Re: The Battle Majestic (Round 3 - Oxbow Inc.)
12-04-2010, 02:13 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Baphomet.
Rays of multicolored light pierced through the waves of an ocean with no bottom, barely casting light on something vast beneath the surface. An intricate web of fleshy stalks spread up from some indeterminable point in the deep, each terminating in a semi-spherical nub. Between these nodes, streamers of light darted back and forth, tracing out strange designs only meaningful to those thinking about them.
There was a splash that could only be felt, but not seen. Something invisible, intangible, and impotent drifted into the deep, gnashing its nonexistent teeth in anguish.
The stalks began to sway in the sea and converge into one point. They mashed themselves together, resembling a gargantuan face. With a sudden flash of light, two luminous eyes shot open, sending a shock through the water that made everything around seem to hum quietly with potential. The face in the deep spoke to its new guest in the raw language of ideas.
"What are you, little beast? You seem familiar."
The only response it received was the idea of loss.
"Do you have no words, little beast? Everything with Mind has words, in one way or another. Without language, everything would be chaos."
The idea of chaos repeated itself from the mouth of Chaos.
"You have no Mind, then? It is no wonder you are lost. A lost mind with no Mind."
There was an idea of desperation, and then confusion.
"I can help, you know. The word for me is Ungol, and I am God of the Mind. I can grant you the gift of Mind, and you will not be lost anymore. Come here, let me see what you are..."
The streamers of light twisted and converged at a point in front of the face, the light forming shapes in the deep. The full spectrum of colors shifted to a deep indigo, and a transparent, writhing, screaming mass of tendrils and teeth faded into view. The mouths' insistent gnashing slowly ceased, and the mass spoke.
"I hate."
The face's mouth slowly dropped open, its eyes shifting from shock to concern.
"I know what you are, now."
"I am change unending. I am what order is not, what you are not. I am the end. I am Magog. And you...you have made a mistake."
Magog burst from the ocean of Ungol, the physical world now unable to support his figmentary form. Below him, he no longer saw a shifting manifestation of liquid order, he saw an ocean. Before him, he did not see a massive buoyant spire of everything he hated, he saw an island. He saw a world, air, a sky. He saw a universe. And behind those things, he saw other words, new words. Causality. Physics. Death, Birth, Love, Hate, Dream, Mind, and... Chaos. This word did not describe him. This was not his Chaos. His Chaos was a binary split. Chaos and Order, each existing exclusively where the other did not. This new Chaos word, it meant something different. It was one of seven other forces, each operating in tandem, sometimes overlapping on an infinite spectrum of possibilities.
Magog hated this word. But, he was not done. The words even infiltrated his past. Events, objects, beings, even ideas, all had words. And further beneath these words, scratching at the base of his newborn consciousness with a red tendril of energy, even more longed to be let in.
"If you are hearing this, then you, too, are a victim of the whims of an enigmatic master, whom has forced you into a battle to the death with many other strange beings. You are likely far from your home, far from your friends, far from your family.
"My name is Vandrel Reinhardt, and I am in a battle similar to yours. I seek allies, to overthrow these unworthy grandmasters. I assume that, if you can receive this message, then you have some way of reaching into the multiverse. Seek me out. Together, we can fight for our freedom."
Friends. Family. Allies. These words are what the Vandrel Reinhardt words sought. They were not goals that Magog shared. But, beyond that... Death. Battle. Fight. Freedom. Magog understood that, as he was now, he could not do anything. He had to accept that his word for Chaos no longer applied to him. He was his own agent, with his own goals. His hate was unconnected with the machinations of universally-enforced lack of order.
He also understood that he was tied to Vex, and as much as he hated that word too, he could not attain freedom without taking it from him first.
Magog learned the words for the red tendril, and thought himself to their source. In their words, he thought himself into a mind. The mind of a girl whose word was Julia.
"I have many new words. Self, Magog, chaos, lost. These words are all mine. I am in a battle somewhere, on an island with a volcano and an ocean. In exchange for your help finding myself, I will make 'ally' one of my words, too."
