Snuggles The Symbiote
The darn thing bled lava! How the hell did Arcade build a robot that bled lava?
I had to fly because I was resistant enough to fire now but lava was much, much hotter than most fire and it was hot enough to make me uncomfortable. I felt a little stronger but I hadn't gotten as much out of The Torch's codex as I'd hoped, the Dreadface symbiote hadn't had much luck adapting to Johhny's DNA.
While the werewolf was crawling around on its hands and spine after I'd destroyed its legs and...
I dodged to the left when the thing spat lava at me. This fight wasn't fair and it made me angry. The heartburn feeling I'd had ever since I found out that Arcade had Klara got a little bit worse. My photonic blasts weren't doing much against anything here...
"Mister Snuggles, didn't you say we had the full powers of all of your original donors by now?"
"Ashley, you're ten. You're barely an adolescent. This one's powers are limited to what your body can fully channel. At this point all this one can do is finish exploiting the DNA we already have since some traits have not been tapped yet, but short of taking in a number of codices that is downright implausible or a particularly powerful few, the best way for us to get stronger if for you to finish maturing."
"That's not good enough!" I shouted out loud and then spewed some metabolic acid down onto the flaming werewolf thing. If it was gonna spit at me I was gonna spit right back.
Apparently, the robots weren't acid-proof. The flaming lava-spewing werewolf's head melted to the point that I could make out the individual circuits. Honestly, now that the fight was over I was regretting melting it becuase it smelled noxious and disgusting and the fumes probably would have hurt me if I wasn't immune to most chemicals.
Now that the boss was gone, I started looking around the church. Where it'd been sleeping, but nothing. I started taping at the walls listening for a secret passage or something, but nothing.
I turned around to face the entrance to the church and saw another one of Arcade's screens. 'Congratulations Apocalypse Girl, you've defeated Laurence the First Vicar." Next to him, Leet was mouthing the S-Word over and over again for some reason. "Unfortunately, Laurence was an optional boss in the game this is based on and normally you'd need to do something special to fight him. You just wasted a lot of your time."
And then the screen vanished.
I took a deep breath. And then I screamed. "SON OF A BI—"
Snuggles The Symbiote
Grace was confused and desperately hoping that this was a coincidence. She'd stepped through her portal and suddenly...
She'd once seen a scary movie about an abandoned hospital that turned into a maze once you were inside becuase it was haunted, and the simulation was reminding her an awful lot of that. The occasional dirty scalpel or out of place surgical table really brought up uncomfortable thoughts, memories, and urges.
Sometimes, Grace wished she had never gotten her memories back after first losing them. Everyone hated her, she could tell. Everyone except Ashley, the ridiculously powerful idiot who loved almost everyone unconditionally.
"I hope she's okay," Grace mumbled to herself while she wandered through her personal heck that reminded her of things she used to love but now she hated and hated herself for having loved.
Eventually, she found a sign of movement. Someone her size running from one door to another faster than she could make out what they looked like exactly.
She tried the door but found that the mysterious kid had locked the door behind themself.
"I'm in a slasher movie," she said aloud. Well, darn if it wasn't karma.
She felt a chill down her spine and turned in time to see a grotesque sight. It was like a giant floating ball, pink and black stripes, with like a cartoonish pair of red lips and a tongue that was far too large for that mouth wiggling at her.
"Oh." Said the little yellow box. "We're in Persona. Could have sworn this was gonna be Silent Hill or something." Grace had no idea what any of that meant.
Moving faster than she'd have expected something like that to move, the waggling tongue monster charged her and knocked her to the ground with its big disgusting tongue.
On instinct, Grace flipped up and stabbed her claws into the creature, which shrieked and faded out of existence. and then Grace fell to her knees and started dry heaving.
"Come on," she said to herself between heaves, "It's not even real. It's like a hard light construct or something. It's not like I hurt a person."
"Oh," said a very familiar child's voice, "they're more than real enough."
The child stepped in front of her. Black dress shoes. White stockings. Blue dress. White apron. Blonde hair.
The girl she saw every day in the mirror. The girl who kept trying to drag her back to what she was before the mutagenic healing factor reformated her brain to one that hadn't been twisted by years of violence and emotional abuse.
The girl she used to be. Without a mirror in sight.
The only difference between this Boensaw and the Bonesaw in the mirror was that this one had sickly yellow eyes.
"No. That's impossible. There's no way they could have possibly known about—"
Bonesaw giggled maliciously. "If I had to make a guess, this whole thing is using some kind of mind or emotion scanner to customize the experience and I'm supposed to be some manifestation of your dark side or some part of you that you're supposed to be repressing, but since you're already a homicidal lunatic with vivid hallucinations, I kind of... Hijacked the whole thing."
