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Cloud is Dead (Final Fantasy VII CYOA)

baud

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 11, 2016
Messages
3,992
Location
Septentrion
RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Flopping to E too.
 

Random

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 19, 2008
Messages
2,812
Despite a strong effort by the Es, the Ds remain conquerers.

Changing Times, Part VIII

You stand there, apartment key in hand, watching her vanish down a hallway. Part of you wanted to go and talk to her, extremely curious for obvious reasons, but you hesitated too long and the moment passed. You lock the door and head out for groceries.

Around two thousand gil poorer, you come out of your local ShinRa SuperMart with four paper bags filled to the brim with everything you'll need for the following week of R&R, plus a concealed handgun license and a handgun to make proper use of it. You utter a small thanks to the power of the free market that lets you buy all those things in one store. As you cross the parking lot to the nearest bus stop, you see several wives with bags of their own groceries waiting for the same vehicle. As usual, most of them are obvious trophy wives, chatting with each other or on their phones about the latest ShinRa TV shows, gossip, and celebrity nonsense.

You stand there for a while, wasting time by counting cars, before one of them suddenly lets out a high-pitched squeal and points at you. She had been staring for a while, and now finally recognition dawned on her pretty blonde features. "You're the guy! On that TV show! Ohmigosh it's you!"

And like a klaxon alarm sounding an imminent enemy assault, her voice heralded the beginning of the swarm.

"He's so handsome!"
"What was it like, killing those no-good terrorists!?"
"Please, sign my grocery bag!"

You might have been more gratified by the clamoring attention, except that you had seen how artificial your own fame was first hand. The advertisements, the interviews, all of it was just ShinRa propaganda. Though, you couldn't exactly blame ShinRa for capitalizing on something for good PR, either.

By the time the bus arrived you had to fight your way out of the small crowd to get on, and then you realized that they were all getting on the same route and had to sit through another ten minutes of the tiring chaos before you finally had a chance to escape into your apartment building.

Now free, you walk back to your room, deposit your groceries and put them away, and flop on your couch, ready to unwind. The nice thing about this week of vacation is that it'll give you a chance to fall off the news cycle, and then you won't have to deal with this nonsense anymore.

You gladly spend the next six and a half days just doing whatever you feel like. You cook yourself some nice meals using some food magazines, picking up some interesting techniques. You get yourself piss drunk on cheap booze on a daily basis, except when you go out to a bar to get yourself piss drunk on better booze and clumsily try to pick up women. Your fame makes that a little easier than it ought to be, but it's hard for someone sex-deprived like you to complain. Still, you like to think you pick up a few things about the lady game that never really occurred to you before, and just plain get better at talking to people and making them like you. Or maybe it really is just the fame.

You don't neglect your personal training, either. You go on jogs through your Sector every morning and night, helping you work off the haze of the alcohol. You lift some of the weights scattered through your apartment, though nothing as good as what a gym could offer. You also get back into a rational sleep schedule, that is, you sleep in as long as you want and go to bed whenever you want. It's great. You feel incredibly better than you normally do when on duty.

But a week goes by fast when you haven't had a proper vacation in years, and you wake up on the seventh day with a sorry attitude and a half-empty bottle of whiskey in your hand that you think you might have spilled on yourself in your sleep. Sure, you had a good time, but something in you feels... empty. Hollow. Is it the anxiety about tomorrow, when you have to put your damn uniform back on and get back to work, or is it that you feel like you missed an opportunity? For some reason, you keep thinking about the SOLDIER. You have caught glimpses of her shadowing you every now and then, but she never approached you personally. You can't help but wonder what's under her helmet, her pants, and her reticent persona.

But then your thoughts turn darker. You remember the bloodshed. You were trying not to. You had the booze to help you forget, but even then it didn't really help. There are ten times the amount of gory corpses burned into your retinas than anyone should have to deal with. Have you really been relaxing, or were you just wasting time, running away from the visions and the smell, the smell, of the dead?

Rather than dwelling on it, you empty the rest of the bottle of crap whiskey into your throat and stumble into the shower. After getting dressed and something approaching sane (if a bit drunk), you sit down with a cup of steaming coffee and a breakfast sandwich of a couple fried eggs, bacon, and a lot of cheese between toast. You stare at your television set, glance down at your game console, glance at the window through which the morning sun is shining, and you let out a long sigh. You've watched enough TV and played enough video games to tide you over for a month. You probably should go for a jog.

What the fuck are you supposed to do today?
A) Watch TV
B) Play your video games and beat that one RPG
C) Spend it making an amazing dinner from scratch
D) Go for a jog around the block
E) Go see a movie in theaters
F) Read a book about materia
G) Finish off the last of your booze supply and get so smashed you won't remember anything
H) Go to a bar to drink and pal around for the big baseball game tonight
I) Pick up women at a bar
J) Hire a prostitute
K) Go out to a nice restaurant for dinner
L) Go practice with your new sidearm at the shooting range
M) Masturbate
N) Clean your apartment from top to bottom
O) Experiment with your bolt materia in an abandoned building
P) Go buy some new clothes for your future TV appearances
Q) Go look for the SOLDIER around the block
R) Other

Character Sheet
Name: Marcus "Steelwall" Westford
Class: Ranger
Level: 2
Profession: Major of the ShinRa Co. Peacekeeping Corps, Department of Public Safety, Military Police Division
Age: 23
Dominant Inner Nature: None
Health: [Pristine - Fine - Poor - Severe - Critical - Dead]
Status: Hungover

Characteristics:
Strength 4 Agility 8
Tenacity 6 Intelligence 7

Skills:
Discipline Lvl. 3
Marksmanship Lvl. 2, Athletics Lvl. 2, Bluff Lvl. 2
Hand-to-Hand Lvl. 1, Fieldcraft Lvl. 1, Stealth Lvl. 1, Academics Lvl. 1, Observation Lvl. 1, Electronics Lvl. 1, Computer Use Lvl. 1, Cooking Lvl. 1, Charm Lvl. 1, Drug Use Lvl. 1

Perks:
Tough Guy ("Love the suck." The penalty for all mundane negative status effects is reduced by 1)

Inventory: Civilian casual clothes, Shinra Employee ID Card, Pocket Knife, Portable Handheld System, Wallet w/ 12,245 Gil, Note from Janice, Tom's business card (blood-stained), Concealed Handgun Permit (Licensed to carry 1 firearm)
Gear: Bolt Materia (Lvl. 1), ShinRa Arms SM-3C 9mm Civilian Defense Pistol, 2 spare magazines
 
Last edited:

Baltika9

Arcane
Joined
Jun 27, 2012
Messages
9,611
B is the :obviously: answer, but we should probably practice with the shiny rock. Failing that, make fwiends. :hug:
O>Q
 
Unwanted

Kalin

Unwanted
Dumbfuck Zionist Agent
Joined
Sep 29, 2010
Messages
1,868,264
Location
Al Scandiya
N > O > M

Can't believe I'm voting for cleaning the damn room of all things, but the fact the option is even there makes me think someone important might drop by unannounced. If so covering up the filthy debauchery could pay off nicely. Failing that it's still a good way to take your mind off things and get back on track for duty.
 

baud

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 11, 2016
Messages
3,992
Location
Septentrion
RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
I've already done too much cleaning today, I can't vote N. I'll go with practice with our shiny rock, it could give an edge next time bullets are flying

O > P
 

Kipeci

Arcane
Joined
May 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
Vicksburg
N > D > Q

Tidying up after a long vacation helps to transition back to the order of work. Barring that, jogging was on our list after traversing all those stairs took so much out of us and perhaps we might encounter our stalker.
 

Azira

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Nov 3, 2004
Messages
8,519
Location
Copenhagen, Denmark
Codex 2012
We can choose several options for sure. This is not a "pick one and ignore all else". Nope. Won't accept that.
So here's my choices:
F, D, Q, O, L and N.
 

Random

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 19, 2008
Messages
2,812
The strong advantage is with N O Q this time.

Changing Times, Part IX

You can't lie. That SOLDIER has been on your mind all week, and now you really, really want to see what she's about. You grab your keys, wallet, and personal defense weapon and head out the door. You don't exactly have much reason to be worried about the neighborhood: this is the real city, not just the slums. Still, with recent events, you feel like you're better off safer than sorry. As soon as you step out from your apartment, you glance around both sides of the street. The few pedestrians walking around ignore you as typical for any big city, and there is no sign of the motorcylist SOLDIER. You go for a stroll, watching pigeons fight over some seeds some old lady threw out in a small wooded park. You watch the cars go by, and although you do see someone pass you on a motorcycle, it's just some guy in a T-shirt, a normal sight.

After you circle the area a few times, finding nothing much, you scratch your head and head back. It was a bust, it seems. Still, it was nice to get out and get some fresh air, see the children playing, see the people being people. It helps remind you that life goes on even though a whole fucking Sector plate got dropped and everyone on and beneath it fucking killed the other day.

You get home and lock the door behind you. You decide to stop being such a slob for once and clean your shit. You don't just clean your dirty dishes and toss out the piled up empty bottles, but you mop your tile floors and dust the furniture, scrub the fridge, scrub the stove, scrub the oven, scrub the toilet, scrub the shower, organize your belongings, wash your clothes, wash your bedsheets, iron your uniforms, make your bed, and by the end of it you feel so grimy that you take a second shower. It was hard work, but worth it. Now your apartment looks like a place someone actually lives in and not a monster nest.

With most of the day spent on those chores, all that remains for you is your curiosity regarding the materia you were given. You turn the glowing green orb over in your palm. You have used this before-it used to belong to Cloud Strife, after all-but you never really took the time to sit and figure it out in detail. Stuffing it in a coat pocket, you leave your apartment again and head for the nearest derelict building, which isn't far. There's an old tenement that got shut down to be replaced later with a shopping center nearby, and you walk there. It isn't hard to get into; the front door is locked, but you circle through an alley to the back and find that it was already broken into, probably by vagrants looking for a dry place to sleep. You step over the broken glass and into the multi-story complex. It's dusty, dirty, and basically falling apart. You call out into it to see if anyone is there, and after a quick sweep you determine that the squatters did stay for a while judging by the pile of trash and cardboard beds they had set up in one of the apartments, but the refuse is all old and untouched with a film of dust on it. Knowing that, you pull the materia out and rub its smooth surface.

