Re: The Phenomenal Fracas! (GBS2G6): [Round One: Afterparty]
09-11-2010, 04:42 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.
Sadie's metallic corpse loudly crashed at the ground, and the pair both exhaled a breath of relief seeing her limbs twitch no more. Muriegro idly stood around practicing some sort of impatient tic - at least, in Riko's perception - and Riko's team saw no better moment to call him up. A rather nervous-sounding scientist spoke up:
"Hi, uh, Thirty-one. This is Twenty-eight speaking. Got some questions about your disappearance..."
"Formal names, huh? Boss watching?"
"Yes, about those questions..."
"Fire away!"
"Are you in a safe position?"
"Oh god not that list again! I'm in some kind of desert with breathable air, a shelter suitable to hide in and little to no physical wounds." Riko tried to tick off as many of the questions in one go, having heard this list far too many times in his experiments on particle teleportation.
"Any other people where you are?"
"There seem to be seven others here, and we're all competing in a contest to kill each other. I made friends with one of them and kind of blew my chances with another. Oh, and some monster was trying to kill me just now, but I took care of it with some Reflex."
The voice on the other end started whispering, but at the same time started yelling angrily which combined into some kind of silent sociopathic anger Riko could imagine being mumbled from between his teeth. "You tested Reflex?"
"Yup."
"On yourself?!"
"You know it."
"Oh god, you're screwed! I'm screwed, we're all screwed! Did you take notes?"
"Well, not yet. I'll try to jot it down when I find something to write with."
"Oh, good! As long as you promise you will everyone will be just peaches!" The sarcasm in his voice was building up at an alarming rate, and Riko wondered briefly if someone could get ill from snark. "What are your coordinates?"
"Can't you just trace my call? Won't that be a lot more efficient rather than me reciting that bunch of numbers."
"Um, right. I'll get on that. In the meantime, stay where you are, and don't do anything stupid."
"When did I ever do anything stupid?"
The scientist on the other end didn't bother replying.
Riko's head dazed as along with the effects of the concoction the adrenaline from the battle faded aswell. He felt a bit more down to earth again, and came to realise he was still stuck someplace at the bottom of an elevator shaft, or something. He even felt rather thirsty, which he mentally wrote off as a side effect of the swill he recently downed, rather than the deteriorating effects of the manipulative pincushion. What he didn't realise however, was that Muriegro had been glaring at him incessantly during his call. His version of the high priest simply paced about in the room. "Now what?" he said to no one in particular.
The time spent doing frankly nothing wasn't at all sensible to Muriegro, as he had the uncanny ability to not let anything bother him. He noticed the scientist who seemed to be quite laid back with anything at all mumble something to himself, something about the time, and about waiting. The wait seemed a lot shorter than what it was in reality, and while the battle outside in Afterparty raged on, to the outer reaches of the Periphery, Riko and Muriegro idled in a forsaken pit. Until, of course, a little rift appeared in the wall. Well, a rift isn't exactly correct. It was more like a crack, but instead of giving way to the darkness one could suspect in the bottom of somewhere, they were faced with a blinding light melting slowly through the wall. The scientist instinctively jumped to the side, recognising the technology immediately. Muriegro followed suit, in a more silent fashion. A red-hot beam of compressed energy seared through the bloodstained walls, the heavy air beween the two and part of the floor, and after being shut down on repeated shouting orders from a supervisor, left a gaping hole leading to the surface of Afterparty once more.
Thatix heavily buzzed around after the bar's explosion, and it took the sorceress quite some time to get all of her body back under control. Every single firefly seemed again rejuvenated, and a part of Thatix' bond with herself was tethered apart by this new force of life. After she recollected her body and mind she flew across the empty desert, weary of any gullible chancellors daring to sneak up behind her. Always look behind you but only with one eye, she commanded herself. She was taken by surprise by the sudden flashing lights descending from the sky and wasn't really sure if they were friendly firefly sorceresses like herself which was kind of a dumb idea given the rare circumstances of her existence, or if they were more chancellors or jurors or senators or whosever red tape you had to cross to off someone. But still, she figured to keep her friends close and enemies closer though those statements weren't exactly clear on the matter of friends looking like enemies looking like friends, because when she arrived she wasn't greeted by a friendly swarm of insects she first thought buzzed through the sky (which in retrospect was a pretty dumb thought bearing in mind the roaring engines) but by the landing of an immense stellar ship, bearing with it several more daringly dressed copies of that one chancellor... the name escaped her. They all immediate took up some kind of menial task no doubt meant for plotting a trap against her. They didn't seem out to get her though, and franky, that distrubed her.
Scientist #27 has always been a bit of a bug geek, and when he got designed to the rescue mission of Thirty-one to whom he held a close vendetta for calling his collection obsessive and crazy, he wouldn't exactly describe himself as overjoyed. However, briefly after landing, he was faced with a swarm of beautiful fireflies, bright unlike any he'd seen before, and buzzing around in perfect unison, even somewhat in the shape of a human. He quickly reached into one of his pockets, pulled out a jar and carefully approached this wonder of nature. When they were caught off guard, he quickly grabbed some of them, only to be met with slight burns. In the irritation, he dunked the insect into his pot, slamming the lid shut. With a satisfied "There.", he turned around, and headed back to the ship.
Thatix only then noticed that overwhelming power she'd felt ever since the explosion of the inn, and turned around to face someone who looked like he just said 'There'. "Hey! You!" The scientist turned around to face her again and boldly pretended not to notice anyone. They both stared quizzically at one another for a while, and when the man turned back towards his friends she lost a little more of her patience. "The nerve," she mumbled. "Just what do you think you're doing to my firefly?" The scientist turned around again in the middle of the sorceress' lecture and only then realised it was indeed the insects talking to him. He then again stared at her for a while, before running away screaming.
A small group of physicists took up the trouble of locating and freeing Riko, who was still trapped between several layers of dirt and crimson steel. The charging of the digging beam always took quite a while, enough for someone to run of and, say, have a conversation with a bug wizard, but once the behemoth was fully charged, the fleeting dust and coarse ground of the Afterparty desert hardly stood a chance. Quickly, the beam was already boring its way to the trapped scientist and partner. "We've reached them!" "Turn of the laser then!" "How do you... Um..." "Come on! We'll hit the core otherwise!"
The unfortunate pair noticed, after the charring laser evaporated, the dark, damp tunnel leading to the surface. A vague voice shouted some directions to head towards somewhere, as if that wasn't clear with a tunnel back and forth to a monster's den and the relatively safe surface. The tunnel was very long though, and lended to some discussion between the two.
"So, what's your story?"
Story. Laguja up to now didn't consider the fact of creating a false background for its servant.
"Well, it's kind of long..."
"So's the road up. Go ahead."
"You see, I've laways wanted to be a doctor. you know, help people out. Ever since I was in preschool I'd play hospital with my pals there. When I finally finished my studies in both Latin and science, dad wanted me to become a lawyer like him. But I didn't, so after I finished law school, I took a bachelor in medical care. I was good, but there were always better people around, so I was always second pick for actual hospitals and stuff. So after pulling some strings, I found my way into homeopathy. And here I am now!" The priest's image again sprouted a nervous smile.
"Well, that's actually very similar to my story. It's actually kind of... of..."
The word 'odd', and along with it the mere thought anything about Muriegro's story rubbed him the wrong way, vanished from his mind.
"...amazing! The world sure is small, huh?"
"Y-Yeah..."
Back on the surface of sandy Afterparty - or to be just that bit more precise, some feet above it - Thatix buzzed about between all these colouful copies of chancellor Riko with a fex fireflies less because that wuss just ran off and wondered why he would even need that many versions of himself except maybe in a silent ballot vote or something and considering that it would be a good idea to clone yourself to run for the senate although there would of course always be a quarrel over who exactly was the senator now. Anways the clones all seemed to come from that one tunnel since one of them just came out of that tunnel so that must be the origin and after she passed by many chancellors Riko she suddenly fluttered in place a bit. "Wait, that last one was the last one." She was surprised by the stupidity of her last statement, and quickly headed back up.
Riko was relieved to finally meet everyone on his squad again, and after some friendly (and in rare cases not-so-friendly) reunions, he finally cut to the chase. "So when are we getting out of here?" "As soon as we reconnect the engine." "You dislodged the... Oh right, that digging beam! Who thought of that?" "Quentin." Riko walked up to Twenty-seven, who bashfully and begruntledly turned the other way. "I was ordered to do this", he harshly replied before Riko getting the chance to thank him. "Come on, Melvin! Show some you for once! You're an okay kid!" Melvin's loose raincoat sweeped up the dust around him a bit as he turned around and offered the enormous jerk a curt handshake. The jerk smiled.
"Chancellor, we meet again. Surprised to see me?" Every scientist around turned to face the talking swarm of bugs, each with an equally stupefied look on their faces. "Don't play your copying trick on me again! It didn't work on me before, and it won't work now! Know that Thatix The... The... That Thatix cannot be defeated!" The loss of a few fireflies seemed to impede her thinking quite a bit, but she shrugged it off and started her fiery assault.O
Sadie's metallic corpse loudly crashed at the ground, and the pair both exhaled a breath of relief seeing her limbs twitch no more. Muriegro idly stood around practicing some sort of impatient tic - at least, in Riko's perception - and Riko's team saw no better moment to call him up. A rather nervous-sounding scientist spoke up:
"Hi, uh, Thirty-one. This is Twenty-eight speaking. Got some questions about your disappearance..."
"Formal names, huh? Boss watching?"
"Yes, about those questions..."
"Fire away!"
"Are you in a safe position?"
"Oh god not that list again! I'm in some kind of desert with breathable air, a shelter suitable to hide in and little to no physical wounds." Riko tried to tick off as many of the questions in one go, having heard this list far too many times in his experiments on particle teleportation.
"Any other people where you are?"
"There seem to be seven others here, and we're all competing in a contest to kill each other. I made friends with one of them and kind of blew my chances with another. Oh, and some monster was trying to kill me just now, but I took care of it with some Reflex."
The voice on the other end started whispering, but at the same time started yelling angrily which combined into some kind of silent sociopathic anger Riko could imagine being mumbled from between his teeth. "You tested Reflex?"
"Yup."
"On yourself?!"
"You know it."
"Oh god, you're screwed! I'm screwed, we're all screwed! Did you take notes?"
"Well, not yet. I'll try to jot it down when I find something to write with."
"Oh, good! As long as you promise you will everyone will be just peaches!" The sarcasm in his voice was building up at an alarming rate, and Riko wondered briefly if someone could get ill from snark. "What are your coordinates?"
"Can't you just trace my call? Won't that be a lot more efficient rather than me reciting that bunch of numbers."
"Um, right. I'll get on that. In the meantime, stay where you are, and don't do anything stupid."
"When did I ever do anything stupid?"
The scientist on the other end didn't bother replying.
Riko's head dazed as along with the effects of the concoction the adrenaline from the battle faded aswell. He felt a bit more down to earth again, and came to realise he was still stuck someplace at the bottom of an elevator shaft, or something. He even felt rather thirsty, which he mentally wrote off as a side effect of the swill he recently downed, rather than the deteriorating effects of the manipulative pincushion. What he didn't realise however, was that Muriegro had been glaring at him incessantly during his call. His version of the high priest simply paced about in the room. "Now what?" he said to no one in particular.
The time spent doing frankly nothing wasn't at all sensible to Muriegro, as he had the uncanny ability to not let anything bother him. He noticed the scientist who seemed to be quite laid back with anything at all mumble something to himself, something about the time, and about waiting. The wait seemed a lot shorter than what it was in reality, and while the battle outside in Afterparty raged on, to the outer reaches of the Periphery, Riko and Muriegro idled in a forsaken pit. Until, of course, a little rift appeared in the wall. Well, a rift isn't exactly correct. It was more like a crack, but instead of giving way to the darkness one could suspect in the bottom of somewhere, they were faced with a blinding light melting slowly through the wall. The scientist instinctively jumped to the side, recognising the technology immediately. Muriegro followed suit, in a more silent fashion. A red-hot beam of compressed energy seared through the bloodstained walls, the heavy air beween the two and part of the floor, and after being shut down on repeated shouting orders from a supervisor, left a gaping hole leading to the surface of Afterparty once more.
Thatix heavily buzzed around after the bar's explosion, and it took the sorceress quite some time to get all of her body back under control. Every single firefly seemed again rejuvenated, and a part of Thatix' bond with herself was tethered apart by this new force of life. After she recollected her body and mind she flew across the empty desert, weary of any gullible chancellors daring to sneak up behind her. Always look behind you but only with one eye, she commanded herself. She was taken by surprise by the sudden flashing lights descending from the sky and wasn't really sure if they were friendly firefly sorceresses like herself which was kind of a dumb idea given the rare circumstances of her existence, or if they were more chancellors or jurors or senators or whosever red tape you had to cross to off someone. But still, she figured to keep her friends close and enemies closer though those statements weren't exactly clear on the matter of friends looking like enemies looking like friends, because when she arrived she wasn't greeted by a friendly swarm of insects she first thought buzzed through the sky (which in retrospect was a pretty dumb thought bearing in mind the roaring engines) but by the landing of an immense stellar ship, bearing with it several more daringly dressed copies of that one chancellor... the name escaped her. They all immediate took up some kind of menial task no doubt meant for plotting a trap against her. They didn't seem out to get her though, and franky, that distrubed her.
Scientist #27 has always been a bit of a bug geek, and when he got designed to the rescue mission of Thirty-one to whom he held a close vendetta for calling his collection obsessive and crazy, he wouldn't exactly describe himself as overjoyed. However, briefly after landing, he was faced with a swarm of beautiful fireflies, bright unlike any he'd seen before, and buzzing around in perfect unison, even somewhat in the shape of a human. He quickly reached into one of his pockets, pulled out a jar and carefully approached this wonder of nature. When they were caught off guard, he quickly grabbed some of them, only to be met with slight burns. In the irritation, he dunked the insect into his pot, slamming the lid shut. With a satisfied "There.", he turned around, and headed back to the ship.
Thatix only then noticed that overwhelming power she'd felt ever since the explosion of the inn, and turned around to face someone who looked like he just said 'There'. "Hey! You!" The scientist turned around to face her again and boldly pretended not to notice anyone. They both stared quizzically at one another for a while, and when the man turned back towards his friends she lost a little more of her patience. "The nerve," she mumbled. "Just what do you think you're doing to my firefly?" The scientist turned around again in the middle of the sorceress' lecture and only then realised it was indeed the insects talking to him. He then again stared at her for a while, before running away screaming.
A small group of physicists took up the trouble of locating and freeing Riko, who was still trapped between several layers of dirt and crimson steel. The charging of the digging beam always took quite a while, enough for someone to run of and, say, have a conversation with a bug wizard, but once the behemoth was fully charged, the fleeting dust and coarse ground of the Afterparty desert hardly stood a chance. Quickly, the beam was already boring its way to the trapped scientist and partner. "We've reached them!" "Turn of the laser then!" "How do you... Um..." "Come on! We'll hit the core otherwise!"
The unfortunate pair noticed, after the charring laser evaporated, the dark, damp tunnel leading to the surface. A vague voice shouted some directions to head towards somewhere, as if that wasn't clear with a tunnel back and forth to a monster's den and the relatively safe surface. The tunnel was very long though, and lended to some discussion between the two.
"So, what's your story?"
Story. Laguja up to now didn't consider the fact of creating a false background for its servant.
"Well, it's kind of long..."
"So's the road up. Go ahead."
"You see, I've laways wanted to be a doctor. you know, help people out. Ever since I was in preschool I'd play hospital with my pals there. When I finally finished my studies in both Latin and science, dad wanted me to become a lawyer like him. But I didn't, so after I finished law school, I took a bachelor in medical care. I was good, but there were always better people around, so I was always second pick for actual hospitals and stuff. So after pulling some strings, I found my way into homeopathy. And here I am now!" The priest's image again sprouted a nervous smile.
"Well, that's actually very similar to my story. It's actually kind of... of..."
The word 'odd', and along with it the mere thought anything about Muriegro's story rubbed him the wrong way, vanished from his mind.
"...amazing! The world sure is small, huh?"
"Y-Yeah..."
Back on the surface of sandy Afterparty - or to be just that bit more precise, some feet above it - Thatix buzzed about between all these colouful copies of chancellor Riko with a fex fireflies less because that wuss just ran off and wondered why he would even need that many versions of himself except maybe in a silent ballot vote or something and considering that it would be a good idea to clone yourself to run for the senate although there would of course always be a quarrel over who exactly was the senator now. Anways the clones all seemed to come from that one tunnel since one of them just came out of that tunnel so that must be the origin and after she passed by many chancellors Riko she suddenly fluttered in place a bit. "Wait, that last one was the last one." She was surprised by the stupidity of her last statement, and quickly headed back up.
Riko was relieved to finally meet everyone on his squad again, and after some friendly (and in rare cases not-so-friendly) reunions, he finally cut to the chase. "So when are we getting out of here?" "As soon as we reconnect the engine." "You dislodged the... Oh right, that digging beam! Who thought of that?" "Quentin." Riko walked up to Twenty-seven, who bashfully and begruntledly turned the other way. "I was ordered to do this", he harshly replied before Riko getting the chance to thank him. "Come on, Melvin! Show some you for once! You're an okay kid!" Melvin's loose raincoat sweeped up the dust around him a bit as he turned around and offered the enormous jerk a curt handshake. The jerk smiled.
"Chancellor, we meet again. Surprised to see me?" Every scientist around turned to face the talking swarm of bugs, each with an equally stupefied look on their faces. "Don't play your copying trick on me again! It didn't work on me before, and it won't work now! Know that Thatix The... The... That Thatix cannot be defeated!" The loss of a few fireflies seemed to impede her thinking quite a bit, but she shrugged it off and started her fiery assault.O
quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur.