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Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 1: Parallels/Perpendicularities] - Robust Laser - 06-13-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by cyber95.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 1: Parallels/Perpendicularities] - SleepingOrange - 06-13-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
After some minutes of this annoyed wandering, torchlight was replaced by dim sunlight and writhing roots felt the crunch of snow beneath them. The tree's expression didn't so much change from its scowl as gain a sharp edge to it as he stepped out into the chilling breeze of the tundra; after a few moments of taking in the openness and spreading his roots and branches, Crepitans turned back to the blasted structure that had so hindered his hunt for the damnable crustacean.
It was the only notable structure in the entirety of the visible landscape, a vaguely-yellowish construction of some kind of sandstone-esque material. A few experimental scrapes and a punch or two revealed it wasn't the hardest stone could be, but it was still solid and a lot harder than even hardwood. Even without any obvious substance holding the stones together, they resisted any attempt at levering or prying them apart. Perhaps most worrying of all, though, was the entire pyramid's tendency to, with a lurch and loud grinding noise, raise another few feet out of the ground at erratic intervals. All in all, it was frustratingly solid and mysterious, and resisted every attempt to physically alter it.
Which simply meant, to Crepitans, that a more magical approach would be required. Why bother plowing a tunnel through the honeycombed tomb when he could simply cause it to collapse or disassemble itself? The perpetual rictus of anger that was usually plastered across the shaman's enormous wooden face softened momentarily into a more contemplative visage as he pondered how to approach this new problem. While he wondered, he reached a hand into his boughs, carefully drawing out an enormous urn filled with pigment.
The wind whipped up dramatically as preliminary sigils were traced across the rough surface of the pyramid. It was probably completely unrelated to whatever spells Crepitans was in the process of weaving, but it was certainly tonally appropriate; the clouds of snow that were kicked up and sent spinning around the base of the structure lent the air a hazy, eerie cast, and the contents of Crepitans's branches were sent knocking into each other, producing arhythmic bursts of hollow, staccato sounds. Had anyone else been around, the entire scene would have been quite unsettling.
A recognizable pattern of glyphs and runes began forming around the entrance Crepitans had managed to escape through; he'd apparently settled on a course of action, as his strokes were getting more confident and faster, and a faint glow was starting to take hold around the edges. A wicked grin began curling its way across the gash that passed for a mouth, and an air of palpable confidence wafted off the cruel shaman. Three more strokes, two more, one, and... It was finished.
Dark shapes writhed around the portal, and the smile widened. Black sparks leapt from the stone, and it faltered. There was a resounding CRACK and flash of light, and Crepitans stumbled backwards, leaves singed and panic rising in his eyes. Snow near the backfiring spell began melting, and the stone it was painted on began warping and darkening.
The rumbling that had been occasionally emanating from the depths of the pyramid redoubled.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 1: Parallels/Perpendicularities] - Akumu - 06-24-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Akumu.
Climbing up the submerged incline of the mountain, he was overwhelmed by the brightness flowing through its bulk. It skittered and leapt and danced, a fire without heat or light. He thought how beautiful it was and wedged his claws into a crevice a little higher on the mountain, pulling himself towards the distant light of the surface. He hoped his brothers could see its beauty too.
- - - - -
Red, though he could activate sensors to detect electrical currents, was not likely to find them as stirring as Blazaard did. Besides that, he was currently far too busy fleeing for his life to do any sensor activating. ACCEPT YOUR FATE, NAMELESS ONE, COVETER AND DEFILER. No matter what twists and turns Red took, Sentinel's booming voice grew steadily louder in his mind. There was no way he could outrun the biped. Must improve locomotive speed in future versions. Clanking through an archway, Red spun around his mech's torso and busied himself preparing for the inevitable.
Soon enough Sentinel came into view at the far end of the hallway. Its red eye-scales burned into Red's sensors and it raised an accusatory finger. You can't hide, Nameless One! All who seek to disturb His tomb will meet their doom at my hands. Red spread his arms wide, and called out “Bring my doom, then!” Sentinel set towards him at a dead run, each footfall cratering the sandstone floor. It drew back its oversized fist as it came and hit Red with a psychic yell that shook him to his core, cocooned inside a yard of metal and cables. Still, he stood resolute, waiting until the colossus came into range. And then, with a twitch of his antennae, he triggered the explosives.
- - - - -
Nemaeus wandered the halls, occasionally finding a stairwell further into the depths of the pyramid. He recalled the myths of heroes descending into the afterlife through caves in the earth, to rescue a wife or lover and return to the land of the living. Perhaps these demons were sent not to torment him, but to test him, and somewhere far beneath there was redemption to be found... whumpf His contemplation was interrupted by a sound like a far away giant clearing its throat, and the ground jumped beneath his feet. A rumbling he felt in his bowels more than heard began from below. Nemaeus looked agape at the floor for a moment and then as the rumbling drew closer, started running: one footfall, two, but his third step found a floor inches lower than expected, and his knee buckled. He went down, tumbling across a skewing stone slab before slamming into the edge of the next, still in its place. The rumbling was a deafening roar now, and he was falling. Stone crashed through stone and the air was filled with flying shards, and the Kyprian hide was the only thing keeping Nemaeus from being perforated. A second later he slammed into the shattered rubble of two floors worth of corridor and rolled roughly down the pile.
Laying on the ground, battered and bruised, Nemaeus saw dimly through the dust-choked air a hulking form looming over him. He gasped, and gagged on the thick slurry of pulverized stone and saliva that formed immediately in his mouth and throat. He fumbled for his knife, choking and coughing, but a massive arm came through the haze and pinned him to the floor.
“Must retreat now. Can still hear it, have only slowed it.”
Red grabbed an arm and a leg, and retracting his arms, swung Nemaeus up and dropped him on the flat top of the mech. He then spun about and set off away from the buried Sentinel.
- - - - -
On the surface, Crepitans Bloodbark was aghast at the power he had unleashed. Through the portal he had inscribed on the pyramid, he saw the shocked face of the pathetic she-monkey from the Counselor’s quarters. Then reality twisted and everything began to dissolve. What had been meant to weaken just the stone of the pyramid had punched through to the desert, but the skein between worlds had already been punctured elsewhere. Now the two holes were puckering together, compressing and shredding the space inbetween.
Merely a dozen yards beneath him, Blazaard saw the beautiful dance of brightness within the pyramid begin to be joined by a profound darkness. He clung to the side of the edifice, gills fluttering, and watched rapt these new developments. The brightness dimmed as the darkness snaked around it, devoured and destroyed. And as it guttered and went out completely, the stone beneath him went gummy. It yielded under his weight, then gave up all resistance and disappeared. A rush of seawater carried him tumbling into the corridors of the pyramid.
Above, the ice sheet canted as the water dropped away beneath it, and Crepitans began a slow slide towards the black maelstrom. Around it, ice was hissing into steam and the steam into a swirling mass of lightning as as the space between molecules and atoms and nucleons was stretched past its breaking point. He tried to dig his gnarled fingers into the ice, but could gain no purchase. His shrike was screaming.
Everything was going to shit.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 1: Parallels/Perpendicularities] - Schazer - 07-03-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Reserved until tomorrow when I can proofread/edit this (preemptive apologies) huge post.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 1: Parallels/Perpendicularities] - Schazer - 07-03-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Tria wasn't all that keen to stick around Geppeto and his puppets, partly because their jocular bickering and carefree yells as they discovered the caverns' secrets left her feeling awkward and lonely. (Also, the fact it was a troupe of undeniably creepy marionettes doing the bickering and yelling, but that almost went without saying by now. Almost.) The fact of the matter still remained, though, that Mo's twin-lamp eyes were the only decent illumination in the crypt. Tria hovered behind them, struggling to find a balance between staying out of their way and making keeping up easy.
The ladder had taken them what felt like the height of the pyramid again into the earth, until they found the missing elevator. Tria had to rip the emergency hatch off the top, before wriggling into the car itself and prising the doors open. (Otto leapt into the car behind her while she was working, fairly startling the girl - in spite of the echoing, ever-nearing clatter of wooden feet on rungs.)
The woman lingered for a while at a crossroads. She could hear Otto's faint yells down the left corridor - something about a huge pillar? Whatever it was, Tria caught Geppeto's reply a moment later down the right, but was distracted by the clack-clack-clack-clack as Otto ran to rejoin his brother.
"Oh. It's you."
Tria did her best to not slam Otto into a wall by his mechanised arms, but the shink of his manipulator's blades extending reminded the woman just how deep underground they were. From the surface. Where Brooklyn was off roaming somewhere and why the hell had Tria sent her away leaving her all alone to be slaughtered by a wooden maniac who she'd just sent flying back down the corridor.
Tria didn't wait for any noise after the crack of splitting wood. She just ran.
---
Brooklyn was sulking, inasmuch as a hovering chainsaw can. The sedate pace of the stupefied lizards, accompanied by their every pathetic flinch at the burst of her jets, restrained the ghost to the kind of vague, poltergeist-powered drift she imagined her new spin-doctor companion might regale in his rubbish sermons as "stately". Brooklyn distracted herself from the merciless sun and poor company by figuring out how best to phrase a metaphor that'd popped into her head.
It's like... like reading your ticket after you've checked your luggage in with Reincarnation Airlines, and it says your next stop's a dragon, but then it's one of those placid looking weedy creatures I saw on that snorkelling trip, once? That's how I think I feel right now. A weedy sea dragon hankering to go and terrorise some peasants, or make it rain. Or something. Hmm, maybe just slash the sub-imagery we're using for reincarnation, I never did like a metaphor that dragged on...
Brooklyn snapped out of her reverie at the fearful screeches of what passed for reptiloid language. She barely noticed the desert shaking; the chainsaw was far more occupied with the mechanical motions in and beneath the pyramid. It wasn't until Norman shouted, and Brooklyn consented to do as she was told and look up at the sky, that she realised something was very, very wrong.
The sky was white - not the slouching, unsociable gloom of snow-choked clouds; but an entire icy landscape stretched out against the cloudless blue. It didn't simply appear with some suitably cataclysmic noise - instead the image of it was warping and buckling and flickering in and out like a poorly-tuned television before a less-dead Brooklyn would've accosted it with duct tape and a spanner. If it hadn't been reminiscent of that rather mundane facet of her life, Brooklyn would've been far more awestruck.
As it was, of greater interest to the ghost was the arctic landscape itself. Mirroring the desert around her, a partially demolished pyramid hung sandstone-gold incongruous from the white; behind her were a spine of mountains, sheer flanks stripped black and devoid of snow. Brooklyn ratcheted her chain a few irritable notches at the lizardmen's wails, wondering if an equally moronic parallel native traversed the tundra. One peak stretched above the rest of the mountain range, as though it had inched its gargantuan way out and above, reaching for a similar spire - one in Brooklyn's desert, its summit tipped with an unearthly light so piercing that she marvelled at how she'd never noticed it until now -
---
The Sentinel did not stir. It instead thrashed furiously against the rubble which entombed it, reducing great bricks of stone into so much dust, and didn't stop until its hideous, scaly head broke from the ruins. It stared sightlessly up into the desert, before its gaze spun to the needle-like spire that pierced the mountain range. The world seemed to ripple as for the briefest, electric moment, sand and snow phased in and met at the two peaks, sending shockwaves across the landscapes.
The Sentinel felt all this, stared up at the desert pyramid, stared through it, then flickered like a sea of sky-bound sand before it vanished.
---
It occurred to Tria, somewhat too late, that she'd run deeper into the complex - further from a way out, further from Brooklyn. Otto's yells that she'd tried to murder him, and Jo's thunderous footsteps closing in, made her regret it. She sorely wished the lights on her arm would dim - so she could at least hide in what she was growing more and more convinced was a dead end - but had to settle for it responding to her anxiety and adopting a warmer colour scheme.
Great.
The punctuation of Jo's handful of shotgun blasts didn't help any, either - Tria cowered behind the enormous stone statue which occupied the best part of the room, keeping it between her and the murderous puppet.
A chill ran down everyone's backs - an accompaniment to the overhead lights flickering, and stone being crushed beneath Sentinel feet as the beast materialised by the doorway. Jo paused, trying to figure if this was that Tria woman's doing or not, turning back to the intersection where Geppeto worked desperately to fix Otto's arm from twisting at the awful angle it was in.
Desecrators. I will end you.
The voice was enough to make Tria shudder, but didn't compare to the anguished scream of a boy that followed a brief burst of gunfire. A steel ball, a chunk of wooden limb still attached by a chain, was tossed with terrifying ease past Tria's field of vision, cratering the wall. She heard more running, more terror-stricken threats fading back in the direction of the elevator, before the malevolent presence that had appeared mere moments before seemed to fade.
The statue's eyes lit up. Each was a glaring white half-circle - large as a car tunnel – fairly blinding Tria.
You will die here.
The entire statue - the massive head of some kind of dog - began to glow, and rise toward the ponderously opening roof. Everything was shaking again as sand streamed in. Tria ran for it, stumbling over log-like limbs despite the additional light as she escaped the Sentinel's chamber, and saw more sand rushing from the side chambers Geppeto and Otto had explored. The elevator shaft was making buckling sounds Tria could detect even above the rumbling and groaning, and if the puppets were there she had no wish to engage them. She instead ran for one of the side chambers, scrambling up ever-growing piles of sand, and found the pillar Otto had been talking about. It was shifting slowly in the dim glow of her apparatus, the carvings rising from the sand even as it drowned in it.
Tria kept clambering up the pile of sand until it had risen above the doorway, until she finally hauled herself onto a ledge on the pillar. She gazed upward, clinging as hard as she could with shaking arms. It seemed to rise into the black forever.
---
Brooklyn howled with surprise as the sand on one side of the pyramid shivered. The pyramid itself began to lurch to one side, a pillar pulling itself from the desert at each corner. From the turmoil rose a jackal's head, big enough to hover at the pyramid's now-midair base; twisting the structure’s visage in her mind’s eye into some grotesque stone turtle. It screamed, craned its head around in a failed attempt to line the arctic pyramid in its sights, and shot a beam of light from its jaws.
Norman just stared while his acolytes screeched their pathetic heads off, but after a moment of slack-jawed amazement a loathing twitch of recognition appeared on his features. Brooklyn had to wonder what that was about (the manifestation of all that mysterious machinery launching her into one of her "discovering" moods) and followed his gaze.
A ghost was prancing on the jackal's forehead, a spectral speck whooping like a maniac and waving to his brother.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 1: Parallels/Perpendicularities] - whoosh! - 07-19-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.
Things had leapt from slow and quiet to wild and crazy with alarming speed. Nemaeus sat at the tail-end of these events (that is, in the retrospective present) shocked and badly bruised, holding on for dear life to a lobster in a mechanical suit.
“Fuck,” he moaned, then buried his face in the wolf pelt that he was gripping with his other hand. The knife was wedged in there somewhere too, and all in all this experience was exhausting, irritating and disorientating. He responded to this realisation by banging awkwardly on the side of Red with the hand not keeping him on top, and screaming hoarsely at the metal.
“Slow down! Get me off this! I bail, I want out, whatever the hell you want from me you can have it!”
Down at the rapidly shrinking other end of the hall rubble slid and bounced in the wake of the rising Sentinel. As such, Red's only response was to desperately shake the wolf man in an attempt to shut him up. It worked, although this may have been more to do with the aforementioned Sentinel than any brilliant negotiation on the lobster's part.
For a moment all thought of communication dropped away. Both of them were tensed, powerfully and immediately quietened by the consuming need to simply listen. In spite of this desire hearts still hammered and Red still scuttled and clanged with a fury, but they were mere whispers in comparison to the rumbling emergence of the Sentinel.
And then it stopped.
Nemaeus twisted around, his battered body immediately protesting to the odd and mildly taxing positioning.
“Hey.”
Red didn't respond.
“Hey, I think it's gone.”
Red slowed briefly, as if himself pausing to listen even more closely and make sure too, but fear or whatever fuelled his movement kicked in again and normal speed resumed.
“Hey! You've got to believe me Red, it's gone.”
“Of course. It just vanished.”
“So?”
“Not stopping.”
“You should,” Nemaeus added nonchalantly.
“Yah? Why?”
“Because God help me, Red, if you do not let me get off this thing I'm going to start stabbing this knife wherever it'll look good. And right now I'm thinking buried in your back would be just spiffing,” he noted in what could conceivably be called a good-natured fashion.
With an air of irritation Red swiftly acquiesced, slowing just enough to pick up Nemaeus and dump him on the ground without bruising him. Too much.
“Enjoy,” he snapped and attempted to leave. Unfortunately, the wolf man responded by wrapping a hand around one of his legs.
“No, seriously. Stop. The thing is gone.”
“Yah? And?” Red attempted to pull away, but the man kept his grip and slid pathetically along the floor after him. The lobster stopped again.
“It doesn't make sense to go running off into who knows where alone. Come on.”
“Sure.”
Sliiiiiiide.
“I'm sorry I threatened you, okay? I just – I just want to talk. For five minutes. With someone who isn't actively trying to attack me, which seems to be all that's happened to me since I di- since I arrived here.”
Red became still for a moment, considering. For a fraction of that time Nemaeus also stared and considered, but it didn't look quite as good seeing as he was staring at the back of his mech suit. Then he uncurled his hand from around Red's leg, stood up and dusted himself off.
“So...?”
Red scuttled around a little to look at Nemaeus.
“No.”
And then he was off again.
The wolf man, however, was quick on the draw and sprinted after him with the desperation of a man trapped in limbo. Being an assassin had taught him a few things, and chief among them was how to run. It was what he was good at.
His start was shaky, but a few seconds later he was fast approaching Red again.
“Hey! One question! That's it!”
Almost instantly Red snapped around and grabbed the troublesome Nemaeus with a telescopic arm. Lurching to a halt, the lobster held the man a little distance away from him.
“What?” He snarled. “What is it?”
Nemaeus blinked. His mind scrambled to catch up with the sudden change of pace, and his mouth opened in an attempt to placate the creature in the meantime.
“Um.” The attempt could not be said to be successful.
“What is it? Your question?”
He swallowed, and collected himself.
“What happened to you before... before you came here? What do you remember last?”
A pause.
“I had finished the... modifications. Everything was ready. For weeks, months, I had worked on this suit, these mechanisms, beneath the surface of the sea. I rose up, stood on the sand. I looked at the sky. Then - then I was gone.”
Red dropped Nemaeus.
“That is your answer. Now leave me alone.”
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 1: Parallels/Perpendicularities] - Pick Yer Poison - 07-22-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.
Gepetto stumbled outwards, mouth gaping as his eyes traveled up the immense amounts of sand pouring in from all sides. He ran over to the edge and clawed fruitlessly at it for a few minutes before beginning to climb up the rapidly-forming wall. Mo dropped down to Gepetto's back and wrapped his arms tightly around the puppeteer's stomach, eyeing the wall of sand uneasily. Otto followed the pair up, finding it slightly easier to climb up the pouring sand because of his flatter fingers.
Several minutes of anxious scrambling found the pair nearing the top of the sinkhole, sinking slowly but surely into the sand. Otto took stock of the situation and realized that at the rate they were going, they weren't going to make it, but...he hesitated for a precious moment, then steeled his resolve. Bringing his hands up, he gave Gepetto, who was still scrambling madly to reach the surface, the strongest push he could. Geppeto scooted upwards several feet, while Otto fell back about the same, pushing himself off the edge of the sandy wall. He landed below, sending up a small plume of golden-brown dust. Sand continued to pour down onto the puppet, and he surfaced a few times before the pit filled up and covered his head, leaving it entirely still save for the sand spilling out to form Otto's grave.
Gepetto, momentarily unaware of his sudden loss, struggled to more solid ground, then turned over and collapsed onto his back, having forgotten Mo's repositioning until an audible CRUNCH reminded him of it. Swearing, he rolled over and gingerly pulled the broken puppet off his back, tears forming in his eyes. "Otto, help me with this! I...I hurt Mo!" He waited expectantly for a moment, then, surprised, turned around to find a distinct lack of Otto behind him. He spun around a few times, trying to find his twin on the empty horizon, but was completely unable to. Jo's...dead, Otto's vanished, and Mo... Gepetto looked down at the crippled mess in his hands, and tears sprung unbidden to his eyes.
---
The Sentinel was quite pleased with its work. The desecrators were fleeing like insects beneath the might of its masters, and soon they would have nowhere to run. It turned its invisible eye towards the human hunched over outside the nearly filled sand pit the pyramid had left in its place when it had risen. Peering closer, it saw the human cradling some sort of mangled humanoid figure. A child, perhaps? The Sentinel found its curiosity, which it was not aware it still had, aroused, and it stalked closer, peering down to get a closer look, intentions of harm momentarily put aside.
---
Red picked his way through the ruins of the pyramid, Nemaeus walking along behind him. The human had insisted on tagging along - something about safety - but to be honest, Red had given up arguing the point a while ago. He was actually rather glad to have the company, although he knew he'd only be lying to himself if he thought Nemaeus would be of any use when taking on the Sentinel.
He cautiously pushed open the set of double doors, wincing as one of them crashed to the ground, cracking into several pieces. On the other side of the room lay the scepter - golden, glittering, and, somehow, more desirable than ever. By the time he had finished stepping over the broken door on the floor, all thoughts of the Sentinel had vanished from Red's mind. He skittered up to the scepter, pausing for a moment to admire its beauty, and then he reached out one of his robotic arms and grabbed it from where it lay beside the coffin.
---
An immense, disabling ringing filled the Sentinel's mind, disrupting its thoughts and sending it into a frenzy. The curse called it to return immediately and defend the scepter, it knew, but at the worst possible time - it was unprepared to split with the pyramid, and only now realized its folly in attempting to eliminate all the defilers it could. The Sentinel, and therefore the pyramid, thrashed about on the hot desert sands, sending them spraying everywhere. Furious and delirious, it turned its invisible eye back towards the puppet master where he was sitting, oblivious, cradling the ruined body of one of his puppets.
---
Gepetto's tears fell in vain upon Mo's ruined body. Several times he thought he saw the figure move, but it turned out to be nothing more than the shaking of his hands. A shadow passed overhead, and Gepetto stood up, dropping the remains of Mo in the process, and stumbled away fearfully from the massive pyramid stepping over him. It came to him in that moment that with his puppets gone - and he realized fully for the first time that they were indeed puppets, and not what he had always thought they were - he was completely defenseless. He turned around and ran from the approaching doom, but his realization had come much too late. The Sentinel pointed the pyramid's jackal head towards the puppeteer, the eyes glowed a blinding white, and a massive beam of energy burst forth from its mouth, striking the sound some yards away from Gepetto, the heat turning a portion of the nearby sand to glass. Gepetto saw it closing the distance and attempted to dive to the side, but in his haste he tripped on the remains of Mo, and he tumbled to the ground. He didn't even have time to turn around and see the energy beam heading his way before it hit him, and after a moment of searing heat Gepetto's burnt, lifeless body fell to the ground. Instantly, across both lands, seven entities vanished with a similar amount of attention, one carrying the scepter the Sentinel had been cursed to guard.
The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Robust Laser - 07-22-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by cyber95.
The Counsellor stepped onto the sandy surface where half of the contestants had been. She stood on the glass where there was once sand, and looked at the charred remains of the first eliminated contestant.
"In a way, this has so far been a success. Tragedy did help him overcome his problem, if only for a moment."
She glanced at the body again, a look of concern on her face.
"However... it's not particularly useful if they aren't able to live long enough to appreciate their new understanding."
Looking around the sandy expanse, she was lost in thought for a moment. She had an idea, but she couldn't quite act on it while the battle was underway.
Before heading back, the female Grandmaster did the former contestant at least one favor, and sunk him several feet below into the sand, next to his former companion. No sense leaving corpses just lying around.
She immediately vanished from the vicinity.
----------
The Counsellor stood in her office and snapped her fingers. Appearing in front of her was an apparently invisible man in a long sleeved shirt, vest, and glasses, furiously taking notes with a fountain pen in a journal. Suddenly noticing he was not in the same place as he was before, he looked up to see the decapitated snake-haired lady. He sighed and spoke in a British voice, "You know, I was trying to watch a universe form."
"There'll be more universes being created in the future, Professor. I need you to do something for me."
Professor closed his book and sighed, "Sometimes I wonder if I should have just stayed back home and not agreed to become your assistant. What do you need?"
The Counsellor turned away, "Have you heard of the Grand Battles?"
"I've actually watched a few of them. A bit ghastly, if I do say so. ...hold on a tick, what exactly have you been doing all this time?"
"Exactly what you think. I've got a theory about them, and the opportunity presented itself to me. Unfortunately, I have... business to attend to elsewhere. I've got to see a man about a tablet."
"A tablet? Odd. I won't pry, though. What exactly am I supposed to do for you, though? I'm not exactly all-powerful. I don't think I'd be capable of running one of these, and I'm a bit on the wrong side of the morality scale for that anyway."
"Don't worry about that. I've got it all set up. The power I gave you should be enough to handle what I need for now, and if you need to get involved directly for whatever reason, you've got those brains of yours to figure something out! Just get the round started for me, and perhaps end it if I'm not back in time. I should be back before round 3 is over."
"Erm, alright then. I don't suppose you'd have the cliffnotes on this, would you?"
The Counsellor pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her... assets, and handed it to the man. She gave a wink before disappearing in a red mist.
"Right then. This shouldn't be too hard. At least I certainly hope not."
----------
The contestants floated motionlessly in a void for a bit, before a British voice surrounded them.
"Erm, sorry about that. Complications. I'm Professor. Not The Professor, just Professor. The Counsellor is busy, so I'm subbing in for a bit. It seems that Gepetto and his friends were, um, eliminated last round," Professor had a bit of a nervous tinge to his voice. The thought of forcing these beings, some perfectly innocent, to fight to the death bothered him a bit, but he had known the Counsellor to be a bit extreme with her 'therapy' methods. He was a bit unsure of how this was actually supposed to help them. Seemed like kind of a load of bollocks to him, but he wasn't a psychology major, so perhaps there was more to it than he thought, "Since that's happened, it seems appropriate to give you all a change in atomsphere. Several atmospheres, in fact. This place is actually a bit reminiscent of a game I saw somebody playing once. If any of you have ever wanted to travel space, but found it a bit unfeasable, this is the round for you. Oh, I suppose I should send you there. I think I can do that fairly easily..."
