The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged]

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Right on a cue that only an omnipotent observer could've noticed, the floor beneath Tria, Gepetto, the puppets, and the sedately hovering chainsaw uttered a detesting rumble. Only Brooklyn could detect the groan of subterranean metal over the foundations' argument with the rest of the pyramid, but perked up when Tria's apparatus whirred to life shortly after.



"Should we run?" Mo screeched above the groans even as they faded. Gepetto clapped a hand over the ear his puppet had just screamed in, the crescendo of metal on rock drowning out his words. Tria scrambled up against a sigil-scribed wall, a few strip-lights on her arm glowing in the gloom as she kept her eyes on the chain-on Brooklyn. She kept her eyes fixed on Brooklyn.

She just hovered patiently on the spot, uttering nothing but a warning grumble as a huge spike of steel pierced the floor in front of her companions. It continued to rise, revealing the girth of the spike at well over two metres across, until it crumbled through the ceiling in turn.

It stopped. The pyramid was silent again, save for the feather-light bursts of jet fire as Brooklyn moseyed round Gepetto and Co to explore the latest development.

Double doors. And a little keypad next to them. Perfect. The ghost had no need to crack its poltergeist-knuckles to figure there wasn't enough electricity to run this anachronistic elevator, but she had a prod around anyway. Tria eventually peered round at her own volition, but Brooklyn uttered an amicable revving that was meant to be inviting.

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</div>"CLOSE EnOuGH," beghilosed the chainsaw, growling with approval as Tria relayed it out loud. "nOUU

WE HAVE HErE A WAy DOWn DEEPEr, CAVES, COOL, MACHInES"



"Wait, how? It just looks like a big metal pole."



Tria frowned at the display. "Laooer? Ladder. There's a ladder inside. Wait, how did you-" the chainsaw's yowl encouraged Tria to quit focussing on pointless minutiae, though perhaps in fewer words. It was hard to tell.

"ArM CAn rIP OFF PAnEL"

Tria bit her lip, and tried to work her fingers beneath the welded-on plate of iron with some skepticism. A distressing kind of moan preceded an echoing bang, as her apparatus wormed a repulsive field round the seal of the door. The ragtag crew were hit with a sigh of stale, but refreshingly cool air.

Gepetto finally peeled himself from the wall him and his brothers had waited against, hopping over the discarded metal sheet as he stuck his head down the shaft and took a look inside, Mo lighting the place up from his usual perch. Motioning for his puppets to follow, he grabbed the ladder and began his clanging path down without another word. Jo was last; kicking another (seemingly ineffective) lever before he struggled his bulky way through the door, leaving the girl and the chainsaw.

Tria let Gepetto's pack get a head start before she proceeded down the ladder, turning to the poltergeist (who had forsaken the unwieldy numeric display and had pulled its blowtorch out again). "Um... thanks for your help." The blade end of the chainsaw waggled in a way that was almost endearing. Almost. Tria stepped down a few cautious rungs, then remembered something and scrambled back up.



"Wait! Brooklyn, the Counsellor said there'd be seven of us here. With Gepetto. Do you know who else is here? Could... could you go and find them, if they're out in the desert? Please? I mean." Great, thought Tria, I'm explaining myself to a flying killer piece of scrap metal. I must be losing it. "Dangerous as the others sounded... we need all the allies we can get. You'd search the desert much faster than I could, too. Please?"



Brooklyn considered the request with a strange mix of amusement at being ordered about, and being touched by the girl's compassion. She rather dearly hoped, then rather impetuously resolved, that Tria wouldn't suffer for it.

The ghost flicked its blowtorch in a smart little salute, snapped it in the correct position for take-off, then flipped sharply and careened off out of the pyramid. She spiralled a few times round the pyramid's steel cap again (Ooh, it's got solar panels inside!?) before remembering her duty, picking a direction, and jetting off with her steely-toothed warcry.





Originally posted on MSPA by Wheeeeeeatthins.

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Show Content

Spoiler

With a voice to humble the countryside, Adilo thundered, "So I say unto you, 'sew the seed not lightly!  For never again shall you regain time to take back Edanias of past!'"

