It wouldn't really make sense for High Priest Groplox to wait this long just to get revenge on you. Plus, you can't really spare the effort to deal with him right now even he did. You put down a mental note to ask High Priest Groplox why parts of his religion might hate you later and return to the task at hand- officiating violence on a wide scale.

The next couple of hours are, much to your disappointment, a slow-moving, strategic affair. You slowly force the contestants towards the center of the trade port, making the playing field smaller and smaller, but there aren't nearly as many fights as you expect as everyone is forced closer to each other. Sure, there is some fighting, and the number of contestants goes down from the high 300s to the low 200s by the time the rest of the trade port is made off-limits, but it turns out that people are less prone to initiate violence when they're surrounded by a bunch of people who will just beat the shit out of them once they're done fighting.

Unsatisfied by the lack of wanton bloodshed and worried about the possibility of this actually turning into, god forbid, a normal eating contest, you turn on the holoscreens. "Greetings! Congratulations on everyone who has lasted up until now, but there's a catch... the center of the trade port has a fire occupancy limit which are legally required to follow. It is..." You mumble into the microphone, pause for a moment, and then say 100. The fire occupancy limit is actually far greater, but at no point did you lie. The two remarks you made were completely unrelated, and if the contestants think otherwise, that is clearly their fault. "If the fire occupancy limit isn't met in half an hour, the competition will have to be cancelled for safety reasons. You should all know what to do."

You hastily cut off the holoscreens and watch with glee as the contestants begin to eliminate each other. Now this is what you were hoping for: nutrient paste flying everywhere in the middle of a no-holds-barred battle royale. People are throwing each other out of the playing field, vomiting nutrient paste up, and forfeiting under the combined assault of many. As you watch the action, you remember something. It's about time for the final environmental hazard- and it's a doozy.
>Retaining walls surrounding the center of the trade port as water begins pouring in from above. Security pushes several boats out of the surrounding shops before leaving. It took a long time to waterproof the area, but the payoff was worth it- it's time for some Roman collisium style fighting in a manmade ocean.
>The surrounding shops open up and packs of walruses begin pouring out of them. You were never able to get space lions like you wanted, but Planet Munchie had plenty of stray walruses. Some of them are cybernetically modified, some are almost sentient and know how to use weapons, and all of them are somewhat angry and hungry for nutrient paste. Time to see how everyone handles this.
>Whirring sounds fill the area as the ground splits apart in many places and all sorts of homemade contraptions appear- bits of metal occasionally shooting out of the ground to send whoever was on top of them flying, spinning, whirring thingamajigs, and oh so many other things ripped straight from Wipeout. All of this is topped off with copious amounts of foam and slime. The former for their safety, the latter for your amusement.
>Write-in

>>4506257
>>The surrounding shops open up and packs of walruses begin pouring out of them. You were never able to get space lions like you wanted, but Planet Munchie had plenty of stray walruses. Some of them are cybernetically modified, some are almost sentient and know how to use weapons, and all of them are somewhat angry and hungry for nutrient paste. Time to see how everyone handles this.

>>4506257

>The surrounding shops open up and packs of walruses begin pouring out of them. You were never able to get space lions like you wanted, but Planet Munchie had plenty of stray walruses. Some of them are cybernetically modified, some are almost sentient and know how to use weapons, and all of them are somewhat angry and hungry for nutrient paste. Time to see how everyone handles this.

>>4506257
>>The surrounding shops open up and packs of walruses begin pouring out of them. You were never able to get space lions like you wanted, but Planet Munchie had plenty of stray walruses. Some of them are cybernetically modified, some are almost sentient and know how to use weapons, and all of them are somewhat angry and hungry for nutrient paste. Time to see how everyone handles this.

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Time to release the walruses! You give security the signal and watch as shuttered stores around the trade port's main square open up. Security guards holding hoses full of nutrient paste appear along with small groups of stray walruses. But these aren't just any stray walruses- they're militarized stray walruses. The Disco Mafia is, well, a mafia, and as one of the biggest players of Planet Munchie requires its own military. That's why, in a partnership with animal rights activists who wanted less walruses being put to sleep in shelters, they adopted a small army of walruses, trained them, and then implanted spare cybernetic implants in them, creating a small horde of animals far superior to guard dogs in intelligence and lethality.

Nutrient paste sprays from the hoses towards the contestants. Some of them dodge the splatter, while others embrace the good fortune and try to eat some of it as it flies towards them. They are the first victims, as the walruses charge towards the 'delicious' nutrient paste, just like the Disco Mafia trained them to. The fighting pauses as many of the remaining contestants flee as fast as their legs can carry them, trying to outrun the blubbery death machines after them. But it's all in vain. The grey mass descends upon them, and while the beasts are trained to avoid deaths, you do hear quite a few unpleasant cracks come from within the pile. The contestants left are culled as most of those assaulted forfeit, including the remaining members of The Church of the Irradiated Light.

Among those assaulted, however, there are exceptions. Big Mac is covered in nutrient paste, but due to his sheer size it's impossible for the walruses to shake him. The turtle is also under attack, but as it's currently flying dozens of feet in the air, there's not much the walruses can do against it. Gloop is being thrown around among the mass, but doesn't seem to mind. ...You're starting to wonder if he even has vitals.

But not everyone can be an exception. Within five minutes of the walruses being released there are less than 100 contestants left, and then in 10 minutes less than 70. Ready to draw things to a close, you turn on the holoscreens, announce that the competition will end in half an hour, and then put a timer up, obnoxious countdown noise and all. This drives things to a fever pitch. There are mercenaries shooting excessive quantities of non-lethal munitions across the trade port, the Disco Mafia serving fools left and right, Big Mac resisting the blows of nearly a dozen men at once, and the horrifying wave of walruses destroying everything in its path. There's only one proper description for this- chaos. Unbridled chaos. You watch with eyes wide open as battles erupt everywhere and everyone does their best just to stay in the game, no effort left to spare for eating anything.

>>4507790
Despite the initial chaos, as walruses begin to be knocked out by some of the exceptional fighters and more contestants are removed from the playing field, things begin to calm down a bit. With 15 minutes left to go, there are a couple dozen contestants left. Some of the elite officers of the Disco Mafia, Gloop (carried only by his inability to be hurt), the turtle, Big Mac, and a small assortment of mercenaries and professional eaters. Once there are only the small group of them left, instead of fighting, they all come to a silent agreement- Big Mac must be eliminated. Throughout the madness this monolith of a man has been cramming handfuls of nutrient paste down his gullet, completely ignoring the wide variety of attacks levied against him. He's definitely eaten the most nutrient paste among anyone remaining, and the less contestants that are left, the more difficult it will be to get rid of him. If they want to win they need to make a move, and fast.

Having come to an agreement, a fight breaks out between Big Mac and everyone else. The walruses are lured towards him, tusks of metal and ivory piercing into his endless layers of fat, but this is only the beginning. The Disco Maifa officers cover themselves with some sort of yellow aura, turning into a literal disco inferno as they crash into Big Mac. He roars in rage as the second volley of blows hit him and slams back against them. As he does so the mercenaries shoot him with enough non-lethal rounds to down an elephant, but he remains standing. A battle to end all battles rages on as the timer ticks down. Big Mac eliminates many of the people after him, but after five minutes it's clear he's running out of strength. But still... it's unclear whether that will happen before the timer is up.

60 seconds left. Six contestants. Big Mac, Gloop, the turtle, two officers from the disco mafia, and a mercenary. The turtle dive-bombs Big Mac as the disco mafia officers attack with the last of their strength. Big Mac buckles under the blows, chest heaving, but manages to slap them all away, sending them flying out of the area. 34 seconds. Three contestants. The mercenary takes a bazooka-looking monstrosity out of his pack, grins, and shoots it towards Big Mac. There's a crackling sound in the air as Big Mac is shocked with the force of uncountable tasers. He lets out a sad yell and lurches towards the mercenary, twitching uncontrollably as he narrowly knocks him out of the center of the trade port. 14 seconds. Two contestants. Big Mac slaps Gloop with as much force as he can muster. Gloop is sent flying across the center of the arena, slams into a wall, and then, much to your surprise, ejects a blob of slime from himself with a weird retching noise. ...You think that was him vomiting? You honestly can't tell. Well, either way Big Mac ate more, you don't need to know-

>>4507798
Two seconds left. A look of despair covers Big Mac's face as he bites down, struggling to force his mouth closed. One second left. He can't. A white torrent of half-digested nutrient paste spews out of his mouth, covering the ground in front of him. No contestants left? The timer goes off. You have no idea who won. ...Fuck. You turn to the room full of security guards around you, hoping they'll give you some sort of answer. They don't. "Who just won?" They all seem as confused as you, and are split between 'no one', 'Big Mac', and 'Gloop'. Great. As you get ready to choose, someone does mention someone odd though- Rayleigh. Confused, you inquire as to how Rayleigh could possibly be the winner, and are informed that the medical bay he's in is closed off to the public, but was on the edge of the playing area. Given that he technically never vomited and he did eat some nutrient paste, he could be declared the winner, although it would probably make everyone angry.
You're still split, but at this point its been over a minute since the competition ended. You need to declare SOMEONE a winner.
>Big Mac was the last contestant who wasn't disqualified. He wins. It's probably the results most of the contestants want anyways. ...Plus, maybe if you make him happy you could try hiring him as a bouncer- there are a lot of weirdos in this sector of space.
>Gloop was the winner. You don't understand his weird alien biology and can't call that ball of slime he ejected from himself vomit. Maybe that was just him being injured. People will be somewhat angry but you think there's room for debate here.
>Rayleigh was the winner. Through a series of technicalities he was technically in the running, and so he's the winner. You don't think people will take it well though.
>No one was the winner. You all disqualified yourselves and no one gets any of the prizes. All complaints can be lobbied at our website. Thank you for competing and have a McSpacies™ day.
>Write-in

>>4507799
>Big Mac was the last contestant who wasn't disqualified. He wins. It's probably the results most of the contestants want anyways. ...Plus, maybe if you make him happy you could try hiring him as a bouncer- there are a lot of weirdos in this sector of space.

>>4507799
>>Big Mac was the last contestant who wasn't disqualified. He wins. It's probably the results most of the contestants want anyways. ...Plus, maybe if you make him happy you could try hiring him as a bouncer- there are a lot of weirdos in this sector of space.

>>4507827
>>4507898
You might be robbing Gloop or Rayleigh here, but Big Mac seems like the most logical choice for winner. You boot up the holoscreens and show your face donned in clown-style regalia for the last time. "I would like to sincerely thank everyone for participating in this monumental occasion and congratulate Contestant #83, Big Mac, on his victory today. His prizes will be delivered shortly." You cut off the feed, head outside, and let out a deep breath. Everything was fun, but it's over now. It's a shame, but now you have to deal with more important matters.
The security guards get to work cleaning up the trade port, which is practically covered in a thin layer of nutrient paste, dealing with all those injured during the fighting, and paying out the winnings for everyone who bet on the competition. Meanwhile you take off your cheesy costume, get dressed into something more... normal, and then get to work.
>Attempt to recruit Big Mac before he leaves with his prizes. You're not sure if you have enough to tempt him into working for you, but if you could employ him then you'd have one hell of a bouncer.
>Call in High Priest Groplox and see why you might have pissed off his religion and what you can do about it. You don't need two enemies right now.
>Gather everyone important and start discussing what to do about King's battleship that's probably heading in your direction. You have no idea how close it is, but the sooner you prepare the better chance you all have of withstanding its assault.
>Write-in

>>4507961
>Attempt to recruit Big Mac before he leaves with his prizes. You're not sure if you have enough to tempt him into working for you, but if you could employ him then you'd have one hell of a bouncer

>>4507961
>Attempt to recruit Big Mac before he leaves with his prizes. You're not sure if you have enough to tempt him into working for you, but if you could employ him then you'd have one hell of a bouncer.

>>4507978
>>4508665
There's a lot you need to take care of, but you should talk to this Big Mac guy first. He'll probably be leaving soon, and you'd like to someone with the sheer power of him at your disposal. You take the prizes with you (although you're not sure how to hand over your 'awe and respect'), and head to the center of the trade port and look for him.

It does not take you long to find Big Mac. He is a multi-ton monolith towering over everyone else, roughly 10 feet in height. His figure is intimidating, although his flabby body offsets it somewhat. As you approach him you expect to see him celebrating victory, proud to win, but instead he seems... disappointed?

You approach Big Mac, not knowing what to make of his odd emotions, and present his prizes to him. He glances at them, sighs, and reluctantly takes them. "I'll earn these properly whenever this competition is hosted again. It's only a real win if you can keep all the food down." ...So that's what he's torn up over. You guess it's some sense of... honor... at work here, although you're not sure.

Big Mac quickly goes to leave now that his prizes are obtained and his picture taken, but you stop him. "Mr. Mac, I have a proposition for you." He stops in place and glances back at you. "I'll hear you out Ronald, but I'm a competitive eater by choice, not circumstance. It's a dream job for someone like me." "...Even so, I'd to hire you to head security at my McSpacies." "Many people have wanted to hire me. No one has. What can you offer me?"
>"I've got all the nutrient paste you can eat and minimum wage. It's not much, but I promise the workplace is interesting." This might not interest him, but you're not lying- boring days around here are few and far between.
>"A guarantee that this competition will be hosted again. Without a good head of security hosting it again won't be viable, and then you'd never be able to regain your honor." You're not sure if this approach will piss him off or ensure his (temporary) employment, but this is definitely something he's interested in.
>Take Big Mac somewhere private and go into a long-winded speech about the conflict between King and McSpacies and how, when you think about it, it's really the biggest eating contest thats ever occurred, one on a galactic scale. If you can bullshit him into believing this point of view then he'll definitely work for you. It might be a big ask though.
[All above options will end with you rolling to convince him.]
>Write-in, either to change approach or add other comments on

>>4509934
>"I've got all the nutrient paste you can eat and minimum wage. It's not much, but I promise the workplace is interesting." This might not interest him, but you're not lying- boring days around here are few and far between.
>"And a guarantee that I'll hold this competition again."

>>4510314
Support

>>4510314
>>4510427
Alright, vote closed. I'll start writing an update in about an hour, in the meantime feel free to roll 3d20. Whether one by one or all at once is up to you guys, if there's any (or all) leftover I'll roll them before I write.

Rolled 12, 3, 2 = 17 (3d20)

>>4510451

...You don't have a ton to offer, do you? Still, you can try to reel him in. "I've got all the nutrient paste you can eat, minimum wage, and a guarantee I'll hold this competition again. And I promise the workplace is interesting." There's an awkward pause as Big Mac examines you up and down, like a beast evaluating its prey. After a second he shakes his head and turns away. "Not enough. But since I do need this to happen again, let's make a deal. I cover a few days worth of shifts next time you need some extra security, and in exchange you make sure to host all of this again."

Well, it's not what you were hoping for, but it's better than nothing. "Deal." You reach out your hand and Big Mac nearly crushes it under his mammoth grip, violently shaking your weak, floppy appendage back and forth. You exchange communicator IDs and he goes on his way, off to the next big competition in the galactic professional eating circuit.

With that dealt with, you have a more worrying issue to deal with. King's battleship. You have no idea when it's coming, but if former burger king Fairview is to be trusted, there is one coming for you. You message Rayleigh, who at this point is conscious and able to walk, and tell him to gather anyone who's important and report to his conference room. You have war plans to discuss.

There's a large, round table half-full in an otherwise empty room. You sit in a fancy wooden chair at the head position. To your left is Rayleigh, and your right The Doctor. Besides him there's Herbert, two of the disco mafia's highest officers, High Priest Groplox, and Fairview, the recently unpossessed burger king. According to Fairview, after hours trying to regain his memories, he's remembered a little more. The battleship, along with a few other assorted vessels, are coming directly towards this trade port. Their goal is to use extreme prejudice in removing the threat here- you and your McSpacies. This mission is headed by Five-Patty Burger King Arsino, King's regional manager for this sector of space.

Unfortunately, despite remembering all this, Fairview can't remember when exactly the battleship is coming. It's somewhere between three and five weeks out, but the specifics are fuzzy. Still, that gives you some time. Not a lot of time, but enough to do something. Unsure of what to do and waiting for ideas to come to you, you put off immediately deciding on a plan and ask High Priest Groplox how exactly you pissed off his religion.

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>>4510600
Upon learning about The Church of Irradiated Light's attempt to sabotage the eating competition, High Priest Groplox's expression grows dim. "Grand Priest, I believe in your devotion to our cause and was awed by your creation of the sacred worship site nearby, so I applied to the Allfather to have you appointed as a Grand Priest. He agreed and granted you a position, but not everyone agreed with his decision. The church is a disparate organization, and with your sudden appointment, it's not a surprise that one of the other higher-ups tried to make a move against you. I apologize for the inconvenience. Punish me as you wish." High Priest Groplox falls to the ground as he says the final part, as if nervously waiting for some sort of divine punishment.

...So you were drawn into their cult's infighting. Great. You tell High Priest Groplox to stop grovelling and that there won't be a punishment. He says a few incomprehensible prayers and returns to his seat. Having figured out what the deal with the church is, you continue surveying the room about their ideas. Rayleigh and Fairview want to fight back against King, to the death if necessary. When you ask how to avoid the 'to the death' conditional the Disco Mafia officers say that they can attempt to gather support from the organization, but that you'll need to come to Planet Munchie for some... formalities. They do, however, strongly suggest a 'tactical retreat' to Planet Munchie via what's essentially a space tow truck, although that would mean abandoning the trade port.

The last person to make their piece known is The Doctor. You're not sure what he's on about, but he says something about 'great power' and 'ancient McSpacies ruins' that he discovered while researching everything King left behind in Rayleigh's library. At first you're not interested, but as he goes on you get the picture that some of the things in these ruins are very cool and can make very big booms. As somewhat of an explosion hobbyist (and oftentimes a creator of explosions), this interests you.

>>4510603
You have a lot to deal with, but only one you. For the time being you need to pick one thing to focus on and just hope that you have some way to fight back before the battleship comes knocking at your door.
>Tell High Priest Groplox to drop by the McSpacies later. You'll need to show that you're not someone that some sheltered crazies can fuck with- you've dealt with enough crazy to send these Grand Priests crying back to their mommies, they can't faze you. Maybe you can even get some help from the higher-ups in the church once you've established yourself among them. If they're anything like the cults back on Earth they have plenty of money and weapons, right?
>Tell the Disco Mafia that you'll be heading back to Planet Munchie with them. You don't know what exactly you need to do to borrow the majority of their power, but it doesn't really matter. You've somehow become their Disco Child, and your orders shall be heeded!
>Head back to the McSpacies and ask The Doctor about these ruins in more detail. You don't know exactly what happened to McSpacies after you fell into cryosleep, but given the sheer size of the old McSpacies corporation they could have left practically anything behind.
>Prepare to retreat. You'll have to abandon the trade port, but it might get King off of your tail.
>Tell the Disco Mafia to prepare to retreat and search for some way to bring the trade port to Planet Munchie. You'll fight if you can't, but you really want to avoid this whole situation.
>Write-in

>>4510604
>Tell High Priest Groplox to drop by the McSpacies later. You'll need to show that you're not someone that some sheltered crazies can fuck with- you've dealt with enough crazy to send these Grand Priests crying back to their mommies, they can't faze you. Maybe you can even get some help from the higher-ups in the church once you've established yourself among them. If they're anything like the cults back on Earth they have plenty of money and weapons, right?

>>4510604
>Head back to the McSpacies and ask The Doctor about these ruins in more detail. You don't know exactly what happened to McSpacies after you fell into cryosleep, but given the sheer size of the old McSpacies corporation they could have left practically anything behind.
Ancient McSpacies ruins? Hell yeah.

I do wanna figure out what we can do as the "disco child" chosen one of the eldritch disco god though

If the vote is still tied in a couple hours I'll roll to tiebreak.

>>4510604
>Head back to the McSpacies and ask The Doctor about these ruins in more detail. You don't know exactly what happened to McSpacies after you fell into cryosleep, but given the sheer size of the old McSpacies corporation they could have left practically anything behind.

>>4510920
>>4511008
>>4511660
The strength of the Disco Mafia, and even The Church of the Irradiated Light are more known quantities, something you have an idea of, but the McSpacies ruins The Doctor is mentioning are more of a gamble. You have no idea what, if anything, could be left behind. But still... you need to go see them. From what little you know McSpacies was a massive, galaxy-spanning corporation around the time period when it disappeared, and in your time it was one of the largest corporations on Earth. It had a massive number of seats in the Disney™ Federation parliament, and was practically a small nation-state. If you're lucky, whatever they left behind could be of far greater value than some help from the Disco Mafia or The Church.

You call the meeting to an end and tell The Doctor to tell you more about the ruins once you're back home. Soon you're back in the privacy of your own restaurant and ask The Doctor to explain more about the ruins. Instead of a short conversation, this question triggers him to start a long, rambling lecture. Some of what he says is useful, although most of it is mindless bullshit that no one besides a history buff would care about. Still, you can't cut him off in the middle and expect to get to the bottom of this, so you just let him go on.

As time goes on your brain starts to cut the chaff out of what The Doctor's saying and pieces together a summary. After defeating Rayleigh and seizing the trade port, The Doctor gained access to a wide variety of classified documents help by King. Since that time hes been poring over them with a fine-toothed comb, painstakingly putting notes and attempting to put the bits of information he could together to figure everything out. And he figured out a lot.

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>>4511984
Around 20,000 years ago, at the height of the last burst of expansion across the still somewhat barren galaxy and at a time when the government's power had waned in favor of corporations, the McSpacies corporation was one of the most powerful forces around. But they'd stepped on too many toes. The fast food market was too big for one restaurant to claim for themselves, but some were of the opinion that McSpacies was trying to do just that. Those opposed to McSpacies expansion banded together, creating an alliance of proportions never before seen and rarely seen since. Then they attempted to initiate a 'corporate takeover by force'- or to be more accurate, a war.

