RE: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 5: GrandCon]
06-29-2013, 04:48 AM
“Well at least all we need now is a computer,” said LeMarche when Lyn predictably slammed the door shut once more. “There’s plenty at the business center.”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind wading through a buncha omnivorous insects. The stairs are at the end of the hall, y’know. That’s a long stretch to get to the lobby.”
“Well, we could take the elevators – “
“Christ, aren’t you a writer? You never take the elevator in a situation like this!”
“Well I’m not just a writer, I’m the writer – “
“I’m a mass consumer of all entertainment media and I know my narrative rules let me tell you – “
Holly and Algernon stood back and simply witnessed the conversation. Holly didn’t really understand all the tech stuff – even exposed to it in the last round, she simply couldn’t understand it in any other way besides a different form of magic. Algernon hadn’t even seen a computer in twenty years or so, at least not a working one, and the only hotel he ever remembered being in didn’t have anything called a ‘business center.’ And both of them were in the awkward position of being fictional characters during an argument about narrative structure.
fire
Algernon rubbed his forehead. “Look, if any Ouroborites gets near, Holly can just do her fire thing.”
“’Fire thing,’” Holly repeated blankly. “You do realize that my ‘fire thing’ needs anger? There’s not a lot of that going on.”
“You seem plenty angry – “
“I’m not angry, I’m indignant there is a big difference – “
“Why are you still outside my room.”
Four sheepish heads turned towards the stony face of Lynette Cooper.
“Sorry,” LeMarche mumbled, and they all headed towards the stairs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The trick was, Toni warned, not to get Ouroguts on you. Of course, they’d swarm you, Ouroguts or no, but there was absolutely no escaping Ouroborous if you got Ouroguts on you. Burning them to a crisp was the best way to deal with them, of course. If you had to skewer them, then you’d better have alternate weapons on hand. You really don’t want to hold something that has hungry, flesh-eating bugs clinging to the other end. Oh, and watch your step.
There were several refugees who were very adamant about keeping a safehouse on hand, at least for those who didn’t think they could handle going out into the chaos again. Hiding in a café might not be the safest thing to do in the midst of an Ouroborous attack, but neither was charging an Ouroborous attack. Besides, it was comforting to know a place you could run to if you were in trouble.
So the plan was to find another closed-off area, secure and bait it up, then blow it to kingdom come. Fighting through swarms of Ouroborous along the way, of course.
A second, smaller group preferred to go looking for some writers, no matter what any naysayers said. They also preferred the Countess to come with them, but like hell she was choosing a rescue mission over a blow-something-up mission. The one dressed as the photographer was disappointed, but no less chipper.
The Countess wasn’t really interested in the planning stage. She only perked up once people started towards the door. Annabell, with her working flamethrower, took point alongside the amalgam. Somewhere in the middle of the group, Brooklyn spoke up. “Right, so make sure to stick together and shit. Watch each other’s backs. ‘Specially mine, since I got the explosive stuff and all.”
“Yeah, yeah, open the doors already.”
Taking in a nervous breath, Annabell barged through, blasting fire at anything that buzzed. The Countess emerged, a sparking monstrosity. Behind the first group, those staying in the café slammed the doors shut. At least until the way was relatively clear for the second group to head out.
The Soft cosplayer was the one who volunteered to carry the bait. She handled herself confidently, slamming her axe against any available surface, making it slick with Ouroguts, very much disregarding Toni’s advice. Allies around her tried to make sure she didn’t get herself eaten, but it was hard to do so when she was swinging a huge battle axe around, even if it was fake.
It was not a group that the Countess would normally associate with (understatement of the century), but in this moment of frenzied violence for survival, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of kinship. Not the common definition of kinship, but her definition of kinship, which was probably not quite the same, but close enough, right?
Annabell gestured towards a glass room and as one, the blow-something-up group barreled towards it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The trip down the stairs was as nail-biting as it was uneventful. The more they descended, the louder the noise of chaos and devastation became, until Algernon was convinced that a swarm of giant bugs would just burst from the walls and eat them alive.
But absolutely nothing happened when they reached the door to the first floor. However, all of the pent up tension that had been simmering for the past few flights boiled over as soon as they opened the door and were immediately accosted by a cosplayer dressed entirely in black. The result was that everybody screamed.
“Wow, that was easy!” the camera-toting cosplayer chirped. Behind her, Frank and Cascala exchanged stunned, disheveled glances. “Mr. Firestorm sir? Pleasure to meet you, good to see you’re alive, we’d like to discuss a possible plan for the future – “
“Can we not do this in the open?” Cascala said.
LeMarche was the first to recover. He was impressed with how well he was handling all this really stupid shit. “We need to get to a computer. Can you help us get to the – “
The entire floor rocked with the explosive force of one semester of pyrotechnics.
“What the hell was that?” said Alex, steadying herself against the wall.
“Oh my god they blew up the business center,” Algernon said in one breath.
As the building settled and the ceiling stopped raining on them, everybody couldn’t help but stare at Algernon. Unused to being stared at and steadily losing his steam, he responded by retracting his neck like a turtle. It would have been more effective with his old turtleneck.
“How did you know that?” Holly asked, and the only thing he could do was glance at LeMarche.
The writer hesitated and then said, “Why don’t we see if the business center really did blow up.”
It really did blow up, to their dismay. It was even still on fire when they got there, and the whooping females did not raise any of their spirits. Although the melted slag that used to be a really nice business center did look cool in the sense that explosions (and their aftermath) are always cool.
The Countess noticed them, and Holly had to refrain from tacking the word ‘unfortunately’ somewhere in that sentence. She clacked her way over there, all sharp smiles. “Ah, Algernon. Finally. So good of you to join us.” Very carefully, Algernon did not shake her hand.
“Dang, you found Firestorm already?” Jessica said, looking a little singed. Her wide grin started to sag at the corners. “Uh. Why’s he here and not in his room? Y’know, writing?”
LeMarche gazed at the flaming room with the expression of a man on a deserted island who had seen a glimpse of civilization and then found out it was a village of cannibals. “Please tell me you at least saved a computer.”
“Uh,” said Jessica.
The Countess ignored what seemed irrelevant and delicately grabbed Algernon’s wrist. “Say, what do you know about interdimensional portals?” Holly stepped up to lay a hand on Algernon’s shoulder, but she didn’t pull him away in case that lost him a hand.
“Uh,” said Algernon.
“Wait a sec,” said Holly. “We’re trying something different. That guy,” she pointed at LeMarche, “is the writer of our battle or something. We’re thinking he might be able to write us a solution.”
“I thought you didn’t beli – “ Algernon bit his tongue as Holly very casually stepped on his foot.
“All he needs is one of those computer things.”
In a conversation separate from their own, Jessica said, “Maybe someone at the café has a laptop.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Of course I have my laptop with me,” said Eureka. “What, you think I’d leave it in my hotel room? Unattended?”
For LeMarche, it turned out the cannibal village was just him making racist assumptions about the indigenous people of the island. “Great. Marvelous. Can I borrow it?”
Eureka hugged her backpack protectively. “You’re not gonna do anything weird on it, are you?”
“Oh my god this is not the time,” Annabell said.
“It’s totally cool,” said the one dressed as the photographer, giving a double thumbs-up to emphasize how totally cool it was. “He’s Firestorm. He’s just gonna write things better!”
LeMarche sweated as Eureka relented, because this was entirely too many females in one room. “Um, thanks.”
“I still think this is a waste of time,” said someone who he couldn’t name off the top of his head. “But while you slowly write shit out, I’m gonna protect our asses and make sure Ouroborous doesn’t break down the door or something.”
Eureka leaned over LeMarche’s shoulder to type in her password, making sure that nobody was watching her quick fingers (as though anybody could figure out what she was typing anyways). The laptop flashed a wallpaper of Euryvex fanart. Eureka quickly brought up the USB folder.
“Right,” said Algernon, leaning over LeMarche’s other shoulder. This made him more uncomfortable than the women leaning over him. At least he never wrote them into existence. “So you can make it so that this never happens, right? An ‘it was all a dream’ scenario or something.”
Several pairs of eyes glared at him.
“You’re not much of a writer, are you,” said Frank disparagingly.
“Look, it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to get me home,” Algernon huffed, or at least tried to.
LeMarche tapped at the small keyboard. “I still lost everything I wrote today. You can’t expect me to rewrite everything and write everything that’s happened up to this point just to be able to say ‘it was all a dream.’”
Algernon shrugged. “Then write it at the beginning.”
LeMarche slowly turned his head up towards Algernon. “Are you serious.”
He was.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Acacia Skammer had the best of intentions when she became a part of the Last Sanctum, but, as they say, 'absolute power corrupts absolutely.' That collar on her neck is called a 'boomer,' and it's quite the sonic weapon. To use it, she was deafened, so she can't hear anything."
"And finally, we have Algernon. That worm on his head isn't just for show- For the low, low cost of a few memories, it can create anything he wants. Of course, when memories are all you have, they come to be rather precious. I wonder what it'll take to make it worthwhile?"
The Controller shifted his posture a bit, and the enthusiasm began to return to his voice. "Now that that's done, let us begin."
The plane around them began to blur, fading into black. Nine beings startled awake across different worlds and dimensions. It was all a dream.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LeMarche was pretty sure that it actually physically hurt to write that.
“Nice job,” said Holly, winding up an ‘I told you so’ look towards Algernon. “I can’t help but notice we’re still here.”
“That’s ‘cause you can’t just change what already happened,” said Alex, joining the huddle around an increasingly sweaty LeMarche. “Think about it. If we changed everything so that it was all a dream from the very beginning, then none of the crazy shit in the hotel would have never happened, which means that then Firestorm would have never written the thing he just wrote meaning that it wasn’t all a dream. So everything happens again. It’s like the Grandfather Paradox thing.”
“So,” said the Countess, who only stuck around in order to keep an eye on Algernon, “you are saying we should resort to Plan A?”
“No, this could work,” said Toni, who was making the huddle quite crowded. “The problem with this was that it broke suspension of disbelief. Writing’s kind of like doing a magic trick. You have to make it so that even if what you’re writing isn’t possible in any way, it’s at least plausible for the audience. In this case, you could say that your audience is reality itself, so rewriting time is probably a no-no.”
This speech drew the attention of many other cosplayers. “You say that like you’re an expert on how metafiction interacts with reality,” Brooklyn said, looking rather skeptical.
Toni could only shrug. “I’m just saying what I think makes sense. We can’t write what’s presently happening because we don’t have the text, so our only choice is to retcon. That means we have to trick reality into thinking what didn’t happen, could have and did.”
“Um, I don’t think I understand this,” said Algernon.
The Cultivator rolled her eyes. “Metafiction.”
LeMarche only scrolled through the GM files, ignoring the bickering that was sure to come. “Trick reality, huh?”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the door to the laboratory slid open, Thane sprung into action. With his instinctual knowledge of the station's functions, he'd formulated a plan, and he only needed a few more sacrifices to make it work.
The engineers, of course, did not expect him. How could they? Their confusion pitted against his ruthless efficiency made for poor competition indeed. As he froze all of the engineers to the spot by mentally assaulting them with the pain of broken legs before he broke their legs, he made sure to carefully avoid Algernon, who was slumped against the wall for some reason. If he were to die, then the plan would be for naught.
One of the engineers made a runner and Thane pursued, in the process, losing the Map of Rome that he had tucked away. Even if he had noticed it fall, he would have left it – it wasn’t needed for the ritual, and besides, it was obviously useless despite its great power.
The Map of Rome floated like any ordinary map would, and drifted onto Algernon’s stomach. Dazed, Algernon could barely register that something had indeed fallen on him. That he tucked the Map away in a small pocket of his backpack was the action of mere instinct rather than any conscious choice. Soon after, he passed out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Algernon was one of the last to finish reading and once he did, he looked up to see several expectant faces.
He carefully unshouldered his backpack and set it in front of him. His hands reached towards a pocket that he was sure he had never touched. Even before he unzipped it, he could see that there was something inside.
It was the Map of Rome.
When he took it out, it didn’t glow, which was very disappointing. All the same, everybody regarded it with wonder and amazement. LeMarche mostly regarded it with smug self-congratulation.
“So…what am I supposed to do with this…?”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind wading through a buncha omnivorous insects. The stairs are at the end of the hall, y’know. That’s a long stretch to get to the lobby.”
“Well, we could take the elevators – “
“Christ, aren’t you a writer? You never take the elevator in a situation like this!”
“Well I’m not just a writer, I’m the writer – “
“I’m a mass consumer of all entertainment media and I know my narrative rules let me tell you – “
Holly and Algernon stood back and simply witnessed the conversation. Holly didn’t really understand all the tech stuff – even exposed to it in the last round, she simply couldn’t understand it in any other way besides a different form of magic. Algernon hadn’t even seen a computer in twenty years or so, at least not a working one, and the only hotel he ever remembered being in didn’t have anything called a ‘business center.’ And both of them were in the awkward position of being fictional characters during an argument about narrative structure.
fire
Algernon rubbed his forehead. “Look, if any Ouroborites gets near, Holly can just do her fire thing.”
“’Fire thing,’” Holly repeated blankly. “You do realize that my ‘fire thing’ needs anger? There’s not a lot of that going on.”
“You seem plenty angry – “
“I’m not angry, I’m indignant there is a big difference – “
“Why are you still outside my room.”
Four sheepish heads turned towards the stony face of Lynette Cooper.
“Sorry,” LeMarche mumbled, and they all headed towards the stairs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The trick was, Toni warned, not to get Ouroguts on you. Of course, they’d swarm you, Ouroguts or no, but there was absolutely no escaping Ouroborous if you got Ouroguts on you. Burning them to a crisp was the best way to deal with them, of course. If you had to skewer them, then you’d better have alternate weapons on hand. You really don’t want to hold something that has hungry, flesh-eating bugs clinging to the other end. Oh, and watch your step.
There were several refugees who were very adamant about keeping a safehouse on hand, at least for those who didn’t think they could handle going out into the chaos again. Hiding in a café might not be the safest thing to do in the midst of an Ouroborous attack, but neither was charging an Ouroborous attack. Besides, it was comforting to know a place you could run to if you were in trouble.
So the plan was to find another closed-off area, secure and bait it up, then blow it to kingdom come. Fighting through swarms of Ouroborous along the way, of course.
A second, smaller group preferred to go looking for some writers, no matter what any naysayers said. They also preferred the Countess to come with them, but like hell she was choosing a rescue mission over a blow-something-up mission. The one dressed as the photographer was disappointed, but no less chipper.
The Countess wasn’t really interested in the planning stage. She only perked up once people started towards the door. Annabell, with her working flamethrower, took point alongside the amalgam. Somewhere in the middle of the group, Brooklyn spoke up. “Right, so make sure to stick together and shit. Watch each other’s backs. ‘Specially mine, since I got the explosive stuff and all.”
“Yeah, yeah, open the doors already.”
Taking in a nervous breath, Annabell barged through, blasting fire at anything that buzzed. The Countess emerged, a sparking monstrosity. Behind the first group, those staying in the café slammed the doors shut. At least until the way was relatively clear for the second group to head out.
The Soft cosplayer was the one who volunteered to carry the bait. She handled herself confidently, slamming her axe against any available surface, making it slick with Ouroguts, very much disregarding Toni’s advice. Allies around her tried to make sure she didn’t get herself eaten, but it was hard to do so when she was swinging a huge battle axe around, even if it was fake.
It was not a group that the Countess would normally associate with (understatement of the century), but in this moment of frenzied violence for survival, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of kinship. Not the common definition of kinship, but her definition of kinship, which was probably not quite the same, but close enough, right?
Annabell gestured towards a glass room and as one, the blow-something-up group barreled towards it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The trip down the stairs was as nail-biting as it was uneventful. The more they descended, the louder the noise of chaos and devastation became, until Algernon was convinced that a swarm of giant bugs would just burst from the walls and eat them alive.
But absolutely nothing happened when they reached the door to the first floor. However, all of the pent up tension that had been simmering for the past few flights boiled over as soon as they opened the door and were immediately accosted by a cosplayer dressed entirely in black. The result was that everybody screamed.
“Wow, that was easy!” the camera-toting cosplayer chirped. Behind her, Frank and Cascala exchanged stunned, disheveled glances. “Mr. Firestorm sir? Pleasure to meet you, good to see you’re alive, we’d like to discuss a possible plan for the future – “
“Can we not do this in the open?” Cascala said.
LeMarche was the first to recover. He was impressed with how well he was handling all this really stupid shit. “We need to get to a computer. Can you help us get to the – “
The entire floor rocked with the explosive force of one semester of pyrotechnics.
“What the hell was that?” said Alex, steadying herself against the wall.
“Oh my god they blew up the business center,” Algernon said in one breath.
As the building settled and the ceiling stopped raining on them, everybody couldn’t help but stare at Algernon. Unused to being stared at and steadily losing his steam, he responded by retracting his neck like a turtle. It would have been more effective with his old turtleneck.
“How did you know that?” Holly asked, and the only thing he could do was glance at LeMarche.
The writer hesitated and then said, “Why don’t we see if the business center really did blow up.”
It really did blow up, to their dismay. It was even still on fire when they got there, and the whooping females did not raise any of their spirits. Although the melted slag that used to be a really nice business center did look cool in the sense that explosions (and their aftermath) are always cool.
The Countess noticed them, and Holly had to refrain from tacking the word ‘unfortunately’ somewhere in that sentence. She clacked her way over there, all sharp smiles. “Ah, Algernon. Finally. So good of you to join us.” Very carefully, Algernon did not shake her hand.
“Dang, you found Firestorm already?” Jessica said, looking a little singed. Her wide grin started to sag at the corners. “Uh. Why’s he here and not in his room? Y’know, writing?”
LeMarche gazed at the flaming room with the expression of a man on a deserted island who had seen a glimpse of civilization and then found out it was a village of cannibals. “Please tell me you at least saved a computer.”
“Uh,” said Jessica.
The Countess ignored what seemed irrelevant and delicately grabbed Algernon’s wrist. “Say, what do you know about interdimensional portals?” Holly stepped up to lay a hand on Algernon’s shoulder, but she didn’t pull him away in case that lost him a hand.
“Uh,” said Algernon.
“Wait a sec,” said Holly. “We’re trying something different. That guy,” she pointed at LeMarche, “is the writer of our battle or something. We’re thinking he might be able to write us a solution.”
“I thought you didn’t beli – “ Algernon bit his tongue as Holly very casually stepped on his foot.
“All he needs is one of those computer things.”
In a conversation separate from their own, Jessica said, “Maybe someone at the café has a laptop.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Of course I have my laptop with me,” said Eureka. “What, you think I’d leave it in my hotel room? Unattended?”
For LeMarche, it turned out the cannibal village was just him making racist assumptions about the indigenous people of the island. “Great. Marvelous. Can I borrow it?”
Eureka hugged her backpack protectively. “You’re not gonna do anything weird on it, are you?”
“Oh my god this is not the time,” Annabell said.
“It’s totally cool,” said the one dressed as the photographer, giving a double thumbs-up to emphasize how totally cool it was. “He’s Firestorm. He’s just gonna write things better!”
LeMarche sweated as Eureka relented, because this was entirely too many females in one room. “Um, thanks.”
“I still think this is a waste of time,” said someone who he couldn’t name off the top of his head. “But while you slowly write shit out, I’m gonna protect our asses and make sure Ouroborous doesn’t break down the door or something.”
Eureka leaned over LeMarche’s shoulder to type in her password, making sure that nobody was watching her quick fingers (as though anybody could figure out what she was typing anyways). The laptop flashed a wallpaper of Euryvex fanart. Eureka quickly brought up the USB folder.
“Right,” said Algernon, leaning over LeMarche’s other shoulder. This made him more uncomfortable than the women leaning over him. At least he never wrote them into existence. “So you can make it so that this never happens, right? An ‘it was all a dream’ scenario or something.”
Several pairs of eyes glared at him.
“You’re not much of a writer, are you,” said Frank disparagingly.
“Look, it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to get me home,” Algernon huffed, or at least tried to.
