Re: The Glorious Championship! [S3G5] [Round 4: GBN2
06-25-2012, 05:45 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Anomaly.
Gaurinn blinked a few times, gazing around the very dark room blankly. He wasn't dead? He looked at the pile of vaguely human-shaped gore he was still somehow attached to in awe. Cailean was alive? In spite of his head being partially chewed off by an alien parasite, and in spite of the fact that his intestines were in a heap outside of his body, he was somehow still alive enough to have advanced.
And... he was sitting in a chair?
Without warning, dozens of lights flashed on across the studio, most of them pointed at the four chairs on a wooden stage. The chairs faced a man seated behind a podium (if he could really be called a man - the large, feathered wings on his back implied otherwise), scowling at the cheering audience behind him. A very familiar trombonist, some kind of harp-playing rodent, and a very short man in a top hat (standing on top of several phone books behind an electric keyboard) played an upbeat tune as the cheers slowly died down.
"Hello, and welcome to WHOSE GRAND IS IT ANYWAY!" the angel yelled, practically choking on his own words. The look of disgust never left his eyes as he glared directly at Gaurinn. He sighed, pulled out a sheet of paper, and continued. "The show where everything's made up, and the points don't matter! That's right, the points are like a round one eliminee."
The audience laughed. The angel frowned.
"As always, I'm your host, Sirius! Until my contract runs out next month. Now let's meet the contestants!"
A spotlight focused on each of the chairs and their occupants in turn.
First up was a weary-looking, sword-carrying woman in a long black dress.
"Virtually a witch, Karen!"
Next, a blob wearing some kind of bulletproof vest.
"Totally spineless, Bae!"
Third, a huge, feathered reptilian creature.
"A walking anachronism, Kerak!"
Finally, the spotlight focused on Gaurinn, as well as Cailean's remains.
"Two heads may be worse than one, Gaurinn and... Cailean?"
Sirius picked up a radio of some sort and began angrily mumbling into it. Evidently they hadn't expected the knight to be quite so dead. He managed to look even more pissed-off as he put the radio down, before he pulled an upside-down hat from beneath his podium. "First up will be Scenes from a Hat. You creti- wonderful audience members put in your own submissions before the show started. You know the drill. I pull something inane out of here, you act it out. Let's go."
He pulled a yellow slip of paper out of the all-too-flamboyant hat. "Bad things to do while in freefall!"
Several more contestants took their turn - the Hedonist particularly enjoyed Bae's rendition of a certain vacuum cleaner building an army in a hardware store - before the host dejectedly slammed his fist on the buzzer. The Hedonist waved the hand that wasn't holding his drink.
Gaurinn stared as the blob-looking thing approached his chair. He wasn't sure if he should try to fight back or not - maybe they'd finally be able to help him out of this whole being-someone's-arm situation. He decided against fighting back, and remained very still as "Bae" created several blade-arms from his otherwise-formless mass and set to work, tearing away at Cailean's body. Gaurinn definitely wasn't a fan of the way the "surgeon" was operating - swinging his tools around maniacally with a huge grin on his face - but after roughly a minute of this, Gaurinn fell to the ground.
He lay in a daze for several seconds, not fully realizing what had just happened. Slowly, he attempted to move the legs on the back half of his body - the feeling of open air was almost unreal in its suddenness. Gaurinn began slowly walking across the floor, attempting to regain his bearings.
"Uh, thanks," he told the still-grinning blob. He hated that grin. It reminded him of the... thing that did this in the first place. But, on the other hand, he was finally free from the idiot who had caused him nothing but pain and misery for several days. Yet, strangely, he felt a bit sorry for whatever was left of Cailean. They'd both been forced into this, and he didn't end up as lucky as the centipede. He was probably better off, Gaurinn told himself. Anything had to be better than the life he was already living.
As the host began protesting against the utter lack of anything happening, Gaurinn's vision blurred. His hearing grew more and more muffled by the second. He knew this feeling well.
It was the worst feeling he had ever felt.
