private Sanctuary, Appaloosa (1x1 Reboot w/ driz)

[Driz 1,552]

"As if we'd ever get a break!" She responded, crouching down and taking a swift glance around the hall to try and identify where the man's voice was coming from. She clicked her tongue. "Hold on." She grabbed Raze by the wrist and pulled him back inside the scorpion door, softly closing it shut behind them.

"We better draw a route of where to go from here. We can't afford casually strolling around the house with the old fart on the loose." She suggested, becoming pensive. "Let's just sneak past him and head straight to the other scorpion door... Where was it?"

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

Raze looked at her and pointed up.

"It's up there. With him!" he whispered. "We're not gonna get to the door unless we go through him. We need to track his movements, see where he ends up, and sneak by him when we find an opening. If worse comes to worst, we fight him."

He took a look at his backpack. He had two clips, four counting the ones he had in his pocket. "I have some ammo left. Just gotta make it count." He stood up. "Alright, let's--"

He was interrupted by the door suddenly swinging open with great force, knocking him back and onto the ground. The old man had kicked the door down and found them.

"Howdy!" he said, readying his weapon. Raze scrambled to get his gun and aim it at his head. He fired two shots which seemed to stagger him, allowing Raze to get up and run up to him, giving him a good kick in the gut and knocking him to the ground. 

"Run!" he said to Lory, making his way up to the rec room. 

[Driz 1,552]

Lory followed the instructions to a tee and sprinted away as soon as the path was clear. "Can this fucker see through walls or something??" She asked while running. After they reached the rec room, she made sure to close the door behind them and scanned the place for anything they could use to barricade it. Soon enough, she found a chair resting atop of the pool table, carefully lifting it up and placing it against the door handle.

"Hurry up and get that damn door open!" She urged Raze.

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

Raze quickly inserted the key into the lock, and opened the door. "Get in and get down!" he said to Lory while entering. He shut the door and crouched, minimizing his breathing as best he could. He also grabbed the shotgun he saw before leaning against the wall, quickly inspecting it.

"Gah... it's broken," he said. "Well, we can use this to get the other shotgun in the main hall..."

He went quiet when he heard Nick finally break through the other door in the rec room. He leaned against the scorpion door to hear him.

[Driz 1,552]

Lory hurried inside the chamber and ducked down right next to Raze, becoming completely motionless and soundless. Upon finding out that the shotgun that was hidden there the whole time was broken, she became somewhat frustrated: perhaps having a much powerful firearm for that exact situation of being backed into a corner would be too much of a convenience. Despite this, the mare patiently awaited - and hoped for - Nick's departure; anxiously listening to his footsteps.

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

After a minute or so of listening, Raze couldn't no longer hear the old man's footsteps. He slightly opened the door and peeked through it. He couldn't see him. Holding the broken shotgun in his left hand and his handgun in his right, he stood up and quickly barged through the door in order to surprise Goldhoof if he was there, turning around to see if he was against the wall behind him. Nothing. He silently gestured for Lory to follow him back to the main hall, going through where Nick had kicked the door down. Poking his head out, he looked both ways for any sign of the old man before quietly exiting the rec room and going back to the main hall. Soon he found himself back at the statue holding the other working shotgun. 

"Here goes..." he said, taking it off the statue. Like before, the metal door behind him shut itself. He put the broken shotgun in the staute's hands, and suddenly the metal door unlocked itself, allowing Raze to get out of the room.

"Yes!" he quietly exclaimed. He holstered his handgun and reached into his pocket, pulling out the two shotgun shells he found in the garage. He loaded them into the shotgun and pumped it once. 

"Only got two shots... gotta make them count..." he said quietly. "Or... there might be ammo back in that room we were hiding in. I need to go back and check..." He began to make his way back up to the rec room.

[Driz 1,552]

"Wha-- Are you serious?? I thought we were done searching that room!" Lory asked, a bit impatient. "Fine, just... Hurry up. We gotta go back before that asshole finds us. I'll wait here." She told him. With a sigh, she decided to stay in the main hall and wait for Raze's return there. In the meantime, she would take a better look around the first floor - which she hadn't done before.

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

Raze made his way back inside the rec room and into the scorpion door room, giving the room a quick search. He opened a wardrobe and found a box of shotgun shells, eight of them. He loaded two more into the gun and pocketed the remaining six. He found a small table with a drawer next to the wardrobe and opened the drawer. There was a handgun clip inside, along with three more shotgun shells and a first aid med. He pocketed the ammo and put the med in the backpack. After half a minute of more searching, he couldn't find anything of significance, so he left, making his way back to Lory. Before he could get back into the main hall, he ran directly into Nick Goldhoof.

"Well, well! Big man got himself a big gun! Know how to use it?" he taunted to Raze, walking towards him.

Raze kept silent and aimed the shotgun at the old man's head, pulling the trigger. The blast tore huge chunks off of his head and caused him to stagger back onto his knees. Before Raze could give him another chance, he pumped the gun and shot him in the head again, laying him flat on the ground with the entire top half of his face gone. He began to convulse again, flopping around like a fish out of water, and like before, his body went limp after a few seconds. Raze looked at the shotgun, giving a nod of satisfaction. He stepped over Nick's body and went back to the main hall, meeting Lory.

"He's dead again," he said, hoisting the shotgun on his shoulder. "That should buy us some time. You find anything here?"

[Driz 1,552]

"Yeah, no shit! I heard the gunshots!" She said walking over to him, concerned. "It scared the crap outta me. I was just about to go look for ya... Well, good thing he won't be bothering us for a while again." She concluded with a sigh. She still didn't completely agree to the idea of wasting precious ammunition on the undying old man, but if that meant he would cease his pursuit - even if only for a determined amount of time - it was worth it.

With a sigh, Lory extended her hand, revealing an ornamental, odd-shaped object. It was a clock pendulum.

"I think I might've broken this... It was in that weird old-timey clock over there. It came out when I tried touching it... You think they're gonna be mad?" She asked, slightly embarrassed.

Edited July 3, 2017 by driz

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

"I think they'd be mad at us no matter what happens," Raze said to her, while grabbing the pendulum. He turned it around and saw it had a strip of tape with writing on it.

"Living room..." he read, then realized what it meant. "I think I know what to do with this..." 

He quickly ran back to the living room and the grandfather clock he inspected before. Sure enough, this one didn't have a pendulum on it. He carefully placed it where it should be, and suddenly the hook holding the pendulum rose up into the clock, only for it to appear a second later. Though instead of the pendulum, a white colored dog head relief was in its place, along with the clock chiming loudly.

"Alright!" Raze exclaimed, taking the relief.

"You know, I think I might have seen where these need to go," he said to Lory, running back to the main hall. He approached a metal door with a three-headed dog engraved on the front, with spaces where the heads would be. He took the other relief from his bag and put both of them in their proper spots. 

"Alright, one more to go," he said.

[Driz 1,552]

"Damn, who'd have guessed! We're almost there!" Lory said, clenching a fist in commemoration. She then brought a hand to the back of her head. "So now, uhm... Processing area, was it?" She thought out loud. "...Is that basement crawling with sludge monsters the only place left for us to check out?" She asked, albeit a bit reluctantly.

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

"Yeah..." Raze said. "But don't worry though. A shotgun blast to the head should take care of them. If worse comes to worst, we can still outrun them." 

Raze headed back to the basement stairs through the scorpion door, and came face to face with the basement door. He took a deep breath.

"Alright... here goes nothing," he said, opening the door. He quickly made his way through the familiar corridors, stopping at a door to his right that he had passed before. 

"We haven't checked this area. There might be something in here we could use..." He opened the door and looked to his left.

There was another one of the creatures standing in an open room. It started walking towards them. Raze took a few steps forward, getting close to the creature. He raised the shotgun up to its head and fired. Its head exploded in a black, slimy mess, chunks of it scattering everywhere. Raze turned his face away to make sure none of it got in us mouth. 

The creature's body dropped to the floor like a heavy weight. Raze pumped the shotgun. He had one shot left before he needed to reload.

"See?" he said to Lory. "No problem."

[Driz 1,552]

Lory was startled once the creature's head blew up from a single shotgun blast. She looked away from the scene in order to try and stay clean, but a small portion of the black substance still reached her cheek and clothes, smearing them. Impressed, she looked at Raze with a crooked smile.

"Damn..." She chuckled. "I wish you could see your face right now, big cat. You look so freakin' happy with your new toy... Well, good to know I can sit this one out." She smiled while attempting to clean off the smudges of mold from herself.

"...Is this the processing room place location thing?" She asked while scanning the area.

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

Raze looked around. "I'm... not sure," he said. He took out the map of the basement and tried to pinpoint their location. "It looks like we're in the 'Incinerator Room', not the processing area..."

He looked to his left. There were about seven  incinerators lined up next to each other. Each incinerator had words on it, written on tape.

"Sky Chaser... Golden Haze... Morning Star... Aqua Dream... Scarlet... Swift Bolt... and Wild Ace..." he read off of each in no particular order. "These are names..." He then slowly reached out to the one marked "Morning Star". He opened it. Nothing was inside. He went though the rest of them. All of them were empty, but when he reached the one labeled "Swift Bolt", the farthest on to the left, he found that it was locked. He raised a brow in suspicion.

