46: Family Gaming
As a whole, the evening passed without much note. Slade showed up around five, and the family cooked together before having a pleasant dinner. Once done eating, the five of them took a short break in the training room where Nyssa greeted Roxanne’s spirits. After she transford into each of the spirits one by one and hung out for around half-an-hour, they returned to the living room, booted up a gaming system, and played so party gas for most of the evening.
Roxanne, to no one’s surprise, wrecked everyone. As the victory screen shone for her win three tis in a row, she pumped her fist. “I’m just built different, built better.”
“Have you been training?” Slade shook his head. He had managed to snatch a very close second, only losing by a hair. “I thought you were on a mission...”
“Well, you know how we get terminals issued by the hero and hunter associations?” Roxanne pointed to her wrist, where the terminal sat silenced. “There was a terminal only ga released a while back, so bricklaying ga, it has a ton of different features, so I’ve been playing that a lot recently.”
“Good to... know,” Slade nodded, making a ntal note.
“Don’t slack off too much during work,” Kaiser reminded while raising the eyebrow. He, along with Nyssa, brought up the rear in their five-person ga. “Angelica, you shouldn’t slack off either, but I trust you more than I trust the two of them.”
“HAH! Take that,” Angelica grinned, leaning back against the couch to lay her head in Roxanne’s lap. “I’ve just built up the credibility, heh.”
“Well, it’s unfair, because you can enter the zone anyti you want,” Roxanne huffed, placing her controller onto Angelica’s face and blocking her smug look. “What do you all want to play next though? We can change gas if you want.”
“I’m fine with anything...” Nyssa yawned, her head bobbing a couple tis as she sat between Slade and Roxanne.
“Rematch.” Slade raised a fist while turning to face Roxanne. “I’ll get you this ti, trust . If Nyssa didn’t accidentally sabotage by sleepily pressing a couple buttons, I would’ve won.”
“Well, that’s just a skill issue. If you knew her as well as , you would’ve been able to predict that she would do that and account for that within your playing strategy,” Roxanne shrugged and stuck her tongue out. “I’m down for a rematch though.”
With the other two, Kaiser and Angelica, murmuring their agreent, Roxanne booted up the next round. The console’s screen faded to black. A small loading emblem appeared in the corner, pulsating with light. A woosh sound effect sounded out, and the ga began. It marked the beginning of a long night of their little house party. Snacks and alcohol got pulled out at so point, soone took a nap at another point, and they played through an entire playlist of music. Trailing long into the night, the five of them hung out until midnight before Slade, Roxanne, and Angelica headed off back to their own hos.
---
A crashing sound filled the lab as several monitors buzzed to black. Torn off the wall, each monitor ca crashing to the ground as exposed wires sparked in the air. A gargantuan masked figure stalked through the lab, pointing at each and every other masked figure one by one. As the figure stalked through the lab, a robotic voice ca out from under its mask. “WHAT. ARE. YOU. ALL. DOING?”
“W-What do you an, supre leader?” A more slender masked man bowed a couple tis. “Please enlighten us as to where we went wrong.”
The leader swung his arm. A resounding slap filled the room and the slender masked man made a new ho in the tal wall. He twitched before sliding down to the floor where the others tended to him. Unhurt, he touched his face while muttering “I'm just so honored the supre leader spared the effort to touch ” under his breath.
“Has nobody seen the new post on the Hunter’s Society website?” The robotic voice ca crackling through once more. “How has our intelligence team allowed this to happen? Who didn’t clean out the lab and who left one of our test modules unsupervised? How did our spies allow for the post to even be made? A group of STUDENTS managed to find our experintal mana module. HOW?! SOONE EXPLAIN THIS INADEQUACY TO !”
“W-Well the association ho page is... well, you know, run by a lot of people, we don’t have the power to just not let sothing get posted, after all its a very transparent organization, practically all their information is available to the public,” A different masked person answered—from the back of the room. “We did manage to lower its urgency rating though. So, it shouldn’t draw much attention. It’ll get buried soon enough and we’ll be able to continue with our plan.”
A creaking sound filled the room as the monitor in the supre leader’s hand got lowered back to the ground. “Makes... sense. What about the rest. Soone answer.”
“As for the negligence with the lab, we had to... uh... we hired so contractors to clean it out and it seed like... they didn’t do a very great jo-” The new masked figure got cut off as a monitor slamd into them. They fell to the floor as a couple masked dical staff workers rushed in and carted the worker off.
“Why are WE, a PREMIER experintal organization, one that’s top-secret, one aiming to change the world, HIRING CONTRACTORS????” The leader roared, the robotic voice broadcaster crackling and letting out static under the stress.
“We’ll ensure such a mistake doesn’t happen in the future, supre leader,” A masked figure bowed. “The experintal module was an unforeseen circumstance. It was buried far underground in a nest of centipedes. Unless the centipedes themselves dug it up, there should’ve been no way for the machine to have even been exposed to air. Because of that, we decided to leave our guards with the other experintal modules. Rest assured, those are still providing great results and none have been discovered.”
“... Fine. Prepare a report for of the rest. I’d like to see the data,” the supre leader tapped its foot. A second later, it whirled around and left the room as everyone began rushing to complete their work.
The sound of its clanking footsteps filled the hallway. It wove through the gleaming lab as other masked figures filled the area. Doors slid open as it neared, allowing it further and further into the lab, all the way until it reached the heart of the laboratory.
A massive reactor glowed in the darkness. Towering into the ceiling, it pulsated with life as chanical additions dotted its surface. Tubes went in, tubes ca out, screens implanted into its surface glowed, and liquids of various viscosities and colors flowed inside of its translucent body.
As the last set of doors slid closed behind it, the supre leader peeled off its mask. Instead of a human face though, the supre leader had a faceless tallic plate. Walking forward, it sat into a cove-like depression in the side of the reactor. Within seconds, tallic and organic tendrils disassembled the supre leader’s entire body, leaving only the face plate sitting in the cove.
A singular tallic arm grabbed the plate, lifting into the air before setting it against the wall. Light reflected off the faceplate, joining the array... as face plates decorated every wall in the reactor room.
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