Re: The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Four: New Battleopolis!]
07-30-2011, 03:45 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
”It’s for you. You are real, right?”
Jen had gone through a phase a few years back where she'd gotten that question a lot. "No" was never the right answer. “Yeah,” she told the lobster.
She could see why this guy made the perfect guard. He wasn’t going to get bored watching her over all day, because he was utterly engrossed in the action of polishing his robot-suit, which despite his strongest efforts still very evidently looked like something thrown together from a junkyard. Nor was he going to get too relaxed and nap on the job, or let Jen convince him to let her go. He was a paranoid mess; every minute he didn’t spend looking up and down the corridor or watching Jen in her cell like a hawk, he was looking at her reflection in one of the shinier parts of his armor. Jen wasn’t exactly a master of crustacean body language, but she could tell that this guy didn’t sleep much. She hadn’t gotten his name.
The lobster wasn’t satisfied by her answer. ”You’re real-real?” he insisted. ”You weren’t awakened? You came straight here from the previous round?”
”Round?” Jen grabbed onto the bars of her cell, formerly a diorama of the moon landing. “As in, Grand Battle round?”
”Yes, yes, you are a bit behind on the times now, aren’t you?” The lobster seemed to catch himself fraternizing, and simply handed his communicator through the bars. ”Look, just take the call. It’s from another battle, so I doubt she can do anything to help you.”
A phone call from another battle? What’s going on here? Apparently all the rules had been thrown out the window. Jen momentarily had a worrying thought that Kracht’s dying had altered the past somehow, but that passed when she realized it was stupid. This was just the battle trying to heat itself up. She took the tangentially phone-looking thing and put it to her ear. “Hello?”
”Hi.”
The voice was young, female and endearingly innocent. Jen didn’t recognize it at all. The last thing Lobstertron had said into the phone before addressing Jen was insisting that he wasn’t actually real, and then, ”Fine.” None of this answered Jen’s myriad burning questions, so she decided to be blunt. “Um, who is this?”
”Yeah, this is Alison Broderburg, I’m in one of the battles. Who’s this?” In the background on the other end of the line, there was a sound like an engine and some gunfire and… a baby? She decided not to think about it too hard.
“Huh,” she said, deciding she instantly trusted Alison. “So, there are a lot of these battles, huh? I’ve mostly been focusing on my own. Yours is run by a big omnipotent one-eyed guy, right? The Observer?”
”No, mine’s just some guy. The Charlatan.”
God, there’s more than one of them. I don’t like that. Well, at least they’re suffering us to talk to each other. ”So what’s your story? Psychic powers? Tentacles? Supergenius?”
”I’m here with my whole family,” she responded immediately, as though it explained something.
Jen groaned. “That’s fucked up! You’re just, like, some family?”
”Yeah, really, four of us and the baby.”
And the baby. “Shit. Are you all okay? What round are you on?”
”And the RV came along too. It’s not that bad,” she said, the very picture of chipperness. ”I mean I don’t really think anyone’s gonna try to kill anyone or anything. The only other fighter I met was really cool. And there’s another one helping us out with some car trouble now, I think.”
This was painful. Jen didn’t want to crush this girl’s little innocence-fest, but if she kept on like this, it wasn’t going to last all that long anyway. “Look, Alison, I thought that through a lot of my first round, and then—“ and then Xadrez killed Weo “—and then one of the players shot another one in the back. Now there are only four of us left, and… I think one, maybe two of them might deserve to die.” She’d forgotten about Xadrez killing Weo, way back when. When had she decided that the spirit was her ally? Her friend, even?
”So there are only four of you left? That suc—stinks.” She can't say "sucks" because her parents are there. How old is she, eleven? Twelve? She supposed it was better than the alternative… although Jen couldn’t imagine what this battle would be like if her parents were here. I wonder where they’re living now. ”Were any of them your friends or anything?”
Good question. Her subconscious bypassed her internal thoughts and said “Yes.” She sighed. “The last one was named Kracht. He was, um, a rock.”
Alison paused and puzzled over that. ”Oh. Oh, I’m sorry,” she ventured. Then: ”Like a pet rock? I used to have one of those.”
Jen’s grief had a brief battle against her sense of humor and lost. She found herself smiling, then giggling, then laughing aloud. Lobstron shot her a nervous glare.
“I like you, Alison,” said Jen, after she calmed herself. “Call me again sometime.”
