Mobius Online 2

[Sokas]

Short, but interesting. Keep it up.

Edit: WAIT WAIT WAIT. Did it just disappear? WTF.

[Inbazuro]

This one is also Kind of short

Chapter 8: Are we there yet?

It's Saturday, 7th of November, 8425.

Heh, that sounds pretty official, I should do that more often.

Tech called me down to an unexpected meeting place to have a talk. He said for the sake of safety, everyone in the house should come, too. They wanted us to not go back to the house for a day… "or a few" as M worded it when he told us.

Where did we have to go to? A cemetery far north of Gangocho. Apparently word was spreading around Crow's cults about the most important agent in the business, and the one nearest that Cemetery that they had tracked was afraid of cemeteries. And to keep us off the grid, they told us not to call a pod, but to drive there.

So, Jaws could drive, and I could drive, so we packed up two cars with stuff we'd need for a few days and drove up there. Jaws drove with M, I had Klonoa and Lolo with me… And Katelyn, who wanted to come to. Sometimes I hate how worried she gets about me, she says that if she at least can see me, it's better than wondering what's going on while I'm away. I worry that having her with me would harm her, because I don't know what's going to happen. M and I talked to each other through our holo-bands on the drive up.

"Why are we driving for hours to a different city again?" Klonoa asked as soon as we started driving. It was kind of early, and he was still tired. I wasn't really, I spent the past few days not doing anything.

"Because the government wants something to do with our house," I answered to the best of my knowledge.

"How long is it going to take to get there, again?" his voice sounded a little hoarse. Not like his usual "just woke up" raspy tone, but kind of sickly.

"I don't know, three to four hours," I told him, "We can't take any straight path, we're supposed to take some wavy fucking road that'll just add two hours." I was as pissed as he was, I guess." I made sure too add, "What's with your voice? Are you getting sick?"

"My throat's kinda sore," he said, "I'm not that sick."

"If you feel like you're gonna throw up or anything, just tell me and I'll pull over," I made sure to tell him. He had been regaining his tendency to say whatever he felt like, but it wasn't like he used to be, so I wanted to make sure.

M came through on my holo-band, telling us, "There's a couple of pit-stops along the way. These cars can go about thirty times the distance we have to go without recharging, so it's just for stopping for bathrooms and things."

"Klonoa's sick," I told him, "So if it gets worse, we're pulling over right away."

"Just make sure to tell us."

"It's not that bad," Klonoa piped up.

"Well," I said back to him, "just remember, we're not stopping so you two can screw back there."

"Hey!" I could just feel him shooting me a glare. At the same time, Katelyn punched my shoulder for that remark. I didn't think Lolo was paying attention until she spoke...

"Chah dohu ngahaf chah," was all she said. I knew it was Taisroan… but didn't know what it meant. I couldn't tell what it meant by the tone she said it in, but Klonoa giggled, and Katelyn smirked and shook her head.

"God damn it, am I the only one that doesn't know this language?" I thought aloud, "What did she say?"

"Sounded like 'You should go fuck yourself.' to me," Katelyn translated.

It was kind of a quiet drive, Klonoa and Lolo just started playing their little gaming handhelds or whatever, and Katelyn and I rarely talked. We had done enough talking on her birthday, not that we were upset at each other, just that nothing interesting came up to talk about in the past… day...

We had to stop for a bathroom break three times through the entire drive, two times being just for Klonoa. He didn't get any sicker, though. But… that often? It kind of puzzled me.

Anyway, we got there, booked one big hotel room under Katelyn's name, not mine, and dropped our stuff off there. One room. Three beds. It was… Kind of luxurious, but way too cramped for me. It had a hot tub… that was its peak of luxury. But the hot tub was inside the room, not the bathroom. So… not much privacy.


Then we went to the cemetery a block away. All of us, because Tech wanted all of us there again.

Tech wasn't the only one there, though. Luke and another shady figure I haven't met were there with him.