LeMarche tapped at the small keyboard. “I still lost everything I wrote today. You can’t expect me to rewrite everything and write everything that’s happened up to this point just to be able to say ‘it was all a dream.’”
Algernon shrugged. “Then write it at the beginning.”
LeMarche slowly turned his head up towards Algernon. “Are you serious.”
He was.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Acacia Skammer had the best of intentions when she became a part of the Last Sanctum, but, as they say, 'absolute power corrupts absolutely.' That collar on her neck is called a 'boomer,' and it's quite the sonic weapon. To use it, she was deafened, so she can't hear anything."
"And finally, we have Algernon. That worm on his head isn't just for show- For the low, low cost of a few memories, it can create anything he wants. Of course, when memories are all you have, they come to be rather precious. I wonder what it'll take to make it worthwhile?"
The Controller shifted his posture a bit, and the enthusiasm began to return to his voice. "Now that that's done, let us begin."
The plane around them began to blur, fading into black. Nine beings startled awake across different worlds and dimensions. It was all a dream.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LeMarche was pretty sure that it actually physically hurt to write that.
“Nice job,” said Holly, winding up an ‘I told you so’ look towards Algernon. “I can’t help but notice we’re still here.”
“That’s ‘cause you can’t just change what already happened,” said Alex, joining the huddle around an increasingly sweaty LeMarche. “Think about it. If we changed everything so that it was all a dream from the very beginning, then none of the crazy shit in the hotel would have never happened, which means that then Firestorm would have never written the thing he just wrote meaning that it wasn’t all a dream. So everything happens again. It’s like the Grandfather Paradox thing.”
“So,” said the Countess, who only stuck around in order to keep an eye on Algernon, “you are saying we should resort to Plan A?”
“No, this could work,” said Toni, who was making the huddle quite crowded. “The problem with this was that it broke suspension of disbelief. Writing’s kind of like doing a magic trick. You have to make it so that even if what you’re writing isn’t possible in any way, it’s at least plausible for the audience. In this case, you could say that your audience is reality itself, so rewriting time is probably a no-no.”
This speech drew the attention of many other cosplayers. “You say that like you’re an expert on how metafiction interacts with reality,” Brooklyn said, looking rather skeptical.
Toni could only shrug. “I’m just saying what I think makes sense. We can’t write what’s presently happening because we don’t have the text, so our only choice is to retcon. That means we have to trick reality into thinking what didn’t happen, could have and did.”
“Um, I don’t think I understand this,” said Algernon.
The Cultivator rolled her eyes. “Metafiction.”
LeMarche only scrolled through the GM files, ignoring the bickering that was sure to come. “Trick reality, huh?”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the door to the laboratory slid open, Thane sprung into action. With his instinctual knowledge of the station's functions, he'd formulated a plan, and he only needed a few more sacrifices to make it work.
The engineers, of course, did not expect him. How could they? Their confusion pitted against his ruthless efficiency made for poor competition indeed. As he froze all of the engineers to the spot by mentally assaulting them with the pain of broken legs before he broke their legs, he made sure to carefully avoid Algernon, who was slumped against the wall for some reason. If he were to die, then the plan would be for naught.
One of the engineers made a runner and Thane pursued, in the process, losing the Map of Rome that he had tucked away. Even if he had noticed it fall, he would have left it – it wasn’t needed for the ritual, and besides, it was obviously useless despite its great power.
The Map of Rome floated like any ordinary map would, and drifted onto Algernon’s stomach. Dazed, Algernon could barely register that something had indeed fallen on him. That he tucked the Map away in a small pocket of his backpack was the action of mere instinct rather than any conscious choice. Soon after, he passed out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Algernon was one of the last to finish reading and once he did, he looked up to see several expectant faces.
He carefully unshouldered his backpack and set it in front of him. His hands reached towards a pocket that he was sure he had never touched. Even before he unzipped it, he could see that there was something inside.
It was the Map of Rome.
When he took it out, it didn’t glow, which was very disappointing. All the same, everybody regarded it with wonder and amazement. LeMarche mostly regarded it with smug self-congratulation.
“So…what am I supposed to do with this…?”