Re: The Savage Brawl [Round 4: Small 50s Town]
01-22-2011, 07:01 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.
As the town slowly rose to greet the soft dawn light, the not-so quiet violence of the early morning drew curious townsfolk towards two houses in particular. One, from the outside, did not seem too out of the ordinary, despite the unanswered knocks of concerned neighbors. On the other side of town, the other house was a tad more conspicuous. If the crumpled body laying near the driveway wasn't enough to arouse suspicion, the missing kitchen wall certainly was. As the more prudent citizens rushed to call for local emergency services, others warily looked through the large hole in the wall, trying to discern what was happening inside.
The house's interior was a mess. Every wall had been torn down, the floors ripped apart, copper wiring and plumbing strewn through every room in an increasingly complex web. Hoss moved through the house methodically, scrounging for the raw materials he needed to continue the construction. As he worked, he realized he was grateful for the absence of his newmatter fabricators. Where before he may have simply spat out a horde of Von-Neumann nanomachines to do the labor for him, now he was present and involved in every step. He had always found this kind of detail-oriented work oddly therapeutic, and as his artificial muscles went on autopilot, his mind, never content to waste time, turned towards other matters.
His brief foray into the world of magic during the previous round had taught him much. He recalled his meditative period, when he had first applied his Will to the world around him. At first, he could summon nothing more than a slight breeze, but his efforts towards understanding the application of will to reality had shown him much. During his time of contemplation, he had felt... something. A current running through the fabric of his being. It was very faint, and the more he had tried to control it, the more it had slipped away. Confused, he had given up that avenue of research and had instead turned his attention to the calm grass and air around him. Again, he encountered a current; he could not tell if it was the same type as what he sensed within him, nor could he tell if it had a "type" at all, but it was there.
It was when he surrendered himself to the current within that he found he could control both. It was slight, at first; the breeze was an accidental side-effect of a kind of magical pressure, created by that surrender.
Later, when he had so recklessly poured that current, his will, into the electromagnetic singularity, the current inside had left him. He felt an odd pressure, as though his body were still meat and fluid, and his lungs held naught but vacuum. The world pressed upon him, and his still-human brain instinctively tried to fill that vacuum. Futilely, it sent involuntary signals to his cybernetic body, forcing him to gulp down mouthfuls of air which were of no use to him and went nowhere. His body convulsed as his brain told it to fill lungs which no longer existed.
Eventually he had reached a kind of internal equilibrium. He still felt... odd, but he at least had control over himself once more. Now, calmed by the meditative labor, he was able to reflect more coherently on those events. He'd undergone similar soul-searching in his youth, of course, and had never encountered that ethereal flow. So why now?
He turned to the data his sensors had gathered during the round transition. They were disappointingly sparse. He was, however, able to wrest from them some useful information: the current, the ethereal flow, had fluctuated wildly during the transition, and there was a definite drop in the... intensity of the external current; the flow of the world around him. Which would make sense; this world was likely less magical than the park. But why? What made any particular universe inherently more or less magical? And how could he, a being from a universe without magic, suddenly sense this current?
The answer had to lay with the Cultivator. Her powers were sufficient to allow mutually incompatible laws of multiple universes to work together in harmony. Obviously, this meant these "laws" ceased to be "laws" and became more... guidelines, to be adopted and discarded as one wished. By allowing the rules of different universes to work in tandem, the Cultivator had made them less rigid, allowing more enterprising minds, like Hoss's, to bend these laws to their will.
There was more, he knew. But he needed more data. Especially if the Network were to become workable. Its users would need to have the ability to easily and quickly pass information through the multiverse; something which was, at the moment, quite difficult to do. He and his sister were lucky, and he suspected there may be other beings who had such pre-existing links. But there were too many who didn't.
Which brought him back to his work. If the house-sized device he was constructing served its function, he would hopefully gather enough additional data to easily convert it into a multiversal communication node.
And if he could build one, then he could pass on the instructions to his sister, who would in turn pass it on to the rest of the Network.
