ChasNicollette
Allons-y Means Let's Go.
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2007
- Posts
- 16,135
"The Sound of Silence," covered by Disturbed. (Chris/Rose)
The world stopped there for a moment. The space between the ticks of a clock.
And then her claw hand descended, quick as a lightning bolt stabbing down through a tree--
--but Grant exploded out of his catatonia--
--by God, he was fast--
--rattlesnake fast--
--like he'd been forced into a merciless training regimen on a planet whose gravity was excruciatingly strong and whose atmosphere was asphixiatingly thin--
--he drew his stolen gun, stupid, Redwood should have smelled the gun oil, the cordite, but she was in such a hurry to splatter his viscera across this roof--
--so bloodthirsty she didn't stop wait think--
--his gun was in his hand, pointed upward, pressed against the wrist of the hand that held him fast--
BLAM!
--chlorophyll-green blood burst like a bubble into the air, severing the hand--
--before she could recover, he aimed, fired again--
BLAMBLAMBLAM!
--a perfect grouping--
--three bullets right in her eyes and forehead, blinding her in another gush of green--
--she roared in fury, staggered backwards--
--he dove, rolling, throwing off the hand that still clutched his hair--
Redwood healed almost instantly.
A fresh hand had almost finished growing by the time she used it to wipe green goo out of her freshly-grown eyes.
And he was standing there across the roof, holding his phone his one hand, his gun aimed square at where her heart would be if she were human.
"Not so disarmed, then," she snarled.
He squinted his blue blue eyes at her. "Being a Dialer is all about taking what you're handed and beating the odds. If you haven't learned that by now, maybe you never will."
"I ain't done yet," Redwood snapped as she circled left a bit, right a bit, trying to gauge if she could get to him before he Dialed-- he was so fucking fast--
"Oh, but you might be," Grant replied. "See, cut off from The Master's grand design, left on my own to wail and gnash my teeth, I have no aspirations left. No dreams of a future where I serve as an officer in an army of this Earth's corrupted Dialers, with you as my lieutenant. I could just kill you now."
"I don't die easy," Redwood reminded him. "Redwood's th' best there is at what she does."
He ran his tongue over his teeth. "True. But all I have to do is keep the pressure on you until your Dial times out, and then you're cattle to the slaughter. How long have you been in this form, now? How many hours did you spend suspended in the Hellspore firewall? How many hours hunting me through Pittsburgh? Can't be long now."
Redwood hesitated. He was right, she never knew how long she had in a given ectype before it timed out, but it had never been longer than 24 hours.
"Who should I become to destroy you?" Grant wondered, his voice rising with intensity, narrowing his gaze down the gun-barrel at her. "Savitar again? Storm Boy? I admit, I have gotten quite fond of frying your nerves with lightning. But perhaps something new."
"Whatever ain't borin' me t' tears!" Redwood decided with a snarl, diving forward with claws akimbo and murder aforethought--
SssshhCLICK!
"I am SONAR!" he roared, transforming into a man with long red hair, and a tattered uniform of white, brown, and blue-- and that roar accompanied a wave of concussive sonic force exploding radially from both palms, and that wave bulldozed Redwood near to ribbons, smearing her along the rooftop.
She was on her feet again almost before she was done skidding, her green skin spreading back across her body where it had been road-rashed away--
--but then--
--no--
SWOOOSH
--her time was up, she was Rose again.
Down on her knees, her hands and knees, her inner ear spinning from the vile vibrations emanating from Sonar!Grant, she felt bile rise up in her mouth and she vomited noisily on the rooftop. "Oh-- oh God--"
"--been Redwood before-- but she--"
"--killed all those monster things--"
"--killed that robot guy--"
"--was gonna kill you when she thought you were powerless--"
Sonar!Grant stood over her, and narrowed his masked eyes down at her, power humming in his hands.
"Hnh. I suppose something can be said for your... desperately clinging to your innocence. The tenacity of that purity. But it'll all be for nothing in the end. All is still one."
"I don't-- I don't know what that means," Rose mumbled, fumbling her phone out of her pocket, ready to Dial again, not sure why she was still alive but ready to do battle-- just as soon as Pittsburgh stopped pinwheeling around her.
