ravnicrasol

Gamma Protocol (103)

[103]

Vesper had been awake for thirty-six hours straight when the notification arrived, running on stims and spite while cross-referencing supply inventories that never added up to enough. One week since the last protein run from Axel, all signs of him had vanished and they didn’t know why, nor could they find out because he’d specifically been avoiding Quinn’s surveillance drones. It was the third day since she’d stopped checking casualty reports because the...

Gamma Protocol (102)

[102]

The locks engaged behind us with the same heavy finality, each thud driving through the floor and into my chest. My shoulders pulled tight with every one.

The “training” metal box felt larger than the last time I’d been here. The hollow sea of gray and silver stretched wide, those sheer walls rising until they disappeared into themselves. The air pressed against my exposed skin with that same peculiar weight, filtered so clean it tasted of nothing ex...

Gamma Protocol (101)

[101]

“I need air.”

Three simple words, but they barely made it past the constriction in my throat. The weight of everything pressed against the base of my skull, a pressure that threatened to split me open from the inside.

The conference room's recycled atmosphere clung to my skin, made worse by the suit I wore. Its fabric alone was worth more than every credit I'd ever touched. Hours ago, the Elder Meguca sitting across from me had wanted me dead. No...

Gamma Protocol (100)

[100]

I lost.

That was the first thing that came to my mind the moment I regained consciousness, it was a cold rock in my gut.

Shadow had been right all this time and I hadn’t even considered the possibility because I’d been too focused on the here and now without considering the consequences of my actions.

“Fuck.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spoken the word, it felt alien in my tongue even when I no longer had a neuralink watch...

Gamma Protocol (099)

[099]

I hauled myself up from the floor with my claws open and my throat a raw grate. The floor drank the shock and fed it back as a dull ache through my frame. Fulton stood where she had planted herself, at the mathematical center of the room, head level as she stared me down. A thin woman in a dark suit who looked like she should be handing out reprimands, not snapping the air in half.

With unsteady steps, I moved closer as she waited.

Her next sweep loo...

Gamma Protocol (098)

[098]

“Axel.”

I opened my eyes to the distant high-pitched buzz of drones, every alarm in my body firing at once. I scrambled and yanked the sheet of corrugated metal I kept by the cave’s entrance, dragging it across the opening to seal it shut. My breath hitched while my brain tried to catalogue what was coming. Two, no, twelve, no, hundreds. There were hundreds of drones moving through the sewers, maybe more. The hum came from every direction. The high p...

Gamma Protocol (097)

[097]

“The ISPs have started throttling us.” Quinn’s message chirped in the common chat, clipped and angry. “Remote workers are getting shafted. Contracts will get pulled within the week, if not sooner.”

Isia watched the feed scroll past her neuralink, hands moving through the familiar ritual of cleaning her rifle. The Cobra R12 was beautiful in a blunt, utilitarian way. Its design served two purposes, and only two: fire big rounds, keep firing under a...

Gamma Protocol (096)

[096]

With a groan and an annoyed huff, I set the last protein vat down carefully, then peeled off the “metal gloves” I’d cobbled together for the job. They kept my claws from tearing the lining and dumping me into a fresh bath of nutrient gloop, which had already happened once in the badlands and had not improved my mood or aroma. Night air cut through the lingering stink, cool on my face. I fanned my wings a few times to wick off heat and started for the ruine...

Scrap Core Chronicles (006)

[006]

Sir Corin Vale disliked being pulled from his chair for anything short of blood. The bell had rung twice in quick succession, not the soft chime for a misfile but the hard iron note for a breach. He took the south corridor at a walk anyway. The Sponsor’s Wing was a dead end with teeth. No one got past the vault faces without a token and a verse, and even he had never seen those doors open without a sponsor at hand. If some fool child had slipped a rope, the wi...

Scrap Core Chronicles (005)

[005]

After about an hour of mostly wandering around in search of anything useful, Tessa marched us to a circulation desk where a clerk tallied receipts and coins. The elvish woman wore a silver pin shaped like an open cog, a sign I assumed indicated rank. Tessa leaned in with a tense smile, her voice a perfect recreation of a man she’d been tailing for a few minutes. “Beg pardon, looking for texts on advanced Appraisal procedures.”

The clerk adjust...

