Re: The Savage Brawl [Round 4: Small 50s Town]
04-19-2012, 09:40 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.
Some time later...
Hoss reached down and deactivated the device's connection to the Network - its internal power source was limited, after all - and gathered it back up in his makeshift sling. He moved back to the door, and poked his head out, scanning his immediate horizon. He appeared to be on a main throughway of the town, and was surrounded by low buildings. One in particular caught his attention, as it had the main attribute upon which he'd based his search: height.
Another quick glance up and down the street, and Hoss darted from the doorway, deftly navigated the battle-torn street - discovering whatever else he currently lacked, he at least still had some muscle memory - and stopped at the corner. The building he was heading towards was some distance yet, but the smoke trailing from an impact on its roof helped Hoss to easily locate it. As he cautiously ran between buildings and across streets, he wondered why he had yet to encounter another of his fellow contestants. Gormand didn't count; his army was quite obviously winning the battle against the alien invaders, and Hoss could see evidence of the meat-virus's presence encroaching on the center of the town. Ekelhaft, he preferred not to think about. Especially not in this state; the creature fed off magic, and - so far as he knew - Hoss's body had been created entirely with magic. And given how little he was steadily realizing he knew about magic, a thought could very well attract the slime. He moved on quickly to the others... who exactly was left? He should have kept better track - he did not appreciate his options being 'Diego, Konka Rar, Ziirphael: Pick two'. He'd had very little contact with the small, dangerous-looking man, aside from a few magical traces. The other two would likely kill him instantly if they recognized him, and maybe even if they didn't. Hoss stopped behind a bush - he'd left most of the buildings behind, trading them for what appeared to be a primitive educational facility - and caught his breath, considering his options. On the one hand, his new appearance would make a rather convincing disguise, and his best option would be to lay low. On the other hand... Hoss looked up at the crashed ship. Its saucer section had impacted the building at an angle that was very nearly 90 degrees, adding at least another twenty meters to the building's height. He currently had no way to scale the side of the saucer, unless he used magic. And if he could, then he had more at his defense than a disguise.
The only way to know was to try. Hoss exhaled, readied himself, and began sprinting towards the building. His feet pounded the pavement, and with each thrust against the Earth Hoss tried to push harder. As he threw himself forward, he could feel a fire begin to burn within him. He focused on it, tried to feed the flame with his sweat and blood and flesh, running faster until he felt near bursting, until he finally planted one foot on the ground, gathered the power he had gathered, and shot it downwards.
The results were significantly more exaggerated than he'd expected.
Hoss's intention had been to generate enough thrust to get him maybe to the roof, and from there he'd try for the top of the saucer. Instead, the ground beneath him was pulverized, and the shockwave demolished the front face of the school. Hoss was sent shooting almost a kilometer into the air, wildly out of control. His body, whose muscle memory contained no records of being shot cannon-like into the air, flailed reflexively, and Hoss, unable to properly manage the amount of power he'd gathered, blasted himself in a number of random directions before forcing down a burbling panic and forcing himself into stillness. The moment did not last long, as it dawned on him that the last direction in which he'd blasted himself had been down. Taking care to control his movements and his focus, Hoss turned midair to face the oncoming ground, stretched out his arms, and pushed against the ground. His descent slowed, and Hoss spread out completely, pushing slightly with his entire body, using an increase surface area to ease his control. He continued to slow until he was a half a meter from the ground, at which point he brought his arms and legs down, and looked around him. While he was in the air, he'd had just enough time to locate the part of the town he'd attempted to spot from atop the saucer. It was an especially war-torn section of suburb, on the adjacent side of the town's center. In its center was his target: ground-zero of the Giant's explosion, and the area where he'd torn a hole in this universe. He'd landed in a field behind the school, and provided he skirted the edges of the town, had nothing but forest and pastures between himself and his target. He rather doubted the massive expulsion of magical force, and the subsequent catapulted humanoid, had escaped anyone's attention. The chaos of the battle had long since moved away from this part of the town, which was slowly being taken over by Gormand's virus, aiding in his army's destruction of the alien warships, and as such, his rather explosive anomaly would stand out to even the casual observer. Hoss grimaced. Remaining hidden was rapidly becoming a less viable option. He'd have to hurry to the tear.
