Re: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round One: Vio Maleficat)
01-09-2011, 07:01 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Terrorists. Or anarchists. Or some other kind of destructive menace that Jetsam wanted little to do with. The plant couldnt've been consigned to scrap, else the car wouldn't be outside. They weren't some atypical A-team brand of Chaos, either - although the one he'd extracted from the ceiling was a bit ambiguous, the rusty-coloured one that had just walked in was definitely Unity-aligned. Maybe the pigmentation was a grudge-inducing memory of some kind of incident. Or something.
Benjamin was struggling to care whichever way. He was more occupied with coming up with a plan, after having reached the conclusion that rogues like these weren't likely to accommodate his personal agendas, whatever they might be for this particular planet. Best get out of here before he got implicated. Hell, if their cartel or gang felt like hunting him down, they could hunt him down. Jetsam didn't have much better to do yet, anyway.
This train of thought was interrupted, as the pangolin finally noticed the way Tor was staring at him. It sent a shiver down his rows of scales that probably had more to do with a freshly bolstered local Unity getting upset at him.
Yeah, that does it. Unnerved, Benjamin's tail lashed around a bit, the hand scrabbling along the benches for something resembling a weapon. He rumbled slowly, as though addressing thrice as many people, with twice as much firepower pointed in his direction. "I don't know what I've walked into, but I'll leave you gentlemen to it. I don't want any trouble. If anyone asks, I didn't see anything. I wasn't here."
"On your marks..."
The pangolin glanced up to the light fixture, whose grin was flickering in and out of focus. He took another step back into the far corner; he was going to need a good running start to force his way through the door. Benjamin hoped, in the interests of not spending his time on Vio fleeing from a criminal organisation hell-bent on revenge, that Tor would have the sense (or failing that, the reflexes) to get out of the way.
"Get set..."
He didn't. Benjamin rose to his hind legs with a roar and dealt the rather excitable ceiling light a brutal uppercut, before crashing back down to all fours and charging full tilt for the door. Tor managed a "wait!" which Jetsam didn't have the time or mindset to construe as anything other than an angry warning, and was smacked aside as the pangolin curled into a ball mid-run, catching the Telpori-Han with his flailing tail.
There was a dull boom from further off, like a prickly wrecking ball colliding with a wall, before things quietened down to the more ambient tones of the facility. The office was still lit enough from the doorway, now thoroughly devoid of doors, as well as the rippling and warping holographic screen which had come off worse off from an encounter with Benjamin's trampling foot. The carefully channelled Chaos that had powered this fantastical technology leaked out, manifested a music box ballerina warbling the first few lines of "Sing a Song of Sixpence", before Unity roiled through the room and snuffed it out.
"May I point out," Scofflaw began, hoping recent events had driven his own attempt at murder from the Telpori-Hal's mind, "it was being perfectly reasonable until you showed up and scared it."
Benjamin galloped through still-spatially unstable corridors, spurred by fresh Unity lapping at his heels, hunting for an exit. When realising Chaos decided that wasn't his lot, he galloped just for the hell of it, savouring the inertia this form granted him, if not so much the stamina.
He finally caught his breath a good distance from Tor and Scofflaw and the prickle of Unity in some kind of hangar, wishing he had some glasses or something to deal with this damnable poor vision. For a shaky second, Chaos seemed willing to oblige with a pair of shutter shades, before Unity reminded Benjamin his foray into Her factory had come with certain provisions. Snorting with frustration, Benjamin just walked the twenty or so metres until the other end of the hangar came into sepia (why hadn't he noticed that before?) focus.
The entire end wall of the hangar was conspicuously absent, the hexallation shimmer of the Unity barrier's boundary the first thing Jetsam had seen in Vio to elicit actual elation. His experience to date showed on the whole, Chaos wasn't prone to friendly fire. A thick meadow of very large, Chaotic flowers was encroaching into the facility between Benjamin and escape, and it was only when Jetsam had hurriedly retreated from the meadow with half a dozen piranha-like tulips and a bouquet of lion-faced miniature sunflowers attached to his right foreclaw that the pangolin realised that a) he’d been wrong to make sweeping generalisations about how Chaos behaved and b) this wasn't going to be so easy.
The tulips' very determined gnawing (which failed to stop even after Jetsam uprooted the bastards) was rapidly escalating from annoying to painful, and by the time Benjamin had levered them all off with a metal-rimmed scale his foreleg was covered in puncture wounds. He winced, licked the wounds clean as best as his morphology would allow, and hunkered down in a corner which gave him a decent view of the door.
Benjamin needed a plan. He’d gotten as far as ‘something something petrol’ (it was hard when your brain was geared toward plans powered more with Chaos than logic) when a previously ignored office door opened behind him. A man, with a head like an egg and a build (beneath his overalls) that looked like he’d eat three of them raw for breakfast, stared at the pangolin. His eyes narrowed, and he hefted his comically large spanner. Jetsam felt the Unity pouring off the guy in abrasive streams before he heard him, and turned just in time to get a concentrated bolt of the stuff in his side.
The pangolin flew across the width of the hangar, fall arrested if not quite broken by a jeep. The foreman held his spanner with practiced ease, a second lurid green bolt chattering in its jaws. Benjamin struggled to his feet to the sound of tulips roaring with approval, the hit area not visibly wounded but simultaneously burning and numb. “Sir, you’ve got intruders. In your-”
Benjamin barely avoided the second blast, sprinting for the woefully insufficient cover afforded by another vehicle before it too was shot to bits. The man closed the gap until he stood in the middle of the hangar, chasing the pangolin in a wide arc as he ignored its pleas.
“YES,” roared Jorgensaard, now hefting his wrench like a crossbow as he shot a rapid stream of controlled Chaos at Jetsam, “THERE IS A PRICKLY BLOODY ANTEATER LOOSE IN MY FACTORY!”
Terrorists. Or anarchists. Or some other kind of destructive menace that Jetsam wanted little to do with. The plant couldnt've been consigned to scrap, else the car wouldn't be outside. They weren't some atypical A-team brand of Chaos, either - although the one he'd extracted from the ceiling was a bit ambiguous, the rusty-coloured one that had just walked in was definitely Unity-aligned. Maybe the pigmentation was a grudge-inducing memory of some kind of incident. Or something.
Benjamin was struggling to care whichever way. He was more occupied with coming up with a plan, after having reached the conclusion that rogues like these weren't likely to accommodate his personal agendas, whatever they might be for this particular planet. Best get out of here before he got implicated. Hell, if their cartel or gang felt like hunting him down, they could hunt him down. Jetsam didn't have much better to do yet, anyway.
This train of thought was interrupted, as the pangolin finally noticed the way Tor was staring at him. It sent a shiver down his rows of scales that probably had more to do with a freshly bolstered local Unity getting upset at him.
Yeah, that does it. Unnerved, Benjamin's tail lashed around a bit, the hand scrabbling along the benches for something resembling a weapon. He rumbled slowly, as though addressing thrice as many people, with twice as much firepower pointed in his direction. "I don't know what I've walked into, but I'll leave you gentlemen to it. I don't want any trouble. If anyone asks, I didn't see anything. I wasn't here."
"On your marks..."
The pangolin glanced up to the light fixture, whose grin was flickering in and out of focus. He took another step back into the far corner; he was going to need a good running start to force his way through the door. Benjamin hoped, in the interests of not spending his time on Vio fleeing from a criminal organisation hell-bent on revenge, that Tor would have the sense (or failing that, the reflexes) to get out of the way.
"Get set..."
He didn't. Benjamin rose to his hind legs with a roar and dealt the rather excitable ceiling light a brutal uppercut, before crashing back down to all fours and charging full tilt for the door. Tor managed a "wait!" which Jetsam didn't have the time or mindset to construe as anything other than an angry warning, and was smacked aside as the pangolin curled into a ball mid-run, catching the Telpori-Han with his flailing tail.
There was a dull boom from further off, like a prickly wrecking ball colliding with a wall, before things quietened down to the more ambient tones of the facility. The office was still lit enough from the doorway, now thoroughly devoid of doors, as well as the rippling and warping holographic screen which had come off worse off from an encounter with Benjamin's trampling foot. The carefully channelled Chaos that had powered this fantastical technology leaked out, manifested a music box ballerina warbling the first few lines of "Sing a Song of Sixpence", before Unity roiled through the room and snuffed it out.
"May I point out," Scofflaw began, hoping recent events had driven his own attempt at murder from the Telpori-Hal's mind, "it was being perfectly reasonable until you showed up and scared it."
Benjamin galloped through still-spatially unstable corridors, spurred by fresh Unity lapping at his heels, hunting for an exit. When realising Chaos decided that wasn't his lot, he galloped just for the hell of it, savouring the inertia this form granted him, if not so much the stamina.
He finally caught his breath a good distance from Tor and Scofflaw and the prickle of Unity in some kind of hangar, wishing he had some glasses or something to deal with this damnable poor vision. For a shaky second, Chaos seemed willing to oblige with a pair of shutter shades, before Unity reminded Benjamin his foray into Her factory had come with certain provisions. Snorting with frustration, Benjamin just walked the twenty or so metres until the other end of the hangar came into sepia (why hadn't he noticed that before?) focus.
The entire end wall of the hangar was conspicuously absent, the hexallation shimmer of the Unity barrier's boundary the first thing Jetsam had seen in Vio to elicit actual elation. His experience to date showed on the whole, Chaos wasn't prone to friendly fire. A thick meadow of very large, Chaotic flowers was encroaching into the facility between Benjamin and escape, and it was only when Jetsam had hurriedly retreated from the meadow with half a dozen piranha-like tulips and a bouquet of lion-faced miniature sunflowers attached to his right foreclaw that the pangolin realised that a) he’d been wrong to make sweeping generalisations about how Chaos behaved and b) this wasn't going to be so easy.
The tulips' very determined gnawing (which failed to stop even after Jetsam uprooted the bastards) was rapidly escalating from annoying to painful, and by the time Benjamin had levered them all off with a metal-rimmed scale his foreleg was covered in puncture wounds. He winced, licked the wounds clean as best as his morphology would allow, and hunkered down in a corner which gave him a decent view of the door.
Benjamin needed a plan. He’d gotten as far as ‘something something petrol’ (it was hard when your brain was geared toward plans powered more with Chaos than logic) when a previously ignored office door opened behind him. A man, with a head like an egg and a build (beneath his overalls) that looked like he’d eat three of them raw for breakfast, stared at the pangolin. His eyes narrowed, and he hefted his comically large spanner. Jetsam felt the Unity pouring off the guy in abrasive streams before he heard him, and turned just in time to get a concentrated bolt of the stuff in his side.
The pangolin flew across the width of the hangar, fall arrested if not quite broken by a jeep. The foreman held his spanner with practiced ease, a second lurid green bolt chattering in its jaws. Benjamin struggled to his feet to the sound of tulips roaring with approval, the hit area not visibly wounded but simultaneously burning and numb. “Sir, you’ve got intruders. In your-”
Benjamin barely avoided the second blast, sprinting for the woefully insufficient cover afforded by another vehicle before it too was shot to bits. The man closed the gap until he stood in the middle of the hangar, chasing the pangolin in a wide arc as he ignored its pleas.
“YES,” roared Jorgensaard, now hefting his wrench like a crossbow as he shot a rapid stream of controlled Chaos at Jetsam, “THERE IS A PRICKLY BLOODY ANTEATER LOOSE IN MY FACTORY!”
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