Re: Intense Struggle Season 2! (Round 4: Deathball Championship)
04-08-2012, 12:02 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.
Vernon was not the kind of man that anyone would in normal circumstances fear. He was short, he was fat, he was balding. He was middle management and he worked for Deathball Inc. He was a human resources manager, and in this line of work that meant more than hiring and firing employees. He was in charge of recruiting. That is to say he was in charge of finding people capable of abducting innocent people and sending them to their certain deaths. Once you were in Deathball there was no way out, even if you proved to be good at it, you would be there until you made that one fatal mistake and died. Vernon was in charge of creating incentives for regular loving citizens to nominate a member of their nearest and dearest to participate in the games.
A lesser man might have had issues with this job, might have balked at the things he was expected to organize. But Vernon was middle management through and through. He did his job and it was not his problem that your significant other/family member was going to be brutally killed for the amusement of the nation. He took a pride in the job that he did and it was rather distressing that he was receiving reports that one of the new recruits had escaped. This was unprecedented. This was unacceptable. This was an embarrassment to Deathball. How could anyone ever take them seriously again if some thing was able to escape their custody? It had to be found. In his little office in the building adjacent to the Deathball Stadium, Vernon bellowed orders to every recruiter in the plant’s proximity.
His orders were simple. “Bring in that recruit and if you fail to do so you can expect to be playing Deathball in its place!”
--------
Reudic floated casually down the street, his attention not on the world around him but on the fevered ranting that was going on inside his own head. He was all powerful, look how he could reach out his tendrils and end the lives of these meagre humans, so weak, so pathetic. Or if he deigned to spare them they could easily be drugged; laced with his own special chemicals that would illuminate the truth of the world they inhabited, show them the folly of their complacent lifestyle and Reudic’s unquestionable superiority. Either way his progress down the street was marked with a trail of bodies, corpses and those who had merely collapsed as they struggled to cope with the ideas being forced onto them by Reudic’s toxins.
It was surprising, or it would have been surprising had Reudic not been so lost in his own maniacal monologue, that there were no screams, no people running for their lives. There was a palpable air of panic amongst the people who remained on the street, but no outward vocalisation of this fear. The people of this city had long ago learned not to draw attention to themselves for fear of being entered into the games. Bystanders watching the Viridoflorian’s quiet rampage did not turn to run; they simply moved at as brisk a pace as they dared into the nearest building and closed the door tightly behind them. Where someone found themselves locked out of all nearby buildings they tried to run in the moments before Reudic’s vines found them and ended their pathetic existence.
There was a screech of tyres as a pair of vans, black with tinted windows and the Deathball logo emblazoned on the sides, swerved onto the street one after another. Moments later a third was rushing up the street behind him. The vans almost seemed synchronised as they skidded to a stop a couple of metres from the plant, skidding as they cornered tightly in an attempt to block off as much of the street as possible. Used against anyone else it might have been an effective tactic, but it very quickly became apparent that Reudic could easily float over the vehicles.
The van doors slid open and a couple of worried looking recruiters emerged from each; three humans, one reptilian with laurel green scales, a woman with brittle amber skin and an elongated head and a heap of viscous amethyst goo. They were all wearing the feared grey recruiter’s uniform and in their hands/claws/wedged into their goop were heavy duty electric prods. They exchanged nervous glances and without a word darted around their own blockades to pursue the floating plant. Reudic snaked some vines in their direction and before they had time to react one of the humans was hauled into the air by his neck. He struggled pathetically for a moment, managing to jab at Reudic’s vines with his prod before they twisted his neck and flinched away. A cry of pain escaped Reudic’s mouth fruit.
The pain forced Reudic to focus; these insignificant things had more bite than most and they needed to be taught that they could not stand up against their god. He dodged their distant thrusts, swept the amber skinned woman off her feet whereupon she broke into chunks upon the concrete floor. Moments later a small swarm of bees emerged from her broken body and flew quickly away. The reptilian tried to get in close and for her trouble she found herself impaled upon one of Reudic’s barbed vines. The remaining recruiters hung back a little more after that. One of the humans glancing around as though he was ready to flee the scene, was rather suddenly aware of the approaching civilians, their bodies gashed from where Reudic had touched them, their eyes staring into the distance.
