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**Schazer** · 03-24-2011, 09:31 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

“Glere!”

The Fishbowlkin turned, a scowl already forming upon the glass. The handful of salt he tossed didn't actually stop Asteira, but she paused out of courtesy anyway.

“I'm not a vampire, Glere. But Spender said him and I were dead. Can you just forget our feud and tell me what's going on?”

“No,” Glere replied flatly. Keegan chose this moment to interrupt the unhappy reunion.

“Is she one of yours?”

Glere snapped out of radiating hostility, startled at the Ender's question. “Well yes, but-”

“She flammable?”

“Well, I wouldn't dock points if she wasn't,” Glere finally managed. He tried not to look at Asteira's open-mouthed objection at that, taking a few safe steps away as Keegan conjured up a fireball. “I've, uh... got someone else to catch up with. I'll even award you double the score for this one!”

“Wait.” Glere halted his sprint, with obvious reluctance. Great. Now Asteira and Keegan were eyeing him up.

“She tricky or something?”

“The worst, Keegan. The absolute worst.”

Glere was struggling to figure out how he felt when he saw the brief look of pride on the ghost-girl's features, but was already running for his life when Keegan launched a pillar of fire beneath her feet.

Gotta find Spender before that little firebug does, methinks... Oh. Wow.

The second mnemonocyst rose above the horizon until it hung clearly above; the black arc of the Propaelyum some ways off in the distance. Right in the impact zone. Just brilliant. Glere pulled out some gardening shears, then a spade, then gave the task at hand a little more consideration and pulled out a chainsaw.

One bomb shelter-sized cube of meat carved from the rubbery floor later, the Fishbowlkin was fossicking about for something to cap it. A manhole cover fit the botttleneck opening perfectly, and Glere jumped in just as he spotted Keegan lumbering over the horizon. Something about his stagger seemed off – Glere clicked and padlocked the chain on his makeshift door just in time.

The shelter was lit with a faint purple tinge from the floor; it appeared Glere's excavations had scraped near the bottom of the psychic star's skin. The Fishbowlkin pulled out a stool, a pipe, and a fishing rod as he carved a neat little hole while Keegan screamed something overhead.

“I know you're in there, you jerk! I want this stupid ghost out of my head RIGHT NOW!”

Something nibbled on the end of Glere's line as he sighed. Yup, just as he'd expected. There was a whoomph from outside as Keegan failed to incinerate his way in.

“GLERE! LET ME IN!”

Oh would you look at that, he was putting explosive charges round the manhole cover's rim. An umbrella was extracted, but Glere was interrupted by something violet and psychic squirming up the length of the fishing line, and latching onto his hand. It writhed a bit, more purple forcing its way out of the core. Even as the heavy iron lid burst off with a snap of the chain, he found himself quite unable to tear off the pulsing tendril, despite vaguely feeling like it was a bad idea.

Then the shelter was aflame. Keegan jumped in about a minute later, glared sullenly at the cloak hovering in the corner (singed, but still intact), and leaned against a char-grilled wall until the Fishbowlkin got his bearings (and a body) back.

An armoured, headless knight stepped forth from the cape, beat the ash from it, and fixed it round his neck before searching inside for a bowling ball. He found two, put one on his head, and one rather firmly in the hole the mnemonocyst core had wormed its way out of.

“Right, um... sorry about that. And thanks. I think. Ok! Explosion imminent. I suppose you can hide in here with me, but no trouble. From either of you. Got it?”

“But she won't get out of my head!” whined Keegan.

“Asteira, do you have any intention of coming out and facing this situation with a shred of honour?”

“No,” Asteira replied sulkily, after struggling to acquire control of the Ender for even the briefest moment.

“No, Keegan, she won't get out of your head. You see quite equipped to handle it though, so it's probably for the best. Now,” Glere said, pulling out a stepladder to exit the shelter, “where's that lid of mine got to? Ah!”

In a few minutes, the trio crouched rather awkwardly in the gloom, waiting for the inevitable.

“I'm bored.”

Glere ignored the Ender. There was a nagging, more insistent than Keegan's, in his head about something important but forgotten. It was annoying. Keegan eventually fell silent; Glere assumed he was talking to his resident Umbra.

A persistent, suitably apocalyptic kind of rumble slowly increased in volume. The little bomb shelter's temperature clicked up slowly, toward unbearably hot. The walls shook and flexed and crushed down upon them and seemed to threaten to break as the spheres impacted, but they never heard a particularly emphatic kaboom.

Gravity finally seemed to agree on an arbitrary direction, so Keegan took initiative and leapt easily for the manhole cover. It floated away.

“Woah...”

Glere glanced up at the Ender's exclamation, and jumped lightly up after him in the reduced gravity. In the middle distance of the debris field remained the Propylaeum, miraculously intact on one of the larger planetoids of mnemonocyst.

Beneath the obsidian arches, most of the energy from the collision swirled and roared. Glere imagined he could feel the heat on his bowling ball face from here.

“How far is that to being completed?”

“Uh... I'd say three quarters. Give or take a river of lava.”

“A volcano-” Glere paused for a minute, rubbing his chin “-is a severe oversight in my current inventory. But where there's a will, there's a way! Keen to help?”

“I guess... but I guess this means Teival didn't do me a favour and die already. I mean, I know your opponent looked pretty wimpy, but shouldn't you be worrying about them as well?”

“I – hm.” So that had been the niggling feeling. “Shouldn't be a problem,” Glere finally managed, without sounding too uneasy. “Just... stay away from the purple stuff, ok?”

**Pinary** · 05-08-2011, 06:37 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

As the cloud of rubbery chunks and purple paste dwindled in the distance behind the shuttle, Linda busied herself with restarting the navigational systems. Until they had those back, they wouldn't be able to do much more than list slightly to the side.

While she worked, Thomas and Spender talked. She hadn't been a part of the battle up to now, and she had a sneaking suspicion that she'd cease to be a part of it (and most likely cease to be, period) once this single round of it ended. She was content to listen, going through the familiar motions of passively gathering information and doing some basic ship maintenance. The other two had plenty they wanted to discuss anyway.

"But even if we knew where he was," Thomas was saying, "could we even approach being able to do anything to stop him? Everything he's done has been so far beyond anything we could even hope to match! We just don't think we have the power to do him any harm whatsoever, and much as we'd like to, we don't think we can."

"What we've seen so far has all been cinematic stuff," Spender replied, his tone insistent, "all things that could've been planned for ages beforehand and just activated. There's no way of telling how much power he could actually bring to bear on us in a face-to-face confrontation."

"Okay, say you're right, and we can just walk up to him and stab him or something. That still doesn't address the problem of how to get to him in the first place. You've done scan after scan, and we're still no closer to having any idea of how to get to him."

"We may not know where he is now," the agent said, "but we can be fairly sure of where he'll be some time soon."

A look of understanding crossed over Thomas' face. "The end of the round," he said, the words coming quicker as the plan leapt into his mind. "Once it ends, he'll show up, and if we can break his planned sequence of events, then we at least stand a chance of getting rid of him for good!"

Just then, the ship's systems came back online. Satisfied with her work, Linda turned to the other two and interjected, "This all assumes that you're right about him not being as powerful as he seems, mind."

"Well, if he is, we don't exactly have much of a chance anyway," Thomas replied, taking the seat opposite her and pushing the shuttle's engines to maximum. "We have to at least try."

"There's another factor as well," Spender added, his face darkening a bit. "This plan also depends on bringing the round to its end."

-

The bowling-ball-headed, cape-wearing knight, having no intention of being a rotten egg, had taken the Ender up on his challenge, and the two were busily bounding through the zero-gravity space between the rubbery bits of mind-reading calamari that were scattered around, taking the quickest path towards the propylaeum. The heat from the archway grew more powerful as they neared it, and when the pair finally arrived on the strip of rubbery land that remained below it, Glere found himself grateful that his current head wasn't full of boiling-prone water.

Keegan didn't seem to mind the heat, and after he threw a few token fireballs at the gateway, he turned to his companion and said, "So, mister hotshot expert, what do you want to do with this thing? Or were you just coming over here to get nice and warm?"

"I'd thought it was obvious," Glere responded, taking a pair of coloured flags out from his cape as he spoke, "I want to open it up!"

"With flags?"

"No, no." Raising one of the flags, Glere pointed to something behind Keegan. The Ender looked, but the sight of the shuttle heading right for them didn't answer his question very well at all.

At his companion's that-doesn't-answer-my-question-very-well-at-all look, Glere chuckled. "I'm going to open it with what's in there." And with that, he held the flags out, one at each side, and started signalling.

-

"It looks like an ancient sea-ship code," Linda said. They'd brought the shuttle to a halt a short distance away and were looking down at Glere's flag-waving. "The angles of the flags indicate letters, words, or other messages. It's what they did before they had even basic EM transmitters."

"What's he saying?", Thomas asked. He'd never heard of that sort of thing, but it sounded reasonable enough.

Linda just rolled her eyes. "I've heard of it, that doesn't mean I can tell what he's saying. It could be gibberish for all I know."

"Ah." That settled, they looked on for a bit longer, until Glere apparently got frustrated and just started gesturing with the flags to an empty spot on the ground near the gate.

"Now that I understand," Linda smirked, and she brought the shuttle down in the indicated area. She carefully landed with the ship facing directly away from the arch, keeping the door from facing straight into it. Even so, as it swung slowly open, the heat rushed in, making everyone inside burst out in sweat. The cooling pads in Thomas' clothing immediately kicked into work, but even their efforts couldn't do much against the wave of searing air.

Thomas blinked, and his eyes went from grey to red. Bern raised an arm against the heat, and the shuttle's cabin cooled down a bit, going from "unbearable" to merely "sweltering."

Glere came to the door, and he somehow managed to convey a wide grin despite having a perfectly-round thumbhole in place of a mouth. "Tom! Spender! Third person!"

"Glere." Spender was much less enthusiastic about his greeting, his tone more cautious and reserved.

Glere ignored him. "Hey, listen, can we get some help? We're going to open this thing!"

Thomas tapped a few commands into a touchscreen to bring up the rear displays. The images he got were far too contrasted, though, just showing a bright circle surrounded by darkness. Frowning, he turned to Glere. "What is it?"

"It's a propellermatic," he replied enthusiastically, "a gateway Keegan's people use to jump between worlds!"

This got the attention of everyone in the shuttle. "Let's take a look," Spender said, and he slid a few coins out of pockets and handed one to both Linda and Thomas. Activating them, the three felt the heat fade away, a shell of cool air enclosing them. As they stepped out of the shuttle, they also found the light from the propylaeum tinted, making the swirling mass of flames nearly bearable to look at.

Keegan stood to one side, looking not-terribly-trustingly at the newcomers. "It needs fire to activate," he reluctantly explained, "and even crashing the two planets together didn't get it going."

Spender and Thomas both took a few steps toward it, thinking. The former activated another of his innumerable scans, getting an idea of the power levels required, and considered what he could do to reach them. The latter took the more direct approach and set several blasts of flame towards it, channelling the heat the thing was radiating right back into it. Spender tried a few coins as well, but nothing was quite up to the level they needed. Finally, he turned to Thomas.

"How much power do the drives on this ship of yours put out?"

Greg considered, then took control and said, "It varies, but quite possibly enough, if we threw it to max power and left out the final thrust-conversion stage. Definitely worth trying."

"You get on that, then," the agent said. Then, as Thomas moved back into the shuttle, he turned to Glere. "So, say we could open this thing for you. Why should we? You haven't exactly proven you're trustworthy."

"Simple!" Glere gestured toward the gate. "Once it's open, we just walk right through, and we all go our separate ways! What else is there to it?"

"That's it? You want me to believe that this'll just magically send us all to our respective homes?"

