Re: The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Four: New Battleopolis!]
12-19-2011, 07:13 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Interesting
but I refuse
The man smiled, without a hint of malice.
"That's quite all right! It shan't matter in the wider scheme of things whether you do or not."
How about in my scheme of things then
what of my shattered world and missing friend
does lending your apparently limitless potential extend to such a piddling matter in your beauteaous future ruins where the grandmasters once stood
"Hey, one thing at a time, cool? We're still searching for the necessary equipment, but once we've got it we can easily execute a memetic scan across everyone registered on the Network-"
Xadrez smacked the man with his free hand, hefting a stone chess piece.
Ive heard enough
Ive lost patience in your procrastination
do you take me for an idiot
I know tactics and the laying of a trap and I am beginning to doubt you have the aptitude or lack of raw ability to necessitate such meticulous planning
I may be forgivven for concluding that you amalgam you inelegant brute are merely stalling
and that kracht was right
and regardless of that being true or not I will not suffer
being played
like a fool
---
Hans Sliverman's eyes snapped open. Another nightmare, ending in those same fateful words.
"You'll never wake up."
He merely blinked blearily - far too used to his call to consciousness - and extricated himself from the window by which he'd slept. Ignoring the fire escape he'd climbed to reach his perch last night, he leapt into the alley with a flawless landing three floors down.
Hans' chief regret right now (he had a lot) was not that he hadn't eaten in a week. Rather, he regretted that he hadn't had to.
The man in the tyrant shell sighed, and disengaged his assorted proximity sensors and lifesign alerts. Those could warn of unwelcome attention in the night, but signals like that would only attract it on Battleopolis' streets.
With resignation, he pulled his hoodie up over his tyrant face, and proceeded with his transient life.
---
Jen, meanwhile, was elsewhere. It wasn't green, and other than that it was a concertedly generic landscape seemingly inhospitable to adjectives, but not particularly hospitable to anything else (though that wasn't to say it was inhospitable). It was neither pleasant nor threatening, and Jen thought very little of it beyond a mild expectation of something waiting to happen.
Something verdant this way came, at an ungainly-elegant lope. The creature seemed some jellied amalgam of bird and eel and lizard, and chattered a greeting as it approached Jen. It had front limbs like a crane's legs, yet strutted on its twiglike toes, and only had a tail where its back half should've been.
It glowed like a unicorn in lime, and a tingling in the back of Jen's eyeballs told her this was an envoy of the Place. She reached out to pet it, but a tingling on the front of her eyeballs reminded her of Kracht.
"Hello," she ventured, instead. The envoy pricked up its crests, surprised she said things it understood.
"Sunrise," it replied, apparently with the implication it was happy to see the girl, albeit on some benefactor's behalf. Radiation's tickle aside, Jen was glad for the creature's affection, the kind she supposed you'd expect from an old family pet. She studied the creature's rather rudimentary neon face for the usual signs of intelligence, but it merely grinned.
"So, what happened? Am I dead?"
"Metal and smoke." An unwelcome idea. Its claws tapped pensive on the forgettable earth, as it tried to string ideas together. "Roots burrow, burrow. Deepest sunlight-" Jen somehow parsed that was her, "-the brushed-ones and the fount. Envoy's end, envoy's bliss, by leaf and vine and Tender.
Poisoned water. Poissoned water." The way it flowed into every crack, seeking weaknesses in the stone. Spoiling fruit and rotting ancient hearts. Jen laughed a bit at that.
"You speak French?"
It cocked its head to one side, and blinked. It knew confusion, but knew nothing which was a metaphor for it.
"Flood," it chirped. Something inexorable, inescapable, and irritatingly non-specific (to Jen's comprehension of this banana-brained metaphor mess.) She slumped down in whatever grew in the soil here, and scowled at her unicorn.
"Come on, doc. I know this is tough for both of us, but just give it to me straight. You're from the Place, right?"
"Smoke."
"Oh. You're... a battler, then?"
"The palanquin." It was referring to itself, but more about the associated aspect of uncertainty. "Rhizome, leaf mould. Leaves-" and their rustling, their noise- "smoke."
"Wait, someone from the Place sent you? To find me?"
"World Tree," replied the creature, but it shivered. Jen missed the metaphor that time, sitting up sharply.
"The World Tree?"
"World Tree!" trilled Sen. The girl was about to ask it lead her to it, but it was already cantering off across the landscape. Jen stared for a moment, then scrambled to her feet and gave chase.
