Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead)

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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The trick, the pangolin was starting to understand, was to acknowledge Unity as rather pushy and self-important middleman, like a receptionist or airport security. Accord it just enough respect to avoid it getting unnecessarily in your way, but don't by any means pander to it.

And don't, by any means, let it go asserting what Benjamin was starting to innately understand as its ephemeral authority, numbered days and all.

The pangolin paused at the door, dredging up and reflecting sadly upon the memory of Skorn tearing down a similar pair of heavy barricades between Benjamin and a potential way home. He felt Unity wash over him like a horde of fretting bureaucrats, their flailing wands failing to find any kernel of Unity to wrap their officious evicting tendrils round.

Jetsam vaguely understood at this point. The car was cast in Unity, steeped in Chaos. Same for the factory. He gave the rather distressed pall of Unity; still humming around him, weakly protesting he shouldn't be here; some kind of signal that he wouldn’t deliberately cause Chaos or trek too much of it into the house, in anarchic little puddles that turned everything into scrapbooks.

The doors, like the rest of the factory, huddled in their little shrouds of Unity, gazing fearfully out to the Chaos and its too-close-for-comfort spiky harbinger. Benjamin saluted a friend in a distant universe, rose up to his full nine ant-eating feet, and punched the doors down before strolling into the facility.


Benjamin wandered the ground floor aimlessly for some time, failing to find stairs scalable for quadrupeds like himself. He eyed the instructions above a fire extinguisher, who muttered quietly asking the short-sighted beast to please don’t get so close, you’re kind of freaking us out here, before nodding to himself.

Humans. Or, at least, humanoids. The simplified, on-fire silhouette stop dropping and rolling while his unignited compatriot doused him confirmed it. Not that he’d been expecting this place to be pangolin-run, after he’d failed to muscle his way through the main doors without showering sparks everywhere.

Further meandering, and bashing a few more doors down, yielded a head office. It had a state-of-the-art computer system with a keyboard too small and a screen too holographic for Jetsam to easily negotiate around in his current form. The latter wavered and uttered beeps and squawks and squelches of alarm as the pangolin wandered through it.

Lastly, a pair of legs, dangling from the ceiling. They prickled of Unity tied to a chair while Chaos fossicked through their wardrobe and laughed at their awful taste in dress shirts. Benjamin reached up, and a moment after placed a rather nice boot on the desk. The legs were kicking now, so Jetsam stopped messing around and grabbed both ankles in his clumsy claws, pulling gently until Chaos lent a hand and made the floor around Scofflaw more akin to quicksand.

There was a suitably comedic midpoint between a slurp and a pop, and Benjamin reached round with a tail, snatching at Scofflaw’s collar before setting him gently down. He passed the villain’s shoe back.

“You wouldn’t be Mr. Jorgensaard, would you? If so, your car was looking for you.”