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Dragon Fogel · 06-11-2011, 10:29 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

Arkal had by this point completely given up on understanding what was going on.

Xadrez had to be stopped, but Arkal didn't even know exactly what he was stopping. Kracht had gone crazy, and was now standing eerily still. Jen was apparently Maxwell. And the Ovoid didn't even begin to make sense in the first place.

What had he gotten himself into?

Frustrated with sitting around on the ship and watching whatever Xadrez was talking about with whoever he was talking to, Arkal turned his attention to the body of the late Edward Crossbones.

"You poor bastard," Arkal said to the dead man. "It may be presumptuous of me, but I assume you've done your share of misdeeds. You still didn't deserve this."

He looked out over the edge of the boat, looking for a moment at Xadrez' continued conversation with the stranger. Then he turned back to the captain.

"You died because some lunatic thought it would be funny to take us from our homes and send us traipsing around in other people's backyards. And apparently if we stop the lunatic, this 'Hand of Silver' takes over absolutely everything."

Arkal sighed.

"And none of that should have mattered to you in the first place. But now you're dead because of it. Because of the Observer - and because of us."

He looked back at Xadrez and his conversational partner. This time, he blinked. Was Maxwell Jen again?

"See?" he asked the corpse. "You died because of whatever nonsense is going on down there. Or something else which makes just as little sense. With no clue of what it's about. And you're not the only one. You probably won't be the last, either."

Arkal shook his head in frustration.

"I think I need a drink," he grumbled.

Elpie · 06-15-2011, 04:24 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

ACT ONE: KRACHT’S FIRST TIME

The light flickered back about thirty seconds after the blast. “There you are,” said Kracht, running to embrace Emma.

“Kracht,” breathed Emma, weakly. “Is the light back? I can’t… Kracht, can you see me?”

The mineral waved his hand in front of Emma’s eyes. She didn’t respond. “No,” whispered Kracht. “No, no, Emma, honey, I’m sorry. The lights are on. You’re just blind, is all.”

Emma didn’t say anything to that. She just smiled, that way she always smiles.

“In the name of the silver and the beige!” came the voice over the loudspeaker. “Come out and accept your fate, rock! I wield the silver sword!”

“Shit,” said Kracht. “The silver sword. Like beating me to death with my own mother.”

“Mommy’s here?” asked Emma. “My mommy works for the newspaper.”

“Release the girl, Kracht!” came that voice again. “You know what your alien radiation is doing to her!”

“I know, sweetie,” said Kracht, kissing Emma on the forehead. “But stay with me. That sword was forged from the silver anvil that I was forged on in my first battle, okay? It’s stronger than I am.” The rock shuddered, making a sound like a little earth quake. “And Sir Cedric, the man holding the sword, he’s stronger than I am too.”

“You’re stronger than anyone I ever knew, Kracht.” Emma touched Kracht’s hand, gently. “Tell me a story.”

“Hang on.” Kracht stood up to replace the barricade to the door, which had been knocked around a bit in the explosion. “What story do you want to hear, Emma?”

He turned to look at her, staring off into space. Even at twenty-five years old, she still looked so infantile sometimes. It was his fault, of course. His presence was undoing what constant time manipulation had wrought, reverting her to the child she’d been when she’d entered her first battle. The irony of the matter was as crude and unpleasant as stone.

“Tell me the story of the rock that became a man,” she said, finally. She sounded so earnest it almost cracked him in half.

Kracht sat down next to Emma and held her hand. There was a distant sound of marching.

“Once upon a time…” Kracht started.

Once upon a time there was a little green rock from outer space. The rock was floating in outer space forever, knowing that it would never die, and hoping that it would crash into some planet where it wouldn’t have to be so lonely.

One day a bad man named the Observer found the little green rock. He put the little green rock in a battle with seven other things—people, mostly—and told them they would all have to fight to get out.

One of the fighters was a very hardworking old man with a white beard who made weapons. He found the little green rock first, and while the other people were out fighting, he took his hammer and his anvil and turned the little green rock into the most beautiful, perfect green sword the world had never seen.

Not to brag or anything.

Now, the hardworking old man with the white beard knew that he had made the best weapon he would ever make, and he felt completed in his life, and didn’t want to fight anymore. But he didn’t want his most perfect weapon ever made to go to waste. Luckily for him, one of the other fighters was a princess—a warrior woman—who loved swords. At first the princess didn’t want to take the sword, because she hated the color green, but the hardworking old man with the white beard showed her how sharp it was and she agreed to use the sword in the fight. And knowing his sword was in capable hands, the hardworking old man went to his death fulfilled.

Now, this princess had many magic powers, and one of them was that she could talk to swords. So the princess told the green sword all about the world she came from, where there were all manner of things (most of which weren’t people) and everything was purple and a sword could live happily killing dragons forever and ever. And in return the sword told the princess all about what it was like being a rock floating in the emptiness of space for all eternity. He had a lot to say about that, as it turned out, and had just been waiting for a friend to whom he could say it.

The princess and the sword fought a lot of monsters together, but the worst of them were two of the other fighters in the battle with them. One was a great beige monster from a world where everything has more sides than it ought to, and the monster hated everything that wasn’t people. The beige monster enslaved a ghost who liked to play games to do its bidding, and long after the beige monster died, the ghost had lost its mind and become the worst enemy of the princess and the sword.

In the last round of the fight, just as the ghost landed its killing blow on the princess, the princess sent the sword right through the ghost’s heart, killing them both at the same time. This meant that even though the princess had done all the work, the sword had won the battle, and was allowed to turn back into a little green rock and continue its existence floating through space.

The little green rock, now that it had known what it was to have a friend, was even lonelier than it had been before. However, not long after it had won the battle, it finally crashed into a planet just like it had always hoped it would. This planet was called Earth—the planet you’re from—and like all the planets after what happened in the last battle, there wasn’t anything except people on it anymore, led by the wicked Silver Man.

Some of these people wanted there to be other things than humans again, so when they found the rock, they made it into a shape like a man where it could move around and talk. And they called the rock-man “Kracht,” and hid him from the Silver Man and his people-police.

Kracht spent many years learning all about the world, which was difficult, as the Silver Man had burnt all the books about animals and magical creatures and all the wonderful things that used to live in the world. Still, he learned, and the more he learned, the sadder he became about all the things he had failed to save in his battle, back when he was a sword.

It was after this period of learning and constant hiding that he was drawn into yet another battle, and another, and these were fraught with peril, for nearly all of his opponents were allies of the Silver Man and wanted Kracht dead. All except one, a beautiful girl named Emma who could control time and space and all kinds of things. Emma took pity on Kracht and the two of them went on the run from the wicked Sir Cedric, who viewed Kracht as a fighter. And they, um… they kept running until… um…

Kracht felt a sudden envy for people who were physiologically capable of crying. It would have given him an excuse to stop talking.

“Kracht,” said Emma. There was a trace of a wheeze in her voice. “You forgot the end part.”

“What end part?” snapped Kracht. “The part where your decision to take pity on me landed you with fatal radiation poisoning? And the last thing you witness on this Earth is going to be Sir Cedric barging through that door and impaling me with the silver sword? Do you want me to say it?”

Emma smiled and shook her head. “The happy ending. The one where you fix everything.”

Kracht punched the floor angrily. “Emma, stop this. I knew a girl who lived in a fairyland, once. She died for it, and it still burned like everything burned.”

The door burst open. In stepped Sir Cedric, resplendent and suitably menacing in his perpetually-flaming Godbeard. In one hand he still held that goddamn megaphone, and in the other the silver blade glistened like a gloating death’s head.

Kracht’s only response was to hold Emma tightly, not sure whether he was protecting her or expecting protection for himself.

“Kracht,” growled Sir Cedric, leveling his sword. “It’s the end of the line and the end of the round. You and I are going to settle this.”

“No,” said Emma, plainly.

Sir Cedric seemed to agree to this. He froze in place; even the light shimmering on his blade held still.

Kracht turned towards Emma in disbelief. Her nose was bleeding. Her tear ducts seemed to be bleeding as well. “Did he stop?” she asked Kracht. “I can’t see.”

Kracht nodded, realized she couldn’t see him nodding, and stopped. “Yeah, honey,” he stammered. “Yeah, you did it. Don’t… you don’t need to exert yourself like that, okay?”

Emma laughed. Her gums were bleeding, staining her teeth. Kracht sought the words to express how badly he wanted her to stop bleeding, and failed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “This is the part where you fix everything. From the beginning.”

She raised one hand (she was bleeding under all her fingernails) and suddenly Kracht felt everything turning upside-down in four directions at once. “We can do this, Kracht,” he heard her saying. “We’re all-stars, remember?” And then everything went black.

And within that blackness were thousands of tiny points of white. Everything was starting to look existentially familiar.

Kracht looked at his hand. He was still there—he was still shaped the way the humans had made him.

Something bumped into Kracht’s side. It was a green rock, floating forever through space. It didn’t look familiar, but he recognized it anyway.

Kracht reckoned he’d be better suited to appreciating the surreality of the situation if everything he’d ever known hadn’t been ripped away into a now-uncertain future. Instead, he felt depressed.

He also felt a telltale tingle on the back of his neck like a hole being opened up in nothingness. When you’ve been through enough round transitions, you can tell the warning signs. Praying he wasn’t too late, he kicked the rock out of the way and—

"GGGGGENTLEMEN AND LADIES, ARE YOU READY FOR THE SECOND SEASON OF THE OTAKU MELEE TO BEGIN?"

Kracht sighed in relief. There was a scent of purple and magic in the air, like an old friend saying hi.

So the bad news was, he’d have to go through it all again. Bad times and good times alike (mostly bad). The good news is, he had advantages. He knew how things might turn out. And best of all, this time he wasn’t a rock.

He tried not to think about whether the girl he’d gone back to fix even properly existed anymore. No use dwelling.

That back-of-the-neck feeling came again and Kracht found himself up on the stage. ”This is the Kracht!” announced the Observer. ”I know what you’re thinking, folks. ‘This is just a rock! What can it possibly—‘ Wait. Hang on, what—shit. This is the Kracht. It looks like he’s been sent back in time to, aheh, to catch us all with our pants down, just a little bit. I’d, uh… watch out for him. He’s looking like the favored constestant from where I’m standing.”

The spotlight shut off, but Kracht retained the feeling that all eyes were on him. He had scared the Observer. This was going to be easier than he thought.

He would fix everything.

ACT TWO: RETURN OF THE QUEEN

Jen craned her neck up off the ground, feeling large and clunky. She looked hideous.

Well, that wasn’t entirely fair. Aside from an outer layer of crunchy tendrily bits, she was starting to look mostly like Maxwell, who pulled the unshaven loner look to some effect, if not entirely to Jen’s tastes. A tentacle was lazily sliding its way back into her torso, which was becoming more feminine at roughly the rate that a rock smoothes out in a still pond. She felt around for the itchy part of her brain where Fantha had built her nest, and nudged it. “Taking our time, aren’t we?” she asked.

Hey, this isn’t as easy as it looks. This hunk of meat has been changing up so much it’s starting to sag on a molecular level. Plus, jettisoning Sikarius took a bit of a psychic strain, even with all the magic floating about.

”Jettisoning—shit. Hungry man’s going to end up in control of the giant man-eating dragon-spitting city that’s already fucked everything up in this ocean, isn’t he?” Jen tried wiggling her toe, and a fanged mouth on her ankle screamed like a man.

Don’t knock it, sassed Fantha. He’s bringing glory to our species. He’s one of the greatest that ever was, really.

”You really need to get your priorities straight.” Jen meant to say it telepathically, but ended up saying it out loud. It sounded squelchy.

Oh, look who’s talking. Jen, you believe in altruism. A philosophical dead end and a waste of time if ever there was one. Now. While I’m rebuilding you, want any improvements made? I could bring you up a cup size or give you the wings of an angel without much added difficulty.

Jen felt her hair growing back. It was an odd sensation, as she reflected it ought not to be, because her hair was growing all the time anyway. “I’ll pass,” she concluded, after a moment’s thought. “Jen 1.0 is the only hardware I know how to use properly. Besides, you don’t want your parasitic buddy-cop to also be your genetic level plastic-surgeon. That’s like having a dentist who is also your masseuse and babysits your kids, it’s just confusing for everyone. I give you leave to dress me up, though. Something practical, but cute. And green, obviously.”

Fantha retreated a ways back inside Jen’s shoulder, as though in shame. About that, she said. I’m having some issues with the pigmentation. All the green is being diverted.

”Diverted. To wh—oh.” Jen looked outwards, content to see that her toes were more or less toes again. Beyond her toes, however, was Kath, draped in a shimmering, hissing green gown. And in front of Kath was Kracht.

The (bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch usurping bitch) mermaid touched the rock lightly on his chest, and Kracht began to scream. At the same time, the mineral began to grow, and also to become more… ornate.

Jen felt herself enough ro rise to her feet. Bits of not-her fell off like swollen ticks. She felt around for a sword and found she didn’t have one, so she raised her fists awkwardly.

“Alright,” she said aloud, looking from Kath to Xadrez and back again. “Whose ass do I kick first?”

ACT THREE: KRACHT HAS NEVER SEEN “GROUNDHOG DAY”

Things were going swimmingly.

Well maybe that was an exaggeration. Jen, Arkal, and Maxwell were all dead, yet again. The battles went on, pointlessly as ever. Emma Broderburg seemed no longer to exist. And the greatest threat to the hegemony of the Grandmasters was perhaps the last person Kracht would ever want in charge of anything. Still, he’d put a kibosh on the whole human supremacy thing easily enough—there was just one last supreme human to take care of.

”Join me,” shouted the Criminal, his voice booming in accordance with his freshly-tailored omnipotence. ”And I will spare my life and make you my Crimineral, first among my Gentlemen! Together we shall form a new set of Battles—true Battles of wit and skill, broadcast for an audience of a trillion demographics!”

Kracht had difficulty responding to this, partly because it was so fucking stupid, and more so because he was restrained from moving by the Criminal’s unshakable telekinetic grip.

The Criminal seemed to have realized this. ”You may speak,” he decreed, and Kracht found that it was so.

“I’m not joining you,” said Kracht. “But I do have something for you.” Finding that he could move his arm (infinite is the generosity of the Criminal), Kracht opened a door that didn’t exist and pulled out a dish of cured salmon. He offered it to the Criminal. “Lox?”

The Criminal looked at the fish platter as though appreciating how nonsensical this plan was. ”The lox, though seemingly scrumptious, is obviously a trap,” he conceded. ”However! Having divined the secrets of no fewer than five grandmasters, I am surely immune to whatever poison you may have concocted. …Still, I see no reason to play your game.”

Kracht, knowing better than to interrupt, simply stood and tried to make the lox look as delicious as possible.

”I shall eat your lox,” said the Criminal. ”If you can best me in a small contest! The situation is thus: I’ve tired of the Grandmaster name ‘the Criminal.’ It’s bland, it doesn’t suit me, and if you are to truly become my Crimineral, that would seem a bit redundant. The two of us shall brainstorm new names for me. If I come up with a name that satisfies me before you, you are forever my slave and my bitch, and I shall do with you as I please. If you are the one to name me, I shall sample your delicious-smelling seafood dish. Do you agree to these terms? No matter! We shall begin at once! Name for me a name!”

”The Mastermind,” offered Kracht.

”The Miscreant!” countered the Criminal.

“The Malcontent.”

”The Aristocrat!”

”The Bohemian.”

”The Symphonaut!”

”What?”

”Keep ‘em coming, Kracht!” yelled the Criminal, inappropriately loudly. ”I think we’re really getting somewhere!”

Kracht was never good in these 'seems like a game but of course it’s deadly serious’ situations. ”Um… the DJ?”

”The Synesthete!”

Something clicked in Kracht’s mind. He smiled triumphantly. “The Scofflaw.”

The Scofflaw considered this for a moment, then realized he was considering it as the Scofflaw, not as the Criminal. ”The throwback... it’s so powerful! …Very well. Give me the lox.”

Kracht handed over the fish. The Scofflaw produced a fork and knife made of the most brilliant diamonds, and wolfed it all down rather gracelessly. He gave a triumphant belch. ”Ha! That was delicious and I don’t feel a thing! Your gambit has failed, Crimineral.”

It was at this point that the Scofflaw realized that Kracht was moving his legs. He attempted to dispel his dishes and restrain his foe, but rather simply managed to drop the plate on his foot and make a futile dramatic gesture with his arms. ”Confound it!” he blustered. ”What did you do?”

”Sorry, Scofflaw. It ‘lox’ away your powers. Carnea was very proud of the pun.”

As Kracht approached Scofflaw to knock him out with a single punch to the jaw (Scofflaw’s jaw seemed to be a direct conduit to his sleep synapses), the world stopped. A familiar face, bleeding from all ends, came into his mind behind his eyes. ”We can do this, Kracht,” it said. “We’re all-stars, remember?”

And then he was in space again, floating endlessly next to a green rock.

As he felt himself being drawn into the Observer’s battle for yet a third time, he tried to count the weeks of fighting in both the first and second iteration of All-Stars, and came to an uneasy conclusion. Emma had messed up, or else overshot the mark; whatever she’d done with her dying breath had stuck him in a permanent cycle. Having saved the universe once, Kracht would have to do it again, and again, and again.

Until he died.

ACT 4: THE VERY MODEL OF A MODERN MAJOR-GENERAL

Xadrez felt like a bell, only instead of making sounds he rang smug satisfaction. It was the only emotion he really knew, except perhaps for smug dissatisfaction, and his body seemed acoustically shaped for it. Watching Jen gradually morph into her old self, in accordance with her own wishes and against his better judgment, sent a chime vibrating through him.

It dispelled when the former queen shoved her figurine in the breast pocket of her new outfit—a shimmery red number that perpetually looked like it had been worn the previous night in a dance club—and made a rather emphatic declaration of ill intent towards the spirit. Xadrez narrowed his eye-parts, puffed up his chest-parts and floated over to her.

To what do I owe the pleasure of your ceaseless nagging, my former lady

I seem to recall having just not only saving your life, but recovering it from the other side of saving

Expending in the process the lion’s share of what autonomy I have left

Jen rolled her eyes. ”Jesus, Xadrez, you fucking negotiated with my fucking usurper just to bring me back to life, and that after trying to convince my body to let me die so you could get both me and Kracht out of the way and get this battle done with. There were so many ways to get me back in my body, for fuck’s sake! I just thought of another one right now!”

Pray tell

”I don’t know, I could get all the children to clap and say they believe in me.”

Xadrez made a dismissive gesture. There’s no time for jokes, Jen

Jen stuck her tongue out. ”The magical logic is sound,” she insisted. ”I don’t joke about this stuff.”

Forgive me for my flight of rationality, sighed Xadrez

I forget how much of a crutch it can be in this world of yours

The girl and the tactician paused their spat to look over at Kath, entranced in the process of transforming Kracht. The rock, his neck having disappeared into a stone doorframe, turned his gaze as best he could back at Jen. ”Good to see you back, Jen,” he said, cracking a smile. ”I’d… fallen into this pattern of seeing you dead. After a while I thought it had stopped hurting seeing everyone die but… it’s good to see you moving on to the fourth round again. Do you… do you think you can survive this thing?”

”Of course, Kracht,” said Jen, a tear on her cheek. ”That was never the question.”

”Attagirl,” said Kracht. His voice was beginning to weaken as his lungs spread out and flatten inside of him. ”Looks like it’s not going to be me this time. Not to pick favorites, but I guess it ought to be you. No offense, Arkal.”

”None taken,” said Arkal, absentmindedly dissembling Weo’s old scythe over the pirate captain’s dead body. ”Or maybe a bit.”

Xadrez bristled at his blatant exclusion, but had no means to talk to the rock. Instead he took it out on Jen. Shouldn’t you be going to save him? he shot at her.

Jen shuddered. Fantha gave her an affectionate pat on the head. ”Yeah, sorry,” said the former queen. ”I’ve been putting it off because… I’m already pretty sure what’s going to happen.”

”Are we going to rescue the rock?” inquired Arkal. The old man groaned and snapped the scythe’s head back onto its base. ”I suppose you wouldn’t be alone. It’s an undignified way to die, being opened and walked through. Besides, I want to try out the features on this thing.”

Before Jen could properly counsel him against it, Arkal touched the scythe in a precise spot, shooting a burst of intense heat straight at the mermaid. Then something green happened, and Arkal was on the ground.

That set Jen off. ”You bitch!” she shrieked, walking over to the shipwreck and grabbing a floppy-looking cutlass off the ground. She pressed the flat of the blade against her cheek, as though embracing it, and after that tender display defaulted to her murderous rage. ”I am going to cut out your overexposed clitoris and feed it to the Ovoid,” she shouted, ignoring Kath’s unresponsiveness.

As Jen charged to her inevitable demise (you’d think she’d learn better so soon after dying twice in a row), Xadrez simply said, Stop

And she stopped. Very completely.

Jen turned towards Xadrez in fear. ”What… what did you just do? Xadrez?”

