Temporal Rift RPG

[The Kingpin]

Jacob looked down at the slab of concrete now laying on the floor, a neatly cut doorway in a massive chunk of collapsed ceiling. The edges were still glowing white hot, molten concrete running down from the cutting points as the Mercenary deactivated his monoblade and walked through the pathway to accompany his companion. "We'll live. We hardly needed a guide to deal with Mecha-thulu" said Jacob as he pressed onwards. The path ahead was dark and gloomy -Just like every other bloody thing in this place-, and dead lichen and moss hung from the damper parts of the pathway. The occasional rat skeleton could be seen lying around, indicating that whatever this place was, it's home realm was not unlike their own. Interestingly, Jacob noted what looked like a few of Twitchy's roots, though, like everything else here, they were long dead. "Look at this. Seems Twitchy used to live here. Guess Death's a new resident. Funny. Always wanted to try my hand at eviction"...

[C S]

Kane raised a brow. "What do you figure this is? Domain or vacation home?" he deadpanned as he walked forwards, one hand on the grip of the launcher. His visual feed enhanced the lighting for him to the see the bunches of piping leading into and out of the walls, most of them burst and rusted. A thin wisp of vapor would flow out of the broken pipes on occasion. Kane referred to his environmental scans and didn't find any particularly strange gaseous readings.

What did catch his eye was the fact that there evidence of a huge temperature dip on the thermal feed. The tunnels themselves were almost uniformly a minty green color on the thermals at 20 degrees Celsius, with shades of yellows and oranges where there were spots of irregular heating. The pipes on the other hand, dipped into the range of blues. Things ahead were going to get a bit... chilly.

[The Kingpin]

"Can't say I really have a damn to give, either way" said Jacob with a shrug as he followed the receding temperature readouts running along the pipes, mostly marked by little annotations on Jacob's HUD marking the gradual shift, though a switch to Thermal Vision mode gave him an in depth readout of just how sharply the temperature dropped. Near their apparent destination, the colour reading came back as deep navy blue....nearly a hundred below zero, give or take. "Hm. Been a while since I last visited Antarctica. Suppose I could use a reminder of what cold-and-miserable feels like" he quipped. He noted that already, small ice crystals were beginning to form on the walls and pipes...despite the fact the temperature readings in those places were still well into the mid 20s Celsius. What was even more odd was the fact the crystals seemed completely detached from the fixtures and surfaces from which they descended, and even pointed in directions gravity couldn't've performed...

[Godzilla Forever]

"Sounds like a good plan to me, Dietrich," Damian replied through the communications. The scanners on the APC were turned up high in order to scan for potential threats. After all, they had been through a lot in the short amount of time.

Damian began to head towards the city's location on the APC's map, and failed to notice the red bubble taking refuge aboard their vehicle....

[Giratina93]

Yukari and Rebin didn't notice the new passenger onboard the APC either. They were unwinding from the hecticness that had been the probe-tether incident. However, once they had heard Dietrich's words, they groaned. ANOTHER Tether? Great, what if this one was the other probe? Considering the nature of this damn place, it would be all too fitting for it to mess with them like this. But... if there was a city... then perhaps... "Sounds interesting." Rebin said as he looked over at Yukari, who was deep in thought. "Plus, maybe that city has other people there, and information we can gather on this place as well."

[C S]

"Well we found the cold," Kane replied. The two had reached the doorway to the next compartment of the complex, and the walls had a layering of wintery whiteness clinging to it. Ice occupied cracks in the concrete and Kane's view port was filled with blips and dots identifying all sorts of structural weaknesses as a result. "we've yet to find the misery."

He extended a hand to the door, applying pressure gradually. It took less than five seconds for the dull thud of brittle metal breaking to sound off. Kane's scans of the door confirmed that the inner integrity had failed and that the locking mechanism was out of commission. Carefully, he pressed against it, swinging the door open and letting a howling, unnatural wind gust from the other side...

