Re: The Great Belligerency [Round 2: New Shambhala]
06-25-2011, 08:01 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.
"... just run for the evacuation shuttles as fast as you can."
The girl wasted no time in dutifully turning heel and running, every bit the frightened young women Girnham expected her to be. She rounded a corner, and the uncoordinated fear-driven runner transitioned seamlessly into a blur of motion, her passage felt more than seen. Her duties to the resistance, and to Rheinhardt, were suspended, if not finished entirely. The chaos of the city was feeding upon itself, and no longer required her attentions. The city was falling apart on its own, giving her the perfect environment in which to pursue her own goals.
The girl hadn't been idle while in the Administrative building. Such an unprecedented windfall of information was nearly irresistible to her. So she'd done some digging, and what she found hadn't disappointed her.
She knew where Minotaurus lived.
---
Ambrose quivered behind an emergency barrier, too shocked to move by the sight before her. All of the evacuation shuttles, destroyed. The city lurched again, and Ambrose felt herself getting lighter. It wasn't long before New Shambhala would be in free-fall, and with her aircycle destroyed she had no way to escape.
Her and tens of thousands of other stranded citizens; all humans, now that the purge had been completed. Ambrose felt sick just thinking about it; genocide was such an ancient, savage concept, and seeing it here made her feel... inhuman. More disturbingly, she knew there were many out there, in equal shock at their chance of escape stolen away, who disagreed. Disturbing murmurs on the 'net, before patches of it started going dark, suggested more favor than she'd been willing to entertain towards Vanhart and his disgusting xenophobia.
Ambrose clenched a fist. She wasn't going to die here. Not in this place, not with these people. She turned from the wreckage and began walking, mind working furiously. Think, she told herself, those shuttles can't have been the only way off this city. All those spoiled rich corporate-types and eccentric technocrats must have their own private shuttles or-Minotaurus! If anyone were qualified as an eccentric technocrat, it had been him. Even the fact that he was dead didn't stymie her ambitions; he had been good, but Ambrose had learned long ago to make sure she knew just enough about all her "partners" to be able to use it some day.
And she knew where Minotaurus lived.
---
The girl didn't expect him to be there, of course. His private residences were well hidden amongst a throng of other nearly identical apartments, hiding in plain sight. But she knew he'd take precautions against intrusion. Her presence would not go unnoticed, and the minotaur would come to her.
His quarters were spartan, yet elegant in their simplicity. She ran her hand along the wall as she paced through the rooms, noting how the doorways and hallways had been adjusted for someone of Minotaurus's stature. Her fingertips sent pulses into the walls, searching for hidden compartments; she was not surprised to discover many. His alarm system was impressively complex, but for someone with millenia of skill behind her, it proved little challenge to disassemble. She took special care to trip a select few triggers, ensuring that only his automated intruder alert system would be activated, as opposed to the various explosives and incendiaries which littered the walls, ceiling and floor of the unit. More importantly, the intruder alert would send a signal straight to him.
The girl sat back from her work and looked around. Time now she prepared for the Minotaur's arrival; and he'd kindly provided her with ample weaponry.
---
Ambrose would have considered herself lucky that Minotaurus lived so close to the evacuation shuttles, but she rather thought it wasn't coincidence. He'd always been a pragmatically paranoid son-of-a-bitch. Like it'd done him any good. Ambrose scolded herself; he'd still been a good person, and she had no right to think of the dead like that.
So lost was Ambrose in her own thoughts as she trudged through rubble-filled back-alleys that she barely noticed a small anomaly recorded by one of the city's many cameras. She'd gotten into the habit of having the video feeds from every still-operating camera near her position to constantly relay information to her, so she wouldn't be caught by any of those rampaging crazies in the same "contest" the bug-man was in.
The anomaly was more of a quick blurring of a section of the camera's video feed, and it took Ambrose a few seconds to realize something had just happened. That blur was very obviously not an artifact of the camera, and nothing she knew of could have caused it. Which definitely made it worth investigating. She isolated the feed, and restarted it from an earlier timestamp. Yes, there definitely was a blur there; it seemed to be about the size of a person, and it was definitely moving, but moving impossibly fast. The public cameras weren't of the highest quality, but they did have a decent ability to capture high-speed objects. After getting the timing down right, Ambrose finally managed to isolate a few frames capturing the object, and what she found was...
A girl?
Ambrose frowned. It was just some girl. A very serious-looking girl, and moving with incredible speed and finesse, but just a girl.
As Ambrose puzzled over the nature of her "anomaly", her eyes happened to trace the destination of the blur, and just as she realized where the girl was headed, she intercepted an intruder alert from Minotaurus's residence.
Ambrose pursed her lips and picked up the pace. This girl must be a contestant, just like the bug-man. And though she didn't trust him very much, she trusted the rest of them less. Worst of all, Ambrose had the sinking suspicion that this girl may be the "Julia" she'd been searching for. If so, it meant "Julia" was in her (sort of) friend's home, and Ambrose was going to figure out why.
---
The girl waited. She'd reconfigured the various traps to be under her control; she could set them off and direct them at will. She could have reset their IFF and had the Minotaur's own traps be his demise, but he'd already shown himself to be a crafty opponent, and if she was going to kill him, she'd damned well do it herself.
Plus, it would give her the opportunity to question him. And she had may questions.
She didn't have to wait long. The door to the unit opened, and through it stepped Minotaurus. He saw her instantly, and took a step forwards, closing the door behind him.
"Stop," the girl commanded. "I've got every defensive system in this place pointed directly at you. Move and you die."
"Why not just kill me now?"
"I could have asked you the same thing earlier today. You had plenty of opportunities to kill me; why did you not take advantage of them? You obviously want me dead."
Minotaurus shrugged. "Politics."
The girl pursed her lips. She could tell she wouldn't get any more out of him on that subject. "Very well. If you won't answer that question, perhaps you'll tell me why you want me dead."
"You'll figure it out. For now though, it is irrelevant."
"Irrelevant?" The girl smirked. "I did not take you as someone to give up so easily. You must have known I was here whan you received the alarm. How kind of you to come here for me, to die."
"You are mistaken. I did not come for you. I came for her."
He turned to face the door as it opened, and there was a quiet gasp. The girl moved to look around Minotaurus's massive bulk, and saw a lazily-dressed young woman standing stock-still, staring at the Minotaur, mouth frozen in an "O" shape. Then the girl recognized her. The shocked young woman before her was the same person she'd seen investigating her handiwork. Her eyes narrowed. Thousands of years of honed paranoia had taught her never to dismiss the improbable as coincidence. And for this woman to have come into contact with her twice in a single day was no coincidence.
Minotaurus spoke. "Welcome, Ambrose. It is good to finally see you in person."
Ambrose's face did something odd as multiple, conflicting emotions ran through her, before realization dawned. "M-Minnie?" she whimpered.
Minotaurus winced. "I told you not to call me that."
Ambrose began to stumble towards him, and the smile that had just begun forming on her face faltered along with her footsteps as her gaze went past him, to the girl glaring at her. This was the girl she'd seen... blurring here. She looked back and forth between the two. "What... what is she doing here? Do you know who she is?"
Minotaurus turned back towards the girl. "I doubt anyone truly does."
Ambrose rolled her eyes. Typical, terse, vague Minnie. "Ok whatever, important thing is I'm pretty sure she's dangerous, and-" the room lurched, and Ambrose's feet took a disturbing amount of time to reach the floor again. "-ok she's just dangerous can we leave now?"
Minotaurus smiled, ever so slightly. "She is no longer a threat to us."
"No longer a threat?" the girl hissed. "I've been a threat since the moment you failed to kill me! Now that you've kindly gathered the only other person capable of opposing me, I can assure you that I will not fail to kill you." The girl produced a device from somewhere on her body, and allowed herself a small grin of victory as her finger began to depress a button-
-and then she vanished. Ambrose started at the girl's sudden disappearence, and at the lack of explosions. For a moment she thought perhaps the girl had teleported out and left them with a room pumped full of gas, but that certainly didn't look like any teleportation technology she knew of, and Minotaurus was turning towards her and jeez he's a freakin' Minotaur (a part of her giggled at the obviousnous of his name), and he looked calm so she guessed everything was ok?
"Ambrose. I know you have many questions, and I assure you, they will be answered. For now, though, I have a job offer for you. My employer has been recruiting intelligent and capable people to help him... monitor certain events. I have never met a person more adept at information-gathering than you, and we have need of someone with your skill."
"I'll take it," Ambrose blurted. "There's nothing left for me here and if you're offering me a job it means you have a way off this city."
Minotaurus chuckled. "Indeed I do. Take my hand, Ambrose."
She placed her tiny, fragile hand in the Minotaur's massive palm. There was a shimmering, and the room was empty.
