Inside 74: Summer Fun and Zombies

[Vahnavoi]

[Steele Street]

"They're just pieces of paper. But if something comes for the objects while you're at it, I suggest you run", the bandaged man says helpfully.

Then he waits.

Or, he could just wait, for the paperboy to exhaust the supply of magnets and return. But, since he's here, he might as well take care of some errands.

"Hey, you! Why are you following that man around?", he shouts to the spirit following that man around. The spirit might see the glow of crimson flame in his eyes. The gentleman only sees some biker thug approaching and shouting at seemingly no-one.

[Morty]

[Normal Escort Mission]

The door appears to be locked. There's no visible way to open it from their side.

[Rebonack]

[Steele Street]

Waiting around is boring.

The lad doesn't seem to be having a great deal of difficulty attaching paper to metal with magnets. He'll probably run out within a few minutes. There is, however, a notable lack of the zombies that the barmaid was talking about.

There is, however, a spirit.

Who the biker is now yelling at.

"What are you talking about?" the man replies, glancing around in equal parts confusion and alarm.

The ghostly woman, meanwhile, begins vomiting down the front of her dress.

Her countenance is one of a person poisoned to death.

This doesn't answer the biker's question, not directly, though it hints pretty strongly to a reason.


[Normal Escort Mission]

"Yes," the arcane abomination in the shape of a you woman from a non-descript fishing village replies. "In a supply closet, it would appear. The door is barred. Impediments to our goal continue to abound."

So...

That means?

Can't she just magic the door open or something?

[Gullara]

[Normal Escort Mission]

"O-oh." Onyeka doesn't ask why this is an impediment when the outside of the building was not. Instead she shifts over to the door and feels it out. Specifically examining the handle or knob. "Let me just..." Do something, hopefully.

[Vahnavoi]

[Steele Street]

If there are indeed zombies lurking around, stealing steel objects, they will sooner or later pick up one or more of the objects with magnets attached. It might take a while, so the bandaged man is not fretting yet. He has this other thing to pass the time.

"I'm not talking to you", he says to the alarmed gentleman. "Just go on your way as if you never saw me." He then reaches to grab the arm of the ghostly woman, to drag her with him. To people without second sight, the gesture hardly makes sense. If the ghost doesn't put up too much resistance, the bandaged man will drag her back under the gas lamp and the gentleman is free to go on their way... for now.

[Rebonack]

[Steele Street]

The gentlemen definitely has no second sight and he remains alarmed and confused for the time being. Once the ghost is dragged away her hurries down the street hoping that he won't have to interact with the bandaged man again.

As for the ghost.

She gets dragged away under the gas lamp passively.

Like many ghosts she's little more than an echo of a person, a shadow burned into reality by a terrible passing.

She probably won't have much to say to the bandaged man.

But!

That's okay.

Because one of the steel objects that has been marked was just taken.

[Vahnavoi]

[Steele Street]

After appraising the ghost's sorry state, the man utters a short spell: "Revere Path of Binding: Soul Burial." Faint outline of a gate appears behind him, though there might not be a living soul around capable of seeing it. "You may go", he says to the ghost. If it is a weak one, with no real soul to it, it might dissipate due to mere presence of the gate, like a wisp of fog blown away by the wind. If not, if the ghost remains passive, he will give it a gentle push, sending it through the gate to fate unknown.

Then he begins planning a second spell. "I speak to the four winds / I recall every quarter / I draw the points / I trace the directions..." Each verse is accompanied by him drawing a sigil in the air, then turning 90 degrees and doing so again, holding his other hand close to his chest, finger pointing upward. The purpose of the chant is to help him focus his second sight on the pages of his notebook - if the paperboy did as he asked, those notes should be carried away along with the magnets attaching them to the objects being stolen. This way, he can feel where they are and where they are being carried. If the paper boy did his job well and spread the pages and magnets far enough, the bandaged man might even be able to tell the scope of the problem.

[Rebonack]

[Steele Street]

Like fog at sunrise, the spirit fades.

