RE: DEATHGAME 9000 [S!3] Round Two: Interplanetary Circus
02-15-2014, 08:30 PM
The longer Weaver spent drifting on the tide of fairgoers the more apt his comparison with home seemed in his head. He’d been in places like this before, it’s always easy to vanish at a circus, and this one wasn’t even putting up much of a facade of legitimacy. The people on the planet below really had made it into space, as he’d daydreamed himself while on the run, but if it had empowered them in any way it wasn’t really showing. While the novel, alien forms would not have fit in well at any of his old haunts some of the looks of scheming and desperation he could pick out in the sidelines were definitely familiar.
Weaver wasn’t really one to spend long ruminating on the past, nostalgia wasn’t in his programming and besides there wasn’t much from back then to miss, but this strange-yet-recognisable place was making him think and what he decided about his current circumstances was not a pleasant realisation; While there were plenty of superficial differences and even some that you could regard as fairly important, in the parts that were most essential his situation wasn’t really any different at all to how it had been before he’d been plucked from his home and consigned to fight a handful of complete strangers.
He’d escaped the police sure, probably forever. The world of the past was behind him and even if The Incompetent intended to place him back where he came from at the conclusion of his “Battle” Weaver was someone doubtful of his ability to actually do so (had he even announced what the Winner would receive, apart from the generous gift of their life? Weaver made a mental note to review the recordings again). But, even though it seemed that none of the things he’d spent so long hiding from could touch him now, he had only managed to go from one situation where his life was dictated entirely by the whims of others into another.
Worse in fact, he hadn’t even done so of his own volition. While “staying alive” was a skill he was glad to have exercised it was about all he’d managed to do before someone else solved his problems for him, with abilities difficult to separate from literal magic. And what had he done after being transplanted into another world? Not a great deal, honestly. He’d let himself get carried along by happenstance instead of making his own way and now he’d replaced the abundant resources of the previous world (what couldn’t he do in a simulated universe? If there had been anywhere to challenge a near-omnipotent being it would have been there) with a carnival. A space carnival yes, but still hardly a place abundant in the tools you’d need to fight gods.
Weaver had spent eight years living reactively, scrounging off the land and moving on when the police presence got too heavy. Once in the battle, he’d settled himself to information gathering, a good starting point, but then allowed himself to be distracted by individual events rather than focusing on the bigger picture. What he’d done was made resolutions but not actions. He’d had plenty of big plans for changing the future back at home too and what had they amounted to? Nothing, as it turned out. He’d never got so far as actually carrying them out.
It was time for him to start being proactive. If he was going to make it out of this alive, depose The Incompetent, and gain control of whatever tools he was using to grant his powers (Weaver couldn’t imagine for a moment that such abilities could be inherent to a creature of such evidently low intellect) he couldn’t well let somebody else call the shots.
And so following that train of thought, while avoiding unnecessary deaths would be the ideal and the others he had met so far (apart from the one that stole his arm) had seemed like they could make fairly capable allies in an escape, it seemed to him quite possible their chances of fighting back would be better from a locale not chiefly surrounded by a big top.
It wouldn’t hurt to play the part a little, reassure their ringmaster that there was wouldn’t be anything funny going on to watch out for. There was always one fairly obvious way to roll the dice a couple of times for somewhere better, after all.
“For the last time, no, I’m fine! Go bother someone else!”
Eris was having some difficulty shaking ERIC from tailing her as she continued to run opposite to the crowd. Marbles, assorted lego pieces and banana peels were just smashed underfoot and no sudden ice patches, potholes, localised weather or falling pans of fryer oil seemed to do much to slow down the inexorable machine either, though they at least provided unpleasant surprises for the fairgoers she was shoving into her wake. Unfortunately she didn’t have much time to revel in their misfortune what with the endless task of elbowing people in the chest (or nearest approximation) to get them to move out of her way. Couldn’t they watch where they were going?
“You are in danger. Please consent to containment, for your own protection.”
ERIC was having some difficulty catching up with the diminutive chaos elemental, did she not know that she was in a battle to the death? As she consistently refused to allow him to pick her up and did not actually appear to be in any way wounded, despite running into him earlier, he did not have any grounds to actually justify restraining her against her will but as the first member of the battle he had found in this place so far, he considered it his unshakeable duty to follow her around and make sure she stayed out of trouble. He couldn’t really have picked a worse candidate.
The crowd was a little difficult to navigate, as the diverse range of sapient-presenting creatures making it up meant he could not simply stomp through it like the one in Gomorrah, but fortunately most of them seemed to trip or slip or fall out of his path as he approached, so despite the crush of people pushing forward from behind and heading towards the big top his path was not as impeded as it could have been.
“I don’t need any help! I’m not a baby! I can look after myself!”
“You are in imminent danger. Basic protocol dictates I escort those in imminent danger to safety. Please consent to containment.”
“No! Leave me alone! Nobody gets to tell me what to do.”
ERIC’s current passenger wasn’t having much of a good time of it either. As soon as ERIC sighted one of the other contestants, that had basically been it as far as his control of the situation went. His race didn’t do much in the way of facial expressions and he didn’t have any palms to rest the chitinous mask he had for a head in, but the loud bugle of frustration that inflated the vocal pipes on the back of his neck could probably have been understood the universe over.
He almost wished that he couldn’t see what was going on outside, being powerless to direct the robot despite it being a machine that was supposed to follow his orders was infuriating!
Except… except that he could see something he could use as leverage against his jailor. Or at least, a method of changing the tracks he was running on to ones that might be a little more productive.
“Ambulance drone! Ten o’clock! Patient!”
ERIC’s comically extended neck snapped around and locked onto Weaver at about the same time as Weaver looked up from his musings and saw him back. Eris and her pursuer should have been fairly hard to miss, but he’d been letting his feet follow the crowd while his mind was elsewhere. Stupid, he should have been looking where he was going.
“Attention [Weaver 16]! You are injured! Please remain calm and do not move in case you exacerbate your injury. You will be collected for delivery to the nearest hospital at our earliest convenience.”
The crowd was harder for ERIC to wade through in that direction, through a combination of lateral movement, lack of stray magical tripping hazards and people generally getting kind of freaked out by the large, shouting machine, and Weaver had the advantage of much longer legs than Eris and a lifetime’s experience of escaping. Frustrating to be cut off like that but he didn’t really want to grapple with all of those arms again, he still needed time to figure out whether this place had anything that could be of use to him before scouting out allies.
“Please do not be alarmed! Your earlier injury was a regrettable accident. You will be directed to a complaints form upon release to - Look we have your arm safe and someone can probably reattach it, this is an ambulance droid not a war machine or whatever that self-important deity guy was talking about earlier, it just wants to give you your limb back.”
Weaver stopped running as the machine’s voice was cut off by a second one, far less artificial in tone. Cautiously he turned and stared into ERIC’s distant eyes, then raised both arms and waved them from side to side so that they were easy to see. ERIC stopped too, and there was an awkward moment of silence (a couple of people in the crowd who had stopped to watch took this opportunity to barge past, irritated at the blockage in traffic.)
“Alright I’m talking with it but I don’t think just seeing that you still have two of those things is going to be enough for it when it’s got one you shed earlier here in storage. We’re not used to alien biology, it’s telling me that maybe you’re supposed to have three.
Plus after listening to that whole “you’ve got to kill each other” speech it really wants to put all seven or whatever of you somewhere safe where it can keep an eye on you but I wouldn’t worry about that, it can’t keep you against your will if you look healthy enough to make sensible decisions.
Would you mind indulging us? It’s not going to stop following you around otherwise and if there’s some other people after your neck that might not be the attention you want.”
It was all true, to an extent. Gan was merely omitting the tiny detail that ERIC would probably not consider an artificial life-form immune to being a disease vector for The Plague and would refuse to let him out again. He could have all of the AI programming knowledge of a “mad genius” who had built his own cybernetic body ready to work at the problem of getting them both back out, a little deception was justified for that, no?
Weaver tried to think quickly, ERIC was waiting for now but if he didn’t respond he was pretty sure the lumbering robot would just try and manhandle him inside again.
So, salient points;
1) Mysterious voice was right and drawing attention to himself (either from other competitors, carnival security or the self-styled grandmaster) by making a commotion and running a chase around the station was really not what he wanted right now.
2) He didn’t need his arm back but if he wasn’t being lied to, it would have been recording everything that was going on on the other side of that black hole for his perusal upon retrieving it (if it was sending a wireless signal then it didn’t seem to be able to get out).
3) The Incompetent seemed poorly informed about most of his “combatants” and so ERIC actually being a medical robot didn’t seem impossible, especially considering it lacked any visible weapons… disregarding the pulsing singularity anyway.
4) He hadn’t been able to do much damage to ERIC from the outside and seeing if it had any weaknesses inside would not be a complete waste of time.
The main question of course was… did that big blue vortex actually lead to the inside of an ambulance or was he being strung along by a voice modulator? ERIC had yet to demonstrate to anyone that things which went in could eventually come out again.
“I will consent to some form of medical examination, you heard The Incompetent say I was a machine yes? Establishing that shouldn’t take you very long.
But if, and only if, you can demonstrate that I will not be harmed by my passage.”
ERIC pondered for a moment about how to accomplish this without breaking containment, but the answer was pretty straightforward. Gan didn’t even have time to register annoyance before his subjective passage of time slowed to a complete stop along with the rest of the currently active objects in the ambulance storage dimension. No risk of contamination now!
With a slightly theatrical flourish ERIC levered himself open, exposing his pulsing core, and thrust his head through the event horizon on the end of its flexible neck, emerging seconds later from a nearby point at a completely different angle.
The crowd parted in a nervous circle around him, Weaver hoped they thought the light show was just another act.
“Is this to your satisfaction? I am eager to fulfil my duties.”
Weaver inspected the display with suspicion but had to conclude that ERIC was basically giving him what he’d asked for and he didn’t have much room to make any other demands. Aside from convincing another competitor to jump in first this was probably as prepared to make a decision as he was going to get.
“Alright then. Let’s make this quick.”
Weaver strode confidently up to ERIC’s bisected form, placed his hands on the lip of the armoured casing and vaulted into the rift, disappearing from sight almost immediately. Eric’s upper body slowly levered itself back into position behind him, locking into place with a click.
“Quarantine maintained.”
Eris was watching from the eaves of a nearby food outlet. She hadn’t really wanted a big robot to be chasing her around, but it had been a little exciting and for it to allow her to go from the centre of attention to completely ignored was just rude. She recognised the neon figure of Weaver from earlier and as far as she could remember he hadn’t been that interesting so why there had been all that excitement over him she didn’t know, maybe it was a robot thing?
Anyway the important thing was, he’d never done anything for her (hadn’t even given her one of those glowing lights) and now he had the nerve to steal her limelight, and that wouldn’t do at all. She was going to have to come up with some kind of surprise for him for when he came out of that big hole again (looked like a pretty standard controlled dimensional rift, nothing fancy). He’d called her a queen when they first met, like The Incompetent had, and as royalty she certainly couldn’t let such insolence go unpunished.
Weaver wasn’t really one to spend long ruminating on the past, nostalgia wasn’t in his programming and besides there wasn’t much from back then to miss, but this strange-yet-recognisable place was making him think and what he decided about his current circumstances was not a pleasant realisation; While there were plenty of superficial differences and even some that you could regard as fairly important, in the parts that were most essential his situation wasn’t really any different at all to how it had been before he’d been plucked from his home and consigned to fight a handful of complete strangers.
He’d escaped the police sure, probably forever. The world of the past was behind him and even if The Incompetent intended to place him back where he came from at the conclusion of his “Battle” Weaver was someone doubtful of his ability to actually do so (had he even announced what the Winner would receive, apart from the generous gift of their life? Weaver made a mental note to review the recordings again). But, even though it seemed that none of the things he’d spent so long hiding from could touch him now, he had only managed to go from one situation where his life was dictated entirely by the whims of others into another.
Worse in fact, he hadn’t even done so of his own volition. While “staying alive” was a skill he was glad to have exercised it was about all he’d managed to do before someone else solved his problems for him, with abilities difficult to separate from literal magic. And what had he done after being transplanted into another world? Not a great deal, honestly. He’d let himself get carried along by happenstance instead of making his own way and now he’d replaced the abundant resources of the previous world (what couldn’t he do in a simulated universe? If there had been anywhere to challenge a near-omnipotent being it would have been there) with a carnival. A space carnival yes, but still hardly a place abundant in the tools you’d need to fight gods.
Weaver had spent eight years living reactively, scrounging off the land and moving on when the police presence got too heavy. Once in the battle, he’d settled himself to information gathering, a good starting point, but then allowed himself to be distracted by individual events rather than focusing on the bigger picture. What he’d done was made resolutions but not actions. He’d had plenty of big plans for changing the future back at home too and what had they amounted to? Nothing, as it turned out. He’d never got so far as actually carrying them out.
It was time for him to start being proactive. If he was going to make it out of this alive, depose The Incompetent, and gain control of whatever tools he was using to grant his powers (Weaver couldn’t imagine for a moment that such abilities could be inherent to a creature of such evidently low intellect) he couldn’t well let somebody else call the shots.
And so following that train of thought, while avoiding unnecessary deaths would be the ideal and the others he had met so far (apart from the one that stole his arm) had seemed like they could make fairly capable allies in an escape, it seemed to him quite possible their chances of fighting back would be better from a locale not chiefly surrounded by a big top.
It wouldn’t hurt to play the part a little, reassure their ringmaster that there was wouldn’t be anything funny going on to watch out for. There was always one fairly obvious way to roll the dice a couple of times for somewhere better, after all.
“For the last time, no, I’m fine! Go bother someone else!”
Eris was having some difficulty shaking ERIC from tailing her as she continued to run opposite to the crowd. Marbles, assorted lego pieces and banana peels were just smashed underfoot and no sudden ice patches, potholes, localised weather or falling pans of fryer oil seemed to do much to slow down the inexorable machine either, though they at least provided unpleasant surprises for the fairgoers she was shoving into her wake. Unfortunately she didn’t have much time to revel in their misfortune what with the endless task of elbowing people in the chest (or nearest approximation) to get them to move out of her way. Couldn’t they watch where they were going?
“You are in danger. Please consent to containment, for your own protection.”
ERIC was having some difficulty catching up with the diminutive chaos elemental, did she not know that she was in a battle to the death? As she consistently refused to allow him to pick her up and did not actually appear to be in any way wounded, despite running into him earlier, he did not have any grounds to actually justify restraining her against her will but as the first member of the battle he had found in this place so far, he considered it his unshakeable duty to follow her around and make sure she stayed out of trouble. He couldn’t really have picked a worse candidate.
The crowd was a little difficult to navigate, as the diverse range of sapient-presenting creatures making it up meant he could not simply stomp through it like the one in Gomorrah, but fortunately most of them seemed to trip or slip or fall out of his path as he approached, so despite the crush of people pushing forward from behind and heading towards the big top his path was not as impeded as it could have been.
“I don’t need any help! I’m not a baby! I can look after myself!”
“You are in imminent danger. Basic protocol dictates I escort those in imminent danger to safety. Please consent to containment.”
“No! Leave me alone! Nobody gets to tell me what to do.”
ERIC’s current passenger wasn’t having much of a good time of it either. As soon as ERIC sighted one of the other contestants, that had basically been it as far as his control of the situation went. His race didn’t do much in the way of facial expressions and he didn’t have any palms to rest the chitinous mask he had for a head in, but the loud bugle of frustration that inflated the vocal pipes on the back of his neck could probably have been understood the universe over.
He almost wished that he couldn’t see what was going on outside, being powerless to direct the robot despite it being a machine that was supposed to follow his orders was infuriating!
Except… except that he could see something he could use as leverage against his jailor. Or at least, a method of changing the tracks he was running on to ones that might be a little more productive.
“Ambulance drone! Ten o’clock! Patient!”
ERIC’s comically extended neck snapped around and locked onto Weaver at about the same time as Weaver looked up from his musings and saw him back. Eris and her pursuer should have been fairly hard to miss, but he’d been letting his feet follow the crowd while his mind was elsewhere. Stupid, he should have been looking where he was going.
“Attention [Weaver 16]! You are injured! Please remain calm and do not move in case you exacerbate your injury. You will be collected for delivery to the nearest hospital at our earliest convenience.”
The crowd was harder for ERIC to wade through in that direction, through a combination of lateral movement, lack of stray magical tripping hazards and people generally getting kind of freaked out by the large, shouting machine, and Weaver had the advantage of much longer legs than Eris and a lifetime’s experience of escaping. Frustrating to be cut off like that but he didn’t really want to grapple with all of those arms again, he still needed time to figure out whether this place had anything that could be of use to him before scouting out allies.
“Please do not be alarmed! Your earlier injury was a regrettable accident. You will be directed to a complaints form upon release to - Look we have your arm safe and someone can probably reattach it, this is an ambulance droid not a war machine or whatever that self-important deity guy was talking about earlier, it just wants to give you your limb back.”
Weaver stopped running as the machine’s voice was cut off by a second one, far less artificial in tone. Cautiously he turned and stared into ERIC’s distant eyes, then raised both arms and waved them from side to side so that they were easy to see. ERIC stopped too, and there was an awkward moment of silence (a couple of people in the crowd who had stopped to watch took this opportunity to barge past, irritated at the blockage in traffic.)
“Alright I’m talking with it but I don’t think just seeing that you still have two of those things is going to be enough for it when it’s got one you shed earlier here in storage. We’re not used to alien biology, it’s telling me that maybe you’re supposed to have three.
Plus after listening to that whole “you’ve got to kill each other” speech it really wants to put all seven or whatever of you somewhere safe where it can keep an eye on you but I wouldn’t worry about that, it can’t keep you against your will if you look healthy enough to make sensible decisions.
Would you mind indulging us? It’s not going to stop following you around otherwise and if there’s some other people after your neck that might not be the attention you want.”
It was all true, to an extent. Gan was merely omitting the tiny detail that ERIC would probably not consider an artificial life-form immune to being a disease vector for The Plague and would refuse to let him out again. He could have all of the AI programming knowledge of a “mad genius” who had built his own cybernetic body ready to work at the problem of getting them both back out, a little deception was justified for that, no?
Weaver tried to think quickly, ERIC was waiting for now but if he didn’t respond he was pretty sure the lumbering robot would just try and manhandle him inside again.
So, salient points;
1) Mysterious voice was right and drawing attention to himself (either from other competitors, carnival security or the self-styled grandmaster) by making a commotion and running a chase around the station was really not what he wanted right now.
2) He didn’t need his arm back but if he wasn’t being lied to, it would have been recording everything that was going on on the other side of that black hole for his perusal upon retrieving it (if it was sending a wireless signal then it didn’t seem to be able to get out).
3) The Incompetent seemed poorly informed about most of his “combatants” and so ERIC actually being a medical robot didn’t seem impossible, especially considering it lacked any visible weapons… disregarding the pulsing singularity anyway.
4) He hadn’t been able to do much damage to ERIC from the outside and seeing if it had any weaknesses inside would not be a complete waste of time.
The main question of course was… did that big blue vortex actually lead to the inside of an ambulance or was he being strung along by a voice modulator? ERIC had yet to demonstrate to anyone that things which went in could eventually come out again.
“I will consent to some form of medical examination, you heard The Incompetent say I was a machine yes? Establishing that shouldn’t take you very long.
But if, and only if, you can demonstrate that I will not be harmed by my passage.”
ERIC pondered for a moment about how to accomplish this without breaking containment, but the answer was pretty straightforward. Gan didn’t even have time to register annoyance before his subjective passage of time slowed to a complete stop along with the rest of the currently active objects in the ambulance storage dimension. No risk of contamination now!
With a slightly theatrical flourish ERIC levered himself open, exposing his pulsing core, and thrust his head through the event horizon on the end of its flexible neck, emerging seconds later from a nearby point at a completely different angle.
The crowd parted in a nervous circle around him, Weaver hoped they thought the light show was just another act.
“Is this to your satisfaction? I am eager to fulfil my duties.”
Weaver inspected the display with suspicion but had to conclude that ERIC was basically giving him what he’d asked for and he didn’t have much room to make any other demands. Aside from convincing another competitor to jump in first this was probably as prepared to make a decision as he was going to get.
“Alright then. Let’s make this quick.”
Weaver strode confidently up to ERIC’s bisected form, placed his hands on the lip of the armoured casing and vaulted into the rift, disappearing from sight almost immediately. Eric’s upper body slowly levered itself back into position behind him, locking into place with a click.
“Quarantine maintained.”
Eris was watching from the eaves of a nearby food outlet. She hadn’t really wanted a big robot to be chasing her around, but it had been a little exciting and for it to allow her to go from the centre of attention to completely ignored was just rude. She recognised the neon figure of Weaver from earlier and as far as she could remember he hadn’t been that interesting so why there had been all that excitement over him she didn’t know, maybe it was a robot thing?
Anyway the important thing was, he’d never done anything for her (hadn’t even given her one of those glowing lights) and now he had the nerve to steal her limelight, and that wouldn’t do at all. She was going to have to come up with some kind of surprise for him for when he came out of that big hole again (looked like a pretty standard controlled dimensional rift, nothing fancy). He’d called her a queen when they first met, like The Incompetent had, and as royalty she certainly couldn’t let such insolence go unpunished.