Temporal Rift RPG

[Turbo Tyrannophonic]

The sword-wielder stepped inside after her companion, looking around. The place had definitely seen better days; its trek from another world left it broken and abandoned. To some, it may serve as a powerful message - such a simple thing, full of life, taken for granted in one's everyday existence, destroyed and left in ruins.

"I wonder if any of the food survived."

[C S]

Heavy footsteps ensued in response to the inquiry, the man making great haste to the back of the restaurant, vaulting over the counter. He stepped around the dispensers and other facets of fast food industry, the steel tables where the orders were put together before being handed to customers lined up on the other side of the employee area, the containers full of napkins and wrappers and some such.

He swerved into the kitchen. The grills were inactive, the grease in their collection pans becoming a strange state of matter in the cold, almost gelatinous to the eye. The few burger patties that he could see in the open had spots of white that looked vaguely like ice but not quite so.

There were several bodies in the kitchen. Some of them were recognizable as human, wearing the burger restaurant's uniforms still as they were laid out on the floor, a few braced against cabinets and sitting against cupboards with glassy eyes. Many of them were things that the man could not identify beyond the fact that they also appeared to be deceased. He couldn't describe their features, but their clothing seemed warm enough with the puffy sleeves and neckline.

It did not take long for him to identify the cause of death: half-eaten patties that the beings clung to even in death. A few chunks hung on the corners of their mouths. What he hoped to be their mouths.

[Turbo Tyrannophonic]

The woman appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, her expression souring instantly.

"Aw. Dammit."

[C S]

"Yeah. Just... yeah. Turns out that just being in an icebox isn't enough to k-- wait minute. You try to get some warm clothes off of these cold bodies," the man said, suddenly struck by some form of inspiration and insight. He took wide steps in between the corpses on the floor, swinging himself about the kitchen while bowlegged, dancing in between the bodies until he reached the far back of the room. There stood a huge steel fridge. The way it was angled, the door pointed towards the tilt of the building, it should have swung open when the restaurant was plopped down in the snow. Fortunately, there was a dead employee at the base of it, their body offering an adequate brace to keep the door from opening on its own accord.

"Your sacrifice means that we won't go hungry, dead stranger," he said humbly to the corpse, "thank you."

With that, he kicked the body with his heavy metal boot, sending it rolling down the inclined floor. He yanked the fridge door open and, with wide, teary eyes, regarded the bounty of frozen foods safely locked away in barriers of plastic. The gleeful man pulled a few stacks of patties and bags of french fries out of the container and held them in view of his companion, a wide grin on his face.

[Turbo Tyrannophonic]

"Score!" the woman exclaimed, grinning back. With incredible agility, she danced her way through the corpses, intent on checking the supply of food herself.

[C S]

Organized on the shelves of the fridge were all kinds of preserved processed foods from a realm yonder, dressed in clear wrappers that had bits of ice covering them. Some of them were in boxes, which would undoubtedly help in hauling the food products out of the burger place in bulk. Reheating them in the middle of a frozen wasteland was another matter, though.

The man let his companion peruse the fridge in silence, occupying himself with observing the strange growths on the exposed burgers that seemed to spell doom for the outer beings that were piled up all over the floor. Had it not been for the cold stopping the decomposition process, the kitchen would have smelled of rotting flesh, the aliens producing who knows what as they decayed alongside the former employees. The appetites of the two travelers wouldn't have been a problem in such a scenario. If anything, they would have avoided the uprooted restaurant like the plague, because it was more likely than not that the place would have some incredibly viral disease lurking on filthy surfaces without any disinfectant.

"Frost fungus," the man acknowledged out loud. "The paper-hats probably died after being dumped in the middle of Snowsville, Snowland in the province of Really Really Cold and the... whatever-they-ares started eating food already taken by frost fungus. Sucks, to think they survived being dumped here only to bite it taking... bites... of bad food. At least, I hope that's what they were doing..."

