Re: The Savage Brawl [Round 4: Small 50s Town]
05-07-2011, 01:48 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
The small crowd that had gathered outside the house had rung the bell several times and pounded loudly on the door for several seconds and still received no response; several people were discussing what to do, one had already gone back home to call the police again, and a few were considering ignoring the discussion entirely and just breaking down the door. One decided to circle around the house itself to see if they could see anything; as he passed the late Robert's room's window, he was the first one to become aware of what happened. He wasn't burdened with the knowledge for long, though, as Ekelhaft burst through the window as he approached.
The poor victim shouted noisily and scrambled back, hoping to run back to the safety of the group; he wouldn't make it, of course, as dozens of razor-sharp teeth sliced neatly through his retreating hamstrings then descended on his prone body, but he did neatly lead the oozing scourge back towards the rest of the group. It was immaterial anyway, as his dying screams brought them to Ekelhaft anyway.
---
Getting down off the steeple had been a time-consuming challenge; crossing the roof and descending the wall had been a time consuming challenge; tailing the lich across the grounds had been a time consuming challenge. Self's already small size had been further reduced in the fiery cataclysm that had ended the previous round, to the point where even grass had become a bothersome obstacle to both vision and movement. It did its best to absorb as much of the plant matter as it could as it passed, but the biggest impediment to growth was the abysmal starting point it had to work with.
Konka Rar had already begun digging in the graveyard before Self managed to draw level with him; it was a pity, since the energy from his spell would have proven a nice boon for the little slime, but the powdered human was still an adequate meal. Plus, this way he was so occupied with manual labor that the chances of him noticing Self before it wanted him to were minimal. The blob began idly etching its way into a tombstone, settling in to wait and gain power while it let its influence slowly take hold in the old necromancer's mind.
---
Chaos was rapidly taking hold elsewhere in the figuratively and literally sleepy little town; Ekelhaft had summarily slaughtered nearly the entire band that had gathered around the house it had been summoned in, and the survivors were running pell-mell and screaming. Alternately brutally efficient and playfully sadistic, the ooze was a force to be reckoned with, and the poor civilians had no real way of dealing with it. Even Crazy Old McRabish and his infamous .44 special, the most resistance the town could really offer, was completely ineffective, and the coot in question was quickly mutilated for his trouble.
Most of the survivors had fled as far as they could, so Ekelhaft was occupied picking off stragglers and toying with the still-living when the police arrived. The pair had been expecting some kind of domestic disturbance, not a horrific monster straight out of the movies; they barely had time to radio back to HQ to report the nature of the threat before they were summarily killed. Well, before one officer was summarily killed; the other was kept around a little longer. Just for fun. The dispatcher at the other end of the transmission would have been unable to believe her ears and assumed it was some kind of stupid pranks if it weren't for the very convincing screams Officer O'Donnel had managed to get out before his lungs were removed.
---
The little fragment of slime and sentience that called itself Self had consumed a not-insignificant amount of tombstone by now, and was having to take care not to bore all the way through the soft stone in the interest of staying unnoticed. A skeleton with a shovel wasn't exactly a thrilling show, and the rock not exactly the best material to consume for the purposes of growth, but there wasn't much else to do or see for now. It wished there was at least some way to see the effects it was having on the lich; as it was, the only thing it could see was Konka Rar knee-deep in a hole.
---
Konka Rar was of a similar midset, although about entirely different subjects. He was becoming increasingly frustrated about his decision to indulge himself and disintegrate the groundskeeper, and the hard-packed soil wasn't helping. Nor was this culture's ridiculous insistence on burying their dead fully six feet underground. What was the point? It's not as though the digging was tiring, but it was dreadfully dull. In an attempt to at least do something with his mind as he dug, he began calculating the approximate increased efficiency that would have resulted from zombifying the old man instead of destroying him.
After only a few moments of menial mathematics, the lich caught something out of the corner of his vision. It appeared to be a female figure all in black; he whipped his head around to get a good look at her, but could find no indication that anyone was there or had been there. Not one to dismiss something as his imagination, Konka Rar began scanning the surrounding area with his cybernetic eye and a few low-level divinations; the data he got back indicated neither the presence of anything living nor the aftermath of any kind of teleportation. There was a small anomaly near some graves a few yards away, but it was within acceptable deviations. It was probably about time to calibrate his eye anyway. Still, the sight of the woman had been odd.
Very odd.
---
Life for Nancy Lionel was fairly dull: she was the third-shift dispatcher at Jedesburg's dinky little police station; not only did this mean she was up from Ungodly O'clock at night to Ungodly O'clock in the morning, when nobody worth mentioning was awake and about, it also meant that her job was boring and uneventful in the extreme. There was no crime in Jedesburg, just teenagers. Nothing ever happened on her shift, which meant she spent all her time playing solitaire with her lucky deck and reading the cheesy romance novels she'd never admit to owning.
When two calls came in at about the same time, it was a once-a-year occurrence; the reports were pretty vague, so she just sent a patrolcar to each, expecting one to be some kind of accident and the other some kind of argument. She also expected that to be the high point of her nearly-over shift, and was thus VERY surprised when someone radioed back. It was O'Donnel and Michaels, the pair she'd sent to the domestic whatever; it was hard to tell exactly what they were telling her, since most of what they were doing could really be described as "gibberish" or "screaming", but she got the gist from words like "monsters" and "killing" and "corpses". She was initially skeptical, but... She was pretty sure she just heard the pair die. It was honestly more 'excitement' than she'd ever wanted, and she pushed down the urge to feel guilty for wishing things weren't so monotonous as she sent out a call and warning to the other on-duty officers, explaining what little she knew and urging caution.
---
Ekelhaft was neither stupid, nor deaf; it had heard the policemen send their warning and call for help back to their base or station or whatever they had. And it was glad they had, too. Why bother looking for targets when they all tell each other right where you are and come looking for you themselves? It once again thanked the Cultivator with a wordless paean to her barbaric glory, with just a little hint of gratitude towards whatever droning voice had seen fit to aid her. Aeons of silent, solitary degeneration, suddenly replaced by glorious combat and delicious death.
The ancient killer descended on a passing stray, bloodthirst sated for the moment as it waited for the prey to come to it. Things had never been so easy! It was glorious.
---
Several minutes had passed since Konka Rar had seen the woman, but it hadn't left his mind; he kept his senses sharp and his sensors on high alert. Given his vigilance, it came as a great shock when he heard snippets of words floating across the air.
"... be doing... can't see why... right."
Once again the lich spun around to survey his surroundings, but the scenery gave no hint of any presence but his own. And the words had sounded like they had been coming from RIGHT next to his head.
The small crowd that had gathered outside the house had rung the bell several times and pounded loudly on the door for several seconds and still received no response; several people were discussing what to do, one had already gone back home to call the police again, and a few were considering ignoring the discussion entirely and just breaking down the door. One decided to circle around the house itself to see if they could see anything; as he passed the late Robert's room's window, he was the first one to become aware of what happened. He wasn't burdened with the knowledge for long, though, as Ekelhaft burst through the window as he approached.
The poor victim shouted noisily and scrambled back, hoping to run back to the safety of the group; he wouldn't make it, of course, as dozens of razor-sharp teeth sliced neatly through his retreating hamstrings then descended on his prone body, but he did neatly lead the oozing scourge back towards the rest of the group. It was immaterial anyway, as his dying screams brought them to Ekelhaft anyway.
---
Getting down off the steeple had been a time-consuming challenge; crossing the roof and descending the wall had been a time consuming challenge; tailing the lich across the grounds had been a time consuming challenge. Self's already small size had been further reduced in the fiery cataclysm that had ended the previous round, to the point where even grass had become a bothersome obstacle to both vision and movement. It did its best to absorb as much of the plant matter as it could as it passed, but the biggest impediment to growth was the abysmal starting point it had to work with.
Konka Rar had already begun digging in the graveyard before Self managed to draw level with him; it was a pity, since the energy from his spell would have proven a nice boon for the little slime, but the powdered human was still an adequate meal. Plus, this way he was so occupied with manual labor that the chances of him noticing Self before it wanted him to were minimal. The blob began idly etching its way into a tombstone, settling in to wait and gain power while it let its influence slowly take hold in the old necromancer's mind.
---
Chaos was rapidly taking hold elsewhere in the figuratively and literally sleepy little town; Ekelhaft had summarily slaughtered nearly the entire band that had gathered around the house it had been summoned in, and the survivors were running pell-mell and screaming. Alternately brutally efficient and playfully sadistic, the ooze was a force to be reckoned with, and the poor civilians had no real way of dealing with it. Even Crazy Old McRabish and his infamous .44 special, the most resistance the town could really offer, was completely ineffective, and the coot in question was quickly mutilated for his trouble.
Most of the survivors had fled as far as they could, so Ekelhaft was occupied picking off stragglers and toying with the still-living when the police arrived. The pair had been expecting some kind of domestic disturbance, not a horrific monster straight out of the movies; they barely had time to radio back to HQ to report the nature of the threat before they were summarily killed. Well, before one officer was summarily killed; the other was kept around a little longer. Just for fun. The dispatcher at the other end of the transmission would have been unable to believe her ears and assumed it was some kind of stupid pranks if it weren't for the very convincing screams Officer O'Donnel had managed to get out before his lungs were removed.
---
The little fragment of slime and sentience that called itself Self had consumed a not-insignificant amount of tombstone by now, and was having to take care not to bore all the way through the soft stone in the interest of staying unnoticed. A skeleton with a shovel wasn't exactly a thrilling show, and the rock not exactly the best material to consume for the purposes of growth, but there wasn't much else to do or see for now. It wished there was at least some way to see the effects it was having on the lich; as it was, the only thing it could see was Konka Rar knee-deep in a hole.
---
Konka Rar was of a similar midset, although about entirely different subjects. He was becoming increasingly frustrated about his decision to indulge himself and disintegrate the groundskeeper, and the hard-packed soil wasn't helping. Nor was this culture's ridiculous insistence on burying their dead fully six feet underground. What was the point? It's not as though the digging was tiring, but it was dreadfully dull. In an attempt to at least do something with his mind as he dug, he began calculating the approximate increased efficiency that would have resulted from zombifying the old man instead of destroying him.
After only a few moments of menial mathematics, the lich caught something out of the corner of his vision. It appeared to be a female figure all in black; he whipped his head around to get a good look at her, but could find no indication that anyone was there or had been there. Not one to dismiss something as his imagination, Konka Rar began scanning the surrounding area with his cybernetic eye and a few low-level divinations; the data he got back indicated neither the presence of anything living nor the aftermath of any kind of teleportation. There was a small anomaly near some graves a few yards away, but it was within acceptable deviations. It was probably about time to calibrate his eye anyway. Still, the sight of the woman had been odd.
Very odd.
---
Life for Nancy Lionel was fairly dull: she was the third-shift dispatcher at Jedesburg's dinky little police station; not only did this mean she was up from Ungodly O'clock at night to Ungodly O'clock in the morning, when nobody worth mentioning was awake and about, it also meant that her job was boring and uneventful in the extreme. There was no crime in Jedesburg, just teenagers. Nothing ever happened on her shift, which meant she spent all her time playing solitaire with her lucky deck and reading the cheesy romance novels she'd never admit to owning.
When two calls came in at about the same time, it was a once-a-year occurrence; the reports were pretty vague, so she just sent a patrolcar to each, expecting one to be some kind of accident and the other some kind of argument. She also expected that to be the high point of her nearly-over shift, and was thus VERY surprised when someone radioed back. It was O'Donnel and Michaels, the pair she'd sent to the domestic whatever; it was hard to tell exactly what they were telling her, since most of what they were doing could really be described as "gibberish" or "screaming", but she got the gist from words like "monsters" and "killing" and "corpses". She was initially skeptical, but... She was pretty sure she just heard the pair die. It was honestly more 'excitement' than she'd ever wanted, and she pushed down the urge to feel guilty for wishing things weren't so monotonous as she sent out a call and warning to the other on-duty officers, explaining what little she knew and urging caution.
---
Ekelhaft was neither stupid, nor deaf; it had heard the policemen send their warning and call for help back to their base or station or whatever they had. And it was glad they had, too. Why bother looking for targets when they all tell each other right where you are and come looking for you themselves? It once again thanked the Cultivator with a wordless paean to her barbaric glory, with just a little hint of gratitude towards whatever droning voice had seen fit to aid her. Aeons of silent, solitary degeneration, suddenly replaced by glorious combat and delicious death.
The ancient killer descended on a passing stray, bloodthirst sated for the moment as it waited for the prey to come to it. Things had never been so easy! It was glorious.
---
Several minutes had passed since Konka Rar had seen the woman, but it hadn't left his mind; he kept his senses sharp and his sensors on high alert. Given his vigilance, it came as a great shock when he heard snippets of words floating across the air.
"... be doing... can't see why... right."
Once again the lich spun around to survey his surroundings, but the scenery gave no hint of any presence but his own. And the words had sounded like they had been coming from RIGHT next to his head.