Re: Inexorable Altercation [Round II - Armada]
11-04-2010, 03:51 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.
Sir Drake had retired to his stateroom by the time the cache of gunpowder exploded, and he barely gave the sound a thought. His focus was entirely on the turmoil inside him.
All his life, he'd been able to sense the feel of the sea. No one else quite knew what he meant when he tried to explain it, but there had just been this instinctual knowledge always lurking in the back of his head. When a storm was coming, he could feel it far before the waves began to get choppy, and when opposing ships were approaching from around an island, he could feel their hulls in the water. It was as though the seas themselves were speaking to him, and right now, they weren't talking- they were crying out in pain. Something was tearing into them, dragging them down and compressing them. It manipulated them, controlling them, and the pain this caused them made them cry out in anguish.
The seas' cries echoed in Drake's head, all bellowing at once.
-
"What makes you think steering a ship with your mouth is any sort of good idea?!", Apathy shot back.
"Do these look like effective hands to you?!"
"Alright, so your bad design excuses your clumsiness?"
"You're one to talk! 'Oh, look at me, I'm a sack of meat! I'm vulnerable to puncture wounds! I-'"
"Would you please stop antagonizing her," O'rylath interjected. "She's hardly likely to cooperate with someone making fun of her species."
"He's right, you know. We humans are rather sensitive about our not-terribly-stab-resistant bodies." Will cut in this time, his voice halfway between snarky and diplomatic and his intention not even clear to himself. "There are genuine threats around, and it might be best if we could put our physical differences aside for a moment and discuss things diplomatically." He was pretty sure he was trying to be genuinely pacifying, but he couldn't really tell with that sort of thing.
"Oh really? You're going to talk about peaceful negotiations after what happened back in that cave?"
"I did what I had to," he said, not sure if he was telling that to Apathy or to himself. "If he'd killed her, we'd have one more crazed murderer loose on these ships with us, and I think we've got plenty already."
-
In a distant universe, a pair of beings sent out a message, broadcasting it far and wide across the multiverse, its chaotic pattern echoing past universes and delivering its explanation and invitation to a number of beings. It is not pure information, however- its medium, too, a barely-controlled burst of energy, burst forth from the universe and cascaded past others. Most universes, closed and isolated, felt nothing, and the few that had been opened felt barely any effect at all. A slight time-ripple, perhaps, but nothing more.
One universe, however, had a loop of causal thread pulled through its skin, wrapping back around upon itself before being drawn to another universe, and another. The inviting transmission, surging through the void, plucked the string ever so slightly, shifting the universes' temporal alignments by an infinitesimal amount.
-
There was no flash, no jolt, no gradual blur- one moment, Will was standing on one side of the ship trying to persuade Apathy that he wasn't such a bad guy after all, and the next, he was a few meters to his left, waving the data reader over OTTO's metal form. He stopped, blinked, and tapped the reader. Looking up, he saw the other two looking at him as though he'd just spontaneously teleported.
He furrowed his brow for a minute, thinking, then checked the reader again. Slowly, he asked, "did I ever tell either of you how many times I'd been through that big timeloop directly preceding my experiences here?" They shook their respective heads. "Alright," he continued, slow and distracted, "well for the record, I'm number seventeen." Clicking a few buttons on the data reader, he checked back over the data he'd been gathering. "There was a... a bump, of sorts, in the temporal variance in the area. I'm not positive, but I think that may have been some sort of discontinuity between this universe's timestream and my own, shifting my iterations in comparison with this battle's own." An idea came to him, and he slipped the data reader back into its holster. "Who died in the first round", he asked, "and how did it happen?"
"You shot Greyve," Apathy provided, talking to him as though he were mentally ill, "when he tried to kill the witch."
"Alright, that matches up," he said, frowning. "But something changed, yes?"
"One moment, you were over here, and another, you were standing next to puncture-proof there, if that counts."
"It does indeed, but something's still not adding up... Eh, it's not important right now. Where were we?" Clasping his hands together, he looked from OTTO to Apathy, expectantly.
-
Having sorted out the wails and cries a bit, Drake had some space to think. Fight back, he thought. When under attack, fight back. His thoughts went out into the water, echoing throughout and provoking a response- slight, surely, but there. The water began to move a tiny bit more, its gentle lapping beginning to grow stronger, slowly building.
Sir Drake had retired to his stateroom by the time the cache of gunpowder exploded, and he barely gave the sound a thought. His focus was entirely on the turmoil inside him.
All his life, he'd been able to sense the feel of the sea. No one else quite knew what he meant when he tried to explain it, but there had just been this instinctual knowledge always lurking in the back of his head. When a storm was coming, he could feel it far before the waves began to get choppy, and when opposing ships were approaching from around an island, he could feel their hulls in the water. It was as though the seas themselves were speaking to him, and right now, they weren't talking- they were crying out in pain. Something was tearing into them, dragging them down and compressing them. It manipulated them, controlling them, and the pain this caused them made them cry out in anguish.
The seas' cries echoed in Drake's head, all bellowing at once.
-
"What makes you think steering a ship with your mouth is any sort of good idea?!", Apathy shot back.
"Do these look like effective hands to you?!"
"Alright, so your bad design excuses your clumsiness?"
"You're one to talk! 'Oh, look at me, I'm a sack of meat! I'm vulnerable to puncture wounds! I-'"
"Would you please stop antagonizing her," O'rylath interjected. "She's hardly likely to cooperate with someone making fun of her species."
"He's right, you know. We humans are rather sensitive about our not-terribly-stab-resistant bodies." Will cut in this time, his voice halfway between snarky and diplomatic and his intention not even clear to himself. "There are genuine threats around, and it might be best if we could put our physical differences aside for a moment and discuss things diplomatically." He was pretty sure he was trying to be genuinely pacifying, but he couldn't really tell with that sort of thing.
"Oh really? You're going to talk about peaceful negotiations after what happened back in that cave?"
"I did what I had to," he said, not sure if he was telling that to Apathy or to himself. "If he'd killed her, we'd have one more crazed murderer loose on these ships with us, and I think we've got plenty already."
-
In a distant universe, a pair of beings sent out a message, broadcasting it far and wide across the multiverse, its chaotic pattern echoing past universes and delivering its explanation and invitation to a number of beings. It is not pure information, however- its medium, too, a barely-controlled burst of energy, burst forth from the universe and cascaded past others. Most universes, closed and isolated, felt nothing, and the few that had been opened felt barely any effect at all. A slight time-ripple, perhaps, but nothing more.
One universe, however, had a loop of causal thread pulled through its skin, wrapping back around upon itself before being drawn to another universe, and another. The inviting transmission, surging through the void, plucked the string ever so slightly, shifting the universes' temporal alignments by an infinitesimal amount.
-
There was no flash, no jolt, no gradual blur- one moment, Will was standing on one side of the ship trying to persuade Apathy that he wasn't such a bad guy after all, and the next, he was a few meters to his left, waving the data reader over OTTO's metal form. He stopped, blinked, and tapped the reader. Looking up, he saw the other two looking at him as though he'd just spontaneously teleported.
He furrowed his brow for a minute, thinking, then checked the reader again. Slowly, he asked, "did I ever tell either of you how many times I'd been through that big timeloop directly preceding my experiences here?" They shook their respective heads. "Alright," he continued, slow and distracted, "well for the record, I'm number seventeen." Clicking a few buttons on the data reader, he checked back over the data he'd been gathering. "There was a... a bump, of sorts, in the temporal variance in the area. I'm not positive, but I think that may have been some sort of discontinuity between this universe's timestream and my own, shifting my iterations in comparison with this battle's own." An idea came to him, and he slipped the data reader back into its holster. "Who died in the first round", he asked, "and how did it happen?"
"You shot Greyve," Apathy provided, talking to him as though he were mentally ill, "when he tried to kill the witch."
"Alright, that matches up," he said, frowning. "But something changed, yes?"
"One moment, you were over here, and another, you were standing next to puncture-proof there, if that counts."
"It does indeed, but something's still not adding up... Eh, it's not important right now. Where were we?" Clasping his hands together, he looked from OTTO to Apathy, expectantly.
-
Having sorted out the wails and cries a bit, Drake had some space to think. Fight back, he thought. When under attack, fight back. His thoughts went out into the water, echoing throughout and provoking a response- slight, surely, but there. The water began to move a tiny bit more, its gentle lapping beginning to grow stronger, slowly building.