That's one problem solved for now.

The simple one.

Now for the other, more difficult problem. The one that involves corpses less willing to succumb to their rest.

The zombies are... something else, to be sure. Their bones have turned into lightning. Those further along, their flesh has become like fog and iron scales have begun growing on their bodies. The iron is all being carried back toward the spire they're building, like a huge lightning rod.

A steel serpent is coiled around it, electricity dancing across its scales. Each scale a face warped in agony.

The snake probably isn't nice.

[Vahnavoi]

[Steele Street]

The bandaged man spies all this through his second sight. He's starting to suspect this is beyond his wounded physical form's ability to deal with. Damn it all! Why did he let that detective keep his tool?

But, there is a silver lining on this dark cloud. He knows the origin of iron and lightning and can wrest control of them from whatever evil spirit has crawled from an otherworld to make its nest here. But he only has forty liters of gasoline or so. The spire is quite big. Creating a prison of flame around it won't be easy. Or safe. Good portion of the street might burn down.

The man puts his helmet back on and gets on his bike. He'll have to try and circle the perimeter of this zombie invasion, put up fires here and there. Oh, and tell any passersby to stay the Hell away.

So he gets to driving, stopping to occasionally pour gas across the street, shouting at any civilians to clear the area, lighting up trashcans and other little things on the way. Hopefully the locals won't mistake him for a bigger problem than the zombies. Cones of light cut through the smog, shining from the eyes of the skull ornament at the head of his bike, the infernal roar of the engine warning others of his path.

[Geopol4r]

[Steele Street]
Running into the scene, Prof. Hyeonbin Jin stops just short of the bandaged mans motorcycle, trying to stop him in Hyeonbin's panic.
What is going on?
The professor takes a puff of his cigarette and forcefully blows it at the zombies. The smoke quickly turns into a cloud of plasma, coating over the zombies and scorching the street.

[Rebonack]

[Steele Street]

Sounds like the bandaged man has learned something important today.

Never leave tools you might need later with someone who isn't going to help you stop a giant snake from eating a city.

That isn't the sort of problem that comes up *often* but when it DOES come up it's really important.

The first few fires can be started without a great deal of trouble. But by the time he makes it to the third the zombies seem to have realized that he's up to something though they probably don't know what. Or, well. The zombies probably don't know much of anything. But the malign will that seems to be directing them sure does. The plodding undead with lightning for bones, thankfully, can't move like light. So they are mostly stuck shambling toward him when he's lightning fires before he zooms away on his motorcycle.

It isn't long before they get the clever idea of blocking a whole street with zombies. Where did they get all those extra zombies from?

Well, the zombie grabbing that guy over there and breathing lightning into his eyes and mouth until the guy burns from the inside out and becomes another zombie probably explains it.

Then a professor arrives!

Who can breath plasma!

Now several of the zombies are on fire, though their ionized state causes the plasma to whip out in odd coils and loops around them. Probably not quite as effective as one might hope.

Also! Attacking them directly seems to have really riled the zombies up since an arc of lightning just lashed out of the second story window of a nearby building at the professor and the biker.

[Vahnavoi]

[Steele Street]

The bandaged man hits the brakes and brings his bike to a halt to avoid running over the good Professor. "God damn it, man! Don't get in the way!"

To Hyeonbin, the man might look almost as scary as the zombies, clad in black leather, his face obscured by a black helmet and visor. He's riding a Harley Davidson with a skull ornament at the head, the headlights shining from eyesockets of the skull.

The man is somewhat surprised when the Professor turns around and breathes plasma at the approaching zombie mob. This fool might actually be useful! But before he can vocalize that thought, he predicts an attack coming. "Duck!", he shouts to Hyeonbin, jumping off his motorcycle and throwing himself as far away from it as he can.

The arc of lightning strikes the motorcycle and causes the remaining gas in the jerrycans to explode. A flash of light and heat washes over the street, the bike engulfed by a small mushroon cloud of flame.

