RE: The $300,000 Fight-A-Thon! [Round Two: Toyetic!]
06-21-2013, 05:49 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-21-2013, 06:08 AM by Seventeenth Squid.)
Eriz's armor wheezed and clanked as she staggered between the towering buildings of Toyetic. Alarm lights blinked on and off inside her face-dome, illuminating her head with angry red and orange glare. The watch, attached to her wrist with two pieces of thick gray tape (it was far too small to fit over the bulky arm of her suit) bleeped as she staggered towards the coordinates it marked. Her first priority, of course, was getting to the safehouse. While other contestants might be fighting and killing each other already, all she wanted was a bit of comparative safety and a chance to get her armor back into fighting shape.
Her right leg dragged stiffly, its primary knee actuator wrecked by Thize's blade. The motors in her chest were inactive as well, giving her a jerky, crippled gait. Every heavy footfall created another cracked patch of flimsy concrete and her dragging right leg left deep score marks. She had already fallen once, crashing through the wall of a house, much to the surprise and dismay of its inhabitants.
Well, some of them. While his parents screamed in terror and fled their rapidly collapsing home, their young son ran out into the alley, waving what appeared to be a tiny model of her, holding a blood-spattered hammer with a distinctive jutting blade.
This was far from the strangest thing Eriz had seen in the last few hours, so she just took it in stride. She was past even trying to make sense of what was happening to her. All she cared about was trying to get out.
Since the encounter with the family in the now ruined house, she had seen few people on the street. She stuck to back alleys, but her damaged suit made a horrendous racket as she made her clumsy way through the city. A few times she glimpsed furtive faces in upper-story windows or peeking around corners, but they always vanished before she could get a clear look at them.
The state of the city appalled her. While it appeared on the surface to be clean, well organized and fastidiously maintained, the shattered pavement left by her steps and chunks of masonry ripped from buildings when she staggered against them attested to a truly awful level of workmanship.
It was a wonder they even managed to build buildings this tall, she thought as she scurried in their shadows. These things would collapse under the slightest strain. Almost like...
Almost like they were planned that way.
The thought occurred to her early on in her stay in Toyetic. The Coach has mentioned the city had manage to avoid the disasters that commonly afflicted civilization on her home planet: namely, warfare and earthquakes. Orexies had both in abundance. Sauthai built accordingly, with massive sturdy domes anchored on heavy foundations and supported by plenty of stout pillars. Armor plating and thick layers of concrete sheltered them from bombardment. A Sauthai city, her people had often bragged, was built like a Sauthorn: ready for anything, any time.
Toyetic was about as far from a Sauthai city as anything that could still be called a city could get. In other words, the perfect place for a brawl of unprecedented destructiveness. She figured she could probably bring down one of the monolithic towers with nothing but her suit, her hammer and its unearthly blade.
The aforementioned blade had proven an absolute menace in the city of Toyetic. With Thize's spindly arm behind it, it had managed to penetrate the layers of hardened metal and composite of her armor with little difficulty. With the motors of her Sauthorn driving it, it cut through the walls of the buildings around her with impossible ease. An accidental graze while turning her torso would shear a pillar in half. A simple drop of its tip towards the ground would score a groove half a meter deep in the concrete. She took to carrying it over her shoulder, blade down.
The watch buzzed. She stopped in the middle of another alley that seemed just like any other, edged on both sides by tall, nondescript buildings faced in gray plaster that (poorly) mimicked natural stone. Ten meters, it said. She looked more closely around the alley, but saw nothing that would give away any sort of hidden safehouse.
She sighed. She pretty much knew where it would be.
She swung her hammer in a heavy sweeping arc, smashing into the wall of the building on her right, towards the indicator on the watch. It exploded in chunks of shattered plaster and timber, caving with barely any resistance. She stepped inside as the building's power failed, its interior suddenly filling with gloom. Her visor brightened, its light amplification systems kicking in to bring her face to face with...
Herself?
Her face-dome stared back at her, framed by arcing aux-arms stretching up behind her head. A gauntleted hand, armored in blue steel, held a huge hammer engraved with Sauthai sigils, one end melted and fused, a wicked blade jutting from its mass.
The her-that-was-not-her fell over backwards, splitting in half as it hit the floor. Chips of plaster splattered across the cracked tiles.
A thin man with large, buggish glasses peeked out from behind a counter.
“Oh.. oh my...you...” he stammered.
Eriz looked from the shattered replica of her to the man, then back again. Behind him, a shelf collapsed, cascading dozens of boxes and cartons onto his head. Several spilled over the glass top of the table, which (of course) immediately broke into hundreds of razor-sharp shards.
A carton rolled across the floor to rest at her feet. She stretched an aux-arm down to pick it up and brought it towards her face, turning it right side up.
“$300,000 Fight-A-Thon Official Battle Drinking Game!” its brightly colored logo exclaimed in garish font. A bottle of amber liquid slipped out as its bottom ripped out to smash on her metal toes. Eight little glasses, barely large enough to hold a swallow, tumbled after to shatter around her. A pamphlet fluttered sadly after them, its vibrant illustrations showing a very familiar group of eight individuals around a table, the bottle between them.
She dropped the carton just as the main managed to dig his way out of a mound of statuettes, mugs, shirts, hats, pastries, sports equipment and countless other objects she could barely even guess at. All emblazoned with faces she recognized only too well. A broad, grinning toothy face. A leering, upside-down skull. A plain-faced man with a light scarf around his neck and a hat perched crookedly on his head.
A glimmering, smooth dome with a crimson sigil.
She slowly raised her hammer, taking it in both hands.
“What is this,” she asked, her voice harshly modified, crackling with static. “You think this is a joke? You think I'm fucking laughing? You think I'M HERE FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT?!”
She had always known, of course. Kill or be killed, for the enjoyment of an unknown, omnipotent audience. But this? But this? Cheap cotton T-shirts with Sauthai symbols, ancient symbols with hundreds, thousands of years of history and meaning drawn on them in flaking acrylic, sold in twelve packs in shops that caved at the slightest touch? This was something else.
Eriz had felt many emotions since being dropped into this contest. Terror, of course. Panic. Uncertainty. The pumping blood-rush of kill or be killed, the thrumming pulse of Sauthai war-song. But now it was much simpler. Now she was just mad.
She rushed the man, who scrabbled madly at the pile that still clutched at his legs. He screamed incoherently, shouting at the top of his lungs about something she was past caring about. She slammed her hand into his throat and pulled, hoisting him bodily out of the morass of merchandise. He kicked and flailed, face rapidly purpling. Disgusted, she threw him to the floor. He lay whimpering at her feet.
She knelt down, awkwardly bringing her impassive visage towards his thin, sweaty face. His bug-eyed glasses had fallen off, smashed as he collided with the floor. Tears and snot ran down his face as he gibbered incoherently.
She raised the watch to his face, tapping its face with her other hand. He stared at her, eyes glazed and uncomprehending.
“Where is it,” she growled.
He shook his head violently and shrieked some more.
“It says five meters. Where is it?” she repeated, more forcefully. He finally seemed to grasp what she was saying, and waved his hands feebly, trying to point but shaking so badly that he seemed to be pointing at everything at once.
She grabbed his wrist with her right hand, feeling the frail bones under the thin, pasty muscle. She could snap it so easily... the temptation was almost overwhelming.
“One more time. Where is it.”
“D-d-d-down,” he stammered. “Sub basement. Please. Just let me goooo....” His voice trailed off into sobbing.
“What's down there?” she asked.
“I don't know! They never gave me a key. Please, please, I swear I'm telling the truth! They never told me! They said, they told me, they said don't go down there! C-company secrets!”
Eriz stood, releasing the man's wrist. As she rose, he sprung for the door. A foot placed lightly in the small of his back pinned him neatly to the floor, arms and legs scrabbling like a cockroach flipped on its back. She bent down and hauled him easily over a shoulder with one arm, pinning him in place. His screams echoed down the street as she walked to the back of the store and down a staircase into a musty storage room piled high with merchandise, most of which bore the “300k F-A-T!” logo in neon colors.
In the back of the room Eriz found a heavy door, sealed with a few bulky padlocks. Its thick steel construction and massive bolts implied something very valuable. The watch was buzzing madly now. One meter. She tore the door out of the wall with her other hand, its thick hinges tearing out of the shoddy plaster with barely any resistance. As it clanged to the ground, she stepped down a tight staircase and out into an echoing space.
She stood for a moment in darkness, the only sound the man's terrified whimpers. A hum built in the background, like a huge electrical system powering on. Bright halogen lights suddenly sprung to life in the ceiling, casting stark white illumination onto a huge chamber straight out of her father's workshop. Racks and racks of tools and weapons gleamed in the light. She recognized them all at a glance; laser emitters, huge coil-barreled railguns, hundreds of tools designed to fit on an aux arm. Stacks of exterior plating, molded to fit on the exterior of a Sauthorn, glimmered with Sauthai sigils. Workbenches and storage lockers stretched on to the far wall, which must have been one hundred meters distant.
