Mini-Grand 5106 [SUDDEN DEATH]

A hero in the moment of her darkest despair, when all she cares for is gone and there is nothing left worth living for, can find somewhere within herself an almost supernatural strength. Ataya cracked and crumbled under the relentless assault, her actually supernatural resilience no match for Zafira’s Righteous Fury. That’s the way it should have gone. That’s the way it would have gone in the movie. Zafira would have roundly defeated the evil river spirit and afterwards when her rage had settled she would have found by some miracle that Sara had not been as dead as she had appeared to be (or in the circumstances that Sara was Very Definitely Dead, there would be some contrived circumstance, say for example, placing her body into the Thunder Chamber, and what do you know she would be revived back to life even better than new), and free of Ataya’s control, they would kiss and then ride off into the sunset together. Unfortunately this was not an episode of the Sparkklechix hit TV series, and such a whimsically happy ending was far from guaranteed.

Zafira was not a skilled fighter; she was punching and kicking and scratching and though she hadn’t quite got to biting yet it was almost definitely a tactic she would employ. Ataya would have been able to fend her off easily if she wasn’t on the verge of collapse. Zaffy landed one blow after another but it was pointless, for all the impact she was having she might as well have been punching a particularly tough slab of meat. Ataya didn’t even flinch. After a minute Zafira’s attacks began to slow as the initial burst of adrenaline depleted, not that she actually noticed. She was lost in rage, continuing to attack even as her limbs ached, her eyes streamed and her voice grew hoarse. Though she could barely continue to stop was unthinkable.

“Enough of this.” Ataya rasped, and with a deftness that didn’t seem to gel with her sluggishness, she grabbed Zafira by the wrist. Zaffy, who had been in mid-punch, stumbled and quickly righted herself and attempted to free herself from Ataya’s vice-like grip. It was just as pointless as attacking her had been, though she scratched and bit and prised at Ataya’s fingers for all she was worth she didn’t budge them an inch. She thrashed and lashed out against Ataya, but that was just as ineffectual. “I’m dying soon.” Ataya said. “Without my river it is inevitable, but you know, I think I don’t mind if I take you chix with me.” And she squeezed Zafira’s wrist tightly. Her screams of rage turned quickly to screams of pain. She could feel the bone cracking and Ataya kept on squeezing. Her legs buckled beneath her and she retched impotently.

Suddenly she was tossed aside, flung away as though she were no more substantial than a child’s doll. From where she landed she could see Ataya surrounded by a number of gigantic spiders. The river spirit bore a particularly disgruntled expression, as the spiders darted around her, wrapping her in webbing with every pass they made. She tore fistfuls of it away, but there was too many of them and she was too tired. Zafira watched through a haze of pain as the spiders eventually webbed her up and carried her away. For a moment she was enraged that she was being denied her revenge, but the waves of pain from her shattered wrist convinced her to let it go; she didn’t have a chance anyway. She gave up, not just on revenge. She dragged herself across the steel floor to Sara’s body, still unfortunately dead, and with nothing else to do she embraced her former love and waited for it all to end.

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A note slid under the door of Senior Thundergod Leannadora St Augustine. Though at first obscured by a carpet of spiders, it was promptly carried over to Lenie’s desk where she read it with a weary sigh. It was a status report; on the one hand the good news was that most of her henchmen had put their clothes back on, but on the other hand the space police had shown up and everything had kind of gone to shit. It was not exactly the most efficient means of communication, but the Thundertower’s communications network had mysteriously stopped working and it seemed that a face to face briefing wasn’t an option after Naiima and her spiders had consumed whole the last couple of clerks that had attempted to do so. Lenie flipped the status report over to see that it was written on the back of a hastily drafted letter of resignation.

Lenie had been trying to pretend that everything was okay, despite the fact that hundreds of ill-tempered spiders and their grief-stricken queen had all but taken over her office, and that attempts to placate the aforementioned queen had gone rather spectacularly awry with the bulk of her henchmen stripping down and joining Team Cannibalistic Orgy, not to mention the fact that today was supposed to be a half day so she was going to have to pay everyone overtime when this was all over and done with. It was only thoughts of the future, of some time when this whole absurd situation had resolved itself, that she might somehow utilize the power of the Thunder to wipe out all the spiders that had kept her going. She was probably going to need a brand new office suite. In fact, probably best to burn this entire room, she decided.

But in terms of the now it was not just Lenie that was growing impatient; Naiima was tiring of this wait too. “Well?” she asked. “Have you the river for me, mouse, or does she laugh and trickle through your fingers again?”

“There is a complication.” Lenie ventured. “The Space Police are here and, trust me, we ought not to be.”

“We stay.” Naiima snapped back.

“Look, I understand that you want the river to pay for what she’s done. I sympathize, but we can’t stay here.” Lenie argued. “I mean, the river, from what you know of her she’s not just going to go quietly is she?” Lenie paused for a reply but received none. “So she’s as good as dead either way. Let’s just get out of here while we can.”

“Hush, dear mouse.” Naiima replied soothingly. “You understand so little. Bring me the river; I will end your ‘Space Police’.”

“I’d like to see you try.” Lenie snapped back, though on reflection she wouldn’t. “And I don’t appreciate being called mouse.” Naiima affixed her with a look and it was only in that moment that Lenie remembered the efforts she had gone to to remain calm, optimistic and pleasant, and realized how much of a mistake she had made.

Naiima leaned in close and studied the Thundergod for a long moment. Lenie’s heart pounded furiously, but she didn’t shrink away. “Not a mouse.” Naiima agreed after a moment. “A mouse scurries and hides away from a predator. Notmouse sits and fears and waits to die. Notmouse already dead already entombed in papers and fear.” There was a pause. “Can I call you corpse?” Naiima mocked her.

Lenie struggled to keep her anger and her revulsion in check. She knew that it was a bad idea to provoke a highly emotional and vindictive spider queen and her hundred or so young, but everyone has a breaking point. Luckily for her the conversation was cut short in a most dramatic manner; the door burst open once again, this time revealing the absurdly muscular form of Space Captain Photon Laserox in the abandoned corridor outside. Lenie sighed heavily.

“Leannadora St Augustine!” Captain Laserox exclaimed with a scowl and clench of his fist. “I should have known You would be behind this heinous crime!”

Suddenly Lenie had an idea and it was all she could do to stop herself from grinning. “Actually Captain Laserox, I think you’ll find that I am the victim here. This enormous spider and,” she peered around Captain Laserox to spot Mindy and Debbie lurking awkwardly in the corridor behind him, “those young women have broken into my Thundertower. Now I can’t tell you exactly what those two have been doing because this spider has been holding me prisoner up here for the last hour or so, but I have it on good authority that a couple of their friends were being publicly indecent and have murdered a number of my employees.”

Photon Laserox just looked dumbfounded. He turned to Mindy and Debbie, “Is this true?” he asked.

“Um, well, we didn’t really break in so to speak.” Debbie said hesitantly, carefully avoiding looking at Mindy who was giving her a full on death glare. “We were dumped here by this high powered eighties business woman archetype who was trying to force us to fight to the death.” She continued though she might as well have not bothered, Laserox had already stopped listening.

“I should have known you two were despicable criminal types from the moment I met you,” Laserox monologued to nobody in particular, “to think that I was so easily swayed by your cruel feminine manipulations sickens me to my Very Core. I’m afraid that you are all under arrest, oh except for you Ms. St Augustine, thank you for your cooperation by the way. The rest of you, you have the right to remain silent, anything you do so may be taken down and used against you in a court of Law.” He quickly produced some kind of futuristic looking energy handcuffs and turned back towards the chix to see Mindy silently fleeing down the corridor.

“I’m sorry about her.” Debbie said awkwardly. “She’s very attached to her freedoms, and what am I doing?” She quickly turned and fled as well, apologizing profusely as she did so.

“Some people just have no Decency nowadays.”Laserox lamented.

“Aren’t you going to chase after them?” Lenie asked.

“No need,” Laserox said, as he turned his attention to the other criminal who was suddenly standing over him, scrutinising him carefully, “there isn’t anywhere for them to run to anyway.” Even with Naiima looming over him, Laserox didn’t show an ounce of trepidation, he didn’t miss a beat. “Excuse me, individual, could you please raise your two forelimbs in front of you?”

“Such a brave mouse.” Naiima replied. “So boring.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”
Laserox said, only hesitating for the slightest of moments. “If you do not comply you will give me no choice but to use whatever force I deem necessary to end your rampant villainy.” He touched the laser pistol holstered on his belt to reinforce this point.

“Enough.” Naiima said with a coldness in her voice. She pounced, though it could barely be called such as she was almost atop him anyway, and bit Captain Laserox, sinking her enormous fangs into his shoulder, and forcing her venom into his veins. He tried to stumble back and when that was less than effective he grabbed for his laser pistol. By the time that he had unsheathed it Naiima was done with him. She had retracted her fangs, moved back and seemed to be more interested now in Leannadora St Augustine. “Corpse lied.” She accused. Lenie couldn’t reply, she couldn’t take her eyes off Laserox. His movements were slow and clumsy as he tried to raise the pistol.

“Please raithe your forelimbth and-” His demand was suddenly cut off by Naiima’s sound suppression.

“Corpse said she’d bring the river, only brought sad stupid mouse.”

Moving in unison Naiima’s spiders began to climb Photon Laserox’s body. In forced silence he awkwardly tried to knock them off or brush them away, but his movements were stilted and awkward, like the movements of a frantic puppet. They climbed as inevitably as the tide until he was covered entirely. His laser pistol fell from his spasming grip and eventually after a minute he collapsed backwards.

“Corpse lied to the sad stupid mouse, wanted it to kill us.” Naiima continued. “Time a corpse was truly a corpse.”

Lenie’s attention was very quickly snapped back to Naiima. “No hold on, you’re making a mistake, there’s no call for this. Just give me more time I’m sure I can capture the river.” Lenie leapt to her feet and grabbed the closest heaviest thing she could (a ring-binder filled with important documents and almost covered with spiders) and raised it threateningly. It was a futile gesture and she knew it, but Naiima wasn’t paying her any attention any more.

Skittering down the corridor towards the office were a number of abnormally large spiders (smaller than Naiima but still, in Lenie’s opinion, bigger than a spider had any right to be) and between them they hauled a human sized cocoon of cobweb. Lenie and her transgressions were forgotten in an instant. Naiima made her way over to the cocoon and carefully gnawed away at the webs, brushing them aside with her forelimbs to reveal Ataya’s face. Her eyes were half closed, her lip broken and stained with dried blood, her hair singed and her skin charred. Her breathing was laboured and she was only just lucid.

“You killed my children.” Naiima accused and paused, as though waiting for some kind of response; some acknowledgement of her crimes or some admission of guilt. There was nothing, no response. “You killed my children. You killed Winter.” Naiima grew angrier with each accusation. “Say something.” She demanded bitterly.

The river said nothing. Her eyes were filled with pain, but it was not physical pain that gripped her, though she was feeling her fair share of that. It was the knowledge that death, something that had never been a concern in a world where she could always return her spirit to her river, now awaited her with the same inevitability that it awaited any mortal being. It was the knowledge that she could do nothing about it; not to fight it, not to stop it or get out of it, not even to slow it. Naiima may not have seen the subtleties of such pain, but she saw Ataya’s despair and her surrender to her fate. It made her sick.

“Mouse.” Naiima spat. The river was nothing but a mouse; her children slain by a mouse. So much effort expended and hate wasted upon a mouse. She wasted no more time; she tore into Ataya, ripping chunks of flesh from her body and finally, conclusively ending her unnatural life. With a passion drawn from her righteous fury she cracked Ataya’s bones and pulverised her organs, but it was an empty action. There was no satisfaction to be gleaned from squashing a mouse. She was still angry but now more at a world that could have let this happen that at Ataya herself. In no time she had reduced that broken girl to nothing more than a bloody mess that Lenie would never be able to remove from her carpet.

All too soon Naiima was done and left with an emptiness it was difficult for a hunting spider to articulate, not that she ever got a chance to. Within a moment she was consumed with pain, a burning in her thorax as it started to melt away. As Naiima turned towards her, Lenie fired Captain Laserox’s laser pistol again and a third time to make sure. It was quick; Naiimas limbs buckled beneath her and aside from the thump she made as she hit the floor, she died in silence. Her last thought was of her children and how she would see them again.

In the moments after Naiima’s death there was a tense silence as Lenie looked across the hundreds of spiders, ready to pounce and realized she had made a huge mistake. “Now I am your queen.” She proclaimed in as confident a voice as she could manage.