Private/Closed Bootleg Bros. Ultimate - The Banished Campaign (Act 1)

[PaprusTeuton]

Kazaaak

David sacrificed his plasma pistol's battery, to no avail, as the door remained shut. That is, until the swordsman jabbed his blade into the wires, releasing sparks and opening the door. The door did not open, however the gap that was created before it stopped was large enough for both of them to enter. A dead Brute was revealed on the other side.

"...You didn't expect that to work, did you?" Kazaaak joked, before passing into the area, waving at the foul air as he did so.

 

[comic]

THE COURIER​

—Arcturus Pit, Day 2 Early Morning—​

As it were, the grunts didn’t even reach his end of the hallway. They waddled right on by the placed plasma grenade, failing to notice it in the slightest, making their way to the elevator. Once all three were on board, the door shut and the elevator began to move.

There was no indicator what floor they’d moved to, but the possibility they had been sent to check on the brute meant to collect Blake was a strong one, so his time as an unknown escapee was likely short. No other enemies followed them to the hall, which was left once again bare - save for the placed plasma grenade.
​

Kazaaak stepped into the hall beyond as he made his remark, finding immediately that the brute corpse wasn’t alone - several others had been piled at the other end of the hallway, which made a sharp turn to the left. It was a little difficult to see at first glance, but any scrutiny of the skeletons would unveil deformities. As in, their actual skeletal structures had been warped and changed. Some seemed to have extra arms, or double heads, one even appearing to have overlaying rib cages.

The lighting here was a bit different than the usual Banished norm, too. While there was still the red lighting, actual white lights dimly shone from sparse lights above, illuminating a slight mist in the air, giving the hidden place an overall eerie regard.

It was unlikely the current Banished forces were aware this place even existed. And if they were, they avoided it intentionally.​

 

[Captain Cardboard]

Courier Six​

They went into the elevator. Of course. Why would they check in an empty room? How stupid of him. Stupid, STUPID - Blake didn't have time for this. But haste made waste. Blake slunk down the hallway. As he passed the elevator, he pressed the touch screen to call it. Anything to buy him a few more moments.

Blake approached the right door, hiding in the shadows on the corner of the south wall. He picked up the plasma grenade he had dropped and readied the Spiker. Carefully, he moved within range of the door to detect his presence and open up, peeking into the adjacent corridor to see what was within. If it was clear, he'd move in and start heading north towards the Cell Block.

 

[Psymallard]

Hidden Lab
The electricity predictably surged as the wiring short-circuited. However, more interestingly, there was a creak from behind David. He slowly turned back to the door, and then looked Kazaaak in the eye. A smug grin crept its way back onto his face.

"...You didn't expect that to work, did you?" the insectoid joked.

"I shall never tell," the swordsman replied.

He slipped through the door after Kazaaak, scrunching his nose to the smell of old air and the visage of veritable tomb they had intruded upon. The human's smugness had quickly evaporated- this was no simple backdoor to the facility. No, it could never be so simple. So what was this place?

David passed by the pile of corpses at the end of the hall, and as he did, he stole a glance at the skeletal deformities, which gave him a couple guesses as to what this place was. His first guess was that this was some sort of lab that dealt with biotics. Either they meant to splice genes, or whatever they had been studying had some sort of way to hijack genetic code.

His second guess would be that this was a place that dealt in the occult. Back in his own galaxy, there were no shortage of deities that had the power to warp the minds, souls, and/or bodies of mortals on a whim. Especially where the Kyrzals were concerned. David really hoped this wasn't an occultist temple. Either way, he pushed forward into the main hallway while on high alert.

 

[ArmedBlue]

Copen
​

Matthews' reaction was appropriate.

The communicator did more than transmit sound – it deployed a hologram of whoever was on the other end of the comm link. This revealed the entire group to the new brute, who had evidently considered this possibility. It wouldn't have been a surprise for news about Arcturus Pit to have reached him already.

Still, the communication hadn't cut off yet. Was the brute gathering more information still? His armor was different, likely denoting a higher rank, and unless his role was to manage Banished communications, it didn't sound right for him to be any higher-up brute. Based on what Copen had gathered lately, then perhaps this could be...

"...Are you the chieftain here?"​

 

[Fraseandchico]

JULIAN

He wasn't too surprised that he failed to scare the humans, only annoying them - It was annoying to him in turn, of course, but he'd been around military types enough to know by now that they were more likely to respond to his words with ignorance or immature, rude gestures, than fear.

Still, with compliance the SPARK activated the Communicator, JULIAN himself making sure to note each and every detail of the hologram, the Brute's appearance. This one seemed rather important, those his words implied the Banished had indeed traced his hacking. Drat.
"Hello to you too, ugly." The AI didn't hesitate in responding to the Brute's own words, though let Copen ask his own question.

Logs: Banished Communicator, notes, first communication; On the other end of our first message is a Brute - A higher ranked one, with one of the humans believing it's the Chieftain here. It appears he already suspected this, likely having heard of our little escape and the conflict over at Arcturus Pit. We'll need to study this technology more, as I'm not sure if he just sees our holograms and words or if he sees our surroundings as well - Since we can only see him.

The logical side indicated he should have noted that part of the brute's words might have come from knowingly tracing the communicator, but if that were the case and this other AI had snuck through some backdoor JULIAN had missed, it would tip off the enemy as soon as they found that file that JULIAN did not, in fact, know about the backdoor they used. Ergo, embarressingly, it was safer not to log all possibilities.

"If my...ally here is correct about you being the chieftain, I don't suppose you'd be fond of telling us your location so we can kill or capture you? No?" Of course this was not a serious question, though some of these Brutes encountered previously seemed to like a good fight (Such as that one with the gauntlets who had landed with a rather dangeorus one liner before JULIAN had managed to escape with the aid of Nova), but assuming that would work wasn't the best idea. No, this was more akin to a taunt.