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File: False Woman Quest.png (599 KB, 1000x1000)
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"I was not born to have faith, and yet I believe."
-K-444

There's something right behind you.

---

Read the previous threads at: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=False%20Woman

You possess an amount of Strain equal to your Conditioning score. When attempting actions beyond your current capacity, you gain a point of Strain. Attempting to Strain while at maximum Strain will result in a Strain Check. During a Strain Check, roll 1d10 for every point of the relevant Parameter. Results that are 6 or above count as one success. Results of 10 count as two successes. Three successes must be rolled to avert a critical failure. Fail or pass, after a Strain Check, you cannot Strain again until you restore your Strain by seeking shelter.

This quest allows you to designate a second-choice vote on decisions with three or more options before Write-Ins. When votes are totaled, the option with the least votes for it will be removed, with votes for that option instead being changed to the second-choice of those voters. Second-choice votes are also used to break ties. This helps increase the accuracy of votes, but is not mandatory. Please specifically mark your second-choice as such if you do so.

Vote stay open for a minimum of six hours, but will usually take longer.

A note: My writing style is pretty dry, but don't mistake that for it being serious.
>>
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You purse your lips. The emergency safety equipment would be concealed in the walls, to prevent attackers or uninitiated serfs from taking it away from the actual adepts in an emergency- a serf exactly like you, as it happened. Besides, you didn't have so much as an electoo yet, much less any real graft, so it's not like you... would...

...would...

...wait.

Hesitantly, you raise your hand. You grab the back of your neck, then slowly trace your fingers upwards. Everything that had happened had distracted you. First Korash's treachery, the ritual he had attempted, Iapetus' appearance, you'd forgotten what had happened when the daemon had been upon you. Though, you must have been delirious, imagining molten brass burning through the back of your skull and into your head. There was no-

There was something hard and metallic under your hair.

You freeze. It was perfectly round, perfectly seamed against your skin, perfectly fused to it somehow. Even your fingernail didn't seem to get under the socket- and it was a socket. There was a depression inside of it which was deep enough it must penetrate beneath your skin, the interior formed from some kind of mesh with a sharp divot at the very center. Your finger moved up, and you found another plug touching it's edge, then another, and another- six in total, each slightly thinner than your finger, forming a cluster around a single large port that pushed so deeply into your head that it must surely have breached through your skull and into the deepest parts of your brain.

You wince, squinting your eyes as the symbols that have been crawling at the edge of your vision push in more insistently. The images fed directly into your visual cortex by your implants, and the interface built into them.

It was impossible. Your model simply did not come with such implants. It wasn't in the spec sheet, and you hadn't been modified. It should have been impossible...

Turning your hand upside down, you knead your plugs with the back of your hand and knuckles, letting out a quiet wince at the pleasant feeling of them shifting against your flesh. An electro-graft. You had an electro-graft. Maybe even a full MIU. Composite link cables, capable of manifold connection under the right circumstances.

Symbols flashed inside your mind, and you slid your eye beneath the lid to glance at a line of glowing binary.

Mars-pattern Mind Impulse Unit +++ Manifold Ready.

An MIU, then. You weren't sure what the rest of it meant.

+Posi-+ A harsh squak came, buzzing into your ears. The sound tasted like hissing static, nerves and the tang of hot contactors. The words had a broken, interrupted double-meaning, beating between the pauses in the sequence of data. Data-tags spelling out queries, questioning, anger, fighting, peace.
>>
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>>6184465
Your head jerked up. The figures were emerging from the haze more clearly. Red-robed and copper-limbed, they were assuredly skitarii, walking with their rifles braced out in front of them, helmet lenses scanning the stairway in front of them.

+Positive contact. Neutral contact. Contact. Relations with handler adjusted-located. Callback at- callback at- The lead stammered out.

“Hello? Skitarii?” You approach, nervously touching your ear. The words were pleasant, like a low murmur of static- but you weren't sure how you were hearing them. Was this too the fault of... your MIU?

+THREAT.+ The other screeched and whirled on you. It raised it's rifle and pointed it at- not at you. At the skitarii in the lead. The one you were speaking to. +Threat... lost. Threat?+

The lead skitarii turned it's head to the muzzle pointing straight at it. +Awaiting command directive.+ It turned it's head to you, then to the rear skitarii- a unit missing parts of it's cranial casing and a single arm, it's carapace marred with scratch marks. +Directive?+

+Directive?+ It turned to look at the other.

+Directive?+ Which in turn looked back at the lead.

+Direc...+ It let out a low murmur of static, then twitched slightly. There was a slight hiss of pumps within it, it's limbs tensing.

Something loomed over your shoulder. Your neck started to prickle uncomfortably, and you took a step back as the skitarius jerked aggressively towards it's fellows, then back towards you. You felt fingers gripping your shoulder, and then the skitarius lunged.

You flinched, and the floor buckled. Pipes and cables and broken values streaming caustic fumes wrenched out of the floor, shattering the stone and bending, twisting around, forming an odd pillar that wrenched itself to the side, smashing itself into the skitarius' chest as it lunged towards you, sending it careening back. In an instant, it was clawing at the mass of metal, clawing away at it furiously- in fact, far more desperately than it truly needed to. The pipe was already tearing and twisting away, but the skitarius thrashed on the floor as if it was being dismantled.

It's fellows stood dumbly at it on the floor as you backed away, then the only other undamaged one twitched.

You threw yourself up the stairs as it threw itself upon it's fellow, gripping it's robe and tearing into it, letting out a bray that sounded like a recording of an animal, blasted through subdermal speakers loud enough to make your teeth vibrate oddly. Gunfire erupted as you made it to the top of the landing, throwing yourself over the top of the stairs and crawling away on your hands and knees, chest dragging across the tile, small puffs of dust erupting from the next flight as stray bullets struck.

A responding cry echoed from the next landing, and the one below you. More skitarii.
>>
>>6184466
Eyes burning with smoke, you lurched to your feet and began running up the stairs, sparing a glance behind you. One of the two struggling skitarii was dead, sparking and smoking, as if every component of it's body had spectacularly failed at once. The one-armed one's rifle was still raised as it's torso, the end of it's barrel trailing a thin wisp of smoke, but it's eyes were trained directly up, on you.

You hit the next landing and whirled around the stairs, taking them two at a time. The effort made you body suddenly burn, and you coughed as you were forced to inhale deep lungfuls of smoke. You felt spent in a way you hadn't before, but you forced yourself to keep moving. One flight became two, then four, then six. Shadows flicked past you at each landing- more skitarii, you weren't sure, but you also weren't able to see, the smoke becoming thick enough that you could barely see a few steps in front of you.

Footsteps were clattering from behind you as you fell to your knees, struggling for air. You glance up and notice the landing is different from the others, lacking a large door into one of the temple floors. Quickly, you count the number of flights you'd gone up. Thirty seven and a half. That should put you on-

You lunge for the side of the landing, running your hands along the wall, digging your fingers into the polished stone until you found a seam, which you followed down and to the left. You found the crank, twisted it and wrenched the door open with effort. Immediately, cleaner air hit you in the face just before hot smoke began rushing past you, being sucked into the passage. No time to worry about letting smoke into the passage, you slide through as soon as the gap is wide enough.

The slap of your boots against stone instantly turns to the muffled thud against the plascrete corridors, mixed with sudden clatters where there were access grates in the floor. You scramble around a corner, your dress suddenly rippling in a new breeze. They had followed you in.

Around one corner. Then another. You kept track of the turns carefully, referencing your mental map of the maintenance corridors. You needed to ensure you didn't back yourself into a dead-end corridor. There were many, and worse the maps were frequently incorrect on which ones were and weren't, as new labs had been erected and bisected passageways, or sealed off due to disuse.

You heard a loud clatter around the next corner, and you stumble to a stop. Someone heavy and metal-footed was walking down the corridor in front of you. They'd turn the corner any second now. You mentally reference your map again, trying to find a new route, and-
>>
>>6184467
A pair of hands grabbed you from behind and gently yanked you back into darkness. The dimly-lit corridor became visible through only a small square of light, but a second later it vanished behind a door with a slitted grate. A figure leaned in, holding up a finger to their lips as he peered at the grate, then turned and threw a cloak of some kind over you.

“Quiet.” A warm, deep voice murmured.

>"Buddy?"
>"Lovelace?"
>"Skitarii have advanced predator sense. A wall won't hide us."
>Be quiet.
>[Write-In]
>>
>>6184468
>>Be quiet.
>>
>>6184468
>Be quiet.
>>
>>6184468
>Be quiet.
>Investigate the cloak.

Seems like a good time to distract the analytical mind. Also worth saying this machine spirit of the titan ruining all the skitarii that threaten Leb is absolutely mental.
>>
>Be quiet.
Writing.

>>6185852
I have no idea what you're talking about.
>>
>>6186782
nevermind then. It seemed like Lebesnati would be panicking, and autistically focusing on the cloak might help chill her out.
>>
Bentus, it's been a while. So I need to ask again. COADE when?
>>
>>6186794
It could be. Like I said, I have no idea what you're talking about. :)

>>6188363
WHEN I GET THE MILK.

I'm probably going to need a good few months to recharge after this wraps up, and I have a non-quest project I'd like to work on between this and COADE 2. Questing has given me a lot of experience on what my limits are as a writer and the sorts of projects I can reasonably expect to finish without burning out, so if I get it started this year, I expect I'd finish it and be onto COADE 2 within the year.
>>
You go still, your ear pressed awkwardly against cloth- probably the man's chest. The cloak he had thrown over you didn't feel like enough to protect you from the gaze of the skitarii on the other side of the door. It likely had integrated auspex, advanced preysense- even if it literally couldn't see through walls with atomsense, it could definitely sense the radiant heat of your bodies. Unless, perhaps... heat-resistant material? Auspex absorbing material? Cameleoline?

There was a distant rumble, the floor vibrating softly beneath your boots. The smell of flame and smoke hadn't reached into these ducts yet, but there was a persistent tang to the air that you couldn't quite place. Chemicals and perhaps flame that had quickly sputtered out. Burst pipes, perhaps? The place certainly felt warmer than usual.

...these thoughts were getting you nowhere. You wish that you were tall enough to see through the grate, but also you could do was strain for the heavy footfalls of the skitarius moving on.

After some time, the man finally dropped his arm and the cloak. “Close one.” He said, lifting the shutter on the grate to peer out, then turned to you. “How you doing, A-4?”

“...Buddy?” You blink.

“The one and only, yeah?”

>"What are you doing up here?"
>"How did you...?"
>"...some kind of synskin?"
>"...do you even realize what's happening right now?"
>"I'd like to get you up to speed, but we don't have time for that. We have to get out of here."
>[Write-In]
>>
>>6192080
>>"How did you...?"
>>"I'd like to get you up to speed, but we don't have time for that. We have to get out of here."
>>
>>6192080
>"What are you doing up here?"
>"I'd like to get you up to speed, but we don't have time for that. We have to get out of here."
>>
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>>6188794
I CAN'T WAIT ANY LONGER BENTUS
>>
>>6192080
>"What are you doing up here?"
>"I'd like to get you up to speed, but we don't have time for that. We have to get out of here."
>>
>"What are you doing up here?"
>"I'd like to get you up to speed, but we don't have time for that. We have to get out of here."
Writing.

>>6193231
YOU'RE DOWN FOR TIIRIS THAT BAD? I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER USING THIS PICTURE.
>>
>>6194924
NO THAT'S JUST SOMETHING I FOUND ON THE INTERNET. YOU'LL GET MORE WHEN YOU COME BACK.



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