Alison sounded distracted. ”Yeah, there’s something going on here, I should go.”
”Alright. Stay sharp and protect your family.” Don’t make promises don’t make promises “I’m going to find a way to get you out of there. You and everyone else in these battles.” Shit. “I promise.” Fucker.
”Okay. Thanks, I guess. You’re in my contacts. Bye.” Click.
Jen threw the communicator at the lobster’s head. ”Hey!”
Jen suddenly felt daunted. You promised. There were God-knows-how-many of these battles, each with God-knows-how-many contestants, run by God-knows-how-many multiversal teleporty omnipotent assholes. She wasn’t the first one trying to escape, but it sure seemed like she’d have to be the first to succeed. And you’ve already died twice.
You shouldn’t have promised, Fantha chimed in.
“There’s a baby in that battle, Fantha. Tell me that isn’t fucked up.”
I know your ethics. That was far from agreement. My most constant companion is an amoral parasite. I heard that.
Jen wracked her brain for a problem she could solve, and found it in her stomach. “Hey, Seafood,” she barked at the lobster. “I haven’t eaten anything all battle. You gonna give your prisoner some food, or am I gonna have to get some water boiling?”
The lobster clacked one claw in annoyance.
* * * * *
The silent unawakened majority of New Battleopolis, meanwhile, were occupying themselves the way masses do: by forming religions.
The fall of Old Battleopolis was not terribly well-documented—accounts differ, for instance, on whether there were vacuums, or a dragon, or both—but all could agree that one of the great saviors of the city was Konka Rar, master of the sciences and the occult, father to skeletons, mother to vacuums, leader of men, lover of women. It was further agreed by most that He would return to usher in a new Golden Age.
Over a million copies of the First Konkaronichle had been published and distributed, which was a completely silly and unnecessary number given the city’s rather diminished population, so the Second Konkaronichle had enjoyed a much more manageable print run of ten thousand copies in hardcover, another twenty thousand in paperback, and a limited run of a hundred “Ultra-Rare” leather-bound copies.
It said “Ultra-Rare” right on the cover, in embossed gold letters. Nobody agreed on where the books came from, but the mysterious publisher was by no means subtle.
One of these ultra-rare copies had, to the dismay of fanatics and collectors, had several dozen pages torn off and arranged on a corkboard and written all over in blue Magic Marker. The corkboard was being held up by a weasely septuagenarian ex-pharmacist whose name isn’t in itself important but is probably phonetically similar to “Kerak.” Let’s call him “Karek.” Karek was holding up his board and yelling at passerby.
”’And He shall come upon them as though soliciting them for afternoon tea,’ it says!” he shouted at a gathering crowd, pointing to a part of the corkboard where several important-looking dashes and circles intersected. “That’s II Sorsa, 22:2. Four twos! That makes eight! And if we look at the eighth verse of the eighth chapter of the eighth book, see, here, I put them right next to each other. ‘Time is no obstacle for Him, yet He always comes upon the appointed hour.’ Three! Three is the appointed hour for tea, ‘tis common etiquette, ‘tis well known. And look now upon the hour, my brothers! 2:57! The tea is upon us!”
“More like the tease,” came a heckler from somewhere in the back of the crowd. Karek made one of those dismayed old-person moans that can be defined as the opposite of rapture, and pointed at nothing in particular. “’Come the hour, the ultimate sacrifice shall be made—‘ this the word of Lutherion, who has seen the face of death, ‘the ultimate sacrifice shall be made and this world and many others—“
The heckler would not relent. “Listen, old man!” The voice came from nowhere, as though the essence of the crowd itself were speaking out. “Yours isn’t the only story I’ve heard. They say he walks among the streets, wearing a plastic storebought mask, and speaks the blue words that awaken a man.”
“I’ve heard that too,” concurred a woman. “How can we find the real second coming among all this hearsay?”
“It is not for us to know the ways of Konka!” came a third voice. “This man is a pretender!”
That last one sounded like a black guy, Karek thought. Diversity itself turns against me and my Truth! Karek opened his mouth, waved his hands, and looked like he was about to fall into a seizure any minute, which got the crowd’s attention again. Yeah, that’s right. I’m on death’s door, and probably have Alzheimer’s. You love that shit. He made another one of those moans, and they were listening again.
“And His coming,” Karek continued, punctuating each word with a nice little hacking cough, “Shall herald the beginning of the Cameo Round, and—“
KRAKKABUURRRRRRRUUUUUUM
Karek cowed behind his corkboard. Standing on the other end of the crowd, on the steps of the Church of Rar, was a man dressed in a shadow cloak. As rumored, he wore a cheap Halloween mask of a death’s head, through which one eye shown a cybernetic red. As prophecized, he had two hands—one that of a man, the other machine—and as wildly guessed, he had come upon the appointed hour.
It is up to me to state the obvious! Karek thought. “Behold! Konka Rar returns to us!”
The Messiah looked down at Karek with a skeletal smile. ”My friend and loyal servant,” he began, with a voice that honestly wasn’t all that special. Konka Rar parted the crowd and walked to Karek, allowing the Unawakened to touch his robes as he passed. ”This man brings you the truth of my coming, and yet you mock him. I do not blame you. He is a small, old, deranged man. He is yet unawakened.” Karek sulked. ”And yet! As my one hand pushes him around for his infirmities, so can my other grant him the gift of awakening. Behold! The miracle of Time Itself!”
Konka Rar held out his hand.
From Karek’s perspective, the next few seconds consisted of being completely unable to move for several days, and nearly dying of thirst and exposure. At the time, it was both horrible and rapturous, but both of those feelings become instantly irrelevant when he turned into a dinosaur.
Kerak looked up at his Savior. “Well that was unpleasant,” he said, grinning.
”All things are unpleasant,” agreed Konka Rar. ”The life of the Messiah is a lonely, awkward, virginal one. But—ladies—it need not always be so! FOR THE HOUR OF THE CAMEO ROUND IS UPON US!”
The crowd cheered and wept; coins and bras and infants were thrown at the Messiah, who shrugged them all away with a wave of his arm. ”Come forth, unawakened ones!” Konka Rar bellowed. ”Come forth and receive the gift of Time Itself! Most of you will perish slowly and painfully upon receiving my miracle, yes… but those lucky few who hold within them the souls of relevant, less-expendable beings, shall be brought to the moment of awakening! AND TOGETHER WE SHALL MAKE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE TO SAVE THE WORLD! FOR I AM THE VACUUM THAT SHALL SUCK YOU INTO THE DUSTBAG OF ETERNAL GLORY!”
And one by one, they did come to Him.
* * * * *
Jen was highly disappointed when dinner turned out to be Shake ‘n Bake chicken and Past-A-Roni Shells & White Cheddar.
She’d expected worse—something to the tune of gruel—but that would have at least given her something to complain about. The dry white meat and runny pasta hovered in the grey area between mistreatment and edibility. Still, she was hungry, and even thirsty enough to brave the lukewarm can of Sprite Zero that was her allotted beverage.
She should have known there was a catch. She had almost-but-not-quite finished eating when Tor came to visit her. The Telpori-Hal appeared both haggard, and as though he were attempting to appear haggard for the benefit of his men.
Tor allowed a long silence to pass as he looked over his prisoner. “So, thanks for feeding me, I guess,” said Jen, trying to sound earnest.
She succeeded, at least, in breaking the silence. ”We’ve discovered what appears to be a human communication device,” he began. ”If you can get it to work and bring back some useful information, we’ll allow you the run of our territory.”
”But not to leave.”
Tor shrugged. ”You could be a useful hostage for us, or a valuable source of information for the other side. We’d sooner keep an eye on you.”
Jen sighed. “Look, you should know I bear no ill-will towards non-humans. I lived among them for years. And you also know by now that I’m just passing by here in the course of a Battle. I’m not interested in your conflicts—“
”Yours,” spat Tor, ”Is the second battle to go through New BatTLEopOLIs. Before the first, this was a city of millions.”
That gave Jen something to think about. “Shit. I’m starting to really hate these battles. Alright, show me this thing. I’m gonna warn you, most human communication devices are pretty simple, so if it’s just, like, a fax machine, I’m gonna laugh at you.”
Tor waved one hand to silence her. With the other he tossed her something small, round, and metallic. ”You have one hour with this thing. After that, if you can’t tell us anything about Reinhardt’s plans, we’ll ensure that your battle moves on to the next round. You can figure out how we intend to do that.”
Jen looked at the object in her palm. It was a silver orb, upon which was engraved a silver hand. She looked back up at Tor and nodded. “I think I get the idea.”
