Mini-Grand 5111 [Round 3: Menagerie]

Originally posted on MSPA by Sanzh.

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Loading Mini-Grand Framework... Done.

Generating Administration Personality... Done.

"I see my predecessors have neglected their duties. I will need to rectify this."

Generating Characters... Done.

Six beings suddenly found themselves nowhere, able to see one another but nothing else. A synthesized voice came out of the nothing surrounding them.

"Right, I suppose we should get started on this. You’ll be participating in an experiment of sorts. We-- after all, science is a collaborative enterprise, and without your help this experiment would be impossible-- will be examining how well individuals fare in a fight to the death. I’m afraid your agreement in this arrangement wasn’t necessary, but know that your deaths will be going towards the cause of progress."

"Our first specimen calls himself Batman-- he knows no other name, thanks to radiation affecting his mind. While he is not particularly well-equipped, his tenacity and dedication to the pursuit of justice compensates for that weakness. He’s worth keeping an eye on, no doubt."

"On the topic of justice, here we have two Bird Police officers. They were expecting they would be on a fairly normal beat, but this was not to be the case. They will not stand for obstruction of justice, and have a camera man along with them-- should they survive, they will have an interesting story to share."

"Kay has already died once, but that was not enough to stop her. She now only exists to pursue vengeance, and her transition to un-death has only helped her in this regard. Were I unfortunate enough to be in your collective situation, I would be cautious about provoking her, and would not bother to attempt escaping."

"Our final subject is Archmage Rannus. If you gave him enough time, he could bring the walls of reality crashing down. Unfortunately, time is not on his side right now. He has already adapted to one catastrophe, we will see how well he does with this one."

Generating Setting... Done.

The six generated characters suddenly found themselves moved, scattered in various locations on-board a passenger airplane, the cabin noticeably futuristic. Many of the seats are unoccupied, giving the contestants more room to fight in the otherwise-cramped interior.

"As of now, you are all flying thirty thousand feet above sea level, in one of Pan Asia Airways' newest additions to their fleet of aircraft. For those too poor to afford passage on an orbital shuttle, this is the preferred method of transit, capable of crossing the Pacific in four hours. A marvelous example of the progress humans can make, I would say."

Just as the characters are beginning to re-orient themselves, the air-frame begins to shake and rumble. A loud explosion is heard from outside.

"Unfortunately, this particular aircraft suffered a catastrophic engine failure during flight and crashed into the ocean. I would say you have an hour, perhaps two, before the aircraft crashes and you all cease to live. As soon as one of you expires, we can proceed further in this experiment. So, get to it then."

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SpoilerI don’t know if it was apparent from the description, but your characters are on an airplane from a cyber-punk period world. Think like a modern passenger plane and then increase the size enough to have multiple floors and sufficient room to fight and such. In addition to slightly futuristic stuff, here’s some airplane staff, passengers, and so on. I’ll probably give this a month or so, and the word limit is 500 words (though I won’t care too much if you go over).

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Spoiler

By request of TimeothyHour.

Name: Batman
Gender: Male
Font color: [color=#JUSTICE]#JUSTICE[/color]
Race: Human
Weapons/Abilities: BATMAN REQUIRES NOTHING BUT HIS FISTS.

Description:

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Spoiler

Batman wears a red retro-style spacesuit, complete with a fishbowl-esque helmet. However, it is not actually a spacesuit, but a set of novelty clothes, so it does not function very well as a spacesuit. He has greasy black hair and equally dark sideburns, and wears a pair of polarized sunglasses underneath his fishbowl helmet.

Batman's real name isn't actually Batman, but he doesn't even realize this, much less know his actual name. He is mildly insane, having accidentally subjected himself to radiation which adversely affected his brain, wiping clean most of his memories. He stumbled out of the cave he'd slept in with no idea of who he was and no realization that he had ever known. Surprisingly, his skills remained intact, and he quickly discovered that he was an excellent hand-to-hand fighter. After finding a stash of aged Batman comic books, he quickly gained a childish obsession with the titular character, naming himself after him and following his ideals, so long as they coincided with his own.

Where he got that bizarre astronaut outfit, on the other hand, is a complete mystery.

Biography:

[color=#JUSTICE]"Say my name!" Batman screeched at the villain, twisting his head painfully to the side. "Say it! SAY MY NAME! SAY MY NAME!"

"I don't know your fucking name!" the villain shouted back desperately, struggling in vain to free himself. "You weren't nice enough to tell me it when you busted in here to beat me up!"

"BATMAN WILL SNAP YOUR NECK IF YOU DON'T SAY HIS NAME!"

"Batman! Batman! Your name's Batman! Please don't kill me!"

Batman snapped his neck anyway. Partly because he was a villain, but also partly because Batman hadn't had any fun at all getting up there to him.[/color]

Username: Soular Power
Name: Avus Par and Cordave Haro, Bird Police Department
Gender: Male Duo
Race: Avus is a blue feathered "bird-man" from a place similar to where Sarika is from. Cordave is similarly like a bird except that he has arms independent of his wings and he can actually fly. Also he's red.
Colour: Purple-y, #8F00FF
Biography: "So yea, we met ages ago, back in the Bird Police Academy."
"We had all kinds of insane adventures, like when we blew up the girls bathroom."
"Wait, we never got caught for that... and you just told everyone..."
"ANYWAY, yea, after that, being the BEST BRO'S, we became partners."
"Yea, we get all the regular kinds of crime, defending parrots who only want a cracker, and stopping scum from murdering defenseless Giant Crested Iblis's."
"You know, normal stuff."
"So, ready to go on patrol with us?"

The camera man nods. Today, he will go on patrol with these two Bird Police Officers for the hit show COPS. As always, he is slightly worried, but still hopeful that nothing horrible will happen.

He's pretty wrong.

Description: Avus is more down to earth and is a bit of a whiner. He doesn't really try to make things into a big deal and he hides his feelings a lot. He's sort of short at just 5 feet tall so he's a bit insecure about that. He still loves his job and the feeling of doing right.

Cordave is a little bit more of a prick, and he is much more confident. He was much more well to do so all his life he had that sort of confidant air about him. He lets things out in the open and sometimes lets things get a mite personal. He's at 5 feet and ten inches and he is much more physically tough than Avus.

Both are wearing their Black Bird Police uniforms over their feathered bodies, hat and sunglasses included.
Items/Abilities: Badge with BPD plastered on, their gun, and various policing tools in the back of their police cruiser. They have been on the force for about five years now and can work splendidly as a duo, when they aren't at each others throats. They are obviously in their Police Car, why wouldn't they be?

Also, there is a camera man in the back because they were filming for COPS. This may give the misconception that the whole thing is staged, as camera men are all mute and can't say "Oh shit, that is bad, oh god oh man oh god oh man."

Username: Pharmacy

Name: Kay

Gender: Female

Race: Ghost

Colour: #FF0000

Biography:

Violent deaths are an especially traumatic experience and most ghosts do not exactly remember what happened when they are alive. They remember only bits and pieces, especially scenes that stand out the most. Kay is no different from these other ghosts. Like other newly formed spirits, she could only recall partial scenes, floating memories that seemed almost like dreams. She remembered bitterness. She remembered hate. She also remembered…acceptance?

What?

How could such a soothing feeling be with her, especially she’s a bloody ghost with a sword stuck in her chest. That simply could not do. Ghosts are here for a reason and Kay was no different. She needed to figure out why, not that she needed to that to go to eternal rest, more like. She needed to know. Luckily, she found herself in a strange, unfamiliar place. Another battle, perhaps another duel?

She smiled.

Description:

Kay looks like a complete mess. After all, her current state does not exactly match up with her appearance when she is actually, you know, alive. She wears a coat, which is well kept despite the fact there is a freaking saber stuck straight in her chest and a large ceremonial mask, which casts a distinct silhouette. She also has incredibly bad posture, which gives her an animalistic “I’m gonna rip your freaking throat” vibe. This description is reinforced by her noticeable claws and spurs, which perfectly suits her fine.

She’s always on her toes, always running. Although she does understand the concept of stealth, she is not the most subtle person on the universe. She gets excited pretty easily, really easily. She just loves the concept of singling out a target, focusing all her attention on that person. Finally, their finish at her hands – so beautiful, so romantic. As you can see, she enjoys her duels (perhaps a little too much) and actively seeks them.

Kay is not exactly a pleasant person. After all, when she was alive, she enjoys arbitrarily challenging people to duels and murdering their face off. However, she is not completely heartless, but rather a proud romantic. She loves such virtues such as honor and justice and is caught up in the beauty of self-sacrifice and love. She strives to be the ultimate – the most eloquent – the person with the best manners in the world. She may be a borderline-psychopathic nutjob, but she does have her good side. She could be polite, kind, and even charitable. However, that’s kind of rare –most of the time, she is challenging and murdering people for no particular reason.

Despite her pompous demeanor, there is this air of sadness around her. When she walks, she stumbles, like a wounded person struggling to get away. This description is apt considering the parts of her that are bright red leave significant bloodstains everywhere. Although smelling and feeling like blood, the liquid eventually fades away, as though she never existed in the first place.

Items/Abilities:

Kay is a corporeal ghost. Though she is not exactly human (and alive) anymore, she does not have super strength, speed or anything like that. In fact, her physical health right now is the same as when she was alive, boring old human. However, she does have excellent skills in the way of the gun and the sword, which are supplemented by the fact she carries around two ornate pistols and a saber (in her chest).

Despite her notable skill in duelist weaponry, her true strength lies within two abilities she had somehow gained post-death. One, her presence makes people feel unnaturally uneasy. Lesser mortals will flip out. People with stronger wills can tolerate her presence (although they would still feel somewhat iffy about her, depending on their trust). However, the strength of this incorporeal aura scales in power with the number of people nearby her. The larger the crowd, the more possessing this ability is. Unfortunately, Kay barely has control over this aura and if she even slightly flips out, she could cause a stampede.

Her second ability is a little more terrifying. If she chooses a target (one or many, alive or dead, robot or cat, does not matter), the target could never escape her – literally. No matter what the circumstances, no matter the situation, Kay would always find that person, even if he is hiding in a room, or ten thousand feet underground. For some reason, all the wounds she inflict on her target seem more lethal, grievous…this supernatural ability may be essentially her trump card.

Name: Archmage Rannus Adderan
Gender: Male
Race: Venephim.

Venephim are a crystalline race hailing from a plane of existence that is saturated with mana. While individually the appearance of Venephim can vary massively they are generally tall with spindly limbs. They have no natural form of reproduction, new Venephim are formed through a particularly complex magical ritual.

At one point magic came as naturally to the Venephim as breathing does to a creature with lungs in a world with air. In fact that metaphor is very apt, at that point in time the plane of Kaiy was filled with mana in the same way our world is filled with air.

Unfortunately this came to an end with an event known only as The Crisis. It remains unclear the precise series of events but suddenly, within the space of one day mana drained and dwindled to the point where it suddenly became a precious resource.

This had a profound effect upon the Venephim. As everyone clamoured for the precious dregs of mana their civilisation all but broke down. Previously nobody had given a thought to the supplies of mana, but one short day later a venephim would fight his best friend to the death for the slightest scrap of the substance. It was in short anarchy. Only the toughest, and those who had through sheer dumb luck found themselves with the most plentiful supplies of mana survived.

Life continued and slowly the Venephim began to adapt to this new state of affairs. Magic was proved to still be possible, even with just the trace amounts of mana that remained. However the downside was that such magic required intense preparation; incredibly specific magical reagents, complex runes and diagrams that have to be drawn out before time, complex magical gestures which if not performed correctly can have massively unpredictable results, long winded magical incantations which must be intoned word perfectly and in some cases to a precise rhythm and the use of specialised totems (referred to as wands) which can directly influence the trace mana in the air.

If any one of these factors is wrong the spell is likely to blow up in your face, sometimes literally.

Color: Some blue colour

Items/Abilities: There is very little that Archmage Rannus is not capable of. His magic can alter summon forth powerful beings to do his bidding, bind the power of the elements to his will, subjugate his enemies’ will (either physically or mentally) or alter the very fabric of the world itself.

The problem is that to do any of these things is very very very difficult (as outlined in the race section). Archmage Rannus carries with him at all times, packs filled with a slew of magical reagents, magical wands for every occasion, tomes filled with diagrams and incantations, paints and chalks and the like for inscribing runes on whatever surface he finds himself on, and of course a reference tome just to make sure that he doesn’t forget any of the necessary rituals.

Description: As a Venephim Archmage Rannus is a crystalline figure, approximately human shaped. He has an extra pair of arms and his all of his limbs are long and spindly, including his fingers (two fingers and a thumb upon each hand). His skin is smooth and speckled like titanium drusy.

Biography: The title of Archmage harkens back to the time before the Crisis, before the collapse of Venephim society. He was at that point a highly respected mage who spent most of his time teaching others how to get the utmost from their innate abilities.

When the Crisis occurred Rannus survived by not owning anything with enough mana to make him a target for others, and not being foolish enough to go after those who still had a slim scrap of mana.

It was actually Rannus who began the pioneering research into magic without mana, something that did not make him popular with those who had mana, most of whom had seized upon the imbalance of power to declare themselves the de facto rulers of the Venephim.

Archmage Rannus had to go into hiding until he had perfected his techniques, a task that took him a long time. While his magic without mana is a cumbersome thing, and not very useful in any situation where you don’t have a lot of planning and preparation time beforehand, it is better than being without magic entirely.

He eventually managed to spread the knowledge of how to work magic with little to no mana throughout the remaining Venephim population, by way of an information ritual which took days to set up. Shortly afterwards he was taken to be part of a grand battle.