Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp]
02-29-2012, 09:22 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Message curled up somewhere on Countess' person, surveying the damage.
Dear Countess-
"I know you're as immodest as you are insufferably pretentious, Message. You needn't bother repeating yourself, as much I know you wish to."
Message held back its retort, likely as it was the amalgam would mistake its silence for a white flag. A tendril of ink instead drip-slid out from the joints in Countess' fingers, lapping up the muddy mix of ash and blood and marshwater.
He may have been of some actual use to you, but that point is quite moot. Kerosene has fallen-
"-That's disgusting," interrupted Countess, trying (with little success) to yank Message off the charred remains at the island's shores.
-and you are a hypocrite. The situation in neighbouring Fernwood will no doubt worsen by the time you haul your unaerodynamic self out there. Perhaps it would have already fallen, which does not suit my needs at all. Regardless, this "disgusting" meal you left me - a gesture so courteous for the likes of you I can only assume the side effect of satisfying my needs was entirely unintentional - will improve my stamina. Enough that I may lead you back to civilisation far less circuitously, at any rate.
Some urgency would not be remiss, though. The Swamp has, all too quickly, become a far deadlier place.
Regards,
The Message
The last of the inky trail slithered out, and snaked across the Swamp's surface like a shadow. Countess took a few dainty, whirring steps, arms folding away in an almost-pensive motion.
"I wonder."
Message flowed in a lazy circle, making no response until its companion slid back under the water. Her voice sang out, a little tinny from submersion, but chirpy-depraved as ever.
"Do you think the Ouroborous could make a meal of that mindworm?"
---
Dear Countess,
As much as I abhor penning a cliche, I simply cannot leave you alone for five minutes, can I?
With exasperation,
The Message
"More like five days, by my estimation." Countess flexed a mantis-like forelimb, reviewing the way it slotted flush into a groove down her chassis. She didn't like it all that much, but figured it was better than having an actual five days to renovate. Clockwork, the agent had to concede, was pretty and precise and oh-so elegant, but really wasn't much use in a swamp. She hated having to resort to this sleek, futuruistic form her constituent nanites seemed to prefer, but the location left her no choice. Not to mention a new face would give her the element of surprise, to run one of those imbeciles through and put an end to this unpleasant detour.
PS. If I had abandoned you for five days on my reconnoisance - which I certainly did not - then you could have easily walked to Fernwood by now. I can see where you're trying to go with this, but did it not occur to you that the boardwalks are the quickest route between two towns?
It hadn't, but Countess wasn't going to admit it. She opted for one last beartrap grin, unchanged save for the whole arrangement locking together a little more seamlessly, before slipping into the water.
Under the moulded-steel shell, the still-clockwork innards kept whirring and churning, occasionally managing to drag another clag of muck out through its myriad teeth and spit it out. Her arms clamped to her chest in a straitjacket embrace while her still-insectoid forelegs dragged her unhurriedly through the murk.
Dear Countess, began Message, registering as an occasional oily black streak across Countess' field of mired vision:
do you even understand how aquatic organisms function?
She ignored it.
What were you even expecting to find? Next to nothing of an agreeable disposition lives off the boardwalks. Are you doing this purely for the sake of being contrary? I find that rather immature.
...
If you insist on being disagreeable to the point of uselessness, then don't bother heeding my suggestion and swimming the way I'm indicating in the corner of your eye. At the very worst, the two of you might talk some sense into each other.
In disgust,
The Message
Countess waited until Message had well and truly departed elsewhere, then dragged her steely self to face port(ish) and forged on.
An hour's crocodilian marsh-draggling, with only the distant screech of Ouroborites to distract her, and the agent's feet scraped solid ground. A sleek head - whose shape seemed to borrow from all the worst carnivores - craned from the water on a slightly telescoping neck, gracing a sharp-plated body on four mantid legs. A pair of arms unfolded, the needle-like fingers (she just couldn't give those up) picking mud off the oversized forelegs. Countess furrowed the ground with a hindleg, which had been folded away during her trek. Ouroborous had passed through here, that much was clear.