He grinned internally. Now that would certainly disturb these self-styled "Grandmasters". To have their contestants suddenly building communication nodes, devices which broke the confines of their individual battles... he was certain it would not go over well. He would have to be prepared to take advantage of the initial disturbance, and ensure the fledgling Network was not crushed before it could begin.
A sound brought his attention back to the house; something was moving downstairs. Hoss stood up from the web of fractal-like wiring he'd been assembling and moved towards the stairs. A small band of men armed with baseball bats, tire-irons, and a few firearms were cautiously working their way through the ground floor, perhaps searching for the one who'd killed their neighbors. A tinge of annoyance passed through Hoss as they clumsily shoved their way through his carefully-assembled wiring.
This would not do. They were interfering with his work.
He was glad enough of his peripheral systems were functioning to allow him to move silently; they did not know he was above them. His aural and infrared sensors tracked their movement through a hallway directly underneath him. He waited until they had passed him, then fired his lower kinetic emitters. The floor beneath him was blasted apart, and he dropped straight down. His legs remained straight as he landed, as he did not need to absorb the force of the landing, and as such had no recovery period. Before the closest man could whirl to face him, Hoss's only remaining arm was outstretched. The men were motionless. Not because they were startled, but because a thin silver line was connecting them all at about forehead-level. The line contracted back into Hoss's hand, and again, there was a sound of bodies slumping to the floor. Hoss looked at the corpses, considering. He probably had enough nervous tissue from the bodies laying about the house to actually be useful. He bent down to begin harvesting, but was interrupted by the sound of sirens.
Hoss's mind raced ahead; emergency vehicles inevitably meant law enforcement, which inevitably meant more people entering the house. He couldn't keep killing them; it would delay his work. They couldn't kill him, but of course this was a fact of which they were unaware. Inevitably, the situation would turn into a siege, where the locals realized sending people inside would only get them killed, but, guided by a misplaced sense of righteousness, they would set themselves up outside to prevent him from leaving.
No matter. He didn't intend to leave anyway. And perhaps the bodies they would lose in their initial forays would give him more raw material for the device. Plus, the barriers they would erect around the house would be full of precious metals, should he ever require more.
Hoss knelt again, and began to flay the skin off of the corpses before him.
As the town slowly rose to greet the soft dawn light, the not-so quiet violence of the early morning drew curious townsfolk towards two houses in particular. One, from the outside, did not seem too out of the ordinary, despite the unanswered knocks of concerned neighbors. On the other side of town, the other house was a tad more conspicuous. If the crumpled body laying near the driveway wasn't enough to arouse suspicion, the missing kitchen wall certainly was. As the more prudent citizens rushed to call for local emergency services, others warily looked through the large hole in the wall, trying to discern what was happening inside.
The house's interior was a mess. Every wall had been torn down, the floors ripped apart, copper wiring and plumbing strewn through every room in an increasingly complex web. Hoss moved through the house methodically, scrounging for the raw materials he needed to continue the construction. As he worked, he realized he was grateful for the absence of his newmatter fabricators. Where before he may have simply spat out a horde of Von-Neumann nanomachines to do the labor for him, now he was present and involved in every step. He had always found this kind of detail-oriented work oddly therapeutic, and as his artificial muscles went on autopilot, his mind, never content to waste time, turned towards other matters.
His brief foray into the world of magic during the previous round had taught him much. He recalled his meditative period, when he had first applied his Will to the world around him. At first, he could summon nothing more than a slight breeze, but his efforts towards understanding the application of will to reality had shown him much. During his time of contemplation, he had felt... something. A current running through the fabric of his being. It was very faint, and the more he had tried to control it, the more it had slipped away. Confused, he had given up that avenue of research and had instead turned his attention to the calm grass and air around him. Again, he encountered a current; he could not tell if it was the same type as what he sensed within him, nor could he tell if it had a "type" at all, but it was there.
It was when he surrendered himself to the current within that he found he could control both. It was slight, at first; the breeze was an accidental side-effect of a kind of magical pressure, created by that surrender.
