From: caz@owlnet.rice.edu (HWRNMNBSOL)
Subject: [KQ] Kron [TGMOAB 5.1] The Kron Solution
Organization: Rice University
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 00:19:55 GMT

Kron's blood drips down his arm and into the pool.  The crimson drops rain down
on the riotous mass of flesh that is Great Mother's body.  Where the blood
strikes, tiny mouths form and swallow it down; others manifest and pipingly
demand more in the screeching voices of pure insanity.  

Kron is unimpressed.

After all, he has seen the intricate workings of Great Mother from the inside.
Shielded by the domineering presence of his loving but oh-so-determined sister,
Kron has survived the experience with his sanity, if not intact, at least in
one piece.

The blood is a message.  Kron has speeded it on its way through judicious
application of sharpened steel, and now keenly awaits an answer.  He knows
that harm to him will catch the attention of one very important facet of
Great Mother's greater total.  He needs that attention to enact a plan of
sorts -- one that will solve, for once and for all, the dilemma of the 
Lady and the Tiger.....

Kron has seen all of the resources at Cheyenne's disposal.  She has become
a part of a being from an entirely alien place and time -- one of the Elder
Ones; a holdover from an era whose memory has been mercifully expunged from
our collective consciousnesses.  Her powers on many levels are formidable;
unconquerable to one of Kron's mortal status.  In the other bowl of the
balance, Kron's assets look slim: he has his armor and weapons; he has a
portion of Great Mother's attention distracted and diffuse; he has his mind,
his skills, his determination.....and he has his self.  Very important, that.

It's not much, but it will have to do.

Kron has figured out what will have to be done.  It's a terrible thing to
even consider, but the options......never mind.

"CHEYENNE!!!!" Kron bellows.  

And she answers...

*****************************************************************************

Cheyenne rises once more from Great Mother's bulk.  ...sage and his newly-
empowered allies represent a menace to her, but Terry is bleeding!  Somebody
else can deal with the other, more trivial affairs.

Her eyes gelatinize as her waist cuts the surface of Mother's bulk.  Her
brother stands on the edge of the pool, his short sword held to the point of
his neck.  Blood streams down his left arm from a shallow knife wound.  There
is a look of determination in his eyes.  What could he be planning?  [LINK:
INITIATE MINDGRAB...]

"Stop!" shouts Kron.  "Release the grab, or I kill myself!  I can do it before
you get full control!  Release it now, dammit!"

[RELEASE MINDGRAB//PROCESS:FORM VOCAL CORDS]

"Terry!" pipes Cheyenne anxiously.  "What are you doing?"

"We're renegotiating."

"Dammit -- you're *stalling* again!  You know just as well as I do that you
made the choice of your own free will!  You *want* to join me much worse than
you want death!  So quit faking around, or I'll have to...."

"Shaddap!  It's not that I don't want to be with you -- it's HOW.  I want you,
not all the rest of it."

"Comes with the package, I'm afraid, Terry.  Can't have one without the other."

"Don't care.  BEING with them wouldn't be so bad.  JOINING with them is
another matter entirely!"

A low hummock forms itself behind Cheyenne, who wearily sits back on it and
peers disconsolately at her brother.  "Terry, what in the nine hells are you
talking about?"

"If you promise to hear me out, can I put this sword down?"

Impish grin.  "Oh, why not?"  Kron lowers the sword and squats down to talk.

"Look, I was inside you, and I saw what you are.  I know your capabilities
and your strengths.  In particular, I saw the strange mental power you have
to separate yourself from others.  You can dissociate yourself from the
others any time you want, right?"

"Terry, it's not that easy.  Sure, I can break contacts whenever I want, but
I can only do so many at a time!  And there are SO very many......and they
are always trying to reestablish the link!  I can fend them off well enough
to take and keep dominance, to allow me free access to any control center
in the groupmind, but separating myself is quite out of the question."

Kron holds up a finger.  "Ah!  There's no question that a total and permanent
separation is impossible.  After a few seconds the others would overwhelm you
with sheer numbers and drag you back into the fold, as it were.  But you could
get yourself -- all of yourself! -- out for just a moment or two."

Cheyenne frowns.  "Why?"