[The Kingpin]

The wind was freezing, literally causing icicles to sprout wherever it touched, Jacob's head enclosing itself in a helmet for the first time since they had come to this realm, protecting him from the sheer temperature drop that accompanied the breeze. It didn't necessarily pose a threat to him, but it certainly made the entire experience less pleasurable. "Aaaand, there's your misery. Thank you Kane. I really wanted to be reminded of how it felt to freeze your arse off. Good thing this suit has internal heating" he said through the comm link between his suit and Kane's...



With the location settled, the Wustenfuchs set off, kicking up a massive dust trail in its wake as it roared to full speed in the direction of the city, scanners keeping track of energy signatures in the area. Up near the peaks of the valley, a massive humanoid beast looked down at them, a low, gurgling snarl coming from it as it pointed it's one glowing whitish green eye in the direction of the city, beginning to make its way there itself, starting at a walk, soon accelerating to a sprint, blackish muck engulfing it's form as it took on a more animalistic gait, bolting on all fours with inhuman speed towards it's destination...the humans would be heading there soon.....and it would be waiting for them when they arrived...

[C S]

The shoulders of the burly mechanized suit shrugged. "With your cybernetic upgrades, it is virtually impossible for you to get frostbite. Bet you wish you could have made that claim back in 2010, huh?"

Kane tapped his fingers across his terminals, prepping the NT-SB armor for especially hazardous conditions. The room ahead was nearly as cold as the lowest recorded temperature on Earth. It was quite likely there were environs worse still elsewhere in the Rift, adding obscene pressures or other atmospheric effects to the harshness.

There was a sharp hiss at the suit's joints where panels split, creating seams a fraction of an inch in width. A warm golden glow shone from between the gap and a scan would reveal a similar energy composition to that of the Tri-Blade system, utilized to prevent freezing damage to the armor instead of molecular disassembly.

"Alright, my little hitchhiker. Time to meet your friend..."

Kane ventured forth into the cold, the unusual wind blowing hard against his orange bulwark. The suit adapted, however, and bolstered his strength to carry on unhindered by the frigid drag. The walls he had come to recognize as a staple of the waterworks complex were completely different beyond the door. They were giant slabs of ice with jagged shards and spikes stabbing out of them. A white mist fell; from where Kane could not discern. The wisps hung near the floor and swirled with the wind.

Pipes that ran overhead had burst ages ago, the contents bound into strangely captivating, abstract sculptures after spraying and subsequently freezing in mid-air. Depending on the chemicals, the ice took on tinges and shades, looking uncannily similar to stained glass. Due to this, the icy chamber had a colorful quality in addition to its crystalline structure.

Several meters ahead in the toroidal room, at the center was another brass grate, identical to the one the two had come across before. However, the tank and machinery that would have been above it was nowhere to be seen save for bits of scattered metal and cables hanging, frozen stiff from the ceiling. Kane inferred the fate of the fixture from the bent and broken bars that made up the ruined grate, which bent downwards into a pool of water that had had not been frozen solid. It glowed with an intense concentration of Rift energy.

"I guess the wind wasn't the misery after all..." Kane thought.

[The Kingpin]

"Hm. Play time" said Jacob amusedly as he reached into a pocket, pulling out a disk shaped object about two inches wide. Tossing it into the water, he activated it remotely, the drone's edges splitting as two wing-like fins extended from either side, tiny turbines activating along the front and rear ends of the disk. In moments, the tiny machine was beginning its exploration of the pool, small cameras examining its surroundings in a wide range of visual modes, keeping track of potential activity as Jacob began to head for the grate. "It'll help give us an estimate as to how far down we need to go to find our objective" he said as he pulled the grate's bars out of the way...

[C S]

The treatment basin was an impressively sized, glorified storage tank. The ornate machinery that used to be above the grate sat over a cylindrical container that was twenty feet deep and forty feet in diameter, filled to the brim with bubbling, roiling water that was surprisingly warm, given its environment. That was not to say it wasn't freezing, an unprotected person would suffer hypothermia in minutes, if not sooner than that. However, it wasn't what one would expect in a chamber encased in ice at over minus one hundred, with a staggering windchill making temperatures dip even further.

Kane hummed as his hands flew over keys, his eyes glued to his monitor screens as he read his suit's preliminary scans. After a short while, he exhaled sharply and leaned back in his control unit. "That's a tether in the drink alright," he said to Jacob. "best part: its a mobile one. Looks like it's pool time for us."



And just like that, Jacob's scout disappeared, bombarded with background radiation in the split-seconds preceding its demise. The last of it's feed was like some unholy roar from the blackness of space, a sound only recorded by radio telescopes, much less a lowly drone venturing into a water tank...

[The Kingpin]

"Wonderful" said Jacob bluntly as the stream of data from his scout fizzled out of existence. "I suppose it's time we found out just how much Rift radiation our equipment can handle before being fried" he added as he got rid of the majority of the grate, giving them a fully open access point. And with that, he took a step forward, plunging into the abyssal depths...


Beneath the surface, the light intensified dramatically. A glare of energies manifested that spanned all across the light spectrum, visible and invisible combined. It was a glare unlike anything the natural world could match, generated by the distorting nature of the Rift radiation and causing a glare that had Jacob reeling for several moments. Infra-red and ultraviolet light emissions were off the scale, and Jacob's visual dampeners had to filter the intake immensely to allow him to see easily. Another oddity were the shockingly fast pressure change he was experiencing. The pressure increase per metre here was equivalent to that of 5 back in their home realm. Despite that however, ice crystals were forming along the sides of the tank. Usually, the mechanics of water meant that ice only formed in lower pressure environments. The Rift's bending of physics seemed ever-increasing, and unpredictable. The one thing Jacob was thankful for, was how his suit and cybernetics were reacting to the adverse temperature and pressure changes. The external protective layer of his suit kept out most of the cold. Underneath it, dozens of ultrathin layers of thermal regulators kept the suit's internal temperature at an optimal level. While the equipment was designed in such a way that it didn't require the heat to function, the warmth did reduce the drain on the systems and improved the suit's overall performance. Jacob's cybernetics, on the other hand, simply ignored the cold, protecting him from the harms it posed and allowing him to press on. For all intents and purposes, Jacob was a universal military operative; Capable of functioning smoothly in any and all circumstances...

[C S]

Kane got ready for the plunge when there was a certain oddity he noticed over his feed. The alien rumbling that was heard earlier was a sound that completely surrounded Jacob as he drifted to the bottom of the reservoir, increasing in volume as it appeared to converge on his position.

"Jacob, get the hell out-!" was all Kane got a chance to say before the water gushed upwards like a geyser. The spray sprinkled back down, sizzling and hissing on the ice before transitioning to snaps and crackling, the water losing the energy from the radiation surprisingly quickly and freezing over.

Kane looked about the chamber, finding that Jacob had been thrown several feet away, the man on the floor surrounded by shards of multicolored ice after he slammed against a large block. He walked over to the man while ruminating on the situation. Whatever this tether was, it did not seem keen on leaving the water, nor was it inclined to let anyone enter the tank.

Kane found it peculiar that he was able to detect the Rift radiation through the pipes earlier, when logically any and all pipes leading to the basin should have been rendered unusable. That was when it hit him: the entire chamber was a tether. The tank and whatever forces were associated to it were the core...

[The Kingpin]

Jacob found himself frozen to the ground, a layer of ice forming over his entire body as the radiation drained from him. With a series of cracks and snaps, the ice shattered, the man pulling loose of his position on the floor and rising to his feet, the man looking down over his form, noting that his coat was frozen stiff. A backward kick quickly smashed the ice layering it, sheets of paper thin ice crystals cascading to the floor as he brushed off his shoulders. "Huh. That's new" he said with a raised brow, ice cracking across his brow and forehead at the action. Reaching over his shoulder, the Mercenary drew his NESA Shotgun, switching it to fire solid slugs. "Thoughts before I give it the C4 treatment?" he asked...

[C S]

"Just one; we're inside the thing!" Kane replied.

The growls and roars that were inaudible to the unaided ear grew more frequent, the pitch deepening as if the tether was emoting with its voice. The surface of the water stirred violently as if it was spontaneously boiling away, a dark shape appearing at the center. It was small at first, but quickly grew in size as it ascended from the bottom of the tank; rising with a dramatic flourish in a spiraling column of water which then spread out in all directions. A mist spread out around the bronze construction that loomed from the water, pipes and cables bunched around each other to create a thick flexible base for the spherical machine. The purification assembly had been transformed into something completely unreal, looking like some kind of complex metal mace with numerous spikes protruding from it...

[The Kingpin]

"Bugger" was all the Mercenary could say as he stared at the Kraken-esque mechanical tendril writhing in the water, the spiked orb on it's tip swinging dangerously, occasionally grazing against pipes along the ceiling, or digging deep gouges in glacial formations in the corners of the chamber. Slowly, the former SAS soldier switched his weapon back to buckshot mode...with this tether being as sentient and prepared for them as it seemed, he'd need the wider target range cluster mode offered if he intended to hit anything...

[C S]

"I think it'd be best if we spread out. Logically, that thing can't track both of us at the same time!" Kane said into his comms.

As if to spite him, the sounds of the tether flooded his ears, the scientist feeling as if he was going to get a splitting migraine. The mace at the end of the tendril began to spin on its axis, raw Rift energy converging around it, swirling in the direction of its rotation. Dark purple wisps of energy emanated from the weapon and before long, four bright beams were projected from the mace; one from the front, back and both sides of the sphere. As it spun, the beams scored across the frozen arena towards the two.

[The Kingpin]

"You HAD to jinx it, didn't you?" said Jacob as He tightened the spread cone on the shotgun and fired, the clustered projectiles of the weapon colliding with the beam's source, detonating with tremendous force as he aimed a second shot at the tendril itself, hoping to sever it, another violent boom erupting from the weapon...

[C S]

Kane on the other hand jetted into the air, the rays sweeping over where he once stood, small explosions and sparks going off in rapid succession underneath him. The heavy mech-suit dropped back onto the ground after they had ceased, Kane observing the conflict as it unfolded and taking great care to observe how the tether used its abilities.

The smoke and flames dispersed over the turbulent waters, revealing the core to be completely intact. The purple glow that surrounded the mace and its limb betrayed the presence of a Rift energy barrier, which appeared to be responsible for the ineffective attack. The spiked orb began to spin erratically right after, a white ring appearing where it connected to the cable cluster. The mace separated from the tendril right before the duo's eyes, floating in mid air surrounded by a vortex of phantasmic power; while the tendril loomed over the water's surface, its own energies coalescing a few feet past its end to form a rippling white orb.

[The Kingpin]

Jacob's armour hissed as ridges split up his integrated boots, glowing a dull orange as the ATAT Systems engaged, the Mercenary beginning to move around the room, gradually picking up pace in an effort to keep the Tether focused on him, giving his team mate time to pinpoint a potential weakspot he might overlook. For now, he saw fit to manually test for weakspots, by way of an explosive shell to the proverbial face of the Tether, the Agent shooting the glowing ring with the suspicion it may hold the key to ridding them of the spinning ball of death above it...

[Giratina93]

The city the team came upon was... was unlike any Rebin and Yukari had ever seen. The first thing the drivers of the vehicles saw was a giant wall, charcoal-grey 50 meters high. As far as the eye could see, from one end of the valley to the other, the wall ran, with a large steel gate closed before them. The wall seemed ancient, made of stone and clay. Vines were snaking their way up the wall sides, too slow for any real movement to be noticed. Scars and slash marks could be seen on the sides of the wall as well, tell-tale marks of monsters trying to enter into the walled city. Just over the edge of the wall, were the peaks of a few buildings, though from the distance they were at, it was near impossible to tell what condition they were in. Likewise, there didn't seem to be anyone ontop of the wall.

Yukari let out a low whistle as she saw the wall before them. "I must say, that is a heck of a wall. I guess whoever lives, or lived, inside that city didn't take any chances with this place."

"Yeah. A wall that size could hold back most normal things... Only problem is, this place doesn't just have normal things." Rebin replied. It seemed like this was their destination up ahead... what lay ahead of them inside the walls? Who or what made this city? And, hopefully, was the other probe in here as well? It was these questions that he was thinking on... as well as what possible dangers awaited inside...