CrushDaddyXx
Zeke my dood, I am about to give you soooo many good songs, you have no idea. I’ve got an entire folder labeled “combat jingles” sitting on my desktop for exactly these kinds of emergencies.
Dodough
What song would actually work well for a fight?
CrushDaddyXx
The obvious choice would be Hungry by Rob Bailey. It works on two levels. First, Zeke is literally fighting an apocalypse. Second, he is single-handedly carrying this entire forum on his back right now with his fic.
ThatFedoraGuy
^Crush.
Considering at the start of all this, the forum was practically stagnant and borderline approaching Aslum levels of insanity over no new content, as unfortunate as Zeke’s unbelievable situation is, the way he sincerely writes his fanfic and the fact that he is able to uncover so much lore…and now this cliffhanger?
Yeah, it’s no wonder why this forum became as rabid as it did. It’s like rapidly bombarding a crowd of people from a century ago a bunch of YouTube ads nonstop, the ones that show all of humanity’s progress, products, jokes, documentaries, achievements, music, etc, and expecting them to not go mad with curiosity over everything they never believed could be real or possible, and then demanding to see more.
Pinochle
| What song would actually work well for a fight? |
Considering that Zeke is asking for something fitting, I wonder if the style of music has effects. Appropriate chase music = faster run speed, etc. Dood is now his own soundtrack.
Kelasgre
So, I think I’ve just found the perfect song for Zeke to sing. Honestly, I don’t know if it could be any more perfect - the lyrics are incredibly ironic in this context. He’d essentially be spelling out the plan right to their faces as it unfolds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE&list=RDz5rRZdiu1UE&start_radio=1
Caboodle
That sounds like an excellent way for Zeke to be tempting fate. Remember that Marek spent his entire life sabotaging the pod and it kept regenerating. I’m just saying, maybe we shouldn’t taunt the psychic apocalypse.
MushroomCleric
That’s because Marek wasn’t filled with the power of the Beastie Boys.
ElkZombie
I mean, Van Halen’s Eruption never goes out of style.
The_Spanish_Inquisition
TIME TO GO THROUGH THE FILES. THROUGH THE DOCUMENTATION. I HAVE A SONG TO FIND.
One recommendation here with a semi-fitting song: I Ain’t Your Savior by Bullets and Octane.
ElTerrible00
I was thinking Angel of Death by Slayer. Or something along those lines. But I’m liking I Ain’t Your Savior.
Gavinfoxx
Let’s see…
Barracuda by Heart
Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue
Fuel by Metallica
Ridiculously_Average_Guy
The Zeke runs must be fun as fuck now. Challenging as all hell, too, trying to escape the Black Teeth from his baseline.
FarFieldVanishes
| Zeke runs must be fun as fuck now. |
You’d think so but we’ve hit a wall. The modders are still trying to figure out how to get Patch into the Witness Chambers. Plus, we don’t know how we’re going to get the PC from The MIZ into the Chapel Pit.
There’s an argument right now and everyone is split. Some are saying that we should just script an abduction event and teleport the PC over. Some are saying we actually have to build the proper infrastructure for a portal somewhere in The MIZ.
In short, we’re still working on it.
Gilar
Zeke needs a list of 2-3 songs for every opportunity so he can use buffs immediately without waiting for the forum.
Raj
^Gilar. I’m moderately surprised he hasn’t asked for a thread where a bunch of different songs are posted yet.
Reader
I know a lot of people are recommending rock songs, but I really think it should be a sad song for all the thousands of people who got killed.
RedMonty
^Reader. So I’m gonna recommend something that isn’t what people would probably go with initially. This isn’t a chase or a fight really.
This is a mercy kill and a lullaby kind of song. Besides, he ain’t performing for the Deadlands. It’s just his group, the victims and the Baby Fracture.
My top contenders are Time is Running Out by Muse and Blackhole Sun by Soundgarden
KickInator
I agree. A sad song might be better.
HollowHeartsClub
Thank you. Someone finally said what I’ve been thinking. Let’s all stop for a second and think about what’s actually trapped in the pod. It’s a wall of people. They are trapped memories, emotions, and whatever is left after years of being dissolved into an alien machine.
All that Zeke has heard from them has been fear, grief, confusions, and begging for the sweat release. The Second Fracture is built out of suffering and fear, and I don’t think the answer to that is to attack it harder.
