Re: Mini-Grand 5111 [Round 3: Menagerie]
05-28-2012, 04:19 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.
Rannus wasn’t surprised by the creatures’ capacity to exist in space, primarily because he didn’t really understand space. How could he have done? He had been formed in an elemental plane and before this battle had occurred he had never left the nexus of planes in which it was situated. The closest comparison he had to the concept of space was once when he had accidentally opened a portal to the elemental plane of void. Likewise the best comparison he had to the things that were making their way in his direction was when he had once accidentally opened a portal to the elemental plane of flesh. The vast bulk of the creatures were twisted approximations of people with claws and talons, ragged flesh and sharpened protruding bones. Emerging from the cloud of fog were larger things, the size of vehicles or even of buildings made from an awful mesh of carcasses and with tentacle like tangles of nerve and muscle trailing behind them.
To an organic being, or someone who might have once been an organic being, it would have been horrifying. To Rannus they were just aesthetically unappealing meat beasts, no more stomach turning to him than a half melted lump of plastic would be to us. Rannus was more concerned about how quickly they had generated. Hypothetically this meant one of two things; that there was some kind of time dilation effect between this universe and the last or that the magic that infused the fog was even more powerful than he had previously reckoned. It was troubling and he was having a hard time concentrating with the panic that was erupting from around him.
“There is no need to panic.” He spoke clearly, his voice calm and clear to demonstrate the need for restraint in this difficult situation. He was consequently drowned out by the noise of the crowd, who couldn’t seem to make up their minds whether to stand at the windows at gape at the creatures that were coming their way or to flee towards the parking bays. “Excuse me!” Rannus shouted over the crowd, his voice no longer restrained and calm. Even this was swallowed up into the cacophony and Rannus was forced to try again a third time, this time expending a portion of his magical reserves to ensure that he would be heard.
“EXCUSE ME”
That had been more than he had intended, but at least it seemed to accomplish the desired effect. Silence fell and he wondered if there was a part of the Menagerie that had not heard him.
<font size="4">“THANK YOU,”
A pause.
“OH GREAT NOW I’M STUCK LIKE THIS. DO NOT WORRY I HAVE THIS ALL UNDER CONTROL. IT WAS NOT MY INTENTION TO CAUSE A SCENE, COULD EVERYONE PLEASE GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING NOW AND LET ME DEAL WITH THIS.”
With his supply of mana was dwindling faster than he would have liked, Rannus knew he was going to have to prioritise. Instinctively he thought that the most important thing was to close the portal, cutting off the supply of these creatures would be far more effective than trying to combat the potentially endless waves head on. However that had the unfortunate drawback that he would essentially be sealing the doom of the town and the entire exercise would have proved pointless, less than pointless in fact because he had endangered the denizens of this world as well.
“Put your hands in the air!” The voice belonged to a reptilian security guard who was pointing some kind of futuristic weapon in Rannus’ direction. “All of them!” It added. It was thin and nervous looking with pale grey scales. Its body crackled and burned with vermillion flames. It wore a heavy dark blue uniform including an unfashionable baseball cap and a name tag that read ‘Syen’. For a moment Rannus glanced from left to right, looking for the person this security guard was apprehending. He was surprised to find that at some point in his cogitations the crowd had all decided to put some distance between themselves and him.
“YOU – DAMNATION IS THIS STILL ON? – YOU ARE MAKING A MISTAKE HERE.”
“Put your hands in the air!” Syen repeated, a crackle of electricity dancing along his weapon. Another security guard, out of breath and sweating globs of candle wax joined him.
“I AM NOT THE BIGGEST PROBLEM YOU HAVE AT THE MOMENT. I DON’T KNOW IF YOU HAVE NOTICED BUT THERE IS A SWARM OF… THINGS OUT THERE HEADING THIS WAY AND IT IS REASONABLE TO BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE GOING TO CAUSE MAJOR DAMAGE TO THIS STRUCTURE AND THE PEOPLE INSIDE IF I DO NOT DO SOMETHING TO STOP IT.”
The crowds had for a brief moment been calmed. The fact that security was confronting the mysterious crystal terrorist had temporarily reassured them that whatever was going on it was going to be sorted out. This shared delusion broke simultaneously as people began to rush for the elevators down to the parking bays.
“What are your demands?” Syen demanded. Rannus sighed, really loudly.
“I WISH TO PUT AN END TO THIS SITUATION EVERY BIT AS MUCH AS YOU. IF YOU REALLY WISH TO MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL COULD YOU SEE FIT TO ACTIVATE WHATEVER DEFENSES THIS STRUCTURE MIGHT CONTAIN AND MAKE THESE PEOPLE BE QUIET SO THAT I CAN THINK. I JUST CANNOT WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS.”
Syen dithered. He could not comply with either of those requests. Most of the other security guards were attempting to keep some kind of order amongst the panicked guests, but they might as well have been trying to convince water to flow uphill. As for the defences, well they’d already done all they could; the shield was up and that was pretty much all the defences they had. This was after all a zoo not a military base. The shield wouldn’t last a minute when up against those creatures; it was only ever expected to protect them from space debris and meteorite dust. The only lead they had was this one guy and he was not proving to be as helpful as they had hoped.
“Get down on the ground!” The other security guard demanded when Syen failed to take any decisive action. “Get down on the ground and put your hands in the air.”</font>
“Drop the gun.” Kay was suddenly there with a gun of her own. She’d heard Rannus’ voice halfway across the menagerie and had just known that everything was going horribly wrong.
“KAY I DON’T SUppose – oh hm I guess I must be running low on magic if that wore off without the need for a counterspell. That’s worrying… but to focus upon the problem at hand; Kay, I don’t suppose you could give me a rough estimation of how many people there are in this structure and how many there were in the town we were just in?”
“What?” Kay asked. “No, why would you expect me to be able to do that?”
“That’s it!” The other security guard snarled through gritted teeth. A blast of electricity shot across the pathway striking Rannus in the chest. Before the bolt had even found its target Kay had opened fire. Almost simultaneously Rannus and the security guard stumbled back. Rannus managed to right himself, charred but not really affected by the electricity otherwise. Thick foam poured from the security guard’s wound and he collapsed face first to the floor. Syen had been unsure what to make of the crystal man and now his bloodied friend; he wished he could say that shooting Frank had clarified things somewhat. He wished he was allowed to carry more than this glorified taser, which he turned on Kay. She pointed her gun back at him with the expression of someone who really didn’t care what happened to the people who got in her way.
“Would everyone just calm down for a moment?” Rannus asked. He was running dangerously low on mana he knew, but he also figured that he was never going to solve this problem if everyone didn’t just calm down for a minute. He opted to just help them along a bit; whispered an arcane verse as Kay and Syen faced one another down, and then he collapsed.
A hiss and a snap coming from outside the windows tore Kay’s and Syen’s attention away from each other. The things were at the shield and as Syen had predicted, within a minute it was down. A couple of spaceships had managed to make it out of the docking bays where they found themselves quickly swarmed by fog creatures that ripped and tore and hacked through the hull of the spacecraft and then presumably did the same to those inside it. Some of the monsters started to pour through the open ports into the docking bays and the screams of those who had managed to get the elevator down could be heard throughout the zoo which had been stunned into silence. The creatures slammed into the dome above and began to scratch and claw and relentlessly tear at it.
“This is bad.” Syen stated the obvious.
“Naaah.” Rannus said dismissively. He was lying on the floor on his back, his arms splayed out by his sides and generally looking far more relaxed than was appropriate and than should have been possible in the situation. “It’s okay. There’s no need to worry I’m sure someone’s got it all under control I bet.”
Kay broke off from the pointless standoff that she and Syen had been engaged in and hurried to Rannus’ side. His face was set into a wide crystalline smirk and he looked as though he didn’t have a care in the world. She frowned, “Pretty sure that person is supposed to be you.”
“Awww man.” Rannus moaned. “Can’t someone else do it? Hey Kay heres a thought; I hereby promote you in charge of stopping the bad things. Now go and save the day and while your up if you could get me a drink or something that’d be tremendous thanks.”
Rannus wasn’t surprised by the creatures’ capacity to exist in space, primarily because he didn’t really understand space. How could he have done? He had been formed in an elemental plane and before this battle had occurred he had never left the nexus of planes in which it was situated. The closest comparison he had to the concept of space was once when he had accidentally opened a portal to the elemental plane of void. Likewise the best comparison he had to the things that were making their way in his direction was when he had once accidentally opened a portal to the elemental plane of flesh. The vast bulk of the creatures were twisted approximations of people with claws and talons, ragged flesh and sharpened protruding bones. Emerging from the cloud of fog were larger things, the size of vehicles or even of buildings made from an awful mesh of carcasses and with tentacle like tangles of nerve and muscle trailing behind them.
To an organic being, or someone who might have once been an organic being, it would have been horrifying. To Rannus they were just aesthetically unappealing meat beasts, no more stomach turning to him than a half melted lump of plastic would be to us. Rannus was more concerned about how quickly they had generated. Hypothetically this meant one of two things; that there was some kind of time dilation effect between this universe and the last or that the magic that infused the fog was even more powerful than he had previously reckoned. It was troubling and he was having a hard time concentrating with the panic that was erupting from around him.
“There is no need to panic.” He spoke clearly, his voice calm and clear to demonstrate the need for restraint in this difficult situation. He was consequently drowned out by the noise of the crowd, who couldn’t seem to make up their minds whether to stand at the windows at gape at the creatures that were coming their way or to flee towards the parking bays. “Excuse me!” Rannus shouted over the crowd, his voice no longer restrained and calm. Even this was swallowed up into the cacophony and Rannus was forced to try again a third time, this time expending a portion of his magical reserves to ensure that he would be heard.
“EXCUSE ME”
That had been more than he had intended, but at least it seemed to accomplish the desired effect. Silence fell and he wondered if there was a part of the Menagerie that had not heard him.
<font size="4">“THANK YOU,”
A pause.
“OH GREAT NOW I’M STUCK LIKE THIS. DO NOT WORRY I HAVE THIS ALL UNDER CONTROL. IT WAS NOT MY INTENTION TO CAUSE A SCENE, COULD EVERYONE PLEASE GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING NOW AND LET ME DEAL WITH THIS.”
With his supply of mana was dwindling faster than he would have liked, Rannus knew he was going to have to prioritise. Instinctively he thought that the most important thing was to close the portal, cutting off the supply of these creatures would be far more effective than trying to combat the potentially endless waves head on. However that had the unfortunate drawback that he would essentially be sealing the doom of the town and the entire exercise would have proved pointless, less than pointless in fact because he had endangered the denizens of this world as well.
“Put your hands in the air!” The voice belonged to a reptilian security guard who was pointing some kind of futuristic weapon in Rannus’ direction. “All of them!” It added. It was thin and nervous looking with pale grey scales. Its body crackled and burned with vermillion flames. It wore a heavy dark blue uniform including an unfashionable baseball cap and a name tag that read ‘Syen’. For a moment Rannus glanced from left to right, looking for the person this security guard was apprehending. He was surprised to find that at some point in his cogitations the crowd had all decided to put some distance between themselves and him.
“YOU – DAMNATION IS THIS STILL ON? – YOU ARE MAKING A MISTAKE HERE.”
“Put your hands in the air!” Syen repeated, a crackle of electricity dancing along his weapon. Another security guard, out of breath and sweating globs of candle wax joined him.
“I AM NOT THE BIGGEST PROBLEM YOU HAVE AT THE MOMENT. I DON’T KNOW IF YOU HAVE NOTICED BUT THERE IS A SWARM OF… THINGS OUT THERE HEADING THIS WAY AND IT IS REASONABLE TO BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE GOING TO CAUSE MAJOR DAMAGE TO THIS STRUCTURE AND THE PEOPLE INSIDE IF I DO NOT DO SOMETHING TO STOP IT.”
The crowds had for a brief moment been calmed. The fact that security was confronting the mysterious crystal terrorist had temporarily reassured them that whatever was going on it was going to be sorted out. This shared delusion broke simultaneously as people began to rush for the elevators down to the parking bays.
“What are your demands?” Syen demanded. Rannus sighed, really loudly.
“I WISH TO PUT AN END TO THIS SITUATION EVERY BIT AS MUCH AS YOU. IF YOU REALLY WISH TO MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL COULD YOU SEE FIT TO ACTIVATE WHATEVER DEFENSES THIS STRUCTURE MIGHT CONTAIN AND MAKE THESE PEOPLE BE QUIET SO THAT I CAN THINK. I JUST CANNOT WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS.”
Syen dithered. He could not comply with either of those requests. Most of the other security guards were attempting to keep some kind of order amongst the panicked guests, but they might as well have been trying to convince water to flow uphill. As for the defences, well they’d already done all they could; the shield was up and that was pretty much all the defences they had. This was after all a zoo not a military base. The shield wouldn’t last a minute when up against those creatures; it was only ever expected to protect them from space debris and meteorite dust. The only lead they had was this one guy and he was not proving to be as helpful as they had hoped.
“Get down on the ground!” The other security guard demanded when Syen failed to take any decisive action. “Get down on the ground and put your hands in the air.”</font>
“Drop the gun.” Kay was suddenly there with a gun of her own. She’d heard Rannus’ voice halfway across the menagerie and had just known that everything was going horribly wrong.
“KAY I DON’T SUppose – oh hm I guess I must be running low on magic if that wore off without the need for a counterspell. That’s worrying… but to focus upon the problem at hand; Kay, I don’t suppose you could give me a rough estimation of how many people there are in this structure and how many there were in the town we were just in?”
“What?” Kay asked. “No, why would you expect me to be able to do that?”
“That’s it!” The other security guard snarled through gritted teeth. A blast of electricity shot across the pathway striking Rannus in the chest. Before the bolt had even found its target Kay had opened fire. Almost simultaneously Rannus and the security guard stumbled back. Rannus managed to right himself, charred but not really affected by the electricity otherwise. Thick foam poured from the security guard’s wound and he collapsed face first to the floor. Syen had been unsure what to make of the crystal man and now his bloodied friend; he wished he could say that shooting Frank had clarified things somewhat. He wished he was allowed to carry more than this glorified taser, which he turned on Kay. She pointed her gun back at him with the expression of someone who really didn’t care what happened to the people who got in her way.
“Would everyone just calm down for a moment?” Rannus asked. He was running dangerously low on mana he knew, but he also figured that he was never going to solve this problem if everyone didn’t just calm down for a minute. He opted to just help them along a bit; whispered an arcane verse as Kay and Syen faced one another down, and then he collapsed.
A hiss and a snap coming from outside the windows tore Kay’s and Syen’s attention away from each other. The things were at the shield and as Syen had predicted, within a minute it was down. A couple of spaceships had managed to make it out of the docking bays where they found themselves quickly swarmed by fog creatures that ripped and tore and hacked through the hull of the spacecraft and then presumably did the same to those inside it. Some of the monsters started to pour through the open ports into the docking bays and the screams of those who had managed to get the elevator down could be heard throughout the zoo which had been stunned into silence. The creatures slammed into the dome above and began to scratch and claw and relentlessly tear at it.
“This is bad.” Syen stated the obvious.
“Naaah.” Rannus said dismissively. He was lying on the floor on his back, his arms splayed out by his sides and generally looking far more relaxed than was appropriate and than should have been possible in the situation. “It’s okay. There’s no need to worry I’m sure someone’s got it all under control I bet.”
Kay broke off from the pointless standoff that she and Syen had been engaged in and hurried to Rannus’ side. His face was set into a wide crystalline smirk and he looked as though he didn’t have a care in the world. She frowned, “Pretty sure that person is supposed to be you.”
“Awww man.” Rannus moaned. “Can’t someone else do it? Hey Kay heres a thought; I hereby promote you in charge of stopping the bad things. Now go and save the day and while your up if you could get me a drink or something that’d be tremendous thanks.”
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