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Arthur Lowell     Last time, the Visitors managed to get the safeties on a WINDOW PORTAL in RECREATIONAL LUDOGENICS off, and thus secure a fast-travel option. But now, they need to go back -- and it looks like getting to the elevators would actually require more of a dangerous rigmarole if they went through that fast-travel! So we begin again at Earth-413, and not the other planet linked to through the windows, back at the entrance.

    Arthur Lowell has asked people to join him at an unremarkable location in a desert in the middle of the Layered Deeps -- somewhere that Earth-413 was re-located to following the multiversal reorganization. This would be somewhere around the old American Midwest, in what used to be an isolated forest. Here, a number of Arthur's small weird bipedal iguanas have excavated a large, highly secure hatch, though it appears to be quite battered. Among the excavated sand and simple excavation equipment, chunks of buried civilization -- bits of above-ground structures obliterated by unknown means -- have sat decaying for nearly eight years. A piece of wall can be found, still bearing worn graffiti, simply declaring in stylized typography: "SKY IS FALLING". A colorful three-prong trident stabs through the text, with sharp, bright crimson lines.

    The desert heat is cooled, recently having reached the early evening due to the winter season -- or is that an unnerving chill in the spine? There's not much in this world right now besides scattered settlements, the closest of which is hundreds of miles away, but the warpgate nearby, where a train station stood eight years ago, still works perfectly.

    Look close: A piece of the train can be seen, plunged into the sand.

    Arthur greets each person at the hatch in his traditional manner: A cool-kid handshake, designed for their hands and for their apparent nature. Daps, pounds, bumps, low-fives, weird elbow hooks, finger-wiggly-things, all kinds of stuff. And then he leads them inside. We don't wanna shit around waiting for the doors to open or for everyone to follow along a linear path after all.

    SECURITY LOBBY C is large, sweeping, and tall. Its geometries are high and vaulted, and its overall silhouettes are influenced strongly by Beaux Arts era architecture through a Modernist perspective. Vending machines line one of the walls, displaying the colorful brands "JACK NOIR'S STASH", "SOFTMESH!", "LUDORIUM", and "INTERFACES 4 U". There are a multitude of "windows", seemingly displaying some sort of pseudo-holographic vista of an above-ground daylit city outside and behind the window, despite everything being underground. Seating can be found here, clearly meant for people to wait for some appointment or another with the various magazines on the desk. It's near an unlit elevator that is marked "INOPERABLE GEOMETRY", presumably meant to lead up to whatever structure was once above.

    A pumpkin-sized meteor sits in the lobby at rest in a pile of water and sand, looking for all the world like it just belongs there, despite the fact it punched through the ceiling. One of the windows has been blown up and removed from the wall, revealing weird crawlspaces behind. There are a few battered, small bits of robotics about. A lot of fighting went on in here. Two corpses that appear to be near-identical duplicates of Big Boss are sitting behind the security desk, not decaying a bit, while a third stands there, waiting. He has stood there for days and days. One can see him struggling to stay upright. The back of his head, from the top of his forehead to the base of his neck, is exposed, leaving his skull visible, protected only by a thin wireframe.

    He stares at visitors. He does not act unless approached. Someone placed brass poles and velvet rope around the corpses and chunked robotics though, and left up an apologetic sign: "/!\ PARDON OUR MEMORY LEAK /!\".

    Arthur invites the visitors, old and new, to join him in one of the elevators in the elevator-hall, the only one that works right now.
Big Boss Big Boss is better armed than last time. A bigger rifle. More grenades. A suitcase with artillery. These things are /tough/, and there's going to be a lot of them. Dressed in his greatcoat, beret, and eyepatch, the legendary soldier just accepts the motions of Arthur's handshake begrudgingly, moves inside, and approaches the elevator. He knows what's up here, and it's not of interest to him. Instead, he needs to know more about what's down there.

"Are we returning to the Ludogenics floor?"
Roxas Roxas offers a simple FIST BUMP to Arthur, because he is too direct a person to get into too much of this elaborate handshake stuff. He'd lose track of it or run away with it and waste time if allowed to, so he's just not.

He trails after Arthur into the elevator, settling in next to / behind him depending on how he's standing. Nothing about this place seems to strike him as terribly weird, although he /does/ glance between Big Boss, the corpses, and the staring skull-exposed Big Boss briefly.

Motioning animatedly towards Xion to join them on the elevator like a proper RPG Party Member, he finds himself temporarily distracted by the manner in which Big Boss is transporting his munitions.

"Are you... planning to /stay/ here?"

Then, towards Arthur, "Is this the sorta place you just /stay/? I mean, I guess I can sort of see it. Sometimes we pack to go stay in Castle Oblivion, and /it's/ in an only sort-of-habitable place..."
Doctor Strange      Strange engages in the customary Strange-Arthur Greeting. It's a series of high fives only possible through spatial manipulation, which both of them are likely only doing because it looks stupid.

     When that's over with, he joins arthur in the Elevator. "If we are," says Strange to Boss, "Let's try and find a way there that puts us as far away from those things as possible." He nods in the direction of the Big Boss clones. Inside the safety of the elevator, he weaves a spell. He's polite enough not to bump his arms into anyone as he works it.

     On the Ludogenics floor, a burning mystical eye opens. Strange scries, trying to find a route that can get them to the data center without having to fight or sneak past them. As he recalls, there were a lot.
Big Boss As Roxas joins up with the group, Big Boss gestures with a foot towards the case, while pulling up the map on his iDroid. "Rocket launcher. More portable this way. Design makes it more concealable, as well." He's well aware that it's weird that he has a rocket launcher in a suitcase.

At least he's not taking it through an airport.
Xion Rumors of a GHOST PLACE usually come with more fanfare, but this is the American Midwest - flat, boring, and largely empty save for townships, heat, and various kinds of lizards. Few lizards, of course, stand upright. Fewer still fiddle-faddle with ancient bunkers!

Out of a Corridor of Darkness (a purple-black tear-sworl in the air), a black-coated and cowled figure frontflips out, landing on a knee and both hands.

"Ghost ninja guy! I'm he-oh, not here either. Dang. When am I going to get that quest done?" Xion exclaims, popping up to her feet with a quick kip-up powered by her fingers and planted knee.

"Hello!"

Arthur Lowell has an aura of deep Need!
He desires to be ELABORATELY HANDSHOOK

Xion stares, shock-blue eyes staring deeply into the soul of the CoolKid.

> Get It On.

Xion shoots her hand out and shakes. Her thumb wiggle-waggles with his, and as her gloved fingers slide away, they close into a fist to bap forward, top, and bottom.

> It's Not Enough! Shake!

Her hand pops open and she does a palm clap, then a back-of-hand return clap, retreating with a jazzy wagglewiggle of her fingers. Her face is a furrow of concentration. A bit of tongue pokes out of the corner of her mouth as she bites it in deep concentration. She begins repeating the cycle with her other hand - first and second, starting with the shake-thumbjoust and ending with the front-clap-back-clap.

> IT'S NOT ENOUGH! HIS HUNGER IS INSATABLE!!! Engage Full-Power Shake!

Xion begins practically dancing in tandem with Arthur, a gyration of stances, handwaggles, thumb wars, bringing it in with an intense bicep pump, single claps across the back--

> FINISH IT!

Xion takes a step back, panting from shake-exertion, and raises her hand high.

The high-five is THUNDEROUS.

The low five, as she passes, is perfect.

Practically collapsing from effort, the black-haired youth gasps for breath. "R-roxas, he's too strong!"

Then she spots the trident symbol. "Oh cool! What's that mean?"
Deelel Deelel had been accessing her old memories of the death game that Arthur had been a part of. Heck, she'd been a moderate par to it herself and the idea something was left at Skaianet had her on edge. It wasn't the majority of its tech that worried it was one thing and one thing alone. The means that caused the whole session to start. To ignore it would be folly even with what she might find there.

She'd have to face it one way or another right? To anyone noticing Deelel, she would not be bothered by the temperature much if at all. However, she seemed on edge she would look at the display for a moment.

"Jack Noir..."

Now there's a name with some serious memories attached to it for her. She would now go to take a look at JACK NORI's STASH just what do they have there? She will keep tabs on Big Boss after all he is her leader right?
Staren     Staren arrives with a large group of constructs -- humanoids made from scrap metal melted down and cast into a shape the magic could interact with. They'll wait to be called down though, Staren's not going to try and cram them into the elevator at the same time the actual party is going down.

    Staren's armed and armored as usual, but who knows what that means -- he has a bag that's bigger on the inside, after all. Maybe there's extra ammo and a gun designed to fire the cruxite rounds he picked up last time.

    "What's ludogenics even supposed to /mean/?"

    Staren looks at Roxas. "This doesn't seem like a place to stay, we're just trying to get something here... some beta, unreleased game that's going to be a Christmas present to everyone."

