Re: The Battle Royale S2 [Round 3: Endymion]
07-16-2011, 05:00 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.
About half a mile below the network of catwalks and tubes that make up Endymion's residental areas is a barrier of clouds, and below that, solid ground. There are a number of fables that parents tell their children about what that cloud barrier is, and why you shouldn't go past it, but it's just a result of the extreme heat from the machinery in the lower districts hitting the mass of cold air produced by the upper residential districts' environmental controls. This was discovered by accident while Endymion was being built, and the moon was quickly redesigned to incorporate artificial rain into the maintenance of the artificial oceans and tides that make up the majority of Endymion's perpetual motion system.
- Excerpt from A Comprehensive History of Endymion
A set of rusted pistons forced open an enormously heavy door set into Endymion's metal surface. The sharp hiss of pneumatics was drowned out by sheets of rain pouring in through the gradually widening opening. Wardell stumbled up the stairs towards the exit, urged onwards by a tall, willowy fellow wrapped in a variety of work belts.
“Out!” he barked, pushing Wardell off the tarp covering the stairs and onto the moon's ground floor. “This isn't a place for civilians.” He took a few steps back to get out of the rain. “There's a sign out front,” he called up the stairs. “Can't you read?”
Wardell didn't look up from his copy of A Comprehensive History of Endymion.
“Right, then,” the foreman growled. He pulled a large, important-looking lever, and the doors groaned shut.
DANGER, said the words painted across the front. SALVAGE OPERATION – NO CIVILIAN ENTRY.
Wardell calmly adjusted his hood and made his way to the underside of a staircase leading to the upper balconies. Raindrops splattered onto the vast metal floor, leaving ripples in the thin layer of water that covered everything. Off in the distance, vertical water wheels built halfway into the sides of buildings and streetlamps provided hydroelectric and mechanical power to the lower districts. The yellowed lights flickered irregularly in the heavy mist. Heat sinks and broken pipes belched steam that rose through the occasional gaps in the clouds. Wardell's clothes clung to him in the heavy, humid air.
One end of his scarf pulled back his hood, silencing its music. “You need shelter, Wardell,” the other end reminded him. Wardell's hands clenched around his book.
“You're...” he began, then swallowed. “You still talk.”
“Yeah.”
“Why.”
“I'm not really sure,” it admitted. “But you can't just stay out here. You're covered in syrup.”
“That's fine,” muttered Wardell. He propped himself against the underside of the stairs.
“The others are going to be looking for you,” the scarf pleaded. “You're out in the open.”
“I exorcised Umbra before Photographer's dreams could kill us all,” Wardell countered, still not looking up from his book. “None of them would want to kill me for that.”
Admittedly, the scarf was a bit surprised that Wardell had been paying that much attention. “Humidity ruins the pages of books,” it sighed.
Wardell didn't look up. He fidgeted with the corner of one of the open pages.
“It's true,” the scarf said. It knew this would work; it was just hoping it could use reason to get through to Wardell, instead. He was such a child sometimes.
Wardell cautiously looked up at the endless rain, as if dealing with it carefully would make it leave him alone. He took a step out from under the stairs. His scarf pulled two thick encyclopedia volumes from his coat, flicked them open, and brought them together over Wardell's head like an umbrella.
Wardell looked up at the scarf quizzically. “Won't the rain clean you off?” he asked, reading an open page of Volume 317: Quk – Qwr out of the corner of his eye.
“I hate the rain!” said his scarf, a little too forcefully. “So does your jacket,” it added after a moment.
“...But not being washed?”
“It's a clothes thing,” it said uneasily. “You wouldn't get it. Besides, you still smell like myna gas.”
Wardell raised his sleeve and sniffed experimentally. Everything around him groaned and began to ripple and contort. He quickly pulled his face away, blinking away lightspots.
“Fair point,” he muttered queasily. “Let's go.”
---
Somewhere after a steep, dark drop that had deposited him in a much larger pipe carrying something approximating the contents of a small river, Geoff found himself tangled in what felt like a filthy metal grate. The rushing water echoed and crashed all around him, and he just barely managed to get ahold of one of the bars and pull himself free of the overwhelming flow of water. He stayed there for a few moments, clutching the grate and gasping for breath. The grate was covered in waterlogged debris, and every breath he took was putrid – this was probably where garbage was filtered out – but the long, dark journey down was taxing to say the least, and Geoff needed a moment to recuperate; he had no way of knowing if what came next would be worse. He brushed his free hand over the rusted bars until he felt what was unmistakably a lock, keeping the removable grate fixed in place.
Moment's over.
He plunged a metal crossbow bolt into the small gap between two sections of pipe that had been cutting into his leg. It took all of his strength to push off from the grate against the endless deluge pushing him back down. He kept a firm grip on his improvised handhold and lashed out with his opposite leg, smashing the rusted metal grate free of what was left of the lock. As it spun out of control in the rushing water, Geoff was pushed along with it thanks to the force behind his kick. He ducked and covered his head blindly as the dislodged metal grade spun past him, nearly hitting him on the head. If he were knocked out in these conditions, he would definitely drown. He fell straight through a series of thinner metal screens – filters, most likely – before hitting the bottom of the pipe hard as it suddenly leveled off.
This was the best getaway ever, Geoff decided with a mental groan as he pulled himself to his hands and knees. He made it a few feet before collapsing onto his side again in exhaustion, somehow managing to make it to the mouth of the pipe. He rolled over and fell into a pool of clear, cool water, which was somehow more overwhelming than his entire nightmarish escape.
He bobbed to the surface, gasping for air. Clean, pleasantly enough. A few agitators shaped like tuning forks lazily stirred the contents of the tank, sucking the screens down into drains at the bottom.He caught ahold of the nearest agitator and let its arm carry him to the side of the tank. In the distance, several more tanks took in water from several hundred more pipes. Possibly several thousand more, Geoff slowly realized as the agitator arm carried him in a slow arc across the surface the tank. This room was gigantic. Somewhere overhead, a series of huge waterwheels spun rapidly under the power of a waterfall that spilled water from what must have been an entire district of Endymion into a giant vat with BLOCK D painted on the side, which dominated the center of the room. From there, pipes redistributed the water into smaller tanks, and then into what looked to be about a dozen pools dotted with agitators. It was hard to guess at what the actual purpose of this room was supposed to be, but it was one of at least four, and Geoff's impression was somewhere between 'waterworks' and 'cathedral.' As the opposite arm moved out of the way, Geoff noticed Wardell crouched by the end of the tank with a book in hand.
“Wardell!” he called. No answer.
He sighed and let go of the arm once he was close enough. “Wardell,” he repeated as he paddled towards the edge. After Geoff threw a few crossbow bolts, Wardell looked up from the romance novel he was supposed to be using to dry off his syrupy coat and boots.
“Oh, hello,” he said with a blank smile. His scarf shot out and wrapped around Geoff's middle and hauled him up onto the dry platform next to the tank. It was surprisingly strong, for a length of bloody wool. Wardell went back to his clothes and novel. A bit of butter on the sleeve of his coat started to spell out 'WARDELL WENT BA-,' but that only got it dunked into the vat of water again.
Geoff lay on what felt rather like a smoother kind of concrete for a few long moments.
“So, you're covered in syrup,” Geoff offered as a conversation starter. “Is that...” he started, but he realized he had no idea which question to ask first. There were too many.
“Photographer got high on myna gas. His dreams become reality, and the gas made his dreams turn random and dangerous – and they got a lot bigger. Somewhere in the last two rounds, Photographer picked up Umbra, too. I had to get rid of it before things got any worse.” He paused to turn a waterlogged page of his book. “I guess that means Sereno is dead.”
Geoff was actually a little startled. He was pretty sure he hadn't heard Wardell say so many words at a time before. Or that many words total, for that matter.
“I suppose,” Geoff replied. “I haven't seen Steinwaffe around, either. But that makes two separate occasions where Umbra's attacked people randomly. I think we're better off,” he said grimly.
“I don't,” said Wardell after a pause. He didn't look up from his coat, even though he was just watching it dry. “I don't think it was fair to Sereno that he got dragged into this. I'm sure The Eccentric just wanted Sereno for his doppelgeist, but that wasn't Sereno's fault.” Wardell's tone of voice wasn't hostile; actually, it was very passive.
As much as Geoff wanted to remind Wardell that this whole scenario wasn't fair to anyone, he did have a point. When he put it like that, Geoff felt sort of bad about it. He turned away with a small sigh, pulling out of the conversation before it got any more awkward. Knowing Wardell, he wouldn't even notice the difference.
He took a moment to review: Endymion was slowly going to fall apart, or something, now that The Composer had taken it from its place in the universe. As before, there was a time limit. This might be a habit of The Composer. Something to watch out for in later rounds.
The natives are friendly enough, but something about his being from off-world was very upsetting to them, even though it was mostly true. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what they would have done if they'd caught him.
Something in the neighborhood of four or five contestants remained. One was sitting right next to him, doing nothing. Each successive round would either make it harder to find his dwindling number of targets, or make it harder to hide from your opponents. Probably the latter, from what he'd seen of The Composer's rather brutal methods.
Romance novels make poor sponge-
Geoff's last thought was interrupted by what was unmistakably a klaxon. Even on an alien world, alarms were still plainly recognizable as alarms. He turned to Wardell, who was already kneeling by the edge of the tank he had just fished Geoff out of, as opposed to, say, springing to his feet, or checking his surroundings. Either Wardell was completely oblivious, or, Geoff realized as Wardell started pointing, he already knew what he was supposed to be looking at. One of the agitators had stopped moving, and warning lights lit up the tank of water. Metal plates sealed off the pipes pouring water into the tank, and the water levels in all the other tanks began to rise as the one below them slowly drained.
The scarf swiftly pulled free of Wardell's neck and wrapped around his wrist to get a few more feet of reach. Before Geoff could ask what was going on, it had already coiled around the stopped agitator, and Wardell was extending a hand to Geoff. “Are you coming?” he asked, as if that was supposed to be enough for him to make sense of what was going on. He took Wardell's hand and started to say something, and then grabbed on with both hands as the scarf hauled them both off of their feet and lowered them into the tank, which only had a few inches of water left in it.
Also, a corpse with a jagged knife in the back of its neck, lodged halfway into a drain.
Wardell was already rolling the victim onto his back when a maintenance worker appeared on the edge of the water tank, staring dumbly at Geoff and Wardell.
“Welp,” said the scarf.
“Shit.”
About half a mile below the network of catwalks and tubes that make up Endymion's residental areas is a barrier of clouds, and below that, solid ground. There are a number of fables that parents tell their children about what that cloud barrier is, and why you shouldn't go past it, but it's just a result of the extreme heat from the machinery in the lower districts hitting the mass of cold air produced by the upper residential districts' environmental controls. This was discovered by accident while Endymion was being built, and the moon was quickly redesigned to incorporate artificial rain into the maintenance of the artificial oceans and tides that make up the majority of Endymion's perpetual motion system.
- Excerpt from A Comprehensive History of Endymion
A set of rusted pistons forced open an enormously heavy door set into Endymion's metal surface. The sharp hiss of pneumatics was drowned out by sheets of rain pouring in through the gradually widening opening. Wardell stumbled up the stairs towards the exit, urged onwards by a tall, willowy fellow wrapped in a variety of work belts.
“Out!” he barked, pushing Wardell off the tarp covering the stairs and onto the moon's ground floor. “This isn't a place for civilians.” He took a few steps back to get out of the rain. “There's a sign out front,” he called up the stairs. “Can't you read?”
Wardell didn't look up from his copy of A Comprehensive History of Endymion.
“Right, then,” the foreman growled. He pulled a large, important-looking lever, and the doors groaned shut.
DANGER, said the words painted across the front. SALVAGE OPERATION – NO CIVILIAN ENTRY.
Wardell calmly adjusted his hood and made his way to the underside of a staircase leading to the upper balconies. Raindrops splattered onto the vast metal floor, leaving ripples in the thin layer of water that covered everything. Off in the distance, vertical water wheels built halfway into the sides of buildings and streetlamps provided hydroelectric and mechanical power to the lower districts. The yellowed lights flickered irregularly in the heavy mist. Heat sinks and broken pipes belched steam that rose through the occasional gaps in the clouds. Wardell's clothes clung to him in the heavy, humid air.
One end of his scarf pulled back his hood, silencing its music. “You need shelter, Wardell,” the other end reminded him. Wardell's hands clenched around his book.
