Re: The Wretched Rite - Round Two - Inferno Alpha
02-21-2012, 01:58 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.
Alice reached the bottom of the stairs; her hands balled up into fists, her shirt damp and caked with congealing ink crusted around her heart. Her face was not angry, not sad, not anything. Her expression was serene, almost as though something else was doing the thinking for her for a moment. Something that had its heart set on a climactic confrontation. Alice’s hands pressed against the heavy oak doors. Her feet strode one in front of the other into the dishevelled library. The atmosphere seemed to change as she walked in, trailing a breeze that idly flicked over the leaves of fallen books as she passed them. Heads turned to look at her; the heads of the humanistic animals that populated the now devastated town. Her eyes scan the room, looking for the telltale lavender skin of the tsote that she is here to be killed by. Vera’s fate still lingers in the room, but she is gone. Alice’s body seems to droop when it comes to the realisation that the other Tsote is not there. Sure she had no weapon, sure she was doomed to be killed by the woman that was supposed to be standing in front of her, but this would have made an awesome locale for a climactic showdown. Narrative imperative all but demanded that their story be brought to a close. Alice was deep down in there somewhere, she fought her way to the surface for a moment under the perplexed gaze of the watching creatures.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” she asked, and then before their very eyes she was gone.
--------
The next thing Alice knew she was kneeling on the warm stony floor of another world. The skyline, such as it was, was all rocky ridges and geysers and plumes of smoke rising from outcrops of rock. Above her a night sky; starless and almost completely clear. The landscape was very evocative, a clear hellscape if ever one had been sighted. The rocks had a dark red tint that the makers had probably worked hard to get exactly right. The only problem was that the Tsote had never really had a concept of heaven or hell. The moral imperative of their species was to do as they were fated to do, and whether they accepted it or not this was what would ultimately happen. There was no need to reward those who had righteously accepted their fate and no need to punish those who tried to run from theirs. They could not run forever. When they made contact with humans they did learn of their concepts of heaven and hell, but to them it did not make sense. Their morality was by and large removed from a concept of right or wrong, only what you would do and what you would not. That is not to say that some Tsote did not take up the religion, some did, though by and large it was probably because they had been fated to do so.
Alice climbed to her feet and glanced down at her chest to discover that the ink that had clung to it, clouding her mind, making awful decisions for the sake of an exciting finale, had gone. The memory of what she had done made her feel nauseous; heading downstairs to confront the Tsote who would kill her. Attempting to console herself with such a pitiful boast that she would not make it easy upon her opponent. To truly make it difficult for her it was best to turn and run the other way, she knew that. Luckily it had all turned out for the best. More or less. If you could call being here, wherever here was, the best.
“I will give you a moment to make peace with your fate.” A voice said from behind her.
FUCK.
“If it helps I will not enjoy what I am about to do.” Vera lied. “I am merely an agent of fate.” Alice turned around slowly to face her fated opponent. In the air around them their fates intertwined. It was almost beautiful, if you had the requisite senses to perceive that kind of thing and were not about to be killed that is. Vera had a smug smirk on her face and her razorwhip uncoiled in her hand, it trailed in the dirt by her feet. Her other hand was on the butt of her pistol at her waist, it quite clearly said, I could use this… but I’d rather not. Vera had waited a long time for this, she’d rather wait a little longer than have the whole thing be over in one momentary spurt of action.
“Fuck you.” Alice spat at her. Vera’s brow furrowed and her smirk cracked into a disappointed frown.
“Really?” Vera asked incredulously. “I’m really fated to battle one of those fucking bitches who can’t accept her own destiny?” She looked as though she had swallowed something distasteful. “This is…” she struggled for the right words. “This is so… embarrassing.” Alice scowled.
“You’re embarrassed?” Her voice was hard. Vera was too close, if Alice turned to run one slash from that razorwhip would, if not kill her, then certainly make fleeing the scene an issue. “What, you’re going to be ashamed to tell your stuck up fate blessed spoilt bitch friends that you killed me?” There was a long pause as Vera regarded her opponent.
“Yes.” She said eventually.
“How truly awful.” Alice retorted snidely. “My heart goes out to you. However will you cope with such a monumental fucking hardship?”
“I’ll lie.” Vera said simply, disregarding the sarcasm of the question. “Tell them that my opponent was noble. Not some fate denying street trash.” For a minute nothing was said, the conversation seemed to have come to a natural conclusion and there seemed only one thing left for the two of them to do. Maybe it was time to give up, Alice thought, accept fate and lie down and die. No that was the lingering after effects of the narrator’s ink talking. She was not going to die. Not here in some bizarre world she didn’t understand, and not to her. Not to Vera. Alice screamed and leapt forwards.
It was the last thing Vera had been expecting. Alice crashed into her before she had time to react, wrestling her to the ground. They landed heavily against the hard rock floor, Vera bearing the brunt of the blow. Her razorwhip knocked from her hand landed a couple of feet away in the dark red dirt. They struggled against one another, Vera clearly on the back foot as Alice attempted to force her pistol from its holster. Vera had been caught unprepared and knocked off balance, but it did not take her long to recover. Alice’s limbs were thin and stick like. She’d been living rough and hadn’t had a good hearty meal in a long time. It took its toll on her strength; she simply could not overpower the fate-blessed tsote. She was thrown off, and for a moment she didn’t know how to respond. Her eyes met the razorwhip discarded a couple of feet in front of her and she scurried forwards, snatching it up and climbing to her feet in one swift motion. She spun around to find Vera standing there, her pistol unsheathed and pointing directly at her.
“Fuck.” Alice muttered breathlessly. “I don’t suppose you’d respond well to encouragement to think for yourself for once in your life would you?”
“If it helps,” Vera said emotionlessly, the way this ritual was supposed to be said “I will not enjoy what I am about to do. I am merely an agent of fate.” Alice refused to look away, she stared her opponent in the eyes, unflinching. Neither Tsote seemed particularly pleased with what was happening, but Vera would not back down and Alice could not.“And this is your-”
“Hello!” Vera was cut off by a friendly mechanical voice. Approaching the pair was a robot, tall and silver with numerous red eyes and horns, a mechanical trident in its mechanical grip, hooves and a pointed tail. Even Alice who had had minimal contact with human culture could tell what this was supposed to be. “Hi there and welcome to Inferno Alpha.” It said as it got close to the pair. “We here at Inferno Alpha apologise for the delay in our services. Let’s see about getting you two assigned to your eternal punishments.”
“What are you?” Vera asked. Her attention had wandered; the pistol drooped between her and Alice.
“I am an assignment officer.” The robot said, its voice not discourteous, after all those who it greeted were customers and it did not do to upset a customer, but it was clear that this was information she should already have known. Alice slowly, so as not to draw Vera's attention, lowered herself towards the ground in a move that resembled a deep curtsey, and dropped the razorwhip careful to make as little noise as possible. It was such a clumsy weapon, Alice was pretty sure if she tried to use it she’d end up chopping her own ear off or something.
“You have no fate.” Vera said curiously. The machine did not have a good response for that.
“If you will let me process you I will see to it that you are sent to your eternal fate as quickly as possible.” It replied.
Alice pounced. She jumped forwards gripped both hands around the pistol, careful to tilt it towards the floor as much as she could, and pulled back in one swift motion. The unexpected twisting of the gun meant Vera lost her grip easily and she stumbled forwards to land in a heap at Alice’s feet. Alice was fumbling with the weapon for a second, twisting it the right way around. It took her a moment to get it right. She aimed down and without hesitation she pulled the trigger. The whole thing took a couple of seconds. It was over by the time that the robot was able to process what had just happened. Alice screamed and Vera smirked. The gun had jammed.
“Fine.” The robot demon assignment officer said rather huffily. There were protocols for when someone decided they did not like the sound of eternal damnation once they were there in person.
Alice fumbled with the pistol, attempting to clear the jam but having no real idea how to do so. Vera stopped this short when she kicked Alice’s legs out from underneath her. As they struggled on the floor, cursing one another angrily, they each felt a sharp pain as something small and metallic punctured their bodies and everything faded to black.
--------
The assignment officer proceeded with his scans (non invasive brain scans designed to determine the sins of newcomers to Inferno Alpha so as to best allocate them to a suitable circle) on the unconscious Tsotes, he ran the scan on Vera twice just to be certain, and with a shrug (or as much as a shrug as a mostly emotionless robot can manage) hauled both of them, and their possessions to processing. Alice was the easiest of the pair to deal with. She, along with what the processing offer had assumed was her pistol, had been placed in a pod to be sent down to the seventh circle, to the inner ring. He was quite pleased about that. It had been a while since he had processed anyone so high profile, so to speak, and he felt he could use the commendation that such a processing would receive.
Vera on the other hand, well, let’s just talk about Vera. Though she’d been flirtatious back in her former life, she’d never really been what you could call lustful. She hadn’t been a glutton, her slim waistline was testament to that. In terms of greed perhaps she had more than most people, but her fate had conferred that upon her. She’d never asked for it. She was not greedy. Though she knew she would kill someone very soon she had never done so up till this point in her life. She had in fact before the confrontation with Alice never raised a blade in anger. She was always honest about herself. She had never committed fraud and she had never betrayed anyone. While you could have made a very good argument she was to be assigned for being a heretic, for not believing what the Bible taught, there was a flaw in that argument. The scanners saw her devotion to fate. The two concepts; faith and fate, to the Tsote they were the same thing.
The scanner had been forced to conclude that she had been misplaced. And so the processing officer prepared a short range shuttle for her. She was being sent to where she belonged, her rightful sphere of Paradiso Alpha.
Alice reached the bottom of the stairs; her hands balled up into fists, her shirt damp and caked with congealing ink crusted around her heart. Her face was not angry, not sad, not anything. Her expression was serene, almost as though something else was doing the thinking for her for a moment. Something that had its heart set on a climactic confrontation. Alice’s hands pressed against the heavy oak doors. Her feet strode one in front of the other into the dishevelled library. The atmosphere seemed to change as she walked in, trailing a breeze that idly flicked over the leaves of fallen books as she passed them. Heads turned to look at her; the heads of the humanistic animals that populated the now devastated town. Her eyes scan the room, looking for the telltale lavender skin of the tsote that she is here to be killed by. Vera’s fate still lingers in the room, but she is gone. Alice’s body seems to droop when it comes to the realisation that the other Tsote is not there. Sure she had no weapon, sure she was doomed to be killed by the woman that was supposed to be standing in front of her, but this would have made an awesome locale for a climactic showdown. Narrative imperative all but demanded that their story be brought to a close. Alice was deep down in there somewhere, she fought her way to the surface for a moment under the perplexed gaze of the watching creatures.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” she asked, and then before their very eyes she was gone.
--------
The next thing Alice knew she was kneeling on the warm stony floor of another world. The skyline, such as it was, was all rocky ridges and geysers and plumes of smoke rising from outcrops of rock. Above her a night sky; starless and almost completely clear. The landscape was very evocative, a clear hellscape if ever one had been sighted. The rocks had a dark red tint that the makers had probably worked hard to get exactly right. The only problem was that the Tsote had never really had a concept of heaven or hell. The moral imperative of their species was to do as they were fated to do, and whether they accepted it or not this was what would ultimately happen. There was no need to reward those who had righteously accepted their fate and no need to punish those who tried to run from theirs. They could not run forever. When they made contact with humans they did learn of their concepts of heaven and hell, but to them it did not make sense. Their morality was by and large removed from a concept of right or wrong, only what you would do and what you would not. That is not to say that some Tsote did not take up the religion, some did, though by and large it was probably because they had been fated to do so.
