Eagle Time

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

Ziirphael sprinted through the trees, panicstricken. Sure he hadn't been expecting his attack to decimate Ekelhaft but he had been expecting slightly more than what did happen, the blob simply reforming around the obstruction. For a moment he had just stood there and gawped until Konka had yelled at him. Panic had seized hold of his heart and here he was running through the trees, his heart beating, his head pounding, not even looking where he is going, just running for his life. The higher functions of his mind, those that would be ashamed that he had been reduced to this had been swept away as Ekelhaft rendered his attack futile. All he could think of for the moment was getting the hell away from there.

He emerged from the trees at the edge of a cluster of buildings and drew to a halt. For a moment he stood there, doubled over and gasping for air. The world seemed to spin uncontrollably around him and he felt faint. There was a rustling in the trees behind him and another wave of panic washed over him. He spun around, too fast and collapsed onto his back, wincing as pain shot through his battered wings. Ziirphael scrabbled backwards towards the buildings without taking his eyes off the treeline. He came to a stop as he hit the wall of the building, without seeing anything emerging from the trees. He sat there for a minute, tensely, unwilling to stand up. Finally part of his brain started to flicker into life reminding him he had just been in the vicinity of Ekelhaft, whose very presence can cause madness. He breathes a sigh of relief, which is cut short as a bloody roar comes from the spot he is watching. Panicking, once again he climbs to his feet and runs around the side of the building, leaping into it at the very first door he spots. As he slams the door behind him there is a loud thud as something slams into it from the other side. His hands shaking he slides the heavy bolt closed and collapses, breathless against the wall.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

Ekelhaft, for all its chaotic and destructive nature, was not a being incapable of planning and forethought; indeed, the successful campaigns of millenia had taught it a great deal of strategy and patience. That said, direct combat brought out the deepest oldest parts of the slime, full of rage and destruction and a dearth of sense and foresight. Precious seconds were wasted vacillating between three equally-delicious targets, before a near-random decision sent it oozing after Konka Rar.

Rather than maintain the torso it had so recently adopted, the scattered blobs of Ekelhaft simply launched themselves formlessly after the lich, leapfrogging amd bouncing in pursuit, emitting an excited keening and occasionally spitting the odd tooth towards their quarry. Konka Rar had been gliding inches above the ground on a small cushion of air, but as the ooze closed in the spell began to warp and fade; the lich's toes caught on the soil, sending him toppling face-first. His reflexes were good enough to catch himself with his mechanical arm and turn the fall into a mere stumble, but he had lost too much time to continue running. Five smaller Ekelhafts formed a semicircle around him, gibbering and feinting. They were small and fast enough that it was difficult to train a laser on one, but they hadn't moved to attack yet.

Suspended as it was in Hoss's prison, Self had a very poor view of its surroundings; the distortion made identifying things very difficult on top of the problems of only having one eye. Still, the little gob of angry slime was able to recognize what it used to be as it bounded past and redoubled its escape efforts upon seeing the streaks of green. Hoss could feel his arm vibrate with the force of the thing's attempts to break free, but was confident that the prison would hold as long as he had energy to supply.

The mage-cum-cyberneticist cursed himself for a fool. He should have known better than to try to use magic to escape from a thaumophage like Ekelhaft, and was paying the price for his blunder; only one shot in five was hitting, and the tiny amount of ooze that sublimated on each hit seemed easily recovered or ignored. As he backed away from the group, still trying to fire, he'd lost track of two of the chunks of green madness; he was certain without looking that they had circled around behind him and had him surrounded. His bony hand gripped his staff tightly, and his conquerer's mind raced, trying to turn the situation to his advantage.

Seeing the world through a thousand eyes is easy for something that had done it for all of its eons of existence; seeing the world through disparate groups of hundreds of eyes, however, was dizzying. Konka Rar had been half right: the intention was to encircle the bothersome lich; in execution, however one of the five had gone the wrong direction and was having a very hard time figuring out where it was in relation to the others and its target. The false swipes that Rar had mistaken for feints were simply misjudged and botched tackles.

In the back of its mind, Ekelhaft knew it had the advantage in any prolonged standoff, but in the forefront of its consciousness was the desire to rend and kill and do it now. Its anger at the lich and at itself for being so clumsy served only to incite even more frenzied attacks, which themselves were scattered, disorganized, and largely off the mark. It was too intent on its attack as it was to reform or reconsider, but as long as Konka Rar was in control of his faculties, Ekelhaft would have little luck with its haphazard assault.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Konka Rar desperately tried to think of a plan, still firing spells desperately at the approaching blobs to hold them off. His concentration was suddenly disrupted by a noise below him.

"Yip yip!"

CRUNCH.

The lich, despite though he was, instinctively looked down at the disturbance. A common mongrel had snuck up behind him, and was attempting to use one of his bony legs as a chew toy! As if he weren't in enough trouble surrounded by pieces of Ekelhaft, to suffer such humiliation...

Then he realized that there was only one blob in sight behind him, which he quickly blasted with a spell to distract it. Though this made him suspect the ancient creature was trying to lure him into a trap, he saw no alternatives for the moment. He would have to take the chance.

As 'thanks' to the dog for revealing his chance for escape, Konka Rar grabbed it with his mechanical arm, and threw it at a piece of Ekelhaft. It might slow down one of his pursuers, he reasoned, madly dashing for the gap in the circle.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

Instinctively, the fragment of Ekelhaft that had a terrier hurtling towards it leapt towards the dog. There was a moment of muffled whining before a loud snap heralded a sudden cessation of canine sounds. In the seconds it took for the slime to take care of the animal, Konka Rar was away, dashing across the field without the assistance of magic. Ekelhaft wasted several more precious seconds gathering his constituent blobs into one mass, which was further slowed down by the still-confused fifth piece, which was rolling in entirely the wrong direction.

By the time the old god was in (mostly) one piece again, its target was far ahead of it. Quivering with rage, Ekelhaft made chase again, unsure it would be able to catch up to the lich before he managed to do something untoward like teleporting away or taking flight. Using its teeth as pitons, the slime dragged and oozed itself along faster than it ever had before.

Originally posted on MSPA by MyifanW.

---

"This is a pretty good place..." Diego told himself, after ascending to the top of the security building, and climbing up the radar tower.

He relaxed himself against the inside of an upturned radar dish, and closed his eyes. It was a little cold. The air was fairly still. The wind blew lightly towards the north. He was at the highest point that he could see, and in the most open. It was the ideal place to read the air for long range scouting.

This was one of Diego's old patterns, and something he was comforted by doing. High places, where he was above all the sounds, not needing to do anything but listen for his targets below- they were the places he felt most safe in. At a high elevation, looking down at everything as if it were flat, Diego felt as if he were reading a map. First, he located the places on his "map" where he had seen his enemies, through feeling the general shape of the area. Rewarding his focus, he heard the Lich and the old god running, although he wasn't sure that it was them. The sound of their footsteps were obviously distinct, but against the soft ground, it was hard to tell. Alongside one of them Diego heard a dog, which was odd, as he had somehow expected that there were no living things. The blob, although it had been seen, was unheard. Diego was fairly sure now that the blob had some sort of magic distortion. If he concentrated on the area, maybe he could sense the blob, but Diego didn't want to strain himself yet.

Knowing the location of his targets, Diego then scanned for the thing that had been chained. Although stealthy, something that big couldn't possibly be soundless. From Diego's vantage point, he could sense the slightest trace of weighty steps or large breaths, if there were any.

There weren't.

Diego opened his eyes and scrunched his eyebrows, confused. What was going on? Nothing was soundless. The only conclusion was that it had somehow escaped his scan's effective range, or... Diego glanced to the building by the warehouse. It seemed that the door might have been ajar. Diego began sweating. Was the door open before... Or was it just opened recently? Could something be hiding in there, sounds muffled by the room?

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Konka Rar decided to risk glancing back.

Scanning behind him with his cybernetic eye, the lich noticed that Ekelhaft was significantly further away than expected.

Excellent. There would be time to prepare.

Konka Rar planted his staff in the ground, held it in both hands, and concentrated. The earth around him began to shake, gradually at first, then growing in strength, though the ground beneath his feet remained stable.

Minutes later, when the lich felt that enough energy was traveling through the ground, he shouted as he finally unleashed it.

"Seismic Eruption!"

The ground rose, wildly and chaotically, in a circle centered on the lich. Earth and stone emerged in pillars and spikes, creating a sort of maze surrounding Konka Rar on all sides.

Ekelhaft approached it. The ancient creature cursed its earlier sluggishness - burrowing through this much ground would be difficult, and climbing would be even slower. It could attempt to navigate existing crevices in the structure easily enough, but that approach was unlikely to take it directly to the lich. Consuming the magic was not an option, either - the spell had simply been used to reshape the ground, and was not sustaining its new shape.

Ekelhaft silently seethed as it pondered what to do - all options seemed to provide Konka Rar ample time to prepare for the blob's arrival.

Originally posted on MSPA by Not The Author.

---

Gormand munched on a pretzel stick. He wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting. He, along with seven others, had been whisked away from their homes by an insufferably absentminded semigod-thing and thrown wantonly about the uni- or possibly multiverse to kill each other for no particularly acceptable reason. They had been to a haunted cavern complex purported to be the underworld, the house of a giant sorcerer (or the giant house of a sorcerer), and now a postapocalyptic dog park. The first had had no discernible exits; the second had a fifty percent chance of escape not mattering anyway.

He hadn't expected it to be this easy.

The wrought-iron bars descending from the sky appeared to be, in fact, wrought-iron bars. Despite the ominous way they shot up into infinity overhead, they looked exactly like a typical metal fence. The metal hadn't aged well, though; despite all the plant growth in the park proper, the grass around the fence was stunted from a heavy precipitation of disintegrating rusty flakes. Aside from the obviously abnormal height there was nothing to suggest anything out of the ordinary.

At least, not from a distance.

As he made his approach, Gormand gradually became aware of a faint tingly sensation radiating outward from his pupil. It wasn't exactly unpleasant so much as it simply was, though he suspected one more sensitive than he might find the feeling ticklish. The meatball considered the possibility that the feeling might simply be nerves moments before he felt as though he was being stabbed by thousands of miniature needles. Deciding that perhaps the barrier was somewhat more dangerous than it seemed, he backed away, and the pain subsided.

Now Gormand was curious, much in the way one might be curious as to what mechanism that neigh-invisible wire activated when broken. He examined his modest carbostave collection, testing each pillar of crunchy dough for sogginess, saltiness, stability, and the like. Settling on the least palatable of his pretzel sticks, he lifted the snack above his head, twirling it about a few times for good measure before launching it at the fence.

The stick clattered ineffectually against the iron bars and fell to the ground.

The meatball sighed, once again unsure of what his expectation had been. Perhaps had his projectile turned to dust, or bust into flame, or exploded... But no, of course whatever defensive mechanism the fence held would not activate for a goddamn pretzel stick. What he needed-

*whine*

For the bedraggled husk of a Shih Tzu, Gormand could only have seemed something from a dream: a hulking mound of still-fresh, well-seasoned, high-quality ground beef, interspersed with thick pillars of firm-yet-soft, lightly buttered noodles. The pup looked wonderingly at the great mound of meat before her, and was too engrossed by the idea of eating something that hadn't been festering for a week that it didn't even flinch when it's soon-to-be-meal turned and looked at it. A thin strand of viscous drool flowed from the canine's mouth; the sole reason she hadn't begun devouring the meatball already was that she simply didn't know where to start.

All that was rendered null and void, however, when one of the colossal strands of pasta grabbed her around the midsection. Howling in pain with half-crushed lungs, she bit ineffectually into the constricting cable, finding the flavor inexplicably bitter. Her release was unexpectedly abrupt, as was the force with which she was sent flying through the air. Fortunately, she managed not to die of internal hemorrhaging.

Not five feet from the fence, the scrawny pup was incinerated by a trunk-like bolt of electricity.

Gormand stumbled backwards, half-blinded by the unexpected burst of energy. He might have felt sorry for the pup he'd thrown into the trap, but was too amazed at the sheer unnecessary volume of power that had been channeled into it. Still, the dog had served its purpose and answered the pertinent question: What was keeping them from leaving the park? Massive electrical discharge.

As his sight returned, Gormand became aware of a figure standing in the grass behind him, laughing quietly.


"Impressive."

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

---

Reserve.

Edit: Aaahhhh nope nevermind, gonna take waaaay longer than expected. No reserve.

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

Ziirphael sat against the cold metal wall of the building, his heart pounding, his head spinning, and slowly the panic drained away and he was left feeling exhausted. He could feel his eyes starting to close, and even though he was aware that it was a potentially fatal mistake to fall asleep now there was little he could do to stop it. As his eyes closed he found himself right back in that cave in the afterlife staring into the eyes of The Cultivator as she locked him into this body.
He awoke with a scream, there was rage and hatred in that scream but mostly it was one of horror. For all his life he had moved from body to body, using them up, killing other bodies and moving on. He had never been attached to one like he was now, when one had fallen asleep he had moved on, or otherwise extricated himself. He had never dreamt. That he had done so had been reminder enough of what The Cultivator had done to him, that the dream had been of that moment had been infuriating.

Though perhaps this reminder was one that he was due. Here was trying to destroy an irrelevant slime monster, when The Cultivator was his real enemy. Maybe he had been too hasty in dismissing the idea of working together to destroy The Cultivator; surely the others could see that she was their real enemy here. Plus, a powerful enemy dead is one thing, but a powerful enemy made a powerful ally is another thing entirely.
Something outside threw itself at the heavy door, snapping Ziir out of his reverie. He climbed to his feet and proceeded to completely ignore the thuds and scrabblings at the door. He walked down the corridor, which was lit only with dim red emergency lightning and peered through all the doors until he found the one that he wanted; a staircase. Ziir stretched out his awful wings and propelled himself up through the stairwell, slowing only as he reached the top floor. Here he levered the door off its hinges and threw it idly down the stairwell behind him. He steps out onto the roof and walks to the edge, peering down at the fire escape through which he entered. He could not make out what the thing at the base of the building was, but one thing was clear in his mind. That thing was The Cultivator's; a distraction against what they should really be fighting. He would bring the contestants together and they would make a stand against her. The thought brought a smile to Ziirphael's face as he took flight from the building.

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

---

As Hoss made his way towards the edge of the enclosure, a familiar mound of meat in motion caught his eye. Realizing an unprecedented opportunity to candidly observe Gormand had just presented itself, Hoss stood back to watch, quietly.

