FIENDS FROM THE PAST

Job 7: A Thrown Charge

Carmelita and Murray emerge from the safe-house together, with Murray sputtering as some water drips on his head. The two of them make their way past the patrolling guards to the rocky beach. There, they climb to a boulder and Carmelita pulls out her binoc-u-com. "So, we're taking out that generator, right?" asks Carmelita.

"Right," says Bentley. He adjusts his glasses. "Based on its design, most of its working parts will be located below sea level, but all the ghosts it produces are above water. Ghosts are notoriously difficult to fight."

"That doesn't mean I can't do it, Bentley!" Murray cuts in.

"We need you for other stuff, Murray. Carmelita's going to watch your back while you pry open the ghost generator's entrance; then, she'll stand guard while you go to town on the inside."

"All right; we'll talk after we've gotten that thing open."

Carmelita and Murray tuck their binoc-u-coms away. Play resumes as Carmelita; she leads the way to the beach, and the first of the metal bridges.

Where, of course, they're ambushed by ghosts.

Murray's punches stun them, but can't take them out. Carmelita's shots are fast and furious, carefully not hitting Murray as she takes out everything around him, then clearing the path ahead enough for them to keep moving. The ghosts get more creative as they get closer, coming from behind, dropping from above, once giving them an entire bridge of a breather before rising from beneath the next island's sand.

Murray absolutely did not give a tiny scream of surprise when that happened.

They reach the generator at last. Carmelita keeps off the ghosts (rising from the sea in never-ending waves) while Murray locates three levers and lifts each one over his head.

A door clacks open. Murray and Carmelita both look at it. "Do you think you can fit through that?" Carmelita asks.

"Of course!" Murray boasts, posing. "It'll be just like going down a chimney."

"Are you sure?" Carmelita asks, blasting away ghosts without even looking at them. "It looks awfully small..."

"Fear not! No task is too small for... The Murray."

With a LOADING screen and a lot of grunting, Murray emerges into a small room, the top domed like the top of the ghost generator. Candles, flickering purple out of reach, provide the only light and reveal a steep dirt staircase ahead.

Murray makes his way down it, almost touching the walls on either side, candles lighting the way. He emerges into a large, empty room—if 'room' is the right description. A path, strewn with rocks and crates, stretches out before him; a gap, too deep to see the bottom in the flickering candle-light, gapes like a bottomless abyss on either side. Out of jumping distance are platforms, holding various machine parts. Water pumped from the sea and into a steam machine; a salt-shaker as big as Murray covering containers creeping around the edges of the room on a conveyor belt; a dozen or more gears that serve no obvious purpose; and several alarms.

"Start by taking out the alarms, Murray," says Bentley in his ear.

"You got it, little buddy," says Murray. With a powerful stomp, he picks up a boulder, and throws it at a nearby alarm.

All at once, the other alarms start blaring. Carmelita's voice crackles in Murray's ear. "Don't know what you just did, but we've got company."

"More ghosts?" asks Murray, taking care of the next alarm.

"Them. AND a stampede of terriers. I can't keep them all out!"

"Focus on the ghosts, Carmelita, Murray can't take those. Murray, you'll just have to deal with the guards that make it to you."

Everybody ready for a brawl on a narrow platform with The Murray, alarms blaring and stuff to throw all around? Of course you are. Ready... and... GO! Thunderflop and punch, pick up whatever's closest—whoops, looks like it's a guard this time, sorry dude—and throw it at the next alarm before charging back into the fray and breaking exactly as many skulls as dared to come down there.

Which, to be fair, is a lot. A WHOLE lot. A few of them even come from further down in the generator, howling the alarm to go along with the blare from the actual alarms, a klaxiconic symphony of destruction.

The Murray thinks the only thing that needs to be added is the triumphant horn section of his own triumph, and with every alarm he takes down, every guard he throws at an alarm, it gets a little bit louder. A little bit stronger. And greater still when he hurls one more guard and the last alarm falls silent.

"Great work, Murray! Now, you can't reach most of those platforms, but you can reach the conveyor belt. Ride it around until you get to your next target."

Murray has to punch three guys off a cliff where they hover a moment, bug-eyed, before looking down and plummeting like stones.

The first stop is the salt-shaker of death. It's... actually shaking literal salt. I have no idea why it's shaking salt, but, there ya go. Murray jumps off the conveyor and onto the platform feeding it salt, where a few punches knocks out the support and a groaning, full-body heave sends it flying. The salt shaker still moves, growing gradually emptier, until Murray picks up one of the hexagonal containers riding the conveyor belts and stuffs it in. Then it explodes in a shower of metal bits and sparks.

"Sweet!" says Murray, punching another few guards that are trying (failing) to follow him as he gets back on the conveyor Riding it a bit further gets him to the steam machine, which is too big to punch, but doesn't handle having a few guards stuffed into it and being thunderflopped very well. Or maybe it does, since he has to do it four times.

"How do you like that, suckas?" Murray demands.

Bentley's voice sounds in his ear, "Excellent! Now, the gears! Carmelita, how are you doing?"

"It's a good thing my shock pistol was fully charged," she says in Murray's ear as he follows the conveyor belt again. "It's got less than half left. Try to hurry it up, Murray!"

"The Murray will hurry like no one has hurried before!" Murray boasts, rearing back and taking out the first gear with a booming chop. Another falls victim to his thunder fists; the last is victim to a thrown vampire.

"The ghosts have stopped coming," Carmelita reports as the conveyor dies.

"So have the guards," Murray says, punching the last few into the abyss. "What now, Bentley?"

"Keep following that conveyor belt; I wanna know where it goes. Carmelita, you stay guarding the entrance. Without the ghosts, I trust you'll be able to keep any unwanted guests from finding Murray?"

Carmelita barks an affirmative as Murray gets back on the conveyor belt and follows along its path. The conveyor, and hexagonal boxes, go through a small gap in the wall; Murray has to bend down and crawl to get through (and how often does he do that?). From there, he enters a maze of twisting passages, all alike... well, no, he finds himself in a large room full of machinery that's stopped moving completely. It looks like things were being stamped in, or through, or out of the hexagons in places; in others, the pieces were picked up and combined.

Tiny robot birds, half-built, liter the conveyor belt. It continues further, down and into water, heading towards the island with the tower, but not even Sly could fit through that gap. But there's another problem as well: a second conveyor belt. Similar pieces; similar things being done to the things. But the tiny robots being built on them are different.

They're robotic foxes.

And by the second conveyor belt is a computer, gleaming, tantalizing, and so not for Murray to touch.

"That looks like everything," says Bentley in his ear. "Head on back to the safe-house. At least we'll be prepared when the first robo-foxes attack.

JOB COMPLETE

Murray gets stuck on his way out of the ghost generator. Carmelita has to grab his arms and pull.

Available Jobs:

Cooper Crypts