Re: The Fearsome Encounter (GBS3G8) [Round 1: Circumlocution]
10-24-2011, 05:11 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
"Right. Can you hear this?"
It wasn't like Vex had any way of knowing - the owl's gaze already fixated on the tome after it had crushed the cardinal - but Luchesse had, with only some fiddling with controls on Vex's part that didn't really exist.
Frank glared at the book, harbouring some very sudden-onset mixed feelings for it that had more to do with his unmitigated disgust for the Vizier.
"I was thinking you couldn't be that petty," drawled a blue jay, who was apparently competing for both Luchesse and Vex's annoyance as it jabbed an experimental beak into Encylopedia's cover, "even if I can sympathise with wanting Chordeilis gagged, so this does explain a lot. And in case you cared, Si'nit's making all manner of friends-"
"Get off!"
"Ah. So it speaks."
"Get off it," growled Luchesse, "unless it's telling you it's set to detonate in five seconds. In which case, stay there."
"Manners, Frank," smirked Reynard. How a little corvid managed to inject so much venom into a tiny shift in pose was a mystery, but so were the whereabouts of a good chunk of Reynard's victims. In a couple of notorious cases, chunks of them. "Yes, you may be biggest and baddest bird of all the big bad generals that'd still get off on being in charge of this asylum, and yes-" Reynard paused here to let Vex get another ineffectual word in edgewise "-you may decorate yourself with dissenters' entrails until you feel like a war hero again, with ribbons of intestine and tail-feather, and an iron cross that can be Si'nit's foot-"
Luchesse kicked Encylopedia aside, opting to snatch Reynard up in a talon. The book fell with an unexplosive thud at Parliament's feet, which (along with Vex's luckily-untranslated outburst) pulled the pair's attention long enough for the Marshal to compose himself.
"That is obscene, Reynard." The jay ignored his compatriot's dangerously calm tones, doing his damnedest to shrug.
Wait, was that owl speaking Tuscan?
"My point is, you'll not win the war for Parliament from without. Nor will your self-styled rise to power ever amount to anything if you do not realise that Avery was a definitive bastard."
Reynard had an actual smirk on his beak by this point. He could feel it, and it made him burst with pride and smirk even harder.
"Some of us saw fit to discuss it, as you paraded around. He named us Parliament for a reason, Frank."
The blue jay vanished. Elsewhere, a penguin stopped becoming a limp mess after Parliament's enchantments failed to sustain its distance with an extra bird, and resumed trying to gouge Cepra's eyes out.
"Do- do you parla Toscano!?" yelled Vex. It caught the Marshal's attention, anyway.
"Italiano, si. You're another contestant?"
Fuck. Italy /Former name of the Republic of Tuscany (Circa 2076)/? "I, uh... no. Non parla Toscano, or Italiano. I just recognised snatches of it - look. You were talking fine to that other bird, can any of you lot speak English? Parla fucking English?"
The fish-owl cocked his head one side. "You're an encylopedia. Which speaks."
"Hanswer his question, boy," crooned a swan. It wasn't the mute swan, and it wasn't a black one, so Luchesse felt pretty comfortable with trying to tear a chunk out of its neck when it tried to wrap itself around him.
"Ooh, fiesty has ever~" it purred, which left the fish-owl no choice but to retreat with a sense of personal violation. "Let me handle se book, se guests halways told me haI had a way with my tongue. Hyou can wait for me inside, make yourself comfortable."
The swan winked, somehow, dispelling Vex's qualms about an owl growling archaic Tuscan in the face of an apparently nymphomanic, probably-sociopathic swan that apparently spoke his goddamn language. Reynard (the blue jay) burst out of nowhere again and told a conflicted Luchesse to quit his grandstanding and come back inside. A final coquettish wink, and Frank vanished with a shudder.
"So. Halone at last, Mr. Ardayne." Behind the rather graceless bulk of the swan, the mannequin loomed motionlessly above.
A second later, its head twitched, and it stooped and grabbed the Encylopedia like it had done this every day of the life it didn't have.
"Shit, hang on-"
"Sorry, Mr. Ardayne," the swan interjected, batting a wing and not sounding the least bit sorry, "but Parlhament doesn't agree with yours truly sat Ms Samedi would make delightful company. Hour distraction's sadly exhausted himself, so hwe must depart."
Vex couldn't think of a way to explain he'd lost his coin without losing the coin to the glorified birdcage, so settled for fuming as the two strange vessels marched for the treeline.
