World a Day, #5

Something a bit different this time! I really enjoyed the Chasers' world yesterday, so I decided to expand on it instead of making a new world. I whipped up a stripped-down version of the episode randomizer I'd been planning, plugged in the info from yesterday's world, and started writing based on the results.

If you want to check out the episode randomizer, it's here. It's not user-friendly yet, and the names for various elements can't be edited yet, but if I decide to polish this version of the tool instead of completely changing it up, that'll be included. (The series generator, which is more polished, is here.)

Oh -- I wrote too much about the first episode and spent too long making the tool, so it's just a description of the first episode. I like the details, though.
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Episode 1:

The Chasers track the dataflow of elementals to a quiet, calm part of town, a residential area that’s busy during the day, but serenely empty tonight.

As they’re trying to pinpoint the exact center building hosting whatever’s calculating the elementals into existence, Savanna suddenly has to duck and roll backwards, barely evading an elemental’s surprise attack. The other Chasers aren’t used to combat, and we see them stumbling over themselves as they try to turn book learning into practice.

Savanna reaches out, and space tesseracts between her and a monkey bar at the nearby jungle gym until she’s hanging with one hand from the bar. Her other hand crackles with a cloud of zeroes and ones, the same glitch pattern as has formed around the elemental. She stares at it, hanging from the bar with one hand, grinning as the data blast in her hand shifts through colors to a phosphorous white, then clenches her fist and snaps that aura and it spreads across her body. She grabs the monkey bar with both hands and starts swinging, and on the third swing, she launches herself with knees out to slam into the elemental, at the same time as tesseracting space towards it, so she suddenly snaps into hand-to-hand distance. We get a cool fight sequence of them fighting around the jungle gym.

When the fight’s finished, the Chasers identify the exact computers that created the botnet, though they aren’t running anymore. Thread’s able to piece the calculation together, though, and he can get a basic connection running to whatever source the calculation channels elementals from. He gets it running, and Savanna combines the logical channel with her own ability to distort spatial relationships, bringing her into a virtual space. She’s half-rendered, clipping through a wall as she sees the man we’ll come to know as Garrison, walking away from her through a pulsing red field of stalactites and stalagmites that seem to claw at him without moving, none of them finding grip. Savanna’s running the graphical calculations in her head that keep her rendered in this space, buying her the time to see him lower himself to his knees, running his hand across the ground, and seeing it pull together into curves like a giant hand starting to clench – and in the last agonized second before her calculations aren’t enough to keep her in this space, she sees his face, Garrison, the summoner of the elementals.

When she unplugs back to physical space, the rest of the Chasers have traced another elemental burst, a few miles away. They scramble there, not noticing the van parked near their destination, only noticing the giant elemental towering over the city.

Fight scene ensues. After a few halfhearted attempts from the rest of the Chasers, Savanna makes a speech about what they’re up against – this thing’s going to kill people. It’s already destroyed one building, and Savanna calls on Thread to count exactly how many people died in that attack. It’s a sobering number, and he jumps to a better vantage point, and starts calling out opportunities and dangers – basically serving as an AWACS. With that help, the team rallies and defeats the elemental. After that Savanna distorts its size down, and as it shrinks, tries to interrogate it, asking what the elementals are here for, what they fear, who they’re following. She gets no answer that she can understand -- “Nothing but pain, nothing but pleasure, and no one at all.” She’s left with a mystery as it vanishes from reality.