How did you use it before? you wonder. It has been a while. You didn't think much at the time. You just focused and the materia's knowledge did the rest. If that is the case, then you should be able to use it again without much issue. You hold the crystallized Mako out, feeling a soft warmth emanating from it. Alien thoughts, alien ideas enter your mind, concepts that you should not be capable of understanding and yet which make perfect sense. This inexplicable sensation of impossible understanding of reality should hurt your brain, but instead it feels perfectly natural. You concentrate on the knowledge contained within the orb. It has to do with lightning, electricity. There is a spell in this materia, a spell that you can call upon. You envision what you desire, and it responds by glowing brighter. Suddenly a surge of raw energy erupts from your hand, crackling, arcing electricity bursting through the air and colliding with the old rusty bedframe you had chosen to attack. The small lightning bolt strikes it, and quickly dissipates. The leg of the bedframe, the point of impact, is red-hot and dripping molten iron down to the tile floor. You are thankful that ShinRa refuses to invest in wood flooring and carpeting unless you're wealthy. It might have been bad otherwise.

It is less impressive now that you've done it a second time. Your memory of the first activation of the materia was a lot more vivid and exaggerated than that. In fact, you're a little disappointed. You had been hoping to turn the whole bedframe into slag, not just one of its limbs. Certainly you could fry a man to death with something like this, and it would definitely wreak havoc even on the more badass ShinRa combat robots, but there are hundreds of monsters out there that this spell would do little more than annoy. You turn the materia over in your hand again. Such a strange thing. Whose knowledge is it that you're reading from it like a book? How deep does this knowledge go?

What should you do?
A) Try zapping some more things, trying to make the bolt spell bigger and more powerful
B) Try to focus on memorizing this strange knowledge so that even if you drop the materia you can still cast the spell
C) Try to fire the spell as quickly as possible. Maybe you can create a lightning machinegun?
D) Practice some more, but resolve yourself to go find some books on materia for further understanding next chance you get
E) Be done with practice for now and go home to get a good night's sleep
F) Try to destroy the materia to see what happens
G) Resolve yourself to return this materia to ShinRa. It's not yours and it's too dangerous to leave in the wrong hands
H) Resolve yourself to sell this little gemstone at a local materia dealer. Materia is worth thousands upon thousands of gil. Easy money!
I) Other

Roll Results
Observation roll to find the SOLDIER if she's around:
1d20 + Observation Lvl. 1 + Intelligence 7 + Pristine = 11 + 2 +7 + 2 = 22
TN: Unknown
Failure!

Character Sheet
Name: Marcus "Steelwall" Westford
Class: Ranger
Level: 2
Profession: Major of the ShinRa Co. Peacekeeping Corps, Department of Public Safety, Military Police Division
Age: 23
Dominant Inner Nature: None
Health: [Pristine - Fine - Poor - Severe - Critical - Dead]
Status: Clear

Characteristics:
Strength 4 Agility 8
Tenacity 6 Intelligence 7

Skills:
Discipline Lvl. 3
Marksmanship Lvl. 2, Athletics Lvl. 2, Bluff Lvl. 2
Hand-to-Hand Lvl. 1, Fieldcraft Lvl. 1, Stealth Lvl. 1, Academics Lvl. 1, Observation Lvl. 1, Electronics Lvl. 1, Computer Use Lvl. 1, Cooking Lvl. 1, Charm Lvl. 1, Drug Use Lvl. 1

Perks:
Tough Guy ("Love the suck." The penalty for all mundane negative status effects is reduced by 1)

Inventory: Civilian casual clothes, Shinra Employee ID Card, Pocket Knife, Portable Handheld System, Wallet w/ 12,245 Gil, Note from Janice, Tom's business card (blood-stained), Concealed Handgun Permit (Licensed to carry 1 firearm)
Gear: Bolt Materia (Lvl. 1), ShinRa Arms SM-3C 9mm Civilian Defense Pistol, 2 spare magazines
 

Kipeci

Arcane
Joined
May 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
Vicksburg
A

So long as we have it, might as well try to make better use of it. We’ve tended to be squishier than what we’ve gone up against, a surprise application of massive thunderbolts would be a neat trick to pull.
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,465
Location
Shaper Crypt
I have no idea about the magic rules. Also no SOLDIER meet-up :|

C then B


(Holy shit the forum is going to be unusable in a week if this keeps up, it's already borderline unreadable)
 

Baltika9

Arcane
Joined
Jun 27, 2012
Messages
9,611
D is an obvious plot hook. Since we missed out on making friends, maybe we should take this one. Also, practicing too much in the open city might not be the brightest idea. A bigger bolt may draw unwanted attention.

D
 

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