>>30653943
>Psi rating: 6
>You have learned: Psi Shield (spend a psi point to reduce or nullify an incoming attack)
>You have learned: Matter Bomb (spend 2 psi points to inflict massive damage in an area of up to three metres diameter.)
>your general psychic control has been greatly improved.
>May tweak or adapt these abilities during the course of tomorrow.

>All of your implants have been removed, including the aggression inhibitor.
>All removed beneficial implants have been compensated by genetical modification to replace it.
>Your physical strength, speed and agility have been boosted, but you may need serious retraining.

>Last time, I forgot to add an ability. For clarification, the two active powers were given to you for rising in psi rating, this one is from the Xel’naga modifications themselves.
>Psi cloak (You can prevent yourself from being detected by psionics. actual detectors like missile towers, overlords and observers will still detect you. Automatically activates on cloaking, but can also be used without cloak.)

----

You head back down towards the rest of the group, and you keep finding yourself stumbling over your feet. It’s going to take quite a lot of time to get used to this “new” body. When you finally arrive at the camp, the guards simply nod. No one really seems to have noticed you were gone.

>1. Go to bed, you don’t really have anything to do tomorrow so whatever you want to do, you can do it well rested.
>2. Try to train a bit, get used to this body before you go to bed.
>3. Meditate, try to see if something severe changed on a mental level.
>4. Write in.

>>30653951
>1
We had a rough day, and might regain some of our memories in our dreams anyway

>>30653951

Well that escalated quickly.

How much differently do we look again?

Also seconding
>1 Rest now.

>>30654170
>>30654012
Ok, writing.

You look pretty much the same (though examining yourself might not be a bad idea), but you're much faster, stronger etc. The problem is you're not used to it and it feels as if it's not your own body.

>>30653951
... I missed copying the "Last time" part. Oh well, here it is.

>Last time on Freelance Ghost Quest:
>Your arm was bandaged by a medic, you talked shop with Haverdam about the optimisation device, and socialised with Holmes and Murphy. After dinner, and another quick chat with Haverdam, you went and used the device with Holmes and Murphy watching to make sure nothing went wrong. It only took a few minutes, and you’re now much stronger.

You say goodbye to your companions and head to your sleeping spot. You can deal with this tomorrow after a good night rest, and your memories might come back in your sleep too. You crawl into your sleeping bag, slightly hindered by the bandage around your arm, and go to sleep.

-You’re sitting in front of a ghost with a black suit, a red 4 on his chest. His mask is off though, and you see a man nearly identical to you. You’re in a small sleeping quarter, just two beds and some cupboards. For a moment, you’re confused a bit, and try to look around. When you do, he recoils in surprise.-

-“Sextus? What the hell?”-

-“Sextus?” You look down at yourself to see you’re wearing the same black suit, this time with a 6 on it. You’re in his body, you quickly realise, but why the hell can you control it?-

-“Wait, it’s… Secundus? Is that you?”-

>1. Yeah, what the hell is going on, why can I move sextus’ body?
>2. Umm, I have no idea what’s going on.
>3. Nope, it’s sextus, definitely sextus.
>4. Write in.

>>30654300

>1
>2

Yeah, I have no idea what's going on. Were you up to something?

Sorry guys, slight delay due to important IRL stuff, will be back in 10-15 minutes I think.

>>30654450
Ok, back.

>>30654396
Seems like it's just one person for now.
Writing.

-“Yeah, it’s me. I have no idea what’s going on. Why can I move sextus’ body?” You’re fairly bewildered. It’s just like moving your own, there doesn’t seem to be any resistance.-

-“It’s… Well… Wait a second.” He closes his eyes for a few seconds, and when he opens them again he continues. “Ok, it’s safe.H e’s asleep. When you were sent away, Primus lost his favourite chew toy. He became more abusive and violent towards us. He was too strong. I could bow, but Sextus couldn’t. He broke. He’s nothing but an empty shell anymore. No personality, no will to do anything. He mindlessly takes Primus’ commands. I think it doesn’t matter whose commands it would be, but Primus is… Dominating.”-

-“I remember. I got past most of the mind wipes now. Still sorting it out a bit though.”-

-“Good. And the conditioning? You need every edge, he’s getting close now. I think he’ll find you in about a week, two weeks tops, even if you go off planet. He’s homing in on your psychic signature and once he manages he can find you wherever you go with that damn amp chamber. Look, maybe I can help during the battle itself, but I can’t make up my mind about that yet or he’ll notice.”-


>Note: You feel your grip on sextus decreasing slightly already, you won’t be able to ask or tell him everything.
>1. Tell him about the machine you went into and the boost it gave you.
>2. Ask him how strong Primus is and how he fights.
>3. Ask him for advice on how to break the ghost conditioning.
>3. Write in.

