Re: DEATHGAME 9000 [S!3] Round Two: Interplanetary Circus
11-29-2012, 04:57 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Adenreagain.
There was no explaining it, she just didn’t know what went wrong. Having run from Jerkface, she wound up hiding among a bunch of children of different races on a twelve-tiered carousel. Even with their parents watching over them, she had still managed to get all of them to start fighting one another when Jerkface managed to track her down, and all she had to do was join the fight for him to pass her by while muttering about “ungrateful brats” and “chaos freaks”
Going from there, she had run again and ended up outside of a giant stadium with something that looked like a cloth of light stretched over it. Once she got in, it would have been easy to hide again among all the people, except she needed a ticket that she didn’t have and couldn’t afford even with the money she had lifted off the unconscious mother back in the midway. Last, and worst of all, something had yelled “there she is” and Eris, assuming that she was the “she” in reference, had ducked into the nearest stand to hide yet again. Deciding to take a look out the front of the stand, she had been accused of trying to steal food and had to convince the lackey behind the register that no, she wasn’t stealing food, she was a new employee and didn’t know what she was supposed to do since it was her first day and all, and would he please point her in the direction of the manager and then shut up because your voice is too whiny and nasally for talking thank you. Even after she had found the manager, who wasn’t surprised when she claimed to be a new worker, things had gone downhill, with one exception. Now she was standing in an uncomfortably itchy uniform that made her look like a salesman who felt like he could sell a marching band to a town, listening to people argue with the cashier, listening to the manager arguing with the people arguing with the cashier that “we don’t take intangible currency, even if it is legitimate in your system, you can just go find an exchange booth, and no I can’t change how my cashier sounds.”
At least there was cotton candy, which she was making. Put in charge of the cotton candy machine (some foods really are universal), Eris was actually slightly in her element. Pulling wisps of spun sugar wasn’t quite how she made it normally, but to her cotton candy was cotton candy: a staple in any chaotic doing. Left to her own devices, she would have simply created it out of nothing, and could potentially have eaten several times her mass in the sugary substance. Except no, the manager told her, it doesn’t matter if you can do that, we have inter-galactic health standards to maintain and you’ll be out of here faster than blinking if you mess with it.
Of course, that wasn’t going to stop her. Fun was fun so long as it was chaotic, and she didn’t really work there anyway.
Dipping her candy handle into the machine, Eris finished the last off the sugary fluff that had been running when she arrived, and glanced around to see if she was being watched. It was time for some batches of candy that were guaranteed to attract attention, chaos, and at least one chuckle, and maybe get Bunny Boy’s attention if he was nearby. She began to scoop cotton candy again, even though the machine was running on empty. Clouds of the sugary substance began forming, and that’s exactly what they were: candy clouds. Of course, one batch like that wasn’t going to be enough. Reaching back in, she abandoned the pretext of the handles and began to pull clouds of chaotic confectionary out in giant strands by hand, shaping them and placing them on trays to delay suspicion. Done with clouds, she pulled hand over hand to make various other flavors: a light blue that looked delicate but was made of solid ice, a light red that would burn the tongue off all but the most hardened spice-eaters, a row that she affectionately deemed “condiment candy” in flavors ranging from deep red ketchup to white horseradish, as well as a basic pink that didn’t have any special flavor but would put a drop of chaos in any that ate it (spreading chaos takes time, and the midway fight would’ve burnt itself out by now anyway).
Shouting that she was going to grab more coloring, Eris grabbed her palette of cotton candy clouds and walked out the back of the tent, throwing them one by one into the air, where they seemed content to drift, slowly pooling together to form one giant cloud. Eris grabbed a spare cone and tossed it lightly at the cloud, which started to rain onto the tent and attracting the eyes of beings that were generally desensitized to the usual ploys of food venders to attract customers. Grabbing her dye pack for her alibi, she walked back in time to be grabbed by the manager and placed onto a register. With a “we’ve got enough stocked and you need to learn every position,” the manager walked off, leaving Eris to deal with her first customer: a sullen and slightly grey Nick DiAngelo.
“What do you want?” Eris wasn’t the cheeriest salesperson in the multiverse, and she’d be the first to admit it.
“Listen kid, I need as much three-penny cotton candy as you got, I’m fresh out. And hurry up, because if I don’t get back in the stadium, people are gonna buy other food and I’ll be out my paycheck.”
Eris glanced at the price sign: the smallest size they had was still more than three cents. She thought so anyway, there wasn’t anything on the sign that looked like a recognizable number to her. She decided to guess. “We don’t have any three-penny candy, this stuff is like, super expensive. But I’ll tell you what…” She beckoned him closer. “We’ve got a batch that’s off-color and can’t sell even though it tastes fine. If you take it off my hands so I don’t get in trouble, I’ll let you have it no charge.”
Nick pretended to think it over. Selling free candy meant that whatever he didn’t have to hand over to his own boss would go straight to his pocket. It wasn’t even a question if he would take it, it was as good as his. “Sure thing kid, just because I’m nice. Throw in one regular one too though, since I’m doing you a favor you can do me one too.”
“Done,” Eris said, grabbing one of her chaotic-pink ones and passing it to him. “Just meet me out back and we’ll get you what you need.” Ignoring the look of the other cashier at the suggestive nature of her comment, Eris abandoned her register, snagging all the condiment candy as well as a few more chaotic ones, she walked out the back of the tent and handed them off to Nick, wishing him luck and turning to go back into the tent, running face to face with her “boss.”
“Whatd’ya think you’re doing, giving stuff for free? And what did you do to my recipe? It’s been in my family for years!”
“First off, that stuff wasn’t right. It’s my first day so I messed up. He was taking it off our hands so we wouldn’t have to throw it out. And secondly, what recipe? You said it was all standard or something!”
Silvio DeMarco closed his eyes and looked up, begging for patience. His hadn’t been in town long, and he was trying to make a clean profit in a new place. That his father had worked for the mob was a past he was trying to escape by trying to be a confectioner like his mother, but it was hard going against the idea that candy was ‘for babies, and women’s work too’. Without his father’s support, he felt like he was going nowhere in a hurry, and thought he might have to take after his old man after all. “Listen kid, my family’s been selling this stuff for years, and if we don’t turn a profit, we’re gonna get shut down. We almost couldn’t afford to pay the Boss for protection last month, and I sure as hell don’t want to miss paying him this month. Secondly…” He opened his eyes and gaped at what was taking place above his stand. The cotton candy cloud was now pouring down on his tent, causing it to sag in places, and staining the fabric in general. He let go of Eris and grabbed his hair, threatening to pull it out. “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?!”
“What? It’s just chocolate! All pink cotton candy makes chocolate milk, you want a different rain, give me a different color to work with! And it’s bringing in customers!”
“And ruining my tent! Kid, when they find you, there’s not gonna be enough left for them to tell what you were. I’ll make candyfloss outta you!” He looked down to grab Eris, but she had run off again. All he caught of her was her cackling in the distance.
Inside the stadium, Bill Bisbano wasn’t doing so well with his sales. When he ran out of mustard, and then ketchup, people stopped wanting hot dogs. And that penny-pinching cotton-candy peddling customer-thief was back. At least his sales weren’t doing too hot either. Customers took one bite of his stuff and spat it back out, demanding a refund that Nick wouldn’t give them. Others saw this and stopped buying cotton candy completely, leaving the way open for peanut sellers and popcorn pushers to move in on both their territories. Bill decided to go have a gloat and followed Nick to a bench in the corridors surrounding the thater, where Nick was eating his own cotton candy.
“Tough day at the game, chump?”
“Shut it Bill, I just got some bad cotton candy today is all, I’ll leave you in the dust tomorrow. What’s your problem, hot dogs get all cold?”
“No, ran out of stuff to put on it. What’s wrong with your stuff? Looks like your normal low-quality crap to me.”