Interesting
but I refuse
The man smiled, without a hint of malice.
"That's quite all right! It shan't matter in the wider scheme of things whether you do or not."
How about in my scheme of things then
what of my shattered world and missing friend
does lending your apparently limitless potential extend to such a piddling matter in your beauteaous future ruins where the grandmasters once stood
"Hey, one thing at a time, cool? We're still searching for the necessary equipment, but once we've got it we can easily execute a memetic scan across everyone registered on the Network-"
Xadrez smacked the man with his free hand, hefting a stone chess piece.
Ive heard enough
Ive lost patience in your procrastination
do you take me for an idiot
I know tactics and the laying of a trap and I am beginning to doubt you have the aptitude or lack of raw ability to necessitate such meticulous planning
I may be forgivven for concluding that you amalgam you inelegant brute are merely stalling
and that kracht was right
and regardless of that being true or not I will not suffer
being played
like a fool
---
Hans Sliverman's eyes snapped open. Another nightmare, ending in those same fateful words.
"You'll never wake up."
He merely blinked blearily - far too used to his call to consciousness - and extricated himself from the window by which he'd slept. Ignoring the fire escape he'd climbed to reach his perch last night, he leapt into the alley with a flawless landing three floors down.
Hans' chief regret right now (he had a lot) was not that he hadn't eaten in a week. Rather, he regretted that he hadn't had to.
The man in the tyrant shell sighed, and disengaged his assorted proximity sensors and lifesign alerts. Those could warn of unwelcome attention in the night, but signals like that would only attract it on Battleopolis' streets.
With resignation, he pulled his hoodie up over his tyrant face, and proceeded with his transient life.
---
Jen, meanwhile, was elsewhere. It wasn't green, and other than that it was a concertedly generic landscape seemingly inhospitable to adjectives, but not particularly hospitable to anything else (though that wasn't to say it was inhospitable). It was neither pleasant nor threatening, and Jen thought very little of it beyond a mild expectation of something waiting to happen.
Something verdant this way came, at an ungainly-elegant lope. The creature seemed some jellied amalgam of bird and eel and lizard, and chattered a greeting as it approached Jen. It had front limbs like a crane's legs, yet strutted on its twiglike toes, and only had a tail where its back half should've been.
It glowed like a unicorn in lime, and a tingling in the back of Jen's eyeballs told her this was an envoy of the Place. She reached out to pet it, but a tingling on the front of her eyeballs reminded her of Kracht.
"Hello," she ventured, instead. The envoy pricked up its crests, surprised she said things it understood.
"Sunrise," it replied, apparently with the implication it was happy to see the girl, albeit on some benefactor's behalf. Radiation's tickle aside, Jen was glad for the creature's affection, the kind she supposed you'd expect from an old family pet. She studied the creature's rather rudimentary neon face for the usual signs of intelligence, but it merely grinned.
"So, what happened? Am I dead?"
"Metal and smoke." An unwelcome idea. Its claws tapped pensive on the forgettable earth, as it tried to string ideas together. "Roots burrow, burrow. Deepest sunlight-" Jen somehow parsed that was her, "-the brushed-ones and the fount. Envoy's end, envoy's bliss, by leaf and vine and Tender.
Poisoned water. Poissoned water." The way it flowed into every crack, seeking weaknesses in the stone. Spoiling fruit and rotting ancient hearts. Jen laughed a bit at that.
"You speak French?"
It cocked its head to one side, and blinked. It knew confusion, but knew nothing which was a metaphor for it.
"Flood," it chirped. Something inexorable, inescapable, and irritatingly non-specific (to Jen's comprehension of this banana-brained metaphor mess.) She slumped down in whatever grew in the soil here, and scowled at her unicorn.
"Come on, doc. I know this is tough for both of us, but just give it to me straight. You're from the Place, right?"
"Smoke."
"Oh. You're... a battler, then?"
"The palanquin." It was referring to itself, but more about the associated aspect of uncertainty. "Rhizome, leaf mould. Leaves-" and their rustling, their noise- "smoke."
"Wait, someone from the Place sent you? To find me?"
"World Tree," replied the creature, but it shivered. Jen missed the metaphor that time, sitting up sharply.
"The World Tree?"
"World Tree!" trilled Sen. The girl was about to ask it lead her to it, but it was already cantering off across the landscape. Jen stared for a moment, then scrambled to her feet and gave chase.
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