Someone set up us the bomb
18 Jun 2018Haley
This whole thing just keeps getting weirder. The attack of the clockwork robots was a thing. Apparently I’m pretty damn good with a gun, and stuff. Lauren was pissed that an untrained rookie was better at shootering than she is, everyone else seems to think it’s because we’re apparently either the same person (according to Solveig) or numbered clones (according to Hilde).
Anyway… after I helped Solveig crash our hovercraft after everything electronic died, and we mowed through clockwork robots like they were nothing, this giant fucking clockwork gorilla thing appeared and absolutely smashed Hilde. I took a shot at it, then Lauren seemed to remember how guns work and took over so I could go tend to Solveig’s injuries. This was harder than it should have been? I don’t even know what happened there, normally I’m really good at his kind of thing but seems like I couldn’t do much more than an average first aider so… I dunno. I’m feeling rather wonky about my abilities right now. So while I’m having my crisis, Lauren and Hilde dealt with the gorilla, Hayden kept out of the way and did a cheerleading act which seemed to make everyone work harder, and then we were left to take stock of our situation.
We’ve lost our transportation, Hilde and Solveig aren’t in great shape, and we still need to find this Daniel guy. Lauren is convinced he’s in the city somewhere but suggested that we should signal him somehow rather than just blunder around aimlessly. This was exactly what I was thinking too - it’s seriously like she’s in my head sometimes - but the others were reluctant to draw attention to ourselves because of the clockworkians. It was all a moot point anyway, because Mike had the flare gun.
At least, I thought it was a moot point. Apparently Solveig had an idea, so we trekked off to the top of a nearby building, leaving Lauren behind to guard the hovercraft, with Taba as a second pair of eyes. When we got to the roof, Solveig shooed us back inside as if she was super embarrassed by something. We heard what sounded like a magic spell of some kind and then there were some intense flashes of light in what looked like morse code (Lauren told me later that it spelled SELF). Solveig returned looking sheepish and told us that “nothing happened and we can forget about it”. After a few moments we spotted what looked like a mirror flashing a reflection at us from halfway up another building. We figured this was Daniel, so we went to pick up the others and go check it out.
Heading across to the signal’s origin was fairly uneventful. It was clear when we got there though that someone had put a lot of work into clearing out all the clockwork robots in the area and seeing up traps and barricades. Of course, Hilde missed the memo about traps, copping a grenade to the face as she prodded dead bots looking for “clues”. Lauren confirmed that these bots had probably been shot with the kind of gun Daniel was carrying, so we headed for the entry only for Lauren to trip another of the traps…
Fortunately she’s smart enough to know how not to instantly detonate the claymore attached to the tripwire. Solveig recovered it instead. Lauren spent a few moments complaining that she should have expected this, and then warned us all to be on the lookout for additional traps… at which point part of the wall collapsed. This gave us an unimpeded path upstairs to where Daniel was.
We got to the floor where Daniel had signalled us from, and Hayden started calling out in a soothing voice to let him know we were here and friendly. Lauren snarkily told him “if you’d just let me do the talking he’d be fine, he already knows me.” Daniel obviously heard them bickering and directed us down the hall to where he was. Lauren led us into the room.
Daniel seemed pretty relieved to see Lauren in particular, and glad to see that she had a team with her. Then he noticed me bringing up the rear and did a double-take. He looked at Lauren, then back to me, then back to Lauren, and said “I never expected to see Diane on a mission with you…?” It was pretty obvious that he got the three of us mixed up just like everyone else seems to do, and I may have been more than a little annoyed as I introduced myself.
Daniel had seen better days. I had a look at his injuries but there was nothing I do for him that he hadn’t already done for himself. While I was doing that, he filled us in on everything that had happened. He’d been tracking the group of clockwork robots that had taken Michelle, and had been pretty damn surprised to see a mechanical angel swoop down, basically snatch her from their grasp and fly back into the tower. I guess this is where we’re heading next… but we’ve decided to make our way back to the hovercraft with Daniel first so we can do something about patching up all of the damaged people and rating in a slightly more defensible position than a crumbling building laced with explosives.