"Alright AJ, you all set? Armor polished, sword sharpened? Makeup? Did we get the makeup done?"
"Makeup's done boss!"
"Alright, cameras one through four ready? Lights up! Ok, places everyone! Aaaaaaaaaaand...... Action!"
Acradius put that gleam in his eye that could only mean he was up to some sort of mischievous pursuit. With his signature smirk, he put on his best Australian accent. "Here we are in the dangerous Donkey Kong Country, where there have been rumors abound about a large and diverse community of simians. As the local legends say, these monkeys and gorillas and orangutans are far more intelligent than any other researchers give them credit for."
He ventured a few steps into the temple, the lights of the cameramen illuminating its dark entryway for the first time in thousands of years. "Now what's also a disturbing occurrence is that these primates have presumably been at war with some sort of race of advanced crocodiles, the very basis of these stories being temples such as this. Far more likely, is the possibility of an ancient civilization that worshiped the reptiles for their representation of the very rivers upon which they relied." He took a dramatic, sweeping look around, directing the camera at one of the many statues. "Now, I may not exactly be an expert on these buggers, but it seems to me that these 'Kremlins' as they were called by the natives, wouldn't be very dangerous physically. Certainly not a match for old Steve. But, if they were as smart as most of the legends do, in fact state, and they were at least partially bipedal like this here statue, they may have been able to wield primitive weapons like spears and shields, as opposed to just crawling around snapping at people."
The track they had laid down for the cameras to roll on stopped. The director shouted through his megaphone. "Great job AJ. It'll be a few more hours before we're ready for the next shot."
Dropping the accent, the Time Warrior, sweating in full battle gear in the middle of the jungle, shot back, "Great. I'm going to find somewhere to cool off in here. Stay safe guys."
And with that, he walked into the depths of the temple...
"Eeewww... smells like bananas and poo in here."
The 11th Nintendoland Battlefield Tournament, round 2 battles.
-
Acradius
- Member
- Posts: 963
- Joined: Sat Feb 24, 2001 2:00 am
- Location: Where Time, Space and Reality fade, and there is l
- Contact:
-
Scripture
- Member
- Posts: 436
- Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2004 1:00 am
Scripture was silent as the winds carried jeweled snows over the plains, making the sound of a rattler or falling sand. Metal Man looked closely, and a silver cloud seemed to be seeping from Scripture, nearly hidden by the gusting white, blooming up like volcanic ash. From this cloud, defying gravity by not moving in the winds, seemed to emerge the heat-mirage effect of bending air, and from that strange warping of reality came shades of blue, dark and light, eventually blending into the hue of cobalt before solidifying into a perfect gem-sphere of the color, with a single black dot in the middle. At first, only three emerged, enough that Metal Man could count, and then five rolled out at a time, six, seven, eight. It seemed a solar system was bursting from that heat-mirage to orbit around the felled Scripture, he their sun.
They looked at everything as they circled him. Metal Man felt they were all peering into him and past him, and in them he could see eons and dimensions-worth of information – strangely familiar, because he had just attempted to forcefully download into Scripture’s spine that very wealth, and now he was seeing it in flashes and pings above him. Out of Scripture’s mind. A sinking feeling washed over him, eclipsed quickly by anger.
Out of his field of vision spheres took off into the clouds. More were created, finally, to take their place, and then the heat-mirage died down, died out.
“Stop talking,” Scripture said, muffled under the snow so it might not have even come out that way to Metal Man’s ear. Then Scripture rose up, standing in the man-shaped crater Metal Man had put him in and looking, despite the cracks in his eye-jewel, directly at him. His array of cobalt orbs halted, seemed to turn their omnipresent gaze directly at the dimension-hopper.
In a thought they went from hovering to shooting like asteroids, a handful of bowling balls hurtling for Metal Man. He swung his axe in an awkward blow brought on by madness and instinct, but he only managed to puncture one to its core – it exploded as his axe landed into the snow, and in its shards he saw information hurtling about before being deleted, the stuff of worlds and civilization lost in the cold. His attention shifted, however, as his jaw was dislocated and shoved into his Adam’s apple, his eyes both blackened deeply, and his ribs cracked forcefully under numerous smoothed blows. All that in a few seconds, as he was suddenly lost to bruises and cracking bones and blood, thrown down in the rush to the harsh grains of ice on the ground, left there to bleed out as he shielded his face with his forearms and axe and a stampede of cobalt rushed relentlessly over him.
The spheres that had earlier shot into the sky then returned, charged with enough energy to power a countryside. Scripture thought, and they hurtled for Metal Man as the rest cleared, went back to orbit around their master. They made connections with the ground on their way, chewing up permafrost and the Earth beneath in the jagged penciling of an artist, and Metal Man could only howl with anger – a wet, gurgling sound through broken jaw and flopping tongue - as they ran directly into him and halted, dumping the majority of their reserves into him.
Electronics seized into hyperactive life and died inside him, muscles pumped with vigor and then twitched and grasped dearly around his battered bones as everything burnt, burnt, burnt, and from Scripture’s point of view, from his stars’ point of view, there was only steam and dust.
They looked at everything as they circled him. Metal Man felt they were all peering into him and past him, and in them he could see eons and dimensions-worth of information – strangely familiar, because he had just attempted to forcefully download into Scripture’s spine that very wealth, and now he was seeing it in flashes and pings above him. Out of Scripture’s mind. A sinking feeling washed over him, eclipsed quickly by anger.
Out of his field of vision spheres took off into the clouds. More were created, finally, to take their place, and then the heat-mirage died down, died out.
“Stop talking,” Scripture said, muffled under the snow so it might not have even come out that way to Metal Man’s ear. Then Scripture rose up, standing in the man-shaped crater Metal Man had put him in and looking, despite the cracks in his eye-jewel, directly at him. His array of cobalt orbs halted, seemed to turn their omnipresent gaze directly at the dimension-hopper.
In a thought they went from hovering to shooting like asteroids, a handful of bowling balls hurtling for Metal Man. He swung his axe in an awkward blow brought on by madness and instinct, but he only managed to puncture one to its core – it exploded as his axe landed into the snow, and in its shards he saw information hurtling about before being deleted, the stuff of worlds and civilization lost in the cold. His attention shifted, however, as his jaw was dislocated and shoved into his Adam’s apple, his eyes both blackened deeply, and his ribs cracked forcefully under numerous smoothed blows. All that in a few seconds, as he was suddenly lost to bruises and cracking bones and blood, thrown down in the rush to the harsh grains of ice on the ground, left there to bleed out as he shielded his face with his forearms and axe and a stampede of cobalt rushed relentlessly over him.
The spheres that had earlier shot into the sky then returned, charged with enough energy to power a countryside. Scripture thought, and they hurtled for Metal Man as the rest cleared, went back to orbit around their master. They made connections with the ground on their way, chewing up permafrost and the Earth beneath in the jagged penciling of an artist, and Metal Man could only howl with anger – a wet, gurgling sound through broken jaw and flopping tongue - as they ran directly into him and halted, dumping the majority of their reserves into him.
Electronics seized into hyperactive life and died inside him, muscles pumped with vigor and then twitched and grasped dearly around his battered bones as everything burnt, burnt, burnt, and from Scripture’s point of view, from his stars’ point of view, there was only steam and dust.
-
The Willful Wanderer
- Member
- Posts: 2221
- Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2004 2:00 am
- Location: Aisle 12, between the kumquats and the radicchio.
Ad-liberating
Seles was, for her part, more than nonplused at the total ineffectiveness of her fireball (against Aidan, at least; it had been well enough as strong as she'd intended it from the energy poured in). In retrospect, she should have expected something like this- the way the man was clad so lightly in spite of the horrendous and unnatural frost spake of either an intense heat within, or some incredible resilience to chill. Possibly both, but he had specified fire- so it remained to be found if frost would prove as pointless to strike the man with.
The immensely focused slap against her forceshield had done its fair part of damage, and were the thing to be made of visible glass, it would be showing a network of thin cracks across nearly three-quarters its surface from the blow. Where the man had summoned the power from was beyond her- it certainly seemed no magick she knew of. But then, there were other powers that be. If his actions were to be believed (and believe she did, as she well enough realized she had to endure them), then this man had access at the least to one or another of these powers. Possibly to magick of some form or other as well. That he had not only avoided harm from her fireball, but stolen it despite her own power being its sustenance spake that he had no small ability to manipulate the element. That could be a truly bad thing, as Seles herself held none of her craft for dealing with flame in particular. She was, as sorceres went, inclined to the most generalistic form, preferring variety to raw power despite her immense internal wellspring.
Fortunately for her, the barrier did its part to protect against sonics as well, so she was suffering no loss or impairment to her hearing. That did not, however, mean she had particularly enjoyed the not-sound, nor that she was completely consanguine about her current position. Floating midair seemed to be posing no notable impediment to the monk's attempts to destroy her, and holding still was not helping her case any either. The forceshield was well and good enough, but he could clearly continue to strike at it for all day and all night and on for at least a fortnight, unless she sorely underestimated the fiery monk. Clearly, a change in tactics was warranted- and all this she thought even as she resisted the attempts of her shield's feedback to drive a pickaxe through her brain.
Thus, even as Aidan fell back to terra-sometimes-firma, Seles made a few more quick motions with her hands- and then seemed to split into four. Aidan may or may not be familiar with the concept, but the extras of the sorceress (none of the four were in quite the place she had been a moment ago, so it would be difficult to tell where the 'real' one was) were a peculiar form of phantasm. Rather than illusions that convinced the viewer that they were real, they effectively *were* real- they just weren't her. They were also exceedingly fragile, as such imitations tend to be regardless of the nature of their origin. Other secrets indeed they did hold, but these were not immediately apparent- and in fact, most of these other qualities would likely not come into play. The man was too skilled, too fast to be baffled by the copies for long- but if a certain small gambit worked, she held some hope that much time would not be needed.
Aidan, therewith, found himself charging not at Seles, but at one of four Seles who all swooped down near to the ground, skimming off in four different directions. Each of them seemed to take a separate quadrant of the roughly round crater the man had left, and even as the shirtless monk approached one of them with his left arm wound for a palm-strike, the four began circling, orbiting about on the lip of the crater. Swirls of snow and dusty dirt were kicked up by each, and the monk quickly realized that there was naught he could use to tell them apart from one another aside their placement. They bore each the same heat, the same frame, the same scent, even the same pattern of auras, thaumic and otherwise. Whatever it was the broad-caped young woman had done, it was most effective, most effective indeed. And thus, most intriguing- but still something he had to surpass.
Though the silk-trousered man moved quite swiftly, feet beating a stacatto on the turned, exposed, blasted soil, the four of Seles were also shifting rapidly, never remaining in place and continuously accelerating. Still, he held advantage in that he need not charge straight at each from behind, but could instead angle out to the edge of the circle they formed and as much go to them as let them come to him. So, he caught his selected target with his hand- or would have had she not abruptly exploded into a rather large splash of vile, pale-blue liquid. The thin fluid coated much of his arm and a rather long spray across the ground, the momentum of the duplicate maintaining even as she dispersed into something not much better smelling than extremely old limburgher cheese. Quickly, Aidan shifted his arm and swung it to splatter off as much of the putrid stuff as he might- for he could feel the telltale sear of acid on his flesh. Were that not enough, the thin spray on the ground was faintly smoking, melting snow near-instantly and slowly eating dirt away into a considerably less vile-smelling gray sludge. A quick burst of flame dispersed the remaining acid from his arm, though the skin of it had taken on a rather boiled look. If acid was the form of that phasm, then what of the other false sorceresses? Would they each seek to burn him likewise? Clearly, this was more than a simple guessing game....
Of the three remaining Seles', each began to murmer a different quiet incantation, and each one's hands moved in different but careful arcane patterns. The one already nearing him seemed to be sparking slightly, tiny arcs and crackles of white-blue coursing her body from thin slippers to the top of her ponytail's high arc. The next appeared to be caught in a small tornado that was matching her vector, tossing both cape and brown hair about so much that it was a wonder she could aim herself. Indeed, so near as Aidan could tell, her eyes were shut tightly, squinted against the swirling air. The one across the crater (or so nearly so as to make it a negligible distinction) was trailing glimmering shards of ice, sparkles and flakes like she was some curious form of snowcloud set to bring back the white covering to the edge of the blasted dirt.
*****ELSEWHERE*****
There was motion... activity. Sound. Sound of... people. Sound of.... food.
A dull groan sounded as some small wooden rubble shifted to reveal a gaunt and mummified corpse. The body, long since abandoned by its soul, groaned again as it slowly brought itself upright. Rime and frost cracked and shed from it in thin scales that shattered quietly upon the ground with a tinkling sound. This one was soon joined by others, several bloated despite the chill. Five... seven frigid corpses rose from amidst the building, clambering across the remains of the shattered upper floor and bits of roof-tile. Slowly, moving more like some horrific death-glacier than humanoid bodies, they made their way towards a collapsed section of wall- and then the street.
There, the small group was joined- inasmuch as a random assortment of creatures traveling in vaguely the same direction with no particular order could be considered a gathering. Dozens like them, and others seeming to be more along the lines of iced-over skeletons than rotting corpses, slowly drew themselves up and began moving, in scattered array, towards the edge of the city. Towards the crater. Towards the monk and the sorceress. There there was warmth... food. They would eat the flesh, not to sate some hunger from beyond. Not to force others to endure as they had the horrors of an eternity soulless, mindless, meaningless. No, they would do so because they had been told. It was not their nature- no thing like them, risen from horrific death in despicable circumstance by foul means, could ever have an actual nature.
*****ELSEWHERE YET*****
"In the names of the powers that sustain..." The voice intoned softly,
"I call upon the might.
Let devastation rain...
And shadow trigger night.
For so shall come upon this place,
A devastation great,
That puts awe on e'en the sternest face,
Snuffs even living hate.
Although you come from far beyond,
I now shall draw you here.
To make my foes, both meek and strong,
Summarily disappear...."
And then there was waiting. Watching the battle of the monk and the duplicates from high upon the petrified wall, another Seles narrowed her mouth with the incantation finished. A dull, small gust began to pick up about her, billowing her skirt and cape slightly. Raising her staff before her despite the scorch midway down its length, she gently planted the thin end atop the center of her log-of-residence, and waited, focusing. Watching the monk.
*****WHAT, SOMEWHERE ELSE TOO???*****
There they were.... the undead. Somehow, she escaped their notice- a method she'd not explain to any, largely for lack of another wanting such knowledge. However it was, she did so, and stayed as she was. Watching. Waiting. Hoping.
**************************
3
Seles was, for her part, more than nonplused at the total ineffectiveness of her fireball (against Aidan, at least; it had been well enough as strong as she'd intended it from the energy poured in). In retrospect, she should have expected something like this- the way the man was clad so lightly in spite of the horrendous and unnatural frost spake of either an intense heat within, or some incredible resilience to chill. Possibly both, but he had specified fire- so it remained to be found if frost would prove as pointless to strike the man with.
The immensely focused slap against her forceshield had done its fair part of damage, and were the thing to be made of visible glass, it would be showing a network of thin cracks across nearly three-quarters its surface from the blow. Where the man had summoned the power from was beyond her- it certainly seemed no magick she knew of. But then, there were other powers that be. If his actions were to be believed (and believe she did, as she well enough realized she had to endure them), then this man had access at the least to one or another of these powers. Possibly to magick of some form or other as well. That he had not only avoided harm from her fireball, but stolen it despite her own power being its sustenance spake that he had no small ability to manipulate the element. That could be a truly bad thing, as Seles herself held none of her craft for dealing with flame in particular. She was, as sorceres went, inclined to the most generalistic form, preferring variety to raw power despite her immense internal wellspring.
Fortunately for her, the barrier did its part to protect against sonics as well, so she was suffering no loss or impairment to her hearing. That did not, however, mean she had particularly enjoyed the not-sound, nor that she was completely consanguine about her current position. Floating midair seemed to be posing no notable impediment to the monk's attempts to destroy her, and holding still was not helping her case any either. The forceshield was well and good enough, but he could clearly continue to strike at it for all day and all night and on for at least a fortnight, unless she sorely underestimated the fiery monk. Clearly, a change in tactics was warranted- and all this she thought even as she resisted the attempts of her shield's feedback to drive a pickaxe through her brain.
Thus, even as Aidan fell back to terra-sometimes-firma, Seles made a few more quick motions with her hands- and then seemed to split into four. Aidan may or may not be familiar with the concept, but the extras of the sorceress (none of the four were in quite the place she had been a moment ago, so it would be difficult to tell where the 'real' one was) were a peculiar form of phantasm. Rather than illusions that convinced the viewer that they were real, they effectively *were* real- they just weren't her. They were also exceedingly fragile, as such imitations tend to be regardless of the nature of their origin. Other secrets indeed they did hold, but these were not immediately apparent- and in fact, most of these other qualities would likely not come into play. The man was too skilled, too fast to be baffled by the copies for long- but if a certain small gambit worked, she held some hope that much time would not be needed.
Aidan, therewith, found himself charging not at Seles, but at one of four Seles who all swooped down near to the ground, skimming off in four different directions. Each of them seemed to take a separate quadrant of the roughly round crater the man had left, and even as the shirtless monk approached one of them with his left arm wound for a palm-strike, the four began circling, orbiting about on the lip of the crater. Swirls of snow and dusty dirt were kicked up by each, and the monk quickly realized that there was naught he could use to tell them apart from one another aside their placement. They bore each the same heat, the same frame, the same scent, even the same pattern of auras, thaumic and otherwise. Whatever it was the broad-caped young woman had done, it was most effective, most effective indeed. And thus, most intriguing- but still something he had to surpass.
Though the silk-trousered man moved quite swiftly, feet beating a stacatto on the turned, exposed, blasted soil, the four of Seles were also shifting rapidly, never remaining in place and continuously accelerating. Still, he held advantage in that he need not charge straight at each from behind, but could instead angle out to the edge of the circle they formed and as much go to them as let them come to him. So, he caught his selected target with his hand- or would have had she not abruptly exploded into a rather large splash of vile, pale-blue liquid. The thin fluid coated much of his arm and a rather long spray across the ground, the momentum of the duplicate maintaining even as she dispersed into something not much better smelling than extremely old limburgher cheese. Quickly, Aidan shifted his arm and swung it to splatter off as much of the putrid stuff as he might- for he could feel the telltale sear of acid on his flesh. Were that not enough, the thin spray on the ground was faintly smoking, melting snow near-instantly and slowly eating dirt away into a considerably less vile-smelling gray sludge. A quick burst of flame dispersed the remaining acid from his arm, though the skin of it had taken on a rather boiled look. If acid was the form of that phasm, then what of the other false sorceresses? Would they each seek to burn him likewise? Clearly, this was more than a simple guessing game....
Of the three remaining Seles', each began to murmer a different quiet incantation, and each one's hands moved in different but careful arcane patterns. The one already nearing him seemed to be sparking slightly, tiny arcs and crackles of white-blue coursing her body from thin slippers to the top of her ponytail's high arc. The next appeared to be caught in a small tornado that was matching her vector, tossing both cape and brown hair about so much that it was a wonder she could aim herself. Indeed, so near as Aidan could tell, her eyes were shut tightly, squinted against the swirling air. The one across the crater (or so nearly so as to make it a negligible distinction) was trailing glimmering shards of ice, sparkles and flakes like she was some curious form of snowcloud set to bring back the white covering to the edge of the blasted dirt.
*****ELSEWHERE*****
There was motion... activity. Sound. Sound of... people. Sound of.... food.
A dull groan sounded as some small wooden rubble shifted to reveal a gaunt and mummified corpse. The body, long since abandoned by its soul, groaned again as it slowly brought itself upright. Rime and frost cracked and shed from it in thin scales that shattered quietly upon the ground with a tinkling sound. This one was soon joined by others, several bloated despite the chill. Five... seven frigid corpses rose from amidst the building, clambering across the remains of the shattered upper floor and bits of roof-tile. Slowly, moving more like some horrific death-glacier than humanoid bodies, they made their way towards a collapsed section of wall- and then the street.