Glere scoffed. "Of course not! The important bit, though, is that it's somewhere else! From there, you can do whatever you want, go home or whatever! It's just the first stop!"

"And I'm supposed to take your word that it won't just disintegrate us."

"Oh, please." Glere suddenly dropped his tone, speaking very seriously for the moment. "I want out of here as much as you, Spender. You think I'd pass up a chance like this any more than you would?"

"Fair enough," Spender conceded.

"Great!" The caped lunatic was all bubbles and absurdity again. "Now, let's get this show on the road, come on!"

Spender moved back towards the shuttle, but Linda stopped him just outside. "Do you really think that the Overseer is just going to let us open this gate and waltz out of here? That he's not going to come down here and stop us?"

"Please." Spender gave her a look. "If he could've stopped us, he would've done it already. It's just like we thought- he's limited to his pre-planned shows between rounds. Anything impromptu is beyond him." He moved past her into the shuttle.

"Or he knows we won't succeed," the reporter muttered to herself.

A short while later, Greg had made the necessary changes. "We put a switch in place before the final thrust converter," he explained, "we can disengage or reengage it at will, letting us either use the engines as normal or just expel all the energy as heat."

"Right." Spender took a deep breath. Glere could easily be trying to trick them into doing something dangerous, foolish, or just plain silly. He still had to kill Thomas to survive, and Spender rather doubted that even that head-swapping maniac could forget something like that.

Or maybe he was telling the truth. There really wasn't much of a way to tell with him, and escapism did seem right up his alley.

Spender sighed. Really, he couldn't afford to get himself lost trying to figure out what made Glere tick, and if the gate was a trap, it seemed more like that it would take out everyone here, not just one competitor.

The agent waved a hand at Thomas. "Do it."

Greg punched in a few commands, activating the engines. Behind the shuttle, twin jets of heat lanced out, streams of fire that curved, spiralling in to join the maelstrom at the center of the propylaeum.

Glere stepped into the shuttle. "It's working," he gleefully exclaimed, "just a minute or two more of this and it should open up! 'Course, it's going to get rather hot out there first. Could you, uh...?" He gestured at the door, and Linda, rolling her eyes, closed it with the push of a button.

-

Outside, Keegan stared up at the gate, the blistering heat writhing in the center a beautiful sight. He knew that he'd be the only one able to go through it, and he'd told Glere as much, but if that strange-headed man didn't want to share, well, who was he to argue?

The ball of fire flashed and sparked, condensing a bit and doubling the heat around it. Ninety percent, Keegan thought. I'm so close! He leaned forward, bathing himself in the heat radiating from it, the shuttle's twin arcs of fire passing by far above him.

The staff collided with the Ender's head with a loud crack, sending the squat imp sprawling to one side. Shocked, he looking up at his assailant.

Teival glared down at him, the spectral weapon reshaping itself into a sword, pointed straight at Keegan's throat.

"I've suffered indignities innumerable," the Dairen spat, "been subjected to pointless exercises in nostalgia and self-reflection, and I am finished. I'll stand for no more of this. I shall end your pitiable existence and be done with this affront of a competition once and for all." He took a step forward, bringing the sword's point to within millimeters of his victim's throat. "Do you have anything more to say before before you are ended, Ender?"

"Yeah," Keegan grinned, "hang on."

Just then, the gate hit another milestone, the fireball at its core flaring up once more, this time sending out a shockwave that rocked the shuttle and flattened Teival to the ground. In a flash, the Ender stood atop him, conjuring a tiny, white-hot fireball just above the tall man's face. "I'll be doing the ending here, thanks," he joked, spinning the tiny flame around a bit, singing Teival here and there. "But out of fairness, do you have anything more you want to say?"

The prehensile chains the Dairen had used earlier were manifested again, and they wrapped themselves around Keegan's wrists and yanked him off. "You pathetic creature," Teival sneered, "you poor, soulless little-"

He was interrupted by an explosion that knocked him backwards, slamming him against the side of the shuttle. He responded with a lashing from the chains, but Keegan simply caught those and pulled, dragging his attacker to the ground. He didn't expect them to be pulled back, though, and he fell to the ground as well. They vanished, then, Teival opting instead for a double-ended spear. He sprang up, thrusting one end down at Keegan, who dodged.

He was about to stab down again when, with a final burst of fire, the propylaeum opened.

The ball of flame at the center shrunk down, forming a core barely a meter across of white-hot plasma, and then exploded, sending fire sweeping out in front of it. The shuttle was rocked, the rubbery ground was charred, and Teival was knocked to the ground, skin blistering under the heat. The tempest of flames roared, a chaotic firestorm raging around it before settling down into a swirling whirlpool, flames circling around and falling into the bright white center.

Wind whipped up, the air in the area starting to be pulled into the burning singularity at the propylaeum's core. A few bits of tentacle-ground from the surrounding space started to drift closer, pulled in close and just burned to a crisp when they neared the gate's core.

Keegan rose, standing before his people's gate for just a moment before starting forward. He would pass through, he'd kill everything, and he'd burrow down. Size be damned, he'd do it anyway. Then he'd move on and do it again somewhere else. He'd-

The chains caught his ankle and pulled him down on his face. Teival stood his ground against the rising winds, feet digging into the ground and holding him in place.

"Let me go!", Keegan roared. He launched a fireball at his competition, only to have it curve around in a large arc and come around into the gate, triggering a redoubling of the winds' efforts to drag their charge in. "It's mine, I need it! You can stay here and win this Exchange, I don't care! Just let! Me! Go!" He accompanied the last words with another fireball each, but they all went wide as well.

"If you leave, you survive, and I lose!", Teival bellowed. "I will end you now, and secure my proper place in immortality! I will move on to take on the life of every being to ever exist! I will-" He was cut off before he could say what else he could do.

Keegan's three last fireballs had looped back around as well, being pulled into the gate and triggering yet stronger winds. Teival, standing tall, was torn from the ground, and he fell towards the core of the propylaeum, dragged down to the center.

