The Abyss is calling...

[Eggman Empire]

"Reynolds, what the F is going on?!" SGT Jay Romero called out to the man on the roof top in front of him. The man who's back was to the Sargent, was SPC Craig Reynolds. He was in the Sargent's Decon squad, and had been pronounced dead but three hours ago. Romero still couldn't quite believe whole chain of events that had led up to this point. It had all started but a day ago. Romero, Reynolds, and four other privates in 7th Chemical Company's Third Decontamination platoon; First Squad were on a routine clearing patrol looking for corpses in the quarantined city of Vlask. Reynolds had been taking point, and had found a body in one of the houses the squad was clearing. Reynolds and another private were in the process of trying to move the corpse into a body bag when the thing had literally burst, covering the squad with a contaminated pink goop. Reynolds had the extreme misfortune to have his face plate punctured by what was believed to be a piece of bone. After he was rushed to a med-center, his condition steadily grew worse.

Within twenty-four hours of coming in contact with the goop, Reynolds had died. Or that's what Romero was told. Less then three hours after being declared dead, Reynolds apparently came back to life, and went on a murder spree. After killing three medical technicians, four guards, and an officer, Reynolds had escaped the small FOB in the middle of Vlask, with Romero hot on his tail. Reynolds had finally ran into a small apartment building and ran up to the roof, Romero still chasing him. Now, here they were. On a roof top with Romero wondering what the Hell was going on.

"Reynolds, dammit, Answer my question!" Romero snarled. Reynolds didn't turn, but he did reply.

"Ah, mortals with your silly questions." "Reynolds" said with a chuckle. Romero felt very cold suddenly. Reynolds' voice was not that of his own, but rather it seemed like a thousand different eerily cheery voices speaking directly into Romero's head.

"Reynolds.....What's wrong with you? They said you died..." Romero asked, feeling his courage slipping. "Reynolds" giggled.

"Ah, silly fool. You friend Reynolds died a long time before his mortal shell did. What you are witnessing is the birth of something truly remarkable. You should consider yourself honored to behold it." The thing explained. Romero felt every hair on his skin prick up.

"Birth of what?" He asked cautiously. The thing giggled again.

"Me of course." It said like that would explain everything. "Reynolds" finally turned around, and Romero gasped at what he saw. From the neck down, the man looked fairly normal. Well, as normal as one could wearing blood-stained scrubs. But the face...It was the face that caused Romero's heart to freeze up just for a moment. The eyes were gone, and filling in the sockets were two globes of flickering white light. The smile was much larger then any normal human could ever manage, with the grin literally going from ear to ear. The eyes seemed bore into Romero's soul, rooting him to the spot. "It will be easier for me to show you then use words. Come, let me show you." The thing reached out it's hand, and despite every instinct screaming at him to run, Romero found himself rooted to the spot. It made contact with Romero's uniform, and his world promptly imploded in on itself.

----

A mere minute and a half later, the rest of the search party burst through the roof door, expecting to find Reynolds being detained by Romero. Instead, they found Romero curled up in a ball. A lieutenant rushed over to him.

"What happened? Where'd he go?" The Lt. asked. Romero let out a choked sob. The Lt. shook him roughly. "Dammit Sargent, get a hold of yourself. What happened? Where's Reynolds?" He demanded.

"Gone...swallowed by the abyss..." Romero muttered. The Lt. looked at him in confusion.

"Sargent, what are you talking about?" He asked. Romero emitted a strangled giggle.

"I saw it! The abyss is opened and I've seen it's every detail!" He suddenly spat out.

"Sargent, stop rambling and wake up, that's an order!" The Lt. snarled, and slapped the NCO in the face. Romero didn't respond to the slap, but kept talking.

"The abyss is hungry! Hungry for chaos, and rage, and insanity! We'll all be consumed by the oncoming madness! There's no way to stop it!" He screamed out. Before anyone could stop him, Romero lunged forward and snatched the Lt's sidearm and jammed it under his chin. "Only way out..." He sniffed.

*BANG!*

-----

Somewhere in Vlask, in an abandoned Tux shop, a figure turned towards the sound of the gunshot. It then returned to it's business, looking through the racks of suits for something to appeal to it's taste, it's eyes shining through the gloom. It finally found what it wanted: A three piece, white-on-black pinstriped suit with a black tie, a top hat, and a pair of Italian dress shoes with a diagonal white strip going down both sides of each shoe.

"This will do nicely." It spoke. "I'll find the cane later." It looked outside once more into the dark city streets and laughed. "I'm awake all, and I'm hungry..."

-----

Sammyace Kintober bolted upright from bed with a gasp. He sat there panting heavily, not quite sure what had happened. It was like he'd had the worst nightmare in history, but it was still haunting him even though he was awake. He sat there for several more minutes, before his adrenaline slowed down and weariness crept back over him. As he lay back down, he still couldn't shake the feeling that something bad had just popped up out there, and he was on it's hit list.

[Sarah Tintagyl]

OOC: Looking forward to see this continuing.

[Eggman Empire]

OOC:The Abyss is calling...it wants to know if your refrigerator is running.

IC: Kintober stared at the speaker on the floor of the Senate. The man was currently discussing how to work together with the Federal Republic of Grøenlandia to co-ordinate the building of of a highway that would connect both Eggman Empire and Grøenlandia to each other via roadways. The speech included cost numbers, grafts, and charts. And the whole thing bored Kintober to no end. It wasn't just the boredom that Kintober hated about these types of meetings. His mind tended to wander. And in the past recent weeks, his mind seemed to enjoy wandering off the deep end.

Kintober idly looked out a window near him that showed Robotropolis. As he watched, a nuke fell down from the sky, and exploded. He watched, uncaring as the blast wave enveloped the city and stormed through the Senate hall. The speaker, himself, and the rest of the assembly had their fleshy parts vaporized, leaving only their skeletons. Kintober then yawned as he watched the skeleton continue to blather on about figures and point to a burnt chart about the amount of manpower it would take to build a stretch of highway between Robotropolis and Isen.

Kintober blinked and shook his head and the whole facade vanished, replaced with reality once again. Kintober tried to focus, but soon he was imagining things again. This time he imaged the speaker had turned into Mr. S and the rest of the senators had morphed into shifting, black demons wearing Mr. S' facial expression.

"...and that is why the road will lead us to ruin! The only way to stop it is to declare war on Grøenlandia! You must wipe them out with all our weapons at our disposal!" "Mr. S" proclaimed, pointing at Kintober. Great, now he was hearing things outside his head in addition to the little voice in the back of his mind that harassed him constantly. Kintober sighed and closed his eyes. He thought back on the past few weeks. The visions had been alarming at first, but as they grew more bizarre and frequent, Kintober found himself ignoring them. Kintober knew he was most likely insane, or at least had serious mental issues. But he could still do all the things that he normally did, and his hallucinations were quickly becoming background noise. So, the question was: Should he seek help now? Or see if he could go on the rest of his life seeing images that weren't there while still functioning normally? Kintober honestly couldn't care less about the answer.

"Hmm, your mind certainly is resilient. I'll give you that much credit. But it's only a matter of time before you give in and obey..."

Kintober perked up. Now that wasn't a hallucination or a little voice coming from his own mind. That was something else entirely. Kintober snorted. Most likely Mr. S. "Screw off and find yourself another leader to torment. You'll get nothing from me." He thought.

"That's what they all say. Still, I think I might take your advice and go after a few other leaders to manipulate as well. That Hannah girl certainly has a spark. And while she doesn't have your mind, she certainly has your mindset. I hear she's authorized your type of experiments to take place in her country. Secretly, of course." The voice chittered back. Kintober grinned.

"I suspect the only will she's going to bow to is Sarah's, and even that is suspect. You might as well find someone else." He thought smugly.

"I've yet to find someone else whose allowed these types of procedures to be carried out on such scale, unfortunately, and I have a vested interest in you to begin with, so I'm not going anywhere." The voice assured him.

"Why so interested in the Happy Smiler augmentation process?" Kintober thought back, intrigued.

"Hank" Was it's only reply.

Kintober understood immediately. "I see, if you can't get someone in charge to lob nukes around, you'll just use someone like him to start a war. Trying to have all your bases covered?"

"That, and have you seen what Hank can cause? Imagine a thousand of him running around. Bye for now..." It replied back, and with that, the voice disappeared. And for the rest of the day and into the night, Kintober was pestered by hallucinations involving Hanks of all sizes and shapes running around bringing the world to an end. Kintober was now completely certain he would be in the loony bin by the end of the year.

[Eggman Empire]

*9th Ex Division recruit holding center, Location:Classified*

It was a small compound, located some dozen or so miles outside the command post were the 9th Eggman Empire Amry Experimental Division was headquartered. The compound was known only as "Secondary 9th Div Recruit in-processing center." It's actual purpose was a holding facility for freshly minted, incoming Happy Smiler troops. While small, it was better defended then most of the bases that existed in Eggman Empire, able to hold of a small army. The security was second to none as well. Nestled into a mountain face, there was only one road to get in, with numerous checkpoints along the way. Just to enter the perimeter, you had to have top-secret clearance granted only by Kintober himself. Even trying to sneak in would be difficult. The base had been designed so any possible entrances like sewer mains or water passageways had numerous cameras, trip wires, heat sensors, and motion trackers in place to detect any interlopers. The architects of the base claimed not even a fly could get in. However, the architects did not plan on Mr. S.

Mr. S stared up at the 15 foot wall, built out of titanium and concrete, and topped with a tangle of barbed wire. It looked back down at itself. A three piece dress suit, top hat, and dress shoes. Not the infiltration apparel most would pick, but then again, Mr. S wasn't a person. With a chuckle, it knelt down, and pressed it's hand against the wall. The barrier began to crack and groan, and in a few moment's time, the section of the wall surrounding Mr. S' hand crumbled into dust. With a snort, it promptly walked through the hole, and into the base. Despite that section of ground being covered from all angles by infrared trip lasers, not a single one went off as Mr. S strolled through.

Reaching the back of the holding center, Mr. S did a repeat performance on the building's wall. Like the last time it'd done it, the wall disintegrated, and it strode through. It turns out Mr. S was in luck. On the other side of the wall was a stairwell that would lead down to the holding "barracks" for the Happy Smilers. After several flights down, Mr. S finally found one of the floors holding the troopers. With stealth not even the greatest spy in the world could master, he snuck down a few hallways until finally reaching one of the many holding rooms. A third repeat performance with it's hand allowed it to bypass one of the most difficult-to-hack electronic locks on the door, ever. It entered the room to find not beds, but black, casket-like, stasis pods. Each pod held a Happy Smilers, and there were thirty pods in this particular room. Mr. S cracked its knuckles and got to work.

It walked over to the nearest pod and placed its hand over the head. Mr. S stood there for a moment before shaking its head and moving on to the next one. It continued this process 26 more times. Finally at the 28th pod, Mr. S seemed to have found what it was looking for. Mr. S smashed the control panel on the side of the pod, and the action triggered a safety fail-safe that opened the pod. Mr. S was a tad surprised to find a female in it. Oh well, help is help. As soon as the lid had cleared, Mr. S reached forward an placed its hand on the female's forehead, and proceeded to "change" her mind about whom she served. Right as the process finished, warning klaxons began to blare. Mr. S looked down and saw the female still hadn't woken. That meant it would have to carry her back up all those flights of stairs, up the mountain, and through the woodlands to evade a conflict. It sighed. Sometimes being in the corporeal realm sucked. Effortlessly hoisting the unconscious super soldier onto its shoulder, Mr. S marched out of the room and back up the stairs. When he arrived at the hole in the wall, he saw his way blocked by several dozen heavily armed Happy Smilers, two Guardian APCs, a Hammerhead gunship hovering overhead. Mr. S chuckled. Fools...

With a simple wave of its hand, the troops surrounding him suddenly collapsed, writhing on the ground, choking for air. The APCs leveled their M242 Bushmaster chain guns at it, and the Hammerhead moved into a position to fire missiles at the target. Mr. S pointed its finger at one APCs, then pointed to the Hammerhead, then pointed back to the APCs. It snapped its fingers, and mere moments after doing so, all three vehicles opened fire on each other. The resulting explosions were spectacular, and when the dust and smoke cleared, Mr. S and its captive were nowhere to be seen.