    Staren tilts his head at Big Boss. "A bit cumbersome, isn't it?" He pulls from his bag something that has the rough form factor of a rifle, but the bore is way too big, and the magazine wider and longer, because this thing fires missiles. "Missile launcher. No assembly required. Carry it like a rifle. Although if you want really powerful missiles, you'd need super strength to carry a scaled-up one..."
Roxas Roxas deeply contemplates the peril that Xion has put herself in by engaging in the exact sort of extensive, elaborate handshake jutsu that he himself has been forbidden from. He fishes around in his cultist robes, withdraws a small bottle of BLUE LIQUID, and upends the ether on Xion's head. It's extremely sparkly and blue.

"Does that help, or do you need Cure?" He asks.

Slowly, his attention turns from Xion towards the symbol she's pointing out. He recognizes it, albeit incorrectly. There's only so many gods that use that symbol, and the one that does is among the assholes of the pantheons.

"Uhhh... this isn't... this isn't associated with /our/ world, is it?"

Regarding the suitcase, Roxas 'ohhs' appreciatively. He is a teenage boy, therefore rocket launchers are automatically at least moderately cool to him.

"An unreleased game...?" He wonders aloud.
Sumiko Mikoto shows up because she heard something adventurous was afoot!  Being a sort of person who shouldn't use her powers flippantly, but does anyway because she gets bored but also wants to understand more about the world doesn't bother her one bit.  Of course, the first challenge for her is, of course, the handshake given by Arthur.  She looks like she's about to give a proper bow, but then she remembers that American's were weird.

Ok.  She can do this.

[MINI-GAME]

Oh.  She reaches out, which turns into a strange STRIFE rhythm game that she's forced to keep up with. Fistbump, fistbump, slap, low five, high five, Fistbump into finger waggle, pound, pound, bump, dap...and then the LIGHTNING ROUND Happens, which is just basically a bunch of symbols happening at once.

[VICTORY?]

This goes on for a stupid amount of time until the music fades.  Why is there music? However, with that greeting, they get to go into the dungeon itself.  Climbing down after the aforementioned tour guide into this place, she finally reaches the bottom and of course, immediately notices the corpses.  

Before she could even respond she's in the corner ejecting her mistake of lunch from earlier.  Already queezy, she decides to perhaps get something from the Vending machine to make herself less sick.  She selects SOFTMESH.  Hopefully, it was what she wanted it to be, or rather needed it to be.  

> Examine the Moving Corpse of Big Boss.

Mikoto shakes her head, refusing to do it.  

> Turn your back on the Bodies.

Mikoto follows Arthur instead, deciding that she should do the thing she feels in her heart she should never do, but doesn't want to admit that there are bodies there so her stomach becomes less of a horrible tumble of a washing machine.

"So uh... an elevator.  How far does it go down?"
Lezard Valeth     Lezard arrives, as ominous as always, but he still partakes in the ritual of giving Arthur his COOL KID HANDSHAKE. The Sorceror still looks at his hand afterwards, wondering if he is being duped into some kind of secret god-worshipping ritual in the guise of a coolkid greeting.... But that's just paranoia, right?

    Either way, he heads in with the others, and... Well, "This place once more." He sighs to himself. "The creatures are absurdly durable. Do be careful, it would take a significant amount of effort to render them inert." Inert, not dead. He's not sure if they're even alive, really. He does, however, stop to watch Xion's INTENSE SECRET SHAKE POWER. "..." His glasses take on that certain sheen as he adjusts them, watching intently. Could he be wondering it that power could be harnessed for his own goals? Surely not, that's absurd.

    The Sorceror wastes no time, just moving over into the elevator and sweeping past the mess outside of the SKULLBODY's aggro ranges.
Mauve Gauntlet Holy crap his place is freaky. She's never had any reason (or money) to come to America, so while she didn't know what to expect, it definitely wasn't this. What with the dead robo-clone bodies of people who were already here. She tries not to stare at the Big Boss robo-clone thing, since it looks like the kind of person who would jump over the table and attack her if she just looked at it wrong.

She shrugs at Staren. "Is it like...uh...I think Luddite is the word?" She's wrong of course. Very wrong.

Mauve startles a bit when Arthur just offers a COOLKID handshake out of the blue, but she eventually gently fistbumps Arthur instead of shaking his hand like she normally would out of her armor. Her namesake gauntlets would probably just engulf his entire hand, anyway.

She quietly edges into the elevator, giving everyone a gentle wave. She looks down at the rocket launcher suitcase, trying to not make contact with Big Boss because, again, Kind of person who would punch her for looking at him wrong. Or Rocket launcher.
Arthur Lowell     HANDSHAKES! Arthur does a number of multi-dimensional bro-pounds to Strange! Xion really, /really/ gets into it, in the perfect way, and Arthur's system just keeps on pouring on the output as she goes. There's a literal bar filling up, his SALUTATION INDEX just maxing out hard! He gives a brief answer to her question as a result of the boost she's gotten out of the handshake: "NOT SURE, gotta say. I kept seein' it around SKAIANET STUFF, but SKAIANET ICONS were SPIROGRAPHS. I dunno WHAT IT MEANT." He briefly sweeps away sand on the surface with his broom, revealing more of the trident, and writing along the illustrated hilt of the graffiti:

    "BLUH BLUH HUGE WITCH"

    "Don't think we're ever gonna FIGURE THIS ONE." Arthur says, furrowing his brows. Time to head down, anyway. He replies to Big Boss. "That's the IDEA. Ya still got that MAP? There's a DATA CENTER way in the back of, I think some bit you were WANDERING back then?" Arthur replies to Big Boss, as he loads his own BROOMSTICK RIFLE. Roxas gets a brief laugh. "Fuckin' NOBODY should STAY HERE." Then he tilts his head. "Why'd it be YOUR WORLD? You got GAME STUFF goin' on, homie?"

    Now that everyone's inside, they can see unusual further details. The main walls, floors, and ceiling are concrete, composed of a grid of blocks or perhaps panels like tile, with every third block featuring a simple square buzzing lamp. Each cell of the grid is marked "1X1M SOLID GEOMETRY FLOOR TEXTURE" or "1X1M SOLID GEOMETRY WALL TEXTURE", repeated constantly. All the main architecture surfaces are a flat, dull gray. At the top of one of the walls, strict, blocky text has been painted on in large fonts declares the room's various aspects: "-9.8M/S^2 'SAFE' GRAVITY ZONE", "DATA NON-DUMP INSTANCE, MEMORY RECYCLING", and "UNSUPERVISED LUDOGENICS PROHIBITED".

    JACK NOIR'S STASH is finally investigated by Deelel, after being ignored by everyone last night. The VENDING MACHINE vends exclusive KNIVES. Fucking typical, Jack Noir. Wait, what the fuck? From the look of its dust and manufacturing info on the sticker, the vending machine was installed only last year. That doesn't make any sense at all.

    The SOFTMESH! machine dispenses, it seems, primarily geometric primitives. Meshes, in the literal sense. Who would consume basic 3D geometry? Presumably skullbodies? Yet, somehow, the cylinder has one of those tab-opening things. A soft drink? Well, maybe that'll settle the stomach a little.

    Arthur answers the question of Ludogenics simply: "Creation, through games."

    He hits the button on the elevator -- it's actually an INSTANCE TRANSITIONER, so the light flicks off and they're at the destination. Now for what's there, and the process of navigating through.
Arthur Lowell     SUBCAFETERIA 4 is a large, wide-open food-court-like area served mostly by one large vendor that's halfway between a kiosk and a small restaurant. Entirely identical chairs and cafeteria-type tables crowd the area. Each chair is stained identically, and every table has the same three types of meals in trays arranged in four total potential arrangements. A few art pieces dot the environment, strange, complex, blocky abstract carvings made out of an odd off-white crystalline substance. The average viewer may find them off, or unnerving, though figuring out why requires substantial capacity for art appreciation.

    There's an exit to the NORTH towards MAINTENANCE ACCESSWAYS marked "EMPLOYEES ONLY", WEST towards those INSTANCE TRANSIT "ELEVATORS", and to the EAST there's something that signage says is a "LUDOGENICS ZONE".

    In here, a number of SKULLBODIES can be found. Each clad in the same gray jumpsuit, each standing motionless or shambling strangely, each breathing heavily or in a stressed way, they go through the motions of acting out a crowd. They get more tense if one dares to approach their chosen paths of navigation, clearly a threat, and clearly quite difficult to simply sneak through with the way dozens of them wander the cafeteria, never eating but always getting food, putting food on tables, and throwing it away.

