These are the files. I hope you have everything you need.
>>649
You thrust the ceremonial knife into the commander's thorax, but it fails to pierce his armour and does no more than wind him slightly. He counterattacks by clumsily shoving you backwards with both hands. You stagger, but manage to retain your balance. A quick glance to the side reveals that the man on the cube has vanished entirely. Perhaps it's just your imagination, but the cube appears larger than before as well. The commander gets back on his feet and begins to spread his arms in the air again.
You take stock of the situation. You are currently standing just next to the cube, about a metre and a half from the commander, wielding the ceremonial stone knife. You also have an ordinary knife in your pocket. To your South is an open doorway leading to the next room, which, as far as you can see, is empty. This is where you last saw the other two guards go to. The commander is standing with his back against a stack of large wooden crates, of which there are many others around the room. His armour covers his entire body, including his head. It is composed of plates, overlapping at the joints. It is a dull matte grey colour, apart from the visor which is black. He appears to be looking over your head rather than directly at you, having presumably realised that you possess something dangerous to look at.
fart
Hide behind the cube.
Wonder if Jesus had a penis.
Crotch-void cube for science and discovery!
>>651
As a 2D little girl, you are physiologically incapable of flatulence.
>>652
You dive to the side and crouch behind the cube. The commander summons an enormous ball of fire between his arms and hurls it towards you. You hear a loud roar and feel a rush of hot air wash around the sides of your hiding place, but you are uninjured. The cube, however, begins to shriek with pain and rock from side to side.
>>653
You devote a moment's thought to the topic of Jesus Christ's genitalia. There is exactly one reference to Jesus' penis in the bible that you know of, that being the circumcision of Jesus, which took place eight days after his birth. Furthermore, there is a legendary relic known as the Holy Prepuce which is, supposedly, the severed foreskin of Jesus. Though by no means definite, this strongly suggests that Jesus did possess a penis for at least some of his life, and you see no particular reason to assume otherwise.
>>654
While the commander is preparing his next attack, you lift your skirt and attempt to envelop the black cube with your crotch. As it is currently moving about quite a bit, you put a hand on it to steady yourself. To your shock, it is scalding hot, and worse still, your hand binds to it. Pull as you might, your hand is stuck fast.
Unperturbed, you progress with your plan, and thrust your crotch towards the nearest corner of the cube. As soon as the two meet, there is an overwhelming howling sound. The lights go out and you are plunged into complete darkness. You feel a terrible rending in your lower body, as though you are being torn in half. As well as the pain, you experience extreme vertigo, as though you are falling, plummeting through some endless void; as though reality itself has been sucked away and all that remains is you, the cube and the void, and the cube is trying to kill you. You die.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 30
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>650)
Face sit on the commander.
Offer to spare the commander's life in exchange for his body armor.
>>656
You take a run up and jump, crotch first, into the commander's face. Thankfully, you catch him before he manages to summon his next projectile. He is knocked backwards against the crates and slumps to the ground. You cannot tell what he is or isn't seeing inside his visor, but he somehow avoids the allure of the void and continues to struggle. You wrap your legs around the back of his head, and thus are able to resist his desperate attempts to push you away.
>>657
He makes no response, but persists in struggling.
You currently have him quite well incapacitated. You could easily push him into the void from where you are, but would then be deprived of the potential mana and skill points. On the other hand, to do anything else would most likely require leaving yourself open to danger once more.
Remove his helmet with the blunt stone knife.
Demand goof butts.
Find something to shoot and curse quietly whilst doing so.
>>659
Seeing that this man apparently holds his body armour above his own life, you show no mercy and strike his helmet over and over again with the stone knife, like a bird trying to break a snail shell, in order to find some way to release it. Eventually, you succeed by using the knife as a lever at the joint on the back of his neck. The helmet pops off to reveal the same bearded man, eyes tightly screwed together.
>>660
The man shakes his head from side to side. You can't be sure whether this is a refusal or an attempt to shake you off, but you suspect the latter.
>>661
You look for some sort of secondary weapon the commander might have - his companions were mostly armed with laser weapons, which it would be prudent to relieve him of, and useful to own. You are so frustrated with yourself for not having thought of this earlier that you can't help mouthing some disparaging comments as you search.
You cannot locate anything shootable - worse still, the commander makes makes use of your lapse in concentration to grab you by the legs and throw you off. You land on your back, just next to the cube. The commander gets back to his feet and begins to run away to the South.
Use commander as the requisite shootable object.
Inspect cube.
Give cube a firm talking to.
Pirouette.
>>663
Gosh darn it, you think to yourself, why didn't that commander chap have the decency to carry something you could shoot? And why is shoot both a transitive and an intransitive verb? It's so confusing! If you can shoot a gun then it's shootable, but if you can shoot a person then they are also shootable. And that commander is just so very shootable!