Awestruck, she staggered down the last steps. The man on her shoulder had ceased his simpering entirely, apparently equally awestruck by the armory buried right under his shop. She walked to the nearest storage locker, a huge, gray slab-sided thing, built in the proud Sauthai tradition of unflinching sturdiness. She pulled it open and dropped him inside, slamming the door shut. She wedged a long wrench-arm into its handle, barring it shut.
“Got air holes?” she asked, voice lacking the static that had made it so harsh before.
“Um... yes. Yes. I'm fine. I'll be quiet,” the muffled voice from inside replied.
“Can you see out?”
“No, no I can't see anything, please, I won't watch anything, just don't kill me!” he squealed.
“Just stay quiet,” she growled before turning back to inspect the equipment arrayed around her. All seemed of the highest quality, and as she limped between stations she was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of it all. Far more than she could ever use herself. At a final station, between racks of extra aux-arms and a massive projectile cannon longer than her Sauthorn was tall, a little scrap of yellow paper caught her eye.
She plucked it off the bench and lifted it towards her face.
Eriz,
A and I really love your work. Magnificent, heady stuff. It was an honor to work with you, but we unfortunately must depart on business for a little while. Looking forward to next time. I'm sure you are too.
-D.
She sighed and let the paper drop to the floor. She had more pressing matters on her mind right now. Namely, a few motors in her suit that were entirely scrapped. Luckily, she had seen several of the exact model she needed throughout the shop.
“Suit, open exterior and interior locks. Full breach.”
The suit beeped its acknowledgment, and moments later a few loud pops echoed through the shop. The front of the suit hinged forwards, then the inner layers slid out, folding outwards and retracting. For the first time since being pulled into this world, she felt the outside air on her bare torso. She pulled her long arms out of their sleeves as the arms slid down, then levered herself out of the suit entirely, dropping onto the hard concrete of the floor.
She retrieved a little tool from a bench and went behind her suit, popping off the aux-arm rack from its socket. She found a harness in a cabinet and slung it over her shoulders, then attached the rack to its socket on the shoulders. Their input plugged into her spine, and she waggled them each in turn, testing the connection. Satisfied, she began collecting tools and parts to begin her repairs.
Luckily the room was well heated. Her “benefactors” had seen fit to provide her with just about everything she could need, save clothes.
Her right leg dragged stiffly, its primary knee actuator wrecked by Thize's blade. The motors in her chest were inactive as well, giving her a jerky, crippled gait. Every heavy footfall created another cracked patch of flimsy concrete and her dragging right leg left deep score marks. She had already fallen once, crashing through the wall of a house, much to the surprise and dismay of its inhabitants.
Well, some of them. While his parents screamed in terror and fled their rapidly collapsing home, their young son ran out into the alley, waving what appeared to be a tiny model of her, holding a blood-spattered hammer with a distinctive jutting blade.
This was far from the strangest thing Eriz had seen in the last few hours, so she just took it in stride. She was past even trying to make sense of what was happening to her. All she cared about was trying to get out.
Since the encounter with the family in the now ruined house, she had seen few people on the street. She stuck to back alleys, but her damaged suit made a horrendous racket as she made her clumsy way through the city. A few times she glimpsed furtive faces in upper-story windows or peeking around corners, but they always vanished before she could get a clear look at them.
The state of the city appalled her. While it appeared on the surface to be clean, well organized and fastidiously maintained, the shattered pavement left by her steps and chunks of masonry ripped from buildings when she staggered against them attested to a truly awful level of workmanship.
It was a wonder they even managed to build buildings this tall, she thought as she scurried in their shadows. These things would collapse under the slightest strain. Almost like...
Almost like they were planned that way.
The thought occurred to her early on in her stay in Toyetic. The Coach has mentioned the city had manage to avoid the disasters that commonly afflicted civilization on her home planet: namely, warfare and earthquakes. Orexies had both in abundance. Sauthai built accordingly, with massive sturdy domes anchored on heavy foundations and supported by plenty of stout pillars. Armor plating and thick layers of concrete sheltered them from bombardment. A Sauthai city, her people had often bragged, was built like a Sauthorn: ready for anything, any time.
Toyetic was about as far from a Sauthai city as anything that could still be called a city could get. In other words, the perfect place for a brawl of unprecedented destructiveness. She figured she could probably bring down one of the monolithic towers with nothing but her suit, her hammer and its unearthly blade.
The aforementioned blade had proven an absolute menace in the city of Toyetic. With Thize's spindly arm behind it, it had managed to penetrate the layers of hardened metal and composite of her armor with little difficulty. With the motors of her Sauthorn driving it, it cut through the walls of the buildings around her with impossible ease. An accidental graze while turning her torso would shear a pillar in half. A simple drop of its tip towards the ground would score a groove half a meter deep in the concrete. She took to carrying it over her shoulder, blade down.
The watch buzzed. She stopped in the middle of another alley that seemed just like any other, edged on both sides by tall, nondescript buildings faced in gray plaster that (poorly) mimicked natural stone. Ten meters, it said. She looked more closely around the alley, but saw nothing that would give away any sort of hidden safehouse.
She sighed. She pretty much knew where it would be.
She swung her hammer in a heavy sweeping arc, smashing into the wall of the building on her right, towards the indicator on the watch. It exploded in chunks of shattered plaster and timber, caving with barely any resistance. She stepped inside as the building's power failed, its interior suddenly filling with gloom. Her visor brightened, its light amplification systems kicking in to bring her face to face with...
Herself?
Her face-dome stared back at her, framed by arcing aux-arms stretching up behind her head. A gauntleted hand, armored in blue steel, held a huge hammer engraved with Sauthai sigils, one end melted and fused, a wicked blade jutting from its mass.
The her-that-was-not-her fell over backwards, splitting in half as it hit the floor. Chips of plaster splattered across the cracked tiles.
A thin man with large, buggish glasses peeked out from behind a counter.
“Oh.. oh my...you...” he stammered.
Eriz looked from the shattered replica of her to the man, then back again. Behind him, a shelf collapsed, cascading dozens of boxes and cartons onto his head. Several spilled over the glass top of the table, which (of course) immediately broke into hundreds of razor-sharp shards.
A carton rolled across the floor to rest at her feet. She stretched an aux-arm down to pick it up and brought it towards her face, turning it right side up.
“$300,000 Fight-A-Thon Official Battle Drinking Game!” its brightly colored logo exclaimed in garish font. A bottle of amber liquid slipped out as its bottom ripped out to smash on her metal toes. Eight little glasses, barely large enough to hold a swallow, tumbled after to shatter around her. A pamphlet fluttered sadly after them, its vibrant illustrations showing a very familiar group of eight individuals around a table, the bottle between them.
She dropped the carton just as the main managed to dig his way out of a mound of statuettes, mugs, shirts, hats, pastries, sports equipment and countless other objects she could barely even guess at. All emblazoned with faces she recognized only too well. A broad, grinning toothy face. A leering, upside-down skull. A plain-faced man with a light scarf around his neck and a hat perched crookedly on his head.
A glimmering, smooth dome with a crimson sigil.
She slowly raised her hammer, taking it in both hands.
“What is this,” she asked, her voice harshly modified, crackling with static. “You think this is a joke? You think I'm fucking laughing? You think I'M HERE FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT?!”
She had always known, of course. Kill or be killed, for the enjoyment of an unknown, omnipotent audience. But this? But this? Cheap cotton T-shirts with Sauthai symbols, ancient symbols with hundreds, thousands of years of history and meaning drawn on them in flaking acrylic, sold in twelve packs in shops that caved at the slightest touch? This was something else.
Eriz had felt many emotions since being dropped into this contest. Terror, of course. Panic. Uncertainty. The pumping blood-rush of kill or be killed, the thrumming pulse of Sauthai war-song. But now it was much simpler. Now she was just mad.
She rushed the man, who scrabbled madly at the pile that still clutched at his legs. He screamed incoherently, shouting at the top of his lungs about something she was past caring about. She slammed her hand into his throat and pulled, hoisting him bodily out of the morass of merchandise. He kicked and flailed, face rapidly purpling. Disgusted, she threw him to the floor. He lay whimpering at her feet.
She knelt down, awkwardly bringing her impassive visage towards his thin, sweaty face. His bug-eyed glasses had fallen off, smashed as he collided with the floor. Tears and snot ran down his face as he gibbered incoherently.
She raised the watch to his face, tapping its face with her other hand. He stared at her, eyes glazed and uncomprehending.
“Where is it,” she growled.
He shook his head violently and shrieked some more.
“It says five meters. Where is it?” she repeated, more forcefully. He finally seemed to grasp what she was saying, and waved his hands feebly, trying to point but shaking so badly that he seemed to be pointing at everything at once.
She grabbed his wrist with her right hand, feeling the frail bones under the thin, pasty muscle. She could snap it so easily... the temptation was almost overwhelming.
“One more time. Where is it.”
“D-d-d-down,” he stammered. “Sub basement. Please. Just let me goooo....” His voice trailed off into sobbing.
“What's down there?” she asked.
“I don't know! They never gave me a key. Please, please, I swear I'm telling the truth! They never told me! They said, they told me, they said don't go down there! C-company secrets!”
Eriz stood, releasing the man's wrist. As she rose, he sprung for the door. A foot placed lightly in the small of his back pinned him neatly to the floor, arms and legs scrabbling like a cockroach flipped on its back. She bent down and hauled him easily over a shoulder with one arm, pinning him in place. His screams echoed down the street as she walked to the back of the store and down a staircase into a musty storage room piled high with merchandise, most of which bore the “300k F-A-T!” logo in neon colors.
In the back of the room Eriz found a heavy door, sealed with a few bulky padlocks. Its thick steel construction and massive bolts implied something very valuable. The watch was buzzing madly now. One meter. She tore the door out of the wall with her other hand, its thick hinges tearing out of the shoddy plaster with barely any resistance. As it clanged to the ground, she stepped down a tight staircase and out into an echoing space.
She stood for a moment in darkness, the only sound the man's terrified whimpers. A hum built in the background, like a huge electrical system powering on. Bright halogen lights suddenly sprung to life in the ceiling, casting stark white illumination onto a huge chamber straight out of her father's workshop. Racks and racks of tools and weapons gleamed in the light. She recognized them all at a glance; laser emitters, huge coil-barreled railguns, hundreds of tools designed to fit on an aux arm. Stacks of exterior plating, molded to fit on the exterior of a Sauthorn, glimmered with Sauthai sigils. Workbenches and storage lockers stretched on to the far wall, which must have been one hundred meters distant.
Awestruck, she staggered down the last steps. The man on her shoulder had ceased his simpering entirely, apparently equally awestruck by the armory buried right under his shop. She walked to the nearest storage locker, a huge, gray slab-sided thing, built in the proud Sauthai tradition of unflinching sturdiness. She pulled it open and dropped him inside, slamming the door shut. She wedged a long wrench-arm into its handle, barring it shut.
“Got air holes?” she asked, voice lacking the static that had made it so harsh before.
“Um... yes. Yes. I'm fine. I'll be quiet,” the muffled voice from inside replied.
“Can you see out?”
“No, no I can't see anything, please, I won't watch anything, just don't kill me!” he squealed.
“Just stay quiet,” she growled before turning back to inspect the equipment arrayed around her. All seemed of the highest quality, and as she limped between stations she was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of it all. Far more than she could ever use herself. At a final station, between racks of extra aux-arms and a massive projectile cannon longer than her Sauthorn was tall, a little scrap of yellow paper caught her eye.
She plucked it off the bench and lifted it towards her face.
Eriz,
A and I really love your work. Magnificent, heady stuff. It was an honor to work with you, but we unfortunately must depart on business for a little while. Looking forward to next time. I'm sure you are too.
-D.
She sighed and let the paper drop to the floor. She had more pressing matters on her mind right now. Namely, a few motors in her suit that were entirely scrapped. Luckily, she had seen several of the exact model she needed throughout the shop.
“Suit, open exterior and interior locks. Full breach.”
The suit beeped its acknowledgment, and moments later a few loud pops echoed through the shop. The front of the suit hinged forwards, then the inner layers slid out, folding outwards and retracting. For the first time since being pulled into this world, she felt the outside air on her bare torso. She pulled her long arms out of their sleeves as the arms slid down, then levered herself out of the suit entirely, dropping onto the hard concrete of the floor.
She retrieved a little tool from a bench and went behind her suit, popping off the aux-arm rack from its socket. She found a harness in a cabinet and slung it over her shoulders, then attached the rack to its socket on the shoulders. Their input plugged into her spine, and she waggled them each in turn, testing the connection. Satisfied, she began collecting tools and parts to begin her repairs.
Luckily the room was well heated. Her “benefactors” had seen fit to provide her with just about everything she could need, save clothes.