[Geopol4r]

[Steele Street]
Hyeonbin hits the ground to avoid the lightning. He chucks his cigarette at the zombie, and it begins releasing waves of pressure and plasma. Hyeonbin runs to the guy with mummy wrappings.
Are you okay? Where do we go?
The prof pulls out a cigar and lights it on the burning bike. He breathes in and blows the smoke peacefully into the air.
Want one? It'll keep you going for a while.

[Rebonack]

[Steele Street]

The source of the lightning bolt isn't immediately obvious, having come from a second story window of a building nearby, but chances are it is related to these very metal undead shambling around stealing metal. The zombies that were forming the blockade begin to approach, though the zone of death created by the cigarette laying on the ground pulverizes several of them before they can get close.

Thankfully these are definitely slow zombies who don't appear to be very fast or very-

Oh.

One of them just reached into its abdominal cavity and pulled out a bunch of...

What are those?

Like caltrops or something?

It hurls the fistful of spikes at our 'heroes'. Getting struck by them will cause the unpleasant experience of getting shocked not terribly different from getting hit by a stun gun.

That's probably how the zombies immobilize people long enough to zombify them.

[Geopol4r]

[Steele Street]

The professor thankfully just took a puff of mad scientist smoke. As the euphoria sets in, Hyeonbin slowly(not without effort, mind you) turns towards the zombie that chucked caltrops at him. Without pain or fear of pain, Hyeonbin takes another puff of his cigar, places the cigar in bandaged mans hands, and pulls out an electric lighter. Not the kind that you press against stuff, the kind that superheats air and torches stuff.
The secret Setting 2 on Hyeonbin's lighter: Flamethrower.

Hyeonbin stiffly walks closer to the undead, and slowly raises the lighter.
Click.
Click.
Boom.

Spoiler: Boom

Show

Not what Hyeonbin looks like, but you get the idea.

[Vahnavoi]

[Steele Street]

The biker stumbles up, shaking off some dust and lingering flames. "A cigarette? I a situation such as this?", he asks incredulously as he takes off his helmet, revealing his head and face are covered in white bandages. "... okay. Maybe one." He takes the cigarette and inhales the smoke, letting Hyeonbin deal with the approaching zombies for the moment. He hops back to avoid being hit by the caltrops, staying behind the professor, admiring his trick with the lighter.

"I have a feeling we will get along fine!", he shouts to Hyeonbin, kneeling to put his helmet on the ground. His left hand holding the cigarette, he draws something from his pocket with his right - a silver pendant, in the shape of a hammer or an axe. "Forger of the sky / Creator of clouds / Watcher on the edge of Heaven / Borrow me your axe / Let me hold the hammer / To strike a spark / To sound the thunder..."

[Rebonack]

[Steele Street]

It turns out that blasting the zombies with a flame thrower is a pretty great way of preventing them from doing nefarious zombie things.

Several more undead get torched by the flame thrower. Between that blast of flames and the cigarette zone of DOOM the troop of zombies with lightning for bones seems to have been thinned out pretty noticeably.

Of course, that means the situation is going way too smoothly which means it is no doubt time for more problems.

That second story window the lightning bolt was launched from earlier?

Explodes.

It's another zombie!

Except this one is completely covered in iron scales, save for its open abdominal cavity revealing flesh of mist and bones of lightning within. The monster leans back, throwing its arms wide, and releases a thunderous blast of stormy wind, lightning, and metal fragments from the cavity in its belly. Getting sliced by the shards isn't fun. Nor is getting zapped by the lightning. But the biggest danger, perhaps, is that wind.

It'll steal the breath straight from one's lungs.

[Morty]

[Normal Escort Mission]

Onyeka will find a doorknob. If she tries to use it, she will find that the door seems to be barred from the outside. There's no lock or visible obstruction on this side but something is holding it fast. Meanwhile, the two will hear some voices from elsewhere in the shop. It's hard to make out what they're saying, but there are at least two. They're not getting closer, at least.