Professor's voice trailed off as the blackness shifted around them into, well, really more blackness, but a bit more populated blackness. Small planetoids appeared around, the various contestants landing on different planets, all with vastly varying attributes, and most strangely enough, more gravity than they should allow for their size. Despite the host's claim of several atmospheres, none of them seemed to have anything of the sort, which wasn't nearly as bad as it should be, because the space between the planets was strangely breathable. Before everybody was sent off to continue their escapades, Professor spoke up again.
"Oh, and apparently most of you hadn't actually met each other due to the circumstances of the previous round. The Counsellor recommends you get to know the other half of the contestants if you can. Erm, have a good round? I'm not quite sure the ettiquette of... death battles."
The contestants were free to move once more.
![[Image: professorg2-1.png]](https://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn81/cyberspace95/professorg2-1.png)
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Pick Yer Poison - 07-28-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.
Jean-Luc Bartleby slammed his hands down on the counter. "Quantos, where are those orders? I've got hungry customers out here waiting for their food. I swear some of them are already turning red."
"Maybe they're runaway lobsters, Bartleby!" Jean-Smith piped up from the end of the kitchen, where he was carting dishes around.
The chef, despite somehow simultaneously stirring three pots, managed to shrug in Bartleby's direction. "Listen, pal, I've seen more action than you or your customers ever will. They can afford to wait a few more minutes for their seafood to be cooked to perfection."
Jean-Luc Bartleby waved his hands around irritably. "Listen, whatever. Just get that food ready. I'm going to go stall some more." He turned towards the entrance, straightened his tie, and pushed the kitchen doors open just in time to gather a stomach full of lead from one of the machine gun arms of Red, who had just appeared in the french seafood restaurant. Quantos watched the waiter's body fall to the floor and pulled out a watch from his shirt pocket. He looked carefully at it, then snapped it shut and placed it back in his pocket. With a crackling noise and gust of wind, he was no longer there. Jean-Smith quickly followed suit, albeit with a good deal less theatrics.
---
Red was furious. He'd never liked those sly french folk, but displaying his kin trapped in a tank before they were brutally murdered to feed a bunch of tourists crossed more lines than he had bullets. The moment he realized where he was and what was going on, which didn't take long, he activated the machine guns in his arms and began firing at the residents in the restaurant. To his surprise, a few of them simply vanished just before the bullets hit them, while others vanished just after, but the majority of them were too taken by surprise to do anything, and were turned into swiss cheese.Once he was the only living, sentient creature left in the restaurant, Red clattered over to the lobster tank, ignoring the obvious fright the lobsters within it were experiencing. Gripping the sides and bracing himself, he hefted the tank off the table, then carefully walked out of the restaurant. Have to find water for them, he thought, looking down at the crazed crustaceans. He then looked up, surprised to see a number of other planets strangely close to the one he was on. A quick survey of that planet showed that it was only just large enough to hold the french restaurant he'd found himself in - a curious fact, but then again, thought Red, in a trans-dimensional battle to the death, most facts were curious. He looked around until he saw a planet that appeared to be full of water, then gently pushed himself off towards it, easily breaking free of the gravitational pull of the planet he had started on despite his spidery mech legs only being capable of a weak push at best.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Schazer - 07-31-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
The wind was picking up, catching engine-smoke and priestly garb amongst the sand and snow.
Do you know him!?
Brooklyn shouted over the crackling vwoosh of the pyramid-turtle-jackal-thing's laser blast. She was itching to fly on up and get a better look at that stone head; figure out how it was doing that. Norman didn't respond – the fact it came out as a mechanical snarl instead of an earnest question may have had something to do with it. The chainsaw waited a further unfulfilling minute for Norman to do something other than glare, then took off-
-and vanished-
-and reappeared, to the taste of metal and the Counsellor's insufferable chatter. Brooklyn strained against the Grandmaster's invisible hold, willing her rockets to blast into life and fly away and keep flying and-
-Brooklyn did just that. With a bellow that lit the great exhaust pipes below her red-hot, the chainsaw's rockets kicked in and shot her out of orbit. Her delighted howls resounded across the starscape, the mad machine refusing to shut off the propulsion until the planetoids were all hurtling by in a disorienting blurred mess. It was exquisite, especially for someone who didn't have those bones in her ears to tell her she was tumbling non-existent head over non-existent heels.
At least, Brooklyn was pretty sure the bones were in her ears. Her contemplations were rudely interrupted by an oncoming seafood restaurant; a few seconds rocketing perpendicular diverted the chainsaw in a gentle arc as the planet's gravity tugged at her and hold on she'd passed that green planet before hadn't she.
Damnit. So rocketing off into the depths of space and escaping wasn't an option. Now Brooklyn had a headache, if only because the ramifications of physics in a space without edges was making the most of her imagination. She orbited a lazy figure-eight round the green moon – little more than a glorified watermelon, it seemed like – carefully decelerating as she went.
A lobster in a mech suit was kicking furiously in midair, clamping a frustrated arm on the lid of the fish tank he was carrying while unsuccessfully trying to regain momentum. Brooklyn moseyed over, ignoring whatever displeased noises Red was making, and nudged him toward the nearest planet big enough to accommodate the suit.
The two of them touched down after a few awkward minutes, followed by a further awkward minute as Brooklyn jimmied her blade out of a joint in the back of Red's armour. The chainsaw hovered expectantly, humming.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Akumu - 08-04-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Akumu.
A globule of turquoise water hung suspended in a void, its surface wobbling slightly out of round as a rainbow of tropical fish flitted through its interior. Suddenly the tranquility was shattered as a tumbling form materialized at speed, shooting through the water and trailing blood and air bubbles like the tail of a meaty comet. Blazaard's trajectory bent in the weak gravity of the watery planetoid, and he slowly spiraled in to hang at its center. With the shift of environment had come an equally radical shift in mood, from an elated optimism to a morose dejection. He had failed.
He had been tumbling through the great den inside the mountain, pushed along by a roaring wall of water, scraping his flesh raw on the rough-hewn stone. And then, darkness. He was confined once again, and around him the halting chatter-whistle (speech) filled the emptiness. It almost meant something, and his eyes dilated and nostrils flared as he tried to draw it in. “Eliminated.” Of course. His brothers could only be dead, torn to shreds by one another before he could reach them with his message. He was the lone survivor, and now a new brother was to be thrust against him, probably to die as well.
Thus were his thoughts as he bobbed gently at the center of the tiny sea. Its pressure was nothing compared to the crushing sadness that compacted his will to act to a speck. He had never imagined such feeling was possible... As he hung motionless, crystal scabs grew over his abrasions, knitting together the wounds and subsuming a little more of his old self. The fish were beginning to get over their initial startle and move in to examine this new addition to their world, taking exploratory nibbles, when a dull warbling roar and a burst of orange light caught his attention. He craned his neck and paddled slightly to look at the proper up, scattering the curious fish once again. Out there, beyond the surface of the water, he saw a distant red figure of many limbs, moving slowly away.
Brother!
Like a switch had been flipped, he was right back to elation. Somehow his brother had escaped death! He had to reach him and give him the message. He paddled with all his might, fighting up through the water, picking up speed...
and breaking free! He erupted out of the sea with a spray of water, sending tiny globules shimmering out into space. He pulled in his feet to streamline himself and glided out towards his brother. As he drew near he saw that the light was coming from their machine for ripping apart and putting the wrongness in, and it was ripping into his brother right now, working its way into his metal shell. He screeched in anger but this was lost in the terrible roar of the machine. Even worse, it was driving into his brother and pushing him away, so that he passed behind them unnoticed, flailing his claws and screaming without effect as he followed a straight path from the sea.
His brother receded away as he traveled onwards, and ahead another planet loomed, bristling with gleaming towers of glass and plastic. As he drew closer he saw small pods of the same bustle to and fro between the towers, and a cacophony of honks and roars rose up towards him. He braced for impact.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Mirdini - 08-05-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Mirdini.
Tria stood numbly in the void as the “Professor” character stuttered onwards, turning over the events of the pyramid in her head. She’d smashed that puppet’s arm, which Gepetto had spent time fixing which the kid could’ve used to run away from that… Sentinel thing, time she’d stolen from him which ended up costing him his life. Did that mean she was responsible for Gepetto’s death? Tria might’ve been a thief for five years, but she’d never actually killed a person before – much less a child.
It was an accident! I didn’t mean for any of that to happen, I’m not a murderer! I…
In spite of her rationalizations, Tria’s conscience disagreed. She was still wrestling with the implications of what she had done when Professor snapped his fingers and she popped out of existence.
-and back, to find herself staring at a skyscraper that could just as easily have stood in the central business district of Metralis. She’d only been there once, a junior sneak running errands for more veteran gang members who had been casing a building for later infiltration, but she still recalled gawking in wonder at the height of those steel and glass monuments, gleaming in the feeble sunlight between storms. And the trees – actual TREES – that had stood in martial file on every avenue! The skyscraper in front of her did not reach into a clouded sky, however, but straight into the pitch black of space. Lost in thought, Tria followed the length of the building into what passed for a sky - she could make out no stars, but several other spheres that could only be some of the planetoids the Professor had winked into existence. If what he had said was true, she only needed to leap with enough force to-
-VRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Tria jerked towards the sudden cacophony, slowly grasping in fragmented instances where she was actually standing. The sound was a horn, the source a very large vehi-
She was on the tracks again. It rushed towards her, growing larger with every passing moment. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t move-
A small part of her mind screamed at her to dodge, to get out of the way, to use her arm, to do something, anything, anything to avoid the bus hurtling towards her still figure. Instead she stared at it, her mind paralyzed by fear. The bus began - almost comically - to swerve out of the way, far too late to affect the outcome of the seemingly inevitable collision.
The bus slid closer, only a few meters now separating the girl and five tonnes of metal. Passers-by gaped at the scene.
<font size="3">Existential Threat Identified. Standard Field Strength Not Sufficient To Preserve Apparatus. Removing Safety Parameters.
Tria’s arm whipped up of its own accord, segmenting to reveal the electromagnet coiled within. Bright white light erupted from the device, electricity crackling down the length of the limb as the Apparatus was pushed further than ever before. A web – no, a wall of magnetic energy burst from the girl’s hand and slammed into the bus, sending it and several vehicles behind it flying into a building in a manner reminiscent of a child sweeping aside toy cars.
Fatal Power Surge Detected. Shutting Down Auxiliary AI Functions. Initiating Transfer Of Full Control To Host. Heat Management Standby Mode Engaged. Goodbye.
Her mind rocked with a sudden surge of sensation from her right arm, snapping her out of her paralysis and into the present. Her first instinct was to dive onto the sidewalk, but it was quickly suppressed as a vicious, wracking pain shot up her right side. Swallowing a sob, Tria’s legs buckled under her, the girl clutching her shoulder as she fell into shock. Consciously she hardly noticed the pandemonium that had erupted throughout the street at her display, much less the ominous rumbling of the nearby tower freshly ventilated by an influx of airborne automobiles. Slowly but surely, the building began to slant towards the road.
Some primal instinct screamed at her to get moving, to get out of the area, and despite her limp right arm and the constant, violent throbbing from her shoulder Tria’s body obeyed. She ran through abandoned cars and screaming crowds, past storefronts and electronic billboards, finally staggering around a corner and into a dilapidated alley. There she collapsed, panting and screwing her eyes shut as her body acclimatized to the advanced integration her Apparatus had initiated. Minute by minute the pain decreased exponentially, until it settled into a manageable ache. She opened her eyes again to a view that felt unnaturally like home – the same worn pipes, the same patina of grime covering every available surface. As the surge of adrenaline that had propelled her dash left her system the pain in her shoulder flared, and Tria (still lightheaded) idly wondered if she would be able to find some form hospital or pharmacy on the planetoid.
Some meds would really hit the spot right now…
As lucidity returned to her, however, her thirst for relief was subsumed by a curiosity over what had just occurred. When Liren had told her he had given her arm some “basic AI package” following a checkup a year after her “acquisition” she had assumed it was simply a way to make sure she didn’t burn out or try to off herself with the arm, like some of the other Apparati she’d heard rumors about. Either he’d lied about its capabilities (and Tria could see no reason why he would have), or the AI had evolved at some point since its installation. She was certain that Liren had limited her maximum field strength to something far below the explosion of magnetism she’d produced earlier, and knew he would never have trusted a computer program with something as sensitive as removing those limits – that paranoid bastard.
Even more curiously, she couldn’t feel it dampening her awareness of the Apparatus anymore either. She couldn’t find the AI at all. Though the prosthetic was currently hanging lifelessly from her body, she could feel the machinery within entirely busy capturing and storing the remaining heat from her prior display – without which she would likely have had first degree burns down the length of her body. As things stood she merely felt slightly warmed, as if she had just taken a hot shower. A figure popped into her head – it would take at least three hours for her arm to return to an operational state.
What? How do I know that?
Tria paused, guardedly considering the wild current of information that sprang from her Apparatus straight into her brain. Though still muddled, her mind seemed to be organizing it with remarkable speed.
Still hurts like a bitch, though.