"Hmm..." He looked behind him. There was a table with a note on it, which he picked up and read aloud.

"Cole, I found the one who keeps trying to escape again. Lock him up in one of the incinerators and take him out when he's ready. You know how to open it, do you? Just remember: three As and a handprint. Do what you want with his girl..."

He looked at one of the incinerators. The middle one, labeled 'Scarlet' had a giant red handprint on the door. But what did the note mean by "three As"?

"I'm... not sure what to make of this..." he said to Lory.

[Driz 1,552]

"Gimme that." She said, swiftly swiping the note from Raze's hands and reading it once again to herself. Her eyes scanned across the paper once. Twice. Three times over. Her expression displayed more and more frustration after each reading. "Grrrr!! What the hell is this!?" She growled. "This house is full of little asinine tricks, gadgets and contraptions, it pisses me off!" She slammed the paper back onto the table, then began walking over towards the labeled lockers.

She inspected each incinerator closely for a while. She brought a hand to her chin, sidestepping from locker to locker. The gears and cranks inside her brain turned wildly, trying to come up with any idea of how that locked door was going to open. Then, she approached the one labeled 'Scarlet'. "Huh..."

Lory placed her right hand onto the red handprint design, so that their shapes matched as closely as possible. "A..." She said out loud. "A..." A second time. "A!" She finished. After that, she began frantically looking around the room to see if anything had changed. Apparently, nothing had. With a defeated sigh, she stepped back.

"Well, that's all I got." She informed. "Otherwise, I have no earthly idea of what "three A's" mean... Well, Aqua Dream over there starts with an A, but that's the only one... There are no three names with A... So it's impossible, right? Well, good game."

Edited July 4, 2017 by driz

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

Raze brought a hand to his chin. "Think, think... three A's and a handprint... Aqua Dream, that name has three A's in it... plus the handprint on Scarlet... Hmm... wait..."

He went over and closed all of the incinerators he had opened. Then he went over to Aqua Dream's and opened it. 

"Three A's."

He made his way over to Scarlet's.

"A handprint."

He opened that one as well. Suddenly a click went off in the Swift Bolt's incinerator, and the door opened slightly with a loud hissing noise accompanied with a bunch of steam escaping.

Raze stood still for a few seconds. "I don't think I'm gonna like this..." he slowly went over to the door and opened it all the way. One of the sludge creatures was inside it, and it began to wave its arms wildly, almost hitting Raze before rolling onto the ground and clumsily picking itself up. Raze noticed this one had a right arm that was bigger than its left, that looked like dark, spiky blades.

"SHIT!" he shouted, raising the shotgun to its head and firing. His eyes widened when he saw that his head didn't explode right away, though the blast did knock it back. After it had recovered, it put its big arm up towards its face, preventing Raze from getting a clear shot.

[Driz 1,552]

"WOAH!!" Lory jumped out of the way once the creature came out of the incinerator. She positioned herself behind it, placing it between her and Raze, and readied her knife. Once she built up enough courage, she pounced on the monster's back and stabbed it a couple of times. However, before she could step back, the creature performed a sharp 180 degrees turn and swatted at Lory with its left arm, knocking her down to the ground. Thankfully, the sharp claws didn't seem to connect, although the impact alone was able to leave a bruise onto her arm.

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

Raze took the opportunity to quickly grab two shells from his left pocket and load them into the gun. He pumped it once and aimed it at the creature's head, blowing it away. The force knocked the creature's headless body to the ground. Raze pumped the empty shell out of the gun, then proceeded to load in three more shells to fill it up completely. He walked over to Lory, helping her onto her feet.

"You alright?" he asked.

[Driz 1,552]

"Ugh... Yeah... Guess I am." Lory responded while getting up, then examining her arm to confirm that there were indeed no serious damage caused. Thankfully, there only was a small bruise left by the impact. She massaged it with her right hand since it was aching a fair amount.  "I'll be fine... I was lucky he didn't get me with that giant fucking guillotine on his arm... What on earth was that?" She asked, bewildered. "...That might be a problem, huh? If they're gonna be surprising us with new stuff like that..." She wondered. Soon enough, her eyes drifted towards the compartment where the monster had come out.

"Hey..." Upon identifying an object inside, she called Raze, signaling with her head. "What's that?"

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

Raze walked over to what she was referring to and saw that a key was left inside, along with the monster. He picked it up, somewhat surprised at how warm the metal was. There was a metal tag attached to it; "Processing", it read.

"Looks like we're gonna need this," Raze said, handing it to Lory. "Hold on to it for me."

He closed the incinerator, then looked at the body of the creature he had just shot. "Swift Bolt..." 

Something clicked in his head just then. "Wait. That letter said they caught a guy trying to escape, and they locked him up in here... that's him!" He pointed to the creature. "Which means all those creatures we killed... had to be people that turned into those things! The missing people, the note saying how they 'turned'... the Goldhooves... they're making  these creatures..."
 

[Driz 1,552]

"Like some effed-up laboratory with mad effing scientists playing Gods..." Lory thought out loud, bringing a hand to scratch her head. "Boy, oh boy... Just what demented hellscape we walked into, Ray-Ray..." She began breathing faster. "This is so messed up..."

The idea alone that those expressionless black sludge monsters both of them had been murdering were once innocent lives of unfortunate living beings manage to do a number on her stomach, as the feeling of nausea came back for a short duration. If anything, it simply served as more fuel to her desire of getting out of that place as soon as possible, as well as seeing Nick Goldhoof and his family pay the price. Determined, Lory stomped her way out of the incinerator room.

"Let's just go. We have the key: all we gotta do now is find that damn processing place, get the dog head and fucking bounce. We'll call the police, the army, the marines, Celestia, Luna, Twilight, whoever! Hell, let's carpet-bomb this damned monster ranch, I don't give a rat's ass." She continued complaining while readily moving out.

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

As they walked out, Raze shouldered his shotgun using the leather sling attached to it and took out the map. 

"Says here that the path to the Processing Area is straight ahead," he said, looking at the room with the black sludge they had previously past. "Just past... this room..." he gulped. The room ahead of him didn't look very inviting; then again, neither did the rest of the house. Still, something felt... off. His gut told him to be extra careful.

"Ok, break," he said to Lory, stepping in front of her and pointing to her pocket knife. "...You need a better weapon than that. I only have so much ammo, and who knows when I'll find more, or if  I'll find more, or how many times we'll be encountering that old man or more of those creatures." He looked around, going back to the large room where he found the scorpion key. He spotted a long iron pipe leaning against a corner of the room, about as long as a baseball bat. He picked it up. 

"Seems sturdy enough..." he said, then handed it to Lory. "Here. At least with this, you shouldn't have to worry about fighting anything too up close."

[Driz 1,552]

Lory grabbed the pipe and stared at it for a few seconds. She then got a better grip and did a few practice swings in the air, testing it out. She nodded her head several times while a wide, gleeful grin slowly took over her feature. "Ohhhhh man... Now we're freaking talking!" She happily proclaimed. "This is so much better than the butter spreader! Now I can actually bash their faces in like I'm used to instead of tickling them to death... This is goddamn perfect! Thanks for the gift, Ray-Ray." She smiled, proudly shouldering her new weapon. With that, the mare received a sudden boost in confidence; evident in both her body language and way of speaking.

"Those fuckers aren't even gonna scratch me now. Let's go."

[Jack Baker 698]

@driz

Like she's used to?? Raze thought, but shrugged it off. If anything, he needed someone like that right about now. He made his way back to the black sludge room, holding his shotgun in his hands and taking a good look around. The entirety of the room was covered in the mysterious substance, from the walls to the floor. On the left hand side were bathtubs filled with murky black water, just like the bathroom at the upper part of the house. To his right was an entryway, but as he made his way there, two of the sludge creatures had risen up from the ground, one in front of Raze, one behind him and Lory.

Thinking it was best to save its ammo, Raze put away the shotgun and took out his handgun, firing three shots at the head of the creature in front of him. It raised its right arm to block them, however it destroyed it in the process. The creature, groaning in pain, quickly made its way towards Raze, tackling him and knocking him down. Now the creature was on top of him, looking ready to sink its sharp teeth into Raze.

 

[Driz 1,552]

Lory had her back turned - facing the one behind them -, when she noticed that the monster had seized Raze. Right away, she turned around, held on tightly onto the iron pipe with both hands, pulled her posture back and, akin to a baseball player, swung the weapon full strength to the creature's head. On impact, it staggered and fell to its back: bits and chunks of mold being flung across the room.

"Yeah, suck on th--" Her celebration was promptly cut short once she felt a burning pain being inflicted on her back. "GAAAAHH!!" She cried out. While she wasn't keeping an eye out, the second enemy managed to take opportunity of the flank and snuck up behind her, slashing its claws across her back near her shoulders. In a reflex, Lory attempted to turn back around and hit the monster, but when she did, her legs gave up and she fell to her knees, wincing and gritting her teeth. The agonizing pain rendered her immobile.