Re: VENDETTA!!! [S!2 Round 1 ~ Presidentialgon]
03-22-2012, 06:20 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Flummox.
[color=#99z8rz] As the crushed and battered remains of the tourist crowd escaped the building, Felgurd reached the end of the massive row of figures, catching a fleeting glimpse of his pursuers. They did not seem to tire, as he knew humans should, instead chasing after him with the same amount of gusto as when they started. He decided it was probably best to try and outrun them at this point; losing them seemed impossible.
Just as he was nearing the pair of double doors, they slammed shut – some sort of automatic closing mechanism, activated to end his escape. They were the nearest exit, but they were overly large, made of some sort of metal that looked very durable, and by the looks of it, locked with an elaborate gear system. Trying to break them open would be pointless. He sprinted across the carpet and ducked down the next row of figures, doubling back towards the other end of the hall.
As he ran, he moved hands out of his arms and to his legs, making them longer while his arms became shorter. The unfortunate side effect of this was that it was impossible to balance without bobbing his body back and forth, to the point where it looked like he was imitating some sort of flightless bird.
But it paid off, and soon he was outdistancing his assailants. No one can run forever, though, and Felgurd knew this too. So as he weaved through the line of statues, occasionally shoving aside the few tourists left in the room, he began to look for exits.
The double doors seemed to be the only man-made way out of there. He could make another hole, but that would take far too much time. They would catch up to him by the time he would be able to get through.
But as he stepped behind the last, largest statue in the row, his eye scanned the far wall of the room, and he spotted something – the hole he had come in through. Perhaps… it would have to be quick. He knew the men would fire at will as soon as he left behind these expensive looking decorations. It was his only way out; he would have to take it.
They must have known he was going for it, because a few of the men began to detach from the main group and head towards the hole. He had to be quick. Timing was essential. He started to bring his hands back into his sleeves and form coherent arms. But slowly, because he still needed the speed boost from the extended legs.
Closer…closer…
He hooked one of his legs inside the hole and swung himself inside. The top of his hat clipped the ragged edge of the hole and fell off. He swung one of his arms around to retrieve it, but jerked back when he heard the distinctive pop of a pistol with a silencer. Feeling a sharp sting in the hand at the tip of his arm, he looked down to see blood oozing slowly out a bullet hole. Since there was no heart to force the blood out, it came slowly. But the tendon in one of the fingers was severed, the muscles injured; the hand would never function the same again. The dripping blood would also leave tracks, which was especially important to avoid. Felgurd left his hat as well as the injured hand and burst out of the splintered doorway at the other end of the room.
The hallway was familiar – not because he had been there before, though there was that too, but because it looked like all human hallways, at least in any office building. As he continued through the hallway, he slipped in the occasional glance into the passing room, and noticed that they too seemed quite familiar, the type of room that one typically finds in human office buildings. Indeed they were all familiar, in exactly the same type of way, too – something was very wrong here.
But there was no time to ponder the similarity of rooms. He could hear more popping sounds behind him, and bullets were denting the walls around him. He veered down the next left, if not losing his pursuers then at least getting out of their line of sight for a bit.
He found himself lapsing into quite a rhythm: right, left, left, right, left, right right left
Then he came across a wide, gaping hole in the nearest wall. It was useless to enter through – it only led to a room, which had no other exits – but it might provide a distraction to his pursuers. They might be led to believe he went through it, or if not, at least they might stop to wonder at the destruction.
He continued sprinting down the hallway, wherein he encountered an unconscious woman with sheaves of paper strewn about her body. He bent down to rip the hands from her wrists and add them to his collection, but a bullet striking sparks off the nearby wall tore him from the distraction, and he started off down the hallway again.
The woman might well have been his downfall, for the men chasing him were not far behind and the hallway continued straight for quite a ways.
A bullet grazed one of the hands on the back of his neck, slicing off the tip of one of its fingers quite neatly. The hand was still functional, but it was slowly dripping a quite visible trail of red. He swapped it with another hand from deep inside his torso so that the blood would drip not onto the floor but on the hands underneath it.
Fortunately, there was another one of those ragged holes off to his left, and he ducked inside to avoid further injury. This room had another hole in the far wall, which provided a continued escape route.
This hole led to another hallway; he could go left, right, or forward, through the hole in the wall ahead. Indeed, there seemed to be a veritable path of destruction – whoever or whatever was making these holes was probably very strong and very angry. Anything so wantonly destroying this building wouldn’t be allied with his pursuers. If he followed the trail, then he’d come upon whatever was leaving it – and perhaps it would destroy those men. It wasn’t a flawless plan, but it’s the best he had. Felgurd could only hope that whatever it was, it wouldn’t destroy him too.
So he followed the path, crawling through some smaller holes and jumping through other, larger ones. He passed through multiple offices, each one identical except in their state of disarray. Some were completely destroyed, others disorganized, and yet others utterly untouched.
At last he burst out into a hallway where the trail of holes ended. There was simply not another hole. Ahead, there was a row of wall-sized windows, from which a mountain range could be seen. He considered opening or breaking the window and climbing out, but that was probably not the best idea taking into account that it looked out onto an almost vertical cliff side.
At this point it would be best to stick to the original plan. He picked a direction, left, and started to run. The men must have caught up with him again, for he heard bullets ricocheting off the walls. He reverted back to his long-legged form, the air resistance pushing his empty sleeves back in a flowing stream of cloth.
He tore past a man in a hat with a boy under his arm and some sort of beast over his shoulder. Could they have been the cause of the trail? No. No human can tear holes in walls of that size. It can’t be. But they still could provide some use. Humans would not fire upon their own kind, would they?
He slowed to a trot, turned around, and was about to speak, when Johnny Raptor’s fist collided with his mask.
[/color]
*****
“Hmph.” Johnny Raptor grabbed Felgurd by his lapels and hoisted him up. “Tell me, thing, do you work for the Viper?”
“Gghhng.” Came Felgurd’s response. Having spent weeks without talking to anyone, his voice was raw. Being hit in the face did not help.
Johnny slapped him again. But his interrogation session was interrupted by the sound of boots thundering down the hallway. He spun around to find eight men standing there. The one on the far left and the one on the far right grinned and tore off their faces to reveal hideous reptilian smiles. Their pants split to accommodate their long, thrashing tails.
“VIPER!” Shouted Johnny, as they advanced on him slowly. “Back me up, kid.”
He dropped Felgurd to focus on the two Viper agents.
Some sort of blade was taking shape in Artemis’ hand as Grendel slid into a material form.
“This will be exciting!”
“I sure hope not.”
But it turned out that Johnny did not need backup – throwing Zeus at the one on the right, he spun around to catch the hand of the one on the left, swiftly punching him in the midsection. He grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him through one of the windows. His screams could be heard as he fell to his death. The leopard simply sat on the other one.
As this was going on, five of other men from the group reached inside their jackets and pulled out slim daggers, shiny with some sort of liquid coating. Most likely poison. They branched out in a circle, surrounding Johnny, the skin on their faces peeling off to expose crocodilian heads. Long claws split the skin on the tips of their fingers.
“Assassins! I should have known they’d come with reinforcements.”
[color=#99z8rz]Felgurd began to come to his senses, wakening to a frantic fight scene. The boy with the sword and the man in the hat were in the center of a circle of reptilian warriors. They were lashing out at anything that came close, but not making any headway. Say… didn’t that man look familiar? And the boy, too… yes, that’s right. The mysterious man in the suit, Don… something or other. That wasn’t important. Didn’t he mention something about… moving on once someone had died? Yes, change. It was hard to imagine that anyplace could be worse than that one, but it would be different. And different was bad. Different meant new people, new rules, new things to get accustomed too. No, he could not allow them to die, for then they would move on, whatever that meant.
He stood up and gripped the nearest assassin in an iron clutch, tossing him out the already broken window.It seemed that the other Viper agents were distracted by the loss of their fellow, because Johnny was able to clobber one over the head into unconsciousness.[/color]
He then spun around and kicked another in the side of the head, sending it sprawling to the floor. The boy also took advantage of the gap, slashing one across the face. This seemed to have little effect, until Johnny Raptor came up behind him and wrapped his arms around his neck in a chokehold. Felgurd seized the remaining one by the arm and bent his arm in a rather odd direction, creating a sickening crack. Johnny let go of the remaining one, who lay on the floor, gasping for air.
The remaining man had stood by, watching the fight, but now he turned to Johnny. His smile grew and grew until it became maniacal. Then it grew more, and his skin could be heard tearing as his face was split in two. Thousands upon thousands of small snakes spilt from where his neck used to be. A larger snake wormed its way up through the multitude.
