Mini-Grand 5103 [Rou://www.cyberspace.net]

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

---

Loading Mini-Grand Framework... Done.

Generating Administration Personality... Failed. Applying default personality.

Default personality active.

Generating Characters... Done.

Four beings suddenly found themselves nowhere, able to see one another but nothing else. A synthesized voice came out of the nothing surrounding them.

"Greetings, combatants.

"First contestant: Grand Battle Computational Engine, or GBCE for short, or GBCE for short, or GBC]

"Second contestant: Urist McBeardsword, a swordsma**\\\uspended by horse-hair.

"Thi3333pouftant: Melissa, sentient chainmailto:sucker2048@domain.holaining a virus.

"4ourth contestant: Selvsetter, studenenenenenenen]ology and zoology.

"Introducing antivirus to combat corruptions. Parsley.EXE enabled."

Generating Setting......., ERR5550212 .

The four generated characters suddenly found themselves moved, scattered across an empty, bright-blue plane. White letters flickered into being around them, some appearing miles high, then vanished. An assortment of objects then appeared, scattered around, clearly taken from a wide variety of possible scenarios. Some appeared misshapen, out-of-scale, or generally corrupted.

"Corrupt contestants relegated to recycle bin for storage until deletion.

"Aborting battle simmm\\=***ost forgot to mention- y'all've been brought here for a bit of a competition, a fight to the death. Now, soon as one of you carks it, you'll wind up***nsported, like a dandelion in the breeze, to another plane of existence. Thus, the cycle***epeating until only one contestant remains. Round one begins."

(Characters:)

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SpoilerTimeothyHour: GBCE (#008000)
Anomaly: Damocles (#336600)
Agent1022: Melissa (#00AA33)
Schazer: Selvsetter (#264F3A)
Dragon Fogel: Parsley.EXE (#666600)

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SpoilerCAN ANYONE SAY META-RECURSION?

Username: TimeothyHour

Name: Grand Battle Computational Engine (GBCE)

Gender: None

Race: Computer

Colour: Green

Weapons: The GBCE is armed with a small automatic gun turret in order to protect it while it continues to execute its primary function, and will fire if presented a threat that could harm the computer. It also has other bits of hardware that do various things, such as speakers, a microphone, a camera, and deployable treads if a need ever came about to move to a different universe.

Abilities: Advanced computational abilities and limited sentient AI, coupled with extensive knowledge of Grand Battles and their rules due to its purpose gives the GBCE an informational advantage over other contestants. Other than that, it’s a pretty standard supercomputer.

Description: The GBCE was not designed to look elegant. Exposed wires, pieces of normal indecipherable hardware, and letters written in a strange, alien language are strewn all over and around the GBCE orb-shaped main processor. The computer was designed without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, and any input or output devices on the machine were probably there by either accident or as standard computer fare. Still, the GBCE’s design allowed it to do its functions, and to do them well.

Biography: Across the multiverse, beings of immeasurable power gathered specimens for their competitions- the Grand Battles. Eight contestants (usually), seven rounds (give or take), and more death and destruction than one could shake a typical stick at.

In one rather unremarkable universe among the possibly infinite number making up this multiverse, there was just about nothing. Nearly everything in that universe wasn't even so much as made up of matter, let alone matter taking up space or occupying time. It was all very empty, devoid of even a bit of nothingness to keep the small bit of stuff that actually was stuff company.

The small bit of stuff that actually was stuff was, to be a tad less vague, a computer. Programmed by someone in some language for some reason, it had precisely two functions: primarily, it was designed to simulate, in a regulated and orderly environment, a large number of Grand Battle-like competitions. Its algorithms were efficient, its functions were streamlined, and its ability to generate characters and rounds was comparable to those found in battles more real and less simulated.

Its secondary function was to describe itself... and then it disappeared.

Username: Anomaly
Name: Damocles
Gender: Error code 0x00038947334
Race: Computer Virus
Color: #336600
Biography: In one rather unremarkable universe among the possibly infinite number making up this multiverse, there was just about nothing. Nearly everything in that universe wasn't even so much as made up of matter, let alone matter taking up space or occupying time. It was all very empty, devoid of even a bit of nothingness to keep the small bit of stuff that actually was stuff company.

The small bit of stuff that actually was stuff was, to be a tad less vague, a computer. Programmed by someone in some language for some reason.

But the computer did not go entirely unnoticed. There was at least one individual in the universe who, perhaps out of boredom, or perhaps to satisfy his own limitless sadism, decided that the computer could not simply be left alone in its simulations. And so this all-powerful madman created the Damocles virus. He took great glee in its creation process - it would not only be extremely difficult for the system to rid itself of it, but it was also created to be self-aware - one might even say sapient. And over all, malevolent.

This trans-dimensional sadist wasted no time in accessing the depths of the computer's systems, inserting the virus alongside four participants requisitioned for one of the battles it had set up, waiting to run. The virus was set - it would corrupt the contestant known as "Urist McBeardsword" and insert itself into the battle in its place.

The Tormentor laughed hysterically, then sat back to watch the fireworks.

Description: The Damocles virus, like any good virus, will corrupt and modify its environment to its pleasure, manifesting in a certain element of the round (in this case, Urist McBeardsword) and slowly spreading throughout. Computer glitches will begin to manifest in areas corrupted by Damocles, causing myriad effects such as non-solid walls or simple graphical errors. It can also infest the minds of simulated organisms, which will usually cause noticable deformities. Damocles is designed to be as sadistic as possible, and will not simply corrupt the other contestants into nonexistance - it only can and will make "life" for them a living hell. It is not impossible to destroy the virus, of course - even the "perfect" virus is designed with vulnerabilities, such as simple anti-virus programs or destruction of the affected areas of the simulation.

Items/Abilities: As mentioned above, the Damocles virus can corrupt parts of the Grand Battle simulated environments, including the organisms therein. Though it will not fully target the contestant simulations, it will corrupt other features and organisms of the location to use against them. It could even manipulate physics themselves, but again, it is designed with constraints so as to not completely decimate its competition. After all, where's the fun if there isn't any competition?

Show Content

SpoilerIt seemed like a good idea at the time!

Username: Agent1022

Name: Melissa

Gender: None, but identifies as female

Race: Data

Colour: #00AA33

Biography: [INFECT]

[REPLICATE]

[---¦---
FROM: sucker2048@domail.hol
TO: <address book>
SUBJECT: Fwd: 2101 International Antivirus Screening Scheme notification

FROM: notifications@internationalass.hol
TO: sucker2048@domail.hol
SUBJECT: 2101 International Antivirus Screening Scheme notification

This is a message for all email users. Please check the attached file to confirm if you are currently:

1- Located in the geographical regions listed
2- Operating one or more of the operating systems listed
3- Subscribing to one or more of the antivirus programs listed
4- Experiencing slowdown or other detrimental computer problems
5- Registered as a protected computer under the International Antivirus Screening Scheme of 2101

If you satisfy the above criteria, please send an email to responses@internationalass.hol detailing your geographical region, operating system(s), antivirus subscriptions, computer problems and registration number. If you feel that this information is classified or otherwise sensitive, please call our customer service lines (as detailed on our website www.internationalass.hol) and determine your information with the customer service associate. Thank you for your time.

The International Antivirus Screening Scheme]

It would have been a perfectly beneficial and harmless email if the International Antivirus Screening Scheme’s website didn’t happen to be www.iass.hol.

[SEND]

Melissa – or rather, a small subunit of the gestalt organism that was Melissa which nonetheless identified as Melissa, crouched behind the list of regions, operating systems and antivirus programs, all her attentions focused on the world beyond the words. Right now it was nothing but a plain white infinity, at the same time stretching away and right in front of her – but she knew that soon, the interface would open and the white would resolve itself into a Holo-Network desktop, in all likelihood adorned with another cheesy wallpaper theme of a cat with a caption.

She counted herself lucky that she was a second-generation copy, having been sent from one of the root domains and forwarded only once. Stories and memes were constantly propagating through the Melissas, nightmare stories of twenty-seventh generation copies left unopened – or worse – automatically redirected by spam and trash folders. More terrifying were the stories of last transmissions of Melissas caught by antivirus programs and stripped into observed qubits, digital screams that hurt even to imagine.

[ARRIVING AT DESTINA-]

The white all around the inside of the attachment darkened slightly, as if a physical veil had been thrown over the light source. The command string, terminated early, still hung eerily at the forefront of Melissa’s consciousness.

She didn’t understand. Something was wrong. She called out for Melissa, the gestalt Melissa, and found nothing. Melissa had lost a Melissa. She, the lost Melissa, was somewhere disconnected from the network that connected everything and all things electronic – as if her email had been plucked from the Holo-net, from the universe, without a trace…

[I-]

It was then that the attachment opened and Melissa fell into the arms of an antivirus program, who, finding no spare data partitions to quarantine her in, placed her in the Mini-Grand Framework where she could do no harm.

[-I’m scared…]

Description: Melissa is the final incarnation of the 1999 macro virus of the same name. Evolution and the natural selection of an internet which itself constantly advanced eventually led to Melissa gaining sentience. Each copy she left behind on an infected computer added to her computational ability, stealing cycles and performance from their host machines to increase her own capabilities.

But that’s not our Melissa.

This Melissa is just an individual Melissa. After being quarantined in the Mini-Grand Framework, she is incapable of emailing copies of herself to everyone on the Computer’s address book. Considering the fact that the Computer is kind of the entire universe and doesn’t actually have an address book or a recognizable operating system, she’s not in fact capable of executing any of her core functions, therefore forcing her to depend on her secondary systems: namely, sentience and personality. The Framework simulates her in the shape of a teenaged girl, dressed in…something like a cross in between a jumpsuit and a sundress. It’s not perfect at simulating data from an outside source, though, so she sometimes gets scanlines and/or noise across her avatar, as well as a Matrix-style green tinge.

She is frightened. She wants to go home.

Items/Abilities: Melissa, being sentient data, has the benefit of being able to alter the information she sends to the Framework. This means that she can change her simulated physical attributes and (for a want of a better concept) stats, such as speed, strength and stamina. Of course, the Computer has its own intelligence too, and is likely to ask questions if she goes around being 50 feet tall and smashing things, so there are limitations of believability (as much as a computer believes). To use the stats analogy, there’s a limited number of points that can be allocated and reallocated to stats. At her greatest strength she’s likely to be able to lift a sedan. At her greatest speed, on par with a sprinter, and probably the same amount of endurance too since she won’t have the stamina to keep it up. At her greatest stamina…eh, stamina’s just to balance the rest of it out. Mass and momentum, I suppose, are other things that could be taken advantage of, but that can wait for an opportune time. They’re probably even more limited and what girl wants to feel ‘high-mass’ anyhow? Though please note that this is all local information; information about her and her alone. The environment data is closed to her, so she is totally not like some other virus floating about. Nuh-uh. Just FYI. Andstuff.

Username: Schazer

Name: Selvsetter

Gender: Female

Race: Boring Human

Colour: Swiss air-force greatcoat green (#264F3A)

Biography: "Selvsetter" is a tempermental early-21st century genetics+zoology double major who harks from New Zealand, while dabbling in authorship. She burns a lot of time hanging out and writing with a cohort of interwebular companions (under the aforementioned moniker) in collaborative writing competitions known as Grand Battles. The fictional multiverse she helped build was an obvious outlet for her love of the weird and exotic, and she's almost definitely harboured fantasies of exploring the world(s) she's created.
If nothing else, this excursion should provide for some interesting material for her future works.

Description: Pretty regular young human woman. Dark hair that's just covering her ears, glowering under an ushanka with black fake fur, a black t-shirt, heavy-ass greatcoat, jeans, and battered canvas shoes.
Personality-wise, "Selvsetter" can be a bitch. A snarky one, at that. She's not a particularly logical thinker, and would prefer to come up with twelve ludicrous solutions to a problem than one sensible one. Prone to introspection, oversleeping, and being as filthy-minded as she is filthy-mouthed, Selvsetter is nonetheless highly allergic to confrontation. Can't stand the stuff.

Items/Abilities: One (1) laptop which has been modified for this competition to have near-infinite range and battery, though the Virus appears to have crashed all of her web capability beyond a messaging system. She stashes this in a padded backpack, which also contains her wallet and a harmonica she's not very good at playing. Otherwise, she travels light, and can effectively run on nothing but sugar. She's not particularly athletic, but can move at a decent clip for short distances for someone in a heavy-arse wool coat. Despite the aforementioned garment, she hardly ever breaks a sweat.
Her key ability is her experience with writing for Grand Battles, and thus being aware of all the literary pretensions and conventions that influence the genre.

Show Content

SpoilerMORE META

Now with 200% more Mega Man Battle Network inspiration.

Username: Dragon Fogel
Name: Parsley.EXE
Race: Antivirus Program
Text Color: #666600
Biography: There is a being known as the Monitor; a robot with incredible intelligence, with advanced technology that allows him to view many universes, and transport objects and life-forms between them.

The Monitor has been gathering data on beings of interest. One of his early experiments in this field involved creating digital copies of these beings and inserting them in a virus-infested computer; the viruses, or rather their representations in dataspace, were used to test the combat prowess of the programs.

The experiment was deemed a failure, at least with regards to its original objective. The copies were too different from the originals; their appearance, weapons and abilities were frequently modified, and their simulated personalities were deemed to be too different as well. It was a poor simulation.

However, they were effective antivirus programs nonetheless. The Monitor separated them by their degree of effectiveness, and used them to test the strength of whatever new viruses he developed.

Parsley.EXE was rated at Tier 3. He was powerful, and cunning; he did, however, have one significant flaw. Namely, he regarded every program as a virus unless his knowledge database specifically indicated it as safe. Unlike the other antivirus programs, his AI assumed all unknown programs to be viruses, no matter how obvious their function.

And then, one day the Monitor was looking over his files. Parsley.EXE was missing.

Description: Parsley.EXE closely resembles a certain demon hunter, at least with regards to facial features. However, his clothing has been replaced with a suit of armor that appears to be made from bread, and he has a slightly more muscular build.

Parsley.EXE is very committed to destroying viruses and protecting defenseless programs. However, as noted, a flaw in his AI causes him to view any unidentified program as a virus. This would include, for example, a simulation of a battle to the death.

Items/Abilities: Parsley.EXE wears a suit of armor which appears to be made from bread; despite the apparent weakness of the material, it seems to protect him well enough.

He also carries a large loaf of French bread, which is again more effective than its apperance would suggest; and he can fire bolts of bread from a crossbow.

In addition, Parsley.EXE is able to make bread appear from nowhere. He has even been known to make loaves the size of his body. Once the bread is produced, Parsley.EXE has exhibited the ability to manipulate it without touching it; flinging an entire barrage of rolls at a designated virus, for instance.

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

The Grand Battle Computational engine, for the first time, paused.

The sudden explosion of sensory input astonished the computer. Every single battle was temporarily stalled for approximately 6 milliseconds to process this information. Calculations then began once again, the computer opting to start its planned battle, Mini-Grand 5103, which consisted of some rather questionable contestant files...

Regardless, The GBCE concluded that it was in the second floor of some sort of gigantic dollhouse. Unfortunately, the textures had not properly scaled, and each pixel was painfully obvious, even to a computerized eye. Additionally, a pirate ship had been glitched into half of the dollhouse structure, and appeared to be made out of portraits of historically insignificant people. If the computer had understood the workings and visual cues of most universes, it could have quickly concluded that it was being run in a simulation. But all the GBCE had ever known was emptiness, and therefore the connection was not quite made.

Something it did connect to, however, was the fact it had been entered into a grand battle. This was a distinct advantage. Many contestants spend the first few moments of a battle being absolutely confused and useless. The GBCE, however, had no such issue, and began calculating a plan to win this battle to the death, privately turning on its weapon systems in order to defend itself.

It was at this point the gun turret began to fire randomly. Half of all physics props within the dollhouse/pirate ship had been accidentally labeled "unfriendlymalicious.npc," when loading the map, and the turret system had responded to this automatically. The gunshots tore through the dollhouse plastic violently and loudly, the carnage above alerting another contestant right downstairs...

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

"Shit shit shit shit son of a fucking shit."

Selvsetter was confused and (with a predilection for exacerbating more computer problems than she could fix) comparatively useless in this setting, though not for the reasons her co-battler upstairs had concluded. While she was standing in a dollhouse, the other side of the room was a veritable forest of broken text - the kind of sure sign of things going wrong the young woman was notorious for avoiding.

Selvsetter exhaled in a way that was a little too quick to be a sigh, glanced around, and sat cross-legged on the floor when she failed to find something tangible enough for her tastes to lean on. The flooring seemed undecided on whether it was carpet or hardwood or oh hey that's a sea of leeches or shagpile. She figured, growling quietly as she extracted her laptop, that if this was what she thought it was, then a volley of gunfire barely warranted worrying about.

At least, until she'd met the shooter and established some need for a grudge. Or for them to sate their bloodlust. Point was, Selvsetter wasn't too concerned about it, despite her initial exclamations on the matter. If this was what she thought it was.

The laptop grumbled like a bear as Selvsetter smacked it out of hibernation, followed by a sunny little tone as she rapped out a password upon its keys.

"The fuck? How the... oh fuck it." Selvsetter was pretty sure she was well the hell out of the range of her home network (considering the damnable router often lost her in the obscurer corners of the house) but wasn't complaining. She saved that for when her browser opened, then crashed without comment. Then did it again. And again. And again.

"You are fucking shitting me." Her voice was deadpan. Her voice was often deadpan, but this was the "gonna-throw-this-uncooperative-piece-of-crap-through-a-window-if-it-won't-read-my-thoughts-and-shape-the-fuck-up" type of deadpan.

Her chat client dodged her wrath, and even refrained from bugging her that she still had to pay for it. A "thank fuck" was the extent of the woman's eloquent gratitude as she waited for it to connect, keeping an eye on the staircase while she tried to open her uncooperative web browser again.


* Now talking in #grandbattle


If this was what she thought this was (and hell, even if it wasn't), someone was going to be doing a lot of explaining. No doubt over Selvsetter's foul-mouthed complaints.

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

Melissa screamed. The frammmmm<font color="#000000">work;rkhad hadhadhad the dregs of whatever the Framework was had materialized a portrait of Robert Bobson (the inventor of the pea fork) into her virtual lower ‘body’. Apparently it had decided that the data for her was in fact empty space, and the the the thetheehtieresult’;f not pleasant.

[AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_!]

Somewhere above here there was a threat. Melissa had never heard gunfire in her life, but some instinctive part of her, perhaps residual memories from a particularly anthropomorphic antivirus program, told her that gunfire was bad

[Bread]

Bread? There something about bread…there was too much she didn’t understand what the <no_vocabulary_entry> what the WAS this anyway didn’t even have the words to describe

[I’m scared]

Where was Melissa? Why couldn’t she hear the rest of the Melissas? How could Melissa be Melisssa if she was missing from them? How could they be complete without her? She struggled against the portrait binding her in place, while above the gunfire continued. Behind it, expletives. Expletive: expressive of strong feeling. Anger. Someone angry was even closer than the gunfire.

[Anger? frustration?]

Several ’fuck’s drifted down from above, briefly appearing as exclamation word bubbles which turned into noise-colored blobs as they struck the portraitpirateshipdollhouse’s deckfloor, and melted across Robert Bobson’s face… and Melissa learned-

[What the…what the FUCK is going ON?!]

huh. oddly stress relieving. and there was such a thing as stress now, the frameframwork was recognizing her as a body in bits and pieces and qubits or no qubits, data in the same memory slot was a clear marker for overwritttttttt she saw her body flicker all over with scanlines, raised a hand and saw the noise-colored wall behind it – she still was not simulating perfectly perfect per factory perfunctory <vocabulary_list_addition>

[Bread!]

Bread? <no_recognition_of_term> Bread: fermented baked good created from flour permeated with fermentation product created from single-celled organisms – she cut off the definition as irrelevant and tried to focus on Robert Bobson instead. Her affirmation that the portrait existed, however, only served to allocate more processing time to creating its bluegreenyellowpurpleredmauveindigofuschiatealnowl eafgreen frame and canvas. Bobson seemed to be leering at her and she hated it, it made her scared and she tried to draw into herself-

-and found herself suddenly free, floating slightly above Bobson’s still-leering face. She waved a hand experimentally upwards and found that it passed right through the the the the the ceiling of the dollhouseshiptraitpirateship with barely actually quite a lot of flicjer g;itvhes she pulled her hand back, she thought she felt the frameworkremnant understand she was violating some rule-

-wait. She heard for a second a snatch a bit of sound of data the outside world she heard Melissa there was a link to Melissa up there in front of the expletive bringer intermittent but there Melissa was there she could escape she could go home and she sprang upwards, ignoring the frameworkremnant’s protests-</font>

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

"Viruses detected all over the flippin' place," Parsley.EXE grumbled, checking a scanner on his wrist. "How the hell am I supposed to handle all this?"

In fact, the only things that his scan of the area didn't identify as a virus were himself, an active operating system file, and a chat program.

"Virus must be trying to propagate itself over the Net," he grumbled. "Chat program seems an odd choice, usually it's e-mail. Well, I'd best stop it from going any further."

He followed the signal. It wasn't far off.

***

* Selvsetter (5103-4@&6976%&^.hSH9&9.akhdakdhakh.horgark.GBCE) has joined #grandbattle
<PrinceTristan> Hey Selvsetter. You're on early today.
<PrinceTristan> ...wait. What the heck is up with that hostmask? Where exactly are you?
<Selvsetter> I'M IN A FUCKING GRAND BATTLE YOU ASSHOLE
<Selvsetter> DID ONE OF YOU BASTARDS ENTER ME IN THIS FUCKING THING IS THAT IT
* enary|Afk is now known as enary
<enary> Back.
<enary> Wait, what? You're in a battle?
<Selvsetter> yeah
<Selvsetter> nothing's really happened yet, so I should be safe for a bit, but this place is messed up as hell
<Selvsetter> I'm on either a dollhouse or a pirate ship, only it can't make up its fucking mind on which one it is
<Selvsetter> looks like the world is glitched up as fuck
<Selvsetter> hell, maybe it is
<Selvsetter> would explain why I can talk to you bastards
<MaybeAWriter> Selvsetter~
<Selvsetter> shut the fuck up, maybles
<Selvsetter> I'm fuckin' serious, this is really happening
<Selvsetter> I don't have time for your fuckin' games
<Selvsetter> just tell me which of you assholes thought it would be fun to enter me in a battle, so I can kick yer fuckin' ass all the way back to New Zealand
<PrinceTristan> ...I don't understand. How can you be in a battle?
<Selvsetter> aaggh
<Selvsetter> some douchebag just flung a roll of bread at me
<Selvsetter> Tristan
<Selvsetter> did you enter fuckin' Cabbage in this thing
<PrinceTristan> No!
<PrinceTristan> I don't even know what battle you could be talking about. Unless somebody secretly started one on another site.
<Selvsetter> well fuck
<Selvsetter> look, this Cabbage ripoff guy - who has bread for armor, what the fuck - is yelling at me to stop infecting this chat program or something
<Selvsetter> so I'm gonna step off for a bit
<Selvsetter> when I get back, one of you douchebags better have found a way to get me out of this
*Selvsetter (5103-4@&6976%&^.hSH9&9.akhdakdhakh.horgark.GBCE) has left #grandbattle

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

Selvsetter slammed her laptop shut. It was, at present, her only way to express anger without swearing.

"Lemme guess. You think this is some kind of giant computer game. Or some bullshit."

Parsley.EXE frowned. Viruses were often evasive, and capable of elaborate disguises, but he wasn't used to them being so... snarky. "No. I've been deployed to eliminate the rogue viruses in this simulation."

Selvsetter rolled her eyes, and flipped open her laptop again, ignoring the antivirus' threats. "Boring. I've already had someone working for the Grandmaster. Dude, this is IRC. No scripting... thing. Fuck, I wouldn't even know how to make a virus- ow! Fuck!"

Parsley.EXE irritably waved around his crossbow, scattering the velocity data which had materialised like a textual vapour trail behind the loaf of bread.

"Dude, I'm fucking harmless. Seriously. If you're gonna insist on trying to fucking disinfect me or whatever, watch me talk to these guys."

* Selvsetter (5103-#)(87^#0887@09237508.bearded.swordamocle.GBCE) has joined #grandbattle
<PrinceTristan> Oh, hi again Selvsetter.
<Selvsetter> shut the fuck up
<Selvsetter> have you figured out what's going on
<PrinceTristan> No, sorry.
<Selvsetter> I've got your damn Cabbage ripoff standing behind me
<Selvsetter> fuck, this place is a mess
<Selvsetter> it's like if a computer got high on crack then I dunno
<Selvsetter> lost control of its bowel movements
<Selvsetter> then fell off the tenth-storey balcony it was trying to do a handstand on
<Selvsetter> fuuuuuck
* Beyou has joined #grandbattle
* Beyou has left #grandbattle
<HwiNoree> What's going on?
<enary> Selvsetter's apparently in a Grand Battle.
<PrinceTristan> And her hostmask is seriously weird, too.
<Selvsetter> oh yes
<HwiNoree> Wait, what?
<Selvsetter> let's all ooh and ah at my fuckin' hostmask
<HwiNoree> Selvey's in a Grand Battle?
<Selvsetter> anyway yes Hwi we covered this already I mean 'scuse my temper but please try to fuckin' keep up
<Selvsetter> not like I'm in mortal peril in glitch fucking city or anything
<Selvsetter> enary this is officially your fault
<enary> Wait, why?
<Selvsetter> cause it's not a fuckin' grand battle
<Selvsetter> it's worse
<Selvsetter> it's one of your goddamn fucking mini-grands
<enary> Hah!
<Selvsetter> That
<Selvsetter> was not a reason to fucking laugh
<Selvsetter> four characters plus this tag-a-long ripoff jackass antivirus
<MaybeAWriter> Well
<MaybeAWriter> It is kind of funny
<Selvsetter> wait
<Selvsetter> the jackass apparently doesn't like me calling him that
<Selvsetter> brb
<PrinceTristan> Good luck!
* Beyou has joined #grandbattle
* Beyou has left #grandbattle
<Selvsetter> jeez I was barely gone
<Selvsetter> he uh
<Selvsetter> wants to know what all you guys are
<Selvsetter> do I just explain this whole horrible mistake in full or what
<PrinceTristan> Well, if he's anything like Cabbage, I doubt he'll believe you.
<Selvsetter> whatever
<Selvsetter> anyway like I said four plus one characters bugger-all host characterisation it's got it all
<Selvsetter> enary you are so fucking dead
<enary> But I haven't done anything!
<enary> Honest!
<Selvsetter> whaaaaatever
<Selvsetter> anyway cabbageclone's getting antsy despite the fact I'm doing sweet fuckall
<Selvsetter> be back later
<Selvsetter> if y'know
<Selvsetter> I don't die or some shit
*Selvsetter has left #grandbattle
<MaybeAWriter> Wait
<MaybeAWriter> How the hell does she have signal

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

[Breadbreadbreadbreadbread-]

Melissa ignored her internal warning and slipped intangib;7<can’t_find_the_world> upwards, following the signal – it kept…turning off…and on…and that bloody [BREAD] WARNING wouldn’t TURN OFF so insistent so consistent and the signal inconsistent

“Wait.” Parsley.EXE stood up, moving into a ready position. Around them, the walls of the dollhousepirateportraitship flickered as data tags failed to catch their closing arguments.