“Leave him alone!” One screeched as he flung himself at the hesitant recruiter. He attacked with primal fury, teeth and nails clawing and biting at whatever exposed skin he could. His mind was clouded over, his logic hazy ever since Reudic had slashed him with a vine; all he could feel was the overwhelming compulsion to protect his new lord from his persecutors. In moments he was joined by a number of other drugged civilians and the screams of the dying recruiter finally broke the eerie silence of the street.
--------
Sarika was slumped in the passenger seat of a Deathball recruiter’s van. In the seat next to her Turaine was talking, largely to herself, about some of the tips and tricks of the trade. Behind them there was a barrier designed to separate them from their recruits while still allowing them to see what was going on back there. Marcus was still unconscious handcuffed to the metal bench and sitting opposite him in a resigned silence was a creature made of sharp angles and unnecessarily pointed accents. His skin was a deep demonic red and his eyes were like that of a lizard.
Sarika stared into the middle distance and let Turaine’s words wash over her. She could not bring herself to care about anything that the recruiter had to say. She could barely bring herself to care about the battle she was in any more. She felt empty, completely drained by the series of ordeals that had comprised the last couple of hours. She just wanted to stop; to just be left alone for a while, to have a moment where she did not have to worry about people killing her or the prospect of potentially killing them. But no. This was not to be. Evidently something had happened.
Sarika felt the vehicle speed up as Turaine put her foot down acting upon some orders that she had missed. She consulted a panel set into the dashboard upon which a map indicated a flashing red dot a couple of streets away. No matter how distant she was, she could not help but notice the eagerness in her new companion. Turaine was pretty confident that this thing that everyone had been sent to apprehend was going to mean a major bonus for whoever brought it in, and she was pretty confident that person was going to be her.
The van raced towards Reudic’s location, at one point taking a corner upon two wheels in her enthuasiasm. Turaine only slowed down as she turned onto the street where Reudic was. The trail of bodies that he had left behind was enough to give even her pause. Somewhere in the middle of several empty recruiters’ vans there was Reudic. He floated lazily admist a circle of corpses and citizens who were upon their knees praising him. Sarika sat up, momentarily removed from her melancholic fugue by the sight of the plant. She might have expected to hate him for what he had done, but again she could not bring herself to have an emotion so strong.
“Hey, rookie…” Turaine’s voice betrayed her growing uncertainty about the situation they were walking into. “Do you think you could use that future vision, get us some idea of how this is going to play out?”
Sarika wordlessly obliged. In the future Reudic was still floating there, and there amongst the corpses there was a new one, that of Turaine. That wasn’t really all that surprising; you didn’t need to be able to see the future to work that one out. What was surprising was that she saw herself standing in front of Reudic engaged in what appeared to be a polite, if tense, conversation. She didn’t appear to be uncontrollably swaying like she had been when she’d been affected by his toxins previously, or kneeling at his roots like the others that surrounded him. Then something happened that really took her by surprise. Within moments she was rushing out of the van. The “Wait here.” to Turaine was almost an afterthought. A twinge of pain in her temple indicated the future had been altered; Turaine was no longer dead. She quickly walked towards Reudic.
“Sarika!” Reudic greeted her happily. If he had been a human such a greeting would have been accompanied by a disconcertingly wide grin. “Have you come to greet your new god?”
Sarika had her mouth open to speak and then paused, blindsided by Reudic’s ambition. She was for a moment simultaneously insulted on behalf of her gods and amused at what was clearly a hopeless pipe dream. Ultimately she found she didn’t particularly feel either and she continued. “Reudic, I understand that this isn’t you.”
This time it was Reudic that was blindsided. “What?” was his meagre response.
“This is the darkness from the castle.” Sarika replied. “It’s been controlling you, but you can fight it off, I saw it leaving you.”
