06-14-2017, 10:31 AM
Isaac Clarke loved space. Sure, the Ishimura tainted the idea of going back out into space considerably, but he never lost that child-like wonder he got when he gazed out into the blackness of space and into the bright specks of light that dotted the galaxy. But it was the sense of the unknown that got to him the most. Even with slipspace drives, humans had only discovered so many other planets to crack open and harvest for minerals. There were still so many other planets and star systems to explore. He was hoping that, one day, he’d find a planet where the droplets of water rained upwards into the sky, or a planet where sections of the tectonic plates shifted around in different directions along the planet’s axis. Or, one day, he’d be among the first humans to discover an alien species and meet them face to face. That was what he signed up for, more than anything else. Anyone can fix a ship, but only someone like him could live in space and enjoy every minute of it.
He hadn’t felt that feeling in a long time, but staring up into the starry sky of Coruscant, an inkling of that child-like wonder surged through him once more.
He had taken to standing out in the wide open after passing through another checkpoint of stormtroopers, whom were notably surprised by his appearance but had done nothing to impede him nonetheless. People of various races, both humanoid and not, walked past him along perfectly polished sidewalks, the darkness preventing them from seeing the true state of his armor as they went about their daily business. Stars lined the night sky high above the largest, shiniest skyscrapers he had ever seen in his life. Massive hover cars zoomed overhead, following each other on invisible highways. Lining the skies were giant, holographic signs advertising various products in all the garish colors they could get away with.
It was like watching humanity evolve five generations at once. Not even in 2500 had they advanced this much, or invented this many things, or had this many aliens just walking about. He had to be dreaming. Nothing he was looking at was the real thing, surely.
His mind went back to the checkpoints. The scanning, the numerous amounts of guards at the entrance, the cautious yet aggressive nature of every single guard as they cleared him and sent him on his way. It was exactly like EarthGov. It was so EarthGov-like that it terrified him as much as it calmed him. Something had to be amiss within this world to cause the people defending it to be so on-edge all the time.
Nevertheless, it didn’t look like he had to go very far to find a place to live in this crazy, mixed-up multiverse place thing. At least he could shack up in the futuristic version of EarthGov, rather than some desert or abandoned snow palace or something.
He glanced away, noticing from the amount of whispering and moving away from his general location that he was drawing undue attention to himself. He sighed. He really did have to find a place to wash off the blood. Hopefully, none of them tried to report him to authorities; he didn’t want to spend his first day in Coruscant in an interrogation room and being asked why some child got traumatized after finding a human coated in blood and staring at him with three small, bright blue eyes.
So he walked. He didn’t have a firm idea of where he was going, however. He would have stopped a stormtrooper patrol and asked where the nearest engineering plant was, but that would just get him killed. So, he just walked, with no place to go, going into whatever alley or side road he could find to avoid attention.
He never expected someone to be IN those alleyways, though.
He had swerved into another one of those after finding a particularly large group of white-armored guards, chatting on top of a police hovercraft. As he looked beyond the corner he had past to make sure he hadn’t ticked them off to his presence, he had caused a person travelling through the alleyways to cease movement entirely. It wasn’t until Clarke sighed and started to get moving again did he see him.
The two just stared at each other, an awkward silence in the air. Despite that, Clarke was glad that, out of all the ways he could have met this guy, it had to be in an unusually sparkly, cleaned up alley with zero bits of trash or debris anywhere in the vicinity. The guy in front of him would likely have pissed his pants if he heard a leftover can get kicked and saw someone like Clarke sneaking around. Hell, he looked as if he was already about to piss his pants, given how pale-faced, slack-jawed, and wobbly he was.
Isaac Clarke raised his hands into the air, indicating he meant no harm. The man flinched, but after seeing the surrendering motion of the armored individual in front of him, seemed to calm down just the tiniest bit. He was like a deer stuck in the headlights, frozen in place and waiting for whatever death he was expecting to happen happen.
“Hey,” Clarke said, “I’m not going to hurt you. You don’t need to worry.”
No answer.
“I don’t know how I got this blood all over me, but I can assure you, I’m just… looking for work.”
The man’s eyes widened. “W-Work…? Wh-What kind?” He chuckled, his former nervousness slowly being replaced with that of excitement and relief.
Clarke looked over the man. Blond, cut-down hair as flat as a table, and a strikingly young-looking face that hid his true age very well. He wore some sort of purple suit and a black tie to match, and a sticker on his left breast. It read: “Hello! I’m Roger Arthington Your Syntech Employee!” with the name written hastily in sharpie
Whatever Syntech was, it was a good start for an actual job. “Depends. What work do you got for me?”.
“Actually…” he said, sliding a hand into the inner catacombs of his suit, “there is a competition that we are hosting that can more than likely suit someone of your… purposes!”
He pulled his hand back out, retrieving what looked to be a contract of some sort. “All I need is a few questions answered and I can send you to it myself!”
...What…? He reached over and grabbed the contract from Arthington’s hand. He looked it over.
“Dante’s Abyss…?”
“You’ve never heard of it? It’s an annual event! Those who win gain great renown, cash, pretty much anything they want!”
“What’s it about?”
“I’ve already told you! It’s a competition!” Arthington tapped his foot against the steel ground, his teeth chattering from impatience. “A contest between Primes! Or are you asking for something more specific?”
“Actually, I have two questions,” Clarke said. “First off, Primes? Second of all, a competition about… what, exactly?”
Arthington didn’t look too happy about answering his questions, but he answered them nonetheless. “You must be new around here if you’ve never heard of a Prime. They’re people summoned by Omni himself, or the Smiling One. They can summon things with glowing orbs of light called Omnillium."
He stopped, then narrowed his eyes. “Are you a Prime?”
Isaac Clarke went silent. He racked his brain for a short few moments, closing his eyes.
In the darkness, he saw Omni’s smile once more. He saw his curved hand as an Omnillium orb materialized on his fingertips. He saw the orb absorb itself into him before the abyss was replaced by the blood void.
“Yes. I’m a Prime.” His voice was shaky. “Is that important?”
“Yes! Very much so! Good segue into your second question,” Arthington said, wiping some sweat off of his young forehead. “You see… these contests… they’re very dangerous. Most contestants are, shall we say… not very polite. We don’t want to be held responsible for any secondaries meeting their demise in our events.”
Clarke wanted to ask what a secondary was, but he decided it wasn’t very important to him at that moment. What was was the description of the event itself. “Care to explain?”
“You see, this Dante’s Abyss is a bit different from last time. Essentially, um…” he said, pausing to figure out the best way to explain it to the blood-covered space man in front of him. “This contest is a bit… less focused on killing, you know. It’s more of a scavenger hunt.”
“...Scavenger hunt.”
“The point is to collect as many items as you can. Whoever collects the most is the winner. The alternative is also to be the only one left alive at the end as well. Options!”
Arthington did a little hop in place that looked remarkably artificial even by his standards.
Isaac stared down at the contract, silent. A contest completely dedicated to a bunch of people fighting each other in order to see who comes out on top? It was basically a gladiatorial arena, from the sounds of things; it was something so ancient it almost transcended modern history.
Aren't these people modern enough to be way past that level of savagery?
He thought back to the Ishimura.
That answered that question pretty well.
He didn’t want to. He had never wanted to kill anything, much less fight. That was true back on the Ishimura and it was still true now. He had half a mind to shove the contract back in the man’s face and continue on his way.
But Arthington promised renown, cash, and more; all things he sorely, sorely needed. No one was going to take an engineer if no one knew who the hell he was. He had to prove himself to the world, didn’t he?
At the very least, it would be a good way to learn more about it, if only how to survive it.
How could a world that had advanced so much still have such backward ideas on entertainment?
Sighing, he responded.
“Alright, I’m in. What do I have to do?”
“Splendid!” He could just hear the relief wash over Arthington as he spoke. “Just fill out the contract and I can lead you to the preshow facility!”
Shaking his head, he filled out the contract.
--------------------
What is your name?
Isaac Clarke.
How long have you been in the Omniverse?
Not even a day.
Where do you live in the Omniverse?
I plan on residing in Coruscant. Probably wherever my commute would be shortest.
What is your current job?
Engineer.
What was your life like back in your own world?
Wondrous, very adventure-heavy, but also insane, insanely scary, and everything was almost on the verge of going to hell. In fact, it did go to hell by the time I left it. Or at least my world did.
Why are you joining Dante's Abyss?
I want to ensure myself a stable job once I’m done with it. Fame and money can do both.
-------------------
He handed the contract back to Arthington, leaving behind more than a few bloody prints from where the gloves of his RIG touched the paper. The Syntech employee grimaced from the sight before smiling again, grabbing the contract.
“Wonderful! Come with me, please. We’ll be on our way! There should be a transport pad somewhere nearby that we can take.”
Turning around, they started to traverse the alleys once more. Neither of them talked very much along the way, although Arthington did have something to say. He didn’t say it up until they actually found a transport pad and Clarke was getting ready to be teleported.
“You know, you’re lucky...” Arthington said as the pad lit up a bright red, enveloping Clarke in a red, flickering light. “We were just about to close down sign-ups. You were just in time for the whole thing."
He chuckled before giving him a cocky finger-gun pose. "Make it count!”
The last thing Clarke saw before his entire form disappeared into thin air was the now genuine smile of accomplishment on the young employee’s face.
He hadn’t felt that feeling in a long time, but staring up into the starry sky of Coruscant, an inkling of that child-like wonder surged through him once more.
He had taken to standing out in the wide open after passing through another checkpoint of stormtroopers, whom were notably surprised by his appearance but had done nothing to impede him nonetheless. People of various races, both humanoid and not, walked past him along perfectly polished sidewalks, the darkness preventing them from seeing the true state of his armor as they went about their daily business. Stars lined the night sky high above the largest, shiniest skyscrapers he had ever seen in his life. Massive hover cars zoomed overhead, following each other on invisible highways. Lining the skies were giant, holographic signs advertising various products in all the garish colors they could get away with.
It was like watching humanity evolve five generations at once. Not even in 2500 had they advanced this much, or invented this many things, or had this many aliens just walking about. He had to be dreaming. Nothing he was looking at was the real thing, surely.
His mind went back to the checkpoints. The scanning, the numerous amounts of guards at the entrance, the cautious yet aggressive nature of every single guard as they cleared him and sent him on his way. It was exactly like EarthGov. It was so EarthGov-like that it terrified him as much as it calmed him. Something had to be amiss within this world to cause the people defending it to be so on-edge all the time.
Nevertheless, it didn’t look like he had to go very far to find a place to live in this crazy, mixed-up multiverse place thing. At least he could shack up in the futuristic version of EarthGov, rather than some desert or abandoned snow palace or something.
He glanced away, noticing from the amount of whispering and moving away from his general location that he was drawing undue attention to himself. He sighed. He really did have to find a place to wash off the blood. Hopefully, none of them tried to report him to authorities; he didn’t want to spend his first day in Coruscant in an interrogation room and being asked why some child got traumatized after finding a human coated in blood and staring at him with three small, bright blue eyes.
So he walked. He didn’t have a firm idea of where he was going, however. He would have stopped a stormtrooper patrol and asked where the nearest engineering plant was, but that would just get him killed. So, he just walked, with no place to go, going into whatever alley or side road he could find to avoid attention.
He never expected someone to be IN those alleyways, though.
He had swerved into another one of those after finding a particularly large group of white-armored guards, chatting on top of a police hovercraft. As he looked beyond the corner he had past to make sure he hadn’t ticked them off to his presence, he had caused a person travelling through the alleyways to cease movement entirely. It wasn’t until Clarke sighed and started to get moving again did he see him.
The two just stared at each other, an awkward silence in the air. Despite that, Clarke was glad that, out of all the ways he could have met this guy, it had to be in an unusually sparkly, cleaned up alley with zero bits of trash or debris anywhere in the vicinity. The guy in front of him would likely have pissed his pants if he heard a leftover can get kicked and saw someone like Clarke sneaking around. Hell, he looked as if he was already about to piss his pants, given how pale-faced, slack-jawed, and wobbly he was.
Isaac Clarke raised his hands into the air, indicating he meant no harm. The man flinched, but after seeing the surrendering motion of the armored individual in front of him, seemed to calm down just the tiniest bit. He was like a deer stuck in the headlights, frozen in place and waiting for whatever death he was expecting to happen happen.
“Hey,” Clarke said, “I’m not going to hurt you. You don’t need to worry.”
No answer.
“I don’t know how I got this blood all over me, but I can assure you, I’m just… looking for work.”
The man’s eyes widened. “W-Work…? Wh-What kind?” He chuckled, his former nervousness slowly being replaced with that of excitement and relief.
Clarke looked over the man. Blond, cut-down hair as flat as a table, and a strikingly young-looking face that hid his true age very well. He wore some sort of purple suit and a black tie to match, and a sticker on his left breast. It read: “Hello! I’m Roger Arthington Your Syntech Employee!” with the name written hastily in sharpie
Whatever Syntech was, it was a good start for an actual job. “Depends. What work do you got for me?”.
“Actually…” he said, sliding a hand into the inner catacombs of his suit, “there is a competition that we are hosting that can more than likely suit someone of your… purposes!”
He pulled his hand back out, retrieving what looked to be a contract of some sort. “All I need is a few questions answered and I can send you to it myself!”
...What…? He reached over and grabbed the contract from Arthington’s hand. He looked it over.
“Dante’s Abyss…?”
“You’ve never heard of it? It’s an annual event! Those who win gain great renown, cash, pretty much anything they want!”
“What’s it about?”
“I’ve already told you! It’s a competition!” Arthington tapped his foot against the steel ground, his teeth chattering from impatience. “A contest between Primes! Or are you asking for something more specific?”
“Actually, I have two questions,” Clarke said. “First off, Primes? Second of all, a competition about… what, exactly?”
Arthington didn’t look too happy about answering his questions, but he answered them nonetheless. “You must be new around here if you’ve never heard of a Prime. They’re people summoned by Omni himself, or the Smiling One. They can summon things with glowing orbs of light called Omnillium."
He stopped, then narrowed his eyes. “Are you a Prime?”
Isaac Clarke went silent. He racked his brain for a short few moments, closing his eyes.
In the darkness, he saw Omni’s smile once more. He saw his curved hand as an Omnillium orb materialized on his fingertips. He saw the orb absorb itself into him before the abyss was replaced by the blood void.
“Yes. I’m a Prime.” His voice was shaky. “Is that important?”
“Yes! Very much so! Good segue into your second question,” Arthington said, wiping some sweat off of his young forehead. “You see… these contests… they’re very dangerous. Most contestants are, shall we say… not very polite. We don’t want to be held responsible for any secondaries meeting their demise in our events.”
Clarke wanted to ask what a secondary was, but he decided it wasn’t very important to him at that moment. What was was the description of the event itself. “Care to explain?”
“You see, this Dante’s Abyss is a bit different from last time. Essentially, um…” he said, pausing to figure out the best way to explain it to the blood-covered space man in front of him. “This contest is a bit… less focused on killing, you know. It’s more of a scavenger hunt.”
“...Scavenger hunt.”
“The point is to collect as many items as you can. Whoever collects the most is the winner. The alternative is also to be the only one left alive at the end as well. Options!”
Arthington did a little hop in place that looked remarkably artificial even by his standards.
Isaac stared down at the contract, silent. A contest completely dedicated to a bunch of people fighting each other in order to see who comes out on top? It was basically a gladiatorial arena, from the sounds of things; it was something so ancient it almost transcended modern history.
Aren't these people modern enough to be way past that level of savagery?
He thought back to the Ishimura.
That answered that question pretty well.
He didn’t want to. He had never wanted to kill anything, much less fight. That was true back on the Ishimura and it was still true now. He had half a mind to shove the contract back in the man’s face and continue on his way.
But Arthington promised renown, cash, and more; all things he sorely, sorely needed. No one was going to take an engineer if no one knew who the hell he was. He had to prove himself to the world, didn’t he?
At the very least, it would be a good way to learn more about it, if only how to survive it.
How could a world that had advanced so much still have such backward ideas on entertainment?
Sighing, he responded.
“Alright, I’m in. What do I have to do?”
“Splendid!” He could just hear the relief wash over Arthington as he spoke. “Just fill out the contract and I can lead you to the preshow facility!”
Shaking his head, he filled out the contract.
--------------------
What is your name?
Isaac Clarke.
How long have you been in the Omniverse?
Not even a day.
Where do you live in the Omniverse?
I plan on residing in Coruscant. Probably wherever my commute would be shortest.
What is your current job?
Engineer.
What was your life like back in your own world?
Wondrous, very adventure-heavy, but also insane, insanely scary, and everything was almost on the verge of going to hell. In fact, it did go to hell by the time I left it. Or at least my world did.
Why are you joining Dante's Abyss?
I want to ensure myself a stable job once I’m done with it. Fame and money can do both.
-------------------
He handed the contract back to Arthington, leaving behind more than a few bloody prints from where the gloves of his RIG touched the paper. The Syntech employee grimaced from the sight before smiling again, grabbing the contract.
“Wonderful! Come with me, please. We’ll be on our way! There should be a transport pad somewhere nearby that we can take.”
Turning around, they started to traverse the alleys once more. Neither of them talked very much along the way, although Arthington did have something to say. He didn’t say it up until they actually found a transport pad and Clarke was getting ready to be teleported.
“You know, you’re lucky...” Arthington said as the pad lit up a bright red, enveloping Clarke in a red, flickering light. “We were just about to close down sign-ups. You were just in time for the whole thing."
He chuckled before giving him a cocky finger-gun pose. "Make it count!”
The last thing Clarke saw before his entire form disappeared into thin air was the now genuine smile of accomplishment on the young employee’s face.
C&C Thread
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New to OV? Need a question answered? Want a C&C of your work? Send a PM to me!
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