Re: The Wretched Rite - Round Two - Inferno Alpha
08-31-2012, 07:44 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Jacquerel.
You might be forgiven for assuming that since extricating itself from a festering pool of gore, Malus mancinella had simply hidden itself from the punishment station's hostile inhabitants and then curled up for a nap. Indeed, while many of the other “participants” amused themselves by befriending robots, hunting each other and proposing marriage none of them saw hide nor hair of the Nature spirit (and not only because it possessed neither), but idle it had not been.
In truth its intention had been to avoid its fellows almost to the same extent that it did the demons. After the temporary madness that had aborted its attempts at expanding the forest it had decided that while some of them could well become allies they had been distracting him from more important things and this barren land needed far more attention than the previous locale had called for.
The only examples plant life on Inferno Alpha that M. could have stumbled upon were found within himself, Olivia and the wretched forms of the suicides which (on further inspection) were really just grotesquely twisted people rather than trees at all.
Honorope obviously had houseplants and Level One was honestly a fairly pleasant place to look at (though with the absence of any unbaptised to punish in a voluntary hell, it was mostly used as a robotic break room) but those places were too far and too exposed for Mancinella to roam.
The first thing M. was going to have to do would be open things out a bit, the partitioned nature of Inferno Alpha didn't really lend itself well to conversion into a garden, in fact several of the life support systems were set up specifically to combat it. It was fortunate then that those same systems necessitated ducts just about big enough for a shapeshifting panther to squeeze itself through (and that M. lacked any awareness of quite how clichéd it was being) and the parallel water pipes meant that in a pinch the tunnels that let the facility breathe could be hijacked to form a circulatory system of roots. The Styx has to drain somewhere, and the blood heating tubes for the pool of boiling body fluids that M. had experienced first hand (First branch? First paw?) worked very well as a fertiliser.
Better even than M. realised at the time, in fact.
The Nature Spirit had been thinking fairly... long term in its plans. With luck it would be able to set up something that could continue without its presence after the “round” ended and it was whisked involuntarily to somewhere else. Lacking any particularly strong supernatural ability to speed growth this was about the best it could hope for.
The addition of sinner blood to his first tenuous shoots though had an... interesting effect.
Considering the inmates were signed up for eternal torment anyway, the facility weren't terribly bothered about hygiene and just let the bodily fluids they'd started with mingle freely with that of the sufferers with the bare minimum of cleaning required to keep it from turning to rot as it circulated the heating system necessary to peel the skin of the bathers above, rather than immerse them in a relaxing sanguinary hot tub.
As a result of this, the slurry of assorted cells was also infested with billions of the nanomachines that patrolled the sinner's veins and attempted to keep them alive for as long as was humanly possible before signalling that someone needed more drastic replacement.
They got a bit lost when suddenly introduced to plants but by god they had a job to do and they weren't going to give up just because they weren't entirely sure what it was that they were doing, nor pay much heed to the fact that some of them hadn't actually even seen the inside of a person for years either.
The rapid, cancerous growths that sprang almost immediately from a one of its own shed branches (the acidic apples were seedless and infertile but cuttings will usually do in a pinch) were almost nothing like a tree at all, more a mass of bark-covered vines with regularly spaced clutches of deadly fruit. This reaction was... troubling to say the least, but also incredibly convenient. As much as it disliked compromising the purity of its “children”, M. conceded that this was going to allow its plans to proceed exponentially faster, perhaps even allowing it to witness the fruit of its own labours first hand (granted that the planet's transformation didn't result in the inadvertent death of one of the other dimensional travellers, of course).
Once things were properly prepared it could wean its plants off the growth enhancers, until then they would be needed.
To start with, M. set up an “orchard” in the lower level maintenance tunnels, rapidly producing great crops of fruit. The caustic liquids contained within the apples were potent (and fortunately just as strong even under the influence of the station nanomachines) but it was still going to take a vast harvest to burn through the station's internal structure. It was designed to isolate the place from space, after all!
This job really consisted more of shepherding the tangle of roots away from places it might be easily noticed than anything else, it grew fast enough on its own spreading to follow the path of the station's piping. There were definitely going to be a few issues a couple of hours down the line as the new forest drank the entire Styx reservoir but hopefully by the time anyone realised why it would be too late.
Once the apple farm was ticking over nicely all that remained was the “simple” task of collecting and concealing caches of apples at strategic points on every other level of the station. M. could “set them off” when the time was right using its empathic bond though it had never quite had to deal with so many at once. The plan had been to activate the ones in the upper levels once the floors beneath had started to collapse together, but someone already seemed to have started an assault on the higher floors for it...
As The Godbot's rampage began overhead fewer and fewer imps stuck around to perform their cleaning duties and it was no longer necessary to be so secretive, and as the exuberant plantlife became more and more firmly entangled with the punishment station's immortality systems the less the little robots were actually capable of doing even if they did find this new invader.
Even their pest-extermination flame-throwers didn't seem to have much effect, achieving at most a temporary halt up until flames licked at a crop of apples... at which point M. would become aware of the assault and use its telekinetic powers to turn the unfortunate demons into puddles of corrosive rust.
A few particularly lost sinners tried to eat the apples which had even less pleasant consequences.
It was nearing the final stages of the plan, while M. was checking out one of these incursions personally, that it crossed path once again with Alluvion. The River was, for some reason, poking a walker that had already expired with a sharp piece of metal apparently salvaged from an office chair stand.
M. had basically no interest in finding out what he was up to let alone getting pulled along behind him like last time, but it would also be a particular shame if the River Spirit was buried in the oncoming collapse. Despite Alluvion's bothersome and easily distracted nature M. knew that they had fairly similar goals and had no desire to kill an ally... which also suddenly reminded it of Olivia.
As far as M. could tell from the apple it had placed previously within her own canopy she was not in any immediate danger and was also fairly high up, meaning pretty safe from the destruction that would occur as soon as the time seemed right. That was also where most of the station's attendant robots seemed to have gone though which was a little bit worrying, if Alluvion could be convinced to escort her all the way to the top floor that would really kill two birds with one stone.
With a terrible clattering, the Nature Spirit dropped itself from a generously sized grate, landing just a few feet away from Alluvion. While the river spirit could somehow understand what he wanted, M. was still totally incapable of any form of speech and thus had to make sure to attract his attention first before any kind of meaningful exchange could occur at all.
Not that an “exchange” was what it was looking for here, the less chance Alluvion had to speak the better.
”River friend, there is danger on the lower floors. You will find the Ivy/walker if you head back upwards, she must be taken to the highest level.”
“Ah, hello! How did you know I was looking fo-”
But the panther was gone as quickly as it had arrived, racing off at a pace that Alluvion's literally sluggish movements could never match. A little rude perhaps, but the plant spirit didn't really care at all about conversational conventions and Alluvion was barely aware of them, though he would have liked to catch up with what the Manicella had been doing since they were separated in the library.
This was in fact exactly why M. didn't stick around.
Malus mancinella's inherited hunter's instinct combined with Alluvion's obliviousness meant it was a fairly simple task to follow behind him completely unnoticed, it had no intention of sticking around the danger zone when he started collapsing supports either and didn't really rate Alluvion's ability to fend off demons particularly highly (unaware that his touch was close to death for electronic machines).
By a frustratingly circuitous route, the pair began to ascend towards the highest level.
Now left completely unattended, through lift shafts, pipes and air ducts the immortal tree began to follow.
In truth its intention had been to avoid its fellows almost to the same extent that it did the demons. After the temporary madness that had aborted its attempts at expanding the forest it had decided that while some of them could well become allies they had been distracting him from more important things and this barren land needed far more attention than the previous locale had called for.
The only examples plant life on Inferno Alpha that M. could have stumbled upon were found within himself, Olivia and the wretched forms of the suicides which (on further inspection) were really just grotesquely twisted people rather than trees at all.
Honorope obviously had houseplants and Level One was honestly a fairly pleasant place to look at (though with the absence of any unbaptised to punish in a voluntary hell, it was mostly used as a robotic break room) but those places were too far and too exposed for Mancinella to roam.
The first thing M. was going to have to do would be open things out a bit, the partitioned nature of Inferno Alpha didn't really lend itself well to conversion into a garden, in fact several of the life support systems were set up specifically to combat it. It was fortunate then that those same systems necessitated ducts just about big enough for a shapeshifting panther to squeeze itself through (and that M. lacked any awareness of quite how clichéd it was being) and the parallel water pipes meant that in a pinch the tunnels that let the facility breathe could be hijacked to form a circulatory system of roots. The Styx has to drain somewhere, and the blood heating tubes for the pool of boiling body fluids that M. had experienced first hand (First branch? First paw?) worked very well as a fertiliser.
Better even than M. realised at the time, in fact.
The Nature Spirit had been thinking fairly... long term in its plans. With luck it would be able to set up something that could continue without its presence after the “round” ended and it was whisked involuntarily to somewhere else. Lacking any particularly strong supernatural ability to speed growth this was about the best it could hope for.
The addition of sinner blood to his first tenuous shoots though had an... interesting effect.
Considering the inmates were signed up for eternal torment anyway, the facility weren't terribly bothered about hygiene and just let the bodily fluids they'd started with mingle freely with that of the sufferers with the bare minimum of cleaning required to keep it from turning to rot as it circulated the heating system necessary to peel the skin of the bathers above, rather than immerse them in a relaxing sanguinary hot tub.
As a result of this, the slurry of assorted cells was also infested with billions of the nanomachines that patrolled the sinner's veins and attempted to keep them alive for as long as was humanly possible before signalling that someone needed more drastic replacement.
