SkyeOfStars
Progress was slow but at least there was progress.
We were makin' our way through a bigger part of the complex now. The room was massive, a whole set of these huge turbines sat in the center, connected by walkways that arched over and under each other. No control room, though, just monitoring stations at each turbine. Nothing to control them, just lotsa panels with lotsa dials and knobs and things, all of 'em dark.
Jesus. It was like we were doin' some major surgery with this shit. Tryin' to restart the brains of the city by jump startin' the power grid. Hurk was quite amazed.
"Shit, Andy. Ever seen somethin' like this before?"
"Nah, man. Pretty amazin', ain't it?"
"Man, shit, this is what the city runs on? Jesus Christ these things are huge!"
"Well this city's huge, Hurk. Takes a lot of power to run all of it."
There were robed guys here too. Apparently Alonzo didn't get all of 'em to move with his shenanigans. We were surgical with 'em, move 'n shoot, move 'n shoot, try not to hit any of the multi-million dollar shit in the center of the god damn room. These idiots weren't soldiers, even though they was armed like 'em. Hurk, however, was, and he was mowin' through these chumps like a lawnmower over tall grass. By the time we reached the end of the room, everyone else was dead save for us. I was busy loading up my shotgun while he was reloading his rifle.
Then we moved on. No time to waste, after all.
Collab between DJAtomika and the crafty pig, Part Three
There was a crash, an explosion of human endeavour and cultists were bursting through the doors, body after body, piling through in a mad frenzied scramble. Tattoos stretched and reared in howls of joy, wolves raising the hunt by moonlight even as they dropped. Round after round, felled them, the door their chokepoint yet even every body gained them another yard another step, another inch towards the barricade. Life by life they advanced and the rat at tat of the rifle became more rythmic, more panicked, a man fighting a loosing battle, drowned by the tide.
Relief kept him moving, he had might the right call, there was no way he could have contained this monstrosity on his own, with a pistol. Point was he was still armed with a pistol
"Powerless for a change"
... and a kitchen.
"you bastard"
He was scrabblling moving quick and quiet even as the mob advanced through the cafeteria, bottles of oil 2 meters... matches 3 meters... hatch another final meter. They were past him now a seething tide barely contained. Time to turn the tide... unscrew the cap... open the hatch, cap towards him, grab by the handle, body arched.... avoid the oil slide away.
"Why... stop.... why... haven't you done enough"
Oil spilling out over the floor, trail across the floor, then it reached the centre of the tide, a boot caught it, it spun, oil flying, a twisted catherine wheel, catching boots, cloth, spattering across the floor.
The match sparked into life, a little glow breaking the darkness.
He wanted to watch it forever...watch it burn.
"you will burn in hell"
He gave a little guffaw and flicked the match away. A trail of flame seered away from him into the night
Screams in his head... scream outside his head... Argan couldn't help but giggle.
{ --------------- }
Alonzo spotted the goblin in the kitchen and instantly knew that they were on the same side. The silenced pistol in his hands saw proof to that; he'd been the one plugging cultists in the kitchen. As he watched, the little green man grabbed a bottle of what he knew as cooking oil, uncapped it and shot it across the floor towards the charging mob. Then he lit a match.
It took him a second to put two and two together and shield his eyes, which was when the fireball erupted within the cultists.
The smell of burning fabric and flesh began to fill the air as the whole mob was set ablaze, men screaming and writhing in pain as the fire consumed them from head to toe. Alonzo helped several along the way with aimed bursts, putting down several more that had escaped their fate of being barbequed alive.
Finally, he emptied the last bullets in his magazine in killing the last few men standing. The rest of the noise was inconsequential; burning cultist corpses littered the floor, and what few remained alive were either bleeding out from their bullet wounds, on fire, or both.
Alonzo reloaded and stood, waving a free hand to the goblin in the kitchen, who apparently was cackling away at the grim scene in front of him.
"Hey! You there! Came to help us?"
{ --------------- }
You could tell a lot about a man by how he responded to burning. It cut at men, to hear another human in such pain evoked a reaction in everyone.
Sweet lord....The screaming was glorious.... the primal sound of agony,pure angish....that tore at you, that consumed from the outside in underlined by frantic desperation as you tried to stop the agony... better yet it was that agony that killed.
The man showed his first weakness... compassion... he put mercy bullets into the heads, silencing the screams. Clean headshots every one...professional and effective but not callous. Emptied the magazine and reloaded. 7 bullets wasted ... perhaps not... better a full clip than half empty... they tended to run out at the right time.
