Comic 1057 - Go to church
Posted on 2nd Jun 2018, 8:59 PM
in Hope
Average Rating: 5 (3 votes) /
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Author Notes:
You send your bug downstairs... and you have it hit the button to finish opening the bay door to the tunnels. You have your bug scramble back over to the body.
A massive tentacle shoves its way inside, grabs at the poisoned corpse, and drags it into one of many mouths.
You give the signal to Caius. He calls Jury, and tells her to be ready--the monster will be disabled in about forty five minutes.
You all grab equipment--guns, ropes, rubber gloves, air filtration masks, whatever you think you might need. Everyone performs their respective rituals, conjuring bone armor. ...Except Caius, who's still wearing his. You do a quick test with Lumpy, having him use a normal bone armor ritual--and it works. The incantation and symbols for the prototype are different, so the rituals don't conflict.
You, Fuse, Caius, Michelle, Dr. Finch, and Lumpy all pile into the hummer and take off. Dr. Finch and your golem will stay with the vehicle--Finch to drive, the meat golem to help you protect Finch in case something goes wrong. Elizabeth stays at the bunker.
You consider blooding the hummer itself, as an alternative to bringing Dr. Finch. However, you're... still not really sure what all that would entail. It does have a computer built in, but it doesn't have a self driving option--you don't think blooding that would give you access to the steering, for example. You could try blooding the engine itself, the steering column, the... brakes? It would be a lot of blood, and require you to do some syncing, you suspect, as you know very little about cars.
Once enough time has passed and you're fairly close to the church, you start preparations in earnest. Caius tells Jury she's good to go on attacking the monster. Fuse breaks out his phone and starts hacking into the local network of Hope's cameras, TVs, and so on--not just disabling the cameras, but putting Carpenter's face up on all the screens. You check on your raven and rats to make sure nothing is amiss.
Just before you reach the church, you activate the eggs. Meat walls start bursting into existence all across the church, including one broad one over the window that overlooks the sanctuary. Before Hope and the others can react, you spring a huge meat cage up around Grizwald... who starts to laugh like a madman from inside it.
"Y'all are screwed, now!," Grizwald yells. "She's here. Y'all's gooses are cooked! I warned ya!"
Hope and his two associates are... visibly unnerved, the largest man drawing a very heavy looking handgun.
You, Caius, Michelle, and Fuse charge in through the front doors of Brother Hope's church. You make it to the top of the sanctuary steps before guards from all over the room start firing their handguns toward you--forcing you and your allies to duck behind the pews (and Caius's shield) for cover as you return fire.
"Can't get close enough to light 'em up," Fuse mutters.
Michelle sticks to the handgun for now, letting her fire and duck back down quickly--and shoot with more accuracy, as the minigun loses something over a distance.
"Please, brothers and sisters!," Hope yells from the stage. Despite the gun fight going on, he doesn't make any effort to take cover. "Can't we talk about this? Can we not deal with this in a calm, CIVIL manner? Are we animals? I am WILLING to NEGOTIATE!"
Despite his calls for peace, his numerous guards continue to try and shoot you from various directions.
avoid killing him. making him a martyr will just add fuel to the flame. incapacitate him if we can. maybe drop some "eggs" off the meat cage and grow some golems. keep in mind that thale has eyes and ears in this place still. knox and the other guard are upstairs, and thale probably has no shortage of goons to expend. we need to stay on our toes.
On top of that, Thale can easily just appoint a new Chief Idiot Priest of Enyo by making "Enyo's voice" whisper to his next-most-charismatic thrall.
The fire doesn't ever stop. If we can prevent a martyr, we can at least partially douse it before a new Chief Idiot pops up to start reigniting things.
Alternatively, if we don't want to have too many new arrivals in our party, or we don't want a blood fight with Thale, we could go for poison straight away, maybe we could use a dosage that won't be deadly, but will incapacitate people.
A note for later: Let's learn how to create anesthetics.
But, like I said before, it might turn into a battle with Thale if he's been blooded. Listening in on him and the secretary might give us some info on that.
Sorry Hope, but given that you actively desire the destruction of our entire hometown and the deaths of millions, we aren't terribly interested in negotiating with you unless you hand us a 100% unconditional surrender, no tricks-- especially no *Thale* tricks.
Are any of the guards standing near enough our meat walls that we can bone-spear them? Alternatively, this might be a good time for some meatball grenades-- or to send some bugs/winged darts to harass the shooters and allow our allies to shoot more easily.
Whatever remains of the bonebombs, fragments, pieces, etc. we try to quickly pigment and have those pieces cast the messy bone armor spell (as long as Jury and co aren't around)
Also keep an eye on the monster somehow, we did not look at it after poisoning it
ALSO DEFINITELY OBSERVE THE BROADCAST ROOM (with Thale and secretary) we left an egg there with eyes and ears
While we're at it, maybe we should check on the bug we fed to the tunnel monster-- if it's still alive, we can try blooding the thing. Gaining control of it would be amazing; but even forcing Thale to rot large chunks of it away just to prevent the blood from reaching the brain would be helpful to Jury.
So let's see if we can sneak a blood syringe into Hope.
We could tell him that we can't trust someone who'd plot against his own allies in the night- and gesture to the Carpenter silhouette. (There is no overt lie in this statement. Hope did plot against Carpenter that one night. If he wants to believe the implication that Carpenter put us up to this, that's on him.)
We could tell him that the gentleman in the A/V room won't help him.
We could tell him that all we want is to give him a blood transfusion-- or a mutual exchange of blood as a gesture of goodwill. We'll even let him decide who injects whose blood first!
This is taking longer than I had hoped. I'm expecting a retaliation from Thale at any moment. Any other ideas to get Grizwald to us sooner the better.
Can we move the meat shield? Grizwald was tied to a chair so we'd have to pick him up inside the shield. Maybe move it like a slug or snake gradually up to meet us (or convert it into a blood turtle)?
Also for christ sake, Hope, shotgun diplomacy only works before you start shooting. Then it just becomes shotgun.
Was the fat guy here? If he is, don't worry about shooting him cause fat is pretty bulletproof. I only say this cause someone important should get shot here, and it's not gonna be us/Griz.
Hope and his two associates are... visibly unnerved, the largest man drawing a very heavy looking handgun.
We do NOT want to have to deal with that.
Time is of the essence.
If you can say the name 'Patton Thale' put away your weapons and get out of this building. Our fight is NOT with you.
I'd simply inform everyone that if they aren't slaves to Thale, for them to vacate, that we don't wish to fight them. We're here to get our friend back, and that's it.
I'm not terribly convinced they WOULD listen, but maybe we can bluff them into standing down because they're counting on the tunnel monster-- currently busy fighting off Jury's squad while dealing with severe food poisoning.