The damp little island might've been a hill, once upon a time. A mouldering stone watchtower was busy taking forever to collapse, taking up most of the available land. The stone blocks at the foot of the tower (you could see where they'd fallen off the crenellations up top) were slick with purple, and a chitinous leg still poked out from underneath one. The remnants of a shrub and what looked to be extremely crude attempts at agriculture, sulked on the one patch of land not overshadowed by the building.
Countess looked up to to the battlements, and took a brick to the flank - but only because she'd almost-purposefully flailed the initially-targeted head out of the way. She scrambled away from the great overdue accident of an edifice, finding some innard of head-region that could still ratchet angrily and growling her mechanical growl.
The dead man walking, to his credit, managed to sate his curiosity until just after Countess began to think it might've been an accident.
"... Paige?" It was less a question, and more tenuously-witheld belief.
Well, that made things interesting.
---
Reilen refused to climb down his own rope ladder (paranoid idiot), and Countess was certainly in no form to climb up it. He also kept telling her (loudly) to keep her voice down in case those sentrali bugs showed their ugly faces again, which just ground her gears even worse.
"It's Countess, now," implored the amalgam. "Considering I haven't gone by that name since I started work with Viscount-"
"-who?"
"Hethwell," chirped Countess, testily. Her colleague made a non-commital noise which (in Countess' opinion) needed serious curtailing with a knife to the face. "Let's pretend I'm here to help you, and you'll be grateful enough at the prospect of a friendly face" -ok, she did have to concede Reilen got to laugh at that- "to tell me what brings you to this fetid backwater. Good?"
Reilen just cackled some more, waving what looked to be a chunk of inexpertly-grilled Ouroborite. Disgraceful, but Countess supposed you couldn't pick a worse hell for a Telpori-Hal than a swamp. No wonder he'd lost it.
"You've changed in a lot of ways, 'Countess'."
"Hal still black as ever, I hope?"
"Nah," growled Reilen, in a catastrophically poor display of tact. He grinned. "Well, I mean you're still as sadistic a bitch as always, sure, but something's eating you."
Countess said nothing, doing some kind of metal equivalent with her face of smiling sweetly. The Telpori-Hal continued to glare at her from his perch, as though trying to pick out some small feature on her nonexistent clothing.
"Still got to wonder how you ended up here, Paige. He tossed you in a battle, and you didn't rip them all limb from limb before one of them got a chance to escape?"
"Countess, Reilen. It was supposed to be a test. It is a test. I'm merely under the guise of a contestant, to sow discord-"
"-and stop something like this from happening? That is rich."
"I suppose you fared far better," chirped the amalgam. Reilen just laughed. Again. It was starting to annoy her.
"Nah, not going to kid myself. Boss got plain bored of me, can't dress something like that up. Wait! I've got it!" The Telpori-Hal leaned over the parapet, jabbing an excitable finger Countess-ward.
"You've got the hots for the Boss, haven't you?"
That prompted a very, very long silence.
Eventually, she managed:
"Follow your own advice, Reilen, come down here, and try asking me that a little more quietly. I think that meddling brainworm Hitchcock" -oh hey- "in Holm might not have heard you."
Reilen responded by shrieking at the top of his badly-starved voice. He found it hilarious, although a small part of him realised he'd just given himself the options to starve to death, or jump down there and melt Countess' poor smitten sadist face off. He solved this dilemma by not watching his footing, and pitching headfirst over the parapet.
Countess didn't bother toying with Reilen, even while most of his bones were shattered, which was a good enough indication she was furious and he should regenerate. He realised what a monumentally stupid idea that was, when she slid a leg underneath him and tossed him into the swamp.
She settled, spidercatlike upon brushed-steel haunches, and groomed herself clean of mud while doing some mental arithmetic. This whole detour might've taken two days, maybe three if Message opted to be useless. For what? Reminiscing with an old colleague about how much better things were, way back then? Was this what normal people did?
What an utter waste of time, she thought to herself.
Message curled up somewhere on Countess' person, surveying the damage.
Dear Countess-
"I know you're as immodest as you are insufferably pretentious, Message. You needn't bother repeating yourself, as much I know you wish to."
Message held back its retort, likely as it was the amalgam would mistake its silence for a white flag. A tendril of ink instead drip-slid out from the joints in Countess' fingers, lapping up the muddy mix of ash and blood and marshwater.
He may have been of some actual use to you, but that point is quite moot. Kerosene has fallen-
"-That's disgusting," interrupted Countess, trying (with little success) to yank Message off the charred remains at the island's shores.
-and you are a hypocrite. The situation in neighbouring Fernwood will no doubt worsen by the time you haul your unaerodynamic self out there. Perhaps it would have already fallen, which does not suit my needs at all. Regardless, this "disgusting" meal you left me - a gesture so courteous for the likes of you I can only assume the side effect of satisfying my needs was entirely unintentional - will improve my stamina. Enough that I may lead you back to civilisation far less circuitously, at any rate.
Some urgency would not be remiss, though. The Swamp has, all too quickly, become a far deadlier place.
Regards,
The Message
The last of the inky trail slithered out, and snaked across the Swamp's surface like a shadow. Countess took a few dainty, whirring steps, arms folding away in an almost-pensive motion.
"I wonder."
Message flowed in a lazy circle, making no response until its companion slid back under the water. Her voice sang out, a little tinny from submersion, but chirpy-depraved as ever.
"Do you think the Ouroborous could make a meal of that mindworm?"
---
Dear Countess,
As much as I abhor penning a cliche, I simply cannot leave you alone for five minutes, can I?
With exasperation,
The Message
"More like five days, by my estimation." Countess flexed a mantis-like forelimb, reviewing the way it slotted flush into a groove down her chassis. She didn't like it all that much, but figured it was better than having an actual five days to renovate. Clockwork, the agent had to concede, was pretty and precise and oh-so elegant, but really wasn't much use in a swamp. She hated having to resort to this sleek, futuruistic form her constituent nanites seemed to prefer, but the location left her no choice. Not to mention a new face would give her the element of surprise, to run one of those imbeciles through and put an end to this unpleasant detour.
PS. If I had abandoned you for five days on my reconnoisance - which I certainly did not - then you could have easily walked to Fernwood by now. I can see where you're trying to go with this, but did it not occur to you that the boardwalks are the quickest route between two towns?
It hadn't, but Countess wasn't going to admit it. She opted for one last beartrap grin, unchanged save for the whole arrangement locking together a little more seamlessly, before slipping into the water.
Under the moulded-steel shell, the still-clockwork innards kept whirring and churning, occasionally managing to drag another clag of muck out through its myriad teeth and spit it out. Her arms clamped to her chest in a straitjacket embrace while her still-insectoid forelegs dragged her unhurriedly through the murk.
Dear Countess, began Message, registering as an occasional oily black streak across Countess' field of mired vision:
do you even understand how aquatic organisms function?
She ignored it.
What were you even expecting to find? Next to nothing of an agreeable disposition lives off the boardwalks. Are you doing this purely for the sake of being contrary? I find that rather immature.
...
If you insist on being disagreeable to the point of uselessness, then don't bother heeding my suggestion and swimming the way I'm indicating in the corner of your eye. At the very worst, the two of you might talk some sense into each other.
In disgust,
The Message
Countess waited until Message had well and truly departed elsewhere, then dragged her steely self to face port(ish) and forged on.
An hour's crocodilian marsh-draggling, with only the distant screech of Ouroborites to distract her, and the agent's feet scraped solid ground. A sleek head - whose shape seemed to borrow from all the worst carnivores - craned from the water on a slightly telescoping neck, gracing a sharp-plated body on four mantid legs. A pair of arms unfolded, the needle-like fingers (she just couldn't give those up) picking mud off the oversized forelegs. Countess furrowed the ground with a hindleg, which had been folded away during her trek. Ouroborous had passed through here, that much was clear.
The damp little island might've been a hill, once upon a time. A mouldering stone watchtower was busy taking forever to collapse, taking up most of the available land. The stone blocks at the foot of the tower (you could see where they'd fallen off the crenellations up top) were slick with purple, and a chitinous leg still poked out from underneath one. The remnants of a shrub and what looked to be extremely crude attempts at agriculture, sulked on the one patch of land not overshadowed by the building.
Countess looked up to to the battlements, and took a brick to the flank - but only because she'd almost-purposefully flailed the initially-targeted head out of the way. She scrambled away from the great overdue accident of an edifice, finding some innard of head-region that could still ratchet angrily and growling her mechanical growl.
The dead man walking, to his credit, managed to sate his curiosity until just after Countess began to think it might've been an accident.
"... Paige?" It was less a question, and more tenuously-witheld belief.
Well, that made things interesting.
---
Reilen refused to climb down his own rope ladder (paranoid idiot), and Countess was certainly in no form to climb up it. He also kept telling her (loudly) to keep her voice down in case those sentrali bugs showed their ugly faces again, which just ground her gears even worse.
"It's Countess, now," implored the amalgam. "Considering I haven't gone by that name since I started work with Viscount-"
"-who?"
"Hethwell," chirped Countess, testily. Her colleague made a non-commital noise which (in Countess' opinion) needed serious curtailing with a knife to the face. "Let's pretend I'm here to help you, and you'll be grateful enough at the prospect of a friendly face" -ok, she did have to concede Reilen got to laugh at that- "to tell me what brings you to this fetid backwater. Good?"
Reilen just cackled some more, waving what looked to be a chunk of inexpertly-grilled Ouroborite. Disgraceful, but Countess supposed you couldn't pick a worse hell for a Telpori-Hal than a swamp. No wonder he'd lost it.
"You've changed in a lot of ways, 'Countess'."
"Hal still black as ever, I hope?"
"Nah," growled Reilen, in a catastrophically poor display of tact. He grinned. "Well, I mean you're still as sadistic a bitch as always, sure, but something's eating you."
Countess said nothing, doing some kind of metal equivalent with her face of smiling sweetly. The Telpori-Hal continued to glare at her from his perch, as though trying to pick out some small feature on her nonexistent clothing.
"Still got to wonder how you ended up here, Paige. He tossed you in a battle, and you didn't rip them all limb from limb before one of them got a chance to escape?"
"Countess, Reilen. It was supposed to be a test. It is a test. I'm merely under the guise of a contestant, to sow discord-"
"-and stop something like this from happening? That is rich."
"I suppose you fared far better," chirped the amalgam. Reilen just laughed. Again. It was starting to annoy her.
"Nah, not going to kid myself. Boss got plain bored of me, can't dress something like that up. Wait! I've got it!" The Telpori-Hal leaned over the parapet, jabbing an excitable finger Countess-ward.
"You've got the hots for the Boss, haven't you?"
That prompted a very, very long silence.
Eventually, she managed:
"Follow your own advice, Reilen, come down here, and try asking me that a little more quietly. I think that meddling brainworm Hitchcock" -oh hey- "in Holm might not have heard you."
Reilen responded by shrieking at the top of his badly-starved voice. He found it hilarious, although a small part of him realised he'd just given himself the options to starve to death, or jump down there and melt Countess' poor smitten sadist face off. He solved this dilemma by not watching his footing, and pitching headfirst over the parapet.
Countess didn't bother toying with Reilen, even while most of his bones were shattered, which was a good enough indication she was furious and he should regenerate. He realised what a monumentally stupid idea that was, when she slid a leg underneath him and tossed him into the swamp.
She settled, spidercatlike upon brushed-steel haunches, and groomed herself clean of mud while doing some mental arithmetic. This whole detour might've taken two days, maybe three if Message opted to be useless. For what? Reminiscing with an old colleague about how much better things were, way back then? Was this what normal people did?
What an utter waste of time, she thought to herself.
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