raptorcanaria | Labyrinth

Entry tags:

game: milliways

Labyrinth

Here's the thing about Milliways: It's not the Real World. Dinah has a very clear delineation in her mind: there're things that happen in the bar, and there are things that happen at home, and even if people visit from one to the other, they're very different places.

Justice League, supervillains, Oliver. Those things don't follow her in. Which is good and bad, because it becomes a place to escape. And escape becomes too safe, somewhere where actual threats aren't real. That's the problem with the place. It's not home, and it doesn't touch home, and if she wanted, she could stay in the bar, rent a room, and never have to worry about outside. And that's what's so dangerous.

Not that she's thinking of danger right now, even deep in the forest where there might be demon rabbits. She's just thinking of the run, and the exercise, and also where she wants to take Ollie for dinner tonight. That's how she manages to get lost.

And how she finds herself facing a rough hewn stone wall, with a door cut into it.

Dinah stands in front of it, stretching out her warm muscles, staring at the door. Has that always been here?

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Voodoo slowly gets to his feet, stumbling to a wall before grasping onto it, climbing like he did before.

He's slower, now. And the walls - they're coming closer.

Dinah glances over he shoulder at the approaching wall, just in time to leap in the air and deflect a second arrow heading at Voodoo.

"Keep going," she says. "Plenty of time." That's a lie, but as the opposite wall gets closer, the risk of another arrow hitting him gets greater, and she won't be able to pick him up again.

So it's time to stay level with him on the wall, grabbing on with her hands and kicking arrows out of the air.

It doesn't look like he'll clear it, but he does, rolling flat onto the top of the wall just before they slam shut.

"ThinkI'mgonnapuke," he rasps.

Dinah vaults over and lands next to him, hand on his shoulder to communicate nothing other than it being okay to puke.

Except...

The last pair of walls are moving now, and they're doing it fast.

"No time," she says. "Run!"

Voodoo struggles to his feet and - really, the best way to describe what he's doing would be 'a slow lurch'. That or it's some kind of zombie shuffle that eventually graduates into a drunken sprint.

Here's hoping the walls don't speed up.

Dinah races forward, leaving him behind, in order to press the triangle and open a door, but then she turns right back and runs towards him, offering a hand.

"Come on," she says. "We can do it."

He's not going to make it at zombie shuffle.

Voodoo doesn't respond - unless you count the labored breaths that make it sound like he's gonna heave. He leans on Dinah a little more, and soon he's got a more respectable pace going.

"Stupid...fucking...rabbit," he rasps. They're almost at the door.

"Yep," Dinah says. "Totally the rabbit's fault."

At 'almost,' she drops from under his arm, steps back and stands behind him, just enough to lean on him heavily and push him the final couple of feet towards the door. Then she leaps after him.

Shephard would pay to see the way Voodoo goes ass-over-teakettle into the room, an arrow mark on his ass and a cut on the right buttcheek of his pants. There's no graceful landing here, either - he sprawls facefirst onto the floor.

Shephard would likely pay double to see the way Voodoo scrambles to unbuckle his helmet and toss it aside before propping himself up on his elbows and-

-well. He hasn't eaten in a while, so there's no real chunky parts to it, and while it's nothing like out of Team America, it's...a couple hours' worth of bile?

He still has the presence of mind to not fall into said puke, mind.

Dinah catches his helmet and holds it for him while he finishes, looking up and around the room as he does.

They're still indoors, but the ceiling is no longer flat, instead forms a point around them with a bamboo lining. There are pillars either side of them holding up a raised walkway which hugs the wall. It's hard to gauge the shape of the area, in fact, because it's marked with archways and pillars and walkways with a red and gold theme.

In fact, Dinah thinks, it's sort of Japanese in style.

"Oh," she says. "Remember how you asked for ninja?"

"Yeah," Voodoo rasps, taking his helmet back, "what about it?"

It's not until he's strapped it on that he gets a good look at the room.

"...fuck."

He scrambles for his MP5.

"It's alright."

Dinah's smiling, for some reason. She takes a couple of steps forward.

"I got this."

When a shuriken appears, it's hurtling straight for her. Dinah spins and drops to three points on the ground, and the star sails straight over her head.

"Just keep your back to the wall. Yell if you need me. These are people, Voodoo. Don't kill them."

She races forward towards the place the throwing star came from and leaps onto the walkway above him.

"These are people, don't kill them"?

Does she have any idea of what he does for a living?

But, you know, Voodoo complies. For one thing, this whole exercise'll be a lot easier if he can get through it without pissing her off. For another thing...

...it saves ammunition?

So he glues his ass to a wall, his gun up and ready as he sidesteps along.

Why do you think she felt the need to tell him that?

There's a noise from above and a few seconds later Dinah comes flying down again, bearing down on a predictably black clad gentleman. They land, both on their feet and Voodoo gets to be witness to some spectacular ninjitsu before she knocks him out.

Look to your left, though, Voodoo. This one's got a sword.

Ninja with a katana! Good thing he's got a gu-

-wait. Dinah said no killing.

Well, that's okay, if he just aims for the kneecaps he can-

-oh, who the fuck is he kidding, he'll never make that shot with the way this guy moves!

"Goddammit!" he yells, dropping his MP5 to hang by the sling as he raises his fists.

(Do you see the burden your rules put on him, Dinah? Do you see?)

When the ninja makes for a sweeping horizontal slash, Voodoo steps to their outside, grabs their wrist, and slams an elbow into their throat. From there it's a simple matter of fracturing their hand, disarming them, and sweeping their feet out from under them. The katana is broken on his thigh, and Voodoo hopes to God this one's male, because the coup de grace is a stomp to their groin with the heel of his boot.

He's male, and he's on the floor in seconds, silent in the pain. Dinah is on him the instant he hits the ground, and with one strike finds a point to put him out cold.

She looks up, face flushed with the effort, mouth set in concentration, and nods approval of Voodoo's actions.

Then she spins around and sweep kicks the poor ninja coming up behind her.

Another ninja dashes up, nunchucks in hand. Voodoo's judo is a little rusty (he's more of a Krav Maga guy), but he still knows enough that the fight goes something like this:

- one high parry
- one kick to the balls
- one Harai Goshi
- one arm lock
- and an arm broken in two places that, from the sounds of it, will take months to heal.

The finishing touch for this one is a kick to the head - the guy's out like a light. Voodoo looks back up and ducks as a handful of shurikens embed themselves in the wall above his head.

"Remind me again why we ain't killing these assholes?"

Because, you know, the ninjas are not playing by the same rules.

"Because we..."

Dinah is a few yards away, surrounded by a circle of four.

Three.

Two.

"Are better than they are."

The final two rush her at once, and she cartwheels out of the way towards Voodoo, bringing both hands up and dispatching them at the same time.

"And you need to save your ammunition for actual threats."

"Actual threats?" Voodoo asks, dispatching two that come running at him, "you mean like that itty-bitty bunny rabbit a little ways back?" Another nina grabs him in a bear hug from behind, and he slams an elbow into their temple before throwing them over his shoulder and breaking their arm.

"Exactly like that."

She would be keeping an eye on him, but she spins and raises a hand to deflect in incoming shuriken, forgetting that she's not wearing her gloves.

It slices her hand, but she's not implaed so she's calling that a plus.

"I can't take a psycho monty python bunny."

She grabs the nearest ninja by his shoulders, and flips over him, kicking his friend behind him in the face on her way down.

"Ninja, I've got. Can you find the way forward?"

"Yeah, but-"

-another ninja gets their balls stomped and leg fractured, in that order, and Voodoo pivots to engage the next one-

"-it'd be a whole lot easier if I could use my freaking gun!"

Srsly. No guns. What the fuck.

"All that SEAL training and you can't make non- lethal shots?"

Dinah crosses the distance between them, and inserts herself between Voodoo and the ninja nearest him. She's rushed, and she dispatches him.

"Do you need a distraction?"

It's an honest question. She can take the heat off him if she needs to.

Sometime Voodoo's going to have to sit Dinah down and explain to her that using a firearm in self defense does not work like that.

Now is not the time. Now is the furthest possible moment from that time.

"Yeah," Voodoo says, putting his back to the wall, "distract away."

Edited 2013-06-03 18:48 (UTC)

She nods, and squares off against the now growing group of ninja, regretting her own edict.

Because it'd be so easy to bring them all down with a scream, but that would kill so many.

Instead she rushes the nearest, grabs a katana and spins around, using him as a shield as she sweeps low, keeping his colleagues back.

She knocks him out with one strike and takes out two more before he lands, stealing a shuriken from another and inserting it into someone's shoulder.

She just amped up the difficulty setting.

~~But can she run Crysis?~~

Voodoo dashes out of the fight, feeling his way along the wall. None of it feels familiar, until -

- he reaches a corner and his hand comes across a triangle indentation in the wall. He pounds it with his fist.

"Dinah!" he yells, "door's open!"

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