[Turbo Tyrannophonic]

"That's nice and all," the woman said absently as she inspected a package of what appeared to be some sort of dessert, "but how exactly are we supposed to eat most of this stuff? We're in the middle of a frozen hell. And are we even sure it's safe to eat?"

[C S]

"I don't think the frost fungus learned how to open doors. Not yet, at least," said the man in the black cloak. He looked down at the foodstuffs he had in his hands and added, "The packaging is also intact so... I guess if we want to start cooking we can head back to the sledder and pop the hood. The engine might be fried, but that doesn't mean we can't use it to fry... other things."

[Turbo Tyrannophonic]

The sword-wielder shrugged. "I'll take your word for it," she replied, collecting as much food as her arms allowed.

[C S]

Her comrade put the burger stack and bag of fries on a table to take off his backpack. He then put them both inside of it and headed over to the woman's side, holding it open for her to fill. "You'll need free hands when we head back out," he reminded her. At least he had a gun stowed away for tricky situations. She insisted on swinging a big knife around. And being cold, what with her refusal of a change of clothes.

[Turbo Tyrannophonic]

The woman looked at her companion for a moment, half tempted to refuse. With a sigh, she put her armful of supplies into the backpack, stuffing it with as much food as it could take.

[C S]

With their loot acquired and dutifully carried on the back of the hooded traveler, the two set off again, following the snow trenches made by his trek from the broken down sledder. It was an easier trip heading back to the car. He simply retraced his steps, literally walking in the frozen rut that winded in between the discarded wrecks in the Dumping Grounds. It did not take long at all before the pillar of smoke became visible over the snow dunes in the junkyard.

"Yep," the man said as they closed in on the sledder, "It'll cook plenty things before the cold gets to it."

[Turbo Tyrannophonic]

"Finally, the hunk of junk is worth something!" the woman exclaimed, silently thankful she grabbed at least one thing that didn't need cooked to be edible.

[C S]

With a few bumps on the old metal and a few grunts of effort, the hooded man was able to pry the back plating of the sledder open. The smoke wafted out, rolling, huge. He stopped, dropped but was thankful that he didn't have to roll, and also thankful that he didn't breathe any of it in. When he stood up, the smoke was rising vertically, unimpeded, off of the steaming couplings and the cage of radiators that wrapped around the hunk of metal and smaller components. It all looked very complex and intricate.

He reached into his bag, pulled out a burger stack and opened the plastic wrapper. He slapped one onto the superheated metal. The circle of meat hissed, crackled and sizzled.

"Wow, that's really effective. Give it a flip with your sword when the bottom is all crispy and stuff."

[Turbo Tyrannophonic]

The swordswoman lazily drew her blade, the elegant weapon shimmering slightly in the reflected light of the snow. After a few moments of nothing but sizzling meat, the sword flashed, skillfully knocking the patty into the air and onto its opposite face.

"You know, if I weren't so hungry, I might've been offended that my role has been reduced to this."

[C S]

"We forgot to nab cooking utensils along with the stuff we wanted to cook. Go figure," her companion replied from his seat in the snow, beside his bag of supplies. He drew another two patties and, with a look of concentration, prepared to throw them onto the impromptu grill. He tossed them like a pair of frozen meat Frisbees, as that was what they were.

[The Kingpin]

A mechanical whir sounded as Jacob's side arm pulled itself back together from its maintenance mode state, gaps between various segments of the weapon disappearing as he put it back in its shoulder holster. Since the connection to home was severed, the former SAS soldier had made it a daily routine to check, clean and repair his weapons the moment they showed even the faintest traces of dirt and wear. He knew from experience that dirt and damage left to worsen would be much more costly for him in the long run, and while the ship was capable of reproducing damaged parts using Rift technology, he was certain they would not be up to the standards of the originals. The full repair suite he had in his armoury couldn't fix everything, and the spare parts he had available, while sufficient, were also limited.