"Thank you all for coming," He greeted us, "You're confused about why you're here."

He didn't ask if we were, he just knew.

"The area of the house you live in is being set up with a powerful force-field. The radiation is so strong we needed to keep you away while things get coordinated. Several areas of the forrest are also being severed from each other and thoroughly scouted. There's some non-cultic activity that needs investigation."

"That's it?" I asked, I would have been pissed if we had to come up here all secluded for his special message… being that.

"No," He went on, "The Ek-lou kingdom has made a fast recovery in Tasiroa," He told us, "The last chosen hero was the holder of the Teal-Sphere. Now, the next step is the green-diamond. The crystal is never created at the time, it's usually delivered before-hand. It's also barely isolated. It attaches itself to something of value, something of use. Usually it's a bracelet, a glove, a sword." He turned his eyes away from me, and toward the black furred kid sitting on a tombstone, swinging his feet and staring at the ground, "Klonoa," He looked up, "You have a ring with a Green Diamond on it."

Klonoa stared at him, shockingly. I guess he knew what that meant. Tech brought up the darkly-dressed figure up to talk to him.

"Have we met before?" He walked up to Klonoa, extending his hand. Klonoa hopped down from the stone and shook it.

"I don't think so," He timidly stated.

"I'm Prince Nokario," He introduced himself, "And it's an honor to meet you, Klonoa."

"Well, uh," Klonoa was speechless. It looked like he was scared… or… really nervous, "You know my name, so…" He tried to laugh it off, but it didn't work.

"I haven't met any of you either," He turned to us, Katelyn was beaming, Lolo looked as nervous as Klonoa.

But… he walked up to me first, When I introduced myself, I told him I had never heard of him before. He laughed and moved on to Katelyn, I remember the conversation.

"You must be Katelyn?"

"Oh my god," she said to his face, "The Prince of Taisroa knows my name…"

"The Prince of Taisroa would also like you to know that he thinks you're beautiful," He joked.

"I can't believe this is happening…"

"Please, don't act like that, I don't want to be worshiped or anything major. I have heard things about you, passed from person to person. I would rather get to know you, than to have you as a fan." This kid weaved sentences pretty elegantly. His accent was… Kinda Britsh sounding, and had a cadence similar to Klonoa's, but slightly deeper, and airier.

As he moved on to Lolo, he also complimented her, and then moved on to the most important message.

"Now, Klonoa is going to have to travel to Taisroa. He will need a team to help him, in both battle and in spirit. Klonoa can pick who comes with him."

"Everyone here," Klonoa answered simply, "but… like… not you or Tech. Everyone with me… and Luke."

"That can be done," Nokario told him simply.

The next half an hour was spent discussing how everything will take place, when we can go back to the house, when Klonoa has to leave… Then we wandered the cemetery until Jaws stopped at a particular stone, staring at it, mouth agape.

I looked at what was engraved on it. The engraving was just one line, probably why it caught is attention. I read it, and easily saw why it kept his attention.

James Taisroa

[Inbazuro]

COMMENT, PEOPLE.

Chapter 9: Think I'm a freak? It's Okay if you do.

We sat around in the hotel, Jaws was looking on his laptop for any records he could find on that grave stone. Apparently he died ninety something years ago… and we were all pretty shocked by it… Hell, I didn't really care, but he seemed stressed out.

"Jaws, you know that you got here from a time-split glitch," M tried to explain to him, "It shouldn't be a surprise that… another one of you died."

"I died less than a year after I got there," He countered, "Who paid for my burial? Amy never said I died… I don't think."

"You know what?" I caught his attention, and stared at him, "You're here, and you're you. Why worry about what happened to some other version of you in the past?"

"I don't want to be this me anymore," Jaws stood up and stared at me… His eyes might have been glowing for all I saw… Bright teal. I never noticed that before, "You don't know what I used to be like. Who would have loved that me? And why would I give that me up to be some fake me?"

"You're not making any sense, Jaws," M added…

"I don't need to," He looked at everyone else, then made a half-hearted announcement, "Fuck therapy, fuck the submissive thing. I'm starting over."

"Jaws!" Klonoa spoke up, "The reason you went through that is because you killed people!"

I didn't know shit about what Jaws was like. From what I see, though… he might of been kind of badass. He was starting to sound like me.

"Those people weren't important," He defended, "Hell, It was over you, kid."

"Don't call me kid!" Klonoa was morphing into something else, too, "You're not that much older than me. You're younger than Guntz."

"At least I'm done with puberty."

"What are you trying to argue now? You're going on a temper tantrum now. Can we get back to-"

"That's what you call me? You even know what the hell I'm talking about."

"But you're just being immature. All I wanted to do was try to tell you to-" It seemed like Klonoa was desperately trying to steer the fight back on the original course.

"And what's maturity to you?" Jaws didn't want to, though.

"That doesn't matter, Jaws."

"No, Tell me, damn it!"

"You have no responsibility, you don't care about anything, you don't even have a job. You shouldn't have anything to complain about anymore, your life is fine!"

"What the hell makes you think you can tell me off? Is school that hard that it makes you holier than me or some shit? Get a grip, Klonoa."

"You get a grip! Now all you're doing is changing the subject!" I instinctively chuckled, because it was almost comedic how Jaws just wasn't catching on… Bad choice, because then Jaws took it out on me by running up and punching me in the stomach. I Ignored the pain long enough to ram him into the back wall, and then M pinned him for me while I backed up and writhed in pain.

"Jaws," I said, winded, "Just fucking stop."

"What?"

"You sprung into this out of god damn nowhere. Just stop. If it was that easy for you to slip into it, it should be easy to stop. You're never like this…"

"You didn't know me for most of-"

"That's why he doesn't want to take the chance, Jaws," M told him, still holding him up against a wall, "Please, just calm down. You're happy with us, right?"

A few more minutes of that, and Jaws was broken of his little "spell." But… I couldn't help but think it might come back. That had kind of an impact on me. God, he made me care about him. I was actually afraid of him changing, I had just gotten used to his dynamic. Whenever I get used to something, I hate when it gets different. That little spaz-out was kind of badass, though. We all had little conversations until the evening.

"You know what would be interesting?" Katelyn tried suggesting something, and got everyone's attention, "We should all spend a day in here without any clothes on."

There was immediate objection, that I knew I was a part of, when I heard my voice, along with another, shout, "No."

Then it registered in my mind that the only other person that objected with me was Klonoa.

"Well, think about it-"

"I thought about it," I told her, "Never in front of these people."

Lolo always had a thing for embarrassing me, "What about that one time you got drunk and-"

"Shut up!"

Katelyn giggled as I rolled my eyes.

"What do you expect us to do to pass the time here for four days? We didn't bring anything entertaining." She still had a good point.

"I have an Idea," Lolo spoke up, "Lets designate one person a day to decide what everyone else does, like, a game. Like Katelyn said, we all know each other here, so why don't we just forget embarrassment? We barely even talk to each other much. It could be like… an Ice breaker thing."

That sounded more reasonable to me… when stated that way. I didn't have a problem with gradually opening up like how she described, but I had one issue.

"What happens when someone doesn't do what they're told?"

"Then… That's not fun."

"Honor rules," M said, "But… anyone can just stop," M stared at me while he said that, "Can we think of some type of punishment?"

"How about we get to that when it happens?" Katelyn proposed.

"Should we vote for the first leader?" M asked, "I vote Katelyn."

Ok, this is what Home 2.0 should have been like. Just saying.

"Katelyn," Jaws counted in, although kind of half-assed.

"Katelyn," Lolo followed.

"Me," I knew what was inevitable.

"Guntz," Klonoa sided with me.

"Two to three, Guntz," Katelyn smirked. God damn it, I just knew that she was gonna do some crazy shit, but at least it wasn't as bad as what Jaws or M would have done.

I knew the punishment would probably be worse… So, I figured I'd follow along. I think the next chapter is gonna skip ahead a few days, huh? I'll spare you the torment.

[NendZilddiz]

What's up everyone, I'm new to the forum and just wanted to say hey. Hopefully I posted this in the right section!

[Inbazuro]

What's up everyone, I'm new to the forum and just wanted to say hey. Hopefully I posted this in the right section!

No, you didn't. You posted in a different person's topic. We have an introduction section clearly marked in the forums.

[Sokas]

Lol bot.

[Inbazuro]

Chapter 10: Enough of that.

Nothing like waking up to the screams of violent brainwashed maniacs that want your head on a stake. There's nothing like those most hated points in the job you love.

To get out of that hotel, we had to fight out. But here, have some details.

"They're doing that fucking chant thing," I noticed while looking out the window.

"It's called a Hokai," M clarified, "Which… actually means chant, so…"

I darted from the window to my bag. Always keeping at least one firearm with me, I ran down a flight of stairs to the lobby. There were a few people there, one of them at the desk.

"People!" I shouted out generically. I always hated the "announcement" side of protecting people. Hell, if I wasn't working for the good guys permanently, I would have capped all of them. There, no one for the zealots to kill, but that's just immoral, so… shout, I did. "I'm with the Tower special operations division!" Have I announced myself differently before? That's because I don't have a title, but I just say something that sounds more official than, I'm paid by the Monarch to kill people! Anyway, I made sure to hold up my holo-band. It by default has Tech's little insignia on it, so people knew I was legit.

"There are members of a Cult that are planning to slaughter everyone to get to people upstairs," That was a lie, but if I said they wanted me, they would have shoved me out the door. "All of you get to your rooms and lock the door!"

The people were quick to question me… and it seemed surprising, but they definitely believed me as soon as they all saw a line of headhunters come to the front door. Then they ran. I jumped behind the desk and got the person working there to duck down. I took aim at the general direction of the head hunters and hoped that it just might hit them. I got one in the chest, before another pulled up some other projectile weapon and shot at me. I ducked and saw the bullets pass over me. Well, they weren't bullets, they were some type of spike. Odd, but I'd save the surprise factor for later.

I popped up for a second, quickly aiming and firing at one of them's head. He was the guy with the gun, and I'm sure there were going to be more.

"You," I ducked down to talk to the worker, "Stay under this desk. Do not come up unless we say it's safe."

The guy nodded, and I figured I'd give myself a little boost in this fight. I stood up and activated the Combat-suit.

Let me stop here, now, i don't have a name for this damn thing. The name they gave me was like "Hurricane Exoskeletal Physical Enhancement Armor, Combat Type, Base Gen 3, M-8-644.4.25". Someone told me it was known "Lone Wolf Edition" in development. I'm thinking about just calling it the "Combat Suit" from now on… so, yeah, just for clarification.

Anyway, when that was fully activated, I stood up and took a couple bullets… or spikes, rather, from the other people who entered. Those things didn't to shit to my armor. I got out the two built in handguns, stood in the wide open, and shot off quite a few rounds. When I got too caught up… someone snuck up behind me, and I turned around just to see them about to lunge some huge blade down at me… but it was stopped by another long blade that was tossed from across the room. The little black cat from upstairs walked up to the pierced body and reclaimed his sword.

"I completely forgot you had that," I told him, being careful to watch for any more that entered, and he smirked at me. I knew this onslaught was going to continue, so I tried to think of some type of plan… When I realized I wasn't that good with planning, I turned to Jaws. "Jaws, this is just going to keep going, and they're going to find another way in. How should we get everyone out?"

Instead of the cat answering, the kid behind the service desk did for him. "There's a service elevator that goes to a separate section of the building!" He shouted over the sounds of my cannon firing, "You can get to it from the second floor and go out the back!"

I nodded and pulled up one arm to talk to M.

"What's up?"

"I need you to get everyone on your floor to find a service elevator… it's-" I cut myself off to ask the service guy where it was, "Where on that floor is it?"

"Between rooms 207 and 208!"

"Between 207 and 208. Get everyone off that floor, now."

"On it, I'll call you back when we're all down here."

"Hurry."

We spent about 5 more minutes fighting off these endless swarms of some cultic warriors, coming through two doors… A few close calls, but nothing we couldn't handle otherwise. When we got called by M, I felt relieved. He said it took two trips to get everyone down, even a few others on that floor, and from down in the service room, there was a lockdown button. So he held one trip for us; we grabbed the one guy at the service desk, and flew up the stairs as fast as we could.

M held the door for us, and we hit the emergency shut-down button on the elevator once we were down. There were only a few other groups of people that were there, sitting around on storage and maintenance equipment.

"Ok," M started, "Is there anyone here who's missing someone?"

Everyone in each of the families nodded.

"Good," I took over, speaking through the mask, "There's a fuck-load of headhunter cultists that are going on a killing spree. They want to storm the second floor just to find me. I don't know if they want to move up the building, but-" I was cut off by some convenient good news.

"I just found something called the lockdown button!" Klonoa shouted from one wall.

"Oh!" Apparently the service desk guy knew what it was, "That's our emergency button!"

"What does it do?" M asked quickly.

"It does some field thing to every door in the place… so all the doors are locked. We had to use it once before, and nothing could get through those fields. It was pretty scary though. We-"

"Save it," I told him, "Klonoa, push that thing!"

Briskly, he nodded and slammed in the button. We heard a humming sound, and then a gentle buzzing. Everyone stayed silent.

The families were probably scared, confused… but they seemed to remain calm… a few questions here and there...

"Are we underground?"

"Yep," The service guy answered, No way down here but that elevator and a staircase that… probably just got blocked off and sectioned off by those doors."

"We can wait until the Military gets here," M pulled up his holo-band as he called for a drop in… And this drop was considerably slower, about an hour.

I didn't pay attention to anyone's conversations. There were some among the people, and a couple people asked what authority I had, but I'd just say it was classified… I just wanted to get the hell back home. When we finally got out, we grabbed our stuff from upstairs and got the fuck out. We piled into the cars and found our way back to the freeway. I didn't care to think about the other families stuck in there with us… Then, as if the "called upon to save the world" thing wasn't enough for us to think about, Tech relayed some bad news.

"Guntz." Was the first crackle through my holo-band.

"Yeah?" I answered immediately.

"We finished some barricades, but had to quicken the process. We've effectively formed a bubble around the entire forrest except for the area your house is in. We didn't have time to sanction it off, but it's safe to go back, and I order you to go back immediately."

"Order me?" I asked, "We're on the road, Tech. We've been driving for an hour. We had to leave early because of cultists."

"God damn it…" This was the first time I had ever heard Tech express any emotion. But this emotion felt more like just… violence. The guy was a stone-cold motherfucker. If anything was going to make him feel affected, it had to be huge.

"God damn what?"

"Crow had found out we were aware of his locations and decided to start an uprise with every cult in one area that we didn't know about. His religious organizations are initiating a borderline genocide of an entire continent on Dovalyen. In a matter of hours, they took over. They started with communication services, that would insure that no word would get out of the continent. Then, they took control to send our armed forces out on false missions, only to be led to slaughter. They even shut down transportation services and took themselves off the map of pod dispersal. They took over buildings and slaughtered government officials and took power. All in three hours. An entire continent. We didn't find out until an hour later."

"Holy shit…" Those were the only words that could even come close to describing the frightening amazement I had with that situation.

"Crow is a genius," He continued, voice deep and getting thicker, "He knew that our military were mostly stealth agents. This is our weak point. He's making us wage war."

"And… they're spreading?"

"We don't know what they're going to do. Your safest bet is to get to the house. It's completely surrounded with barriers. The team also installed one that can be turned on or off from inside the house. We do not know of any weaknesses, though. The cultists might, so don't think you're perfectly safe."

"We're two hours away right now, so we'll be there soon."

"It took them three hours to establish a nation," Tech warned us, "We don't know what they can do in two."

"Well, what the fuck are we supposed to do?" I cracked, "We have cars! Not pods, cars! If we get in a pod, we might get hacked or something, right?"

"I'm going to turn all traffic signals red in your path as you reach within a kilometer of them. I am going to order police vehicles to block highways off which will enable you to have a completely free path. Your only job now is to speed."

"I like that Job," I smirked. I switched coms to M, then briefly told him, "M, Tech says shit's going down. He's clearing all the roads. Floor it."

"What?"

"No time to explain, drive as fast as you can."

We sped up as we flew through the current city's streets to find an on-ramp. Police lined the road to the sides of an on-ramp, and we saw one car drive in front of it as soon as we got through.

"Damn…" I thought aloud to everyone in the car, "Tech's fast."

"He's the ruler of 4 planets," Katelyn reminded me, "He could have done that faster if he wanted to."

So, we pretty much did 130 km/h until we got to some city where the cop cars were blocking us. We slowed down as soon as we saw them, and had to break pretty fast to not hit them. I honked from my car, then stared at all the cop cars. I saw some weird screen with flashing characters through one of the cop cars. I couldn't read them.

"Katelyn," I turned to her, pointing out the screen I saw, "What does that say?"

"They look like… Taisroan numbers," She told me, squinting slightly, "17… 16…" Then her tone changed on a dime, "Back up!"

"Wh-"

"Back up! Now!"

She grabbed my wrist and shouted the same thing into the holo-band. I did what she said, kind of scared because I didn't know at that time what it meant, but she's twice as smart as I am, so I just assume to listen to her.

"Keep going!" She said in a frightened voice. We were going backwards about 100 meters away, I was scared as hell, when the clock hit zero. And of course, all of the cop-cars combusted and exploded. I watched them in sheer terror, I didn't really expect that to happen. Hell, training said to expect the unexpected, but when the government is controlling the roads for you, rigged cop cars aren't gonna seem like an every-day thing to you. After all the explosions were over, I tried to work off my adrenaline rush by geting out of the car and walking around the car, trying to get my senses working again. I heard Katelyn ask Klonoa and Lolo in the back if they were alright, and I saw Jaws getting out of his car.

"What the hell was that about?" I shouted to him.

"I was going to ask that," He shouted back, "And if we should keep going on the highway or get out and go down into the city."

"There could either be more traps up there or not," I told him, "We'd probably get jumped easier on tight city streets, though."

"That's true," He shouted back to me. We saw that the exploded cars flew out of the way, leaving a wide opening in the middle.

"Lets floor it through that opening!"

"Got it!" We both got back into our cars, and prepared to speed through the gap. We weren't far from Gangocho by now, It was just on the outskirts of this city. So we started driving through, and got another surprise when cultists with huge blades hopped over the walls near where the cars were, screaming. One came up to Klonoa's window, and he screamed louder than they did. I don't usually shout when scared, though, I just react. And… I floored the acceleration and sped off.

"I think…" I thought aloud, "I think I pissed myself."

There was a silence for a few seconds.

"When?" Katelyn laughed slightly.

"I think… during the explosion, maybe…"

Klonoa started laughing in the back, I just ignored him.

"To be honest," Katelyn looked out the window, away from me, "The more I get to know you, the less I believe that you used to be some badass freelance assassin."

"He was," Klonoa vouched for me, or so I thought, "but every other outlaw thought he was too pretty-boy."

"Oh, shut up! You're one to fucking talk," I fired back at him, "didn't I hear something about you having a crush on me or something?"

"Well, at least I remember to use the bathroom before we leave for something."

"Again, Fuck you."