Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp]
03-16-2012, 01:02 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.
"What was that soun-"
The green tendril that shot out of the mist and into one of the remaining guards' throats came quickly, cutting that guard off mid-sentence. It didn't stop there, and without much pretence, it whipped around, grabbed another guard's neck, and pulled, wrenching that guard to the ground and leaving him motionless. Then, and soon as it was done, it pulled away, retreating back into the mists of the swamp and leaving the remaining two guards to brace themselves for its return.
It did return, but, counter to the guards' expectations, it didn't come alone, and certainly not at the same speed it had before.
It came, instead, as part of what seemed to be an amalgamation of a zombie, a swamp monster, and an eldritch abomination. The thing shambled slowly forward, a wide, toothy grin splitting its face farther than grins really should.
The guards just stared at the swamp-thing, and when it flicked its wrist in a quick motion, they flinched back. They didn't end up with new holes through their bodies, however; on closer inspection, it seemed that what had once been Thane had procured a pair of shiny handcuffs from somewhere and was now wearing them across its somewhat-rotten wrists.
-
"Captain! Captain, wake up!"
Captain Scumbeard, asleep in the closest he'd approximation to his old bunk he'd managed to make, was reluctant to do what his earnest first mate was urging him to do.
"Captain, we have to go! They're everywhere, we don't have long!"
Okay, it did sound important.
"What, what is it?", he asked, still rather groggy from the night before. "Who're everywhere?"
He got his answer soon enough.
-
"No, sir, not a word. He's just sitting there."
The people of Hearth were taking no chances when it came to the not-Thane monstrosity. It was in a specially-outfitted hotel room, thick iron bars keeping it contained in one corner and a quartet of guards standing watch at all times. One door to the room was atop one of the highest branches of the tree, leading anyone who passed through to a probably-fatal drop down to the ground outside, and the other was set in the floor of a specially-dug pit that had an additional pair of guards armed with high-powered rifles standing by the top.
The radio in the guard's hand crackled to life. "Well, if he does say anything, let me know immediately. Over and out." (The head of the guard, a sentient police dispatch console that preferred to be called either 911 or "sir," always used proper radio protocol.)
"Right, will do."
The Thane-thing wasn't much disturbed by being in a cell. It knew just what was happening outside. It could still hear them coming. All was well.
-
Looks like it was true. The whole town, destroyed.
there is movement down there
At the ship's words, Sarin drew back a bit. She didn't want to see the sorts of things that might lurk in Fernwood's remains. If she looked over the edge, she worried she might see the things that had destroyed the town, or maybe some sort of beast eating the remains of the population.
What she didn't think to worry about was a grappling hook wrapping around one of Richter's bones, followed by another, then another, then more. The thought hadn't even occurred to her.
-
The joint populations of Kerosene and Fernwood arrived in Hearth not long after the un-Thane itself, and their reception was about as warm as they'd expected. I mean, a horde of zombies approaches your fortress, what are you going to do, invite them in for tea?
Automatic weapons fire, magical fire-weapons, and assorted other warfare ammo blazed from the lower branches of the tree. When one of 911's scouts had reported back that there was a "horde of something coming in, over," the call of "battle stations!" had gone out. Everyone who could handle a weapon was sent to positions on the tree's lower branches, from which they could shoot from cover but still have an excellent chance of actually hitting anything.
It was a solid plan. The combined fire of Hearth's defence kept the swamp-zombies at bay.
Well, most of them.
-
"Land ho!", came the cry.
Captain Scumbeard, the ex-living ex-ex-pirate, stroked his still-scummy beard and smiled a still-toothy smile. "Prepare to disembark," he said, putting the old piratical emphasis back into his arrs.
With a few quick throws, there were grappling hooks binding their vessel to the tree. From there, the crew began their mission.
-
Something thumped on one of the doors to Thane's makeshift cell.
Immediately, one of the guards grabbed for his radio. "Sir," he began, "we've got-"
He didn't get to finish his message, due to a cutthroat pirate doing the sort of thing one would expect someone described as "cutthroat" to do. None of the other guards even reached their radios.
The thing that wasn't Thane stood, and once Scumbeard's crew had found the keys to the cell, walked forward. As the crew scrambled to get the cuffs off of their leader, they looked to it for guidance. What was their next step? What did they do next?
It told them.
-
The plags were coming.
Acacia, being in possession of two hands and having seen a machine gun before, had been sent out to a branch where she could guard, and she'd even gotten a perch not far from Kalevi.
It wasn't much comfort. They were coming for her.
There were so many of them below, and the mist partially obscuring them didn't do anything to make them any less real.
She'd always known they would come for her. She'd done things, and they'd seen, and now they were here, coming to get her.
She didn't notice when her gun ran out of bullets, because by then, she'd stopped even aiming. She was just pointing it down at the crowd and clutching the trigger for dear life.
Kelavi, on the other hand, did notice. "Aic," he shouted, "you need to reload!"
Kel was there. They were coming and Kel was there. She needed him, she needed to get to him, he could help, he could make them leave, she'd be safe with him, where was he, she needed him, Kel where are you.
"Aic, come on, stay with me! You need to reload!"
There he was, just over there, she needed to go to him, she had to get there, she was coming, almost there.
The fear of the plags might've kept her on the branch if she'd had a bit more time. Left to her own devices, she might not have fallen from her perch and met her end. Kelavi might not have seen her go and might not have dived after her in an insane bid to protect her.
Unfortunately, a skeleton airship slamming into the tree wasn't exactly conducive to people keeping their footing.
If Kalevi hadn't bought her what time he had, though, they would've eaten her so fast that two humanoids, an amalgam-creature, and a selection of insects wouldn't've gotten to see what happened when the hole caused by Richter's forced flight into Hearth's trunk was able to leak any substantial amount of fog into the town. The four remaining contestants might not have had an opportunity to witness that Hearth, like Kerosene and Fernwood, was inevitably bound to be zombie food.
> Contestant dead. Loading mswampexit004... Done. Executing...
Still, though, the moment Acacia had officially ceased to be alive, reality ground to a halt around the four. Almost immediately, sections of the world began to vanish, and any sounds that had existed dissolved into static.
As things vanished faster and faster, though, the static resolved itself into a sound the contestants all recognized. (Well, the ones capable of recognizing it.)
The Controller was laughing at them, getting a good, hearty chuckle out of his actions. The sound reverberated in from all sides, the echo distinct enough that it almost sounded like their captor had brought company.
After a few moments, the laughter died away, and the Controller spoke. His voice echoed just as his laughs had, but his tone was quieter, almost contemplative. "Beautiful," he said, "just beautiful. There's always something to be said for building up hope, only to dash it away once it's ripened."
He sighed, lapsing into silence for a second or two before continuing. None of the contestants could see where he was, but he sounded like he must've been nearby. "I thought you could use some time to yourselves, time to just think about the last few weeks, so I booked you all rooms at Tropic Skies, a lovely hotel in a tropical climate. Feel free to look around the resort; there's a bit of an event going on, so I'm sure you'll have plenty to do.
"Enjoy!"
As the Controller's last word echoed into the distance, the black nothingness around the contestants began to resolve itself into a room. After a few seconds, each contestant found themself alone in a nice little hotel room, the walls covered in a tropical palm-tree wallpaper and a hidden speaker somewhere quietly piping out the calming tones of steel drums. The music didn't quite mask the sound of voices out in the hotel proper.
-
Nearly an hour prior, Tropic Skies' main ballroom was immersed in something very nearly resembling total darkness. In the shadowed room, a massive crowd of beings was packed together, the murmur of quiet voices easily recognizable as restrained excitement. Something big was about to happen.
"Should be any second," one of the multitude was whispering to another.
"I wonder if something- ooh! Shh, shh!" The reply, as with most every thread of conversation in the packed room, dissolved into attempts to shush everyone else in the room when, contrasting starkly with the darkness, a bright-white line appeared, light stabbing out at the mass congregated there.
After everyone's eyes had a moment to adjust, they could see a lone figure standing in the shaft of light, all black-on-black, just a shadow in the brightness.
"Greetings," the figure said, voice amplified through massive speakers all around the room. "You can call me the Coordinator, and this..." (He paused for a few moments' dramatic effect)
"This... is the Grand Convention!" Flinging his arms wide, all the lights in the room went up at once, practically blinding everyone once again. Nonetheless, the crowd cheered, adding temporary deafness to their temporary blindness.
The Coordinator was a regular guy, except he was dressed in an all-black suit and was wielding what seemed to be a microphone cane. "Welcome, one and all, to the fourteenth-annual Grand Convention, the world's foremost celebration of the Grand Battle series and its related media! I'm absolutely thrilled to be here at Tropic Skies, whose facilities are nearly twice those we had access to last year!" At this, the crowd cheered again. They did seem to enjoy cheering. "We've got unilateral access to their facilities, including three ballrooms like this one and nearly a dozen smaller rooms as well, but even with all that space, we've managed to pack our schedule so full of events that you're going to have some tough choices ahead of you. Would you rather attend a session on module design in the GBRP system or get a lesson in drawing from Kent Browning, illustrator of the Battle Majestic and Epic Clash comics? That's the kind of choice you've got ahead of yourself, so better start thinking now!
"Of course, you don't have too long to decide; both of those sessions start just ten minutes from now, at eleven o'clock, along with five others. There's also the vendors' hall over in Ballroom Two, a scavenger hunt that'll be taking place across all three days of GrandCon, and numerous other activities besides. Keep your schedule handy, access the site from your phone, or check any of the numerous signs scattered around the building; however you decide, just do it quick, because GrandCon starts now!"
With that, the ballroom's doors swung wide, and a tide of fans was released out into the convention. Most of them had attempted to costume up to some extent or another, and the quality varied from just wearing a logo t-shirt to astonishingly life-like makeup and prosthetics. There was exactly one thing that brought all of them to that convention: their love of the Grand Battle series.
Soon enough, they were dispersed around the convention centre. Conversations abounded; people everywhere could be heard discussing their favourite battles, which characters could beat which in a fight, and the finer points of canon.
"Eximo was an upright Hoover, didn't you read the manga?"
"Whaat, no. The novels- that's his first appearance- make it plainly clear he was like a Shop-Vac!"
"Plainly clear? I don't know which novels you were reading, but the originals were ambiguous about him at best!"
GrandCon XIV was shaping up to be the best Grand Convention yet; unfortunately, before the first session could even end, the only unoccupied rooms- four of them, booked months prior under the name Ken Parusi- had their intended occupants transported in.
This year's GrandCon was going to be interesting.
-
"Senator Lutetian, the evidence of your crimes being overwhelming in both quantity and quality, and you yourself having plead guilty to your crimes, you are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment in Prisoner Rehabilitation Colony Three-Eighty-Four without the opportunity for appeal."
"What was that soun-"
The green tendril that shot out of the mist and into one of the remaining guards' throats came quickly, cutting that guard off mid-sentence. It didn't stop there, and without much pretence, it whipped around, grabbed another guard's neck, and pulled, wrenching that guard to the ground and leaving him motionless. Then, and soon as it was done, it pulled away, retreating back into the mists of the swamp and leaving the remaining two guards to brace themselves for its return.
It did return, but, counter to the guards' expectations, it didn't come alone, and certainly not at the same speed it had before.
It came, instead, as part of what seemed to be an amalgamation of a zombie, a swamp monster, and an eldritch abomination. The thing shambled slowly forward, a wide, toothy grin splitting its face farther than grins really should.
The guards just stared at the swamp-thing, and when it flicked its wrist in a quick motion, they flinched back. They didn't end up with new holes through their bodies, however; on closer inspection, it seemed that what had once been Thane had procured a pair of shiny handcuffs from somewhere and was now wearing them across its somewhat-rotten wrists.
-
"Captain! Captain, wake up!"
Captain Scumbeard, asleep in the closest he'd approximation to his old bunk he'd managed to make, was reluctant to do what his earnest first mate was urging him to do.
"Captain, we have to go! They're everywhere, we don't have long!"
Okay, it did sound important.
"What, what is it?", he asked, still rather groggy from the night before. "Who're everywhere?"
He got his answer soon enough.
-
"No, sir, not a word. He's just sitting there."
The people of Hearth were taking no chances when it came to the not-Thane monstrosity. It was in a specially-outfitted hotel room, thick iron bars keeping it contained in one corner and a quartet of guards standing watch at all times. One door to the room was atop one of the highest branches of the tree, leading anyone who passed through to a probably-fatal drop down to the ground outside, and the other was set in the floor of a specially-dug pit that had an additional pair of guards armed with high-powered rifles standing by the top.
The radio in the guard's hand crackled to life. "Well, if he does say anything, let me know immediately. Over and out." (The head of the guard, a sentient police dispatch console that preferred to be called either 911 or "sir," always used proper radio protocol.)
"Right, will do."
The Thane-thing wasn't much disturbed by being in a cell. It knew just what was happening outside. It could still hear them coming. All was well.
-
Looks like it was true. The whole town, destroyed.
there is movement down there
At the ship's words, Sarin drew back a bit. She didn't want to see the sorts of things that might lurk in Fernwood's remains. If she looked over the edge, she worried she might see the things that had destroyed the town, or maybe some sort of beast eating the remains of the population.
What she didn't think to worry about was a grappling hook wrapping around one of Richter's bones, followed by another, then another, then more. The thought hadn't even occurred to her.
-
The joint populations of Kerosene and Fernwood arrived in Hearth not long after the un-Thane itself, and their reception was about as warm as they'd expected. I mean, a horde of zombies approaches your fortress, what are you going to do, invite them in for tea?
Automatic weapons fire, magical fire-weapons, and assorted other warfare ammo blazed from the lower branches of the tree. When one of 911's scouts had reported back that there was a "horde of something coming in, over," the call of "battle stations!" had gone out. Everyone who could handle a weapon was sent to positions on the tree's lower branches, from which they could shoot from cover but still have an excellent chance of actually hitting anything.
It was a solid plan. The combined fire of Hearth's defence kept the swamp-zombies at bay.
Well, most of them.
-
"Land ho!", came the cry.
Captain Scumbeard, the ex-living ex-ex-pirate, stroked his still-scummy beard and smiled a still-toothy smile. "Prepare to disembark," he said, putting the old piratical emphasis back into his arrs.
With a few quick throws, there were grappling hooks binding their vessel to the tree. From there, the crew began their mission.
-
Something thumped on one of the doors to Thane's makeshift cell.
Immediately, one of the guards grabbed for his radio. "Sir," he began, "we've got-"
He didn't get to finish his message, due to a cutthroat pirate doing the sort of thing one would expect someone described as "cutthroat" to do. None of the other guards even reached their radios.
The thing that wasn't Thane stood, and once Scumbeard's crew had found the keys to the cell, walked forward. As the crew scrambled to get the cuffs off of their leader, they looked to it for guidance. What was their next step? What did they do next?
It told them.
-
The plags were coming.
Acacia, being in possession of two hands and having seen a machine gun before, had been sent out to a branch where she could guard, and she'd even gotten a perch not far from Kalevi.
It wasn't much comfort. They were coming for her.
There were so many of them below, and the mist partially obscuring them didn't do anything to make them any less real.
She'd always known they would come for her. She'd done things, and they'd seen, and now they were here, coming to get her.
She didn't notice when her gun ran out of bullets, because by then, she'd stopped even aiming. She was just pointing it down at the crowd and clutching the trigger for dear life.
Kelavi, on the other hand, did notice. "Aic," he shouted, "you need to reload!"
Kel was there. They were coming and Kel was there. She needed him, she needed to get to him, he could help, he could make them leave, she'd be safe with him, where was he, she needed him, Kel where are you.
"Aic, come on, stay with me! You need to reload!"
There he was, just over there, she needed to go to him, she had to get there, she was coming, almost there.
The fear of the plags might've kept her on the branch if she'd had a bit more time. Left to her own devices, she might not have fallen from her perch and met her end. Kelavi might not have seen her go and might not have dived after her in an insane bid to protect her.
Unfortunately, a skeleton airship slamming into the tree wasn't exactly conducive to people keeping their footing.
If Kalevi hadn't bought her what time he had, though, they would've eaten her so fast that two humanoids, an amalgam-creature, and a selection of insects wouldn't've gotten to see what happened when the hole caused by Richter's forced flight into Hearth's trunk was able to leak any substantial amount of fog into the town. The four remaining contestants might not have had an opportunity to witness that Hearth, like Kerosene and Fernwood, was inevitably bound to be zombie food.
> Contestant dead. Loading mswampexit004... Done. Executing...
Still, though, the moment Acacia had officially ceased to be alive, reality ground to a halt around the four. Almost immediately, sections of the world began to vanish, and any sounds that had existed dissolved into static.
As things vanished faster and faster, though, the static resolved itself into a sound the contestants all recognized. (Well, the ones capable of recognizing it.)
The Controller was laughing at them, getting a good, hearty chuckle out of his actions. The sound reverberated in from all sides, the echo distinct enough that it almost sounded like their captor had brought company.
After a few moments, the laughter died away, and the Controller spoke. His voice echoed just as his laughs had, but his tone was quieter, almost contemplative. "Beautiful," he said, "just beautiful. There's always something to be said for building up hope, only to dash it away once it's ripened."
He sighed, lapsing into silence for a second or two before continuing. None of the contestants could see where he was, but he sounded like he must've been nearby. "I thought you could use some time to yourselves, time to just think about the last few weeks, so I booked you all rooms at Tropic Skies, a lovely hotel in a tropical climate. Feel free to look around the resort; there's a bit of an event going on, so I'm sure you'll have plenty to do.
"Enjoy!"
As the Controller's last word echoed into the distance, the black nothingness around the contestants began to resolve itself into a room. After a few seconds, each contestant found themself alone in a nice little hotel room, the walls covered in a tropical palm-tree wallpaper and a hidden speaker somewhere quietly piping out the calming tones of steel drums. The music didn't quite mask the sound of voices out in the hotel proper.
-
Nearly an hour prior, Tropic Skies' main ballroom was immersed in something very nearly resembling total darkness. In the shadowed room, a massive crowd of beings was packed together, the murmur of quiet voices easily recognizable as restrained excitement. Something big was about to happen.
"Should be any second," one of the multitude was whispering to another.
"I wonder if something- ooh! Shh, shh!" The reply, as with most every thread of conversation in the packed room, dissolved into attempts to shush everyone else in the room when, contrasting starkly with the darkness, a bright-white line appeared, light stabbing out at the mass congregated there.
After everyone's eyes had a moment to adjust, they could see a lone figure standing in the shaft of light, all black-on-black, just a shadow in the brightness.
"Greetings," the figure said, voice amplified through massive speakers all around the room. "You can call me the Coordinator, and this..." (He paused for a few moments' dramatic effect)
"This... is the Grand Convention!" Flinging his arms wide, all the lights in the room went up at once, practically blinding everyone once again. Nonetheless, the crowd cheered, adding temporary deafness to their temporary blindness.
The Coordinator was a regular guy, except he was dressed in an all-black suit and was wielding what seemed to be a microphone cane. "Welcome, one and all, to the fourteenth-annual Grand Convention, the world's foremost celebration of the Grand Battle series and its related media! I'm absolutely thrilled to be here at Tropic Skies, whose facilities are nearly twice those we had access to last year!" At this, the crowd cheered again. They did seem to enjoy cheering. "We've got unilateral access to their facilities, including three ballrooms like this one and nearly a dozen smaller rooms as well, but even with all that space, we've managed to pack our schedule so full of events that you're going to have some tough choices ahead of you. Would you rather attend a session on module design in the GBRP system or get a lesson in drawing from Kent Browning, illustrator of the Battle Majestic and Epic Clash comics? That's the kind of choice you've got ahead of yourself, so better start thinking now!
"Of course, you don't have too long to decide; both of those sessions start just ten minutes from now, at eleven o'clock, along with five others. There's also the vendors' hall over in Ballroom Two, a scavenger hunt that'll be taking place across all three days of GrandCon, and numerous other activities besides. Keep your schedule handy, access the site from your phone, or check any of the numerous signs scattered around the building; however you decide, just do it quick, because GrandCon starts now!"
With that, the ballroom's doors swung wide, and a tide of fans was released out into the convention. Most of them had attempted to costume up to some extent or another, and the quality varied from just wearing a logo t-shirt to astonishingly life-like makeup and prosthetics. There was exactly one thing that brought all of them to that convention: their love of the Grand Battle series.
Soon enough, they were dispersed around the convention centre. Conversations abounded; people everywhere could be heard discussing their favourite battles, which characters could beat which in a fight, and the finer points of canon.
"Eximo was an upright Hoover, didn't you read the manga?"
"Whaat, no. The novels- that's his first appearance- make it plainly clear he was like a Shop-Vac!"
"Plainly clear? I don't know which novels you were reading, but the originals were ambiguous about him at best!"
GrandCon XIV was shaping up to be the best Grand Convention yet; unfortunately, before the first session could even end, the only unoccupied rooms- four of them, booked months prior under the name Ken Parusi- had their intended occupants transported in.
This year's GrandCon was going to be interesting.
-
"Senator Lutetian, the evidence of your crimes being overwhelming in both quantity and quality, and you yourself having plead guilty to your crimes, you are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment in Prisoner Rehabilitation Colony Three-Eighty-Four without the opportunity for appeal."