==> Tory: Run (like the wind) The Game [PETE]

[PETE WASUPON]

==> Pete: Watch Thor’s antics with interest

So you were supposed to just throw something into the glowy ball and then it’ll turn out into what Thor had floating beside him right now, right? Sounds like fun, actually! You observe the teal-ish ghoul-like creature, its wrinkly face and leaves making it look like Old Man Venus. Oh jeez, that sounds wrong. Venus-jiisan, like your animes would call him. Drawing your eyes from the screen to the pesterchum pop-up, you start to tap out a reply.

NC: yeah, i totally saw what happened. dyou think i could toss somethin in too?
NC: oh? it can talk too? dude that is so cool!
NC: so its like, sentient sprites?
NC: here, lemme try and help.

==> Pete: Turn on the sound intereface

Funnily enough, the whole sound thing up till now was muted. You click the loudspeaker icon and the little grey X disappears. All of a sudden, you can hear crackling (fire), air whistling (meteors falling), crashing (infrastructure failing). Retrieving your headphones (nice black ones. Pretty powerful bass) and plugging them in, you settle down and try to listen to the plant-babble.

==> Pete: Feel a strange tingle in your ears and understand the plant-babble

Wow. For a second it just sounds like a lot of leaves tearing and greenery mashing together, but then for some reason once it gets to your brain, the noises sort themselves out.

If you had known you could understand plants, you would’ve taken up gardening ages ago.

FLYTRAPSPRITE: i DON’T feel VERY good RIGHT now CAN you HELP me PLEASE
FLYTRAPSPRITE: i CAN’T feel MY roots AND i FEEL so THIRSTY
FLYTRAPSPRITE: and I’M floating WHY

==> Pete: Sympathize

You feel for the poor thing, and so you use your cursor to move the stuff off of the Alchemiter launch pad. Then you take up a gallon of cold water out of the fridge. There! Killed two birds with one stone. You go back to the bathroom and clumsily (it’s hard to coordinate when all you’re using is a mouse) dump the entire jug on the sprite. Sadly, you don’t think that your microphone would work the way a loudspeaker would work, or else you’d try to tell Venus-jisan that everything was gonna be ok.

[style=width: 450px; padding: 10 25; background: #ADD8E6; border: 1px dashed black; font-size: 11px; font-family: courier new; font-weight: bold; color: red; text-align: left;]
NC: dont worry Thor, i got this.
NC: for some reason i can understand Venus-jisans language thing.
NC: aight, i moved the stuff. feel free to do your thing, man!
NC: oh, and Venus-jisan also says to hurry cuz like, youre bout to die. aaaaand that he thinks your shirt today looks funny.

[TORY WOLFFE]

==> Tory: Change your shirt.

What?! No! why should you care what this glowy half-plant sprite thing thinks of your clothing? Besides, you don't have much time and you think your shirt looks fine. Despite it being picked out by your mother of all people. Speaking of your mom, you hope she gets back home soon. If everything really does go to shit on the outside...well, you definitely do not want to leave her behind.

MP: venus-jisan..?
MP: nevermind, um, if you have nothing else to do now
MP: agent, would you mind zooming out or maybe taking a look out at the driveway or..something?
MP: are there any cars driving in..? ><

==> Tory: Place Cruxite dowel on Totem Lathe

Now that you've got Pete on lookout, you ventured into your room that's fortunately untouched by the meteors. The only damage done was the broken window at the end of your room, which you've also chosen to ignore. Doing like what you saw Mila did, you placed the cruxite dowel in the space meant for carving it and placed the pre prunched card into the slot. From a plain cylindrical teal block of cruxite, it was carved into a rather swirly, spiky looking block of cruxite. The edges looked pretty sharp. You watched yourself with the dowel and brought it out to the Alchemiter.

==> Tory: Alchemitize and blast off.

Wait, what about your mother?!

MP: agent

MP: any sign of..well, anything? ><

==> Tory: Wait.

You're sure there's enough time right? Look at the timer. 1:59, About two minutes, there should be time right? Right venus-jiisan? You look to your sprite who's just continuing to plant babble. Seriously, how does Pete understand that anyway? You look at the timer again, 1:13. Um...maybe you should alchemize this first.

==> Tory: Alchemize and then wait.

You placed the cruxite dowel on the scanner platform and waited as it was scanned and in a bright flash-pop, a light teal cruxite Pinwheel appearified on the alchemiter platform. You picked it up and inspected it while shooting quick glances to your front door. It's handle was about as long as half your arm and it had twelve leaves on it's face. Symbolic? You're not entirely sure. Now, you sort of recall Mila breaking her cruxite artifact and supposed that maybe you should break your pinwheel as well...but how? Break it in half? Wouldn't that be too easy? Besides, you said you'd wait a little while longer, you still had....40 seconds to go. You felt your somach churning at the thought of potentially dying while waiting for your mother, but then, you suppose if your mom were to die here, at least you'd be with her. You decide to check with Pete one last time. Venus-jiisan getting more worked up by the second.

MP: ]nothing?

[MOTHER]

==> Mother: Hurry home

You snap out angrily at…whatever had given you that command. The nerve! Of course you were hurrying home, who wouldn’t when they saw this supernaturally ridiculous meteor shower? The only thing in your dark orange head right now was Tory, Tory, TORY, your innocent, wildflower son.

Pavement flies by underneath your red cleats. So do bits of molten rock and fire.

==> Mother: Spare a thought for the other children

Just halt de Fresse, please. You don’t need any metaphysical voice telling you to have some compassion. The little football (or as this nation calls it, soccer) players in the team that you coached were simply sent back home in a rush. Hopefully, hopefully they made it back in one piece.

Your gaze flickers to the right, where a well-sized chunk of meteor lands with a slight BLAMDADAM on one of your friends’ houses, a teacher at the school you coach. Ach, well. Nothing you could do about that, but you silently pay your respects and pray that she were somewhere else.

==> Mother: Arrive home

What did you say before?

==> Mother: Arrive…home…?

You don’t think that’s what you said before.

==> …

Good. You arrive in front of the flaming wreck that is your apartment, and stop for a moment, fists clenching. Somewhere up there, your son was possibly trapped, and waiting desperately for help. Verdammt, you had to get up there somehow, but once you barged into the still relatively whole lobby, you find that the lifts are out of order.

Stairs, then. Up you race, taking the stairs six steps at a time, your long legs coping with ease and grace. Some parts were blocked by crushed-in parts of the wall, but you manage to get to the seventeenth floor safely.

The door was locked (good boy, Tory), but you had forgotten the keys in your earlier rush to get to the school on time, since you had woken up rather late. This was no time to be knocking and waiting, especially if Tory was in there, maybe even stuck beneath a piece of debris or something. So, you activate your strife specibus, drawing out a sleek black crowbar (from convenient hammerspace) and smashing the door in.

==> Mother: Rescue your son

…Fine, you’ll let it go this time. You crunch over the splintered wood and spot your son, who was…unharmed! Safe! But there were several machines around the kitchen that made no sense to you, except…they felt strangely familiar. You go to Tory.

MOTHER: Tory!
MOTHER: Are you alright?
MOTHER: And what is all this?
MOTHER: No, forget it. You’re coming with me, right now. We are getting out of here, Tory.

You make a grab for him.

[PETE WASUPON]

==> Pete: Reply

NC: no dude, i dont see any cars comin up your driveway.
NC: theres just a few people runnin around, and one person runnin real fast, its amazin.
NC: theyre probably all just scared, man. yeah, thats it, nothing else.
NC: dude, if youre waitin for your mum, i think you should.....you should

==> Pete: Hesitate

Well, if Thor was waiting for family, then obviously, the best thing to do would be to wait. But the timer was counting down steadily, and you sure as hell didn’t want your friend to blow up right in front of your eyes. But...his mum, for goodness’ sake! What should you say? You don’t see a car or anything speeding up the drive-oh. What if...what if, no, you banished the thought from your head, shaking it vigorously. It was bad luck to even think that someone could be, you know, deceased.

==> Pete: Notice Venus-jiisan

The floating plantsprite was looking kind of hot under the collar (metaphorically speaking, of course, since you know, plants wore no collars), and your forehead scrunches up as you work out its words.

FLYTRAPSPRITE: quick QUICK you’re ALL going TO die NOW quick QUICK
FLYTRAPSPRITE: oh OH i FEEL someone IS coming UP the STAIRS really RAPIDLY

FLYTRAPSPRITE: gurgle BURGLGE tuergugle PEOEPLD

==> Pete: Recoil

You do so. The sudden melting of Venus-jiisan’s voice (if you can call it that) into a meaningless mess clashed on your ears unpleasantly. You hurriedly rip the headphones off and just sit there for awhile, staring at the screen in surprise and confusion. It, whatever ‘it’ was, had worked before, so what happened? Maybe there was something messing with the signal or whatever.

Wait, something...and the door burst open! You scroll there and replace your headphones as you have your first sighting of the mysterious Mrs. Thor.

NC: uh, Thor?
NC: shes here, by the way.
NC: thought you oughta know.

This was going to make things a lot more difficult.

[TORY WOLFFE]

==> Tory: Break the pinwheel

Venus jiisan definitely thought that was a good idea. And you do too. Maybe you can slowly, maybe take your time, actually no, you don't HAVE the time to take your time to break the dang pinwheel.

==> Tory: Hear your Mother approaching

It can't possibly be anyone else,and for some reason, you knew it was your Mom, you don't know how you just do. And as soon as your Mother burst through the door, literally, crowbar in hand. You broke the pinwheel, expecting a huge explosion or something similar to that. But...but nothing happened! You didn't know what went wrong, it was certainly broken in half, wasn't that what you're supposed to do?

==> Tory: Be dragged off

No, wait, you can do this, you were supposed to do something else, not just break the pinwheel in half. You felt your Mother dragging you by the arm towards the door.

Tory: no wait!
Tory: Mother, wait, I know what to do!

==> Tory: Well, do it?

You don't understand, you, your house, everything was supposed to be transported to, well, somewhere else as soon as you broke it! You dug your feet into the ground to, resisting against your mom's intention of dragging you to safety, while staring intently at the broken pinwheel in you hands. Your mother must be wondering why the heck you're actually resisting being dragged out of a crumbling apartment. Then it hits you, like...like the meteor that just crashed through your kitchen window. You quickly plucked out each leaf on the pinwheel. Amazingly, you're actually holding up pretty well against your mother considering your size.

==> 0:03

You're halfway there, just six more to go, man these pinwheel leaves are stuck pretty tight. You leave a trail of it as your mother drags you closer and closer to the entrance of your house.

==> 0:02

The windows shattered at the sudden air pressure from the incoming meteor. It was so close, you could practically feel the heat coming off it. There wasn't anytime to lose.

==> 0:01
You plucked out the last leaf, the trail of pinwheel leaves gets picked up by the wind and

==> Tory: Enter The Medium.

[[picture courtesy of Wong's thread 8'D;;]]