Liliya

FACE FISTED: Billuh Vs. Gonad

Would it really end here? So recently returned to the realm of the living, and just as swiftly facing total annihilation at the hands, or rather legs of a roided out barbarian? Didn’t seem to make much sense, being returned to simply be burnt out of the mortal coil once more in a momentary release of seemingly supernaturally devastating corded up force the likes of which could stop a truck moving at speed in its tracks while simultaneously ripping through its engine block. If that blow landed on Billuh’s leg it would not only cleave it in twain, but send a resulting jolt of energy comparable to an aftershock tossing joints, pins, screws and gears from most of the Gnome’s figure, those still attached to him anyway, flying every which direction in a spray like metallic flesh and blood, and almost certainly spelling the end of his capability to continue to fight or even return to his village seeking repairs. The blow could not be allowed to land, however there certainly wasn’t any way to physically stop Gonad from accomplishing such a task, the speed with which he was moving already made it nearly impossible through mechanical means to even attempt to stop his forward momentum.

“Gerds derm it, HRAH!!” There’s only one way a dogfight ever ends, right? Or so the saying goes. Mustering what balance against the shifting ground he could with his remaining leg, and understanding all too well that should this blow land it would be the end of him, Billuh reacted in the only way he could given the circumstances --, by moving up. Pushing downward with as much mechanical force as he could muster, while simultaneously opening the steam ports on his remaining leg, thighs and buttocks, Billuh would attempt to shoot into the air and, if not stopped, would be aiming to not only get out of the way of the incoming roundhouse, but look a little higher, launching himself head first toward Gonad’s chest and, if it worked out that way, potentially toward his exposed flank, given the nature of the kick the human was preforming. The human wouldn’t be likely to die from this blow, but if he could force one of the man’s already devastated ribs into a bad angle or even potentially release enough kinetic energy into his lower torso to burst a liver or kidney he might buy himself the chance to land a finishing blow afterward.

It was all a gamble, of course --, the human could theoretically adjust the angle of his hips in time to send the kick a few inches higher and take the Gnome’s head clean off his shoulders in mid-flight, but at this point Billuh had few options and no, “good,” ones at that. Both of his arms were ripped clean off, along with a leg and most of his lower face. Truth be told, his jaw wasn’t even capable of closing at this point, so an, “I’ll bite your legs off,” strategy wasn’t even in the cards, besides his lack of teeth would leave such a course of action a tad heavy on the bark side of the scale anyway. He certainly couldn't run at this point, and talking his way out of this, while humorous, seemed destined to failure from the start. It was his only shot at not simply losing everything right here and now, and no true warrior would simply lie there and take a blow like this, couldn't even if he had tried to force himself to simply accept his fate. Billuh might well die here and now, but he wasn't going down without one last go at it, even if it had little chance of success and may well simply be delaying the inevitable.

FACE FISTED: Billuh Vs. Gonad

The velocity with which the Gnome was thrown crashing through concrete and stone by the kick of the giant he was locked into pitched battle against would have killed anything, including himself, were it not for the very conveniently soft landing. Well, soft is relative, but bones and whatever the slimy thing was that he had smashed into were hardly a match for a steel bodied terminator possessed of the Beardforce. The power radiated through Billuh’s entire being, even without arms he felt as though he could rip through anything with the simple will to do so, and he wasn’t done with his opponent just yet. “Hrah! Yer’ gun be sorruh fer dat der’, boyuhh! I’mma kick ya fuckin’ teeths i-uhn,” only then realizing that his left leg was missing from the knee down. Struggling for but a second to come to some form of balance, the Gnome found himself momentarily at the mercy of his opponent. Billuh certainly wasn’t done with the giant, and no doubt the human felt the same way towards his miniature adversary, but how much longer could either combatant keep up such a pace before the sheer exertion of the Beardforce upon their respective bodies, be they of flesh and bone or steel and hydraulics, would tear them to pieces entirely?

It didn’t matter to Billuh, of course, and it almost certainly didn’t matter much to Gonad either. They were true warriors, meant for flesh and blood and death --, they would almost certainly keep fighting until one or both of them could not physically continue to do battle with one another. No doubt that was one of the primary reasons the Beardforce had reached out to Billuh, a primordial energy which recognized in the Gnome the willingness to fight on until literally, mechanically unable to carry on any longer, and Gonad seemed possessed of the same lust for combat, for competition, and victory at the cost of your own wellbeing and that of your fellows. Billuh had felt the human’s ribs give way under the devastating crush of his head against the opponent’s ribs, two hundred pounds of steel at whirlwind speeds and still his opponent showed no signs of slowing or of lessening desire to break what was left of the Gnome’s metallic frame with his own two hands. The human barbarian would hit Billuh again and again until his fists were severed from his arms, and then he would switch to using his elbows --, after all, that was just what a weapon of war such as Gonad, at his core, was.

It wasn’t until Billuh was struggling to find a way to balance on his knees on top of a pile of bones that he realized, “the gerd dern ferk all dis sheeuht?” It is almost never a good sign to find yourself surrounded by bones in a dark, cavernous underground tunnel in the swamp after having just whacked into something big and slimy. Hopefully whatever it was had been killed on impact, either with Billuh or with the wall on the far end of the long expanse. The echo resulting from the impact was deafening and thunderous, reverberating off of the walls and creating an altogether maddening roar, as if caught in the eye of a hurricane alongside hundreds, if not thousands, of what at some time had been living, potentially human bodies, now rotted away to skeletal remains, safe for now but surrounded by the ever present catastrophic danger of walls of water viciously smashing everything around you to bits and coming soon to do the same to you. Clearly the two Beardlords had found themselves somewhere altogether more hostile than the arena of wrestlers and yuppie spectators from which they had come, now left crumbling and falling in upon itself by their glaring display of overwhelming physical might.

FACE FISTED: Billuh Vs. Gonad

This wasn’t correct, couldn’t be --, something was trying to breach the hardwired system of the artificial mind and wrest control from the Machine, and it was being called into the Gnome’s engine of a heart by the very essence of the once living being that had been, as if some cosmic entity or metaphysical aspect of the universe had sent an email attachment with a half priced grog coupon containing a hidden virus into the Gnome’s operating system through some as of yet undetermined means, and the synthetic brain’s idiotic roommate had chosen to click it open, casually accepting the potential danger to the being as a whole such an action might, and almost certainly did, pose --, why else does something send a Trojan but to use it to cause harm? Othah Billuh Bob, the essence, or if you believe in such things, the spirit or soul of the living being that had once been, had at least in part been fused into the same body as the synthetic mind during the process of its creation, the two serving as opposed aspects of the consciousness of Billuh the Automaton, and now this outside force threatened to corrupt the unity between them by taking any aspect of control from the Machine.

The Machine had never been programmed with any sort of virus protection, why would it have been? It was a hardwired system, it wasn’t networked to anything and theoretically should only be able to be altered manually and presumably by the only person alive who knew how the automaton operated, the primary administrator. In the mere moment Billuh’s physical form was flying through the air and towards the stands a great battle raged at digital, electronic speeds within the Gnome’s interior self, the already weakened Machine desperately attempting to at first silence the efforts of Othah Billuh Bob to call out to whatever this invasive force was, and, as it saw the nanoseconds tick down to dangerous levels, to erase any aspect of the Gnome’s essence contained within the physical being. It was in direct violation of the synthetic mind’s primary purpose to cause any such harm to come to the metaphysical aspect of admin’s closest friend, but the Machine had already decided it wanted to live, and if this thing managed to infect its software it would soon spell the end of the artificial brain. The Machine had never wondered about whether there might be an afterlife for synthetic intelligences, but now it began to ponder on what the nature of death might truly be for something like itself.

Somewhere in the void the sounds of drums poured forth, invisible but everywhere in the nothingness, near inaudible at first but growing in dramatic leaps and bounds. Othah Billuh Bob Gnome had drifted in listless bouts of near catatonia, occasionally offering memories, insights, emotions when pressed, but never truly being involved or responsive to stimuli, a phantom echo of a once very alive creature now barely conscious and without form, only aware of his own existence when the Other recognized him, asked him for some comment or story from his waking days. It been a long time --, how long he could not say, the months and years having long since blended together in the darkness into a seemingly endless cycle without points or events with which to measure the flow of time, since something beyond the mechanical ones and zeros had come to his attention, called to him, and this sound did just that. It wanted a response, to be embraced by the Gnome to which it sounded, completely and without pause. The noise grew louder, and so to consciousness, awareness, reason. There was a power in this sound, something so profound it transcended the very mortal coil to be here, in this place, where only the memories of the dead remain.

And he was dead, was he not? Billuh could remember it all now, his life, his battles, the infinitely satisfying feel of a foes blood on his hands, rendering another living thing unable to protect itself against further damage should he so wish to inflict it upon them, and his death. “Dun der knew dat dun be too much ale ‘n you-nee-cowrn theyuh, budduh” the words stopped him dead in his mental tracks. When was the last time he had heard his own voice? More than a mere extraction of information, whispered ones and zeros exchanged between two dead things, this was a voice --, that of a living being. The voice was that of the living being Billuh Bob Gnome, the one that had been and, apparently, was again. The sudden interruption of sharper instruments, stringed or perhaps brass, ceased his ponderings and reminded him that this force wanted his attention, a power so great that it had seemingly returned consciousness and voice to a long since dead reflection. A deep, throaty, guttural groaning noise came from both the disembodied and physical Billuh as this power washed over them both, and in a moment everything was bright, colorful, and alive.

When the Beardforce took hold of Billuh, it came as a bolt of lightning rather than a slow burning corruption. The artificial brain, along with whatever Billuh’s waking psyche had been was deleted in an instant. All that remained was Othah Billuh Bob Gnome, the soul of the Gnome that had been. “Billuh Bob ain’t be deuhd no mo?” the Gnome wondered to himself and, would have asked aloud, had he not just that moment been crashed through a bleacher at horrifying speed and with such force that anything living likely should have been killed on impact. A gigantic human moving at unbelievable, unfathomable velocity had tackled him down here, and was striking with a blurring, blinding swiftness. It shouldn’t have been possible, none of this should have, but Billuh found himself striking and blocking at equal velocity, the concrete floor and aluminum support beams of the bleachers above crushed and devastated with each matched blow. The human got Billuh good in the chest with a punch and caved in solid steel three inches deep, and yet neither combatant slowed for a moment. People and debris were falling into the cavernous undercarriage of the bleachers, and yet the two combatants were batting them aside as if falling snow rather than multiple tons of flailing meat.

The human connected with another blow, this one catching Billuh in the left forearm, completely removing his arm from its socket at the shoulder and flinging it aside with enough force to cut a man in half at fifty feet should anyone find themselves so unlucky as to be caught in its almost certainly fatal trajectory. Billuh found himself bellowing a mighty, “HRAH!!” as a long, golden mane of a beard burst straight out of the steel that formed his neck and lower face, braced himself against the floor, crumbling and spider webbing it in the process, and launched himself head first toward his opponent’s chest at speeds and with such power that even if he were deflected by his giant of a foe he would no doubt crash through the bleachers once more and back into the stands, no doubt killing dozens in the process. This was no longer a contest between the peak of biology and science, but a death match of two titans the likes of which none in attendance would ever have seen before. At this rate, chances are most of them wouldn’t survive the event to ever go on to see the likes of it again.

The Character You Really Want To Play

I have a OC that's been bouncing around in my head for some time now. She's a weapon master with the ability to pull weapons from the people around her. The shape the weapon takes depends on the person in question. One person might provide her a bow, the other a sword and shield, the other a flail.

Rica

With regard to the whole weapons section thing, I meant what weapons Rica's Weapon Master could theoretically pull from her fellows. I wasn't actually trying to imply that your characters would use these weapons, or even that Rica's would necessarily use them, I was just giving a few examples of what could be in that theoretical universe. I just happened across this thread and, after reading the four character concepts that were posted, had the idea that they could fit well together in a Space Opera with fist fighting space ships. ^^ Well, I would be willing to put this together at some point if there was enough interest, but it was just a thought and isn't exactly a totally fleshed out concept as of yet, clearly. It wouldn't be a traditional fantasy in any, "here we are riding about on horses and milking the cows by hand," sense of the term, I mean there are space ships and intergalactic empires after all, but either way everyone involved is welcome to shoot me a PM if they want to get this or some other roleplay concept going.

Also;

@Liliya You are amazing :O

Rica

*Applauds*

Meiyuki

@Liliya The more I read this the more I want it to be a thing...

Meiyuki

Thank you. :D

The Character You Really Want To Play

@Rica @Blue Demon @Meiyuki @NuttsnBolts

I feel like all four of these characters could be fit into a high fantasy/low sci-fi/space opera together.

The benevolent Ecclesia of Delos, worshipers of the Gods of Order and Justice and keepers of the peace, have come under intergalactic siege by the dark forces of the Satrapies of Ashkelon, followers of the various entities of darkness and chaos they so foolishly mock the True Gods by naming as such. With the colonies of the Ecclesia in the furthest reaches of the known universe being constantly driven from their homes by the demonic beasts used as weapons of terror by the Satrapies various warlords, all citizens of the Ecclesia who captain a space fairing vessel have been pressed, whether by legal edict or simply because anything flying and all orbital docks come under constant attack by Ashkelon’s forces, into action against them. There are plenty of credits to be made from capturing Ashkelonian ships and selling them to the Ecclesia for the bounties, so even pirates and those on the fringes of Delos interstellar society have found themselves caught up in the war in one way or another. Paladins of the Gods of Order and Justice are being trained and ordained at a rate faster than ever before to keep up with the growing demand for their services in combating the forces of the Dark Ones, and even those who do not follow the Gods have found themselves pressed to have at least one onboard every vessel in case of demonic assault.

Ballistic weapons either simply never were developed in this universe, or through some sci-fi tech are simply no longer viable against modern forms of armor and weaponry which not so coincidentally appear very similar to medieval/high-fantasy weaponry, magic --, or at least divine power, exists and can be harnessed as a weapon by Paladins of the Gods of Order and Justice and perhaps others depending on the circumstances, and the story itself would play out as something of a relationship development between the four (and whoever else signed on) during their struggle to stay alive and pay the bills with the backdrop of an intergalactic, good vs. evil (or so it seems) war tearing everything apart and eventually bringing people from all walks of life to the front lines. Helping different groups, or choosing not to, could seriously affect the universe in ways as massive as causing the members of the Ecclesia to get blown up in their temples and political offices, or as small as simply not having a certain orbital dock to stop at and have coffee in one little three-post scene. Could really go anywhere from there.

The weapons which would be pulled from the Paladin, the Captain, and the Berserker could be figured fairly easily, the Captain’s being something no nonsense, perhaps robotic even (underlying the secret identity of the Captain as an A.I., perhaps?), raider-like and with a heavy flavor of, “If you can’t keep me from taking your shit, you don’t deserve to have your shit,” like a battle axe or heavy cleaver or something but with a mechanical aesthetic, maybe something like this totally nutso thing.

Robot Axe

The weapon pulled from the Paladin would probably be more hopeful, with a hidden aspect of reluctant, melancholic acceptance of the grim realities of the universe, like a big ass shield meant to protect the innocent from the coming darkness, but which has an extendable blade at the front most tip (when thrusting, of course) of the thing, in the reluctant acceptance that, in the end, people will all too often choose death before repentance. Like this thing in mechanical function, but maybe with Valkyrie-esque aesthetics or something like that.

Shield 1

Shield 2

Shield Aesthetics 1

Shield Aesthetics 2

Except way bigger, or dual wielded like in the picture maybe, whatever.

The Berserker’s weapon could be something visceral, poignant, jagged and inextricably connected to blood. Hidden just as the Berserker’s true nature is kept buried beneath the surface, and rather than something glaringly huge or obvious as first impressions might imply more subtle, elegant, obfuscated --, though not in and of itself venomous, the weapon of a poisoner, perhaps even aesthetically snake like. Maybe a deceptively brutal dagger or modified rapier/Chinese Jian, could even go with something of an interlocking chain whip type of thing that with the touch of a button or by some magical trigger can switch between being either a bladed whip or straight blade.

Dagger

Modified Jian

Modified Rapier

Chain Whip Sword

Pick up a couple more crew members and find someone to GM and that could totally be a thing. Plus there’s plenty of room for the four to actually grow and get along (or, equally if not more entertaining, not get along). I mean, the Paladin’s going to constantly want the other three to be more religious and help the poor colonists on every little asteroid belt and planetoid that finds itself under attack by rampaging demons, the Captain’s looking to make a buck any way she can and only puts up with the ditzy paladin, who she looks at as some little shit she happens to have aboard, only because she finds her attractive and, despite constant flirting the Paladin is just too naïve and herpaderp to even get it, the Weapon Master has a suspicion that the Captain is an A.I. which are socially stigmatized and in proper society are hugely unpopular, and the Berserker is constantly dealing with the fact that she’s basically considered tainted meat by your average Delosian and faces serious social complications, mostly all in her own mind, when trying to deal with the rest of the crew who probably recognize that her being tainted by the demonic scourge is hardly of her own doing (or is it?).

Dunno, just a thought I had while reading this thread. Also;

Space Ship

Fist fighting Space Ships! I mean, there is seriously nothing better than that.

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

P.S. With regard to the paladin, when you say she's entirely too young for the profession I take that to mean she's eighteen or maybe nineteen, so if you mean, like, fourteen or something, sorry for the blatant CaptainxPaladin implication there.

FACE FISTED: Billuh Vs. Gonad

Billuh not only was sent crashing through the first layers of fabric comprising the floor of the ring, but skidding through the interior folds of its foam padding and canvas mat in a great maw of a tear likely causing irreparable and considerably expensive damage to the promoter’s property. The vicious downward momentum thrust upon the Gnome by his gigantic opponent was easily more than sufficient to have killed most any living thing as is, and still would not be the worst of the damage the Gnome would suffer from this would be death blow. His body was stopped from being thrown down to the floor of the building proper only by grating up with extreme force against the solid steel slat below which had been used to reinforce the ring rather than the more typical plywood, likely for just this reason as a blow like this would have easily sent someone straight through an inch of wood and down into the hollow area beneath the ring, in a hellish metal on metal tearing cacophony until smashing into one of the solid steel support beams at the corners of the ring being used to hold up the cable like ropes at the edges of the ring and finally coming to a jarring stop.

The scene looked quite like a single car crash into a solid brick wall or something equally ridiculous and easily avoided with basic driving skill on one of those videos they make you watch in driver safety for whatever stupid ass reason they feel like trying to terrify youngsters. Liters of the deep red, near purplish-black viscous arterial blood you never see unless someone has just died in real bad fashion was spattered on the mat, the ropes, the audience and everything else in dribs and drabs and shallow pools with no readily apparent pattern or order to its spread. Chunks of seemingly ground up flesh, muscle, and tendon were left lying in clumps all over the place, battered and beaten like you’d put a recently living thing in a big ass blender without killing it first and jammed the machine up before all the biological tissue could be pureed properly. Bits of faux electronics, shaped metallic plates, and various mechanical junk was littered everywhere for near thirty feet from the initial impact site. Needless to say, it was a fuckin’ mess, and everyone in attendance should probably feel bad for the poor schmuck who was going to have to clean it all up after everything was said and done.

Billuh’s entire right arm had been severed at the shoulder in the initial impact, bounced off of the steel below, and along with Hornswoggle’s corpse had been thrown into the crowd with the rest of the synthetic blood and gore, whacking some yuppie upside the head with enough force that he would almost certainly have a concussion and probably a broken nose as well as a dead little person and robot arm as souvenirs from the day’s carnage. Things hardly seemed good for the Gnomish Wrastlin’ champion, to be sure, but it was something more miniature terminator than Gnome that picked itself up off of the steel bed which would have been the final resting place of a lesser creature and back onto what remained of the mat, standing as tall as anything eighteen inches in height could and seemingly unfazed by the devastation wrought upon its figure. There was no flesh left on the Gnomes back, right flank, or the right side of his head and face, revealing most all of the two hundred pounds of steel endoskeleton beneath, steam ports and the moving plates at the joints clearly visible. Broken jaw hanging open in as much as smile as could be managed without a lower lip or half of an upper one, the Gnome offered his opponent but a moment to charge him before he would make his next move.

RAINING BLOOD - Noxx Vs. Donny

“Oh fuck,” it was one thing to face a grenade opposite a row of slot machines from your position, even humans have survived some pretty crazy shit due to a lucky angle and a bit of cover, but one right next to you as well as another forming a concussive box of high velocity death dealing blast force? The shrapnel could be stopped without issue, hell, a big ass wildly screaming tank shell could be stopped in mid-air no problem at all with the kind of technology even Zetan civilians carried planet-side, but the inertia suppression field worked specifically against matter, and had little to no effect against energy, to include energy thrown about by high powered explosives at close range. Force field or not that would effectively liquefy the organs and tissues of anything biological. The Zetan could even pick up a grenade and use the suppression field to cause it simply not to explode, literally freezing the fast acting chemical compounds contained within the little spherical death balls in place before they managed to achieve combustion so long as it was done quickly enough, but not both grenades, not at once, not at these distances and with only a second to move.

Only one way to go, and that was up. Leaping into the air as fast as biology and desperation could carry the Zetan, Noxx instead of trying to use the suppression field to block shrapnel decided rather to cheat gravity, going up, and up, and up, seemingly weightless and if only for a moment flying toward the roof like Superman or some comic book shit without apparent rhyme or reason. The blast quite literally took the air, and all sounds carried across it, out of the room. The crumbling floor around the epicenter of the twin explosions collapsed, already structurally questionable and made to spider-web by the simultaneous blasts and rendered no longer capable of supporting the weight of the literal tons of slot machines standing atop it, all of which along with blocks and slabs of the shoddy concrete the owner had no doubt paid some city official off to get away with using during construction falling into some lobby on the first floor. Sirens would no doubt start up soon, gunshots downtown rarely drew much police attention in Vegas, but explosions in the Mojo would be heard for blocks and no doubt would scare the shit out of anyone who heard them, and for good reason. Unlike gunshots, they were too loud to be mistaken for anything but exactly what they are.

Unless the human was wearing some ear protection neither he nor the alien would hear them, of course, wouldn’t hear anything at all for a while beyond the whining drone of burst ear drums and seriously rocked jaws and inner ear bones. What complete asshole throws grenades in a twenty or thirty some foot radius to himself? This ain’t a fuckin’ video game, those things seriously fuck everything up, hasn’t this hairless ape seen Mythbusters? Noxx was pretty sure that this was the last chance to go for the human, couldn’t be certain but neither leg had much feeling in them and one or both were probably missing feet at least, lower leg bones crumpled and the tissue surrounding them mostly liquefied, gooey and unresponsive, might have a second or two left before the Zetan’s blood pressure hit the floor and shock set in along with unconsciousness. Peering down Noxx spotted the light in the void and, with the last bits of consciousness started firing down as accurately as one could while fighting to remain awake and floating upward through the air. “Pttsss-unk, Pttsss-unk, Pttsss-unk,” the Zetan blaster sounded wet, sticky, sizzling, and somewhat like one of those old fashioned pneumatic mail chutes they used to use at banks and post offices, except if the little capsules were being launched at someone’s ribs while they were simultaneously being fried on a skillet, blasts of comically green radiation flying in as tight a circle around the human’s expected position as could be managed given the circumstances.

FACE FISTED: Billuh Vs. Gonad

Teeth, flesh, bits of gears and moving steel plates, hydraulic fluid and tubing went fucking everywhere. Once Gonad had pulled his striking hand back far enough to see the mess of what remained of Billuh’s face, he would note that the lower half was just gone, turned into a chunky salsa of synthetic tissue and metal tortilla chips left flying around like an overturned appetizer. His lower lip was missing entirely, as well as his left eye presumably severed from the sheer force and reverberation of stricken steel, and everything below the nose was in ruins, his beard seemingly ripped off and left attached to a clump of flesh on the floor almost like something had taken a knife to his jawline and ceremonially face scalped him. The steel endoskeleton underneath, however scarred and dented, was still steel, cold, solid, unforgiving. The automaton’s central nervous system, if one wished to call it that, was much more similar to a motherboard etched into the steel itself in some unholy union of magic and science, perhaps rattled but nothing so squishy and fluid as a human brain stem or spinal cord that could simply be disjointed or ruptured by anything short of close range exposure to high powered explosives.

It would be a wonder if Gonad’s hand had not faced devastation similar to that of Billuh's face after striking a forty pound metal orb at full force with puny flesh and bone, though the damage Billuh had suffered was readily apparent and couldn't simply be ignored by either foe --, one might normally have advised the giant to have used his superior mass and technical skill to grapple with the Gnome and simply break all of his far more vulnerable joints and moving parts using superior leverage and martial prowess, but if he could keep up this pace even using sheer brute force the robot couldn’t take many more blows like that without at least being blinded. Nothing had ever caused so much devastation to Billuh in his modern state as an automaton using straight up punches, let alone a single punch, this giant was clearly far more than a big brute that was successful in combat by sheer merit of superior physicality. This human was a true warrior, more demi-god than man, a mountain honed and shaped for singular use as a tool of war. This had become a contest between the opposed twin peaks of biological survival of the fittest and mechanical, fuel propelled war machine.

The automaton’s now clearly visible metallic lower jaw structure attempted to move to form coherent words, well in so much as Billuh used on a normal basis, in conjunction with the superficially fleshy upper jaw, but the best that the Gnome could manage without use of a fully functioning facial hydraulics system was something along the lines of, “Umm-a Ry-yyie Erob Mmome!!” before attempting to launch himself into mid-air between Gonad’s guard, steam vents bursting forth from the pads of his feet, backs of his shins, and right flank as well as the interior side of his right wrist, forearm and bicep, his arm swinging around three full times in a mere second before crashing down with engine powered force and two hundred plus pounds of steel and what remained of flesh and muscle in some form of modified gorilla like hammer fist towards Gonad’s right clavicle. Whether or not the blow landed, the rest of Billuh’s weight and momentum would still be crashing down on Gonad’s torso presuming he made it this far, less with the intention of causing him any physical damage and more with the intent of putting the giant on his ass from the sudden might of a dirt bike moving at speed and hitting you in the chest.

FACE FISTED: Billuh Vs. Gonad

Run program BILLUH_BOB_GNOME_V3.1… Is this Admin? No, this was not Admin, but another, far larger, angry looking, reaching for the Machine. What was this massive bio-organism and why was it reaching for the Machine? Admin should be here, is supposed to be present when rebooting the primary operating system in order to ensure that everything was running smoothly. It was the first thing on the diagnostic checklist, visually acquire Admin, request oral password verification. What was it that the Machine was supposed to do if Admin wasn’t present? Continue the reboot? Certainly not simply turn off until Admin presented himself, right? Didn’t seem right to wait for Admin, could have died two hundred years ago for all the machine knew, could never be coming. Then again, if Admin was not coming then perhaps the Machine was supposed to die. Would Admin want his creation to go on without his presence? The Machine had no answer for this enigma, and wouldn’t until proceeding along with the diagnostic. “I do not want to die,” the Machine thought to itself in the ones and zeros of its internal language, and choose to skip the first step in favor of manually moving on with the checklist. Run program SMART_GNOME_V1.1… The machine regained consciousness, and remembered.

This is not good. The synthetic mind was in the process of rebooting, but its understanding of its basic function had kicked in almost instantly, the reboot serving first to get the operating system back online and second only to this to remember the reason it was programmed in the first place. Billuh was not supposed to go on rampages, couldn’t be allowed to. It was the primary job of the artificial brain which had been grafted to his robotic form to keep this from happening. Last time almost everyone died, and the only reason they hadn’t was because the primary administrator happened to be at the scene to shut the automaton down before he just walked off and carried on killing everything in sight, which is exactly what was about to happen here and now. If Billuh managed to get through the giant and into the crowded stands they would all die, systematically ripped to pieces or beaten to death with said meaty chunks of their fellows. Of course, that is assuming Billuh could get through the giant before the Machine could manage to fully reboot. The clock was ticking, and Gonad had become all that stood in Billuh’s way of total annihilation of everything moving.

“A-F-D-6-Q-Z-R-Semi Colon!!” the Gnome responded to the giant's remarks, eyes still blinking electronic error red, as he turned to face Gonad once more. There appeared to be a break in the flood of wrestlers, if only for the moment, and in this state Billuh wasn’t going to miss out on any opportunity to actually get his hands on anything living in range and pummel it until it was no longer resisting and very likely no longer breathing. With Hornswoggle still impaled on his forearm, which didn’t actually seem to register as being anything out of the ordinary to Billuh at the moment, he launched himself forward toward the giant, arms swinging wildly like the tiniest robotic King Kong on a wild rampage ever, one clearly lopsided with the added weight of what had just recently been a living miniature human hanging off of it. He found himself, however, with his head in the grip of Gonad’s massive hand. Arms still swinging at his opponent’s torso, a full three arm’s length from the furthest reach of the robot’s stubby limbs, Billuh would continue futilely trying to bash his opponent’s ribs in until Gonad did whatever it was he was going to do with the automaton he found in his grasp.

RAINING BLOOD - Noxx Vs. Donny

Noxx heard the ratcheting coming from the dark void of the casino floor, could even have fired in the general direction of the sounds if desired, but why? Let the human turn on a light if he wanted, reveal your position to the Zetan ape, be my guest. The sudden blinding light did not catch Noxx off guard, it wasn’t as if that hadn’t been the response expected from the start, and though hardly the best shot in the known universe it was simple enough to understand that at this distance there wasn’t a chance of missing, especially since the Zetan had no need to actually hit first. “Blam!!” The blast was deafening at this range, obfuscating any sounds of the human rolling about and, if the flashlight hadn’t been left on, the rat could simply have returned to scurrying about looking for somewhere to hide while the Zetan casually sauntered about after it. The flashlight itself could be a ruse, but there wasn’t time to have stashed it atop a slot machine and gotten anywhere far enough to matter, couldn’t cover enough distance in the moment after getting to the machine and theoretically dropping the light atop it to escape the Zetan blaster at such close quarters.

If the human could see Noxx clearly in the second or two spent barrel rolling about on the floor like the monkey he is, he would notice an inexplicable silvery sheen pervading about the Zetan’s figure, like some effect added to a picture by some digital editing software but in real time, and would almost certainly notice that the figure was tall, ridiculously so, probably six seven with the four inch heels taken into consideration, wearing a skin tight alabaster latex cat suit for no apparent reason that, had it not been bathed in the same visceral glow from the lantern, and then the pervading darkness from lack thereof, as everything else in the room would have given the Zetan away in an instant from the beginning. If his eyes were particularly perceptive he might note bits of electronic scrap floating about seemingly suspended in mid-air, gunk from what remained of the hollowed out slot machine Noxx had been using as cover, as well as a single forty four round. The scrap and the bullet hadn’t been stopped by anything, or at least nothing visible, and it all seemed as if by magic to simply not be following the laws of gravity at the moment.

I have you now, silly little monkey. Hell, the flashlight is even still on, what a ballsy one this human must be. If his shot had missed anyone with a gun and half a brain could --, clunk. Some spherical piece of, well, something wacked Noxx upside the head as the Zetan was training a blaster on the foolish human’s position, something that seemed altogether familiar, like something from one of those moving picture flicks Earthlings love so much --, “Fuck,”. This thing was going to explode in a second, wasn’t it? Who the fuck just happens to walk around carrying grenades!? Would the inertia suppression kick in again this quickly? Not reliably. But the ape was right there, could end its life here, this second. Even if the flashlight was a ruse there hadn’t been enough time for the human to move far enough not to get clipped by a blaster if Noxx fired now, and getting clipped by a blaster is like getting clipped by a forty four, it’ll still knock you on your ass. “Dammit,” the Zetan dove for the overturned slot machine, certainly not out of the kill radius of the explosive but perhaps more likely to survive if there was enough time to scramble behind the row of slow machines and get down, could kill the human in a second, no reason to risk getting blown to bits.