Troubling Heaven

[WPZanar07]

Lance, for some reason, missed the jump as a chill nearly as cold as death itself flooded his body. The world seemed to go out of focus, then was the same as it had been. Except he had missed. Which meant he would have to climb up the wall instead of his original plan. Activating a device that would cloak him visually and thermally, he began the ascent on the outside of the Gold Palace...he figured there might be some information on the planet in there.
********
Later, Lance grabbed the ledge and pulled himself up with the last of his strength. He had made it, but barely. Taking a moment or two, he caught his breath, and injected an adrenal solution a kid named Tek had invented. The Militia claimed to have done it, but he knew the truth; they had stolen the information from the boy genius. Feeling new strength within him, Lance went to work descending the nearby stairs cautiously, on route to one of the information databases. He was still cloaked from the sensors. The device he carried cloaked him from thermal, motion, and noise sensors, among a few other things. It was vulnerable to EMP's, however, being a prototype of Kennith "Tek" Johnson.
Lance held his breath and flattened against a wall as he heard voices coming up the stairs.
That better not be the King!!! he thought irritably.
(Whether a glitch in the system or not, let Lance enter the palace. You can do whatever you want; set up a trap or be completely oblivious, but not before he gets some information. And maybe he could meet....IBAN???)

 

[Brilliand]

As Hollowstar regenerated, Gresholm found himself in his bedroom, in his house, which wasn't connected to the palace. But his had to report to the Gold King. Gresholm climbed down the stairs and headed to the empty lot next to his house, where the Gold Palace sat when it happened to be on the ground. He walked over to a rectangular depression made by the drawbridge and called out, "Hello! Yellow strawberry victory orb of ultraviolet ancestor swallow king emerald hat -" Wham! Apparently one of those keywords had gotten the attention of the guest-receiving computer that Algen had set up. A smaller boom sounded as the drawbridge came down, combined with the sound of rushing water as a moat filled up beneath the drawbridge. Gresholm walked across the drawbridge, then stared at a blank wall until someone on the other side pressed the button to make it disintegrate. Gresholm thanked the servant who had let him in and headed for the master conrol room.

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"I told you, it's the Wall of Pins. Now that we've wasted all this time looking for the Orb of Needles, can't we go look under WP?"

"It's an orb. I know it's an orb. It must be the Orb of Spikes."

"You idiot, not everything round has to be an orb!"

"Who ever heard of a round wall?"

"Maybe the same king who decided getting - hey, who's this?" One of the palace workers, a tall, thin man holding a white cylinder in his left hand, had sighted Lance.

"He doesn't look like a native. Hey wall, who is this?" The other worker, a stocky man of medium height holding a computer accessory, struck the wall behind him with his fist.

 

[WPZanar07]

Lance muttered an obscenity when his cloak had cut out. He quickly dodged into an empty room, hoping he hadn't been spotted. Quickly, he made a few minor repairs--being a prototype, it wasn't perfect, so he had to adjust the frequency to compensate for the interference--and quickly reactivated it. When the workers came and went, he knew he had been successful.
He realized he was in a computer room. Quickly, he set his fingers to the keys and began looking through the files.
(What is on this computer? Up to you Brilliand. And please, sight him only when he deactivates it next time, or if there is an electo-magnetic pulse, or something. He is currently cloaked. Of course, you could deduce he's there if he's doing something. After all, keys don't press themselves!...well, usually)

 

[Brilliand]

The two workers had left the artifact list open, so the first screen Lance accessed read "Orb of Aftershock: Causes attacks to repeat their effects more weakly. Emad." This message occupied the entire screen, with buttons for "Next," "Previous," "Main Menu," and, mysteriously, "Nedemu."

 

[WPZanar07]

Lance would avoid "Nedemu" until he knew more about it. Instead, he tried to find the button that would tell him where the specific artifact was...it sounded interesting. He looked through the other artifacts first, of course, and recorded them onto his datapad. He now had a portable version of this database.
And just in time too. Flattening himself against a wall, he saw two people come in, one with an artifact in his hands. Perhaps...perhaps he could take him to the place with the artifacts? And maybe he had access to a database concerning Hollowstar itself...
Lance would follow him, cloaked, until they came near the artifact room. He would then plan a way to steal the Orb of Aftershock.

 

[WPZanar07]

Lance suddenly realized one of the words in the Orb's description had to be what was called a "locater code," waiting for the two men to leave before he accessed his datapad. He managed to navigate to the "artifacts" section --- he wasn't used to Hollowstar menus--- and it asked for a code, which he entered as "Emad". He was pleased when it showed a map of where he was and where the room he needed to access happened to be. One floor down, it seemed. Lance made his way to some nearby stairs.
***
Lance chuckled at how lax the security was for the door, until he noticed a bunch of orbs that looked IDENTICAL. The residents of Hollowstar were strange indeed. He began to scan the names of each artifact one by one. This was going to take a while.

 

[Brilliand]

"Bing!" A computer across the room attracted janem's attention wiht an insistent noise, and Janem headed over to investigate. The display mystified him, however - it was a black-and-white sheet of scrolling text that ended in "genaram efuded emad." These blasted computers love that language, Janem thought in disgust. "Gresholm!"

Gresholm appeared in the center of the room. "Yes?" he asked tiredly.

"What does this mean?"

Gresholm walked over to the screen and began scanning it from the top down. "Let's see... Forty years ago, Gerold Finn purchased the Blade of Subsize. This is the artifact events screen... it tells everything happening in the storage rooms."

"This computer beeped. Doesn't it say something important?"

Gresholm's eyes dropped to the bottom of the screen. "Genaram efuded emad... This very hour, the most recent guest to enter the palace entered an artifact storage room. I don't remember which artifact Emad is. The guest was never invited, and entered through the fourteenth-story window. You know the one. Ram... ram... I think you can look up everywhere else he's gone on some other computers."

Research. Janem despised Algen's systems. It seemed the king was supposed to be omniscient, but every little tidbit of information required half an hour to dig up. "Uninvited guest? Kill him. Why did the computer let hi min in the first place?"

"Algen was very hospitable. The entire computer system is hard-coded to treat any outsider as a guest."

"I don't care what Algen thinks. Kill that burglar!"

"Emad... emad... Uh, type Emad into the guard system."

Janem walekd over to the guard system computer. "E... m... WHERE'S A?" Gresholm walked over and pointed to it. Janem punched it impatiently, then bumped the S. "AHHH! What do I do now?"

The speaker above the computer crackled ot life. "Yes, sir?"

Gresholm punched the backspace key. The speaker went dead. Janem carefully pressed the D key, and the computer crackled to life. "Yes, sir?"

"Someone's in that storage room! Kill him!"

"Yes, sir." The speaker went dead.

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Mogue Sapin was an average Hollowstar guard, still equipped in Algen's teamwork-oriented style. However, he had gotten used to Janem's mad rule, and knew where to equip himself for single combat. Mogue charged into the EM storage room and scooped two artifacts off the wall, whipping another one off his belt. Orb of ghost motion, orb of afterthought, rod of clearing. "OK, you poor innocent wretch, I don't know why you came here but Hollowstar isn't what it used to be!" There's no one here. Or rather, he's invisible... let's see, the code was Emad. Mogue made a beeline for the Orb of Aftershock, swinging the Rod of Clearing in front of him like a club.

 

[TheCheat1]

Ethian managed to bounce off of the force field and zipped back down to the palace. As he went through the window, he rushed at lightspeed to the many artifacts, looking for one to help him contact Iban. Unfortunately for him, all the orb-shaped artifacts looked alike.

"All of them look exactly the same! What the crud..." Ethian picked one up and turned it on to be greeted by a monstrous alien life form that he'd never before laid eyes on. "Containment cell!" Ethian fired energy at the monster to find that it was only a large hologram. "Oh." Throwing the orb behind him, Ethian reached for the next one, and continued the process of elimination. "Matter eraser... energy-efficient toothbrush... cloning device..." At this Phera interrupted. "Please, I don't need any more of you." Ethian ignored the comment and continued searching. Finally, Ethian turned on an artifact and a voice spoke, "Please enter message." Ethian sighed a sigh of relief. "Finally... Iban's probably lightyears away by now, but..." Ethian took a deep breath. "This is Ethian! Come back to Hollowstar! It's still here! Come back, darn it!" The orb flashed twice. "Recipient." Ethian shrugged. "Uh... Iban." The orb flashed. "Delivering to android Iban."

The orb disappeared and reappeared in front of Iban, displaying the message large enough to read from a distance and recited Ethian's message.

 

[Brilliand]

((Not light years. That would take years. ))

Iban scanned the message twice, taking a full second to both realize that it was writing and decipher the unfamiliar human tongue. Once he understood the message, he grabbed the orb, absorbing it to throw himself into the planet Satersphere. Iban ricocheted off the planet, expending a good ton of water to change direction and head back to Hollowstar at practically lightspeed. The water boiled for miles.

