/vx/ - Videogames and Paranormal

>>170738
Amber grimaces. "It appears that the Reichsbahn office in Katerinburg made an error and gave us an incomplete manifest," she lies. "The dummkopf responsible will pay dearly for costing the company so much time," she continues with a shake of her head. "Any further delay is inexcusable, so let me get back to my work."

>>170739
He sighs loudly
"Of course they made an incomplete manifest. They run the Reichsbahn like they run... everything else... Well a census would work better than a manifest anyways. But make them present Identification! Passngers must have it anyways to go through customs."

[1d2 = 2]

>>170740
>>170739
No other problem thrusts itself into the situation... yet, and Amber is allowed to close the door.

>>170740
>>170741
Breathing a sigh of relief, Amber quickly continues her census, making sure to ask for identification. One of her companions not assigned to the tally, and who hopefully is looking for the actual manifest (though that is a forlorn hope), might be nearby, and Amber would request to ferry the identification requirement to the others.

>>170743
Annoyingly, most passengers do not have their identifications out, and fumble about for it, while others have it "with their bag"

Helder replies to the identification request
"Oh. We were supposed to ask for ID?"

And Erich,
"What does it matter if they are lying or not to us? I don't care."

Federkleid...
[1d20 = 15]

And now, a new problem:
A familiar griffin is trying to open the door to the locomotive to get out

>>170744
"They will need to present it when going through customs, so it would be ideal. We should be avoiding mistakes as much as possible."

The familiar griffon had been in the back of Amber's mind for a while now. She quickly runs to stop him.

>>170745
It's a good thing, as the door is unlocked. Evidently he was still hiding in the bathroom when the train stopped and crowds blocked off the exit. He must have only just now realized there were officers there.

"I have to get off!" He yells, still trying to open the door

>>170746
"Stop! They'll catch you immediately. You don't have a chance out there," Amber exclaims, trying to restrain him.

>>170747
"I don't have a chance in here!" he says, although attempting to open the door with less enthusiasm.

>>170748
Amber tries to think of some counterpoint. "We can…hide you, yes. Or else smuggle you out. You cannot leave without being seen," she nearly whispers.

>>170749
He blinks, and turns to her/him
“How?”

>>170750
Amber resorts to the most obvious solutions. "We could put you in some luggage. Or maybe there is a hole in the floor somewhere to exit through…."

>>170751
He nods
"Yeah! That'll do!" The young griffin is eager to cooperate.

Where Amber recieves less cooperation is from a few griffin passengers pouring in from cars further back. Helder and Erich seem to have largely reduced the flow of passengers from the rear to the fore, but a small number of stragglers make it through, spreading panic rumors about an invasion of the rear most cars by bandits or worse. Like an indefatigable hydra, these passengers always appear to cause problems, however many are placated.

>>170752
Amber acts sternly towards these passengers, physically barring them from going any further. "Go back to your seats and stop spreading rumors. You are completely safe and nothing bad will happen, but we are required to remain on the train until we complete a census. Thank you for your cooperation."

>>170755
https://youtu.be/d6MMX4MYIys?si=EI-FbmLIa-Sfqx-5

Whatever may be, the passengers fully believe that Amber works for the Reichsbahn. They shut up for long enough for Amber to get back to work.

>>170756
Amber wastes no time to finish up her part of the census before the others complete theirs.

>>170757
Amber is allowed to complete the census, but the griffin fugitive is impatient. “What about me?” There are no small number of questions from passengers about what is going on.

Erich is the first to come back to Amber with a hastily scribbled set of pages. Helder is the last, with much better claw writing. Federkleid comes back with pages from the locomotive. “I found an earlier passenger list from Griffinheim. It won’t include the passengers from Kronburg, but this is most of them.”

>>170758
"Do you have your ID? Are you supposed to be here? No? Then shut up while we think of something," Amber says irritably to the fugitive.

"Thank you, Federkleid. This is exactly what I needed," Amber says warmly. With a second thought and a gesture to the fugitive, she asks, "Could you calm down the passenger who's 'misplaced' his ID?" She finds a wide, stable surface and sets to work adding those names not present on the old list, and crossing out those who had evidently disembarked.

>>170759
The young fugitive blinks.

Amber can hear that Federkleid counsels the young griffin something along the lines of “shut the fuck up”

There is a small table at the end of the car, likely always intended as a crew “office.” Amber is allowed to do her work in relative peace. Amber can notice a couple inconsistencies, like a passenger was missed or managed to get off. Then again, these may have gotten off at Kronburg. Hard to tell, really.

>>170760
kek

Amber tries to work around these inconsistencies, which at least aren't her fault this time. The thought occurs to her that she doesn't quite know how she'll continue her escape after handing over the manifest, but she dismisses this thought and continues writing like her life depends on it.

>>170761
Take it one day at a time, little pony. Like the alcoholics

Well, there are a few missing but... Let's just say they got off at Kronburg. Probably better than having excess passengers anyways.

It's taken longer than Amber really would have wished, but her work is done.

>>170762
Amber proof-reads it one more time before hurrying to hand it to the officers, straightening up before opening the door to look official.

>>170763
There are a few mistakes. One of Amber's companions, who shall not be named, other than to say that his name rhymes with "numeric," has misspelled names, despite having the resource of the correct spelling right in front of him.

The more worrying error is where names do not match. Amber can deduce that this is caused by use of maiden names, aliases, or middle names instead of first names. The original manifest has full, ID correct names, but someone decided to only use a simple first and last name format, relying, evidently, on self-reporting, which of course leads to minor inconsistencies.

Still, it's as close as she can get.

>>170764
Amber, in her fatigued, sleep-deprived state, can't help but grind her beak in anger at her uneducated oaf of a companion. Still, there is no time to lose and whatever she can, she quickly corrects, but otherwise hands over the completed list.

>>170765
Somehow, Amber always knew that Erich would get them killed...

Anyways, she goes to the door, claws over both the old manifest and the new census to the officer, and waits.

The officer goes down the list, and checks it, looking between both lists. He complains at the minor inconsistencies.

Then he asks
"And your name?"

>>170766
Amber had an alias ready for such a situation, right? "Rudolf Hofstadter, sir," she answers after just a moment.

>>170767
He looks her directly in the eyes.

"We received a request from the Imperial Government for four griffins. These are Erich Sóbányász, Federkleid Engel, Hedler Von Neuestadt, and Schwelle Wildemann. Are these griffins onboard?"

>>170768
For a brief moment Amber entertains the thought of handing over the young fugitive as one of the four. But to betray another's trust…. "They are not aboard. We have completed this census and there are no four griffons with inconsistent information."

>>170769
You know what is coming

Roll Bluff

>>170771
Not... Great

Roll luck

>>170773
AHHHHHHH

>>170774
>>170773
>>170771
The Officer looks at Amber with his serious expression

"You lack confidence in your delivery. What exactly are you not telling me?"

>>170775
"Well, you see…" Amber says as she shifts uncomfortably. "There is one passenger who would not show us his ID and who seemed intent on avoiding sight. He is a stowaway."

>>170776
The officer narrows his eyes

“A stowaway?!?!”
He reaches for his pistol.

“Well, we will have to deal with him. Where is he?”

>>170777
"He is in the next car over," Amber answers (if this is the case). "One of the staff has him cornered."

>>170778
He’s actually in the same car. The officer moves Amber aside, and goes towards where Amber tells him.

>>170779
A pang of intense guilt stabs Amber's heart as she looks on. But this was her last resort. If it wasn't for the one, then it would be the four of them. If only she could have been more convincing.

>>170780
Entering into the car, Amber can see the fugative griffin with Federkleid next to him. "Is this the one?" The officer asks

The griffin's heart sinks, and Amber can see him physically sulk down, before turning around, and again going for the door, trying one last effort to escape. Whether it was because he had sense enough, or because the situation left him silent, he does at least remain mostly quiet. Federkleid has a claw on him to restrain him. This will not be enough, both because the young griffin is panicked, but also because Amber can see that Federkleid has kept a claw inside of her coat, almost certainly holding onto a hidden gun. Federkleid looks back at Amber confused, and looking for direction.

