Rosalyn and Simone come to almost immediately. They feel a bit rough but generally OK. Bizarrely they find themselves sitting in the front row of the small theatre they glimpsed momentarily what feels like hours previously.
Around the auditorium lie the other Supers, including the two who were working for the government.
The place is clean and comfortingly worn, not shabby or run down, but not brand new either. There is a really very small open stage in front. Burned into the floor is a pentagram. It glows with a dull, sickly light. On the point of the pentagram nearest them is a large, heavy looking iron bowl. Floating above the pentagram is a strange, spherical distortion, about 3 feet across and looks a bit like the local reality if spiralling down a plug hole. The girls investigate. From which ever way they look at it, it looks the same. In the very centre of the anomaly is a tiny hole through which they can see what looks like the area of the base they just came from, barracks and all. The hole is too small to see details but what is apparent is that time is passing very quickly as the barracks seem to be being dismantled in time-lapse.
Behind the anomaly there is a fair amount of stage scenery and gear piled up and strew, abandoned on this are some 12 marionettes. This is a marionette theatre.
Rosalyn realises that something feels odd. She checks her mouth. Her two canine teeth are somewhat longer than she remembered them being, considerably longer. Simone feels fine and checks out Rolf, who after a shaky start seems his normal self.
Some of the guys start waking up. They feel groggy but glad to be alive. Samson finds he cannot see. This is an advantage because it means he cannot witness the foul, yellowy-orange mucus that seems to be leaking from every orifice...every orifice.
Chuck is too physically exhausted to move at all, he just lies in his seat.
After throwing off his exhaustion, Marcel feels, well, pretty damn good actually. He too starts to investigate.
Eldnah doesn't feel too bad at first but then has a coughing fit, and he brings up a thick, black ichor which drools down his front and over the seats. It reeks. Everyone gets as far away from him as possible, so he wanders off to the back stage area to have a look around. He finds some toilets, a workshop and eventually a door to the outside.
The party focus their minds and throw off their ailments, i.e. they use Hero Points, but they cannot rid themselves of the new, strange conditions.
Despite her best efforts, Simone fails to heal anyone so she decides that the time has come to get out of here. She heads for the exit at the top of the auditorium. As she turns the handle on the door there is a sound from the stage. Those still down that end report that the marionettes moved briefly. Simone lets the door handle go. The marionettes are quite still. Simone tries the handle again. The marionettes twitch.
The party agree that this is probably not a good thing and that proceeding with utmost caution is what's required here.
Out back Eldnah opens the door.
“Oops. You cannot leave,” chirps a merry marionette, and they all jump up.
Eldnah steps outside. The light is strange. It has a purple hue and an oppressive feel. Grey clouds scud overhead across the dull purple sky.
Simone opens her door and runs into the lobby with Rolf.
“Please don't go. Come an play” says a high pitched, cheery female voice.
“Yes, play with us,” adds a chorus of similar voices.
A frantic fight ensues. The party quickly realise that the marionettes fall into two categories; females, with their bright, happy voices and mute male marionettes. They also quickly find that the females are powerful Mind Controllers and that the males are tough brutes whose touch drains their resistance to the female's Mind Control. Chuck and Marcel quickly succumb to the females.
“Hello Chuck,” she says. “You are mine.”
“Hello Marcel” another says. “You are mine.”
“Sit down and enjoy the show.”
“Yes, it's going to be good fun.”
The Supers plant themselves back in the seats.
Rosalyn finds she cannot control the males, there is no mind to control, but she mind control the females and fight them for control of the minds of her own party, which she finds herself having to do quite a lot.
“Oh, she's good. Join us Rosalyn, join us!” Rosalyn gives the offer a serious consideration. It might be fun being Queen of the Marionettes. She likes puppets after all.
Despite the mucus dripping from his orifices, Samson puts good use to his Thunderclap power, sending out shock waves of sound to send the marionettes flying. But this attracts the attention of the females and one takes his mind over.
Eldnah, still occasionally spewing black liquid, hearing the commotion and screams has a bright idea. He runs for the workshop, finds a battery powered saw, and bursts onto the stage to attack the marionettes. They don't like the saw.
The battle swings one way and another, Rolf chewing, Simone shooting, Marcel trying to avoid his mind from being dominated as scoops a couple of marionettes into his dimension pocket. Chuck meanwhile has come up with a cunning plan to use the strings still attached to the marionettes to tie them up with, using his telekinesis. It's a bit tricky but it starts to work. A couple of males get tied up, thus stopping them from reaching the party with their deadly draining power.
It is touch and go. Which side is going to run out of puff? Both sides are getting worn down. Following another thunderclap a female marionette grabs Samson's soft little mind again. He's standing along an row of seats from Rosalyn. The marionette commands him to take her. His mind swings interprets the command in only one way. Unzipping his fly, not easy because it is full of foul yellow mucus, he steps eagerly forward. Rosalyn, attacking one of the female marionettes doesn't see him approach. At the last second, with Samson mere inches from her back she goes invisible to hide from two approaching male marionettes and swings round 180 degrees to attack a female marionette over whom she gains control. This happens to be the one controlling Samson. Samson's mind spring free and quickly assessing the situation, he goes for his thunderclap to take out the two approaching males. What he doesn't realise is that Rosalyn is still standing mere inches in front of him. She sees what is coming and knows she either has to drop to her knees or Samson's hand are going to try and meet where she is. She drops, he claps, blowing the two marionettes against the auditorium wall. As a side effect of his movement he neatly deposits a large blob of mucus on the end of her nose with his knob.
“Not the worst facial I've ever had,” she thinks. ED: Dabe's words, not mine
There then comes a series of surprises for Samson.
- He notices that there appears to be a blob of mucus floating in the air.
- He then notices that his troos are around his ankles.
- Rosalyn suddenly materialises right in front of him, on her knees.
- It is apparent that the blob of mucus isn't floating.
- She draws her stolen, standard US marine issue 9mm M9A1 Beretta and thrusts it between his legs.
- She fires....at the marionette now coming up behind him, which has managed to escape from its own strings. It staggers backwards with the blast.
- With that flash and heat Samson decides to get the hell out of there. Unfortunately he moves as Rosalyn fires a second shot, putting her off her aim and so the bullet hits him in the right buttock.
- Normally his strong Absorption power would soak up the blast. Unfortunately the zombification process has reduced this power and so he feels pain, lots of pain.
A female marionette decides to mind control Rolf and unknowingly she has her power reflected. She decides, oddly, that she wants to run up to one of the marionettes and bite it.
The marionettes are being backed up by Eldnah wielding his saw with maniacal aplomb, Rolf, Chuck, following Eldnah's lead, with a drill and Simone blasting away with her shotgun. Marcel, in a desperate struggle with one particular female marionette gives in trying to get her into his dim pocket and retreats to the top of the auditorium to sulk. Finally the two remaining marionettes decide to call it day, rush to the back of the stage where they originally came from and collapse to the floor, inert once again.
All goes quiet, except for whimpering from Samson and Marcel his worm shape fattened by the two marionettes in his dim pocket. Deciding that the theatre has fall too low a ceiling to drop the annoying buggers from, his warps outside, a 1000' up and tips them out. From this vantage point he can see that this world is quite small, a mile across. It is the centre of a city, a European city. IN fact he recognises it, Prague. Of course, Milan is Czech.
He spots the old town square and off it a huge church. Aware of Milan's apparent love of such buildings he hazards a guess that this is Milan's location. After making a note of the direction, he warps back to the top of the theatre, lands neatly and spring back up. He didn't expect that. A powerful leaping power. So he was affected, albeit in a minor, perhaps positive way by the move to this world too. He thought he had got away with it. He warps back inside and explains the situation to everyone.
The party leave the theatre, turn right and head to the junction at the end of the road. To their right is a small square and on its corner are four soldiers, of a sort. Their skin is pale and blotchy, their clothing tattered. One still has dog tags around its neck. A fifth is crouching on the ground on all fours like an animal. Its limbs look longer than normal and it sniffs the air before leaping at the party, covering the 100' gap in two bounds. It is fought off and killed.
The party notice more zombie soldiers, lots of soldiers shambling in to view. When they see the party they break into a fast run but are taken down by fire power and Samson's mighty thunderclap.
The party decide that warping across the roofs would be a safer route to the church. They skirt the northern edge of the old town square which is pretty well populated with zombies, and drop down on the far side of the church near the main doors. Simone starts feeling unhappy about their location. They decided to sneak in, pretty sure that Zdradnik is not going to welcome them with open arms. Simone simply can't bring herself to go in. The feelings of fear and dread are too strong and seeing how the zombies on the streets in the area are also avoiding the church she too surmises that she has not escaped the zombification process without side effects either. Telling the others to go in, she and Rolf sneak off, find an empty building and she strips down and checks them both for other physical signs of the process. They seem fine. Some zombies, looking in from the outside feel deep down that they ought to be oh so very interested in this, but the feeling eludes them and they drift with a strange feeling that they've really missed out somehow.
Meanwhile back at the Church of Our Lady before Týn....
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