The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 6: Tidal Cove]

The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 6: Tidal Cove]
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 5: GrandCon]
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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The plan, as it turned out, was uninspired as heck. They entailed the duo trundling down to the main convention floor, and suffering a bunch of gawpers as they set off looking for half a suave android. This didn't go so well, and watching Countess "act" out a scene with her "friend" Chelsea didn't exactly put Jessica at ease either. Her ability to sense impending violence was being strangled in its sleep by how straight-up geeky the conversation was getting, and Jessica wondered if she was dealing with as rabid a fan as her boyfriend. (Ex-boyfriend? Why don't we find the jackass first, how's that for a plan?)

The orderly queue outside Conference Room Four looked like her Hoss' company, if the meta-plotty esoteric horseshit they were spouting to each other was any indication. There was one Hoss, but Countess didn't even bother asking Jessica whether it was the one they were looking for. The droid's focus had been diverted to whatever mad plan she was cooking up with her obnoxiously pretty friend, leaving Jessica feeling more than a bit put out.

Anarchy let her attention drift, caught one earful of some petualnt manchild insisting that Lord Avery so was a Grandmaster, and decided she'd had enough. Muttering a promise to regroup to a barely-interested Countess, the supervillainess slouched off. Chelsea waved goodbye, but Jessica was pretty sure she already hated the elf's guts. She rounded a corner, stalked her way up a nerd-clogged hallway, and was rudely accosted by a floating chainsaw. A lady a ways off grinned, thumbing furiously at a radio-controller. The chainsaw bobbed about, and uttered a satisfying audio clip of a mechanical shriek.

"Group photo!" she laughed. "We needed a Dr. Anarchy, and your costume looks great!"

Jessica didn't know any of the characters off the top of her head, only vaguely recognising an impressive blue sea-serpenty costume (black-stockinged legs sticking out the bottom notwithstanding.) The Only Reasonable Scientist was trying on a Robin Pearson's coat, having a good laugh at the toy heron stuffed in a pocket. ("Oh man, I couldn't even tell you'd hand-made this! But real pockets!") A very humanoid Kriok introduced the group as the "Sisterhood of Scientist-Battlers (in coalition with the Strong Female Characters Squad)" led the charge on complimenting Jessica's Anarchy, while the Brooklyn Taylor with the radio-controlled chainsaw asked whether Jessica would care to join them all for elevenses at the Genreshift Cafe.

Jessica decided that yes, she would like that.

---

"Please answer the question this time," chirped Countess, ignoring the silent "what the fuck do you think you're doing"s from Message and Holly, and caring a similar amount for the ruckus she was causing. "What are the weaknesses and easily-exploited vulnerabilities of each currently-extant Grandmaster?"

Holly clutched her face in her hands, wondering if Countess' free hand could spit her like a pig at this angle. Either way, claiming plausible deniability seemed a safer route than pathomancy. The man on the end of Countess' occupied arm had dropped his microphone, more occupied with trying to keep the bobbing of his Adam's apple a safe distance from a pointy finger. He was whimpering, and his knees seemed about ready to give way from underneath.

"Put him down," Holly growled, realising the rest of the crowd had edged away and wishing she'd done similar. She wasn't sure who was the bigger moron here - the defective psychopath robo-slurry, or the man who'd laughed at her.

Security (the ones who weren't in costume) showed up. "Jesus fuck," one of them muttered. His partner just brandished a taser, and barked at the silver lunatic to come quietly.

---

Dear Countess,

It is with much regret that I inform you that this partnership of ours is delivering less-than-optimal results, a fact I will not hesitate to add frustrates me deeply. Whie I understand that this venture of ours was undertaken under a 'contract' in the very loosest sense of the word, it was with apparently-misguided hope that I believed you would be able to demonstrate the most basic tenets of cooperation.


"Shut up," sulked Countess. As Tropic Skies had a strict no-smoking policy, the amalgam was presently slumming it up on the hotel's front steps amongst some distinctly out-of-character characters. Princess!Eryntse exhaled a cancerous lungful veeeery carefully, not wanting to antagonise anyone who had half a dozen security officers march her out. The pointy-eared bitch hadn't even tried helping her.

It was my assumption that Miss Tallbirch would remain in the conference, under the assumption that useful information may eventuate despite your ill-thought out a tap-tap-tap, like Someone couldn't quite find the right word for it ... plan.

At any rate, her emotional manipulations would make smuggling you (when necessary) through the front door far easier than it sounds. I suggest you take some time to comport yourself before considering how best to spend your time in this locale. Perhaps firstly consider whether you seriously intend to follow through with neutralising our employer.

A note: I am quite ambivalent either way; I see ample advantages available to me whether he dies at your hands or not. It is entirely your decision, but I implore that you tarry no longer in making that very decision. You (and by current association, I) face being dragged along by events if we do not instigate them ourselves. Our employer has no time for those without intiative, and I daresay would look upon an attempted uprising in a far more favourable light, compared to your presumed present plan of claiming in the aftermath that whatever transpired was your plan all along. If you must insist on such intellectual laziness, I must insist in turn that I discredit every one of your lies when that time comes.

It has been quite an age since I permitted a host to retain autonomy of thought, Countess. You should take care to not make me regret that.

Regards,
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Countess' present posture didn't really facilitate slouching, or anything moodier than a laserlike glare affixed upon the ground five feet ahead. Her hands didn't even reach the ground to toy with a pebble or something.

"Those security guards had nothing that could harm me, did they?"

...

P.S. Of course not. Your courtesy at playing along and minimising bloodshed, for once, is greatly appreciated.

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Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 5: GrandCon] - by Schazer - 02-11-2013, 01:50 AM