Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 77
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 May 26th 2010
Okay, I am SUPREMELY pissed off right now! Mikaboshi just upped the ante in our little war and I am NOT pleased. That bastard is messing with my home and my family, and that is NOT allowed. I was already dead-set on taking him down, but this f**king seals the deal! I’m so mad I want to tear the Cursed Ring off my finger, give in to my shikome urges, and just rip something, or someone, to pieces. But I know better… >_<
Gods, I’m so worried about Echo and Oiwa I can hardly think straight. T_T
So, I was hanging out in St. Petersburg, Russia, where I was supposed to perform a concert tonight, when suddenly Adam telepathically contacts me and tells me to get to Chicago immediately because the machines there have all gone haywire and seem to be attacking scions specifically. Something bad was certainly going down, so I left Keiko, Dahlia, Kimiyo, and Quinn in Russia with my lesser shikome while Miko, Sera, Echo, Tabby, and the rest of my elite shikome boarded the Valkyrie with me and we flew back to Chicago as quickly as possible. On the way, Adam and I texted back and forth a bit; apparently the technological malfunction gripping the city was blocking most communication, and it was all he could do with his mad hacking skills to open a brief channel for texts. But he did manage to tell me that the others had already gathered (mostly through mystical means) at his fortified house outside Chicago. Only Charles was absent, and as of now we still have no idea where he is. I hope he’s okay.
Our texting was cut short when Adam sent the message “Gotta go. Robots attacking!!” We already suspected that daitokuji was behind the attack on Chicago, and that cinched it. I later learned that Adam and the others destroyed their attackers with minimal damage to Adam’s house (he built that thing to withstand some damage after all ^_^). But the robots that attacked were a big new model of armored walker mecha that were not only deadly but difficult to take down effectively. Good thing T-Bone and Adam master techniques for mystically shutting down machines.
Given how bad things were in Chicago, I was naturally worried about MY home. Right now, Rose is safe with Pierre’s daughters in his estate in Trinidad. So are Alandra and Veronica. Since I’m on tour, and since Pierre, Elisa, and their family are in Trinidad and Ray relocated to New York, there isn’t really anyone staying on Red Mountain right now except for Yuko (our sweet bathroom cleaning youkai girl), Tanith, and a couple of Pierre’s daughters. I tried calling Pierre’s daughters, but couldn’t get through, so I summoned Oiwa. She doesn’t really stay at Red Mountain when I’m not there, but she was quite willing to go check things out.
But when I summoned her again to see what she’d learned, she didn’t answer my summons. That could mean only one thing: she COULDN’T answer my summons. That’s when I really started to become frightened.
The others stayed holed up in Adam’s place until I was finally able to arrive. I left Sera and Miko with the Valkyrie along with Audrey to help protect them and took Echo, Tabby, Ophelia, Sadako, and Mercy with me. We had to land outside of town in order to keep the jet from malfunctioning like everything else in Chicago, and let me tell you, hiking to Adam’s place was an adventure. Something was buzzing in my head – more like screaming, I guess, like an ultrasonic sound that I could feel but only barely hear – and even though I was able to achieve a sort of meditative focus to shut it out, it was still unpleasant. It gave Echo a terrible headache too, but none of my shikome (nor any of my scion comrades) were even aware of it.
Anyway, it was deep in the night by the time I arrived, and the others filled me in on what they’d managed to learn. Adam had been bothered by a growing sense of foreboding all day and had received a prophecy of a shadow falling over his world, a corrupted woman crawling, a giant zombie, and a great deal of chaos and loss of life. The first and last parts of that were already pretty obvious, what with the unnatural chaos that had consumed Chicago. The rest became apparent later.
Adam had also been working to isolate the nature and source of the phenomenon. He’d worked out that some sort of magical radio signal was being broadcast throughout the city and was causing the technological kami to go haywire and attack people and scions. >_< How DARE Daitokuji abuse the kami like that! >_< That same signal was what was giving Echo and me such a terrible headache (Echo’s basically become a kami by now and as a demigod of the Amatsukami, I count as one too, but neither of us are “technological,” so it didn’t affect us as badly). Fortunately, Miki, Hondo, and our other friends in Chicago seemed to be okay, either out of town or well-defended by their servants (Miki even had zombie nurses patrolling the halls of the hospital!).
But when I reported that Oiwa had gone missing while investigating Red Mountain, we were all alarmed, and we agreed that it was time for Adam to consult the Mysteries. Here’s what we learned:
The source of the signal that was driving the kami berserk was a being called Jigsaw X, which we suspected, and later confirmed, was one of Daitokuji’s specter-machines. But Chicago wasn’t our only concern. In fact, it was just a distraction to keep our attention away from the real target: Red Mountain. Mikaboshi was moving on our home! >_< He was trying to transform it into a conduit between the World and Soku-no-Kumi! That f**king bastard! Sure, I’m planning to royally screw Mikaboshi over, so I shouldn’t throw stones. But you know what, he’s the enemy, and he just made this personal, so I’ll throw all the f**king stones I want! >_<
And as if that weren’t bad enough, Echo is the spirit of Red Mountain, so as Mikaboshi corrupts our home, he’s corrupting her too. Unforgivable. I swear I’m going to shatter every bit of Mikaboshi’s power and leave him so weak that he’ll never be anything more than a dark spot in the back of my mind!
