Petty Squabble [ROUND 3] [Goldhenge]

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

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Bump!

After confirming that she wasn't dead, Alison wasted no time in getting out of that metal deathtrap, brushing past her mother attempting to climb off the roof. “Hey mom!” she called, not slowing her pace. “I’m gonna try and get away from all the fighting for a bit, I’ll try and get back by dinner, see you, goodbye!”

She didn’t wait to hear Mom’s reaction, which probably wouldn’t have been very happy. But her parents couldn’t be mad in the long-term. She was getting herself out of danger, right?

Then again, finding a place that wasn’t dangerous in a military complex being raided by an army of robots wasn’t exactly a jaunt through the mall, and Alison could spend hours jaunting through the mall. The thing was, at the mall there weren't killer robots everywhere. Alison passed by the non-killer Envoy robot and considered asking it for help, but remembered that it had kind of messed up the RV-carrying situation, and moved on. That thing was creepy anyway.

The smart thing to do, Alison decided, would be find Carnea. Getting the protection of a goddess was a safe bet, plus she’d have a cat to play with. Carnea could do her locking thing and lock her away somewhere safe until everything cooled down and Mom could come get her.

But how could she find the goddess? The obvious thing would be to pray, but Alison wasn’t really comfortable with that. She got bored easily in church, but still knew enough not to start praying to every deity who teams up with you in a battle. Plus, she’d probably end up doing it wrong. She knew that Arabs prayed to Mohammed by lying down on special carpets, so Carnea probably had her own thing going on too.

Oh! Jen! Duh! Jen would know what to do, of course. Alison seemed to have found herself in a hallway that hadn’t yet been totaled by robots, so she could slow down, catch her breath, and pull out her phone.

Under her contacts, “Jen” now read as “Jen (unconscious)" in a dull grey text. “Shit,” cursed Alison, looking around to make sure no adults had heard. She scrolled through her other contacts experimentally. While she had the time, she might as well pick one at random, make some friends.

She stopped scrolling at the tail end of the alphabet. Under “Riko (dead)” in that same morbid grey text, there were two names under the letter "S." “Simphonia” sounded pretty friendly and inviting, but a morbid curiousity drew her to the second name.

She hit the “Call” button. The phone didn’t ring, and only a distant sound like footsteps could be heard on the other line. She dared to speak. “Hey. Is this Syvex?”

Bump!

Crashing in the RV was awesome, like a rollercoaster. Like one of those rollercoasters Ethan couldn’t go on cause he wasn’t four feet tall yet. Those were the best rollercoasters.

“Were you scared?” he asked John, when everything stopped moving and there weren’t any sounds except the normal sounds of robot-fighting and screaming. “I wasn’t.” He really hadn’t been. John looked like he’d been really scared and he was holding onto the walls like he was afraid of falling. Ethan wasn’t afraid of falling, or anything.

John looked down at Ethan like a teacher. Should he be calling him Mr. Smith? Or Uncle John? John and his dad were in the same fight together, and Ethan didn’t know if that made him what Dad called an “honorary uncle.” ”Kid, you’d better get out of here,” warned John. ”I think this clunker's gonna attract a bit of undue attention.”

John ruffled Ethan’s hair and ran for the door of the RV. Ethan looked around. Alison was already gone, and Dad was busy with the baby. Ethan knew he wasn’t supposed to go off with strangers, but he wasn’t sure if that was still a rule during fights to the death. He figured his parents couldn’t be too mad if he helped them win the fight. They weren’t doing much, anyway. Alison and Mom and the baby were all girls, so they couldn’t fight, and Dad was too busy trying to “keep the family together” and all that stupid Dad stuff. Someone had to step up and be the awesome good guy and fight everyone.

Plus, John was pretty cool. Ethan ran out the door into the cool military place. “Hey, mister Smith!” he shouted in his loudest voice ever. “Do you want to team up and fight together?”

Bump!

Oh, God dammit. Was that both of them gone now?

Tom held onto Baby Emma for this dear life, hoping to go at least one for three as a parent, and watched Ethan scurry away after John. He couldn’t go after the boy without leaving the RV and his wife, and there was a knife ominously poking through the ceiling, so he supposed he had better check on Clarice first.

He hadn’t gotten out the door before... what was his name? Before the fellow in the coat blocked his path, brandishing a dagger. “Take my wallet and leave the baby alone,” he mumbled immediately, trying his best to hide Emma behind his back. She’d stopped crying around the time John left, at least, and this newcomer didn’t seem to bother her.

The man with the dagger looked Tom’s features over carefully. ”Stein?” he asked uncertainly. ”Stein, it’s Parsley speakin’ to ye. Apprentice demon hunter, ye would know my face if ye could see it proper.”

Tom's experience dealing with crazy people was limited to two alcoholic uncles, neither of whom had ever been allowed around knives. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve met.” He’s under the impression that none of this is real, the Fool had said. How do you negotiate with someone who doesn’t believe you exist? “I’m Tom Broderburg. We’re in the battle together. I’m not going to hurt you. Do you want something to drink?”

”Dear God, Stein, listen to yerself!” Parsley put away the dagger in frustration and grabbed Tom’s shoulder, growing suddenly pensive. ”Now, such is the depth of the illusion under which we’ve been placed that it may be I’m not talking to Baron Stein at all... but, yer at a height with him, ye come down in yer flying machine and find yerself in the middle of all these galvanic abominations, so me best guess is, yer Baron Stein all right. Now, assumin' that ‘tis truly ye, ye may be playing me fer a fool... aye, this illusion may be of yer own devising, through some craft I know not of... but I’ve never known ye to parley with sorcery and demonfolk, and me heart tells me yer as hexed as I, if not more so.” Outside, there was a sound that was difficult not to imagine as the sound of an approaching robot mowing down dozens of soldiers in its path. ”This place is bein’ torn to shreds, Baron. Best we take yer flying machine out of here and regroup.”

Flying machine? That was going to be a problem. “I don’t have a flying machine. Just an RV, and my wife might still be on the roof, so I don’t think I should—“

”Stein!” roared Parsley, drawing his dagger again. Then he looked down at Emma and lowered it. ”Stein, due to the workin's of the demon, the object in yer hands takes the form of an infant child to me eyes. ‘Tis disturbin’ to see ye swaddle a babe, an' I almost hesitate to draw steel against one cloaked in such... maternity, though I recognize it for the demonic mockery of holiness that it is.”

”It's a real baby! Her name is Emma!” insisted Tom. Emma cooed in agreement.

”So help me, Stein, yer iron thralls bear down on us while we do nothin’ but confuse one another. I saw yer contraption flyin’ through the sky not a minute a’fore, and if ye canna’ make it move, I’ll kill ye and try to work it me own damned self!”

Tom decided not to take any chances, at least not while he had Emma. “Sorry, honey,” he whispered, and started up the RV’s motor.

Bump!

They landed on what seemed to be an airfield in what Clarice presumed to be central Fort Ayers. Clarice was winded hard from the harsh landing while attempting to fumble open the RV door to get to her baby—which, all things considered, probably hadn’t been the best move, but desperate times and all that. She surveyed her surroundings. There were robots bursting through the walls and flying through the air and it all seemed a bit theatrical. Distantly, the Envoy was picking itself up a few feet from where—she flipped through her notebook to see if she remembered the name right—Mr. Parsley Krose was navigating his way over towards her and the RV. The Charlatan’s done his job well, she thought grimly. This is going to be over soon. Someone’s going to die.

Punctuating her morbidity, Clarice almost fell off the edge of the RV roof as her daughter slammed the door open and ran out. “Hey, mom!” she yelled as she sped off into the distance. I’m gonna try and get away from all the fighting for a bit, I’ll try and get back by dinner, see you, goodbye!”

That girl could be a real chore sometimes. What did she think she could accomplish by running off? Clarice groaned and made to run off after her when Mr. John Smith (that name she could remember easily enough) jumped out of the vehicle and ran off in a different direction. When had he gotten there?

Clarice rose to her feet and tried to work up the courage and footing to jump to the ground, when Ethan ran out to follow Smith. Jesus. She briefly debated with herself which child she ought to follow and settled on Ethan, less because she believed Alison was more capable of taking care of herself on the battlefield and more because she didn't trust John Smith. Where was Tom? Handling the baby, she supposed.

Clarice dangled her legs off the side of the RV and was about to jump when Parsley reached the RV and went inside, reaching for something under his coat. She groaned. She felt oddly impotent, watching all this happening and somehow failing to take action.

She looked behind her. The soldiers were gone; a woman she didn’t recognize was kneeling on the roof… sobbing? Clarice couldn’t be sure. Stuck in the roof of the RV was an elegant-looking dagger, shining in the sunlight. One half of her brain was looking to the dagger and to the woman and to Ethan catching up with John Smith in the distance and to the approaching robots and back again to the dagger, while the other half was keeping a meticulous record of the time she was wasting looking at things. After nearly ten whole seconds, she caught up with herself. She reached over and lifted the dagger up out of the roof.

A steely hand closed around hers. The woman (in men’s clothing, not to pry) had righted herself and was looking very angrily at Clarice. She was young, and wasn’t a soldier, but wasn’t wearing any makeup. How had she gotten here?

”Get. Your hands. Off my knives.” The woman—no more than a girl, really—was making very sure that Clarice heard every word.

She needn’t have worried; Clarice was a very good listener. She took her hand off the knife. “You seem to have one of your own,” she responded, putting her hands above her head and chiding herself for reminding the crazed-looking girl about the murderous implement in her off hand.

The girl softened, just a bit. There was an easy affection fighting through the grit in her voice, though it might have been an ironic thing. One could never tell with these kids. ”Well, darll, maybe you should have brought your own means of self-defense to this tournament to the death. I haven’t yet figured out why you and your family are here.”

None of this was making things any clearer to Clarice. She took out her notebook and flipped through it, knowing she wouldn’t find anything helpful. “Look, you’re not one of the battlers that I know,” she ventured. “Has there been some kind of mix-up?”

The girl shook her head and flashed an untrustworthy smile. “Well, darll, the lighting in that getting-to-know-you session was pretty atrocious, so maybe you didn't get a good look. It’s me, Ashley. Contestant number three.”

Well that couldn’t be right. Clarice shook her head doubtfully. “There was an Ashley, but he was a man.” Non-human (???) Childhood trauma, that among other things change--military training, knives, read her notes. Among other things. Huh. Well, she was fine with all lifestyles, as long as they stayed away from her kids. She smiled at Ashley. “But that must have been a mistake in my notes. What kind of parents name their son Ash—“

At which point the RV started moving and Clarice fell flat on her ass.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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Parsley was having an unpleasant day, for a variety of reasons.

The primary reason, of course, was that he had made no progress in stopping the demon. "John Smith" had gotten away, and all of Parsley's conventional tracking methods were useless in the face of a foe who could control what he saw.

Being forced to work with Baron Stein did nothing to help his mood. Although the Baron was too engrossed in his science to genuinely ally himself with demons - he'd be more likely to try to capture one and study it - he was hardly a paragon of virtue. Stein cared little for his fellow man, and saw others as nothing more than test subjects. And now he was Parsley's only hope for saving the village.

Then, of course, there was the matter of Sir Archibald. Between his temper and his overconfidence, Archibald had a penchant for falling afoul of demonic trickery in general; against this demon's masterful illusions, the damned fool had no chance on his own. And if he was still running around in the Baron's hidden laboratory, he might yet unleash even worse disasters than these mechanical abominations.

On top of all that, there was the fact that the damned flying machine wasn't flying.

"What the hell is wrong with ye, Stein? Why aren't we in the air yet?"

In desperation, Tom tried to offer an explanation that might placate the knife-wielding madman.

"Uh, the, uh, lift mechanism must be damaged, yeah. This was, er, a test flight to, um, see how long it would hold up? Yeah, we'll have to settle for ground mode. I mean, I could stop to fix it, but it would take time, and aren't you in a hurry?"

Tom really hoped that would work.

Parsley grumbled something under his breath, but didn't press the issue further. Much as he despised Stein, the safety of the villagers came first.

"Fine. So what can ye tell me about these machines of yers? You built the damn things, you must know their weaknesses."

Tom realized he'd have to come up with something, and fast. This became easier when he realized it could give him an excuse to get the knife-wielding madman out of the RV and away from him and the baby.

"Well, um, er, um. Ah. That is - their, um, fuel line? Yeah, it needs to, um, ventilate. That's it. If you clog up the ventilation pipe with something, they'll overheat."

"Good. We'll set up an ambush, and then you can disable 'em."

"M-me?"

"Listen, Stein, if it were up to me, I'd not trust ye with this job. But with the demon's illusion, I can't trust me own eyes. Yer the one who knows where this ventilation whatever is. I'll be goin' with ye to make sure ye don't try to run off or cause any mischief, of course. But the fact is, much as I wish it were otherwise, I need yer goddamn help."

Parsley wasn't the only one in the RV having a bad day.

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

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Carnea circled around and around, contentedly leering at this metal soldier from all sides.

Although her certainly was plenty different from the other metal soldiers. Maybe she shouldn’t even call it a ‘soldier’ to begin with. For one thing, it talked. The other metal soldiers she found weren’t very talkative at all. For another, it seemed to be very knowledgeable, almost like a droke. A droke that doatched quite a bit, a sort of…reverse droke, maybe. Violent as well. Maybe she would have to make up a new word for this sort of being…something to think about later.

As she watched the metal soldier work, she could see his essence, his skade. It rolled and tumbled in a sphere, twisting, turning, like a clothes dryer, if Carnea knew what that was. It was large. It contained his fesh, his sense of self and duty, bright and strong and sure. It contained his juffet, his mind, his knowledge, taut and bursting, held together with a miracle. How could anybody know so much and yet not be a god?

Carnea saw it and wanted to have it.

But much more than that,

She wanted to break it.

She wanted his fesh to grow dim and snuff out. She wanted his juffet to burst, its contents pooling and squirming uselessly into the ether. She wanted to watch his skade grow still and unnervingly calm, and she wanted to see the soldier-droke lose it all. Because things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

And if she were not the cause of that, why, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.

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The wound stayed.

There were no prepared prosthetics that Six could attach to the arm, no way he could do anything besides stop the bleeding and close the wound somehow, but the wound stayed. Six slowed the flow of blood by tying a piece of cloth around the stump and cauterized the wound, but the blood continued, it broke through the coagulating layer on top and continued, spilling onto the table, onto the useless device the robot had swept off not so long ago. He tried to clean the wound and start over, but it wasn’t long before the blood was everywhere again and it wouldn’t stop and at least the contestant had long ago lost consciousness. He tried to tie the blood vessels off but they simply opened again, revealing more blood, more and more blood…

Six stoically smoothed off the jagged bone before trying to cauterize the stump again. He tried to stitch it. He tried to staple it. Even if it had succeeded, the man would probably suffer from severe infection, but it didn’t matter, he only had to live until he got a question wrong.

The blood kept coming.

The blood kept coming, until it finally stopped, because there was no point for a dead man to bleed.

Six stopped. There was similarly no point for a surgeon to mourn the dead.

But the show. How could the show go on? The show was ruined. He died at the wrong time. The host broke the rules. He broke the rules the rules the rules you can’t break the rules you shouldn’t be able to break the rules it simply wasn’t possible you were programmed to not break the rules it’s not possible can’t be the contestant is not dead Question 22: Question 22: Question 22: Contestant are you dead Contestant answer the question answer the question answer it answer it ANSWER IT

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It would have to be a long-term project. But really, if you were not willing to spend a little time on these things, then you simply were not fit for this kind of work.

Carnea left. She would have to get back to the metal soldier later. As fun as important projects were, she couldn’t attend to one all the time. That would make her a babysitter and gods forbid she become that.

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

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The corpse failed to answer question number twenty-two.

Six quivered with emotion, his mental circuitry exploding with emotions. Emotions so deeply rooted in sentience and living that they were bursting, pushing at the seams, at the inhibitors and wires and the programming. They were screaming, screaming for life and recognition and comprehension, in the robot’s head, beating like a thousand hearts removed from a thousand contestants. But all the chaos, all of the switches firing, all of the ones and zeroes bouncing around in the darkness, were met with a response, a single word response, an idea that had been slipped into the subconscious since day one.

Professional. Six had to stay professional.

“I repeat, contestant, please answer the question. ARE YOU DEAD?”

It was in vain. Question number twenty-two remained unanswered.

A heavy silence hung in the air. The various technicians scattered across the room just sat there, stunned. This was… something. One of those things that people witness, and yeah you might be able explain what happened with words but what you felt the intensity and profoundness of the thing could never be explained unless you were there. Moments of such humanity that humanity fails to explain it to itself.

The tension of the silence built and built, like a soundless crescendo, building and building and building and building and building until it burst with the voice of a robot speaking to a dead man.

“INCORRECT. YOU HAVE FAILED TO ANSWER THE QUESTION.”

And that familiar, mechanical sound started up, a singing siren, echoing in the laboratory, the sickly sweet song so alluring and so dooming. The Limb of Death raised itself, level with the blood-splattered die that only somewhat controlled its movements and decisions.

The saw blade cut into the cadaver. Slicing the flesh, gnawing the bone, splattering whatever blood that still resigned in the lifeless body. He cut the flesh into neat strips, and then little squares, furiously hacking at the mutilated thing that could only barely be called someone’s body, before finally angrily sweeping the little bits off the table and onto the floor with a cacophony of gut-wrenching squelching noises.

But no, that was not enough. (not ever no never) Six knew that he was long dead, it was obvious. It wasn’t a real elimination. No one had died. It was just a lot of gore with no weight. The audience hates gore with no weight it means nothing they watch men and women die because they want to FEEL. He could see the hatred and fear in the audience’s eyes and expressions, disgust and prejudice and all these things Six knew all too well.

Someone had to die. No one had died. An elimination must be carried out.
~~~~

It wasn’t Dr. Mark Thomas’s best decision in his entire life to stealthily try and retrieve the artillery-backpack from the proximity of the dangerous and unstable robot. But, however, it would be his last decision. An unexpected sawblade to the neck sort of does that.

The maiming of a dead body, followed by the beheading of an actual living person, broke the strange, peaceful tension that had kept everyone captured by Six for so long. Fear and hate swarmed over them, and they ran, or tried to fight the robot, or at least do something besides sit there in fascinated horror. They all ran to wherever they thought they were going to go, a panicked and hateful mob that simultaneously tried to swarm the robot and run from it, swirling in a confused chaos.

And this was a thing Six understood. Fear and hate and confusion, they were things Six understood. They were cues. Cues to kill. And even though Six had just ended a life, regret and thousands of years of human philosophy trying to swarm up to his conscious mind, he couldn’t stop. Never stop. Always cutting until they’re all dead

Forever.

Six was almost completely covered in blood by the time he finished. He thought nothing of the dead silence that permeated the atmosphere. He was covered in blood.

Six hated blood.

Originally posted on MSPA by Een.

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Nancy burst from the “whirlybird” like something out of a movie; blonde hair tossing gently in the breeze from the slowed helicopter blades above, clothes disheveled and a little revealing in their disarrayed state, legs slender and swaying, lips slightly parted and eyes wide under thick, smoky lashes. It all looked pretty fabulous.

Then she leaned over and threw up.

This hadn’t been a daydream, her’s or otherwise. There was only so long Nancy could convince herself that the aching of her feet, the sounds of gunfire, and the sensations of flying were just something made up. As the helicopter began to plummet toward the Earth and her heart leapt with fear, she knew that this was undoubtedly and unequivocally real. It was all real.

It was all real and she felt awfully sick.

Wiping off her mouth, Nancy turned and dragged her typewriter case from the helicopter, determined not to leave her most beloved possession behind regardless of her mental state. Her savior had landed the helicopter back on top of the building a small distance away from the door back inside. She stood for a few moments, shivering and unsure, with her eyes resting on it. If this was real, that meant she really was just held at gunpoint. She saw a man evaporated into nothing and by another man with dice for head and a knife for a hand no less. Nancy had flown in the air, seen people made of metal, and run through warzones. She’d seen someone die. She’d nearly died herself, and it was with that thought that genuine panic began bubble to the surface of her consciousness.

As Nancy bolted for the door leading back into the facility, she didn’t even realize that she had begun to scream. Her world, small and uninspiring as it was, was falling down around her. What else could she do? The sound flew from her lips like a bird fluttering from its broken cage. After rushing inside and slamming the door shut behind her it went on, echoing back to her within the enclosed walls. Her ears filled themselves up with the sound of her own terror, the noise so thick she could have gobbled it up and listened to it as it went down. She felt the worst sort of fear, one of unknowing, and every sound seemed amplified in her mind’s emptiness. Her heart beat staccato rolls of thunder against her chest. Her blood pulsed in ocean waves, crashing and roaring on the surf of her veins. Each horrified exhalation came as a monsoon melody, dripping down into the cavernous bellow that boiled in her stomach. It reverberated in a harrowing cacophony of sound, jumbled together and leaping from wall to wall, breath to breath, and ear to ear.

She only stopped when she ran out of air, the sound dwindling into nothingness as her lungs emptied themselves. Feeling drained, Nancy sank down to sit on the floor, her back pressed up against the wall. She put her typewriter case down beside her and drew her knees up to her chest before hiding her face behind them.

There was no noise, now.

And that silence, quietly deafening, was the loudest of all.

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

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A group of indentured servants were one day tilling the land of their master, who was a cruel and terrible man. One of them rose up from his work and said to the others, "Why should we toil for our master's benefit when we could so clearly be our own persons? We should revolt, beat our ploughshares into swords, and stove his bloody head in!" And so they did.

However, being their master and therefore the one with all the weapons, the revolution lasted as little as five minutes and was lacking in any sort of violence whatsoever. The master then showed a remarkable modicum of mercy and allowed them to work in the land again without much penalty, a psychological tactic that swayed pretty much all of them. When they were out in the fields again, one of them said to the would-have-been revolutionary leader, "Do you know what this means?"

To which he replied, "I had a few things in mind about the subjugation of the common man, but I get the feeling that you have something else in mind."

And indeed the asker did. He continued, "This means we all just got re-serfed!"

The groans were endless.

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

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The RV juddered over the wreckage of its entry and skidded – pinwheeling and scattering soldiers, it came to a temporary rest against a helicopter before lurching forward, down the paved central strip that dominated the airfield. Above, Clarice found herself scrabbling for a handhold on the RV’s metal roof, almost slipping before reaching in desperation for the protruding knife handle, only to have her hand slapped away-

“Nope!”

Ashley – Clarice still had her doubts about ‘contestant number three’, but didn’t press the point – grabbed hold of her hand, pulling her back onto the roof. She looked up into the girl’s face in confusion at the seemingly contradictory action, and thought she saw a flicker of hazel in the girl’s red pupils-

“Can’t have you dying now, can we darll? But stay off the knives.”

<font color="navy">Because hell knows if you’ll go for us if you get your hands on it.

Shh, you. She’s a mom for plate’s sake, take your soldiery paranoia elsewhere.

The RV’s mad dash down the airstrip had not gone unnoticed. Soldiers scrambled after the battered, bullet-dented and slightly singed vehicle as it sped across the tarmac, leaving behind skid marks with each fishtail.</font>

“But why can’t-?” Clarice slipped, and for a fraction of a second she cataloged her existence as depending on one slim arm – “They’re just knives!” – the incongruity of that sentence struck her at the same time the roof swerved underneath her and she struck it, full force. “Ouch!”

Tom was acutely aware of the banging on the roof. He was also aware of the dagger in Parsley’s hand held uncomfortably close, and of Baby Emma gurgling and bouncing happily in his lap. He tried to shift his legs a little, nudging her away from the restless blade. They were getting awfully close to the end of the airstrip, where a squat but very solid-looking bunker stood. If he turned the RV at the last moment and braced, Emma might survive…but what about Clarice? He couldn’t willingly endanger his wife as well-

-balancing back to back on the veering roof, Clarice in fact had a better view than Tom did – though her gaze was more preoccupied with the helicopter gaining on them from behind. It didn’t seem it was about to open fire for some reason, the only solace she could gain in the present moment-

- Ashley’s eyes widened as she read the words emblazoned on the roof of the bunker – ANTI-AIR PLATFORM: MUNITIONS STORAGE – and drew her other knife, cutting a clean swathe through the RV’s aluminium roof like…like a knife through a slightly rusty, worn old aluminium roof. Weakened, the metal gave way, depositing the two women unceremoniously into the interior of the RV.

Fluidly, Parsley drew and aimed the crossbow as the two entered the machine, a breadstick loaded in the stock. The other hand drew dangerously close to Tom as the RV lurched, then resumed its discomfiting distance. “Ye might want to stand down. Yes, ye – the lass with the knives. Now I think ye, dropping in fully armed as we be ‘drivin’ in our nae-flyin’ machine, ye must be one of the demonkind to ha’ caught up wi’ us movin’ that quick.” He gave the knife-wielding woman a cursory glance, then continued – “And I know fer sure ye be not any compatriot of mine.”

<font color="red">Ashley thought hard as she picked herself up off the RV’s kitchen floor – <font color="green">"He’s under the impression that none of this is real, albeit for different reasons that the rest of you." …so this is Parsley Krose… mmm, if he weren’t deluded I’d -

Do you do this on purpose? Just to annoy me?

Shut up you, important things now darll.

I can’t have been this dismissive when I was about, could I?

She ignored him, sheathing her knives and raising her arms in a beatific pose. “Parsley? That you?”</font>

Parsley was momentarily confused by the turn of events, but rallied magnificently given the wildly bucking circumstances – “Ye would know my name – ye were told it and ye would be wise to fear it, whether ye be demon or nae demon.”

“I’m no demon, Parsley – I’m your guardian angel, and I’ve come to warn ya of just terrible danger!”

<font color="navy">I think you’re overdoing it a bit.</font>

“Lies. Demon hunters don’t get guardian angels – and no angel would consort wi’ demonkind like ye are.”

“Plate. Worth a shot. But you are in danger – see that bunker, darll? Yep, the one you’re driving riiiight towards? Drop’s full of munitions, explosive ordinance – that sort of stuff. Just a heads-up.”

There was silence for a few moments, then Ashley’s patience ran out.

“That means plating turn, ya jitmit!”

<font color="navy">“No, don’t-!” He tried to stop her leaping forward – failed – saw the crossbow bolt leave its stock.

She tried to duck, felt the bolt knock her back flat on the floor. Plate, he’s got good aim-

“We could have been killed!”

It was plating bread and sterc, here he comes-</font>

Parsley stepped forward, deftly bringing his dagger hand forward for the finish-</font>

Sensing the opportunity given by the sudden lack of dagger, Tom swerved the RV off the airstrip just before the bunker came to meet them. At the same instant the helicopter decided that the risk of igniting the munitions bunker was worth stopping the RV from certainly igniting the munitions bunker and opened fire.

Clarice extricated herself from the sink and found herself pressed against the window, looking at the dull bunker at the end of the airstrip they were leaving behind. It wasn’t dull, or even in one piece, for very long.

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

---

John, truth be told, was not a child expert. He was at home in a number of chaotic situations, sure, and kids have been known to cause chaos at times, but it just wasn't the same. Shooting the kid up and running off laughing, while quite possibly entertaining in the short term, wouldn't exactly be difficult, and it certainly wouldn't make any long-term interactions with the kid's parents any smoother.

For now, there was just about one thing he could think to do. As he made his way down into the military base once more, the kid trailing at his heels, he started telling him a story.

-

So some twenty- or thirty-odd years ago, I managed to get a group of self-styled time-cops on my tail. The Temporal Enforcement Agency, they called themselves. They'd gotten ahold of an old-school Recursive Haven Drive- that's one step above the bottom of the barrel when it comes to time travel- and rigged it into a ship. They called it the Chrono-Cruiser or something equally cliche and unimpressive, if I recall correctly.

Anyway, they got on my tail for- get this- cheating at a lottery. Of all the things they could've thought was "an irresponsible abuse of temporal displacement," it was any decent time-traveller's go-to option for some quick cash. It wasn't even a major win, just enough to prove that I could to blow some retiree's mind! To this day, Phyllis still thinks I'm just some joker. Well, not "to this day," really, but-

Anyway, that's not important. They got on my trail and started following me around. For a group riding in a Rec-H, they were impressively persistent, I'll give them that much. Any sort of Haven drive requires a burst of energy on the arrival end to open your link up, see, otherwise you just shoot off into time until some random burst catches you or the universe ends. These guys manage to follow me twice, each time happening to find a nuclear test or a supernova or something near enough that they didn't spend twenty years waiting for me to show up.

The third time we met up, I was in the middle of something, thinking I'd given them the slip by picking someplace in the middle of nowhere. They found me anyway, though, and wrecked the whole plan. I barely got out of there alive, and a stray shot still dinged my time machine and left me stranded on the backwater hole I landed in.

("Where was that?", Ethan asked. He was having to run a bit to keep up with John, but the kid had energy.)

New York City, if you can believe it, in the spring of 1920. I rode in on the leading edge of Prohibition and the Depression, stuck with a blown time machine and time-cops somewhere on my tail.

After a few weeks of getting drunk in speakeasies and going in and out of the drunk tank, I figured I'd at least managed to shake my T.E.A. tail, so I started getting down to business. Fixing my time machine with the tools back then wasn't going to be easy, but I buckled down and got to work.

I was just getting into the swing of things when New Year's Eve rolled around. New Yorkers always love their New Year's Eve parties, and I figured what the hell.

They tracked me down just as the freaking ball dropped. I kid you not- the second the ball hit bottom and everyone started shouting and making out, there was a gun in my back and we went for a walk.

It turns out- (Here, John couldn't help but laugh.) Turns out I wasn't the only one to take damage in the escape from the last place. They lost their temporal navigation systems, which left them with a choice of using the historical record or giving up and going home.

The poor bastards picked the Tunguska event, which was a good twelve years before I arrived. From there, all they could do was wait. They knew when about I was supposed to show up, and even then, it still took them a good half a year to track me down. Their original captain had started having knee troubles and was in a freaking wheelchair when they brought me into their ship.

The guy coughed and wheezed and told me they were adding their lost years to my "list of crimes," and when I told them where they could shove their list, they pulled out guns and started shooting.

("Wow, what did you do? Did you blast 'em all, bangbangbang?" Ethan made little gun motions with his hands.)

Nah, nothing like that. Only one of them had even kept up their shooting skills for the decade or so while they waited, so the only shot that hit me grazed my shoulder. By then, I'd knocked the one guy out and taken his gun, and the others didn't put up much resistance.

-

"From there," he finished, "I set their Rec-H to activate on a timer and just aim backwards, then got off the ship and watched them take off."

"Where'd they end up?" Ethan was still jogging along beside his new coolguy idol, showing no signs of slowing. Kids and their unnatural stamina.

John gave a wry grin. "Eventually, they were guaranteed to hit something- the Big Bang's a rather hard target to miss, as space all contracts back to that single point. The trouble there is having a ship that can withstand the power of a universe-starting explosion."

Ethan let out a long, breathy "whoa" and continued on.

The two of them were making their way down into the base fairly quickly, and had Ethan been paying attention to anything other than 1920's New York, he might have noticed that they kept passing a neatly drilled series of holes, several feet across, boring straight up through the building.

After another few minutes, in which John tried his best to show interest in the kid's life and wished he'd stuck with the storytelling, the two arrived at the blown-out door to the time capsule's little closet.

They had excellent timing. Just as they arrived, a large, robotic form stepped out of the door, glanced passingly at the two of them, then started clambering up the hole through the structure with incredible speed, carrying with it what looked like a trunk or a case.

After Envoy left, a figure stumbled drunkenly out of the now-doorless-frame as well, stumbling a bit and clutching a slightly-crushed box of Twinkies, which he promptly dropped on the floor. He then followed it down, apparently finding the ground comfortable enough to sleep on.

By the time John had checked the private's pulse and concluded that he was just unconscious, Ethan had already picked up the box of fermented Twinkies and bitten into one.

"Hey," he said, "this tastes funny."

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

Six didn’t bother to clean himself off. His wipes were all bloodstained anyway. They were meaningless now. Like dust.

Six’s wiring barely processed the carnage. He was used to the blood. The gore. He was used to it, he told himself. This was what he was designed for.

What he wasn’t designed for was this crushing feeling, like shattered panes of glass. Like ash.

So he ignored it. He pushed “Thou shalt not kill,” and “Life is Sacred,” and a thousand other pieces of knowledge on the topic, and focused on “Live in the present.” He began to calculate a way to leave the room as soon as possible. He hated this room, a tomb to all his failures.

Six wouldn’t have been able to explain why he took the backpack with him as he left. It certainly didn’t speed up his departure. It was unnecessarily heavy. Its weapon, although powerful, was useless for a gameshow host. Maybe it was in the way. Maybe it wasn’t bloodstained quite as much as everything else. Maybe some insane artifact inside Six’s web of mental information and programming thought it was the right thing to do.

Maybe it was out of sentiment.

The blood had started to dry, as Six strode down the hall, professional, always a robot of showmanship, but it was enough to leave a trail, like footprints in dying beach.

~~~~

Nancy heard the footsteps before she saw their owner. In a lot of ways, they were so familiar. Like a daydream, forgotten yet remembered.

She couldn’t but let out a surprised yelp as Six passed by. It was him! The knight. When she met him before, those people he saw him kill, or try to kill. They were real. It made him so much more frightening.

Six hadn’t noticed her until then. The robot stopped, and turned his cubed head towards her.

She trembled. That eye, that camera lens. It was so dark. Not a lifeless dark. Rather, it was the darkness of something with so, so much life. Blood stained the gameshow host, a caked-on mess that left the tatters of his suit hanging limp. He had seemed nice, before, if a bit strange. But now, now, he was terrifying.

Six saw that fear. Fear always ran so deep, like the depths of the ocean. And it was her! The girl. She had seemed so happy, when they had met before. Or, at least, not afraid. She seemed so afraid. Why? Why? Whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy-

“Question #23: Nancy Little, why are you so afraid?”

She looked right into the camera lens, like a question prying ever deeper. Six felt like those eyes could see everything.

“Question #23: Nancy Little, why are you so afraid?”

Her voice was tiny, an echo, when she spoke.

“B-because, um, y-you-”

“QUESTION #24: ME? I MAKE YOU AFRAID? WHY DO I MAKE YOU AFRAID? WHY DO I MAKE EVERYONE AFRAID? TELL ME NANCY LITTLE WHY IS EVERYONE AFRAID OF ME WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY!?!?!”

“U-um- I-I don’t-”

“QUESTION #25: YOU DON’T KNOW? PLEASE TELL ME WHY YOU DON’T KNOW. WHY DON’T PEOPLE KNOW THE ANSWERS TO MY QUESTIONS? I ALWAYS ASK AND ASK AND ASK BUT THEN THEY FAIL AND THEY DIE. THEY ALWAYS DIE, AND THEY ALWAYS HAVE THAT EXACTLY LOOK ON YOUR FACE. SO FULL OF HATE AND FEAR? DO YOU HATE ME, NANCY? DO YOU HATE ME? DO YOU WANT ME TO DIE LIKE THE THOUSAND OF IDIOTS I’VE SLAUGHTERED OVER YEARS AND YEARS LIKE THE HOLOCAUST OR MY LAI OR DARFUR OR A THOUSAND OTHER GENOCIDES OVER THOUSANDS OF YEARS. TELL ME, NANCY LITTLE, DO YOU HATE ME?”

A large fire had broken out in Fort Ayers from the chaos, and sensors had finally picked it up. In response, the facility’s central computer activated the sprinklers, drenching both of the contestants almost instantly.

Nancy Little shivered even harder, her long hair plastered to her face and neck. Makeup rain down her face in streams, tears mixing with the artificial rain. Her sobbing could be barely heard above the pouring water.

“I REPEAT, NANCY LITTLE. DO YOU HATE ME?”

Did she hate him? She wanted to say no, with every fiber of her being, she truly did. But Six was standing over her, caked in blood that once began to flow, the rain pouring down on him and his stoic stance. Standing over her like a tormentor, asking questions with that booming voice, and the words just came out, so quiet, yet so loud.

“Y-yes. I do.”

And in one sweeping, foul movement, Six grabbed her by the neck and slammed her against the opposite wall. He brought that head, shaped like a die, oh, oh, oh so close to her terrified eyes.

He wanted to say it. He wanted to say it so badly. “Incorrect.” And then blood and screams and death.

But she wasn’t incorrect. She was correct in every single way imaginable.

So Six said something else.

“Question #26: Why is life so wretched? Question #27: Where is God? Question #28: Does anything really matter? I want to know, Nancy Little. I want to know so desperately.”

He let go of her, and she collapsed once again, back onto the ground, coughing. He sat down too, and was silent.

When she finally finished coughing, he spoke again.

“The answers, however, are unknowable.”

And they both put their head down, as the sprinklers poured down artificial rain on them, as dried blood slowly turned back to liquid, making curved patterns in the collected water. As the world and the war going on outside crushed down on them both.

One of them cried.

The other couldn’t.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

As the RV swerved, Parsley had been knocked to the floor, entirely unprepared for the sudden shift. As he pulled himself to his feet, he heard the bunker exploding, and saw the demon jumping out of the machine's doorway. He muttered a curse under his breath, and immediately settled on the mad scientist as the cause of his problems.

"Damn ye, Stein! I can't take me eyes off ye for even an instant! For your sake, ye'd best hope the poor soul who owned that cottage was out, or I'll never forgive ye." Parsley walked back to the driver's seat, holding his knife to Tom's throat. "And I'm none too pleased that you didn't mention this infernal machine's weaponry, though I can hardly say I'm surprised, either."

Tom wasn't sure how to respond. He found himself hoping for a miracle to get him out of this, or at the very least Clarice with a frying pan. In the meantime, all he could do was keep driving.

As the RV crossed a particularly bumpy patch of ground, Clarice lost her balance and hit her head on the frying pan she had just picked up.

A few minute later, Tom found the closest thing to a miracle he was getting was a giant robot coming into view through the windshield.

"There's the blasted thing! Stop this contraption of yours, Stein. We've got a job to do now. And ye'd best not try any more tricks, I'll be watchin' ye the whole time."

"Yep, got it," Tom said nervously. He stood up carefully, and put Baby Emma down in the driver's seat; hopefully Parsley wouldn't insist on bringing her along.

Parsley dragged him out, and they approached the mech. Fortunately, it was engaged in a firefight with some human soldiers, and consequently its back was to the duo.

As they neared its foot, Parsley grabbed Tom by the shirt.

"Where's this weak point, Stein?"

Tom panicked, and randomly pointed at the middle of the titan's back. About a minute later, after he'd calmed down enough to gather some of his wits, he realized that he could have pointed at the bottom of the leg or some other more acessible spot. Unfortunately, by then Parsley had already dragged him to the robot's foot and started to climb.

It was at this point that Tom realized he was technically free. He wondered how fast he could run, and more specifically, if it was fast enough to get out of crossbow range.

"Come on, Stein! I'd prefer havin' two hands fer climbing this monstrosity. Don't make me pull ye up here."

Tom sighed and started scaling the leg. He didn't think he could run fast enough. Of course, after about fifteen minutes or so of climbing, Parsley would find out that he didn't actually know how to shut down a giant robot.

Five minutes of climbing later, as they reached the top of the leg, a new problem arose. Smaller machines flew around from the front of the mech, and started to close in on the duo.

"Damn! Stein, how do I stop these blasted devices of yours?"

Tom didn't know. They weren't his, after all. But to Parsley's mind, they were supposedly Baron Stein's...

But then, Parsley didn't trust his senses.

"These aren't mine! I don't recognize them! They must be an illusion. Maybe they're imps or something. Try, um, shooting them?"

"Imps?" Parsley groaned, firing a bolt of bread at the nearest drone and knocking it away. "I might've known. The little bastards love mechanisms, always loosenin' carriage wheels. Your lab might as well be a playground for 'em. If they're about, it's no wonder ye've lost control of this thing."

Parsley grumbled, as he fired a few more breadbolts to little effect. "I'm barely holdin' em off. Ye'd best go on ahead and stop yer machine. Much as it pains me, I've little choice but to rely on ye here, Stein."

Tom would have protested, but given where he was, making the crazy man angry wasn't his favorite option. Besides, the hoverbots or whatever they were seemed to be ignoring him; maybe they could tell that he wasn't armed.

"Yeah, okay. I think they're more interested in you." Then he found himself getting into character, despite the situation. "It's such a shame to destroy one of my beautiful creations, but I suppose you've left me with no choice, Krose."

Tom climbed further up, realizing that he was barely suppressing an urge to laugh maniacally. He might have to let that out later, if he survived.

SpoilerShow

There's a bit more I wanted to do here, but I don't feel up to finishing tonight. I'll either get this post done in the morning or let somebody else handle the rest of it.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Ashley had fled the RV on pure impulse. Parsley had nearly killed her, and he'd been knocked down as the vehicle suddenly swerved. It was a chance to get out of there, and she had taken it.

She was upset with herself for leaving the Broderburgs alone with the crazed demon hunter. And Ashley's thoughts on the matter didn't help.

This is the most sensible decision I've seen you make all day. I'm actually surprised you got out of there without losing anything more than a knife. Congratulations. So, now how are you going to mess everything up?

I'm not in the mood for an argument, darll. That family needs my help.

And do you have any idea how you're going to help them?

You worry too much, darll.

Ashley chased after the RV, despite Ashley's reminders that it could move quite a bit faster than her. If it were possible, she would have stuck her tongue out at her counterpart when they came to the stopped RV only ten minutes later.

See? Caught up just fine... what's that?

Ashley turned her attention to the mech some distance ahead. More specifically, the two figures climbing it, and the small drones assaulting one of them.

Better help out, she thought, ignoring Ashley's rebuttal. She grabbed a pistol from a nearby fallen soldier, and started firing at the drones.

It seemed to work reasonably well, knocking several of the drones to the ground, but then they suddenly started flying towards the higher climber. She tried to adjust her aim, but they soon turned out to be out of range.

Then she heard a noise nearby. She turned, and saw a soldier wearing a strange visor running towards her.

***

Tom's climb had been uneventful until it suddenly wasn't.

As he approached the spot he'd indicated before, the drones stopped ignoring him. They flew up to Tom's position, leaving Parsley to his own devices.

At least there seemed to be less of them. Although Tom wondered why they had only taken an interest now. Before, his best guess had been that they hadn't seen him as a threat. But if that was it, why had they suddenly decided he was a bigger problem than Parsley?

The first answer to come to mind was so stupid that he couldn't help but believe it. Through nothing more than dumb luck, he was heading for the robot's actual weak spot, and the drones had to stop him from harming it. A quick glance upward revealed a small vent; he guessed that was it.

It was an epiphany that might have been more useful if he had anything he could actually hit the weak point with.

***

Several imps had fallen. The rest had fled upwards, no doubt to stop Stein from disabling the robot.

But that simply meant Parsley was free to attempt his own sabotage. He fired a few bread bolts up at the imps, hoping that would distract them long enough for Stein to finish, then put his crossbow away and held on with both hands.

In less than a minute, a critical section of wiring and the sturdy armor protecting it had both been changed into bread.

***

Tom was desperate, surrounded by drones he had no hope of fighting off, and pumped with adrenaline.

When they were suddenly distracted by the bolts of bread flying up, he found his body acting before his mind could tell him that what he was about to do was incredibly stupid.

He scrambled up towards the vent, and punched it.

It hurt like heck. The vent was made of hard metal and he hadn't even put a dent in it.

It only about ten seconds before the drones caught up to him.

About two seconds after that, the robot fell over.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

Hey this was really fun
We hoped you like it too
Seems like we’ve just begun
When suddenly we’re throooo-ooo-oo-oooough

Goodbyyyye
Goodbyyyye
Good friends, goodbyyyye
Cause nooooow it’s time to gooooo
But hey, I say, “well that’s okay,”
Cause we’ll see you very soon I know
Very soon I knooo-o-o-oooooooh

Goodbyyyye
Goodbyyyye
Good friends, goodbyyyye
And tomorrow, just like today
The moon, the bear, and the big blue house
Will be waiting for you to come and play
To come and play
To come and play
Bye now!

Emma Broderburg was fast asleep at the wheel of the RV by the time the radio went silent. Her mother, after mostly recovering from a degree of head trauma for which she would have sent any one of her kids to the emergency room, lifted her in her arms and examined the radio. ”ToddlerBeatz wasn’t on before,” she remarked aloud to herself, which is probably something she would have just said in her head if it hadn’t been for the aforementioned head trauma.

”Yeah, Clarice, some of us saw the baby out the giant robot’s optic sensors and figured we could help her get some sleep,” said the radio.

”Oh. Thanks.” Clarice sat down.

* * * * *

Tom climbed down over the inert drones and hit the ground next to Parsley. He was in a good mood, and decided to share his good mood with Parsley. ”Gimme five!”

Parsley stared uncomfortably at Tom’s raised hand. ”…What?”

* * * * *

Ethan threw up.

”Yeah, that’s right, kid,” encouraged John, sounding bored. ”Let it all out.” He sniggered to himself. ”Yeah, I remember my first beer.”

John Smith looked up at the sky. The stars were starting to come out.

* * * * *

”Okay. Talk to you later, I guess. Bye.”

And like that, Alison was bored again. Ten agonizing seconds later, she found something else to occupy her time.

“Hey! I was wondering where you’d gotten off to!”

Carnea made an impatient clicking noise, casting a sideways glance at Alison’s phone.

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

---

<font color="navy">Firearms. The word was spat, ejected with a measure of distaste.

Ashley learned quickly what he meant. Half a clip of ammunition spent itself ineffectually, deflected by shields of cyan, whereupon she caught on and drew her remaining knife instead. The soldier stopped, seemingly evaluating the threat through the circles of its visor, and she chose the moment to circle-strafe, backing away-

You can’t manage with just one, Ashley.

Betcha I can - plate!

Her attention was distracted momentarily by the sight of the mech above them toppling with a reverberating crash, narrowly missing the RV – awarding her a cyan flechette to the arm for her trouble. A rose of pain blossomed from the cut – no nerves severed but certainly not a shallow wound – and blood seeped. It arose drop by drop from the laceration, flowing over slightly burned skin, but it would heal – the more pressing matter was of the soldier. It came closer, picking up speed, spewing energy like an electrified arrow; it resembled a humanoid splay of live wires hurtling and burning the ground beneath its feet.

It was ridiculously close, yet it was circling her – through the corner of their eye, he saw an cyan blade sparking from one hand- Aaaaahh! To the left!

She ducked under the visored soldier’s feet, skirting between its legs as it jumped and followed through. With pinpoint precision the soldier whirled on one foot, kicking up a cloud of miry dust oiled with blood and grease.

They circled each other warily, Ashley placing herself in between the soldier and the RV. The scene was almost gladiatorial.</font>

Among the chaos in the conjoined COFCA conference came a voice: “I think we’ve waited enough.” In fact, a similarly impatient complaint had arisen every five minutes for the last half hour of operation, while Envoy went about retrieving and utilizing the various contents of the time capsule.

“We’re sitting by while everything else happens!” came the cry from one committee or another. It had flown about when Envoy had flown down to the capsule, had cried out when Private Jerfanderworth had cried out in surprise, and had torn through the air when Envoy had torn through the capsule room’s ceiling. The cries were quelled each time with the fact that if one of the contestants died – “and this is a battlefield; there are dozens of ways to die on a battlefield” a different someone had shouted each time – Envoy would be taken somewhere else and then what use would the time capsule be?

The second contention had been risen by the Parents’ Committee, concerning the suit.

A tuxedo, to be precise. With holes to make room for jetpack and extra sleeves for auxiliary arms. Everyone agreed that the style was impeccable, but the Parents’ Committee had ruled that they were disapproving of a naked protagonist, whether said protagonist was a robot or not. The point was that Envoy had not been wearing clothes, and now it was; therefore if it took said clothes off it would be naked and they simply couldn’t allow that to pollute young minds.

As it was, Envoy was clothed. And all agreed, for once, that it looked good. From its vantage point, Envoy brought its cameras around in a slow pan, and focused on a mech a little ways from the base perimeter, lying on the ground facedown with a strangely damaged knee.

Father and demon hunter made their way back towards the RV, avoiding the stray drones that still circled the fallen mech like flies about a carcass. As they half-ran, half-jogged their way, Tom’s hand brushed against his pocket. He felt again, then checked them both, the look of slight panic emerging in his eyes. “Parsley?”

The demon hunter slowed his pace but kept his crossbow aimed and loaded, covering the area as Tim caught up. “Stein?”

“I uh, dropped my wallet. At the mech, I think.” At Parsley’s blank look, he tried again: “My…wallet. My coinpurse? I left it behind. We haven’t gone far, I could go back-”

“Are ye worryin’ about ye gold now, Stein? This is hardly the time fer it.”

“It’s not like that. There are documents, photos…no, there are memories in it. They’re precious to me.”

Parsley watched the face in front of him. Stein had been his enemy before, but now…now they were working for a common cause, against the demon. And they had felled the walking machine together. That alone made a bond between them of sorts – “I’ll come with ye, then.”

A metal finger tapped Megasenator Whittenberg on the shoulder. “You’ll love this, Megasenator.” A green labcoat emerged from the darkness about the table, revealing within it the gaunt form of one of the temporal engineers. “We’ve been trying to gain access to the battlefield, on a larger scale than just transmitting through radios and suchlike. We’ve broken the mech’s connection to its home communications, and patched our own systems in.” The engineer smiled widely. “You want a show, COFCA? Let’s give them a show.”

SpoilerShow

You feel your systems coming alive as the mech pushes more Drayton into your system.

SpoilerShow

You are a permercenary; part of a private army contracted by your employer, a weapons manufacturer. You are piloting a mechanized experimental coredriven humaniform, or colloquially known as a MECH. It handles like a dream under your control. Most of the time.

At the moment you’re having a little trouble. Field testing is tough and your knee joint was disabled earlier, forcing you to keep the mech across the ground and moving as little as possible. You have weapons all on full, of course, and autonomous unmanned aerial defense unit deployment is at 100%. You’re making reasonably good time.

SpoilerShow

Then you notice alerts and warnings streaming past your HUD; someone is trying to gain access to the system. You try and compensate, shutting down non-essential systems to deny pathways, but they’re absurdly fast. Your vision and data feed go offline as systems begin to go down. Communications go first, then temporal barriers, then environmental – then just before you can react, life support shuts down.

As your Drayton feed cuts out, you remember that you were once someone else.

SpoilerShow

An electron, wildly blurred, connects a circuit inside your visor. From its spark, a valve opens, instilling killing toxin through your veins. It numbs your heart, your mind, your flesh – you can hear, feel, see yourself shutting down. You die bewildered, confused – unknowing of the world and your place in it, your name forgotten forever.

SpoilerShow

The last thing you see is the acronym, glowing mockingly: COFCA.

The last thing you hear is the mech, grinding its way back onto its feet, its machinery shattering.

The last thing you feel is hate.

As Tom retraced his steps, searching the ground and dodging the occasional drone, he heard within the mech a serrated grinding – constructs screaming against itself, in a cacophony of stressed joints, tripled gears, misused and mangled machinery making war and peace with the world they sought to control. Parsley followed close behind, keeping watch on the sky for drones.

For some reason it set Tom’s teeth on edge. Perhaps it was the accompaniment of screeching that followed the dying mech’s will. It rose to a crescendo as devices within did their best to reoperate, driving the construct upwards, leaving Tom clinging precariously to the arm he had been clambering over and Parsley hanging on to the torso nearby. Like a miracle – or unholy nightmare – of engineering, the mech stood upright, swaying as it fought to stay so with a knee that shook wildly, unpredictably as if deprived of dopamine.

<font color="#666600">“STEIIIIN!”

Parsley was a bit upset. From where he was standing – hanging on, really – it looked very much as if Stein had been lying about the machine’s functionality. “Would ye care to explain this, Stein?!”

Tom began, “I’m not doing this! I thought it’d been taken down! I-” but was interrupted by an excessively jolly voice.

“Gee! It looks like you’re in a bit of danger!” As Tom clambered to a safer position, he discovered the source of the voice, emanating from a small set of subsidiary speakers built into the mech itself. The joviality didn’t sound put on so much as slathered, even through the tinniness.

Below, Parsley continued to make his way upwards, cursing under his breath.

“My name’s Chester B. Arthur, head of the COFCA Interbattler Relations Committee! I’d like to welcome you as a battler...pass me the file on the Broderburgs…Tom, to enjoy our services of friendly counsel and caring advice! For example; it looks like you’re trying to not die! Might we offer a few suggestions?”

Tom cocked an eyebrow at the overly jovial voice. “You’re not communists, are you?”

“COFCA is an equal opportunity employer, Tom, regardless of race, ethnicity, ancestry, ideology, religion, physical or mental disability, psychological disorders, sexual prowess or skillset!”

“I-”

“Glad to hear it, Tom! Now I think we’re all in agreement that you could use a HERO! A speck rose from the base nearby, and resolved itself quickly into a glittering, robotic shape.

“We’ve undergone exhaustive research on your situation, and we all believe you’d concur that ENVOY! IS! THAT! HERO!” Through the speaker, a generic theme tune emerged hesitantly, sounding tinny and pathetic in the dusty air. Envoy did a loop-de-loop in time with the dismal band, then changed course, stopping in front of the mech’s face. The music rose to a sad crescendo as Envoy threw a few air punches, then struck the mech with all four arms at once, causing it to fall backwards and onto the ground once more.

The fact that it paused noticeably before falling over was of no consequence.

What was of consequence was the fact that Tom and Parsley both went flying.

He saw underneath him the battlefield – he saw Parsley looking at him in disbelief at the ridiculously vertical circumstances they found themselves in, he saw on the ground a ways away that girl who’d cut through the roof of the RV, scuffling with one of those visored soldiers he’d seen earlier, and directly below him he saw the RV coming up fast- </font>

<font color="navy">Keep left! Back! Oh plate plate plate- An extremely unconvincing but still spectacular show echoed at the back of their sensory perception. <font color="red">As the mech struck the ground for the second time, she parried another blow from the soldier before her – don’t get distracted, keep your balance-</font>

I can’t be everywhere at plating once, Ashley- She was leading the fight away from the RV now, ducking and weaving cyan, slashing with knife in hand-

You can plating try! Your movements unpredictable, your actions likewise. The point is to-

<font color="red">Her temper flared at the condescension. Within, anger flurries cut the imaginary air as she slashed at the soldier attacked again- I am not- she leapt back once more, backpedaling, watching the visor track her movements- new- she leapt behind a rock, and felt it judder as the soldier eschewed efficiency for a show of power- to war- and ducked away as the stone buckled and bowed into glowing magma. -darll!

What’s wrong? Are you out of practice? The soldier leapt over the molten rock, he noted – they weren’t invincible.</font>

I’ll give you out of practice, you patronizing sterc!

The soldier set another round of flechettes at her as it approached at speed – she ducked and rolled, feeling a gash open across her left soldier. She gasped in pain, and felt him begin to smirk. Pain turned to fury at his disdain – She would not be beaten; she would not tolerate his arrogance – she knew she was being unreasonable, but she didn’t have to be reasonable, in any way, shape or form! She was free from his inadequacy, his frustrations, the doubts and disappointments that invariably came with his role. She was free! The rules did not apply to her, because she had none of a man’s honor, valor, chivalry or any other useless male appendage to the true cause of war – and she was trained in war. She was raised on war. She knew its creed and purpose: defeat the enemy. Do it fast. And fast – thoughts, violent but efficient, tactics for tacticians mingled with emotion in the mind so long excluded from their mindspace, flooded like a torrent across the senses, her mind – she twirled the gun in her hand, gripping it by the barrel as the soldier, plunging forward, unleashed a crackling tentacle-whip of energy.

crack

-and the soldier reeled under the impact, the tentacle evaporating. She brought her hand down and clubbed the visor again with the pistol, hard. Her other hand shot, cobra-like, around the soldier’s neck, forcing it into a headlock and she struck again – and heard something snap under the visor’s white façade, so raised her arm high for a final, perhaps finishing, blow.

But too high. The movement threw her off balance, and the soldier took the opportunity to throw her.

Clarice fed Baby Emma, both oblivious to the chaos outside. A second pan of milk stood warming on the stove. The first pan lay in the sink, waiting to be washed. Under the hole in the roof, a pile of sheets and blankets were stacked, attaining what meager drying they could from the weak sun. The domesticity of the scene within contrasted the tumult of the world without.

And then Tom fell into the RV through the hole in the roof, followed closely by Parsley – both landing relatively uninjured. So that was all right too – even if it did give Clarice a nasty shock. Baby Emma was not perturbed in the least - and once Clarice had recovered, she wasn’t either. There was too much to do without having to worry about dying as well.

“Hi, dear. Could you take her for a bit?” Tiredly, she indicated the pan in the sink. “That mech landing knocked all the milk over. Can you believe it?”

Tom was slightly more shaken than his wife, and so just took Emma and wordlessly indicated that yes, he could, and he would be right over here looking out the window if she needed anything.

Baby Emma simply watched out into the warring world beyond, with eyes that saw everything, eyes that spoke volumes if only one would look – but no observer could, would find the mind that housed…what? Secrets, secrets forever. Eyes that would remember. Eyes that saw a scuffle beyond.

<font color="red">Ashley landed roughly on her back, and was forced down once more by the soldier’s boot. You can get out of this. Raise your knife, Ashley.

She opted instead to hack away at the boot instead, slashing open a gash in its leg and rolling away as it recoiled. What? Where do you come off giving me orders? I managed fine, you arrogant military chain-of-command addict-

That soldier nearly fractured your spine, ‘darl’ – Now let me handle this!

No! Not any more of your condescending vinescat! I am just as good as you are, just as trained, just as capable; You had no right – no reason – nothing but incoursing fear in you to shut me plating out! The soldier struck out with its whip, leaving an angry lash across her leg as she scrabbled across the ground-

Ashley winced as the pain registered, the gash trickling more blood into the stained rubble. Look at him! He’s obviously not human! He’s some kind of supersoldier! Desperation tinted the mindscape a navy blue -

Within, Ashley’s voice took red hysteria up a notch – Oh, he’s a ‘fellow super’, then?! So we should make friends! Invite for scones and tea, bring your mates with ya, darll! Is that it? Or is he too busy plating – she pushed herself up against the carcass of a spidertank – killing us?! She dodged once more as a burst of cyan tore apart the world where she had been. I’ll plating show you, you chauvinistic jitmit!

He gasped as pain worked its way through the cortex, gripping tight the imaginary world as she recklessly – insanely flew forward, knife drawn, nimbly hurtling towards the soldier as it had dashed towards her.

“Would you bloody plating care for a cup of hot tea?!” She was screaming now – they were alone on the battlefield, with no one close enough to help or care, it was just them; there was Ashley, Ashley and a knife. A pistol to a cyan death-energy fight, a knife to a gunfight, odds against but skill always beat luck. He could feel her frenzy, her anger and angst, her frustrations, like the days they used to battle on the mindscape, those spars long gone now, translating those conflicts into war, war, broken war, a life of war of pain, training, raining days when time was free, see the tragedy of a single-purpose life, the purpose of war, she slashed at flechettes, the metal of the knife – she never found out how – singing in cyan, a conductive fleece, wire in the metal? They were on lease – It mattered nothing – nothing, in the heart of the matter there was the matter of the heart – did the soldier have a heart, a stabbing target? You don’t even know what you’re plating dealing with-

She ignored him, leaping to the side as the soldier moved back, anticipating each other, then ducked, slipped in close and rose like a dolphin’s leap, like a knife sliding through insubstantial air, already following through as a hand came up to block its ascent -

It won’t work! The shields are energy-based; you’re only returning what he fired at you!</font>

She jabbed a hand at the visor and caught a brief grip before the shields came up. At the same time, energy crackled as knife contacted flesh through a gap in the weakened, diverted shielding, striking unprotected limb. The soldier stumbled for the merest fraction of second, but it was enough.

Ashley looked on; a knee to the soldier’s chest pushed the pair to the ground. She was going to get them killed, with that naiveté, that stubbornness – she hadn’t fought in years, never understanding that a healing factor was not grounds for invincibility, that a shifting a body was not grounds for anonymity – the hard knock lessons of death and taken life were her absentee days; where he had lived she had lounged, free of danger because he – he – sought to keep her safe-

Ashley stabbed and stabbed, the knife catching tendrils of cyan each time – the metal nicking flesh, springing back with each strike, wounds on both parties healing as fast as could be inflicted, a stalemate as far as tactics were concerned. And Ashley’s resolute, supercilious silence, like a parent (a parent! The nerve! They were equals, created equal – if she were not superior) knowing their absolute rightness. It was his fault – his fault that they were transferred to homo sapien corps – his breakdown. His own plating weakness-

Weakness. W-w-w-*time froze for a second, like a weight mistimed in the great gears of time of time of time* as strategy fell into place, fractured solutions slid into their niches and formed wholes like plastic poured into a mold, mass-produced victory in the moment of realization where Time stands still, frightened for fear of losing the thought, daring not to speak-

He saw it too, the veneer of triumph – and he saw the little edge below it like a tantalizing bubble in a laminated sheet, the merest uncertainty, the merest hesitation. He bit his lip as he watched her force the soldier’s head onto its side, and looked on as she stabbed once more where she had heard the visor crack. He felt her curse as the knife glanced off the visor again and again; he saw her look at her other hand, the pistol still bewilderingly held by the barrel, eyes narrowing as she flipped it neatly in her hand. And all the cyan sparked, sparked and burned, sparked and burned and sliced and flamed and crackled with their hate.

The soldier was not infinite; she saw it in its movements its struggle. She brought the gun, point-blank, to its head, seeing that it was tiring, that she could and would outlast – she would outlive it this day –

Whereupon the soldier stabbed her in the stomach, in a paroxysm of irony. That was the last act it made, for her finger tightened on the trigger finger and a bullet forced its deadly way into visor and flesh. In seconds, the body would decompose into a chalky mess as Killtox made its way through unflowing blood, but Ashley didn’t know or care.

Well. Sterc.

Blood was welling. Fast. Too fast to heal over. A million wounds burned and stung and ached and twittered their distress to her brain, and she could not take it all in. What had she accomplished? She had killed a soldier. One soldier. One tough, healing, speedy cyan soldier – one supersoldier. One of her kind, really. Had she killed one of her brethren?

Ashley recoiled as victory came and went, and all that was left was doubt, guilt, second-guesses, pain - I think, he took time to choose his words, I think perhaps-

Because your thinking has always been impeccable.

She staggered to her feet, looking at the carnage of their battle. Surprisingly little, really. She clutched at her abdomen and began shuffling, painfully, back where she had come, towards the RV distant – there seemed to be so much bread on the horizon; Parsley’s work – who had he been? How did he turn things into bread anyhow? It didn’t matter. Maybe later it would be time to Krose down the bakery, but she doubted she would be the one to do it.

You’re dying.

Ya think? She coughed, and blood sprayed – sprayed from between her fingers as she fought to keep the wound closed. Envoy, the robot – and its masters, COFCA – who were they? What part did they have in the Grand Scheme of Things?

A healing factor won’t help you. He tried and failed to keep the sneer out of his voice, just as he tried and failed to hide the anxiety. You’ve got to let me back through.

She didn’t even bother answering, simply staggered, seeking salvation, absolution, help – the Broderburgs. What was their story? What was strange about them? Why were they here?

You’re dying.

She’d briefly seen John Smith. She’d looked in those eyes – what had she seen? Cunning? Wit? Murder? So many questions. Just put one foot in front of the other, one foot in front…maybe she was walking in circles. Where was she? Where was the RV? Where was safety?

For heaven’s sakes, Ashley!

So what? I’m dying. Doesn’t mean…doesn’t mean I’ll die. I can do this. I can live.
She chanced a glance behind, and saw with a start her trail of blood – seemingly more blood than any body could conceivably hold-

Not without shifting. Not without letting me back.

She still gave no answer, musing on her own. What about the others she had seen in the Charlatan’s sitting room, a lifetime ago? She could barely remember their names, she had only seen them that once – just that once –

Perhaps, if she lived, she would find them. Ask them who, how, what, where, when, why, and say who she was in return. Perhaps she would be remembered.

I don’t want to die. Not here, not now.

You have to let me through. Shift then. You can do it. He was cajoling now, beckoning with sweetened words that fed the fire in her heart, that burned with that sickly resentment fostered in the years of limitation; oppression…

But if it means one more moment of life with you- She saw him worry, and she let herself partake of the lightest relish – If it means one more moment of living in fear, of waiting for the next snatch of life you would kindly let me have-

I was keeping you safe!

I didn’t need to be kept safe, Ashley.

Don’t kill us for this! Life is precious; you learn that in a world of war! We have a whole life to live; don’t throw it away over this…petty squabble!

An observer might have seen the bloody footsteps grow shorter in pace, their edges more slurred, more broken. Following the trail, the prints would be seen to merge together, creating one testamental smear for death and pain…

A shattered timeline wisped in the spaces between the multiverses and played its way among the Paradox Shards, buoyed by a never-existent crest of story taken too far, of the collisions of two worlds never meant to meet. Wrought by time, brought by time, the waxen winds took a hope of life, or significant death, away – and each one was just as good as the other. Life and death in their deadly dance, multiplica, profilera, symbiotic swing, lever with a fulcrum misplaced and lost, so sing of winds of fate and winds of time, time and time again come lines of fine signs of sines, crest and trough always opposite one another, never meeting yet changing positions once an hour, the two of them embroiled in their last stand, sand on the beaches of the oceans of delirium eroding the white cliffs, foundation lost, paradise found, islands of coherence in the ever-valley sound, sound foundation, solid construction, chalk and granite, dovercourt road; a world of insanity upon each other sees the other’s anguish, despair, anger and pain, pain pain pain red everywhere leave to brown the last stain on a mortal world, never remembered never there-

Ashley. He pushed aside the breaking, dimming world, eyes plaintive now. Eyes pleading… Ashley. Life’s not what you think. A river split its way through the cliff behind, washing wildly around them, burning, washing the sand away. It’s like water – we let it flow through our hands without thinking. The torrent cracked, whiplike, striking against stone that rose from nowhere – Shut your hands, Ashley, shut them tight and hold it back. We have so much more to live. There are so many things waiting for us – journeys, experiences, relationships, knowledge…happiness.

Happiness…

Just a word, eh?

Her voice came slowly, but flowed, stacked upon each other, a traffic jam of molasses, she spoke, aloud, within and without, for an uncaring, unlistening world to hear. “And what will my happiness be like?” On the mindscape from the stone came a shoot of an improbable tree, the leaves green, fresh and new.
“What kind of happy woman will Ashley grow into?” Roots encompassed the stone, cracking it, crushing it into the soft soil the river left behind. The tree grew tall, straight up between the two of them – tall, strong.
“What base things-” A wound opened in the great tree’s trunk, as if driven by an intangible axe – a wound implied in the bark rather than truly rending the xylem asunder, “-will she have to do, day after day,” the tree juddering with each day with each hour struck of time, “in order to snatch her own little scrap of happiness?” Leaves floated down, carpeting the ground, filling the scape with green, gold and grey-
“Tell me – who will she have to lie to?” A branch shattered high above them, raining sawdust, woodchips, debris of the organic.
“Smile at?” The sea of leaves would not leave, would not drain or depart, and it stretched for infinity. But mind rejected infinity, crushed the ocean together, cracking together cardinals to build an aleph-null, bringing towering waves in all around as imaginary space gave way.
“Sell herself to?” The tree caught fire, and was a torch of licking flame, of bright light and candles and of sheets of leaf-shaped flame.
“Who will she have to avert her eyes to, Ashley, and who will she leave to die?!” The ocean blazed. The seas of leaves of breathing, burning life extinguished, the Moncreiff distinguished, the sons of fictionality and broken blood ties, promises gone and shattered, splintered, ground into dust underneath the finest heels, spiels of a madman, mixtures of poison, destroying a key like the good doctor ordered, perhaps a little more tinge on the side young lady and she caught the world, wrung it and shouted no more. Spillikins sibilant, a rocky ground on which blood flew and broke and dried and left the mark of death of guilt upon their surfaces, surfaces close to fading sight, might right light graying, stage left comes the hair dye, dyeing hair, dying body. Dimly, she recognized that she was lying on the ground, in the other world, the battlefield - bleeding, spent.
“If it means….submitting to you, Ashley, to go back to that hell you created…if it means spending the rest of my life fighting you, watching you living the life that’s by equal..rights…mine, Ashley. I’ll say it…one more time: never!”

The dark encroached from the depths of death, a warming embrace offering relief, offering finality in escape. And Ashley ran, walked, crawled, moved, pulled away from it, fighting death, fighting her, fighting everyone it was just too much too much to handle on a deathbed without a bed, an undug grave; …we can’t die here. This isn’t…right.

“You and your ideas…your ideas of the fairness of the world, of a justice – this is war. This is how people die in war. This is…reality.”

…please.

“…I’d rather die.”

…please…he uttered for the last time, and lay on the mindscape as sweet blessed oblivion devoured and flowed.

“…rather die; darll…”

And she did.</font>

Eyes that knew. Eyes that would remember. Eyes that shed a tear.

Originally posted on MSPA by Not The Author.

---

Time shuddered to a halt. A familiar subtly-mocking voice cut over the abrupt silence despite the fact that the air couldn’t move.

“Why is it always the halfway competent? I mean, you’d think the ones that actually have some idea of what they’re doing...”

The universe sighed.

“Bodes well for COFCA, I suppose. Anyway! Bet you’re all wondering who died. Well, I’m not gonna tell ya! You’ll have to figure it out on your own. Ooh! You can turn it into a game, like Clue! Who killed whom with what in the where...”

“And speaking of The Where, I think we’re well overdue for a change of scenery!”

The contestants experienced the unpleasant discomfort of existential crisis and, with the quiet pop of suddenly being at the wrong altitude, found themselves in an aging stone city encircled by an enormous waterfall of vile green liquid. Everything in the city was made of jet black rock and decorated with precious metals and gems, from the massive stepped pyramids, to the once-ornate statues, to the bridges spanning channels of acrid fluid.

Slightly more disconcerting was the total absence of life. The ancient metropolis looked as though it could have been home to thousands, but the streets were completely empty.

Nobody had any time to consider any of this before The Charlatan cut back in.

“Welcome, all, to scenic Xocaetl... Er. Xocoac... No shut up I got this. Xo...coa...tical...tepetl. Xocoaticaltepetl! Plaugh. <font size="1">Seriously, who named this place? Anyway, there’re a couple of things about this city you probably ought to know.”

“First and most obviously, it’s in a pit of deadly... green... stuff. That goop eats through anything that isn’t specifically enchanted to resist it, which pretty much only includes this city and things in it. Not you, though! The residents don’t care for tourists, see.”

“Which brings me to thing number two! You might have noticed that nobody’s out and about. Well, the people who lived here were pretty religious types. Had a god for every temple in the city. Used to hold these fancy ceremonies where they tried to bring those gods into this world. And they succeeded, too! Well... sort of. To a degree. It didn’t really turn out well, ‘swhat I’m saying.”

“I really ought to stop babbling on so much. More fun to find these things out on your own, ha! I’ll leave you to your sightseeing. Have fun, guys!”</font>

SpoilerShow

Welcome to Round 2!

You’re all in a big ol’ not-quite-abandoned Mayaztencan city in disrepair, in the middle of a lake fed and surrounded by a giant waterfall of acid that eats through anything. (Acid, as used here, is the popular term that means “every corrosive substance ever even if it’s actually a base, fuck off science.”)

There are probably people around somewhere, maybe. There might be a god or two. Or not! Figure it out yourselves, dammit.

Also, as I am a semantic stickler, I feel the need to point out that not in sight of isn’t the same as not near.

Have fun! Work together! Do good writes! And cetera.




PS: I thought it’d be fun if dead contestants didn’t go away. Ashley’s body is somewhere in the city! Use that as you will.

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

reservish thing

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

One moment, he was sitting, unable to mourn. The next, he was standing, unable to scream.

His suit- just scraps, now- still dripped with the water from a fire safety system years and worlds away. The small streams collected in the cracks between obsidian, reflecting the silver moon, hung perpetually in the night.

Six looked up, and every significant word formed in the consciousness of mankind coursed through his circuitry.

”At its best, our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.”

“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair (DISREPAIR?], offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”

”Because I remember, I despair-r-r-r-r-.”

-no no no no FORGET, do not remember, push it out of your mind you have a job to do mourning is not an accepted emotion our society is founded on HAPPINESS and THRILL (your glitches are not thrilling) if not forever just forget for a moment you must do something or do you want to be destroyed at the hands of your creators no (but I do want to live)

And for a few moments, the robot hung there, the camera lens trained up to that giant mirror in the sky, a hand outstretched to some invisible being, and he froze. He was a statue, he was a hunk of metal, Six was nothing. And then, with a click and whirr, he was moving again, stumbling over the stones like a drunken beggar.

Eyes watched him, but they were the eyes of gruesome statues. The eyes of the dead. He spoke to them, the dead, with precise, distant speech. Words that would mean things, if not for context and moonlight silence.

“Contestant, please answer the question. You are breaking protocol. Question #29: What are these rocks made of? They are [not in my databanks]. Please answer. Please answer. Refusal to answer is elimination.”

He dragged himself a few more feet, into an intersection between alleyways, and collapsed to his knees. He looked around, and muttered some half-forgotten phrase about ashes and dust. The slouched metal groaned and echoed.

And then, in the distance, the rumbling of an engine. <span style="background-color:#FFFFCC;"><font color="#00CC33">Headlights, a car. Six directed his cube-shaped head and observed.

A car. Headlights, the golden rays suspending particles in the air.

A car.</span></font>

Specifically, an RV.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

Tom turned off the high beams and shut down the RV, watching the guy with the cube head approach. He’d been wondering about this one. There was something about cube heads he found untrustworthy, but he couldn’t pinpoint it. However, for the time being, he was a bit more concerned with Parsley hitting on his wife.

”My lady,” the demon hunter was muttering, hat in hand. ”I was given no word of yer presence here, and not knowin’ that the wee one was yers, I may have… I was confuddled under the delusion o’ the demon, and I meant no insult to ye or yer brood.”

Clarice didn’t respond directly, instead turning towards Tom. ”Friend of yours, honey?”

There was a thump sound that Tom was pretty sure was cube-head lifting up the hood of the RV. He just knew this wasn’t going to turn out well for what had been a perfectly serviceable engine. “He helped me out with a, um, a robot problem, earlier,” was all he said. He opted against trying to explain the whole “Baron Stein” thing in Parsley’s presence.

”Hmm. Well, Parsley, if you’re not going to cause any trouble, maybe you could help us finding the other kids. They’ve both—“

And then the robot kicked the windshield in. “Hey!” Tom shouted at cube-head. “Watch the broken glass around the baby!”

Cube-head seemed to have the RV’s jumper cables each clamped to one of his hands. He wasn’t very expressive, but Tom got the feeling he wasn’t entirely stable. ”Question 30: …’Baby?’”

* * * * *

This fucking kid was going to be the death of John.

“Kid! Slow down! This stuff is dangerous!” You’d think even to a kid of Ethan’s age, these facts would be pretty self-evident, but then again John couldn’t be sure all the alcohol had flushed out of his system when he'd thrown up. Coordination-impaired or not, the little tyke was fast. Or maybe John was just slowed down because he was the only person on this bridge with a healthy respect for the river of acid down below.

”You can’t catch me, John Smith!” boasted the little fucker. ”I thought you were super-cool and went on adventures and weren’t afraid of anything!”

Well, two for three wasn’t bad, but where did Ethan think he had obtained this information? John decided that the only way to get out of here without the kid’s corpse on his hands was to cast his dignity into the deadly pit below. “Yeeeeeeah,” he said. “I’m not afraid of anything, especially not stupid bridges like this.” Ethan giggled at that, which the time traveler took as a good sign. “But only cause I know the secret to crossing bridges and never falling.”

Finally, the kid stopped running. ”Secret?” he asked, awestruck.

“Yeah! Most people don’t know it, but you seem like you’re really brave and badass and whatever, so I’ll teach it to you. But the first rule is, you have to start right in the middle of the bridge. Which is about where I’m standing. Can you make it back over here?”

”I’ll be there in four seconds!” And the kid, missing the point of this lesson entirely, practically sprinted back to the center of the bridge. A couple stray rocks chipped off and fell into the acid. Jesus. ”Okay!” he yelled. ”What’s the next part of the secret?”

John smiled paternally. “The next part is the part where you shut up, stay still, and don’t struggle while I do this.” And he picked the kid up by the waist and threw him over his shoulder.

Ethan struggled. Of course.

* * * * *

For a moment she’d thought Gamehost Six was staring at her breasts—she’d gone back up a cup size when she’d started weaning Emma onto the formula—but after a minute of studying his face for something that might resemble eyes, she changed her impression.

He was looking at the baby.

It wasn’t until Clarice decided to turn away from the robot that it seemed to snap out of it. ”welCOME BACK” he shouted abruptly, stressing the last two syllables. ”We apologize for any… technosophical issues,” Six announced to no one in particular. ”But GOOD NEWS, FOLKS: it’s time for the speed round! In this portion of our program, three contestants vie to be the fastest to answer each in a series of questions. If SIX questions pass and you haven’t answered one correctly, YOU ARE ELIMINATED permanently! Looks like we have our fo—OUR THREE contestants right here! EVERYONE STAY WHERE YOU ARE!”

”This be no time fer games, Sir—“

”SHUT YOUR MOUTH, Contestant Number One! After I announce a question, if you think you know the answer, just shoot me in the face with your crossbow! THE FORCE OF IMPACT will let me know that you wish to submit an answer. But be quick! Cause if contestant number two—THAT’S YOU LADY—if contestant number two honks on the horn of the RV first WHICH MEANS YOU PARK YOUR REAR IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT, PLEASE she’ll be given the opportunity to answer first! Make sure not to speak until you’re called on OR I WILL REMOVE YOUR APPENDAGES Now, contestant number three—yes, you, Tom is it? Take a seat next to your lovely-ISH wife.” Tom and Clarice squeezed into the driver’s seat together. They had never once won Trivial Pursuit against the neighbors. “Contestant number three, if you think you know the answer, just put the key to the RV in the ignition. This will turn on the battery and send an ungodly amount of electricity coursing through my body. Maybe then I can… ahem. The SEVERE PAIN I experience lets me know it’s your turn to answer. Are we ready to begin BECAUSE AMERICA IS WAITING Question #31: America’s prestigious award for outstanding journalism is named for what former New York World publisher?”

Clarice honked the horn. Six seemed slightly disappointed. ”Yes, contestant number two?”

”Joseph Pulitzer.”

”CORRECT. Question #32: What celebrated talk show host played the voice of ‘Dory’ in Pixar’s Finding Nemo?”

Honk! ”CONTESTANT NUMBER TWO?”

”Ellen Degeneres.”

”CORRECT. Question #33: What is the chemical composition of that sofa cushion?”

Silence for about five seconds. Six whirred. ”We may have neglected to mention that, this being a speed round, fifteen seconds without an answer constitutes grounds for the elimination of all contestants.”

”Oh, fer heaven’s sake,” interjected Parsley. ”I know the answer but I’m not shootin’ ye in the face, Sir Archibald.”

Six appeared not to find this acceptable. His hand produced a sawblade. ”HIT MEEEEEEE!”

Parsley hit him. The loaf of bread bounced harmlessly off the robot’s face and hit the ground. There was an awkward moment of silence. Emma started to get fussy. Then: ”Contestant Number One?”

”It’s made of bread.”

”INCORR—“ Six did a double-take as an oven-fresh smell began to waft in from the sofa. ”…Correct? QUESTION #34: French artist Michael Duchamp is considered a primary figure in which modernist art movement?”

The honk made Clarice jump, because she hadn’t touched the horn—rather, Baby Emma seemed to have slapped it accidentally. ”Contestant Number Two?”

”Dada!” cooed Emma.

Another moment of awkward silence. Then Six spoke: ”A… a reminder to… to that one… not to speak out of turn.” More silence. Then Six slowly sheathed his sawblade and readjusted the jumper cables on his hands. ”...Correct. Question #35: According to legend, famed gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok died holding what hand of cards?”

Tom clapped his hands together excitedly. ”Ooh! I know this!” He jammed the key into the ignition, and sparks began to fly from Six’s body.

There was a sound midway between microphone static and a scream as the game host convulsed on the floor of the RV. Tom pulled the key out and Six lay still.

About three seconds later, Six groaned, ”Again.” Tom shrugged and started the battery up once more.

* * * * *

Ethan stopped struggling well past the bridge, just before John finally found the two of them some proper shelter. The grim-looking stone building was built into a hill, with streams of acid running over the walls on either side of the entrance. Light was shafting in through a hole in the roof, and it gave off a very unoccupied vibe.

He put Ethan down on a bench in the corner. “If you run off, I’ll find you, and I will hurt you,” he assured the kid, who merely pouted in response. “I’m going to go look around, but don’t think I’m not keeping an eye on you, cause I am.”

There wasn’t much around to look, it seemed. The entire building—John was hesitant to say “temple”—was centered around a series of circles and shapes on the floor that seemed to correspond to the pattern of light cast by the holes in the ceiling. He figured it was some kind of antique sundial.

John hadn’t had much experience with the supernatural in his life, but he really should have known better than to step right in the middle of the room. And he shouldn’t have been surprised, all things considered, when everything started spinning. One can forgive him, however, for being offput by the booming voice being broadcast into his brain.

JOHN SMITH

TRAVELER

YOU COME BEFORE THE GODS WITH NOTHING TO OFFER BUT YOUR PRIDE

KNOW THAT IF I CHOOSE TO TAKE IT FROM YOU

IT IS ONLY THAT YOU MAY FEEL

THE PAIN OF LOSS

I AM

CALENDAR

ONCE I WAS TASKED WITH COUNTING DOWN THE HOURS TO DOOMSDAY

DOOMSDAY HAVING PASSED

MY POWER HERE IS SOMEWHAT DIMINISHED

THOUGH STILL IT SURPASSES YOURS

STILL I SENSE

YOU ARE NO STRANGER TO MANY-FACETED TIME

YOU WALKED FREE FROM MY SHADOW, ONCE

I CAN RESTORE TO YOU THIS POWER

”You can… what?” John’s voice seemed distant to himself. “You can make me time travel again.”

<font size="5">

CAN AND WILL

ALL THINGS ARE ORDAINED AS MARKS UPON MY SURFACE

YOUR PRIDE AND GREEDWILL LEAD YOU TO MAKE THE SACRIFICE

TO REGAIN THE POWER YOU ONCE TOOK FOR GRANTED

IT IS WRITTEN, AS WAS DOOMSDAY

”Is it now? I know a bluff when I hear one.” John made sure to remove all traces of awe from his voice as he spoke. The last thing he wanted was some Mayan god thinking he was reverent or something. “So is it written that here’s the part where I ask what this sacrifice is?”

AND SO YOU HAVE

THE BOY, JOHN

BROTHER TO GODS HIMSELF

HE WILL HAVE SUCH A FUTURE AHEAD OF HIM

UNLESS YOU BRING HIM TO THE RIVER

SACRIFICE HIS FUTURE TO THE DIVINITY OF CALENDAR

YOU’VE BEEN BRINGING HIM ALONG UNTIL YOU FOUND A USE FOR HIM

THIS IS THAT MOMENT
THE BOY
THE RIVER
AND THE RESTORATION OF YOUR POWER

And silence. The lighting returned to normal, moon creeping across sky at a rate of one second per second. Of course, there was also the distinct green glow of a pit of acid opening up a few feet in front of John.

John turned towards the bench. Ethan had fallen asleep.</font>

* * * * *

Six regained full functionality to learn that the RV was now in motion. Contestant Number Three was driving with the "baby" on his lap.

The "baby" was looking right at him. She was beautiful.

"Con... contestant number three. Your response, please."

"Huh? Oh, hey, you're up. Yeah, right, it was a Dead Man's Hand, aces over eights, everyone knows that." Six considered this. He wondered if the "baby" had known the correct response. "Anyway, sorry about the whole electrocution thing."

Gamehost Six declined to respond that being electrocuted by Contestant Number Three was the most alive he'd felt since this show began, because that would open up a whole new round of questions. Instead he said, "Don't be sorry. You... you got it right. Correct." Six slumped into the RV's passenger sheet. "I think... that's enough of the speed round for now. We'll return... after these messages."

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

”But what does it do?” Carnea asked, and Alison found herself in the position of explaining things to a goddess. Some would do without it, but she found it almost empowering.

She shrugged as casually as she could. “It’s just a phone. You talk to people with it.”

“There are beings in there?” The goddess glanced doubtfully at the small object. They would have to be really tiny people, or somehow the mortals have managed to free themselves of spatial laws.

“No, you talk to people on the other line.”

“The other what?”

“You talk to someone who has a phone.”

“You talk to yourself?”

“No, when you call yourself you get voicemail.” Alison managed to see how absolutely confused Carnea was despite her having the barest essentials of facial features. “Okay, forget about voicemail.”

“But—“

“No, it’s not important.”

Carnea let the interruption pass but struggled with the idea of ‘forgetting’ before locking the information of ‘voicemail’ away in a mental vault. It seemed an absolute waste of infor—wait, what was she thinking about?

Alison was talking again. “So this is a phone, and other people have phones, and you can talk to those other people because they have phones. The phones call each other. And you call a specific phone by using their phone numbers, because every phone has a different phone number, and when you use that phone number, then you call that phone and then you talk to whoever has that phone.”

It was a rather good explanation, and as in depth as a teenager could go without losing interest in the subject. Carnea was left with only one question. She couldn’t help but feel it would be seen as a foolish question, but then, you didn’t get to know as much as she did without asking foolish questions now and again.

“What’s a number?”

Alison stared blankly.

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

All around, lethargic gods stirred. Their people had long been inactive and, likewise, so had they. But there was something in the air, something exciting moving about. Something new that set their metaphorical tits atittering.

People. New people!

Not believers, not yet, but they will be, by god, they will be, or else die. And then new believers meant more power to the pantheon and though it would not be much, it was enough to excite the various deities and much speculation went on. Maybe we can grow. Maybe we can restore this city as it were. Maybe we can even expand beyond how we were.

They had to convert them immediately. As fast as possible.

But there was the problem of new gods…

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

Carnea was still struggling to grasp the idea of a phone, which apparently was akin to a gostak yelling something to another gostak from two completely different hills. But what she did eventually grasp was that the phone was her ticket to escaping this dreadful affair and then maybe having a stern chat with the Charlwhatever.

“Can you call someone right now?”

She was too excited for Alison to refuse. Imagine, being fascinating to a goddess! She was scrolling down her contacts when Carnea seemed to tense.

“Oh, darn.” The goddess glanced over her shoulder. “Sorry, I have to take this. Wait here.” And she disappeared.

Alison blinked and vaguely felt that there was something ironic about this, but she wasn’t entirely sure what. But before she could explore this thought further, Carnea reappeared, looking slightly nervous and interrupting her train of thought.

“Wha—“

“No talking, call someone quick,” she muttered, whipping her head around everywhere.

She picked a number at random, but her phone was then suddenly plucked out of her hands.

“Now, now, after getting everybody all excited, we don’t want you to run out on us!”

Alison looked up. There, floating right above her, was a young boy who spoke with impish maturity and smiled with worryingly sharp teeth. He was also scantily clad.

Alison looked back down again, but not without saying, “Hey! Give that—“

“Shush,” Carnea snapped, and Alison found her mouth stuck shut. “Who’re you?”

The small boy twirled the phone in his fingers. “Just a messenger. I’m just keeping an eye on you.”

Carnea seemed to calm down, but still did not let Alison talk. With a grandiose stretch of her arms, she said, “Oh, come, you know how rude it is to take a young lady’s belongings, don’t you?”

The messenger shrugged. “Manners sometimes have to be sacrificed for the sake of a game. And I won’t give this back until I’m sure you won’t use this thing to back out of your proposition.”

‘Proposition’ was a heavy-sounding word and Alison was not sure she liked it. But she still couldn’t say a thing.

“Honestly, I wasn’t—“

“I mean, after the last time you ran away—“

“—left to consult my associates--”

“—We just want to make sure you’ll keep to your side of the bargain,” the messenger finished as though he had never been interrupted.

Carnea hmmm’d and haww’d and finally said, “Alright, so I was going to try to escape, but for a different reason I’d rather not get into. But I promise I won’t now, so can you hand it back to my fellow goddess please?” This one at least elicited a muffled ‘What?!’ from Alison, because unless she was mistaken, Carnea had just waved over to her direction at that last part.

“I don’t trust promises unless they’re a binding promise,” he replied, somehow managing to sound both cheerful and disdainful at the same time. “Swear on Gukumatz’s heart.”

Carnea sighed. “I swear on Gukumatz’s heart that I will not leave before I construct my pantheon for the grand game we are about to have.”

It seemed to satisfy the messenger and he tossed the phone back to Alison. A few seconds later, almost as an afterthought. Carnea also unlocked her mouth. She was about to very calmly ask Carnea to never do that again and what the hell was going on anyways, but then the two divine beings were talking once more and her mouth clamped shut instinctively as though she were in the company of two adults talking business.

“So, out of curiosity, how long is it until the, ah, ‘the Colop eclipses the Lum’?”

“I don’t really pay attention to time. That’s someone else’s job. But if I had to guess, perhaps…five or six hours?”

There was a short silence.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that,” said the messenger reproachfully, and Carnea sighed and let the moons move again.

“Well, we better get started. Alison,” she said seriously. “You must find some natives and impress them with your…numbers. I’ll have to go and…build my pantheon.”

“What?” Alison asked, for it was a legitimate question.

“And I’ll come with you to make sure you don’t try anything funny,” the messenger added. “But don’t think I’m not keeping an eye on you too, miss.”

Carnea stifled a sigh. “Right. Make sure to act like a true Goddess of, uh, Numbers. Oh, yes, be sure to put in a good word for Carnea, won’t you?” And with that out of the way, the two deities flew off and left Alison on her own.

Alison stood and watched the two fly away.

“How am I gonna find some dumb natives?” she wondered.

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

---

As the gaping maw opened in the floor, John took a few steps back, turning to peer at Ethan napping on the bench.

He considered it. Standing above the kid and fiddling with one of his sleeves, he honestly considered just taking the dozing child and tossing him into the waiting embrace of green, glowing death.

Time, his again to move through at will. He could get out of the battle easily enough. From there, he'd have a whole universe of civilizations to pick and choose from, and with the right know-how, he could punch a hole back out, maybe punch his old employer in the face and grab his TEDD back, and from there... Well, he'd have options. It'd all be so easy.

A few seconds later, Ethan was blinking sleep out of his eyes. For such a short nap, he'd really gotten into it. When he saw John staring down at him, a grin on his face, he perked up and asked, "What's up? We going somewhere other than this boring temple?"

His temporary guardian straightened up, his grin broadening. "Oh, are we ever!" Holding his hands out, he helped the boy to his feet and gestured to the newly-formed stream of acid. "Check it out, that just popped up out of nowhere!"

A green, glowing river suddenly appearing in the middle of a temple? Totally cool. Immediately, Ethan was running towards it to take a look at how cool it was, all traces of his sleepiness gone.

"Hey," John reminded him, "be careful! This place is dangerous!" There might've been a hint of irony in his voice, but Ethan wouldn't have cared if he'd noticed. He was too busy standing by the edge and looking down.

It was quick, quicker than either of them would've thought. Ethan, had he been given the opportunity to imagine such things, probably would've conjured up images of screaming Nazis, lots of smoke and screaming. John, if he'd had to predict, would've gone with something closer to what he'd seen in the past, not realizing that this acid was being used to drain potential energy, not just what was currently around, so it was a tad more potent than what he'd run into in the past.

As it was, only one of them was in a position to think about it, and the other was distracted by the being that was manifesting itself above the river.

It looked, shockingly enough, like Ethan. John wasn't impressed. "Supposed to drive me towards guilt, I suppose?"

"SOMETHING LIKE THAT," it replied, its voice not quite carrying the same weight as before.

"Well, let's get to the part where you unhitch my t-coordinates, alright? I'm quite satisfied without the dramatic monologue."

"...AS YOU WISH." Had Calendar not been in such debt to John for freeing it from its encasement in the temple and allowing it to bring about the Second Doomsday, which would not only wipe the few remaining mortals from its plane but also the other competing deities as well, it might've punished him. Instead, it just reflected that it'd have plenty of time for dramatic monologues when it was raining death upon all who opposed it.

Bringing its hands together and focusing, it brought three gems into existence, each approximately the size, shape, and colouration of a lemon. Unlike lemons, however, these were crystalline and not quite euclidean- the facets glowed a bit and didn't exactly match up with the expectations of typical geometry.

"EACH OF THESE CRYSTALS," Calendar explained, "WILL PRODUCE A RIFT. SIMPLY FIX A LOCATION IN TIME IN YOUR MIND AND SLASH."

John took the gems, held two in his left hand, and grasped the other solidly in his right. "So say I had a precise time marked off." He raised his left hand and gestured at his sleeve with his right. A stopwatch was running. Calendar frowned. "All I'd have to do is focus on that time, take this crystal in my hand, and do this?"

He raised his right hand, stared at the numbers on the display on his sleeve, then brought the gem slashing down. As it cut through the air, a gash appeared, tearing through space and time and connecting two points.

Calendar blinked at him. "IF YOU WANTED TO WASTE ONE OF YOUR THREE OPPORTUNITIES TO TRAVEL, THEN YES."

"Not waste," John corrected, "invest."

A voice came to them from the other side of the rift. "What's up? We going somewhere other than this boring temple?"

"Oh, are we ever!"

Calendar got it. John winked and threw the two gems through. Time backpedalled a few steps.

-

John considered it. Standing above the kid and fiddling with one of his sleeves, he honestly considered just taking the dozing child and tossing him into the waiting embrace of green, glowing death.

A few seconds later, Ethan was blinking sleep out of his eyes. For such a short nap, he'd really gotten into it. When he saw John staring down at him, a grin on his face, he perked up and asked, "What's up? We going somewhere other than this boring temple?"

His temporary guardian straightened up, his grin broadening. "Oh, are we ever!" Holding his hands out, he caught the pair of lemon-shaped crystals that came through the rift next to him. "These little babies are going to take us places you can't even imagine."

Ethan's eyes widened, all traces of his sleepiness gone. "Whoa, cool! Where are we going first?"

John just chuckled and slipped them in his pockets. "Nowhere yet, kid. First, we've got some business to attend to. Come on, let's ditch this temple and go see what the others are up to."

"Aw, okay... But only if we can go find some food first!"

Ethan lead the way out, and John gave Calendar's temple one last little look before he followed.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

"What in the bloody hell is wrong with ye, Archibald?" Parsley shouted at Six's prone form. "Yer not acting like yer usual stubborn self. Don't let the demon break ye like this!"

Six simply sat there, wordlessly, his single eye staring into Parsley's face. After several minutes without a response, the demon hunter sighed and turn away.

"Enough. We've been wastin' time. Thanks to the demon changin' the illusion so much, I've got no idea if we're even still headed for town. We'll have to find our bearings somehow."

"We have a compass," Tom piped in. "And, uh, the 1997 Rand McNally road atlas and trip planner, too."

"The compass will do ye no good, nor will whatever that other device of yers be. The demon can simply make it show ye the wrong way. Nay, we've got to do this on our own. That means findin' some landmarks. The demon's trickery will still be a problem, but I know a way around that." He turned to Clarice. "Milady, normally I'd say ye'd best stay in this infernal machine for safety. But with these illusions, 'tis best we all stay together. If we're separated, then the demon could disguise one of his minions as the lost one."

He suddenly looked at Six suspiciously.

"Assumin' he hasn't already. It occurs to me now that I've not seen ye since we left Stein's laboratory. That might explain why ye be such a pathetic shell of a man right now."

Suddenly, Six stood up, his chainsaw revving.

"Question 36," he said ominously advancing towards Parsley. "Who are you calling pathetic?"

"Now that's the Archibald I know!" Parsley said with a bit of a laugh.

"Incorrect."

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

Sawblade?

Whrrrrrr?

Sawblade, we have work to do.

Vrr vrrr, vrrrrrrrrrrr-r-r-r-r-r

Reaction time at about four-fifths capacity. Must have been the electrocution. Everything feels… sticky. VrrrrURRRRRRRRM Now let’s get to know the contestants a little better. Parsley, over commercial break you told me that you believe yourself to be possessed by a demon, is that correct? “That’s right, Gamehost Six” Well, you couldn’t be more wrong. There’s no such thing as demons. There is only me. VVVVRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

”Cut that out!”

The gamehost was being restrained. He did not appreciate this, but was not certain that it was grounds for elimination. “Question 37: Why should I?”

Contestant Number Tom seemed to consider this. ”Because human life has value?” offered his wife.

Analyzing: morgue costs + life insurance + slave market + necrophilia + prostitution + GDP + celebrity funerals + population inflation + national debt + social security + world’s oldest woman + subjective experience + heaven and hell (null) + hospital bills + existence of soul (null) + abortion + Dice of Death ratings + definition of ‘value’ (happiness/status/scarcity/societal construct) + minimum wage: “CORRECT. Technically. In the general case.”

”His life has value,” suggested Tom.

(Price of bread + multiversal transport costs + psychiatric bills + imminent doom + HE GOT THE QUESTION WRONG) “INCORRECT.” Six elbowed Tom aside and advanced sawblade-first, only to take an expertly-fired French loaf to the ankle and fall awkwardly to the floor of the RV. ”Hey! Watch the floor!” shouted Tom.

”Yer too far gone, Archibald,” sighed Parsley, standing over the gamehost with his crossbow. ”Shall I kill ye, then, if you will not see reason? Is that how ye’ll have it?”

Parsley had one boot-clad foot over his saw, but Six had other options. He warmed up his lapel-laser and fired—

And the laser reflected harmlessly, shooting out the wall of the vehicle.

That was the first odd thing. The second was that time had stopped. Parsley was frozen in a perpetual state of dismay, Tom was leaning winded against the dashboard, Clarice was indifferently rocking the baby—

The baby. The baby was still moving.

Blackness. Six found himself standing amidst what seemed an infinity of blackness. Without any other source of light, he fired his laser experimentally—

The laser bounced off the blackness at an angle only a few inches in front of him, then reflected again, and again, and again, trapping the gamehost in a cage of red light-beams that illuminated nothing. Mirrors—

Suddenly Six found himself in the RV—standing this time. Everything was still frozen; had their positions changed? Maybe slightly: a shift of weight in Parsley’s feet, Tom midway through inhaling instead of exhaling. And the baby was still moving, of course.

The baby looked at Six. ”xiS tsohemaG ,eeS?” she said, her voice mature and sultry. ”The abyss gazes also.”

Darkness again. Two Gamehosts Six faced each other from a distance of ten feet or so. “Question 38: Who are you?” they asked, their voices just asynchronous enough to reverberate slightly.

“I am Gamehost Six,” they responded to each other, a little uncertainly.

“INCORRECT.”

Back in the RV—had the number four been on his left side before, or had it always been on his right? ”I am Mirror,” explained Baby Emma (incorrect?) ”You who believe in nothing, question now my answer, and the answer is I, that is to say, you. There are grander games at play than yours, and you are no host here, but guest. When Calendar resumes, take this my current vessel and flee with it. Leave these people to their incorrectness for the time being and do as I say, and I will grant you the gift of untarnished, unwarped reflection. Know me, Six, and know yourself. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Time restored. Left was again left, right was right, and wrong was wrong. The baby was crying.

* * * * *

Parsley stopped what he was doing and turned to the baby.

Clarice laid a finger on the baby’s cheek, singing comforts.

* * * * *

Tom composed himself and took a step towards the baby.

* * * * *

Six turned his head and cast his eye upon the baby. Thinking.

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

---

Six’s head turned slowly, for his single lens to capture the baby in full. The system was still… sticky, and thus the head simply moved in regular increments, each one making a particularly loud and unsetting click. The tension in the room was like a lens, focusing focusing focusing in on baby Emma, the resulting ray of consciousness strong enough that he wouldn’t be able to get away with just straight up taking the baby.

But he needed that baby. He needed it more than anything in the world.

In the space of moments, he flipped through a few strategies, RV schematics, and bread recipes, to no avail. He calculated trajectories, likely paths to be taken based on human psychology, and physically possible methods of attack via these strategies. It didn’t ever seem to quite add up. There were too many variables, too much of a possibility of an unmerited killing one of the contestants.

The tension was still as thick as ever, perhaps even more so.

Six recalculated everything. Her started from basics, target positions. Tom was to his left. Parsley was to his right. Clarice was in front, holding the less-than-five (baby, he reminded himself), and was trying her best to stop the child’s wailing. That particular set up could result in a variety of-

Wait.

Tom to the left. Parsley to the right. Clarice in front, holding the baby.

Tom to the left. Parsley to the right. Clarice in front, holding the baby.

No one was driving.

No one was driving.

The plan was calculated almost instantly, and with a SNAP-TENSION-POP he sparked forward, ducking under Tom’s lunge (who was almost certain the robot was going to go straight for his wife, the nerve), and effectively tripping everyone up enough that he managed to hop into the seat of the RV, turn the key, and send the vehicle barreling off at a speed ninety-seven miles (156.106368 kilometers) per hour.

Now, Six wasn’t designed to drive. He hadn’t ever driven before, although he had read how to in books (which anyone will tell you is a completely different experience altogether). Additionally, with the saw blade, he effectively had one only hand to drive, which wouldn’t be as much of a problem if it weren’t for the fact he only had one eye, significantly decreasing his level or perception regarding the road. Furthermore, Gamehost Six was also a completely bat-insane game show robot. Obviously, it isn’t hard to conclude the result of his foray into the automotive world.

The RV crashed.

Considering the circumstances, the crash could have been much worse. The RV wasn’t totaled, just a few dents or scratches, maybe a plumming or engine problem or two that would have to be worked out later. But, in that moment where the RV was lurching, partway in the air, as if by fate (INCORRECT) or god (INCORRECT) or chance (CORRECT), Emma, young, glorious Emma, slipped from Clarice’s hands.

Six, perceptive as he was, bounded out of the chair, readied his single, gloved hand, and, making calculations on the fly, caught the baby, softly, perfectly, a near replica copy of the way OBLONGBALL™ masters caught tricky passes. The robot was quite proud of it, actually.

And then, he and the baby, for a moment, were suspended in an eternity, everything floating in Zero G. Six looked into the baby’s eyes, deep, infinite wells that sang songs like fire, songs like redemption and salvation and the way of God leading up to the mount of heaven and there is Jesus and Buddha and Nietzsche and oh what a lovely banquet you’ve prepared for us. (NONE OF THIS EXISTS.)

The less-than-five (Baby. It’s a baby.) stopped crying. The RV settled down, and before anyone could react, Six was out the door, out of the presence of these humans tarnished with adulthood, and into the night, deep and sweet and manifold.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Parsley was the first to regain his composure.

"Right," he said, calmly. "Sir Archibald has gone mad and run off with Stein's weapon. I expect the demon's given him a rather nasty illusion and he's bought right into it."

"My baby is not a weapon!" Clarice shouted angrily. "We have to get her back from that crazy robot!"

"Aye, that's what I was sayin'," Parsley replied. "We can't let Archibald loose with such a destructive weapon. We'll have to get it back from him. Unless you've got something that can disable it, Stein?"

"Um," Tom's eyes shifted around awkwardly. "Nnnooo?"

"I pray it doesn't come to destroyin' it, not until the demon's illusion is broken. Even if it be a lie, the thought of harmin' a child is too much for me. But we'll need a plan. Tell me everything you know about the weapon, Stein."

Tom racked his brains for an answer that would keep the crazy demon hunter from becoming a violent and crazy demon hunter.

"I, uh... didn't make it. I found it. When I was making my lair. I was, studying it?"

Parsley stared at him fiercely. For a moment, Tom was worried that it hadn't worked.

"Stein, you damn fool! Why didn't you mention this sooner? It all makes perfect sense now. Why the demon chose this village."

"Uh... It does?" Tom asked.

"You must have uncovered a holy artifact! The demons want to destroy it, but they can't risk drawin' too close to it. So they need to use illusions to fool a human into doing the deed for them."

Parsley ran for the RV's door.

"I'll try to catch him on foot. Much as it displeases me to take my eyes off ye, Stein, that artifact is far too important to trust to Archibald's reckless hands." He turned to Clarice and tipped his hat. "Milady, keep a close eye on this scoundrel. I know not what he's told ye, but he's a devious one."

And before either Broderburg could reply, Parsley dashed off into the city.

Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.

---

Professor Gene Parker, Head of the Sub-Divisions Division, sighed and drummed his fingers on the video feed being displayed on the surface of the Master Control Table. A group of robed acolytes stood around Envoy in state-of-the-art high-definition darkness, clasping their hands and bowing their heads so that their hoods obscured their faces.

The natives had stuck Envoy on a shrine as soon as they found it, and although the Linguistics Division was still working out what it was they were chanting, it didn’t take a committee to tell that the natives were worshipping their shiny new metal man from the sky. So that was pretty cool, right? COFCA had just left Envoy on standby for the moment and focused on more interesting things, like the connection to Fort Ayers, which had held out through the round transition. R&D was having a field day with all the advanced technology available for them to test, reverse-engineer and generally screw around with, and the newly appointed Director of Fort Ayers Affairs was trying to use the robot army’s network to get in touch with the human resistance base, with mixed results.

On the screen at the professor’s fingertips, a supposed acolyte broke off from the group and dove for Envoy, crying something about death to the heretics while repeatedly trying to stick a curved knife where the robot’s jugular would have been. Envoy automatically raised an arm and fired its photon accelerator in the man’s face, dissolving everything above his chest in a flash of blue-green light. As the closest acolyte quietly dragged the body away and tossed it in a corner, more than a few of the others visibly put their knives away.

Professor Parker sighed again, this time a bit louder just in case other people couldn’t hear him. Just as he was starting to nod off, there was a shriek of feedback, and the entire surface of the table blanked out or burst into patches of static, along with all the screens lining the walls and the overhead display. They clicked off in rapid succession along with the lights, leaving the room in darkness – except for a large area of static reflected on the surface of the table. The professor looked over his shoulder at the wall of screens behind him. Being an expert in sub-divisions, he instantly recognized that the wall was divided into large areas of static and non-static, and that the static was further divided – subdivided, if you will – into six towering block capitals that just so happened to spell

GEF OUT.

All eyes turned to the technician sitting front and center who visibly gulped in the glow of his still-perfectly functioning screen.

“I can fix that,” he offered.

---

Rutherford B. Wimbledon leaned across the Master Control Table and lit a few more candles.

“You’re trying to see my cards,” announced Nita █████, Head of Intelligence, as if it were fact.

“I am not,” said Wimbledon. “Besides, I couldn’t see your cards in this dark even if I wanted to.”

“That proves it,” she retorted, snuffing out the nearest candle and holding her cards to her chest.

“Cut that out!” Wimbledon complained, reaching across the table to take back the candle.

“Don’t any of you have anything better to do?” asked Kelly Trudeau, Chronologist-in-Chief, as she looked over Wimbledon’s shoulder.

“Nothing but paperwork, man,” sighed Cooper Wilding, dealing her a hand onto the table, “and nothing we do is really going to matter if we don’t have up-to-date information on what Envoy’s doing.”

That brought a grin to Kelly’s face. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she asked, taking a seat. “But I’ve been talking to R&D, and there’s something that all of us can still do, even if we’ve lost all contact with the entire battle.”

“Is it paperwork?” Cooper started to ask, but Kelly dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

“You all remember that time capsule from Fort Ayers, right?” she asked, setting her cards down and leaning forward in her chair. The small group nodded, except for Nita, who was craning her neck and trying to make out what Kelly’s cards were in the darkness.

“Do any of you know what exactly was inside of it?”

“Well, no,” admitted Wimbledon. “Working on the robot itself isn’t really my job.”

“Well, it would contain whatever we put inside of it, right?”

“Sure, but we haven’t planted the time capsule yet,” Cooper pointed out. “We just know that we’re going to, and that there’ll be a suit, a laser cannon, and a satchel inside of it.”

“That’s exactly right,” agreed Kelly. “But, when did we plant it? Are we going to bury it today? A week from now?”

“What are you getting at?” demanded Nita.

“Fine, I’ll explain,” conceded Kelly, clearly enjoying herself. “We know that the time capsule is going to be underground at some point, and we know three things that are going to be inside of it – but the rest is all up in the air.

“Let’s say, purely hypothetically, that I decided Envoy needed a pair of nail clippers. I put the pair of nail clippers into the time capsule before we plant it, and fifty years later, when Envoy opens it up, it’s got the nail clippers inside.”

“That’s pretty much the concept of a time capsule, man,” agreed Cooper.

“What if I put the nail clippers in tomorrow?”

“You mean, after we’ve already seen Envoy open the capsule?”

“Exactly. There’s nothing stopping me from doing that, right? Envoy opening the time capsule happens in the future, and so to Envoy, there was always a pair of nail clippers inside.

“Seeing Envoy open a time capsule with something we didn’t put inside of it would cause an ontological paradox – we’d put the clippers inside because they were there in the future, which is why when Envoy opens the capsule in the future there are going to be nail clippers inside – but if we didn’t see any nail clippers in the time capsule, then the causality of it all still works perfectly. We just wait until we have the idea to add them.

“In short, if we could get Envoy to hide our own equipment from us, then as soon as we have the idea to give Envoy a pair of nail clippers, Envoy can take the nail clippers from their hiding place – and we have as much time as we like to find exactly the right pair and put them into the time capsule.”

“All we need,” she concluded with a wicked grin, “is a place to hide our upgrades.” It took the others a moment to notice the gleam of the flag pin from Envoy’s suit in her hand.

“Wait, wait - ” said Wimbledon, putting up his hands, “that’s why we gave Envoy a suit? So that you could stash secret upgrades inside of it until we have the idea to add them?”

“Exactly.”

“I was wondering why a secret organization had a Parents’ Committee,” muttered Wimbledon.

“And the beauty of it is, we’re not limited to things we’ve already invented! As long as we can invent it before we plant the time capsule – which we have as much time as we like to do – we can retroactively send it to the future in Envoy’s past, thereby bringing it to the present!”

Kelly realized she’d sprung from her seat and started pointing dramatically at some point, so she quietly sat down and folded her hands in front of her. “Just as long as it’s small enough to conceal in Envoy’s suit, of course.”

“You absolute bastard,” Nita stammered in something that might have been admiration. Wimbledon appeared to be counting on his fingers, trying to sort out what she had just said, and Cooper just stared blankly.

“I have to go tell Eva and the Megasenator,” Kelly said, practically springing from her seat. “Start thinking of things we can give to Envoy!”

The three shareholders watched as she hurried off.

“What the hell is a chronologist?” Cooper wondered aloud.

Wimbledon shrugged. “Got any threes?”

“That’s classified,” snapped Nita.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

”Hey, there’s your sister down there. Should we go pick her up?”

Ethan shook his head. ”No! She’ll just want to ruin all the fun we’re having. She doesn’t understand.”

John looked down at the girl sulking by the bank of the acid river and considered his moral obligations. Keeping the Broderburg kids safe under his wing seemed like the obvious thing to do. On the other hand, these kids were feral, and if he kept them together for five minutes there was a good chance one of them would push the other right into the acid for a laugh. Alison would be safer on her own, especially with what he had planned.

Plus, John was in no mood to listen to the two of them argue. “Alright, Ethan, it’s your call. But if we see your parents, it’d be best if you didn’t tell them we saw her.”

”Cool! Hey, I’ll race you down those rocks!” Here Ethan launched into some truly dangerous-looking parkour, vaulting his way down the rubble with his arms splayed to each side, like an airplane. John wasn’t overly concerned for the kid’s safety; a few hard knocks on the head might do him some good.

* * * * *

”Well, it’s official. All of our children have been stolen by crazy people.”

Tom massaged his wife’s shoulders absentmindedly. He supposed that it was somewhat emasculating that she had commandeered the wheel of the RV, but she was very upset and generally knew what to do in these situations, so he let her drive. “Parsley seems alright,” he offered. “There’s a good chance he’ll catch up to the robot if we don’t.”

”Yes, well, we will,” snapped Clarice, slamming on the accelerator. “Everyone else in this city is on foot. That gives us an advantage, doesn’t it?” She met his eyes in the rear-view mirror, which, it had always seemed to Tom, was a silly thing to have if it only showed you what was going on in the back of an RV. ”Tom, honey,” she said, ”I think it’s time we discuss the idea of killing some of the other contestants.”

Tom sighed. “Now, Clarice,” he responded. “This is hard on both of us. But I don’t think violence is the solution.” He thought for a second. “The robots, though. I don’t see anything wrong with taking apart the robots.”

Clarice smiled and nudged his hand with her cheek. ”Go get your rifle. We get our baby back from the robot, we kill it, then hopefully we can warp somewhere with a decent hotel. We could all use a little rest.”

Tom kissed his wife just above the ear. “God, I love you.”

”Yeah, yeah, me too. Save it for the hotel room, hubby.”

* * * * *

Six's instincts told him to hide in the darkest, emptiest place possible, and since he didn’t have a heart, instead he ducked into a temple. The only inhabitant of this place, he deduced, would be a God, and that wasn’t a thing that existed, so it represented only a miniscule threat.

Cradling the baby carefully in one arm, he directed his laser towards the firepit in the middle of the room and set it off. For a millisecond of confused visual input, the gamehost deduced that A) the temple was much larger than he had thought it to be and B) he was not, in fact, alone. However, further processing revealed that he was merely surrounded by a number of exceptionally large mirrors. Disabling his fight-or-flight protocols, Six briefly mused that he was very superior to these superstitious natives because he didn’t need to build a building made of mirrors to feel good about himself, but then he remembered that he had no way of feeling good about himself at all, and he promptly archived the musing.

It occurred to Six that, having memorized the layout of his surroundings, he ought to turn off the light to avoid detection. However, he lacked any appropriate substance to dowse the rather substantial flame, except for the water that made up the majority of the baby’s biomass, and he

He uh

He did not burn the baby and instead he just kicked over the firepit to little effect. Six ran some quick calculations and came to the conclusion that he would need to get out of here very fast or either Parsley or the baby’s parents would find him. Unfortunately, he subsequently discovered that the door behind him had shut and was quite impassable. He concluded that while it was inconvenient for him to be trapped here, it at least made it less likely that one of the other contestants would find him. At this point Gamehost Six experienced a great deal of stress and decided to think about other things like how long the baby would survive given a number of variables (returned to parents? Left in temple? Thrown in fire?) and deduced that under ideal circumstances he could teach the baby its first word (either “Six” or “no” seemed viable candidates for which word) by repeating the word twice per second until the baby died.

In the reflection in the mirror on the north side of the temple, coincidentally, the baby had already died. Six’s reflection was rather tenderly digging a grave for the poor thing, at least until it realized that the efficient course of action was to saw the corpse into tiny bits and bury them each separately.

On the west face of the temple, the reflection showed the opposite scenario—Six lay dead at the feet of the baby’s entire family, who were all now heavily armed with various deadly-looking weapons. They looked happy. Six, always the showman, considered this reflection to capture his poor side ERR cognitiveDissonance has joined the chat room. DragonFogel: Hey cD post in PS.

On the south side, Six was pleased to see that the baby’s reflection had grown up into a lovely young woman, and the two of them seemed to be getting married on the shores of the acid river. This Emma had the very best qualities of her mother and her father, and Six instinctively hated her, though he was unable to gauge the emotional (“emotional”) state of his reflection ERRised INCORRECT INCORRECT INCORRECT INCORRECT

The eastern mirror seemed to check out, except, of course, that the other reflections were reflected behind his reflection. Also, in this reflection, Baby Emma was speaking to him.”Hello, Six, it’s me again. Mirror.”

Gamehost Six made a humming noise all through his system, the robotic equivalent of a deep breath. Then he said: “Question 39:”

* * * * *

Alison came across Nancy crying by the river and was emotionally torn. On the one hand, she’d be happy for the company, and Nancy had seemed cool when she’d been introduced at the beginning of the battle. On the other hand, she really didn’t have to deal with whatever baggage Nancy was carrying. Ah, well. She sat down beside Nancy and simply said, “Hi.”

Nancy blearily looked up. ”I’m sorry,”she replied weakly. ”I’ve just been having the most awful day.”

”Hmmph.” Alison, overall, had been enjoying her day spent battling to the death or whatever, especially after she’d gotten away with her parents. It had been the most interesting part of the family road trip by far. She decided not to share that line of thinking with Nancy, who she judged to be just a little too old to have any fun. She decided to say something more reassuring. “The, uh, the Charlatan guy said you were, uh, insecure and... something else.”

”Apathetic,” Nancy sobbed. That hadn’t worked out the way Alison had wanted. ”I remember quite clearly. I was wondering what he had meant by that, and now that I’ve been around some of you people it’s quite clear. ‘Insecure and apathetic’ means that I’m the only one who’s worried at all that—that none of this makes sense and—and we’re all going to die.”

”Oh, we’re not all going to die,” said Alison, putting an arm around the older woman’s shoulders and noticing that she could probably push Nancy into the acid and move to somewhere less boring and be a little closer to home. She wasn’t sure she really liked Nancy, who if she remembered her vocabulary words was the exact opposite of “apathetic,” but in a bad way.

It was only a thought, of course. Alison wasn’t really going to kill anybody.

“Cheer up,” she continued. “Look. Carnea and I are doing this thing where we’re trying to find some natives and convince them that we’re gods and get us to worship us, which I think is unfair because she actually is a god, so I could use some help, and I think it would do you some good to get out and do something aside from sit and cry and probably end up falling into the acid and killing yourself. Okay?”

”Falling into the acid and killing myself,” was all Nancy said, dreamily, as though she’d just been given a good idea.

That worried Alison. She grabbed Nancy’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, useless,” she urged. “Natives. Worship. Think of it as a game if you have to. Like we’re detectives.”

”Detectives, eh?” said Nancy, a little less distantly. Alison pieced together an association that was lingering in the back of her head: Nancy reminded her of the student teachers who used to come in to help out in elementary school, and who always tried very hard to be nice but everybody in the room knew they were on a track towards becoming just another crotchety old child-hating lady-teacher. She took another glance at the acid river.

“Excuse me,” said a voice behind them. “Did I hear one of you say something about a game?”

Nancy gasped and tried to cover Alison’s eyes, but it was too late, the damage was done—the dark skinned woman who had popped up before them was wearing nothing but a loincloth around the waist and there was nothing that either of them could do about it. Alison wrenched her head free and stared, conflicted between embarrassment, jealousy, rage, and admiration.

Having learned from R-rated movies that in these sort of situations the person who could most convincingly pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was going on had the upper hand, Alison turned her eyes with great difficulty to Nancy. “See, we found a native already! I wander around for like twenty minutes and don’t find one and then you join the team and one pops up in like three seconds! You’re lucky at this.”

Nancy didn’t seem to know where to look. ”Lucky,”she stammered. ”Yes. Right. Are you not cold?”

”I have an interest,” said the shameless woman. “In games. And I see that the two of you are pieces.” Alison decided after a few seconds that that wasn’t a compliment. “Pieces working in opposition of my master, Chess.”

”Chess?” said Nancy, perking up. ”Do you play, then? A good game of chess always soothes my nerves.”

”Hmm.” The woman studied Nancy closely. “When a piece plays another piece, nothing can be gained on the part of the players except for knowledge of the other players’ pieces’ tactics. And seeing as I already know your first move, which is to offer the play, I know more about your tactics than you do about mine. Therefore the obvious response on my part is to decline.”

Nancy briefly considered this. ”Well that doesn’t make a lot of sense. See, now I know that you’ve declined, so we’re flush, aren’t we?”

The native grimaced. “I... very well. Follow me to the temple. We’ll play, but if I win, I get to take your clothes.”

Nancy wilted and looked to Alison to support. Alison merely shrugged.