Re: The Grand Battle II! [Round 5: Value City Mall!]
07-07-2010, 06:36 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
The sound of a sternum cracking is not a noise many can say they've heard, but even Gestalt with its zest for experience would have been hard-pressed to appreciate the novelty. The same went for the noise of some dozen ribs popping one after another, and for the sight of already-ravaged skin bulging outwards before being pierced by fine needlelike claws. Really, the sight of one rotting woman violently clawing her way out of another was probably more rare a sight than each individual experience separately, but it helps to appreciate the small things.
The schrotgolem, however, was showing a nearly-philistine lack of wonder at the series of strange things happening in front of it. Even as the first woman's spine creaked backwards, viscera flopping out and a second torso that could not possibly have fit inside the first pulled itself out of the tangle of putrefying intestines, Gestalt simply pulled slightly away from its assailant and readied an array of weapons. The boxes were surrounded by a halo of hovering cutlery, the golem going on the simple assumption that any zombie, no matter how resilient or filled with other zombies, would eventually stop moving if liquefied.
The nesting zombie women lunged, Lissa's increasingly-useless torso and remaining arm swinging behind her and Yume's twisted visage gnashing at the air as her arms flailed at the boxes. Knives and blades and sharp pieces of wood pincushioned the shapeshifter, and Gestalt used what vestiges of Karmic power it still had and understood to aid the process of roundly destroying the girls an whatever shapes dragged themselves out of their sundered corpses. They had little recourse but to attempt futilely to stave off the onslaught, weapons and sharp pieces of garbage swooping in and away like vengeful steely insects. Shreds of slimy fat and withered muscle cascaded to the already-soiled floor, the thuds of Gormand's single-minded assault on the gate accentuated by the pinging of bone on cement and wood.
Had Gestalt a face, it would have been one set with bland determination, a face that had ceased thinking and was entirely unperturbed about being up to its elbows in zombie and totally unemotional about the situation at hand. It was a face that had problems to solve and was going about solving them in the most efficient manner possible, saving morals and squeamishness and even speculation for later. A blank face, occasionally spattered with unknowable gore. Lissayume writhed as shethey were torn apart, more hands scrabbling their way out of whatever necrotic mockery of the Souzou remained only to be summarily pureed by the whirring, room-sized blender that was the unthinking golem. Gradually, what had been a grasping abomination of assorted body parts, moaning and bubbling and multiplying succumbed to Gestalt's determined ministrations, and what was by now an extended smear of gore and twitching fingers stilled. Forgetting or ignoring the pulsating monstrosity of flesh that was even now buckling the plates of the door, the schrotgolem returned to its dispassionate and instinctual exploration of the grocery.
Shelves and bins and refrigerators were too large and too bland to arouse interest and few if any intact specimens of food remained. The cash register, dented but intact, provided a momentary diversion and a quickly-secreted spoil, but a being that had already figured out the complex machinery of Rexxcer's laser pointer and the human heart and the endless blackness of the abyss had little left to glean from springs and simple chips. A box of condoms proved inscrutable without accessing some of Samuel's memory, and the golem was in no state at the moment to engage that part of him; the box was stored for later study, several condoms the golem had curiously unrolled left scattered on the floor. In a small closet, there was... A broom. The broom's function was simple, was obvious. The broom was not so big it couldn't be inhabited. And because all of the golem that was Gestalt was balled in on itself and having no contact with the outside world, the broom was taken.
Objects have functions, and a thing with a function should be used. Without higher cognizance to guide it away from this basic instinct, the schrotgolem put the broom to work, used it for what it was made for. It came to pass, therefore, that as the battered shield succumbed to Gormand's noodly onslaught, Gestalt was calmly sweeping the scattered detritus that covered Grocer Delight into a small pile, bruised fruit mingling with rotting flesh and broken glass, smeared and drying blood forming zen-garden-like patterns around the mound of rot and ruin.
The sound of a sternum cracking is not a noise many can say they've heard, but even Gestalt with its zest for experience would have been hard-pressed to appreciate the novelty. The same went for the noise of some dozen ribs popping one after another, and for the sight of already-ravaged skin bulging outwards before being pierced by fine needlelike claws. Really, the sight of one rotting woman violently clawing her way out of another was probably more rare a sight than each individual experience separately, but it helps to appreciate the small things.
The schrotgolem, however, was showing a nearly-philistine lack of wonder at the series of strange things happening in front of it. Even as the first woman's spine creaked backwards, viscera flopping out and a second torso that could not possibly have fit inside the first pulled itself out of the tangle of putrefying intestines, Gestalt simply pulled slightly away from its assailant and readied an array of weapons. The boxes were surrounded by a halo of hovering cutlery, the golem going on the simple assumption that any zombie, no matter how resilient or filled with other zombies, would eventually stop moving if liquefied.
The nesting zombie women lunged, Lissa's increasingly-useless torso and remaining arm swinging behind her and Yume's twisted visage gnashing at the air as her arms flailed at the boxes. Knives and blades and sharp pieces of wood pincushioned the shapeshifter, and Gestalt used what vestiges of Karmic power it still had and understood to aid the process of roundly destroying the girls an whatever shapes dragged themselves out of their sundered corpses. They had little recourse but to attempt futilely to stave off the onslaught, weapons and sharp pieces of garbage swooping in and away like vengeful steely insects. Shreds of slimy fat and withered muscle cascaded to the already-soiled floor, the thuds of Gormand's single-minded assault on the gate accentuated by the pinging of bone on cement and wood.
Had Gestalt a face, it would have been one set with bland determination, a face that had ceased thinking and was entirely unperturbed about being up to its elbows in zombie and totally unemotional about the situation at hand. It was a face that had problems to solve and was going about solving them in the most efficient manner possible, saving morals and squeamishness and even speculation for later. A blank face, occasionally spattered with unknowable gore. Lissayume writhed as shethey were torn apart, more hands scrabbling their way out of whatever necrotic mockery of the Souzou remained only to be summarily pureed by the whirring, room-sized blender that was the unthinking golem. Gradually, what had been a grasping abomination of assorted body parts, moaning and bubbling and multiplying succumbed to Gestalt's determined ministrations, and what was by now an extended smear of gore and twitching fingers stilled. Forgetting or ignoring the pulsating monstrosity of flesh that was even now buckling the plates of the door, the schrotgolem returned to its dispassionate and instinctual exploration of the grocery.
Shelves and bins and refrigerators were too large and too bland to arouse interest and few if any intact specimens of food remained. The cash register, dented but intact, provided a momentary diversion and a quickly-secreted spoil, but a being that had already figured out the complex machinery of Rexxcer's laser pointer and the human heart and the endless blackness of the abyss had little left to glean from springs and simple chips. A box of condoms proved inscrutable without accessing some of Samuel's memory, and the golem was in no state at the moment to engage that part of him; the box was stored for later study, several condoms the golem had curiously unrolled left scattered on the floor. In a small closet, there was... A broom. The broom's function was simple, was obvious. The broom was not so big it couldn't be inhabited. And because all of the golem that was Gestalt was balled in on itself and having no contact with the outside world, the broom was taken.
Objects have functions, and a thing with a function should be used. Without higher cognizance to guide it away from this basic instinct, the schrotgolem put the broom to work, used it for what it was made for. It came to pass, therefore, that as the battered shield succumbed to Gormand's noodly onslaught, Gestalt was calmly sweeping the scattered detritus that covered Grocer Delight into a small pile, bruised fruit mingling with rotting flesh and broken glass, smeared and drying blood forming zen-garden-like patterns around the mound of rot and ruin.