Maybe Zeke needs to do the opposite. He should soothe the victims and give them peace by playing something mournful.
Zeke, you should play them something human, and something that reminds them that they were people before they became part of the pod. A funeral dirge makes more sense to me than trying to attack the apocalypse with metal.
StoryLeech
What are you saying right now?! The Second Fracture isn’t some kind of sad ghost choir. It’s an extinction-level threat that’s been using the absorbed minds of thousands of people to grow an intelligence.
You don’t soothe rabies, you don’t comfort cancer, and you don’t sing a lullaby to an apocalypse baby.
Zeke’s entire plan is to hit it with something aggressive enough to overload it. He needs a loud, chaotic, violent, and emotionally overwhelming song. The whole point is to fully destabilize EVERYTHING before the Second Fracture wakes up.
Sure, the victims deserve some peace. I’m not going to argue against that. But the Second Fracture deserves blunt force trauma in the form of thrash metal.
BrightSky18
Think (Don’t Fear) The Reaper would also be a good option to send off both the victims and the nascent fracture.
Daniel
I think The Only Thing They Fear is You is up there. Shit, anything from Doom fits the theme of killing big shit. The name almost summarizes this entire thing. Kinda like…its meant to be.
WireApe
Sounds like the job is up to “Dragonforce - Through the Fire and the Flames.”
Blazer66
It’s great that we’re all taking this so seriously. At least that elterrible guy isn’t sneaking in another self-advert in this trying moment.
Mithras131
Rip & Tear! It’s you versus alien horror hell. Got to rip and tear and shred until it’s done.
EnSchola
Doom. BFG Division. Because what better to symbolize a BIG BOOM that kills pretty much anything? Aka the BFG.
Bilbo
Obvious choice of the song would be Another One Bites the Dust, although I’d personally prefer You Give Love a Bad Name. Hotel California would be funny.
Anonymous_S
I still say he can befriend the Fracture using this song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
BaryBybax
Dammit anon. I hate your face.
FortyForty
Get Ready to Die by Andrew WK.
AnywayHeresWonderwall
I think there’s only one real song for this type of situation. And I think we all know what I’m going to suggest.
The Fracture hears the opening chords and immediately kills itself to avoid listening to a guy with an acoustic guitar at a party.
Shootingblnks
No wonderwall. But I’m liking where your head is.
If we all really want Zeke to end the apocalypse, he should play:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w
Imagine being an eldritch monster made out of stolen consciousnesses and then suddenly, BABY SHARK DO DO DO DO DO. The Second Fracture would self-destruct just to make it stop. Fastest apocalypse speedrun in history.
Hambone
Shooting, you joke but there was literally a lawsuit out in Oklahoma about a jail torturing inmates by playing Baby Shark on a loop.
CrimsonProphecy88
If I’m trapped in a flesh wall, don’t send me off with sad violins. Hit the apocalypse with the nastiest beat drop that humanity has ever produced.
GrognarTheGreen
The Heaviest Matter of the Universe - Gojira
It sounds like an Earthquake fighting a Hurricane while God screams in the background.
PaperSnakes
Imagine trying to explain this whole fic to your friends.
“So, there’s this guy named Zeke and he’s nervous about all the abandoned buildings in the Glens. Now he’s performing a thrash-metal execution song on an embryonic god using magical tuning forks.”
Z3ke (Original Poster)
I’m ready. I’ve read everyone’s comments and arguments and everything. I’m NOT going to play Baby Shark. That’s not gonna happen and you all need help.
I’ve been sitting here in the back of the jeep and I need to address something. First, let me just say that you all seem to be forgetting that I don’t have access to YouTube or anything that’s not this forum. I can’t click on those videos that you’re all sending me. I’ve been able to piece together a few of the songs that you all suggested due to context alone, but that’s it.
Second, let me address the whole victims thing that you all are talking about. Everyone is getting caught up on the tragedy of this place and forgetting what’s actually happening in the basement of the pod. I get what you’re all saying. The people trapped in these walls deserve some mourning or funerals or to have their names etched into a stone plinth or something.
But that’s not what is happening here. I can’t really give them peace and I can’t get them out of the walls and that sucks but…what do you want me to do? This isn’t a memorial service. I need a song that is going to kill the pod before the Second Fracture breaks loose. And I don’t even know if it’s going to work.
Elnor and Jackie have basically been running themselves ragged to give me this shot, and I can’t waste it on a nice, sad song. With Elnor, whenever he has touched the pod to map out the “emotional fault lines” he kept getting worse and worse. His hands won’t stop shaking and he’s lost blood because his nose is bleeding and he’s barely even cognizant for what is happening right now.
Jackie is forcing herself to walk through a living nightmare of a pod with screaming faces and reaching hands. She absolutely hates this place and it’s almost like it gets to her more than it does to Elnor and me. She’s been walking through the pod and I can see her body wanting to flinch like something is about to grab her, but she’s still out there helping to jab the glyph rods into the wall because she thinks it might actually save some people out in the Deadlands.
I’m not going to play a funeral dirge. I need something that is going to hit the Second Fracture hard enough to break it before it wakes up. So…I’m going with Rip & Tear by Mick Gordon.
BrokenKing42
Marek spent years fighting the pod and failing to stop the apocalypse. Now Zeke is about to finish the job with a song dedicated to demon homicide.
CrushDaddyXx
DOOM music for the doom baby. Humanity remains undefeated.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
We’re in the garage and the the jeep is pointed out the exit. Jackie is doing final checks on the engine. We’re all a little bit nervous. Well, except for Elnor because he’s mostly just passed out in the passenger seat.
He’s half-conscious with his head leaning against the wall and every few seconds he flinches like he just heard something whispering into his ear.
I’ve got my guitar out and sitting across my lap. My hands are shaking too, which is annoying because I can feel my Persona skill activate and trying to keep me calm but it’s not really working.
The glyphs are in place and everything is connected. We should be ready to go in a bit.
***
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Jackie finally finished her engine checks and climbed up into the jeep and started the engine.
It roared to life and she buckled herself in and gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. I could tell it was taking everything she had not to just slam her foot down on the gas and tear out of the garage immediately.
She looked over her shoulder and gave me a nod letting me know that she was ready. I took a breath, adjusted my grip on the guitar, and activated the glyph that I’d carved into the back of it.
The connection hit and I could feel all the glyph rods that we’d planted throughout the pod wake up. Then I started playing.
The first notes of Rip & Tear hit and all the glyph rods I could see lit up instantly. Blue-white light exploded through the corridors and the rods started vibrating violently and the sound rolled through the pod. NullSigil was right in that the place was acting like a tuning fork now.
I felt the sound. I felt the vibrations of the music traveling through the pod and creep up the jeep tires and latch onto me and spread through my legs and chest until my ribs were humming along with the music. The sound filled every inch of the pod, amplified and carried by the glyph rods.
At first it was just the song. Mick Gordon was playing out in the pod and it got into me, but it was still just a song. Then my skills activated. Instrument Mastery and Persona and Performance all clicked together and fed something into the glyphs.
I felt the magic pouring out of me and into the air all around us. It spread through the rods and surged into the walls and the corridors and suddenly the music wasn’t just music anymore.
Around about then, the screaming started. Faces burst from the walls. There were hundreds of them and they pushed out of the metal. Their mouths were stretched impossibly wide as they screamed into the music. Eyes snapped open and focused on us. Hands clawed up from the surface. Bodies convulsed beneath the walls. Arms reached for the jeep.
They were screaming at everything. They were screaming at me and the pod and each other and the nightmare that had trapped them for all those years. I locked eyes with one of the faces as I kept playing and I can’t even tell you what emotions the thing was feeling. It was rage and relief and terror and insanity all bound up in one face.
The face screamed at me and the music screamed back. Then black fluid started leaking from the eyes of the face. It started with the eyes and it started small, just a few rivulets that dripped down the face and got in its mouth. But then there was more. It gushed from the eyes and the mouth and the nose in thick streams, and I could tell it was the same black liquid from the reservoir down in the basement. It was the same liquid that had tried to reach out and grab Elnor back when we’d been exploring.
The faces kept screaming. Some were crying and some were begging for me to stop and some were laughing and it all blended together into a horrible chorus that merged with the song itself.
The screams and prayers and incoherent rambling joined with the music and fed into the glyph network and carried through the pod. And as the sound spread, it carried all the emotions that were being fed it into.
