Re: The $300,000 Fight-A-Thon! [Round One: Storage Park!]
10-23-2012, 08:19 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SeventeenthSquid.
“Oh no. Oh nooooo. Oh no oh no ohnononononononononoNONONONONONONONO!”
A spurt of blood shot up from the headless man's severed neck. It was an annoying, but unavoidable side effect of his curious condition that always showed up when he was stressed. He was very stressed right now. More than he had been in a very, very long time.
Overcoming his initial shock, he began to rush across the mess of multiversal trash and effluent energy, vaulting over flopping sharks and shards of concrete in a blind rush towards the ruins. Blind being the operative word, as he had no eyes. Not that that stopped him from picking his way over all the shit in his way. The Artiste wouldn't have left him with such a major handicap. Well, actually it probably would if he wasn't so useful to it. Of course, it didn't really matter if things were as bad as they looked; it would be coming for a lot more than just his head.
As he ran into the bulk of the storage park and towards his employer's storage unit, he noticed something very strange. Through the massive rents in the walls between units he could barely make out something red moving very rapidly up and down. Well, he didn't really know if it was red. Everything he saw was red. But whatever it was, it seemed pretty agitated about something. At least it didn't look like it was in the Artiste's unit. Thank MetaGod for small mercies. In fact, he couldn't see any rents in the walls looking through into the corpse-filled unit. It looked like it had been outside the path of the shark missiles, whatever the fuck those were.
He stopped his mad dash and plopped down onto a block of shattered concrete, sighing with intense relief and gushing a wave of blood down the front of his suit.
Damn it, he thought. Gonna have to get this dry-cleaned yet again. The shit I put up with in the service of art.
A dreadful sound slowly faded into the air. Its sound could most closely be compared to that of a hatchet hitting a ribcage over and over again, becoming louder with each repetition. A meaty, thunking noise with overtones of cracking and maybe a bit of sloshing here and there. It was a sound he had heard far too many times in his unfortunate life.
“What's so damn funny?” he said, seemingly to thin air.
The voice that responded was not even remotely human. It sounded like an assortment of meat and bone being shredded in a blender and pushed through a grinder in front of a crappy microphone and then remixed by a slightly tone-deaf disk jockey into something approximating Meta Standard English-Derived Pattern XVII Phonetic Language. The words oozed like coagulating blood from somewhere between the red-tinted world the headless man saw and somewhere else. It said only two words.
YOUR FEAR
The headless man just sighed again and cursed as blood flowed down his front. There was no further reply from the voice.
---
Eriz stood totally dumbfounded. She was so dumbfounded, in fact, that for a moment she forgot to be scared. When her brain did eventually overcome its confusion at the absolute absurdity of what had just happened, it was already over. An eerie silence hung over the wake of destruction left by the passage of the fish-missiles. The winged thing and the fish-man seemed just as stunned and silent as she was. The first to speak was, in fact, not a person at all.
It sounded to Eriz like someone being murdered with a blade. Not that she had ever actually heard what that sounded like, but she could make a pretty good guess. It seemed to come from nowhere, barely audible at first but growing louder with every second. She suddenly flew into motion, spinning on her heel to survey her surroundings. Nothing but shattered shelves, broken crates, chunks of building materials and two confused beings eying her with curiosity . Nothing else appeared on her motion sensors.
The noise kept getting louder. It seemed, she thought, that it must be building to some kind of crescendo. As it got louder and louder it seemed like any repetition must be the last, that surely this was the loudest it would get.
It was not.
It was so loud now that she could hear nothing else. The big blue thing lowered its head towards her face and mouthed something to her. She could not hear a word she said and, lacking any experience in lip reading, couldn't decipher her face either.
The sound kept building, so loud now that it hurt. She staggered a step backwards, still clinging to her hammer with both hands. It grew louder. She dropped the hammer and slammed both hands into her face-dome, trying to drown out the sound. She heard nothing. It grew louder.
She fell to her knees. Tears streamed down her face. If it gets any louder, she thought with increasing panic, I'll die. I can't take this.
It grew louder. Louder than her thoughts. She collapsed face-first on the ground.
Crimson fluid ran from the top of her face-dome. It pooled at the bottom of her helmet. There was nothing she could do to stop it, even if she was capable of trying. She could do nothing but hear. As the liquid level rose, she found first her nose, then her mouth submerged. She could not breath. She did not even feel the panic of drowning. She could only feel the sound.
It grew louder.
She quickly drowned in the pool of fluid.
---
Death, Eriz thought, was even worse than anything could have prepared her for. The Sauthai promised no afterlife, no great “Hefen” like the ancient myths from Old Earth spoke of. They were an atheistic lot, practical to a fault. To a Sauthai, death was merely the end of all things.
Things were most certainly not at an end.
She floated naked in a vast void, dimly lit by a blood-red glow that seemed to originate from the air itself. She felt more vulnerable than she thought she ever could. She tried to move her arms from her sides, maybe to retrieve some pathetic, meaningless scrap of modesty and cover her face, but they did not respond to her. She could not even move her eyes. She could not even blink. She could not breath, nor did she feel any need to.
I guess you can only suffocate once, she thought. At least the noise was gone. It was perfectly silent.
A voice split the silence with the neatness of a butcher's cleaver. It was a voice like knives, perfectly enunciated, totally barren of anything resembling human emotion. So flat that she felt it could cut right through her.
metal girl i have been watching you with the greatest interest
There was a noise like a whetstone being drawn across a huge blade, a mechanical snickering.
you saw my piece yes my newest piece it was to show how to put this meant to show a sort of life from death not so simple but close enough for your mind
The noise again. An image of the flesh-tree filled her mind, unbidden.
it was a truly flawed creation and i was to consign it to the grinder
In every pause in its strange flowing words, the sound rang out again, like the drawing of some kind of insane, impossible breath.
until you saw it
Eriz had no idea where the voice was coming from, but once the image of the tree forced itself into her mind she knew exactly who she was talking to. The thing with the warehouse of bodies. With a tree made of dead things.
yes on its own the piece was of little value a sad and misguided attempt to capture a fleeting thought
schiiing
but then you saw it metal girl and now it has so much new meaning and i will not consign it to the grinder oh no for i am excited like i have not been in so very long
schiiing
the thrill of creation is back in my being and i will begin a new piece
schiiing
metal girl you were born under a killer sun
schiiing
you hid from your sun for so long but
schiing
metal girl you have seen the sun
---
Eriz gasped and spluttered. Crimson fluid spattered on the inside of her face-dome. Immediately, tiny limbs folded out and wiped it clean. As it was cleared, she saw the blue thing's face looming in front of hers. She was laying on her back, facing the ceiling. Eriz was very bad at reading expressions but she could nonetheless identify a very startling emotion on her face: concern.
“DAMN IT, WAKE UP. WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING TO THE DEATH, NOT JUST... DYING TO THE DEATH. DAMN IT. THAT SOUNDED BETTER IN MY HEAD.”
Eriz jolted to the side, registering a sharp impact just below the ribs on her left side. She groaned loudly and lifted her right arm to her face-dome, shooing off the winged thing's leering face.
“OH GOOD! I WAS PRETTY SURE YOU WERE DEAD. YOU JUST SORTA FELL OVER! HEART ATTACK MAYBE! OR A STROKE. HUMAN MEDICAL SCIENCE ISN'T REALLY MY SPECIALITY BUT IT IS OH SO VERY INTERESTING! I'VE GOT A GREAT BOOK ON IT RIGHT HERE!”
She sat back from Eriz's prone form and began to root through one of the many bags attached to her body. Eriz propped herself up into a sitting position, both gauntleted hands on the floor. She tried to talk but found her throat gummy and unresponsive, producing only a strangled croak. She coughed up a copious lungful of crimson muck and tried again as the little arms busied themselves cleaning up after her.
“I don't think that's necessary. I'm fine now,” she said with little sincerity. Her voice wavered uncontrollably, much to her shame. The creature turned its attention back to her, stopping its mad search through its bag.
“OH. WELL. YOU HUMANS SURE ARE WEIRD. IF I PASSED OUT AND NOBODY COULD WAKE ME FOR FIVE MINUTES I'D BE PRETTY CONCERNED!”
“Five minutes?” she replied, climbing to her feet. She was pretty surprised the thing hadn't tried to pry open her armor. A quickly whispered query to Telt confirmed that she had, in fact, tried and failed. She sighed again.
“Look...” she stopped, remembering she didn't know the thing's name. Eriz stopped for a moment, hoping that she would pick up on the cue and tell Eriz her name. She just cocked her head to one side and waited for Eriz to continue.
“By the Ship, you're frustrating.” She glanced around, noticing for the first time that the person they had run across was gone. “What happened to the other person who was here? And I meant to ask you for your name. I never caught it in all the confusion,” she said, indicating the ruinous state of the warehouse.
“OH, HIM. HE RAN OFF RIGHT AFTER YOU PASSED OUT. I THINK HE'S HEADING FOR THE PARKING LOT.” She paused and raised an eyebrow in query. “DON'T YOU ALREADY KNOW MY NAME? THEY TOLD US ALL EACH OTHER'S NAMES IN THE INTRODUCTIONS.”
“I don't really remember those. I think I was in shock.”
“AREN'T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE, A SOLDIER OR SOMETHING? DO YOU ALWAYS PASS OUT LIKE THIS?”
“Just tell me your fucking name!” Eriz shouted, suddenly losing her temper.
“IT'S GUILLEMET. JESUS CHRIST. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE SO RUDE.”
“It's a fucking fight to the death,” Eriz replied caustically. “I can be as rude as I want. We're just going to have to kill each other anyways.”
Guillemet recoiled from her with a grimace before replying. “THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE TO BE SO RUDE.”She turned away from Eriz and harrumphed.“BESIDES,” she said, turning back to face Eriz,“I'M IN JUST AS MUCH SHIT AS YOU ARE AND YOU DON'T SEE ME BEING SO BELLICOSE.”
“You tried to take my armor. Twice.”
“I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD! LOOK, I'LL APOLOGIZE. I'M SORRY. THERE. I APOLOGIZED. LET'S BE FRIENDS NOW!”
Eriz felt like she was running in circles. Or beating her head against a wall, sans helmet.
“Alright, fine. Let's be friends. By that I mean, I'll try to avoid killing you for now. I expect the same from you.”
She knew this was probably a terrible idea in the long run but getting Guillemet on her side was probably better than having to fight her. Maybe. She hoped.
A big toothy smile spread across Guillemet's disgustingly fleshy face.
“OH BOY! I KNEW YOU'D COME AROUND EVENTUALLY!” she said before proceeding to jump up and down in excitement, causing Eriz to immediately take a few steps back.
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT DEATHTRAPS? I BET WE COULD RIG UP SOME REALLY GOOD ONES FOR THAT SHARK GUY. HE'S AN ASSHOLE, HE SHOT ME RIGHT IN THE BUTT! OOH, I'VE EVEN GOT SOME GOOD PLANS FOR A FEW ON ME!”
She began to dig through her pouches again while still jumping up and down, resulting in papers, boxes and devices of unknown purpose spilling all over the floor to a chorus of rapid curses. She immediately stopped jumping and started to shove everything back into her bags, swearing fluidly the entire time.
“SO WHAT WAS THAT WHOLE PASSING OUT THING ABOUT? I KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT HUMANS TO KNOW THEY DON'T JUST PASS OUT FOR NO REASON!”
Eriz still had no idea what the meaning of the thing's message had been, but she knew that whatever it was, it was watching her. Whether that was a good thing, she had no idea. If it could fill a warehouse with corpses, she reasoned, it might be a good thing to have on your side in a fight to the death.
That is, unless it had decided that she had the perfect skull for the top of its tree. In that case, well... in that case she would probably just die horribly. It had already shown her that it had no trouble at all with that part.
Though, she felt strangely alive for someone who had just died. Maybe it hadn't really happened at all? There was no trace of the crimson fluid in her helmet, just the small amount she had coughed up. But then where had that come from? Plus, if she had died, wouldn't that have been the end of the first round of the Coach's game?
“I said, it was nothing. I'm fine now,” she finally replied. Guillemet eyed her with obvious disbelief.
“IF YOU DON'T WANT TO TELL ME YOU DON'T REALLY HAVE TO. I GUESS. FOR NOW.”
Guillemet turned away from her and surveyed the wreckage. In the distance she could barely make out forms flitting between the ruined shelves and collapsed walls. The rest of the contestant were out there, she knew.
“WELL, ENOUGH LOLLYGAGGING. WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING TO DEATH, AREN'T WE? I BET WE COULD SCIENCE UP A FEW GOOD DEATHTRAPS. FOR THE DEATH PART, YOU KNOW.”
She began to dig through the morass of smashed boxes and crates that surrounded them, tossing aside countless shattered remnants of various objects in her search for something sufficiently deathly for her traps.
Eriz watched her with curious detachment for a moment. For the first time she really appreciated the movement of the muscles under Guillemet's blue scales. So strong, she thought. So lithe. So... beautiful.
If only I could see them without all that damn skin in the way.
With a start, she realized that she had attached a power-cutter to one of her aux limbs and had taken a step towards Guillemet, who was busy with her search and had not even bothered to look behind her. She quickly stowed the blade and joined Guillemet in her search, trying to un-think the thoughts she had been thinking moments earlier.
The blade-chopping-meat sound faded in from silence and back again, barely registering to her ears.
She realized with a start what it was.
It was something that had no idea how to laugh trying its hardest to laugh.
“Oh no. Oh nooooo. Oh no oh no ohnononononononononoNONONONONONONONO!”
A spurt of blood shot up from the headless man's severed neck. It was an annoying, but unavoidable side effect of his curious condition that always showed up when he was stressed. He was very stressed right now. More than he had been in a very, very long time.
Overcoming his initial shock, he began to rush across the mess of multiversal trash and effluent energy, vaulting over flopping sharks and shards of concrete in a blind rush towards the ruins. Blind being the operative word, as he had no eyes. Not that that stopped him from picking his way over all the shit in his way. The Artiste wouldn't have left him with such a major handicap. Well, actually it probably would if he wasn't so useful to it. Of course, it didn't really matter if things were as bad as they looked; it would be coming for a lot more than just his head.
As he ran into the bulk of the storage park and towards his employer's storage unit, he noticed something very strange. Through the massive rents in the walls between units he could barely make out something red moving very rapidly up and down. Well, he didn't really know if it was red. Everything he saw was red. But whatever it was, it seemed pretty agitated about something. At least it didn't look like it was in the Artiste's unit. Thank MetaGod for small mercies. In fact, he couldn't see any rents in the walls looking through into the corpse-filled unit. It looked like it had been outside the path of the shark missiles, whatever the fuck those were.
He stopped his mad dash and plopped down onto a block of shattered concrete, sighing with intense relief and gushing a wave of blood down the front of his suit.
Damn it, he thought. Gonna have to get this dry-cleaned yet again. The shit I put up with in the service of art.
A dreadful sound slowly faded into the air. Its sound could most closely be compared to that of a hatchet hitting a ribcage over and over again, becoming louder with each repetition. A meaty, thunking noise with overtones of cracking and maybe a bit of sloshing here and there. It was a sound he had heard far too many times in his unfortunate life.
“What's so damn funny?” he said, seemingly to thin air.
The voice that responded was not even remotely human. It sounded like an assortment of meat and bone being shredded in a blender and pushed through a grinder in front of a crappy microphone and then remixed by a slightly tone-deaf disk jockey into something approximating Meta Standard English-Derived Pattern XVII Phonetic Language. The words oozed like coagulating blood from somewhere between the red-tinted world the headless man saw and somewhere else. It said only two words.
YOUR FEAR
The headless man just sighed again and cursed as blood flowed down his front. There was no further reply from the voice.
---
Eriz stood totally dumbfounded. She was so dumbfounded, in fact, that for a moment she forgot to be scared. When her brain did eventually overcome its confusion at the absolute absurdity of what had just happened, it was already over. An eerie silence hung over the wake of destruction left by the passage of the fish-missiles. The winged thing and the fish-man seemed just as stunned and silent as she was. The first to speak was, in fact, not a person at all.
It sounded to Eriz like someone being murdered with a blade. Not that she had ever actually heard what that sounded like, but she could make a pretty good guess. It seemed to come from nowhere, barely audible at first but growing louder with every second. She suddenly flew into motion, spinning on her heel to survey her surroundings. Nothing but shattered shelves, broken crates, chunks of building materials and two confused beings eying her with curiosity . Nothing else appeared on her motion sensors.
The noise kept getting louder. It seemed, she thought, that it must be building to some kind of crescendo. As it got louder and louder it seemed like any repetition must be the last, that surely this was the loudest it would get.
It was not.
It was so loud now that she could hear nothing else. The big blue thing lowered its head towards her face and mouthed something to her. She could not hear a word she said and, lacking any experience in lip reading, couldn't decipher her face either.
The sound kept building, so loud now that it hurt. She staggered a step backwards, still clinging to her hammer with both hands. It grew louder. She dropped the hammer and slammed both hands into her face-dome, trying to drown out the sound. She heard nothing. It grew louder.
She fell to her knees. Tears streamed down her face. If it gets any louder, she thought with increasing panic, I'll die. I can't take this.
It grew louder. Louder than her thoughts. She collapsed face-first on the ground.
Crimson fluid ran from the top of her face-dome. It pooled at the bottom of her helmet. There was nothing she could do to stop it, even if she was capable of trying. She could do nothing but hear. As the liquid level rose, she found first her nose, then her mouth submerged. She could not breath. She did not even feel the panic of drowning. She could only feel the sound.
It grew louder.
She quickly drowned in the pool of fluid.
---
Death, Eriz thought, was even worse than anything could have prepared her for. The Sauthai promised no afterlife, no great “Hefen” like the ancient myths from Old Earth spoke of. They were an atheistic lot, practical to a fault. To a Sauthai, death was merely the end of all things.
Things were most certainly not at an end.
She floated naked in a vast void, dimly lit by a blood-red glow that seemed to originate from the air itself. She felt more vulnerable than she thought she ever could. She tried to move her arms from her sides, maybe to retrieve some pathetic, meaningless scrap of modesty and cover her face, but they did not respond to her. She could not even move her eyes. She could not even blink. She could not breath, nor did she feel any need to.
I guess you can only suffocate once, she thought. At least the noise was gone. It was perfectly silent.
A voice split the silence with the neatness of a butcher's cleaver. It was a voice like knives, perfectly enunciated, totally barren of anything resembling human emotion. So flat that she felt it could cut right through her.
metal girl i have been watching you with the greatest interest
There was a noise like a whetstone being drawn across a huge blade, a mechanical snickering.
you saw my piece yes my newest piece it was to show how to put this meant to show a sort of life from death not so simple but close enough for your mind
The noise again. An image of the flesh-tree filled her mind, unbidden.
it was a truly flawed creation and i was to consign it to the grinder
In every pause in its strange flowing words, the sound rang out again, like the drawing of some kind of insane, impossible breath.
until you saw it
Eriz had no idea where the voice was coming from, but once the image of the tree forced itself into her mind she knew exactly who she was talking to. The thing with the warehouse of bodies. With a tree made of dead things.
yes on its own the piece was of little value a sad and misguided attempt to capture a fleeting thought
schiiing
but then you saw it metal girl and now it has so much new meaning and i will not consign it to the grinder oh no for i am excited like i have not been in so very long
schiiing
the thrill of creation is back in my being and i will begin a new piece
schiiing
metal girl you were born under a killer sun
schiiing
you hid from your sun for so long but
schiing
metal girl you have seen the sun
---
Eriz gasped and spluttered. Crimson fluid spattered on the inside of her face-dome. Immediately, tiny limbs folded out and wiped it clean. As it was cleared, she saw the blue thing's face looming in front of hers. She was laying on her back, facing the ceiling. Eriz was very bad at reading expressions but she could nonetheless identify a very startling emotion on her face: concern.
“DAMN IT, WAKE UP. WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING TO THE DEATH, NOT JUST... DYING TO THE DEATH. DAMN IT. THAT SOUNDED BETTER IN MY HEAD.”
Eriz jolted to the side, registering a sharp impact just below the ribs on her left side. She groaned loudly and lifted her right arm to her face-dome, shooing off the winged thing's leering face.
“OH GOOD! I WAS PRETTY SURE YOU WERE DEAD. YOU JUST SORTA FELL OVER! HEART ATTACK MAYBE! OR A STROKE. HUMAN MEDICAL SCIENCE ISN'T REALLY MY SPECIALITY BUT IT IS OH SO VERY INTERESTING! I'VE GOT A GREAT BOOK ON IT RIGHT HERE!”
She sat back from Eriz's prone form and began to root through one of the many bags attached to her body. Eriz propped herself up into a sitting position, both gauntleted hands on the floor. She tried to talk but found her throat gummy and unresponsive, producing only a strangled croak. She coughed up a copious lungful of crimson muck and tried again as the little arms busied themselves cleaning up after her.
“I don't think that's necessary. I'm fine now,” she said with little sincerity. Her voice wavered uncontrollably, much to her shame. The creature turned its attention back to her, stopping its mad search through its bag.
“OH. WELL. YOU HUMANS SURE ARE WEIRD. IF I PASSED OUT AND NOBODY COULD WAKE ME FOR FIVE MINUTES I'D BE PRETTY CONCERNED!”
“Five minutes?” she replied, climbing to her feet. She was pretty surprised the thing hadn't tried to pry open her armor. A quickly whispered query to Telt confirmed that she had, in fact, tried and failed. She sighed again.
“Look...” she stopped, remembering she didn't know the thing's name. Eriz stopped for a moment, hoping that she would pick up on the cue and tell Eriz her name. She just cocked her head to one side and waited for Eriz to continue.
“By the Ship, you're frustrating.” She glanced around, noticing for the first time that the person they had run across was gone. “What happened to the other person who was here? And I meant to ask you for your name. I never caught it in all the confusion,” she said, indicating the ruinous state of the warehouse.
“OH, HIM. HE RAN OFF RIGHT AFTER YOU PASSED OUT. I THINK HE'S HEADING FOR THE PARKING LOT.” She paused and raised an eyebrow in query. “DON'T YOU ALREADY KNOW MY NAME? THEY TOLD US ALL EACH OTHER'S NAMES IN THE INTRODUCTIONS.”
“I don't really remember those. I think I was in shock.”
“AREN'T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE, A SOLDIER OR SOMETHING? DO YOU ALWAYS PASS OUT LIKE THIS?”
“Just tell me your fucking name!” Eriz shouted, suddenly losing her temper.
“IT'S GUILLEMET. JESUS CHRIST. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE SO RUDE.”
“It's a fucking fight to the death,” Eriz replied caustically. “I can be as rude as I want. We're just going to have to kill each other anyways.”