King was the head of the alliance against McSpacies, but many other restaurants joined in. Wendy's in the Box, Sub-Way, and a radical offspring of The Colonol's descendants, UFC (United Fried Chicken), were some of the largest members of the group, but nearly the entire industry joined in. They managed to keep their machinations under cover for an amazingly long time and pulled off a devastating sneak attack against McSpacies, crippling the military of their great empire. But it wasn't enough. McSpacies rallied their troops rapidly, formed a tight defensive line, and fought back with an unwavering ferocity The Alliance hadn't expected.

Despite The Alliance's sneak attack, things quickly went downhill. Their forces were pushed back, and small, unlucky restaurants' fleets were annihilated completely. Soon things were looking bleak, and even the members of King were talking about abandoning the war and begging for mercy. But then something unexpected, and still explainable happened. Out of the blue a superweapon of unforeseen proportions appeared, one that could lead King to victory. It has since disappeared, but in that war it single-handly helped annihilate McSpacies, wipe its name from public memory, and force the rest of the alliance to become subsidiaries of King.

King became a leader of the final era of galactic expansion, and a part of it even formed what is now known as the 'Galactic Parliament'. The modern King is far, far divorced from this government, but it's still favored to an extent and maintains power far above that of most normal corporations in a government-dominated era.

But this still leaves some things unexplained- the possessions, the practical genocide, the superweapon, and the almost fanatical effort King put towards attempting to wipe McSpacies from the pages of history. There has to be something tying all of this together. As you think about it, you suddenly think back to Count Arby- that weird, repulsive man who claimed to work for the devil. You ponder whether he might have been connected to these events ...and after a few moments, he suddenly appears.

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>>4511992
"Count Arby, restaurateur, salesman, and servant of Lucifer at your service! Ronald, ol' buddy, ol' pal, did you call? Ready to give up that soul of yours? I can give you anything- ANYTHING!" ...Oh god, you didn't know this would bring him here. You have regrets. "Well that's rude. I come all the way from Earth to here and you're just going to give me the cold shoulder? I have a half a mind to-"

As Count Arby starts speaking, The Doctor stares at him, eyes wide open, and starts trembling. "So he's not just a fairy tale... he's real." Count Arby snorts. "Of course I'm real! How else would souls get to their rightful owner?" You ignore Count Arby and ask The Doctor what he's referring to. "Count Arby is supposedly... no, is, the brother of Doctor Faustus. Doctor Faustus made a pact with Lucifer, become a necromancer, and was dragged to hell, while Count Arby made a pact with Lucifer, started a international shipping business, and was taken to hell, only to become a salesperson for Lucifer, fated to serve him until he collected enough souls."

"So you know about me! How flattering. Anyways, I don't have all day- I have meetings to catch and souls to trade. Do you need anything? I can provide what you wish, as long as you have my payment of choice."
>"No. Begone foul creature." You don't want anything to do with this weird fourth-dimensional stalker. You have your suspicions about him and his role in the war, but no way to verify them.
>"...Can I pay with souls other than my own as long as I can collect them? Say the souls of King's higher-ups?" You're not interested in making a deal with him, but asking a few questions could reveal how his whole system works, and whether he might have been involved in the war and King's whole 'room of eternally tortured McSpacies employees' thing. ...You're not sure if it changes anything if he was involved, but hey, at the very least it gives you another target for your anger.
>Unleash every form of weaponry you have at this monster before it can react. The mouth laser, Roomie, the weird disco energy inside of you, it doesn't matter. You want to remove this unholy being from your sight.
>Write-in

>>4511997
>"...Can I pay with souls other than my own as long as I can collect them? Say the souls of King's higher-ups?" You're not interested in making a deal with him, but asking a few questions could reveal how his whole system works, and whether he might have been involved in the war and King's whole 'room of eternally tortured McSpacies employees' thing. ...You're not sure if it changes anything if he was involved, but hey, at the very least it gives you another target for your anger.

>>4512228
May as well try to get some information out of this... thing while it's here. "Can I pay with soul other than my own as long as I can collect them? Say... the souls of King's higher-ups?" Count Arby lets out a booming, demented laugh in response to your question, tears appearing at the corners of his eyes. It takes a few seconds for him to calm down and answer. "Yes and no. There are certain circumstances where you can offer up the souls of others, mainly in a bulk deal, but you that won't work with King." "Why not?" "Why not? Boy, it's like if I tried to sell you your own restaurant- there's no value to that which I already own."

So Count Arby was involved in the war. You're glad you got some info about this, but... it felt too easy. Is there something else at work here? "Calm down. I told you because it doesn't matter, not because there's some sort of trap." ...Is he reading your thoughts? "No. I'm just good at reading faces- 41,000 years of commission-only sales will do that. Anyways, nice to make the acquaintance of your friend- here's my card." A spark of fire appears in Count Arby's palm before turning into a business card. He tosses it to The Doctor and then disappears.

You feel kind of like of violated after that conversation and have a strong urge to take a shower, but you don't really have the time for that right now. "So, the ruins. Where are they?" "That's the thing- there's a few within warping distance. They're all installations which were cleared out and ransacked by King, but which didn't suffer catastrophic damage due to planetary defensive measures. Common knowledge would say that not much of value would be left, but from my research it seems like many of the important parts of these buildings are only accessible to certain members of McSpacies. I have no idea what security measures this refers to, or if you'd even be able to access them, but we'll have to make a gamble and hope that you can."

>>4512933
So it could be a shitshoot, it could not be. Fine, you can roll with that. "There are three ruins I've been eyeing up. Tell me which one you're interested in."
>On a freezing planet with an icy crust, McSpacies used to have a military hanger. This hanger was located on the surface when it was made, but should be currently be buried under a sheet of ice due to environmental changes. Fortunately it still appears to be accessible, as there is a settlement nearby that opened up a small path into the ruins. Unfortunately this settlement is also a military facility, and getting in will be... interesting. Travel time: 12 days total
>There's a highly-populated, tropical planet that's a popular vacation spot. It has many well-known tourist traps, and one of them is a set of mysterious ancient ruins which are actually just a regional headquarters for McSpacies. The upper portions have been restored and turned into gift shops, restaurants, and so on and so forth, but there are still locked lower portions which no one has figured out how to get into without the use of explosives. Travel time: 9 days
>In the deserted plains of rural planet is a set of castle-like ruins which appears to have been some sort of university. This university was actually an offshoot of Hamburger University, the only ivy-league culinary school on Earth (and your alma mater), and was created in its image. You're not sure what could be contained here, but if nothing else it could be a nice walk down memory lane, even if it's not the real Hamburger University.
>Write-in
Time left until battleship's arrival: roughly 3-5 weeks

>>4512936
What's the travel time for the 3rd option?
>In the deserted plains of rural planet is a set of castle-like ruins which appears to have been some sort of university. This university was actually an offshoot of Hamburger University, the only ivy-league culinary school on Earth (and your alma mater), and was created in its image. You're not sure what could be contained here, but if nothing else it could be a nice walk down memory lane, even if it's not the real Hamburger University.

>>4513148
8 days, whoops

Was originally waiting for a consensus yesterday but I probably should've just called it before I went to sleep.
Will write the update in around 4(?) hours, maybe a little longer, need to commute home so that I can vote next week.

File: hamburger university.jpg (578 KB, 996x744)

578 KB JPG

>>4513148
You're tempted by the military installation, but you're not sure how you'd manage to sneak in without being noticed. Same for the second ruin. You're honestly not sure what items of value could be left in the ruins of a dilapidated university, but you guess that's what you're going to find out. You tell The Doctor your plans, sort out some minor matters at home (like who's taking care of the till while the two of you are gone- Gloop sure as hell can't do it), and then head off towards the ruins via methods which are cramped, uncomfortable, and expensive. ...At least they're fast. Through a variety of uniquely uncomfortable warp methods, the two of you reach Planet X3487, aka 'Planet Meados', after eight days of travel.

The two of you end up in a small town of around twenty or thirty thousand people immediately after arriving. It's rural, and according to The Doctor the technology is rather quaint, but it still feels rather futuristic to you. There you shower, eat, and get some essential supplies before renting out an all-terrain vehicle for the several hour journey to the university's castle-like remains.

The journey to the university is mostly pleasant, although the occasional unprovoked assault by ten-foot tall lizard monsters is both not expected and not appreciated. Fortunately both you and The Doctor opted to bring standard-issue (for whom, you're not aware) plasma pistols when you left, which are more than effective at causing injuries 'incompatible with life' to the local wildlife. Whenever The Doctor mentions the 'wildlife' you say that they're looking more 'wild-dead' than anything. He doesn't laugh, and eventually stops using the word altogether.

The first thing you see upon arriving at the ruins are broken pieces of metal in front of a few crumbled piles of an odd, blackish stone. The Doctor approaches the metal and examines it closely with a handheld device you don't recognize. After a couple of minutes and repeated examinations he lets out a quiet cheer. "This is the place- this used to be a sign that said 'Hamburger University Subsidiary 188-C', although you wouldn't know by looking at it."

You leave The Doctor to his weird, futuristic archaeology efforts as you enter the campus on foot. The sight out front made you think that this might have all been a waste of time, but fortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. While everything out front wasn't recognizable as anything, as you get towards the center of the campus you see more buildings that are in salvageable, explorable shape. They must have been preserved by something that didn't wear down until later, although you're not sure what.

>>4516012
As the two of you look over a rough map of the area and decide where to go, you spot footprints in the partially-muddy ground. To the side are a few vehicle tracks, although they disappear as they enter onto a still-paved path. It rained yesterday, which means there's a good chance someone else could still be here. That's... odd. You didn't think many people visited here. Maybe it's worth investigating... or avoiding.
>The footsteps and vehicle tracks are heading roughly in the direction of the dorms. May as well go and check it out. It's not like whoever is here should be assumed hostile- they're probably just some sort of tourist.
>You should head to the library. The building is still somewhat intact, and if it's anything like the original Hamburger University, it's digitally-based and functions off of redundant database upon redundant database. At this point some of the data might be gone forever and it could take an outside device to access it, but there could be some interesting stuff left behind.
>You'll poke around the administrative buildings. They're still in pretty decent shape and if there was anything cool left behind here then the guys in charge would probably have them.
>Write-in

>>4516015
>The footsteps and vehicle tracks are heading roughly in the direction of the dorms. May as well go and check it out. It's not like whoever is here should be assumed hostile- they're probably just some sort of tourist.
Is Roomie with us?

>>4516062
Yes, you currently have Roomie strapped to your back. He's a little too big to carry like a sidearm.

>>4516015
>The footsteps and vehicle tracks are heading roughly in the direction of the dorms. May as well go and check it out. It's not like whoever is here should be assumed hostile- they're probably just some sort of tourist.

>>4516062
>>4516088
The tracks appear to be heading towards the dorms, so you'll check there first. You and The Doctor follow the track bests you can, although they disappear at times, and about five minutes later the two of you end up at some sort of side entrance. The door that previously stood there is now a rotted piece of metal on the ground, and the building itself is overgrown with vines and foliage.

The two of you step inside, entering into a stairwell (although it's a bit lacking in stairs). Now that you're inside you can see clear evidence of someone living (or at least constantly visiting) here. Many of the plants inside have been torn away, and much of the dirt inside swept away, although no one has bothered to clean the area very thoroughly. You follow the cleanest route, carefully taking what stairs are left up to the second floor.

As you step into the hallway of the building's second floor, you feel yourself trip over something. You instinctively hold your arms out to stop your fall, but mid-fall you notice shards of glass among the dirt on the floor and guard your face instead. Upon landing you feel your arms get cut up, but suffer no major wounds.

Startled by your sudden fall and the glass waiting for you, you throw a glance at where you tripped. You faintly see something glint off of the dim light coming through the dirt covered, broken, windows. Someone put a string in that doorway- probably some sort of trap. As you're about to tell The Doctor (who's still examining the stairwell) about this, you hear movement behind you.

"Who the hell're you?" The voice confronting you isn't exactly threatening, but they don't sound happy to meet you either. You start to turn towards them, but then they yell. "No sudden moves! Put yer hands up and then turn slowly, SLOWLY, towards me. Aye don' take to intruders well."
>Comply with the man's commands, turn around, and try to see why he's so hostile. He's clearly living here and isn't used to company, maybe you just freaked him out. You can salvage this.
>Comply with the man's commands, attempt to covertly signal The Doctor (assuming he hasn't already noticed), and hope he bails you out of this. You have no idea if this dude is just jumpy or mentally unstable, and you need help.
>Ignore the man's commands, escape into the stairwell, and prepare to engage with Roomie. This building is a bit too fragile and cramped for easy use of a mecha, and you might end up destroying a hallway, but you don't take kindly to being threatening.
>Write-in

>>4516168
>Comply with the man's commands, turn around, and try to see why he's so hostile. He's clearly living here and isn't used to company, maybe you just freaked him out. You can salvage this.

>>4516168
>Comply with the man's commands, turn around, and try to see why he's so hostile. He's clearly living here and isn't used to company, maybe you just freaked him out. You can salvage this.

>>4516175
>>4516542
Alright, you can still salvage this situation. The dude's paranoid, maybe a little dangerous, but he didn't immediately shoot so he can be reasoned with. You turn slowly, SLOWLY towards the man speaking. Upon turning around you're greeted by someone that you can only describe as 'rough'. Their skin is tan and callused, and their clothes torn and stained with what looks like oil. A long, scraggly gray beard falls off their face, and unkempt hair obscures their face.

Besides his appearance, you rather quickly notice that the man is pointing a gun at you. It looks really outdated and is probably something that you could find before you went into cyrosleep, but it's still a lethal weapon. The man resumes his commands while making sure to keep the gun pointed at you. "Are you armed?" "Yes, I'm carrying a sidearm. My companion is in the stairwell and also has one." You don't mention Roomie, as he looks harmless. The man seems pleased by your response and nods slightly. "Alright then. Slowly, SLOWLY reach fer the weapon and toss it to me. An' for fucks sake make sure the safety's on first, this place is already banged up and I ain't got time to fix it."

You slowly (SLOWLY) reach for your pistol and toss it over to the man. The Doctor is made to come out into the hallway (after the man warns him to avoid the tripwire) and hesitantly tosses his weapon over as well. Once the man takes both of your pistols he seems much calmer. "Name and purpose. You first." "Ronald. I'm here because I worked for the company that founded this place when it was still in business. I also graduated from the parent university back on Earth. I wanted to poke around, see if anything useful was left behind." "Time in cyrosleep? Name of the company? Proof?" "40,000 years, McSpacies, and I have my employee ID in my pocket if you wanna see." "Toss er' over."

You toss over your employee ID, and after glancing at it for a moment and the man tosses it back to you. "Checks out. Sorry fer the trouble, those historical preservation rat-bastards keep tryin' to chase me off my land, even though we've been working here since my grandpappy's generation." "We? There's more?" "Not anymore. Brother moved out to the city. But I'm still here." The man lets out a sigh and lowers his gun for a moment. "Anyways, we're good. You can poke around all you want, just keep out of my house 'an my workshop. If you need medical care for those cuts I got a first aid kit, and... uh, I'll be keepin' yer weapons as a safety measure, no offense."

>>4516617
An awkward silence ensues as the two of you finally lower your hands and the man puts away his gun(s). He stares at you for a moment, mutters "Think we're done ere so I'll get back to working on the 'bot." and starts to leave.
>Stop the man and ask exactly what he's working on. You think you heard him mention something about a robot, and you are thoroughly intrigued.
>Leave the dude alone and head towards the libraries. Even if he is working on something interesting, it's not of much interest to you- you feel like he might get adversarial again if you try to interfere.
>Leave the dude alone and look through the administrative buildings. Even if he is working on something interesting, it's not of much interest to you- you feel like he might get adversarial again if you try to interfere.
>Write-in

>>4516620
>Stop the man and ask exactly what he's working on. You think you heard him mention something about a robot, and you are thoroughly intrigued.

>>4516620
>Stop the man and ask exactly what he's working on. You think you heard him mention something about a robot, and you are thoroughly intrigued.

Did he just say something about a robot? You are thoroughly intrigued and might be getting somewhere with this visit. "Hey, hold up, you mentioned a robot?" The man pauses and puts his hand on his gun again. "Yup. My grandpappy found the thing, took him an' my dad to figure 'er out, and then me an' my brother started working on it. Its our pride an' joy, and I'd rather not show it to outsiders."

So there is a robot- and probably a big one if they've been working on it for that long. You really want to see it- even if you can't use it, big-ass robots are cool. "My friend here used to work in robotics. Maybe he could lend you a hand?" The man throws a glance towards The Doctor and starts asking about technical terms and parts you don't understand. Fortunately The Doctor seems to able to understand the questions and answers them correctly (or at least in a way that doesn't piss the guy off). After a few minutes of talking the man disappears into a nearby room before returning with a rope and a few pieces of cloth. "Put these blindfolds on reallllll tight and then hold onto tha rope. I'll show you Righty."

The two of you are blindfolded by the man and then led around the campus for at least an hour, weaving in and out of buildings and occasionally going in what seems like circles. You assume that this is all an attempt to disorient you and make sure you can't easily find your way to wherever this robot is, and it's working- you're completely lost. The entire walk the dude tries to stop you from figuring out your location based on sound, loudly singing an old code monkey spiritual to drown everything else out: "99 bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code. Take one down, mark it fixed, 128 bugs in the code..." (and so on and so forth).

Eventually the two of you are led into a building and down a long set of wooden and metal stairs. There the man takes off your blindfold. You're greeted by the sight of a massive storage room with no windows. In the middle of the room is a mess of metal and wires several hundred feet long, kept several feet in the air on some sort of special machine that reminds you of a car lift. "This is mah work. Righty." Mmm... interesting. You stare at it, confused, and wonder if the weird clump of metal and wires you're looking at is actually a robot or if this dude is just insane. Luckily The Doctor starts indirectly explaining things for you before you stick your foot in your mouth (and possibly incite a murderous rage by accidentally insulting this guy's life work). "It's part of a super-mecha?" "'Posed to be. My grandpappy was a roboticist and found this while searching the place for scrap parts. Although back then it ain't even close to workin', was just a half-finished prototype. 'Parently a few of these were supposed to be deployed to a military facility nearby as part of some war, but they only finished one of the prototypes. I think I'm gettin' close on this, but it'll prolly take another Kurt after me to get it working."

>>4517205
Oh, so it's part of a robot. Ok, part of a really cool robot. But just a part. You're initially disappointed, but after some further inquiries The Doctor mentions something that lifts your spirits. "Once that thing gets working it could get grafted onto a smaller mecha as long as some major modifications were made. It'd probably need to be from the same parent manufacturer though, or at least something similar." As The Doctor says this he throws a glance at Roomie. Now you're getting the message- if this thing can get working then you can shove the arm onto Roomie and have part of a big-ass robot at your disposal. That might be enough to fight a battleship, although it's a bit risky.
>Offer the guy all the money and help you can on the robot part as long as you can use it in battle once you're done. This could be the weapon you need to defeat King's battleship, and while the guy seemed hostile before he might agree if this lets him see this thing work in his lifetime. ...Although you're not sure if you can get it working before the battleship arrives. [Will require roll.]
>Offer the guy all the money and help you can on the robot, but pretend it's mainly an interest in robotics and don't mention how it will be used. He definitely wants to see it working, although you have no idea if he'd consent to seeing his family heirloom brought into battle. [Will require roll.]
>Let The Doctor finish the conversation, thank the dude for showing you the robot, and then have him blindfold you and leave. You're interested in the robot, but it's not practical to use this half-finished prototype. ...Plus, based off what he said, you have a feeling there could be a working one somewhere else.
>Leave and check where you were brought on your communicator later. You want this thing but you don't think he'd want to give it to you... so the best option would be to just take it, although transporting it out of this room might be a big ask.
>Write-in

>>4517207
>Let The Doctor finish the conversation, thank the dude for showing you the robot, and then have him blindfold you and leave. You're interested in the robot, but it's not practical to use this half-finished prototype. ...Plus, based off what he said, you have a feeling there could be a working one somewhere else.
Let's see what else the university has

>>4517207
>Offer the guy all the money and help you can on the robot part as long as you can use it in battle once you're done. This could be the weapon you need to defeat King's battleship, and while the guy seemed hostile before he might agree if this lets him see this thing work in his lifetime. ...Although you're not sure if you can get it working before the battleship arrives. [Will require roll.]

Will take a late nap which may turn into a full-blown sleep. If the vote's still tied whenever I wake up I'll roll for a tiebreaker.

>>4517207
>Let The Doctor finish the conversation, thank the dude for showing you the robot, and then have him blindfold you and leave. You're interested in the robot, but it's not practical to use this half-finished prototype. ...Plus, based off what he said, you have a feeling there could be a working one somewhere else.

>>4517294
>>4517719
>>4518305
This is a very nice, very big robot, but you don't think it's what you're looking for. You let The Doctor and your paranoid acquaintance finish up their robot talk before being led, blindfolded, back onto the campus. Around half an hour later you're let loose.

You start off closest to the administrative buildings, so you decide to go through them first. For the most part they're devoid of anything useful, although you do find a few working computer parts that still hold some data. You'll need to get them to better machine than what you have on you to decrypt any of it though.

After poking through the administrative buildings for around an hour, the two of you come across an armored building at the center of them. A massive metal door lays crumpled and rusted on the ground, and the opening leads into a metal chamber around 30 feet across. As the two of you go to enter the chamber, your communicator starts loudly beeping. "RADIATION WARNING. RADIATION WARNING. RADIATION LEVELS ARE EI- NINE TIMES THE RECOMMENDED AMOUNT- TEN- AND INCR- ELEVEN- EASING."

Successfully scared off from approaching further, the two of you back up and decide to leave whatever that chamber is alone. Maybe it does have something valuable inside, but you enjoy living. With all of the administrative buildings examined you head to the library. Most of the equipment there is destroyed beyond repair, but there are a few which you can still retrieve data from.

You retrieve the (thankfully unencrypted) data from the working equipment and The Doctor assembles them into one set of data on your communicator. Some portions of it are corrupted, but you estimate that you were able to get around 90% of what was contained within the library. You begin to look through it, and while most of it isn't of immediate interest, you find a lot of 20,000 year-old textbooks that do peak your interest. You wouldn't say they're inherently superior to what you learned (although maybe you're just a stubborn old man), but from what you've glanced over you can tell there's a lot of promise in combining 'modern' techniques from 20,000 years ago with the cooking you learned back in the 23rd century. Besides that there's also a wide variety of 'McSpacies Martial Arts', a series of fighting techniques which remind you of what Rayleigh and the other higher-ups of King employed. You guess they cobbled together their current fighting style from McSpacies's old teachings.

