Re: LAST. THING. STANDING. [S!1][ROUND ONE: TELEVISION LAND]
12-07-2011, 07:52 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by The Deleter.
The only thing that mattered was the evidence. Clint Gladwell knew this somewhere deep in his middle-aged bones, and it was backed up by reality. The LAPD couldn’t just point fingers. It had to have solid evidence that added up to one thing – this man or woman shot or stabbed or did drugs or trafficked children. This person was scum and had to be put away.
Right now, though, at 1AM in the morning, this evidence wasn’t adding up for him.
It was mostly blood and bodies. Three bodies, to be exact, lying near the squad car they had driven in life. They had been cut open like a knife through butter. It wasn’t pretty. Genre wavered as it tried to cope with keeping the violence family friendly, and then asserted itself. Lieutenant Gladwell was a world certified badass, a dogged pursuer of justice and friend to all children. A few spools of intestines wouldn’t even faze him.
Clint ran a hand through his scruffy yet somehow stylish blond hair and walked towards the scene, being careful not to step in the blood. This suit was hell to dry-clean.
“What have we got?” he snapped at Detective Jake Teall, their bodies man. The mousy-faced man wasn’t even bothering to do his routine. On the contrary, he looked quite pale.
“World’s biggest butcher shop, boss,” he replied.
“Hell of a selection. I’d hate to see this guy’s back room.”
“Back room nothing. This guy’s going public.”
This sort of banter was normal. Genre demanded that nobody in a crime scene investigation said anything of worth.
“Any survivors,” Gladwell managed, after a few more minutes of that sort of thing.
“One. He’s in LA General. Babbling something about a dude in medieval armour kidnapping a kid.”
Clint took out his sunglasses. Even though it was night.
“So you might say this was a…”
He slipped them on and stood at just the right angle, so they caught the light.
“…knight-time murder.”
---
“Wow!”
Tim and Alaster had found the rest of the city.
It was so bright! How could something at night be so bright? There were so many lights everywhere, in blue and green and red and colours Tim didn’t even have names for! And they weren’t torches! They were something else! Maybe it was magic! And the people! They were everywhere and they dressed funny! Especially the women! You could see their legs! That was apparently rude, but Tim was eight and only had a vague idea about this. The wizards didn’t talk much about women for some reason. Oh well.
And everyone seemed really happy for some reason. Maybe it was a party! And there were things, like carriages, but they moved without horses! And the music didn’t sound like music, it sounded like an earthquake! It felt like one too! He could feel it in his ribs when he went near the places with music! And, and the ground was funny, and there were signs everywhere, and he could see how tall the buildings were now, and wow, they were HUGE! And the smell was weird, like the place was kinda lived-in but not in a bad way, and, and…
Tim was baffled and amazed by everything. He tried to get into some places, with flashy lights and loud music, but there had been people standing next to the door who said he was too young. One or two had told him to go home.
Well, one had said, “Why don’t you go home to your mom?”
That had hurt.
But it didn’t matter, because everything was so new! It was big and strange and kinda scary, too. But at least they were safe though.
Alaster had no such culture shock issues. It was focused on their initial objective – to find a television. But there seemed to be few things that matched a description around here. It was also aware of people giving it and the boy strange looks, and whilst it did not have the capability to feel uncomfortable or threatened, it knew that being in the open would draw attention. There would probably be a television nearby. Find it, and find a different world.
The question of what to do if it found a competitor occurred to it.
Never kill. The boy had asked it one day what its purpose was. It had answered honestly, because lying was an unknowable concept to it. It was created to protect him. To defend him from harm. To kill, if necessary. But the boy had been insistent. Never kill. Killing humans was Bad. Alaster didn’t understand what Bad was, but Bad was to be avoided. Killing, even to defend the boy, was to be avoided if possible.
It had killed the policemen because they had attacked him and the boy. Somewhere, in its memory crystal, that fact didn’t sit right.
It was probably nothing. Just a tuning issue.
“Hey, Alaster! Are these tele-thingies?”
They were outside a shop of some sort. It had a glass front. That was another thing! There was lots of glass. Tim thought glass was expensive, so maybe all these people were rich. He didn’t know. Anyway, on the other side of the glass were lots of box-things, and they had pictures on them. Moving pictures! That wasn’t too weird. Tim had used the scrying glass before.