The remaining screams and howls seemed to have no effect on him as he moved towards Argan, eyes fixing easily on Arcan despite the gloom.
His rifle was low, at ease... too trusting? too confident? or maybe too dangerous.
Argan considered putting a bullet in his head. One less bit of competition, he could get into the fold just as easily, the returning hero bringing back a fallen comrades body.
His eyes glittered.
Not the right time, by the littering of corpses on the ground, there were enough people in here to overwhelm him.
No need to be hasty
"Tommy sent me, for old times sake...thought you might need some extra hands."
{ --------------- }
"No idea who that is, but an extra pair of hands never hurt. C'mon."
Alonzo moved out from behind his cover and jogged over past the goblin, moving into the kitchen.
"You came from a service area, right? Well we gotta head the other way. The other guys went to the main control room to kick start the power. We just gotta follow the signs to the damn place and we'll be set."
At the doorway to the inner service hallways, he stopped, holding the door open for his newfound companion.
"C'mon man, let's get a move on. The sooner we leave, the quicker we can get to my friends. Oh, and I'd like to know your name so I don't have to refer to you as the goblin. Mine's Alonzo, a pleasure meeting you."
That said, he left the door open as he continued his jog. The signs pointed the right way, leading the duo towards their next destination. It would be a long trek, though, taking at least fifteen to twenty minutes. And who said the hallways wouldn't still have armed cultists waiting for them?
Several minutes later, Alonzo and his companion were ambling along a hallway that led past one of the main generator rooms. He stopped for a second to check out the huge turbines that were in the room, then abruptly noticed the corpses that littered the catwalks and platforms around the huge room.
"Hey, check this out."
He jogged over to one of the corpses and kicked it. No response. He knelt down to examine the corpse further. The man was already dead, two neat bullet holes in his chest.
Only one other man could have such military accuracy.
Hurk.
Alonzo turned back to Argan and gestured with his rifle.
"My buddies went through here. These kills are recent, couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes ago, while I was back there gettin' my ass kicked until you came along."
He stood and followed the carnage through the room, stepping by fallen bodies with bullet holes in their chests, some having an assortment of them instead of two neat body shots. He attributed the messier kills to Andy's handiwork. Tommy guns weren't known for their accuracy, neither were shotguns.
"Thanks for the save, by the way. Would've gotten dead if I'd stayed there any longer."
{ --------------- }
"No idea who that is, but an extra pair of hands never hurt. C'mon."
Perhaps Tommy was not such a big name after all. His eyes glittered as concern flashed for the first time. Had he made a mistake... a fatal mistake.
The man was moving, at a steady trot and Arcan fell in stride next to him pausing briefly to snag a shotgun from the ground, hands quickly rummaging over the corpses belt to tuck a few rounds into his waistband. Ever so briefly his fingers touched tattoed flesh and he felt a surge of power, a torrent through his mind, she was yelling cursing, howling obscenities and he reeled forcing her back.
His hands gripped his head... then she was gone. He glared accusingly at the glassy eyed flesh... he needed to find a vampire and fast.
"You came from a service area, right? Well we gotta head the other way. The other guys went to the main control room to kick start the power. We just gotta follow the signs to the damn place and we'll be set."
They trotted along, his companion seeming content to set the pace and make conversation
"C'mon man, let's get a move on. The sooner we leave, the quicker we can get to my friends. Oh, and I'd like to know your name so I don't have to refer to you as the goblin. Mine's Alonzo, a pleasure meeting you."
"Raz" he muttered with a rough salute "just call me Raz."
Silence descended as they moved together, wary eyes flitting over opposite sides of the room, feet drumming across the floor. He let Alonzo lead his eyes flitting backwards, ears straining for the slightest sound
Then they walked into a graveyard, corpses and shell cases littered the ground, the walls behind the bodies peppered with deep black shell shot. Alonzo was chatting away peering at the corpses but Arcan was deliberately ignoring them... the bitch was getting stronger and the bodies had something to do with it
"Thanks for the save, by the way. Would've gotten dead if I'd stayed there any longer."
The voice pulled him back to the present, the guy seemed genuine, a nice bloke... but to get so far in the biggest family... there must be something more to him. Perhaps he just recognised the greatness in Arcan, the greatness he knew was within him.
His eyes glittered.
"My pleasure. You were holding up well. I've not seen shooting like that before.... where were you trained? Army?"
