Re: The Fearsome Encounter (GBS3G8) [Signups!]
08-08-2011, 02:58 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.
Username: Agent1022
Name: Four
Gender: Male
Race: …Human…?
Colour: #440000
Biography: Wyndham Arbor-Pryce hung from rusting chains in a pitch-dark Thought-Correctional Facility. The word ‘dungeon’ was Taboo now, and was thought to bring to mind unpleasant thoughts which, when evaluated by innocent minds, could possibly incite a Disturbance of the Peace, or worse, a Minor Revolution. On the outside, the Facility remained as generic and indistinguishable as any of the Buildings, but on the inside it was built to completely epitomize those unpleasant thoughts. Arbor-Pryce could not see the instruments that had caused him agony for…ten years? Twenty? But he knew they were there, bloody blades and spikes and syringes full of liquid fire, only centimeters from his tortured, torn flesh. They exuded an aura of evil that only those who had suffered from them knew. To his left there was the Little Serrablade #7, which had cut deeply into his arm at forty places some time ago, and still dripped slightly in the slight lull. They often left prisoners in the dark to administrate to someone else, supposedly leaving him time to reflect on his sins. And so Arbor-Pryce reflected:
“Wyndham Arbor-Pryce, the Council has deliberated.”
Arbor-Pryce slowly raised his eyes – gently, almost tentatively, they met the twelve red-robed figures sitting at the crescent table before him. The faces he saw were cold, hardened by lifetimes of government, and the eyes that met him were thrice so. Their impassive glares were daggers, embodiments of coldest steel in the frigid air. The speaking Councilor’s met his, and he almost thought he felt physical pain. It’s only the conditioning, he told himself, it’s all in your mind. But mind or no mind made not a whit of difference. The pain was there all the same.
In the depths of his dark room, he heard, faintly, a far-off scream. It was probably someone new. No one screamed after a while. Pain, every kind of it, became your companion, and you treated it as a friend because there was no one else. You let them use their tools and carve open your flesh and suffocate your lungs and set ablaze your mind because the pain was the only sense in a sense-deprived world. On the surface, Arbor-Pryce was one of those, accepting their sentence and accepting the pain. But underneath, Wyndham Arbor-Pryce lived…hated and hated and lived.
“You have been brought before us on the most grievous charges – Anarchic Proclamation with Intent to Secede, Illegally Maintaining Ideological Status for over the prescribed time limit of three consecutive years, Failing Basic Thought-Threat Tests and Destruction of Innocence. On these charges alone you merit an existential sentence in a Thought-Correctional Facility.”
He had seen this coming, but it was different to hear it in the Council-room. The words carried with them the finality that an existence-long sentence naturally held.
Hated and hated and hated. His sentence was nearly at an end, but his life was not yet over. He was Anarchic, and would bow his knee to no one. He had already been brought back from the brink more times to count, and knew that despite everything they did his body soon would fail and refuse to restart. He wasn’t ready for that.
“You will be moved to Thought-Correctional Facility #421. Your designation will be Four.”
Four. It was the number on the outside of his cell door. It was the number that appeared on his admission papers, the number that he was officially designated, the number that the Council Press gave the world. At a word and a signature, Four was him, and he was Four – and if that was what they wanted he would fucking well oblige that. Four would break the chains. Four would open the door. Four would wring the lives from every misguided loyal drone of the autocracy.
They dragged him down the corridor and opened the door into his cell. Beyond the door crouched a gaseous dark, extending its tendrils like a blot of ink on the middle of the pupil, subsuming the weak light of the white corridor. The sinuous and wraithlike blackness drew him in, whispering wisps of wisdom unheard, a susurrus lightly tasting of blood. When they had clamped him into the chains in the total murk, and retreated, he had sensed the machinery around him, felt the malice and pain that so mirrored his own. When the door closed and bolted and dark had consumed the last light he would see – the blades began their dance and Wyndham Arbor-Pryce began his scream.
It was a sharp feeling.
His heart was slowing. He wasn’t ready-
The Councilor had had the most evil sneer, safe knowing that the populace was still under their total, dominant control-
He seethed at the memory-
“This sentence will be carried about without any chance of negotiation or appeal. And Mr. Arbor-Pryce?”
He turned to face the speaking Councilor, once more feeling the pain in the back of his mind as their eyes met. He looked away, at the document in the Councilor’s hand.
“This is an order for the destruction of your donated genetic material and historical record in the Archives, to be carried out after your Incarceration.”
He tore himself from the grip of the guards in a fit of desperation, and tried to lunge for the Councillor, but one of the sentrymen fired off a stunshot-
“There will be no more Arbor-Pryces. There will never have been.”
That was the last human voice Wyndham heard-
With only darkness, pain and hatred to accompany his final breaths, Wyndham Arbor-Pryce’s heart gave its final beat, and Wyndham Arbor-Pryce died.
