Zagreus

[trustycrowbar]

Date & Time: Late in the timescrew
Location: 2nd & Main, The Singularity Timeknot
Characters: Gordon Freeman, The Doctor, AND YOU.
Summary: Time may be endless, but we're gonna kick anti-time's ass.
Warnings: Weird science, timeline-eating megamonsters, violence, graphic imagery.

The singularity sat and silently twisted in unnatural knots as the combatants start to amass around it in the early light. The spheroid on Main Street is large enough to take up the entire intersection. Clearly showing day, night, snow, summer in some parts and smokey with filth in others, like blood-spattered crystal, it constantly shifts in chaotic patterns from smooth to gnarled and faceted, shredding the feeble light of the sun into component colors better left undescribed. Gordon set down the tech box he'd carried from the Hold and looked over the numbers.

They're more than he'd expected, but fewer than he'd hoped.

"There are the temporal stability devices I mentioned last night." Gordon begins without prelude, reaching into the box and retrieving a strange, LED-studded thing about the size and shape of an old audio disc player, with a strap to secure it. "Everyone gets one. Turn them on before you jump in and be sure to keep it on you at all times. If you stray out of a six-foot radius of these things you're subject to the ravages of the singularity's dilation field."

He waves back to the singularity, which pulses eerily behind him. "The Doctor is in there. I found this out last night; he's still not completely disassociated from Zagreus. That makes this a rescue mission as well as a full-on assault."

"First objective: find the singularity and throw this stuff into it." He retrieves a large vial of something black and churning. "This is Zero Matter. Whoever's fastest, take it. But if you hold onto it for too long, it might start to... alter you, so don't hold onto it for too long. Second objective is to find the Doctor, and get him the hell out of there. Third: Take out Zagreus, any way we can."

"This isn't going to be an easy fight. The temporal potential of billions of ruined timelines is behind that thing. Pay attention to your surroundings and use them to your advantage; no matter how insane it gets in there remember that if something is a hazard to you, it might be a hazard to him."

"When everyone's ready, we head in together. Good luck everyone."

Comments

CONFRONTING ZAGREUS

[shoesfitperfectly]

~~…yyyoouuu. YOU. …ooomecome to rescue the Time Lord?...~~

The sphere resolves, gains something of a humanoid shape.

~~…aaaaai-ai-ai-ai-AItry and take him….~~

[trustycrowbar]

[Gordon doesn't say anything to the taunt. Instead he smirks, and slings from around his shoulder a stocky large-barreled thing wrapped in twine and duct tape that glows with a strange amber color from its side vents. There's a fine hum as he charges the odd gun up.]

[Go on, you bastard. Take your best shot.]

[shoesfitperfectly]

~~...oh-oh-oh-so-so-so-SO BE IT!...~~

The form gains a little more corporeality, becoming... well... Doctor-shaped. All resemblance to the normally very easygoing Time Lord cease there, however, as the being throws its hands out, light and energy swirling around it. This swirling speedily coalesces into bright, hot balls of energy, which are then...

...of course...

...hurled at Gordon with frightening force and accuracy.

Typical, really.

[trustycrowbar]

[The first energy ball grazes past him as he lurches backward, a crackle of black singing his suit. The second, however, is caught in a purposeful arc by the gravity gun, and as he reels back it's swung in a cyclotronic sling and launched with just as much energy as it had been initially thrown with, maybe more.]

[shoesfitperfectly]

The redirected anti-time hits its mark like a cannonball thrown back by an innerly peaceful Panda and with nearly as spectacular of results. It hits the energy being whose form disrupts, wavering jaggedly, emitting painful blasts of psychic static. The wavering nearly obliterates it entirely before the energy being splits.

It drops something that looks like a humanoid.

And then charges full-tilt at Gordon.

[trustycrowbar]

He stumbles and staggers, the psychic wave hitting him hard and flaying chunks of memory like shrapnel:

"Gordon, thank god for that hazard suit..."
"I Killed twelve dumbass scientists and not a one fought back..."
"they're trying to kill everyone associated with the project..."
"through an immense portal, created by the intense concentration of a single powerful being."
"if you don't wipe it out, there won't be much for you to come home to..."

He snarls and throws himself out of the way as Zagreus gets close, speed augmentations kicking in in his suit. Aiming the zero-point-energy manipulator at point blank before he can even think, and fires a concussive blast of continuum-wrenching gravitational potential at the being.

[shoesfitperfectly]

Zagreus attempts to change course when Gordon dodges and they end up circling momentarily before the gravity gun's blast hits. He takes the hit, fragments, pulls together, and lunges again. But this time he's distinctly de-rezzing around the edges.

The past and the future follow him like light-trails.

[trustycrowbar]

"FREEEEEEEAMANNNN..."
"The right man in the wrong place can make all the diff-er-ence in the wor-ld..."
"Gordon, HELP ME!"

Gordon grits his teeth against the regurgitating memories and lowers to the side, ducking the lunge and firing again.

[demonbloodblade]

Meliantha comes (apparently) flickering into existence, throwing another grenade at the entity of antitime, this one a gentle green color. When it explodes, Zagreus now will be dealing with a swarm of flies and other insects moving around him.

As that goes on, Meliantha takes a second to gasp to Gordon, "Charge?" As if asking, do you want me to run at it, so you can do science at it or something.

She also appears to be smoking, or steaming, a little.

[shoesfitperfectly]

An enraged roaring makes itself heard in their minds as Zagreus flails at the insects and reels, de-rezzing further, from the impact of another gravity blast. His mind was born out of the mind of a corporeal being, after all, and for instant, he betrays a corporeal being's reaction to a swarm.

That instant may be all they need, because it is all they're going to get.

[trustycrowbar]

"Meliantha!"

He reaches into his storage pack and extracts the jar of zero matter, tossing it to her as he fires the gravity gun at an odd angle. If she has an arm like that with the water and bug grenades, then...

"It's all up to you!"

[demonbloodblade]

She's gotten pretty good at it, yeah.

She catches the bottle, hefts it a couple times to get the balance, and then turns to look at the form of Zagreus, flailying for a moment at the insects.

"He canna hit battah," she says, smiling, and then the bottle is thrown, with everything she has, straight at the chest. (Head might not be so good, but center of mass, yeah.) Along with it goes a prayer, although not a traditional one. Well, from her world.

"Helm, please do not let me fuck this one up."

[shoesfitperfectly]

The Zero Matter hits squarely.

It hovers in midair, spinning, and what little form Zagreus has, now, grows larger, encompassing it. For a moment he glows brighter.

Then he flickers. Wavers. Shrinks into something barely larger than the Zero Matter container itself. A horrible scream echoes through the minds of everyone there--a soul-raking sound in every kind of voice imaginable, a wall of sound that thrums in subsonic and whistles round the edges of perception and howls and howls and howls in pain and in rage and in dissolution. Zagreus is dying.

He explodes.

Time and antitime and Zero matter roar over them all in a gale-force shockwave, light washing over them several beats before a deafening, horrific sound follows. It thunders against the barrier of the singularity and pops it like a soap bubble.

The singularity collapses.

((OOC And down to the next thread, again!))