Xadrez shrugged his neck. I honestly wasn’t certain that would work

But no, it seems your body is rather wired to the ramifications of magical oaths

Or need I remind you that your life was a gift from the new queen to me

Jen trembled, realizing what had transpired. ”I… belong to you?”

Until you repay the debt with another life, be it my own or otherwise

An unfortunate consequence of my heroic actions on your behalf, yes, but I doubt it’ll have any adverse affect on our relationship

It’s not as if you have a reputation for rebelling against authority

The feeling of self-satisfaction came around again like a bell ringing in the hour. Or was it just a doorbell…

Feeling a prickling at the back of his neck, Xadrez turned away from Jen once again. Kracht seemed to have completed his metamorphosis, and looked rather ridiculous as a door with a humanoid head sticking out the top. Kath, heedless of the various attempts on her life around her, grabbed the doorknob and opened him…

ACT 5: A RIFF IN TIME

There seemed to be something a bit perverse about the way Converse’s metallic arm plucked the strings of his electric guitar—it was all mechanical, like a calliope. Still, Kracht had to admit, there was a lot of life to his music.

He had, by his count, five minutes left before the loop took him back again. The mineral’s future was in the hands of Converse Xodapop, Time Shredder, and that was not a comforting notion. The former time cop was eminently qualified to solve Kracht’s problem, but the “muse” he was bonded to—more or less an entity of pure chaos—wasn’t quite as trustworthy.

”Sorry, Kracht babe,” sighed Converse after a particularly riveting 4-D guitar solo. ”My flow won’t jive to the frequency of this time wall you keep hitting up against. Looks like your record’s gonna keep on turning.” Converse adjusted his sunglasses. It was night.

“Damn,” said Kracht. “I can’t keep going back and saving the universe again forever, Converse. What if I slip up?”

Converse put on his most serious face, which was recognizable only by a slight furrowing of his shades and a twitch in his handlebar moustache. ”Yeah, well, see, I’ve been thinking about that. That chick that put you in this temporal stranglehold really did a number on the timestream.”

”It was an accident. She was dying.”

Quantos struck a frustrated chord. ”Yeah, well, it had better have been an accident. Frankly, Kracht babe, I’ve half a mind to follow your flow back to that moment and shoot the chick before she can put the mojo on you and launch us all into Paradox City.”

”Don’t,” said Kracht. “That timeline was a hellhole. That can’t be the solution.”

Converse groaned. ”Yeah, yeah, I can dig it. But hear me out, daddy-0, something’s got to get done about these chronological remixes you’re dropping. Look. You go back and everything gets rewritten but you. You remain constant, despite the fact that you should be knocking yourself out of your own history every time you hit rewind. And now you got the memories of a bunch o’ histories that never actually happened, you dig? That shit’s a paradox, and paradoxes are not my groove, yo, they are bona-fide discordant. Now your Emma chick’s temporal voodoo has been doing a good job of buffing out the scratches on the vinyl, so we can rock to it for the time being—haha, time being, that’s a joke, Mr. Mineral, little occupational humor, can you dig it?” Kracht could not dig it. ”A’ight, a’ight. Now, like I’m saying, this loop-de-doop is sustainable while you’re around clinching it and lynchpinning it, pardon my parlance, but if you slip up and someone sends you to the big rock quarry in the sky, well then, the bigger half of existence as we know and love it is going the way of the Dodo and the Gordian Knot, if you catch my coattails.”

Kracht considered this while Converse caught his breath from the run-on sentence. “I guess I just won’t mess up,” he concluded.

”Better men than you have made such promises, my friend,” laughed the Time Shredder, slinging his guitar over his back. ”Don’t sweat it, my main man, other solutions present themselves. Now, listen, I’m gonna take a trip, surf the wave of your kooky causality, see if I can’t find the point where you jump ship. Now, either you end up breaking through the time wall and having yourself a nice ol’ future—in which case, everything’s peachy like mango—or, more regrettably, I find the iteration where you bite the big one, in which case I just do the legwork and stitch that time loop into a stable-ass mobius strip, turn it into a fully-functioning timeline. Sound like a plan, Stan?”

Kracht wasn’t entirely happy with the idea of Converse messing around in his future, but he didn’t want existence to be erased on his count, either. “Alright, do it. We’ll need a power source for you to time travel, right?”

”Ha!” Converse unsheathed his axe and hit a few chords. ”Baby, I’m half past way too convolutionary for the jigawatt tango. The only power I need… IS THE POWER OF ROCK AND ROLL!”

And Converse Xodapop began to shred. It was the most beautifully metal thing that Kracht had ever heard, in all the iterations of his life.

Purple lightning began to flash around the time ex-cop’s fingertips. ”Hang tight, Kracht the Rock that Rocked, I’ll be back before you can say ‘instantaneity.’”

He disappeared in a flash of violet pyrotechnics. At the same moment, he was standing behind Kracht. ”Something in your ear, daddy-0,” he chuckled, reaching for the side of Kracht’s head.

“What did you find out?” Kracht asked. “What happens? Do I die?” But he was already hearing Emma’s voice echoing in his head. The last thing he saw before he was pulled back to the past was Quantos pulling his hand out of his ear and revealing a shiny new quarter.

CLIMAX

It didn’t hurt.

The transformation itself hurt. Quite a bit, in fact. Being a mineral, Kracht didn’t really perceive pain the way most people did, but he was willing to bet that human-style pain felt a lot like turning into a door, only less intense.

Being opened up, though… it just felt hollow. He felt cold and empty, like an old wardrobe, which was quite a shock given that he’d felt like a solid chunk of rock for the entirety of his very long life.

He looked down at Kath, who was looking through him pensively. He wondered what she was seeing. Green fields, perhaps.

The mermaid moved to step through… and stopped. A green effect like a strobe light signified something very strong punching through Kath’s magic defenses and curling around her in serpentine tendrils of beige. Kath screamed, the first sound she had made since beginning to construct the door, and struggled with the Ovoid as its material snaked its way up Kracht’s frame and up to his head.

A tan tentacle wrapped around Kracht’s skull. Contact was made. The entire world began to look like a Cubist painting, all angles and diagrams and directions that ought not to exist. Above all, there was a presence… an insistence… something both more and less than a voice in his head. It sounded confident. It wanted to know what was going to happen next.

“Give me five minutes,” Kracht said out loud. “Five minutes to talk to the others. Then I’ll tell you.” The tendril tightened around his head. Kracht felt himself softening, beginning to splinter. “You can’t threaten me,” he reminded the anomaly. “This is the end for me anyway. Give me five minutes.”

The tan receded, and refocused on Kath, encasing her entirely in a bubble that had a worrying tinge of green in it. Kracht felt her influence recede, but the empty feeling remained.

Jen tried to run Kracht’s way, but was blocked by a piece of Ovoid that threw her back. “Jen,” said Kracht, his voice beginning to crack. “Don’t worry about me. There are bigger things at stake. Arkal, and Xadrez, I suppose, you need to hear this too.”

”I’m listening,” said Arkal, softly. Jen picked herself up and nodded, saying nothing.

Kracht tried to clear his throat, which only served as a reminder that he no longer had a throat. He began to speak anyway. “Xadrez has already been contacted by a man named Reinhardt. He’s purportedly leading a revolt against the grandmasters of the various battles, and he’s trying to recruit as many contestants as possible. He might be dead already, or soon, I don’t know—time always gets a bit scratchy in the space between battles—but his ideals live on, and most of them aren’t honest or noble.”

The Ovoid bubble encapsulating Kath was beginning to go green and ripple, like a nauseous cartoon character. “The name of the game is humanity,” Kracht continued, wondering if he wasn’t being a little overdramatic. “Reinhardt and his allies want us all made in God’s image. An eye for every arm and an opposable thumb for every lung. They want us perpetuating the norm, working nine-to-five, getting married two by two and occupying every corner of the universe with no surprises in the middle. These people… I don’t know, they look at the world and all the beautiful crazy things—mermaids and giraffes and aliens and ideas—they just look at all these things that are alive and being themselves and all they can think of is ‘Why is this here? How can we get this out of the way?’ I’ve never understood it, but then again, I’m a rock.

“My job for the last—for a very long, non-linear time—my job has been to stop them from getting what they want. But of course I never could, because every time I’d just go back and my going back would undo it all. Jen, Arkal, maybe without me you two can give us a victory that lasts. I’m sorry I couldn’t be with you to see it. Oh, and hey, if you ever see Emma Broderburg, tell her—Aaaargh!”

The Ovoid coated over him like a syrup, impatiently, as Kath cut her way out of her 4-D prison, screaming about how no one was going to stop her from getting what was hers by right. Kracht could barely hear it. All his senses were dimming now, except for that intrusive sense of something wanting to know what was going to happen next.

The insistence was rhythmic. The Ovoid wanted to know what was going to happen next. It wanted to know what was going to happen next. It wanted to know what was going to happen next.

Kracht could barely manage a whisper. “I… don’t know,” he said. It was the truth. He’d lost all sense of things. “I don’t know,” he repeated. It was true. He had no idea. It was funny, really. He didn’t have the foggiest idea what was going to happen next. Probably he would die. Maybe he would just start laughing.

It was the second one. Kracht laughed, a powerful laugh that shook the doorframe like an earthquake, prompting Kath to disentangle herself from the last strips of beige clinging to her and jump through him.

The hollowness Kracht felt was filled up both by his laughter and by the buzzing of the dragonlets that followed her through the door. The rock found all this hilarious—the numbness of the magic draining out of him and the pain of the Ovoid angrily tightening its tendrils on him until he cracked in a dozen places.

The door slammed like a punchline, and with a sound like laughter, Kracht crumbled into so much chartreuse dust.

EPILOGUE ALPHA: MINDFUCKS APLENTY

Converse Xodapop took a detour in his journey through his bro Kracht’s lifetimes, and wound up in a place that can only be described as a “domain.”

The entity sitting there observed his entrance and tried not to appear spooked. “Yo, Obby!” shouted Converse by way of greeting. “My most observant servant! How’s grandmastery on this fine timeline?”

The Observer did his best to seem very not-amused. ”The Observer is nobody’s servant,” he snarled in his best Alan Rickman impression. ”What are you doing here, little time traveler?”

”Oh, you know, not belonging. I’m from a history that’s just gotten rewritten, this whole multiverse has a big ‘no loitering’ sign up with my name on it.” The observer raised one cosmic eyebrow. “Don’t worry, I’m checking out and fading away soon. Have you seen the version of me they got going on in this timeline? Total narc, am I right? Alright, but I can see you’re a to-the-point kinda guy. Minimalist. I’ll give the rhyme sheet Philip Glass for you, then. I’m here about Kracht.”

”Are you going to tell me how to run my battle?” asked the Observer, flourishing appropriately. ”That would be... badass. But unwise.”

”On the contrary, my Grandbrother!” assured Converse. “I’m a big fan of your work! I’ve been reading through all the memories I’ve pulled from Kracht’s head, and let me just say, they are absolutely just the tops. Riveting stuff. Now, I know you’re setting up Kracht to win all the time, but—“

”Am not! The battle's fair. It's been calibrated and such. Hell, Keleth might have won.”

”Yeeeeah, well, the stats say otherwise. As a matter of fact, if Kracht keeps up this winning streak, the damage to the timestream is gonna go all irreversamundo!” Converse cracked a smile that would have frightened children, had any been present. “All I’m saying is, maybe it’s time for you to change things up. Look through the records and find the right place to throw a curveball at him. You know this is the first time my boy Kracht is going to meet a Jen Tull with power over green things?”

The Observer remembered that he had his eyebrow raised, lowered it, and raised his other, which he hoped would be even more formidable. ”I didn’t know that,” he confessed, sulkily. ”I kind of only skimmed over Kracht's memories.”

”Well, maybe you should reconsider that policy,” said the Time Shredder, popping a USB drive out of his arm. “Here, you can have my copy, if you do a favor for me.”

The Observer raised both eyebrows at once, displaying an omniscient inquisitivity that might have shattered a lesser, or more likely a greater mind. ”Oh, come on. Like I don't can't access his memories myself without your help,” he huffed.

“Hey, brother, I’m not asking for anything we don’t all want! All I’m looking for is a little stable time loop action. When Kracht dies, you just take these memories and put a copy of him back at the beginning of the battle, so everything goes hunky-dory and we can all finally get on with the future. Sound good?”

The Observer stubbornly refused to respond.

“Attaboy, my Observish Dervish! I know you got my back.” Converse put the USB drive down on the floor. “Well, my work here is done. I got my ticket out of this existence, and its all-aboard, dig?”

With one final power chord, Converse Xodapop allowed causality to catch up with him, and winked out of history. The Observer, after a quick glance around to make sure nobody was scrying, allowed himself to giggle. That had been a welcome distraction.

EPILOGUE OMEGA: FAIRY TALE ENDING

Kath emerged in a bath of placental fluids and brimstone. She removed herself from that rather disgusting situation, and found herself in a cave. Behind her was a bloated, reeking dragon corpse with her womb cut open; in front of her was a furry four-legged man and an eight-limbed maid wearing an outfit that, despite her limited knowledge of the philosophy of clothes, Kath would be confident in describing as “slutty.”

The baby monsters hovered expectantly, awaiting so much of a gesture from Kath. She decided to let them kill the woman. She personally had had her share of blood for the hour.

The spider-vampire shouted “Deities, we couldn’t stop it! Avenge me,” and then Kath’s new friends made short work of her, starting with the clothes and working inwards to the gooey bits. The centaur bucked, considering making a run for it, and charged at Kath.

Wondering when she became so much faster than anybody else, Kath simply sidestepped and grabbed the horse-man by the hair (when will these landlings learn to shave?) and leapt up onto his back. She spent a moment pondering what it would be like to have sex with this appealingly musculatured chimaera, but his body language and the morningstar he kept fumbling for suggested he wasn’t in a consenting mood. He was also crying. Adorable.

Kath put her sword to the centaur’s neck and managed to convince him to stop. “Whoa there, fella,” she whispered in his ear, feeling his abdomen up and down with her free hand. “No need to confront. I’m your new queen, it would seem.”

The centaur grunted either in anger or in humor. “You fish-smelling cunt, I’ll obey no queen who was born alongside a thousand dragons. That would be stupid.”

Kath rolled her eyes. “Stupider than calling the woman with a sword to your neck a fish-smelling cunt?” She demonstrated the perils associated with having a sword to your neck. “Hardly.”

Kath hopped off the corpse and addressed the dragonlet swarm. “And you,” she told them, feeling haughty. “Don’t think I'm nurturing you until you’re grown. Get proactive. Fly to all corners of this place and start killings. Go on, I’m sure you can handle the separation bends.” The little ones reluctantly took her word and flew off, leaving only a single monster contentedly digging a hole in the woman’s face. “Little shits,” she grumbled.

Kath walked out into the green, feeling sadistic and dangerously post-feminist. The world before her seemed so vibrant and completely realized that she would have to burn it all down before it could become her canvas for something new, which would probably also involve fire.

Fire was something you couldn’t do underwater. Kath was eager to begin experimenting with it.

She walked into the town that lay at the shadow of the cave. She was of two minds: either she should get herself straight to the castle and coronate herself right away, or else she should find a body of water, get a taste for the oceans and rivers of the Place. Either way, there would be plenty of opportunities to rack up infamy on the way. And there’s no such thing as bad publicity, as they say.

Robust Laser · 06-17-2011, 05:30 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by cyber95.

The Observer lifted his hat and looked at his eyebrow...s. Who the hell had managed to shave off the middle of his perfectly kept brow without him noticing? Very concerning. Now, if his guesstimations were correct, the round should be ending soon. Still a bit to go before his other guests would show up, but that probably didn't matter right now anyways. For now, he needed to call up his old buddy again!

The Observer turned on a screen where the Director was apparent, milling about and apparently unaware he was being watched.
"Hey, Smokey!"
The Director flinched at the grating sound of his "successor's" voice. What was it now?
"Haven't heard from you in a while? Been busy with All-Stars stuff, right?"
"I have, actually. How is it, I must ask, that your battle has yet to produce a winner when-"
"Season one is not the topic right now, man. I just wanted to tell you that I'm going to be using some of your resources. Like that Geiram place you cooked up!"
"I don't think I had given you permission to use Battleopolis. Besides, it is-"
"Don't worry about that, I already grabbed it! Go and check the pocket universe you were keeping it in and you'll see! Well, I suppose you won't see. Took some work to move an entire city messed up like that without you noticing."
The Director paused for a few moments, spacing out while his consciousness was focused elsewhere. By the time he had gotten back, however, the subject of his newfound anger had already gone.

Just as predicted, Kracht had been destroyed! Really, at the start of the round, Observer wasn't entirely certain that the location changing thing would work, but it was worth a shot! Even then, he could probably figure something out for the next round. Causality's a bitch, and he didn't really want to screw with it too much. Okay maybe just a little.

He cracked his knuckles and shaved off the rest of his eyebrow, deciding it just looked weird the way it currently was, and got the next round underway.

The four remaining contestants, once again, found themselves in a new, unfamiliar location. The ruins of a city were apparent, as were buildings that were untarnished, and perhaps even new. Something had clearly happened here some time ago. Long enough for people to start rebuilding. The voice of the Observer could be heard from nowhere in particular.

"Hello, contestants! Seems like my picking on Kracht went a little bit far. Oops! Well, all's well that ends well, as they say! Now, about your new arena! This place was already used in a previous battle by a good friend of mine. You can tell because of the fact that everything is broken. Well, not quite everything. There were a few survivors! I think only a generation's gone by since then, so there are a couple hundred people living here. Some of the older ones might be able to give you an idea of what happened... if they're still of sound mind to do so by the time you get to that. Anyways, enjoy the wonderful town of New Battleopolis, everyone! Toodaloo!"

The Observer's speech finished, leaving the contestants to start the new round proper.

"Alright, now, time to sit back and watch the show..."

The Observer thought to his visitor just prior to the previous round. He didn't really know too much about the guy, but decided he hadn't fucked with enough beings of unimaginable power lately anyways. Maybe he'd tell the local Mr. Xodapop about the alternate timeline guest he just had. That should be an interesting conversation.

SpoilerShow

Dragon Fogel · 06-18-2011, 10:20 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

Reserved.

Dragon Fogel · 06-19-2011, 12:41 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

Arkal looked around him. Broken machines littered the area, as did a large pile of bent steel girders. There were bags of concrete as well, and a badly-damaged fence around the whole area.

Had he come from a different time, Arkal might have recognized it as a construction site. In the blacksmith's eyes, however, it was more of a material repository. He set to work at once.

He had just finished taking the treads off of a bulldozer when he was rudely interrupted by a loud voice.

"You there! Step away from the machinery and come this way at once!"

Arkal turned around, and saw two figures approaching. Both were armored, but in completely different styles; the man in the more traditional suit carried a large sword, and from the way he walked, it looked like he was in charge. The other man's armor appeared to be far more advanced; it was made largely of a material Arkal couldn't place offhand. He held a rifle, and was pointing it at the smith.

"You think he's awakened, boss? But why over here?"

The sword-wielding man turned to his cohort.

"It hardly matters. The important point is that he is human, unlike the last few to awaken. We may actually be able to find a new recruit."

He walked over to the smith.

"Greetings. Welcome to New BaTTleOpOliS. I would like to discuss the state of our fine city with you, Sir..."

Arkal paused, and extended a hand.

"Arkal. Arkal of the Silver Anvil."

The armored man shook Arkal's hand firmly.

"Greetings, Sir Arkal. I am Vandrel Reinhardt."

Elpie · 07-03-2011, 01:46 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

Xadrez was nowhere to be seen, which was a relief. Jen was free to… shit. Do what exactly?

She was standing in front of what looked like it used to be a museum. A previous battle had been through here? Sure looked like it. Jen wondered who the contestants were, and how one had died. Some of them were heroes, maybe. She wondered if Kracht had met any of them, in a past life.

Kracht was dead. By Jen’s understanding, if Kracht hadn’t died, this entire timeline—this entire fight—would have been erased and written over. That meant that the most significant event in this entire universe—multiverse, whatever—was that the rock had died. And that was Jen’s fault, if it was anyone’s.

It used to be that if you saw ruins like this, instead of getting all mopey about what had come before, you’d go explore, said Fanthalion.

“Don’t act like you’ve known me,” said Jen, aloud. Her voice echoed off the walls of the former museum. “You’ve rifled through my past like a filing cabinet, but you haven’t known me, really. You weren’t there.” Despite herself, or rather because of herself, Jen began to walk up the steps towards the museum door. “There was… let’s see. One ruin I loved was that former convent that we figured out was actually devoted to the creation and distribution of gay porn. They’d chronicle the dozens of hours they’d spend on a painting of two dudes fucking. I was twelve, it freaked me out a bit, but still, it was a great ruin. So many little things left behind.”

She entered the museum. A kiosk invited her to take home a souvenir Key to the City from the gift shop. Above, a replica biplane dangled from a single cable, spinning lightly in the breeze that came through the shattered windows. She looked at the signs and decided, almost unconsciously, to head towards the space exhibit.

