[IC] Between the Cracks (A Fairy Tale for the Digital Age)

[Too Old 4 This]

Anonymous Internet Board somewhere in cyberspace...

No Han shot first!!!!!!11
-posted by scifan404

Actually no he didn't.
-posted by fractalfairy

Blashphemy!
-posted by scifan404

Greedo shot first, absolutely sure of it.
-posted by fractalfairy

How so sure?
-posted by xxjedimastrxx

Because I'm an elf.
-posted by fractalfairy

Haha
-posted by scifan404

Wrong forum Tolkein-fanboi
-posted by ewok4life

In a crack between two walls in the rotten heart of a modern city, squeezed a small room with every modern convenience an industrious machine elf could provide for himself. LED lamps lit the room and ionizers constructed from laptop fans filtered the otherwise stale and spore infested air. A touchpad propped upright like a massive computer monitor dominated one wall, it's pixilated display broken only by the pointy eared silhouete of a three and a half inch tall elf. It was soon joined by a second, as another fairy entered through the tiny cubicle's sliding mouse-door.

Krith craned his elfin head over his brother's narrow shoulder. The older alfar frowned at the endless stream of ceaseless chatter scrolling down along the modified lcd of a 'borrowed' human cell phone. The machine elves excelled at transforming scavenged human pocket tech into desktop computers they could access at their perceptive and temporal scale. On the monitor reflecting Sil's long pointed ears and mischievious grin, images flashed along at 300 frames a second with resolutions upwards of 5000 pp, fast and refined enough to trick the elf's acute eyes the way a plodding 30 frame per second movie fooled a human's. It was a challenge from a technical perspective, making a computer system as twitchy as an elf, but it pretty much assured that they carried the top scores in Team Fortress and every other high paced shooter.

"Is this all you've been doing while I've been out?" Krith groaned, "trolling starwars geeks?"

Sil grinned, "oh no, this is all part of a larger project. You see," he flipped the touch screen to bring up a divided window, "I have two troll threads, one over here with the star wars people and another over here with the trekkies... and once I get each flamed up to the right temperature, I drop a couple subtle hyperlinks and cross the streams. Suddenly you have a bunch of pissed off trekkies and starwars geeks all in the same confined board..."

"And then what?" Krith asked straining to find the point.

"Then we sit back and enjoy the lulz."

Krith sighed, "I think you're spending too much time with gremlins."

"You just don't appreciate the evil genius of this project. It's like secretly inviting an acid and a base that hate each other to a date in the same beaker."

"Just make sure you clear the history after you're done, we don't want your little comments there to be traced back here by a judicar or any other arm of the Council." He pointed a long, accusatory finger to one of the more recent posts.

"But that's actually the truth, I mean to an elf that firefight between Hans and Greedo takes nearly full five seconds to transpire, it's clear that Greedo did in fact..."

"Don't. Just don't. You know exactly what I'm talking about. The Unseelie may not take many things seriously, but breaking the fourth wall is certainly one of those things. They find you exposing the fairy even as a joke online, and you'll wind up banished in your own private dreamland for all time."

"Actually when you put it that way it doesn't sound that bad."

"Just shut up and get yourself ready. That Seelie ball is tonight."

"Oh you mean the one we're not stabbed for showing up at."

"Yes that one, now get your tucks."

"But what about the trolling?"

Krith reached in and killed the windows evoking a chagrin on his brother's face equal to an artist witnessing the brutal destruction of his greatest masterpiece. "I dislike that word, whoever made it up never saw a real troll in the flesh."

"Actually they did," Sil corrected, "a machine elf invented the term."

[Too Old 4 This]

The Empire State Building 'The Spire'

On the observation deck of the empire state building tourists jostled and pressed against the fence that separated them from an 800 foot fall to asphalt oblivion. On the edge of that precipitous drop beyond view of the mortals just an arm length away, a crude crack in the concrete formed a jagged doorway. Through it flitted something no bigger than a horse fly, but it was no insect. The tiny creature with pointed ears and sky blue skin dashed with glitter was a pixie, a fairy messenger on dragonfly wings. It dove through the crack with room to spare and followed the jagged tunnel past the guards who buzzed their wings and lifted their toothpick lances in greeting.

Pressed for time, the pixie could not offer his kith any acknowledgement except a tilt of his wings as he darted onward. Beyond the guards the dark concrete cave filled with light before opening not from the surface of some biggun-built skyscraper, but rather natural granite mountain side. Bursting fourth in all the color and vibrance of a painter's dream, a lush valley expanded out below the rock slopes, another world forged by the magic of the fairy. A midst its greenery no evidence of the human world, its iron, steel and disbelief, was visible, just untainted nature and impossible architecture. At the center of this hidden paradise, a building that only a madman's imagination could erect, thrust up at the artificial sun. In contrast to the enchanted valley, the spire stood dark and brooding, forged of black stone and shrouded in storm clouds that hovered just above its jagged point. The spire was a singular nightmare surrounded by a dream.

On his straight course to the Spire's serrated apex the pixie passed squads of his own kind training in their wedge formations as well as Sidhe nobility and Sprite courtesans enjoying the enclave's perpetual spring day. All gave him a wide berth, even the Sidhe who recognized the crescent eye on his tunic, their countess's coat of arms. Under the shadow of the Spire's clouds all was silent and still and the pixie found himself holding his breath until he remembered that even in this dreamlike place he needed oxygen. He dared not catch his breath, however, until he landed at his destination. He fluttered to a stop upon a narrow balcony ringing the palatial quarters. Despite being perched high above everything in this dreamworld, he was not alone.

"No need to rush," Lady Nyora assured him in between her thoughtful marital poses. The young sidhe often used the high platform to practice her swordplay and as such her graceful sweeps and parries were a familiar sight to the lowly messenger. Scarlet hair streaming between emerald wings, she stepped and glided lightly across the black stone on bare feet, thrusting and chopping at monsters her high rank prevented her from ever facing in the flesh. "She's been in her sanctum for nearly a day working on some kind of summons." She swept her glittering dreamblade about in a shining arc. "Probably another one of those ugly gargoyles."

"My apologies my lady," the pixie sputtered, "but the message is urgent. It concerns... security at the upcoming ball."

"Security?" Nyora, whose interest in social affairs normally stopped before it began, snatched at the scroll. The pixie twiddled his thumbs nervously as the young hier to the realm unrolled the parchment and read the contents. Her eyes suddenly sparkled to match her blade. "I need you to carry another message," she spoke attention still locked on the scroll.

"To whom, my lady?"

"To the our seamstress. Tell her I'll be needing a suitable gown by this evening." She made a quick study of her sword's brightly colored scabbard, "something that matches with pink."

[Too Old 4 This]

Old Sewer System, Bronx

Beneath the city, a messenger of a wholly different type carried his mental parcel. A timid goblin, she crept on slimy webbed toes over the slick stone of an ancient pipe of a type and age relegated to archaeology elsewhere in the city. The large clay tunnel afforded the shadows room to play with the fears of the little fairy and she leapt at every drip of condensation and each ripple of stale water. When she first heard the dead call, she rightly assumed it an artifact of her overactive imagination. When it sounded a second time, however, she stopped in her tracks. "Meeeeeeeooooooow." The sound which instilled fear in the bravest fey heart reverberated through the hollow clay and froze the goblin in her tracks. When two yellow moons opened a midst the darkness and a black mountain of fur pounced from the shadows, the little fey knew it was to late. Petrified, she stood still in the rapidly yellowing water at her feet to await her fate. At the last instant, a metallic chink sounded the strain of a steel chain. When the goblin opened her limpid eyes she found the massive mangy feline struggling madly at it's collar, little more than a paw swipe's distance from its would-be meal.

"Goblin!" The girl followed the voice to a hidden door now cracking through the clay wall of the pipe. The long, hooked nose of a gremlin extruded through it and the wizened fey's yellow eyes, similar to the cat's only smaller, narrowed into devious crescents. "If ye want to be cat food for the neko by all means wait there in yer piss, but if ye want to deliver yer message and get paid, best start yer slimy ass movin'" The gremlin shook his pointed features as the goblin squirmed in from the dark. "Bakka," he muttered. A gaggle of fellow gremlins craned their noses in to see and smell the meeting. In the back, a crafter stopped his work on what appeared to be some fusion of a leg trap and a firecracker to twist his head around. The leader's long ears tilted back in mistrust as he surveyed the messenger. "You have word from the STD?"

"TLC," the goblin corrected meekly.

"Whatever," the gremlin snapped like one of the mousetraps the messenger had to avoid on her trip.

"...Yes... they will... umm take the job."

A yellow toothy grin spread through the room like a dental disease. The leader unfolded his long, dexterous fingers in order to give the goblin's moist bald head an appreciative, if slightly creepy, pat. "Well done. Your King will be pleased and the Underking always rewards his servants."

"There is one problem..." The gremlin waited, arms akimbo and hands a flinch away from the spearguns which hung at either bony hip. "Their leader... he's... smart... for a troll... he seemed suspicious being asked to attack both a Seelie and an Unseelie target."

The gremlin relaxed before bursting into a fit of snickers. It soon spread throughout the room culminating in a young gremlin who was so overtaken with laughter that he fell back into a primed bear trap. After the ensuing fountain of green blood had painted the ceiling like a canvas of modern art, the other gremlins quieted down. Their leader, unphased by the common occurrence of accidental gremlin demise, explained in a level voice. "There is no such thing as a 'smart troll', unless by smart you mean capable of counting past two. Now, I want you to go back to your pathetic little warren and await further instructions. If all goes as planned you'll be ruling it as a vassal of the Underking by the next month."

"And the payment... for the trolls?"

The gremlins seemed about to burst into another fit of laughter, but after the last fit's tragic consequences they seemed to think better of it. "Payment? What makes you think they'll escape that ball to collect it?" The gnarled fey smiled as he pulled out a speargun and tweaked its barbed tip. The projectile's steel point, once the tip of an ordinary finishing nail, flashed with unnatural glamer. "If by some miracle both the Seelie and Unseelie guard fail to put them down, we will. Can't have them thinking there's a puppeteer pulling their strings now, can we."