I'll bet a diamond-tipped chain they just wanted to get rid of me, Brooklyn fumed with indignation.  I saw their looks.  So what, I'm a chainsaw… that's supposed to be a big deal?  It's not like any of them can boast about being 100% natural human.  Well, if you count those living dolls together with the boy, at least.  I mean… hmmm… does a puppet act as an extension of the person?  Or is it a separate… thing?  I can't think of the right word right now…
Brooklyn had nothing to do but let her sprawling thoughts wander as she herself wandered the vast desert.  She hadn't been given any directions.  She hadn't been given any clues as to where this mystery person might be.  All she had been told is that there was probably some other person out here.  Probably.
So there she was, as she had been for the last half hour, gliding across the golden sands of the desert, fine grains flying up in her wake.  The sun shone overhead, beaming down so hard she could feel it cooking her chassis.
She remembered the last time she had cooked in the sun like this.  She had stood outside a locked car on a cloudless summer day, waiting for the car serviceman to come and open the door with a Slim Jim.  It had been a half hour then, too, no?  No… an hour and a half? Either way, she decided that if she was going to wait, she might as well be smart about it.  No use standing around and waiting for something to show up.  So she found a thin pole sticking from the ground nearby, knocked a notch into it, and attempted to unlock the door.  While it did quite a number on the workings of her car door, it hastened her waiting time by about ten minutes.  That ten minutes wouldn't be enough to save her from sunburn, and the next few days she'd be picking off flakes of skin.  Of course, that was back when she had skin and could actually feel it.
Now, she had no skin.  The only thing that worried her was that her rockets might overheat if she were out here for too long.  While she could zip around as much as wanted blitzed off her rocker on ghost juice, there were still physical limitations to her rockets—if anything blew or overheated, she'd be stuck sitting in the desert sand until her parts cooled down enough, or she made the necessary repairs.  So it was completely understandable for Brooklyn to become a bit impatient searching for a nebulous seventh person.
Why hadn't I parked in the shade that day? she thought as she passed by a familiar-looking dune.  I could have saved myself—extension, that was the word—so much trouble.  I mean, if it's going to be bright outside, you might as well…
This gave her an idea.
She shot up into the air to get a better glimpse of the landscape.
Three miles due west was the pyramid with its elevators and subterranean paths that what were they doing there oh wait she had asked herself that same question for ten minutes earlier.  Then, two miles past that was a mountain range.  At its base was a large opening to a cave—the same cave that Gepetto and his extension had previously come from.  (Though Gepetto had not said a word about it to the others—mainly because he had no recollection of what had happened there.)
Brooklyn figured that, if anyone else would be somewhere in this hellhole, it'd have to be there.





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Norman Pollet, even having fallen into considerable fortune with this latest turn of events, cursed every echo that bounced of the cave's walls.  Each onlidyrnrfe put him on edge for attacks from the demon that weighed down on him.  Even though he was free from him here, he was still apprehensive.  In fact, being emancipated was, in a way, worse—the calm, he felt, could break at any second.  At one time, he actually shouted, "I can hear you!" to the echoes.
His new followers asked him what this meant.  He explained that it was just his god again, divining him to hurry up for Pete's sake.  He looked back on the four tough-skinned lizard-like beings now standing by his word as they swayed remotely—even a bit catatonically—and then, with a knock of a staff against the ground, heeded the wise man's words to hurry on out of the underground passage.
It surely had been Nihart Herb.  And an incredibly potent specimen at that.  After his test—which had proven to be more than successful, as his subject had displayed the "beginner's fervor" before being sent off—he took a few ounces of it himself.  He reveled in its relaxing properties without a single worry of experiencing some of its more extreme effects (after all, he had built up an immunity to it).  As he sat staring tranquilly at his staff, he thought to himself, oh, what a perfect cave this is, so nicely carved, so elegantly marked…
It took a few minutes in his state for him to realize that the markings on the walls were unnatural.  Something had to have put them there.  And with the way this cave had seemingly been dug out, coupled with the fact that someone had left an unlit torch at the entrance with a flintrock, signs pointed to one thing:  something, at some time or another, lived here. 
He picked up a torch and attempted to light it.  It took a few minutes to finally light it.  Then, he headed down into the cave.  The passage narrowed out after the first thousand or so feet, then continued winding on in an increasing decline.    After ten minutes of walking—just as he thought about turning back—he happened upon them.
A sharp fall led down to a hollow where four lizard-like beings lived.  They were sitting in a circle when he came across them, doing something with stones and chiseled blocks… cards?  Were they gambling?  The four lizardmen looked on at him half with interest, and half with the want of being left alone.
"Rggle dggle…?" a short Lizardman with a taught face mumbled.
Norman raised his right arm and began his work.





