Re: The Grand Battle II! [Round 5: Value City Mall!]
06-21-2010, 01:07 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.
Buried under layers of shimmering strings, well-trodden connections between restless brain cells, hidden out of sight from any mortal lacking a trepanning kit, Maxwell was reasonably certain there was a small part of his brain that didn't like him. The enormity of the acts causality could pin on him had to be processed, as a matter of habit - every detail combed to analyse motives and identify mysteries worth pursuing in a field of thought completely new to him. Death. Killing. Murder. Whatever. The ethical connotations, the mindset of a killer, what role was played by cause and effect; by default, all of these things were novel lines of speculation and reasoning and so all had to be considered equally and thoroughly.
But something didn't like it. Something within him, his moral grounding upon which his life was based, was clashing with the attention Maxwell was giving to the idea of killing. So what if the man himself at yet to fire a shot, or to plunge a knife or drop a bomb or kick or punch or rip or tear - the thoughts were starting to be there, to be acknowledged, and that was not good.
So it was revolting, knocking his brain slightly out of frame, skewing his way of viewing reality as it tried to find a common ground. Some things were being disconnected, others were being shut down. Lines of contemplation were being destroyed before they could manifest themselves and have an impact on the already fragile shell Maxwell was hiding behind from the cruelty of the world.
The notable side effect of this was that he now had a rather perturbing headache, thumping away somewhere in the left side of his mind.
He couldn't quite bring himself to care. This wasn't quite helping Galus one bit.
"I expect Gestalt and Vyrm'n have already wrought havoc upon the zombies in the immediate area, but there's bound to be more. You'll need some way of protecting yourself, you must realise that..."
Maxwell meanwhile was exceptionally interested in the noises he could make if he struck his kettle in various manners with his fingernails. Scratches, clicks and clangs, thwumps and thoops; all neat little distractions from the unsettling reality around him.
"Your rapier, where is it?"
"Good question. I think I threw it away somewhere, somewhen."
Galus's patience with the supposed genius was wearing thin. "You are in the middle of a fight, Maxwell, and you throw away your weapon? Are you ma- yes, you are mad. I can damn well tell."
Maxwell had discovered that the kettle was, through some sheer coincidence, remarkably good as a hat.
"Look, I can't just leave you to die. You might be entirely insane, but you are human and you've done nothing wrong."
"Insane? Oooh, listen to the pot calling the kettle black, hey? Do you think it is reasonable and rational to go around killing people?"
"To be fair, our current enemies are dead already. We can't exactly kill dead people, can we?"
This forced a pause in Maxwell's mindless antics. For a moment or two, he'd found something well worth considering. A sort of far-away look crept across his eyes.
"I could argue with that, but I fear I lack the time. The highest point on today's agenda is the finding of some decent milk. Now that you can't argue with, hey?"
Seemingly pleased with what he had just achieved, Maxwell bounded off up the theatre steps, traversing them two at a time, every jump taking him, in his mind, closer to a source of a beverage capable of soothing and repairing his brain. In Galus's mind, it was another unprecedented and extremely frustrating spanner in the works. Shouting warnings and cursing under his breath in alternation, the pilot pursued him, thankful that, at the very top of the steps, Maxwell had the sense to stop.
Admittedly, he was standing there quite agape at the sight that had met him, but at least he had stopped bouncing about the place.
There were too many bodies on the floor - spread across the faux carpet, small piles of corpses protruded above the sea of gore, fleeting patches of untouched ground rarities in their own right. Some people were without heads, lacking limbs or body parts, some with internal organs peering out from behind broken bones. Into the distance, the carnage stretched, halting at river of revolting gloop, nefariously noxious even from where Galus was standing. Beyond that, a myriad of undead shoppers ploughed on, shabbily stepping across the hall, bumping on occasion into shop windows and planters.
"...well, on the plus side, um, we're kinda safe for a bit."
"Maxwell, look, I don't know if I should do this but... oh, nevermind; look, you know how to use a gun, right?"
"...that way, I pres- oh, yes, yes, as it happens - Uncle used to take me down to Bolselin House every now and again when the clay-pigeon shooting was on. That was, ooooohhhh..."
At this, Galus reached for the pistol on his belt.
"Good. Now, for your protection, I want you to have-"
"Mind you, they never said I was any good at it, which surprised me. I mean, come on, think about it; compared to trying to shoot a moving target from a fair way away, it's much more logical just to wait for the damned thing to land, then shoot it. Nice and easy, you're bound to hit your target and you get a fair bit more exercise if you have to trudge your way through the meadows to get to them. Never could quite see it any other way, I'm afraid..."