Gamma Protocol (095)

[095]

In New Francisco, as in much of the world, the phrase “consequences for criminal activity” meant wildly different things depending on where you stood on the social pyramid. If you found yourself near the bottom, breaking the law only carried weight if it managed to draw the eye of someone inclined to care, someone with enough power or anger to make you regret it. More often than not, that kind of attention ended with one or both parties sprawled out on the p...

Scrap Core Chronicles (04)

[004]

“Welcome to the palace of Tessa,” the green-haired elf proclaimed as she set me down on the floorboards.

The room was hardly larger than a cupboard, certainly too cramped for even a simple bench. Bare walls showed only patches where plaster had flaked away, exposing brick and nail heads. A soot-streaked metal burner crouched beside the single window, its narrow chimney stabbing straight through warped wooden planks. Opposite the window sagged a rectang...

Gamma Protocol (094)

[094]

SKREAAaaaaagghhh

SPLAT

The mouther took one look at me and bolted the other way, scrambling frantically just before I crushed it with a chunk of debris I had flung across the street. I couldn’t blame the thing, I’d seen my reflection. In my current shape, I looked terrifying enough to give nightmares to anything with eyes. Still, watching the mouther run like that was enough to make my skin crawl. It didn’t sit right.

Because monsters wer...

Scrap Core Chronicles (003)

[003]

Level Up!
You have reached Level 5!
CONGRATULATIONS! 

You can unlock a Class!

You have met the criteria for unlocking the following classes:
(+) Saboteur
(+) Artificer
(+) Rune-Scribe
(+) Bard
(+) Fighter

Select One.

In the darkness at the end of the garbage chute, I stared at the notification screen with a mix of ...

Scrap Core Chronicles (002)

[002]

The automaton bore the name “Fire‑Tusker” across its forehead, followed by the custom stamp of the lunatic artificer who had decided a forge furnace deserved four legs. Warped iron plates quilted its chassis, each seam pulsing a dull red. Vapor hissed from hairline vents where the golem bled pressure. Its four limbs ended in broad flat pads built to crush anything beneath them, and a head that filled nearly a third of its mass glared down with blazing red ...

Scrap Core Chronicles (00 + 01)

[000]

Ignore the squeak of lesser minds as they rub two half-baked ideas together; greatness begins here.

Archartificer Magnifiria the Mindglow read the inscriptions upon her obsidian cup, its rim traced with fine copper filaments that hummed faintly with thaumic energy to keep its contents a perfect 81ºC. She raised it to her ruby lips and sipped from the cake‑flavored ambrosia. The enchanted choker on her neck transmuted every calorie into a charis...

Scrap Core Chronicles

Gamma Protocol (093)

[093]

I was trapped somewhere between a dream and a nightmare.

At one level, I clearly grasped the grim reality of my task. I faced a monster powerful enough to obliterate a city without effort, fully aware that the slightest miscalculation meant complete destruction. My sole desperate strategy lay in drawing it ever higher into the sky, as high as I could go.

Yet on every other level, I wandered within a shifting realm both intimately familiar and unsettl...

Good News Everyone (update)

GAMMA PROTOCOL

After some fenagling and wrangling on my end, I've managed to get the following implemented:

• Since the chapter frequency will remain to 1x a week, Gamma Protocol updates will (starting on ch92 onward) double in chapter size (from the rough 2K before to 4K, and yes, it's way easier to make chapters chonkier than writing two separate ones)

That said, I am left with a sort of open question regarding the chapters BEFORE ch92.

I sort of se...

Gamma Protocol (092)

[092]

AN: Extra thick chapter!

ESTIMATED STRIKE-ZONE: 2km from [coordinates]
ETA: 4min 52secs 

You are currently “20.2 meters” from [coordinates]
The City of New Francisco thanks you for your collaboration.

Ajax’s neuralink was doing overtime to tone down the extreme anxiety currently burning through his body. It poured biochemical stress suppressants and played small copyright-free AI-generated tunes in a va...

Gamma Protocol (091)

[091]

C̴͕̋ ̴̻͌O̸͖͒ ̷͉̎N̴̯̞͛ ̷̝͓̌S̸͚̾͠ ̶̱̓̍U̶̹̐ ̸̞̗̄M̶͇͌͌ ̷̺̈́̅E̷̺̍̌

It had been the only way I could see out of the bind, I’d released the transformation and immediately after turned back. I had no AP, no points, no mode, and the pangs of hunger I’d expected had come back with a vengeance. I roared, clutching at my head. I was starving, there was a roaring chasm in my gut...