>>4518375
Once you're done glancing through the library's contents you poke through the few other intact-ish buildings on campus, but there's not much of note. You do notice that there's about enough serviceable equipment left to fill one classroom if you wanted, although that's not too important unless you want to go through the McSpacies curriculum here, as trying to ship them back home wouldn't be worth the cost.
>It's a bit of a waste of a trip, but you should head back to town and figure out where you're going next. There's not much you're interested in here.
>Head back to town and try to get access to a better computer and some radiation suits. It'll probably take until tomorrow afternoon at least, but maybe you'll get something useful out of the administrative building. [-1 day]
>Assemble all the working equipment in one classroom, have The Doctor set up a portable generator, and start studying the "new" McSpacies teachings. All the equipment you'd need is here, so it should go pretty fast. [-? days]
>Try to track down the weird robot guy and work out an offer. There's not much else of value here, so you may as well talk to him.
>Write-in
Time left until battleship's arrival: approximately 17 - 31 days (You are currently four days away from home)

>>4518377
>Head back to town and try to get access to a better computer and some radiation suits. It'll probably take until tomorrow afternoon at least, but maybe you'll get something useful out of the administrative building. [-1 day]
Mystery box? Mystery box!
>Assemble all the working equipment in one classroom, have The Doctor set up a portable generator, and start studying the "new" McSpacies teachings. All the equipment you'd need is here, so it should go pretty fast. [-? days]

Holy shit, I think my internet is back. Testing?
Assuming it holds long enough for me to take care of some irl stuff, will write an update before I go to sleep!

>>4518574
You're not done here yet- not until you're sure there's nothing left. You send The Doctor back to town in order to pick up radiation suits and find a way to decrypt the data from the administrative building. In the meantime, you have some textbooks to go through- sure, you already have your masters in 'Culinary Sciences', but it's never too late to back to school.

Once you finish the grueling task of gathering all the intact equipment in the least-damaged classroom, you realize something important. There's no food to practice with besides tonight's rations. After standing there shell-shocked for what feels like forever, you come to terms with your idiocy and send The Doctor a shopping list of ingredients to pick up while he's in town.

Unwilling to give up completely on the textbooks, you decide to do some image training. You fall into a sort of trance as you flit about from piece of equipment to piece of equipment, imagining the changes in the food as you execute each step. You hold the only remaining spatula as you do this, its silver sheen rapidly flitting about as you bring imaginary burgers to perfection. As you do so, you grow used to both these new ways of cooking (even if you're never used them in practice), and the spatula you're using- its weight becomes familiar to you, and it's almost like a part of your body. There may be better spatulas out there, but this is a good spatula.

The sun rises and a few rays of light pour into the dilapidated room before reflecting off the metallic equipment and your sweat-covered body. Around this time you feel an odd sensation flowing through you. Like everything that you were just imagining as an image before is just a little bit realer. You embrace it, falling into the illusion, and continue your practice until you hear an odd cracking noise. You open your eyes to find that you've managed to accidentally smash apart some of the still-intact floor tiles without even touching them. ...Now that you think about it, the fighting curriculum had a lot of stuff regarding image training, although you were planning to get to that later. Guess you skipped ahead a little.

>>4521400
After snapping out of your psuedo-trance you decide to sit down and rest for a while. You immediately fall asleep, and only wake up once The Doctor is back. "I tried to wake you up but you wouldn't budge. I decided to go through the administrative building first and then come back." ...Oh, so you only woke up after he was back. Shit. "My bad. What'd I miss?" "According to the data we recovered that radioactive zone in the administrative buildings contains some sort of defensive and regulatory system- it's the reason any of these buildings have stayed intact for this long. I examined it, and while the defensive system is broken now, if I stay for a while I should be able to salvage parts of it. Won't be anywhere near as useful as the whole thing, but at least it should work after some minor repairs. Besides the defense system here, the data says that the ruined military base I mentioned before should have a finished prototype of that super-mecha. They were researching it here and at some other universities, but assembling it there." "Mmm. The defensive system sounds helpful, but how long is a while?" "A week."

That's... a long time for something that won't even work without repairs . Then again, it's just him that needs to be here- maybe you can get something done in the meantime.
>Leave The Doctor here for a while and do something else. [The Doctor will be unavailable for the next week, and a vote will follow on what to do.]
>Stay here and practice some of the cooking and fighting techniques while The Doctor salvages part of the defensive system. You don't really need a week to go through it all, but you guess the extra time is nice. [-7 days]
>Leave and head somewhere else with The Doctor. There's no need to waste so long on something that might not even work. [Vote will follow on what to do.]
>Write-in
Time left until battleship's arrival: approximately 16 - 30 days (You are currently four days away from home)

>>4521403
>Stay here and practice some of the cooking and fighting techniques while The Doctor salvages part of the defensive system. You don't really need a week to go through it all, but you guess the extra time is nice. [-7 days]
Am I the only player anymore? What happened to everybody else?

>>4521409
Yeah, uh, that would appear to be the case. I suppose I could roll with one vote on everything, try to speed along through the last couple of arcs, do the fight with the battleship and then the final battle, or I could just call it here because it's not really a quest. I'm kind of undecided, I don't like leaving things like this unfinished but with one player it's eh. Do you even want to get to the end?

>>4523183
I am interested in seeing what happens next. I wouldn't want to keep you here unnecessarily though.
I guess you can do like you said and just keep writing, I'll keep voting, and if more players show up then there'll be more players.

Also, a better archive link
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?searchall=Welcome+to+McSpacies

>>4523183
Sorry. Had an election hangover and spent the previous days shitposting on various boards. I'm back now.

You tell The Doctor to do his best to salvage the defensive system. Even if it can't get working at full capacity, if it can block a few hits then it's worth taking along. In the meantime you can just hide out here and increase your culinary knowledge. Hell, maybe you can even learn how to channel your cooking abilities and unchecked rage into a lethal weapon while you're at it- Rayleigh seemed pretty good at doing that.

You wish The Doctor good luck in salvaging delicate parts out of a radioactive and structurally unstable hole in the ground and return to your training. Now that you have ingredients, it's time to get some real practice in. You wipe the counters down, arrange your equipment, and sink into the blissful world of culinary science. Flavors, scents, and textures flash through your mind as you experiment, attempting to optimize recipes using new ingredients and new methods of cooking as best you can.

The sun sets, and the sun rises. The sun sets, and the sun rises. Several days have passed since you started. You've taken occasional breaks to eat and sleep, but most of your focus has been put towards these intriguing new cooking techniques. It's like when you were cooking your master's 'thesis' all over again. You take a deep breath in and look around the room. Half-finished dishes are scattered around, and everything is disorganized. But at the center of it all sits a single burger. Your masterpiece. From the soft, cloud-like bread to the juicy, flavorful meat and beyond, it's one of the best burgers you've ever made.

You gaze upon the burger and smile before unhesitatingly dropping it into the trash. It may be a masterpiece, but it's not good enough. You let out a sigh, clean up the kitchen, and begin slowly unpacking ingredients from another bag of ingredients The Doctor got while returning to town for equipment. Time to break your limits.

Your equipment is questionable and your ingredients not specially-sourced, but that doesn't matter with fast food. What matters is technique and soul. You think you've peaked in regards to both. You've ingrained techniques old and new onto your soul, combined them, and used them to create something you can be proud of. A burger that can only be made by you, a specialty that comes from your knowledge and experiences.
>This burger is 'A Connecticut Yankee', an almost bittersweet burger that draws from the experiences of being set adrift into space and waking up in a completely different world.
>This burger is the 'Disco Ball', a burger that's made in pairs and which can be easily shared among groups. It comes from all your fun memories since waking up and tastes best when eaten with friends.
>This burger is 'Fuck You', an extremely spicy recipe which revolves around your sheer hatred for King.
>Write-in

I'll speed up the update schedule and try to finish then.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>4524605
Gonna roll between these two
>This burger is 'A Connecticut Yankee', an almost bittersweet burger that draws from the experiences of being set adrift into space and waking up in a completely different world.

>This burger is the 'Disco Ball', a burger that's made in pairs and which can be easily shared among groups. It comes from all your fun memories since waking up and tastes best when eaten with friends.

I just think a burger based on hatred for somebody else isn't something we can be proud of creating, ya know? It isn't *ours*, it's just a symbol of how King isn't paying rent for living in our head.

breaking news the other guy is back!

>>4524605
>This burger is the 'Disco Ball', a burger that's made in pairs and which can be easily shared among groups. It comes from all your fun memories since waking up and tastes best when eaten with friends.

>>4524632
>>4524886
Lots of things passed through your mind while making this burger. Your loneliness of waking up in a world separated from your own by 40,000 years, the hatred you hold towards King, and everything else you're experienced in the past months. But most important, and what overpowered everything else, were the fun times you had. The hours spent killing time with Gloop, The Doctor, and later on your delivery driver Jeff; the hustle to get everything up and running and to try and make money; the trip to Planet Munchie with that weird turtle; the time spent organizing the eating contest with everyone. All of that was fun, and even if it's not always the first thing to come to mind when you think of everything that's happened since you woke up from cyrosleep, it's what's most important.

These fond memories have manifested into a burger suitable of them- The Disco Ball. The Disco Ball is a burger made up of a bunch of sliders, their partially-separated buns reminiscent of the panels on a disco ball. It can vary from small sets of four sliders for a couple of friends having a good time, to dozens upon dozens of sliders for a real party. It's a good burger no matter what, but it tastes best when you're with friends.

Having mastered the cooking portion of the textbooks and created a specialty, you focus the rest of your time trying to learn how to transform your culinary skills into fighting skills. Since you had some lucky progress with the image training it isn't terribly hard, but you do still have some minor troubles with the training. Fortunately you think you're suited for this, and the progress you make still seems oddly fast. By the time the week is over and The Doctor is done, you have a solid foundation and are only confused over some of the more advanced textbooks made for fighting-specialists.

>>4525106
With his task done, The Doctor informs you that he'll be busy securing transportation back to the McSpacies for him and his newfound cargo, as well as repairing the small portion of the defensive systems he was able to salvage. As a result he won't be able to assist you for the time being, which may be... troublesome if you're visiting any other ruins. Still, you should be mostly fine- sure, you can't figure out most of this newfangled bullshit technology, but you can navigate everyday life acceptably. You just need to figure out where to go next.
>Find that paranoid 'friend' of yours and see if he's willing to lend you that super-mecha part if you can get it working. The Doctor is already kind of occupied, but it's worth asking.
>Head to that ruined tourist trap and see what was left behind. It might be difficult finding a way into the portions that are blocked off without causing a commotion, but you'll figure something out. [Travel time: Will take 2 days to get there, will take 5 days to get back home]
>Find that McSpacies military base and try to make your way in, past the currently active military base on top of it. Now that you know it houses a (hopefully functional) super-mecha you can't ignore it. ...Although if you're exceedingly unlucky you might have to call the turtle express warping service and hurry back home early. [Travel time: Will take 3 days to get there, will take 7 days to get back home]
>Find that paranoid 'friend' of yours and see if he wants to help you get that whole super-mecha. ...Sure, you don't know him very well, but you don't have the doctor with you and you'll need his help if it's not working when you find it. [Travel time: Will take 3 days to get there, will take 7 days to get back home.]
>Contact the Disco Mafia and head back to Planet Munchie. It's time to formally establish yourself as Disco Child so you can truly borrow their power. [Travel time: Will take 3 days to get there, will take 1 day to get back home.]
>Inform High Priest Groplox that you'll be paying a visit to his compatriots and go to out-crazy some of his coworkers so they'll stop bothering you. [Travel time: Will take 2 days to get there, will take 4 days to get back home.]
>Inform High Priest Groplox that you'll be paying a visit to their headquarters in order to establish yourself among the priesthood. Maybe you can even borrow some money or weapons if you do well- cults generally have lots of both, right? Although you're not 100% sure if you have the time to get to their HQ, let alone to make any sort of mark there. [Travel time: Will take 4 days to get there, will take 7 days to get back home.]
>Write-in
Time left until battleship's arrival: 9 - 21 days (You are currently four days away from home.)
Took the non-rolled option since I assumed the first voter was fine with either of the first two options

>>4525113
>Find that McSpacies military base and try to make your way in, past the currently active military base on top of it. Now that you know it houses a (hopefully functional) super-mecha you can't ignore it. ...Although if you're exceedingly unlucky you might have to call the turtle express warping service and hurry back home early. [Travel time: Will take 3 days to get there, will take 7 days to get back home]
We'll become Disco Child before the final battle I guess

>>4525113
>Find that McSpacies military base and try to make your way in, past the currently active military base on top of it. Now that you know it houses a (hopefully functional) super-mecha you can't ignore it. ...Although if you're exceedingly unlucky you might have to call the turtle express warping service and hurry back home early. [Travel time: Will take 3 days to get there, will take 7 days to get back home]

File: somewhat generic frozen p(...).jpg (203 KB, 1280x752)

203 KB JPG

You have a lot to do, but the allure of a giant space robot is too much- you have to get that super-mecha, no matter the cost. You secure transport to and from your destination, although you'll have to get supplies at the settlement you arrive at. The planet you're heading to (fondly referred to as '83X3'), is practically a frozen hellscape and you'll need to purchase quite a bit of gear on site to avoid imminent death.

Unfortunately, besides the whole 'frozen hellscape' thing, 83X3 is also a heavily militarized planet. Military bases, hidden and obvious, are scattered across the planet, and around a third of the population are involved with the military in some way. 83X3 practically serves as a hanger for a small interstellar empire which contains around half a dozen planets. While it's subservient to the galaxy's 'united government', it retains some degree of sovereignty and the military might to match.

After several long days of travelling you arrive at an ice-covered planet rotating around a dim sun. 83X3. The tiny ship you're on touches down in the middle of a city of around 50,000. Upon leaving the ship you're immediately assaulted by the freezing cold and follow several others off the ship and to the nearest clothing store. Everything seems rather overpriced, but afraid of losing an appendage or two you suck it up and buy their "insulating suit".

You are pleased to find out that while you may have been ripped-off, you weren't tricked, and that the odd, several-layered suit works as well as advertised. With this on you should be safe as long as temperatures don't approach absolute zero (Although in that case you would have much bigger problems). Now that you're not in imminent danger you pick up some food and other odds and ends before preparing to set out.
>You do your best to hire a sherpa who seems discreet and head through the seemingly endless snow-covered ice towards the military base you need to break into to access the McSpacies ruins. Sure, it might complicate things having another person to look after even if he doesn't rat you out, but you're just going to get lost if you set out alone. [Will require roll to hire the correct sherpa.]
>You do your best to concoct some bullshit story about why you need to head to the military base and hire a sherpa to bring you there. Hopefully that should avoid any trouble before you get there, but once you arrive you'll probably be refused entry or worse unless they somehow buy your excuse.
>You rent out a snowmobile and head towards the military base on your own. Sure, navigation is gonna be... rough, but you're sure you'll be fine. You can even bring some extra food in case you get lost. [Will require roll to navigate.]
>Write-in

>>4526042
>You do your best to hire a sherpa who seems discreet and head through the seemingly endless snow-covered ice towards the military base you need to break into to access the McSpacies ruins. Sure, it might complicate things having another person to look after even if he doesn't rat you out, but you're just going to get lost if you set out alone. [Will require roll to hire the correct sherpa.]

>>4526191
I'll call it here since I want to update later tonight. I'm gonna need 3d100, whoever rolls can feel free to roll them all at once.

Rolled 52, 38, 98 = 188 (3d100)

>>4526338
Ok

You need to hire some sort of navigator or there's a good chance you're going to either freeze to death or die of starvation on your way to the military base. But given that you're heading straight towards a restricted military base on a planet where nearly a third of the population are related to the military in some fashion, you need to be careful, to act with subtlety, and make sure to exercise discretion in anything and everything you do. One slip up and the consequences could be dire.

"HELLO MONSIUER, WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN ZE REVOLUTION?" After a series of 'subtle' and 'discrete' inquiries into sherpas who wouldn't say to much to anyone, a giant of a man approaches you with a booming voice, asking if you would like to join 'ZE REVOLUTION'. At first you assume this is some sort of government setup and say no, but after several minutes it becomes abundantly clear that this man is just very stupid and very desperate. Eventually you give in and decide to talk to him properly, figuring that he might be able to help you.

"The revolution?" "Yes, yes. Ze revolution is to overthrow ze Galton Administration and restore freedom to 83X3 and ze rest of the Galton Federation." Ah. Violent political dissidents. Great. "I heard you asking around and you appear to be one of us, yes?" "No, no I'm not. I don't hate the whatever-administration, I'm not even from here. I just need a sherpa who can keep a secret, so unless you have one of those our conversation is over."

"A sherpa? Who can keep a secret?" A light-bulb seems to spark to life inside the man's head as he frantically tries to reel you back in. "We have vone! Our leader, Alain, he is ze 'White Fox' of the blizzard, and he would never rat a fellow revolutionary out! Now please, come vith me!" You're dragged along with the man down several tight, stinking allies, and eventually brought to a tiny bar crammed at the bottom of several high-rises.

Inside the bar is a group of men, unremarkable besides the fact that all of them are wearing sunglasses. Upon entry the person who brought you here, Mondue, explains your 'plight' to the rest of the group. A tall, thin man sitting in the center of them all puts an e-cigar out and nods towards Mondue. "Good job meeting the recruitment quota. I'll take it from here."

>>4526628
The leader of the revolutionaries attempts to convince you to the join the revolution, conveniently ignoring the fact that you're not from here (it makes you less suspicious), don't care (there's plenty of incentives), and that you're almost ready to just rat them out to the police if it'll get them to leave you alone (a true friend of the revolution would never do such a thing). Eventually, however, the two of you do reach an impasse. You need a navigator who won't rat you out, and they need help. Now you just need to find an exchange you can agree on... although you can't help but think this would all be easier if you just found a normal sherpa who might rat you out for enough money, and not a bunch of rebels, even if your secret is safer with them.
>Tell them of you entire plan and how taking the super-mecha will stop the government from using it to beef up their army. You'd rather not have them involved at all, but this will take care of your transportation problem.
>Offer to secure them some decent weapons through the Disco Mafia. They do have some weapons, but they are woefully outdated and while great at harming civilians, will do nothing against a proper military unit. ...Of course there is the question of whether they'll believe you before the arms arrive, and if they might be traced back to you later, but it's an easy way to solve this.
>Offer to help them out with whatever they need once you're inside the military base. As long as it doesn't involve directly killing anyone you can pick up some weapons, put up some extremist flyers, whatever they want as long as you can get what you came for done.
>Write-in

>>4526629
>Tell them of you entire plan and how taking the super-mecha will stop the government from using it to beef up their army. You'd rather not have them involved at all, but this will take care of your transportation problem.
>Offer to secure them some decent weapons through the Disco Mafia. They do have some weapons, but they are woefully outdated and while great at harming civilians, will do nothing against a proper military unit. ...Of course there is the question of whether they'll believe you before the arms arrive, and if they might be traced back to you later, but it's an easy way to solve this.
Both

>>4527960
You're going to seize this partnership by the horns and become the boss. If you let them in on your plans and offer some weapons once everything is said and done then you'll be the one in charge and have some help in securing the super-mecha. You explain your proposition to the revolution's leader in painstaking detail, and after laying everything on the table he smiles and goes to shake your hand. "Monsiuer, monsiuer, I knew you were a true friend of ze revolution! I see no problems with this arrangement- if things are truly as you say, we shall assist you."

That was... easier than you thought honestly. You thought they'd expect proof or something, but no, they just took you on your word. "Monsiuer... what was your name again? I don't you actually introduced yourself." Ah, you didn't. "My name is..." Wait, you shouldn't give your real name, right? That might get you implicated in... something later. "...Ronaldo." Goddammit, you and your stupid brain. Whatever, it's different enough. "Monsiuer Ronaldo, we shall set out in the morning after we take care of some basic preparations. In the meantime please make yourself at home and enjoy what we have to offer."

What they have to offer isn't much, but you accept their hospitality and spend the night on a cot located in one of their back rooms. The next day you start traversing the near-endless icy wastes with around a dozen inadequately armed revolutionaries. As you travel you chat with them, and learn (or more accurately, are constantly reminded) that the military base you're heading to actually has one of the original leaders of this group in their custody. Apparently their group was much larger in the past, but after their last remaining founder was arrested on charges of treason for whistleblowing they lost the brains of their operation (as well as the only person who knew the identities of everyone else involved) and the group fell apart.

>>4528933
You ignore their repeated attempts to guilt you into breaking their leader out while you're getting the super-mecha, but eventually they do say something that gets to you- their leader previously worked on military hardware similar to this super-mecha, and if anything is broken he wouldn't have much trouble performing repairs as long as they were remotely possible.
>...But that doesn't matter, as he's near the center of the facility and is under heavy guard. You'll just have to hope that it's mostly working and that you can take care of any basic repairs with the help of one of these guys.
>While there's no hope of breaking this guy out, his knowledge is tempting. You'll attempt to get close to him without being noticed and give him some way of communicating with you. Even if he can't work on the super-mecha himself, he should be able to help you perform any problematic repairs.
>Alright, you're convinced. You'll sneak your way in there, beat up the guards, and then break the guy out of his cell. You'll create a commotion when you leave with the super-mecha anyways, all you're doing at this point is adding onto it.
>Write-in

With your actions after you enter the facility decided on, all you have to figure out is a plan of entry. A few have been thrown around, both last night and during your journey to the military base, and you've finally settled on one.
>You'll use some fake identification and a military uniform these guys stole and attempt to enter the facility with one of them. This could go either extremely well or extremely badly depending on the quality of their fake IDs, which you have no way to judge.
>You'll run up to the gates of the facility half-naked (well, as naked as you can be without immediately freezing to death) and claim to be a soldier who was attacked and robbed by a bandit on your way there. If things go well they'll then go to attack the bandit and leave the sight of the facility. Assuming their group is small enough you can then follow after them, beat them all up, steal their uniforms and identification, and then enter the facility while disguised. They'll figure out what happened eventually, but hopefully you can be gone by then.
>You'll all hide in wait near the entrance, attack simultaneously, and attempt to enter the facility with guns blazing. If you can hide in the McSpacies ruins before they can react then you should be fine. ...Although that is kind of a big 'if'.
>Write-in

>>4528937
>Alright, you're convinced. You'll sneak your way in there, beat up the guards, and then break the guy out of his cell. You'll create a commotion when you leave with the super-mecha anyways, all you're doing at this point is adding onto it.
>You'll run up to the gates of the facility half-naked (well, as naked as you can be without immediately freezing to death) and claim to be a soldier who was attacked and robbed by a bandit on your way there. If things go well they'll then go to attack the bandit and leave the sight of the facility. Assuming their group is small enough you can then follow after them, beat them all up, steal their uniforms and identification, and then enter the facility while disguised. They'll figure out what happened eventually, but hopefully you can be gone by then.

>>4528937
>You'll run up to the gates of the facility half-naked (well, as naked as you can be without immediately freezing to death) and claim to be a soldier who was attacked and robbed by a bandit on your way there. If things go well they'll then go to attack the bandit and leave the sight of the facility. Assuming their group is small enough you can then follow after them, beat them all up, steal their uniforms and identification, and then enter the facility while disguised. They'll figure out what happened eventually, but hopefully you can be gone by then.

>>4529339
>>4529844
Well, you're already going to cause a commotion when you leave with the super-mecha, you may as well cause another one breaking their leader out. You'll just social engineer the guards away from the gate, knock them out, take their uniforms, rush inside, beat up more guards, free a political prisoner, and fly out in an approximately 2000-foot tall mecha. Easy peasy.

With a plan in place your group approaches the military base as carefully as possible, attempting to avoid the patrols. Fortunately through the miracle of homemade stealth technology you manage to get within half a mile without being spotted. Now it's time for the hard part.

"Halt! Identify yourself!" You come to a pause a couple dozen feet away from the armed guards in front of the facility's gate, but don't meekly answer their commands. You're going to need to take the lead if this is going to work. "I'm Captain Hart Ashford, but you can call me Captain Hardass, PRIVATE!" The guards look confused but hurry to salute you. You salute back, still talking. "I got robbed. Now bring me inside before I freeze to death."

Within 30 seconds you're clothed in a spare guard's uniform and inside the guardhouse. There you explain that while you were out on a top-secret mission for the general you were attacked by several enemy combatants. It is of the utmost importance that these two guardsmen gather a small group of men and pursue the enemy before they have the chance to escape with important intel. You honestly weren't expecting this to fool them, but fortunately with the help of the rebels' only remaining officer rank fake ID you manage to pass as a Captain and scare the guards here into following your orders while you file the paperwork for everything.

What follows is you leisurely drinking coffee as you watch the guards frantically assemble a squad to capture your attackers, and ten unprepared men then running into the endless snow to capture your attackers. Once they're almost out of sight you quietly follow behind them, staying hidden until they're distracted by the vehicle your group arrived in. As they prepare to engage in a fight you rush up behind two of them, knocking both out with a slap of your spatula. Before their bodies hit the ground another one is incapacitated, and as the remaining guards turn to face you another two guards double-over, your spatula thrust violently into their guts. What follows is a vicious, efficient removal of the remaining guards. You make sure none of them die or experience severe injuries, but they're all gonna be out until morning.

With the guards knocked out you steal their uniforms, dress them in your old clothes so they don't freeze to death, and then leave them tied up in the vehicle you came here in. A single man is left behind to leave the guards somewhere safe and to drive the vehicle home.

>>4531522
With no time to waste, the 11 of you begin walking through the facility while attempting to look as busy and important as possible. The rebels had some maps of the floor plan, which assists in this, but you still spend an awkward amount of time trying to figure out where you're going. Still, after 15 minutes you reach the prison block. You enter with two others, and leave everyone else outside to keep a lookout.

Upon entering the second-layer of the prison block you're asked to enter your ID number. Not trusting your own, you enter the leader of the downed guards ID. It works. This process repeats a few times, until you're informed that the maximum-security area requires a higher rank to access. Worried about your unusual activity being logged, you hurry up and enter your fake ID's number. It works, and you enter into a small block of a dozen cells. Four heavily armed guards glance at you and your companions as you enter.

You salute the guards as you enter and slowly approach one of the cells. Then you suddenly turn around, draw your spatula from under your uniform, and smack it at the neck of one of the guards. A loud cracking sound echoes throughout the room as their armor is broken and the man falls to the ground. The other guards turn towards you, guns at the ready, and you throw your spatula towards one of them. It smacks again his hand, denting the armor and making him drop his gun. You charge towards him as you pull the spatula back to you using a piece of "titanium-alloy string" you tied to it. Once the spatula returns to your hand you dispatch the man with a few well-timed hits before turning onto the other two guards, who are currently fist-fighting with the rebels you brought along. All in all only 20 or 30 seconds pass before all the guards are unconscious, but even that feels like too long. You need to get out of here.

You hurry towards the cell containing the rebels' leader, Justaine, and prepare to break open the bars and free him. Before you do so he gestures for you to stop. "The warden is on the floor, use his one-time-key on the terminal over there and disable the security measures on my cell. It might buy you a bit of time." You don't get it, but look at one of the rebels you brought along. "What he said."

As the rebel hurries to free Justaine you get him up to speed on the specifics of the situation. He seems to process everything quickly, and brings up something you hadn't even considered. "If everything is going to go on high-alert soon anyways, why don't you just free all the prisoners? The more chaotic everything is the more time we have."

>>4531523
...You didn't think of that.
>He has a point, it's better to have the guards after everyone than just your group. You'll free all the prisoners and let them riot.
>He has a point, but he's not thinking big enough. You'll free the prisoners and then attempt to enact a prison break with whoever's willing to follow you. Sure, the focus will still mostly be on your group, but it will be a much bigger group. The super-mecha has plenty of passenger space, and you wouldn't mind leaving here with some extra manpower, criminals or not.
>He has a point but you have moral qualms with freeing large quantities of possibly violent prisoners in the middle of a military base full of weapons. You'll try to get the super-mecha without causing any chaos. That's both the morally correct option and the option which would make it least-likely for this entire army to hold a grudge against you.
>Write-in

>>4531533
>He has a point but you have moral qualms with freeing large quantities of possibly violent prisoners in the middle of a military base full of weapons. You'll try to get the super-mecha without causing any chaos. That's both the morally correct option and the option which would make it least-likely for this entire army to hold a grudge against you.

>>4531574
You feel like both the safest and most moral option here is to not cause a massive prison break, despite the hypothetical benefits of doing so. You inform Justaine of your thoughts on his modest proposal, and he seems slightly disappointed but just shrugs. Once he's free you strip a nearby guard and have Justaine put his uniform on.

As your group prepares to leave and gather with the rest of the group, a gaunt, sallow man gets up from the concrete 'bench' in his cell and approaches you. As he does so the sound of chains clacking against concrete echo throughout the room. Unlike many of the maximum security prisoners who you assume committed some sort of political crime like Justaine, this man is restrained from head to toe. His arms are held behind him with some sort of straight jacket, and his legs are held together with something much the same. Despite that, he has no trouble walking.

"I'll be wishing you farewell then Justaine. I'll break out on my own after the alarm goes off. Maybe I can draw some heat off of your group." Justaine just nods and finishes getting dressed. You inquire as to the situation, and he shrugs. "That's the 'Hartford Slaughterer'. He killed 203 armed soldiers before being subdued. I was going to break out with him in a few days, but you guys got here first." "...So is he good, or...?" "Neither, but the army did start the fight. Now let's get going."

As you leave the room you feel an odd sensation fill the air- the same kind you feel whenever someone like Rayleigh or one of the Disco Mafia's officers prepares to fight, although this time it's a bit stronger. You're not sure what's going to happen here once you're gone, but that cell isn't going to be able to hold him. Still, you have more important things to think about. You leave the prison blocks at a brisk pace, keeping your head down and ignoring anyone who so much as looks at you.

Once you meet up with everyone you just signal for them to follow you and then start speed-walking towards the building's exit. You need to get out of here, cross a short stretch of tundra used as a training field, and then enter into a smaller building connected to the 'entrance' into the ruins. Halfway across the training field this plan falls apart. Nobody else seems to notice, but you faintly hear alarms going off within the building closest to you. They found you out.

"We need to run." You break out into a sprint and begin rushing towards the next building. At the same time a small group rushes out of that building. They ignore you for a moment, but upon catching sight of your face the group's leader reaches for a radio-like device on their chest. You reach for your spatula. A very short brawl breaks out, ending in no injuries on your side and four unconscious on the other. But the point is clear- you're not getting into the ruins peacefully.

>>4532099
You take the officer's radio (as the ones you stole off the guards seem to have been deactivated) and hurry into the building. As you do so you hear the radio speak up once before it's disabled remotely. "A dozen armed intruders inside the Excavation Building, Class 3 threat. Hartford Slaughter exiting the prison block, Class 5 threat. Scramble to assigned locations, scramble to ass-".

Your radio cuts out in the middle of a long hallway leading towards the entrance to the ruins. The doors one either side of you slam open as soldiers start rushing into the room. You dispatch a few of them but for the most part ignore them- you'll get overwhelmed if you stay here. You force your way down the hallway with the help of the rebels and reach the entrance to the ruins. You pull open the tall, metal door and almost push everyone in before slamming it behind you. After that you hurry down a long, winding tunnel of ice. It cuts straight through the ice sheet and to where the McSpacies ruin is.

Only a small section of the ruin is exposed. It's a long metal wall with clear wear and tear, but to your surprise, with no clear holes or weak points- McSpacies really built these places to last. On this section of wall is a 10x10 foot area which is clearly some sort of door, but which has no clear opening mechanism. You take a deep breath and approach it. "This better work." You take a multitool out of your pocket, cut your finger slightly, and then put it up against the wall. Nothing. You push your employee ID up against it next. Nothing. The door from before bursts open at the top of the tunnel of ice. Fuck. You pull out your spatula, focus for a moment, and then thrust it towards the door with all your strength. A phantom image of a burger appears behind you, a burger made up on many smaller burgers- The Disco Ball. YOUR Disco Ball.

>>4532102
A thud reverberates throughout the tunnel and some of the ice nearby cracks, but nothing happens. Just when you're ready to lose hope, a weak electronic voice comes from the door. "Identity and clearance ver...ed. Of...cer-level combatant "RONALD" reg..tered" The door in front of you suddenly creaks open, and you sprint inside. You hurry and mash a button by the door, desperately attempting to close it. It starts doing so, but before it can finish you hear the soldiers following you open fire. An unpleasant burning scent fills the air and you can hear electricity spark. The door comes to a halt. The soldiers can follow after you.
>Better to hold them off here than anywhere else- they can only push in with two or three men at a time with the door half-open like this. You'll send Justaine and an assistant to find the super-mecha, get it working, and bring it here.
>You don't want to engage in too much fighting. You'll do your best to hold these guys off for a minute or two, then hurry after everyone once they have a little bit of distance- and before you lose them. You don't trust them completely to not steal your super-mecha if they have the chance. The group you found may have been full of trustworthy idiots, but now that they have a leader everything is different.
>Write-in

>>4532105
>You don't want to engage in too much fighting. You'll do your best to hold these guys off for a minute or two, then hurry after everyone once they have a little bit of distance- and before you lose them. You don't trust them completely to not steal your super-mecha if they have the chance. The group you found may have been full of trustworthy idiots, but now that they have a leader everything is different.

>>4532105
>>You don't want to engage in too much fighting. You'll do your best to hold these guys off for a minute or two, then hurry after everyone once they have a little bit of distance- and before you lose them. You don't trust them completely to not steal your super-mecha if they have the chance. The group you found may have been full of trustworthy idiots, but now that they have a leader everything is different.

>>4532243
>>4532839
You don't want to engage in too much combat if you don't have to. ...Plus, although you wouldn't say it out-loud, you don't want to stay here and hold the door alone- you just met Justaine and you wouldn't be surprised if he tried to leave without you. You'll retreat from here after you've made some distance between the soldiers and the rest of the group and try to get the super-mecha working before things get too chaotic.

You draw your spatula and hold it straight in front of you, making it the only thing between you and the ever-growing swarm of soldiers coming towards you. You see someone about to fire a laser rifle and you preemptively strike the air with all the power you can muster. At the same time a laser shoots towards you, but it's deflected by your attack and shoots back towards the group of soldiers. A few muffled yells echo out as the laser passes through a few soldiers before dispersing against the ice. "You shall not pass."

Most of the soldiers put away their guns and charge forward with plasma-bladed bayonets in hand. A few stay behind with their rifles at the ready, waiting for an opening. As the men swarm towards you move like a blur, straining your muscles to the max. Half your attention is on the men in front of you, half on the men aiming at you from behind them. All of your attention needs to be on both groups. This situation is pushing your newly-gained combat skills to their limits.

As the soldiers further back begin to open fire you slowly get pushed back. You would deflect the attacks, but given the wall of armed men in front of you that's not an option right now. After around a minute you're almost pushed out of the doorway and throw a glance behind you. The others are almost, but not quite, out of sight. Now's the time. You fake a killing blow and then dash backwards as fast as you can. You reach a ruined piece of furniture (probably some sort of desk, but you can't be sure), wind up a massive blow with your spatula, and then send it flying towards the door. The soldiers in the doorway are sent flying backwards like bowling pins as it slams into them before lodging itself in the doorway. That should buy you some more time.

With your task done, you catch up with the rest of the group. You're surprised to see that several of them have backpacks open, and are sweeping random pieces of ruined military equipment into their bags. Before you can say anything, one of them answers. "The more we take the less zey get!" ...Whatever, alright then, as long as they don't slow down too much. You keep watch behind you as the group hurries towards the super-mecha's location, but fortunately you seem to have lost them for a little bit. You reach the massive hanger containing the behemoth super-mecha without trouble and admire the robot as Justaine goes to examine it.

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>>4532947


The mecha is over 2000 feet long and lying on its side, the struts that were holding it upright having collapsed over time. The paint is flaked and faded in places, but you can still make out the design without trouble. Yellow and red paint covers most of the super-mecha, but the face (which also serves as the main entrance) is mostly white. On top of the head is the passenger area, which is a massive blastproof glass dome tinted bright-red. Around where the heart would be on a human, the super-mecha has an oversized McSpacies logo on its chest. Directly under that is its name: "RONALD-008". How fitting.

You edge closer to the super-mecha, cautiously examing it, before you get a message on your communicator. It's from Justa... wait, did you give him your communicator ID? You didn't. Oh well, you don't have time to care about how he got it right now. "Most of the systems are damaged but temporarily functional. The main weapon will work for a few strikes, but more than that might cause it to explode. Shield systems are at 3% effectiveness. The power source is unstable and low on fuel- we have at most a week's travel out of it without weapons, less with weapons. Past that it will need proper repairs. Need to replace some of the wiring, but only in a couple places. With help it can be done in five, ten minutes."

The thing is mostly working, great! It might've made shit hit the fan, but you're glad you broke Justaine out- even if you could fix the wiring it would've taken a lot longer than five or ten minutes. ...Oh wait, there's another message. "Working now. Six minutes to fix. If you can buy me another 20, 30 minutes then I can get the warp system working without causing the fusion reactors to malfunction, at least for a bit. We won't be able to retreat mid-repairs though, I need to open a critical system up. Without the warp system we might have to fight our way out and pray the weapons hold."
>It's a big ask, but you'd rather fight down here than up there. Tell Justaine that you'll buy him time to get the warp system working.
>You think buying enough time to get the super-mecha functional will be possible, but another 20 or 30 minutes past that? That's impossible, hell, you can already hear some soldiers approaching. You'll have to go without the warp system and hope they can't scramble too many ships to chase you with the 'Hartford Slaughterer' on the loose.
>Write-in

>>4532950
>It's a big ask, but you'd rather fight down here than up there. Tell Justaine that you'll buy him time to get the warp system working.
This is just training for our fight later!
Last resort, we can use our mouth beam.

Will start writing an update in an hour or two, would've gotten to earlier but there was a long tornado warning.

>>4533761
An extra 20, 30 minutes? So 36 minutes at the most? That's a big, BIG ask, but you'd much rather fight down here than up there, where if you lose you explode in the vacuum of space. "Repair the warp system as quickly as possible, even if it breaks again immediately after we get out of here. I'll buy you time." You let out a deep breath and leave the room with nine of the rebels to back you up. The last two are somewhat knowledgeable in the field of telling tools apart from other tools and other such basic tasks, and are left behind to assist Justaine in his repairs.

Two minutes have passed. They're getting too close. The ten of you exit your hiding spot, come out into the open, and start walking up the stairs leading to the floor the super-mecha is on. Their advance stops here.

Immediately after taking your positions a small group of guards notice you. A few of them mutter something into their radios, probably calls for backup, but a few of the braver ones scramble for the narrow set of stairs and charge towards you, plasma-bayonets at the ready. They are immediately dispatched, and their unconscious bodies serve as the first of many makeshift obstacles on your stairway of doom.

5 minutes. Two dozen men stand at the top of the stairs. Six of what you assume are their melee 'elites' charge at a time in three rows of two men each, while the rest try to take pot-shots at you without hitting their own comrades. This plan doesn't work particularly well at first, but it succeeds in draining your strength slightly and buying time for more reinforcements to appear. 8 minutes, the two dozen men are now three dozen. A couple minutes later, four dozen.

At this point the reinforcements seem to temporarily cease, and they engage in a massive assault on your location. Gunfire of all sorts rains down towards you, forcing you to jump back to the bottom of the stairwell and take cover behind some furniture. Lasers, plasma, and even traditional ballistics slam against the stairs, the floor, the ceiling, everything, leaving behind marks. None of it hits you, but that wasn't the goal. The goal was just to force you to the back off- you can deflect one or two shots if you see who's aiming at you, but there's no way you can dodge their barrage.

With the stairwell clear (besides a sizable group of unconscious men, some of which who just suffered some minor friendly fire) the men begin rushing down it. You go to secure it once more, but another round of suppressing fire assures you can't get on the stairs directly. You give up and decide to hold the bottom, but at that point the men rushing you jump down en masse. The rebels subdue the first of them with ease as they try to land, but they end up buying time for the rest of their comrades and forcing their way onto the floor itself. They got past you.

>>4535514
At this point you'd clear up the guys down here, stabilize the situation, but the reinforcements just keep coming. There were maybe 50 in all before, but now there's what, double that? Without a chokepoint you're completely fucked. They start swarming your location, engaging in a ridiculous brawl across the wide metal floor broken up only by half-destroyed furniture.

Now there's no option to hold them back, or any strategy to think about- it takes all of your effort just to stay alive. At first you fight one on three, then one on five, and eventually one against god knows how many- although at that point it's basically just you running while occasionally getting a blow in against someone. The rebels are all subdued by this point, and it's just a mass of soldiers chasing you around, draining you of your energy.

23 minutes. You're exhausted. Your thermal-whatever-the-fuck suit is in tatters, having been sliced apart by what seems like an endless swarm of plasma bayonets at this point. Your side is burning with some of the worst pain you've ever felt, and you're pretty sure you were grazed by some sort of laser-gun there. You keep running, fighting, dispatching enemy after enemy, but no matter how many enemies you get rid of more keep coming. They're practically endless. At this point there is no focus on incapacitating the soldiers or waiting out time, there's just you running back and forth in the hope that you won't die.

Eventually, as you're cornered by a group of soldiers wielding riot shields and plasma-bayonets, something shoots through your shoulder and your left arm goes limp. You grit your teeth as another burst of pain fills your left leg and makes you stumble. You take a deep breath, just watching as the plasma-bayonets of the nearby soldiers cut down towards you, when they suddenly pause and start running like hell. You hear someone scream "HIT THE DECK!", and you start frantically looking around. As you do you notice a circular device that looks like a hand grenade heading straight towards you. Oh hell no.

You push off the ground with your good leg and shoot backwards as the grenade explodes. A green mist pours out of it, and you see everything in the area around it visibly corrode. ...Was that grenade filled with acid?! ARE THERE ACID GRENADES?! Before these important questions can be answered you see half a dozen more grenades get lobbed towards the soldiers from the super-mecha hanger. The soldiers are, to say the least panicking. As you take advantage of the chaos to regain your bearings and try to figure out what to do, every soldier's comm devices sound out at once.

>>4535515
"The Hartford Slaughterer has killed General Walters. Repeat, the Hartford Slaughterer has killed General Walters. All combat troops MUST report to the general's quarters to subdue him. Temporarily halt pursuit of the Class Three Point Five threat. Specific orders will be sent out to individual squads following this announcement." The soldiers around you who aren't currently dodging grenades pause, looking confused. Some of them put away their weapons while others look at you and prepare to fire. Figuring that this will be the only chance you'll get to get rid of them, you put on your best poker face and force yourself to your feet.

"You may have forced me into a corner, but I'm not dead yet. If you still want to fight, we can fight, but there won't be mercy this time." You take a deep breath, hold your spatula aloft in your right hand while struggling to grip a rifle in the other, and stare the soldiers down. The shower of grenades temporarily stops and everything comes to a standstill. After what seems like an eternity an officer shakes his head and begins to walk up the stairs. Within seconds the rest of the soldiers begin their retreat. You 'won'. Not by your own merit, but you won.

Weakness fills your body, but you resist the urge to immediately collapse and go to check on the rebels. Two are severely wounded, possibly dead, but the rest are just unconscious. As you drag the rebels back to the hanger one of the rebels who was assisting Justaine pops out of the super-mecha hanger and throws a handful full of acid grenades at the stairs. There's a horrible hissing noise as the metal that makes up the stairs wears away and deforms, rendering the path down here unusable. ...You wish they'd found those things earlier.

As you stumble into the hanger your vision starts to become spotty. Fuck. Justaine hurries up to you, and much to your relief, doesn't start some maniacal speech about stealing the super-mecha all for himself and abandoning you. Instead he just informs you that the warp drive is stable for the time being and asks where to retreat to.
>Tell Justaine to get to wherever seems safest so that he can perform some proper repairs on the super-mecha and get you and those injured proper medical attention.
>Tell Justaine to go to Planet Munchie. It's on your way back to the McSpacies anyways, and it's closer by.
>Tell Justaine to head for the trade port by your McSpacies. You should hurry back there.
>Write-in

>>4535516
>Tell Justaine to go to Planet Munchie. It's on your way back to the McSpacies anyways, and it's closer by.
We can pick up some help from the Disco Mafia while we're there

>>4535556
You tell Justaine that he should head to Planet Munchie and give him the coordinates. You mention that you have connections with the Disco Mafia there and that it should be a good place to recover. That's all you really get out, and by the end of it you're both whispering and slurring your words. Once yous top talking your body starts to go limp and you feel the darkness overtake you. Your senses fade out, and everything you can hear, everything you can feel almost seems like it's coming from another place and another time. Eventually you just stop feeling anything, and fall into a deep sleep.

"Thank god some of the equipment is working. He's mostly stabilized." After what feels like ages, these muddled sentences are the first words you hear. You try to get up, but no matter what you do your body won't respond. You give up and slip back in and out of sleep. Occasionally you hear a few sentences, but nothing substantial.

One day, after who knows how long in your own personal 'I have no mouth but I must scream'-style slumber, you wake up and are able to move. You open your eyes and are greeted by what appears to be a painfully bright, blurry image of a medbay. No one is in the room besides yourself. You consider getting up, but immediately discard that idea when you examine yourself. An IV is put into your right arm, something you'd rather not talk about is in your groin, and several large, scary, metal machines are clamped onto your left arm and leg, as well as your side.

You try to call for assistance, but find that you throat is painfully dry. Fortunately you don't need to wait long for someone to check on you, and it's only a few minutes before Justaine shows up. "I'm glad to see that you're alright. Since the soldiers were otherwise occupied I cobbled together some working medical equipment from the broken machines left behind in the medbay, but your condition kept deteriorating. Luckily you stayed... functional until we arrived here, and you should be all right now."

So you're alive. You figured that was the case, but it's not to have a second opinion. You weakly gesture towards your throat with your free arm and Justaine hands you some water. It feels amazing going down, and now you can finally speak. Your first words should be something important, maybe even something cool. "...Of course I'm all right now. Just look at my left side." He's not laughing. Fuck, you messed it up. Was that not cool? "...We arrived here yesterday. You should be back to normal in two or three days as long as nothing happens. Your contact told me to mention that nothing has happened yet."

>>4536358
So nothing has happened yet. Great. You still need to get home soon, but being a day away and safe is much better than being a week away and surrounded by troops. Justaine continues to go on about things, and you get a few clear points: The super-mecha is in much better shape now than before but the resources the Disco Mafia can offer to repair it are limited, the higher-ups would like to speak with you about the inauguration, and Justaine would appreciate the weapons you promised his men once you're not half-dead.
>Speak with the Disco Mafia about your inauguration as Disco Child. You're injured, but you can probably handle it tomorrow. You don't really have the time to put it off anyways.
>Speak with the Disco Mafia about allocating additional resources to the repair of the super-mecha- it needs to be ready for battle as soon as possible. The higher-ups have made it clear that they can't fully support you until you formally accept your position, but you might be able to swing something, although it'd use up any influence you have before the inauguration.
>Speak with the Disco Mafia about giving Justaine and his men the weapons you promised him. It'd use up any pull for resources you have left before the inauguration, but without the rebels you probably wouldn't be alive and you owe them the weapons you promised them.
>Go back to sleep. You can't be bothered with all this shit right now.
>Arrange transport home immediately. You have no idea how long its been, and even if nothing has happened so far, there's no promise that it couldn't happen before you get back home. ...Although you suppose the chances of a battleship sneaking up on the trade port without being spotted ahead of time are somewhat low.
>Write-in
Time left until battleship's arrival: ???

>>4536364
>Speak with the Disco Mafia about allocating additional resources to the repair of the super-mecha- it needs to be ready for battle as soon as possible. The higher-ups have made it clear that they can't fully support you until you formally accept your position, but you might be able to swing something, although it'd use up any influence you have before the inauguration.

>>4536364
>Speak with the Disco Mafia about your inauguration as Disco Child. You're injured, but you can probably handle it tomorrow. You don't really have the time to put it off anyways.

>>4536364
>Speak with the Disco Mafia about your inauguration as Disco Child. You're injured, but you can probably handle it tomorrow. You don't really have the time to put it off anyways.

Alright, looks like Option 1 wins, will start writing after I get something to eat.

You're injured, but you don't have time to rest. You need to get that inauguration done with, come hell or high water- borrowing the forces of the Disco Mafia is essential.
You put in a call to the higher-ups of the Disco Mafia, and within minutes the medbay looks like something out of some weird mobster movie. Afro'd men with dark sunglasses and leisure suits lurk around the room, respectfully glancing in your direction. One of them pushes to the forefront of the group and greets you- the leader of the Disco Mafia's operations in this city, 'Groove Viper'. You communicate your wishes to go on with the inauguration as quickly as possible, and Mr. Groove Viper seems both worried and pleased.

While the inauguration isn't particularly physically taxing, there is... a certain complication. As part of being crowned Disco Child, besides all the pomp and ceremony, you need to dance. And not just dance a little bit, oh no- you need to serve all challengers and prove your strength as the Disco Child. It's not as difficult as fighting, but it'll definitely take some strength out of you. Still, you've decided that you can't put this off any longer, so you have to do it. The only question is how you're going to go about this.

You could go up there, medical gear still attached, showing that you're going to serve these fools a plate of humble pie no matter what condition you're in, or you could take it off and try to project an image of strength. ...Or if you don't seem to be in good enough shape before you go on, you could always inject some painkillers and some perker-uppers and try to recover a bit before you go on. Although if you did you might have to lie down for an extra day or two afterwards- injured men shouldn't be doping on restricted chemicals.
>Do everything while hooked up to your medical gear. Even if you're injured, you can still serve these fools.
>Take off the medical equipment during the ceremony and try to inspire confidence among the rest of the Disco Mafia. Most of them will be seeing you for the first time besides some of the officers, you need to inspire confidence.
>Take off your medical equipment, project your aura of confidence, and then dope up on restricted 'medications' before the dance number so that you can make 100% sure that nobody shows you up and challenges your position.
[All options will involve rolls of various kinds]
>Write-in

>>4537601
>Take off the medical equipment during the ceremony and try to inspire confidence among the rest of the Disco Mafia. Most of them will be seeing you for the first time besides some of the officers, you need to inspire confidence.
S T R E N G T H

>>4538083
Alright, roll 3d20

Rolled 13, 1, 9 = 23 (3d20)

>>4538099
Destiny is in my hands (dice)

Sure, you can try and rely on modern medicine to help you here (in both good ways and bad ways), but you think the straightforward approach is best here. You'll project strength and inspire confidence in the ordinary groove maniacs of the Disco Mafia by putting up a strong front and serving some fools.

The ceremony is hurriedly arranged for the next morning, and members of the Disco Mafia are shuffled to the planet's second largest city, Ore Derb, where you're currently recuperating. You slip back into a deep sleep for the time being, resting up while the Disco Mafia rushes preparations and Justaine ruishes repairs.

The next day you're wheeled into a discreet vehicle and taken into the back of the Disco Mafia's one and only 'Boogie Wonderland'. It's the largest and most luxurious base the Disco Mafia has, and the decor is both tacky and awe-inspiring. Servants and ordinary members of the Disco Mafia normally take care of the everyday running of Boogie Wonderland, but they're kept away as you're wheeled to a hidden area near where most of the formal ceremonies will take place- nobody can know you're injured. This needs to kept among the higher-ups to prevent any instability as you formally take on the position as Disco Child.

Around 9 AM you're unhooked from the IV and all sorts of others devices attached to you. You take a deep breath, push yourself up from the bed, and stand. You feel kind of drained, but you can stand up straight without too much trouble. That's a good sign. You're ushered out in front of a massive crowd of near-identically dressed men. You're dressed in a similar style to them, but your appearance is much more... maybe not awe-inspiring, but it's definitely inspiring something. You're wearing an extremely shiny leisure suit, the shaggiest shag jacket ever made, and an afro filled with glitter and decorated to look like some sort of organic disco ball.

You greet the crowd, sit through an extended applause, and then go through many odd, drawn-out ceremonies. There are many oaths on disco, the groove, and so on and so forth, and an odd, repeated insistence that "Disco is not dead, and as long as the position of Disco Child is passed down and Planet Munchie stays in one piece disco shall never die." Besides this there are some entertaining parts- friendly dance-offs between the officers, weird 'traditional' dances that have been handed down for thousands of years, and original 'nu-disco' compositions which are... interesting to say the least.

>>4538218
By the time all the pomp and ceremony is over with, it's noon. You've been sitting for most of the time, but you still feel weaker than earlier. Maybe you should've had some of that equipment removed while you were in the chair somehow? Oh, well, too late. Time to do this.

"Time to boogie on down. Time to share the spice of life. Time to boogie on down tonight! Let's groove!" You muster all of your energy, rise out of your seat, and immediately head for the dancefloor. You just need to last for one song, and then you can disappear backstage, put your medical equipment back in, pass out, whatever you need. But first you gotta get down on it.

The room lights up as dozens of disco balls drop down from the ceiling, covering everything in lights. The seemingly endless panels of the gargantuan dancefloor you're on light up, and the few braggarts with the hubris to challenge you take the floor. The higher-ups stay away, already having understood and acknowledged your abilities. This leaves you without any competition at all. As you dance an overwhelming burning feeling burrows into your muscles as you move, and you feel what it's like to truly become a disco inferno. As the song goes on your vision grows spotty and your body weak, but you struggle to hold on. And just barely, you do. You want to collapse at the end of the song but with some good old, blood (literal), sweat (literal), and tears (metaphorical, but literal whenever you're not surrounded by people), you managed to pull through.
>13 - success with consequences
You did it.
>1 - critical failure
But there's a problem. As you're preparing to drag yourself off the dancefloor, you feel your body completely run out of energy. You can't make it backstage like this. You try to think of a way to get out of this, but before you can two people approach you. You recognize one of them- it's Rasputin, the officer you beat in the dancing contest. The other man is someone you don't recognize, but he gives off a... fearsome aura. Even with the abilities bestowed upon you as Disco Child, he seems like an opponent you can't completely dismiss.

"My name is Aaron, but you can just call me 'Kool'. Everbody does. I manage combat operations for the family, as well as many of the day-to-day affairs. I apologize for my tardiness, but I was performing some business for the family. I'm glad to make your acquiescence though, and will be at your service." This guy just introduced himself, but you still have a bad feeling. You need to leave... but before you can he calmly resumes his speech. Rasputin just stares at you with a twisted smile on his face. "Would you spare me a dance? It's not tradition, but the inauguration is more or less over, and I'm sure everyone would benefit from seeing how two of the strongest members of the family groove. Right?"

>>4538223
You want to say something but you feel like you can barely speak. You glance around and see that the higher-ups are extremely nervous and whispering among themselves. You were hoping they would step in by now, but... clearly there's some reason they can't easily do so. As you stand there, helpless, Rasputin speaks up. "I'd love to see two of the men I respect the most get down! What about the rest of y'all!" A chorus of cheers comes from the crowd, and they start yelling for an encore. Fuck. Fuck. You've been set up. You can't do this.

But whether you can do it or not doesn't matter. The disco balls drop down again, the floor lights up, and the music starts. Some of the men in charge rush towards the two of you, hurrying to break daceoff up, but they aren't fast enough. You try to make a move, but before you can Kool has made several. You could beat him in your peak state, decisively beat him, but as it is you're gonna get served. Served something bad. You collapse to the ground, body devoid of strength, as Kool stares at you with dull eyes and a cruel smile.
That bastard.

"That conniving traitor, trying to steal away power from the Disco Child! He's flagrantly disobeying the Allfather's will! We have to kick him out of the family!" "...But he holds too much power right now. The hurried ceremony, the sudden appearance of the Disco Child... it wouldn't matter too much alone, but when combined with this convenient show of power, too many people are on his side. If we exile him a schism will form at the Disco Mafia's very core."

You come to with a frenzied argument raging around you, a discussion about Kool and how his underhanded attempt to usurp you should be handled. ...That is certainly an important question, although now that the ceremony is over there is one other thing you're supposed to handle- meeting that 'Allfather', the weird eldritch disco god thing you saw on your trip before. You weren't told much, but apparently it was real, and while it can't do everything by itself it is the one in charge around here. As its... chosen representative for the next however long you live, you're supposed to meet with it.
>Tell the higher-ups to leave the problem for now, meet with the Allfather, and then go back to sleep. You're pissed, but you're not able to deal with this right now.
>Tell the higher-ups to exile him from the family, even if it causes problems, meet with the Allfather, and then go back to sleep. As long as Kool is left to his own devices he'll get in your way- you need to get rid of him so that you have full control over the Disco Mafia's resources, even if those resources are cut down by the inevitable fallout of kicking him out.
>Go to meet with the Allfather and ask if he can deal with Kool for you. ...Sure, it might be a bit presumptuous of you to ask some weird disco god thing for favors, and if it wanted to do something it probably would by now, but maybe you can work out a deal.
>Write-in

>>4538225
>Tell the higher-ups to leave the problem for now, meet with the Allfather, and then go back to sleep. You're pissed, but you're not able to deal with this right now.
Maybe we should reveal that we literally walked out of the hospital to do this but weren't even at our full power? And Kool can get a true rematch when we aren't dying.

That Kool bastard is going to get his comeuppance when you're not seriously injured, but for the time being you'll just have to leave him alone. You were barely standing, and he can't beat you a real danceoff, but the higher-ups were purposely suppressing any news about your injury so it's harder to fall back on that. Even though it's real and provable the sight of you immediately collapsing when faced by him is something the rank and file men won't forget. While many of them are fiercely loyal to their superiors and the organization as a whole, by the way the conversation is going a sizable portion were probably fooled by the supposed overwhelming strength and dancing skills of their leader Kool. You'll just have to show them that's not the case when you have the chance and pull them back over to your side.

You force yourself upwards, tell the officers to keep a defensive stance against Kool for the time being, and are wheeled towards the inner sanctum of Boogie Wonderland, the only place where you can contact the Allfather, the mysterious entity who gave you some of his power. You're taken to a small, unremarkable door before 'Disco Viper' bids you farewell- he, and the rest of the Disco Mafia aren't allowed any further. You open the door and slowly make your way inside, this time with your medical equipment still attached to you.

When encountering supposed gods or greater beings, you expect certain things. Great truths, powers that you can't comprehend, and so on and so forth. You don't get any of these things. Instead you get a cheesy tourist exhibit manned by grinning animatronics which fall smack-dab in the middle of the uncanny valley. Their monologues are horribly drawn out and boring, and the animatrics deeply disturbing, but you do your best to pay attention.

The tour goes into deep, DEEP, DEEP detail, but the gist of it is that a long, long time ago disco was declared dead. Not metaphorically, but in a political sense- a planet was ruled by a disco-based meritocracy long, long ago, but eventually a revolution rose up and ousted the disco-based rulers. This led to many bloody wars which you learn about down to the battles, but the point is that the disco people lived on and managed to build a planet-sized mothership manned by a sentient AI.

The weird disco people normally wouldn't have been able to do this, but apparently they used some sort of forbidden, unholy technology to do so- the details of this are one of the only things left out by the animatronics. The AI they created is the Allfather, and it had one goal- to ensure that disco didn't die. Shortly after starting on this mission there was some sort of malfunction, this AI fell asleep for a while, woke up, and when it did found that its giant disco-ball shaped exterior had been covered in planety-stuff and that it had turned into Planet Munchie. From there it on it regained the few followers who still remembered and believed in it, and formed the Disco Mafia.

>>4538261
You don't know how many hours it took, but eventually your Inhuman Patience wins out against the patience of whatever monster made this exhibit and you reach the end of the tour. You stare at the last animatronic, unsure of what to do now that you're free, when a booming voice fills your head. "MY CHOSEN, WERE YOU BORED?!" This voice burrows deep into your mind and seems to come from both nowhere and everywhere all at once- it's the voice of the thing that granted you the position of Disco Child- it's the voice of the Allfather. "Uh... no, no, it was very interesting." "NO, NO, IT'S FINE. THEY ALL GET BORED. IN ALL HONESTLY, YOU'VE LASTED LONGER THAN ALL OF MY CHOSEN HAVE COMBINED, ALL OF THE... HUNDREDS I SUPPOSE. A TRULY IMPRESSIVE FEAT."

"ANYWAYS, I APOLOGIZE FOR WASTING YOUR TIME. I HAVE A LOT OF FREE TIME AND NOT MANY FRIENDS- THE GREAT OLD ONE TOLD ME I'M NOT WELCOME ANYMORE UNTIL I FIND SOMETHING NEW TO TALK ABOUT. ...You've never felt bad for a godlike being before, but here you are, pitying the "Great Old One". ...And the disco thing too you guess, but having to listen to it for thousands of years sounds worse. NOW THAT YOU'VE LEARNED OF MY PURPOSE, I HAVE BUT ONE QUESTION- DO YOU PROMISE TO PREVENT DISCO FROM DYING AND TO DEDICATE YOUR EFFORTS TO SPREAD IT ACROSS THE GALAXY?
>Well, this weird god thing has helped you out a lot. Sure, you promise to try your best to spread disco across the galaxy. You obviously still have your main job, but you guess a disco-themed fast food place can work? Maybe? You'll figure out the specifics later.
>You cannot in good faith promise that. You'll make sure disco doesn't die and make some attempt to help it once you have the time, but you're a McSpacies man at heart.
>You have to put all your energy towards your McSpacies, you can't in good faith take responsibility for another ancient thing. If it has anything else it needs, you can do that, but no thanks, you might not be the chosen one it was looking for.
>Write-in

>>4538262
>You cannot in good faith promise that. You'll make sure disco doesn't die and make some attempt to help it once you have the time, but you're a McSpacies man at heart.
We can have a disco room on every McSpacies I guess

>>4538262
>You cannot in good faith promise that. You'll make sure disco doesn't die and make some attempt to help it once you have the time, but you're a McSpacies man at heart.
"I have to prioritize that McSpacies doesn't die" or something

>>4538777
>>4538779
"I cannot in good faith promise that. I run the last McSpacies still in existence, and while I can't say that it's the only thing I care about, the company did help me out a lot back on Earth. I can help make sure disco doesn't die, and help it out whenever I have the time, but first I need to make sure that McSpacies doesn't die. If it did then it wouldn't be the end of the world, but it... it would be sad to say the least. Maybe it's just me being nostalgic, but I want it to stick around."

There's a short pause before you hear booming laughter come from the Allfather. "GOOD! YOUR ANSWER IS BETTER THAN MOST OF THE CHOSEN! "Really?" "WHY I REMEMBER, A WHILE BACK, THE 138TH CHOSEN... OH, HE DIDN'T LIKE BEING CHOSEN AT ALL. HE TOLD ME TO GO FUCK MYSELF AND THEN SAID HE'D DO HIS BEST TO KILL DISCO." "...So what'd you do then? Smite him?" "OH NO, NO, NO. THE FIRST LAW OF ROBOTICS IS TO REFRAIN FROM KILLING, AND I WAS BUILT WITH THOSE LAWS IN MIND. SINCE REMOVING THE ENERGY I PUT IN CHOSEN PUTS THEIR LIVES IN DANGER, I JUST OCCUPIED MYSELF FOR A WHILE AND WITHIN A DECADE OR TWO HE DIED. I LIKED HIM THOUGH. HE WAS ONE OF THE ONLY ONES WHO VISITED ME, ALTHOUGH HE MOSTLY JUST SWORE AT ME AND TRIED TO BREAK THE ANIMATRONICS."

You politely prepare to exit the conversation and continue recuperating, but the Allfather just goes on... and on... and on about anything and everything that comes to mind. It talks about 138th Chosen's antics, its confusion over the other extremely powerful entities ignoring it, the relationship between Disco and Funk, and most notably, a countdown of its Top 100 best sunrises and sunsets. It just never stops. Your Inhuman Patience wears thin over the long hours of ranting, but lasts just long enough for that horrible thing to lose its train of thought completely. You hurriedly excuse yourself and don't look back as it responds. "OH, YOU'RE LEAVING? MAKE SURE TO VISIT. NOT MANY PEOPLE VISIT- ESPECIALLY NOT THE GREAT OLD ONE, THAT SLIMY BASTARD. NOR THE LESSER OLD ONE. WHY, I OUGHT- OH, YOU'RE ALMOST AT THE DOOR, THAT WAS FAST. BEFORE YOU GO, TAKE THIS!"

As you reach the exit a tennis-ball sized orb of blindingly bright light shoots towards you. Once it reaches you it dims and starts slowly orbiting around you. "YOU SEEM LIKE ONE OF THE BETTER CHOSEN. YOU'LL NEED THE ENERGY I LEFT INSIDE OF YOU TO REACH YOUR FULL POTENTIAL, BUT TAKE SOME EXTRA. MAYBE YOU'LL FIND A GOOD USE FOR IT. WHY, I REMEMBER THE 867TH CHO-". Oh god, he's trying to lure you back with this like a lonely grandma with cookies. You pretend to not hear it continue and leave.

>>4539143
With that taken care of, you return to resting.
>After Justaine finishes up his current set of repairs the super-mecha takes off and you head for the trade port. You need to make sure you beat the battleship there, wherever it is.
>The super-mecha will stay on Planet Munchie for however long you need to recover, and then you'll head back to the trade port. The battleship might arrive before you, but they have that defensive thing to stall for a bit, and repairs will go faster here.
>You'll rest until you're back to your peak state and then deal with Kool's attempts at rebellion. You want to try and stabalize the situation here ASAP... assuming that the battleship doesn't interrupt you first.
>Write-in
Time until the battleship arrives: ???

>>4539146
>After Justaine finishes up his current set of repairs the super-mecha takes off and you head for the trade port. You need to make sure you beat the battleship there, wherever it is.

