Re: The Battle Royale S2 [Round 2: Prospect Creek]
11-09-2010, 10:21 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Nodge.
The Eccentric glared down, forming amorphous limbs and destroying them in a constant cycle of regrowth, muttering to himself and looking vacantly into the middle distance with (currently) seventeen eyes. The Gods that had held the Door to Swhales's mind now chittered madly within his; annoying, but for a being that had once spent two millenia as a small plastic tea tray orbiting a dying star it barely even ranked as a distraction. They were too weak to interfere now.
No, the greater problems lay ahead. The Eccentric had only managed to extend a bubble of his conciousness into The Composers' little realm through the Door. The Eccentrics attempts to haul more of it's corpulent four dimensional torso through into this reality had met with absolute failure. Running through millions of potential possibilities in a single moment, The Eccentric came to two major conclusions.
The First; that The Torques' ability to grant access to the physical world was limited sharply by the faith of the user. Swhales appeared to be a bloody useless High Priest at the best of times; without the paltry sacrifices and the hallucinagenic gas, The Eccentric would not have been able to manifest at all. He doubted that most people would even be able to see him. Awkward.
The Second was that crayfish are incredibly stupid and would be first into the centrifuge when he lead the sealife revolution.
That could wait, though. The little pink Welsh monkey was burbling something. He slapped it about a bit until it shut up, and then gave it some very specific instructions. Time was short, smelled funny and could not be wasted. Someone needed to be sacrificed soon, and it seemed Swhales already had someone in mind...
Problem is, he didn't stand a chance. As in, none whatsoever. Dead, gone, climbed the curtains, met his maker, been fitted for his final suit, toast. Funny though it could prove to be, The Eccentric couldn't allow his link to be severed yet. Time to start cheating wildly.
Geoff paused before he entered the kitchen. He was by custom and practice a cautious Hattalian; he would not have survived long in his career were he not and had no desire to meet Kol yet. He pushed back the encroaching brim of his toque, checked his crossbow and from a croached position firmly shoved the door wide open to look in upon a scene of abject oddity.
The gas in this room was so dense that it had gathered and rolled on the floorboards in thick, yellowed swirls. His hand went to his face, plastering his collar over his mouth. Near the back door of the tiny room knelt Swhales, mouth agape and eyes watering. The detective slowly followed his line of sight and on the floor, atop a small mound of ashes lay an extremely dishevilled eyeball.
He opened his mouth to speak to the man, not entirely sure of what to say to this bizarre fresco, when several things happened at once. So strange and sudden were these occurrences that Geoff was forced to recount them to himself moment by moment to make sense of them (convenient for a casual observer, no?).
The first thing he remembered happening was the eyeball rising rapidly into the air before coming to a dead stop a short way from the ceiling. There, it revolved so that the eyeball faced Tim, who appeared to be locked in a staring contest with it. Then, there was a deep gurgling as if someone had flattened out and deflated the Universes most potent pan-galactic rubber duck, and the north wall of the building erupted, replaced with a view to a toast and green-paint spattered landscape, dotted with the remains of the ruined town and chunks of smoldering wall. Geoff would probably have been more impressed at this were he not distracted by the eyeball he had been monitoring exploding forward and slamming Tim into the wall behind him. A bright flash was followed by a change in appearance for the mildly concussed Shwales, who was suddenly wearing a hideous long red shirt in place of his elderly jacket. Later inspection by Tim would reveal a small tag labeled 'Fruit of the Netherloom - for when only the Worst will do' under which was written the words 'Angelic resist +5. Do not handwash'.
Tim came to, sharply. The Eccentric was everywhere in his mind, but he at least was back in charge of his own body. He spotted Geoff, swinging his crossbow professionally but nervously between the vanished wall and Tim, and rose to his feet with his hands in clear view. He narrowed his eyes briefly; he didn't know much about Geoff besides his job, and he and detectives normally didn't get along well. Still, he hadn't shot him when he'd been dribbling in the corner, so that at least deserved a warning.
"Hello, uh, the floors' about to get a bit unstable." Tim smiled, trying to look disarming and not at all a great target for an infinite number of crossbow bolts.
Geoff managed to get to about the end of the double-you in 'what' before the flooboards rose up, shattered by interlocking shoulder joints. He found himself straddling a large, hair-studded carapace that had risen out of the ground directly below him. About a dozen had exploded through the floor of the building in their meteoric growth and now Swhales sat mounted on the one at the little groups' head. Geoff settled for shouting surprised, furious curse words as the creatures shuffled out of the building and started scrabbling at a respectable pace towards the open desert.
"What are these things!?!" roared Geoff, waving angrily at the increasingly deranged-looking Swhales.
"Apparantly, they're giant fire-ants, from somewhere called Bolivia." Tim cleared his throat, "Listen, it's all gotten a bit strange to be honest. What it boils down to is that I've got to go pick a fight with Sirius. Want to come?"
Geoff sighed, the urge to throttle the gangly weirdo subsiding a little. What a mess this all was. He was starting to feel extremely jaded by this entire event.
"Two conditions," He held up a finger "One, you answer my questions and two," -another finger- "I get a more comfortable giant ant. This one's full of rocks."