Later, when he had so recklessly poured that current, his will, into the electromagnetic singularity, the current inside had left him. He felt an odd pressure, as though his body were still meat and fluid, and his lungs held naught but vacuum. The world pressed upon him, and his still-human brain instinctively tried to fill that vacuum. Futilely, it sent involuntary signals to his cybernetic body, forcing him to gulp down mouthfuls of air which were of no use to him and went nowhere. His body convulsed as his brain told it to fill lungs which no longer existed.
Eventually he had reached a kind of internal equilibrium. He still felt... odd, but he at least had control over himself once more. Now, calmed by the meditative labor, he was able to reflect more coherently on those events. He'd undergone similar soul-searching in his youth, of course, and had never encountered that ethereal flow. So why now?
He turned to the data his sensors had gathered during the round transition. They were disappointingly sparse. He was, however, able to wrest from them some useful information: the current, the ethereal flow, had fluctuated wildly during the transition, and there was a definite drop in the... intensity of the external current; the flow of the world around him. Which would make sense; this world was likely less magical than the park. But why? What made any particular universe inherently more or less magical? And how could he, a being from a universe without magic, suddenly sense this current?
The answer had to lay with the Cultivator. Her powers were sufficient to allow mutually incompatible laws of multiple universes to work together in harmony. Obviously, this meant these "laws" ceased to be "laws" and became more... guidelines, to be adopted and discarded as one wished. By allowing the rules of different universes to work in tandem, the Cultivator had made them less rigid, allowing more enterprising minds, like Hoss's, to bend these laws to their will.
There was more, he knew. But he needed more data. Especially if the Network were to become workable. Its users would need to have the ability to easily and quickly pass information through the multiverse; something which was, at the moment, quite difficult to do. He and his sister were lucky, and he suspected there may be other beings who had such pre-existing links. But there were too many who didn't.
Which brought him back to his work. If the house-sized device he was constructing served its function, he would hopefully gather enough additional data to easily convert it into a multiversal communication node.
And if he could build one, then he could pass on the instructions to his sister, who would in turn pass it on to the rest of the Network.
He grinned internally. Now that would certainly disturb these self-styled "Grandmasters". To have their contestants suddenly building communication nodes, devices which broke the confines of their individual battles... he was certain it would not go over well. He would have to be prepared to take advantage of the initial disturbance, and ensure the fledgling Network was not crushed before it could begin.
A sound brought his attention back to the house; something was moving downstairs. Hoss stood up from the web of fractal-like wiring he'd been assembling and moved towards the stairs. A small band of men armed with baseball bats, tire-irons, and a few firearms were cautiously working their way through the ground floor, perhaps searching for the one who'd killed their neighbors. A tinge of annoyance passed through Hoss as they clumsily shoved their way through his carefully-assembled wiring.
This would not do. They were interfering with his work.
He was glad enough of his peripheral systems were functioning to allow him to move silently; they did not know he was above them. His aural and infrared sensors tracked their movement through a hallway directly underneath him. He waited until they had passed him, then fired his lower kinetic emitters. The floor beneath him was blasted apart, and he dropped straight down. His legs remained straight as he landed, as he did not need to absorb the force of the landing, and as such had no recovery period. Before the closest man could whirl to face him, Hoss's only remaining arm was outstretched. The men were motionless. Not because they were startled, but because a thin silver line was connecting them all at about forehead-level. The line contracted back into Hoss's hand, and again, there was a sound of bodies slumping to the floor. Hoss looked at the corpses, considering. He probably had enough nervous tissue from the bodies laying about the house to actually be useful. He bent down to begin harvesting, but was interrupted by the sound of sirens.
Hoss's mind raced ahead; emergency vehicles inevitably meant law enforcement, which inevitably meant more people entering the house. He couldn't keep killing them; it would delay his work. They couldn't kill him, but of course this was a fact of which they were unaware. Inevitably, the situation would turn into a siege, where the locals realized sending people inside would only get them killed, but, guided by a misplaced sense of righteousness, they would set themselves up outside to prevent him from leaving.
No matter. He didn't intend to leave anyway. And perhaps the bodies they would lose in their initial forays would give him more raw material for the device. Plus, the barriers they would erect around the house would be full of precious metals, should he ever require more.
Hoss knelt again, and began to flay the skin off of the corpses before him.