RE: DEATHGAME 9000 [S!3] Round Two: Interplanetary Circus
03-19-2014, 08:15 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-11-2015, 04:48 AM by Elpie.)
Hey, teens! It’s
Death came knocking at an inconvenient hour, catching the Housewife on the way out of the shower, like a handyman in a porno. The Housewife hastily clad herself in a robe of stars , leaving exposed about a quarter of the surface area of each of her breasts—the left containing the milk of the force of creation, the right of destruction. When she crossed her arms just so, the two forces met, and at their intersection there formed a branching vertical crease—a little Y in parentheses, like a question. The Housewife fixed her hair and ran to the door to meet Death.
To her disappointment, when she greeted him Death was looking her straight in the eyes. This was not a social call.
Death had come to demand a tithe. And thus began the Bickering Buddyfest.
Your profile must follow the format shown here.
Username: ?!?!?!?!?!?
Name: ~*#*-Ella-*#*~
Race: Hadn’t Trisha seen something like this before, someplace in the previous round, in some place she had chosen to forget? Or else she had not seen something like this—which is to say, failed in the same way to see it? Because she wasn't, really, seeing it now.
Sex: The other Patricia reminded Patricia of, if not everything she had refused to reconcile about herself, then roughly half of it. Her clothes, her demeanor, her damned posture. She supposed this was an inevitability of spacetime travel; she had never had time for genre fiction, but she understood the trope of prismatic confrontation with one’s self. Patricia hated nearly everything about herself except for that which she, the real she, had made herself into. So she was almost grateful for the giggling specter of death relieving the awkwardness of the meeting.
Color: Uncreative minds picture death as blackness, but blackness is only the beginning. There is a moment of blackness that comes with death, yes, but there is so much more to death. The oppressive umber of dirt. The green of putrefaction. The nicotine-stain yellow of fear. The burning white of incomprehensible pain, and the manic ultraviolet of mindless violence which hovers always at the edge of perception. That uncomfortable, oppressive glow. You have seen this color.
Description: N/A
Weapons/Abilities: Mrs. Paroxysm had named her daughter after a woman born of no parents. This was a mercy. Galatea had sculpted her own destiny. She was made now not out of marble but of starstuff.
Until Ella came. And Galatea, knowing herself to be the star of the show, had seen the smiling beast the way she had always seen everything: as an opportunity to show her specialness. She was getting more special all the time, thanks most recently to Vigil.
And then the starstuff bled out of her at the ends of Ella’s claws and teeth. And now Galatea was only made of carbon and foul smells, like the rest of us. Still, unlike the rest of us, she will be remembered. So that's something.
Ella likes to toy with her prey! I'd like you to imagine an origami swan folded from the wings of a still living butterfly. Now keep imagining that until you cannot help but to imagine its death, the ceasing of its spasmodic quivering.
How long did it take the butterfly in your head to die? Record the answer (in seconds) in the following space:
Check one of the following based on how you visualized the butterfly’s death:
Mail your answer to our Bickering Buddyfest offices at 45 Woopzoop Drive, Eagleton CA and we'll write back telling you whether you truly understand death.
Biography: he he he he
Username: N/A, there is no God
Name: Commander-Princess Patricia Pastrykisses-Bearonrollerblades
Sex: ( Y )
Color: I’m digging #802A2A
Race: Mixed
Description: Patricia is an attractive, curvy-within-reason young lady of twenty-six years. Patricia’s pupils are dilated from terror. Patricia is sweating. Patricia has learned recently that years of cardiovascular training will do nothing to stop fear, that useless hag, from grabbing onto her lungs and shaking them like maracas, reducing her breath to a rhythmic rattling. Music to her pursuer’s ears.
The other Patricia turns around to see. This is a mistake, of course. However, incidentally, an observer viewing two Patricias facing two different directions will be able to form a composite picture. A schematic for who this strange woman is, and who she could be.
Biography: ”Don’t look at her!” growled Patricia.
“I can’t!” Trisha yelled back. “She’s sort of fading in and out of sight. How is she doing that?”
Patricia grabbed her other’s arm. “You don’t understand what we're dealing with! Hurry!”
“You know,” said the other, “If you’d bothered to look, you’d see that She-Boom has her distracted for now.” She pulled on Patricia’s arm, yanking them both to a stop. “Anyway, there’s no use wasting our breath. I’ve already whistled for a ride.”
“A ‘ride?’” Patricia groaned. “Please don’t tell me you let Jax sell you a—”
“Neeeeeigh.”
Tricia was up on top of the horse before it had so much as stopped moving. She reached a hand down to Patricia. “Come on, and hurry! She-Boom might not last much longer and I have a patient to check back in with.”
“You want me to ride that thing?”
Weapons and Abilities: Trisha pouted. “You’re me, right?”
“You’re me, yes.”
“And you don’t know how to ride?”
“The multiverse is just full of wonders, princess.”
Trisha glanced back at the brawl between Ella and She-Boom. “Well, if you’re really me, you’ll probably take to it pretty fast once you’ve tried it. Take my hand.”
* * * * *
Username: What???
Name:She-Boom – DEAD
Race: Adaman
Sex: Eve
Color: Gravel
Description: Six hundred pounds of pure power and eternity. A monolith of a woman. “Look upon me, ye mighty.”
Biography: The Adamen of Cold Core lived lives of punishment. Though no predator could pierce their flesh, there was little food to sustain them. The soil of Cold Core could not support crops for most of the year, and even those who starved did not decay into fertilizer, but gravel. They lay amongst their pulverized ancestors and slept, rising only to forage and to console one another.
If She-Boom could speak, she still would not have talked about the father and mother and sisters and uncles she had left to die. She would not have spoken of the long winter’s journeys and the cold hollowness of her stomach, like a tomb. Maybe she would have spoken of the man with the spaceship. The man who saw her, and saved her.
Had she spoken of these things, no one would have judged her; no one would have been surprised. It was the same as all of their stories. She used to be a child without a future, and then she ran away to join the circus. And there she was happy for a time.
Weapons/Abilities: Almost, but not quite, enough to save her.
* * * * *
Username: Lord Paradise (brainstorming credit to Godbot)
Name: Dr. Trisha Bearonrollerblades, V.D. (and Hippocrates)
Sex: Tee-hee. Uh. Female.
Race: Human (and horse)
Color: I’m digging #802A2A
Biography (Continued): ”A veterinarian?” scoffed the other Trisha as they rode through the circus back to the menagerie. “You were me and you became a veterinarian?”
“I did!” Trisha stroked Hippocrates’ mane. “Why, what’s your job?”
“You’re speaking to the Commander-Princess of the Greater Jetpaxian-Tiaran Armistice Region, I’ll have you know. At least when you got pulled into a battle for the death, your universe didn’t lose anyone of importance.”
“Hey! There is an immortoise waiting for me back on the farm that could only have decades left if I’m not there to give him his medicine.”
Hippocrates jumped over a bench. Patricia screamed and threw her arms around her double’s waist. She laughed nervously. “Listen, there’s no time to argue,” she said, casting a glance over her shoulder. “Ella’s coming to kill me and there’s half a chance she’ll accidentally kill you instead, so if there’s anything you can possibly contribute to this situation other than an extremely low-tech getaway, let me know.”
“Hippocrates provided the getaway, not me. And I have a plan already, kind of. Do you know why… ‘Ella?’ Do you know why she’s so hard to see properly?”
Patricia shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s magic. She’s slipping in and out of dimensions or something.”
Trisha shook her head. “I don’t think so. If she could do that, she could leave the battle-thing. The simplest solution is that she’s simply manipulating light. Optic distortion. That could also explain your primal fear-response to her. Hypnotic triggers.”
“’Explain’ my fear response? I can do that pretty easily, doctor! Didn’t you see what she did to Galatea?”
“I did.” Trisha looked back at Patricia, her eyes an ocean of calm. “Have you ever seen a Moebipede foal? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just experiencing a deep-seated traumatic reaction to certain events of the previous round, but you seem to be losing it a bit in comparison, considering that we’re the same person.”
Hee hee hee hee he hehe haaaaaa!
”So I’m going with hypnotic triggers,” concluded Trisha. “Here we are.” Hippocrates turned in to the menagerie. “I have this patient who I think was poisoned. He’s been trying to communicate to me who it was that hurt him, but his fluorescent language can't express it.” She grabbed a syringe from out of her pocket and injected it into Hippocrates. “My theory is that if I can give Hwael the visual cortex of a predator, to give him an enhanced ability to process composite images with depth, he’ll be able to directly project a photoglyph of the, ah, culprit, so to speak. So I’ve been playing around with that.”
Oh hey, you 2
”Anyway, the point is I’ve just DNN-infused Hippocrates with a Hwael’s ‘vocal’ chords. Hippocrates? Optic whinny.”
N E I G H
This was not a sound but a pattern of flashing white lights. Patricia shielded her eyes. “If my hypothesis is correct," explained Trisha, "The whinny should serve as a jamming signal for whatever abilities Ella’s using against you. Which will make it a fair fight.”
And it did. Patricia opened her eyes and saw Ella—not a living smile or a blur of light, but just a girl. Short, blonde hair. Claws. Angry. Dangerous. But just a girl.
“You can fight, right?” asked Trisha.
Weapons/Abilities:
THE BICKERING BUDDYFEST
Death came knocking at an inconvenient hour, catching the Housewife on the way out of the shower, like a handyman in a porno. The Housewife hastily clad herself in a robe of stars , leaving exposed about a quarter of the surface area of each of her breasts—the left containing the milk of the force of creation, the right of destruction. When she crossed her arms just so, the two forces met, and at their intersection there formed a branching vertical crease—a little Y in parentheses, like a question. The Housewife fixed her hair and ran to the door to meet Death.
To her disappointment, when she greeted him Death was looking her straight in the eyes. This was not a social call.
Death had come to demand a tithe. And thus began the Bickering Buddyfest.
Spoiler
Your profile must follow the format shown here.
Username: ?!?!?!?!?!?
Name: ~*#*-Ella-*#*~
Race: Hadn’t Trisha seen something like this before, someplace in the previous round, in some place she had chosen to forget? Or else she had not seen something like this—which is to say, failed in the same way to see it? Because she wasn't, really, seeing it now.
Sex: The other Patricia reminded Patricia of, if not everything she had refused to reconcile about herself, then roughly half of it. Her clothes, her demeanor, her damned posture. She supposed this was an inevitability of spacetime travel; she had never had time for genre fiction, but she understood the trope of prismatic confrontation with one’s self. Patricia hated nearly everything about herself except for that which she, the real she, had made herself into. So she was almost grateful for the giggling specter of death relieving the awkwardness of the meeting.
Color: Uncreative minds picture death as blackness, but blackness is only the beginning. There is a moment of blackness that comes with death, yes, but there is so much more to death. The oppressive umber of dirt. The green of putrefaction. The nicotine-stain yellow of fear. The burning white of incomprehensible pain, and the manic ultraviolet of mindless violence which hovers always at the edge of perception. That uncomfortable, oppressive glow. You have seen this color.
Description: N/A
Weapons/Abilities: Mrs. Paroxysm had named her daughter after a woman born of no parents. This was a mercy. Galatea had sculpted her own destiny. She was made now not out of marble but of starstuff.
Until Ella came. And Galatea, knowing herself to be the star of the show, had seen the smiling beast the way she had always seen everything: as an opportunity to show her specialness. She was getting more special all the time, thanks most recently to Vigil.
And then the starstuff bled out of her at the ends of Ella’s claws and teeth. And now Galatea was only made of carbon and foul smells, like the rest of us. Still, unlike the rest of us, she will be remembered. So that's something.
ACTIVITY CORNER:
Ella likes to toy with her prey! I'd like you to imagine an origami swan folded from the wings of a still living butterfly. Now keep imagining that until you cannot help but to imagine its death, the ceasing of its spasmodic quivering.
How long did it take the butterfly in your head to die? Record the answer (in seconds) in the following space:
________
Check one of the following based on how you visualized the butterfly’s death:
The butterfly doubled in my mind’s eye so that there were two butterflies, one alive, one dead ___
The dead butterfly replaced the image of the living butterfly in my mind’s eye ___
The butterfly turned into Galatea Paroxysm's broken body in my mind's eye before dying ___
The dead butterfly replaced the image of the living butterfly in my mind’s eye ___
The butterfly turned into Galatea Paroxysm's broken body in my mind's eye before dying ___
Mail your answer to our Bickering Buddyfest offices at 45 Woopzoop Drive, Eagleton CA and we'll write back telling you whether you truly understand death.
Biography: he he he he
* * * * *
Username: N/A, there is no God
Name: Commander-Princess Patricia Pastrykisses-Bearonrollerblades
Sex: ( Y )
Color: I’m digging #802A2A
Race: Mixed
Description: Patricia is an attractive, curvy-within-reason young lady of twenty-six years. Patricia’s pupils are dilated from terror. Patricia is sweating. Patricia has learned recently that years of cardiovascular training will do nothing to stop fear, that useless hag, from grabbing onto her lungs and shaking them like maracas, reducing her breath to a rhythmic rattling. Music to her pursuer’s ears.
The other Patricia turns around to see. This is a mistake, of course. However, incidentally, an observer viewing two Patricias facing two different directions will be able to form a composite picture. A schematic for who this strange woman is, and who she could be.
Biography: ”Don’t look at her!” growled Patricia.
“I can’t!” Trisha yelled back. “She’s sort of fading in and out of sight. How is she doing that?”
Patricia grabbed her other’s arm. “You don’t understand what we're dealing with! Hurry!”
“You know,” said the other, “If you’d bothered to look, you’d see that She-Boom has her distracted for now.” She pulled on Patricia’s arm, yanking them both to a stop. “Anyway, there’s no use wasting our breath. I’ve already whistled for a ride.”
“A ‘ride?’” Patricia groaned. “Please don’t tell me you let Jax sell you a—”
“Neeeeeigh.”
Tricia was up on top of the horse before it had so much as stopped moving. She reached a hand down to Patricia. “Come on, and hurry! She-Boom might not last much longer and I have a patient to check back in with.”
“You want me to ride that thing?”
Weapons and Abilities: Trisha pouted. “You’re me, right?”
“You’re me, yes.”
“And you don’t know how to ride?”
“The multiverse is just full of wonders, princess.”
Trisha glanced back at the brawl between Ella and She-Boom. “Well, if you’re really me, you’ll probably take to it pretty fast once you’ve tried it. Take my hand.”
* * * * *
Username: What???
Name:She-Boom – DEAD
Race: Adaman
Sex: Eve
Color: Gravel
Description: Six hundred pounds of pure power and eternity. A monolith of a woman. “Look upon me, ye mighty.”
Biography: The Adamen of Cold Core lived lives of punishment. Though no predator could pierce their flesh, there was little food to sustain them. The soil of Cold Core could not support crops for most of the year, and even those who starved did not decay into fertilizer, but gravel. They lay amongst their pulverized ancestors and slept, rising only to forage and to console one another.
If She-Boom could speak, she still would not have talked about the father and mother and sisters and uncles she had left to die. She would not have spoken of the long winter’s journeys and the cold hollowness of her stomach, like a tomb. Maybe she would have spoken of the man with the spaceship. The man who saw her, and saved her.
Had she spoken of these things, no one would have judged her; no one would have been surprised. It was the same as all of their stories. She used to be a child without a future, and then she ran away to join the circus. And there she was happy for a time.
Weapons/Abilities: Almost, but not quite, enough to save her.
* * * * *
Username: Lord Paradise (brainstorming credit to Godbot)
Name: Dr. Trisha Bearonrollerblades, V.D. (and Hippocrates)
Sex: Tee-hee. Uh. Female.
Race: Human (and horse)
Color: I’m digging #802A2A
Biography (Continued): ”A veterinarian?” scoffed the other Trisha as they rode through the circus back to the menagerie. “You were me and you became a veterinarian?”
“I did!” Trisha stroked Hippocrates’ mane. “Why, what’s your job?”
“You’re speaking to the Commander-Princess of the Greater Jetpaxian-Tiaran Armistice Region, I’ll have you know. At least when you got pulled into a battle for the death, your universe didn’t lose anyone of importance.”
“Hey! There is an immortoise waiting for me back on the farm that could only have decades left if I’m not there to give him his medicine.”
Hippocrates jumped over a bench. Patricia screamed and threw her arms around her double’s waist. She laughed nervously. “Listen, there’s no time to argue,” she said, casting a glance over her shoulder. “Ella’s coming to kill me and there’s half a chance she’ll accidentally kill you instead, so if there’s anything you can possibly contribute to this situation other than an extremely low-tech getaway, let me know.”
“Hippocrates provided the getaway, not me. And I have a plan already, kind of. Do you know why… ‘Ella?’ Do you know why she’s so hard to see properly?”
Patricia shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s magic. She’s slipping in and out of dimensions or something.”
Trisha shook her head. “I don’t think so. If she could do that, she could leave the battle-thing. The simplest solution is that she’s simply manipulating light. Optic distortion. That could also explain your primal fear-response to her. Hypnotic triggers.”
“’Explain’ my fear response? I can do that pretty easily, doctor! Didn’t you see what she did to Galatea?”
“I did.” Trisha looked back at Patricia, her eyes an ocean of calm. “Have you ever seen a Moebipede foal? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just experiencing a deep-seated traumatic reaction to certain events of the previous round, but you seem to be losing it a bit in comparison, considering that we’re the same person.”
Hee hee hee hee he hehe haaaaaa!
”So I’m going with hypnotic triggers,” concluded Trisha. “Here we are.” Hippocrates turned in to the menagerie. “I have this patient who I think was poisoned. He’s been trying to communicate to me who it was that hurt him, but his fluorescent language can't express it.” She grabbed a syringe from out of her pocket and injected it into Hippocrates. “My theory is that if I can give Hwael the visual cortex of a predator, to give him an enhanced ability to process composite images with depth, he’ll be able to directly project a photoglyph of the, ah, culprit, so to speak. So I’ve been playing around with that.”
Oh hey, you 2
”Anyway, the point is I’ve just DNN-infused Hippocrates with a Hwael’s ‘vocal’ chords. Hippocrates? Optic whinny.”
N E I G H
This was not a sound but a pattern of flashing white lights. Patricia shielded her eyes. “If my hypothesis is correct," explained Trisha, "The whinny should serve as a jamming signal for whatever abilities Ella’s using against you. Which will make it a fair fight.”
And it did. Patricia opened her eyes and saw Ella—not a living smile or a blur of light, but just a girl. Short, blonde hair. Claws. Angry. Dangerous. But just a girl.
“You can fight, right?” asked Trisha.
Weapons/Abilities: