Travis Gardin
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Chapter 24: Transform!
🕑 Added 2024-10-25 18:00:01 +0000 UTCTurns out that Biscuits clawing at a blob of detached flesh counted as her participation in the fight, so she got two level ups. Yay.
Also, we got good loot from the boss.
Signing Pen. Documents you sign with this pen become binding contracts. Those who break the contract (including you) become randomly cursed. When used to scribe runes the effects are increased by 25%.
Red Tie. Power, authority, but also anger. While wearing this tie the positive and negative effects of Rage are increased by 50%.
Blue Tie. Calm, peacemaking, but also subdued. While wearing this tie you recover Ki, Faith and Spirit 50% faster when out of combat.
The red tie goes to Madeline. She's got Rage from her new Barbarian class. She wraps it around her left forearm, which is her sword/axe hand.
The blue tie goes to Jose. He's not gotten a lot of loot and the dude burns through Ki like nobody's business. He ties the tie around his head like a headband.
The pen goes to Mercy. She's got the Imbuer class and has “Defense Up” runes. Runes are pretty interesting. Each time you learn a rune, you can apply it exactly once, but it lasts forever. If you apply it again the first one fades. But, unlike other abilities, you can learn a rune more than once. Mercy has three copies of the “Basic Defense Up” rune. She's placed one on each of her outfits, increasing the defensive value of each by 25%. Doesn't help a ton with the cloth of the Warlock or Princess outfits, but that's a huge boost for the mecha suit. Another 6.25% on top of the 25% won't hurt. More importantly, as she learns more powerful runes, the pen will continue to be a boon.
Since we have time, we scour the whole White House for treasure and secrets. We find all sorts of interesting memorabilia, replica relics and neat nods to Presidents past. We each find a couple of items that we put in our inventories. For myself I take the President's desk. The whole thing. It includes an old recording device which has Nixon talking on it. The tape is only six and a half minutes, for some reason.
Downstairs in the situation room, we find all sorts of probably secret documents, which may or may not be dungeon bullshit. Like, there's a report on Area 51, which says there's three alien corpses there. But also there's a report claiming that there's a secret nuclear missile hidden in the Seattle Space Needle. So we take those documents with a grain of salt.
I gained four levels and allocate them, plus one stored level, to Weapon Master, bringing it to 10. I get some passive effects that improve my dagger attacks. Thanks to the Weapon Master's One For All subclass, those effects now boost all my weapons. I wonder if there's a way to get these passive boosts to affect my spells...
Importantly, I use the free points I get to raise my Agility to 250, thereby unlocking a new ability choice.
Notice! You have reached 250 Agility, and are offered the following choice: Leap or Skip.
Leap - Your jumping distance increases by 100%. You no longer take fall damage.
Skip - You can teleport a number of feet equal to 20% of your Agility.
So I can already jump pretty well, and also I can fly. But teleporting, that sounds fun! Skip it is!
I try it out. It's just like one of those anime dash right behind you moves. So I just flicker out, then flicker in. There's an accompanying fssh sound like a jet of compressed air. I think that if I didn't have absurd Reflexes, the Skip would probably be disorienting, but I'm fine with it. I try Skipping up. It works. I try Skipping in the air. It works, but I can't Skip more than once between being on the ground. So I can't teleport-fly. This ability doesn't seem to have a cost, but it does have a cool down, which increases as I use it, then decreases after I give it a rest for a while. Mercy says her costume abilities work the same.
For example, I can use it once, then two seconds later, then four seconds later, then 8 seconds later, etc. It should be great for surprise attacks, but by the time someone figures out the trick, the cool down will be too long to be viable anyway.
6/22
Washington D.C.
7:05 AM
We stand before the US Capitol Building, the last stop on our fucked up tour of dungeon DC.
“Alright,” I say. “Everyone fully charged up?” I look around at my team. They look ready to fight, but also ready for this to be over with.
Huh. That's odd, I can scan the Capitol Building itself. And it shows up as a giant red dot on my radar.
The Political Machine. Tier 6. You don't know anything about this monster yet, other than it's a monster, and probably made of stone.
Possible loot: Amendment Proposal, Capitol Keystone, Gavel Of Order, Transformation Transformer
“The entire building counts as a monster. We need to be careful.”
I slowly advance with Lunar Mind and Atmos Mind active. We get to the bottom of the long steps up to the front of the building. There's only the sound of our boots on stone. I begin to climb the stairs when there's a deafening rumble of stone.
The building lifts up and I leap off it. “Ruuun!” I shout to the team, and use Atmos storm hands to pull along Rutger, who's the slowest of the team.
There's a clattering of giant gears, the rumble of stone, the cracking of marble. As we get back to the invisible entry tunnel, we turn to watch the Capitol Building change like a goddamn Transformer. The stairs become feet, the left wing slides down and splits apart into legs. The right wing unfolds into arms. The center of the building becomes the chest, and the rotunda slides open to reveal a marble bust of Uncle Sam.
“Nope!” I hear Rutger, Mercy and Madeline say at the same time.
“We can just shoot it from ‘ere,” Quins offers. We already know that the space in between “floors” is enclosed, despite looking like open sky. The invisible tunnel we're currently in runs between the Washington Monument and the former Capitol. It's actually only about 10 feet wide, and running your hand along the wall feels like glass.
Glass which, upon the Capitol mecha punching it, shatters. The entire tunnel flickers, cracks, and then turns into a shower of crystal shards, pelting us with tiny blades. I throw Lunar Armor on Rutger so they're protected, but don't have time to save anyone else. The shower fortunately ends after just a second, leaving us ankle deep in glass(?).
The Capitol building advances, just one stomp of its foot shaking the ground like an earthquake. “Stay mobile! I'm going to see if it has a weakness!” I fly up at the monster, aiming for the front doors. Below the team opens fire, shooting at random parts, hoping to get lucky and hit something vital.
I punch my way through the heavy wooden front doors and find... The United States Capitol Building. I look around and see corpses. People who had to have died here back at the beginning of the Dracosys. They're desiccated.
I quickly move into the central hall to find statues and more dead people. From the inside, this place looks totally normal. I hear a colossal thud as the mecha takes another step, but I feel nothing. Inside the monster is a separate space. I punch open doors and check offices randomly. I dash into the House Of Representatives. Thud! I run the other way and check the Senate. Thud! There's nothing here but the building as it was. Shit. I was really hoping for a glowing crystal core I could smash.
I fly out and drop down to my team. They've already had to hoof it to the Washington Monument. The Political Machine has stomped halfway down the National Mall already, leaving giant footprints in its wake.
“Not good, chief!” Quins calls out, nocking three arrows and firing.
“It's made of stone!” Mercy confirms. “Nothing bleeds on it. Shooting into the windows doesn't seem to do anything.”
“When in doubt,” Jose fires up at a steep angle, hitting the massive head. His bullet, though powerful against human sized targets, does almost nothing to a giant stone head.
In response Uncle Sam's eyes glow red and a laser sweeps across the field, tearing up the ground but not the Washington Monument. It seems invulnerable, which is good because we'd all hidden behind it.
“Gears! I heard gears turning,” Madeline reminds us. “It has to have joints we can hit.”
“Mercy, with me,” I turn to her and she changes into her Angle Frame blue and white mecha outfit. An outfit which can fly. We fly up and look down at the monster from above. Sure enough, down in the inside of the rotunda, are hundreds of gears. The gears occupy the space that should be the inside of the building, a space I was just in. But physics can go fuck themselves, I guess.
We drop down to the neck(?) and open fire on the gears. Mercy uses her minigun and I charge three Tempest Buster Rifles and blast away with giant storm lasers. Uncle Sam's eyes glow red and I start moving away from Mercy, knowing that when you're being tracked, you start dodging before the enemy fires. (Thanks, video games!) The beams fire off behind me and sweep towards me, too fast to outrun. I launch myself up, using Skip to teleport over the five-foot-wide beam as it passes beneath me. I feel the heat from the boiling air around the red laser.
Mercy, seeing a chance to go in for the kill, has charged in with her beam spear, and slashes away at the mechanisms. The gears smash, shatter, jam and stop. The giant golem itself stops moving, right as it's got a foot next to the Washington obelisk.
“Is it dead?” Madeline asks.
I check my radar. It's still covered in a large red dot. “No, but that definitely did something. Let's go back and regroup.”
We fly back down to our allies, who are over by the reflecting pool now.
“So, it's still counted as alive,” I say. “But we smashed the shit out of its gears.”
“It doesn't seem to be moving anymore,” Madeline says warily.
We retreat back by the Lincoln Memorial and wait. A minute goes by, then five.
“I've thought of something stupid,” I say, breaking a long silence. I then explain my plan.
“That is something stupid,” Rutger agrees. “But I kind of like it. The symbolism is nice too.”
I say, “I have world class Wisdom but still don't get symbolism.”
Rutger rolls their eyes. “I'll explain if this works.”
The plan is simple, really. First, we all move forward, to the back of the Machine. The part where we travel underneath the giant robot is maybe the first time I've been scared in a long time. This goes bad, this thing falls wrong, and we're all instantly dead.
We get to about 150 feet behind the monster and I down some potions to recover my AP. Then we begin to charge. Quins loads five arrows, each glowing a different color. Jose's gun overflows with electricity and small sparks jump off to the ground near him. Rutger holds a ball of white hot flame in one hand and a ball of emerald lightning in the other hand. Mercy is back in her White Hat Warlock outfit and rings of green data are spinning around her. And I switch to full Atmos Mind and charge ten Tempest Buster Rifles in ten storm hands.
Madeline, without a powerful ranged attack, is calling out the timing. “Three, two, one, fire!”
We all launch our attacks at a single point high on the giant robot's back. The explosion of our combined mightiest powers deafens and sends a cloud of white stone flying in all directions. Then the smoke clears and we've blasted a 30 ft hole in its back. The bottom of the rotunda is gone, and the top part begins to crack off and we see the back of Uncle Sam's head. Then, it begins.
The titan wobbles just a tiny bit, which for it is 30 feet or so. It wobbles forward, then backwards. As it wobbles backwards its shadow falls across us as if the shadow of death itself. If I have to, I think I can get everyone out of-
Quins fires a single arrow. It flies up, then explodes in a massive, 50 foot wide sonic shockwave. Then Capitol-mus Prime suddenly rocks forward again, and just as we'd hoped, it falls. It falls right onto the invulnerable Washington Monument, the obelisk acting like a spear that drives itself through the golem's chest and neck and then through the hideous face of Uncle Sam. The sound is calamitous. Bricks and stones go flying and crash into the ground. Giant gears pop out and roll away. Paper flies and flutters in the air. Wood splinters and shrapnel flies out, cutting into a few of us. An upholstered chair from the Senate floor drops down right in front of me.
And the red dot disappears from my radar. I've gained six levels.
“Yeaaaaaaaaah!” we all yell and hug each other and slap each other on the back.
