You are Calliko Edwards, newfound pilot of Durendal, daughter of the head councilman Mister James Thomas Edwards and currently you're drinking some honeyed mint tea concoction with far too many ingredients to name that your mother had dreamed up, in the back yard of your family villa.

It feels as if you've earned a bit of relaxation, doing it entirely guilt free for once. Leaning back in the reclining lawn chair you let out a sigh. A God-Machine pilot. You. Selected to be, by the God-Machine itself.

Casting a quick glance in through the glass door to the dining room, you make sure both of your parents were gone before allowing yourself to pump your fists into the air excitedly and laugh.

The rush of success and the excitement of the day is making it hard to relax, to allow your swimming head and wandering thoughts to settle and focus. No amount of frilly tea drinks or lazing about in front of the garden was probably going to help, but that was fine, for now.

In your alertness though, you swear you keep catching the glint of something. A reflected light, that seems to pop up in a diferent part of the deeper parts of the garden. Its there again now, you can see it, just behind a row of sunflowers, and its not moving any longer.

All the hairs on your body stand on end as you

>Roll out of the chair towards the center of the porch
>Jump out of the chair and over the side of the porch

>>3038869
>Jump out of the chair and over the side of the porch

>>3038869
>Jump out of the chair and over the side of the porch

>>3038869
>Roll out of the chair towards the center of the porch

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>>3038867
Something is wrong. Something is wrong and you just can't wait here to let it end your life. You take a deep breath, trying to maintain that look of relaxed excitement and then reach over and grasp the railing feet pressing off the reclined seat of the steel deck chair.

A single shot rings out and you feel it weave its way through your hair as your legs clear the railing. You tumble to the ground on the other side, the smell of burnt hair and your own severed locks following you like a cartoon dust cloud of where your head had been.

The ground beneath is loose stones and pebbles. Not the most comfortable to land on as you tumble, but at least you have solid cover between yourself and whoever that is immediately.

Your pulse is pounding, flying through possibilities. Loyals, competing councilman, loyals, angry mafiosos, loyals.

Your first thought is to continue forwards through the open space to another door, but there's no way you'd make it to the basement dugout in time, so you look behind you, under the porch.

There's a few gardening tools, but there's also a door of its own. For security reasons it doesn't lead directly into the main building, but it does give you a nice, long tunnel out to a disused gardening shed, abandoned when your father bought the grounds.

The door's heavy, solid, and leads to a short ladder and a dark, but dry walk. Pulling it back closed as quietly as you can, you start to creep down the tunnel in near total darkness, with only the dim light of LEDs along a shielded power cable to guide you. Along the way you feebly grasp onto a woodcutting axe, finding its grip foreign and overheavy in your hands.

It will have to do, in a pinch.

Reaching the end of the tunnel, you lift the hatch ever to slightly and turn your head on a pivot to check the inside of the shed. A small mouse scampers off into a corner where one boot stands and the other lays on the ground, unoccupied.

Still, you jump and cover your mouth, closing your eyes as if expecting the shot which turns the black tunnel to void before you can process just what it was.

You are here alone, you are on your own, you are going to die alone in the back of your family villa and no one will know.

No. Someone will know. You will make someone to know.

Its not hard to shove the hatch open, as adrenaline begins to surge. More tools rust away in the corners, but they aren't what you're after as you start yanking open drawers for a lighter, a flare, something to signal the house with, discarding them on the floor.

They clatter, disgorging odds and ends until something workable flies out from under a box. Grasping the handle of the flare gun, you swear you hear something moving outside as you break it open, grasping a flare from the same discarded drawer, work the hammer and open the door to the shed a fraction. Pointing it through the doorway, you angle it up into the sky and pull the trigger.

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>>3042202
It clicks in your hand, arcing a desperate, burning signal into the daytime sky, a harsh but dim red against the baby blue of a clear day. You break it again, grabbing another flare from drawer before simply hopping down into the hatch while something makes its way loudly around the shed. Failing to land flat on your feet, you fall onto your back and ram the new flare home before worming back into the darkness, keeping it trained on the hatch.

Whoever it was you can practically feel them shaking the ground with their boots as they pull open the door, their steely gaze piercing the stone walls of the tunnel, seeing you already. A masked head drops, inverted through the hatch, followed by the barrel of the rifle.

You take aim, pointing the flare gun, heartbeat thundering in your ears, pulse making your world sway. The trigger breaks past the point of no return, hammer falls, strikes the primer, flare leaves the barrel, rifle levels on you in slow motion, flare closes the gap, strikes the wall next to his head, blindingly bright in the dark tunnel and then suddenly the world is dark again.

Somewhere, in some distant corner of your mind, you hear a voice, speaking to you.

>"I want only the best. Give it your all."
>"Up and at 'em, course isn't over."
>"If you start to sink, don't worry, I have you."

>>3042210
>"Up and at 'em, course isn't over."

>>3042210
>>"Up and at 'em, course isn't over."

Welcome back, OP. Glad to see more of this quest. It finally encouraged me to get around to watching The Big O, and its been a fun ride so far.

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>>3043586
It'll only get more and more wild as things go along, and oh boy, do I mean wild.

>>3042210

Light floods in again as you push yourself up from the mud. Every muscle burns, every sinew sore, but you take that first step up and spit out that bit of soft dirt you just nearly swallow falling off the climbing wall.

Magnus is standing off the path of the training course. He's thin here, and less stressed. You pin the memory to just two and a half months after your sixteenth birthday.

Your father insisted you train and run the course, and every day you wanted to stay some, to get a chance to rest off some of the soreness of the training, but still, he insisted and you just couldn't say no. He was just worried about you.

Then Lieutenant Magnus wasn't or if he was, he didn't let on with his harsh glower. Turning around you throw yourself at the wall again, hands dirtied, slippery and struggling to find solid purchase in the artificially placed stones, sweat sweeping away and mixing with what was in your face and your hair.

It was just ten feet of verticality between you and the finish line and just like before, as you reach the top, your fingers find purchase, but your legs don't. You can't afford to let yourself dangle here, to slow and tire yourself out hanging as your legs hand, and you shout to match the protest of every joint in your arms.

>Power through it, there's only one way out, and its right over.
>Get a foothold again. Security first.

>>3043678
>Get a foothold again. Security first.

Not sure which is more fitting for the girl. I know the boy probably would've tried to power through, out of sheer pride if nothing else.

>>3043678
>Get a foothold again. Security first.

>>3043678
>Get a foothold again. Security first.

>>3043678
>Get a foothold again. Security first.

>>3043678
>Get a foothold again. Security first.

>>3043678
>Get a foothold again. Security first.

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>>3043678

You force your feet to find purchase once more, scrabbling blindly at the board into they hook onto support, and push and pull with all the strength your exhausted limbs could manage. Behind you, you can hear Magnus cracking, as well as the crunch of foot steps as he walk to the other side of wall.

"Last step, almost there."

As you tumble to your left a deafening roar fills the tunnel, a round screaming death past your head once again. Your would be assassin starts to work the action of his rifle while you toss aside the flaregun and spring to your feet. He thrusts the barrel of the rifle forwards to ward you off but you palm it aside with your left, while the right grabs the axe you had left by the hatch.

Arcing it across one handed, the half strikes the side of his masked head and falls to the ground, head first, stunned, only for you to bring the implement down squarely on his face. His whole body tenses up, arms and legs jolting.

The only sound is your own breath and pounding heartbeat as you fall to your knees, place your head in your hands, and let out a scream. You vent out everything, every bit of fear, anger, the soreness of stressed muscle tension, everything.

>Rest a moment, collect your wits, find out who this is and why they tried to kill you.
>Get back in the house, find your family, and safety.

Oof. Clapping, not cracking, and haft, not half.

Apologies by the way for all the delays and the messiness of this thread. I'm adapting to a new sleep schedule now that I'm working different shifts and don't have the constant threat of being called in for a night shift. Didn't feel right to risk delaying another week, though.

>>3045351
>Rest a moment, collect your wits, find out who this is and why they tried to kill you.

>3045372
Relax real life comes first, thanks for the update to tide us over.

>>3045351
>Rest a moment, collect your wits, find out who this is and why they tried to kill you.
More assassins might be in the house, anyway.

>>3045372
Aye, life comes first. Congrats on getting a better(?) shift. We appreciate you trying to get us out rather than leave us hanging.

>>3045351
>>Rest a moment, collect your wits, find out who this is and why they tried to kill you.
And make sure he's fucking dead, while you're at it

>>3045351
>Rest a moment, collect your wits, find out who this is and why they tried to kill you.

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>>3045351

Take a breather, get a hold of yourself, Calliko. You're alive, you're still here.

Leaning over the man you take a better look at your quarry, and the axe sprouting from his face. He's definitely not breathing. The blow had managed to kill him. You have killed a man and you're inspecting his corpse.

A massive wave of nausea overwhelms you and you take a stumbling step to one side, supporting yourself against the wall and pulling your hair back out of the way before you vomit.

Once you wipe your mouth on the back of your wrist you return to inspecting him, albeit reluctantly. There's no way you're going to identify him from his face, that's for sure. He's wearing a black jumpsuit and pocket lined webbing, which you start to systemically search. Most of the pockets have tools and spare ammunition, but as you reach into the breast pocket beneath his webbing you hit paydirt.

A small, typed letter describes the task, you're assassination, but also a location for payment once its done. The abandoned water treatment plant on Flag Street. There's no mention of who the author is, or who they're working for, but for now, it will have to do.

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Sadly, I'm going to have to call things here. Again, apologies for the thread being late, brief, and so on. Next thread will be on schedule and actually the usual sort of productive, however, so without further ado...

>All roads point to nefarious acts taking place in the sewers around the water treatment plant! But can are our fledgling heroes and the metal deity from ages past prepared for the horrors that may lurk below the building? Find out next time, on Lo, Our Iron Gods!