Right now, it was showing… something. Tim’s eyes widened as he recognised people. People from the arena! The other wizard with the money elemental (Tim knew about elementals, but that was taught to senior wizards), the blobby thing and the drippy lizard person were all on the floor of a room someplace. Everyone looked very confused. But how had they got there? Was that how televisions worked? This was what they needed, right?
The third question was answered, along with maybe the first, by Freefall flopping out of the front of a large plasma screen inside the store.
“Ow.”
The superheroine pushed herself upwards, making a mental note to lighten up before travelling like that, and met a pair of pointy shoes. On top of those shoes was the rest of Timothy.
“Oh. You’re the lady from the arena! Hi!”
---
Alaster perked up at the sound of sirens.
The sword was still bloody. The golem would never find the time to clean it at this rate. But the boy’s safety came first.
“Pass the can-opener,” muttered Lieutenant Gladwell as he performed a perfect power-slide across a city intersection, coming into view of the suit of armour that matched the descriptions. Hell of a sword he had, though.
“Maybe he could carve Thanksgiving turkey in his cell when I-”
Alaster also had a hell of a throwing arm.
The black four-by-four that Clint loved so much, unable to cope with four foot of magical steel embedded in its front, screamed, skewed sideways, tipped over and rolled for a considerable distance before slowly grinding to a halt, leaving a lot of sparks, a hubcab and a few unidentified bits in its wake.
Alaster nodded, stepped up to the stricken vehicle and slid the Vorpal blade out of its temporary home, before turning and clanking back into the electronics store.
Gladwell, meanwhile, groaned and shook his head. This sort of thing almost never happened. Sometimes, when things were Serious, cars got flipped and blew up, but it never usually happened to him. He’d been shot a lot, but they were all fake deaths to lure gang members in or something. Too badass to die, or something.
Thankfully, the other sirens were closing in. He didn’t need the backup as such, but it was nice to know they were there.
He finished kicking out the window, rolled himself from underneath his cruiser, and rose, straightening his sunglasses as the car began to catch fire.
---
“Sorry, miss. Alaster does that sometimes.”
Alaster didn’t offer its own wit, scooping up Timothy and striding out of the store’s back door before Freefall could intervene. Tim managed to wave at her before they vanished from sight.
The only thing that mattered was the evidence. Clint Gladwell knew this somewhere deep in his middle-aged bones, and it was backed up by reality. The LAPD couldn’t just point fingers. It had to have solid evidence that added up to one thing – this man or woman shot or stabbed or did drugs or trafficked children. This person was scum and had to be put away.
Right now, though, at 1AM in the morning, this evidence wasn’t adding up for him.
It was mostly blood and bodies. Three bodies, to be exact, lying near the squad car they had driven in life. They had been cut open like a knife through butter. It wasn’t pretty. Genre wavered as it tried to cope with keeping the violence family friendly, and then asserted itself. Lieutenant Gladwell was a world certified badass, a dogged pursuer of justice and friend to all children. A few spools of intestines wouldn’t even faze him.
Clint ran a hand through his scruffy yet somehow stylish blond hair and walked towards the scene, being careful not to step in the blood. This suit was hell to dry-clean.
“What have we got?” he snapped at Detective Jake Teall, their bodies man. The mousy-faced man wasn’t even bothering to do his routine. On the contrary, he looked quite pale.
“World’s biggest butcher shop, boss,” he replied.
“Hell of a selection. I’d hate to see this guy’s back room.”
“Back room nothing. This guy’s going public.”
This sort of banter was normal. Genre demanded that nobody in a crime scene investigation said anything of worth.
“Any survivors,” Gladwell managed, after a few more minutes of that sort of thing.
“One. He’s in LA General. Babbling something about a dude in medieval armour kidnapping a kid.”
Clint took out his sunglasses. Even though it was night.
“So you might say this was a…”
He slipped them on and stood at just the right angle, so they caught the light.
“…knight-time murder.”
---
“Wow!”
Tim and Alaster had found the rest of the city.
It was so bright! How could something at night be so bright? There were so many lights everywhere, in blue and green and red and colours Tim didn’t even have names for! And they weren’t torches! They were something else! Maybe it was magic! And the people! They were everywhere and they dressed funny! Especially the women! You could see their legs! That was apparently rude, but Tim was eight and only had a vague idea about this. The wizards didn’t talk much about women for some reason. Oh well.
And everyone seemed really happy for some reason. Maybe it was a party! And there were things, like carriages, but they moved without horses! And the music didn’t sound like music, it sounded like an earthquake! It felt like one too! He could feel it in his ribs when he went near the places with music! And, and the ground was funny, and there were signs everywhere, and he could see how tall the buildings were now, and wow, they were HUGE! And the smell was weird, like the place was kinda lived-in but not in a bad way, and, and…
Tim was baffled and amazed by everything. He tried to get into some places, with flashy lights and loud music, but there had been people standing next to the door who said he was too young. One or two had told him to go home.
Well, one had said, “Why don’t you go home to your mom?”
That had hurt.
But it didn’t matter, because everything was so new! It was big and strange and kinda scary, too. But at least they were safe though.
Alaster had no such culture shock issues. It was focused on their initial objective – to find a television. But there seemed to be few things that matched a description around here. It was also aware of people giving it and the boy strange looks, and whilst it did not have the capability to feel uncomfortable or threatened, it knew that being in the open would draw attention. There would probably be a television nearby. Find it, and find a different world.
The question of what to do if it found a competitor occurred to it.
Never kill. The boy had asked it one day what its purpose was. It had answered honestly, because lying was an unknowable concept to it. It was created to protect him. To defend him from harm. To kill, if necessary. But the boy had been insistent. Never kill. Killing humans was Bad. Alaster didn’t understand what Bad was, but Bad was to be avoided. Killing, even to defend the boy, was to be avoided if possible.
It had killed the policemen because they had attacked him and the boy. Somewhere, in its memory crystal, that fact didn’t sit right.
It was probably nothing. Just a tuning issue.
“Hey, Alaster! Are these tele-thingies?”
They were outside a shop of some sort. It had a glass front. That was another thing! There was lots of glass. Tim thought glass was expensive, so maybe all these people were rich. He didn’t know. Anyway, on the other side of the glass were lots of box-things, and they had pictures on them. Moving pictures! That wasn’t too weird. Tim had used the scrying glass before.
Right now, it was showing… something. Tim’s eyes widened as he recognised people. People from the arena! The other wizard with the money elemental (Tim knew about elementals, but that was taught to senior wizards), the blobby thing and the drippy lizard person were all on the floor of a room someplace. Everyone looked very confused. But how had they got there? Was that how televisions worked? This was what they needed, right?
The third question was answered, along with maybe the first, by Freefall flopping out of the front of a large plasma screen inside the store.
“Ow.”
The superheroine pushed herself upwards, making a mental note to lighten up before travelling like that, and met a pair of pointy shoes. On top of those shoes was the rest of Timothy.
“Oh. You’re the lady from the arena! Hi!”
---
Alaster perked up at the sound of sirens.
The sword was still bloody. The golem would never find the time to clean it at this rate. But the boy’s safety came first.
“Pass the can-opener,” muttered Lieutenant Gladwell as he performed a perfect power-slide across a city intersection, coming into view of the suit of armour that matched the descriptions. Hell of a sword he had, though.
“Maybe he could carve Thanksgiving turkey in his cell when I-”
Alaster also had a hell of a throwing arm.
The black four-by-four that Clint loved so much, unable to cope with four foot of magical steel embedded in its front, screamed, skewed sideways, tipped over and rolled for a considerable distance before slowly grinding to a halt, leaving a lot of sparks, a hubcab and a few unidentified bits in its wake.
Alaster nodded, stepped up to the stricken vehicle and slid the Vorpal blade out of its temporary home, before turning and clanking back into the electronics store.
Gladwell, meanwhile, groaned and shook his head. This sort of thing almost never happened. Sometimes, when things were Serious, cars got flipped and blew up, but it never usually happened to him. He’d been shot a lot, but they were all fake deaths to lure gang members in or something. Too badass to die, or something.
Thankfully, the other sirens were closing in. He didn’t need the backup as such, but it was nice to know they were there.
He finished kicking out the window, rolled himself from underneath his cruiser, and rose, straightening his sunglasses as the car began to catch fire.
---
“Sorry, miss. Alaster does that sometimes.”
Alaster didn’t offer its own wit, scooping up Timothy and striding out of the store’s back door before Freefall could intervene. Tim managed to wave at her before they vanished from sight.