He stopped, though, the chains he'd wrapped around the Ender's ankles suspending him a few meters away.

"No!" Keegan cried out, grasping them and trying his hardest to pull the Dairen back, away from his gate. "It only works for one, I need it! Just pull yourself out, let me help you!"

Teival stared at him for a moment, mouthing a single, drowned-out word, then dispelled the chains.

Keegan bellowed in mindless rage as the Dairen fell, pulled into the gate.

-

Outside the shuttle, the flames died away, and Greg deactivated the engines. The external cameras adjusted, revealing the gate, dark and inactive, and Keegan, slumped in front of it. Linda slapped the door control, and the group stepped out into surprisingly cool, fresh air.

"What happened?", she asked, not directing the question at anyone in particular.

"He went in," the Ender replied, seeming more childlike than ever. "He fell into it instead of me."

"Who?"

"Teival. He hit me while you were pumping in fire, and then, when it opened, he got dragged in."

Must've snuck out of the bathroom while we were all out here, she noted. "So... where'd he end up, then?"

He shot her a look. "He's dead, stupid. Only us Enders can take the heat. He's just fffp, gone. Ashes on some distant world."

-

On a platform outside the space-loop containing the contestants, the Overseer watched events unfold. He had a handful of screens arrayed in an arc to one side, following one contestant or mnemonocyst-reflection each, and the platform itself had a rather nice view of the rubble-field that had been the planetoids.

Behind him, Miles coughed. "So, that's one contestant down. Are you going to handle it, or...?"

Bryce, having sent the Stranger off earlier, just waved a hand. "You deal with it," he said. Something in his tone didn't exactly invite discussion, so, a bit reluctantly, his co-host vanished. On the screens, he saw him appear next to the contestants.

-

"Congratulations, Keegan! It's my pleasure to officially crown you the winner of the Exalted Exchange!"

The Ender turned an angry gaze on the Chronicler, who'd just appeared to one side of him.

"There's, uh... there's no... actual... crown." The co-host trailed off for a moment before regaining his composure. "Right! Now, let's take you away, get you your, uh-" He checked his notes- "Your prize, yes! The Stranger promised the winner their freedom, and that, you'll have!" He waved a hand, and the Ender vanished. "The rest of you, uh... carry on! You're still, y'know, competing and all that." He waved another hand and vanished as well, leaving Glere, Thomas, Spender, and Linda standing next to the shuttle on the burned and charred little island, the cold gate looming over them.

For a few moments, they all just stood there. Then, just as Thomas was about to say something, Spender lashed out with a coin, flinging it towards the far end of the gate.

"What was that?!", Thomas yelped.

In response, the agent just pulled on the cord of light the coin had created, tugging the figure who'd been looking on toward the group.

"Watcher," Eric breathed.

Watcher was a man, maybe an inch shorter than average and a mite thinner than most. He wore rectangular glasses that seemed to be just lenses with nothing to keep them in place, along with a deep crimson button-down shirt and nondescript slacks. His face was pale, and his thin lips were pressed firmly together, as Thomas had always seen them.

After the surprise at seeing him had worn off, Thomas dismissed him. "He's not going to give us anything useful," Eric said. "He's never said a word to us in life, and if he's our memory, he's going to be consistent to that. He just stands, watching us. It's always when something goes wrong in our life, too- any time we're going through some hardship or another, he shows up. Doesn't matter where we are, he's there as well." He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice as he stared at him. "Just do what you do best, Watcher, and let me get on with things."

Spender, shrugging, dismissed the rope wrapped around him. Before he could say anything, though, something else happened.

A door handle appeared, floating in the air a few meters away. It was the flat sort, more of a handle than a knob, and it was soon joined by the rest of the door one would expect a doorknob to be attached to, just materializing out of nowhere.

It opened toward the group, blocking their view of the other side, but just far enough that Watcher could see in. Well, that's not quite accurate. More truly, it opened just far enough that whoever was on the other side could see Watcher. See him and shoot him.

Most portrayals of crossbow bolts fail to capture the full experience. Often, they simply describe the sound as the bolt "thudding" into someone's chest, and that hardly does the sickening crunch of ribs justice, not to mention the person's little gurgle of pain as they realize they've had their heart rendered nonfunctional. They rarely talk about the single little step backwards most people take, the force of the bolt not enough to knock them over but enough to unbalance them. Nor do they cover the few additional steps backward they take, not from the force of the physical bolt, but from the force of the realization that they're not going to be alive much longer.

They also don't usually mention the explosion that completely removes the top half of the person, essentially vaporizing their head, chest, and shoulders, but that's not really a usual part of being hit by a crossbow bolt, so the omission is understandable.

The group stared as Watcher's legs toppled to the ground, smoking and smouldering. None of them had been expecting it, and something on the other side of the door was amplifying their stunned reaction almost to the point of paralysing them in place.

A figure strolled slowly out of the door, taking each step with purpose. "Thomas Packston," he said, lingering on the name, letting every syllable take its time to pass through his mouth.

Linda gasped as the man stopped, facing them from a few meters away. He was physically indistinguishable from the man he'd just blown up with a crossbow.

"Watcher?", Thomas asked, incredulously.

"Yes and no," the man replied. "The thing I just disposed of was a memory of yours, brought into being by one of the mnemonocysts that used to populate these spheres. That memory was of me- or rather, me as you remembered me.

"To you, I am Watcher, a mysterious figure that looks on whenever your life gets particularly challenging. To others, I'm known as the Controller, or Ken Parusi, or any number of other aliases. I'm a being very similar to your Overseer- capable of crossing dimensions, able to do things that typical humans would ascribe to supernatural abilities... I often seek entertainment, and while I run a battle similar in structure to this one, I also spend time roaming, planting seeds that I hope will grow into works of art."

He'd been pacing idly around a bit, but he stopped here, facing Thomas and ignoring the other three. "You should understand, see, that my concept of art differs a bit from what you probably think of. I deal in the physical, the mental. Pain, that is my medium, and I spend my time trying to create greater and greater works.