Getting up, the man walked out of his room, intending to find out what Kane was up to. They had spent scouting the rift and identifying high activity zones. They avoided those areas as much as possible during inactive hours, giving them the chance to get some decent rest before re-entering the zones to conduct analysis and see what they could find that might be of use.

Huh. Time. There's something that was getting more and more unreliable as time wore on. Were it not for the Earth-tuned clocks they had built into the Felicity as well as the specialised clock built into Jacob's suit, he probably would have no idea how long it had been. Months by earth's count. But how long it had been by the Rift's count really depended on where in the rift you happened to have spent the most time. So much changed so fast that time itself was warped beyond recognition in some places. There was no such thing as a Rift Day, only Rift regions. Time proceeded differently depending on the region, and your luck while in said region. Sometimes it'd be faster, sometimes slower. He had yet to encounter time being reversed, if that was even possible. But if he had learned anything in his time here, it was that the Rift cared little for the boundaries of possibility...

[C S]

Beeping. Chimes. A readout on the display. His electronically mapped out synapses, in all their billions, shown before him on the monitor in the shape of his brain. Kane, with a black stylus in his mouth, sat back and observed the results of his latest mental integrity test with one brow slightly raised. He took the stylus out of his mouth and swiped its point across the nearby tablet, jotting down some quick notes before sticking it back in his mouth. He hummed to himself as he contemplated the data.

The lights in Felicity's cockpit were dimmed down. Extraneous displays were powered down. Consoles had only blips of information appearing every couple of seconds, the passive scans still running. The door at the back, past the container for the NT-SB suit, was the threshold to his tomb-like solitude. A solitude promptly broken when the door slid aside for Jacob to enter with its distinct whir and hiss.

[The Kingpin]

"Anything new worth noting?" asked the Mercenary as he walked in, taking a seat in one of the swivelling seats of the cockpit. This had become routine for him. Every waking cycle, after finishing up whatever weapons maintenance the previous 'day' hadn't been enough to complete, and ensuring everything was ready in case he needed to act fast, he would come to the cockpit, Kane's favourite spot on the ship, and find out what there was to be reported, before settling into the varied routine of the day. He never had to worry about finding Kane asleep; A few weeks working as a team had resulted in them typically waking at about the same time, so by the time Jacob was done with his early morning work, Kane was certainly up and about, probably busy with something related either to the vessel, the Rift, or his latest technical project...

[C S]

Kane grunted and nodded. One hand reached out to a nearby console pad and his fingers dashed from key to key, punching in a command that brought up a side-by-side view of past neuro-scans on the screen. Dated by Earth standard, the first of the scans was taken just after the waterworks tether was destroyed. It showed heightened electrical activity in his brain, mainly near the occipital lobe, a bright red and orange glow around what was mostly cool blues and greens. There was also stimulation of his temples, oddly enough, coinciding with the beliefs of ancient shamanistic medicine practices and the new wave nonsense derived from them.

Progressing along sequentially, the anomalous activity dissipated to other parts of the explorer's brain before diminishing considerably, until finally, shown by the latest readout, it ceased completely.

"I'm going to call this phenomenon 'Neurological Osmosis': The ability for the human body to make contact with exotic particle emissions and then carry the side effects of which for up to four months." Side effects, as they both knew, included but were not limited to, seeing visions from the perspective of what seemed to be an external intelligence.

Kane took the stylus in hand again and flicked it onto a button, pulling up a radiation chart with peaks and dips wild, and colors from all across the spectrum. He circled a region of the chart with the stylus, leaving a glowing white outline.

"From what I've observed in my case, this is a safe zone. It might be the threshold before such exposure leads to massive mental instability, or just a fraction of the total amount the body can withstand before suffering. Now, keeping in mind there are people out there living without highly protective gear, I can hypothesize that they've either developed a resistance to it over generations, or it is a latent environmental pressure with no physical detriment, similar to hypersensitivity to electromagnetic fields..."

Kane spun his chair around to look at the cyborg. "In layman's terms, whatever it was that was hitchhiking in my cranium has hit the old dusty trail, by the looks of things."