    RECREATIONAL LUDOGENICS has another velvet rope blocking off some more corpses that are just at its entrance. Un-decayed, just like the ones upstairs. "PARDON OUR MEMORY LEAK"

    Now it's just a matter of navigating this crowd of mindless, suffering non-player characters. It's made more unnerving by the fact that they copy the visual appearances from those who have visited -- or, in other cases, the helmets. Linehart's helm can still be seen here. Mauve's helm is stacked onto proportions that seem to be a rough estimate of her real-life body's. They stare at the visitors, but only react when their paths are crossed.
Xion The graffiti and logoing draw Xion's immense attention after she recovers - thanks to Roxas's potion - from the emotionally and physically draining act of keeping up with the SALUTATION MINIGAME. "Well, if there's a huge witch with a spear, it COULD be the Sorceress, but it could also be whoever 'Bluh Bluh' is. Hmmm..."

She carries on, with the party, deeper in, checking the textures of the walls and the strange writing on the cieling. "C-can I take this?"

Xion attempts to add 1x WALL TEXTURE to her inventory.

Skirting the strange SKULLBODIES that mill about like a random encounter that she really doesn't need the drops from, Xion heads vaguely towards the LUDOGENICS ZONE. "Well, maybe we can clear up the leak, and then everything will be better? That sounds right. Let's do it!" She exclaims in a hushed stage-whisper.
Doctor Strange      "We might," says Strange to Arthur, on the topic of the 'huge witch' graffiti. "But I kinda don't want to," he muses.

     The instance transitions. Strange cuts off his scry-spell with a curt hand gesture, just as the transition begins. Sneaking past the Skullbodies will be difficult--they seemed to realize that something was wrong, even if they never figured out exactly how they were being deceived. It seems like there are more people than last time, too.

     This time, he tries something different. Rather than sneaking past them, Strange alters the geometry of the area. FLOOR TEXTURES sprout up from the ground. Technically, at this point, they are WALLS. The Sorcerer Supreme is making a labyrinth for the Skullbodies, attempting to cordon the majority of them off from the party, and make the trip to LUDOGENICS easier.
Deelel Deelel is checking out Jack Nori's Stash. She'll look over the vending machine for a moment "Knives? That's Jack Noir all right."

She muses and then pauses as she looks over the info on the sticker she'll pause for a moment staring. The program will go wide-eyed for a moment at it.

"Wait this was put in last year?!"

She pauses and will try to see if she can get the vending machine to give up a knife or two, if she has to she'll summon her keyblade. if she can't get any blades out of the machine and will attempt to use its powers to unlock it. She'll also check the insides for more clues. Once she's finished up there? She'll move to head for SUBCAFETERIA 4.
Roxas "Oh, uh--" Roxas shakes his head at Arthur, "I mean, maybe. But that three-pronged symbol is a bit familiar. There's this God--" A zone transition happens, and the lights turn out. When they flick back on, Roxas looks AMAZINGLY unsettled by the entire experience. He falls silent, pressing two fingers together in a distinctly awkward gesture that is considerably outside of his norms.

He surveys the SKULLBODIES acting out the process of going to a cafeteria, getting food, 'eating', and discarding it. The entire process is hauntingly familiar in a way that he finds almost offensive, but he isn't about to actually admit to that.

Now both sour /and/ unsettled, he decides that he wants as little as possible to do with what's going on in this room. Waiting patiently, he observes a brief window in which to pass through the pathing of the SKULLBODIES when they pause to discard their food at garbage cans.

His body dissolves into a streak of light, following Xion towards the LUDOGENICS zone.
Arthur Lowell     Xion attempts to grab a 1X1 WALL TEXTURE. What happens next depends on how her inventory works, because this is /actually/ a 1X1X1M block, a real-ass large chunk of actual concrete set into other similar blocks. So if she can take such blocks -- there one goes! Behind it? Exactly the same kind of block, set one meter deep. This area is such a surreal mix of game and world.
Big Boss Big Boss hasn't visited the Ludogenics Zone yet. He got a Channel module from the acccessways last time, so he might be able to assist with that. Moving with the others, he moves through the corridors. If there's any Skullbodies they stumble upon in the process...

He uses his body to neck chop them, throw them back, and stagger them long enough to proceed. Too short of range to fire. Once inside the Ludogenics Zone, he looks for a computer, or something, that he can start proceeding to in order to hook up the Channel module.
Sumiko > Drink the SOFTMESH.

Well, her stomach IS a little upset from the bodies, and if there are more here it's only going to get worse.  So with a shrug, she pops the top off of the geometric shape and attempts to...drink from it?  She is completely confused at how this is possible if it is possible.  While Deelel stays and deals with knives, she moves on with the rest of the group.

Of course, now that there is some sort of teleportation, she scratches her head.  Ok, that was weird, it's like a game?  Oh well, they said this place was LIKE a game.  

Approaching the maze of SKULLBODIES, causes her some pause.  She's disturbed by this but knows they're just some sort of weird NPCs.  They're not REALLY corpses, and also corpses don't eat.  It's ok, Mikoto, you got this.

> Stab them with your sword.

"Hm, appears to be way too many to do that, and everyone else wants to try and get around them," she muses aloud, so refusing to actually do that.  

> Bounce around like a madman?

Mikoto nods at this, already transformed and using NANOHA'S flight and mobility...well she just attempts to JUMP around the problem, bouncing off walls and landing on tables to make sure she's not in any pathing.  Attempting to get to the door, where LUDOGENICS is.  

"What's a LUDOGENIC anyway?"
Arthur Lowell     Strange is successful -- partially. The moment he begins warping reality and setting up the maze, the Skullbodies are stopped. Some of them begin to navigate their segments, with inhuman precision, as if they were solving the maze using navigation nodes. Those cut off entirely immediately begin to... Smash the walls aggressively. And with enough power to crack chunks of the walls. They threaten to get through quickly. Within half a minute, they're already smashing through, with hands broken and bloody, but it gives the group plenty of time to arm up, and fewer foes to deal with at any given moment.
Arthur Lowell     DEELEL KEYBLADING the VENDING MACHINE is successful. It's a vending machine, you know? Not some unbreakable enemy or a game abstraction. It opens up, spilling more knives. The technology inside is recognizeable. Carapacian, scavenged and rewired. Someone's been recycling old carapacian tech with an economic eye. They knew Jack Noir.
Staren     So much for bringing reinforcements anywhere.

    At least Dr. Strange is on point; Hopefully his reality-warping gives them a clear path through the cafeteria. Elsewhere... or, if extermination is needed in the cafeteria, Staren reveals that the missile launcher he showed Big Boss is loaded with some kind of heat-generation warheads that make massive fireballs and a bit less of a shockwave, hopefully burning groups of skullbodies or other constructs.

    For individuals and mop-ups, Staren unloads energy weapons trying to focus fire and end things before they become a real problem.

    If constructs DO become a big problem, overwhelming anyone in combat, Staren pulls out a conventional assault rifle with the cruxite magazine from before loaded into it and tries to finish them that way.
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve gives the NPC clones as wide a berth as she can, especially the ones wearing her helmet despite being closer in height to her real-world self by swinging her way along the ceiling. She lands somewhere by the 'Employees only' Sign and tries to bust the door down.
Arthur Lowell     Some people are heading to Ludogenics, so there's a stop-in there. This requires battling through a number of the Skullbodies. This means stabbing -- an effective way to shove them down, though hard to kill -- as well as chopping and focused heat-generating warheads, though using the kind spec'd for vehicles may be more fruitful.

    RECREATIONAL LUDOGENICS ZONE 4 has a central chunk of the floor's grid, something like an 8x10 area, replaced with a soft, almost plush mix between a carpet and a trampoline, still grid-patterned and reading "1X1M NONLETHAL GEOMETRY FLOOR TEXTURE". It isn't nonlethal, you could still break your neck or something, but it's softer. The "windows" in here include a skylight, displaying a brilliantly cheerful blue midday sky. A section of the "skylight" has cracked badly, allowing a meteor the size of a truck to peek through.

    A large red button is accessible on a post near the soft area, and a number of benches line it like people will meet here or observe what happens in the middle. The zone in the middle has a caution-yellow border written in harsh, thick, blocky text, reading "!!CAUTION!! NON-RELEASE SOFTWARE PROHIBITED !!CAUTION!!" Someone a long time ago scrawled "TECH DEMO" in chunky, loopy graffiti near the edge. It has the aura of derisive, pejorative terminology. Another "LUDORIUM" vending machine is here, as well as another cargo container.

    The main exit is an open space to the WEST, leading to SUBCAFETERIA 4. There are double-doors on the east wall that lead out to a well-lit courtyard, but when examined, it becomes clear that they are actually pseudo-holographic screens displaying false elegant doors. If you look even MORE closely, you can tell that someone (the visitors from last time) walked through them recently, into a real world on the other side.

    The red button post can be pressed, summoning up HEX SYS and its many MODULE SLOTS opening on the post. Other software cannot be chosen now, since nobody has a SELECTOR INTERFACE, so nobody gets to play Nullbody Move! and have a stupid laser tag/SWAT game.

    Pressing the module that Big Boss got into the slot results in an odd event.
Doctor Strange      Strange handles this development the way he handles everything--by resolving to be more annoying than the problem.

     Following input from Staren, he flips part of the facility on its side. Strange and his allies now see the labyrinth from a top-down perspective, as if they were above it rather than adjacent. He thrusts with a palm, creating some distance between the Skullbodies and the party, allowing his allies to shoot 'down' at the top of their heads. The Skullbodies retain their own gravity--meaning that escape is now less a matter of smashing through walls, and more a matter of climbing up them.

     Given how willingly they bloody their fists, he doesn't doubt they'll attempt the climb with equal determination. He makes for Ludogenics, rather than stand and fight--they're here for the Data Center, after all. That being said, he takes an interest in the holographic doors, and the world beyond them. Strange attempts to peer into that world. Are there mystery visitors, waiting to greet those brave enough to step through?
Xion Having acquired and stored one 1x1x1 Medium Block in her inventory, Xion is pleasantly surprised at her new acquisition. It's a big block! Collecting a few more here and there, Xion uses her inventory to bear up one of the blocks suspended by a 'placement gun' beam of dark purple voxel-motes.

Guiding the block with her hand, she uses it like a battering ram, letting Roxas follow up with his weapon as he zips along beside her. "Let's go!"

Continuing through the crowd with her bashing 1x1x1 brick of terrain.

Re-stowing it after pushing through to LUDOGENICS, Xion stares at the red button.
"I definitely wanna push the button!"

Then she goes to poke the enormous switch like a child in an elevator - obsessively (unless stopped).
Arthur Lowell     As for the MEMORY LEAK, it looks like that's what the local area thinks corpses are. There's a number of corpses of SKULLBODIES of last-visit's Visitors, as well as chunks of robotics that were attached to them. "Robotics" is a bit of a simplification though. A number of the machines look like the physical manifestation of videogame interfaces. One of the SKULLBODIES has a HEALTH INTERFACE physically jamming knife legs into its shoulders and neck, while several have NAVIGATION INTERFACES scything their legs through the SKULLBODY's head. It was a pretty pitched battle.

    Arthur looks at them with distaste. "UGH." He mutters. "Fuckin' HATED those things. Alright, looks like we're just about DONE I think. Wanna hit up the OTHER AREA? You said you had a MAP, BOSSMAN?" Arthur points to Big Boss.
Roxas Roxas reappears from the streak of light-- on top of the brick Xion is carrying. Instead of using his weapon, he just angles an arm out and fires a rapid-fire series of orbs of light that crash violently into anything that happens to dare to approach the pair of them as they advance. He jumps sideways off of the terrain brick when they arrive at the target destination, scratching his head at the surroundings.

"This place is so w--"

There goes Xion.

After taking a look around towards the vending machine, he decides that whatever happens as a consequence of her enthusiasm is going to be /way/ more entertaining than that. So he just wanders off vaguely to the side of her, looking in the general direction of the button.

"We are?" He marvels at Arthur's remark that they're just about done.
Big Boss As Strange makes them a firing point, Big boss unfurls the suitcase, grabs his rocketr launcher, puts it together, loads a rocket, and fires straight at the mass of Skullbodies, trying to blow some apart or knock them back. He'll fire again if he has to, but he doesn't have many rockets.

Once inside, though, he puts the module in, and looks for a response button to Skaianet's reply. He doesn't see one.

At Arthur's reply, Big Boss shows the iDroid, holographic map popping up. He scrolls along it, moving to find the 'other area' Arthur refers to, and start leading the charge to navigate there. He does not let anyone touch the iDroid, though.

"I'll lead the way."

Though he /does/ pause to see what happens when Xion presses the button.
Deelel Deelel takes a moment to get a look over the machine it's Carapacian technology, she makes note of that. She'll take a few of the knives and slot some money into the machine. She'll take a few knives to look at later. She also knows they might be useful later on. With that, she's on her way to SUBCAFETERIA 4.
Sumiko Mikoto bounces off of the wall, and into the counter.  Ok, that could have been aimed better.  Leaping from it, she tries to make her pace towards the door.  One problem.

A SKULLHEAD, no wait...SKULLBODY blocks her path.  It turns because she just accidentally got in its way, to which she attempts to leap over it.  As she lands, she thrusts her sword into the ground, causing a spike of jade to shoot out of the ground behind her, aiming to try and impale the thing to the ceiling.

Hopefully, it'll stay there as she goes through the door.  When she is finally through, she goes to lay on the 'non-lethal' floor, just to see what it feels like.  Oh hey, bouncy.  Of course, people are already waiting to move to the next area, and Xion is about to push a button.

"Smash that button, Xion!"
Arthur Lowell     Those heading for EMPLOYEES ONLY Maintenance Passageways find something entirely different.

    MAINTENANCE ACCESSWAYS are much more claustrophobic than the other areas, consisting mostly of tunnels that are exactly two gridspaces tall and wide. The writing on the walls and floors and ceilings persists here, but now the lettering is reflective, shining brightly under any light that passes over it. Piping and wiring of all sorts goes on back here, sometimes thick enough to obscure the walls and ceiling. At times, it even becomes thick enough to make it clear that it doesn't need to be that complex.

    It's nearly impossible to navigate, with all the maze-like structure. Getting to any of the interesting content on the NORTH, WEST, or EAST ends of things will need some form of enhancement to navigation, but finding a map could do it. It's easy enough to reach the SOUTH door that leads back to SUBCAFETERIA 4.

    A thinner number of SKULLBODIES are present. There are sounds of robotic motors and skittering as well. Mauve Gauntlet is the first one to encounter the hostile INTERFACES. Like the interfaces of a game, these display and facilitate interacting with all manner of things: HEALTH, ELEVATION, NAVIGATION, SELECTION, INVENTORY, who knows what else? But the HEALTH INTERFACE is a rectangular-bodied robotic creature intent on burrowing its knife-legs into her shoulders, the ELEVATION is a needle-like body with a dozen spindly little legs trying to inject itself into where her eye would be, the SELECTION is a daddy-long-legs style six-foot-tall robot with a tiny main body that tries to impale her, and the INVENTORY interface is a six-legged crab-like thing that tries to leap into her back and stab deep into her equivalent of a ribcage. There's a half-dozen of these here, and more further in. It'll be a battle to navigate the deeper tunnel zones -- she'll likely want backup!
Arthur Lowell     Strange checks outside. Staren explored this earlier! A modest city in Spring, un-lived-in. If he checks the global location on the other end, it appears to be a city built entirely for economic reasons, as part of a sort of ponzi scheme for real estate investors ten years ago. Perfect place to stick some windows. There's an absolutely metric ton of networking gear on the other side. It's all active since Staren turned it on.
Arthur Lowell     XION pushes the button. A large TEST PLAYFIELD is loaded from HEX SYS immediately, since it just did the default action since she doesn't have a SELECTOR INTERFACE. Now it properly displays. By which I mean a series of hexagonal spaces appears on the soft square grid, and, most importantly, Xion is clearly aware that she can interact with any of them that she chooses in order to open the CELL INTERFACE.

============================== SAMPLE TEST ZONES ===============================
                          ___     ___     ___     ___                          
                         /   \   /   \   /   \   /   \                          
                         \   /   \   /   \   /   \   /                          
                         /   \   /000\   /006\   /   \                          
                         \   /001\   /005\   /007\   /                          
                         /   \   /003\   /009\   /   \                          
                         \   /002\   /012\   /008\   /                          
                         /   \   /004\   /010\   /   \                          
                         \   /   \   /   \   /011\   /                          
                         /   \   /   \   /   \   /   \                          
                         \   /   \   /   \   /   \   /                          

================================================================================

    

    Unfortunately, a DEPENDENCY IS MISSING if she attempts to, though mentally "clicking" on one causes it to wobble up and down a little. There's a tense sense to the field, like everything's poised for conflict in some key way.
Doctor Strange      Strange makes note of the outside world. He then leaves the door assumes the lotus position. He crosses his hands over his chest, preparing to open the Eye...

     Until a scream rings out in his radio earpiece. Mauve has encountered the Interfaces, it seems. "Oh," he says with a nod, keyed up so that Mauve can hear him. "/Those/ assholes. Listen, I'm going to the future. If you die, I'll come back and stop it." He resumes the gesture, mimicking the opening of an eye with his thumbs and forefingers. The Eye itself opens, disappears, only for an instant. To everyone else, it seems like he just flashed in and out of existence, with nothing but a bright green light to signify it.

     In actuality, he travels to the future. Far enough into the future that the party has already collected the RESONANCES and can therefore see the effects of each ACTION. In so doing, he's hoping to find out what each ACTION does, to get an idea of which RESONANCE they should shoot for first.
Mauve Gauntlet It's a maintenance tunnel! An incredibly small one, and it's still full of those robo-clones,

"The heck...?" Mauve says to herself. This catches the attention of the interfaces though, and they attack.

Mauve screams, backhanding the elevation bar, and shooting a fist into the selection machine. The fact that some of them looked like fucking spiders didn't help and honestly this room was just full of nope. She doesn't catch the inventory interface and that health bar was gunning for her pretty fast.

She bolts out of the room, the inventory interface still strapped to her back and the health bar not too far behind.
Lezard Valeth     Just when Mauve Gauntlet is in DIRE STRAITS, there is a confident, demanding phrase.

    "Fire Storm."

    A moment later, there is an explosion of flame that blasts through the horde of Interfaces, Lezard having no truck with getting his (or anyone else's) body mangled so they can do their jobs at the moment. Mauve, luckily, is unaffected as Lezard considers her something resembling an ally.

    The Inventory Interface, however, is not. Lezard promptly stalks forward, a scowl on his face as he lashes out with the Manus Catalyst, following up to attempt to crush anything in his way while the others deal with the game in the other room.

    There are still many mysteries left to plumb here, after all.
Sumiko Mikoto is kinda stumped on what to do here, taking a seat on the floor while Xion makes great life choices, like pushing buttons.  Her eyes move to the flash of green on Dr. Strange for a moment, before he disappears.  Yeah, it's because she thought she saw a gem.  Turning her head back, she thinks.

"Draw, I guess.  We could at least see what happens if you do!" She says, finally pulling out the SOFTMESH, popping the cap and taking a drink.  

This won't end badly.
Roxas "I agree with Drawing." Roxas replies to Xion, turning 'round to look the way they came in anticipation of Mauve's arrival. Once she passes through the cafeteria they'd come through and into their current location, he raises a hand and calls, "Cura!"

Pain-easing sparklies dance through the air around Mauve. It's not a /fantastic/ mending of wounds, but it beats no mending of wounds at all by a long shot.

He pats Xion on the shoulder approvingly, "Pretty sure we'd be missing out on something cool if you hadn't pressed that button. Good job."
Staren     "If we need resonance to do anything, and drawing is how we get that rather than a missing dependency, I guess we do that."

    And then there's screaming on the radio.

<"Wait, who is that? Where is it coming from?">
<"What are WHAT? There are dangerous monsters here, where are-- oh">
<"...You're facing more than ONE? Run back here and we'll fight them together">
Arthur Lowell     The Skullbodies are being limited by readjusting their geometries -- at least, the ones who weren't limited by being pinned through jade impalements. Now folks are heading to the next area -- and when they do, they need only deal with, primarily, the Skullbodies that are climbing. They're willing, terribly willing, to rip their fingers apart on the straining climb up to reach their intended path, and it looks like they somehow know Doctor Strange is to blame for aggroing them, so to speak. Despite their horribly physical nature, they still somehow possess the powers of these key aspects of game abstraction. Most of their efforts are concentrated vaguely in Doctor Strange's direction, now, unluckily for him.

    Now folks are heading to zones of key importance. Past the maintenance halls, there is something important. The Resonances, which Big Boss can guide them to, are waiting somewhere in those technical zones, under development. Arthur rushes to meet the robotic foes as they stumble and burn, screeching noises of warped game VFX. Horrid things. Arthur's focused on wrestling the SELECTOR INTERFACE, and shoves it back towards the MAINTENANCE ZONES. "Don't get SLOWED DOWN, homies! RUN AND GUN this bitch, don't let 'em REGROUP for a SECOND!"
Big Boss As the group returns to the Employee Area, Big Boss puts away his rocket launcher and unslings his rifle. As they head through, Arthur tells them to run-and-gun.

This is the part where, in the Metal Gear Multiverse fictional series, it becomes a rail shooter. Big Boss starts moving, aiming at center points and popping off shots with pinpoint accuracy, butting the rifle into anything that tries to get into melee range.

As he does so, he checks the map when he gets a fair moment, and tries to commit it to memory. If he can do so, he won't need to reference it constantly!
Arthur Lowell     Doctor Strange visits various futures.

    He sees some aspects of them. The details have been sent privately.
Staren     Now they run for the next area so they can find the dependencies.

    Staren pulls a submachinegun from his bag; he's focused on slowing tactics now. The underbarrel launcher fires pen-size missiles whose heads explode into large globs of fast-hardening foam; not enough to cover a nullbody, but maybe enough to stick a foot to the ground, or an elbow to the nullbody next to them. The bullets, meanwhile, are smart material, but right now all that means is they transfer kinetic energy very effectively. Staren also pulls vials from his bag and chucks them at the nullbodies' feet, where they explode into fast-growing viney bushes larger than a man, blocking the way.
Sumiko Mikoto drinks the fluid.  It's, flat, but mildly sweet, which is alright.  However, after a moment there seems to be a slight CHANGE in her.  Higher definition edges, sharper colors, and a look that almost reminds someone of flowing jade instead of just a dress in the color of it.  She looks just SLIGHTLY older, more confident, and ready to do this.

Run and gun huh?  Mikoto flips to her feet and is on the heels of the other.  If they need to fight their way through, then it's just a matter of being faster than they are.  Mikoto comes up right behind the group, giving them a warning to get out of the way as she swings the blade forward.

It releases a barrage of shards of jade, attempting to impale and slice through any of the text commands in her way, as she attempts to use 'THE DARKNESS' to try and teleport through the group and get behind them.  Riku's teleportation was in fact, useful...if not very horrifying.

When people get in, she slides in to try and buy time.  Aiming to block the way with herself, she slams the blade down and attempts to be a physical barrier.  Using her IMPROBABLE DEFENSE to try and make things more difficult for the monsters and buy time.
Doctor Strange      Upon returning to the present, Strange shares his knowledge. "The options," he begins. One hand carves a portal with the Sling Ring. The other holds a finger to his temple, keying him up for the radio. "Like you guys were saying, Draw looks like our best bet. Everything else either uses resources or sends us off someplace, from what I could see." He doesn't mention specifics--having seen the mock-fight between himself and Arthur, the Sorcerer Supreme elects to keep that card close to his chest. Foreknowledge of that eventuality might present an advantage.

     Lezard has proposed a plan to deal with the nullbodies, while others track down the Resonances. Strange steps through the portal, emerging on the other side next to Lezard. Rather than close the portal, he changes its destination, with a twist of his hand.

     The Sorcerer Supreme flings the portal through the crowd of attacking INTERFACES. Guided by his motions, the portal seeks out HEALTH INTERFACES. Its counterpart hovers over the nullbodies scaling the very same walls he created. Strange essentially drops HEALTH INTERFACES into the crowd of Nullbodies, a few at a time.
Deelel Deelel is at the moment passing the same way as the other dungeon crawlers are, she'll do her best to evade the skullobodies where she can as she's going. Though at this rate she's going to have to pull out her keyblade again as it's time to run and gun. She'll use her blade to fend off the Skullbodies, or at other times, she'll cast ice spells at them as she moves.

"I don't plan to. I do not want to get reduced to grist by these things!"

She calls back to Arthur as she moves along with everyone else.
Arthur Lowell     The INTERFACES are relatively simple to force back with gunfire, though they love persisting in hit-and-run tactics. The SKULLBODIES further into the tunnels are far harder to deal with, and require stunning before something like Staren or Deelel's riot foam or ice magic to secure them in place, or someone to give them a solid melee thwack like Deelel or Mikoto, and even then they threaten to re-emerge from them with concentrated superhuman strength. The crawling SKULLBODIES chase more, and more, and more as well...

    Luckily, Mikoto has escaping through maintenance covered. With the right moves, she can barricade relevant passages with brutal spikes that the SKULLBODIES frequently fall on. Sadly, this does little for the INTERFACES, which skitter around and about them deftly. They're going to need LOTS more fire area-denial from Lezard Valeth's efforts, which were so successful before with them. It's hard to find any solution that fits both the Skullbodies and the Interfaces, unfortunately!

    But he might not be joining. There's science to do. Mostly marrying the INTERFACES to the SKULLBODIES. Strange manages to get a HEALTH INTERFACE onto a SKULLBODY -- this one's a pained-looking Deelel -- and the moment it attaches there's a palpable sense of /wrongness/. The interface slides on the way a knife slides into flesh. The SKULLBODY seems to like it plenty, though, its face twisting into a rictus grin instead of the usual display of pain. It doesn't seem to be suffering anymore. It still, though, seems quite intent on killing Strange. The same effect is replicated on others -- a SKULLBODY of Mauve can't express an expression, but it can seem more at ease in posture, and XION's suffering face is finally banished from the world in favor of a horrible camera smile.

    Instead of stumbling about in pain, the ones connected to INTERFACES begin to move at tremendous speed, climbing, or else dashing, at the limit of human motion. Better test that science theory fast.
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve gives Lezard and Roxas a cross between a salute and wiping sweat off her 'brow'.  "Thanks!" She says.

And back into the Tunnels of NOPE they go.

Mauve grabs a chair from the cafeteria as they enter, chucking it ahead of her and punching it into some Skullbodies. They needed to test their durability, right? She then shoots out her fists to grabs two and slam them together.
Doctor Strange      "Well... I think we just gave them amphetamines, Lezard," says Strange as the Deelel-skullbody comes rushing towards him. The sense of wrongness is the harder of his two thoughts to put into words. So, he doesn't. Not now, anyway. "No more of that," he warns.

     The best way to kill something high up is to drop it. So, when the skullbody reaches the apex of the wall and begins to crawl over it, Strange baits it. He flies over the labyrinth, his personal gravity adjusting instinctively. He gets just out of the skullbody's reach, trying to bait it into jumping.

     The moment it does, Strange weaves a spell, his fists mimicking the swinging of some cumbersome flexible chain weapon. When he 'casts' the weapon, a length of dull red cord shoots from the mandala before his palm. The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak envelop the skullbody while it climbs, tying its limbs up. The Bands aren't unbreakable, but Strange is hoping that won't matter--a second without grip on such a steep surface should, hopefully, be all he needs.
Sumiko Mikoto leaps back, the smaller action bars are trying to get through.  Well ok, they're succeeding in getting through!  It DOES, however, give her an idea.  She leaps back, still at the head but waiting for others to shoot.  She waits for another tight spot, before stabbing her blade in again.  Another line of jade shoots up.  

The attempt is to make a jade prison.  But just enough holes to give them a way through.  This is odd, because wouldn't that do nothing?  

Standing up, she starts firing spears from the air all around her, channeling the power of JEANNE DE'ARC, before a massive fire blast out from her, attempting to catch them in the makeshift oven.  Attempting to literally turn the heat up and make it deadly to keep pushing.
Staren     Staren has his slowdown methods, and more fireball missiles to launch down corridors full of skullbodies and no allies. He's watching as they fight their way to the 'resonance'... when enemies get too close, out comes a spray of cruxite bullets. But he has to be sparing with them. He hasn't many.

    "Maybe we should try to capture a backpack so I can get more of these..."
Lezard Valeth     Lezard nods in acknowledgement to Mauve. "There is nothing to worry about. I am here to assist you." What? Lezard acting as support?

    There is another explosion as he works to ward the creatures off. He's been impaled before, he isn't going to get stabbed again. As Strange plucks the Healthe Interfaces out, Lezard switches from fire to /lightning/. "Metallic monsters, face your end!" He proclaims, "LIGHTNING BOLT!" He cries, unleashing a blast of electricity this time in an attempt to simply fry out the remaining Interfaces. While the others deal with the Nullbodies, he seems to continue to advance, working to try to clean out the threats. "How many of these creatures /are/ there?" He asks to no one in particular. "Has anyone discovered anything of use, or are we still under siege?"
Xion "Roxas, if you want to go on and meet up with the others to find something, I'm hungry, so, I'm going to get some food!"

She says it so casually, but as she pops up her hood, instead of LEAVING or GOING FORWARD, she spins around to go back to the infested CAFETERIA area.

With a quick scan of the SKULLBODIES, she assumes the most likely form to avoid their noice - up to and inclduing a Xion-shaped Skullbody - to head into the cafeteria and get in on that GRUB action.
Arthur Lowell     Here is the nature of the Test.

    SKULLBODIES who have not been forcibly attached to INTERFACES are inhumanly durable. It doesn't take much force to knock them down, but it takes a lot of force to kill them, and they're fully capable when they're not dead. But when Mauve encounters one of her own doppelgangers -- one that has been forcibly attached to a HEALTH INTERFACE, whose robotic claws squelch into its bleeding flesh -- she finds that while it's /faster/, it has lost the durability.

    Doctor Strange confirms this with his fall-damage test, as the SKULLBODY falls headfirst towards the ground and only rips out of the bindings in time to fall with a sickening crack. Now, the null-pointer error is forcibly resolved, and the thing seems to suffer damage normally, rather than this wild over-durability. It's a trade-off though, when they're not debilitated by the pain they seem to go wild and run /fast/. It's wrong to do it though, one might think: These are supposed to have a null pointer. They are, after all, Nullbodies.

    Mikoto is starting to comprehend the nature of this on a more intimate level. The abuse of the unseen, only barely hinted-at NAV MESH is functional, and she effectively forces them to unthinkingly make use of her chokepoint. Like Lezard demonstrated, heat is incredibly effective for the robotics. Staren's approach complements this, using wide-area attacks to clean up SKULLBODIES on flanking routes as the assault surges through the tunnels... Those that break through are swiftly being aggrieved by Arthur, and likely Deelel and the others if they choose to join in!
Deelel Deelel keeps on fighting her way through, the Skullbodie alongside Mikoto. She does her best to cover the concord operative as they keep up the pace. SKULLBODIES keep getting in the way and they keep getting her strikes. Mikoto though is seriously pilling some major with and with Dr. Strange doing some also serious clearing of the way? She should not be in great danger of being instantly overwhelmed by these horrors wrought by Skaianet.

Then Lezard adds his efforts to the mix and she keeps going on the enemies that keep seeming to keep attacking them. She will keep moving though but she does wonder there may be more on the way which could prove to be a danger to everyone else.

She keeps tabs on Xion and Mauve as well in the mix and any thought gets distracted at her clone. While programs may be more open to the idea of another instance of themselves? Seeing a corrupted and twisted version brings up memories of a viral outbreak when she was far younger and that causes her to freeze up for a moment leaving her open to the SKULLBODYs for a moment.
Roxas "You know, we could just stop by a Waffle House on the way home..." Roxas replies to Xion, putting his hood up and trailing off towards the employee corridors that the others had taken. He bypasses the cafeteria skullbodies that remain with his turning-into-light trick.

Waffle House is the last restaurant open when the hurricane hits.

He meanders out onto the back line of those advancing through the tunnels, frowning slightly at the bizarre sight in front of him.

They're /kind/ of like certain types of undead. He wonders if he can just...

Pointing towards one of the Skullbodies /without/ an interface, he shouts, "Cura!"

Green sparkles dance through the air again.
Big Boss They can't get interfaces onto every Skullbody. So, Big Boss grabs some grenades. He starts throwing them at the monsters as they push past. The first is a flashbang, to blind them. Then comes the HE grenades to blow them apart. They likely have navigation systems, so he didn't bring many smoke. After they're stunned and blown back, he aims for head shots, trying to blow their heads off with the rifle.

Hopefully, he can combo this with other people - stun, explode, shoot. Stun, explode, shoot.
Sumiko They just keep being in the way.  Mikoto thinks to herself before asking for an update, which is 'still more shit in the way'.  With a sigh, she spins the blade around again.  Fire does the job but it's too much work at this point.  

So she thrusts her blade into the ground, Magical symbols appear, as...

A really large Armadillo appears.  It's body the perfect spiral, as it balls up and SPINS at high speeds down the hall to try and flatten anything that is actually still there with the force of something that shouldn't actually roll that fast if it wasn't a magical animal.  

"Go, Armadillan!"
Arthur Lowell     Big Boss guides the gang. They're getting closer. A little further... Explosives rock the halls. The unnerving creatures aren't thinning, but progress is progress. Roxas is onto something, a little. The first SKULLBODY he heals keels over from pain, which is the opposite of what should happen, but at least has it incapacitated. The next, though, seems unaffected, and the next as well? It seems that he needs to match the heal to some unknown value to resolve whatever it's pointing its health pointer to, and that takes luck -- or perhaps some insight, if someone can provide it. Luckily, he isn't too overwhelmed by SKULLBODIES, since Deelel and Mikoto are effectively battering back the ones that come from the cafeteria using a combination of ice, jade, and, apparently, ragdoll-bowling.

    They reach, soon, a further-in lab. Arthur calls the others over to it, since this is a better chokepoint. He seems confident, for no clear reason, that this is somehow the specific goal they're after.

    LUDOGENICS APPARATUS LAB 4 is another of these chambers. This one looks like it's a larger space, meant for testing the games properly. A 16x16 NONLETHAL GEOMETRY texture marks a central space where several sensors and consoles run around the border. Inside the boundary is a... small suburban house? Albeit one that seems to bear a number of strange pieces of machinery snaking through it with heavy tubing. As ever, Skaianet works on sending this horrid shit out into the world. But, strangely, the one thing that all those who encounter this room can feel is that they've stepped onto a HEXAGONAL GRIDSPACE -- like, for a moment, mentally, they got to see themselves as pieces played onto a cell on a board.

    There are a variety of SKULLBODIES in the interior space -- no. Not Skullbodies, once you look closely. Nullbodies of a traditional sort. They're covered in wireframe all the way, and seem content with that. They're not suffering. They wave, cheerfully, to the visitors. "Hello world!" They say, and... go back to what they were doing. One is mowing a nonexistant lawn. One is relaxing on the porch of the house. There's one upstairs, visible in the window, playing on a computer.

    They flicker, occasionally. The wires of their wireframes vibrate, and the chromatic aberation displays three colors: red, blue, and green. They seem... content. Passive. Okay with the state of things. Peaceful at the core.

    "God CHRIST, they wanted to put this shit out into the WORLD. Fuckin' SKAIANET. Okay, split it! Pick SOLVING DUTY or FIGHTING DUTY!" Arthur calls out, as he rushes to the surreal gamespace. "We're probably lookin' for CARTRIDGES! Or DISKS maybe! SOMETHIN' like that!" The house undoubtedly contains all manner of PUZZLE BULLSHIT. Yes, in fact, the machines snaking through it are a complex Myst-like series of levers, switches, wheels, lights, buttons, and other suchlike that operate aspects of the house, and also may produce the necessary RESONANCES when operated properly to remove their key artifacts. But no doubt more SKULLBODIES threaten to enter while the solvers do their solving.
Big Boss As the group arrives in Ludogenics Apparatus Lab 4, Big Boss glances around. Lots of machinery. Lots of Nullbodies. Big Boss calls out. "I'll do solving. Cover me."

And then, he starts approaching the levers, switches, buttons, et cetera, but he doesn't activate them yet. He kneels and turns on the iDroid, activating the comm.

<"This is Big Boss. Bring up all data on Skaianet you can find. Look up keywords 'resonance', 'cartridge', 'disk', 'Hexsys'. Collate and send back the most useful information."

As Big Boss talks to the people on the comms, Outer Heaven's Intel Team is doing everything they can. Talk to people form Skaianet if they can find them. Googling intensely, searchng intensely, talking to Multiversal contacts. Everything that would provide an edge for Big Boss's question, they do, and hopefully, they have something to give.

Old Union and Confederacy intel comes in handy. They report back, and Big Boss learns not what Hexsys is, or about the resonances, but finds out how to operate the technologies. He immediately moves to put this into work, trying to operate the various machines to start getting out resonances to the colors the others need.
Sumiko "I think I'll stick with FIGHTDUTY.  Go ahead and solve the weird puzzle shit, or whatever it is," High Definition Mikoto says, with a flick of her hair and turning back towards the hallway with the sword.  She thrusts the sword down into the ground once more, as something strange happens.  

From the earth comes a phantasmal copy of Jeanne Alter, dark colors of the Dragon Witch are apparent as she raises her sword and sweeps it across.  A massive flame sweeps out in front of her, aiming to flood the hall with fire again and make the lives of oncoming SKULLBODIES.  

Mikoto keeps ready, in case the fighting gets hand to hand like it was before.  
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve joins in on fight duty, anchoring herself near the entrance. She's got just enough gague to Rocket fist down the hall if they need it, but for now she's ready to throw Skullbodies into the path of JadeJeanne's fire sword if needed.
Staren     Roxas HEALS a skullbody into pain. What.

    If he could only see what was happening. There's some kind of game abstraction here, but without the interfaces, Staren can't SEE it.

    Or... can he?

    Staren pulls another item out of his wonderful bag of toys. Goggles as dark as night. His helmet visor briefly opens for him to stuff them in place around his face.

    "Do that again!" Staren watches this time. And watches what happens when he shoots the skullbodies with bullets and energy beams.

    Maybe now he can see the pattern... and a way to exploit it!
Doctor Strange      Strange is summoned by his fellow wizard. He answers, stepping through a portal and leaving it open for Lezard, Mikoto, Mauve, Roxas, and anyone else who might need to get to the better choke.

     "You rang?" he asks, because of course he does. When Arthur explains the situation, he nods. "I'm going for solving, too."

     "And fighting," says a second Strange, here from another timeline.

     One Strange joins Big Boss in attempting to solve the puzzle. He enters the house and begins taking an inventory of the levers, valves, etc. He makes note of the labels, if any, and if there aren't any, he looks for those switches, valves, etc., which can easily be re-adjusted should the operator make a mistake. Those are the ones he fiddles with first, and he is sure to ask Boss, as well as anyone else trying to solve, if there is any noticeable difference when he flips the switch. Unfortunately, due to the urgency of the situation, this process is a little hurried.

     The other Strange, meanwhile, helps fight off the nullbodies by making the choke absolutely unbearable. He ices the floor and fills the hallway with illusory copies of himself to distract the nullbodies from his allies. The aim is to get them to focus on the many Stranges, and slip on the floor like bad guys in a famous movie about home invasion.
Roxas "Uhh-- I guess I'm FIGHTDUTY for the moment. I guess that's okay, I'm not really good at puzzles." Roxas says, recalling the occasion on which he neglected to open a box because nobody explicitly told him to do it. Combined with the fact that Staren just requested that he /repeat/ an action, he settles into a waiting pattern for the approach of Skullbodies and then resumes casting Cura on them when they inevitably approach under the scrutiny of Staren's scanners.
Deelel Deleel has snapped out of her stooper and is fighting again making for the lab with the rest of the group make it to the lab. Now in the lab, she beholds that there are some nullbodies. Who do not seem to be in pain or suffering? They seem content with wht's going on. Then comes Arthur's outburst, she's not sure if he's referring to the skullbodies or the peaceful nullbodies for a moment. The Basic calls out to Arthur.

"FIGHTING DUTY!"

Thus the program will get to work, she will use Keyblade and spell to give cover to those who are working on solving this latest puzzle. At lest Deelel muses to herself, there's nothing needing frogs at the moment.
Lezard Valeth     Lezard would normally love to simply apply his knowledge to resolving the problem of the puzzles, but he seems to be ill at ease with the constant assault of the various Bodies attacking them all.

    "How am I supposed to concentrate with the lot of you making so much /noise/?" Lezard comments acerbically as he turns his irritation on the enemies. The Catalyst is outstretched, and Lezard makes use of the narrow approache to the room for force the enemies into a choke point... One well suited for his techniques of hurling elemental death. He continues doing this with aplomb, simply scorching the enemies into nothingness if need be as he works to give the others the time they need. "Feel free to dedicate yourselves to this task. I will slay the enemies."
Arthur Lowell     Big Boss can immediately evade several potential _hours_ of trial and error necessary to learn about several things. This operates the lights -- and the lights change that /other/ thing in the kitchen. This teleports only certain food objects through alternate space, where this wheel arranges them for later dispensing, and if you clear a line in it, then you also automatically change the heating at a step the puzzle-thermostat is currently missing. It takes work. It's a puzzle-game nightmare. But with the experimentation out of the way, Boss and Strange can work on solving this less like an entire videogame and more like a slowly-defusing bomb.

    It isn't long before they manage to change the TV's channel to a channel it ardently insisted on skipping, and thus force the VCR to dispense a large casette tape marked, in red marker, "RESONANCE". It looks like Skaianet was working on adding horrible extrareality aspects to all platforms.

    Another piece of media that needed extracting was a blue cartridge marked "RESONANCE" lodged, immovably, in a game console the size of a fridge that was bolted hard to the floor, and required a complex adjustment of heating and disabling cooling to get it to overheat and shut down. As for the green? Collecting five keys necessary to open an apparently-infinitely-durable toolbox seemed to open it up and it gave them access to a radio with a green Skaianet spiropgraph icon, labeled RESONANCE.

    Meanwhile, outside, the battle is pitched and aggressive. Arthur joins Mauve Gauntlet, Staren, Roxas, Deelel, Lezard, Mikoto, and another Doctor Strange(???) in combat. Arthur and Deelel work in tandem once again, just like in old days, cooperatively stunning them to give Mauve Gauntlet room to grab and grapple, exploiting Strange's iced floors to get much better grip and forcing them to fall under, presumably, Mikoto's continued assaults; if they're the same, they'll get pinned there, which means they're out of the gang's hair. Working together like this, they can fully and properly evade the wave. This, unfortunately, works little for the INTERFACES, but Lezard has those well in hand, brutalizing the aging, brutal robotics with all the vengeance deserved by the things that impaled him last time.

    Though it's Staren's approach that helps seal the deal with some of the more dangerous Skullbodies that are breaking through. By carefully locking his INSPIRATION on the SKULLBODIES, he can apply Science That Should Not Be to them. Specifically: He can't see something about them, but he becomes immediately aware of modifications he needs to make to the code of his HUD to see parts of their memory! In absence of any health to reference, their equivalent of a soul is referencing random pieces of the environment for health. The null pointer is pointing to something wrong! When it healed in /exactly/ the right way, it apparently healed not their hit-points, but some microbe cluster or another on the walls and floors referenced by their health pointers, which then overfed itself and died.