"These seeds I mentioned... they are beings, ordinary people, that I alter. Only slightly, you see, for in them, I wish to see the fundamental beauty of nature's own art expressed. A childhood trauma leads someone to destroy a city, a dose of paranoia leads to an artful interrogation...

"Of course, with my many attempts, not all are successes. No, in my time, I've had some miserable failures." He strode forward, jabbing Thomas in the chest with one finger, and anger tinted his voice. "You, for example, Mr. Packston, are one of my greatest failures to date."

"Us?! What-"

"I broke you at birth, shattered your mind into four warring pieces. You should have gone mad, been unstable, ended up imprisoned for your own safety as much as others. But no, you managed to scrape together a decent life. So I threw in some chaos to try and destabilize you, but each time I did, you pulled together and pulled through.

"Eventually, I decided enough was enough and just gave you to the Overseer for his battle. If anything would break you, I thought, it would be the stress of being forced to kill seven other beings.

"But no, still you persist in remaining stable. Your severed personalities just gave you what you needed to stay sane under conditions that should've broken your sanity into tiny little bits."

Turning, he stalked back towards his door. "At the very least, I can take satisfaction in knowing you'll either die here now or go on to yet another one of these things. Maybe then you'll show some sort of redeeming qualities, make up for all the effort I put into you."

With one last look, presumably glaring at his failure from behind his glasses, the Controller walked through his door and closed it behind him.

The group just stood for a moment in shocked silence.

-

The other end had moved, the Controller noticed. He hadn't come out of his door back in his own lair. Instead, he found himself standing on the Overseer's observation platform, alone with the other grandmaster.

"Next time," the Overseer said, his frat-boy persona dropped for the moment, "you should consider asking before you interfere in someone else's battle."

"Oh, please," the Controller replied, his voice cheerful, any echo of the disappointment and bitterness it had just held gone, "that wasn't interference. So I destroyed the reflection of myself, that didn't change the balance of the battle. I keep an eye out for imposters, that's all. I don't want others running around with my face on."

"No, can't fault you for that, I suppose." The Overseer turned away from his screens to face him. "And I guess you're right, it didn't really change how things would turn out down there."

"Not in the least." The Controller grinned slightly. "I try to be careful not to interfere in other grandmasters' battles."

"Please- what about Zaire's battle? You dropped an agent in there to do your dirty work, but it's still your interference."

"I said grandmasters' battles," he reiterated. "I've no qualms about interfering with someone like him."

Bryce snorted. "Fair enough."

"No," the Controller continued, "you'll find that my actions here haven't really changed anything." His grin widened. "Of course, I'm not the one who redirected my door."

Bryce frowned behind his sunglasses. "No, that was me. I wanted to have a little talk about interfering before you left."

"Right, right. It was all you, connecting the space inside that loop of yours to the space outside it. Sure, that space-loop will probably destabilize and collapse shortly, leaving nothing but open space between you and your contestants, but that was all up to you."

The Overseer whirled, checking his screens. Sure enough, the space-loop surrounding the planetoids was unravelling, coming apart at the seams.

"Now, a grandmaster like yourself shouldn't have any trouble putting that right back in place. That's child's play for someone who can traverse dimensions and create whole worlds. I'll leave you to it." He stepped back to his door, but stopped with his hand on the handle. "Of course, if you're not exactly running on all cylinders, it might be a bit difficult. Oh, well. I'm sure your assistant will be back shortly, and you can explain to him why you didn't fix it yourself." Opening the door, which now lead back to where he'd intended to go, he added, "See you around," and with a chuckle, he went through, closing the passage behind him.

As the Controller's door vanished, the Overseer turned back to his screens. This was not good.

-

Nobody said much after the Controller left and his door vanished. Thomas went back into the shuttle, idly resetting the engines back to their normal state and trying not to dwell on what had been said. (And, incidentally, failing.)

Linda went over to examine the cold, still propylaeum, and Spender looked at the pair of singed legs. Glere rummaged around in his cape, more for something to do than anything.

It was Linda who first noticed it- the sky, the black space all around them, was rippling. It was hard to see, blackness rippling, but ripple it did, shimmering a bit like silky cloth, and at her shout to "look," the others turned their gazes skyward as well, and as they watched, it rippled more and more, until, like a veil being removed, the blackness was pulled away.

The sky was still black, really, but this time, it was strewn with stars, glinting and glistening in the distance, shining at the group from all directions. A bright smear crossed the sky, what they presumed to be the plane of whatever galaxy they were in. For a moment, that all just stared up at it.

Then, Thomas spotted something that sent him darting into the shuttle.

"What, what is it?", Linda asked him, following him in. He trained the external cameras on one particular point and zoomed in, finger jamming down at the display.

It showed a platform, made of nothing in particular, whose sole occupant wore a recognizable red shirt emblazoned with a white ship. Eyes blazing, Thomas rushed past Linda and out of the shuttle again. He surged over to where Spender stood, grabbed one of the legs he was so intent on, and then stalked toward Glere. The bowling-ball-headed man was facing away from him, focused on the contents of his cape, and he didn't see Thomas coming.

The leg to the head was quite surprising, and it sent the bowling ball rolling away, clear off the edge of their little floating island. The knight body, blinded, flailed around a bit, and with Spender's help, Thomas managed to restrain it. With a quick twist, the cape's clasp came undone, and the body flopped lifelessly to the ground.

He folded the cape twice, and, feeling it move around in his grip, he passed it to Spender. "Keep this treacherous bastard secure," he told him, "and come on. We've got someone to talk to."

He went back into his family's shuttle, and Spender had to hurry to make it in before the door closed behind him.

"Thomas, what's- ahh." Thomas pointed out the image on the screen, and the agent immediately understood.

-

The shuttle stopped at the very edge of the platform, and the door lowered itself down to act as a landing ramp. The three stepped out, Thomas flanked by Spender on the left side and Linda on the right. They walked forward, forming a loose circle around the grandmaster.

