Re: LAST. THING. STANDING. [S!1][ROUND ONE: TELEVISION LAND]
03-02-2012, 10:01 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.
“Halt!”
“Infringers sighted.”
The corridor was a steel-plated prism, light spitting from harsh fluorescents and bouncing cruelly off its polished insides. Wizard, tanksaction and jellyfish stood, sat and swam at one end – facing the squad, twelvestrong, at the other. A ragtag sort, mismatch ruling both sets, both worlds.
<font color="#655575">Dead eyes met the aurumancer’s. Dead eyes, with their life and soul beaten from them long, long ago by legislation, revision – the Copyright Captain must have been someone, sometime, somewhere forever gone. “Squad…twenty-seven! Open fire!”
Bedlam.
“My name is Aaron Abstract! I am alive! Now you’d want that to keep happening, wouldn’t you?!”
Bedlam as the pathomancy surged through their minds bitterly, like sand forcing its way through a sponge, tearing apart chains of logic and reasoned arguments like “who is this?!” and “what the hell is his life to me?!” and filling them with thoughts of pearls and glitter and shiny, snapping connections and sense like a child might snap a toothpick-
By gold…
Blithely, they followed down the hall, through lobbies and messes and canteens, following their golden idol with the silver tongue. Through the warzones, they fired at those who had been their compatriots, their colleagues, but were now just threats, endangering their Abstract, whom they had pledged to protect, protect with their worthless lives in exchange for his. Red shirts stained red as chaos flew in little bundles, exploding in lasing powers, in flitting, fleeting projectiles that ricocheted like spirochetes in helices, whorls and lethal shards. In the center Aaron screamed and laughed as death, pointless death claimed for him, for him, which only let him take more – more power!
Nizzo was reevaluating the world.
In the rocking waters of the lurching tank as it trundled, pummeled by laser and by shot, Nizzo tried to make sense of the noise and vibration that passed into his realm of understanding. There were a blur of noises around the beacon that was this-male-one-of-riches, and he saw other noises that were concentrated, there, there…
Hunkered behind an overturned stack of crates, Aaron heard – directed his minions, their fire – there! Screams -
Another shot struck the tank, scoring cracks in its housing - Aaron! A little bailing out, if you would please! Strong arms pulled transaction and jellyfish behind the fortification as the ‘fwuup’ of lasers echoed overhead.
…Seconds passed like a million years, alternately compressed back down to seconds then drawn apart once more, like taffy stretched on rotating arms of causality and insanity…
And like a clock winding down, Aaron stopped. The firefight was dying, and so were the fighters. Exhausted, the survivors lay on the bloody ground, unable – or unwilling – to move.
“I did this! I…ahahaha…I did this!”
Idiot! Change swiveled madly on his useless treads, slick with blood and matted with death, pointing the cracked turret into Aaron’s face. They were assets! We could have used them, and you sent them all to their deaths! The barrel poked the aurumancer in the chest. Have you gone mad?!
For a broken, brilliant shrapnel shard of a second, Aaron seemed ready for a retort. “Y-”
Listen to me, Aaron! Listen to yourself! I don’t even know who’s more dangerous of an investment – the jellyfish; or you! The tank’s internal workings coughed and wheezed as Change abused them back and forth, then finally died, freezing the barrel mid-poke. And at the admonishment, Aaron froze as well-
A hand trailed along the wall, and came away bloody. Eyes widened as they surveilled the scene: resplendent with bodies – prone – charred – dead.
“I-I did this.”
Yes, Aaron, you did. The Transaction gathered himself, slowly – leaching a flurry of bills and coins from the pockets of the dead. His voice was cold, flat, almost absentmindedly – a complement to the death that surrounded them. You killed them.
A tear hit the bloodied floor with a splash, then another –</font>
A door at the far end of the mess hall blew open, interrupting the two. “Haltholy shit!” a redshirt managed to exclaim, before falling, twitching, to the ground -
“Threat level increased! Further restrain the infringer!” A corporal wrestled a taser from the woman they had with them – the dark blue suit marred here and there with burn marks – and attempted to tug her into the bloody room. <font color="#7474FF">Upon refusing to move, however, the Copyright Corporal opted to apply approximately 20,000 volts of electricity, temporarily rendering the captured infringer movable.
