FloatingFatMan

I've never run Keyes, but after reading about it, and reading comments, I conclude that there's only 1 way to make it fun.

Delete it. I'm certainly never going to run it based on what I've read!

I've run this twice so far, once in a team on a scrapper, and once solo on my PB.

The first time was fun, mobs were easy enough and we had a blast.

Second time, not so much. Why, I ask?

Simple. VOIDS!

Mission 1 was OK. Just a couple of minion class Voids which aren't a problem to contend with. Blasted through the mission and had fun.

The second mission got a little messier. For every single mob that had an Elder Igneous in it, it ALSO had a LT class Void in it. These buggers can stun and kill you dead in 2/3 shots. This was not a lot of fun at all.

The LAST mission was a total sod. LT class voids in each mob so I decided to avoid them like the plague, and then, stood right next to the mission EB, there was a Boss class Void Slayer.

Thanks for that. Those buggers are NASTY when you're missing all your decent powers thanks to exemping down, and whilst I don't mind the exemping, at level 20 you do NOT normally come across Void Slayers, and they can kill you in 2 shots, easy. Trying to content with one of them when you've also got an EB smacking you AND a couple of regular mobs is suicide.

If I didn't have the Return to Battle power and the brief invulnerability it provides, it would have been impossible to defeat both these mobs and go on to complete the mission, not solo.

The problem isn't the mission itself, the problem lies in the Voids spawning inside it. I'm just glad there wasn't a cyst, too!

I will not be re-running this mission on my PB. Not solo.

Pretty sure you've still got Ellie's reference material, DeeDee.

So, a 12 hour downtime window, but they're actually physically relocating the servers?

Right, soo... See you all in about 48 hours then (and that's being optimistic).

IF they gave a monkeys, they'd have finished power customization ages ago, but the clearly don't so don't be expecting them to EVER get it done. Not without the dev who was the impetus for it in the first place.

Somewhere in Galaxy City - Impact +4 Hours

Ellie's breath was coming in ragged gasps now, her exertions having depleted what little oxygen remained in her would-be tomb to dangerous levels. Her armours' power systems had failed long ago, but she didn't need the display to know that she was dangerously low on reserves and soon she wouldn't be able to supplement her human form with life sustaining energy. When that happened, she figured she'd have a couple of minutes at most before she suffocated.

She'd already tried teleporting her way out, then shape shifting and even converting to full energy so she could pass through the rubble above, but she was long past the power levels needed for that; there wasn't even enough left for her energy claws. All she had left was enough to try to physcially dig her way free.

For nearly four hours now, she'd been alternating between punching her way through the rubble and half passing out from the pain and blood loss, but she'd managed to dig a shaft a few meters long. Her feet were currently braced against the crumbling sides as her armoured fist smashed and clawed at the material above.

Abruptly, there was a loud booming clang and pain shot through her arm and head, making her yelp as she quickly withdrew her hand to suck her knuckles. "What the bloody hell?" Her voice was hoarse and weary, her fatigue obvious were anyone there to hear.

Frowning, she shook her hand, then reached up again to feel around. A smooth surface that yielded slightly to slow pressure but, after tapping with a knuckle, instantly hardened. Her frown deepening, Ellie pushed against it and felt it start to yield. Once centimeter, two, three; then, abruptly, there was a metallic tearing sound and her hand broke through into empty space.

Instantly, Ellie gasped as burning hot air poured through the hole, searing her already burned skin and making her cough and choke as it scalded her lungs. But with it came a sudden feeling of warmth deep in her core and she abruptly realised that whatever had been blocking her from recharging had been breached! Energy, wonderful and glorious cosmic radiation! It felt far weaker than usual, barely enough to stabilize her current power loss, but it was enough to give her hope.

She hung there for a few moments, her hand hanging on as the scalding air rushed to fill the hole she'd dug. Then, with a metallic shriek of abused metal, she tore the opening wider and pulled herself through.

---

Impact +9 Hours

A faint light gleamed weakly in the darkness, a tiny point of red in an enveloping velvet shroud. Surrounding it, darker patches of black filled the adjacent space and filled the room with the scent of scorched metal. At the centre of the room, Ellie lay on her side; her breathing still laboured after inhaling scorching hot air, but at least now there was oxygen enough that the purplish tinge in her lips was fading. Abruptly, a coughing fit seized her and she curled into a ball as her lungs protested the sudden influx of air.

She lay there for several minutes after the coughing eased, curled up tightly as she drifted briefly into unconciousness. Then with a scrape of her boots on the strange metallic floor, she pushed herself up onto a hand and knees, her left arm still held tightly to her side, and started to crawl towards the light.

It took her a long time to reach it, interminable minutes passed as she slowly dragged herself towards the only sign of life she'd seen in hours. Finally though, she reached the base of whatever it was and hauled herself upright. This close to it, the tiny light lit up the surrounding few centimeters weakly, revealing a small keypad and a grille. The buttons were scorched and half melted, but the largest of them had "RELEASE" stamped on it. Not knowing what it was, but hoping it was something that could help, Ellie pressed it.

A deafeningly loud honking sound filled the room, making her clamp her hand over her right ear and whimper in pain at the touch on her head. A red emergency light lit up, flooding the room in a dim red glow, and next to her, several loud clunks of releasing catches sounded. A moment later the entire wall split down the centre and slid haltingly open, revealing a heavily damanged corridor lit in the same dim emergency lighting.

Looking around, she realised that she must be inside some kind of underground research lab, and she started to make her way through, slowly climbing over the assorted debris. There were bodies here, four white coated technicians sprawled in the wide corridor, each showing signs of having been caught in a fire. The whole place stank of a combination of burnt metal and plastics, and cooked flesh, making her cough more as she picked her way through the debris.

Several meters down the hall, she came across a buckled metal door with a fire exit sign next to it, and pulling it as hard as she could, managed to get it open enough to squeeze through. Inside, half blocked with rubble but showing no signs of fire, a staircase led upwards.

Groaning tiredly, she started to climb.

---

The running battles had taken their toll on both Shanna and Rauri as they escorted another group of survivors to a nearby relief station. Both were looking rather the worse for wear, their bodies marked with minor abrasions as well as soot and grime from the ruined city. The citizens they were escorting, however, were in a far worse condition. Two of them were almost catatonic with shock and were being helped along by some of the others, and most were either sobbing or trying to comfort those that were as they made their way towards the relief station hastily setup by Longbow.

Almost two city blocks behind them, a mound of rubble started to shift. A painfull creak of metal echoed through the night air, startling Rauri and Shanna and making them turn towards its source. With a loud crash, rubble was thrown into the air as a concealed metal door slammed open and a second later, Ellie's blood smeared and filthy body stumbled from the dark portal and staggered to her knees.

"Who the...?" At first he didn't recognize who he was seeing, her face so burned and her white hair gone that she was barely recognizable. Then his eyes widened in shock as he recognized the costume underneath the grime. "Ellie!" Rauri's shout echoed around the empty block and he started to run towards her, not seeing the huge Shivan monster crawling out from a pit behind Shanna. Ellie did though, and without thinking, her arm snapped forwards and a pencil thin beam of energy burst from her hand, slicing the monster in two. A second later, her eyes rolled up and she collapsed fowards, completely drained.

"I got ya, Ellie!"

The womans' shout sounded from the air, and a sudden blur of motion streaked from the sky, catching Ellie before she fell face first into the dirt. "Geez, girl... What the HELL have you been doing!?"

A few seconds later, Rauri reached the two of them and knelt down beside them as Brie, the one who'd caught Ellie, lowered her carefully to the ground. "Where'd YOU spring from?"

Barely sparing him a glance, Brie quickly assessed Ellie's injuries, muttering a reply as she worked. "Was nearby, felt the power spike... Knew it was her... God damn El, you're a MESS!"

Carefully, her fingers probed Ellie broken arm, then her stomach and chest. Finally, she turned her attention to her head and winced. "Her heads all staved in, feels like a fracture. I'll do what I can, but we need to get her out of here." A bright green glow surrounded her hands as she spoke, the distincting glow of a Peacebringer's healing powers going to work.

Rauri looked back towards Shanna and called out, guesturing her away. "Get those people t' safety, Fea, an' tell the medics we got a seriously injured Kheldian comin' in!" Turning back, he carefully started to lift Ellie into his arms, moving slowly so that Brie could keep her hands in place as she focussed on repairing the worst of the damage.

Shanna nodded and turned to the people with her, "Right, we'll have t' shift or we'll be in more trouble. We'll get ye all t' safety soon." A moment later, she and the frightened survivors hurried away, heading for the nearby relief station.

As conciousness slowly returned, the first thing Ellie became aware off was the pain. Her entire body hurt, like she'd been hit by something massive, but the worst was her face. Far more than her body, her face felt like it had been flayed raw and dipped in acid, and she grimaced as slowly, she opened her eyes.

She couldn't see a thing. Wherever she was, the darkness was so absolute that not even her feline vision could make anything out; nor could she hear anything either. Wherever she was, it was as dark and quiet as a grave.

A brief shiver ran down her spine as that unpleasant thought crossed her mind, and mumbling softly to herself, she started to sit up. Immediately, intense pain flashed through both her left arm and her head, the latter as she cracked it against something hard a few inches above her, causing her to flop back with a curse. A few seconds later she tried to lift her arm again, only to give up immediately as another flash of pain stabbed through it. After a moment's pause, she tentatively moved her other arm, and feeling no pain, tried to feel above her.

Stone by the feel of it, or concrete. She moved her hand in a circle, feeling as much as she could, and after a moment came to the grim realisation that wherever she was, she appeared to be buried. From the feel of it, her legs were pinned tight, only her right arm appeared to have any movement at all, and from the smell of the air, it wouldn't be long before what she was breathing became too stale to be much use.

"Okay... Don't panic... You've been in worse situations than this... I think... Good thing you were wearing your comlink." Her voice seemed weak and thready, but the sound of it lent her some small comfort as she reached for the button comm behind her left ear.

"Aaaaah!!" The yell of pain surprised her, even as an intense stab of agony lanced through her entire head, and she pulled her hand away quickly, her fingers sticky with blood.

"Oookay... Not such a good idea... Guess I must be hurt there, too... Alright... Let's see..." She thought for a moment, an edge of panic beginning to nudge the edge of her awareness, then she remembered. "My suit! That's it, the biomonitors..."

Feeling carefully with her right hand, she managed to locate her left forearm, where the control gauntlet was located, and managed to open the flap after some fumbling. Wincing, she pressed the activation control and let her hand drop away. A second later, her remaining right side monocle flickered on and began to run through diagnostics, both for itself and its wearer.


Bio-Systems Readout
Compound fracture, left occipital bone
Compound fracture, left ulna
Compound fracture, left radius
Compound facture, left humerous
Estimated 1.16 pints blood loss

Biological energy levels, 4.2%. Rate of depletion, 0.87% per hour. Rate of replenishment, 0%. Core matrix energy compromised. ETA to depletion, 4.6 hours at current usage.

Non-Biological Systems Readout
Armour integrity, 85%. Main area of damage, left arm.
Self-repair systems offline
Mediport beacon offline
Stealth system offline
GPS system offline
Comm system offline
Emergency defense shield system online

Non-biological energy levels, 15%. Rate of depetion, 30% per hour.
Warning: Emergency defensive shield activated. Predicted failure, 15.35 minutes.


Ellie worried at the readings for a moment, her thoughts beginning grow somewhat foggy, before she asked herself. "Why aren't I getting any power?"

No answer was forthcoming, and after a time, she began to feel herself starting to drift off too sleep. Giving her head a little shake to try to clear it, a sudden stab intense pain jolted her wide awake, and once it subsided to a bearable level, she muttered to herself.

"No, I am NOT going to die in here..."

Slowly, her movements restricted to the few inches space available to her, she began to punch the ceiling.

Statesman... Not only is he a jerk, but ALL of his alternates are complete gits!

Stormfront

There had been a faint chill in the air when she’d arrived in Galaxy City that morning. A hint, Ellie thought, of the approaching end to summer as the tides of time moved inexorably towards the end of the year. Thanks to no classes to teach, she’d been able to spend more time in the city recently, actually fulfilling her role as one of the city’s heroes for a change, and was just completing the arrest of a group of idiots in Galaxy when the siren started.

At first, she didn’t bother to look up. The siren was nothing new and another Rikti raid looked to be about as interesting as arresting these Hellion’s had been, but once they were tagged and collected by the Zig’s teleport grid, she finally looked up.

A frown creased her brow as she noticed that the war walls were still online and the sky had yet to take on its telltale dark lustre from the alien attackers. She was just about to mutter something about unreliable aliens when she saw it, a streak of fire breaking through the light cloud cover and trailing a line of smoke behind it. It was quickly followed by another and another, until dozens of them had broken through, turning the sky a deep orange, and Ellie gasped as she realised what they were, meteors!

Throwing herself into the sky, she didn’t give herself the luxury of thinking about her actions, didn’t have time to consider that something had gone horribly wrong with the so called meteor shower the scientists had predicted. All she had time to do, was react to the imminent threat they posed. She’d done this once before in London and she would simply have to do it again. Around her, more brightly clad figures also took to the skies as they too headed to intercept the incoming barrage of cosmic garbage, brightly coloured streams of energy and magic already firing from them in an effort to forestall the carnage. Ignoring the intense stab of pain he cause, she shifting over to her beast form and threw herself at one of the missiles.

*WHAM!*

The impact was much worse than the last time she’d done this, the angle far steeper and the size of the burning rock far greater than previously. She saw stars briefly, stunned for a few seconds, before she shook her head and began to push back against the rocks’ headlong plummet. Her rebuilt armour protected her body from the intense heat, but she could already feel the skin of her face starting to crisp and smell the distinctive odour of burning hair. Pushing the pain aside, she began to push harder, vaguely aware of explosions happening further below as the meteors began to strike, and of the faint screams of people as they scrambled for some kind of cover.

Her muscles straining and energy flaring brightly around her, Ellie used all her incredible power to divert the meteor, trying to slow its headlong rush and alter its trajectory away from the city, and gradually, she began to have an affect. It’s angle flattened out as it crossed Galaxy City and its speed dropped rapidly as she pushed back with all her might, determined to stop it from destroying her adopted home. So intently was she focusing on her task though, that she failed to noticed a large glowing creature emerge from the surface of the rock and stalk towards her.

Standing more than eight feet even though hunched over, the creature quickly crossed the half dozen meters to where the young heroine held the rock on her back and once it had gotten close enough, it suddenly let out an ear shattering roar. Her head snapping around, Ellie’s eyes widened as she saw the oddly familiar creature and gasped out loud. “Oh crap!”

There was nothing she could do. If she tried to defend herself the meteor would strike the city, possibly killing hundreds, and as the creature raised its huge claw to strike, she had just enough time to mumble. “This is sooo gonna hurt...”

I was thinking 12ish too, but the newspaper clipping never made mention of a time, I think. I have some fiction ready to post, but have been holding on actually doing so in case anyone else was going to post any pre-meteor strike fiction like Z's...