Re: The $300,000 Fight-A-Thon! [Round One: Storage Park!]
11-29-2012, 08:22 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by SeventeenthSquid.
Eriz wiped off her upper arm with a towel she had found amongst the myriad crates and boxes of the storehouse. The sheet of mucus parted slowly under a firm scrubbing from her aux-arm. She felt like retching just knowing that Guillemet's foul excretions were sullying her father's beautiful work. She scrubbed harder. Guillemet sat on her haunches a few meters away, still daubing at the streams of goopy tears and snot that ran down her face.
“THEY'RE SO YOUNG. TOO YOUNG FOR WAR, ERIZ! TOO YOUNG TO DIE!”
Eriz didn't reply, having realized by now that Guillemet was much more interested in the sound of her own voice than anything she had to say. Finally managing to scrape off the last of the gunk that was obscuring her illustrious family history, she threw the sodden towel on the ground and started to incinerate it with her laser.
Guillemet heard the laser powering up and instantly stopped blubbering, snapping her face up to stare at it intently. She watched with intense concentration as Eriz burned the towel to a crisp and ground the ashes into the ground with her hydraulic foot. She never could resist a good laser! All maudlin ravings forgotten, she sprang to her feet and bounded over to Eriz, grabbing the laser arm with both hands and pulling it closer to her face.
“WOW THAT THING IS PRETTY NEAT! NEAT IN THE WAY THAT KID'S TOYS ARE NEAT. IT'S PRETTY PATHETIC. WHAT'S THE POWER SUPPLY ON THIS THING? METAL-ION BATTERY? LOOKS PRETTY WEAK. I COULD DO BETTER!”
She let go of the emitter and sprang back, not even noticing Eriz had cocked a metallic fist back in preparation to punch her in the throat. She dove into the drifts of “useful” scrap she had accrued from the warehouse in her orgy of trap-building, throwing pieces of detritus into the air in a maelstrom of creative enterprise.
Eriz gingerly sat on a stout metal crate and watched the mad beast work. She appeared to be trying to build a power supply from six toasters, an aquarium, a jar of unknown fluid and a can of old coins. Eriz sighed to herself.
“Milady,” came Telt's voice. “I do not mean to sound rude but I wish to broach the subject of your death.”
Eriz was mildly startled by this before remembering that she had, in fact, already died once today. Telt hadn't mentioned it, but it was, after all, programmed to be unobtrusive. She had been rather busy trying to assemble an assortment of traps without dying, a feat to write home about given Guillemet's take on explosives handling. She still wasn't really sure if she wanted to talk about it.
“Right, um...” she began. “Look, I think we can both agree that there are things going on here far beyond what we are capable of understanding.”
“Now milady, that's no way for a Sauthai to talk. Everything can be explained,” it replied. That was the way it was programmed to talk, she thought. Everything can be explained? She had just drowned in blood, experienced what she could only describe as literally the afterlife and then come back to life. There was no room in the Sauthai world-view for events like this.
“No, Telt. Where we're from, everything can be explained. We come from a place with natural laws, where if you drop a stone, it falls to the ground. Where if you die, you stay dead. Telt, I died today. I have no doubt of that. I died so that whatever that horrid thing was, it could talk to me. And then I came back, spitting up blood. Do you really mean to tell me that you can explain that?”
She felt anger rising in her, anger at Telt for not being able to comprehend the situation she found herself in. But, she thought, it was only doing what it was programmed to do. It didn't know any better. It wasn't actually alive, she had to remind herself. Just because you can talk to it, doesn't mean it can think.
“Milady, perhaps recent events have lead you to act rashly. If you think calm down and apply logical processes to these events-”
“Telt,” she interrupted, “revert to passive mode. Deactivate personality routines.”
“Passive mode engaged.”
She sighed again and idly kicked at the scraps of material littering the ground. Telt was a good construct, but nothing more. It was horribly out of its depth here. Its programmers had made no allowances for situations like this. She had no use for it now.
“ERIZ!” came a bellow that demolished the air of quiet contemplation Eriz had managed to obtain. “ERIZ LOOK AT WHAT I BUILT!” Guillemet shouted, jumping up and down again, holding a contraption over her head. Its outer shell seemed to be cobbled together from the chassis of two toasters, joined at their base. Small gurgling tanks of fluid covered its sides, coils of wire looping around and through them. She bounded over and held it out to Eriz.
“YOU SHOULD STRAP THIS TO YOUR BACK AND PLUG IT INTO THE LASER. IT'LL GIVE IT A LOT MORE ZAP! AND A LASER WITHOUT ZAP IS LIKE...” She paused, tapping her chin with one hand. She stuck her tongue out and looked back and forth, deep in thought. The device slipped from her hand.
