The Savage Brawl [Round 5: Battletopia]

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Konka had a point. Translation was clearly an issue in these battles. How else would a centuries-old god of death, a primal avatar of entropy, a sentient meatball, a cyborg from the distant future and a cyborg lich be able to communicate with one another? The Cultivator had set one up that automatically converted whatever anyone said to a language whoever was listening was most familiar with. Interestingly, or not, Ziirphael had been experiencing the battle in Sumerian, the first human language he had ever learned and the language in which he still thought. The problem with translations is that sometimes things get lost.

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The streets were empty; everyone had fled or was dead. Those were pretty much the only options. Okay some people were still alive, huddled in their houses waiting for the danger to pass, or else out looting the empty shops, but mainly the streets were pretty empty. Ziir couldn’t really articulate the reason he had came to land upon the street corner that he had, not that there was anyone to listen, not that he would have told anyone anyway. A good guess would be the row of televisions in the electronic appliance store. The window was broken, a couple of televisions snatched from the display, a trail of broken glass leading off down the street. The picture on the remaining televisions was of poor quality. It was black and white and frequently interrupted with blasts of static, and even when it was not it was flickery. On the screen there was an alien, similar to the ones that he had encountered on the ship but slightly different. She wore an intricate uniform and had emerging from her back butterfly wings. But the thing that was the most unusual about her was her eyes, well to Ziirphael at least. As he stared into her eyes, he let her words drift over him, something about a Collection. Though he could not place it there was something familiar about those eyes, something that made him feel less angry, less alone.

Slowly he realized.

It took him longer than it should have.

There was a time when it had been all he had wanted, but he had believed that time was gone; subsumed by rage at the Cultivator’s actions, at being forced to live on this mortal coil.

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If you would indulge me for just a moment, I would tell you a story. It is a story of a being named Ziirphael who was born in the black emptiness that preceded everything. When the stars and planets were forming Ziirphael was already there. One was picked, almost at random, and Ziirphael went to live on it, and watched as the planet grew bountiful with life. Ziirphael of course promptly snuffed out that life wherever it was to be found. But I can tell that some of you think you already know this story; that I should probably just skip to the end where Ziirphael is plucked into a battle to the death, and more specifically to the part where he speaks to the President of Skavat. You are, of course, mistaken.

This is not that Ziirphael. Where he tired of killing and fell into despair, she grew tired of killing and began to wonder about the lives of the things she had been killing. She sought to help them where she could, to attempt to fix the damage she had done. Slowly the various species of Skavat had stopped warring, thanks in part to her efforts. Gradually as time went on she made her machinations less covert, more public. Now everyone on the planet of Skavat knows her name; Ziirphael, their ever-living president. They know how she has improved their lives and lead them to scientific breakthroughs and military conquests. Many even know that she was once a force of death.

Of course her name is not actually Ziirphael. It is something unpronounceable without the correct set of mandibles, but the translation is almost perfect. A happy accident, something found in translation.

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“That was the point of the collections.” The President explained. “I knew that I could not be the only one. That somewhere in the universe there must be someone else, someone like me.” It was not a two way communication. It was a blanket transmission; all over town anything that could display a picture of play audio was playing this transmission. It was somewhat heavy handed, but the President had been looking for someone really like her for a long time. Though she only had the thinnest shakiest scrap of evidence that there was someone in that backwater town who was like her, she was prepared to seize upon it. “Ziirphael, if you can hear me, make your way to-” The message was cut short, the screen suddenly cut to static.

High above the city a missile from Gormand’s motherburger slammed into the Skavat mothership, destroying the master receiver, and cutting off communications between the two planets for good.