ic Straw Gods(IC)

[Curious Key]

"Me?" Warp looked battered, a little shaky on her feet, but her smile was still long, and smug as ever. She knelt down, balanced on the balls of her feet, and talked ot the dinosaur like a child. "Oh that's just rich. So funny. But you know what's even funnier?"

 

"I don't know what you did to your world, but it seems pretty bad. But we would have saved you." She wagged her finger. Naughty, naughty dinosaur! "Our world is full of boyscouts that would have been happy to help you relocate. You were thiiiiiis close to a happy ending." Warp held her fingers a centimeter apart. "But, just like that, first contact, you see a human. And throw it all away."

 

"

 

"You said you wanted to keep your world safe. And you weren't lying, I could tell. But you know what you cared about more?" Warp's smile bared teeth, turning into a snarl. "Your stupid ego."

 

"You think you're above consequence." She shook her head, and when she spoke again her voice was back to normal. "But you're not. No one is."

 

"When your stars grow dark and your world turns cold," her eyes narrowed to slits. "I want you to remember . . . You could have stopped this. Everything started when you decided you were too good to keep your promise. You destroyed your people's last hope."

 

"I want you to remember that."

 

At last she stood up and aimed her palm at something that looked important. Entropy cut the air like a bolt of black lightning, burning easily into machinery with a keening howl.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Curious Key

[Ari]

GM

 

Raul's despairing howl echoed with the song of Warp's havoc-wreaking lance of entropic power, the electronics, focus crystals and machinery that made the slender window into Kat's Earth possible dissolving into nothing, melting like snow under a flamethrower.

 

The world-window began to shudder and crackle, its harsh edges growing fuzzier and its shape warping erratically, the image of the ASTRO Labs showroom and the floor full of mechanical dinosaurs grew rapidly out of focus.

 

Then it happened, hardly a second after Warp had opened fire.

 

The searing power of entropy blasted through frail metal and wires, and hit a massive crystal. A giant shield-shaped chunk of gleaming quartz-like brilliance. The death-stroke that hit it cracked and shattered the thing, but sent an arcing burst of Warp's own power mingled with the decaying energy trapped in the crystal straight into her face.

 

The whole world grew horribly sharp. Sounds, sights, scents and pressures grew to agonizing levels of acuteness. Kat suddenly knew what to say to make Raul listen, could feel the current of life itself tying her to the universe and saw where the gnawing hunger in her led.

 

 

Soon as it came the clarity was torn away and she was in a broken mad science lair with a weeping dinosaur on the floor. With another, much larger dinosaur dressed in some kind of uniform and shaking the scientist with their teeth. "Ssethuss! Mentor! What happened, who is this?" Their tail flicked towards Warp, but the hulking thing kept its wary distance. The brick-red monster with his grotesque brain, meanwhile, could only mumble 

 

"All lost...all gone...all dead..."  Over and over.

 

The small, shrinking tear between worlds shone feebly in the air, still locked between the grasping metal claws of the lab. 

[Curious Key]

Images, thoughts . . . knowledge swam through her mind. Suddenly, she was lost in the depths of an ocean of thought, of reality. The secrets of the universe lay before her. The knotted, dark inevitability burning in her heart. For a long, terrifying moment, Warp was no longer Warp. Just a piece of detritus, a shred of dark vanishing into the border of infinity.

 

The noise in her head faded. She remembered that she was a person. Her name was Kat, yes. Or was it Warp? No, it was both, but Warp right now. So Warp peeled her hands off her face and tried to moderate her breathing as she stared, baffled, at the human contours of her hands. Her head still pulsed, and the world still felt too . . . clear, in a way she couldn't describe.

 

Too shaken to leave the overblown chicken a last parting shot to remember her by, Warp vanished in a flash and appeared above the portal. She fell through it, hoping that she would be able to land okay on the other side.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Curious Key

[Ari]

GM

 

On the other side, Dr. Spencer and the rest of the university tour group were standing in the midst of the broken, scattered robosaurs. Smiling with all the warmth and good cheer that a Montreal winter could hold, she went on with what appeared to be part of her running exposition: "...which brings us to the final part of our tour, the aftermath of a super-battle! An integral part of our work is things going horribly wrong and superheroes needing to step in! Say 'thanks' to the nice lady, folks!" Spencer waved, metronomically, with something dark and terrible brewing in her eyes.

 

With a last desultory whimper, the Guardian of infinity shuddered closed behind Warp.

 

"And that concludes our tour! Be sure to visit the gift shop! If you weren't taking notes I will find you."

 

As the students hurried off Dr. Spencer marched up to Warp, grabbed her by the shoulders and whispered "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!"

 

Meanwhile

 

" But, Mentor..." the Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Continental uniform gaped at Raul, the other saurian getting to his feet and wiping away his tears with an evil light in his eyes "...you told me this was our last hope! That this 'Lab' was our only chance!"

 

"No. There is another. Though i am loath to accept it, I have an...offer. From a human. I thought I could avoid bloodshed by finding another world, but that is no longer possible." With a deep, rattling sigh, Sssethusss Raul regarded the shattered, dissolved Brightstone crystal that his people had coaxed and grown for a million years. 

 

"That world will be ours. All it will take is a few more promises. Ones I will be sure to honour."

 

Starting with this: I swear to tear that ape's head from her shoulders!

[Curious Key]

it would have been nice if Warp could say she fell gracefully, like normal. Nope. She landed sprawled out on the ground. "Ow." She sighed, deadpan, and pushed herself back up to her feet while the world around her slowly settled into colors that her three-dimensional meat-brain could comprehend. She was still tired, so when Spencer grabbed hold of her Warp just stared at her for a long moment while she tried to process what exactly she was asking about. When she did understand, her eyes started to narrow. "You mean about the part of stopping a dinosaur invasion? Or closing a portal to a hostile world?" She twisted her scowl into a grin. "You've got a real funny way of saying 'thank you.'" 

 

Warp grabbed Spencer's hands, shoved the woman off her and vanished in a bright red flash.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Curious Key