E11: Christmas Challenge: Max -vs- Christmas (December 24, 2014)

A crazy cyborg and a beloved holiday walk into a room. Only one of them will walk out.

Time to get back to Max Power as he struggles to escape the Bucket and reach Aurelia, but can Max survive Christmas? Read on to find out. This one is weird and a bit all over the place, but oh well. Oh, and it helps if you have played Mortal Kombat...

Deep within the bowels of the medical research facility known as the Bucket, befuddled cybernetic hero Max Power is on a mission...

Our hero needs to find a computer terminal. He must locate his spaceship "Starla" if he has any hope of escaping.

Max Power (in a deep, hollow, metallic voice): "ALL OF THESE CORRIDORS LOOK THE SAME! THIS IS SO CONFUSING. THERE MUST BE A COMPUTER TERMINAL IN ONE OF THESE ROOMS."

Max Power: "I SUPPOSE I WILL START WITH THIS ONE."

Max Power: "I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS LABELING SCHEME. HOW DOES DR. LOBOTOMY KEEP ALL OF THESE ROOMS STRAIGHT? THIS ONE IS JUST LABELED WITH RED AND GREEN."

Our hero enters the room...

...the "red and green" room.

What Max finds is nothing like he was expecting. Instead of another cold, sterile lab he finds a softly lit room full of toys and pretty packages. Strings of multicolored lights line the walls.

A big, homey fireplace fills one wall, with a large, cozy fire blazing away.

But sure enough, tucked into a corner and looking rather out of place, the computer terminal Max has been seeking sits, waiting to be accessed.

Still, this is the Bucket, and what Max sees next fills him with an inexpressible dread and loathing...

It seems that Dr. Lobotomy hasn't kept his horrid experiments confined to the animal kingdom, for what stands before him is a blasphemous and horrific amalgam of machine and plant. A coniferous catastrophe of pine needles and colorful blinking lights. Who knows what sort of horrors this strange creature might unleash upon poor Max.

Max stands stock still for well over an hour before he is satisfied that this hideous "treeborg" is in some kind of dormant state, despite its numerous blinking lights.

Max creeps quietly to the computer, and casually begins to override all of Dr. Lobotomy's numerous security protocols. He is nearly through the last firewall when suddenly...

...Max feels he is no longer alone in the room.

Jolly, booming voice: "Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas! What's your name human boy?"

Max turns to see a strange, fat creature with a white beard, dressed in Aurelian red! Perhaps Max's luck is changing!

Max Power: "GREETINGS. I AM MAX POWER, AND I AM-"

Santa (interjecting): "Well hello Max! I'm Santa Claus!"

Max Power (confused): "CLAUSE LIKE IN A SENTENCE? OR CLAWS LIKE SNAKES USE TO SCRATCH YOU?"

Santa: "Um, well, neither of those! I'm my own special kind of Claus! Ho ho ho! So tell me now, young Max, have you been a nice boy or a naughty boy this year?"

Max Power: "CALCULATING...ERROR 317: INSUFFICIENT DATA. ERROR 1273: MEANINGFUL CONTEXTUAL PARAMETERS NOT FOUND. THAT IS TO SAY...UM...I DO NOT KNOW."

Santa (now a little confused himself): "Oh, uh, OK then! Ho ho ho! Well let's start with what do you want for Christmas, human boy?"

Max Power: "I AM UNFAMILIAR WITH THIS "CRISS MUSS" OF WHICH YOU SPEAK, BUT WHAT I WANT IS TO FINISH USING THAT COMPUTER TERMINAL OVER THERE."

Santa: "Ho ho ho! I see! And are you authorized to use that terminal, little Max?"

Max Power: "WELL...UM...NEGATIVE. I AM NOT AUTHORIZED, NO."

Santa (stroking his beard): "Hmmm, well I must say, Max, that sounds a little naughty to me."

Santa: "Ho ho ho! So tell me this my young friend, why do you need to use that terminal?"

Max Power: "I NEED TO LOCATE MY SHIP, STARLA, SO I CAN BREAK OUT OF HERE AND FIND AURELIA. I HAVE AN IMPORTANT PACKAGE TO DELIVER, AND ALSO I WISH TO JOIN THEM IN THEIR FIGHT AGAINST THE IMPERIUM."

Santa: "Breaking out of the Bucket? Defecting to Aurelia? Why those things sound very naughty to me, I'm afraid. Ho ho ho!"

Max Power: "BUT ARE YOU NOT AN AURELIAN YOURSELF?"

Santa: "No! Not at all!"

Max Power: "I JUST CALCULATED, WHAT WITH THE RED SUIT AND ALL..."

Santa: "Ho ho ho! Yes I get that all the time! But no, I'm not an Aurelian."

Max Power: "OH."

Santa: "But I do have something for naughty Aurelians like you here in my bag! Would you like to guess what it is?"

Max Power: "IS IT SNAKES?"

Santa: "No."

Max Power: "CLOWNS?"

Santa: "No."

Max Power: "IS IT HEIGHTS?"

Santa: "What?! No, none of those things!"

Max Power: "GOOD. I AM TERRIFIED OF ALL OF THOSE."

Santa: "Well, human boy Max, it is something quite scary and dangerous. I'll give you three more guesses!"

Max Power: "SCARY, HUH? IS IT BLANKA FROM THE VIDEO GAME STREET FIGHTER?"

Santa: "No."

Max Power: "IS IT SCORPION FROM THE VIDEO GAME MORTAL KOMBAT?"

Santa: "No. One more guess."

Max Power: "UM OK. CALCULATING...IS IT SUB-ZERO FROM THE VIDEO GAME MORTAL KOMBAT?"

Santa: "Why yes! Yes it is! Good guess Max!"

Santa: "Now prepare to die! Ho ho ho!"

Moments later...

Max Power: "YOU KNOW, YOU REALLY HAVE TO WATCH THAT WHOLE DOUBLE-ICE BACK FREEZE THING. I THOUGHT YOU HAD ME THERE FOR A SECOND."

Sub-Zero: "\*sigh\* Yeah."

Max Power: "HOW DOES THAT WORK ANYWAY? I MEAN, YOU HIT ME WITH AN ICY BLAST THAT FREEZES ME, AND THEN YOU HIT ME WITH ANOTHER ICY BLAST, BUT INSTEAD OF BECOMING MORE FROZEN...I AM SUDDENLY FREE...AND YOU ARE FROZEN! I DO NOT GET IT."

Sub-Zero: "Yeah, it never made much sense to me. Game mechanics I guess. Oh well."

Max Power: "UH-HUH. SO...ARE YOU READY TO DIE?"

Sub-Zero: "\*sigh\* Yeah, I guess so."

Max's chainsaw hand: "Whrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!"

Max Power: "FATALITY!"

So Max returns to the computer terminal and finishes breaking down the Bucket's security. He discovers the location of Starla, and then decides to download the entire content of the stations mainframe into his brain for good measure. After all, there's bound to be something useful to the Aurelians in there.

Max is still a bit leery of the "treeborg" on the other side of the room, but if a fight with Santa and Sub-Zero didn't wake it up, it must be a pretty sound sleeper.

As an afterthought, Max deletes all information from the Bucket's mainframe after he's done downloading. He feels a bit dizzy with all of that data crammed into his head.

Max Power: "WHAT A STRANGE ROOM. I WILL BE GLAD TO GET OUT OF HERE. BUT I LIKE THIS HAT. I AM KEEPING THIS HAT. I AM KEEPING THE SWORD TOO."

Max heads toward the door.

Max Power: "AFTER SURVIVING ALL OF THIS I CALCULATE THAT BREAKING OUT OF THE BUCKET SHOULD BE QUITE EASY."

And with that, he leaves.

Santa's head: "Ho ho ho! And there you have it! The incredible story of how Max Power saved Christmas! Or possibly destroyed it forever. Or maybe neither, what do I know? In any case, from all of us here in Max Power's corner of the Insurgency to all of you out there, wherever you may be...Merry Christmas to all! And to all a good fight! (and if you see Dr. Lobotomy, tell him the Christmas Room needs a good cleaning! Ho ho ho!)"

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Notes:

I wanted it to be clear that the horrible "treeborg" was just a regular Christmas tree, but after I read it back, it didn't necessarily seem clear. This is the Bucket, after all. But yes, Virginia, that really was just a regular ol' Christmas tree.

Now is this what Max usually does at Christmas? It's hard to say, because technically this is his first Christmas as Max Power. Let's hope his subsequent Christmas' are less bizarre than this one!

Also for some reason one of the images repeats, but I didn't catch until I had already finalized the MOC. I use the "old picture loader" or whatever, so I thinks it's nearly impossible to fix without starting over completely. Does anyone know what I need to do to get my computer to let me use the Java loader? I use windows 8. I anyone knows I would be much obliged!

Acknowledgements:

The toys in the Christmas room (minus the robot nutcracker) came from LEGO set 40106, some Christmas Elf set they sent me for ordering over $75 worth of stuff.

The Christmas tree and the light strands were inspired by the ones from LEGO set 10245 Santa's Workshop.

Thanks to R.K. Blast for running the Insurgency

Thanks to Quinn Beeson and Indy Beetle for including Captain Golrath in their Chistmas Challenges.

Thank you to all active Insurgency players and all of you who read and comment on our stories!