Re: Vendetta [S!2 Round 1 ~ Presidentialgon]
12-23-2012, 04:21 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by XX.
A black folder landed on the desk.
“It’s a serious threat, Mr. President.”
The letters V-I-P-E-R were embossed into it just enough to glitter under the light of the single desk lamp. Something caustic had recently been spilled on it; cartoonishly green smoke wafted from a ragged hole in its upper right corner, exposing a few leafs of charred paper. He already knew what they said.
“But…”
Weary hands dragged the folder closer and lovelessly flipped it open. He could feel a migraine coming on like a targeted missile between his eyes as he scanned the first few pages. Childlike doodles of oversized guns and men with bulging muscles nested side by side with tactical analyses of sleek-looking machines like helicopters on steroids, dwarfing scale drawings of tiny men fleeing in panic. A huge red V marked the top of every page like a letterhead, overseeing neatly scripted notes detailing casualty rates and personnel losses in addition to “how completely awesome it was”. The latter included a graph.
“In the right hands, it could be an opportunity.”
He didn’t look up from the folder, mindlessly flipping back and forth between two identical images of a man being eaten by a snake.
“This feels very familiar,” he said.
“Granted, there are some risks, some… well, uncertainties, certain factors out of our control. But we feel that our studies so far have been sufficient to warrant these measures and that, given the situation, it may currently be our best and only hope. Our tests in the field have proven overwhelmingly successful.”
“I don’t like it.” The next four pages were all scribbled drawings of a man in black armor with a red V on his helmeted face. He was frowning very emphatically.
“Sir, levels one through five are already irretrievably lost to us. If we do not act quickly…”
He looked up at the young man standing at the other end of his desk, smiling apologetically with one hand on the silver wire leading into his ear. He made a point of not looking at the identical gunmen standing to either side of him, their weapons trained on the President’s heart.
“Please,” 5106 said, “We’re just trying to help.”
______________________
Shit.
The sword came down like a guillotine an inch from Artemis’ face.
“Uh, Rayeln, was it?” the boy stammered, swallowing. The hand not holding the medkit searched the air behind him desperately. “Rayeln the, uh, the… the Something, Something Bad? Is that you? Rayeln-”
“Rayeln the SCOURGE!” Rayeln roared. His bulk occupied the hallway like a furious bulwark of flesh and beard, the smell of dried blood and rubbing alcohol thick on his breath. His laser sword hissed forebodingly against the conditioned air. “Scourge of the aristocracy! Scourge of the monarchy! And you, little noblesse whelp, YOU are an ENEMY of the PEOPLE!”
The big man took a lumbering step forward, holding his weapon before him with both hands. He grinned like a tiger at a deer.
Son of a bitch. Why does everyone in this disaster have to be such a blowhard?
With a harsh shhtanng the sword came slicing down again; Artemis dodged, almost without thinking, twisting away from the angry glare of the blade with a long-practiced efficiency. Belatedly he felt the medkit slip from his fingers and he scrabbled for it, his grip failing as the sword flashed downward and cleaved the kit neatly in two.
The contents instantly exploded outward, bandages and creams of various descriptions spattering across the walls in puffs of burning plastic and chemicals. “VICTORYYYY,” Rayeln screamed, stomping an enormous boot down on an already flaming pile of gauze. “Take your punishment, traitorous objects! Feel the wrath of the peoples’ justice! No longer will you aid the enemies of freedom! No longer will you perform your mysterious tasks in the dark of your tiny box! RAYELN THE SCOURGE has brought you to the harsh light of TRUTH!”
Rayeln’s boot came down again and again, the astrocossack swearing mightily in a language Artemis suspected didn’t technically exist. His booming voice shook the walls as the boy took a step backward, then another. And another.
“Uh, Grendel…?”
“Don’t ask me, kid. Guess we’re not that interesting after all.”
A bear-like snarl exploded forth from the giant’s throat. “What is… ? It is MEDICINE??” He squinted at the smoking remains of the kit’s lid. Its red cross was little more than a molten blob. He gave it a few more hacks with his sword, smearing the plastic across the carpet. “Hah! Foolish aristocrats! Have your puny bodies failed you so poorly that you require childrens’ band-aids?”
“We needed those,” was all Artemis could think to say, shortly before his mouth contorted into a grimace of anger and Grendel shouted, “HEY, ASSHOLE!”
Rayeln’s head whipped in their direction, eyes narrowed to slits. He seemed vaguely surprised to see that the boy was still standing there. “Wait your turn, wretch,” he growled, grinding a heel into the sad remains of a tin of burn cream. “Your death will come shortly. Patience is a virtue only the pure can afford!”
“Fuck’s sake,” Grendel grumbled. The knife flashed; in its place there was suddenly a black and twisted sword, its razor point smoking faintly. An insistent tug brought up Artemis’ arm and Rayeln eyed the boy with sudden suspicion, spitting angrily onto the floor. “Do you know how long we searched for those, you bastard? Who the hell destroys a box of medical supplies?”
“Sabotage! Ha!” Rayeln bellowed proudly, giving his sword a few more experimental sweeps through the charred mess. His chest swelled with pride and he swung his blade at Artemis, missing the boy’s head by several meters. “Comrade Exida asks many tasks of me, and this could very well be one of them! I serve only the people!”
“That doesn’t- Exida? The deer?”
“THE MOST MAJESTIC OF CREATURES!”
“Sure, yeah.” The sword rattled angrily in Artemis’ hand. The boy’s eyes flicked around the hallway, searching for an exit, but Rayeln stood squarely in the way of escape and Artemis doubted he could dodge the man without losing any of his favorite limbs. Play it safe, he pleaded silently to Grendel, but the demon ignored him. “And uh, where’s he now? Exida? Still got a head as big as fucking Jupiter?”
“Speak ill of him all you please,” Rayeln snorted, ramming his blade home in the carpet and posing heroically with one massive fight clenched at the heavens. “Comrade Exida has a plan to crush all you puny aristocratic ants like the insects you are beneath his MIGHTY PROLETARIAT HOOVES!”
“Does this plan consist entirely of yelling?” Grendel said dryly.
“Yes,” Rayeln admitted, “For the first part. But luckily the second is more exciting.”
Later Artemis would remember that it was at this point that the barbarian ripped his sword from the carpet and pointed it at his head, and that some time between then and the blackness that followed that the big man moved much, much faster than someone of that size and bulk should have been capable straight for him in a screaming red blur. Grendel was batted aside like a stick in the hands of a child, hellfire burning against the laser in a shower of blinding sparks; then there was an explosion of pain on the side of Artemis’ head, and a thick and terrible blackness, and a demon swearing prolifically as the floor came up to meet him.
_________________
“Slept well, did we?”
[color=#99z8rz]Darkness. [/color]
“Come, now, we don’t have all day, wake up. There are bigger issues than your silly head trauma at hand.”
[color=#99z8rz]A soft and melting darkness. [/color]
“Do you even have a head underneath that thing? Eurgh.” The voice faded, mumbled “shock” and “time for this”. It returned dripping with disgust, “…Do everything around here. What are you waiting for? Do it, you idiot!”
