December 25th, 2:08 AM
The Streets of Hub City, Illinois
"Uh-oh, fell in love again (fell in love agaaain), what am I gonna tell my friends (tell all my frieeends)? It just happened, you walked in my door (you walked in my doooor), and now I don't wanna be, alone no mooore!" The sounds of Britney Britney's latest hit,
(Uh-Oh) Fell In Love Again, filled the interior of the tour bus. If they weren't pissing their pants out of fear, the civilians inside might have found it to be rather funny. They were in a double decker hot pink tour bus glammed out with sparkles and fake jewels, being chased by mythological creatures. Their saviors were a faceless man in a Dick Tracy costume and a similarly faceless woman firing at the aforementioned mythological creatures.
However, because he wasn't pissing his pants out of fear, Oscar Ellison, better known as
The Question, was currently laughing his ass off at the absurdity of the situation in between bouts of singing along to the music.
"Hahahaha! Aw... Aw man... Okay, okay get a hold of yourself Q, get a hold of yourself... Hey Alias!" Question shouted to his partner,
"How far is that military base?"Shams Al-Harasa sighed from the back of the bus as she shot her shotgun out of the window at the closest fairy tale creature. She had been shouting directions at Oscar as he drove them through the city. All of this from memory of a place where she had never even been. She'd been around the city, yes; that was a police officer's job, but she had never been to the military base. That was the best place to go however, if there were still guys there they'd know exactly how to secure the area and protect the civilians.
"Just a few more turns from here, it's on the right side of the road from the... the ship-museum, the old battleship that you can walk around in," she instructed. Then she paused a moment.
"And stop torturing these poor people, Britney's music's bad enough without you wailing the crappy lyrics.""Hey shut up," Question barked at his partner,
"I can't turn it off! There's no button or whatever for it! And so what if I happen to like bubblegum pop? At least I'm not afraid to admit it." The vigilante turned to the nearest civilian,
"You like pop music?" The civvie nodded shakily, though it seemed more like he nodded just to get Question to look back at the
Goddamned road.
"See Alias, this guy gets it!"Alias scoffed as she reloaded her shotgun, cocking it as she looked over at Oscar and his apparent friend, who whimpered without making a move.
"He's just nodding because he's in a bus with a man who lacks a face, hell, if I was in his shoes I'd be doing whatever the hell you wanted too," she said with a hidden smirk. Standing to fire another shotgun shell out the window. When she pulled back, she heard a yelp from the back window, noticing a satyr holding onto the back of the bus.
The satyr also had a massive erection.
She really needed to read more mythology to find out what in the fuck this was.
The satyr's innovative method of trying to enter the bus was humping the window in the hopes that it would break. It did break, but not thanks to the satyr's gyrating hips.
More thanks to a shotgun. Right to the goat-face. It was quite satisfying.
"Is this really the fastest we can go? I only ask because we're being chased by a shit-ton of horny goat people.""Uhhhhhhhhh..." Q checked the speedometer. Judging by it, they were going 90 miles an hour.
"... A, we're going ninety. I don't think we can go any faster." Still, hoping that the van could somehow go even faster, Question put the pedal to the metal. Suddenly, the bus began to fly forward, right into a harpy which exploded in a shower of blood and guts.
Wordlessly, Question turned the windshield wipers on.
"One-seventeen now!" Question shouted to his partner.
Alias growled.
"You mean you weren't going as fast as you could?! We're in a fucking warzone!" she roared as angrily as she could sound. She yelped as a massive lion leaped onto the side of the bus, smashing one of the few non-broken windows. She fired a blast into the beast's eye with a roar. The beast's corpse lodged itself in the window, forcing Alias to kick it out of there.
Well, she wasn't forced to, but it felt good none-the-less.
"There's too many of them, we're not gonna make it taking this route!" she yelled to Oscar, her voice breaking just a bit. She was usually quite good at hiding her fear, but this was not the usual situation she found herself in.
The other passengers seemed to notice, and quite a few began to panic, one breaking down into fearful hysterics and another hyperventilating.
Alias looked back at Oscar.
"I don't care what you do, just get us there as fast as possible!"Looking at his partner and the panicking civilians, Question nodded, gripping the steering wheel tightly and swerving into an alley. Screams were heard behind him, but he didn't care; he was going to get them to the military base ASAP. Behind them were dozens of satyrs, a cyclops, and- holy fuck, is that a
minotaur?
"HANG ONTO YOUR ASSES!" The faceless fedora enthusiast shouted, heading out of the alley and turning sharply to get back onto the main road. The back of the bus hit a minotaur as Question attempted to straighten it out, denting the bus and causing the minotaur to go flying into a brick building.
Question kept right on this road, he could see the city limits and with it the military base. Before long, the swarm of monsters chasing the bus were just dots in the distance, and the military base was in sight. Reassured they were away from the bulk of them, Question slowed the bus down to a reasonable speed of 60 MPH.
He turned back to the occupants of the bus.
"That good?"As a result of Question's sudden turns, Alias had tumbled head over heels, accidentally firing a shotgun shell into the roof before settling upside-down between a pair of seats, head staring up at the gum-coated underside of one of them. It was quite disgusting, at least the floor was consistantly cleaned, all the best for a pop princess she supposed.
As Question finally slowed to a reasonable speed, Alias attempted to pull herself out only to end up collapsing in an even less dignified heap. She huffed and made a few primal noises as she freed herself with a thump and pushed her way into a standing position. She grabbed her shotgun from the floor and cocked it again, sending the shell that she had spent during her graceful fall tumbling through the air in a manner that she imagined much resembled her own collapse.
"Yep, just fantastic," she groaned as her hip lit up in agony from being slammed into the wall.
"Thank god for painkillers," she mused as she slowly made her way up to the front of the bus.
"Right, just a right turn up here and we should be there," she said, gesturing to the road with the hand not currently pressing against her injury. As she turned she mumbled to herself something about hoping the map was correct and that she couldn't wait to get the fuck out of here.
As Alias got up from the floor, Question couldn't help but feel a little bad about how fast he was going. He was caught up in the moment, the adrenaline making him do things he would regret later. Thankfully nothing
too bad happened, like someone dying, but still.
However, that adrenaline was still coursing through him, so when he noticed Alias pressing a hand against her injury he said
"Want me to kiss it better?" in a tone that wasn't exactly innocent. And it was only after saying that that he realized
he actually said that.
'Oh fuuuck...'Alias stopped suddenly.
She turned back to look at Oscar very slowly.
'Did he just hit on me?'She waited in that spot for a time that felt like an eternity before walking towards Oscar and stealing the hat from off of his head and tossing it into the back of the bus.
She'd need that for later.
"Focus on the road," she reminded before walking back into the bus.
Question cringed slightly when Alias took his fedora, half wanting to shout at her to give it back. Instead, he focused on the road as she said, blurting out a quick
"Sorry" as he did so.
Not long after, the bus was pulling up to the military base, which seemed to be abandoned.
"Shit. What now?"Alias turned back as she felt the bus slow, quickly running up to look out the windshield.
The base was in fact abandoned, and that crowd of harpies by the humvee appeared to be snacking on a corpse of some kind. Alias couldn't help but cringe at the sight of one of the fiends pulling a long string of tissue from what was almost definitely a deceased soldier. The fence was broken through in multiple places, and the glass of the visitor's building window appeared caked with fresh blood.
She almost didn't wanna go in.
"Well, the barracks or armory should be secure, they're probably holed out there, and even if not, it couldn't hurt to get some better guns. Especially considering I'm almost out of shells," she said, pulling four shells from within her trenchcoat. She loaded them all into the shotgun, making six in total.
She cocked the shotgun and made her way into the back, grabbing Oscar's hat and hiding it on her person and informing all of the civilians to follow her. She walked back through towards the door.
"Let's go Q, get your pistol out, you shouldn't need to use it if we're quiet enough."She calmly made her way down the stairs with a few deep breaths, walking onto the faded asphalt that marked the enterance to the military base.
"We're going through the fence, head towards that big building over there," she whispered to the group, crouching into a more stealthy position.
The Question followed Alias' lead, crouched low and following after her with light steps. The civilians followed closely after, and before long the group made their way into the armory, Question opening the door and heading in first...
Only to meet the barrel of a rifle.
Looking up, the owner of the rifle was a man well into his thirties, his blue eyes filled with suspicion.
"... Are you one of those Actor Activist types, or whatever they're calling them these days?" The man asked.
Gulping slightly, the Question nodded.
"Uh..." he cleared his throat, taking on his trademark growl.