Bern took control, and he grabbed the Overseer roughly by the shoulder, spun him around, and just slugged him across the jaw.

The Overseer stood back up immediately, seemingly unfazed. "Dude, really? That's your big plan? Please." The grandmaster socked him back, sending Thomas sliding halfway back to the ship. "I know you're busy underestimating me, but that's just going to extremes."

Slowly, Greg stood as well. "No, see, that's the thing. We've no interest in underestimating you. That could easily end up being fatal. That was more of a... let's call it a test. You could have blocked us with a force field, suspended us in midair, or any number of other things, but you didn't. You instead took the physical route, and that says something."

He took a few steps forward. "In addition, not long after Watcher- the Controller, whatever- came by, the loop that kept us from escaping this particular location broke down. It doesn't take a genius to see the correlation there- he did something to take it down, allowing us to get to you. We rather suspect he'd like to see us take you down, and there's a good chance he's taken down other defences of yours as well."

He continued to walk forward as he talked, and the Overseer stood his ground, watching with a half-cocky smile that didn't stretch past his mouth. Thomas may have been following the wrong line of deduction, but Bryce knew where he was headed just the same.

"You're not retreating as we advance," Greg went on, "but that could mean any number of things. We suppose the biggest factor that makes us think we're not underestimating you is one that's staring me right in the face."

"Oh? And what's that?" The grandmaster's sneer was halfhearted, part of it seeming... resigned, somehow.

Greg stopped right in front of him. "The fact that you're staring me right in the face, rather than paying attention to what Spender's doing behind you."

The Overseer spun around, turning to see the special agent holding Glere up, unfurled.

Walt took over, then, and a quick kick to the back of the legs sent Bryce tumbling forward, into the cape.

The grandmaster fell, tumbling forward and in. He didn't attempt to grab anything, prevent himself from falling in. He just fell, feet following him into the hammerspace inside the cape.

Spender bundled the cape up, then, and Glere, removed from a body and unable to pull out a fresh one, was powerless to do anything.

Thomas took his balled-up adversary from the agent and regarded it, the last of his opponents in this battle. He held in his hand the last being between himself and victory.

"Tricky bastard," Bern said, and with that, he lit the cloak on fire.

**Schazer** · 05-08-2011, 12:20 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

"Good day, my compatriot in crazy!"

The piles of weaponry, armour, treasure, junk, explosives, and bodies rapidly rearranged themselves round the tumbling Overseer. They danced disembodied through the depths of the cape, reconfiguring into a tunnel of detritus with the square of opened cape far above.

The square became a sliver, then a warped line, then black. There was a snap, bringing to sourceless light one irate Grandmaster standing nowhere. His wary gaze bled outward as he eyed the slowed-down swirl of trash.

Bryce scowled. He wasn’t looking forward to that condescending frigid bitch finding out about this.

While he tried to figure out whether it’d be better or worse if Miles somehow came to his rescue, a disembodied voice hooted with laughter. "You think this is funny!?" snarled the Grandmaster.

"I’m of the school of thought that any hoisting is a good cause for laughter. In fact, I’m sure I had an actual petard round here somewhere- no wait, that’s just a grenade…"

"Glere. Let me out of here."

"Shan’t. Or, y’know, can’t. Spender’s still got a hold of me; we’ve been here all of what? A thousandth of a heartbeat? Say, do you even have a heartbeat? Would you mind terribly if I… tore it from your chest and borrowed it a moment?"

"There’s no need for this, Glere. Whatever happens next, it’s not gonna kill me. You just threw away your life on some futile plan of Packston’s."

"Pfft. So I could’ve killed him! So what, there’s no fun in finishing off an Epic Clash with an actual clash! That’d just be stale and predictable. Trust me, I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d rather drag out my final moments with. This works great. I’ve had my fun."

"I-"

"Nononono. No getting emotional about it. Only burning in hell now, you hear me?"
The hammerspace beast’s hoots broke into a crackling roar, as fire crept into the peripheries of Bryce’s vision. Somewhere behind him, a grenade exploded in the rising heat.

-----

Bern kept his hands clamped around the flaming wad of cloth, until it was reduced to ash. One surviving corner was examined, before a lone firecracker snuck out of it and screamed over Spender’s head. Thomas destroyed the last of the cape.

The rocket snaked starward, bursting after a moment with a boom into a shower of sparks. When the afterimage had faded and the trio looked down again, there stood the Chronicler. His eyes nervously flickered between the two memories, before reluctantly settling on Thomas. The man glared back.

"We’re done."

GBCE · 05-11-2011, 03:37 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Baphomet.

Miles stood dumbfounded on the dying planetoids. He thought time to a stop state to deal with the unfolding crisis, and Thomas's two parting words slowed into an unrecognizable drawl.

"NonononoNOnono," Miles mumbled to himself, arms gesticulating frantically as he pulled numerous panels out of thin air. Each displayed eerily silent, empty areas. An empty black void with more floating panels. The pocket dimensions belonging to all of Bryce's friends. The infinity chamber-nothing there but static. Tied to his life, then? No, he had to be alive... Black panels, black panels, over and over...

With a desperate expression, he waved the entire surrounding universe away with a gesture and appeared in a completely black space. His head darted in all directions, then he waved the blackness away, too. It was replaced by a wood-paneled room, empty. He repeated the gesture. An empty chair. A bare mahogany desk. A house full of frozen beings, none of them Bryce. Back to the spot in front of Thomas. He put his hands together and then pulled them apart, unfurling an exact duplicate of Glere out of nothingness. The young god split into two, and one leapt inside.
Empty. Not even junk. The entire pocket dimension had been erased.

Miles slumped. He remained motionless, save his eyes--darting back and forth, lost in his own internal monologue.

A hand on his shoulder snapped him out of it.

He spun in an instant. "Bry-"

Shock covered Miles's face and he lost his concentration. Time whirred back into motion with the dying roar of the spacecraft's engines and the final crackle of the firework.

