The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Six: Eddelin City]

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

Xadrez wandered a little further up the corridor, enough that one would actually have to follow him from the junction before the spirit could no longer pretend to ignore them. Mere dissatisfaction was not a strong enough word to describe how the formerly-disengaged watcher felt; though he was still a long way off from proper rage. Call it frustration. Offering the offensively yellow stripe marring his board the most disgusted look his expressionless face could manage, Xadrez glanced around, reached around with a spectral limb, and extracted dagger from shoulder.

It was an unremarkable kind of blade in appearance, with no ornate inscription or erstwhile glimmer to hint at its powers, but for posterity's sake Xadrez already had a full idea how the weapon affected his own proficiency in the scope of a battle. With a mild sense of regret, the spirit mused that data modifiers on others' proficiency in the knowledge he had such a blade was lacking. Regardless, it felt good and belonging entwined beneath Xadrez's slender fingers as it sunk easily into the solid, rust-and-suspiciously-not-rust-but-red-spattered wall. A casual flick, like a key being turned, and a nick of metal fell out with a clang. The chessmaster's other hand picked it up as the knife-arm pressed on, uninterrupted as it sliced deeper to extract wedges of the unknown material.

Having finally hacked off an area surrounding a sizeable enough chunk for one piece, Xadrez was about to lever it out of there when a pulse of laser fire hit him in the back, before dispersing throughout the marginally more irritated spirit in a series of arcing bolts. Xadrez turned, greeting a ceiling-mounted turret, its disdainful shriek reserved for mutie scum nearly as unwelcome as the row of sequentially illuminating LEDs that indicated the turret was recharging.

"AND 200 CREDITS FINED, YOU DISGUSTING WASTE OF FRIEND COMPUTER'S LOVE, FOR DAMAGING GLORIOUS FRIEND COMPUTER'S PROPERTY. FINE WILL BE DEDUCTED AFTER SUMMARY EXECUTION AND TERMINATION WAIT WHY AREN'T YOU DEADZZGHZZGT-"

It was a rather brash move, on what Xadrez idly hoped (in that way you would when all possibilities are mere odds - simply you know the values) was true, according to present evidence. Whatever this locale's usual methods of execution were, they certainly didn't work on him; but were effective on the locals. Considering all unknowns, a postulation unlikely to hold true for any length of time, but a comforting enough assumption that didn't require a huge readjustment if it failed to hold up. More to the point, the tactician was turning over the defense turret in his ghostly claws as he figured out how it was put together, and thus how he could slice it into piece with minimum mess. Sparks still danced from its rudely severed cables, as the sentry's constituent parts were decimated, and placed roughly equidistant around the edge of the black board. One final slash, and the hunk of wall-metal sat in the centre - seven pieces of turret and a looming humanoid placed around it.

The blank eyes narrowed. Xadrez found this ugly set-up hardly appealing, but it would do at present. The knife in the tactician's hand was starting to whisper odd little nothings to itself, so for now the spirit settled for the basics. The blade skimmed unyieldingly across the polished black, and scoring the yellow, as it traced an octagon around each piece, stemmed a series of connections and transecting polygons off those, and finished with a casual flick across the surface of the stolen wall, emblazoning a single eye upon it. The now-humming dagger was implanted back in Xadrez's torso, at which the tracings glowed briefly white before fading without a trace.

The nomenclature and legend of an in-progress alliance map complete at any rate, Xadrez glanced back the way he'd come. The smith was whacking the remnants of another unprepared robot servant of this Computer into submission, or possibly into weapon-form. Like most observations, the tactician did little more than make a note of it. The temporal blip, and the remaining humans, bar... Maxwell, and his parasite -named, sentient? Worth confirming- were in increasing states of further up the corridor from the clanging forge. The armoured... Rillian caught Xadrez's attention. From the Observer's introduction, a fighter, plain and simple. Well, as plain as simple as self-autonomous sentience could be, which Xadrez begrudgingly conceded, all the while admiring, that it really wasn't that simple.

Still, gaining a better understanding of what made this piece of sentience tick would, in turn, help Xadrez get a grip on the other innumerable drifting snatches this complex fight offered him. Noting the repeat offender had made little progress as he crossed the junction -Harangued, perhaps? And why and where does he need the Maxwell boy in such a forceful hurry?-, the tactician drifted back to a much more crimson Weo, resting couple of metres up the hallway. Xadrez said nothing, content to observe until the Rillian finished toying with the terminal and asked the spirit something directly.