"... just run for the evacuation shuttles as fast as you can."
The girl wasted no time in dutifully turning heel and running, every bit the frightened young women Girnham expected her to be. She rounded a corner, and the uncoordinated fear-driven runner transitioned seamlessly into a blur of motion, her passage felt more than seen. Her duties to the resistance, and to Rheinhardt, were suspended, if not finished entirely. The chaos of the city was feeding upon itself, and no longer required her attentions. The city was falling apart on its own, giving her the perfect environment in which to pursue her own goals.
The girl hadn't been idle while in the Administrative building. Such an unprecedented windfall of information was nearly irresistible to her. So she'd done some digging, and what she found hadn't disappointed her.
She knew where Minotaurus lived.
---
Ambrose quivered behind an emergency barrier, too shocked to move by the sight before her. All of the evacuation shuttles, destroyed. The city lurched again, and Ambrose felt herself getting lighter. It wasn't long before New Shambhala would be in free-fall, and with her aircycle destroyed she had no way to escape.
Her and tens of thousands of other stranded citizens; all humans, now that the purge had been completed. Ambrose felt sick just thinking about it; genocide was such an ancient, savage concept, and seeing it here made her feel... inhuman. More disturbingly, she knew there were many out there, in equal shock at their chance of escape stolen away, who disagreed. Disturbing murmurs on the 'net, before patches of it started going dark, suggested more favor than she'd been willing to entertain towards Vanhart and his disgusting xenophobia.
Ambrose clenched a fist. She wasn't going to die here. Not in this place, not with these people. She turned from the wreckage and began walking, mind working furiously. Think, she told herself, those shuttles can't have been the only way off this city. All those spoiled rich corporate-types and eccentric technocrats must have their own private shuttles or-Minotaurus! If anyone were qualified as an eccentric technocrat, it had been him. Even the fact that he was dead didn't stymie her ambitions; he had been good, but Ambrose had learned long ago to make sure she knew just enough about all her "partners" to be able to use it some day.
And she knew where Minotaurus lived.
---
The girl didn't expect him to be there, of course. His private residences were well hidden amongst a throng of other nearly identical apartments, hiding in plain sight. But she knew he'd take precautions against intrusion. Her presence would not go unnoticed, and the minotaur would come to her.
His quarters were spartan, yet elegant in their simplicity. She ran her hand along the wall as she paced through the rooms, noting how the doorways and hallways had been adjusted for someone of Minotaurus's stature. Her fingertips sent pulses into the walls, searching for hidden compartments; she was not surprised to discover many. His alarm system was impressively complex, but for someone with millenia of skill behind her, it proved little challenge to disassemble. She took special care to trip a select few triggers, ensuring that only his automated intruder alert system would be activated, as opposed to the various explosives and incendiaries which littered the walls, ceiling and floor of the unit. More importantly, the intruder alert would send a signal straight to him.
The girl sat back from her work and looked around. Time now she prepared for the Minotaur's arrival; and he'd kindly provided her with ample weaponry.
---
Ambrose would have considered herself lucky that Minotaurus lived so close to the evacuation shuttles, but she rather thought it wasn't coincidence. He'd always been a pragmatically paranoid son-of-a-bitch. Like it'd done him any good. Ambrose scolded herself; he'd still been a good person, and she had no right to think of the dead like that.
So lost was Ambrose in her own thoughts as she trudged through rubble-filled back-alleys that she barely noticed a small anomaly recorded by one of the city's many cameras. She'd gotten into the habit of having the video feeds from every still-operating camera near her position to constantly relay information to her, so she wouldn't be caught by any of those rampaging crazies in the same "contest" the bug-man was in.
The anomaly was more of a quick blurring of a section of the camera's video feed, and it took Ambrose a few seconds to realize something had just happened. That blur was very obviously not an artifact of the camera, and nothing she knew of could have caused it. Which definitely made it worth investigating. She isolated the feed, and restarted it from an earlier timestamp. Yes, there definitely was a blur there; it seemed to be about the size of a person, and it was definitely moving, but moving impossibly fast. The public cameras weren't of the highest quality, but they did have a decent ability to capture high-speed objects. After getting the timing down right, Ambrose finally managed to isolate a few frames capturing the object, and what she found was...
A girl?
Ambrose frowned. It was just some girl. A very serious-looking girl, and moving with incredible speed and finesse, but just a girl.