    He can now identify which skullbody is referencing which health at which moment, and direct anyone to attack the area-geometry of the micro-organisms or suchlike it's referencing for health values! EVERY value of these SKULLBODIES seems to be referencing something else. He can even see it referencing the visitors for appearances!
Big Boss Ah, puzzle bullshit. It gives Big Boss an idea...what about a key you need to both heat and cool to turn into /different/ keys? He'll remember that, as he knows an organization who'd love to use it. Once they have the resonances, though, he retrieves them...

And gets thick into the battlefield, grabbing his rifle to shoot a skullbody in his way, and toss them over to Arthur. "Here. Plug them in, quickly."

And then, if they fast travel away, he shoots anything that might Follow Them, trying to force it back. For now, Big Boss is busy with getting the resonances to Arthur, first and foremost.
Sumiko Staren starts issuing crazy instructions.

Mikoto thinks this is odd but at the same time, he's never willingly lead them wrong.  She moves to the light switch and flips it three times, seeing what would happen.  She then moves to stab the specific block on the wall as instructed.

"What's next, do we jump at a corner until we clip through the wall?"  She blinks.  She starts to jump at the wall.
Arthur Lowell     As a belated aspect of the mental scan of the Skullbodies, Xion finds something odd.

    When attempting to mind-scan a SKULLBODY, she is instead presented with the mind of a totally random individual present inside the facility. It is sometimes the same individual as the one they look like, but only rarely, about one in a hundred. They do not have minds of their own, it seems -- just a passive suffering and a reference to Something Over There. If she digs deeper, she finds only one thing in place of a mind:

    "HELLO WORLD!"
Staren     The SIGHT OF THE INSPIRED allows Staren to DO SOMETHING to his HUD that allows it to see the skullbodies' pointer references and how they're being interpreted.

    He takes the glasses back off, because trying to look at the battlefield with them on just gives him eyestrain and a headache.

    And then he starts rapid-fire issuing nonsense commands, like he's giving instructions for a glitchy speedrun or an arbitrary code execution exploit. <"Move that bit of dirt an inch to the left. Attack that wall. Heal that one. Flip that lightswitch three times. Push that wireframe one foot to the right."> At the same time, he's pointing this way and that and blasting seemingly-random parts of the level geometry.

    Mikoto jokes about clipping through the walls.

    <"No. It doesn't work that way, YOUR pointers aren't referencing anything. Jumping-- no not there, take three steps to the right AND jump in place and that one will die...">
Doctor Strange      "I see your angle, Staren," says the Strange in the house, over the radio. "We just got the resonances, like Boss said. I'm gonna come out and give you a hand."

     By that, he means at least a dozen hands. When Strange exits the house, there is a parade of them. It's not as if this is unusual, of course--between his own illusions (most of which have shattered) and the Skullbodies, everyone here has probably seen a lot of him.

     The Strange brigade listens to Staren's instructions, following them to the letter with space-bending magic. When a nullbody needs to be pushed, there is a Strange there, altering its gravity to tug it in that direction. When Staren needs someone to stand on one leg and hop in a circle, there's a Strange for that. When he needs someone to shoot an otherwise unreachable piece of geometry, there's a Strange that can tug it out into the open and throw a magical attack its way.

     The exact number of Stranges is precisely Enough--the initial one used his perfect memory to recall every command the scientist gave. Accordingly, he traveled back in time to satisfy each command that his allies could not.
Deelel Deelel fights along sides Mauve Gauntlet, Staren, Roxas, Lezard, another Doctor Strange and finally Arthur. They all are mixing it up pretty heavily as she falls into old habits fighting alongside Arthur, just like back in the death game. The monster keeps coming but it seems there may. She will end up throwing her keyblade at several of the skullbodies like a boomerang. Launching her keyblade at several more skull bodies. After that, she throws several ice spells into the mix as the assault continues.

"They just don't give up do they?!"
Arthur Lowell     Arthur snatches the REQUISITE DOODADS. He CAPTCHALOGUES them into his SYLLADEX. Nobody here is supposed to understand what that means, but they're acquired properly now. He calls out: "ALRIGHT! Makin' a PORTAL out! Cover DUDES as they GET GOIN'! Yeah, these dudes AIN'T QUITTIN', fuckin' things." He flicks his broom to one side, and its many bristles twist and turn, undulating within mechanical systems until a bright green spirograph flicks into existence. It... is exactly like the Skaianet logo, strangely! "I'll plug those RESONANCES when we're GONE!"

    He flicks his broom back to broom-rifle configuration. He follows Staren's leads -- and it works. His weird, exotic sciences tap properly into the weird ludogenic nature of this, albeit just a little, to make it easier to disable the SKULLBODIES with heavy pain, which creates terrible hazard for them underfoot. With half of the oncoming force disabled, the INTERFACES can be dealt with more directly and easily, and the pressure lightens up enough that Arthur's portal can be taken!

    It leads right back up to the Security Lobby! Folks can leave at their leisure now. The Skullbody at the security desk mutters "Hello... Hello world..." Under its breath at them.
Roxas "Arthur," Roxas asides as he makes for the escape portal, "game stuff isn't supposed to be super lethal. And none of it makes sense. Is this normal? Are video games just elaborate murders where you come from?"
Doctor Strange      Only one Strange crosses through Arthur's portal. The rest of them all open the Eye of Agamotto, each one vanishing in a flash of green light. The one that makes it through vanishes in a similar emerald light, but only after allowing himself a moment's rest. He reappears an instant later, his breath slightly thin as if he went for a jog.

     He can't help but chime in when Roxas brings up the safety of the game. "They're actually like that everywhere, and your world is the weird one," says the Sorcerer Supreme with a completely serious expression. "When I was still practicing, we would get people in the hospital all the time from Madden." He nods grimly, then departs, via a portal of his own.
Arthur Lowell     "Fuckin', only SBURB was, and SKAIANET made it." Arthur replies to Roxas while reloading his broomrifle. "SHIT almost KILLED ME! And it killed..." He pauses before he pulls the bolt back. and counts on his fingers. "Three... four... SIX of my FRIENDS. I got KILLED too, but it was from another GAME. Still blame SBURB tho'." Ca-chik! "SKAIANET are ASSHOLES, man." Back to shooting.
Deelel The portal call goes out, it's time to go. She will do her best to help cover the others as they go. She's got to wonder what will happen this time? She has no idea. As she's making her exist she will hear Roxas question and pauses looking at him sadly. Once she is sure everyone else is making it out she does the same.

"Madden? That soungs like a GAME CLU would like..."

She notes to Doctor Strange and the way she says GAME is not in a fun tone either.
Xion Xion returns from touching the minds of the Skullbodies (bonebuddies?), waving goodbye at them with a 'Hello, World!' called as her disguise fades away.

"Roxas, it's that Ironman difficulty thing. The one where if you die, your file deletes? And you can't save and load!"

She looks over at what Arthur is shooting. "Are you... a broom... gun... knight?"
Sumiko Mikoto jumps out through the open portal, after learning she can't clip through the walls because she's not part of the video game.  Her life dreams crushed, she pushes on with something else.  

"Wow, they kinda are," she responds to Arthur about SKAINET.  "So what is the end game here anyway?"

She turns towards Xion, "Worse if you die in the game you die in real life."
Big Boss Big Boss covers Arthur, shooting down skullbodies and forcing them backwards with the last of his grenades. Once they're back, he pushes through the portal, and once everyone's through, he shouts to Arthur. "Now!"

Hopefully, they get through without any skullbodies following.
Staren     There are suddenly a lot of Stranges, filling in to do the commands no one else has time to. Staren's speech speeds up even more rapidfire -- he doesn't actually have to talk for his speakers to make sound, putting the sudden horde of Stranges to use. Over the cascade of orders, he asks, "Wait, what? How did..." but there's no time to explain right now!

    As Arthur sets up the exit, Staren keeps giving commands up until the last second, heedless of a skullbody charging right for him. Then he blasts a random spot on the floor and it keels over and slides past him as he lifts a foot, then turns and runs.

    "Geeze that was nuts." Staren looks to Roxas. "Normally? No, but he was caught up in another game made by Skaianet. It ended this world." He nods at Arthur's summation and rolls his eyes at Strange's and Xion's.

    After they pass the 'security', Staren turns to consider it a moment. Looking to see if there's some emotional value, if he can remove the thing's suffering by setting it to Happy.

    But it's not complex enough for that, is there? There's probably only a program counter, and if he messes with that it might make it do ANYTHING. Better to leave it alone.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur tilts his head to Mikoto, pausing his gunfire funfire to contemplate the question. "A new frontier. Nice gift to the Multiverse." He says, obliquely. That seems to be all he has to say about it though.
Sumiko "Really? That's interesting!" Mikoto says back to Arthur. "I was interested before, but now I'm a bit more interested to see how this works out!"