Re: DEATHGAME 9000 [S!3] Round One: Gamexus X99
05-22-2012, 06:50 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
Christian had the letters G-O-O-D W-I-L-L tattooed on his knuckles. Trisha went through the motions of fixing her hair, less because her hair needed fixing and more because she wanted him to see her fixing her hair for him. “Hi,” she said. “Um. Congratulations. On winning. The fight.”
Keagan and Jolene exchanged a glance.
“Thanks, Princess,” said Christian. “But it wasn’t much of a fight.” He made every word sound as if it were both a joke and the most serious thing in the world. Christian was continuously moving forwards, and every step he took seemed to halve the distance between them, until Trisha had to lean back and hold in her breath to avoid touching him. “I was only in it for the prize,” he concluded, taking her hand.
”Heh,” murmured Jolene so that Keagan could hear. ”’Princess.’ Honestly.”
”Christian has won the date with the princess!” announced Moustonshire. “Unfortunately, Mr. Christian, it seems that her memories won’t be in attendance.”
“Well then,” said Christian. “I guess we’ll just need to make some new ones.”
Trisha took a sideways glance at Keagan and Jolene. “I, ah,” she started. “I don’t know any good restaurants around here. But if you could take me out of the Gamexus I know this great caf—“
“Let’s go to Vanity Fair,” interrupted Christian. “They let me in for free ever since I defeated Beelzebub and Lord Hate-Good and made it free from sin… mostly.”
“I…” Trisha looked one last time at Keagan and Jolene. “That sounds lovely, yes. Keagan, Jolene, take care of Cornelius.”
Keagan looked down to see a familiar-looking ape nursing a chipped tooth, having attempted to bite the boy’s finger while he wasn’t looking. ”Serves you right,” he told it; getting the reference did not serve to endear him to the chimp in the slightest.
After Trisha, Christian, and Hippocrates had wandered off, Keagan turned to Jolene. ”You know,” he said dryly, ”I always figured girls like that would never go for guys like me, but this is the first time I’ve been proud of that.”
”Keagan, I’m counting on you to worry about your dating life after we escape the battle to the death. Until just now, I wouldn’t have thought that would be a question.”
Keagan and Jolene sighed. Trisha’s defects aside, they both could have stood for some company other than each other. ”Anyway,” said Keagan, ”You have eyes on them, right?”
”Of course.”
”I’m gonna hang around and watch the fight. There’s gotta be someone here who can help us out. You let me know if they get up to anything interesting.”
Jolene raised an eyebrow.
Some minutes later, an Other jogging behind them invisibly, Trisha and Christian dismounted from Hippocrates at the gates of Vanity Fair. A leering carnival barker stood in their path. “Welcome to Vanity Fair, Christian… and guest. You can tie that horse up in the stable over there. Enjoy your evening!”
Trisha frowned. “Hippocrates can’t come?”
“Your horse?”
“Yes.”
The barker shrugged. “Sorry, doll, company policy. Nothing personal. He’s a beautiful horse.”
“We’ll come back for Hippocrates later, princess,” whispered Christian in her ear. He had a point.
Trisha nodded and turned to her date. “I’ll say goodbye to him,” she said submissively, toying with his collar. “You buy me one of those big bags of kettle corn, okay?”
“Okay.” Trisha winked at Hippocrates and fumbled through her syringes as Christian ran off (yes, he actually ran, which struck the veterinarian as rather cute) and promptly returned with an oversized bag full of kettle corn.
“Thank you,” said Trisha, feeding her horse a handful of the sweet-yet-salty snack and then unceremoniously dumping the bag onto the ground. “I, ah, I only needed the bag.”
Christian smirked. “Okay, I’ll bite. What do you need the b—“
He stopped talking when the faux-princess jabbed a needle into her horse’s neck and caused its entire body to dissolve into a chunky chestnut-colored muck, which she began scooping into the bag. “Help me out,” she said nonchalantly.
Christian, to his shame, lost his cool for a sustained period. “What did you just do?”
“I turned Hippocrates into a gel for easy transport. Now, obviously we can’t carry around enough of his biomass that we can ride him when I resolidify him, but we can get a Hippocrates the size of a dog and come back for the rest of him later. Can you believe this guy, not letting him in? As though Hippocrates were dangerous somehow. You’re not dangerous, are you, big guy?” she asked the pile of ooze, patting it with a wet slapping sound.
Christian reminded himself that he’d done messier things than this in the past. Just, usually it had been a mess he’d caused. With his sword. Cutting people. He took a deep breath and reached his hands into the horse-gel.
”What are they doing now?” asked Keagan, already bored of the spectacle and exhausted for leads as to escape options.
“Nothing you want to know about. It’s gross,” replied Jolene.
Keagan rolled his eyes. ”Come on, I’m not ten. I know how everything works. You can tell me.”
”Trust me,” asserted Jolene. “You don’t know how this works.”
That was when they realized that Ezio was sitting between them. Keagan jumped. “So much for ‘finding the others,’” he joked. “Tell me, how do you know the princess again?”
”I don’t think she’s even a princess,” asked Keagan. ”And she’s in the same ba—the same situation… as us.”
”Mm-hmm,” responded the assassin. “And what ‘situation’ would that be, exactly? For someone who knows so much about me, you certainly seem to be dodgy about your own—how do I put this—your genre.”
“That’s our own business,” snapped Jolene. “On the subject of who’s being ‘dodgy,’ where did you just run off to?”
“Oh, you know,” laughed Ezio. “Petty theft. For instance,” he said, holding up Jolene’s pistol with a fluorish. “A pretty thing. I’ve seen its like before.”
”Not cool, man,” groaned Keagan. ”Give that back.”
Ezio stood, lazily pointing the gun at Jolene. “A weapon for an answer is a fair trade, boy, especially when your enemies hold all the weapons and you hold all the answers. What are you doing here?”’
Keagan and Jolene looked at one another, uncertainly. ”Fine,” said Keagan. ”We’re not from here. We were—“ As the teenager launched into explanation, Jolene turned her mind back to her Other, who had taken the ferris wheel car one behind Trisha and Christian.
”—First I thought it was just an oversized amoeba,” the veterinarian was explaining to the pilgrim, “But it had no organelles, and it had a face. There was a whole cave full of these things.” Christian turned his gaze from the princess’s eyes to the neon lights of Vanity Fair stretching out below them in all directions to the Dachshund-sized horse curled up at his date’s feet. He had had an odd day, and the wheel was nearing its apex. “Literally every part of it would function as a poison gland,” Trisha continued excitedly, “Even though I don’t think the conventional food chain really applied in that place. My theory is that they’re all made of data and none of them really eat, and homeostasis is just a question of having territory to stake out, so everything just adapts for territorial control. Which is really interesting because your r-selected species essentially become little armies scraping over every blade of grass and your K-selected species can retreat into seclusion because the only thing that really provides a challenge to them is humans, those trainers, and it can get to the point where you have an entire species that is just one unique individual that lives forever because it actually owns a mountain. I really need to go back there, there was this professor who I was supposed to—“
Right on cue, the lights went out, leaving them in darkness. Christian breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment there he’d been almost certain that the plan had fallen apart and he was going to be stuck listening to this “princess”’s prattling for the rest of the evening. He looked at the woman and smiled. “Looks like there’s been an outage,” he said. “Guess it’ll just be the two of us for a while.”
“Neigh,” corrected Hippocrates.
”—Descriptions he gave of us were completely off-base, like he was doing some kind of stand-up routine at our—“
”Keagan,” interrupted Jolene. “Something’s wrong. I think Trisha’s in trouble.”
Keagan rolled his eyes. ”Well, no one saw that coming. See what happens when you—“
”Keagan, you know what’ll happen if she dies. We need to help her.”
”Yeah, yeah.” The boy turned back to Ezio. ”Any chance we can continue this conversation on the way? We really need to help—“
”If she does as she’s told, the doctor won’t be harmed,” assured Ezio, keeping the gun aimed on Jolene. “Now sit down.”
Jolene groaned. “Did you see that coming?” she asked Keagan snidely.
“None of you have any cause to worry. You aren’t priorities,” said Ezio. “You’re potential sources of information, nothing more. We’ll decide what to do with you once—“
The first thing Jolene was conscious of was the gun going off, the bullet buzzing an inch over the top of her head. It was only after the initial shock that she was conscious of the screaming, helmeted monkey pouncing Ezio.
She grabbed Keagan’s hand. “I thought we were supposed to be babysitting him, not the other way around,” she muttered. “Come on. Let’s save the princess. That’s a thing that people do in video games, right?”
”Yeah,” replied Keagan, looking back at the frenzied battle between man and ape. ”Usually towards the end.”
Christian had the letters G-O-O-D W-I-L-L tattooed on his knuckles. Trisha went through the motions of fixing her hair, less because her hair needed fixing and more because she wanted him to see her fixing her hair for him. “Hi,” she said. “Um. Congratulations. On winning. The fight.”
Keagan and Jolene exchanged a glance.
“Thanks, Princess,” said Christian. “But it wasn’t much of a fight.” He made every word sound as if it were both a joke and the most serious thing in the world. Christian was continuously moving forwards, and every step he took seemed to halve the distance between them, until Trisha had to lean back and hold in her breath to avoid touching him. “I was only in it for the prize,” he concluded, taking her hand.
”Heh,” murmured Jolene so that Keagan could hear. ”’Princess.’ Honestly.”
”Christian has won the date with the princess!” announced Moustonshire. “Unfortunately, Mr. Christian, it seems that her memories won’t be in attendance.”
“Well then,” said Christian. “I guess we’ll just need to make some new ones.”
Trisha took a sideways glance at Keagan and Jolene. “I, ah,” she started. “I don’t know any good restaurants around here. But if you could take me out of the Gamexus I know this great caf—“
“Let’s go to Vanity Fair,” interrupted Christian. “They let me in for free ever since I defeated Beelzebub and Lord Hate-Good and made it free from sin… mostly.”
“I…” Trisha looked one last time at Keagan and Jolene. “That sounds lovely, yes. Keagan, Jolene, take care of Cornelius.”
Keagan looked down to see a familiar-looking ape nursing a chipped tooth, having attempted to bite the boy’s finger while he wasn’t looking. ”Serves you right,” he told it; getting the reference did not serve to endear him to the chimp in the slightest.
After Trisha, Christian, and Hippocrates had wandered off, Keagan turned to Jolene. ”You know,” he said dryly, ”I always figured girls like that would never go for guys like me, but this is the first time I’ve been proud of that.”
”Keagan, I’m counting on you to worry about your dating life after we escape the battle to the death. Until just now, I wouldn’t have thought that would be a question.”
Keagan and Jolene sighed. Trisha’s defects aside, they both could have stood for some company other than each other. ”Anyway,” said Keagan, ”You have eyes on them, right?”
”Of course.”
”I’m gonna hang around and watch the fight. There’s gotta be someone here who can help us out. You let me know if they get up to anything interesting.”
Jolene raised an eyebrow.
Some minutes later, an Other jogging behind them invisibly, Trisha and Christian dismounted from Hippocrates at the gates of Vanity Fair. A leering carnival barker stood in their path. “Welcome to Vanity Fair, Christian… and guest. You can tie that horse up in the stable over there. Enjoy your evening!”
Trisha frowned. “Hippocrates can’t come?”
“Your horse?”
“Yes.”
The barker shrugged. “Sorry, doll, company policy. Nothing personal. He’s a beautiful horse.”
“We’ll come back for Hippocrates later, princess,” whispered Christian in her ear. He had a point.
Trisha nodded and turned to her date. “I’ll say goodbye to him,” she said submissively, toying with his collar. “You buy me one of those big bags of kettle corn, okay?”
“Okay.” Trisha winked at Hippocrates and fumbled through her syringes as Christian ran off (yes, he actually ran, which struck the veterinarian as rather cute) and promptly returned with an oversized bag full of kettle corn.
“Thank you,” said Trisha, feeding her horse a handful of the sweet-yet-salty snack and then unceremoniously dumping the bag onto the ground. “I, ah, I only needed the bag.”
Christian smirked. “Okay, I’ll bite. What do you need the b—“
He stopped talking when the faux-princess jabbed a needle into her horse’s neck and caused its entire body to dissolve into a chunky chestnut-colored muck, which she began scooping into the bag. “Help me out,” she said nonchalantly.
Christian, to his shame, lost his cool for a sustained period. “What did you just do?”
“I turned Hippocrates into a gel for easy transport. Now, obviously we can’t carry around enough of his biomass that we can ride him when I resolidify him, but we can get a Hippocrates the size of a dog and come back for the rest of him later. Can you believe this guy, not letting him in? As though Hippocrates were dangerous somehow. You’re not dangerous, are you, big guy?” she asked the pile of ooze, patting it with a wet slapping sound.
Christian reminded himself that he’d done messier things than this in the past. Just, usually it had been a mess he’d caused. With his sword. Cutting people. He took a deep breath and reached his hands into the horse-gel.
”What are they doing now?” asked Keagan, already bored of the spectacle and exhausted for leads as to escape options.
“Nothing you want to know about. It’s gross,” replied Jolene.
Keagan rolled his eyes. ”Come on, I’m not ten. I know how everything works. You can tell me.”
”Trust me,” asserted Jolene. “You don’t know how this works.”
That was when they realized that Ezio was sitting between them. Keagan jumped. “So much for ‘finding the others,’” he joked. “Tell me, how do you know the princess again?”
”I don’t think she’s even a princess,” asked Keagan. ”And she’s in the same ba—the same situation… as us.”
”Mm-hmm,” responded the assassin. “And what ‘situation’ would that be, exactly? For someone who knows so much about me, you certainly seem to be dodgy about your own—how do I put this—your genre.”
“That’s our own business,” snapped Jolene. “On the subject of who’s being ‘dodgy,’ where did you just run off to?”
“Oh, you know,” laughed Ezio. “Petty theft. For instance,” he said, holding up Jolene’s pistol with a fluorish. “A pretty thing. I’ve seen its like before.”
”Not cool, man,” groaned Keagan. ”Give that back.”
Ezio stood, lazily pointing the gun at Jolene. “A weapon for an answer is a fair trade, boy, especially when your enemies hold all the weapons and you hold all the answers. What are you doing here?”’
Keagan and Jolene looked at one another, uncertainly. ”Fine,” said Keagan. ”We’re not from here. We were—“ As the teenager launched into explanation, Jolene turned her mind back to her Other, who had taken the ferris wheel car one behind Trisha and Christian.
”—First I thought it was just an oversized amoeba,” the veterinarian was explaining to the pilgrim, “But it had no organelles, and it had a face. There was a whole cave full of these things.” Christian turned his gaze from the princess’s eyes to the neon lights of Vanity Fair stretching out below them in all directions to the Dachshund-sized horse curled up at his date’s feet. He had had an odd day, and the wheel was nearing its apex. “Literally every part of it would function as a poison gland,” Trisha continued excitedly, “Even though I don’t think the conventional food chain really applied in that place. My theory is that they’re all made of data and none of them really eat, and homeostasis is just a question of having territory to stake out, so everything just adapts for territorial control. Which is really interesting because your r-selected species essentially become little armies scraping over every blade of grass and your K-selected species can retreat into seclusion because the only thing that really provides a challenge to them is humans, those trainers, and it can get to the point where you have an entire species that is just one unique individual that lives forever because it actually owns a mountain. I really need to go back there, there was this professor who I was supposed to—“
Right on cue, the lights went out, leaving them in darkness. Christian breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment there he’d been almost certain that the plan had fallen apart and he was going to be stuck listening to this “princess”’s prattling for the rest of the evening. He looked at the woman and smiled. “Looks like there’s been an outage,” he said. “Guess it’ll just be the two of us for a while.”
“Neigh,” corrected Hippocrates.
”—Descriptions he gave of us were completely off-base, like he was doing some kind of stand-up routine at our—“
”Keagan,” interrupted Jolene. “Something’s wrong. I think Trisha’s in trouble.”
Keagan rolled his eyes. ”Well, no one saw that coming. See what happens when you—“
”Keagan, you know what’ll happen if she dies. We need to help her.”
”Yeah, yeah.” The boy turned back to Ezio. ”Any chance we can continue this conversation on the way? We really need to help—“
”If she does as she’s told, the doctor won’t be harmed,” assured Ezio, keeping the gun aimed on Jolene. “Now sit down.”
Jolene groaned. “Did you see that coming?” she asked Keagan snidely.
“None of you have any cause to worry. You aren’t priorities,” said Ezio. “You’re potential sources of information, nothing more. We’ll decide what to do with you once—“
The first thing Jolene was conscious of was the gun going off, the bullet buzzing an inch over the top of her head. It was only after the initial shock that she was conscious of the screaming, helmeted monkey pouncing Ezio.
She grabbed Keagan’s hand. “I thought we were supposed to be babysitting him, not the other way around,” she muttered. “Come on. Let’s save the princess. That’s a thing that people do in video games, right?”
”Yeah,” replied Keagan, looking back at the frenzied battle between man and ape. ”Usually towards the end.”