>>30654912

>Tell him to be careful, and thank him for his assistance

I can't think of anything I'd like to ask before we sift throgh our own memories

>>30655023
But.. I suggested things to ask.

Oh well, writing I guess.

>>30655169

He's not exactly in good position, and the less he knows, the less he can allow Primus to extract from his mind, and if we don't extract too much information out of him ourselves, he is more likely to escape punishment from Primus for revealing stuff behind his back.

Plus there's always a possibility that it was a trap.

>>30655217
Ok, I see.

-You thank Quartus for his assistance as you feel your grip on Sextus lessening. You let go, and fall back to sleep-

----

-You see him rushing at the scientists. Killing them. He shouldn’t be able to do that, you think in the back of your mind. What about the aggression inhibitor?-

-Octavus takes down a guard in CMC armour with the training knife. You have no idea how, but he always was better than you with them. You’d like to intervene, help him, even shout to warn him about the other marines taking aim behind him, but even the thought of doing so makes your head explode with pain. That damn inhibitor.-

-You can’t do much more than watch in horror as he is gunned down. His last attempts to dodge the bullets and deflect them with his psionics grant him a few more seconds to live, but he’s in the open, no armour, and there’s four marines shooting at him with C-14’s. He never stood a chance.-

-A few weeks, and much spy work of the Omega ghost team later, you manage to find out that he wrecked his aggression inhibitor with his powers. You all would have liked to do that too, but Octavus had always been prone to bursts of insane aggression where couldn’t be reasoned with. The scientists attributed it to something called ‘puberty’, but none of you ever found out what exactly that was.-

You wake up in the morning, a bit late apparently. Half the camp is empty, and one of the guards informs you that they’re all off helping the professor with his actual archaeological work. You’re free to do as you please for the day, but you’ll have to take one of the guard shifts in the evening.

>Options in next post.

>>30655427
>1. Try to train your body, get the hang of it. It’s gonna take quite a lot of work to be able to handle it properly in a fight so you best get started.
>2. Train your shooting skills first, see if those have changed with your body and if so, try to get them up to par again.
>3. First, meditate and try to see if anything changed mentally.
>4. Meditate and try to work on your ghost conditioning.
>5. Write in.

>1. Try to train your body, get the hang of it. It’s gonna take quite a lot of work to be able to handle it properly in a fight so you best get started.

>>30655445

Have a jog around the temple, maybe. Might as well check the perimeter while trying out the new tissue.

>>30655506
>>30655512
Writing.

If you want to have any chance to defeat Primus, or anything really, you have to learn how to handle your body. You do some quick exercise like push ups, sit ups and squats, and you find that when you’re getting the hang of things a bit more, it goes a lot easier than before. You don’t even break a sweat, literally. After this you decide to do some jogging and running, testing out your speed. You exit the temple and you immediately feel the presences inside the statues again without even trying. It seems your psychic powers have been amplified too. You carefully avoid directing any psychic attention to the statues, and start running around the temple.

The crater itself is bare, nothing growing in it, not even weeds. You were jogging on a fairly normal tempo when you round the first corner. Your path is blocked by the large tentacle-like arm resting against the temple and the side of the crater though. You make a running start and jump up, and surprise yourself at how high you actually jump. You thought you might reach maybe a quarter up, but you’re almost halfway as you hold on tight on the relief on the arm. Climbing up takes surprisingly little effort, again. The next part, you run at your top speed, and you reach the next corner in no time. It’s not even tiring you out.

When you reach the opposite side of the temple from where the entrance is, you find a tunnel entrance. Closer inspection reveals it goes downwards.

>1. Check it out
>2. Continue your tour around the temple and go on with your excercises.
>3. Write in.

>>30655904
>>1. Check it out

>>30655904

Take a few steps in, try to gauge how far deep does it go, but don't go exploring too deep on your own. It's something worth telling Haverdam though.

>>30656126
>>30656150
Ok, writing.

You enter the tunnel cautiously. By now, you’ve got enough feel to do general movement without stumbling all the time. A bit more and you’ll be good to go to test combat movement.

It’s fairly dark, but you’re perfectly capable of seeing though. Perhaps another gift of the machine? Not far in, the tunnel goes into a spiral downwards. You think it’s best not to go too far though, but you’re getting the feeling it’d go to one of the lowest chambers, or something next to it. Best inform Haverdam later. You head back outside and continue your tour. You run at top speed but it really doesn’t seem to tire you, though you are sweating a bit at least.

By the time you arrive at the front again, you’re fairly confident of your running and moving, but the harder part will be getting your combat reflexes adapted. It’s almost time for lunch though, so you head back to the camp. You quickly have lunch with the guards, but it seems Haverdam and the rest of the group brought food with them to the other floors and won’t be returning until later this evening.

>1. Continue to work on your body. Find an isolated room and work on your punches, kicks, dodges, etc.
2. Train your shooting skills, see if those have changed with your body and if so, try to get them up to par again.
>3. meditate and try to see if anything changed mentally.
>4. Meditate and try to work on your ghost conditioning.
>5. Find an isolated room and experiment with your newfound psychic powers.
>6. Write in.

>>30656341

Hm. Better get this over with I suppose.

>1.

>>30656434
Writing.

Damn, we're very slow today.

After the meal, you head out again. You go to an empty side-room and start practicing your punches, kicks, and dodges. Getting used to it is hard. Your punch connects faster with your imaginary target than you’re used to, and you get the feeling there’s more force behind it too.

Dodging is a much more horrible mess. As you throw yourself to the side, you keep overestimating the amount of force you need to use and throw yourself into the walls, or lose your balance as you land. You keep working on it, and you do notice improvement, but it’s nowhere where you’d like it to be though.

After a few hours, it’s clear that once you get it all under control, you’ll be a much more formidable fighter than you were, but it’ll still take a lot of time. Days, perhaps even weeks, but you furiously hope not. Your immediate goal though is to get as least as good as you were before, and you feel like you’re more or less approaching that target.

>It’s about halfway into the afternoon, you can do one more thing before dinner, and probably one more after dinner.
>1. Continue. You don’t really feel tired but you’re afraid you might be putting a bit too much stress on your body so soon after its modification.
>2. Train your shooting skills, see if those have changed with your body and if so, try to get them up to par again.
>3. meditate and try to see if anything changed mentally.
>4. Meditate and try to work on your ghost conditioning.
>5. Experiment with your newfound psychic powers.

>>30656790
> 2

>>30656790

That's enough exertion for now, check on Haversam, maybe we'll learn something of where we are.

>>30656907
You don't actually know where haverdam is, the guards just said "up". You'll have to look through the entire upper part of the temple if you want to find him, and that would take quite some time again.

>>30657016

Good. More exploration of mysterious temple.

>>30656860
>>30657070
Still a tie though. If there's no tie breaker in 3 minutes I'll roll.

Rolled 2

>>30657088
Rolling.

1: >>30656860
2: >>30656907

>>30657177
Writing for searching Haverdam.

You decide to give your body a bit of a rest and look for Haverdam. You’ll have to look through all of the upper floors, but you feel that that’s not a problem, you don’t seem to tire anyway so you calmly jog through the building.

You clear out the first floor, and while there’s some evidence of them having been there, they no longer are. When you reach the second floor, you immediately see the group at the central chamber. There seems to be some kind of spire in the middle, and Haverdam is closely examining it. When you come closer he doesn’t even notice you. His work really does seem to absorb him entirely.

>1. Draw his attention.
>2. Wait until he’s done and notices you, but if it takes too long, draw his attention.
>3. Wait until he’s done and notices you.
>4. Write in.

>What do you talk about?

>>30657329

Hello professor. Found anything interesting?

>>30657329
>2
mention second trip in machine, also enquire how long this trip will continue.

>>30657515
Writing.

Since I seem to be writing for an audience of roughly 1.5 people, I think I'll be stopping a bit early.

>>30657608
yeah, sorry i was late.

“Hello professor.” He jerks up in surprise, bashes his head on the spire and bows back down grabbing at the back of his head.

“Ow ow ow.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, ow, I’m fine. Hi artemis. I’d rather people not interrupt me while I’m working though. But what is it?” He sounds slightly impatient. He’s probably eager to go back to work.