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Finally at the entrance to the mine, Brooklyn took a lie-down on the dirt.  It was important that she rest her motor a bit before heading off any further.  She didn't want to have to bring out the welding torch again.  Also, isn't it nice to just lie down once in a while?
But she perked back up at the sight of a dim glow coming from the deep in the tunnel.  She hovered defensively while she decided what to do, then headed toward the light.  At its source, she saw Norman Pollet and his four new followers.
He looked at Brooklyn for a few moments, trying to remember if the machine had been one of the things the Counselor had brought to this desert.  Then, he turned back while pointing to the levitating treestroyer with his staff.
"And this was the sign I said would be sent."
The four disciples gaped in wonder.
Brooklyn rolled a sprocket.  Though she was glad that her search for this last person was over, she couldn't help but think that he was at least a little bit of a rube by this first impression.  She had some questions to ask, but she thought it would be better suited for the entrance of the cave—it was still rather dark back here, and it would be hard to read what she had to say by the light of only a single torch.  She led the way.
At the entrance of the cave, she stopped hovering suddenly.  As the roving party stopped, she turned to the wall and asked, "WhO?"
"Norman Pollet.  I am here not to fight, but to spread my word across the plaines."
She shook back and forth a bit, then raised back up and pointed once again to the word, "WhO?"
"These fellows?"
"Bgggh, brggle?" one of the lizardmen asked.
She nodded.
"I saw some markings on the wall of this cavern and figured that this cave was probably inhabited by something.  So I went out in search.  There, at the bottom of this cavern, I found these four.  I showed them the light.  They have become my followers.  My disciples.  My… entourage."  (A lighting effect caused by the sun bouncing off Brooklyn's chain and to Norman's eye produced a little sparkle.)
"Rggle dng pwggle chzz," one of the lizardmen said.
"Rggle dng pwggle chzz," the other three chanted at once.
But… how?  How could a person do such a thing?  Did these weird things even understand English?  She had to ask:
"hOW?"
"How what?"
"hOW COnvInCE?"
Norman scratched his head, puzzled as the dickens.  "Cow… convenience?  What on Earth does that…"
Brooklyn thought about killing this idiot right now.  He would be useless to their group.  Instead, she retraced her letters to make them a bit clearer."
"Ohhh… how did I convince them? Well, that's easy."
Norman flung his arms out as if they had suddenly been covered in serpents and he needed desperately to expel them, and repeated this action with each word of him saying:
"Forceful.  Hand.  Gestures."
The lizards behind him just bobbed their heads vacantly.
"Anyway, I believe that what I've gotten most from these fellows is that there's an elaborate system of mining tunnels down there."
Brooklyn revved excitedly, finally having gotten to something a little less unbearable.  She aimed herself at the wall and bore into it anxiously.  She momentarily forgot what she had been sent out to do in the first place when she started writing:
"shOulD WE EXPLOrE—"
The walls around them began vibrating violently.  Then, sudden booms came from inside the caverns.  The lizards started yowling in terror.
"You're causing a cave-in!" Norman shouted. "Quick!"
At once, the party leapt from the cave as the bangs of the Earth folding inside itself increased in velocity.
The damage wasn't visible from the entrance—but residual dust spewed out from the inside of the cave where the cave-in had occurred.
The four lizardmen, with eyes wide open, looked back at where their home had been.  Then, they looked to Norman and fell to their knees.
Brooklyn revved as if asking to know what that was about.  Of course, it wasn't as if she needed to ask Norman for permission to boast…
"Ha ha... do you know what the quaint thing about that is?  I told them that an imminent fate awaited those who did not join me."  He paused for a second, ruminating about the situation.  While he did, the lizards took another glance at the floating machine.
"And at the same time, I also told them that you were a sign sent from above.  So they might… fear you now."  The lizardmen shrunk away a bit as she turned to them.
Brooklyn directed herself away from them, disregarding her new status as a Prophesized Doomsaw of the Apocalypse, and pointed on toward the pyramid, leading the way for the pulpitman and his entourage.