Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 3: Las Orbitas]
12-15-2010, 12:33 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Let’s just take things back an anachronistic step or eight. Quite some time before the Countess was leading her soon-to-be exterminated insectoid compatriots to their Last Supper (and yes, there’s a perfectly valid explanation for how a precision instrument like herself got a dumpster full of meat into Las Orbitas’ stadium, if you’d be so kind as to hang around), there was that issue of the fact Ouroboros had found the engineer. Had Algernon been in enough of the right kind of state to actually ask after a name, the amalgam would’ve jokingly and falsely referred to her now non-extant informant as Ken.
Not that that mattered much; seeing as whoever-the-hell-he-was wasn’t much more than bug food now, and even if Algernon asked his worm to trade his memories for a handful of sass and a substantial amount of suspension of disbelief, the shrieking made it pretty clear that anything (or one) organic in the immediate vicinity met a very unpleasant end as several thousand mandibled mouthfuls.
The Countess, meanwhile, just kind of sighed as Ouroborites poured from the ventilation shaft she’d eaten the grill off of and settled into a comfortable position. She even did ‘Ken’ a favour and rather glumly drove a foot between his eyes so the poor bastard wouldn’t have to sit through getting eaten alive.
The overhead lights died with a whimper as Ouroborous ripped out its electrical jugular. The Countess reformed her aural sensors so the screaming wasn’t quite so palpable, and plucked the first few prawns by their papery wings and tossed them on the metal-crushing gears in the back of her throat. Their crushed little bodies spewed pain-signal pheromones into the air; Ouroborous’ was visibly upset by this message and started sinking its collective jaws into less edible things like the rubber grip on the walkie-talkie, and the Countess’ feet. The slick purple rubbed off on the steely limb, making it prickle unpleasantly as the constituent nanites locked down and locked up. Wondering why these damnable insects didn’t have a “stop your shrieking and calm down” signal – actually…
It took downing a few more Ouroborites (and consequently angering the rest of them into clambering up to her torso, where even more of them got mashed up on the moving parts before those got gunked up) before the Countess had processed something useful, even if in her illustrious career of devouring metal and reforming it into something that would cause a lot of misery for someone else didn’t lend much experience into identifying it.
Somewhere in her core, the amalgam shuffled apparatus about into something approximating a chemical munitions factory. Compounds rendering Ouroborous’ tangle of limbs immune to its own paralysing slimy thermal blanket worked their way through the clockwork, took their sweet time getting to the peripherals, but eventually granting the jammed gears yield and letting the Countess limber up. There was the notable downside of the fact that now she had a consistent carpet of Ouroborites on her like an uppity scientist who’d pissed off Anansi, but she wouldn’t quibble.
Ken or what was left of him had about reached that point it wasn’t much use to any man, amalgam, or insect, but whatever the Countess was exuding was making Ouroborous stick around. The slick coat every cog and spring in the Countess was acquiring afforded her a rather fetching purple tint, but if the contents of her little wrist-bound vial were anything to go by the stuff was electrically conductive, too.
Which, if the screeching walls were anything to go by, could prove to be rather important.
The Countess scooped up the sad remnants of the walkie-talkie, its wires stripped of casing and thoroughly shorted out, thought better of extracting the Ouroborite still lapping up a bit of battery acid, and downed the lot. Cables insinuated down her arm, arranging themselves down its length as gently thrumming coils.
This sight, while quite striking in the lightless corridor, its air thick with chittering, ticking, scuttling, sparking, and the all-pervading smell of blood, still doesn’t really explain how this monstrosity found its way to the elf and the stadium and the dumpster full of meat.
Rest assured, I’m getting there.
Let’s just take things back an anachronistic step or eight. Quite some time before the Countess was leading her soon-to-be exterminated insectoid compatriots to their Last Supper (and yes, there’s a perfectly valid explanation for how a precision instrument like herself got a dumpster full of meat into Las Orbitas’ stadium, if you’d be so kind as to hang around), there was that issue of the fact Ouroboros had found the engineer. Had Algernon been in enough of the right kind of state to actually ask after a name, the amalgam would’ve jokingly and falsely referred to her now non-extant informant as Ken.
Not that that mattered much; seeing as whoever-the-hell-he-was wasn’t much more than bug food now, and even if Algernon asked his worm to trade his memories for a handful of sass and a substantial amount of suspension of disbelief, the shrieking made it pretty clear that anything (or one) organic in the immediate vicinity met a very unpleasant end as several thousand mandibled mouthfuls.
The Countess, meanwhile, just kind of sighed as Ouroborites poured from the ventilation shaft she’d eaten the grill off of and settled into a comfortable position. She even did ‘Ken’ a favour and rather glumly drove a foot between his eyes so the poor bastard wouldn’t have to sit through getting eaten alive.
The overhead lights died with a whimper as Ouroborous ripped out its electrical jugular. The Countess reformed her aural sensors so the screaming wasn’t quite so palpable, and plucked the first few prawns by their papery wings and tossed them on the metal-crushing gears in the back of her throat. Their crushed little bodies spewed pain-signal pheromones into the air; Ouroborous’ was visibly upset by this message and started sinking its collective jaws into less edible things like the rubber grip on the walkie-talkie, and the Countess’ feet. The slick purple rubbed off on the steely limb, making it prickle unpleasantly as the constituent nanites locked down and locked up. Wondering why these damnable insects didn’t have a “stop your shrieking and calm down” signal – actually…
It took downing a few more Ouroborites (and consequently angering the rest of them into clambering up to her torso, where even more of them got mashed up on the moving parts before those got gunked up) before the Countess had processed something useful, even if in her illustrious career of devouring metal and reforming it into something that would cause a lot of misery for someone else didn’t lend much experience into identifying it.
Somewhere in her core, the amalgam shuffled apparatus about into something approximating a chemical munitions factory. Compounds rendering Ouroborous’ tangle of limbs immune to its own paralysing slimy thermal blanket worked their way through the clockwork, took their sweet time getting to the peripherals, but eventually granting the jammed gears yield and letting the Countess limber up. There was the notable downside of the fact that now she had a consistent carpet of Ouroborites on her like an uppity scientist who’d pissed off Anansi, but she wouldn’t quibble.
Ken or what was left of him had about reached that point it wasn’t much use to any man, amalgam, or insect, but whatever the Countess was exuding was making Ouroborous stick around. The slick coat every cog and spring in the Countess was acquiring afforded her a rather fetching purple tint, but if the contents of her little wrist-bound vial were anything to go by the stuff was electrically conductive, too.
Which, if the screeching walls were anything to go by, could prove to be rather important.
The Countess scooped up the sad remnants of the walkie-talkie, its wires stripped of casing and thoroughly shorted out, thought better of extracting the Ouroborite still lapping up a bit of battery acid, and downed the lot. Cables insinuated down her arm, arranging themselves down its length as gently thrumming coils.
This sight, while quite striking in the lightless corridor, its air thick with chittering, ticking, scuttling, sparking, and the all-pervading smell of blood, still doesn’t really explain how this monstrosity found its way to the elf and the stadium and the dumpster full of meat.
Rest assured, I’m getting there.
peace to the unsung peace to the martyrs | i'm johnny rotten appleseed
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow