The Desert

[captainankh]

The desert stretched for miles around. More than miles. Infinity.

Sand, infinite lengths of brown sand. Dunes, ridges, cliffs, valleys, swamps, of sand.

It had been hot. And then it had been cold. Now it was hot again. The enourmous sun shimmered, laughing, in the empty blue sky, like a giant pool of water that he just couldn't reach, teasing him, mocking him.

Frost trudged on. Frost doesn't last in a desert, and neither would he.
He was sure that deserts were supposed to have cactus plants growing around, full of water, but there were none.
Deserts were supposed to have an oasis, like in the movies, but there were none.
He was being ignored, again.

He still wore his coat. He was sweating, but clung desperately to his image, like it was important, like it could save him somehow. His boots scraped on the sand, and at first he had been stumbling, but now he went too slowly.

Beside him, Alternate-Jess dragged herself wearily on. Her clothes were torn, her feet and legs cut from the coarse sand. Her skin was starting to burn, and she rocked back and forth as she followed Frost through the infinte waste.

Neither of them was prepared for this. Neither knew how it had happened, or where they were going.

Alternate-Jess stumbled, and collapsed. She clutched at Frost desperately as she fell. He picked up her thin body, drenched in sweat, and limp from weariness. She was breathing lightly, the dry air riddled with sand which cut into both their throats.

Frost stumbled onward, his eyes almost shut, his hair full of sand, carrying the exhausted body of Alternate-Jess in his arms as best he could manage.

For the first time, Frost had no plan and left himself open to fate.

[captainankh]

Frost dragged himself over the dunes. He couldn't remember how long it had been since his previous post, had it been 10 minutes?

His eyes were full of sand, he winced through clouds of the stuff, the wind had started to pick up a little. Alternate-Jess was limp in his arms.

The horizon still stretched into infinity. He might have been standing in the same place he'd started, he would never be able to tell.

He trudged on, aware that the sun was beginning to drop towards the earth, soon it would disappear and the land would be cold again. Frost wasn't sure if he'd last another night.

[sanguinius]

The sun was halfway beneath the horizon.
The pair of travellers stopped.
Castor pulled off the bandana concealing his mouth and spoke.
"We can go no further tonight, brother."
"Agreed" Pollox replied.

Reaching into his heavy robes Castor retrieved a small, round, red device. He pressed a button and tossed it into the sand.
Immediatley it began to glow, and emanate heat.
The sand around it began to gloss over, turning to glass.
Eventually a smooth floor had formed, large enough for the duo to set camp on. They were prepared for anything.

"Tomorrow we deal with Frost", spoke Pollox.
"Tomorrow", agreed his brother.

[danielwoodfield]

Clarke had been driving down the same road for an eternity now. Time no longer mattered. Sanity did. Clarke just drove, and tried to think about something that mattered, like his job, or his car. That he was driving. In the desert. Clarke just kept driving, trying to keep his sanity.

Then it ran out. The road just stopped. However, a 1500 kg Nissan Skyline traveling at well in excess of 250 km h -1 just doesn't stop just like that. The noise was deafening, as the car began to roll. Sand was dug up and flung into the broken windows, showering Clarke with a paste of petrol-dampened sand and shards of glass.

The Skyline finaly came to a halt, on its roof, in the middle of the infinate desert. Clarke was hanging upside down in this seat, blood seaping from a gash across the face. The last thing Clarke saw before he blacked out was two strange white figures, shaping the desert around them, settling down for a night's
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<font color="#f7f7f7" size="1">[ August 24, 2003 05:06 AM: Message edited by: Clarke Anderson ]</font>

[captainankh]

The night was cold.
In the country, things turned a deep blue after the sun left.
In the city, the surroundings were lit with an eerie sodium-orange glow.
But in the desert everything turned black. As black as space itself. There was no light. There should have been stars. There weren't.

Frost cradled Alternate-Jess in his arms, wrapped in his trenchcoat. They both shivered with cold, caked in sand. If he'd been religious, Tiberius would have prayed. But as it turned out, he wasn't.

Anybody would have thought that the desert would retain some of the heat of the day during the night. They would have been wrong.

[sanguinius]

The skyline hurtled across the landscape with incredible velocity, and came crashing down onto the mirrored floor. Shards of glass flew everywhere, showering the twins with a hailstorm of razor-edged death.
When the clouds cleared, Pollox leapt up to investigate.

Inside the vehicle he discovered an unconscious driver, and no passengers. If ever there had been anything of value in the vehicle it was worth nothing now. Everything that had been straight was bent. Everything that had been bent was benter. The damage was irreversible. The vehicle was dead.

One edge of the glass floor was shattered. Castor set about resetting the enigmasphere to repair it, but to little avail. "Brother!", he called.
Pollox turned.
"We should leave this place. The man is none of our concern."
"Always the sentimental one, aren't you?" replied Pollox. "Agreed."
Castor retrieved his device.

The pair made off into the blackness, somehow knowing which way to go.
Behind them they left a twisted car on a shattered floor of glass.

[Chris Wesley]

Chris rode his skateboard over the sand. Pushing it along, inch by inch, he began to think he was doing something wrong. Perhaps he should have chosen concrete instead, he seemed to move faster in the local parking lot. But he was too far from that to turn back now. He kept going. Inch By Inch.

A Space Station fell out of the sky and landed in front of him. Dammit. Now he had to go around.

[James Winters]

James was chasing Clarkes skyline and was catching up because of a shot of NOS. He had been close behind him on the corners but the skylines top end speed had started to open the small gap into a large lead.
Then Clarke rolled. His car just flipped and rolled over the desert sand.
James reefed on the hand brake, pressed in the clutch, hit the brake and got the car sideways to try and bring his car to a halt. A car at 290km/h with a weight of 1200kg does not stop easily. It just slid.
"As long as this keeps sliding then I will be ok, if the tyres grip, I'm dead." James thought.

[sanguinius]

The night was still. The twins bounded across the landscape, white cloaks flapping, scarfs fluttering.
In the early hours of the morning, right on sunrise, they came upon the camp of Tiberius Frost.
The man in black, clutching a woman, not at all the mighty warrior they sought. It was not important. There was a mission, and it must be completed.

The pair threw off their cumbersome robes, revealing their crisp trademark white trenchcoats.
"Awake, foe! The Diskouroi are upon you!" shouted Pollox, weilding his claymore.
Castor ripped out a shortsword, and spun it behind his back. Uttering a battle-cry, they advanced upon their prey.

[captainankh]

Frost was jarred to life just in time to dodge a heavy claymore aimed at his head.
From somewhere inside him, a little spark of instinct ovverode his fatigue. He drew his sword, trying to defend Alternate-Jess. But it seemed they didn't want her. To be on the safe side, he tried to lead them away.

"Come and get me then," he tried to yell at the duo. were there two of them, or was he seeing double?
His voice was cracking and coarse, his throat full of sand. In a desperate attempt to gain some advantage, Frost tried to climb to a ridge of sand. The sky was just lightening with the dawn.