"-done." Thomas did a double-take at the unrelentingly black, well-dressed being in front of him before promptly being subjected to paralysis and falling over on his face.

"What a mess," said The Director.

"Director!" said Miles.

The Director nodded. "The Chronicler. I trust your search was as fruitless as mine?"

"I, uh, I can't, I mean, I don't-"

"Stop," The Director continued. "Might as well come clean at this point. I've been watching him through you this whole time. I know you haven't found him, because I saw your search. It was a few years of subjective time shorter than mine, but then I trusted that you would know how to find him better, anyway. If there was one thing he was good at, it was hiding things from me." He paused and looked off into the distance. "Things like how many things he was good at. Guess that's a moot point now."

A swirl of blue, a green cape, a tangle of cloth, and a mess of roots had pulled themselves into the scene as he spoke. The latter held a bottle of champagne aloft.

"So, do we start the party now or later?" Talis asked through a barely-contained smile.

"Just what do you have to do with this?" sneered The Composer.

"And just why would you care?" The Charlatan grinned to The Composer.

Talis popped the cork on the champagne. "My, ah, late employer at the time was responsible for destroying that round 'Bryce' had cooked up originally. Or, should I say, he was responsible for telling me to be responsible for it. Held together by tape and spit, anyway." He filled a few glasses that weren't in his hand a moment ago. "Things, well, haven't gone well for us since. I'd name my suspect in The Executive's murder, but..." he nodded blithely to the pile of ashes that was Glere, "Speak not but good of the dead." He extended a glass to the gathered throng. "Champagne?"

"W...wait, do you mean uh-" Miles began. He was cut off by a green cape sweeping between him and Talis.

"Well," said the Charlatan through his grin, taking a glass, "It's what Bryce would have wanted."

The Stranger, quiet thus far, hobbled forward to take a glass, but was cut off by The Composer upending them all in Talis's face. She advanced on the monocled villain, her eyes narrowed to glowing white slits. "You," she spat, "are a bootlicking lackey to a master who can't even keep his component molecules intact before a man who was just defeated by his own contestant." Talis began to back up uneasily, and The Charlatan's grin somehow grew even wider. "YOU have no battle, we're running it now. YOU have no master, he's dead."

"Um, presumed dea-" Talis began.

"YOU," The Composer repeated, "Have about three seconds to explain to me why you're not worth the effort of scraping your remains off the bottom of my foot, and it took me two to say that."

"Excusemehavetogo," Talis blurted, before disappearing. The Charlatan took a loud sip from his glass of champagne, and The Stranger shuffled awkwardly.

The Director cleared his throat. "So anyway," he began, after a pause that seemed appropriate, "Bookkeeping to deal with. This battle needs a representative for All-Stars." He gestured to Miles. "Naturally, Chronicler, you are the first choice in this situation."

Miles stared blankly back at The Director for a moment.

He glanced down at his feet.

He looked back up.

"Hell no," Miles replied. "W...With all due respect, I mean." He nodded, then disappeared.

The Director turned to The Charlatan and Composer. "Hrm. Well, as you two have already...shall we say, 'commandeered' another battle, I would say you're out of the running. I'd throw this one to The Observer like I'd originally planned for Battle Majestic, but..." He turned to The Stranger, who held his swaddled fists up to his chest and began vibrating excitedly, "I'd say we have someone else here who may prove himself capable."

The Stranger hopped about a foot off the ground and made the sort of sound you'd expect a chimpanzee to make when you tickle it. "YES! Wait, really? Super really?"

The Director paused a moment. "You're making me regret my decision already, but yes," he cleared his throat pointedly, "Super really. I skimmed The Exalted Exchange. Good stuff there. Well handled, good round choices, good characters. Solid all around. So, do you think you can-"

"YES," The Stranger blurted. "I mean, I'm sorryforinterrupting, it's just, I will do a good job I swear! Not as good as you I mean WOW, you're The Director and youstartedallthis and-" he smacked the mass of accessories where his face would be with his gloved hand and continued, "-rambling, yes, I would absolutely love to!"

The Director, despite not needing to breathe at all, took a long breath. "As I was saying, do you think you can wrap this one up for-" he gestured to where Thomas had fallen to the ground paralyzed moments ago, "-wait. Where is our contestant?"

Thomas stood and rubbed his forehead where he'd hit it on a dying psychic space monster moments prior. Not because it actually hurt, but more because it seemed like it should have. He quietly lamented the lack of creativity in his new environment. It was always all black or all white with these extradimensional beings, wasn't it? In this case, it was the latter. Very white, with some sort of dull hum in the background. What was he supposed to do here? It didn't look like any of those beings that were talking had taken him here. The last thing he had heard was the first half of The Stranger accepting his new position. Perhaps his analysis had been right about The Overseer setting things up in advance, and some preset teleportation had been triggered by the end of the round?

"Yes, that exactly," said a monotonous voice from nowhere in particular. Thomas spun around to find a disinterested-looking man at a desk where there definitely hadn't been one a moment ago. He was dressed in what looked to be officewear, and was unhurriedly transcribing something on a piece of paper in front of him while holding his head up with one arm. For the first time since Thomas arrived, the man looked up from his work. "Teleportation triggered by an outstanding account concerning you."

Thomas took a cautious step back and adopted a defensive position as he quickly processed what the man was saying. "So we owe you something?"

The man looked back down at the paper and began writing again. "No, backwards. You're owed something. Let's see..." He licked his thumb and flipped a few pages in the stack, "Here we go, page two, last post, 'With each death, you survivors are one step closer to freedom, and your one greatest wish... as well as I can carry it out. You'll find most reasonable requests to be within my grasp, and yours, if you win.'" He looked back up to Thomas. "You're owed one reasonable request."

Thomas's eyes widened, and shifted from blue to brown. "So, since we're promised a request as well as The Overseer can carry it out, and we're here being offered one request, we can assume that The Overseer still exists."

"I can see why you would think that," the man responded in monotone.

"I take it you won't be more specific than that," Thomas replied.

"It's possible that certain requests would be made possible by his previous existence, even if that existence is not ongoing."

"And you've still failed to answer our question."

"But I haven't lied to you."

"Will you?"

"No."

"Is The Overseer alive?"

"No."

Thomas paused. "Was he ever?"

"Define alive."

Thomas sighed. "So at some point, he could have qualified for some definition of alive, but he currently could not. That doesn't tell us anything. How about this, does The Overseer currently exist?"

"No."

"Will he exist again in the future?"

"Stranger things have happened. I can see we're not getting to that request anytime soon, huh?"

"We just want to know if it was all worthwhile."

The man smiled, subtly. "It was."

"And that's not a lie?"

"No."

Thomas exhaled audibly and stared down the man for a few silent seconds, lost in a four-way internal monologue. "We want a year," he finally replied. "When we left, where we left, plus the time passed from our point of view and the distance our ship has traveled in that time, respectively."

The man's smile broadened. "So specific, Greg. Can't just say 'put me back where I was,' you have to compensate for the idea that I might put you in the cold of space where your ship used to be."

"And we want no more or less than a year. We want to know when we will be leaving for the next battle, and we want time to prepare," he continued.

"You'll have it. No funny business, this isn't that kind of deal. I'm not your enemy."

Thomas's eyes shifted red and he stood up taller. "Then whose side are you on?"

The man stood up and the whiteness that was everything flickered briefly. "I'll tell you," he replied, "but I won't let you know. My next sentence will be the last one you remember from our interaction. You'll have your year, and something else, on me."

Thomas stumbled as he landed in a dimly-lit, brushed-steel room packed full of shelves of whirring computers. The Director replayed the recording of his arrival again on the panel, while a number ticked away in the corner.

"About an eighty trillionth of a second," The Director said to the bundle of multicolored cloth behind him.

"Woooow. An entire year passed there in that time?" The Stranger asked.

"EXACTLY a year, and time just stopped afterwards. That entire universe is on pause, with respect to frames of reference in every other universe as far as we can tell. Someone's put the reins on his local time flow. We can't extract him from any other moment."

The Stranger shrugged. "Do we want to?"

The Director sighed. "I suppose that's up to you."

"I'm not really worried about it, mister The Director sir," he replied. The Director nodded.

"Then I'll let you know when the all-star battle starts. Best of luck to you." He extended the black smoke that passed for his hand, and The Stranger shook it vigorously with his glove.

"Same to you, sir!" With a multicolored puff of smoke, The Stranger disappeared.

He appeared in a dark place, where he chuckled giddily. "Best of luck, best of luck. Heehe." He took a few waddling steps forward and began shedding clothes. A scarf. A jacket. Oversized boots. "Oh Director, Director. Best of luck, Director." Gloves. Socks. Another Jacket. Another scarf. Blood began flowing freely from him with each step, pooling on the suddenly-reflective surface of what qualified as the ground here. The rest of his clothing sloughed off as The Stranger rose into the air, rising to the center of what was now a large cube, each face mirrored on the inside.

In every direction, his reflection looked back at him.

Black eyes smiled. White, sharp teeth menaced. "Best of luck, Director. You're going to need it."

**Pinary** · 05-12-2011, 03:01 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

"My name is Eric T. Packston, and I was born aboard Cosmand City in the year 2417. I don't expect that to mean anything to any of you- you likely come from a universe very different from my own, plucked from your home by an interdimensional being known as a Grandmaster and forced to do battle. This message is intended to home in on beings trapped in these competitions, and though I won't pretend to understand how it works, my brother tells me that it is going to react with dimensional breaches consistent with the intervention of a Grandmaster. He then tries to go into the math and physics behind this, and at that point, I tune out.

"But I digress. Ten months ago, my brothers and I were where you are now- trapped in a battle to the death with seven other beings from across the multiverse. By the end, those seven beings had died, one by the hand of my brother, and we were named the victor. We were put back in our home and given a year- just one year- before we'd be taken again for the next battle- an all-stars battle, a competition between the winners of eight of these other battles.

"Now, this establishes a worrying precedent. Even on the off-chance we come out of this next battle alive, there's a good chance there will be another battle, with the winners of eight of those, and another, and another. Once you've been selected for one of these, it would seem that you have exactly two possible futures. The most likely, obviously, is death. There's only a one in sixty-four chance of even winning your second battle, and as the pattern continues, it doesn't take long for those odds to get impossibly thin.

"The only other option, then, is to defy the Grandmasters. We must break the pattern if we are to have any hope of leaving these battles alive, and quickly- the longer we wait, the more the odds stack against us. We need to band together as a group- and we need to do it with a cunning, skillful leader. What we shouldn't do is follow Vandrel Reinhardt. Just listen to his message- he's a primitive barbarian, keen to cleave his enemies' heads from their shoulders with an iron blade. How he came to be in a position to send messages like this one (a complicated process, I assure you), we may never know, but I urge everyone who hears this to avoid his leadership. Yes, we need to band together to defy the Grandmasters. We just need someone a bit more civilized than Reinhardt to lead us.

"Odds are, my brothers and I won't be able to do anything more to work toward this goal until we're taken for the all-stars battle. Even another transmission like this one is unlikely, given what we've had to do to send this. All we can do is wish you luck. Do what you have to do, what we all have to do- Defy your captors. Live on."

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Dragon Fogel · 05-12-2011, 03:04 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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**Pinary** · 05-12-2011, 03:31 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

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Not The Author · 05-12-2011, 03:40 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Not The Author.

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SleepingOrange · 07-02-2011, 06:47 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

And here we have... The Epic Wordle!

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GBCE · 07-05-2011, 12:01 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by cynicallyFaithful.

Awe, too bad it's done.

SleepingOrange · 07-05-2011, 01:26 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

Well, fortunately, it's not like there aren't a whole bunch more that are still active that you can still follow as they progress. Heck, I'm having to make these sentences as long as possible just so that I can link them all. There's even one that's currently about to start, so if you wanted to join, you could.