Magog, for all his new-found understanding, still missed a few key pieces of information, not the least of which was that "island with a volcano and an ocean" lacked enough specificity to be meaningful to anyone. Even if it was informative enough to elicit assistance, the island to which he referred was so far away from his target that the concept of "distance" was essentially meaningless.
A few blocks away from his target, seated atop a large executive-style chair behind a large executive-style desk, a lone figure bore a scowling expression as she sifted through the contents of a manila folder. She wore an oppressively-starched business suit, with accommodations for her short vestigial scaled tail in the back, a throwback from the genetic template that had spawned her ancestors. She scanned the document with increasing ire. These allegedly-diplomatic "requests" for collaboration with her Cheratid subordinates were becoming increasingly forceful. She fought to keep her emotions in check, expressing her contempt with a vicious snarl rather than by tearing the paper in half. The humans would play god with her kind, while being too proud to use the same methods of genetic guidance that had led to her and her ancestors' intellect on themselves? Then, they would have the gall to ask her to "share" the fruits of that intellect with them? She took a deep breath and turned to the computer terminal inset into her desk, searching through it for whichever form letter said "fuck off" as politely and aggressively as possible.
A blinking green icon of a phone appeared on her desk's screen, accompanied by a chiming sound. The information spelled out beneath the icon identified the call as coming from elsewhere in the facility. She pressed it with a scaled finger. "Liss here. What do you want?"
"Ey, 's Heng. Y'know 'bou' any 'uman vis'ors s'pose t' be 'ere ri' now?"
Liss narrowed her eyes. What a suspicious question. "Let me make something very clear. There are not now, nor in the foreseeable future, humans allowed into this facility."
"We go' a pro'lem then, Liss. Go' a 'uman 'ere in 'ydropower, said 'e was lookin' fer 'ydroponi's."
Liss stood up from her chair quickly. "What? What did he want?"
"'E di'n' say. Jus' walked i' and ou' like 'ere wu'n nuthin' odd 'bou' i'."
Liss took a moment to parse Heng's accent, then another for a deep, calming breath. "Where is he now?"
"I don' know, 'e jus' wal'zed ou'. Almos' li'erally, 'e 'ad musi' playing from 'is coa'. Li' I sai', presuma'ly 'es on 'is way to 'ydroponi's."
"Thank you, Heng. I will take care of it."
"O' course y'will."
Liss ended the call, a cauldron of frustration boiling in her chest. How did a human even get inside this place, much less deep enough into the facility to get to Hydropower without being noticed? And why, then, would they proceed to expose themselves as purposefully as this one had? The stealth required for entry smelled of subterfuge, while the reveal indicated, what? A trap, most likely. Yes, that must be it. A human agent or agents infiltrated the facility, and were preparing some sort of ambush for higher-ranking officials in Hydroponics. They had finally escalated. Naturally, she would not be walking into it. Now sure of her destination, she adjusted her suit and strode purposefully through the door to her office.
Vex was getting restless behind his bank of glowing screens, but the time to mull over his current predicament was appreciated. He watched carefully for any glimpses of Iris and Blitz, caught randomly from their rooftop positions by the haphazard cameras all over the various buildings in the facility. Oddly, they apparently hadn't noticed each other yet, though they were headed in similar directions. Iris was headed toward somewhere along the perimeter, while Blitz… Vex wasn't sure, but he seemed to be on the opposite side of the dome and moving towards the center, near his current position. Vex recalled with minor trepidation the last major interaction the two had, at the beginning of the previous round. He had offered to assist Blitz in seducing one of the natives, but then retracted the offer when he did not respond quickly enough for his liking. That was not how things should work, and was no doubt a result of Magog's heightened influence at the time. Perhaps he could make it up to him.
And then there was this new contestant, Iris. A woman, and an attractive one at that. However, the orchestrators of the battle seemed to consider it a foregone conclusion that he would hook up with her. That fact alone was enough to make him resist the idea, simply to deny them authority in any way he could. Besides, it was destined to end in sorrow; this was, after all, a battle to the death.
A battle to the death, where escape by his actions alone did not seem likely. If he were to return to his world by any means other than by winning the battle conventionally, then it would be via the aid of his former compatriots in godhood. That was likely the outcome responsible for the fear inherent in the note he had received between rounds, as he didn't feel his more conventional attempts to escape had born much fruit, all things considered. Since waiting to be rescued by gods did not require effort on his part, perhaps the best course of action was to… well, participate. While he did not enjoy the thought of killing these remaining five people, the stakes at this point had been raised to the reinstatement of his godhood and the dethroning of his son, goals which, in Vex's mind, overruled the loss of five lives. He had, after all, taken lives before in the several-millenia-long span of his life, albeit infrequently.
However, this posed several problems to him. The first of these problems was that he was nowhere near the most combat-capable of the people in this group. In fact, he was perhaps the least. Loath as he was to admit it, the one thing that had made him in any way dangerous was currently elsewhere. Without Magog, he had little in the way of strength or combat training and no weapons. To make matters worse, none of the contestants currently living seemed particularly inclined to take lives, themselves. If Vex were to become the exception to that, they would likely all turn on him at once, and he was almost certain that would end in his death.
However, where he was not adept at causing death, he was very skilled at avoiding it. Furthermore, he realized, he did not actually have to kill five people. He only had to kill one. The last one. Until that point, he had a reputation to uphold.
Vex's thought processes were interrupted by the sound of the door opening behind him, and he quickly forged a connection with all entering parties. Chained bird-guy looks like shelf? Own appearance changed to his? Change the Deejan's frantic bound pleas to background noise? Mask his smell and that of the security guy? After completing his mental checklist, he turned in his chair to greet the ingressors. Before him, a short, but somehow imposing scaly biped was flanked by two large hairy beasts armed with large clubs. A quick check of the Deejan's mind's impressions of the figures registered recognition in the scaly one; Liss, boss, hardass, scary. He shifted the image of the feathered creature for be more cowed and submissive.
"H-Hey, Liss, what're you..."
"Move," she interrupted, pushing Vex's seat aside. "I've received word that there is at least one human in the facility. We will discuss why you haven't informed me of this momentarily-"
Vex panicked and tried to move the chair in time with her motion. He could craft a three-dimensional image in several people's minds at the same time, make them hear the same things from the same directions, even make himself look like whatever was behind him from several angles at once to hide. But, there was one thing he never got the hang of. There was simply too much involved in making even one being feel weight differently. Her muscles were going to exert a known amount of force, and he'd have to make her perception of her own arm move more than it had, move his own image further, alter her tactile sensations where her fingers met the image of the Deejan, mask himself actually moving the chair back...
Luckily, she seemed too engrossed in the task at hand to notice. After pushing him aside, she planted her hands firmly on the desk and bent over, inspecting the screens closely. Vex and his illusion stood and stepped back, ostensibly to offer her more room, but he was boxed in my the two massive, hairy bodyguards that had entered with her. This was hardly ideal.
"What the hell is going on, here?" Liss asked, incredulously. She turned towards Vex.
A look of surprise crossed Liss's face upon turning to face him, and she looked back to both of her guards in turn. Then, she turned further, inspecting the far corner of the cramped room. She looked directly at Vex's prisoner.
Vex's eyes shot open in alarm as adrenaline rushed into his veins. Had he slipped? Did one of his muffled sounds make it through? Regardless, she was turning, and took a step towards the corner. "Did anyone enter this room before me?" Liss asked, slowly.
"N-No, ma'am." He cycled through her senses' impression of the corner while frantically trying to fix whatever his oversight was. Sight? Seemed normal. Sound? Nothing. She took another step. Vex swallowed hard and urgently continued on his checklist. Smell? Her sense of smell was heightened compared to his, but he'd been masking the scent.
With unexpected swiftness, she leapt, as did Vex's heart. The jig was up, she would find him. He had to get out. He left his image in the same location and darted around the side of the bodyguards, trying to find a passage through them without touching them. He tried to keep his cool. What should she find? She would touch his prisoner, he wouldn't be able to hide that. He would have to remove the illusion. Then, he had to get out before she found out his false image wasn't where he was anymore. He dropped the illusion hiding the Deejan just as Liss was about to make contact.
The bodyguard he was going to step in front of stepped forward and turned towards the image he'd made. Liss turned to face the image's location, and then turned further to face Vex himself. Liss pointed directly to him.
"Guja, swing there!" she barked. Vex had the Yagg's long processing time to thank for the fact that he managed to duck under the swing. He rolled to the side, and Liss lunged directly for him. Everything was going wrong. How could she see him? Swing there indicated an aptitude for location that Liss would know the Yaggs did not share, but what...?
Liss quickly drew a sparking black rectangle from her coat mid-lunge and thrust it downwards towards Vex. He moved his arm out of its trajectory, but it hit his cloak and pinned it to the ground with Liss's follow-through. He knew that when he pulled the cloak out from underneath, she would feel it. Vex got ready to alter her sense of touch to negate it as best he could...
That was it. Her sense of touch. Through her senses, Vex felt the heat emanating from his body, as well as from the body of the still-bound Deejan in the corner. She could feel exactly where he was, and how warm. It hadn't occurred to him to alter that, as he'd never encountered another creature with that sense before.
"Show yourself," Liss yelled. Vex knew he would have to show her something. Something to cause an alarm. Something that would make the Yaggs move away from the door...
He suddenly recalled what Liss was talking about when she'd entered.
A well-dressed human man, or at least the sights, sounds, and heat signature of one, shimmered into being from nothingness and leapt up and to the left, over Liss's head. She was so surprised, she didn't even take note of the feeling of the ground beneath her taser pulling to the right. All presently visible moved to subdue the human. His immediate and unexpected disappearance prior to capture, as well as the disappearance of the illusory Deejan, was accompanied by the sound of the door closing.
Vex lurched up the stairs, his long legs taking them three at a time, his heart almost beating out of his chest. Cresting the stairs, he glanced around for signs of anyone to hide his presence from. Fortuitously, his vantage point gave him a more upward view than most walking below. Accompanied by a humming sound and a static trail, a scarred man in a red scarf leapt between two rooftops overhead.
Vex smiled slowly as an idea sparked through his mind. Blitz: a man who he owed a romantic interest from last round. Iris: an attractive woman with whom he was hesitant to initiate romantic contact. Perhaps it was time to play matchmaker, at least until an opportunity for blameless murder presented itself.
Blitz skidded to a halt as he heard a voice in his head. After the inexplicable disappearance of his father, he'd been growing accustomed to the mental solitude. This particular intrusion, however, was not unwelcome. Following the voice's instructions, he backtracked and leapt down from the edge of the building. Artificially empowering his leg muscles to take the impact more robustly, he landed neatly in front of the alien satyr whose voice he heard.
"Vex," he said, smiling in a way that only a man scarred over half his face could make creepy, "I'm glad I found you."
"I'm glad I found you too, dude!" said Vex, his unencumbered mind now much more adept at picking up slang and idioms from Blitz's mind. "How've you been?"
Blitz was only slightly off-put by the former god's unexpected casual tone. "I...uh...well this whole battle thing is still pretty terrible. And I heard Sen a second ago, It screamed pretty loud. I was going to see what was up there and... uh... save him I guess."
Vex raised one furred eyebrow at him. "Huh. Well, I'm not sure what that would accomplish, especially considering the creatures here apparently have some sort of problem with humans."
A look of concern crossed Blitz's face. "Well... what's the escape plan for this round?"
Vex pointed directly up. "Depends how good a swimmer you are." Blitz's face cycled through several responses until Vex punched him playfully on the arm. "Just kidding, man. You gotta loosen up a bit. I'm playing it by ear, you're the first other contestant I've found." He looked over in the direction Blitz was originally heading. "Why don't we go find some of the others? I'm pretty sure Iris is further up that way. Oh, and by the way-"
As if on cue, a tremendous static crackle burst from hidden loudspeakers all across the facility. "Attention, employees. We have a human incursion into the facility. Until further notice, this entire facility is on lockdown. There will be no more trains in or out. The humans are known to possess some form of cloaking technology. Please report all suspicious activity to any security officer or to extension 415. And to the humans, I'm watching you. You will not escape. Find a phone, extension 415. Four one five. Let's talk."
Another static burst as the transmission ended. Vex nodded, continuing where he left off in the conversation. "Yeah, that." Vex made a sheepish expression as Blitz's brow lowered. He shrugged. "My bad."
Rays of multicolored light pierced through the waves of an ocean with no bottom, barely casting light on something vast beneath the surface. An intricate web of fleshy stalks spread up from some indeterminable point in the deep, each terminating in a semi-spherical nub. Between these nodes, streamers of light darted back and forth, tracing out strange designs only meaningful to those thinking about them.
There was a splash that could only be felt, but not seen. Something invisible, intangible, and impotent drifted into the deep, gnashing its nonexistent teeth in anguish.
The stalks began to sway in the sea and converge into one point. They mashed themselves together, resembling a gargantuan face. With a sudden flash of light, two luminous eyes shot open, sending a shock through the water that made everything around seem to hum quietly with potential. The face in the deep spoke to its new guest in the raw language of ideas.
"What are you, little beast? You seem familiar."
The only response it received was the idea of loss.
"Do you have no words, little beast? Everything with Mind has words, in one way or another. Without language, everything would be chaos."
The idea of chaos repeated itself from the mouth of Chaos.
"You have no Mind, then? It is no wonder you are lost. A lost mind with no Mind."
There was an idea of desperation, and then confusion.
"I can help, you know. The word for me is Ungol, and I am God of the Mind. I can grant you the gift of Mind, and you will not be lost anymore. Come here, let me see what you are..."
The streamers of light twisted and converged at a point in front of the face, the light forming shapes in the deep. The full spectrum of colors shifted to a deep indigo, and a transparent, writhing, screaming mass of tendrils and teeth faded into view. The mouths' insistent gnashing slowly ceased, and the mass spoke.
"I hate."
The face's mouth slowly dropped open, its eyes shifting from shock to concern.
"I know what you are, now."
"I am change unending. I am what order is not, what you are not. I am the end. I am Magog. And you...you have made a mistake."
Magog burst from the ocean of Ungol, the physical world now unable to support his figmentary form. Below him, he no longer saw a shifting manifestation of liquid order, he saw an ocean. Before him, he did not see a massive buoyant spire of everything he hated, he saw an island. He saw a world, air, a sky. He saw a universe. And behind those things, he saw other words, new words. Causality. Physics. Death, Birth, Love, Hate, Dream, Mind, and... Chaos. This word did not describe him. This was not his Chaos. His Chaos was a binary split. Chaos and Order, each existing exclusively where the other did not. This new Chaos word, it meant something different. It was one of seven other forces, each operating in tandem, sometimes overlapping on an infinite spectrum of possibilities.
Magog hated this word. But, he was not done. The words even infiltrated his past. Events, objects, beings, even ideas, all had words. And further beneath these words, scratching at the base of his newborn consciousness with a red tendril of energy, even more longed to be let in.
"If you are hearing this, then you, too, are a victim of the whims of an enigmatic master, whom has forced you into a battle to the death with many other strange beings. You are likely far from your home, far from your friends, far from your family.
"My name is Vandrel Reinhardt, and I am in a battle similar to yours. I seek allies, to overthrow these unworthy grandmasters. I assume that, if you can receive this message, then you have some way of reaching into the multiverse. Seek me out. Together, we can fight for our freedom."
Friends. Family. Allies. These words are what the Vandrel Reinhardt words sought. They were not goals that Magog shared. But, beyond that... Death. Battle. Fight. Freedom. Magog understood that, as he was now, he could not do anything. He had to accept that his word for Chaos no longer applied to him. He was his own agent, with his own goals. His hate was unconnected with the machinations of universally-enforced lack of order.
He also understood that he was tied to Vex, and as much as he hated that word too, he could not attain freedom without taking it from him first.
Magog learned the words for the red tendril, and thought himself to their source. In their words, he thought himself into a mind. The mind of a girl whose word was Julia.
"I have many new words. Self, Magog, chaos, lost. These words are all mine. I am in a battle somewhere, on an island with a volcano and an ocean. In exchange for your help finding myself, I will make 'ally' one of my words, too."
Magog, for all his new-found understanding, still missed a few key pieces of information, not the least of which was that "island with a volcano and an ocean" lacked enough specificity to be meaningful to anyone. Even if it was informative enough to elicit assistance, the island to which he referred was so far away from his target that the concept of "distance" was essentially meaningless.
A few blocks away from his target, seated atop a large executive-style chair behind a large executive-style desk, a lone figure bore a scowling expression as she sifted through the contents of a manila folder. She wore an oppressively-starched business suit, with accommodations for her short vestigial scaled tail in the back, a throwback from the genetic template that had spawned her ancestors. She scanned the document with increasing ire. These allegedly-diplomatic "requests" for collaboration with her Cheratid subordinates were becoming increasingly forceful. She fought to keep her emotions in check, expressing her contempt with a vicious snarl rather than by tearing the paper in half. The humans would play god with her kind, while being too proud to use the same methods of genetic guidance that had led to her and her ancestors' intellect on themselves? Then, they would have the gall to ask her to "share" the fruits of that intellect with them? She took a deep breath and turned to the computer terminal inset into her desk, searching through it for whichever form letter said "fuck off" as politely and aggressively as possible.
A blinking green icon of a phone appeared on her desk's screen, accompanied by a chiming sound. The information spelled out beneath the icon identified the call as coming from elsewhere in the facility. She pressed it with a scaled finger. "Liss here. What do you want?"
"Ey, 's Heng. Y'know 'bou' any 'uman vis'ors s'pose t' be 'ere ri' now?"
Liss narrowed her eyes. What a suspicious question. "Let me make something very clear. There are not now, nor in the foreseeable future, humans allowed into this facility."
"We go' a pro'lem then, Liss. Go' a 'uman 'ere in 'ydropower, said 'e was lookin' fer 'ydroponi's."
Liss stood up from her chair quickly. "What? What did he want?"
"'E di'n' say. Jus' walked i' and ou' like 'ere wu'n nuthin' odd 'bou' i'."
Liss took a moment to parse Heng's accent, then another for a deep, calming breath. "Where is he now?"
"I don' know, 'e jus' wal'zed ou'. Almos' li'erally, 'e 'ad musi' playing from 'is coa'. Li' I sai', presuma'ly 'es on 'is way to 'ydroponi's."
"Thank you, Heng. I will take care of it."
"O' course y'will."
Liss ended the call, a cauldron of frustration boiling in her chest. How did a human even get inside this place, much less deep enough into the facility to get to Hydropower without being noticed? And why, then, would they proceed to expose themselves as purposefully as this one had? The stealth required for entry smelled of subterfuge, while the reveal indicated, what? A trap, most likely. Yes, that must be it. A human agent or agents infiltrated the facility, and were preparing some sort of ambush for higher-ranking officials in Hydroponics. They had finally escalated. Naturally, she would not be walking into it. Now sure of her destination, she adjusted her suit and strode purposefully through the door to her office.
Vex was getting restless behind his bank of glowing screens, but the time to mull over his current predicament was appreciated. He watched carefully for any glimpses of Iris and Blitz, caught randomly from their rooftop positions by the haphazard cameras all over the various buildings in the facility. Oddly, they apparently hadn't noticed each other yet, though they were headed in similar directions. Iris was headed toward somewhere along the perimeter, while Blitz… Vex wasn't sure, but he seemed to be on the opposite side of the dome and moving towards the center, near his current position. Vex recalled with minor trepidation the last major interaction the two had, at the beginning of the previous round. He had offered to assist Blitz in seducing one of the natives, but then retracted the offer when he did not respond quickly enough for his liking. That was not how things should work, and was no doubt a result of Magog's heightened influence at the time. Perhaps he could make it up to him.
And then there was this new contestant, Iris. A woman, and an attractive one at that. However, the orchestrators of the battle seemed to consider it a foregone conclusion that he would hook up with her. That fact alone was enough to make him resist the idea, simply to deny them authority in any way he could. Besides, it was destined to end in sorrow; this was, after all, a battle to the death.
A battle to the death, where escape by his actions alone did not seem likely. If he were to return to his world by any means other than by winning the battle conventionally, then it would be via the aid of his former compatriots in godhood. That was likely the outcome responsible for the fear inherent in the note he had received between rounds, as he didn't feel his more conventional attempts to escape had born much fruit, all things considered. Since waiting to be rescued by gods did not require effort on his part, perhaps the best course of action was to… well, participate. While he did not enjoy the thought of killing these remaining five people, the stakes at this point had been raised to the reinstatement of his godhood and the dethroning of his son, goals which, in Vex's mind, overruled the loss of five lives. He had, after all, taken lives before in the several-millenia-long span of his life, albeit infrequently.
However, this posed several problems to him. The first of these problems was that he was nowhere near the most combat-capable of the people in this group. In fact, he was perhaps the least. Loath as he was to admit it, the one thing that had made him in any way dangerous was currently elsewhere. Without Magog, he had little in the way of strength or combat training and no weapons. To make matters worse, none of the contestants currently living seemed particularly inclined to take lives, themselves. If Vex were to become the exception to that, they would likely all turn on him at once, and he was almost certain that would end in his death.
However, where he was not adept at causing death, he was very skilled at avoiding it. Furthermore, he realized, he did not actually have to kill five people. He only had to kill one. The last one. Until that point, he had a reputation to uphold.
Vex's thought processes were interrupted by the sound of the door opening behind him, and he quickly forged a connection with all entering parties. Chained bird-guy looks like shelf? Own appearance changed to his? Change the Deejan's frantic bound pleas to background noise? Mask his smell and that of the security guy? After completing his mental checklist, he turned in his chair to greet the ingressors. Before him, a short, but somehow imposing scaly biped was flanked by two large hairy beasts armed with large clubs. A quick check of the Deejan's mind's impressions of the figures registered recognition in the scaly one; Liss, boss, hardass, scary. He shifted the image of the feathered creature for be more cowed and submissive.
"H-Hey, Liss, what're you..."
"Move," she interrupted, pushing Vex's seat aside. "I've received word that there is at least one human in the facility. We will discuss why you haven't informed me of this momentarily-"
Vex panicked and tried to move the chair in time with her motion. He could craft a three-dimensional image in several people's minds at the same time, make them hear the same things from the same directions, even make himself look like whatever was behind him from several angles at once to hide. But, there was one thing he never got the hang of. There was simply too much involved in making even one being feel weight differently. Her muscles were going to exert a known amount of force, and he'd have to make her perception of her own arm move more than it had, move his own image further, alter her tactile sensations where her fingers met the image of the Deejan, mask himself actually moving the chair back...
Luckily, she seemed too engrossed in the task at hand to notice. After pushing him aside, she planted her hands firmly on the desk and bent over, inspecting the screens closely. Vex and his illusion stood and stepped back, ostensibly to offer her more room, but he was boxed in my the two massive, hairy bodyguards that had entered with her. This was hardly ideal.
"What the hell is going on, here?" Liss asked, incredulously. She turned towards Vex.
A look of surprise crossed Liss's face upon turning to face him, and she looked back to both of her guards in turn. Then, she turned further, inspecting the far corner of the cramped room. She looked directly at Vex's prisoner.
Vex's eyes shot open in alarm as adrenaline rushed into his veins. Had he slipped? Did one of his muffled sounds make it through? Regardless, she was turning, and took a step towards the corner. "Did anyone enter this room before me?" Liss asked, slowly.
"N-No, ma'am." He cycled through her senses' impression of the corner while frantically trying to fix whatever his oversight was. Sight? Seemed normal. Sound? Nothing. She took another step. Vex swallowed hard and urgently continued on his checklist. Smell? Her sense of smell was heightened compared to his, but he'd been masking the scent.
With unexpected swiftness, she leapt, as did Vex's heart. The jig was up, she would find him. He had to get out. He left his image in the same location and darted around the side of the bodyguards, trying to find a passage through them without touching them. He tried to keep his cool. What should she find? She would touch his prisoner, he wouldn't be able to hide that. He would have to remove the illusion. Then, he had to get out before she found out his false image wasn't where he was anymore. He dropped the illusion hiding the Deejan just as Liss was about to make contact.
The bodyguard he was going to step in front of stepped forward and turned towards the image he'd made. Liss turned to face the image's location, and then turned further to face Vex himself. Liss pointed directly to him.
"Guja, swing there!" she barked. Vex had the Yagg's long processing time to thank for the fact that he managed to duck under the swing. He rolled to the side, and Liss lunged directly for him. Everything was going wrong. How could she see him? Swing there indicated an aptitude for location that Liss would know the Yaggs did not share, but what...?
Liss quickly drew a sparking black rectangle from her coat mid-lunge and thrust it downwards towards Vex. He moved his arm out of its trajectory, but it hit his cloak and pinned it to the ground with Liss's follow-through. He knew that when he pulled the cloak out from underneath, she would feel it. Vex got ready to alter her sense of touch to negate it as best he could...
That was it. Her sense of touch. Through her senses, Vex felt the heat emanating from his body, as well as from the body of the still-bound Deejan in the corner. She could feel exactly where he was, and how warm. It hadn't occurred to him to alter that, as he'd never encountered another creature with that sense before.
"Show yourself," Liss yelled. Vex knew he would have to show her something. Something to cause an alarm. Something that would make the Yaggs move away from the door...
He suddenly recalled what Liss was talking about when she'd entered.
A well-dressed human man, or at least the sights, sounds, and heat signature of one, shimmered into being from nothingness and leapt up and to the left, over Liss's head. She was so surprised, she didn't even take note of the feeling of the ground beneath her taser pulling to the right. All presently visible moved to subdue the human. His immediate and unexpected disappearance prior to capture, as well as the disappearance of the illusory Deejan, was accompanied by the sound of the door closing.
Vex lurched up the stairs, his long legs taking them three at a time, his heart almost beating out of his chest. Cresting the stairs, he glanced around for signs of anyone to hide his presence from. Fortuitously, his vantage point gave him a more upward view than most walking below. Accompanied by a humming sound and a static trail, a scarred man in a red scarf leapt between two rooftops overhead.
Vex smiled slowly as an idea sparked through his mind. Blitz: a man who he owed a romantic interest from last round. Iris: an attractive woman with whom he was hesitant to initiate romantic contact. Perhaps it was time to play matchmaker, at least until an opportunity for blameless murder presented itself.
Blitz skidded to a halt as he heard a voice in his head. After the inexplicable disappearance of his father, he'd been growing accustomed to the mental solitude. This particular intrusion, however, was not unwelcome. Following the voice's instructions, he backtracked and leapt down from the edge of the building. Artificially empowering his leg muscles to take the impact more robustly, he landed neatly in front of the alien satyr whose voice he heard.
"Vex," he said, smiling in a way that only a man scarred over half his face could make creepy, "I'm glad I found you."
"I'm glad I found you too, dude!" said Vex, his unencumbered mind now much more adept at picking up slang and idioms from Blitz's mind. "How've you been?"
Blitz was only slightly off-put by the former god's unexpected casual tone. "I...uh...well this whole battle thing is still pretty terrible. And I heard Sen a second ago, It screamed pretty loud. I was going to see what was up there and... uh... save him I guess."
Vex raised one furred eyebrow at him. "Huh. Well, I'm not sure what that would accomplish, especially considering the creatures here apparently have some sort of problem with humans."
A look of concern crossed Blitz's face. "Well... what's the escape plan for this round?"
Vex pointed directly up. "Depends how good a swimmer you are." Blitz's face cycled through several responses until Vex punched him playfully on the arm. "Just kidding, man. You gotta loosen up a bit. I'm playing it by ear, you're the first other contestant I've found." He looked over in the direction Blitz was originally heading. "Why don't we go find some of the others? I'm pretty sure Iris is further up that way. Oh, and by the way-"
As if on cue, a tremendous static crackle burst from hidden loudspeakers all across the facility. "Attention, employees. We have a human incursion into the facility. Until further notice, this entire facility is on lockdown. There will be no more trains in or out. The humans are known to possess some form of cloaking technology. Please report all suspicious activity to any security officer or to extension 415. And to the humans, I'm watching you. You will not escape. Find a phone, extension 415. Four one five. Let's talk."
Another static burst as the transmission ended. Vex nodded, continuing where he left off in the conversation. "Yeah, that." Vex made a sheepish expression as Blitz's brow lowered. He shrugged. "My bad."