The Ziggursky's primary halls weren't all that great to begin with for details. The sheer number of crooks Paragon produced and imprisoned made it a
place of understaffed, overworked guards that couldn't wait to leave at the end of the day. The secondary halls were worse, containing members of the
streets' more powerful gangs. Cybernetic Freakshow, psychic Lost, and the Damned and Bone Daddies of the Hellions, or the various Ink Men of the
Tsoo...these were the charges of the secondary halls.
Then there was the shift no Zig guard wanted, and thus, it was staffed primarily by Longbow volunteers, having the most experience with its inhabitants...the
superpowered criminals that created these gangs. The Omega Hall. Occasionally, a Patron of Arachnos would stay here for a week or so before political pressure
got them released, or someone like Clamor or Castillo before their minions busted them out. But of late, the star prisoner of the Omega Hall was one of the
simplest to contain.
For within Omega #12, was imprisoned the tube that contained the mind of the insane Clockwork King.
For weeks, he'd been a model prisoner, if one could consider a drifting brain with no limbs or means of movement, or even indication that he'd exited
his catatonia to be a model for reform. The Longbow troops had begun wondering if the brain was even alive anymore, or if the shock of being defeated by Task
Force Impulse had finally done the King's fragile mind in entirely. But the doctors assured the ward officers that the brain was still alive, if not
especially active.
With the Rikti returned, more and more Longbow were being shuffled elsewhere to attempt to help increased incursions within Crey's Folly, Founders, and the
Lost's attacks all over the city. The Clockwork King's catatonic state was considered to be a lesser threat, and so the guard detail steadily dwindled,
eventually with only a pair of guards and psi dampeners serving as sentinels to a once-feared villian.
Thus, there were only two Guardians left the day that the psychic registers blipped.
"Oh, hey..." Smith noted, looking at the device. "Someone's throwing around some pretty powerful psi in this vicinity."
"It coming from the Tube King here?"
"No. Inbound, not emanating."
"Then it don't matter."
There was a flatline beep as the psi-sensor tuned out, and for a moment, both guards could almost swear they heard a little girl yelling distantly...but then
it went away.
And then the monitors began beeping again.
"...we have alpha wave activity..."
...penny....
The Guardian at the monitor started sweating under his cowl as he watched the monitors begin to flair up. "Shit, shit, shit. Get someone to ramp up those
dampeners, we've got a full blown reaction here!"
...Penny....
The tube began to glow a sickly pinkish white as the Guardian sighed in relief when the psi readings died down. "Yeah, doesn't matter how powerful you
are, Mr. Brain. We got enough anti-psi here to lock down a Rikti regiment. And the two of us couldn't get you out if we tried anyway. So just go on back to
your nap. No brains for you to control, and no Clockwork for you to call in."
....fools....
"Kringman, why can I hear his voice in my head? Aren't the buffers up?" Smith asked.
"Yeah, but....he shouldn't be able to push through them...."
You mean....these?
The two Longbow looked up at a creak in the ceiling, before a small number of tiny Clockwork fell from the roof, landing in the cell. Kringman's eyes
bulged in terror as he recognized the blocky shapes that formed their torsos......the shapes of the psi-emitters that were fueling the dampening signal.
We are leaving. You will not stop us.
"Open fire, open fire!"
The glass around the brain and eyes of the Clockwork King was not particularly durable, but the bullets seemed to spang off it as if hitting armor plate
nonetheless. There was a creaking groan of tortured metal before an enormous arm wrenched through the floor, already
connected to a shoulder joint below the tube that hadn't been there before. The Guardians dove for cover as the Clockwork approached their master....and
the very cell that had been holding him reshaped itself into his new body. Panels flew off walls and bent themselves into place to form armor. Gears and joints
shattered and reformed into hands and feet. Superstructure, limbs, coolant...it all seemed to build around the single tube as the massive archvillain
reconstituted himself. And around him, his minions in turn began to form. Like undead from the earth, they rose, winking diodes and sparking joints, and soon
they began to assemble others, a massive horde, backed by large Princes that dwarfed the men.
One or two went down to the Longbow gunfire before it dropped off as the two Guardians realized how little they could do to stop the oncoming horde. Turning,
they ran through the emergency door, slamming the lock into place behind them just before the sea of Clockwork became a tidal wave, smashing through the walls
and adding to itself with every demolished piece of scrap...
***
"Talk to me," Gaussian said, pulling up his phone.
"You've got a grade A problem heading your way, chief," the Vanguard liason to Ziggursky Penitentary said. "The Clockwork King just busted
out and he's on a red eye path through the sewers for the RWZ. Estimated ETA is in about twenty minutes."
"....the girl. Yin. Damn, the rumors were true. We can't warn Task Force Trafalgar in time. I guess they're on their own....make a note of this
phenomena though, Frank. If the Rikti ever got the idea to go after the King instead of the Queen, I think it's safe to say they'd be able to find bait
all too easily...."
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
place of understaffed, overworked guards that couldn't wait to leave at the end of the day. The secondary halls were worse, containing members of the
streets' more powerful gangs. Cybernetic Freakshow, psychic Lost, and the Damned and Bone Daddies of the Hellions, or the various Ink Men of the
Tsoo...these were the charges of the secondary halls.
Then there was the shift no Zig guard wanted, and thus, it was staffed primarily by Longbow volunteers, having the most experience with its inhabitants...the
superpowered criminals that created these gangs. The Omega Hall. Occasionally, a Patron of Arachnos would stay here for a week or so before political pressure
got them released, or someone like Clamor or Castillo before their minions busted them out. But of late, the star prisoner of the Omega Hall was one of the
simplest to contain.
For within Omega #12, was imprisoned the tube that contained the mind of the insane Clockwork King.
For weeks, he'd been a model prisoner, if one could consider a drifting brain with no limbs or means of movement, or even indication that he'd exited
his catatonia to be a model for reform. The Longbow troops had begun wondering if the brain was even alive anymore, or if the shock of being defeated by Task
Force Impulse had finally done the King's fragile mind in entirely. But the doctors assured the ward officers that the brain was still alive, if not
especially active.
With the Rikti returned, more and more Longbow were being shuffled elsewhere to attempt to help increased incursions within Crey's Folly, Founders, and the
Lost's attacks all over the city. The Clockwork King's catatonic state was considered to be a lesser threat, and so the guard detail steadily dwindled,
eventually with only a pair of guards and psi dampeners serving as sentinels to a once-feared villian.
Thus, there were only two Guardians left the day that the psychic registers blipped.
"Oh, hey..." Smith noted, looking at the device. "Someone's throwing around some pretty powerful psi in this vicinity."
"It coming from the Tube King here?"
"No. Inbound, not emanating."
"Then it don't matter."
There was a flatline beep as the psi-sensor tuned out, and for a moment, both guards could almost swear they heard a little girl yelling distantly...but then
it went away.
And then the monitors began beeping again.
"...we have alpha wave activity..."
...penny....
The Guardian at the monitor started sweating under his cowl as he watched the monitors begin to flair up. "Shit, shit, shit. Get someone to ramp up those
dampeners, we've got a full blown reaction here!"
...Penny....
The tube began to glow a sickly pinkish white as the Guardian sighed in relief when the psi readings died down. "Yeah, doesn't matter how powerful you
are, Mr. Brain. We got enough anti-psi here to lock down a Rikti regiment. And the two of us couldn't get you out if we tried anyway. So just go on back to
your nap. No brains for you to control, and no Clockwork for you to call in."
....fools....
"Kringman, why can I hear his voice in my head? Aren't the buffers up?" Smith asked.
"Yeah, but....he shouldn't be able to push through them...."
You mean....these?
The two Longbow looked up at a creak in the ceiling, before a small number of tiny Clockwork fell from the roof, landing in the cell. Kringman's eyes
bulged in terror as he recognized the blocky shapes that formed their torsos......the shapes of the psi-emitters that were fueling the dampening signal.
We are leaving. You will not stop us.
"Open fire, open fire!"
The glass around the brain and eyes of the Clockwork King was not particularly durable, but the bullets seemed to spang off it as if hitting armor plate
nonetheless. There was a creaking groan of tortured metal before an enormous arm wrenched through the floor, already
connected to a shoulder joint below the tube that hadn't been there before. The Guardians dove for cover as the Clockwork approached their master....and
the very cell that had been holding him reshaped itself into his new body. Panels flew off walls and bent themselves into place to form armor. Gears and joints
shattered and reformed into hands and feet. Superstructure, limbs, coolant...it all seemed to build around the single tube as the massive archvillain
reconstituted himself. And around him, his minions in turn began to form. Like undead from the earth, they rose, winking diodes and sparking joints, and soon
they began to assemble others, a massive horde, backed by large Princes that dwarfed the men.
One or two went down to the Longbow gunfire before it dropped off as the two Guardians realized how little they could do to stop the oncoming horde. Turning,
they ran through the emergency door, slamming the lock into place behind them just before the sea of Clockwork became a tidal wave, smashing through the walls
and adding to itself with every demolished piece of scrap...
***
"Talk to me," Gaussian said, pulling up his phone.
"You've got a grade A problem heading your way, chief," the Vanguard liason to Ziggursky Penitentary said. "The Clockwork King just busted
out and he's on a red eye path through the sewers for the RWZ. Estimated ETA is in about twenty minutes."
"....the girl. Yin. Damn, the rumors were true. We can't warn Task Force Trafalgar in time. I guess they're on their own....make a note of this
phenomena though, Frank. If the Rikti ever got the idea to go after the King instead of the Queen, I think it's safe to say they'd be able to find bait
all too easily...."
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."