[spoiler]This is the second chapter to my OffTopic RP campaign, [i]When Cøckroaches Fly[/i]. Open to all.[/spoiler] [b][i]Somewhere in... another... deep, dark chamber...[/i][/b] Wood and saliva like paper, made into and from a dried pulp, chewed together by invertebrate mandibles. This was what the walls of the place were made of, and every passage slithered together into a humming necropolis— [i]a Labyrinth of Echoes[/i]. Within its heart was darkness made redundant by a thousand compound eyes, all of them piercing through it to gaze at what was at the chamber’s center: a glistening red cocoon, suspended from floor to ceiling to wall by a dozen strings— or arteries. Inside this cocoon was the one that had been awaited to hatch for who knew how long... because no one in His audience had any concept of time... But He would. The one of the horde’s flesh and man’s blood would count on [i]fingers[/i] how many units of time it would take for OffTopic to perish under His legion, and the horde held a visceral truth within themselves that the time would not be long. But now, another time of rejoicing was upon them. From within the naked womb, something pushed against its walls. On one side, the moist skin rose and tented, and the audience shifted to acknowledge it. The skin continued to rise until it ruptured, and a wash of orange plasma flooded out from the stringy aperture and onto the floor; the audience converged on the liquid and lapped it up like six-legged hounds. And as they drank, a single glistening appendage— a hominid leg, foot and all— extended from the spout. Immediately, His audience beheld His arrival with great veneration and spread themselves away from His ground so that the rest of Him may fully hatch. With the leg came an arm, and another, and another— until an impossible proboscis slowly slid into existence like a wayward saber. And at the base of it was a set of perfect red eyes— [i]oh how His audience chirped in the marvel of it all[/i]!— and a pair of magnificent antennae, too. Then, just like that, He was upon them in all His majesty, and His legion sang a high, eldritch song with their legs. He stood vast and looked upon them, and they told Him in a thousand voices that He must lead their charge against humanity. They told Him that if He was lost to them, all the small things in the world would perish beneath the iron foot of man. And so He obliged, and promptly flew from the Labyrinth of Echoes on two great wings. His legion followed, and until the sun set behind the horizon of OffTopic, the song wouldn’t end. — [b][i]Elsewhere— the household of FitnessGramPacer...[/i][/b] Equipped with a mace given by StoneFlare and a (now empty) pistol given by RingLeader, Milton’s confidence in fending off the encroaching insect invasion of OffTopic is slapped across his grinning face as he and Fitness walk towards the latter user’s house, which is only a few dozen yards in front of them. “Oooooo, looks like a cozy place you’ve got here!” Milton chimes. “Yeah,” Fitness replies, “looks that way from the outside, doesn’t it?” In their path, beneath their field of vision, is the dried corpse of a small lizard, its body resembling that of a sucked-dry juice packet before being crushed to pieces beneath Fitness’ boot as he walks onward. “Well yeah,” Milton says, looking to Fitness, “is it different on the inside or something?” “You could say that,” Fitness says, smirking. Milton narrows his eyes at his companion before looking back at the house. The place seems like any other suburban nest from where Milton can see; a foundation of painted wood and bricks, two floors, a few windows. But upon stepping onto its porch and peering through its front doorway after Fitness opens it and steps inside, Milton’s eyes and mouth gaped. Every ceiling, every wall, every floor of the house was completely reinforced by steel alloy. The furniture inside looked jarring amongst the full metal domain. “Oh,” Milton said bluntly. “Yeah,” Fitness says, going to his fridge to get a sandwich or something, “you can never be too prepared out here; OffTopic can be a crazy place sometimes.” “[i]Ohhh[/i] [b][i]yeah[/i][/b]!” Milton cheers, pumping his mace in the air, “This place is [b]perfect[/b] for an apocalypse!” He jogs into the house and puts a hand on one of the walls. “I mean look at this— how could you go wrong with[b][i]AAAAAAAGH WHAT THE FUÇK IS THAT[/i][/b]??!!” Milton flies back and away from the door as a foot-long red centipede slithers in through the open front door. In fighting reflex, Fitness quickly sets his sight on the hundred-legged fiend from across the room, grabs a nearby kitchen knife, and tosses it at his target. The knife strikes the upper carapace of the thing, splitting it in half, and ricochets out the door with a flurry of yellow bug juice. Fitness hurries over to the door. “Never leave the door open,” he remarks as he passes by Milton, whose nude body is plastered up against a nearby wall in fear; he stares on at the remains of the centipede and then at Fitness in shocked silence. As he steps back onto his porch to collect his knife, Fitness rises to see a dark figure standing in the distance, about a quarter of a mile away. It stands upright on two thin legs, but it crosses two pairs of arms at its chest. It has some sort of long, narrow appendage extending from its face, and it seems to stare back directly at Fitness with a collection of red eyes. “[i]Who are you[/i]...?” Fitness murmurs, squinting in alert confusion through his mask at the strange entity. Suddenly, two transparent wings rise from behind the figure, and with a shrill, buzzing hum, they begin to flap into a blur until the figure ascends into the sky, disappearing amongst the clouds above. Fitness’ gaze followed it while the thing was visible in flight, and he holds it at the sky as he works out what the next move is in his head. Milton peeks his head out from the front doorway behind him. “Should I... close the door now? Or are you coming back in?” he asks awkwardly. Then, suddenly, the air begins to hum around the two users, rising in volume at the second, and they glance around in confusion. “What is that?” Milton chitters anxiously, the hairs on his neck standing up, “Fit, what is that?” “I don’t know, Milton, I don’t know every— oh. [i]That’s[/i] what it is.” Fitness cøcks his knuckleguns and Milton wheezes in horror as thick yellow tendrils of flying, swarming wasps— thousands of them— descend from the clouds above them and begin slithering towards the house like an enormous, writhing octopus. Fitness turns and runs back into the house, leaving Milton to behold the encroaching invertebrate nightmare. “Close the door, Milton,” Fitness shouts behind him over the deafeningly loud buzzing, “I’m going down to my basement to get some... [i]repellant[/i].” But both the buzzing and his own inner terror drowns out Fitness’ words from Milton’s mind, and he simply begins screaming like a school-girl as the wasp hordes close in with a hive-minded fury. [spoiler][b]FIGHT![/b][/spoiler]