>>170781
Amber subtly waves downward in a tacit instruction to Federkleid to not cause trouble and to let this happen. "Yes it is, officer," Amber answers the police glumly.

>>170780
>>170782
Federkleid attempts to move aside and let the officer arrest the fugitive, letting go of the gun. It’s only when the griffin spreads his wings and tugs on the handle of the door that she realizes she cannot stand still, and she commits to grabbing into him. Federkleid holds him down, as the officer grabs him. He cries out “No! Not like this! I can’t go back to my master!” And struggles against the officer, forcing him to through the fugitive down on the ground. More officers come, and hold him down. Meanwhile, passengers look on, spooked by the action. “What’s going on? Are there infiltrators among us?” They ask

>>170783
"There was a stowaway, and that's all. Just stand aside," Amber answers the passengers, wringing her talons.

>>170784
Amber watches the griffin struggle, scream, and cry as he’s tackled onto the very narrow walkway of the center of the car. He almost pulls himself away by grabbing onto a seat, but fails. This goes on for more than a minute

>>170785
"I need to play some music…" Amber mutters to herself. She goes to get her violin and come back.

>>170786
The officer looks up toward Amber strangely, and says "Now? We are arresting a suspect, and the train must remain sealed." Evidently he doesn't quite appreciate the need for music in the situation. Federkleid states,
"It will calm the passengers down."

He relents
"Very well. Go get it."

Amber's violin is very close, being in the locomotive. Just go through the door, and across to the locomotive, and she has it. But in this narrow band of time, all pandemonium is let loose upon the car.

"Is this about the bandit?" A passenger asks
"No, that was an imperial officer." Another says
"Disguised as an officer." The first says
"No, it was a rebel looking to take hostages. They burst in disguised as an officer!" a third says

The officer shoots up, with another two officers left with the hard task of securing the fugative

"A rebel?! by the Imperial border? Where did this happen?"

First passenger "As you said, by the border."
Officer: "No, where in the train?"
Second passenger: "In the back of the train. They came through the back door of the last car. Busted through with a crowbar."

The officer speaks to a different officer
"Rebels by the Imperial border"
Other officer
"I thought they would have remained in Longsword"
Officer:
"They cross the border sometimes, or are locals, inspired to rebel by their kin in the south. They must be using the Imperial lands as a safe base to launch their attacks."
The officer looks over towards a passenger, and asks him
"Tell me, what did these rebels look like. Were they short? Brightly colored? Kind of cute? With hooves?"
Third passenger:
"No. They were two griffins. One grey, one white. Both were wearing Imperial District police uniforms, including with the caps."
Officer:
"Griffin colloboraters. That's worse. Either thieves, or traitors within the imperial ranks. So that's what the Imperials were trying to warn us about. If only they were not too ashamed to tell us the truth. Would have saved us trouble, and let us know how serious this is." Then the officer announces to the car,
"It looks like this train was targeted by pony rebels that are using the Imperial District as a base to attack our lands here in Hellquil. With all the chaos and poor management over there it is a wonder they haven't done it before. They must be attacking the train because they know that many of you are immigrants, and they want to take Hellquil for themselves."

Federkleid, not knowing when to be silent, says
"Heh, ponies? Like the cute, colorful things that make our toasters?"
Officer
"It is not a joke! They are weak, yes. Cowardly too. But a stab in the back is deadly all the same. Especially if they have manipulated griffins into their cause."

Second passenger:
"The staff fought them off. They captured one."

And now he turns to Amber:
"You captured one? Where is he? Why was I not told before? I must get to this at once!"

No one notices that Amber has armed herself, as she now has her viol in claw.

>>170727
Cool.

Silver is first down the hall, with Spectral Streak by his side, the white pegasus officer just behind, the purple pony behind him, the cream medic, the grey medic, and the two wounded ponies - Azelea and the orange stallion - in the rear. They shuffle along with haste. Though they do not know just precisely where they are going, they understand why they must get there quickly. Silver is on the second-floor walking down a hallway that forms the left/western edge of the courtyard. To Silver's left, the walls are plaster, painted white with ever so subtle shade of grey, so as to avoid inducing madness. To his right, above waist level are row after row of glass windows, allowing a view into the courtyard below. Looking down, is a fountain without water, a couple seedling trees, and freshly planted grass. The hallway rings around the courtyard like the cloister of a monastery, but it is a cloister made of glass and plaster rather than granite, and the harmony the ponies within dedicate themselves to is not that of ponies and nature, but making trains running on time and off-loading cargo ships.

The morning sun has the perfect angle to shine through the window and onto the wall, with the few clouds to the north not blocking the light. The evil clouds that tower far beyond the east horizon and stretch into space are too far away to cloud the skies of Baltimare, though the tails of what seem to be comet fragments, visible in the daylight, hang in straight, grey streets across the sky. To the ignorant it must surely appear as if the end of times has come, and to the educated, evidence to contrary is increasingly wanting. The light that shines through the windows and onto the opposing wall is oddly dim for an unclouded spring morning sun. To Silver, it likely looks as if the sun is in partial eclipse. The blue sky has a slight grey-black tinge, as if obscured by smoke from distant fires, or the dust of distant sandstorms.

Commercial advertisement posters adorn the left wall, decorations for the air travel wing of the building. They depict voyages to a world that may now have ceased to be. The idyllic scenes within are displayed in colors that alternate between calm and vibrant and have an impressionistic style that gives the scenes a dream-like quality, even as the text insists that these are but windows into a world that is increasingly within the grasp of the average pony.

The first poster is of an island, with crystal waters, cotton ball clouds, "v" shaped sea birds, and white sands. In the background and to the left are coconut laden palm trees that hang over the edge of the shore, with small, white-walled cottages with blue-tile roofs dotting the tree line. The shore wraps around to the foreground, with the front right of the poster depicting a family of ponies on the beach. A white pegasus mare - they are all pegasi - sits under a red and white umbrella, looking towards the ocean wearing a straw hat and sunglasses, with her tail wrapped around her. A yellow stallion lies, wings spread, on a towel on the sand. An older green foal is in the water just past where waves break on the shore, holding onto a round floating tube styled like a rubber duck complete with a head. A smaller pink foal makes "angels" with her wings in the sand, while a still younger filly uses a garden shovel to make a small castle. Other ponies, just a little more distant and to the right, likewise lie on bamboo chairs or swim in the crystal waters, though little detail can be discerned save for the bright red, orange, and pink colors of the ponies. Above the island is an airplane, white with a blue-stripe livery and blue globe on the tail, quadruple props, and angled as if coming in for a landing. Over the scene is text in a slanted, cursive font stating "Get away to the Summer Isle with Pan Equus."

The next scene is a bit more realistic, though with an impressionistic blur that still makes it appear as if viewed through fogged glass, or the haze of memory. This depicts a city, though not like Baltimare, nor quite like any city of Equestria. In the foreground are apartment buildings close together, mostly bright red, but pink and yellow as well, with little balconies that open up with half circular doors, and perches without rails that stick out like tongues. Further back are great temples with big, white, marble lined domes, and gilded spiral minarets, and granite, crenellated turret tower that looks like a rook chess piece. In the extreme fore, below the line of apartments, indeed physically below the level of the street, are white ruins - columns, and the remains of what are presumably houses and a temple - that surely must have been ancient when the first Hearthswarming was celebrated in Equestria. Perhaps oddly, no ponies, nor any living creatures, are depicted. Above the minarets and the apartments is a sky where clouds blend into the horizon. To the right the sky is blue, and to the left, orange twilight of a setting or perhaps rising sun peers in. The city scene is completely lacking in any vehicles, save one - a grey-white rigid airship approaching the city - though it appears smaller than the dome of the temple, or even the granite base of the ruined temple at the bottom of the poster. The text at the top of this poster is in a stern, straight-lined font. It says "Visit Karthin with the New Mareland Overseas Airways Company."

The third poster is not the last, though it is the last Silver sees along this line. This poster is more straight forward: amongst the clouds, and high above green fields, is a single passenger plane with white paint on the top, a dark green striped livery, and an aluminum grey belly. Its big, aluminum wings are swept back, and have no visible props, but rather two holes visible along the left wing near the fuselage. The text says "Jet Air Travel is coming to the New Mareland Oversees Air Company starting July of 1022, with the new Meteor Jet plane."

>>170794
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrsR4GFlAyI&pp=ygUbam9obm55IHdvbid0IGJlIGNvbWluZyBob21l

The posters are well lit by the direct, dim sunlight, rather than reflecting an expected glare. As Silver passes these posters on his left, and glances at them, his radio turns on, and broadcasts the following. It's from the familiar voice of the Magister Manis, the "Master of the Ponies." But his voice, so weak in his public broadcast before, is much more confident, even angry and demanding, in this more limited broadcast.

"This is Magister Manis Long March. All units in Baltimare are ordered to eliminate any and all Changeling cells, and to prioritize securing the city above all else. The Changelings are willing to die to destroy our cities and our ponies, and I expect nothing less than the same devotion from my ponies to save them. All activity in the Baltimare region is subordinate to the commander of the Republican Guard."

The line becomes filled with static, and tones out, then increases in volume, until another, likewise familiar voice:
"This is Brigadier General Circling Camp of the 78th Republican Guard Reverses. We have received intel from a survivor of the Transit Ministry. The survivor is confirmed to be a pony, and to have been an electrician employed within the ministry. Infiltrators had placed themselves among the guard crew and workers of the ministry building. This morning, they killed the pony guards, then went around hunting down what ponies were in the building. As the building is still under construction and the attack happened around 7 AM, the number of ponies inside was low enough for the take over to be easy. The entrances were locked, and more infiltrators, disguised as work crews, came in and secured the building. The plumber managed to hide in a closet, evade patrols, and jump out of a window, eventually encountering Homeguard forces. The electrician did not view the device himself, but claims he believes that the device was likely already within the building, either hidden in the central hall, or the basement beneath it. These are the areas first secured and prioritized by the changelings.

We know based upon the story of the electrician, and from the accounts of our own soldiers, that the changelings are sending patrols around the building. Most likely this is to move them from exterior windows to other exterior windows to make it harder to enter the building, and make them seem to be greater in number than they are. This may also be to search for anypony who entered the building. However, the electrician offered a third reason that would explain why the device has not been detonated yet. The electrician reports hearing a firefight around the central hall between the infiltrators and surviving guards. The guards lost, but the electrician postulates that the device was grazed by a stray bullet that damaged it. The damage has prevented the device from being activated. However, the infiltrators have since gone through the trouble of both reinforcing this position, and also of obtaining the activation codes. The electrician suspects that the damage is likely simply a severed wire or broken circuit board, or something simple to fix, and the teams patrolling the building are looking for replacement parts. He suspects they will likely get the device working shortly; certainly less than an hour. We know they have the activation codes from the WMARE broadcast station, and they wouldn't be here if they did not have a device. We must find that device before they can activate it.

Though the exact location is unknown, it is likely to be in center of the building, close to or below ground level, and certainly around the largest concentration of changeling forces. You'll know it when you see it.

Eliminating the patrolling forces may increase the amount of time remaining by making their repair more difficult, preventing them from reinforcing the device, and allowing our forces to enter the building. Flanking may be wiser than a head-on attack, as they are well armed.

Disable that device with all haste."

>>170794
>>170795
Silver looks to the ponies following him, and addresses them as a group.

"Alright ponies, we know where to look. We find that bomb, we secure it, and we kill any changelings guarding it. They are fighting because their Queen demanded them to. We are fighting because this is our home, and we will not let those insects destroy it. And we. Will. Win. On me."

He barely waits for a response before he heads in the direction of the central hall. The ponies are on a timer before destruction, and they need to beat it.