TeChameleon

KINGS ROW/FORGOTTEN ZONE-

Scarlet Eye floated patiently in the mindscape, irritably wishing he could mindcrush Bang and be done with it.

"It is... distressing... to find you... bound... to a mind... so... small, 'father'..." he commented eventually, "Tied... to one... who foolishly... believes... mere insanity... to be... chaos..." He subsided, biding his time. Patience comes easily to immortals.

DARK ROVER-

"Concile of Seven? Doesn't sound familiar... guessing they're a relatively recent group." Energon X replied, sounding as if he were frowning. "There's enough firepower here still to make attacking this world counterproductive- after twenty years of war, only our strongest are left. Unfortunately, our own war... petty though it might seem to you... means that we lack the resources to create any kind of strikeforce."

The Blaster glanced at Ken. "It probably sounds ridiculous to you, but this little blue-green marble of a world has been the crux point of an utterly ludicrous number of historical events, ones that extend far beyond our own atmosphere, some beyond even this universe. Don't ask me why, but it keeps happening." An expressive shrug. "Anyways... sleeper agents, monolithic war machine... if it weren't for the free will thing, I would've suggested just letting them roll over you and then obliterating their supply lines, cutting off their military and then starving them into submission." He waved a hand. "Eh, listen to me... just babbling. You've no doubt already tried all that."

The blaster gave Ken a look. "So... if you stay, we'll definitely be getting Concile visitors, probably Shade-type-visitors, and if you leave, the Concile knows where we are, and the Shades may raze our world to dust just out of general principles. I'm not sure whether to thank you for alerting us to the threat or slap you for bringing your enemies to our doorstep."

A flickering of the blazing lights that made up the Blaster's 'eyes', and he turned sharply to Ken. "Wait... what do the Shades do with technological remains? Do they simply kill the organics and active positronics and ignore inert or apparently inert machinery or technology? An idea is forming..."

*ducks without even looking up*

I claim partial immunity, since that's what I deal with pretty much every night... as in, that's my job.

*finishes paperwork, then fires it into Hellspite's... er... face(?) from a cannon, neatly removing his... head(?)*

And the question is... will it blend?

*points top of blender at Chaotic and removes lid*

*Chaotic is flensed by flying Dalek shrapnel*

This would be Aaron Williams... scan through until you meet "Zodon", you'll probably see what I meant.

And... ah... you only reading Pratchett kind of shows >.O

Although I could swear there's a certain level of Douglas Adams-ism happening there too...

Quick list of authors for you to check out (based on your writing style, fondness for Pratchett, and need to expand your reading habits ):
Douglas Adams (assuming you haven't already)
David Eddings (he's rather guilty of plot-recycling, but his characterizations are excellent, particularly in his earlier stuff)
Jim Butcher (specifically his Dresden Files series)
Donald Jack (the Bandy Papers)
Keith Laumer (his Bolo series is good, but his Retief series is better. Much, much better. Also extremely funny)

That should be enough to keep you giggling maniacally enough to qualify for hiring an Igor for a good while.

EDIT- I realize this might be a bit presumptuous- but there are a lot of good authors out there; and as a fellow Pratchett fanatic (I discovered him in my highschool library in... must've been '93-94..? Yup- I was into Pratchett before he was cool Well... before he was considered cool, anyways), I think I can at least take a stab at stuff you'd enjoy.

... were you channeling Aaron Williams near the end there?

... so where does it cross the line between "Pratchett homage" and "blatant Discworld Ripoff"? Personally, I'm thinking around the line about 'jumping up and down on the hooks to get them to sink' (considering that that's almost a word-for-word quote)...

>.>

It's funny, just kind of a... familiar... funny.

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((Something involving purple rhinoes, ballet, and a rubber duck with a bicycle pump would fit.))

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((And I now have the mental image of Scirocco running screaming from a ten-ton rubber duck, Indiana-Jones-in-the-Temple-of-Doom style, screaming "The lightning! It does nothing!"

I think I'm tired >.< ))

((Gah... my brain is totally dead. Have my traditional winter virus attempting to kill me, and I just can't think of anything to do with either Build or Devious' situations.))

..?

*shrugs and detonates Chaotic96*

*goes back to the party*

Ow!

*collapses*

*TeChameleon's lawyer taps Chaotic96 on the shoulder from behind*

*hands Chaotic96 a subpoena informing him that he is being sued for stealing TeChameleon's schtick*

*lawyer throws down smoke bomb and vanishes*

*TeChameleon groggily wakes up*

Hah! Take that! I hire only the finest Law-Ninja!

*taps _Klaw_ on the shoulder from behind*

*dartdartdartdartdartdartdartdartdartdartdartdartd artdartdartdartdartdart*

You mean these Crey?

*five pre-MoG'd Paragon Protectors turn up and start attacking _Klaw_*

What, you thought you were the only one who could hire Crey?

*snickers and fades into the shadows again, patiently waiting for MoG to fade so that _Klaw_ can be darted again*

BANG'S 'MIND'-

The Scarlet Eye froze for a moment when the mask spoke. This wasn't entirely unexpected, but it was... disquieting, that the mask retained enough personality of its own to object to his intrusion. It raised the risk of his attempted maneuver significantly, but... the offer...

He considered.

"I believe... I will take... all of the above." he finally concluded. "Empower me... 'father'..." Then the elemental hesitated. "Although... we can... dispense with... the added... height." A pause. "However... I promise only... non-aggression... for so long... as... you... or your... host... do not interfere... with my plans."

As he 'spoke', he let questing tendrils of his consciousness drift, apparently aimlessly over the landscape... doing the telepathic equivalent of a passive scan of his surroundings, seeking anything that could be turned to his advantage, now or later.

THE DARK ROVER-

Energon X shrugged, having completed his test on the now rather perforated hull plating. "Time Travel was never something I enjoyed, even when those Mender idiots were running all over Paragon for a bit. However, I did learn not to make assumptions about it, no matter what the math might suggest." He paused, and made a displeased noise. "I also learned that paradoxes are a pain in the [censored], but that's a story for another time."

He turned to face Ken and the others. "In any case, there's little point standing here trading hypotheticals; you obviously have more direct experience with the entities in question, whereas I have little to go on save my experience and intuition, both of which are urging caution on this matter." He looked Ken square in the eye. "If I might be so bold... it looks like you've been carefully avoiding saying exactly what you're fighting that makes weaponizing world-killing creatures seem like a good idea..." He left the implied question hanging in the air.

((Boy, wouldn't Scarlet Eye just love that... the chaos that would invoke would be a 'meal' like nothing since the war))

((Yeh, yeh, sorry. Got distracted with... er... actually playing the game >.>

Will edit this post into an actual post at some point today))

THE DARK ROVER
Energon X looked at Ken cautiously (although this was difficult to tell, given that his 'face' was a blank mask with two glowing bits where his eyes would be), then shrugged. "A briefing would be appreciated, although I'd like to test your hull integrity first; it will give me some idea as to the capabilities of your little Shade-thingies better than a technical readout would."

He walked over to a spare slab of hullmetal lying in the hangar bay and brought it under the focus of a thick beam of coherent energy, gradually ramping up the intensity. "And insofar as the Shades never developing your particular time-travel tech... there are other methods of time travel out there. And given what I've experienced over the last twenty-five years or so, assuming 'they can't possibly follow us' is a really, really, really bad idea."

A thought struck him. "This is probably a stupid question, but did anybody go back and check that their world is still monatomic dust in the present after you started mucking about with the timestream?" he added, as he continued to ramp up the inensity of his blasts.

KINGS ROW/FORGOTTEN ZONE-

Bang's knife dug into the Scarlet Eye's side, and the elemental began to leak raw magic. The illusory self he had left when he removed himself to the psychic plane during the teleport shuffle faded, a stricken look on its face, and Bladewing and Dax were left alone in the Forgotten Zone.

On the psychic plane, the Scarlet Eye clutched at his side and glared at the capering Bang. "If... what... you show... is... true..." he rasped, sounding somewhat pained. "Then... you have... something... of mine... little... god..." He lunged, chaos energy spraying accross the mindscape and distorting it strangely.

Contact.

To Bang's eyes, little would have changed- they remained on the mental plane, Scarlet Eye attacking him both mentally and through manifestations on the plane. To an outside observer, though... the Eye had leapt into the mask, in a furious attempt to usurp it from its wearer, relying on his own tremendous mental powers and a psionic 'anchor' he had left with Cry, allowing him to draw upon the new Ghost Widow's power and leaving him with a way back into the world, if things went wrong in the maskBang mind.

*grin*

Sorry, leftover habit from playing the original Deus Ex. I was a complete crossbow fiend. Drove my brother insane when he watched me play.

"Hey, that guy's got a machine gun!"

*dart dart dart*

"So?"

"Would you play the stupid game RIGHT!"

... when I let him try, he carved a bloody swathe of death >.< (of course, my only response was "Meh... where's the fun in that?")

*darts Wolffe's unconscious body again, just for fun*

*pops out of box and guns down guards in slow motion*

*darts _Klaw_ again*

*vanishes into shadows once more*

Energon X glanced at Ken, giving him an odd look. "Lesse... I've had vegetation, rocks, animals, shadows, raw electricity, pure magic, scrap metal, ghosts, dead flesh animated by both science and magic, extradimensional entities, dimensional echoes and otherselves, gravity, creatures of myth, and more varieties of sentient than I can easily count all attack me, but I can't recall the air ever trying to. Still, I guess I wouldn't want to see that." he responded with a certain dry humour.

He hesitated for a second. "You've integrated your nulltime deformer and dark gateway? Don't they work on conflicting principles?" The blaster shrugged. "Eh, not really my area anyways. If these Shade thingies were so inimical to everything, how are they managing to work up the internal cohesion to pursue you? Wouldn't they just eat one ano..."

A frozen instant, then E-X slapped his gauntlet against his helmet, about where his forehead would have been. "Oyyyyy... PLEASE tell me you didn't... you uplifted them when you weaponized them, didn't you?" He shook his helmet. "Even if you get outta here in the next ten minutes, those things are still going to turn up looking for you. Do you have a spare sheet of hullmetal? I'd like to test something, and I'm assuming you'd prefer that no-one else poked holes in your ship."

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ooooohsnap

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... precisely what I envision happening to his neck once our resident "yes, I actually am a girl" posters see that...

*winces, then sets up videocamera*

... Nothing?

I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove anything!

*runs*

... what?

Curses, I've been spotted!

*ducks into shadows and fires tranquilizer dart at _Klaw_, then feverishly starts working to disable the alarms*

((I really have no idea- my extent of interaction with Orouboros on the Test Server was to walk in, do the intro missions, go 'cool' and wander off again, and I don't remember teaming with anyone on the Test Server ever, so... >.>

And if I was a dev, I would've thought I'd have noticed by now... I mean, there'd be clues, like paychecks from Cryptic, memos about the NCSoft buyout, that kind of thing...))

((and thus we have why I'm confused. There's no question in my mind that that's my character design, and my primary and epic powerset... if it's a coincidence, it's one so massive that it boggles the mind, because it even has my weird little touches like the same shade of 'circuitry' pattern on the boots and the blue-and-purple 'psyche' pattern inside the cape (which is black outside).))

A brief flickering of lights as Energon X 'blinked', then he shook his helmet, trying once again to clear his mind. "... er, my apologies. I seem to have gotten the names reversed." Then he shook his helmet again. "I suppose it's possible that I'm a Sun Engineer, given that I don't know what they are, but it seems unlikely. I was human at one point, but my current state is somewhat more... energetic." he finished cryptically, the caution of twenty years of war making him reluctant to be more open than he had to be.

The Blaster glanced briefly around as they entered the transport, interest dulled somewhat by the thudding headache that seemed to be slamming through his entire nonexistent body. Given how long it had last been since he felt any sort of physical sensation, even pain, other than the distant strain of energies trying to explode forth through him, the headache was almost more a thing of interest than a hinderance.

Some distance in, he managed to tear his attention away from the headache and ask "So... what resulted in you ending up here, on this particular world? Judging by your... ah... landing, this doesn't seem to have been your original destination... or at least, not this particular location."

((Hoo boy... okay, PMing around on my next course of action on Scarlet Eye- things could get very interesting here, but it'd take a lot of cooperation for it to work. Will post once I've got responses back))