There was a long silence.
sheliesshetriestotrickyoutriestomakeyoudoubtyourow ndivinepurposedestroyhermurderherripherpeicefrompe ice
Reudic felt like he was waking up from a dream, the logic that had seemed so clear and certain at the time was falling apart in the cold light of day. What had he been doing? Aspiring to be a god? That was not what he wanted, not what he stood for. Before this battle had occurred, before he had accidentally downloaded a wealth of information on the lifestyle of these wretched humans, he had had no concept of a god. He had since decided it was a lie that humans told themselves to feel better about the cruel nature of the world. In Reudic’s opinion the majority of human culture that he had become forcibly acquainted with was just that; lies to cope with a harsh world. It was why they were weak; because they could not accept the world for what it was, because they had to sugar coat it with fairytales and stories and gods and pathetic morality. It was that he saw the world how it really was that made him strong, and it was that fact that had for a moment caused him to believe the little lies the darkness had been feeding him.
youarethenightthedarknessthattheyfearembracethatem bracethepoweryouhaveandshowthemoncemorewhytheyshou ldfearthiscolduncaringworld
No.
Sarika took a step backwards as a cloud of darkness was expelled from the plant, it hung in the air for a second before it was gone. There was a hesitant silence for a couple of seconds in which Sarika isn't exactly sure what is going to happen next. “Thank you Sarika.”
“You should go.” Sarika said. “Behind me there’s someone who wants to take you off to play some kind of death sport, and I don’t think Marcus is going to be pleased to see you, even if it wasn’t exactly you who killed Lillian.”
“No.” Reudic replied after a pause. “It was me. The darkness made me do some things I do not believe in, but not that. Lillian was weak and she did not deserve to survive, so I did not allow her to survive.”
“…oh.” Sarika was crestfallen. “I thought…” she trailed off.
“You are weak too.” Reudic replied. “But I will allow you to live this time because you have done me a favour in helping me reclaim my mind.”
Sarika didn’t know what to say in response to that, and so somewhat hesitantly, she turned to leave. She walked back to the van where Turaine was waiting for her.
“Well?” the recruiter asked.
“We should go.” Sarika replied. Turaine was reluctant, but with a sigh she reversed the van and started towards the Deathball Stadium. Maybe she’d be able to claim they were not in the area at the time?
--------
In a new mind the darkness lay dormant for a moment and scoffed at its lack of ambition. Why settle for the mind of a plant when it could have anyone in this shiny new world?
Vernon was not the kind of man that anyone would in normal circumstances fear. He was short, he was fat, he was balding. He was middle management and he worked for Deathball Inc. He was a human resources manager, and in this line of work that meant more than hiring and firing employees. He was in charge of recruiting. That is to say he was in charge of finding people capable of abducting innocent people and sending them to their certain deaths. Once you were in Deathball there was no way out, even if you proved to be good at it, you would be there until you made that one fatal mistake and died. Vernon was in charge of creating incentives for regular loving citizens to nominate a member of their nearest and dearest to participate in the games.
A lesser man might have had issues with this job, might have balked at the things he was expected to organize. But Vernon was middle management through and through. He did his job and it was not his problem that your significant other/family member was going to be brutally killed for the amusement of the nation. He took a pride in the job that he did and it was rather distressing that he was receiving reports that one of the new recruits had escaped. This was unprecedented. This was unacceptable. This was an embarrassment to Deathball. How could anyone ever take them seriously again if some thing was able to escape their custody? It had to be found. In his little office in the building adjacent to the Deathball Stadium, Vernon bellowed orders to every recruiter in the plant’s proximity.
His orders were simple. “Bring in that recruit and if you fail to do so you can expect to be playing Deathball in its place!”
--------
Reudic floated casually down the street, his attention not on the world around him but on the fevered ranting that was going on inside his own head. He was all powerful, look how he could reach out his tendrils and end the lives of these meagre humans, so weak, so pathetic. Or if he deigned to spare them they could easily be drugged; laced with his own special chemicals that would illuminate the truth of the world they inhabited, show them the folly of their complacent lifestyle and Reudic’s unquestionable superiority. Either way his progress down the street was marked with a trail of bodies, corpses and those who had merely collapsed as they struggled to cope with the ideas being forced onto them by Reudic’s toxins.
It was surprising, or it would have been surprising had Reudic not been so lost in his own maniacal monologue, that there were no screams, no people running for their lives. There was a palpable air of panic amongst the people who remained on the street, but no outward vocalisation of this fear. The people of this city had long ago learned not to draw attention to themselves for fear of being entered into the games. Bystanders watching the Viridoflorian’s quiet rampage did not turn to run; they simply moved at as brisk a pace as they dared into the nearest building and closed the door tightly behind them. Where someone found themselves locked out of all nearby buildings they tried to run in the moments before Reudic’s vines found them and ended their pathetic existence.
There was a screech of tyres as a pair of vans, black with tinted windows and the Deathball logo emblazoned on the sides, swerved onto the street one after another. Moments later a third was rushing up the street behind him. The vans almost seemed synchronised as they skidded to a stop a couple of metres from the plant, skidding as they cornered tightly in an attempt to block off as much of the street as possible. Used against anyone else it might have been an effective tactic, but it very quickly became apparent that Reudic could easily float over the vehicles.
The van doors slid open and a couple of worried looking recruiters emerged from each; three humans, one reptilian with laurel green scales, a woman with brittle amber skin and an elongated head and a heap of viscous amethyst goo. They were all wearing the feared grey recruiter’s uniform and in their hands/claws/wedged into their goop were heavy duty electric prods. They exchanged nervous glances and without a word darted around their own blockades to pursue the floating plant. Reudic snaked some vines in their direction and before they had time to react one of the humans was hauled into the air by his neck. He struggled pathetically for a moment, managing to jab at Reudic’s vines with his prod before they twisted his neck and flinched away. A cry of pain escaped Reudic’s mouth fruit.
The pain forced Reudic to focus; these insignificant things had more bite than most and they needed to be taught that they could not stand up against their god. He dodged their distant thrusts, swept the amber skinned woman off her feet whereupon she broke into chunks upon the concrete floor. Moments later a small swarm of bees emerged from her broken body and flew quickly away. The reptilian tried to get in close and for her trouble she found herself impaled upon one of Reudic’s barbed vines. The remaining recruiters hung back a little more after that. One of the humans glancing around as though he was ready to flee the scene, was rather suddenly aware of the approaching civilians, their bodies gashed from where Reudic had touched them, their eyes staring into the distance.
“Leave him alone!” One screeched as he flung himself at the hesitant recruiter. He attacked with primal fury, teeth and nails clawing and biting at whatever exposed skin he could. His mind was clouded over, his logic hazy ever since Reudic had slashed him with a vine; all he could feel was the overwhelming compulsion to protect his new lord from his persecutors. In moments he was joined by a number of other drugged civilians and the screams of the dying recruiter finally broke the eerie silence of the street.
--------
Sarika was slumped in the passenger seat of a Deathball recruiter’s van. In the seat next to her Turaine was talking, largely to herself, about some of the tips and tricks of the trade. Behind them there was a barrier designed to separate them from their recruits while still allowing them to see what was going on back there. Marcus was still unconscious handcuffed to the metal bench and sitting opposite him in a resigned silence was a creature made of sharp angles and unnecessarily pointed accents. His skin was a deep demonic red and his eyes were like that of a lizard.
Sarika stared into the middle distance and let Turaine’s words wash over her. She could not bring herself to care about anything that the recruiter had to say. She could barely bring herself to care about the battle she was in any more. She felt empty, completely drained by the series of ordeals that had comprised the last couple of hours. She just wanted to stop; to just be left alone for a while, to have a moment where she did not have to worry about people killing her or the prospect of potentially killing them. But no. This was not to be. Evidently something had happened.
Sarika felt the vehicle speed up as Turaine put her foot down acting upon some orders that she had missed. She consulted a panel set into the dashboard upon which a map indicated a flashing red dot a couple of streets away. No matter how distant she was, she could not help but notice the eagerness in her new companion. Turaine was pretty confident that this thing that everyone had been sent to apprehend was going to mean a major bonus for whoever brought it in, and she was pretty confident that person was going to be her.
The van raced towards Reudic’s location, at one point taking a corner upon two wheels in her enthuasiasm. Turaine only slowed down as she turned onto the street where Reudic was. The trail of bodies that he had left behind was enough to give even her pause. Somewhere in the middle of several empty recruiters’ vans there was Reudic. He floated lazily admist a circle of corpses and citizens who were upon their knees praising him. Sarika sat up, momentarily removed from her melancholic fugue by the sight of the plant. She might have expected to hate him for what he had done, but again she could not bring herself to have an emotion so strong.
