As was agreed upon, the deadline arrived and here is the voting thread.

As a reminder for those who didn't check the original post, there will also be on top of each submission the objectives delineated by Lobotomizer at the start of the round however:

Quote from Lobotomizer

To entertain:

The goal is no longer what it seems. It is not to reach the end. It is not to record the entirety of the journey. It is not to overcome given handicaps with trivial effort. It is to entertain. Only creativity is rewarded; following the guidelines is secondary.

Here are the participants:

Quote from Waffles' task

Handyman

Starving: It's hunt-a-gladiator time.

Hidden in plain sight: When discovered, Handyman will be seen glowing to the discoverer, making an easy target even in the dark.

Puppeteer and the puppeted: Limbs jerk uncontrollably. Even his tongue now seems unreliable.

Mortality in Immortality: Severe injury to point of being incapable of combat results in dormancy, and subsequently defeat.

is muddy, and the atmosphere is... off.

Air currents glide through branches, hitting the sensitive digits of the creature's grin. A few of the smile's fingers started to move, slowly priming their loose joints before breaking their limits, the sound of them snapping individually echoing loudly from the creature's facial gape.
Trees, everywhere! Finally, a place this creature can think of as home. But the feeling of reassurance is ended abruptly by a desire now festering its way through his whole essence. Hunger.

It needs to feed, he knew this much. It felt his mind slipping through the cracks of its skull where fingers knit tight and nails oozed pus. It's starting to become empty again, and it needs to refill. But the hunger is strong, the intense desire to feed causing it to slip into an inert state, the sensation of emptiness racking through its body and locking its joints up. It can't move, it feels its conscious slowly leaving, all it can really do is stay frozen until food comes along. All it can do is wait.

Then it heard them. Voices, garbled as their echoes bounced through hundreds of trees, the forest interfering with the creature's perception. Slowly, the voices became less scattered and it could close in on where they were, but the information was pointless. Only when one of them gets near it could its body jerk into its primal rage, lust for food overriding all senses. The voices became clearer.

----------

"Disagreement: I have no clue who you are! Just- just get away from me!"

The creature's back tickled with anticipation.

"Hoi, I know you, mate! You said you was gonna partner up with me but I bet you're just aimin' to get that key for yourself!"

It felt heat flood through its body, its simple mind racing, sounds of twigs snapping and syllables shouting roaring in its skull, drowning out any consciousness that was left.

"Statement: There are two keys, you idiot! Look, whoever you are, I know there are others that want to get in our way, so it's best if we work together!"

They were close now. Vibrations ran through its fingers, all the segments of his skull coming to life and slowly tensing, almost as if the head was breathing.

"Shut it, I know there are two keys! One's in that tower batfink fucked off to, and the other is-"

The two men stopped running, their feet digging hard into the mud. They happened upon a small clearing, small enough to house the black behemoth yet large enough to show its size.

"th-there."

The two, stopped in their tracks, forgot about their differences and dared look upon the demon before them, starting to glow a faint grey in the dark. Heat trickled down their spines, warm fear radiating from this terror, towering above the two. It was slouched over, two heavy fists perched into the ground, the head aimed downwards as to conceal its face.

"Observation: is- is it asleep?" the metal man asked, carefully treading around the creature, getting as many angles as it could. He tried to identify the creature, but his helmet was malfunctioning. Nothing would register the creature, as if it was just part of the Earth itself.

"Well, it's the second key. We're gonna have to, uh, behead it or something," the bandaged man suggested, his eyes drifting towards his 'partner' sidestepping around the beast, "and it seems pretty paralyzed, maybe we oughta-"

Snap.

Bust's eyes darted back to the creature, only to see its face pressed against his.

"W-What the fuck!?" Bust screamed, striding backwards, attempting to distance itself from the thing. But it moved with him, black leather-like skin pressed against his bandaged face. Bust's back hit a tree trunk, ceasing his movement, though the creature's head kept on moving. Bust whimpered and cursed as the smiling black sphere pushed him down and into the dirt. Out of the corner of his right eye, he could see the creature slowly reaching his left hand up to its jaw. Bl.An.C just watched, astounded at the speed of the thing's movement, hesistating to take action until he saw his partner was thoroughly helpless. And he needed him alive. The creature? Not so much.

Bl.An.C, too distraught to summon any of his weapons, picked up a rock from the floor and threw it at the creature's back. The beast jerked in surprise, freezing on the spot. Bust used this moment to scurry out from underneath the thing, mud and leaves sticking to his back as he shuffled towards the scientist.

"Jeez-!" Bust bawled out. "The fuck is this thing!?"

Lending a metal hand, the scientist helped the shocked Bust up. Slowly, the creature turned around, its joints sounding like slabs of concrete grinding on each other. Suddenly, a giant arm darted out to the beast's side and punched through a tree, causing the upper half to descend upon the creature. The deafening snap of fist through bark causing the two others to hastily scarper away, heading to the bridge that would take them up the stone tower.

Shifting the tree off of itself with ease, the hunger-driven beast began to make chase. It was too hungry to care about pain, to care about silence, it just needed to feast, so it shot arms out of its body, grabbing trees and tearing them towards it. It smashed itself into log after log, trying to move swiftly through the dense forest yet constantly being interrupted a tree at a time. It could sense the two running meals ahead of it reaching the edge of the forest. It had to get them now.

Bust and Bl.An.C managed to reach the wooden bridge in time. A wide structure, cornering around another elevated pillar of forestry before driving into a decrepit stone tower, ascending and vanishing into mist far above. They ran, fear throbbing through their legs, fuelling their charge to safety. Bust turned around to see what happened to the creature, and he wish he hadn't.

Behind the trees, he saw the glowing outline of the creature. It was no longer some humanoid shape, it was a flying storm of fists and arms. Caring not for its own safety, the creature launched itself through trees, breaking out of the forest and landing onto the bridge behind them. Timber flew from the woods' gash where the beast lingered, crashing into the wooden bridge and causing it to waver madly.

"Shit-!" screamed Bust, loosing his footing. He grasped onto Bl.An.C's foot as he fell, hoping to be dragged to the now-close platform. "Don't fuckin' leave me here, man!"

Bl.An.C fell over Bust's weight. "Expletive: Shit! Get off me!" He started kicking Bust in the skull, metal heel clashing against metal cranium, trying to get him off. He saw the beast at the far end of the bridge, crawling across whilst arms spasmed and convulsed, punching into the bridge, out in the air and into the creature himself.

The bridge creaked and shuddered, losing its grasp against the main platform, the creature's destructive exit ravaging most of its structure. Luckily, as it lost grasp of the dirt and stone it was hinged to, Bl.An.C drove a steel fist into the platform's ridge.

"Observation: The bridge is falling! You, can you see the beast!?"

"N-no! It fell with it! We're fuckin' safe, Hallelujah!" rejoiced the bandaged man, hanging by the armoured leg of Bl.An.C. "Now, fuckin' lift me up!"

"Observation: Wait. It was a key," said the scientist. "One less key."

"What- what do you fuckin' mean?" it dawned on Bust quickly. "W-wait! Shit! I knew you were gonna do this!"

Bl.An.C swung an arm down, said "Sorry, guy. I got the upper ground here." Bright light sheened over his arm, forming into a high-energy plasma cannon.

"N-n-n-" He couldn't finish the last letter of the word 'no', for he had no head left to say it.

A limp hand fell loose of Bl.An.C's leg, falling down with the bridge. The survivor looked down, some regret in his mind, until he saw something big and glowy clutching to the bridge, clambering up.

"Expletive: Shit."

He hoisted himself up, rolled himself onto the platform and started pelting down to the other bridge. 'the other key is up there' the scientest strategised, 'I could finish off the bat and get it. Easy.'

The armoured man raced onto the bridge, eyes forwards onto the tower. He stopped for a second, feeling like something was heavily off. He looked down at the bridge, his gaze slowly reaching to the end of it, realising that the world was starting to curve upwards.

"Affirmation: shit's getting fucky."

The madness of the world started to overwhelm him, until he was shot back to reality by a giant thump behind him. He turned. He started to scream.

The beast was mere meters away from him, a lovecraftian clusterfuck of limbs and appendages, holding a headless man in a giant hand, now visible to Bl.An.C to be Bust, or what was left of him. The creature's face was open, a red tentacle of an arm gently pawing at Bust's gaping neck, trying to find something in there worth eating. Nothing. The arm holding the corpse jerked violently, throwing it far behind the creature. Then it noticed Bl.An.C, who was already running as fast as his metal legs could take him.

'Shit shit shit shit shitshitshitshits SHIT' he screamed in his head. He ran up the bridge, trying to get to the tower, but it seemed to just drift further away from him. The wood started to shudder underfoot. Thump. Thud. Boom. The vibrations worsened, he could feel them get closer and closer and closer, he could feel the warm fear screaming through his bones, until he fell over.

Bl.An.C hastily shoved himself up, realising he was now in the base of the tower. He looked behind him to see how far away the creature was. His retina widened, and he thrust himself up the nearby staircase, barely dodging the flurry of giant fists crashing through the doorway. He felt the whole tower shudder as this force of nature slammed against it, and all he could do was run upwards.

The stairs seemed to go on forever, repeating and repeating constantly. The only thing that stood out from the grey walls and stairs were the few dots of black blood now and then. 'The bat shit could be at the top. Hope the shit hasn't got the key,' thought Bl.An.C. Shudders still rocked up the building now and then, but they got fainter and fainter, as if the beast couldn't fit into the stairwell. The idea caused him to feel a bit of relief.

When he reached the top of the tower, he encountred exactly who he thought he would. Standing there, in a stone, windowed room, trying to clutch a heavy stone key in his mouth, was Venox.

"Observation: Still alive, huh?"

The robotic voice fell on deaf ears. The creature's right wing was missing, instead showing a singed mess of skin and scar where its shoulder should have been. It squinted at the man-machine, stone key clutched between its teeth, its weight causing pain to rack up through the bat-thing's neck and spine. Its eyes darted left and right, seeing several metal-coated men standing before it,

Bl.An.C summoned his plasma cannon once again, and aimed it towards the creature, the glow of the barrel reflected in its two red eyes. It knew it planned to run past him, to take the key for himself. He knew he deserved freedom more than the little freak. Then he paused and thought, 'wait. This creature is near helpless, maybe I could use it for a better purpose, like bait. The beast seemed to want something in Bust's head,' feeling a slight pang of regret as the name entered his mind, 'maybe I could sate the beast with this one, get both keys? Bigger reward, possibly.'

He lowered his cannon, letting it flow back into his arm. 'Now,' he thought, 'how to-'

Thoughts were cut short as the tower began to sway. '-shit, this place isn't right. Warping around like it is. I'd best stand my ground, though. Don't want the bat to-' he noticed the bat was losing its footing too. 'so it's not just me, is it?'

Though, everything started to change around when he heard an explosion. Then he realised the tower isn't warping, it's tilting. Constantly. Shudders shook throughout the pillar before it fell a few meters, causing Bl.An.C and Venox to enter freefall for a few seconds, the key flung from Venox' grasp.

He tried to retrieve it for himself, but the scientist's scope widened once again when he realised what he saw out of the window, the gravity around him becoming lesser and lesser.

"Observation: shit. It broke the tower."

Stone bricks cracked and broke as the giant tower crashed down upon the world. Bl.An.C managed to grab the key in the freefall, unawares that Venox had flung himself out of a window, aiming to land in the trees as a safety net.

'Aha, got it! now to get outta here oh shit' thought the man. The tower crashed into the starting platform, a tree impaling through the room, tearing through Bl.An.C's left hand, flaying the armour from his flesh.

He woke up a few minutes after, pain pulsating through his body, starting from his left arm. It was trapped between giant stone bricks and a shattered tree stump. He cursed, blood spluttering within his helmet as his mouth moved. He tried to shift himself, shrapnel freeing itself from his body, revealing dents and gashes. All he knew was that he was trapped in a cavern, that his left hand is damaged- possibly even torn off- and that in his right hand, close to his chest, he held the key.

"Analysis: I'm going to survive this. I just gotta free myself, and I'll head over to the exit. I'll- I'll be fine. I can just build a new hand."

He tried to yank his limb out, but he couldn't. He tried constantly, disturbing the cavern around him, leaves and pebbles falling like rain with each pull. Then another sound came, a heavy thud. Another one, and then even more.

"Expletive: Ah shit."

He looked around before seeing a glowing mess through the wall, slowly approaching him. Hands flailed upwards, he guessed it was digging for him. It was moving slow and was at a distance, so he had plenty of time to escape.

Until he heard a shrill voice right above him, yelling "H-hey! Beast! I hear movement over here!"

'The little shit! Well, time for drastic measures. Here goes.' Bl.An.C dropped the key onto the floor, summoned a plasma gun from his right arm and aimed at the trapped limb. He calmed himself before continuinng. 'Plasma should seal the wound shut. Should. Here goes nothing.'

A bright flash of light, and he was free. Unfortunately, the shock caused the cavern around him to finally collapse. He tried to rise up, hoping to beat the shit out of the batshit bat shit with the key, held firmly in his only hand. He broke through the surface, rubble and debris shifting off him as he arose. And arose further. The floor was moving further away from him? He saw Venox grinning below, staring at him. Bl.An.C was heavily confused, until he saw the glowing fingers around his waist, slowly squeezing his armour into his body.

The creature in his grasp shoved its tongue on to the back of his prey's neck, the small red hand meeting only metal plating. It tried to drill through, but it found nothing. The creature was almost disappointed, until the tongue jerked to the left, tearing the plating clean off, showing fleshy tones underneath.

"Expletive: F-fuck! What!? G-Get off me! GET IT OFF ME!"

Venox watched in glee as his friend finally had his

I'll have it later, sorry.

It.

HOT GOD DAMN
I almost gave up you as a person, Blender.

This is some good stuff. Lobo will be pleased. Hopefully.

Great job ErrorBlender!

I really like the way your story described the shifting landscape and Handyman's attacks. That written work is EPIC.

Here's what I can say :D, they're not much but here we go.

WafflesMgee:
[spoiler=]
Story was great, wonderful actually. Gore, blood and horror. I liked it.

Now then, Cnc.

The first part was present tense then the next was past. Was this intentional? I'm just asking though; the division cleared the confusion anyway. The other task you had where Handy's limbs jerk around weirdly isn't visibly there but I understand that in his hungry state you'd barely notice it but you gave his fine movements in parts where he was trying to consume L.L. and later when he devoured Bl.An.C.

You also switch tenses my friend. I have that problem so I point it out to you before Lobo does.

I'm pretty sure Lobo is tired of reminding me of it.

So far that's the only thing I can say. I'm glad to have read this. Awesome work, Waffles.
[/spoiler]
Cassandra:
[spoiler=]
You, my friend, are improving. I like how you describe the surroundings despite the lack of sight and hearing. You paint a weird dark picture that I can still wade into which is nice.

Cnc then? Let's go. Its all technical stuff, challenge wise things.

So far, I don't get why his sight is gone as well. The challenge only said he was deaf and that everything was a powerful hallucination. Another thing was that there would be no flying. The DarkWing flew to the tower which is odd and went against the rules. You also went a bit over the 4k limit.

Overall, it looks to be a solid piece. Good work, Cass.
[/spoiler]
Aquila:
[spoiler=]
Short and sweet, paranoid hunter has a new friend :D

CnC, my friend.

It wasn't too short or too long. The story showed what it had to do, all challenges were met nicely and described well. Though the story could have plodded on with L.L. meeting with Bl.An.C., showcasing a bit more paranoia but its okay as of now. :D
[/spoiler]

EDIT: Thanks Cass, I appreciate it :)

Thanks for the CnC Error! I appreciate it.

About the "blindness" thing...well, it did say that night vision was disabled, and my setting was in forested darkness. Venox couldn't see because there was no light to see by. I didn't put torches in the tower (whoops, lemme get my level editor XD), so he couldn't see in there either.

Yes, I admit making the Darkwing fly was unfair...but I only misread the instructions. I thought that only Venox was affected by the no-fly rule, but after reading your story I realized your aerial bots were finding it hard to get off the ground. :O That was a major mess-up element in my story...sorry. :P

Wow, Venox went through a lot. He got attacked by things he couldn't see (my story), had his sanity torn apart by a body-horror beast (Aquila's story), made friends with the same creature (WafflesMcgee's story), and pulled off a successful vanishing act (your story lol).

I guess L.L. Bust got a little "busted" up too, didn't he? :D

I'm not going to focus on grammar and such because it wasn't the point of this round.









Said a lot about Cassandra's, couldn't say much about Aquila's because he was doing some verbal moonwalking, and Blender's was written rather well except he missed a few big things and the ending says how rushed he was to finish it.

Whoo.

Thanks Waffles. The Aloof part was kind of vaguely used there. I understood that the Aloof part was tha he couldn't recognize the voices but when L.L. Bust brought out a gun [or what hazy figure it looked to be] and the mention of the deal, Bl.An.C.'s mind simply trusted him to be the bounty hunter.

That's it. Bust's Paranoia, I forgot completely. I agree that the not only the head could've been plaster white for the sake of the outline but I wanted Bl.An.C. a clear sight on the head since it would be pivotal to the story. The conflict I portrayed here was inner conflict in Bl.An.C., the clashing of beliefs in reality and how he had to forego whatever he knew before in order to continue. But all has been said and done, the work is here and its up to the reader to understand without my explanation. Hah.

But again, thanks for the CnC. I very much appreciate it.

Oof, I had a hard time picking between Waffles and Error, honestly. But in the end I have to pick Waffles.

