Re: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Two: The Great Battlefield)
09-18-2011, 01:33 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
Ooooooooooooooooh
Come, messmates, pass the bottle ‘round,
Our time is short, remember,
For our grog must stop,
And our spirits drop,
On the first day of November.
Huebert simply couldn’t fathom why Scofflaw was singing. Or, even more strangely, how Jessica already knew the chorus. “For tonight, we’ll merry, merry be!” she shouted atonally. “For tonight we’ll merry, merry be, for tonight we’ll merry, merry be, tomorrow we’ll be sober!” Huebert, meanwhile, was up to some sensible pursuits, like putting his pants back on. He smelled smoke.
Oooooooooooooooh
Farewell, ol’ rye, ‘tis a sad, sad word,
But alas, it must be spoken,
The ruby cup must be given up,
And the demijohn be broken.
For tonight we’ll me—Who the hell are you?
Even after hearing the explosion, Jetsam had really hoped he would make it a couple more minutes without being spotted. He had two of the three drunken subordinates he’d rescued so far watching the staircase up to the main bar, and the other one helping him untie the rest. No one was watching the side room with all the giggling coming from it, which Jetsam should have realized was a mistake when dealing with Scofflaw.
”Who the hell are you?” demanded the villain, advancing menacingly with a baseball bat in his hand. His confusion was understandable; Jetsam was still dressed in Anzhi’s teal, and had tried not to get himself noticed getting in (although he’d still been forced to relinquish his weapon, and now found himself wishing he could have been allowed to keep it for use as a club).
The Tartan Tyrant worked out that the teal stranger was Jetsam about a second before the wanderer’s palm slammed into his nose, thankfully failing to break it. …Forced to take a shape suited to the world he arrives in… It was the hair that tipped him off. Recovering from the blow to his face, he found Jetsam’s hands clamped around his baseball bat, which sparked in him mixed feelings. On the one hand, he’d been planning on using that bat to smash the fucker’s head in, end of the round be damned. On the other hand, struggling over weapons was a situation the Tyrant had found himself in a lot, over the course of his various incarnations. This little basement brawl wasn’t quite as glamorous as struggling with Vigil-NT over his amputation ray, or struggling with a hobo over the world’s only pack of the Perfect Cigarettes, but it still awoke within him the comfortable feeling of slipping into a worn old pair of moccasins on the first day of spring.
He wished there were a large window nearby. Or a railing. Or basically anything with an edge that he could throw both himself and Jetsam over the edge of. That was his usual tactic in these struggling-over-a-weapon situations. He supposed he could try and get them both to trip over one of the tied-up Reds…
”For Kerak!” shouted Jessica, to absolutely everyone’s surprise. She threw herself at one of the untied Reds, giving the soldier’s body a lot of conflicting signals and generally making him want to fall down. The other two took affront at this act of probably-aggression and charged Huebert, who, suffice to say, was bigger than they were.
Jetsam ripped the baseball bat out of the Tyrant’s hands. Shit. “Curses!” Damn it. “Confound it all!” Fuck that guy. “Blast you, Benjamin Jetsam!”
Despite a lengthy stint wearing a white coat as “MisDemeanor, M.D.,” the Tartan Tyrant hated hospitals and tried to avoid them, especially since hospitals hated him back. Accordingly, he had long ago mastered the art of minimizing the amount of damage his body took during a humiliating defeat. He turned his body at a precise angle so that the first swing of Jetsam’s baseball bat hit against the fleshy part of his side. After the second hit glanced against his bicep, he made sure to fall down, exposing the less sensitive part of his stomach to a kick that Jetsam must have found very satisfying.
By this time, unfortunately for Jetsam, Huebert had worked up his fight-or-flight response too much to engage negotiations. The wanderer suddenly found his legs going in two different directions, his torso heading for the floor, and his breathing passages obscured by a fist.
* * * * *
In the end, to TinTen’s frustration, it was mostly just a matter of reverse-engineering from what Scofflaw had already done.
The weapon neutralization field generator functioned by emitting electromagnetic radiation with a frequency, and TinTen was embarrassed to have to say this, that can only be measured in imaginary numbers. As well as, mostly through a side effect, interfering with the firing mechanism of TinTen and Huebert’s plasma weapons, this completely nullified the effect of the soldiers’ weapons, which ran on a similar principle. Proximity to the generator also had a slight but noticeable effect on the subject’s amygdala, which was already a bit distended.
It was a natural conclusion to draw (and he daren’t risk shutting off the generator to test this theory, especially with the fire spreading) that the guns functioned by flooding the target’s nervous system with square-root-of-minus-radiation, essentially adding the target’s decision-making center to an unconscious network of obedience with the general as the central hub. How exactly this network functioned, or why it also made your outfit change, was a complete mystery to TinTen, but he had a start.
The practical application of this knowledge became apparent when the Meipi toggled a dial on the side of the field generator, and the tartan pattern on the Alfalfa Male’s clothing disappeared. Dialing it further down caused him to redshift from green to chartreuse.
Shouldn’t hang around this thing too long, TinTen thought, worried for the sake of his brain. Then again, his own amygdalas weren’t simply hanging out there for the world to see, and he’d never been converted before, so his own tolerance was probably a good deal higher.
Thirty seconds’ more experimentation (he couldn’t have more than five minutes left before the fire reached the generator) enabled him to rig the generator to produce a stereo effect, producing two frequencies at one time. Setting one to “green” and the other to “red” recreated something approximating the plaid texture, if a bit crudely (to tell the truth, it was more of a tie-dye). This also increased the natural activity of the subject’s brain, suggesting a slight return of independent thought. So, thought TinTen. Plaids are hooked up to two separate neural networks, yet remain independent of each. Increase in autonomous function… can Plaids be converted through traditional weaponry? Did Scofflaw do this on purpose?
It took him another minute to hit upon the solution to the question Scofflaw had posed. He set to work immediately, pilling from the scrap metal Scofflaw had left laing around—how could the villain stand to work like this all the time?—and quadrupled the generator, creating four separate frequencies. When the four frequencies were set to red, blue, yellow, and green, the test subject’s clothes faded to a slightly stained white, and his amygdala no longer registered any external influence at all.
TinTen felt a twinge of gleeful satisfaction. Cured. Two seconds later, Scottie Gibbs, the Alfalfa Male, died of a potent combination of alcohol poisoning and impromptu brain surgery.
The generator was leaking a trail of undiluted ethanol, and the flames were beginning to eat away at the corners of the room. This thing could end the war, if sufficiently amplified. TinTen couldn’t let it explode. With a grunt, he dragged it out of its place and pushed it up against the wall; he then lifted it up against the wall and succeeded in tossing the whole thing out the window. It landed with a soft thud that, thank fate, didn’t suggest any major internal damage.
TinTen followed the generator out of the sweaty inferno into the cool air of the battlefield, and found himself facing down several hundred green soldiers.
A faraway but magnified voice shouted, ”Attention Tengeri, or whoever’s in there!”
* * * * *
Kerak had been handed a megaphone, and decided that it suited him.
“Attention Tengeri, or whoever’s in there! We know we can’t use weapons, but we also know that there are a whole lot more of us than there are of you, and one of us is a dinosaur, which apparently is kind of a big deal with you people. You come out here, surrender your technology, allow your forces to get converted, and we'll talk business. Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you, so long as you play nice.
"The battle's over.
"This is war."
Ooooooooooooooooh
Come, messmates, pass the bottle ‘round,
Our time is short, remember,
For our grog must stop,
And our spirits drop,
On the first day of November.
Huebert simply couldn’t fathom why Scofflaw was singing. Or, even more strangely, how Jessica already knew the chorus. “For tonight, we’ll merry, merry be!” she shouted atonally. “For tonight we’ll merry, merry be, for tonight we’ll merry, merry be, tomorrow we’ll be sober!” Huebert, meanwhile, was up to some sensible pursuits, like putting his pants back on. He smelled smoke.
Oooooooooooooooh
Farewell, ol’ rye, ‘tis a sad, sad word,
But alas, it must be spoken,
The ruby cup must be given up,
And the demijohn be broken.
For tonight we’ll me—Who the hell are you?
Even after hearing the explosion, Jetsam had really hoped he would make it a couple more minutes without being spotted. He had two of the three drunken subordinates he’d rescued so far watching the staircase up to the main bar, and the other one helping him untie the rest. No one was watching the side room with all the giggling coming from it, which Jetsam should have realized was a mistake when dealing with Scofflaw.
”Who the hell are you?” demanded the villain, advancing menacingly with a baseball bat in his hand. His confusion was understandable; Jetsam was still dressed in Anzhi’s teal, and had tried not to get himself noticed getting in (although he’d still been forced to relinquish his weapon, and now found himself wishing he could have been allowed to keep it for use as a club).
The Tartan Tyrant worked out that the teal stranger was Jetsam about a second before the wanderer’s palm slammed into his nose, thankfully failing to break it. …Forced to take a shape suited to the world he arrives in… It was the hair that tipped him off. Recovering from the blow to his face, he found Jetsam’s hands clamped around his baseball bat, which sparked in him mixed feelings. On the one hand, he’d been planning on using that bat to smash the fucker’s head in, end of the round be damned. On the other hand, struggling over weapons was a situation the Tyrant had found himself in a lot, over the course of his various incarnations. This little basement brawl wasn’t quite as glamorous as struggling with Vigil-NT over his amputation ray, or struggling with a hobo over the world’s only pack of the Perfect Cigarettes, but it still awoke within him the comfortable feeling of slipping into a worn old pair of moccasins on the first day of spring.