[color=#99z8rz]Electrocution hit him like a bolt of freezing lightning and suddenly he was screaming, his countless fingernails punching through his suit in a thousand frantic seizures. He smelled burning hair and burning skin and heard the seams popping on clothes as his hands arched and spasmed, every tendon in them a wire of agony flashing through his body- something held him down, prevented him from fleeing, from fighting, and there was burning, burning, burning and fire, and light, and his thoughts were an electric Braille blinding him with lightning pulses of pain-[/color]
“He doesn’t have a heart, you complete waste of oxygen, he’s made out of hands. Who the hell gave you your degree? No, don’t cry, you incompetent ass. Get off the floor and get the sedatives ready. Christ.”
[color=#99z8rz]Just when he thought he could take no more and the darkness was coming up to swallow him again the agony ceased and Felgurd’s hands collapsed. He felt his body begin to dissipate, slipping weakly against his bonds. [/color]
“I won’t lie to you. I don’t remember your name and it certainly doesn’t matter at this point.”
[color=#99z8rz]The world was gently returning to him. Strange, beautiful lights were glittering distantly through a quiet fog and he found himself thinking of snow, decades ago in a coastal town. Lights, and a white sun staring down at him from somewhere in the pale sky. It was cold out, he thought. Cold as winter. No, no, that was wrong, he was cold, he was freezing. He was on something hard and metal, and metal was touching his hands and crushing them. He couldn’t move. His eye whirled sluggishly, aching with an agony he hadn’t felt in years. Broken bones ground against one another as he feebly tried to turn, to see who was speaking at his side (though he knew, and he knew), but a cage of steel held his head in place. [/color]
“No matter. You’re awake now, aren’t you? They tell me you fell off a damn building.”
[color=#99z8rz]The branches of a white tree (and how the ornaments shone…) passed into his vision, smooth and weather-worn, but they weren’t trees at all. They were antlers, and they went down and down and down into a pair of beautiful, beautiful black eyes. [/color]
“What kind of things can make a monster cry?” Exida whispered to him. His breath tasted of cancer. “It must have hurt. It must have broken your empty heart.”
[color=#99z8rz]Felgurd tried to respond, but all that came out was a wheeze.
The deer turned away, hooves clacking on the unseen floor. The animal was a cloud of snow with a golden collar around his neck, and something else- a red smear on his fur. Blood? Did deer bleed, he found himself wondering. Did deer bleed? Did he bleed? Did Tolgurd? He couldn’t remember.
He just wanted to lay there and weep. [/color]
“He’ll be ready in a few minutes. Not too long. I want them to see how pathetic he truly is.”
[color=#99z8rz]Other voices were breaking through his mental winter fog now, sounding meek and worried. The deer was talking over them as if they didn’t exist, using words like “deadline” and “fatality” and “viper” (Johnny?), and other things Felgurd didn’t understand. Tolgurd’s memory was an iron weight in his chest. It was all so light and so heavy, such a tremendous howling pressure in his head. His mask tilted forward, its single eye spinning; was this what his brother had felt, when he died…? Would he meet him again? Felgurd wished he knew. He wished his hands would stop twitching, wished his suit wasn’t torn, and he wished with all the heaviness in his nonexistent heart that he had been the one to die instead. [/color]
In the corner of the room, Exida reviewed his script.
“ ‘Prepare for your annihilation’? ‘ Resistance is hopeless’? Does anyone actually know what this ‘Viper’ horseshit is? This is a disgrace,” he grumbled. “Bush-leaguers. Bush-leaguers with a megaphone, God save us all. I drowned a man in gasoline at sixteen.”
“No one doubts your credentials.”
“Last week I gored a doorman for staring. Not doing anything in particular, just looking a little longer than I liked. A little extra slackness of the jaw. Makes a man feel self-conscious, being looked at like that. Might’ve had his wife done as well, don’t remember. I’d like to think of myself a professional in this business. I quite literally wrote a book on it and had everyone who read it blinded. This is undignified.”
“Obviously.”
The deer turned, squinted. Cigarette smoke wafted through his muzzle. “You’re a funny one. I hope that when this is all finished I’ll get to kill you.”
“Unlikely at this point.”
“Mm.” Medical personnel scurried around the lab, some audibly sniffling. One woman was crouched against a wall, holding her head and chanting a string of numbers in Javanese, but she was an anomaly. The room was a hive of productivity surrounding the masked hands-monster, pinned to a metal slab in a complicated wire cage. It had been dug up from some obscure supply closet in the facilities’ basements. No one had bothered to explain why they had already possessed restraints for a giant man made out of hands.
A loud bang startled several people into hysterical screaming as a malfunctioning screen exploded. Exida gave a quiet cough; the room went silent but for the gentle moaning of the thing on the slab. Every stricken face in the room was turned toward his. An intern began to wail into a balled-up jacket.
The deer snorted, rolling his cigarette between his teeth. “Keep going.”
Work resumed as if nothing had ever interrupted it, though pieces of the lab were now marginally on fire and one or two of the medics were suffering from second degree burns. One politely excused himself from the lab, shielding the shard of plastic now extruding from his eye.
“I suppose I’m obligated to say that I appreciate your help,” Exida mused, “If you’d call it that. No man writes his own bit in the end, I suppose. ”
“I would assume not, Mr. Exis,” said 5106, needlessly checking his watch. “And as much as I have enjoyed our discussion, I believe that if we are going to act the time is now.” He gestured to someone on the other side of the room. “If you would, please.”
The deer looked down at his chest. Specifically at the gleaming crimson V now fixed to his breastbone, and the rust-colored powder it was leaving on him. The smell of cheap spray paint clung to his nostrils. He allowed himself a chuckle.
He strode to the center of the room with casual grace, his golden hooves treading over broken clipboards and the occasional squealing staff member alike. Most of the medics were now struggling with a set of cameras that had formerly been used as coffee tables but were now being hauled upright and centered squarely on the semi-conscious Felgurd, a team of experts adjusting their six-figure lenses. Makeup artists poured from hidden doors and began to flit through the crowd like hummingbirds, drying tears and applying foundation and mascara to men and women alike as needed. One buzzed around Exida as he walked. The deer resisted the temptation to bite her.
Two spotlights erupted into life with tremendous crashes as the last layer of blush was applied on a giggling anesthesiologist and the artists vanished in a cloud of dry ice. In the confusion the sound crew had already finished their setup; the subtle hiss of feedback filled the room like distant condescending applause. Felgurd groaned but the noise was quickly drowned out by an ominous chorus of cellos from the string quartet in the back of the room. They continued to trill quietly as the deer steeped forward, punctuating his hoofbeats with trembling notes and the occasional anticipatory moan.
As the chief director motioned for the cameras to begin rolling Exida found himself thinking of what the agent had told him while the broken form of the monstrosity was being strapped down. Why? he had asked the quiet man. Why do it? Why play along?
5106 had only given his most patient smile. Why, Mr. Exis, he had said, Haven’t you ever simply been curious?
___________________
Gunships boomed in the sky like thunderheads.
The Presidentialgon huddled in their shadow amidst the howls of tornado sirens and foghorns like a frightened child hiding from monsters underneath its sheets. High above the ground at the building’s apex a tattered flag snapped and fluttered listlessly in the backdrafts, its sixty-three stars and twelve hundred stripes crudely masked with the emblem of a rearing red serpent. The once white walls were smeared with smoke and viscera. A prominent façade bore the words “RAPTOR DEAD TONIGHT 7 P.M.” scrawled in twelve-foot-high crimson letters, freshly painted in blood. Both of the periods were heads nailed to the plaster. One of them was sneezing.
Johnny Raptor sniffed. He could smell the evil.
The constant TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH of the gunships’ heliblades masked all noise but he had no doubt that deep inside that noble institution of law and orderlihood, red-blooded damsels were squealing in erotic terror and burly men in distress were squaring their jaws against the insidious serpentine threat that had come down on them like a tsunami of pure malevolence. Johnny hadn’t personally been there to see the coup- he’d been too busy helpfully punching Viper squadmens’ heads into educational murals- but it was always the same. The same uniforms, the same chants, the same squalling propaganda wagons trundling into villages and cities and underground nuclear shelters everywhere. The same chaos, the same tyranny. The same mysterious man in a mysterious suit and his endless hordes of mysterious minions.
It was enough to make a fellow suspicious, but that fellow did not happen to be Johnny Raptor.
With the roar of a tidal wave hitting a glacier the belly of the nearest gunship beamed light from its fissures and yawned, displacing bristling AA missiles and swinging bullet belts as black ziplines shot down and shattered the central dome of the Presidentialgon with a titanic crash. Viper squadrons poured down them like ants- filthy villainous ants!!- swarming over the monument with vile-looking instruments and mockingly hacking away at stuccoed eagles and angels with sudden fervor. That their tools were various household implements wrapped in tinfoil and that most of the soldiers were all wearing intern-level clearance badges did not strike Johnny; all he saw was a paragon of democracy being fouled by the grubby hands of unwashed evil. He surveyed the scene with indignant fury, his chest swelling into a mighty bellow of “JOOOHHNNYYYYY-”
“-RAPTOR. JOHNNY RAPTOR. IT’S BEEN A LONG, LOOOONG TIME.”
The musclebound hero stopped midbreath, looked up, and let his remaining air out in a dumbfounded whuh.
A single, massive gunship was descending down from the noxious swirls of an oncoming thunderstorm like the grasping hand of a furious god, sending the rest of the fleet spinning away on gusts of wind as though they were nothing more than leaves on the swells of a raging river. It loomed like a second sky over the sudden plunging darkness of the Presidential lawns; next to it the fleet’s largest ship was barely a speck of insignificance. The noise it made was the sound of an atom bomb perpetually trapped in the exact moment of explosion, only less pleasant. It was huge and imperious and black and evil and in the dead center of its belly there lay a seven-stories-high red V.
“VIPEEEEERRRRRRRRR,” Johnny screamed, mostly out of habit. He shook his fist at the hovering leviathan to let it know he meant business.
Like the burning eye of God opening to reveal His wrathful gaze the V on the ship’s belly whited out, casting a colossal spotlight on the heart of the nation’s capital. Decorative ponds and fountains for miles in all directions evaporated instantly and for a moment Johnny was blinded; but the screen flickered, blinked down a few numbers on a spinning countdown wheel, and then the cataclysmic thundering of a sound system the size of the average skyscraper tore its way through the troposphere.
“PEOPLE OF NEOTRANSAMERICA,” the voice of an apocalypse came howling down, “PREPARE FOR YOUR ANNIHILATION AT THE VICTORIOUS HANDS OF THE ALL-POWERFUL AND TRIUMPHANT VIPER! YOUR PITIFUL STRUGGLES HAVE BEEN IN VAIN! WE HAVE DESTROYED YOUR TEMPLE OF SIN AND FUTILITY! WE HAVE BROUGHT YOUR SO-CALLED LEADERS TO THEIR KNEES AND REQUESTED THEM TO PERFORM OBSCENE ACTS UPON US! WE HAVE CONQUERED YOUR EMPIRE! WE HAVE CRUSHED YOUR HEROES! YOU ARE HOPELESS! YOU ARE EMPTY! RESISTANCE IS USELESS, LOWLY SCUM! BOW BEFORE THE MIGHTY POWER OF ALL THAT IS VIPER!”
“Not on my watch,” Johnny growled, and then, as if on cue, a colossal white deer appeared on the titanoship’s screen. It smiled, and then didn’t.
“THE MAN CALLED JOHNNY RAPTOR,” it said, “THIS NEXT PART IS FOR YOU.”
The view flickered; now he was looking at the back of what seemed to be a long metal table standing alone in a gleaming silver laboratory. Noxious flasks of boiling liquids and posters reading “SUBMIT” in various languages covered the walls. Strange racks of instruments that were clearly never intended for anything but to bring incredible amounts of pain to their victims hung in tantalizing distance from the ceiling, dangling above- what was it? A man? A pile of clothes? A heap of squirming rats?
The camera panned around the room ponderously, showing a brief glimpse of white-coated men huddling in the shadows with clipboards clutched in their hands like life preservers. One of them waved as the image centered directly on the table, a crystal-clear pinnacle of cinematographic glory that managed to disgust and awe with equal confidence and lack of regard for aesthetic stamina.
A ragged suit writhed sluggishly underneath a network of steel bars freckled with dark stains and suspicious smears. Its motion indicated a mass of worms or insects, yet somehow it managed to exude an air of completely piteous defeat that begged for assistance and promised countless hours of adoring favors. The only part of it fully exposed to view was a strange mask, blood and other exciting fluids trailing from the single eye sunken into its surface. As the camera zoomed in on its face it turned toward the screen with a creaking of tendons and the unmistakable grinding of fractured bones.
[color=#99z8rz] “Jjjjjohnnyyy,” Felgurd wheezed. His voice resounded off the landscape like the last sigh of a dying god. The camera crept forward until the screen was filled with nothing but his mask, blown up to the size of a small city. His eye revolved like a miserable sun. “Jjj-jjjjhhhh….”[/color]
“YOU SEE,” the booming voice of Exida interrupted, “YOU SEE HOW HELPESS YOU ARE AGAINST US?”
The screen returned to the deer, wielding a cigarette and a sneer with equal nonchalance. This time Johnny saw all the animal’s subtleties, rendered seven stories tall in insultingly high definition: the faint sheen of dirt and oil clinging to his pearly fur, the deadly sharpness of his antlers, the virulent crimson of his staring eyes. Had he been inclined to Johnny would have also noticed the thick lines of false lenses around the deer’s irises, but red eyes on a villain was as natural to him as punching a critically endangered species so he accepted it and moved on. He had to admit, for an animal that wasn’t some kind of tiger the cervine was an impressive specimen. He swaggered in a way that deer simply shouldn’t, and he was wearing the V of Viper on his chest. Johnny hated him instantly.