Some minutes earlier...
Hoss looked carefully at his device's screen. It currently displayed a disorganized-looking cluster of beige globules. His own voice was speaking.
"Now, this is a rough approximation of the local mutliversal structure, and when I say rough, I mean rough. Since neither of you has the capacity to either view or conceptualize dimensions greater than three, what you see here is more of a metaphor than an example. This sphere," an arm came into view, and a black-gloved hand pointed out a globule on the lower-right, which conveniently bounced and lit up, "is the battle the Amalgam was entered into. This sphere," the hand moved, and pointed at a globule roughly in the center of the cluster, "is where you are, younger self. And this," a pulsating splotch of beige erupted around the first globule, with a single tendril that was currently growing inwards, towards the second, "is us." The view changed, and zoomed in. In the lower right, the splotch of the Amalgam vibrated and danced around its battle's current universe. In the upper left, the universe containing Hoss's surroundings sat, serene. All the other globules had vanished, and racing across the center of the view was the lone tendril of beige."We have discovered that grandmasters have a wonderful mastery of the creation and destruction of universes, and especially in the management of said creations. In particular, when creating a reality in which to host a Grand Battle, many seem to prefer to 'anchor' it in the multiverse, if you will. We presume this is one of many protections against tampering, as the grandmasters are, as you will discover, paranoid meddling backstabbers."
Hoss cocked an eyebrow at that last phrase, and the voice from the screen continued.
"We plan to take advantage of these multiversal anchors. But first, we need a place to latch on. That's where you come in," and Hoss's face appeared on the screen - no, it wasn't quite his, there was something... tan... in his eyes. Those eyes affixed him through the screen, and the view behind them changed again, zooming in on Hoss's universe, in particular, on a small imperfection on its surface. The face on the screen smiled. "If we remember correctly, you've just ripped a hole in your universe - which was then further destabilized by dimension-breaching magical cascade. We need you to destabilize it just a bit more, so that we may enter your universe, and use its anchoring properties to tear out a piece of our own."
Hoss nodded. "Yes... the orbs I made have a function that would meet our needs. Their scanning utility can be easily modified to destabilize instead of detect. This device, unfortunately, is only capable of communication."
"We are aware," said the face on the screen, "We have been planning this for a long time - when we'd explored all avenues of possibility for how to escape the prison generated by that anomalous mineral fragment, we occupied our attention with fantasies of what we might accomplish with our freedom. Now that we have Hans with us, we can control the moment of our ascension, and enjoy ourselves a little. One of the benefits of being one with the Amalgam is that we spent no time deciding which of our imaginings we wanted to manifest; agreement is always instant and unanimous. We have been actively laying the groundwork since the beginning of this battle, and now we come to the crucial moment. When you have destabilized the tear, we will attach ourself to your universe, and rip out a section of this war-torn city. Its parent universe will likely collapse immediately, but we will keep our acquisition safe. When we leave, it will float freely through the multiverse, and serve as a hub for the Network, where its members can meet, plan, trade, and organize. It will be watched over by you," The view zoomed out as the Amalgam Hoss gestured to his left, and Hans came into view. Amalgam Hoss looked back at the screen. "When we expel my remnant and push it into him, our ascension will occur almost immediately - even now, we are being... pulled away."
Hoss frowned. "This remnant... I'm still not quite sure I understand what it is."
Amalgam Hoss shrugged. "Neither are we. That is the troubling thing. The amount of ignorance we still have about it is... staggering. And a little bit terrifying. We didn't even know what it did until we met other copies like Hans, and we noticed an imperceptible difference," he walked over to Hans, who looked on impassively, "he possesses your memories, skills, knowledge, and technology. He looks like you, he talks like you, and in a way, he thinks like you. We have observed the appearance of various copies of ourselves - pardon, that is, of you and me - and each has lacked a certain... drive. A particular strength of will. An ability to understand, predict, and shape the world around him. He would not be capable of the feats you and I have accomplished, and yet, we can not identify what is lacking, what benefit is provided by this remnant besides an apparent loss in work ethic. We do know that it comes from something old, and that you, me, and the Amalgam, owe all our accomplishments to it. And we cannot complete our ascension so long as it remains within us; whatever it belongs to will not let the remnant go."
Hoss shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know how comfortable I am with the idea of owing everything I am to some... ancient progenitor."
The Hoss on the screen nodded. "We know the feeling. Now, you should get going. You have work to do." He smiled out from the screen and the display went blank.
---
A sweating, panting, exhausted Hoss ran up to a massive crater, surrounded by the wreckage of a suburban neighborhood. Ground zero of another of his experiments with magic. He sighed, and made his way down the walls of the crater, using the time to attempt to catch his breath.
As he reached the bottom, he held up an orb he'd picked up on the way. He'd gone past the original launch point of all of the orbs, only to find that some were returning - some charred, half-melted, in pieces, or perfectly fine. Puzzling, but something that he could figure out later. He approached the center of the crater, where space... flickered. Pressing a few key sections of the orb, he disabled the safety settings on the scanning feature - which used a particular type of multiversal radiation to make visible seams and weaknesses in one's current universe - and caused it to begin emit an overloaded burst of radiation. Immediately, the space before him roiled and glowed, and an oily tan began to seep through. Hoss raised the intensity of his radiation barrage, and the flickering, folding chaos in front of him grew. A horrible ripping sound tore across the expanse, and Hoss took a few steps back as he felt gravity begin to lose consistency near the border of the growing tear. The sound grew, and Hoss retreated back up the walls of the crater, to the relative safety of the blasted landscape above. The hole grew, and oily tan flowed from it like spherical geyser, and then...
... and then the ripping sound was replaced by confused static, and the oily tan spasmed, convulsed, and then imploded, taking the portion of the universe it had breached with it. Space fell inwards to fill the sudden absence and in an instant, the crater had folded up upon itself. Hoss was knocked backwards by the gravitational shifts, and sat on the ground, stunned. The orb rolled away from his hand, sparking.
In the back of his mind, a gibbering panic began to rise, and from across the crater, a familiar green sludge was oozing itself through the wreckage of a house. Just as Hoss tried to suppress his fear, a shadow fell over him. He scrambled to his feet, and found himself face-to-face with Ziirphael.
Some time later...
Hoss reached down and deactivated the device's connection to the Network - its internal power source was limited, after all - and gathered it back up in his makeshift sling. He moved back to the door, and poked his head out, scanning his immediate horizon. He appeared to be on a main throughway of the town, and was surrounded by low buildings. One in particular caught his attention, as it had the main attribute upon which he'd based his search: height.
Another quick glance up and down the street, and Hoss darted from the doorway, deftly navigated the battle-torn street - discovering whatever else he currently lacked, he at least still had some muscle memory - and stopped at the corner. The building he was heading towards was some distance yet, but the smoke trailing from an impact on its roof helped Hoss to easily locate it. As he cautiously ran between buildings and across streets, he wondered why he had yet to encounter another of his fellow contestants. Gormand didn't count; his army was quite obviously winning the battle against the alien invaders, and Hoss could see evidence of the meat-virus's presence encroaching on the center of the town. Ekelhaft, he preferred not to think about. Especially not in this state; the creature fed off magic, and - so far as he knew - Hoss's body had been created entirely with magic. And given how little he was steadily realizing he knew about magic, a thought could very well attract the slime. He moved on quickly to the others... who exactly was left? He should have kept better track - he did not appreciate his options being 'Diego, Konka Rar, Ziirphael: Pick two'. He'd had very little contact with the small, dangerous-looking man, aside from a few magical traces. The other two would likely kill him instantly if they recognized him, and maybe even if they didn't. Hoss stopped behind a bush - he'd left most of the buildings behind, trading them for what appeared to be a primitive educational facility - and caught his breath, considering his options. On the one hand, his new appearance would make a rather convincing disguise, and his best option would be to lay low. On the other hand... Hoss looked up at the crashed ship. Its saucer section had impacted the building at an angle that was very nearly 90 degrees, adding at least another twenty meters to the building's height. He currently had no way to scale the side of the saucer, unless he used magic. And if he could, then he had more at his defense than a disguise.
