Re: The Savage Brawl [Round 4: Small 50s Town]
11-07-2010, 09:21 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.
"Just lead the way, will you?"
Hoss had been careful to maintain his confused exterior; given how many times he'd lost his sanity during this battle, it was better if the other contestents did not know how much control he currently had. Especially given he no longer considered them relevent.
Nevertheless, he had to agree with Gormand. Diego Red would prove an easy kill, and the sooner he could get the round to transit-
Suddenly the world faded, and he was once again surrounded by blackness. No, not yet! I wasn't ready! He'd been hoping to be able to prepare for the transition, but as it was...
He'd barely managed to configure his sensors to record as much data as possible about the transition before he found himself in a town straight out of his world's past. He ran a quick overview of what he'd managed to gather; some interesting information about the local geometry of the multiverse, but nothing useful was immediately obvious. He shunted the analyzation of the data over to his secondary processors and looked around.
Briefly, he wondered who died, before deciding it didn't matter. This battle, its contestents, they were no longer important. Something much larger was in motion...
As if to puncuate his train of thought, he recieved a notification of a message broadcast through the multiverse, and smiled inwardly. Reinhardt would prove as a valuable filtering mechanism, and a believable face of the Network, leaving Hoss free to set the groundwork for the Network's future.
He'd been walking as he thought, idly recording the scenery. This town was from before even his time. He considered this other being's words carefully. The passing mention that the current tranquility would be broken by something other than the contestents was telling; from his history, he knew that nothing of note ever actually happened in these kinds of towns, therefore they could not possibly be in his home universe. This too must be another artificial construct of... well, apparently, not the Cultivator. Was the other voice another... what had Reinhardt called them... Grandmaster? If so, why had the Cultivator felt the need to bring it in? Had she noticed what he was doing?
He rather hoped so. The more interest he could garner from the Cultivator, the more likely it would be that she directly interefered. He was not yet prepared for that eventuality, but still, perhaps this new Grandmaster was a good sign. A sign of her increasing worry, perhaps?
He entered a yard, and the robe-clad man who'd been padding his way towards his mailbox for the morning paper froze. Hoss felt like sighing; he'd forgotten his appearence; a nearly naked, one-armed metallic man with a grisly gash through his face, and other similar wounds across his body. If only his newmatter fabricators were working...
He brought himself short at that thought. Their disappearence was related to his magic use, somehow. If he could continue to learn more about the arcane, perhaps he could regain full functionality. All he needed was a viable test subject. And luckily, he already had one.
He reconfigured a small portion of his internal sensors, and sure enough, they were receiving a signal. He tried to grin, before realizing he couldn't. He sent a few commands; this would take some time to set up, but the wait would be worth it.
Meanwhile, the man had begun to back away. Small sounds of confusion and fear escaped his mouth. Hoss extended his left arm, and a thin sliver of silvery metal shot out, impaling the man through his just-opened mouth, severing his spine through the back of his neck. The sliver retracted back into his arm, and the man slumped over. As Hoss looked towards the house whose yard he was standing in, his tertriary processors sent up a notification.
As per his previous orders, they'd been passively analyzing patterns within the battle, and had come across an interesting anomaly. Before the previous round ended, a small burst of neutrinos had been recorded in the distance. The anomaly arose from the fact that this neutrino pattern exactly matched certain aspects of the neutrino patterns evident when the "gods" had been speaking. Curious, that one hadn't made itself known in the previous round, and curiouser still that the same pattern had shown up in the approximate direction of one Diego Red...
Hoss continued to mull over the data as a blast from his forward kinetic emitters pulverized the wall of the house. He walked through the resultant hole to see a rather startled looking woman and two children, just beginning their morning ritual of breaking fast. The mother's eyes drifted slowly downwards, focusing on something in the yard behind him, and she opened her mouth to scream...
Three bodies slumped to the floor in quick succession, as Hoss continued into the house. This will do nicely, he thought. He moved towards a wall and shoved his hand through, pulling out a mess of wiring, and got to work.
"Just lead the way, will you?"
Hoss had been careful to maintain his confused exterior; given how many times he'd lost his sanity during this battle, it was better if the other contestents did not know how much control he currently had. Especially given he no longer considered them relevent.
Nevertheless, he had to agree with Gormand. Diego Red would prove an easy kill, and the sooner he could get the round to transit-
Suddenly the world faded, and he was once again surrounded by blackness. No, not yet! I wasn't ready! He'd been hoping to be able to prepare for the transition, but as it was...
He'd barely managed to configure his sensors to record as much data as possible about the transition before he found himself in a town straight out of his world's past. He ran a quick overview of what he'd managed to gather; some interesting information about the local geometry of the multiverse, but nothing useful was immediately obvious. He shunted the analyzation of the data over to his secondary processors and looked around.
Briefly, he wondered who died, before deciding it didn't matter. This battle, its contestents, they were no longer important. Something much larger was in motion...
As if to puncuate his train of thought, he recieved a notification of a message broadcast through the multiverse, and smiled inwardly. Reinhardt would prove as a valuable filtering mechanism, and a believable face of the Network, leaving Hoss free to set the groundwork for the Network's future.
He'd been walking as he thought, idly recording the scenery. This town was from before even his time. He considered this other being's words carefully. The passing mention that the current tranquility would be broken by something other than the contestents was telling; from his history, he knew that nothing of note ever actually happened in these kinds of towns, therefore they could not possibly be in his home universe. This too must be another artificial construct of... well, apparently, not the Cultivator. Was the other voice another... what had Reinhardt called them... Grandmaster? If so, why had the Cultivator felt the need to bring it in? Had she noticed what he was doing?
He rather hoped so. The more interest he could garner from the Cultivator, the more likely it would be that she directly interefered. He was not yet prepared for that eventuality, but still, perhaps this new Grandmaster was a good sign. A sign of her increasing worry, perhaps?
He entered a yard, and the robe-clad man who'd been padding his way towards his mailbox for the morning paper froze. Hoss felt like sighing; he'd forgotten his appearence; a nearly naked, one-armed metallic man with a grisly gash through his face, and other similar wounds across his body. If only his newmatter fabricators were working...
He brought himself short at that thought. Their disappearence was related to his magic use, somehow. If he could continue to learn more about the arcane, perhaps he could regain full functionality. All he needed was a viable test subject. And luckily, he already had one.
He reconfigured a small portion of his internal sensors, and sure enough, they were receiving a signal. He tried to grin, before realizing he couldn't. He sent a few commands; this would take some time to set up, but the wait would be worth it.
Meanwhile, the man had begun to back away. Small sounds of confusion and fear escaped his mouth. Hoss extended his left arm, and a thin sliver of silvery metal shot out, impaling the man through his just-opened mouth, severing his spine through the back of his neck. The sliver retracted back into his arm, and the man slumped over. As Hoss looked towards the house whose yard he was standing in, his tertriary processors sent up a notification.
As per his previous orders, they'd been passively analyzing patterns within the battle, and had come across an interesting anomaly. Before the previous round ended, a small burst of neutrinos had been recorded in the distance. The anomaly arose from the fact that this neutrino pattern exactly matched certain aspects of the neutrino patterns evident when the "gods" had been speaking. Curious, that one hadn't made itself known in the previous round, and curiouser still that the same pattern had shown up in the approximate direction of one Diego Red...
Hoss continued to mull over the data as a blast from his forward kinetic emitters pulverized the wall of the house. He walked through the resultant hole to see a rather startled looking woman and two children, just beginning their morning ritual of breaking fast. The mother's eyes drifted slowly downwards, focusing on something in the yard behind him, and she opened her mouth to scream...
Three bodies slumped to the floor in quick succession, as Hoss continued into the house. This will do nicely, he thought. He moved towards a wall and shoved his hand through, pulling out a mess of wiring, and got to work.