The Grand Battle II! [Happy End!]

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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With a slick splash, the Faceless fell off the stage, inching its way up the stairs to appraise the approaching undead. The corpse lurched to a halt as the darkness struggled to raise its slurried self. It was difficult to tell if the zombie recognised the starless pile as a target, before it resumed its shambling descent of the stairs, right into the waiting black. The slurry seemed to embrace the wretched creature, before it sharply retracted to ram an inky pseudopod through its head. Skull yielded to spike with a sickening crack, replacing Vyrm'n's vanishing starscape with a spatter of gore. The black spine was curiously still as the last snags of bone detached, retreating into the bulk as the decapitated corpse slumped into an aisle seat. None of the contestants moved, as the shadow melted up the stairs and slithered out into the main mall.

A horde of formerly peaceable shoppers milled about the theater lobby, about a score of necks snapping in the Faceless' direction as it exited before their owners turned and shambled towards the shadow. Samuel's light, presently in clumsy control of the normally mindless void-form, ignored the the ineffectual teeth and talons of the moaning dead as it struggled to interpret the atomic song permeating existence. The entity, murder incarnate, was as close to frustration as its limited personality could make itself. Having finally found a form that could equal it in its black-hearted purity, Conscience's inability to manipulate it maddened the zealous one. Eventually shrugging off the feeble efforts of one particularly persistent zombie, the shadow slipped through the grille of a bank teller, and crushed the undead employee's skull against the till before pooling on the blood-splattered tiles.

Ignoring the gathering mob of groaning horrors, Conscience crossed a universe; seeking, for the first time, understanding.

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Vyrm'n drifted, half-conscious, through a dimensionless darkness, its lack of definition a source of comfort to the battered, shrieked-at spirit. Normally this state would not have been worthy of note, the Faceless tiredly accepting of whatever horrors its voidself would commit, slipping back into a starscape whose song was marred only slightly by the rampage when the universe eventually deigned to howl a little softer.

This time, though, came an intruder to Vyrm'n's quiescence. The Faceless ineffectually told the Light to leave me alone, knowing the futility of her words.

Control it.

no

I will destroy you, Faceless.

no - The simple denial was this time nuanced with, well, not so much a challenge, but a refutation. Calling Conscience's bluff.

It is not my hand that must be stayed - the schrotgolem could gouge and carve you into oblivion if I provoked it.

Another denial, only wavering slightly as Vyrm'n argued the light could not bear to immolate what lay within.

A dank, cavernous chuckle was Conscience's reply. While ever the strongest of men cannot face the foes of their own heart, I will live on.

But what about you, Faceless?

...

Discrete, indivisible, unique... alone. Will you die for your pride, Vyrm'n?

...

Take control.

the void

With it, we can end this battle in three strokes - even the Observer himself, if you wish it. I will protect you.

Vyrm'n was drifting again, seemingly too tired to even think straight any more. Regardless, she wasn't accustomed to communicating here, in the solitude. Conscience was about to say something else, when it departed the nameless space to the Faceless' relief. Her peace was short-lived, as it flung itself across the void and returned, its oily tones aflame with triumph.

There is one with a flamethrower. The glass won't hold much longer.

Your move, Vyrm'n.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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SpoilerReserved. I'm not even gonna waste time threatening you dudes, but it'd be nice to see you guys in here at some point. Either that, or wander onto the IRC so we can get scheming about what we're gonna do.

Vyrm'n was tired. Ragged and worn and desiring nothing but sleep. And no matter where, within or without, she retreated to; the forces found her, screaming assimilation. Demanding an acceptance that she was trapped in the filthy amorphous howl of everything, to consent to it jabbering away at her until the Faceless was as deaf as the world, screaming forever without ever a moment to pause and listen again.

Death. Vyrm'n knew how to deal it to others, and yet understood so little of her own circumstance. Last time that incessantly keening unknown plagued her, it had driven her here while a baser form failed to make it reciprocate. All these thoughts were scattered, nebulous; but roiled into an overwhelming sense of ill-ease in Vyrm'n as she considered her options. Conscience, meanwhile, had drifted aside, letting the Faceless' own worries twist her into submission.

What is death like?

Beauty. Inimitable beauty in the act.

Somehow, these words resonated in Vyrm'n, but it wasn't what she wanted to hear...

And mine?

It will be beyond compare, Vyrm'n.

The spirit thought for another moment, then finally, misgivings obvious, gave in, letting that death-loving force approach and enshroud it.


In the Atrium, a solitary figure strode purposefully through the horde which totally ignored it; strange behaviour considering the woman was not a zombie herself. Or, at least, not in appearance. She carried a sizeable book, open at a page with a single rune emblazoned upon it, explanation for the undeads' disinterest. The necropolitan frowned as she walked into the entranceway.

The exit was walled off with barricades beyond rational manpower, replaced with a featureless wall of concrete. Somehow, this treatment didn't really surprise Clara, who was finding the lack of contestants far more disconcerting.

There was a lot of things about this set-up that didn't feel at all right to the nun, but amongst it all she mulled over the possibilities as to who had made the kill.


Vyrm'n returned to the world, and before even acknowledging the encroaching horde, she picked herself up off the floor, noting the tendencies of this new form. It seemed to resist motion while at rest, but became slicker and sharper as she moved, coercing her to swirl quietly - until the violet flames licked through the melting plexiglass.

Leaping into action, Vyrm'n swiftly took in the room, looking for a way to burst out and fight the horde. Conscience had settled around her mind, both sheltering and melding it to the still-raging void. The vestiges of Karma offered a swiftly fading aural colour to the Faceless' much-deteriorated atomic vision, but with these foes the potential that Samuel would've redistributed was long gone. Even with Conscience protecting her, the void still swallowed up much of the song, leaving the shadow with far less than it was used to to see the world. The hole at the teller was big enough for the first zombies to crawl through, their flesh sizzling against the molten glass.

Vyrm'n was ready, and promptly slammed a black spine through the first zombie's leering face. The second she grabbed by his head (and oddly-well-attached hat) and swung across, severing and cauterising his neck upon the blistering edge of the new-formed gap. Another rush of flame poured from that zombie with the mad grin, this time the violet dancing across the black with no glass to divert it. The Faceless did not flinch, instead rather calmly arcing a pseudopod through the flames, enveloping the clone's head, and swiftly and messily crushing it.

The flamethrower had cleared a decent area in front of the till, and Vyrm'n shrugged through the hole, pouring into the crowd. She was dimly aware of at least a few bullets plunging in as she systematically ripped apart the legion, one by one, but the universal song was no longer what fascinated her, even as chunks of it wailed within. No, the Faceless was taking savage delight in killing foe after foe, increasing the circle of stilled and shredded corpses around it. A graceful, skyward arc, and Vyrm'n left the ring, crushing the gunman upon impact.

Atomic focus swung around, taking in the carnage. The walking dead were now mostly assembling from the main crossroads, Vyrm'n having carved through all the undead humans cornered down the plaza that led to Electromagic. A poisonous, discordant tone alerted the shadow to a final zombie, standing outside the electronics store. The television screens, previously dead, now had lines upon lines of murderous words pouring down them, the bloody ink which emblazoned them pooling on the tiles below. Vyrm'n approached the enemy, taking in the height, the fur, the horns (one cracked), all marking this one out as distinctly inhuman. It turned, fixing the Faceless with its alien stare, before breaking into a run, arms outstretched, purple coal bursting over its shoulder as it launched towards Vyrm'n with a bloodstained snarl.

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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SpoilerI've found, from three days of experience, that the only person I ever seem to be able to catch on IRC is Dragon Fogel. Timezones aren't helping me at all... hopefully, come the weekend and the ability to chat between 10-15:00 GMT it brings, I might be able to participate with people...

Speaking of the weekend, that's roughly when I guess you can expect something from me - I am afraid that I am now entering exam season, with my first being this friday morning and the last being June 24th... 18 of the damned things in total... I tried hammering something out earlier, but I got "distracted" by the production and uses of biogas and ethanol...

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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SpoilerEurgh. Although by your clock I should've seen you about at some point (although I eschew Pesterchum for #MSPAFA, if there's a chance to chat I'll certainly frequent #grandbattle again), I'm actually trying to stop myself from being awake around the time you've available, because the usual extension of me being at a computer from 10pm-3am is me staying at said computer until I'm making the sun look tardy. Damn antipodes, and damn diurnal lecture timetables - I didn't actually go to sleep last night because by the time bed was looking like I good plan I could've kissed my 8am lecture goodbye. Still, this not being the first time I've done that this week, I'm almost a little scared I'm shifting into full-blown nocturnalism...

I mean, arguably the weekend should be a fine time to indulge my insomnia, but next thing you know I'm doing the pre-reading for Monday morning's lecture and debating whether it's worth waking up for (and normally these debates are viciously one-sided).

Yeah, exams are creeping up for me to. On that note, I actually had that Terms Test tomorrow, so... *sidles off to bed at the ludicrously reasonable hour of 11pm*

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

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SpoilerAlright ye bitches I'm about to go all Dragon Fogel on your punk asses. Nobody's posted since I posted two days ago? TOO BAD IM POSTING AGAIN

Y'all scrubs best be ready.

this new attitude may or may not last a week

A pile of boxes clattered and rolled across the stage, tumbled down the stairs to the floor, and slid out the door so recently used by the faceless. Hours (days? weeks? who could even tell through this sort of dimension-hopping?) of existentialism and planning and thought and emotion and mind-invasion had left Gestalt inwardly weary, and it had decided to settle back into the comfortable rhythm of near-mindless reaction. Under the simple and violent surface, deeper parts of the golem that it hadn't even been aware of until recently were clicking away, but the time for consciously mulling everything over was past; it would almost certainly come again, but for now there were new things to find and new things to kill.

The boxes formed a semicircle immediately outside the door labeled Observer Theater; lids snapped back in unison with the mechanical precision that had been somewhat absent as the battle had dragged on, and a whirlwind of blades sprang out. Putrescent flesh fell before the metallic onslaught; erstwhile shoppers were cut down, then their still-twitching limbs shredded. The pattern of attack was precise, repetitive, and uncreative, but mindless fleshy automata posed little challenge that mindless steel attacks couldn't overcome.

An observer might note that Vyrm'n's exit from the theater had stirred up the hungry dead, but the schrotgolem had no way of know that the swarming corpses were anything but the norm; its progress was slow but methodical, slicing through the revenants and reducing them to immobile heaps of tattered flesh and sundered bone. Ordinarily, it might not even have left the theater, but the word mall had piqued Gestalt's interest; shopping meant new and exciting things to find and explore, and if that meant mowing through these mindless things, so be it.

At a conscious level, Gestalt was thinking little save noting the direction and number of attacking zombies, and paying little attention to much beyond the closest bodies; this is probably why its cloud of bladed sundries was blindsided by a column of moldering starch swung through the air. Much of the golem's current arsenal was enveloped by rot; it panned its awareness towards the assaulter: a trunk-thick tendril of mold and what was probably once pasta was withdrawing towards a stand advertising itself as Ted's Tacos. Heaving itself over Ted's counter was... It was hard to tell past the maggots and dripping, festering fat, but it appeared to be a vaguely-spherical mass of meat, with writhing, over-boiled-pasta tentacles. It pulled itself over the counter and landed with a loud splat, then turned a desiccated, punctured and obviously-blind eye towards the Gestalt.

The golem fell back, consolidating its boxes and remaining weapons, wary of this new threat and unsure of how to kill i, but determined to do so.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Vyrm'n tensed, but was unused to the inertia of her new hybrid state, and only half-slipped out of the lunging Vexmagog's path. Dextrous digits gripped the receding black, swung around with a blank-eyed grin fixed in an expression of twisted malice, and the satyr punched the shadow with all its mindless fury. Raging, burning violet shrieked as it tore effortlessly through the Faceless. She didn't even have the time to yield; Magog's reality-warping fury simply carving through Vyrm'n's heart, the matter unable to stay silent in proximity to such an awful, chaotic tone. The Faceless was paralysed with the shock, the zombie sliding its arm out of the darkness as though it were the mere absence of light, and not a solid, pain-filled creature.

Between the pain not even Conscience could block out, and the twisted aura of the chaos god tearing reality asunder around her, Vyrm'n finally felt ready to concede to death. The world was fading as the black-hearted protector shut out more of the pain, more of everything, but Magog's nightmarish changes to reality were seeping into the cracks in the Faceless' mind - walls melting; the faces of Vyrm, Cabaret, countless others she'd slaughtered, craning their way out of the warp; their agonized moans tortuously filling the air, which stunk of ozone and iron; the only sight burnt into fading vision the sickly crawl of purple and coal up and around Vex's slashed, mangled torso.

"Approaching lifeforms. Unknown lifeform currently presents no interference to the cleansing. Known lifeform has previously proven hindrance to the cleansing. Initiating aggressive maneuvers to terminate known lifeform."

Vyrm'n was too preoccupied with the questing tendrils of Magog's insanity trying to skewer her mind, to hear the crescendoing hum, or the sharp retort of a pistol. She felt with a merciful cessation of the waves of madness, rather than saw, Vexmagog leaving her side to confront the vacuum cleaner. The sparking violet had clawed its way up Vex's furred face, charring it as it went. He could only manage an angry, animal snarl at the vacuum, before it intoned,

"Deploying Units VC-01 to VC-20 to assist with the cleansing." More vacuum cleaners, far less anachronistic than the one which spoke, rocketed out of Electromagic. Some charged out of the hardware store, brandishing power tools. They picked and harried at Vexmagog; a coordinated swarm unfaltering even when one of their number was seized with an indigo claw and tossed into their midst with a casing melted to iron-hard needles to show for its trouble. While the automatons kept the savage amalgam at bay, Eximo trundled up to a still-prone Vyrm'n, its unblinking robotic eye indifferent to whether she was staring back.
"Unknown lifeform will be requested to vacate the area immediately for cleansing. Failure to do so will result in termination. Hail Konka Rar!"

Vexmagog had vacated the area for long enough that the accumulated madness had had a chance to disperse, but Vyrm'n still saw Eximo's command come from the mouth of some terrible abomination. Shifting uneasily, tentatively filling up the hole Magog had carved in her, the Faceless needed no second invitation. She leapt in the air (a little awkwardly, her lack of balance caused by the unexpected loss of mass) and fled the section of the mall. The breeze whisked away the last of the mad shroud, and cleared Vyrm'n's thoughts.

You're fading away, Faceless. You could have killed that madbeast without effort. What stopped you?

... the faces

You feel guilt for that now, Vyrm'n? What's wrong with you? Vyrm'n didn't want to say it, though realised her consciousness and this one's were so bound, it almost went without saying. Almost.

Maxwell

... What has he done for you? Shackled you. Branded and shamed you for something you found natural. Bound you, in his righteousness, to an ideal even he can not uphold.

...? They were cruising over the four-way intersection; Gestalt was fighting some monstrous, tentacled horror. The Faceless went right.

He killed, Vyrm'n. Maxwell Deakin slew the Karmist.

you're lying

Ask him, then. It's worth only your freedom.

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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SpoilerOK so technically this is not going to be English Literature revision, but I think if I consume too much more of William Golding's marvellous ability to overcook an allegory my mind will explode. Reserved, with the potential to stretch a couple of hours if I have dinner a bit on the early side...

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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With immeasurable relief, Galus at long last clamped his hands around his gun. It had indeed been removed from him during the stagefight, and by forces unbeknownst moved itself to some obscure corner of the stage. But now, at least, it was back in his hands. That gross aberrance, unliving yet walking flesh and bone, was going to to require dispatching. He certainly didn't like the sound, however, of having to cope with thousands of them, and the gun in his hand, no matter how much faith he might place in it, was probably not going to be sufficient.

But still, he could make an effort. Having become somewhat detached from the proceedings whilst the search was on, at first finding the zombie that had so alarmed him was tricky. It, along with Vyrm'n, curiously enough, had vanished with no apparent trace...

Then, in the wings, a couple of shadows congealed to form a silhouette, obviously of a man, stumbling somewhat as it tried its best to lurch towards Galus. Eminating from it, he had to presume, was a distinctive whiff of blood. He had his target. There was, though, a little something nagging him. What he knew about the undead, he got from stories. Fiction. The infestation here, that was fact, and a nasty one at that. Hopefully, they followed the rules and cliches of those fables, and a couple of rounds would do the trick. Hopefully.

But then, thankfully, a little common sense overruled his adrenaline. After all, he was pretty sure his prey hadn't been wearing a hat.

"...f-fabulous. Just the human being I was ever so slightly kinda hoping to see!"

The gun clattered to the floor once more, possibly through the shock attached to the sight of the bedraggled Maxwell, possibly because of the sudden weight that had somehow been added to the device, mere moments prior aimed at his head.

"...um, sorry if I, er, well, surprised you; I surprised myself, I'll give you, um, that..."

The dishevelled mess in front of him did wonders to the mind of Galus. Gestalt had crashed to the floor but was, by the admisson of his very words, still there enough to be considered alive. Vyrm'n was off somewhere, living up to the legend of "enigma" as only she knew how to. So that left, um...

"Samuel?"

A little glimmer of crimson on Maxwell's shoes was suddenly a rather impenetrable wall in the exchange, one that dwarfed any previous hope Galus had had for both their relative sanities. There had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation and he so wished he could ask for one, plain and simple, but his throat was dry and caustic, as the possibility that there might not be one. There was, of course, the horrible possibility that he'd underestimated the man before him - he was still in this battle to the death, after all. So instead, the next best thing; standing there agape, watching the tremulant fool in front of him brush himself down.

With a slur on par with a drunkard sloshing his last sentient words for the night, Maxwell spoke:

"You were... on the right track there. Yes. Yeah, good. I... recommend you explore it, um, further..."

...

"Gun. Head. As per Samuel, I think. It... it'll be fitting. Please"

Now it was obvious, but there was still the sheer enormity of it to get through. The atrocity alone was enough to force words from Galus's mouth.

"Did you kill him?"

There was an apathetic emission of air from Maxwell, presumably a chuckle gone wrong.

"Does it matter? Can you really distinguish between the man who pulled the trigger and... and the imbecile, who gave him the gun in the first place? Do you care? Ah, there, see, that's the best one of the three, I guarentee you. Either way you look at it, or, if, like me, you choose, for reasons I daren't stress, to look at it from underneath, I had a hand in his demise. Two, actually. You can't hold a shotgun with just the one."

Maxwell was faltering, still a tad aquiver. With the riddle unravelling in his mind, this gave Galus the confidence he needed to stand up straight and look his opponent in the eye.

"You don't deserve to die."

"And what right do you have to toy with my life? It's mine to do whatever I want with, or at least, it should be. You've been trained, if I understand things correctly, to fight, to kill, to do so, I suppose, for what you know to be the greater good, which absorbs so readily the reprecussions of your actions. I've been trained to think, and I think that the burden of a death is too great a weight for these frail shoulders. But one more to you? Pah..."

In the sluggish seconds that followed, that gaze was held, from orange to brown and back again. The subsequent snap of both parties caused enough chaos to blur time, but through methods quite discernable, the Urisian's gun was back in its rightful place on his belt and the suicidal Maxwell was writhing on the stage floor.

"You don't deserve to die, by my hand at least."

With a battered pride, a sigh was the other man's best affirmation of defeat.

"I... I... I'm afraid I might need a hand with getting up. Um, yeah."

A slightly different type of sigh tore free from Galus, and with no noticable effort Maxwell was, though admittedly rather shakily, back on his feet. Mumbling something comparable to a thanks, he tottered off, still swaying as he found his bearings, back into the wings from whence he came. This was all accompanied by a bit of furitive digging in pockets of pockets that was only brief significance to Galus, who preferred instead to turn back to the door at the end of the theatre, to where a couple of boxes were slinking themselves out into the unknown world.

"...you know, it should've occured to me that emergencies are never really going to be totally satisfactory by their very definition... do you have any water on you? I daren't stretch to milk..."

In one hand, Maxwell held the Director's last gift - a cardboard copper kettle. In the other, a pile of random, pocket-sized detritus with a couple of teabags perching on top.

"...you are insane. I knew it."

"How can you call this insanity? I have nerves that need calming right now and I expect you do to. Trust me, this is the best possible way of doing so..."

Finally, at long last, Maxwell set eyes upon an undead foe - this one plantively pottering its way down the aisle towards them, uninterested in the boxes that had since rolled past.

"Oh. People. Do you think he might know where we can find a spot of water?"

"Maxwell, he's dead. Well, undead, actually. The Observer said that there are thousands of them out there, in some big Mall or something."

"Ooh, a mall! Excellent! That means milk! Maybe even a spot of Earl Grey, if I can be so lucky..."

Galus facepalmed.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

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SpoilerBleh, starting my Quest to Post the night before the night I run a weekly real-life D&D campaign was a mistake. Still, post ahoy.

The strains of tea-centric conversation floated out of the quiet auditorium and into the main hall; the small irony of the subject would have been lost on Gestalt even were it not drowned out by the bubbling, keening noise the rotted meat that once called itself Gormand was emitting. Near-undirected coils lashed at the golem who could do little but fall back under the assault; blades buried themselves in the pulpy mass and were tugged away, bludgeons collided with its surface and bounced harmlessly off, and even with the vestiges of karmic power and the new knowledge of life and power that linking with Samuel had brought, Gestalt could exert no influence over the fetid creature. The harried schrotgolem was so occupied merely with avoiding the noodly onslaught that it was unable to fend off the lesser shamblers; seeing no other option, the crates barreled through an obese woman and her necrotic son, careening down a hall towards the apparently-peaceful "Grocer Delight".

Judging by the ransacked appearance of the store, the zombies had been here long enough to pick clean every shred of non-undead meat that might have been here. Nothing appeared to be moving, so Gestalt's marionette scurried up and released a sliding metal door that superficially reminded the schrotgolem of a portcullis, but solid. A number of exploratory objects emerged from the crates, including the now-very-tattered glove that had been present since before the first round. Presuming itself safe behind the security door, Gestalt began methodically examining the detritus and produce of the grocery, each smashed banana and stray wingnut a wonderful new experience.

By the broken iceboxes, there was a large cat. Its ears were tattered, its fur was missing in places, and its intestines were poking out through festering wounds; to describe it as sleeping would be inaccurate, as the living dead are incapable of slumber. Perhaps dormant was the word. In any case, it was unmoving and unaware, curled up on a pile of garbage and food; if it weren't for the obvious zombification, it might have made for quite the adorable image. Still, as Gestalt picked through its new treasures, the cat's ears twitched, and its eyelids snapped open, revealing a feral yellow glare in one socket and some sort of writhing larva in the other.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Vyrm'n flew near-blind over the heads of hundreds of undead, their rotted hands thrust skyward, jostling each other as they clawed ineffectually up at the passing shadow. Up ahead at the junction, the three-foot high letters proclaimed the entrance to the swimming complex. A suited figure swayed slightly as he straddled the arched crown of the lowercase 's', his skeletal wings threatening to upset his balance and send him toppling into the moaning horde below. Flying on a collision course, Faceless arced sharply out of the way as Nothing unfolded his wings with a death-rattle, the burst of bones knocking him off his perch. Fleshless wings stretched and snapped to raise the reaper as it banked, cleaving off a few unfortunate heads as he unconcernedly extracted his scythe and climbed after Vyrm'n.

The Faceless could've snarled with frustration as Nothing pursued her, reaper blade keening with the promise to seize the basest part of her and shatter it to pieces. Vyrm'n had the speed, but neither the agility or sense of cunning at the moment to outmaneuver her mindless, methodical foe. The pair arced and weaved above the upturned, putrefied faces, the Faceless often killing gravity to narrowly avoid the leisurely cleave of a swinging scythe. Conscience's rasping at the inside of her brain, commanding the foe be struck down, torn apart; the shadow swooped lower until she could feel the bloodied, necrotic fingers scraping at the pitch. The suited skull followed with a shuddering, sighing beat of his wings, closing the gap. Vyrm'n crashed atop several more zombies, spurting rotten, mushed innards from the horned, now-inverted helm and black armour of a knight missing both hands and one arm, but dragged herself sharply toward the oncoming reaper's direction instead of letting herself skid back in the direction of the theatre.

Black matter coiling like a spring to provide the necessary thrust, Vyrm'n leapt as Nothing brandished his scythe and prepared to strike. The pair collided, shadow streaking upwards as she rammed the angel of death into the fluorescent lights above, grimly satisfied with the crunch of bone and shimmer of falling glass. Backing away from the keening scythe, the shadow ducked back, then plummeted after the broken reaper as he fell bodily into the horde; comet twisting upon itself, the tip sharpening, coiling, into a massive black arrow -

Vyrm'n uncoiled from the mangled remains of Nothing, rising up to survey the horde. Somehow, she wasn't quite as towering as she used to be, but Magog's ravaging punch had taken a lot out of the Faceless. A spine accelerated out and impaled a white-haired girl with her jaw torn off; a sick gurgle that could well have been relief forced its way out and around the spike before Vyrm'n tossed the lifeless remnants into the crowd. Whatever grip Vyrm'n had on the meagre scrap of reality Conscience felt she was fit to hear, it was battling furiously within against brutal, callous, desolation - and its sidekick panic.

Too many the strong ones the ones they aren't human why are they here why are there so many The core of death, just for a split second, let the noise of the world rush forward. The assault nearly liquefied Vyrm'n out of cohesion on the spot, before it wrenched it back to the lowest whisper. Can you recover lost mass, Faceless?

Shaken, she whimpered; it can be done I don't know it doesn't like to listen it doesn't like me listening it needs telling so much telling but I don't want to speak- a black snarl, and another burst of reality, so cacophonous as to be blinding, but forcing the Faceless into slightly more coherence -the mill maybe it had a way of singing that it didn't care about who commanded up and where

A final pulse, this one gentler, and fading to a manageable level atomic vision. The zombies, having stripped clean their slaughtered compatriots, turned and advanced on the trembling Faceless. Take it out on the horde, Vyrm'n. I will find you another mill.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

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Spoilerbluh bluh lazy post is terrible

To some extent, a zombie is a zombie, regardless of what it used to be; their brains barely serve to control or advise the body, rather acting simply as a vessel for necromantic energy and enchantments. Still, a shape begets a function, and even the most basic of reanimations can eke out some of the body's old skills or habits. Currently, the mindless thrall that might once have called itself Niko was crouching under a vegetable stand, watching bits of the golem trundle around and pick through the mostly-worthless things that covered the floor. With one last twitch of its tail, the cat launched itself a marionette with an armful of plums.

The puppet was bowled over by the zombie colliding with it, and before it could move it was pinned beneath paws whose exposed bones were just as sharp as the claws it still hard; necroniko's bites were somewhat less effective at rending would than they were once against flesh, but in the time it took Gestalt to react, several chunks of its favorite tool's face were missing.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

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The marionette scrambled as best it could away from the attacking ocelot, but could do little to escape; eventually Gestalt abandoned the pretense of humanlike movement and simply yanked the doll away from the furious ball of claws and fangs and death. The puppet skidded across the floor, leaving one arm in Niko's mouth, while the swarm of weapons leapt out of their boxes and advanced. Assuming the cat would have little more grace or speed than the average humanoid zomie turned out to be a mistake: the golem sent two groups of knives crashing together, intending to sever the thing's head from its body, but with a twitch of her ears and a leap, the decaying parody of life moved well out of the way of the attack. Mid-jump, she raked her claws across the surface of a crate before landing well out of range of immediate retaliation.

Gestalt grouped his remaining tools together, reasoning that the cat had only been able to so easily successfully hit and run because the golem's strength was spread out. Forming a defensive ring of blades and bludgeons around its now-huddling crates, Gestalt waited for its opponent to make the first move. Niko for her part prowled slowly in a circle, seemingly looking for an opening but in truth merely playing out the preprogrammed actions her body remembered. Her jaws worked absently, gradually reducing the still-struggling arm to splinters.

Without any sort of warning or indeed logical reason for doing so, the ocelot launched herself towards the bristling wall of weaponry that was Gestalt's outer rim, tattered vocal cords producing an ululating yowl and claws outspread. Against a foe without 360 degree 'vision' it might even have worked well, but the golem was ready and quickly twitched her target away before sending a hail of sharp objects her way. Niko's speed served her well again, however, and only an old breadknife and a hatpin buried themselves in her rotting flesh. Her claws scrabbled on the floor as she landed, turning her around in an inelegant-but-efficient manner, and she pushed off the crates, launching herself back towards the iceboxes.

A trail of slime and fetid meat lead from the main area of the mall down one of its side halls; anyone with the stomach to follow it would see what appeared to be a colossal pile of ground beef that was obviously several years past its prime. Its surface moved as countless maggots and mealworms went about their foul duties, and the mass itself oozed towards the now-sealed Grocer Delight, dragging several disintegrating pasta tentacles. As it approached the security door, it raised one and sent it crashing into the steel; the door crumpled slightly, and the meat for its part rippled with the force of the impact, sending uncountable flies buzzing angrily into the air before returning to their repugnant meal. The hall behind Gormand was packed with moaning corpses, all intent on pursuing the golem the instant to door gave way.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Fresh number-crunching stats/Schazer was so freaking bored last night:

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SpoilerTotal words Round 1: 30,069
Total words Round 2: 25,175
Total words Round 3: 37,273
Total words Round 4: 12,426
Total words Round 5: 7,065 (and counting)

Total words written so far in GBII: 112,008

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

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Gestalt was becoming frustrated; while the cat had managed to inflict little real damage, the golem had inflicted even less. It was being bested by a mindless zombie of a primitive feline; it was worse than frustrating, it was embarrassing. On top of that, something was clearly attempting to batter down the portcullis, which severely limited Gestalt's time to deal with the cat. Clearly a different tack was in order.

The crates' lids snapped open again, and all of Gestalt's things save for those embedded in Niko or Gormand returned to their places. The crates themselves slid quickly across the floor, repositioning themselves in an apparently-vulnerable area by the refrigerated section; Niko had a straight shot for a pounce, and Gestalt had no ready weapons to defend itself. Lacking the higher thought to be suspicious of such an obvious mistake, the ocelot lumped, claws out and snarling.

The golem did little in response until she reached the apex of her jump; it then sent a small tendril of itself into the handle of one of the refrigerator doors lining this side of Grocer Delight and yanked it open. Thick safety glass collided at high speed with the even higher-speed cat; the glass fared much better, and it was safe to assume the sickening crunch was bony in nature rather than silicate. Niko went sprawling as the door bounced back into place, no longer possessed by the schrotgolem.

The boxes moves closer to the downed ocelot; Gestalt was intent on finishing this zombie like it had in the past. There was no movement from her, which was unsurprising; her skull had been essentially flattened, and her spine had been forced backwards so quickly that it had kinked and now protruded from split skin down her back. As one crate slid ponderously open to allow a large butcher's cleaver to rise out, Niko's smashed face... rippled. Her mouth suddenly shot open, and a pale hand reached out. Gestalt started and backed away, waiting to see what was happening, and the hand was followed by an arm; eventually a shoulder joined it, splitting Niko's mouth open and tearing the skin on her cheeks. Eventually all of the cat's shattered body split like a fleshy chrysalis, and a female zombie dressed in a plain, sodden clothes pulled herself to her feet; her jaw was slack and her eyes milky, but her head snapped with unnatural precision towards Gestalt, raising a large, curved knife and emitting a bubbling moan.

Originally posted on MSPA by Opirian.

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SpoilerSadly this is not a post or a reserve but a notice that life has finally calmed the frak down... I will get to reading and eventually some decent posting on my part.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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The Faceless craned about a little while it absently bashed and lashed out at the encroaching horde, Vyrm'n's omnidirectional blows at odds with a questing Conscience who was unused to such directionless vision. Its focus leapt in disconnected little hops from one potential mill to the next, each questioning pulse rejected by a flinching Vyrm'n who huddled deeper and deeper from the mind-rending drone of reality, none of the undead showing the capability to restore the shadow's mute repose.

Conscience snarled, tired of this fruitless search through screaming sentience. Too unused to atomic vision to sense the nuances, the ripples through reality the otherworldly ones traced on their journey to the here and now, it was getting angrier and angrier. Each useless spark of existence rammed in Vyrm'n's face with increasing force, the tether Conscience dragging her behind the starless Void-death, dragging her further and further from the surface and I just want to dive under and not have to hear the world the fragment world its agonising I'm tired of listening why won't it stop

There.

Vyrm'n sluggishly followed Conscience's gaze, to a dull crash. It would've gone unheard, were the Faceless not tracking the tumble of fishbowl from hunched shoulders, as Glere tossed away his own head rather than tolerate any more murderous females in it. But the Faceless had no interest in the song of the now-headless corpse, or even the foreign sentience-keen the now-shattered glass bowl possessed. Even before Conscience could get in a command, the shadow leapt skyward as a thrumming chainsaw materialised from the folds of the Fishbowlkin's cloak.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

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It wasn't difficult for Gestalt to wrench the knife out of the zombie's hand and send it plunging repeatedly into her chest; it wasn't hard to tangle her clothes around her legs and send her crashing to the floor; it wasn't even hard to send barrages of the golem's usual weapons crashing into the rotting frame of the dead girl. It just didn't seem to matter; no amount of stab wounds marring her chest slowed her down, and as her clothes constricted around her, she simply tore out of them and pulled herself to her feet once more.

It was lucky enough for the schrotgolem that it wasn't human, or even organic, because most such things would have been hard-pressed not to retch at the sight of the zombie's naked figure. Putrid fat spilled out of her maggot-ridden breasts where the knife had done its grisly work, and dripping intestines tumbled out of both wounds and decayed patches of skin. It was clear that her left arm was only held on by ligaments which were stretching with the weight of the flesh, effecting an image of a limb attached by cobwebs. The entire corpse reeked of drowned animals, and the flesh was pale and spongy and prone to dropping off in chunks. She lurched towards Gestalt, unaware of or ignoring the knives and bludgeons that were steadily tearing through her pulpy flesh.

It was as she approached the pile of boxes that her own knife tore through the cartilage holding her arm on and tipped a large gash down her side; as the skin split and the festering muscles beneath revealed themselves, claw-tipped fingers pressed themselves through the necrotic fibers. There were several snaps as the zombie's ribs broke, and a nearly-human hand scratched and pushed its way out through her side. A shoulder and neck followed, topped by a grinning, needle-toothed face; its features were bizarrely feline, exaggerated mockeries of what they should have been, and it slavered and bit at the air. The original woman was still doggedly pressing towards Gestalt, and the new one clawed excitedly towards the golem despite still being much too far away to land a hit.

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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SpoilerThe result of ten hours work, starting with scheming on IRC with Schazer, then taking an awfully long time to prepare itself (read: too many distractions) and finally being truncated before I'm done with it. Ah well. It's a post.

Buried under layers of shimmering strings, well-trodden connections between restless brain cells, hidden out of sight from any mortal lacking a trepanning kit, Maxwell was reasonably certain there was a small part of his brain that didn't like him. The enormity of the acts causality could pin on him had to be processed, as a matter of habit - every detail combed to analyse motives and identify mysteries worth pursuing in a field of thought completely new to him. Death. Killing. Murder. Whatever. The ethical connotations, the mindset of a killer, what role was played by cause and effect; by default, all of these things were novel lines of speculation and reasoning and so all had to be considered equally and thoroughly.

But something didn't like it. Something within him, his moral grounding upon which his life was based, was clashing with the attention Maxwell was giving to the idea of killing. So what if the man himself at yet to fire a shot, or to plunge a knife or drop a bomb or kick or punch or rip or tear - the thoughts were starting to be there, to be acknowledged, and that was not good.

So it was revolting, knocking his brain slightly out of frame, skewing his way of viewing reality as it tried to find a common ground. Some things were being disconnected, others were being shut down. Lines of contemplation were being destroyed before they could manifest themselves and have an impact on the already fragile shell Maxwell was hiding behind from the cruelty of the world.

The notable side effect of this was that he now had a rather perturbing headache, thumping away somewhere in the left side of his mind.

He couldn't quite bring himself to care. This wasn't quite helping Galus one bit.

"I expect Gestalt and Vyrm'n have already wrought havoc upon the zombies in the immediate area, but there's bound to be more. You'll need some way of protecting yourself, you must realise that..."

Maxwell meanwhile was exceptionally interested in the noises he could make if he struck his kettle in various manners with his fingernails. Scratches, clicks and clangs, thwumps and thoops; all neat little distractions from the unsettling reality around him.

"Your rapier, where is it?"

"Good question. I think I threw it away somewhere, somewhen."

Galus's patience with the supposed genius was wearing thin. "You are in the middle of a fight, Maxwell, and you throw away your weapon? Are you ma- yes, you are mad. I can damn well tell."

Maxwell had discovered that the kettle was, through some sheer coincidence, remarkably good as a hat.

"Look, I can't just leave you to die. You might be entirely insane, but you are human and you've done nothing wrong."

"Insane? Oooh, listen to the pot calling the kettle black, hey? Do you think it is reasonable and rational to go around killing people?"

"To be fair, our current enemies are dead already. We can't exactly kill dead people, can we?"

This forced a pause in Maxwell's mindless antics. For a moment or two, he'd found something well worth considering. A sort of far-away look crept across his eyes.

"I could argue with that, but I fear I lack the time. The highest point on today's agenda is the finding of some decent milk. Now that you can't argue with, hey?"

Seemingly pleased with what he had just achieved, Maxwell bounded off up the theatre steps, traversing them two at a time, every jump taking him, in his mind, closer to a source of a beverage capable of soothing and repairing his brain. In Galus's mind, it was another unprecedented and extremely frustrating spanner in the works. Shouting warnings and cursing under his breath in alternation, the pilot pursued him, thankful that, at the very top of the steps, Maxwell had the sense to stop.

Admittedly, he was standing there quite agape at the sight that had met him, but at least he had stopped bouncing about the place.

There were too many bodies on the floor - spread across the faux carpet, small piles of corpses protruded above the sea of gore, fleeting patches of untouched ground rarities in their own right. Some people were without heads, lacking limbs or body parts, some with internal organs peering out from behind broken bones. Into the distance, the carnage stretched, halting at river of revolting gloop, nefariously noxious even from where Galus was standing. Beyond that, a myriad of undead shoppers ploughed on, shabbily stepping across the hall, bumping on occasion into shop windows and planters.

"...well, on the plus side, um, we're kinda safe for a bit."

"Maxwell, look, I don't know if I should do this but... oh, nevermind; look, you know how to use a gun, right?"

"...that way, I pres- oh, yes, yes, as it happens - Uncle used to take me down to Bolselin House every now and again when the clay-pigeon shooting was on. That was, ooooohhhh..."

At this, Galus reached for the pistol on his belt.

"Good. Now, for your protection, I want you to have-"

"Mind you, they never said I was any good at it, which surprised me. I mean, come on, think about it; compared to trying to shoot a moving target from a fair way away, it's much more logical just to wait for the damned thing to land, then shoot it. Nice and easy, you're bound to hit your target and you get a fair bit more exercise if you have to trudge your way through the meadows to get to them. Never could quite see it any other way, I'm afraid..."

Galus was starting to question quite why he was so intent on keeping Maxwell alive. Conscience was one thing - surviving this competition with the now impossible lunatic in tow was most certainly another.

"Forget it then..."

"Great, now that's other with... call this a hunch, but I'm gonna say that a stall named "Refreshments" will, you know, probably do refreshments..."

Seemingly with no rational concern for his safety, Maxwell took off, adopting some bizarre hopscotch-style dance to manoeuvre his way through the incapacitated zombies, fleeing flawlessly through the liquefying bodies whilst hardly touching them. The swearing and oaths this display caused to escape from Galus's mouth were unnoticed, despite their crescendo as Maxwell slipped into the stall.

"Stop it, stop it! You haven't even checked the damned place out for zombies, you bloody fool! There could be one of the buggers standing right there in the doorway and you wouldn't have a clue, would you?"

Anger and agitation fuelled Galus's traversal of the gore, nimbly navigating the mountains of cadavers and being awkwardly careful not to douse himself in bodily fluids. Puddles of ichors were tackled with the helmet down, so as to keep his nostrils from bearing the brunt of a most repugnant malodour. Eventually, he stumbled through the side door, prepared for the worst.

There were two bodies on the floor, both adorned with ragged clothes and manifold maggots. They appeared stationary, having seemingly been pummelled several times with a reasonably large blunt object that had left definite dents in their shapes. Then there was Maxwell, casually rifling through an antiquated refridgerator.

"Hang on, I thought you said-"

At this point, Maxwell turned away from the trove he had unearthed, becoming slightly silhouetted against the feeble fridge glow.

"Look, they were standing in front of this, so I had a bit of a word and, well, sadly, they didn't exactly want to listen, the poor blighters. Well, I'm a busy man, you know, and besides, it really isn't nice to stare, especially if you're missing an eye..."

This revelation was starting to gnaw on Galus - which was now the more enigmatic; Vyrm'n, who having shown herself to be a monster with an unrestrainable urge to kill, had shown a side more helpful; or Maxwell, who had calmed aforementioned beast and expressed a core belief in pacifism, yet presently had become decidedly deranged and disconnected with his prior expressions. So, which contradiction was the most incredible?

"Well, what would you say the chances are that we are on a planet or space station or whatever where the milk is supposed to be fluorescent blue, hey? Not to mention it having green lumps in it... I guess I'll just have to have it black then..."

Thinking of which...

"So, um, where do you think Vyrm'm's gotten to?"

"Easy. Go back outside, look down the hall, then up."

Curiosity overrode fears for his safety and so, clutching his gun, Galus risked a peek outside. The mall stretched on for some considerable distance, culminating in a large frontispiece. Various shades of blues and whites appeared faded and presumably cracked, with the signage itself readily rusting at the edges. It was, apparently, a "Splash World". A place of fun and leisure, for all the family, if they were sentient to bumble through its open doors...

He looked up, as requested. The facade didn't quite meet the ceiling, curtailing in a fancy wave-shaped cornice that left a few feet between it and the roof. There were a few lights dangling from the ceiling, but he couldn't see any trace of Vyrm'n.

What he could see was much lower down; a horde of zombies, finally having twigged to their presence, were blundering their merry way over to the refreshment kiosk.

"Maxwell."

"Did you not notice it? One of the lights has broken. No longer does it illumine what I can only presume to be a water park. Do you not wonder why? I'm afraid I do. It can't have been ravaged by the passage of time that has made this milk capable of defying gravity - no, were that the case, I'm sure many more of those lights would have long since given up the ghost. I very much doubt one of our deceased guests could have gotten up there and Gestalt would have had to have made one heck of a tendril to reach, but for what purpose? No, the simplest explanation is that Vyrm'n broke it, somehow. So I'd eat my hat if she's not somewhere around there-ish... actually, that might not be so bad; I am a bit hungry and I'm not entirely sure when I last ate..."

Galus grimaced and adopted the manner of a teacher preaching to a misbehaving child.

"Thank you for that Maxwell. Now you're finished conjecturing, there is mob of zombies lurching their way here... oh, why do I bother?"

Once more, Maxwell was ignoring his companion; the current, far more interesting thing to do was to whack the tap above the stall's sink repeatedly with his kettle. With his lack of involvement pretty much assured, at least for the time being, Galus set about readying himself for the coming onslaught.

"Urgh... when I said I fancied it black, I wasn't referring to the water I used to make it..."

"Are you quite done yet?"

"Wha- um, maybe?"

A zombie finally got within range and was swiftly dealt with, crumpling down on itself as a few expertly-aimed bullets destroyed its head. Oblivious to the loss of one of their number, the remaining crowd stumbled on, each shuffle bringing them a step closer to their living prey.

“Meh, good enough.”

Originally posted on MSPA by Opirian.

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SpoilerBah, I'm a filthy liar it seems, and also my character is being developed so much more nicely than I could have done.

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

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SpoilerWhat's that? You want assorted numbers? Comin' right up!

Stats for The Grand Battle II:
Total Word Count: 119038
Total Post Count: 253
Average Post Length: 470.51

Word Counts in The Grand Battle II:
1: Schazer - 48974
2: Sruixan - 22397
3: bobthepen - 17416
4: SleepingOrange - 12146
5: Archduke_Ferdinand - 6697
6: Opirian - 3917
7: snoomanwaff - 3379
8: yousodumb - 2644
9: cyber95 - 1431
10: Dragon Fogel - 37

Average Post Lengths in The Grand Battle II:
1: Schazer - 699.63
2: bobthepen - 600.55
3: Sruixan - 533.26
4: Archduke_Ferdinand - 372.06
5: SleepingOrange - 337.39
6: Opirian - 261.13
7: cyber95 - 238.5
8: yousodumb - 203.38
9: snoomanwaff - 146.91
10: Dragon Fogel - 37

Current Battle Word Counts:
The Grand Battle - 123883
The Grand Battle II - 119038
Battle Royale - 123003

Current Overall Top 5 Player Word Counts:
1: Schazer - 54652
2: Dragon Fogel - 41925
3: MyifanW - 34320
4: Aryogaton - 30349
5: Drakenforge - 26000

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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SpoilerReposting for major edits to the non-Vyrm'n bit at the end, plus for the record: after some discussion about some things that I should've thought through before I was allowed at the keyboard, with Cyber's permission I went back and retconned this post (the bit about Clara), as the way I originally worded it contravened with the circumstance we're trying to set up. No actions changed; just what Clara was thinking.

Vyrm'n slipped along the ground, flattening to avoid the incoming screech of the chainsaw as its momentum nearly dragged the bloodied, necrotic humanoid wielding it off his feet; before it continued in its wide arc and cleaved off an encroaching zombie's head. Knocking the feet out from under more shambling corpses, their skulls cracked open upon impact with the slippery, innard-stained tiles, the Faceless danced around its prize.

Glere, resplendent in a suit with the remnants of his vocal chords trailing all down the front, had cleaved a considerable space around him. The chainsaw rattled away, caked in ichor and congealed blood, pitch rising as the Fishbowlkin raised it against the orbiting shadow.

The Faceless snaked behind him, and struck. It eschewed its usual strategies of impalement or crushing the skull, the void dulling Vyrm'n's ability to determine where accursed undead ended and matter-granting saviour began. Darting forward and wrapping round Glere's ankles, Vyrm'n launched up the startled zombie, immobilising his arms before the chainsaw could get its teeth in.

As the smooth black crawled alongside Glere's cape, Vyrm'n savoured the aurally cool sensation of the cavernously empty hammerspace. Even the discordant warble of warped space couldn't stop that from looking inviting to the beleaguered Faceless. With only a moments hesitation, more of the shadow dragged itself up and into the folds of the cape.

For a moment, nothing happened as Vyrm'n swiftly acquainted herself with the mess of objects which filled a fair chunk of the null space. A comfortingly finite mess, though, thought the Faceless as it sent out a questing black tendril back out into the screaming world, neatly and traditionally punching a sizeable hole through the Fishbowlkin's chest. Vyrm'n wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that the pocket dimension did not snap shut with the gurgling expiration of its host. Undeterred, another pseudopod snaked round the corpse's midriff, splitting off and raising Glere's body up on star-speckled stilts. With several shambling steps to get the movement right, the aberration lurched its way to the swimming complex, striding over the heads of the horde.

From the shelter of a Dance Dance Revolution game stationed outside Wondercade, an unlikely duo observed this strange sight. The one who still had a lip to bite was presently doing so, tightly clutching her heavy tome. As Vyrm'n vanished out of sight, her cloaked companion motioned with his staff the direction they had to get going.


Earlier...

Clara had little trouble tuning out the moans of the undead as she busied herself with her predicament. It was a little distracting, certainly, but she had the calm professionalism to treat it as background noise, alert for the sound of anyone, contestant or more intelligently dangerous denizen of this locale, approaching her.

Hence, when the purposeful, rhythmical footfalls tapped out an order above the groaning, the nun triggered a few precautionary abjurations she'd set up before turning to greet whoever else was alive in this microcosmic hell. Stopping a safe, respectful distance from Clara, the lich spoke. It was hard to gauge using his skeletal features, but Konka Rar didn't sound all that pleased.

"Would you care to explain what is going on here?"

Cautiously confident with her wards, Clara had the luxury of not looking too startled as she studied the lich. If it weren't for his response, she would've blamed him for all the undead shambling around the place.

"But of course," replied the necropolitan, gripping her cane a little tighter. "If only I had a clue."

Konka glared at Clara, mind working feverishly. "Tell me... what do you know about... the Cultivator? The Savage Brawl? If you've seen-" the look on Clara's face halted the necromancer, such was her thunderstruck expression.

"Eight contestants, drawn together from all the forsaken corners of the world, to fight to the death." The comprehension on the lich's face made Clara's crumple a little. "Oh lord, it's not just one battle, is it?"

The necromancer nodded, relieved to finally be able to shed some light on the situation. "Assuming you were never introduced to a vacuum cleaner, then yes, that makes at least three." Reasoning Clara could tell him little else useful about this place, the sorcer turned to leave with a turn of his cloak.

"Wait. Please... what can you tell me about these undead?" Konka looked nonplussed. "It's... not my kind of magic. That's all I know."

"Your kind?"

"Ah. Sister Clara Jungfrau, in the Church of Schleier. Necropolitan," she added, after considering the varied races found in her own battle. Tucking the tome under one arm, she proffered the other to the lich. He took it.

"Konka Rar, necromancer and roboticist. So, next question. Where is this, and is there any opportunity to escape?"

"I... I don't know. At first, I was under the impression someone had been killed and we'd moved on, but I haven't seen any other contestants - I'm rather certain."

The crash that followed wasn't resounding, but it dragged the undead pair's attention back in the direction of the rest of the mall - just in time to see a broken human form journey gracelessly from ceiling to floor, pursued by a malevolent black streak which crushed it (its impact audibly). Konka and Clara looked at each other.

"Not one of your contestants?"

"Absolutely not."

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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In a brief moment of frivolity, Galus tried to count the number of approaching zombies, under the justification of getting to know what he was up against. There were at least a dozen, but from the doorway, discerning if there were any more was near impossible, unless he stuck his head out right where his attackers wanted it. If they could want. By the looks of things, their lurching was not even noticed by their brains - some of them didn't even have brains, for goodness sake. You could see one or two of them had holes in their heads, cracked open by a fall to the floor or at the hands of some other, unknown force.

Taking a chance, Galus took his eyes of the approaching swarm and turned to face Maxwell. The man appeared to be routing around in an old cupboard near the sink. The odd item was being chucked back over his shoulder; various bottles of spoilt liquids, plastic cutlery and plates, bags and boxes sporting faded trademarks. Hopefully, Galus mused, he was searching for something that might, by some sheer coincidence, be useful in dealing with the matter at hand. Well, the one that was in his hands, anyway.

Trying his best to remain unstirred, he drew his attention back to his attackers. He'd been cutting it a little too close, perhaps, checking in on Maxwell, but there was still that obligation to keep him out of trouble, cowering at the back of his mind. Still, he now had to forgo the luxury of accurate aiming and just shoot, if he wanted to stay reasonably alive. Years of training and experience at least allowed him to let his subconscious deal with the trigger.

Each bullet sent up a vigorous spray of flesh and fluids as they tore into the festering corpses before him - these then rained down upon the horde, damasking their ragged garments with various shades of blood. A couple of bullets were lucky enough to hit spots of dense matter and shoved their targets backwards, whilst others snapped tendons and sent appendages spiralling out from their sockets, no longer attached to their hosts.

"Aha! Splendid, I must say! I wondered if they might have one..."

Once more, curiosity took control and Galus swivelled away from the gore. Maxwell was leaning against the worktops, looking awkwardly pleased about the spanner he had in his hands. For once, Galus was impressed.

"...have you actually been thinking for once? That's perfect! It'll pack a better punch that your kettle of yours, and it doesn't dent, to boot..."

That hasty glance was all he could afford - a crescendo in the moanings and wailings of his foes pulled him away from the delightful sight of Maxwell's armament. There were thankfully fewer now, what with most of them presently piling up before him. There was, however, a knot of them converging at the back - through their dangling heads, Galus could make out a curious figure, notably still hanging on to most of his head and torso, swinging what appeared to be an oversized hammer in a haphazard fashion. The idea that some of his attackers could have armed themselves didn't settle particularly well… (but then again, all things considered, this mall had a myriad of stores in which to stock up on such weaponry)

Eschewing such speculation for the moment (and reproaching himself for a such scatterbrained approach to this situation), he fired off a couple of shots towards the stragglers. He was going to run out of ammunition before long, and he somehow doubted he could recharge his pistol with a mob of zombies bearing down on him. Taking advantage of the lull in their lurching, he reached for his knife, but a cacophonous clang from behind him made him shake a little and grasp instead at thin air.

“I hope noise is better than it sounds, Maxwell. Please tell me you're doing something useful…”

“But of course! I'm just struggling somewhat with this pipework…”

Galus's groan was not too discernable from those of his aggressors. He didn't know for sure what his companion was doing, but fearing the worst now was probably going to pay off when he eventually found the time to discover quite what was going on back there.

A couple of cadavers had successfully gotten close to the doorway – they didn't get much further, most collapsing as the knife tore into what little flesh they had. Bones were a bit of a problem, but even then, virtually all of them were swinging from their remaining tendons, already exposed and easily snapped. With his safety assured for another few moments, Galus risked turning round.

“I shall confess, this is a little impromptu and perhaps ill-advised. However, this valve is certainly not supposed to be orange and I'd wager that the fool responsible for this stupidity didn't know the first thing about chemistry… still, now we know why this tap disperses such repugnant liquid…”

In the heat of battle, with his attackers less than ten feet behind him, Maxwell was dabbling in a spot of spontaneous plumbing. Galus was reasonably certain he hadn't had any training to deal with this sort of travesty. Nor, he suspected, did he have the vocabulary to properly articulate the way in which he'd like to see his ally suffer for his inconsiderate actions.

“…is there any way, however impossible it might be to carry out, that I can knock some sense back into that supposedly brilliant head of yours that might make you realise that if you don't get your ass out of that cupboard right now, you're going to die?!”

With this outburst expressed, Galus channelled his frustration to his knife and fists. The zombies who had crept up on his buckled at the force of his slashes. One in particular let loose a decidedly discordant cry as the blade was thrust into its decaying left eye. His rage the circumstances he had no reason to deserve; lumbered with a blithering fool of a liability, single-handedly fending of a legion of impossible assailants, thrown out of his world into this despicable farrago that some omnipotent buffoon had seen fit to create for his enjoyment alone; all this indignation transformed into fury, exacted upon his adversaries who should not even exist through a simple slab of carbon steel.

It didn't quite register with him that the big guy at the back was no longer holding his hammer. Its transformation into a broadsword had taken mere seconds, but the mindless creature holding it was having difficulty accepting the power he'd once had. It took the briefest of thoughts to change it into something else, and that was exactly what his maggoty brain was solely capable of, so much so that it generated them by the dozen. The gauntlets could hardly keep their form for a minute, switching freely between swords, axes, projectile armaments, guns and bows and a manifold of other well-worn devices.

Galus couldn't care less. It was surprising, but so were most of the other things that he currently had great umbrage towards. This foe was quite incapable of focusing on his perpetually shifting weapon, but he tried. His attempts at coming to terms with the gauntlets on his hands distracted him from the knife aimed at his throat until it was far too late. His flesh pierced, the blade was removed and plunged into the muscle around his arms, again and again and again, hacking away at the screaming corpse. The broadsword was swung, but it flickered in and out of shape, becoming a sludgy lump of mass, trailing behind his flailing arms.

Presently, the concourse was silent, bar the distant buzz of the undead at the other end of the mall and Galus's trenchant panting. Save some slight twitching from the mounds of bodily parts, it was still as well.

Still, that is, until a familiar, haggard hat popped out around a doorframe, newly painted red.

“Have you quite finished yet? Honestly, you've been making one heck of an awful racket, shouting and screaming like that. With that sort of volume you could probably raise the bloomin' dead; you didn't exactly help my concentration, regardless. Oh, and your language wasn't exactly subtle either – I swear you invented some of those words on the spot, didn't you? I certainly wouldn't put them in a dictionary…”

Stumbling, Galus fumbled towards a bench in the middle of the hallway.

“…not… helping…”

“Anyway, I've decided I was on a bit of a fool's errand back there. I mean, I'm not expert when it comes to plumbing, I'll grant you, but even I can see that no human hand could fix that network, let alone get clean water flowing from it. Blood from a stone and all that, see?”

“Maxwell, please, shut up… I need… a rest…”

“Ho hum… here, tell you what, I've been a bit of a fool, haven't I?”

”Oh, now it's dawning on you, is it?” mumbled Galus.

“It's actually startlingly obvious. I'm amazed I didn't think of it before.”

With his helmet-covered face in his hands, Galus rolled his eyes.

“Where better to find some nice, fresh water than a place called “Splash World”? Come on, let's get going; no time like the present!”

At the very moment the exhausted soldier finally got to plonk himself down on a bench, Maxwell went gambolling off, blissfully unaware of the carnage he was leaving behind. Drawing breath sharply, Galus leapt back to his feet.

“No, no, no! You are not, I repeat, not doing this to me!”

Maxwell carried on, oblivious. Meandering around the noxious stream of no-longer-edibles emanating from a side corridor, he set his sights upon the fading sign at the end of his vision. Gasping for breath, Galus dutifully followed, grumbling more fabricated curses into his helmet. Glancing around for threats, he spotted a ramshackle billboard in the middle of the thoroughfare. A particular word, long since given special status in his mind, glimmered at him.

Lurching forwards, he nearly pressed his face against the peeling wood, just to check it was true. All the letters were there, in the right order (with a few more tacked on the end), with a neat little number next to it in a colour shared with a block on the map.

“Maxwell! Guess what I found? This place, well, I mean, it has a weapons shop! What kind of mall has a shop for weapons? That's insane… but it's here. It's just down that path there. We can get you something and hopefully I can get some more ammo and maybe, erm… Maxwell?”

Pulling himself away, a quick survey of his surroundings produced a concerning lack of Maxwell. Peering around the map, his face fell as he watched a greatcoat amble towards a peculiar pair – a woman in nun's garb carrying a curious tome and… well, someone who, from Galus's perspective, to have suffered unreasonably from the zombification process, to the point where every square inch of his skull was on show above his ebony cloak. Two rather unusual figures to have been patrons in this mall, surely…

And then, the memory of that fight moments prior, tussling with that anomaly of a man with the unexplainable gauntlets, drifted into his mind. The sudden realisation that Maxwell was walking, out of his own free will, straight into the grasp of two more of those bizarre adversaries was sickening, to say the least.

Wheezing and wailing, Galus sprinted towards the meeting, earning inquisitive glances from all three of his targets. He collapsed just short of Maxwell, running out of air before he could push him out of danger. An immeasurable feeling of guilt struck him as he fell to the floor, coupled with a wave of worthlessness at his failure.

“Sorry about that. He's been running around an awful lot lately, I'm afraid. Worn himself out, poor chap. He shouldn't mean you much harm if he doesn't think you're going to tear my head off, which, by the way…”

There was suddenly a noticeable presence, hovering about Galus's left ear. He could feel warm breath on his exposed skin.

“That was quite the display, but totally, completely and utterly unnecessary. For a start, I don't think that zombies can change their facial expressions, especially to one of immense surprise. Nor, I think you'll find, can they beckon you over with properly articulated words and a curling of a finger. The nail in the coffin, I'd say, is the fact they can walk properly. Better than you can, I should think. Now, get up, dust yourself off and introduce yourself. It's only polite…”

Galus tried to speak, but gave up readily. The floor was, however, much easier to look at than the disconcerting reality above him that he no longer knew quite what to think about…

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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Show Content

SpoilerTop Five Longest GB Posts Ever

1. Baphomet, TBM, 2737
2. Sruixan GBII, 2552 - this one
3. Baphomet, TB, 2380
4. Sruixan, GBII, 2148
4. Baphomet, TBM, 2071

Check my facts, since that was done in five minutes, but I dare say that's pretty accurate. And worrying.

“So, um, hello, my name's Maxwell Deakin, walking brain, supposedly affiliated with the rest of a body but you know what happens when a relationship gets put under a spot of pressure; contact diminishes in frequency and you kinda drift apart… um, by the by, I might be a little mad at the moment and for that I do apologise – moral crisis and all that…”

Konka Rar's attempt at introducing himself was rudely halted by a groan from the floor-bound Urisian. The necromancer tried again, but this time it was Maxwell that interrupted:

“Well well well, you two, um, what's it like being, you know, undead then? I can't exactly call you peeps by such a derogatory term as “zombie”, but still…”

This caused a little surprise to creep onto the face of Clara, whereas Konka Rar just rolled him mechanical eye.

“Look, neither of you have breathed yet. If you're holding it, you're doing a remarkably good job of not turning puce, I must say… mind you, not sure a skeleton can turn puce, to be honest… I suppose if you had the right kind of dye…”

Galus's latest bout of grumbling was accompanied with at attempt at standing up, but after getting his first good look at Konka Rar, he decided not to bother rising any further.

The lich cleared his non-existent throat.

“…I've never exactly…” (at this point, he couldn't help but sneer somewhat) “…tried dying my body, but I'll bear that in mind.”

He extended his left arm out to Maxwell, a courteous motion that only served to plunge Galus back to the floor once more. The genius seemed remarkably unfazed, although quite whether he truly comprehended the metal hand he saw fit to shake a tad too rigorously for comfort is anyone's guess.

“Konka Rar, necromancer and ro-“

“Ooh, are you the chap responsible for these pesky, um, pests that ar-“

A little infuriated by the impolite mannerisms of Maxwell, the lich barked his response; “No, not in the slightest.”

“Pity, I thought I had it sussed for a second or two there…”

“So did I when I met him, but still; I'm Sister Clara, of the Church of Schleier and, as you rightly guessed, a necropolitan.”

”Hmm… I knew a chap called Schleier once. Well, to be fair, it was actually Schleicher; he had the decency to stick a couple of consonants in there at the end so you don't have to roll your mouth around like you're eating candyfloss to pronounce those vowels… he had a friend called Schneider, which was a bit of a pain, especially that one time I had something of a cold, that was quite a day that was… in a bit of a roundabout way, that cold almost got me kicked off the grounds of the Gutenberg Universität, but oh dear, I'm rambling again, I'm sure of it...”

Maxwell's meandering monologue had given Galus enough time to upright himself. With his face now visible, the emerging suffusion of red about his cheeks, already a brash pink from over-exertion, gave away his feelings.

“…sorry, he really has… gone… insane. He wasn't too bad… earlier, but… um, it's… it's a long story…”

Clara, with her impossibly amicable attitude, batted the awkward air the conversation so far had created aside, making an attempt at comforting the shattered Galus, placing a motherly arm around him. Konka Rar, on the other hand, was less benign, exhibiting a brief snarl before turning to business.

“Now, what do you two know of the Cultivator, or, perhaps, the Monitor?”

These words set Maxwell's face alight. With some slight ecstasy, he nudged Galus in the ribs, chuckling as his companion squirmed.

“See, what did I tell you? Actually, hang on, did I tell you? I can't remember, it was a long time ago… it might have been Cabaret or Vyrm'n, I'm really not quite sure…”

The revelation was almost expected, but the necropolitan pair were still caught a little off-guard due to the ease with which the words passed the man's lips. The lich, a little uneasy with the repetition of events, grimaced.

“Not another one… although, actually, I don't suppose you've had competition from a vacuum cleaner, have you?”

”Sir, I've had many strange things attempt to kill me these past few hours, but I'm happy to say a vacuum cleaner has not been one of them! Were that the case I'm sure I would have admitted defeat many rounds ago…”

Galus was having a merry time comprehending what he was hearing.

“Maxwell, what are they saying? The Observer's not the only one holding a battle like ours?”

”But of course! He did say, I think. I wrote it down somewhere, somewhen…”

This time it was Clara who was struggling to come to terms with events.

“If you two are in the same battle… have you seen any of your other competitors in this Mall yet, dear?”

Maxwell, with a slightly disconnected look in his eyes, gave a chuckle with his reply. “Well, I think Gestalt was fumbling his way up the theatre steps when we left, right Galus? And Vyrm'n's probably off killing zombies somewhere over… there…”

Maxwell's gesture, a finger extended towards the water park, led Konka Rar to put two and two together.

“That creature up there, that black…” (here there was a pause whilst he searched for a word to explain Vyrm'n with) “…monstrosity, is one of your contestants?”

Maxwell spun round to face him, letting a little anger seep into the otherwise blissful look on his face.

“Hey now, don't be so harsh! Vyrm'n's not that bad, once you get to know her. Alright, maybe she can be, how shall I put it… a little feisty at times, she can be rather charming, honest!”

The idea that the paltry fool in front of him could progress to such an advanced round, having been pitted against such a potent force would have made Konka Rar's face contort in pure amazement, if he had had one. Instead, another one of his scornful looks had to suffice. Clara, however, could now see quite how the genius had gotten quite so deranged…

Before she could utter a word, though, there was a wail from down the corridor. Some of the mindless undead were getting restless again, stirring for no other noticeable reason bar the fact they could. With a slight sigh, Clara reopened the tome she'd let shut itself, tutting under her breath as the horde died down somewhat. Galus meanwhile was fixated on the runic inscriptions within the battered book before him. Seeing Galus agape, Clara smiled.

“It's a ceremonial tome, by nature, but there are a few bits of magic in here concerning necropolitans…”

From Maxwell there came an admonishing exhalation at the mention of magic, but his expression turned to bemusement before the sentence finished.

“We've been wandering off on a couple of tangents, haven't we? Ah well, ‘suppose it can't be helped, what with half the participants of this conversation being incomprehensible at best. That's us two, by the way; no offence to you guys, which is a stupid thing to say, but anyway. Yes, now, we've gone off on so many tangents I believe we've just about come full circle – what are the chances of that? But before I digress much further, if there is even a second between now and another scatterbrained perusal of a paltry little point on my behalf, I do wonder how our non-living friends over there came into being. I wonder a lot, you see. It's a bit of a drag, but bearable, I assure you…”

The irksome Maxwell was starting to exasperate Konka Rar, but at least he was showing an interest in the world around him…

“Well, I'm not certain. You'd need an awful lot of magic to get a couple of thousand corpses re-animated. Doing them all at once would require a lot of energy. You haven't come across another necromancer so far, have you? Otherwise I'd have to chalk it up to our grandma-“

Once again, Maxwell interjected the lich's musings, this time with a clicking of his fingers. It almost provoked a response from him, but the disrupter got in first.

“Of course, of course… you know what, it's actually pretty obvious, if you think about it hard enough. I know as much about magic as I do about plumbing (believe you me, Galus will surely testify that the latter is terra incognita for me), but I'm allowed make a couple of educated guesses, right?”

Behind Maxwell's back, Clara motioned silently to her companion, pleadingly asking for him to keep calm.

“Recently deceased in our canon, you two, is one Samuel Therion who, before his admittedly rather deserved demise, in an act of egocentrism, explained to me the nuances of his powers; namely, the control of what he called “karmic energies”. It's a little disconcerting, but it's “life energy”, right? Energy that allows a creature to live, determining its lifespan and life. Sounds a bit like a soul, but not exactly, I assure you. Galus, I'll summarise this at the end, probably. Konka Rar, I can see you're about to interrupt, but don't, please. If you derail this train, it doesn't go back on its tracks…”

The lich had no idea quite how Maxwell had known what he was about to do, considering that the man had been looking the other way at the time of his comment, but another hasty glance from Clara stopped him intervening.

“So, if you do look at it as energy, which I suppose from my non-magical viewpoint I am forced to do, it'll do the normal energy kind of stuff, I guess. So that means you can store it, which is what Samuel did, somewhat, for the prolonging of life and, if he could stomach it, so I'm told by the horse's mouth, the gaining of abilities. Regardless, from his lecture I am reasonably sure he'd gotten his hands on an awful lot of that energy over goodness knows how many years.”

In his explanations, Maxwell was starting to use hand gestures. None of those around him had the faintest notion of their purpose (including Maxwell himself, for that matter), but it seemed to help.

“So, if you store energy, it's potential energy, which, as the name so rightly suggests, has the potential to do stuff. You can store it reasonably indeterminately; you can't quite do it forever, but that's a complete and utter tangent. Point is, Samuel is currently doing a remarkably spiffing job of being stone cold dead. Upon his death, at his own hands or mine, whichever way you choose to look at it, all that stored energy is no longer bottled up within his body, on account of it lacking much of a head. I bet you that was released in one nice big explosion of life, which is a bit of a funny juxtaposition, but there you go, can't be helped.”

Noting that Konka Rar was nodding subtly, Maxwell continued.

“Well, I expect it was a lot of energy, but there were an awful lot of people in the blast radius too. Somehow I doubt that amount would have been enough to turn a couple of thousand corpses into a couple of thousand decidedly bewildered, living, breathing people. In fact, guess what? I can prove it to you that it wasn't; all you have to do is look around you. With that “karmic energy” spread so thinly, nobody was reincarnated properly. There was just about enough to make them undead, but not enough to make them living. A final act of revenge from Samuel.”

At this point, Maxwell took a bow. Clara nearly clapped, but thought better of it. A still rather scornful Konka Rar, however, appeared quite impressed.

“Not bad for someone with no understanding of how necromancy works. Your terminology was abysmal, your descriptions fanciful and your explanations… unusual. You're not exactly correct, but, yes, the death of someone like Samuel might have caused all this…”

As Konka Rar encompassed the motley knot of zombies loitering around Splash World, Maxwell allowed a grin to light up his face. Scanning the mall a tad absent-mindedly, the only human present felt rather proud with himself…

…and then, in an instant, the smile evaporated, revealing a new look, surprise with just the tiniest, minutest possible dash of worry. Shifty eyes glanced back towards the theatre, then back towards the water park, before the concern was replaced by a faux smile.

“Now we've got that sorted, might I, um, suggest that we get moving on a bit? You know, preferably to somewhere reasonably safe…”

Clara, misinterpreting the man's remarks, smiled and held her tome aloft.

“Ah, I never did explain this, did I? The magic in here should stop us from coming to harm at the hands of the zombies; it makes us pretty much invisible to them, so we can pass through them with ease.”

“…good, good, we could do with getting through that lot up there, actually. I don't suppose, on an off-chance, you happen to have found a reasonably safe place somewhere on your travels?”

Once again, his statement was misunderstood. Konka Rar sighed as his parsing of it cemented conclusions he'd hypothesised the moment he'd set eyes upon Maxwell.

“Well, the Atrium is practically sealed up. I expect, if you were spineless enough, you could barricade yourself in there comfort-“

“Perfect, perfectly fine. Honestly, I couldn't care less, as long as it's a bit out of the way…”

Galus, finally feeling a little bit refreshed, eyed his acquaintance with an air of curiousity.

“Is everything alright, Maxwell? You seem a bit uneasy to me…”

Spinning round to face him, his coat aflutter, Maxwell's face was the picture of calm.

“Oh no, no worries at all…”

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

In the theatre, things were returning to normal. The myriad of particulates and dust, thrown into the air by the intruders to their realm, were beginning once more to settle on their surfaces and coat the place in a fine layer of speckled white anew. The spiders, hardly batting any of their eyelids at the destruction of their cobwebs, set about rebuilding their traps and so the flies enjoyed a brief respite from the usual dangers. A respite that was long enough to traverse the newly trashed corridors towards a novel scent for them – death.

They flocked towards a door, located at the very rear end of the backstage, left ajar as the trespasser fled so long ago. The light was on in that room; a glow, already dimming as the bulb suffered the strain of being functional for the first occasion in a remarkably long time. Between the rotting frame and the decaying door, it was the only thing that escaped the chamber; all the flies were immigrants, arriving to feast upon a banquet most splendid, the first treat in living memory. Admittedly, that wasn't much, considering that we're dealing with the memory of a creature that rarely lasts to see the summer if born in the winter, but still.

And then, reverberating about the hollow shell that the Observer had left behind, they began to buzz again, a cacophony that lasted merely a minute before silence reigned again.

A door creaked.

Originally posted on MSPA by bobthepen.

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Show Content

Spoiler

Top Five Longest GB Posts Ever

1. Baphomet, TBM, 2737
2. Sruixan GBII, 2527 - this one
3. Baphomet, TB, 2380
4. Sruixan, GBII, 2148
4. Baphomet, TBM, 2071

Check my facts, since that was done in five minutes, but I dare say that's pretty accurate. And worrying.

You could check with Pinary since he's been keeping track of this, but The Sunset Death post was a little over 2600 words (Schazer) and I posted one in round 2 that was 2100 words but I think in word count/post you've really been taking the cake this round.

Edit: with all this grand-battle related excitement. Looks like I still have some reading to do.

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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Show Content

Spoiler

Top Five Longest GB Posts Ever

1. Baphomet, TBM, 2737
2. Sruixan GBII, 2527 - this one
3. Baphomet, TB, 2380
4. Sruixan, GBII, 2148
4. Baphomet, TBM, 2071

Check my facts, since that was done in five minutes, but I dare say that's pretty accurate. And worrying.

You could check with Pinary since he's been keeping track of this, but The Sunset Death post was a little over 2600 words (Schazer) and I posted one in round 2 that was 2100 words but I think in word count/post you've really been taking the cake this round.

Edit: with all this grand-battle related excitement. Looks like I still have some reading to do.

Show Content

SpoilerLike I said, I did that count in five minutes. You're right about Schazer's post, and yours. The actual count then, I presume, is:

1. Baphomet, TBM, 2737
2. Schazer, GBII, 2646
3. Sruixan, GBII, 2552 (I edited it a bit)
4. Baphoment, TBM, 2380
5. bobthepen, GBII, 2212

You've gotten me curious now. I'll check with Pinary later...