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So... this was supposed to be one chapter. It turned into three chapters once we hit the second draft. How does that work? I have no idea, but it did, and there's nothing I can personally do to stop it. Oh well. :3
Now the housekeeping: as a refresher for long-time followers of the series and a reference for those who are new, "UHC: Foundation" is a long-running series set in the expansive 'Severance' alternate universe and follows the fates of that universe's incarnations of the Minecrafters we've come to love and respect. As per protocol, for further information and reading, refer to the World Dossier (here) and the compiled story/serial document (here; alternatively, one can follow the story through here.)
=====
On Your Marks - Ready
The supersoldier, deceptively casual in his soiled, white t-shirt and torn-up jeans, raised his voice just enough for the rest of the incarcerated cadre to hear. “Gath’r ‘round, guys. I think I gots us an idea.”
The bare-footed rogue standing beside him grinned, genuinely and with sincere relief. “Finally. That’s the BdoubleO I know.”
“Yer too kind.”
The skittishly hyper native that seemed to be bounding back and forth across the stifling steel pit even when he was standing perfectly in one place, shot the confident Assyrian a dirty look. “Any plan is better than no plan at this point … even if it’s coming from mister bad ideas himself.”
“Hey, you wanna get outta here or what.”
PauseUnpause simply stuck his tongue out.
BdoubleO glared pointedly. “You put that back in your mouth, son.”
A flippant grin. “Make me.”
“Oh … I will—”
Guude stepped in before the bickering could escalate. “Knock it off, you two. We need to focus on gettin’ outta here.”
A surly beat of silence.
Pause shrugged dismissively, the aggression running off of him like water off a fowl. “Fine.”
It took BdoubleO a few instants more to calm down. “… fine.”
A mouldering, but still perfectly sentient pig-man lumbered over to the assembly, and stood himself with burly arms crossed and cloven hooves apart. “Pause has a point, though. Your track record with plans isn’t exactly stellar, Bdubs … I mean, I still remember the Trial and all that nonsense.”
The Assyrian bristled. “That wasn’t my fault—”
As if on cue, Avidya’s cool voice chimed in: “Or that one time he and Generik tried to turn Etho’s house into a store?”
A nervously glancing MC nodded meekly. “I remember that, too.”
BdoubleO glared at them both. “Hey, Etho started it!!”
Pakratt, the navy-suited preacher, ran a hand through tousled dark hair and shrugged. “Or how about when he tried this one ‘get rich quick’ scheme by selling bootleg records—”
BdoubleO was now audibly snarling. “—would you guys just shaddap …”
It was Pause who delivered the final blow. “Sorry, dude, but if us getting out of here means we have to resort to one of your harebrained schemes, we’re fsked.”
Once again, it was Guude who defused the imminent confrontation. “But those plans of his work when they count, guy. Bdubs got my ass out of Modera, and it was his strategy that won us the Battle of the Canyon of Woah.” The legendary Vanalian General looked around between his battle-brothers, catching each of their eyes in turn. “… and if there was a time for one of his ‘harebrained schemes’ to work, now’d be one hell of a time.”
There was a long, heavy beat of silence as the Mindcrackers stood up a little straighter, taking a few steps closer to their charismatic leader.
Even then, Pause still shot the General a narrow-eyed look. “You’re dead set on defending him, aren’t you, Guude?”
The barefooted rogue shot the native an equally withering glance. “Like any plan of yours’d do any better, Pause.”
Pause put up a finger in the air and opened his mouth to argue, but let the gesture drop within the next fraction of a heartbeat and rolled his eyes meaningfully.
BdoubleO smirked. “He got you there, Alex.”
“Shut up, John.” The native let out a small huff. ”Just because Jason likes the idea doesn’t mean I have to.” A resigned sigh that at once seemed perfectly appropriate and wildly out of character for the inimical berserk warrior. “So … what’s the plan?”
BdoubleO motioned for the assembled cadre to close off in a sports huddle. “This is what I’ve got in mind …”
Everyone gathered close.
“If any of you guys paid attention earlier, then you’re aware of the force field they’ve set up on the perimeter of the arena we’re gonna get taken to.”
There were nods and quiet acknowledgement all around the group.
“That forcefield’s gonna need power, and I bet that the generators for that forcefield are somewhere in the arena and very, very close to where the forcefield walls are gonna be.”
Beef, the cyborg butcher, remarked in an oddly meek voice: “… so you’re saying we gotta find the generators?”
“No, I’m sayin’ we leave those alone and give the viewers what they’re tunin’ in to watch.” The Assyrian paused for dramatic effect, and then sneered. “Of course we’re gonna need to find those generators, duh.”
