Petty Squabble [ROUND 3] [Goldhenge]

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

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Oh come on. That time, she was subtle!

…Okay, she wasn’t. But ‘subtle’ had different meanings depending on who you talked to. When you talked to gostaks, ‘subtle’ would be ‘grand and awe-inspiring while sneaking the stuff you want them to do in there somewhere.’ When you talked to doshes (…though nobody would ever really talk to doshes), then ‘subtle’ was ‘threateningly direct.’ Of course, when you talked to other deities, ‘subtle’ can range from ‘the actual meaning of subtle’ to ‘banging his wife right in front of him.’

Whatever Envoy happened to be, Carnea realized very quickly that it probably wasn’t like a dosh. It certainly reacted to something she said, or she thought it did, but it didn’t react quite the way she was hoping it to.

…Wait, was it going to tell the Broderburgs what she said?

…Well, it couldn’t talk. Hahaha. No need to worry then. Ha.

So, just another thing to add on her checklist: what the hell is Envoy and how could she manipulate it? She grinned metaphorically. It sounded like a nice challenge. And if she couldn’t do it, she’d cheat.

Welp, time to keep to the plan. Keep going in the general direction she was going while stopping along the way whenever she saw the contestants (not ‘fellow contestants’ of course) of the game. Get information, maybe screw around with their heads, spread chaos for the hell of it, so on, so forth. Now, what was the best way to spread chaos in a war?

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The large, metallic, skeleton-like soldiers may never tire, but they had to have some sort of base. A place to take orders from, a place to build more soldiers, maybe. If anything, a place to keep people like that masked man (she was at least somewhat sure they were on the same side).

Whatever it was, it was being frustratingly hard to find.

Carnea had already slid back into the immaterial plane to avoid being shot at, only popping back into a material form once in a while to gain her bearings and see if, somehow, she stumbled across it. It was a tedious method that wasn’t really getting her anywhere. She needed another idea.

There were a lot of spirits floating around here. The goddess became aware of a nearby one just ready to dissipate and wrapped her own consciousness around it, embracing it tightly and forcing it to stay together.

Hello, spirit.

The spirit wasn’t panicking, but it was certainly confused. Carnea learned about this through its jumble of thoughts.

Focus, spirit. Do you remember being a soldier?

Yes. I was fighting. And then I died.

Well, that much is apparent. Hm, does sarcasm really translate well here? Oh well, now you know I was trying to be sarcastic. Anyways, I want you to tell me a few things. I need to find the base, but I’m having trouble finding it. If you don’t mind helping me out, I should be able to help you out.

Well…I guess I feel as though I still have strength to help my

Yeah, yeah, I can do that. What about finding the base?

I think

Only thing you can do oop I didn’t mean for you to hear that. Continue

I have an idea. Radio messages send radio waves, or, I mean, I’m no specialist or anything, but in any case, you can sense them too, right? The messages? They feel different. You could probably follow them to the base, I guess?

I have no idea what you are talking about but I’m pretty sure I know what you’re talking about. Hang on, that made sense, right? In any case, this was very helpful. Good boy.

Actually, I think I’m a girl.

Oh, that’s right, you asked for something I think. Hang on, just come with me for a sec. Carnea, by the way. Spread the word. A goddess can never have enough followers…

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Carnea popped her head out for a bit in the material plane and pulled it away from more artillery fire. She instantly appeared again, this time out of the ground, clutching something wispy between her long fingers. Catching up with a large metal soldier, Carnea managed to shove the wispy thing right into it and locked the two together before disappearing again.

Ex-Corporal Bree Evans woke up groggily and found herself in control of a giant enemy mech. Or rather, she found herself as a giant enemy mech.

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It didn’t take long to find a radio whatsit. It moved quickly, rippling space around it as it careened in a direction that could probably be described as ‘away.’ Away from a point. The goddess made an extra burst of speed, reached the ripple, and let herself become even more formless, if it was possible to be formlesser than formless. She surfed the radio wave.

She could hear the message it was sending, over and over. It was only interesting once. She spent her ride in utter boredom. Of course, radio waves don’t take that long to travel. It’s hard to please a goddess sometimes.

The only other interesting thing of note was a few moments after she merged with the wave. Or, rather, a few…somethingseconds. A really small increment of time in any case. Another radio wave came close by, but not one originating from the same universe. Carnea could tell because it came in by way of an open door in the space-time…or…maybe it was just a multiverse door? Either way, it disappeared as quickly as it came, making her realize that she couldn’t really call it a door because it didn’t remain even when it closed. It seemed to be a short, one-way thing.

The radio wave itself shot straight through the one she was reclining on, almost forcing her off and onto it instead. Irately, she hung on to hers, and the radio wave was soon on its way. She heard the message that one was sending too. Something about other battles and "an all-stars battle" and "Defy your captors" and such. It was certainly something to think about. And it looked like one way to get out. It was too bad she had no way of knowing where and when another radio wave like that would show up.

So with that, she settled back into her radio wave and tried not to listen too much to the repeating message.

Calling for backu—oof! zzt Calling for backu—oof! zzt Calling for…

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Zzzzzzzzzt

Weird. There was a message coming in, but all he could hear was sta—wait…

Zzzzzzztrrrwhere is this now? This is so dassing annoying…oh, hang on, haaaang on…

The radio operator realized there were a few things wrong with this. One, he did not recognize the voice. Two, there was a ghost cat suddenly exploding out of his radio.

Carnea wasn’t entirely happy with being fired upon again and simply locked the man in position. Looking around her, she could see the remains of what she assumed was the ‘radio’ thing she was told about. They shouldn’t make these things so fragile.

Looking at the soldier in front of her, she couldn’t help but think she was in the wrong base. She meant to go to the side with all those masked men. This man wasn’t masked…though maybe there were others here who didn’t use the masks?

…No, she was pretty sure this wasn’t it. Carnea sighed heavily and stopped paying attention to the frozen soldier. She had been planning to sneak those metal soldiers over the enemy lines because she was pretty sure she could. But she somehow ended up over the line without any metal soldiers with her. How…annoying.

Hang on, maybe there was something here that could help after all.

Carnea swooped down towards a nearby bookshelf and picked out one book. She seemed disappointed as she flipped through it before slamming it shut again. Okay, for this to work, she just needed to think up a good way for it to work. A good metaphor. Books are like doors. Books are like doors because…

With a flourish, Carnea shoved her doorknob into the book’s cover. Books are doors to knowledge, and to get to that knowledge, of course, you have to go through. It follows that those who go through this door of knowledge then enters the book. And this was how she was going to get metallic soldiers into the middle of a base without suspicion. Beyond the fact that she was a cat-ghost-goddess, of course.

In any case, this book was now a door. It was a door to the inside of the book. Luckily, it was a pretty large book, so she could probably manage to fit metallic soldiers through it. She should probably stop floating around thinking about her plan. She should probably just go out and do it.

Carnea exited the base easily and went on with her plan.

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

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The room John had directed the two towards happened to be a supply closet. A simple light bulb hung from the ceiling, which Six quickly flipped on before letting Nancy back onto the ground. Random, disorganized objects lined the walls on utilitarian metal shelves, bearing all sorts of futuristic cleaning supplies. Nancy looked at the room in bewilderment, which Six noticed.

“We are in a supply closet,” Six politely informed her.

“No, I know that,” she replied, staring at a particularly strange-looking device that presumably worked somewhat like a mop. “B-but what is all this stuff?”

“I would hypothesize that these objects serve some sort of cleaning purpose, Contestant Number 1.”

Nancy shook her head, trying to regain her composure. This was all so strange. She didn’t even understand half of what was happening. Where was she? Who were these people? Why was that guy wearing such strange-

Oh no. Oh God no.

Somehow she had managed to find herself in a supply closet with a strange man. She didn’t even know his name! She reached into her purse and fumbled for her Revolver, pointing it at Six’s cube-shaped head.

“You better not try any funny business while we’re in here, mister. I’m not afraid to shoot (In actuality, she was terrified to shoot).”

Six processed the words and the perceived threat of Nancy’s weapon. Although she was breaking protocol with possessing a weapon, Six’s curiosity towards this strange woman overwhelmed his desire to kill, which only made Six’s puzzlement burn even more. Concluding that calming the contestant would be the best course of action, he set to work. Referencing various media sources and contextual implications, the robot composed an appropriate reply.

“I assure you, Contestant Number 1, your worries are in vain. I am not... anatomically correct.”

Nancy seemed to understand, at least somewhat. She slowly lowered her weapon, the look of suspicion fading from her eyes. For Six, it was enough.

Enough to as questions, at least. However, now the questions took on a different tone.

“Question 13: Contestant Number 1, what is your name?”

Finally, something that made sense, even if made absolutely no sense in context! Nancy was happy to comply with answer, even if the question was preceded by yet another of this strange man’s quirks.

“M’name’s Nancy, Nancy little, and you are?”

“NANCY LITTLE. CORRECT,” Six replied, and after a little thought added a bit more. “And I am known as Gamehost Six, Six functioning as a nickname.”

“Pleased to meet, ya, Mistah Six,” Nancy replied, holding her hand out for a handshake. Quickly she remembered that Six only had one hand and quickly switched which arm was being offered to the robot. He took the hand and shook it as he intoned another question.

“Question 14: If you do not mind my asking, Miss Little, why is your reaction towards me so different. Most respond to me with fear or hatred, yet you respond cordially. Please explain why.”

Nancy sat there for a long moment, thinking. The silence settled thick over the pair as Six waited for Nancy’s reply. Once again he noticed the blinking “GPS DOWN,” and once again Six felt as if he was missing something, some epiphany, some bigger picture.

“Well...” Nancy began, breaking the quiet. “It’s probably because-”

-At which point the door splintered, a man and several baguettes flying into the storage room, slamming against the back wall of the room. An off-kilter laugh echoed in the hallway outside, and Six turned to come face-to-face with a grinning John Smith.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

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There was a panicked moment when Tom thought his steering had cut out... and then another panicked moment when Tom thought the brakes and the gas had cut out as well. Then he realized that something or someone had simply picked up the RV and was flying with it, like Superman.

He shut off the engine. No sense in wasting what fuel he had left, or in contributing to the hole in the Ozone layer.

“You got the baby okay, Alison?” he asked, glad that he could take his eyes off the road (or sky, as it was) for a moment.

”Yeah, dad,” said Alison, curtly. She was on her cellular phone again, of course. ”Hang on, I’m trying to hear this.”

”I thought you said you didn’t have any phone bars,” accused Tom, perplexed. “Who are you talking to?”

”Some telemarketer,” Tom’s daughter replied, waving him off. ”I think he’s offering to upgrade my phone, but I have to join the call list for some multiversal army.”

Tom chuckled. “Yeah, that’s where they get you. How’d this guy get your number, anyway?”

”It’s just a recording, dad—“

”Well they need to know what number to send the recording to!” Some ominous banging noises on the roof of the RV forced Tom to raise his voice. “Have you putting your number on chat rooms?”

”No, Dad, I don’t even—“

”She talks to boooooooys,” chimed in Ethan from behind a wall of couch cushions.

“Honey,” admonished Tom. “We talked about this.”

”You stupid little brat!” shouted Alison, shoving the phone between her chin and her collarbone and standing in attack position. She was prevented from smashing her brother’s fort when she realized she had Baby Emma sort of slung into the crook of her arm, and the baby began to cry.

“Alison, be more careful with your sister,” said Tom, rising uneasily from his seat as the RV rocked violently to one side.

”Yeah, Alison, be more careful with your sister,” teased Ethan, giggling.

”I know, I’m sorry,” said Alison, rocking the baby gently. “Here, can you take her? I need to figure out what’s going on with my phone.”

Tom nodded assent and walked across the angled floor of the flying RV to take the baby. He was distracted from comforting his infant daughter when a deranged-looking man in a visor crashed onto the hood, shook off a clip of machine gun rounds with a burst of blue energy, fired bolts of lightning at the soldiers on the roof, and disappeared.

“Hmm,” grunted Tom.

* * * * *

Jack shoved her walkie-talkie in Clarice’s hand as she and the other two surviving soldiers tackled the “super.” Whoever was at the other end of the talkie sounded angry--no, upset but not angry--flustered, that's the word. She put it up to her ear.

”Hello, is this Clarice Broderburg?” came the voice.

Clarice was a little offput by this. “Yes, uh, yes it is.”

”Yeah Clarice this is COFCA. The robot’s ours.”

Clarice nodded. “I see. Well, then. Could you tell it to put us down?”

From the other end of the talkie there was a sound of frantic whispering—apparently these COFCA folks couldn’t remember to keep their hands off the “talk” button. Then: “Yes, well, there’s been a problem with that. We picked you up because we thought we could help you escape the, er, the… super… soldier. The supersoldier.”

”Yes, but—“

”Yes, we know, we know, the supersoldier got up there with you. And ordinarily we would send Envoy to help out with the fight, but we can’t, um, we can’t do that without, you understand, dropping you.”

Clarice failed to see the predicament. “Well can’t you, I don’t know, put us down, and then get this thing out of our hair?”

More murmuring on the other end of the line. “Yes, well, there’s a problem with the, er, putting you down. You see, you and the soldiers, that is both the normal and super, er, soldiers, are being held to the roof of the RV through the normal force of the upward acceleration. If we were to decelerate any faster, that would, you know, sort of fling you out into the sky. So putting you down will take about twenty minutes, is what we’re—I’m sorry, I’ve just received a note that I ought to have said ‘decelerate any slower,’ which is just—that is completely incorrect. To clarify, Clarice—heh heh—what I meant was that we are in the process of slowing down, but we are slowing down slowly, which means that we are still going fast. To slow down more quickly, which would make us more slow, would—I keep getting these notes. People just pass them to me, I’m sorry Clarice, I—the consensus is that I shouldn’t be on, er, communications detail, so to speak.”

”I think you’re doing a fine job,” lied Clarice, indignantly. One of Jack’s soldiers had a hole punched through some muscles that he had probably worked very hard to maintain, and he staggered over near Clarice’s feet to die. The sound of the air was awfully loud. “We’re all a little stressed out,” Clarice added.

”Oh, you can say that again. You wouldn’t believe the week I’ve been having, Clarice. It all started when my niece—I’m sorry, I’ve just received several notes telling me not to tell you about my—get your hands off me, I have the mic—about my week. One of them is written in blood, so—oh, real mature guys—“ The walkie talkie went quiet.

“Maybe some other time then,” said Clarice into the mic. Ignoring the nearby corpse and the nearby threat of the supersoldier, she laid down on the roof of the RV and shut her eyes, remembering a carnival ride she’d been on with Tom a few years before Alison was born.

* * * * *

While her dad was taking care of the baby, Alison made sure not to stop talking, so as to ensure that nobody could ignore her. Alison hated being ignored.

“Yeah this guy downloaded something onto my phone somehow. It’s all different.” She shot Tom a glance out of the corner of her eye—he and Emma were playing peekaboo. The word “sluts” popped into her head and she ignored it, continuing to tinker with her phone. “Hey, my contacts are gone! Vandal whatever replaced them with a bunch of his own people, I guess. Who’s ‘Magog?’ Oh, this is bulls—this is nonsense. There’s a contact in here called ‘Red.’ That is not a person, that is a color. Jesus.”

”Easy with the Lord’s name there, Alison,” said Tom. The moment of attention passed quickly, and Alison suddenly felt very alone. She flipped through the contacts’ list again. In the interest of science, she figured she ought to call one of them. But who?

Ethan popped out of his cushion-fort. “Daddy, look, I’m in Fort Ayers!” he shouted gleefully. ”I’m the human army, and I’ve got all sorts of guns and explosions. But the robots are stronger, and they’re gonna—“ --he popped out of the fort for dramatic effect, sending cushions sprawling everywhere— “They’re gonna send all their robots and ninjas and they’re gonna blow us up and kill all of us!”

”Peekaboo!” replied Tom. Baby Emma giggled.

”Did you hear me dad?” Ethan begged. ”We’re all gonna die in explosions, did you hear?”

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

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Ashley knew he’d run out of energy. And so he had. He lay there in the rubble, breathing hard as the robotic troops came up behind his splayed body. In response to some hidden signal, they formed a square on three sides around him, and two robots stepped forward and grasped his legs-

<font color="red">“Plate this. You’re going to die.”

He gave in. He shut his eyes tightly as a crawling sensation made its way through the layers of his skin, reconfiguring and revitalizing nerve endings and spiriting away melanin and other pigments. He fancied – no, he knew – that his skin was paler now by nearly a shade, sweeping across his body. The robots began to drag him backwards – towards the Fort, he thought – and he opened his eyes a fraction to make sure his bearings were correct. No luck, he was still face down in the dirt, though the hands he saw trailing across the rubble were definitely not his. They were too slender, too pale.

Legs.

He shut his eyes again, and felt his thighs and calves change mass and proportion. Muscle cells flowed about, reverting briefly to stem and satellite cells before redifferentiating into lipid, nerve and blood vessel. </font>

Ashley opened her eyes. An observer might have caught a glimpse of hazel iris being subsumed by red, but that was only a split second. Another sliver of time, and Ashley had slid from her robotic captors’ grasp and somersaulted to a standing position. She pivoted on her heel, and stood standing firm as cargo pants tightened around the hips.

<font color="navy">Okay, I’ll admit it, that was nicely done.

Mmhm. So now you’re allll about sucking up.

The robotic legion stopped for a moment to consider the options, then began to bring their weapons to bear-

It was a compliment!

Compliment me later darll, when I’ve shut down the army that was meant to kill YOU.

The changes were finally working on the details, as muscle mass changed all over her body. Cells migrated upwards from the abdomen as muscles converted their focus from force to flexibility. Lower down, gluteus maximus expanded to cover a shifting pelvis, and other essential bits reconfigured themselves into other essential bits, burrowing deep into the place where essential bits go. They seemed to do so with a little familiar rush, like a dancer finally completing a well-practiced routine unperformed for too long. It was not the process that scared him, deep in the back seat of his mind now. It was how little it seemed to matter. But then again, did it really now? His squadron was far behind in another universe, and no one he knew was here.

SpoilerShow

(I had more, but it started to read like porn. /prude)

The remnants of his anatomy reformed themselves swiftly without hesitation, and neither did she as she drew her knives from the belt over her shoulder-

Knives against energy bolts. Are you sur-

Darll, you never look at the details. You see the one on the edge of the square?

He followed her gaze, and then saw what she had seen: an identification pennant welded into the shoulder of the robot she indicated. Three parallel bars of a darker metal, neatly fused into the armor.

…Stripes?

The robots opened fire.

Ashley threw her knives.

With pinpoint accuracy and instinctual programming, each rifle automatically changed their aim to fire at the perceived greater threat. Within a fraction of a second the spinning blades were positively humming with energy, and buried themselves to the hilt.

The striped robot crackled a little, and made some abortive movements to try and extricate the knives from its chest. It would have been nice to say it exploded in a pyrotechnic display to rival nuclear fire, but reality is a stubborn child at the best of times and the robot simply stopped moving. With it, the entire battalion of metallic soldier froze in place.

Squad leader. He was prolly the entire command relay for this battalion, which really doesn’t seem like robots now, does it? I mean, if you can issue commands to every soldier at once, why bother with relays?

Don’t know, don’t care. I’d really like to escape now, before they recover.

Bloody PLATE darll! Use your head! These robots are like, waaay old. They’re not likely to have been connected to the central ‘puter running the armies out there – they were prolly just running off some kinda automatic response to anything registering as human. They’re totes not recovering.

It would also have been nice to say that the robots began recovering at this point, but reality, ever-frustrating, still refused to comply to good narrative contrivances. As Ashley retrieved her knives, it did however acquiescence slightly in the slightly believable event of the RV rocketing into the sky under rocket propulsion.

…Envoy. That must have been Env-

Then three things happened: there was a flash of cyan lightning up above where the RV soared, Ashley remembered the glowing masked man and ran for her life. The fourth thing to happen, which happened shortly afterwards, was that Ashley stopped, picked up a battered first aid kit left behind by some dead or fleeing human squadron, and wound a tight length of bandage fabric around her chest.

And when we find some proper underwear, darll…

I couldn’t very well carry around your clothes with me in the army!

No darll, you were too busy pretending I didn’t exist.

The weak light from the sky was suddenly obscured, and Ashley found herself in the shadow of a giant enemy mech. Ignoring the sound of rapidly warming-up energy-based death, she did nothing but finish winding the cloth and securing it. Pulling her shirt down over the bandage, she reached for her knives-</font>

SpoilerShow

Point to remember: The rest of the contestants only know Ashley, and not Ashley. I mean, they weren't exactly told, were they?

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

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John wheezed a bit as he laughed, sucking in deep breaths of air as he leaned on one edge of the door-frame.

"I... cannot believe... he didn't see that coming." He didn't bother addressing Parsley- for the moment, the demon-hunter was stunned. Instead, he talked to the 'group at large,' which amounted to just Nancy (giving him that same vaguely confused look of recognition she'd had before) and Six (incapable of giving looks of any sort). "I mean, really..." He added a tired little chuckle and clapped Six on the shoulder. "You'd think an expert like him would be able to handle a little Aikido."

Six calmly ignored the hand on his shoulder. He doubted this human (another contestant, he noted) would be able to unbalance him very easily. Something did perturb him a bit, though; the man's eyes, for just a few seconds, flicked quickly and calmly around the room. That was not the behaviour of a tired, worn-out man.

John continued moving, still acting as though he'd been winded by the fight, taking another step in and leaning on a shelf of cleaning supplies instead of the impassive Gamehost. Wood panels, metal brackets. Slight give. He was still breathing heavily; the fight had appeared to have taken quite a toll.

"Sure, to be fair, it was something like the third style I threw out in a row, but it's not like I'm an expert in any of them."

"Why were you even brawlin' in the first place?"

John turned sharply to look at Nancy, as though he'd forgotten she was even there and been rather startled to hear her speak.

"Oh, nothing big," he said. Taking the step and a half it took to cross the cramped storage closet, he leaned down to examine an industrial-sized jug of cleaner. Wide mouth. Danger: flammable. Mostly full. With a small chuckle, he spun the cap around a few times, toying with it. As he stood back up, he hissed into her ear, "Be ready to run." Understandably confused, she started to respond, but he turned away and talked over her, so she just clammed up.

"He's decided that I'm the 'demon' controlling this place," he chuckled. "Seriously. Me." Idly, he grabbed the handle of a broom, leaning a bit on it instead of any of the shelves. Dry, wooden handle, old-school straw. Stiff bristles. Old. "So, of course, demon-hunter that he is, he decided to make with the hunting. He started out with a few breadsticks, then pulled a knife on me."

"He tried to kill you?" Nancy was noticeably perturbed. "Why're you dawdling around in here?! He won't be konked out for long!"

"That he won't," John agreed, "but I just want to make his life a little more interesting when he comes around." From the shelf next to him, he grabbed a long-necked lighter. He idly flicked it once or twice and passed his gaze around the room once more. Perfect.

"Contestant 2," Six said, "Question 15: How, in this context, do you define interesting?"

John leaned back on the shelves, resting one hand out to either side. "Interesting?" He grinned at the robot, cocking his head a bit as he did. "Simple: Likely to be the last thing he ever knows." Suddenly, with a downward shove, he snapped the shelf from the wall, wrenching out the screws holding it up and sending several dozen bottles of various fluids clattering down to the floor. Only two or three opened on impact, but they still sloshed enough around to make a substantial puddle.

Before the last of them had even landed, he'd grabbed the broom in both hands and snapped the brittle handle with his knee. With the same leg, conveniently already cocked, he lashed out at the jug of cleaner beside Nancy, knocking the cap off. Turning the kick into a quick crouch, he grabbed the bristle end of the broom (now with maybe a foot of handle max) and stuck it in the jug's top. The lighter lit the bristles, and the old, dry broom quickly added another flickering light to the room.

Grabbing Nancy by the wrist, he yanked her past the Gamehost and out the door. All traces of being winded had vanished- he'd caught his breath far earlier, just keeping the act going as another means of being underestimated. The two ran, John leading the way down the hall.

Six hesitated for a nanosecond, deciding if he should follow. Fortunately, his programming made the decision easy. Someone dying because they were defenceless was not good for ratings; audiences wanted confrontation and excitement, and burning alive in a broom closet just didn't qualify.

-

Parsley came back to consciousness just as the bone-dry broom-head burned down far enough, the impromptu fuse catching the cleaner and bathing everything in the storage room in flame. The other fluids on the floor caught as well, adding to the explosion, and soon every bottle from the broken shelf had been vaporized. The heat of it caught the bottles and jugs on higher shelves as well, and a few moments later, everything in the storage room was either blown up or burned to a crisp.

The demon-hunter looked on as the flames burst out into the hallway a few dozen feet away, the Gamehost standing beside his slumped charge.

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

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Waking up to an explosion and a murderous gameshow host isn’t exactly the best way to return to the world.

Additionally, Parsley was never a waking-up person. Despite, or maybe because of, erratic sleep schedules and years of demon-hunting, waking up was one of the harder parts of his day. There had been times the demon hunter had not gone to sleep; afraid he wouldn’t be able to wake up in time of some important event. He had even oftentimes joked about how waking up was his “greatest demon.”

So, it was understandable when Parsley had woken up rather startled and alarmed. Contorting his face with a fearful yell, he grabbed the air behind him, throwing a newly-materialized breadstick at the calmly waiting Six. Parsley’s actions were perfectly understandable, from a human point of view, his surprise completely reasonable.

To Six, however, they were understandable in a different kind of way. Surprise, fear, violence. These were staples of Dice of Death. Six saw them, every day, on his victim’s contorted faces, in their accusing blood. Yes, Parsley’s actions were understandable, unlike Nancy’s cordiality or Smith’s madness. Understandable, understandable and safe.

“GPS DOWN.”

Six’s basic programming kicked in.

“Contestant #3, please stand up. Inability to comply gives me authority to eliminate you, as per protocol.”

Still dazed from his rude awakening, Parsley obeyed the gamehost’s forceful command. The rush of blood helped the demon hunter wake up a bit, and the new levels of lucidity allowed him to consider this particular illusion. A man with a dice for a head. Really, quite clever, yet a little uninspired compared to some of the other things in this massive illusion-

“Thank you, Contestant #3. Questioning will now begin.”

-although he did look quite frightening, covered in blood and chemicals. Parsley doubted that whatever man or beast or illusion represented was malicious towards him, however. Who or whatever it was seemingly did save him, after all. In fact, Parsley should probably mention it to the illusion.

“By the way,” he began. “I want to thank you for-”

“-Please do not speak until questions are asked. Inability to follow formal question-answer protocol is grounds for elimination.”

Parsley quieted himself, even if his saviour seemed rather rude. He continued to privately wonder who this illusion really was, however. Perhaps he could glean some information from aspects of its appearance and actions.

“Question 16: The bark of what common tree was once commonly used as a treatment for aches and fever?”

A medicinal question? Huh. That's honestly a pretty obvious question, so probably whoever this is isn’t real big on medical treatments. Either way, he should probably answer it.

“Willow Bark, sir. If you are a sir, that is.”

“WILLOW. CORRECT. Addendum: for your information, I do go by a masculine pronoun. But please, call me Six, per-protocol.”

Well, at least Parsley knew he was a guy. And judging from the rampant blood on his clothing and that impressive saw as a replacement for his hands, it could be reasonable to conclude that this man was a warrior of some sort. And with all these commands and mention of protocol, whoever this man was had a very strict way of going about things.

Parsley snapped his fingers. He thought he made a connection. Even if he didn’t know who this man was, he knew what he was.

“Contestant #3, please do not snap your fingers. Any further violations of protocol will force me to elimin-”

“Say, are you a knight? Please tell me yes, or I’m going to have to scrap this whole guessing-from-attributes thing.”

Six paused. Not to calculate an answer (one had already been calculated), but because the interruption was legitimately surprising for the robot.

“Like I told another contestant: ‘In many ways I suppose you could compare me to a knight.’ However, Contestant #3, you have broken protocol once again. I regret to inform you that you must be eliminated.”

Six’s blade spun, screaming for the blood that accused. For violence and death and fear.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Parsley silently cursed himself as he jumped back to avoid Six's blade. He'd known the demon was twisting the words he heard - obviously, the knight was having the same experience. Parsley had probably come across as some sort of impudent prankster. Most likely the knight had gone through what he perceived as a particularly harrowing experience, and wasn't in the mood to humor troublemakers.

Even so, the level of violence this knight was showing was excessive. Most of the knights Parsley had met were able to restrain themselves somewhat even under heavy stress.

Most of them. There was one notable exception...

"This is a job for the knights, old man. Not for you and your apprentice." Sir Archibald sneered. "I recommend you leave now before you get in our way."

"Funny," said the old hunter. "I was about to give ye the same advice."

"Now listen here," Archibald growled. "I will not take this disrespect. Are you suggesting that my men cannot capture a small band of highwaymen?"

"They're not highwayman, Captain. They're demons. They want to lure yer men here. Damned if I know why, though most likely it's to grind up yer bones and bathe in yer blood."

"Demons! You and your fairy tales. Do you know what I think, old man? I think the bandits offered you a bribe to scare us off. Just tell the authorities that they're demons and you'll handle it, and they'll back off out of superstitious fear. That was your plan. Well, it might work with a more dim-witted captain, but it won't work with me."

"Yer a daft fool if ye think I can be swayed by mere coin, Archibald." The old man produced a pouch from his belt. "In fact, ye've just reminded me why I bothered comin' to meet ye in the first place. Here."

Sir Archibald took the pouch of coins and flung it to the ground in disgust.

"Are you bribing me to stand down? I should have you arrested on the spot!"

"No, sir!" Parsley chimed in. "This isn't a bribe, sir. This is compensation."

"Compensation?"

"Aye, sir," the apprentice hunter said with a smile. "It's to cover the costs of shoein' yer men's horses."

Sir Archibald blinked.

"Why are you giving me enough money to shoe all our horses if it's not a bribe?"

"Well, sir, we thought ye'd be wantin' it. After all, the horses won't be gettin' very far walkin' on bread."

It had been Parsley's first experience with the bearded knight's infamous temper. The strange machine's wild attacks were more than a little reminiscent of the encounter.

"Calm down, Sir Archibald!" Parsley screamed at his pursuer. "It's not me ye want, it's the demon!"

"Archibald? Demon?" The spinning of Six's blade slowed a bit as he tried to take this new data in. This response was completely outside of the host's programming.

Unless the contestant was crazy? That was a possibility. Six pondered this for a moment, until he heard a voice coming in a nearby room.

***

Private Archibald Bartleby couldn't understand why the hell his communicator wasn't working. Had the command center been shut down? Was the battery dead? He didn't know a damn thing about how these stupid gizmos work.

After a while, he decided to just try shouting into it. Maybe he'd turned the volume down or something.

"HELLO! THIS IS ARCHIBALD! DO YOU READ ME?"

Unfortunately, due to an accident of timing, he had happened to shout it when Six was pondering Archibald's identity, and also still in kill-mode.

The Gamehost entered the door to investigate, and then his programming handled the rest.

***

"What's that imbecile gone and done now?" Parsley muttered, running towards the door he'd noticed the 'knight' enter moments before. "The demon must be delighted to have him around, he's bloody easy to manipulate."

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

Well, the book thing did indeed work. It took a bit of squeezing, of course. Giant robots weren’t built to fit in books. (Hang on, where did they actually go? Maybe inside the book? Whatever.) Still, Carnea was now clutching a twitching book that held maybe three or four of those metal soldier things inside.

It probably should have occurred to her that giant metal soldiers wouldn’t like being inside a book though. It probably should have occurred to her that they might actually be able to thrash about and make it annoyingly hard for her to keep them in. She had to lock the book shut, but although her locks were strong, there were other ways to pass through doors. Breaking it down, for example…and the giant metal soldiers were very eager to break the door down.

She didn’t want to release them prematurely and yet, they were about ready to break out and she wasn’t even back inside the building.

Okay, perhaps breaking out behind the line of combat would be rather chaotic, but it definitely wouldn’t be as fun as having them break out right inside the base. The very center of the base. That’s the most important part of bases, right?

People kept saying things like “Stop!” and “What’s that?” and “FIRE AT WILL!” and it was all so troublesome and hard to keep up with. Why didn’t door-books have the ability to go immaterial too?

In frustration, Carnea dove into a trench to hide for a moment. The occupants of that particular trench became—well, really, they were still occupants of the trench, in the sense that they occupied space within the trench. But they certainly weren’t living occupants anymore.

So, as shouting and shooting and weapon-firinging continued around her, Carnea continued to clamp the struggling book shut. It was starting to smoke. Searching the bodies quickly produced some sort of strap and she used it to tie a tight knot around the tome. It certainly didn’t stop the violent shuddering. But it did seem to hold everything together nicely for the moment.

The goddess looked about carefully before dashing towards the next trench over. And the next one. And the next. And then she got impatient and just made a mad dash for the base. She passed halfway through the building’s walls before remembering that the book wouldn’t be able to pass through with her and instead looked around for some sort of small opening that would allow the book through. She found one in the form of a vent.

It was a very small vent, and one that wouldn’t fit her if she didn’t happen to be able to pass through walls as a part of the Mighty Goddess Package, but it was big enough for the book, so that was good enough for her. She followed the path it formed, forced out the grate on the other side, rid the room she found herself in of occupants, and headed out the door.

Well, she was inside, but this part wasn’t important-looking enough for her to let the book open. There weren’t enough glowy things and shiny things and important things to really make it a disaster. She sped down the hallways, poking around for such a room.

And then she ran into two beings she vaguely recognized as being contestants in that game she wasn’t taking part in. A female and a male. She drew back in slight surprise and then lingered a bit, staring at them. The two seemed just about as surprised to find her here and stared back, though the woman did send worried glances back where she had come from. Or had been dragged from. The man had recovered quickly when the book made a sound that books usually didn't make and bulged.

The snapping of the book’s makeshift binding reminded the goddess of more important matters. Carnea clamped down on the book even harder with one arm and waved a bit with the other and said, “’Scuse me, have you seen an important room I could drop this off in?”

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

In those few seconds, where Six’s mind was calculating the saw blade quickly and efficiently eviscerating a man, he was a god. He engorged himself on the feeling of ending a human life. He was Death, reaper of souls, gatekeeper to the Underworld.

In the next few seconds, when the four terabytes uploaded with large sections of human knowledge, including several thousand years of moral and ethical debate, returned to the scope of his perception, he became a monster. The splattered blood pointed to his evil. It was a prosecutor that convicted, a finger that accused Six of his actions. He hated blood. Hated it hated it hated it.

Six pulled a handkerchief from one of his pockets. This was the one he had used previously, and was already marked with that substance he hated most. Useless. He forcefully threw it to the ground, reaching for another handkerchief on his person.

It was at this point Parsley entered the room. He had seen plenty of violent scenes in his time as a demon hunter, but this… all he had to say was that the Demon was particularly creative.

Six turned his head and looked at the man dejectedly. The designated contestant hadn't even been eliminated. He could simply kill him now, but the urge, the desire locked within his subconscious programming, was gone. Six felt disgusted even thinking about it. He began furiously wiping his saw blade in response.

“Um,” Parsley said, trying to connect the illusion with a specific reality. “What happened here?”

Six paused from his furious scrubbing to give heed to the question. Unfortunately, the man was not responding to this scene in fear or hatred. Confusion, perhaps, or pity for the man who died. But without the recognition of the emotions with which he was most familiar, it was unlikely Six would try to kill him again. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

“A contestant was eliminated,” he finally said, moving the cloth to the splatter on his cube-shaped head.

Parsley was pretty sure that meant someone had died, even if that was already obvious. Perhaps he could glean details from other things within the illusion? Hm… wait. Hadn’t Archibald asked a medical question earlier?

Parsley frowned. That actually explained quite a bit. Whoever this was had probably been injured in some way, and Archibald had been asking him for information on how to treat him.

Obviously, the attempt at saving him failed. The demon’s illusion-based powers were probably a factor. It was a life lost, a mark against this wretched demon, and Parsley privately swore he’d avenge the dead who died because of him.

Parsley turned his mind to Archibald. He had finished wiping himself with that rag, and was now seemingly staring at the gore around him, a brooding air about him. Parsley sighed. The Knight really did care about the people around him, even if he did have a temper. He never did take deaths under his watch very well. In an act of kindness, Parsley walked up to Archibald, put a hand on his shoulder, and spoke.

“I’m sorry for… what happened,” he began. He wasn’t the best at wording these kinds of things, but he was ok at it. “Do you… need anything?”

Six turned to look at the demon-hunter. Touching the game-host without permission from a MediaPolitics representative or Six himself was a serious break of protocol, although that didn’t really matter to Six right then. Was this man showing… compassion? To him? Compassion was a thing Six had only known about, yet had never seen. As soon as this so-called competition began, everything had seemed to change. Places, people, rules. His carefully constructed perceptions of his world were crumbling before him.

“Question 17: Do you have an extra set of clothes?” Six said, responding to Parsley's question. The demon hunter glanced down at the robot’s clothes, furrowing his brow. After a while, he finally replied.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Parsley slowly said, in as soft a voice he could muster. “Sorry about that.”

Quietly, a rage built up in Six. He did not deserve this compassion. He was a murderer, and he deserved fear, hatred. To him, it was a simple statement of fact, and he was angered the erroneous reaction of the demon hunter.

“I killed that man,” Six intoned.

“No, you didn’t,” Parsley said, shaking his head. “It was the Demon. He caused this man’s death.”

Six didn’t know how to respond to compassion, certainly not compassion he did not want. So, simply, he left. He turned, pushing Parsley out of the way, returned to the hallway, choosing a random direction to head in, and left.

Parsley sighed, internally lamenting the knight’s tendency to run off, and followed after him.

Originally posted on MSPA by Een.

---

There had been lots of very official-sounding questions posed to Nancy when she interviewed to be a secretary at the New York City police department. They wanted to know, how swiftly can you type? How would you rate your skills of organization? And so on. But Nancy quickly learned that these weren’t the sorts of questions they should have been asking. The interview should have been composed of queries such as, do you have a strong stomach? Can you handle the notion of your coworkers being in incredible danger on a daily basis? Can you keep your tears down at their funerals? Can you walk properly in high-heeled shoes?

They should have asked, because in response to all of them, Nancy would have said yes.

Especially to the bit about the heels.

Good lord, could Nancy Little get around in heels. She proved it now as she skittered down the halls, led by John Smith, her sleek black Herman Delman shoes click-clacking noisily as she went. She hadn’t minded his rough handling of her wrist at first. It was becoming a theme as far as Nancy could tell thus far, what with Six toting her around like a rolled-up rug, and that soldier leading her about with a gun to her back. How much more roughhousing was she supposed to tolerate? It had been nice of Six to rescue her and all, but this was just getting ridiculous. She had no idea where John was taking her, and Nancy had just about had it! What would Henrik have thought, if he saw her scampering around dark corridors with strange men? Nothing good, she sure was. Suddenly feeling rather rebellious, Nancy dug her heels into the floor like brakes on a Chevy and tugged her wrist away from John.

“Quit draggin’ me around like I’m some creep joint kitten!” She shouted up at him, standing on her toes to appear a bit taller, like a startled cat that fluffs out its tail. Though one hand was still occupied by her typewriter’s carrying case, the other was free to point accusingly at John. To make matters even more confusing, she simply couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that she knew him from somewhere. His mannerisms and face sang with familiarity, but she simply couldn’t place it. This only served to frustrate Nancy even further, who had, up until this point, handled all of this nonsense pretty well.

“Break it up! What are you, a sharper? Bracin’ some dame like it’s eggs in the coffee! Take a quick tick and spill it, what the heck is goin’ on here?”

Unlike Nancy, John had found little recognizable about his current cohort. Not only was her face as unmemorable as a pack of peanuts, but he had been enough places and met enough people to cover several lifetimes. There wasn’t enough space in his head for an extraordinarily lucky yet exceedingly boring police secretary. There was, however, something familiar about her uniquely twenties dialect. It made what she was saying easy to decipher, if anything:

“Break it up! What are you, a sharper?” Cease this nonsense immediately! Are you some form of swindler and/or con-man?

”Bracin’ some dame like it’s eggs in the coffee!” You are treating a woman you barely know rather rudely, and are acting as though that is an acceptable way to behave.

”Take a quick tick and spill it,” Pause a moment, if you will, and explain our current predicament to me.

He never thought being stuck in the twenties for couple decades would actually turn out to be useful.

Still, he didn’t have time for this woman’s yammering. He and Nancy viewed the world from opposed ends of the spectrum. Where she shied away from danger and excitement, John embraced it wholeheartedly. There was not much exciting about sitting in an empty corridor, theorizing with a silly girl from an obsolete era. Besides, where was the fun in keeping her informed? Watching her flounder and grapple with the situation at hand seemed a much more interesting way to interfere with his new acquaintance.

“You heard the Charlatan!” he replied with a grin, unaware of how little Nancy had been listening during the Charlatan’s little introduction. “We’re supposed to kill each other. Not sure how you’re going to manage that, though, so you may as well stick with me.” John hadn’t been time travelling all of those years for nothing, and he was no idiot. Parsley had obviously survived the explosion, otherwise something would have happened. Unless the Charlatan had been lying about that bit, but there didn’t seem to be any motivation for him to do so. It was reasonable to deduce that so long as they were here, it meant all of the contestants were still among the land of the living.

Which meant John had plenty of time to cause as much of a ruckus as humanely possible. His grin grew more mischievous at the thought and he clutched Nancy’s hand once more, tugging her in the direction of what he thought might be an exit. He’d already bested Parsley once. That game had grown boring. But there was still an entire roomful of contestants just waiting for him on the surface.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Despite all the commotion in Fort Ayers, the base's research lab had been relatively calm. This was quite fortunate, as the scientists had been desperately looking for a way to solve at least some of their problems.

"Got it!"

The researcher smiled, but only received empty stares from the other lab technicians as they looked at the small metal sphere in his hand. It had an antenna poking out of it and a circular base, but was otherwise unremarkable.

He sighed.

"It's a jamming device. The range isn't very high, but it should be able to stop that robot, at least. Then maybe we can take it apart and see what makes it tick."

"Congratulations," said one of the younger lab assistants. "So, how are you going to get close enough to that thing to jam it?"

A few minutes later, as he walked down the hall carrying only a small pistol and the jamming device, the assistant made a mental note to himself.

Don't ask "how" to someone who outranks you.

***

"Great. First we lose our target, then there's an explosion," the sergeant grumbled. "As if we didn't have enough problems out there! And what the hell is wrong with all of you? I take one minute to call in and see if we have any idea what this guy's after, and when I get back, I find out we've got a man wounded because you just let the bastard tell you what to do?"

There was a wave of apologetic murmuring from the company.

"You're all an embarassment. But we need all the men we've got, so I guess I'm stuck with you. Just don't let it happen again, you hear me?"

Before he could get a response from the company, Six ran down a hallway right in front of them.

It didn't take the sergeant long to regain his composure. That was one of the reasons he was a sergeant.

"After him, men!"

***

Parsley cursed his luck. He'd lost sight of Sir Archibald for only a moment, but it had to be right before the hallway split into two.

The first thing he tried was touching the wall in front of him; after all, he could hardly count on the demon showing him every available path. But it felt solid.

Unless the tricky bastard's even messing with my sense of touch, he thought.

Then he paused for a moment, and held his hand to the wall again. This time, he concentrated on it, and turned a small portion of it to bread.

Stone, he thought, pulling his hand away from the wall. It's stone. Or was, at any rate.

He'd always been able to feel materials as they changed with his power; and he doubted very much that this demon, powerful as his illusions were, could fool such an unusual sense.

It was comforting to know he had that option in order to gain his bearings; of course, he couldn't use it on everything, since it involved changing whatever he was testing into bread. And that carried its own risks.

For the moment, however, he had to find Archibald before the poor fool hurt himself, or somebody else.

Then he heard footsteps and shouting somewhere to his right.

"Blasted demon must want me over there," he grumbled, heading down the hallway towards the commotion. "Suppose it's as good a lead as any."

***

"We've got him now. That hall leads to a corner. Circle around and we can trap him!"

"Sir, um... are you sure we can hurt this thing? Not to mention, it doesn't seem hostile at the moment..."

The sergeant glared.

"That thing killed some good men, soldier. We're going to stop it before it kills any more. Is that clear?"

"Hold on! Hold on!"

The man running down the hall waved his arms frantically. The sergeant recognized him as one of the lab boys. Even if he hadn't, the labcoat and the strange device in his hand were big tip-offs.

"What's that you got there, Fritz?" he asked calmly.

"It's a jamming device." He pointed to its circular base. "Magnetic. We stick it on the robot and squeeze the sphere, and he stops moving. But somebody has to actually get it on him."

Fritz tried to hand the device to the sergeant, but was rebuffed.

"You keep that. I don't know how that thing works, and these idiots would probably just drop it on their own feet. We've got him cornered now, so we'll keep him distracted while you do your thing with that doohickey."

Fritz sighed.

"Yes, sir."

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

“v. cor•nered, cor•ner•ing, cor•ners
v.tr.
1. To furnish with corners.
2. To place or drive into a corner: cornered the thieves and captured them.
3. To form a corner in (a stock or commodity): cornered the silver market.”

Six was pretty sure the second definition described him at that moment. Despite his best attempts to avoid conflict with the men, they had placed him, driven him, into a corner. Their weapons were menacingly aimed at him, and he was directly confronted with the fear and hatred in their faces.

Fear and hate were things easily understood: they made the show better. They quenched the audience’s bloodlust. Simple as that. Fear and hatred, the audience and the populace, demanded a death. Who was he to deny them?

The blade began to slowly spin. It screamed at him to comply, to give them what they wanted.

The blinking alert once again caught Six’s attention. GPS down. How could he be sure there was an audience? Contestants? Or even a game host?

To kill or to die was what it boiled down to. Anything else was just justification for actions. It was a question that had he had never thought of before, and he had no answer for it.

Failure to answer calls for elimination.

~~~~

Parsley reached the end of the hall. The good news was that Sir Archibald was there. The bad news was that the knight was surrounded by a group of soldiers aiming those strange weapon-like objects in his general direction.

The demon hunter tried to interpret the illusion into something reasonable. Were these men just illusions? Real people? Do they have malicious intent? Or are they just disoriented and confused by the illusions afflicting them?

There wasn’t enough time to answer. They were getting ready to fire, and some sort of man in a white cloak was messing with some sort of device that didn’t seem like it was going to be used in a friendly way. He had to act, and soon.

~~~~

“Augh!”

Suddenly, a piece of bread collided with one of the soldiers from behind. He was completely unprepared for this, and fell forward, firing wildly upward.

Chaos ensued. Bullets flew everywhere, ricocheting off of walls with wild and unpredictable paths, the rest of the men, not sure who was shooting or what had happened, began to fire their guns. The sergeant was not pleased.

“NO, FUCKING GODDAMMIT! DON’T BREAK RANKS! DON’T PANIC! YOU PUSSIES, STAY FUCKING CALM OR WE’LL ALL-”

A good punch administered to the back of the head by a demon hunter is an effective way to shut someone up.

~~~~

Six observed the scene before him, processing. Violence. Chaos. Efficient knockout techniques. Contestant 3 had answered the question for him.

Kill.

The laser on the robot’s lapel fired, vaporizing several soldiers. The saw blade began to spin, faster and faster and faster, yearning for the kill, asking for blood, horrible blood.

Who was he to deny the blade?

~~~~

Fritz was terrified.

He used one of the fallen bodies as a human shield as he screamed several expletives, inaudible above the sound of gunfire. He uttered several more when he saw the robot charge through the panicked soldiers wildly, blood splattering and screams echoing. Even more flowed when he realized the terrible murder machine had noticed him, and began heading in his general direction, cutting through men who dared to get close enough.

Fitz glanced at the jammer. It was his only chance for survival.

The scientist threw he corpse aside, charging at the game host, a terrified war cry escaping his lips.

~~~~

Six hadn’t actually noticed the scientist until he ran out of seemingly nowhere, uttering his cry of fear and hatred. He was simply moving in a path that he had calculated to be the most effective way to kill as many people as possible. His programming for elimination hadn’t been so well programmed as to be able to pick out important targets in a crowd.

So, when the scientist suddenly appeared, the robot was legitimately surprised. Another surprise was the object he was carrying- he could not identify what it was, and it was seemingly being used as a weapon.

The curious weapon and interesting tactic piqued Six’s curiosity. Fear and Hatred demanded violence, but he made an adjustment to his path in order to satisfy his need for knowledge.

~~~~

Parsley cursed Archibald’s violent tendencies, as he backed away from the cloud of gore around The Knight’s path. Those could be innocent people, or even his own men! The demon hunter was merely trying to incapacitate them, but he was slaughtering them!

Parsley uttered a swear under his breath as he knocked out another soldier with a piece of bread. He didn’t have time to deal with this fight, or the knight, or any of this! He had a demon to fight!

A particularly loud scream echoed through the hall, directing the demon hunter’s attention. The man in the white cloak, now stained red, was on the ground, screaming, holding his hand. Archibald was staring down at him, his blade starting to slow down.

Parsley then felt something hit his foot. He looked down, and the strange spherical device was at his feet, marred by blood, glinting in the artificial light.

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

SpoilerShow

NPCs get plain black text in MY universe :P

As Ashley drew her knives, the mech made a spastic half-motion and its guns lost their charging glow. There was a grinding sound from within it, as if its inner machinery was tearing itself apart from within.

“Stop! I-”

Ashley stopped. The voice emanating from the mech was metallically harsh, yet it carried with it an unmistakably human cadence.

“Is there someone…in there?”

“Yes! Oh God, I thought I was dead! I thought-”

“Okayokayokay, sloooow doooown darlll. Let’s start from the beginning. What’s your name? And how did you get inside that thing?”

“Corporal Bree Evans, of...well, human forces. Wait holy fuck, I think I’ve defected to the robot side now. Somehow.”

“Do ya feel like killing every human you see?”

“The mech does! I don’t even know how this happened, our platoon… oh fuck, we were hit by a pulse shell, and then I was dead and there was…there were questions, and she was being sarcasticof all things-”

“You were dead? Narrows that it down…”

“Narrows what down?”

“Wellll, lemme put it this way, darl – unless there’s some other deity around here, there’s reallllly only one who could’ve done this to ya. Do ya, y’know, believe in another one or…?”

“No, I never…She said her name was Carnea, and a Goddess…can never have…too many followers…”

The mech lurched alarmingly, with a screech of querulous metal joint on joint. More alarmingly were its guns, which powered themselves on.

“Bree, focus! Stay with me, darlll!”

“Ahhh! It’s like a fucking thought cascade in here! You don’t know what it’s like!”

<font color="navy">“Oh yes I do!”

“Stay the plate out of this!” Ashley, suitably peeved, wrested back control of her vocal cords. “Never mind him, darlll.</font>

“Never mind who?! Who was that?!?”

“It’s waaaay too compli to explain-” –the mech lurched again- “And maaaaybe you need help, darlll.”

“I…heard talk from the lab boys about stuff like this…mech bodies for the soldiers. Things like that…do you think they might be able to-”

“Sounds good darll let’s go which way?”

“But there’s perimeter control and-”

“I don’t know if ya know this darlll, but these things back here? Rocket boosters.” She tapped the cylindrical canisters attached to the mech’s arm. “Mhm, almost full too.”

Envoy and the Broderburgs were no longer alone in the sky.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Parsley picked up the device at his feet. He had little doubt that it was a weapon, and there were too many illusion-addled villagers roaming around to let it stay around where any of them could stumble onto it.

He held it in his palm, and concentrated on changing it into bread.

As the device transformed, Parsley was struck by how strange the composition of it was. What was it made of? Some kind of metal, of course, but what else? It was... unusual. And yet... Familiar. Had he encountered this somewhere before?

And then he remembered it.

"Baron Stein!"

The Baron looked up from his notes and turned to the old demon hunter.

"Ah, yes. I thought you'd show your face soon enough. After all, I already caught one rat sneaking around."

He turned his head towards the strange contraption of metal and glass to his left. Within, Parsley was restrained, his hands suspended in midair by streams of electricity.

"Don't worry. I have no intention of harming him. On the contrary, I intend to study him."

As he spoke, the Baron reached behind his back and retrieved a strange device from the table.

"On the other hand... I doubt that you have anything to offer my research."

He raised the device, and fired it at the old hunter. A blast of electricity shot out from the weapon's barrel.

Parsley's master was quick to react, however. He had readied himself to dodge the moment the Baron's hand had vanished, and the blast struck a large metal sphere behind him. The hunter swiftly fired a bolt from his crossbow back at the self-proclaimed scientist, striking him in the hand and causing him to drop his weapon.

Stein quickly dropped to the ground to retrieve it, but as he stood up, the old hunter knocked over one of the numerous device littering the lab.

"STOP!" the Baron screamed. "It took me months to perfect that!"

The old man grinned.

"Try and make me, ya bastard."

Stein cursed under his breath. This fool could cause untold damage to his lab if this battle kept up!

But the Baron still had a bargaining chip.

"You know," he commented, "that device your apprentice is in is rather delicate. Unplug the wrong wire, and who knows what might happen to him?"

The hunter laughed.

"Stein, ya fool," he said, still chuckling. "When's the last time ya even looked at my boy over there?"

Stein turned his head. Parsley was still trapped, his hands unable to reach anything...

Then he saw the smile on the younger hunter's face as the air around his hands and wrists turned to bread. The electricity couldn't pass through it.

Parsley pulled his hands out of the bread, and then touched the capsule itself.

"Impossible! He can turn the air itself to bread?" Stein screamed.

His plans were ruined. But he still had one chance.

Stein pressed a button underneath his table as Parsley tore his way through the loaf that had moments ago been his prison. The room began to shake around them.

"This castle won't last long," the Baron said with a grin as he turned to flee. "I'd suggest you leave while you can."

Parsley ran after him, but his master's protests gave him pause. He sighed, and ran out the other way with the old man.

As Parsley fled, he heard the Baron's shouts behind him.

"Farewell, hunters! Perhaps we'll meet again! Ahahahahaha!"

The Baron's machines. They'd had that same strange material... or something much like it, at the least. He'd called it "wire", hadn't he?

Was the Baron here? It was a distressing thought. Though not outright influenced or possessed by demons, Baron Stein was still a dangerous man. If he had come to this village as well...

Perhaps the demon had brought him here? He might have made a promise to lure Parsley to this village, so that the Baron could study him... or perhaps kill him, if he still held a grudge.

This village seemed more dangerous by the moment. And the only ally he had found was an ill-tempered knight who was an easy victim for the demon's illusions. How many villagers had died to this trickery?

Parsley looked at the strange machine - stranger even than the Baron's devices had been - cowering before him.

He sighed. He could not leave this man alone. Not in good conscience.

"Sir Archibald!" he shouted at Six. "Your reckless behavior endangers innocents. I must ask you to refrain from raising your sword in anger until the demon is slain. Do you understand me?"

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

---

Had John been in a car, he would've been changing lanes left and right as his plans changed with every mile-marker he passed. Nancy would've been in the passenger seat, no longer telling him to "cool this hayburner" but just hanging on and hoping he'd decide on an exit soon.

But, if that analogy were to hold, an eighteen-wheeler would've just ramped over the hill to one side of the highway and landed smack-dab in front of the pair (who'd've been forced to come to a screeching halt). The driver would've then stuck her head out the window and enquired about local governmental buildings in which to deposit the tank-load of toxic waste she was driving around with.

John would've most likely stuck his head out the window, looked at the tank of glowing sludge with some not-insignificant fascination, then directed the felinoid trucker to follow the highway back the way they'd come. Specifically, he'd mention an exit they'd passed a few miles back that mentioned a large data centre, probably holding information relevant to the entire state and most likely an excellent place to introduce many gallons of radioactive goo.

The trucker would've then waved her thanks, started her rig up again, and headed recklessly off the way the pair had come. John would've gotten going again in short order as well, and Nancy would've been left still wondering what a computer was.

She would've been further perplexed when he finally turned off, taking an exit labelled "helipad."

-

The door on the roof of the base slammed open, and John ran out, followed closely by Nancy. She'd made it all the way up in her shoes, no mean feat, and even though being on the roof meant more running, she was just glad it wasn't another set of stairs.

John half-turned, switching from a run to some sort of side-step trot, and shouted back, "Come on, almost there! Pick up the pace, they've probably spotted us by now!"

Nancy wasn't really sure what the thing she was supposed to be picking up the pace towards was, but she wasn't sure she liked the idea of them (whoever they were) having spotting them. She hurried, and when John flung open a door for her and gestured vaguely to the restraints, she clambered in and did her best to strap in.

John disregarded the safety harness entirely and focused only on getting the chopper in the air. He had just started up the rotors when Nancy, fiddling with a buckle, shouted, "What is this thing?!"

"It's an antique helicopter," he shouted back, "something from the late 20th century, if I had to guess!"

"A what?!"

"A whirlybird!", he clarified, as though putting it in a term thirty-some years off the mark would help.

It didn't, but Nancy got the general idea when the craft lifted off anyway.

Envoy, Ashley and Ashley, the Broderburgs, and Corporal Evans were no longer alone in the sky. Some might say it was actually getting a bit crowded up there.

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

And lo, the kroanbards fell before Sorrel the First, for it was the skentwass of The Stiketunder, the Snave One, Yanis Carnea. He did not share his doatchings. It would only fall upon lelloed ears.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

With the addition of several other players in the sky, the fight with the supersoldier probably became much more interesting. Not that it wasn’t before, but really, fighting on top of an RV? Either side could probably pause their fire for a moment, reach over, and just slap the other. With the addition of a giant mech and a whirlybird that was likely to be armed, there were probably more (unwilling) platforms for one to do cool acrobatics off of. There were probably more angles for bullets to come from. And it was quite possible that COFCA had stopped arguing about what they could do and what option was the best and which one of them was the most stupid.

But all of that’s not interesting at all. Let’s ignore that.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Calm down! Calm down!” said the demon hunter, or at least something to that effect.

Six found himself not staring at him, but at the thing in his hand. It had changed. More specifically, it had changed into something edible, a miraculous act that most likely wasn’t part of the unknown weapon’s function. It was irrevocably changed, perhaps forever, meaning any chance that Six had to glean any information from it himself was gone. Without noticing, his blade started to spin once more, and he turned back and stepped towards the scientist, who played his part nicely and screamed and scuttled backwards while still nursing his stump.

The demon hunter moved to intercept him, even daring to try to divert his blade by pushing it at the elbow. Six shoved him aside and turned his attentions back to him. He was the one who made his moves of inquiry all for naught. He was the one who had destroyed information. It was an unforgivable break in protocol.

Though the host had to admit that the contestant’s powers were mysterious and not quite something he understood. Maybe he did know something about the maybe-weapon.

Six did not move, though his blade continued spinning. As always, he could always fall back on the rules. If the contestant could answer the question, he was allowed to live. If not, then Six could finally kill this man for insisting on continually breaching protocol…there was the unfortunate matter that he did not quite know what the answer was himself. But rules were rules.

“Ques—que—“ No, no, it wasn’t good to stutter. What was the question number? No, it wasn’t like him to get confused.

Internal questions did…not count as actual questions. Not at all. “Question eighteen,” he said rather decisively. “What was the purpose of that device?”

The demon hunter seemed to realize that it was a question mostly directed to him, with a sort of hidden hostility that was unnerving. “It…might have been a machine built by Dr. Stein…”

“It’s a jamming device,” the scientist gasped out desperately, his voice quavering as he struggled to stay alert. “It was meant to shut you down,” he added.

Six did not show any acknowledgement of that answer until, a few seconds later, he sighed a “CORRECT.”

“Well, now you know,” the demon hunter said, obviously not understanding much of what it was at all. “May we help the poor man now?”

“Not ‘we,’” Six clarified. “You have failed to answer, contestant, which means—“

The very tense situation was rudely interrupted by a giant metal foot coming out of the wall.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The room had been as important-seeming as that man had said and Carnea was extremely excited to finally just let the book open and all the struggling giant soldiers out. The three soldiers destroyed pretty much everything in the room just by being inside it and confusedly stomping around. When they got oriented, they actually used their weapons.

As usual, whenever she saw chaos erupt and her plans reached, all plump and fruity and ripe (was that a good metaphor?), Carnea wanted to gloat to gloat to the nearest authority figure (usually another god). There didn’t really seem to be a god who considered this building their belonging, unfortunately, and Carnea wasn’t quite sure what a mortal authority figure would even look like, so she had to settle for giggling to herself.

The place was starting to collapse. Two of the soldiers appeared to be trudging along through other walls. One flew straight out the ceiling and joined the party in the sky, though mostly it focused its weaponry down onto the base.

Really, it hadn’t been the most complex plan, or devious, but it was certainly rather destructive.

SpoilerShow

Why do I write for characters I do not know how to write for.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

As the mech fell away from her, Ashley just barely managed to grab on to the rear bumper of the RV while hanging onto her knives. Unfortunately, the bumper was a far from ideal handhold, and the RV was shaking back and forth with the wind, so this proved an unsustainable situation. And so Ashley fell.

Luckily, the robot was there. Envoy looked a rather silly sight up close, gently lowering the RV with the arms that sprouted out of its shoulders while encircling Ashley’s waist with the serpentine arms coming out of its chest. The robot turned its glowing eye-analogues towards Ashley, making no kind of expression that revealed any kind of intent to do anything.

Ashley growled. Being caught in a robot-hug when there was violence going on up above wasn’t precisely what she had in mind. “What are you waiting for?” she barked at the robot. “Take me up there.”

Envoy complied after only a brief delay. The arms extended and slowly, carefully snaked up towards the roof of the RV. Where the bullets seemed to have stopped. Awwww, did I miss it?

She’d missed it. There was nothing on the RV but a bunch of humans and a cybernetic-looking corpse. “Shhh!” shouted one of the soldiers over the wind, gesturing to a woman Ashley vaguely recognized as the Broderburg matriarch. “Be quiet! She’s sleeping!”

So she was. “Good god,” mused Ashley. “I could be dead and still not get any sleep under these conditions.”

“Well,” pointed out another soldier, “She has a baby. This is probably about as quiet as her life gets.”

And then the helicopter showed up, as if on cue.

* * * * *

”No, I do not have the wrong number! I’m not even looking for anyone in particular! You are Red, aren’t you?”

Alison was talking to a boy. Ethan couldn’t prove it, but he knew it. He could just imagine what the boy was saying on the other end of her phone. “I’m red cause you make me blush so much, cause I’m your boyfriend.”

”The New Batt—well I don’t care if you’re the Cincinnati Red or the Rhode Island Red or whatever!”

”You talking to Communists, Alison?” asked Dad. Ethan didn’t know what a Communist was, so he ignored that, and so did Alison.

Ethan couldn’t hear what the boy was saying, but it sounded kind of like “I’m going to drive from Rhode Island and we’re gonna go on a date.” It was gross. It was so gross he wanted to throw up.

Alison probably wanted to throw up all the butterflies in her stomach cause she was so much in love. ”A copy of what? …Oh. Well, you could have said that in the first place! Can you put me through to someone who is real?”

”Honey, just remember, just because you’re friends with someone doesn’t mean they can tell you who to vote for.”

”The love between us is real,” said the boyfriend in Ethan’s mind. “We’re gonna get married for real and make your stupid brother wear a tie and watch us kiss each other in front of everyone at the wedding.” That one was so gross that if the floor wasn’t shaking, he would have gone into the bathroom and made the biggest, chunkiest throw-up in the history of ever. Or maybe it was just cause the RV was flying so fast.

“Dad?” asked Ethan, while Alison listened to her boyfriend make kissy noises over the phone. “Is there really a flying robot carrying us? For real?”

”That’s what I thought I heard your mother say, son. I didn’t see it.”

”How big is the robot?” Before Dad could answer, Alison ruined everything by opening her big ugly mouth again.

”Hi. Yeah, this is Alison Broderburg, I’m in one of the battles. Who’s this? Well, hi, Jen.” Jen was a girl’s name! Why did Alison’s boyfriend have a girl’s name? Was her boyfriend a girl? He had heard about that in school, and he and Tyler had agreed that that was double-gross. Just from hearing about it, they’d had to go through cootie chemo to make sure they weren’t infected.

”No, mine’s just some guy. The Charlatan. I’m here with my whole family. Yeah, really, four of us and the baby. And the RV came along too. It’s not that bad. I mean I don’t really think anyone’s gonna try to kill anyone or anything. The only other fighter I met was really cool. And there’s another one helping us out with some car trouble right now, I think.” Alison was so gross that Tyler would probably need cootie chemo again. But there wasn’t any mud around, or anything to drink it out of. "So the other four are all dead? That suc—stinks.” Alison did that face she makes when she almost uses a bad word in front of dad. Ethan looked at her and made his I-Know-What-You-Did face, which was like smiling only uglier. ”Were any of them your friends or anything? Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. …Like a pet rock? I used to have one of those.”

Just when Ethan was starting to get bored, the door opened. Which is really cool cause the guy who came through the door, he must have flown in from the sky or else jumped from a helicopter or something. Ethan could hear the helicopter flapping its blades right now.

”Afternoon, Broderburgs,” said the guy. He looked really cool. ”The ‘fasten your seatbelts’ sign is on, since it looks like we’re gonna be coming in for a landing soon. I’m your flight attend—“

”You’re John Smith!” yelled Ethan, getting it right. “I remember you from the beginning of the battle.”

”Don’t talk to strangers, Ethan,” warned Dad.

”Strangers?” Ethan could tell by the way John said that that he was really hurt on the inside by how rude Dad was being. ”Us battlers gotta stick together, right? We’re all friends here.” John made a big smile that looked really friendly to Ethan, but for some reason, it made his baby sister Emma start to cry.

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

Fitz stumbled through the chaos, the dust and rubble, his lungs racking with a cough from the particles in the air. The deafening footfalls of the robots rang all around him, interrupted every few moments world-shattering gunfire. Fitz wanted to run. He wanted to scream. He wanted to puke.

The scientist, bruised and battered, the stump of his hand spurting blood, collapsed. He dry retched at the ground a few times, and then turned onto his back, staring into the cloud of war that hung above him.

“Be gentle, sky, and let me rest-” He said slowly, using his last ounce of energy. “These bones are worn - they lack the zest…”

As his eyes slowly closed, he noticed a figure stand above him, tall and foreboding. The single eye glinted in the madness as it spoke.

“Of flesh in life - they’re marrowless!- / Their arid surface, nakedness!-”

And then he fainted, exhausted.

~~~~

“Betrayed in death; no sheen of red / From coursing blood; and blue was shed.”

Six’s metal arms wrapped around Fitz as he spoke, slowly lifting him up. He stared into the limp, corpselike body, his mechanical stare thinking, calculating. This contestant answered the question correctly. He was not dying, if Six had any say in the matter.

"Upon the fading out of eyes / That cased the world and gave disguise"

There had to be a medical center somewhere nearby. There was even an EMT team on the set of Dice of Death, in case Six ever got a little too rambunctious with his killing and hurt an innocent bystander. In this chaos, however, it was going to be hard to make sense of where to navigate. There wasn’t really more strategy than randomly picking a direction and heading that way in that matter.

"To what my deepest thoughts had been- / But now I’m done with all I’ve seen."

So that’s exactly what Six did.

~~~~

Carnea wasn’t really expecting a dice-themed game show robot carrying a wounded human scientist (as if she knew what either of those things were) to come walking out of the destruction, but it was a pleasant surprise. Nothing could really sour her mood right now. Besides, she particularly enjoyed these metal warriors. They were just so much fun, like giant conglomerations of locks and doors.

The warrior (Six was his name, right?) hailed her. “Question 19: Do you know the location of any facilities which could help in recovering this contestant of his wounds?”

Although some of those words were completely foreign, the goddess was able to glean the general intent of the inquiry.

“Well,” she said. “No. I don’t. Although…”

She turned and pointed towards a section of the base that wasn’t in ruins.

“I think I saw some really crazy stuff over there. Maybe that can help you.”

Six considered this reply for a moment, before issuing a response.

“CORRE-I mean… thank you.”

The robot continued in the direction Carnea indicated, and she followed them with her eyes, thoroughly interested.

After thinking for a bit, she began following them, unlocking herself from the material plane to observe in relative stealth.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Parsley had seen few things as large as the metal foot that had come between him and Sir Archibald. The demon hunter turned to investigate another corridor, but as he did, an identical foot popped out of the wall and cut off the other path. Sighing, the hunter turned his attention to the foot between him and his quarry.

An experimental touch and bread-transformation soon revealed that it was coated in metal, just as it appeared, and filled with Stein's "wiring". Parsley reasoned that it would be safe to change more so he could pass by.

He focused. It took several minutes to change enough of the device to bread that he could squeeze past it on the far end, and the damn thing kept moving until he changed some more wires, but it was soon done.

Unfortunately, by then Sir Archibald had vanished, along with the poor victim of his rage. And Parsley had no clue as to their whereabouts.

Then he heard a loud noise behind him. Turning, he saw the large metal feet stand up. The robot's legs were unlike anything he had seen before; and as the full machine was much taller than the hallway, he couldn't even identify them as legs.

It was enough, however, to make him realize that Baron Stein had a new weapon, and a very destructive one. Parsley would have to stop it, and find the madman as well. If he went for the demon first, the Baron would be free to destroy the town; Parsley could not let that happen.

Then he heard another noise, and saw two more of the weapons on the other side.

The hunter realized that he had a difficult job ahead of him.

***

The robots were more durable than the walls of Fort Ayers, but breaking through them was an awkward process. Still, they slowly managed, and the three machines burst out of the outer walls after about ten minutes of finding their bearings.

It was quite a shock to the soldiers still fighting outside, including their own allies.

The fact that one of the trio was walking around awkwardly was of little comfort.

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

Reservyserve :3

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

COFCA Headquarters was settling into its continual state of uproar, the chaos spreading outside conversation and debate. The round black table was beginning its inexorable descent into paperwork burial; already its pristine obsidian surface was half covered in printouts and folders, and the remaining half was rapidly becoming stained with foodstuff and caffeine.Technicians jogged in and out of the conference room and the adjoining control room, bringing equipment from corners of the facility and jury-rigging monitors and speakers haphazardly across both. Assistants brought in memos, files and coffee, and brought out empty mugs and paper cups. The board members bickered and bantered, and behind them others discussed the unfolding battle before them.

“Who was that? And why was she clinging onto a flying mech?” Several technicians were crowded around a shakily wired LCD screen in a corner of the conference room, comparing the room’s video feeds with the incoming data stream.

“She looked familiar. Like…didn’t someone say something about Ashley? Or Ashley? Or something like that?”

“Wasn’t that the guy from Temps? Or wait, no, what dep is he again? He was all…‘no no, I said Ashley’. Something like that, yeah-”

Meanwhile, around the table tensions were rising. The façade of anonymity cracked in places as others leaned into the light to speak candidly.

“And why is Envoy listening to her? What is she, the robot whisperer?” Mauri O’Connor, nanotechnologist. As one of the most outspoken supporters for the total and complete reintegration of the only Uae metal samples into the construction of Envoy, its abduction had been particularly hard on her.

“No, I think that might be the other one. The goddess? If you’re looking for someone to go around gaining access to things…in any case, we should allow Envoy to complete its command.” Jonathon Wimblestaten, heir of the prestigious and affluent Wimblestaten family (heavily invested in Envoy’s left leg) pressed his own contact panel and watched as the votes for his motion were tallied.

Envoy’s arms moved with a dexterity that no earthly construction could emulate, placing Ashley gently on the roof of the RV while avoiding the ascending helicopter. Its cargo delivered, the secondary arms retreated, taking an aerodynamic, accessible position flat against Envoy’s sides.

“There, we’ve freed up those arms and hopefully gained a little goodwill-” What Wimblestaten intended to say was lost to time by the multitude of voices rising to argue, bicker, comment and defend.

“-should we do something about that helicopter? It’s climbing awfully fast and-”

“Who does she think she is anyway? Ordering our robot about like some army jock-”

“I don’t think it’s our responsibility to nursemaid everyone in danger that comes along-”

“-it’s awfully fast-”

“Has anyone seen my sandwich? I could swear I put it down only just now-”

“We don’t even know who this girl is-”

“-always barking orders, Envoy is not some kind of toy or botservant-”

“-and I haven’t eaten for bloody ages, so if anyone’s nicked my sandwich-”

There was a groan from the technicians’ corner as the badly rigged LCD screen blew out – though that sound was barely heard amidst the rooms’ noise. The group broke up, their conversations re-mingling with the din already present.

“-well, he was going on about Ashley – the contestant I mean, only he said it funny-”

“-what could we do? It’s not as if Envoy has any kind of anti-air capability-”

“The guy from Temps? Toast?”

“I think so-”

“Get out of the way perhaps? We could try and reduce our second derivative further-”

“Toast? You mean Kwan?”

“Aha! Yes, he was the one who dropped all that mysterious Ashley lark-”

“Decelerate faster? I thought we covered this!”

“The one in the cloak? God, I can’t stand that guy. Just because he has a cybernetic limb he thinks he can be all ineffable-”

“Or we could accelerate, oh no wait it’s level with the RV now. Who’s flying that? Does anyone-”

“Wait a second…his name is Kwan To-”

“HOLY GOD DID YOU SEE THAT?!”

“-was that John Smith? Did he just jump from the helicopter? Did he just jump from the goddamn helicopter?! And into the RV?!”

“Shit, he really is completely off his head isn’t he?”

“That’s it, I’m outta here – this is way insane for my taste-”

“-what do you mean, that’s an unusual name? Damn it, he was just there half a minute ago, he’s always vanishing places-”

“What about the heli? If John Smith just jumped out, is anyone piloting – CRAP obviously there is, really badly at that - who’s flying that bird? I thought it was going to crash into OH SHIT no it missed again-”

If – and this was a bit of a contested point – if the eyes on board the roof of the RV hadn’t lied to their respective owners, a man in a woven metal formal suit had leaped out of the helicopter that was until recently ascending alongside them, grabbed hold of the door of the RV, pulled it open and slid inside, and still had had the time to give them all an appraising glance in between.

Ashley knew her eyes were in better than working order, and <font color="navy">Ashley notwithstanding, so was her mind. In addition, she had the benefit of recognizing John Smith, while she ardently hoped the converse was untrue.

Inside their mind Ashley paced about, considering the situation.

I…don’t think so. He looks sharp, it’s not going to evade him forever. But he and the rest of the contestants only know me, not you.

D-did you see his eyes, darll? They were…they were all probey! All ‘I know your soul’-like! Like…like Sarge Heims! Exactly like Sarge Heims! Remember him and his “Information! Is the KEY! To any CONFLICT! You have to CONCENTRATE! And take in EVERYTHING around y-”

Ashley interrupted quickly – a mental image of the paranoid sergeant had begun to cloudily form in their mutual mind’s eye.

That…that’s in the past. Let it go. Concentrate on what’s going on around you.

Easy for you to say, darll. I’ve been looking at the inside of our mind for two plating years, and you expect me not to look in our mind’s eye once in a while? I haven’t had my body for a looooooong time…courtesy of who again?

Ashley sighed, and lay crosswise across one of the comfortable chairs, resting his neck on one armrest and his legs on the other. I didn’t have a choice, Ashley. You…you don’t understand. You’re unbelievably naïve for a girl your age – you think you can get away with anything, but you just…can’t! I’m my own person! I can’t sweep up after your faults all…the time…

He stopped, faltering.

I…

Well?

…it was for our own good. It was.

The comfortable chair vanished, dropping Ashley on the ground slightly harder than could be accounted for by imaginary gravity.

Agh! The hell?

You’re…plating unbelievable!

Crying, Ashley drew one of her knives and drove it into the RV’s roof in anger. None of the other soldiers saw her teardrops blow away on the rushing wind, and no one heard the sound of knife on steel over a baby’s cries…</font>

John Smith felt…discomfited. The baby was crying, punctuating the rapidly cooling atmosphere inside the RV, and the sound unnerved him somehow. He’d made a social faux pas – but one that he hadn’t planned on making, or expected would occur. Tactically, he now stood at an unanticipated disadvantage – and the crying – wouldn’t – stop.

Clarice left behind the long-gone merry-go-round and opened her eyes. With true maternal instinct, she was sitting up and moving the instant Baby Emma let out her first bawl. By the second cry, she was throwing open the door of the RV-

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

There was too much going on. Parsley needed to pause and review what he knew.

He was in a place with stone walls - that meant he had most likely wandered into a cavern. He recalled from his early review of the surrounding area that there was a large mine near the town. That was most likely where he was.

The Baron must have been using it as a base. But what was Archibald doing here? And the other townspeople?

The demon must have lured them here. But why? Was Stein involved?

Parsley shook his head. It hardly mattered; he had more important tasks to focus on. From what he remembered of the map, the mine was some distance away from the town.

That had two implications. First, it suggested the demon's illusions were more powerful than Parsley had expected; either he could affect both the town and the mine simultaneously, or his illusions would last in his victims' minds for quite some time. Both scenarios were troubling.

On the brighter side, Baron Stein's machines had quite a distance to cover before they could threaten the town itself. That meant there was still time to stop them.

Of course, he still had to think of a plan. He made his way through the holes in the cavern walls the machines had left behind; on his way, he found the infirmary.

The various medicines and machines were beyond his understanding; he reasoned it to be one of the Baron's smaller labs, disguised by an illusion.

Parsley found a small open box laying on a table; there were syringes of something inside. He picked one up and examined it; it read "CTRLDRG" on the side.

Nonsensical letters. A common sign of an illusion, he recalled his master telling him once. He'd honestly expected better of the demon by this point.

Experimentally, he turned the syringe and its contents to bread. He couldn't recognize the material it was made of - it was similar to Stein's "wiring", or at least the part outside of the metal. He was using it for containers now?

The liquid inside was even more unrecognizable, though that hardly surprised him. About all he could tell was that it was wet. It also made him vaguely uncomfortable.

He put the newly-formed roll in his coat pocket. He'd have to dispose of it safely later. Then he continued following the holes created by Stein's gigantic machines.

Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.

---

Dial tone.

Beeeeep.

Beeeeeeep.

Beeeeeeeeeeclick

“H'lo?”

“Um, hi. Hello. Miss. Is Mr. Roussoin Carver in?”

“Yeah,” said Miss, in a tone that sounded like she had her feet up on her desk. “This is Jane McClain, his assistant. Can I take a message?”

Rutherford B. Wimbledon, Executive Obfuscation Officer, lowered his phone and covered the receiver. “It's his assistant,” he hissed to the man next to him.

“What are you telling me for?” Dr. Leon Folstrom demanded under his breath. “Just tell him what you have to. Make something up.”

“Her,” corrected Wimbledon.

“Just say something!”

He raised the receiver to his ear. “We, uh, it's for a movie, Ms. McClain. It's a movie deal. For Mr. Carver. You should let us talk to him.”

“Uh-huh.” Jane nodded apprehensively and nearly dropped the phone tucked between her cheek and her shoulder in the process. “Well, what's the movie about?”

“Um.”

Beat.

“It's a secret. Because it's still in production,” he quickly added. “We... can't have just anyone knowing.”

“I'm supposed to believe that you're writing a movie directed by Roussoin Carver that no one is supposed to know about? Not even his secretary? What am I supposed to tell people if someone else calls and offers him a contract? 'He's off filming a secret movie, don't tell your friends'?”

“It'd be illegal for me to tell you,” Wimbledon blurted out. “About the movie. If you could please let me talk to -”

“Oh, yeah? And who's gonna know if you told me? I'd find out anyway.”

“We, uh...”

“What did you say your company was called?” Jane asked.

“Tell me, Ms. McClain, what's Mr. Carver's cell phone provider?”

She wrinkled her nose. “...Horizon Wireless. Why? Are you supposed to be selling us phone service now?”

“Because we just hacked them and found his cell number. Thanks for your time, Ms. McClain.”

“Wait!” she stammered, quickly sitting up. “You can't just- ”

“Oh, and we charged your data plan for the hacking.”

Dial tone.

Beeeeep.

Beeeeeeep.

Jane swore into the receiver and slammed down the phone.

---

Chester B. Arthur, newly-appointed chairman of the newly-created Committee for Mistakes and Poor Planning (CMAPP) cleared his throat nervously. The rest of COFCA sat around their obsidian table, bathed half in shadows.

"Well, we-" he began, only to be immediately interrupted by an LCD screen behind him powering on, silhouetting him against an enormous red line graph captioned 'Fig. 8: A line going down.'

Chester looked over his shoulder at it for a long moment. He swallowed and turned back to the round table. The line graph provided just enough light to show him that everyone was glaring at him. He shuffled the pages of his speech in front of him.

"We've been receiving some complaints," he tried again, "that our PR campaign for Envoy hasn't been going as well as we expected it to."

"Envoy's been ferrying around an RV for almost ten minutes," interrupted Margaret Doyle, Executive Assistant Executive. "We don't look good right now. People are going to take us for granted!"

"Well yes, but our engineers are working on an exit strategy that should get Envoy out in as few as sixteen more minutes-"

"Envoy isn't saving anyone," a smallish woman with a man's face chimed in. "He nearly got the Broderburgs killed!"

"Y-Yes, well, technically it was the supersoldier who did that, and we only realigned Envoy into its current paradigm because we were trying to-"

"You mean you realigned Envoy into its current paradigm," Nikolai Lutetian, CEO of Ennel Mining interjected.

"That's, uh, that's right, sir," Chester sighed. "But if we can just synergize our ways of thinking instead of-"

"I have a better idea," announced Megasenator Whittenberg as he stood up from his chair. He leaned forwards and planted his hands on the obsidian table. "Chester, you're fired."

An enormous counter labeled "FIRE SCAPEGOAT?" appeared on the center of the table and on more than half of the screens dotting the room, and a set of options appeared on the screens at each person's seat. The tally of "yes" votes skyrocketed so quickly that he barely had time to register that there wasn't actually a tally of "no" votes.

He stared down at the table. "MOTION PASSED" blinked back at him in plain white block capitals before he could finish saying 'benchmark.'

"But I-" he stammered.

"Nope. Out. Go."

He sighed. "Yes sir, Mr. Senator."

"That's Megasenator," he corrected brusquely. The rest of COFCA scowled in silence as Chester stood, gathered up his briefcase and started towards the door. COFCA was just a bunch of loud, immature little children in business suits, anyway. They didn't need him, and he didn't need them. To hell with first contact. To hell with rogue demigods. To hell with paradigm shifts and to hell with Env-

"Sir!" Cooper Wilding, internal operations technician, called from a makeshift desk covered in mismatched computer components. "We've found a perfect new candidate for COFCA!"

Chester stopped halfway through punching in the 7-digit combination for the exit to listen, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else.

"Well?" Megasenator Whittenberg began, only to be cut off by Eva Nguyen, Actual Diplomat, who stood up and conveniently blocked Whittenberg's line of sight.

"Well?" asked Eva Nguyen.

"He's an astrophysicist - the best in his field. Made a breakthrough in understanding black hole physics. Holds several Master's degrees and a Ph.D in communications. Our database says he's just been recently laid off, and he's between jobs right now. We can easily manage double his last salary."

"Sounds wonderful," Eva admitted. Even as she was speaking, the "HIRE ASTROPHYSICIST?" counter already had several dozen votes on it. "What's his name?"

"Dr. Chester B. Arthur, man. Erm, ma'am."

"We'll need someone to get him introduced to the COFCA," she continued, reading off a napkin she had produced from somewhere. Chester's Raspberry smartphone chirped, indicating that he'd received an email.

"One step ahead of you, man."

---

Envoy powered down its primary rockets and leveled off over Fort Ayers. Down below, several mechs were rampaging through the stronghold of solid concrete and bedrock like lawnmowers through butter. But up here in the sky, three contestants (totaling eight people and change) were being lazily carried along by a fourth contestant (totaling somewhere in the range of a hundred people) whose work seemed awfully unappreciated right about now. Envoy had saved these people, and the only thanks COFCA got was having their extremely expensive toy reduced to an extremely expensive ferry. That wasn't COFCA's fault. All they did was find an incident and step in to rescue someone.

Why, it just wasn't right!

It was only just that COFCA should get a second chance at rescuing everyone, and almost 90% of them voted unanimously that they should handle the situation proactively, take initiative and make themselves another opportunity if they wanted things to go better (and raise brand awareness).

This was no time to sit around and do nothing.

It was time for them to be heroes.

Ashley, John and the Broderburgs all perked up as all of the walkie talkies, Alison's cell phone and the RV's radio crackled to life, broadcasting the radio channel that COFCA had hacked into.

“This is COFCA! Bad news, everyone – our temporal transitional field is causing a double – no, a triple causality loop in the inverted flux array, and our last tachyonic sweep, uh, picked up a quantum waveform disturbance in Envoy's asynchronous polarity field! Um, if our translational matrix doesn't perfectly account for the resulting entropic time-dilation, we could – OH NO, LOOK OUT!” someone on the other end cried as Envoy casually tossed the RV into the middle of Fort Ayers. There was a noise that sounded distinctly like a phone clattering to the floor, and the line went dead.

The inside of the RV was all yelling and screaming as it plummeted towards certain death. Envoy slapped its hands over its mouth for good measure and surged towards the RV at just under 88 mph.

A mech accidentally slapped it out of the air, and Envoy heroically crashed through the wall and skidded to a halt a few feet from where Parsley was standing.

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

---

Private Arnold Jerfanderworth was not in the bathroom. He wasn't really sure where he was, actually- the door hadn't been marked, and had the power not gone out in this rarely-used section of the base, it likely would've been locked as well.

Or rather, it likely would've been locked from both the inside and outside, instead of just one way. As it was... well, he was starting to get a bit hungry. There wasn't any food in there; in fact, aside from the big, old-school steel cylinder that took up about half the room, there wasn't much of anything, really.

-

Through sheer coincidence, the man everyone was suddenly paying attention to in COFCA's conference room was also named Jerfanderworth. Instead of being a bumbling, unfortunate military private, however, he was a brilliant temporal physicist who had just proposed a record-breakingly lazy and roundabout solution to a pressing issue.

Megasenator Whittenberg was the first to break the silence. "A time machine?"

Several of the more science-literate members snickered at him.

"No, Megasenator," Jerfanderworth replied, moustache twitching side-to-side as he tried to figure out how to simplify his explanation even further. "A time capsule. We can use various readings to determine precisely where Envoy currently is, then send a crew there to construct a sealed capsule. The capsule will sit dormant until the appropriate time, at which point it will open up and send it whatever it is we think would be useful."

COFCA's newest employee, Dr. Chester B. Arthur, spoke up. "But what about paradoxes? Shouldn't we be worried about sucking the planet into an inter-temporal schism of some sort?"

"Not if we play our cards right, no." The scientist made a vague gesture with one hand, and one of his disgruntled aides fumbled with a tablet until a diagram appeared on several screens around the room. "You see, if we hire a contractor, give them specifications, then leave them be, the feedback loop that constitutes a paradox would have no chance to form. As long as none of us communicate with the contractors after we've hired them, there's no way that the outcome of their efforts could come back and change what they actually do."

The motion for "WEIRD TIME SHIT?" passed quickly, and a list of things that would make Envoy look good was drafted up soon after.

-

As the RV plummeted down, no one thought about much of anything. It really only lasted for a few seconds, and the RV was tumbling enough that they couldn't really tell anything about what sort of surface they'd be landing on. John didn't have time to consider the hilariously nonsensical technobabble that the COFCA representative had been spewing, Ashley didn't have time to think about anything but hanging on, and Baby Emma... well, if she'd had anything in particular to think about, she didn't have much time for it.

Even if they had had hours to think about things, though, it's doubtful that they would have considered the possibility of a neat hole being bored into the roof of Fort Ayers and disgorging a pair of flying blurs. It wouldn't have even occurred to them that one of the blurs would speed towards the RV, attach itself to the bottom, and begin slowing the vehicle's descent. The thought that a pair of autonomous support drones might've been sitting under Fort Ayers for years wouldn't have even crossed any of their minds.

-

Even less likely to think of such things was Nancy, who was too busy finally losing the modicum of calm rationality she'd been barely holding on to up to now. She didn't even register the existence of the second support drone, let alone that it was saving her from a really-quite-near brush with the ground and levelling the helicopter out at a safe altitude.

-

Topping the list of people who didn't give thought to the drones' existence, though, was Private Arnold Jerfanderworth. He was much too distracted by the remaining contents of the cylinder. In particular, he was occupied by the discovery that a myth he'd been skeptical of for most of his life was, in fact, true.

"Come on," some tech had whined, back when the time capsule was being loaded up, "what's the worst that could happen?"

"Fine," his boss had replied, "throw it in. I still think that story's full of crap, though."

"You'll see," the tech had said, grinning as he threw in the last item and swung the door shut. "When this thing eventually opens up, that twinkie will totally be full of alcohol."

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

Doctor Mark Thomas wondered where the hell Fritz was.

Of course, it wasn’t the first or second thing on his mind at the time. It was more like the fifth or sixth, and was kind of overshadowed by the first two thoughts, which consisted of “HOLY SHIT MORE ROBOTS APPARENTLY JUST LAUNCHED THEMSELVES OUT OF THE BASE,” followed by “HOLY SHIT THE ORIGINAL ROBOTS ARE STILL RAMPAGING FUCK WHAT DO WE DO.” These were both phrases he screamed at his staff of technicians, who were frantically trying to figure out how to actually solve the problem.

The current rushed prototype they had whipped up in the span of ten minutes was basically a backpack-mounted long-range artillery gun. With a single shot from close range, it could take down those giant robots, and worked pretty well for an artillery-backpack. The big problem they were running into was that it was heavy. Really heavy. That, and firing it had a high likelihood of breaking your spine. Artillery wasn’t really supposed to be shot from a backpack.

And that kept Dr. Thomas yelling. “GET THAT ARTILLERY PACK FUCKING SMALLER AND EASIER TO USE, OR ELSE I’LL GET ONE OF YOU TO FIRE THE FIRST SHOT. JUST LIKE FRITZ, SO GET YOUR ASSES MOVING OR YOU MIGHT NOT EVEN HAVE ONE AFTER-”

Suddenly, at that moment, a gameshow-host robot carrying a dying scientist kicked the lab doors in.

An awkward silence settled over the entire lab as their attention was drawn towards Six. He stood there, perfectly straight, like some surreal statue, fearfully and carefully observed by the technicians around the room.

The robot finally broke the quiet tension.

“Question 20: Could you please direct me to the nearest medical facility?”

It got even quieter, as if all the air had been sucked out of the laboratory. No one replied, all for different reasons. Some were afraid. Some didn’t know how to respond. And some just refused to answer the evil robot scum.

“Failure to comply will result in elimination. I repeat, failure to comply will result in elimination.”

Continued silence.

“This is your third and final warning. Please direct me to the nearest medical facility, or suffer the consequences.”

One of the technicians sort of snapped out of it, stammering out a nervous reply.
“Well, um, we have a medical facility right here, but I don’t know if it will be able to treat those wounds.”

Six’s robot eye inquisitively directed itself towards the speaker, before suddenly nodding saying “Thank you. I will, however, most likely use these facilities.”

The robot walked towards the nearest table, which happened to contain the backpack-artillery, and swept it all aside, loudly crashing to the ground.

“Hey!” Someone said. “We were working on that.”

“This contestant’s life,” Six said while placing Fritz onto the table. “Is more important to the continued existence of the show than whatever asinine technologies you have been assigned to build. Question 21: Could you please retrieve an item with which I could decrease blood loss?”

Someone complied, and then Six got right into operating on the half-dead scientist.