DEATHGAME 9000 [S!3] Round Two: Interplanetary Circus

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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The world disappeared leaving behind just a black expanse of nothingness and the word LOADING writ large in the sky. A progress bar appeared beneath it and began filling at a sluggish pace. The contestants found themselves once again immobilised standing in a row, however this time was a little different. During their introduction Gomorrah had been condensed into a flickering incomprehensible form, but in this empty space it did not need to be reduced in such a manner. Behind the row of seven immobilised humanoids, one immobilised rabbity-thing and one immobilised bag of horse gloop was an ethereal city standing in its full grim splendour. Citizens of Gomorrah, crooks and thieves and whores and thugs all of them, were formed into an unwilling crowd at the back of the other contestants.

With some half-hearted fanfare and slightly glitchy special effects The Incompetent appeared before them once again; swooping down from the skies upon the back of a jet black dragon. Dressed, as he was, from neck to foot in thick plate armour wrought from gold, studded with precious gems and filigreed with the finest orichalcum, he looked somewhat different. Strapped across his back was an enormous obsidian blade, longer than he was tall it burned with a black flame.

“Hi there, hello.” The Incompetent said sort of awkwardly as he dismounted his dragon (which promptly disappeared). “I’m going to be absolutely honest and say that I thought you were all dead. I am glad to see that you are not, after all it hardly counts as a battle to the death if nobody is watching, right?” He paused as he looked across the contestants, his attention drawn by the ghostly city. “So, an addendum to the introductions from before; Gomorrah is a ghost city. It is pretty cool. Man this is going to be so great I can’t wait to get this battle going proper.”

The Incompetent turned and glanced up into the sky, to the progress bar that was approximately a fifth filled. “I know I promised you guys The Deadly Maze, but I’m afraid that that particular arena will have to be shelved till a later date due to some Unforeseen Circumstances.” He turned back to the contestants, a gleeful grin upon his face. “But luckily I have come up with another thing that will be Just As Good, if not better.” From thin air he produced a video game box, the front of which was emblazoned with a rendering of a blue-skinned elf in skimpy armour and a seductive pose. “I used to love this game.” He mused almost forgetting that the contestants were there. “I made my own module with the in-built toolset; it’s called Shadownight: The War of the Dragons, and let me tell you it is pretty epic. There are so many dragons you have no idea.” He smiled to himself whilst behind him a middle-aged, but still reasonably attractive, woman in a lilac bathrobe suddenly appeared with none of the fanfare The Incompetent had attempted to conjure for himself. She had long black hair, sopping wet, and skin that was a distinctive shade of orange. She held a wine glass in one hand (incorrectly strictly speaking) and a lit cigarette in the other. “I don’t know why I didn’t-”

“Alan Cuthbert Hall!” The woman exclaimed as she marched towards him. The Incompetent’s face, which had momentarily been the picture of accomplishment, dropped instantly. “What do you think you are doing?” He spun around.

“Get out of here! Can’t you see I am busy?” He hissed between clenched teeth.

“Is that any way to speak to your mother?” The woman snapped. “You’ll have your friends thinking you’re ashamed of me.” She peered around the Incompetent who had folded his arms huffily to get a better look at the assembled group of people.

“Mom these aren’t my friends, they are my battlers. I am trying to run a battle here and you are ruining it.” The Incompetent whispered.

“Nonsense, I’m sure that you’re doing that all on your own.” The Incompetent’s mother replied dismissively. She stepped past the Incompetent and walked up to the contestants. “Hello, I’m ‘The Housewife’ but that’s so formal, call me Evelyn, I insist.” A little voice next to Keagan’s ear whispered “you can call me Eve…” There was a pause and then Evelyn turned back to her son. “Why aren’t they saying anything? Have you frozen them all? That’s so frightfully dull.”

“What do you want Mom?” The Incompetent demanded.

“Oh, right, there was a phone call from the electric.” Evelyn took a drag of her cigarette. “Do you have any idea the amount of electricity that is required to maintain a fully interactive synthetic reality filled with numerous artificial intelligences and textures more realistic and detailed than real life?”

“Uh…”

“It’s a lot.” Evelyn replied. “Alan, you’ve blacked out the entire Principality! I dread to think of our electricity bill.”

“Okay I get it.” The Incompetent replied sullenly.

“So lets just…” Evelyn snapped her fingers and they were all returned to The Incompetent’s room, causing Gomorrah to revert to a flickering pillar of unidentifiable ghostliness. Evelyn strode over to the Gamexus X99, which was now displaying a loading bar that was almost full, and turned it off. She took a gulp of her wine, which seemed to magically refill itself, and then turned back to look at her son. His face was creased up into a sneer, his arms remained folded and his body was trailing strands of data that had moments before been a highest tier set of armour and a rare skinned max damage sword.

“Is that all?” The Incompetent asked snidely.

“Well you could try cleaning your room perhaps? This room looks like its played host to a battle.” The Incompetent’s frown deepened and Evelyn continued. “But, no, I guess that is everything. Enjoy your battle sweetie; try not to make too much noise okay?” The Incompetent didn’t reply. He just stared at her until she was gone, and at the foot of the stairs that led up and into the house proper he could have almost sworn that she shot that kid Keagan a wink. As soon as the door at the top of the stairs clicked shut he breathed out a sigh of relief and slumped down into his beanbag chair.

At some point in the preceding conversation it had dawned on him just how woefully unprepared he was for this battle. He had had one round planned in advance and it had turned out to be full of holes, almost literally. And it wasn’t as though he could just dump his battlers in some random universe while he found one that was more suited to battling in, though on the other hand leaving them immobile in his room seemed like an even less practical option. If only his mom hadn’t intervened they could have all been fighting dragons and getting intimately acquainted with ice elves by now. How would she like it if he messed around with her battle…?

“Okay.” He said, suddenly full of enthusiasm again as he climbed to his feet. “Sorry things haven’t gotten off to the greatest start but I’m confident that from here on in things are going to go exactly to plan.” He paused. “What’s up with, um, Josephine is it? The cop woman? What’s up with her?” Jolene’s corpse was stood to attention as rigidly immobile as any of the other competitors. Her eyes were closed and her mouth hung open, a trail of sticky blood had dripped down her neck and soaked into her shirt. At his sudden realisation of her death The Incompetent let her drop to the floor.

“Man, I can’t believe I missed the first kill in my own battle.” The Incompetent sighed wistfully. “Nevermind, I’m sure it’s all going to be smooth sailing from here on out. Like I said before The Deadly Maze is a no-go. While I get it operational you can go and wait in my mom’s battle. It’s the least she can do after screwing up my round.” The Incompetent clicked his fingers and suddenly the battlers were elsewhere. “This round is…” The Incompetent hesitated. “I don’t actually know what this round is. Take a look for yourselves. Figure it out. I’m going to go and sort stuff out. Later.”

As the voice of the Incompetent faded away and his immobilisation ceased the seven remaining contestants and the corpse of Jolene Kamiensky found themselves scattered throughout a wondrous circus. It was filled with patrons who were almost as strange and unusual as the shows they had come to see. The night sky above was decorated with twin moons and stars unfamiliar to any one of the remaining contestants.

SpoilerShow

This round is an interplanetary travelling circus. It is a round in The Housewife’s battle. The round (and thus remaining number of The Housewife’s contestants) is undecided but it probably started before The Incompetent’s battle. Theoretically this round is already in progress. Have fun.

The following spoiler is metabattle stuff.

SpoilerShow

Alone (or as near as made no odds) in his basement once again, The Incompetent allowed himself a smug smile. This battle had been nothing but problems, but now he really felt like he was getting a handle on it. In celebration of this he took a seat in his beanbag chair and turned back on his Gamexus. He knew he should be making ready the next round for his contestants, but battles take a long time (or so he’d heard), he was sure he could afford half an hour spent playing Demons Weep. His celebration was rather short-lived. The screen displayed a long winded error message (CATASTROPHIC FAILURE) and the lights on his console flashed red.

It didn’t matter anyway. When he got up from his beanbag he found that his basement had been overlayed with a semi-translucent prison cell. On the prison bed sat a man known as The Broadcaster. He wore a pair of broken sunglasses, a prison jumpsuit and, in a semblance to regain some sense of respectability, over that he wore a black tie. His hair was black and thick with oils and gels. Overall he looked a little bit bruised and battered but as if that was a secondary detail to a man like him. The Broadcaster’s assistant, a being called Channel, was stood at the cell door, peering through as best he could with a flatscreen television for a head, making sure the coast was clear.

“Hello again.” The Broadcaster greeted him.

The Incompetent sat back down.

Earlier that day, shortly after The Incompetent had misplaced his contestants, one of the robotic gentlemen that had been missing since before the battle had started suddenly reappeared. It was carrying something small and physically tangible yet completely invisible. The Incompetent had no idea what it was and the gentlemen in question had somehow got stuck speaking some kind of language he’d never heard before and so was not exactly forthcoming with the details of what the hell this thing was. However with the careful application of a sledgehammer The Incompetent was able to deactivate the thing’s perception filter and discover that it was, or rather had been, a hovering camera, marked with the logo ‘LTS’ in a bold blocky font.

That was when he’d been contacted by The Broadcaster, who the camera belonged to. The grandmaster had listened to the Incompetent’s torrent of problems and had offered to help by providing him with a new group of battlers hand selected by his finest casting staff. All he asked for in return was the rights to record and broadcast Deathgame 9000 to an eager multiversal public (also licensing and merchandising rights to all characters featured within Deathgame but that was right down there in the small print). The Incompetent had agreed without hesitation. The new contestants had arrived promptly, more fearsome and dangerous than his last batch and everything had been going great until…

“They all escaped.” The Incompetent admitted.

“They all escaped?” The Broadcaster repeated back to him icily.

“Turns out that The Deadly Maze wasn’t as well designed as I thought it was.” The Incompetent replied. “There was a hole large enough to squeeze through at the end of the Hall of Swinging Blades.” Pause. “And um, one in the shrinking room trap as well, and one in the chamber of spikes as well.” Another pause. “There was a lot of holes lets put it that way.” The Broadcaster frowned.

“Let me guess; you want me to find you some more new contestants?”

“No, no, it’s okay, I found the other contestants.” The Incompetent replied. “As it turns out they were hiding in a virtual reality accidentally created by my video game console. On an unrelated note how much of an expenses budget do I get for running this battle?”

“So everything is back on track?” The Broadcaster neatly sidestepped the question, not because he didn’t have the money to provide an expenses budget but because The Incompetent had been giving him the distinct impression that he couldn’t be trusted with one.

“I could use some manpower to help fix up the Deadly Maze, make it completely escape-proof.” The Incompetent said. “All I have at the moment is…” He gestured towards the one remaining gentleman.

“La reĝo estas subfosis de supre. Imperiestro Radioaparato dekretoj salajro-kortego.” The gentleman said upon noticing that the two grandmasters were paying attention to it.

“Okay fine.” The Broadcaster replied. “But don’t mess it up this time.”

“I assure you that everything is going to go perfectly according to plan.” The Incompetent replied, but The Broadcaster had already hung up. The tenuous link between their worlds had been severed, the Incompetent’s basement was just a basement once more. “Oh well.” The Incompetent supposed it was time to get to work.