"Yes. Call me the Question. Rescued civilians with partner Alias, took them here in the hopes we could find armament and provide them a safe haven with you.""Bit too late for that safe haven, pal," the soldier said, lowering his rifle,
"those bastards did a number on us." He extended a hand,
"Captain Frederick Curie. Call me Fred.""Hrm. Good to meet you, Captain." Question said, shaking the man's hand.
Alias moved up next to Question, careful to avoid pointing her shotgun anyware near the man in uniform.
"Always nice to see a man in uniform," she sighed in relief.
"We have around five men, four women, and four children, a boy and three girls," she informed in as neutral a tone as she could manage through the adrenaline-driven hyperventilation.
"Alias, that's me, HCPD too," she said, recalling Oscar's introduction while also giving information as to her own identity in order to prove that they weren't just some morons out of their league.
They were that too but still.
"HCPD? Well, if you're risking your neck helping innocents as a vigilante, then you're definitely not one of those incompetent corrupt sons of bitches they have in the department." Captain Curie said to Alias, turning back to Question.
"So, you want weapons, eh? General Wallicker was one of the first to bite the dust, so that leaves me as the CO of this place... So knock yourselves out."Question was stunned.
"... You're... You're serious."Captain Curie just nodded.
"... You're not gonna pull some bullshit, right? No strings attached?""As long as there are rifles and ammunition enough for us to hold out until help arrives, be my guest.""Jesus Christ, this is so much easier than I thought it was gonna be." Question muttered, both ecstatic that they were getting the weapons so easily and shocked that the man would just
give them away to strangers. Grabbing a nearby duffel bag, Question began to grab explosives, rifles, shotguns, really any weapon he could find.
Alias was flabbergasted by the man's ease in which he gave away the weapons. She had thought military men would be a bit more stringent on such matters, but she wasn't one to complain. She grabbed as many grenades and other explosives as she could find, and that was a whole lot.
Those artillery shells probably weren't going to see much use, so why not use that to blow something up?
Alias grabbed as many shotgun shells as she could hope for and then tossed the sack over her shoulder, hoping to god that Captain Curie had no objections.
Clearly there was no way for this to serve as a defensible location, with the lack of soldiers other than this one and maybe the one or two friends he had, and the fact that all the fortifications appeared obliterated by the assault, if a crowd of the beasts came they'd be slaughtered. So she took all of the explosives and loaded them in the bus before going back for another load. Curie didn't seem to mind. By the end she had made a pile big enough to cover the back windows of the bus.
She drove all of the citizens back into the thing and ran back in to fetch Question.
"Right, you good Q?" she asked, heavily breathing from the effort required to bring those heavy sacks around.
"Yep, all good." Question said, packing up the two duffel bags filled to the brim with guns and ammo into the bus.
"... Do we really need all this?""If we want to hold out till someone gets here to help, probably," she confirmed solemnly.
"Come on, we have to get moving before any more monsters get here," she said, gesturing him onwards.
Nodding, the Question hopped onto the bus, getting into the driver's seat and waiting for Alias to get on before closing the door.
"So where to? Are we staying here?""No, it's not safe enough, all the fortifications are broken. We're heading to the hockey rink, that'll house everybody and it should be defensible enough," she said, climbing onto the bus and pulling the doors closed with a wave to Captain Curie.
"And hockey sucks so nobody will miss it if we blow the rink to shit." she japed with a tired smile hidden behind her mask.
As Alias said that, an idea sparked in the Question's mind.
"... This bus has a pretty good sound system, we can play the music pretty loud. Loud enough that it could be heard for blocks." Behind his mask, a maniacal grin lit up his face.
"... Let's crank it up, lure these bastards to the hockey rink, trap them in there, then blow it to shit."Alias stared at him like he was the stupidest man on Earth at first, then she thought about it more and more.
"Well, I mean, that's stupid, but I suppose it could work, and even if it doesn't, it should distract them long enough to allow us to leave," she said with a hand on her chin.
"Eh what the hell, let's try. Worst thing happens we die, not like that was ever off the table so what do we lose?" she asked rhetorically with a shrug.
"Nothing." Question said, his grin seeping through his tone.
"Let's go blow up a hockey rink." With those words, he turned up the volume to max and began to drive, the monsters inhabiting the military base following not long after.
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