ManaGun - Stage 03

Stage 3-1

Unsettling organ music wafted down from the haunted house as Charlie and Marcus approached the large iron gates that blocked their way to the attraction. Charlie couldn't help but think it was a shame that the carnival was evil, considering how much obvious care went into the meticulous decoration and theming of everything she'd seen.

Both she and Marcus had their managuns at the ready, but hadn't encountered a single enemy on their way to the haunted house. Marcus was certain that they concentrated their forces inside each attraction area, which was perfectly fine with Charlie. She could use the downtime from each onslaught of opponents tonight was going to force on her.

They reached the gates for the attraction and tried to push them open but they seemed locked in place. She looked over at Marcus but his gaze was focused on a small ticket booth next to the gate that she had somehow completely missed. She had a bad feeling as they drew closer to it and shrieked when the creepy puppet from the entrance suddenly popped into view, dressed in a completely different outfit from the first time they saw it.

"Ghoulish greetings from the haunted house! Tickets please!" it shouted enthusiastically, wrapped in bloody bandages like a disturbing wooden mummy.

Charlie and Marcus showed their tickets to the unsettling marionette and the gates slowly swung open.

"Test your courage inside these halls, with creaking doors and bloody walls! Grinning ghosts and vampire bats will seal your doom if you're not fast! Zombies moan and spirits shriek to make your knees grow soft and weak! The Lord and Lady of this manor await, so step right in and face your fate!" the barker said to them cheerfully before it disappeared out of sight once more.

Thunder and lightning roared overhead and Charlie gulped nervously as she followed Marcus through the gates. Once they'd gotten far enough away from the gate, it slammed shut behind them. Charlie jumped in place slightly but didn't dare turn around as three coffins shot up from the ground a short distance in front of them. Their lids fell away and rotted hands pulled mobile corpses dressed in elegant medieval fashion out of the coffins.

The corpses' empty eye sockets turned towards Marcus and Charlie before they started to shamble at them with outstretched arms. They weren't able to get very far once the two Agents started to fire away. The bodies literally blew apart with every bullet in a disgustingly gory display. The only thing that saved Charlie from throwing up was the small blessing that they didn't seem to have any blood.

"Zombies. Classic." Marcus said in a cheerful tone.

"Please tell me you're not having fun right now." Charlie groaned.

He laughed in lieu of an answer as he led the way towards the manor at the top of the hill. Several more zombies popped up from coffins that burst out of the ground on their way up but provided no challenge outside of being visually disturbing. It felt too easy, especially after the midway. Charlie didn't trust it.

Once they had fought their ways to the front doors of the manor, the doors exploded open as a massive swarm of bats flew out. Charlie tried her best to keep up with the swarm as it attacked them but she knew if it wasn't for Marcus's machine gun, they would have been overwhelmed. Even with it, they barely kept up. To make matters worse, zombies shambled slowly towards them from inside the manor.

"I got the bats, you focus on the zombies!" Marcus commanded, shouting to be heard over their gunfire and the shriek of the infinite swarm of bats.

Charlie nodded and started to blast away at the shambling corpses. The slight gap her diverted efforts created allowed a small handful of the bats to slip past Marcus. Both Agents suffered bites from the aggressive flying rodents but powered through the pain as they thinned out the enemies bit by bit. Eventually, they managed to kill everything and moved cautiously into the actual manor.

The inside of the manor was completely overrun with cobwebs. Dust covered everything and holes had rotted into the wooden walls. Smashed furniture and pictures lay all over the floor that had to be carefully navigated around. Glass crunched under Charlie's boots with nearly every step, which added an eerie, uneven percussion to the persistent organ music.

"I hate this." Charlie groaned quietly.

"Scared of the dark?" Marcus teased.

"No, it's the waiting. Knowing something's going to pop up but never knowing when." she clarified with her gun at the ready.

As if to mock her, a prop skeleton dropped from the ceiling right as she finished speaking. Charlie screamed and emptied the rest of her clip into it. The skeleton was torn to pieces from her barrage and her heart hammered in her chest as she stood there before it.

"Reload!"

Marcus burst into laughter as soon as her gun repeated its annoying reminder. She glared at him as she slammed her clip back into her gun but that only made him laugh harder. She growled as they moved into a large foyer with several doors and an enormous staircase that split off in two directions for upstairs.

"Alright, rookie's choice. Which way?" Marcus asked with more than a little mirth still in his voice.

"I don't know...there?" she answered with her finger pointed at one of the doors on the first floor.

Marcus nodded and they made their way towards her selection.They had only taken a few steps towards the door when several sections of the walls around them suddenly spun open. Zombies poured out of secret passages in the walls, which spun closed again as soon as it ran out of zombies, and shambled quickly towards them.

Charlie and Marcus fired away. The zombies were as easy to defeat as they had been previously but the sheer number of them in such a closed space proved a much greater danger than before. One of them had even gotten close enough that it nearly took a bite out of Charlie's face. She found herself once again thankful that the monsters didn't bleed.

"Still having fun?" she asked grumpily.

"Wouldn't keep this job if I wasn't." he replied cheekily as he reloaded his managun.

Charlie rolled her eyes and followed behind him as he led them through the door she had chosen to go through before the latest zombie attack. They entered a small reading room, completely empty of anyone else. Unlike the rest of the manor so far, the furniture and pictures were in immaculate condition. There was still dust over everything but at least here it was in one piece.

"Yeah, this isn't suspicious at all." Charlie muttered as they quickly searched the room.

"It's probably not a trap, at least. Might be a secret passage around here." Marcus said as he poked random things around the room.

"I think I just picked a bad door. Maybe next time you pick the door." she replied as she headed towards the door.

Before she could leave, a muffled cry for help came from the furthest wall. Charlie whipped back around and Marcus nodded at her as he pointed his gun towards where the cry had come from. Charlie rushed over to the bookcase on the wall and started pulling books out in hopes that one of them opened a secret passage but after only a few moments, Marcus spoke up.

"We can't waste that much time, just blast the wall apart!"

Charlie nodded, stood by his side and aimed her managun. Together, they blasted the wall apart bit-by-bit until they had created a gigantic hole big enough for the both of them to step through. The light of the manor didn't penetrate into the dark space they had created but they pressed on regardless.

"Hello?" Charlie cried into the darkness.

There was no response. She and Marcus marched carefully further into the darkness in search of who they hoped would be one of the hostages, when suddenly eerie lights descended through the ceiling. The lights quickly formed evil red eyes and rows of razor sharp teeth then charged towards the two Agents with a terrible shriek. It would be do or die.

Stage 3-2

"How in the world is this only a C-Class mission?" Charlie whined after they had finally dealt with the latest batch of enemies.

The amount of enemies in the manor had been relentless on a completely different scale than the booth maze had been. Aside from the sheer volume of them, the variety had been its own headache. Zombies moved slowly but took quite a few shots to take down, bats swarmed and moved erratically in patterns that made them difficult to hit, and those sharp-toothed ghosts were able to appear from literally anywhere.

With so many bite marks all over her body, she felt like she was being held together with duct tape and hope instead of flesh and bone. She desperately wanted to stop and get some first aid but they couldn't get enough of a break to do so. To top everything off, they'd been chasing the voice of the hostage throughout the entire manor but hadn't even seen them so far.

"Something's wrong..." Marcus drawled out.

Charlie didn't have enough time to ask him to elaborate, as a fresh batch of well-dressed zombies burst from every door of the hallway they travelled through. The undead menaces shambled towards them with outstretched arms, only to be met with a barrage of bullets. The two of them easily blasted the zombies to pieces and moved forward deeper into the manor. They'd chased the voice through a kitchen, several bedrooms, secret passageways and around an empty swimming pool.

"That's it! It's too big!" Marcus suddenly shouted with a look of joyous epiphany on his face.

"What?" Charlie blurted out, confused.

"The manor, it's too big. That's what's been bugging me about it. On the outside, the manor is only two stories and should have held at most 15 rooms. We've already travelled through 17! They must be using space distortion. That's why we can't find the hostage we've been chasing." he explained.

