Malazan Empire: Ultimate deathmatch 4 - Malazan Empire

Jump to content

  • 5 Pages +
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Last »
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

Ultimate deathmatch 4 Yes, YES! Drink his Blood!

#21 User is offline   Mezla PigDog 

  • Malazan Yo Yo Champion 2009
  • Group: Mezla's Thought Police
  • Posts: 2,666
  • Joined: 03-September 04

Posted 15 February 2009 - 04:52 PM

Illy vs Mez Round 1, post 2 (or 4!)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The pain was unbearable. Fantassy stared at his charred hand as it tried to cradle his broken sword arm. It looked like a brittle dead tree branch, oozing brown sap. The sword arm was a misshapen swollen mass that was starting to turn blue. He had clearly lost his mind since his sword seemed to be talking to him.

Mr Kleesh'ay, this is Agent Erikson of the Bureau of Progressive Fantasy speaking

"Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh"

Pull yourself together, you miserable wretch and listen to me

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

I said shut up that screaming and do as I say!

"Shhhhhvvvaaaaaaarrrrrggggggghhhh………..hic"



------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Farm-Boy-U-Like Ltd executive box, high in the arena where money buys almost guaranteed spectator survival, Fantassy's sponsors sat back in relief.

"For a moment there, I thought the sword was going to go off and we'd be for it" said the man. "Popcorn?" He got to his feet and headed for the door then stopped dead, a shadowy figure materialising in his path. Falling back with his hands shielding his head, he fell to his knees,

"It's not our fault! We didn't know! Forgive us!" he blurted.

Ignoring the man, the shadowy figure casually stepped around him and settled into one of the deep cushioned seats, revealing himself as an elderly man. Drawing laconically on a cigarette he blew out the smoke and looked down to the charred figure of Fantassy Kleesh'ay on the floor of the arena. A long and disappointed sigh seeped from his lips as his gaze flicked to the now standing female Farm-Boy-U-Like Ltd employee.

"What is your mission?" he asked quietly.

The woman shifted uncomfortably on her feet and cleared her throat before replying. "My mission, on behalf of the Fantasy World Domination Committee, is to eliminate novel opponents that attempt to…er……reinvigorate the genre of fantasy, S-s-sir."

The old man nodded slowly, drawing deeply again on his cigarette.
"I don't see much shrimp on the barbeque here. Do you?" he asked.

Eyes twitching nervously between the ashy surface of the arena and the face of the old man, the woman mutely shook her head.

"Would you like to tell me about the sabotage of a clone that my organisation has effectively used in over 200 fantasy stories to save the world in an uninspiring yet highly efficient fashion?" he drawled menacingly, leaning forward in his seat and baring coffee stained teeth.

Chewing her lip, the woman looked at her feet.

"If the boy survives this charring, I expect you to fix this or it's the Jordan treatment for you," he said. Rising from the chair he dusted cigarette ash from his clothes and finished, "I assume you enjoy braiding hair?"

The woman's eyes widened and she stammered, "Y-y-y-yes, Chairman Eddings. I-I-I mean no, Chairman Eddings. I-I-I-I understand".

A cold smile drew across the wrinkled face and he breathed out a lungful of smoke that expanded to fill the room. When it dissipated, he was gone and her companion was a lifeless corpse on the floor.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The giant mechanoid shrimp was lurching around the blasted centre of the arena, the sounds of an argument emanating from deep within. The screaming from Fantassy abruptly stopped and the absence of the sound was deafening after those tortured wails. The Mansplitter wheeled to face the boy again. He slowly rose to his feet, burned flesh making wet splitting noises as his exposed bone and sinews straightened. The sword dangled loosely at his side, the only unmarred part of the boys devastated body was the hand gripping the sword hilt. Was he grinning or was it just the rictus effect of the burns ravaging his now featureless face?



The sword sprang to life, Fantassy's body flopping like a ragdoll in its wake, red brown sticky streaks marking the spots where his melted flesh touched the floor. The shrimp fired its eye lasers again. The sword twitched to flick the boys body out of the way, an outflung leg was nicked by the beams and the tortured screaming began again. The shrimp skittered around the arena floor, pursued by the sword wielding the boy behind it. The frequency of bursts from the eye lasers increased but still they could not do lasting damage to their target. No longer constrained by the rigid skeleton of the intact human arm, the sword was free to swing as wildly as it wished but it could not get through the barrage of laser beams or snapping claws to land a hit on the armoured hull. The shrimp scuttled backwards, giving itself time and space to fire up the eye lasers to full intensity for one last burst. The sword and the boy grew still in the arena as a hum emerged from the mechanoid, the intensity of the crimson light increasing. Fantassy's breath wheezed out in sodden gasps between harrowing screams. Finally, two brilliantly bright scarlet beams arced towards Fantassy's intact hand. The sword lurched up, bending the broken arm in so many directions at once that some people in the crowd threw up. The shrieking reached epic proportions as the blade of the sword met the twin beams and Fantassy's arm came off at the elbow with a wet pop. This time the sword had judged the angle perfectly and the blade deflected the beams back at the head of the landship Mansplitter. There was an explosion of crimson light and a cloud of dust billowed up into the arena, obscuring the ravaged opponents from view. The screaming had stopped.

This post has been edited by Mezla PigDog: 16 March 2009 - 07:47 PM

Burn rubber =/= warp speed
0

#22 User is offline   drinksinbars 

  • Soletaken
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 2,162
  • Joined: 16-February 04

Posted 15 February 2009 - 04:57 PM

DIBS Vs Cause Intro (Post 1 of 4)
----------------------------------------------

“Crucifixion?” asked the man with the clipboard.

Martin having only just joined the queue, leaned to one side to get a better look at where he was heading to and to check he was in the right place.

“Crucifixion?” asked the man again to the next person in line. “Through that door, yes, no on your right, thank you!”

Martin stepped forward, the man giving him a slightly quizzical look before asking in a hesitant tone, “crucifixion?”

“No, death match,” answered Martin quickly, remembering that scene in Spartacus with a sense of dread.

The man, bearded and wearing an oddly dusty poncho stared down at his clipboard again and then back to Martin’s face and for the briefest moment, Martin could look right into his mind and see the word ‘crucifixion’ repeat it self in bewildered tones.

“Death match?” asked the man after a long pause.

“Some sort of weight loss program, I belief,” added Martin. The man made a deliberate show of looking Martin up and down, and couldn’t help but notice how thin he was before nodding to himself.

“I suppose that is one way of looking at it, though losing a few arms or legs in the pursuit of a diet seems excessive. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer crucifixion, double pay on a Saturday and it always gets the Christians hot and bother as they park their cars?” he said with a hopeful look.

“No, I think I would prefer the work out,” said Martin.

“Back the way you came then and take the right, not the left, costume department I think, or perhaps armament might be better suited for you.”

Martin backed away, a few minutes walking took him to a warehouse sized area full of every type of costume imaginable but few that seemed probable and wearable. Wandering in a sartorial daze, Martin had spent a few minutes in awe until he finally spotted a service desk.

“Morgoth?” asked the worker behind the desk. He was a big man, burly being the appropriate description that first jumped to Martin’s mind. Dressed in coveralls of faded brown with black stains down one side he had the look of a man with no business in costume.

“Martin,” he answered.

The big burly man blinked owlishly.

“Crucifixion is back the way you came and on the left,” said the man.

“I am here for the death match,” replied Martin, starting to get annoyed.

After a long pause and another exaggerated blink the man said, “we have many different forms of powered suits or costumes if you wish to use one of them, for someone of your size though, well we may need to pad one out a bit.”

Martin looked down at the dirty jeans, the flamboyant shirt and the tatty blazer he wore thinking perhaps he had taken the black books image a little far when he got out of bed that morning.

“Perhaps something Viking?” he said.

They moved together, back through the warehouse until they came to a section under the heading “Ancient Earth Cultures: Human”. Martin wondered briefly about what other ancient cultures they may cater for to require such a specific determination, but put it aside when after another brief walk they came to a large stretch that was populated with every imaginable Viking cliché available. Everything was oversized, built for giants of men but Martin was determined now that he had seen what was there, that this was how he would dress.

“There’s nothing in your size,” said the man with a harsh laugh.

“So?” asked Martin, his tone dangerous and menacing all of a sudden.

Shrugging, the man lifted down the equipment while Martin made sure to grab his two hip flasks from his blazer pockets. A massive weighty length of chain went on over his shirt, crushing him under its ringed steel. Heavy shoulder guards with wicked steel points hedge-hogged over it came next and they settled onto Martin’s bony shoulders with so much room to spare that they swung back and forward with every movement. Gauntlets so large that deep shadows surrounded his wrists where they flared were placed over his hands. Boots fourteen sizes too large and built for a man with legs three times longer than martins came up to his knees, wrapped in fur and lined with ridges of bone swallowed his feet as he stepped into them, jeans and loafers still on. The final piece of the outfit was the massive bone antler helmet he had first spied. It was a large bowl almost half a metre in diameter with thick horns stretching out to each side, the bone twisted and knotted turned to the hew of dun stone.

“What about a weapon?” asked Martin, his face only slightly strained though the weight must have been immense.

“An axe?” asked the worker, his amazement written plain on his face.

“Better make it two,” said Morgoth, “just in case.”

The first axe was almost the size of the worker and the bulging of his muscles and discolouration of his face spoke volumes toward its mass. A single broad blade curved on one side, Morgoth grasped it in one hand as the worker struggled with it. The weight as it settled in his hand was both reassuring and familiar. The second axe was larger than the first, but not as tall, with two enormous butterfly blades on either side of a shaft so thick the burly man couldn’t close his hand around it.

Unable to take its weight the man slipped and fell, the axe slipping lose of its holding and plunging into the man’s groin, splitting him in two from his crotch up to his ribcage. The axe’s weight had driven the blade through his fat body and embedded it deep into the concrete floor. Morgoth reached down with his free hand and yanked the blade free. A long tongue snaked far out of his wide smiling lips to lap up the blood from along the edge of the blade. Smoke began to slip from the blades shaft, as Morgoth’s hand sank into the dark wood, blackening it further.

Stepping over the corpse Morgoth headed toward the arena, his boots no longer seeming too big for him to fill.

This post has been edited by drinksinbars: 16 February 2009 - 02:28 PM

0

#23 User is online   Cause 

  • Elder God
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 5,739
  • Joined: 25-December 03
  • Location:NYC

Posted 15 February 2009 - 07:30 PM

DIBS Vs Cause Intro (Post 2 of 4)

Spreading across a thousand acres and a hundred worlds, the ultimate arena! Home to the ultimate death match, though perhaps more famously also the setting for the multi-verses most popular reality show the multi-verse has talent. An amalgamation of the architecture of a thousand worlds and a thousand times. In Arena 22-B a titan warmech battled against a sorcerer the fight streaming out on a hundred channels. In 52-F a summoned demon fought a cold the action appearing only in the scrying pools of wizards. Our stories focus however is taking place in 66-D. 66-D is nothing special, it is in fact one of the Ultimate Arena’s more regular settings. The arena’s centre was oval in shape and floored in black tile. With a raised hill in the middle of that as its only ornament. But it is here that an expectant crowd gathers to watch one of the more promising fights of the 4th annual Ultimate death match.
It is here that our stories’ players gather. Let us begin with the two malazanite forum lurkers (a kind of cult apparently, with seven holy books and growing) who had had been drawn like iron to a lodestone at the promise of the impending bloodshed. They were strangers to each other but their carried copies of Steven Eriksons limited editions of gardens of the moons quickly identified to each man that despite appearances they were kindred spirits. The first was perhaps in his late thirties, early forties. Dressed in a navy blue suit and power tie it was obvious that he was here during his lunch break from the office. The second was dressed in a black blazer a shield and motto on his its breast pocket. This information combined with his young age made it just as obvious that he was skipping school to be here. The older man extending his box of popcorn to his companion asked "Explain it to me again". His companion sighed, an act with consequences during eating popcorn that should not be shared, and repeated by rote what he had been saying "Cause is fighting DIBS". The gentleman squinted at the Viking in the arena and replied "I thought DIBS was Irish" The student with new found respect for his own teachers explained that yes that was Morgoth, from Norway. "Then Cause is fighting Morgoth surely?" The gentleman fairly shouted in exasperation. "No, Morgoth is fighting Captain Gershon. Cause is battling Ben. DIBS is fighting Shade and martin is up against Bauchelin but those fights are in a different Arena." the student reiterated now wondering if maybe he was also confused. "Ben, Martin?" the gentleman fairly whispered his eyes staring at his hands as they clenched and unclenched in his lap. "That’s their real names, DIBS and Morgoth are just aliases. All of them have them. What don’t you watch wrestling anymore, too old?" Suddenly the gentlemen looked up a sense of triumph glowing in his eyes "If you’re so smart" he said "explain how all of that can be going on at once". Suddenly the student recoiled in horror leaning as far back away from the gentleman as he could "Oh" he said "Your one of those".
"One of what" the gentleman asked truly perplexed.
"WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LEAVE THE GOD DAMN TIMELINE ALONE!!!"

Elsewhere Liz was striding down one of the ultimate arena's many service corridors. She needed to be in arena 66-D to watch the fight and was already running late. She had spent too long trying to get a sample of lady Influenza’s blood. She was dressed as a stereo type of her profession. Her eyes behind large re-inforced plastic safety glasses, her hands in rubber gloves. From shoulder to knee she was covered in what once must have started life as a white lab coat and which was not stained green, blue and black. Finally she reached the doors to the judge’s sky-box. Opening it she was immediately greeted by the rising climax of shouts from outside in the arena. Her fellow judge Shin was already seated. He was dressed all in black with a katana strapped to his back. "Hey liz" he called “what’s with the outfit, something more uhmmm martial would have been more appropriate I think". Glancing down at her own outfit she replied "I don’t know what you mean I’m wearing all the PPE I need".
"PPE" Shinrei questioned
"Personal protection equipment, It has all the latest enchantments I assure you. Proof against acid, alkaline and all disease." she answered "What about you, just because you live in japan does not make you a ninja". Shinrei outrage jumped to his feet "Oh no? Watch this" his hand in one fluid motion reached into his belt withdrew and in a violent motion threw whatever was in his hand to the ground. It landed with a plop sound and did nothing. Mezla's eyes were drawn to it in expectation. A second passed, than two, at three it at last it started working. Slowly at first than quicker a cloud of orange smoke began to rise. Mezla again looking at shin though he was partially obscured by the smoke raised her eyebrows. "Its the damn economic recession okay, you know how much a decent smoke bomb costs" he whined. Suddenly the cheers and shouts outside stopped. Both judges now leaning on the rail of their skybox were just in time to see a man in heavy armour and wielding a kind of spear enter the arena. "Where does Cause find these people" they exclaimed as one.

Striding out from the shadow into the light Captain Gershon entered the arena. In his left hand he carried his helmet, in his right a kind a spear. Its blade was a wicked piece of steal oddly large for a spear but stranger still was that connected to the shaft was a coiled length of chain. With a powerful thrust he stabbed the but spike of his spear into the arena’s floor. Taking his helmet in both hands he raised it above his head looked up at the crowd and shouted before putting it on

"For the motherland”.

This post has been edited by Cause: 26 February 2009 - 06:38 PM

0

#24 User is offline   drinksinbars 

  • Soletaken
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 2,162
  • Joined: 16-February 04

Posted 15 February 2009 - 07:56 PM

DIBS Vs Cause Battle (Post 3 of 4)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The axe head began to throb as heat dripped into it with every step toward the arena. Within a few paces the dark corridor was flaring crimson as the blade sizzled with heat. Bright globules of molten metal left a hissing trail on the floor. From red to orange and from orange to white, the heart of the blade began to pulse in time with the steady beat of Morgoth’s heart. The temperature in the corridor began to rise dramatically, making the walls sweat, bubble and burn filling the confined space with a cloying black smoke.

Morgoth began to increase his pace and with each heavy thump of his boots pieces of burning steel splash away from the edges of the blade. Those unfortunate enough to have been crowding the corridor had succumbed in moments to the poisonous presence of the demonic Morgoth and he strode over their corpses with indifference. He cocked his right arm back behind his head then extended it in one long graceful movement. The smoke split around that glittering blade, caught in its thunderous wake as Morgoth sent it before him as a herald of doom.

For a heartbeat the glowing trail hung in the air before him as a misshapen collection of white hot metal that traced its way to the giant across the arena floor. The speed of the throw tore the sand off of the ground behind it and carried it onward in a churning wave. Even as the sand flowed forward the heat of the axe melted and burned it so the front of that wave became a jagged collection of glass spars growing longer with each instant.

The growing wall of sand exploded outward as a spear, trailing a massive chain, burst from its midst in a shower of glass. With no time to change his course, Morgoth could only comprehend the bloom of agony as the spears tip was pushed boldly through his belly and tore its way out of his back. A lucky twist as it struck saved his spine, but momentum pushed him farther through the spear until the first few rings of chain had passed into his guts. His forward momentum finally stopped as he crashed into the chest of his opponent, breaking his nose as his face planted in a jagged tear of metal that stretched across his opponent’s body.

Stunned and disorientated, Morgoth instinctively grasped the spear with one hand, while desperately clinging to the axe in his other. With a shove that sounded and felt like a steam train his opponent thrust forward once more, only Morgoth’s grip keeping the giant from thrusting the spear completely through his body. The movement ended abruptly as the giants reach was fully extended, and Morgoth, his feet lifting off the sand, found his head whipped backward into near oblivion.

***

Martin sat up, feeling groggy and a little under the weather. He had been having more of those dreams; dreams that felt like living nightmares. The room was dark; the curtains pulled tightly across so little light could creep through the spaces between. He reached for the water he had left on his bedside table, groping around for it before nearly tipping the glass. It tasted stale and flat, and even with a strange head cold he could smell something metallic in its touch. The after taste was enough to leave him coughing and gagging.

He tried to stand up, and failed. His legs, suddenly jelly like in consistency, dropped him on his face. Warmth bloomed around him and he knew from experience that his nose was bleeding, though the lack of pain gave him some hope that it hadn’t broke. He tried again to stand up, but it took him some time and left him shaking with the effort. He staggered over to the bedroom door, clutching the handle as he struggled to remain standing but it felt so hot to the touch he had to force himself to hold on.

Eventually he gave up, falling backward and dragging the door open as he went. He missed the edge of the bed by scant inches, catching it half way up his back instead. He didn’t even notice.

The door hung open, and beyond a giant metal face swung into view, filling the doorway. Heat poured in from outside as steam pumped from between metal plates, and bloody oil spilled thick and black from a jagged wound along its chest. Pain exploded in Martin’s belly and as he looked down he now saw the chain.

Links of black metal wormed their way out of his belly, splitting back flesh and muscle, breaking skin in a wide gapping wound that drowned in blood. The chain began to pick up speed, snaking across the floor to plunge out the bedroom door when suddenly it went taut, pulled at the far end just enough to lift it into the air and to pull Martin into a hunched over stance. Hands flailing at the links, but slick with blood, he was pulled toward the door in slow uncertain steps.

***

Morgoth screamed in rage as he felt his host crawling under his skin, warring with his will. Two battles raged in the arena, the battle for Martins body, and the battle with his body. Hanging between the two, Martin could only scream inside his mind as pain threatened to strip away all sanity.
Morgoth, his strength fading as his control slipped, brought the axe to bear. As the giant made to thrust once more, Morgoth gave his all to one last swing. A metal helmet bounced across the sand and the giant staggered back releasing his hold on the spear so that its weight dragged Morgoth to his knees. He dropped the axe to the sands, and reached for his whiskey flask. It burned going down, and as he watched it burned coming back out too.

“What a waste,” he said, reaching for the axe.

This post has been edited by drinksinbars: 09 March 2009 - 12:08 PM

0

#25 User is online   Cause 

  • Elder God
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 5,739
  • Joined: 25-December 03
  • Location:NYC

Posted 15 February 2009 - 08:04 PM

DIBS Vs Cause Battle (Post 4 of 4)

Walking the cobbled streets of ancient Ishan, the first city, one could forget there was a war. Forget that mere miles away on the far side of the river Styr that fed the city that the men of the glorious first army fought to defend their home. Only at night and even then only on a few, when the vagaries of whether, wind and temperature allowed, could one hear the crash of far off artillery as one tried to sleep.

As with all horrors, one could forget, however one did not. The streets were filled with reminders of a subtler kind. Ancient Ishan, proud Ishan, first city of man with not a man to be seen on its streets except the very young and the very old. Everywhere women, mothers of soldiers, wives of brave men, daughters of honourable fathers, their eyes haunted with the knowledge of the missing never to return. The war could be seen in empty streets that had once bustled with commerce. When the fear became too much some glanced up to the Mehtsonc Walls and thought are they not strong. Others glanced west towards the Great Temple either to remind themselves of god’s mercy or to remember the garrison of knights of the Prophet that resided there. But many, so many sought solace in the hoarding of letters from loved ones. As one such daughter of the motherland bent her head down to read such a letter at her kitchens table, a letter from her beloved husband which began:

Dearest Wife

I received your care package, thank you...


The criers for the cities newspapers called out their wares. “Read all about it, Read all about it”. Perhaps it is best she never heard their cries on the wind. Perhaps today the mercy of a god reached out to her or perhaps those vagaries of wind and temperature sheltered her. Either way perhaps it was best she never heard their cries on the wind for as it was her tears fell, marring the ink of a beloved husbands writing. Perhaps all she would ever have of him.
“Read all about it, read all about it. Tragedy strikes at Ultimate Death Match”

***

The crowd roared for blood indifferent to whom it would belong. The fight I was to learn was between our champion and a demon of a dark dimension. Though I had imagined a ravaging beast, or perhaps an incorporeal Wight like those sometimes seen in the war, I was not prepared for the horror of what I would truly see. What strode into that arena had not the aspect of a beats, the dead or the damned. It had the aspect of a man; it wore the face of war. I was prepared for anything I had thought, but not this revelation. We are the truest horror. What I looked at was no t some demon but our very own champion. With his head as yet uncovered by his helmet I had the opportunity to meet his eyes as they bored into the crowd. I was forced to look away. Only the dead could match that gaze, only the dead or another soldier.

As I sat in the sky box reserved for the press contemplating this thought I saw our champion don his helmet, scream ‘for the motherland’ and take his stance. It was at this moment that his opponent made himself visible a being that radiated malice and fire. It was as I had expected, but any fear that I might have felt was absent. I knew that our champion’s eyes were impassive behind his helmet. I knew now that nothing those eyes would ever see again would shock them. And I knew than as well that forever after this war there would be but two kinds of men. Those that had fought and survived and those fortunate few who never saw that horror first hand.

I watched as the demon burning with fire, shining with molten metal whipped back its hand and then threw one of its great axes towards its foe, it following a heartbeat behind. As the axe travelled I watched as its glow changed from a fierce red, to an incandescent blue and at last it shone with the purest white. As it flew it caught the sand of the arenas floor in its wake and for a moment it seemed our champion would be washed away in the wave of the demons hate.

Our champion stood resolute, immovable and for a moment I wondered if this is what he sought. An end to all the things he saw with those dead eyes, the images at last washed away. Than with a strike so fast I missed it he struck the axe aside with his harpoon caster. Shifting his stance he pointed his weapons deadly tip in the wave of heat blasted sand and fired. The harpoon shot through the wave, spraying sand and what I saw now was shards of glass into the crowds. Even in my skybox I saw shards bounce off the glass. The harpoon carried on its flight striking the demons chest and as I watched the demon continued forward to smack like a bullet into a shield into the champions chest. Our champion wrapped his hands around what shaft remained un-embedded in the demons flesh and struck out and up with his fullest force. The demon was lifted bodily off the ground his head whipping back and sounding a harrowing screech.

The demon was as yet unconquered though, possessing that unnatural strength of its race. With the clangour of a trip hammer against an anvil its second axe resounded of our champion’s helmet knocking it from his head. Hammering him to the ground and forcing him to drop his harpoon. Oddly the demon chose this moment to drop its axe and took a swig from a hip flask acting al the world like it had no more pressing concern. Than reaching again for its axe it raised it high above its head and brought it crashing down onto his opponent’s chest. Again and again he rained blows upon his downed opponent. I heard the screech of straining metal. Saw the armours wards flare blue in response to the demons red fiery axe.

At the last when I was convinced our champion must surely be dead his right hand reached out and caught the chain trailing from the demons chest and pulled. The demon toppled fell across our champion and as I watched our champions arms encircled the demon, wrapped him tight and crushed him in a hug. The armours wards flared brighter but so too did the demons heat .Their forms became obscured in the glow and when it at last died out completely two unmoving corpses were all that marked that arena floor.



This post has been edited by Cause: 26 March 2009 - 03:56 PM

0

#26 User is offline   Path-Shaper 

  • Mafia Modgod
  • Group: Game Mod
  • Posts: 1,255
  • Joined: 01-October 08

Posted 16 February 2009 - 09:32 AM

RESULT POST FOR PREVIOUS TWO FIGHTS

Illy Vs Mezla

voting result :-

DIBS Vs Cause

voting result:-
Only someone with this much power could make this many frittatas without breaking any eggs.
0

#27 User is offline   Tapper 

  • Lover of High House Mafia
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 6,646
  • Joined: 29-June 04
  • Location:Delft, Holland.

Posted 17 February 2009 - 08:54 AM

Tapper vs JA - Tapper's intro (post 1 of 4):

(note, caps in original intro have been replaced by bold italics) for reading ease:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“One hour to the start of your match, sir. You have fifteen minutes to announce your weapon of choice for the bout – the bookies need it to adjust the last minute odds.” The clerk, a small spotted green being with a froglike mouth and insectoid wings hovered near Trouble’s shoulder, a ridiculously oversized PDA in one three fingered hand, held in place by suction pads at the end of each digit.

I’ll make my choice,” the anthropomorphical entity rumbled. “Just considering what weapon I prefer.”

“Every single weapon you can imagine is here, so what’s holding you back?” the clerk squeaked, rather annoyed.

I don’t know if I still have the skills to wield them,” Violence replied, reminding himself of the conversation he had with his sister a few days ago.

Influenza was clearly a lot better off than he himself was: she lived in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, courtesy of the pharmaceutical industry. As he approached, the door was opened by a flunky in a doctor’s outfit. Typical. Back in the day, he had surrounded himself with Valkyries. Blond, busty and feisty. Seems they weren’t that different.

Yeah, she’s in bed and not to be disturbed,” he said before the toyboy could speak, shouldering past the man and stomping off towards the staircase and the single room it led to. She always was in bed. It was her nature, after all. He entered without knocking. Two scantily clad ladies in latex nurse uniforms turned towards him, one holding a thermometer. Likely hadn’t been using it on his sister’s armpit, he mused.

Hello sister,” he offered. Influenza turned towards him, pale complexion, watery blue eyes, platinum blond hair a messed up tangle.

Hello brother,” she replied in a shaky voice.

How are you doing?

I could be better. Why are you here?

I need your advice. I entered an Ultimate Deathmatch.

You fool. Your standing is the lowest it has been in centuries. You are vulnerable!

I have changed.

You have become a tertiary concern, Violence, and don’t you deny it. When was the last time you checked Death’s Ratings?

It’s been a while. I don’t have internet in my trailer.

I checked them last week. Accident is topping the lists, as he has been for ages. Those self styled hippie Segways of the Apocalypse are right behind him - Aids, Traffic, Bulimia and Drugs – of us ancient ones, only War and Famine are still doing well, thanks to Africa. You are nowhere to be seen. Outsourcing Domestic Violence during the early 17th century is biting you in the ass now.

As I said, I have changed. It makes me different, not worse.

You were dressed in golden armour and were covered in gore from head to toe, Violence.
Look at you now – there’s only pigeon shit on that ridiculous coat and I dare say self-indulgence has increased your girth – and not with muscle. When was the last time you wielded a sword anyway?


Iwo Jima, banzai charge against a machine gun emplacement.

That’s what I mean. It hasn’t even occurred to you to continue to practice, and thus, you’re losing your skills. You are only as good as the people you fight against and with, Violence. Don’t fight at all and you have nothing left.

What do you know about that?

I have to have a complete make-over every seven years to continue to circumvent the vaccinations, you dolt! Do you know how many medical scientists are out there trying to get me?” she screamed. “Who hired you anyway?

The Vatican. They had my card since the Crusades - they liked how I slaughtered the Saracens.
Aha. Just goes to show how those priests fail to understand how time changes everything. Hopelessly torn apart between the Bible and modern times.

You believe I stand no chance?

“You are Violence, you always stand a chance, it’s your nature. But you better relearn your skills fast, brother – and there’s no-one alive to teach you in this world. I fear you have to regain your skills in the arena, and get rid of that fat as well.

He stared at his feet, only then noticed he could hardly see them.

Brother?

Yes?

Get me some tickets.”

Death has a skybox.

He inspected the edge of the no-dachi – five feet of curved steel, one and a half for the grip. Such beauty, such craftsmanship. Maybe he’d wield it in another match, later on, when he had been able to adjust his mass and muscle length to something more explosive. He’d have to get hurt quite seriously before he could achieve that condition – he could do so only through regeneration.

Hopefully this Duke would help him on his way by pouring him full of lead. He recalled that banzai charge, how the Marines had emptied a full ammunition belt into him at point blank range before he staggered into them, bleeding black smoke from many holes, no longer even resembling a human form, to disembowel them all in three cuts.

He put the blade down reverentially and then took up the one weapon he was certain he could wield with some skill. “I choose this one.

“Go suck Orion’s cock and fuck a black hole!” the clerk screamed from where it hovered above him. “What by Andromeda’s tits are you going to do with a baseball bat against the Duke and his guns?”

Bash his head in, shove it up his arse, or go down trying. As Eastwood once said: ‘there’s nothing like a good ol’ piece of hickory wood’.

In Death’s Skybox a priest and a disease watched the bookies adjust their rates in favour of Duke Nukem. Gamblers howled their outrage, and the crowd followed them as the near square figure of Trouble in a Trenchcoat entered the arena, baseball bat tucked unglamorously under one arm.

“A baseball bat? Has he lost his mind?” Anthony asked.

Au contraire,” Influenza smiled. “He finally has a chance.”

This post has been edited by Tapper: 17 February 2009 - 07:29 PM

Everyone is entitled to his own wrong opinion. - Lizrad
0

#28 User is offline   Jump Around 

  • Weasel
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 241
  • Joined: 01-December 06
  • Location:Milan, Italy

Posted 17 February 2009 - 08:55 AM

Tapper vs JA - JA's intro post (post 2 of 4)

--------

The short, balding man enters the bar. He pauses for a second to take in the spectacle of absolute destruction. Splinters of wood and shreds of flesh litter the floor, the walls and, in a few unexpected spots, the ceiling.

There is barely any furniture left intact, and is it difficult to evaluate how many dead bodies there are since the number of chests, feet and fingers don’t really add up. The lone survivor, who, from his looks, must be the bartender, is sitting on his bar, removing shards of glass from his bleeding face. Carefully, he makes his way towards him.

“I’m looking for Duke Nukem”

The bartender’s gaze seems lost and unfocused, and if he heard the question, he does not acknowledge it. The newcomer was about to speak again when the answer came:

“Ah, si, senor Nukem. He was here, si.”

“Where did he go?”

Once again, the answer takes some time to come. This time, there is a hint of amusement in the voice:

“You are looking for trouble, senor?”

The short man grunts.

“Actually, Trouble is looking for him. I’m Luster Kindergrass, I work for the Death Match corporation.” He holds his hand to shake, but the barman seems too busy scanning his cheeks for more glass fragments to notice it. “Mister Nukem came to register for the next tournament. Not sure how he got the invitation, but he will have to do. I showed him to his preparation room with strict instructions not to leave it. When I came to get him for his fight, I found the room empty with half the wall missing.”

He looks at his watch.

“And if I don’t find him in the next half hour, I’ll disqualify him. I have half a mind of doing it anyways for failure to follow the pre-game rules.”

“Then just stay here, senor Kindergrass, he will come back shortly.” The barman waives in hand in the general direction of the devastated room. “You see, senor Nukem promised to compensate me for the destrucción. He just had to step out to… find… some cash. I have no chair to offer you, but would you like a drink?”

Luster Kindergrass considers for a moment the blood slowly dripping from the nose and chin of his host, and politely declines. The man, unfazed, continues his litany in a drone-like voice, tainted with a hint of discouragement and resignation.

“Senor Nukem always comes back here. You see, he likes the niñas

They both stare silently at the devastated catwalk decorated with twisted remnants of poles. Somehow the room seems even more depressing in the silence, so Kindergrass quickly breaks it.

“Well, that would explain why he registered this place as his home address. What happened here, anyways?”

“I am not certain, actually. You see, I stepped down for a minute to get more botellas, and by the time I came back senor Nukem was already jumping around, voicing loudly his opinion that the senors here were inspiration for the birth control”.

“I'm curious, was he armed? One thing I don’t get is how he managed to blow a hole in a 10-inch brick wall. It’s like he used a rocket launcher or something, but when I let him in the room I’m quite certain he was not carrying anything.”

Some amusement appears in the lost stare of the barman. He points at the hand on the counter next to him, four fingers attached to a bloody mess of bones and flesh.

“I’m quite certain senor Rico here made himself a similar reflection. Senor Nukem always looks unarmed. But blink, and he’s holding a pistolero. Blink again, and it’s a rocket launcher.” He beckons his visitor closer, and his voice becomes a whisper: “You see, senor Nukem, he’s a very especial gentleman.”

A snort. “I wouldn’t call Duke Nukem a gentleman”.

“Ah, si, a very valid opinión to hold. Although, if I may offer some advice to you, I would refrain to express it aloud when senor Nukem is around. Speaking of which, that should be him. This motorcycle sound, many noches I dream about, si.”

Indeed, after a loud backfiring sound, and a few moments of silence, Duke Nukem enters the room. His massive frame navigates the leftovers of a couple of chairs, and he kicks a broken table out of his way. Ignoring the small man in the costume, he slams a few bills on the bar next to where the owner is sitting.

Keep The Change

The barkeeper stares at the three 100-dollar bills, stained in blood and puckered with gunpowder burn spots. With a forced smiled, he nods, and Duke Nukem turns around to make his way back through the thousands of dollars worth of mess he had caused. The bald man hops in his wake.

“Mister Nukem, I specifically asked you not to leave your preparation room.” As he caught up with him while Duke Nukem straddled his motorcycle, he can’t help but notice the different shades of lipstick marks the blonde giant has all over his forehead and cheeks. “I will ask you to come back immediately, as your fight is about to start. Are you listening to me?”

He quickly runs to his automobile to catch up with the disappearing bike.

***

The gate was getting closer and closer, and the cheers of the immense crowd waiting beyond were vibrating the wall and floor like the slow rumble of thunder. Duke Nukem was advancing mechanically, mesmerized by the implied promise of violence. Still trying to catch up with him was Luster Kindergrass.

“Did you understand me, mister Nukem? Whatever you win today – assuming you even survive – we’ll have to subtract some money to pay for the damage you made to the wall. You hear me?”

Blink.

“What the hell is that?? Is that a Shrink Ray Gun? Where does… What the… Did you register that with the bookies? Mister Nukem!”

He ran past him, and turned around, holding his ground between the giant and the gate.

“That’s enough rule bending from you! Turn around and talk to the bookies, and register ALL your weapons, whichever they are. You are NOT stepping foot in the arena with an unregistered Shrink Gun!”

***

A few seconds later, Duke Nukem stepped foot in the arena with an unregistered Shrink Gun. He paused for a moment to wipe his right foot in the sand. Whatever he had stepped on, it was red and gooey.

***

The cheer of the crowd was deafening. The man was standing in the center of the arena, clad in a dark trench coat, leaning nonchalantly on a baseball bat. From him was emanating a strange essence, an aura that made Duke Nukem’s heart accelerate. Had he been a religious man, he would have recognized it as veneration. But he was not a religious man.

He started running towards his opponent, the warm, greenish glow of his weapon dancing on his grin of savage joy.

"COME GET SOME!"

This post has been edited by Jump Around: 18 February 2009 - 06:55 PM

0

#29 User is offline   Tapper 

  • Lover of High House Mafia
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 6,646
  • Joined: 29-June 04
  • Location:Delft, Holland.

Posted 17 February 2009 - 08:56 AM

Tapper vs JA, Tapper's post (post 3 of 4):

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

Trouble took a few experimental swings, considering his strategy. He would have preferred a smaller arena – there was no way he could dodge bullets in his present condition and he needed to get the blond blockhead into his reach at some point in time, but speed wasn’t going to be his best asset given his current girth. Best to close that distance, taunt the giant in the red shirt into firing, then not give him a chance to reload that plasma rifle. He’d improvise from there on.
Trouble started walking, and the other guy came running, something between a sneer and savage joy on his face, gun raised. Trouble braced himself when he saw the trigger finger tighten, the knuckles whitening. He was halted in his tracks as a green light obscured his vision. No plasma gun after all…

He shook the blast off, continued walking, only to slam his knee into a boulder sized stone. That hadn’t been here before, and neither had all the others surrounding it. Shouldn’t he be standing on sand?
Come to think of it, the horizon was open, where there should be stands all around. The sky darkened, and Trouble looked up. An enormous boot, cigar ash and human entrails spread out over its heel, loomed above him, then stomped down and from somewhere even higher, a voice closely resembling his own rumbled:

“Rest in pieces!”

It dawned on him just before he was crushed between two ridges of the rubber profile. Shrink ray. Well, wouldn’t Nukem be surprised. Once what passed for his body dealt with the shock, it would expand to its chosen mold again. And then, Nukem would be within reach.

He undertook the crushing press of rubber with stoic indifference, then felt the familiar rush of his body pulling itself together. Switching his grip on the baseball bat, he smashed the butt upwards as his eyelevel passed Duke’s knee, into the crotch, and then, as Nukems hands cupped his smashed babymaker, he pushed his elbow upwards, connecting solidly with the square jaw. Nukem was thrown back in half a somersault, ending on his back in the sand, shrink gun spinning away. Surely it wasn’t going to be this easy?

He wasn’t disappointed: the man recovered near instantly, rolled towards him, then effortlessly passed under his elbow as he swung the bat down. His coat was torn to shreds as a gun was emptied into his back, starting near the tailbone, then riding up. Twelve shots barked in quick succession. The crowd went berserk.
Black smoke curled through the holes.

“I love the smell of burned crap in the morning,” he heard from behind him.

“That was a full clip, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Fall over and die, will ya? I’ve got a repopulation project scheduled in ten, and I never let the ladies wait. It’s an honour thing.”

“Sounds a lot better than the interior decorator I arranged,” Trouble whispered, coughing up more smoke and turning to face his opponent once more.

Blink.

“You’re a tough motherfucker, but your punch lines suck,” Nukem replied, readying a shotgun.

“Did you just pull that gun out of your ass?”

“Why you askin’?”

“If you did, there’s no challenge in putting this bat up it.”

The reply consisted once more of gunshots, and the heavy shells left decidedly bigger holes this time around. Still, only a minor scratch. Besides, he had to bleed.

“For a weight loss course, this is going rather well”, Violence smiled, for the first time allowing white light to slip through the unbroken darkness that was his complexion. He took a step towards Nukem, and walked straight into a kick to the face that threw his hat off. Ropy black tentacles fell to his shoulders and writhed around in a mockery of hair.

“Meet the Mighty Boot,” his opponent growled, then planted the left foot next to the right, still somehow able to backpedal, despite having no feet on the ground, all the while shoving new shells into the shotgun. Trouble answered by aiming for the man’s crotch once more, which led to a hasty withdrawal of both feet, and a more hurried retreat by Nukem. His opponent’s ability to change weaponry at will worried him – while he was willing to take insane amounts of punishment, he had counted on reload times to gain a few devastating swings in himself. Duke was simply not giving him any opportunity for that.

Time to change pace. He rushed his opponent, barely slowing down when two shells hit him in the chest, barrelled into Nukem, throwing him of his feet, through the boarding, into the catacombs… into which they disappeared. Camera bots dove down after the pair, and the arena switched to screenplay to continue broadcast of the fight. The spectators saw the pair rolling through the corridors, punching, kicking, shooting and bat swinging, into that holy of holies: the Amazonian training section.

Or that it had been, before Duke Nukem had happened to the Deathmatch. Now, the sole work out option was a pair of vertical poles, Amazons who had exchanged armour for lingerie curling around them. A swing from the baseball bat threw Nukem off his feet onto the platform, where he nearly collided with a voluptuous Amazon, head inches from her bosom.

“Silicone or home-grown, babe?” he enquired.

Up in Death’s skybox, Influenza saw a golden bracer form around Trouble’s right arm, a first step towards regaining his former glory. She was not the only one to notice this detail and its significance, however.

On a trailer park in Texas, a blond woman in a pink duster with curlers in her hair switched off the TV and smothered her menthol cigarette against the heel of a Bugs Bunny flip-flop. Time to gather the girls.

Violence was out of retirement, and he would want his Valkyries with him. Her big man was finally back, and Brunhilde was determined to give him hell for making them wait this long.

This post has been edited by Tapper: 21 February 2009 - 12:48 PM

Everyone is entitled to his own wrong opinion. - Lizrad
0

#30 User is offline   Jump Around 

  • Weasel
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 241
  • Joined: 01-December 06
  • Location:Milan, Italy

Posted 17 February 2009 - 08:57 AM

Tapper vs JA, JA's post (post 4 of 4):

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

Duke understood he had to get out of there. He normally had no problem mixing fighting and women, but this time, he was not dealing with some half-retarded alien sprite.

He blew his way in the general direction of the arena. At last, he saw the sky. Ignoring the yelping spectators raining down from the stand he just destroyed, he stepped back in the professional, distraction-free fighting ring.

“Ahem”

Duke turned his head in the direction of the noise. Right next to him stood four magnificent women, standing proud, the sun shining on the highlights of their enticing curves. Their ethereal hair danced in the air around their winged helmets, and the most dressed of them wore bits of golden armor which, far from hiding her splendid nudity, attracted the eye to it.

"Aroused from Einheriar, wolfish perversion, and unbearable desire, may distress descend on you. Never shall you sit, never shall you sleep, that you love me as yourself."

Duke stayed silent for a moment. Finally, he fumbles in his pockets, and extirpated a few dollar bills which he held in front of him.

Shake it baby.”

The blow came fast. Straight to the crotch, it sent him sprawling a dozen meters back. As he laid motionless, the looming figure of Trouble appeared from the rumble. He paused as he saw the four Valkyries, gave them a smiling nod which was answered by four annoyed pouts.

Grunting, Duke slowly stood up. His groin was throbbing painfully. He was getting weary of this new trend of hitting him down there. Throughout the years, he endured all sorts of damage to his limbs, and somehow they always managed to grow back. He never had to test the theory on lil’ Duke, though, nor was he inclined to. This was really pissing him off.

“This really pisses me off”

Trouble started to laugh.

“Is that so? Then why don’t you come and fight me?”

“I’m not gonna fight you, I’m gonna KICK YOUR ASS!”


It took many slow-motion replays and weeks of debate on the DeathMatchEmpire forum to determine that in the ten following seconds 1583 projectiles of various kinds were fired in the direction of Trouble and his four Valkyries. This was later brought down to 1582 when freeze-frame analyses proved that one of those was actually a small bird that had the bad idea to be there at the time. The bird appeared on only two frames before being replaced by a red mist.

Once the smoke cleared, the five figures remained standing. Trouble’s trench coat was now a tattered mosaic of cloth fragments that fell slowly on the sand. Out of nowhere sinewy tattoos had appeared on his arms and legs. And still he was laughing.

The laugh started to shimmer in the air behind him. Slowly, the first few rows of spectators stood up, and started to climb down the debris towards the ring. There was a strange frenzy in their eyes, and their faces were twisted in a savage grin of hate.

Duke hesitated at the view of all these innocents running frantically towards him, yelling war cries in forgotten tongues. However, as he quickly calculated, he did have enough ammo. “Groovy!” And as the first arm approached to grab him, it grabbed lead instead.

Shot after shot, the limbs flew, and still they kept coming. Between the deafening blasts, the panicky squeals of the wounded and the angry groans of the spectators adding their bodies into the fray.

And still, the laugh got louder, and reached deeper in the stands. Splattered in blood, muscles aching, Duke kept shooting and shooting and dodging and punching and shooting. That laugh carried a smell, a metallic tingle dripping with the promise of blood and savage violence. Actually, he realized, it was not violence. It was Violence. This is not working, he thought. He feeds off it.

And thus, Duke Nukem understood what he had to do.

The explosion ripped through the mass of bodies, and in the stunned silence that followed, his path to Trouble was clear. Stepping swiftly under the rain of gore, he closed the distance, slicking his hair and flashing his best smile.

Wanna dance?

***

Oleh Bury was rushing back to his seat. He heard so much commotion coming from the stands while he was stuck in the queue that he regretted his decision to elope for some hotdogs. He needed to watch those fights to study his future opponents.

When he finally emerged, the crowd was silent. He saw many stunned face staring dumbly at the ring, and the woman in the seat next to his had fainted. What the…? He took a quick look. Oh Sweet Mother of Mercy.

Down there, two men were locked in a passionate embrace. The left hand of the blonde giant was enthusiastically massaging the now-almost-bare ass of his opponent, while the right hand was used to hold the head in place. Not that it was an easy task.

In a career-destroying move, a cameraman and a DeathMatch producer decided to flash a close-up of the action on the Jumbo-tron. A thunderous “EEEWW!” rose from the crowd at the high-definition sight of the copious amount of saliva squirting in various directions, the frantic look of panic on Trouble’s face, and the swiftness of Duke’s tongue that was exploring orifices not often involved in this exercise.

The image cut from the big screen, but the damage was done. A man next to Oleh vomited his large Coke, as many in the crowd rushed for the exit. On the left side of the arena, musicians were rushing to set up an improvised spectacle, to tear the attention of the spectators away.

Away from the sight of more-or-less intact civilians stumbling around, confused, as if awaken from a dream.

Away from the sight of the four Valkyries staring longingly at Duke Nukem.

Away from the spastic, visibly shrinking figure of Trouble, whose thrashing were becoming weaker and weaker.

This post has been edited by Jump Around: 23 February 2009 - 05:57 PM

0

#31 User is offline   Path-Shaper 

  • Mafia Modgod
  • Group: Game Mod
  • Posts: 1,255
  • Joined: 01-October 08

Posted 17 February 2009 - 09:45 AM

JUDGES POST
-------------------------------
Tapper Vs Jump around – JA wins

Tapper's death scene


Father Anthony watched the spectacle in the arena with disbelief growing into outrage.
There was only one last option available to him. He rushed down the stairs, wrestling against the mass of horrified spectators looking for the nearest exit, into the arena, to the struggling pair and the four near naked 'Hildes surrounding them, their mouths open and cheeks flushed red with excitement.

He was joined by a sparrow-like man with a bobbing head who was marking page after page in a large book. Anthony tried to drag Trouble out of Duke's embrace, without much success.

"You Sodomite," he shouted. "First these pagan whores and now this! Benedictus is struggling to save humanity from homosexuality, and you get screwed by a man on pay-per-view! Do you know how many will turn their back on Pope and Faith now? I withdraw you from the competition!"

"Technically, that's impossible," the other man commented. "He is already being disqualified for multiple offenses against the rules, most notably 33.5.1, Attempted Death by Spectator, rule 55.6.7, by being Willingly Molested By The Opponent, 3889.1.1, due to Bringing Unregistered Female Supernatural Aides to the Fight Without A Clear Purpose and rule 1.1.: by failing to Please the Spectator with Blood and Gore.
We shall have to bill the Catholic Church as his sponsor for our losses, as well."

"So I won?" Duke asked, repeatedly spitting mouthfuls of blood and yellow phlegm on the ground.

"Yes."

"Good. I need to get this taste out of my mouth, and I'm all out of gum." He looked at the Hildes. "Fancy a date with the Duke, babes?"

"When Duke Nukem Forever is released," the golden armored one promised. The other three giggled maliciously. Hell would probably freeze overbefore that. She turned to Violence. "What are your plans, darling?"

"There's only one thing I can do, now that my career in entertainment has crashed," he growled. "Run for governor of California."
Only someone with this much power could make this many frittatas without breaking any eggs.
0

#32 User is offline   Morgoth 

  • executor emeritus
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 11,448
  • Joined: 24-January 03
  • Location:the void

Posted 17 February 2009 - 12:07 PM

Morgoth Vs Bauchelin the Evil

Round 1 post 1

--------------- § ---------------

There is a forest. Great trees reach towards the sky like the greedy fingers of giants long dead. The foliage is an unbroken roof, and beneath this shelter of green and yellow and brown roams creatures of all kinds, of all times. Here there truly be dragons. And unicorns, and the nameless beasts left behind by the Old Ones when the universe was altogether different.

There is no place where the forest can be found. Not one place where it's roots suck hungrily at the riches of the earth. The forest is all forests, and it is none of them. It was there when life emerged, fleeing in terror onto land. It was there when mankind crawled out from beneath the undergrowth of ancient jungles. It watched impassively and without feeling as the nations of Atlantis, Pandomea and Samarkesh grew into power. It was there, watching when they fell from fire to dust.

In the forest there is a glade. It is not the only glade, nor is it the most important one. Yet within it resides power both ancient and potent. It is the home of the
leprechauns, and at this point in the narrative, the leprechauns are dancing.

One Leprechaun, however, is not dancing. At the edge of the glade he sits, looking at the festivities with a mix of anger and longing that makes him seem... forlorn if anything. His fake beard lies abandoned at his feet like the sad carcass of a fleeting hope. His eyes follows every move of his dancing kin, but he can take no part in their joy. He is alone.

After some time a very old leprechaun approaches. Beneath a massive beard sweat and exhaustion show he's been dancing for quite some time. He sits down next to his lonely brother, joints creaking in protest. There is silence for a while as they watch together.

"I am greater than all of them" says Bendoran, breaking the moment. He would've sounded threatening if not for the hurt surfacing beneath the anger of his voice.
"Aye, you certainly are powerful"
"So why am I not the leader?" Cries Ben. "Why can I not at least dance with them?".
The old one sighs and in his voice there is a thousand years.
"You know the rules as well as I. The rules of the forest. The rules of the glade." He nods, as much to himself as to Ben.
"Suffer no bush to be found in the glade. Do you not remember the words?"
"But I'm a man goddamn it! Must I drop my pants and prove it to you people?"
Visibly alarmed the old one raises a calming hand.
"Now. Now. Let us not be improper. I see the answer on your face clear as day. Your cheek is smooth, my friend. Smooth like a baby's bottom. Is my cheek smooth?" Illustrating his point, the old leprechaun tugs his beard, alarming an owl nesting within, which throws itself out among the trees with a frightened hoot.
"No" he says, and now there is a finality to his words that was absent before.
"No, you're not a man."

For a while they sit together, side by side watching the dancing. There's less clothes present now. The music is more intense, more heated. The reflection of the sun glitters like a trail of diamonds along Ben's silky, smooth cheek.
"Is that you're hand on my thigh?"
"Aye. It is that."

Later, picking pieces of bone and hair out of his bruised knuckles, Bendoran decides he's had enough. He leaves the glade, and never in the five hundred years since has he returned.

*

Emerging into the arena under the burning touch of the sun, Bendoran is in a rotten mood. He has not thought of that fateful day in decades. Five hundred years and still the humiliation burns like it happened just yesterday. Those fuckers. He'd make them all pay one day.

A glint of light pulls him out of his thoughts and he bends his body sideways just as a silver bolt of some kind of energy brushes past him. His cheek burns with its touch. Too close, Ben. Focus! On the other side of the arena, silhouetted by the sun stands a man, hooded and cloaked, two swords shimmering strangely in the light.

Ben roars with anger, and the crowd, seated all around the two fighters, roars with him. He lets the wave of thundering voices herald the beginning, and in an explosion of sand and dust he throws himself forwards at a headlong sprint. His berserker scream vibrates ahead of him, and he can tell that his speed has caught the enemy fighter off balance. Another bolt of silver cuts past him, neatly severing the skin above his ear, but Ben couldn't care less about the pain. All that matters is the kill.

Twin swords descend towards him and he lifts his fists to meet them, not missing a stride. The impact of blades on flesh rings like the scream of a welshman in heat. There is no blood! The fighter and the crowd have but half a heartbeat to be astonished before Ben barrels headfirst into his opponent, throwing them both to the ground with a resounding crash. A fist is raised and the sound of impact as Bendoran's shamrock adorned silver knuckle iron meets Shade's unarmoured forehead makes even the most bloodthirsty of spectators wince.

The game is on.
Take good care to keep relations civil
It's decent in the first of gentlemen
To speak friendly, Even to the devil
0

#33 User is offline   Bauchelain the Evil 

  • Greatest necromancer ever
  • Group: Team Quick Ben
  • Posts: 1,859
  • Joined: 15-March 08
  • Location:Italy
  • Not much

Posted 17 February 2009 - 12:31 PM

Bauchelain the Evil vs Morgoth Intro (Round 1 Post 1)

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

There had been problems when Shade had arrived. Lots of talks about him not being registered and apologies and stuff like that. He had suffered all that tirade for a while. Well, to be precise, only a few minutes, then he unleashed his anger.

The foolish and unlucky guard-unlucky for not knowing his reputation- who had tried to block him, had been the first to die. He probably never understood what happened to him. One moment he was grabbing the assassin’s arm, the other he was holding his entrails, a look of surprise on Shade’s blood-smeared knife. Suddenly there had been panic: people were screaming and the pompous clerks were calling reinforcements.

Soldiers holding enormous guns had arrived yelling to drop the weapon. Shade did so. The soldiers relaxed and it was then that the hooded man attacked: a wave of silver magic engulfed them and when the magic ended, nothing was left of the men. Not much refined but, hey, his patience wasn’t infinite.

Shade had smiled, then turned toward the man behind the desk. “I think that it ‘s now clear to you that I’m capable enough to participate in this tournament”

The clerk was trembling with fear and before answering he had licked his dry lips. “Your ability has never been doubted, especially now, but, you see, there are rules that must be respected and…”

He never finished the sentence. A gloved hand hit his neck, breaking it. Shade had moved behind the wooden desk, writing his name on the apposite paper. With blood. He had then turned to face the people still in the room. “I don’t think you’ll find any problems in me signing the form, right?” He smiled again after they had nodded.

Apart the initial scuffle, he was enjoying himself, after all. They had assigned him a wonderful room and he could practice with whomever he wanted. Although he still hadn’t faced any participant, he had seen some: a heavily armoured dude and a giant in a trench coat. They seemed worthy opponents.

After some weeks waiting, they called him. Finally. Shade was getting bored and had started to be nastier than ever during practice as his personal trainer had discovered before leaving this world. The hard way.

The hooded man followed a guy in a suit. They entered an elevator and he could sense the machine going up. Suddenly the doors opened and Shade turned his face to avoid the unexpected light.

They were in an arena. A big, open arena with sand that covered the floor. Thousands of people were there to watch the fight. Shade was impressed. He focused on his opponent: he was absurdly short but Shade wouldn’t underestimate him. Short people could be vicious.

The assassin beckoned the man in suit to come nearer. “I would like you to deliver a message to my opponent.”

The chaperon looked at him confused. Shade acted: a sword hissed in the air and the man in suit’s head rolled on the floor. Shade took the corpse and threw him in the middle of the arena.

Yet his enemy didn't seem shocked nor scared. Well,the assassin thought, he'll soon be. A bolt of energy travels toward the dwarf, or is it a leprechaun?, but doesn't hit him. Shade hides his surprise for missing and runs to meet the opponent, swords drawn. The short man parries both blades. With his hands.

Then, Shade doesn't quite understand what happened, he's on the floor, feeling pain in his stomach .He is good but the hoodded man knows he's better as a short, curved, blade appears in his hand, ready to plunge in the other's neck.

This post has been edited by Bauchelain the Evil: 18 February 2009 - 04:39 PM

Adept of Team Quick Ben

I greet you as guests and so will not crush the life from you and devour your soul with peals of laughter. No, instead, I will make tea-Gothos
0

#34 User is offline   Morgoth 

  • executor emeritus
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 11,448
  • Joined: 24-January 03
  • Location:the void

Posted 17 February 2009 - 12:33 PM

Morgoth Vs Bauchelin the Evil

Round 1 post 2

--------------- § ---------------


Rage thunders through his body in waves of burning red. He can barely see his opponent through the blood coloured haze blocking his vision. Every beat of his heart ripples outwards, power pulsing out into every part of his body in waves. Around him, individual specks of sand glitter as they gently descend toward the ground among ruby coloured droplets of blood. For a tenth of a heartbeat, Ben tries to read the pattern, to find the message in the chaos before his focus returns to the fight. There's a tranquility in that moment he did not expect to find. This is where he's supposed to be, and the knowledge touches him like the loss of a heavy weight strapped to his back.

Beneath him, the arms of his opponent move as if through water, slowly coming up to block the descent of his fist. In the light of the sun, the silver strapped to his knuckles glitters like an arched knife as it descends. Their eyes meet, the two fighters, and for a moment they are caught in the gaze of the other. For a moment they are one, consciousness blending together in a storm of impressions. A scream rises above them and Ben cannot tell whether it belongs to him, his opponent or them both. A darkness crawls over him seeping into his every pore, pouring into his ears, his mouth, his eyes. New emotions assaults his anger, vying for control of his soul. Fear, despair, loneliness, familiar yet subtly different. Alien. The emotions are not his, he realises in a flash, they are that of the one beneath him. Shade. that is my name. My name? His name.. Ben shakes his head. Tears force themselves out of his eyes, streaming along the side of his face as his fist crawls painfully through the air towards its destination. Why is he crying? He can't tell. Perhaps his tears are those of Shade or perhaps they're just a result of his frustration. The leprechaun knows this man as well as he would his own twin, yet by the end of the match he knows he must kill him.

In a rush of sound and senses the world jumps back into focus. The wall that is the yelling of the spectators hits him like a sledgehammer. Everything speeds up, the contact is broken and Ben's fist hits the hardened sand of the arena floor with a painful thump. He wonders fleetingly whether he really wanted the attack to hit home, but as a flash edges towards him from the edge of his vision and he rolls backwards, barely avoiding the slash of a sword, all such thoughts are dispelled from his mind. Familiar rage burns through him once more and all is well. Ben turns the roll into a backflip, landing on his feet in a skidding halt, barely avoiding another slash of his enemy's sword, halfway blocking it with his left hand. The blade slides off the silver and cuts a deep gash into his palm.

The pain is good. The pain draws forth the adrenaline and pulls everything into focus. Blades slice the air on parallel trajectories towards his neck, or where his neck was but a heartbeat ago. Ben sidesteps one and blocks the other with his left fist, turning the elegant swing into a clumsy miss with minimal effort. His stand is that of the Hunting Tigress; a punch barely averted and he flows into the Strike of the Cobra; his attack misses and a cut along his forearm is the prize he receives. As blood follows the arch of the sword in a spray of red droplets, Ben is already moving with it in the form of the Raging Monkey, a kick to the chest sending his opponent staggering backwards. Continuing his momentum into the Swipe of the Crane; a glancing blow to the chin, the Preying Mantis; a jab to the elbow drops a sword to the ground, and finally, as he steps inside the other's guard, the culmination, the crescendo if you will, of his flow; the Glasgow Kiss buries his forehead in the soft cartilage of Shade's nose.

The sweet taste of warm iron fills his mouth. Blood streams from cuts all across his body. Drops fall in a steady drip from his knuckles. Rivers of it, already transforming into flakes of black and purple cover his face. Ben feels wonderful. Strong, immortal, aroused. He is all those things and not in centuries has he felt it so profoundly as in that very moment. He bends back his head and roars and the crowd roars with him. His is a violent style and they love him for it.

Across the arena, Shade stands motionless. His clothes soaked with blood pouring from his broken nose. His left arm hangs useless at his side, and every visible art of his skin is covered in bruises. Ben sees all these things and would've felt confident if not for the grin on the face of his opponent. He takes a step forwards only to stop with a gasp as pain explodes through his body like its on fire. It's only then that he notices a deep gash, cutting diagonally across his chest and down through his thigh. The sickly white of bone gleam where Shade's blade must've graced his ribs on the way down. How the hell did he manage that? .

Across the arena the two fighters ready themselves for the final confrontation. An explosion of dust and sand herald their coming as they charge each other. At their feet, a trail of red snakes backwards like a testament of violence. There can be but one winner, and at the feet of the winner will rest the corpse of the other. The crowd roars high pitched and insane with the lust for death. The two men roars with them and the fight is on.
Take good care to keep relations civil
It's decent in the first of gentlemen
To speak friendly, Even to the devil
0

#35 User is offline   Bauchelain the Evil 

  • Greatest necromancer ever
  • Group: Team Quick Ben
  • Posts: 1,859
  • Joined: 15-March 08
  • Location:Italy
  • Not much

Posted 17 February 2009 - 12:36 PM

Bauchelain the Evil vs Morgoth (Round 1 Post 2)
----------------------------------------------------------

When his opponent had entered the arena Shade had believed that stocky as he was, he would have used strength to try winning the fight. He had been wrong.. That damned leprechaun hadn’t fought, he had danced. He had been everywhere, feinting left and right, always hitting him. It had been a long time since Shade had faced a worthy opponent and he was happy.

As they paused for a moment, he examined his wounds. He could have used magic to heal at least the broken arm but he didn’t want to offend the other challenger. Of course this meant that his theorycally unlimited arsenal was now limited but he didn’t care.

“Could I know your name?” The assassin asked, not really expecting an answer.

“Ben Doran”

Then he charged. Now that he knew his style Shade waited for the inevitable feint. As soon as it arrived he stretched his arm, a slim knife in his gloved hand. Ben parried it, then punched with his other hand his midriff . Shade turned slightly, thus avoiding the shattering of his sternum, and used his longer legs to knock the ground under the leprechaun. They both fell and started to wrestle on the sandy ground.

The crowd squinted, trying to see through the cloud of sand and dust that had been lifted and then shouted with surprise, seeing Ben on top. The leprechaun grinned and punched the hooded man on his cheek.. Shade felt some of his teeth shatter at the contact with the armoured hand. Another grin as his enemy prepared for another punch, a grin that became a shout of pain when Shade spitted a broken tooth that pierced his left eye.

Shade decided it was time to act. While Ben clutched his maimed eye from which blood was running, he elbowed the leprechaun’s head, sending him sprawling on the floor. Before his opponent could react, Shade grabbed him by his throat,lifted him in the air and started squeezing.

Yes. This was why he had become an assassin: the sense of power he felt as he took someone else’s life. His joy was interrupted when the apparently hapless leprechaun kicked him in the stomach, making him double over. As soon as he was in reach Ben’s metal-clad fingers clawed his left eye. Yes, this is how it’s supposed to be, now we’re even.

The next things were incredibly fast. Shade hit the ground and Ben sat on him, applying his considerable weight. Ben lifted his fist and Shade knew that this was the killing strike. Yet, his opponent had made a mistake:he had left his guard open. A dagger was in his hand and he was already stabbing upwards, piercing the short body of Ben Doran even as the armoured fist falled down, crushing his skull and thus ending his fairly interesting life.

This post has been edited by Bauchelain the Evil: 25 February 2009 - 05:57 PM

Adept of Team Quick Ben

I greet you as guests and so will not crush the life from you and devour your soul with peals of laughter. No, instead, I will make tea-Gothos
0

#36 User is offline   Path-Shaper 

  • Mafia Modgod
  • Group: Game Mod
  • Posts: 1,255
  • Joined: 01-October 08

Posted 17 February 2009 - 01:09 PM

JUDGES POST
------------------

Morgoth Vs Bauchelain the Evil

Voting result :- Morgoth: 12 votes
Bauchelain the Evil: 0 votes
Only someone with this much power could make this many frittatas without breaking any eggs.
0

#37 User is offline   D'rek 

  • Consort of High House Mafia
  • Group: Super Moderators
  • Posts: 14,599
  • Joined: 08-August 07
  • Location::

Posted 17 February 2009 - 08:04 PM

- Fight 6 -
D'rek vs. Sir Thursday

(Post 1 of 4)

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


"This is stupid."

Lippmer sighed. "We've had this argument twenty-six times already. Can you please just shut up while I put my armor on?!"

"No, I won't! You never complained about my talking while I was alive, why should I stop now? If you don't like it, you shouldn't have married me!" He tried to tune her out while he finished buckling the strange plate mail he'd found in the armory. Kevlar, the attendant had called it. This place was full of strange things with strange names, though the rumors said his first fight would be with an ordinary young woman.

Uh oh, Catherine had noticed he wasn't paying attention and was starting to use her outdoors nagging voice. "And another thing! Even if you don't get completely obliterated by a wave of magic in the first 5 seconds, how are you planning on fighting with that sword you picked up? You don't know how to use the damned thing!"

Lippmer looked up from fastening his thigh pads. For once, it was actually a reasonable question. "Sure I can. Soldiering runs in my family. I've got a cousin, actually, who spends her spare time fighting furious desert warriors in some empire back on planet Tennes. Think her name is Jellian or something..."

"Well I'll bet she stays sober when she does!"

"It doesn't matter. Some great-uncle-twice-removed of yours came to the wedding, gave me a bottle that would give me the fighting skills of a great swordsman named the Darkness Son or something like that. Said he was a personal friend or some such. Anyways, I get in a fight, those skills should just kick-in and I'm set."

Catherine looked at him for a while, strangely silent. Lippmer prayed the silence would--

"This is stupid."

Lippmer sighed.

"Either this Prince of Darkness fellow is a nobody and you've been fooled, or else it's all true and you really will be an expert swordsman and you won't take any hits, meaning you won't be getting your ring broken either, idiot!"

"Maybe," Lippmer mused. "Or just maybe this Darkness fellow has a particular knack at setting up his opponents for the exact blow he wants to receive, right in the middle of the fight."

A knock sounded at the door, followed by a creature that could only be described as a walking, talking giant potsherd.

"The battle is about to begin, Mr. Lippmer." Without waiting for a reply, it quickly turned about and walked out.



***


Lippmer caught up with the giant potsherd just as it reached the gate leading out into the arena. He peered through the slats in the gate, taking glimpses of the battlefield.

"It looks like a soccer field."

The giant potsherd turned a protruding portion of its body towards him. "Football. We do have more than just Deathmatches here. Once the blood and body parts are removed, the turf is actually quite soft. Of course, every now and then a player falls on a shard of metal the janitors missed. The audience loves it."

The potsherd was already walking away and the gates swinging open as the last sentence was spoken. Lippmer stepped through the threshold into a wide, grassy expanse blazing by the light of three suns, though he noted dark clouds approaching from the southern horizon.

He was startled to see Catherine take visual shape beside him. She was visible only to him, of course, but she had always remained a voice in his head when he was in public before. And now she was doing so in front of tens of thousands of spectators. Probably wants to get one last argument in before I die, Lippmer mused.

"You know I can still hear you when you're in my head, I just don't reply so you think I can tune you out." As he spoke these words, seemingly to himself, a cheer rose up from a section of the audience reserved for schizophrenics.

"Shut up. I'm going to help you win this and keep that ring I gave you from breaking in the process."

Catherine's tone was unlike any of the thirty-odd nagging voices he'd categorized over the years. Instead she sounded determined, almost brash. Maybe she's actually enjoying this.

Lippmer giggled. "Finally, we're doing something as a couple that we both enjoy!"

Together they turned to watch the gates across the arena swing open.

This post has been edited by D'rek: 18 February 2009 - 09:21 PM

View Postworrywort, on 14 September 2012 - 08:07 PM, said:

I kinda love it when D'rek unleashes her nerd wrath, as I knew she would here. Sorry innocent bystanders, but someone's gotta be the kindling.
0

#38 User is offline   Sir Thursday 

  • House Knight
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 1,819
  • Joined: 14-July 05
  • Location:Enfield, UK

Posted 18 February 2009 - 12:51 AM

D'rek v Sir Thursday, Post 1 of 2

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

So, we’d been hanging around for a while, but it seemed like our fight was finally about to begin. I was getting more and more depressed – try as I might, I just couldn’t get away from Sam...it paid too much attention to me for me to get away. Seemed odd, ‘cus there were plenty of other people around, all of them probably ‘stronger forms’ than me, to use its terminology. Must have taken a shine to me, which did not seem like it would be conducive to my long term health.

Anyhow, we got summoned down to this gigantic room packed with weapons and stuff. Some weird, wizened old man came over to ask us what we wanted – said everything had to be declared to the bookies, but that Sam could use anything she wanted. I found it odd how everyone was referring to Sam as a she – it stopped being that in my eyes a long time ago. But I guess it did look female…kind of attractive too, if you could bring yourself to look at it that way. So Sam said she wanted some kind of weird acid – I’d never heard of it, but obviously the guy we were talking to had, because he disappeared off and came back with a glowing ball of light. “We must keep it stored in a containment chamber like this – it’ll corrode anything, you know, anything! Only way to store it is to make sure it isn’t touching anything – this is high tech stuff, latest quantomagnetics, real rare. The containment field should break if you throw it at something.”

“We want several of these.” Said Sam, and I could swear it sounded almost nostalgic. “And obtain for our meal here a sword, for he may have need of it.”

Mr. Weaponsgeek, as I decided to call him, led me over to the sword section, and asked if there was anything special I was looking for. I’d never held a sword in my life, so I had no idea what to go for. He looked at me a little oddly, then said: “I’ll get you something with a pointy end.” Eventually, he came back with a rather mean looking cutlass – black as night, wickedly curved and razor sharp. I tried it out, had a few swishes, y’know. All the while, Mr. Weaponsgeek was looking at me with a face full of disdain. I imagine it’s kind of obvious when someone isn’t much good with a sword.

I saw a chance…if I could stab Sam, then maybe I would have time to make my escape. We got back to it, and I immediately took a big swing at Sam, hoping to cut it in two. To my surprise, the blade went straight through it. “Goddammit!” I yelled. Seemed like there was no way for me to be rid of the thing – the sand probably just parted and let the sword go through it. The blade nicked Mr. Weaponsgeek on the way through – don’t think he’d been expecting it either. It was just a little nick on his hand, I figured he’d be OK, but then he suddenly started screaming and collapsed into a heap on the floor. There was a kind of crinkling noise, and then he exploded as if he was a tomato being hit by a sledgehammer. It all passed straight through Sam, of course – obviously it liked being clean, but I got splattered. I stood there in shock…I had killed him! How had I killed him?! It didn’t make any sense. Sam leaned over and whispered in my ear: “I may need to borrow that at some point.”

So eventually we got led through all the screening mumbo-jumbo and out towards the field. With every step it took, Sam seemed taller, more imposing. I guess when you’re made out of dust you can do that. I tried to look big and nasty as we went past all the security people, but I don’t think they were fooled. Out in the arena, I could see an armoured man standing there, waiting. Looked like he was muttering to himself, which freaked me out let me tell you. There was some weird kind of heat haze or something next to him…I could see the air shimmering, anyway.

Sam strode out confidently, with me tagging along behind, scared shitless. That guy must be pretty hard to have made it here – if he decided to get rid of me first, I was toast. Alternatively, Sam might decide she needed her ‘meal’, and that would be the end of me…either way, the future looked bleak.

It seemed Sam had decided to share its strategy with me, because as we were walking out it started muttering to me: “We will find the chinks in his armour, and flow through the like sand. And if no chinks exist, then we will make some.” It gestured to the spheres on its belt. I hoped it would be that simple, but given what I knew about Sam, I was sure that this guy would have some tricks up his sleeve.

Oh, you have to leave now? That’s a shame; I guess I’ll tell you about that fight next time. You don’t want to miss it, it was spectacular!

This post has been edited by Sir Thursday: 20 February 2009 - 03:18 PM

Don't look now, but I think there's something weird attached to the bottom of my posts.
0

#39 User is offline   D'rek 

  • Consort of High House Mafia
  • Group: Super Moderators
  • Posts: 14,599
  • Joined: 08-August 07
  • Location::

Posted 18 February 2009 - 04:03 AM

- Fight 6 -
D'rek vs. Sir Thursday

(Post 3 of 4)

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

As he rolled back up into a crouch, Lippmer could hear the groaning of steel coming from behind him, quickly followed by screams of a few unlucky spectators.

"Acid." Came Catherine's matter-of-fact voice, directly in his head though she remained in her ghostly form. "Looks like it'll burn through your armor pretty easily, too. She's got about a half-dozen of those balls." Her tone changed to an attempt at sounding sweet and sincere. "Aren't you glad I warned you, sweetie?"

Lippmer glared at her as he straightened. Catherine was now close enough to his opponents to have poked either of them in the ribs, given a more corporeal existance. He spared little thought for the dirty boy, despite the fiercesome blade in his hand. The announcer had not even named the lad. The real threat would be this girl who apparently threw balls of acid and had resisted any of Catherine's attempted possessions without even showing a hint of distraction. Catherine suspected the girl could not even notice that it was happening at all.

As his ghostly wife warned him that the girl, named Sam, had another glowing ball of acid in hand, Lippmer began slowly circling about the arena, waiting for the next warning and ready to take a mouthful of grass and soil. He continued circling but the warning did not come. Realizing he had no offensive weapons, Sam was waiting for a closer shot.

Most observers would have speculated that Lippmer planned to continue circling, edging closer to his opponent little by little. As he neared the middle of one side of the arena, the light of comprehension flared in Catherine's eyes and she edged closer to the long-haired boy gazing awkwardly towards Lippmer. A few more scuffling paces and-

"Now!" Lippmer roared and launched himself into a full sprint towards them.

As Sam reached back to begin her throw, the boy Luke turned and stepped in front of her. She side-stepped and prepared to throw again, but Luke moved to block her shot once more, all the while staring dumbly towards her. Frustrated, Sam threw her ball of acid in a curved throw around the boy. The throw had little of the velocity of her former shot and Lippmer barely broke stride in dodging it.

Again and again Sam tried to move herself into a clear position to fire at her opponent, but every time Luke matched her motion with a grace he had never shown before. Sam tried throwing around, over and under Luke, but none of her shots had the accuracy or speed to pose a serious threat to the approaching armored figure charging towards her.

As she lifted the last ball of acid from her belt Lippmer reached the boy Luke and lifted his knee into a forceful kick that sent the boy sprawling into Sam. Lippmer could only stare, slack-jawed, as the lad passed straight through the girl and fell into a heap beyond her, all the while flailing his arms. The ball of acid was knocked from Sam's hand and broke upon contact with the ground, melting a small swath of grass and soil.

Recovering his focus, Lippmer brought up his sword as Sam passed a hand through her shirt and into her own stomach, then shot straight forward revealing one final ball of acid that had been held in reserve inside her own body.

With no time to dodge, Lippmer's invested instincts brought his sword into a vertical block directly in the path of the ball. A faint recollection triggered in his memory, warning him that this was not necessarily the wisest move when facing alchemical munitions, but there was no time left in which to change his stance.

The orb surrounding the acid collapsed upon contact with his sword and the acid continued its momentum towards Lippmer. Much of the liquid was blocked by his sword, but twin streams of green passed it on each side and struck his flanks.

Catherine, rising from Luke's motionless form, screamed in Lippmer's head, "Get your armor off! NOW!"

Throwing his eroding sword towards Sam, he took hold of the straps at either shoulder and yanked them out of their bindings. There were two more bindings on each side but the acid had already burned through most of these and a quick tug lifted free his chestplate.

Momentarily distracted by the necessity of dodging the acid-coated sword thrown her way, Sam was once more upon him so he lashed out with the chestplate in one hand. Unsurprisingly, the armor passed right through her body, but the wide surface of the plate pushed her torso backwards in a million little pieces. He could only stare at this new development for a moment before he doubled over in pain as unseen traces of the acid finished melting through the greaves on his thighs. As Sam finished restoring her form, she stepped up to the doubled-over Lippmer and plunged an arm into each of the wounds on his thighs. The two fell to the grass together, Sam composed, unemotional and unspeaking, Lippmer rolling and screaming.

"Catherine! She's inside me!" he moaned.

"Forget about that! It will take a lot of her to overcome three years' worth of alcohol in your bloodstream, and those wounds are so small it'll take her a while to get inside, too. You just need to keep enough of her out, now get to it!"

For the next three turnings of the sand-hisser, the audience watched as Lippmer endlessly swung his chestplate through the arms and body of Sam, only to have the particles reform her figure and plunge into his wounds again. The arena technicians quickly rushed into the stands to set up displays showing Sam's slowly-decreasing body mass and Lippmer's blood-alcohol-nanobot percentages. The contest continued to pass unchanged until mid-afternoon when the southern storm clouds finally rolled in overhead.

This post has been edited by D'rek: 25 February 2009 - 03:51 AM

View Postworrywort, on 14 September 2012 - 08:07 PM, said:

I kinda love it when D'rek unleashes her nerd wrath, as I knew she would here. Sorry innocent bystanders, but someone's gotta be the kindling.
0

#40 User is offline   Sir Thursday 

  • House Knight
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 1,819
  • Joined: 14-July 05
  • Location:Enfield, UK

Posted 18 February 2009 - 01:12 PM

D'rek v. Sir Thursday, Post 2 of 2

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

Being possessed is one weird experience, let me tell you. You can feel everything in there, but it’s slightly distant, if y’know what I mean. Plus, having no control over your limbs can be a mite terrifying sometimes. This Catherine woman was really rather nice about the whole thing though – I think she was tired of being so annoying to her husband or something. So she stood there, using my voice to cheer her husband on (also really freaky, I might add). I say cheer; it was more ‘support in an insulting fashion’. Cries of “Keep it up, you drunken lummox!” and “That chest-plate won’t swing itself, stupid fool!” were the order of the day. All the mean time she kept murmuring to me about how she was only insulting him for show: “I love him really,” she murmured to me once, “but he likes me annoying him really. Always used to work like a charm when we were alive, anyway.”

They’d been going at it for several hours, and now, and I could tell that both of them were getting slower. Sam was losing energy every time it had to desolidify to get out of the way of Lippmer’s frantically waving chest-plate, and Lippmer was getting rather tired too by the looks of things. I was surprised he had kept it up this long, to be honest, because he didn’t look in especially good shape. Catherine was worrying to me about his bad diet: “Liquid bread only gets you so far, you know. I tried so hard to get him to stop, but he was having none of it.” I suggested we go and lend him a hand, because it seemed like otherwise he’d be losing. I really wanted Lippmer to win – the sooner that thing was out of my life the better, as far as I was concerned. Catherine duly manoeuvred us closer, and started using my sword to slash at the shimmering space that Sam inhabited.

We hacked and slashed, and it seemed like it might be working – the motes of dust were swirling slower now, and it was taking longer for Sam to re-coalesce after each swipe. But in a flash, everything changed. Seemed Sam had gone for a change in strategy – it was taking too long to get into Lippmer, so now it was coming after me. Unknowingly, we’d played right into its hands by coming closer!

It was too quick for Catherine – apparently it’s hard to react quickly when the controls are unfamiliar. The sandstorm enveloped us, and I steeled myself for dissolution…

…only to open my eyes and find myself still alive! How could this be?! Then I glanced down and noticed the bosom that swelled on my chest and realised what had happened – somehow that thing had switched bodies with me – I was in Sam now! A confused gasp echoed seemingly from within my skull – apparently Catherine had come too. But now, for some strange reason, I had the reins, not her. Sam/Me/The Thing was stretching, taking a few experimental swipes with its newly acquired sword, while Lippmer was slowly getting to his feet, trying to get away as fast as possible. As Catherine realised the plight of her husband and herself, she began to beg, imploring me to help keep her beloved alive.

“Fresh form, oh how fressssh!” The Thing said to itself. “And now, we must rid ourselves of the useless one, and that drunk too – how his saturation disgusts us!” That didn’t sound too good. There we were, defenceless, against a sandstorm with an incredibly deadly sword. And to top it all, fat drops of rain were starting to fall, soaking me to the skin instantly. The rain didn’t bother the sandstorm though, it merely let the droplets pass through it. But that gave me a sliver of hope – it would lose energy much faster if it was constantly shifting like that, maybe we could last until it ran out of steam. I reached down to pick up the helmet Lippmer had torn off in his haste to rid himself off the acid stained chestplate earlier. It wasn’t much, but if I could just stick it into the sandstorm for long enough, I might just be able to snatch the sword while it was insubstantial. It wouldn’t do us a whole lot of good, but it might buy us enough time to see it off.

With Catherine whispering encouragement, I sidled slowly towards the Sandstorm, trying to keep myself between it and Lippmer, who was crawling painstakingly slowly away on his hands and needs, gasping for air and alcohol. When I judged us to be close enough, I threw the helmet with all of Sam’s strength (which seemed quite considerable – the Sandstorm had evidently left some of its strength behind in the form I now coinhabited). I followed it up with a mad dash at the swirling cloud of nanobots (also surprisingly fast), and managed to wrap my hands around the pommel of the momentarily free sword. Then my own hands - well, they were Luke’s now (if you’ve ever done it, you’ll know how bizarre it is to be fighting yourself) – formed themselves on top of mine. And so began a desperate tug of war – if I lost, we were all finished. No way in hell was Lippmer going to stop in his current state if the Sandstorm managed to finish us off. And so we danced around each other, each desperately trying to cock their wrists enough to point the sword in their opponents’ direction. Could we hold it off for long enough? It was going to be pretty damn tight…

This post has been edited by Sir Thursday: 16 March 2009 - 12:18 AM

Don't look now, but I think there's something weird attached to the bottom of my posts.
0

Share this topic:


  • 5 Pages +
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Last »
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

1 User(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users