Re: The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Two: Sk'va!]
08-27-2010, 05:02 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
A little earlier...
"No, no, that piece detaches like that..."
Xadrez observed the mayhem in the office with rising disgust.
"Excellent, thank you. Send the emissary out right away."
No. Xadrez had not had the time to analyse and understand every aspect of the Sk'van's body language, but the crowd-mind, to his experience, was a universal phenomenon.
"Oh, oh dear... best wipe that up before a stain sets in..."
Their leader was dead; the circle tethering the tactician had been snuffed out with her. And Xadrez could tell just by looking.
They'd seen this coming
Ignoring the chatters of displeasure as he drifted, slow and deliberately obstructive, through the crowd, the spirit drew his dagger as he approached the machine. The morticians and magi-engineers scattered as the tactician gazed upward, into the eerily still tangle. The blade swung through the air and machine, halting only with a dull thunk and shrieks of outrage as the dagger embedded in the still-dripping chitin of the millipede.
With a supreme lack of concern, Xadrez reached in with some difficulty, and extracted a little copper clamp, sheared clean through its base by the tactician's unassuming blade. From its claws, the spirit pried his carving of Jennifer, and was about to discard it when something about the forcibly mangled talon beckoned. The knife was whistling uneasily as the furious insectoids formed ranks and closed in, but Xadrez paid them no heed as he raised the knife and chiseled more details into it; etching bloodied clothes, a twisted aberration of an arm, a mouth of voracious teeth.
A pulse of light, and the splintering of glass. Xadrez hissed and clasped the swirling gap where his shoulder had been, glaring at the burly stag beetle who'd fired the beam. The dagger's wailing was getting worse, reverberating round the enchanted bubble of the domed office, drowning out the police chief's screeches for the Ambassador to step away from her Excellency, this instant. Holographic displays buckled and warped, delicate bits of the bureaucratic machine shattering as the golden light faded, replaced with something more natural as the glass above splintered and showered the occupants.
Xadrez glanced around, still holding the shrieking knife in one hand and his copper figure of Maxwell in the other. Head jerking aside to avoid another laser blast, the tactician placed the piece next to Jennifer’s token, and drifted backwards, deeper into the machine, slashing as he went. His gaze remained fixed not on his path or the armed stag beetle, but the bureaucrats. At first, they had fled at the noise and destroyed dome, but seeing Xadrez invading the city’s control centre had dragged them out. One particularly officious-looking rose chafer, his twelve-piece monocle dangling at his side, was trying to get the stab beetle’s attention while using him as a shield.
The tactician watched him, watched the way his mandibles twitched when the knife threshed through more wires and levers, and kept retreating.
An island-jolting rumble signaled the cities had rejoined, and something by Xadrez’ hand chirped. A moment’s consideration, a tidy slice to detach the case from its hinges, and suddenly the chafer was screaming for the chief of police to shoot.
Then the knife’s frequency climbed to some critical, insect-disabling frequency, and the Sk’vans fell as one, clutching their heads in pain. Xadrez rested the dagger on his board, where it chattered as it yowled, and studied the exposed panel. The display was unreadable, but the tactician had ample time. He drifted out of the tangle of cogs and pipes, picked up the stag beetle police chief’s gun, and jabbed it in the monocled beetle’s carapace. It left a viciously satisfying little burn, as Xadrez telepathically passed his message down it:
what does the panel do
An ominous little hissing noise was accompanied by some steam escaping from the constable’s exoskeleton. Xadrez juggled spectral carbine, clerk, and knife for a moment, before terminating the screech with a swift stab in his gut. The rose chafer was making unpleasant gulping noises as the rest of the contingent slowly got to their feet. Xadrez jammed the rifle in his hostage’s back, and hissed his message again.
Perhaps it was the fact the whole room wasn’t that pleasant shade of amber anymore, but somehow the whole setting had just got a lot less magical. Perhaps Xadrez was just in a game-changingly foul mood this iteration.
you brought this upon yourselves, you prancing, pantomiming fools
-----
Moments later, Xadrez was back out on the street, panicked citizens jostling around him, few stopping to notice the now-revealed skeleton of the glass-dome atop the civic offices. Tossing the gun aside, the spirit listened for where his pieces had gone. He had to cut open a few buildings to get at a few, but soon he had his full set again - the grey wall of Alpha Complex, the scraps of sentry turret, and Jennifer, in jade. A hunk of pinkish marble Xadrez’d just hacked off to get at the Observer’s piece nearly flew from his hand as Sk’va slumped a little; it was then the tactician noticed his copper carving of Maxwell was still missing.
somewhere beneath; possibly lost in a sewer-
Normally, this would’ve caused unbelievable frustration to Xadrez. Normally, under no circumstances would he have interpreted this as a ‘sign’ of any description. Had someone suggested it to the spirit, they would’ve been met with derision.
But the tactician was angry. He knew full well such anger would only serve to make him irrational. He knew Kracht’s words, a two-mirror trap of reverse psychology, were as useful to him as no words at all. He knew Kracht alone knew how Maxwell would die, and that it was only this angry irrationality spurring him to angry, irrational action.
And he didn’t care. In fact, he savoured it.
The flow of the crowd was pushing Xadrez toward a squat, but nonetheless grand building. The tactician pegged it from afar as a refuge; perhaps even an escape pod? Musing over it, the spirit decided firstly Kracht wouldn’t be able to resist warning Maxwell of his demise, and secondly the boy wasn’t going to hide from it. Swinging his knife and watching the Sk’vans scatter, Xadrez drifted on, toward the now-visible spires of Cyk’nl.