There, the small group was joined- inasmuch as a random assortment of creatures traveling in vaguely the same direction with no particular order could be considered a gathering. Dozens like them, and others seeming to be more along the lines of iced-over skeletons than rotting corpses, slowly drew themselves up and began moving, in scattered array, towards the edge of the city. Towards the crater. Towards the monk and the sorceress. There there was warmth... food. They would eat the flesh, not to sate some hunger from beyond. Not to force others to endure as they had the horrors of an eternity soulless, mindless, meaningless. No, they would do so because they had been told. It was not their nature- no thing like them, risen from horrific death in despicable circumstance by foul means, could ever have an actual nature.
*****ELSEWHERE YET*****
"In the names of the powers that sustain..." The voice intoned softly,
"I call upon the might.
Let devastation rain...
And shadow trigger night.
For so shall come upon this place,
A devastation great,
That puts awe on e'en the sternest face,
Snuffs even living hate.
Although you come from far beyond,
I now shall draw you here.
To make my foes, both meek and strong,
Summarily disappear...."
And then there was waiting. Watching the battle of the monk and the duplicates from high upon the petrified wall, another Seles narrowed her mouth with the incantation finished. A dull, small gust began to pick up about her, billowing her skirt and cape slightly. Raising her staff before her despite the scorch midway down its length, she gently planted the thin end atop the center of her log-of-residence, and waited, focusing. Watching the monk.
*****WHAT, SOMEWHERE ELSE TOO???*****
There they were.... the undead. Somehow, she escaped their notice- a method she'd not explain to any, largely for lack of another wanting such knowledge. However it was, she did so, and stayed as she was. Watching. Waiting. Hoping.
**************************
3
\"What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters?.....
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
-
Metal Man
- Member
- Posts: 17964
- Joined: Sun Apr 23, 2000 1:00 am
- Location: 1592 Miles Away From Here
- Contact:
But one voice would not stop. Despite the pain and destruction, Metal Man forged on, having built up an incredible amount of energy from the pain this had caused him. He grabbed his broken jaw and shoved it back together enough to talk, not that this had fixed it; simply had been artfully broken into a function to coordinate speaking. In an act of angry defiance, he pointed again at Scripture. Despite the damage, his darkened eyes continued to see, although he was too mad with his uncontrolled anger to care. A raspy metallic sound issued, piercingly accentuating (his wrecked software failed to compensate for much.) And he responded.
"No one shall silence the Metal Man but the Metal Man himself. You shall die a thousand times for what you have done... extinguish all hope for your continued existence now, foolish machine."
This thing was operating on a power level beyond mere battling. It only saw him as some annoying ape that had to be killed. Metal Man decided it was time to utterly annihilate his opponent, lest it try again and succeed. Even as he bled from many pores and none of his bones seemed to fit right anymore, he saw out of the corner of his eye something very interesting...
He had dropped the axe, and it was now behind Scripture. As the menacing machine stood there, with its armada of warped reality gems... he laughed. Indeed. He thought to himself what the machine had just set itself up for. He made a gesture with his right arm reminiscent of the finger... but it was not. Rather...
*SHLORK* The axe he had dropped suddenly had flown up from behind and sunk itself into the machine's back and spine. Sticking up, this caused a lightning bolt to hit the machine, igniting the flammable liquids that had seeped inside. Within moments, the machine was plagued by explosions from within.
Circuits burned. Fibers frayed. The joints and plates inside this robot MELTED. It was a statue, if it had no way to recover from this. Explosions blew out pieces from within; it was much like this robot was a covered dish in a microwave. All the fiery smoke and steam within flew out to escape, as Metal Man chuckled. But that distraction... yes... distraction... was the beginning.
"You fell for my trap, you know. It may be painful to tell you this, but you just gave me access to those systems you so artfully used to nearly kill me. Except... I wasn't in as bad as shape as you when you used it originally."
The shaded gems left from earlier shook, as Metal Man's virus infiltrated the systems of the machine, trying to make its systems its own. It mostly failed, but what it did not grab it broke, causing further damage to the machine's internals. Worse yet, though, the gems had changed their target. Scripture had Metal Man's signature. They had been set to kill Metal Man. Metal Man's own signals had become too weak to lock onto. In an instant, Scripture's own orbital armageddon occurred to him. Vast hordes of the gems appeared, using HIS energy, smashing into him from all sides.
He began to look like a pockmarked asteroid himself, with all these holes. The fires still burned within him, and the minute that was over with the virus took advantage in tandem with this. Scripture regained control over the gems of death but at the same time... *BAM* His right arm abandoned ship. How horrible. The opportunistic floating hand of Metal Man picked it up, and Metal Man replaced his broken right arm with it. The hand then locked into the broken right arm and floated alongside him. Metal Man defiantely shook all three of his fists at Scripture.
"You see what you've made me do! You touched one of my programs... you just signed your own death, scrap heap!"
Scripture was still sentient, of course, as Metal Man made his way over. However, with one arm and all those holes, a virus fighting within him, and a fire still inside his other shoulder, he wasn't really able to block all those punches. Soon enough Metal Man let off a furious series of blows that was akin to a jackhammer at the thing's face, using all three arms--things which had not been targeted heavily by Scripture, and hence, were in rather good shape, considering.
But the aim of this, actually, was worse. Metal Man grabbed the robot's head and twisted it backwards, causing an infernal screech and the sound of more snapping components. Then he took the remaining arm and stabbed its fist into the back of the thing's head, also breaking whatever he could of those joints. He then proceeded to break the right knee by bending it the wrong way, and finished off by brutally stabbing the midsection of it with the arm... he walked quickly to his now standing axe (his hand moved it straight up when it was done earlier) and impaled Scripture, front-first, on its blade, the robot's face facing the heavens... and indeed, another bolt came, and even if the robot could not see earlier... this was the sound of thunder.
Not trusting the stolen arm, Metal Man stabbed it onto the smoking, lightning-hit robot's face and left it there, then walking back a bit. He took out his TT33, shining silver pistol, and shot at the robot's impaled body repeatedly. It was probably overkill, but he didn't care--that thing had set him off, and he knew it would probably attack again, being a robot. The man fired over and over again, the sound of his gun echoing into the desolate steppe. A gust of wind blew some snow onto the remains of his visor, and he coughed to himself.
He thought solemnly to himself of how hideous a foe this was, recalling images of those he had fought... that piranha face stuck in his mind, and he resolved to break every inch of its surface after this. His mind was weary and angry now, and he vainly fumbled at his broken jaw, which now just did not stop hurting. He felt some pity for the creature who had gone for his fragile, physical body--for it was his spirit which would keep on fighting until nothing was left of this.
His mixture of anger and sorrow continued to boil inside his mind, and he was beginning to glow an odd color... he didn't know if he'd survive the next round, but he knew that the release of such feelings would probably trump what he'd done so far. For no amount of physical damage could repair the hatred he had for this thing in his soul... what remained of that after so many mechanical changes.
He cursed to himself as he swore the thing just moved again. He held his gun over his head, ready to violently shoot anything that came from above... although in the back of his mind he knew it may be moot. Or perhaps... his next attack to defend against would come from within.
"No one shall silence the Metal Man but the Metal Man himself. You shall die a thousand times for what you have done... extinguish all hope for your continued existence now, foolish machine."
This thing was operating on a power level beyond mere battling. It only saw him as some annoying ape that had to be killed. Metal Man decided it was time to utterly annihilate his opponent, lest it try again and succeed. Even as he bled from many pores and none of his bones seemed to fit right anymore, he saw out of the corner of his eye something very interesting...
He had dropped the axe, and it was now behind Scripture. As the menacing machine stood there, with its armada of warped reality gems... he laughed. Indeed. He thought to himself what the machine had just set itself up for. He made a gesture with his right arm reminiscent of the finger... but it was not. Rather...
*SHLORK* The axe he had dropped suddenly had flown up from behind and sunk itself into the machine's back and spine. Sticking up, this caused a lightning bolt to hit the machine, igniting the flammable liquids that had seeped inside. Within moments, the machine was plagued by explosions from within.
Circuits burned. Fibers frayed. The joints and plates inside this robot MELTED. It was a statue, if it had no way to recover from this. Explosions blew out pieces from within; it was much like this robot was a covered dish in a microwave. All the fiery smoke and steam within flew out to escape, as Metal Man chuckled. But that distraction... yes... distraction... was the beginning.
"You fell for my trap, you know. It may be painful to tell you this, but you just gave me access to those systems you so artfully used to nearly kill me. Except... I wasn't in as bad as shape as you when you used it originally."
The shaded gems left from earlier shook, as Metal Man's virus infiltrated the systems of the machine, trying to make its systems its own. It mostly failed, but what it did not grab it broke, causing further damage to the machine's internals. Worse yet, though, the gems had changed their target. Scripture had Metal Man's signature. They had been set to kill Metal Man. Metal Man's own signals had become too weak to lock onto. In an instant, Scripture's own orbital armageddon occurred to him. Vast hordes of the gems appeared, using HIS energy, smashing into him from all sides.
He began to look like a pockmarked asteroid himself, with all these holes. The fires still burned within him, and the minute that was over with the virus took advantage in tandem with this. Scripture regained control over the gems of death but at the same time... *BAM* His right arm abandoned ship. How horrible. The opportunistic floating hand of Metal Man picked it up, and Metal Man replaced his broken right arm with it. The hand then locked into the broken right arm and floated alongside him. Metal Man defiantely shook all three of his fists at Scripture.
"You see what you've made me do! You touched one of my programs... you just signed your own death, scrap heap!"
Scripture was still sentient, of course, as Metal Man made his way over. However, with one arm and all those holes, a virus fighting within him, and a fire still inside his other shoulder, he wasn't really able to block all those punches. Soon enough Metal Man let off a furious series of blows that was akin to a jackhammer at the thing's face, using all three arms--things which had not been targeted heavily by Scripture, and hence, were in rather good shape, considering.
But the aim of this, actually, was worse. Metal Man grabbed the robot's head and twisted it backwards, causing an infernal screech and the sound of more snapping components. Then he took the remaining arm and stabbed its fist into the back of the thing's head, also breaking whatever he could of those joints. He then proceeded to break the right knee by bending it the wrong way, and finished off by brutally stabbing the midsection of it with the arm... he walked quickly to his now standing axe (his hand moved it straight up when it was done earlier) and impaled Scripture, front-first, on its blade, the robot's face facing the heavens... and indeed, another bolt came, and even if the robot could not see earlier... this was the sound of thunder.
Not trusting the stolen arm, Metal Man stabbed it onto the smoking, lightning-hit robot's face and left it there, then walking back a bit. He took out his TT33, shining silver pistol, and shot at the robot's impaled body repeatedly. It was probably overkill, but he didn't care--that thing had set him off, and he knew it would probably attack again, being a robot. The man fired over and over again, the sound of his gun echoing into the desolate steppe. A gust of wind blew some snow onto the remains of his visor, and he coughed to himself.
He thought solemnly to himself of how hideous a foe this was, recalling images of those he had fought... that piranha face stuck in his mind, and he resolved to break every inch of its surface after this. His mind was weary and angry now, and he vainly fumbled at his broken jaw, which now just did not stop hurting. He felt some pity for the creature who had gone for his fragile, physical body--for it was his spirit which would keep on fighting until nothing was left of this.
His mixture of anger and sorrow continued to boil inside his mind, and he was beginning to glow an odd color... he didn't know if he'd survive the next round, but he knew that the release of such feelings would probably trump what he'd done so far. For no amount of physical damage could repair the hatred he had for this thing in his soul... what remained of that after so many mechanical changes.
He cursed to himself as he swore the thing just moved again. He held his gun over his head, ready to violently shoot anything that came from above... although in the back of his mind he knew it may be moot. Or perhaps... his next attack to defend against would come from within.
Super Smash Quest: Fighting evil since 2002.
-
Repster
- Member
- Posts: 6130
- Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2000 1:00 am
- Location: J'tun ostie d'Acadien.
"Acid..." Aidan looked at his arm, his gaze circled around, as mentioned he was all but blind but as always it was more of a habit then necessity.
"Lightning, Ice, Wind..."
One gone, three left. No, not three. Four. Possible more . This woman was no fool. She would not have left herself this close. It was evident in the skill she had in creating these copies. Not to mention he could feel and smell something else in the air. Magic always left a distinct odor for every spell. He had little idea exacly what it was, but some form of movement. Teleportation perhaps? She could have shifted realities for all he knew, but the real Seles could not be of these three.
Mind you, that did not make them any less of a threat. Considering what had happened with the first, he would need to choose his next target carefully. Bombs of one fashion or another, all of them by his guess. He took a swig from his flask, his flaming bones not even dinging the silver's polish, and took out a flat triangle of some metal or another. One of the points was painted gold, one blue, and one green.
"Green, gold, blue." He chuckled and dropped the thing with a twitch of his wrist giving it a light spin. It landed at his feet, a glimpse at it and the position of the three clones and he had his targets in order, he blurringly saw the colored tips. Ice first. Just wonderful. He should just of gone for the closest one.
The monk closed his right fist, and the flames went out and bones locked. he was going to lose it anyway, he might as well conserve some power. He needed to end this quickly. Mages always had tricks up there sleeve, and the longer these things were around, the longer he was off her trail... the longer she could prepare. He placed his good hand on the bones, moved, then he stopped, and moved again.
Seles, perched as she was and no longer on the receiving end, saw just ho complex Aidan's current form of movement was. She could see the appearance of dozens of individual magical effects combining with raw physical power and then something more all combined for raw speed even if the original purposed of the individual spells were not designed for that purpose. He would have no trouble catching up to any of the copies.
Icy trailed Seles' eye widened in shock. Not at the man's sudden appearance in front of her, but of what crashed into her face. Aidan's clenched bone fist. Aidan himself however, was already moving towards his next target as it connected, missing one chunk of limb. He ignored the release of energy behind him. He could feel the chill in his back, any closer... and that would have been uncomfortable to say the least.
His open palm crushed Seles' face as wind tore at his body, blood misting in the air from the churning air currents that had been with her, yet he continued to move, his momentum unperturbed with such a simple thing as torn flesh and gale force impact, or an eye torn from socket.
The final copy's back struck charred earth and was promptly crushed by Aidan's foot. A leap has preceded the crushing, ending his momentum. The electrical charge did not last long, it did it's damage, unseen but quite painfully felt. The monk grunted as he was thrown back from the shock. He got up.
He walked toward where the four had split from, kneeled and felt the earth, wafted the air, took in a deep breath from his nose. He got up, obviously paying attention to the air, listening to every sound, searching for the sorceress. She had been higher up, but there it was. He only needed to pinpoint the trail. He was a hunter, he tracked his pray threw the most unrelenting terrain, threw countless environments, across the plains, and threw realms. Few things could run, fewer still could hide. Seles was not one of them as he raised his head. Empty socket, and eyepatch met indigo eyes even at that distance. A crazed grin on his face, the monk waved at her with his right stump of an arm.
Bloody, bruised, battered, missing a third of his arm, the other burnt by acid he walked towards her. Strange... he felt the staff in her hands... oak... burnt oak. The staff she had before, yet that was still over where he threw it. A pair, twins that were one perhaps? One's fat shared by the other? He could see how that would be rather handy for a mage. He needed to test that, it could be useful to him as well. Then again, he could be completely wrong, but that mattered little to him. He placed one foot against the stone before him, and ran. Up.
Arms trailing behind him, Aidan was already rethinking his every move to properly deal with the balance issues. Sideways, upside down, diagonally, every which way could provide footing with a tree nearby. He could adjust to anything on the fly with impossible reaction speed, but he did have to occupy his mind for the scant moment he took to reach her.
The monk focused. His fist went forward, and broke. He struck that damnable barrier with more raw physical force then ever. Even missing his eye, his hand audibly breaking, he did not lose his calm look, with that crazed contradictory smirk as big as ever. His head followed immediately. With just as much force. Blood splattered everywhere as head wound tended to be bloody, especially from an already severely damaged face.
"Lightning, Ice, Wind..."
One gone, three left. No, not three. Four. Possible more . This woman was no fool. She would not have left herself this close. It was evident in the skill she had in creating these copies. Not to mention he could feel and smell something else in the air. Magic always left a distinct odor for every spell. He had little idea exacly what it was, but some form of movement. Teleportation perhaps? She could have shifted realities for all he knew, but the real Seles could not be of these three.
Mind you, that did not make them any less of a threat. Considering what had happened with the first, he would need to choose his next target carefully. Bombs of one fashion or another, all of them by his guess. He took a swig from his flask, his flaming bones not even dinging the silver's polish, and took out a flat triangle of some metal or another. One of the points was painted gold, one blue, and one green.
"Green, gold, blue." He chuckled and dropped the thing with a twitch of his wrist giving it a light spin. It landed at his feet, a glimpse at it and the position of the three clones and he had his targets in order, he blurringly saw the colored tips. Ice first. Just wonderful. He should just of gone for the closest one.
The monk closed his right fist, and the flames went out and bones locked. he was going to lose it anyway, he might as well conserve some power. He needed to end this quickly. Mages always had tricks up there sleeve, and the longer these things were around, the longer he was off her trail... the longer she could prepare. He placed his good hand on the bones, moved, then he stopped, and moved again.
Seles, perched as she was and no longer on the receiving end, saw just ho complex Aidan's current form of movement was. She could see the appearance of dozens of individual magical effects combining with raw physical power and then something more all combined for raw speed even if the original purposed of the individual spells were not designed for that purpose. He would have no trouble catching up to any of the copies.
Icy trailed Seles' eye widened in shock. Not at the man's sudden appearance in front of her, but of what crashed into her face. Aidan's clenched bone fist. Aidan himself however, was already moving towards his next target as it connected, missing one chunk of limb. He ignored the release of energy behind him. He could feel the chill in his back, any closer... and that would have been uncomfortable to say the least.
His open palm crushed Seles' face as wind tore at his body, blood misting in the air from the churning air currents that had been with her, yet he continued to move, his momentum unperturbed with such a simple thing as torn flesh and gale force impact, or an eye torn from socket.
The final copy's back struck charred earth and was promptly crushed by Aidan's foot. A leap has preceded the crushing, ending his momentum. The electrical charge did not last long, it did it's damage, unseen but quite painfully felt. The monk grunted as he was thrown back from the shock. He got up.
He walked toward where the four had split from, kneeled and felt the earth, wafted the air, took in a deep breath from his nose. He got up, obviously paying attention to the air, listening to every sound, searching for the sorceress. She had been higher up, but there it was. He only needed to pinpoint the trail. He was a hunter, he tracked his pray threw the most unrelenting terrain, threw countless environments, across the plains, and threw realms. Few things could run, fewer still could hide. Seles was not one of them as he raised his head. Empty socket, and eyepatch met indigo eyes even at that distance. A crazed grin on his face, the monk waved at her with his right stump of an arm.
Bloody, bruised, battered, missing a third of his arm, the other burnt by acid he walked towards her. Strange... he felt the staff in her hands... oak... burnt oak. The staff she had before, yet that was still over where he threw it. A pair, twins that were one perhaps? One's fat shared by the other? He could see how that would be rather handy for a mage. He needed to test that, it could be useful to him as well. Then again, he could be completely wrong, but that mattered little to him. He placed one foot against the stone before him, and ran. Up.
Arms trailing behind him, Aidan was already rethinking his every move to properly deal with the balance issues. Sideways, upside down, diagonally, every which way could provide footing with a tree nearby. He could adjust to anything on the fly with impossible reaction speed, but he did have to occupy his mind for the scant moment he took to reach her.
The monk focused. His fist went forward, and broke. He struck that damnable barrier with more raw physical force then ever. Even missing his eye, his hand audibly breaking, he did not lose his calm look, with that crazed contradictory smirk as big as ever. His head followed immediately. With just as much force. Blood splattered everywhere as head wound tended to be bloody, especially from an already severely damaged face.
When our world is burning.
When all run like the cowards they are.
I shall stand in the inferno, and fight until I am consumed
When all run like the cowards they are.
I shall stand in the inferno, and fight until I am consumed
-
Scripture
- Member
- Posts: 436
- Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2004 1:00 am
It started as a shiver in Metal Man’s shoulder, something like numbness or the byproduct of using different components – only it grew from the periphery of his nerves, started into a boiling pain, and soon his mouth was agape, jaggedly agape, and he was trying to scream.
He looked at his shoulder.
It was like mercury, a strange silver-liquid was growing, eating the very make-up of his flesh and metal, chew at the limber connection between body and arm until it hung on by only bone and then, as the silver substance covered and ate, nothing at all. Metal Man’s arm fell to the snow, and the liquid suddenly took on a temperament considerably sharper, sinister – it hardened into harsh angles, spider-like, and jumped for his fallen gun, a single tendril trailing off from the mass to embed itself like a piercing in the man’s chest. Using this connection like a vine it snagged the gun with its body and swung back up, tearing out at the apex of the swing, and embedding itself with two prongs into Metal Man’s shoulders, straddling his head. He heard a familiar cocking sound and his attitude went from shock and awe (the silvery specimen was something to marvel at, indeed, an example of incredible technology) to murderous disdain.
The gun went off numerous times, fired like a nail-gun into his shoulders and then into his knees, and as he fell from that injury the gun leveled itself, leveled itself impossibly, and fired a shot that scorched down his chest like an artillery shell in sand. It sailed off a few yards, but not before tearing out of his groin.
The silvery nano-thing then began to eat the gun itself, ballooning in size as it broke the weapon down and spat it back out. This done over the period of a few seconds, it went to work on Metal Man’s face, puncturing his eyeballs like two olives as it caked itself over him, chewing them up and growing. It tore off his lips like a vacuum and grew; it groped at his gums and the few teeth he still had and devoured them and grew; it tore at his nose, flattened it to his skull and grew; it tore and ate and tore and grew and Metal Man didn’t know what was going on, the pain in the darkness was terrible because he didn’t know if it was Scripture or some rat tearing his face off, running down his throat towards his stomach…
Meanwhile Scripture was in a terrible way. Immobile thanks to a broken knee, his face and eye a mess, sans an arm, and his skeleton generally torqued and broken in such a way he looked fit for nameless grave in the plains rather than a continuing battle. Despite this, the lightning had energized his systems beautifully, to such a degree he saw from his many infected stars in high-definition and then some, the sort of vision that let him appreciate each crystal of snow for itself, and certainly let him appreciate Metal Man’s pitiable state close up and personally as his little offspring slid down his esophagus and absorbed it, punched into his lungs like grapes and shot a cluster of porcupine-limbs out of his right side, sticking his left arm and enveloping it, breaking it like pottery and trying to tear it off like a chicken wing.
And it ate, and ate, until at last it reached critical mass, feeding off tiny chemical and mechanic reactions to build enough energy to first light up Metal Man in a heavenly glow, and then explode like dynamite in his stomach, blowing his innards outward in a shower the likes of a shotgun blast might cause.
This allowed Scripture to isolate Metal Man’s virus, and in a small mental victory, load it wirelessly into a cobalt sphere, launch it burning up into the atmosphere.
He looked at his shoulder.
It was like mercury, a strange silver-liquid was growing, eating the very make-up of his flesh and metal, chew at the limber connection between body and arm until it hung on by only bone and then, as the silver substance covered and ate, nothing at all. Metal Man’s arm fell to the snow, and the liquid suddenly took on a temperament considerably sharper, sinister – it hardened into harsh angles, spider-like, and jumped for his fallen gun, a single tendril trailing off from the mass to embed itself like a piercing in the man’s chest. Using this connection like a vine it snagged the gun with its body and swung back up, tearing out at the apex of the swing, and embedding itself with two prongs into Metal Man’s shoulders, straddling his head. He heard a familiar cocking sound and his attitude went from shock and awe (the silvery specimen was something to marvel at, indeed, an example of incredible technology) to murderous disdain.
The gun went off numerous times, fired like a nail-gun into his shoulders and then into his knees, and as he fell from that injury the gun leveled itself, leveled itself impossibly, and fired a shot that scorched down his chest like an artillery shell in sand. It sailed off a few yards, but not before tearing out of his groin.
The silvery nano-thing then began to eat the gun itself, ballooning in size as it broke the weapon down and spat it back out. This done over the period of a few seconds, it went to work on Metal Man’s face, puncturing his eyeballs like two olives as it caked itself over him, chewing them up and growing. It tore off his lips like a vacuum and grew; it groped at his gums and the few teeth he still had and devoured them and grew; it tore at his nose, flattened it to his skull and grew; it tore and ate and tore and grew and Metal Man didn’t know what was going on, the pain in the darkness was terrible because he didn’t know if it was Scripture or some rat tearing his face off, running down his throat towards his stomach…
Meanwhile Scripture was in a terrible way. Immobile thanks to a broken knee, his face and eye a mess, sans an arm, and his skeleton generally torqued and broken in such a way he looked fit for nameless grave in the plains rather than a continuing battle. Despite this, the lightning had energized his systems beautifully, to such a degree he saw from his many infected stars in high-definition and then some, the sort of vision that let him appreciate each crystal of snow for itself, and certainly let him appreciate Metal Man’s pitiable state close up and personally as his little offspring slid down his esophagus and absorbed it, punched into his lungs like grapes and shot a cluster of porcupine-limbs out of his right side, sticking his left arm and enveloping it, breaking it like pottery and trying to tear it off like a chicken wing.
And it ate, and ate, until at last it reached critical mass, feeding off tiny chemical and mechanic reactions to build enough energy to first light up Metal Man in a heavenly glow, and then explode like dynamite in his stomach, blowing his innards outward in a shower the likes of a shotgun blast might cause.
This allowed Scripture to isolate Metal Man’s virus, and in a small mental victory, load it wirelessly into a cobalt sphere, launch it burning up into the atmosphere.
-
Metal Man
- Member
- Posts: 17964
- Joined: Sun Apr 23, 2000 1:00 am
- Location: 1592 Miles Away From Here
- Contact:
The Man of Steel's physical body was mostly trash at this point. What remained of it activated an EMP bomb inside itself to clear out the nanites. The armor had been built in an era when nanite attacks were not only possible but common, after all. But it was too late. Indeed. His vision gone, and most of his body destroyed, how could he defeat the robot? There was nothing to feel. His senses had been erased...
Or had they? A click was heard, and the armor stood up despite the fact the body inside was pretty much dead. A seemingly familiar digitized voice was heard. The body drunkenly lifted up its remaining arm and pointed a torn metallic hand at Scripture. And from that hand, an electric speaker crackled with familiar speech...
"Oh, you're dead now, robot boy. I haven't had to use this side of my body for a very long time."
Metal looked exactly the same; but the body was simply on life support now. Enough to keep his brain and remaining organs alive, but with the cruel machine side of his personality fully in control. He remained largely the same being, but he had a rather large hitch in his plan. His organic eyes weren't going to cut it any more. A few DOS-style beeps could be heard as his secondary systems were activated. These had been last-ditch things, added on in case most of his systems were to explode; the designer had been incredulous. "What do you mean if most of your body is destroyed? You'd be dead, if not insane with pain!" "Do it anyway." He was going to regret those words eventually...
These backups were rather pathetic, though. Secondary also meant second-rate. He only saw a few vector-graphic dots around, one for Scripture, some for trees... one for the sun... a plane of reference for the ground. Sight, however, was not the thing Metal Man craved. The extremely damaged, slowly dying warrior turned to his heavily damaged trash-can wreck of a foe. Metal looked at the axe in desperation; it glinted heartlessly in the sun, the snow between him and it an endless gulf between possible salvation and certain death. Yet it was also stuck in his foe... and he knew the nanites of this being could easily take it over. He began walking in slow motion, the sun feeling as if it was melting him from above, as he felt himself burning up within.
This was going to be risky. But what was there left to lose? Scripture had him in a corner. He was going to use all the methods he had, even if it meant irreversible physical damage to himself. Even though he had EMPed the nanites from his body, he also blew away his primary systems, including his remote axe control. His remote hand sat comatose on the ground nearby, no longer programmed or controllable by anyone. Still the infernal Man who half-lived hungered for vengeance, as he lumbered forth like a dying zombie and raised his remaining left arm at his foe again, turning on the crackly, tinny speaker under his wrist again. The voice spoke harshly with its metallic grate, a sound the Master Control Panel would have loved to have.
"Impressive. But unlike you... I never stay in the same place twice."
The man saw the massive amount of anger and turmoil in his inhibitor. It had become like a bomb; the capacitor was broken, and instead of blocking it, it had become filled with the very energy it was in charge of stopping... much like Metal Man had been moments ago.
He got an idea... a very crazy idea, however this was something Zero himself had done before, against a similarly unstoppable foe. Metal Man lurched forward, unable to move effectively (even with mechanical stabilization, his joints were all torn apart and mostly useless), his shiny armor glinting dimly in the blinding endlessness of this hell-field of snow that was the steppe. Then he leaped forth fot his foe, landing with a dull thud that seemed to echo endlessly. At least, to Metal's near-destroyed ears. Metal's axe was strategically flung to the side as its owner landed on his foe, stabbing this mechanical malfeance with his only free arm. It went in deep, crunching through layer after layer of machinery. He wasn't going to risk his life on a mere surface wound. Metal spoke again to the machine, its raspy words echoing inside of his foe.
"I think I forgot to tell you something. While you are a machine and lack fleshy parts like mine, which burn and singe and explode, you also lack a soul. Therefore, you cannot be as unpredictable as a human being. And... you most likely do not know of what I'm about to use... since you lack emotions. What a pity. Come. Make all the puny satellites you want. I will fight you right here, with all my bones broken, all my body destroyed, and about only my brain, some heavily life-supported pieces, and two bits of machinery. I may be outgunned... but you're going down with me!"
A sudden explosion rocked the Steppe, like a massive firebomb. All of Scripture's body was engulfed in it nanomachines and all. It also engulfed Metal Man... it originated from him, after all, as his helmet and shoulders seemed to inexplicably combust right there, along with his arm. Every single plate on his body exploded, destroying wasted tissue as well as pieces of his foe. A wordless scream could almost be heard, but the speaker it was coming out of dissappeared too quickly to be heard from.
There would be no escaping this destruction... pieces were flung everywhere. Metal was nowhere to be seen after the blast, with most of his mechanical pieces also thrown around everywhere. What did sit there, however...
Was on fire. The pieces of Scripture would have to reunite themselves... but also have to have survived a hastily triggered EMP blast. Metal, in his infinate hatred for his foe, had set off the second EMP trigger in his suit... the one that mechanic thought he wouldn't have the guts to use. It would suitably silence the pesky electronics inside Scripture, although whether or not that would be enough to stop him would be yet to be seen.
It was unknown what had happened to this maniac of Steel... as of yet.
Or had they? A click was heard, and the armor stood up despite the fact the body inside was pretty much dead. A seemingly familiar digitized voice was heard. The body drunkenly lifted up its remaining arm and pointed a torn metallic hand at Scripture. And from that hand, an electric speaker crackled with familiar speech...
"Oh, you're dead now, robot boy. I haven't had to use this side of my body for a very long time."
Metal looked exactly the same; but the body was simply on life support now. Enough to keep his brain and remaining organs alive, but with the cruel machine side of his personality fully in control. He remained largely the same being, but he had a rather large hitch in his plan. His organic eyes weren't going to cut it any more. A few DOS-style beeps could be heard as his secondary systems were activated. These had been last-ditch things, added on in case most of his systems were to explode; the designer had been incredulous. "What do you mean if most of your body is destroyed? You'd be dead, if not insane with pain!" "Do it anyway." He was going to regret those words eventually...
These backups were rather pathetic, though. Secondary also meant second-rate. He only saw a few vector-graphic dots around, one for Scripture, some for trees... one for the sun... a plane of reference for the ground. Sight, however, was not the thing Metal Man craved. The extremely damaged, slowly dying warrior turned to his heavily damaged trash-can wreck of a foe. Metal looked at the axe in desperation; it glinted heartlessly in the sun, the snow between him and it an endless gulf between possible salvation and certain death. Yet it was also stuck in his foe... and he knew the nanites of this being could easily take it over. He began walking in slow motion, the sun feeling as if it was melting him from above, as he felt himself burning up within.
This was going to be risky. But what was there left to lose? Scripture had him in a corner. He was going to use all the methods he had, even if it meant irreversible physical damage to himself. Even though he had EMPed the nanites from his body, he also blew away his primary systems, including his remote axe control. His remote hand sat comatose on the ground nearby, no longer programmed or controllable by anyone. Still the infernal Man who half-lived hungered for vengeance, as he lumbered forth like a dying zombie and raised his remaining left arm at his foe again, turning on the crackly, tinny speaker under his wrist again. The voice spoke harshly with its metallic grate, a sound the Master Control Panel would have loved to have.
"Impressive. But unlike you... I never stay in the same place twice."
The man saw the massive amount of anger and turmoil in his inhibitor. It had become like a bomb; the capacitor was broken, and instead of blocking it, it had become filled with the very energy it was in charge of stopping... much like Metal Man had been moments ago.
He got an idea... a very crazy idea, however this was something Zero himself had done before, against a similarly unstoppable foe. Metal Man lurched forward, unable to move effectively (even with mechanical stabilization, his joints were all torn apart and mostly useless), his shiny armor glinting dimly in the blinding endlessness of this hell-field of snow that was the steppe. Then he leaped forth fot his foe, landing with a dull thud that seemed to echo endlessly. At least, to Metal's near-destroyed ears. Metal's axe was strategically flung to the side as its owner landed on his foe, stabbing this mechanical malfeance with his only free arm. It went in deep, crunching through layer after layer of machinery. He wasn't going to risk his life on a mere surface wound. Metal spoke again to the machine, its raspy words echoing inside of his foe.
"I think I forgot to tell you something. While you are a machine and lack fleshy parts like mine, which burn and singe and explode, you also lack a soul. Therefore, you cannot be as unpredictable as a human being. And... you most likely do not know of what I'm about to use... since you lack emotions. What a pity. Come. Make all the puny satellites you want. I will fight you right here, with all my bones broken, all my body destroyed, and about only my brain, some heavily life-supported pieces, and two bits of machinery. I may be outgunned... but you're going down with me!"
A sudden explosion rocked the Steppe, like a massive firebomb. All of Scripture's body was engulfed in it nanomachines and all. It also engulfed Metal Man... it originated from him, after all, as his helmet and shoulders seemed to inexplicably combust right there, along with his arm. Every single plate on his body exploded, destroying wasted tissue as well as pieces of his foe. A wordless scream could almost be heard, but the speaker it was coming out of dissappeared too quickly to be heard from.
There would be no escaping this destruction... pieces were flung everywhere. Metal was nowhere to be seen after the blast, with most of his mechanical pieces also thrown around everywhere. What did sit there, however...
Was on fire. The pieces of Scripture would have to reunite themselves... but also have to have survived a hastily triggered EMP blast. Metal, in his infinate hatred for his foe, had set off the second EMP trigger in his suit... the one that mechanic thought he wouldn't have the guts to use. It would suitably silence the pesky electronics inside Scripture, although whether or not that would be enough to stop him would be yet to be seen.
It was unknown what had happened to this maniac of Steel... as of yet.
Super Smash Quest: Fighting evil since 2002.
-
Asnabel
- Member
- Posts: 552
- Joined: Thu Oct 12, 2000 1:00 am
On the other side of the country from Lucas, a nearly deranged man sat huddled over his keyboard. The room was pitch black, save for the pale glow of his computer monitor. This alone revealed far too much detail of this man’s quarters. His room was filthy, littered by an assortment of old junk food and Hot Pockets so spoiled that the smell alone would repel anyone seeking entrance There were no windows in the room, and he hadn’t kept track of night and day for quite some time. Discs and CDs of various sorts hid the carpet almost completely, and what one could see was a mess of dirt and dried something. The door that led to the adjacent restroom was closed, but a smell so terrible it seemed to scream for an exorcism still managed to creep under the door.
The room’s resident was a sight to see as well. He was a large man, in every dimension, and pale beyond all description, especially in the light of his computer monitor. His shirt, the classic “Han Shot First” affair, was covered in food stains and the tracks of his fingers being dragged across the chest. His name was Geoff, and despite his rather cheerless surroundings, Geoff was absolutely ecstatic about something.
He was a shut-in, to say the least, but prided himself on the skills he had developed. Geoff had spread his own particular breed of spy ware around the online community, and it was one of his greatest pleasures in life when he received interesting results. To his utmost glee, he had managed to pick up on Lucas’ activities. When he saw that an artificial intelligence program was activated and that a fight was planned, he jumped to his feet excitedly.
In his joy, a stream of incomprehensible speech burst forth from his mouth. It could only be decently transcribed as: “LOLTHIS GYU IS TEH NUB AND I SHAL OWNZOR HIS FACE”, followed quickly by some more, even less understandable yelling. Exhausted by his momentary outburst, Geoff quickly fell smiling back into his chair. He reached and took a bite from his Hot Pocket, and feverishly set about his intended work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
In his own dwelling, a palace by comparison, Lucas was enraptured by the confused movements of his creation and the shock that he had witnessed when the duck disappeared. Still, he was excited to introduce an opponent for Litmus to fight. However, when he tried to insert another creature of his own creation, he found the program unresponsive. Suddenly alarmed, Lucas panicked, and went about trying to fix the problem with every method he could think of. After several minutes of furious fiddling and tweaking, he came to one unavoidable conclusion: someone was ****ing with his system.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Litmus lifted himself off the ground, recovering from the ducky attack. After he gently dusted himself off, that strange voice in his head gave him the impression something was amiss. It screamed “INTERLOPER” into whatever sensory organ let him hear it. He looked around and quickly found the source of the alarms going off for him. A man was standing a distance away from him. Of course, “man” is a loose term, as the only recognizably human part of his body was the face of a young man. The rest of his head was wrapped in a dark blue helmet, as were both of his lower legs. His right forearm was covered in the same material, culminating in a large, bulky glove. His other arm ended in a hand at all, but rather a large bulbous shell that opened up like a cannon instead of a hand. The rest of his body was covered in a flexible, light blue material.
“Who the hell are you?”, Litmus called out. The man before him said nothing, but the answer made itself apparent to him anyway. Above the shiny blue helmet, the man’s name appeared in large red and blue pixelated letters: “MEGAMAN”.
The room’s resident was a sight to see as well. He was a large man, in every dimension, and pale beyond all description, especially in the light of his computer monitor. His shirt, the classic “Han Shot First” affair, was covered in food stains and the tracks of his fingers being dragged across the chest. His name was Geoff, and despite his rather cheerless surroundings, Geoff was absolutely ecstatic about something.
He was a shut-in, to say the least, but prided himself on the skills he had developed. Geoff had spread his own particular breed of spy ware around the online community, and it was one of his greatest pleasures in life when he received interesting results. To his utmost glee, he had managed to pick up on Lucas’ activities. When he saw that an artificial intelligence program was activated and that a fight was planned, he jumped to his feet excitedly.
In his joy, a stream of incomprehensible speech burst forth from his mouth. It could only be decently transcribed as: “LOLTHIS GYU IS TEH NUB AND I SHAL OWNZOR HIS FACE”, followed quickly by some more, even less understandable yelling. Exhausted by his momentary outburst, Geoff quickly fell smiling back into his chair. He reached and took a bite from his Hot Pocket, and feverishly set about his intended work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
In his own dwelling, a palace by comparison, Lucas was enraptured by the confused movements of his creation and the shock that he had witnessed when the duck disappeared. Still, he was excited to introduce an opponent for Litmus to fight. However, when he tried to insert another creature of his own creation, he found the program unresponsive. Suddenly alarmed, Lucas panicked, and went about trying to fix the problem with every method he could think of. After several minutes of furious fiddling and tweaking, he came to one unavoidable conclusion: someone was ****ing with his system.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Litmus lifted himself off the ground, recovering from the ducky attack. After he gently dusted himself off, that strange voice in his head gave him the impression something was amiss. It screamed “INTERLOPER” into whatever sensory organ let him hear it. He looked around and quickly found the source of the alarms going off for him. A man was standing a distance away from him. Of course, “man” is a loose term, as the only recognizably human part of his body was the face of a young man. The rest of his head was wrapped in a dark blue helmet, as were both of his lower legs. His right forearm was covered in the same material, culminating in a large, bulky glove. His other arm ended in a hand at all, but rather a large bulbous shell that opened up like a cannon instead of a hand. The rest of his body was covered in a flexible, light blue material.
“Who the hell are you?”, Litmus called out. The man before him said nothing, but the answer made itself apparent to him anyway. Above the shiny blue helmet, the man’s name appeared in large red and blue pixelated letters: “MEGAMAN”.
-
The Willful Wanderer
- Member
- Posts: 2221
- Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2004 2:00 am
- Location: Aisle 12, between the kumquats and the radicchio.
Suicide vector?
Blinking, Seles stared at the blazing monk with an expression of baffled awe. It was as though the man did not believe he could be stopped and that had somehow empowered him. For what reason Aidan had so convinced himself that he not only must but would break through to strike at the small woman, his target knew not. All she did understand there was this- she could not let him. Quietly, in the back of her mind she hoped for the sake of all that this fight he had started with her would not disturb whatever wrongness was here enough to garner its attention. At least, not before she had a chance to try and obliterate it. Not that it seemed likely that she would anytime soon, having crested the wall to land a massive one-two strike against the sorceress' barrier.
Though, he was stalled. Perhaps he would be stopped altogether soon, even if it turned out to be his own fault, and not the result of one of the sorceress' spells. He certainly seemed to be doing himself more than a fair share of injury with his recklessness. She could feel in her head as her force-barrier gave slightly- not a motion so much as a slight buckling like unto a shell being softened. She couldn't allow him to get through so quickly... the time was not yet right.
Frowning slightly, Seles bore down on the staff with what she felt a 'safe' level of strength, as much pushing it at the top of the petrified log as using it to hold herself up. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she focused, and a viridian fire began to flare from the corners of the orbs in tiny spurts and bursts- only it was not fire. Tiny bursts and flares of tinted magick itself were escaping from the whites of her eyes, watchful spheres themselves now glowing faintly. More energy she felt she needed, and more energy she drew- though a good helping of that seemed to disappear quite entirely. Where it was fed to Aidan knew not, but he suspected some form of plan or ploy.
"Felseth kur baretas sun dimari chu vore il mascherimaken su vater ben irimas..." Seles began to chant under her breath, then winced and stumbled as Aidan brought his skull to bear on the forceshield again. Her place lost, the magic discharged in a vivid spray of multicolored feathers that fluttered down about the two, many being quickly charred away by the fire that the monk once more brought out. A punch, a kick, another punch, a double knee-strike.... the man was outright unloading on the invisible sphere that protected his target. Too much longer like this and she'd not have that protection anymore.
Frowning, the sorceress growled slightly, then released her staff. She couldn't permit that- couldn't let him through. The oak remained where and how it was, standing at an odd slant. Sweeping her hands out to the sides, she beheld the crackling fire that Aidan was bringing to bear against her shield with fist and feet. Clearly, she needed to take the offense on a (relatively) minor scale for a bit, that she might find herself more properly attacking later on. Magick was her weapon, and so magick she gathered, the energy gently swirling about her arms much as it did within her soul. It could not be seen that several streams were weaving about to end in her palms. Nor could it be beheld that there the energy began to pool, given shape by willpower and the intent of its mistress.
"If fire will not, then perhaps something else will." She spoke quietly. Hauling her right arm back as if to pitch something. Something that had not been there, but now was, semi-translucent and glowing a faint white-blue as it shed sparkling fragments of halted water. "Iceball!" She announced, flinging the sphere of sucking cold now clutched in her right hand. Almost before it left the perimiter of her guard, it impacted Aidan's knee that had been coming up to strike- and exploded in a burst of force and icy shards, sucking what little heat there was from the area, perforating the very air it slowed. And yet, not affecting the young woman whose other arm had pulled back as the first went forth.
"Sparkball!" Came another declaration, and another throw. Aidan spasmed briefly as electricity much more intense than that of the bursting-dupe had released coursed through his body. Arcs traced his limbs, one searing at the end of his arm where there had once been more bone and flesh. A mild concussive force accompanied, electrons ripping through the air too fast, much too fast- and it pushed at him, bending his spine back in a move usually performed with a Hawaiian beat and under a horizontal beam.
"Thunderball!" Another throw and a wave of sheer, solid sound slammed into the man. Pure concussive force achieved what elemental energy could not, stunning Aidan briefly and forcing the golden-eyed monk off the ground a scant few centimeters. But Seles was not done, no, not hardly. She needed to take his attention, his time with her attack- and so she would eat her own such to fuel it. A rhythm was started then, arms alternating between throwing and hauling back.
"Shardball!" An explosion of crystalline needles followed that, the thin toothpicks of some unknown mineral flying out with such force as to lift himi another few centimeters and force him back. Even so, the tiny flechettes dug into his skin and flesh, flaying him all across his front and distracting him again for a vital moment in which he could have, should have brought his flight under control.
"Gustball!" Another burst of raw force as wind exploded from the next of the softball-sized spheres that struck, whipping about and grinding into him in a way that gases should not be able to do. The expanding swirling wind veritably threw him from his place atop the wall even as it ground the tiny spines of crystal-clarity into his skin, erosion dulling their outer points.
"Thornball!"
"Thunderball!"
And on it went, the shirtless monk being thrown further and still further from his target with each strike of an explosive sphere. Seles moved her arms faster now, needing to catch the spells up to the man she was bombarding even as she used them to fling him even farther away. The unrelenting pace of the blasts kept him from regaining control to avoid them, their hurler's deep blue-purple orbs narrowed in desperate concentration. She was pushing it, she knew, her body was telling her of all sorts of strain with the soft creak of her fragile bones. Still, she could not let him be just now. Not just yet.
"Shardball!"
"Sparkball!"
"Gustball!"
Now he was fain thirty feet out, over a part of the crater.
"Sparkball!"
"Gustball!"
"Thornball!" As he neared fifty feet's travel, Seles' rhythm faltered, no longer able to accelerate enough to keep striking him at the same rate from that distance. The next sphere, a swirling mass of spiny vines that would explode with vegetational shrapnel wherever it struck, flew by as Aidan recovered enough to bend out of the way- and so he fell. Seles was not ready.
The undead, however....
Aidan found himself once more out above his crater and sighed slightly. Falling again? This was tedious. Still, it was also a bright choice of the young spellcaster, using the advantage of aerial movement to distract him. Delay him. And... what was this?
Seles winced slightly as she saw Aidan plummet towards a growing crowd of frost-rimed corpses, shambling and raising their arms at him. Then she spotted the growing cluster at the base of the wall she perched upon and paled. Not only were there that many, she could see more arriving, now that the monk was not occupying all of her attention for a brief moment. A quick look with her magick sense, and she shivered again. These would not be harmed by flame nor cold- and lightning had long proven inefficient against the undead. Worse yet, she could see the network of strands leading back from these vile wraiths, trails of magic like a spider's-weave of threads.
Each and every one trailing back towards the base of the cliff within the city itself. These... these were the agent of the wrong. And they had come.... so, too, would it.
********THAT OTHER OTHER PLACE AGAIN*********
A brief shudder passed through her as still more of the ghastly dead shambled by, scraping their feet to the point of wearing them off the ankles. Her gladness at their inability to sense her was muted by the knowledge that there were, at the very least, thousands of these... things... wandering the city. Not aimlessly, but slowly. If she were to get by, to do what she wished, she would need to either expose herself however briefly, or find some way to accelerate their movement. It wasn't like she could..... well, actually, maybe she could...?
**************************************
2
Blinking, Seles stared at the blazing monk with an expression of baffled awe. It was as though the man did not believe he could be stopped and that had somehow empowered him. For what reason Aidan had so convinced himself that he not only must but would break through to strike at the small woman, his target knew not. All she did understand there was this- she could not let him. Quietly, in the back of her mind she hoped for the sake of all that this fight he had started with her would not disturb whatever wrongness was here enough to garner its attention. At least, not before she had a chance to try and obliterate it. Not that it seemed likely that she would anytime soon, having crested the wall to land a massive one-two strike against the sorceress' barrier.
Though, he was stalled. Perhaps he would be stopped altogether soon, even if it turned out to be his own fault, and not the result of one of the sorceress' spells. He certainly seemed to be doing himself more than a fair share of injury with his recklessness. She could feel in her head as her force-barrier gave slightly- not a motion so much as a slight buckling like unto a shell being softened. She couldn't allow him to get through so quickly... the time was not yet right.
Frowning slightly, Seles bore down on the staff with what she felt a 'safe' level of strength, as much pushing it at the top of the petrified log as using it to hold herself up. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she focused, and a viridian fire began to flare from the corners of the orbs in tiny spurts and bursts- only it was not fire. Tiny bursts and flares of tinted magick itself were escaping from the whites of her eyes, watchful spheres themselves now glowing faintly. More energy she felt she needed, and more energy she drew- though a good helping of that seemed to disappear quite entirely. Where it was fed to Aidan knew not, but he suspected some form of plan or ploy.
"Felseth kur baretas sun dimari chu vore il mascherimaken su vater ben irimas..." Seles began to chant under her breath, then winced and stumbled as Aidan brought his skull to bear on the forceshield again. Her place lost, the magic discharged in a vivid spray of multicolored feathers that fluttered down about the two, many being quickly charred away by the fire that the monk once more brought out. A punch, a kick, another punch, a double knee-strike.... the man was outright unloading on the invisible sphere that protected his target. Too much longer like this and she'd not have that protection anymore.
Frowning, the sorceress growled slightly, then released her staff. She couldn't permit that- couldn't let him through. The oak remained where and how it was, standing at an odd slant. Sweeping her hands out to the sides, she beheld the crackling fire that Aidan was bringing to bear against her shield with fist and feet. Clearly, she needed to take the offense on a (relatively) minor scale for a bit, that she might find herself more properly attacking later on. Magick was her weapon, and so magick she gathered, the energy gently swirling about her arms much as it did within her soul. It could not be seen that several streams were weaving about to end in her palms. Nor could it be beheld that there the energy began to pool, given shape by willpower and the intent of its mistress.
"If fire will not, then perhaps something else will." She spoke quietly. Hauling her right arm back as if to pitch something. Something that had not been there, but now was, semi-translucent and glowing a faint white-blue as it shed sparkling fragments of halted water. "Iceball!" She announced, flinging the sphere of sucking cold now clutched in her right hand. Almost before it left the perimiter of her guard, it impacted Aidan's knee that had been coming up to strike- and exploded in a burst of force and icy shards, sucking what little heat there was from the area, perforating the very air it slowed. And yet, not affecting the young woman whose other arm had pulled back as the first went forth.
"Sparkball!" Came another declaration, and another throw. Aidan spasmed briefly as electricity much more intense than that of the bursting-dupe had released coursed through his body. Arcs traced his limbs, one searing at the end of his arm where there had once been more bone and flesh. A mild concussive force accompanied, electrons ripping through the air too fast, much too fast- and it pushed at him, bending his spine back in a move usually performed with a Hawaiian beat and under a horizontal beam.
"Thunderball!" Another throw and a wave of sheer, solid sound slammed into the man. Pure concussive force achieved what elemental energy could not, stunning Aidan briefly and forcing the golden-eyed monk off the ground a scant few centimeters. But Seles was not done, no, not hardly. She needed to take his attention, his time with her attack- and so she would eat her own such to fuel it. A rhythm was started then, arms alternating between throwing and hauling back.
"Shardball!" An explosion of crystalline needles followed that, the thin toothpicks of some unknown mineral flying out with such force as to lift himi another few centimeters and force him back. Even so, the tiny flechettes dug into his skin and flesh, flaying him all across his front and distracting him again for a vital moment in which he could have, should have brought his flight under control.
"Gustball!" Another burst of raw force as wind exploded from the next of the softball-sized spheres that struck, whipping about and grinding into him in a way that gases should not be able to do. The expanding swirling wind veritably threw him from his place atop the wall even as it ground the tiny spines of crystal-clarity into his skin, erosion dulling their outer points.
"Thornball!"
"Thunderball!"
And on it went, the shirtless monk being thrown further and still further from his target with each strike of an explosive sphere. Seles moved her arms faster now, needing to catch the spells up to the man she was bombarding even as she used them to fling him even farther away. The unrelenting pace of the blasts kept him from regaining control to avoid them, their hurler's deep blue-purple orbs narrowed in desperate concentration. She was pushing it, she knew, her body was telling her of all sorts of strain with the soft creak of her fragile bones. Still, she could not let him be just now. Not just yet.
"Shardball!"
"Sparkball!"
"Gustball!"
Now he was fain thirty feet out, over a part of the crater.
"Sparkball!"
"Gustball!"
"Thornball!" As he neared fifty feet's travel, Seles' rhythm faltered, no longer able to accelerate enough to keep striking him at the same rate from that distance. The next sphere, a swirling mass of spiny vines that would explode with vegetational shrapnel wherever it struck, flew by as Aidan recovered enough to bend out of the way- and so he fell. Seles was not ready.
The undead, however....
Aidan found himself once more out above his crater and sighed slightly. Falling again? This was tedious. Still, it was also a bright choice of the young spellcaster, using the advantage of aerial movement to distract him. Delay him. And... what was this?
Seles winced slightly as she saw Aidan plummet towards a growing crowd of frost-rimed corpses, shambling and raising their arms at him. Then she spotted the growing cluster at the base of the wall she perched upon and paled. Not only were there that many, she could see more arriving, now that the monk was not occupying all of her attention for a brief moment. A quick look with her magick sense, and she shivered again. These would not be harmed by flame nor cold- and lightning had long proven inefficient against the undead. Worse yet, she could see the network of strands leading back from these vile wraiths, trails of magic like a spider's-weave of threads.
Each and every one trailing back towards the base of the cliff within the city itself. These... these were the agent of the wrong. And they had come.... so, too, would it.
********THAT OTHER OTHER PLACE AGAIN*********
A brief shudder passed through her as still more of the ghastly dead shambled by, scraping their feet to the point of wearing them off the ankles. Her gladness at their inability to sense her was muted by the knowledge that there were, at the very least, thousands of these... things... wandering the city. Not aimlessly, but slowly. If she were to get by, to do what she wished, she would need to either expose herself however briefly, or find some way to accelerate their movement. It wasn't like she could..... well, actually, maybe she could...?
**************************************
2
\"What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters?.....
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
-
Repster
- Member
- Posts: 6130
- Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2000 1:00 am
- Location: J'tun ostie d'Acadien.
Aidan growled. They got here faster then he thought. He had felt them move as soon as they're "march" had begun. His gag reflex was quite dull from countless run ins with them and worse. Still, he was damn near close to vomiting as he impacted with the zombies. His feet went to work immediately. Weakened undead flesh stood no chance against his physical prowess. However, it would take hours to get rid of them all.
The monk chucked a fireball at his feet. The raw fire spread and flowed outwards, everything in his vicinity was engulfed in flames. Aidan growled again, this time instead of annoyance it was rage. Fire proof undead? That just wasn't very fair. His feet where a mass of puss, blood, and bone fragments barely avoiding being bitten by the horde. Damn things were messy.
"Bloody flame... I ain't got time for this." The eyeless monk growled again.
His hand went out and grabbed a zombie by the ribs, hand digging into flesh easilly. He ignored the biting, the tearing of flesh at the arm. He twisted, let go, and grab the leg and smack another zombie in the head with the corpse. Once his bludgeon was starting to were out his hand lashed and and grabbed another, suffering more wounds. Slowly, at a crawl really, he begun to have breathing room. It was a simple amount of raw gore and flesh forming a small barrier slowly down the shambling corpses.
As soon as he could, he leapt straight at the wall. Far from withing striking range of Seles, but out of harms way. His hand struck into the wall and grabbed there fingers buried into stone. He hung there for a moment. His arm was going to fail soon, he could only force his torn apart muscle structure so far. Well, he might as well make good use of what little it had left. Hoist, brace, focus, leap. It was an incredibly mundane routine to him.
Airborne once again the monk brought his remaining hand near his stomach, cupped it, and brought his stump close to it. First there was a spark, then a flame, that flame turned into raw energy. That energy, Aidan fed. Fed it with his physical strength, fed it with his spiritual strength, fed it with fire. The raw force of his will, and fire combined into one. Ki blast were one thing to learn to perform, but to be able to fuse fire within that manifestation of raw physical power, well that took something different. The result was simple enough, one near white orb of force coated in almost pure white fire. Aidan smirked, that just maybe, possibly, could be enough. Then he spun. Maybe wasn't good enough. Faster and faster. The air displaced around him, wind flowed out from his sheer rotating. Then he reached the apex his his rise, and he hurled the thing.
The orb took little time to strike, with more impact then Aidan's fist ever managed against the barrier. Then the fire exploded, behind it giving it that much more oomph and bathing the area in the flames.
Aidan, now falling back towards the undead, sighed as he took a swig of his flask. Now he had to deal with them again before getting to the sorceress. His arm hung limply at his side as he clipped his flask back, as did his stump. Well, at least they had lasted that long. His legs, however, never failed him.
The monk chucked a fireball at his feet. The raw fire spread and flowed outwards, everything in his vicinity was engulfed in flames. Aidan growled again, this time instead of annoyance it was rage. Fire proof undead? That just wasn't very fair. His feet where a mass of puss, blood, and bone fragments barely avoiding being bitten by the horde. Damn things were messy.
"Bloody flame... I ain't got time for this." The eyeless monk growled again.
His hand went out and grabbed a zombie by the ribs, hand digging into flesh easilly. He ignored the biting, the tearing of flesh at the arm. He twisted, let go, and grab the leg and smack another zombie in the head with the corpse. Once his bludgeon was starting to were out his hand lashed and and grabbed another, suffering more wounds. Slowly, at a crawl really, he begun to have breathing room. It was a simple amount of raw gore and flesh forming a small barrier slowly down the shambling corpses.
As soon as he could, he leapt straight at the wall. Far from withing striking range of Seles, but out of harms way. His hand struck into the wall and grabbed there fingers buried into stone. He hung there for a moment. His arm was going to fail soon, he could only force his torn apart muscle structure so far. Well, he might as well make good use of what little it had left. Hoist, brace, focus, leap. It was an incredibly mundane routine to him.
Airborne once again the monk brought his remaining hand near his stomach, cupped it, and brought his stump close to it. First there was a spark, then a flame, that flame turned into raw energy. That energy, Aidan fed. Fed it with his physical strength, fed it with his spiritual strength, fed it with fire. The raw force of his will, and fire combined into one. Ki blast were one thing to learn to perform, but to be able to fuse fire within that manifestation of raw physical power, well that took something different. The result was simple enough, one near white orb of force coated in almost pure white fire. Aidan smirked, that just maybe, possibly, could be enough. Then he spun. Maybe wasn't good enough. Faster and faster. The air displaced around him, wind flowed out from his sheer rotating. Then he reached the apex his his rise, and he hurled the thing.
The orb took little time to strike, with more impact then Aidan's fist ever managed against the barrier. Then the fire exploded, behind it giving it that much more oomph and bathing the area in the flames.
Aidan, now falling back towards the undead, sighed as he took a swig of his flask. Now he had to deal with them again before getting to the sorceress. His arm hung limply at his side as he clipped his flask back, as did his stump. Well, at least they had lasted that long. His legs, however, never failed him.
When our world is burning.
When all run like the cowards they are.
I shall stand in the inferno, and fight until I am consumed
When all run like the cowards they are.
I shall stand in the inferno, and fight until I am consumed
-
Erdawn Il Deus
- Member
- Posts: 3036
- Joined: Wed May 21, 2003 1:00 am
- Location: Threading the jeweled thrones of earth under my sa
Du-dududududududududu-dum!
Ac's blood ran cold in his veins as that thunder hit his ears. Whatever expression he'd worn was paralyzed to his face in a caricaturised rictus of surprise and fear and amazement. He was looking into two dark coins, suspended inside the frowning mass of a shaggy, Cro Magnon skull and supported by a boarish neck, wide shoulders and two very long arms as thick around as tree trunks. Those coins were staring back with a dead expression of mute, challenging fury. Donkey rose up on his legs again, and beat his chest once more, the percussion so loud acradius could feel the vibration beat at his eardrums. He kept staring.
What hit the Time Warrior wasn't so much fear of something stronger than he (although the physical strenght of this creature must have been colossal). It was that hereditary fear the civilized minds of the human self feel when staring into the shadows of their own primitivity - it was the raw fear of a man looking at a brutal and unintelligent creature and fully aware he was now subject to circumstance entirely beyond his capacity to reason or affect.
It was also wearing a rather tasteless tie around its bulging neck, orange, and with the letters D and K almost unintelligibly scribed into the fabric amidst tears and spots of misuse.
Donkey by contrast shared none of the emotional or philosophical reasoning behind their encounter. His was only the furnace fires of a short and murderous temper stoked high by the intrusion of an unknown beast into his territory. It was a rage born of suprise - he was, for that critical moment, no longer in control of the events in his life and the memory of shock alone had driven him mad with wrath. His hand clenched, muscle knotting through dark leather flesh like steel cables, and the reptilian skull he had been playing with exploded under the pressure with a crackling like driftwood and was obliterated. The simian's heavy brow was suddenly divided by lines as deep as trenches. Acradius had a moment to reflect on what effect those hands might have on his very human skull before the ape had leapt from his perch atop the bananas and bones and grime and came down on him like some kind of savagely insane bird of prey.
The Time Warrior acted in favour of instinct than thought - so he survived - and had thrown himself backwards in a roll as all the half-tonnage of the great gorilla hit the stone floor - breaking it apart like the disassembled array of a jigsaw puzzle - and broke for him at a charge, lips pulled back to reveal fangs assumedly capable of ripping Acradius's face from his skull.
The quantum was brought up to bear, its point like the quivering punctuation mark to its own delivered sentence, but even as acradius made motion to bisect his primitive assailant's skull from its shoulders, the entire bulk of the thing threw forward in a ground roll that litterally shook the earth beneath its strenght. Acradius was staggered, and when the 1000lbs or so of Donkey's bulk smashed into him it was more or less like most vehicular highway collisions. He was throw up and over and pain exploded like a kerosene bomb from his hip with a pop! and something burst into agony in his right knee and faded and suddenly he was in the air, turning over...
He tried to scream when Donkey's shovel hand closed over his face even while mid-air, but the stench of sweat and soil and bananas and other nondescript reeks and the pressure of muscular, leathery flesh against his face gagged him into quietude. Donkey brought his arm down like a hammer, increasing the velocity gravity had put into motion and pounding Acraidius's skull into the stone like a wrecking ball of fur and muscle and... well, Acradius's skull. There was a booming and other such noise expected of heavy impact, and the gorilla's arm rose up with the upset mortar and shattered bedrock and hurled the limp body of his adversary into the sky like an Olympian dart.
Armour rattled as he was bounced off the bulk of one of the great stone crocodile idols, and his limbs jerked with a decided lack of motor function when he finally came to a halt (or a bounce, as it were) against the ruthless face of the stone square. His hip and leg shuddered involuntarily and blood pooled from where it had leaked, but already he was coming through the fog of senselessness.
Donkey didn't really care either way. He punched the ground - hard - and roared, and punched the ground again, and roared, and did so menacingly and with great intimidation until the stone was gravel and cracks had started to frown against the more solid face of the temple columns.
Ac's blood ran cold in his veins as that thunder hit his ears. Whatever expression he'd worn was paralyzed to his face in a caricaturised rictus of surprise and fear and amazement. He was looking into two dark coins, suspended inside the frowning mass of a shaggy, Cro Magnon skull and supported by a boarish neck, wide shoulders and two very long arms as thick around as tree trunks. Those coins were staring back with a dead expression of mute, challenging fury. Donkey rose up on his legs again, and beat his chest once more, the percussion so loud acradius could feel the vibration beat at his eardrums. He kept staring.
What hit the Time Warrior wasn't so much fear of something stronger than he (although the physical strenght of this creature must have been colossal). It was that hereditary fear the civilized minds of the human self feel when staring into the shadows of their own primitivity - it was the raw fear of a man looking at a brutal and unintelligent creature and fully aware he was now subject to circumstance entirely beyond his capacity to reason or affect.
It was also wearing a rather tasteless tie around its bulging neck, orange, and with the letters D and K almost unintelligibly scribed into the fabric amidst tears and spots of misuse.
Donkey by contrast shared none of the emotional or philosophical reasoning behind their encounter. His was only the furnace fires of a short and murderous temper stoked high by the intrusion of an unknown beast into his territory. It was a rage born of suprise - he was, for that critical moment, no longer in control of the events in his life and the memory of shock alone had driven him mad with wrath. His hand clenched, muscle knotting through dark leather flesh like steel cables, and the reptilian skull he had been playing with exploded under the pressure with a crackling like driftwood and was obliterated. The simian's heavy brow was suddenly divided by lines as deep as trenches. Acradius had a moment to reflect on what effect those hands might have on his very human skull before the ape had leapt from his perch atop the bananas and bones and grime and came down on him like some kind of savagely insane bird of prey.
The Time Warrior acted in favour of instinct than thought - so he survived - and had thrown himself backwards in a roll as all the half-tonnage of the great gorilla hit the stone floor - breaking it apart like the disassembled array of a jigsaw puzzle - and broke for him at a charge, lips pulled back to reveal fangs assumedly capable of ripping Acradius's face from his skull.
The quantum was brought up to bear, its point like the quivering punctuation mark to its own delivered sentence, but even as acradius made motion to bisect his primitive assailant's skull from its shoulders, the entire bulk of the thing threw forward in a ground roll that litterally shook the earth beneath its strenght. Acradius was staggered, and when the 1000lbs or so of Donkey's bulk smashed into him it was more or less like most vehicular highway collisions. He was throw up and over and pain exploded like a kerosene bomb from his hip with a pop! and something burst into agony in his right knee and faded and suddenly he was in the air, turning over...
He tried to scream when Donkey's shovel hand closed over his face even while mid-air, but the stench of sweat and soil and bananas and other nondescript reeks and the pressure of muscular, leathery flesh against his face gagged him into quietude. Donkey brought his arm down like a hammer, increasing the velocity gravity had put into motion and pounding Acraidius's skull into the stone like a wrecking ball of fur and muscle and... well, Acradius's skull. There was a booming and other such noise expected of heavy impact, and the gorilla's arm rose up with the upset mortar and shattered bedrock and hurled the limp body of his adversary into the sky like an Olympian dart.
Armour rattled as he was bounced off the bulk of one of the great stone crocodile idols, and his limbs jerked with a decided lack of motor function when he finally came to a halt (or a bounce, as it were) against the ruthless face of the stone square. His hip and leg shuddered involuntarily and blood pooled from where it had leaked, but already he was coming through the fog of senselessness.
Donkey didn't really care either way. He punched the ground - hard - and roared, and punched the ground again, and roared, and did so menacingly and with great intimidation until the stone was gravel and cracks had started to frown against the more solid face of the temple columns.
<i>\"We know how to sing but we don\'t know how to handle money or women. Do-wap, do do wop.\"</i>
-The Runaway Five
<i>Rx Prozach</i>: Toronto is one sucky Toronto. :P I can\'t imagine smoking enough pot to find a shoe museum interes
-The Runaway Five
<i>Rx Prozach</i>: Toronto is one sucky Toronto. :P I can\'t imagine smoking enough pot to find a shoe museum interes
-
Scripture
- Member
- Posts: 436
- Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2004 1:00 am
From Metal Man’s DOS point of view, Scripture was a fiery blip, sending green lines of wind and energy out like a miniature sun. The emotion of grinning went across what was left of his mind, but then he thought…the fires racking his body hadn’t been as strong as that. And he had killed him! Discharged an EMP strong enough to ruin a building’s worth of electronics.
That very EMP now danced around Scripture’s only hand, a blue-white pulsar of energy that made it twitch when his magnetic field blipped in and out. Metal Man had done a number on him – what was left of his armor was charred and blackened, wires and oils and blood leaked from every wound, sloughing out sometimes between the wire meshing of his under-armor. His neck, that bridge between mind and body, was twisted obtusely away from his body, and he parts of him were burning, and so on, and so forth. But he was alive, sweetly alive, and he had a bead on Metal Man from his high-definition satellites hovering above him. All that remained was simple getting there and finishing the job, vaporizing Metal Man into so much dust.
It was at this point that Scripture lit up like a star, sending heat out into the steppe that resulted in a whirlwind forming around him, first of snow and then, when he pushed outward and touched on his main reactor, of water. This whirlwind spiraled into the sky, visible in a low frame-rate to Metal Man as a sort of green light show into the sky. He could no longer see Scripture, who was laying in the frothing middle of the tempest, the ground below him melting into liquid and then glass when it sloughed far enough away from him.
His knee popped into alignment with a crack, a sickening crack, and fluids popped and hissed like fat on the spit all over him, but he rose. He rose on fire with plasma, a burning power like the heart of a volcano, and he walked, hobbled, staggered across the Russian steppe, to the crater where Metal Man might find himself eye to eye with a breathing, burning star, around which innumerable cobalt planets orbited.
[OoC: Apparently, there will be a final attack from me after Metal's set-up post, and then a final attack from him, and a wrap-it-up dealie, and then we call this battle over and await the judgings, hopefully before even July 3rd, when T3hD4rk/\/3$$ will print out the battles for his early viewing. So, yeah. /OoC]
That very EMP now danced around Scripture’s only hand, a blue-white pulsar of energy that made it twitch when his magnetic field blipped in and out. Metal Man had done a number on him – what was left of his armor was charred and blackened, wires and oils and blood leaked from every wound, sloughing out sometimes between the wire meshing of his under-armor. His neck, that bridge between mind and body, was twisted obtusely away from his body, and he parts of him were burning, and so on, and so forth. But he was alive, sweetly alive, and he had a bead on Metal Man from his high-definition satellites hovering above him. All that remained was simple getting there and finishing the job, vaporizing Metal Man into so much dust.
It was at this point that Scripture lit up like a star, sending heat out into the steppe that resulted in a whirlwind forming around him, first of snow and then, when he pushed outward and touched on his main reactor, of water. This whirlwind spiraled into the sky, visible in a low frame-rate to Metal Man as a sort of green light show into the sky. He could no longer see Scripture, who was laying in the frothing middle of the tempest, the ground below him melting into liquid and then glass when it sloughed far enough away from him.
His knee popped into alignment with a crack, a sickening crack, and fluids popped and hissed like fat on the spit all over him, but he rose. He rose on fire with plasma, a burning power like the heart of a volcano, and he walked, hobbled, staggered across the Russian steppe, to the crater where Metal Man might find himself eye to eye with a breathing, burning star, around which innumerable cobalt planets orbited.
[OoC: Apparently, there will be a final attack from me after Metal's set-up post, and then a final attack from him, and a wrap-it-up dealie, and then we call this battle over and await the judgings, hopefully before even July 3rd, when T3hD4rk/\/3$$ will print out the battles for his early viewing. So, yeah. /OoC]
Lucas watched in annoyance as his screen unfroze, and a visibly polygonal rendition of the classic gaming icon appeared in the 3D window.
Whoever had invaded his system seemed to prefer input speed as opposed to code correctness - or sprite originality, for that matter. (Lucas swore he had seen the exact same model on a free resources site somewhere out there in the ether.) The codes that he had typed in to diagnose his problem now all flowed out of their buffer into the terminal at once, and executed with a speed that brought Lucas's application dangerously close to several race conditions. Sysadmin instincts flew into effect, and his hand flashed to behind his router to cut its power - and then he froze.
Disconnection would mean losing the seeds and possibly his entire download.
"F***."
Lucas took his hand away as the screen flashed on and off several times, and his own creature reset its position to where it had been 'born'. Finally the system began running on its own steam again, allowing Lucas to enter the most important command of all into the battle terminal:
If he had to keep himself connected, he'd have to do something about his 'visitor'. Lucas was now starting to mildly regret having turned off his malware defenses and firewall in order to squeeze an extra two percent from his system's performance.
A few rapid keystrokes and several screens later, Lucas saw the offending foreign process and killed it immediately - pausing only to note the IP address and details of his unwelcome guest. Next, he raised his firewall, closing all ports save for his torrent and the one that had been in use only seconds previously.
Flicking to his project directory, Lucas surveyed the damage. Someone had tried to inject an agent without a real knowledge of how the system worked, and had only barely managed to do so without crashing the simulator. They clearly had enough programming experience to write somewhat-functioning spyware (that worked on a Linux system, no less), but ...
Lucas snorted in contempt. His opponent's ability with simulators verged on the amateur level. (Lucas' thought processes were, of course, conveniently ignoring the total lack of documentation the intruder would have faced. It was four in the morning, after all.)
"If he wants to play, I'll let him play ... if can afford to pay the fee if he loses."
A few hundred lines of code and one warning-plagued compilation later, Lucas possessed a true remote client. No administrative access, and entirely limited by hardcoded #DEFINEs.
Connecting to his nemesis' machine was far easier than he thought it would be. Every single port was open - obviously his opponent expected a lot of connections to be coming in at any one time. He surmised it was for all of the other suckers this guy had infected. Still, that's what was going to make this a lot more fun ...
A quick copy, and the binary was now present on the foreign machine. Tapping on the keyboard, Lucas began to type the terms of engagement.
So you want to play, huh? You could have just asked.
Since you decided to be a bastard, the rules will be a bit different. If you refuse the challenge, I give your name, crimes and home address to the AFP. If you accept and lose, I give your name and address to every malware-hunting forum in the ether. If you manage to win, your prize is to simply walk away.
Got that, mate?
A few blank seconds passed, and Lucas flipped to another window. He leant back in bemusement as he watched his firewall status display light up again and again. The intruder was now trying to connect through to a non-existent hole to a piece of spyware that was now nothing but random bytes. Finally he saw the connection attempts stop again, as he imagined his opponent coming to terms with the fact that he might have to play fair.
A popup informed Lucas that his adversary had found the binary and run it. A second message told him that the other had pushed the button to enter the sim.
Mesh files go in the 'objects' directory that you'll see on your desktop. Apriori knowledge and logic laws can be edited for your agent the first two minutes via the terminal. You also get ten object injections, with two minutes cooldown after each one.
This is an artificial intelligence battle. Let's hope you have the intelligence to make a brain quick-smart.
His creation would of course have a couple of minutes to experiment whilst the stranger built a knowledge bank ... fair home-ground advantage, of course. Lucas grinned asymmetrically as he turned on the incoming chat link and restarted the simulation.
-------------------------
The world ... the world was tearing itself apart. Litmus heard black streaks swirl in front of his eyes as he saw the howl of strange winds. He staggered and blinked his ears, but the sight still continued.
Wait ... what? That's not right, it shou-
Then as soon as it had started, the calamity stopped. Litmus shook his head and tried to sort out his thoughts. He definitely wasn't standing in this spot a few seconds ago ... though the strange blue boy was still standing a little way in front of him, eyes blank, identifying label still conveniently hanging in thin air right above.
ENEMY.
Enemy, inner voice? If this 'Megaman' is my enemy, then I must fight or contain it. Yet I need a way to attack it to fight it. 'Standard tasks' doesn't involve breaking steel by my definition.
POWER.
Certainly Litmus needed power over his opponent. His inner voice's terseness wasn't helping any. Litmus felt as if it had been given short words in order to have it store as many obtuse sayings as possible.
Meanwhile, Rockman stood there like he really was made of rock, still showing no sign of consiousness.
I need to take action now, but how?
Litmus stroked his metal hair back, trying to think, and was suprised when he felt electricity tickle its way down his forearm. Reflex drew his arm down in front of him, and the shock was visible on Litmus' face as he watched a huge bolt of electricity arc from his hand to his opponent. The other kind of shock was far more visible on the Blue Bomber however, as he flew backwards through the air, spasming until he hit the featureless white floor with a clang.
Err ... I guess that's the 'power' my voice was talking about. Whatever works ... I guess.
Litmus advanced forward, stroking and shocking repeatedly - part thunder god, part high-school poser.
Whoever had invaded his system seemed to prefer input speed as opposed to code correctness - or sprite originality, for that matter. (Lucas swore he had seen the exact same model on a free resources site somewhere out there in the ether.) The codes that he had typed in to diagnose his problem now all flowed out of their buffer into the terminal at once, and executed with a speed that brought Lucas's application dangerously close to several race conditions. Sysadmin instincts flew into effect, and his hand flashed to behind his router to cut its power - and then he froze.
Disconnection would mean losing the seeds and possibly his entire download.
"F***."
Lucas took his hand away as the screen flashed on and off several times, and his own creature reset its position to where it had been 'born'. Finally the system began running on its own steam again, allowing Lucas to enter the most important command of all into the battle terminal:
Code: Select all
> suspend -totalA few rapid keystrokes and several screens later, Lucas saw the offending foreign process and killed it immediately - pausing only to note the IP address and details of his unwelcome guest. Next, he raised his firewall, closing all ports save for his torrent and the one that had been in use only seconds previously.
Flicking to his project directory, Lucas surveyed the damage. Someone had tried to inject an agent without a real knowledge of how the system worked, and had only barely managed to do so without crashing the simulator. They clearly had enough programming experience to write somewhat-functioning spyware (that worked on a Linux system, no less), but ...
Lucas snorted in contempt. His opponent's ability with simulators verged on the amateur level. (Lucas' thought processes were, of course, conveniently ignoring the total lack of documentation the intruder would have faced. It was four in the morning, after all.)
"If he wants to play, I'll let him play ... if can afford to pay the fee if he loses."
A few hundred lines of code and one warning-plagued compilation later, Lucas possessed a true remote client. No administrative access, and entirely limited by hardcoded #DEFINEs.
Connecting to his nemesis' machine was far easier than he thought it would be. Every single port was open - obviously his opponent expected a lot of connections to be coming in at any one time. He surmised it was for all of the other suckers this guy had infected. Still, that's what was going to make this a lot more fun ...
A quick copy, and the binary was now present on the foreign machine. Tapping on the keyboard, Lucas began to type the terms of engagement.
So you want to play, huh? You could have just asked.
Since you decided to be a bastard, the rules will be a bit different. If you refuse the challenge, I give your name, crimes and home address to the AFP. If you accept and lose, I give your name and address to every malware-hunting forum in the ether. If you manage to win, your prize is to simply walk away.
Got that, mate?
A few blank seconds passed, and Lucas flipped to another window. He leant back in bemusement as he watched his firewall status display light up again and again. The intruder was now trying to connect through to a non-existent hole to a piece of spyware that was now nothing but random bytes. Finally he saw the connection attempts stop again, as he imagined his opponent coming to terms with the fact that he might have to play fair.
A popup informed Lucas that his adversary had found the binary and run it. A second message told him that the other had pushed the button to enter the sim.
Mesh files go in the 'objects' directory that you'll see on your desktop. Apriori knowledge and logic laws can be edited for your agent the first two minutes via the terminal. You also get ten object injections, with two minutes cooldown after each one.
This is an artificial intelligence battle. Let's hope you have the intelligence to make a brain quick-smart.
His creation would of course have a couple of minutes to experiment whilst the stranger built a knowledge bank ... fair home-ground advantage, of course. Lucas grinned asymmetrically as he turned on the incoming chat link and restarted the simulation.
-------------------------
The world ... the world was tearing itself apart. Litmus heard black streaks swirl in front of his eyes as he saw the howl of strange winds. He staggered and blinked his ears, but the sight still continued.
Wait ... what? That's not right, it shou-
Then as soon as it had started, the calamity stopped. Litmus shook his head and tried to sort out his thoughts. He definitely wasn't standing in this spot a few seconds ago ... though the strange blue boy was still standing a little way in front of him, eyes blank, identifying label still conveniently hanging in thin air right above.
ENEMY.
Enemy, inner voice? If this 'Megaman' is my enemy, then I must fight or contain it. Yet I need a way to attack it to fight it. 'Standard tasks' doesn't involve breaking steel by my definition.
POWER.
Certainly Litmus needed power over his opponent. His inner voice's terseness wasn't helping any. Litmus felt as if it had been given short words in order to have it store as many obtuse sayings as possible.
Meanwhile, Rockman stood there like he really was made of rock, still showing no sign of consiousness.
I need to take action now, but how?
Litmus stroked his metal hair back, trying to think, and was suprised when he felt electricity tickle its way down his forearm. Reflex drew his arm down in front of him, and the shock was visible on Litmus' face as he watched a huge bolt of electricity arc from his hand to his opponent. The other kind of shock was far more visible on the Blue Bomber however, as he flew backwards through the air, spasming until he hit the featureless white floor with a clang.
Err ... I guess that's the 'power' my voice was talking about. Whatever works ... I guess.
Litmus advanced forward, stroking and shocking repeatedly - part thunder god, part high-school poser.
Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?
-Clifford Stoll
-Clifford Stoll
-
The Willful Wanderer
- Member
- Posts: 2221
- Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2004 2:00 am
- Location: Aisle 12, between the kumquats and the radicchio.
Distraction for two, smoking heavily section please.
Seles frowned as she stood atop the wall, eyeing the gathering mob of frigid dead. Those about the monk warranted the least of her attention, being well-occupied by (and, presumably, well-occupying) the bare-chested monk and his whirling-dervish act. No, of more concern to her was the growing pile of scrabbling, ice-encrusted corpses scraping fingers and teeth at the wall in an attempt to reach her. It was most disheartening that there were so many of the vile things, and worse yet that they continued to gather.
So many dead..., she thought to herself as she panted slightly with her right hand gripping the staff. But to what purpose? For what reason....? She puzzled over this a few instants, but left off the path. If she were to simply stand and wait, the undead might well overcome even the vast titanic wall she perched upon, nevermind the possibility, however remote, of the fistfighter's being slain and remnants from that brawl turning to bear upon her defenses.
Clearly, something was needed to cut down scores of thermally inviolate bodies in a short time, and preferably with a large area. This could be a problem, as most spells affecting large regions were either bursting (and as such would be heavily stunted by the sheer thickness of the crowd, 'standing room only' not being a euphemism here), composed of fire or chill, or both. No, some other recipe for destruction was warranted, and she might well find herself in need of one of her 'experiments' to deal with-
A faint flicker caught the corner of the sorceress' eye, and that saved her. A quick turn of her head brought the careening white sphere into view. The projectile reflected itself twice in the narrowing pupils of the young woman's eyes as it approached, growing ever larger. Her right hand released her staff and swung up before her as her mouth opened, the sheer suddenness of the attack forcing the young woman to draw upon something she'd rather not- but that was at the forefront of her mind.
Whatever it was that she said was lost in the impact, much as the gestures of her hands. A billow of force blasted itself into the barrier encapsulating her, a barrier that rippled and shook like some sort of gelatin struck with a spatula. Yet, the shockwaves from the detonation had hardly passed half across the ordinarily-solid defense (distorting what little view there was to be had amidst the flash of brightness) when Aidan's mongrel blast erupted, grinding itself still harder into the wall of nothingness surrounding its target. For a brief moment, the sphere seemed to bulge in on that side.
Then it shattered. Or vanished. Perhaps both? The space around the woman seemed to crack and disintegrate, but nothing fell nor flew from around her, the arcane protection simply discorporating as it broke. Then the true attack, the whirling wad of ki, seemed to almost launch forwards, flying on out of the far side of the caustic cloud of infernal destruction until it impacted the cliffside. A secondary detonation signaled the end of the ball of raw willpower, showering rocks and dirt about a much more distant area. Even as Aidan finished his drop, vanishing into the throng of quietly groaning, dessicate corpses, the billowing flames atop the wall collapsed in on themselves with a quiet rushing sound.
There, glimmering with a refractiveness to beat even the most thoroughly ice-clad of the thronging zombies, stood Seles. She seemed to be encased in a thick coating of something almost absolutely clear- yet flawed enough to bend out a dazzling chromic array of light. At first one might have thought it to be ice, but the edges were not shorn and angular. No, this woman was stuck in the midst of a mass of solid glass. An expression of desperation sat upon her face as she stood there, the first two fingers of either hand crossed before her with elbows akimbo. Whatever it was she had done, it left her trapped and immobile- and it left Aidan to deal with the undead as he might. Still, something was clearly unfinished.
The staff, slightly blackened by the brief firestorm, was still standing.
**********AREN'T YOU GETTING TIRED OF THIS EXTRA LITTLE CHUNK AT THE END YET?**********
There- there were no more flocking, no more thronging by! She could pass.
Drifting from shadow to shadow, little more than a small black form, she moved. Here- in this building, the entire top floor vacant as if ripped off by some giant's mitt. Down the ladder into the cellar, and from there to behind an empty, frosted wine-rack. Here there was a large gap, and she slipped through with almost undue haste. She could feel it, the thing starting to strengthen itself. More speed, more speed was needed. A whispered word, and she started an acrobatic tumble through a dark crystalline cavern, bouncing hither and yon like a steel ball in a pachinko machine.
Here... here it was. In this deep blackness, almost puddled in the lowest part of a larger cavern. A slow, deep gurgling breath began to draw itself- one that might take over a minute to complete inhalation.
Hopefully, it never would. Turning her gaze up to the ceiling of the darkness, the small form raised her arms, and a pair of arcane circles formed in the air, one to either side of her. She spoke one word.
"Terrasomaburigevasperetifantomeadmisalomahoalakwiahora."
Something began to spread.
**********
1
Seles frowned as she stood atop the wall, eyeing the gathering mob of frigid dead. Those about the monk warranted the least of her attention, being well-occupied by (and, presumably, well-occupying) the bare-chested monk and his whirling-dervish act. No, of more concern to her was the growing pile of scrabbling, ice-encrusted corpses scraping fingers and teeth at the wall in an attempt to reach her. It was most disheartening that there were so many of the vile things, and worse yet that they continued to gather.
So many dead..., she thought to herself as she panted slightly with her right hand gripping the staff. But to what purpose? For what reason....? She puzzled over this a few instants, but left off the path. If she were to simply stand and wait, the undead might well overcome even the vast titanic wall she perched upon, nevermind the possibility, however remote, of the fistfighter's being slain and remnants from that brawl turning to bear upon her defenses.
Clearly, something was needed to cut down scores of thermally inviolate bodies in a short time, and preferably with a large area. This could be a problem, as most spells affecting large regions were either bursting (and as such would be heavily stunted by the sheer thickness of the crowd, 'standing room only' not being a euphemism here), composed of fire or chill, or both. No, some other recipe for destruction was warranted, and she might well find herself in need of one of her 'experiments' to deal with-
A faint flicker caught the corner of the sorceress' eye, and that saved her. A quick turn of her head brought the careening white sphere into view. The projectile reflected itself twice in the narrowing pupils of the young woman's eyes as it approached, growing ever larger. Her right hand released her staff and swung up before her as her mouth opened, the sheer suddenness of the attack forcing the young woman to draw upon something she'd rather not- but that was at the forefront of her mind.
Whatever it was that she said was lost in the impact, much as the gestures of her hands. A billow of force blasted itself into the barrier encapsulating her, a barrier that rippled and shook like some sort of gelatin struck with a spatula. Yet, the shockwaves from the detonation had hardly passed half across the ordinarily-solid defense (distorting what little view there was to be had amidst the flash of brightness) when Aidan's mongrel blast erupted, grinding itself still harder into the wall of nothingness surrounding its target. For a brief moment, the sphere seemed to bulge in on that side.
Then it shattered. Or vanished. Perhaps both? The space around the woman seemed to crack and disintegrate, but nothing fell nor flew from around her, the arcane protection simply discorporating as it broke. Then the true attack, the whirling wad of ki, seemed to almost launch forwards, flying on out of the far side of the caustic cloud of infernal destruction until it impacted the cliffside. A secondary detonation signaled the end of the ball of raw willpower, showering rocks and dirt about a much more distant area. Even as Aidan finished his drop, vanishing into the throng of quietly groaning, dessicate corpses, the billowing flames atop the wall collapsed in on themselves with a quiet rushing sound.
There, glimmering with a refractiveness to beat even the most thoroughly ice-clad of the thronging zombies, stood Seles. She seemed to be encased in a thick coating of something almost absolutely clear- yet flawed enough to bend out a dazzling chromic array of light. At first one might have thought it to be ice, but the edges were not shorn and angular. No, this woman was stuck in the midst of a mass of solid glass. An expression of desperation sat upon her face as she stood there, the first two fingers of either hand crossed before her with elbows akimbo. Whatever it was she had done, it left her trapped and immobile- and it left Aidan to deal with the undead as he might. Still, something was clearly unfinished.
The staff, slightly blackened by the brief firestorm, was still standing.
**********AREN'T YOU GETTING TIRED OF THIS EXTRA LITTLE CHUNK AT THE END YET?**********
There- there were no more flocking, no more thronging by! She could pass.
Drifting from shadow to shadow, little more than a small black form, she moved. Here- in this building, the entire top floor vacant as if ripped off by some giant's mitt. Down the ladder into the cellar, and from there to behind an empty, frosted wine-rack. Here there was a large gap, and she slipped through with almost undue haste. She could feel it, the thing starting to strengthen itself. More speed, more speed was needed. A whispered word, and she started an acrobatic tumble through a dark crystalline cavern, bouncing hither and yon like a steel ball in a pachinko machine.
Here... here it was. In this deep blackness, almost puddled in the lowest part of a larger cavern. A slow, deep gurgling breath began to draw itself- one that might take over a minute to complete inhalation.
Hopefully, it never would. Turning her gaze up to the ceiling of the darkness, the small form raised her arms, and a pair of arcane circles formed in the air, one to either side of her. She spoke one word.
"Terrasomaburigevasperetifantomeadmisalomahoalakwiahora."
Something began to spread.
**********
1
\"What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters?.....
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
-
Metal Man
- Member
- Posts: 17964
- Joined: Sun Apr 23, 2000 1:00 am
- Location: 1592 Miles Away From Here
- Contact:
Metal Man's systems flickered. He saw, yet he did not; his life had all but been destroyed from the previous fighting. However, that explosion had only destroyed pieces of his armor. Crackling, standing up from the crater, he coughed with weariness. Every joint in his body ached; a fog haunted his mind. If his eyes hadn't been destroyed earlier, he'd notice his eyelids drooping. He stumbled poorly, his digital vision not helpful in detecting simple rocks beneat his feet.
He walked, each step like a million miles. He felt the temptation to lay down and sleep, but he knew that would be fatal, battle or no. As the warning sensors beeped and clanged dully in his damaged ears, he reached his axe, which he had thrown aside, and clutched onto it as the tornado came towards him, seeing hundreds of reflections of himself in the snow and green dots. Indeed; images of his past flew by hi--
He clenched a fist. The images departed. The haze burned. One thing was left, and it was a burning rage which could not even be clenched by his body telling him his time in this battle was up. He stood at the approaching tornado, and with the guile of a madman, took his axe out of the ground. The slick sliding seemed to take forever in his mind, images of it danced in his memory.
He saw the tornado as a bunch of dots, which he mentally interpreted to be a bulky polygonal affair, nearly like a Nintendo 64 image. He knew the danger of it, however he was too tired to fear it or attempt to simply leap out of the way.
Mere seconds seemed to take hours, as his brain seemed to have slowed down. He swore he was seeing white, but ripped it away into the bleakness of raw anger. His hand tried to stop functioning; he hit it and it remained alive, although it would not respond the same again. It had taken one EMP too many, and the backup systems had mostly been severed.
The wounds of his had mostly caked over with blood by now, just moving was causing sickening crunches, each which acted as a concert to make him so angry he could punch a brick wall down. He gripped the axe with his remaining hand and hefted it slowly and shoot it, and his fist, at the storm which was flying towards him.
He thought of the sun and the moon, and realized this was likely the darkness which countered that of the living, seeing eyes that most people were blessed with. Something weird happened, as the completely warped systems of his suit began to do odd things. Soon, he heard a dissonant, echoing, angry musical beat in his head. Colors of red, black, and brown; textures of rock, rock which was abrasive yet pebbly, hence containing two properties he hated most.
He fought off the image of a tunnel, blasting it to pieces in his mind with this inner display; the light at the end was consumed by a massive inferno inside his mind, through which he saw his goal clearly.
He wanted to hold his face, but he had one hand, and it was busy using his axe as a cane. He snapped to reality and snapped a button on the axe, crisply activating its data. It wasn't much, but he expected it to completely end the battle, one way or another.
He heard the beeps of its navigation screen, and feverishly used small buttons he felt on the handle to navigate it. Without sight, he had no choice but to go by the sounds it made, and his memory of its ghostly bluish white text and outlines. He fumbled repeatedly, sweating profusely as he saw his doom wheeling at him, unstoppable and omnipresent in its power.
Dismay bit his forcibly mute self as he realized it would take a while to charge. Worse yet, the death cyclone heading towards him would reach it far faster than that. He was about to simply warp out when an evil, vaguely Bowser-like voice echoed in his head.
"DESTROY EVERYTHING!!! LET NO ONE STOP YOU!!!"
He mentally shook his head, realizing the incident had jarred similarly deadly moments against Darth Bowser from his memory. There he had simply continued fighting.... and his muscles reflexively twitched. Indeed, he couldn't just give up now.
He stared down his incoming opponent with the fury of his past battles combined, preparing himself for an incoming attack.
He walked, each step like a million miles. He felt the temptation to lay down and sleep, but he knew that would be fatal, battle or no. As the warning sensors beeped and clanged dully in his damaged ears, he reached his axe, which he had thrown aside, and clutched onto it as the tornado came towards him, seeing hundreds of reflections of himself in the snow and green dots. Indeed; images of his past flew by hi--
He clenched a fist. The images departed. The haze burned. One thing was left, and it was a burning rage which could not even be clenched by his body telling him his time in this battle was up. He stood at the approaching tornado, and with the guile of a madman, took his axe out of the ground. The slick sliding seemed to take forever in his mind, images of it danced in his memory.
He saw the tornado as a bunch of dots, which he mentally interpreted to be a bulky polygonal affair, nearly like a Nintendo 64 image. He knew the danger of it, however he was too tired to fear it or attempt to simply leap out of the way.
Mere seconds seemed to take hours, as his brain seemed to have slowed down. He swore he was seeing white, but ripped it away into the bleakness of raw anger. His hand tried to stop functioning; he hit it and it remained alive, although it would not respond the same again. It had taken one EMP too many, and the backup systems had mostly been severed.
The wounds of his had mostly caked over with blood by now, just moving was causing sickening crunches, each which acted as a concert to make him so angry he could punch a brick wall down. He gripped the axe with his remaining hand and hefted it slowly and shoot it, and his fist, at the storm which was flying towards him.
He thought of the sun and the moon, and realized this was likely the darkness which countered that of the living, seeing eyes that most people were blessed with. Something weird happened, as the completely warped systems of his suit began to do odd things. Soon, he heard a dissonant, echoing, angry musical beat in his head. Colors of red, black, and brown; textures of rock, rock which was abrasive yet pebbly, hence containing two properties he hated most.
He fought off the image of a tunnel, blasting it to pieces in his mind with this inner display; the light at the end was consumed by a massive inferno inside his mind, through which he saw his goal clearly.
He wanted to hold his face, but he had one hand, and it was busy using his axe as a cane. He snapped to reality and snapped a button on the axe, crisply activating its data. It wasn't much, but he expected it to completely end the battle, one way or another.
He heard the beeps of its navigation screen, and feverishly used small buttons he felt on the handle to navigate it. Without sight, he had no choice but to go by the sounds it made, and his memory of its ghostly bluish white text and outlines. He fumbled repeatedly, sweating profusely as he saw his doom wheeling at him, unstoppable and omnipresent in its power.
Dismay bit his forcibly mute self as he realized it would take a while to charge. Worse yet, the death cyclone heading towards him would reach it far faster than that. He was about to simply warp out when an evil, vaguely Bowser-like voice echoed in his head.
"DESTROY EVERYTHING!!! LET NO ONE STOP YOU!!!"
He mentally shook his head, realizing the incident had jarred similarly deadly moments against Darth Bowser from his memory. There he had simply continued fighting.... and his muscles reflexively twitched. Indeed, he couldn't just give up now.
He stared down his incoming opponent with the fury of his past battles combined, preparing himself for an incoming attack.
Super Smash Quest: Fighting evil since 2002.
-
Repster
- Member
- Posts: 6130
- Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2000 1:00 am
- Location: J'tun ostie d'Acadien.
Aidan sighed. She damn well did it again, but this time he knew how to get threw quite easily. This was going to sting, or damn well hurt like a two dollar whore that wants a spanking. Most likely the first to her, and second to he, but pain would be brought to both. He roared, and what a roar it was.
The mixture of dragons, humans, fire, predatory birds, canine, equine, and lord only knew what else at once coming from his throat mixed into one distinctive sound. The earth shook as it reached the maximum volume the man's enchanted vocal chords could produce. Aidan voice was such that his voice was constantly produced outside his own body, to various location and echoed. It sounded normal enough, and was always clear, it also left it near impossible to pinpoint. The roar however, the roar pushed his voice to it's very limit and it was quite obvious where it came from. It staid at that amount of raw decibels for a moment. Now at it's limit one would think it would the lessen. One did not know Aidan Dreiks.
It got louder as Aidan stared into the eyes of his limits, and punched it in the face. The air pulsed with the pure vibration, and it grew louder still as Aidan outright kicked the limit right in the nuts, it and it new strength. Zombie splattered after a moment that that sonic energy no longer registered in hearing range at close proximity. The limit put it's foot down, Aidan crushed it's foot and broke it's kneecap. Aidan walked, and his voice grew ever so much more. The limit tried to fight back. The monk, caught and tore out it's arm then slapped it with it's own limb. The eyeless shirtless man ran. Undead were torn apart, splattered and rendered to nothing but a pile of gore in the path of that roar. The new limit, for it was new every time, madly attacked the monk, at this point that would be quite a disaster. The fiery hair one's fist tore into flesh, and brought back a heart. He ate it. The very earth below his feet churned with the now clearly visible concentrated vibrations. He reached the wall.
The current limit's intestines were used to hog tie it. Aidan foot touched crumbling stone and up he went, never slowing. The limit punched him in the stomach. Aidan misstepped, and he nearly plummeted down and lost control of the roar. At current level that would have torn him apart.
He tore out the limits throat and defecated in the wound. He flipped with incredible speed and agility and was moving just as smoothly as before. There she was. Just a few steps away. His voice went silent as all that raw sonic power was absorbed into his flesh, and stored for a brief moment.
Death, death now dared to oppose his will, oppose him . He laughed. His foot was brought to bear and went straight to into it's side coming out the other side. He had no time to die, not yet. He rotated in mid air and his foot collided with the glass shell of the Sorceress' body. Now, the flame wielder did not know if she could see threw that protective barrier, but he would have given his left arm, healthy mind you not limp it was at the moment, to see the look on her face clearly.
*Ping*
The single note rang across the city as his foot tapped the glass and it shatered to pieces from the sheer vibrating force that was then released into it. The shards flew outwards. Every single crystal, The few that affected the woman's flesh were mere scratches. Aidan ignore the few that passed threw his as he swung his head, and his fang tore into his prey. He heard the crunch of bone under the force of his jaw, but was nearly unaware of it. He did not care for the still standing staff, or what it meant, he barely felt Seles final defenses as his fang dug into her shoulder. He outright ignored everything. The only thing that truly registered was the taste, the exquisite taste of one with such immense magical power, power that permeated the taste. He drank deeply letting her own circulatory system wash her life blood unto his tongue and down his gullet.
There was no increase in strength to be gained. No vitality, no store of arcane might. There was little sustenance. Nothing but thirst, and curiosity, towards the taste.
Even as he enjoyed his brief taste, he braced himself, he would not be long there. She would make sure of it, there was no doubt in his mind.
The mixture of dragons, humans, fire, predatory birds, canine, equine, and lord only knew what else at once coming from his throat mixed into one distinctive sound. The earth shook as it reached the maximum volume the man's enchanted vocal chords could produce. Aidan voice was such that his voice was constantly produced outside his own body, to various location and echoed. It sounded normal enough, and was always clear, it also left it near impossible to pinpoint. The roar however, the roar pushed his voice to it's very limit and it was quite obvious where it came from. It staid at that amount of raw decibels for a moment. Now at it's limit one would think it would the lessen. One did not know Aidan Dreiks.
It got louder as Aidan stared into the eyes of his limits, and punched it in the face. The air pulsed with the pure vibration, and it grew louder still as Aidan outright kicked the limit right in the nuts, it and it new strength. Zombie splattered after a moment that that sonic energy no longer registered in hearing range at close proximity. The limit put it's foot down, Aidan crushed it's foot and broke it's kneecap. Aidan walked, and his voice grew ever so much more. The limit tried to fight back. The monk, caught and tore out it's arm then slapped it with it's own limb. The eyeless shirtless man ran. Undead were torn apart, splattered and rendered to nothing but a pile of gore in the path of that roar. The new limit, for it was new every time, madly attacked the monk, at this point that would be quite a disaster. The fiery hair one's fist tore into flesh, and brought back a heart. He ate it. The very earth below his feet churned with the now clearly visible concentrated vibrations. He reached the wall.
The current limit's intestines were used to hog tie it. Aidan foot touched crumbling stone and up he went, never slowing. The limit punched him in the stomach. Aidan misstepped, and he nearly plummeted down and lost control of the roar. At current level that would have torn him apart.
He tore out the limits throat and defecated in the wound. He flipped with incredible speed and agility and was moving just as smoothly as before. There she was. Just a few steps away. His voice went silent as all that raw sonic power was absorbed into his flesh, and stored for a brief moment.
Death, death now dared to oppose his will, oppose him . He laughed. His foot was brought to bear and went straight to into it's side coming out the other side. He had no time to die, not yet. He rotated in mid air and his foot collided with the glass shell of the Sorceress' body. Now, the flame wielder did not know if she could see threw that protective barrier, but he would have given his left arm, healthy mind you not limp it was at the moment, to see the look on her face clearly.
*Ping*
The single note rang across the city as his foot tapped the glass and it shatered to pieces from the sheer vibrating force that was then released into it. The shards flew outwards. Every single crystal, The few that affected the woman's flesh were mere scratches. Aidan ignore the few that passed threw his as he swung his head, and his fang tore into his prey. He heard the crunch of bone under the force of his jaw, but was nearly unaware of it. He did not care for the still standing staff, or what it meant, he barely felt Seles final defenses as his fang dug into her shoulder. He outright ignored everything. The only thing that truly registered was the taste, the exquisite taste of one with such immense magical power, power that permeated the taste. He drank deeply letting her own circulatory system wash her life blood unto his tongue and down his gullet.
There was no increase in strength to be gained. No vitality, no store of arcane might. There was little sustenance. Nothing but thirst, and curiosity, towards the taste.
Even as he enjoyed his brief taste, he braced himself, he would not be long there. She would make sure of it, there was no doubt in his mind.
When our world is burning.
When all run like the cowards they are.
I shall stand in the inferno, and fight until I am consumed
When all run like the cowards they are.
I shall stand in the inferno, and fight until I am consumed
-
The Willful Wanderer
- Member
- Posts: 2221
- Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2004 2:00 am
- Location: Aisle 12, between the kumquats and the radicchio.
Oops, she did it again.
As he took one more savory gulp of the young woman's blood, Aidan registered an odd sensation. Something seemed off- the ichor was thickening almost as if clotting far too quickly. It took the man but a moment to pull back from the staggered shape he had latched onto and blink in puzzlement.
There, sprouting from the top of the centuries-dead and crystallized wood was an aloe plant. A large array of broad succulent leaves, slightly barbed on the edges. It didn't even bear a passing resemblance to the sorceress he had been battling these last ten minutes (felt like hours), aside the fact that it was green and so was her clothing. Of the oaken staff there was no sign, like as not that had not even actually been present. Even so, the several of the larger fragments of glass held a distinct shape that seemed to say that the woman *had* been there, had occupied that odd molten-silica structure. She simply wasn't there now. Almost as if refusing to recieve his strike, and thereby not doing so.
Screwing up his mouth slightly to the right, the bloodthirsty monk scraped the roof of his mouth with soft muscle, tongue skimming away a thick coating of semitranslucent sap. The thick, unfriendly flavor of the sticky mass caused him to flare his nostrils and furrow his brow. That had been a bit of a dirty trick....
His starting to turn to seek out Seles was interrupted by a new sensation. The ground was shifting, quivering and shaking in some lesser tremor. Those frigid zombies that remained ignored it in their continuing drive to reach the man, piling atop each other accidentally as they sought to scrape down the wall. The city, however, could not remain so blithe to the change. It began near the center, a tall structure with its bell-tower long since rendered a jagged ruinous spike caving and collapsing in on itself with a slow implosion of stone and mortar. Then other edifices commenced to fall, in a manner that might well have been expected of the greatest of quakes- but still the ground only shivered.
Rippling outwards the destruction ran, a massive sinkhole forming through the core of the golgothan ruination. Building by building, block by block, that which had withstood over five centuries of endless, eroding winter simply devoured itself. From his perch atop the wall, Aidan could observe the growing maw of the void in the frozen dirt. It seemed almost to iris open- and then he could see it. Some crackling, white-orange flow ran within the gaping hole, and where it touched the earth simply vanished as if eaten away by an army of moles. First holing, then collapsing, and then simply melting out of existence in a quiet subsidence of matter. It was a grand and awesome thing, this steady removal of the ground from beneath the cursed city, and it was almost a disappointment when it stopped.
A last few buildings fell over the lip and into the deep darkness- but for all its depth, the hole was now tremendous. And from it came a great screeling keen, a cry like unto a thousand falcons with blood-gorged throats. Stone after stone of building, massive icicles and spires and spines of wood, clumps of jagged-edged rock... all had plummeted into the depths, and Aidan could look down into that immense pit and swear that he was looking upon something he would never have guessed. Thousands of eyes, as many mouths... and great, pustulious pores. A huge, sweltering mass of skinlessly-glistening red flesh lined the bottom of the pit, copiously oozing putrescent shiny slicks of blackened blood where it was pierced by the city's debris.
Here rested a horror of horrors. In this place was to be found something so vile and foul that while it could never die, it would never be life. Beneath this city had lurked for so long something beyond human understanding, but not beyond perception. Not beyond insanity.
Here, below, was Mantorok.
Aidan spat his mouthful of aloe sap to one side, eyeing the baleful thing lurking in the depths of the pit. This... was a surprise indeed. But not his concern- where was the...aha.
Down below, beyond the edge of the pit, he spotted her. She stood upon a small mass of floating rock, conical with the tip down and nearly a meter across. Her cape was flaring and rippling, her skirt pushed back to flow out behind her by some gust that the shirtless monk would never feel from such a distance. No staff in her hands, she sagged deeply as she released the magic that had cleared the way. The way for what, though? Did she seek to meet him in combat literally atop the rotting god? Would this become a more active fight, rebounding from stone to stone, from one to another chunk of rubble?
Then, the clouds parted.
*****************
0
*****************
Even as Aidan noted that the young woman was focused wholly on the horrific mass beneath her, a thin shaft of light illuminated him from behind. The vast, surly-dark cover of clouds that shrouded the entire region in a clammy darkness and rendered this area unlivable split themselves to escape. For here there was first fire. A small array of speeding orange-red spheres, fireballs of a more 'typical' kind than either of the two combatants had been wielding in their attempts to lay one another low. But these were not alone- behind them a clustery swarm of sparks, trailing glimmers of electricity and burning the air to ozone. And yet another in the caravan of destruction, an almost elegant geometric pattern of orbs in a swirling puce soared through the air at that angle- and still more behind.
And there in the sky, beneath the clouds, another phasm exposed itself- though this would like as not be his own mind playing with him. It was the face of the sorceress, some of her bangs plastered to her scalp by a quiet sheen of sweat. The whites of her indigo eyes were no more to be seen, replaced by guttering fountains of the blue-white not-fire that could only be raw magickal energy. Round lips parted without disturbing the wrinkled expression of focus on that soft, almost lineless face, and it spake three words into Aidan's mind. Three words that gave him brief pause, and even seemed to lock up the clamoring scrape of the frigid dead at the wall.
"Shin Meteo Array."
A brief burst of fire seared through the air near Aidan, which he caught with his face- caught with his face! The blistering warmth seemed to refresh the wild monk slightly, his lips curling in a vague smile. That was it- that was what he liked. The warm embrace of explosive flame, not corrupted through warping or focus- just the soft, lovely burning of that ancient energy.
The edge of the cloud of sparks brushed his scalp, and there was rictus. Every single muscle in his body locked up, nerves frying as several bones weakened by the stress of combat snapped under the violent contraction of his flesh. A series of quiet cracking sounds were almost drowned out by the brief, unbiddent yelp caused by the squeezing of his lungs- and then that too was past. But remembered unfondly with pain- as one of the green orbs quite simply walloped him in the side of the skull. It burst, then, like a balloon overfilled with water, and he knew more pain. Acid! That thing was nothing but a weltering glob of acids, searing and eating at his flesh. His left arm was nearly off now, the bone of his skull exposed above where his left ear had once been, and the knee on that side half eaten-through. He looked a ghoulish fright as his eyepatch fluttered to the ground, exposing the brilliant spark held by his slightly-bubbling socket.
Staggering, the man stayed his fall, fighting skill serving where resistance to hurt could not and keeping him upon his feet to stare as what had narrowly scraped him (and done so very much harm) continued on its merry way, down into the depths. Mantorok screeled again with its many circular, needle-toothed mouths, those horrific dentures spreading wide and exposing a multitude of bloody-wet throats to the chill air in a cry of pain from the explosions of fire upon it. The inferno had but began when the glowing cloud of electricity grounded itself out through the middle of the Dead God, searing and blackening and outright cooking the skinless muscle of the beast. Long tendrils, fully a meter wide, thrashed about in convulsions of electrical death, a display of pain that shattered so many of the stones and beams littering and puncturing the creature's upper layer. Then those too broke severed by immense sprays of acid. Within instants the burnt, cracked center of the creature was sinking down, melted into the most pungent cesspit yet. The core of Mantorok was being worn down, converted to so much horrific sludge- but it was not yet done. A translucent sphere that Aidan had not noticed passing over his head impacted, and there was a brief-
-as a glowing orb of light skimmed over him so quickly that it generated its own wind. Aidan did not have time to express his puzzlement, even in his head, at what the previous ball had done (there was this strange sense of disconnection...) before the softly-glimmering spark touched down. Briefly, the world went black from the sheer intensity of the flash generated, more light than any one surface could truly absorb, no matter its tincture. Another scream chorused forth from the beleaguered Mantorok, hundreds of thousands of pupils narrowing to points as the thing, the entire creature was blinded. This is ridiculous, Aidan realized, as he narrowly missed being decapitated by one of a dozen huge wads of jagged crystal that streaked overhead. Their impacts had such sheer velocity and momentum that even as the splash of liquified ancient thing-from-beyond sprayed itself up onto the oddly-immobile undead at the base of the wall, they tore huge gaping rents beneath the pit in the center of the thing, drawing away what little blood remained there. How in the name of the flame could she bring down this?
The horrific, earshattering cry of the Dead God was continuous now as it felt the agony of its injury. A gaping wound had been torn in the middle of it, fully enough to house a city on its own, were any daft enough to lay out surrounding farms on the horrific wetness of the gibbering thing's body. Spurts and gouts of dark ichor sprayed and fountained all across the hole and drained off into blackened pits of flesh where even Aidan could hear the ten-foot balls of jagged death tumbling about whatever passages and organs could be found within this biology-defying thing.
And still it continued.
Again, Aidan had reason to smile as he was caught in the edge of what could only be called a fleet of fireballs, nearly a dozen of the things breaking open and detonating in blistering washes of flame across his head and back. Even with his skull partly bared, he reveled in the comforting heat of the collision, enjoying the mild buffeting of hot air and even the way it blackened the top of the wall he was perched on. Mantorok, clearly, held a different view of things (but then, not having any sort of reference a mortal mind can, it held a different view of everything than everyone), screeching in enraged pain and gibbering wordless consonants with its many mouths. Again, muscle was fried and blackened in the dripping fat and blood of the horrific thing. It was a veritable Fourth of July deep in the pit, fire bursting and spraying in red and orange, and this titanic nonmortal thing was the grill and the barbecued meat. For a few instants of eternity, Mantorok shifted, the ground quaking now in earnest as that massive slab of wrong shifted to try and escape its pain.
Then all was silent. Still facing the pit, Aidan locked sparks with the sorceress even across all that distance, neither of them having earnest eyes at the moment. White-blue in a pair matched with orange-white alone. Aidan could see where a few fragments of rock had decided to grace the side of the woman's head- but no blood trailed down her skin there, no. Instead a kind of octarine fire sprayed brilliantly from the sorceress' split scalp, surging and sparking spectacularly. It bore a color that defied definition, dancing deleriously and showing itself nowhere else, but brightening that deep dark pit. She... had no blood. Not as he knew it. There was too much magick. Just so very, very much magick.
Even as she stared back at him, she smiled grimly, a few locks of hair draping themselves across her sweat-plastered brow, and she pointed at Aidan with one shaky and slightly limp hand. Somehow, that brilliant flaming spark that he called an eye seemed to blink. Why would she be indicating him? Did she have something planned? Then he realized-
-she was pointing behind him. The continued lightening of the sky had been beyond his notice, with the titanic mess occuring so far below, but as he turned, he noted that the clouds had all but dissipated. For a moment he stared up into the sky blankly.
"Well." He summed it up, the holes in his left cheek lending the words a strange, whispery quality.
"**** me."
Angled so as to catch him on its way into the corpse of the Dead God Mantorok, a half-mile meteor was plummeting through the atmosphere, molten at the edges, but still- uncountable tons of rock.
Turning his head, Aidan gave the sorceress an incredulous glance. She shrugged, raising her hands as if to protect herself.
And the sky came down.
As he took one more savory gulp of the young woman's blood, Aidan registered an odd sensation. Something seemed off- the ichor was thickening almost as if clotting far too quickly. It took the man but a moment to pull back from the staggered shape he had latched onto and blink in puzzlement.
There, sprouting from the top of the centuries-dead and crystallized wood was an aloe plant. A large array of broad succulent leaves, slightly barbed on the edges. It didn't even bear a passing resemblance to the sorceress he had been battling these last ten minutes (felt like hours), aside the fact that it was green and so was her clothing. Of the oaken staff there was no sign, like as not that had not even actually been present. Even so, the several of the larger fragments of glass held a distinct shape that seemed to say that the woman *had* been there, had occupied that odd molten-silica structure. She simply wasn't there now. Almost as if refusing to recieve his strike, and thereby not doing so.
Screwing up his mouth slightly to the right, the bloodthirsty monk scraped the roof of his mouth with soft muscle, tongue skimming away a thick coating of semitranslucent sap. The thick, unfriendly flavor of the sticky mass caused him to flare his nostrils and furrow his brow. That had been a bit of a dirty trick....
His starting to turn to seek out Seles was interrupted by a new sensation. The ground was shifting, quivering and shaking in some lesser tremor. Those frigid zombies that remained ignored it in their continuing drive to reach the man, piling atop each other accidentally as they sought to scrape down the wall. The city, however, could not remain so blithe to the change. It began near the center, a tall structure with its bell-tower long since rendered a jagged ruinous spike caving and collapsing in on itself with a slow implosion of stone and mortar. Then other edifices commenced to fall, in a manner that might well have been expected of the greatest of quakes- but still the ground only shivered.
Rippling outwards the destruction ran, a massive sinkhole forming through the core of the golgothan ruination. Building by building, block by block, that which had withstood over five centuries of endless, eroding winter simply devoured itself. From his perch atop the wall, Aidan could observe the growing maw of the void in the frozen dirt. It seemed almost to iris open- and then he could see it. Some crackling, white-orange flow ran within the gaping hole, and where it touched the earth simply vanished as if eaten away by an army of moles. First holing, then collapsing, and then simply melting out of existence in a quiet subsidence of matter. It was a grand and awesome thing, this steady removal of the ground from beneath the cursed city, and it was almost a disappointment when it stopped.
A last few buildings fell over the lip and into the deep darkness- but for all its depth, the hole was now tremendous. And from it came a great screeling keen, a cry like unto a thousand falcons with blood-gorged throats. Stone after stone of building, massive icicles and spires and spines of wood, clumps of jagged-edged rock... all had plummeted into the depths, and Aidan could look down into that immense pit and swear that he was looking upon something he would never have guessed. Thousands of eyes, as many mouths... and great, pustulious pores. A huge, sweltering mass of skinlessly-glistening red flesh lined the bottom of the pit, copiously oozing putrescent shiny slicks of blackened blood where it was pierced by the city's debris.
Here rested a horror of horrors. In this place was to be found something so vile and foul that while it could never die, it would never be life. Beneath this city had lurked for so long something beyond human understanding, but not beyond perception. Not beyond insanity.
Here, below, was Mantorok.
Aidan spat his mouthful of aloe sap to one side, eyeing the baleful thing lurking in the depths of the pit. This... was a surprise indeed. But not his concern- where was the...aha.
Down below, beyond the edge of the pit, he spotted her. She stood upon a small mass of floating rock, conical with the tip down and nearly a meter across. Her cape was flaring and rippling, her skirt pushed back to flow out behind her by some gust that the shirtless monk would never feel from such a distance. No staff in her hands, she sagged deeply as she released the magic that had cleared the way. The way for what, though? Did she seek to meet him in combat literally atop the rotting god? Would this become a more active fight, rebounding from stone to stone, from one to another chunk of rubble?
Then, the clouds parted.
*****************
0
*****************
Even as Aidan noted that the young woman was focused wholly on the horrific mass beneath her, a thin shaft of light illuminated him from behind. The vast, surly-dark cover of clouds that shrouded the entire region in a clammy darkness and rendered this area unlivable split themselves to escape. For here there was first fire. A small array of speeding orange-red spheres, fireballs of a more 'typical' kind than either of the two combatants had been wielding in their attempts to lay one another low. But these were not alone- behind them a clustery swarm of sparks, trailing glimmers of electricity and burning the air to ozone. And yet another in the caravan of destruction, an almost elegant geometric pattern of orbs in a swirling puce soared through the air at that angle- and still more behind.
And there in the sky, beneath the clouds, another phasm exposed itself- though this would like as not be his own mind playing with him. It was the face of the sorceress, some of her bangs plastered to her scalp by a quiet sheen of sweat. The whites of her indigo eyes were no more to be seen, replaced by guttering fountains of the blue-white not-fire that could only be raw magickal energy. Round lips parted without disturbing the wrinkled expression of focus on that soft, almost lineless face, and it spake three words into Aidan's mind. Three words that gave him brief pause, and even seemed to lock up the clamoring scrape of the frigid dead at the wall.
"Shin Meteo Array."
A brief burst of fire seared through the air near Aidan, which he caught with his face- caught with his face! The blistering warmth seemed to refresh the wild monk slightly, his lips curling in a vague smile. That was it- that was what he liked. The warm embrace of explosive flame, not corrupted through warping or focus- just the soft, lovely burning of that ancient energy.
The edge of the cloud of sparks brushed his scalp, and there was rictus. Every single muscle in his body locked up, nerves frying as several bones weakened by the stress of combat snapped under the violent contraction of his flesh. A series of quiet cracking sounds were almost drowned out by the brief, unbiddent yelp caused by the squeezing of his lungs- and then that too was past. But remembered unfondly with pain- as one of the green orbs quite simply walloped him in the side of the skull. It burst, then, like a balloon overfilled with water, and he knew more pain. Acid! That thing was nothing but a weltering glob of acids, searing and eating at his flesh. His left arm was nearly off now, the bone of his skull exposed above where his left ear had once been, and the knee on that side half eaten-through. He looked a ghoulish fright as his eyepatch fluttered to the ground, exposing the brilliant spark held by his slightly-bubbling socket.
Staggering, the man stayed his fall, fighting skill serving where resistance to hurt could not and keeping him upon his feet to stare as what had narrowly scraped him (and done so very much harm) continued on its merry way, down into the depths. Mantorok screeled again with its many circular, needle-toothed mouths, those horrific dentures spreading wide and exposing a multitude of bloody-wet throats to the chill air in a cry of pain from the explosions of fire upon it. The inferno had but began when the glowing cloud of electricity grounded itself out through the middle of the Dead God, searing and blackening and outright cooking the skinless muscle of the beast. Long tendrils, fully a meter wide, thrashed about in convulsions of electrical death, a display of pain that shattered so many of the stones and beams littering and puncturing the creature's upper layer. Then those too broke severed by immense sprays of acid. Within instants the burnt, cracked center of the creature was sinking down, melted into the most pungent cesspit yet. The core of Mantorok was being worn down, converted to so much horrific sludge- but it was not yet done. A translucent sphere that Aidan had not noticed passing over his head impacted, and there was a brief-
-as a glowing orb of light skimmed over him so quickly that it generated its own wind. Aidan did not have time to express his puzzlement, even in his head, at what the previous ball had done (there was this strange sense of disconnection...) before the softly-glimmering spark touched down. Briefly, the world went black from the sheer intensity of the flash generated, more light than any one surface could truly absorb, no matter its tincture. Another scream chorused forth from the beleaguered Mantorok, hundreds of thousands of pupils narrowing to points as the thing, the entire creature was blinded. This is ridiculous, Aidan realized, as he narrowly missed being decapitated by one of a dozen huge wads of jagged crystal that streaked overhead. Their impacts had such sheer velocity and momentum that even as the splash of liquified ancient thing-from-beyond sprayed itself up onto the oddly-immobile undead at the base of the wall, they tore huge gaping rents beneath the pit in the center of the thing, drawing away what little blood remained there. How in the name of the flame could she bring down this?
The horrific, earshattering cry of the Dead God was continuous now as it felt the agony of its injury. A gaping wound had been torn in the middle of it, fully enough to house a city on its own, were any daft enough to lay out surrounding farms on the horrific wetness of the gibbering thing's body. Spurts and gouts of dark ichor sprayed and fountained all across the hole and drained off into blackened pits of flesh where even Aidan could hear the ten-foot balls of jagged death tumbling about whatever passages and organs could be found within this biology-defying thing.
And still it continued.
Again, Aidan had reason to smile as he was caught in the edge of what could only be called a fleet of fireballs, nearly a dozen of the things breaking open and detonating in blistering washes of flame across his head and back. Even with his skull partly bared, he reveled in the comforting heat of the collision, enjoying the mild buffeting of hot air and even the way it blackened the top of the wall he was perched on. Mantorok, clearly, held a different view of things (but then, not having any sort of reference a mortal mind can, it held a different view of everything than everyone), screeching in enraged pain and gibbering wordless consonants with its many mouths. Again, muscle was fried and blackened in the dripping fat and blood of the horrific thing. It was a veritable Fourth of July deep in the pit, fire bursting and spraying in red and orange, and this titanic nonmortal thing was the grill and the barbecued meat. For a few instants of eternity, Mantorok shifted, the ground quaking now in earnest as that massive slab of wrong shifted to try and escape its pain.
Then all was silent. Still facing the pit, Aidan locked sparks with the sorceress even across all that distance, neither of them having earnest eyes at the moment. White-blue in a pair matched with orange-white alone. Aidan could see where a few fragments of rock had decided to grace the side of the woman's head- but no blood trailed down her skin there, no. Instead a kind of octarine fire sprayed brilliantly from the sorceress' split scalp, surging and sparking spectacularly. It bore a color that defied definition, dancing deleriously and showing itself nowhere else, but brightening that deep dark pit. She... had no blood. Not as he knew it. There was too much magick. Just so very, very much magick.
Even as she stared back at him, she smiled grimly, a few locks of hair draping themselves across her sweat-plastered brow, and she pointed at Aidan with one shaky and slightly limp hand. Somehow, that brilliant flaming spark that he called an eye seemed to blink. Why would she be indicating him? Did she have something planned? Then he realized-
-she was pointing behind him. The continued lightening of the sky had been beyond his notice, with the titanic mess occuring so far below, but as he turned, he noted that the clouds had all but dissipated. For a moment he stared up into the sky blankly.
"Well." He summed it up, the holes in his left cheek lending the words a strange, whispery quality.
"**** me."
Angled so as to catch him on its way into the corpse of the Dead God Mantorok, a half-mile meteor was plummeting through the atmosphere, molten at the edges, but still- uncountable tons of rock.
Turning his head, Aidan gave the sorceress an incredulous glance. She shrugged, raising her hands as if to protect herself.
And the sky came down.
\"What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters?.....
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
-
Scripture
- Member
- Posts: 436
- Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2004 1:00 am
The great twister’s bottom tore out from under it as it rushed into the final twenty yards separating it from Metal Man, and Scripture came flying out, the soles of his feet smoking. He collided bodily with Metal Man at a speed best reserved for a missile, searing his chest with that terrible plasma. Metal Man’s axe was split in half as he tried to defend himself, the head of it lost to a groping hand of Scripture’s and the remaining haft lost in the tempest behind, and then he was left with only his fist to bat the burning cyborg away with, but where each punch would torque him one way or the other, his own fist would come back white-hot and malleable
Scripture’s two feet wobbled as they leveled themselves on the ground, coming down from their collision with Metal Man. He snaked out with his one good fist – the EMP diverted elsewhere, for another moment – and grabbed Metal Man’s only remaining elbow, broken from his encounter with the silver symbiote, and tore at it, rending first flesh and ligaments and steel and then finally the joint itself, tearing it out like a wishbone as Metal Man tried to lash away and come across with a wobbling boot, his movements spurned on by some fragment of emotion that said to continue and fight this terrible star.
They separated, but Scripture pursued. Metal Man noted in that one second of reprieve his satellites were gone – he knew Scripture had drained them of their power for his own use (save one, to see), to give the punch that burned away half of what remained of his face a certain edge to move his entire girth along with it, take him off his feet as the tempest swirled to catch up with them. Scripture pulled his hand back, his movements impossible to see, like looking at the sun, and caught up with Metal Man’s steadied fall, punched him straight on in the chest – the wound burned and then his chest gave way, allowing Scripture’s fist to blast through his sternum and singe his punctured lungs and grip his spinal cord, grisly, boiling fingers poking out of the flesh on the other side.
Scripture held kept from falling, but did so from his spinal cord.
Metal Man tried to stare at this monster standing over him, but it was impossible, his DOS-vision had gone completely green. Metal Man couldn’t see Scripture’s plasma fan out in coiling tendrils along his body as he held him by the most delicate connection, searing it all the while – the tendrils wrapped themselves around Metal Man, the sound of alcohol on a fire mixing with the constant drone of ionized air as Metal Man was enveloped in a womb of plasma, his entire body seared past recognition or function—
Then it was over, and he could see Scripture up close and personal, fuzzily outlined in a warm glow with a cobalt sphere on the periphery, observing.
Scripture pulled his hand out and gripped the cauterized gore of Metal Man’s face. An electromagnetic pulse went through his fingertips and coated him, knocked him backwards and swirling away as his legs gave out and the twister enveloped him.
Scripture’s two feet wobbled as they leveled themselves on the ground, coming down from their collision with Metal Man. He snaked out with his one good fist – the EMP diverted elsewhere, for another moment – and grabbed Metal Man’s only remaining elbow, broken from his encounter with the silver symbiote, and tore at it, rending first flesh and ligaments and steel and then finally the joint itself, tearing it out like a wishbone as Metal Man tried to lash away and come across with a wobbling boot, his movements spurned on by some fragment of emotion that said to continue and fight this terrible star.
They separated, but Scripture pursued. Metal Man noted in that one second of reprieve his satellites were gone – he knew Scripture had drained them of their power for his own use (save one, to see), to give the punch that burned away half of what remained of his face a certain edge to move his entire girth along with it, take him off his feet as the tempest swirled to catch up with them. Scripture pulled his hand back, his movements impossible to see, like looking at the sun, and caught up with Metal Man’s steadied fall, punched him straight on in the chest – the wound burned and then his chest gave way, allowing Scripture’s fist to blast through his sternum and singe his punctured lungs and grip his spinal cord, grisly, boiling fingers poking out of the flesh on the other side.
Scripture held kept from falling, but did so from his spinal cord.
Metal Man tried to stare at this monster standing over him, but it was impossible, his DOS-vision had gone completely green. Metal Man couldn’t see Scripture’s plasma fan out in coiling tendrils along his body as he held him by the most delicate connection, searing it all the while – the tendrils wrapped themselves around Metal Man, the sound of alcohol on a fire mixing with the constant drone of ionized air as Metal Man was enveloped in a womb of plasma, his entire body seared past recognition or function—
Then it was over, and he could see Scripture up close and personal, fuzzily outlined in a warm glow with a cobalt sphere on the periphery, observing.
Scripture pulled his hand out and gripped the cauterized gore of Metal Man’s face. An electromagnetic pulse went through his fingertips and coated him, knocked him backwards and swirling away as his legs gave out and the twister enveloped him.
-
Repster
- Member
- Posts: 6130
- Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2000 1:00 am
- Location: J'tun ostie d'Acadien.
Boom.
The monk stood there, watching it fall. Well now... This was rather unfortunate. He could get away. He could. It would be a simple enough process, but something kept him there. Pride, but mostly stubbornness. He was going to finish this fight. No such thing as a rock would stop him. He dropped off the wall head first. Pride would not let him allow the sorceress to outdo him.
His arms burned, turned to fire and was absorbed into his body. What was left of them anyway. He took that power and fed it threw his entire body. It flowed naturally, with freedom unrivaled from even the blood in his veins. It gathered, and fueled one last motion that defied what his body was capable of. His foot went into and skull and plucked out his eye. The monk crashed into the earth and let nature take it's course.
The eye grew as it's mass took it towards the earth. And mass it had. Mass that went towards raw fuel for the flames. Considering it's exponential rate of growth, and intensity already having gone beyond any shade besides blue and still growing. There was little doubt about what would happen when both forces would collide. So as it was about to strike the earth, and the chuck of space rock was going to impact with was now undeniably a small star, it did.
Aidan's laughter was the only sound. Even the shrieking of Mantorok was unheard. The titanic explosion of a blue star going nova, and of a rather large meteor striking home were mute. Unless one was some dozen or so miles away, then there it shatered eardrums. Light of such magnitude that it could be seen from far off worlds quite easily.
Nothing was left of the city. The earth was neither scorched nor battered, not harmed. It was simply not there. There was nothing to be seen in any direction from where the city once stood. A crater withing a crater so flat it did not deserve the name. A desolate wasteland for miles and miles.
The sound finished it's first trip around the surface of the planet and the earth shook as it passed. Yet, at the epicenter, ground zero as it were, Aidan's laughter still echoed, and he lied there. The right left side of his torso gone, one leg a stump at the knee. The other squished. His eveyr bone broken, his flesh torn apart. He chuckled.
"You still alive?"
He laughed. A thing of pure and simple mirth.
The monk stood there, watching it fall. Well now... This was rather unfortunate. He could get away. He could. It would be a simple enough process, but something kept him there. Pride, but mostly stubbornness. He was going to finish this fight. No such thing as a rock would stop him. He dropped off the wall head first. Pride would not let him allow the sorceress to outdo him.
His arms burned, turned to fire and was absorbed into his body. What was left of them anyway. He took that power and fed it threw his entire body. It flowed naturally, with freedom unrivaled from even the blood in his veins. It gathered, and fueled one last motion that defied what his body was capable of. His foot went into and skull and plucked out his eye. The monk crashed into the earth and let nature take it's course.
The eye grew as it's mass took it towards the earth. And mass it had. Mass that went towards raw fuel for the flames. Considering it's exponential rate of growth, and intensity already having gone beyond any shade besides blue and still growing. There was little doubt about what would happen when both forces would collide. So as it was about to strike the earth, and the chuck of space rock was going to impact with was now undeniably a small star, it did.
Aidan's laughter was the only sound. Even the shrieking of Mantorok was unheard. The titanic explosion of a blue star going nova, and of a rather large meteor striking home were mute. Unless one was some dozen or so miles away, then there it shatered eardrums. Light of such magnitude that it could be seen from far off worlds quite easily.
Nothing was left of the city. The earth was neither scorched nor battered, not harmed. It was simply not there. There was nothing to be seen in any direction from where the city once stood. A crater withing a crater so flat it did not deserve the name. A desolate wasteland for miles and miles.
The sound finished it's first trip around the surface of the planet and the earth shook as it passed. Yet, at the epicenter, ground zero as it were, Aidan's laughter still echoed, and he lied there. The right left side of his torso gone, one leg a stump at the knee. The other squished. His eveyr bone broken, his flesh torn apart. He chuckled.
"You still alive?"
He laughed. A thing of pure and simple mirth.
When our world is burning.
When all run like the cowards they are.
I shall stand in the inferno, and fight until I am consumed
When all run like the cowards they are.
I shall stand in the inferno, and fight until I am consumed
-
Metal Man
- Member
- Posts: 17964
- Joined: Sun Apr 23, 2000 1:00 am
- Location: 1592 Miles Away From Here
- Contact:
The energy was all around him. Systems failed. Nothing could be seen. A vague sense of hopelessness enveloped Metal Man. However, the bitter rage would not let him die. Would not let him sleep. As much as he wanted to die, the pain... he could not stop feeling it. It gave him a bloodcurdling rage which defied destroyed organs. He was half machine, and that half would not die like his other half basically had.
EMP raced through it. Hundreds of circuits died. Little was left... but a few extremely protected chips survived. They had been taken out of missiles; the man who built his armor had balked at the request. "Are you sure, sir? These things are worse than death. They'll keep you alive, but at the cost of your very soul."
Metal Man cared not; he wanted the ultimate edge, and indeed, against certain death, these ballistic units went into action. On fire, melting, near death, unable to use any of his transformations or other devices which would render such things a simple intransigence, his mechanical armor thrashed in primal fury enough to challenge the very twister itself.
The plasmatic womb had created a monster... one too strong for it to hold. Using programmed techniques the evil Joker had past inflicted, it tore out of this mess, relentlessly shredding the pieces of Scripture which happened to get in its way. It glared as hot as the sun itself, those soulless, oozing, skeletal sockets piercing Scripture's sensors with a vicious hatred that could melt steel.
Unfortunately, Scripture happened to be made of such a thing. And indeed, the mechanical frankenstein made sure to reply to his attacker with the red, firery sourness of hellish scorn. He glinted in the sun, the snow having melted from his steps. The mechanical wreck saw nothing, but it still heard... indeed. He calculated, using ballistic tables, what was around him and what he could hit by trajectories alone, from remnants of smell and sound and disintegrated touch subtly examining the eternal iciness of the steppe.
This was a fire; some said the Earth would end in it. However Metal Man subscribed to quite a different category... one of ice. His wrecked, burned, bespoilt hand forlornly grasped some snow... and crushed it into a bitter ball. The last remnants of his systems powered up for what might have been the last sign--what remained crackled and blasted, gouts of blood and still-burning lubricant flying about and splattering on the snow, staining it as if this being's rage would taint all which it touched.
An almost heavenly glow appeared around the tattered abomination, the wrecked man's skeletal face showing the appearance of a lich, or perhaps some sort of grim reaper. Of technology. But he had not changed; the same thoughts raced, although he had to shut off his organic sensors. They had simply been destroyed. His brain, fatigued and damaged indirectly but intact to think, saw nothing but rage.
Even with it off, though, a hissing noise echoed through Metal Man's entire being as he accessed all his reserves, planning to throw them at his hated foe. He knew it would be more than simply blowing up some armor plates this time, but the time had come for him to forget such petty squabbles. The world would be better without his foe... and perhaps himself.
He turned to the sun, staring at it as if to ask why it had forsaken him. Indeed, he did not see, but at once he was aware of the nature he had ignored. He had to make peace with it to overcome his foe... that had been his mistake throughout this entire battle!
He felt, vaguely, the ice cooling the wounds beneath the crispy, crunchy metallic hand holding it. It felt as if it could heal this nasty damage, even though it was probably damaging it as it spoke. But without reason, the body simply turned like a mad diver and pushed under the snow.
He felt at one with that which he lost here; the snow was deep enough to be surrounded by; indeed, he sensed his opponents possibly confused steps from above. What sort of half-dead cyborg uses his strength to go beneath the snow? But at last... the answer came.
He manipulated his energies... he knew how to form crystals with water. He used the very lifeforce of himself to manipulate the crystals. Life support lost power as vast spears of ice stabbed at the tornado, becoming so tall that the trees themselves would fear being buried beneath a new ice age. The icy wrath of Metal Man continued until the tornado was entombed in ice... cold... blue... truly evil ice of hatred.
Metal Man's program complete, and his last effort done, he stopped thinking as the massive 30-foot ice tomb collapsed atop his foe, struck by encircling lightning which would be as extensive to fly at his foe's eyes high in the sky; the wrath of nature which had been imbalanced. The Metal Man, at least for this battle, was finished; frozen solid... ...so that he could be revived again to fight another battle.
As for his foe... who knows? Many pounds of ice, even numbering in the hundreds, stabbed and fell upon him; but he was crafty. Either way, it was not a decisive ending... given a jolt, either would probably continue their death dance.... but most likely not now.
Amongst the destruction sat one thing out of place; a single rose of ice over Metal Man's last position. Having had attempted to destroy what he felt was the personation of ugliness, he had left at least one mark of beauty on the now scarred and burnt steppe area, a place which would likely be known as the Plain of Demons after this mess.
EMP raced through it. Hundreds of circuits died. Little was left... but a few extremely protected chips survived. They had been taken out of missiles; the man who built his armor had balked at the request. "Are you sure, sir? These things are worse than death. They'll keep you alive, but at the cost of your very soul."
Metal Man cared not; he wanted the ultimate edge, and indeed, against certain death, these ballistic units went into action. On fire, melting, near death, unable to use any of his transformations or other devices which would render such things a simple intransigence, his mechanical armor thrashed in primal fury enough to challenge the very twister itself.
The plasmatic womb had created a monster... one too strong for it to hold. Using programmed techniques the evil Joker had past inflicted, it tore out of this mess, relentlessly shredding the pieces of Scripture which happened to get in its way. It glared as hot as the sun itself, those soulless, oozing, skeletal sockets piercing Scripture's sensors with a vicious hatred that could melt steel.
Unfortunately, Scripture happened to be made of such a thing. And indeed, the mechanical frankenstein made sure to reply to his attacker with the red, firery sourness of hellish scorn. He glinted in the sun, the snow having melted from his steps. The mechanical wreck saw nothing, but it still heard... indeed. He calculated, using ballistic tables, what was around him and what he could hit by trajectories alone, from remnants of smell and sound and disintegrated touch subtly examining the eternal iciness of the steppe.
This was a fire; some said the Earth would end in it. However Metal Man subscribed to quite a different category... one of ice. His wrecked, burned, bespoilt hand forlornly grasped some snow... and crushed it into a bitter ball. The last remnants of his systems powered up for what might have been the last sign--what remained crackled and blasted, gouts of blood and still-burning lubricant flying about and splattering on the snow, staining it as if this being's rage would taint all which it touched.
An almost heavenly glow appeared around the tattered abomination, the wrecked man's skeletal face showing the appearance of a lich, or perhaps some sort of grim reaper. Of technology. But he had not changed; the same thoughts raced, although he had to shut off his organic sensors. They had simply been destroyed. His brain, fatigued and damaged indirectly but intact to think, saw nothing but rage.
Even with it off, though, a hissing noise echoed through Metal Man's entire being as he accessed all his reserves, planning to throw them at his hated foe. He knew it would be more than simply blowing up some armor plates this time, but the time had come for him to forget such petty squabbles. The world would be better without his foe... and perhaps himself.
He turned to the sun, staring at it as if to ask why it had forsaken him. Indeed, he did not see, but at once he was aware of the nature he had ignored. He had to make peace with it to overcome his foe... that had been his mistake throughout this entire battle!
He felt, vaguely, the ice cooling the wounds beneath the crispy, crunchy metallic hand holding it. It felt as if it could heal this nasty damage, even though it was probably damaging it as it spoke. But without reason, the body simply turned like a mad diver and pushed under the snow.
He felt at one with that which he lost here; the snow was deep enough to be surrounded by; indeed, he sensed his opponents possibly confused steps from above. What sort of half-dead cyborg uses his strength to go beneath the snow? But at last... the answer came.
He manipulated his energies... he knew how to form crystals with water. He used the very lifeforce of himself to manipulate the crystals. Life support lost power as vast spears of ice stabbed at the tornado, becoming so tall that the trees themselves would fear being buried beneath a new ice age. The icy wrath of Metal Man continued until the tornado was entombed in ice... cold... blue... truly evil ice of hatred.
Metal Man's program complete, and his last effort done, he stopped thinking as the massive 30-foot ice tomb collapsed atop his foe, struck by encircling lightning which would be as extensive to fly at his foe's eyes high in the sky; the wrath of nature which had been imbalanced. The Metal Man, at least for this battle, was finished; frozen solid... ...so that he could be revived again to fight another battle.
As for his foe... who knows? Many pounds of ice, even numbering in the hundreds, stabbed and fell upon him; but he was crafty. Either way, it was not a decisive ending... given a jolt, either would probably continue their death dance.... but most likely not now.
Amongst the destruction sat one thing out of place; a single rose of ice over Metal Man's last position. Having had attempted to destroy what he felt was the personation of ugliness, he had left at least one mark of beauty on the now scarred and burnt steppe area, a place which would likely be known as the Plain of Demons after this mess.
Super Smash Quest: Fighting evil since 2002.