The Great Belligerency [Round 4: Static]

Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.

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A line of villagers trailed out of the main hut's entrance. Each carried a token or an offering with them, from handmade clay bowls to grass-weave blankets to the crude clay statue of himself that Phil was pushing away.

"No, go away. I don't want it," he muttered, knowing the woman wouldn't understand him anyway. She drew back, hesitated, then brought the statue forward again hopefully. Phil swatted it out of her hands with a snarl, knocking it to the floor, where it cracked into several pieces. The woman shrunk back, tears in her eyes, and dragged herself out of the room, the rest of the line pointedly ignoring her. Phil chuckled sardonically. I think I just ostracized her.

The line advanced and another villager stepped forward, but Phil stood up and stretched, ignoring the grass seeds the man offered him. "That's it, I'm officially bored of this," he said, striding out of the hut, the members of the line shifting to let him through with a quiet murmur. An older man in the back who was slower on the uptake than the rest of the line received a vicious shove from Phil on his way out, and found himself sprawling on the floor, the clay bowl of water he had been holding having shattered and spilled on the floor. His feet kicked up a decent amount of dust as he prowled around the village, doing his best to ignore the villagers peering at him from behind the huts. He found himself at the edge of the small settlement in just a few minutes, staring at the empty horizon.

Wait. Phil narrowed his eyes. "Suit, zoom to five hundred percent." The miniscule specks Phil saw on the horizon were suddenly magnified several times over, and were revealed to be another village, with equally miniscule figures muddling about in between huts of a similar structure to the ones in the village Phil was currently in, but made of some sort of different material. "Suit, abort zoom." The village returned to being a speck on the horizon, and Phil turned around, the corners of his mouth twisting into a demented grin.

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Half an hour later, a woman in the neighboring village was making her way to the watering hole to fill up a pitcher when she spotted a group of people on the horizon. She cocked her head curiously and moved closer to investigate. Without warning, the lead figure, a good head taller than the others, pitched an object at her. The stone flew true and collided with her skull with a sickening crack, splitting her head and killing her instantly. The lead figure let out an excited howl, which was mimicked by the crowd; both then charged forward into the village. It was a massacre; the village was not prepared to repel an attack they had never been expecting, and the crazed mob of zealots fighting for and with their god, inexperienced though they were, made short work of them.

But Phil was nowhere near done. With a whoop, he kicked in the side of one of the huts. His followers immediately followed suit, throwing their remaining stones at the structures, then resorting to simply tearing them apart with their bare hands. It wasn't long before the entire village had been destroyed, its inhabitants unconscious and bleeding on the ground, many already dead. Phil let out a cry of victory and fired off a series of shots from his rifle; his followers jumped at the gunfire, looking up fearfully at the strange object in Phil's hand, then eagerly repeated his howl. They had no idea what was happening, and many were frightened, but anything that kept them in favor of their god was worth the cost.