NLBFT 12: The First Round Beckons

[Galefore]

And now the end is begun.

A quick copypaste of the rules, and we're off.

Rules:

1. This will be judged by three people and have sixteen combatants. All round battles are in ONE TOPIC, such as “First Round” will be for the first set, and “Second Round” for the second, etc. This matches the most recent and also the most classic form for the NLBFT, as it was the first form used and also the most recent, as reinstated by SML.

2. This is for serious battlers only. I won’t restrict who joins and who doesn’t, but if you cannot write, do not join this very important event, for either judge or battler. By saying “Cannot Type”, I mean no spaces, punctuation, capitalization, etc. I would prefer that only seniors and vets join, but newbies of high skill level and regular members are just as welcome. It is a free forum, after all. Remember, this is a tournament of high pedigree, and you will likely be facing tough opponents, so do not expect to be baby treated. High quality posts will probably be a must from the judges, and you would do best to remember that. Judges must be older members with a healthy amount of experience and lack of bias. Please heavily consider the responsibilities, as any judge who does not post a judgment within a week of the round’s end (with only a few exceptions) will be replaced or confronted.

3. There is a strict time limit. I've reset this to 2 days before a full point is lost, and one more before you're up for either another deduction or possible elimination. I'll make exceptions where due, but we need to make this a little quicker than last time around. Remember this, as it is standard, and complaints will only be considered if not simply whining. Also, reasons to have been absent are to be discussed by the judges as acceptable or not. If your computer explodes and you had no access to another, fine, but if you simply were too bored to try, it is elimination. It sounds retarded, but it isn’t. Trust me.

4. The judges word is final. I want to see good sportsmanship from the loser, and likewise from winner. I will be honest and tell you that if I lose my battle, I will not complain. Simply put, it is un-sportsmanlike and very dishonorable.

5. The first to post has battlefield choice in their specific battle. Make it something past generic, and give it some specialty and pizzazz. Not to say having an interesting battlefield is a rule, it’s just kind of useful.

Matchups:

Alpha division:
1. L007 vs. 5. Erdawn
2. Phenom vs. 8. KirbyBoy2000
3. Selene (Sarai and Samiel) vs. 7. Teh Dahkness
4. Inferno vs. 6. Tazy

Beta division:
1. Galefore vs. 8. Lycrios
2. X-3 vs. 4. MC Mushi Mo
3. Wyborn vs. 7. Acradius
5. Vapor vs. 6. Bartman

Judges:
Seat 1: SD (Joined via PM)
Seat 2: Repster
Seat 3: Kargath

[Wyborn]

Most, most interesting.

Acradius, would you care to make the field, or should I?

[Kargath]

For those who wish to write to spec, here are my judging criteria again:

My ten points are divided into several categories, each with their own point weighting. Also, I use decimals.

Narrative - General (3.5 Points)
This category concerns the general theme of "what have you got to say?"
Does your story flow correctly? Are the characters defined well? Is the dialogue interesting, assuming you have a situation where talking would take place? Can the reader follow what is going on, and is there a logical connection between each sub event? All of these factors and more will influence this category.
Writing - Technique (4 Points)
As opposed to the above, this category is concerned with how you are saying what you wish to say. Spelling, correct grammar, etc are the most obvious examples. Skilful use of polished description, simile and metaphor will be rewarded appropriately. Avoiding anything like the "WHAAAAAAAAAM" exchange in the last NLBFT would be appreciated.
Narrative - Originality (0.5 Point)
This was specifically separated in order to emphasise it. I want to experience something different, and I want everyone to take on the challenge of creating something new.
PROTIP: Make characters that are wholly your own if you wish to score here.
Narrative - Gradient And Scaling (1 Point)
If you write actions that are significantly above the previously established scale of the fight, you will be penalised. Don't do anything which would reasonably kill a character. (I may provide an exception for if you post just an hour or two before deadline, if you're making an effort to 'cap off' a story.) The "I WIN" button is not for your personal use. If you perform an action such as trapping the other fighter in a slowly contracting sphere of killydeathdeathwalls as the last thing in your fight, and that character has had stated limits previously that would prevent them from even moderately dealing with that situation, then you suffer the loss in this category, not them.
Misc - Fuzz Point (1 Point)
Since things never go PERFECTLY to spec, I've included a category for anything I feel like at the time. This is meant to cover anything I've forgotten above.