Ignoring the jibe, Nick popped a bite of his own candy in his mouth, talking as he chewed. “Dunno, mine tastes fine, and I got it from the same kid. They all complained that it had a weird taste, kind…of…like…” His eyes widened as he chewed, an idea forming that was so crazy it just might work. “Bill, listen. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, right?”
“Damn right.”
“And you’re out of toppings? Ketchup, relish, like that?”
“What’s your point, kid?”
“People’ve been saying my stuff tastes like that. Yellow is mustard, red is ketchup, that sort of thing. What if we worked together for the day to make some more money? My cotton candy on your hot dogs?”
Bill glanced at the bags of spun sugar doubtfully. Grabbing an open bag, he put some yellow fluff on a hot dog and took a bite. It wasn’t terrible like he thought it’d be, in fact it tasted just like a dog with mustard should. “Kid, if we can sell this, you’ve got a deal, just for today. After that I hate you, you hate me and we go back to how things were.”
“Deal, old man. I just wanna make my pay.”
There was a slight change. If a city could feel confusion, Gomorrah would’ve felt it. It was expanding beyond the stadium, and had already taken over several concession stands, putting in its own owners and remaking the tents into facsimiles of small mom-and-pop shops. There was one where a pink raincloud kept washing off the changes made, but the Lolorians (who had a fondness to anything mostly air) were slowly eating it. The tent would be replaced with an aged confectionary before long. If it had been as large as it had been not long ago, it would have brushed the sensation off. It was different from the ghost-girl, but Gomorrah was small still, and there was something it felt. A sense of wrongness came over it in the stadium. It had taken all the joy of the circus away, but somehow fun was coming back. It wiped the fun away but people were still changed, and the fun was slowly growing back. A weed that only had the top pulled while the roots festered, and those roots had to be burned away. Focusing on the stadium, Gomorrah began to change things back to the way it wanted. It was harder than it should have been, but only marginally so.
Its people were cheery, it took that away until it noticed that what they were eating was causing the change. It replaced it. Tracing the food back to the vendors, it found that they were…cooperating. That wouldn’t do. It tried to change them back, but only one, Bill Bisbano, would. Nick DiAngelo would not. It saw the cotton candy, and felt the chaos inside it. It was not chaos Gomorrah knew, and not the taint of the ghost girl, nor the chaos that comes from crowded places like a circus, but a new chaos. Nick would take time to change back, to burn out the foreign chaos in the ghost, but no matter. There were dozens like him, all dreary and wanting to get ahead in life. It removed Nick and put another in his place and had a trashman sweep the now-discarded candy away and throw it down one of the stadium’s trash chutes where no one would eat it. It knew Nick DiAngelo's life like a record, endlessly repeating to the point where it could have played his life itself. And it had, many, many times. Something had changed, though. Where had he gotten the tainted food? It looked, and saw a small girl, winged with a small crown on her head. She was not one of its creations, but something outside. If Gomorrah could have, it would have been frustrated at seeing something that it was on the edge of recognizing but could not. It would remember though, if such a thing happened again. For now though, the problem was resolved, and Gomorrah again turned outward to continue its spread into the circus.
By the dumpsters behind the stadium, one of the shadows formed into a child. A homeless orphan girl dressed in rags: Little Amelia, and she was starving. She jumped up and grabbed the edge of the dumpster, slowly and strenuously pulling herself in. After rooting for a minute and eating the remains of a chip bag and the corner of a burger, she came across a large bag of bright pink cotton candy. She remembered times when her parents would give her a penny to go down to the corner and get herself a treat if she had been good or just to get rid of her for an hour, but that was before mommy had killed daddy for hitting her (sometimes it was daddy who hit mommy and she would hit her head too hard when she fell, or daddy hit her so she ran away, or mommy took her frustrations out on her). That candy was hardly a fraction of the prize that lay in front of her now, and she didn’t know if something like this would come along again soon, if ever. She tore open the bag and began shoveling cotton candy into her mouth as quickly as she could.