She winced, holding her shoulder as she gradually propped herself up against the wall. As interesting as her newfound capabilities were (whatever they are), she remembered that regardless of her current situation she was still stuck in a battle to the death with sev- no, six- six other beings of indeterminate power. She certainly didn’t want to get caught sitting down if one less sympathetic than -What was her name again? Brook? Brookie? - showed up.
Tria had almost managed to stand up when she was knocked back to the ground by the sudden impact of a particularly crystalline meteor on the avenue immediately parallel to her temporary refuge.</font>
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Pick Yer Poison - 08-14-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.
Red's mech rotated to face Brooklyn. Although he tried to do it slowly in order to keep from agitating the lobsters in the tank any further, they were already so frightened from the breakout that there was little hope of them calming down any time soon. He nestled the tank irritably, glancing around at the planetoid Brooklyn had pushed him towards. It seemed harmless enough, covered with grass upon which a flock of sheep was grazing peacefully, but it wasn't the watery one he'd been aiming at. Even more irritating, judging by the embarrassing dead-in-the-water moment he'd just had, his mech's legs weren't strong enough to push him between planetoids, making travel to the watery one a tricky proposition. Although, he thought, happening upon a burst of inspiration, chainsaw that saved me may be capable of effecting travel...will need to study gear for duplication.
"Do not think we have met," Red said hesitantly. Can it even understand me? "Name is Red. Yours is Brooklyn?"
The chainsaw dipped in a manner Red chose to interpret as a yes.
"Thank you for the thrust," he continued. "How does it work?" He paused. "...can you talk?"
Brooklyn responded by drifting down to the ground and starting up her blowtorch, using it to burn crude words into the ground. "W/ ROCKETS - CAN TALK OFCOS"
He decided to put the unknown definition aside for the moment. "Can you help get kin to watery planetoid?" he asked, gesturing with the lobster tank somewhat more forcefully than he intended, scaring the lobsters inside witless as the water in the tank swirled around them. After several moments without any apparent activity from Brooklyn, Red began to wonder if its microphone was in bad shape. "Can repay favor somehow if you want," he added nervously, leery of promising his aid to a flying chainsaw but unable to see any other options just then.
Brooklyn immediately kicked into action, whizzing back down to the ground and torching another question into it. This time the line read "CAN U MAKE SPEAKER" and was followed by a squiggly symbol that Red decided to judge as a question mark based on the context.
Red thought it over for a moment. "Can make a speaker, probably," he responded. "Will need to examine your strange hardware, but should be possible."
"WILL HELP" was quickly emblazoned on the ground. Flames spawned from Brooklyn's blowtorch had latched onto the grass and were multiplying.
Great, thought Red, looking up at the watery planetoid, which seemed much farther now that he knew he couldn't make it there on his own. Now how to get there?
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Akumu - 08-26-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Akumu.
Something big had happened over on 7th. A great veil of smoke was wafting across the intersection ahead, and cops and EMTs were swarming like ants over a chicken bone. It was a major pain in Pierre's ass. Here he was, stuck in traffic, no fare in the backseat and a whopper of a migraine coming on. Maybe he should have taken that dishwashing job his brother had offered, after all. He thought the big city would be more rewarding, less degrading. He rested his forehead against the steering wheel and let out a ragged sigh. What a joke! It was nothing but aggravation, and business was shit with all the rich pricks up in their gleaming towers, never even deigning to come down to street level with its grime and exhaust fumes and working-class schlubs.
The commotion from outside was getting louder, and Pierre lifted his head to squint out through the windshield. A few people were shouting and pointing up into the sky, so the beleaguered cabbie started rolling down his window to get a look at what the fuss was about. He was still working the crank when the car leapt upwards, slamming the steering column into his face. He bounced backwards into the seat, splattering droplets of blood across the dashboard. Something was wrong with his nose, and out the front of the car he could see up past the upper reaches of the towers and into space. That's not usually the direction my car points in, Pierre thought absently as he fumbled at the door handle.
The door was stubborn, and Pierre had to put his weight into it to swing it up and open. Still disoriented, he tumbled out and fell crashing to the asphalt a few feet down. He ended up lying on his back, looking up at his cab which was now scissored into a shallow V around the crater of crumpled metal in its center. Pierre got clumsily to his feet amongst the gathering crowd, one arm hanging limply from a dislocated shoulder, and stumbled forward to investigate what had struck his cab. Within the wreckage, something shifted, underneath the shards of metal, twinkle of broken glass, and... fur? As Pierre leaned in to get a better look, something shot out and tore a ragged gash across his face, and he was blind.
---
He had come down hard, through the egg-like pods that zipped through the air between the upper reaches of the towers, and down to where crisp white and black gave way to a muddy gray, before slamming into the machine that broke his fall. All around him now he could hear them buzzing like flies in his ear, their overlapping speech beating on him like waves, crushing him down. Why was it always them why could he not get free why why why why why and then one of them was there above him, bringing its grotesque flattened face down towards him, and he lashed out. His new webbed feet were not as well-suited for clawing, but he still managed to rip at its eyes and it fell back.
He rose up out of the wreckage, and dropped forward with all his weight on the blinded one. He and it fell back onto the hard black stone with a crunch, but it was only when he began burrowing into its torso that it began to scream. All of them around him began screaming as well, some rooted in place and others turning to flee. The one he was upon spasmed and lay still, and he retreated back against the wrecked machine, coated down his front with blood and chunks of flesh.
“Fuck,” Tria whispered to herself, rubbing absently at her prosthesis, which still throbbed with pain. She was crouched up on a fire escape balcony she had clambered up onto, watching Blazaard tear apart the hapless cabbie. She was supposed to face this monster? It was ludicrous, to say the least. A gunshot rang out, and chunks of asphalt sprayed out inches away from the blood-soaked beast. “Police! H-halt!” somebody called out from outside of the limited view from the alley. From the tight terror she could hear in his voice, Tria could tell he must be shaking like a leaf. No wonder the first shot went wide. Blazaard immediately began galloping towards the cop, who wailed “No! Stop! Stop!” and unloaded his clip at the oncoming beast. Most struck the street around it, but at least one buried itself in the mechanism fused into its back. Then it too was out of view, and she could only hear the wet crunch and short-lived screams that followed. The general nausea she had been feeling spiked and her stomach clenched up, but she managed to fight down the gorge rising in her throat.
Overhead, a black shape flashed, and a loudspeakered voice echoed off of the buildings around her. “This is the police! Stay where you are or we will be forced to open fire!” It looked like the professionals had arrived, which meant it was time to go. When the tac teams moved in, Tria made it a point to move out.
The one who had shot at him lay dead, and the rest of them had fled. The constant screaming terror receded from his mind, and he could think again. Before he could consider how to find his brother again, however, the sky above him was filled with buzzing black egg-pods. From each of them a deep boom accompanied a bursting forth of incredibly bright light, leaving him blinded and transfixed. Their speech pounded down on him from the sky, and he swung his head up to face it, unseeing. A hard mesh slammed into his face, pressing him down into the ground. He was trapped. His limbs were pinned under him. His struggles had no effect on the confining mesh. No, no no no no no no no. He had to get free, he couldn't be held again! He had to move, get loose, the metal strands cutting into him didn't matter, only getting out mattered.
The pitons that had sunk into the concrete sidewalk held firm no matter how the aardvark thrashed. The pods above continued to pour their light down upon him, and in his hysteria he was drawing it all in. Shadows began to move into the spotlights, resolving into human shapes as they came near. His struggles redoubled, slaver frothing up and foaming at the corners of his mouth. They continued to approach, padded and bristling with weapons, they came near enough that he could see his death in their eyes, and he released the light.
Their hateful eyes boiled and burst in their skulls in the split-second before their bodies ignited and burned away to ash. Their long shadows were burned instantly into the surrounding buildings, followed shortly by the shockwave of super-heated air expanding outwards from him, shattering brick and stone and glass and making the steel underneath groan in protest. The concrete and asphalt immediately around him was pulverized, compressed into the underlying earth, and rebounded back into the sky in a great jet of debris. The pods in the sky, heated beyond their limits and slammed by the shockwave, were dropping like flies. Most importantly, the net holding him melted away like a bad dream, and left him free in the center of a rising mushroom cloud, on a planet slowly drifting out of its place in the firmament.
Originally posted on MSPA by Wheeeeeeatthins.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - whoosh! - 09-20-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.
As reality coalesced back into being, Nemaeus found himself sitting on a plush chair with pinstripe upholstery. The room this particularly fine piece of furniture sat in was impressively large, this size amplified by the gargantuan mirrors that hung on opposing walls. Several other couches and chairs sat neatly against the edges of the chamber, similar in quality and decoration to the one he sat in.
For a moment the wolf man didn't move, a little uncertain as to the nature of his surroundings. A fire crackled cheerfully in the grate, but he felt no more reassured by this as he did by the clearly opulent nature of the furnishings. He had a sinking feeling that he was trespassing in a place where people had less than zero patience for the trespassers in question. People with an army of servants and guards, all merciless and far too many in number to control with his powers of influence.
Nemaeus quickly stood, adjusting his pelt as he did so. A quick sweep revealed two windows, but they were rather disconcertingly barred. They were elegant and antique bars, undoubtedly, but they were still drastically reducing his chances of a quick and stealthy exit. Thinking that he could ditch the stealthy aspect as long as he could keep the quick one, Nemaeus began tugging at the window frames. This attempt unsurprisingly failed.
He had just begun to wrap the wolf pelt around his right side prior to taking a running smash through the window when he became acutely aware that someone was standing behind him.
Nemaeus turned quickly, spinning round on his heels. “Hello,” he began in what he hoped to be a jovial tone.
The false confidence quickly faded.
Standing in the doorway was a person draped entirely in midnight blue cloth, hiding all but the bottom half of their face (they were young) and a hand clutching the door: a hand so scarred by fire damage that not an inch of it was completely healthy.
Only one person, but with no eyes to look into. They also appear to be part of a cult or some other bullshit.
For a moment there was absolute silence between the two individuals. The person was smiling gently at Nemaeus, which was possibly encouraging, but not if they were crazy. Their state of dress was not helping to convince the wolf man that this was not the case.
“I'm sorry,” said Nemaeus, grasping for the words which would expel him from this place with complete politeness and speed. God, he hated people.
“I'm not entirely sure of my surroundings or even how I got here, so-”
“No.”
The act of the stranger speaking had stunned Nemaeus into silence.
It's a woman. Why am I surprised? It could have been anyone in there.
Not to be so easily defeated, he began talking again only to be cut off again.
“I know why you are here, Nemaeus.”
“What? No, no-”
With a peal of laughter, the woman slipped back through the door and shut it, the satisfying clack of metal signalling the turning of a key in the lock.
Nemaeus did nothing.
He only knew three, terrifying facts at this point in time: the woman had locked him in a room he had already tried and failed to escape, and that this same woman inexplicably knew his name. And he was scared witless by this.
He tried to door, futile as it was, but it didn't open. Fortunately, a Kyprian wolf's claw had no such problem.
To be truthful, Nemaeus had largely forgotten about the claw prior to entering this battle. He had kept it with him out of habit, consoled by its weight and familiarity. Now he turned it over in his hands, staring in undiminished awe at its sheer blackness. He had feared that it might have lost its edge, but lightly trailing it across the back of his hand had proved him wrong.
Brushing away the blood, Nemaeus gripped the claw and gently sliced away the hinges. The metal was unresistant, separating like butter. A small thrill raced through him. It was really a thing a beauty, a blade that could do something so incredible yet understated. It took only a moment, and a small push, for the double doors to come crashing forward into the room beyond.
He stepped out slowly, surveying the dereliction before him with a little trepidation, but that was quickly overridden by curiosity.
While the room behind him had been nothing short of in perfect condition, the walls here were cracked and dead ivy crawled all over it. Faded paint peeled. A sharp wind alerted him to the fact that the ceiling was largely missing, revealing a stormy sky. Thunder rumbled as if in response to his gaze. Nemaeus flinched as broken glass crackled beneath his step.
The décor here had clearly had been as fine as in his prison, but time and climate had taken its toll. It had a wistful feel to it, this place. The threadbare carpets and tarnished metal remembered better times, a golden era of carefree beauty, but you could almost hear them weep in their current state. The wolf man traced a hand over the furniture and the walls as he passed, mouthing his apologies.
The corridor of sorrow led him to a larger room. Two marbles angels stared at him with blank eyes. They flanked double doors, pointing the way onward. One of them had lost their hand, and it instead pointed back down the way he had come. He picked it up, stroked her hair, and ignored her warning. Without a faded carpet to cushion his steps, each fall of the foot rang out on the cold stone.
Within the confines of these two doors he found a gargantuan white room. It was almost perfect, but again the ceiling had been slashed away to expose that angry sky. Underneath it an oak proudly stood, but this was no organic creation. Dark veins ran through its white stone, like snakes wrapped around the branches.
This fantastic work of art would have been enough to stun Nemaeus, but coiled around the tree was a glittering black dragon. A drake, perhaps, would have been a more accurate term. It lacked the massive size normally associated with those hoarders, but it made up for this with a wiry strength to its shape, and an impressive length. Beautifully fragile wings, reinforced with long, elegant spurs put to rest any ideas that this creature was less than mythical.
And then, above it, embedded in the trunk of the tree, was a sword. Occasionally it crackled with tendrils of an odd blue light, but otherwise it was fairly normal. A tail as thin as a whip was wrapped around the hilt.
Nemaeus faltered in his walk at these sights. At a loss, he simply stared. Everything before him had an unearthly beauty: the contrast of black drake against white tree, the bursts of blue light reflected on gleaming black scales, the sheer perfection of those twisting branches and razor thin leaves. This was not a place where he belonged. This was... this was...
A fairytale. A legend. A story, waiting for a hero to arrive to slay the dragon with a sword sheathed in blue lightning, to free the cursed princess in the broken castle.
A hero who wasn't him.
He was determined that this would be the case.
Angel hand still gripped in his own, Nemaeus took the steps back to the hall. The corridor swept him past the door of the room he had appeared in, down through a labyrinth of courtyards and walls. In spite of the confusing nature of the architecture he felt himself leaving the white room behind; he felt the alluring presence of those unreal fantasies fading with each passing second. By the time he stood in a bare archway and stared out at the plains stretching forward from under his feet, Nemaeus' face was streaked with silent tears.
And so he walked out onto the flat plain of this world.
Lightning struck the ground metres away from him, the thunder crashing down around him instantaneously. Ears ringing, he hardly noticed as rain began to pound down on the ground and sting his skin with each hard drop. Winds sprang up and clawed at his clothes and hair, robbing his breath and smashing the rain into him with even greater force.
Disorientated and in disarray, he staggered backwards. Torn between reentering the house and staying as far away from it as possible, Nemaeus skirted around the walls. This afforded him a little protection – even so, the elements still continued their vicious assault. Still he edged around the crumbling building.
This barrage went on for some time. Nemaeus couldn't have said how long, drenched and blinded by the rain as he was. At some point he became aware that his hands were guiding him past rock and not brick. If he'd been particularly aware of his surroundings it might have registered that this was part of the rocky cliffs that the house had been built upon. As it was, the wolf man was completely unaware that the house now loomed high above him. It's unlikely he would have cared, if not for the succession of events that took rapidly took place in the next few seconds. They were as follows:
First, a planet that was careening through the wilds of space came to a rather sudden stop, at the cost of the planet that it slammed into. Second: throughout both of these odd worlds an earthquake rippled, splitting open ground and buildings alike, shaking and destroying all that it encountered with impish impunity. This had many consequences, but only one that would interest Nemaeus.
And it was this:
The earthquake rushed towards the castle crowning the cliff, and sped under it. The cliffs rippled like water, tearing apart the stoic building that had stood there for so long. In an instant it was torn apart and the insides scattered. The noise was so loud to be almost incomprehensible. In the case of the cowering Nemaeus, all he was understanding was that there was noise, and it was loud, and that was it. His brain refused to accept the judgement of any other sense.
At some point he may have screamed, perhaps just to test its strength against this paralysing cacaphony, or crawled a little from the cliff.
Regardless, there was a sudden tremendous crack that he wouldn't have noticed, and the upper half of a marble tree smashed into the ground beside him. Leaves tinkled and clattered as they leapt away from the branches in spontaneous Autumn, the craftmanship of a master destroyed in one moment of noise and devastation among a thousand others.
And then, once the quiet had returned as with the flick of a switch, from the splintered trunk of the oak, a sword fell into the dirt with a thwump.
It crackled.
Nemeaeus raised his head.
And for a moment as quiet as a vacuum is empty, absolutely nothing happened.
Then, of course, the drake woke up.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - SleepingOrange - 09-25-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
Once again, the Counsellor's meddling had plucked Crepitans from the middle of something important, involved, and exhilarating only to drop him into a serenely bland situation. Perhaps it hadn't been her meddling directly, this time, but given that the simpering dolt who had dropped the contestants where they now were seemed to be in her employ, it was her meddling nonetheless. Regardless of how or why or who, the disgruntled shaman once again found himself alone and furious.
Judging from Professor's brief description of the new setting, it might be difficult to find the cretins Crepitans was supposed to be hunting. Once again he snorted at the stupid way this stupider competition was being run; what kind of fool instigates a battle to the death, only to constantly separate the combatants and hide them from one another? It was further proof that Crepitans had no choice but to destroy the Counsellor, to make her pay for her hubris and idiocy. This Professor would doubtless have to die too, although judging from his sniveling that wouldn't prove difficult.
For the moment, though, there were more pressing targets to render into fleshy pulp; Crepitans would play this game, if only so that he could more easily find its hosts. Out there were six beings to destroy, and the shaman intended to oblige. Honestly, the most challenging part of the whole battle seemed to be finding his targets. Crepitans was not a mage who had much time for paltry tricks like divination or far-sight, so it was either time to search on foot or summon something with better perspective than Crepitans had. A jagged smile split his bark; why bother ruining the chase by knowing exactly where the chased was and would be? Demons and spirits could wait this time. For now, there should be some fun to be had leaping from sphere to sphere, squashing each one's inhabitants like the insects they were and waiting until one of the wastes of sapience that could laughably be called his competitors were squashed with them.
The planetoid Crepitans himself had landed on was sadly unoccupied for the most part; it was a breezy tropical beach, cool clear water lapping lazily at a white-sanded shore and elegant palms waving languidly in the blackness of space. It was all very idyllic and boring. A few crabs scuttled about, colorful little creatures snapping at one another and overall not being worth Crepitans's time. After a few moments, there was a screech and a crack; at least the shrike was having fun. Overall, it reminded Crepitans of a climate he had been bred for, and might have been pleasantly nostalgic if the sadistic tyrant had the time for such nonsense. Instead, he cast a disapproving gaze across the impossible landscape and began thundering across it, leaving sandy craters in his wake.
Above and around him, more silly planets with similarly-improbable physics and layouts spun and twinkled. It was hard for a being with an enormous canopy mounted on its back to look upwards, which made it difficult for the forestkith to pick a target to jump for. He was forced to scan the horizon for a likely-looking ball, hoping he could line himself up from a distance and jump accurately enough blind. It seemed that the problem might not become salient for a while, though; as he stomped across the beaches and sandbars of the tropical paradise orb, all he could find littering the black were little forested retreats, empty plains, and jagged rocky lumps. Nothing seemed to present itself that was worth targeting.
And then, as Crepitans waded into the shallow ocean, something caught his eye: another boring little green ball rose above the horizon, but this one was spotted with cabins. Cottages, really. It was hard to see from the beach planet, but there seemed to be specks moving between the cliched little huts. The jagged smile widened, and as the shrike nestled itself in the shaman's branches, having taken its fill of the odd crustaceans, the sea churned angrily behind the striding, three-story figure.
Crepitans lined himself up as best as he could and leapt.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Pick Yer Poison - 10-06-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.
Red gently lowered the lobster tank into the water, or at least as gently as was possible with arms containing ballistic missiles. Actually, primarily for that reason, he didn't as much lower the lobster tank into the water as he did lower himself into the water, and the lobster tank simply happened to be taken along for the ride. The lobsters immediately scattered, their animal minds only too happy to get away from the scary monstrosity that had abducted them.
Red clanked back out of the surf and addressed Brooklyn, who had been hovering curiously near the shoreline, watching the whole affair with an unreadable expression. Not that every expression wasn't unreadable; she was a rocket-propelled chainsaw, after all. That lack of expression might have made Red a little uneasy around her, but he had never quite picked up on the idea of reading human expressions anyway, and was not terribly upset by the inability to do something he had never done before.
"Ready," he stated tersely, avoiding looking back at the shoreline for the fourth or fifth time to see how the lobsters were doing. "Let's go. Need to get to planet with adequate machinery to make voicebox." He looked up in the sky, scanning each planet until he settled on one cluttered with skyscrapers. "City planet should suffice."
Brooklyn revved her engine and moved in front of Red. He reached out with one of his arms and grasped the back of her. He jumped up, and she pulled him off towards the city planetoid.
Originally posted on MSPA by Wheeeeeeatthins.
Originally posted on MSPA by Wheeeeeeatthins.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Schazer - 10-27-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
"Ok, Red, here's the plan. You cauterise the feet off anyone who comes down that ladder, and I'll plot a course for some of those rocks up there. Sound good?"
Red didn't have any reservations about fulfilling his end of the bargain. Yet.
"Leave the planet with my kin on it be."
"But I'm pretty sure I could just run that into that water pla-"
"No."
Brooklyn would've shrugged, then grinned. "Whatever you say." She unsnapped her blowtorch with a noise like knuckles cracking, then jabbed the console with the end which wouldn't torch it.
---
The city-planetoid of Hoofstad was more of an overinflated cube (three ring roads circumscribing the "globe", plus the twelve "edge" roads), which made a perverse sense to Brooklyn. The whole mindset she was gleaning – from the bunker in which she and Red were trespassing –smacked of a self-righteous geocentrism which a 20th-century scientist like Brooklyn could only chuckle at.
Brooklyn didn't actually like computers all that much, if she was going to be honest. Sure, they might've been able to figure out all manner of things which would've taken far too much of someone or another's time otherwise, but she'd never been awed with the fruits of a computer program the same way a nice suspension bridge or locomotive or wind turbine did no, don't mind me, Red, just talking to myself yes I will tell you as soon as I've figured out how to control these planets.
The 3D map projected itself up and around Brooklyn, bathing the haunted chainsaw in a wavering, watery glow that was nothing like water and more like a concerted attempt by a future she didn't rightly belong in to drown her. The whole display hummed with claustrophobia and the reminder the ghost was entombed deep underground, in a planet knocked adrift by a vagrant rock or reptomammal (not that Red had spotted the aardvark; else he would've been sensible enough to not help Brooklyn celebrate her new voice by following her orders to the centre of this planetoid). Or maybe it was just fluorescent lighting. Those had always given Brooklyn headaches.
The guard Red had rather forcibly dissuaded from using his firearms groaned gently in a corner. Brooklyn still had no idea what to do with him. Her blowtorch twitched mindless metronomic like a conductor's baton, a lousy substitute for drumming her fingers. She rumbled, glanced to the irritatingly fretful lobster, and then must've pressed a button.
That was to say, she dealt the keyboard a staccato report which mashed no fewer than twelve different keys. Brooklyn would later claim she knew what she was doing.
---
On Hoofstad (as opposed to, say, within it), Tria had clambered and scrambled to the roof of an apartment block. Gripping the railing with one good hand, she hopped up and down a bit, the occasional crackling complaint emanating from her arm.
The gravity was weaker the higher up she went. Which didn't make all that much sense, but Tria wasn't going to question it. She stared into black space, not-all-that-suddenly uncertain about whether this was a good idea or not. A blue sphere nosed its way from the right-hand edge of the sky as Tria watched, cruising overhead into tandem with an oncoming purple rock-
"-found it, what just happened? Is there some kind of- of rewind on this? Hold on, my nephew said undo on a computer was control and, um… Z? Red, I'm going to need an extra hand- uh, well, look, you know what I meant. Just hold that key there-"
Tria (and everyone else on Hoofstad) heard some clanging, like metal footsteps on a bunker floor.
"There is red light on panel. Was not on before."
"Eurgh, I can't see that kind of thing, Red, how big is it?"
"Small."
"Um… it's a… recording? Device?" Tria didn't recognise either of the voices, although both were rough and tinny, like speakers played through speakers. "Look, I'll test it. Hello? Hello? Um… Does anyone read me? Over and out? Just, um. Don't mind us! We'll be out of here just as soon as we know what we're doing, and oh no wait hang on, Red, that doesn’t look good-"
Whatever had hijacked the loudspeakers on every street corner was cut off by a cataclysmic boom and shudder. A fish from the first planetary collision fell with a wet slap on the roof beside Tria.
"What did you do!?"
"I didn't- I didn't realise this one was moving!" wailed Brooklyn. "That moon snuck up on us- I mean, well, technically, we snuck up on it, I suppose but-"
"Well fix it! Hearing people above!"
"Uh, um, look, if anyone can hear us, I'm going to fix this!"
Beeping. Clanging. A growl of warning, cut off by an incredulous expletive. Shots fired. Chainsaws and men, screaming. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry-"
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Pick Yer Poison - 02-12-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.
A pile of lifeless bodies littered the floor underneath the ladder, the remains of faceless grunts who had been sent to defend something they knew nothing about. A squad of three had unwittingly descended the ladder, directly into the line of fire of a heavy machine gun sprouting from a mechanical body.
As he listened to the screams of the dying, for the first time since he'd been abducted, Red felt like he was in control. This - ending worthless human lives - was what he'd designed his machine for, and it was doing so perfectly. It didn't strike him that he was getting a little excited over such a small number of kills; rather, the gratification they granted him made it seem as though each person he killed was worth a hundred. He was no longer worried about the troops he heard marching above him. In fact, he welcomed the challenge. The notion that he might be in any real danger had entirely vanished from his head.
A few tense minutes passed before the sound of marching feet faded. Red peered around uneasily. It had started coming from the sides as well just before it stopped; were there hidden doors of some sort? Suddenly, a loud CRASH came from the walls, several dents appearing on various sides of the room. It only took him a few moments to realize what was happening; it took the same amount of time for the teams in the adjacent corridors to impact the walls a second time, tearing three new doors into the room.
Red's torso swiveled on the spidery base as pods of mustard gas launched from his shoulders, bursting open on impact, several to each door. A few of the entering soldiers fell down, choking, but were quickly dragged out by the people behind them, who had quickly put gas masks on the moment their comrades collapsed. Red took the opportunity to fire a carefully-aimed grenade into one of the openings, and was rewarded with screaming, which turned into choking and coughing as the gas masks fell off of those who were hit. As he swiveled towards another of the holes to repeat the procedure, he was rewarded with the sight of buff security guards pouring out of him, firing various weapons at him. The bullets pinged off of his armor. Heedless, he shouted back at them as he stretched out his hands. "Bad move!"
Brooklyn, meanwhile, was so involved with the console that what was going on barely registered with her until a few bullets pinged off her metal form. The shock shattered her concentration, and she flew at the source of the bullets more out of reflex than anything else. The soldier who had fired them tried to dive to the side, resulting in only his arm being sawed apart, instead of his torso. He crumpled to the floor, staring in a daze at his disconnected arm. Brooklyn was about to chase after the rest of his squad, who had decided to haul ass when they saw a flying chainsaw coming at them, when the soldier connected the dots and screamed.
Brooklyn looked back at him, intending to finish him off. His screaming petered out, the blood pouring out of his wound bringing him ever closer to the verge of death. His shockingly pale face looked up at her in what she first took to be fear, but after a moment's scrutiny, realized also had something else mixed into it - hope. He was hoping she'd finish the job and spare him the agony of her mistake. She revved herself up, but could do nothing but stare at him as he slowly bled to death.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh god, I'm so sorry," she repeated, unable to bring herself to finish him off. She had said it several more times before she realized he was dead.
Red noticed none of this tomfoolery and continued to tear through the soldiers flooding in through the door openings with reckless abandon, jeering them on as he slaughtered foe after foe, until finally they began to call a retreat. Unable to fit through the holes to follow them, he settled for firing grenades through and sending them bouncing down the corridors as far as he could. "COME BACK, COOOOWAAAAAAARDS!" he jeered. "WHY ARE YOU RUUUUUUNNIIIIIIIING, COOOOOWAAAAAAARDS?"
---
Tria's eyes were as wide as saucers, and her free hand moved to cover her mouth. Who was down there? They were...those screams, they couldn't be...what were they doing? Was that gunfire? She looked at the fish next to her, which was gasping as it asphyxiated in the open air. Did they just hit a planet? Fear and anger began to flare up inside her. Why were they endangering an entire planet? What gave them that right?The sharp sound of metal bending startled her out of her reverie. She looked around and saw the twisted form of a gutterpipe, which had, for some reason, curled itself in a crude circle around a seemingly-random point in the air. She glanced down at her arm again, but even before she did so she knew that it had done it - she had felt a small twinge within it just as she heard the gutterpipe bend, although it had taken her a few moments to put the two facts together. She grimaced. Getting used to not having the AI controlling her arm would take some getting used to, especially if just getting a little angry could make it react.
Meanwhile, the broadcast was still going, albeit with a lot less talking and a lot more shooting. Explosions could be heard at first, but they quickly stopped. The worst part, Tria decided, was the way one of the tinny voices kept laughing and jeering at the screams of the dying. It made her sick at heart. She started clambering down from the rooftop of the apartment building she was on. She had a vague notion of working her way over to wherever the commotion was happening, but what she really wanted to be sure of at the moment was that she didn't go the same way as the dead fish next to her, flung off in an interplanetary collision and thrust into an environment in which she couldn't survive.
As it turned out, finding the entrance to the bunker Red and Brooklyn were in was easier than she had expected. Although to be fair, a chainsaw flying out of an alley door and up into the sky was a bit of a dead giveaway.
---
Red clanked over to Brooklyn, who was still floating dejectedly over the dead body of the soldier. "Why are you not back at console? Work to do. Need to fix whatever you messed up."Brooklyn spun around to face him in a way that he couldn't interpret as anything but angry. "The hell is wrong with you?"
Red didn't respond.
"What kind of threat were they supposed to be? They couldn't even hurt us. It's not like either of us are particularly...not immune to bullets!"
This time Red chose to respond. "You sawed man's arm off. Watched him die. Not like me. Deaths were quick, painless. Justified. How can you lecture me?"
Brooklyn's voice didn't splutter, but her engine did anyway. "I panicked! That's totally justifiable! Anyone could've done it!"
"You are too reserved! Scared of killing!"
Brooklyn flared up and flew over to the ladder, turning back to Red before heading up. "Fuck you, you mangy cockroach. I don't need to sit here and listen to you insult me. Have fun in that stupid carapace of yours." With that, she floated up through the hatch, rocketing through the facility's corridors until she reached the exit, her mental map serving as a good enough guide. She shot out from the hidden entrance - not noticing or just not caring that Tria saw her - and flew off, toning her jet engine down as she left the planet's gravity and looked around to decide where to go.
She quickly found the planets involved in the collision. It wasn't hard; there had only been one solid planet involved, and when it had been hit by the giant floating sphere of water around a gravity generator that constituted the other planet, a good portion of the water had started floating off elsewhere as the gravity generator lost its hold on it, creating a scene that looked remarkably like a time lapse version of someone taking a water balloon to the face. Brooklyn flew towards the disaster; she might as well see how much damage she'd caused.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Mirdini - 03-26-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by Mirdini.
Tria had just clambered down onto the highest landing of a fire escape in an attempt to get a closer look at the alleyway below when Brooklyn came roaring out of the bunker’s entrance, her exit accentuated by the dim rattle of machine gun fire behind her. The ghost punctuated her furious ascent by flaring her rockets as soon as she reached open air, which unfortunately for Tria meant precisely when Brooklyn was next to the rooftop the girl had been scoping out the alleyway from. Only a jarring dive to the floor saved Tria’s eyebrows from a lethal scorching, her prosthetic thankfully bearing the brunt of the impact with no more than a twinge in her still-aching shoulder.
As the sound of Brooklyn’s propulsion faded into the distance, Tria momentarily considered what the hell she was doing above what was by all accounts a kill zone. Why had she instinctively headed towards danger? Had she lost even more of her mind since getting caught up in this nightmare? The murderous rampage she’d caught snippets of during the broadcast was awful, sure, but what made her think she’d stand any more of a chance against whoever was behind it than the tattered remnants of the spec ops teams fleeing the neighborhood? She had barely a clue as to how to use her only weapon, she’d never been in a combat situation – the idea that she’d be able to save someone from whatever was going on down there was crazy! And who was she hoping to help – the feds? They weren’t her friends, or even neutral parties – hell, they’d probably arrest her on sight! So why had she come over here? What had possessed-
Tria’s agitated introspection was rudely interrupted by the sharp clang of a door swinging open once more as Red emerged from the bunker. What he was doing there was less important to Tria than the fact that if the broadcast was any indication there was a bloodthirsty mechanical – … lobster? Is that what he was? - directly below her, one that might at any moment chance to look up. As far as she could recall Brooklyn couldn’t actually speak, which left the owner of the apologetic voice on the broadcast a mystery – maybe that Pollet guy? The crazed laughter from below and heavy weaponry still bristling on Red’s secondary carapace while he took potshots at the security men unfortunate enough not to be out of sight left no similar doubts as to the source of the brutish jeering.
Red’s bloodlust had hardly been dimmed by Brooklyn’s exit; if anything her disparaging comment about his suit made him more determined to prove its worth. Not that he had anything to prove to such a crude, makeshift piece of engineering – but his machine was finally performing in the environment he had designed it for, and he could hardly turn down the opportunity for more testing. As the terrified humans had seemingly deserted the bunker, he worked his way back up to street level, eager to see if he had truly driven them out of their precious control center. He was almost disappointed to find no ambush set up as he clattered into the alleyway, and settled for launching a few missiles at the fleeing remains of whatever human group had dared challenge his beautiful craftsmanship. He laughed at their impotence, marveling at the efficiency with which his mech reloaded and fired as he painted the alleyway red.
As the smoke cleared Red scanned his immediate surroundings, feeling the satisfaction of a job well done when it became apparent that there were no more life signs to be found in the alleyway. This left him at somewhat of an impasse, however: continue pursuing the humans, or return to the bunker to ensure the chainsaw’s meddling hadn’t endangered his kin? Deciding on the latter (after all, there’d still be time to wreak havoc later) he managed a step towards the bunker before the glass of his aquatic enclosure was splattered by some sort of low-viscosity liquid. Quickly ascertaining that it had come from above, Red swiveled to investigate the source – were the humans trying to blind him now? Or was it some sort of bioweapon? He shouted a challenge at his hidden aggressors.
“WHAT IS THIS? YOUR SNEAKY ATTACKS WILL NOT HARM ME, COWARDS! COME OUT AND FIGHT!”
Tria had fucked up. She had a low tolerance for lactose products in general, but when a quick raid of an empty flat during her way over had turned up only cereal and milk she’d gone against her better judgment and scarfed some down. After all, she hadn’t had an opportunity to eat since she’d been transported by the Counsellor and who knew when the next one would come along. She promptly regretted that reasoning when upon witnessing Red’s casual slaughterhouse action in the alleyway her already upset stomach decided to stage a full-scale rebellion. It was all Tria could do to not vomit on her sneakers, and as she leaned over the railing of the fire escape the dreadful realization of what gravity was doing with her puke slowly dawned on her. She glanced down to find the crab-bot shouting and pointing its myriad weapons straight at the fire escape she was sitting on. And her arm still wasn’t done cooling down.
Though his reserves were somewhat depleted, Red still had enough missiles stocked to feel comfortable launching one into the proverbial dark. Though his vision was somewhat obscured he could still make out some sort of platform directly above him, which was doubtlessly where the foul assault had come from. He readied a missile, aimed-
Hoofstad had been careening through space for a little under three hours at this point, narrowly avoiding several major collisions. It ran out of luck moments before Red locked onto Tria’s fire escape, colliding apocalyptically with the fairytale planet Itrelii. The ensuing earthquake understandably threw off Red’s aim.
Tria might’ve been relieved by the sight of a missile narrowly missing her perch if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with the fact that the building next to her was collapsing - Hoofstadian building codes apparently not being written with interplanetary collisions in mind.
Shit shit shit shit shit what the fuck was that it’s like the planet exploded what the hell is going on oh damn oh damn this thing is going to fall
The building lurched, setting the fire escape at an untenable tilt to the ground that only grew more precarious as the building slowly proceeded to fall like some giant domino piece. The fire escape itself was barely holding onto the building, its moorings snapping one by one. A few more and it would go careening into the landing zone of the building on the other side of the alley – and the irritated crustacean that was still struggling to regain his balance below it. Tria felt like a protagonist in one of those cheesy disaster flicks she’d sometimes caught on the holo. This building didn’t seem like it was going to miraculously stop collapsing, though. On the other hand, it seemed to be doing the whole collapsing thing rather slowly now that Tria thought about it.
Oh. Right. Low grav.
She had been so at home in the cityscape that she’d forgotten the planet she was on was essentially a miniature, and that with just a bit of force she'd hopefully be able to launch herself clean away from the whole disaster.
Alright, deep breaths. One, two, three
She leapt from the top of the fire escape, shooting into the sky. For a moment she was elated, but gravity would have none of that. Despite her heroic effort it acted, leaving Tria briefly suspended above the imminent devastation below before slowly pulling her back in. She could picture it chuckling darkly at her predicament as she floated back to earth - and with her current trajectory she was set to fly straight into yet another crumpling apartment block. It was precisely at this juncture that Tria realized her arm had finished cooling down. Though the fire escape wasn’t directly below her anymore it was still the closest metal object of any significant mass, and Tria pointed her prosthesis at it, hoping it’d live up to half of its name as she fired off a juiced-up directed magnetic pulse. The shock to her shoulder felt like she’d punched a brick wall.
Tria rocketed out of Hoofstad’s gravitational pull parallel to the colliding planets, caught between confusion at being able to breathe in what was supposed to be a vacuum and spouting liberal profanity over the pain in her shoulder. Those distractions were replaced with a growing sense of alarm as she closed in on Itrelii’s surface at an uncomfortable if not outright lethal velocity, this time without any handy metal constructions to bounce off of. She braced for impact.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - whoosh! - 04-06-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.
When Nemaeus rose to his feet his ears were ringing. Something big had just occurred – the shaking of an entire planet was testament to that – but whether that was limited to just seismic disturbance was another mystery entirely. Right now, there was only silence and settling clouds of dust.
His gaze drifted to the contented crackling of the sword, which was still embedded in the mossy ground. It gleamed at him. The weapon was beautiful, and that unnerved him. Things made for the express purpose of killing shouldn't look like that. They should be functional, certainly, maybe even noble or robust if the user thought like that, but beauty – true beauty – looked out of place here.
No killer deserved it.
A few faces, faded by time and a lack of familiarity, flickered through Nemaeus' mind. It didn't matter. He recognised every one. He'd consider himself lucky if he could ever forget.
Sighing, he closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He didn't know what he was supposed to be thinking or feeling right now. He'd made his peace before he donned the noose. It was supposed to make up for the things he'd done, put it all beyond his power to fix or atone for. It was all meant to be over.
Hoping for a sign, or perhaps just to silently appeal to the heavens, Nemaeus opened his eyes and looked up at the sky at the same time as, quite by accident, Tria was falling from it.
He had time to blink, start to shout and turn around to run before she hit him with full force. (And a rather satisfying WHUMP.) Nemaeus instantly crumpled, landing face down on the ground and winded. His relatively restrained curses were fortunately muffled by the ever-obliging moss. Tria rolled off of him a few moments later and climbed to her feet.
“Ah,” she said, catching sight of her impact site. “Sorry.” It seemed an appropriate thing to say.
Nemaeus raised his head and looked at her, astonished. He staggered to his feet for the second time in as many minutes and – staying completely silent – twisted to look back at the sky. Hoofstad loomed. It was not as close as it might have been, partly because they were standing some distance from the point of collision and partly because it had rebounded slightly. But it was still utterly and undeniably there.
“You came from that planet?” Nemaeus didn't even bother to point. Tria looked up anyway, in spite of herself.
“That's where I jumped from.”
“Hm.”
Nemaeus stared at it for a moment more, stroking his stubble.
Somewhere far away, something rumbled and echoed. But in the aftermath of an earthquake, such noises are surprisingly easy to ignore.
He turned back to Tria, ran his fingers through his hair, and looked down at his shoes.
“You're one of the contestants. Combatants. Whatever we are and whatever this is.”
“Yeah.” Tria shifted her feet.
“Are you...? Do you intend to...?”
“Kill you?”
Nemaeus glanced up, and their gazes met for a moment. For the duration of that moment, Tria's thoughts completely derailed. For a single, silver breath she felt... happy. Everything was wonderful. Everything was peaceful. Everything was... silver.
But then the moment passed, and another second or so later and she was wondering why she'd thought that. The world, dreary and monotone as always, looked back.
“Yeah,” Nemaeus replied. He rubbed the back of his neck, gaze still averted. “I'm not – that's not my intention, anyway. To kill anyone. I don't really know what to think of this situation, really.”
Tria rubbed her shoulder, suddenly aware of the pain again. “Yeah, okay. I'm not going to try it either.”
Still quite far away, something roared and echoed. It might have drawn the attention of the two talkers a little better if not for the muffling effect of distance. It might just be another rumble or aftershock, after all.
Nemaeus visibly relaxed at her words. “Good. That's good.” He still didn't look at her, instead examining the surroundings as if casting around for a topic of conversation.
“What's that?” Tria pointed at the sword. Sparks and streaks of lightning danced around the blade now, far faster and louder than previously.
Nemaeus looked at her, surprised again, then towards the sword. He moved towards it, paused midstep and suddenly looked up at the sky behind Tria.
Something roared again, and this time it wasn't distant.
Nemaeus dived for the crackling blade, wrapping his fingers around the hilt as he slammed into the ground. Rolling aside it was pulled free, and the spot where it had once stood burst into flame. Tria leaped back from the heat, throwing up an arm instinctively. An instant later, Nemaeus had grabbed it. Tria stumbled as he started running.
“What-”
“Don't look back! Just run!”
“But what is it?” She yelled, panic rising. If she just knew what the hell she was running from, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
“It's a fucking dragon!”
Perhaps not.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Akumu - 04-11-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by Akumu.
If one were to attempt to follow their Planetary Guidebook to Hoofstad, capital of planets, they would at the current point in time find only a slowly dispersing cloud of dust and debris, pancaking out on one end and stretched out to a point on the other, a tack-like shape which formed, luckily enough, a crude directional indicator. Following in that direction, the signs of destruction would be abundant, space being filled with wobbling pockets of liquid and shards of rock, their trajectories already bending in towards each other to form loose accretionary blobs. It would not be long until Hoofstad itself was located, moving at a stately pace through the heavens, its glacial speed belying the gargantuan amount of momentum it truly possessed. This seeker of Hoofstad, seeing the looming form of Itrelli over the shoulder of the bustling metropolis, would be best served to call off their search and consult their Guidebook for an alternative destination. However, if they were stubborn enough to continue, down past the once gleaming towers now coated in dirt and soot, down past the plutopause to the brick and mortar and iron of the lower levels, down even past street level into the crater that they had been pointed to, they might notice in the crater wall a tunnel burrowed into its side. And when, peering into that dimness, they felt the world shudder beneath them as it scraped apocalyptically into its fairy-tale neighbour, they might see the glint of a pair of eyes snapping open and staring back at them. God help that stubborn, curious traveller then, if they happened to be human and were not, in fact, hypothetical.
- - -
His burrow jerked beneath him and he jolted into wakefulness, instantly alert. The shaking continued, dislodging a shower of loose dirt to sprinkle down on him. He had been utterly spent after his struggle against their imprisonment and his retaliation, and he had had just enough stamina to dig out a small den before lapsing into unconsciousness. Now though, the safety it had offered turned sour as images of collapse and entrapment flashed through his mind. His mouth went dry and he scrabbled out of the burrow without even thinking to check whether the coast was clear outside. Luckily, the area around the crater had cleared out around the time of its creation, and now the rest of the population of Hoofstad was trying to make its escape, streaming off the surface and into the void like dandelion fluff. He wasn’t aware of this, of course, wasn’t aware of much of anything other than his need to get free of confinement. Even in that state of mind, it was hard not to notice the form that filled the sky from horizon to horizon, looming above the towers that swayed like stalks of grass in the breeze. With his weak eyesight, it was impossible to gather much information other than it was big, very big, and not where it was supposed to be.His ears swivelled towards a new sound that rose out of the general roar of the ongoing earthquake. A high-pitched keening, like an animal crying out to warn its brothers as it is set upon by predators, was coming from the nearest tower. Instinctively, it made him want to shuffle away from the sound, but even more convincing was the sight of the tower beginning to lean inwards towards him. He scrambled up the side of the crater, gaining footholds on the half-slagged pipes gushing water towards the shear upper edge, and then was out on the hard black stone and running across the broken glass that covered every surface. Behind, the tower screamed and sloughed, its size making its sagging fall seem slow-motion, but when it hit the ground it sent a wave through that shattered apart the surface black shell and picked him up and flung him through the air away from the impact.
His trajectory followed a low, lazy arc down the avenue, taking him half a block in a dreamy low-g freefall before he impacted back into the ground, tumbling across the shattered stone and glass. Old wounds opened alongside new, and the machine in his back ground into him, driving the air from his lungs. When he came to a rest, he was oozing from a hundred different cuts and scrapes, and a deep ragged breath dissolved into a fit of barking coughs that splattered glittering blood onto the street. Despite all that, he could not imagine being happier, because drifting out of the nearby side-streets he heard a familiar voice.
“I LIVE, COWARDS! WILL HAVE TO DROP MORE THAN BUILDING TO END ME!”
Pushing himself shakily to his feet, he staggered into the alleys in search of his brother. He still had a message to deliver, after all.
- - -
Red hurled invective upwards, cycling through detection modes to find one that could pierce through the veil of smoke and dust that obscured the sky. He felt invincible, his suit having performed flawlessly through all the humans had thrown at it. One attacker had evaded him thanks to the earthquakes that wracked the city, but he would remedy that soon enough, if he could just spot them through the haze.Focused as he was on the sky, Red missed the motion along the ground until an automated subroutine pinged a proximity warning. Coming towards him through the alley, practically dragging itself, was the hideous aardvark he had thought himself rid of when he had dumped it into freezing arctic waters. It looked even worse than before, its body stretched in unnatural ways and lumpy with crystal growths, torn to shreds and barely even functioning. Red’s antennae twitched in distaste. Why did something this misshapen even bother to exist? He raised a mechanical arm, internal mechanisms spinning an explosive shell into its chamber before popping a mini-cannon out of its hatch. The aardvark drew to a stop and hunched in on itself, probably trying to prepare another blinding burst. Red took aim, and was about to fire when his communications systems came to life in a burst of static, before disgorging a jumbled mess of voices.
“We must not hurt buddy. Buddy must not eliminate buddy, s’alright. Hope hope hope hope hope s’alright. We need to band together as a group.”
On the street, the aardvark loosened again and looked directly up at him, panting with exertion and looking for all the world like it was incredibly pleased with itself.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - whoosh! - 05-04-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.
The feeling of running from the drake was incomparable to anything else that had ever happened to Nemaeus. He could virtually feel his heels burning.
Sure, he'd run from people before. Dangerous people, mostly, or at least intended to be more dangerous than him. And they'd been armed, certainly. But they'd never boasted powers of flight or the ability to spit flames.
And he'd never had anyone else with him. He cast a glance at Tria, keeping pace beside him, half hopefully and half fearfully. He tried to remember what the Counsellor had said about her, but all he could recall from that time was numb shock, confusion and despair. It had all been too fast, too fast -
You should be dead.
He could feel it now, see it, hear it. The rope was rough around his neck. The curtains were open, and he could see the city lights. The blare of traffic drifted in through the open balcony doors, as did the cool touch of the breeze. He hadn't intended to write a note, it had never been in his plans, but he'd found himself encapsulating all the pity of his existence in those two terrible words anyway. Nobody would care. Maybe somebody would even read them. He'd smiled a little, and straightened his lapels. It was funny, the way the suits had just become part of him. Couldn't imagine life without one. Couldn't image death without one either. He'd bundled the pelt around his shoulders for the same reason. Stroked it, ran his fingers through the creature's fur one last time. These were all the things that formed his life.
Night. City. Wind. I'm sorry. Suit. Pelt.
Time to go.
With only the slightest twinge of apprehension, far too late for him to act upon, he had kicked out the stool from underneath him. For a second he had fallen, and for a second he had been utterly free. A dead man had no debts.
“What are you doing!?” Tria screamed at him, huddled behind a ruined and broken wall. Her eyes were red, and Nemaeus was sure she was shaking. He stared at her in utter confusion. His mind was still in the room with his suicide note and the cool night breeze.
Things became a little clearer as the light of the sun was blocked out. Staggering in sudden darkness, he threw his gaze upwards only for the light to return. Nemaeus cursed and covered his eyes, but he had seen it.
Some long buried sense of preservation burst through into his mind, screaming and flailing. Barely thinking, he flicked the wolf skin upwards.
The wall of flame brushed the air beside him. The rest of the inferno dissipated against the fur. It was gone in a second, leaving him choking and gasping but very much unburnt. Seizing the chance, he leapt and staggered to Tria's wall.
She looked even worse up close. Perspiration streaked her face, and her eyes were wide. Her eyes focused on him and she tried to speak, but she only succeeded in half-mouthing something and croaking a little. She absolutely was terrified. Not knowing what to do, Nemaeus outstretched a hand. She flinched and he immediately withdrew it.
How the hell am I supposed to deal with this?
He glanced up at the sky, curiously blue after the storm. No dragon in sight. For the moment. He had time, at least, but what was he going to do with it?
Think!
In response, a few words, half forgotten, politely floated up into his consciousness.
“...she suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress, pyrophobia, and has some overall personality issues...”
Pyrophobia. Of course.
He looked at her again, sharp twinges of guilts running through him as he did so. Why had he taken her with him? He had the sword, so presumably he was the dragonkiller in this story. She had nothing to do with any of this.
He looked away sharply as her eyes met his, but the thrill of the exchange ran through him in that moment. Could he... could he convince her that it was fine? Could he twist her into something more useful? Did he dare?
It terms of pure logistics, it would be simple. Maybe once she was more pliable and less frightened, and nobody could stay scared forever. And if he could protect her...
Then what?
Once he had his ally, what would he do with her in a battle with only one survivor? Is it that difficult to imagine?
Not to mention that logistics wasn't the only thing to consider. Nemaeus looked at Tria once more, not meeting her gaze. The guilt stabbed like knives this time. She's just scared. And she doesn't deserve to be.
Nemaeus felt the fur beneath his fingers. For a moment he stared at the skin of the legendary wolf, and then his mind was made up.
He stood up. Tria immediately clawed at his suit jacket, hissing at him to stay hidden. He gently disentangled himself from her, and stabbed his sword into the dirt. It burst into a flurry of lightning, but he ignored it. Instead he unfurled the pelt. The Kyprian wolf's upper jaw stared reproachfully back. That wasn't worth his attention either, so instead he draped it over Tria's back. The head sat over her own, and the rest wrapped around her fairly easily. The wolf had been large, and Tria wasn't the bulkiest of people. She stared up at him, (causing the skull to fall off and bend back against the fur in a somewhat surreal manner) looking at him with... what? Confusion? Gratefulness? He didn't know, so he lifted the morbid hood back up.
“Don't take it off. You'll be safe from the fire if you keep that on.” He wrenched the sword back out of the dirt, and it crackled contentedly.
He waited for a moment, hoping for some response, but she only looked at him with that curious expression. He paused a moment longer, then coughed and turned away. A roar crashed through the air, raising the hairs on the back of his neck.
Nemaeus inhaled. This was suicide.
He began to walk. The ruins were curious and sprawling, but a relatively intact tower towered before him. He began to climb the steps. Gaining height might actually let him get close to this monster.
His mind flashed back to the single second of freefall, noose around his neck, and nothing in the world weighing him down.
Yes, this was suicide.
That was part of the appeal.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - SleepingOrange - 05-12-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
Several hours had passed like minutes. Like seconds, even, or moments. Perhaps they had passed for Crepitans in a way that had little to do with time; treefolk of all bents are notoriously awkward about their perceptions of chronology in any case. His departure from the beachy planet had been one bookend to a frenzied, atemporal story, certainly; what followed, though, had stood out less like a plot and more like a series of disconnected events.
A clan of tiny humans – were they tiny for humans, or just for him? – had fallen. He remembered fondly, or perhaps experienced in the moment or even was daydreaming about, their screams. As soon as he'd landed, he'd scooped one up, pulling it apart like an insect and flinging its still screaming corpse at what was probably its mate or offspring. It had certainly set an excellent tenor for the rest of the rampage, as the bloodied survivor had gibbered in abject horror as its home and family were crushed and splattered like the garbage they were. Crepitans had been sure to make sure that victim had been the last. Probably. The last of the first in any case. Cabins and cottages had fallen like blocks and splintered like toothpicks under his assault, followed by bridges and suburbs and radio towers. He supposed he'd moved between planets at some point, then, hadn't he?
Shrieks and shrikes and terror and laughter all blurred into one dreamlike recollection for him. How many lives had his blood-rimed hands claimed since the beaches? A dozen? A hundred, a thousand? That didn't seem right. There hadn't been time for that. Probably. Regardless, it had been many. Faces and species melted into one another and all died the same way, all chaff to be winnowed from the worlds they undeservedly inhabited. His boughs clacked and squelched with new trophies, his bird chirping contentedly in concert with his swaying.
Why wasn't he killing anything now, actually? Crepitans blinked and shook what could be called his head, trying to rouse himself from the then-and-now world of his memories or fantasies. He'd run out of victims, then, yes. As he had before. Long after he'd expected to come across another of his laughable competitors. Another planet – [i]had it been a city? A forest, perhaps? – had been drained of life, its peaceful inhabitants not prepared to deal with a behemoth of wood and blood and vrutality. So he'd, yes, he'd leapt again. As he had before. There was the creak of wood on stone, no, soil, and he'd left another impossible gravity field. Soared through the sky that wasn't a sky but was emptiness and landed again. Killed those who had lived there too, was killing them now, forced his spiked fingers through the bones of a bag of flesh. No. He blinked. That was then.
With an effort, he focused himself. He wasn't going to fall into the traps of doddering old grey-needled pines and lose a sense of when. Now, now, now. Now, he was floating in blackness, an ocean of black with spheres ahead and spheres behind and spheres around. Ahead and behind, one before and one after. The behind-spheres were past. He was moving ahead. Why wasn't he there already? Why had he stopped?
Well, he hadn't. He was still moving, or the worlds were moving around him. It was the same thing. His last leap simply hadn't had the force to get him to his destination, or perhaps he'd aimed poorly. It didn't matter. Probably.
He twitched, then thrashed. With nothing to gain purchase on, there was no way to steer, no way to gain speed. So he drifted, annoyed at this peaceful interlude of darkness. Of course, he hadn't actually slowed down since his leap; the breathable void didn't truly have any air resistance. He simply had longer to go before he reached anywhere than before. And so he thought.
Mostly, he thought the same thoughts he'd thought before. Thoughts about the Counsellor and Professor and the idiots he was supposed to be ending at their behest. Thoughts about how they had proven so inept, so foolishly incapable of organizing a deathmatch that he'd shed the blood of perhaps dozens of equivalents to his targets and seen none of them. Perhaps he was too competent, and they sought to hobble him and prevent the battle ending in minutes. But then why enter him against such obviously inferior targets to begin with? Incompetence, probably. Probably. It was all very, very vexing. He had things to be doing, better people to be killing in more exciting ways. Better plots to hatch than "Murder, then murder some more, then murder the one who asked for the murders."; it was all too straightforward, too beneath him. He could be ending empires, not swatting fleshy flies.
Perhaps he landed again, or perhaps he simply drifted back through his own personal bubble of time. Roots slammed into cobblestones, cracking them in a very satisfyingly ominous way. He followed the splitting rabble with a bloodthirsty roar, flinging seeds into the mass of little things that had come to see the ruckus. They were humans, maybe, or little plantlike beings with leafy skirts. A race of insects, a species of bird. Did it matter? They bled, or did something close enough, and they wept and they died. He wove spells as many among their number fled, causing their bones or plates or stems to twist and throb with agony, their muscles to turn on them and pull them apart. He laughed as some approached as though to fight. Did they throw fireballs, or was it some kind of mechanical device? Swords had probably played a pivotal role in being as unable to harm him as everything else. He let the ones who would fight live longer than the others, so they could watch each other die painfully, futilely. The broken soul of a brave warrior was a treasure to be savored before its skull followed suit.
This repeated itself, perhaps literally and only in his mind, perhaps figuratively and more tragically across a slew of planetoids. Spheres of all sizes and colors dripped with the shed ichors of their inhabitants, at the very least in the mind of the shaman. Certainly several had been exsanguinated and exterminated. Did it matter how many? No, it couldn't. Definitely. It was enough, it was many. But it wasn't as many as it could be, and it hadn't lead him to his real targets yet.
And yet, here he was, once again drifting aimlessly. Perhaps simply still drifting so. In the dark expanse of space that he'd never hitherto considered, it was harder than it ever had been on solid ground to follow the threads of when and where, realized and planned. No sun ticked and tocked across his canopy like an unwindable clock, no true interactions with other sentients set his pace, no complex or measured rituals filled his hours. It could have been hours, it could have been days. It could have been minutes, but it was hard for Crepitans to admit the possibility that his carefully-maintained linear awareness had so quickly crumbled as to fade in minutes of unnatural stillness and activity.
The only other being who could have cared about Crepitans's durations – and had survived to see befores and afters – wasn't in much of a position to evaluate them either. He'd been unconscious, or dead, and had just woken up. Maybe he was about to, instead. Either way, he couldn't know how long sweet comatose senselessness had dragged on for, even if he still had the faculties to evaluate it or the memories to make it relevant. Regardless of his consciousness or lack thereof, and regardless of what he might think about it, Norman Randall Pollet's little graveyard planet had just seen another one-sentient boom in population, and the man was soon going to have to deal with an angry and murderous and detatched saptwister.
Probably.
Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged] - Schazer - 07-22-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Chainsaw screams and rocket roars resounded through Space, fleeing from Brooklyn as often as they arced about the constricted endlessness and chased her in turn. Her omnipresent wails merely fuelled her hysteria, a beach and a forest and knot of cogs and a crystal ball of a moon and a castle and cemetry and a carpark and an ocean over a city all hurtling past her again and again into something homogenous and awful and incredible. It must have taken someone lifetimes, to build it or move it or achieve something close to divinity to exist it into place.
Add one ghost, one messily-curtailed echo of one lifetime. Cities burnt, shores crumbled, and a dozen soldiers carved to pieces. They couldn't have hurt her.
ArooooOOOOOOOoooo, howled Hoofstad's sirens, as Brooklyn sailed past them a fourth time. She cut the thrust, and aerodynamics be damned the chainsaw sailed onward. The silence served to calm her down, blanking out external noise as simple as not concentrating.
Not looking was simple as well, for the most part. The mundanity of just knowing where and what things surrounded you, so integral to living that there weren't pithy words for the whole experience, you lost that when you died. Or died, but stuck around jammed in a testament to your most spectacular mistakes. Brooklyn didn't know the difference, but a joyride of crippling guilt and merely-symbolic fleeing from phenomenal balls-ups was giving her time to think.
Moons. Water. Rubble. More moons. The little knot of cogs, a smear of sand in three dimensions. Another moon. A haunted house, and its token ghost.
A ghost!
Brooklyn slammed the metaphorical brakes, then realised that didn't do squat and sliced circles out of the void for a bit before the chain's revs pointed her mansion-ward. Her charge was a bit too enthusiastic, and carved straight through the roofspace of the North Tower. Oops.
Trenton, to his credit, just waved.
"Are you that ghost from the desert?" she demanded, loose bolts rattling irritably as her chassis twitched this way and that. Ghost sight, as it turned out, took a while to warm up again.
"Oooh, you saw me? Couldn't be sure how I'd look to you, if you could see me at all. Norm's never any help when I ask him."
The ghost's cheerfulness was disarming. "Norm?"
"My brother. The preacher creature you're supposed to be sticking your pointy end in, according to the... Councillor?"
"... Counsellor, I think."
Trenton just looked confused. "Isn't that what I said?"
"With an 'e'."
"With a what now?"
Brooklyn snorted with frustration; the Pollet's uncomprehending gawk in the face of danger just annoyed her further.
"Ugh, you're as hopeless as your brother, aren't you? Can you even read?"
"Woah!" cried the striking but indistinct smudge that comprised the best part of Brooklyn's sight. She could've sworn its aura flared up once, like a particularly petulant and indignant sun. "Of course I can read. I can write, too!"
"Really," Brooklyn retorted, vaguely aware (and even more vaguely, comfortable) she was falling headfirst into an argument with a veteran idiot. "Says you and what publisher?"
"My brother's assorted nebulously extant deities," swore Trenton. He hadn't actually stopped his incessant swinging in circles while grasping the tail of Skullclops Manor's rusty weathervane, but Brooklyn couldn't see that. "You are rude!"
"And you," snarled the chainsaw, "have no right-" creak creak, round round round, went Trenton on the weather vane- "no right at all-" creak creak squeak- "to claim a scrap of superiority over your idiot of a brother!" Creak, creak. "What's he doing in a fight to the death, anyway?"
Creak cr-
"I was just wondering about that."
"Wait, really?" Thank god (only as a turn of phrase, granted), a sane thought in his head.
"Pffft, nah."
Brooklyn clanked, choked, fell about a foot in the air, then seemed to finally compose herself.
"This is a waste of time."
"This is a waste of time," parroted Trenton, leaping atop the weathervane and deftly balancing upon it. "Look at me! I'm a dragon in a box! A metal monster, busy as can be! I haven't the time or the nose to smell the flowers, only to turn it up at silly little ghosts as I fly by to my busy ghostly business!"
"If you think you're being funny-"
"All the time in the mortal coil, and I've shuffled out it in a magical flying suit of armour! There's not a second to waste!"
"Shut up," snapped Brooklyn. The poltergeist refused, or maybe he didn't hear her over the shriek of her chainsaw.
"But I'm trying to help!" Trenton chided. "Look, for discourse's sake I'll even worship your timeless shrine, give up my slothful ways, and cut to the chase. Why did you come looking for me?"
And despite her obvious answer - her harried, impatient self, Brooklyn found herself unable to answer. Not without feeling like she had to blurt the obvious and sound dumber for saying it.
"You a ghost. Like me. I just- I just needed someone to talk to. About, uh. Ghost things."
There was an awkward science.
"Iiin my defence," grumbled Brooklyn, seething in her chassis, "talking to you seemed a damn better idea before I actually talked to you."
"That is such a sweeping generalisation if I ever heard one! I mean, just because we're both ghosts, we're automatically going to have so much in common? It's not like being a ghost has to define you, it's not like we only hang out with ghost-friends and ghost-allies, only talking about ghost-things-"
"Yeah, I get it."
"It's not like there's one single way to ghost-dom either! Poisoning, soldiering, drowning, dysentry, childbirth, lynching, simply nodding off to sleep at a ripe old rage and a lifetime's regrets-" Trenton stoped at this point, not for lack of observations on ghost-dom, but because his conversation partner had her blade in his head. It was a tad more disconcerting than when Norman and his staff actually got the jump on Trenton and cut an ineffectual swathe out of him, but not by much. He stopped more out of courtesy.
"I," growled Brooklyn, "am not in a good mood."
Trenton sniffed. It smelt of post-storm forest; fresh air mixed with churned mud and snapped branches. "I didn't need to be a published author to figure that one out."
"Good."
---
Norman Randall Pollet's book was interrupted by splintering roof, though he didn't recognise it as such. A dusting of crumbled cobwebs and decreptiude turned solid dislodged from the ceiling, sprinkling itself gently across the page.
Norman glanced up, his solitude registering in that single moment. The noise was upsetting. He wanted to be alone, and knew as soon as he'd decided that that whoever was out there would not indulge him.
"... Damnit," growled the clergyman, uneasily uncertain of Who was supposed to be damning things for him. He rose from his seat (a pile of musty albums and other books he'd already read), shuffled out the door and to the cupboard under the stairs where he'd stashed his cane. The sight of it alone wasn't anything special, nestled as it was in shadows and spiderwebs, but Norman just knew. He'd grab that staff, march to the front door, and someone would tell him something he should've already known and had no wish to know; like where he'd gotten it from and who he'd done despicable things to just to have gotten it.
Norman sighed. Some hellish cockerel yodel-screeched above, wishing him good morning, you self-serving scum.
How could you do that to that poor boy?
Do you know him!?
Norman did not. The staff in his hands felt like it was chewed up and spat out a sawmill, any connection to its tree shrivelled and dried and snapped off with disuse. Oddly comforting, really. He made his unhurried way to the front door, not entirely certain where it was after his perceived months of hermitage.
Grin-nh-nh-nhn-nh-nh-nhn-nh-nh-nhn, went the cockerel on the roof.