Round 2: Soulforged Vs Relt Peltfelter

[The Soulforged]

"You stupid bimbo. I didn't say you had to help me," Seed muttered as his still unnamed foe ranted and raved about numerous things, "I said we don't cause one another bodily harm. Which means no punching, kicking, eye gouging, ball smashing, tit-twisting, foot stomping, or any other sort of damaging acts. And, under no circumstances do we OH MY GOD THERE'S A FUCKING SCORPION IN MY EYE!"

Instantly he forgot what he was doing, and fell to the ground, thrashing about wildly. He caused all sorts of debris to fly into the air, from living to dead to somewhere slightly in-between, and the curses he screamed caused a person completely unrelated to this incident to fall down a flight of stairs (though to be fair, that guy was having a pretty bad day to begin with).

Though the beast put up a vicious fight, with much clawing and stabbing, in the end it was not enough. With a firm hand (that shook with fear and dread), Seed grabbed the damn thing and smashed it repeatedly into the cave wall. After the death bell knelled, all that remained of the epic battle of man versus scorpion was a slight mess on a cave wall, and several more cuts on Seed's face. He cursed, saluted his valiant enemy, and then turned his attention towards the darkness before him.

"Okay! God damn it! Tu me fait chier! Salope!" he screamed at the back of the woman. "I will find you, and stab you repeatedly in the ass...that's not a metaphor! I will stab you repeatedly in the ass with my sword...that's not a metaphor either!

At times like these, Seed always found it helpful to establish a to-do list. He was, just in general, a scatterbrained type of individual. Being such, it always helped to have a simple list to follow.

Step one: escape with life. Step two: get revenge on stupid girl who threw scorpion in face. Step three: beat shit out of man who set up this blasted tournament. Step four: avoid the ghost monster behind him. Step five: move step four up to step one, because that shit's pretty damn important.

Seed felt the wind leave his chest as he was tackled to the ground, and his lungs filled themselves with that stank air that could only come from some sort of science experiment gone horribly wrong. With a spicing of rotten tomatoes on top.

He twisted and squirmed, much like he had the first time. He even threw out a punch, like he did the first time, and cursed as he is hand suffered a sudden onset of minor frostbite. Seed then resolved that in this case, the best offence was a good defense. He covered his face, dealt with the scratches, and made several rude comments involving the ghost, its mother, and a broom handle.

Thirty some odd second later, the freak of nature (part ghost, part monster, all freaking annoying), vanished without a trace; Seed found himself knee deep in roach guts and some sort of wetness. He checked himself, nodded in pride that he had not soiled his pants, and dusted himself off as best he could. All he had to do was defend for thirty seconds each time he was attacked, such a thing couldn't be so hard.

In fact, things were starting to get better already. After he had returned to his base camp (where he had crashed), he found one of the fires still burning. On top of that, he found the stick of weed that had been brutally kicked out of his mouth by queen-bitch-of-the-universe. With a smile, he picked up the thing she had called a flare, took a hit of the drug, and marched onward. Ever onward, into the black unknown.

At least, that's what he hoped people would call it if they found his dead corpse. It sounded a lot cooler that way.

[Relt PeltFelter]

It was a dangerous game Relt was playing, fighting a man in the midst of an ectoplasmic assault, but the girl was as hard-headed as she was loud-mouthed. She knew nothing about her opponent other than the fact that he was utterly vile, and though it pained her, she had to assume he was at least a somewhat capable fighter. Relt was not a capable fighter. She could hold her own in a street brawl, and had once beaten a barnacle creature to death with its own cirriped, but most of her successes in life were based on good luck. Fortunately, she believed in making your own luck.

Relt had slowed her run down the tunnel gradually, hoping that the gently fading sound of her flip-flops slapping against the ground would convince him she had run further, and therefore make him think he was safe (apart from the aforementioned spectral attackers). Then she had removed them, as they really hadn't provided much protection from the scampering roaches licking at her heels anyway, and the relative silence of bare feet would give her something of an advantage.

She was finding her way using her phone's infrared camera, which worked about as well as a papier-mâché jackhammer, so as to mask her movements. It was eating up her battery, though, so it would not prevent a long-term solution. A solar powered cell phone was not going to recharge easily this far underground.

And she was only getting farther underground; the tunnel had developed a resolute stubbornness about changing direction, being rather preoccupied with "down". It was quite a suprise for Relt, then, when she came to a fork in the tunnel. Not the typical fork that one might expect in a tunnel, where it splits like a growing tree branch into two divergent passages, but more like a dinner fork: four identically sized tunnels, all pointing in roughly the same direction, and laid out alongside one another like tines.

Relt had a devious plan.

She crept down the rightmost tunnel, which after about twenty feet began corkscrewing gracefully to the left. Relt stopped just past the first complete turn, fiddling with her phone. After a moment, it began emitting loud, thrumming bass music. The tunnel shook with the noise of it, Relt was illuminated by the insistent, electric glow. She set the phone down, reluctantly, as it played its tunes and shined brightly on the opposite wall. Then, the girl felt her way through the darkness, back up to the four-way split.

Relt found a spot in the next tunnel over where she could see out, but not be easily seen by, for instance, a perverted passerby who had recently received some arachnid-based injuries to his head's ventral surface. If all went according to plan, such a person would think she was down there with her phone, and therefore she could sneak silently into the trap tunnel after him, and stab him up. Relt was glad that the dried hippo blood dulled the shine of her switchblade. She knelt in a state of badger-like readiness, badgers ranking on the readiness billboards somewhere far below cats and slightly above kakapos. There was a still a little marijuana steam burning in the riverboat of her mind, but Relt was sure she could easily subdue her opponent.

Now all she had to do was hope like fuck that she wasn't sucker-punched by a ghost.

[The Soulforged]

"Dear diary, I have had a very interesting day. I signed up for a tournament to kill a bit of time, and what happened? I've been assaulted by bisexual ghosts, kicked in the face, punched in the face, gone on a toboggan ride of death, and got trapped in a cave with a girl who won't stop attacking my face. And, to top it all off, I've reached a fork in the road."

Four ways to go, all of them looked pretty much the same. No, scratch that; the rightmost path had two more scorpions and three more cobwebs than any other path. Seeing as how his luck with skittering creatures with claws was at an all-time low, that path was definitely out of the question.

"Oh, and one of the paths is simply blaring out loud noises that make me want to shake my booty in a sexual fashion. Naturally, I suppose the only possible solution to this dilemma is to charge blindly down said path, because there's NO WAY that music is a trap. Yes sir, I can only assume that the ass-shakingly good music will be beneficial to my health, and in no way will I end with another scorpion in my face. Or worse."

There was a saying that Seed recalled at moments like these Always use protection, because you never knew just what type of filthy diseases were waiting for you in the hole that you chose to plunge into. Sure, it might work out all right, but at the same time, you might earn yourself a painfully agonizing death. Hence, the best option was to look before you leap, think before you act, and use a goddamn condom.

So naturally, Seed found his feet taking him blindly down the tunnel with all the music.

As the music grew ever louder (he could have sworn the cave was shaking, but that might have just been anxiety over another scorpion being thrown at him), Seed licked his lips. How was he to go about this? Seeing as how blasting bass was anything but natural, he could only assume something would happen when he reached whatever was emitting the noise. He could charge in blindly; that was fun sometimes. There was nothing quite like just plowing into that dark hole, ignoring everything but the exhilaration of pleasure.

But the kicks, punches, scorpions, and ghosts had put a damper on that particular style. Seed cocked his head to the side; maybe another ten feet until he reached that noise? The weed he had borrowed (he had every intention of returning it...someday) was almost out, and it wasn't even doing a decent job of getting him high. He made a mental note that scorpions and pain canceled out fun, and came up with a plan.

His flare was almost out as well, but it still had a bit of fire left; enough for his purposes. He let out a bit of a sigh, spit away his weed, and focused as best a man with his scatterbrained mind possibly could.

It was always a bit difficult to control the flames, but dear god, what a feeling it was. As he traced his burned hand over the dying fire, a rush of power filled him. Those little flames, how beautiful they were! Shining brightly despite their imminent demise, lighting the way in the darkness where nothing else would, and providing him with warmth in a cold world. Yes, fire was a wonderful thing, and so too was the man who could control it.

The flame beckoned to his call; it always did. No one understood fire better than Seed. The way it burned, the way it destroyed, the way it brought life. All aspects of the flame captivated Seed, and so too could he captivate the flames.

"Let me add my own beat to the mix," he muttered softly as his damaged hand moved slightly; the flame danced brighter in response. "Here goes! Party time!"

He flung the flare forward towards the noise, and clenched his burned hand tightly. He could, at his skill level, extend a flame up to ten feet. Seed wasn't sure if it was enough, but it was better than simply charging in there blindly. Not that such an option didn't appeal to him; he had simply decided on a bit of protection this time around.

The flare, which had so recently been on death's door, hit the ground. It should have faded away, but instead it burned ever brighter. The red fire painted the cave in a crimson color; the stone walls seemed to reflect that wonderful color. With a mad grin, Seed yanked at the flame from where he was, and it responded to his call.

Red fire whipped out ten feet, swirling in every direction. Roaches, bugs, scorpions, unnamable creatures that had long been forgotten by the world of me, all fled from the fire. What was once a small fire had become a ten foot long whip of flame, scorching everything it touched.

He had no real plan, he never did. All that mattered was that that the music of the crackling flame was more beautiful to him than whatever creature created that other noise, and the fact that he was the maestro of the flame.

Moving his hand about, the fire licked against the walls. This way, that way, it didn't matter. He would simply send the fire in every direction until he lost control (it would only take a few seconds), or he heard someone scream. Either one suited him just fine.

[Relt PeltFelter]

That's right, you big dumb idiot, Relt thought as her quarry slipped into the trap she had laid, Just waltz right in 'cause that's the right-FUCK

Creeping after him in the dark, Relt was totally unprepared for the skeevy dude to start shaking around a bullwhip made of fire. These are not the sort of surprises a person should be subject to at the bottom of a ghost-filled hole. Fortunately, however, he seemed to be focusing the brunt of the pyrotechnic display forward, toward the music, and she could probably just...just sort of...

Relt stood silently behind the man, switchblade raised. Blood pounded in her ears.

- - -

"So tell me," Oggtemple, newly jacketless, groaned. He rubbed his temples in frustration, "Why have two of the contestants vanished down what was supposed to be the shallowest tunnel? Why did our very expensive stadium-sized crystal ball dissolve?"

Young Elder Thumphaven looked pensive for a moment. The sun was beginning to set outside, but the room he was in was quite brightly lit, so perhaps it would be alright. He adjusted the fit of his new jacket. "As I understand it," he said, "The tunnels were made by some kind of...creatures, that owned this land before there were men or elves or dwarves. They didn't farm or build cities or anything, they were nothing like civilized races, but they were...I don't know. It's complicated,"

"Start simple, and then build on it,"

"The legends say that they were cruel masters to the land. They attacked villages constantly, for no reason anyone could understand. There was a war, because of that, between these creatures and the people who would be my ancestors, and somehow my people won, wiping out every last one of these creatures. They tossed their bodies down the holes, and thought that was the end of it,"

"And I am to assume that it wasn't?"

"No, as it happens," Thumphaven scratched the back of his head nervously, "My grandfather told me stories about what happened to people who went into the tunnels. They disappeared, sometimes, like your two fighters, like the tunnels moved around on them. The tunnels are sort of...haunted,"

"Haunted? The ghosts of these creatures, you mean?"

"Yes, sort of. These creatures weren't from our world, they don't work the way you'd expect. A human dies and, sometimes, becomes a ghost. These things...you know caterpillars?"

"I'm familiar with the concept, yes," Oggtemple said, utterly without sarcasm. He was far too concerned for snideness.

"My grandfather said the ghosts of these things are like caterpillars. They don't become ghosts after they die, they are born as ghosts and become solid later,"

- - -

As Relt was about to show this guy her stabs, particularly in the back of the neck, she was startled by a now-familiar bloodcurdling shriek as one of the ghosts tackled her from the side. It pressed her against the tunnel wall, multifarious limbs flailing and scratching weakly at her. Relt struggled to get it off, but only as a token objection; she knew now that these things could only maintain an attack for half a minute, so it was just a waiting game now.

- - -

"Why now?" Oggtemple demanded, "These holes have been there for centuries with people nearby, and those blasted archaeologists have been in and out of them for months!"

"I think it's your tournament," Thumphaven responded, "All the stories about these things say they fought like demons, goading people into attacking them. I think that they got energy from fighting, that conflict strengthens them. They fed on people fighting. My ancestors got it all backwards, I suspect; those tunnels aren't catacombs, they're a womb. Fighting inside there must be like fertilizing the eggs,"

- - -

Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one... Relt counted as she tried in vain to shove the ghost off of her. She counted to fifty before realizing that the situation was different. The creature was getting heavier, and its misty-white ghostly coloration was fading into a dull rust-red. It howled at her with its hideous jaws again, growing larger as its limbs shifted from ephemeral tendrils to bulkily carapaced claws.

Relt punched at it, feeling her hit connect, but only managing to generate a sickening crunch in her knuckles. She would have preferred that the creature laugh at her weakness; you know where you stand, when a monster chuckles at you condescendingly. Instead it just howled in her face again, grabbed her in an enormous lobster pincer, and hurled her bodily towards her still-nameless opponent.

[The Soulforged]

I guess I messed up. Seed though. She was behind me all this time. How sad, I thought to be the one to stab her in the ass, but it seems like she'll stab me. Well, I really can't complain. Turnabout is fair play. Heh. Kinky.

His legs buckled as his body jerked with the large amount of force that hit him. He lost control of the flame, and the flare flickered to a dim light. It would die in a few seconds; a fitting irony. He who had loved the flame so much would follow shortly after. That wasn't so bad.

"Hah, what a soft death. I thought it would hurt to die, but this is actually quiet nice," he muttered as his face plowed into the ground; there was no way to stop his rapid descent to the earth. Roaches and other creatures skittered away from him as fast as their filthy bodies could carry them; the ones who couldn't make it found themselves smashed by Seed's body. He didn't mind too much, it wasn't as if he was the poster boy for cleanliness.

This was actually kind of peaceful. Sure, would have preferred to die on a big bed, surrounded by naked women putting grapes in his mouth (while they put certain other things in their mouth), but he wasn't about to complain. Yeah. Now all that's left to do is to go to sleep. That's what it's is to die I bet; it's just a nap that you don't wake up from. No more skirt chasing, no more drinking, no more scorpions in the face. I'll rest now.

"Just kidding!" he blurted out randomly, "I guess you didn't kill me after all! Do you have a soft spot for me, my frisky foe? Because I'm pretty sure I can find a soft spot on you!"

With a wild laugh, Seed groped around as best he could, hoping he could grab at least something juicy. After all, this whole tournament had been such a screw up, but if he could walk away after getting high and copping a feel, it couldn't have been all bad. In fact, he would most likely call it a good day.

He was so absorbed with his fun that he almost didn't notice the impending death coming at him. Thankfully, the ghost monster was in fact a monster (generic story book kind, class C), and let out the standard stomach-twisting roar of I'm-going-to-kill-you-now-yum-yum-I-bet-you'll-taste-good (had it been of a higher class, it would have just ate him and been done with it, ending this story here).

"Holy fuck! Get offa me! We'll cuddle later!" Seed shouted as he shoved the girl away, and rolled to his feet. He made to question the changes that had gone over the monster (like why it was more real, and why it had giant crab pincers), but such thoughts were secondary compared to saving his skin.

"Fuck shit damn," he swore as the now very corporeal monster tackled him. He learned of the monster's non-ghost status by punching it in random desperation, and noticing that his fist managed to connect with something solid. He also noticed that that object was very much solid, to the point that his hand was throbbed with a dull pain as the creature tossed him about.

Oh, and one of those crab claws managed to take out a good chunk of his side. Just great. He complained. Now my shirt is ruined. Er, more so than it was before.

"Okay. Now I'm mad," Seed whispered weekly as he managed to rise up; his right hand cupped his side timidly. A good amount of blood ran down his leg, which probably wasn't a good thing, seeing as how he wasn't on his period. Plus he was a dude, but that was beside the point. If the damn monster was real, than he could cut it. And if he could cut it, it was slice and dicing time.

Well, it would have been if the monster hadn't snapped his sword into two with its giant claws. Seed sighed, muttered something about how that sword had cost him at least ten coins, and rolled away from the beasts relentless attack; a few of the more blood thirsty insects scuttled toward the blood that had dripped from his side, and onto the ground. He was happy to see at least something in this blasted cave couldn't die hungry.

"Ah," he whispered as he pulled out one of his knives and looked towards little Miss I Love To Throw Scorpions. "I propose a tru...wait wait WAIT!"

He instinctively covered his face from any inbound arthropods.

"On second thought, let's just...throw shit in every which direction. Bonus points if you hit the beastie though, and not me, mmm'kay?"

[Relt PeltFelter]

Bunnying approved.

The sound of Relt's head hitting the tunnel wall as she bounced off of a greasy pyromaniac was reminescent of a giant tortoise being struck by a bowling ball. Blood trickled into her face, making her concussed brain wish briefly for a nose-mounted windshield wiper, and she skidded to a stop next to her cell phone. She smiled faintly at this, and picked it up. The music she had started was still belting forth from the phone, lending a surreal air to the conflict. Of course, that sensation may have been due to the aforementioned concussion.

Relt stared as the monster swiped at her opponent, who she was begrudgingly beginning to regard as less of a target than the recently de-ghosted monster. The thing looked only somewhat like it had before; big sections of what had appeared to be noodles were now covered in thick crustaceous plates, and there was now a clearly defined head. It was a head that appeared to be made out of small legs surrounding a mouth, with no visible eyes, but a head nonetheless.

The girl snorted as the man recoiled in memory of an arachnid in the eye. "God fucking shit nuts," Relt muttered, "Do you never shut up? I think we've passed the point were proposing a truce is a good idea; let's just try not to get, I dunno, eaten or whatever,"

The creature roared again, and while the smell that it had possessed as a spectre seemed diminished, the sound it produced was now sufficient to peel an orange. The roar died away down the tunnel, and the gross guy rolled his eyes. "Yeah," he said, Relt still feeling a powerful urge to break his nuts, "Heard you the first time. What else you got?"

"Don't taunt the monster, shithead," Relt hissed.

Another shriek answered the first, from seemingly every direction, and suddenly the tunnel was, if the reader will pardon the oxymoron, alive with ghosts. The swarmed through the walls, howling and wriggling at the behest of their solid cohort.

- - -

The ghosts, or rather, larvae had only the vaguest of memories of the time before, when they or possibly the ancestors (though the two may have been one and the same) ruled the world above. But they knew that they were thirsty, and that it had been so very long since they had drunk any conflict. And here were two small shouting things, so very full of animosity and violence; the larvae could feel it pouring out of them like a torrent, delicious conflict invigorating and sustaining them.

The larvae watched as their First, the solid one, strode forward and pressed the two humans against the wall, reveled in the increased flow of conflict as the humans fought for their lives. Their shrieks became cackles as their ghostly forms bloated with hatred and fear and resolute refusal to give up. This would be a meal enough to permit them all solidity, and they would return to the surface and take it, and drive the world into a war that would scorch the skies and boil the seas, all so that they might taste genocide.

- - -

Relt's head ached, and not merely from the significant injury dealt to it. She couldn't see a way out of this scenario that didn't involve being scissored in half. She was bloody and exhausted, and her switchblade had done nothing but ricochet off the thick plating of the lobster-like claw currently pressing her against the wall. She was also uncomfortably close to her opponent, the man who took her weed and reminded her of a guy she knew in high school who had been arrested for doing a bodily rape on an endangered species, the man who she would like nothing more than to stomp into a kind of, of gross pinkish jelly, or maybe a powder, or-

She stopped. Relt had noticed, as she thought about those (admittedly very gratifying) thoughts, the horrible ghostly things had begun to solidify a bit. The shock of this had snapped her out of it, even got her to stop fighting against the claw she was sure was doing irreparable harm to her midsection, and at this the ghosts returned to translucent, filmy things.

"Holy shitfuck, really?" she whispered, "That's just dumb. Way to go, monster ghosts, for having the stupidest 'moral of the story' weakness ever. Hey idiot!"

"Shut up, I'm busy! We'll fuck later!" the pyrotechnical pervert shouted over the sounds of him stabbing a lobster claw.

"Gross, no! Just stop fighting. I think they, I dunno, eat fighting?"

"Wait, what?"

"I mean, let's try, like, the opposite!" Relt yelled over the shrieking cacophony of swarming ghosts, "I mean, what the fuck even is your name?"

"Albert Gofuckyourself!"

Relt held her breath for a moment and tried to relax. She dug deep inside and found that peace at the center of her being, that little happy place where marijuana, video games, and old movies about guys in giant rubber monster suits trashing Japanese cities mingled to create the closest thing Relt Peltfelter ever had to inner peace. She opened her eyes, the tunnel suddenly silent.

"Nice to meet you Albert, I'm Relt," she managed, through clenched teeth.

The ghosts had gone, and the huge calcareous claw sagged from the wall. The monster actually looked smaller, and paler, as though it eaten something that didn't agree with it.

"What did you say, these things 'eat fighting'?" the newly minted Albert asked.

"Yeah, so I guess chilly politeness was like poison or some shit," Relt replied, popping her neck and trying to keep her left shoulder from dislocating.

"That's what you get for living off an abstract concept, idiot," the man said, jeering at the weakened monster.

"Settle down hoss, you'll just feed it again. Let's just get the fuck out of here, this is a bunch of shit,"

"I bet this is the start of a beautiful friends-with-benefits-ship," The man said, wrapping an arm around Relt's shoulder.

"Don't touch me,"

- - -

Paradoxically, once the pair set out for the surface, it took only ten minutes for them to get out. There was no obstruction, no closed-off tunnel, and the sun had barely set. One of the tournament organizers had been out for a smoke when he saw them emerge; he had swallowed his cigarette, and needed nearly as much medical attention as the two combatants.

Rexfort Oggtemple had been hurriedly informed, and had rushed out to congratulate the two on surviving an 'unscheduled special tournament event', thankful for the waivers the two had signed at the beginning of the Serenti Invitational. Chuggy Thumphaven had gone back to the village after Relt and Seed Vicious (having dropped the Albert alias) told him what they went through; he planned to raise money to buy a lot of black powder from Alerar and a few dozen barrels of concrete.

- - -

Relt rubbed awkwardly at the bandages on her head. Apparently even crazy bullshit fairy magic didn't fix things as well as a bandage did, as both had been applied in equal measure. She and Seed, who maintained his rank as the most sexually unappealing man Relt had ever met, were sitting in the office of Rexfort Oggtemple. His proper office, that is, back in the town of Serenti proper. It had been three days since the situation regarding their match in the Naiterwally Catacombs, and an important issue had to be settled. The man himself sat in his comfortable chair, in front of his massive desk, and smiled joylessly at the two combatants. His assistant stood, clipboard in hand, by the door.

"It's just that neither of you won," Oggtemple said, then caught himself, "I mean, of course we at the Serenti Invitational are sorry for selecting a location of occult significance and great mystical danger, we had absolutely no idea, but the fact of the matter is that at no point in the match did either of you defeat the other."

"So you'll need to fight again,"

Relt glowered at the man. She couldn't, and didn't want to, see Seed's expression, but she was sure it was similarly dour.

"Now, we've lined up an arena on an island-"

The leather of the chairs creaked as Relt Peltfelter and Seed Vicious stood up.

The issue of who won the match remained undecided for the day, but both combatants felt rather gratified to have beaten three kinds of hell out of Rexfort Oggtemple.

[Silence Sei]

Relt/Soulforged


Story 7/7: Seed had the better intro, Relt had the better conclusion (as technically, Soulforged did not have one), and the middle was good on both ends. I will say that while I enjoyed Relt’s back-and-forth scene switches for her next-to-last post, it was jarring s3itching back and forth between characters, but not enough to seriously dock you for it.

Continuity 6/4: You kept up your end of the deal by mentioning your previous rounds quite well. Soulforged lost points because, while cell phones, flares, and the maryjane are all things Relt’s character would know of and refer to, Seed brought in terms that would be out of his characters continuity. Mention of a hotel (When in the particular setting Althanas is in, most ‘hotels’ would be considered ‘inns’), Seeds mention of adding his own beat to the mix (a more recent Earthy term, considering I wouldn’t think Althanas to have ‘beats’, per se), and references to booty/ass shaking all took away something from the continuity of your character. Also, the toboggan reference threw me for a loop as well.

Setting: 5/5: The cave was good, the monsters were better (More on that in Interaction), but overall I felt that there was nothing spectacular about this particular matchup. Throwing scorpions is fun and all, but it gets stale the 2nd time its even mentioned, and stop becoming funny.

Creativity 8/6: Relt had a more creative use for the cave than what he at first let on. Soulforged, you get an above average score for your impromptu sled at the start of the match, but (And please don’t take this personally) Relt outclassed you in almost every way when it came to coming up with unique stuff.

Character 4/4: I know what the two of you were trying to convey from your characters, but I never got the sense that Seed was the asshole that he was making himself out to be. Nor did I get a sense that Relt was this independent girl who just wanted to kick the chauvinist pig in the testes. Try incorporating more feeling into your posts. Make me want to root one way or the other. Relt, a great example was your last round, I was totally hoping Relt would get some good dick-punching out, though that match didn’t finish. I just didn’t see that same sense of empowerment in this thread. Soulforged, Seed talks way too much to come off as a genuine jerk. I know smack-talking is in his character, but at some point a line should be drawn.

Interaction 8/5: Seed gets the average score because he wrote his ‘interaction’ with Relt’s weed a lot better than anything else, which just seemed to be taking a page out of what Relt had already established, with the occasional flair added in. Relt says the ghost-thing stinks, Seed says the ghost-thing stinks. Relt punches ghost-thing and hurts her hand, Seed punches ghost-thing and hurts his hand. Relt, you did an excellent job creating a backstory to an environment, something I rarely see, making a unique type of crab-ghost-apillar thing.

Strategy 6/6: Tied mostly because of Relt’s use of the cell phone and Seeds use of his fire-whip thingie. There could have been more done, but this match just seemed more like a shit-talking match, with an occasional Scooby Doo moment thrown in for laughs.

Mechanics 7/4: Soulforged, I could count 2-3 errors in almost each one of your posts on average. While there were some spelling errors on Relt’s end as well (I spotted a The when you meant They off the top of my head), your mechanics almost made your posts to the point of unreadable. A good hint would be to have a buddy read over the thread for you, checking for you mechanics. I go to SirArtemis for such things, but I’m sure you can find someone who will help point out errors as well.

Clarity 5/5: Both of you were clear, though there were reaons why I had to go back and re-read a post or two from each of you (Relt I had to re-read your next to last post twice because of the scene switching. Soulforged, your errors caused me to read a couple of your posts). They weren’t horrible, but not as crystal clear as to let me move on flawlessly.

Wildcard 7/7: Relt’s creature and backstory was good, and the MK reference from Soulforged, though rather out of place, did cause a smile to cross my lips (In fact, it’s the one scene I kept thinking of whenever this thread popped into mind). I’m also impressed that the two of you kept to the deadlines so well, without trying to game the system. Good job, Old Blokes!

Final Score:

Relt – 63
Soulforged – 53

Relt gets 1050 Exp, 100 GP
Soulforged gets 300 exp, 200 GP

Relt Peltfelter Advances to Round 3!

[Silence Sei]

Exp-GP added.