The Glorious Championship! [S3G5] [Round... Uh, Seven? The Oasis]

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SpoilerA profile before the post! Or after, it might be more fun to read it that way.

Username: SleepingOrange!
Name: Ekrith. Just Ekrith. It's a lot more distinctive in their native language, especially the psionic imprint that goes with it. Multiple names would be redundant.
Gender: Lots and lots of tiny males and females, but collectively neuter. Uses the pronoun "they"; refers to themself as "we".
Species: Afu.
An individual Afu is actually not an individual; any given Afu is a collection of tiny lifeforms, connected by a hive mind and led by a queen: the vaguely-hominid bodies seen by most are actually something of a living hive, a biological construct operated by the tiny beings inside it. Their "body" can be best described as being a roughly-cylindrical tripedal mound of matter of a consistency between flesh and wood. Their legs are stiltlike and awkward, their arms are stumpy and end in claws, and their head and face are both nonexistent; instead, about five sixths of the way up their body, there is a red, glassy plate of chitin embedded into their flesh. This plate contains the queen, who in addition to producing drones to sustain the colony has a number of sensory organs that her subjects lack or have stunted versions of; she communicates this information and directs the colony's movements and activities. Even the queen herself, however, is largely unintelligent: any Afu component on its own acts solely on instinct and is largely helpless; only when they are together and communicate do emergent intelligences become apparent.

Due to their unusual neural structure, which is actually composed of thousands of Afu drones specialized for data storage and communication, Afu have a natural knack for psionics. Even an untrained Afu will probably have a power or two. Their many-in-one nature also gives them unparalleled reflexes and speed of thought, but requires much more food and air than a normal being of their size (an average hive stands between five and six feet tall).
Here is a picture to help the visualizin'.
Associated Color: We find this color readable and reasonably representative.
Weapons/Abilities: Afus in general, which means Ekrith in patricular, breathe a heavy atmosphere of primarily-carbon-dioxide laced with a number of larger organic molecules. To most species, it is extremely toxic; to Ekrith, a "normal" nitrox environment would be near-instantly lethal. A quirk of the transition – whether it was through Crumb's desire to perpetuate the battle for causality's sake, Gaurinn unconsciously providing for the need, or Ekrith's own psionic or now temporal abilities – has surrounded them constantly with a bubble of self-replenishing Zharusian atmosphere. It extends about a foot away from them in every direction; what would happen if they were submerged or buried remains to be seen.

More saliently, or at least more intentionally, Ekrith is a telepath. It's an ability that comes naturally to them, but not one they ever studied or developed. Indeed, they are inexpert and their mental powers are generally out of their control. They can hear others' surface thoughts if they try, and even project messages with some effort; it's theoretically possible that they could attempt more dramatic things like psyche-scrambling or mind control, in the same way that it is theoretically possible someone with functioning legs could attempt to walk a tightrope. They are more likely to hurt themself than anything else. They become stressed and overwhelmed in large groups, literally having a hard time hearing themselves think; they tend to view their telepathy as a handicap more than a skill, although it does have its uses.

Their job is as an automation engineer. They have experience with a lot of technology, especially of the mechanical persuasion, and are from the spacefuture. Their education and employment gives them significant aptitude towards physics and engineering, as well as a working knowledge of workplace safety and a head for problem-solving. How they will leverage this in a battle to the death would be of great interest to a grandmaster who had actually selected them for the battle. They are also carrying the tools of their trade, largely by coincidence.

Description: Ekrith is fairly typical as Afus go. Look at the picture, imagine some clothes on it, you're close enough. They were on shift at the shipyard when they were taken for the battle, and are thus dressed in a heavy canvas jumpsuit with a toolbelt, a toolbox, and protective gloves and mask-helmet. To a human (or most species), they are extremely bizarre-looking, and actively disgusting up close (few sapient beings like being around someone whose skin literally crawls); to another Afu, they are very plain.

They preferred solitude from a young age, having never developed the psychic shielding most telepaths maintain naturally and thus finding company to be stressful and disquieting. This gave them a tendency to run towards shy and withdrawn, and rather forced them to become good at things that don't require much interaction with living things. They like the small creature comforts of life, they like to curl up in a hot bath and a book after a long shift, and they like the company of other telepaths since they're usually polite enough to keep their thoughts to themselves. If Ekrith were a human, they would probably be a librarian and have cats and do crossword puzzles and just generally be the sort of little old person one thinks of as sweet and feels vaguely sorry for without quite knowing why.

Biography: Ekrith grew up, went to school, got a job, developed modestly successful new processes and tools for various manufacturing fields, and settled into their life of quietude and machines. They have never been off their home planet of Zharu and never had any desire to be; they have only rarely seen any alien species, since few can survive without environmental protection and even fewer have any particular reason to go to Zharu or interact with its inhabitants. Ekrith is mildly xenophobic, having heard all their life that most aliens look down on Afu as primitive or unpleasant or just plain weird. Little of real note happened in their life until fate or something more powerful than it decided they were to become a time traveler and fight to the death far removed from their life and home. It is a frightening time to be Ekrith.

And they were just about to go on break, too.

One.

Ekrith looked down at their claws, which for a brief instant had been delicately, almost lovingly, cradling a dying insect. There was no centipede now, which was almost upsetting; somehow, the fact that they'd been pulled through two universes in the span of moments was worse than if it had been only one. When your surroundings could change without warning in an instant, then change again before you can even take the new ones in, how are you supposed to adjust?

There is only one, only one, only one.

The water – water! Not just vapor, not just patches, but enough to stand in, enough to drown in – hissed and bubbled and steamed, and for a moment, that was the only sound. And then the buzzing started. Ekrith hated that prickling, back-of-the-mind noise, the precursor to uncontrolled thoughts, the certain signal that things were about to get loud, that someone was coming, that there were too many people.

A time traveler's duty, your duty, protect from paradoxes.

They scuttled backwards, away from the water, but the mental static was coming from every direction, and they were having too hard a time focusing through the steam to make out what could even be thinking. They didn't see anyone else, couldn't see any shapes in the mist that were people. Anything they would recognize as people. They couldn't move fast enough to get away, couldn't tell where away was, where it would be. And then the voices became clear, the static receding and replaced by silent shouting that drowned out the not-quite-a-thought Ekrith hadn't realized they'd been having and hadn't realized wasn't their own.

About to die. About to die. About t-t-t– That motherfucker thinks he knows from hate? Piece of pencil-pushing shit, the hell does he think he is?

A clacking began, loud and insistent and increasingly rapid and angry, but Ekrith wasn't even conscious of it above the rising mental din. If they'd had the presence of mind to notice Etiyr's demands for attention, they might at least have been able to move away from him, tried to get some peace deeper in the Oasis, but as it was they just stumbled over their own stilts and threatened to run into walls as they tried to block out the stream of invectives forcing their way into their thoughts.

The hell does he think he gets to decide we're just going to go on our merry damn way killing each other because of his stupid fucking causality problems? The fuck do I care? And I bet these other self-righteous idiots can't even spare a scrap of common decency, a shred of fucking gratitude that I was the only one with enough sense and brains to take care of that long streak of piss and her stupid centipede.

The typewriter's penchant for expressing itself textually with no regard for who might actually read what it wrote meant that, for a narrow window and a narrow definition, a non-psion would have actually had a very good idea of what it was like in Ekrith's mental landscape. That window ended abruptly as their stumbling brought them closer to Lucky VII, and as their already-damaged-by-the-transition focus crumbled under the weight of Etiyr's demonic thoughtstream. Unconsciously, they'd been shielding themself from the colossal wall of mental energy emanating from the planetsphere by simply letting it wash over them, bending with the strain rather than resisting it; with their mind increasingly flagged and their reality increasingly incomprehensible, they bent too far and broke. A trillion tiny thoughts and desires and moods bombarded them, and they simply didn't have the faculties to handle it. They collapsed to the porous stone beneath them, terrified then unaware then catatonic.

The citizenry and especially leaders of Lucky VII were not unfamiliar with psionics, of course. As soon as they detected the wildly fluctuating mental fields emanating from the strange new addition and saw the deleterious effect their presence was having on the thing, they raised thoughttight shields that they hadn't bothered to maintain since the Convolution's banishment to its singularity. It had only lasted moments, not even a second, but for that briefest of instants, Ekrith's mind had been linked with every citizen of the worldship not specifically trained to resist such intrusion, to say nothing of the other battlers.

It took them a moment, but with the oppressive mental presence gone, Ekrith gradually returned to consciousness. It was then that Etiyr, who fucking paid attention, paused long enough in his rant to notice demoniacally what Lucky's instruments had discovered scientifically. It was also then that the poor little Afu, alone and surrounded and confused and afraid, lost even the tiniest shreds of composure they'd brought with them from Zharu. Without thinking or willing it, their vocal structures thrummed, their entire body buzzing and vibrating with a scream of increasing pitch and volume that filled the cave system and the ears of every organism unfortunate enough to rely on echolocation. Not having a real mouth or central speaking organ was occasionally useful, and Ekrith took full advantage of their nebulous anatomy to maintain the shriek while also wailing out plaintive words.

"What is going on?!"

Hey. You. Yeah fucking you, you know what you I mean because we both know you're the only one who can hear me right now. Listen up with your stupid powers, because if you don't I'll just force my way in with my stupid powers, and neither of us wants to deal with the consequences of that. Scratch that, I'd love to deal with the consequences of that, but call this a good faith offer since I'm feeling generous right now. A good faith offer that will be rescinded if you don't shut the hell up. Right now. So help me G- guh, so help me, I will shut you up myself if I have to. Good. Now. Stay shut up, except for the part where you start talking instead of that fucking shrieking you've been doing. Or just thinking at me, that'd be even better if you can manage to have two thoughts back to back so I don't have to listen to your voice, which also has the added bonus of not letting Orby McFloatyfucker over there listen in.

Because you've got some explaining to do.

---

To say the contestants weren't the only ones to notice the scream was quite an understatement. The Oasis wasn't exactly teeming with life, but it was still an ecosystem. There was water and there was heat, so there were complex organisms. A number of them took flight on hearing the echoing wailing, which might have caused some confusion among the locals if anyone cared enough about the Oasis to pay attention to it when there weren't idiot tourists blundering around, and which would have been more dramatic if there had been any bats to swarm out in broad daylight. Ominously. Instead it was mostly reptiles and insects and the occasional ambulatory moss, and they mostly just crept higher up in the cave system instead of doing anything suitably dramatic.

Still, there had been a few things with the hunger or intelligence to not simply flee the noise. It was pretty inevitable in a place as remote and uncharted and thus exciting as the Oasis, and even more inevitable in a place as remote and uncharted and thus not-cleared-of-predators as the Oasis. More unusually, though, was that the contestants weren't the only ones to notice the psychic and temporal distress that had been dropped into the deepest part of the caves.

Well, not quite the deepest.