Eriz caught it before it could hit the ground. Guillemet looked down in surprise.
“NICE CATCH!” she shouted before snatching it back and running around behind Eriz, already pulling out an assortment of welding and joining tools to attach it to the back of Eriz's sauthorn. Eriz turned with her, standing up from the crate and trying to keep her front facing Guillemet as she ran around, surprisingly nimble given her bulk.
“No!” Eriz shouted. “Put those down, you crazy beast!”
Guillemet continued to try to place the device on Eriz's back as she rotated, the two madly circling one another for several moments while Guillemet screamed about “AMPERAGE AUGMENTATION” and “PRODIGIOUS ZAPPING POTENTIAL.” Eriz finally stopped turning and stuck out one arm. Guillemet slammed into it with the force of a runaway train (full to the brim with SCIENCE) and brought the two crashing to the ground in a heap. The device skittered across the floor to land in a pile of aborted mines.
“FUCKING GOD DAMN BLOODY SHIT YOU FUCKING GOD DAMN CYBORG BARBARIAN I SWEAR TO WHATEVER FOUL GODS YOU WERE RAISED ON I'M FUCKING TIRED OF BEING PUNCHED, BURNED, SHOT AND OTHERWISE INJURED.”
“Well,” Eriz replied, pulling herself up from the ground and inspecting her arm. It was now splattered with a small layer of dragon blood. “Maybe you should stop being such an overbearing ass and ask me before you try to tamper with my armor.”
“WOW.” Guillemet said as she stood up. “WOW. I WASN'T AWARE YOU WERE SUCH A SUPERCILIOUS CUNT. I THOUGHT YOU APPRECIATED ME. WE HAD SO MANY CHILDREN TOGETHER, ERIZ. SO MANY BEAUTIFUL, INJURIOUS CHILDREN.” As she said the last sentence, tears started to form at the edges of her eyes, running down her face to mingle with the blood that streamed from her broken nose.
Oh no, thought Eriz. Just what I needed.
Guillemet burst into another squall of wailing and crying, tears, blood and mucus ejecting themselves from her face at a frightening rate as she enveloped Eriz in a reptilian embrace.
“WE HAD SUCH A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP! WHERE DID IT ALL GO WRONG! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LOVE!”
Guillemet, absorbed by her sorrow, failed to notice Eriz's lack of retaliation as she embraced her armored body.
Eriz was, once again, completely and totally dead. Thousands of metal spines had pierced her heart from the inside, exploding through her body in an instant of total, explosive mayhem, stopping just short of the inner skin of her suit.
---
Oh no, Eriz thought. Oh no. But even as she floated in the crimson void, she felt strangely different from the first time she had visited it. The total, abject terror that had consumed her before was gone. Now she just felt... something she could not easily describe. Annoyance? Frustration? But tinged with a desire to understand what was happening to her.
Still though, once was enough for a day, she thought. Can't a girl catch a break?
no
The voice was exactly as it had been before, totally flat and devoid of any emotion or emphasis. But... had it actually repsonded to her thoughts?
Can you understand me?
no
But... you can hear me?
i can no more understand you metal girl than you can understand an ant that crawls across your path
schiing, the intake of metal-sharpening breath.
and that is why i am so utterly fascinated yes enraptured yes even one could say in love
What! She screamed in her head. In LOVE?
your kind cling to biological imperatives yes the drives to eat reproduce sleep excrete
schiiing
you see love only as the connection formed by your desire to breed
schiiing
i am flattered oh so flattered but you read me wrong
schiiing
like a book that has lost its pages to an inferno but the book was written in another language
schiiing
and written on a paper that you cannot see and suspended in a place you cannot exist
Your metaphors leave something to be desired.
metal girl if i thought in your style i would find humor in your comments
Enough stupid games, she thought. The thing was obviously in a talkative mood. Maybe she could get some answers.
Why did you bring me here again? Why bring me here at all?
the one you called the coach is an interesting artist who is working in an interesting medium
schiiing
one i have worked with myself before although in different ways
You mean the battle? It's not art. He's doing it because he needs money. We're some kind of sick entertainment for... I don't even know what. Whatever watches this sort of thing.
the blind worm that writhes in the muck makes art without knowing it does so
schiiing
metal girl you think in such a literal linear fashion it fascinates me to no end
schiiing
you will find that often the world will not conform to the rules and edges you impose upon it
schiiing
and often you will be forced to let things be
The noise she had heard so many times earlier returned as the thing struggled to express its emotion-roughly-anologous-with-amusement. It faded away quickly, though, before getting very loud.