“I was kind of wondering how long the expedition would take.”

“Well, I could stay here for months, but with the rations and tools we brought, we’ll have to leave tomorrow morning, somewhere around 9 o’ clock. I’ll be looking towards setting up a bit more permanent camp here with the next expedition.”

“Also, I thought it would be a good thing to inform you that I went to the machine last night after you went to bed.”

“Oh.” You seem to have caught his attention. His eyes widen, and when he talks again, he’s trying to hide excitement. “I… Tell me about it please! No wait. I really should go on with this. My time here is limited as is, so I’d be much obliged if you tell me about it over dinner.”

With that, he goes back to work. You don’t even pretend to understand what he’s doing. You look around, and most of the group seems fairly relaxed. They seem to be gathering lots of smaller items, probably to bring back to Frontier for Haverdam to work on there. They’re all busy though, except for the few that stand guard.

>It’s only one more hour before dinner time.
>1. Try out some more of your new abilities (physical / shooting / psychic)
>2. meditate and try to see if anything changed mentally.
>3. Meditate and try to work on your ghost conditioning.
>4. Write in.

>>30657872
Next post will probably be the last one.Maybe I'll extend it until you go to sleep.

>>30657872
>1 find a nice quiet spot and cut loose, really push artemis's power's to the limit.

>>30657872

>meditate and explore our unlocked memories

>>30657896
don't push yourself too hard.

>>30657932
You mean psionically?

>>30657872
Meditate, work on the conditioning. We should also practice hiding our strength at some point, and should learn to feint that we still have the conditioning when fighting against Primus.

>>30657896
Was dealing with BS wishing I could post in this thread on my phone, but phone-questing is too challenging for me based on how tired I am

>>30657932
It'll attract Primus sooner, it'd be nice to get that going, but maybe not QUITE yet.

>>30657972
all three. because i doubt more memories will help us at this point, but being familliar with our new self may help us survive primus

>>30657872
> 1
shooting

So, votes are all over the place so I'm going to divide it a little bit.

>1. Meditate.
>2. Train

We'll specify what exactly after this.

>>30658201
>1 Meditate

>>30658201
train

>>30658201

>1. Meditate.

>>30658352
>>30658585
Think I've waited long enough now. Writing, last post of the day.

>>30658619
I'll combine memory and conditioning meditation to avoid the need for another 10+ minutes of voting.

>>30658641
>>30658619
Oops, lost my trip there.

>>30658201
1.Meditate

We must work from the ground up.

You go back downstairs to the camp and sit back in what has more or less become your ‘meditation corner’.

First, you focus on your ghost conditioning. You revisit the fortress, remembering your previous analysis. You probe a bit more, and find that even your mental speed and strength has been boosted slightly. Where before the response had been lightning fast, it’s become a bit more delayed in your perception. You push a bit further, and actually make a small attack on it. It’s deflected successfully, but at the same time it again gave you valuable information which you can use next time.

A quick check reveals you still have a bit more time than you thought you would, so you descend again into your own mind. This time to revisit the memories. It’s all coming together now, the memories are becoming ordered, with proper structure.

-You see a child standing in front of you. Actually, you’re a child too you realise. Roughly 12 years old you’d say now that you have some insight in how age works. You didn’t back then.-

-A man in military uniform is standing to the side, giving instructions. Where to strike, how to dodge or parry. You’re fighting each other. Around you, there’s three other pairs of children fighting.-

-Primus, the toughest kid. You, secundus, the weakling. Tertius, a comrade and the strongest psionic of the group. Quartus, down to earth but not unfriendly. Quintus, the loudmouth who regularly got punished. Sextus, the quiet one. Septus, who was friendly to everyone and stood up to primus when he picked on you again. And Octavus, who was generally difficult to work with and rather did things by himself.-

-But all of you could put their personalities and differences aside when it came down to it. You all had to or you’d be punished. You had always had a disciplined life, and the personalities of you all would only surface during sparring and what little time you had for yourselves.-

>>30659017

>That’s it for tonight. A bit more quiet than I’d have liked, but I think my irregular schedule is to blame.
>There will be a thread tomorrow, 8pc CET.

>>30659049
Also, archived.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Freelance%20Ghost%20Quest

Going straight to bed, g'night guys. If you've got any questions, you can still post them, I'll address them at the start of next thread then.

>>30659049

Cheers, supervisor. Been fun.