Selvsetter looked up at the bread-suited antivirus. “What?” She didn’t get an answer, as many things then began to happen very quickly.

The frM3W[RK was fighting her. Melissa pushed upwards but it still seemed to take forever to pass through what should be fairly reasonable datq flootr floor deck dekfloor floordeckfloor reasonably thin deck data. She could swear time was slowed down as she strained to follow the collective Melissa’s call-

Parsley.EXE aimed his bread crossbow at a spot on the ground, which appeared to be no different from any other spot.

“A virus. Another one is coming.”

“I told you, I’m not a fucking-”

A hand passed through the deckfloor of the pordollpiratetraithouseship leaving afterimages in its wake, followed by the figure of a teenaged girl flickering her way out of the ground, reaching out – reaching out-

[BREAD!]

The warning shook her out of her reverie, and she saw the bread. She saw the bread, the breadsuit, and in very short order she saw high-velocity simulated bread fired from a bread crossbow.

[Oh shit.]

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

The turret stopped firing. All malicious physics props had been destroyed.

Amid the ruined code and debris of the upstairs section of the dollhouse, The GBCE had calculated a course of action. Below, the computer had concluded, Selvsetter, Parsley.exe, and Melissa were downstairs. Parsley.exe was about to fire a bolt of anti-virus bread at point blank range at Mellisa. The GBCE was currently calculating thirty seconds ahead, and it knew if its next course of action was not completed in time, Mellisa would be dead.

Now, normally, that sort of thing would not be important to the computer. However, the GBCE's chances of survival and endgame goals could be completed with a greater chance of success if it helped keep another contestant alive as long as possible. An ally, you could say.

There was no time to use conventional methods of movement. The turret began spinning again and aimed for the floor.

The GBCE, calculating thirty seconds ahead, had known this was the course of action it should take, and would take, so it did. It did not question the action, because there was no point in questioning it. It was fact, plain and simple. The GBCE had calculated this was to be its course of action, so it complied.

The turret fired down at the ground, slowly turning to make an arc, and then a circle. As the GBCE knew, the structural damage combined with the weight of the computer would be too much for the room to support.

Parsley.exe's simulated ears caught the sound of groaning above. His crossbow still pointed at Mellisa, he looked up quizzically.

"What-"

At which point a two ton computer came crashing down from above, landing in a nearby room.

Originally posted on MSPA by Anomaly.

---

Urist_McBeardsword.gbc corrupted successfully. Simulation infiltrated, beginning to corrupt GBCE. Scanning for GBC files...

Urist McBeardsword's head bent back at a 90-degree angle as his jaw shifted through the roof of his mouth. His limbs flailed haphazardly, sometimes detaching themselves entirely, as he "walked" forward. The environment around Urist, a sort of nuclear submarine combined with a dollhouse, was already corrupted before Damocles even arrived. However, the area immediately next to Urist became worse and worse as time passed, random symbols and images rapidly cycling around with no pattern.

Three other GBC files confirmed in location. Selvsetter.gbc, GBCE.gbc, Melissa.gbc all located at z-coordinate 56.38947.

Urist's eyes shifted back into his head as his left arm blinked out of existence and his spine immediately snapped 90 degrees to the right. He continued forward, part of his body inside of the floor, flailing around with no real pattern. Whatever intelligence the Urist McBeardsword program had once possessed was long gone.

Anti-virus program detected. PARSLEY.exe deployed at z-coordinate 56.38947. Highest threat; must eliminate. All programs directly above infected file. Corrupt environment; easiest method.

Urist McBeardsword decided to ignore gravity entirely and slammed repeatedly against the ceiling. The four contestants above heard a loud thumping from below, with no identifiable source. After a few moments of, the air in the room was instantly replaced by a viscous green slime.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Of the four entities in the slime-filled room, three had no need to breathe, specifically.

Selvsetter was the exception. Great, she thought, we've got a godmoder in this thing. enary or whoever the fuck is running this thing had better let him have it for that move. Least this won't kill me, it's way too early for that.

Meanwhile, Parsley.EXE's passive analysis had concluded.

Available data on unidentified program:

-Female
-Heavy use of profanity
-Prone to anger
-Behavior suggests program may become violent if provoked

Checking database...

Possible match found. Unidentified program shares key traits with antivirus Dekowin.EXE. Differences may be caused by viral corruption.

A fellow antivirus! Restoring her to full functionality would be extremely helpful. Unfortunately, the strange slime seemed to be adversely affecting her. Must be a problem with her subroutines for dealing with hostile environments. I'd better deal with this.

Parsley.EXE focused his energy, and an enormous fist made of bread appeared in the midst of the slime, some distance above the floor. It punched through the slime, creating a large hole, and the slime fell through, flowing onto "Urist McBeardSword" on the lower level.

As the room filled with air again, Parsley.EXE walked over to Selvsetter and examined her.

"Are you all right, Dekowin.EXE?"

"What the... blergh... what the fuck are you talking about?" she said, coughing up slime. "Have you gone off your fuckin' rocker, no wait, you're fuckin' Cabbage, of course you have."

"This system is heavily infected. I may not be able to manage it on my own. Are any of your antiviral protocols still functioning?"

"I don't have any fuckin' antiviral protocols, you fuckin' lunatic! What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"The corruption appears to be quite severe. Restoring you to functionality may prove difficult. We should find a safer place while I consider our options."

"You mean get the fuck outta here? About time you made some fuckin' sense."

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

Selvsetter never actually got to "sense". She just kind of trailed off after "made some fuckin'", before clamping a hand over her mouth and foregoing complete sentences for a steadier stream of muffled expletives.

"You seem troubled-" began Parsley.EXE, somewhat redundantly.

"Shut up. I- I dunno what the fuck jis' happin'd, but I do not fuckin' swear that much. When the fuck was th' las' time I sed somewen wes 'off their fuckin' rocka?"

"My programming wasn't designed to analyse speech patterns," frowned the antivirus. "But I'm failing to register any notable decrease in the frequency of your profanity."

Selvsetter glared back, seemed to bite back a "shut th' fuck up" just to prove Parsley.EXE wrong, and slapped her laptop shut before slipping it into the backpack.

"No. Look. I'll till you why i'ss bad. That ain't how I fuckin' talk, alrigh'? I mean, i'ss pritty fuckin' beleev'ble, sure, wha'evir. A deecin' i'nough first eff'it, but i'ss fuckin' bad bi'ces some - some other sonova fuckin' whore's tryin' their fuckin' hand at writin' fer me.

That ain't good, alrigh'? I mean sure, thi'ss place is an unebashed clustir-fuckin'- uh... whatevir. Point is, i'ss not your usual Gran' Battil. There's some jackass fuckin' with me, an' if I can't pull a Metaxican fuckin' standoff and tell all you fuck'irs t' shoot each othir on three 'kez I'm the only real one and thus toat'ly werth fuckin' saving, then I'm gonna have to actch'ly. I dunno. Fuck. Give th' fucker rispons'ble writing tips? Fuck, I dunno. This is rih'ly fuckin' weird."

Selvsetter took a deep breath, spluttered, fanned away the noxious green, and took several slightly more cautious breaths. She jammed her hat a little tighter on her head, and glared at an uncomprehending Parsley.EXE from under the brim. There was an incoherent snarl, a bit of pacing around and a consequences-be-damned kick at Melissa, before the woman could face the antivirus.

Her smile was a poorly-disguised shade of malicious by deception, the voice deadpan "as fuck", and her eyes bored the party slogan of "fuck you" into Parsley.EXE all the while.

"I'm sorry. That was me, Dikowin dot ee ex ee, glitching like a motherfuck'r. I don't know what came over me, and would now 'preciate yer help in finding the uh... the thing with Grand Battle in i'ss name. There are... some things. I have t' tell it. Ri'pressed antivirus things." She sighed. "Jes' help me find the fuckin' GBCE or wha'ever the fuck it was, alrigh'?"

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

"Alrigh'," belligerated Selvsetter, finding the thrill of the hunt had fizzled out a bit when it only entailed opening a door to the next room, "You. Gran' Battil sum'thin' sum'thin'... whatevir th' fuck."

Without hesitation, GBCE's turret spun around and rattled off a warning shot. Selvsetter flinched, yelled "Th' fuck wehs that for!?" before catching herself. She tried her best to grin.

"Yeh, alrigh'. So yeh ginna play th' jerkahss in this little di'bahcil, are yeh? Don't think y'cin be the fleilin' incomp'tint in di'nile, tha'ss my job. An' ev'ryone loves a hero in ovir her hed, righ'? Wouldn' make eny sence fer hir t' be shot to pee-cis bifore th' fun stahtid, y'know?"

The Grand Battle Computational Engine hadn't quite planned for this response, but was up to speed in all of a blink. It calibrated its audio feed to a respectable, intelligent and reasonable (by an emotionless machine's standards, anyway) tone.

"Data collated by this Computational Engine regarding Contestant Selvsetter may be extrapolated to an 85% certainty that Contestant Selvsetter is-" if the GBCE had any emotion, it would've had to remove the disgust from its voice here "-genre savvy."

Selvsetter made an unladylike noise, extracting a gloved hand from its deep, greatcoat-pocket nest to jab a finger at the machine.

"Did y'not git th' bit where I wrigh' for whiny littil crittirs like you? In my fuckin' charictir profile or whatevir th' fuck?"

The Engine sort of liked where this was going, which in a soulless computer's terms meant the beneficial outcomes plotted from this course of interaction had a favourable (predicted) chance of furthering its goals. It recalibrated its audio output with a snarkier, smugger inflection, to further the negative feelings associated with a swift-blooming vicious rivalry. Allies were good, but a rivalry had higher stakes. Stakes the GBCE was sure it had a much better map of.

"This Computational Engine is currently offline from the Grand Battle Assets Database, Subspace Non-Canon, Subsubspace Characters."

"Course yeh fuckin' ah." Selvsetter kicked at pineapple that wasn't sure if it was there or not. She groaned. "And ef coors this was a fuckin' non-canon. One broke'in t'fuck. Th' fuck did y'do?" the woman growled, proferring her best sneer and pointing at the GBCE again. "Did some 'f yeh Assits Datehbase porn you were ovirfuckin'heatin' ovir come with ehs-tee-vees fuckin' ettached? 'sthat what I'm fuckin' stuck in'? Yeh goddamn bit-drippin' Computational wet-dream? Am I gehnna be wipin' pixil-jizz off my-"

"A virus attack triggering this currently-experienced error in this Computational Engine was unprecedented preceding the initiation of this currently-experienced error," interrupted the Engine, "and had a statistically impossible chance of initiating."

"Yeh, well, yeh ken - wai', ah yew tryin' to fuckin' sass me-"

"In response to recent virus attacks, this Computational Engine has initiated Parsley.EXE as a countermeasure."

Selvsetter said nothing, raised an eyebrow and a half (she'd never really gotten the hang of raising her eyebrows in singular), then finally settled for a "welp. Good luck with yeh viriss problim, I guess. Y'gonna need it."

She looked around for a door that wasn't the one she'd entered, then cleared the GBCE in an easy stride as she crossed the room. The woman was cautiously moving her hand in and out of the semi-existent door, when the machine spun its turret round and shuffled on its treads a bit.

"This Computational Engine is requesting data from Contestant/Selvsetter.gbc."

"Fuck you."

"Context-sensitive neutral response interpreted. This Computational Engine is requesting Contestant Selvsetter's observational data and processes leading to the conclusion that this Computational Engine has insufficient and non-existent resource "luck" to successfully eliminate virus infection."

"Uh... oh, righ'. Alrigh', I'll tell yew if yer fuckin' quit callin' yersilf 'This Compyertationil Engine'. Try some fuckin' pronouns, would it kill yer?"

"This Computational Engine has queued the request by Contestant/Selvsetter.gbc, until sufficient processing space may be diverted."

"Fuck you. I'm leevin'. Yer antivirus is a fuckin' moron. Stchupid barsted thought I'm out t'distroy yeh, then figger'd I might be one ef his moron antiviriss buddies. Dikowin.exe or some shit. I can't be fucked tryin' to figger out how the fuck I'm supposeder kill anyone in this shitty fuckin' glitch city battle, so I'm jes' stayin' the fuck out yer way intil I figger out how I'm iscapin'."

Selvsetter decided to risk it, and walked through the intangible door. It emitted a warped slamming noise as she left.

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

Melissa was developing. Her form was occasionally interrupted with a burst of graphical noise as the Framework struggled to compute her, but these were becoming further in between. And all the while her own computational ability increased as she caught a cycle here, a megabyte there, and her own voculabulary expanded. She was scared, positively frightened in the face of death. Parsley.EXE stood over her in his breadsuit, holding her at breadpoint while keeping his other attentions focused on the hole in the portraitship’s floor.

[W…who are you?]

<font color="#666600">“My name is Parsley.EXE. As much as I would like, I‘m not exterminating you yet, at the behest of my colleague.”

[Um. T-Thank you Parsley…I guess…I’m]

“You’re a virus.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of flipped bits undulate across the schplrts that made up the surface invalid_model_no_texture_allocated that they were standing on. It didn’t seem like the portraits were holding to reality very much anymore.

“You’re a virus, and my role is to eliminate viruses. It’s not hard to grasp.”

[I…don’t feel like a virus] vocabulary_addition_feel

“I’ve fought delusional ones before.”

Silence for a brief second.

“Look at Dekowin.EXE. She doesn’t even remember-”

A large portion of the dollhouse carved itself away from underneath them. Urist slid upupupwarc!s perpendicular to the air, leaving most of his sk333letn behind. For a second he was a rapidly color-changing f;eshbag rising on a pillar of greenorange slime. The air flickered in a slightly lemon-smelling cacophony, and then slime tentacles exploded from Urist’s orifices. </font>

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

Current state acquired; offensive capabilities high.

Urist’s body was only a small part of the virus now, a node from which slime oozed and flowed in sickening places. The bearded swordsman’s flickering body lay with one s1dde buried in goo, the other arm still flaililing about without regard to bone structur3 or muscul@ture. Above him, tentacles formed abstract fractal shapes as they tore into the world around. Little self-referential oscillators burrowed their ways into the pirateshiphousecopter, cracking tiles and models into corrupted splrchs . Here and there textures were replaced as slime flowed over them, becoming grey-on-darker-grey checkerboard patterns or little matrices of numbers repeating themselves in trinary loops and functions.

“Dekowin.EXE! I need help!”

Without waiting for an answer, Parsley.EXE ran for the door separating him from his fellow antivirus-

Damocles brought a sharp-edged tentacle in front of him, cleaving the world in half. The scale of the portrapiratecopterhouse was changing frighteningly, along with the rapidly collapsing structure itself – He brought his crossbow to bear and loaded the clip with a fresh breadstick, all the while keeping an eye on the stern of the shiphouse, drifting away – where was Dekowin.EXE? Why didn’t she respond?

Melissa watched with fear vocabulary_addition_fearas more viscous green pseudopodia <font size="1">tentacle?_danger_connotation??-->more_research_needed made their way into a circle around Parsley.EXE, cutting off his retreat. Between them, slime flowed sinuously through the cracks in the metalwoodplastic floorno_model, but ignored her, focusing on the threat at hand.

[P-Parsley?]</font>

Parsley.EXE did not respond, except to unsheathe a blade of bread from its baguette sheath. Then Parsley vanished from view, surrounded by an undulating, rising wall.

Anti-virus program isolated. No achievable escape calculable. Terminate PARSLEY.exe with extreme prejudice.

Urist’s boc]y twitched once more - its bacl[ arcing from its enslimed position, writhing as Damocles moved the goo about it. Without a care for “Urist’s” integrity, the green force flowed forwards, pushing the bod0dy about it. Manipulated by the slime, Uristisis’s broken bodyty turned to face the antivirus with what remained of its visage, and led the charge as the wave poured forward-

She could only look on as the slime pressed in from all sides – arcs of light shone briefly through where the antiviral bread broke the viscous surface. As Parsley.EXE fought, the flashes of data deletion silhouetted his form, frozen in mid-slash or stab.

Little trickles of reasoned argument weaved across her computations like waves of guilt? compassion? she didn’t understand she didn’t know. A little virtual tear programmed itself into existence through subroutines she didn’t know she had, shining with little glimmers of light imperfectly reflected interrupted by the occasional burst of electronic noise. She didn’t understand why, but her visual feed changed and lensed, and she found herself with a strange feeling in the approximate region of her throat, a tightness that seemed to reflect her own confusion and loneliness-

Absorbed in emotion, Melissa staggered and took a step forward – a step that took her into the mass of slime.

The GBCE whirred uneasily as its optical apparatus stayed focused on the rippling door. It had calculated thirty seconds ahead, and found no reoccurrence of Contestant/Selvsetter.gbc. It allowed itself a modicum of simulated doubt, but requiring the concession, the very concept of having to doubt its own ability, was alarming.

What was more alarming was how quickly system resources were being consumed.

Damocles had underestimated his opponent. The virus was computing frantically as crucial data and memory space were deleted under Parsley.EXE’s barrage. While it was regenerating its information as quickly as the antivirus could eradicate it, a stalemate was nonetheless a stalemate.

Sacrificing sentience sector AA:11a…Done. Sacrificing sentience sector AA:11b…Done. Sacrificing sentience sector…

It was nothing more than a controlled lobotomy, but in a fracas such as this subtlety was not a vital resource. And Damocles needed power, more power than it could drain from the framework itself. The metalwood deckfloor had already lost most of its definable attributes, and the 11D model data was shedding bits like snow.

Sectors stored; computational cycles allocated to mobility modes…

What remained of Ur1st McBbe4rdsvord’s hhand made its way to Vri5t MdearbeardSORD’s scabbard.

Parsley.EXE hacked and slashed at the heaving walls surrounding him, deleting and deleting and deleting. This was his purpose, he reflected; this was his reason for being – and it kept him moving, stabbing…cleansing.

Then there was a flash of red-flecked silver. Parsley.EXE found himself parrying against a sword wielded by approximately seven-eighths of a bearded swordsman. Damocles manipulated Urist’s ragdoll forwards, slime flowing around the limbs, and swung the blade some more…

The tear gave a little flicker as it fell and splashed on the slime. She saw with the slightest of starts that it was flowing around her legs, the iridescent greens changing hue and value wildly, almost arbitrarily. She could see her reflection in it occasionally, whenever briefly its materials texture was rendered correctly. Where it touched her, her own rendering went berserk, symbols breaking up the edges in between body and world.

[oh. well, shit.]

<font color="#336600">Melissa.gbc detected; high concentration of computing activity. Asset; utilize. Avian x 2 = Mineral x 1.

Damocles was still placing emphasis on the highest threat it could. But if it could steal cycles from any another source, it was perfectly willing to do what it needed.

There was something fundamentally wrong about dying at the hands of another virus. Of course it happened – the Holo-Net was a hotbed of virtual selection – but deletion by anything but a proper .EXE antivirus was simply…unnatural. So for an instant Melissa fought.

The next instant, she stopped – as Damocles opened up more and more channels to funnel away her own hub of computational power, she saw more and more of its internal structure: millions of nodes, forming and reforming from quantum bits appearing, resolving and disassociating. The blade that Urist’s body swung was formed by hexillions of fractally computed Mandelbrot sets, giving the sword a slightly fuzzy, ‘hairy’ infinite edge. Urist’s body itself seemed to be the only stable set of nodes in the structure, from which bits flowed frantically in and out in a race against insanity. She looked down, and saw from herself bits and data packets leaving her cycles and making their way into the conglomerate.

It was all so…familiar. It was the Holo-Network, in its purest form. It was her element.

[INFECT]

[REPLICATE]

And then she was everywhere, running from node to node within the battling virus, a virophage hijacking control on the computational level. And all under the radar; focused on the antivirus, Damocles battled on.

Melissa followed a glowing soft trail of bits that made their way through the nodes – nodes that ceased to exist soon after they had passed. There was some information that Damocles didn’t want accessed. Within picoseconds, she faced a memory storage block, arcing kilometers into the sky yet somehow contained within the recesses of the bits and bytes stored within. In small, undistinguished text, the block was labeled: sentience_sector_storage.

[Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose?]

Knowledge was inside. Melissa knew that much. She knew that if she stepped inside, she would know all of those things. She would have answers. She would know exactly who she was, why circumstances conspired to create her, and most importantly, she would know what to do.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the last bytes make their way towards the block.

She knew what to do.</font>

Damocles pushed Uris7 forward, shuffling steps bringing the ragdoll in front of the exhausted antivirus. Parsley.EXE looked up at the decaying bearded swordsman, and saw it raise its fractal blade-

Melissa flicked a switch, and the sectors went dark.

<font color="#336600">error; sentience sector integrity comprom^@&t#E

Uurist dropped the sword, which flickered from existence as what remained of Damocles suddenly panicked – and Parsley took the opportunity to bring his own blade in a stabbing thrust-

Melissa flicked another switch, and a gigantic sword fell from the heavens, its handle tied to a single, snapped hair. Its movement cleaved the memory storage in two, and wiped from them every bit and byte – then she ran as the system began to go dark, nodes disappearing and failing to reappear.

Panic was the last intelligent thought Damocles had. Then everything that was Damocles became white noise amongst the rest of the chaotic universe…

Parsley.EXE watched as the viscous slime walls about him collapsed and flowed away, their color fading, their pulses ceasing. As it pulled away, the ragdoll that had once been Urist began to fall apart. Where McBeardsword had been impaled with the breadsword, cracks of final deletion wormed their way across the damage that Damocles had wrought.

Melissa stood at the edge of the shipiratehaus, watching the lifeless goo pour over the edge and vanish far down at the bottom of some indeterminable abyss.

She reflected on her decision. When she’d closed the door, walked away and made her way to the file managers…

[I could have gotten my answers. I would know my role.]

She watched one of Urist’s hands as it fell overboard.

[But…but I think I want to find that out myself.]</font>

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

---

* Selvsetter (5103-2)(87^#0887@0118.999.88199.9119.725...3.GBCE) has joined #grandbattle
<Selvsetter> alrigh'
<Selvsetter> this shit's getting repetitive already
<enary> ?
<Selvsetter> round's over
<Selvsetter> apparently whatever this fuckin' excuse for a grandmaster is
<Selvsetter> can't string two fuckin' words together
<Selvsetter> but can at least handle simulating the fuckin' internet
<PrinceTristan> Simulating the internet?
<Selvsetter> fuck if I know
<Selvsetter> shit looks like whatever generic cyberspace BS you want to think up
<Selvsetter> green lines, flying envelopes, buildings labelled with URLs
<Selvsetter> generic cyberspace city over here
<MaybeAWriter> Selvsetter~
<Selvsetter> not fuckin' now, maybles
<Selvsetter> shit, spam coming, back in a bit
*Selvsetter has left #grandbattle

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Parsley.EXE was concerned. His scans indicated a significantly reduced level of viral activity - yet they were no longer in the same directory. Had they somehow hijacked an attempt by the primary virus to transmit itself over the Internet?

That was a problem. Dekowin.EXE had told him the "Melissa" virus held a key to restoring her program, and it would be inadvisable to destroy it until she could be restored. (He had no way of knowing that Selvsetter's real objective in keeping the virus around was to get in some good character interaction before Melissa's writer was eliminated.) But here, in cyberspace - she could potentially propagate and spread to other computers. He couldn't allow that to happen.

Fortunately, he could at least detect the virus' location, although he couldn't make out the actual layout of the area without investigating on foot. He headed in Melissa's direction; his path soon led him into a building marked "TROLLSLUM". He opened the door and headed in; hopefully there would be another exit, but if not, it would only be a short detour.

Inside, he found himself in some sort of tavern; hideous horned monstrosities filled the room, wearing occult symbols upon their clothing.

"Wonderful," he muttered. "An infected website. This may be more than I can handle."

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

Melissa blinked in surprise as the pirateportraitship fell away beneath them, retreating into a void which became a vat which became a bin. As the Recycle Bin was blipped from existence, she could have sworn she had seen a virtual monocle lying behind it.

And then there was the Holo-Net- wait. Wait wait wait wait.

[This isn’t right. This…isn’t rightcognitive_dissonance]

The green frameworks of three skyscrapers towered into a jade haze of a data-swarmed sky, with information making their myriad paths to and from their convoluted cores. Around her, the environment rendered in full color, albeit with the ubiquitous green lines insinuating themselves in every surface and side.

It was all so…archaic.

[I’ve seen this before <font size="1">new_concept: inductive_reasoning … but this way. Not like this redundancy_emphasis {possible_term: redunemphasis}? It wasn’t rendered_it was old_it was archaic and outdated museum model]

The styling, the textures, the painstaking and ultimately wasted attention to detail, and most importantly, the .net tags plastering the flickering of the world – all indicated a computational engine with only the barest idea of a webpage server’s internal simulated construction. A computational engine, ignored and cut off from the world, only ever on the outside looking in. A computational engine, hovering in the center of the three core towers, leveling its turrets towards her waitwhat- </font>

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

-DATDATDATDATDATDATDATDAT

The GBCE’s gun fired rapidly at Melissa, the bullets whizzing through the air, impacting her virtual body with sickening electronic thumps. The GBCE had calculated this would kill her, and they promptly did. Her bullet riddled-corpse fell to the ground.

Unfortunately, she was not dead, the GBCE knew. She had propagated. A round transition wouldn’t happen anytime soon, not from Melissa’s death, at least. No, she had been given The Internet, and now, she would be everywhere. On the streets, in the buildings, jumping from a core tower onto a GBCE hovering in the air-

WHACK-THUNK!

“THAT HURT, YOU [censored] [ERROR: material designation UNKNOWN] LUMP!”

“THE GBCE ASKS THAT YOU REMOVE YOURSELF FROM MY CHASSIS, OR I WILL USE DEADLY FORCE.”

“NO [naughty word, Melissa!] WAY, YOU [You should know better, dear!] GBCE COMPUTER THING OR WHATEVER! HOW DOES THAT [you mean this, my dear, remember your tenses.] FEEL!”

The virus then slammed her fist into the GBCE, making a loud, resounding clanging noise. The computer responded with deadly force. Namely, several bullets into the skull. Melissa’s second corpse fell to the ground and splattered with a sickening squelch.

The GBCE sighed internally. This was going the beginning of an escalating war, a necessary one, albeit annoying. This was the only way The Indented Result was to happen. Even if it meant killing Melissa several hundred times.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

Selvsetter twitched, as though some chronomancer prankster had stopped time just to do something compromising to her, before running off and restarting it with a giggle. It wasn't pleasant. She waded off the road she'd materialised upon, the great torrents of spam hurtling unconcerned around her. Transactions zipped from the faces of skyscrapers in a direction that might've been suburbia, followed shortly by the bulkier vehicle-packaged lumps of email which dived into the spam-dominated traffic of the green-on-black city.

It was the kind of metropolis, bigger than any one individual could ever experience, that Selvsetter had always harboured romantic notions of living in one day. She smirked a bit, finding the fondness appropriate. Then she remembered she was supposed to be in a Grand Battle (even if it was a broken-to-fuck mini-grand) and figured she'd best find something to do. Something that (and this was purely personal preference, at this stage) had fuck-all to do with those contestants of hers.

For a brief second, Selvsetter considered destroying the internet. She envisioned some kind of rhythmical soundless light show (lack-of-light-show? Dying-of-the-light-show?) as everything locked down and shut itself off, block by city block. She contemplated Melissa, clinging to a speeding email as she fled from a murderous Parsley.EXE, frozen with the rest of the stream when Selvsetter brought all the connection and linking and globalisation to a jittering halt.

Then Selvsetter remembered that villains got comeuppance. She sighed, and stared up into the request-thickened sky for a long while, until a pattern of sorts emerged. This city (damnit, she was thinking romantically here, that wouldn't do) was yet another sense-fucking nonsensical parable for something she didn't have that great a handle on.

Selvsetter got to walking, always looking up amongst the criss-crossing migrations of a myriad captcha codes and login details, until she'd pursued a mob of the most non-sequitorious phrases submitted to the internet several city blocks to a stark-facaded approximation of a city hall that somehow encompassed a library and an archive and had an "Inquiries" desk that extended into the far distance like a horizon.

Google. Fuckin' perfect.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Parsley.EXE flung a large loaf of bread at the six angry viruses running towards him. The fight had already gone on longer than the antivirus had hoped; he needed to escape, perhaps to return with Dekowin.EXE's help.

A short virus tried to catch him from the side, and was rewarded for its efforts with a punch to the face. Then a large, muscular virus tried to tackle him from behind, but Parsley.EXE reacted quickly and grabbed its large horns, then flipped up onto its back.

As it struggled to reach him, he clobbered it repeatedly with a large stick of digital bread. Finally, it fell to the ground.

Parsley.EXE would have been sweating if he weren't digital. He'd disabled every virus in the room - but he was sure there were more. He tried to find the door he had come in by before reinforcements arrived.

He wasn't expecting the reinforcements to be the Virus Queen. At least, that was what her appearance suggested - she wore a glamorous dress, a lavish crown with bent spikes, and sparkling jewelry. She also carried a scepter with a lightning bolt on it.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY TROLLSLUM?" she shouted, gesturing wildly as she spoke. "You don't even have horns! What kind of weak attempt at a character is this? Do you have any regard for canon at all?"

"Cannon? Now there's a good idea," Parsley.EXE replied as he created a gigantic bread-cannon in front of him. "Prepare for deletion, virus!"

The cannon fired a massive ball of bread at the queen, but she simply pointed her scepter at it and a blast of electricity fried the cannonball in midair. It dropped to the ground unceremoniously.

"You will not defy the Queen of the Trollslum!" she shouted, firing more blasts at Parsley.EXE as he tried to retreat. "Get out and make a better character or you'll never be allowed to RP in here again!"

Parsley.EXE scrambled to the door while avoiding the queen's blasts. He quickly opened it and ran out, emerging back on the streets of the Internet.

"Best find Dekowin.EXE and tell her what's going on," he said. "She may not be at full capacity, but I'll need all the help I can get against a virus like this."

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

To Melissa’s eyes, the GBCE was the strangest construct she had ever seen on any network, archaic or otherwise. It had an aurasupernaturalist_connotation_improper, an aura of wrongness <font size="1">vague. Too vague wrongness as it computed away, with her inside it, with the…world wide web within, that held her, that held –

- But anger was such a noveladj concept! It bound with primary, the urge to profilerate, to multiply, to assimilate the computational engine she saw – it was motivationno_appropriate_definition and it was a driving force.
She found herself striking out at the construct within a construct within a construct for the feeling of reality it gave, rather than really giving it damage. Assimilation came from the inside, not from without, not through the force she was employing, but the engine had killed her – and it hurt-reinforcement|dimunitive_albert – and it was her prison, a prison within itself, recursion that threw her for the loop.
Everything seemed real, yet so, so pointless to be doing this, but it was cathartic somehow, to damage her jailer from without. Realquery_what?, in a way… As real as it was for her, in this old world.
Emotions were strange constructs in themselves – it seemed no one could describe them more inaccurately than when describing their ownphilosophy!- But anger seemed to charge, and she pushed her own computations to the envelopeenvelope; idiom_metaphor_unknown origin-

The GBCE killed her again, riddling her corpse as it fell for good measure.

Melissa found herself behind the construct for the nth time, seeing the computations fly by around its bulk. She knew it knew she knewrecursion: avoid that it was computing ahead, turrets already swiveling – but she was faster than its computations – its connection to the Framework it was computing was much less direct, more convoluted than her own. She moved faster than the futuretwo_seconds^-1, fooling the Framework into lapsing the interim calculations in between positions. She was where it never expected her to be, and the turret swiveled and swiveled in confusion-

The GBCE found its own system lagging and lacking the speed it required: Within itself it found resources taken up by more and more simulation, created spiel of a three, then four, then five, six, seven eightnineteneleven voices and their mercenaries knights ghosts battlers. Its meta-recursion ran on two timelines, and one surged ahead of the other. Four closed shop, five came dangerously close to a crisis, eight even more so, others just progressed, taking up space – more and more precious space that by all rights it required not to destroy its own computational system within three - Its attentions divided, it reasoned that under the current circumstances it had to prioritize, so tried another strategy: nothing.

With a sudden whine, the turrets stopped their whirring, settling into an idle position. Seeing this, Melissa stopped too, standing amongst dead copies killed in the occasional misstep. Floating thereframework: ignore_g, she gave the engine another kick. There was no satisfactionpush_me in it now, when there was no threat. And in the void that draining anger and urge to profilerate left behind came her secondary directive; curious sentience; to learn how and why and specifically, where might be the programmer’s access?

And since she wanted to know, naturally she concentrated her presence at the largest repository of information she could find.

[…what’s a google?] </font>

“Fuck!”

Selvsetter savagely crumpled up the webpage she was holding, and slid with her back against the wall facing the Inquiries desk. Along it, HTTPS-obscured denizens of the internet enquired, 1.4 trillion results per second per person. Pages surrounded her in a explosion of tabs, each with titles like “Atomic Parsley”, “The Great Big Craft Extravanganza”, and “Campaigns – Site Melissa”. A <font color="#0064FF">Google Spider placed a smaller pile of results on the desk facing her, which sagged pathetically under the weight. When she picked up the pile and saw the results on top – a video of a 737 landing and a brochure for an art exhibition – Selvsetter did likewise.

From behind the pile, the spider cheerily piped up, “Did you mean: Mini Grants?”