But hatred is not an emotion – it is a force, which compels, pulls and pushes in the same way as any other. Gravity might pluck an apple from a tree, or electromagnetism a pin from a table – Hatred might reanimate a soul, a body, to fulfill an eternal thirst for Anarchy.
When the Facility was finally unsealed, they counted 548 of 549 dead, and Four missing without a trace.
Description: Four stands…“stands” five feet ten inches tall, but only five feet nine inches of that is Four. He walks on thin air about an inch above the ground – walks as if he is moving through willpower alone, which he is. He retains the intelligence and personality of Wyndham Arbor-Pryce, but Four has given up that identity. All that is left now is the hatred, and it is the motive force moves his limbs, forces him forward, powers his body like some biological automaton. Four wears ragged clothes, the remnants of his indeterminate time in the Facility, which have lost all functional meaning and are now simply cloth covering Four’s equally ragged flesh. Four’s body is covered in a multitude of cuts and slashes from which the last blood flowed long ago. His body is not technically alive – his heart does not beat, his lungs do not breathe, he does not touch the ground – but that doesn’t stop him from killing anyone who he considers unfit to live. A body and soul brought back by the raw power of sheer hatred would hardly trifle with something as needlessly complex as biology. As a being powered by hatred, his greatest desire is to kill and destroy as much as possible, specifically hating authority and those who turn to and depend on it for every decision and guide rather than thinking for themselves – but this desire is so powerful that it overrides logical thought, leaving Four somewhat emotional and impulsively murderous. He usually stays coherent enough to make a kind of conversational sense, but since he is powered by hatred he isn’t going to be dishing out the hugs any time soon.
Items/Abilities: Four has a kind of localized telekinesis (telekismesis?) which associates itself in a field extending two meters from his body. Within it, all objects with a past associated with hatred and violence are under his telekismetic control. The longer and more turbulent the past, the easier and finer the control Four has over it. Objects with a virtuous or innocent past, however, dampen his control if he tries to pick them up and make it more difficult for him to move objects in his field. If he leaves them alone and doesn’t let them get too close to him, however, he can safely ignore them. It is for this reason that Four does not touch the ground, since it is (usually) more innocent than violent. A patch of sidewalk where a mugging once took place is not particularly fair game, whereas a battlefield has vastly more bloodshed and therefore is. Four was taken without any of the torture devices that were until recently used on him, so in terms of weaponry he has nothing but the clothes on his back… but those have a turbulently violent past too.
Username: Agent1022
Name: Four
Gender: Male
Race: …Human…?
Colour: #440000
Biography: Wyndham Arbor-Pryce hung from rusting chains in a pitch-dark Thought-Correctional Facility. The word ‘dungeon’ was Taboo now, and was thought to bring to mind unpleasant thoughts which, when evaluated by innocent minds, could possibly incite a Disturbance of the Peace, or worse, a Minor Revolution. On the outside, the Facility remained as generic and indistinguishable as any of the Buildings, but on the inside it was built to completely epitomize those unpleasant thoughts. Arbor-Pryce could not see the instruments that had caused him agony for…ten years? Twenty? But he knew they were there, bloody blades and spikes and syringes full of liquid fire, only centimeters from his tortured, torn flesh. They exuded an aura of evil that only those who had suffered from them knew. To his left there was the Little Serrablade #7, which had cut deeply into his arm at forty places some time ago, and still dripped slightly in the slight lull. They often left prisoners in the dark to administrate to someone else, supposedly leaving him time to reflect on his sins. And so Arbor-Pryce reflected:
“Wyndham Arbor-Pryce, the Council has deliberated.”
Arbor-Pryce slowly raised his eyes – gently, almost tentatively, they met the twelve red-robed figures sitting at the crescent table before him. The faces he saw were cold, hardened by lifetimes of government, and the eyes that met him were thrice so. Their impassive glares were daggers, embodiments of coldest steel in the frigid air. The speaking Councilor’s met his, and he almost thought he felt physical pain. It’s only the conditioning, he told himself, it’s all in your mind. But mind or no mind made not a whit of difference. The pain was there all the same.
In the depths of his dark room, he heard, faintly, a far-off scream. It was probably someone new. No one screamed after a while. Pain, every kind of it, became your companion, and you treated it as a friend because there was no one else. You let them use their tools and carve open your flesh and suffocate your lungs and set ablaze your mind because the pain was the only sense in a sense-deprived world. On the surface, Arbor-Pryce was one of those, accepting their sentence and accepting the pain. But underneath, Wyndham Arbor-Pryce lived…hated and hated and lived.
“You have been brought before us on the most grievous charges – Anarchic Proclamation with Intent to Secede, Illegally Maintaining Ideological Status for over the prescribed time limit of three consecutive years, Failing Basic Thought-Threat Tests and Destruction of Innocence. On these charges alone you merit an existential sentence in a Thought-Correctional Facility.”
He had seen this coming, but it was different to hear it in the Council-room. The words carried with them the finality that an existence-long sentence naturally held.
Hated and hated and hated. His sentence was nearly at an end, but his life was not yet over. He was Anarchic, and would bow his knee to no one. He had already been brought back from the brink more times to count, and knew that despite everything they did his body soon would fail and refuse to restart. He wasn’t ready for that.
“You will be moved to Thought-Correctional Facility #421. Your designation will be Four.”
Four. It was the number on the outside of his cell door. It was the number that appeared on his admission papers, the number that he was officially designated, the number that the Council Press gave the world. At a word and a signature, Four was him, and he was Four – and if that was what they wanted he would fucking well oblige that. Four would break the chains. Four would open the door. Four would wring the lives from every misguided loyal drone of the autocracy.
They dragged him down the corridor and opened the door into his cell. Beyond the door crouched a gaseous dark, extending its tendrils like a blot of ink on the middle of the pupil, subsuming the weak light of the white corridor. The sinuous and wraithlike blackness drew him in, whispering wisps of wisdom unheard, a susurrus lightly tasting of blood. When they had clamped him into the chains in the total murk, and retreated, he had sensed the machinery around him, felt the malice and pain that so mirrored his own. When the door closed and bolted and dark had consumed the last light he would see – the blades began their dance and Wyndham Arbor-Pryce began his scream.
It was a sharp feeling.
His heart was slowing. He wasn’t ready-
The Councilor had had the most evil sneer, safe knowing that the populace was still under their total, dominant control-
He seethed at the memory-
“This sentence will be carried about without any chance of negotiation or appeal. And Mr. Arbor-Pryce?”
He turned to face the speaking Councilor, once more feeling the pain in the back of his mind as their eyes met. He looked away, at the document in the Councilor’s hand.
“This is an order for the destruction of your donated genetic material and historical record in the Archives, to be carried out after your Incarceration.”
He tore himself from the grip of the guards in a fit of desperation, and tried to lunge for the Councillor, but one of the sentrymen fired off a stunshot-
“There will be no more Arbor-Pryces. There will never have been.”
That was the last human voice Wyndham heard-
With only darkness, pain and hatred to accompany his final breaths, Wyndham Arbor-Pryce’s heart gave its final beat, and Wyndham Arbor-Pryce died.
But hatred is not an emotion – it is a force, which compels, pulls and pushes in the same way as any other. Gravity might pluck an apple from a tree, or electromagnetism a pin from a table – Hatred might reanimate a soul, a body, to fulfill an eternal thirst for Anarchy.
When the Facility was finally unsealed, they counted 548 of 549 dead, and Four missing without a trace.
Description: Four stands…“stands” five feet ten inches tall, but only five feet nine inches of that is Four. He walks on thin air about an inch above the ground – walks as if he is moving through willpower alone, which he is. He retains the intelligence and personality of Wyndham Arbor-Pryce, but Four has given up that identity. All that is left now is the hatred, and it is the motive force moves his limbs, forces him forward, powers his body like some biological automaton. Four wears ragged clothes, the remnants of his indeterminate time in the Facility, which have lost all functional meaning and are now simply cloth covering Four’s equally ragged flesh. Four’s body is covered in a multitude of cuts and slashes from which the last blood flowed long ago. His body is not technically alive – his heart does not beat, his lungs do not breathe, he does not touch the ground – but that doesn’t stop him from killing anyone who he considers unfit to live. A body and soul brought back by the raw power of sheer hatred would hardly trifle with something as needlessly complex as biology. As a being powered by hatred, his greatest desire is to kill and destroy as much as possible, specifically hating authority and those who turn to and depend on it for every decision and guide rather than thinking for themselves – but this desire is so powerful that it overrides logical thought, leaving Four somewhat emotional and impulsively murderous. He usually stays coherent enough to make a kind of conversational sense, but since he is powered by hatred he isn’t going to be dishing out the hugs any time soon.
Items/Abilities: Four has a kind of localized telekinesis (telekismesis?) which associates itself in a field extending two meters from his body. Within it, all objects with a past associated with hatred and violence are under his telekismetic control. The longer and more turbulent the past, the easier and finer the control Four has over it. Objects with a virtuous or innocent past, however, dampen his control if he tries to pick them up and make it more difficult for him to move objects in his field. If he leaves them alone and doesn’t let them get too close to him, however, he can safely ignore them. It is for this reason that Four does not touch the ground, since it is (usually) more innocent than violent. A patch of sidewalk where a mugging once took place is not particularly fair game, whereas a battlefield has vastly more bloodshed and therefore is. Four was taken without any of the torture devices that were until recently used on him, so in terms of weaponry he has nothing but the clothes on his back… but those have a turbulently violent past too.
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