Re: The Grand Battle II! [Final Round: Dimensional Speakeasy]
07-12-2011, 08:52 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Ms. Dorcy snatched up the book with a nod of thanks to the Diarist; the incessant scritching of quills interrupted with only a reciprocating grunt. They turned to leave, to Gestalt's relief, but stopped at the threshold. His guide raised their loot to what might've been a handheld laser-pointer's eye level.
"Once we return to the Speakeasy, you'll have to sequester this on your… person."
Gestalt barely avoided physically recoiling from the book. mUst I
"While Jessamine remains capable of detecting motions down to ripples of mere thought within the Speakeasy, concealing a displaced segment of an alternate reality - even one as - mutable as the Diarist's – is a necessity. So yes. You must. The alternative," continued Ms. Dorcy, batting aside Gestalt's coalescing words, "is fighting through every agent and homunculus she has at her disposal before we reach Vyrm'n."
and wrAppiNg mySelF RoUnd That wREtcHed THinG wiLl shiELD It?
"Would you like truth? It'd merely stall our detection. However, with the assistance of my associate, that will hopefully ensure we locate the Faceless, before Jessamine locates us. Now please, transfer your essence to the book."
She gave Gestalt a moment, before slipping Reccxer's laser pointer into a pocket and opening the door. The transition itself was far less unpleasant for the schrotgolem - though whether that was through familiarity with the sensation; or the nature of its particular vessel, or the greater discomfort of trying to accept this tool of callous murder as part of itself; was hard to say. The less said about the Diarist, the better; thought Gestalt. He busied himself with somewhat fastidiously getting all of his boxes in order while Ms. Dorcy got on with the business of being Frank, finally tucking away the ragged little book (and the laser pointer). Concealing the tome was somehow more unpleasant than simply being the book in Gestalt’s entirety; it dually felt like a self-impaled splinter and a pit in its non-existent stomach.
"Right," exclaimed Frank brightly, with an enthusiasm Gestalt found jarring, "how’s about we ankle, and find ahselves a Faceless?"
-----
"I still don’t know how the hell you found my office," Lucian begrudged, closing the door behind him, "but it makes my job easier, so I’m not complaining."
Vyrm’n was pleased with herself for being of use to Lucian, but restrained it to a gentle hum of her speaker while toying with the new piece of apparatus lodged in her bulk. Little arcs of something - vaguely tangible and not entirely unpleasant to her senses - danced from the irregularly plated sphere to the comm device. Lucian had called the contraption some kind of "collation grid" - at least, that was what she caught of its name - the physics of which went well over Vyrm’n’s uncomprehending but nonetheless attendant head. From what she gleaned, it was a battery for her speaker, and one whose edges were fuzzy against her black - quite unlike any other material she’d dealt with.
Lucian stood around for a bit - bristling a bit with equipment he'd himself picked up without explaining its purpose to his companion - as though expecting Vyrm'n to pick a location. There was a disappointed air to him when, checking his wristwatch after a minute of the Faceless simply standing expectantly, he told Vyrm'n to follow. She slipped into personable step behind him like a shadow, missing the brief spasm across his face of something unreadable.
"Where are we going?"
"It’s… a friend of mine. If you’ve nowhere else to be, I suppose. They’ve got something to help you with this mad plan. Of yours."
"I already met Paris," responded Vyrm’n, her voice synthetic and amicable. Things finally seemed to be going right. "He was the one that gave me the key. It was how I located your office. He gave it to me after he told me… What's wrong?"
Lucian's friendly façade had crumbled away into so much emotional rubble, besmirching the feet of something resigned and angry at being exposed. "Vyrm'n, did you seriously get approached by that grovelling little bitch of the Madam's and not think to-"
"Do you mean Jess-"
"Don't. Say her name. And don't. Interrupt me." Lucian swore under his breath. Lucian swore louder, after he'd paced around a bit and shot a glare at the wounded Faceless. "Look. Vyrm'n." Lucian sighed, swore again, and paced around a bit more. He checked his watch, came as close to pinning Vyrm'n to the wall with concentrated anger as he was capable, then marched off - knowing full well she'd follow.
"Lucian, what's wrong-"
"I tried. That's my fucking problem. No, wait. It's that masked freak's what's fucking wrong." The man spun around mid-furious gesture, still not halting his hasty gait to gods-knew-where. "I lose my office. Right. After. The creep hands me a note, saying you're showing up!"
"But he said-"
"I don't care, Vyrm'n," snarled Lucian. He ripped back his sleeve to read the time again, before doubling back to the crossroads they'd just passed and taking a left. "If Paris knows, it's only so long before the bitch-in-chief does too. And once she knows, we're all fucking dead. Christ, Vyrm'n." The Faceless just mutely followed, clinging to the vague familiarity of the situation with quiet desperation.
