Scion – Mad Machine (Rada Campaign Crossover) – Prelude
This account was originally found on Livejournal, I am not the original author—I am just a fan of the journal and have found reading it on livejournal clunky to navigate and rife with errors/instability (such as having to refresh multiple times due to the page in questions becoming unavailable often requiring multiple refreshes. The original post can be found here, published by DJ-Yomi, and was published on Sep 19th 2008
O-M-G! WTF! I am so pissed off right now. Daitokuji has made this personal, and I haven’t been this furious in ages. F**k Daitokuji! t >_< t They tried to kill me, they threatened Echo and they destroyed my house! They killed my house’s kami! Those kami were my friends!
Fortunately I’m safe enough now, and so is Echo and my followers. I have that much to be thankful for, anyway. But along with my house I lost a lot of my stuff, including some of my favorite outfits and a lot of expensive sound equipment. It’s a damn good thing I’ve got stuff stowed away at the townhouse in Boston too, and that Keiko and I keep backups of all my computer files, including my music, at both the townhouse and the studio. I mean, I was able to rescue some stuff, like my laptop and my gun and pretty much all of my relics, but still…I’m so pissed. *hate*
And I wasn’t the only one to be attacked. Everyone else was attacked. Adam, Ray, Elisa, Pierre, T-Bone, Anna, Carina, Storm, Helena, Jacob, Cesar…everyone. All simultaneously. Daitokuji really has it out for us. None of use were seriously hurt, which is good…but Ty, one of Ray’s friends, was killed.
Then again, I don’t think Daitokuji was trying to kill us. Not outright, anyway. It would have been bonus if the attacks had taken a few of us out, but that wasn’t the point. This was a challenge.
Sigh. I guess I should start from the beginning. I hadn’t been up long, only a couple of hours. I tend to stay up late most nights working on stuff or playing clubs, so I don’t usually get up until around noon anyway. I’d eaten and was doing some sound engineering in my personal studio. With my headphones on and all I never even heard it coming. It was actually Echo who came rushing in to get me. She was frantic, and about the time I could open my mouth to ask what was wrong, things started exploding. Bullets went ripping through wall and there was fire everywhere. Echo and I somehow managed to make our way to what was left of some windows, and by this time she’d managed to tell me what she’d tried to before the attack began: Daitokuji’s robots were attacking. I got a good look at them as we dodged from cover to cover just trying not to get hit. BGRs, HDRs, and some new type…a type with missile pods that blew the hell out of my house. *hate t >_< t hate*
I caught sight of Tabby and the shikome pouring from their house some distance away. They were going to attack, and I knew what would happen if they did. They’d be massacred. So I whipped out my cell and somehow through the roar of the explosions managed to call Tabby and get her to call off the shikome. I told them to retreat to their house and hide. Tabby argued. I thought she was going to disobey me, but in the end she did as I asked. The shikome weren’t the robots’ targets, and I hoped that they’d be safe if they stayed out of the way. And fortunately, Keiko, Sera, Dahlia, Quinn, and Kimiyo were in Boston setting up club dates. I only hoped that they were safe there.
I knew there was no way in hell that Echo and I could stand up to the robots. I was wishing that my friends were there to help out, when suddenly it hit me. Ray hadn’t shown up to save me. That could only mean one thing. He was being attacked as well. We all were. Echo and I were on our own.
I think we had the same idea simultaneously. We had to get to the garden outside. Echo’s sumptuous subterranean suite was buried deep beneath the ground there, and it had everything we would need to survive in comfort until things blew over. And it’s more-or-less inaccessible unless you can move through solid earth…we’d be safe from the robots. The only trick was getting to the garden in the first place.
I knew that I could just shadow step out, but Echo couldn’t do that. “I’ll burrow out and meet you there,” said Echo, sensing what I was thinking. We know each other so well that she practically read my mind. As she sank into the ground, I dashed from cover and dove into the shadow of what was left of a closet. I rolled out of the shadow of a tree in the garden, right above our underground abode. It took the robots a moment or two to reacquire me, and by the time they did, Echo popped up beside me, grabbed my hand, and started to pull me below ground. But I hesitated. I wanted to convince the robots I was dead, at least enough for them to leave as soon as possible. I wouldn’t get cell phone reception in our underground suites, and I didn’t want to be out of touch long, not with everyone else in danger.
I actually let one of the HDRs hit me with a spray of bullets, and then I shed my corpse. As I was knocked back from the force of the bullets (unharmed but shaken), Echo pulled me below ground, leaving my “duplicate” behind. It crumpled into a bloody mess against the tree and decayed to dust almost instantly. I guess the robots aren’t smart enough to become suspicious of that, because according to Tabby, they left almost immediately afterward.
Echo and I stayed hidden for a short while before she checked to make sure the coast was clear. Tabby and the shikome were combing the wreckage of the house, almost desperate with worry. And Keiko and the others were on their way back. Tabby had guessed what was happening and had called Storm (she’s still smitten). And once I got reception back, I discovered a few messages from people checking to make sure I was okay. The first was from Carina.
I immediately started calling people, and eventually got in touch with everyone. Adam and I quickly coordinated things. Everyone’s meeting here at Red Mountain so that we can figure out what to do next. Obviously, we’re going after Daitokuji. The question is how. Ray and I agreed to send our jet around to pick up people who need a ride to Boston; Ray’s posse is going along with the jet, and I sent Keiko for the meet and greet. It sounds like most people have their own ways to get here, though. Carina and Sam are coming in their helicopter, and I think Adam lent Jacob and Helena his new flying car. ^_^
I’ll have to use the shikome’s house for the meeting and to put people up for the night. Fortunately, it’s a pretty big house (I planned ahead in case I got more). And in the mean time, I’m doing what I can to clean up the wreckage. I’ve already talked to the authorities and smoothed things over, and there are crews here now working to clear things away. I’ll have to rebuild soon…in the mean time I’ll be staying at my townhouse. But that’ll come later, after we’ve rid the world of Daitokuji.
There’s one other disturbing factor in all of this. Apparently we’re cut off from the Overworld and Underworld. I don’t think Ray can get in touch with Cila (Echo tried and she couldn’t), and I couldn’t summon Oiwa. Looks like we’re on our own.