Big Grin: "So I can join with you first."

"What?!"

"Look, I don't want to go unless I go with you.  Just you.  I'll take the
others if I must, but I don't want them getting their grubby paws on me unless
you can nurse me through!  You understand -- remember the shock you had when
they sucked you in the first time?"

Cheyenne looks pensive.  "I remember...."

Kron gazes earnestly down at her.  "Don't make me go through that, Shy.  I'd
rather die than take that, honest I would.  Help me."

Cheyenne looks up at him.  "You'd go back in with me?  Us, together again?"
Tears choke her eyes and voice. 

Kron feels like Judas, but he forces on his best Big Brotherly smile.  "You
betcha, kid.  You and me, together again.  Just like those Fafhrd and Grey
Mouser Stories I always told you.  Remember?"

Cheyenne smiles.  "I remember.  I -- I'll try.  Okay?"

"Do it."

******************************************************************************

[ENTER PROCESS CONTROL]

[Sandar Tol] .....Cheyenne?whatdoyouthinkyou'reuptothistime?......

[SEVER LOWER LINKS]

[Sandar Tol] ....HEY!What.....GreatCrucifiedJesus,youcan'tpossibly.....

[SCRAMBLE ADDRESS ALLOCATIONS]

[Sandar Tol]  ....No!Oh,SHIIIIIITTTTTT2p8jhav9p83 n5ol8yhfrla38k.vn......

[DISENGAGE]

[LOG OUT]

****************************************************************************

Great Mother's surface erupts into a vortex of chaos.  Where once ordered
insanity ruled, anarchy takes over.

The pool leaps and heaves in terrific spasms.  Great prominences of flesh
and foetor arc across the room to crash against the cracked stone walls.
Greenish, reeking mists spring up from the thrashing roil and threaten to
choke the unfortunate bystanders.  Limbs, heads, tentacles, phalluses, 
gobbets of slime, and less identifiable shapes rear themselves forth and
crash again on the all-engulfing tide of putrescence.  A jumbled howl fills
the air, causing all humans to clutch their ears in pain.

That's what you get when you reboot an Elder God.

****************************************************************************

Kron stands impassively by the fury of Great Mother's disorderly body.  His
mind is wracked with hundreds of conflicting emotions, but he cannot let any
of them show.  To do so would scuttle The Plan.  Instead, he looks for his
sister.

There she is!  From the tumbling, fleshy froth, strands of order weave 
themselves and snake onto the ledge at the bath's edge.  They twist and kink
and writhe about each other like mating serpents, and swiftly knit themselves
into a shape.  It is the shape of a girl wearing green dress and a single
silver earring.  

Cheyenne.

She opens her eyes and heaves a great breath.  Terry has not moved from where
he stood moments ago, and he regards her without emotion.  Cheyenne, however,
is overflowing with joy:

"Terry!  Oh Terry!  I'm me again!  Oh, it's so good to see you!  Really SEE
you!  Hahaha..."   She flings her arms around his neck and gives him a huge
hug.  She does not seem to notice that he does not respond in kind.

After a moment, she steps back.  "Oh, Terry, we're going to be together again.
For ever and ever, this time."

"For ever and ever," Kron echoes hollowly.

"We'll have so much fun, and we'll never be lonely again!"

"Never lonely..." echoes Kron, his face as blank as an empty slate.

Cheyenne looks at herself with real eyes: the eyes she was born with.  "Terry,
I haven't aged a day!  Heeheehee.....It's nice to be me for once."

"You for once."  The voice is dead as the light in his eyes.

"Too bad it's only for a while, though."  She looks wistfully back at GM's
body, already beginning to calm down and reintegrate.

Kron slowly shakes his head.  "No.  For ever and ever and ever."

With the speed and strength of the truly desperate, Kron reverses his short
sword and drives it will all his might through the skull of his one and only
sister.

There is a moment of pure silence.

Then there is no silence.

******************************************************************************

Somewhere, friends, there is a place where the best things in life are free.
There is a land where dreams do come true.  There is another world where
the just triumph, and the virtuous get their just desserts, and love is a
force that can cast down the highest walls.

Ha.

Welcome to Generica.

-- 
HWRNMNBSOL