I might become a gambling addict.
I have a craving to open thousands of these mystery cubes, and we're only on the first one each so far. Sasha pulled out a beaten longsword featuring a sun-emblem on the guard. Apparently it was one of Arlo's first prototypes for Cam's sword from a long time ago. It's broken beyond repair, according to Athena. Athena and Sasha bickered back and forth for a while, Sasha attempting to get Athena to reveal redacted information, which got her nowhere of course. Athena did reveal that one of the purple cubes contain the latest version of Cameron's sword. Additionally, we found out that the defences experienced so far were only the passive ones, after Sasha made a joke about hacking the system.
Scary stuff, really. That Arlo is a complete psychopath.
My first draw was a metallic arm. What a find! Followed by Cam trying to take it from me. Despite me CLEARLY being in need more than the scary dragon-slaying badass, Athena crushed my dreams as per her new habit and told me the drain on my mana would be deadly, since I'm so bad at magic.
A little more scavenging with the help of Athena led both of us each to various items. Cam got the A.S. V2, a watch that stabbed him in the wrist, then started talking in his brain. Weird, weird stuff.. I still understand none of it. I got a large green seed. Honestly, I was starting to feel genuinely scammed at this point.. I asked Cam to ask 'Hestia', what he named his A.S., what the hell it was. Meanwhile, he apparently managed to send a message to an A.S. V5 instance within The Intersection.
This stuff was.. too confusing for me. I ended up asking Athena directly while Cam was distracted with something or another, and Sasha was still in the basement storage room. She told me the research on it hadn't been completed, but it may or may not be helpful to eat it.
So, after some mild convincing, I did.
I collapsed in agony soon after, and according to Athena and Cam, I started to have a seizure before going limp, then suddenly waking up after ten minutes. With a plant-arm.
"It must be a plant that's subsisting on you. Look, you even have plant-claws on your plant-arm."
I called her a bitch openly for that one, and she had no way to shock me this time. With no other option, I wrapped it in crude bandages to hide it's nature. Apparently it's somehow a little stronger than my old arm, is extremely regenerative, and I will retain full control.. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Sasha came back upstairs about then too, of course, worried about my new plant-arm. She apparently got quite the haul, having a real pretty rapier and ring on her person now. The rapier was supposedly a gift from Arlo, while the ring was an updated version of the A.S. software, still using Athena however. It supposedly gave her a custom clearance level for just her, which would've been a nice gesture of trust from Arlo if I hadn't already decided I hate clearance levels.
She also brought up another cube, supposedly containing the latest version of Cameron's sword. Though, for the moment, Cam was distracted by MY robot arm I'd found being attached to his body.
Well. Arlo's robot arm but.. I found it.
It was also at that time Cam apparently received a response from the V5 instance. I don't know exactly what they said, but it sounds like there was going to be a fight soon.
And so, I decided to talk to Sasha some more. About Arlo and the like. I threw in a few good 'Your dad left you' jokes too, or.. I thought they were good. She told me Arlo had disappeared some years back with no prior warning. I also found out she's been looking for him for a long time, AND that he's some kind-of dimension-wide war criminal. I KNEW he was a psychopath.
In that moment, my lucky ass pulled a black crystal from the cube. I really wasn't convinced back before the world went to shit, but I guess those crystal girls were right.. Or, Arlo was a superstitious teenage girl. One seemed more likely than the other. Athena had told me about these crystals, and about halfway through her explanation, I got excited and stabbed it into my new arm.
Everything post that was a blur. I remember excruciating pain, as I stumbled down the stairs, following Athena's vague instructions. I remember Sasha and Cameron screaming and shouting as they saw me, before Athena had me drive a metal stake through my own heart. Then I woke up a few minutes later. The pain hadn't nearly subsided. The room erupted into arguments for a while, my attitude driven by pure pain, until eventually when my pain subsided to consistent aching, I asked Athena what the FUCK just happened.
"You stabbed it into yourself, which caused your mana to over-purify and create a certain energy that is dangerous to the human body. You injected yourself with 'Reinforcement', an experimental item created by Arlo. It has pretty much strengthened your body with a rare alloy of his creation. You are faster, stronger, more resistant, and more aware of your surroundings now. The energy inside you hasn't been researched as until this moment, it should have a 100% potency rate, yet you are a clear anomaly to that. I can research it given more time."
That answered my questions. I guess.. Despite the pain, I pushed on and didn't whine. Athena had supposedly disobeyed one of her own rules to save me, and so was under a repercussion period wherein many of her functions were disabled, a feature added by her co-creator named..
You guessed it! Another redacted name!
So irritating. Cam made me sit down in the living space upstairs, as I fought the extreme exhaustion plaguing my body.. We all sat down, enjoying a drink for a while. Cameron found a list of super-drinks Arlo had been making, including some supposedly intended to make even a literal God hammered. He spent a while listing which ones he was insistently going to drink, as we helped ourselves to each of Arlo's frankly amazing homemade flavoured ciders. Sasha didn't drink though. She instead went to check out that terminal from earlier. I was drinking so I don't recall the particulars, but she was trying to get the password to the terminal by contacting Arlo. Apparently, the V5 software was nearby and Athena thought herself able to ping off the advanced systems and send the desired message.
Then the doors suddenly sealed shut, cutting the conversation short, followed by heavy impacts continuously battering the great steel barriers. Apparently, the user of the V5 software had come for Cam, and he was not-so-happy. Plus he was monstrously strong.. And that's where I am now about now.. Sasha and Cam want me to stay back to avoid getting hurt because I'm weak.. which I want to refute but don't have the capabilities to do so. Anyhow. Wish me luck, whoever reads this in the future..
That makes no fucking se-