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Gaslands: a Palimpsest’s Tale

—— Earth-F67X: North Capital City: New Venice

Dom sits down on a folding chair, a few slices of cold kielbasa on his styrofoam plate, an apt foundation to the mound of lukewarm sloppy joe and artificial cheese sauce. Great to pour into his gullet. He can see Han out of the corner of his eye, and notes she’s probably watching him, too. Manspreading, he has a free seat on either side of him. Nothing wrong with that, there are always more seats than people. He turns his gaze to the Dragon, who begins by saying:

“There are several projects we’re considering, for those brave enough to pick them up. Cooperate on which ones you want, work out how you’ll achieve your objectives. I don’t recommend solo play. Always good to have another eye to check your plan for flaws. We don’t want them to look like victims.”

He glances at his notes, then, as if he’s repulsed by them, practically spits: “An Azot performer over in Flatiron. Was processed by the portal security a few weeks ago, coming out of Ximbic. She’s stealing business from human buskers, dancers, and the like. That needs to stop.”

“Next up, a would-be diplomat, probably a spy, from that alien prison camp across the pond, we’ve been observing him for a while. His schedule is on file. Seems he’s trying to negotiate better terms for the xenos in Allure. We can’t be having that, now can we? People need to know they stand on the side of humanity. That means we focus on our own before making life better for those murderous interlopers.”

“Finally, a family of Mirr—those brass asses—got off a hyperlight shuttle from Veris, supposedly they’re part human, if we can even call those people who ran off to the Gnaritas System human anymore. Inbreds, if you ask me. Abominations. Anyway, I guess space is at a premium in Gnaritas, and they want to emigrate here. Let’s give them a reason not to.”

Gaslands: a Palimpsest’s Tale

—— Ximbic-8: Ximbic Central City: The Bulge

Light-enlivened shadows trilled to Belacrazu's every utterance, a moribund paternoster that lilted, grated, and ensnared. Saccharine sounds commingled with minute motions, ephemeral as the flensing of dawn by the diurnal pendulum's dusk-sharpened edge, and stirred motes surreptitiously amalgamated in dappled silver bands buoyed by the alien's posterior plonk. Amid the effluvium, crimson and gold ribbons circumnavigated a lazy descent. Gracious e'er, he, Spencer's host, wended limb in a decanter-directed gesture, and offered:

"Pot-valor, client courageous?
Whilst wrinkled organ moil,
And glutamate-greased sere-wan ducts
Perfect palaver peculiar?"

Answer anticipated, an ice-laden quintic mandelbulb of heavily-faceted phenakite careened into Spencer's sternum. From the midst protruded an ornately fluted onyx flagon, as otherworldly as an obelisk atop a shattered glacier. Still, within smoldered a promise of hidden hooch. An alien wink and a nod were ample evidence thereof; thus, vessel delicately lifted to his lips, Spencer drank the formidable unknown. Orgasm exploded on and clung to his tongue, all salty, sweet, viscous, and neat. Petrichor inundated his nostrils. Rigor bewitched his loins. Wooziness beset his skull. Suddenly he was quite conscious of the elliptical geometry of the shop, itself rife with implausibly-sculpted trinkets. The influx of awareness nearly caused his collapse, but, shifted to a mucosal hassock, howwhich he knew not, Spencer remained upright, recalibrated, and suspiciously enjoined, "Uh, so what'cha sell?"

Chest puffed, braided beard asway, and horns provocatively coiled, Belacrazu regally crooned,

"Mercurial,
Experiential,
Skin slipping,
Mind twisting,
Exploits extraordinaire!"

Strung archwild round the apothecary, gaze synchronized with Belacrazu's arm sweep, Spencer beheld on shelves overburdened and vibrantly-stained a variegated arrangement of flasks, bottles, and condoms. Some appeared ceremonial, like a suspiciously phallic calabash; others outright alien, as was the prismatic arrangement labeled Flakon of Ekthidian Ganask; and a great many more were beyond his ken, although he imagined at least one vessel served as lacrymatory to an extant species of sentient cosmic persimmons. Nothing immediately suggested the implied virtual reality. It took a moment, then he connected two and two. Eyebrow's furrowed and mouth ajar as he digested the splendid scene, Spencer reduced his host's preposterous boast to noisy doubt, "You sell drinkable memories?"

Irises florid as nacreous offal mesmerized Spencer's benighted pair. Unable to elsewhere gape, he felt his inner daemon lance his attenuating insult, the warranted gesture of which planted itself deep in his bowels; lest, of course, such sensation was merely an alchemical reaction from his alien imbibement. Flushed, shame somehow tore his gaze astray. Inability to pay for such an intrepid exchange ruminated briefly in his brain, then Belacrazu whimsically whispered:

"Two of thine,
Wed with wine,
Best of the lot,
For one of mine,
A decadent plot.
Merely think,
Then piss in the pot."

Gist gotten, Spencer quaffed what remained in the gelid vessel then, vis-à-vis with pupils pertinacious, renewed within himself congealed tokens two: the former, a tournament where with heroism he maybe died; the latter, an orphaned childhood in which, amid war and poverty, he thought he thrived. Gone, for chimeric vivaciousness, was the apothecary, but behind each scene camped Belacrazu's cipher. Thus encouraged, illumined neurons bled acetylcholine into ganglionic canals, mementos petrified in ptyalin-partitioned dextrose patterns, secreted from parotid to urethra, and deposited from an instrument unclothed and clasped warm and rigid in his calloused grasp. Wait, no. That wasn't his hand. It felt like toffee draped in fur. He glanced down. Vibrant, twin jets diverged, by fate or crusted glans, from a worm coiled about a black woolen mitten where once was his member. He blinked in horrified curiosity, then pondered the way his liquefied sunshine glistened through a pallor of steam and settled into neon porosity. Soon the dual tides of piss were riven back into their respective streams and absorbed within antipathetically-arranged phials.

"Chaos! Suspense!
Delusive juvenescence!
Personal fable gilt in altruism's belied guise!
Exchange equivalent, to words thine own,
Take this, go forth and 'give a shit.'"

Dysmorphic conundrum paramount in his mind and words reduced to slurs, Spencer inexpertly articulated, "Em I--errr melthing?" Either the chamber blurred or his vision filled with smoke, at which point he promptly lost consciousness.

Gaslands: a Palimpsest’s Tale

—— Earth-F67X: North Capital City: New Venice

Within, the Honorable Knights of Terra's regional headquarters is abustle. Strangers mill and cluster, their voices coalescing to a din demonstrative of the unsuitability of the hall for casual conversation. Linoleum snap-groove textile that looks kind of like maple is glued over disintegrating subway tile, pipes, and wires. A sconce flickers, a testament to a shoddy wiring job. There's a word for the style, but Dom can't remember it. Lots of cheap wood accents and wallpaper featuring stags and water fowl. Dark. Gloomy. A poor man's idea of a rich man's study. Attire is generally motley, although Dom's own gray sweat suit sulks at the bottom of the spectrum of decorum. For the time being, he won't come here in uniform. Not until he knows it is safe, anyway. Maybe after he earns his gold oak leaf.

Speaking of uniforms, he scans the room for his bird dog.

There, in a long open pale suede duster with minimal accents. The silver coyote seems cool, even though the room feels, to Dom, uncomfortably warm. Probably on purpose. There's likely technology hidden underneath the silver paisley ascot, plain white dress shirt, and sepia blazer that keeps him comfortable in spite of his environs. Personalized climate control, a way of life for anyone over 40 who can afford it.

Dom considers making his way over, but decides not to embarrass his superior with unsolicited fraternization. He just waits for eye contact, his dark chocolate eyes briefly catching artificial blues. A brief nod. Acknowledgment. Then, out of nowhere, he's accosted by a blunt blonde. Dom tried to place her accent, manner, ethnicity, but to no avail. She's almost alien or—no: almost robotic in her precise, concise approach, so much so that it initially strikes him as a contrivance.

"You give me good vibes. Can I work for you? I need to eat so I don’t die," she blurts out.

Speechless, he glances down at himself, his short solid frame presumably inconspicuous in rain-flecked gray sweats. Except for the prominent bulge in his crotch where his Belkrait is stashed. The blonde likewise appears to be packing. Her attire isn't much better than his, a band metal t-shirt and simple black jeans. Her boots are peculiar, though. There's something oddly familiar about them, like something from a black-and-white movie he watched in junior high.

"I'm looking for work, too—well, not so much work, but guidance. If you need to eat, there's food here," and points at a spread of mini hotdogs, fried chicken, and baked beans. Not a vegetable in sight. Not even cheese. Anything resembling a charcuterie might be construed as effete.

He walks with her over to the table, and introduces himself, "I'm Dom. What type of work are you looking for? Although, I guess if you're here, heh. We'll both know more after things settle down and we listen to what the realm Dragon has to say."

Gaslands: a Palimpsest’s Tale

—— Earth-F67X: North Capital City: Lakehurst Airforce Base

Light shines sharp through bamboo slats barricading a window, thin glass admitting a chill breeze. Nothing warming this room. Certainly not its chief occupant. Slouching behind a large metal desk, beige with chips exposing dull aluminum flecks, a government-issue therapist's heavyset mass reclines in an straining swivel chair; an old Pollock executive with abundant wear and tear evident in its leather creases. A civilian contractor, the man strains a tan t-shirt and olive slacks, neither of which are stain free. There might be a belt in there somewhere, but his gut isn't telling. Unconscionably, he sports a beard, a ratty ginger affair.

On entering this sanctuary of despair, Dom stands at attention, shaved, short, and sturdy, the operational camouflage of his ACUs ineffectual against the white backdrop of the office walls. Sleeves tight, rolled up, and buttoned, his left shoulder bears the single silver bar of his rank; on his right, the colorful stitching of the Grim Zims, insignia of his remote vehicle operation squad. Taking in the mess of his therapist, Dom masks his contempt with, he hopes, disinterest.

Civs psychoanalyzing fighting personnel and dictating their fitness. Bullshit. Fit for that task as any fool confident in their placement on the Dunning-Kruger spectrum.