"Right. Can you hear this?"
It wasn't like Vex had any way of knowing - the owl's gaze already fixated on the tome after it had crushed the cardinal - but Luchesse had, with only some fiddling with controls on Vex's part that didn't really exist.
Frank glared at the book, harbouring some very sudden-onset mixed feelings for it that had more to do with his unmitigated disgust for the Vizier.
"I was thinking you couldn't be that petty," drawled a blue jay, who was apparently competing for both Luchesse and Vex's annoyance as it jabbed an experimental beak into Encylopedia's cover, "even if I can sympathise with wanting Chordeilis gagged, so this does explain a lot. And in case you cared, Si'nit's making all manner of friends-"
"Get off!"
"Ah. So it speaks."
"Get off it," growled Luchesse, "unless it's telling you it's set to detonate in five seconds. In which case, stay there."
"Manners, Frank," smirked Reynard. How a little corvid managed to inject so much venom into a tiny shift in pose was a mystery, but so were the whereabouts of a good chunk of Reynard's victims. In a couple of notorious cases, chunks of them. "Yes, you may be biggest and baddest bird of all the big bad generals that'd still get off on being in charge of this asylum, and yes-" Reynard paused here to let Vex get another ineffectual word in edgewise "-you may decorate yourself with dissenters' entrails until you feel like a war hero again, with ribbons of intestine and tail-feather, and an iron cross that can be Si'nit's foot-"
Luchesse kicked Encylopedia aside, opting to snatch Reynard up in a talon. The book fell with an unexplosive thud at Parliament's feet, which (along with Vex's luckily-untranslated outburst) pulled the pair's attention long enough for the Marshal to compose himself.
"That is obscene, Reynard." The jay ignored his compatriot's dangerously calm tones, doing his damnedest to shrug.
Wait, was that owl speaking Tuscan?
"My point is, you'll not win the war for Parliament from without. Nor will your self-styled rise to power ever amount to anything if you do not realise that Avery was a definitive bastard."
Reynard had an actual smirk on his beak by this point. He could feel it, and it made him burst with pride and smirk even harder.
"Some of us saw fit to discuss it, as you paraded around. He named us Parliament for a reason, Frank."
The blue jay vanished. Elsewhere, a penguin stopped becoming a limp mess after Parliament's enchantments failed to sustain its distance with an extra bird, and resumed trying to gouge Cepra's eyes out.
"Do- do you parla Toscano!?" yelled Vex. It caught the Marshal's attention, anyway.
"Italiano, si. You're another contestant?"
Fuck. Italy /Former name of the Republic of Tuscany (Circa 2076)/? "I, uh... no. Non parla Toscano, or Italiano. I just recognised snatches of it - look. You were talking fine to that other bird, can any of you lot speak English? Parla fucking English?"
The fish-owl cocked his head one side. "You're an encylopedia. Which speaks."
"Hanswer his question, boy," crooned a swan. It wasn't the mute swan, and it wasn't a black one, so Luchesse felt pretty comfortable with trying to tear a chunk out of its neck when it tried to wrap itself around him.
"Ooh, fiesty has ever~" it purred, which left the fish-owl no choice but to retreat with a sense of personal violation. "Let me handle se book, se guests halways told me haI had a way with my tongue. Hyou can wait for me inside, make yourself comfortable."
The swan winked, somehow, dispelling Vex's qualms about an owl growling archaic Tuscan in the face of an apparently nymphomanic, probably-sociopathic swan that apparently spoke his goddamn language. Reynard (the blue jay) burst out of nowhere again and told a conflicted Luchesse to quit his grandstanding and come back inside. A final coquettish wink, and Frank vanished with a shudder.
"So. Halone at last, Mr. Ardayne." Behind the rather graceless bulk of the swan, the mannequin loomed motionlessly above.
A second later, its head twitched, and it stooped and grabbed the Encylopedia like it had done this every day of the life it didn't have.
"Shit, hang on-"
"Sorry, Mr. Ardayne," the swan interjected, batting a wing and not sounding the least bit sorry, "but Parlhament doesn't agree with yours truly sat Ms Samedi would make delightful company. Hour distraction's sadly exhausted himself, so hwe must depart."
Vex couldn't think of a way to explain he'd lost his coin without losing the coin to the glorified birdcage, so settled for fuming as the two strange vessels marched for the treeline.
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