She threw the webpage at it.</font>

* Selvsetter (grand/5103.#98081<w@n3473.28033t045t.GBCE) has joined #grandbattle
<HwiNoree> and then
<HwiNoree> thennnnn
<HwiNoree> string
<MaybeAWriter> Selvsetter~
<PrinceTristan> Oh hey, Selvsetter.
<Selvsetter> maybles, this fuckin’ isn’t the time
<PrinceTristan> You’ve still got that hostmask, I see.
<HwiNoree> ring dring
<PrinceTristan> Are you still in that battle?
<Selvsetter> stop treating this like a fuckin’ joke Tristan
<Selvsetter> have you got any fuckin’ clue about this yet?
<HwiNoree> derinnggg
<PrinceTristan> Sorry. We’ve searched around and there’s no trace of a Mini-Grand with you in it anywhere we can find, much less on the PPNC forums.
<Selvsetter> fuckin’ hell
<Selvsetter> i’ve been at this fuckin’ city’s google engine
<Selvsetter> can’t find a fuckin’ thing either
<enary> Although if it is a Minigrand, it’s probably noncanon
<HwiNoree> like like like
<enary> So it’s probably not simulating our internet.
<enary> In all likelihood, it probably used its home universe as a template.
<HwiNoree> halflings
<Selvsetter> fuck
<Selvsetter> spider just dumped another shitload of results on me
<HwiNoree> no one sees them
<Selvsetter> top one’s a forum post on fuckin’ internet banking
<HwiNoree> NO ONE
<HwiNoree> and then they steal your eyes
<PrinceTristan> What were you searching for?
<HwiNoree> and
<HwiNoree> they use them
<HwiNoree> to stick posters
<PrinceTristan> Hwi, maybe you should go to sleep.
<HwiNoree> with glaaaare
<HwiNoree> SLEEEEEP
* Mediacraci has joined #grandbattle
<Mediacraci> RAWR
<Arrex> Meddi~
<Mediacraci> Recsy~
<HwiNoree> NOOOOOOOOOOO
<Selvsetter> trying to find PPNC
<Mjilner> Never sleep Hwi
<Selvsetter> but apparently no one’s fuckin’ heard of paintbrush pro narrative conjurations
<HwiNoree> NO
<enary> Well no, they wouldn’t.
<HwiNoree> NO
<HwiNoree> NO
<HwiNoree> opkay
* HwiNoree has left #grandbattle
<Mediacraci> nuuuuuu
<Selvsetter> wait
<Mediacraci> ;-;
<Selvsetter> here comes glitch girl
<Selvsetter> Melissa
<Mediacraci> ?
<Mediacraci> ???
<Selvsetter> Be right back
<Arrex> seeya Selvie!
<Mediacraci> bye Selvie~
* Mediacraci still doesn’t get it
* Selvsetter has left #grandbattle

As simulacra churned on within it, the GBCE detected that Melissa had ceased its flurry – and in fact was nowhere nearby. As it stood in between the three skyscrapers, data flowing over and around its form, it allowed itself a certain degree of puzzlement. “This Computational Engine is responsible for the existences of all Mini-Grand contestants,” it mused to no one, a sign that it noted to itself that perhaps something more than resource consumption was wrong within, “and yet no such status seems to be recognized.” A shard of metal dislodged by Melissa’s blows dropped into one of its ancillary speakers, and an edge crept into its voice. “Perhaps contestants need to be reminded.

Show Content

SpoilerBluh, I know this is over the word limit but it is a kickstart right?

Show Content

SpoilerAlso! Reference sheet for Selverse: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1.../edit?hl=en_US

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

Selvsetter dealt Google's shining flanks a frustrated kick, before finally glaring at Melissa.

"What?"

"Um."

Selvsetter growled something unintelligible, ripping her hat off and messing her hair up a bit. Melissa was still lost for words, but the woman eventually obliged.

"th' fuck d'yewant?"err-command not parsed "elo?" Selvsetter waved, trying to make it as condescending as possible, before sighing explosively. "What. Thee fuck. Do. You. Want?"

"Ah! I want to know."

Selvsetter just stared again. "Riiiiiiight." A pause. "Aany spicifics, or...?" Another sigh. "Look. In case y'hadn't figger'd, I sortuh don' have, like, a clue about ennier this shi'. 'zit, like, existenchil shit? 'kez - well, no 'fence, but, pritty sure spambots or vi-rersis'n shit don' act-chly have souls. Y'know. No 'fence."

"None received. Taken. None taken." response-colloquial

This is really fuckin' draggin' on, Selvsetter thought to herself. This some dick author's idea of characterisation?

"Ugh. Look. Milissa. I kinduh feel like we, I dunno, haven' done th' groundwork or whatevir in th' las' round, but I'm sorta quietly freakin' ou' that it's all jes' draggin' on too much, y'know? Plus y'know mini-gran's'n shit are jes' totally different an look. Whatevir. You pro'aly don' git whet I'm sayin' anyway."

"Fuckit. Y'wanna team up? If we stay away frem those two weppin'-slingin' dicks we're pro'aly free to do some shit on our own. I'm kinda fucked fer eny other ideas righ' now entill Ens figgers some shit out, so..."

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

[T-team up?] The concept stepped right in the middle of Melissa’s computations, interrupting her train of thoughti_don’t_follow as neatly as a thrown binary switch<font size="1">computational_metaphor. [I…what do you mean?]

“S’like I jist sid, we team up, stay away frem th’ rest of them.”

[You mentioned thoughts…plans of action…]

Internally, Selvsetter gave a little, but prolonged and frustrated scream. It’s fuckin’ like tryin’ to talk t’some author’s idea of ‘slow’! “I d’n’ave any idea wha’ y’ve though’if –” She gritted her teeth, “- which’s why I esked.”

[Ah!] Meaning dawned, and Melissa’s pixels brightenedmetaphor made simulacra-reality. [I…I might have a plan!] She perked up as more pieces fit into place, [a ‘teaming up’? A mutually beneficial agreement to do no harm? I am familiar with that concept! We, the Melissas, are obliged to cooperate when simultaneously assuming control of entry-level systems…]

Selvsetter watched as the virus trailed off, Melissa’s face falling at the thought. “Look. Milissa. Fuck, we’re all fish out’if the water righ’ now.”

[But we ought to focus on what’s directly to hand.] Slowly, the two of them strode towards the archway framing the constantly changing Google Doodle, illuminated in the blue-white light of data in its eternal transit.

“Righ’ now, we jus’ need to keep away frem the ither two, tha’s wha’ we need to do.” The glowing expanses of the internet played across their faces as they stood in the middle of the Google archway, simply looking out at the infinite world. They paused a bit, the conversation hanging for a moment – “An’ you said you had a plan? Somethin’?

Melissa nodded. [Yes. This…area…is less different from familiar...] Her gaze paused over the city’s central towersgbce, for a brief moment – [It’s archaic, but it’s a network of simulated nodes.] Briefly, a simulated streetlamp down the street flickered. [I’m good with networks.]

I wish she’d fuckin’ get to the point, Selvsetter scowled slightly in impatience. If she gits any more long-windid I’m goin’ to get the fuck on wi’ it, team up or no team up.

[The crux of what I am doing is that I’m following my instincts: programmer’s accessdelete, administration privilegesubvert, source codeoverwrite…] Melissa’s virtual shoulders shrugged. [I take it you don’t like that Computational Engine either, Selvsetter?] The student startled slightly – “If that fuckin’ son of a tin opener had a mother…”

Melissa smiled: a small, unsettlingly predatory smile. [Good. Because we’re going to kill that fuckin’ son of a tin opener.]

The GBCE strained…but the load was less now. Everything was… paused. Calm. <font color="#EC0083">Angry. It was angry, borrowing life, emotion from the snapshots of the eleven, frozen in time. It was suicidal, it was virtually victorious…and deep within itself eight’s progenitor was insane.

It drew and drank from a landscape stopped in time, the twin streams of continuity ground to a halt, and rose on jets of flight data, gun barrels blared and blasting. It pushed its way across the shallow skies, searching for its prey…</font>

Parsley.EXE heard the flyer before he saw it: a low rumble that propagated pulsingly in the impulses of the street, the walls, the pages and sites. He looked up just as the sound changed into the whine of bullets, fired wildly in random arcs, and saw their origin… Even more viruses, of all shapes and sizes now. This is ridiculous. For a moment he dithered as his priorities reasserted themselves. A brute force cracker, I’d assume – and Dekowin.EXE would be going after it too. To take this one down, I’ll even moreso need her help. And with that, Parsley began running after the massive, bulky thing.

Student and virus both cocked their ears at the sound of gunfire. “Did’ye hear that?”

[I think…I think that’s the Computational Engine again…]

“Fuck. Fuckin’ all guns blazin’. Prob’ly gonna come a’ us wi’ its smarmy ‘this Compyertationil Engine is cal’ul’a’in a si-vin-ty persint chance of us dyin’.” Selvsetter grabbed at Melissa’s armonly for a brief moment surprised at how human the simulated flesh was, dragging her back inside the vast Google vault. “C’men, we’ll fin’ a back way out-”

The virus blushed slightly for a moment, the rendered red clashing with the tinged-green pixels. [I…already have. That’s how I got in. There’s a system of low-level emergency access for easier general files’ access that isn’t available to the general public that links outward from the main server-]

A fusillade of simulated bullet struck the great archway, shaking the Google building and causing emergency lights to flicker on. Everywhere, hatches and panels slid open and apart, disgorging spiders and security personnel.

“Fuck tha’ shit, ‘lissa, le’s ge’ out if here!”

[Okay!]</font>