“There was the underwater city and the city in the clouds that had been at war until everyone came to a treaty whereby they all left their cities and formed a new city on the land. Like that solved anything. Anyway, I took an orb off the pedestal in the sky and suddenly it started raining and we all fell into the ocean city… I’m sorry, you know all this.”

You can keep talking if you’d like.

”…I’ll pass, thanks.” She had stopped in front of a diorama of what she was pretty sure was a highly inaccurate and romanticized depiction of Native American life. There was a loud humming coming from down the hall. She ignored it. “Before that was the attic, all Mom and Dad’s old things. I built my first castles out of cardboard boxes there.” She sighed. The buzzing intensified into what was unmistakably the sound of a vacuum cleaner, especially when accompanied by the sight of a vacuum cleaner with skeletal arms moving towards her. The vacuum outstretched one of its hands, expectantly.

Jen didn’t see what else to do. She took the hand. It was cold.

The vacuum left a trail of clean as it led her the direction she was already going, towards the planetarium. Inside, it was dark, lit only by a projection of what seemed to be a purple-tinted map of the city from overhead. This gave off the dizzying illusion that the city was upside-down and pressing down on Jen’s head, and the sounds of a dozen vacuum cleaners circling the planetarium were like airplanes passing under the city. A city in the clouds, she mused.

The big projector that ought to have been in the center of the planetarium was gone. In its place was a human skull, affixed to the floor as though lying on a pillow, with something black and purple and sinister looking stuck in one eye socket. Jen put her hand over the eye, and the planetarium went black all at once. Her hand started to burn, and when she pulled it away and the light came back, there was a man standing in front of her.

”The woman whose head that was called herself an Empress. She deserved what was coming to her, believe me.” The man was the color of copper, tinted a bloody violet by the light of the purple eye. He looked strong, determined, and more worrying, smart in the way that really matters. <font color="#702020">”The humans here haven’t been good to us here, girl, and we’ve paid them in kind. Newcomer or no, your being in our territory upsets the treaty.”

In the darkness, there were sounds. Growls, and whispers in alien languages. Jen resisted the urge to reach for the place where she knew she wasn’t wearing a sword, and resorted instead to lying, which was always a good plan B. “Oh, please, I’m not a human,” she said, trying her best to sound older than her years (this mostly consisted of sounding “sultry,” which it turns out is not a word that actually means anything). “The body is, but nobody’s home. She’s pretty, isn’t she? Young.” Jen psychically nudged Fantha, who compliantly slithered out of her shoulder-hole and wriggled around a bit for show.

The rust-colored man smiled and shook his head.</font> “Still thinking in human terms, girl,” he said. The sounds all around were getting louder and closer. ”But I’m a Telpori-Hal. I see you as you really are. Both of you. Take her.”

Something that smelled, felt, tasted and sounded like a canvas bag dropped over Jen’s head. She didn't get to see what it looked like; she didn't get to see anything at all.

**Schazer** · 07-10-2011, 09:08 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

Xadrez allowed himself one long, satisfied smirk. It even tasted like victory. He stared up for a long moment into the soulless sky, then somewhat unnecessarily, summoned his implacable beige steed. The Ovoid made no indication it was receptive to the tactician’s words, but Xadrez began his spiel anyway.

I do wonder

why would you let that sickly little liar turn those two against us

my allegiances crossed with her royal sociopathic majesty I can comprehend

she poses no threat to me unless the observer’s wards are so ineffectual

in which case her summons are the least of my concerns

what are you trying to tell me, Xadrez asked an otherwise unremarkable patch of air, glare narrowing a little as if in accusation.

are those two mere fodder

hearts pounding counting down until our trap is laid to ensnare a grandmaster

Im not seeing it, Ovoid

answer me

kracht is dead

kracht is dead and you seemingly can not care less his parting gift was to poison their minds

do you not care any longer

have we already won

answer me, damn you

♫♪~

It was a ghost, perched on the twisted remnants of a corner shop. Xadrez lowered his hand, the fact he’d been yelling at it only now dawning on him. The cloud of notes swirled round into a hunched mockery of the tactician whispering away into his hand, accompanied with a shimmering giggle like the afterechoes of a gong.

Xadrez glared at it. It trumpeted gleefully, having caught his attention, then assumed a more humanoid form and darted a bit a closer. Despite the Ovoid’s protests (at least, that was how Xadrez interpreted the crunching sensation around his arm), he approached slowly – curious. The ghost chirped, leapt over the tactician’s head, before doubling back and chattering with a castanet consternation at Xadrez’ chess pieces.

Xadrez just watched as its quaver-talons struggled with picking up a pawn. Out of nowhere, he felt… not quite homesick - the place had been broken to hell since Scout had disappeared, but that was probably part and parcel of ripping a god from its domain – but yearning for some long-dead and buried ideal. Xadrez’ nostalgia – that was it, he supposed -

came screaming to a halt, beige melting away to the hilt as though the blade burned. Xadrez would’ve conceded it actually did, but the screaming came back with a renewed vigour as though mortally offended he’d been ignoring it for so long.

Xadrez caught the accusing taste of chlorine in the air. The spirit fled with a startled clang, not that the tactician noticed. Everything was howling. There was nothing but the godawful howling of a promise broken.

---
Do you hear something?

"Uh… like, a wail?"

That's the one. Out the way of the humans' camp. I don't suppose you heard about them trying anything, did you Trenton?

Ma'am, I would like to think I of all people would recognise the sound of my dear brother's pompous windbaggery.

Trenton.

Brookie, relax. Last time I went round there, he was brown-nosing one of his higher-ups so he could kick-start his religion amongst the locals like a good missionary. That was yesterday. Either my brother's learnt to keep his trap shut when he's got a good thing going… pfft, who am I kidding. There's no attack planned.

Hmm. A newcomer, then? Where's Zeke?

I do believe I spotted him heading to the roof. Also…

What?

Well, either that awful centipede got his head trapped in a dustbin again, or Symphonia's returned. I can't tell cowbell from cymbals when it comes to her, but it's clear enough something's bothering her.

Oh, for pity's sake. Trenton, get Zeke. I don't care how you do it; if he's pursuing you downstairs with a deathwish that's not that big a deal anyway. Not if it's time for us all to die.

Hypocrisy!

Trenton, I do not have the patience for you right now and you are frankly quite fortunate that I have the fortitude to save you from the existential crises of a vengeful rocket chainsaw steeling herself to meet the screaming banshee possible harbinger of our collective demise. Get off my thrusters. Go get Zeke.

Who died and left you in charge?

Trenton.

It was a joke, Brookie.

---

The Ovoid covered up the knife again just as soon as Symphonia fled, leaving almost-as-painful-aural-afterimages as other noises crept from their hiding places and slowly reclaimed the air again. A five-story apartment block with a glass façade further up the street creaked a little, bits of window still trickling onto the pavement.

The most intact remaining pane was already on its way to asphalt-dusting ruination, and didn't have quite the effect Brooklyn had been gunning for when she roared through. He didn't see a rocket-propelled chainsaw with a geriatric ghost jammed in there, however.

Xadrez saw a youthful, bright, and belligerent soul which took in its adversary, then appeared to get ready to verbally abuse him to kingdom come.

Yes, it didn't escape the tactician's attention said soul lived in a rather pointy, flame-spewing contraption. But Xadrez knew it was what was on the inside that counted.

Hello little one

would you be one of the older ones the observer mentioned

or is this town dwelt in exclusively by the dead

Oh, awesome. You speak ghost. Spectrish? Spiritese? Never mind that. Observer's your Grandmaster?

yes ventured Xadrez.

And you're totally sure your last round ended? No inexplicable skip?

Your comprehension of my circumstances leads me to assume you are also in a grand battle

if this is correct then as kindred spirits in death in battle I will assist your enquires

yes the observer is my grandmaster

yes the round ended this is the locale set for myself and my three opponents to purportedly fight in

now please explain to me the relevance and perhaps your revelation

The chainsaw couldn't grin, but the spirit couldn't have grinned wider if the machine had slashed off her own corporeal jaw.

Oh, shit. Excuse my language, but holy. Shit.

If you're right – I think you're right, I believe you, I guess, but I suppose it comes down to if Zeke's right, this is it. It's begun. Armageddon. The end of days. Wow, I mean I wasn't ever all that optimistic about humanity but I never figured I'd actually get to see it myself… wait. What's your name again, Mr. beige-handed doombringer?

Xadrez

Ok, Xadrez. Sorry. It's just… you're here. You're actually here. One of you or your friends are going to die. Do you know what happens then?

I suspect little chattering one that you will illuminate me on the matter shortly

Everybody dies. No tomorrow. See that? The sun up there? That's the last sun I'm going to see. Isn't it amazing? Sorry, I'm getting emotional. Still new at this, get it? Zeke. I'll take you to Zeke. He'll explain. Please. Maybe you've got better things to do, but this is my last day to live. Or might be. I don't know yet, but Zeke can tell us all for sure. I know we just met, but please. Come with me. Talk to Zeke.

GBCE · 07-16-2011, 03:12 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

The Ovoid had been rather inactive since the round transition, its main mass content to hover nonchalantly approximately twenty feet above the ground of a ruined alleyway. The Amalgam to which it belonged, however, was not so calm.

In a space beyond spaces, oily tan shifted and pulsated in directions that should not exist. The vast four-dimensional structure of the Amalgam contorted itself frenetically, as Kracht's death was absorbed, and its implications realized. The structure continued to shift until, without warning, it resolved itself into something resembling order. A decision had been reached.

---

In an old, run-down shop, in a particularly uninhabitable section of the city, space ballooned into a humanoid shape, and a man was suddenly standing in the rubble. He didn't seem a particularly remarkable man; his clothes were well-fit, formal looking, but without standing out too much. He took in a deep breath, and closed his eyes, enjoying the ability to breathe once more. He let out a sigh, and looked around, gaze purposefully scanning every nearby object. Seeming to find nothing, the man pointed himself in a direction, and began to walk.

In another section of the city, humans bustled around a rebuilt apartment building. In an empty hallway of the building, space ballooned once more, and a woman appeared. Her clothes were more casual; tight-fitting white pants which cut off mid-thigh, and a white armless shirt with a large collar. She, too, took in a breath, and closed her eyes briefly before letting it out. She began to walk forwards, finding her way with eerie precision to an exit. She opened the door into a street, and, without wasting a beat, walked straight up to human nearest the door. "Excuse me!" she said, brightly. "Have you seen any silver orbs around?"

"Uh... no?" the man looked confused.

Unperturbed, the woman smiled. "I see. Thank you!" Before the man could protest, the woman strode off, appearing to know exactly where she was headed.

In yet another section of the city, space ballooned once more, and another human appeared. He stretched, seeming to take pleasure in the simple movement of limbs. Something rattled behind him, and he turned around. "Greetings!" he raised his hand. "Hello! Over there! How are you?"

A voice came from the rubble. "Human. How did you get past the perimeter? No, wait, it doesn't matter. You'll be dead soon anyway."

The man paused. "Well that's all very interesting but I think I should be going." He turned to leave.

"Halt!" A noodly appendage shot from the rubble, but before it could grasp the man, space ballooned around him once more, and he disappeared, only to reappear not twenty feet away, significantly out of reach. Gormand trundled out from behind the rubble, single eye glaring at the human. The meatball began to move towards the man.

"Uh, thanksforyourassistancebye!" the man waved and then ran off, navigating his way through the ruined city with relative ease. Gormand watched him leave, then turned to report the incident to the Captain of the Watch.

---

As Xadrez followed the chainsaw, the bit of Ovoid wrapped around his knife seemed to tighten its grip. Xadrez moved the knife experimentally; there was definitely resistance, now. In fact, if he didn't know any better, he'd say it was occasionally trying to pull him in seemingly random directions...

---

All across the city, humans began to appear. They all exhibited the same behavior upon arrival, and all began to start walking shortly afterwards. An outside observer would have noted their even distribution across the city, and, more importantly, would have noted their movements as an efficient search pattern.

On an individual level, this higher order was lost. Each human appeared to be wandering randomly. In fact, that was exactly what the first man to appear seemed to be doing when he ran into armed humans, guarding a barrier in the streets.

"Hello there!" he said, with far too much joviality. He waved, and began to stride purposefully towards the guards, who shifted uneasily. One of them raised a worn-looking rifle.

"Identify yourself!" he called.

"Oh no need for that, I'm not important. But you are! What's your name?"

"Um..." the guard looked to his partner for help, who could only shrug. "You... you first. You don't look like you're from around here."

"How astute! You are correct of course. I came from over there," the man pointed, roughly in the direction he'd come from, and continued. "But I came here because I am looking for someone. Actually, a lot of me is looking for someone. I mean, my friends. A lot of my friends. Are looking for someone. Yes." The man had reached the barrier now, and was standing rather awkwardly in front of it. The guards, both convinced this man was of no threat, lowered their weapons.

"And... just who is it that your... friends... are looking for?"

"Oh I doubt you know him. He's probably formed a secret society or something silly like that. So unless you're part of it...?" the two guards looked blank. "Well then, I'll know him when I see him. Mind letting me through?"

"Um... sure." The guards moved aside, and the man, nodding in thanks, continued through. The two guards looked after him. "That was strange."

"You sure letting him in was a good idea? He seemed a bit... off."

The first guard snorted. "We're all a bit 'off' here. If he causes trouble, he'll be dealt with."

The other guard nodded in agreement.

All across the city, the new humans began their search. One spatial dimension above them, the tendrils of the Amalgam hovered around them, staying in constant communication with its fragments.

Dragon Fogel · 07-21-2011, 03:25 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

It had been a shock to Arkal to meet the man Kracht had warned him about. It had been a greater shock to hear him speak so casually of his disdain for nonhumans.

Reinhardt's companion, who had grudgingly introduced himself as Phil Girnham, seemed relatively uninterested in speaking to either of them. He mostly ignored the other two and simply muttered under his breath; at one point, Arkal thought he heard the man say "when are we going to find something to shoot already."

Reinhardt himself, by contrast, was doing enough talking for the three of them, with enough words to spare for a fourth.

Much of it was simply spiels about the superiority of humanity in general, and Reinhardt in particular. Arkal had little choice but to conceal his disgust; this was an opportunity to question the man he was trying to stop, after all, and he couldn't waste it.

The explanation had started with the "awakened". Reinhardt began by explaining how he had been Matthew Vanhart, a simple tailor, and then suddenly found himself with new memories and a new appearance. And a new mission: ensuring humanity dominated the city.

"You see, I was not the only one to awaken in such a way," he explained. "There were others. Some were human, but a number of them... became other things. One man turned into a pile of boxes, filled with odds and ends. A woman became a wolf. A boy turned into a strange-looking armadillo. And there were others. I could not ignore the threat they posed to New BaTTleOpOliS."

Arkal was curious about the vocal distortion whenever Reinhardt mentioned his city's name, but he said nothing. The man himself didn't seem to notice.

As Reinhard continued, he explained that a group of these other beings had formed explicitly to wrest control of the city away from humans.

"They are our primary enemy. But, make no mistake: though there are non-humans who claim they have refused to join, they still seek to overrun this city. They must all be stopped. Worse still, there are humans who refuse to fight by our side, despite the threat these hideous creatures pose to us all! It disgusts me to think there could be such traitors to humanity in our midst."

It was at that point that Arkal punched Reinhardt in the back of the head and knocked him to the ground. He rubbed his knuckles afterwards; that helmet was made of strong stuff.

"You dare to strike me?" Reinhardt shouted, picking himself up. "Have you chosen to forsake humanity and side with the monsters, then? So be it. You have signed your death warrant."

Arkal responded by grabbing the knight and hurling him at Phil. He then unchained his anvil and raised it above his head, preparing to bring it down upon the duo and end Reinhardt's evil.

But he had underestimated the monster's strength. Reinhardt raised his hands and grabbed the anvil just it drew near, holding it up easily.

It wasn't a comfortable position for Phil. Being pinned under a heavily-armored man who was fighting with a muscular blacksmith over a large anvil offered little room to maneuver. If not for his own armor, he'd likely have been crushed already.

Fortunately, the communicator in his helmet was hands-free. In general, he didn't like calling for backup, but he liked being caught under Reinhardt's bulk even less.

***

John Smith picked up the call.

"It's Girnham," he said to the bearded man beside him. "Seems he's in a bit of trouble over at the old construction site."

"Girnham calling for help? It must be bad, then." Cedric grinned.

"Something about an old man trying to crush him and Reinhardt with an anvil," Smith replied.

"Lord Reinhardt," corrected the knight. Smith ignored it. He called no man his lord.

"Let's just go, shall we? This promises to be interesting, at the least."

High above, atop a ruined building, hundreds of eyes watched them run off.

The insect-covered mass of rotting meat that was Cole Aran had been tracking them for some time. And he intended to continue doing so.

Cole grew a set of dragonfly wings and followed the duo towards the construction site.

Elpie · 07-30-2011, 03:45 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

”It’s for you. You are real, right?”

Jen had gone through a phase a few years back where she'd gotten that question a lot. "No" was never the right answer. “Yeah,” she told the lobster.

She could see why this guy made the perfect guard. He wasn’t going to get bored watching her over all day, because he was utterly engrossed in the action of polishing his robot-suit, which despite his strongest efforts still very evidently looked like something thrown together from a junkyard. Nor was he going to get too relaxed and nap on the job, or let Jen convince him to let her go. He was a paranoid mess; every minute he didn’t spend looking up and down the corridor or watching Jen in her cell like a hawk, he was looking at her reflection in one of the shinier parts of his armor. Jen wasn’t exactly a master of crustacean body language, but she could tell that this guy didn’t sleep much. She hadn’t gotten his name.

The lobster wasn’t satisfied by her answer. ”You’re real-real?” he insisted. ”You weren’t awakened? You came straight here from the previous round?”

”Round?” Jen grabbed onto the bars of her cell, formerly a diorama of the moon landing. “As in, Grand Battle round?”

”Yes, yes, you are a bit behind on the times now, aren’t you?” The lobster seemed to catch himself fraternizing, and simply handed his communicator through the bars. ”Look, just take the call. It’s from another battle, so I doubt she can do anything to help you.”

A phone call from another battle? What’s going on here? Apparently all the rules had been thrown out the window. Jen momentarily had a worrying thought that Kracht’s dying had altered the past somehow, but that passed when she realized it was stupid. This was just the battle trying to heat itself up. She took the tangentially phone-looking thing and put it to her ear. “Hello?”

”Hi.”

The voice was young, female and endearingly innocent. Jen didn’t recognize it at all. The last thing Lobstertron had said into the phone before addressing Jen was insisting that he wasn’t actually real, and then, ”Fine.” None of this answered Jen’s myriad burning questions, so she decided to be blunt. “Um, who is this?”

”Yeah, this is Alison Broderburg, I’m in one of the battles. Who’s this?” In the background on the other end of the line, there was a sound like an engine and some gunfire and… a baby? She decided not to think about it too hard.

“Huh,” she said, deciding she instantly trusted Alison. “So, there are a lot of these battles, huh? I’ve mostly been focusing on my own. Yours is run by a big omnipotent one-eyed guy, right? The Observer?”

”No, mine’s just some guy. The Charlatan.”

God, there’s more than one of them. I don’t like that. Well, at least they’re suffering us to talk to each other. ”So what’s your story? Psychic powers? Tentacles? Supergenius?”

”I’m here with my whole family,” she responded immediately, as though it explained something.

Jen groaned. “That’s fucked up! You’re just, like, some family?”

”Yeah, really, four of us and the baby.”

And the baby. “Shit. Are you all okay? What round are you on?”

”And the RV came along too. It’s not that bad,” she said, the very picture of chipperness. ”I mean I don’t really think anyone’s gonna try to kill anyone or anything. The only other fighter I met was really cool. And there’s another one helping us out with some car trouble now, I think.”

This was painful. Jen didn’t want to crush this girl’s little innocence-fest, but if she kept on like this, it wasn’t going to last all that long anyway. “Look, Alison, I thought that through a lot of my first round, and then—“ and then Xadrez killed Weo “—and then one of the players shot another one in the back. Now there are only four of us left, and… I think one, maybe two of them might deserve to die.” She’d forgotten about Xadrez killing Weo, way back when. When had she decided that the spirit was her ally? Her friend, even?

”So there are only four of you left? That suc—stinks.” She can't say "sucks" because her parents are there. How old is she, eleven? Twelve? She supposed it was better than the alternative… although Jen couldn’t imagine what this battle would be like if her parents were here. I wonder where they’re living now. ”Were any of them your friends or anything?”

Good question. Her subconscious bypassed her internal thoughts and said “Yes.” She sighed. “The last one was named Kracht. He was, um, a rock.”

Alison paused and puzzled over that. ”Oh. Oh, I’m sorry,” she ventured. Then: ”Like a pet rock? I used to have one of those.”

Jen’s grief had a brief battle against her sense of humor and lost. She found herself smiling, then giggling, then laughing aloud. Lobstron shot her a nervous glare.

“I like you, Alison,” said Jen, after she calmed herself. “Call me again sometime.”