“You're...” he began, then swallowed. “You still talk.”
“Yeah.”
“Why.”
“I'm not really sure,” it admitted. “But you can't just stay out here. You're covered in syrup.”
“That's fine,” muttered Wardell. He propped himself against the underside of the stairs.
“The others are going to be looking for you,” the scarf pleaded. “You're out in the open.”
“I exorcised Umbra before Photographer's dreams could kill us all,” Wardell countered, still not looking up from his book. “None of them would want to kill me for that.”
Admittedly, the scarf was a bit surprised that Wardell had been paying that much attention. “Humidity ruins the pages of books,” it sighed.
Wardell didn't look up. He fidgeted with the corner of one of the open pages.
“It's true,” the scarf said. It knew this would work; it was just hoping it could use reason to get through to Wardell, instead. He was such a child sometimes.
Wardell cautiously looked up at the endless rain, as if dealing with it carefully would make it leave him alone. He took a step out from under the stairs. His scarf pulled two thick encyclopedia volumes from his coat, flicked them open, and brought them together over Wardell's head like an umbrella.
Wardell looked up at the scarf quizzically. “Won't the rain clean you off?” he asked, reading an open page of Volume 317: Quk – Qwr out of the corner of his eye.
“I hate the rain!” said his scarf, a little too forcefully. “So does your jacket,” it added after a moment.
“...But not being washed?”
“It's a clothes thing,” it said uneasily. “You wouldn't get it. Besides, you still smell like myna gas.”
Wardell raised his sleeve and sniffed experimentally. Everything around him groaned and began to ripple and contort. He quickly pulled his face away, blinking away lightspots.
“Fair point,” he muttered queasily. “Let's go.”
---
Somewhere after a steep, dark drop that had deposited him in a much larger pipe carrying something approximating the contents of a small river, Geoff found himself tangled in what felt like a filthy metal grate. The rushing water echoed and crashed all around him, and he just barely managed to get ahold of one of the bars and pull himself free of the overwhelming flow of water. He stayed there for a few moments, clutching the grate and gasping for breath. The grate was covered in waterlogged debris, and every breath he took was putrid – this was probably where garbage was filtered out – but the long, dark journey down was taxing to say the least, and Geoff needed a moment to recuperate; he had no way of knowing if what came next would be worse. He brushed his free hand over the rusted bars until he felt what was unmistakably a lock, keeping the removable grate fixed in place.
Moment's over.
He plunged a metal crossbow bolt into the small gap between two sections of pipe that had been cutting into his leg. It took all of his strength to push off from the grate against the endless deluge pushing him back down. He kept a firm grip on his improvised handhold and lashed out with his opposite leg, smashing the rusted metal grate free of what was left of the lock. As it spun out of control in the rushing water, Geoff was pushed along with it thanks to the force behind his kick. He ducked and covered his head blindly as the dislodged metal grade spun past him, nearly hitting him on the head. If he were knocked out in these conditions, he would definitely drown. He fell straight through a series of thinner metal screens – filters, most likely – before hitting the bottom of the pipe hard as it suddenly leveled off.
This was the best getaway ever, Geoff decided with a mental groan as he pulled himself to his hands and knees. He made it a few feet before collapsing onto his side again in exhaustion, somehow managing to make it to the mouth of the pipe. He rolled over and fell into a pool of clear, cool water, which was somehow more overwhelming than his entire nightmarish escape.
He bobbed to the surface, gasping for air. Clean, pleasantly enough. A few agitators shaped like tuning forks lazily stirred the contents of the tank, sucking the screens down into drains at the bottom.He caught ahold of the nearest agitator and let its arm carry him to the side of the tank. In the distance, several more tanks took in water from several hundred more pipes. Possibly several thousand more, Geoff slowly realized as the agitator arm carried him in a slow arc across the surface the tank. This room was gigantic. Somewhere overhead, a series of huge waterwheels spun rapidly under the power of a waterfall that spilled water from what must have been an entire district of Endymion into a giant vat with BLOCK D painted on the side, which dominated the center of the room. From there, pipes redistributed the water into smaller tanks, and then into what looked to be about a dozen pools dotted with agitators. It was hard to guess at what the actual purpose of this room was supposed to be, but it was one of at least four, and Geoff's impression was somewhere between 'waterworks' and 'cathedral.' As the opposite arm moved out of the way, Geoff noticed Wardell crouched by the end of the tank with a book in hand.