Pause gave off a look of equal parts consternation and amused incredulity. “… that … almost sounds too easy.”
BdoubleO immediately turned his attention to the lean berserk. “It is too easy, and I’m countin’ on our hosts fortifyin’ the positions of the generators.”
The native didn’t relent. “We got jack sh!t, Bdubs. If there are going to be guards swarming those generators—”
“—which is why I’m suggesting we split off into teams.” The supersoldier looked around among his companions’ various expressions of doubt and apprehension. “Some of us are better at some things than others, after all. Us taking out those generators is gonna come down to everyone contributing to the best of their ability.”
Again, Pakratt spoke up in that ever-present calm of his, tinged ever so slightly with the acute awareness that the augmented Ex-Moderan always seemed to possess. “Teams? In a free-for-all battle royale? We’re all gonna be split up. How th’ heck are we gonna find each other—”
“We aren’t.”
The navy-suited preacher only blinked. “… okay. Now you lost me.”
BdoubleO didn’t hide his confident little smirk. “You heard the lady during the briefing; the arena’s gonna be huge. We’re not going to be able to find each other just wanderin’ around willy nilly.”
Surprisingly, the next one to speak up was Kurt. Even behind his 3-D glasses (now somewhat dinged and crooked), the lingering panic shone through in his eyes. “Then how are we going to find each other?”
BdoubleO simply continued to smile. “The arena’s gotta have a middle somewhere, right?”
That one statement brought Pause’s vitriol back in full force. “Seriously? Rush the middle? That’s the best you can come up with?”
The Assyrian merely granted the native a single glance. “Unless they happen to give us flares, why don’t you come up with a better idea?” The taller man fumed silently, but thought better than to continue the exchange.
“Thought so.” BdoubleO took a light breath, but his voice still didn’t rise any more than absolutely necessary.
“Anyway … the team thing is just so everyone knows what they’re doin’, so we aren’t wasting time just wanderin’ around. We all know those generators are gonna be crawlin’ with guards, and I bet those guards are gonna be those black-armored screwballs that witch has followin’ her beck ‘n’ call. It’d be safe to say that it’d be hella stupid to just run in there practically butt naked.”
The sports huddle was tight enough to keep movement to a minimum, but the slight, shared shuffle and the uncomfortable glances were nevertheless very much noticeable.
BdoubleO actually rolled his eyes. “… and I thought I was the prude here.”
“You can lay off on the similes and metaphors, Bdubs,” a skull-masked, un-readable BTC remarked.
“Yeah.” Pause shot the supersoldier a meaningful look. “You’ve been hanging around Generik too long.”
“Shuddup.”
A deep breath; coming from Kurt, of all people. “So what are we going to do then?”
BdoubleO was back into his business stance in an instant. “Obviously we’re gonna need supplies; that’s Team One’s job. Their job is to harvest materials and build stockpiles. Those stockpiles have to be clearly marked so the rest of us can find them when we’re getting ready to stage our escape. … any volunteers?”
~||~
==Game Time Elapsed: 105 minutes==
MCGamer trudged slowly through the birchwood forest, straining against the handful of logs that he dragged behind himself by way of a makeshift harness that he had fashioned, quite simply, from taking off his now somewhat tattered orange business suit jacket and tying it together into a simple, durable figure-of-eight. It was an old survival trick that he had been taught even before he had travelled to Minecraftia, but never in his life had he expected to find a use for this long-cherished method in such a ghastly, unthinkable scenario as this.
Pity they hadn’t been allowed to switch clothes. He would have preferred his jumpsuit.
What a time to be caught in a kidnapping raid while wearing your casual outfit.
Being a trained medic, MCGamer knew many things about physical health. Guided by his own considerable conditioning, he continuosly put each foot in front of the other with calculated precision, never straining his back and abdomen more than absolutely necessary, yet still his head hung low and his shoulders slumped for each step he took. He had no idea where the cameras were that would supposedly broadcast this infernal ‘game’ to all the waiting, blood-thirsting audiences across Minecraftia and Earth alike (the ones that weren’t watching in anxiety and concern for their fellow warriors-turned-gladiators’ lives), but he was pretty sure that they had a perfectly good bead on him.
Being a trained medic, MCGamer knew many things about physical health. Being a Vanali medic trained by the Mindcrack’s own token preacher, he also knew many things about emotional and psychological well-being.
And right now, it was the latter two that were smarting.
He reached the small storage deposit that he had been aiming for; little more than a freshly shovelled pit in the dirt where he heaved the logs onto an already impressive pile. In literally any other context, he would have taken a moment to step back and admire his work, the effort he was putting in to ensure the success of an even greater endeavour.
Instead, he simply cast a single, weary eye over the neatly stacked pile, noting that the pit was now filled to capacity. He pulled a handful of simple charcoal torches from his custom sewn-in tool holsters, set the torches into the ground around the storage deposit and lit them with a raw chunk of flint that he struck against the back edge of his survival kit-assigned hunting knife. Finally, he untied his jacket from its somewhat awkward tangle of sleeves and pulled it back onto his torso while he rolled his shoulders in a semi-conscious motion to dispel the slow onset of aching muscles.
At least he now had the forest’s edge solidly within sight. He had never done well with woodlands--they felt cramped and claustrophobic, limiting his range of view to the nearest tree trunk overlapping the next, and the next, and the next. He’d already had a few terror-inducing encounters with the natural hostiles that seemed to call this elaborate deathmatch arena their home, over the course of a number of days and nights that had passed with a speed so alarming that it should be stark impossible for a human body to adapt to … and yet, in all this madness, adapted to it he had, as if this kind of hideously compressed timekeeping was perfectly natural.
He could only hope that the rest of his compatriots were faring at least no worse than he was.
That was, perhaps, the one thing that would have driven him to the brink of a nervous breakdown several times over if he wasn’t letting the sheer physical exertion overwhelm him so much. He had dedicated his life, his existence, to preventing death and suffering with every ounce of power and conviction vested in him … and here he was, stuck in his semi-casual business suit instead of his medic’s jumpsuit, in a game of blood and death where he was just as expected to murder his war brothers in cold blood as they were to kill one another—and even him.
“Bdubs, you’re crazy,” he breathed to the air, to himself, and to no-one in particular. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to say with that.
Volunteering for the ‘gatherer’ group had seemed perfectly natural in that stifling steel pit. At least that way, he’d have a chance not to have to pretend to confront his companions in mock battles to satisfy an uncaring public eye eager for bloodshed. He’d be able to stay out in the wild, collecting raw materials and natural resources for the others to put to use and see the martial and military potential in. Such ways of thinking had never come easily to him. He was a medic, not a warrior. He cared too much about other people for that.
So perhaps it was just a gargantuan case of stress-triggered stupidity that he would willingly place himself in an escape plan role that meant he’d probably spend the majority of this ghastly game all on his lonesome, with no way to watch over his friends and war brothers in the midst of the treacherous flora and fauna.
There were even restless undead here. It had taken a few ‘days’ before they had risen out of the ground to harass him, but heavens alive, did that one night nearly scare him out of his clothes and his skin.
He trekked away from the storage pit he had just secured, his stride a little quicker from the lack of weight but still no chipper in gait, cleared the final distance to the forest edge and stepped resolutely into the open, gentle sunlight that bathed the near meadow-like grassy fields beyond. He actually stopped dead in his tracks, breathing deeply and expanding his chest and shoulders as much as he could, to somehow ingest the freedom of the new terrain into the very core of his being.
>The best part is, you’ll see everything coming from a mile away now.
The orange-clad medic immediately cringed at the text that appeared on his field of vision, tinted a holographic neon green by the headset that had lodged itself into his very skull the moment he had placed it against his temple. Suddenly the array of birch trunks behind him seemed far less the choking cage it had been the past grossly accelerated days, and much more an inviting refuge where he could tuck tail and hide like a frightened critter.
MC was personally convinced that there couldn’t be anything even remotely healthy about an electromagnetic device that was somehow designed to burrow straight through a man’s scalp into the cranium and directly augment his very perception of reality—though ‘augment’ was far too generous an adverb to be applied here, in his own quite humble opinion.
He had no choice but to accept it. With the way the headset was attached, he had no qualms whatsoever about the strange ‘announcer’s’ allegations: that a single flick of a switch would be enough to kill every arena-trapped Mindcracker outright. He wasn’t a neurosurgeon by any means; but he had done his homework, and knew how strongly electrical currents could impact the human brain.
>Mind the static.
The headset’s display never so much as twitched, but it was all MC could do not to dash back around the nearest tree and curl up in fetal position. He so didn’t need that mental image right now.
He was jolted from the moment of ensuing panic by the sound of voices floating towards him across the grassy plain ahead.
It couldn’t be … could it?
It could!
Ahead from his position, the broad, powerful frame of Anderz came striding towards him, the burly Scandinavian viking waving with his usual gruff enthusiasm while shouting to MC across the open expanse in his inimical accent; behind him came the slightly leaner, but far more peaceful and composed gestalt of Avidya strolling casually, as if the two battle-hardened warriors hadn’t experienced anything worse than a mild delayment while promenading across flower-covered fields of green.