[Geopol4r]

Steele Street
The wind knocks the drugged professor over. After face planting on the asphalt, he gets up unfazed, yet scorched both inside and out from the shock.
The lighter returns to setting one. A pipe is pulled out, swiftly filled and tamped down, and lit.
A puff is drawn from the pipe. A smoke ring is blown. Solid smoke wraps the abdomen of the zombie, sealing it.
A trail of smoke drifts from a mouths corner.
A smoke spike is driven into the zombies mouth area, through the back of the head.
Hyeonbin smiles in a way only a high guy can.

[Vahnavoi]

[Steele Street]

The bandaged man is shouting something, but his voice is lost in the explosion. Then the zombie blows out all the air away from the man. The lightning and the metal shards, he can hide from by rolling behind flaming wreckage of his bike - the flames and the heat are a smaller problem than flying shrapnel - but having his breath stolen, that's another thing.

Still, his lips keep moving, silently continuing his recitation. When it starts looking like Hyeonbin's on his last legs, the man jumps from behind the bike, holding the silver pendant before him.

"Reverse Path of Destruction: Pale Lightning."

Arc of electricity jumps forward - from the nearest zombie, towards the pendant. And them from the second nearest, so on and so forth. If there's any ionized plasma around, it cools down to gas. Holding the pendant before him, the bandaged man walks forward, draining away the electric force from the walking dead.

[Rebonack]

[Steele Street]

A ring of smoke, binding, seals fast the roiling storm in the armored metal zombie's belly. The spike, however, glances off its iron armor. Turns out this foe is a pretty resilient one.

Resilient foes are definitely the worst kind.

And then lightning in a bottle happens.

Raw power is ripped away from the lesser undead without difficulty, causing them to slump to the ground like puppets with their strings cut as their animating force is stolen away.

But the heavily armored undead?

It thrashes and twists and rages against the power drain.

However, it doesn't fall.

Not yet.

It can't belch for lightning from its belly. Nor conjure electricity from anywhere else without it flowing away. But what it can do, it does.

The undead grips a scale on its shoulder and pulls it free, the metal disc revealed to be a blade plunged through its wispy flesh and deep into its body. With a snarl like distant, rumbling thunder it lunges toward the bandaged man, aiming to skewer him with the improvised short sword.

Rude.

[Geopol4r]

[Steele Street]
The euphoria is about to wear off. So, the prof does the reasonable thing. He steps up towards the lunging zombie, clicking the lighter into setting two. A little smoke from the belly band wraps the lighter, keeping the lighter on while drawing it into the zombie belly. The professor probably gets knocked over by the flying armor zombie, and he will stay down. But the zombie has a flamethrower just sitting inside him blowing its flame.

[Vahnavoi]

[Steele Street]

When the zombies begin collapsing, the bandaged man coughs to clear his throat and draws in a relieved breath. Good, his intuition was correct.

But, the big guy is not out of the fight yet. When it pulls a sword out of its body, the bandaged man stops. He could recite another spell to reinforce the bindings, but he wants to keep the last one going, lest the other zombies recover.

So, when the big zombie lunges, the man simply flees, running away to avoid being skewered, lightning trailing after him as he keeps draining power from the zombie. Hopefully it runs out of steam before he does, or Hyeonbin's gambit put a stop to it.

[Rebonack]

[Steele Street]

A torch in someone's belly isn't good.

But you know what is good?

Employing the most ancient defensive art when faced with someone holding a sword who intends you harm.

Run away!

Because after all, it's very difficult to stab someone with a sword if they're way over there.

That's what arrows were invented for.

But alas!

The armored zombie has no arrows!

And its lightning is being steadily stolen.

After a good thirty seconds of chasing the bandaged man it collapses, its animating force extinguished.

[Geopol4r]

Steele Street
Hyeonbin lies on the street, broken and exhausted.
What is up with this? I'm not used to corpses in the streets. How are you doing? What's your name?
Hyeonbin calls out to the bandaged magic man.

