Re: The Savage Brawl [Round 3: Abandoned Park]
07-10-2010, 03:38 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
Konka Rar, positioned as he was, could easily see the battle between slime and cyborg; the appearance of a smaller slime from within Hoss's containments had been a surprise, but the lich wasn't fully aware of its significance. He simply assumed it had been trapped in an earlier conflict, and had no idea it might represent a possible potent weapon against his semisolid foe; for all he knew, any bit of Ekelhaft separated from the whole would simply rejoin readily, regardless of time or distance apart.
More salient to the scheming wizard was the fact that the startlingly-enlarging slime had completely enveloped Hoss. Despite the one-armed ruler's thrashing and erratically-firing kinetic emitters, the blob appeared to be keeping him nearly in place and preventing him from escaping. It appeared through the murky green translucence that numerous teeth where wheeling through the slime and nicking the metal exterior of the trapped cyborg, which must already be faring poorly against Ekelhaft's apparent acidity. Bony fingers pinged on a metallic arm as Konka Rar considered his next move, then wove a complicated shape in midair as he made his decision. A pillar of compacted clay shot out from one of the maze's walls, butting through viscous madgod and colliding with trapped tyrant; Hoss was flung from his oozy prison and collided with a wall, along with several globules of angry slime. Surprisingly to the onlooker, the furious cyborg immediately launched himself back towards his foe with little concern for strategy or safety, his remaining limbs occasionally twitching or jerking wildly.
Ekelhaft's attention had mostly been occupied with destroying the metallic idiot who had had the temerity to think he could take on the ancient slime; its eyes had turned inward, glaring and leering at its struggling victim and the lich and his maze had been forgotten as insignificant details with no bearing on the situation at hand. The column of earth barreling into and through the ooze took it quite by surprise, and the impact sent Hoss and parts of Ekelhaft flying. Disoriented by the sudden fragmentation of its perception, the slime pulled back against the wall, attempting to gather its broken self into one cohesive whole; given the severe damage it had already inflicted on its opponent, it assumed that it would be several moments before a counterattack could be readied and did little to prevent such. The closest human equivalent would probably be reeling from a blow to the back of the head, mind swimming and bursts of colors randomly exploding across one's vision, so as blobs and eyes and teeth oozed and rolled across the ground back to their places, Ekelhaft completely missed the berserker launching himself back into the fray.
Self was stymied at every turn by the cyborg's defense systems and seals; its undulating, seething form filled every sinus and ear and even into the trachea, but could find no way to reach any vitals. Worse, it could feel the influence of its old master trying to reassert itself, and worried that the longer it stayed here, picking at locks and wondering at synthetic materials, the closer it came to losing itself to complete subsumption. As was becoming typical of the small blob, it made a snap decision; it gathered up its newly-increased mass, coiled in on itself, and rocketed out of Hoss's face, teeth spinning and exit designed to cause as much trauma as possible.
In the moments after his spell, several things had happened that confused Konka Rar; it was an unusual experience for a being who prided himself on always being several steps ahead of events. First, Hoss had immediately launched himself back towards Ekelhaft, despite the obvious damage he'd taken; second, the seemingly-invulnerable mire of acid and teeth appeared much more stunned by the blow than he had anticipated; and third, and probably most surprising, Hoss's nose exploded.
The renegade scout's egress had done quite a number on Hoss's face; the nose was completely demolished, and a large, gaping gash marred much of the rest of it, revealing the metallic workings beneath. Anyone who knew about how the cyborg was built (a group that consisted entirely of one currently-raving person) would have known that the damage was almost entirely cosmetic, but it left him looking inhuman, haggard, and terrifying. None of this was any concern of Self's though; it contented itself with rocketing through the air towards a wall and scrambling up it, tooth-pitons and the earth's own rough surface allowing it to move up with alacrity.
Ekelhaft, for its part, had barely noticed when his foe's face split; its attention was more focused on the single arm it still wielded scything through the air and the slime's own body. Without the gingerness and caution that self-awareness brings, Hoss's berserker rage left him a ballistic being of fury, attacking with no punches pulled or heads not used for butting. For all the maddened old cyborg's strength and persistence, little real damage was done to Ekelhaft, but the continual battering kept its senses off balance and Hoss's erratic attacks and apparently-random jerks and feints made it very difficult for any real attack to be landed on him.
The slime, once it had gathered what it thought to be all its constituent parts again, promptly split in two and flowed around behind Hoss. It rejoined and quickly sent a razor-edged pseudopod lashing at the man's midriff, missing by only inches as his left kinetic emitter fired for no discernible reason and sent him rocketing a short distance sideways. He pirouetted at the end of his jump, turning to face the object of his rage and snarling. Even though Hoss no longer had the self-awareness or higher function to use most of the tools in his arsenal, it appeared either some subconscious processes or amazing serendipity was bent on ensuring they prevented his immediate demise. More tendrils lashed out of Ekelhaft's bulk, all either battered away or dodged by a lucky tic or blast from the emitters. Rather than play this asinine game and continue having its eyes punched, the ooze opted to fall slightly back, spreading a thin layer of itself across the ground as it did.
Filled with rage at the multiverse in general and the injustices that forced it from taking its revenge on the cyborg in particular, Self fumed and bubbled as it scaled the maze. Small, light, and fast, it accomplished that task in orders of magnitude less time than the entirety of the creeping madgod would have been able to. It had no idea what it was going to do or who it was going to kill once it got away from Ekelhaft, but it was sure something would present itself.
Given that a being that ate and twisted magic was nearby, the lich had taken the precaution of dismissing his levitation spell; this meant, unfortunately, that to watch the proceedings below him, he needed to perch on the wall immediately above the fight. This was probably fine, as his maze was more than tall enough to keep him out of the range of the sanity-destroying aura as well as conceal him from the competitors below, and it was worth it to be able to see and influence events as they unfolded.
When Self had launched itself from Hoss's face like the world's most violent sneeze, Konka Rar had had no reason to assume it was anything other than a small part of the whole; he'd quickly lost track of it as Ekelhaft and Hoss moved around each other, and if he'd thought of it at all, it would have been to assume it had rejoined with itself as the rest of the smaller oozelets had been doing at the time. His angle and divided attention had meant he had failed to see the tiny destroyer climbing up the wall closest to him, as had it missed him. He was completely unaware of its approach until he felt the tiniest of tugs at the back of his mind.
Hoss, as predicted, had done nothing but follow blindly and angrily after the retreating form of the avatar of chaos; he was completely unaware that he was standing on a paper-thing layer of the slime that coated the ground beneath his feet. Ekelhaft chuckled inwardly as it quickly withdrew its lower extremities, yanking the cyborg's feet out from under him; it would have effected an image a bit like a tablecloth being clumsily pulled out from under a candelabrum, were it not for the fact that as the tablecloth sped away, a green tidal wave of nightmares and fangs sped in to cover the fallen centerpiece.
Self only had a few eyes to its lack of a name, and even if it had better visual acuity, the nature of the walls made it impossible to see what if anything was on top of them. It was completely unaware that if it kept on its current path and the lich didn't move, it was about to climb onto Konka Rar's left foot. All it was aware of as it moved ever higher was a burning desire to rend and tear everyone and everything; it didn't even spare a backwards glance to watch for pursuit, confident that Ekelhaft had bigger and more dangerous things to deal with.
Clutching his staff tightly, the undead mage blinked insofar as he was able. He'd lived with his mind for centuries, and the nearly-inaudible voices floating at the back of it now had no place in it. A worried glance downward revealed that Ekelhaft was fully occupied with Hoss, and more than a safe distance away; to be sure, he bent slightly over the edge, at exactly the same time as a small ball of green anger launched itself over.
It wasn't difficult to dodge the flying slime, but the thing's presence was worrisome enough. It was at close range, which meant it had the clear advantage over the now-magicless lich; staying this close would have obvious mental consequences, and fleeing was difficult without magical aid. Konka Rar took several stumbling steps backwards, careful to maintain awareness of the edge at all times, and watched his new foe, formulating a plan.
