Rust Blues[Closed]

Huh, a three way conundrum, that was unexpected. But then again...

"If it's build like a fortress then the direct path may not be the best one to take. we should check the other rooms before we move on through there." he said as he pointed hoof the the direct route door.

Arc moved to one of the doors. Now there should be something that... ah, there was the access panel. "Tesla, give me a helping hoof with this, can you?" Arc said while opening the panel.

"Sure thing Arc," Tesla said walking over to the access panel. He looked at the exposed panel. There were wires of every color criss crossing themselves as they went from the panel to the door itself. Surveying it, Tesla understood most of what was going on with the wires however he was having an issue with finding out which were truly necessary for opening the door, while which were simply there to hinder their attempts into getting inside. "Alright Arc, what do you need me to do?"

"Right, you see the two red ones there? I need you to rip them out at the moment i rip out these two blue here, then put one in the slot with the beige one and ground the other one. Ready?"

(Repair 51, Luck 6)

Tesla listened to the instructions Arc gave, looking at the wires he pointed too, the green unicorn wrapped the cords in his aura. "Alright I'm ready, lets do this." {I hope this works, cause if it doesn't...well I don't know what we are gonna do}

Repair (100)
Luck (5)

Working together, Arc and Tesla managed to get the door to open, what it revealed was another service station, containing a locker and a worktable with a set of old rusty tools.

Tesla's eyes lit up as the door slid open revealing an old workbench as well as lockers with what the unicorn hoped were components he could use. "This is fantastic!" He said running up to the wooden workbench, inspecting it. It was in surprisingly good condition for having sat there for centuries. Turning to the lockers, the gunsmith couldn't help himself as he began to open each of them looking to see if anything was useful.

(Tesla searches the lockers)

---Locker---
The locker contains:
2x Duct Tape
2x Wonderglue
2x Scrap Electronics
2x Conductor
2x Scrap Metal
2x Spark Battery
1x Steam Gauge Assembly

"Hahahahaha" Tesla laughed as he rooted through the lockers grabbing all the materials he could find, this was absolutely fantastic! Rushing over to the workbench the unicorn frantically tried to remember all the various designs and schematics..."no don't have enough for that...or that...damn it just one item short for that....shit! I still got nothing! Ah well at least I got all this now."

Stowing it all away into his saddlebags, the gunsmith went back to Arc, "well whole lotta hype for nothing. Alright lets see whats behind door number two Arc. Same deal as the last time?"

Opened the panel and looked over the cables and circuits. The layout of the system seemed identical to the last one.

"Indeed Tesla, same deal as last time."

(Repair 51, Luck 6)

"Alright Arc, sounds like a plan." Walking over to the opened panel, Tesla saw the exposed wires in a layout nearly identical to the previous doors. "Well this should be easy." The after opening the first door, Tesla had much more confidence in rewiring this one.

Repair (100)
Luck (5)

After a while of effort, the bootom half of the door hissed and opened, the upper hoewer got it's hydraulic systems jammed and beyond repair. The room behind was a small cube with a still huffing spark generator in the middle, with another door, this time with opening mechanism, stood in the opposite wall than the entrance was.

"Well well well what do we have here?" Tesla said as the bottom half of the reinforced door slid open. Looking at the generator, small arcs of lightning leaping out of it from as it continued to fight on despite its ill repair that the effects of time had caused. "Arc you think your water talisman is somewhere in here?" the unicorn asked, it certainly seemed like it would be plausible. Guess the only real thing to do now was look.

Slowly Tesla made his way around the generator, toward the door on the other side, taking care of his distance from the generator, if it still had power, that meant it was still a threat. the gunsmith really didn't want to see the damage one of those arcs of electricity could do to a pony.

Arc climbed under the door and looked around the room. The generator was probably the reason the lockdown and elevatr still worked, but this was probably not the place where one would place the talisman, too little piping and other stuff that would indicate a wwater treatment device.

"No, I think this still isn't the right place, let's continue throught that door, shall we?" said Arc and pulled the lever next to the door down. The door slid open.

The door slid open and the two ponies stared into ant's face... err... mandibles? Anyway, the ant was hiding and waiting for them to open the door. He lunged at Tesla, but the space was too small for his size and one of the mandibles tripped over the doorframe, making him miss and land in heap close to Tesla.


---Enemies---

Ant1, normal warrior giant ant: Undamaged

"Son of a Bitch!" Tesla yelled leaping back from sudden threat. Drawing his prism blaster, the unicorn leveled his weapon at the giant insect, as the creature stumbled and fell through the door way, landing in a pile of frantic legs and mandibles. Pulling the trigger, the prism blaster burst to life as a burst of red beams erupted out of the gun.

AP: 7 (Drawing Blaster, Firing Prism Blaster at Ant 1 3x with +10 modifier)
Trait: (Trigger Discipline)
Energy Weapon: (38)
Luck (5)

Sound Wave let out a whinny of surprise as the Ant attacked, and luckily missed. Pulling out his own weapon, the Pegasus aimed his Sawed-Off at the humongous insect and aimed for the eyes before pulling the trigger and flying back to gain some distance from the creature.

AP: 6 (Drawing Sawed-Off, Firing Sawed-Off at Ant 1x with +10 to Shooting rolls)
Trait: (Trigger Discipline)
Guns: 42
Luck: 3

Arc jumped away from the opened doors and took aim with the prism rifle. Then realized, almost too late, one important thing.

"Watch for the generator for fucks sake!", after all, those things were rather volatile devices.

(AP:7
Pulling out weapon(Prism Rifle):1AP
3xFiring(Prism Rifle, Ant1):6AP, EW60, Lck6
)

At the sounds of yelling and shooting, Kipper looked up from the hunk of broken down machinery he was wasting his time with and ran as fast as his lumbering bipedal form would carry him. More fucking ants, probably.

"I RETURNING!" he shouted as he rounded the corner, his eyes wide with aimless panic. "What is happens? More of--"

The insectoid monster was hard to miss in such a narrow corridor. It'd be suicidally dangerous to close on it, what with all the firearms and DEWs lighting up such a confined space.

Well, no other option then. Kipper drew his revolver, narrowed his eyes, and pumped two rounds of hot lead in the ant's direction.

[Running to battle - let's say 3 AP]
[Drawing .357 revolver - 1 AP]
[Firing at ant twice - 2×2=4 AP]
[Total: 8 AP. As always, stats in signature.]

Tesla and Arc managed to pull out a few quick shots, Arc even managed to cook off parts of the ant's body with one of his beams, however Sounds shotgun shot went wide and did no damage and they did not stopped the ant from lunging at Tesla and giving him two ugly bites. Kipper managed to get in fast enough and one of his shots not only hit the ant, but splattered it all around.

---Summary---

Ant1 dead

Tesla lost 28 hp, now has 182/210

"GAH!" Tesla cried out as the ant lunged at him, knocking his gun away as it proceeded, biting at his hoof and then midsection not once but twice, ripping off parts of his green coat and drawing a fair amount of blood from it. Luckily before the monstrous ant could attack once again, a bullet round struck the it, splattering its head everywhere, covering the gunsmith in ichor.

Tesla was relieved to see the rest of the creatures body slump over dead. "T-Thanks, Kipper....I owe you one."

"I swear, if another one of these things come up I am going to SCREAM." The Pegasus complained, having had enough of these over-sized picnic invaders to last a good long while. "Can we hurry this up and get what we need?" He turned to the others, looking quite distressed as he's been through enough after so much of all this. "Cause at this rate, one of us will end up loosing a limb or dead!" Stuffing his pistol away for the moment, the Pegasus shook himself a bit in a way to blow off some stress before turning to Tesla and making a bit of a face as he saw that his unicorn friend was covered head to toe in.... gunk.

"Eeeeew...."

“T-Thanks, Kipper...” Tesla said, bleeding all over the floor. “I owe you one.”

“Not problemical,” Kipper replied with a satisfied grin, spinning his .357 about its trigger guard, only for the pistol to liberate itself from his finger, twirl through the air and into a wall. He winced and ducked his head, but it fortunately didn’t discharge. He knelt to retrieve the escaped firearm and paused as he caught a glimpse of Tesla’s leg. A stream of blood had soaked a nauseous, ruddy brown path through the pony’s green fur.

“Can we hurry this up and get what we need?” the as-of-yet unnamed song pony whined, giving everyone else some kind of... puppy dog... look. “Cause at this rate, one of us will end up loosing a limb or dead!”

As possibly psychotic as the song pony might or might not be, he did raise a salient point – the brushes with death and/or maiming had been distressingly high thus far, regardless of how awesome Kipper apparently was at slaughtering huge ants.

He nodded in passive agreement, sliding two rounds into his revolver’s emptied chambers and then holstering it. He slowly drew his machete, walking to the door the ballistically lobotomised ant had stumbled through. “Ponies, please for watching my back.”

Kipper carefully entered what seemed to be a small office.

On the left side was a desk with a still working terminal. Remnants of what used to be a chair stood in front of it. Above the terminal hanged a small cabinet.

On the right side, most of the wall was cover by mouldy but still readable map, labelled "Emerald Stream underground river".

The back of the room is filled with filing cabinets.

Machete raised like a deadly security blanket, Kipper slowly crept into the office. He checked behind the door before looking at anything else; at this rate, he wouldn't be surprised if there was an ant crammed in back there.

After settling that niggling bit of paranoia, he walked over to the map to have a look at that first. Mould, eh? Means damp air, which could mean they were getting close to the water talisman. Or maybe it was just the underground river described on the map. Promising, or perhaps disconcerting. Either way, they couldn't sit still.

He looked down sadly at the ruined chair before the terminal. Great. Those ponies probably didn't mind being on their feet all day, what with being quadrupedal, but his legs were starting to get a bit sore. Well, whatever; he had other things he should be worrying about.

He gave the terminal a brief look over to check it was in working condition and then powered it on. Cracking his knuckles in stereotypical fashion, he got to work perusing that potentially pertinent... pinformation.

(Science 45)

>Sparkle-Cola os 2.31
>Welcome 'guest', please enter password for privileged access

On the fourth try, Kipper got the password "celerity" right and the files opened to him.

>Welcome 'chief maintenance officer Bolt'
>MENU
>E-mail
>Open storage facility door

Upon opening the e-mail section, only one file was still readable

>From 'chief maintenance officer Bolt'
>To 'director Passat'

Passat,
I have bad news. The talisman we installed did worked, everything up to spec and all our gunk that managed to leak from the pipes got cleaned, but the samples from the stream are showing still elevated levels of... well... something. We do not know what is it, we are not equipped for that kind of analysis here, but you know there's one place only that could it be coming from. Those idiots upstream at Arbor. We need to sent the samples to MAS for actual scientific analysis and to get those bastards upstream nailed to the wall by their balls to get clean out of this.

Best regards
Brass Bolt