[Gullara]

[Normal Escort Mission]

Onyeka will find a doorknob. If she tries to use it, she will find that the door seems to be barred from the outside. There's no lock or visible obstruction on this side but something is holding it fast. Meanwhile, the two will hear some voices from elsewhere in the shop. It's hard to make out what they're saying, but there are at least two. They're not getting closer, at least.

[Normal Escort Mission]

"It's... barred somehow I think. I can't find any sort of locking mechanism on this side." Onyeka concludes after a bit of rooting around. "I might be able to bypass a simple physical impediment on the other side, but if it needs a key." She shrugs, forgetting that the gesture is invisible in the dark.

First she presses her ear to the door and listens for a few minutes, trying to be as certain as possible that there's no one on the other side. Once satisfied, she begins. "Let's see." She produces one of her wands and gets down on the floor so she can try and stick it under the door. If she can, she speaks an invoking word. A spirit promised to aid her, two purple, clawed hands materialize. If there's a physical way it can open the door it'll attempt to do so subtly. Whether that's moving something out of the door or simply turning the knob from the other side.

[Vahnavoi]

[Steele Street]

The bandaged man leans on his knees, wheezing and coughing as he catches his breath. He gives the collapsed zombie a wide berth as he limps back towards Hyeonbin. Running around really wasn't good for his injured foot.

"An evil spirit from a netherworld has made its home around a spire there", he answers the professor, "it is making the dead walk and stealing all loose iron it can. I was going to close it in a circle, but... well..." He looks at the burning remains of his bike. Then he looks at Hyeonbin.

"You don't look like you're fit to fight anymore. I suggest you get as far from here as you can. If you see anyone on the way, tell them to keep setting fires around the perimeter."

Leaving the question about his name unanswered, he holds his hands above the flaming bike, the silver pendant dangling from his fingers. "Two can play this game", he mutters, glaring through the smog towards the spire. He begins singing: "Darkness was your light / muteness was your tongue/ death was your life / matter was your spirit..."

Hyeionbin might notice loose bits of iron and steel beginning to rattle as the man's voice grows louder. The skull decoration of the bike, in particular, looks like it turns on its own to look at the bandaged man.

"... laid in the bowels / dark bowels of marshland / dead beneath the waters / oblivious to all / devoid of all knowing..."

The bodies of the collapsed zombies begin to move, but not under their own power. Rather, fragments of iron are being pulled out of them, one by one, by power of the song. If Hyeonbin has anything made of iron on his person, he might feel that object being pulled towards the bandaged man as well.

"... from breasts of maidens three / black milk for soft iron / white milk for birth of steel / red milk for pig iron..."

[Rebonack]

[Steele Street]

Nothing quite like a nice song to magnetize all the iron nearby.

Or maybe just pulling it to himself?

Depending on the reach of the song the reaction is going to be very different.

If the reach is just a block or so the storm serpent wrapped around the base of the spire won't pay it any heed.

But if it pulls on iron all the way to the spire?

There will come a distant rumbling. A storm building. A sound of metal sliding against stone.

If the storm serpent is coming to devour them both they have a few minutes. It isn't in nay hurry.

All the world can be devoured in time.


[Normal Escort Mission]

Neshi, for her part, watches.

Magic is always a strange thing to observe. Mortals cajoling spirits into performing tasks for them, great and small.

Could she rot the door in front of her into nothing through the teeth of time and entropy? Certainly. But that lacks subtly. And subtly is what she seeks.

So, for the time, she is content to allow Onyeka to work.

[Morty]

[Normal Escort Mission]

Onyeka will find that there's a metal bar on the other side of the door, held in place by a large, solid padlock. It might be possible to get it to open with the conjured hands, if they're capable of such fine manipulation.

[Gullara]

[Normal Escort Mission]

Onyeka sighs. It can't just be easy, huh? She lacks a direct perception of the room, but she can instruct the spirit to look around the room form keys of any sort. That's a simple enough task that might yield results.