Guillemet recoiled from her with a grimace before replying. “THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE TO BE SO RUDE.”She turned away from Eriz and harrumphed.“BESIDES,” she said, turning back to face Eriz,“I'M IN JUST AS MUCH SHIT AS YOU ARE AND YOU DON'T SEE ME BEING SO BELLICOSE.”
“You tried to take my armor. Twice.”
“I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD! LOOK, I'LL APOLOGIZE. I'M SORRY. THERE. I APOLOGIZED. LET'S BE FRIENDS NOW!”
Eriz felt like she was running in circles. Or beating her head against a wall, sans helmet.
“Alright, fine. Let's be friends. By that I mean, I'll try to avoid killing you for now. I expect the same from you.”
She knew this was probably a terrible idea in the long run but getting Guillemet on her side was probably better than having to fight her. Maybe. She hoped.
A big toothy smile spread across Guillemet's disgustingly fleshy face.
“OH BOY! I KNEW YOU'D COME AROUND EVENTUALLY!” she said before proceeding to jump up and down in excitement, causing Eriz to immediately take a few steps back.
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT DEATHTRAPS? I BET WE COULD RIG UP SOME REALLY GOOD ONES FOR THAT SHARK GUY. HE'S AN ASSHOLE, HE SHOT ME RIGHT IN THE BUTT! OOH, I'VE EVEN GOT SOME GOOD PLANS FOR A FEW ON ME!”
She began to dig through her pouches again while still jumping up and down, resulting in papers, boxes and devices of unknown purpose spilling all over the floor to a chorus of rapid curses. She immediately stopped jumping and started to shove everything back into her bags, swearing fluidly the entire time.
“SO WHAT WAS THAT WHOLE PASSING OUT THING ABOUT? I KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT HUMANS TO KNOW THEY DON'T JUST PASS OUT FOR NO REASON!”
Eriz still had no idea what the meaning of the thing's message had been, but she knew that whatever it was, it was watching her. Whether that was a good thing, she had no idea. If it could fill a warehouse with corpses, she reasoned, it might be a good thing to have on your side in a fight to the death.
That is, unless it had decided that she had the perfect skull for the top of its tree. In that case, well... in that case she would probably just die horribly. It had already shown her that it had no trouble at all with that part.
Though, she felt strangely alive for someone who had just died. Maybe it hadn't really happened at all? There was no trace of the crimson fluid in her helmet, just the small amount she had coughed up. But then where had that come from? Plus, if she had died, wouldn't that have been the end of the first round of the Coach's game?
“I said, it was nothing. I'm fine now,” she finally replied. Guillemet eyed her with obvious disbelief.
“IF YOU DON'T WANT TO TELL ME YOU DON'T REALLY HAVE TO. I GUESS. FOR NOW.”
Guillemet turned away from her and surveyed the wreckage. In the distance she could barely make out forms flitting between the ruined shelves and collapsed walls. The rest of the contestant were out there, she knew.
“WELL, ENOUGH LOLLYGAGGING. WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING TO DEATH, AREN'T WE? I BET WE COULD SCIENCE UP A FEW GOOD DEATHTRAPS. FOR THE DEATH PART, YOU KNOW.”
She began to dig through the morass of smashed boxes and crates that surrounded them, tossing aside countless shattered remnants of various objects in her search for something sufficiently deathly for her traps.
Eriz watched her with curious detachment for a moment. For the first time she really appreciated the movement of the muscles under Guillemet's blue scales. So strong, she thought. So lithe. So... beautiful.
If only I could see them without all that damn skin in the way.
With a start, she realized that she had attached a power-cutter to one of her aux limbs and had taken a step towards Guillemet, who was busy with her search and had not even bothered to look behind her. She quickly stowed the blade and joined Guillemet in her search, trying to un-think the thoughts she had been thinking moments earlier.
The blade-chopping-meat sound faded in from silence and back again, barely registering to her ears.
She realized with a start what it was.
It was something that had no idea how to laugh trying its hardest to laugh.