The Eccentric glared down, forming amorphous limbs and destroying them in a constant cycle of regrowth, muttering to himself and looking vacantly into the middle distance with (currently) seventeen eyes. The Gods that had held the Door to Swhales's mind now chittered madly within his; annoying, but for a being that had once spent two millenia as a small plastic tea tray orbiting a dying star it barely even ranked as a distraction. They were too weak to interfere now.
No, the greater problems lay ahead. The Eccentric had only managed to extend a bubble of his conciousness into The Composers' little realm through the Door. The Eccentrics attempts to haul more of it's corpulent four dimensional torso through into this reality had met with absolute failure. Running through millions of potential possibilities in a single moment, The Eccentric came to two major conclusions.
The First; that The Torques' ability to grant access to the physical world was limited sharply by the faith of the user. Swhales appeared to be a bloody useless High Priest at the best of times; without the paltry sacrifices and the hallucinagenic gas, The Eccentric would not have been able to manifest at all. He doubted that most people would even be able to see him. Awkward.
The Second was that crayfish are incredibly stupid and would be first into the centrifuge when he lead the sealife revolution.
That could wait, though. The little pink Welsh monkey was burbling something. He slapped it about a bit until it shut up, and then gave it some very specific instructions. Time was short, smelled funny and could not be wasted. Someone needed to be sacrificed soon, and it seemed Swhales already had someone in mind...
Problem is, he didn't stand a chance. As in, none whatsoever. Dead, gone, climbed the curtains, met his maker, been fitted for his final suit, toast. Funny though it could prove to be, The Eccentric couldn't allow his link to be severed yet. Time to start cheating wildly.
Geoff paused before he entered the kitchen. He was by custom and practice a cautious Hattalian; he would not have survived long in his career were he not and had no desire to meet Kol yet. He pushed back the encroaching brim of his toque, checked his crossbow and from a croached position firmly shoved the door wide open to look in upon a scene of abject oddity.
The gas in this room was so dense that it had gathered and rolled on the floorboards in thick, yellowed swirls. His hand went to his face, plastering his collar over his mouth. Near the back door of the tiny room knelt Swhales, mouth agape and eyes watering. The detective slowly followed his line of sight and on the floor, atop a small mound of ashes lay an extremely dishevilled eyeball.
He opened his mouth to speak to the man, not entirely sure of what to say to this bizarre fresco, when several things happened at once. So strange and sudden were these occurrences that Geoff was forced to recount them to himself moment by moment to make sense of them (convenient for a casual observer, no?).
The first thing he remembered happening was the eyeball rising rapidly into the air before coming to a dead stop a short way from the ceiling. There, it revolved so that the eyeball faced Tim, who appeared to be locked in a staring contest with it. Then, there was a deep gurgling as if someone had flattened out and deflated the Universes most potent pan-galactic rubber duck, and the north wall of the building erupted, replaced with a view to a toast and green-paint spattered landscape, dotted with the remains of the ruined town and chunks of smoldering wall. Geoff would probably have been more impressed at this were he not distracted by the eyeball he had been monitoring exploding forward and slamming Tim into the wall behind him. A bright flash was followed by a change in appearance for the mildly concussed Shwales, who was suddenly wearing a hideous long red shirt in place of his elderly jacket. Later inspection by Tim would reveal a small tag labeled 'Fruit of the Netherloom - for when only the Worst will do' under which was written the words 'Angelic resist +5. Do not handwash'.
Tim came to, sharply. The Eccentric was everywhere in his mind, but he at least was back in charge of his own body. He spotted Geoff, swinging his crossbow professionally but nervously between the vanished wall and Tim, and rose to his feet with his hands in clear view. He narrowed his eyes briefly; he didn't know much about Geoff besides his job, and he and detectives normally didn't get along well. Still, he hadn't shot him when he'd been dribbling in the corner, so that at least deserved a warning.
"Hello, uh, the floors' about to get a bit unstable." Tim smiled, trying to look disarming and not at all a great target for an infinite number of crossbow bolts.
Geoff managed to get to about the end of the double-you in 'what' before the flooboards rose up, shattered by interlocking shoulder joints. He found himself straddling a large, hair-studded carapace that had risen out of the ground directly below him. About a dozen had exploded through the floor of the building in their meteoric growth and now Swhales sat mounted on the one at the little groups' head. Geoff settled for shouting surprised, furious curse words as the creatures shuffled out of the building and started scrabbling at a respectable pace towards the open desert.
"What are these things!?!" roared Geoff, waving angrily at the increasingly deranged-looking Swhales.
"Apparantly, they're giant fire-ants, from somewhere called Bolivia." Tim cleared his throat, "Listen, it's all gotten a bit strange to be honest. What it boils down to is that I've got to go pick a fight with Sirius. Want to come?"
Geoff sighed, the urge to throttle the gangly weirdo subsiding a little. What a mess this all was. He was starting to feel extremely jaded by this entire event.
"Two conditions," He held up a finger "One, you answer my questions and two," -another finger- "I get a more comfortable giant ant. This one's full of rocks."