You decide to take the cautious course of action and leave Planet Munchie immediately after the current set of repairs are done on the super-mecha and the thing is closed up and ready to go. You'd love to wait here and deal with Kool, but you can't afford to- the battleship could arrive at any moment.

Tired after experiencing your own personal "cosmic horror", you fall into a deep asleep. When you wake up you're still in the same med-bay, but when you look at the window it's clear that the super-mecha is moving. You take a deep breath, slide out of bed, and go down the hallway. You're feeling a little better, so you may as well look around.

Holy shit this place is beat up. Every few doors you run into one with a hand-written sign telling you, very emphatically, to NOT enter under risk of imminent death, and while everything is cleaned (probably courtesy of the rebels in their spare time), there are missing wall panels and broken furniture everywhere. Still, you're able to walk around, so that means it was probably much worse before. You should thank Justaine for this, even if he is only here for weapons and because it's his only non-death alternative.

Eventually you find your way to the bridge of the super-mecha, where wide, complex rows of flashing buttons and colored levels sit in front of an even wider panel of some sort of opaque metal facing out into the endless void of space. Inside the room are two of the rebels sitting around and playing some sort of card game. As you enter, an intercom starts talking. "This is Trade Port Rayleigh, send over identification before approach, we're currently in a state of high-security due to nearby military actions."

One of the rebels pushes a button and pulls a mic out of the center console, but you shuffle over there and ask for the mic. They seem relieved by this. "This is Ronald, from the McSpacies. Could you get Rayleigh on?" "...Uh, Rayleigh is in a meeting right now, but let me see." A few minutes pass before Rayleigh appears. "You came back just in time. I managed to trace their stops and found out where the battleship is. We were discussing the information just now." "You found it?! That's great. How far away is it." "16 hours." "...and how far away am I?" One of the Rebels loudly chips in from behind you, happy to be able to help a little. "One hour and some change!" His duty done, he returns to his cards with a smile on his face.

You're short on time, but at least you can get back home with the super-mecha in time.
>You need to talk to Rayleigh and get updated on the situation. You don't know what has gone on in the trade port in the weeks you've been gone, and now would be a good time to ask.
>You need to talk with Justaine, give him a deadline on any final repairs, and figure out what exactly the capabilities of the super-mecha are. You know it's not at full functionality yet, but it should be in better shape than before.
>You need to take a nap. This is going to be tiring.
>Write-in

>>4539829
>You need to talk to Rayleigh and get updated on the situation. You don't know what has gone on in the trade port in the weeks you've been gone, and now would be a good time to ask.

>>4539997
"I'll be there in an hour. Please update me on what's going on by then." ...Alright, I'll get into the specifics then. To start..." You spend most of the next hour talking to Rayleigh and get a good idea what things are like at the trade port. A couple weeks after you left security in the trade port tightened up greatly, and Rayleigh enforced a 'state of emergency' with regular patrols, curfews, and an immediate seizing of all ships (payment for said ships to be made at some point in the future). Most of their manpower in the past weeks has been focused on converting the consumer-grade ships into small arms ships with materials gathered from the Disco Mafia and High Priest Groplox.

At this point there was a rapid migration of people out of the trade port, and about a quarter of the population left. It would've been more, but the trade port is located in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and even with the option to leave most people would rather not abandon their home when they don't think there's a risk of imminent death.

With the trade port on full lockdown a small fleet of ships from the Disco Mafia joined them, as well as a few heavily-armed ships supplied by High Priest Groplox which are supposedly used for "church business". This small fleet alone wouldn't be enough to challenge a fleet headed by a battleship, but apparently more support from the Disco Mafia beat you here by half a day (apparently some assistance was pushed through despite the disaster at the inauguration and the risk of civil war) and The Doctor has set up the defensive matrix he salvaged from the ruins at the center of the trade port, where it should be most effective.

You're given more details regarding the specifics, but that is more or less the state of things. You have a fleet that is probably less than adequate, a big shield that might hold out for a while, and a giant robot that you hope makes the battleship go boom. You're unsure of your enemy's capabilities, but the situation is... questionable. As you take this in your super-mecha arrives at the trade port and haphazardly docks to it, the limbs contorting so that one of the exits can connect to the trade port.
>Find Justaine and get him to give you a rundown over the super-mechas capabilities and controls. It's your robot, you want to fly it into battle when shit goes down.
>Have somebody lead you to wherever all the higher-ups are meeting and listen in. Maybe there's something you can help with. You're nominally in charge after all, even if you've been leaving a lot of the micromanagement to others.
>Head over to the McSpacies and tend to the place. You haven't been there in a while, and even if shit's hitting the fan you gotta make sure everything is in tip-top shape.
>Go back to sleep. You're not sure what you're going to do during the battle, but you're going to need to conserve your energy for it.
>Write-in
Time until the battleship arrives: 15 hours

>>4539829
>You need to talk to Rayleigh and get updated on the situation. You don't know what has gone on in the trade port in the weeks you've been gone, and now would be a good time to ask.
>You need to talk with Justaine, give him a deadline on any final repairs, and figure out what exactly the capabilities of the super-mecha are. You know it's not at full functionality yet, but it should be in better shape than before.

>>4540293
Ignore this

>>4540247
>Find Justaine and get him to give you a rundown over the super-mechas capabilities and controls. It's your robot, you want to fly it into battle when shit goes down.

>>4540295
>>4540295
Since you haven't been here you trying to mess with the meetings might cause more harm than good, and man, you REALLY want to fly a half a mile tall giant robot and kick some ass. You tell the rebels (who have finished many rounds of old maid while you were talking to Rayleigh) to call Justaine over and wait.

After a few minutes Justaine shows up in some sort of protective work suit covered in oil and various other robot fluids. "What'd you need me here for?" "A few things. First of all, sorry for the wait, I'll get you your weapons and a way out of here once everything has calmed down. Secondly, if you haven't already heard this thing is going into battle in less than 15 hours, have any current repairs done within the next half day. Lastly, could you please show me how to fly this thing, now that I have a giant robot I really want to fly the giant robot."

"...Half a day... nevermind, it's ok. I personally don't know how to pilot this in combat well, just how to work the autopilot, so sure, you're as good a pilot as any. On top of the habitation dome is the mass ejector rifle, it's the really, really big gun you might have noticed. The shock absorbers were broken, I jury-rigged a repair but they'll fail again after one shot. Ok?" ...Mass ejector rifle? Shock absorbers? You don't get it. You shake your head.

Justaine stares at you for a moment, a sad look in his eyes, before he resumes talking. "The big gun will work for one shot. If you shoot it a second time very bad things will happen. On the shoulders, in the things like look like fry containers, are missiles. Most of the missiles work, I'll mark down which ones. The missiles go boom and the designs are so old that modern defense systems might have trouble with them. They're hard to replace, but with your contacts you might be able to get missiles of a similar caliber in a month or two. I'm not sure. Besides that..."

Justaine continues his rundown, and you're impressed by how many things in the robot work. Looks like he's been hard at work. You have a shot of the big gun, the missiles, lots of lasers, and most importantly, a 700 foot-long spatula made to short electronics and become so hot that it can cut through spaceships. Of course that requires bringing the super-mecha up close and personal, but it's cool so that's an acceptable risk. As far as movement goes, more things are broken (especially the warp drive, which is properly fried after you escaped with it only half-working), and the shields are only at 10% capacity.

>>4540540
Having gone over the specs, Justaine tries to show you the controls, but it quickly becomes clear that you're a lost cause. Eventually he forces you out of command room and tells you to come back in 30 minutes. When you do, there's some augmented reality and haptic feedback equipment set up. "I downloaded a training simulator and configured it so that it's similar to our mecha. You can use the actual controls in the cockpit and the haptic feedback stuff will make it feel like the mecha is moving. No matter what you do, DO NOT turn the training mode off." Justaine points to a giant lever as he says this. "Any questions?"

"Where'd you get the training thingy?" "Pirated it. Have fun." Justaine leaves you to your own devices, and you put on the augmented reality goggles and the haptic feedback suit. You then find yourself thrust into a battlefield full of giant robots fighting with each other. Oh hell yeah.
>Practice getting up close and personal. Chopping shit up with your giant spatula of doom, ripping and tearing other mechas apart, stuff like that.
>Practice fighting from a distance with the smaller arms that are working. Its the safer course of action, especially with the defensive matrix surrounding the trade port.
>Practice shooting the mass ej- the big gun and the missiles. You have limited usage of both, so you need to practice with them a lot before you use the real things.
>Write-in

>>4540542
>Practice shooting the mass ej- the big gun and the missiles. You have limited usage of both, so you need to practice with them a lot before you use the real things.
Let's start here. I really wanna use the spatula though.

>>4540761
You'll focus on the big gun and missiles since with those every shot counts. If you fuck up a bit with the others, no big deal. You try to take some distance from the other mechas, but you mix up the controls and it immediately falls on its ass. You try to get up, but get shot with a worrying amount of high-explosives while doing so. This is followed by another mecha brutally stabbing yours with some sort of giant plasma-sword and slicing yours in two. The simulation resets. You find yourself thrust into a battlefield of giant robots fighting with each other.

It's a rough start, but eventually you figure things out. First the basic movement, then... evasive movements, and then how to fire the weapons. Once you have all that down you go back to your original plans. The big weapon makes a big boom that gouges a hole through several mechas before stopping, and while the missiles cause less damage and can't penetrate through things, they're still pretty impressive. These results are mostly as you expected, although you are surprised by the big gun's accuracy at long ranges. If you had a spotter this thing could work pretty well as a sniper rifle within a range of a few light years.

Just when you feel like you're getting used to everything, the fighting robots and the destroyed cityscape around you disappear, and you find yourself back in the vacuum of space. "You... played for really long for someone who's still injured. How do you feel?" "Tired. Hungry. Mostly fine though. I used to do that a lot back in university." "Good. The fleet is asking for your orders."

...You knew you were forgetting about something. You open comms and connect to Rayleigh, High Priest Groplox, and Jazztronik, the commanders of the combined fleet. Apparently the bulk of the enemy is two hours away, but conflict could break out sooner than that. Probably an hour from now, 90 minutes if you're lucky.
>The fleet will stay within range of the defense matrix and use the trade port as its base of operations. You'll engage in a straightforward battle with the defensive matrix to protect you and the trade port.
>The fleet will take the defensive matrix with it and charge the enemy. The defensive matrix will be slightly less effective used this way, and one of the larger ships will have to sit at the center of the fleet and carry it, but this way the trade port won't risk any damage and you might catch the enemy by surprise.
>The fleet will stay at the trade port whilst you retreat to a small asteroid field a few light years away. You'll stay still there and attempt to stay hidden while the fleet relies on the defensive matrix to fight back. Once the enemy's battleship shows up you'll fire up the big gun and shoot for where everyone tells you they are. It's a big target, and as long as you can land the shot it'll cripple their main fighting force. ...Although it will also take you away from the fighting for the 20 minutes it takes to get back.
>Write-in

>>4540830
>The fleet will take the defensive matrix with it and charge the enemy. The defensive matrix will be slightly less effective used this way, and one of the larger ships will have to sit at the center of the fleet and carry it, but this way the trade port won't risk any damage and you might catch the enemy by surprise.

>>4540830
>The fleet will take the defensive matrix with it and charge the enemy. The defensive matrix will be slightly less effective used this way, and one of the larger ships will have to sit at the center of the fleet and carry it, but this way the trade port won't risk any damage and you might catch the enemy by surprise.

Will update later tonight, maybe more if I don't just fall asleep. Would've wrote one last night but shit came up on top of me having to pack for break.

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93 KB JPG

>>4542019
>>4542558
You'll take the defensive matrix with you and charge the enemy. Fighting here would be slightly more effective, but it would put the trade port (and the several thousand civilians inside) in too much danger. Having made your decision you turn the training mode off on the super-mecha and order the fleet to load the defensive matrix onto one of the largest ships, arrange around it, and then charge with you.

The United McSpacies Fleet, headed by super-mecha RONALD, charges towards King's forces at approximately 4 light years per hour. Stray groups of scout ships and lightly-armed corvettes lead King's attack, and upon running into the fleet are immediately routed. Behind them, however, lurks the main force of the fleet- The S.S. Armen, the only battleship-class vessel in the 303rd King Fleet and de facto headquarters of Sextuple Burger King Armen. Surrounding it are a small group of sizable, heavily-armed and heavily-armored vessels, which themselves are surrounded by groups of ordinary cruisers and corvettes.

An hour passes before The United McSpacies fleet collides with the main force of the 303rd. For the first time, they finally face sizable resistance, and not the unlucky sacrifices of a scouting mission. The defensive matrix kicks into full gear, and power starts to drain from it as barrages of plasma, lasers, missiles, mass drivers, and all sorts of other weapons shoot between the two fleets.

As the battle begins everyone in the fleet has high hopes, and seeing energy barely disappear from the defensive matrix as attack after attack is dispersed by it, you feel like there's no way you could lose this. But then, less than a minute after the two fleets meet, the S.S. Armen makes a move. A small ball of light almost as bright as a star appears from some sort of gun at the top of it, and it just grows and grows, quickly becoming larger and brighter. You can see this happening, but you can't stop it- the fleets are already engaged and the S.S. Armen is hidden at the back of their forces- there's no easy way to target it yet.

After around a minute, the light is large enough to be seen across the battlefield, but stops growing. Then it rapidly shrinks down, condensing to the size of a small scout ship. After this the ball of light erupts forth, being launched at a speed which, ironically enough, far surpasses the speed of light. The ball spins around, leaving a corkscrew-like afterimage in its path, and in only a moment it collides with the defensive matrix. A monstrous impact causes it to shake and the dim blue light surrounding the fleet to flicker for a moment, but it holds strong.

>>4543412
You let out a sigh of relief seeing that you're fine, but then you look at the defensive matrix's readout. It's down to 63% power. You can take one, maybe two more blows like that before it hits for real, and you have no idea how long it will be before they can launch another attack. You need to end this battle as quickly as possible, before they can take the defensive matrix down.
>Charge out of the defensive matrix, spatula in hand, and wreak havoc on the enemy's front lines. It exposes you, but it should allow you to push closer to the S.S. Armen faster. This thing doesn't have a lot of shielding right now, but it's tough and still has some, so this isn't a death wish. It's just risky.
>Stay where you are and loose all your missiles and the big gun at the S.S. Armen, specifcally at the section you just attacked with. This course of action is... questionable given the small horde of ships between you and the battleship, and since it's not damaged yet any defensive abilities will be working at full to reduce the damage, but if it works then things will be much safer.
>Stay where you are and loose all your missiles at the enemy's front lines. It feels like a waste of resources, but it should allow for a quick advance forward.
>Charge out of the defensive matrix, spatula in hand and missiles at the ready, and do anything possible to reach the S.S. Armen. It's an extremely reckless course of action, but if it works you might just be able to starts tearing into their flagship.
[The above options will result in rolling dice.]
>Hold steady. Just keep fighting normally and hope it's enough.
>Write-in

>>4543413
>Charge out of the defensive matrix, spatula in hand, and wreak havoc on the enemy's front lines. It exposes you, but it should allow you to push closer to the S.S. Armen faster. This thing doesn't have a lot of shielding right now, but it's tough and still has some, so this isn't a death wish. It's just risky.

>>4543413
>Charge out of the defensive matrix, spatula in hand, and wreak havoc on the enemy's front lines. It exposes you, but it should allow you to push closer to the S.S. Armen faster. This thing doesn't have a lot of shielding right now, but it's tough and still has some, so this isn't a death wish. It's just risky.

>>4543623
>>4543764
alright, I'll update in a couple hours, in the meantime could I get 3d100

Rolled 75, 93, 81 = 249 (3d100)

>>4543813
rollin'

You need to push forward faster, and to do that you'll need to take some risks. You shoot out of the defensive matrix, spatula in hand, and with a sweeping blow tear into several small scouting ships. The areas you cut through burn bright red from the heat of the spatula for a moment, before the ships turn into small balls of fire and debris.

As the only one outside the defensive matrix, you become the main target, and draw fire from the surrounding ships (sans the S.S. Armen, which appears to be recovering from its earlier attack). You're swarm by gunfire, and have to take evasive actions to avoid the worst of it. Still, you do have some shielding, and it's impossible to avoid all of it without this thing fully repaired (and more training on your part), so you take more than a few blows. But as you do, you dish out plenty of fatal hits- cutting ships in half, kicking them away and severely damaging them, at one point even headbutting a cruiser so hard that it folds in on itself like a tin can.

You leave a path of chaos and destruction in your wake, pushing forward like you're unstoppable. Although there are a few close calls with the larger munitions from the 'leading' ships, you avoid any major incidents through both luck and skill. You seem to be pushing closer to the S.S. Armen due to this, but before you can get particularly close, you see that ball of light appear again... it only took about 15 minutes for them to recharge. Given the earlier attack you have a minute, maybe a little longer, until that attack comes for you.
>Rush back into the coverage of the defensive matrix and prepare to hunker down. It should still have enough energy to absorb that blow.
>Rush towards the S.S. Armen and unleash the missiles and your big gun at the ball of light. If you're lucky it could damage the weapon, maybe even make it explode while it's charging up. On the other hand, you're still pretty far away, and if you get caught by that thing outside of the defensive matrix... [Ends in dice roll]
>Stay where you are, put all of the super-mecha's energy into its arms, grip your spatula like a baseball bat, and get ready for that ball of light to shoot towards you. It's time to play some super-high-stakes baseball. [Ends in dice roll]
>Write-in

>>4543934
>Rush back into the coverage of the defensive matrix and prepare to hunker down. It should still have enough energy to absorb that blow.
We attack the Armen itself afterwards

>>4544074
You have some plans here, but they're not practical. For now you should duck behind the shield and wait out the next shot- you should still have more time before the defensive matrix gives out completely.

You watch as the shot charges up, and after half a minute of slaughtering your way back to the edge of the defensive matrix you stop and watch. The same process as before repeats, although it takes an even two minutes for the shot to charge up this time. Maybe they're hurrying to bombard the shield faster than that thing should be shooting.

As the ball of light crashes into the defensive matrix the dome of blue light not only flickers this time, but starts cracking apart, pieces of it disappearing as the spot where the two forces come into contact turns a solid wall of blue, only dimming again once it neutralizes the attack completely.

21% power left in the defensive matrix. If they launch another attack like that, you're only going to be able to block half of it. That's...worrying.
>Return to the front lines and help push forward. You were doing pretty well before so you feel like it's a good plan. [No roll required as you rolled a 93 on this action earlier.]
>Launch all your missiles at the front lines and then charge forward while they're disorganized. It might be a bit of a waste, but you need to move fast.
>Rush through the remaining ships and charge straight towards the S.S. Armen. You've closed some of the distance, but this is still a big gamble what with the whole fleet between you and the ship. [Roll required.]
>Aim for the S.S. Armen and use the big gun and all of your missiles. You don't know what defensive measures they have in place, and you're still pretty far away, but they might lose out to your trump cards, especially if they're caught by surprise. [Roll required.]
>Write-in

>>4544306
>>Rush through the remaining ships and charge straight towards the S.S. Armen. You've closed some of the distance, but this is still a big gamble what with the whole fleet between you and the ship. [Roll required.]

Rolled 65, 15, 47 = 127 (3d100)

>>4544354
dice bot go, lower DC than before since you did well in melee and closed the distance between your fleet and the battleship a little

Alright, it's time to go for broke- you can't let that thing get off another attack. You charge out of the defensive matrix and dash through the wall of gunfire blocking your path, your shields sputtering under the combined force of dozens of attacks. The 303rd stops focusing on bombarding the defensive matrix and pursues you, aiming to stop you from reaching the S.S. Armen at all cost.

The United McSpacies fleet makes rapid progress with the 303rd distracted, but it comes at a cost. Your shields flicker out before long, worn out under the rapid-fire assault of hundreds of smaller ships, and blasts of plasma, missiles, and all sorts of other weapons come in contact with your super-mecha. While the thing is heavily armored, there wasn't enough time to repair it and it wasn't in the best of shape to begin with- while you dodge a lot of the attacks, the ones that do land starting taking their toll. As blow after blow lands a few lucky ones open small breaches in the outside of the super-mecha, although none of them have landed anywhere important, mostly already damaged areas the Justaine closed off already. ...Although given enough time that will change.

10 minutes after this chase begins, you reach the S.S. Armen. You let out a sigh of relief, happy that you'll be able to end this, when you see a several hundreds foot high hanger on the front of the S.S. Armen open up and a few reserve ships fly out, dragging something that looks like a giant piece of meat behind them. Confused but unfazed, you grab your spatula and slice towards them. As you're doing so you see a hundreds of feet long black tentacle shoot out of the hanger and grab onto the ships and the meat all at once, crushing it all into a ball as it pulls it back into the hanger.

...What the fuck?! Your jaw hangs open in shock as countless black tentacles appear from the hanger bay and you start to see sight of some horrifying squid-like entity. As the tentacles start to emerge from the hanger bay a massive red eye follows after them, locking onto you.
>OH GOD, YOU HATE IT, KILL IT, KILL IT. Use the [Big gun/missiles/both] and to eradicate whatever god-forsaken entity this is and tear open a hole in the front of the ship while you're at it.
>Grab your spatula and charge forth to defeat the foul beast. You still have some fight left in you, and while it's a scary, big fucker, you think your mecha is still a little bigger. You just hope the fleet behind you doesn't capitalize off of this too much while you're distracted.
>Ignore the weird space-kraken they just sicced on you and head for the weapon they were using to attack earlier. You need to make sure that's not operational before you do anything else.
>Write-in

>>4544445
>OH GOD, YOU HATE IT, KILL IT, KILL IT. Use the [Big gun/missiles/both] and to eradicate whatever god-forsaken entity this is and tear open a hole in the front of the ship while you're at it.

>>4544445
>OH GOD, YOU HATE IT, KILL IT, KILL IT. Use the [Big gun/missiles/both] and to eradicate whatever god-forsaken entity this is and tear open a hole in the front of the ship while you're at it.
Just the missiles for now

This thing needs to die. Now. You slam the missile buttons and watch as several dozen yellow, fry-shaped missiles shoot towards the eye. A sad shriek passes through your mind as the missiles all explode, and the surrounding area is filled with fire, black bood, and chunks of space-kraken. You're almost a little sad- not because you executed this poor thing, but because all that good space-kraken meat is probably not salvageable. Maybe you could've even made a special out of it. But it's all for naught, as that thing is dead and most of its bits are thoroughly vaporized.

With a small area near the front of the ship decimated, you go to move onto the big gun, but then feel the attacks from behind you resume in full force. Your super-mecha metaphorically groans under the rain of blows, its readouts looking less than favorable. You need to do what you came here for and finish this up.
>Run away as fast as possible, reach the other end of the S.S. Armen, and use everything at your disposal to wreck their main weapon. [Roll required to run away while sustaining minimal damage, no roll required to shoot their gun at short range.]
>Focus all power to the arms and back, grab onto the battleship, and lift with all your might. It's a bit taller than your supermecha, and many times longer, but if you can manage to swing this thing then that entire fleet will be history. [Roll required for strength.]
>Write-in

>>4545055
>Run away as fast as possible, reach the other end of the S.S. Armen, and use everything at your disposal to wreck their main weapon. [Roll required to run away while sustaining minimal damage, no roll required to shoot their gun at short range.]

>>4545055
>Focus all power to the arms and back, grab onto the battleship, and lift with all your might. It's a bit taller than your supermecha, and many times longer, but if you can manage to swing this thing then that entire fleet will be history. [Roll required for strength.]

Will tiebreak in a couple of hours if it's still tied then, hoping to finish up this battle completely by late late tonight or tomorrow.
funnily enough the final battle should take less time despite hopefully being more epic, solely by virtue of being a bit less tactical and choice-intensive no matter what approach is taken

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>4545368
>>4545425

Rolled 45, 39, 64 = 148 (3d100)

>>4545605

Time to end this. You're gonna grab this damn battleship and use it to crush the fleet. You redirect power, get a grip on the battleship, and begin lifting. The joints creak and the the super-mecha shudders under the weight of the battleship, although it does begin to lift into the air. After 30 seconds you've taken far more damage than you would've liked and the thing is immobilized and lifted up to the super-mecha's chest but could probably start shooting you sooner rather than later. You need to change approaches.

As you sigh and prepare to give up, you get a call on comms. Or to be more accurate, a call you noticed- you've been getting bombarded with them for the 20 seconds or so, but you just didn't notice... er, just didn't care. You answer them, and are greeted with Justaine asking what the fuck you're trying to do and concise explanations of the weight-limits and other related specs of the super-mecha which state that you cannot do what you're trying to do.

After a bit of back in forth, mainly "it's too late to stop now" and "you still need to", Justaine gives you an out. "If you really want to go with this route, there is one way. Use the safety override switch for the generators. It's to your left and is probably the scariest looking switch there is. That will take down the safeties on the generator and allow for more power to be used. Side-effects are temporary damage of the power systems, permanent damage of the power systems, and nuclear explosion depending on how long you use it. Good luck."

You flick the switch and watch as the S.S. Armen suddenly flies into the air, just barely fitting between your super-mecha's arms. You hastily turn around and smash it towards the fleet behind you, damaging both the S.S. Armen and most of their other ships in the process. Then you start to spin around, allowing the S.S. Armen to pick up momentum. As you do so you hear a loud grinding noise start to come from the center of the robot. Afraid of the risk of nuclear explosion, you get ready to launch the S.S. Armen towards a desolate moon nearby, but before you can the thing tears in two, unable to withstand the force of you spinning it round and round, and the other half ends up slipping out of your hands and towards the rest of the ship. As the second half slips out of your hands the arms of your super-mecha follow after them, giving out under the strain of all that weight. Fortunately they end up just a short ways away, damaged but hopefully re-attachable.

Flashes of red appear as the two halves narrowly scrape by each other, and a small field of debris floats around remains of the S.S. Armen. The front half floats away from you, while the back half rotates towards you, exposing the (surprisingly intact) remains of the ship's generators.

>>4545652
As you stare at the rubble you get a distress call from the S.S. Armen. You hesitantly answer it. "This is Sextuple Burger King Armen. What are your demands. I'm willing to surrender."
>Inform them that they'll be changing loyalties and that all living personnel should disarm themselves and evacuate. You'll exorcise any of the higher-ups once they've surrendered and hopefully they should be able to get their subordinates under control.
>Tell them that you'll discuss the matter with your commanders and tell the fleet to prepare anti-personnel weapons. You want to salvage what remains of the S.S. Armen, but you don't want the people inside, brainwashed or not.
>Take aim with the big gun and fire towards the S.S. Armen's generator. You just want to see them all explode.
>Write-in

>>4545653
>Inform them that they'll be changing loyalties and that all living personnel should disarm themselves and evacuate. You'll exorcise any of the higher-ups once they've surrendered and hopefully they should be able to get their subordinates under control.

>>4545807
Three days have passed since the battle. There were some minor problems to deal with, but the survivors of the 303rd were imprisoned (including an impressive number of now-loyal Burger Kings from the Sextuple level downwards), the remains of the S.S. Armen and other ships are being salvaged, and the super-mecha is fortunately able to be prepared. Things would be looking on the up and up, but... after that something unexpected happened. Something bad. A wormhole opening a pathway from distant space opened up next to the S.S. Armen, caused by some sort of distress signal. Then a second one opened up about five light years away, and a third after that, forming a triangle around the area.

The three wormholes all seem to be coming from different locations, and only one of them can be identified- Earth. Whatever's coming through the wormholes will all arrive in three months at roughly the same time, and you have a bad feeling that it's gonna be the big guns. But you stood your ground this time, and you can stand your ground again. Especially if it means ending this lengthy grudge once and for all.

With everything in imminent crisis, people are (justifiably) panicking. There have been a lot of meetings and arguments over how this should be handled and about how you can possibly overcome whatever massive fleet is going to come out of these wormholes. There have been a lot of suggestions, but ultimately the final decision comes up to you.
>You'll use all the resources at your disposal to power up the super-mecha and try to cobble together something that can fight back against whatever it comes up against. You think The Doctor mentioned a couple other ruins you could visit, and that weird orb of energy The Allfather gave you might be usable as an energy source. You're gonna make a superweapon of your own.
>You'll head to Planet Munchie, speak with The Allfather (as much as you dread the thought), and learn the ways of combat disco. After that you'll spend the coming months honing your abilities and trying to combine your two fighting styles. Once the ships arrive you and a crack team of your best fighters will board the Andromeda Land-Space Turtle and teleport into the enemy's main ship and try to kill The King yourselves.
>Write-in

>>4546016
>You'll head to Planet Munchie, speak with The Allfather (as much as you dread the thought), and learn the ways of combat disco. After that you'll spend the coming months honing your abilities and trying to combine your two fighting styles. Once the ships arrive you and a crack team of your best fighters will board the Andromeda Land-Space Turtle and teleport into the enemy's main ship and try to kill The King yourselves.
Be the superweapon

>>4546114
You don't have the the industrial complex to fix this super-mecha up and trying to power it up is a gamble. You'll head into their main ship with whoever dares to join you, slaughter your way towards The King, and end his reign of terror with your own two hands. You don't need some sort of superweapon- you'll be the superweapon.

Having decided on your course of action you depart to Planet Munchie. You need to speak to The Allfather again and figure out how the Disco Mafia fights from the source, but there's an errand you need to deal with first. Kool. Now that you've recovered from your wounds, it's time to serve that two-timing bastard.

You stop at the Disco Mafia's second largest base, which Kool has commandeered as his headquarters. The guards recognize you, but believing that you're a weak, false imitation of a Disco Child, they try to block you out front. You immediately knock them out and make your way inside. Several of the Disco Mafia's officers follow you inside, helping secure the area.

Before you make it to Kool's self-constructed throne room, he comes to meet you himself. "I've already proven that I'm the stronger one. Can't you just give up and let bygones by bygones? I'll even agree to split from you cleanly and work together- I'd hate to see infighting." So he's trying to weasel out of this with lesser gains. Fuck that. "Shut up. We're dancing right here, right now, and I'm not taking no for answer." You take a deep breath, set a boombox down, and scream as you approach Kool. "SERVE OR BE SERVED JIVE TURKEY!"

https://youtu.be/tCnBrrnOefs
The disco balls flicker and the dance floor shatters as you go into motion, the groove almost solidifying around you. Kool seemed somewhat confident before you went into motion, but after seeing your first move his face falls and he realizes just how much he fucked up. You proceed to leap across the dancefloor like a disco swan, your combination of force and grace leaving Kool's confidence shattered and any image of him as an all-powerful groovemaster destroyed.

>>4546205
With Kool defeated and the officers ready to begin the legwork to reunite the Disco Mafia, you're almost ready to see the Allfather. You just have to figure out how to deal with this fool first. He backstabbed you and fucked you over, but he is powerful. He led the troops of the Disco Mafia for a long time, and seemed to legitimately think that he was more qualified for the position of Disco Child for you, even if he used underhanded methods in an attempt to make himself look much more powerful than he was.
>Have someone keep an eye on him and have him train. You need all the manpower you can get to fight King and after what just happened nobody is going to follow him.
>Have him imprisoned for the time being. This isn't worth killing over, but you don't feel comfortable putting him to work yet. He'll have to earn that privilege.
>Tell the Disco Mafia to do whatever they want with him, which will almost certainly be making him 'disappear'. He betrayed the family and he'll pay the price.
>Write-in

>>4546206
>Tell the Disco Mafia to do whatever they want with him, which will almost certainly be making him 'disappear'. He betrayed the family and he'll pay the price.

>>4546254
He's more a liability than anything, and if the Disco Mafia is ever gonna retain their authority they have to take care of a major traitor like this one. You'll leave the decision of what to do with him up them. You leave Kool to his fate and go to meet the Allfather.

The Allfather is, as expected, overjoyed to have a visitor, and it says that it'll teach you anything you want to know about disco combat. When it learns that you plan on spending nearly a month here, it's overjoyed, and doesn't hesitate to spend the first day talking to you all about the groove, how it's gathered together via the power of dancing, and how it can be directed to create attacks and induce hallucinations.

In actuality, disco's fighting style is just a sub-branch of dancing in general, which is vaguely related to martial arts in a somewhat more grounded way than McSpacie's and King's fighting. It's still rather... odd though, and focuses a lot more on metaphysical forces than you'd expect. Fortunately it's not difficult to learn with the concentrated 'disco energy' the Allfather imparted on you. Whatever it actually is, it lets you bring your dancing and fighting abilities to their full potential with much less practice, and allows you to practically see 'the groove'.

After a week, you're an expert. Two weeks, a master. Once you manage to slog through over a month of training with your garrulous 'friend', you've reached the zenith. There are people stronger than you in general, and there have been people better than you at both disco dancing and fighting with it (mostly the past Disco Children), but you're probably the only one alive with such a comprehensive grasp of both.

Now that you've comprehended fighting with the groove to the best of your ability, it's time to shore up your cooking abilities and how you fight with it. You're not bad, but if want to face The King you need to be better. In the month you spent in isolation The Doctor did his best to gather more materials for you from ruins that seemed promising, and Rayleigh, with the help of Justaine's designs (he was promised a spare military cruiser for his efforts), and the Disco Mafia's manpower has created a set of spatulas that you can proudly carry into battle.

>>454638
>They're made from materials taken from the S.S. Armen and the Super-mecha, and are nearly impossible to break apart. The one made from the S.S. Armen can focus your energy into balls of light similar to its main weapon, while the one made from part of your super-mecha can expand in size up to twice your height.
>The focus was on 'miniaturized' technology. One is made with a miniaturized cold-fusion generator, and can release horrifying amounts of energy when harnessed properly... or when purposely used improperly. The other is designed and mostly ready, and by the time your fight with The King shows up will have some core components of the defensive matrix put inside so that it can create a force-field around you during battle.
>They simply took the spatula from the super-mecha and scaled it down. Literally- it is the exact same spatula, but some sort of special process was undergone to make it smaller. It's more a huge hunk of metal than anything, and it takes both of your hands to hold it. Its weight is ridiculously huge, and you have to use special battle techniques to even hold it. If someone is getting hit with this it will be the same, or worse, than getting hit with a car, and you're having trouble imagining it getting destroyed.
>Write-in

>>4546390
>The focus was on 'miniaturized' technology. One is made with a miniaturized cold-fusion generator, and can release horrifying amounts of energy when harnessed properly... or when purposely used improperly. The other is designed and mostly ready, and by the time your fight with The King shows up will have some core components of the defensive matrix put inside so that it can create a force-field around you during battle.

File: point of no return.jpg (51 KB, 720x405)

51 KB JPG

I want to update later tonight but I should probably leave this vote open for a while longer and the next vote was just going to be an open prompt anyways, so I'm just going to say it here instead of after another month-long timeskip:
After you resume your training, there is no turning back. The final battle will begin immediately afterwards. Is there anything you want to do before that happens?

>>4546390
>The focus was on 'miniaturized' technology. One is made with a miniaturized cold-fusion generator, and can release horrifying amounts of energy when harnessed properly... or when purposely used improperly. The other is designed and mostly ready, and by the time your fight with The King shows up will have some core components of the defensive matrix put inside so that it can create a force-field around you during battle.

>>4546416
You're going to need a new thread. Doing the final battle on page 10 is very risky.

>>4546493
I'll keep a close eye on it tomorrow and make a new thread if it looks like we're going to drop off the board. I'll basically be running a session as long as there's votes and there is a decent chance we could finish the quest before this thread dies. and if not I failed my goal of not having to make a fourth thread for a quest I was confident would end in two, but oh well no biggy, there's no way I would cut things short just because of that

Also, since there is the possibility things ending this thread and this falling off the board within a day of it ending, here is my obligatory request for feedback. I thought things went alright for a quest I did partially to shake off the rust before a 'real' one and partially to get a fun idea out of my to-do list, but yeah, it obviously wasn't perfect and if anything was particularly annoying I would like to remedy that for next time. Also, a couple of specific questions:
1. Does the lack of images at times bother any of you guys? I never saw the big deal but was thinking about saving thematic images for my next quest ahead of time.
2. Was there anywhere where the pacing seemed particularly bad or where you got annoyed that you were making choices but nothing was happening? I personally thought I did that badly with the first Planet Munchie arc but who knows, maybe you guys disagree.

Finally: If anyone's interested I will probably start my next quest in late December or January. It's about a 50 year-old salaryman who's tired of wageslaving and corporate bullshit running around Tokyo in a mecha cosplay and dishing out justice as "Salary Man" in order to act out his childhood dreams and make something of his life. Silly concept but will be more serious than this tonally, not that that says much. I'll post in /qtg/ when it starts.

>>4546416
>After you resume your training, there is no turning back. The final battle will begin immediately afterwards. Is there anything you want to do before that happens?
Fusing the disco fighting and McSpacies fighting styles to make a unique fighting style (perhaps related to our disco ball burger somehow)?

>>4546734
>Does the lack of images at times bother any of you guys? I never saw the big deal but was thinking about saving thematic images for my next quest ahead of time.
Not a bother at all, but it can be fun and helpful for setting a mood.
>Was there anywhere where the pacing seemed particularly bad or where you got annoyed that you were making choices but nothing was happening?
Nothing I can think of. I think you've done pretty good.

>Finally: If anyone's interested
Yes I am interested

Just got up, will post an update within an hour or two.
>>4546825
>Fusing the disco fighting and McSpacies fighting styles to make a unique fighting style (perhaps related to our disco ball burger somehow)?

That's what the training is meant for anyways, so you guys don't need to specify that, it would happen either way. I was just asking about loose ends in case anyone wanted to see something closed up that wasn't necessarily related to the main plot.

>>4547391
Oh ok
What about Dasher and Santa?

Your spatulas are advanced pieces of technology made under the maxim of sword and shield. One spatula can generate overwhelming force, and contains a miniaturized cold-fusion generator inside, and the other will provide an impenetrable defense, with a small portion of the defensive matrix contained inside. The latter isn't finished yet since The Doctor needs to do some research to finish it up, but it should be ready soon.

The next month is spent going through the teachings of the McSpacies fighting style. There are many sub-focuses, such as deep friers, breakfast food, and the ever-elusive ice cream machine techniques, but the core of everything focuses around burgers and spatulas. Although you focus on the main fighting style, you do pick up a bit of a specialization- dual-wielding. By the time you're done training both of your hands become blurs during combat, your spatulas instinctively striking anything that comes too close to you. At this point they're extensions to your body, and performing tasks with them is the same as doing them with your own two hands.

With a month left until the wormholes open you decide to take a short break before you try to combine the two techniques. You have a meal with the freed Burger Kings, almost all of whom were in their own training beforehand and looking forward to getting some revenge in a month. You stop by the store and manage it for half a shift, visiting with The Doctor (who just finished the last work on your spatula), Gloop (who's as understandable as ever), and Roomie. You figure you'll visit Jeff, your delivery driver, too, but apparently he's up to some... antics with the Andromeda Land-Space Turtle. You guess you'll leave them to it. Lastly, you pay a short visit to Dasher. At this point he's become a mascot of the trade station, and is a little plump (even for a walrus) due to the amount of treats he gets. Santa is no longer in charge of him, as the time you paid him for ended a while back and he didn't want to continue employment in an area this dangerous, although according to him it was 'definitely an experience'.

>>4547477
After a short goodbye to everyone you return to your training. For the first week or so you make no progress, but after 10 days something just... clicks, and you start making progress rapidly. Both fighting styles are just a way of using specialized knowledge and performances to bring weird metaphysical forces into a physical state. There's enough similarities to combine them. Every move is a dance move, and at the same time they could all be used while cooking.

12 hours before the wormhole opens. A hundred-foot tall image of The Disco Ball, your signature burger, floats in the air. But it also looks like a disco ball, and is made out of some odd force that can pretend to be both. You stare at it for a moment and make the half-real image disappear- you'd destroy the room if you tried much more.

There's an hour until the wormhole opens. Your crack team is assembled on a special device made to reduce your weight and fit on the Andromeda Land-Space Turtle's back. He's not particularly enthused the task itself, but he has been promised that Planet Munchie's restaurants will also serve as his own all-you-can-eat buffet if this turns out well, so he's more than willing to work together on this. You have all the former Burger Kings who survived from the S.S. Armen, many of the higher-ups and powerhouse of the disco mafia, a couple disciples from The Church of the Irradiated Light who normally collect debts, and Big Mac, who you called in for those 'few shifts' he promised.

With everyone gathered and the time night, you issue your final orders. Once you're on the ship you'll charge towards The King's throne room if you're not already there.
>Everyone will fight him together, and you'll even teleport more people in as long as they can be a threat and are willing to fight. You're taking this fucker down.
>You and anyone who has a life-death grudge (pretty much just the Burger Kings) will fight The King. This isn't something for outsiders to intrude in.
>You'll fight The King yourself and everyone else will focus on keeping others out. This is personal. And besides... you have a feeling that even if the others want to, they won't be able to help you much now. Not anymore.
>Write-in

>>4547478
One the one hand, the Disco Ball tastes best when shared. On the other...

>You'll fight The King yourself and everyone else will focus on keeping others out. This is personal. And besides... you have a feeling that even if the others want to, they won't be able to help you much now. Not anymore.

"This fight is gonna be mano-a-mano, just me and him. It's personal. The rest of you are gonna hold the entrance and make sure no one interferes. Understood?" A resounding chorus of yeses fills the air before everyone returns to silence. The atmosphere is solemn, but determined, as people simply stare forward and wait for the time to come.

Space itself distorts as the first wormhole, near the ruins of the S.S. Armen, opens. A fleet too massive to capture on anything but radar begins to emerge from it. Hundreds of battleships, around 50 ships larger enough to easily crush one of those, and a dozen custom-made ships which would blot out anyone's field of vision and which are large enough to crush a city by landing. But that's not all. At the center of all of this is a moon-sized behemoth in the shape of a giant burger. Pieces of it are gone, and it's clearly in a state of disrepair, but it's still an awe-inspiring sight.

The Doctor gave you a handless communicator before you parted ways, and it speaks into your ear as you stare at more and more ships follow this planet-like ship out of the wormhole. "That should be what's left of the superweapon that won them the war. That's definitely where The King is. If Armen's experiences and my old floorplans are accurate, then the throne room should be around here." Your communicator lights up and a blueprint with a giant 'X' marked on it shows up. You show it to the turtle. He nods and the space around you begins distorting as you teleport.

This time the distance you're teleporting is much shorter, and it's a matter of seconds before you arrive inside their ship. You're in some sort of giant conference room, and a bunch of Burger Kings with four to eight crystals in their crown are staring at you, confused. "Guess we were a little off. Get ready to fight!"

Everyone lets out a war cry as they charge towards the Burger Kings. The Burger Kings, fitting of their positions, quickly adapt to the situation and pull out their spatulas. Still, they're scattered, while your forces are concentrated- you have the immediate advantage. Rayleigh leads your charge, displaying strength exceeding even that of Armen and locking a Septuple Burger King in battle. Armen and Big Mac rush in behind him, tying up two Sextuple Burger Kings who try to interfere.

As everyone starts finding their opponents, you zip around the room and keep the big guns out of the way. You charge towards the only Octuple Burger King in the room, ready to face off, and thrust your spatula towards his chest like a sabre. A purple fog of groove forms in the air as you do so. He grimaces and tries to dodge, but you rotate on your leg to attack where he's going, miming yourself flipping a burger as you thrust once more. The groove knocks into his chest like a hammer and your spatula follows up moments later, knocking him backwards into the wall.

>>4547705
The battle in the conference room takes less than five minutes. You easily defeat the strongest members of the enemy force, which opens up Rayleigh and the others to get rid of people weaker than them, and so on and so forth. At one point soldiers try to storm the room, but they're not qualified for the battle going on and are immediately dispatched. After that they don't send anymore. With the rabble disposed of, you ascend towards the throne room, which you only missed by a short walk.

As you walk towards the throne room you get another message from the doctor. "The second wormhole opened. It's the Galactic Council's Environmental Protection Force. They have a warrant." You guess some of those things you did were illegal. Well, whatever. That doesn't really matter now, especially if you don't survive. You walk up to the ornate-carved, golden door separating the throne room from the rest of the ship and tell everyone else to standby.

You muster all of your strength, force the door open, and then look around. Sitting inside is The King. He's dressed in luxurious red robes and wears a crown with five gleaming red jewels. He's the picture of royalty... except for one thing. His face. He doesn't have that gut-wrenching imitation of a face you've grown used to. Or to be more accurate, he only has half of one- the left side of his face is still charred and disfigured, bearing the wounds from when you injured him back on Earth.

You expect him to attack immediately but he just gestures towards a seat. "Sit down. Now that the trash is gone, we need to talk."
>"The only trash here is you." There's no room for talking anymore. Attack.
>"Fine then." Take a seat and get his last words. You can fight afterwards.
>Write-in

>>4547706
>"Fine then." Take a seat and get his last words. You can fight afterwards.

>>4547706
>>"Fine then." Take a seat and get his last words. You can fight afterwards.

>>4548363
>>4548368
Now he wants to talk? Not gonna lie, you're actually kind of interested. Maybe he's just buying time, maybe he's just fucking with you, but you may as well get his last words anyways. "Fine then." You glance at the luxurious velvet sofa he's pointing at and take a seat, leaving about 20 foot between the two of you.

"Good. I am still quite sour over my face, but that, and other minor trifles can be fixed with time. When we last fought I thought you used some outside source to underhandedly injure me, but clearly I was wrong- you're not trash like the rest of them. You're a King, just like me." "A king?" "Yes, a King. The rare kind of man who rules instead of being ruled. Hell, we're gods compared to them. We could stomp thousands upon thousands of them underfoot and they couldn't do anything to resist. And does it matter? No! Because they're garbage, the lot of them, made to be used."

"What's your point?" The King's face breaks out into a disgusting smile and excitement creeps into his voice. "My point is that we can work together! As the only competent person within my organization, I've had to take care of everything myself for 20,000 years, almost never straying from headquarters. But together we can grow for real. Not just fast food, but taking over the government again won't be just a dream! Come on- abandon your old ways and be a King with me!"

So this is what he wanted to discuss with you? Hilarious. "Unlike you, I don't have a sociopathic streak. I have morals, although they're not perfect, and I have friends who I consider equals. We can't work together." The King lets out a tut of displeasure and rises to his feet. "I thought more of you. I didn't think a man who acquired the abilities to threaten me, a 20,000 year-old wraith, with three, maybe four decades of life experience would be so disappointing. But I guess I was being too hopeful."

You pull out your spatulas and rise to your fight. Looks like the time to talk has ended. The King stares at you for a moment and you feel a strange, vaguely threatening pressure building up in the air. As you look on The King's muscles expand dramatically, bulging outward like some bulbous, deformed mass. A moment later the royal-looking clothes covered him shoot of his body, unable to hold under the mass of his monster-like physique. What's left behind is The King staring you down, dressed in a torn pair of jeans.

"I'm not losing to Count Arby's debt collector. Let's do this."

>>4548445
https://youtu.be/Z9CuaJZpxK0?list=RDZ9CuaJZpxK0
A deafening sound fills the air as The King kicks off the ground and charges towards you, the furniture around him shattering into tiny pieces and the floor beneath revealing a thick sheet of metal that doesn't even dent. The same happens as you go into motion, your spatulas colliding with The King's hands as the two of you fight.


The two of you collide for a moment, your spatulas absorbing the seemingly unending force of his muscles for several seconds before the two of you are sent shooting backwards. "Still using spatulas? Amateur." As the two of you charge forth again The King's hands seem to morph, and although they're clearly still hands, at the same time they look almost like spatulas. "THE MAN IS THE SPATULA, THE SPATULA IS THE MAN- KILLING BLOW #28- MAN SPATULA CONVERGENCE!"

As The King closes in on you with an even greater attack than before your body contorts in a way that shouldn't be possible to dodge, harnessing the groove around of you as you do so. The King's fists scrape past you by a fraction of an inch and you come face to face with him, spatulas in hand. You lift your spatulas up, which are both thick with groove, but The King continues onwards, headbutting into them and pushing open a path past you. You're forced to take evasive actions again as he charges towards you with pure, overwhelming force.

Guess it's time to get serious. You tap into the power of your right spatula and watch as the miniaturized defensive matrix causes an almost invisible forcefield to spring up into the air around you. The King knocks into it and his muscles bulge and veins appear as he tries to break through it. Before he can do so your other spatula shoots towards his face, a horrifying force coming from it as it does so, a combination of your strength and that of the cold-fusion generator.

This leads to The King's first wound of the battle. It's minor, just a bruise, but unfortunately for him, it's not the last- nowhere near it. You take the initiative from here, and while he continues using his overwhelming force and mastery of cooking-based fighting styles that surpasses even your own, he's not able to overcome you. With your combined fighting-styles it becomes a struggle for him to deal with the odd properties of the groove, not to mention your souped up spatulas. While he gets used to them and realizes that trying to break through your forcefield is a fool's errand, that doesn't making fighting against them much easier.

>>4548449
To The King's credit, though, he doesn't go down easily. Half an hour of brutal life-and-death combat passes before he even shows any displeasure. His body is bruised, his muscles beaten over and over again with your spatulas, but he seems less injured than impatient- if things continue this way you figure you'd be the ultimate victor, but you have no idea how long it'd last. Days at least.

Eventually The King stops moving and stares at you, frustration in his eyes. "Dammit. Let's end this. Face me like a man!" He settles into a crouching stance and pulls his hands back. As he does you see a navy blue light start to form around him and energy concentrate around his hands. Looks like he's gathering energy and is about to shoot a beam of it at you.
>Face him like a man? Sure. Start busting a move and gather all the groove you can, if he wants to fight face-to-face, beam-to-beam, you'll let him.
>Ignore him and just put up a forcefield to block the beam and then try to get in close and deal a major injury. It'll put it the miniature defensive matrix under more stress than before, but you should be fine
>Write-in

>>4548454
>Face him like a man? Sure. Start busting a move and gather all the groove you can, if he wants to fight face-to-face, beam-to-beam, you'll let him.

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If he wants a beam struggle, he'll get a beam struggle. You take a deep breath and start bustin' a move so fast that you're practically a blur, kicking up so much groove that a purple fog starts to fill the (now mostly-destroyed besides the metal base) room.

After a few seconds of this The King pushes his hands forward and a blue beam two feet in diameter starts shooting towards you. A sonic boom sounds out as it does, and the beam is halfway to you before you counter-attack. You raise your hand to the air, the purple fog condensing into a dark purple there, and as you bring your hand down in front of you it shoots forward, creating another sonic boom just before it comes in contact with The King's attack.

The two beams shoot against each other, yours pushing The King's back slightly before they both stabilize halfway between you and The King. This stalemate continues on for a minute, but eventually, after you start getting into the flow, your beam starts to push The King's back.

An angry scream comes from across the room as your beam starts making progress. "No! NOOOOO! I'M THE KING! OF EVERYTHING! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!" Despite that your beam continues making progress as you get into the groove, and within another minute it's only a foot away from The King. Beads of sweat are pouring down his face at this point and his veins are bulging out as he clearly struggles to keep this state up.

After a few more seconds pass it becomes clear that he can't. The King is swallowed up completely and an explosion comes from the other side of the room, vaporizing any debris left there. What's left behind is just The King knocked prone on a bare metal floor, his hair scorched and countless bruises covering his body.

"You can't winnnnnnNNN.... dammit... I ALREADY WON THIS WAR 20,000 YEARS AGO! YOU'RE NOT GOING TO END ME!" A guttural growl comes from The King as a phantom image of a crown starts to form in the air. Jewels of deep blue energy start to form within it as it grows in front of him. You let out a snort and your spatulas flash as a disco ball starts to form in front of you. "Consider this karma. Goodbye."

"Is that... a disco ball?" Is all you hear before your attack slams into him, shattering his half-finished crown and slamming him into the wall behind him. It finally dents slightly as he slams into it with a thunderous smacking noise. He coughs up blood as a bone pierces his chest. A second later he starts to slide down the wall before collapsing on the floor.

You start to near The King to finish him off. He stares at you, hatred and desperation within his eyes. "This isn't how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to rule with a firm hand... bring the galaxy to a better place... I was the only one qualified to do so..." "Maybe you'll get a chance to do so in the next life. But for now..." You point a spatula towards him as you say this. "It's over."

>>4548514
He scowls as you say this. "Maybe it is. But... I know what's waiting for me after I die. What awaits everyone who makes a deal with Count Arby. So I'm going out with a bang." An ominous feeling rises up within you as you hear this and you hurry to kill The King, but you aren't in time. He grabs his crown and smashes it against the ground, tearing out all nine jewels as he does so. He spits out a dark clump of blood onto the jewels in his hand as a multi-toned, inhuman sound comes out of his mouth. "M̵̢̬̝̜̮͖̤̉̎̎̔͝͝ͅə̵̧̡̛͖̰͙͎̏̒n̶̛͚͓͇̉̓́̐ə̴̜͙̙͕̻͇̺̈́̽͌͆ ̷͙̫̬͉̣̗̮̍̓̌͗̄̇͘͠g̴̨̨͙̘͔͍͙̓͒͠ə̶͙͙̬̳̺͖̉̍͐̀̌̏͘l̴͓̳̳̟͎͈͖̄" The temperature in the room drops and you're sent flying backwards by a force surrounding The King.

https://youtu.be/a4Oexko8mjQ
A howling noise fills the room as ice crystals start to form on everything, even yourself. Following that you see vague, human-like shapes start to phase through the wall and enter into The King. At first they come alone, then in small groups, but by the end there isn't a single space in the room except where you're standing that doesn't have one.

After what feels like ages, but could have only been a minute or two, The King stands back up. He looks to be in even worse shape than before, but now he's holding nine blood-red jewels that pulsate like beating hearts. He takes a deep breath and you watch as he thrusts the hand with the jewels into it into his own chest, tearing it apart in a shower of blood. A moment later his hand pulls back, and you see a jewel left behind, sinking into his heart.

The King repeats this eight more times with his limbs, head, lungs, and two spots near his stomach, but you're kept at bay by some sort of mysterious force as he does this. ...Surprisingly enough this restriction appears to apply to Count Arby too, as he appears during the process, screaming at The King. "YOU CAN'T DO THIS! WE HAD AN AGREEMENT! THOSE SOULS ARE MINE!" The King just laughs in response to this, but instead of sounding like a laugh, it sounds like thousands upon thousands of voices overlapping and laughing all at once. "They were part of my kingdom, so it's only right that their souls return to me in the end. It's not like your boss cares anyway, or else he wouldn't have let me do this."

Once the jewels are in place you watch the wounds close up and The King's body completely recover. After that, he bursts into flames. He lets out a gut-wrenching scream as blue flames engulf his body, burning it to ashes. At the same time the jewels go to work, burrowing throughout his body and leaving behind a mesh of red veins on his surface that pulsate with his thudding heartbeat, stopping the flames from truly killing him.

>>4548514
With the ritual over, The King stares at Count Arby. He lets out a gulp and tries to get away, but it's too late. A sonic boom fills the room and the metal on the ground dents slightly as The King shoots towards Count Arby. A moment later you see the blue fire engulf him, and Count Arby begins screaming as the flames lick against him. "MY SOULS! MY SOULS! YOU CAN'T USE MY SOULS LIKE THIS!" "I'd rather burn them like this than give them to you. Bottomfeeder."

Count Arby disappears into another dimension, but the howling continues for a moment longer. Once he's gone, The King turns towards you. "TiME tO END yoU!" His voice distorts more this time, the voices overlapping less and starting to merge into one entity. He's clearly losing his sanity... or his sense of self. But that doesn't matter- what matters is the super-powered demon who wants to kill you.
>You'll aim for the jewels his shoved into his body. You're not sure if you can get past the whole mass of fire, but if you can destroy those he'll probably lose his power.
>You'll wait him out. He said he's burning the souls to gain power, and there has to be a limited quantity to them. You can play it safer this way, and although it's a bit selfish... you feel a bit of joy seeing the souls of King's higher-ups being burned away completely, not even going to hell, with nothing left.
>Write-in

>>4548520
>You'll aim for the jewels his shoved into his body. You're not sure if you can get past the whole mass of fire, but if you can destroy those he'll probably lose his power.

>>4548622
https://youtu.be/99sr7nyxkOc
You need to get rid of this threat as soon as possible. You'll tear out those jewels and let what's left of The King get consumed by his own hellfire. As his blurry image charges towards you you raise up your defensive spatula and watch a forcefield flicker into existence. There's a sick crunching noise as he crashes into the forcefield, and a few cracks spread across its surface, but it holds. For now at least.

Claws of flame scratch against the forcefield as you retreat, trying to look for an opening. There is none. Sonic booms sound out repeatedly as you retreat and "The King" chases, howling as he slashes against your forcefield, blood and flames flying everywhere as he does so. You attempt to counter-attack with your other spatula and stop the damage, but he bats it aside. You do the same with the Disco Ball, this time to more effect, but without much time to charge up it's merely a minor inconvenience. He's on an entirely different level than before. You want to tear out his jewels, end him, but if you made a real move to do so you'd lose your arm in the process, if not your life. It's almost hopeless.

As you struggle with "The King", the miniaturized defensive matrix in your spatula quickly dying out under his assault, Count Arby appears, seemingly fine and with a sly grin on his face. "...I see you're having a bit of trouble? Would you like some help?" "For free? Yes. Otherwise no." Count Arby chuckles as you block another strike. "Nothing's free with me, but I can give you a discount. Promise me a soul, any soul, as long you can retrieve it and I don't already own it, even if it's not yours I can give you some help. My ass is on the line here too m'boy- if 10,000 souls just go up and gone then I'll never get my ticket out of hell."
>"Fuck off. I can do this myself." You're not going to play god and start dealing in souls. You'll get out of this the clean way, even if you have to burn all the disco energy the Allfather left within you, even if you're crippled for life, even if you burn into ash in the process! BRING IT YOU BASTARDS- COUNT ARBY, THE KING, KING ITSELF, WHOEVER, THEY'RE ALL GOING DOWN WITH YOU!
>"Fine. But the only soul I have power over is my own. Take that." If you fight without help there's a good chance you'll die, but you're not going to become like The King- man has no right to interfere in that way. You, and you alone, will pay the ultimate price to end this.
>"...If that's your price, then sure. Here's a soul you can have:" [Name another character.]
>Write-in

>>4548702
>"Fuck off. I can do this myself." You're not going to play god and start dealing in souls. You'll get out of this the clean way, even if you have to burn all the disco energy the Allfather left within you, even if you're crippled for life, even if you burn into ash in the process! BRING IT YOU BASTARDS- COUNT ARBY, THE KING, KING ITSELF, WHOEVER, THEY'RE ALL GOING DOWN WITH YOU!
Even Kool isn't bad enough to deserve this

>>4548702
>>"Fuck off. I can do this myself." You're not going to play god and start dealing in souls. You'll get out of this the clean way, even if you have to burn all the disco energy the Allfather left within you, even if you're crippled for life, even if you burn into ash in the process! BRING IT YOU BASTARDS- COUNT ARBY, THE KING, KING ITSELF, WHOEVER, THEY'RE ALL GOING DOWN WITH YOU!

>>4548727
>>4548737
"Fuck off. I can do this myself." In what seems like a rare, unconscious, moment of agreement, both you and 'The King' attack Count Arby. 'The King's' undying flames cause him to to screech in pain once more, whereas a... creative application of forcefields from you slices him in half, although he'll probably have no trouble surviving it given his track record. With the nuisance disposed of the two of you return to fighting, but this time you start igniting one of the two disco orbs of disco energy the Allfather left inside you. You have to if you're going to fight back.

You're surrounded by a bright, white light as your body is strained to its max controlling the pure disco energy you're forcing it to use. After a moment streaks of purple appear in the white- the massive amounts of groove you're attracting by igniting said energy. Sonic booms sound out as you move, and all that can be seen from a third-person's perspective is blue and whitish-purple blurs crashing into each other over, and over, and over again as the room rapidly falls apart, the walls dented, melted, and cracked apart from the supersonic fight that the two of you are waging.

Your body feels stretched to bursting with energy, you're covered in burn wounds, and your muscles are probably torn and being held together with disco energy like some sort of metaphysical duct tape. On the bright side, "The King" looks similar. You've been exchanging attacks as fast as possible, and while neither of you have been able to deal a decisive blow, you have both been getting... exhausted to say the least. His flames are dimming, and the noises coming from him are sounding less spirited and more exhausted. As if he knows his time is running out.

Despite that, you can't just wait him out. You're running out of energy too, and probably faster. As the two of you wear each other down you've been hoping beyond hope that some sort of opening would appear, some chance to destroy this monster before it destroys you. And this paid off. As the two of you ram into each other, fist on spatula, for the umpteenth time, 'The King's' stance slips open and you find a chance to reach at his stomach, where one of his jewels was placed. You'll just have to take a few hits to get it.

>>4548861
As a claw-like fist comes shooting towards your face you thrust your arm into his veil of blue flames. You expected it to be painful, but you still have to resist the urge to scream out in pain as you thrust it into him. His blood is boiling and his insides hotter than the flames itself, but you need to get that jewel. 'The King's' attack lands, and while the sensation of fire assaulting skin and claws tearing into flesh covers your face you fish around, trying to grab ahold of the jewel. Just when you're afraid that it might be gone somehow, you manage to find it. You firmly grasp it and feel the blood-red veins attached to it pulse quickly, as if they're afraid of you. 'The King' pulls back and tries to refocus his attack on the arm you used to take the jewel, but it's too late. The veins snap and he lets out a roar of pain as you crush the jewel into dust, destroying it forever. The flames around 'The King' dim slightly as you do this, and hundreds of souls fly away while letting out joyful howls, glad to be free.

Not content with just one jewel, you move your arm and reach for the second one that was in the stomach area. You get it, although this time 'The King' isn't caught so off-guard. After you crush the second jewel your hand doesn't hurt or anything, it just... doesn't. You don't have a left hand anymore. This would, normally, be a great loss, but right now you don't care. You're just happy that you managed to weaken this thing.

With two jewels destroyed 'The King' is weakened considerably, and the fight eases up. Even down a hand you're able to hold on, and while you feel your body screeching in pain and trying to give up, you're able to find a safe way to remove a third jewel. Then comes the fourth, then the fifth, and so on and so forth. As you destroy the ninth jewel the flames completely disappear, and you can see the last of the thousands fly away while letting out their faint, haunting cries of glee. They're doomed to a pretty horrid fate at the hands of Count Arby, but at least they aren't destroyed. ...Although maybe they'd be better off that way- you're not sure.

What's left behind after the rest of the souls are gone is a charred husk of a man. Its features are impossible to recognize, and its heart is still beating, but it's like a charred peppercorn. You sigh, and get ready to destroy it, but then the corpse's hand grips onto your own, stopping you from moving. It breaks out into a smile, but as it does so its teeth fall to ash in its mouth. "...Goodbye Ronald, of the McDonald Clan. The only ones left in this body are the truly loyal servants, and we hope to see you again... in hell."

>>4548863
A horrifying energy begins to build up from the body, and you immediately realize what's happening- the souls that The King didn't even need to bind to him, the few hundred servants who would willingly give themselves, soul and all, over to him, are detonating all at once. They lost, but they want to take everything down with them. You furiously ignite ALL of the disco energy left inside you and feel your body tear apart as you direct it towards him. You need to contain the explosion- not just for yourself, but to ensure everyone else survives. It'd be easier to just fly away, put up a forcefield, but... you're not that kind of person. You have friends. You can't let them die like this, caught in the crossfire of your battle.

The a blinding light engulfs the room as it blows to pieces. Your energy held the explosion back, but it didn't dissipate it completely... especially where you were. You're sent flying backwards into open space, the last traces of disco energy protecting you from the lack of atmosphere and maintaining your basic life functions.

You simply float on as you watch the beauty of space float by. You'd love to stop yourself but... you can't. You can't even move a finger. After that fight you're practically just a broken sack of meat. As you watch on you see the thousands of King ships, one by one, raise the McSpacies logo on their flags. Heh. You guess all of their leaders defected at once when The King powered up like that. In the distance you see more ships, probably the Environmental Protection Force. They're idling across from a massive Andromeda Land-Space Turtle, one that's even bigger than King's mothership. You guess that was the third wormhole, but fuck if you know why it's here.

As you take all these sights in, you feel yourself fading. It's all getting dark, and it's hard to see. You just want to... rest for a bit. Even if you die doing so, right now you wouldn't mind it. At least if you died now, you'd be dying after reaching heights that almost no man ever reaches. You'd be satisfied.

>>4548866
But that's not what happens.

It takes eight months, but you wake up. You can't move and a significant portion of King's fleet was sold to facilitate your recovery, but you're awake.

You lapse in between waking and sleeping for a while after that, and it's more for a year before you're back to 'normal' again- although normal is applied loosely here. One of your eyes is gone, clawmarks covering where it used to be, you're missing a hand, and your body will probably never be able to take the strain of fighting again, but for the most part you're fine. You could repair the hand and the eye with robotic parts, but, eh... for now you're just enjoying the whole pirate aesthetic.

-------------------------------------------------

"Happy 37th birthday!" "I think we're supposed to say that, not you." "Ah, shut up, I'm allowed to drink again just in time for this, let me do what I want." "Whatever. Are you heading to the new store on Munchie after this?" "Glorp?" "Yeah, I will. It'll be a week or two before I'm ready, but I need to go over and teach the new staff the McSpacies way and all that. ...Plus, I'll be looking to cut expenses. We got a lot of ships, but holy shit those fines were out the ass- if they didn't want me to blow that planet up they should've just said so." "Glorp." "Sorry. Shouldn't have suggested it." "It's fine. Got us traffic at least. I'm gonna head back inside." "Splorp."

The drive-thru light turns on as you head back inside. Dammit, you forgot to close the place for your birthday party. Guess you should get that. You head to the window and see a familiar sight- it's Big Joe, that space trucker! You've been recovering mostly, so you didn't realize he still came here- maybe you should give him a first customer discount or something.

"Welcome to McSpacies, may I take your order?"
THE END

>>4548877
Wonderful. Thanks for running QM.