Re: DEATHGAME 9000 [S!3] SIGNUPS OPEN
04-14-2012, 03:23 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Snowyowl.
Only two of the eight contestants had the necessary senses to notice, and one of them was busy elsewhere, but the structure of local reality was becoming rather... turbulent. It wasn't a fight, not exactly - but two entities were each asserting their control over the laws of physics without realising the other's existence. Gomorrah, angry yet curious about these intruders and directing matters accordingly. And the Gamexus X99, intelligent and powerful but lacking sentience and personality, simply receiving instructions and acting on them. They trod on each other's insubstantial feet without realising it.
Take the gun, for example. To Weaver, it was a gun that fired bullets. If he'd thought about it, he might have remembered the word "shotgun". To Clark Jacobsen, it was the Winchester his old pa had given to him twenty, twenty-five years ago, and he'd gone hunting with it twice since.
To Gomorrah, it was the spectral memory of a shotgun that had been real once, and had in fact belonged to a real Clark Jacobsen, who had been married to a real Esther Jacobsen and really did beat her. Gomorrah was fond of that sort of neatness. He'd never lived in a ground-floor apartment, and the real gun had been poorly-maintained and probably wouldn't actually fire, but that was easy enough for Gomorrah to fix. The gun itself was a common enough model, fairly light and loaded with buckshot. If aimed true, it could kill a man with one shot at a considerable distance.
To the Gamexus, the gun was a Level 1 Shotgun, with what it had eventually decided was a custom appearance that had been modded in. (The normal Shotgun looked cartoonish compared to this one.) It fired 10 raytracer pellets that each dealt between 3 and 9 damage depending on range and chance, or a guaranteed 18 on a critical. Even at point-blank range, a non-critical shot definitely wouldn't kill a trained fighter, and probably not a civilian. Its origins didn't really matter to the Gamexus; that was all so much flavour text. The Shotgun could be fired twice before it needed to be reloaded, and allowed you to carry 32 ammo in total.
Either way, it was a weapon, which put Weaver at a severe disadvantage. He was down one arm and had no weapons, no equipment, no communications, no reinforcements, and nowhere to run to. The mob outside would tear him to shreds, and there was literally nothing he could do except try to talk the gunman down. His chances weren't just slim, they'd died of starvation. Internal Log #6361 was opened, filled with swear words, and closed 0.1 seconds later.
"Don't shoot! Please, don't shoot. I don't mean any harm"
"Oh yeah? That's nice. You just walk into someone's house then, guns blazing, but don't worry, it's all fine because you don't mean any harm."
"Guns blazing? I'm afraid I -"
BANG. The shot was aimed at Weaver's foot; only four pellets found their mark, for a total of 33 damage. It wasn't clear how much health Weaver had; it was more than most, but he was fairly small and unarmoured. Call it about 200. "Hell yeah guns blazing. You afraid, then, little man? You afraid?" Clark smiled nastily, and levelled the shotgun at Weaver's head. "Then gimme one good reason. One. Good. Reason. That I shouldn't repaint that wall with yer brains, you sumbitch."
"I." Weaver couldn't think of a reason. "I can help you!" No, he couldn't. "Er, pay you?" He couldn't do that either.
It got Clark's attention though. "Yeah? Well, my patience ain't cheap. Start passing over the Benjamins, I'll tell you when to stop." The shotgun was lowered again, slightly.
"I... don't have the local currency, but I can give you advanced techn-"
BANG. 78 damage. Weaver was screaming about secrets that would let Clark rule his world if he wanted to, to no avail. The man was beyond reasoning with. "You come here." He flipped the shotgun open. "You break my damn door." He ejected the spent casings. "You threaten me and my family." He inserted two new shells (that had materialised from thin air) (that reduced his ammo count to 28) "And now." He clicked the shotgun shut and...
... glanced at the source of a noise behind him. "Esther? Get back inside."
"I wanted... I thought I heard... I'm sorry"
"Damn right you're sorry. Now get back inside. And put that pan away."
Esther held up the pan dreamily, and looked at it like she'd never seen it before and didn't remember why it was in her hand. She took a shaky step towards her husband.
"I told you to go back inside, Esther."
"I'm sorry, Daddy. I didn't mean it."
"You didn't...? What?"
Another step, less nervous this time. "I didn't want this. For us. I. " She made a sound somewhere between a sob and a screech.
"I am not discussing this right now. I told you to go back inside, and you will do what I tell you to. Do you understand me?"
"I. Ah. ...No."
A second or two passed. Then Clark spun around and aimed the gun at Ester. "YOU DO WHAT I TELL YOU TO, BITCH. I'M IN CHARGE HERE, AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT. YOU'D BE NOTHING WITHOUT ME. NOTHING! AND YOU'D BEST JUST-"
Weaver dived onto Clark, dragging him to the ground. The shotgun flew out of his hand and clattered across the floor. Weaver got one solid punch in before Clark grabbed his good arm and started hitting back. The stump where his right hand had been was near-useless for hitting and blocking with, mostly due to the reduced reach. He flailed randomly with his feet while trying to prise his left hand from Clark's grip. Clark wasn't much of a fighter compared to Weaver, but he was strong and angry. Weaver hit him with a headbutt, managed to pull his arm free, and had Clark in a hold and was ready to break his arm by the time Esther started talking.
"Baby..." she said.
She'd picked up the shotgun, and was holding it properly, though her aim was waving all over the place. Weaver froze. Clark struggled slightly, but couldn't move an inch.
"You know how much I love you, right?"
Clark went pale. "Esther. Darling. Don't do this."
"I love you so, so much." Pause. "I really do."
"We can have a talk. I'll make dinner. You can rest. What do you say?"
"So it makes me sad..." she sniffed, and dissolved into uncontrollable sobbing.
"Okay. Okay. Don't worry. It'll be fine. Just give me the gun."
BANG. BANG. Two critical hits. 360 damage total, spread almost equally across both of them.Weaver's head was shredded entirely - not having any bones to speak of was like that. Clark whimpered, still alive for a few more seconds. His eyes watched Esther drop the gun, fall to her knees, and sob something indistinct that might have been "...when you tell me what to do". He twitched and lost consciousness.
The crowd outside stopped converging on the house, apparently sensing through a mysterious intuition that their target was no longer a threat (which in fact was exactly what they were doing). Esther collected herself. She'd imagined this moment, sometimes when she was angry (and Gomorrah had allowed her to play out her fantasy several times before). She checked the bodies for a pulse, mechanically; Weaver didn't have one at all, and Clark had a faint pulse, getting fainter fast. She slit his throat with the knife to be sure. Then, she fetched a blanket from the bedroom, carried the bodies onto it, and dragged them through the kitchen and out the back door.
She didn't notice anything strange about the alleyway, for a variety of reasons, but in fact it wasn't all there. The level designers hadn't wasted many resources on it, since the player would normally only see it from a distance and invisible walls prevented access. The floor and walls were flat and perfectly uniform. The bins that Esther threw the bodies into were textured cubes that didn't open, and the bodies passed straight through them anyway. Visual glitches allowed one to see through some of the nearby buildings.
The blinded and deafened Weaver wasn't in a condition to notice anything strange either. He lacked senses of taste and smell entirely, and his sense of touch was significantly less effective than a human's. He'd felt someone check him for a pulse and drag him along, but he had no idea where to. He did know that Esther thought him dead, though he didn't realise she was anything other than human and could only hope the crowd wouldn't cut him up or set him on fire or anything like that.
As Esther looked for cleaning products to wipe the blood and roboflesh out of the hall, Gomorrah at large accepted her assessment of the situation. The intruder was dead. Its attention turned elsewhere. And, of the two entities controlling reality, neither had the slightest interest in the bin alley any more. So it ceased to exist.
Clark's body vaporised itself. The walls stuttered in and out of visibility, and though bright flames were visible behind them they didn't light up the scene in any way. The bins briefly appeared to be inside-out, then turned solid black before the entire place winked out of existence and Weaver fell, alone, into an infinite black void.