“Wardell!” he called. No answer.
He sighed and let go of the arm once he was close enough. “Wardell,” he repeated as he paddled towards the edge. After Geoff threw a few crossbow bolts, Wardell looked up from the romance novel he was supposed to be using to dry off his syrupy coat and boots.
“Oh, hello,” he said with a blank smile. His scarf shot out and wrapped around Geoff's middle and hauled him up onto the dry platform next to the tank. It was surprisingly strong, for a length of bloody wool. Wardell went back to his clothes and novel. A bit of butter on the sleeve of his coat started to spell out 'WARDELL WENT BA-,' but that only got it dunked into the vat of water again.
Geoff lay on what felt rather like a smoother kind of concrete for a few long moments.
“So, you're covered in syrup,” Geoff offered as a conversation starter. “Is that...” he started, but he realized he had no idea which question to ask first. There were too many.
“Photographer got high on myna gas. His dreams become reality, and the gas made his dreams turn random and dangerous – and they got a lot bigger. Somewhere in the last two rounds, Photographer picked up Umbra, too. I had to get rid of it before things got any worse.” He paused to turn a waterlogged page of his book. “I guess that means Sereno is dead.”
Geoff was actually a little startled. He was pretty sure he hadn't heard Wardell say so many words at a time before. Or that many words total, for that matter.
“I suppose,” Geoff replied. “I haven't seen Steinwaffe around, either. But that makes two separate occasions where Umbra's attacked people randomly. I think we're better off,” he said grimly.
“I don't,” said Wardell after a pause. He didn't look up from his coat, even though he was just watching it dry. “I don't think it was fair to Sereno that he got dragged into this. I'm sure The Eccentric just wanted Sereno for his doppelgeist, but that wasn't Sereno's fault.” Wardell's tone of voice wasn't hostile; actually, it was very passive.
As much as Geoff wanted to remind Wardell that this whole scenario wasn't fair to anyone, he did have a point. When he put it like that, Geoff felt sort of bad about it. He turned away with a small sigh, pulling out of the conversation before it got any more awkward. Knowing Wardell, he wouldn't even notice the difference.
He took a moment to review: Endymion was slowly going to fall apart, or something, now that The Composer had taken it from its place in the universe. As before, there was a time limit. This might be a habit of The Composer. Something to watch out for in later rounds.
The natives are friendly enough, but something about his being from off-world was very upsetting to them, even though it was mostly true. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what they would have done if they'd caught him.
Something in the neighborhood of four or five contestants remained. One was sitting right next to him, doing nothing. Each successive round would either make it harder to find his dwindling number of targets, or make it harder to hide from your opponents. Probably the latter, from what he'd seen of The Composer's rather brutal methods.
Romance novels make poor sponge-
Geoff's last thought was interrupted by what was unmistakably a klaxon. Even on an alien world, alarms were still plainly recognizable as alarms. He turned to Wardell, who was already kneeling by the edge of the tank he had just fished Geoff out of, as opposed to, say, springing to his feet, or checking his surroundings. Either Wardell was completely oblivious, or, Geoff realized as Wardell started pointing, he already knew what he was supposed to be looking at. One of the agitators had stopped moving, and warning lights lit up the tank of water. Metal plates sealed off the pipes pouring water into the tank, and the water levels in all the other tanks began to rise as the one below them slowly drained.
The scarf swiftly pulled free of Wardell's neck and wrapped around his wrist to get a few more feet of reach. Before Geoff could ask what was going on, it had already coiled around the stopped agitator, and Wardell was extending a hand to Geoff. “Are you coming?” he asked, as if that was supposed to be enough for him to make sense of what was going on. He took Wardell's hand and started to say something, and then grabbed on with both hands as the scarf hauled them both off of their feet and lowered them into the tank, which only had a few inches of water left in it.
Also, a corpse with a jagged knife in the back of its neck, lodged halfway into a drain.
Wardell was already rolling the victim onto his back when a maintenance worker appeared on the edge of the water tank, staring dumbly at Geoff and Wardell.
“Welp,” said the scarf.
“Shit.”