"If they're even real..." Charlie muttered as she followed him through the manor, "So what exactly do we do? Are we stuck in some kind of trap?"

"The entire carnival's a trap, rookie. They managed to hide a lot of the mana signature they should be giving out through these attractions and the hostages. This distorted manor is the proof of that. C-Class missions should only have conjured enemies and maybe some basic buildings with traps inside."

"Wait, what does that mean?" Charlie asked as a bad feeling grew in the pit of her stomach.

"It means this isn't a C-Class mission but somebody went out of their way to make it seem like it was." Marcus groaned out, clearly annoyed.

"So when you say the entire carnival's a trap, you mean that it's a trap for us. B.U.S.T." she realized aloud.

Marcus nodded as they turned a corner and were assailed by yet another swarm of bats with a couple zombies mixed in. Charlie focused on the zombies until they went down, then moved to help Marcus with the bats. They had done this so many times at this point that they had it down to an artform. Once the new hallway was clear, they made their way to the lone door at the end.

The door slid open on its own as they approached it, which revealed a single zombie occupant. It didn't last even two seconds under the gunfire from Marcus and Charlie. Once the doorway was clear, the two entered into the tiny room and Charlie was hit with a sense of deja vu.

"Up or down?" Marcus asked her.

She blinked at him in confusion for a moment until the obvious finally hit her. She chuckled at the realization she was in an elevator for only the second time in her life and manually reloaded her gun as she internally debated which way to go.

"Down. If we've been on the first floor this whole time, that means there's a whole hidden floor we didn't see from outside. I bet the hostages are there." Charlie answered.

"Down it is." Marcus replied as he hit the button.

The room lurched as the elevator suddenly dropped down at a far greater speed than either of them had been prepared for. Charlie braced herself against a wall as best she could while Marcus simply crouched slightly with his gun at the ready. She fully expected their ride to end in a sudden, violent stop.

Thankfully, it suddenly slowed down at the last moment and came to an unexpectedly gentle stop. Charlie let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding in and marvelled at how calm Marcus seemed to be. Part of her hoped that it was just an act but she knew it was probably just the difference in their experience.

"Maybe we should just find the stairs next time." she said to him as the door opened back up.

The two of them stepped out of the elevator into what could only be described as a mad scientist's dungeon. Giant electrical coils lined the walls and connected to great big machines with glass tubes. Large vats of chemicals were scattered around with empty gurneys and medical slabs in a few places around the room.

Charlie could feel her hair stand on end at the energy that freely and dangerously flowed through the room as she carefully followed Marcus deeper into the room with her managun at the ready. They were only given a few moments of peace to take in their new environment when the familiar sound of deathly moans mixed with the crackle of loose electricity. Zombies emerged from behind the various machines and objects around the room.

"I am so sick of you guys!" Charlie shouted as she fired away.

The offensive shamblers only moaned in reply as she and Marcus blasted them apart. More zombies took their place as the two of them moved deeper into the lab but they weren't enough of a threat on their own to do more than slow the Agents down.

"HELP!"

Both of their heads turned towards the familiar sound, though it was far clearer now than when they had been chasing it through the manor earlier.

"That's got to be the hostage." Marcus stated.

"Then let's clear these jerks out and get over there!" Charlie growled.

The two of them gradually dispatched the ridiculous undead numbers and charged towards the direction the cry for help had come from as soon as their way was clear enough. More zombies appeared from seemingly everywhere but the path remained clear so Marcus and Charlie ignored them for the time being.

"Over there!" Charlie shouted as soon as the source of the cry was visible.

Off in a side room were four adults, all strapped by their wrists and ankles to upright slabs that were connected to odd, large machines that sparked and crackled with green lightning. Thankfully, none of the lightning seemed to arc out of the machines so the four hostages were all safe for the moment.Only one of the hostages didn't have their mouth covered with a gag, a middle-aged fellow, so they went to him first.

"Are you okay?" Marcus asked.

"Who are you people?" the fellow asked awkwardly as they helped him safely down from the slab.

"We're B.U.S.T. Agents. Are there any other hostages here?" Marcus said while Charlie went to go help the others.

"The maniacs who locked us up here took the children somewhere else. I think they went upstairs." the middle-aged hostage answered.

Charlie carefully untied the next closest hostage, an elderly woman in a faded sundress whose feet had barely touched the ground before she turned to Charlie with an unpleasant frown and spoke.

"A young lady shouldn't be going around wearing men's clothes and waving a gun around. It's just not right."

"Is that really your priority right now?!" Charlie shouted indignantly at the ungrateful crone.

"Charlie!" Marcus shouted.

Charlie whipped her head around to ask Marcus what he needed when she saw that he had already started firing. The zombies they had passed on their way to the hostages had gathered together in an unthinkable number. She literally couldn't count all the heads as Marcus plowed them all down as best he could. It was a horde, plain and simple.

"Get the rest of the hostages down as fast as you can and come help me!" he commanded.

She didn't even bother to respond. She just ran to the next hostage and struggled against their restraints as fast as she could. Panic had her heart racing and the damned restraints refused to budge for less than the most Herculean efforts she could muster. All care to getting the hostages down gently was thrown away. All that mattered was speed and survival.

"Hurry up Charlie!" Marcus shouted desperately as she struggled.

Charlie finally managed to get the last hostage free and drew her gun as she ran over to Marcus's side. She fired almost blindly into the massive hoard, her aim nowhere near as important as the speed at which she could put bullets into bodies. The onslaught seemed as though it would never end but she never let up for even a moment.

Body after body blew apart, only to be replaced with more shambling corpses from the next tide of the endless ocean of enemies. Wave after wave, with an unholy ebb and tide as defeated bodies fell to the floor and slowly vanished as the mana that composed them floated back into the ether.

It seemed like it would never end but eventually, blessedly, it did. The numbers of bodies thinned out after a small eternity and an uncountable number of bullets fired. Charlie felt exhausted and she could tell that even Marcus felt how difficult it had all been. Sweat slid uncomfortably down her forehead as she quietly worked on getting her heart back to a reasonable number of beats.

"This is definitely a B-Class mission." Marcus growled with more venom than Charlie had thought him capable of.

It was going to be a long night.

Stage 3-3

Getting the hostages they had rescued from the basement lab had been disturbingly easy. Not a single enemy had attacked their large group on the way out, which Marcus had attributed to the manor itself running out of mana to generate new enemies. After the massive swarm of zombies they'd had to fight off, Charlie didn't doubt it. She followed him in as they made what she hoped would be their final foray into the manor. Something unexpected awaited them once they reached the foyer.

"Is that... music?" Charlie asked as they approached the stairs.

"Sounds like our invitation for one last dance." Marcus replied.

The music got louder as they ascended, so it was easy to track to its source. Charlie couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding as Marcus took point and opened the door the nefarious symphony emanated from. Charlie could only describe the sight as a mad science themed ballroom.

Machines lined the walls, crackling with green lighting that fed upwards to some bizarre metal chandelier. Five large, transparent tubes were high up on the walls with cables that led to the machines. Charlie could see that the children they were looking for were inside the tubes, banging on the glass and shouting but unable to be heard for some reason. Two tall people dressed in messy white lab coats and surgeons' masks danced gracefully around the wide open middle of the room together.

"Why look, my Lady! We have guests!" one of the two dancers said.

"Why yes we do, my Lord! Uninvited ones, at that!" the one referred to as Lady said.

"Whatever shall we do with them?" Lord asked.

"How about standing still and getting shot?" Marcus said as he levelled his gun at them.

"We'll also accept you giving back the kids and surrendering." Charlie added as she followed his example.

"Such impudence!" Lady gasped.

"Shall we teach them a lesson, my Lady?" Lord asked her.

"Oh we most certainly shall!" Lady replied.

The music suddenly shifted into something frantic and Lord and Lady spun in each other's grasp at an inhuman speed. They moved around the dance floor in an erratic cyclone that made it all but impossible to hit them. Both Charlie and Marcus tried their best though and they did manage to score a few hits before test tubes and beakers of all shapes and sizes flew towards them from the Lord and Lady.