In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 594):

"I'm not gonna know if the monster who killed my kid is dead unless I bring you back.  How's that for assurance?"

He sighs.  "All I can tell you is Victor has some control of the reality in that pocket dimension.  He can control light for example.  Which is why I can't accomplish shit in there.  I don't think he can control everything.  But..."

Paley shrugs.  "That's the most I can tell you."

The young Mr. Sharpe considers the words of Pale Image at some length, looking between him and his wife as if he might divine the truth of his words. His gut instinct tells him he can trust this guy on this move. He'd come here with and looking for information, and was genuinely looking to catch the guy. He hadn't made any moves to grab Pale, or his wife, for crimes of the past.

"If I'm successful, you turn a new leaf, try to keep your nose clean," he tells the guy, finally.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 596):

"The only reason I'm in the life is to get justice for my boy.  You get that for me, consider me retired."

He motions for you to follow him and heads into the complex.

He stops before a door and opens it.  Inside is a lab.  A platform with various devices and wires attached to it is at one end.

"Stand there.  I have to power the gate.  But my wife will man a communication device.  Here."</goldenrd>

He hands you said device: a small ear jack.

<goldenrod>"That will only work as long as Vic doesn't notice it.  So don't make it too obvious for as long as you can.  Once he cuts that off, we won't be able to hear you until Vic's out of the picture.

"I'll hold the door as long as I can.  But if it does shut don't panic.  Just use the device to signal us as soon as you are able to.

"Questions?"

Jack takes a moment to study the device before he puts it in his ear. "Yeah," he replies. "How fast will he notice your portal is open? Any chance I can blitz him before he has a chance to up his defenses or are they always in place?" he wonders. He doubts that Pale has any answers, given that he'd never had anyone come back alive, but it's going to be his methodology here to begin with.

With that in mind, he monitors the situation and starts zipping back and forth across the room, preparing to launch through the portal the moment it opens.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 598):

Pale walks over to the wall of devices and begins to flip switches.  His wife takes a seat at a chair near a scanner.

"I don't think he knows someone's there until they're there.  But I can't say that's the case with one hundred percent certainty.  I can only go off what we hear from through the earpieces before the person we sent gets beaten to death.

"But it sounds like the landscape there changes.  I don't think Victor is sane anymore.  Go fig."

He walks over to a rod sunk into a small pedestal.  He motions for you to take your place on the platform.

"Ready?"

Warmed up, speed wise, Jack moves onto the pedestal as he watches Pale Image get ready. His focus intense as he intends to hit the guy without even giving him time to form a coherent thought. He's angry enough not to hold back, at all. All it takes is one glance at the perfect clarity of his eidetic memory to remember how much rage he feels toward 'Victor.' He also has some choice words to level at his mom, but he doesn't blame her as fully as Pale seems to. Her experiments might have been part of the process of creating Jack himself.

That said, he's still a teenager, so he jokes from Rick and Morty: "Oh boy, here I go killin' again."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:16, Sat 15 July 2023.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 600):

"And that's what I like to hear...Powering up in 3...2...1-"

There's a wrenching sensation.  You actually feel it.  It's like being hit by a plane you didn't see coming while in mid air.  Annoying but not devestating.

The scenery twirls and tears and reforms.  Into a park.

Your standing on the shore of a lake.  It's a pleasant spring afternoon.  Dotted along the lake shore are families and couples enjoying the sun.  Some lay on blankets, enjoying picnics.  Some are swimming in the lake.  A couple of older looking guys are fishing.

They all seem dressed in the wrong era.  No one has skinny jeans on for example.  Several of them are wearing Converse high tops.  A couple of the guys have mullets.

No one has any faces though.  Not a single one of them.  They're just milling about, going through a pantomime of Saturday afternoon off park like activities.

Under your feet you can see a slightly glowing circle of gold.  The portal gate.  Paley seems to be keeping it open.

The only sound you can hear is music.  It sounds like some old rock song being played too loud on a car stereo.  A crescendo of drum toms and a monotone singer.

I don't care if you hurt me some more
I don't care
If you even the score

Your earpiece buzzes.

"This is Mrs. Image.  Are you in?"

Dipping into the prodigious depths of his memories, Jack pulls up the reference he wants to make: “I’m in,” he replies, because he’s always thought it was a funny thing said in movies, “In case I fail, get word to the Monkey, he’ll know who to tell. Anyway, it’s clearly a dream-state. Reminds of Seurat’s, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Faceless people. It’s playing music. From the Cars, I think,” he actually doesn’t remember the name of the band for certain because it was just one random memory but without proper tagging because he can only identify the music based on composition and vocal qualities which are hardly one hundred percent accurate.

“Anyway, the period would be the 80s, I assume. Mullets, Converse high-tops,” he explains over the radio as he walks forward, checking for identifiable differences across different wavelengths. The guy probably isn’t also changing their expression in things like X-rays and infrared if he can’t perceive in those wavelengths, so he looks for ways to spot his target as he moves.


He also listens for anything out of place, besides the music. Though he does move closer to the sound of the music, his voice going more quiet.

“I’ll try to pass along any additional information I can,” he shares.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 602):

Other than the music, there's no other sound.  The faceless people don't rustle the grass.  The breeze doesn't cause branches to creak.  Birds open their beaks but don't chirp.

You come through the woodline and into a parking lot.

There's a single car there.  A BMW.  An M5 you think.

Both doors are open and the keys are in the ignition.  The radio is blaring out that song.

<i>You can mock me
and I don't care
And you can rock me
just about anywhere

It's all riiiiiiigh-riiiiiight<i>

There's a guy in the car, face slumped onto the steering wheel so you can't tell if he's another faceless person or not.

There don't seem to be any roads leading into this parking lot.  In fact, as you scan out past the park itself, everything is just blank space

Jack doesn't know what will alert Victor, so he keeps looking. He does keep an eye on the guy in the car because the year of the car seems off slightly, perhaps because there is something actually happening with it and it isn't just another case of randomness without faces. Though according to a random memory of a newspaper from 2006, he knows that the M5 has a 1989 edition, which means the car is likely not anachronistic.

The source of the music however, does make him keep watch. His eyes moving over the area as he moves at a walking pace. Perhaps if the guy knows he is here, he can surprise him with his speed if he doesn't show too much, too soon.

"Found a guy crashed out in an M5, might have no face," he reports quietly.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 604):

Ms. Image pops back, "Careful about cars.  Vic was a car nut.  Anything car related he was into."

As you look around, the car suddenly shudders.  The door opens and the guy behind the steering wheel slumps out.  He crawls across the lot a bit, face still looking down, and then lays face down on the asphalt.

Cos
You're all I've got tonight
You're all I've got tonight
You're all I've got tonight

I need you

Tonight

The guy laying on the parking lot isn't moving.

With a continuous assessment, Jack takes a moment and then cuts the car in half with a glance. Severing it directly from the front bumper to the back with a sweep of his eyes. He can't be certain what is happening here, but it seems that he isn't just going to walk into an answer, and the world is reacting to him now, so he had might as well start acting.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 606):

You sizzle the car...

And it leaps backwards, sort of morphing into a man's shape for a moment.  Not like in the Optimus Prime way.  But more like in a odd "did that just happen?" way.

The park around you gets blurry...

And you're suddenly standing on a race track.  A cavalcade of racing cars...all of them from the 80s...are barreling down the track towards you...

As the man begins to get blurry, Jack moves toward him and attempts to bisect him with another attack, but alas, he's doing that Freddy Kreuger thing. Looking toward the cars coming at him, he kicks up off the race track and flies up into the air and simply continues to cut the cars in half. In fact, he pretty much starts heat-visioning everything moving.

A car?

Heat vision.

A waving bit of grass.

Heat vision.

"The car was him, he's controlling the environment now," he relates over the ear-piece, in case he can be heard.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 608):

"He's done that before," Mrs. Image tells you.  "There's two things we know.

"First, that environment reacts to a strong will.  He's been there so long that it's easy for him to manipulate it.  But we had a couple of people who said they figured out how to make that space do what they wanted, at least on a small scale.  They both died. But it can apparently be done.  Don't ask me how.  I don't know.

"The second thing is it's almost useless to destroy everything there.  It just tires you out. Vic can jump from manifestation to manifestation in there.  That's how almost all of the people we sent through before died.  Vic just threw everything at them.  They tired themselves out and he could pick them off easy.

"But one lady got a hit on him.  She said she figured out how to tell when he jumps from one manifestation to another.  She said it was something about the way he breathed.  I don't know more than that.  Apparently he's only really vulnerable when he's moving from one manifestation to another one."

The racetrack shifts into the air so no matter where you go, you're standing on it.  Or hovering right above it.  You slice and dice car after car.  All of them are blaring out 80s music.

Here in my car
I feel safest of all

It's loud synths this time.

You try focusing on the sounds of breathing.  You guess the music is to try to hide the breathing.  Too bad.  You may not be as good at listening as Darja.  But you're not bad yourself.

You pick it out.  A man's breathing under all the roaring of the cars.  The man is breathing like he's undergoing stress.  The way an athlete would breath while training.

Then suddenly the breathing goes...very....slowly.....

And then he's panting again.

It starts to....slow....

You zero in on the car and blast it.  It flies up into the air and you think you can hear a scream.

The scene shifts.

You're standing in what looks like a hospital hallway. A long line of sickbeds are lined against the wall.  In each sick bed lays a man on a respirator.

Faceless nurses holding machetes and flame throwers come running down the hall at you.

In the words of a character from another multiverse entirely: “I can do this all day.”

He doesn’t pass along that information, not when he has spotted the tell. The guy may have additional tricks he thinks he can pull, instead, Jack continues to blast seemingly aimlessly and waits for a perfect moment to hit.

He debates which of his tricks to use to destroy these projections, but he wants to save showing off as many of his abilities for as long as possible. In case Victor can adapt to them. So he sticks to using his heat vision and flight, whisking himself along through the rooms and cutting holes through walls when he needs to go further to extend his reach.

All the while waiting for that perfect change and proximity so that he can blitz the guy with more than just a single pass of his heat vision.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 610):

The nurses begin going at you with the machetes while others torch you with the flame throwers.

Victor's breathing takes a bit for you to hone in on, what will all the fake breathing-on-a-respirator going on.  But you manage to track him down.  Second bed from the end, northern end of the hallway.

You find that sweet spot.  Firing off over the head of one of the nurses, you get him once and then follow it up with a few more blasts.

Vic actually grunts and the scenery changes again.  Next comes a bowling alley where pot bellied men try to spray your face with cans of shoe disenfectant.  After that you're on the floor of the room where giants try to river dance on top of you.

You score hit after hit.  Then you're just in a big open field.  A middle aged man is at the other end of it.  He seems to be breathing heavily and looks haggard.

He glares at you.  "What are you?"

"In the words of a guy in a movie one time: I'm Vengeance," Jack replies as he continues to fire off an endless stream of obliterating heat and fury. There is an endless well there, driven by his anger at what he'd seen caused by this man. Even if he knew how to bring this guy in alive, which he's almost certain he can't, because the guy can't be removed from whatever this place is according to Pale'y, he isn't certain he would.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 612):

Vic laughs.  He's moving much faster now.  Every time you fire away a car or a faceless nurse or a tuba or an exact replica of Rodin's The Walking Man pops up, taking the blast before it can reach Vic.

He holds up a small child.  "Here.  You can save this one I'm sure."

He tosses the child to the side, towards a giant industrial sized microwave that suddenly appears.

The man clearly can't just be snatching anything or anyone, this is all just him. He continues to fire off attacks, only increasing his own pace as necessary to continue to inflict wounds and wear down the man--which might happen to include destroying the microwave, but isn't the focus here. If the guy can just grab people from reality as hostages like that, he needs to keep him on his toes, not start fighting to the other man's tempo.

"Oh, I got another one," he realizes. "I am Inevitability."

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 614):

"You smell just like Fresca.  That damn woman-"

He's cut off as you manage to land a nice searing cut.

Victor roars and throws an ocean at you.  The water does help cool down your beams slightly.

He flees into the wreck of a submarine laying on the bottom of the ocean floor.

You notice something odd.  Well, odder than having an ocean thrown at you.

It's like the edges are crumbling.  Just at the periphery of your vision things have gotten hazy.  And the air seems filled with cracks.

Doing his best not to grind his teeth at the mention of Fresca, Jack pursues, speeding up not just his senses but his flight speed as he starts to deploy all of his abilities. The cracking air and withering around the edges, to him, means a weakening of Viktor's mind and ability to hold up this dimension.

"He's weakening," he reports over the radio as he chases, firing off more of his anger-fueled blasts of energy from his eyes.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 616):

-kay. Now's when he usually...most danger...

You're getting all kinds of static on the headset.

...usually...controls the laws...careful. Don't assume he can't...reindeer...

The lights go out.  Quite literally.  Everything goes dark.

You can't see anything.  You flip through all the spectrums.  Nothing.  Firing off heat blasts doesn't do anything either.  You can feel them shoot out of your eyes.  But you don't see them as they fly through the air.

Everything is dark.

The air is filled with the sounds of labored breathing.  Like ten thousand asthmatics are scrambling for their inhalers just beside your earlobes.

Something smashes against your back.  It doesn't do anything of course.  But you still feel the impact slightly.

"Oh, he's reindeer gaming the hell out of this," he replies, not sure what Mrs. Image was going to say, but it amuses him to make jokes.

The only solution that Jack has to total blanket attacks in a void like this is to attack everything, everywhere, all at once. So he starts spinning in a tight pirouette, moving his eyes up and down and then rotating his whole body 90-degrees randomly so that he can cover the top, bottom and everything else. All the while, his eyes continue to blast out.

If he could be seen, there’d be an expanding cocoon of light around him as he becomes a miniature sun of heat and radiating blasts flying from him in all 360 degrees.

In reply to Jack Sharpe (msg # 618):

You get pelted as you spin, not that that means anything to you.  But the attacks decrease and then stop.

So does the breathing.  In fact, soon you can only hear your own heartbeat.

When Victor finally says something, it sounds like it's coming from everywhere around you.

"I didn't ask for this you know.  It's not my fault."

There's a pause.

"Are you gonna kill me?  Will that make it all better?"