“Johnny Raptor.” It hissed. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
“Crotalis. I’ve been waiting for you too.”
“Shall we dance?”
At this, the snake shed its human clothes, and the full monstrosity was revealed. Millions of snakes squirmed away from Crotalis, their exodus slowly exposing its body. It was about three feet thick and immensely long, covered in sharp scales and with a cruel glint in its eyes. It bared its fangs and hissed, lunging at Johnny, who caught it by the neck.
“Whoa there. Not too fast.” He gave it a powerful uppercut, sending it flying against one of the windows. The glass shattered and sliced gouges into Crotalis’ hide, snakes squirming out of the wound instead of blood. Crotalis wrapped himself around the window support.
“You won’t find me so easily disposed of, Raptor.”
This time, it was more cautious, dancing at the edges of Johnny’s range. Small snakes fell out of its wounds, writhing. Some would thrash their bodies and advance towards Johnny, only to have their heads stamped in.
“You gotta help him out!” Grendel said, noticing the standoff their fight had gotten too. “Look. If he dies, I’ll never have a chance to observe him, to research him. Don’t you see? This could be my big break!”
“Fight that thing? You must be crazy.”
“Distract it or something then. Just do something!”
“Um. Alright.” Artemis danced up to the snake, doing some sort of jig while holding his satanic sword in a threatening position and making silly noises. Crotalis seemed unfazed, still weaving his body in and out of Johnny’s reach, until Artemis began to take swipes at it. Then it reared up and flared its hood, a terrifying jumble of red and yellow, abstract shapes forming themselves into something resembling a distorted human face. Artemis stumbled back, scrambling to get away from it.
“Stop it, boy. I will tear you into so many pieces that your remains will look like dust and I will inject so much venom into you that your parents will feel it.”
This distraction did give Johnny an edge, however, and he tackled Crotalis from the side. He kept a firm grip on the snake’s throat as he carried it to the windows and proceeded to tie it in knots around the support of the broken window.
“Snakes shouldn’t fight raptors. I’m your natural predator.”
He walked over to Felgurd and held out his hand.
“Johnny Raptor, Secret Service.”
“Fff..Felgurddh.” He didn't take Johnny’s hand.
[color=#99z8rz] As the crushed and battered remains of the tourist crowd escaped the building, Felgurd reached the end of the massive row of figures, catching a fleeting glimpse of his pursuers. They did not seem to tire, as he knew humans should, instead chasing after him with the same amount of gusto as when they started. He decided it was probably best to try and outrun them at this point; losing them seemed impossible.
Just as he was nearing the pair of double doors, they slammed shut – some sort of automatic closing mechanism, activated to end his escape. They were the nearest exit, but they were overly large, made of some sort of metal that looked very durable, and by the looks of it, locked with an elaborate gear system. Trying to break them open would be pointless. He sprinted across the carpet and ducked down the next row of figures, doubling back towards the other end of the hall.
As he ran, he moved hands out of his arms and to his legs, making them longer while his arms became shorter. The unfortunate side effect of this was that it was impossible to balance without bobbing his body back and forth, to the point where it looked like he was imitating some sort of flightless bird.
But it paid off, and soon he was outdistancing his assailants. No one can run forever, though, and Felgurd knew this too. So as he weaved through the line of statues, occasionally shoving aside the few tourists left in the room, he began to look for exits.
The double doors seemed to be the only man-made way out of there. He could make another hole, but that would take far too much time. They would catch up to him by the time he would be able to get through.
But as he stepped behind the last, largest statue in the row, his eye scanned the far wall of the room, and he spotted something – the hole he had come in through. Perhaps… it would have to be quick. He knew the men would fire at will as soon as he left behind these expensive looking decorations. It was his only way out; he would have to take it.
They must have known he was going for it, because a few of the men began to detach from the main group and head towards the hole. He had to be quick. Timing was essential. He started to bring his hands back into his sleeves and form coherent arms. But slowly, because he still needed the speed boost from the extended legs.
Closer…closer…
He hooked one of his legs inside the hole and swung himself inside. The top of his hat clipped the ragged edge of the hole and fell off. He swung one of his arms around to retrieve it, but jerked back when he heard the distinctive pop of a pistol with a silencer. Feeling a sharp sting in the hand at the tip of his arm, he looked down to see blood oozing slowly out a bullet hole. Since there was no heart to force the blood out, it came slowly. But the tendon in one of the fingers was severed, the muscles injured; the hand would never function the same again. The dripping blood would also leave tracks, which was especially important to avoid. Felgurd left his hat as well as the injured hand and burst out of the splintered doorway at the other end of the room.
The hallway was familiar – not because he had been there before, though there was that too, but because it looked like all human hallways, at least in any office building. As he continued through the hallway, he slipped in the occasional glance into the passing room, and noticed that they too seemed quite familiar, the type of room that one typically finds in human office buildings. Indeed they were all familiar, in exactly the same type of way, too – something was very wrong here.
But there was no time to ponder the similarity of rooms. He could hear more popping sounds behind him, and bullets were denting the walls around him. He veered down the next left, if not losing his pursuers then at least getting out of their line of sight for a bit.
He found himself lapsing into quite a rhythm: right, left, left, right, left, right right left
Then he came across a wide, gaping hole in the nearest wall. It was useless to enter through – it only led to a room, which had no other exits – but it might provide a distraction to his pursuers. They might be led to believe he went through it, or if not, at least they might stop to wonder at the destruction.
He continued sprinting down the hallway, wherein he encountered an unconscious woman with sheaves of paper strewn about her body. He bent down to rip the hands from her wrists and add them to his collection, but a bullet striking sparks off the nearby wall tore him from the distraction, and he started off down the hallway again.
The woman might well have been his downfall, for the men chasing him were not far behind and the hallway continued straight for quite a ways.
A bullet grazed one of the hands on the back of his neck, slicing off the tip of one of its fingers quite neatly. The hand was still functional, but it was slowly dripping a quite visible trail of red. He swapped it with another hand from deep inside his torso so that the blood would drip not onto the floor but on the hands underneath it.
Fortunately, there was another one of those ragged holes off to his left, and he ducked inside to avoid further injury. This room had another hole in the far wall, which provided a continued escape route.
This hole led to another hallway; he could go left, right, or forward, through the hole in the wall ahead. Indeed, there seemed to be a veritable path of destruction – whoever or whatever was making these holes was probably very strong and very angry. Anything so wantonly destroying this building wouldn’t be allied with his pursuers. If he followed the trail, then he’d come upon whatever was leaving it – and perhaps it would destroy those men. It wasn’t a flawless plan, but it’s the best he had. Felgurd could only hope that whatever it was, it wouldn’t destroy him too.
So he followed the path, crawling through some smaller holes and jumping through other, larger ones. He passed through multiple offices, each one identical except in their state of disarray. Some were completely destroyed, others disorganized, and yet others utterly untouched.
At last he burst out into a hallway where the trail of holes ended. There was simply not another hole. Ahead, there was a row of wall-sized windows, from which a mountain range could be seen. He considered opening or breaking the window and climbing out, but that was probably not the best idea taking into account that it looked out onto an almost vertical cliff side.
At this point it would be best to stick to the original plan. He picked a direction, left, and started to run. The men must have caught up with him again, for he heard bullets ricocheting off the walls. He reverted back to his long-legged form, the air resistance pushing his empty sleeves back in a flowing stream of cloth.
He tore past a man in a hat with a boy under his arm and some sort of beast over his shoulder. Could they have been the cause of the trail? No. No human can tear holes in walls of that size. It can’t be. But they still could provide some use. Humans would not fire upon their own kind, would they?
He slowed to a trot, turned around, and was about to speak, when Johnny Raptor’s fist collided with his mask.
[/color]
*****
“Hmph.” Johnny Raptor grabbed Felgurd by his lapels and hoisted him up. “Tell me, thing, do you work for the Viper?”
“Gghhng.” Came Felgurd’s response. Having spent weeks without talking to anyone, his voice was raw. Being hit in the face did not help.
Johnny slapped him again. But his interrogation session was interrupted by the sound of boots thundering down the hallway. He spun around to find eight men standing there. The one on the far left and the one on the far right grinned and tore off their faces to reveal hideous reptilian smiles. Their pants split to accommodate their long, thrashing tails.
“VIPER!” Shouted Johnny, as they advanced on him slowly. “Back me up, kid.”
He dropped Felgurd to focus on the two Viper agents.
Some sort of blade was taking shape in Artemis’ hand as Grendel slid into a material form.
“This will be exciting!”
“I sure hope not.”
But it turned out that Johnny did not need backup – throwing Zeus at the one on the right, he spun around to catch the hand of the one on the left, swiftly punching him in the midsection. He grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him through one of the windows. His screams could be heard as he fell to his death. The leopard simply sat on the other one.
As this was going on, five of other men from the group reached inside their jackets and pulled out slim daggers, shiny with some sort of liquid coating. Most likely poison. They branched out in a circle, surrounding Johnny, the skin on their faces peeling off to expose crocodilian heads. Long claws split the skin on the tips of their fingers.
“Assassins! I should have known they’d come with reinforcements.”
[color=#99z8rz]Felgurd began to come to his senses, wakening to a frantic fight scene. The boy with the sword and the man in the hat were in the center of a circle of reptilian warriors. They were lashing out at anything that came close, but not making any headway. Say… didn’t that man look familiar? And the boy, too… yes, that’s right. The mysterious man in the suit, Don… something or other. That wasn’t important. Didn’t he mention something about… moving on once someone had died? Yes, change. It was hard to imagine that anyplace could be worse than that one, but it would be different. And different was bad. Different meant new people, new rules, new things to get accustomed too. No, he could not allow them to die, for then they would move on, whatever that meant.
He stood up and gripped the nearest assassin in an iron clutch, tossing him out the already broken window.It seemed that the other Viper agents were distracted by the loss of their fellow, because Johnny was able to clobber one over the head into unconsciousness.[/color]
He then spun around and kicked another in the side of the head, sending it sprawling to the floor. The boy also took advantage of the gap, slashing one across the face. This seemed to have little effect, until Johnny Raptor came up behind him and wrapped his arms around his neck in a chokehold. Felgurd seized the remaining one by the arm and bent his arm in a rather odd direction, creating a sickening crack. Johnny let go of the remaining one, who lay on the floor, gasping for air.
The remaining man had stood by, watching the fight, but now he turned to Johnny. His smile grew and grew until it became maniacal. Then it grew more, and his skin could be heard tearing as his face was split in two. Thousands upon thousands of small snakes spilt from where his neck used to be. A larger snake wormed its way up through the multitude.
“Johnny Raptor.” It hissed. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
“Crotalis. I’ve been waiting for you too.”
“Shall we dance?”
At this, the snake shed its human clothes, and the full monstrosity was revealed. Millions of snakes squirmed away from Crotalis, their exodus slowly exposing its body. It was about three feet thick and immensely long, covered in sharp scales and with a cruel glint in its eyes. It bared its fangs and hissed, lunging at Johnny, who caught it by the neck.
“Whoa there. Not too fast.” He gave it a powerful uppercut, sending it flying against one of the windows. The glass shattered and sliced gouges into Crotalis’ hide, snakes squirming out of the wound instead of blood. Crotalis wrapped himself around the window support.
“You won’t find me so easily disposed of, Raptor.”
This time, it was more cautious, dancing at the edges of Johnny’s range. Small snakes fell out of its wounds, writhing. Some would thrash their bodies and advance towards Johnny, only to have their heads stamped in.
“You gotta help him out!” Grendel said, noticing the standoff their fight had gotten too. “Look. If he dies, I’ll never have a chance to observe him, to research him. Don’t you see? This could be my big break!”
“Fight that thing? You must be crazy.”
“Distract it or something then. Just do something!”
“Um. Alright.” Artemis danced up to the snake, doing some sort of jig while holding his satanic sword in a threatening position and making silly noises. Crotalis seemed unfazed, still weaving his body in and out of Johnny’s reach, until Artemis began to take swipes at it. Then it reared up and flared its hood, a terrifying jumble of red and yellow, abstract shapes forming themselves into something resembling a distorted human face. Artemis stumbled back, scrambling to get away from it.
“Stop it, boy. I will tear you into so many pieces that your remains will look like dust and I will inject so much venom into you that your parents will feel it.”
This distraction did give Johnny an edge, however, and he tackled Crotalis from the side. He kept a firm grip on the snake’s throat as he carried it to the windows and proceeded to tie it in knots around the support of the broken window.
“Snakes shouldn’t fight raptors. I’m your natural predator.”
He walked over to Felgurd and held out his hand.
“Johnny Raptor, Secret Service.”
“Fff..Felgurddh.” He didn't take Johnny’s hand.