The only way to know was to try. Hoss exhaled, readied himself, and began sprinting towards the building. His feet pounded the pavement, and with each thrust against the Earth Hoss tried to push harder. As he threw himself forward, he could feel a fire begin to burn within him. He focused on it, tried to feed the flame with his sweat and blood and flesh, running faster until he felt near bursting, until he finally planted one foot on the ground, gathered the power he had gathered, and shot it downwards.
The results were significantly more exaggerated than he'd expected.
Hoss's intention had been to generate enough thrust to get him maybe to the roof, and from there he'd try for the top of the saucer. Instead, the ground beneath him was pulverized, and the shockwave demolished the front face of the school. Hoss was sent shooting almost a kilometer into the air, wildly out of control. His body, whose muscle memory contained no records of being shot cannon-like into the air, flailed reflexively, and Hoss, unable to properly manage the amount of power he'd gathered, blasted himself in a number of random directions before forcing down a burbling panic and forcing himself into stillness. The moment did not last long, as it dawned on him that the last direction in which he'd blasted himself had been down. Taking care to control his movements and his focus, Hoss turned midair to face the oncoming ground, stretched out his arms, and pushed against the ground. His descent slowed, and Hoss spread out completely, pushing slightly with his entire body, using an increase surface area to ease his control. He continued to slow until he was a half a meter from the ground, at which point he brought his arms and legs down, and looked around him. While he was in the air, he'd had just enough time to locate the part of the town he'd attempted to spot from atop the saucer. It was an especially war-torn section of suburb, on the adjacent side of the town's center. In its center was his target: ground-zero of the Giant's explosion, and the area where he'd torn a hole in this universe. He'd landed in a field behind the school, and provided he skirted the edges of the town, had nothing but forest and pastures between himself and his target. He rather doubted the massive expulsion of magical force, and the subsequent catapulted humanoid, had escaped anyone's attention. The chaos of the battle had long since moved away from this part of the town, which was slowly being taken over by Gormand's virus, aiding in his army's destruction of the alien warships, and as such, his rather explosive anomaly would stand out to even the casual observer. Hoss grimaced. Remaining hidden was rapidly becoming a less viable option. He'd have to hurry to the tear.
Some minutes earlier...
Hoss looked carefully at his device's screen. It currently displayed a disorganized-looking cluster of beige globules. His own voice was speaking.
"Now, this is a rough approximation of the local mutliversal structure, and when I say rough, I mean rough. Since neither of you has the capacity to either view or conceptualize dimensions greater than three, what you see here is more of a metaphor than an example. This sphere," an arm came into view, and a black-gloved hand pointed out a globule on the lower-right, which conveniently bounced and lit up, "is the battle the Amalgam was entered into. This sphere," the hand moved, and pointed at a globule roughly in the center of the cluster, "is where you are, younger self. And this," a pulsating splotch of beige erupted around the first globule, with a single tendril that was currently growing inwards, towards the second, "is us." The view changed, and zoomed in. In the lower right, the splotch of the Amalgam vibrated and danced around its battle's current universe. In the upper left, the universe containing Hoss's surroundings sat, serene. All the other globules had vanished, and racing across the center of the view was the lone tendril of beige."We have discovered that grandmasters have a wonderful mastery of the creation and destruction of universes, and especially in the management of said creations. In particular, when creating a reality in which to host a Grand Battle, many seem to prefer to 'anchor' it in the multiverse, if you will. We presume this is one of many protections against tampering, as the grandmasters are, as you will discover, paranoid meddling backstabbers."
Hoss cocked an eyebrow at that last phrase, and the voice from the screen continued.
"We plan to take advantage of these multiversal anchors. But first, we need a place to latch on. That's where you come in," and Hoss's face appeared on the screen - no, it wasn't quite his, there was something... tan... in his eyes. Those eyes affixed him through the screen, and the view behind them changed again, zooming in on Hoss's universe, in particular, on a small imperfection on its surface. The face on the screen smiled. "If we remember correctly, you've just ripped a hole in your universe - which was then further destabilized by dimension-breaching magical cascade. We need you to destabilize it just a bit more, so that we may enter your universe, and use its anchoring properties to tear out a piece of our own."
Hoss nodded. "Yes... the orbs I made have a function that would meet our needs. Their scanning utility can be easily modified to destabilize instead of detect. This device, unfortunately, is only capable of communication."
"We are aware," said the face on the screen, "We have been planning this for a long time - when we'd explored all avenues of possibility for how to escape the prison generated by that anomalous mineral fragment, we occupied our attention with fantasies of what we might accomplish with our freedom. Now that we have Hans with us, we can control the moment of our ascension, and enjoy ourselves a little. One of the benefits of being one with the Amalgam is that we spent no time deciding which of our imaginings we wanted to manifest; agreement is always instant and unanimous. We have been actively laying the groundwork since the beginning of this battle, and now we come to the crucial moment. When you have destabilized the tear, we will attach ourself to your universe, and rip out a section of this war-torn city. Its parent universe will likely collapse immediately, but we will keep our acquisition safe. When we leave, it will float freely through the multiverse, and serve as a hub for the Network, where its members can meet, plan, trade, and organize. It will be watched over by you," The view zoomed out as the Amalgam Hoss gestured to his left, and Hans came into view. Amalgam Hoss looked back at the screen. "When we expel my remnant and push it into him, our ascension will occur almost immediately - even now, we are being... pulled away."
Hoss frowned. "This remnant... I'm still not quite sure I understand what it is."
Amalgam Hoss shrugged. "Neither are we. That is the troubling thing. The amount of ignorance we still have about it is... staggering. And a little bit terrifying. We didn't even know what it did until we met other copies like Hans, and we noticed an imperceptible difference," he walked over to Hans, who looked on impassively, "he possesses your memories, skills, knowledge, and technology. He looks like you, he talks like you, and in a way, he thinks like you. We have observed the appearance of various copies of ourselves - pardon, that is, of you and me - and each has lacked a certain... drive. A particular strength of will. An ability to understand, predict, and shape the world around him. He would not be capable of the feats you and I have accomplished, and yet, we can not identify what is lacking, what benefit is provided by this remnant besides an apparent loss in work ethic. We do know that it comes from something old, and that you, me, and the Amalgam, owe all our accomplishments to it. And we cannot complete our ascension so long as it remains within us; whatever it belongs to will not let the remnant go."
Hoss shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know how comfortable I am with the idea of owing everything I am to some... ancient progenitor."
The Hoss on the screen nodded. "We know the feeling. Now, you should get going. You have work to do." He smiled out from the screen and the display went blank.
---
A sweating, panting, exhausted Hoss ran up to a massive crater, surrounded by the wreckage of a suburban neighborhood. Ground zero of another of his experiments with magic. He sighed, and made his way down the walls of the crater, using the time to attempt to catch his breath.
As he reached the bottom, he held up an orb he'd picked up on the way. He'd gone past the original launch point of all of the orbs, only to find that some were returning - some charred, half-melted, in pieces, or perfectly fine. Puzzling, but something that he could figure out later. He approached the center of the crater, where space... flickered. Pressing a few key sections of the orb, he disabled the safety settings on the scanning feature - which used a particular type of multiversal radiation to make visible seams and weaknesses in one's current universe - and caused it to begin emit an overloaded burst of radiation. Immediately, the space before him roiled and glowed, and an oily tan began to seep through. Hoss raised the intensity of his radiation barrage, and the flickering, folding chaos in front of him grew. A horrible ripping sound tore across the expanse, and Hoss took a few steps back as he felt gravity begin to lose consistency near the border of the growing tear. The sound grew, and Hoss retreated back up the walls of the crater, to the relative safety of the blasted landscape above. The hole grew, and oily tan flowed from it like spherical geyser, and then...
... and then the ripping sound was replaced by confused static, and the oily tan spasmed, convulsed, and then imploded, taking the portion of the universe it had breached with it. Space fell inwards to fill the sudden absence and in an instant, the crater had folded up upon itself. Hoss was knocked backwards by the gravitational shifts, and sat on the ground, stunned. The orb rolled away from his hand, sparking.
In the back of his mind, a gibbering panic began to rise, and from across the crater, a familiar green sludge was oozing itself through the wreckage of a house. Just as Hoss tried to suppress his fear, a shadow fell over him. He scrambled to his feet, and found himself face-to-face with Ziirphael.