It was raining over in Cinqville as the young tomboy Jade woke up.
But that didn't bother her much as she looked about her messy room, baseball pictures here, her favorite skateboard there, her sally bat over there... Boy, what a messy. She could stay inside and clean today...
Or she could go try that mountain. After all, it was saturday! The school was closed and she was going to tackle Evermount and see what was inside those caves! Maybe some of her friends could come along. It'd be an adventure.
Dracos
Jade wiped the sleep from her eyes and got dressed. She glanced out the window, frowning once more at the rain. But that wasn't about to stop her. What better way to spend the weekend than outside crawling around unexplored caves?
She fished through the mess of her room for a raincoat and her trusty belt. She glanced at the bat leaning against the door, but ran out of her room and her house without grabbing it. She started off towards her best friend's house. Why not drag her friends along? It'll be fun.
She came up to a house not far from her's and pounded on the door. "Steve, wake up and get down here, you lazy bum!"
Steve's window opened up top. "What the heck? What are you doing out in this weather you maniac?" The young lad stared down at her.
Dracos
"What do you mean? This weather's nothing. Now get your stuff and come down here, we're going up Evermount. That is, unless you're too chicken to come out in the rain!" She clucked at Steve mockingly.
"You scrawny brat! I'll show you who's chicken!"
Sean dashed down a few minutes later, coming out dressed in a green jacket. He was a bit taller than Jade and a bit wider as well. "Well, lets get going."
Dracos
Jade shoved Steve lightly. "You're one to be calling me scrawny, you twig." She shifted her raincoat and looked toward Evermount. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go!" The two started off towards the mountain, exchanging insults every now and then.
By the time they got to the mountain it was midafternoon. The rain was beginning to clear. The air was clean and the mountain breeze cool and relaxing. It was a truly peaceful mountain really.
Dracos
Jade smiled. Taking a moment to look up the mountain, she breathed in. "You ready for this, wu--" she looked over at where Steve was, but he was gone. She looked back up the mountain, and he was already making his way up Evermount, taunting her.
"Jerk." She hurried up the mountain to catch up.
They came across, a young man with a strange hairdo relaxing in a small cave.
"Heya dudes. How goes?"
Dracos
"Well what do we have here?" Jade examined the man with the odd hair. "I didn't expect to see anyone up here. You have a name?"
"Dude... and Dudette! I'm like, Kriss. Heya. And like I didn't either. But it is like, totally radical. Come on in dudes. I got some sammiches!"
Dracos
Jade glanced at her friend, then at hair-boy. "Well, we could stand to take a rest before going up further," she decided for the both of them, dragging Steve along with her to the cave and to the strange-talking Kriss.
"Cool, Cool." He handed them each a sammich. "Dig in, there's enough for eeeeveryone." He hit the jukebox he had there, groovy music playing.
Dracos
Jade took the sandwich eagerly and took a bite. She hadn't realized until now that she didn't even grab a bite for breakfast. Without waiting to swallow, she asked with a mouthful of sammitch, "So, what are you doing up here, Kriss?"
The sandwich was kinda good....
As she suddenly felt reaaallly hungry.
And kinda groovy. Whooo, look at all those pretty colors. All those greens and purples.
Mr. alien guy laughed and hit the side of his head, his knee speaking out "I was like, just kinda...relaxing and all...breeze is nice up here, ya hear?"
Dracos
Jade didn't know what was happening. The wave of intoxication swepted her like fire through a forest. She wanted to ask what was happening, but by the time she tried to say anything, all she could manage was a mindless giggle. Green! Green is funny!
She opened her eyes and began laughing harder at the alien talking through his knee. She took another bite of his sandwich and looked towards Steve. "You've... got to try this..." she squeezed out between giggles.
Steve, equally stoned, giggled on. "Like totally! This just rocks."
Dracos
Jade finished her Sandwich of Awesomeness, and turned back to Kriss. her eyes half closed. "Hey... you... alien knee boy.." she giggled. "Man, I'm dying... I need to know what you put in that sammitch.
"Maaaan," The beating drum answered. "It's like, just totally some of the greens! You know, for flaaavor!"
Dracos
"Fl-ay-vor? Flaaayvor. Flavorr... heheh..." she repeated the word multiple times, her mind more spastic now than an Eaglelander's attention span. She idly stumbled around the cave, looking at the technicolor world in it.
And so began a wonderous adventure in which she learned friendship, courage, kindness, compassion. Her life was changed forever. But since all we really wanted to establish was she had a really nutsy trip, we'll leave this post space for bun-bun.
It was dark outside when she awoke, feeling as if a dozen elephants had been dancing on her head.
Dracos
"Ugnn..." Jade moaned, reaching for her head. She opened her eyes, but couldn't see anything. It was too dark, and her eyes hadn't "woken up" yet. She sat up, but laid back down right away when her head started spinning. "Where the hell am I? Kriss, Steve... you guys out there?" she called out.
Steve didn't answer and neither did Kriss.
Though a few minutes later she heard another moan somewhere in the cavern.
Dracos
Jade lay there for a few minutes, until the pain was dulled down enough that she could move about. Staggering to her feet, she started off in the direction of the groaning, calling out Kriss and Steve's names, hoping for some response.
"Ow...shut up you maniac." Steve responded from deeper in the cave.
Dracos
Jade followed the voice deeper into the cavern. "Steve? Come on, get up you bum," she groaned wearily.
"Once the mushrooms stop dancing on my head!"
Dracos
"You wuss. By the time we're out of the cave the pounding will dull. Besides, this is your fault, so get up already," she taunted groggily, still following Steve's voice into the cave.
OOC: Aside, you are both missing your wallet, and pretty much everything but the clothes on your backs.
IC:
"Hey, how is it my fault?" He groaned, sitting up.
Dracos
"You should have known better than to let me drag you over here, so of course it's your faul---" she began, putting her hands into her back pockets. And felt nothing. No wallet, no pocket change, no nothing. She checked her waist for her belt. Nothing, either. "My stuff! It's gone!" She frantically felt her body to make sure she didn't just put her stuff in another pocket. But, of course, there was nothing.
"Come on, get up and out of the cave already so we can find that stoner guy and beat him to a pulp! Nobody takes my stuff!"
He checked his pockets.
"Mine too! Dammit. And with what? He's like twice our size."
Dracos
"That'd be a problem if there were only one of us, but there are two of us. Someone twice our size should be an even match if we both tackle him. Besides, he can't be that strong if he had to drug us. If he were strong enough he'd have just robbed us when we first met." Jade finally reached Steve. She helped him up and began to drag him out of the cave. "Now come on, there's no use staying in this cave, let's go get him already!"
"ow...wait...what time is it?" Steve asked.
Dracos
Jade stopped. "I dunno. The sun's down, but I'm not sure how late it is. Why?"
"Gah, parents!" He ran off.
Dracos
Jade grimaced. Not that she blamed him, but now she'd have to find Kriss by herself. She <i>could</i> go home, but the longer she waits the harder it'll be to find him. That, and dad's already at work, or should be. No use in going home. She left the cave, wondering how she would go about finding Kriss.
It was pretty dark and scary out here all alone in the night. Snakes a hissing and birds a hooting behind every tree. She didn't see any sign of Kriss from where she stood outside the cave.
Dracos
She looked around nerviously. She wasn't scared of the dark, but the idea of chasing a thief in the dark, especially with all these hissing noises around her, suddenly became less appealing. Nobody was around to see her scared out of her mind, at least. A loud hiss coming from right behind her caused her to panic and run home. After sleeping the night away, she'd look in the morning, she reasoned.
Thank god that nobody was around to see her scared like that.
It was a bit dangerous climbing down the mountain at night as she stepped in something....and found it breaking beneath her.
For a second, she freefalled down before hitting the floor below hard.
When she awoke, she could dimly see light funneling in from above, far far above.
Dracos
Jade lay still, recovering from the impact. She weakly checked herself for anything bleeding or broken, her eyes fixed on the light.
Well, she was a very lucky girl. Nothing was broken. Looks like she fell a long ways though, judging by how far up that hole was.
Dracos
Jade groaned and lifted herself up. She looked around the hole she fell into, hoping that the light from above would at least give her some vision.
"Is anybody out there?" she called up to the light as she looked around the hole. "Can somebody help me?"
No one answered her.
And why would anyone? It isn't like a lot of people came out to the mountains in this weather.
Dracos
Jade felt a little foolish, but hey, a girl can hope. She felt around the hole to get a feel for her surroundings, and to see if there was any place to start climbing up from.
The walls were smooth, though there was a dark cavern leading away from the light.
Dracos
Jade started cautiously into the dark cavern, careful to make sure she stayed close to a wall and to step cautiously so she didn't fall. Again.
It was dark and grew darker still...before she saw some otherworldly illumination in the distance.
Dracos
Jade quickened her pace, heading towards the illumination, still walking cautiously.
And so she came upon a sight that she had never before witnessed...
A gigantic factory. Huge. It stretched on further than her eye could see. The entire interior of the mountain hollowed out as tentacled creatures surveyed their robotic workers, an errie glow lighting the place, giving just enough light to see.
There must be hundreds of them here though, building something.
Dracos
"Holy..." she squeaked out. Her first instinct was to run, but her curiousity got the better of her. She just had to see what they were building in this mountain. She inched forward towards the factory, trying to keep hidden from the eyes of those tentacle monsters.
They were building weapons.
A robot army, the likes the world has never seen.
It was terrifying!
She had to get out of here!
Dracos
I've got to warn someone!, she thought, sneaking away from the factory. But in order to do that, I need to get out of here... but the walls are too smooth.
As soon as she was far enough away from the factory, she stopped. Maybe there was a second passage in this cavern that'd get her out of there? She started looking.
If there was, she couldn't find it in this darkness.
Dracos
That plan failed, she headed back to the hole where she fell, her only known exit from this place.
There was no way she was going to scale back up there. It was crazy high. She was lucky she didn't break anything.
Dracos
Jade frowned and started walking back to the factory. No way of leaving the way she came, and no other exits between here and the factory. It seemed like her only solution would be to sneak through the factory and find some exit there. This wasn't going to be fun.
She got to the factory and stopped. The poor illumination should give her some cover, but just to be safe she began inching forward, trying to stay as well hidden in the shadows as possible.
Well, she could try and slip under the equipment. There were plenty of conveyer belts around and the aliens weren't exactly staring at the ground. Or perhaps dashing side to side?
The further she headed in, the less there were really any shadows to hide in at all.
Dracos
Jade decided that the safest route would most likely be crawling under the conveyor belts. At the next conveyor belt she saw, she dived under it, and quickly but silently started crawling through the factory.
She spots...eww, a slimey tentacle in the way.
Some weird clicking and clacking is going on above.
Dracos
Jade stopped herself from groaning in disgust, but made the face nonetheless. Crawling over the tentacle was too risky, and it's unlikely that it'd move.
Crawling around, maybe? She glanced out from under the conveyor belt, the side where the tentacle wasn't protruding, to see if it would be safe to quickly crawl around the tentacle.
A pair of robot feet could be seen. Robots? How weird.
Dracos
Jade raised a brow. Would the robot see her? Too risky. She started backtracking until there was nobody around. Once she found a place where nobody was looking, she looked around once again for either another conveyor belt or a place where she could start running.
The tentacle moved a few minutes later. She could also make a dash for a room to her left.
Dracos
`Man, I'm really, really off today,` the girl crawling underneath the conveyor belt thought to herself. Although the safe bet appeared to be staying under the conveyor belt, her gut had been wrong multiple times today, so she ran quickly to the room to her left.
She saw...Sludge.
Lots and lots of sludges in this room.
God, it positively REEKED here.
Dracos
Jade wrinkled her nose. What a nasty stench.
Eager to get out of the room, she peeked outside of the room to see if there was another room she could run to quickly.
Not without being seen.
Dracos
She ducked back into the room. The smell was almost enough to make her barf, but it's better than certain death.
`What are these... things? Why are they all seperated into separate sludges?` she thought, poking one of them with the tip of her shoe. She looked up and around the room, realizing she saw the sludges and didn't bother to examine the room much. She looked for anything useful... items laying around, another exit, etc.
"Pudgy doesn't like that." The slime coleased a bit, a face forming on it as it growled.
Dracos
Jade jumped back in surprise. "Who... what... how...?"
The slime went right for her, hopping off the ground at her.
Dracos
Jade screeched and ducked out of the way, running to the other side of the room. Her belt gone, she had nothing to beat it down with. She looked around the room for anything--crowbar, lead pipe, fruitcake--to defend herself with.
She saw a fruitcake on the ground.
Why the hell was a fruitcake there?
Who knows! But she could probably get to it.
Dracos
Jade ran over and grabbed the fruitcake. Nice and hard. She turned to the attacking sludge.
"It's on, now!" She flew at it, brandishing her newfound fruitcake.
The fruitcake, while nifty, proved remarkably uneffective against the slimey creature who's very spittle BURNED as it hit her clothes.
Dracos
Jade pulled back, cringing from the burning mucus. The fruitcake proved useless, like all other fruitcakes.
Since the fruitcake did nothing, she tried kicking the slime. Her shoes and pants were thicker than her shirt, so she wouldn't feel the burn, and her legs were probably stronger than her fruitcake anyway.
Her foot smacked in...as the sludge painfully started crawling up her leg!
Dracos
Jade screeched again and flailed her leg, kicking the slime off of her foot. Pancking, she lifted her arms up and pointed her free hand at the pile. "Just die already!" she screamed, focusing as much energy as she could at the pile. Hey, stranger things have happened. Like a fruitcake.
(OOC: Casting Freeze Alpha/beta/whichever's the strongest she has access to.)
The thing was coated in a light coating of frost....giving her a chance to try and escape as it was stuck.
Dracos
"It... worked?!" Jade's jaw dropped. No time for gazing in awe at her awesomeness, though. She quickly ran out the door, and immediately dropped low. The alien's weren't exactly looking at the ground, so, maybe. She quickly looked around, looking for the best place to run.
Well, there were stairs leading up. Maybe she could find an exit out into the mountain.
Dracos
Score, she thought, running to and up the stairs.
And promptly into a big green alien with lots of tentacles....
Who dropped something into her hands when smashed into.
"Huh...InTrUdEr! HaLt!"
Dracos
Jade gasped, looking down at the stuff in her hands. She shifted that into one hand, and pointed her hand at the alien. "Well, it worked once before..."
(OOC: Freeze alpha again.)
The alien was covered in frost...but quickly shook it off and hissed, swinging forward with it's tentacles.
Dracos
Jade ducked quickly, stealing a glance at what the alien had dropped into her hands. She then tried to run past the alien to get all the way upstairs.
Some kind of metal device. Looked kind of like a crest. She was able to get around the alien alright, but it quickly hollered and gave chase.
Dracos
Jade didn't examine the crest further, but kept it in her hand. She ran up the stairs, looking back midway to throw the fruitcake at the alien's face, hoping to slow it down.
It did a step, but it was only a fruit cake. She'd have to hurry to find a way out before they caught her. But where? The place was a maze of ladders and stairways and doors.
Dracos
Jade looked around for a second, thinking as quickly as possible. She ran for the nearest ladder and started climbing.
The creature followed, but she was able to run faster than it. Getting to the top of the ladder, she found two robots pointing nasty looking arm mounted guns at her.
Dracos
Jade screamed and panicked, lifting her hands up at the aliens. If she can create ice, how about fire?
(OOC: PSI Fire on the guns/aliens.)
Fire was nice, fire was good, fire burned metal...
But you know, she probably wanted to dodge and keep running as well as their blasts nearly fried her, even as their circuitry started melting.
Dracos
Jade cheered a bit inside and ran past the aliens. She looked for the nearest stairwell, ladder, or door and ran to and through/up it.
A blast singed the hood of her raincoat but good, reminding in a rather hot fashion that she was dealing with dangerous robots.
Dangerous robots who may be poor shots, but still dangerous robots.
Heading into the next door, she found...Oh god, the wretched smell could slay a man.
She had apparently found their garbage room, with a chute heading up.
Dracos
"Eugh... at least it's not sludge again." She ran up to the chute. Was it possible to climb up?
Sludge grabbed onto her foot from the pile of trash.
It did indeed look climbable though...if she could get free!
Dracos
"Ack!" She screamed, and tried to freeze the sludge as she once did before.
Well, now she had a heavy sludge attached to her shoes. She was also getting a bit tired from doing whatever she was doing.
Dracos
She groaned, letting out an uncontrollable yawn. She hadn't noticed the fatigue before, but it had been a long day. That and now she was dragging a sludge on her foot didn't help much either. But the end was so close. She couldn't give up yet.
She wiggled her foot out of the shoes that the blob grabbed onto, and started climbing up the chute, trying her best to ignore the wave of fatigue that just hit her.
It took a while, and she was pretty darn smelly and grimy afterwards, but she hauled herself out, somewhere in the mountains, sans a shoe and plus a weird crest.
Dracos
Jade breathed in. Nice fresh mountain air... tained by her own stench from climbing through that godawful trash chute. Eugh. Oh, well, it's not the worst that she's smelled before.
She moved carefully away from the chute opening, trying to get her bearings, and find the best way back to Cinqville.
And so it was a smelly and grimy young lady made her way back to Cinqville.
Dracos