As Ambrose puzzled over the nature of her "anomaly", her eyes happened to trace the destination of the blur, and just as she realized where the girl was headed, she intercepted an intruder alert from Minotaurus's residence.
Ambrose pursed her lips and picked up the pace. This girl must be a contestant, just like the bug-man. And though she didn't trust him very much, she trusted the rest of them less. Worst of all, Ambrose had the sinking suspicion that this girl may be the "Julia" she'd been searching for. If so, it meant "Julia" was in her (sort of) friend's home, and Ambrose was going to figure out why.
---
The girl waited. She'd reconfigured the various traps to be under her control; she could set them off and direct them at will. She could have reset their IFF and had the Minotaur's own traps be his demise, but he'd already shown himself to be a crafty opponent, and if she was going to kill him, she'd damned well do it herself.
Plus, it would give her the opportunity to question him. And she had may questions.
She didn't have to wait long. The door to the unit opened, and through it stepped Minotaurus. He saw her instantly, and took a step forwards, closing the door behind him.
"Stop," the girl commanded. "I've got every defensive system in this place pointed directly at you. Move and you die."
"Why not just kill me now?"
"I could have asked you the same thing earlier today. You had plenty of opportunities to kill me; why did you not take advantage of them? You obviously want me dead."
Minotaurus shrugged. "Politics."
The girl pursed her lips. She could tell she wouldn't get any more out of him on that subject. "Very well. If you won't answer that question, perhaps you'll tell me why you want me dead."
"You'll figure it out. For now though, it is irrelevant."
"Irrelevant?" The girl smirked. "I did not take you as someone to give up so easily. You must have known I was here whan you received the alarm. How kind of you to come here for me, to die."
"You are mistaken. I did not come for you. I came for her."
He turned to face the door as it opened, and there was a quiet gasp. The girl moved to look around Minotaurus's massive bulk, and saw a lazily-dressed young woman standing stock-still, staring at the Minotaur, mouth frozen in an "O" shape. Then the girl recognized her. The shocked young woman before her was the same person she'd seen investigating her handiwork. Her eyes narrowed. Thousands of years of honed paranoia had taught her never to dismiss the improbable as coincidence. And for this woman to have come into contact with her twice in a single day was no coincidence.
Minotaurus spoke. "Welcome, Ambrose. It is good to finally see you in person."
Ambrose's face did something odd as multiple, conflicting emotions ran through her, before realization dawned. "M-Minnie?" she whimpered.
Minotaurus winced. "I told you not to call me that."
Ambrose began to stumble towards him, and the smile that had just begun forming on her face faltered along with her footsteps as her gaze went past him, to the girl glaring at her. This was the girl she'd seen... blurring here. She looked back and forth between the two. "What... what is she doing here? Do you know who she is?"
Minotaurus turned back towards the girl. "I doubt anyone truly does."
Ambrose rolled her eyes. Typical, terse, vague Minnie. "Ok whatever, important thing is I'm pretty sure she's dangerous, and-" the room lurched, and Ambrose's feet took a disturbing amount of time to reach the floor again. "-ok she's just dangerous can we leave now?"
Minotaurus smiled, ever so slightly. "She is no longer a threat to us."
"No longer a threat?" the girl hissed. "I've been a threat since the moment you failed to kill me! Now that you've kindly gathered the only other person capable of opposing me, I can assure you that I will not fail to kill you." The girl produced a device from somewhere on her body, and allowed herself a small grin of victory as her finger began to depress a button-
-and then she vanished. Ambrose started at the girl's sudden disappearence, and at the lack of explosions. For a moment she thought perhaps the girl had teleported out and left them with a room pumped full of gas, but that certainly didn't look like any teleportation technology she knew of, and Minotaurus was turning towards her and jeez he's a freakin' Minotaur (a part of her giggled at the obviousnous of his name), and he looked calm so she guessed everything was ok?
"Ambrose. I know you have many questions, and I assure you, they will be answered. For now, though, I have a job offer for you. My employer has been recruiting intelligent and capable people to help him... monitor certain events. I have never met a person more adept at information-gathering than you, and we have need of someone with your skill."
"I'll take it," Ambrose blurted. "There's nothing left for me here and if you're offering me a job it means you have a way off this city."
Minotaurus chuckled. "Indeed I do. Take my hand, Ambrose."
She placed her tiny, fragile hand in the Minotaur's massive palm. There was a shimmering, and the room was empty.