We also discovered that Oiwa has been captured and is in Soku-no-Kumi. So not only is Mikaboshi corrupting my wife, but he’s taken my ghost-daughter too! It makes me want to scream and cry all at the same time, and I feel so powerless to do anything about it right now!
The only saving grace is that our families in Trinidad and my people in St. Petersburg are safe. And if they are, then I can only assume that Yi is as well. We also feared that Oiwa might have been captured to trade for the ghost of Daitokuji’s mother, Keiko, who is currently under Miyako’s guardianship in Yomi, but fortunately that’s not the case. If not, though, I fear for Oiwa and hope we can retrieve her quickly and that she won’t be corrupted by Mikaboshi’s evil. >_<
Actually, there is one other saving grace. Indications from Adam’s visions lead us to believe that Solomon Grundy has awakened again from his grave. And this time, we suspect that he’s on our side. Not only did Ray show him a great deal of post-mortem respect, but Oiwa is technically still his bride. I hope he’ll help us get her back. And by the way, having a giant zombie on your side is incredibly awesome!! ^_^
Unfortunately, before we can do anything about Red Mountain, we have to stop the chaos in Chicago first. We can’t just let the machines keep rampaging and killing people. So we gathered our things and set out across the city in T-Bone’s lunar limousine to find and dismantle the source of the signal. En route, we were assaulted by several of Daitokuji’s robots, a mixture of Hunter-Killers and Hunter-Destroyers. And lemme tell ya, their design has been upgraded. They’re more agile AND they carry more firepower.
I stayed hidden inside the flying car while the others leaned out of the windows and moon roof to fight and T-Bone kept us airborne. After all, it’s not like I can command the minds or attentions of Daitokuji’s robots. I did, however, bolster my companions to make sure they could withstand the assault. Elisa gave me quite a scare. She took a hit that left blood streaming from the wound, but she was so lost in her typical bloodthirsty glee that she barely noticed. I did what I could to keep her alive, so she came out of the combat okay, but she needs to be more careful! >_<
We eventually arrived at a site near the source of the signal and found it patrolled by a convoy including several of the armored walkers the others fought at Adam’s place, some cyberdemon guards armed with lethal vibroblades and riding on hoverboards, and what appeared to be an upgraded Battlemover. T-Bone dove on the convoy with the lunar limo, dispelling it at just the right moment for us to drop on our enemies in force.
T-Bone landed on the Battlemover and channeled the forces of chaos into a series of powerful sabotage attacks that left it temporarily disabled, long enough for Elisa to put some holes in it with some demon bullets. She eventually took the thing out, and that’s when Jigsaw X appeared, a hideous (but kinda cool-looking) mechanical think that resembled a cross between a skull and a spider. T-Bone hit that with his machine-crippling chaos too, and soon Jigsaw X was destroyed.
Of course, I saw very little of this. I spent the moments before the fight bolstering my allies, but sadly I can’t bolster my own ability to take damage. And when we hit ground, while Adam and Pierre attacked the cyberdemons and walkers, I was immediately attacked by a cyberdemon who flew by on his hovering platform and slashed me wide open with a vibrobalde. Damn, those things are vicious!
Fortunately, I was able to shed my corpse, and in fact I shed a very beautiful one, so beautiful, in fact, that I enchanted several of the cyberdemons in the process, compelling them to bask in my presence. Unfortunately, one of the walkers chose that moment to annihilate me, and it very nearly did so. I’m glad Echo wasn’t standing any closer, or she would have been caught in the blast too. >_<
When the smoke cleared and I picked myself up from the ground, I realized I had to flee (I’ve been doing a lot of that lately T_T). I’m tough, but the kind of firepower these guys were laying down was too much for me to take, and there wasn’t much I could do to affect the mecha anyway. I apologized to the others for not being able to stick around and help out, and Adam and Elisa shouted for me to get to safety. I grabbed Echo, held her close, and sank into the grave-cradling safety of the earth.
But as Echo and I waited for the thudding vibrations of the battle above to end, Echo started to writhe and moan as though in pain. I moved my face close to hers and asked if everything was all right, and saw that her eyes had turned pitch black and a sort of black radiance was pouring from her mouth. Mikaboshi’s hold on Red Mountain was increasing, and with it he was stealing my wife away from me. I held her tightly and promised to save her, to purify her, to do ANYTHING I could to help her.
And when the fight ended, I emerged with Echo and told the others that I had to purify her. Even if Mikaboshi’s corruption will inevitably overcome her again, I can at least help keep it at bay for awhile. But we also have to move on and do something about the signal. I’m not sure if the others will give me time to purify her. After all, the people of Chicago are in danger. But I can’t just let Mikaboshi take control of her like this! I can’t, and I won’t!