-----
Gestalt was struggling to keep pace with its guide – it may have been fanciful thinking on the schrotgolem’s part, but it felt like reality itself was growing distressed with this destructive little scrap being dragged through it. It was reminiscent of Vyrm’n, a little.
"Ya alrigh’ theah, little guy?"
Gestalt said nothing, but waved a baton in what it hoped was an indifferent manner. Since his speaker had started intermittently muttering in a low, foreign tongue - which did to Gestalt whatever the spectral equivalent was of one’s hair standing on end - it had kept it muted. Frank solicited a sympathetic noise, promising it wouldn’t be much further.
"Heah we ah," chirped Frank (too soon for, while simultaneously) to Gestalt’s relief.
It was the atrium again. Nothing much had changed –well, Vyrm’n wasn’t there, but Gestalt couldn't have been certain whether she'd stay by Maxwell's side or fall prey to distractions. If the schrotgolem was going to be honest with itself, it was glad she wasn't here.
He glanced around the room again, searching for changes more subtle than a night-sky smudge's disappearance.
"Clara…?"
The wooden woman gave Gestalt a moment, before joining him next to the seventh case. The nun was sitting up against the barrier's walls, though her channelling trance still persisted. "That the one who invited my daddy in?"
"She – yes."
"Yeah, then she's goin' ta be most copacetic right theah behind the blue, 'specially when Vyrm'n arrives." Frank nodded, placing a hand on a box. The box. The one Gestalt felt like leaping with into a fire. "Maybe you don't realise, but you showah owe a lot ta this bird. It ain't mah job to know mah onions about the rules thah likes o' my daddy or 'Servah play by, but I'm pretty showah if it weren't for your friend here, I couldn't be heah helpin' you aither."
"Ah think you owe it tah Clara to do everything you can."
Gestalt said nothing.
"Yah Faceless friend's nearly heah. Ah'll get the door."
Three knocks. There was no apparent time between Frank's voice and the three raps; there was nothing that needed to be done or thought or said in the space. Space. Gestalt glanced up absently; the sky beyond the glass-domed ceiling was black. Not sky. Not space. No stars or saviours or even a beckoning shoal of Faceless. Nothing.
It barely registered to Gestalt that the atrium's exits into the speakeasy had warped – there were only the great double doors, and the one entranceway guarded by Frank. She was talking to someone; his words terse, impatient; she let him and his Faceless in. Gestalt turned mentally to face Vyrm'n, though his boxes did not move. A kind of primal insistence – a struggle to stomach – smouldered away within the pages, written but unread. Their oblivious audience had arrived – and the words demanded to be rallied and read, marching line by ink-black line into oblivion, carrying Vyrm'n with them.
This was necessary. This was awful. This was callous and merciful and unconscionable and desperate and damning and so very, very, cruel.
Vyrm'n didn't say anything, but Gestalt imagined he could feel the atoms dancing where she listened - their songs wavering shy when they noticed, for the first time, an observer. Her gaze made that burnt-edged space in the schrotgolem - where it had laid the book after tearing out its non-existent heart – shake. Trembling under scrutiny. Trembling in anticipation.
Gestalt wanted to say something. To placate, perhaps – even rationalise or apologise. He couldn't find the strength. There was only the book, which had emerged from the depths of Gestalt's regret without warning into spectral, formless hands.
As if on cue, gunfire burst from the doorway Frank guarded, interspersed with the shrieks of the freshly impaled. Gestalt studied the jittering stars a final time, then turned to a man he didn't recognise.
"Let her go."
Lucian shook his head. "She's all yours. Hurry up."
"Let. Her. Go."
A single knife staggered up, flew at the man. He parried it easily with a raised fist, a device in his hand spitting out an arcing shield of blue. Vyrm'n twitched, but moved no further. Her consciousness phased in and out, lurking just beneath the surface of the Void. Unable to flee Lucian. He gestured to the Faceless, humourless gaze flickering to the sounds of fighting.
"She'll kill you."
Gestalt considered, then slid across the room from the duo as far as he could, boxes lined against the huge double-doors.
"Let her go."
The man prepared to protest, glanced over at Frank in the doorway - blood, ichor, and other pleasant reminders of Lucian's "squishy biology" up to her forearms - swore, and slammed a button. Without pause, Vyrm'n lunged straight for the schrotgolem, the cracking of tiles underblack masked by distant bullets. Gestalt just stared for one of those seemingly-endless moments at the featureless cover-
"Get on with it!"
-and flicked it open.
Ms. Dorcy snatched up the book with a nod of thanks to the Diarist; the incessant scritching of quills interrupted with only a reciprocating grunt. They turned to leave, to Gestalt's relief, but stopped at the threshold. His guide raised their loot to what might've been a handheld laser-pointer's eye level.
"Once we return to the Speakeasy, you'll have to sequester this on your… person."
Gestalt barely avoided physically recoiling from the book. mUst I
"While Jessamine remains capable of detecting motions down to ripples of mere thought within the Speakeasy, concealing a displaced segment of an alternate reality - even one as - mutable as the Diarist's – is a necessity. So yes. You must. The alternative," continued Ms. Dorcy, batting aside Gestalt's coalescing words, "is fighting through every agent and homunculus she has at her disposal before we reach Vyrm'n."
and wrAppiNg mySelF RoUnd That wREtcHed THinG wiLl shiELD It?
"Would you like truth? It'd merely stall our detection. However, with the assistance of my associate, that will hopefully ensure we locate the Faceless, before Jessamine locates us. Now please, transfer your essence to the book."
She gave Gestalt a moment, before slipping Reccxer's laser pointer into a pocket and opening the door. The transition itself was far less unpleasant for the schrotgolem - though whether that was through familiarity with the sensation; or the nature of its particular vessel, or the greater discomfort of trying to accept this tool of callous murder as part of itself; was hard to say. The less said about the Diarist, the better; thought Gestalt. He busied himself with somewhat fastidiously getting all of his boxes in order while Ms. Dorcy got on with the business of being Frank, finally tucking away the ragged little book (and the laser pointer). Concealing the tome was somehow more unpleasant than simply being the book in Gestalt’s entirety; it dually felt like a self-impaled splinter and a pit in its non-existent stomach.
"Right," exclaimed Frank brightly, with an enthusiasm Gestalt found jarring, "how’s about we ankle, and find ahselves a Faceless?"
-----
"I still don’t know how the hell you found my office," Lucian begrudged, closing the door behind him, "but it makes my job easier, so I’m not complaining."
Vyrm’n was pleased with herself for being of use to Lucian, but restrained it to a gentle hum of her speaker while toying with the new piece of apparatus lodged in her bulk. Little arcs of something - vaguely tangible and not entirely unpleasant to her senses - danced from the irregularly plated sphere to the comm device. Lucian had called the contraption some kind of "collation grid" - at least, that was what she caught of its name - the physics of which went well over Vyrm’n’s uncomprehending but nonetheless attendant head. From what she gleaned, it was a battery for her speaker, and one whose edges were fuzzy against her black - quite unlike any other material she’d dealt with.
Lucian stood around for a bit - bristling a bit with equipment he'd himself picked up without explaining its purpose to his companion - as though expecting Vyrm'n to pick a location. There was a disappointed air to him when, checking his wristwatch after a minute of the Faceless simply standing expectantly, he told Vyrm'n to follow. She slipped into personable step behind him like a shadow, missing the brief spasm across his face of something unreadable.
"Where are we going?"
"It’s… a friend of mine. If you’ve nowhere else to be, I suppose. They’ve got something to help you with this mad plan. Of yours."
"I already met Paris," responded Vyrm’n, her voice synthetic and amicable. Things finally seemed to be going right. "He was the one that gave me the key. It was how I located your office. He gave it to me after he told me… What's wrong?"
Lucian's friendly façade had crumbled away into so much emotional rubble, besmirching the feet of something resigned and angry at being exposed. "Vyrm'n, did you seriously get approached by that grovelling little bitch of the Madam's and not think to-"
"Do you mean Jess-"
"Don't. Say her name. And don't. Interrupt me." Lucian swore under his breath. Lucian swore louder, after he'd paced around a bit and shot a glare at the wounded Faceless. "Look. Vyrm'n." Lucian sighed, swore again, and paced around a bit more. He checked his watch, came as close to pinning Vyrm'n to the wall with concentrated anger as he was capable, then marched off - knowing full well she'd follow.
"Lucian, what's wrong-"
"I tried. That's my fucking problem. No, wait. It's that masked freak's what's fucking wrong." The man spun around mid-furious gesture, still not halting his hasty gait to gods-knew-where. "I lose my office. Right. After. The creep hands me a note, saying you're showing up!"
"But he said-"
"I don't care, Vyrm'n," snarled Lucian. He ripped back his sleeve to read the time again, before doubling back to the crossroads they'd just passed and taking a left. "If Paris knows, it's only so long before the bitch-in-chief does too. And once she knows, we're all fucking dead. Christ, Vyrm'n." The Faceless just mutely followed, clinging to the vague familiarity of the situation with quiet desperation.
-----
Gestalt was struggling to keep pace with its guide – it may have been fanciful thinking on the schrotgolem’s part, but it felt like reality itself was growing distressed with this destructive little scrap being dragged through it. It was reminiscent of Vyrm’n, a little.
"Ya alrigh’ theah, little guy?"
Gestalt said nothing, but waved a baton in what it hoped was an indifferent manner. Since his speaker had started intermittently muttering in a low, foreign tongue - which did to Gestalt whatever the spectral equivalent was of one’s hair standing on end - it had kept it muted. Frank solicited a sympathetic noise, promising it wouldn’t be much further.
"Heah we ah," chirped Frank (too soon for, while simultaneously) to Gestalt’s relief.
It was the atrium again. Nothing much had changed –well, Vyrm’n wasn’t there, but Gestalt couldn't have been certain whether she'd stay by Maxwell's side or fall prey to distractions. If the schrotgolem was going to be honest with itself, it was glad she wasn't here.
He glanced around the room again, searching for changes more subtle than a night-sky smudge's disappearance.
"Clara…?"
The wooden woman gave Gestalt a moment, before joining him next to the seventh case. The nun was sitting up against the barrier's walls, though her channelling trance still persisted. "That the one who invited my daddy in?"
"She – yes."
"Yeah, then she's goin' ta be most copacetic right theah behind the blue, 'specially when Vyrm'n arrives." Frank nodded, placing a hand on a box. The box. The one Gestalt felt like leaping with into a fire. "Maybe you don't realise, but you showah owe a lot ta this bird. It ain't mah job to know mah onions about the rules thah likes o' my daddy or 'Servah play by, but I'm pretty showah if it weren't for your friend here, I couldn't be heah helpin' you aither."
"Ah think you owe it tah Clara to do everything you can."
Gestalt said nothing.
"Yah Faceless friend's nearly heah. Ah'll get the door."
Three knocks. There was no apparent time between Frank's voice and the three raps; there was nothing that needed to be done or thought or said in the space. Space. Gestalt glanced up absently; the sky beyond the glass-domed ceiling was black. Not sky. Not space. No stars or saviours or even a beckoning shoal of Faceless. Nothing.
It barely registered to Gestalt that the atrium's exits into the speakeasy had warped – there were only the great double doors, and the one entranceway guarded by Frank. She was talking to someone; his words terse, impatient; she let him and his Faceless in. Gestalt turned mentally to face Vyrm'n, though his boxes did not move. A kind of primal insistence – a struggle to stomach – smouldered away within the pages, written but unread. Their oblivious audience had arrived – and the words demanded to be rallied and read, marching line by ink-black line into oblivion, carrying Vyrm'n with them.
This was necessary. This was awful. This was callous and merciful and unconscionable and desperate and damning and so very, very, cruel.
Vyrm'n didn't say anything, but Gestalt imagined he could feel the atoms dancing where she listened - their songs wavering shy when they noticed, for the first time, an observer. Her gaze made that burnt-edged space in the schrotgolem - where it had laid the book after tearing out its non-existent heart – shake. Trembling under scrutiny. Trembling in anticipation.
Gestalt wanted to say something. To placate, perhaps – even rationalise or apologise. He couldn't find the strength. There was only the book, which had emerged from the depths of Gestalt's regret without warning into spectral, formless hands.
As if on cue, gunfire burst from the doorway Frank guarded, interspersed with the shrieks of the freshly impaled. Gestalt studied the jittering stars a final time, then turned to a man he didn't recognise.
"Let her go."
Lucian shook his head. "She's all yours. Hurry up."
"Let. Her. Go."
A single knife staggered up, flew at the man. He parried it easily with a raised fist, a device in his hand spitting out an arcing shield of blue. Vyrm'n twitched, but moved no further. Her consciousness phased in and out, lurking just beneath the surface of the Void. Unable to flee Lucian. He gestured to the Faceless, humourless gaze flickering to the sounds of fighting.
"She'll kill you."
Gestalt considered, then slid across the room from the duo as far as he could, boxes lined against the huge double-doors.
"Let her go."
The man prepared to protest, glanced over at Frank in the doorway - blood, ichor, and other pleasant reminders of Lucian's "squishy biology" up to her forearms - swore, and slammed a button. Without pause, Vyrm'n lunged straight for the schrotgolem, the cracking of tiles underblack masked by distant bullets. Gestalt just stared for one of those seemingly-endless moments at the featureless cover-
"Get on with it!"
-and flicked it open.
peace to the unsung peace to the martyrs | i'm johnny rotten appleseed
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow