RE: The Fatal Conflict (GBS2G7) (Round 3: The Infinite Playground!)
08-06-2013, 04:05 AM
As Scott politely complied with Zach’s request, the two started bringing each other up to speed on what they knew. Zach did this while looking out the window for Maxwell. It was a little rude, but what could you do.
“…You wanted to pick everybody up and just fly out…?” Zach repeated, giving a skeptical glance to the hole in the cockpit.
“At the least, it’d be nice to gather. Or something. Divided we fall and all that? Except less metaphorical.”
“Probably not with Simph,” said Zach, going back to looking out the window. “She’s kinda gone…y’know.”
“Weeeeell,” said Scott, drawing out the ‘e’ in an attempt to think of a nice way to say the thing he was going to say. He gave up rather quickly. “Hasn’t she always been a little…y’know?”
“Not like this. She’s more homicidal, I’d say.”
“Oh,” said Scott, not sure how to respond to such a matter-of-fact statement.
“Right now she’s trapped in the ghost battery though.”
“…Oh,” said Scott. His forehead was starting to crease.
Hearing the slight change in tone, Zach held up his hands to form a little rectangle. “Black box about this big. Runs on ghosts. There’s a ghost city inside it.”
Scott didn’t bother to justify this with a response. A few seconds passed in silence before Zach sighed. “Why did I even expect him to stay in one place. Christ. Look, can you land here? He couldn’t have gone far. Maxwell’s the one with the battery, and by extension, Simph. Luron’s there too, actually.”
“Uh,” said Scott.
“Not a good idea,” said Will, who finally found a point in the conversation that he felt able to contribute to. “This is pretty close to where we stole this ship from.”
It took a while, it seemed, for Zach to process this new bit of information. “’Stole.’ You stole this ship.”
“Sort of?” Scott said.
“You can’t ‘sort of’ steal a ship!”
“What, you just thought we happened to find a ship lying on the ground? The point is that we don’t want the owner stealing it back,” Will said rather smoothly.
“’Stealing it back.’” The expression on Zach’s face was cloudy, and Scott could recognize a coming storm when he saw one. In an attempt to separate himself from the conversation, he tried to look very busy with staring out the window. “I think you mean ‘taking it back.’ Also, that isn’t the point! The point is you wanted to pick up the other contestants, and one of them is down there! I mean what were you planning to do with the others, huh? Fly around and hope they can jump on?!”
“Oh my god,” said Scott, unnoticed.
“It would have been different if we weren’t so close to where we had taken off. Like I said, since we’re most likely nearby that guy, it’s more likely that he’ll see our ship and try to get it back if we land here and go look for your kid. If you could actually direct us to someone else who happened to be on the other side of the planet, well, we could work with that.”
“Look, it’s not like it’ll take long to find him, we were only away for a few minutes!”
“Oh, yeah, I’m really going to believe that. I’m sure that if we land, we’ll find him easy.” Somehow, without even having a displayed body, Will was able to give the impression that he was giving some rather sarcastic hand gestures. “Unless you can tell us exactly where he is, I don’t feel the need to risk our transport, especially for someone who you said yourself was hostile.”
In contrast, Zach had a perfectly visible body, although rather transparent, and he utilized it for maximum expression of his exasperation. “Seriously. And how do you expect me to come up with that?”
“I think I can come up with somewhere to look,” said Scott, pointing out the window. Zach looked. Will waited patiently for someone to explain what was going on.
It was a jungle gym. Or rather, the twisted and convoluted knot of pipes that was an approximation of a jungle gym. It had been rather irregular before, but it was now exhibiting a trait that made it even more so.
It was walking.
“Are you kidding me.”
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Landing on a giant, walking jungle gym had been a hell of a trick, but it somehow worked out. While Scott slowly got used to walking on such shaky and holey ground, Zach flew up right to the figure they had seen riding on top. Surprise surprise, it was Maxwell.
“Okay,” said Zach, worried that he wasn’t going to like any answers to his many questions. “What did you do.”
Maxwell beamed up at him and tapped the black box. Somehow, it seemed to have melded with one of the bars of the jungle gym. Oh boy.
At this point, Scott had managed to channel his inner child and crawled his way to join the conversation. “So that’s the…ghost city you were talking about?”
Zach nodded, a small grimace on his face. How was this even affecting the ghosts inside? “Maxwell, how about you...stop, okay?” Oh god, could he stop it?
Maxwell blinked slowly, much too slowly, and then wrapped a hand around the battery. A few seconds later, the whole monstrosity shuddered to a stop. “Are we gonna go ride in that thing instead?” he asked brightly, pointing back to the ship (which had miraculously not fallen yet).
Zach rubbed his forehead and tried to remember that he was talking to a child. “Well, can you detach the box from that bar?” he replied with minimal testiness. Maxwell blinked again, then half-heartedly tugged on the melded box.
“I think it’s stuck,” he said. “Can we ride that other thing now?”
Zach covered his face with both hands. “Uuuuuuugh.”
Scott, thankful that everything had stopped shaking but still uneasy with heights, said, “It’s probably safe to just leave it here, right? It’s not like anybody else can get it off. Probably.”
“Look,” said Zach, testiness levels rising. “There are people in there. People who happen to be counting on me to help them out. And I may not really like it, but I don’t particularly want to be the guy who lets them down, alright?”
Scott fell silent. Maxwell started kicking his feet, waiting for all the boring adult talk to finish. Will sighed.
“So then what do you suggest?”
Zach opened his mouth to let out a witty retort, but unfortunately had none. He closed it again, mind racing to come up with something to say, some sort of idea, or at least some sort of quip. The silence dragged embarrassingly long.
And then someone else broke the silence for him with a very familiar voice.
“Couldn’t you guy have been on the ground?” Zom complained. “Would have been easier to get to you.”
Zach turned towards the voice, smiling in relief. His smile soon dropped when he actually saw Zom. “Oh my god.”
Maxwell held his nose. Scott turned around to retch.
“I feel so welcomed,” said Zom, pulling himself slowly over the top of the jungle gym like an old man undergoing rigor mortis, which was probably true at this point. He tried to sound sarcastic, but he actually did look hurt.
“Sorry,” said Zach, not sounding particularly sorry, but only because he was distracted by the fact that he was talking to someone (himself) who had his head under his arm. Scott turned around again, but quickly turned back to retch some more. As Zom settled himself on a bar, Maxwell scooted away, wrinkling his nose.
“You smell,” the child complained. Zom ignored him.
Seeing as he was the only one without a sense of smell, it fell upon Zach to ask, “What happened?”
“Kargrek,” Zom said with a sigh. “Him and Bellona are a bit…” He gave a casual gesture to his own neck, much too casual for Zach’s taste. The ghost almost retched himself.
Scott turned around, hand over his mouth. He still avoided looking directly at Zom. “Insane? Great. Those are the last two people I’d want to see insane.”
“Kaja too.”
“Shit,” said Scott, before his eyes darted towards Maxwell. The boy didn’t seem to pay any attention.
“So we’re the only ones left then,” Zach said blankly. Zom shrugged. It was interesting to watch, if ‘interesting’ meant ‘entirely unwelcome.’
Scott snapped with his free hand. “Hold up. The whole ‘turn people insane’ thing can’t get through this mess of metal pipes, I think. Maybe if we move this to where they are, they’ll get better?”
“Why not use the jungle gym to cut out the problem at its source?” Will piped up. Everybody turned to look towards him, which made Scott a little uncomfortable.
Maxwell scrunched up his eyes. “Y’mean…Ymirhoggr…?”
“…You wanted to pick everybody up and just fly out…?” Zach repeated, giving a skeptical glance to the hole in the cockpit.
“At the least, it’d be nice to gather. Or something. Divided we fall and all that? Except less metaphorical.”
“Probably not with Simph,” said Zach, going back to looking out the window. “She’s kinda gone…y’know.”
“Weeeeell,” said Scott, drawing out the ‘e’ in an attempt to think of a nice way to say the thing he was going to say. He gave up rather quickly. “Hasn’t she always been a little…y’know?”
“Not like this. She’s more homicidal, I’d say.”
“Oh,” said Scott, not sure how to respond to such a matter-of-fact statement.
“Right now she’s trapped in the ghost battery though.”
“…Oh,” said Scott. His forehead was starting to crease.
Hearing the slight change in tone, Zach held up his hands to form a little rectangle. “Black box about this big. Runs on ghosts. There’s a ghost city inside it.”
Scott didn’t bother to justify this with a response. A few seconds passed in silence before Zach sighed. “Why did I even expect him to stay in one place. Christ. Look, can you land here? He couldn’t have gone far. Maxwell’s the one with the battery, and by extension, Simph. Luron’s there too, actually.”
“Uh,” said Scott.
“Not a good idea,” said Will, who finally found a point in the conversation that he felt able to contribute to. “This is pretty close to where we stole this ship from.”
It took a while, it seemed, for Zach to process this new bit of information. “’Stole.’ You stole this ship.”
“Sort of?” Scott said.
“You can’t ‘sort of’ steal a ship!”
“What, you just thought we happened to find a ship lying on the ground? The point is that we don’t want the owner stealing it back,” Will said rather smoothly.
“’Stealing it back.’” The expression on Zach’s face was cloudy, and Scott could recognize a coming storm when he saw one. In an attempt to separate himself from the conversation, he tried to look very busy with staring out the window. “I think you mean ‘taking it back.’ Also, that isn’t the point! The point is you wanted to pick up the other contestants, and one of them is down there! I mean what were you planning to do with the others, huh? Fly around and hope they can jump on?!”
“Oh my god,” said Scott, unnoticed.
“It would have been different if we weren’t so close to where we had taken off. Like I said, since we’re most likely nearby that guy, it’s more likely that he’ll see our ship and try to get it back if we land here and go look for your kid. If you could actually direct us to someone else who happened to be on the other side of the planet, well, we could work with that.”
“Look, it’s not like it’ll take long to find him, we were only away for a few minutes!”
“Oh, yeah, I’m really going to believe that. I’m sure that if we land, we’ll find him easy.” Somehow, without even having a displayed body, Will was able to give the impression that he was giving some rather sarcastic hand gestures. “Unless you can tell us exactly where he is, I don’t feel the need to risk our transport, especially for someone who you said yourself was hostile.”
In contrast, Zach had a perfectly visible body, although rather transparent, and he utilized it for maximum expression of his exasperation. “Seriously. And how do you expect me to come up with that?”
“I think I can come up with somewhere to look,” said Scott, pointing out the window. Zach looked. Will waited patiently for someone to explain what was going on.
It was a jungle gym. Or rather, the twisted and convoluted knot of pipes that was an approximation of a jungle gym. It had been rather irregular before, but it was now exhibiting a trait that made it even more so.
It was walking.
“Are you kidding me.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Landing on a giant, walking jungle gym had been a hell of a trick, but it somehow worked out. While Scott slowly got used to walking on such shaky and holey ground, Zach flew up right to the figure they had seen riding on top. Surprise surprise, it was Maxwell.
“Okay,” said Zach, worried that he wasn’t going to like any answers to his many questions. “What did you do.”
Maxwell beamed up at him and tapped the black box. Somehow, it seemed to have melded with one of the bars of the jungle gym. Oh boy.
At this point, Scott had managed to channel his inner child and crawled his way to join the conversation. “So that’s the…ghost city you were talking about?”
Zach nodded, a small grimace on his face. How was this even affecting the ghosts inside? “Maxwell, how about you...stop, okay?” Oh god, could he stop it?
Maxwell blinked slowly, much too slowly, and then wrapped a hand around the battery. A few seconds later, the whole monstrosity shuddered to a stop. “Are we gonna go ride in that thing instead?” he asked brightly, pointing back to the ship (which had miraculously not fallen yet).
Zach rubbed his forehead and tried to remember that he was talking to a child. “Well, can you detach the box from that bar?” he replied with minimal testiness. Maxwell blinked again, then half-heartedly tugged on the melded box.
“I think it’s stuck,” he said. “Can we ride that other thing now?”
Zach covered his face with both hands. “Uuuuuuugh.”
Scott, thankful that everything had stopped shaking but still uneasy with heights, said, “It’s probably safe to just leave it here, right? It’s not like anybody else can get it off. Probably.”
“Look,” said Zach, testiness levels rising. “There are people in there. People who happen to be counting on me to help them out. And I may not really like it, but I don’t particularly want to be the guy who lets them down, alright?”
Scott fell silent. Maxwell started kicking his feet, waiting for all the boring adult talk to finish. Will sighed.
“So then what do you suggest?”
Zach opened his mouth to let out a witty retort, but unfortunately had none. He closed it again, mind racing to come up with something to say, some sort of idea, or at least some sort of quip. The silence dragged embarrassingly long.
And then someone else broke the silence for him with a very familiar voice.
“Couldn’t you guy have been on the ground?” Zom complained. “Would have been easier to get to you.”
Zach turned towards the voice, smiling in relief. His smile soon dropped when he actually saw Zom. “Oh my god.”
Maxwell held his nose. Scott turned around to retch.
“I feel so welcomed,” said Zom, pulling himself slowly over the top of the jungle gym like an old man undergoing rigor mortis, which was probably true at this point. He tried to sound sarcastic, but he actually did look hurt.
“Sorry,” said Zach, not sounding particularly sorry, but only because he was distracted by the fact that he was talking to someone (himself) who had his head under his arm. Scott turned around again, but quickly turned back to retch some more. As Zom settled himself on a bar, Maxwell scooted away, wrinkling his nose.
“You smell,” the child complained. Zom ignored him.
Seeing as he was the only one without a sense of smell, it fell upon Zach to ask, “What happened?”
“Kargrek,” Zom said with a sigh. “Him and Bellona are a bit…” He gave a casual gesture to his own neck, much too casual for Zach’s taste. The ghost almost retched himself.
Scott turned around, hand over his mouth. He still avoided looking directly at Zom. “Insane? Great. Those are the last two people I’d want to see insane.”
“Kaja too.”
“Shit,” said Scott, before his eyes darted towards Maxwell. The boy didn’t seem to pay any attention.
“So we’re the only ones left then,” Zach said blankly. Zom shrugged. It was interesting to watch, if ‘interesting’ meant ‘entirely unwelcome.’
Scott snapped with his free hand. “Hold up. The whole ‘turn people insane’ thing can’t get through this mess of metal pipes, I think. Maybe if we move this to where they are, they’ll get better?”
“Why not use the jungle gym to cut out the problem at its source?” Will piped up. Everybody turned to look towards him, which made Scott a little uncomfortable.
Maxwell scrunched up his eyes. “Y’mean…Ymirhoggr…?”