Mechagogue

The Consigliere patted the money in the bag. He hefted a random stack of bills, grinned ever so slightly, and tossed it to one of his Capo. The man caught it in both hands and began rifling through the individual bills.

"I told you it's all there," Jimmy Cox said in an irritated tone, "Why do we have to go through this every time?"

"To keep you honest," the Consigliere said simply. He glanced back to the Capo, who nodded. "Very well," he said. A flick of his wrist was all it took for all the Family men in the room to file out.

"Wait a second!" Jimmy protested, "What about the 'dyne?!"

The Consigliere stopped, and several of the Family dropped their hands to their guns. It was an unmistakeble signal that Jimmy wasn't going to get his way today.

"The Family feels that, in the future, superadine will play a less significant role in the course of events as they pertain to the Edge. Anticipating this future, we are shifting our focus to more profitable, long-term localities. The Skulls would be wise to adapt to this coming future as quickly, and painlessly," it was clearly a threat, "As possible."

"But I can't go back to my boss with nothing! What am I supposed to do?!"

"You're the Gravedigger," the Consigliere spat with the utmost contempt, "I'm sure you can figure it out."

And the Family were gone.

"[censored]!" Jimmy said, kicking over a barrel. It made quite a racket in the empty warehouse.

Basically, Drow Schoolin' means that whoever is still alive at the end of the semester graduates.

((Don't be scared of a naked lizard! Would you ask the Geico gecko to put on some pants before he saved you hundreds of dollars on car insurance? No, I think not.))

Seeing that most everyone seemed to be fin ishing up their food, Helper shuffled around the yard and began tidying things up. He collected all the used cups and potato wrappers in a trash bag, then gathered the dishes and flatware. The robot took the trash and dishes back towards the house, headed to the kitchen to wash them.

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The purple demon smiled a little reluctantly as he watched Essex enjoy herself in the pool. Nobody seemed to be watching him at the moment, so it would be ok. She was just such a sweet, innocent kid. Absolutely perfect for corruption....

Kefetasura shrugged off the idea. He was, after all, on vacation.

"Ahh, drat. I can't eat cow," Kefetasura said, dropping the forkful of meat onto his plate. He pushed it to the center of the table, turning his attention to the potatoes and chompin on them with restrained enjoyment.

Kefetasura was sitting at a wooden picnic table near the grill, fork and knife tearing into the steak. Another hand had appeared on his right side and was absently juggling three potatoes telekinetically.

The purple skinned man, towel wrapped round his shoulders, paused as he was about to take the first bite of his steak.

"Hey... is this cow?"

Darkness.

Cold.

A stillness grips your heart. You hear a muffled rythym in your ears like the bass drum beat of a distant marching band. A sliver of blinding yellow light cracks across your vision like the promise of a golden path. A large and moving silhouette of something passes through it, and is gone. There is an eye upon you. From where, you can not tell. But there is an eye upon you. The hairs on the back of your neck shift and prickle.

The echo of a drum beats faster in the distance.

Your feet will not take you towards the salvation of the light, no matter how hard you will them to do so. The need to figure out a way grows more urgent as the sliver of gold shrinks away like a door closing in the night.

And is gone.

Alone in the dark, an eye is upon you.

The drummer is franticly pounding his instrument now.

A silhouetted hand reachess out from the dark and touches your shoulder, numbing it like ice...

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"Aaaahhh!"

Ernesto screamed as he woke, his heart racing in his chest and threatening to escape through his throat. He clutched his thin blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders.

The little red light of his answering machine was blinking. He got out of bed and walked over to it, pushing the play button.

>Boop< "Ernie," a voice crackled through the air, "It's Paulie. Where the [censored] are ya, kid? Yer supposed to be here. >click<"

Ernesto looked at the little blue numbers on his microwave. They were stuck at zero.

>Boop< "I'm gettin sick of this [censored], Ernie! Yer supposed to be here a freakin hour ago! Get your [censored] here or find a new job, you lazy moron! >click<"

He scrambled for his alarm clock, boggling it in his hands and reading the face. It was blinking 3:48.

>Boop< "That's it, you [censored] jerk, yer fired! And don't let me catch yer dumb [censored] lazy goldbrickin good fer nothin [censored] anywhere near my shop or I'll knock yer [censored] head off, you got me?! >click<"

"Oh, no! Oh, no!" Ernesto said, shaking the alarm clock. Apparently the power in his apartment had gone off while he slept for just long enough to reset all his clocks. "Oh, no!"

He had been so close! Working two jobs had meant he could use one income for bills and expenses, and send all the money from the other back to his family so they could move to America with him. But now... With only his night job he would barely be making enoug to break even! He scrambled through his clothes from last night, desperately searching for his picture of Anita. He couldn't find it. Ernesto had never gotten it back from the girls, and it was most likely lost and forgotten somewhere in the emergency staircase.

With nothing left to do, Ernesto lay his head in his hands and wept.

Absolutely top-notch horror story!

I also had a freak-out moment at the end when I *finally* figured out it was Toy Dispenser, maybe I'm a little behind the curve on that, but ... well... y'know.... mis-spent youth and all... *blush*

Anyway, the scene as it compares to my normal perception of Toy & the gang is about the same level of a disconnect as you might find (assuming, like me, you're using FF7 as a guide) between an the FMV sequences as compared to the rest of the game. Brutal, gritty and 'realisitic', vs. simple, and a little bit campy.

Two thumbs up on a masterpiece of horror writing!

((Well, I think a reasonable way to go about things would be to just sorta gauge people's interest in the 'current' event, and apply the GM-Poke(tm) to keep things moving at a good pace.

For example -- People have shown interest in a round of room-mate swapping and an impromptu barbeque, so let it run. I imagine the next thing to happen will be some settling in for the first night. Pretty much all you'd expect from a situation where there's a whole bunch of folks in a 'getting to know you' type situation. After that, though, it's perfectly ok to say... skip forward to the next day. Just after lunch when the host announces that days activity, perhaps.

I guess I mean to say that keeping the pace is a fluid thing. You just have to rely on your instincts and your sense of dramatic timing.))

((LMAO, Experiment rocks))

"Holy hell," Xander said under his breath, dropping his guard and staring at the scene in detached stupefication.

Destroy the portal, Stelleshand urged.

"Hmm?" Xander asked, he had been to transfixed to pay attention.

The portal! Destroy it, now! Stelleshand practically screamed into the boy's mind. Whatever they're doing we can not let them succeed!

"Holy hell, you're so right!" Xander said, pulling wave after wave of fortifying life energy from everything around him before exploding in a massive shockwave of black light.

((Double Mire + Quasar))

"I can't eat for a half hour after swimming," Kefetasura pouted as he climbed out of the pool, "I might get a cramp."

He stopped walking with a puzzled look on his handsome purple face.

"Or is that the other way around?"

"I see I have returned just in time," Helper said as he returned from the kitchen, plate of steaming cheesey-taters in foil held in one hand, a five gallon jug of fruit punch in the other. Under his arm was a sleeve of disposable plastic cups.

Helper gazed at the grill, his head cocked to one side in a moment's worth of disappointment.

"Not a problem, sir. I will use the oven in the kitchen," he summized chirpily, shuffling back inside.

"Come on in, people! Are you all shy or aquaphobic or something? The pool is freakin boring without some people to play with," Kefetasura prounounced as he climbed up the ladder and scooted off in the direction of the diving board.

"I am sorry, sir," Helper said in his upbeat tin, seeming to miss Acid's point entirely, "If you had arrived a moment earlier I would have been glad to carry your bags as well."

He held out the plate of potatoes to Acid, "They are not baked yet, and they are stuffed with onion and cheese. But yes, they are potatoes, sir."

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Meanwhile, Kefetasura had slipped off to examine his room.

"Eh, a little small, but not too bad," he said, mentally envisioning what the rom would look like if he pushed the beds together an stuck Helper in the closet. "It's only a robot, it wouldn't mind," he said to the room, "Hell, it just gave me a piggy-back ride like ten feet into the back yard! Anyway, time to be fun and lively!"

He yanked off most of his clothes, leaving only his yellow and purple shorts, grabbed a towel and raced for the yard.

"CANNONBALL!" the demon yelled loudly, dropping his towel on the patio and leaping violently into the pool, splashing water everywhere.

"Oh holy hell," Jon moaned, moving to follow the heroes, "God hates me. He made two of them."

"Indeed, I do not," Helper confirmed as he shuffled into the kitchen, "However, I can not speak for the others. I believe Miss S-6 can extract energy from organic material, and if that is the case then others might be designed to do so as well."

Having postulated that making a meal together would be better for everyone than a party game, as that idea had earned a rather cool reception, he had formulated a new plan.

"I would further assume that Mister Acid's recognition of the grill as a cooking tool does imply that he, at the very least, understands the theory behind food preparation."

The bronze machine began looking through the various kitchen drawers and cabinets, producing a fork, knife, bag of potatoes, some ground black pepper and a roll of aluminium foil. Then he shuffled through the fridge until he found an onion and a large package of cheese. He brought all his supplies to the nearest counter and placed them in rigorously specific locations.

"I have always wanted to try to cook," Helper explained as he began slicing a single small wedge from each potato, "I often observed Dr. Hermes preparing this dish, so I imagine it is preferred by some people."

He set the wedges aside, chopped a small part of the onion, and began slicing cheese. His massive hands seemed a blur of precise movements. Then he carefully scooped out a large chunk of each potato with coordinated use of knife and fork, mashing it into a thick paste with the cheese and onions, mixing in a small amount of pepper. He refilled each hollow potato with the mixture and capped it with the left-over wedges. He then wrapped each carefully in a small sheet of aluminium foil.

"There," he said, preparing one for each guest, and one for Lyden as well. The entire process took Helper less than five minutes, and that was nearly twenty potatoes! "Now they should be ready to eat after spending a few minutes in the coals of the fire."

The robot cleaned up after himself, resealing and replacing what he did not use, piled his 'inventions' up on a plate and headed back for the yard.

((How irritating would it be to try an lob a vee-gan grenade? *laughs* Vegan Grenade: I refuse to kill or exploit any living creature! Grenadier: But you're a freakin' bomb! Gyah! This is so frustrating.... *idea* You know, it's a shame I won't be able to defeat these cattle ranchers, and their slaughterhouse/leather tannery will stay in business... Vegan Grenade: What?! *KaBOOM* Grenadier: *sigh* I wish we didn't have to go through this every single freakin' time.))

Helper, having reached his destination, gently removed Kefetasura and placed him on the ground. There was little fuss other than a slight pout.

"I imagine that for the moment we are, from this point, left to our own devices," the robot observed. "I have noted that it is often helpful, when strangers meet for the first time, to play an ice-breaking game. Would anyone care to participate?"

Jon managed to catch up with Guapo just about the same time that Rad Spike flew down the hall, still in time to see him and the Weilder of the Painpipe.

"Hey, 'Hero,' let's see those h... HOLY [censored] HELL!! What's happened to your clothes?! I don't even want to know. I don't care! I'm tired of today, I'm tired of these sewers, and I'm tired of you!" he bulldoged the much larger man seemingly unconcerned or unaware of the sheer comedy of standing up to El Guapo Grande.

"Now which way is out of this [censored]-pipe?"

Praise upon Essex! *bow and scrape* Freakin' amazing! I can not say enough good things about you or this track!

You've made me one happy Mecha! ^_^

Xander followed her lead, teleporting himself behind the Rikti and blasting them with waves of darkness. Hopefully the ruse would make them think it was a co-ordinated attack from b oth sides and they'd just flee.

Xander didn't even dare to hold on to that hope, smashing a palpable wave of Nictus black-light into a Rikti Guardian to keep it from bubbling up it's allies.

Kefetasura sulked a little when he didn't get Essex. She was so little that she'd hardly take up any space in the room, leaving that much more for him. Unlike Helper, who was huge.

"Giddie-yap, butler-bot!" he instructed, and spurred Helper forward to carry him on the rest of the tour. Helper shuffled along obediently without the slightest inkling of protest.

Kefetasura mostly ignored everything being said while he began scheming -- Who to get kicked out first? So many choices, so many alliances needed to be made....

Hehe, I do get a little over the top. and it looks like I managed to hijack my own thread for another battle in the unending Kefka v. Sephiroth war.

I have a lot of problems accepting Sephiroth as intelligent... Yes, the supernova attack did have a lot of math in the animation, but taken in the context of the game the only person who knew a damn about science/mathematics was Cid. Sepiroth accomplished that feat through the use of rare and difficult to master materia. It's more a testament to luck and/or dedication than it is the actual ability to do the math.

I mean, he did have a clever scheme. Just, in Sephiroth's particular milleu, that scheme was pathetically whiny and momma's boy'ish. In terms of the look, Seph has it hands over Kefka, but that's like saying an F-16 is a more important plane than the Wright Brothers'. The one would not have been possible without the success of the other.

Oh, and one other problem... if Sephiroth's supernova attack blows up the sun, then who gives a [censored] about meteor? At least Keka's Light of Judgement had a little more continuity to it. I know, at this point I'm just nit-picking.

I'm not bored... in fact I write a good portion of my characters in a similar way. Getting a basic framework and building outward from there. Or sometimes I take multiple characters that aren't working and mash them together.

Like Kefetasura... I think he's about three different characters glomped up in one. As was noticed by Essex (gives her a ribbon) his personality is heavily drawn from Kefka, my all time favorite villain. I've been wanting to play a character like him for years and years, but could never manage to find a way to do it where I wasn't just copy/pasting (plaugerizing, ewww!) him over from his original incarnation.

Then, for his backstory, I borrowed parts fom a villian I had created as an antagonist for a V:tM campaign. And the dramatic scene where he is summoned is half Ravnos' awakening from the Week of Nightmares story, half blood cult ritual that gives him his strength that I made up on the spot.

Lastly, his name, Kefetasura, is a blend of Kefka + Zapathasura (The name of the Ravnos clan founder) Since an Asura is a mythological creature in Hinduism, I also tried to keep the vocabulary of Hindu belief sprnkled into his dialogue.

And to better explain his powers for those of you who may be confused...

He is a Mind/Psi/Mu Dominator, though in RP the Mu magic has a blood related aesthetic instead of lightning. The reason he can be in more than one place at a time is because he gains control of the bodies of those whose blood has been sacrificed to him, and his psionic abilities are so expansive that he can easily control several of them in the heat of combat in multiple locations against varied opponents and situations at once.

It would probably take forever for me to explain how I managed to come up with this set of powers by combining all the characters I combined, but if you're willing to trust me, then just believe it makes perfect sense.

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To me. Muah ha ha ha!