Alison sounded distracted. ”Yeah, there’s something going on here, I should go.”

”Alright. Stay sharp and protect your family.” Don’t make promises don’t make promises “I’m going to find a way to get you out of there. You and everyone else in these battles.” Shit. “I promise.” Fucker.

”Okay. Thanks, I guess. You’re in my contacts. Bye.” Click.

Jen threw the communicator at the lobster’s head. ”Hey!”

Jen suddenly felt daunted. You promised. There were God-knows-how-many of these battles, each with God-knows-how-many contestants, run by God-knows-how-many multiversal teleporty omnipotent assholes. She wasn’t the first one trying to escape, but it sure seemed like she’d have to be the first to succeed. And you’ve already died twice.

You shouldn’t have promised, Fantha chimed in.

“There’s a baby in that battle, Fantha. Tell me that isn’t fucked up.”

I know your ethics. That was far from agreement. My most constant companion is an amoral parasite. I heard that.

Jen wracked her brain for a problem she could solve, and found it in her stomach. “Hey, Seafood,” she barked at the lobster. “I haven’t eaten anything all battle. You gonna give your prisoner some food, or am I gonna have to get some water boiling?”

The lobster clacked one claw in annoyance.

* * * * *

The silent unawakened majority of New Battleopolis, meanwhile, were occupying themselves the way masses do: by forming religions.

The fall of Old Battleopolis was not terribly well-documented—accounts differ, for instance, on whether there were vacuums, or a dragon, or both—but all could agree that one of the great saviors of the city was Konka Rar, master of the sciences and the occult, father to skeletons, mother to vacuums, leader of men, lover of women. It was further agreed by most that He would return to usher in a new Golden Age.

Over a million copies of the First Konkaronichle had been published and distributed, which was a completely silly and unnecessary number given the city’s rather diminished population, so the Second Konkaronichle had enjoyed a much more manageable print run of ten thousand copies in hardcover, another twenty thousand in paperback, and a limited run of a hundred “Ultra-Rare” leather-bound copies.

It said “Ultra-Rare” right on the cover, in embossed gold letters. Nobody agreed on where the books came from, but the mysterious publisher was by no means subtle.

One of these ultra-rare copies had, to the dismay of fanatics and collectors, had several dozen pages torn off and arranged on a corkboard and written all over in blue Magic Marker. The corkboard was being held up by a weasely septuagenarian ex-pharmacist whose name isn’t in itself important but is probably phonetically similar to “Kerak.” Let’s call him “Karek.” Karek was holding up his board and yelling at passerby.

”’And He shall come upon them as though soliciting them for afternoon tea,’ it says!” he shouted at a gathering crowd, pointing to a part of the corkboard where several important-looking dashes and circles intersected. “That’s II Sorsa, 22:2. Four twos! That makes eight! And if we look at the eighth verse of the eighth chapter of the eighth book, see, here, I put them right next to each other. ‘Time is no obstacle for Him, yet He always comes upon the appointed hour.’ Three! Three is the appointed hour for tea, ‘tis common etiquette, ‘tis well known. And look now upon the hour, my brothers! 2:57! The tea is upon us!”

“More like the tease,” came a heckler from somewhere in the back of the crowd. Karek made one of those dismayed old-person moans that can be defined as the opposite of rapture, and pointed at nothing in particular. “’Come the hour, the ultimate sacrifice shall be made—‘ this the word of Lutherion, who has seen the face of death, ‘the ultimate sacrifice shall be made and this world and many others—“

The heckler would not relent. “Listen, old man!” The voice came from nowhere, as though the essence of the crowd itself were speaking out. “Yours isn’t the only story I’ve heard. They say he walks among the streets, wearing a plastic storebought mask, and speaks the blue words that awaken a man.”

“I’ve heard that too,” concurred a woman. “How can we find the real second coming among all this hearsay?”

“It is not for us to know the ways of Konka!” came a third voice. “This man is a pretender!”

That last one sounded like a black guy, Karek thought. Diversity itself turns against me and my Truth! Karek opened his mouth, waved his hands, and looked like he was about to fall into a seizure any minute, which got the crowd’s attention again. Yeah, that’s right. I’m on death’s door, and probably have Alzheimer’s. You love that shit. He made another one of those moans, and they were listening again.

“And His coming,” Karek continued, punctuating each word with a nice little hacking cough, “Shall herald the beginning of the Cameo Round, and—“

KRAKKABUURRRRRRRUUUUUUM

Karek cowed behind his corkboard. Standing on the other end of the crowd, on the steps of the Church of Rar, was a man dressed in a shadow cloak. As rumored, he wore a cheap Halloween mask of a death’s head, through which one eye shown a cybernetic red. As prophecized, he had two hands—one that of a man, the other machine—and as wildly guessed, he had come upon the appointed hour.

It is up to me to state the obvious! Karek thought. “Behold! Konka Rar returns to us!”

The Messiah looked down at Karek with a skeletal smile. ”My friend and loyal servant,” he began, with a voice that honestly wasn’t all that special. Konka Rar parted the crowd and walked to Karek, allowing the Unawakened to touch his robes as he passed. ”This man brings you the truth of my coming, and yet you mock him. I do not blame you. He is a small, old, deranged man. He is yet unawakened.” Karek sulked. ”And yet! As my one hand pushes him around for his infirmities, so can my other grant him the gift of awakening. Behold! The miracle of Time Itself!”

Konka Rar held out his hand.

From Karek’s perspective, the next few seconds consisted of being completely unable to move for several days, and nearly dying of thirst and exposure. At the time, it was both horrible and rapturous, but both of those feelings become instantly irrelevant when he turned into a dinosaur.

Kerak looked up at his Savior. “Well that was unpleasant,” he said, grinning.

”All things are unpleasant,” agreed Konka Rar. ”The life of the Messiah is a lonely, awkward, virginal one. But—ladies—it need not always be so! FOR THE HOUR OF THE CAMEO ROUND IS UPON US!”

The crowd cheered and wept; coins and bras and infants were thrown at the Messiah, who shrugged them all away with a wave of his arm. ”Come forth, unawakened ones!” Konka Rar bellowed. ”Come forth and receive the gift of Time Itself! Most of you will perish slowly and painfully upon receiving my miracle, yes… but those lucky few who hold within them the souls of relevant, less-expendable beings, shall be brought to the moment of awakening! AND TOGETHER WE SHALL MAKE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE TO SAVE THE WORLD! FOR I AM THE VACUUM THAT SHALL SUCK YOU INTO THE DUSTBAG OF ETERNAL GLORY!”

And one by one, they did come to Him.

* * * * *

Jen was highly disappointed when dinner turned out to be Shake ‘n Bake chicken and Past-A-Roni Shells & White Cheddar.

She’d expected worse—something to the tune of gruel—but that would have at least given her something to complain about. The dry white meat and runny pasta hovered in the grey area between mistreatment and edibility. Still, she was hungry, and even thirsty enough to brave the lukewarm can of Sprite Zero that was her allotted beverage.

She should have known there was a catch. She had almost-but-not-quite finished eating when Tor came to visit her. The Telpori-Hal appeared both haggard, and as though he were attempting to appear haggard for the benefit of his men.

Tor allowed a long silence to pass as he looked over his prisoner. “So, thanks for feeding me, I guess,” said Jen, trying to sound earnest.

She succeeded, at least, in breaking the silence. ”We’ve discovered what appears to be a human communication device,” he began. ”If you can get it to work and bring back some useful information, we’ll allow you the run of our territory.”

”But not to leave.”

Tor shrugged. ”You could be a useful hostage for us, or a valuable source of information for the other side. We’d sooner keep an eye on you.”

Jen sighed. “Look, you should know I bear no ill-will towards non-humans. I lived among them for years. And you also know by now that I’m just passing by here in the course of a Battle. I’m not interested in your conflicts—“

”Yours,” spat Tor, ”Is the second battle to go through New BatTLEopOLIs. Before the first, this was a city of millions.”

That gave Jen something to think about. “Shit. I’m starting to really hate these battles. Alright, show me this thing. I’m gonna warn you, most human communication devices are pretty simple, so if it’s just, like, a fax machine, I’m gonna laugh at you.”

Tor waved one hand to silence her. With the other he tossed her something small, round, and metallic. ”You have one hour with this thing. After that, if you can’t tell us anything about Reinhardt’s plans, we’ll ensure that your battle moves on to the next round. You can figure out how we intend to do that.”

Jen looked at the object in her palm. It was a silver orb, upon which was engraved a silver hand. She looked back up at Tor and nodded. “I think I get the idea.”

**Schazer** · 08-04-2011, 02:00 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

So

this is a location artificially populated by my grandmasters hands with facsimiles of existing battlers

Well, existing isn't quite right. Zeke died, remember?

It was my assumption from your explanations that zeke like yourself was dead to begin with

If you want to argue semantics, fine. He got eliminated, nitpicker.

Very well

So

this is a location artificially populated with facsimiles of battlers extant and eliminated

and all battles have had a similar one

According to Zeke. I only remember up to the first round of my battle, though.

There one moment

here the next, then

Pretty much.

That would mean this locale's diversity is purely for my benefit

The chainsaw grumbled away in a manner one more mechanthropomorphically inclined would consider pensive. Xadrez just sensed Brooklyn holding her tongue, but didn't particularly care either way whether she spat it out or not.

You're not one of those villainous types, are you?

What

I mean… I suppose I couldn't care much either way. If I'm dead for good in a few hours, anyway. I mean, I dunno. Maybe it was fallacious of me to assume you'd be on my side just because you're a ghost like me. Is that ghost-racist? Is that a thing you can be? Maybe it's just discrimination…

Really

how much does it truly concern you

I have no current intention of harming you and I suppose such a courtesy extends to your spectral compatriots

though and this is with the assumption that you have some leadership amongst these ghosts

why them

if my own battle is anything to go by the corporeal are favoured

Why do I only hang out with ghosts? Now who's being ghost-racist?

Xadrez sighed. I was not aware anysoul was being

ghost racist

in the first place

Look, I'm not exactly spoilt for choice here. The non-humans can see right through my chassis to the human within, so they don't want me, and the humans are – if you'll excuse my language – utter. Fucking. Zealots.

The tactician glanced uneasily toward his hand. A tableau of rubble in the corner of his eye was reminiscent of calculations carved in the walls of a floating city. Beneath the beige, the burn of Xadrez' fingers wrapped round the screaming knife's handle was settling to a dull ache that reached up his wrist.

The Ovoid did not react.

explain

Like the whole human supremacy thing wasn't stupid enough, they do decree that the poor old Zachs can't join their holy crusade just because he's where he is thanks to a Grandmaster's meddling! Mad. The lot of-

You're a contestant?

Despite the iron mask obscuring his lower face, Zeke's voice carried clearly. The suitably desolate gust scouring the crossroads failed to tug at the man's jacket. He leapt lightly off the burnt-out shell of a car, and strode toward the duo.

Xadrez nodded, trying to gauge where he and the new spirit stood in terms of necessary respect.

Your opponents?

Xadrez listed them.

And defeated?

Xadrez listed those too. Zeke just nodded, his emotionless face somehow scraping together a questioning look to Brooklyn. She shrugged.

Nope. We've been keeping tabs on all the awakened battlers since you showed up, too. Nobody like them.

Zeke just nodded. Again. What are your plans, ghost?

Xadrez would've bristled at that, but he'd met a lot of souls, and could recognise one still pretty heavily in denial. There was the whole scale of veterancy that the tactician instinctively stuck by, too. I intend to hunt down the Observer

and seek out in this multiverse my mistress

kidnapped like

myself

Xadrez didn't often lose his train of thought – on the other hand, most metaphorical cattle weren't big enough to phase his metaphorical cowcatcher. In the middle distance, a plume of smoke rose, with the wail of a siren. The last war of Battleopolis might've already started. The assembled dead glanced as one to the noise, before Xadrez waved a dagger at Brooklyn.

Have you seen her

Some kind of ghost meandering round, calling herself "Xadrez' mistress"? Nope.

Do not be flippant with me

she goes by Scout-

-that's a cute name!

Xadrez fought back the urge to stab the chainsaw. He did whatever ghosts do in polite ghost company that equates to an exasperated sigh.

then again

were she here you would already know of her presence

Xadrez' tone was accusing. Did you not say replicates of all of the Grand Battles were present here

I don't know! Look, in case you forgot, this replicate did have a life – existence, whatever – that she was enjoying without kowtowing to some uppity Ouija board, you hear me? I haven't exactly been awaiting your arrival as laid down in the holy soulful scriptures, so if you think I'm gonna raise my blowtorch and roar "hail Xadrez" you've got another think coming.

Xadrez tried to interrupt, but the chainsaw hacked up a plume of smoke and spun its blade angrily. Zeke just kind of stared into the middle distance in a way even the tactician was starting to find disturbing.

Kill me if you want to try, buddy. I might've just said I had a life before you showed up but you know what, I couldn't give two shits, got it? I play by my own rules. If this is the end of the world I'll spend it destroying or making your existence miserable or a damn sight shorter, and I don't care what plans you've got.

I have no intention or desire to be your self-styled foe, spirit

It's Doctor Taylor, or Brooklyn if you bother to ask me out for coffee first.

My apologies

doctor taylor

may we agree to peaceably go our separate destructive ways

had you a score to settle with any particular denizens of this place I can at least assure my non-interference there

my only current desire is to establish whether or not my mistress is here

Fine. I've got the rockets and the swiftly-rotating piece of sharp metal anyway, I don't have to put up with your crap. Zeke, the world is ending, isn't it?

Zeke nodded, rotating his shoulders a bit as a pair of blades snapped into place on his gauntlets. He finally looked Xadrez in the eye, while letting Brooklyn weld the knives into place with her blowtorch.

Can you tell one human from the next?

with an effort

Then leave the human men to me.

Is your final noble deed in this dimension to murder presumably lesser men indiscriminately

No. I have a score to settle.

Zeke's got some dude, but me? Pretty much, yeah. At least, the anthropomaniacs. Oh man, that's a great word. Definitely going to scream that in their faces when I plough through them. Oh, yeah. If you meet anyone in the no-man's land, tell them NeW BaTTLeOpoLis is going under. They deserve to know.

Brooklyn saluted smartly to her dead-eyed oracle with her blowtorch, before snapping it back under her chassis and roaring off up the street, with only a let's go! in farewell. The ninja returned from a mental sojourn of his vendetta-fantasies, and looked into Xadrez in a way that made the tactician very uncomfortable.

Tell me about your mistress.

Xadrez told him. Zeke pierced him with his apathetic gaze all the while, limbering up only when the chessmaster was done.

Xadrez waited. Zeke stood, and made some kind of highly conservative motion with his head between a nod and a shake.

You don't want to find her.

Without another word, the vengeful spirit sprinted off, chasing the plume of Brooklyn's smoke. The beige rippled around Xadrez, like a pennant snagged on its flagpole by a vagrant switching wind. The knife felt like it was drifting; the spirit clamped his hand around it, somewhat doubting the pain would subside enough that he could later release it.

Xadrez gave it a long-suffering look, before floating off in the direction it dragged him.

Dragon Fogel · 08-04-2011, 02:25 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

With the aid of his gauntlets, Reinhardt was stronger than Arkal. But the smith had gravity on his side. It would ultimately be a question of who tired out first - unless, of course, there was an outside intervention.

Smith and Cedric arrived quietly; they didn't want to alert the strange blacksmith to their presence.

"Well, that does seem to be just as Girnham described it," Smith commented to his partner. "I suppose we should aim to capture him alive; after all, that elf is the entire reason we came here in the first place. She might have enraged him, in which case we'd only be losing a powerful ally."

Cedric nodded. "I'll distract him. You free Lord Reinhardt, if neccessary. I'm sure you can think of something."

Smith smirked, and ran off as Cedric advanced upon the scene, making as much noise as he could.

"Foul knave!" he shouted. "Release Lord Reinhardt at once, or taste the blade of Sir Cedric!"

Arkal cursed under his breath. He was making progress, however slight; Reinhardt's strength was starting to give way. He didn't need this interruption.

"I will not speak again, cur! Step away from his Lordship, or your life will be... AAAGH! Put me down, monster!"

Behind him, Arkal heard a loud buzzing, and the sound of a sword clattering against the ground.

"Pay no attention to this imbecile," said a new voice, somewhere in the air by the sounds of it. "He's got a friend lurking around, but I'll take care of him. Keep Reinhardt pinned."

"Let go of me!" Cedric shouted. "AAGH! The pain!"

Smith was amused. He rose from his hiding spot.

"Cole Aran!" he said with a smirk. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure of meeting yet. I look forward to delivering the news of your demise."

Cole said nothing, instead flying higher up. Smith pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Arkal.

"If you don't come down, Aran, I'll shoot this stranger and you'll lose your chance at Reinhardt. I'm sure you don't want to waste..."

"AAAAGH!"

Surprised by the noise, Smith looked up to see Cedric falling towards him. He prepared to get out of the way -

- and then, a moment later, discovered that someone else had done it for him.

"We'll handle this," said the someone else, before disappearing and reappearing beside Arkal. Smith had no idea who he was.

Or who his friends were. More people suddenly appeared; one was holding a very frightened and upside-down Cedric. Three had joined Smith's helper in attempting to aid Reinhardt with the anvil. Another had retreived Cedric's sword, and moments later was by the knight's side, helping him to his feet.

Arkal knew he wouldn't be able to take Reinhardt out with the added influx of people. Who were they, anyway? Mysteriously appearing out of nowhere...

Just like the Ovoid.

Arkal relented, and lifted the anvil himself. Better than his opponents using it against him. The probably-Ovoid-related men were lifted up with it; lacking the strength of Reinhardt or Arkal, they had to grip the anvil more tightly.

But this was a minor issue for them. Space warped around them, and they reappeared on the ground.

Reinhardt stood up. Slowly, Girnham did as well.

Unfortunately, the marine didn't have much chance to enjoy his newfound mobility, as a humanoid shape covered in insects flew down and tackled him. Already worn out from holding up Reinhardt's heavy armor, Girnham passed out from exhaustion.

The insect-covered creature stood up. His body appeared to be made of rotting meat, save for the wings on his back and the eyes and mandibles on his face. Arkal suspected this was the "Cole Aran" who had been addressed before.

"That's one down," he said. An Ovoid-person tried to tackle him, then screamed in pain as an electric shock struck his body.

He vanished, but did not reappear.

Cole's mandibles would have formed a grin if they could have.

"I don't know who you newcomers are, but if that was any indication, it seems you can't harm me."

"Well, perhaps not," said an Ovoid-man. "But they can."

Cedric and Smith turned their attention to the insect-man, as Reinhardt charged towards Arkal, backed up by the strangers.

Cole's body changed in response to the two-pronged; the shell of a stag beetle covered him, and his hands became scorpion claws. Cedric's sword and John's bullets couldn't piece it.

As for Arkal, he had no time to put away his anvil or take out a weapon. The Ovoid-people were quick to react to his strikes, though they landed few of their own, and Reinhardt could hardly be ignored; he was exhausted from the earlier ordeal, and it showed, but Arkal was barely in better shape.

Then a four-armed robot flew down and grabbed him, then flew away.

"About time," Cole mutted, shoving Cedric away just as Girnham regained consciousness and started to stagger to his feet. The insect-man grabbed the still-groggy marine, and flew off after Envoy.

Elpie · 08-15-2011, 12:38 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

”tnoc lliw I tuB .sseccus sti ees ot evivrus ton lliw uoy fo ynam taht ylekil si ti dna ,elggurts tluciffid a eb lliw s”

“Well this isn’t helpful,” said Jen. There was something blurry and emerald-tinted hovering above the orb. If she had to guess, she would say it was a human, but she wouldn’t put money on it. “I think he’s talking backwards now.”

”Damn!” grunted Tor, slamming a palm against the bars. ”The only person who was able to get the even slightest measurable response from it was Greyve. A half-breed, with human blood. I figured you could do better.”

This was one of those situations where careful wording was required. Jen vaguely recalled having been good at diplomacy, once. She tried to put herself in that mental place again. “Look, I’m a human by birth, yes. But I’ve done things—been places—that have… altered me. Back home, I once had Loch and Qi take out all the blood in my body and replace it with freshwater for a week. I’ve had my eyes removed and reinserted into my head by an inside-out woman using nothing but a needle and thread. No less than three magical duplicates of myself have died believing themselves to be the real me. One time I flew faster than the speed of magic and passed an event horizon beyond which everything was perfectly logical, and now possess only secondhand memories of what measures I took to get out. “Human” has been a questionable adjective to describe me since before I died and was inhabited by a parasitic wyrm. Who, by the way, keeps trying to get me to break out and eat you.” Halfway through that last sentence, she remembered about diplomacy. Ah, well.

Tor, seemingly unfazed by the threats of cannibalism, considered this. ”Your hal is a bit green about the edges,” he admitted, ”But if I recognize it as human, the orb should be able to, too. It’s the wyrm jamming the signal. She needs to be cut out.”

Cut out!?

”Cut out?”

”I can’t guarantee it’ll be painless, but once we get you back to a state of independent humanity, you’ll survive long enough to use the orb. Perhaps longer… probably longer, if you cooperate fully.” A twinge of regret crossed Tor’s face. What’s your read on this guy, Fantha?

He has some sort of sixth sense. If I ate someone of his species, I could give you that and you’d be able to get a much better ‘read on him’ than me.

Call that a last resort. “Look, if some surgeon is going to be removing the thing that is singlehandedly responsible for my homeostasis, it’s not going to be one specializing in non-human biology. You people are half likely to cut into my liver thinking it’s my purse and then tell my next-of-kin you were looking for Altoids.”

Did you just call the anti-human zealot “you people?”

Shut uuuuuuuuup

I’m a non-human myself, you know. Maybe I should take them up on their offer and get myself excised. Start leeching off of someone who appreciates me for all my squiggly bits.

”Our… veterinarian, for lack of a more degrading word… is more than well enough versed with all those foul-smelling sacs you humans use to convert alcohol into backtalk. And you’re in no condition to negotiate. Red.”

At Tor’s gesture, the lobster opened up the cell and grabbed Jen roughly by the arm. A brief scenario flashed through her head in which she attempted to resist and got her head smushed and immolated. Then a second scenario ran through her head in which she went along quietly and maybe found a way to escape before she got veterinarian’d and lost the only friend she had kicking around anymore, and she went with that one.

They put the bag over her head anyway, probably because they were just sick of looking at her face. It certainly didn’t stop her from charting their course through the museum—ten paces, left, twelve paces, left, eight paces, down stairs—when she nearly twisted her ankle on the steps, Red decided to pick her up in his suit’s arms and carry her the rest of the way to their destination.

Being carried like a bride on her wedding night, Jen lost track of the paces and turns almost immediately.

After a few minutes, she found herself lowered onto a cold metal table. Red tore the bag off ofher head on his way out. Above her there was nothing but a ceiling, a light, and a pervasive damp feeling.

Then a floating bubble of water passed over Jen, and she was drowning.

”Relax, girl. No need to fear.” A mechanical arm appeared in Jen’s field of vision holding a syringe. A blue fluid went into her collarbone, and within seconds Jen was breathing again. Or rather, she wasn’t so conspicuously not breathing. ”There. That’ll keep you from having respiration issues around me. Sorry, I don’t… operate well without water.” The voice was feminine and kindly, but definitely not human. ”Don’t get up,” she cautioned. "I need to operate. I don’t sympathize with Kajan’s aims, but sending you to me was a kindness, of sorts. The wyrm is wreaking havoc on your body and your mind.”

Jen shook her head, and experimented with talking through the water bubble. “Her name’s—“ well, that worked, “—Her name’s Fanthalion. We have an understanding.”

”Oh, I don’t doubt it,” the doctor said, warmly. ”Such creatures often work telepathically, through promises and compromises, insinuating themselves into the brain. She placed herself in your memories, didn’t she?”

Jen frowned and nodded. “She was my friend. Or, I remember her being my friend.”

”So, hearing that a parasite has infected your body and your mind was more like… learning that your friend had a secret she’d been keeping. Even if the friendship is founded on a lie, you still feel that bond, she’s still your friend, right?”

Jen decided to dodge that particular loaded question. ”Tell it to me straight, doc. If you cut her out, will I survive?”

”Probably. My primary field is in cybernetics. So worst case scenario, I screw up your body, I build you a new one. The mental shock is going to be more pressing. Being separated from your ‘friend’ is going to feel like a very powerful drug withdrawal. The more you try to rationalize what she’s done with you, the more you try to avoid the subject, the harder it’s going to be to overcome that."

Jen craned her neck, trying to get a look at the face of her doctor, but a cybernetic arm grabbed her forehead and pushed it down. “Look,” she said. “I accept that I haven’t actually known Fantha my whole life, but I’ve still known her longer than I’ve known you. You’re working for Tor. Why should I trust you?”

Silence for a second. Then: ”Good question. I was in the same battle with Tor, you know. He was different, then. He had some trust issues, especially when it came to humans, but this anger of his was directed towards one human in particular… one who we can safely say deserved it. Becoming… awakened... in New BatTLe0p0L(is) has different effects on different people." A syringe slid into Jen’s arm, another in her chest. Once more, she tried to project what would happen if she resisted. It would get messy. “Being a contestant in a Grand Battle ends up instilling you with a sort of confidence, I think. Yes, you’re at the mercy of the Grandmasters, but you also know that they chose you, out of everyone, and that they expect there’s a chance you can win, that you can make it through all this. I think that’s something that Tor really needed, and it was starting to help him come into his own as a person. Being... copied here.... discovering that we're just an obstacle to you people, the real battlers… it has the opposite effect. We’re nothing more than paper plates, now. We’re disposable, impermanent.” Jen felt a numbness spreading over her, and found herself unable to respond. ”Even in peace times—and these are not peace times, with you here and war on the way—there’s this loss of self, this nearness to death. Some of us are simply depressed and resigned to our fates--like me, for one--but too many of us have reacted by becoming fanatics. Whatever they wanted in their real lives, they're now missing the superego, the caution, the regard for life that was holding them back from trying to reach out and take it.” Jen couldn’t hear Fantha anymore. There was something floating in the water. She saw a tail hovering over her head. Then it was gone, too quickly for her to register. ”The unawakened citizens feel it too. There’s this cult that’s sort of prophecizing the coming of a fascist leader. A conqueror. A couple people here have met this guy, he was a contestant. He might actually show up.” There was something else floating in the water. Drifting up and out of her like red ribbons. She reached an arm out to grab the blood and swirl it around on her fingertips, but her arms just weren’t moving. ”Listen, Jen, listen to me very carefully. Tor doesn’t want to kill you because he thinks if your battle is here, he might have a real purpose other than this idiotic war he’s been waging. But he’s running out of ways to demean you and hurt you, and on a psychological level he can only let himself keep you alive for so long. After the surgery I’m going to try and get you to TinTen. TinTen’s a friend of mine with a line to the human camp. You can trust him, can you still hear me under there? You can trust TinTen.” Jen wished Kath were here. Kath would have gotten a kick out of seeing her bleed so much, and all in the water.

The doctor came into view; or she passed, at least, through Jen’s increasingly narrow and bloody field of vision. There was a lot of her, serpentine and graceful, with three cold, metal eyes looking down on Jen. She was blue. Jen felt safe with her doctor. Safe enough to close her eyes, just for a little.

Elpie · 08-30-2011, 01:51 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

SpoilerShow

good meat meat scent make scent tell ouroborous friends meat find meat food

Jen woke up and immediately felt Fantha’s absence. She didn’t think it would be so noticeable—how long had she and Fantha spent together? A few hours?—but not having a worm devouring her from the inside out was like being devoured from the inside out by a worm. She fought through it. At least she was homeostatic without any parasitic life support. She figured she ought to thank the doctor...

Fly to meat mark meat scent bring ouroboros friends good ouroborite good friend find meat eat well friends all eat well

Jen opened her eyes. A huge, gross-looking bug was clumsily attempting to fly up onto her hospital bed, and it was failing. She could hear it talking. That was odd. It had been a year since she had last spoken to an animal; she just couldn’t muster up enough childlike sense of wonder anymore. Maybe it was the drugs.

“Hello,” she whispered the bug.

Hello

No!

No talk only feed eat feed hunger ouroborite hunger ouroborous hunger all hunger

Jen grinned widely. “If you talk with me a bit, I can find you something to eat. My name is Jen. What’s yours?”

No name no me only friends family only ouroborous only all all hunger all feed all move no me no you only us only all only meat food hunger kill

”You don’t have a name?” Jen attempted to prop herself up on one elbow, found herself paralyzed below the neck. “Well, that’s no good. I’ll have to give you one.”

No want name no name friends no name ouroborous no name no want name only want feed! grow! reproduce! want be eaten benefit friends benefit family benefit ouroborous hello

The bug skittered around and bumped into the leg of Jen’s bedpost. It hissed, adorably. Jen giggled. “Well, since it’s your first name, let’s make it a little one. I’ll call you Boris.”

Am Boris?

No no no! No am Boris only are Borous family Oro Boris Boris am Boris? Hello! Am Boris?

”Hello! You’re Boris! I’m Jen!”

Hello friend Jen am Boris, Jen are Boris friend Boris feed now?

”Not just—“

”Ouroborite! Watch out!”

A bolt of plasma struck the ground next to Boris, who screeched and skittered out the door. Jen started, eliciting a growl from whoever had issued the warning. ”Doc, she’s awake.”

”Already? Nyoka bungled anaesthesia. Typical.”

Jen found she could crane her neck up enough to inspect her company. Standing over her was a placid squid-looking creature holding a smoking gun with two appendages and checking her pulse with another. Sitting in a chair in the other end of the room (a different room than the one in which she’d been operated on) was a nervous-looking lupine fellow, stamping his paw impatiently.

”Welcome, Jennifer Tull,” announced the squid. ”TinTen Naamxe speaking. When mobile, will be smuggled to human camp.”

”I’ll be going with,” added the wolf. ”Name’s Pluck. I’m a werewolf. Tor’s let me live among the nonhumans under my insistence that the human bit of me is all gone, but tonight’s the full moon, and you know what that means.”

Jen pulled herself into a sitting position. “Does it mean you turn into a wolf?”

”No, no.” Pluck wiped his brow nervously. He rose and whispered in Jen’s ear. ”It means I turn back into a human.” Pluck scampered back into his corner, watching the door.

”Night also marks first wave of human attack,” said TinTen. ”Sympathizers on both sides have hard time ahead. Peacekeeping having failed, damage control and emergency medicine a priority.” He offered Jen some water, which she drank down gratefully. ”Should Tor find Pluck in human form, Pluck likely to be lynched. Separated from worm, unable to produce word of enemy attack plans, human girl now a liability to angry Telpori-Hal.”

”I might still be able to work the silver hand,” Jen said. “Look, I can’t leave yet. I need to save my wyrm. She saved my life once, I owe her.”

”Wyrm a nonhuman, will find work. And Tor has been informed that silver hand designed for transmultiversal communication only. Certainly not used as radio among warring copies.”

”I should find Fantha. Fine. I never got to say goodbye to her, but she’ll probably like it here. So Pluck and I get to your inside human.”

”Yes. Name of Huebert. Will be at rendezvous point in half hour. Pluck knows way. Wiggle toes.” Jen wiggled her toes. ”Good. Expect fully restored mobility in five minutes.”

Jen swung her legs over the side of the bed experimentally. It was hard going. “When I’m on the other side,” she asked. “What can I do?”

”Talk to Huebert. Smarter than lets on. Most important directive: find fellow battlers, finish round. Presence of ‘originals’ inflaming tensions among 'copies'. Best if disappear.”

”I’m not killing anyone.” Jen wasn’t sure she really liked either of these two. Absurdly, she wished Boris were with her.

”We’ll see about that, won’t we?” came a voice from the door.

At first, Jen thought she was a human, an advance scout of the attacking force. However, a closer examination showed the telltale ears and facial structure of an elf. She was beautiful, a low-cut purple dress revealing the sort of body Jen would have killed for back in her brief low-self-esteem phase. Her eyes at once seemed hollow and emotionless, and crackled with maniacal energy. She looked Jen up and down hungrily.

Pluck rose from his chair and outstretched a hand, making a terrible show of trying to seem casual. ”Holly!” he stammered. ”It’s great to see you—“

”My name is H-Bomb now, Pluck,” sneered “Holly,” twirling her golden triangular earrings. ”I’ve come with word from Tor. Plans have changed. We don’t need Jen here anymore, so we’re sending her to the Purple House for a bit of fun.”

TinTen suppressed a shudder, and Pluck lost his smile. Jen decided to play the straightman and ask. “What’s the Purple House?”

”No one knows, really,” said Pluck. ”Hol—H-Bomb’s spent the most time there, but even she can’t give a straight answer. Most agree that the house itself wasn’t what used to be a battler, but whatever’s… inhabiting the house. It’s like a living spell. The Purple House is where Tor’s—where our people go to blow off some steam, but… we have a healthy respect for it. Bad things can happen there.”

”It’s not so bad,” chuckled H-Bomb, winking at Jen. ”You and the half-breed are going to put on a little show for us, is all.”

”Half-breed?” Pluck grabbed his wrist and whimpered when he accidentally drew a little blood.

”Greyve, of course,” said H-Bomb, turning towards Pluck. ”What, did you think I meant you?” The elf laughed and turned back to Jen. ”Pluck and I nursed from the same tit,” she explained. ”Same battle. We’re old friends, Pluck and I. Pluck, tell Jen here how you died.”

Pluck scratched his head. ”I don’t remember,” he confessed.

”He doesn’t remember. Sad, isn’t it?” H-Bomb took Jen by the hand and pulled her off the bed. Jen’s legs were still a bit unresponsive, and she keeled over into the elf’s arms. ”Easy there, girl. Save it for the crowd.” She kissed Jen on the cheek in a way that made Jen feel horribly unclean, and whirled around, supporting her with one arm over the shoulder. ”I know how you feel, girl. I really do. TinTen, leave us.”

The squid gave Jen what might have been a look of apology behind his goggles, and departed. H-Bomb shut the door. ”Now that the buzzkill’s gone, let’s do props and wardrobe.” The elf looked deeply into Jen’s eyes. ”Jen,” she said smoothly, rapturously. ”In about twenty minutes you’re going to be forced into a battle to the death—well I guess another battle to the death, this time in the short-term, against a demon samurai. You’re going to need a weapon that can stand against his katana. What weapon do you want?”

”I want a—“

H-Bomb pressed a finger to her lips. ”Hush. You don’t need to say it. Just picture it in your mind. Keep in mind bullets won’t hurt Greyve. It’ll have to be something that can cut or rend or smash his ugly face open. Close your eyes and picture it. Shut out everything else.” Jen pictured a sword in her mind. It was a very specific sword, one of her favorite swords: it had been forged for her under the name “Queensreign,” but after getting a feel for it Jen had given it the name “Uncle.” Uncle was a perfectly-made sword, sharp as sunlight and light as an infant’s conscience, but a bit lacking in personality. It was exactly the sword she would want to take into battle against a demon samurai. ”Have you got it?” asked H-Bomb. Jen nodded. ”Pluck.”

Jen opened her eyes when she heard the clank of Uncle—or an exact duplicate of Uncle—hitting the floor. H-Bomb picked it up. ”No sense in arming you yet,” she apologized, waving a finger. ”Don’t want you getting any ideas. Well—“ she did a calculated motion with one soldier that made one strap of her dress fall over her upper arm— ”If you do have any ideas, feel free to share them with me. Now it’s my turn. Let’s get you in costume.” H-Bomb stared intently at Jen, poring over every corner and curve of her body (more corners than curves, Jen mused self-consciously, noting the artful perfection of the elf’s cleavage). ”Turn around.” Jen obliged nervously, realizing that she was going to be very unhappy in about ten seconds. H-Bomb closed her eyes for about eight seconds and then said, ”Pluck, I’m thinking of a number.”

There was a ruffling sound. H-Bomb was now holding a purple outfit in Jen’s size. She held it up to Jen’s body—or as much of Jen’s body as it covered, which excluded all of the arms and far too much of the legs and midriff. Jen was very unhappy. She cocked one eyebrow at H-Bomb and snarled. “Does it come in green?”

* * * * *

Dr. Tengeri Nyoka examined the sleeping wyrm. She wondered if it was dying. Good riddance if it is, she thought. The way it was embedded into Jen... this is an evil creature, whether she knows it or not.

Tengeri saw H-Bomb, Tor's elven harlot, walking by towards TinTen's room. That could only be bad news. She turned back to the wyrm--

--And the wyrm was gone. Not so unconscious after all. Damn.

Tengeri hastily exited the room, sealing the door. It couldn't have gotten out the door, she assured herself, replaying the last few seconds. One of her arms scratched at a knot in her back.

A knot in her back. Oh.

Oh.

**Schazer** · 09-04-2011, 10:23 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

Jeremy was on patrol when the situation sparked up, not doing all that much different from when he wasn't on patrol. It was mostly just an excuse to tell the office ladies that he didn't have time to chat; he had a city to be defending.

The commotion was making it hard for the doormage to talk the talk without resorting to walking the metaphorical walk, more so as one of the prettier girls who worked in the law firm was getting positively hysterical at the sight of her neighbour turning into a very papal dinosaur. The man was quickly running out of excuses, until he reached the point where tactically forced to excuse himself and nip through the door that – for anyone else – would've led to a supply closet.

---

It was yet another non-descript human, adjusting his shirt and striding confidently out of an alley in the no-man's land, to which the knife led Xadrez. The man glanced to the beige-dipped dagger with a look of delighted surprise, then smiled genially and extended a hand.

"Hello! I'm really glad to meet you!"

Xadrez assumed he was lying, one way or another, but accepted the handshake after only a moment's hesitation. It left an aftertaste of screaming in his palm, which made quite a few things clearer, but not enough for the tactician's satisfaction.

An explanation, ovoid

The man's gaze kept flickering to the knife, instinctual as watching the lips on an interpreter.

---

"Woah hey wait, where the hell is everyone?"

"Workin'," responded a morose Jacob from the bar. Special Agent Coy Spender glared at the chronomancer in a futile attempt to make him realise the irony of his words. Spender was on his lunch break; Jacob was on vacation since he'd shown up. Lucy, the barmaid clearing up after the lunch hour, was far too sensible to be worrying about things like waking up one day and being something or someone else. Strangely enough, or perhaps not strangely at all, hospitality was the one business not turned on its head by the apparent second coming of the cameo round - and The Bearded Swordsman was no exception, multiversal punters or no. Hell, the Guard's protection alone in this messed-up city paid for the dozen-odd rabble's food, drink, and board.

Spender downed the rest of his half-pint, and wiped his mouth with a napkin before standing. "Right." He finally deigned to look at Jeremy. "What do you want?"

"Konka Rar's just showed up outside the Marples building." That didn't quite elicit the alarmed expression Jeremy wanted Spender to pull, so he clarified. "He's already turned two guys into dinosaurs."

Spender pulled a face, not nearly horrified enough at this news for the door mage's liking. "Going to need backup, then. Go find Trenwye and Jungfrau, Wilson, hell, Deakin and the Faceless – if it gets any madder than dinosaurs we'll need all the backup we can get. Anyone else would be appreciated, unless you'd rather tell Rar and his disciples to head into the DMZ yourself," growled the soldier, pre-emptively cutting off Jeremy's protests at being the Guard's errand boy.

The doormage held the bar door open for Spender with an exaggerated bow, which went ignored. It was only after the second disgruntled slam that Jacob stood, reached for his sword, and vanished with only the faintest of drunken stumbles through a portal.

---

"There. Can I please go comfort some hysterical young women, now? "

Geoff loaded his crossbow as he peered round the alley's corner, sizing up the crowd gathered round the lich. "Wait, no. Get Tria; that looks like it might be Crepitans, and I'd rather be sure."

"Fiiiine, but that's the last one. Go bother Steven or Jacob or something if you need portals or whatever."

The Hattalan didn't even bother berating his irresponsible idiot of a co-battler, knowing full well the door had been closed on him. Catching a glimpse of Coy Spender on the other side of the crowd, Geoff readied his crossbow and marched on up.

"Konka Rar, you are disrupting the peace! You and the other Awakened are ordered to desist and relocate from NeW bATTleOpOlIS settlement immediately!"

The sorcerer chuckled in a manner far too genial for a face without flesh. "Triumphian, would you do the honours?"

Emily Trenwye, founder and head of the Geiram Guard, arrived just in time to see Geoff engulfed in a blast of holy light. A former Mallory Something-or-another-probably-started-with-M merely drank in the light with new, Awakened leaves at her prophet's side.

---

"I'm looking for something in this city."

You, as in

The Ovoid

I should like to speak to it personally

The man smiled, but there was a pain to it – like cutting him open would find a wailing knife, lamenting that it should have never drawn blood. He closed his eyes, and everything other than him juddered briefly before he opened them again. They were uniform tan.

"It's PRESENT."

Is this the most convenient arrangement

"AFFIRMATIVE. It's… CONSENTing to brief you personally, after your ASSISTANCE IN ELIMINATING THE ERRANT FRAGMENT."

I can quite sincerely say that it was my pleasure

however, to business

what other preparations are necessary

"Well, CALCULATING NECESSARY ACTIONS TO, uh, overthrow the Grandmasters couldn't really happen while THE FRAGMENT was still around. Which is why YOUR CO-OPERATION IS NOTED, and why the Amalgam's all right with FULL DISCLOSURE.

I'm looking for a silver orb; the rest of THE FRAGMENTS are scouring the city as we speak. We MAY ESTABLISH COMMUNICATIONS WITH SYMPATHETIC PARTIES, when we find it."

Xadrez stared out into the deserted New Battleopolis streets, not so much absent-minded as displaced-minded. mobilising these replicates against the Grandmasters may be useful

or their abilities utilised, where brute force is ineffective

The tactician's fruitless crowd watching let him miss the uneasy frown that flickered across the Ovoid-man's face. By the time his attention returned, he was all smiles.