The one that had spoken – squad leader, with commandant’s stripes – produced and leveled an energy rifle at the human or humanoid individual in the blue-grey robe: positively identified as being a major infringer or collaborating thereof. He was going to take this opportunity to eliminate a threat that had played a large part in this mess to begin with-</font>
Freefall, on the other hand, took this opportunity to knock the taser out of the corporal’s hand, sending it skidding under a clump of bodies with a keening splut – following through with a punch to the commandant’s gun hand, leaping over the crates and landing in between the wizard and the squad. “All right…value…greed….money wizard. You a villain? Oh never mind, just lemme handle this! Come on, you copyright idiots! Open fire! Give me what you got!”
The Copyright Commandant might have replied, reacted, might have begun to give the order of shooting to kill – had it not been for Change, slicing through the air lithe as a cobra in silence only broken by the commandant’s scream of pain, accompanied by the sound of the gun, and severed fingers, hitting the floor.
The rest of the squad might have acted, if half of them hadn’t been redshirts desperately looking for a way out of tromping with dead-eyed, soulless copyright cadets, and saw a golden opportunity to get on the winning side.
Slowly, Aaron stirred. He tried moving his hands weakly, and found them bound uncomfortable behind his back with cable ties. Around his sitting form were crates and metal plates seemingly repurposed as walls. It felt like a segregated portion of a larger space, such as the cargo hold, since that was exactly what is was. Nearby, in the top of an absolutely worthless plastic box, Change squirmed unhappily while casting seemingly baleful glares the box’s other occupant: Nizzo, swimming in the bottom with an oxygenator. And as he broached the beach of consciousness, he became aware that he was leaning on someone.
<font color="#7474FF">“Why the hell are all of you psychopaths?”
His head hurt, especially where he’d been whacked.
I like to protect my investments. A dead Aaron isn’t much use.
”That’s what I’m talking about! Assigning values to people like price tags…that’s psychopath stuff right there, and believe me I’ve beaten up psychopaths before-
He wetted his lips for a second – they tasted like blood – and parted them. “Um.”
Oh good, Aaron, you’re awake. No, don’t move, Miss Freefall’s got your hands tied to hers.
“Oh, it’s ‘Miss’ Freefall, is it? Come over here and say that!”
“Oh.” Aaron looked closely at the box; no wheels. “Um, how-”
“If Moneybags doesn’t shut up, I’ll goddamn find a way-”
The flurry of notes shifted a little, embarrassedly. We were captured.
“No duh-”
“That’s not good.”
No.</font>
“Halt!”
“Infringers sighted.”
The corridor was a steel-plated prism, light spitting from harsh fluorescents and bouncing cruelly off its polished insides. Wizard, tanksaction and jellyfish stood, sat and swam at one end – facing the squad, twelvestrong, at the other. A ragtag sort, mismatch ruling both sets, both worlds.
<font color="#655575">Dead eyes met the aurumancer’s. Dead eyes, with their life and soul beaten from them long, long ago by legislation, revision – the Copyright Captain must have been someone, sometime, somewhere forever gone. “Squad…twenty-seven! Open fire!”
Bedlam.
“My name is Aaron Abstract! I am alive! Now you’d want that to keep happening, wouldn’t you?!”
Bedlam as the pathomancy surged through their minds bitterly, like sand forcing its way through a sponge, tearing apart chains of logic and reasoned arguments like “who is this?!” and “what the hell is his life to me?!” and filling them with thoughts of pearls and glitter and shiny, snapping connections and sense like a child might snap a toothpick-
By gold…
Blithely, they followed down the hall, through lobbies and messes and canteens, following their golden idol with the silver tongue. Through the warzones, they fired at those who had been their compatriots, their colleagues, but were now just threats, endangering their Abstract, whom they had pledged to protect, protect with their worthless lives in exchange for his. Red shirts stained red as chaos flew in little bundles, exploding in lasing powers, in flitting, fleeting projectiles that ricocheted like spirochetes in helices, whorls and lethal shards. In the center Aaron screamed and laughed as death, pointless death claimed for him, for him, which only let him take more – more power!
Nizzo was reevaluating the world.
In the rocking waters of the lurching tank as it trundled, pummeled by laser and by shot, Nizzo tried to make sense of the noise and vibration that passed into his realm of understanding. There were a blur of noises around the beacon that was this-male-one-of-riches, and he saw other noises that were concentrated, there, there…
Hunkered behind an overturned stack of crates, Aaron heard – directed his minions, their fire – there! Screams -
Another shot struck the tank, scoring cracks in its housing - Aaron! A little bailing out, if you would please! Strong arms pulled transaction and jellyfish behind the fortification as the ‘fwuup’ of lasers echoed overhead.
