Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp]
08-27-2011, 06:39 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
There wasn’t much to do in the morning besides clean up, and that’s what the townspeople tried to do. And with such a town of wildly varied beings with their own, potentially helpful powers, rebuilding was not too much of a problem. Holes were boarded over, roofs were replaced, boardwalks were patched up, the whole shebang. Some residents found themselves housing a few of the newly-made homeless, but it wasn’t getting crowded and everybody was at least on friendly terms with one another, so, hey, it wasn’t too much trouble.
A group came together in the Town Hall (jokingly called Stuffy Important Building of Uselessness up until now) to discuss what exactly should be done to prevent such a disaster from occurring ever again. Cherry was required to attend after Algernon let it slip that she had encountered the beastly bugs before, much to her ire, and she had gone, muttering darkly, thus leaving him to his own devices.
It seemed as though nobody really questioned his sudden ability to walk on walls and Algernon found that nobody was pestering him to do anything like create houses out of thin air, which he was eternally grateful for. He tried to help in reconstruction until it was evident that he really had no ability to build things himself and so instead found himself in a watchtower overlooking the swamp. His partner in watching looked very human. Algernon didn’t talk with him much, though, because he was asleep.
Watching out for danger after the danger had so recently passed was an extremely tedious endeavor. Though you knew what the danger looked like and you were indeed afraid of the danger and you would tense up at the thought of the danger coming back, but really, it never came back and you were just giving yourself an adrenaline high that would go away after a few seconds after you realized what a silly goof you were being and settled down enough to realize how boring everything was.
Then Algernon spotted movement in the swamp. It was heading towards town.
After he stopped freaking out again and looked closer at the movement, he realized he recognized the movement, or at least thought he recognized the movement, and quickly slid down the ladder to run towards it.
At the edge of the broken boardwalk, he could see a group of beings already climbing up on it. One of them he recognized because she was the only person he recognized from the remnants of his past. The other he recognized because it was hard to forget a gunslinger snake. They all looked rather disheveled, though that was probably because of their trip through the swamp.
As Algernon helped to pull Chambers up on the boardwalk, he asked, “What happened?” He hadn’t been back to Kerosene for a while, but he was pretty sure they had been rather happy just staying in their own little town.
Galatea glanced at him as she wiped her face. “…So you were here the whole time.”
“Well, yeah, I…didn’t those…uh, the lobster thing tell you where I was?”
“Presumed dead,” Chambers said rather coldly, already starting to slither into Fernwood. “Along with the rest of the group.”
Everybody was now trudging slowly with the snake. Algernon jogged up beside Galatea again and repeated, “What happened?”
Galatea continued staring downwards. “A huge thing landed in Kerosene. Those insects were…everywhere. The town’s burned down now.” She finally looked up again. “Your engineer friends are—“
She must have understood what the look on Algernon’s face meant because after a few seconds of silence, she punched him.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The newly-made Council received the poor former Kerosenites with open arms, apologizing profusely along the way, although they made sure to constantly repeat that none of it was really their fault, that it was a simple mistake, that they needed to drive the swarm away, that if they could do anything different it would have been to aim the catapult sliiiightly to the left, that Algernon was their hero and it was his idea so please don’t kill him although if you are really that angry maybe you could punch him a little but seriously don’t kill him.
Kerosene’s survivors weren’t numerous, but there weren’t a lot of places for them to stay. It wasn’t getting quite crowded yet, but when nobody from Kerosene could hear them, the budding Council couldn’t help but say that they were glad there weren’t more of them.
A faint voice called out from one of the watchtowers. It cried, “People coming from Holmside!”
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It never seemed as though they were building shelters quickly enough for the large number of refugees that were suddenly flooding Fernwood. Part of it was because the Council, now composed of beings of all towns that came in, continued arguing about many issues, issues of punishment, issues of blame, issues of workload, issues of ‘what would be fair,’ issues of tissues, issues of issues, a great many issues that a significant amount of the Council thought a waste of time (that was also an issue). The residents complicated matters, everybody getting along as much as the Council itself was. There always seemed to be one complaint or another muttered in the streets.
Grellend claimed that someone broke into his lab and stole something, though he wouldn’t say what this something was. That caused an uproar.
Then somebody else claimed that Grellend was performing unethical experiments in his lab and further insinuated that he was the cause of the plague of zombie things that destroyed most of their homes. That caused another uproar.
There were allegations that Algernon’s actions were maliciously deliberate and those people continued to punch him, or at least anybody who looked like him, which prompted another group to call the others out on it, decreeing that they should just leave the poor man alone already.
Protests rose in front of the Town Hall as well as the Council continued to fail to decide upon anything at all. In an effort to please the public, the Council opened their debates to the public, a move that they immediately regretted when the public came, bearing rotten fruit.
It was all very odd. The atmosphere was indeed strained, but had some sort of manufactured quality about it, as though the situation was this turbulent because of some outside force rather than natural conflict among the people. Certainly, the scandal and rumors and protests all seemed to rise up more quickly than it ought’ve.
But it seemed everybody was too preoccupied with arguing, punching, complaining, or blaming Grellend to really notice.
There wasn’t much to do in the morning besides clean up, and that’s what the townspeople tried to do. And with such a town of wildly varied beings with their own, potentially helpful powers, rebuilding was not too much of a problem. Holes were boarded over, roofs were replaced, boardwalks were patched up, the whole shebang. Some residents found themselves housing a few of the newly-made homeless, but it wasn’t getting crowded and everybody was at least on friendly terms with one another, so, hey, it wasn’t too much trouble.
A group came together in the Town Hall (jokingly called Stuffy Important Building of Uselessness up until now) to discuss what exactly should be done to prevent such a disaster from occurring ever again. Cherry was required to attend after Algernon let it slip that she had encountered the beastly bugs before, much to her ire, and she had gone, muttering darkly, thus leaving him to his own devices.
It seemed as though nobody really questioned his sudden ability to walk on walls and Algernon found that nobody was pestering him to do anything like create houses out of thin air, which he was eternally grateful for. He tried to help in reconstruction until it was evident that he really had no ability to build things himself and so instead found himself in a watchtower overlooking the swamp. His partner in watching looked very human. Algernon didn’t talk with him much, though, because he was asleep.
Watching out for danger after the danger had so recently passed was an extremely tedious endeavor. Though you knew what the danger looked like and you were indeed afraid of the danger and you would tense up at the thought of the danger coming back, but really, it never came back and you were just giving yourself an adrenaline high that would go away after a few seconds after you realized what a silly goof you were being and settled down enough to realize how boring everything was.
Then Algernon spotted movement in the swamp. It was heading towards town.
After he stopped freaking out again and looked closer at the movement, he realized he recognized the movement, or at least thought he recognized the movement, and quickly slid down the ladder to run towards it.
At the edge of the broken boardwalk, he could see a group of beings already climbing up on it. One of them he recognized because she was the only person he recognized from the remnants of his past. The other he recognized because it was hard to forget a gunslinger snake. They all looked rather disheveled, though that was probably because of their trip through the swamp.
As Algernon helped to pull Chambers up on the boardwalk, he asked, “What happened?” He hadn’t been back to Kerosene for a while, but he was pretty sure they had been rather happy just staying in their own little town.
Galatea glanced at him as she wiped her face. “…So you were here the whole time.”
“Well, yeah, I…didn’t those…uh, the lobster thing tell you where I was?”
“Presumed dead,” Chambers said rather coldly, already starting to slither into Fernwood. “Along with the rest of the group.”
Everybody was now trudging slowly with the snake. Algernon jogged up beside Galatea again and repeated, “What happened?”
Galatea continued staring downwards. “A huge thing landed in Kerosene. Those insects were…everywhere. The town’s burned down now.” She finally looked up again. “Your engineer friends are—“
She must have understood what the look on Algernon’s face meant because after a few seconds of silence, she punched him.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The newly-made Council received the poor former Kerosenites with open arms, apologizing profusely along the way, although they made sure to constantly repeat that none of it was really their fault, that it was a simple mistake, that they needed to drive the swarm away, that if they could do anything different it would have been to aim the catapult sliiiightly to the left, that Algernon was their hero and it was his idea so please don’t kill him although if you are really that angry maybe you could punch him a little but seriously don’t kill him.
Kerosene’s survivors weren’t numerous, but there weren’t a lot of places for them to stay. It wasn’t getting quite crowded yet, but when nobody from Kerosene could hear them, the budding Council couldn’t help but say that they were glad there weren’t more of them.
A faint voice called out from one of the watchtowers. It cried, “People coming from Holmside!”
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It never seemed as though they were building shelters quickly enough for the large number of refugees that were suddenly flooding Fernwood. Part of it was because the Council, now composed of beings of all towns that came in, continued arguing about many issues, issues of punishment, issues of blame, issues of workload, issues of ‘what would be fair,’ issues of tissues, issues of issues, a great many issues that a significant amount of the Council thought a waste of time (that was also an issue). The residents complicated matters, everybody getting along as much as the Council itself was. There always seemed to be one complaint or another muttered in the streets.
Grellend claimed that someone broke into his lab and stole something, though he wouldn’t say what this something was. That caused an uproar.
Then somebody else claimed that Grellend was performing unethical experiments in his lab and further insinuated that he was the cause of the plague of zombie things that destroyed most of their homes. That caused another uproar.
There were allegations that Algernon’s actions were maliciously deliberate and those people continued to punch him, or at least anybody who looked like him, which prompted another group to call the others out on it, decreeing that they should just leave the poor man alone already.
Protests rose in front of the Town Hall as well as the Council continued to fail to decide upon anything at all. In an effort to please the public, the Council opened their debates to the public, a move that they immediately regretted when the public came, bearing rotten fruit.
It was all very odd. The atmosphere was indeed strained, but had some sort of manufactured quality about it, as though the situation was this turbulent because of some outside force rather than natural conflict among the people. Certainly, the scandal and rumors and protests all seemed to rise up more quickly than it ought’ve.
But it seemed everybody was too preoccupied with arguing, punching, complaining, or blaming Grellend to really notice.