Iban had taken five minutes to reach Satersphere, and the trip back to Hollowstar took only a quarter second more. Iban's computer mind carefully registered this fact and didn't care. After giving the force field the same treatment as before, Iban hovered a mile above the ground and considered why Hollowstar had not been destroyed. It must have been the deathless arena. To destroy Hollowstar, I must disable the deathless arena. Only the king can do that. Therefore, the solution is in the Gold Palace.

 

[TheCheat1]

((It's an expression, Mr. Brilliand. ))

Ethian tapped his foot. Did he get it, or what? Suddenly, he felt Iban's energy-expulsion and raced back out the window to Iban. As he landed below Iban, Ethian shouted, "Mind waiting until I'm off the planet before you blow it up next time?!"

 

[Brilliand]

Iban looked down at Ethian. "Can't you escape?"

 

[TheCheat1]

"Well... yeah, but..." Ethian shook his head. Pull it together, man! She tried to blow you up! Ethian nodded. "Yeah, but there's innocents on here. Innocents I know. So let's not blow this place to pieces without fair warning, m'k?" Ethian shrugged. "So why'd it come back, anyway?"

 

[Brilliand]

"I don't mind killing innocents." Iban looked in the direction of the Gold Palace, which was approximately back the way that they had come. "It's the Deathless Arena. Apparently it covers more land than I thought. We could spend a few years destroying pieces of Hollowstar and figuring out what's protected, but the fastest way would be to shut off the deathless arena. The master control panel is somewhere in the Gold palace."

 

[TheCheat1]

"You think it'd take years?" Ethian looked to the Gold Palace. "Okay, so how do I shut it off? What's it look like? And how heavily guarded is that palace?" Ethian cracked his knuckles. He was ready to have some fun.

 

[Brilliand]

EDIT: I said something embarassing. It was easy to type, but I couldn't stand to look at it.

 

[NavyGuy7]

((I'm assuming I'm in the same storage room as you...))
"I'm up for destroying Hollowstar, too," Lance said to the two newcomers as he disabled his cloak. "Quite frankly, I could use an artifact or two from here myself, and by now the king knows I'm here. Guards are going to be looking for me, at the locater code Emad, or whatever."
"My name? My name is Lance, and I am with the Marty Militia. My mission...to destroy Hollowstar. My people have no problem with innocent lives..."

 

[TheCheat1]

((That's you in the Evil of the Unknown thread?! I had no idea! I'm terrible with names, so since you didn't have your CF Character on I didn't recognize you! ))

Ethian was surprised that he hadn't felt this Lance's presence. He was also angry for not keeping his concentration. "Yeah? Well I kind of do, and your people sure wouldn't like a super-powered, invisible, untouchably-fast fourteen-year-old up their rear, would they?" Ethian wasn't about to go kill people that had no part in this. "Look, if you're in, then you're in, but I'm not going to kill random people. There are people I know on this planet... we evacuate those few people first or I simply wipe you out of existence now." Ethian sighed. "So what's our first move?"

 

[Brilliand]

((Oh, that's where my post went... Now I'm embarassed again.

Now, we have a big misunderstanding... Lance is in a storage room, but Ethian and Iban are outdoors. Lance is under attack by a guard who can't see him, but knows what he's looking for. But it is high time we got inside the palace.))

Iban shot off, not bothering to respond to Ethian's question. He wanted to get on with the mission, and he knew that his words would be terribly distorted at high speeds.

 

[NavyGuy7]

(Sorry. I need to catch up. Let's just assume Lance gave up and went outside??? I dunno....i'll just post...))
"You insult me. I don't kill random people. Not unless I have a contract to kill them. In essence, I am an assassin of sorts, and no, I am not up for the highest bidder. But in this case, I realize I cannot accomplish my mission alone. I am in."
Lance hit a button on his wrist device, and seconds later a small, nearly undetectable dogfighter appeared out of the sky.
"If he's going to take off like that all the time, I'll need this. Besides, the enemy has arrived."
Lance hopped into the open cockpit as the first shots rang out, and barreled out of there in the fastest dogfighter known to man, known only as the Spartan Dagger.
"You coming?" Lance shouted before he closed the cockpit and pulled on his breath mask.

(Will that do? A little weird, I know....but still....I promise to get back to normal soon, lol.)

 

[TheCheat1]

Ethian stamped his foot, inadvertently killing some small animal that crawled next to him. Not bothering to look at it, Ethian shot off after Iban.