RE: The Phenomenal Fracas (GBS2G6) [Round Five: The Ambitus Phenomenon]
06-09-2013, 07:06 AM
Syvex considered calming down and getting out of there, but everything exploded.
The fact that "everything" was really more like "the front of a house" didn't mean much, given that it was the house that he and Eureka were currently in, and that explosions were really goddamn bright.
"Hey, Eureka?" Syvex nudged the textilomancer, noticing her doing that slow-breathing thing she'd also done while under assault by angry vegetation.
Eureka was doing her best to ignore the world around her, to ignore the explosions, to ignore the creaking and cracking from the ceiling above, to ignore Syvex's increasingly frantic nudging and yelling, to ignore the chunk of ceiling falling directly on top of her wait shit.
Eureka sprang from the ground in a panic, splintered chunk of wood merely slashing her leg instead of smashing her head. It really didn't hurt as much as it should have, Eureka noted as she watched her distressingly violet blood stain the ex-opulent carpet.
"Shit," she spat. "New plan, let's get the hell out of here."
"Right into the middle of a revolution? Maybe there's a back door..."
"Back door? You're the one with portal... magic... stuff! Get us out of here!"
"If you haven't noticed, the house is on fire! Fire isn't really good for darkness!" Syvex swatted another chunk of wood out of the air. "This way, now!"
Eureka followed the well-dressed serpent into the slightly-less-on-fire back part of the house, where he immediately set to work creating an escape route. Amidst general feelings of panic, Eureka found time to idly wonder why she wasn't hungry. She hadn't eaten in at least a day. She also found time to wonder how she found time to wonder in the first place, given that she was probably in extreme danger.
Eureka's musings and Syvex's portalings alike were interrupted by the unmistakable cacophony of a chimney crumbling under its own weight. Brick and mortar and broken glass sprayed across the room as the house's back wall was torn to shreds, the ceiling bowing downward with a creak. Cracks spread wider and wider across the ceiling by the second, the entire house groaning under the stress.
As the rallying cries of the revolutionaries echoed in the distance, Syvex and Eureka narrowly avoided being smashed into unregenerative paste by several tons of wood, brick, and mortar. A hasty portal jump left them sitting inside of a dissonantly serene fountain in the middle of the Blue District.
"That could've been bad," Syvex mumbled as he watched the house collapse into an unrecognizable pile of debris. "You alright, Eureka?"
"...Just fine," she retorted, rubbing the rapidly-healing gash in her leg. Rough. Purple. Just great. "Okay, let's get the hell out of here for real now, before something else happens."
Some shouts erupted from the distance, and a number of figures came running from the unseen mob. Syvex clambered out of the fountain, pointed several hands in their direction, and fired a burst of darkness in their general direction (only a warning, of course) - they responded by running faster, by shouting louder. He launched another, hitting one of the frenzied revolutionaries - a tall, armored man who seemed to be missing an arm - in the face. He fell like an especially heavy rock.
Glowing balls of darkness trailed through the evening air with all the accuracy of a shotgun in an action movie. Two more were felled by the furious serpent in this way - a park bench was splintered; a lamppost bent.
Also, two more of their attackers were knocked unconscious.
Syvex very suddenly ceased his onslaught when a black sphere rolled to the base of the fountain, fuse lit. Syvex had never seen an old-timey bomb before, but it was pretty obvious that it wouldn't exactly be spewing sunshine. As he dove to knock the bomb out of the way, it exploded, taking most of the fountain and two of his right arms with it. Eureka flopped to the ground, ragdoll-like, then vanished into time.
Syvex, in a frenzy, tossed himself at the barrel-thrower - a dilapidated suit of armor that didn't actually seem to have anyone inside of it. The suit shrugged off frantic blasts of vaguely-defined darkness, delivering a solid punch to the serpent's gut followed by several rounds from the gun mounted to its arm.
Several seconds later, the animated tin can found that its shadow was a lot less solid than it had remembered, and it summarily fell into a river of human excrement.
Syvex didn't want to stay and fight. He really wanted nothing more than to calm down and rejoin Eureka back in the future. He didn't even have to consider fleeing - he hopped through a portal on instinct.
Faced with a shadowy tear in space with no clear destination that could close at any second, most people would turn away and find somewhere else to revolute. The cephalopod-faced man whose sword was now buried in Syvex's chest was not most people.
"Alright, what the hell," Syvex mumbled, ripping the sword out of his chest. He lurched toward his attacker, intent on caving his skull in.
Thane responded by stabbing Eureka in the heart. Purple blood spurted from the fresh wound, and she fell to the ground, clutching her chest.
"No!" Syvex shouted, reaching out an arm, which immediately ripped itself from his body. His other arms followed suit. Unfazed, Syvex slithered toward Thane to bite his goddamn octopus-face off, only to be held back by his own arms.
"Wh- what are you..." Syvex began, before his tongue fell out of his mouth. Eureka grabbed the operating table and pulled herself onto her feet, only for Thane to stab her again. The doctors did nothing but stare as Thane stabbed her again and again, her shouts for help going unanswered. Syvex struggled. The arms couldn't hold him on their own. HIs own arms grew back in mere seconds, then fell off again. And again. Dozens of arms dragged him away as Thane continued to slice apart the defenseless Eureka.
Syvex, tongueless, tried to shout her name. Thane stopped at the pathetic groaning sound, staring impassively at the helpless serpent. Idly, he swept his sword through Eureka's neck, sending her head bouncing across the dirty, tiled floor and into Syvex's arms. Syvex stared, in shock. Then the head started screaming...
Eureka woke up in the shade of a tree, lying on much nicer-kept grass than she had landed on before blacking out. She sat up, head throbbing. All things considered, she felt much better than most people would after being launched through the air by an exploding fountain. A fountain that, in the future, had been rebuilt in honor of the revolution, clean water flowing serenely in a stark contrast to the chaos a century prior.
Eureka pushed herself to her feet, not especially startled by the fact that her right arm, badly burnt, was healing over in purple scales. Loathe as she was to admit it, she was already getting used to terrible things happening.
When Syvex appeared in front of her, apparently unconscious, it wasn't even remotely surprising. That is, until he suddenly convulsed, clutching at his head and murmuring indistinctly, then disappeared again. Eureka stared, wondering what the hell had just happened.
Eureka's head rolled across the floor. It screamed. Eureka's limp body grew another head. It fell off too. The heads screamed. They all screamed and rolled and bled. There was no end. There was no refuge. There was no battle.
There was only screaming.
The purple serpent flashed into the present again, hands clasped to his temples, murmuring growing louder, pained. Once again, he disappeared.
A dark forest. An operating table. Lights. Displeasure. Sadness. Gunfire. Yelling. A cage. A laboratory. A skyscraper. Trees. Falling. Shouting. Darkness.
Darkness.
Light.
Eureka grabbed a few strips of fabric from her pocket, watching the cobblestones for another appearance. When the convulsing Syvex appeared for a third time, Eureka fabric-slapped him across the face. Really goddamn hard.
"Hehehehehehe...." A rotten face smiled ear-to-ear as its owner strolled through the empty streets, little but fire, rubble, and a bloody, animated corpse to keep him company.
"What have we here? A revolution? Perfect! Plenty of material for my armies, hmm? Hahaha!" Lutherion gazed into the distance with his one good eye. "Hmmmm... It looks like they're already gone! No more destruction here, then... But where would they go... Aha! The castle, of course!"
Lutherion giggled with glee. "Might as well get started here. After they kill each other out there, we're going to have so much fun! Isn't that right?"
The huge, bearded zombie kept quiet.
Not very discreetly, Lutherion hopped on top of the crumbled remains of a once-stately house, searching for anything that had once been alive. He laughed hideously as he found an arm sticking out from under a chunk of stone, and commanded Arkal to pull the corpse out into the open. The zombie obliged.
In the house across the street, Herbert Tannerson, terrified local cobbler, stared on as some sort of insane hobo and his giant friend dragged the body of respected judge Tabberyl Johnson from the rubble of his own home. Herbert sighed. Judge Johnson had long defended the king's rule, and for that his house had been blown up with him inside of it. There was no justice in it.
Herbert stopped caring about justice when he watched Tabberyl's skeleton rip itself out of his body and come to life. The hobo cackled maniacally as the skeleton and the giant set to work digging through the rubble, no doubt searching for the rest of the dead judge's family.
Herbert threw up.
"So be it, then," the armored man yelled over the roaring crowd, raising his sword for battle. "You shall all die upon this night!"
The crowd visibly shrunk back from Scarlet's declaration. Many of them had never been in a real fight - impoverished citizens who had been swept up in the fervor of revolution without full realization of the consequences. They could die here. They could all die, and for nothing, to no end, no better life for others.
"What are you waiting for?" Triumphian roared. "What is one man before the will of the God? Onward!"
For a second time, the battle-cries of the reptilian priest ignited the crowd. By their will, by their numbers, by their righteousness, they could stand against even the legendary Scarlet Knight, he who had slain a hundred men in battle without so much as a scratch, who had shrugged off assassination attempts as if a schoolboy had tied his shoelaces together. Who cared if they had to accomplish the impossible? Who cared if some of them were to die for their cause? They could not fail! A rallying cry went up as the army charged the palace, swords and spears at the ready.
Perceived righteousness proved a poor substitute for decent swordsmanship. With a single stroke of his sword, the knight struck down three men, their blood spilling upon the uncaring cobblestones. With a sweep of his armored foot, several more were sent flying back.
"Run while you still can, miscreants! These steps shall be your graves!" The knight demonstrated his point by gutting a dirty, wolfskin-wearing rebel. The rebel tossed an oversized claw in desperation before he collapsed, cleanly cutting through the knight's armor and leaving a massive, bloody wound in his midsection. He shrugged it off, the wound healing over in seconds.
The fervor once again began to die out. It was hopeless. He fought their best swordsmen to a draw, and could slaughter the less-capable effortlessly. A miracle would be needed if the revolution were to get past the gate, though many were already starting to doubt the God's support for their revolt.
Then, out of nowhere, a blinding light hit the knight in the face, causing him to stumble back. Several more followed, though he was able to shield himself with his monstrous sword. He was not able to shield himself against the force of an angry, rocket-propelled pirate. (Mind you, that's not really the kind of thing you learn to shield against).
The Scarlet Knight gave Ripper a hearty punch to the face, stumbling back to his feet. He raised his sword to deliver an easy coup de gras, only to have his hand blasted off by technology that wouldn't exist for another 500 years. As the sword clattered to the ground, Ripper delivered a furious and sudden beatdown with her stun-stick, swiftly rendering the knight unconscious. Immortality, unfortunately, failed to provide protection against electric batons from the future.
"Astounding!" Triumphian shouted. "Truly you have been chosen by the God! Now, let none stand in your way! Remember those we have lost, and press onward!" A thunderous roar resounded across the palace as the forces of revolution charged toward their regicidal goal.
Syvex awoke in a daze, like waking up from a horrible but half-remembered nightmare. All around him were vague, fuzzy shapes that couldn't seem to stop waving around in every direction at once. As it happened, Syvex was just as susceptible to head trauma as everyone else. Most concussions, however, don't tend to follow nightmarish mindfucks from octopus-headed swordsmen. Most.
The world slowly came into focus. Eureka was there, thankfully - although she was much scalier than he'd last seen her. He sat up. Well-kept streets, neatly-trimmed gardens, no explosions or yelling - definitely the future. That thought alone kept Syvex calm enough to not launch through time yet again. It's not like anything bad could happen at a goddamn opera.
"Hey, Eureka. Glad you're safe. What the hell just happened to me?" is what Syvex would have liked to say. What he actually said sounded more like "Eureka venar. Ne vax voren sarat. Rek sintrak'vo tarven ne'vi son?"
"...What?" Eureka replied.
"I asked you what the hell happened," Syvex continued to not actually say. He could tell something was wrong, but wasn't really sure what.
"...Syvex, are you having a stroke? A... can you even have a stroke?"
"What are you talking about, Eureka?" Syvex tried very hard to figure out what she was talking about, but failed.
"Okay... I heard my name in there. What the hell language are you speaking, Syvex?"
"I'm... I'm speaking English. Aren't I? Wait... No, no, definitely English," Syvex said in non-English.
"Alright, alright. Listen. Whatever happened with the convulsions and stuff, must have... damaged your speech centers? Is that how it works? Does your brain even work that way?" Admittedly, Eureka didn't know a lot about psychology, but that sounded familiar.
"I... huh? Am I... what do I sound like to you?"
Eureka looked uncertain. "Syvex, uh... Just... don't bother with talking. It's probably some kind of trauma. Let's just go to the opera house and calm down before one of us panics and ends up in the past again. Hopefully you'll get better." Giving Syvex an odd look, she started down the road to the opera house.
Syvex started to protest, then stopped. What was the use? Sure, there was a revolution and some people were going to die. But it already happened. The more they changed the past, the more the present would change as well. And who were they to erase the present in order to make an attempt at changing history? History that they'd been a part of. The implications made Syvex's head hurt.
He wanted to save those people. War wasn't right, and it didn't accomplish a thing except killing the innocent. Everywhere Syvex went there was death and destruction, and just once he wanted to stop that. But looking now upon the peaceful future, upon the lives people had made for themselves, the world the revolution had built... he wondered if it was right after all.
After a while of quiet strolling and slithering, the two reached the gates of the converted palace. Admittedly, their once-fancy clothes, to put it bluntly, looked like shit after the explosions and such - Eureka set to work mending them as much as she could before they entered.
The fountain was still there - just like it always had been, of course. Syvex rushed to it as soon as he entered, followed by Eureka. The names of the revolutionaries were mostly the same as before, etched into the ostentatious golden monument, with one exception - Eureka's name was gone. Syvex breathed a sigh of relief.
Eureka, meanwhile, noticed a name etched very prominently at the top of the plaque - "Ripper Blackmask". Eureka was suddenly very relieved. "Okay, great. So the pirate's going to die in the past, if things keep going like they are now. We just need to stay here and wait out the revolution, and it'll be him that dies instead of one of us. Unless that priest guy changes things, but I haven't seen him since... Since... The city? The house? Whatever."
"The heir yet lives! Revolution shall strike again! The tyranny shall soon - auuugh!"
A thump resounded through the lobby as confused patrons looked on. Two uniformed guards pushed their way through the crowd, dragging a disheveled, unconscious man out of the building. Murmurs immediately went up throughout the well-dressed mob, about heirs and revolutions and monarchies and other such topics.
These murmurs were quickly hushed by the sound of a spoon tapping on a wineglass. The members of the crowd looked up to the balcony at the head of the room. There stood a man known well to all of them - blonde hair, a red scarf, an impressive jawline - the president.
"Settle down, settle down! Don't worry, we have nothing to fear from rumors and simple madness. There is no 'living heir', and there isn't going to be a revolution. The country is perfectly stable now, so relax, and enjoy the show!" The confident smile on the president's face as he disappeared into the theater dispelled the worry and doubt in most of the opera-goers, and the calm atmosphere returned to the room.
Neither Syvex nor Eureka remembered the Prestidigitator's passing mention of such rumors - if they had, they might have thought to stay away from the opera house and hide somewhere else for the night. As it stood, though, all they saw was a nutcase screaming about nonsense. They both had doubts, but they didn't want to listen to them. And, of course, talking it out was completely out of the question. Instead, they merely followed the rest of the crowd into the theater, and (in Syvex's case very awkwardly) took a couple of seats in the back. The opera that night seemed interesting - a retelling of the glorious revolution a century prior.
In several back rooms of the Ambitus Opera House, a group of men sat in silence, knives concealed in their sleeves. Their objective was simple. At the stroke of midnight, they would slit the throats of every government official in the building. At the same time, other conspirators would detonate explosives across the city, bringing down much of the government in one swift motion. Revolt and unrest would spread, instigated by countless others, and what remained of the nation's leaders would be overthrown. They had only to wait for the stroke of midnight, the climax of the play, when the army of revolutionaries erupted into the throne room of the "corrupt" king and slew him. It was merely a matter of time...
Meanwhile, in one obscure corner of the opera house sat a frantic woman, suddenly bereft of the one thing that had driven her to go to such great lengths for her family. She wasn't alone - before her stood a gaunt, pale man, mouth horrifyingly stitched shut, looking just as confused as she was. He was ignoring her, searching around the room for something. She began quietly tearing through boxes, searching for the spider pincushion, the legacy of her grandmother, of the survivors of the royal family.
Nothing. She grew more frantic. Even with the pincushion, she'd barely had the nerve to come here in the first place - without it, she was sent into a veritable panic. What if she was wrong to come here? What if the monarchy was destroyed for a reason? This was murder - what if the others failed? Turned back? She'd go to jail. They might execute her for it.
In her increasing panic, the heiress failed to noticed that the hooded man was now silently standing in front of her. She fell back in surprise.
"...Who are you?" she eventually worked up the nerve to ask.
Muriegro, of course, said nothing. He, too, had been separated from his pincushion, his master, at the exact same moment as the girl. But unlike her, his mind was significantly more clouded by La Aguja's influence, his emotions dulled to the point where panic was impossible. Had it not been for that fact, he would already have been in the past, reunited with his god.
But as it was, Muriegro, for the first time in years, had begun thinking for himself. The girl in front of him had lost something, too. He gestured at the boxes, tilting his head slowly.
"I, uh..." she timidly began. "Have you seen a pincushion anywhere? Looks like a spider, about this big?"
As the heiress made a circular motion with her finger, something distantly resembling surprise registered in Muriegro's head.
The fact that "everything" was really more like "the front of a house" didn't mean much, given that it was the house that he and Eureka were currently in, and that explosions were really goddamn bright.
"Hey, Eureka?" Syvex nudged the textilomancer, noticing her doing that slow-breathing thing she'd also done while under assault by angry vegetation.
Eureka was doing her best to ignore the world around her, to ignore the explosions, to ignore the creaking and cracking from the ceiling above, to ignore Syvex's increasingly frantic nudging and yelling, to ignore the chunk of ceiling falling directly on top of her wait shit.
Eureka sprang from the ground in a panic, splintered chunk of wood merely slashing her leg instead of smashing her head. It really didn't hurt as much as it should have, Eureka noted as she watched her distressingly violet blood stain the ex-opulent carpet.
"Shit," she spat. "New plan, let's get the hell out of here."
"Right into the middle of a revolution? Maybe there's a back door..."
"Back door? You're the one with portal... magic... stuff! Get us out of here!"
"If you haven't noticed, the house is on fire! Fire isn't really good for darkness!" Syvex swatted another chunk of wood out of the air. "This way, now!"
Eureka followed the well-dressed serpent into the slightly-less-on-fire back part of the house, where he immediately set to work creating an escape route. Amidst general feelings of panic, Eureka found time to idly wonder why she wasn't hungry. She hadn't eaten in at least a day. She also found time to wonder how she found time to wonder in the first place, given that she was probably in extreme danger.
Eureka's musings and Syvex's portalings alike were interrupted by the unmistakable cacophony of a chimney crumbling under its own weight. Brick and mortar and broken glass sprayed across the room as the house's back wall was torn to shreds, the ceiling bowing downward with a creak. Cracks spread wider and wider across the ceiling by the second, the entire house groaning under the stress.
As the rallying cries of the revolutionaries echoed in the distance, Syvex and Eureka narrowly avoided being smashed into unregenerative paste by several tons of wood, brick, and mortar. A hasty portal jump left them sitting inside of a dissonantly serene fountain in the middle of the Blue District.
"That could've been bad," Syvex mumbled as he watched the house collapse into an unrecognizable pile of debris. "You alright, Eureka?"
"...Just fine," she retorted, rubbing the rapidly-healing gash in her leg. Rough. Purple. Just great. "Okay, let's get the hell out of here for real now, before something else happens."
Some shouts erupted from the distance, and a number of figures came running from the unseen mob. Syvex clambered out of the fountain, pointed several hands in their direction, and fired a burst of darkness in their general direction (only a warning, of course) - they responded by running faster, by shouting louder. He launched another, hitting one of the frenzied revolutionaries - a tall, armored man who seemed to be missing an arm - in the face. He fell like an especially heavy rock.
Glowing balls of darkness trailed through the evening air with all the accuracy of a shotgun in an action movie. Two more were felled by the furious serpent in this way - a park bench was splintered; a lamppost bent.
Also, two more of their attackers were knocked unconscious.
Syvex very suddenly ceased his onslaught when a black sphere rolled to the base of the fountain, fuse lit. Syvex had never seen an old-timey bomb before, but it was pretty obvious that it wouldn't exactly be spewing sunshine. As he dove to knock the bomb out of the way, it exploded, taking most of the fountain and two of his right arms with it. Eureka flopped to the ground, ragdoll-like, then vanished into time.
Syvex, in a frenzy, tossed himself at the barrel-thrower - a dilapidated suit of armor that didn't actually seem to have anyone inside of it. The suit shrugged off frantic blasts of vaguely-defined darkness, delivering a solid punch to the serpent's gut followed by several rounds from the gun mounted to its arm.
Several seconds later, the animated tin can found that its shadow was a lot less solid than it had remembered, and it summarily fell into a river of human excrement.
Syvex didn't want to stay and fight. He really wanted nothing more than to calm down and rejoin Eureka back in the future. He didn't even have to consider fleeing - he hopped through a portal on instinct.
Faced with a shadowy tear in space with no clear destination that could close at any second, most people would turn away and find somewhere else to revolute. The cephalopod-faced man whose sword was now buried in Syvex's chest was not most people.
"Alright, what the hell," Syvex mumbled, ripping the sword out of his chest. He lurched toward his attacker, intent on caving his skull in.
Thane responded by stabbing Eureka in the heart. Purple blood spurted from the fresh wound, and she fell to the ground, clutching her chest.
"No!" Syvex shouted, reaching out an arm, which immediately ripped itself from his body. His other arms followed suit. Unfazed, Syvex slithered toward Thane to bite his goddamn octopus-face off, only to be held back by his own arms.
"Wh- what are you..." Syvex began, before his tongue fell out of his mouth. Eureka grabbed the operating table and pulled herself onto her feet, only for Thane to stab her again. The doctors did nothing but stare as Thane stabbed her again and again, her shouts for help going unanswered. Syvex struggled. The arms couldn't hold him on their own. HIs own arms grew back in mere seconds, then fell off again. And again. Dozens of arms dragged him away as Thane continued to slice apart the defenseless Eureka.
Syvex, tongueless, tried to shout her name. Thane stopped at the pathetic groaning sound, staring impassively at the helpless serpent. Idly, he swept his sword through Eureka's neck, sending her head bouncing across the dirty, tiled floor and into Syvex's arms. Syvex stared, in shock. Then the head started screaming...
Eureka woke up in the shade of a tree, lying on much nicer-kept grass than she had landed on before blacking out. She sat up, head throbbing. All things considered, she felt much better than most people would after being launched through the air by an exploding fountain. A fountain that, in the future, had been rebuilt in honor of the revolution, clean water flowing serenely in a stark contrast to the chaos a century prior.
Eureka pushed herself to her feet, not especially startled by the fact that her right arm, badly burnt, was healing over in purple scales. Loathe as she was to admit it, she was already getting used to terrible things happening.
When Syvex appeared in front of her, apparently unconscious, it wasn't even remotely surprising. That is, until he suddenly convulsed, clutching at his head and murmuring indistinctly, then disappeared again. Eureka stared, wondering what the hell had just happened.
Eureka's head rolled across the floor. It screamed. Eureka's limp body grew another head. It fell off too. The heads screamed. They all screamed and rolled and bled. There was no end. There was no refuge. There was no battle.
There was only screaming.
The purple serpent flashed into the present again, hands clasped to his temples, murmuring growing louder, pained. Once again, he disappeared.
A dark forest. An operating table. Lights. Displeasure. Sadness. Gunfire. Yelling. A cage. A laboratory. A skyscraper. Trees. Falling. Shouting. Darkness.
Darkness.
Light.
Eureka grabbed a few strips of fabric from her pocket, watching the cobblestones for another appearance. When the convulsing Syvex appeared for a third time, Eureka fabric-slapped him across the face. Really goddamn hard.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Hehehehehehe...." A rotten face smiled ear-to-ear as its owner strolled through the empty streets, little but fire, rubble, and a bloody, animated corpse to keep him company.
"What have we here? A revolution? Perfect! Plenty of material for my armies, hmm? Hahaha!" Lutherion gazed into the distance with his one good eye. "Hmmmm... It looks like they're already gone! No more destruction here, then... But where would they go... Aha! The castle, of course!"
Lutherion giggled with glee. "Might as well get started here. After they kill each other out there, we're going to have so much fun! Isn't that right?"
The huge, bearded zombie kept quiet.
Not very discreetly, Lutherion hopped on top of the crumbled remains of a once-stately house, searching for anything that had once been alive. He laughed hideously as he found an arm sticking out from under a chunk of stone, and commanded Arkal to pull the corpse out into the open. The zombie obliged.
In the house across the street, Herbert Tannerson, terrified local cobbler, stared on as some sort of insane hobo and his giant friend dragged the body of respected judge Tabberyl Johnson from the rubble of his own home. Herbert sighed. Judge Johnson had long defended the king's rule, and for that his house had been blown up with him inside of it. There was no justice in it.
Herbert stopped caring about justice when he watched Tabberyl's skeleton rip itself out of his body and come to life. The hobo cackled maniacally as the skeleton and the giant set to work digging through the rubble, no doubt searching for the rest of the dead judge's family.
Herbert threw up.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"So be it, then," the armored man yelled over the roaring crowd, raising his sword for battle. "You shall all die upon this night!"
The crowd visibly shrunk back from Scarlet's declaration. Many of them had never been in a real fight - impoverished citizens who had been swept up in the fervor of revolution without full realization of the consequences. They could die here. They could all die, and for nothing, to no end, no better life for others.
"What are you waiting for?" Triumphian roared. "What is one man before the will of the God? Onward!"
For a second time, the battle-cries of the reptilian priest ignited the crowd. By their will, by their numbers, by their righteousness, they could stand against even the legendary Scarlet Knight, he who had slain a hundred men in battle without so much as a scratch, who had shrugged off assassination attempts as if a schoolboy had tied his shoelaces together. Who cared if they had to accomplish the impossible? Who cared if some of them were to die for their cause? They could not fail! A rallying cry went up as the army charged the palace, swords and spears at the ready.
Perceived righteousness proved a poor substitute for decent swordsmanship. With a single stroke of his sword, the knight struck down three men, their blood spilling upon the uncaring cobblestones. With a sweep of his armored foot, several more were sent flying back.
"Run while you still can, miscreants! These steps shall be your graves!" The knight demonstrated his point by gutting a dirty, wolfskin-wearing rebel. The rebel tossed an oversized claw in desperation before he collapsed, cleanly cutting through the knight's armor and leaving a massive, bloody wound in his midsection. He shrugged it off, the wound healing over in seconds.
The fervor once again began to die out. It was hopeless. He fought their best swordsmen to a draw, and could slaughter the less-capable effortlessly. A miracle would be needed if the revolution were to get past the gate, though many were already starting to doubt the God's support for their revolt.
Then, out of nowhere, a blinding light hit the knight in the face, causing him to stumble back. Several more followed, though he was able to shield himself with his monstrous sword. He was not able to shield himself against the force of an angry, rocket-propelled pirate. (Mind you, that's not really the kind of thing you learn to shield against).
The Scarlet Knight gave Ripper a hearty punch to the face, stumbling back to his feet. He raised his sword to deliver an easy coup de gras, only to have his hand blasted off by technology that wouldn't exist for another 500 years. As the sword clattered to the ground, Ripper delivered a furious and sudden beatdown with her stun-stick, swiftly rendering the knight unconscious. Immortality, unfortunately, failed to provide protection against electric batons from the future.
"Astounding!" Triumphian shouted. "Truly you have been chosen by the God! Now, let none stand in your way! Remember those we have lost, and press onward!" A thunderous roar resounded across the palace as the forces of revolution charged toward their regicidal goal.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Syvex awoke in a daze, like waking up from a horrible but half-remembered nightmare. All around him were vague, fuzzy shapes that couldn't seem to stop waving around in every direction at once. As it happened, Syvex was just as susceptible to head trauma as everyone else. Most concussions, however, don't tend to follow nightmarish mindfucks from octopus-headed swordsmen. Most.
The world slowly came into focus. Eureka was there, thankfully - although she was much scalier than he'd last seen her. He sat up. Well-kept streets, neatly-trimmed gardens, no explosions or yelling - definitely the future. That thought alone kept Syvex calm enough to not launch through time yet again. It's not like anything bad could happen at a goddamn opera.
"Hey, Eureka. Glad you're safe. What the hell just happened to me?" is what Syvex would have liked to say. What he actually said sounded more like "Eureka venar. Ne vax voren sarat. Rek sintrak'vo tarven ne'vi son?"
"...What?" Eureka replied.
"I asked you what the hell happened," Syvex continued to not actually say. He could tell something was wrong, but wasn't really sure what.
"...Syvex, are you having a stroke? A... can you even have a stroke?"
"What are you talking about, Eureka?" Syvex tried very hard to figure out what she was talking about, but failed.
"Okay... I heard my name in there. What the hell language are you speaking, Syvex?"
"I'm... I'm speaking English. Aren't I? Wait... No, no, definitely English," Syvex said in non-English.
"Alright, alright. Listen. Whatever happened with the convulsions and stuff, must have... damaged your speech centers? Is that how it works? Does your brain even work that way?" Admittedly, Eureka didn't know a lot about psychology, but that sounded familiar.
"I... huh? Am I... what do I sound like to you?"
Eureka looked uncertain. "Syvex, uh... Just... don't bother with talking. It's probably some kind of trauma. Let's just go to the opera house and calm down before one of us panics and ends up in the past again. Hopefully you'll get better." Giving Syvex an odd look, she started down the road to the opera house.
Syvex started to protest, then stopped. What was the use? Sure, there was a revolution and some people were going to die. But it already happened. The more they changed the past, the more the present would change as well. And who were they to erase the present in order to make an attempt at changing history? History that they'd been a part of. The implications made Syvex's head hurt.
He wanted to save those people. War wasn't right, and it didn't accomplish a thing except killing the innocent. Everywhere Syvex went there was death and destruction, and just once he wanted to stop that. But looking now upon the peaceful future, upon the lives people had made for themselves, the world the revolution had built... he wondered if it was right after all.
After a while of quiet strolling and slithering, the two reached the gates of the converted palace. Admittedly, their once-fancy clothes, to put it bluntly, looked like shit after the explosions and such - Eureka set to work mending them as much as she could before they entered.
The fountain was still there - just like it always had been, of course. Syvex rushed to it as soon as he entered, followed by Eureka. The names of the revolutionaries were mostly the same as before, etched into the ostentatious golden monument, with one exception - Eureka's name was gone. Syvex breathed a sigh of relief.
Eureka, meanwhile, noticed a name etched very prominently at the top of the plaque - "Ripper Blackmask". Eureka was suddenly very relieved. "Okay, great. So the pirate's going to die in the past, if things keep going like they are now. We just need to stay here and wait out the revolution, and it'll be him that dies instead of one of us. Unless that priest guy changes things, but I haven't seen him since... Since... The city? The house? Whatever."
"The heir yet lives! Revolution shall strike again! The tyranny shall soon - auuugh!"
A thump resounded through the lobby as confused patrons looked on. Two uniformed guards pushed their way through the crowd, dragging a disheveled, unconscious man out of the building. Murmurs immediately went up throughout the well-dressed mob, about heirs and revolutions and monarchies and other such topics.
These murmurs were quickly hushed by the sound of a spoon tapping on a wineglass. The members of the crowd looked up to the balcony at the head of the room. There stood a man known well to all of them - blonde hair, a red scarf, an impressive jawline - the president.
"Settle down, settle down! Don't worry, we have nothing to fear from rumors and simple madness. There is no 'living heir', and there isn't going to be a revolution. The country is perfectly stable now, so relax, and enjoy the show!" The confident smile on the president's face as he disappeared into the theater dispelled the worry and doubt in most of the opera-goers, and the calm atmosphere returned to the room.
Neither Syvex nor Eureka remembered the Prestidigitator's passing mention of such rumors - if they had, they might have thought to stay away from the opera house and hide somewhere else for the night. As it stood, though, all they saw was a nutcase screaming about nonsense. They both had doubts, but they didn't want to listen to them. And, of course, talking it out was completely out of the question. Instead, they merely followed the rest of the crowd into the theater, and (in Syvex's case very awkwardly) took a couple of seats in the back. The opera that night seemed interesting - a retelling of the glorious revolution a century prior.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In several back rooms of the Ambitus Opera House, a group of men sat in silence, knives concealed in their sleeves. Their objective was simple. At the stroke of midnight, they would slit the throats of every government official in the building. At the same time, other conspirators would detonate explosives across the city, bringing down much of the government in one swift motion. Revolt and unrest would spread, instigated by countless others, and what remained of the nation's leaders would be overthrown. They had only to wait for the stroke of midnight, the climax of the play, when the army of revolutionaries erupted into the throne room of the "corrupt" king and slew him. It was merely a matter of time...
Meanwhile, in one obscure corner of the opera house sat a frantic woman, suddenly bereft of the one thing that had driven her to go to such great lengths for her family. She wasn't alone - before her stood a gaunt, pale man, mouth horrifyingly stitched shut, looking just as confused as she was. He was ignoring her, searching around the room for something. She began quietly tearing through boxes, searching for the spider pincushion, the legacy of her grandmother, of the survivors of the royal family.
Nothing. She grew more frantic. Even with the pincushion, she'd barely had the nerve to come here in the first place - without it, she was sent into a veritable panic. What if she was wrong to come here? What if the monarchy was destroyed for a reason? This was murder - what if the others failed? Turned back? She'd go to jail. They might execute her for it.
In her increasing panic, the heiress failed to noticed that the hooded man was now silently standing in front of her. She fell back in surprise.
"...Who are you?" she eventually worked up the nerve to ask.
Muriegro, of course, said nothing. He, too, had been separated from his pincushion, his master, at the exact same moment as the girl. But unlike her, his mind was significantly more clouded by La Aguja's influence, his emotions dulled to the point where panic was impossible. Had it not been for that fact, he would already have been in the past, reunited with his god.
But as it was, Muriegro, for the first time in years, had begun thinking for himself. The girl in front of him had lost something, too. He gestured at the boxes, tilting his head slowly.
"I, uh..." she timidly began. "Have you seen a pincushion anywhere? Looks like a spider, about this big?"
As the heiress made a circular motion with her finger, something distantly resembling surprise registered in Muriegro's head.