Galus was starting to question quite why he was so intent on keeping Maxwell alive. Conscience was one thing - surviving this competition with the now impossible lunatic in tow was most certainly another.
"Forget it then..."
"Great, now that's other with... call this a hunch, but I'm gonna say that a stall named "Refreshments" will, you know, probably do refreshments..."
Seemingly with no rational concern for his safety, Maxwell took off, adopting some bizarre hopscotch-style dance to manoeuvre his way through the incapacitated zombies, fleeing flawlessly through the liquefying bodies whilst hardly touching them. The swearing and oaths this display caused to escape from Galus's mouth were unnoticed, despite their crescendo as Maxwell slipped into the stall.
"Stop it, stop it! You haven't even checked the damned place out for zombies, you bloody fool! There could be one of the buggers standing right there in the doorway and you wouldn't have a clue, would you?"
Anger and agitation fuelled Galus's traversal of the gore, nimbly navigating the mountains of cadavers and being awkwardly careful not to douse himself in bodily fluids. Puddles of ichors were tackled with the helmet down, so as to keep his nostrils from bearing the brunt of a most repugnant malodour. Eventually, he stumbled through the side door, prepared for the worst.
There were two bodies on the floor, both adorned with ragged clothes and manifold maggots. They appeared stationary, having seemingly been pummelled several times with a reasonably large blunt object that had left definite dents in their shapes. Then there was Maxwell, casually rifling through an antiquated refridgerator.
"Hang on, I thought you said-"
At this point, Maxwell turned away from the trove he had unearthed, becoming slightly silhouetted against the feeble fridge glow.
"Look, they were standing in front of this, so I had a bit of a word and, well, sadly, they didn't exactly want to listen, the poor blighters. Well, I'm a busy man, you know, and besides, it really isn't nice to stare, especially if you're missing an eye..."
This revelation was starting to gnaw on Galus - which was now the more enigmatic; Vyrm'n, who having shown herself to be a monster with an unrestrainable urge to kill, had shown a side more helpful; or Maxwell, who had calmed aforementioned beast and expressed a core belief in pacifism, yet presently had become decidedly deranged and disconnected with his prior expressions. So, which contradiction was the most incredible?
"Well, what would you say the chances are that we are on a planet or space station or whatever where the milk is supposed to be fluorescent blue, hey? Not to mention it having green lumps in it... I guess I'll just have to have it black then..."
Thinking of which...
"So, um, where do you think Vyrm'm's gotten to?"
"Easy. Go back outside, look down the hall, then up."
Curiosity overrode fears for his safety and so, clutching his gun, Galus risked a peek outside. The mall stretched on for some considerable distance, culminating in a large frontispiece. Various shades of blues and whites appeared faded and presumably cracked, with the signage itself readily rusting at the edges. It was, apparently, a "Splash World". A place of fun and leisure, for all the family, if they were sentient to bumble through its open doors...
He looked up, as requested. The facade didn't quite meet the ceiling, curtailing in a fancy wave-shaped cornice that left a few feet between it and the roof. There were a few lights dangling from the ceiling, but he couldn't see any trace of Vyrm'n.
What he could see was much lower down; a horde of zombies, finally having twigged to their presence, were blundering their merry way over to the refreshment kiosk.
"Maxwell."
"Did you not notice it? One of the lights has broken. No longer does it illumine what I can only presume to be a water park. Do you not wonder why? I'm afraid I do. It can't have been ravaged by the passage of time that has made this milk capable of defying gravity - no, were that the case, I'm sure many more of those lights would have long since given up the ghost. I very much doubt one of our deceased guests could have gotten up there and Gestalt would have had to have made one heck of a tendril to reach, but for what purpose? No, the simplest explanation is that Vyrm'n broke it, somehow. So I'd eat my hat if she's not somewhere around there-ish... actually, that might not be so bad; I am a bit hungry and I'm not entirely sure when I last ate..."
Galus grimaced and adopted the manner of a teacher preaching to a misbehaving child.
"Thank you for that Maxwell. Now you're finished conjecturing, there is mob of zombies lurching their way here... oh, why do I bother?"
Once more, Maxwell was ignoring his companion; the current, far more interesting thing to do was to whack the tap above the stall's sink repeatedly with his kettle. With his lack of involvement pretty much assured, at least for the time being, Galus set about readying himself for the coming onslaught.
"Urgh... when I said I fancied it black, I wasn't referring to the water I used to make it..."
"Are you quite done yet?"
"Wha- um, maybe?"
A zombie finally got within range and was swiftly dealt with, crumpling down on itself as a few expertly-aimed bullets destroyed its head. Oblivious to the loss of one of their number, the remaining crowd stumbled on, each shuffle bringing them a step closer to their living prey.
“Meh, good enough.â€
But something didn't like it. Something within him, his moral grounding upon which his life was based, was clashing with the attention Maxwell was giving to the idea of killing. So what if the man himself at yet to fire a shot, or to plunge a knife or drop a bomb or kick or punch or rip or tear - the thoughts were starting to be there, to be acknowledged, and that was not good.
So it was revolting, knocking his brain slightly out of frame, skewing his way of viewing reality as it tried to find a common ground. Some things were being disconnected, others were being shut down. Lines of contemplation were being destroyed before they could manifest themselves and have an impact on the already fragile shell Maxwell was hiding behind from the cruelty of the world.
The notable side effect of this was that he now had a rather perturbing headache, thumping away somewhere in the left side of his mind.
He couldn't quite bring himself to care. This wasn't quite helping Galus one bit.
"I expect Gestalt and Vyrm'n have already wrought havoc upon the zombies in the immediate area, but there's bound to be more. You'll need some way of protecting yourself, you must realise that..."
Maxwell meanwhile was exceptionally interested in the noises he could make if he struck his kettle in various manners with his fingernails. Scratches, clicks and clangs, thwumps and thoops; all neat little distractions from the unsettling reality around him.
"Your rapier, where is it?"
"Good question. I think I threw it away somewhere, somewhen."
Galus's patience with the supposed genius was wearing thin. "You are in the middle of a fight, Maxwell, and you throw away your weapon? Are you ma- yes, you are mad. I can damn well tell."
Maxwell had discovered that the kettle was, through some sheer coincidence, remarkably good as a hat.
"Look, I can't just leave you to die. You might be entirely insane, but you are human and you've done nothing wrong."
"Insane? Oooh, listen to the pot calling the kettle black, hey? Do you think it is reasonable and rational to go around killing people?"
"To be fair, our current enemies are dead already. We can't exactly kill dead people, can we?"
This forced a pause in Maxwell's mindless antics. For a moment or two, he'd found something well worth considering. A sort of far-away look crept across his eyes.
"I could argue with that, but I fear I lack the time. The highest point on today's agenda is the finding of some decent milk. Now that you can't argue with, hey?"
Seemingly pleased with what he had just achieved, Maxwell bounded off up the theatre steps, traversing them two at a time, every jump taking him, in his mind, closer to a source of a beverage capable of soothing and repairing his brain. In Galus's mind, it was another unprecedented and extremely frustrating spanner in the works. Shouting warnings and cursing under his breath in alternation, the pilot pursued him, thankful that, at the very top of the steps, Maxwell had the sense to stop.
Admittedly, he was standing there quite agape at the sight that had met him, but at least he had stopped bouncing about the place.
There were too many bodies on the floor - spread across the faux carpet, small piles of corpses protruded above the sea of gore, fleeting patches of untouched ground rarities in their own right. Some people were without heads, lacking limbs or body parts, some with internal organs peering out from behind broken bones. Into the distance, the carnage stretched, halting at river of revolting gloop, nefariously noxious even from where Galus was standing. Beyond that, a myriad of undead shoppers ploughed on, shabbily stepping across the hall, bumping on occasion into shop windows and planters.
"...well, on the plus side, um, we're kinda safe for a bit."
"Maxwell, look, I don't know if I should do this but... oh, nevermind; look, you know how to use a gun, right?"
"...that way, I pres- oh, yes, yes, as it happens - Uncle used to take me down to Bolselin House every now and again when the clay-pigeon shooting was on. That was, ooooohhhh..."
At this, Galus reached for the pistol on his belt.
"Good. Now, for your protection, I want you to have-"
"Mind you, they never said I was any good at it, which surprised me. I mean, come on, think about it; compared to trying to shoot a moving target from a fair way away, it's much more logical just to wait for the damned thing to land, then shoot it. Nice and easy, you're bound to hit your target and you get a fair bit more exercise if you have to trudge your way through the meadows to get to them. Never could quite see it any other way, I'm afraid..."
Galus was starting to question quite why he was so intent on keeping Maxwell alive. Conscience was one thing - surviving this competition with the now impossible lunatic in tow was most certainly another.
"Forget it then..."
"Great, now that's other with... call this a hunch, but I'm gonna say that a stall named "Refreshments" will, you know, probably do refreshments..."
Seemingly with no rational concern for his safety, Maxwell took off, adopting some bizarre hopscotch-style dance to manoeuvre his way through the incapacitated zombies, fleeing flawlessly through the liquefying bodies whilst hardly touching them. The swearing and oaths this display caused to escape from Galus's mouth were unnoticed, despite their crescendo as Maxwell slipped into the stall.
"Stop it, stop it! You haven't even checked the damned place out for zombies, you bloody fool! There could be one of the buggers standing right there in the doorway and you wouldn't have a clue, would you?"
Anger and agitation fuelled Galus's traversal of the gore, nimbly navigating the mountains of cadavers and being awkwardly careful not to douse himself in bodily fluids. Puddles of ichors were tackled with the helmet down, so as to keep his nostrils from bearing the brunt of a most repugnant malodour. Eventually, he stumbled through the side door, prepared for the worst.
There were two bodies on the floor, both adorned with ragged clothes and manifold maggots. They appeared stationary, having seemingly been pummelled several times with a reasonably large blunt object that had left definite dents in their shapes. Then there was Maxwell, casually rifling through an antiquated refridgerator.
"Hang on, I thought you said-"
At this point, Maxwell turned away from the trove he had unearthed, becoming slightly silhouetted against the feeble fridge glow.
"Look, they were standing in front of this, so I had a bit of a word and, well, sadly, they didn't exactly want to listen, the poor blighters. Well, I'm a busy man, you know, and besides, it really isn't nice to stare, especially if you're missing an eye..."
This revelation was starting to gnaw on Galus - which was now the more enigmatic; Vyrm'n, who having shown herself to be a monster with an unrestrainable urge to kill, had shown a side more helpful; or Maxwell, who had calmed aforementioned beast and expressed a core belief in pacifism, yet presently had become decidedly deranged and disconnected with his prior expressions. So, which contradiction was the most incredible?
"Well, what would you say the chances are that we are on a planet or space station or whatever where the milk is supposed to be fluorescent blue, hey? Not to mention it having green lumps in it... I guess I'll just have to have it black then..."
Thinking of which...
"So, um, where do you think Vyrm'm's gotten to?"
"Easy. Go back outside, look down the hall, then up."
Curiosity overrode fears for his safety and so, clutching his gun, Galus risked a peek outside. The mall stretched on for some considerable distance, culminating in a large frontispiece. Various shades of blues and whites appeared faded and presumably cracked, with the signage itself readily rusting at the edges. It was, apparently, a "Splash World". A place of fun and leisure, for all the family, if they were sentient to bumble through its open doors...
He looked up, as requested. The facade didn't quite meet the ceiling, curtailing in a fancy wave-shaped cornice that left a few feet between it and the roof. There were a few lights dangling from the ceiling, but he couldn't see any trace of Vyrm'n.
What he could see was much lower down; a horde of zombies, finally having twigged to their presence, were blundering their merry way over to the refreshment kiosk.
"Maxwell."
"Did you not notice it? One of the lights has broken. No longer does it illumine what I can only presume to be a water park. Do you not wonder why? I'm afraid I do. It can't have been ravaged by the passage of time that has made this milk capable of defying gravity - no, were that the case, I'm sure many more of those lights would have long since given up the ghost. I very much doubt one of our deceased guests could have gotten up there and Gestalt would have had to have made one heck of a tendril to reach, but for what purpose? No, the simplest explanation is that Vyrm'n broke it, somehow. So I'd eat my hat if she's not somewhere around there-ish... actually, that might not be so bad; I am a bit hungry and I'm not entirely sure when I last ate..."
Galus grimaced and adopted the manner of a teacher preaching to a misbehaving child.
"Thank you for that Maxwell. Now you're finished conjecturing, there is mob of zombies lurching their way here... oh, why do I bother?"
Once more, Maxwell was ignoring his companion; the current, far more interesting thing to do was to whack the tap above the stall's sink repeatedly with his kettle. With his lack of involvement pretty much assured, at least for the time being, Galus set about readying himself for the coming onslaught.
"Urgh... when I said I fancied it black, I wasn't referring to the water I used to make it..."
"Are you quite done yet?"
"Wha- um, maybe?"
A zombie finally got within range and was swiftly dealt with, crumpling down on itself as a few expertly-aimed bullets destroyed its head. Oblivious to the loss of one of their number, the remaining crowd stumbled on, each shuffle bringing them a step closer to their living prey.
“Meh, good enough.â€