…Seconds passed like a million years, alternately compressed back down to seconds then drawn apart once more, like taffy stretched on rotating arms of causality and insanity…
And like a clock winding down, Aaron stopped. The firefight was dying, and so were the fighters. Exhausted, the survivors lay on the bloody ground, unable – or unwilling – to move.
“I did this! I…ahahaha…I did this!”
Idiot! Change swiveled madly on his useless treads, slick with blood and matted with death, pointing the cracked turret into Aaron’s face. They were assets! We could have used them, and you sent them all to their deaths! The barrel poked the aurumancer in the chest. Have you gone mad?!
For a broken, brilliant shrapnel shard of a second, Aaron seemed ready for a retort. “Y-”
Listen to me, Aaron! Listen to yourself! I don’t even know who’s more dangerous of an investment – the jellyfish; or you! The tank’s internal workings coughed and wheezed as Change abused them back and forth, then finally died, freezing the barrel mid-poke. And at the admonishment, Aaron froze as well-
A hand trailed along the wall, and came away bloody. Eyes widened as they surveilled the scene: resplendent with bodies – prone – charred – dead.
“I-I did this.”
Yes, Aaron, you did. The Transaction gathered himself, slowly – leaching a flurry of bills and coins from the pockets of the dead. His voice was cold, flat, almost absentmindedly – a complement to the death that surrounded them. You killed them.
A tear hit the bloodied floor with a splash, then another –</font>
A door at the far end of the mess hall blew open, interrupting the two. “Haltholy shit!” a redshirt managed to exclaim, before falling, twitching, to the ground -
“Threat level increased! Further restrain the infringer!” A corporal wrestled a taser from the woman they had with them – the dark blue suit marred here and there with burn marks – and attempted to tug her into the bloody room. <font color="#7474FF">Upon refusing to move, however, the Copyright Corporal opted to apply approximately 20,000 volts of electricity, temporarily rendering the captured infringer movable.
The one that had spoken – squad leader, with commandant’s stripes – produced and leveled an energy rifle at the human or humanoid individual in the blue-grey robe: positively identified as being a major infringer or collaborating thereof. He was going to take this opportunity to eliminate a threat that had played a large part in this mess to begin with-</font>
Freefall, on the other hand, took this opportunity to knock the taser out of the corporal’s hand, sending it skidding under a clump of bodies with a keening splut – following through with a punch to the commandant’s gun hand, leaping over the crates and landing in between the wizard and the squad. “All right…value…greed….money wizard. You a villain? Oh never mind, just lemme handle this! Come on, you copyright idiots! Open fire! Give me what you got!”
The Copyright Commandant might have replied, reacted, might have begun to give the order of shooting to kill – had it not been for Change, slicing through the air lithe as a cobra in silence only broken by the commandant’s scream of pain, accompanied by the sound of the gun, and severed fingers, hitting the floor.
The rest of the squad might have acted, if half of them hadn’t been redshirts desperately looking for a way out of tromping with dead-eyed, soulless copyright cadets, and saw a golden opportunity to get on the winning side.
Slowly, Aaron stirred. He tried moving his hands weakly, and found them bound uncomfortable behind his back with cable ties. Around his sitting form were crates and metal plates seemingly repurposed as walls. It felt like a segregated portion of a larger space, such as the cargo hold, since that was exactly what is was. Nearby, in the top of an absolutely worthless plastic box, Change squirmed unhappily while casting seemingly baleful glares the box’s other occupant: Nizzo, swimming in the bottom with an oxygenator. And as he broached the beach of consciousness, he became aware that he was leaning on someone.
<font color="#7474FF">“Why the hell are all of you psychopaths?”
His head hurt, especially where he’d been whacked.
I like to protect my investments. A dead Aaron isn’t much use.
”That’s what I’m talking about! Assigning values to people like price tags…that’s psychopath stuff right there, and believe me I’ve beaten up psychopaths before-
He wetted his lips for a second – they tasted like blood – and parted them. “Um.”
Oh good, Aaron, you’re awake. No, don’t move, Miss Freefall’s got your hands tied to hers.
“Oh, it’s ‘Miss’ Freefall, is it? Come over here and say that!”
“Oh.” Aaron looked closely at the box; no wheels. “Um, how-”
“If Moneybags doesn’t shut up, I’ll goddamn find a way-”
The flurry of notes shifted a little, embarrassedly. We were captured.
“No duh-”
“That’s not good.”
No.</font>
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