She giggled again. "And the best part? That Arcade guy said that this is all being broadcasted live across this Earth and Earth Bet, that means that everyone knows that Grace 'The Gremlin' O'Reilly is really Riley Grace 'Bonesaw' Davis, which means if you get out of here alive the PRT's either gonna kill you or send you to the Birdcage, poor little Ashley's hard work be darned."
Bonesaw bent back and shouted. "You hear that Earth Bet people! That cute little girl with the alien parasite fused to her body subverted justice and bullied and blackmailed the PRT to get a serial killer off scot-free for her thousands of crimes."
"It wasn't my fault," Grace mumbled as she shivered. "I was brainwashed." At least, that's what Ashley said. And kept saying. Grace wasn't so sure. Would she have liked it so much if she'd been brainwashed?
"And I'm sure that that's a huge comfort to that guy we turned into a living Rubix cube," Bonesaw said with a huge smile. "You think he's still alive? I mean, I don't think they can legally euthanize him without his consent and he's not capable of giving it, and they can't pull the plug becuase the plug's inside him. So yeah, he's probably still alive. Probably either drugged into a coma or else in the kind of inconceivable agony that you can't even talk about. I wonder if they're giving him drops to keep his eyes wet or if they just plucked them out of his lidless sockets because it was easier."
Grace vomited.
"Or how about that time we saw that movie with the centipede and thought 'I can do better' so we raided a retirement—"
"Shut up," Grace said quietly. At this point, she was rocking herself back in forth trying to stay calm.
"Ooh, what about that time that badly scared woman in Maine wasn't giving out candy on Halloween so we made her eat her own pancreas?"
"Shut up."
"Face it, Riley: You're a monster. You like being a monster. So please, stop pretending to be something you're not, and let's go make some art like Jack taught us. That Arcade guy is practically asking for it and we can probably use some parts from Uber and Leet, too."
"No. I don't want to do that anymore," Grace whispered.
"What was that?" Bonesaw asked while leaning in.
"I don't want to do that anymore," Grace said more confidently. "I don't want to hurt people anymore. I want to do something constructive and meaningful."
Moving like a streak of light, Bonesaw charged and buried a scalpel in Grace's collar. "You're lying, Riley. I know you still want to kill people because I still want to kill people."
"Well then," Grace said as she stood up and ripped the scalpel from her flesh, "I guess that means that you're not me! Not anymore!"
She capped off that statement by punching her doppelganger square in the nose, sending her stumbling back.
But, unfortunately, Bonesaw started laughing. A distorted laugh with some kind of echo filter like effect under it. "It seems, that you just triggered something in the programming of this simulation."
Bonesaw started jerking and twitching and growing. Grace actually had to look away, becuase the way the body was contorting brought up some sickening memories. A few minutes later, her attention was drawn back by a very scary voice making a declaration.
"I am a Shadow, the True Self."
Snuggles The Symbiote
Dean had found himself in some kind of tomb or crypt, doing battle with machines that resembled skeletons or ancient mummies dressed in vaguely nordic armor mumbling in some language that he hadn't recognized but still understood due to some power. The All-Speak, his vague past-life memories clarified.
One particular phrase kept coming up. "Unslaad Krosis" Eternal Sorrow. He wasn't sure what videogame this was based on, but it clearly involved some kind of ancient curse.
He'd been at it for about ten minutes or so. It was all simple enough: Go in the room, kill the skeletons and mummies, go to the next room, figure out the rather simple rotating block puzzles, go up the stairs, kill more zombies, and so on and so forth.
This particular room was different. Almost like a great hall. One end, near where he'd come in, had an ornate, golden claw ornament of some kind on a pedestal.
Obviously he was supposed to pick it up, but half-remembered instincts told him that it was obviously a trap. He explored the rest of the hall, first.
Pressure plates on the floor with a dozen holes in the wall on either side, dart trap, clearly. He flew over it and examined the large round door.
Three large rings around the door with a pressure plate in the middle, and symbols around the rings. Depressions on the plate... He looked back to the pedestal with the claw. Obviously, that was the key. But what about the symbols?
Dean shrugged, and then turned around and smashed the door open with Mjolnir. He'd already been here for ten minutes, why waste more time? Besides, he had the feeling he was near the end.
On the far side of the room was a raised platform with a short set of stairs on either side and in the middle of a dark stone throne. Upon that throne was yet another 'mummy' though this one was more heavily armored and wearing a crown.
As Dean stepped into the room, the mummy stood and drew a sharp black sword. Braced for battle it stepped forward, and Dean gripped his hammer tightly and stepped forward to meet it.
The undead wretch, however, mumbled something. "Fus... Ro Dah!" Dean supposed that the resulting blast of force was meant to knock him back, but Dean was a God now. When wielding this hammer he had strength and stamina far beyond mortal men and thus he merely stumbled
With his Godlike power, he was able to amplify his emotional blast and match the undead warrior's burst of raw kinetic force with the same amount tenfold and focused to the size of a fist, blasting the mechanical imitation of an undead king's head clean off.
As the creature fell to the ground, Dean took to searching this room and found a door, hidden from sight by the throne of the undead king. He tried the handle but found it locked and so once more smashed it open.
Fresh air was, perhaps, not the appropriate phrase to use since he was quite certain that the night sky was artificial and, with his know godlike eyes he could see that, after a certain point, the dark forest he saw was painted on, but still. He'd gone from being within a crypt of some sort to near the top of a mountain, with a clear trail heading upward and occasional stone steps embedded in the stone implying that, once upon a time, an actual man-made footpath existed here.
A guttural roar from higher-up told him that, if this was a video game than clearly that's where the dungeon boss was, and if he climbed up he'd find his exit from the simulation. And so he climbed.
If he didn't know that there was some monster at the top, his slow walk up the mountain trail under a night sky under a massive aurora would, fake or not, have been one of the most pleasant experiences of his young life, and, for a brief moment, he remembered her previous self traveling to Midgard for the first time.
The mountain's peak had a flat top, with the path leading up to a stone wall with writing in a runic alphabet that he didn't recognize, and perch upon that wall was a creature with vibrant green scales, a reptilian head with a conical frill, a long neck, a body like a bird with wings like a bat with a dorsal fan between them, strong legs, and as it roused from its perch Dean could see that it's long tail was tipped with a large, leaflike fin.
Despite himself, he found himself smiling. Intellectually, he knew that it was just a machine, but the part of him that was Thor hadn't slain a dragon for a long time.
Now airborne, the wyrm dove for him with a shout of "Yol Toor Shul!" Dean had to take to the air himself to avoid the stream of flame and when he brought his hammer down upon the dragon's head he merely made it stumble in the air before it righted itself.
As the dragon attacked him with a fang and shouts that conjured blasts of flame and force, Dean was made to realize that he was faster than the dragon and far more agile in the air.
And then he got an idea. A mischievous but most awesome idea.
First, he flew around the dragon from head to tail in a corkscrew pattern to confuse it, and then he did a u-turn and tackled its torso where its neck met its shoulders. He wrapped his arms around its neck and kicked at its forelimbs to force its wings shut and then he rode the dragon from the top of the mountain all the way down to the ground, smiling like a madman as he felt the wind rush past him.
They crashed into the ground with enough force to tear up the sod and soil deep enough to expose the cold metal floor beneath it. The impact took the dragon's head clean off, the stump sparking and allowing Dean to see that its flesh was, in fact, some kind of light or energy projection. Now slain, the flesh began to boil and melt away with a sound not unlike a crackling fire and the energy swirled like a colored wind away from the Dragon's body and created a glowing doorway like the one that had brought him into this simulation in the first place.
He shook the dirt that landed on him during the impact from himself and stepped forward, finding Weaver, Ms. Mystic, and Vista sitting at a table outside some kind of restaurant. On the table was a large reptilian skull-like head with two large black horns that were somewhere between those of a goats and a bull's pointing sharply forward, with a few wires visibly jutting from the stump.
"—And then one of the Supermutants ran at me holding a ticking bomb the size of a football, and I'm like, hey, 'a mini-nuke' so I let it get up to me and explode and then I just absorb the heat and radiation and that's when this guy shows up." Vista patted the monster's head. "So then I'm like... Oh, hey," She said turning and smiling. "I was in Fallout. Had to run a gauntlet. Killed a Deathclaw. I know it's just a robot but I'm still bringing the head home and having it mounted as a trophy."
"Fair enough," Dean smiled. "Tis only young Ashley and the Gremlin that are left?"
Now that he was acclimated to the new setting, he realized that Taylor was radiating concern. "Yeah. Neither of them are back yet. Hope Ashley's okay."
Snuggles The Symbiote
I let the scorpion pincer that I'd finally remembered to use revert back to my normal hand as the horrific octo-wolf thing with the hooves and the one head that was half-fanged horse and half horrible deformed human and the other head that was just a stump full of teeth and clear white death ray collapsed to the ground in the middle of the pong of blood we'd been fighting in.
This was based on a videogame? Seriously, when the hell did videogames get so scary and evil? Why couldn't my simulation have been based on Undertale? I could go around and make friends with people trying to kill me. I'd done it once already, kinda.
And then I noticed that the supergiant sword that it had stuck to it's back started glowing a sickly pale green.
"Oh no... Not a phase two. Please tell me that there's not a phase—"
"Aah, you were at my side, all along," the monster suddenly said in a deep, silky smooth human and not at all a monster voice. And then it stood up on it's two hind leg-hoove-things and drew the sword with its two big-clawed-monster-werewolf-forelimbs. "My true mentor... My guiding moonlight..."
I didn't know any Irish words for how angry the fact that there was a second phase to this boss fight was. I don't think anyone watching at home would get mad at me for expressing how I felt.
"FUCK!"