A little earlier...
"No, no, that piece detaches like that..."
Xadrez observed the mayhem in the office with rising disgust.
"Excellent, thank you. Send the emissary out right away."
No. Xadrez had not had the time to analyse and understand every aspect of the Sk'van's body language, but the crowd-mind, to his experience, was a universal phenomenon.
"Oh, oh dear... best wipe that up before a stain sets in..."
Their leader was dead; the circle tethering the tactician had been snuffed out with her. And Xadrez could tell just by looking.
They'd seen this coming
Ignoring the chatters of displeasure as he drifted, slow and deliberately obstructive, through the crowd, the spirit drew his dagger as he approached the machine. The morticians and magi-engineers scattered as the tactician gazed upward, into the eerily still tangle. The blade swung through the air and machine, halting only with a dull thunk and shrieks of outrage as the dagger embedded in the still-dripping chitin of the millipede.
With a supreme lack of concern, Xadrez reached in with some difficulty, and extracted a little copper clamp, sheared clean through its base by the tactician's unassuming blade. From its claws, the spirit pried his carving of Jennifer, and was about to discard it when something about the forcibly mangled talon beckoned. The knife was whistling uneasily as the furious insectoids formed ranks and closed in, but Xadrez paid them no heed as he raised the knife and chiseled more details into it; etching bloodied clothes, a twisted aberration of an arm, a mouth of voracious teeth.
A pulse of light, and the splintering of glass. Xadrez hissed and clasped the swirling gap where his shoulder had been, glaring at the burly stag beetle who'd fired the beam. The dagger's wailing was getting worse, reverberating round the enchanted bubble of the domed office, drowning out the police chief's screeches for the Ambassador to step away from her Excellency, this instant. Holographic displays buckled and warped, delicate bits of the bureaucratic machine shattering as the golden light faded, replaced with something more natural as the glass above splintered and showered the occupants.
Xadrez glanced around, still holding the shrieking knife in one hand and his copper figure of Maxwell in the other. Head jerking aside to avoid another laser blast, the tactician placed the piece next to Jennifer’s token, and drifted backwards, deeper into the machine, slashing as he went. His gaze remained fixed not on his path or the armed stag beetle, but the bureaucrats. At first, they had fled at the noise and destroyed dome, but seeing Xadrez invading the city’s control centre had dragged them out. One particularly officious-looking rose chafer, his twelve-piece monocle dangling at his side, was trying to get the stab beetle’s attention while using him as a shield.
The tactician watched him, watched the way his mandibles twitched when the knife threshed through more wires and levers, and kept retreating.
An island-jolting rumble signaled the cities had rejoined, and something by Xadrez’ hand chirped. A moment’s consideration, a tidy slice to detach the case from its hinges, and suddenly the chafer was screaming for the chief of police to shoot.
Then the knife’s frequency climbed to some critical, insect-disabling frequency, and the Sk’vans fell as one, clutching their heads in pain. Xadrez rested the dagger on his board, where it chattered as it yowled, and studied the exposed panel. The display was unreadable, but the tactician had ample time. He drifted out of the tangle of cogs and pipes, picked up the stag beetle police chief’s gun, and jabbed it in the monocled beetle’s carapace. It left a viciously satisfying little burn, as Xadrez telepathically passed his message down it:
what does the panel do
An ominous little hissing noise was accompanied by some steam escaping from the constable’s exoskeleton. Xadrez juggled spectral carbine, clerk, and knife for a moment, before terminating the screech with a swift stab in his gut. The rose chafer was making unpleasant gulping noises as the rest of the contingent slowly got to their feet. Xadrez jammed the rifle in his hostage’s back, and hissed his message again.
Perhaps it was the fact the whole room wasn’t that pleasant shade of amber anymore, but somehow the whole setting had just got a lot less magical. Perhaps Xadrez was just in a game-changingly foul mood this iteration.
you brought this upon yourselves, you prancing, pantomiming fools
-----
Moments later, Xadrez was back out on the street, panicked citizens jostling around him, few stopping to notice the now-revealed skeleton of the glass-dome atop the civic offices. Tossing the gun aside, the spirit listened for where his pieces had gone. He had to cut open a few buildings to get at a few, but soon he had his full set again - the grey wall of Alpha Complex, the scraps of sentry turret, and Jennifer, in jade. A hunk of pinkish marble Xadrez’d just hacked off to get at the Observer’s piece nearly flew from his hand as Sk’va slumped a little; it was then the tactician noticed his copper carving of Maxwell was still missing.
somewhere beneath; possibly lost in a sewer-
Normally, this would’ve caused unbelievable frustration to Xadrez. Normally, under no circumstances would he have interpreted this as a ‘sign’ of any description. Had someone suggested it to the spirit, they would’ve been met with derision.
But the tactician was angry. He knew full well such anger would only serve to make him irrational. He knew Kracht’s words, a two-mirror trap of reverse psychology, were as useful to him as no words at all. He knew Kracht alone knew how Maxwell would die, and that it was only this angry irrationality spurring him to angry, irrational action.
And he didn’t care. In fact, he savoured it.
The flow of the crowd was pushing Xadrez toward a squat, but nonetheless grand building. The tactician pegged it from afar as a refuge; perhaps even an escape pod? Musing over it, the spirit decided firstly Kracht wouldn’t be able to resist warning Maxwell of his demise, and secondly the boy wasn’t going to hide from it. Swinging his knife and watching the Sk’vans scatter, Xadrez drifted on, toward the now-visible spires of Cyk’nl.
peace to the unsung peace to the martyrs | i'm johnny rotten appleseed
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow