There was one bonus to this scenario that Heather could think of. It wasn't much, but it was something, and in times like these, somethings were important to keep in mind. They stopped you from going into that disaster mindset where you just curled up in a fetal position somewhere and waited for something to eat you.

That something was that at least this time, she knew where she was, and knew she hadn't gone crazy.

That? Was a comfort.

Unlike on the wet pavement of Silent Hill, where she'd been mentally transported just over a month ago when the delusion-inducing fog had crept across eastern Johto, here Heather's boots made almost no sound against the new floor of the city, which was smooth as tile and covered in bright little squares (pixels?) of light that blinked as they moved soundlessly. It was similar enough to the creeping clotlike things that coated the walls of the Otherworld that it sent little prickles of discomfort through Heather's skin when she thought about it too much, but different enough that it didn't sent that heavy, cloying sense of pure dread that the delusions from a month ago had.

The warped cityscape with its permanent redorangepurple sky seemed almost empty, though that probably had to do with the fact that its usual clamoring crowds and busy population had been turned into still, silent pillars of pixel. Heather... was just trying not to look at them as she walked briskly through the desolate streets. Those gave her the wig way more than the pixels that skittered across the ground like digital mice. In all honesty, the place might have been disturbing but oddly peaceful, if it weren't for the hideously warped music and the far-off screams of the beasts she now knew were drifting around the city. Ghosts and skeletons. Boy, this place really knew how to show its citizens a good weekend.

She'd gone in to work today expecting yet another long, drudging shift of ringing up Pokeballs and pretending to be interested in helping women with way too much time on their hands choose which Pokemon plush to get for their collection. What had happened instead was pretty much the eldritch, computerized equivalent of walking into a classroom, seeing something different and thinking you walked into the wrong room, ashamedly ducking out again while everyone stares at you, and then realizing you were actually in the RIGHT room halfway down the hallway.

The pixel people had kind of thrown her off.

An hour and a half later?

She'd been educated on the Missing Number and told a few unsettling things.

She felt like she should have been shocked by this information-- that this world might well be ending.

But it wasn't the first time she'd had the apocalypse sprung on her like a bad surprise party.

And, well, in rough times, they do say to do what you know.

And the last time this had happened? She'd gone into the heart of the storm.

Fought through the obstacles.

Found the source.

Killed it.

Her Pokemon were back in the hotel room-- no point in going back. This was her kind of situation now-- not the time to conform to this place's weird animal-fighting culture. She'd feel safer fighting for herself, anyway. No uncertainty. You made every move yourself and there was no doubt.

She'd found a chunk of pipe.

It was pixelated like everything else, to the point where when she touched it, she almost expected it to feel fuzzy, like a piece of moldy wood. But it felt like rusted metal to her palms and that was good enough for her. She'd just... avoid looking at it whenever she had to use it and pretend like it looked like the real thing.

Her chances? Probably weren't too good, but... hey. No point in just sitting around, right? She'd rather go down swingin' than just stand and watch the place go all low-res like a cheap jpg. image until it finally just went dark. Or whatever it was that was gonna happen.

It was probably disturbing just how easily she found herself slipping back into the same mindset she'd had the last time she was faced with the end of the world, but she'd just... consider the implications of that later.

If there was a later.


A loud cry rang out from one of the alleys. It was one of those things, all right. Those ratcheting, computerized noises that sounded sort of like a Pac Man game mixed with somebody talking into a fan. It wasn't the same kind of hair-raising noise she was used to that made her skin crawl, but it was unsettling enough for her to know good and well that she didn't like it.

"C'mon out, you creep..." she muttered under her breath, hefting her pixel-pipe and stepping towards the mouth of the alley. Briefly it occurred to her that every time shit like this happened, it usually involved her going into alleyways, but she put that out of her mind. The world had turned into a computer crash personified and she was looking to kick a little ass on account of it.

The mouth of the alley was lit in bars and speckles, which twinkled off into the darkness ahead like little fireflies as she stepped in.

.... And there it was.

Pixels fell from its body like dust as it turned its massive head towards her and regarded her with empty eyesockets, its legs and wings splayed out across the alley to keep it suspended between the two narrow walls. Speckles of color flickered all around its skeletal frame like a bad greenscreen effect.

Heather swallowed.

".... Well, uh. You don't look so tough."

A few white pixels trickled down over its lower jaw and hit the smooth ground with gentle plops. They kind of looked like bird poop to Heather but it was easy enough to tell what they were supposed to be.

She took a step back.

"Tell you what, my friend, if you make even one move to eat me, you are BONED."

Apparently Missingnos did not appreciate witty one-liners. It lunged.

Heather swung.

The not-pipe connected with the creature's thick lower jaw with an impact that was real enough-- she could feel it vibrate up her arm painfully-- but instead of the sharp CHING of metal on bone, there was nothing but a rather flat, 8-bit DONK noise.

"Oh, come ON..." Talk about anticlimactic...

She didn't have time to be disappointed, though, because the thing had come down to rest on the floor with a jingle and was now staring at her in a way that distinctly said, despite its empty eyesockets, that it was pissed off.

Suddenly the pipe didn't seem like such a great weapon in such an enclosed space like this anymore.

.... Nnnnkay, time for plan B.

"Hope you can run, bitch!"

~*~TIME FOR A BRISK JOG AROUND THE CITY~*~







_{[ooc: Others can encounter her being chased, encounter her actually FIGHTING one or more of these things, or-- pretty much anything. Feel free to help her out, distract her, yell at her for being reckless, fight her yourself (if that's how you roll), whatever. LET'S PLAY.]}

Comments

[philanthrotaku.livejournal.com]

"Why does everyone try to fight it?!" Otacon complained, catching up to Heather.

"You wouldn't hit Nyarlathotep with a steel pipe, so why hit that thing?!"

[foolishwren]

"It's a fuckin' MONSTER, it's what you DO with MONSTERS!" Heather snapped a little irritably. She'd stopped behind a wall that had, at one point, actually been a little copse of trees outside the bank, but in Magical Glitch Land it had just turned into a vaguely tree-shaped wall. She leaned over to peer out around it to see where the thing that had been pursuing her had gone.

"And what the fuck is Nylothop?"

[philanthrotaku.livejournal.com]

"F-forget it, it's not important right now." he stammered, stopping to catch his breath.

"But we can't beat it hand-to-hand, and I wouldn't risk using our Pokemon in case the glitch affected them even worse."

[foolishwren]

"Who says we can't beat it hand-to-hand?" Heather snorted. LALALLAA I AM TOO STUBBORN FOR YOUR SCIENCE OTACON. "It's how I've beaten everything like that before."

Then, turning to look over her shoulder, she frowned a little at the general cityscape. She'd used to be able to see the hotel above everything else, with what a huge building it was, but now all the buildings just sort of looked... the same.

"I don't even have my Pokemon here. They're back in my room. ... S'better that way."

[philanthrotaku.livejournal.com]

"Heather, think about it. That thing messes with the game. If this is actually the game, that means it bends the rules of reality.

You really think you can punch that to death?"

[boldandresolute.livejournal.com]

Liquid was not a man known for his patience or knowledge of computers. So when he started getting attacked by giant flying skeletons, he started breaking shit. They were just skeletons, after all, and Liquid knew plenty of ways to break bones. Glitches, code, corrupted data... that was all for people like Otacon to figure out. Liquid was just the muscle of the operation, and he was going to do what he did best. Break shit.

And when he found one of those skeletal things chasing after Heather, well, there was only one thing for him to do.

Zombiedactyl was met with a punch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFtw7qW7Vcw) that had enough force behind it to snap its head to one side with a loud CRNCH. Even on its pixellated skull, there were fractures spread out like spiderwebs from where he'd struck.

[foolishwren]

Heather could run like the wind. It was one thing that had kept her alive on many occasions. Needless to say, it wasn't until the CRNCH that she even realized that anyone had intervened.

She skidded to a halt (hard on a smooth surface) and turned around, shoulders heaving slightly.

"HEY! I was taking care of that!"


... Nice to see you too Heather.

[boldandresolute.livejournal.com]

"Were you? I hadn't noticed."

Smirk.

"Maybe I'll leave you a little something once I'm done breaking this thing."

He cracked his knuckles with a sound like splitting wood.

[foolishwren]

"Back off! It's mine!"

TERRITORIAL DISPUTE, GO.

Meanwhile, the creature was picking itself up again. There was just... a hole in its face now. Deleted coding.

[boldandresolute.livejournal.com]

"You want it? Come and get it."

Because Liquid was going to start punching that thing back to whatever eldritch plane it came from with his code-deleting fists.

[usedgigadrain.livejournal.com]

Kisame had been testing out the seemingly shortened travel times when he heard a familiar voice yelling. He'd come across, and avoided, some of the monsters before so he had an idea of what he was up against. If it was one of the ones that was just an area of color, he had no idea how to deal with it, but if it was bone, well, he liked Heather enough to interfere.

Like any good ninja he sought a high position, and the pixels both made it easier and harder to climb up. His not-quite healed hand slowed him down but there were Heather and a bone thing coming down the street. "Let's see how you move when you're neck is broken, eh?"

He waited patiently and when it was close enough, leaped down in a vicious kick, using his hefty weight to add more force to the blow. They'd taken his chakra, but not his training, and the kick was on the mark--the delicate vertebrae right behind the massive skull.

[foolishwren]

Heather was used to hard concrete under her feet when she ran-- not this weird, almost plasticy-smooth stuff. Whatever it was. But it almost seemed to let her go faster, so she didn't mind. These things were quick but she could outrun them till the cows came home, for all she cared. That said, she wasn't too sure just how to go about beating them. After all, it wasn't like she could--

ka-CRAK


.... do that.


The beast's pixelated neck snapped under the impact of the kick, sending the skull and quite a bit of its front half (these things were pretty flimsily held together...) tumbling to the ground.

Heather skidded to a halt, twisting around with a surprised (and wary) expression.

WAT HAPPEN?

[usedgigadrain.livejournal.com]

Kisame stood up and grinned at Heather as he stepped away from the broken bones. He wasn't sure if it was dead, but he didn't want to find out while he was in the middle of the bones.

"Heather-san. It's good to see you in person." He was acting like this was just another day, and in some ways it was, pixels aside.

[foolishwren]

Could glitches really die?

Who knew?

It sort of looked like it was... decaying... though. Pixels were disappearing into the ground and crumbling away.

"I-- ... uh. Hey, Kisame. Thanks."

Well this was a little awkward.

Letting the pipe-holding hand fall to her side, Heather rubbed the back of her neck.

"I totally had that, by the way."

[usedgigadrain.livejournal.com]

"Leading it into a trap, eh?" That was said without any sarcasm or condescension at all, and he smiled at her. "I'll let you have the next one, if you want."

Then he noticed the pipe. "I'm not sure something that's gone the way the rest of the world has will work well against them though."

[bakaitoukid]

He had said it once already, and he'd probably say it a thousand times. When Kaito had wished, as a kid, that he could live in a video game, he most certainly didn't mean this. Oh sure, it was a video game (more now than it had ever been before) but it didn't have to be all pixely and creepy, did it?

Kaito was sitting on the dotted ground in front of the Pokemon Center, fiddling with his gear in an attempt to communicate with others on the network and figure out how to fix this (if it was possible) when Heather streaked passed. He glanced up just in time to see the giant skeleton monster hot on her heels, and suddenly the Pokegear became less important than it had been ten seconds ago.

"Heather--! Shit--!"

Kaito was agile and swift, so it took mere seconds for him to leap to his feet and dart after her, gear clutched in his hand. It was a good thing he had his Pokemon attached to his belt still, though he was (understandably) reluctant to use them. It was far too weird seeing his friends, usually so colorful and filled with life, act like 8-bit sprites.

"Heather, the hell did you do?!"

[foolishwren]

What a world, man.

One day it's perfectly normal, then the next, it's all 8-bit and your friends are getting chased around by giant monstrosities that would have been described as Lovecraftian, if Lovecraft had been around to be influenced by the internet.

At the sound of Kaito's voice (she hadn't spotted him when she passed, having been a little more concerned with regulating her speed than taking in the sights), she looked over her shoulder. KAITO. Now there was a sight for sore eyes. Not in that she hadn't seen him recently, but in that she was glad he hadn't turned into a goomba or something.

"NOTHING! ... I just hit it with a pipe!"

Heather that is not 'nothing'.



The beast was gliding above the rooftops, but it was obvious in the same way that a hawk is obvious when it's homing in on a rabbit that it was following her-- but when Kaito joined the equation, its skull swiveled on the neckbones and locked onto him as well.

Uh oh.

[bakaitoukid]

"You hit it with a pipe?!" was Kaito's incredulous reply as he continued to run next to her, completely unaware that the ominous skeletal creature had targeted him in conjugation with his friend, "The hell were you thinking?!"

To be fair, Kaito wasn't really one to talk. If he had been faced with the same situation as her, he probably would have tried hitting the skeleton pterodactyl with a pipe, too.

[foolishwren]

"HEY, it was that or turn into a scooby snack, all right?!" She waved the pixelated pipe agitatedly as she ran. But she was relieved to see he was all right, at least. She'd just have to tell him that later, since now wasn't the time.

Above them, the Missingno angled its wings for a swoop-- though how its wings even carried it was a mystery, considering they were just bones, the air whistling around them hollowly, but hey, in Magical Glitch Land who both of them-- it intended to snag at LEAST one!

Heather chose this moment to look over her shoulder, because after so much energy put into running away from monsters, after awhile you started to just know things.

"LOOK OUT!"

[bakaitoukid]

Heather's warning was more than enough cause for Kaito to glance over his shoulder--

-- just in time to catch the flying skeleton dive-bombing them from above.

"GET DOWN!" was Kaito's immediate response to the danger that loomed ominously behind him. But before Heather could follow his urgent command, he reached out and grabbed her shoulders from behind, pushing on them hard to force her to the ground, and allowing himself to fall with her.

The pain that would surely follow from their fall would be worth it if they managed to avoid the grasping talons of the giant skeleton monster.

[imthe-shit.livejournal.com]

If Snake had an RPG with him, he'd be using it. But no, instead, he's got a bunch of pixelated Pokemon. And some rocks. Still, better than nothing for now. He could see Heather making a break for it, and he forced himself to run after her, grunting harshly with almost each breath.

"Heather!"

His voice is harsher than he meant for it to be; but it could be the fact that he's running and in a bad mood. The giant skeleton didn't go unnoticed to him, not at all.

Snake was starting to feel reminded of REX all over again... Those bare bones really reminding him of cold metal. This thing better not launch nukes and shoot lasers.

[foolishwren]

The smooth ground felt like the moon after awhile. It was like running, but-- ... smoother. Wasn't much of a comfort when you were being chased by a screaming, skeletal specter, though.

The teen darted out into a clearer space, one that had probably once been a little mini-town-center (but had been transformed by the glitch into pretty much nothing more than a flat space) and spun on a heel, hefting the pipe.

Snake's rough voice caught her ear and she looked over her shoulder, brows shooting up.

"Snake? ... SNAKE, be CAREFUL!"

She knew he was a badass, but he was also... well, he was also OLD. She didn't want him to have a HEART ATTACK or something... or become skeleton food.

Speaking of the skeleton...

The bony beast-- one of the many she'd alternately been chased by and fought off over the past few hours, came rushing downwards, landing with an 8-bit clatter in the open space, wings flared. If it had been flesh and blood, it would have been blowing air aggressively through its nostrils and curling its lips up over its many teeth.

[imthe-shit.livejournal.com]

He ran up beside her, coming to an almost flailed halt as he saw the beast land nearby. Grabbing one of the balls from his belt, he got into a defensive stance, brows furrowed.

"Don't worry about me. How are you holding up?" Goldenrod had been good to him; he'd managed to make his own ration packs... at least before the place became pixelated. They should recover any lost stamina and LIFE. At least in his case, but he couldn't help but worry about Heather. She hadn't understood him when he talked about that stuff, so maybe things were different where she came from.

Seeing the monster flare its bony wings at them, Snake tensed further, half expecting to hear it bellow out REX's roar, or perhaps even RAY's. He'd heard them both so long ago, but they were both still so fresh in his mind. He'd had nightmares of REX ever since he'd witnessed Gray Fox's death in Shadow Moses.


But he wasn't about to let that get to him now.

[foolishwren]

Heather had no Pokeballs-- just the weird pixelated pipe in her hand. She was tensed as well, ready to spring away should the beast make a swipe at her-- it was still lumbering forward, distinctly more jittery and clumsy on the ground than it was when it hovered eerily in the air.

"Fine. Just peachy."

Well, if she was healthy enough to be sarcastic, she was probably telling the truth.

"Don't get too close to it, these fuckers are mean."

Which was sort of why she'd led it to an open space-- somewhere easier to FIGHT it.

[imthe-shit.livejournal.com]

Anything that jittered about that much while walking was automatically creepy in Snake's books. Also it could topple over if he had some firepower... But he didn't.

Instead, he had Solid, his Onix. Tossing the ball into the air, he sent out the pixelated Rock Snake, listening to the "goorarooroo" sound it made once it emerged.

"Yeah. I know."

He turned to Heather, and gave her one of the Pokeballs. "This one's got Mk. II, my Magnemite inside. He's strong against anything that flies, and this skeleton does that, so we can take our chances and see how it goes." He frowned, looking back at the glitched Pokemon, "He'll keep you safe for now. Just in case."