Along with Gormand, Hoss had to shield his eyes from the massive electrical discharge. He couldn't help but chuckle at the gratuitous display of carnage; not too dissimilar from his own outburst several minutes ago. Gormand's initiative was...

"Impressive."

Gormand's single eye waded through the mass of ground beef to point itself at Hoss.

"Figures you'd appreciate such wholly unnecessary gore."

"That is not the action to which I referred. Your... exploratory instinct, caution, whatever you'd prefer it to be called, is what impressed me. Almost human. Of course, the raw power this enclosure has put to use in order to better serve its purpose is equally as... intimidating."

"You almost sound scared. I'd think of any of us, you might be able to deal with this."

"Yes, you would think so... but I cannot. At least, not at the moment."

Gormand made a small sound of annoyance. "You're much more useless than I originally thought. You can't even take out a little fence, much less live up to your part of the Ekelhaft problem. If I'm not mistaken, that's Konka Rar off in the distance, doing your job."

Hoss pursed his lips. Ekelhaft was indeed a problem; one that Hoss was less willing to deal with than he'd care to admit.

He glanced at his gravity blade, the makeshift prison vibrating rather more than it should. Perhaps...

Perhaps it was because of the nearby electrical discharge. Perhaps it was an early warning of rapidly diminishing power reserves. Perhaps it had something to do with the sudden "disappearance" of Hoss's newmatter fabricators. Whatever the cause, for the briefest of moments, the gravity bands of Self's prison weakened.

Self had discovered, rather quickly, that it did not have the patience of its larger counterpart. Doubling and redoubling its efforts to break the gravity prison, it wasted no time on surprise when a sliver of an opening appeared for a bare instant. It was not enough to manufacture immediate escape, but a small portion of Self's unbridled, rage-fueled insanity leaked out. Leaked out, and touched upon Hoss's mind.

... Ekelhaft would have to be dealt with, sooner rather than later, Hoss realized. He raised his eyes back to a glaring Gormand.

"You are correct. I have been lax in my duties; I entered into a deal, and it is something I intend to make good upon."

With that, he turned towards the rock maze in the distance. A burst from his kinetic emitters sent him rocketing across the field, towards the inevitable conflict.

A rumbling escaped from Gormand's meaty innards; his way of expressing disdain. Something about the cyborg's behavior was... off. He suspected the damage from Ekelhaft two rounds earlier was more permanent, and more extensive, than he'd previously considered.

A paroxysmic cyclone of manic anger tore at the boundaries of its prison as it spun. Then... oddly familiar shapes occupied its limited view of the outside world. They were little more than heavily-distorted blurs, but something about their pattern... Self recalled its last battle with its captor: a maze of broken porcelain. The pattern of the shapes was reminiscent of that disastrous conflict. Self felt a strange wistfulness overtake it; the distorted scenery evoking the memory of its true separation from Ekelhaft. It found that it valued being... individual. It did not want to go back.

It was still going to kill everything, though.

Remembering his previous engagement with Ekelhaft's sprout, Hoss knew that the conditions of the maze would be ideal for Ekelhaft's aura to work its subtle influence upon him. The deleterious detritus would make short work of him here, undetected as it was.

Hoss decided to change that. His magical acumen had grown slightly since his capture of Ekelhaft Jr. Enough, possibly, to detect the ethereal insanity radiated by the main mass of the ancient madgod.

He entered the maze, every sensor he could afford to activate prowling the boundaries of their detection ranges, searching for traces of madness.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

Ekelhaft, burbling with a combination of anger and the thrill of hunting down a skilled opponent, had wasted only moments making its decision. Navigating a maze would be unacceptable; it would take far too much time and had no guarantee that any path actually lead to the slippery lich. For all anyone knew, Konka Rar was surrounded by a circle of earth with no way in. Climbing, too, promised little progress. Like any such being faced with such a Gordian knot, Ekelhaft drew its sword, launching itself teethfirst towards the hard-packed soil that made up the walls of the maze.

Digging short tunnels through porous limestone was one thing, but bursting in and out of magically-compacted ground was quite another. Sinewy roots and unexpected deposits of hard stone hampered the slime's spinning fangs, and the dense loam allowed next to no flow through it. Some three thicknesses of wall later, Ekelhaft felt little closer to its target; it was fairly certain it was headed straight towards the center, but infuriated that it had no way of knowing whether or not the lich had moved. Or set traps.

[background=silver:1l22y0tc]Magic or none, Hoss's senses were much more acute and wide-ranging than Ekelhaft's; hundreds of eyes afforded keen vision and an entire body that was a sort of sensory organ along the lines of tastetouchsmelltremor meant the slime was always well-aware of its immediate surroundings, but it couldn't compete with the array of enhanced organs and mechanical detectors the cyborg was in possession of. It was no surprise, therefore, that it was he who was aware of the ooze first, rather than the other way around.

Hoss had been navigating the maze by less forceful means than his quarry, forming a map in his mind of the twists and turns and dead-ends; this approach was effective both for finding his way through the maze, and finding his way to the old god. It was actually his more mundane detectors that alerted Hoss to Ekelhaft's presence before his attempts at divining the location of the madness aura; the cyborg could tell he was some thirty meters away from his target, and it was a fairly straight shot to approach.[/background:1l22y0tc]

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Konka Rar had bought himself some time. Now he needed to use it well.

The ground at his feet had remained steady. The lich stood in a clearing surrounded by tall slopes of earth on all sides.

A basic levitation spell carried him up one of the slopes effortlessly. Even if the slime sought to climb the outer structure rather than burrowing, it would not be able to navigate the rough surface as smoothly. Rar would have time to flee.

But that thought did not comfort him. Fleeing was a temporary solution, and only served to leave him in a continued state of powerlessness. No, he would have to find some way to fight back.

Reaching the peak of the earthen maze, Rar looked out on the horizon with his cybernetic vision. He observed a dog wander near the boundary of the park.

The resulting display of electricity surprised him. And also pleased him.

That much electrical force would surely affect the slime, especially if it were non-magical in nature. All he had to do was lure it to the boundary, and the fence would take care of the rest.

Of course, he could simply allow it to chase him, but then he would run the risk of being struck by the defenses himself. He would have to devise a plan; and to do that, he would first have to confirm that the slime creature had, in fact, entered the maze.

He floated around the upper edge of the tall crater that marked the center of the maze, carefully hovering just low enough for his eye to peek over the edge. He soon observed Ekelhaft emerging from a wall and oozing towards another, burrowing into it. Hoss was also moving through the maze, seemingly in pursuit.

Konka Rar would have smiled if his teeth were not locked in a permanent grin. At last, he was in control. Ekelhaft and Hoss were forced to respond to him, rather than the other way around.

It was a situation the lich intended to take full advantage of.

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

As Ziirphael flies through the upper reaches of the caged park static sparks off his monstrous limbs. Electricity ripples across the bars of the cage as he flies by. But Ziir's attention was taken up with something else. In the centre of the park a giant maze of earth had risen from the ground. Trees were scattered, uprooted in a rough circle at the very edge of the earth maze.

