Re: Mini-Grand 5106 [Round 3: Thundertower]
10-19-2011, 10:40 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by XX.
she is the ghost with a thousand bodies
she is the one coming for you
but they’ll never find you here.
Senior Thundergod Leannadora “Lenie” St. Augustine pressed her the palms of her hands to her temples. She was not having a good day.
Despite what the title may have otherwise indicated she was not really a god, and therefore didn’t have the option of turning the panicked Head of Security into a convenient animal or banishing him to basically any place that wasn’t here. She sighed, fiddling with the decorative lightning bolt plaque on her desk. Things would be so much easier if a blatant disrespect for human rights was a job perk.
“Ma’am, I really don’t think you understand,” the nervous-looking twentysomething was babbling. He had his finger nervously resting on the trigger of his lightning pistol, as if at any second he could solve his problems by shooting the floor. “This isn’t like usual-”
Lenie gave him a stern look. “You said a group of women, right? These women?” She pointed to a nearby monitor. It cycled rapidly between several shots of girls in various stages of nudity and cannibalism.
“Yes, but-”
“Clark,” the Thundergod said, “How many break-ins have we had this month?”
“…Three.”
“Not including this one. They don’t even have uniforms for God’s sake. The naked one might be some kind of big name wherever she’s from, judging by the way she’s giving orders, but honestly?” She sat back into a chair that gave the impression like the cows who had died to make it had been fed entirely on high-denomination bills. “I’m not concerned. They’ll just want to harness the lightning for whatever little scheme they have going on like every other upstart villain that comes through.”
“But Len- Thundergod,” Clark said, “These ones are different. I know they are. Look at them. Look at their faces.”
Lenie leaned in toward the screen reluctantly. What she saw there was enough to shake her more than nearly anything else since she’d taken the job ten years ago.
“Those aren’t…”
Clark nodded grimly. “Unique character models. If you look closely you can even see that they’re different heights."
“Jesus,” Lenie said. “Protagonists.”
___________________
the ghost runs in the shadows with the red god’s gifts and she hungers
she’s starving but all she hears is the howls of the hunters, running past her feet
the red god he says “Don’t worry about them, little sister. Their souls will return to me from these bodies. They are the ghosts of my children, little one. They are your kin.”
she listens but all she thinks of is her cats and her winter, dying in the snow
she runs with the hunters by her side, through the hall and over the mice before they squeak, before their little mouse jaws open there is a hunter to catch them and a hunter to kill. black shadows in the hall. mice are small in death, paws outstretched and little red mouths on their necks
the hunters whisper to her, this ghost. black and white and grey where they meet the metal, they tell her of strange forests where the mice hunt spiders and trees grow underground and the leaves are made of ice. they tell her of their children and the lives they lived before Winter came for them. i killed death, she says, but they do not understand, these others. they know a different winter.
she runs with the ghosts of the dead and mourns for Winter, and she runs until she stops
________________
The door to the Senior Thundergod’s office was reinforced triple-barred steel with a randomly-encoded DNA lock. In case the primary lock failed or was tampered with it also included a generator that would upon activation send somewhere between ten and twenty thousand volts through the handle. The door was considered impenetrable by everyone in the facility; naturally this meant that the first thing any intruder did was break it down. For this reason the hinges had long since been replaced with painted cardboard, for convenience and ease of replacement.
Lenie was subsequently not even slightly surprised when her door suddenly collapsed inwards, though she did pause when the head of an enormous white spider squeezed through. Most of the Thundertower’s assailants were humanoid, though that wasn’t to say that they didn’t get the odd war mecha or beast/human hybrid scientist. She shuffled the papers on her desk idly as the rest of the spider’s bulk managed to squeeze into the office, tragically ending the life of an innocent bookshelf.
“Let’s get this over with,” the Thundergod said. “Are you here for the lightning? Oh please don’t hurt us, we’ll give you anything you want, just let us live, the keys are in the safe under the desk, et cetera et cetera.” She eyed the spider disapprovingly over the top of her glasses. “I’d appreciate it if you could move this along, by the way. It’s been nearly an hour since you arrived.”
The spider tilted its head in a way that could have indicated any number of things. “My children are dead,” it said, in a voice that Lenie’s years of experience lead her to believe was feminine. “The river killed them all. The river is here and I am here and my children are dead. She killed them all.”
Lenie frowned. This wasn’t standard protocol at all. “Are, um, are you quite sure you’re not here for the lightning?”
A long black leg crept lazily over the top of the Thundergod’s desk, pushing over her stack of papers into her lap. She shrieked involuntarily as the rest of a slick black spider followed, spilling an inkwell onto the mahogany surface. It looked at her with beady red eyes and hissed.
“My children,” the spider said again. More and more of the creatures were pouring in, spreading over the walls and ceiling in a silent black tide. The white spider advanced on Lenie through the swarm, pale eyes focused on the Thundergod’s face. Lenie had never before considered herself an arachnophobe but she found herself pondering a conversion as the monster’s mandibles crept with terrifying certainty towards her neck.
“The river is here. The river has come. You will hunt the river as I have, as my children did, and you will stab it through its murdering heart. You will do this now and I will save you. My children are lonely, little mouse. Do not be the one to comfort them in death.”
she is the ghost with a thousand bodies
she is the one coming for you
but they’ll never find you here.
Senior Thundergod Leannadora “Lenie” St. Augustine pressed her the palms of her hands to her temples. She was not having a good day.
Despite what the title may have otherwise indicated she was not really a god, and therefore didn’t have the option of turning the panicked Head of Security into a convenient animal or banishing him to basically any place that wasn’t here. She sighed, fiddling with the decorative lightning bolt plaque on her desk. Things would be so much easier if a blatant disrespect for human rights was a job perk.
“Ma’am, I really don’t think you understand,” the nervous-looking twentysomething was babbling. He had his finger nervously resting on the trigger of his lightning pistol, as if at any second he could solve his problems by shooting the floor. “This isn’t like usual-”
Lenie gave him a stern look. “You said a group of women, right? These women?” She pointed to a nearby monitor. It cycled rapidly between several shots of girls in various stages of nudity and cannibalism.
“Yes, but-”
“Clark,” the Thundergod said, “How many break-ins have we had this month?”
“…Three.”
“Not including this one. They don’t even have uniforms for God’s sake. The naked one might be some kind of big name wherever she’s from, judging by the way she’s giving orders, but honestly?” She sat back into a chair that gave the impression like the cows who had died to make it had been fed entirely on high-denomination bills. “I’m not concerned. They’ll just want to harness the lightning for whatever little scheme they have going on like every other upstart villain that comes through.”
“But Len- Thundergod,” Clark said, “These ones are different. I know they are. Look at them. Look at their faces.”
Lenie leaned in toward the screen reluctantly. What she saw there was enough to shake her more than nearly anything else since she’d taken the job ten years ago.
“Those aren’t…”
Clark nodded grimly. “Unique character models. If you look closely you can even see that they’re different heights."
“Jesus,” Lenie said. “Protagonists.”
___________________
the ghost runs in the shadows with the red god’s gifts and she hungers
she’s starving but all she hears is the howls of the hunters, running past her feet
the red god he says “Don’t worry about them, little sister. Their souls will return to me from these bodies. They are the ghosts of my children, little one. They are your kin.”
she listens but all she thinks of is her cats and her winter, dying in the snow
she runs with the hunters by her side, through the hall and over the mice before they squeak, before their little mouse jaws open there is a hunter to catch them and a hunter to kill. black shadows in the hall. mice are small in death, paws outstretched and little red mouths on their necks
the hunters whisper to her, this ghost. black and white and grey where they meet the metal, they tell her of strange forests where the mice hunt spiders and trees grow underground and the leaves are made of ice. they tell her of their children and the lives they lived before Winter came for them. i killed death, she says, but they do not understand, these others. they know a different winter.
she runs with the ghosts of the dead and mourns for Winter, and she runs until she stops
________________
The door to the Senior Thundergod’s office was reinforced triple-barred steel with a randomly-encoded DNA lock. In case the primary lock failed or was tampered with it also included a generator that would upon activation send somewhere between ten and twenty thousand volts through the handle. The door was considered impenetrable by everyone in the facility; naturally this meant that the first thing any intruder did was break it down. For this reason the hinges had long since been replaced with painted cardboard, for convenience and ease of replacement.
Lenie was subsequently not even slightly surprised when her door suddenly collapsed inwards, though she did pause when the head of an enormous white spider squeezed through. Most of the Thundertower’s assailants were humanoid, though that wasn’t to say that they didn’t get the odd war mecha or beast/human hybrid scientist. She shuffled the papers on her desk idly as the rest of the spider’s bulk managed to squeeze into the office, tragically ending the life of an innocent bookshelf.
“Let’s get this over with,” the Thundergod said. “Are you here for the lightning? Oh please don’t hurt us, we’ll give you anything you want, just let us live, the keys are in the safe under the desk, et cetera et cetera.” She eyed the spider disapprovingly over the top of her glasses. “I’d appreciate it if you could move this along, by the way. It’s been nearly an hour since you arrived.”
The spider tilted its head in a way that could have indicated any number of things. “My children are dead,” it said, in a voice that Lenie’s years of experience lead her to believe was feminine. “The river killed them all. The river is here and I am here and my children are dead. She killed them all.”
Lenie frowned. This wasn’t standard protocol at all. “Are, um, are you quite sure you’re not here for the lightning?”
A long black leg crept lazily over the top of the Thundergod’s desk, pushing over her stack of papers into her lap. She shrieked involuntarily as the rest of a slick black spider followed, spilling an inkwell onto the mahogany surface. It looked at her with beady red eyes and hissed.
“My children,” the spider said again. More and more of the creatures were pouring in, spreading over the walls and ceiling in a silent black tide. The white spider advanced on Lenie through the swarm, pale eyes focused on the Thundergod’s face. Lenie had never before considered herself an arachnophobe but she found herself pondering a conversion as the monster’s mandibles crept with terrifying certainty towards her neck.
“The river is here. The river has come. You will hunt the river as I have, as my children did, and you will stab it through its murdering heart. You will do this now and I will save you. My children are lonely, little mouse. Do not be the one to comfort them in death.”