Dom's oppugnant opens his lax sore-rife mouth and opines,

"Second Lieutenant Dominic Ruiz-Malavé, is it? Born Dominique. Now you go by Dom. You think you're a man, huh? Taking testosterone, pissing through a funnel, begging someone to staple a cock to your clit. Why should the airforce finance your body-modification? Not merely cosmetic, but fully-functional."

"Sir," Dom coolly readies his prepared speech, tensing his muscles and wordlessly highlighting his more masculine physique, "me and my fellow soldiers are willing to give everything for Earth. Our lives. Many of us have, including my father. He died honorably as a result of his service during the First Contact War. All we ask for in return is for Earth to stand behind us. If it can, make us whole."

"Whole, huh?" the therapist muses, "Sounds like a load of horse semen. This is no recital, you know."

Dom's jaw tightens. He'd clench his fists were they not flat against his thighs. At the moment, he doesn't have the luxury of vomiting out whatever angry nonsense parades through his skull. He needs this charlatan's signature on the approval form for the bottom surgery he's been waiting a year for.

"Sit down," his therapist gestures toward a far less executive vinyl and aluminum stacker, yellow foam escaping through fissures in its cushion.

"For me, Sir, this is no casual affair," Dom answers, and continues to stand. "I know who I am. I know what I am. I've known ever since I was old enough to know there were differences. I know without this, I won't achieve my potential."

The shrink snorts, drums his fingers against the disarray atop his desk, retorting, "Are you not achieving your potential now, as a military officer?"

Dom pauses, collects his thoughts, and answers: "Sir, I mean my potential in life. I am male not because of what I imagine being a man is. I am male because I must be for my life to have meaning. One day, I will meet a girl and fall in love. I'll work up the courage to ask her out. She might say yes, but even if she doesn't, I'll keep asking until she does. I'll insist on paying for everything, even though it is sexist and old fashioned. One day we'll kiss, make out, find somewhere private, and make love. I'll feel myself inside her. Really feel it. Really know I'm getting her off. Eventually, we'll get married and have a kid. I'll be a father. I really want to be a father, Sir. Of my own child. Only then, with a woman and kid my blood boils with the desire to protect, will I achieve my full potential in the defense of Earth against xeno scum."

Opposite, the man pretends to look at a file, and says, "Quite the speech. Seems to me you already have enough reasons to hate this so-called xeno scum. Not the least of which is your father's eventually fatal condition, no treatment at the time, shame. Besides, that was decades ago, and Allure, well, that was just a big acci—"

"With all due respect, Sir," Dom interrupts, "your assessment is … wrong. Making excuses for the xenos? Trivializing millions of dead men and women, deaths for which xenos are to blame? The more reasons I can give myself for hunting them down and exterminating them, the better."

… Ϟ

—— Earth-F67X: North Capital City: Central Park

Hours later, I'm not sure what I'm planning, thinking. I'm on auto-pilot. Just casually waiting for him to leave the office. Gray sweats, now, great for a winter jog. Casual, anonymous. Uniform hanging back in my locker.

I follow the bastard to Central Park. Maybe I was planning on killing him. Scaring him, at least, that fat fucking fraud. I wasn't expecting a distraction, but that's where it happens. I see her, the damp dank depressing atmosphere striating the scene in my mind's eye like an antebellum photograph. She sits in lonely anguish on a bench, eyes downcast, dove gray cheek against jet black glove, mysterious yet sensuous under a charcoal corduroy duster. Beautiful, sublime; like a grieving angel atop a grave. My heart skips a beat, and not just because of what I am about to do. I focus on what I am there for and play it forward in my imagination.

He is cutting through the park, taking a shortcut, probably eager to get home to his penthouse in the canopy where a tepid bath, shot of butterscotch whiskey, and blowjob from his mistress await. She's paid, she has to be. That ugly slob. I'll get to him first, just as the path cuts through a dim copse of gloomy swamp oaks and withered magnolias. Zap him right in the back of the neck with the prongs of my Belkrait. No. That might get me caught. There is a record for everything. I'll pick up a rock instead, there are so many of them nearby. Scenic litter. Pretty. Zen. It'll make for a fine memento once steeped in his blood. Then I'll drag him to the subway tunnel that leads to New Venice, except we won't be going to New Venice. We'll be going to a utility closet full of useful tools like push brooms, crowbars, x-acto knives, and prybar scrapers.

When he comes to, he won't have his tongue, or fingers, or vocal cords. I haven't done this before, so it will be messy. A hatchet job. Still, I know enough field medicine to ensure he survives long enough to see me and know. Know. Know what?

I glance back at the girl.

Is he worth it? Worth possibly losing my life over? Worth definitely losing my soul over? No, he isn't. My pride isn't.

She's my savior.

I abdicate my prey to his karma. I man up. Damn, this is harder than killing a man. Deep breath. Finally, I walk over to the bench and sit down on the other side; next to her, but not so close as to be creepy. I feel creepy anyway, like some stalker or pervert. There are other benches, empty ones; I could easily sit on one of them. It is so awkward. So damn awkward.

I need to say something to break the ice.

Nothing good comes to mind. I don't know what to say. I panic, clench my fists in my pockets, and feel a handkerchief. Heh, fancy. It is really just a paper tissue, fortunately not yet soiled. I don't need to say anything. I offer it to her without a word.

"Thank you."

Her voice isn't shrill, or sharp, or pitched. It is like cool velvet, like jazz, like falling asleep happy and sad at the same time. Melancholic. Yes, that's the word. Somehow it calms me and I find my own voice. False start, I remember it isn't deep on its own yet. The hormones are still doing their work. Gruff, baritone, intentional, I mumble, "You're welcome, ma'am."

It feels good. Warm, almost. My cheeks are suddenly livid, not from anger, and my stomach growls, not from hunger. Not wanting it to end, I push myself to continue the conversation. A side-long glance. She seems so cold, her flesh almost in a pallor.

"It is chilly out here, isn't it? There is a café in the Boathouse if you'd like some tea or coffee."

Somehow she accepts.

… Ϟ

—— Earth-F67X: North Capital City: New Venice

Our date is over, I'm already calling that. I'm elated. Terrified. Her name is Vesca and she lives in Kips Bay. She's into military guys, I think. She doesn't know I'm not all the way there, yet. I dread I won't be ready in time. Killing that guy would've just delayed it, anyway. Even so, her and I have parted ways for the moment. I'm on my way to an important meeting at a quick pace, but not so quick as to be conspicuous. My shadow splits five ways as I navigate the tunnels of New Venice, for one long stretch traveling via gondola. Eventually I stand in front of oil-slick bronze double doors, a veritable gate of yore, opulent in contrast to the dilapidation of the rest of this subterranean sprawl.

I push inward, and pass under a red banner hanging on the door of the gate. It depicts knights from the good old days where the only thing a man needed to prove himself was the courage to bash in the skull of anyone who dared to challenge him. It is my first time here, but I've heard good things. I'm excited. For two reasons, now. A nice swing away from the piss-poor start of the day.

Inside the local headquarters for the Honorable Knights of Terra, it smells of cigar smoke and thick coffee. Already, some blonde bimbo is asking for work. What kind of establishment does she think this is? We're here to assassinate the worst in this world. We're here to plan, coordinate, and execute the extermination of xenos.

Nexus Finals: Sóse Oakes vs Ivplec Ulkonotor

Euphomic dropbeads patter the alembic oubliette with a cut-short victory whoop, ceasing whence a singular crystalline goal multiplies and muddies to untold mysteries. At Ivplec's back, destruction and unreality fulminate, beasts beyond ken clawing with rapid violence through the fissures in the roots. Before him, innumerable paths diverge on the precipice of collapse into hypermassive singularity.

Hm.

Seems I'll be unable to keep that promise in the short-term.

Now, stay and be annihilated or venture into the unknown?

Ah well, maybe I'll get lucky and find my way home.

His kyter super-state crystal laser refracts among the fragments of the grand lens, illuminating each with suggestions of what lies beyond the wormholes. Too many to analyze in the fraction of a second he can afford, even when filtering out the multiplicity of voids, he elects at random one among those most colorful.

Yet again, Pffkshwahk barks to the rescue. Then, in the face of repeating shockwaves of impossible force, Ivplec activates his jet engine, propelling himself through the newly-erupting portal and closing the gap between himself and his destination. With desperate vigor, he surges forward through the wormhole an instant before it collapses. The experience is as none he's ever witnessed, folding manifolds rebounding off another in a phantasmagoria of possibilities that briefly come into being within the maelstrom piercing spacetime. Behind him, he hears screeching, baying, snarling, hissing. Shadows carom off the rippling foglight interior surface, hinting at tentacles and formless forms. A mouth within a mouth, fangs traversing in a forever fractal spiral perverting the golden ratio to a baleful maw.

Suddenly, the wormhole vomits Ivplec out. Like a cannonball, he zips through space and in to a dense, fragrant atmosphere. The air thickens, but not so much that he can't see the sea of foreign stars spreading out behind him. Then he lands in a vale of serenely swaying sungrass, striking with enough force to incinerate several meters beyond his impact crater. For a moment, he experiences disorientation. Then he stands, nearly gets his bearings, nearly enjoys the viridian and gold meadow of drooping dew-flecked lanterns. Then, just as it collapses and folds out of existence, the dwindling Einstein–Rosen bridge barfs forth a mass of puss and tentacles that, as it closes, lops in half, the remaining horror flopping down on Ivplec and setting his senses afire!

Nexus Finals: Sóse Oakes vs Ivplec Ulkonotor

0.000010233242

Strobes of intense gravity violently claw away the arena's interior surface. In evidence, torrents of dull opalescent bark and splinters careen in the wake of such incomprehensible mass, like headless ephemeral serpents in the clutches of a whirlwind. Ivplec knew his creation would threaten to consume him, it was always a question of when. Resolute, he clutches his spatha, blade piercing the ground hilt deep, his anchor against the storm. On purpose, he deadens his tactile sensory array, ignoring the molecule-thin layers of protection shearing off of his exoskeleton. In desperate self-preservation, he consolidates, size diminishing yet again in the final picoseconds of his ridiculous assault's ramp-up. Meanwhile, his multi-dimensional array of portal and multiplicity charges fades.

« PnAP sphere's 2 through 5 destroyed, » intones the auto-prompt.

« PnAP 1 undetected, executing localized MADIF pre-flay cycle and sweeping for anomalies. »

Great! Whatever! Just one more bounce, then boom!

Pointing the limb housing Pffkshwahk at the evanescent matrix's terminus, he fires a final portal charge.

Incessant chaos and impenetrable muddle reduce visibility of the stroboscopic idiospheric holograms coruscating inside the arena's interior to zero. Outside of projections, he has no idea what's going on with Sóse. Really, it doesn't matter. The plan is in motion, it is too late to stop. A vague sense of something incredibly wrong, evil, and twisted emerging through the frays in reality titillates his paresthesic consciousness, but it is nothing immediately actionable. Instead, he works forward, loading hundreds of kyter super-state crystals into Rngswusch's internal high-capacity magazine.

0.000000000134

Unable to withstand the pull, the last of his thaumic shield locus layer peels away. Underneath, miasmic build-up billows out in a xanthic aura. Before another gravimetric pulse spaghettifies him, two thirds of his eyes gamma glint. Yocto-band lasers suddenly shimmer against the deadly aerosol, then space contorts, tessellating around Ivplec in a spheroid of quasi-uniform polytopes in a hyperbolic 9-dimensional subspace configuration.

Just long enough to survive what is coming, he vanishes from local spacetime.

0.000000000002

Nobody would see 0.000000000000.

Through the eruption of devastation, it would be impossible.

In the utterdark defensive well of slipweave migoria, he can only imagine the scene. 400 r-process fusion reaction missiles, each with a galactic rest mass, speeding toward the magic barrier imprisoning him in the arena at a velocity of 99.98c; each striking with the force of an entire universe going nova! Yet, he is not idle; instead, as a pupa in a chrysalis, he repatterns his anatomy, a quartet of demi-black translucent wings flowing from his shoulder blades and a medial-posterior jet propulsion vent.

Beautiful.

Absolute annihilation violates the barrier separating arena from hall, contestants from observers, winners from losers. An impact, an instant, the utter obliteration of a Moser's number's worth of thoughts, dreams, and memories. Not merely an explosion, but the incredibly violent and volatile reaction where iron transmutes to actinium and exotic particles and heaves raw chaos into a system. Its singular nature is primal destruction at a fundamental level. Bevies of linearly-expanding warp bubbles reverse-extrude the very fabric of space. Oscillating the ultramundane to absence expand a vibrato of quark-gluon plasmas, color-glass condensates, and masses complex, negative, and theoretical.

Boring through roots and limits amid a whorl of antimatter collisions, it rises like a monochromatic volcanic eruption, slamming into the ceiling of the Nexus hall, reducing rafters to ash, shingles to cinders, and exposing the lidless host of eyes ever-watching.

May those eyes go blind and the thoughts behind them darken, Ivplec wills, his hypoversal skein unraveling.

Before and above him looms indescribable glorious carnage. Free of this gladiatorial death match, he pounds his feet against the ruin of the arena floor, propelling himself upward. Wings spread, jet engine roars, and his PnAP's MADIF analyzes local events for metanormative markers. Eager to bring this drama to its crescendo, Ivplec activates his Big Ass Sword, stabbing forward, its nigh-infinite laser light in direct alignment with the seat of Kynion's throne.

"Now, Kynion, I shall keep my promise!"

Nexus Finals: Sóse Oakes vs Ivplec Ulkonotor

Dandelion graffiti upswells from the rent roots coruscating on the chamber's roof, stage, and walls like frayed fiber optics, vomiting streams of thoughts and dreams to inevitable doom in singularities lurking beyond the 200 portals. A kessel run race through darkness and space, the ravenous reaction missiles slingshot around black holes, stealing mass and speed, and rush from Ivplec's portals with ever-mounting vigor.

Fleeting yet incredible in quantity, images wisp from the roots into the muddy milieu of already present phantasms. What began as vivid chimeras saturates to a wild kaleidoscopic of ridiculous enormity. Din, cacophony, utter visual discord with occasional motes of crystallizing clarity in colorful churn: a figure standing before a crowd in only their underwear, another in a frantic search for that which they cannot recall, another fleeing indescribable terror, another lustily pursuing that which is not theirs to own. Lost in the mess, in the serpentine flow of gas and light, are the obsidian trees, the colorful kingfishers, the crisp hiss of guillotines relieving a mob's bloodlust in their dramatic descent.

The lost thoughts of millions, billions, trillions, more ...

Minds throughout this multiverse that for a time find rest, no longer suffering the pollution of incessant facile futile noise.

Matters Ivplec ignores, focusing instead on the optimization of his matter increase and acceleration loop, infusing violence with greater violence until it becomes an untamable monstrosity, erupts free, and rids from him of bonds of this place's false gods.

Toward that, he determines bits of bark and incidental feed are inadequate to slake his thirst for destruction.

Augmenting the exponential increase of his reaction missiles, bloating from a mere 100 grams to 1,000,000,000 each in the few moments thus far flown, he engages the molecular cultivation rays of his quartet of Partex spheres within the arena. The roots, slowly maturing over untold eons, burgeon to bud and leaf in real-time, inundating the interior of the arena. From torn branches springs new life, branches twisting and writhing and weaving together like art animating from the pages of the Leabhar Cheanannais. Feed for AIMAB's consumption. As swiftly as it grows, m-Thief Glutton devours.

"More!" bellows Ivplec, reeling back and bashing his fist against his massive gorillian chest.

Almost immunerable on Ivplec's body, solid white corneas retract into scelaras along reverse triptych spirals, exposing inside igneous cavities seething with anger and plasma. Not for long. A wash of cold light resonates out in a thousand-meter radius, fixing virtual particles to a frequency aligning them with the active spacial manifold. Unable to depart, matter builds up and clarifies at an exponential rate, thickening the atmosphere of the arena and providing his railgun missiles an endless supply of matter on which to gorge.

Another second passes and the mass of his missiles transitions from billions to trillions. Slingshoting through portals and passing through multiplicity bubbles in an endless loop, their speed surpasses 0.5c.

« 38.349… seconds to impact, » auto-prompts his databank substrate.

Now we wait.

Seconds count down, each stretching like minutes. Maybe it is the increase in gravity, an effect hitting like a strobe as his missiles race from portal to portal, phasing in and out of local spacetime. Sóse's admixture of ionizing antimatter whorls around each, comas on comets. Thus far, his counterpart appears safe in Turtle, the machine's pincering limbs securing it to the stage in defiance of the gargantuan masses. At the core of those forces, Ivplec has no such need; at least, not until they threaten to rip him asunder. In anticipation of that inevitability, he compacts himself by a third, overlaying his exoskeleton with his shield locus' luminal ward and durability that cover his dark gray-green exoskeleton in an shimmering magenta sheen.

Skulls, fractal, explosion. Yup. He gets it. No further communication needed.

Hmm. A countdown wouldn't hurt.

Might even pique the curiosity of the audience.

The network of eyes atop Ivplec's angular flat skull suddenly emit a bright gold ray, hitting the barrier separating them from the Nexus observers like it is a projector screen. Selecting a random typeface—Comic Sans—from his databank substrate, he broadcasts a sequence of numeric symbols that radiate on the barrier's surface with a precision of 12 decimal places.

18.209325023952

Gravitonic surges vibrate his body violently, siphoning his miasma along a wending trail through the network of portals. Each missile is now as massive as a planetoid racing along at 0.81c. Dangerous, even for him. Rather than letting it be fuel, he closes the gaps in his shield locus, allowing his otherwise airborne acid to gather beneath it in preparation for the final step in this dangerous waltz.

7.232305923030

Missiles once as massive as planetoids balloon to the equal of neutron stars, inducing relativistic effects as they bowshock in their flashes from present to absent at a rate of 0.88c, forcing Ivplec to further compact, further increase his thaumatic shield, and gird himself in his guarding presence.

Gaslands: a Palimpsest’s Tale

—— Earth-F67X: North Capital City, Chinatown

"AAAH! How dare you collar and chain me like a dog to the scrub-n-tug!" gurgles Mateo from the spa, his voice reverberating through the skyway connecting the highrise to the warehouse. Seussian contraptions flail about on pneumatic hinges from apertures in the bathhouse wall, erupting torrents of sudsy soap froth and scourging him with nzw-Martex antimicrobial microfiber tassels. Eyes stinging, he can't even decipher color or shape, just that, through his clenching eyelids, everything is shining bright red.

Something pinches his neck, inside the collar. Hot, heavy, and soaking wet, he slams his fist down on the floor.

"Fesyen, I'm going to kill y-arrooooo! Arrrrf! Arrrf! A-wooooo!"

He pants, ears flicking back against his skull. Suddenly, he feels his tailbone twist back on itself, unfurling just above his asshole, and his joints reverse.

"What the—grrrr! Arrrrrroooof!"

A spray of fresh cold water slaps against his face, clearing away the soap. His tongue slaps out, licking some beads from his cold wet snout. Then, he sees his reflection. Oh fuck no, that ain't me! I'm not a fucking kinker, Fesyen! Staring back at him are twin chocolate eyes framed in a dense light gray-brown furry fox face, a bright red flecktarn collar around his neck with a blank name tag, and the body of a chilla.

… Ϟ

Fesyen refocuses on his second guest of—well, whatever the time be. Han, the Nazi regalia aficionado.

"Wel~l," Fesyen contemplates, reaching both his hands out to close Han's own, hiding in her grip the Iron Cross, "I'll take care of these rare and precious boots. You, meanwhile, may return when you have the bits. As for a fixer, well, I'm not tha~at well connected, bu~ut I hear if you goosestep your way down to New Venice you'll find some luck. Follow the scarlet swatches, once you get down there. When you feel you've found the kingdom of nerds, you're there. Then again, if the suffering of xenos is not to your liking, maybe you'll find something more agreeable at 4 Pennsylvania Plaza."

He turns around and scampers up to his work dais, clutching her boots.

There'll be a buyer for these if she can't get the bits, I'm sure.

Nexus Finals: Sóse Oakes vs Ivplec Ulkonotor

Filling the cylindrical vastness, a material hologram of intermingling dreams riven from the roots. Ivplec towers through its axis, an imposing edifice darkening the vibrant mirage. Day, gaudy and gay, deceives the senses, inflecting distinct hues cast from a cycling quartet of nascent stars. Miasma mates with fog, accreting around him in a slow-moving vortex shifting from sepia, to mauve, to bole; overhead, the matrix of translucent cubes spread step-wise, edges intense neon deviations to the gas' agnate pastels. The ignition of his core heats the chamber, lifting and warping the nebulous veil to dense a formation of globular mammatus clouds.

Sharp, naked trees with trunks and limbs as dark as obsidian hew around him in a queer mimicry, appearing to erupt in sync with rising fog. Not an explosion of their own matter, but via a multitude of birds bursting from their boughs, dashing wings of feathers in curvelinear chaos, scattering pinions to entangling rainbows in a mad cacophonic descent. Hissing, ephemeral, they alight on the water, dissolving to opalescent sheens.

The very essence of mirrors and smoke, Ivplec muses.

Four of his five Partex spheres levitate along an arciform path through the cloaking brume, n-Band Sensor Arrays scanning the arena along 90 degree steps. They detect a hole rapidly skirting the perimeter, a trail of self-canceling kinetic anomalies in its wake. Less stealthy, an armored hexapedal unit projecting a lepton near-field. Sóse enters the latter, a mechanical man with the lingering taint of meat: the person this place insists he defeat.

A logic pattern cascades along Ivplec's exoskeletal frame. Its properties are unique enough that they warrant analysis by his q-nervous bramble. Co-routines propagate up through his data substrate's exception interface, reducing the noise via Perlin antipodal artifact sanitization and translating the message.

Interesting.

Ivplec's vague approximation of a face confronts Turtle's own comidic abstraction. Briefly, he drops his muzzle; a gesture of acknowledgment that transcends species and worlds. Rather than settle for an answer imprecise, he festoons it with fact that emerge as his soul projects beyond mundane mineral matter and violently bludgeons the thoughtscape into order via violet astral astroblemes, afterimages of his presence hammering the floating cubic platform into a pillar and imprinting upon it a multitude of fiery mathematical glyphs in a serpentine block-step helix a kilometer long.

Sóse made it this far, perhaps he can ascertain to whom I am pointing and the meaning behind my equation.

Restoring Rngswusch to his sinistral talons, he reconfigures its firing mode to maximize output, activating three of its four modalities: Overheat, m-Thief Glutton, and Chandrasekhar Limit Breaker. Soon its parallel railguns will unload mass-increase fusion reaction missiles at a rate of 100 rounds a second and a velocity approaching a third the speed of light. Meanwhile, in his other arm, serving as shield, beat stick, and mortar housing, he imprints in Pffkshwahk an alternating pattern of matter multiplicity and portal charges and loads its teleportation telemetry to the same matrix seen on the pillar.

Pausing a moment, Ivplec scrutinizes the way a tree's spidery shadow depict upon the billowing meadow grass scenes akin to France's most notable revolution, awash with crashing guillotines, splashing blood, rolling heads, and bestial cruel children, women, men.

Scenes of thoughts and dreams almost exclusively humanoid in nature, yet they come from the roots, a supposed multiverse's worth of real-time experiences. What a horrid foreshadowing of the Verse's dominant species, like locusts, spreading through the cosmos and imposing their rule of asinine absurdity.

Maybe I should kill Sóse—eh, no, substance cannot be found in such a meaningless act.

He makes a note of Owl and Turtle's locations, verifying they are not within the immediate threat radius of his fire-control systems. No point in waiting for an affirmation. What's going to happen is going to happen, and he will force his will with or without assistance. A nanosecond passes as Ivplec reins in his presence, focusing it inward, into his q-nervous bramble, and unifies his processing capacity with the idle processes of his ancestral Lodika. More than adequate time to validate and fine tune the mathematical integrity of his formula.

I bet the observers are getting bored, looking down at that shaft-pierced cloud for a whole half-second.

Here's to more boredom!

« Firing solution optimized. Ready to commence code-name "AIMABP": accelerated infinite matter accretion bombardment protocol. »

"It's go time!"

With that, Pffkshwahk erupts for a solid second, scattering 400 charges throughout the arena, the iridescent bubbles ranging from anywhere between 5 and 100 meters in diameter. The array almost entirely fills the arena, although there is plenty of space in the gaps. Near the end of the burst, he levels Rngswusch, targets the first portal bubble, and over the course of the next second his railsword turns bright red from the heat of blasting out 200 bolts fusion reaction missiles.

Nexus Finals: Sóse Oakes vs Ivplec Ulkonotor

The Nexus Roots

… 🗲...

Rage, wrath, vengeance—emotions raze his soul's placidity, still inciting Ivplec to annihilate Kynion.

I promised him I would kill him.

Resolve quells his blazing inner landscape. A minute of torment in puerile putrid flesh, a moment of fatalistic rapport, an infinitesimal mote of introspection, just totems of fate on his present path. His torso heaves, then he remembers he doesn't breathe. Focus is spiritual, inward. Silent, still, he hones his senses. Within, the rime of determination proliferates, a dread simulacrum contorting his will to a haunt, a ghost sound, a ceaseless vicious wail from the lone high cleft of a hoarfrost-ensnared spire.

I will break the spire.

Clenching Rngswusch's haft in his gorillian grip, he feels strong. Stronger. A whisper reverberates up his arm, his massive black blade divulging its increasing potency. Concealed in his club-form fist, Pffkshwahk echoes an accord. A surge of power, a display of guile. Sheathing Rngswusch in the reverse ribs protruding from his spine, Ivplec spreads wide his arms and bows to Kynion with excessive flourish. Inchoate, that faceless mound atop his trunk lengthens, splits, snarls. He recalls his sword arm to his fore, fist up, knuckles out, and casually extends a solitary central digit.

« Audience body language indicative of successful contempt translation: rolling eyes. »

No reason to leave any space for doubt.

Viridian fangs burst from his mound's gash, menacing, dripping pungent acidic bands. It contorts, a rictus, a fiendish gaping mad grin. He clamps down on his finger, root and all, rears his head back, and rips it off. A multitude of eyes glare at Kynion. Acid spills from the corners of his mouth, translucent hissing yellow. Then Ivplec vomits the digit on the ground at the foot of Kynion's throne, a chunk of dark malachite writhing to a rough sphere in a pool of noxious phlegm.

Deserved or otherwise, his contempt seeks its locus. He senses aught else, even as the platform on which he tarries descends through an arcane patina and as the nexus tree's roots twine overhead in a sinister canopy. Raw instinct alone exposes the for him the contemptuous warden lazing on his throne, tormenting his hostages, a vain melodramatic wretch.

Suddenly, most of Ivplec, mostly, is alone.

"When I get outta here I’m gonna rip yer head off!" resounds throughout the cavity, terminating Ivplec's brooding.

Pause, analysis, recollection. From the brackets, he internally recites the name of his counterpart: Sóse Tekaronhióken Oakes, a formerly-human cyborg. A sizable fellow, a person with whom Ivplec shares an important aim in common.

"Enough of their games. Let's forge our own path home," Ivplec offers, his endoskeletal chimes ringing soft and low, audible only to Sóse.

What passes for his face lifts up to the unseen watchers, and the false enormity of the would-be battlefield flows over him. Around, above, below twist and grasp the roots, contrivances to contain; unimaginably thick, a few fine, each awash in a pallor of blue-tinged dim gray, as the flesh of a dead thing.

Odd that things so dark, so weary, nevertheless glow, he observes, the diffusing light delineating a chamber infinitely far and oppressively near; an optical illusion.

Cold, weary, bored, rife with a false light.

This place longs for action.

Deep in his trunk, his core rouses, fusing iron to actinium, radiating his inner flame through the cold liminal misery of this pathetic fastness. Acid flowing through his countless crevasses evaporates, a xanthic miasma billowing along the floor in a scene akin to dry ice drifting across a pop concert stage. Again, he raises his fist, his display defiant. The gap between four digits, his reminder to the audience. Fuel for their sadism, he again clamps down, bites, tears off his four remaining digits, and heaves them forth.

"Are you entertained?", he roars up to the crowd.

"WELL, ARE YOU?"

Talons erupt from the stumps of his sword hand, black, vicious, glinting. He drops to a knee, punches down, and impales the ground. A trillion trillion dreams writhe and flow around his quartet of nibs; fantasies, desires, ambitions, night terrors, a coagulation of minds and souls for whom sleep is an everlasting panopticon. Insufficient to whelm either his q-bramble or his ancestral presence, he diverts the current to drown in a data lake.

So this is it? Mere numbers, mundane minds; monotonous, repetitious, scarce as aggregates.

A hail of splinters and shattering dreams accompanies his claws as he excises his fist from the roots. Ivplec stands, retrieves his spatha. From his miasma, four objects ascend, his discarded digits reclaiming their purpose as Panoptic n-Axical-Partex spheres. Around him, the air crystallizes, an n-dimensional sheen casting his image from myriad angles, reflecting with it the afterburn of dreams, the splinters of their former confinement fading to dead wood. His will envelopes them, crushing the dregs, empowering the exemplary to soar.

Empty space, wood—a wireframe of orange light courses through it, transfiguring the battlefield with vivid contours of light, dark, form, and void. A vast geometry of intersecting neon cubes expands above him, adrift over a meadow without expanse, lakes of billowing waterglass surging with electric eels and penetrated by emetic conifers bowing under a burden of prismatic kingfishers. Stars shine overhead, near and fierce, a sign of neither night nor day.

In an enthusiastic imitation of Michael Buffer, Ivplec calls out to Sóse across the polychromatic expanse, "Let's get ready to RUMBLE!"