Gonna write a thing, and submit it in Tevokkia's contest. I sent this to the graveyard before, because it was getting a little weird with no one except me saying anything about the story, but it's back. No one in the story will die, be mauled, or even be injured more specifically that just being defeated or knocked out, which is already in the game. It'll be all in third person, with no speech.
Mauled
Sat, 07/06/2013 - 10:41
Sat, 07/06/2013 - 16:52
#2
Do this.
1. Click the Post Number, for instance, this could be 2. Its on the right side of the box.-----------------------------^^^
2. Copy the address.
3. Create an anchor tag for it: < a href = "[Insert address]">[Insert Name]< /a >. Don't add the space in < a and < /a >.
Sat, 07/06/2013 - 17:23
#3
Woohoo!
Thanks so much! Didn't occur to me that those were buttons...
Sat, 07/06/2013 - 21:31
#4
The least I could do when you pixelized that cute ponytail for me :3
Wed, 07/10/2013 - 17:55
#5
Chapter One
-July 29, 2012
Waking up in a sunny meadow just outside Haven, the knight’s first reaction was to panic. He was up on the surface, with no protection from the heat! Without even having to think, he dove into the shadow of a tree. Once there, he rummaged in the pocket in which he had stored a remedy capsule in case of emergency. Before he found it, though, he came to the realization that he was not on fire, despite having apparently been asleep in the sunlight.
Glancing around, the knight spotted the walls of Haven. He took a step back, startled by how undamaged it looked. As Haven was not a direct threat to his welfare, like the sun had been, he was able to stare at it for several minutes while he sifted through his mind for an answer.
Upon mulling it over, this is what the knight decided had happened: his time travel machine, despite being made of barely more than bronze bolts and scrap metal, had worked. He was no longer in his own time.
Looking back at where he had been lying, he located the tool he had taken with him to the past: an elevator rail grinder, used in his own time to circumvent elevator costs by those who needed to conserve energy desperately enough to justify the risk, or who simply were mad enough to enjoy it. The property that the knight intended to use, though, was the fact that the use of grinders also made it possible to end up with more knights having landed at the same elevator platform than the flimsy weight capacity of the elevator normally allowed.
While the grinder’s newspaper wrapping was completely intact, even in the direct light, the knight still hesitated to leave the shelter of the tree’s shadow. He plucked a fistful of grass from the ground, and tossed it into the light, seeing if it would burst into flames as expected. When it did not, he cautiously nudged the tip of his boot out of the shadow. When that too did not melt, he crept painfully slowly out from behind the tree.
The knight ran over to the grinder, heaved it over his head to create another protective shadow, and ran back behind his tree. He knew that all the evidence pointed to the conclusion that the sunlight wasn’t lethal, but he wasn’t going to push his luck if he didn’t have to.
The knight stared thoughtfully at the newspaper covering the grinder. There was the daily article detailing the statistics of the Blazebreak generator, claiming that everything was running smoothly, and that the city would be safe another twenty-four hours. The knight laughed at that, and shifted his attention to the picture accompanying another article. It was himself, purchasing the modifiers that would reset his eyes and height back to the way knights had been a hundred years ago. He let out a sigh when he saw his ponytails. The Emberbreak set may have been useful for helping to keep the heat at bay, but he wished it were styled differently.
Back in the past, buying height and eye modifiers might not have been newsworthy. But with the scarcity of crowns, he had spent a small fortune. He’d had to close down his laboratory, and sell everything in it to get enough to afford the modifications. Everything, that is, but his time machine.
Remembering where he was, the knight unwrapped the newspaper. The tool inside was a gremlin thwacker’s axe, with the business end rotated ninety degrees so that the clamp edge faced upward. Red wires snaked around it, leading from a switch built into the handle to a small motor in position to close the clamp. The clamp itself had been made to open wider, enabling it to grip the rails that elevators traveled along.
The knight picked it up and glanced under it. Not finding what he was looking for, he searched the sheets of newspaper he had unwrapped. He gave up, deciding that the other half of the grinder was gone.
Trying to remember how he had misplaced it, he replayed the scene in the time machine room in his mind: The Blazebreak shield had gone down, letting the deadly sunlight shine down into Emberlight. He had been in his lab at the time, and had just finished wrapping up the grinder for the his expedition to the past tommorow. He knew he had had both halves of the grinder then, since he had been carrying one half in each hand on his way in.
As he had been walking to the door, the sunlight had suddenly shone in through the windows making up one wall of the room, causing the metal floor to bubble and the doorway to droop closed. Panicking at this, he decided to make his escape through the time machine. He had started it up, picked up the grinder, punched in the date he wanted to travel to, and gotten inside. Where had the other half of the grinder gone in this short time?
The knight sighed, wrapped up the half he had again, and went off towards Haven, darting between the shadows of trees.
Mon, 07/08/2013 - 13:56
#6
Edit
Filled in a small hole in the plot, added links to jump right from story chunk to story chunk.
Wed, 07/31/2013 - 23:03
#7
Chapter Two
-August 1, 2012
After entering Haven, the knight had stopped briefly to talk to two masked gremlins about the possibility of building a replacement part for his elevator rail grinder. After learning that neither of them knew how to accomplish it, he had continued quickly on into the shade of the arcade.
Walking down the arcade for a place to camp out, he passed three platforms before finding one that was vacant. Once there, he had sat down to wait. The arcade was just about deserted, save for the people on the other platforms and a small group of knights who claimed to recognize him, and asked to borrow some crowns. The knight had assured them that he had never met them.
While he waited, he had gone over how he expected the mission to turn out: The alert would go out at the very end of the month, and the squad of Recon Rangers would be sent to defeat Maulos. He would grind the elevator rails down after them, explain to them why they should leave Maulos be, and then freeze himself in the everfrost to get back to his own time. Since the records of the past were a bit vague, he didn’t know which elevator the squad would use, or he would have waited there to reason with them before they left.
He had also had time to contemplate how he’d be able to follow the squad with only half a grinder. It would still latch onto one of the two rails, but he’d have much less of a secure grip. He supposed he would just have to try it, and make sure he stopped gradually.
But the alert hadn’t come. It was the morning of the first day of August, but the knight stayed at his post, just in case the records had been a bit off on the date. Sure enough, at noon, he heard a buzzing and spotted a squad of four knights dressed in white and yellow walking towards a gate on the other side of the arcade.
Running after them, he reached the gate just as the tops of their helmets descended out of his view. He considered simply jumping down onto the elevator after them, but discarded that plan when he remembered that a fifth knight’s weight on the elevator would cause it to crash. Besides, he had hesitated from the sunlight and let the elevator get far enough down that the landing would now very likely hurt, and it was still accelerating.
Going back to his original plan, the knight clamped the half grinder firmly onto the left rail and climbed on so that he was facing away from the rail. Then he flicked the switch to loosen the clamp. The grinder dropped, swinging downward so that the knight was hurtling face first down into the clockworks.
Knowing that the standard procedure of reapplying the clamp only a few depths above his destination would be too much force for him to deal with while holding on to the handle upside down, the knight started slowly adjusting the switch around depth fourteen. By the time he reached the frozen city where the squad had been headed, he was descending gently. A few feet from the elevator the squad had left behind, the knight flicked the switch the rest of the way clamped and tumbled off.
Standing back up and brushing himself off, the knight unclamped the grinder, looking regretfully at the long scratches it had left on the rail. One of the major flaws with the design was that they literally ground up the rails, making elevator travel uncomfortable and any further grinder travel impossible. This was one of the many reasons that the grinders weren’t approved for general use.
The knight walked down the frozen highway towards the elevator. The squad had gotten a good head start while he had been traveling down the elevator rail, but had considerately cleared out all the monsters. While they had had to fight their way through, he could just waltz right in, stopping to pick up stray items as he went. In his own time, the item supply on cradle had been severely depleted, so vials and capsules were quite coveted.
He came to a gate blocking the path, controlled by a switch across a short gap. Since he hadn’t thought to bring any weapons with him to operate it with, he regretfully threw one of the precious vials, wincing as it shattered. The gate lowered, and he continued to the elevator without further difficulties.
The elevator was gone, having taken the squad down to Maulos’ chamber. Worrying that he might have been too slow, the knight used his grinder again to get down. As he neared the depth below, he heard roars and guns firing.
Thu, 08/01/2013 - 23:06
#8
Chapter Three
-July 29, 2013
The knight stood at his computer terminal, unable to sleep. He was waiting for tomorrow, the day he could get back to his own time. While he waited for the shards of Cradle’s moon to orbit back out of sight, he browsed through the Spiral Order’s historical database.
Scrolling down to look back at when he had appeared in this time, he saw pictures of the squad of Recon Rangers in Amu-Sol. One of the pictures had been taken from a camera apparently incorporated with the goggles of one of the squad members’ helmet, and even showed the expression that had been on the knight’s face just before he had gotten hit by the concentrated fire of the entire squad. His suit may have protected him against the heat of his own time, but it did nothing to stop the guns’ electricity. He had been knocked out in seconds, and the squad had turned back to their original target. Even Maulos, towering high over the knights, was no match for the weapons the squad had taken from the Gremlins.
Scrolling back a bit farther, the knight looked through the Recon Rangers’ first mission. The picture that caught his eye was of the Rangers’ leader. His helmet was a modified version of Mad Bomber’s helm, whose mohawk had been trimmed down so it would not interfere with combat. While the rest of the squad had been scowling or grimacing, the leader was poring through the old book they had found.
The knight went back through the timeline, looking at events that had happened. There had been one more major threat for the Recon Rangers to take care of, and then they had had a long break. Many of the other entries in the database were simply new fashion trends, the ideas for many of which the knight himself created and sold.
He had amassed a large fortune from this, part of which had been spent on more protective armor. He now wore a suit made entirely out of strongly reinforced quicksilver, which would be capable of surviving even a lightning strike. He had certainly learned his lesson about electricity.
Arriving back at the most recent entry, the knight saw that it was not the article on the golden costumes he had designed, but a notice about the discovery of the location of battle sprites. The knight smiled. He had waited just over a full year for this, but he could finally get back to his own time. The knight drew his Nova Driver and set off for the area that the Drakons had been found in.
Thu, 08/01/2013 - 23:08
#9
Chapter Four
July 30, 2013
The knight reached the arcade, and boarded the elevator to the Sunset Steppes. The knight pressed the button to start, and the elevator smoothly traveled down. When he arrived at the Steppes, the knight looked around, knowing that he wouldn’t be seeing anywhere like this again any time soon. The interior of the enormous capsule containing the Steppes was a pale blue green in the morning light. The dry grass, yellow from the summer heat, swayed gently in the constant breeze made by the clockworks’ constant motion. In the distance, the knight could hear bushes rustling as something moved about.
The knight sighed, and walked onto a large button on the floor. The gate lowered, and another rose up behind him. The knight muttered something angrily; he knew that whoever passed this way next would be sure to report the now untraversable path, and the Spiral Order would probably send out a notice about it.
On his way to collect a Drakon, the knight was ambushed by five wolvers, two salamanders, and a gun puppy. He took aim, fired, swiveled around, and fired again. He calmly reloaded his gun, allowing the bouncing bullets to finish off the monsters, and then was back on his way.
The knight came to a clearing, and saw a stack of closed containers. He went over to it, and glanced inside one to check that it was what he was looking for. Inside, a small Drakon glared at him. The knight picked up the container, and headed for the elevator. By the time he got there, he had fired another four bullets and collected a stack of at least a dozen bones for his new Drakon to chew on. The knight slipped one into the container while he rode the elevator back up.
Later that day, the knight took an elevator down to Amu-Sol. He wandered through the cold, deserted streets to Maulos’s chamber. The tower of everfrost was visible under the thick floor of ice but Maulos was long gone.
After taking an elevator down to the base of the tower, the knight pounded a fist on the icy surface. A sharp clink echoed through the room as it bounced off harmlessly. He was not surprised; this was what had happened before, a year ago, after he had returned a few days being defeated by the squad. He had tried using a bomb that released high temperature mist to weaken the ice, but it hadn’t been hot enough.
The knight set the container on the concrete floor, and opened it. The Drakon waddled out, flexed its wings, and then flew up into the air. The knight shouted a command, and it shot a blazing hot bolt of fire at the tower of ice. Steam hissed loudly, and the knight gave the Drakon the last of the wolver bones as the tower of everfrost softened.
The knight stepped toward the everfrost, and then carefully stuck in his arm. It squished into the tower, as if it were made of jelly. The everfrost had been so cold before that it was still pleasantly cool, even after the fiery explosion. The knight leaned over, and tumbled softly into the gel. He twisted back around to wave a farewell to his Drakon, but stopped short as he blurrily saw someone reaching down to grab it. Then the gel hardened back into ice, and the knight was trapped.
-July 6, 2113
Thump, went the knight's gloved fist on the large bronze power button. As it did, the pedestal the button was mounted on hissed and bent in a way that metal usually doesn't. Grabbing a flat, triangular object wrapped in a newspaper, he hurried over to a large bronze capsule propped up in the corner of the room.
After jabbing "7 2 9 2 0 1 2" into a keypad on the side, he lifted a hatch and leapt inside, allowing the hatch to swing shut on its own. It clanged, but nothing happened. He looked up, and gasped.
The hatch had clanged against, and was being held up by, the end of a handgun. The gun, unlike any the knight had seen before, was almost completely plated with thick glass rings containing a opaque blue-green gel. Before he could analyze what the purpose of the gel could be, the gun tilted down at him and emitted an impossibly soothing noise as it fired.
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