The others had already started to team up. Screw the deathmatch rules. MC felt the first genuine smile in six days and two hours spread across his face, and he waved resolutely back to his new-found allies.
Maybe things were going to turn out alright, after all.
~||~
==Game Time Elapsed: 35 minutes==
Everything is going to go to hell.
He pulled his arms tighter against himself, crossing them hard over his chest, and fought to relax.
Everything is going to go to hell.
One hand—still flesh, though he wasn’t even sure of that anymore in this psychological nightmare—lashed out like a rictus spasm, numbed fingertips brushing against the moist, dark soil surrounding him on all sides.
Only the knowledge that he had left a passage open to the surface kept him from bursting screaming out of the ground like the restless dead that had already risen all around him, shambling back and forth with their unmistakable groans and growls all over the grassy field four feet above his head.
Everything is going to go to hell.
As if on cue, his entire body jerked painfully beneath his perpetually blood-stained apron, from metal heels to leather-capped shoulders, followed by several frightened heartbeats of holding his breath in the nigh-overwhelming fear that the unliving scourge had noticed him flailing around like a mental ward in this self-imposed dirt prison.
He had heard that zombies could claw their way straight through seven feet of solid ground when they caught the scent of prey—especially the terrified kind.
Everything is going to go to hell.
Gradually, he forced himself back into a reclining position, even as his mind continued to cartwheel through his head in agonizing loop-de-loops on a direct collision course with his every repressed pain and secret horror.
… and I can’t even keep myself from thinking about it.
>No, you can’t.
Beef had thought that nothing would be able to top the endless plummet into the abyss that his guts had performed when he had first laid eyes on the headset. That headset. That damn, despicable, improbable, impossible headset. His every thought had screeched to a nauseating halt at the sight of that device, the re-echoing gong in his head that had gone off as he recognized the tech.
And now he couldn’t even focus on that anymore.
Maybe it weren’t such a good idea accepting a headset designed to literally drill itself into one’s brain when you were a cyborg with metal implants from your crown to your lopped-off femurs.
Everything was a blur. A buzz. A sea of white noise and static that only gave way whenever that text in the headset saw fit to—and then it immediately devolved into him watching helplessly while this disembodied, soundless voice surged into his synapses and took over his every waking impulse and willful movement, leaving him to watch in muted despair while his body performed its tasks and duties completely disconnected from his own living consciousness.
It had been relatively benign so far. Caring for half-tame wildstock roaming aimlessly in these green but otherwise featureless pastures, walking among them, counting them and noting their fitness and muscle mass. Using one bullet from his handgun to take one of the animals down and stocking up on meat and hides. He had then been given enough self-autonomy to strike out across the plains, until he had caught sight of a distant oak forest right at the edge of visibility, nearly indistinguishable from the thick, white fog that so abruptly cut off his range of vision—if that, too, wasn’t yet another neuronic trick coming out of that headset.
He hadn’t been able to make the headway he had expected. It was as if the fog distorted not only his effective maximum viewing distance but his depth perception as well, so that a trek that should have been over in half an hour took a day and a night.
And even then, right here, right now, it still felt like it had only been half an hour.
He couldn’t think about it. He mustn’t think about it. All he had to do was lie here, a twitching corpse in its own hand-dug grave, and endure the endless seconds until the daylight orb would come shooting up over the horizon as if forcibly ejected by some unthinkable, unfathomable mechanism.
Everything is going to go to hell.
Endure. He had done that before. Once, and once only.
Everything is going to go to hell.
>Yes, Butcher, it is.
>And it WILL be your fault.
~||~
=Author's Notes=
It's been a rough week, and it's gonna get rougher. Having some serious second thoughts about this whole thing, and a very crucial story element just had several serious fatal flaws pointed out to me; now I'm worrying myself sick trying to salvage it all. If push comes to shove, I'll have to hit the hiatus button again to rejig everything ... again. Pray that won't be the case.
Special thanks to
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Author's Box (FAQ):
"What is the Severance Universe?" -- The Severance Universe is the setting for the 'UHC: Foundation' serial. Read all the previous chaptersodes here or here, or if you want more info and lore, click here.
Severance Universe One Shots:
SUOS 001 - Hat
SUOS 002 - Descent and Denial
SUOS 003 - Into This World
SUOS 004 - Hostility
Sentimentality
Behind Worn Bones
We do more than just the SevU. Here are other stories for you happy lot to check out!
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Date: Wednesday, September 24th, 2014 01:23 am (UTC)Can't wait for the next episode!
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Date: Wednesday, September 24th, 2014 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, September 27th, 2014 03:39 am (UTC)