Waffles: VERY nice work, friend. You seemed to follow this round's entertainment prompt rather well, so kudos on that. Overall, i really enjoyed the pace of your story; it wasn't too fast, not too slow. The only thing that even really bothered me at all were the few instances where you did seem to switch tenses, but I absolutely loved it overall. Good job, Dick. <3
)A somewhat personal gripe I have is the way Bl.An.C talked. He's typically much more calculating and monotonous, and not so many "expletives". (Even if he was suffering from some weird :I

Cassandra: Can I just say I absolutely love the descriptions in your work. Just, truly well done. And it's quite impressive how well you managed to describe the area through the senses of a blind, deaf, "man"-thing. However, I found quite a few of your sentences a little too short. I feel as if that your awkward pacing of certain scenes drew away from the actual quality of the story, and I was too busy starting a new sentence to really comprehend the previous one.. But overall, your descriptions were hella, and I love little Nightwing. <3

Aquila: I think the biggest gripe I had with your work was the length. I enjoy reading what you write quite a lot, but the length with yours just didn't do it for me. However, on the bright side, I liked the whole emotion prompt for Bust. Using Venox's deafness and blindness to incite his rage, and the sass he gives after Handy feeds on Venox, that part was creative, so kudos to you my friend. <3

Errorblender: First off, fantastic work. Just through and through a very well written piece. However, the reason Waffles got my vote over you was due to one thing that bugged me. The pace in the beginning of your work seemed.. Too slow. Bl.An.C had a lot to take in, what with being in a reality where nothing is as he knew, but the pace of your story made it seem as if he was perfectly fine with it, and it dragged on a bit. Even though he's pretty good at keeping his emotions in check, I think it would have been a bit more entertaining if we had seen him freak out, even if just a tiny bit more. The pace didn't seem to pick up until about the middle of the "fight", but then the end was so near it didn't seem to have enough time to really sink in. That's all I really have to say about your piece, and in the end, it was a tough decision between you and Waffles. Very nice work, EB. <3

--Pew Pew--

On the whole, I want everyone to understand that a story should not be thought of in a straightforward manner. I do not expect the prompts I give to be used to their fullest, but I want at least some of them to be a stepping stone to guide your entries to be better written. WRHG might primarily be about fighting, but that is no reason to neglect a plot and the written characters.

Oh Mah Gawd...

This is so hard to choose. Im finding myself trying to pick between Bl.An.C and Cassandra.

Cassandra: I loved you descriptions of every facet of the story. Venox being blind and deaf really made him almost defenseless. I so loved it when you brought back the "forever" concept, "The stairs became another forever". The only thing I'm worried about is that the pacing seems too slow to be able to beat Bl.An.C and L.L. Bust to the tower without contest. However, you made me love a snake like create with wings and his darkwing so props to you.

Blender: Mostly I just enjoyed your story. You may have left out some parts like the distrust of L.L. Bust but the rest of it is explained and comes back later. The descriptions and feeling of a warped world annihilated any connection to reality. And the twist at the end of the story as wonderful as well as when he collapsed at the end.

Waffles: I liked your story, don't get me wrong. It was very descriptive and had an interesting plot, but parts of it seemed un-canon and wasn't what I wanted to read. I did like the way you changed perspectives from Handy to Bl.An.C to Venox. I also liked when the beginning and the elegant description of Handy's hunger.

Aquila: I'm going to be brutally honest. I didn't really like your story. It was so short compared to the others it seemed like you weren't trying as hard. Plus, he didn't win at the end. He now walks a path that leads on forever with the Handyman. And at some point, he is going to get hungry again.

Overall, as Im typing this, I still don't know who I'm going to vote for. I applaud all of you.

Congratz, Waffles. You take the round :)

EDIT: Lobo, questions: How could it have been organized better? How is the pacing too slow? I've gotten the idea that to sink in the weird world into the readers, I had to slow it down. Was it too slow?

I've forgotten to put in my own votes, so here they are.

Errorblender(2): Too much emphasis on the beginning, uninteresting plot and a sudden end. Whilst toting better writing than Waffles these issues put your story at his level.

Wafflesmgee(2): Nature of storytelling is a little jarring, and the out of character writing hurt your piece the most.

Cassandra(1): Confusing and less than interesting plot and writing makes your piece difficult to read and enjoy.

Aquila (0) : Lackluster performance makes your piece the worst.

To sum up.

Wafflesmgee: 5
Errorblender (excluding cassandra's vote): 3
Cassandra: 3
Aquila: 0

Aquila will be eliminated from the tournament.

If we exclude Cass' vote I'd only have yours and SJ's.