”It’s for you. You are real, right?”
Jen had gone through a phase a few years back where she'd gotten that question a lot. "No" was never the right answer. “Yeah,” she told the lobster.
She could see why this guy made the perfect guard. He wasn’t going to get bored watching her over all day, because he was utterly engrossed in the action of polishing his robot-suit, which despite his strongest efforts still very evidently looked like something thrown together from a junkyard. Nor was he going to get too relaxed and nap on the job, or let Jen convince him to let her go. He was a paranoid mess; every minute he didn’t spend looking up and down the corridor or watching Jen in her cell like a hawk, he was looking at her reflection in one of the shinier parts of his armor. Jen wasn’t exactly a master of crustacean body language, but she could tell that this guy didn’t sleep much. She hadn’t gotten his name.
The lobster wasn’t satisfied by her answer. ”You’re real-real?” he insisted. ”You weren’t awakened? You came straight here from the previous round?”
”Round?” Jen grabbed onto the bars of her cell, formerly a diorama of the moon landing. “As in, Grand Battle round?”
”Yes, yes, you are a bit behind on the times now, aren’t you?” The lobster seemed to catch himself fraternizing, and simply handed his communicator through the bars. ”Look, just take the call. It’s from another battle, so I doubt she can do anything to help you.”
A phone call from another battle? What’s going on here? Apparently all the rules had been thrown out the window. Jen momentarily had a worrying thought that Kracht’s dying had altered the past somehow, but that passed when she realized it was stupid. This was just the battle trying to heat itself up. She took the tangentially phone-looking thing and put it to her ear. “Hello?”
”Hi.”
The voice was young, female and endearingly innocent. Jen didn’t recognize it at all. The last thing Lobstertron had said into the phone before addressing Jen was insisting that he wasn’t actually real, and then, ”Fine.” None of this answered Jen’s myriad burning questions, so she decided to be blunt. “Um, who is this?”
”Yeah, this is Alison Broderburg, I’m in one of the battles. Who’s this?” In the background on the other end of the line, there was a sound like an engine and some gunfire and… a baby? She decided not to think about it too hard.
“Huh,” she said, deciding she instantly trusted Alison. “So, there are a lot of these battles, huh? I’ve mostly been focusing on my own. Yours is run by a big omnipotent one-eyed guy, right? The Observer?”
”No, mine’s just some guy. The Charlatan.”
God, there’s more than one of them. I don’t like that. Well, at least they’re suffering us to talk to each other. ”So what’s your story? Psychic powers? Tentacles? Supergenius?”
”I’m here with my whole family,” she responded immediately, as though it explained something.
Jen groaned. “That’s fucked up! You’re just, like, some family?”
”Yeah, really, four of us and the baby.”
And the baby. “Shit. Are you all okay? What round are you on?”
”And the RV came along too. It’s not that bad,” she said, the very picture of chipperness. ”I mean I don’t really think anyone’s gonna try to kill anyone or anything. The only other fighter I met was really cool. And there’s another one helping us out with some car trouble now, I think.”
This was painful. Jen didn’t want to crush this girl’s little innocence-fest, but if she kept on like this, it wasn’t going to last all that long anyway. “Look, Alison, I thought that through a lot of my first round, and then—“ and then Xadrez killed Weo “—and then one of the players shot another one in the back. Now there are only four of us left, and… I think one, maybe two of them might deserve to die.” She’d forgotten about Xadrez killing Weo, way back when. When had she decided that the spirit was her ally? Her friend, even?
”So there are only four of you left? That suc—stinks.” She can't say "sucks" because her parents are there. How old is she, eleven? Twelve? She supposed it was better than the alternative… although Jen couldn’t imagine what this battle would be like if her parents were here. I wonder where they’re living now. ”Were any of them your friends or anything?”
Good question. Her subconscious bypassed her internal thoughts and said “Yes.” She sighed. “The last one was named Kracht. He was, um, a rock.”
Alison paused and puzzled over that. ”Oh. Oh, I’m sorry,” she ventured. Then: ”Like a pet rock? I used to have one of those.”
Jen’s grief had a brief battle against her sense of humor and lost. She found herself smiling, then giggling, then laughing aloud. Lobstron shot her a nervous glare.
“I like you, Alison,” said Jen, after she calmed herself. “Call me again sometime.”
Alison sounded distracted. ”Yeah, there’s something going on here, I should go.”
”Alright. Stay sharp and protect your family.” Don’t make promises don’t make promises “I’m going to find a way to get you out of there. You and everyone else in these battles.” Shit. “I promise.” Fucker.
”Okay. Thanks, I guess. You’re in my contacts. Bye.” Click.
Jen threw the communicator at the lobster’s head. ”Hey!”
Jen suddenly felt daunted. You promised. There were God-knows-how-many of these battles, each with God-knows-how-many contestants, run by God-knows-how-many multiversal teleporty omnipotent assholes. She wasn’t the first one trying to escape, but it sure seemed like she’d have to be the first to succeed. And you’ve already died twice.
You shouldn’t have promised, Fantha chimed in.
“There’s a baby in that battle, Fantha. Tell me that isn’t fucked up.”
I know your ethics. That was far from agreement. My most constant companion is an amoral parasite. I heard that.
Jen wracked her brain for a problem she could solve, and found it in her stomach. “Hey, Seafood,” she barked at the lobster. “I haven’t eaten anything all battle. You gonna give your prisoner some food, or am I gonna have to get some water boiling?”
The lobster clacked one claw in annoyance.
* * * * *
The silent unawakened majority of New Battleopolis, meanwhile, were occupying themselves the way masses do: by forming religions.
The fall of Old Battleopolis was not terribly well-documented—accounts differ, for instance, on whether there were vacuums, or a dragon, or both—but all could agree that one of the great saviors of the city was Konka Rar, master of the sciences and the occult, father to skeletons, mother to vacuums, leader of men, lover of women. It was further agreed by most that He would return to usher in a new Golden Age.
Over a million copies of the First Konkaronichle had been published and distributed, which was a completely silly and unnecessary number given the city’s rather diminished population, so the Second Konkaronichle had enjoyed a much more manageable print run of ten thousand copies in hardcover, another twenty thousand in paperback, and a limited run of a hundred “Ultra-Rare” leather-bound copies.
It said “Ultra-Rare” right on the cover, in embossed gold letters. Nobody agreed on where the books came from, but the mysterious publisher was by no means subtle.
One of these ultra-rare copies had, to the dismay of fanatics and collectors, had several dozen pages torn off and arranged on a corkboard and written all over in blue Magic Marker. The corkboard was being held up by a weasely septuagenarian ex-pharmacist whose name isn’t in itself important but is probably phonetically similar to “Kerak.” Let’s call him “Karek.” Karek was holding up his board and yelling at passerby.
”’And He shall come upon them as though soliciting them for afternoon tea,’ it says!” he shouted at a gathering crowd, pointing to a part of the corkboard where several important-looking dashes and circles intersected. “That’s II Sorsa, 22:2. Four twos! That makes eight! And if we look at the eighth verse of the eighth chapter of the eighth book, see, here, I put them right next to each other. ‘Time is no obstacle for Him, yet He always comes upon the appointed hour.’ Three! Three is the appointed hour for tea, ‘tis common etiquette, ‘tis well known. And look now upon the hour, my brothers! 2:57! The tea is upon us!”
“More like the tease,” came a heckler from somewhere in the back of the crowd. Karek made one of those dismayed old-person moans that can be defined as the opposite of rapture, and pointed at nothing in particular. “’Come the hour, the ultimate sacrifice shall be made—‘ this the word of Lutherion, who has seen the face of death, ‘the ultimate sacrifice shall be made and this world and many others—“
The heckler would not relent. “Listen, old man!” The voice came from nowhere, as though the essence of the crowd itself were speaking out. “Yours isn’t the only story I’ve heard. They say he walks among the streets, wearing a plastic storebought mask, and speaks the blue words that awaken a man.”
“I’ve heard that too,” concurred a woman. “How can we find the real second coming among all this hearsay?”
“It is not for us to know the ways of Konka!” came a third voice. “This man is a pretender!”
That last one sounded like a black guy, Karek thought. Diversity itself turns against me and my Truth! Karek opened his mouth, waved his hands, and looked like he was about to fall into a seizure any minute, which got the crowd’s attention again. Yeah, that’s right. I’m on death’s door, and probably have Alzheimer’s. You love that shit. He made another one of those moans, and they were listening again.
“And His coming,” Karek continued, punctuating each word with a nice little hacking cough, “Shall herald the beginning of the Cameo Round, and—“
KRAKKABUURRRRRRRUUUUUUM
Karek cowed behind his corkboard. Standing on the other end of the crowd, on the steps of the Church of Rar, was a man dressed in a shadow cloak. As rumored, he wore a cheap Halloween mask of a death’s head, through which one eye shown a cybernetic red. As prophecized, he had two hands—one that of a man, the other machine—and as wildly guessed, he had come upon the appointed hour.
It is up to me to state the obvious! Karek thought. “Behold! Konka Rar returns to us!”
The Messiah looked down at Karek with a skeletal smile. ”My friend and loyal servant,” he began, with a voice that honestly wasn’t all that special. Konka Rar parted the crowd and walked to Karek, allowing the Unawakened to touch his robes as he passed. ”This man brings you the truth of my coming, and yet you mock him. I do not blame you. He is a small, old, deranged man. He is yet unawakened.” Karek sulked. ”And yet! As my one hand pushes him around for his infirmities, so can my other grant him the gift of awakening. Behold! The miracle of Time Itself!”
Konka Rar held out his hand.
From Karek’s perspective, the next few seconds consisted of being completely unable to move for several days, and nearly dying of thirst and exposure. At the time, it was both horrible and rapturous, but both of those feelings become instantly irrelevant when he turned into a dinosaur.
Kerak looked up at his Savior. “Well that was unpleasant,” he said, grinning.
”All things are unpleasant,” agreed Konka Rar. ”The life of the Messiah is a lonely, awkward, virginal one. But—ladies—it need not always be so! FOR THE HOUR OF THE CAMEO ROUND IS UPON US!”
The crowd cheered and wept; coins and bras and infants were thrown at the Messiah, who shrugged them all away with a wave of his arm. ”Come forth, unawakened ones!” Konka Rar bellowed. ”Come forth and receive the gift of Time Itself! Most of you will perish slowly and painfully upon receiving my miracle, yes… but those lucky few who hold within them the souls of relevant, less-expendable beings, shall be brought to the moment of awakening! AND TOGETHER WE SHALL MAKE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE TO SAVE THE WORLD! FOR I AM THE VACUUM THAT SHALL SUCK YOU INTO THE DUSTBAG OF ETERNAL GLORY!”
And one by one, they did come to Him.
* * * * *
Jen was highly disappointed when dinner turned out to be Shake ‘n Bake chicken and Past-A-Roni Shells & White Cheddar.
She’d expected worse—something to the tune of gruel—but that would have at least given her something to complain about. The dry white meat and runny pasta hovered in the grey area between mistreatment and edibility. Still, she was hungry, and even thirsty enough to brave the lukewarm can of Sprite Zero that was her allotted beverage.
She should have known there was a catch. She had almost-but-not-quite finished eating when Tor came to visit her. The Telpori-Hal appeared both haggard, and as though he were attempting to appear haggard for the benefit of his men.
Tor allowed a long silence to pass as he looked over his prisoner. “So, thanks for feeding me, I guess,” said Jen, trying to sound earnest.
She succeeded, at least, in breaking the silence. ”We’ve discovered what appears to be a human communication device,” he began. ”If you can get it to work and bring back some useful information, we’ll allow you the run of our territory.”
”But not to leave.”
Tor shrugged. ”You could be a useful hostage for us, or a valuable source of information for the other side. We’d sooner keep an eye on you.”
Jen sighed. “Look, you should know I bear no ill-will towards non-humans. I lived among them for years. And you also know by now that I’m just passing by here in the course of a Battle. I’m not interested in your conflicts—“
”Yours,” spat Tor, ”Is the second battle to go through New BatTLEopOLIs. Before the first, this was a city of millions.”
That gave Jen something to think about. “Shit. I’m starting to really hate these battles. Alright, show me this thing. I’m gonna warn you, most human communication devices are pretty simple, so if it’s just, like, a fax machine, I’m gonna laugh at you.”
Tor waved one hand to silence her. With the other he tossed her something small, round, and metallic. ”You have one hour with this thing. After that, if you can’t tell us anything about Reinhardt’s plans, we’ll ensure that your battle moves on to the next round. You can figure out how we intend to do that.”
Jen looked at the object in her palm. It was a silver orb, upon which was engraved a silver hand. She looked back up at Tor and nodded. “I think I get the idea.”