All my fear and all my anger and all my disgust at the pod and what it represented joined in with the pleading and the panic and the prayers from the victims. It merged together and grew and multiplied.
Persona kept me from completely freaking while all this was happening. Persona amplified the emotions I was forcing into the music. Instrument Mastery slammed into both of them and fused it all together into something bigger.
It was exactly like the Chapel Pit. It felt exactly like when we were running from the Black Teeth. It was a single, impossible moment where all my skills stopped feeling separate and suddenly became one big thing.
The music sharpened and all the notes had an intent behind them now. The emotional force of the performance slammed through the glyph rods and carried itself into the pod.
The faces screamed louder and the corridors buckled and somewhere beneath us I could feel the Second Fracture waking up.
Something flashed in the corner of my vision and I didn’t even need to look at the notification to know what just happened. Instrument Mastery had just ranked up. I swear I could feel the difference immediately.
It didn’t hit the actual music or the feeling behind it. Instead, it changed my control over it. I could feel the weight behind every note. It was like my hands suddenly understood the guitar better and my playing became much more instinctive.
The glyph rods reacted immediately. They started shrieking loud enough that the entire pod started to tremble. Performance Rank 7. Instrument Mastery Rank 5. Persona Rank 4. All three of my skills were working together.
The music became overwhelming. The garage started to convulse around us and I could tell that the pod was fighting back.
The walls bulged inward violently, as if all the weight of the victims was pressing against them. Corridors twisted and metal screamed and entire sections of the ceiling bent downwards with an awful grinding noise.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the limbs started reaching for us. Arms burst from the wall all around us. Half-formed torsos dragged themselves free from the surface while black fluid beaded on the walls and dripped to the floor below. Fingers clawed desperately at the air, trying to reach me as I was standing in the back of the jeep.
Jackie was wide-eyed in the driver’s seat as she watched all this. She looked between the collapsing garage and the open air in front of us and screamed out: “ZEKE, WE NEED TO GO!”
But I kept playing. I was trapped in the song now. I played as the arms reached for me. I played as the pod started to crumble. I played as my fingers bled and one of my guitar strings snapped and the tension of it drew a line of blood from my hand.
All my survival instincts started screaming at me to tell Jackie to floor it and get us the hell out of there before we were crushed flat. But the song had me now and I knew that if I stopped playing, it was all over.
We couldn’t leave yet. I knew it and Jackie knew it and Elnor, if he was still conscious, would have known it too. It wasn’t courage or heroism or anything like that. It was simply that we all knew that if the music died, the pressure in the pod would ease and the thing underneath us would recover. If we ran now, then all of this was for nothing. All the victims and all the risks we took and all that Elnor had put himself through and all that Jackie had faced, it all would have been wasted.
So I kept playing.
My fingers were a mess. The strings were biting into my skin and blood was running down the neck of the guitar and it was making everything all slippery. The notes I was playing kept sending burning pain through my arms from all the feedback I was getting from the glyph rods and it felt like the guitar was burning me from the inside out.
The garage kept buckling. Metal was folding and twisting like soft clay and the floor was sinking underneath the jeep’s tires. The ceiling dropped lower, inch by inch. All around us the pod was screaming.
Faces were everywhere, pushing out of the wall and overlapping on each other with expressions of terror and rage and confusion pasted onto them. Arms stretched out from the walls but they couldn’t quite reach the jeep and instead just clawed at the air.
Then the wall on the far side of the garage suddenly split open with this horrible, wet, tearing noise. Something forced itself out and both Jackie and I jerked our heads to see what it was.
I want to say that it was a massive limb but…that doesn’t really explain it well enough. It was a braid of bodies, like the pod had taken dozens of victims and fused them together and stacked them and stitched them into a single obscene reaching arm.
Hands were layered over hands. Arms were fused into it at wrong angles. Faces were embedded throughout it, half-submerged into the mass of the arm while their mouths opened and closed with screams and laughter as the thing stretched out across the garage towards me.
Time seemed to halt as the thing reached the jeep. It lunged and the hands stretched for my throat and then two things happened all at once.
It’s hard to describe what it felt like. It felt like I was both inside the music and outside it at the same time. It was like the song wasn’t just sound anymore, it was stretched all throughout the pod and I could feel everything inside it but at the same time it was just a song and how can you feel through a song. But somehow I did and I felt something break.
Whatever the hell the Second Fracture was, or whatever the hell the pod had built, it had finally given way.
The screaming in the pod changed. Up until then, the entire pod had been shrieking nonstop and it was like a chorus had been laid over the song. The victims were screaming and the walls were screaming and the Second Fracture was screaming. But then it all just fell apart.
One by one, the faces went quiet. A woman’s face, near the garage entrance, relaxed and slowly sank beneath the wall. Another face across from her went slack and empty. Black fluid poured from her eyes and drip drip dripped onto the floor.
Whatever was happening had started to spread. All across the pod, the noise collapsed into silence. The crying stopped and the begging stopped and the prayers stopped and the laughing stopped. Even the thing reaching us began to come apart.
The fused arm started to unmake itself. That’s the best word for it. It was like whatever was holding it together had suddenly vanished. Flesh split apart into individual grasping hands that then collapsed into black sludge. Huge wet clumps of the stuff splattered against the garage floor as it disintegrated.
Elnor jerked upright in the passenger seat and, for the first time since the basement, he finally looked fully there. His eyes were wide and his breathing came out jerky and ragged.
And while all that happened, Jackie finally floored it. The jeep lurched forward as the garage gave up completely around us. The walls collapsed. The ceiling cracked and caved. Glyph rods throughout the pod started overloading.
Black fluid flooded across the garage floor like a tidal wave. I nearly got thrown out the back of the jeep as we hit the exit. I reached out with a hand to steady myself and my guitar nearly flew out of my grip because my hands were so slick with blood it made everything slipper.
The jeep burst through the collapsing garage entrance we shot out into the eye of the storm.
I was only barely able to hang on but eventually I managed to wrestle myself into the backseat and sit down. All around me I was looking at complete chaos.
The sky above the Deadlands was twisting in on itself. The best description I can say is it was like the entire sky was a sink and something had just pulled the plug and it had created a massive whirlpool. Lightning flickered once and then died.
The winds that had been screaming all around us collapsed. That was probably the most unnatural part of it. They didn’t weaken and then naturally go away. They just stopped. The Janus Storm was imploding and we were right smack dab in the middle of it.
I twisted around and looked back at the pod. It was still there but it too was crumbling. It was folding in on itself and slowly turning into a sinking massive ruin. And all around it, everything else was dissolving.
The sky was changing. Clouds were tearing apart and dragging upwards into nothing. The storm was unraveling and then…it was gone.
I felt…I don’t know what I felt. Maybe it was supposed to be a solemn moment. Maybe I should have been feeling something. The Janus Storm had been protecting the Deadlands and The MIZ from the alien virus that had caused the first Fracture, but now it was gone and future humanity was screwed and I should have probably felt something about that. But at that point, I was just too exhausted.
The engine of the jeep roared all around us and it felt wrong. I think I’d grown used to the sound of the Janus Storm tearing through the sky, and now that it was gone everything had suddenly gone quiet and the engine was being offensive.
Jackie had her hands locked on the wheel and her eyes were forward and her jaw was tight, like she was afraid that if she relaxed even a little, the Second Fracture would still be reaching out at us with its giant face-hand thingy.
The music was gone now and I could feel its absence in my body. It had left a dull ache and nothing about me felt good. My hands were still wrapped around my guitar and blood had dried in ugly streaks across the strings. My lungs were pumping like bellows and my body felt like I’d just run a marathon. I just sat back and let Jackie take us wherever she was going.
The Janus Storm died completely at that moment. For the first time in years, the skies above the Deadlands were still, and that was almost worse than the storm had been. I know you’re all probably thinking “how could silence be worse than the storm?” And I’ll tell you.
It’s because the walls of sand - the vast, suspended mountains of it - hung in the air. Winds had been keeping the sand up and swirling it around, but now there was no Janus Storm. No Janus Storm meant no winds. No winds meant that gravity was suddenly very angry at the mountains of sand still living in the sky.
It all started falling around us. The world broke and tons of sand fell from the sky and crashed down across the Deadlands in slow, impossible waves. It was an avalanche of dunes falling all around us.
Jackie didn’t even look at it. She just put her food down and drove.