Re: Pitched Combat [Round 5: Garden of Shades]
10-15-2010, 11:49 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
For once, Rong didn't seem to want to say anything. And her head wasn't even chopped off. Eemp wandered around and neither dragon started a conversation. There was silence. The grass underfoot might have made a sound if Eemp's feet weren't made of cloth. Even though there were supposed to be armies of gardeners searching for them and giant geese rampaging around and a crazy garden supervisor possibly breaking out of his bonds and coming after them, all the action seemed rather far off right now. Right took this chance to get lost in thought.
It was pointless to think back on the past. And doing so would depress him, he was sure. So he tried making plans for the future.
Immediate plans were pretty easy to make. Mostly because they had to keep simple and flexible with so many random factors such as the fruits and the geese and the supervisor and that crazy Manikin. Making a complex plan would be just asking for it to go awry. So far his plan was finding Jordan. And then killing him.
He didn't want to share this with Rong. He was sure she would taunt him.
A possible problem with killing Jordan, however, was that Right had told him very clearly that they couldn't attack if Eemp didn't consider him a threat. And he was probably smart enough to not attack. Unless he was too dazed to remember that bit of information, but he couldn't really count on that.
In that case, he would either have to trick Jordan into attacking or indirectly kill him somehow...
And the Manikin could pretty much force him to throw any plans out the window if it decided to show up. Right glanced at the horizon as if expecting to see it rise up like in one of those cheap Japanese monster movies that he had never seen or heard of in his life. And to think at the very beginning he had only considered it a small nuisance.
Actually, perhaps he could somehow get Jordan killed by the Manikin. That was pretty indirect. And it seemed a good plan, what with the Manikin's new-found hobby of destructive rampaging and its new fire-proof skin courtesy of Rong's head and so on. So they would have to find out where both Jordan and the Manikin were and lead the Manikin to the very squishable human. Or the reverse.
"Let's get higher," Right said suddenly. Rong didn't even ask why. Eemp's feet left the ground and was led by his arms to the top of a tree. Looking around, Right easily caught sight of several giant geese milling around. There were a few in the distance, probably engaged in some mating ritual. Now that he noticed, he was slightly aware that the trees seemed to be rocking slightly.
He ignored this rather admirably and scanned the area for the Manikin, finally catching sight of it. Or rather, the goose it was attacking. It seemed to be putting up a good fight too. The goose fell with a thud as he watched and let out a large squawk. This seemed to attract the attention of many other geese.
Unfortunately, there was still no sign of Jordan. The branches underneath rustled a bit as he twisted his neck around, but there really was no point. Knowing the coward, he was probably lying low.
It was almost certainly a bad idea. But to try to see further, Right flew up. Rong followed his lead. He managed to spot some movement before a giant garden shear flew past and almost took off Eemp's ever-smiling head. The trio immediately dropped, making the tree rustle loudly as they fell through branches and dropped to the ground rather ungracefully.
Looking towards where the flying shears came from, Right saw a line of gardeners approaching. The one who had thrown the shears simply replaced them by materializing one from nothing. Eemp needed no prompting and ran.
Rong had finally emerged from her own thoughts and started talking, as though they were not being chased by super-tough gardeners. "So. What will we do after this?"
"Huh? What?" Right gasped, looking back at the approaching gardeners. They marched like a robotic regiment. Another shear just missed his snout.
"When we win," Rong clarified. "Remember? Riches and rewards? A trip back home?"
Right thought back. To be honest, he no longer remembered the words said at the very beginning of the battle. But what Rong had said sounded at least somewhat familiar.
"I don't want to go back. Do you?"
"Look, I can't help but think that now isn't the time--"
"No, seriously. Think about it."
Right thought about it. Going back meant back under the thumb of the wizard. And as they were now, they couldn't hope to overcome him. And it would be back to conquering lands for people who couldn't be bothered to do things themselves. It wasn't a fate worse than death, but still not a very great fate to return to.
Another sheer buzzed by and caught itself on one of Rong's horns. She didn't seem to feel it.
"Alright, 'rewards' isn't specified. We could probably ask the Organizer for help with this. He probably even has the power to get us our bodies. So it probably--"
"Hey!" Rong suddenly shouted, whipping her head to the front and dislodging the shear from her horn. "It's that jerk coward glasses guy!" And without hesitation, she breathed smouldering fire at the figure ahead. It noticed very quickly and desperately leapt out of the way.
"Wait," Right said before she could try again. "That's not Jordan!"
The fire was released as steam. "But...he looks like him..."
"Look closer. Monochrome."
Rong squinted. The figure was picking himself off the ground now and getting ready to sprint away. But she could see that it definitely had no color. Right pulled ahead, almost dragging Eemp off its feet, and managed to catch up to pseudo-Jordan before he could get too far away and grabbed his shirt with his mouth, unable to grow an appendage quickly enough. Jordan screamed and struggled, but couldn't do much. Right growled as he tried to set him on fire. "Shtop zhat."
Jordan, surprised that scary dragons could talk, immediately stopped that.
"I, I, uh," Jordan stuttered, trying to scream, but somehow being too abashed to do so now.
"Lok, weer hflpin yoo scap."
"I, uh," Jordan said, trying to figure out what the dragon had just said, his legs dangling feebly. "Okay...?"
"Yoo sheen a gui thbat luks laik yoo?"
Jordan scrunched his face for a moment. "Er. Oh! Yeah?"
"Tshnk yoo cun fnd im--" Right suddenly heaved and gagged; Jordan had apparently touched his gag reflex. For a moment, the fruit's legs were dragged on the ground and he whimpered as the skin was torn apart. Then Right held him up once more. "--ugan?" he continued, as though nothing happened.
Jordan looked around, thought about saying 'you're kidding, right?', realized he didn't have the guts to do so, and just nodded.
"Shet shom twees on fiyah." Jordan briefly wondered if the dragon was still talking to him until the other dragon turned and unleashed an inferno on some nearby trees. The ripe fruits crackled and popped. Some gardeners split off from the group to attempt to save the precious trees. The remaining pursuing group threw some more shears angrily. One of them neatly sliced off one of Right's antlers.
Jordan heard a muffled scream and felt blood drip on his arm, but Right apparently closed the wound quickly. "Shit," the red dragon muttered, which seemed to surprise Rong.
"You can still hear, right? Can't you grow it back?"
Right didn't answer, so Jordan assumed that it wouldn't work. Then he remembered he was supposed to be leading them to that one guy so he looked around at the blurred surroundings. Just as he thought. Everything looked the same. He pointed in a random direction. The stumpy scarecrow stumbled as its arms veered sharply.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The real Jordan peered out from behind a tree, as he found himself doing so often, and, with a little concentration, set fire to one a ways away from his own. Nearby gardeners flocked towards the blazing tree, either putting out the fire or searching for any nearby arsonists, and Jordan took the chance to sneak by with Maxwell in tow.
"You know, I've actually been thinking of that thing," Maxwell said idly as they jogged swiftly away. "Your dragon problem."
"Yeah?" Jordan replied, not expecting much of a response.
"Yeah. Winning would be hard against them, I'd think. Of course, you could try not attacking at all, but then I would think they would find a loophole in their limitations somehow. You know? They could indirectly attack you. So you have to attack first, but to attack first would allow them to attack you and obviously that's not what you want. So you would have to indirectly attack them. This would mean traps of some sort. But they could probably dodge any one trap. Meaning you have to indirectly attack them constantly. Barrage them with indirect attacks, something like that."
"Yeah, I get it," Jordan said unhappily, still not seeing a solution.
"But what counts as an indirect attack? Does any attack that they cannot see count?"
"I dunno," Jordan replied morosely.
"In that case, if they cannot see that you are responsible for any sort of attack, then they would still be unable to attack you. And in that case, your pyrokinesis, since it cannot be seen, would not be cause for them to attack..."
"No, it didn't work," Jordan interrupted. "I tried that before. Right attacked me as a sword."
"Hm," Maxwell said, running a hand through his hair. "But what if he was employing a loophole? What if he was feinting, you know? Hoping to get an attack out of you or something? Like, if you hadn't done anything, he would just stop short."
"And what if he wasn't?" Jordan shot back, albeit doubtfully.
"And how do dragons breathe fire?"
"I...what?" Jordan thought back a bit in case he had missed part of the conversation and found that he hadn't.
"I've been thinking about that too, you see, and there must be something inside that holds some sort of combustable material. you know? Like, a sac that holds...gasoline, say. And to breathe fire, the sac releases it in a gas state and it passes some other organ that...actually, I haven't really figured it out this far yet. Somehow it gets ignited and comes out as fire. But the point is, somewhere inside is some sort of organ holding something highly flammable."
"So?" Jordan said, frustrated. "I'm not sure..." he trailed off as the meaning hit him. The dragons may be fireproof on the outside, but their insides were as cookable as any other thing that was flammable.
You could say that this realization hit him like a pair of dragons attached to a rag doll. Especially since immediately afterwards, he was hit by a pair of dragons attached to a rag doll and the group fell and tumbled around for a bit before any of them could get up. Jordan got to his feet and noticed himself again. Pseudo-Jordan stood up and was surprised to find that he had actually been giving the correct directions. Then he fell to the ground again because his legs were still injured.
Both Jordans turned their attention back to the dragons. Right was rather agitated. He grabbed pseudo-Jordan by the scruff of his neck once more, but this time had the forethought to grow a second mouth. It was creepy. "Let's go," it said.
Jordan was about to ask a suspicious 'why?' when a giant shear flew past and embedded itself into the ground nearby. No other prompt was needed.
Grabbing Maxwell by the arm, he tried to stay on the heels of Eemp, but found that he was lagging behind a bit. The dragons didn't turn around. Gasping a bit, he forced himself to go faster as another shear was flung towards them. The gardeners appeared to be gaining.
He eyed Rong for a bit, yet hesitated. Trying it now would be risky, he reasoned. There was a group of bloodthirsty, inhuman gardeners behind him and if he was distracted with setting something on fire, he might trip or something. And definitely die instead. Besides, he had no idea how big the explosion would be. If he tried it now...he could probably be killed in the blast too. If there even was a blast.
Right got rid of his second mouth and glanced backwards briefly. He hoped that Jordan would simply get caught by the gardeners. That would save him a lot of trouble. But if not, then, well, he was fairly certain they would meet with the Manikin and its new goosey friend soon.
For once, Rong didn't seem to want to say anything. And her head wasn't even chopped off. Eemp wandered around and neither dragon started a conversation. There was silence. The grass underfoot might have made a sound if Eemp's feet weren't made of cloth. Even though there were supposed to be armies of gardeners searching for them and giant geese rampaging around and a crazy garden supervisor possibly breaking out of his bonds and coming after them, all the action seemed rather far off right now. Right took this chance to get lost in thought.
It was pointless to think back on the past. And doing so would depress him, he was sure. So he tried making plans for the future.
Immediate plans were pretty easy to make. Mostly because they had to keep simple and flexible with so many random factors such as the fruits and the geese and the supervisor and that crazy Manikin. Making a complex plan would be just asking for it to go awry. So far his plan was finding Jordan. And then killing him.
He didn't want to share this with Rong. He was sure she would taunt him.
A possible problem with killing Jordan, however, was that Right had told him very clearly that they couldn't attack if Eemp didn't consider him a threat. And he was probably smart enough to not attack. Unless he was too dazed to remember that bit of information, but he couldn't really count on that.
In that case, he would either have to trick Jordan into attacking or indirectly kill him somehow...
And the Manikin could pretty much force him to throw any plans out the window if it decided to show up. Right glanced at the horizon as if expecting to see it rise up like in one of those cheap Japanese monster movies that he had never seen or heard of in his life. And to think at the very beginning he had only considered it a small nuisance.
Actually, perhaps he could somehow get Jordan killed by the Manikin. That was pretty indirect. And it seemed a good plan, what with the Manikin's new-found hobby of destructive rampaging and its new fire-proof skin courtesy of Rong's head and so on. So they would have to find out where both Jordan and the Manikin were and lead the Manikin to the very squishable human. Or the reverse.
"Let's get higher," Right said suddenly. Rong didn't even ask why. Eemp's feet left the ground and was led by his arms to the top of a tree. Looking around, Right easily caught sight of several giant geese milling around. There were a few in the distance, probably engaged in some mating ritual. Now that he noticed, he was slightly aware that the trees seemed to be rocking slightly.
He ignored this rather admirably and scanned the area for the Manikin, finally catching sight of it. Or rather, the goose it was attacking. It seemed to be putting up a good fight too. The goose fell with a thud as he watched and let out a large squawk. This seemed to attract the attention of many other geese.
Unfortunately, there was still no sign of Jordan. The branches underneath rustled a bit as he twisted his neck around, but there really was no point. Knowing the coward, he was probably lying low.
It was almost certainly a bad idea. But to try to see further, Right flew up. Rong followed his lead. He managed to spot some movement before a giant garden shear flew past and almost took off Eemp's ever-smiling head. The trio immediately dropped, making the tree rustle loudly as they fell through branches and dropped to the ground rather ungracefully.
Looking towards where the flying shears came from, Right saw a line of gardeners approaching. The one who had thrown the shears simply replaced them by materializing one from nothing. Eemp needed no prompting and ran.
Rong had finally emerged from her own thoughts and started talking, as though they were not being chased by super-tough gardeners. "So. What will we do after this?"
"Huh? What?" Right gasped, looking back at the approaching gardeners. They marched like a robotic regiment. Another shear just missed his snout.
"When we win," Rong clarified. "Remember? Riches and rewards? A trip back home?"
Right thought back. To be honest, he no longer remembered the words said at the very beginning of the battle. But what Rong had said sounded at least somewhat familiar.
"I don't want to go back. Do you?"
"Look, I can't help but think that now isn't the time--"
"No, seriously. Think about it."
Right thought about it. Going back meant back under the thumb of the wizard. And as they were now, they couldn't hope to overcome him. And it would be back to conquering lands for people who couldn't be bothered to do things themselves. It wasn't a fate worse than death, but still not a very great fate to return to.
Another sheer buzzed by and caught itself on one of Rong's horns. She didn't seem to feel it.
"Alright, 'rewards' isn't specified. We could probably ask the Organizer for help with this. He probably even has the power to get us our bodies. So it probably--"
"Hey!" Rong suddenly shouted, whipping her head to the front and dislodging the shear from her horn. "It's that jerk coward glasses guy!" And without hesitation, she breathed smouldering fire at the figure ahead. It noticed very quickly and desperately leapt out of the way.
"Wait," Right said before she could try again. "That's not Jordan!"
The fire was released as steam. "But...he looks like him..."
"Look closer. Monochrome."
Rong squinted. The figure was picking himself off the ground now and getting ready to sprint away. But she could see that it definitely had no color. Right pulled ahead, almost dragging Eemp off its feet, and managed to catch up to pseudo-Jordan before he could get too far away and grabbed his shirt with his mouth, unable to grow an appendage quickly enough. Jordan screamed and struggled, but couldn't do much. Right growled as he tried to set him on fire. "Shtop zhat."
Jordan, surprised that scary dragons could talk, immediately stopped that.
"I, I, uh," Jordan stuttered, trying to scream, but somehow being too abashed to do so now.
"Lok, weer hflpin yoo scap."
"I, uh," Jordan said, trying to figure out what the dragon had just said, his legs dangling feebly. "Okay...?"
"Yoo sheen a gui thbat luks laik yoo?"
Jordan scrunched his face for a moment. "Er. Oh! Yeah?"
"Tshnk yoo cun fnd im--" Right suddenly heaved and gagged; Jordan had apparently touched his gag reflex. For a moment, the fruit's legs were dragged on the ground and he whimpered as the skin was torn apart. Then Right held him up once more. "--ugan?" he continued, as though nothing happened.
Jordan looked around, thought about saying 'you're kidding, right?', realized he didn't have the guts to do so, and just nodded.
"Shet shom twees on fiyah." Jordan briefly wondered if the dragon was still talking to him until the other dragon turned and unleashed an inferno on some nearby trees. The ripe fruits crackled and popped. Some gardeners split off from the group to attempt to save the precious trees. The remaining pursuing group threw some more shears angrily. One of them neatly sliced off one of Right's antlers.
Jordan heard a muffled scream and felt blood drip on his arm, but Right apparently closed the wound quickly. "Shit," the red dragon muttered, which seemed to surprise Rong.
"You can still hear, right? Can't you grow it back?"
Right didn't answer, so Jordan assumed that it wouldn't work. Then he remembered he was supposed to be leading them to that one guy so he looked around at the blurred surroundings. Just as he thought. Everything looked the same. He pointed in a random direction. The stumpy scarecrow stumbled as its arms veered sharply.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The real Jordan peered out from behind a tree, as he found himself doing so often, and, with a little concentration, set fire to one a ways away from his own. Nearby gardeners flocked towards the blazing tree, either putting out the fire or searching for any nearby arsonists, and Jordan took the chance to sneak by with Maxwell in tow.
"You know, I've actually been thinking of that thing," Maxwell said idly as they jogged swiftly away. "Your dragon problem."
"Yeah?" Jordan replied, not expecting much of a response.
"Yeah. Winning would be hard against them, I'd think. Of course, you could try not attacking at all, but then I would think they would find a loophole in their limitations somehow. You know? They could indirectly attack you. So you have to attack first, but to attack first would allow them to attack you and obviously that's not what you want. So you would have to indirectly attack them. This would mean traps of some sort. But they could probably dodge any one trap. Meaning you have to indirectly attack them constantly. Barrage them with indirect attacks, something like that."
"Yeah, I get it," Jordan said unhappily, still not seeing a solution.
"But what counts as an indirect attack? Does any attack that they cannot see count?"
"I dunno," Jordan replied morosely.
"In that case, if they cannot see that you are responsible for any sort of attack, then they would still be unable to attack you. And in that case, your pyrokinesis, since it cannot be seen, would not be cause for them to attack..."
"No, it didn't work," Jordan interrupted. "I tried that before. Right attacked me as a sword."
"Hm," Maxwell said, running a hand through his hair. "But what if he was employing a loophole? What if he was feinting, you know? Hoping to get an attack out of you or something? Like, if you hadn't done anything, he would just stop short."
"And what if he wasn't?" Jordan shot back, albeit doubtfully.
"And how do dragons breathe fire?"
"I...what?" Jordan thought back a bit in case he had missed part of the conversation and found that he hadn't.
"I've been thinking about that too, you see, and there must be something inside that holds some sort of combustable material. you know? Like, a sac that holds...gasoline, say. And to breathe fire, the sac releases it in a gas state and it passes some other organ that...actually, I haven't really figured it out this far yet. Somehow it gets ignited and comes out as fire. But the point is, somewhere inside is some sort of organ holding something highly flammable."
"So?" Jordan said, frustrated. "I'm not sure..." he trailed off as the meaning hit him. The dragons may be fireproof on the outside, but their insides were as cookable as any other thing that was flammable.
You could say that this realization hit him like a pair of dragons attached to a rag doll. Especially since immediately afterwards, he was hit by a pair of dragons attached to a rag doll and the group fell and tumbled around for a bit before any of them could get up. Jordan got to his feet and noticed himself again. Pseudo-Jordan stood up and was surprised to find that he had actually been giving the correct directions. Then he fell to the ground again because his legs were still injured.
Both Jordans turned their attention back to the dragons. Right was rather agitated. He grabbed pseudo-Jordan by the scruff of his neck once more, but this time had the forethought to grow a second mouth. It was creepy. "Let's go," it said.
Jordan was about to ask a suspicious 'why?' when a giant shear flew past and embedded itself into the ground nearby. No other prompt was needed.
Grabbing Maxwell by the arm, he tried to stay on the heels of Eemp, but found that he was lagging behind a bit. The dragons didn't turn around. Gasping a bit, he forced himself to go faster as another shear was flung towards them. The gardeners appeared to be gaining.
He eyed Rong for a bit, yet hesitated. Trying it now would be risky, he reasoned. There was a group of bloodthirsty, inhuman gardeners behind him and if he was distracted with setting something on fire, he might trip or something. And definitely die instead. Besides, he had no idea how big the explosion would be. If he tried it now...he could probably be killed in the blast too. If there even was a blast.
Right got rid of his second mouth and glanced backwards briefly. He hoped that Jordan would simply get caught by the gardeners. That would save him a lot of trouble. But if not, then, well, he was fairly certain they would meet with the Manikin and its new goosey friend soon.