Re: The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round One: Genreshift
10-12-2011, 12:59 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Akumu.
Sigrar cleaved through an icy blast, spraying the hydra's metallic hide with flame. “What have you done with the princess?” Cedric yelled, adding “RARRRRRGH!!” as he spurred Horsegark forward to engage the beast of hell.
“I told you, she went up the tower to get away from your insanity! Stop attacking!” Nalyg implored. Still, the charge continued. Horsegark leapt towards the hydra, as Cedric leapt from Horsegark, driving himself at improbable speeds straight towards Nalyg's head. Just behind him, Razeran struck viper-quick and closed its jaws around Horsegark's midsection. Cedric heard the crunch of teeth against armor and the terrible pained whinny from behind, and screamed with even more righteous fury than usual as he brought Sigrar flashing towards the hydra's central face.
Black lightning shifted and fractured.
Captain Sigmundson brought down the grip of his service revolver, giving the mustard-tied Kryesan brother a solid blow across the temple. The thug dropped like a sack full of ground beef. Sigmundson flipped his revolver around, catching the grip and swinging around to cover the other two brothers. “You're under arrest for kidnapping, assault on a police officer, and resisting arrest. Resist some more. I dare you, you filthy animals.”
One of the brothers let his tommy-gun clatter to the floor and put his hands on his head immediately, but the other was too busy smashing in the windows of the Captain's car to comply. Sigmundson shifted his aim, but hesitated, filled with confusion as to why and how he had gotten his black-and-white in front of the elevator bank on the fourteenth floor of Matic's casino. Before he could get his mind right, a terrible crunching came from above and the elevator doors blew out in a gust of air and rainwater, smashing all in the hallway against the far wall.
Then he hit the staircase.
Somewhere in the wreckage, Sir Cedric was probably still battling the hydra. Melissa found it hard to believe that only a short time ago she had thought of the knight as simply an overzealous boor. It was clear now that he was in fact dangerously unhinged. They probably all were, in fact. What could have thrown her in with this collection of lunatics and monsters? She set her sights on the top of the tower, and began to climb. Her ticket home was up there, a way to get away from all this madness and back to the comfort and seclusion of the Ivory Tower, and she would be damned if she was going to let it slip through her fingers.
Coming around to the side of the tower that was angled towards the sky, she found a crumpled figure lying in the crook between the stairs and the tower wall. As she inched her way upwards, it shifted and groaned within its overlarge robes. Melissa watched the apprentice with concern, then looked back towards the top of the tower. She was so close! With narrowed eyes and a set jaw, she continued to climb.
Empress Phere stood over the prone body of Cascala, a small frown creasing her face. The mage had spasmed and her fine vestments singed and smoked, but she still breathed. Despite Phere's best efforts, neither Ivan nor Cascala had managed to kill the other. It looked like she would have to take care of this herself. Phere cast about her gaze and settled on a ceremonial dagger caught up in the corner of the room. She began to move towards it, when black lightning scythed across the room.
PH-373 grabbed her head and screeched inhumanly. Her wireless connection was attempting to connect to cameras that were currently carrier pigeons, scrying circles, and other genre-appropriate analogs. The cross-feedback was overwhelming. Her vision systems were linked directly into the implant, and it could not be turned off. The only option was to disconnect the affected systems altogether. The pain stopped, but she was blind.
In the doorway, Princess Melissa stared without comprehension at the interior of the tower summit. Past the stone archway she was standing in, the room was gleaming metal and wires. An automaton built in Empress Phere's image shuffled slowly over the slightly angled floor, moving slowly towards an unconscious woman strapped with a stupefying amount of machinery. Past the gaping hole where wind and rain whipped in from the darkness was a makeshift archway, leading nowhere, covered in frantically blinking lights and buzzing with barely contained energy. From this came a garbled voice.
“Mell-lllsss that xxkkou?”
Princess Melissa stepped impulsively towards the voice, which tugged at the back of her memory. As she crossed the threshold of the room, her sodden dress constricted and twisted, seamlessly transitioning into a side-buttoned shirt and parachute pants, as was the fashion on Valak Orbital. She was an agent of the Culture, and everything in this room made sense.
She made a bee-line for the malfunctioning gateway, ignoring the mad scientist and android. “Drone? What's happened to you?”
“Yyyyou should kn-kn-know, you did it to meeeebbbutt that's not important right now. This is so much bigger than a power struggle on a back-k-k-k-kwoods planet. I've seen suchhhhhings, attached to this device of yours. You need to rip out my memory core and get it back to Contact. I'm done for, but maybe we can save reality.”
Harmon was already prying away the hastily welded sheets of metal enclosing the archway, and gasped when she saw the internal workings of the drone splayed out and interconnected into bits and pieces of electronics and machinery from around Matic's workshop. She looked around plaintively, blinking back tears as she realized she didn't even know where her partner's optical sensors were and that she couldn't look him in the eye.
“There's... there's nothing I can do. Your fusion to this thing is permanent.”
“I know that! But we're professhhhhhionals, and we knew the risks when we signed up. So do it already! Do it...”
Harmon reached into the innards of the machine, grasped the still-living heart of the drone, and pulled. It was kind enough not to scream when she did it.
And right about then, PH-373 clobbered her over the back of the head with the Tome.
The android pounced on top of Harmon as she fell, closing its hands about her throat. It was screaming something about how everything had been under control until she had fucked it all. Harmon was having trouble concentrating on the exact grievances as she asphyxiated. She tensed the muscles in her neck and glanded React, kicking up into the android's torso as her body flooded with stress hormones. PH-373 flew off into the side of the gateway, from which electronic entrails still trailed to the core in Harmon's hand, but bounced back almost immediately to fall upon Harmon again.
“I could reach everything, I could see everything, and now I have nothing because you had to go and break the universe!”
They rolled about on the floor, PH-373 out for blood and Harmon trying to protect the vital memory core and her life. Genres fractured again, and they were a battlefield nurse and an Axis double agent, then a country surgeon and a corrupt mayor. The cells of reality constricted, and the tower shook as the building underneath tore itself apart with the stresses of different modes of perception trying to patch themselves together. Some things remained constant: the floor was slick, tilted, and at the bottom of the slope had a gaping hole leading out into the night. Soon enough, flickering through genres too rapidly to enumerate, Phere, Harmon, and the Tome launched out into the emptiness.
Sigrar cleaved through an icy blast, spraying the hydra's metallic hide with flame. “What have you done with the princess?” Cedric yelled, adding “RARRRRRGH!!” as he spurred Horsegark forward to engage the beast of hell.
“I told you, she went up the tower to get away from your insanity! Stop attacking!” Nalyg implored. Still, the charge continued. Horsegark leapt towards the hydra, as Cedric leapt from Horsegark, driving himself at improbable speeds straight towards Nalyg's head. Just behind him, Razeran struck viper-quick and closed its jaws around Horsegark's midsection. Cedric heard the crunch of teeth against armor and the terrible pained whinny from behind, and screamed with even more righteous fury than usual as he brought Sigrar flashing towards the hydra's central face.
Black lightning shifted and fractured.
Captain Sigmundson brought down the grip of his service revolver, giving the mustard-tied Kryesan brother a solid blow across the temple. The thug dropped like a sack full of ground beef. Sigmundson flipped his revolver around, catching the grip and swinging around to cover the other two brothers. “You're under arrest for kidnapping, assault on a police officer, and resisting arrest. Resist some more. I dare you, you filthy animals.”
One of the brothers let his tommy-gun clatter to the floor and put his hands on his head immediately, but the other was too busy smashing in the windows of the Captain's car to comply. Sigmundson shifted his aim, but hesitated, filled with confusion as to why and how he had gotten his black-and-white in front of the elevator bank on the fourteenth floor of Matic's casino. Before he could get his mind right, a terrible crunching came from above and the elevator doors blew out in a gust of air and rainwater, smashing all in the hallway against the far wall.
- - -
Above, the stone tower leading to Archmage Matic's workshop dropped downwards and canted precariously to one side. The beam to which Ivan desperately clung jerked away from him, and he was suddenly in the open air, falling freely through the lashing rain. Sheets of parchment ejected from the study fluttered around him, and time seemed to move so slowly that he could read each word, penned in his own hand over years of apprenticeship. It had all seemed so important, but now the only thing he could think of was his sister's face. There would be no one left to get justice for her, now. I'm sorry, Jeremiah.Then he hit the staircase.
- - -
Had Princess Melissa not been clinging to the thick ivy growing up the side of the tower as she made her way up its rainslick stairs, she would have surely plummeted to her death. Now, hanging on to the tower wall above her, she glanced below to see the base of the tower replaced with a building of glass and metal, twisted and shattered under the tower's weight.Somewhere in the wreckage, Sir Cedric was probably still battling the hydra. Melissa found it hard to believe that only a short time ago she had thought of the knight as simply an overzealous boor. It was clear now that he was in fact dangerously unhinged. They probably all were, in fact. What could have thrown her in with this collection of lunatics and monsters? She set her sights on the top of the tower, and began to climb. Her ticket home was up there, a way to get away from all this madness and back to the comfort and seclusion of the Ivory Tower, and she would be damned if she was going to let it slip through her fingers.
Coming around to the side of the tower that was angled towards the sky, she found a crumpled figure lying in the crook between the stairs and the tower wall. As she inched her way upwards, it shifted and groaned within its overlarge robes. Melissa watched the apprentice with concern, then looked back towards the top of the tower. She was so close! With narrowed eyes and a set jaw, she continued to climb.
Empress Phere stood over the prone body of Cascala, a small frown creasing her face. The mage had spasmed and her fine vestments singed and smoked, but she still breathed. Despite Phere's best efforts, neither Ivan nor Cascala had managed to kill the other. It looked like she would have to take care of this herself. Phere cast about her gaze and settled on a ceremonial dagger caught up in the corner of the room. She began to move towards it, when black lightning scythed across the room.
PH-373 grabbed her head and screeched inhumanly. Her wireless connection was attempting to connect to cameras that were currently carrier pigeons, scrying circles, and other genre-appropriate analogs. The cross-feedback was overwhelming. Her vision systems were linked directly into the implant, and it could not be turned off. The only option was to disconnect the affected systems altogether. The pain stopped, but she was blind.
In the doorway, Princess Melissa stared without comprehension at the interior of the tower summit. Past the stone archway she was standing in, the room was gleaming metal and wires. An automaton built in Empress Phere's image shuffled slowly over the slightly angled floor, moving slowly towards an unconscious woman strapped with a stupefying amount of machinery. Past the gaping hole where wind and rain whipped in from the darkness was a makeshift archway, leading nowhere, covered in frantically blinking lights and buzzing with barely contained energy. From this came a garbled voice.
“Mell-lllsss that xxkkou?”
Princess Melissa stepped impulsively towards the voice, which tugged at the back of her memory. As she crossed the threshold of the room, her sodden dress constricted and twisted, seamlessly transitioning into a side-buttoned shirt and parachute pants, as was the fashion on Valak Orbital. She was an agent of the Culture, and everything in this room made sense.
She made a bee-line for the malfunctioning gateway, ignoring the mad scientist and android. “Drone? What's happened to you?”
“Yyyyou should kn-kn-know, you did it to meeeebbbutt that's not important right now. This is so much bigger than a power struggle on a back-k-k-k-kwoods planet. I've seen suchhhhhings, attached to this device of yours. You need to rip out my memory core and get it back to Contact. I'm done for, but maybe we can save reality.”
Harmon was already prying away the hastily welded sheets of metal enclosing the archway, and gasped when she saw the internal workings of the drone splayed out and interconnected into bits and pieces of electronics and machinery from around Matic's workshop. She looked around plaintively, blinking back tears as she realized she didn't even know where her partner's optical sensors were and that she couldn't look him in the eye.
“There's... there's nothing I can do. Your fusion to this thing is permanent.”
“I know that! But we're professhhhhhionals, and we knew the risks when we signed up. So do it already! Do it...”
Harmon reached into the innards of the machine, grasped the still-living heart of the drone, and pulled. It was kind enough not to scream when she did it.
And right about then, PH-373 clobbered her over the back of the head with the Tome.
The android pounced on top of Harmon as she fell, closing its hands about her throat. It was screaming something about how everything had been under control until she had fucked it all. Harmon was having trouble concentrating on the exact grievances as she asphyxiated. She tensed the muscles in her neck and glanded React, kicking up into the android's torso as her body flooded with stress hormones. PH-373 flew off into the side of the gateway, from which electronic entrails still trailed to the core in Harmon's hand, but bounced back almost immediately to fall upon Harmon again.
“I could reach everything, I could see everything, and now I have nothing because you had to go and break the universe!”
They rolled about on the floor, PH-373 out for blood and Harmon trying to protect the vital memory core and her life. Genres fractured again, and they were a battlefield nurse and an Axis double agent, then a country surgeon and a corrupt mayor. The cells of reality constricted, and the tower shook as the building underneath tore itself apart with the stresses of different modes of perception trying to patch themselves together. Some things remained constant: the floor was slick, tilted, and at the bottom of the slope had a gaping hole leading out into the night. Soon enough, flickering through genres too rapidly to enumerate, Phere, Harmon, and the Tome launched out into the emptiness.