Well, you decide, if life gives you shootable objects, shoot them - whatever that may entail. You take your stone knife and shoot it at the commander with your hand. Well, throw it. Close enough. The spinning projectile strikes him, hilt first, in the back of his head. He collapses to the ground with a thud, dead.
For killing a sapient creature, you have gained one skill point and fifty mana. You currently have 105 mana.
>>664
The cube is completely black and unreflective and, in size, a bit less than a cubic metre. It seems to absorb almost all the light that falls on it. You cannot see any markings on it whatsoever, from any angle.
>>665
"Now listen here, cube," you say, wagging your finger at it crossly, "What are you, anyway? Why are you here? And what did you do with that poor gentleman who was lying on top of you?" The cube has nothing to say for itself. "Well, I say! I've never met such an impertinent Platonic solid. Really, you should be most ashamed of yourself." The cube whines piteously.
>>666
Having been successful in both disposing of the commander and telling off the cube, you decide to express your elation by spinning around on one foot gracefully. I mean, it worked out so well last time, didn't it? Did it? You can't remember. With a gentle hop and a push from your other leg, you set off twirling about, a breathtaking vision of elegance. It was certainly worthy of a gold medal, you think. Such a shame no one was around to see it.
As soon as the world stops spinning, you become aware that something is wrong. You look around. The door - the only exit to the room - has vanished! You run your hands over the wall. There is no trace of it. It is as though the doorway was simply never there. You look up at the skylight, by which you entered, several metres above you. For an instant you see a face looking back down at you, then it is gone.
Collect stone knife and use it to engrave graffiti of a penis on the wall.
Draw a door on the wall, knock three times.
Try to reanimate the cube.
>>668
You make your way over to where the commander is lying, face down, near the South wall, and reclaim the stone knife. Making the best use of your lack of supervision and mischievous nature, you decide to carve a phallus into the wall - just like the Romans used to. Unfortunately, being an innocent little girl, you aren't awfully well versed in penile anatomy. The result of your careful engraving looks sort of like an ill proportioned mushroom sprouting from between two pincushions. The knife is now even blunter and more useless than it was when you found it.
>>669
Electing to try something a little less complicated this time, you carve a door into the South wall, more or less where its real counterpart was earlier. It doesn't look terribly realistic, in all honesty. Nonetheless, as the closest you've got to an accessible exit, you decide to give it a chance, by knocking firmly on it three times. Nothing happens.
Just as you are about to give up hope, you hear three knocks in response, from the same direction.
>>670
You cannot reanimate the cube because it is still alive.
Knock on the door in morse code:
--- ...- . .-. / - .... . / -- --- --- -. / --. .-. . .- - / ... -.- -.-- / .-.. --- .-.. .. / - --- / .. ... ... .... ---
>>672
After a pause, there comes a response:
.--- -.-. / .. ... / - .... .- - / -.-- --- ..-
Knock:
-.-- . ... / --- .--. . -. / ..- .--. / .--. .-.. --..
And run in as soon as possible if it actually opens.
Kiss the first sapient object we see.
Seek justice for Trayvon
...by making an interpretative dance of Trayvon's murder.
(OOC) do some push-ups whilst game isn't responding.
>>674
The reply comes:
...-.
>>675
You walk over to the cube and kneel beside it, all sweetness and light, before giving it a gentle kiss on the upper face. The cube blushes profusely.
>>676
You wait patiently for another sapient object to show up. You wait quite a while, in fact. So long you fall asleep in the meantime. You are woken up by an immense explosion, only a few metres from your head. You jump to your feet, wondering if you've suddenly developed Exploding Head Syndrome, but find instead that a large, black hole has appeared in the wall to the East. Standing in the gaping aperture, flakes of plaster falling around her, is your darling Continue-chan, looking a little dishevelled. She's carrying a laser gun slung over her shoulder.
"Conundrum-chan," she begins urgently, "We haven't got much time, we need t--" She is interrupted by you firmly grabbing her head in both hands and licking at her face affectionately, like a cute little kitten. She just stands still and patiently waits for you to stop.
Masturbation Continue-chan has joined your party.
>>677,678,679
Releasing Continue-chan, you make your way out of the aperture and begin prancing and jumping about in the open space beyond. Now, you are a black youth making your way to the local convenience store; now, you are a Hispanic gentleman making a call to the emergency services. You whip your arms back and forth to symbolise unidentified cries for help in the background of a telephone call. Just as you are getting to the crescendo, Continue-chan grabs your arm and pulls you forwards into a line of trees and bushes, a few metres away from the side of the building you just came from.
She puts a hand firmly over your mouth, muffling your cries of outrage. As you watch from behind a screen of foliage, a little girl dressed in a frilly pink dress walks slowly down the side of the building from the North. She is dragging a large, black shape behind her. It takes a few moments for you to work out what it is. It's Mecha Alexei Fujiwara, being dragged by the feet!