Note that there is no scope for gaining points from doing more damage to your opponent in your posts. This is the NLBFT, I expect some sort of combat, but you simply won't win just by declaring yourself to do damage. I intend to judge your writing first and foremost.

[Mushi]

Alright, now all I need is for X-3 to show up...

(meaning I'm deferring the right to first post to my opponent.)

[Joker]

And now the end is begun.

Matchups:

Alpha division:
1. L007 vs. 5. Erdawn
2. Phenom vs. 8. KirbyBoy2000
3. Selene (Sarai and Samiel) vs. 7. Teh Dahkness
4. Inferno vs. 6. Tazy

Beta division:
1. Galefore vs. 8. Lycrios
2. X-3 vs. 4. MC Mushi Mo
3. Wyborn vs. 7. Acradius
5. Vapor vs. 6. Bartman

Judges:
Seat 1: SD (Joined via PM)
Seat 2: Repster
Seat 3: Kargath

I haven't seen a first round pick this interesting in a while.

[X-3]

Alright, now all I need is for X-3 to show up...

(meaning I'm deferring the right to first post to my opponent.)

But I wanted to let you have the first post. D:

No, seriously, go ahead. I prefer to have my opponents choose the arena.

[Kargath]

Well ONE of you needs to go first.

[Galefore]

I would actually prefer Lycrios to go first, but it's up to him.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

OoC: L if you don't mind, I have an introduction in mind.

[Kargath]

NLBFT Chat Thread is open, for those who haven't seen it.
(and with that I'm off for food)

[LOOT]

However you want to do it, Erdawn. I need to make a quick call before I get the brain fired up for this.

[Apiary Tazy]

I better start this off....

The small planet floated all by itself in the distance. Lonely, and unpopulated, it had seen many battles in its short life. The area around it was a Graveyard of Ships, and the planet itself was a Round and Giant Rock.

Suddenly, the planet is showered with light and a strange man walks through the circle of light that he himself caused.

"So.....this is the planet of war?" Says this man. He is covered in a strange substance that covered his whole body, yet doesn't hide his elf-like ears, or Strange Armor

"I'm not impressed....but this is as good a place as any to train." The substance uncovered his face. Revealing him to have Blue Skin. He strikes a Fighting pose and awaits someone to come along......

[Lycrios]

Beady eyes surveyed the cool surroundings, all four of them blinking alternatively. A slim deep purple tongue licked at the air before him, peeking out through layers of razor shape triangular teeth. Moisture dampened the loose fitting dark blue robe and glistened on his scaly coppery skin. Tail lashed out calmly, lifting up dust from behind his soft footsteps. The soft scratching of his clawed feet on the paving stones was the only sound, that and the end of the staff he used to walk with. More of a sway than an actual walk, as it seemed his body held not a bone, the way it twisted with each step.

A soundless wind swept through the hollow city, yet the thick mist within it did not stir. No sunlight could pierce through this strange fog, but even here there was light, enough to leave visibility in one’s direct surroundings. Windowless windows opened into empty buildings covered in a thick blanket of dust. Jagged towers climbed the heights only to end abruptly, as if never finished. Not a sign of life, other than himself, was to be seen.

Something told him the quiet serenity of this place would soon be at an end. Kyen shifted, holding his staff ready. Something felt different. His lips twitched as his tongue slithered wildly. Something was drawing nearer. White teeth bared in a cruel smile, he waited. Ready.


[[ Not up to the caliber I had hoped, but it’s something. Need to get back into the Gunjin more often. ]]

[Galefore]

Ah. Interesting. So this is a four-eyed lizard creature? Then I had better come up with something fun.

[Inferno Dragon]

A draconian ship approaches the dead planet and ship graveyard.

Inferno: so, this is the planet of war huh?

Thunder: yes, it's a dead world but we still need to research it for our planet mapping.

Inferno: all right then, I'm going down there to see what it's like. if I get into trouble I'll send up a signal, a pillar of fire, if you see a pillar of fire, I want you to teleport me back to the ship immediately.

Thunder: sure thing Inferno, teleporting now.

With a few key strokes, Inferno disappeared from his position on the bridge of the draconian star cruiser and re-appeared on the surface of the planet. The dragonic saiyan looked around,not noticing much except that there was some kind of strange substance in the air that couldn't be identified. Inferno "hmm"ed and then saw an armored, blue skinned elf-like being standing before him.

Inferno: huh? who are you? I thought this planet was dead.

[X-3]

OoC: Okay, fine, I'll go first. Post to follow in edited form.
---

The soldier lay on the ground. All around him were his corpses, dressed in red-trimmed armor. He breathed heavily as he tried to recount the tragic battle. The amount of blood he remembered was staggering. His comrades...all slaughtered. And for what? To take down a measly bear!?

The Soldier rose, dropping the lance he had been equipped with. He looked at himself, not noting his injuries: for him, they were nothing like the blood his friends has spilled.

A roar sounded across the field. A familiar one to the soldier...the bear had returned. He grabbed his lance, and prepared himself for possible glory.

The bear charged from the distance. It's unusual yellow fur was blasted by the wind, as it let out let another ferocious roar. It opened it's jaws, and electricity started to run in between it's fangs. The soldier realized his grave mistake...but it was too late.
...
The bear finished it's new meal, before cleaning its self. It didn't want the marks of blood to stain it's beautiful coat. As its tongue rose up and down it's fur, its eye caught something in the distance: a traveller, perhaps?

It did not matter to the bear. Everyone was a meal in it's eyes. Unfortunately for many, the Lightning Bear was always hungry.
---
OoC: Yeah. Lightning Bear.

[Vapor]

Trevellyan stepped out of the void of space into the pseudo-atmosphere of the strange planet. It apparently was a moon of Jupiter, one covered in Ice -Ganymede, he guessed. Like the Earth's moon, humans had also spoiled this- the clean, smooth, glittering beautiful ice littered with the refuse of probes and failed attempts at colonization. The Moon God removed from his home contemplated again how much he detested th human race for their despoiling of the cosmos- haven't they done enough with their own planet? Apparently not. The colonization attempts had even distorted the atmosphere to make it suitable for humans.

He gazed out into the sky with his burning eyes. He sensed something was coming. Nay, he knew- He sensed the mind of another coming. And one was. Another of the confounded ships landed, and someone stepped out. Trevellyan glared at the stranger with the purest of contempt.

[Acradius]

Ok, if you don't mind, I'll set this firecracker off.

*Cracks his knuckles and downs a Rockstar*

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

Have you ever been everywhere? Everywhere at once? Have you ever left no grain of sand in the Sahara uninspected, while at the same time been on a first-name basis with every fish in the ocean? Acradius has. In fact, that's where he was at this very moment. Of course, his body was sitting on a Shinto-style temple, in a traditional lotus pose. But his mind? His mind was everywhere. He was viewing the core of the sun and exploring the dark surface of planet Eris. He was tracking the progress of the Voyager sattelite and the path of ants on the ground below. When someone meditates, they turn their attention inwards. They focus on themselves, shutting off the senses that interact with the world around them and using the powers of their mind to approach the problems of their life from angles they had never before considered. But for Acradius, whos mind was considerably more powerful than any natural human, found his own life was much less deserving of his attention. Instead of shutting down his external senses, he expanded them to the point of being absurd. He merely watched. He watched the human race. He watched people dying, people making love, people starving, and people celebrating. And when he was finished; when he had sated his unfathomable curiosity, he stopped.

The Time Warrior opened his ice-blue eyes, and felt the familiar touch of his own wild hair blowing in his face. He stood up and stretched (no easy feat in a suit of half-plate armor), as he surveyed the landscape around him. The nearest hundred yards or so was a rolling green landscape with a path ambling between a few large trees and a small pond. Broken and shattered statuary of Asian, serpentine dragons and small shrines dotted the area. It was a little bit of peace in the midst of a vast sprawl of urban chaos. On the horizon, he identified a pyramid, a castle, a volcano, and a building designed to look like a miniature city in itself. Somewhere off in the distance, a large, neon cowboy chucked his thumb over his shoulder. Aaaah Vegas.

Sin City was quiet, and frighteningly so. Everybody had been evacuated by the government. Not even the homeless and vagrant remained. What could cause such a mass exodus? There was no danger of hurricanes. Earthquakes were too far away, too deadened by the sand of the desert. Heat waves were always a danger, but man's love of air conditioning would have saved all those wealthy enough and smart enough to stay indoors. Sandstorms could actually cause property damage, but not much beyond knocking things around and breaking windows. But as much as the human race had fortified themselves against the elements, they had rarely encountered such a threat as would happen this mid-April afternoon.

Landing on the soft grass after a psionically-assisted leap off the shrine-styled casino, Acradius did one final check-up. He ran a mental diagnostic through every molecule of his body, every atom of his armor, and of course, the Quantum. He was at his peak. He would not have dared to show his face if he wasn't. If every cubed micron of his being wasn't brimming with power, he would have stayed in bed. Las Vegas, Nevada had been evacuated because there was a disaster coming alright. And Acradius Journeyman was only half of it.

[Mushi]

There was a venire of calm as the morning sun rose from behind the tall, jarring mountains of the East, slowly illuminating the valley below. Robert Fritz (better known as “Bobby”) was squatting motionless on what appeared at first glance to be a large boulder. However, upon closer inspection one would soon find that Bobby was squatting on a large landing craft, horribly battered and beaten from an unscheduled encounter with the Eastern Mountains. He stared around at all the towns and cities below. This planet seemed to be rather behind many others when it came to technological advancements, yet like so many others, the inhabitants did not know that on its surface, thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of miners and soldiers from the Battalion Regime were slowly sapping the world of its vital resources.

He was here to put a stop to that.

The mountain, a dormant giant of cold earth, stood defiantly still over the masses of the dead and dying, and Bobby emulated its stillness. He remained perfectly motionless, his perpetual toothy grin never wavering, the piercing gaze of his steel blue left eye coupled with the blank black lens of his right stared directly ahead into some distant plane. His head hung low, his back hunched over, as if some great burden rested upon it. His garb was highly unorthodox, a pitch black strait-jacket that did not bind his arms, although he kept them tightly folded across his chest despite this. His hair was long and matted, the tangled black mass hung low about his face and shoulders, partly obscuring his gaze but doing nothing to hinder his vision nor hide his permanent smile. His skin was ghastly pale, almost grey, and his frame was borderline anorexic. His body was the result of countless inhuman experiments, many of dubious scientific value. Bits of bio-tech machinery jutted out from areas of his skin where in fits of madness he had scratched and clawed his way through his own flesh to the offending experimental apparatus.

The numbers 989057 had been branded on his neck, and for the majority of his life, he had had no other title. He had been drafted at birth to serve in the science division of the Battalion Regime, an immense group mostly comprised of soldiers that help power over most of the galaxy. He managed to escape after many years of torture under the guise of science, but not before the damage had been done.

Suddenly, a red light appeared in his blank right eye. The light moved to the left, then to the right, seeming to scan the landscape. After a few seconds, Bobby stood up, his head still hung low and his arms still folded tightly, and clumsily hopped from his craft. About two miles in front of him, a fierce battle was waging, a battle that had captured the attention of his motion sensor. His smile still plastered across his face, he began to slowly trudge in that direction, humming softly to himself in a voice that that crackled with the sounds of electricity. After several minutes of dutiful trudging, his scanner activated again. About a hundred yards ahead, was a large creature. The first thought that came to his mind?

Bear.

The second?

Kill. His trudge turned into a light jog, which soon turned into a sprint towards the grooming bear. All the while he was cackling in his half-electric voice.

“Bear bear bear bear bear bear bear!”

[Galefore]

OoC: Well, here it is. Not quite as good as I’d like, but I can work with it. Note that even though I have described my creature as ‘immortal’, Gingal is quite damageable and slayable. However, he is cursed to never die of the hunger he feels, so that he may be a perfect tool of destruction.

---------

Every world, every land in nature’s kingdom, is bathed in beauty; and rich with tenderness, nature cares tenderly for all of its lands, all of its hand-made shells of uselessness inhabited by all and everyone, and by creatures who unwittingly replenish and destroy the earthen glory they so feebly try to control. And none truly watch it grow, as they stare impatiently at their own lives and inward beg for them to speed up. The joys of youth are always so imbecilic.

Even so, the earth itself is populated by lands untouched by nature. Only by human waste. And left like a boned-fish’s innards on the ground, it rots and reeks and it cries in torment, none-cared for and never noticed. This place, this rotten husk of a ‘city’, was exactly that: a land so dusted with filth and with smog that none remain. And in eternal limbo it sits, like some unforgiving teacher’s glare remains in the back of a child’s mind, unwanted but foreboding.

And those who find this place are even less wanted.

A clatter of running feet, like hoof beats, could be heard. And to those who heard it, it seemed as those it were a stampede of some prehistoric monstrosity whose legs left lakes in their wake. Paving stones crumbled like clods of dirt thrown haphazardly to the ground by an impetuous child. Doomed was the mortal ambiance of this place, now replaced and murdered by a noise not unlike a roar. The ground itself wept in agony as the creature ran. He wouldn’t stop. And the sight of it, even shrouded in fog, was unforgivably disturbing: a beastly ball of muscle, not toned and bulging, but instead round and unpleasant. A reddish liquid, which gave the false appearance of blood but was, in fact, a form of acidic dribble, leaked out of its grimacing mouth. Skin of pure black, smooth and without ears or hair, curved as a bump over the beast’s body, showing forth a frowning mouth full of dagger-like teeth and nearly invisible black eyes. An orange tongue, stained in red, licked the red gums housing the impossibly disgusting mouth with putrid breath easily noticeable from a great distance.

Standing at nearly eleven feet tall, the creature boasted to short legs, and four long arms, each, including the ’legs’ ending in a jet-black clawed hand. Its black orb of a torso was covered in ornate white markings, florid and pleasant compared to its hideous maw. It showed no signs of having a nose to those who saw it, but it had six small nostrils on the back of its head, which it used to sense anybody who came behind it, as well as two miniscule nostrils above each nondescript eye. To all who had seen it, it was called Gingal, and had been known by tribes of old by the legendary name “Zone Eater”. It heaved and called out in a disgusting roar, and continued to plod at a moderate pace through the city.

The lizard-like creature already there was right. This would not be a peaceful affair.

Its run crawled to a halt. Its head lifted upon an odd, retractable neck, and it apparently took quite the liking to the look and smell of this new thing in front of it. It screeched and begged a glance from the many-eyed lizard before him. Hungry eyes surveyed the creature, and Gingal opened its mouth further to reveal a maw capable of opening at least three feet wide. Within, one could see its torture: instead of a throat, it had a sort of dimensional hole, some wizard’s trick, to keep the beast from ever enjoying any prey it found. But its feral nature and immortal body led the starved beast to feed, causing it to come into a rage of hunger every time it met an opponent.

This was not Kyen’s lucky day.

With a screech, the immense ball of fat lunged forward, swiping his clawed hand at Kyen’s robed form.