"The rest of me's been listening while searching, and it seems like the non-humans are the real zealots. The humans are banding together because they can't trust anyone else! It's the non-humans pressing this war, and they're getting torn apart from within by Grandmaster sympathisers."

Xadrez frowned. How much of this knowledge does the O-Amalgam intend to withhold

"Oh, much less, now that you're a certain ally!"

---

The human encampment was a disorganised affair, bundled clumsily in several crudely fortified city blocks which also housed Battleopolis' main shopping mall. Galus was on guard duty, surveying the deserted streets from atop the remnants of a multi-storey parking lot. Brooklyn happening really didn't count as his fault, although to his credit he put up a decent fight before Zeke deemed his grappling-claw getting mangled up in the chainsaw's innards unsporting.

Brooklyn screamed triumphantly, which really only served to attract more attention. Not that the ghosts minded; Zeke gave his partner a moment to pry off the grapnel and repurpose it into an additional claw, before they charged as vengeful one.

---

Jeremy stuck his head back inside the Bearded Swordsman, discovering the sulky resident one had portalled off somewhere. Gadget had no idea as to his whereabouts, but Lucy's mention of a "sewer" kind of smell gave Jeremy a very good idea. By which he meant a pretty unpleasant one.

A quick grasp of the nearest doorhandle revealed that yes, sewer systems did apparently have doors in them. Somewhere. Jeremy didn't want to question it, but on the other hand, he sure as hell didn't want to be irresponsibly indirectly responsible for Jacob's presumed nefarious schemes.

Jacob had already found his way to his prisoner by the time Jeremy hunted him down. Fortunately for the door mage, the trek had sobered the mercenary somewhat – or maybe it was the bird-like, lizard-like, fruit-like monstrosity caught mid-thrash in a sizable temporal bubble. Jeremy couldn't really confess to "getting" Jacob's obsession with the creature, having been told on many a bitterly drunk occasion (on the mercenary's part) that it was a "godawful lunatic". In a pinch, he would've guessed it was one of those clone-in-denial things.

The swordsman had a look in his eye, not that Jeremy would've been able to see that from where he was standing. The air around Sen rippled, and Jacob's sword jumped in hue. The rest of the wards were lowered in short order, leaving the warden and his prisoner basking in bright indigo.

"Jacob, dude, you're totally wasted," called out the doormage. He wasn't sure whether what he was observing was an unspeakable atrocity or some kind of highly personal ritual he'd walked in on, so settled for stating the obvious. Even if he was the last man in Battleopolis to fairly criticise a guy for drinking.

Sen flicked drain-water off his fingers, and creaaaaked at them both.

Dragon Fogel · 09-09-2011, 12:20 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

When Phil Girnham fully regained consciousness, two things struck him immediately.

First, he was much higher in the air than he was comfortable with.
Second, he no longer had his helmet on.

His first instinct was to scream.

Cole's claw clamped down on the marine's lips.

"Oh, you're awake," he said bluntly. "Try not to struggle too much, or I might decide that whatever information you may have isn't worth all this trouble."

Phil was starting to have serious second thoughts about his choice of career.

***

Envoy flew somewhat faster than Cole, so it and Arkal arrived at the Bearded Swordsman first.

"Thanks, I suppose," Arkal said, looking thoughtfully at the machine. It was made of quite the material; not as potent a mineral as Kracht, but still intriguing nonetheless. Perhaps its creator would have more lying around?

Before Arkal could question the robot, however, it flew off. It returned a few minutes later, this time holding Phil Girnham; Cole landed not longer afterwards.

"Envoy can hold him longer than I can," Cole explained simply. "Now, I'm sure you have numerous questions. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee that I'll have time to answer them; but I can at least give you a comfortable place to sit in the meantime. Follow me."

Arkal shrugged, and followed the bug-covered man into the bar. There were already two patrons sitting down, and a barmaid serving them. One of the customers was a rather nondescript man wearing a grey hooded shirt; the other was more noteworthy for his diminutive size and robotic body parts. They were in the middle of a conversation.

"So Jacob's gone, and Jeremy's chasing after him. Neither has returned. And on top of this, we have the Konka Rar business." The taller man looked worried. "I'm not looking forward to dealing with awakening dinosaurs in addition to our usual problems, let alone while being shorthanded."

"It's worse than that," Cole said, surprising the two men slightly. "It seems the human side has a new ally, who can produce reinforcements from nowhere. Oh, and I found this gentleman."

"Arkal of the Silver Anvil," Arkal said politely. "Any chance of an explanation soon?"

"Yes, yes, one moment. I've also captured Girnham." Cole pointed to the prisoner; he seemed resigned to being trapped in the robot's grip for the foreseeable future. "We may want to question him at some point. I removed his helmet, so he won't be calling for assistance any time soon."

The taller man stood up.

"And is this Arkal willing to join our struggle?"

"That depends on what your struggle is," the smith grumbled.

"Well, considering you're human and you've earned Reinhardt's ire, you're essentially with us or you're on your own," Cole said bluntly.

"That's enough, Cole. He may as well hear us out before making his decision." Arkal thought he saw the man's eyes change from grey to brown, and then back to grey. "Pardon our associate. I'm Eric T. Packston - I'll introduce you to the rest of me in a moment - and I'm the leader of, well, the group trying to find some sort of peaceful resolution to this conflict."

"The conflict between humans and non-humans?" Arkal asked.

"Exactly. Many non-humans have banded together to strike back against the humans, and many humans have joined the Hand of Silver out of fear more than actual hatred. As for us - we're essentially the ones who think the whole mess is stupid and needs to be stopped."

Arkal smiled.

"Now that's a cause I can get behind, Mr. Packston. Count me in."

Elpie · 09-10-2011, 04:47 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

The Purple House clearly wasn’t a part of the natural architecture of New Battleopolis. It jutted out of what used to be four basketball courts, a gleaming new and thoroughly postmodern work of ostentation bedecked with triangular windows jutting out at odd intervals. It was painted a garish namesake with gold-leaf trimmings, and loomed in a very specific way to let Jen know that it was warmly welcoming to everybody but her.

Jen’s hands were tied behind her back, stretching the skin of her shoulder over her fresh stitches. Pluck wouldn’t stop looking at her. She suspected the distant look the werewolf was shooting in her direction was somehow connected with the trail of tiny objects she was leaving in her wake: earthworms, green pebbles, golden triangle earrings and tiny Ovoids that floated into the air like bubbles, only to vanish into a place with no name. “What are you doing?” she asked him, as a trio of matching brown fedoras plopped to the ground at her heels.

”Stream of consciousness,” Pluck replied, his voice even more anxious than it was before. ”Nervous habit. It’s, um, it’s what I do, if you haven’t figured that out. I pluck your thoughts.”

Jen looked up at the approaching Purple House, the setting sun peeking out from behind a steeple. “I’m more interested in what you're thinking, Pluck,” she lied absentmindedly, considering what fate awaited her in that house. Pluck blinked, and Jen was treated to the unfortunate sight of her own corpse, flopping into existence freshly bleeding from several demonic-looking impalement wounds. H-Bomb broke her silence to laugh out loud at the sight of the corpse. So much for my unflappable self-confidence, thought Jen, a bit annoyed at Pluck.

The werewolf didn’t seem to be entirely cogent of the dead body he’d just created. ”I can’t do it on my own thoughts,” he said instead. ”Besides, no one would want to see what I’m thinking. It’s usually not pleasant.”

”You always struck me as more of an emotional being, anyway,” interjected H-Bomb, waving a hand lazily in Pluck’s direction. A bawling infant child suddenly appeared in the werewolf’s hands, which oddly enough seemed to make him more confident. ”There goes some of your infantile desperation,” the elf sniggered. ”Here, let me take care of that for you.” With a lightning-quick motion, the elf produced a whip and cracked it in Pluck’s direction. The baby stopped crying.

“Did you just kill that baby?” Jen cried.

”It was just an emotional construct. That’s what I do. Pathomancy. Converting emotion into matter and vice-versa. It’s all very unscientific, I’ve been told.” Jen didn’t get much out of that explanation, but decided that there was no room in her growing list of worries for the dead baby now lying a few yards away from the dead Jen on the road, even if it did elicit a certain visceral reaction.

They arrived at the Purple House, the door to which seemed to have opened itself for H-Bomb at some point. The elf rubbed a hand against the doorframe lovingly. Inside there was a wail of ghostly feedback, like an incompetent rock band doing sound check. ”Come on in, guys, the House won’t bite,” said H-Bomb. ”Greyve will, but that’ll have to wait for later tonight.”

Jen entered the House. There was something here that—well, evil wasn’t the word, but something that needed fixing. It tickled the back of her mind like a repressed sneeze. The House itself had a certain labyrinthine quality—purple hallways and purple staircases coiled around a large, dark purple central area that she caught glimpses of through doors that creaked uncomfortably as she passed by. After a minute of walking, she found herself led into a small side room dominated by an ostentatious vanity table, and pushed in a chair in front of the mirror. ”Makeup will just take a few minutes, Jen dear,” H-Bomb promised, opening up a drawer containing purple mascara, purple blush, purple lipstick, purple contact lenses, a purple wig, and an assortment of golden jewelry inlaid with amethyst. Pluck growled and stood guard by the door.

Jen stuck out her tongue childishly. “I can do my own makeup,” she whined.

H-Bomb giggled. ”Of course you can. Hold still.” Jen acquiesced—no one had ever died from being tarted up a little, and it might give her some time to think. While the elf went to work on her hair, she simply looked in the mirror, avoided eye contact with Pluck, and tried not to think about anything.

Her makeup artist was the chatty type, it seemed. ”You remind me a lot of myself,” she decided. ”The real me, back in my battle. I was… conflicted. I had all these feelings I didn’t know what to do with, except usually burn things, and… when I awoke as a copy, that all just compounded. I was a mess. So I decided, to hell with emotions. I’ll just scrub myself clean, get rid of everything I can.” Pluck was starting to shed hair; he shook out the sleeve of his jacket and it fell to the floor in brown clumps. It wouldn’t be long now. She felt sorry for the werewolf. Unlike most of the personalities she’d met in this battle, she had the feeling that circumstances permitting, Pluck would have functioned best as a perfectly normal member of society. If he hadn’t been turned into a wolf or gained thought-plucking powers or been drafted into a Grand Battle or died or been resurrected as a clone, she could see him just getting an apartment in the city, collecting all fifty state quarters and settling down with an overw—

Clink!

A coin appeared on the vanity. On its face was an astronaut, a biplane, and the words “OHIO—Birthplace of Aviation Engineers.” Jen thought, They had to really reach to find something interesting about Ohio, huh, then, God dammit, Pluck, what are you doing? From then on, she tried not to think about anything other than quarters, which were the least dangerous thing she could think of to think of. H-Bomb kept blathering on. ”So I turned my Pathomancy to use and just… purged myself. I got rid of the positive emotions first, to make it easier for myself, then the negatives. You should have seen the things that came out. I made an octopus, and it tried to strangle me, and that only brought up more emotions.” Quarters quarters quarters Clink! The Minnesota quarter advertised “the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.” Thrilling. ”It took hours, but eventually I got the job done. Blissful indifference to everything around me. But there was something else. A feeling that wasn’t my own, but had been hiding behind all the rest of my emotions. A little purple bruise on my heart that wanted out. So I let it out.” Jen found herself thinking of all the things she didn’t want to be thinking about when she got Plucked—QUARTEEEEEEEEERS—Clink! The Alaskan quarter had a bear on it. Jen tried not to think about the bear, looked up, and saw Pluck chewing on his claws. The claws were shortening, and so were his fangs. ”And the House rose up all around me. It transformed me. It gave me a new deck of emotions to shuffle through, a whole outlook on life. The House speaks to me.” Clink clink clink! The Alabama quarter was centered around Helen Keller, the Wisconsin quarter showcased a cow and a wheel of cheese (which seemed almost like self-parody to Jen), and the US Virgin Islands quarter… there’s a US Virgin Islands quarter? If she didn’t know it existed, how did it pop into her head? She looked back up in the mirror. Pluck’s snout was starting to shrink into a regular ol' nose, but thankfully H-Bomb was putting on the finishing touches, affixing a purple bobcut wig over Jen’s natural hair. ”Now when I’m in the Purple House, I only have the one feeling. I don't think there's a word for it. I can turn it into fireworks, and it never runs out. Get up, we're done.”

Jen got up. The wig made her head feel imbalanced, and her surgical scar itched like hell. She was in no condition for a swordfight. H-Bomb seemed to disagree; the elf led her out the door and down a dark, silent hallway. As the hallway began to widen out, Jen could see it becoming less dark, and hear it becoming less silent.

To use the blanket term “cheers” would be to ignore the mammoth degree of horrifying diversity in the sound. There were hoots and hollers and applause and whistling, but there was also cackling, roaring, hissing, grinding, mechanical whirring, a sound like a fire tossed about in the wind. There were deep telepathic thrums of excitement, and flashes of penetrating light that carried a smell of magic and passion. There was music, too, loud and simple, music to chant to, not to dance to. It was the sort of music you hear at sports games, vaguely-familiar riffs that spoke of communality and adrenalin, an unending crescendo to bloodlust.

In the center of the Purple House there was a stadium, and H-Bomb was already there.

Well, the elf standing in the middle of the stadium and dancing for the amusement of the audience was distinguishable from the elf leading Jen onto the field in one key aspect. That being, she wasn’t wearing any clothes. Besides which the smile she flashed H-Bomb and Jen upon their entrance conveyed more sadism than genuine happiness. ”You’re late,” she chided.

”Well, I trust in your ability to work the crowd, Bae,” replied the original H-Bomb. ”I look good on you, by the way,” she added with a wink.

”MAKE OUT!” came a helpful suggestion from the crowd. “Bae” laughed and turned to Jen. Where’d Pluck gone off to? Jen searched the crowd, but the ultraviolet floodlights illuminating the arena made it difficult to survey the seats.

”And what have we here?” asked Bae, obnoxiously perfect breasts bouncing up and down with excitement. ”I’d heard the rumors, ladies and gentlemen, but the truth is just so much... cuter. A human in our midst, and she’s a real live Grand Battler besides! You’re a very fashionable item, young lady.” Bae briefly discorporated into a mass of colorless goop before reforming as a perfect (mercifully fully-clothed) duplicate of Jen. ”Everybody’s doing it,” she announced, grating Jen's nerves with every slight deviation from her own voice. ”H-Bomb, be a dear and get the poor girl’s hands free. I want to dance with her.”

H-Bomb cracked her whip. There was a slight sting and the ropes binding Jen fell away. She shook her arms out experimentally, before Bae lashed out and grabbed her wrists with deceptively strong copies of her own hands. ”Come on—Jen, is it?—let’s give ‘em a show.” Bae pulled Jen by the arms and whirled her around the arena, leading a demented waltz.

A fortuitous collusion of dizziness and surreality afforded Jen a moment of strategic clarity. They’re feeding off the theatricality of it all, she realized. This place is the bind that holds all the non-humans together. They’ll kill me no matter how many demon samurai I slay, unless I can make them want me to live. “Two can play at this game,” she said just loud enough for Bae to hear, and took the lead in the dance.

The ex-monarch and the shapeshifter spun around the stadium hand in hand until the whole world was reduced to motion blur and the cold chill of sweat on their shoulders. It was Jen who brought the two of them to a halt, wrestling Bae to the ground with a flick of her wrist. Before Bae could react to being knocked into a childlike sitting position, Jen pressed her momentary advantage, addressing the audience. “Alright,” she asked in her best impression of Bae’s impression of her, “Who’s lost track of which one is the real shapeshifter, and not merely an imposter? Take your time now.”

The crowd burst into a discordant, species-neutral laughter. H-Bomb cracked her whip threateningly and pulled Bae to her feet. ”Sorry about the clown, Jenny-poo,” she reassured the shapeshifter. Bae plays a little ro—“

”Get your hands off me!” shrieked Bae, transforming back into a nude H-Bomb. The audience roared.

Jen, on the other side of the arena, took a bow and shouted, “Us non-elves must all look the same to your host. That’s racist, H-Bomb!” The laughter of the audience intensified.

When the uproar died down, the two identical elves were still glaring at each other with an awkward mutual antagonism. There was a comedically appropriate second of relative quiet, before some brave soul broke it by shouting out, ”MAKE OUT!” Without overlong hesitation, H-Bomb and Bae gave precisely synchronous noncommittal shrugs and shoved their respective tongues down each other’s throats.

The room exploded with excitement as the shapeshifter and the elf embraced, fireworks shooting off at odd angles around them. Jen, unable to match that for theatricality, was at a loss. She wasn’t even able to take advantage of the distraction to make an escape; the gates on both sides of the arena were firmly sealed.

H-Bomb shoved Bae off of her with a playful flick of her whip, sending the shapeshifter to disappear into the crowd. All eyes were in the elf once more, which seemed to be how she liked it. She shaped her fingers into well-manicured handguns and shot some fireworks up near the ceiling, where they burst in a kaleidoscope of light and heat.

”Well, as fun as that all was for most of us,” H-Bomb began, ”I think it’s time we all moved on to the main event. Now, we here at the Purple House by no means advocate battles to the death, but… I think it’s important that we all indulge ourselves a little, don’t you?” The crowd hollered assent. ”That's the spirit. In this corner!” A glaring spotlight shone on Jen’s face. ”An actual, honest-to-God Grand Battle contestant, miss Jen… I didn’t get her last name. Who cares, anyway? And in the other corner!”

Some sort of enraged, terrifying caricature of a pissed-off warrior burst through the gate at one end of the arena. Tall, dark, with muscles just a hair too large to be practical, Greyve would barely have passed for human at all even if you ignored the horn growing out of his forehead. The sword he carried was longer than Jen was tall, and he held it like he knew how to use it. His eyes were glazed over, but his nose eagerly sniffed his surroundings. He looked towards H-Bomb, then towards Jen. ”Foytin’?” he asked simply.

H-Bomb unstrapped Uncle from her back and threw it at Jen’s feet. ”Yes, Greyve,” she laughed maternally, backing off into the audience. ”Fighting.”

Greyve cracked a smile quicker and more dangerous than the elf’s whip.

Dragon Fogel · 09-12-2011, 12:07 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

Cole and Envoy had gone over to a back room to question Girnham, while Packston had filled Arkal in on some more details of the city's conflict - as well as explaining his odd condition which left him with four personalities.

"The conflict's been going for a while, but in all honesty, outside of a small handful in each camp, most of the citizens are banding together out of fear of the other group more than a genuine hatred of them. I regret to say I nearly joined the human faction myself."

"What stopped you?" Arkal asked.

"The most fortunate of coincidences," Packston replied. "I was trying to fix a radio and suddenly it blared to life and I heard a message. It was a message speaking of opposition to these 'Grandmasters', which I've had vague memories of ever since I awakened... the ones running these battles. But it also carried a warning. A warning not to trust Vandrel Reinhardt."

"And that was enough for you?"

"Well, on its own? Most likely not. But when I hear a message that begins with 'My name is Eric T. Packston', I feel I can't simply ignore it."

"So that's how you ended up in charge of this group?"

Packston nodded. "I gathered who I could, we organized ourselves somewhat... and now here we are."

"So what's our plan?"

"Ah, yes. It's been clear for a while now that the biggest problem is the human faction's leader, who we only know as the Hand of Silver; and his right-hand man, Vandrel Reinhardt. Other than that, we've got a few genuine psychopaths on both sides, but they've got no real talent for leadership or propaganda."

"So we need to take down the Hand of Silver," Arkal said thoughtfully.

"Yes and no. If we simply killed him, hard as that might be, it could simply turn the humans against us. Reinhardt's already calling us 'traitors to humanity'; we don't need to cement that reputation. No, our plan revolves around turning the more sensible elements in the Hand of Silver's faction against him. That's a much more favorable scenario all around; the non-humans' leader, Tor Kajan, is driven by distrust more than hatred. Get somebody halfway sensible in charge of the humans, and we can at least get the two sides to negotiate."

"And how do you intend to do that?"

"We need some sort of evidence. Something implicating Reinhardt, if not the Hand of Silver himself. But we aren't sure precisely what we're looking for, or even how to distribute it properly if we did find it. As it stands, our contacts in the human camp are few, and extremely cautious; they fear Reinhardt's retaliation."

"Damn," Arkal muttered. "Sounds like you've got your work cut out for you."

"And it's not just that. For some time, there's been a cult forming insisting that Konka Rar would rise up to save us all - that's another thing, there's a widespread belief among the 'awakened' that when actual battlers come and their round ends, we'll all die - and just now Konka Rar, or at least someone claiming to be him, has turned up. And it seems he can awaken people on his own. Or perhaps he can just turn them into dinosaurs. In either case, it's going to complicate matters."

Arkal looked concerned.

"Wait a minute. I came here from a battle."

Packston's eyes turned a dark red and he pounded on the table.