You're getting off track. You never told me why you brought me here.
just the sort of thing i would expect the metal girl to say yes just the sort of thing that makes me love you
schiiing
you are too perfect yes i could not have asked for one better than you for my piece
ANSWER ME.
The laugh-analog returned.
metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl
schiiing
i am often misunderstood by your type they think of me as some rude sculptor
schiiing
one who takes the shells of what once was and makes silly mockeries of life
schiiing
maybe at some point in the past i thought such things were art but no more no more no more
schiiing
the child reacted very poorly to my presence yes it interpreted it all wrong so wrong
The child? Who is the child?
you likely gave it some name but names are meaningless yes totally meaningless
schiiing
your kind loves names so much but what have names ever done for them nothing
schiiing
he was slight and pink and webbed and it disgusts me to speak in such a literal manner
schiiing
but your kind is incapable of any subtlety any at all and that is why i love you
Thize. His name is Thize. What did you do to him?
i sought to show him the true beauty within his form but he reacted very poorly as your kind are wont to do
My kind? Thize is nothing like me.
silly metal girl still oh so literal thinks her kind means her species her genetics
schiiing
an amusing throwback to the tribes of the dusty plains where passing genes was all that mattered
What did you do to him?!
i showed him true beauty and told him to give me material for my art
What, bodies? You told him to go out and kill for you? That's disgusting!
metal girl metal girl metal girl when will you learn
schiiing
if it was meat i wanted i would take it just as i have taken you
schiiing
so literal so metal yes you are the perfect little metal girl the paragon child
schiiing
except you hid from your sun your one shame so sad so awful you knew you had failed
You don't know what you're talking about! You said yourself you can't understand me! What did you DO TO HIM!? WHAT DID YOU WANT HIM TO FIND!?
always seeking answers i suppose it is your way the metal way the way you were taught
schiiing
metal girl so often i am seen as a creature of meat not meat like you are meat but
schiiing
obsessed with flesh with blood with death with that which i lack completely and do not understand
schiiing
metal girl i love you so much because i am a metal being as well
schiiing
a voice like a blade a mind like a block of metal dense dense dense and very inorganic
schiiing
you understand so very little and yet we share so much
schiiing
many think i am little more than a butcher an artful shaper of meat
schiiing
in the past perhaps i found joy in such things but time is vast and i am vast and the void is vast
schiiing
i told the child to bring me canvases with which to work my art
schiiing
i told him everything would become my art
schiiing
i work on large scales
Eriz felt herself falling. She couldn't move. She did not feel the wind across her naked body but her inner ear told her she was falling, faster and faster, dropping through the infinite crimson void.
Suddenly her muscles spasmed and she could move. She flailed for a moment, wheeling through space, turning head over heels, still feeling no breeze but knowing she was dropping incredibly fast, unhindered by air resistance, still accelerating. She spun and spun, trying to arrest her movement but finding no purchase in the empty void.
As she spun she caught a glimpse of something far below her, so far away that despite her rapidly increasing speed she couldn't discern it coming any closer. She caught glimmers of light in the edges of her vision. Light off metal. Huge blades floating in a vast expanse of nothingness, constantly scything over one another, shearing, casting huge purple sparks, disappearing and reappearing and disappearing again in a mad cycle of whirling light. It extended down as far as she could see, a massive pyramid of whirling deadliness.
She had no reason to believe it did not extend downward forever.
What are you? she thought as intensely as she could. What is your name? Where did you come from? WHAT DO YOU WANT?
WHY ME?!
i am not one for names but there are those who call me the Artiste
schiiing
a crude and pedantic title given out of necessity
schiiing
i am like you and unlike you
schiiing
the sun is rising
Eriz fell into the mass of blades and was cut into an infinite number of pieces.
---
Eriz awoke to a stabbing pain in her ribs that winked away almost before she could realize it was there. She gasped and spluttered. I guess coming back to life is something I'll never get used to, she thought. Guillemet loomed over her.
“ALIVE AGAIN, HUH? WELL, THIS TIME I KNOW FOR SURE YOU WERE DEFINITELY DEAD.”
She held up what appeared to be a stethoscope, albeit a stethoscope a good decimeter across and studded in metallic nodules.
“I GOT THIS LITTLE TRINKET A WHILE BACK. IT'S AN INDUSTRIAL-GRADE HEARTBEAT MONITOR! COMES IN HANDY SOMETIMES WHEN YOU NEED TO MEASURE A REALLY BIG HEARTBEAT! OR ONE BEHIND A FOOT OR SO OF METAL PLATING.”
She grinned, a truly horrifying sight on her mucus-and-blood smeared face with a smashed nose.
“SO I KNOW YOUR LITTLE SECRET, GIRLY. SNEAKING LITTLE DEATH-NAPS ON ME, HUH? THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH THAT?”
Eriz sat up in one quick motion, pulling herself to her feet. As Guillemet opened her mouth to continue, Eriz spoke, cutting her off.
“Guillemet. We're in tremendous danger. Thize. He's coming.”
Guillemet cocked her head to one side quizzically for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“THIZE! HAHAHAHA! THAT LITTLE PIMEPHALES NOTATUS DOESN'T STAND A CHANCE AGAINST OUR MYRIAD DEADLY CHILDREN!”
“No, Guillemet, look. The reason I keep dying is something is talking to me. Something that can literally kill me and bring me back to life whenever it wants. Something incredibly powerful. And whatever it is, it did something to Thize. I don't know what but I'm sure it's nasty. He won't be like when we last saw him. He's been changed.”
“CHANGED? LIKE... LIKE MUTATED? THAT'S LIKE A META-MUTANT! WOW! I'VE BARELY EVEN CONSIDERED THE POSSIBLITIES OF META-MUTANTS BEFORE JUST THINK OF-”
Her rant was cut off by an explosion from the outer mine perimeter. The two immediately spun to face it, but whatever had set off the explosive was gone. Most of it, anyways.
A long, pink fleshy arm writhed on the ground. Its skin tone was unmistakeably that of Thize. As the two watched, it flailed back and forth for a few moments, spewing blood, before flipping onto its hand and scuttling away, growing multitudinous faceted eyes as it did so.
“HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT IN ALL OF UNHOLY FUCK WAS THAT.”
Eriz could only stare at the scorched splatter of blood. She knew what the Artiste wanted. It wanted chaos. Bloodshed. Fighting. Utter unpredictability and the fear of death. The essence of mortality. So it had given Thize the tools he needed, lacking competent combat skills of its own, to give it what it wanted.
---
Several minutes earlier, a man watched them from a safe distance behind a crate, whispering quietly into a phone that he held over the stump of his neck. A dial tone sounded for a tense few second before someone picked up the phone.
“Yves. What the hell do you want.”
A chorus of feminine giggles tittered in the background. The man on the other end of the found tried to stifle a laugh and failed. Yves heard him cover the speaker with his hand, obscuring the sounds with static. A few second later, the other speaker returned.
“I'm busy. Make it fast.”
“Dali I'm so sorry to bother you but some people have broken into the Master's warehouse!”
There was a rapid clattering on the other end of the phone, more female laughing and the sound of running footsteps. Dali was with the female members of the cabal again. They never paid any attention to Yves. He blamed Dali for giving him such a shitty name. Yves. He wasn't sure if Dali was even pronouncing it right, but then again, who would possibly correct him? Of course Dali took the best name for himself. He was the head honcho, after all, and he was in charge of dealing with all the minions. The Master never cared even slightly about them past their usefulness to it. Didn't even bother giving them names or identities after it wiped their minds. Left all that shit up to Dali, that egomaniacal fuck.
“WHO!? WHO WOULD DARE?!”
“Please sir I don't know I just-”
“WELL FIND OUT YOU USELESS BLUBBERING OAF OR THE MASTER WILL TAKE MORE THAN JUST YOUR GOD DAMN HEAD!”
“Yesyesyesyes Dali I'll get right on it but please sir they've got so many guns and hammers and there are bombs everywhere if I try to get any closer they'll blast-”
“Yves. Let me put this in the simplest possible terms. If you don't stop those fucks from messing with the Master's storage, you will face a more horrific possible fate that anything could imagine. The Master's been killing people for a long, loooooooooong time in a hell of a lot of ways.”
“Yes sir I understand I'll get right on it sir.”
“GOOD! Call me back when you've found out more.”
Dali hung up. Ungrateful ass. He asked so much of poor Yves. He just wanted to go home and put a plastic bag over his neck stump and look at Ithelli's ass. It was such a nice ass.
Sigh.
He crept around the edge of the crate and ran quickly to another just as he heard an explosion in the distance. Shit, he thought. Shit, shit, shit. Now I'm screwed. The bombs are going off. This is how it ends.
He thought of Ithelli's ass and awaited the end.
It did not come, and the two strange beings in the central safe-zone of the minefield seemed distracted. Now was the perfect time to snap a few shots with his phone!
He pulled it from his pocket and started taking pictures.
Eriz wiped off her upper arm with a towel she had found amongst the myriad crates and boxes of the storehouse. The sheet of mucus parted slowly under a firm scrubbing from her aux-arm. She felt like retching just knowing that Guillemet's foul excretions were sullying her father's beautiful work. She scrubbed harder. Guillemet sat on her haunches a few meters away, still daubing at the streams of goopy tears and snot that ran down her face.
“THEY'RE SO YOUNG. TOO YOUNG FOR WAR, ERIZ! TOO YOUNG TO DIE!”
Eriz didn't reply, having realized by now that Guillemet was much more interested in the sound of her own voice than anything she had to say. Finally managing to scrape off the last of the gunk that was obscuring her illustrious family history, she threw the sodden towel on the ground and started to incinerate it with her laser.
Guillemet heard the laser powering up and instantly stopped blubbering, snapping her face up to stare at it intently. She watched with intense concentration as Eriz burned the towel to a crisp and ground the ashes into the ground with her hydraulic foot. She never could resist a good laser! All maudlin ravings forgotten, she sprang to her feet and bounded over to Eriz, grabbing the laser arm with both hands and pulling it closer to her face.
“WOW THAT THING IS PRETTY NEAT! NEAT IN THE WAY THAT KID'S TOYS ARE NEAT. IT'S PRETTY PATHETIC. WHAT'S THE POWER SUPPLY ON THIS THING? METAL-ION BATTERY? LOOKS PRETTY WEAK. I COULD DO BETTER!”
She let go of the emitter and sprang back, not even noticing Eriz had cocked a metallic fist back in preparation to punch her in the throat. She dove into the drifts of “useful” scrap she had accrued from the warehouse in her orgy of trap-building, throwing pieces of detritus into the air in a maelstrom of creative enterprise.
Eriz gingerly sat on a stout metal crate and watched the mad beast work. She appeared to be trying to build a power supply from six toasters, an aquarium, a jar of unknown fluid and a can of old coins. Eriz sighed to herself.
“Milady,” came Telt's voice. “I do not mean to sound rude but I wish to broach the subject of your death.”
Eriz was mildly startled by this before remembering that she had, in fact, already died once today. Telt hadn't mentioned it, but it was, after all, programmed to be unobtrusive. She had been rather busy trying to assemble an assortment of traps without dying, a feat to write home about given Guillemet's take on explosives handling. She still wasn't really sure if she wanted to talk about it.
“Right, um...” she began. “Look, I think we can both agree that there are things going on here far beyond what we are capable of understanding.”
“Now milady, that's no way for a Sauthai to talk. Everything can be explained,” it replied. That was the way it was programmed to talk, she thought. Everything can be explained? She had just drowned in blood, experienced what she could only describe as literally the afterlife and then come back to life. There was no room in the Sauthai world-view for events like this.
“No, Telt. Where we're from, everything can be explained. We come from a place with natural laws, where if you drop a stone, it falls to the ground. Where if you die, you stay dead. Telt, I died today. I have no doubt of that. I died so that whatever that horrid thing was, it could talk to me. And then I came back, spitting up blood. Do you really mean to tell me that you can explain that?”
She felt anger rising in her, anger at Telt for not being able to comprehend the situation she found herself in. But, she thought, it was only doing what it was programmed to do. It didn't know any better. It wasn't actually alive, she had to remind herself. Just because you can talk to it, doesn't mean it can think.
“Milady, perhaps recent events have lead you to act rashly. If you think calm down and apply logical processes to these events-”
“Telt,” she interrupted, “revert to passive mode. Deactivate personality routines.”
“Passive mode engaged.”
She sighed again and idly kicked at the scraps of material littering the ground. Telt was a good construct, but nothing more. It was horribly out of its depth here. Its programmers had made no allowances for situations like this. She had no use for it now.
“ERIZ!” came a bellow that demolished the air of quiet contemplation Eriz had managed to obtain. “ERIZ LOOK AT WHAT I BUILT!” Guillemet shouted, jumping up and down again, holding a contraption over her head. Its outer shell seemed to be cobbled together from the chassis of two toasters, joined at their base. Small gurgling tanks of fluid covered its sides, coils of wire looping around and through them. She bounded over and held it out to Eriz.
“YOU SHOULD STRAP THIS TO YOUR BACK AND PLUG IT INTO THE LASER. IT'LL GIVE IT A LOT MORE ZAP! AND A LASER WITHOUT ZAP IS LIKE...” She paused, tapping her chin with one hand. She stuck her tongue out and looked back and forth, deep in thought. The device slipped from her hand.
Eriz caught it before it could hit the ground. Guillemet looked down in surprise.
“NICE CATCH!” she shouted before snatching it back and running around behind Eriz, already pulling out an assortment of welding and joining tools to attach it to the back of Eriz's sauthorn. Eriz turned with her, standing up from the crate and trying to keep her front facing Guillemet as she ran around, surprisingly nimble given her bulk.
“No!” Eriz shouted. “Put those down, you crazy beast!”
Guillemet continued to try to place the device on Eriz's back as she rotated, the two madly circling one another for several moments while Guillemet screamed about “AMPERAGE AUGMENTATION” and “PRODIGIOUS ZAPPING POTENTIAL.” Eriz finally stopped turning and stuck out one arm. Guillemet slammed into it with the force of a runaway train (full to the brim with SCIENCE) and brought the two crashing to the ground in a heap. The device skittered across the floor to land in a pile of aborted mines.
“FUCKING GOD DAMN BLOODY SHIT YOU FUCKING GOD DAMN CYBORG BARBARIAN I SWEAR TO WHATEVER FOUL GODS YOU WERE RAISED ON I'M FUCKING TIRED OF BEING PUNCHED, BURNED, SHOT AND OTHERWISE INJURED.”
“Well,” Eriz replied, pulling herself up from the ground and inspecting her arm. It was now splattered with a small layer of dragon blood. “Maybe you should stop being such an overbearing ass and ask me before you try to tamper with my armor.”
“WOW.” Guillemet said as she stood up. “WOW. I WASN'T AWARE YOU WERE SUCH A SUPERCILIOUS CUNT. I THOUGHT YOU APPRECIATED ME. WE HAD SO MANY CHILDREN TOGETHER, ERIZ. SO MANY BEAUTIFUL, INJURIOUS CHILDREN.” As she said the last sentence, tears started to form at the edges of her eyes, running down her face to mingle with the blood that streamed from her broken nose.
Oh no, thought Eriz. Just what I needed.
Guillemet burst into another squall of wailing and crying, tears, blood and mucus ejecting themselves from her face at a frightening rate as she enveloped Eriz in a reptilian embrace.
“WE HAD SUCH A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP! WHERE DID IT ALL GO WRONG! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LOVE!”
Guillemet, absorbed by her sorrow, failed to notice Eriz's lack of retaliation as she embraced her armored body.
Eriz was, once again, completely and totally dead. Thousands of metal spines had pierced her heart from the inside, exploding through her body in an instant of total, explosive mayhem, stopping just short of the inner skin of her suit.
---
Oh no, Eriz thought. Oh no. But even as she floated in the crimson void, she felt strangely different from the first time she had visited it. The total, abject terror that had consumed her before was gone. Now she just felt... something she could not easily describe. Annoyance? Frustration? But tinged with a desire to understand what was happening to her.
Still though, once was enough for a day, she thought. Can't a girl catch a break?
no
The voice was exactly as it had been before, totally flat and devoid of any emotion or emphasis. But... had it actually repsonded to her thoughts?
Can you understand me?
no
But... you can hear me?
i can no more understand you metal girl than you can understand an ant that crawls across your path
schiing, the intake of metal-sharpening breath.
and that is why i am so utterly fascinated yes enraptured yes even one could say in love
What! She screamed in her head. In LOVE?
your kind cling to biological imperatives yes the drives to eat reproduce sleep excrete
schiiing
you see love only as the connection formed by your desire to breed
schiiing
i am flattered oh so flattered but you read me wrong
schiiing
like a book that has lost its pages to an inferno but the book was written in another language
schiiing
and written on a paper that you cannot see and suspended in a place you cannot exist
Your metaphors leave something to be desired.
metal girl if i thought in your style i would find humor in your comments
Enough stupid games, she thought. The thing was obviously in a talkative mood. Maybe she could get some answers.
Why did you bring me here again? Why bring me here at all?
the one you called the coach is an interesting artist who is working in an interesting medium
schiiing
one i have worked with myself before although in different ways
You mean the battle? It's not art. He's doing it because he needs money. We're some kind of sick entertainment for... I don't even know what. Whatever watches this sort of thing.
the blind worm that writhes in the muck makes art without knowing it does so
schiiing
metal girl you think in such a literal linear fashion it fascinates me to no end
schiiing
you will find that often the world will not conform to the rules and edges you impose upon it
schiiing
and often you will be forced to let things be
The noise she had heard so many times earlier returned as the thing struggled to express its emotion-roughly-anologous-with-amusement. It faded away quickly, though, before getting very loud.
You're getting off track. You never told me why you brought me here.
just the sort of thing i would expect the metal girl to say yes just the sort of thing that makes me love you
schiiing
you are too perfect yes i could not have asked for one better than you for my piece
ANSWER ME.
The laugh-analog returned.
metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl metal girl
schiiing
i am often misunderstood by your type they think of me as some rude sculptor
schiiing
one who takes the shells of what once was and makes silly mockeries of life
schiiing
maybe at some point in the past i thought such things were art but no more no more no more
schiiing
the child reacted very poorly to my presence yes it interpreted it all wrong so wrong
The child? Who is the child?
you likely gave it some name but names are meaningless yes totally meaningless
schiiing
your kind loves names so much but what have names ever done for them nothing
schiiing
he was slight and pink and webbed and it disgusts me to speak in such a literal manner
schiiing
but your kind is incapable of any subtlety any at all and that is why i love you
Thize. His name is Thize. What did you do to him?
i sought to show him the true beauty within his form but he reacted very poorly as your kind are wont to do
My kind? Thize is nothing like me.
silly metal girl still oh so literal thinks her kind means her species her genetics
schiiing
an amusing throwback to the tribes of the dusty plains where passing genes was all that mattered
What did you do to him?!
i showed him true beauty and told him to give me material for my art
What, bodies? You told him to go out and kill for you? That's disgusting!
metal girl metal girl metal girl when will you learn
schiiing
if it was meat i wanted i would take it just as i have taken you
schiiing
so literal so metal yes you are the perfect little metal girl the paragon child
schiiing
except you hid from your sun your one shame so sad so awful you knew you had failed
You don't know what you're talking about! You said yourself you can't understand me! What did you DO TO HIM!? WHAT DID YOU WANT HIM TO FIND!?
always seeking answers i suppose it is your way the metal way the way you were taught
schiiing
metal girl so often i am seen as a creature of meat not meat like you are meat but
schiiing
obsessed with flesh with blood with death with that which i lack completely and do not understand
schiiing
metal girl i love you so much because i am a metal being as well
schiiing
a voice like a blade a mind like a block of metal dense dense dense and very inorganic
schiiing
you understand so very little and yet we share so much
schiiing
many think i am little more than a butcher an artful shaper of meat
schiiing
in the past perhaps i found joy in such things but time is vast and i am vast and the void is vast
schiiing
i told the child to bring me canvases with which to work my art
schiiing
i told him everything would become my art
schiiing
i work on large scales
Eriz felt herself falling. She couldn't move. She did not feel the wind across her naked body but her inner ear told her she was falling, faster and faster, dropping through the infinite crimson void.
Suddenly her muscles spasmed and she could move. She flailed for a moment, wheeling through space, turning head over heels, still feeling no breeze but knowing she was dropping incredibly fast, unhindered by air resistance, still accelerating. She spun and spun, trying to arrest her movement but finding no purchase in the empty void.
As she spun she caught a glimpse of something far below her, so far away that despite her rapidly increasing speed she couldn't discern it coming any closer. She caught glimmers of light in the edges of her vision. Light off metal. Huge blades floating in a vast expanse of nothingness, constantly scything over one another, shearing, casting huge purple sparks, disappearing and reappearing and disappearing again in a mad cycle of whirling light. It extended down as far as she could see, a massive pyramid of whirling deadliness.
She had no reason to believe it did not extend downward forever.
What are you? she thought as intensely as she could. What is your name? Where did you come from? WHAT DO YOU WANT?
WHY ME?!
i am not one for names but there are those who call me the Artiste
schiiing
a crude and pedantic title given out of necessity
schiiing
i am like you and unlike you
schiiing
the sun is rising
Eriz fell into the mass of blades and was cut into an infinite number of pieces.
---
Eriz awoke to a stabbing pain in her ribs that winked away almost before she could realize it was there. She gasped and spluttered. I guess coming back to life is something I'll never get used to, she thought. Guillemet loomed over her.
“ALIVE AGAIN, HUH? WELL, THIS TIME I KNOW FOR SURE YOU WERE DEFINITELY DEAD.”
She held up what appeared to be a stethoscope, albeit a stethoscope a good decimeter across and studded in metallic nodules.
“I GOT THIS LITTLE TRINKET A WHILE BACK. IT'S AN INDUSTRIAL-GRADE HEARTBEAT MONITOR! COMES IN HANDY SOMETIMES WHEN YOU NEED TO MEASURE A REALLY BIG HEARTBEAT! OR ONE BEHIND A FOOT OR SO OF METAL PLATING.”
She grinned, a truly horrifying sight on her mucus-and-blood smeared face with a smashed nose.
“SO I KNOW YOUR LITTLE SECRET, GIRLY. SNEAKING LITTLE DEATH-NAPS ON ME, HUH? THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH THAT?”
Eriz sat up in one quick motion, pulling herself to her feet. As Guillemet opened her mouth to continue, Eriz spoke, cutting her off.
“Guillemet. We're in tremendous danger. Thize. He's coming.”
Guillemet cocked her head to one side quizzically for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“THIZE! HAHAHAHA! THAT LITTLE PIMEPHALES NOTATUS DOESN'T STAND A CHANCE AGAINST OUR MYRIAD DEADLY CHILDREN!”
“No, Guillemet, look. The reason I keep dying is something is talking to me. Something that can literally kill me and bring me back to life whenever it wants. Something incredibly powerful. And whatever it is, it did something to Thize. I don't know what but I'm sure it's nasty. He won't be like when we last saw him. He's been changed.”
“CHANGED? LIKE... LIKE MUTATED? THAT'S LIKE A META-MUTANT! WOW! I'VE BARELY EVEN CONSIDERED THE POSSIBLITIES OF META-MUTANTS BEFORE JUST THINK OF-”
Her rant was cut off by an explosion from the outer mine perimeter. The two immediately spun to face it, but whatever had set off the explosive was gone. Most of it, anyways.
A long, pink fleshy arm writhed on the ground. Its skin tone was unmistakeably that of Thize. As the two watched, it flailed back and forth for a few moments, spewing blood, before flipping onto its hand and scuttling away, growing multitudinous faceted eyes as it did so.
“HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT IN ALL OF UNHOLY FUCK WAS THAT.”
Eriz could only stare at the scorched splatter of blood. She knew what the Artiste wanted. It wanted chaos. Bloodshed. Fighting. Utter unpredictability and the fear of death. The essence of mortality. So it had given Thize the tools he needed, lacking competent combat skills of its own, to give it what it wanted.
---
Several minutes earlier, a man watched them from a safe distance behind a crate, whispering quietly into a phone that he held over the stump of his neck. A dial tone sounded for a tense few second before someone picked up the phone.
“Yves. What the hell do you want.”
A chorus of feminine giggles tittered in the background. The man on the other end of the found tried to stifle a laugh and failed. Yves heard him cover the speaker with his hand, obscuring the sounds with static. A few second later, the other speaker returned.
“I'm busy. Make it fast.”
“Dali I'm so sorry to bother you but some people have broken into the Master's warehouse!”
There was a rapid clattering on the other end of the phone, more female laughing and the sound of running footsteps. Dali was with the female members of the cabal again. They never paid any attention to Yves. He blamed Dali for giving him such a shitty name. Yves. He wasn't sure if Dali was even pronouncing it right, but then again, who would possibly correct him? Of course Dali took the best name for himself. He was the head honcho, after all, and he was in charge of dealing with all the minions. The Master never cared even slightly about them past their usefulness to it. Didn't even bother giving them names or identities after it wiped their minds. Left all that shit up to Dali, that egomaniacal fuck.
“WHO!? WHO WOULD DARE?!”
“Please sir I don't know I just-”
“WELL FIND OUT YOU USELESS BLUBBERING OAF OR THE MASTER WILL TAKE MORE THAN JUST YOUR GOD DAMN HEAD!”
“Yesyesyesyes Dali I'll get right on it but please sir they've got so many guns and hammers and there are bombs everywhere if I try to get any closer they'll blast-”
“Yves. Let me put this in the simplest possible terms. If you don't stop those fucks from messing with the Master's storage, you will face a more horrific possible fate that anything could imagine. The Master's been killing people for a long, loooooooooong time in a hell of a lot of ways.”
“Yes sir I understand I'll get right on it sir.”
“GOOD! Call me back when you've found out more.”
Dali hung up. Ungrateful ass. He asked so much of poor Yves. He just wanted to go home and put a plastic bag over his neck stump and look at Ithelli's ass. It was such a nice ass.
Sigh.
He crept around the edge of the crate and ran quickly to another just as he heard an explosion in the distance. Shit, he thought. Shit, shit, shit. Now I'm screwed. The bombs are going off. This is how it ends.
He thought of Ithelli's ass and awaited the end.
It did not come, and the two strange beings in the central safe-zone of the minefield seemed distracted. Now was the perfect time to snap a few shots with his phone!
He pulled it from his pocket and started taking pictures.