2017-08-30: Methods
- Cutscene: Methods
- Cast: Kalve, The Old Man
- Where: The Great Aveh Desert
- Date: 30th August 2017
- Summary: Kalve encounters a familiar face following his encounter in the Guardian Temple.
Kalve awakens with a start. He sees the desert stretch out before him, an endless canvas of parched, shining sand.
Two things strike him immediately: First, that he's a long way up.
Second, that if he does not move immediately, he is absolutely going to die.
Kalve throws himself to the side. He clears the edge of the cliff. A spike of hot metal slams down into the top of it where he was just sprawled, piercing and rippling the stone like it was so much wax. One of Kalve's sub-arms snaps out, digging itself into the face of the cliff -- a smooth face of worked stone, some part of him notes, as if part of an enormous doorway.
He swings like a pendulum. His body rises, and he sees his opponent: a mass of twisted metal, with too many appendages and too few parallel lines. It moves like flowing water, limbs that end in four-pronged claws snaking upwards to snatch him out of the air. One of them has that spike, glowing red even still, held like a stinger and readied for the kill.
The Demon strikes back. His arms swing forward and his gauntlets flare with yellowish light. Gunsmoke firearms materialize from the ensuing cloud of metallic dust and particulate, firm in his grip and thundering as his fingers squeeze the triggers. He empties them on his way to the ground, pounding solid slugs of false metal into the incoming tendrils. They writhe, but they have too much momentum for the small arms to stop. They part, and he slides between them.
Kalve glides down the uneven limbs like they were transit rails, his body warping to keep centered as they collapse around him. He aches in a bone-deep way that he can't properly describe as his metallic flesh crawls across his body. The gunsmoke weapons are gone, now, replaced by a screen of swirling shrapnel that sucks in the pellets his opponent pours into the air in a more shotgun-like miming of his own falsified weapons. He casts the shrapnel wide, staggering the arms --
Another hits him dead center. The spike tears into his chest. His heart has moved. He's driven to the ground, slammed into the rocky surface. He pulls himself to the right, and the spike comes free of the sudden gap in his flesh. His body flows back together once he's free, and he kicks back to his feet, a stain of silver left behind. He moves in without a moment's pause, attacking with practiced punches that bring impacts that rattle loose stones off the top of the mesa.
His opponent compresses. A humanoid figure meets him, strike for strike. It mimics him in size and shape, but its flesh is mirror-bright steel and its body bears too many silhouettes and shapes of other men, beasts and Demons clinging to its back to truly be him. It intercepts each punch with an open hand, turning all of them aside with contemptuous ease... until one of Kalve's sub-arms slips past, getting an angle on it with a copy of the same spike that struck him so soundly.
"Enough," says the thing.
Kalve stops.
They part.
"Wise One," Kalve begins, but he's cut off.
"I have grown too familiar with that name," the thing says dismissively. Its body shifts as it speaks. It turns to look something near-human, with a hunched posture and a crook that stabs the earth. "I will be the Old Man until something else suits me."
"Old Man," Kalve continues, as if this were a regular event, "it is good to see you."
The Old Man waves a frail-looking hand. Frail, save for the unmistakable sheen of metal in the otherwise leathery skin of the near-human figure. "Yes. It always is. Except you always have some sort of dilemma, don't you? Why can't you be like a normal student and blindly accept my teachings, Kalve?"
"Because that would betray their spirit, Old Man," Kalve says.
"Bah!" The Old Man strikes the mesa with his crook. "Bah, says I!" He does it again. And again, but this time more thoughtfully. "Hmmm. I suppose I can see the appeal of this implement." Tap. Tap, tap. "You are recovered, then?"
Kalve hesitates. That ache remains, but...
"You were injured," the Old Man states, filling the silence. "Your channels were full of slag. You have not been careful in your changes. Too rapid; too sudden; too quick, quick, quick, quick, quick." He strikes the ground with every repetition. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. He suddenly points the crook at Kalve. "Although it was strange, wasn't it? It seemed like the damage was done, perhaps... from the outside?"
The Old Man turns, walking the edge of the mesa, leaning on the crook. "There was other damage, of course. Projectile weapon injuries. Concussive trauma. You were fighting in this state? Brave." He turns a mirror-bright eye to his student. "Foolish. Why did you enter the Temple, Kalve?"
"For answers," Kalve says, without hesitation. "I thought peacible contact with the beings called the Guardians may lead to an understanding of why we are enemies in the first place. If that first step can be taken, we may be able to secure a home without such..."
"'Such senseless destruction,'" the Old Man finishes for him. The crook taps the mesa. The Old Man plants it and turns to face his student. "It is not senseless. It is necessary. The world will not accept us, Kalve."
"I have been working on a strain of Hyadean-derived plant life that could live in the soil here. If I had their assistance --"
The Old Man's expression quiets him. He doesn't say anything. Kalve lapses into silence.
"It's been attempted before, hasn't it?" Kalve asks, after a long moment. "Adaptation."
"Mm. Yes. It ended badly." Kalve reads the understatement in the Old Man's tone, clear as a ringing gong. "But perhaps..." The Old Man turns to look off the edge of the mesa. "Perhaps the time is right for such a change. Nothing lasts forever, does it? Nothing is immutable," he continues, casting a glance over his shoulder, "is it?"
"Feedom's Lie," Kalve replies, his tone thoughtful. "The Fourth Method. There can be no true freedom so long as a force may hinder you. Nothing absolute can be so. Nothing indestructible really is. Immortality, undefeatability... just words."
"Words, and things to strive for. We cannot be perfect -- this implies stasis. The Method and the Methods-within-the-Method are not static. However, we should strive to embody these concepts as best we are able, and flow from one to another rather than become complacent. Your goal is foolish, and courageous. It is as admirable as it is suicidal." The Old Man chuckles. The sound has a metallic grind to it Kalve is all too familiar with. He shifts his stance, very slightly.
"This fool's errand will test you well. However, I will not allow a student of mine to charge off to meet death without proper tempering. The wastefulness of it all!" He shakes his head. "Show me you remember your tutelage." The Old Man turns. His body ripples like the surface of a disturbed pool of quicksilver. "Method Two."
"Force as Instruction." Kalve raises his hands. "What will I be learning, Old Man?"
His teacher's mirror-bright eyes gleam in the afternoon sunlight. "Everything."
The lesson began anew.