It was as Ziirphael was staring at this development that he flies just a touch too close to the cage and an bolt of electricity arcs from the cage to his wings. He screams loudly as the electricity flows through his exposed nerves. He begins to plummet, helplessly feeling the agony of his wings twisting and snapping free from his body. He slams hard onto the roof of one of the employees only buildings, and continues skidding along it as his previous momentum propels him towards the edge. Ziir was really struggling, he felt exhausted, he was bleeding profusely from his back, his bones felt like they had been shattered. It was only his experience at ignoring the pain of a body that allowed him to focus and to reach out with the two extra arms he had grown back in the previous round. He scrabbles for purchase as he slides to the edge of the building's roof, and only just manages to find it as he plunges over the edge, leaving him dangling precariously over a drop that was too high to survive. His arms strain to hold on to the roof. He's too tired. He needs to rest or to cover himself in rejuvenating blood runes; courses of action that are currently unavailable to him. He lacks the energy to pull himself up, he barely has the energy to hang on.

"Help!" he calls, though his heart isn't really in it. He doesn't really believe that one of his competitors is on this roof, and he certainly doesn't believe that if they are they will come to his aid. It's one last shot against the death that he feels sure awaits him. He hangs on for as long as he can, savouring these last painful moments of life. So this is was what it felt like to die. He'd caused so much death over the years, as a murderer, as an executioner, as a warmonger leading armies into battle. He'd always been surrounded by death and yet all that time he had never known what it was to die. To be honest he wasn't sure he'd known what it was to live until The Cultivator had locked him into this body. He'd always been untouchable, never afraid of death, uncaring for the body in which he lived. Just out for himself, to cause as much pain as possible and to kill as many beings as possible. It was no wonder he'd grown bored with his life. Maybe this was what he had wanted all along. An end.

His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a hellish roar coming from the ground beneath him. It was the beast that had pursued him into the other building, now scrabbling around at the base of this one. Ziirphael almost burst out laughing. This situation was already dire enough as it was, adding a horrible monster was just overkill. Then again... just maybe he might be able to survive this. He hangs on, really beginning to strain himself now, but he just needs a little longer. He listens intently, waiting for the beast to roar again. After what seems like the longest minute of his life the creature roars at him again, and he drops from the roof, aiming himself as he plummets, directing himself towards the sound of the creature. He aims his two blade arms beneath him and there is a sickening, yet satisfying squelch as he lands heavily upon the back of the creature, his blades penetrating beneath it's coarse black fur and tough skin, releasing torrents of treasured red blood, that Ziirphael eagerly begin to daub onto himself the very second he regains some measure of control.

The beast was stunned for a moment, but not for long. Regaining it's senses it shakes itself violently attempting to dislodge it's attacker. Ziirphael is pretty secure, his blade arms stuck deep into the beast, but he clings on for dear life anyway, as he feels his broken bones knitting painfully back together. Whatever this thing is it seemed that all his attack had managed to do was piss it off.

Originally posted on MSPA by MyifanW.

---

In the corner of his eye, Diego saw the lich's phenomenal magic raise the earth into the shape of a laybrinth. He blankly thought about how he could probably climb the walls of it if he retrieved a rope he saw earlier, but his main focus lay on the ajar door.

Why was it open? Diego thought he had closed it. He was almost sure that he did. It's true, he hadn't thought too hard about closing the door when he did it, but he had made it a habit to close all doors behind him, to minimalize the chances of being seen when he shouldn't have been.

The door had not been open. Diego still wasn't sure of it, but assumed that it was the case, as the worst case scenario was the most worth exploring. Assuming it had been closed, and was now open, meant several things- first, the thing that had opened it was capable of, well, opening doors. While that didn't sound threatening on paper, in practice it meant that the thing was of a decent height and capable of gripping a knob. It also implied the second thing- that whatever it was, it had rudimentary intellegence at least, enough to understand the concept of turning a door handle. Again, while that fact did not seem particularly threatening, Diego understood the dangers of even the slightest intellegence. Too many times had he almost endangered himself when certain people, even certain animals, acted in ways that exceeded his plans. Remembering the time that the lazy royal guard had decided to make one last round made Diego wretch slightly. He had had to hide in a horse stall, underneath the hay, for about an hour. Diego would never forget the incessent smell, and the pervasive feeling of filth.

Refocusing, Diego squinted, and focused his airspace, feeling the air behind the ajar door. Now, he heard something, and his gut tightened, fear confirmed. It was a plodding sound, fairly light sounding for the size of the thing he had seen. The sound drew closer, closer... Aprehension siezed Diego's heart.

And a dog trotted out.

Diego breathed a sigh of relief, before immediately reverting to his tensed state. The dog's legs were too short for it to reach the doorknob... And, Diego noticed, it's collar had a light on it, which wouldn't have been notable had it not seemed like the exact same light that Diego had seen while watching the thing in the warehouse from the screens. Diego's base deductive instincts told him that there was a link. However, he knew he couldn't find that link if he didn't take a closer look.

"pfft... Stepping into the unknown for the sake of information... I hate doing this."

Diego slowly made his way off the top of the building to ground level, and approached the dog, who had begun chasing it's own lack of tail. Immediately, the dog stopped and backed away from Diego, growling. Diego sighed. He was a failure when it came to animals. It probably had something to do with animals having he ability to percieve things humans could not- in his case, animals probably sensed that his hands had been stained in blood, even though had tried hard not to get dirty, and that benign thoughts never went through his head, as much as he tried to pretend that they did.

"Come on, dog, I just need to see that damned collar..."

Diego stepped forward, widening his steps, leaving the dog no good way to get past him. The dog cowered against the building wall. Diego reached out to grab it.

The dog's collar suddenly turned red.

The sound of breaking bones filled Diego's ears, as the dog's entire frame began expanding. It got off its front legs, and stood on it's back legs, growing senselessly larger and more menacing, defying several laws of physics. It's transformation complete, It howled and searched for the offender, Diego.

But he wasn't there. As soon as Diego noticed something was wrong, namely the breaking bones, he fled to the building he had come from. Behind a closed door, Diego froze.

The beast lifted it's nose to the air and gave a sniff, while perking it's ears, listening for any sound of Diego. It got nothing.

Of all the things Diego could do with his ability, besides manipulating sound, the most useful was the ability to utterly erase his presence. Sound and smell were both transmitted through the air, which, in a small area, he could isolate and hold still. In this way, he had avoided getting caught several times, including this time. The beast gave up quickly, and left the premise, looking for other beings that it had gained the scent of.

With no way of knowing that, though, Diego held his position for a few more minutes.

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

Ziirphael holds on tightly as the beast tries to shake him off again. It seems impotent to actually get him off as long as he keeps a tight grip. Ziirphael's primary concern is what happens when he decides to let go. This creature, although difficult to discern much about from this angle, is huge and fierce; a veritable behemoth. His current form was best suited to melee combat and he figured that against a creature like this it would be ineffective. He just needed a moment when he wasn't being shook violently to inscribe one of his arms with a different weapon. As he thinks this the shaking stops, the creature perhaps becoming aware that it was not helping. Ziirphael takes this opportunity, he lets go with his extra arms and starts to apply a complicated rune to his right arm. Beneath him there's the sound of bones clicking together and there is a sense of disorientation as the ground beneath him appears to get closer. Suddenly the beast wasn't underneath him any more and Ziirphael collapses to the floor, his rune incomplete. He quickly rolls over to face where the beast had been and there stands an innocent looking black dog, wearing an unusual collar. Ziirphael quickly notes the wounds on the dogs back, significantly scaled down. Come to think of it what had struck him before as a bloody roar seems much more likely to be the ferocious bark of a behemothic dog.

Ziirphael suddenly screams involuntarily, startling the black dog back towards the wall. His body is throbbing. His bones are twisting. Ziirphael is used to pain but this is worse than anything he had endured before. His arm twists in it's socket and bones scythe through his skin in erratic patterns. Veins and muscles snake out along his arm entangling at an odd angle. His hand snaps back in a rictus grip as more bones explode from his clenched fist. Ziirphael writhes helplessly as his nerves sing with pain. This had to be that rune. His arm is trying to arrange itself into a shape that had not been inscribed correctly. He retches violently forward, spewing out nothing but air. For a moment he kneels there, head down, arm throbbing and just gasps for air. Then from in front of him a yelp from the dog. Ziirphael looks up to see it begin to transform. It's body expands, the noise of it's bones snapping and reforming into new shapes clearly audible. It continues to grow until it is twice his size, it's teeth and claws looking decidedly more threatening at this absurd scale. It has become a hulking menacing beast, practically foaming at the mouth, it's body matted with it's own fresh blood.

Ziirphael desperately tries to overcome the pains in his arm. He climbs falteringly to his feet and stopps, staring the dog in it's crazy eyes full of anger and confusion. He didn't want to make the first move, but as the skin of his arm rips itself apart he knows he has to move now or else collapse from the pain. His first instinct is to flee into the park proper, but this thing was fast, he won't outrun it. He needs to get into one of the buildings. There he would have time to regroup, to sort out the mess that was his arm. The problem is that the dog stands between him and the buildings. He starts to the right, towards a gap in between two buildings. The dog is on him almost immediately, barrelling into him, knocking him off balance. As he collapses he swings his pincushion of an arm at the dog's face, agony shooting through his body as it connects. He tries to pull back from the pain, pretends for a moment that this is just like all the other bodies; a temporary vessel. Quickly he climbs up and continues to sprint towards the gap, not daring to glance around behind him. The monstrous dog hangs back for a minute or so. Ziirphael reaches the gap before it resumes it's pursuit, it's face dripping with it's own blood.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Konka Rar waited for Ekelhaft to burrow into a wall, then carefully concentrated.

A pillar of earth began to shake, and soon fell towards the wall Ekelhaft was burrowing in, knocking it over. Ekelhaft emerged to find itself on top of a mound of dirt, and no closer to the center than when it had begun to burrow.

It realized the lich must have been responsible. He could produce smaller tremors in strategic places, and allow the solidified ground to do the rest. Ekelhaft would be too far away to consume the magic, and could still be inconvenienced.

Konka Rar looked upon the blob, amused. He should have thought of this before. The ground was of limited offensive value, true - he doubted dropping a wall on Ekelhaft would do any lasting damage. But it could keep the slime busy. And perhaps it would give Hoss the opportunity to destroy the creature - inadvertently fulfilling their bargin, the lich mused.

Scanning the area again, Konka Rar noticed that Hoss was now drawing quite near to Ekelhaft; the delay had sped up their confrontation, and left the ancient god disoriented and angry. He decided to watch, for now, waiting for an opportunity to intervene.

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

---

Hoss had detected the falling pillar and subsequent damage some distance ahead, and guessed its origin and purpose quite accurately. His chance to strike was now. Kinetic emitters fired, and, with his hands crossed before him to shield from the impacts, he propelled himself through the remaining stone walls to come across a mound of rubble bleeding green, burbling ooze. A probing eye cast its gaze across Hoss, and suddenly the entire mass of rubble and blob lurched towards him. Hoss jumped, and came down on top of the hillock of psychotic rubble. Tendrils of green sprouting chainsaws of teeth screeched their way towards the descending cyborg, enveloping him.

Hoss swam through an acidic ocean of screams, single blade-arm slicing at every motion. His kinetic emitters fired bursts from knees and elbows, augmenting his blows and propelling him upwards once more. He broke the surface of the mass of ooze, fighting to stay afloat in a sea of madness. Ekelhaft, having absorbed the rubble which encased it previously, had increased in size, and seemingly in ferocity as well. Sickly webs of acid grabbed at a struggling Hoss, whose movements mimicked the vain bid for escape of one trapped in a tar pit.

An array of teeth sawed towards his face, deflected at the last minute by his synthetic arm; the blow, however, was enough to send him under once more. He sank, and as his feet touched-

-the cold, metallic floor of his ship, he realized how hopeless the situation was. Its hull falling apart around him, glimpses of the endless maw of madness itself, rending the fabric of his sanity could be seen through the failing emergency forcefields. An explosion rang through the thinning air, blasting him towards a bulkhead. His head hit-

-the ground, he fired another kinetic burst from his back. A bulge on Ekelhaft's side expanded and expelled a tattered Hoss. The mass moved once more, roiling across the ground, evincing yet more claws and buzz-saw teeth. Hoss stood his ground, ignoring the remnants of ooze which still clung to him, attacking him in any way they could. The mound of green reared, and Hoss readied the gravity blade, waiting for-

-that one, special moment when all would become clear to him. His hands beat his head, wondering why. Why wasn't his plan working? He'd done everything right, but the Equatorial nations weren't cooperating! Their subservience was key to the eventual formation of his Empire, but those wicked, twisted lumps of animals were laughing at him, he knew it, laughing and screaming and melting and dying and why couldn't they see how important the Space Elevator was? He glared out his windows, as if in the cityscape below he would find-

-the moment to strike. The blade vibrated, not just due to Self's struggle for freedom. The mass descended, and Hoss leapt, blade thrust before him. Its center swelled and its tip extended, forming an expanding sphere into which the falling ooze and teeth and claws were sucked irretrievably. The sphere tore a path through the acidic rain of insanity though which Hoss flew. Turning mid-air, he retracted the blade to its original form, further compacting the new detritus to join Self in its prison. With his feet now facing a recovering Ekelhaft, Hoss released the energy he'd been building up in his lower kinetic emitters through a forced feedback loop. A blast of pure kinetic energy flattened the blob against the ground, and flung Hoss into the air.

Not one to waste a movement, Hoss allowed his feet to overtake his head, flipping 'round and firing another blast from his lower emitters, instantly reversing his path and flying back down towards the burbling ground. The edges of the flattened Ekelhaft raised themselves to form a cauldron of deadly ooze around the hungry mouths which had opened to meet the descending tyrant.

Focused as he was on the mouths, Hoss did not notice a tendril flash towards his right arm. Razer-sharp teeth latch onto his bicep, churning and sawing through artificial skin and synthetic muscle, and the tendril whipped back, tearing the arm from its socket. Hoss screamed in-

-pain. He'd never felt this much pain before, never in his life! Tears streamed down his face, streaking his ash-stained cheeks as he lay against the wall. His lab, his team, his arm... gone, all because of one stupid mistake. He clenched his teeth against the shooting agony from his empty left shoulder as he tried to stand. His right hand, his only hand, held the makeshift tourniquet in place. He stumbled out of the ruins of his lab, glancing behind him at the fading eye of insanity, glaring back at him, daring him to succumb to its influence, whispering horrific truths. "It's your fault," the eye seemed to say, a sentiment echoed by the rotting, suddenly-maggot-filled bodies of his friends and co-workers. As they dissolved into puddles of an acidic green ooze, the eye shivered, single pupil dilating when he finally turned away. A stony resolve took hold of his features as he muttered to himself, "I need a new arm."

He lurched into the ruined hallway, trying not to whimper in-

-rage. The dirty, filthy alien had taken his arm! Ekelhaft's attack had also thrown Hoss off-balance during his descent, which sent him reeling into one of Ekelhaft's open mouths.

The mouth closed as his legs entered it, trapping him in the middle of the closing sphere of Ekelhaft. Left only with his blade arm, Hoss's options were limited. The blade was quickly becoming more of a handicap than a resource, but he was reluctant to reconfigure the arm and release the captured bits of Ekelhaft. However, he had run out of options.

The blade began to dim, and Self's prison to weaken and fade.

Before the process had finished, Self erupted from its cylindrical form at Hoss's wrist and swam up his arm, biting and slashing and frothing at every surface along the way until it finally reached his face. The ooze wormed its way through every orifice, infiltrating the multitude of malfunctioning safeguards and barriers until it finally reached Hoss's organic center: his brain.

At this point, the sphere of green ooze closed, and convulsed inwards.

Hoss vanished from view.

Inside the blob, Self and Ekelhaft both tore at Hoss's body and mind. Last-minute defense systems kicked in, shielding his brain from Self's intrusion, but the blob's proximity was enough to tear his mind from the cliff of sanity.

Rationality left the cyborg once more, and a vessel of destruction was reawakened inside the boiling sphere of madness.

---------------

Emperor Sol I of the Star Empire of Sol touched his brow, briefly. Something... seemed to be off, but he couldn't quite place it. "Probably the quantum interference field..." he muttered.

He was standing underneath a massive array of pipes and rusted metal walls, in the industrial underground of one of the Outer Planets' largest production cities. Steam and other more questionable gases erupted from the decaying pipeworks around him. Drops of unknown fluid were repelled by his high-tech disguise; to any without the correct quantumly entangled key, he would appear a simple repairman. Luckily, the agent he was here to meet had such a key and should be arriving soon. It should give him some time to nail down the kinks in this system; there were some errant data suggesting he'd just been in some kind of fight...

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

Diego had been standing behind the door, carefully manipulating the air so as to be completely intangible, for a few minutes. He closed his eyes and listened carefully to any sounds coming from outside. In the distance there was the muffled sounds of combat. Clearly he could hear footsteps far too heavy to be one of the his opponents. Diego quickly discerned that one of them must be under attack by the creature. For a moment he pondered the best course of action. If the dog killed a competitor it would be one less person in this competition against him, but if his competitor slayed the dog, he wanted a closer look at that collar. Deciding to observe the fight a little closer Diego opened the door and made his way to get a better view. A couple of short minutes later Ziirphael was running straight for the gap between buildings where he was. Diego was momentarily paralysed between attempting to look like he was coming to aid the death god, which had the downside of putting him in danger, and turning and fleeing, which would look more suspicious. He opted to flee.

Ziirphael ran into the narrow alley betwen the two buildings to find Diego running ahead of him. They both headed to the nearest entrance to the building, an ajar door on the right hand structure. Diego dashed through the door pausing ever so slightly, before turning and encouraging Ziirphael to move. Ziir ran, the dog hot at his heels, he could practically feel the thick breath of the creature on the back of his neck. Forcing himself to move as fast as possible, not aided by the slippery muddy ground, Ziirphael dashed through the door to safety, Diego slamming it the moment that he was through.

In the alleyway outside the dog battling with conflicting evidence from its senses. It had seen the pair go into this building, but it could not hear or smell them inside. The dog remained nearby, sniffing at the building in bewilderment. Inside Diego was stood barricading the door, while Ziirphael caught his breath.
"Thank you." Ziir said gratefully, between gulps of air. Diego did not respond, instead attempting to listen through the door to hear if the dog was still there. Ziir was staring down at his aching arm, completely mangled beyond recogniton. Once he had his breath back he turned to Diego. "Diego last time I saw you you indicated a desire to escape this conversation. If you still feel this way I think we could work together."
"Hold on." Diego said. "The last time I saw you you looked like you were relishing this competition. Not to mention you didn't have a face."
"A face became necessary to articulate more complicated thoughts." Ziirphael said, a note of anger rising in his voice. "The Cultivator acted against me. Now my only concern is that I get my revenge against her, making her suffer for as long as I am able to do so, but to do this I need allies. Konka Rar is with me, are you?"

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

---

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

I guess I'll go ahead and reserve. I'm gonna go ahead and say right now that I am never quite sure how to write for Hoss so this post may require some editing in the future.

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

---

SleepingOrange Wrote:I guess I'll go ahead and reserve. I'm gonna go ahead and say right now that I am never quite sure how to write for Hoss so this post may require some editing in the future.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

Konka Rar, positioned as he was, could easily see the battle between slime and cyborg; the appearance of a smaller slime from within Hoss's containments had been a surprise, but the lich wasn't fully aware of its significance. He simply assumed it had been trapped in an earlier conflict, and had no idea it might represent a possible potent weapon against his semisolid foe; for all he knew, any bit of Ekelhaft separated from the whole would simply rejoin readily, regardless of time or distance apart.

More salient to the scheming wizard was the fact that the startlingly-enlarging slime had completely enveloped Hoss. Despite the one-armed ruler's thrashing and erratically-firing kinetic emitters, the blob appeared to be keeping him nearly in place and preventing him from escaping. It appeared through the murky green translucence that numerous teeth where wheeling through the slime and nicking the metal exterior of the trapped cyborg, which must already be faring poorly against Ekelhaft's apparent acidity. Bony fingers pinged on a metallic arm as Konka Rar considered his next move, then wove a complicated shape in midair as he made his decision. A pillar of compacted clay shot out from one of the maze's walls, butting through viscous madgod and colliding with trapped tyrant; Hoss was flung from his oozy prison and collided with a wall, along with several globules of angry slime. Surprisingly to the onlooker, the furious cyborg immediately launched himself back towards his foe with little concern for strategy or safety, his remaining limbs occasionally twitching or jerking wildly.

Ekelhaft's attention had mostly been occupied with destroying the metallic idiot who had had the temerity to think he could take on the ancient slime; its eyes had turned inward, glaring and leering at its struggling victim and the lich and his maze had been forgotten as insignificant details with no bearing on the situation at hand. The column of earth barreling into and through the ooze took it quite by surprise, and the impact sent Hoss and parts of Ekelhaft flying. Disoriented by the sudden fragmentation of its perception, the slime pulled back against the wall, attempting to gather its broken self into one cohesive whole; given the severe damage it had already inflicted on its opponent, it assumed that it would be several moments before a counterattack could be readied and did little to prevent such. The closest human equivalent would probably be reeling from a blow to the back of the head, mind swimming and bursts of colors randomly exploding across one's vision, so as blobs and eyes and teeth oozed and rolled across the ground back to their places, Ekelhaft completely missed the berserker launching himself back into the fray.

Self was stymied at every turn by the cyborg's defense systems and seals; its undulating, seething form filled every sinus and ear and even into the trachea, but could find no way to reach any vitals. Worse, it could feel the influence of its old master trying to reassert itself, and worried that the longer it stayed here, picking at locks and wondering at synthetic materials, the closer it came to losing itself to complete subsumption. As was becoming typical of the small blob, it made a snap decision; it gathered up its newly-increased mass, coiled in on itself, and rocketed out of Hoss's face, teeth spinning and exit designed to cause as much trauma as possible.

In the moments after his spell, several things had happened that confused Konka Rar; it was an unusual experience for a being who prided himself on always being several steps ahead of events. First, Hoss had immediately launched himself back towards Ekelhaft, despite the obvious damage he'd taken; second, the seemingly-invulnerable mire of acid and teeth appeared much more stunned by the blow than he had anticipated; and third, and probably most surprising, Hoss's nose exploded.

The renegade scout's egress had done quite a number on Hoss's face; the nose was completely demolished, and a large, gaping gash marred much of the rest of it, revealing the metallic workings beneath. Anyone who knew about how the cyborg was built (a group that consisted entirely of one currently-raving person) would have known that the damage was almost entirely cosmetic, but it left him looking inhuman, haggard, and terrifying. None of this was any concern of Self's though; it contented itself with rocketing through the air towards a wall and scrambling up it, tooth-pitons and the earth's own rough surface allowing it to move up with alacrity.

Ekelhaft, for its part, had barely noticed when his foe's face split; its attention was more focused on the single arm it still wielded scything through the air and the slime's own body. Without the gingerness and caution that self-awareness brings, Hoss's berserker rage left him a ballistic being of fury, attacking with no punches pulled or heads not used for butting. For all the maddened old cyborg's strength and persistence, little real damage was done to Ekelhaft, but the continual battering kept its senses off balance and Hoss's erratic attacks and apparently-random jerks and feints made it very difficult for any real attack to be landed on him.

The slime, once it had gathered what it thought to be all its constituent parts again, promptly split in two and flowed around behind Hoss. It rejoined and quickly sent a razor-edged pseudopod lashing at the man's midriff, missing by only inches as his left kinetic emitter fired for no discernible reason and sent him rocketing a short distance sideways. He pirouetted at the end of his jump, turning to face the object of his rage and snarling. Even though Hoss no longer had the self-awareness or higher function to use most of the tools in his arsenal, it appeared either some subconscious processes or amazing serendipity was bent on ensuring they prevented his immediate demise. More tendrils lashed out of Ekelhaft's bulk, all either battered away or dodged by a lucky tic or blast from the emitters. Rather than play this asinine game and continue having its eyes punched, the ooze opted to fall slightly back, spreading a thin layer of itself across the ground as it did.

Filled with rage at the multiverse in general and the injustices that forced it from taking its revenge on the cyborg in particular, Self fumed and bubbled as it scaled the maze. Small, light, and fast, it accomplished that task in orders of magnitude less time than the entirety of the creeping madgod would have been able to. It had no idea what it was going to do or who it was going to kill once it got away from Ekelhaft, but it was sure something would present itself.

Given that a being that ate and twisted magic was nearby, the lich had taken the precaution of dismissing his levitation spell; this meant, unfortunately, that to watch the proceedings below him, he needed to perch on the wall immediately above the fight. This was probably fine, as his maze was more than tall enough to keep him out of the range of the sanity-destroying aura as well as conceal him from the competitors below, and it was worth it to be able to see and influence events as they unfolded.

When Self had launched itself from Hoss's face like the world's most violent sneeze, Konka Rar had had no reason to assume it was anything other than a small part of the whole; he'd quickly lost track of it as Ekelhaft and Hoss moved around each other, and if he'd thought of it at all, it would have been to assume it had rejoined with itself as the rest of the smaller oozelets had been doing at the time. His angle and divided attention had meant he had failed to see the tiny destroyer climbing up the wall closest to him, as had it missed him. He was completely unaware of its approach until he felt the tiniest of tugs at the back of his mind.

Hoss, as predicted, had done nothing but follow blindly and angrily after the retreating form of the avatar of chaos; he was completely unaware that he was standing on a paper-thing layer of the slime that coated the ground beneath his feet. Ekelhaft chuckled inwardly as it quickly withdrew its lower extremities, yanking the cyborg's feet out from under him; it would have effected an image a bit like a tablecloth being clumsily pulled out from under a candelabrum, were it not for the fact that as the tablecloth sped away, a green tidal wave of nightmares and fangs sped in to cover the fallen centerpiece.

Self only had a few eyes to its lack of a name, and even if it had better visual acuity, the nature of the walls made it impossible to see what if anything was on top of them. It was completely unaware that if it kept on its current path and the lich didn't move, it was about to climb onto Konka Rar's left foot. All it was aware of as it moved ever higher was a burning desire to rend and tear everyone and everything; it didn't even spare a backwards glance to watch for pursuit, confident that Ekelhaft had bigger and more dangerous things to deal with.

Clutching his staff tightly, the undead mage blinked insofar as he was able. He'd lived with his mind for centuries, and the nearly-inaudible voices floating at the back of it now had no place in it. A worried glance downward revealed that Ekelhaft was fully occupied with Hoss, and more than a safe distance away; to be sure, he bent slightly over the edge, at exactly the same time as a small ball of green anger launched itself over.

It wasn't difficult to dodge the flying slime, but the thing's presence was worrisome enough. It was at close range, which meant it had the clear advantage over the now-magicless lich; staying this close would have obvious mental consequences, and fleeing was difficult without magical aid. Konka Rar took several stumbling steps backwards, careful to maintain awareness of the edge at all times, and watched his new foe, formulating a plan.

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

---

An outside observer may find it odd that the sovereign ruler of a massive star nation would deign meet a mere intelligence agent in the field, and in hostile territory, no less. But this was a special case.

Special enough to make the Emperor rather agitated when his agent failed to show. She'd never been late before, never in the twenty thousand years since he'd formed the Empire. He began to pace. Her failure to make the appointment was more important than a failure to deliver and receive valuable information and resources. Something must have happened. Something...

He paused. He was getting a serious sense of deja-vu. He'd been here before, perturbed by the same issue, he was sure of it. But that was impossible; he'd never encountered a situation like this before; he'd never been on this planet before. There was no way he could-

The loud whine of several speederbikes approaching from a distance interrupted his thoughts. His head flicked towards the noise; he'd viewed the detailed intelligence reports from this world before landing, and the bikes' engines carried the particular frequency used by several of this planet's gangs. But they shouldn't be anywhere near here...

The whole situation was quickly becoming... unfavorable. He would have to extricate himself immediately lest it worsen.

As he pinged his massive private wormhole network to prepare for a transit back to the Empire, several things happened. One, the ping failed. There was no wormhole network. Two, the biker gang, which had been at least half a kilometer away, was suddenly surrounding him. Three, they were not a biker gang.

They wore the uniforms of the local Resistance movement, though the Emperor didn't remember the green of their emblem look quite so... sickly. One of them removed his goggles to grin nastily at the "repairman" that was the Emperor's disguise.

"It's over, Solly. We know who you are."

---------

Back in the real world, a pool of green acid burbled and swayed across the ground, belaying little of the battle raging inside. A bubble formed and swelled across its surface, bursting to reveal what, at first glance, appeared to be a rotting corpse. Skin hung off its face in melting lumps. Torn, tattered and partially-dissolved clothes did little to hide massive portions of flesh flapping limply against a metallic torso. Indeed, the increasingly-exposed metal of the cyborg's body was the only thing to shatter the illusion of a horrendously decayed undead monster, as its battle inside Ekelhaft had done a number on its externals. Sentient acid can be insidious in its violation of any nook or cranny, and the scars opened by Ekelhaft Its jaw opened as it burst from the frothing slime, and an inhuman screech, like tearing aluminium, ripped through the air. Its single remaining arm flicked between multiple weapons configurations, never settling, most of them completely useless without newmatter fabricators or the multitude of other missing or disabled technological gizmo's. It dove back into the seething surface, eager to meet the grinding maw of teeth which had formed beneath it.

---------

"We know you work for the Sollies. To think one of our own citizens would ally themselves with those xenophobes!" The man looked around at his allies, who all scowled accordingly. He looked back at the "repairman". "Shallow degenerates, they are. The filth of the human race has always migrated inwards. But we're not going to give you that chance." The grin was back, and the man dismounted his bike, the rest of his group followed suit. "We know you're here waiting for your Solly contact. So you're gonna help us ambush them. And, just as ah... insurance... to keep you from running..." he motioned towards another of his men, whom hefted a rather deadly-looking weapon, "keep in mind that we'll be watching." The man grinned again.

The Emperor considered. The massive propaganda machine of his Empire's Directorate of Information did more than simply indoctrinate his citizens to hate and fear the worlds beyond the border. It also, much more surreptitiously, infiltrated and guided the political and cultural norms of the portions of humanity which had not yet been absorbed into the Star Empire of Sol. For as long as the Empire had existed, its main tenant had been to protect humanity against alien incursions. The fact that no evidence for alien life had ever been found did not invalidate this goal; indeed, the early version of the DOI used that fact to its advantage. By fabricating shreds of evidence to hint at a secretive alien conspiracy to take over the worlds beyond the Empire's border, aliens that were forever beyond the reach of humanity's influence, the citizens of the Empire remained convinced that their nation's steadily expanding borders for for the best. They were saving these helpless border worlds from the aliens that lurked just out of sight.

On the flipside, the border worlds knew the story to be a complete farce. The aliens were out there, yes, and they were trying to reach us. They were kind and benevolent, and only had humanity's best interests at heart. Stories abound of contact with strange ships with superior technology at the edge of human space kept the population of the Outer Worlds continually reaching outwards, both running from the Evil Empire and running to their Omnipotent Benefactors.

It did not matter that aliens simply did not exist, and that both ideologies were based wholly on fabrications from the DOI. The outcome remained the same: humanity expanded, much faster than they would have if every nation felt at ease and complacent. Fear and nigh-religious love were powerful motivators, and the Emperor utilized both with extreme prejudice to achieve his goals.

Which brought him back to the matter at hand. This man was likely a leader of the local resistance cell; a dangerous group, whom supported fighting the growing Empire, rather than running from them. This, the Emperor simply could not abide. These groups popped up every now and then, and while their overall impact was negligible, it was still annoying. He would have to put them down.

Right as the thought pushed him towards action, something changed in the men around him. It was as if their breathing suddenly came in hisses and pops, or their skin took on a sickly green sheen, or their teeth became razors and their hands became claws, or all at once. Or none at all. The change seemed both imperceptible and glaringly obvious, but the Emperor couldn't work out which, or what it was. All he knew was that it had happened, and this was no ordinary fight. He lowered the disguise, revealing himself in all his Imperial glory, hoping to at least startle the men.

Their reaction was not as expected. Snarling, they charged.

The Emperor brought up his right hand, pointing at the nearest man, ready to unleash-

What right hand? The Emperor stared. How could have forgotten his right arm was gone? Thinking, he had trouble remembering how he'd lost it. It seemed recent, but...

Shaking himself, he stared again. At his right hand. Which was definitely attached to his right arm, which was definitely attached to him. Of course he hadn't lost his arm. That was silly.

Unfortunately, the moment had cost him, and the nearest man was upon him. The Emperor was not overly worried; his shields would repel-

The man swung, and punched the Emperor straight in the nose. He was shocked. His shields should have blasted the man away, and... pain?! He was feeling pain from where the fist had impacted! He brought his hand up to his face, and looked down in amazement at the red blood which his palm brought away. Pain, blood, malfunctioning shields, unreachable wormhole network... something was definitely wrong.

But the Emperor was never one to hold back. And hold back he didn't.

His left arm reconfigured itself into its particle beam setting. He raised it. It fired.

------

The cyborg thrashed futilely inside the crushing ooze cocoon, barely fending off what physical weapons would form to assault it. Then, quite suddenly, it went stock-still, and raised its only arm before it. The arm reconfigured to a setting it hadn't used yet, and fired. Kind of.

The configuration, of course, mirrored the goings-on of the imaginary crazy-world Hoss's mind had run away to. Unfortunately, the cyborg was in no position to properly fire a particle beam; it needed the endless supply of raw material from its now-defunct wormhole links and the limitless power from its black-hole "heart" to fire correctly. As such, fired under less-than-ideal circumstances, what happened was rather... unfortunate. For everyone.

The cyborg had been in a more-or-less upright position inside Ekelhaft when it fired, aimed (luckily) away from the distracted Konka Rar and instead towards the nearest edge of the park's enclosure. With too-low power reserves and sub-optimal internal conditions, it was impossible for the arm to fire a true particle beam. Instead, the vast reserves of the cyborg's new gluon reactor were drawn upon, both for power and for raw material. Given that the original weapon was not made to handle gluons, a recursive loop formed from the conflicting exotic energies and took shape as a bubble at the mouth of the weapon. An iridescent sphere grew at the end of the cyborg's arm, radiant energies sparking multi-colored lightning throughout its interior. Its surface was a roiling, not-quite-opaque, fluid-like storm; as if one were looking at the surface of a gas giant sped up by a factor of twenty. As the sphere continued to grow, the play of lightning inside began to escape the confines of its edge. Each tendril of energy began to stutter outwards, flicking in and out of existence as they expanded. There were not many; less than ten, more than seven, which managed to escape. As each one extended, their color began to settle, and their form to thicken. The seven-to-ten now blueish-red shafts of lightning flickered more slowly as they extended beyond the expanding sphere. With each flicker into existence, the portions of Ekelhaft which they intersected burned and exploded outwards.

After almost a minute, the shafts of lightning were now long enough to break the Ekelhaft's surface, and as they were exposed to the air, thunder rang through the park with each flicker, as superheated air rushed away from the apparitions. They continued to expand, their flickering now once every few seconds instead of once every few microseconds. If the thunder wasn't enough, their size and brightness had alerted every contestant in the arena to their presence, and the inevitable explosion they represented.

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Konka Rar was concerned. This close, the slime was sapping his magic too fast for him to do anything. But without magic, what could he...

He shook his head. The voices were interfering with his thought processes. The lich gazed at his cybernetic left arm. Of course he could fight without the aid of his magic.

Konka Rar pointed his arm at what he presumed to be an ordinary piece of Ekelhaft, and fired. The slime dodged, moving further down the crater. Konka Rar fired again, and the cycle repeated.

Only when Self had moved far enough for the voices of insanity to recede did the lich realize his tactical blunder.

The blasts had created several holes in the walls of the crater. More worryingly, cracks were beginning to form, spreading outward from the holes. Too late, Konka Rar realized that his defense would not last.

In desperation, he leapt over an edge, landing on top of one of the higher walls of the maze. The crater collapsed; perhaps that piece of the blob had been crushed by the avalanche, but Rar somehow suspected that would not be enough. At least he still had a chance to escape, and was free of Ekelhaft's influence.

Konka Rar recast his levitation spell, and decided to cut his losses and leave the maze, hovering across slightly lower walls whenever he could. With luck, Ekelhaft would be too preoccupied with the Hand of Silver to notice the lich escaping.