“Exida Exis!” Johnny shouted. It all made sense now- of course this whole tournament was a setup by Viper! It couldn’t have been anything else, not with this level of organization and diabolical masterminding. Viper was notorious for its gladiatorial-style combat rings. Probably. He’d certainly read that somewhere on the back of a b-
book- somewhere-
Johnny shook his head. Not that he-
The deer’s gigantic face glowed like an unholy moon through the smog and filth choking the sky. His red eyes searched the ground with open scorn, and impossibly they found Johnny with a flash of red lightning that illuminated the Presidentialgon in hellfire. The colossal stag smiled thinly. “AS YOU CAN SEE, MR. RAPTOR, IF I MAY BE INFORMAL-” A brief noise offscreen; the deer gave it an irritable glance- “WE’VE CAPTURED YOUR LITTLE FRIEND. IN OUR TRULY INFINITE MERCY WE ARE WILLING- ONCE WE’RE FINISHED WITH HIM, OF COURSE- TO EXCHANGE HIS WORTHLESS LIFE FOR YOUR EQUALLY POINTLESS EXISTENCE. A FAIR TRADE, DON’T YOU THINK?”
Someone outside the camera’s view did something that made Felgurd scream.
“YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO ACCEPT. OBVIOUSLY.”
From across the distant barren plains that must surely exist in a land so irrevocably tainted by evil there came a wind that sliced across the ground like a reaper’s scythe, slashing across Johnny’s legs. It stirred the foul air, thick with burning plaster and the fog of a slow and rising evil that sank into his skin, staining it with the rank deadness of a doomed world. It was bitter. It whistled through his clothes and out over the smoking ruins of the capitol in a taunting dance of swirling ash. It pushed the brim of the great man’s hat down low, casting a shadow over his face that obscured all but the faintest red spark in his clear blue eyes.
“YOU WILL MEET US IN ONE HOUR, BY OUR COUNT, AT THE FOOT OF THE SPIRE OF GRATITUDE. YOU WILL COME ALONE. YOU WILL COME UNARMED. AND TONIGHT, JOHNNY RAPTOR…”
He paid the wind no mind.
He had a deer to kill.
“…YOU, WITHOUT ANY SHADOW OF A DOUBT, WILL DIE.”
From the highest window of the Presidentialgon, a man holding the unconscious body of a possessed teenager grinned with feral satisfaction.
_______________________
Kid. Kid, wake up.
“Can’t.”
Yes you can. Up and at ‘em.
“Head exploded. Pr’sure.”
It did not, pansy. Rise and shine!
Artemis groaned. It felt like someone was suspending him off a balcony by an ankle.
A few moments later he realized that this was, in fact, the case.
“….Grendel?”
Seriously, kid. I really think you’re going to want to see this.
“Hah! Puny aristocratic dog-child, speaking to itself. It is the hemophilia from your weakened bloodlines that makes you ramble so, tiny man! When the deer-god conquers this miserable planet all this feeble blood will be purged as if by swarms of righteous leeches! Or other such heroic hematophagic creatures, suckling from the veins of the aristocracy like babies at their mothers’ evil breasts! It shall be glorious beyond words!”
You know what, on second thought try to pass out again. I’m already sick of listening.
Blearily Artemis opened his eyes, the light of the setting sun assaulting him like a rude bar patron who’d had too much to drink and desperately wanted to have a discussion about it. For the most part what he could see was an orange blur with a large dark line on the top, which logic insisted was the horizon. Logic hadn’t been much use so far, though, so Artemis ignored it.
Jeez, your head is killing me.
Rayeln’s garbage disposal baritone rumbled like far-off thunder as the boy reluctantly forced himself to take in his surroundings. He was somewhere between fifty and sixty feet off the ground, by rough estimate, dangling aimlessly above a deserted courtyard in Rayeln’s iron grip. A few corpses were piled far below him, huddled against the walls. One was staring up at him with a betrayed expression and a gun clenched in her hand.
“What… ?”
“It is the Revolution, tiny not-comrade! The Revolution long-awaited by the suffering masses! Picture the children clinging to their mothers’ bullet belts, crying out in despair for the blood of our mutual enemies; the young lovers tenderly whispering the many ways the noble scourge will water the rose gardens of the free people with their filthy capital-ridden blood! Picture them vindicated! Surely in the halls of Communist Valhalla my father weeps iron tears of joy at this, the most victorious of days!”
Artemis nodded, closing his eyes. The corpse’s gaze was a little too confrontational. “Okay. Will you let me down?”
“Pffha. In my day we hang children off towers for their benefit.”
Nevertheless the barbarian hauled the boy over with a casual shrug of his colossal shoulders. Artemis collapsed into a rumpled heap against a column and slid to the floor, his head flopping aside like a ragdoll’s. Distantly he heard Grendel snicker.
“Yes, a great day,” Rayeln repeated, a slight tremble entering his voice. Artemis looked up at him blearily: the big man was staring triumphantly at something in the distance, shielding his face with a shovel-like hand. A single inexplicably red tear trailed from his eye. “Never did the small peasant boy that I once was imagine that he would one day be able to experience the full throes of such a glorious upheaval.”
He’s not kidding, you know. We’re in for a grade-A cockfight.
“What are you talking about?”
“Tiny rich ant-child! Why do you question yourself aloud? Truly, you know nothing,” Rayeln snorted, and snatched up Artemis by the scruff of his collar to hold him up over the barbarian’s head.
The boy’s jaw dropped open almost as an afterthought.
Heh. You know, I wasn’t kidding about Personalities.
If you were to give a child a pencil and a piece of paper and tell them to draw the most incredible battle scene they could think of, with every type of weapon they could imagine and the most vicious and terrible carnage they could conceive and specified that you wanted the bodies to number in the thousands, the ground to be soaked with blood, and the sky to be a deep shade of apocalyptic crimson, and after all that fed the child an overdose of PCP there might be a very small chance that they would produce an approximation of what Artemis saw, with some license given for artistic integrity.
Even if they didn’t, it would certainly be more tasteful.
____________________________
At this moment, the Khagan and his noble steed were finding themselves in the center of a sizable conflict, which despite the unimaginable casualty rate was mostly turning out to be emotional in nature.
The last, panicked thoughts of the soldiers who died between Ariq’s gnashing teeth or under the Khagan’s raging fists tended to fall into the general template of “what is that”, or more expressed more accurately “why specifically is it happening to me”. They had accepted for the most part their new reptilian physiology (it wasn’t so bad) and they had had no trouble in receiving the deer as their glorious leader (he was very convincing). They didn’t even particularly mind that they were all about to die, for they knew in their hearts that they were bad people and that was simply what bad people did. But something about the hell-horse and its monstrous rider struck the Viper squadrons as being horribly, horribly wrong. Had they been able to express their feelings beyond the sprays of blood blossoming from their lips, they would have realized that the man mowing them down like paper cutouts simply wasn’t the right kind of hero.
A black folder landed on the desk.
“It’s a serious threat, Mr. President.”
The letters V-I-P-E-R were embossed into it just enough to glitter under the light of the single desk lamp. Something caustic had recently been spilled on it; cartoonishly green smoke wafted from a ragged hole in its upper right corner, exposing a few leafs of charred paper. He already knew what they said.
“But…”
Weary hands dragged the folder closer and lovelessly flipped it open. He could feel a migraine coming on like a targeted missile between his eyes as he scanned the first few pages. Childlike doodles of oversized guns and men with bulging muscles nested side by side with tactical analyses of sleek-looking machines like helicopters on steroids, dwarfing scale drawings of tiny men fleeing in panic. A huge red V marked the top of every page like a letterhead, overseeing neatly scripted notes detailing casualty rates and personnel losses in addition to “how completely awesome it was”. The latter included a graph.
“In the right hands, it could be an opportunity.”
He didn’t look up from the folder, mindlessly flipping back and forth between two identical images of a man being eaten by a snake.
“This feels very familiar,” he said.
“Granted, there are some risks, some… well, uncertainties, certain factors out of our control. But we feel that our studies so far have been sufficient to warrant these measures and that, given the situation, it may currently be our best and only hope. Our tests in the field have proven overwhelmingly successful.”
“I don’t like it.” The next four pages were all scribbled drawings of a man in black armor with a red V on his helmeted face. He was frowning very emphatically.
“Sir, levels one through five are already irretrievably lost to us. If we do not act quickly…”
He looked up at the young man standing at the other end of his desk, smiling apologetically with one hand on the silver wire leading into his ear. He made a point of not looking at the identical gunmen standing to either side of him, their weapons trained on the President’s heart.
“Please,” 5106 said, “We’re just trying to help.”
______________________
Shit.
The sword came down like a guillotine an inch from Artemis’ face.
“Uh, Rayeln, was it?” the boy stammered, swallowing. The hand not holding the medkit searched the air behind him desperately. “Rayeln the, uh, the… the Something, Something Bad? Is that you? Rayeln-”
“Rayeln the SCOURGE!” Rayeln roared. His bulk occupied the hallway like a furious bulwark of flesh and beard, the smell of dried blood and rubbing alcohol thick on his breath. His laser sword hissed forebodingly against the conditioned air. “Scourge of the aristocracy! Scourge of the monarchy! And you, little noblesse whelp, YOU are an ENEMY of the PEOPLE!”
The big man took a lumbering step forward, holding his weapon before him with both hands. He grinned like a tiger at a deer.
Son of a bitch. Why does everyone in this disaster have to be such a blowhard?
With a harsh shhtanng the sword came slicing down again; Artemis dodged, almost without thinking, twisting away from the angry glare of the blade with a long-practiced efficiency. Belatedly he felt the medkit slip from his fingers and he scrabbled for it, his grip failing as the sword flashed downward and cleaved the kit neatly in two.
The contents instantly exploded outward, bandages and creams of various descriptions spattering across the walls in puffs of burning plastic and chemicals. “VICTORYYYY,” Rayeln screamed, stomping an enormous boot down on an already flaming pile of gauze. “Take your punishment, traitorous objects! Feel the wrath of the peoples’ justice! No longer will you aid the enemies of freedom! No longer will you perform your mysterious tasks in the dark of your tiny box! RAYELN THE SCOURGE has brought you to the harsh light of TRUTH!”
Rayeln’s boot came down again and again, the astrocossack swearing mightily in a language Artemis suspected didn’t technically exist. His booming voice shook the walls as the boy took a step backward, then another. And another.
“Uh, Grendel…?”
“Don’t ask me, kid. Guess we’re not that interesting after all.”
A bear-like snarl exploded forth from the giant’s throat. “What is… ? It is MEDICINE??” He squinted at the smoking remains of the kit’s lid. Its red cross was little more than a molten blob. He gave it a few more hacks with his sword, smearing the plastic across the carpet. “Hah! Foolish aristocrats! Have your puny bodies failed you so poorly that you require childrens’ band-aids?”
“We needed those,” was all Artemis could think to say, shortly before his mouth contorted into a grimace of anger and Grendel shouted, “HEY, ASSHOLE!”
Rayeln’s head whipped in their direction, eyes narrowed to slits. He seemed vaguely surprised to see that the boy was still standing there. “Wait your turn, wretch,” he growled, grinding a heel into the sad remains of a tin of burn cream. “Your death will come shortly. Patience is a virtue only the pure can afford!”
“Fuck’s sake,” Grendel grumbled. The knife flashed; in its place there was suddenly a black and twisted sword, its razor point smoking faintly. An insistent tug brought up Artemis’ arm and Rayeln eyed the boy with sudden suspicion, spitting angrily onto the floor. “Do you know how long we searched for those, you bastard? Who the hell destroys a box of medical supplies?”
“Sabotage! Ha!” Rayeln bellowed proudly, giving his sword a few more experimental sweeps through the charred mess. His chest swelled with pride and he swung his blade at Artemis, missing the boy’s head by several meters. “Comrade Exida asks many tasks of me, and this could very well be one of them! I serve only the people!”
“That doesn’t- Exida? The deer?”
“THE MOST MAJESTIC OF CREATURES!”
“Sure, yeah.” The sword rattled angrily in Artemis’ hand. The boy’s eyes flicked around the hallway, searching for an exit, but Rayeln stood squarely in the way of escape and Artemis doubted he could dodge the man without losing any of his favorite limbs. Play it safe, he pleaded silently to Grendel, but the demon ignored him. “And uh, where’s he now? Exida? Still got a head as big as fucking Jupiter?”
“Speak ill of him all you please,” Rayeln snorted, ramming his blade home in the carpet and posing heroically with one massive fight clenched at the heavens. “Comrade Exida has a plan to crush all you puny aristocratic ants like the insects you are beneath his MIGHTY PROLETARIAT HOOVES!”
“Does this plan consist entirely of yelling?” Grendel said dryly.
“Yes,” Rayeln admitted, “For the first part. But luckily the second is more exciting.”
Later Artemis would remember that it was at this point that the barbarian ripped his sword from the carpet and pointed it at his head, and that some time between then and the blackness that followed that the big man moved much, much faster than someone of that size and bulk should have been capable straight for him in a screaming red blur. Grendel was batted aside like a stick in the hands of a child, hellfire burning against the laser in a shower of blinding sparks; then there was an explosion of pain on the side of Artemis’ head, and a thick and terrible blackness, and a demon swearing prolifically as the floor came up to meet him.
_________________
“Slept well, did we?”
[color=#99z8rz]Darkness. [/color]
“Come, now, we don’t have all day, wake up. There are bigger issues than your silly head trauma at hand.”
[color=#99z8rz]A soft and melting darkness. [/color]
“Do you even have a head underneath that thing? Eurgh.” The voice faded, mumbled “shock” and “time for this”. It returned dripping with disgust, “…Do everything around here. What are you waiting for? Do it, you idiot!”
[color=#99z8rz]Electrocution hit him like a bolt of freezing lightning and suddenly he was screaming, his countless fingernails punching through his suit in a thousand frantic seizures. He smelled burning hair and burning skin and heard the seams popping on clothes as his hands arched and spasmed, every tendon in them a wire of agony flashing through his body- something held him down, prevented him from fleeing, from fighting, and there was burning, burning, burning and fire, and light, and his thoughts were an electric Braille blinding him with lightning pulses of pain-[/color]
“He doesn’t have a heart, you complete waste of oxygen, he’s made out of hands. Who the hell gave you your degree? No, don’t cry, you incompetent ass. Get off the floor and get the sedatives ready. Christ.”
[color=#99z8rz]Just when he thought he could take no more and the darkness was coming up to swallow him again the agony ceased and Felgurd’s hands collapsed. He felt his body begin to dissipate, slipping weakly against his bonds. [/color]
“I won’t lie to you. I don’t remember your name and it certainly doesn’t matter at this point.”
[color=#99z8rz]The world was gently returning to him. Strange, beautiful lights were glittering distantly through a quiet fog and he found himself thinking of snow, decades ago in a coastal town. Lights, and a white sun staring down at him from somewhere in the pale sky. It was cold out, he thought. Cold as winter. No, no, that was wrong, he was cold, he was freezing. He was on something hard and metal, and metal was touching his hands and crushing them. He couldn’t move. His eye whirled sluggishly, aching with an agony he hadn’t felt in years. Broken bones ground against one another as he feebly tried to turn, to see who was speaking at his side (though he knew, and he knew), but a cage of steel held his head in place. [/color]
“No matter. You’re awake now, aren’t you? They tell me you fell off a damn building.”
[color=#99z8rz]The branches of a white tree (and how the ornaments shone…) passed into his vision, smooth and weather-worn, but they weren’t trees at all. They were antlers, and they went down and down and down into a pair of beautiful, beautiful black eyes. [/color]
“What kind of things can make a monster cry?” Exida whispered to him. His breath tasted of cancer. “It must have hurt. It must have broken your empty heart.”
[color=#99z8rz]Felgurd tried to respond, but all that came out was a wheeze.
The deer turned away, hooves clacking on the unseen floor. The animal was a cloud of snow with a golden collar around his neck, and something else- a red smear on his fur. Blood? Did deer bleed, he found himself wondering. Did deer bleed? Did he bleed? Did Tolgurd? He couldn’t remember.
He just wanted to lay there and weep. [/color]
“He’ll be ready in a few minutes. Not too long. I want them to see how pathetic he truly is.”
[color=#99z8rz]Other voices were breaking through his mental winter fog now, sounding meek and worried. The deer was talking over them as if they didn’t exist, using words like “deadline” and “fatality” and “viper” (Johnny?), and other things Felgurd didn’t understand. Tolgurd’s memory was an iron weight in his chest. It was all so light and so heavy, such a tremendous howling pressure in his head. His mask tilted forward, its single eye spinning; was this what his brother had felt, when he died…? Would he meet him again? Felgurd wished he knew. He wished his hands would stop twitching, wished his suit wasn’t torn, and he wished with all the heaviness in his nonexistent heart that he had been the one to die instead. [/color]
In the corner of the room, Exida reviewed his script.
“ ‘Prepare for your annihilation’? ‘ Resistance is hopeless’? Does anyone actually know what this ‘Viper’ horseshit is? This is a disgrace,” he grumbled. “Bush-leaguers. Bush-leaguers with a megaphone, God save us all. I drowned a man in gasoline at sixteen.”
“No one doubts your credentials.”
“Last week I gored a doorman for staring. Not doing anything in particular, just looking a little longer than I liked. A little extra slackness of the jaw. Makes a man feel self-conscious, being looked at like that. Might’ve had his wife done as well, don’t remember. I’d like to think of myself a professional in this business. I quite literally wrote a book on it and had everyone who read it blinded. This is undignified.”
“Obviously.”
The deer turned, squinted. Cigarette smoke wafted through his muzzle. “You’re a funny one. I hope that when this is all finished I’ll get to kill you.”
“Unlikely at this point.”
“Mm.” Medical personnel scurried around the lab, some audibly sniffling. One woman was crouched against a wall, holding her head and chanting a string of numbers in Javanese, but she was an anomaly. The room was a hive of productivity surrounding the masked hands-monster, pinned to a metal slab in a complicated wire cage. It had been dug up from some obscure supply closet in the facilities’ basements. No one had bothered to explain why they had already possessed restraints for a giant man made out of hands.
A loud bang startled several people into hysterical screaming as a malfunctioning screen exploded. Exida gave a quiet cough; the room went silent but for the gentle moaning of the thing on the slab. Every stricken face in the room was turned toward his. An intern began to wail into a balled-up jacket.
The deer snorted, rolling his cigarette between his teeth. “Keep going.”
Work resumed as if nothing had ever interrupted it, though pieces of the lab were now marginally on fire and one or two of the medics were suffering from second degree burns. One politely excused himself from the lab, shielding the shard of plastic now extruding from his eye.
“I suppose I’m obligated to say that I appreciate your help,” Exida mused, “If you’d call it that. No man writes his own bit in the end, I suppose. ”
“I would assume not, Mr. Exis,” said 5106, needlessly checking his watch. “And as much as I have enjoyed our discussion, I believe that if we are going to act the time is now.” He gestured to someone on the other side of the room. “If you would, please.”
The deer looked down at his chest. Specifically at the gleaming crimson V now fixed to his breastbone, and the rust-colored powder it was leaving on him. The smell of cheap spray paint clung to his nostrils. He allowed himself a chuckle.
He strode to the center of the room with casual grace, his golden hooves treading over broken clipboards and the occasional squealing staff member alike. Most of the medics were now struggling with a set of cameras that had formerly been used as coffee tables but were now being hauled upright and centered squarely on the semi-conscious Felgurd, a team of experts adjusting their six-figure lenses. Makeup artists poured from hidden doors and began to flit through the crowd like hummingbirds, drying tears and applying foundation and mascara to men and women alike as needed. One buzzed around Exida as he walked. The deer resisted the temptation to bite her.
Two spotlights erupted into life with tremendous crashes as the last layer of blush was applied on a giggling anesthesiologist and the artists vanished in a cloud of dry ice. In the confusion the sound crew had already finished their setup; the subtle hiss of feedback filled the room like distant condescending applause. Felgurd groaned but the noise was quickly drowned out by an ominous chorus of cellos from the string quartet in the back of the room. They continued to trill quietly as the deer steeped forward, punctuating his hoofbeats with trembling notes and the occasional anticipatory moan.
As the chief director motioned for the cameras to begin rolling Exida found himself thinking of what the agent had told him while the broken form of the monstrosity was being strapped down. Why? he had asked the quiet man. Why do it? Why play along?
5106 had only given his most patient smile. Why, Mr. Exis, he had said, Haven’t you ever simply been curious?
___________________
Gunships boomed in the sky like thunderheads.
The Presidentialgon huddled in their shadow amidst the howls of tornado sirens and foghorns like a frightened child hiding from monsters underneath its sheets. High above the ground at the building’s apex a tattered flag snapped and fluttered listlessly in the backdrafts, its sixty-three stars and twelve hundred stripes crudely masked with the emblem of a rearing red serpent. The once white walls were smeared with smoke and viscera. A prominent façade bore the words “RAPTOR DEAD TONIGHT 7 P.M.” scrawled in twelve-foot-high crimson letters, freshly painted in blood. Both of the periods were heads nailed to the plaster. One of them was sneezing.
Johnny Raptor sniffed. He could smell the evil.
The constant TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH of the gunships’ heliblades masked all noise but he had no doubt that deep inside that noble institution of law and orderlihood, red-blooded damsels were squealing in erotic terror and burly men in distress were squaring their jaws against the insidious serpentine threat that had come down on them like a tsunami of pure malevolence. Johnny hadn’t personally been there to see the coup- he’d been too busy helpfully punching Viper squadmens’ heads into educational murals- but it was always the same. The same uniforms, the same chants, the same squalling propaganda wagons trundling into villages and cities and underground nuclear shelters everywhere. The same chaos, the same tyranny. The same mysterious man in a mysterious suit and his endless hordes of mysterious minions.
It was enough to make a fellow suspicious, but that fellow did not happen to be Johnny Raptor.
With the roar of a tidal wave hitting a glacier the belly of the nearest gunship beamed light from its fissures and yawned, displacing bristling AA missiles and swinging bullet belts as black ziplines shot down and shattered the central dome of the Presidentialgon with a titanic crash. Viper squadrons poured down them like ants- filthy villainous ants!!- swarming over the monument with vile-looking instruments and mockingly hacking away at stuccoed eagles and angels with sudden fervor. That their tools were various household implements wrapped in tinfoil and that most of the soldiers were all wearing intern-level clearance badges did not strike Johnny; all he saw was a paragon of democracy being fouled by the grubby hands of unwashed evil. He surveyed the scene with indignant fury, his chest swelling into a mighty bellow of “JOOOHHNNYYYYY-”
“-RAPTOR. JOHNNY RAPTOR. IT’S BEEN A LONG, LOOOONG TIME.”
The musclebound hero stopped midbreath, looked up, and let his remaining air out in a dumbfounded whuh.
A single, massive gunship was descending down from the noxious swirls of an oncoming thunderstorm like the grasping hand of a furious god, sending the rest of the fleet spinning away on gusts of wind as though they were nothing more than leaves on the swells of a raging river. It loomed like a second sky over the sudden plunging darkness of the Presidential lawns; next to it the fleet’s largest ship was barely a speck of insignificance. The noise it made was the sound of an atom bomb perpetually trapped in the exact moment of explosion, only less pleasant. It was huge and imperious and black and evil and in the dead center of its belly there lay a seven-stories-high red V.
“VIPEEEEERRRRRRRRR,” Johnny screamed, mostly out of habit. He shook his fist at the hovering leviathan to let it know he meant business.
Like the burning eye of God opening to reveal His wrathful gaze the V on the ship’s belly whited out, casting a colossal spotlight on the heart of the nation’s capital. Decorative ponds and fountains for miles in all directions evaporated instantly and for a moment Johnny was blinded; but the screen flickered, blinked down a few numbers on a spinning countdown wheel, and then the cataclysmic thundering of a sound system the size of the average skyscraper tore its way through the troposphere.
“PEOPLE OF NEOTRANSAMERICA,” the voice of an apocalypse came howling down, “PREPARE FOR YOUR ANNIHILATION AT THE VICTORIOUS HANDS OF THE ALL-POWERFUL AND TRIUMPHANT VIPER! YOUR PITIFUL STRUGGLES HAVE BEEN IN VAIN! WE HAVE DESTROYED YOUR TEMPLE OF SIN AND FUTILITY! WE HAVE BROUGHT YOUR SO-CALLED LEADERS TO THEIR KNEES AND REQUESTED THEM TO PERFORM OBSCENE ACTS UPON US! WE HAVE CONQUERED YOUR EMPIRE! WE HAVE CRUSHED YOUR HEROES! YOU ARE HOPELESS! YOU ARE EMPTY! RESISTANCE IS USELESS, LOWLY SCUM! BOW BEFORE THE MIGHTY POWER OF ALL THAT IS VIPER!”
“Not on my watch,” Johnny growled, and then, as if on cue, a colossal white deer appeared on the titanoship’s screen. It smiled, and then didn’t.
“THE MAN CALLED JOHNNY RAPTOR,” it said, “THIS NEXT PART IS FOR YOU.”
The view flickered; now he was looking at the back of what seemed to be a long metal table standing alone in a gleaming silver laboratory. Noxious flasks of boiling liquids and posters reading “SUBMIT” in various languages covered the walls. Strange racks of instruments that were clearly never intended for anything but to bring incredible amounts of pain to their victims hung in tantalizing distance from the ceiling, dangling above- what was it? A man? A pile of clothes? A heap of squirming rats?
The camera panned around the room ponderously, showing a brief glimpse of white-coated men huddling in the shadows with clipboards clutched in their hands like life preservers. One of them waved as the image centered directly on the table, a crystal-clear pinnacle of cinematographic glory that managed to disgust and awe with equal confidence and lack of regard for aesthetic stamina.
A ragged suit writhed sluggishly underneath a network of steel bars freckled with dark stains and suspicious smears. Its motion indicated a mass of worms or insects, yet somehow it managed to exude an air of completely piteous defeat that begged for assistance and promised countless hours of adoring favors. The only part of it fully exposed to view was a strange mask, blood and other exciting fluids trailing from the single eye sunken into its surface. As the camera zoomed in on its face it turned toward the screen with a creaking of tendons and the unmistakable grinding of fractured bones.
[color=#99z8rz] “Jjjjjohnnyyy,” Felgurd wheezed. His voice resounded off the landscape like the last sigh of a dying god. The camera crept forward until the screen was filled with nothing but his mask, blown up to the size of a small city. His eye revolved like a miserable sun. “Jjj-jjjjhhhh….”[/color]
“YOU SEE,” the booming voice of Exida interrupted, “YOU SEE HOW HELPESS YOU ARE AGAINST US?”
The screen returned to the deer, wielding a cigarette and a sneer with equal nonchalance. This time Johnny saw all the animal’s subtleties, rendered seven stories tall in insultingly high definition: the faint sheen of dirt and oil clinging to his pearly fur, the deadly sharpness of his antlers, the virulent crimson of his staring eyes. Had he been inclined to Johnny would have also noticed the thick lines of false lenses around the deer’s irises, but red eyes on a villain was as natural to him as punching a critically endangered species so he accepted it and moved on. He had to admit, for an animal that wasn’t some kind of tiger the cervine was an impressive specimen. He swaggered in a way that deer simply shouldn’t, and he was wearing the V of Viper on his chest. Johnny hated him instantly.
“Exida Exis!” Johnny shouted. It all made sense now- of course this whole tournament was a setup by Viper! It couldn’t have been anything else, not with this level of organization and diabolical masterminding. Viper was notorious for its gladiatorial-style combat rings. Probably. He’d certainly read that somewhere on the back of a b-
book- somewhere-
Johnny shook his head. Not that he-
The deer’s gigantic face glowed like an unholy moon through the smog and filth choking the sky. His red eyes searched the ground with open scorn, and impossibly they found Johnny with a flash of red lightning that illuminated the Presidentialgon in hellfire. The colossal stag smiled thinly. “AS YOU CAN SEE, MR. RAPTOR, IF I MAY BE INFORMAL-” A brief noise offscreen; the deer gave it an irritable glance- “WE’VE CAPTURED YOUR LITTLE FRIEND. IN OUR TRULY INFINITE MERCY WE ARE WILLING- ONCE WE’RE FINISHED WITH HIM, OF COURSE- TO EXCHANGE HIS WORTHLESS LIFE FOR YOUR EQUALLY POINTLESS EXISTENCE. A FAIR TRADE, DON’T YOU THINK?”
Someone outside the camera’s view did something that made Felgurd scream.
“YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO ACCEPT. OBVIOUSLY.”
From across the distant barren plains that must surely exist in a land so irrevocably tainted by evil there came a wind that sliced across the ground like a reaper’s scythe, slashing across Johnny’s legs. It stirred the foul air, thick with burning plaster and the fog of a slow and rising evil that sank into his skin, staining it with the rank deadness of a doomed world. It was bitter. It whistled through his clothes and out over the smoking ruins of the capitol in a taunting dance of swirling ash. It pushed the brim of the great man’s hat down low, casting a shadow over his face that obscured all but the faintest red spark in his clear blue eyes.
“YOU WILL MEET US IN ONE HOUR, BY OUR COUNT, AT THE FOOT OF THE SPIRE OF GRATITUDE. YOU WILL COME ALONE. YOU WILL COME UNARMED. AND TONIGHT, JOHNNY RAPTOR…”
He paid the wind no mind.
He had a deer to kill.
“…YOU, WITHOUT ANY SHADOW OF A DOUBT, WILL DIE.”
From the highest window of the Presidentialgon, a man holding the unconscious body of a possessed teenager grinned with feral satisfaction.
_______________________
Kid. Kid, wake up.
“Can’t.”
Yes you can. Up and at ‘em.
“Head exploded. Pr’sure.”
It did not, pansy. Rise and shine!
Artemis groaned. It felt like someone was suspending him off a balcony by an ankle.
A few moments later he realized that this was, in fact, the case.
“….Grendel?”
Seriously, kid. I really think you’re going to want to see this.
“Hah! Puny aristocratic dog-child, speaking to itself. It is the hemophilia from your weakened bloodlines that makes you ramble so, tiny man! When the deer-god conquers this miserable planet all this feeble blood will be purged as if by swarms of righteous leeches! Or other such heroic hematophagic creatures, suckling from the veins of the aristocracy like babies at their mothers’ evil breasts! It shall be glorious beyond words!”
You know what, on second thought try to pass out again. I’m already sick of listening.
Blearily Artemis opened his eyes, the light of the setting sun assaulting him like a rude bar patron who’d had too much to drink and desperately wanted to have a discussion about it. For the most part what he could see was an orange blur with a large dark line on the top, which logic insisted was the horizon. Logic hadn’t been much use so far, though, so Artemis ignored it.
Jeez, your head is killing me.
Rayeln’s garbage disposal baritone rumbled like far-off thunder as the boy reluctantly forced himself to take in his surroundings. He was somewhere between fifty and sixty feet off the ground, by rough estimate, dangling aimlessly above a deserted courtyard in Rayeln’s iron grip. A few corpses were piled far below him, huddled against the walls. One was staring up at him with a betrayed expression and a gun clenched in her hand.
“What… ?”
“It is the Revolution, tiny not-comrade! The Revolution long-awaited by the suffering masses! Picture the children clinging to their mothers’ bullet belts, crying out in despair for the blood of our mutual enemies; the young lovers tenderly whispering the many ways the noble scourge will water the rose gardens of the free people with their filthy capital-ridden blood! Picture them vindicated! Surely in the halls of Communist Valhalla my father weeps iron tears of joy at this, the most victorious of days!”
Artemis nodded, closing his eyes. The corpse’s gaze was a little too confrontational. “Okay. Will you let me down?”
“Pffha. In my day we hang children off towers for their benefit.”
Nevertheless the barbarian hauled the boy over with a casual shrug of his colossal shoulders. Artemis collapsed into a rumpled heap against a column and slid to the floor, his head flopping aside like a ragdoll’s. Distantly he heard Grendel snicker.
“Yes, a great day,” Rayeln repeated, a slight tremble entering his voice. Artemis looked up at him blearily: the big man was staring triumphantly at something in the distance, shielding his face with a shovel-like hand. A single inexplicably red tear trailed from his eye. “Never did the small peasant boy that I once was imagine that he would one day be able to experience the full throes of such a glorious upheaval.”
He’s not kidding, you know. We’re in for a grade-A cockfight.
“What are you talking about?”
“Tiny rich ant-child! Why do you question yourself aloud? Truly, you know nothing,” Rayeln snorted, and snatched up Artemis by the scruff of his collar to hold him up over the barbarian’s head.
The boy’s jaw dropped open almost as an afterthought.
Heh. You know, I wasn’t kidding about Personalities.
If you were to give a child a pencil and a piece of paper and tell them to draw the most incredible battle scene they could think of, with every type of weapon they could imagine and the most vicious and terrible carnage they could conceive and specified that you wanted the bodies to number in the thousands, the ground to be soaked with blood, and the sky to be a deep shade of apocalyptic crimson, and after all that fed the child an overdose of PCP there might be a very small chance that they would produce an approximation of what Artemis saw, with some license given for artistic integrity.
Even if they didn’t, it would certainly be more tasteful.
____________________________
At this moment, the Khagan and his noble steed were finding themselves in the center of a sizable conflict, which despite the unimaginable casualty rate was mostly turning out to be emotional in nature.
The last, panicked thoughts of the soldiers who died between Ariq’s gnashing teeth or under the Khagan’s raging fists tended to fall into the general template of “what is that”, or more expressed more accurately “why specifically is it happening to me”. They had accepted for the most part their new reptilian physiology (it wasn’t so bad) and they had had no trouble in receiving the deer as their glorious leader (he was very convincing). They didn’t even particularly mind that they were all about to die, for they knew in their hearts that they were bad people and that was simply what bad people did. But something about the hell-horse and its monstrous rider struck the Viper squadrons as being horribly, horribly wrong. Had they been able to express their feelings beyond the sprays of blood blossoming from their lips, they would have realized that the man mowing them down like paper cutouts simply wasn’t the right kind of hero.