Spoiler
Only two of the eight contestants had the necessary senses to notice, and one of them was busy elsewhere, but the structure of local reality was becoming rather... turbulent. It wasn't a fight, not exactly - but two entities were each asserting their control over the laws of physics without realising the other's existence. Gomorrah, angry yet curious about these intruders and directing matters accordingly. And the Gamexus X99, intelligent and powerful but lacking sentience and personality, simply receiving instructions and acting on them. They trod on each other's insubstantial feet without realising it.
Take the gun, for example. To Weaver, it was a gun that fired bullets. If he'd thought about it, he might have remembered the word "shotgun". To Clark Jacobsen, it was the Winchester his old pa had given to him twenty, twenty-five years ago, and he'd gone hunting with it twice since.
To Gomorrah, it was the spectral memory of a shotgun that had been real once, and had in fact belonged to a real Clark Jacobsen, who had been married to a real Esther Jacobsen and really did beat her. Gomorrah was fond of that sort of neatness. He'd never lived in a ground-floor apartment, and the real gun had been poorly-maintained and probably wouldn't actually fire, but that was easy enough for Gomorrah to fix. The gun itself was a common enough model, fairly light and loaded with buckshot. If aimed true, it could kill a man with one shot at a considerable distance.
To the Gamexus, the gun was a Level 1 Shotgun, with what it had eventually decided was a custom appearance that had been modded in. (The normal Shotgun looked cartoonish compared to this one.) It fired 10 raytracer pellets that each dealt between 3 and 9 damage depending on range and chance, or a guaranteed 18 on a critical. Even at point-blank range, a non-critical shot definitely wouldn't kill a trained fighter, and probably not a civilian. Its origins didn't really matter to the Gamexus; that was all so much flavour text. The Shotgun could be fired twice before it needed to be reloaded, and allowed you to carry 32 ammo in total.
Either way, it was a weapon, which put Weaver at a severe disadvantage. He was down one arm and had no weapons, no equipment, no communications, no reinforcements, and nowhere to run to. The mob outside would tear him to shreds, and there was literally nothing he could do except try to talk the gunman down. His chances weren't just slim, they'd died of starvation. Internal Log #6361 was opened, filled with swear words, and closed 0.1 seconds later.
"Don't shoot! Please, don't shoot. I don't mean any harm"
"Oh yeah? That's nice. You just walk into someone's house then, guns blazing, but don't worry, it's all fine because you don't mean any harm."
"Guns blazing? I'm afraid I -"
BANG. The shot was aimed at Weaver's foot; only four pellets found their mark, for a total of 33 damage. It wasn't clear how much health Weaver had; it was more than most, but he was fairly small and unarmoured. Call it about 200. "Hell yeah guns blazing. You afraid, then, little man? You afraid?" Clark smiled nastily, and levelled the shotgun at Weaver's head. "Then gimme one good reason. One. Good. Reason. That I shouldn't repaint that wall with yer brains, you sumbitch."
"I." Weaver couldn't think of a reason. "I can help you!" No, he couldn't. "Er, pay you?" He couldn't do that either.
It got Clark's attention though. "Yeah? Well, my patience ain't cheap. Start passing over the Benjamins, I'll tell you when to stop." The shotgun was lowered again, slightly.
"I... don't have the local currency, but I can give you advanced techn-"
BANG. 78 damage. Weaver was screaming about secrets that would let Clark rule his world if he wanted to, to no avail. The man was beyond reasoning with. "You come here." He flipped the shotgun open. "You break my damn door." He ejected the spent casings. "You threaten me and my family." He inserted two new shells (that had materialised from thin air) (that reduced his ammo count to 28) "And now." He clicked the shotgun shut and...
... glanced at the source of a noise behind him. "Esther? Get back inside."
"I wanted... I thought I heard... I'm sorry"
"Damn right you're sorry. Now get back inside. And put that pan away."
Esther held up the pan dreamily, and looked at it like she'd never seen it before and didn't remember why it was in her hand. She took a shaky step towards her husband.
"I told you to go back inside, Esther."
"I'm sorry, Daddy. I didn't mean it."
"You didn't...? What?"
Another step, less nervous this time. "I didn't want this. For us. I. " She made a sound somewhere between a sob and a screech.
"I am not discussing this right now. I told you to go back inside, and you will do what I tell you to. Do you understand me?"
"I. Ah. ...No."
A second or two passed. Then Clark spun around and aimed the gun at Ester. "YOU DO WHAT I TELL YOU TO, BITCH. I'M IN CHARGE HERE, AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT. YOU'D BE NOTHING WITHOUT ME. NOTHING! AND YOU'D BEST JUST-"
Weaver dived onto Clark, dragging him to the ground. The shotgun flew out of his hand and clattered across the floor. Weaver got one solid punch in before Clark grabbed his good arm and started hitting back. The stump where his right hand had been was near-useless for hitting and blocking with, mostly due to the reduced reach. He flailed randomly with his feet while trying to prise his left hand from Clark's grip. Clark wasn't much of a fighter compared to Weaver, but he was strong and angry. Weaver hit him with a headbutt, managed to pull his arm free, and had Clark in a hold and was ready to break his arm by the time Esther started talking.
"Baby..." she said.
She'd picked up the shotgun, and was holding it properly, though her aim was waving all over the place. Weaver froze. Clark struggled slightly, but couldn't move an inch.
"You know how much I love you, right?"
Clark went pale. "Esther. Darling. Don't do this."
"I love you so, so much." Pause. "I really do."
"We can have a talk. I'll make dinner. You can rest. What do you say?"
"So it makes me sad..." she sniffed, and dissolved into uncontrollable sobbing.
"Okay. Okay. Don't worry. It'll be fine. Just give me the gun."
BANG. BANG. Two critical hits. 360 damage total, spread almost equally across both of them.Weaver's head was shredded entirely - not having any bones to speak of was like that. Clark whimpered, still alive for a few more seconds. His eyes watched Esther drop the gun, fall to her knees, and sob something indistinct that might have been "...when you tell me what to do". He twitched and lost consciousness.
The crowd outside stopped converging on the house, apparently sensing through a mysterious intuition that their target was no longer a threat (which in fact was exactly what they were doing). Esther collected herself. She'd imagined this moment, sometimes when she was angry (and Gomorrah had allowed her to play out her fantasy several times before). She checked the bodies for a pulse, mechanically; Weaver didn't have one at all, and Clark had a faint pulse, getting fainter fast. She slit his throat with the knife to be sure. Then, she fetched a blanket from the bedroom, carried the bodies onto it, and dragged them through the kitchen and out the back door.
She didn't notice anything strange about the alleyway, for a variety of reasons, but in fact it wasn't all there. The level designers hadn't wasted many resources on it, since the player would normally only see it from a distance and invisible walls prevented access. The floor and walls were flat and perfectly uniform. The bins that Esther threw the bodies into were textured cubes that didn't open, and the bodies passed straight through them anyway. Visual glitches allowed one to see through some of the nearby buildings.
The blinded and deafened Weaver wasn't in a condition to notice anything strange either. He lacked senses of taste and smell entirely, and his sense of touch was significantly less effective than a human's. He'd felt someone check him for a pulse and drag him along, but he had no idea where to. He did know that Esther thought him dead, though he didn't realise she was anything other than human and could only hope the crowd wouldn't cut him up or set him on fire or anything like that.
As Esther looked for cleaning products to wipe the blood and roboflesh out of the hall, Gomorrah at large accepted her assessment of the situation. The intruder was dead. Its attention turned elsewhere. And, of the two entities controlling reality, neither had the slightest interest in the bin alley any more. So it ceased to exist.
Clark's body vaporised itself. The walls stuttered in and out of visibility, and though bright flames were visible behind them they didn't light up the scene in any way. The bins briefly appeared to be inside-out, then turned solid black before the entire place winked out of existence and Weaver fell, alone, into an infinite black void.