Immersion Sequence initiated.
Connecting to: Rubi-Ka. Please select an identity.
Martial Artist selected.
And there I was, sitting in a corner of a familiar shop in the Omni-1 Trade district, where I last recall going through the available clothing inventory and finding a cute one-piece suit whose appearance would cloak my normal armor thanks to all of the notum in the air.
Notum powers our nanotechnology, so that I can run little programs that make it possible for me to do things I couldn’t otherwise do.
I take a few moments to swap into the one-piece, the vivid orange a cautionary reminder to anything that gets in my way that it should consider a detour around me if it wants to live. Paying the shopkeep the necessary amount of creds to keep the suit without being murdered and sent to reclaim, I saunter out of the shop, heading to the Grid access point on the west side of the city.
When you’ve got to travel fast, the Grid is the way to go, as you’re digitized and transmitted from location to location MUCH faster than taking several Whom-pahs, or heaven forbid, walking, hoverboarding, or even flying the entire distance.
Rubi-Ka is a vast planet, and just traveling from Rome’s Green district to Galway by flying in a Yalmaha takes several minutes. If I were to head to Borealis from Rome without using the Whom-pahs or the Grid, it’d take about twenty or twenty-five minutes, assuming nothing decides I look tasty as I run across the wilds of RK.
Today’s trip drops me out of the Grid at Newland City, somewhat on the northern end of what we’ve managed to colonize of this vast planet, right at the edge of where lush, verdant lands turns into desert and surface lava. Still, I have to trek further north using the Whom-pahs to get to the Newland Desert, then to Hope, and finally, a long jaunt east to the Perpetual Wastelands. The things one does for gainful employment, of course.
My objective today is to find a hidey-hole filled with mutants, clean them out, and find some precious data store that I can bring back to the bosses in Omni-1 HQ for a tidy sum.
With a cloud of profanity, I exit my last Whom-pah, and begin the long and arduous slog from Hope to the Perpetual Wastelands. I beat feet over the dust and packed dirt, running to the northeast, and carefully avoiding any fights that I think might be TOO challenging. Unfortunately, I ran into a Greater Anun Shredder only seconds after finishing off a stray Cyborg Sergeant 1st Class and using my last heal stim.
Reluctantly, I put up my dukes, my martial arts skill being dredged back to the forefront as I execute Fists of the Sorrowful Toad. My hands are enshrouded with clouds of sickly green nanobots as they are readied to taint the flesh of anything that opposes me. I lay into the Shredder quickly, its screeches and caws driving me to silence it before it can truly wound me beyond repair, though the fight did come close to that. As I lay waste to this thing, the chemical green glow is suffused with a bright, blue burst as one punch connects, the sizzling sound stunning the shredder as I Bless it With all of the Thunder I could.
I manage to beat the pulp out of this thing, and quickly cast a vehicle nano that lets me avoid further conflict as I fly back to Hope, chastised into maintaining my health supplies in the absence of an extended amount of nanos for the nanopool.
As I returned to Hope and wandered over near the Whom-pah station to return to Newland and resupply, I could only scream and curse even more, the string of curses so strong and inventive that they could probably replace the nanocloud around me.
“WHEN THE FUCK DID THEY INSTALL A WHOM-PAH TO PW!? WHY IS IT NOT ON MY MAP!?”
In front of me is none other than a Whom-pah to exactly where I was intending to head. Goddamned cartographers, slacking on their work.
