The Monolith [Closed]

Crackle had been roaming the wastes long enough to know that things like this simply DID NOT HAPPEN. This place was too perfect. The griffin suspected either magic or very advanced tech was concealing the true nature of the area. He moved up from his place in the middle of the group, circling to the side to get a clear shot and drawing his plasma pistol, leveling it at the mare. Judging by her calm demeanor, Crackle figured she was all part of the setup too. Probably a robot of some sort. Still, she was his best bet for getting answers. "You've got until I count to three to explain what the fuck is going on here, and I'm skipping one and two. Start talking, or I swear by the bone collector I will turn you into paint."

Mona would find herself staring at the room and the receptionist, her expression showing a slight crack in it's emotionless exterior. This place seemed cleaner then Tenpony, perhaps even comparable to those pre-war simulations from so long ago...but how was that even possible?

Before she could consider asking a question though, one of the Griffon's suddenly had a plasma pistol in the poor receptionist's face! Fool! There was clearly something very wrong about this area, and here he was possibly antagonizing the situation when they could have tried to learn more! For all he knew, there could be turrets ready to pop out and shred them all at the first sign of hostility!

"Lower your weapon. We do not want to cause unnessecary trouble."

Mona would state in her emotionless tone...however, she was already using her magic to discreetly unstrap her cowpony repeater. The threat had been made, and she doubted words would fix things now. The best she could be was ready for the probably inevitable shitstorm.

Crackle frowned at Mona. If the situation were any different, he probably wouldn't have resorted to violence right off the bat. Something this ...unusual, for lack of a better term, though, called for drastic measures. "Trouble? Take a look around. This whole place is wrong. Places like this simply don't exist anymore. They all got burned away in a sea of fire two centuries ago! I want to know what's up with this place, and she's my best chance at finding out." He turned his attention back to the receptionist, keeping his pistol pointed at her from a safe distance away from the desk.

Bakewell didn’t consider herself a racist by any means, but she had started noticing one ever constant trend among griffons.


They always immediately jumped for Violence. Every griffon she had ever met save for one acted this way. Every. Single. Time.

“I-I don’t guess you considered the fact that you don’t have to wave a gun at ponies for them to answer questions, did you?” She sighed. Though really, the mare wasn’t what Bakewell was so worried about. It was the place. If any of the rumors were true, this newcomer’s actions were a surefire way of triggering them.

“Have you forgotten where we are? Or what's supposed to be in here? If any of the rumors are true, you just p-painted a big red target on yourself. Maybe on all of us.” She said, discretely moving as far away from the bird as possible. "You should point the gun away. Even if there arn't any monsters, there's probably security measures behind that desk she can trigger with a hidden hoof movement if you don't."

Kira looked around the room that was behind the doors that Rad had just a few moments before opened with wide eyes, she had never seen anything like this everything just looked so clean smelled so clean and the pony looked the same as everything around her. It was just so wrong to see.

The gryphoness had really no idea what to say as she just looked really confused at her surrounding and back to the pony several time as her beak was slightly open in confusion. But still she reacted to when the gryphon and as well brown grey pony pulled weapons at the receptionist pony which made her curse in her native tongue at the foolish action, best thing to do now was to play along with this strange pony.

"Just lower your weapon." Kira said just after Mona had so as well she talking in a calm voice trying to act as if this was just a normal occurrence. "Sorry about the two they are just like that. We are here to see your boss about the security job and as you can see well we are well armed for the job." She said trying to lie her way though this possible shitstorm.

Rad had been looking around the room in amazement as everypony else had reacted in their various ways. Collat and Crackle had ever pointed weapons at the receptionist mare, Rad didn't quite understand why, it wasn't like she was trying to hurt them.

The unicorn behind the desk didn't exactly react well to being threatened. A look of worry and panic crossing her face at the guns leveled at her. "I-I... I d-don't know what you mean? P-please don't h-hurt me! I'm j-just a receptionist, I-I don't know anything! I p-promise!"

As the others in the group tried to get Crackle to lower his weapon the mare just stared fearfully at the pistol pointed at her head, as Kira mentioned the security job her attention was diverted however. "S-security job? I-I'm sorry you must n-not have heard... The security j-job was taken... L-last w-week... Just g-go see the boss upstairs, i'm s-sure he'll compensate you f-for any travel costs. J-just... D-don't hurt me, please!"

Cuppa gave a slightly surprised look at Crackle as he threatened the receptionist with a gun, apparently not the type to take strange happenings without being obviously shocked.

Whilst everypony else was focusing on Crackle and his behaivour, Cuppa approached the receptionist after she reponded, definitely sounding genuine in her fear... At least he wasn't really in here, it was all a memory now, surely.
"Ah'm sorry 'bout our companion, he's seen a lot an' it's sent 'im a wee bit over the edge... Sometimes he's good an' his suspicions are right, so ya gotta give 'im credit fer that. What floor is the boss on, anywho?" Cuppa would then ask innocently.

Collat put his gun down, strangely believing her. This was all still very, very weird, and he knew something was up. He would've apologized, but it looked like he was completely ignored anyway, so nopony must've noticed... He didn't understand. This place was supposed to be full of ghouls and ghosts, dangerous things and horrible nightmares, hell itself. All he got was a shiny room and a nearly-pissed-herself mare, he was actually starting to think it was all just another dream.

Crackle scowled at the receptionist, but did eventually relent. He backed up to stand beside Collat,waiting to see what would happen. The receptionist clearly didn't have any real idea what was going on, so the griffin decided to stand back and see what would come of the efforts of the rest of the group. He kept his gun pointed in the general direction of the mare, though, still not trusting her. As Cuppa tried to gain some information through a less violent approach, Crackle took a look around the rest of the room [PER 9] to try and spot anything else out of the ordinary.

Bakewell gave a sideways glance at Crackle and the tan pegasus as she stepped up beside Cuppa, attempting to give an encouraging and sorry smile to the receptionist while also standing, conveniently and doubtlessly by complete chance, in between the griffon and the receptionist.

“My friend’s right.” Bakewell said after Cuppa said her part. “Please don’t judge us all based upon his violent tendencies.

While Bakewell meant what she said, her words weren’t the reason she had approached. The earth pony wanted to stay relatively close to her unicorn friend in case she needed to make due on the freshly made promise to protect.

Kira nodded to the frighten mare behind the counter as she saw the more paranoid and aggressive of the group stand down, well kind of stand down. At least they where going to be talking to the one who is in charge of this place and maybe they can get some answers on what is going on here from him.

"Thank you and once again sorry for my companions ill behaviour." It felt wrong to talk like that to the mare but she kept up the charade until they got away from this really strange mare.

When the situation started to defuse, Mona would stop her unbuckling of her rifle, as she pulled the strap back with her magic just as discreetly as she had been undoing it. They had gotten lucky, but if this was how the red Griffon was going to react, then she would no doubt have to keep a close eye on him. If there was one thing Mona couldn't stand, it was reckless fools who try and solve problems with violent action, and no thought. It was a feature that reminded her immediatly of raiders, and that disgusted her...not that her face could show this disgust, however.

When the receptionist directed them upstairs, she would simply watch and listen as the others apologized and questioned, she had nothing to contribute to this conversation, and her monotone would no doubt simply get in the way of questioning, so she simply stood to the side and looked around the room once more, for anything that struck her as particualy odd or off...aside from the pre-war nature of the room itself, of course...

Upon Cuppa's approach the receptionist mare had now resorted to hiding behind her desk, peeking over the top at the group, and the gun still pointed at her. "I-if you take the elevator y-you can get up to the top floor." She gestured a hoof shakily towards the elevators on the right side of the room. "The b-boss is in his office, i-i'll call ahead and t-tell him you're on your w-way..." The mare then levitated the phone from her desk over to her, still behind the desk and hoping she would be safe. To all looking at her, her fear and surprise at the group seemed genuine, there was no hint at all that this was a a charade, this mare seemed genuinely terrified at the group and the threats thrown at her.

(Stuff in spoilers are things only the character they're for can see, you can all read them if you wish, just remember that unless your name is above it, it's content doesn't affect you.)

Crackle:

Spoiler:

Cuppa:

Spoiler:

Bake:

Spoiler:

Collat:

Spoiler:

With the mares words the group now had a choice, take the elevator up, or use the stairs. From the outside of the building anypony could tell that the stairs would be long and tedious. The elevator seemed to be powered just fine, so as far as anypony knew they should work, especially if the rest of the building was like this room.

Rad simply shrugged and started towards the elevators "Guess we better go then? Leave this poor mare to recover eh?" He trotted over and pressed a button on the panel beside the elevator doors, they opened immediately to reveal a nice clean elevator, all seemed fine, apart from the fact it was a perfect pre-war elevator.

Bakewell didn’t pay much mind to the crack in the floor initially, but before long she was forced to stare with wide eyes that darted madly to trace the floor as the one crack became two, then three. Then too many to count. The beige mare didn’t understand what was going on at first. Before long her horrified curiosity became full on horror as the cracks became holes into what could only have been hell itself. Why was nopony saying anything? Why was nopony trying to help? Couldn’t they see? Didn’t they care? But nopony was doing anything, and the holes were growing.

Bakewell tried to will her friend to move, tried to mentally convince her to get out from over the holes to safety. But the brown unicorn wouldn’t notice. Couldn’t notice. Finally Bakewell had to take action. She had sworn to keep Cuppa safe, she couldn’t let her die.

“Watch out!” The large earth pony cried as she launched herself forward and into her friend, hitting the floor and rolling with the unicorn hopefully held safely in her grasp.

They were gone. He was alone. Back in the dirty, twisted wasteland. Hmph... I must've been daydreaming again... That was when he heard it.

Collat froze and reflected upon the voices he heard. They were... right. He could just walk away. Nopony would notice, nopony would care... Eyes darting back and forth, he tried to follow where the voice was coming from, his left.. his right, in front of him, at the reception desk, everywhere. No, no no no. They were wrong. Ponies did care, they did notice... they had to... I'm not a ghost... or am I?

Pushing the thoughts from his head, he made his way to the desk, intent on finding the source of the voice.

It was strange, despite the willingness of the mare to direct them to her superior, she seemed no more inclined to come back up from hiding... At the prospect of them leaving her alone, surely she'd be able to pick herself back up and into her seat.

This curious little mystery caused Cuppa to rear up and rest her forehooves on the desk to peer over the desk, perhaps to be sure that the mare was alright. But what she saw and what she heard were clearly not this mare willingly staying down there. She saw the terror in her eyes, heard the screams that brought her memories tumbling back to that town. The boney talon was something she'd not foreseen, but also something she didn't want to see.

... At least it wasn't that thing, nor anything else she'd encountered that had brought misfortune of some kind upon her. But as she was trying to reach over to help her, a Bakewell called and suddenly Cuppa felt herself being tackled off her hooves, no chance at gaining any footing until afterwards, when she was apparently safe. "Bake! Wha' was that fer? Ah was tryin' t' help the mare behind the desk." The coffee pony asked and claimed, still confused by being tackled by Bake.

Mona would have remined quiet for a moment, at least untill the sudden movement from Bakewell diving for Cuppa. Mona actually began to reflexively draw her pistol at the first sign of trouble, before quickly letting it fall back into it's holster when she realized Bakewell had just seemed to tackle Cuppa from out of danger with a cry of 'Watch out!', which was strange because there didn't seem to BE any danger...

"Bakewell. What's wrong? What should we be watching out for?"

She would ask, before hearing what Cuppa said about helping the mare behind the desk, who...seemed perfectly fine to Mona at a quick glance, if somewhat scared...what was going on here?

Crackle nudged Collat and pointed to the bleeding wall. "Ha! see? I told you all there was something up!" While Crackle would normally have been content to stand back and let Cuppa take the lead, seeing as her approach had gotten results, this whole place rubbed him the wrong way. This latest development only served to reinforce that, putting him even more on edge. Perhaps if he were given some time to calm down he would have been a bit more dimplomatic abour it, but right now Crackle wanted answers, and he wanted them [u]now[u].

He returned his aim to the frightened mare. "Alright, one more time: What. the. FUCK! is going on here, and why the HELL is that wall bleeding?" He shifted his aim and sent a bolt of plasma into her desk for emphasis. Returning his aim to the terrified receptionist, Crackle felt a twinge of guilt. He didn't like having to do this, but something was obviously up and subtlety was NOT his strong suit. His wings rose a bit as the crest above his head flared, adding to the glare he was already giving her as he attempted to intimidate the poor mare into speaking.

Kira was about to walking into the elevator with right after Rad to get further up in this very strange tower to try to see what was really going on in this place when she heard Crackle scream something behind her over by the reception. Bleeding? What the hell was the gryphon talking about? Then she saw him once again point his gun at the more frighted mare again, even if the pony was wearied she did not deserve this.

"Hey!" Kira yelled as she started to walk quickly over to the gryphon standing in front of his aim. "What the hell are you talking about? She have nothing to do with anything strange going on here cant you not see that?"

Right, now that I have everyones post for this part, i'm basically putting the thread on hold till the new site is ready, that way I can start on the new site with an update from here, i'll put a link to this thread too in case anyone needs stuff for reference.