A repeat of the scenario in the Kestalvian Rainforest isn't entirely necessary - sufficed to say, Gaurinn spent quite a long time spasming around the floor in unimaginable pain, vomiting a synthetic, pale-blue sort of blood all over the studio as bolts of electricity fired off in random directions. His mind had at this point stopped perceiving anything but incredible pain. He forgot about Cailean. He forgot about the Glorious Championship. He even forgot about the fact that hundreds of thousands of people were watching him. He let the pain take him.
And, eventually, subside. Gaurinn's eyes slowly came into focus as he struggled to his feet, amidst the mess of pseudo-organic slurry that had quickly coated most of the stage. In spite of his throbbing headache, though, the centipede, on some level, had a notion that things had been made right again. He looked to Cailean's body. Eventually, it came into focus - what remained of Cailean's right arm was looking a whole lot more synthetic.
A few moments later, he came to the realization. He was finally organic again! Whatever processes that had turned him into some sort of artificial centipede-arm had just as easily (as in, not very) reversed the process. In spite of quite nearly being killed by alien parasites, Gaurinn's life had suddenly become a whole lot better. For the first time since he had been tossed, uninformed, into the parking lot of some kind of restaurant/government base, he felt something akin to happiness. It had become a foreign feeling.
Gaurinn also realized that he was alone. The audience, and the other contestants, had left sometime during the seizures and vomit stage. The only one left was Sirius, standing over him and scowling.
"Hey, uh. Sorry about your show. What happened while I was out, exactly?"
"Well, we had to cut it off early after you began shooting seizure-lightning and projectile-vomiting your own blood. Lasted a good twenty minutes. I guess you saved me from this idiotic show for one more day, though, for all the good that's going to do."
"What about Cailean?"
"I don't know. He disappeared right after you looked at him. Just... Just get out of my studio. There's a lot of cleanup to do."
Gaurinn made his way to the door as quickly as possible. He didn't want to be here any more than the host did.
Gaurinn blinked a few times, gazing around the very dark room blankly. He wasn't dead? He looked at the pile of vaguely human-shaped gore he was still somehow attached to in awe. Cailean was alive? In spite of his head being partially chewed off by an alien parasite, and in spite of the fact that his intestines were in a heap outside of his body, he was somehow still alive enough to have advanced.
And... he was sitting in a chair?
Without warning, dozens of lights flashed on across the studio, most of them pointed at the four chairs on a wooden stage. The chairs faced a man seated behind a podium (if he could really be called a man - the large, feathered wings on his back implied otherwise), scowling at the cheering audience behind him. A very familiar trombonist, some kind of harp-playing rodent, and a very short man in a top hat (standing on top of several phone books behind an electric keyboard) played an upbeat tune as the cheers slowly died down.
"Hello, and welcome to WHOSE GRAND IS IT ANYWAY!" the angel yelled, practically choking on his own words. The look of disgust never left his eyes as he glared directly at Gaurinn. He sighed, pulled out a sheet of paper, and continued. "The show where everything's made up, and the points don't matter! That's right, the points are like a round one eliminee."
The audience laughed. The angel frowned.
"As always, I'm your host, Sirius! Until my contract runs out next month. Now let's meet the contestants!"
A spotlight focused on each of the chairs and their occupants in turn.
First up was a weary-looking, sword-carrying woman in a long black dress.
"Virtually a witch, Karen!"
Next, a blob wearing some kind of bulletproof vest.
"Totally spineless, Bae!"
Third, a huge, feathered reptilian creature.
"A walking anachronism, Kerak!"
Finally, the spotlight focused on Gaurinn, as well as Cailean's remains.
"Two heads may be worse than one, Gaurinn and... Cailean?"
Sirius picked up a radio of some sort and began angrily mumbling into it. Evidently they hadn't expected the knight to be quite so dead. He managed to look even more pissed-off as he put the radio down, before he pulled an upside-down hat from beneath his podium. "First up will be Scenes from a Hat. You creti- wonderful audience members put in your own submissions before the show started. You know the drill. I pull something inane out of here, you act it out. Let's go."
He pulled a yellow slip of paper out of the all-too-flamboyant hat. "Bad things to do while in freefall!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A very rotund djinni, margarita still in hand, sat in the back of the studio, taking up three seats by himself. A smile spread across his porcine face as he watched the dinosaur propose to Karen. He wasn't exactly here for entertainment - wait, yes he was - but that didn't matter. His scene suggestions would be coming up very soon.Several more contestants took their turn - the Hedonist particularly enjoyed Bae's rendition of a certain vacuum cleaner building an army in a hardware store - before the host dejectedly slammed his fist on the buzzer. The Hedonist waved the hand that wasn't holding his drink.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Next up will be... 'Extracting a giant centipede from the remains of a zombified knight'? Who even... You know what, sure. Do that."Gaurinn stared as the blob-looking thing approached his chair. He wasn't sure if he should try to fight back or not - maybe they'd finally be able to help him out of this whole being-someone's-arm situation. He decided against fighting back, and remained very still as "Bae" created several blade-arms from his otherwise-formless mass and set to work, tearing away at Cailean's body. Gaurinn definitely wasn't a fan of the way the "surgeon" was operating - swinging his tools around maniacally with a huge grin on his face - but after roughly a minute of this, Gaurinn fell to the ground.
He lay in a daze for several seconds, not fully realizing what had just happened. Slowly, he attempted to move the legs on the back half of his body - the feeling of open air was almost unreal in its suddenness. Gaurinn began slowly walking across the floor, attempting to regain his bearings.
"Uh, thanks," he told the still-grinning blob. He hated that grin. It reminded him of the... thing that did this in the first place. But, on the other hand, he was finally free from the idiot who had caused him nothing but pain and misery for several days. Yet, strangely, he felt a bit sorry for whatever was left of Cailean. They'd both been forced into this, and he didn't end up as lucky as the centipede. He was probably better off, Gaurinn told himself. Anything had to be better than the life he was already living.
As the host began protesting against the utter lack of anything happening, Gaurinn's vision blurred. His hearing grew more and more muffled by the second. He knew this feeling well.
It was the worst feeling he had ever felt.
A repeat of the scenario in the Kestalvian Rainforest isn't entirely necessary - sufficed to say, Gaurinn spent quite a long time spasming around the floor in unimaginable pain, vomiting a synthetic, pale-blue sort of blood all over the studio as bolts of electricity fired off in random directions. His mind had at this point stopped perceiving anything but incredible pain. He forgot about Cailean. He forgot about the Glorious Championship. He even forgot about the fact that hundreds of thousands of people were watching him. He let the pain take him.
And, eventually, subside. Gaurinn's eyes slowly came into focus as he struggled to his feet, amidst the mess of pseudo-organic slurry that had quickly coated most of the stage. In spite of his throbbing headache, though, the centipede, on some level, had a notion that things had been made right again. He looked to Cailean's body. Eventually, it came into focus - what remained of Cailean's right arm was looking a whole lot more synthetic.
A few moments later, he came to the realization. He was finally organic again! Whatever processes that had turned him into some sort of artificial centipede-arm had just as easily (as in, not very) reversed the process. In spite of quite nearly being killed by alien parasites, Gaurinn's life had suddenly become a whole lot better. For the first time since he had been tossed, uninformed, into the parking lot of some kind of restaurant/government base, he felt something akin to happiness. It had become a foreign feeling.
Gaurinn also realized that he was alone. The audience, and the other contestants, had left sometime during the seizures and vomit stage. The only one left was Sirius, standing over him and scowling.
"Hey, uh. Sorry about your show. What happened while I was out, exactly?"
"Well, we had to cut it off early after you began shooting seizure-lightning and projectile-vomiting your own blood. Lasted a good twenty minutes. I guess you saved me from this idiotic show for one more day, though, for all the good that's going to do."
"What about Cailean?"
"I don't know. He disappeared right after you looked at him. Just... Just get out of my studio. There's a lot of cleanup to do."
Gaurinn made his way to the door as quickly as possible. He didn't want to be here any more than the host did.