They got a bit lost when suddenly introduced to plants but by god they had a job to do and they weren't going to give up just because they weren't entirely sure what it was that they were doing, nor pay much heed to the fact that some of them hadn't actually even seen the inside of a person for years either.
The rapid, cancerous growths that sprang almost immediately from a one of its own shed branches (the acidic apples were seedless and infertile but cuttings will usually do in a pinch) were almost nothing like a tree at all, more a mass of bark-covered vines with regularly spaced clutches of deadly fruit. This reaction was... troubling to say the least, but also incredibly convenient. As much as it disliked compromising the purity of its “children”, M. conceded that this was going to allow its plans to proceed exponentially faster, perhaps even allowing it to witness the fruit of its own labours first hand (granted that the planet's transformation didn't result in the inadvertent death of one of the other dimensional travellers, of course).
Once things were properly prepared it could wean its plants off the growth enhancers, until then they would be needed.
To start with, M. set up an “orchard” in the lower level maintenance tunnels, rapidly producing great crops of fruit. The caustic liquids contained within the apples were potent (and fortunately just as strong even under the influence of the station nanomachines) but it was still going to take a vast harvest to burn through the station's internal structure. It was designed to isolate the place from space, after all!
This job really consisted more of shepherding the tangle of roots away from places it might be easily noticed than anything else, it grew fast enough on its own spreading to follow the path of the station's piping. There were definitely going to be a few issues a couple of hours down the line as the new forest drank the entire Styx reservoir but hopefully by the time anyone realised why it would be too late.
Once the apple farm was ticking over nicely all that remained was the “simple” task of collecting and concealing caches of apples at strategic points on every other level of the station. M. could “set them off” when the time was right using its empathic bond though it had never quite had to deal with so many at once. The plan had been to activate the ones in the upper levels once the floors beneath had started to collapse together, but someone already seemed to have started an assault on the higher floors for it...
As The Godbot's rampage began overhead fewer and fewer imps stuck around to perform their cleaning duties and it was no longer necessary to be so secretive, and as the exuberant plantlife became more and more firmly entangled with the punishment station's immortality systems the less the little robots were actually capable of doing even if they did find this new invader.
Even their pest-extermination flame-throwers didn't seem to have much effect, achieving at most a temporary halt up until flames licked at a crop of apples... at which point M. would become aware of the assault and use its telekinetic powers to turn the unfortunate demons into puddles of corrosive rust.
A few particularly lost sinners tried to eat the apples which had even less pleasant consequences.
It was nearing the final stages of the plan, while M. was checking out one of these incursions personally, that it crossed path once again with Alluvion. The River was, for some reason, poking a walker that had already expired with a sharp piece of metal apparently salvaged from an office chair stand.
M. had basically no interest in finding out what he was up to let alone getting pulled along behind him like last time, but it would also be a particular shame if the River Spirit was buried in the oncoming collapse. Despite Alluvion's bothersome and easily distracted nature M. knew that they had fairly similar goals and had no desire to kill an ally... which also suddenly reminded it of Olivia.
As far as M. could tell from the apple it had placed previously within her own canopy she was not in any immediate danger and was also fairly high up, meaning pretty safe from the destruction that would occur as soon as the time seemed right. That was also where most of the station's attendant robots seemed to have gone though which was a little bit worrying, if Alluvion could be convinced to escort her all the way to the top floor that would really kill two birds with one stone.
With a terrible clattering, the Nature Spirit dropped itself from a generously sized grate, landing just a few feet away from Alluvion. While the river spirit could somehow understand what he wanted, M. was still totally incapable of any form of speech and thus had to make sure to attract his attention first before any kind of meaningful exchange could occur at all.
Not that an “exchange” was what it was looking for here, the less chance Alluvion had to speak the better.
”River friend, there is danger on the lower floors. You will find the Ivy/walker if you head back upwards, she must be taken to the highest level.”
“Ah, hello! How did you know I was looking fo-”
But the panther was gone as quickly as it had arrived, racing off at a pace that Alluvion's literally sluggish movements could never match. A little rude perhaps, but the plant spirit didn't really care at all about conversational conventions and Alluvion was barely aware of them, though he would have liked to catch up with what the Manicella had been doing since they were separated in the library.
This was in fact exactly why M. didn't stick around.
Malus mancinella's inherited hunter's instinct combined with Alluvion's obliviousness meant it was a fairly simple task to follow behind him completely unnoticed, it had no intention of sticking around the danger zone when he started collapsing supports either and didn't really rate Alluvion's ability to fend off demons particularly highly (unaware that his touch was close to death for electronic machines).
By a frustratingly circuitous route, the pair began to ascend towards the highest level.
Now left completely unattended, through lift shafts, pipes and air ducts the immortal tree began to follow.