A/N: I've been thinking, and I might make a Richtofen endgame of this as well. Just thought I'd say.
Chapter 2: Broken Ties
Agartha, Hollow Earth
Sometimes after 2040
"What do you mean 'not this time'?" Dempsey yelled.
"I assure you that my abandonment of you was beneficiary in the long run." Maxis replied calmly.
"Wait, where the hell is Richtofen?" Dempsey realized an absence of the German.
"Richtofen has been defeated, but we still have work to do." Came the reply.
"What do you mean 'we'?"
"Fine. You have work to do." Maxis sighed audibly.
"What work? If Richtofen is gone, then what do we have left to do?" Dempsey retorted.
"Dempsey, I don't know if you remember, but we blew up the Earth..." Takeo said weakly.
"So?"
"Now you must assist me in repairing it!" Maxis insisted. Now he remembered why he left them in the first place.
Tank sighed and looked around. And then he realized they were floating. All around him he could see chunks of earth floating around, what looked like ancient buildings crumbling on them.
"Unless you wish for your world to end up like this!" Maxis yelled.
"Oh… shit." Dempsey looked down, and saw the Rift underneath them. It looked as if the chunks of the Earth were being pulled in as he watched, drifting closer to incineration.
"THIS IS NOT A GAME! DON'T YOU SEE!?"
"Now I do…"
"Good. Now, you must find the centerpiece. Make your way to the center of Agartha. Find the cage!" And with that, Maxis said no more.
"Oooh, Nikolai does not feel so well..." Nikolai shook his head and sat up, his vision fuzzy.
"Get over it. We've got to move." Tank suddenly had an M1911 and felt the earth shattering scream of a zombie he hasn't heard since…
"Shrieker!?" He looked and saw a Shrieker zombie hopping across the broken platforms towards them.
As it was about to land on Takeo, Sam jumped up and thrusted her knife into the face of the Shrieker, the momentum and force sending it over the edge of the platform.
"Fuck…" Nikolai summed it up.
"So… move?" Tank suggested, jumping over to a floating platform.
The others followed, hopping onto small platform until they found one about the size of a house, which had a Quick Revive machine that was stripped down where the machinery was visible, and an M14 half drawn next to it.
"This world is falling apart…" Takeo examined the machine.
"You think if I buy that gun, I only get half of it?" Tank asked, and then got an answer when a whole M14 appeared in his hands.
The ground suddenly burst open as risers awoke, and rushed towards the four.
"Taste my steel, dishonorable cannibal!" Takeo yelled, swinging his katana into one of the undead.
"Power to the Aether!" Sam said, her knife piercing another.
Nikolai put his M1911 up to the head of a zombie and simply emptied a magazine into it, and went with a simple, "Fuck you!"
Dempsey was firing at the undead. "Oorah, American made weapons! Or was it made in China? Hell if I know."
After clearing a few out, the group continued onto another platform, this one with walls on to sides and vines suspended above them. The only thing worth noting in it was a Mule Kick machine with broken glass.
"Oh shit, free guns!" Dempsey excitedly yelled, reaching into the machine.
He retrieved a bottle of the liquid and downed it, before the glass suddenly pieces itself back together, and the machine powered down.
"What? How come he gets free shit?" Nikolai said in an outrage.
"It's because I'm white. Trust me." Tank replied.
"But I… I give up." Nikolai sighed.
"Can we move already?" Sam suggested anxiously, looking out onto another string of platforms.
And they did, traipsing over the slowly descending dirt until they reached one that looked like it was a swamp.
"Oh shit, is this… Shi No Numa?" Tank asked, seeing a broken Flogger on the ground next to a Speed Cola machine that was lying on its back.
"Are we… stuck in the past?" Takeo asked.
Suddenly the voice of Maxis came out of air, "Agartha is tapered to show you what you remember as chaotic in your life. It will slowly meld until you reach your own Paradise. I fear that it will not work with the Rift though…"
"Aww, looks like I don't get my 16 virgins." Dempsey frowned.
After a wave of zombies stormed the group, they hurried over to another platform, which finally yielded another wall weapon, a Trench Gun, and the box, which was in it's usual form but had a series of long scratches on it.
"Box! I miss you!" Nikolai greedily opened it and watched it soon as it came out with…
"What the hell?" Nikolai asked, pulling out a device that looked like a WunderWaffe's cage on the barrel, with a detonator.
"Is that a weapon, seriously?" Dempsey commented as he opened the box.
He pulled out what looked like a frozen DSR-50, except without the scope and a larger barrel. He checked the ammo and saw what looked like an…
"An icicle?" Tank said in disgust. "Just great…"
Takeo pulled out a pair of ballistic knives, to his disgust.
Finally, Sam opened the box and watched it spin onto…
"WHAT!?" Tank said in surprise, as a Wunderwaffe DG-2 was taken by her.
