I'm just gonna say this. I'm not abandoning The Archipelago. I've just been busy lately, and when I finally got around to making a chapter I lost internet. I just need something New for a while.
This fan fiction is more of an alternate storyline of what would have happened if the Heart of Ice operation had failed. Also known as: The whole Clockworks and Haven have been put in a deep freeze. Deployed squads of Knights are suddenly trapped and bombarded by blizzards and hailstorms, and rescue teams are unable to leave Haven because of the perpetual ice storms. I'll be telling the story of a researcher working in a Lichenous Lair when the frost struck.
Enjoy. (Maybe)
P.S - If you look at this and there's no chapter 1, it means that I'm afraid I'll lose internet while making it and I've decided to wait until Saturday morning, when the internet will be more stable.
Acessing database... ... ... ... section lichen.data open. Downloading entry.14... ... ... ... Complete. Research entry sent to Haven database.
I typed in my latest report on the behavior and biology of the lichens that I was studying. I was the leader of a research team studying lichens near the core. We were at depth level 22. The next test that we were moving on to would require capture of a living slime, and we were going to cut it open, mostly for the purpose of studying the slimes' 'nucleus'. But night was approaching in the slime-filled biome-sphere, and I was up on guard duty, so trapping a slime would have to wait for tommorow.
I put on my Volcanic Demo armor, and reached for my stranger hat and binocular visor. I loaded an energy cell into my Valiance handgun. I opened the team's Arsenal Chest and grabbed my Nitronomes. I grabbed a belt with a flare gun, two emergency rock salt containers, and a heavy duty flashlight. I grabbed a cylinder containing a Ionized Salt Bomb and put it on my belt. Finally, I grabbed my Combuster. I walked over to the guard's post and used a set of night vision goggles to scan the area. Nothing.
It seemed like it was days I sat there, waiting for something to happen. Sometimes a tiny, overzealous lichen would charge at the camp, and inevitably meet it fate at the wall of rock salt dust. Sometimes I would see a lichen colony or two. In general, nothing at all out of the ordinary happened. Which, I suppose was a good thing, but this research is boring work, and it's not like you can just go on a nice stroll outside the camp.
Another team member relieved me of my post, and I walked into my personal tent, and fell over on my sleeping bag, too tired to even take my armor off.
I woke to the sound of howling wind and the other team members yelling. I looked round my tent, confused. What were they doing....?
I stumbled outisde to see ten knights with heavy duty ropes, herding a giant lichen colony into the camp. More knights stood guard, as the rock salt had to be cleared to get the gargantuan slime inside. It panicked, but it was unable to dash or fire off spikes as the were all bound by ropes. I walked over and marveled at the impressive sight.
"Good work. How'd you managed to capture THAT?"
"We ambushed it", said Clarke, the team's Recon Knight.
"How so?" I asked.
"The slimes just love these Jelly Gems that we found while we were operating in the Royal Jelly Palace. We ended up finding a whole lots of lichens all flocking to the little gelatinous coins, and we thought we hit the jackpot...... but then they all formed together, and we had this thing bearing down on us. We hit it with a little rock salt, and it was weakened, so we roped it, and..... here we are."
"Alright..... relieve it one one of it's numerous cores, and keep it tied up in the research enclosure. Give it more Jelly Gems each time we take another core, and don't take too many at once. We'll release it back out into the wild after the research is over, since we'll be moving on to beast research after my fifteenth research entry."
"Yes sir."
A knight walked up with a heavy rubber glove with a bit of rock salt on it. He put his hand in the jelly and reached for a core. The huge jelly squirmed as he pulled it out. He dropped it on the ground and me and Clarke carried the gigantic nucleus over to a table. The other Knights herded the giant lichen colony into the enclosure and rewarded it's cooperation with a few more Jelly Gems. It was a job well done. We froze the core solid and put it in the sample refrigerator. We would begin work tommorow, but for now, I had to report the resounding sucess to Spiral HQ in Haven via Uplink. I went to a computer terminal and began typing, though I was sure that Feron would like to talk to me as well. I pressed 'Send', and the message was sent to Kora's database.
Now all I had to do was wait for a response.