>>680
You aren't sure who or what "game" is, but they certainly aren't responding to you. You decide to express your indignation by performing some push ups, much to Continue-chan's obvious distress. The rustling in the undergrowth attracts the attention of the girl in pink, who shoots a penetrating glare directly at you. Well, she would do, apart from that her eye sockets are completely empty. With no facial expression whatsoever, she takes something sharp from the back of her dress - a dart? a needle? you aren't sure - and throws it at you. You are killed instantly.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 31
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>681)
Do something fun. Such as stealthily following the weird girl in pink into her hideout. Try to imitate Solid Snake as much as possible.
>>682
You and Continue-chan follow the girl in pink from around ten metres away. Thankfully, the sound of Mecha Alexei Fujiwara's body being dragged provides good cover for your footsteps, and the girl does not seem particularly wary of her surroundings. You follow her along a rough track through the forest which climbs steadily uphill for several hundred metres, pretending all the way to be a stealthy special agent on a solitary secret mission of vital importance. This successfully keeps you from doing anything spectacularly inappropriate or stupid, such as trying to do push ups in the undergrowth.
You pass many forks in the road. Given the darkness and the self-similarity of the forest you suspect that even an expert covert spy/soldier such as yourself would have great difficulty navigating your way back. Just before a corner, you are startled by a faint mewing noise coming from behind you. You and Continue-chan turn to find that the enigmatic black cube from earlier has materialised before you, looking slightly sorry for itself. It is also somewhat smaller than last time you saw it.
An unnamed enigmatic black cube has joined your party.
You continue your tactical espionage on the girl in pink, but, around the next corner, find yourself on the edge of a small clearing - perhaps ten metres in diameter - with no sign of her.
Name the black cube Stove Stove. Dig.
Inspect the ceiling
Go back and take the forks.
Ask Stove Stove to transform into Big Penis.
>>684
The cube is now called Stove Stove.
You scrape at the earth at your feet with your bare hands. The ground is hard, dry and unyielding. It is so dark you can barely even see what you're doing, anyway. You acquire nothing but disappointment and dirty fingernails.
>>685
You look up to where the ceiling ought to be. Instead, there is only an array of cold, distant points of light, feebly trying to reject their fate; radiating their very being outwards into the infinite, empty void of space, to which they will inevitably succumb in a mere few billion years. Your view of the beautiful, horrifying, vertiginous starscape is, however, obstructed by a girl in a frilly pink dress, hovering several metres above your head. She is holding Mecha Alexei Fujiwara upside down by the ankle. From your vantage point you can see up her skirt into a tantalisingly dangerous briar of petticoats.
>>686
You employ the training you gained by imitating a certain non-fluid legless reptile on the way here, and duck under the cover of the nearby trees, while whispering to Continue-chan to provide you with cover. As you run, close to the ground, through the undergrowth, whipped in the face by the trees' thorny appendages, you hear the unmistakeable sound of laser fire from behind you. Eventually, thirty metres down the path, you break cover and combat roll to the foot of a mound of forks. The girl in pink does not seem to have followed you.
There are hundreds of them, piled unceremoniously by the pathside. They are almost all silver, mostly plain but some of them quite ornate, embossed with floral patterns or with ends whipped into spiralling shapes. You stuff as many as you can - twelve - into your pockets. You are now carrying a cleaning rag, a lock of Continue-chan's hair, a bloodstained knife (in your left hand), a ceremonial stone knife (in your right hand), and twelve assorted silver forks.
From back where you left your companions, you see flashes of laser fire, a dark shape darting back and forth above the forest canopy, and, beneath it, faint flashes and gleams of something you can't recognise.
>>687
You cannot find Stove Stove.
Run back to companions. Magic heal Stove Stove if needed.
Massage prepubescent nipples and sigh
Keep massaging your sigh.
Arm yourself with a badass scythe.
>>689
Having gathered your all-important forks, you make haste back up the path to where your companions are fighting for their lives. You find Continue-chan in the middle of the clearing, firing her laser gun into the sky at the girl in pink. The girl in pink, meanwhile, is darting back and forth, Mecha Alexei Fujiwara still in tow, dodging the lasers and simultaneously throwing scores of tiny needle shaped projectiles at her assailant. The clouds of needles are intercepted by Stove Stove, who seems to keep disappearing and reappearing to block their trajectories.
You cannot tell whether or not Stove Stove is injured, but you spend 15 mana healing them just in case. You have 90 mana remaining. There is no appreciable change.
>>690
Seeing that you are in no immediate danger, you drop your weapons and run your hands up your blouse, gently plucking at and rubbing your soft, untouched nipples. The tender, yet insistent stimulation is something entirely new to you. You cannot help but begin to moan in ecstasy. "Ahh... Aaaaahh! Aaaa~aaargh!" You say. The conflict before you continues as before.
