Space Jammin'

Saturday! From what it sounded like, nobody else remember yesterday was Friday, either.

Dave jumped into VR first - Powder & Sword - and got in contact with Cap. D'Ville. While he was waiting for her to pick him up, he was accosted by a couple people wanting him to join the Academy of the Sea; after a brief tour, however, he was turned away for being too low level. Charles and a friend of his, Raquine (his character ais a big, buff, rage machine), showed up a little bit later to join their little quest - getting that rare item for Captain D'Ville. They managed to get through the storm well enough, though the good Captain lost two sailors, swept overboard by the raging seas... On the island, they went through the same motions as before, though this time, they had a rowboat, so there was no drowning! Oh, and Charles picked up a quest, on his hunt for horseback superiority - kill five non-Spanish military soldiers.

After grabbing the rare, Dave, Charles, and Raquine jumped over to Space Marine III, just in time for one of their epic drop-fights. On the world of Nexus Station, an insectoid world, the landscape is deep ravines and spiky mountains, and is filled with insectoid soldiers of all shapes and sizes. They joined the troops jetting down from the ships - launched out of drop pods into blobs of jelly that absorbed the impact. Super metal. Along with the various marines were a handful of medics, and some Juicers, crazy people who use drugs to give them superhuman boosts. They grabbed some soldier boosts, though didn't take them right away.

Just before the battle started, they were treated to a rousing speech ("HRAAAGGH!!!") from Triumphant_Pony, one of the guild leaders, then away they went. It didn't take them long to find combat, and after shooting, spearing, and chain-swording through a number of bugs (including a great kill from Cazeon, as he tells it) - five little bugs and one big shooter bug (I don't know what they are called, I can't say I've ever played SM3), they sat down for a breather, while Cazeon scouted ahead. He found some bug-tunnels, and decided against venturing deeper within; then, he found a crazy Juicer eating a bug, and not much further, a glitch - a weird portal, tall and thin, that seemed to follow him as he changed angles. After injecting himself with the soldier boosts (great stuff! Apart from killing you, drugs are bad), Caz stuck his head in the glitch, and a moment later found himself stuck in a weird, blank room, with gray walls...

Raquine (I don't actually know his handle, I need to write it down somewhere) and Dave realized Cazeon wasn't back after a few minutes, and once the big guy calmed down from his bloodlust, they set out looking for him. They found the Juicer, and after refusing his offer of squidgy bug guts, asked him to join their little band. It took some persuasion, but I guess the big guy is a charmer when he needs to be, because he convinced the guy. And not just that - he also talked him into getting a rope tied around him and getting shoved into the glitch.

Turns out, though, an NPC on a rope is not enough degrees of separation to avoid getting pulled in afterwards. Kenny, realizing what happened, sighed and followed them in.

Inside the gray room, Kenny asked the big guy what his plan was. "Oh, I sent in the Juicer on the rope, and once we grab Cazeon, we just follow the rope out!" Proudly, he demonstrated. He followed the rope up to the Juicer, who had climbed the wall and was sucking on his hand in fear. "Oops, wrong direction!" He followed the rope the other way, and ended up with the other end of the rope. "Uh... Wait." Two direction-reversals later, he realized maybe, just maybe, his plan didn't work out.

Realizing the only way forward was, well, forward, and breathing a sigh of relief that they weren't somewhere underwater, they headed through the only non-grey thing in the room - a fancy looking door. The door lead into what appeared to be an early 1900s sitting room, with a black-and-white TV that was, somewhat incongruously, playing the local news channel.

The reporter showed a picture of a local address, a home at 582 Mayflower Ave., which burned down due to an electrical fire; the three residents perished in the blaze. And, in the next story, two inmates at the Varten jail were found dead of apparent suicide in their cells; the mayor is calling for an overhaul of the prison system to... and so forth. It glitched and faded out to static.

On the other side of the room was a big set of double doors; Cazeon knocked, and the big guy kicked through them, heroically, if impolitely. They found a large man sitting at a desk, talking with a thin woman. The man? Big Tiny. The woman? His girlfriend, Molly Malone. Big Tiny raised a hand, and growled, "So. Why don't you call your little friends, and we'll see how youse handle Big Tiny?"

Oh boy.