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

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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"Woah woah woah woah hey!" Blue Ray managed, before Velobo anticipated his sidestep and leapt off Jetsam's back, braining the man with his tongue.

"This is not good form! I am not Scarf Law, or whatever you called me!"

Velobo sprung atop his prone form, grabbing him by the collar and winding up for a punch to the jaw, but for a dracodactyl's growl as Jetsam shouldered his way in. Blue Ray couldn't really help himself, if only because the identity of a grizzled-pelted monster with an attitude problem and a trained attack cube wasn't really the mystery it used to be.

"Jetsaaaam! I've got to say, feathers look great on you-"

"Mgggruv," gargled the dracodactyl, which nobody except Jetsam himself correctly interpreted as "move." Blue Ray smacked Velobo off him, then yelled more in surprise than pain as his arm shielded his face from a mouthful of dracodactyl acid. He found his feet faster than his progenitor and attached bulk ever would've been capable, shedding his spontaneously de-armed suit jacket as fast as his fingers could undo the buttons. Blue Ray winced, wishing he'd thought to bring the labcoat and goggles.

"Listen, there is an extremely ravishing and megalomaniacal lady the next room over, and wrecking her room and my chances with her totally violates the bro code-"

There was quite a bit lost in translation there, as Jetsam a) had some template to his trainwreck self that harked from a generation too early, b) was mostly reminded of Skorn, who could outperform Scofflaw in all matters brotastic, semi-quadrupedalism or no, and c) couldn't give a flying feathered fuck about anyone's problems right now save his own. Hell, even the thought of a whole bunch of real people around him with real problems only instilled a kind of existential vertigo, and when their problems made no fucking sense it just upset him harder.

Explaining any of that to Blue Ray was clearly below him, and a leaping lunge appended by a kick with a stray back leg sent the blue menace sailing across the bedchamber. A something-skin rug stopped Blue Ray skidding the rest of the way on his face, but ground him to a halt right at Velobo's feet. The cube slapped him, while Jetsam disentangled himself from a broken five-poster bed and flapped-glided awkwardly over.

"Spineless, brainless, gutless, and heartless." Jetsam flicked his beak to one side, flecks of spit sizzling the carpet. "Faceless in short order, too. If you've got anything left to say for yourself, be sure it's nothing that aggravates me."

The feathered fucker grabbed Blue Ray by an ankle, who was figuring whether telling Jetsam he was half-right was worth it. He sucked a breath in between his teeth. "Well, now that you mention it-"

Jetsam spat in his face.

The acid congealed for a second in a slimy death mask, before whatever was underneath had its features rapidly corroded off it. Blue Ray managed one wet scream before it chewed its way through his throat. Jetsam watched the proceedings impassively; Velobo in shock. The dracodactyl lifted its foot from the corpse with delicate distaste, and turned for the door.

"Wait."

"No."

"Jetsam-"

The monster stopped, looked over his shoulder, and growled. He regretted this diversion of attention in short order, when a heavily-tattooed bear blind-sided him.

--

Ursus wasn't a traitor to Clan Njordbludgeon because he'd sold the secrets of the Sigilists. "Selling" secrets was rather commonplace amongst the various bear clans, and letting clans of different schools of Sigilry play around with your simpler symbols was key to advancing the discipline as a whole. It all worked out in the end, because bears never wrote anything down and went by an honour system when it came to teaching things you didn't come up with yourself.

Bears, unlike humans, were inherently selfless creatures. It was a damn shame Jetsam hadn't been a bear this time round; the experience would've mellowed him out a bit.

Unfortunately, Ursus was the only bear on Ruinam at the time, and Lady Midday had no plans for him to be a corpse when the battlers showed up.

Also unfortunately, Ursus wasn't inherently selfless. He was a self-serving dick, to be frank.

Perhaps most unfortunately of all: he was a self-serving dick of a bear who'd broken tradition, taken sides in a conflict that didn't concern the bears, and (more pertinently) tossed his rather invaluable lot with the madwoman raising relics of civilisations that had been the bane of bearkind.

The madwoman in question was trying to take over the world with said relic, sure, but that didn't bother Clan Njordbludgeon so much as the fact damn Caelo Ruinam was flying again, and that Ursus had had a paw in it. Bears have strange priorities like that.

Velobo, meanwhile, had no clue about any of that, more concerned with a couple tons of angry - patchily covered in fur and glowing symbols, less of the former and more of the latter - that barrelled in with no noise and less preamble, grabbed Jetsam by the face and ran him into a wall. The cuboid sprung backwards, bounced of the wall, and launched his tongue at the back of the bear's head. The behemoth barked something that didn't sound like a language, then whipped around with impossible speed and grabbed Velobo by the tongue.

Two seconds later, Velobo was flying out a freshly-broken window.

Ursus took a breath, turned, and was greeted by a tyrant in a white silk bathrobe. She had already put her shoes back on.

"You are safe, then, Milady."

"I was showering, I heard screaming, then your body paint tripped my wards and stopped worrying." Lady Midday wrapped her robe around her a little tighter, burningly curious about the unconscious dracodactyl in her bedchamber but too annoyed to show it. "Did you have to throw something through the window?"