Grand Battle II, the

The Grand Battle II is the second round of Cyber95's The Grand Battle. It has the same mechanics and methods of elimination.

Plot

Prologue

A multidimensional being referred to only as the Observer watches the Director's project of pitching eight beings against each other. Unlike him, he single-handedly seeks out and drags his eight beings to the holding universe, where they are all introduced under a disco ball. The Observer explains that this is purely for his amusement and it'll all be rather amusing. The scene shifts and around them forms...

Round 1: The Labyrinth Field

Set in Donelle's adventure of the same name, the contestants find themselves standing in a dead field with strange walls that move of their own accord. Gestalt collects a brick from the wall and the Nu Orb, and it and the Professor immediately form an alliance with the plan to escape the game with minimum bloodshed. Samuel immediately detects the presence of life, and recruits Galus to protect him from other contestants while the Karmist searches for it. Vyrm'n tries to fly over the wall, but hits a barrier and crashes. This does not deter it particularly, and the Faceless goes to greet Cabaret. It decides for vageuly justified purposes that it has to kill the conjurer, and then tries to suffocate him. Gestalt engages the Faceless; the two spirits fight with differing styles and Vyrm'n retreats to ease off the pressure.

Maxwell goes to examine the walls in order to try and find a method of escape; Vyrm'n follows him and takes him on a flight to show the confines of the world. Here the Faceless reveals it has contact-based telepathy, and makes a decision to personally ensure Maxwell's survival. Gestalt and Reccxer use the Professor's cane to cross over into the Garden, quite possibly breaking the realms of realistic physics. Samuel procurs one of the guardian letter-orbs and kills it to gain its powers of existing in both planes, transporting his mind but leaving his body protected by a killer plant. Galus and Cabaret spend the rest of the time fighting the plant.

Meanwhile, The Sunset decides to assert some order, and sacrifices some time to teleport itself to the Garden. The burst of energy is detected by Vyrm'n in the dead realm, who then binds with Maxwell so he can mentally project using Vyrm'n's vision (similar to Samuel's teleportation to the Garden.) In the Garden, Samuel is accosted by a volley of junk courtesy of Gestalt, and uses the Sunset's life processes to teleport out of danger. Gestalt stabs Maxwell's projection with a letter-opener; Vyrm'n drags him back out and convinces him that the injury never happened. Samuel tries to convince the Sunset to work with him to unlock the near-eternal life the residents of the Labyrinth Field can offer him, but the Sunset refuses to trust him and shoots him through the chest. Samuel recovers with startling speed using the Sunset's repair functions, until it only has a year of life remaining.

Vyrm'n has no comprehension of this in the dead field, but it discovers a set of letter-orbs hidden behind a wall. It figures out the power the orbs have, then by "listening" to Samuel can ascertain what he plans to do with them. With Maxwell's assistance, the Faceless destroys the orbs, then activates its darker side to immolate their souls also, so Samuel's plans are destroyed. Once all except the Nu Orb have been destroyed, Gestalt involuntarily transports back to the dead field, feeling the same fury and grief that Nu does over the destruction of the other orbs. Gestalt and Vyrm'n fight again, with an apparition of Nu hovering overhead that only Gestalt and Vyrm'n can sense. Maxwell, observing, only sees the two spirits fighting.

The Professor sees only Gestalt's hurried departure, and teleports back after him. Mistiming his jump, though, he ends up in the middle of the fighting, where a misplaced blow with his cane causes it to shatter, discharging energy and causing an explosion which kills him. This distracts Gestalt enough to make it pass Vyrm'n the final orb, which Vyrm'n destroys. As the wind dies down, the contestants are spirited off to...

Round 2: Destructo-World

The contestants reappear at the gates of a theme park, where they quickly discover that everything and anything is out to kill them. The rides' safety harnesses break while you're upside down, edges are razor-sharp, games are explosive or use real weapons, you name it.

Characters

Cabaret

A human magician whose conjuring skills were greatly advanced with a blank white mask he once found. The mask allows him to conjure and then wield quite literally anything as a weapon; however Cabaret is more likely to injure himself than others when using conventional weaponry. He is rather naive and light-hearted and refers to himself as "The World's Greatest Magician". After infuriating Vyrm'n with a gamut of traps, Cabaret was hunted down in Destructo-World, but blew himself up with a shrapnel bomb before the Faceless could kill him. He gifted his mask to Maxwell before his suicide.

Maxwell Deakin

A quirky, introverted genius human who is proficient with both rapiers and firearms. He has a habit of speaking his thoughts as they come to him, as well as noting them in his notebook. Maxwell is extremely adverse to the fighting and killing (even able to debate whether eating meat makes him a murder), and distracts himself by trying to solve the mysteries of the worlds he is placed in by the Observer, as well as trying to figure out the Observer him(?)self. After gaining Vyrm'n's vision in the Labyrinth Field, he shares some sort of link with the Faceless, though the nature of the link is not entirely clear. He is presently allied with Vyrm'n, who is intent on protecting him at all costs.

Gestalt

Gestalt is an unusual spirit known as a Schrotgolem. These creatures are formless, possessing seemingly random objects. Gestalt is quite powerful, and is capable of controlling several boxes full of junk, making small objects like knives fly in swarms, manipulating puppets with the skill of a veteran ventriloquist, and seeking out even the smallest pieces of dust. It is a cautious, if unsubtle and occasionally impulsive creature which generally seems motiveless beyond ensuring its own short-term survival, and discovering all there is to discover in the worlds it finds itself in. However, it is often quick to resort to violence. Because it doesn't seem to be specifically 'alive', Samuel cannot predict its threats on his life. Gestalt forms alliances whenever convenient, partnering with the Professor in attempts to escape, then Vyrm'n to take down Cabaret, then Samuel to attempt to pool their powers.

Galus Lee Matthews

A half-Urisian, half-human space pilot who harks from a colony ship called Ceres. He has a full suit of space armour, which allows him to survive in inhospitable conditions. He wields two plasma weapons, along with a magnetic grapple. He's (understandably) convinced that every contestant (except for Maxwell) is a mad, murderous psycopath (whereas Maxwell is just mad). Colony training makes him quite agile, though he is notably reliant on his weapon for a sense of security. He is gloomily aware of his mortality, but like Maxwell, is unwilling to go so far as to actually kill the other contestants.

Professor Armidillo Reccxer

A human scientist who possessed a strange tool known as the Cane of Materalistic Probability. This stone-topped cane (which could only be handled by the Professor) could change the composition of any object, altering its mass without outward change - even changing objects to have the properties of astral elements which supposedly rejected energy, and materials dense enough to withstand the pressures of a black hole. He allied with Gestalt to try and find a way to escape the Labyrinth Field without undue violence, but when the cane was broken the released energies backfired on the Professor and blew him up.

The Sunset

The Sunset is a centuries-old Balancer, a being so integrally bound to the fabric of its universe that its role is to prevent the rise of disruptive super-powers (hence its job as a "Balancer"). To give the other contestants a sporting chance, the Sunset was chosen due to its extremely advanced years. A fear of the unknown associated with death drove it to perpetuate itself by being bound to a suit of power armour, which is powered off the Sunset's remaining lifespan. By shortening its lifespan, the Balancer can execute powerful tasks such as firing the Nightmare, its high-powered coilgun; executing the suit's repair function; or traversing planes of reality. Due to its role within its own universe, the Sunset finds the concept of the Observer (and Samuel's attempts to gain power) abhorrent, though in its weakened state (with only several years of lifespan left) it cannot do much about it.

Samuel Therion

Samuel is the overarcing antagonist of the Grand Battle. He is a Death Karmist, which means he can sense the flow and balance of life and death. Using this, he can detect attempts on his life (with the exception of Gestalt), as well as steal life force from those he kills before their time. This second skill allows him to extend his life indefinitely, or take the abilities of animals and use them himself. Samuel was the puppet master of a whole civilisation, and found the existence of an infinitely superior Observer who could kidnap him without pause intensely frustrating. He is normally outwardly calm and courteous, but deep down is a murderous, megalomaniacal individual who seeks to take on even the Observer. His one weakness is the fact that most of the battlefields are devoid of life, forcing Samuel to rely on dwindling reserves of previously stored karma to protect himself. However, he melded minds with Gestalt in the Escherscape, gaining the schrotgolem's powers.

Vyrm'n

A genderless, enigmatic beast known as a Faceless. Composed entirely out of an unearthly, pitch-black semisolid dusted intermittently with tiny stars, Vyrm'n can change shape at will. It is capable of forming hands and spikes, and even a human face, but as it only replicates the external appearance their is no muscle structure, and the limbs move awkwardly. Vyrm'n is mute, but communicates by writing or through contact-based telepathy. Although Vyrm'n is as old as universes, the Faceless has no memories or sapience before the ten-odd years it spent being the research subject of a rather unstable scientist. Vyrm'n is a duality; it can sacrifice conscious control in favour of the image of a void big enough to hold a universe - to stare into it destroys the viewer's mind. Its personality is rather warped after a decade of intense psychoanalysis, making it methdoically reach conclusions on things which should normally be based on straight emotion. Vyrm'n allies with and then makes a solemn vow to protect Maxwell, but then also kills Cabaret in a mad rage.

Tropes

Author Whip - Godmoding is not tolerated in this collab. Overpowered characters who are not swiftly reined in are usually the first to be eliminated.