He wished there were a large window nearby. Or a railing. Or basically anything with an edge that he could throw both himself and Jetsam over the edge of. That was his usual tactic in these struggling-over-a-weapon situations. He supposed he could try and get them both to trip over one of the tied-up Reds…
”For Kerak!” shouted Jessica, to absolutely everyone’s surprise. She threw herself at one of the untied Reds, giving the soldier’s body a lot of conflicting signals and generally making him want to fall down. The other two took affront at this act of probably-aggression and charged Huebert, who, suffice to say, was bigger than they were.
Jetsam ripped the baseball bat out of the Tyrant’s hands. Shit. “Curses!” Damn it. “Confound it all!” Fuck that guy. “Blast you, Benjamin Jetsam!”
Despite a lengthy stint wearing a white coat as “MisDemeanor, M.D.,” the Tartan Tyrant hated hospitals and tried to avoid them, especially since hospitals hated him back. Accordingly, he had long ago mastered the art of minimizing the amount of damage his body took during a humiliating defeat. He turned his body at a precise angle so that the first swing of Jetsam’s baseball bat hit against the fleshy part of his side. After the second hit glanced against his bicep, he made sure to fall down, exposing the less sensitive part of his stomach to a kick that Jetsam must have found very satisfying.
By this time, unfortunately for Jetsam, Huebert had worked up his fight-or-flight response too much to engage negotiations. The wanderer suddenly found his legs going in two different directions, his torso heading for the floor, and his breathing passages obscured by a fist.
* * * * *
In the end, to TinTen’s frustration, it was mostly just a matter of reverse-engineering from what Scofflaw had already done.
The weapon neutralization field generator functioned by emitting electromagnetic radiation with a frequency, and TinTen was embarrassed to have to say this, that can only be measured in imaginary numbers. As well as, mostly through a side effect, interfering with the firing mechanism of TinTen and Huebert’s plasma weapons, this completely nullified the effect of the soldiers’ weapons, which ran on a similar principle. Proximity to the generator also had a slight but noticeable effect on the subject’s amygdala, which was already a bit distended.
It was a natural conclusion to draw (and he daren’t risk shutting off the generator to test this theory, especially with the fire spreading) that the guns functioned by flooding the target’s nervous system with square-root-of-minus-radiation, essentially adding the target’s decision-making center to an unconscious network of obedience with the general as the central hub. How exactly this network functioned, or why it also made your outfit change, was a complete mystery to TinTen, but he had a start.
The practical application of this knowledge became apparent when the Meipi toggled a dial on the side of the field generator, and the tartan pattern on the Alfalfa Male’s clothing disappeared. Dialing it further down caused him to redshift from green to chartreuse.
Shouldn’t hang around this thing too long, TinTen thought, worried for the sake of his brain. Then again, his own amygdalas weren’t simply hanging out there for the world to see, and he’d never been converted before, so his own tolerance was probably a good deal higher.
Thirty seconds’ more experimentation (he couldn’t have more than five minutes left before the fire reached the generator) enabled him to rig the generator to produce a stereo effect, producing two frequencies at one time. Setting one to “green” and the other to “red” recreated something approximating the plaid texture, if a bit crudely (to tell the truth, it was more of a tie-dye). This also increased the natural activity of the subject’s brain, suggesting a slight return of independent thought. So, thought TinTen. Plaids are hooked up to two separate neural networks, yet remain independent of each. Increase in autonomous function… can Plaids be converted through traditional weaponry? Did Scofflaw do this on purpose?
It took him another minute to hit upon the solution to the question Scofflaw had posed. He set to work immediately, pilling from the scrap metal Scofflaw had left laing around—how could the villain stand to work like this all the time?—and quadrupled the generator, creating four separate frequencies. When the four frequencies were set to red, blue, yellow, and green, the test subject’s clothes faded to a slightly stained white, and his amygdala no longer registered any external influence at all.
TinTen felt a twinge of gleeful satisfaction. Cured. Two seconds later, Scottie Gibbs, the Alfalfa Male, died of a potent combination of alcohol poisoning and impromptu brain surgery.
The generator was leaking a trail of undiluted ethanol, and the flames were beginning to eat away at the corners of the room. This thing could end the war, if sufficiently amplified. TinTen couldn’t let it explode. With a grunt, he dragged it out of its place and pushed it up against the wall; he then lifted it up against the wall and succeeded in tossing the whole thing out the window. It landed with a soft thud that, thank fate, didn’t suggest any major internal damage.
TinTen followed the generator out of the sweaty inferno into the cool air of the battlefield, and found himself facing down several hundred green soldiers.
A faraway but magnified voice shouted, ”Attention Tengeri, or whoever’s in there!”
* * * * *
Kerak had been handed a megaphone, and decided that it suited him.
“Attention Tengeri, or whoever’s in there! We know we can’t use weapons, but we also know that there are a whole lot more of us than there are of you, and one of us is a dinosaur, which apparently is kind of a big deal with you people. You come out here, surrender your technology, allow your forces to get converted, and we'll talk business. Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you, so long as you play nice.
"The battle's over.
"This is war."