Alice climbed to her feet and glanced down at her chest to discover that the ink that had clung to it, clouding her mind, making awful decisions for the sake of an exciting finale, had gone. The memory of what she had done made her feel nauseous; heading downstairs to confront the Tsote who would kill her. Attempting to console herself with such a pitiful boast that she would not make it easy upon her opponent. To truly make it difficult for her it was best to turn and run the other way, she knew that. Luckily it had all turned out for the best. More or less. If you could call being here, wherever here was, the best.
“I will give you a moment to make peace with your fate.” A voice said from behind her.
FUCK.
“If it helps I will not enjoy what I am about to do.” Vera lied. “I am merely an agent of fate.” Alice turned around slowly to face her fated opponent. In the air around them their fates intertwined. It was almost beautiful, if you had the requisite senses to perceive that kind of thing and were not about to be killed that is. Vera had a smug smirk on her face and her razorwhip uncoiled in her hand, it trailed in the dirt by her feet. Her other hand was on the butt of her pistol at her waist, it quite clearly said, I could use this… but I’d rather not. Vera had waited a long time for this, she’d rather wait a little longer than have the whole thing be over in one momentary spurt of action.
“Fuck you.” Alice spat at her. Vera’s brow furrowed and her smirk cracked into a disappointed frown.
“Really?” Vera asked incredulously. “I’m really fated to battle one of those fucking bitches who can’t accept her own destiny?” She looked as though she had swallowed something distasteful. “This is…” she struggled for the right words. “This is so… embarrassing.” Alice scowled.
“You’re embarrassed?” Her voice was hard. Vera was too close, if Alice turned to run one slash from that razorwhip would, if not kill her, then certainly make fleeing the scene an issue. “What, you’re going to be ashamed to tell your stuck up fate blessed spoilt bitch friends that you killed me?” There was a long pause as Vera regarded her opponent.
“Yes.” She said eventually.
“How truly awful.” Alice retorted snidely. “My heart goes out to you. However will you cope with such a monumental fucking hardship?”
“I’ll lie.” Vera said simply, disregarding the sarcasm of the question. “Tell them that my opponent was noble. Not some fate denying street trash.” For a minute nothing was said, the conversation seemed to have come to a natural conclusion and there seemed only one thing left for the two of them to do. Maybe it was time to give up, Alice thought, accept fate and lie down and die. No that was the lingering after effects of the narrator’s ink talking. She was not going to die. Not here in some bizarre world she didn’t understand, and not to her. Not to Vera. Alice screamed and leapt forwards.
It was the last thing Vera had been expecting. Alice crashed into her before she had time to react, wrestling her to the ground. They landed heavily against the hard rock floor, Vera bearing the brunt of the blow. Her razorwhip knocked from her hand landed a couple of feet away in the dark red dirt. They struggled against one another, Vera clearly on the back foot as Alice attempted to force her pistol from its holster. Vera had been caught unprepared and knocked off balance, but it did not take her long to recover. Alice’s limbs were thin and stick like. She’d been living rough and hadn’t had a good hearty meal in a long time. It took its toll on her strength; she simply could not overpower the fate-blessed tsote. She was thrown off, and for a moment she didn’t know how to respond. Her eyes met the razorwhip discarded a couple of feet in front of her and she scurried forwards, snatching it up and climbing to her feet in one swift motion. She spun around to find Vera standing there, her pistol unsheathed and pointing directly at her.
“Fuck.” Alice muttered breathlessly. “I don’t suppose you’d respond well to encouragement to think for yourself for once in your life would you?”
“If it helps,” Vera said emotionlessly, the way this ritual was supposed to be said “I will not enjoy what I am about to do. I am merely an agent of fate.” Alice refused to look away, she stared her opponent in the eyes, unflinching. Neither Tsote seemed particularly pleased with what was happening, but Vera would not back down and Alice could not.“And this is your-”
“Hello!” Vera was cut off by a friendly mechanical voice. Approaching the pair was a robot, tall and silver with numerous red eyes and horns, a mechanical trident in its mechanical grip, hooves and a pointed tail. Even Alice who had had minimal contact with human culture could tell what this was supposed to be. “Hi there and welcome to Inferno Alpha.” It said as it got close to the pair. “We here at Inferno Alpha apologise for the delay in our services. Let’s see about getting you two assigned to your eternal punishments.”
“What are you?” Vera asked. Her attention had wandered; the pistol drooped between her and Alice.
“I am an assignment officer.” The robot said, its voice not discourteous, after all those who it greeted were customers and it did not do to upset a customer, but it was clear that this was information she should already have known. Alice slowly, so as not to draw Vera's attention, lowered herself towards the ground in a move that resembled a deep curtsey, and dropped the razorwhip careful to make as little noise as possible. It was such a clumsy weapon, Alice was pretty sure if she tried to use it she’d end up chopping her own ear off or something.
“You have no fate.” Vera said curiously. The machine did not have a good response for that.
“If you will let me process you I will see to it that you are sent to your eternal fate as quickly as possible.” It replied.
Alice pounced. She jumped forwards gripped both hands around the pistol, careful to tilt it towards the floor as much as she could, and pulled back in one swift motion. The unexpected twisting of the gun meant Vera lost her grip easily and she stumbled forwards to land in a heap at Alice’s feet. Alice was fumbling with the weapon for a second, twisting it the right way around. It took her a moment to get it right. She aimed down and without hesitation she pulled the trigger. The whole thing took a couple of seconds. It was over by the time that the robot was able to process what had just happened. Alice screamed and Vera smirked. The gun had jammed.
“Fine.” The robot demon assignment officer said rather huffily. There were protocols for when someone decided they did not like the sound of eternal damnation once they were there in person.
Alice fumbled with the pistol, attempting to clear the jam but having no real idea how to do so. Vera stopped this short when she kicked Alice’s legs out from underneath her. As they struggled on the floor, cursing one another angrily, they each felt a sharp pain as something small and metallic punctured their bodies and everything faded to black.
--------
The assignment officer proceeded with his scans (non invasive brain scans designed to determine the sins of newcomers to Inferno Alpha so as to best allocate them to a suitable circle) on the unconscious Tsotes, he ran the scan on Vera twice just to be certain, and with a shrug (or as much as a shrug as a mostly emotionless robot can manage) hauled both of them, and their possessions to processing. Alice was the easiest of the pair to deal with. She, along with what the processing offer had assumed was her pistol, had been placed in a pod to be sent down to the seventh circle, to the inner ring. He was quite pleased about that. It had been a while since he had processed anyone so high profile, so to speak, and he felt he could use the commendation that such a processing would receive.
Vera on the other hand, well, let’s just talk about Vera. Though she’d been flirtatious back in her former life, she’d never really been what you could call lustful. She hadn’t been a glutton, her slim waistline was testament to that. In terms of greed perhaps she had more than most people, but her fate had conferred that upon her. She’d never asked for it. She was not greedy. Though she knew she would kill someone very soon she had never done so up till this point in her life. She had in fact before the confrontation with Alice never raised a blade in anger. She was always honest about herself. She had never committed fraud and she had never betrayed anyone. While you could have made a very good argument she was to be assigned for being a heretic, for not believing what the Bible taught, there was a flaw in that argument. The scanners saw her devotion to fate. The two concepts; faith and fate, to the Tsote they were the same thing.
The scanner had been forced to conclude that she had been misplaced. And so the processing officer prepared a short range shuttle for her. She was being sent to where she belonged, her rightful sphere of Paradiso Alpha.
Heaven Help Us | Make Room!!!! | I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You