Re: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round One: Vio Maleficat)
01-21-2011, 12:58 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Shit.
Chaos poured in through the doors, ventilation, and to be honest every other porous and non-porous surface with the disorienting comfort of all your best friends invading your house to throw a party there. Except if your friends were composed of something between fluid and aggregated fog. (Benjamin could vaguely recall several years as a race like that, but they’d been a rather uppity bunch. Hard to even strike up a conversation, let alone make house-crashing friends amongst them.)
Ruining the mood somewhat wasn’t the fact every bone in his body should’ve been broken, because anatomy was doing that laissez-faire thing it was inclined to do on Vio. The familiar bolts of green from on high probably had more to do with it, not to mention the rusty one negotiating his way down a ladder.
Come to think of it, this whole improbable crowd of the dinosaur and Rusty’s associate and a cephalid and a strongman and some kind of winged eel and a luminescent magician and what the hell is that cube thing and why is it looking at me like that didn’t all seem on friendly enough terms to just assume they were all on the same team and oh who are we kidding – Jetsam saw Scofflaw, spotted Tor, and bounded out of the caved-in remains of the generator without thinking much further than finding a way out.
Up wasn’t an option; those razor-wielding barbershop mackerel weren’t going to distract Jorgensaard for long, even if a chorus of eggbeater-headed choirboys were winging their harmonious way across the room as backup. Huebert was blocking one door, busy pumping plasma into the aforementioned walrus contingent who just wanted to come out of the desert heat; Scofflaw narrowly dodged Tengeri’s aqueous uppercut as Kerak protested for everyone to finish listening to his story. Scofflaw had been something of a boon to the pangolin; the influx of Chaos entities notwithstanding, his aggression had left little attention directed at the bemused, panicked pangolin who just wanted to find a horizon to run away over. The dinosaur took an angry step at Tengeri, but smacked face-first into a translucent barrier Murdoch had conjured out of nowhere.
Benjamin’s top priority was for this little scrap to continue long enough that he could get out of here. The magician seemed most liable to restore order, not to mention his wand was making Benjamin prickle the same way Jorgensaard’s spanner did. Luckily for Jetsam, Murdoch had discounted the pangolin as a marauding pinecone or something, and turned his back on it. Benjamin smacked the Varalica off-balance, and he fell to Kerak’s feet with a yell, first of alarm, then of disgust, as the pangolin’s tail smashed a pipe for the token collateral damage. It hissed with steam for five seconds, before it spluttered and started pouring molten chocolate all over the floor.
Scofflaw had been sizing up his contestants from a quieter corner, trying to figure who would be easiest to kill, and failing that, who’d be best to take hostage. He pulled out a little landmine-like contraption, opening its casing with the intention to turn it into a sticky freeze-bomb to shut down the Leviath, but the circuitry had been replaced with pipe cleaners – they swiftly bent themselves into a fuzzy, multi-coloured biplane, which flew up and away over Kerak before exploding in a tiny shower of fuzz. He frowned at the familiar, silvered pangolin, when it gave a roar of alarm which happened to coincide with a circus marquee enveloping the generator room.
Velobo lacked the rope, but he still had his stuncheon and a healthy load of ambition as he admired the enormous, prickly creature that leapt out of the generator. Having not realised it was directly, if unintentionally responsible for Chaos barging in, the Plazmuth only saw it as a majestic substitute for his recently Unified previous mount. He raised his weapon as he darted round the room’s edge, fairly braining Jetsam with the stunstick just as the canvas fell.
Everyone, Chaotic or otherwise, adjusted to the red-and-yellow-striped gloom, forcing a lull in the assorted noise (save for Benjamin’s wail, which tailed off as the nimble Plazmuth circled around him, trying to find a safe way up.) Murdoch had scrambled to his feet by this point, and pumped a materialising reverse mermaid full of Unity before it could get its shark-teeth round Tengeri. It vanished in a shower of rather bloody fireworks, which smelt like tinned tuna. The Leviath herself was holding off any Chaotic aggressors with vicious jets of water, but between her hyperactive HUD and her limited communication she couldn’t really co-ordinate a better response to the anarchy.
Velobo, between the stunning weapon and his superior agility, had bailed Jetsam up onto the bleachers. An albatross cruised past his head, wailing like a fire engine. “What do you want!?”
“Yuh can tuhlk, fpikebeaft!?” The Plazmuth detached his tongue from the albatross after dispatching it with an electrified club to the head. Jetsam just nodded, apprehensive. The cuboid had to swiftly reconsider whether still attempting to employ this thing as a mount was… right. I mean, if it weren’t for the spiky armour it’d be perfect to ride-
“What. Do you want.” Benjamin sounded desperate. Light peered in from one corner of the big top, where the Telpori-Han had torn a hole through. A squadron of potted pansies bounced in after him, while the Plazmuth apologetically fumbled his way through an explanation.
“Well, it was my intention to use you as a mount, seeing as I lost my last mode of transport. But since you-“
“Do you have. A way. Out of here.”
Velobo didn’t turn, but his peripheral eyes glanced around the big top. The walrus contingent was still occupying Huebert and the doorway he’d entered through, but the Plazmuth tried to look confident as he marched up to a non-descript stretch of striped canvas. “Would you please cut this open?”
Benjamin weighed up his options, shrugged, and sliced it to the tune of a spoon running up a xylophone. Beyond was darkness, broken only by scattered, luminous fungi and a dull glow in the middle distance. If there was a roof overhead, its height was “indeterminate”. He shrugged, and slipped through as stealthily as a scaly ten-foot mammal could manage. The pangolin glanced over his shoulder at the carnage still going on in the tent. “Can we shut that?”
“Absolutely,” grinned the Plazmuth. Several flicks with his tongue peppered one side of the rend in sticky saliva, which stuck the two bits of tent back together. The goldish light was reduced to a sliver, which swam off through the gloom like an eel after a minute or so, taking the sounds of fighting with it. Jetsam noted with some worry that Velobo still held the truncheon. Oh well. It seemed harmless enough, and if it was working for Rusty’s cartel dispatching it out here with no witnesses shouldn’t be too much trouble. He kind of hoped it wouldn’t come to that, if only because this one seemed like a lackey. Not to mention the Plazmuth’s whole morphology was more pleasing to a Chaotically-minded Jetsam.
“Now,” Jetsam muttered, the relieved gratitude from Velobo’s unraised truncheon obvious in his voice, “you were kind enough to find me a way out of that mess, and you said you wanted a ride? I’m afraid my scales may be too sharp… however-”
Velobo flinched as a large hand reached out and grabbed him, before realising it was attached to the spikebeast. Benjamin picked him up, and rotated his tail-hand around, palm up, fingers forward, and poised above him like a scorpion’s sting. The cuboid grabbed a plated thumb, thicker than his own arm, for stability, as Benjamin rocked on his claws a bit before setting off at a trot for the nearest copse of glowing mushrooms. Disembodied voices were arguing about the morning traffic and Sean from Accounts in unlit corners, and glowing noses snuffled overhead (no eyes, though), but these phenomena faded as the duo approached the underground glade. Benjamin could feel the Unity coming off the giant mushrooms, but it wasn’t exactly abrasive. Resisting the sudden urge to fling Velobo like a highly unaerodynamic boulder from a trebuchet, the journeyman lowered him carefully at his request. Not minding if things remained far less… interesting than they had in the generator room, Jetsam ignored the gnawing feeling and followed the Plazmuth into the overgrown, glowing fairy ring.
A pack of scruffily dressed assorted marsupials were using the otherwise deserted ring as a practice ground for their weekly martial arts class. They bounded, scampered (and in the case of koala instructor, backflipped) out of the clearing as Velobo and his noble steed strolled in.
“Strange.”
“Hm?”
“The mushrooms are producing Unity, but it’s weak. Doesn’t even bother those little creatures, but…”
Benjamin trailed off, frowning at one of the luminous blooms. He’d started thinking about breaking the mushroom, but the thought had been gently nudged from his head as soon as he’d brought it up. The pangolin shook his head, and turned back to his companion. “Can’t you feel it?”
Velobo squinted, strained, and seemed to hold his breath for a bit, then shook his head. “I am afraid I cannot.”
Probably one of Rusty’s gang, then. He’s not Chaos like me. There was something Benjamin recalled he had to do, were Velobo one of the criminal intruders to the factory, but it didn’t seem important. The cavern had that particular quiet large, water-carved spaces had – with the faint, bluish glow of the Unity mushrooms, it was oddly peaceful.
“Well,” the pangolin grunted, sitting down and curling his tail round his feet, “I don’t know if it’s the caves or the mushrooms or the light or what, but whatever part of me that didn’t like the Unity barrier’s telling me this stuff’s all right. So I’ll be staying here until I know things are less crazy up top.
What about you?”
Shit.
Chaos poured in through the doors, ventilation, and to be honest every other porous and non-porous surface with the disorienting comfort of all your best friends invading your house to throw a party there. Except if your friends were composed of something between fluid and aggregated fog. (Benjamin could vaguely recall several years as a race like that, but they’d been a rather uppity bunch. Hard to even strike up a conversation, let alone make house-crashing friends amongst them.)
Ruining the mood somewhat wasn’t the fact every bone in his body should’ve been broken, because anatomy was doing that laissez-faire thing it was inclined to do on Vio. The familiar bolts of green from on high probably had more to do with it, not to mention the rusty one negotiating his way down a ladder.
Come to think of it, this whole improbable crowd of the dinosaur and Rusty’s associate and a cephalid and a strongman and some kind of winged eel and a luminescent magician and what the hell is that cube thing and why is it looking at me like that didn’t all seem on friendly enough terms to just assume they were all on the same team and oh who are we kidding – Jetsam saw Scofflaw, spotted Tor, and bounded out of the caved-in remains of the generator without thinking much further than finding a way out.
Up wasn’t an option; those razor-wielding barbershop mackerel weren’t going to distract Jorgensaard for long, even if a chorus of eggbeater-headed choirboys were winging their harmonious way across the room as backup. Huebert was blocking one door, busy pumping plasma into the aforementioned walrus contingent who just wanted to come out of the desert heat; Scofflaw narrowly dodged Tengeri’s aqueous uppercut as Kerak protested for everyone to finish listening to his story. Scofflaw had been something of a boon to the pangolin; the influx of Chaos entities notwithstanding, his aggression had left little attention directed at the bemused, panicked pangolin who just wanted to find a horizon to run away over. The dinosaur took an angry step at Tengeri, but smacked face-first into a translucent barrier Murdoch had conjured out of nowhere.
Benjamin’s top priority was for this little scrap to continue long enough that he could get out of here. The magician seemed most liable to restore order, not to mention his wand was making Benjamin prickle the same way Jorgensaard’s spanner did. Luckily for Jetsam, Murdoch had discounted the pangolin as a marauding pinecone or something, and turned his back on it. Benjamin smacked the Varalica off-balance, and he fell to Kerak’s feet with a yell, first of alarm, then of disgust, as the pangolin’s tail smashed a pipe for the token collateral damage. It hissed with steam for five seconds, before it spluttered and started pouring molten chocolate all over the floor.
Scofflaw had been sizing up his contestants from a quieter corner, trying to figure who would be easiest to kill, and failing that, who’d be best to take hostage. He pulled out a little landmine-like contraption, opening its casing with the intention to turn it into a sticky freeze-bomb to shut down the Leviath, but the circuitry had been replaced with pipe cleaners – they swiftly bent themselves into a fuzzy, multi-coloured biplane, which flew up and away over Kerak before exploding in a tiny shower of fuzz. He frowned at the familiar, silvered pangolin, when it gave a roar of alarm which happened to coincide with a circus marquee enveloping the generator room.
Velobo lacked the rope, but he still had his stuncheon and a healthy load of ambition as he admired the enormous, prickly creature that leapt out of the generator. Having not realised it was directly, if unintentionally responsible for Chaos barging in, the Plazmuth only saw it as a majestic substitute for his recently Unified previous mount. He raised his weapon as he darted round the room’s edge, fairly braining Jetsam with the stunstick just as the canvas fell.
Everyone, Chaotic or otherwise, adjusted to the red-and-yellow-striped gloom, forcing a lull in the assorted noise (save for Benjamin’s wail, which tailed off as the nimble Plazmuth circled around him, trying to find a safe way up.) Murdoch had scrambled to his feet by this point, and pumped a materialising reverse mermaid full of Unity before it could get its shark-teeth round Tengeri. It vanished in a shower of rather bloody fireworks, which smelt like tinned tuna. The Leviath herself was holding off any Chaotic aggressors with vicious jets of water, but between her hyperactive HUD and her limited communication she couldn’t really co-ordinate a better response to the anarchy.
Velobo, between the stunning weapon and his superior agility, had bailed Jetsam up onto the bleachers. An albatross cruised past his head, wailing like a fire engine. “What do you want!?”
“Yuh can tuhlk, fpikebeaft!?” The Plazmuth detached his tongue from the albatross after dispatching it with an electrified club to the head. Jetsam just nodded, apprehensive. The cuboid had to swiftly reconsider whether still attempting to employ this thing as a mount was… right. I mean, if it weren’t for the spiky armour it’d be perfect to ride-
“What. Do you want.” Benjamin sounded desperate. Light peered in from one corner of the big top, where the Telpori-Han had torn a hole through. A squadron of potted pansies bounced in after him, while the Plazmuth apologetically fumbled his way through an explanation.
“Well, it was my intention to use you as a mount, seeing as I lost my last mode of transport. But since you-“
“Do you have. A way. Out of here.”
Velobo didn’t turn, but his peripheral eyes glanced around the big top. The walrus contingent was still occupying Huebert and the doorway he’d entered through, but the Plazmuth tried to look confident as he marched up to a non-descript stretch of striped canvas. “Would you please cut this open?”
Benjamin weighed up his options, shrugged, and sliced it to the tune of a spoon running up a xylophone. Beyond was darkness, broken only by scattered, luminous fungi and a dull glow in the middle distance. If there was a roof overhead, its height was “indeterminate”. He shrugged, and slipped through as stealthily as a scaly ten-foot mammal could manage. The pangolin glanced over his shoulder at the carnage still going on in the tent. “Can we shut that?”
“Absolutely,” grinned the Plazmuth. Several flicks with his tongue peppered one side of the rend in sticky saliva, which stuck the two bits of tent back together. The goldish light was reduced to a sliver, which swam off through the gloom like an eel after a minute or so, taking the sounds of fighting with it. Jetsam noted with some worry that Velobo still held the truncheon. Oh well. It seemed harmless enough, and if it was working for Rusty’s cartel dispatching it out here with no witnesses shouldn’t be too much trouble. He kind of hoped it wouldn’t come to that, if only because this one seemed like a lackey. Not to mention the Plazmuth’s whole morphology was more pleasing to a Chaotically-minded Jetsam.
“Now,” Jetsam muttered, the relieved gratitude from Velobo’s unraised truncheon obvious in his voice, “you were kind enough to find me a way out of that mess, and you said you wanted a ride? I’m afraid my scales may be too sharp… however-”
Velobo flinched as a large hand reached out and grabbed him, before realising it was attached to the spikebeast. Benjamin picked him up, and rotated his tail-hand around, palm up, fingers forward, and poised above him like a scorpion’s sting. The cuboid grabbed a plated thumb, thicker than his own arm, for stability, as Benjamin rocked on his claws a bit before setting off at a trot for the nearest copse of glowing mushrooms. Disembodied voices were arguing about the morning traffic and Sean from Accounts in unlit corners, and glowing noses snuffled overhead (no eyes, though), but these phenomena faded as the duo approached the underground glade. Benjamin could feel the Unity coming off the giant mushrooms, but it wasn’t exactly abrasive. Resisting the sudden urge to fling Velobo like a highly unaerodynamic boulder from a trebuchet, the journeyman lowered him carefully at his request. Not minding if things remained far less… interesting than they had in the generator room, Jetsam ignored the gnawing feeling and followed the Plazmuth into the overgrown, glowing fairy ring.
A pack of scruffily dressed assorted marsupials were using the otherwise deserted ring as a practice ground for their weekly martial arts class. They bounded, scampered (and in the case of koala instructor, backflipped) out of the clearing as Velobo and his noble steed strolled in.
“Strange.”
“Hm?”
“The mushrooms are producing Unity, but it’s weak. Doesn’t even bother those little creatures, but…”
Benjamin trailed off, frowning at one of the luminous blooms. He’d started thinking about breaking the mushroom, but the thought had been gently nudged from his head as soon as he’d brought it up. The pangolin shook his head, and turned back to his companion. “Can’t you feel it?”
Velobo squinted, strained, and seemed to hold his breath for a bit, then shook his head. “I am afraid I cannot.”
Probably one of Rusty’s gang, then. He’s not Chaos like me. There was something Benjamin recalled he had to do, were Velobo one of the criminal intruders to the factory, but it didn’t seem important. The cavern had that particular quiet large, water-carved spaces had – with the faint, bluish glow of the Unity mushrooms, it was oddly peaceful.
“Well,” the pangolin grunted, sitting down and curling his tail round his feet, “I don’t know if it’s the caves or the mushrooms or the light or what, but whatever part of me that didn’t like the Unity barrier’s telling me this stuff’s all right. So I’ll be staying here until I know things are less crazy up top.
What about you?”
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