There was no explaining it, she just didn’t know what went wrong. Having run from Jerkface, she wound up hiding among a bunch of children of different races on a twelve-tiered carousel. Even with their parents watching over them, she had still managed to get all of them to start fighting one another when Jerkface managed to track her down, and all she had to do was join the fight for him to pass her by while muttering about “ungrateful brats” and “chaos freaks”
Going from there, she had run again and ended up outside of a giant stadium with something that looked like a cloth of light stretched over it. Once she got in, it would have been easy to hide again among all the people, except she needed a ticket that she didn’t have and couldn’t afford even with the money she had lifted off the unconscious mother back in the midway. Last, and worst of all, something had yelled “there she is” and Eris, assuming that she was the “she” in reference, had ducked into the nearest stand to hide yet again. Deciding to take a look out the front of the stand, she had been accused of trying to steal food and had to convince the lackey behind the register that no, she wasn’t stealing food, she was a new employee and didn’t know what she was supposed to do since it was her first day and all, and would he please point her in the direction of the manager and then shut up because your voice is too whiny and nasally for talking thank you. Even after she had found the manager, who wasn’t surprised when she claimed to be a new worker, things had gone downhill, with one exception. Now she was standing in an uncomfortably itchy uniform that made her look like a salesman who felt like he could sell a marching band to a town, listening to people argue with the cashier, listening to the manager arguing with the people arguing with the cashier that “we don’t take intangible currency, even if it is legitimate in your system, you can just go find an exchange booth, and no I can’t change how my cashier sounds.”
At least there was cotton candy, which she was making. Put in charge of the cotton candy machine (some foods really are universal), Eris was actually slightly in her element. Pulling wisps of spun sugar wasn’t quite how she made it normally, but to her cotton candy was cotton candy: a staple in any chaotic doing. Left to her own devices, she would have simply created it out of nothing, and could potentially have eaten several times her mass in the sugary substance. Except no, the manager told her, it doesn’t matter if you can do that, we have inter-galactic health standards to maintain and you’ll be out of here faster than blinking if you mess with it.
Of course, that wasn’t going to stop her. Fun was fun so long as it was chaotic, and she didn’t really work there anyway.
Dipping her candy handle into the machine, Eris finished the last off the sugary fluff that had been running when she arrived, and glanced around to see if she was being watched. It was time for some batches of candy that were guaranteed to attract attention, chaos, and at least one chuckle, and maybe get Bunny Boy’s attention if he was nearby. She began to scoop cotton candy again, even though the machine was running on empty. Clouds of the sugary substance began forming, and that’s exactly what they were: candy clouds. Of course, one batch like that wasn’t going to be enough. Reaching back in, she abandoned the pretext of the handles and began to pull clouds of chaotic confectionary out in giant strands by hand, shaping them and placing them on trays to delay suspicion. Done with clouds, she pulled hand over hand to make various other flavors: a light blue that looked delicate but was made of solid ice, a light red that would burn the tongue off all but the most hardened spice-eaters, a row that she affectionately deemed “condiment candy” in flavors ranging from deep red ketchup to white horseradish, as well as a basic pink that didn’t have any special flavor but would put a drop of chaos in any that ate it (spreading chaos takes time, and the midway fight would’ve burnt itself out by now anyway).
Shouting that she was going to grab more coloring, Eris grabbed her palette of cotton candy clouds and walked out the back of the tent, throwing them one by one into the air, where they seemed content to drift, slowly pooling together to form one giant cloud. Eris grabbed a spare cone and tossed it lightly at the cloud, which started to rain onto the tent and attracting the eyes of beings that were generally desensitized to the usual ploys of food venders to attract customers. Grabbing her dye pack for her alibi, she walked back in time to be grabbed by the manager and placed onto a register. With a “we’ve got enough stocked and you need to learn every position,” the manager walked off, leaving Eris to deal with her first customer: a sullen and slightly grey Nick DiAngelo.
“What do you want?” Eris wasn’t the cheeriest salesperson in the multiverse, and she’d be the first to admit it.
“Listen kid, I need as much three-penny cotton candy as you got, I’m fresh out. And hurry up, because if I don’t get back in the stadium, people are gonna buy other food and I’ll be out my paycheck.”
Eris glanced at the price sign: the smallest size they had was still more than three cents. She thought so anyway, there wasn’t anything on the sign that looked like a recognizable number to her. She decided to guess. “We don’t have any three-penny candy, this stuff is like, super expensive. But I’ll tell you what…” She beckoned him closer. “We’ve got a batch that’s off-color and can’t sell even though it tastes fine. If you take it off my hands so I don’t get in trouble, I’ll let you have it no charge.”
Nick pretended to think it over. Selling free candy meant that whatever he didn’t have to hand over to his own boss would go straight to his pocket. It wasn’t even a question if he would take it, it was as good as his. “Sure thing kid, just because I’m nice. Throw in one regular one too though, since I’m doing you a favor you can do me one too.”
“Done,” Eris said, grabbing one of her chaotic-pink ones and passing it to him. “Just meet me out back and we’ll get you what you need.” Ignoring the look of the other cashier at the suggestive nature of her comment, Eris abandoned her register, snagging all the condiment candy as well as a few more chaotic ones, she walked out the back of the tent and handed them off to Nick, wishing him luck and turning to go back into the tent, running face to face with her “boss.”
“Whatd’ya think you’re doing, giving stuff for free? And what did you do to my recipe? It’s been in my family for years!”
“First off, that stuff wasn’t right. It’s my first day so I messed up. He was taking it off our hands so we wouldn’t have to throw it out. And secondly, what recipe? You said it was all standard or something!”
Silvio DeMarco closed his eyes and looked up, begging for patience. His hadn’t been in town long, and he was trying to make a clean profit in a new place. That his father had worked for the mob was a past he was trying to escape by trying to be a confectioner like his mother, but it was hard going against the idea that candy was ‘for babies, and women’s work too’. Without his father’s support, he felt like he was going nowhere in a hurry, and thought he might have to take after his old man after all. “Listen kid, my family’s been selling this stuff for years, and if we don’t turn a profit, we’re gonna get shut down. We almost couldn’t afford to pay the Boss for protection last month, and I sure as hell don’t want to miss paying him this month. Secondly…” He opened his eyes and gaped at what was taking place above his stand. The cotton candy cloud was now pouring down on his tent, causing it to sag in places, and staining the fabric in general. He let go of Eris and grabbed his hair, threatening to pull it out. “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?!”
“What? It’s just chocolate! All pink cotton candy makes chocolate milk, you want a different rain, give me a different color to work with! And it’s bringing in customers!”
“And ruining my tent! Kid, when they find you, there’s not gonna be enough left for them to tell what you were. I’ll make candyfloss outta you!” He looked down to grab Eris, but she had run off again. All he caught of her was her cackling in the distance.
Inside the stadium, Bill Bisbano wasn’t doing so well with his sales. When he ran out of mustard, and then ketchup, people stopped wanting hot dogs. And that penny-pinching cotton-candy peddling customer-thief was back. At least his sales weren’t doing too hot either. Customers took one bite of his stuff and spat it back out, demanding a refund that Nick wouldn’t give them. Others saw this and stopped buying cotton candy completely, leaving the way open for peanut sellers and popcorn pushers to move in on both their territories. Bill decided to go have a gloat and followed Nick to a bench in the corridors surrounding the thater, where Nick was eating his own cotton candy.
“Tough day at the game, chump?”
“Shut it Bill, I just got some bad cotton candy today is all, I’ll leave you in the dust tomorrow. What’s your problem, hot dogs get all cold?”
“No, ran out of stuff to put on it. What’s wrong with your stuff? Looks like your normal low-quality crap to me.”
Ignoring the jibe, Nick popped a bite of his own candy in his mouth, talking as he chewed. “Dunno, mine tastes fine, and I got it from the same kid. They all complained that it had a weird taste, kind…of…like…” His eyes widened as he chewed, an idea forming that was so crazy it just might work. “Bill, listen. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, right?”
“Damn right.”
“And you’re out of toppings? Ketchup, relish, like that?”
“What’s your point, kid?”
“People’ve been saying my stuff tastes like that. Yellow is mustard, red is ketchup, that sort of thing. What if we worked together for the day to make some more money? My cotton candy on your hot dogs?”
Bill glanced at the bags of spun sugar doubtfully. Grabbing an open bag, he put some yellow fluff on a hot dog and took a bite. It wasn’t terrible like he thought it’d be, in fact it tasted just like a dog with mustard should. “Kid, if we can sell this, you’ve got a deal, just for today. After that I hate you, you hate me and we go back to how things were.”
“Deal, old man. I just wanna make my pay.”
There was a slight change. If a city could feel confusion, Gomorrah would’ve felt it. It was expanding beyond the stadium, and had already taken over several concession stands, putting in its own owners and remaking the tents into facsimiles of small mom-and-pop shops. There was one where a pink raincloud kept washing off the changes made, but the Lolorians (who had a fondness to anything mostly air) were slowly eating it. The tent would be replaced with an aged confectionary before long. If it had been as large as it had been not long ago, it would have brushed the sensation off. It was different from the ghost-girl, but Gomorrah was small still, and there was something it felt. A sense of wrongness came over it in the stadium. It had taken all the joy of the circus away, but somehow fun was coming back. It wiped the fun away but people were still changed, and the fun was slowly growing back. A weed that only had the top pulled while the roots festered, and those roots had to be burned away. Focusing on the stadium, Gomorrah began to change things back to the way it wanted. It was harder than it should have been, but only marginally so.
Its people were cheery, it took that away until it noticed that what they were eating was causing the change. It replaced it. Tracing the food back to the vendors, it found that they were…cooperating. That wouldn’t do. It tried to change them back, but only one, Bill Bisbano, would. Nick DiAngelo would not. It saw the cotton candy, and felt the chaos inside it. It was not chaos Gomorrah knew, and not the taint of the ghost girl, nor the chaos that comes from crowded places like a circus, but a new chaos. Nick would take time to change back, to burn out the foreign chaos in the ghost, but no matter. There were dozens like him, all dreary and wanting to get ahead in life. It removed Nick and put another in his place and had a trashman sweep the now-discarded candy away and throw it down one of the stadium’s trash chutes where no one would eat it. It knew Nick DiAngelo's life like a record, endlessly repeating to the point where it could have played his life itself. And it had, many, many times. Something had changed, though. Where had he gotten the tainted food? It looked, and saw a small girl, winged with a small crown on her head. She was not one of its creations, but something outside. If Gomorrah could have, it would have been frustrated at seeing something that it was on the edge of recognizing but could not. It would remember though, if such a thing happened again. For now though, the problem was resolved, and Gomorrah again turned outward to continue its spread into the circus.
By the dumpsters behind the stadium, one of the shadows formed into a child. A homeless orphan girl dressed in rags: Little Amelia, and she was starving. She jumped up and grabbed the edge of the dumpster, slowly and strenuously pulling herself in. After rooting for a minute and eating the remains of a chip bag and the corner of a burger, she came across a large bag of bright pink cotton candy. She remembered times when her parents would give her a penny to go down to the corner and get herself a treat if she had been good or just to get rid of her for an hour, but that was before mommy had killed daddy for hitting her (sometimes it was daddy who hit mommy and she would hit her head too hard when she fell, or daddy hit her so she ran away, or mommy took her frustrations out on her). That candy was hardly a fraction of the prize that lay in front of her now, and she didn’t know if something like this would come along again soon, if ever. She tore open the bag and began shoveling cotton candy into her mouth as quickly as she could.