You take your hands out from under your clothes and sigh dramatically, then massage the air in front of your mouth. It doesn't bring you quite the same pleasure as fondling your breasts, but is, nonetheless, an interesting experience.
>>691
As you watch, the girl in pink flies down close to the ground, just above the canopy of the forest, and attempts to catch Continue-chan from the side. This fiendish attack is, thankfully, nullified by Stove Stove, but Continue-chan's counterattack - a burst of laser fire - catches the top of a nearby tree, instantly setting it ablaze.
You pay no attention to this exchange, as you are busy rubbing your hands in front of your face, for some strange reason.
>>692
You take a suitable branch from the nearby forest, and, using your lock of Continue-chan's hair, tie the bloodstained knife perpendicularly to the end to form a makeshift scythe. You require both hands to wield it properly, but your right hand is currently occupied by the ceremonial stone knife.
Assess badass-ness of scythe.
Strap ceremonial knife to blouse. Equip scythe. Do a scythe dance.
Summon "Asses of Badassness"
>>694
You contemplate your newly crafted agricultural tool and/or weapon. The quality of badassness is difficult to assess at the best of times, you lament, but this specimen is especially open to debate. Firstly, the use of a bloodstained knife is quite dramatic (especially what with it being the blood of your childhood sweetheart, whom you murdered in cold blood), but alas the knife is too straight to form the epitomic scythe shape. Similarly, the use of human hair to tie it together is symbolically quite compelling, but in practice renders the head liable to come detached. Finally, the use of a simple branch that happened to be at hand for the handle is, ultimately, neither here nor there in terms of badassery.
You conclude that, in all honesty, it's actually not that badass - if anything, it's just slightly creepy and morbid.
>>695
You are not in possession of anything that can easily be used as a strap. Instead, you make do by slipping the stone knife down your blouse's collar and clamping it in place with your chin. It's quite precarious, but just about stays so long as you don't make any sudden movements. With your hands now free, you hold the scythe in the natural grip. (It'd be much more natural if you weren't missing two fingers, you grumble to yourself, but there's nothing to be done about that now).
Having had your previous interpretive dance so rudely interrupted, you decide to perform a dance in honour of your new scythe. You make sweeping motions to represent reaping grains, or possibly the souls of medieval peasants. You leap from one foot to the other, symbolising the leap of logic from the literal to the figurative. For the grand finale, you raise your scythe in both hands up to the sky (representing, of course, the bourgeoisie) then, while jumping in the air, bring it down through an arc, brushing against the cold earth beneath (to represent the dregs of society; human detritus) and holding it out at arm's reach, pirouetting with all your might, spinning once, twice, three times (the inevitability and twisted equality of death) - scythe whistling through the air - before coming to a beautifully composed stop.
This entire profound, unlikely orchestration is lit by the exquisitely sympathetic background of the forest behind you slowly burning, as the blaze from earlier has spread at an alarming rate - burning, just like that one unspent skill point burning a hole in your metaphorical pocket - and, of course, the ongoing battle between Continue-chan, Stove Stove and the mysterious girl in pink.
>>696
You feel strangely invigorated by your earlier dancing. You are consumed by the need to imbue your new tool with a name, one befitting a weapon of such calibre. "Asses of Badassness," you call out, "I summon thee!"
Continue-chan - and possibly Stove Stove as well, though it's hard to tell - are distracted by your declaration, and the girl in pink takes advantage with a single needle shot almost straight down towards Continue-chan. It impales her left foot, pinning it to the ground. Continue-chan grits her teeth, clearly in great pain but unable to relinquish her cool, stoic façade. She is, however, quite clearly immobilised and pinned in place, leaving her quite vulnerable.
Call girl in pink a mildly vulgar name.
When the MGiP swoops in to attack Continue, swipe at her neck with Asses of Badassness.
Seize the 700GET.
Allocate skill point to Pole Dancing.
>>698
"Hey, you fustilarian!" you shout at the girl in pink. She pauses in mid-air and turns her black, vacuous eye sockets to face you. Momentarily distracted, she is very nearly hit by a laser shot by Continue-chan, dodging it by mere centimetres.
>>699
You charge into the clearing, wielding your weapon, so as to be in place to let your Asses of Badassness taste blood for the first time. Alas, your combatant seems more inclined to stick to her ranged weaponry. This is not entirely unreasonable, as she doesn't appear to be in possession of any melee weapon. Thankfully Stove Stove is more than happy to continue acting as an interceptor.
>>700
You try to lay claim to the coveted 700GET, but cannot as you lack a suitable device with internet access. Even if you could, unfortunately somebody - as some sort of sick joke - has already taken it from you with a post, itself, commanding you to claim it, as though simply to taunt you.
>>701
Try as you might, you cannot will this skill point to become assigned to the Pole Dancing skill, possibly because you just made that skill type up. It doesn't matter, you rationalise; you are already so innately talented at all types of dancing that you need no super-/unnatural aid in such matters.
The girl in pink retreats a few metres to the edge of the forest, hovering gently just above the flaming foliage, sheathed in smoke. She drops Mecha Alexei Fujiwara to the ground, where he lands in a limp pile. Meanwhile, the girl raises both arms above her head and begins to chant something - you cannot hear over the crackling of the fire. Continue-chan stops firing, staring cautiously at the girl. You grab her hand (the one not occupied by a laser gun) for consolation. Stove Stove places itself between the two of you and the girl, quivering slightly with apprehension.
Heal Continue-chan's leg so we can make a getaway
>>703
Making good use of all of those skill points you put into the healing skill, you carefully remove the foreign body that has rudely intricated itself into your darling Continue-chan's foot. You then use your basic magical healing skill on the limb until the bleeding stops. Thankfully, as your patient is undead and, hence, no longer has or needs a functioning circulatory system, you only incur a loss of 10 mana, leaving you with 80 mana remaining. You consider also employing your dress wound skill, but the only thing you can think of that would make a suitable bandage is your own pantsu, and that would be far too lewd. Your cheeks flush crimson at the very thought.
Continue-chan now seems in a fit state to make a strategic retreat, or keep fighting, depending on how things unfold. The chanting of the girl in pink, which has been steadily increasing in volume, stops abruptly. You look up to find that she has vanished.
It's a trap! She's probably gonna pop up behind us! Stove Stove, protect us!
Wait, wait. Are you saying Continue-chan is a trap?
Check Continue-chan's crotch for a penis.
>>705
This sudden disappearance of your adversary can only be a sign of dishonourable artifice, you conclude. You spin around, expecting a needle to the back, but she is not there either. Indeed, however much you or Continue-chan whip your heads back or forth, you see no sign of her.
You play as Stove Stove to protect the two damsels of the party. You quickly locate a deadly projectile falling gently down from somewhere above - to the untrained eye it may appear like a simple envelope, but you know that it is no doubt full of anthrax spores or something equally nefarious. Using your short range teleportation (active skill), you bat it out of the air, letting it land near the non-burning end of the clearing, a few metres from the delightful young ladies in your charge.
>>706
Returning your consciousness to the entity known as Jack Conundrum-chan, you find your doubt and suspicion still unabated. Why has the girl in pink vanished? Why doesn't she feel the need to fight? Is it because she knows your party to already be compromised? Continue-chan has been wounded by that needle; what if it was laced with some sort of psychoactive agent? Has Continue-chan been turned into some sort of evil trap to ensnare or kill you? Does the word trap have some ancillary meaning you aren't aware of? You have many questions, but no answers.
>>707
Now that you've established that Continue-chan is a potential traitor, you feel the need to ascertain what else might she be hiding from you. As you well know, the best place to hide things - such as, for instance, a penis - is in your crotch, as to search there is considered by most a serious taboo. Of course, if your crotch happens to contain an all-consuming void it mightn't be quite such an excellent hiding place, but there's no reason to suppose that Continue-chan's crotch is anything like yours.
You watch as Continue-chan walks over to the envelope that just dropped from the sky, bends over to pick it up, and tears it open. She reads the contents studiously by the light of the burning foliage to your rear. You hear her utter a gentle gasp of shock, and take the opportunity to flip up her skirt, pull down her pantsu and inspect her crotch. "Dame!" exclaims Continue-chan, a few seconds too late.
Sticking out of her crotch is a black and white kitten's head. You stare at the kitten. The kitten stares back at you. The kitten jumps inquisitively out, towards you, landing in your lap. It mews gently. It is followed, swiftly, by another kitten, this time ginger. This is followed by two more, then three, then many more. The space between Continue-chan's thighs is simply a flowing mass of soft fur, wide eyes and little pink noses. They swarm outwards, more and more, faster and faster. "Oh dear god," screams Continue-chan, "What did you do‽" You cannot reply as you have been thrown to the ground by the endless stream of kittens, and are too winded to speak. You are soon buried entirely in kittens. You just barely hear Continue-chan's last words - "No! Not like this!" - when you begin suffocating under the hot, fluffy mass of kittens. Before long you stop struggling and accept your fate. You hear a playful meow in your ear as you consciousness fades away, for good.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 32
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>704)
Grab the envelope and use envelope opening (active skill) and literacy (passive skill) to read it.
Grab the envelope after it falls and use envelope open (active skill) and literacy (passive skill) to read the contents.
Double post because of verification code issues.
Have the totally random and completely unrelated to erased time threads thought that maybe death by too much pussy isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Enrich ourselves by meditating on our past mistakes from previous lifetimes.
Fantasise about that scientist we killed by the fountain.
>>709
You have a sudden urge to grab an envelope and read its contents. But you're in the middle of a forest; where on earth would you find something like that? Envelopes, in your humble experience, are associated with the postal service, and are usually found in places such as postboxes and post offices; not in forests. Really, what were you thinking with this willy-nilly envelope opening and letter reading?
>>710
Just as you're thinking this, an envelope lands on your head. You run your finger under the tab, tearing open the top edge, and pull out a neatly folded A4 sheet of paper. It reads:
To whom it may concern,
I do hereby formally challenge the recipient of this letter to a duel, to take place in the clearing in which last we met, at the next sunrise. Let it be known that the challenging party shall wield an espada ropera; the challenged party may fight with the aid of any weapon of their choosing. In the case of defeat on the part of the challenged party, the challenged party shall pledge their lives to the service of the good Lady Cassandra. In the case of victory on the part of the challenged party, the challenger shall pledge their life to the service of the challenged party.
Yours faithfully,
Jacqueline Conundra
>>711
You find the overly ornate, cursive writing so difficult to decipher it is almost like a code. Furthermore, though it is tempting to conclude that this was written by the girl in pink, you could really do with some sort of verification of this assumption. Indeed, you find your verification/code issues so troubling that you decide to write out a double of the item of post you just received. Unfortunately you cannot, as you lack a usable writing implement.
>>712
You have a strange, inexplicable thought, the significance of which you cannot even guess at.
>>713
You aren't aware of any previous lifetimes you've had; that would be silly. I mean, you've had plenty of near death experiences, but it's not as though you've actually died and then somehow relived the preceding moments differently or anything like that. How would that work, anyway?
Apart from that... you have some vague, yet quite troubling memories of a dream you had - or was it a dream? - when you passed out in the field on your way to your first day of chuugakkou. You could've sworn, for instance, that you'd seen your future Sensei somewhere before...
>>714
You recall something so horrifying that part of you struggles desperately to repress it from yourself. Somewhere, in some strange, other world, you murdered someone - an innocent woman of science - while she lay helpless, unconscious on the floor. The blood! Who would have thought the lady to have had so much blood in her? Out, damned spot! Out, you say!
Once you're quite done fantasising about dubious acts of murder in parallel universes, you turn to thinking about plans for the immediate future. You have only a few hours at most until dawn in which time to prepare, or sleep, or run away. The forest is still on fire, Mecha Alexei Fujiwara is still lying unconscious a few metres away, and you still have one unspent skill point.
Put skill point into pyromancy. Enjoy the fire.
Tell Continue-chan about the duel and ask to borrow her laser weapon. Revive Mecha Alexei with necromancy? Healing? A new battery? Whatever it takes.
Wait for challenger to arrive.
Ask for Easy-to-wield-instant-death-laser-with-autoaim to challenger, as per instructed. Refuse to duel if the weapon is not offered to us, as that would not comply with the duel agreement we celebrated previously.
Draw Big Penis on Alexei's cheek before he wakes up.
>>716
You now have level three pyromancy. You have unlocked the following skill:
Magical firelighting (active skill): Can spontaneously produce a small flame between thumb and forefinger. Costs one unit of mana per second.
You gaze into the fire, taking the time to appreciate the warm colours, the fluid, dancing motion of the flames, as contrasted with the sedate spiralling of the smoke above; the playful crackling noises, the ashy smell in the air, and the feeling of the radiated heat against your skin. How delightful.
>>717
Continue-chan is only too happy to offer her laser gun, however you cannot possibly carry it along with the ceremonial stone knife and Asses of Badassness. Both the laser gun and Asses of Badassness require both hands to wield properly, although you could probably just about sheath the stone knife somewhere in your clothing, if it weren't already full of forks.
You attempt to revivify your long-suffering cybernetically enhanced companion. He is breathing, shallowly, and if you put your ear to his clockwork eye you can hear a faint ticking, but otherwise he seems dead to the world. Alas, you cannot use any of your reanimation skills on him as he is already reanimated, you cannot heal him as you cannot locate any injuries, and you don't have any batteries. You settle for using your place in recovery position (active skill) on him, to little obvious effect.
>>718
You sit, waiting, staring into the slowly receding fire, until the sky turns grey and the stars silently fade from sight. Just as the sunlight breaks over your particular patch of forest, the girl in pink rematerialises behind you, sword in hand. You make your demand to her and make quite clear that your participation in the duel depends on it. A business card sized piece of paper appears in front of you. It reads:
The responsibility of provision of weaponry rests upon the duellist wielding said weapon. Furthermore, refusal to fight for any reason shall be interpreted as a concession of defeat.
>>719
Hilarious as that would no doubt be, you lack any suitable writing utensil.
Drop Asses of Badassness in order to wield Continue's laser; shoot at the girl in pink, aiming at the penile region, because if Touhou fandom has taught us anything it's that floaty magical girls in fancy dresses who shoot needles around are generally hermaphrodites.
Press shift for focused movement.
Change to イージーモード.
>>721
You abandon your slapdash improvised scythe in favour of the more reliable and, frankly, more badass laser gun. You aren't sure what a "Touhou fandom" is, or what it/they has taught you, but you do have some idea the untold horrors that lurk in little girls' crotches and thus decide that this would be the best place to aim your first attack. By the time you level the barrel and pull the trigger, however, she has already dodged well out of the way. Another small piece of paper floats down in front of you.
Much as I admire your enthusiasm, let us first settle the conditions of the duel. Are we to fight a) to the first blood b) until vocal admission of defeat or c) to the death?
>>722
You missed! You need to focus your movement, you decide. To calibrate your fine motor control and reaction time, you sheathe your firearm and, charging boldly forth, attempt to press your index finger up your fellow duellist's dress and into her shift, which you assume she's probably wearing somewhere underneath. You catch her off guard and very nearly succeed, hand brushing alluringly against the soft fabric of her befrilled undergarments, but don't encounter the telltale resistance of a direct hit, as she has already retreated upwards into the air. She appears somewhat flustered.
>>723
Having set the difficulty to Hard Mode back at >>545,548 you are now finding the combat somewhat more challenging than you'd care to admit. Unfortunately, as you are now a chuugakusei, it is no longer acceptable to play on Easy Mode. You would sooner die than incur such shame.
Duel to death
Curse quietly
Save game. Really save it.
Hide behind Stove Stove
>>725 and if we meet death, duel past it and keep duelling through un-death and into the afterlife.
>>725
"To the death!" you declare melodramatically. Another note meanders out of the air in front of you, reading:
Very good. The duel may begin at your discretion.
You take a deep breath, straighten your spine, and glance sideways at Continue-chan. For all that she has become quite an imposing character since your betrayal and her death, just now she looks every bit the timid schoolgirl you knew and loved. Her hands are clasped together at her breast, and her face is awash with anguish. "Please," she whispers, "Conundrum-chan, don't die."
>>726
"May your sword rust and be blunted, may your garish frilled garments rot away, and may your aberrant, unjustifiable existence be swiftly and promptly put to an end, you godless, eyeless monster." you mutter in the general direction of your opponent. She tries to give no acknowledgement to the comment, but you can see her lip twitch.
>>727
(Game saved)
(New save file created: >>730.sav)
>>728
In a moment of weakness and fear, you run away and hide behind the comforting regularity and smoothness of Stove Stove, who is perched nearby. Your opponent seems to interpret this as the start of the duel, and darts through the air, over your head, landing a few paces in front of you, sword pointed straight at you.
She lunges at you, and, as you are cowering in fear, you cannot dodge or counterattack fast enough. The cold steel pierces your thorax and cuts straight into your heart. You die.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 33
You attempt to challenge the GAME OVER to a duel, but cannot because your consciousness no longer exists in any meaningful sense. Similarly, you cannot duel your way to undeath, as your body is not reanimated, nor into the afterlife, because it doesn't exist.
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>730)
Shoot at MiTG until she dies.
>>731
I mean MGiP, I don't even know how could I make such a mistake.
Show Jacqueline your oppai as a distraction.
Wonder if your prepubescent bust even counts as oppai.
Touch prepubescent bust.
Bust a move.
Bust a rhyme.
>>731,732
You fire lasers at the mysterious girl in pink - whom you now know to be called Jacqueline - like a very small, highly directional quasar. Unfortunately, you lack any training in the use of firearms, and thus are even more hopelessly unable to keep up with your opponent's deft movements than Continue-chan was earlier. Jacqueline jumps and bounds around, sword whipping by faster than you can even see, stubbornly refusing to put herself in the path of your deadly lasers.
>>733
Dropping your weapon temporarily, you lift your blouse and flash your diminutive chest at her. She pauses a moment, a metre or two away, and another piece of paper makes itself known to you.
Am I to interpret this as a gesture of surrender?
You suspect that her confusion arises from the similarity of your white blouse to a white flag, coupled with the fact you just laid down your arms.
>>734
You could be using this situation as an opportunity to commit perfidy, but instead get distracted by the semantics and application of the word oppai - as opposed to, for instance, chichi, chibusa or mune. Mune seems the most apt description of your bust to you, but that doesn't necessarily invalidate the other options.
>>735
You decide to gently fondle your mune by way of research. Just at that moment, Jacqueline thrusts her sword straight at your upper chest. It lodges in your left hand, between your carpus and the ends of your metacarpals. The pain is excruciating. "Aaaaaaaargh!" you scream. Your opponent appears unimpressed, and attempts to withdraw her weapon for another attack. Alas, it proves to be quite well lodged in your lower hand.
>>736
You try to come up with something to distract yourself from the agonising pain; something calming, reminiscent of better times. You decide to perform a nice pirouette to ease your distress. You spin hard enough to pluck the sword right out of your rival's hand, and after half a turn the centrifugal force looses it from your hand as well, leaving it arcing across the clearing and into the undergrowth with a spray of blood.
>>737
You cannot resist making a quip towards your now disarmed adversary. "You may have thought me harmless... but now I've left you armless!"
Crack Jaqueline in the head with the back end of your gun, a move also known as a "buttstroke".
Finish her off with Asses of Badassness.
Declare her a sore loser.
Collect a stick of charcoal from burnt forest. Use it to draw Big Penis on her cheek, and Alexei's too since we couldn't earlier.
Before doing that, magic heal our own left hand!!
>>739
As she is still stunned, you take the laser gun from the floor and stroke Jacqueline's butt. No, wait, that's not right. You strike her a brutal blow to the head with the non laser emitting end, knocking her to the ground and likely dirtying her lovely pink frilly dress.
>>740
As she probably won't be getting up again any time soon, you decide you can afford to finish her off in style. You take Asses of Badassness in both hands, holding it over your head, and swing it down into your opponent's unguarded chest. She gazes up at you with what might be a quite heartwarming, puppy-dog expression, were it not for the vacant eye sockets. The blade descends, up to the hilt, into her with an anticlimactic thump. She stops moving, and blood slowly seeps out of the wound. There are a few seconds of merciful silence, then one last missive flutters down from above, reading:
Tell Alexei I love h
The handwriting is shaky, and ends as nothing more than a thin smudge of ink across the remainder of the paper.
For killing a sapient creature, you have gained one skill point and fifty mana. You currently have 130 mana.
>>741
Why should it be your job to play Cupid here? It's her fault if she never confessed to her - admittedly unresponsive - lover. What a sore loser, as far as romance is concerned, you think.
>>743
You spend 25 mana healing your left hand, leaving you 105 mana. It stops bleeding and begins to scab over, but is still fairly painful. Your hand is still usable, and thankfully doesn't seem to have suffered any nervous damage - had the sword struck your carpal tunnel things would be quite different.
>>742
You leisurely make your way into the burnt forest edge - it smells of fire, such a delightful smell - and take a blackened lump that was formerly a piece of tree. You wish it was still on fire; it was much prettier that way. You use the charcoal to draw little phalli on Jacqueline's and Mecha Alexei's cheeks. If they could not be united in love in this world, at least they can be united in facial defacement in the next.
You are in a nondescript clearing in the middle of a forest, with a burnt patch nearby and a path leading away. Continue-chan and Stove Stove are members of your party, and potentially Mecha Alexei Fujiwara, but he seems to be unconscious. As far as weaponry is concerned, there is nearby a laser gun, a ceremonial stone knife, Asses of Badassness and an espada ropera. Given that only two of you can wield weapons, you really don't need - nor can you carry - all of these.
Check if Alexei's mecha parts have a reset button or something.
Leave Asses of Badassness with Jacqueline's corpse. Give the laser gun back to Continue-chan. Strap the ceremonial stone knife somewhere in our clothing (first dropping a few forks to make room.) Take and equip the espada ropera.
Put skill point into Pyromancy.
If Mecha Alexei proves unrevivable, hide him in the forest under some bushes or something until we can find a way to revive him.
Regret nothing.
Place Jacqueline's corpse on Stove Stove and stab her heart with the ceremonial stone knife while singing something patriotic.
Let the Eagles cry.
>>745
Mecha Alexei's clockwork bits look, from the outside at least, indistinguishable from the genuine article. You can't find any buttons, switches or other mechanical input devices.
>>746
Safe from attack for now, you leave Asses of Badassness by poor Jacqueline's body, where it may lie as a testament to your bloodlust and cruelty. You return the laser gun to Continue-chan. Emptying one of your pockets of forks - leaving you six remaining - and tearing a hole in the bottom of it gives you a little strap in your skirt in which you can hang the stone knife. Lastly, you claim the espada ropera for your own. The tip is still stained with your blood. You find the weapon to be light and nimble, well suited to your size and strength.
You now have level four pyromancy. You have unlocked the following skill:
Small fireball (active skill): Can summon and cast a fireball, approximately 15cm in diameter. Requires one free hand. Costs 15 mana per fireball.
Mecha Alexei Fujiwara remains unresponsive, but you can't be sure if he's truly unrevivable. Surely, you feel, if you just knew how he came to be like this, there must be something you could do... Until that time, you decide to conceal him a few metres into the forest, on the opposite side to the burnt patch. You try your best to be free of remorse, but find that you still have some lingering guilt over murdering the lovely Continue-chan, amongst other things.
>>747
With Continue-chan's aid, you drag Jacqueline's inanimate body onto Stove Stove. You take the stone knife from its makeshift sheath and begin singing God Save the Queen, only to find that the corpse you were about to desecrate is being slowly absorbed by Stove Stove. It sinks away and vanishes before your very eyes.
>>748
Though you don't particularly feel inclined to cry yourself, the lachrymatory habits of large birds of prey are, you decide, entirely their own business.