“Hey, rookie…” Turaine’s voice betrayed her growing uncertainty about the situation they were walking into. “Do you think you could use that future vision, get us some idea of how this is going to play out?”
Sarika wordlessly obliged. In the future Reudic was still floating there, and there amongst the corpses there was a new one, that of Turaine. That wasn’t really all that surprising; you didn’t need to be able to see the future to work that one out. What was surprising was that she saw herself standing in front of Reudic engaged in what appeared to be a polite, if tense, conversation. She didn’t appear to be uncontrollably swaying like she had been when she’d been affected by his toxins previously, or kneeling at his roots like the others that surrounded him. Then something happened that really took her by surprise. Within moments she was rushing out of the van. The “Wait here.” to Turaine was almost an afterthought. A twinge of pain in her temple indicated the future had been altered; Turaine was no longer dead. She quickly walked towards Reudic.
“Sarika!” Reudic greeted her happily. If he had been a human such a greeting would have been accompanied by a disconcertingly wide grin. “Have you come to greet your new god?”
Sarika had her mouth open to speak and then paused, blindsided by Reudic’s ambition. She was for a moment simultaneously insulted on behalf of her gods and amused at what was clearly a hopeless pipe dream. Ultimately she found she didn’t particularly feel either and she continued. “Reudic, I understand that this isn’t you.”
This time it was Reudic that was blindsided. “What?” was his meagre response.
“This is the darkness from the castle.” Sarika replied. “It’s been controlling you, but you can fight it off, I saw it leaving you.”
There was a long silence.
sheliesshetriestotrickyoutriestomakeyoudoubtyourow ndivinepurposedestroyhermurderherripherpeicefrompe ice
Reudic felt like he was waking up from a dream, the logic that had seemed so clear and certain at the time was falling apart in the cold light of day. What had he been doing? Aspiring to be a god? That was not what he wanted, not what he stood for. Before this battle had occurred, before he had accidentally downloaded a wealth of information on the lifestyle of these wretched humans, he had had no concept of a god. He had since decided it was a lie that humans told themselves to feel better about the cruel nature of the world. In Reudic’s opinion the majority of human culture that he had become forcibly acquainted with was just that; lies to cope with a harsh world. It was why they were weak; because they could not accept the world for what it was, because they had to sugar coat it with fairytales and stories and gods and pathetic morality. It was that he saw the world how it really was that made him strong, and it was that fact that had for a moment caused him to believe the little lies the darkness had been feeding him.
youarethenightthedarknessthattheyfearembracethatem bracethepoweryouhaveandshowthemoncemorewhytheyshou ldfearthiscolduncaringworld
No.
Sarika took a step backwards as a cloud of darkness was expelled from the plant, it hung in the air for a second before it was gone. There was a hesitant silence for a couple of seconds in which Sarika isn't exactly sure what is going to happen next. “Thank you Sarika.”
“You should go.” Sarika said. “Behind me there’s someone who wants to take you off to play some kind of death sport, and I don’t think Marcus is going to be pleased to see you, even if it wasn’t exactly you who killed Lillian.”
“No.” Reudic replied after a pause. “It was me. The darkness made me do some things I do not believe in, but not that. Lillian was weak and she did not deserve to survive, so I did not allow her to survive.”
“…oh.” Sarika was crestfallen. “I thought…” she trailed off.
“You are weak too.” Reudic replied. “But I will allow you to live this time because you have done me a favour in helping me reclaim my mind.”
Sarika didn’t know what to say in response to that, and so somewhat hesitantly, she turned to leave. She walked back to the van where Turaine was waiting for her.
“Well?” the recruiter asked.
“We should go.” Sarika replied. Turaine was reluctant, but with a sigh she reversed the van and started towards the Deathball Stadium. Maybe she’d be able to claim they were not in the area at the time?
--------
In a new mind the darkness lay dormant for a moment and scoffed at its lack of ambition. Why settle for the mind of a plant when it could have anyone in this shiny new world?
Heaven Help Us | Make Room!!!! | I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You