"Why the hell didn't you say that sooner?" he shouted. "There's more of you, aren't there? One of them's probably revealed their existence already. That's just going to make this whole panic worse! Damn, damn, damn!"

His eyes turned brown, and he took a deep breath.

"I apologize for Bern's behavior there. He's particularly sensitive. Regardless, he has a point; whether or not it's true we die at the end of your round, enough people believe it that we're going to have another problem on our hands. The only upside is that it might drive support away from the two warring armies and towards Rar's cult, but as we know nothing of their alleged 'savior', I'm not sure how much of an improvement that would be."

Just then, Cole stepped into the room.

"Did you find anything out?" Packston asked.

"Yes, actually. Girnham was all too eager to sell out his former allies. Unfortunately, they were smart enough to distrust him, so he couldn't actually tell us much... but, there was one detail that was particularly interesting."

"And what was that?"

"Over the last few days, Girnham had been assigned to acquire a few items and ordered not to tell anyone else of his assignment. A fair amount of scrap metal, some durable and transparent glass, a skull mask, and some black cloth."

Packston blinked.

"And he didn't stop to think about why he was doing it, naturally."

"No. That isn't his style."

"Right. Well, one thing seems clear. This alleged 'Konka Rar' has become our top priority for the moment."

He turned towards Arkal, and smirked.

"And I imagine if one of the Four Battlers of the Apocalypse were to announce himself, that would force him to react."

The old smith laughed.

"Yeah, I think I can help you out with that."

GBCE · 09-12-2011, 06:57 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

An oddly chipper young man walked into a ruined convenience store and was promptly greeted with the business end of a flaming sword.

Or at least, that's what should have happened. The sword's owner was surprised to find that the young man's head had somehow cleaved straight through his weapon - by teleporting the offending section of flaming metal out the back of his head as it entered.

The young man, creepily unperturbed by a sword to the face, neatly sidestepped his attacker as the momentum of the missed swing threw him off balance.

A voice called from deeper in the store. "Alex, man, he's human!"

"I can see that now!" The attacker, a young man himself with a beard-and-sword pin holding on a navy blue cloak, pulled himself off the floor and stood to face the stranger, who didn't really seem to be paying him much attention. His brow furrowed as he examined the newcomer's face. "I don't think I know you..."

The stranger looked at the bearded swordsman and said, with far too large a smile, "You're probably correct!" He then turned away and went back to his examination of the store.

Alex scratched his head, as another figure approached; a shorter man, dressed in blue, with fingerless hands. A staff levitated near his hands. They watched the stranger begin to rummage through what remained of the store.

The fingerless man looked at Alex, then back at the stranger. "We've already gone through this place, there's nothing left. What scavenging team are you from?"

The stranger looked back at them, smiled again, and said something that tilted slightly to the left. He then returned his attention to the debris.

The two scavengers looked at each other, dumbfounded. "There are a lot of battles," murmered Alex's companion. "Maybe we just haven't seem him before?"

"I dunno, John. I mean, we've been all over this city - it's not that big. And the human encampment has been around for a while..."

"Say!" The two men jumped at the voice, and the stranger was suddenly behind them. "I don't suppose you two strapping young lads have ever found any silver orbs in your searches, have you?"

"Uh... no?" said John.

"Pity! What about other silver stuff, eh? Silver cubes, silver hypercubes, silver candlesticks, silver hands, silver slivers of slavering sli-"

John held up a palm. "Wait, silver hands? As in the Hand of Silver?"

"Yes! That would be a thing that is useful to locate."

"Well, he's not a thing, really, he's a..."

Alex picked up, "Um, he's a person. Kind of. Sort of our leader but no one every really hears much from him. Rheinhardt's the one that gives all the orders. He says they're from the Hand of Silver but..."

"No one's seen him in years," added John. "If you want my opinion, I think he's-"

"Wait, shouldn't you already know all of this?" asked Alex. "I mean, you're from the human camp... right?"

"I'm from everywhere! You say the Rheinhardt fragment has a copy here? I should very much like to meet it!" The stranger smiled again, and Alex glowered at him. He was beginning to hate that smile.

"I don't think so. You're coming with us - you're obviously not from the human camp, so you're probably an anti-human spy."

The stranger's eyes widened almost comically. "Goodness I hope not! That sounds very bad. But I'd love to come with you!"

The three humans stood rather awkwardly for a moment, until it sunk in that the stranger was simply waiting to be led. Alex turned to John, and said, "Well, maybe we'll finally be taken off scavenging duty for this."

John snorted. "If he even is a spy. Personally I think he's just messed in the head. But we should take him back anyways."

John left the store, followed by the odd young man, with Alex in the rear, glaring at the disturbingly cheerful newcomer's back.

---

"... and that's why the entanglement spectra of Non-Abelian fractional quantum Luttinger liquids display Rashba spin-orbit interaction instead of Ginzburg-Landau magnetic order!"

Xadrez and the absurdly happy man were walking in what appeared to be no direction in particular; the man seemed content to explore as he talked, and Xadrez didn't wish to waste the opportunity of such direct communication with the Amalgam.

as fascinating as this has been perhaps we could get to the heart of the matter

I had assumed the Amalgam would be forthcoming with information

regarding this round, its inhabitants

and overthrowing the Grandmasters

"But I'm giving you the secrets of the universe, here!"

Yes and I will be sure to put them to use but for now may we focus on the task at hand please

"Oh we are! And in the interests of partial disclosure, I'm pleased to be able to inform you that we've learned of the existence of a fragment-copy that we believe integral to our plans."

What plans and which 'fragment'

"Your plans! And, a fragment within the Amalgam whose personal timeline will soon cross paths with itself. Locating the fragment's copy within this round has become the highest priority, as it has apparently removed itself from the community."

What about the silver orb

"We still need that too! You see, we are kind trying to contact the same fragment twice... to put it in communication with itself. One fragment, three versions! How cool is that!"

I see

and at any point during this painfully vague explanation are you going to tell me the name of this fragment

"Oh yes silly me, we don't use names in Amalgam, it's easy to forget how much the fragmented world relies on them. The fragment in question is currently named Hand of Silver. You can call me Qwcllyn Thurmson, if you were wondering."

I was not

And what precisely does the Amalgam require from me

"Oh right that. We want the human camp destroyed."

Oh really

"Doesn't really matter how that's all up to you, we're confident you can figure something out."

Indeed

and I assume the Amalgam will not be providing assistence in this matter

The man grinned. "Nope! But we would like to observe, so I'll be accompanying you!"

Lovely

---

High above the city, the Ovoid floated. It had been floating there for some time, appearing to do absolutely nothing.

However, if one was patient, one would observe odd deformities blossoming, very slowly, on the Ovoid's usually perfect surface. There was no clear pattern to their formation, and over time, they continued to grow, and began to thin out into wandering tendrils of oily tan.

If any inhabitant of the city cared to look up during this time, they would have seen nothing more than a small dot in the sky. But the Ovoid's growth showed no sign of halting, slow as it might be.

High above the city, the Ovoid floated, and the Amalgam prepared for what was to come.

**Schazer** · 09-26-2011, 08:53 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

Eric smiled a bit at that, although there was the distinct impression somebody in his head was protesting loudly against it. "Cole, Arkal, we'd best investigate this Konka Rar madness personally."

"Can't the Guard handle them?"

"That's what Bern... expressed concern over. We both know Emily's stance on... matters such as Rar."

Cole growled something unintelligible, but obligingly followed the two, glaring at Arkal's look of incomprehension.

"I'm sorry, but who's Emily?"

"Emily Trenwye. Leader of the Geiram Guard. She's one of a handful of contestants who were Awakened - during the first Grand Battle to use this location. Once their round ended, she remained with her memories of the battle intact. It was with the combined efforts of Emily, Alcarith, and Midnara - the last, oddly, wasn't a contestant, but a friend of one who fought in this round - that the city was rebuilt."

"Where are the other two now?"

"Alcarith still serves as a member of the Guard, although she's always preferred Emily's leadership. That's her... up there." Eric pointed toward the skyscrapers' peaks, where a red dragon was lazily circling. "As for Midnara... we can't say we knew her personally; we've only ever heard of her from Emily."

Packston just shrugged in response to Arkal's lack of comprehension, showing he understood little better than the smith. Cole's emotions were harder to read, although if he was radiating anything it was a non-specific sort of disgruntlement. With a quick reconstructing of beetle wings, he flew ahead to assist the Guard.

Eric sighed. "The issue lies with Emily's... standpoints. On certain matters."

"Like?"

"Well, one intractable and frankly ludicrous hatred of hers is demons," interjected Greg.

The sounds of fighting were getting closer; the two men turned a corner and found the source of the commotion about half a city block away. Arkal stared at the dinosaurs rearing over the crowd for just long enough to concede it wasn't the strangest thing he'd seen, then frowned at Packston.

"That hardly seems damning-"

"Try telling our friend Samael that. I mean-" Thomas blinked, Eric wresting back control- "yes, she could stand to be less prejudiced toward the demonic. But the real problem with Emily is how she's defined the Guard's duty. They work for the citizens. The ones trying to lead normal lives despite the constant possibility of waking up and being someone or something else. She'll have no interest in apprehending disruptive Battlers for questioning; it's Guard policy to escort them to the designated zones immediately."

A young woman, scruffy hair bone-white atop a pair of pushed-up goggles, vaulted over a stationary vehicle and dashed with impunity through mostly-halted traffic. She turned for long enough mid-sprint, rifle slapping at her back, to toss Packston a haphazard salute.

"That's Michelle; we were all in the same-"

A black cat, whose stigma of misfortune wasn't helped by its eerie lack of hue or highlight or any distinguishing features, was entwining itself round Thomas' legs like its life depended on it. Packston detached the note from its collar, muttered "shit" and reclipped it to the cat, with only a "Emily. Straight away" before grimacing at Arkal.

"Eli and Steven spotted Konka Rar on Statler Plaza. They're requesting backup."

---

Sen snuffled around, noticeably jetlagged by being stuck in a bubble of temporal displacement since about twenty minutes after he'd Awakened. (Jacob's scouring of the city for the horticulturally inclined whose names started with S had been brutally thorough). He scratched at the sewer walls with a dozily sulky disappointment, trying to find enough grime to plant a World Tree in, as the two men argued.

"Jacob, no offence but this is really fucking stupid!"

"Brackett, I'm drunk." That netted Jacob a blissful three seconds of Jeremy being lost for words, before he saw some incredulous response coming and cut it off. "I've got the sword. 'n the killer fruit. 'n anything you can do, I can surpass with enough caffeine. If you actually, actually came up with decen' reasons why I shouldn't, I'll get bored and jus' cut to the chase." The chronomancer almost lost his sword with one wild gesture around "caffeine", but managed to hang onto it.

"The hell am I supposed to do to then!? Talk you down until you sober up?"

"Nah," was Jacob's eventual answer, after pondering it for far too long. "I just. Don't really care. 'n you shouldn't either!" he eventually growled, jabbing an accusing finger first at the doormage, then at the murderberry. "He sure doesn't!"

Sen had - somehow - got one hand snagged round a hook or rung in the ceiling about twice his height, an impressive feat for something with only two limbs. The other hand-leg-rake made a few futile pinwheels in an attempt to join its spidery brother, before the Tender gave up and fell back into the sewer with a splash and grumpy chatter. It surfaced, flicked water off its claws again, and trotted over to the only source of light in the sewer (Jacob's sword).

The chronomancer wrapped a an arm round Sen's neck in an almost-affectionate gesture, ignoring its tottering and irked creaks. Jacob was talking more to Sen than Jeremy at this point, under no illusion that the creature understood him in any capacity.

"See, Rar's back, the round's gonna be starting, and then hwoof! No need to explain, I don't think you even went three hours without wrecking a brave new frontier of civilisation. Y'know what I'm talking about."

hwoof, replied Sen, still crabwalking along on his storklike legs, trying to maintain balance with a time mage draped about his neck. "Three hours," repeated Jacob, motioning to the creature like a frat boy extolling how many kegs his lime friend had downed. Jeremy was unmoved.

"Jacob, you don't know that. Hell, ask Emily. She's been around since the first one, hasn't she?"

"She thinks she has," spat Jacob, rasping derision off his tongue. "Does 'James Parenthesis' remember the Great Rebuild of Geiram in nineteen-whenever? What about you?" Sen almost looked uncomfortable at this point. "Did the poor sap - hah - who Awakened to my suave features remember? No?"

"Look, it was James Barkley, you're completely fucked right now, and yeah he remembers! Uh. I remember."

Jacob just shook his head, jabbing his sword at Jeremy in warning when he tried to discourage the former's portal-casting. "They faked it," he countered. "Those two scientists figured it out. Uh. Haven. And Harmon. Haven and Harmon. They figured this city was a few hours old, at best."

As an inherently egocentric entity (namely, a human), Jeremy found this whole idea too stunningly wrong to respond. He raised his hands in defeat, more than a little unnerved by Jacob's dead-eyed glare.

"I'm making something of myself now, 'n if you want to make something of yourself trying to stop me, go right ahead. None of it matters anyway."

The portal beneath Jacob and Sen exploded with sunlight, which cast a shadowed death-mask from under the swordsman's face. The sewers blinked back into black as soon as the duo fell through.

Light. Light and rock and clouds below and damp above and Sen scrabbled to his feet, having flipped at a pavement-smearing angle when exiting the portal. Jacob was a more graceful on his feet, and even had the good sense to seal the torrent of sewer-water after him.

"Go on. Go wreck everything like you always do. Do something right for once."

Sen blinked, then trotted off where his soil-searching nose took him, deceptively harmless as a tree-based apocalypse could be. Jacob sighed, waiting for his magic to dry his clothes off.

Elpie · 10-06-2011, 02:29 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

Pluck really looked like a mess when he was human. Poor hygiene, anachronistic fashion statements and uncontrolled body hair growth looked fine in a lupine context, but during his brief regressions into homo sapiens he seemed to combine all the worst aesthetic elements of adolescence and middle age. He was standing in the back, and the crowd was yet to notice his change in appearance.

That might soon change. The audience was getting bored and restless; after a brief exciting period in the beginning of the fight (Jen had done a back-flip off of Greyve’s sword, which was a big crowd-pleaser at the time) the two combatants had settled into a predictable pattern of standing back and poking around for flaws in the others’ defenses. They were evenly matched, in a fruitless and impotent sort of way; Greyve’s style clearly revolved around his opponents being even stupider than he was, and the impression Pluck got from Jen was that she was used to winning swordfights through trickery and luck, both of which were in short supply in the Purple House’s arena. Well, the werewolf was no expert in the martial arts, but he had a vested interest in guessing what people were thinking, and some of these folks were thinking about leaving. The big, taciturn suit of armor that called itself the Sunset was sitting right in front of him, and it slowly turned its head…

Pluck made a split decision. He reached into the darkness of Jen’s thoughts and plucked something out.

* * * * *

This guy was big and scary and had the skill to back it up. Jen was outmatched. She was reminded of that guy from the first round…

Right. That guy standing right there. Weo.

”Aaaah! Where am I?” The newly-formed Rillian turned to Jen, hissed, ”You!” and then whipped around just in time to raise his warscythe in the path of Greyve’s blade…

* * * * *

That got the Sunset’s attention again. Pluck needed to get out; Huebert would be expecting him at the border. He began to skulk along the outer walls of the stadium, head low, letting his trademark hat conceal his features. The doors were all shut, or closely watched. He couldn’t get out.

Down below, he couldn’t see the battle, but he could hear the three-body problem taking effect; blasts of energy like H-Bomb’s fireworks emanated from the scythe that whatever-that-was was holding and ricocheted off the ceiling. It wouldn’t be long until one of the three died, and he couldn't perpetuate the battle by plucking the gladiators forever. He picked up the pace a little, knowing he wouldn’t find an unguarded exit. Because his senses were dulled in human floor, he had nearly made a complete circuit before he heard the sound following him.

Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

To his credit, when he did realize he was being followed, he didn’t immediately scream and break out into a run. To his detriment, after about ten seconds of terrified powerwalking he decided the best course of action would be to barrel into the crowd hat-first. He was stymied in this effort when a dainty pink hand picked up his hat and another lifted his chin.

”Hey there, handsome,” greeted Aph, smiling mischievously. Pluck’s noir instincts absurdly nearly compelled him to comment upon her eyes (the nymph had peepers like a bank vault, big and deep and full of green and completely impenetrable, but isn’t that always the way with dames—hey there, name’s Pluck) but he didn’t have any time to do anything more subtle than pointing at the audience and shouting “Hey! Look!” as he plucked twenty ninja out of Greyve’s thoughts.

Pluck pushed the nymph aside and ran back to the outskirts as the crowd went wild. The sound was still behind him.

Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr—“You are in the way of the ethnic cleansing, please stand aside”—Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

A hallway that had been guarded when he’d passed by before was standing open, and Pluck took full advantage of the opportunity, darting into the depths of the Purple House. The whirring sound followed him every step of the way, but at least here he was free to break into a full run without attracting undue attention.

Shortly before his lamentably out-of-shape human physiology forced him to slow to a walk, Pluck stopped in his tracks. His sense of smell wasn’t as keen as it usually was, but years in wolf form had taught him to pay as much attention to his nose as to his eyes. Right now he smelled smoke.

Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Only a few seconds after he smelled the smoke, Pluck began to hear the crackling of the flames. A few seconds later, the fire rose up all around him, trapping him in an increasingly warm and uncomfortable place.

Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The figure had a very large sword and a very small smile and Pluck couldn’t decide which one he was more afraid of. On his shirt was branded a silver hand. He looked human. ”Hi,” said the stranger. ”I’m Alex.”

Alex walked right through the flames, setting his sword ablaze and pressing it up against Pluck’s neck. The flames licked at the werewolf’s wisp of a beard. ”I’m here to kill you all, but one in particular. Tell me where Jon Swift is or I’ll—“

Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrwhoooooooooooosh!

The fire all vanished as the flaming stretch of hallway experienced a distinct lack of air. Pluck and Alex turned with a comedic synchronicity to find themselves staring down the one entity in New Battleopolis you do not want to fuck with.

Eximo goddamn Pulvis.

The undead vacuum cleaner said, ”Your heritage is unacceptably filthy. Stand by for ethnic cleansing,” and Pluck nearly pissed his pants. The fire mage, not seeming to realize the gravity of his situation, simply raised his sword.

Pluck had barely started running before the screaming began.

* * * * *

Standing on three deep in ninja corpses, swinging a still-living Rillian around by the ankle, Greyve was beginning to look more and more like the cover to the DVD box set of a particularly trashy anime. Jen was losing this fight, and she was perturbed. The Rillian in question was still holding his warscythe, and sort of flailing with that, shooting off the occasional blast of God-knows-what. Jen was standing some feet away with a sword in each hand, debating whether she ought to drop one. Earth-shakingly loud industrial music blared out of the speakers on the walls and made it hard to think. She dropped the sword, suddenly struck by a better idea.

Hoping Weo could distract the half-Oni long enough for her to work a little magic, Jen ran the edge of her remaining sword (it was Uncle, of course) along her inner calf, collecting a trickle of blood on the blade. She held the sword out in front of her, focusing on the blood, and whispered a magic word.

Nothing happened.

Dammit, thought Jen. It’s not royal blood anymore. She wiped the blade clean and said the word again, backwards this time, just in case.

So instead she charged, because if her blood wasn’t worth anything anymore she might as well just get it spilled anyway over some fool’s errand. Greyve planted his greatsword in her path; Weo leveraged the shift in the demon’s weight and wrapped his legs around the other’s arm, bludgeoning the back of Greyve’s head with the flat of his scythe. Greyve staggered, giving Jen the opportunity to leap onto her opponent’s shoulder. Weo and Jen stood facing each other on Greyve’s back for a fraction of the second, as though unsure whether or not they wanted to attack each other, before the half-Oni reared up and swatted at them frantically. Jen was battered aside like an Ouroborite and tossed into the dead-ninja pigpile, and hazily saw Weo retain his footing by driving his scythe like a stake in between two of Greyve’s ribs. A lot of blood came out, and some of it got on her face. Rolling aside in case the half-demon should take a fall, Jen rose to her feet (facing the wrong direction shit dammit) in time to register the smell of burning corpses. Jen hated the smell of burning corpses—it usually signified that things were about to get bad.

Like a devil sent from heaven, someone distinctly human-looking lowered himself down from the ceiling, wearing a dumbass-looking hat and some dumbass-looking fingerless gloves. Behind her, Jen heard a noise like somebody really enjoying a lobster. The newcomer’s eyes were glowing red like he were either possessed by a demon or into some serious drugs, and Jen guessed the former.

The human landed on the ground and smiled. ”Hi,” he said with a voice like flypaper. ”I’m Trickster, and the following inferno comes courtesy of the Hand of Silver.”

With a snap of Trickster’s finger, the Purple House was repainted in the colors of flame and ash, and the music was drowned out by the sounds of a hundred species screaming all at once.

* * * * * *

Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The flames weren’t helping Pluck try and find an exit, not that he thought he’d have any better luck escaping from Eximo outdoors. His only solace was that luck had carried him this far… although come to think of it, he had died. How had he died? He remembered… he remembered seeing himself being eaten by Ouroborous, but that was a different him. He was a different him, too…

None of this was doing much for his confidence. There were half-seen figures running gleefully through the halls, laughing (was that a woman?) as they tracked flames with every step. He could at least take solace in the fact that where the smoke was thickest, at least the vacuum wasn’t close enough to put out the flame.

Trying to run and have a coughing fit at the same time confused the werewolf’s hip muscles enough to make him fall over and skin his knees. It’s funny how you never get the little injuries when you have fur; even the bees stay away.

Whirrrrrrrrrrr He was inhaling more smoke than oxygen now and his brain was starting to go fuzzy. WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

”Eximo, stand down. Clear the fire.”

”Yes, master. Ceasing ethnic cleansing.”

With a whooooooosh, the hallway began to cool down. Pluck gulped down the slightly-more-palatable air, still coughing up lungfuls of black-and-purple ash. A moment after realizing he wasn’t going to die in a fire, the werewolf realized he wasn’t going to die by Eximo either. He chanced looking up. Standing over him was a hooded figure with a glowing eye. It gave him the chills.

“You… you’re Konka Rar, aren’t you? They talk about you.”

The hooded figure chuckled. ”Oh, come on. You really-- Eximo, shut down optics for a moment.” The vacuum sheepishly turned to face the wall, and Konka Rar’s face refashioned itself into the more familiar countenance of Huebert. ”My name’s Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you.” The shapeshifter chuckled, morphing into H-Bomb. See, Tor and I are a lot alike,” said Bae. ”We don’t pay too much attention to appearances, which is how we see more than what’s right in front of us.” Bae turned back into Konka Rar and snapped his fingers; Eximo whipped back around, staring Pluck down greedily. ”You’re more than meets the eye, too, aren’t you, little Pluck? Well, since you clearly aren’t cut out for a career among the freaks, and your rescue plans have gone to the dogs, I’ll do you a favor and let you tag along with me on a little mission of mine. Eximo, you know what? You’re on fire duty. Get the House in working order and keep casualties to a minimum.” The vacuum saluted with one skeletal arm and hurried off, sucking the flames away as it moved. ”There’s a Konka Rar—maybe the Konka Rar, though sources differ—performing miracles among the unawakened. I’m going to see if I can’t add an element of uncertainty to that situation. Your talents may come in handy. What do you say, Pluck?”

Pluck growled as best he could in human form and grudgingly reached a hand out to the shapeshifter.

* * * * *

Greyve, dying, threw Weo, dead, right at the pyrokene, breaking Trickster’s concentration just long enough for Jen to move in without being incinerated.

Having dropped her sword the moment it went red-hot, the ex-monarch had no recourse but to go in with her fists, grabbing Trickster roughly by the wrists and trying to wrestle him to the ground. Trickster laughed, smashed his forehead into Jen’s nose (still not broken by some miracle of science) and deftly negotiated a foot around her ankle, knocking her to the ground.

Greyve still had enough of his vital organs left to bellow out an indignant roar and charge, but soon found his eyes on fire and threw himself to the sand in an attempt to put himself out. This at least gave Jen a second to throw her weight into Trickster’s knee, dropping him to the ground beside her. She put an elbow into his Adam’s apple and rolled over, straddling him. She put a fist in his nose and a finger in each red-glowing eye, and for her trouble found that her hair was on fire. She ignored that best she could.

Trickster brought one flaming hand up to each of her ears and knocked her hard enough that the roar of the burning building snapped into an indistinct whine. The firemage grabbed her by the collarbone and threw her aside, putting his powers of levitation to use to gain the high ground. Jen stood most of the way back up and caught a concussive fireball to the shoulder that knocked her to one side. Upon regaining her bearings she found herself uncomfortably close to Greyve’s still-breathing body, with Weo’s warscythe sticking out of it. She grabbed the rod of the scythe. Whatever it was made of had stayed cool despite the fire all around, but the weapon was lodged inside the half-Oni’s body. When Jen pulled at it, Greyve vomited and opened his eyes.

”Biiiiiiiiiiiiitch—“ but then Jen found a button on the side of the scythe and pressed it. She wasn’t sure exactly what it did, but bits of Greyve flew everywhere and the scythe came free. It was too late, of course—Trickster was already on her, planting his boot into the small of Jen’s back. Jen planted the scythe in front of her to break her fall, and kicked backwards, delivering a satisfying blow to her opponent’s solar plexus. Trickster roared in pain, but retained his faculties well enough to grab onto Jen’s ankle and send a jet of flame up the length of her leg. Jen screamed and lost her balance. She had officially lost count of how many times she’d been knocked to the ground in the last ten minutes.

Her vision was hazy; Jen watched disinterestedly as Trickster raised his hands above his head and produced a pretty final-looking fireball. She pressed the button on the scythe again, less out of any particular desire to live and more because she had a semiconscious inkling that it would make some pretty lights. And so it did, knocking the arsonist off his feet and straight over Jen’s head. Jen smiled and made herself bipedal again for what, regaining her senses only slowly, she figured would probably have to be the last time if she wanted to survive. There were large swaths of her body she couldn’t feel except for the pain. She had burns all over but the fire wouldn’t stick to her, perhaps because orange clashes with green. She didn’t even have the energy to walk over and snap Trickster’s neck while he was down, and he didn’t stay down for long, levitating to his feet looking barely the worse for wear, if you ignored all the bloodstains.

A humanoid silhouette wreathed entirely in flame rushed by Jen and tackled Trickster. The pyrokene shot jets of flame out of his hands at the newcomer, but nothing seemed to slow him down; Trickster took several consecutive punches to the face and then fell down. Jen took that as permission to drop to one knee. An arm bedecked with jingling bracelets grabbed Jen over one arm. ”Honey, stay with me,” came H-Bomb’s voice, as the elf turned Jen’s face to meet her own. ”Tengeri’s dead, but we’re gonna get you to TinTen, he should be able to fix you up.”

As Jen was helped to her feet, the flame-wreathed man laughed and spoke. The voice was recognizably Tor’s, but… different. ”Fire. Against me. Not your boss’s smartest move.”

Jen felt Red, the lobster, pick her up in the arms of his mech, as her consciousness began to fade. The last thing she heard was the lobster’s voice. ”It’s your lucky day, girl. The boss changed his mind about you. The orders are to keep you alive…”

And the last thing she saw was the flame subsiding and the face of Tor coming clearly into view. He looked different now, too. Still Tor, but more effeminate now, and… redder. Tor smiled at Jen and winked—

Dragon Fogel · 10-13-2011, 02:21 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

John had always felt out of place in the human camp. This was probably because he wasn't actually human.

His appearance was close enough that he had been able to pass his unusual hands off as a birth defect; this had bought him the sympathy of the human recruiters who had found him just after awakening. Well, one of them, rather. Cedric had been rather indifferent.

But Alex had been kind enough. He'd been a good friend to John, and had kept him safe from Hoss' (or rather Reinhardt's, in John's opinion) more unpleasant followers.

It had been all right, if not perfect. And then, he learned that Alex had awakened, and he was worried.

No, Alex, not Alex. This was probably going to get confusing.

Alex had been from the same battle as John. He'd know that John wasn't actually human. And he probably held enough of a grudge to call attention to it.

Luckily, Alex was sympathetic. He carefully kept John out of Alex's sight, and kept them together on scavenging missions. As a result, John stayed with Alex, and Alex simply assumed John was with the nonhumans.

It was even more fortunate that there was another John, so when somebody mentioned John, Alex assumed it was him. Alex, of course, knew the truth.

The story would be even more confusing to explain to someone who knew not only that John wasn't actually human, but that John technically wasn't either, even if his reasons for hiding it were very different.

Regardless, when Alex and John arrived back at the human base with their new guest, they found that John was already there (along with Cedric; Alex wasn't there at all) and he had quite a lot of new guests with him.

"Well, this is a surprise!" Alex and John's guest said. "Excuse me, I need to talk to my associates for a moment."

And then Reinhardt called John (no, John, not John) into his office. John watched and wondered what it was all about.

***

"Where is she?" Reinhardt shouted. "These strangers insist on meeting the Hand of Silver. And with that being out of the question, I need to contact her."

"She seems to have disabled her communicator," John replied. "If I were to guess, I'd say she's going on some ill-advised rescue mission for Girnham and doesn't want to be interrupted."

"And how exactly did she find out he had been captured? It certainly wasn't from me."

"That's hardly relevant now, is it? What's relevant is that you want me to find her. Or did you simply call me into your office to vent?"

Reinhardt took his helmet off specifically so that John could see him glaring.

"Find her. And bring her back here at once."

***

She was, as it happened, already occupied. Reinhardt would have opposed her plan, on the basis that any unawakened couldn't be trusted until they were proven human.

But her brother would have understood.

Unfortunately, at the moment she was preoccupied with the young man whose gloves were flying after her, and the young woman with a bladed trombone standing in her way.

The woman was rather surprised when her instrument was lifted out of her hands, and its sharp blades pointed towards her. She dodged as it floated towards her.

Then it started moving faster. Steven, in a panic, sent his gloves over to restrain the trombone as Elimine dove to the ground.

The musician was unharmed, but her attention had been diverted from her quarry. The robed figure had slipped past them.

Only to be blown back by a strong gust of wind.

Packston and an unfamiliar old man now stood in her way. Wonderful. More problems.

***

Meanwhile, at the Bearded Swordsman, Plan B was underway.

"I do not think this color suits him, dahling," Fiorella said to her grumpy assistant.

"What does it matter? He just needs to look like Konka Rar. Who I'm pretty sure had a black robe. Or at least that's what everyone thinks." Eureka moved the cloth into a suitable position before snipping off the loose bits.

"Um, are you sure this is a good idea?" asked the voice behind the skull mask. "I mean, I haven't exactly practiced on these stilts..."

"Relax!" a voice underneath him said. "We'll do all the walking, it'll be easy."

"Hush!" said another voice, a little to the right of the first. "Don't talk too much or we'll blow his cover!"

Gadget walked carefully - or rather, his stilts did - around the bar. He nearly tripped a few times, but Birch and Beech soon had the hang of things.

"Great. Now can I take this ridiculous getup off? We don't even know if we're going to need it yet."

"Oh, but you carry it so mahvelously, dahling! Although it could still stand to be a nice shade of purple..."

Solaris · 10-26-2011, 03:19 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Solaris.

SpoilerShow

Elpie · 11-11-2011, 04:42 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

”She’s not allowed to die. We can still use her.”

Hol—sorry, H-Bomb—had the shakes. She turned them into a pair of drumsticks and started rapping them on the edge of the hospital bed. ”Stop that,” said Tor. ”I’m trying to think.”

”If you insist.” H-Bomb stashed the drumsticks away in the pocket of her hoodie, her anxiousness having been usurped by a dull nausea. There was something offputting about Tor’s latest appearance. Since they’d started working together, she’d gotten used to taking orders from a different face every day, but this one seemed to represent a new paradigm. It lacked that ex-military masculine verve that suited him best, and his eyes were a bit lacking in that far-away regretful look he always got when he was making tough decisions. He was more focused and calculating. If she were in a better mood she would have found it sexy.

”Can only do so much,” sighed TinTen, reading the unconscious Jen’s vitals. ”Jen will live, but may be comatose for some time. Could have used Tengeri’s assistance.”

”Well then go get her.” The elf shouted the order reflexively, and immediately regretted it as Tor, TinTen and Red all shot her a look of pity.

”No one told you?” offered the lobster.

”The Leviath’s dead,” explained Tor. ”She stayed behind with me during the fight and tried to kill me. No one knows why.”

”Whatever her plan was, she didn’t think it through.” Red raised a gun in his suit by way of clarification. Tor had already turned back to Jen. H-Bomb felt impotent. Her power had been tied up with her link to the Purple House, and the Purple House was ashes now. With it had gone her political leverage, her self-confidence, and all the clothes that looked good on her. In her current state, she probably wouldn’t even be able to seduce Tor, which had always been her backup plan.

At least she wasn’t in as bad shape as Jen. The poor girl’s hair was in tatters and a good chunk of her forehead and the back of her neck was covered in nasty red burns. Those wouldn’t scrub out in the shower, H-Bomb guessed. Her breathing was shallow—smoke in the lungs. If she was going to continue battling, she’d need a real doctor. Or a bit of magic.

Red was tossing the silver orb back and forth between a couple of his arms. ”There are larger issues at hand here,” he said. ”The silver hand is tightening its grip. It would behoove us to lop off a couple of its fingers.”

”Hoss sent his message,” said Tor. ”We lost enough good soldiers already. Syvex, Cepra, Aph, the House itself. Pluck’s gone missing, probably dead. Tengeri suffered a lab accident, which wasn’t the humans’ doing, to the best of my knowledge. And Greyve’s dead, of course. If we allow this confrontation to escalate, it’ll be most of the rest of us. We need to shore up our defenses and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

H-Bomb couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Appearance aside, this wasn’t the Tor she knew. But she’d seen him jump into the flames, stumble out the other side an indistinct, incandescent mass… he hadn’t counted Bae, the shapeshifter, among those missing, but no one seemed to know where Bae was. But the fire would have killed Bae… This was all too much for her.

”Sir,” Red was saying to Tor. ”Remember what you told me. If one of Reinhardt’s men takes even one step inside our camp—“

”I remember more than you know, Red. If you want to go running off on some revenge mission, by all means crawl over to Reinhardt and pinch his ankle, but leave your equipment behind. It belongs to the group, and whether or not you’re piloting it, I’m going to deploy it the way I see fit, do you understand?” That shut the lobster up. ”Good. Now, we need to get that orb working. That means getting human prisoners. I’ve—“

”Been unlucky in that department. Two awaked humans have wandered into camp. First is deaf, can’t hear message. Second is deemed sacrifice to Purple House, now lies unconscious and useless.”

”We shouldn’t have killed her,” mumbled Holly. H-Bomb. Whatever.

”Which?” retorted the Meipi.

”As I was saying,” intoned Tor, ”I’ve decided to take somewhat drastic measures to get another human in here. I’ve sent out Countess.”

”Oh, God,” moaned Holly.

”Captives more useful when in one piece,” remarked TinTen.

Red said, ”I could have done it.”

Tor shrugged. ”Frankly, Red, the way you’ve been acting lately I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t just run off once you hit the borders. Countess, for all her faults, at least seems to like it here. I trust her either to bring someone back—and fast—or to die, and either way I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished something.”

Red stormed out without a word, slamming the silver orb down on the table. Tor growled. ”Anyone else have a problem with the way I do things?”

”None that seem advantageous to vocalize.”

”Damn straight. H-Bomb?” Tor cast her—sorry, his—eyes up and down the elf’s body, advancing on her threateningly. ”You’re looking a little… frumpy of late. Anyway you care to trace that back to my decisions? This is your chance, H-Bomb, set me straight, show me the error of my ways.”

Holly backed up against a wall and tried to avoid eye contact. “I don’t blame you for anything,” she said, meekly.

”Good. Now clean yourself up, I’m getting depressed just looking at you.” The Telpori-Hal turned away sharply and marched to Jen’s bedside. ”And what about you, Jennifer Tull? Was it so bad between us? Have I wronged you so?”

Holly watched Tor fall to his knees, take Jen’s hand and whisper something in her ear. She took the opportunity to grab the silver orb and get out.

* * * * *

”Hey there, mister, I’m looking for a silver orb, like, this big. Do you know where it is?”

Pluck looked down at the little girl and shook his head. “Sorry, I try to stay away from silver things.”

The girl giggled. “You’re scared of silver, aren’t you, Mister Scaredy-Fragment?”

”He is that,” said Bae. ”Can we get a move on?”

”It’s okay to be scared sometimes,” explained the girl, very seriously. ”Everyone gets scared, except the Amalgam. But you don’t have to worry, because the flaw in your genetic sequence will eventually be purged, either before or after you die!”

Pluck shivered. ”Little girl.” Bae advanced on the fragment, drawing his knife. ”The only thing stopping me from cutting your throat right now is that Pluck here wouldn't like it, and I still need him. Leave.”

”Bae—“

”It’s okay, Pluck. You don’t need to worry about me either. Can you tell what I’m thinking right now? I’ll give you one guess, and if you get it right, I’ll go away. Like this: poof!”

Pluck smiled. “That sounds fair to me.” He held his hands out and plucked out the girl’s thoughts. Immediately there was a dull weight and a horrible burning sensation in his palms. Pluck screamed in painand dropped the silver orb to the ground.

”Wow, you got it right!” The little girl put the orb into her backpack and gave Pluck a chest-high hug. ”Thanks, mister Pluck! Now, check out my magic trick!”

And she was gone. Like this: poof! Bae groaned. ”Well I hope that was as fun for you as it was for me. Now can we get a move on?”

* * * * *

The combination headscarf, hoodie and baggy jeans made Holly worry that it made her look like she had something to hide. Then again, it might have just been because she did have a few things to hide—the orb being one, her whip being another, and her ears most of all. She couldn’t exactly go walking into the human camp looking so obviously, er, elfin.

Examining herself in the mirror, Holly saw that Tor had been right—she was depressing to look at. Something about the halfhearted way she’d washed off the ash and makeup from her face made her reek of regrets and daddy issues. She looked like the sapient equivalent of a wounded gazelle. Well, she wasn’t. She put a hand (that gritty uncomfortable feeling of soot under the fingernails) to where she’d stashed away her whip, and was comforted. Since the fire, had she gone sane, or had the world gone crazy? She couldn’t tell.

Later, walking out onto the street, Holly found herself trying to hide her face, not knowing why. It wasn’t as though anyone would recognize her. There was only one contestant from her battle left unaccounted for, and she didn’t think he would remember her. Still, all of a sudden she wasn’t comfortable with the eyes on her--unawakened citizens walking through the street, living their lives in spite of all the conflict. For some reason it was important for her that they not know where she was going.

No one stopped her, harried her, or took notice of her all the way to the Bearded Swordsman. This didn’t make her feel better. Standing outside the bar, she put a hand in her pocket and clutched the silver orb tightly.

* * * * *

Nancy was thrown bodily into the room to be confronted with a woman lying unconscious on a hospital bed, and a figure standing nearby, completely engulfed in flame. This was exactly the situation she’d been trying to avoid since showing up in this city.

The clockwork woman who’d brought her here addressed the flaming person. ”She insisted on bringing the typewriter along. She’s feisty. Let me know when you’ve given up on her and I get to kill her.”

”She’ll do,” cried the fiery figure in a smoky voice. ”Leave us.”

The clockwork woman obliged, much to Nancy’s relief. Not that she was completely enthused about the prospect of being alone with the fire-person (were those burns on that girl’s neck?) Further to her relief, the flames faded almost as soon as the two of them were left alone.

Then again: Nancy hadn’t realized that the fire was the only source of light in the room, and all went dark. She wasn’t too fond of the darkness. Feeling the other’s eyes upon her in the blackness, and hearing her typewriter clacking out a message for her, Nancy felt around with her free arm for the lightswitch.

She found it. Click.

Expecting (I don’t know what) some sort of mutant or else just a burnt-out shell, Nancy was both pleased and perturbed to find a perfectly unharmed woman sitting before her, adjusting the shoulders on her outfit. Lying at the woman’s feet, she noticed for the first time, was a pile of freshly-severed tentacles covered in what looked to be teeth marks. ”So you’re my new human,” said the woman. Her skin was a perfect, pop-art shade of red, her hair slightly darker. ”Humans bore me. Been there, done that.” The red woman cast her red eyes at the girl (so young) sitting on the table. ”I’m more interested in all the rest here. The anomalies. A veritable buffet of new species. It was practically designed for my gratification.”

Nancy whimpered. Her typewriter was trying to tell her something, but she was afraid to look. ”So as… ‘your human’… what would my responsibilities be?”

”Do you have a name?”

”Would you expect me not to have a name?” Nancy chided herself as the other woman’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t want to get on this one’s bad side.

”One can never tell with you battling types.”

”I’m Nancy, if it pleases you. Would you please answer my question?”

”Patience, Nancy. There are introductions to be made. This is Jen.” The red woman gestured towards the girl on the table, then pointed to herself. ”And I’m Fanthalion. The others here know me as Tor, because they’re idiots.” She’s lonely, Nancy realized. It wasn't a comforting thought, but it was something to take note of. ”I’m going to eat all the non-humans in this city, one by one,” said Fanthalion. ”It’ll only be a matter of time before they realize I’m not who I was. I do a pretty good impression of the original owner of this body—it helps having his entire brain at my disposal—but this body changes to reflect what’s inside.” Nancy expected this not to be the case, as the woman looked rather pretty, and not cannibalistic at all. ”I could use your help, as a neutral party, to throw them off the scent. And that includes helping me figure out what that orb does... hmm. Red still has it, I think. Anyway, you know you’re the third human that these people have tried to get to work the damn thing. Jen here was the second. Third time lucky, right?”

Nancy sighed. “Lucky, eh?”

Dragon Fogel · 11-13-2011, 02:51 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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