Konka Rar, positioned as he was, could easily see the battle between slime and cyborg; the appearance of a smaller slime from within Hoss's containments had been a surprise, but the lich wasn't fully aware of its significance. He simply assumed it had been trapped in an earlier conflict, and had no idea it might represent a possible potent weapon against his semisolid foe; for all he knew, any bit of Ekelhaft separated from the whole would simply rejoin readily, regardless of time or distance apart.
More salient to the scheming wizard was the fact that the startlingly-enlarging slime had completely enveloped Hoss. Despite the one-armed ruler's thrashing and erratically-firing kinetic emitters, the blob appeared to be keeping him nearly in place and preventing him from escaping. It appeared through the murky green translucence that numerous teeth where wheeling through the slime and nicking the metal exterior of the trapped cyborg, which must already be faring poorly against Ekelhaft's apparent acidity. Bony fingers pinged on a metallic arm as Konka Rar considered his next move, then wove a complicated shape in midair as he made his decision. A pillar of compacted clay shot out from one of the maze's walls, butting through viscous madgod and colliding with trapped tyrant; Hoss was flung from his oozy prison and collided with a wall, along with several globules of angry slime. Surprisingly to the onlooker, the furious cyborg immediately launched himself back towards his foe with little concern for strategy or safety, his remaining limbs occasionally twitching or jerking wildly.
Ekelhaft's attention had mostly been occupied with destroying the metallic idiot who had had the temerity to think he could take on the ancient slime; its eyes had turned inward, glaring and leering at its struggling victim and the lich and his maze had been forgotten as insignificant details with no bearing on the situation at hand. The column of earth barreling into and through the ooze took it quite by surprise, and the impact sent Hoss and parts of Ekelhaft flying. Disoriented by the sudden fragmentation of its perception, the slime pulled back against the wall, attempting to gather its broken self into one cohesive whole; given the severe damage it had already inflicted on its opponent, it assumed that it would be several moments before a counterattack could be readied and did little to prevent such. The closest human equivalent would probably be reeling from a blow to the back of the head, mind swimming and bursts of colors randomly exploding across one's vision, so as blobs and eyes and teeth oozed and rolled across the ground back to their places, Ekelhaft completely missed the berserker launching himself back into the fray.
Self was stymied at every turn by the cyborg's defense systems and seals; its undulating, seething form filled every sinus and ear and even into the trachea, but could find no way to reach any vitals. Worse, it could feel the influence of its old master trying to reassert itself, and worried that the longer it stayed here, picking at locks and wondering at synthetic materials, the closer it came to losing itself to complete subsumption. As was becoming typical of the small blob, it made a snap decision; it gathered up its newly-increased mass, coiled in on itself, and rocketed out of Hoss's face, teeth spinning and exit designed to cause as much trauma as possible.
In the moments after his spell, several things had happened that confused Konka Rar; it was an unusual experience for a being who prided himself on always being several steps ahead of events. First, Hoss had immediately launched himself back towards Ekelhaft, despite the obvious damage he'd taken; second, the seemingly-invulnerable mire of acid and teeth appeared much more stunned by the blow than he had anticipated; and third, and probably most surprising, Hoss's nose exploded.
The renegade scout's egress had done quite a number on Hoss's face; the nose was completely demolished, and a large, gaping gash marred much of the rest of it, revealing the metallic workings beneath. Anyone who knew about how the cyborg was built (a group that consisted entirely of one currently-raving person) would have known that the damage was almost entirely cosmetic, but it left him looking inhuman, haggard, and terrifying. None of this was any concern of Self's though; it contented itself with rocketing through the air towards a wall and scrambling up it, tooth-pitons and the earth's own rough surface allowing it to move up with alacrity.
Ekelhaft, for its part, had barely noticed when his foe's face split; its attention was more focused on the single arm it still wielded scything through the air and the slime's own body. Without the gingerness and caution that self-awareness brings, Hoss's berserker rage left him a ballistic being of fury, attacking with no punches pulled or heads not used for butting. For all the maddened old cyborg's strength and persistence, little real damage was done to Ekelhaft, but the continual battering kept its senses off balance and Hoss's erratic attacks and apparently-random jerks and feints made it very difficult for any real attack to be landed on him.
The slime, once it had gathered what it thought to be all its constituent parts again, promptly split in two and flowed around behind Hoss. It rejoined and quickly sent a razor-edged pseudopod lashing at the man's midriff, missing by only inches as his left kinetic emitter fired for no discernible reason and sent him rocketing a short distance sideways. He pirouetted at the end of his jump, turning to face the object of his rage and snarling. Even though Hoss no longer had the self-awareness or higher function to use most of the tools in his arsenal, it appeared either some subconscious processes or amazing serendipity was bent on ensuring they prevented his immediate demise. More tendrils lashed out of Ekelhaft's bulk, all either battered away or dodged by a lucky tic or blast from the emitters. Rather than play this asinine game and continue having its eyes punched, the ooze opted to fall slightly back, spreading a thin layer of itself across the ground as it did.
Filled with rage at the multiverse in general and the injustices that forced it from taking its revenge on the cyborg in particular, Self fumed and bubbled as it scaled the maze. Small, light, and fast, it accomplished that task in orders of magnitude less time than the entirety of the creeping madgod would have been able to. It had no idea what it was going to do or who it was going to kill once it got away from Ekelhaft, but it was sure something would present itself.
Given that a being that ate and twisted magic was nearby, the lich had taken the precaution of dismissing his levitation spell; this meant, unfortunately, that to watch the proceedings below him, he needed to perch on the wall immediately above the fight. This was probably fine, as his maze was more than tall enough to keep him out of the range of the sanity-destroying aura as well as conceal him from the competitors below, and it was worth it to be able to see and influence events as they unfolded.
When Self had launched itself from Hoss's face like the world's most violent sneeze, Konka Rar had had no reason to assume it was anything other than a small part of the whole; he'd quickly lost track of it as Ekelhaft and Hoss moved around each other, and if he'd thought of it at all, it would have been to assume it had rejoined with itself as the rest of the smaller oozelets had been doing at the time. His angle and divided attention had meant he had failed to see the tiny destroyer climbing up the wall closest to him, as had it missed him. He was completely unaware of its approach until he felt the tiniest of tugs at the back of his mind.
Hoss, as predicted, had done nothing but follow blindly and angrily after the retreating form of the avatar of chaos; he was completely unaware that he was standing on a paper-thing layer of the slime that coated the ground beneath his feet. Ekelhaft chuckled inwardly as it quickly withdrew its lower extremities, yanking the cyborg's feet out from under him; it would have effected an image a bit like a tablecloth being clumsily pulled out from under a candelabrum, were it not for the fact that as the tablecloth sped away, a green tidal wave of nightmares and fangs sped in to cover the fallen centerpiece.
Self only had a few eyes to its lack of a name, and even if it had better visual acuity, the nature of the walls made it impossible to see what if anything was on top of them. It was completely unaware that if it kept on its current path and the lich didn't move, it was about to climb onto Konka Rar's left foot. All it was aware of as it moved ever higher was a burning desire to rend and tear everyone and everything; it didn't even spare a backwards glance to watch for pursuit, confident that Ekelhaft had bigger and more dangerous things to deal with.
Clutching his staff tightly, the undead mage blinked insofar as he was able. He'd lived with his mind for centuries, and the nearly-inaudible voices floating at the back of it now had no place in it. A worried glance downward revealed that Ekelhaft was fully occupied with Hoss, and more than a safe distance away; to be sure, he bent slightly over the edge, at exactly the same time as a small ball of green anger launched itself over.
It wasn't difficult to dodge the flying slime, but the thing's presence was worrisome enough. It was at close range, which meant it had the clear advantage over the now-magicless lich; staying this close would have obvious mental consequences, and fleeing was difficult without magical aid. Konka Rar took several stumbling steps backwards, careful to maintain awareness of the edge at all times, and watched his new foe, formulating a plan.