Re: Mini-Grand 5104 (Final Round: The Treasury)
09-17-2011, 03:42 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
Wow, there were a lot of these things. And their legs were moving so fast. Some of them seemed to want to crawl up his calf. Hector’s hand twitched as a reflex that had lied dormant in his species for millennia was overcome with the urge to swat the thing out of existence.
”Aaaaaaah! Bugs!” shrieked Helen. Okay, thought Hector, Bugs. He sort of moved his eyes and the mass of bugs diverted from Helen, though he couldn’t really determine what was so scary about these things. They were so tiny. What could be the harm?
The savvy-looking woman who’d been giving Helen an odd look ever since bursting through the wall took an aerosol can out of her coat and started spraying at the floor. The bugs backed away, or else rolled over and died on the spot, creating a neat radius around the girl. ”Hold your breath, guys, this stuff’s so poison you can treat cancer with it! Helen! Baby! Come here!”
”…Mom?” Helen looked back and forth between the various parties attempting to kidnap her for the moment, feeling some serious mixed signals, and then decided to go with family, running through the bug-spray to embrace her mother. Hector tried to pretend to be happy for her, but was distracted as he watched his bugs rush over Anarchy Omega and skeletonize the poor chinchilla within a few seconds. Huh. Hector had never heard the term “the circle of life;” life in his world had been more of a steadily ascending line graph. Still, it occurred to him that there was a kind of tidiness to the idea of something he’d created subsisting off of something else he’d created, even if the one thing was cute and the other thing was murderous and kind of gross.
Hector was too introspective and kind of thoughtless to see what kind of damage he’d been wreaking. Saint Timothy and Panthar had already gone the way of the poor chinchilla. Ripper, Helen and Fiona were protected by bug-spray, and Sammy Therion was stomping on bugs by the dozen, gradually becoming grosser and more durable as he did so.
The only one Hector actually did notice was the shapeshifter, who had learned that the bugs paid her no heed when she turned into a duplicate of Hector himself. This snapped him out of his general bewilderment and replaced it with an equally debilitating misplaced anger. “Hey, you!” he shouted. “That’s my appearance!” He marched forwards and made a fist.
Hector had never been in a fight before. Pha had.
The original and the duplicate wrestled for a bit before Pha executed some rather simplistic principles of leverage and the like, turning his knee into the fulcrum and the floor into a very large gravity-powered fist. ”Ow.”
”Yeah, you stay down,” said Pha, feeling pretty masculine. Being fundamentally an agent of chaos, Pha had no particular goals for this venture; she sort of wished at that moment that she had enough of an opinion to take a side in the increasingly heated debate between the chick and the pirate.
She was spared from boredom by the giant chinchilla that leapt into the fray, wearing a blob for a hat.
This came as a great surprise both for Helen, who shouted, ”Anarchy Alpha! Praetorian! You’re back!” and for Hector, who found the massive furball grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him.
”YOURS IS THE FACE THAT HAUNTS ME IN MY DREAMS,” shouted Anarchy Alpha. ”I HAVE SUCH DISTANT RECOLLECTIONS… I HAD A HOME ONCE! I HAD A FRIEND! WE WOULD… WE WOULD PUNCH OUT TIGERS AND RAD SHIT…” Anarchy Alpha cried and gave Hector a hug. ”ARE YOU MY FATHER?”
Hector did not know how to respond to that. For one thing, he wasn’t quite sure whether it was technically true. The chinchilla saved him the trouble, though. ”NO, FATHER, DO NOT SPEAK! ONLY… TELL ME WHAT HAS BECOME OF MY MOTHER.”
”I lost a mother, once,” coughed Helen, as her mother futilely kneeing Ripper’s crotch in an attempt to find the pirate’s testicles. ”It was horrible. I would never inflict that upon… upon my own child.” She nodded reverently. ”Yes, Anarchy Alpha. Hector and I created you together. You were born of our love.”
Hector was definitely sure that that wasn’t true, at least in a literal sense. His head was starting to get a bit fuzzy, but he would have remembered that. Still, the revelation seemed to have the desired effect of drawing all the attention in the room back to Helen. Anarchy Alpha began crying on the girl’s shoulder, Sammy Therion stopped his bug-massacre, Ripper sighed impatiently, Pha turned into a giant question mark, and even the bugs seemed to crowd around, unsure whether now was an appriopriate time to be getting something to eat.
Fiona’s reaction was perhaps the most sensible. She put her hands on her hips. ”…Well, you little slut.”
Wow, there were a lot of these things. And their legs were moving so fast. Some of them seemed to want to crawl up his calf. Hector’s hand twitched as a reflex that had lied dormant in his species for millennia was overcome with the urge to swat the thing out of existence.
”Aaaaaaah! Bugs!” shrieked Helen. Okay, thought Hector, Bugs. He sort of moved his eyes and the mass of bugs diverted from Helen, though he couldn’t really determine what was so scary about these things. They were so tiny. What could be the harm?
The savvy-looking woman who’d been giving Helen an odd look ever since bursting through the wall took an aerosol can out of her coat and started spraying at the floor. The bugs backed away, or else rolled over and died on the spot, creating a neat radius around the girl. ”Hold your breath, guys, this stuff’s so poison you can treat cancer with it! Helen! Baby! Come here!”
”…Mom?” Helen looked back and forth between the various parties attempting to kidnap her for the moment, feeling some serious mixed signals, and then decided to go with family, running through the bug-spray to embrace her mother. Hector tried to pretend to be happy for her, but was distracted as he watched his bugs rush over Anarchy Omega and skeletonize the poor chinchilla within a few seconds. Huh. Hector had never heard the term “the circle of life;” life in his world had been more of a steadily ascending line graph. Still, it occurred to him that there was a kind of tidiness to the idea of something he’d created subsisting off of something else he’d created, even if the one thing was cute and the other thing was murderous and kind of gross.
Hector was too introspective and kind of thoughtless to see what kind of damage he’d been wreaking. Saint Timothy and Panthar had already gone the way of the poor chinchilla. Ripper, Helen and Fiona were protected by bug-spray, and Sammy Therion was stomping on bugs by the dozen, gradually becoming grosser and more durable as he did so.
The only one Hector actually did notice was the shapeshifter, who had learned that the bugs paid her no heed when she turned into a duplicate of Hector himself. This snapped him out of his general bewilderment and replaced it with an equally debilitating misplaced anger. “Hey, you!” he shouted. “That’s my appearance!” He marched forwards and made a fist.
Hector had never been in a fight before. Pha had.
The original and the duplicate wrestled for a bit before Pha executed some rather simplistic principles of leverage and the like, turning his knee into the fulcrum and the floor into a very large gravity-powered fist. ”Ow.”
”Yeah, you stay down,” said Pha, feeling pretty masculine. Being fundamentally an agent of chaos, Pha had no particular goals for this venture; she sort of wished at that moment that she had enough of an opinion to take a side in the increasingly heated debate between the chick and the pirate.
She was spared from boredom by the giant chinchilla that leapt into the fray, wearing a blob for a hat.
This came as a great surprise both for Helen, who shouted, ”Anarchy Alpha! Praetorian! You’re back!” and for Hector, who found the massive furball grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him.
”YOURS IS THE FACE THAT HAUNTS ME IN MY DREAMS,” shouted Anarchy Alpha. ”I HAVE SUCH DISTANT RECOLLECTIONS… I HAD A HOME ONCE! I HAD A FRIEND! WE WOULD… WE WOULD PUNCH OUT TIGERS AND RAD SHIT…” Anarchy Alpha cried and gave Hector a hug. ”ARE YOU MY FATHER?”
Hector did not know how to respond to that. For one thing, he wasn’t quite sure whether it was technically true. The chinchilla saved him the trouble, though. ”NO, FATHER, DO NOT SPEAK! ONLY… TELL ME WHAT HAS BECOME OF MY MOTHER.”
”I lost a mother, once,” coughed Helen, as her mother futilely kneeing Ripper’s crotch in an attempt to find the pirate’s testicles. ”It was horrible. I would never inflict that upon… upon my own child.” She nodded reverently. ”Yes, Anarchy Alpha. Hector and I created you together. You were born of our love.”
Hector was definitely sure that that wasn’t true, at least in a literal sense. His head was starting to get a bit fuzzy, but he would have remembered that. Still, the revelation seemed to have the desired effect of drawing all the attention in the room back to Helen. Anarchy Alpha began crying on the girl’s shoulder, Sammy Therion stopped his bug-massacre, Ripper sighed impatiently, Pha turned into a giant question mark, and even the bugs seemed to crowd around, unsure whether now was an appriopriate time to be getting something to eat.
Fiona’s reaction was perhaps the most sensible. She put her hands on her hips. ”…Well, you little slut.”