Sonar!Grant rolled his eyes, and floated up into the air in a bubble of sonic force.
"You will," he decided and derided.
"You're going to live just long enough to see the true face of my onetime Master and then you will know."
"You will know true purity."
And then he flew off and out into the dark dawning skies over Pittsburgh, leaving Rose a balled mess on that roof.
And as Rose looked at her phone--
--she saw a message glowing back at her.
[Thirteenth ectype unlocked.]
And then the message changed:
[All available ectypes unlocked.]
[One ectype remaining, downloadable content only.]
[To access DLC, please contact The Exchange.]
Rose stared at her phone, the world had stopped spinning but now-- now it only seemed bigger and darker.
Every time she'd heard about this Exchange, it had been in terms of a place of cosmic possibility and pan-cosmic warfare and the very thought of going to that place flooded her bones with a chill she could not easily shake.
"Well," Rose mumbled. "Now what?"
Now.
********
********
Grant was standing on the roof of a building next to a celltower on the corner of 6th and Liberty, a daringly close walking distance from the original fight.
And he was yelling into his phone.
"--no, look, just put me in touch with Requisitions, I still have active mission status--"
"--no-- no-- fuck-- don't put me on hold-- I've just spent the last--"
And then he roared, threw his phone skittering across the rooftop, swore, dropped to his knees, punched the rooftop hard enough to bloody his knuckles, and let out an incoherent scream.
"While I can empathize," Redwood growled, crouching on the lip of the building's roof, glaring at Grant with narrowed eyes, "as it seems customer service is Hell's fergotten Circle no matter what universe yer in, mebbe disarmin' yerself was not yer smartest move ever."
Grant laughed faintly, didn't look up at her, didn't flinch at the sound of her voice. "Yes, my Dial doesn't have the same quantum tethering that yours has. Though I suppose you'd have noticed. Would have made things much easier for me. Could have just walked away from the block of wood and found the Dial back in my hand, for instance. Wouldn't have had to choose between my Anti-Life Drive and my Dial when I was fighting Open-Window Man last month. And on and on."
He tutted, glanced down at his bloodied knuckles.
"If I'd just had access to that Anti-Life firewall software, I could have fed it into the local cell network, infected The Eastern Seaboard, it wouldn't be the whole world-- but I could at least accomplish my mission in part, corrupt all the nearby Dials. But it seems my fears were correct. I've been stranded here. I imagine that I've been burned with my InterGang contacts, too. What a shame-- I could have done it! But they won't even listen to me!"
Redwood jumped down the short distance from the building rim, stalked towards the kneeling Grant as he ranted and blathered. Stood over him. "M'heart bleeds."
"Well, no it don't."
"But yours is sure gonna in a minute, here."
Claws popped from one hand, held low. SNIKT.
Grant still hadn't looked at her.
He just gazed over Pittsburgh's darkened skyline, expression sort of... wistful.
"It's funny what you think about when you can't go home again."
"There was this girl with me in Boot Camp. Beautiful redhead, real knockout, you'd have liked her. Kay, we called her. I wonder whatever happened to her."
"So on top o' everythin' else," Redwood drawled, "ya cheated on yer wife wi' a ginger side piece in some faraway black hole place? Gotta be honest, Mom's probably gonna wanna divorce. Here, I'll save ya th' trouble."
She clutched his hair with her fingers and raised that claw hand high.
The world stopped there for a moment. The space between the ticks of a clock.
And then her claw hand descended, quick as a lightning bolt stabbing down through a tree--
--but Grant exploded out of his catatonia--
--by God, he was fast--
--rattlesnake fast--
--like he'd been forced into a merciless training regimen on a planet whose gravity was excruciatingly strong and whose atmosphere was asphixiatingly thin--
--he drew his stolen gun, stupid, Redwood should have smelled the gun oil, the cordite, but she was in such a hurry to splatter his viscera across this roof--
--so bloodthirsty she didn't stop wait think--
--his gun was in his hand, pointed upward, pressed against the wrist of the hand that held him fast--
BLAM!
--chlorophyll-green blood burst like a bubble into the air, severing the hand--
--before she could recover, he aimed, fired again--
BLAMBLAMBLAM!
--a perfect grouping--
--three bullets right in her eyes and forehead, blinding her in another gush of green--
--she roared in fury, staggered backwards--
--he dove, rolling, throwing off the hand that still clutched his hair--
Redwood healed almost instantly.
A fresh hand had almost finished growing by the time she used it to wipe green goo out of her freshly-grown eyes.
And he was standing there across the roof, holding his phone his one hand, his gun aimed square at where her heart would be if she were human.
"Not so disarmed, then," she snarled.
He squinted his blue blue eyes at her. "Being a Dialer is all about taking what you're handed and beating the odds. If you haven't learned that by now, maybe you never will."
"I ain't done yet," Redwood snapped as she circled left a bit, right a bit, trying to gauge if she could get to him before he Dialed-- he was so fucking fast--
"Oh, but you might be," Grant replied. "See, cut off from The Master's grand design, left on my own to wail and gnash my teeth, I have no aspirations left. No dreams of a future where I serve as an officer in an army of this Earth's corrupted Dialers, with you as my lieutenant. I could just kill you now."
"I don't die easy," Redwood reminded him. "Redwood's th' best there is at what she does."
He ran his tongue over his teeth. "True. But all I have to do is keep the pressure on you until your Dial times out, and then you're cattle to the slaughter. How long have you been in this form, now? How many hours did you spend suspended in the Hellspore firewall? How many hours hunting me through Pittsburgh? Can't be long now."
Redwood hesitated. He was right, she never knew how long she had in a given ectype before it timed out, but it had never been longer than 24 hours.
"Who should I become to destroy you?" Grant wondered, his voice rising with intensity, narrowing his gaze down the gun-barrel at her. "Savitar again? Storm Boy? I admit, I have gotten quite fond of frying your nerves with lightning. But perhaps something new."
"Whatever ain't borin' me t' tears!" Redwood decided with a snarl, diving forward with claws akimbo and murder aforethought--
SssshhCLICK!
"I am SONAR!" he roared, transforming into a man with long red hair, and a tattered uniform of white, brown, and blue-- and that roar accompanied a wave of concussive sonic force exploding radially from both palms, and that wave bulldozed Redwood near to ribbons, smearing her along the rooftop.
She was on her feet again almost before she was done skidding, her green skin spreading back across her body where it had been road-rashed away--
--but then--
--no--
SWOOOSH
--her time was up, she was Rose again.
Down on her knees, her hands and knees, her inner ear spinning from the vile vibrations emanating from Sonar!Grant, she felt bile rise up in her mouth and she vomited noisily on the rooftop. "Oh-- oh God--"
"--been Redwood before-- but she--"
"--killed all those monster things--"
"--killed that robot guy--"
"--was gonna kill you when she thought you were powerless--"
Sonar!Grant stood over her, and narrowed his masked eyes down at her, power humming in his hands.
"Hnh. I suppose something can be said for your... desperately clinging to your innocence. The tenacity of that purity. But it'll all be for nothing in the end. All is still one."
"I don't-- I don't know what that means," Rose mumbled, fumbling her phone out of her pocket, ready to Dial again, not sure why she was still alive but ready to do battle-- just as soon as Pittsburgh stopped pinwheeling around her.
Sonar!Grant rolled his eyes, and floated up into the air in a bubble of sonic force.
"You will," he decided and derided.
"You're going to live just long enough to see the true face of my onetime Master and then you will know."
"You will know true purity."
And then he flew off and out into the dark dawning skies over Pittsburgh, leaving Rose a balled mess on that roof.
And as Rose looked at her phone--
--she saw a message glowing back at her.
[Thirteenth ectype unlocked.]
And then the message changed:
[All available ectypes unlocked.]
[One ectype remaining, downloadable content only.]
[To access DLC, please contact The Exchange.]
Rose stared at her phone, the world had stopped spinning but now-- now it only seemed bigger and darker.
Every time she'd heard about this Exchange, it had been in terms of a place of cosmic possibility and pan-cosmic warfare and the very thought of going to that place flooded her bones with a chill she could not easily shake.
"Well," Rose mumbled. "Now what?"