Sky Blue
TokyoPewPew
Tetsue
Fetzen
Izurich
Shinny
L0nginusMobius Base Outside of Allure City
The veins in Arthur's eyes filled to blood-shot crimson, his windpipe swelling in a banal attempt at barricading his lungs from further infiltration against the genuinely disturbing smell. Every syllable the glutton spat at him felt like a stink-bullet that was aimed directly up his nostrils, set to drill its way up through his nasal cavity and bury itself inside his brain, putrefying it to the point that it dissolved and transformed his skull into a toxic soup bowl that not even plague rats would drink from.
It was the worst kind of decadence. The Gluttons of Hell reeked less than Philippe!
He inhaled, about sling another flurry of insults at Philippe when--
Unable to continue his train of thought, Arthur began to gag uncontrollably, and that uncontrollable gagging escalated led a violent coughing fit. "Ahagh! Ahagh, ahagh, ahagh... hagh...!" Breathing in had doomed him to a disorienting dose of Philippe's malodorous emissions. He had to get it out of his system, somehow, anyhow! Scrambling his failing brain for an answer, Arthur thought: Water... He needed WATER! The Cannibal desperately scanned his surroundings. First he looked over to Allure City, thinking he could find a street-fountain or outdoor vendor selling bottled water, only to realize it was at least several miles from the Mobius camp. Furthermore, he was low on energy, and hadn't gotten the chance to consume a single good meal since getting out of Gluttony--no thanks to Philippe charging into the tent like an obese grizzly bear, chowing down on Heinzmann and all the other soldiers, and effectively jacking all the food in the refrigerator. Lastly, the billowing plume of smoke and fire rising up through the clouds did not bode well for his quest within the city.
"Ahagh! Ahagh, ahagh!-hagh!-HAAAAAAAAGH!" Tears welled up in his eyes as he looked over to the nearby ocean and briefly considered drinking the water. The salt in the air stung his nostrils, and burned his already irritated tear-ducts, and it was precisely that sensation which alerted Arthur to how dumb that plan was. If he drank the sea-water he'd dehydrate himself, becoming that much thirstier, and the last thing he needed right now was to suffer another hallucination like the one that bastard golem had given him.
It was at this point, when all hope for a stench-cleansing refreshment drink seemed lost, that Arthur turned around and saw the light lying just beyond the base's perimeter fence. A fat Frenchman with a curly mustache, dressed in a black-striped shirt, long dark pants, and leather shoes manned a vending stand which served reporters, tourists, and residential locals looking to get a glimpse at that which had replaced their neighbor to the southwest. The vendor had a particularly satisfied look on his face, clearly proud of himself for being able to take advantage of the atrocity wrought by Merse Granstrum, nodding with wholehearted agreement to the message being broadcast by Margaret through the radio on the edge of his stand.
Despite being over two-hundred feet away from the fence, Arthur's supernatural hearing enabled him to hear all of Margaret's words. Not that he cared, though. The only thing concerning the Cannibal was purging his nose, mouth, and stomach of Philippe's deadly odor.
"Wasser..." Arthur groaned haggardly, stumbling across the base like a victim of one of Mobius' top interrogators.
Progressing back passed the tent where that damnable count was surely feeding on something--probably one of the K9s who had rushed into the tent to aid their masters, Arthur instantly clenched his nose between his thumb and index as tight as he could without breaking it, terrified of what another whiff from Philippe might do to him.
"AHAG...EEEEEHUUUHNNNNGGG!" Out came another cough, this one making him honk like a goose with a bass violin stuffed halfway down its throat.
HONK HONK HONK!
Exhausted, but nearing the fence, Arthur's coughing fits somehow paid off. The Frenchman both heard and saw his distress, and was twirling his mustache with predatory greed. He knew that if he could serve this desperate man, who stood on the right side of the fence, surely full of information about Allure City, that he would have all the reporters trampling each other to get to his cart. Like the self-proclaimed genius he thought himself to be, he devised that he would feed this one man for free all day, in exchange for him keeping silent about any Intel he may have possessed.
And the cost for an interview with the hungry man demanded a purchase from his stand!
"Je suis un génie!" The Frenchman proclaimed quietly.
Fast as lightning, the Frenchman practically blinked in front of the fence, and in doing so nearly made Arthur, who was merely three feet from the fence at this point, flinch and stumble backwards.
"Bon après-midi monsieur!" came the thick accent, cracking ever-so-slightly at the end, "Prendre soin d'une aquafina? Bratwurst et souerkraut?"
While relieved at the sight of food and drink, Arthur couldn't help but arc a brow at the vendor, whose demoniacal grin nearly rivaled Philippe's smell in its disturbing nature. The way his cheeks were raised to make the bags on his eyes rest upwards, his teeth glinting like they had just been brushed with white polish... For a moment, he wondered if he didn't remember the man standing in line before King Minos... I'm not still in Hell am I? With help from the delectable scent of sauerkraut, he snapped his mind out the delirium, shoved the thought out of his conscience, and stepped forward to grab the fence in a prying position.
Tearing the wires apart like poorly sewn sheet fabric, Arthur stepped forward, causing the Frenchman as well as the rest of the crowd of onlookers to leap back, but not too far back for Frenchy. "Oh mon! Un client affamé en effet!"
Gleeful as all hell, the man quickly overcame his fear, stepping forward again to present the man his meal. A brief delay in service occurred when the Frenchman noticed just how much farther the crowd had leaped away from Arthur than he had, to which his neck head seemed to unrealistically twist and stretch around, a scowl marking his expression whilst taking a very deep breath.
"Si vulgaire!" The Frenchman shouted scornfully, "Est-ce ainsi que vous traitez un homme qui a toutes les informations dont vous rêvez?"
Though the majority of the crowd remained stiff with terror, a few particularly parasitic reporters did step forth and brave the hungry customer alongside the Frenchman, emboldened by the tongue-lashing he had given them.
Nodding like a satisfied parent, the Frenchman turned his head back to its normal position, emitting a string of pops along the way.
"Mes excuses les plus sincères, monsieur," he said with a humble bow, extending his arms out serve his customer, ignoring the massive explosion sounding in the background not fifty feet away in favor of his ticket to riches... "Amusez-vous."
"Vielen Dank." Arthur replied gratefully, almost thankful for the delay in service as it enabled him to catch finally catch his breath.
Reaching out to take his hard-earned drink, the Cannibal also ignored the loud creaking sound which only seemed to get louder and louder, until he was reluctantly forced to look up with the bottle held between his lips. His face darkened with dread, shoulders dropping to a sag as a colossal shadow cast over the crowd and the French savior before him. Realizing what was about to happen within a matter of nanoseconds, Arthur began to scream frantically, realizing one drink wasn't enough. "NEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!" All the while the Frenchman also screamed frantically, not because he was about to lose his life to a falling skyscraper, shaken loose from its foundation and was so tall that, in its descent it fell over the border separating France from Allure City.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!"
Ignoring the two men's pleas of denial, Arthur who was standing few inches out of the skyscraper's path of descent, instead had his bottle of aquafina sliced in half by a splinter of support beam, depriving him of half his drink that went spilling onto his sweater and pants. A pico-second later, and the onlookers, reporters, the Frenchman, and his vending stand were all crushed, creating an explosion of blood, gore, shards of bone, bratwurst, sauerkrat, aquafina, twirly mustache hair, mic and camera lens, blowing against his face with a fine helping of dust.
"AHAGH!"
"SCHEISSE!" The Cannibal bitched with vocally strained fury. "SCHEISSE, SCHEISSE, SCHEISSE!"
This was the worst day of his life. The absolute worst. He hadn't gotten enough fucking water. He didn't even get to savor a single bite of the goddamn hot dog before Frenchy went splat. The only way he was going to get water now as if he walked back over to that tent where Stinky sat stuffing his fatass.
“Ugh… Ich mochte zuruck in die Holle gehen….” Came the words of a defeated man dragging himself back to the tent, following the scent of blood, horrifying body odor, and… food!?
Hesitating whilst looking dreadfully at the plume, Arthur knew, deep down in his putrefying lungs, gut, and stomach, deep down he knew that his journey was not over yet, that he had but one more trial to endure. He could practically see the darkness of Philippe’s stench swirling around the tent like an evil vortex of doom, threatening to swallow him whole if he got too close, just like those poor soldiers had been ravenously consumed minutes earlier.
Poor bastards, Arthur thought, they had to smell his insides.
Coughing his way through dust and stench, blood and cracked pavement, Arthur somehow made it back inside the tent, where an unfazed Philippe sat gorging on treats from General Heinzmann’s personal mini-fridge. The Cannibal nearly gagged when he took in the mixed scent of food and hellish body odor, falling forward only to catch himself on the Count’s shoulder, where he unleashed yet another violent fit, saliva churning about in his throat as he struggled onward. Pushing off the French fuck, Arthur slammed against a shelf housing a Mobius Corp gas mask, almost toppling the thing over as he struggled to grab the thing and pull it over his face.
Turning around, Arthur gave Philippe a heaving sideways glance, wondering how the overweight Count couldn’t smell his own hazardous odor. It seemed he was too busy chowing down to really care, let alone notice the Cannibal’s bewildering gaze. Deciding it was best to wave it off, Arthur moved over to the refrigerator, acquiring a carton of milk along with some of Heinzmann’s favorite gourmet chocolate chip cookies and sat down directly across from Philippe.
Lifting the mask very carefully so as only to expose his mouth, Arthur bit into his cookie, staring cautiously at Philippe and back down at his snack protectively.
“Guten Tag.”
Allure City
Eddie’s reply came rather short. “It is an attack on my business, Samurai!” The hulking alien backhanded a skyscraper behind him on the vampire’s mental command, shattering the glass and crushing the inhabitants inside. “Are you going to reimburse me for my losses?” The Allure citizens whose bodies had been transformed to servants of the dead growled with a dreadful hunger that could not be abated.
Unwilling to await his response, as he knew the Warrior was just hurling veiled threats at him, and not quite expecting either him or Merse to pay him what they owed, Eddie commenced his assault on the army below. It began with the roots he had spawned earlier, drinking up sewer water which was toxified by the spreading of tainted energy throughout them, spraying the metallic soldiers in a deluge of highly corrosive water that crackled with blightful energy. Meanwhile, the much larger roots rose like a great thousand-digit hand and slammed itself down atop the warriors, crushing some whilst smearing itself across the streets, crashing through the beams of yet more buildings, and causing just that much more destruction.
Throughout his wretched act of wanton carnage, Eddie kept his vampiric gaze fixed on Claine, and an eerie aura began to emanate from them, one capable of bringing even the strongest of men and women under his control.
***
The Golden boy was very close to Granstrum now. His golden body could feel the electricity in the air, his fist slamming into a support beam of the building Merse was standing on, and whom he so conveniently decided to ignore running straight at him. Goldman went on a rampage, golden knuckles caving in the skulls of every employee who got in his way, or just so happened to be in his line of sight, splattering the walls with blood and bone fragments as the roof collapsed ontop of him. This was all fine and good for Goldman though, for he just powered through the destruction as he always did, exploding out through one of the windows.
Landing in the streets, Goldman drove his fingers through the pavement, curling them around a manhole cover and tearing it free, meanwhile using a strong electromagnetic current to uproot another manhole cover at the opposite end of the street. Without a moment’s pause or hesitation Goldman spun the covers in both hands, charging them with lining whilst sharpening their edges. Then he flung the two destructo discs up through the building at curving angles, one threatening to cut Merse off at the point right above his knees, while the other was aimed at his torso, both attacks aimed to chop the Catman down to size.
Lastly, if that attack didn’t work, well let’s just say Goldman’s body could hold a massive charge, and right now he was being pulled via magnetic attraction, set on a crash course Merse at an angle that would set him to emerge through the building directly below his feet, the whole of his body compacted tightly to give him the striking force of a golden cannon ball.
***
Thomas watched in a combination of shock and adrenaline-suppressed horror as Jacknathema survived both the heat and concussive force behind the colossal pipe-bomb explosion. This thing was proving itself to be one helluva monster, but just like the Dreadnaught that had attacked Monterrey, this mutant abomination would also perish. Remembering his time inside the whale, and recalling the devastating aftermath that left the entire Sahara Desert a radioactive wasteland, Thomas contacted Alice through his psi-emitter.
“Summerson!” Came the first contact. The lieutenant and Agron’s minds were in perfect synchronization with each other, so when Merse activated his magical matter-deletion spell, the purple energy powering the circle rushed directly into the earth spirit’s runes, a surge of ethereal blue flames representing its will to live flared out from within, shielding them both from the threat of annihilation while containing the energy powering that threat. “I need you to call in an anti-matter strike on my exact location!” Without the slightest degree of hesitation, Thomas separated his right hand from his USP and reached for his riot baton, firing the gun with at Jacknathema several times on direct subconscious orders from Agron, trusting the golem not to lead him astray. Thus when the Val’gara belched fire at Thomas, so too did he unleash a concentrated barrage of Merse’s magic, eradicating the flames in his path whilst slinging the baton he had just grabbed down toward the planet’s core.
“What, are you cra--!” Alice screamed, flabbergasted, only to be cut off by Thomas.
“Just shut the fuck up and do it!” He snapped angrily he felt the core temperature around him suddenly sky-rocket, only to suddenly, and seemingly inexplicably plummet back down to survivable levels. When Thomas flung his baton, containing Agron’s essence, the Earthen shape-shifter not only expanded the area around the Operative, lessening his exposure to the deadly heat, but it slowed the movement of molecules to such a degree that it induced a chill. Like a swollen vein losing its supply of oxygen, the tunnel leading to Earth’s core paled to an icy blue as the vaporized moisture contained within the earth condensed and precipitated along the walls, forming a crystalline outline.
“Lastly,” He was cut off by his own roar of pain as Jacknathema impaled him through the rib-cages, their bones fusing together as he listened to the ex-Herald’s wrathful shouting, rage starting to overwhelm his own mind. “USE THE PSI-EMITTER SATELLITES TO REINFORCE BOTH MINE” the Red Aura, Agron’s offensive spiritual essence flooded the entirety of his exoskeleton, invading Jacknathema’s body where it held him in a vice-grip, taking advantage of the gravity well to ensure its grip remained solid, “AND THIS MOTHERFUCKER’S SOULS!” He was practically frothing at the mouth, eyes rolling into the back of his skull as the strain of Agron’s runes containing Merse’s magic and the physical pain of being skewered melted into a volatile cocktail of agony, the Operative slamming his head furiously against Jacknathema’s own, cracking both their reinforced skulls wide open. The blow he delivered was not just a physical one though, not by a longshot, given that this was a spiritually based attack, it very much served to give the monster an extreme migraine, whilst the vice-grip Agron held on Jacknathema’s body tightened as it spread its essence farther out, increasing the strength of its Red Aura. This had a secondary effect of straining Jacknathema’s q-cells, or at least restricting their ability to adapt to the follow-up headbutt containing Merse’s matter-destroying magic, literally oversaturating them by way of an overbearing assault. Without realizing it, Thomas Balvice was pushing the boundaries of Anathema’s reactive adaptation, but it came at a cost, for he was also pushing the boundaries of Agron’s ability to withstand a power made to destroy matter by tightly syncing their minds together.
The satellites hovering over Allure City aligned together in a triangular formation. “Alice I want you to get out of Allure City now CALL IN A BEACON, DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO, BUT GET OUT!”
“YOU’RE RIGHT!” Thomas roared back, frothy spit hurling against Jacknathema’s face. “WE ARE GOING TO ATONE FOR OUR SINS! BOTH OF US!”
In that instance, a beam of invisible psionic energy penetrated the atmosphere at the speed of light, the electromagnetic phenomenon causing the clouds in the sky to briefly darken as a faint outline of transparent cobalt breached the earth. With both Thomas and Jacknathema nearing their physical limitations, and with the latter so hellbent on consuming the Operative in its fiery wrath, it seemed only natural albeit eerily so that his resolve would seem to multiply tenfold. Such was the consequences of the psi-emitter reinforcing the Val’gara’s willpower, the same effect occurring within Thomas’ head, infecting their very souls with the raw, unbridled desire to dominate each other, and so it would be that the sui generis of what made the two combatants was preserved.
Twenty years ago, the Red Technocracy dropped anti-matter bombs on Dreadnaught in a desperate attempt at wiping the beast out, and most of North Africa now paid the price; living in a hideous state of genetic mutation spurred by both cancer as well as the Vesuvian Virus. Tribal warfare was fueled, using weapons man was never meant to possess, let alone by bushmen of all people. To drop a bomb yielding this amount of destructive force was not just to invite a radioactive fallout, it was to invite a political one, but goddamnit if Thomas wasn’t willing to be placed in prison or potentially even executed if it meant he could take out the Val’gara scum. Fortunately, Mobius Corps had developed irradiation technology that could clean scrub away the radioactive fallout in a matter of hours, possibly even minutes if they reacted quickly enough. Now that weapon was to be used again, called in by the ex-cop turned black ops agent and international criminal investigator.
Despite his hatred of the creature before him, something in the back of his mind told him to listen to its words, to do what he was best at, and that was to investigate and uncover the truth behind them. Thus when the anti-matter capsule was launched from an orbital rail-gun via satellite, exploded through the atmosphere in a storm of fire, breached the electro-psionically charged clouds, and powered through the noxious plume of smoke, dust, ash, and soot that Thomas failed to fear for his life.
Thomas was going to a better place.
Jack and Anathema were both going to go to a better place.
They were all going to a better place of closure.
The capsule opened as entered several miles into the planet’s core, catching up with the Thomas and Jacknathema, triggering a chain reaction of protons, neutrons, electrons, positrons, neutrinos, atoms, molecules, cells, and more matter that was considered to be more tangible like the dirt sitting atop Allure City’s bedrock. The grass which grew from that dirt and the skyscrapers which sat atop the pavement that had been laid over all of it. Everything erupted in an explosion which annihilated everything in its path, Thomas made sure that the Val’garan would be unable to resist it, at least on a physical scale, not by overpowering him, but by narrowing his the adaptive range of his q-cells, forcing them to divide their attention. Using the psi-emitters to empower Jacknathema’s will served hyper-focus his aggression on Thomas and Thomas only, distracting him from the threat looming above.
Goldman got flung for miles by the resulting shock-wave, Eddie who was farther out felt the fabric of matter itself disintegrating and annihilating from a distance. Who knew what would possibly happen to Merse who was right before the blast.
In the meantime however, Thomas, Agron, Jack, and Anathema, whose bodies were completely obliterated now dwelt in a plane beyond the physical. Gradually an ocean of light coalesced around the four souls, the light bending and refracting until a room with a one-way mirror framed by the bones of a human skeleton sat behind Thomas who was now seated in a chair across from Jacknathema, his hands cuffed to the underside of a table made of the very same material. The whole room was like one big skeletal interrogation room with two clocks on the walls above each person's head, the clock itself having metacarpals in place of standard hour and minute hands.
Presently, the clock showed 11:55pm, and Thomas knew that he was short on time. This stunt he had just pulled would not hold up for long. Somehow, without seeing how he had resisted the process of creation and destruction, he knew this beast would break free, for its anger, its rage, was not all that dissimilar from Thomas’ own, thus making him an insurmountable threat.
“It’s time you and I have ourselves a talk.” Thomas said bluntly and directly.
“Who the hell are you, and WHY do you keep calling me a murderer!?”
Truthfully, Thomas didn’t fully understand why he was even asking these questions, but he was determined to uncover the answer.All he knew that was this thing knew something about him, something very secret, something only he should know.
“Tu ne vois pas que je profite d'un repas, paysan?!” He shrieked, his jowls wagged like the mediterranean tide, and spittle flew like a sea mist spray.
“Votre présence ici est une insulte pour tous. Va-t'en en train de japper Chihuahua!” Count Bourgeois flicked his wrist, shooing off Arthur dismissively with his ham-sized hands.
The veins in Arthur's eyes filled to blood-shot crimson, his windpipe swelling in a banal attempt at barricading his lungs from further infiltration against the genuinely disturbing smell. Every syllable the glutton spat at him felt like a stink-bullet that was aimed directly up his nostrils, set to drill its way up through his nasal cavity and bury itself inside his brain, putrefying it to the point that it dissolved and transformed his skull into a toxic soup bowl that not even plague rats would drink from.
It was the worst kind of decadence. The Gluttons of Hell reeked less than Philippe!
He inhaled, about sling another flurry of insults at Philippe when--
Unable to continue his train of thought, Arthur began to gag uncontrollably, and that uncontrollable gagging escalated led a violent coughing fit. "Ahagh! Ahagh, ahagh, ahagh... hagh...!" Breathing in had doomed him to a disorienting dose of Philippe's malodorous emissions. He had to get it out of his system, somehow, anyhow! Scrambling his failing brain for an answer, Arthur thought: Water... He needed WATER! The Cannibal desperately scanned his surroundings. First he looked over to Allure City, thinking he could find a street-fountain or outdoor vendor selling bottled water, only to realize it was at least several miles from the Mobius camp. Furthermore, he was low on energy, and hadn't gotten the chance to consume a single good meal since getting out of Gluttony--no thanks to Philippe charging into the tent like an obese grizzly bear, chowing down on Heinzmann and all the other soldiers, and effectively jacking all the food in the refrigerator. Lastly, the billowing plume of smoke and fire rising up through the clouds did not bode well for his quest within the city.
"Ahagh! Ahagh, ahagh!-hagh!-HAAAAAAAAGH!" Tears welled up in his eyes as he looked over to the nearby ocean and briefly considered drinking the water. The salt in the air stung his nostrils, and burned his already irritated tear-ducts, and it was precisely that sensation which alerted Arthur to how dumb that plan was. If he drank the sea-water he'd dehydrate himself, becoming that much thirstier, and the last thing he needed right now was to suffer another hallucination like the one that bastard golem had given him.
It was at this point, when all hope for a stench-cleansing refreshment drink seemed lost, that Arthur turned around and saw the light lying just beyond the base's perimeter fence. A fat Frenchman with a curly mustache, dressed in a black-striped shirt, long dark pants, and leather shoes manned a vending stand which served reporters, tourists, and residential locals looking to get a glimpse at that which had replaced their neighbor to the southwest. The vendor had a particularly satisfied look on his face, clearly proud of himself for being able to take advantage of the atrocity wrought by Merse Granstrum, nodding with wholehearted agreement to the message being broadcast by Margaret through the radio on the edge of his stand.
Despite being over two-hundred feet away from the fence, Arthur's supernatural hearing enabled him to hear all of Margaret's words. Not that he cared, though. The only thing concerning the Cannibal was purging his nose, mouth, and stomach of Philippe's deadly odor.
"Wasser..." Arthur groaned haggardly, stumbling across the base like a victim of one of Mobius' top interrogators.
Progressing back passed the tent where that damnable count was surely feeding on something--probably one of the K9s who had rushed into the tent to aid their masters, Arthur instantly clenched his nose between his thumb and index as tight as he could without breaking it, terrified of what another whiff from Philippe might do to him.
"AHAG...EEEEEHUUUHNNNNGGG!" Out came another cough, this one making him honk like a goose with a bass violin stuffed halfway down its throat.
HONK HONK HONK!
Exhausted, but nearing the fence, Arthur's coughing fits somehow paid off. The Frenchman both heard and saw his distress, and was twirling his mustache with predatory greed. He knew that if he could serve this desperate man, who stood on the right side of the fence, surely full of information about Allure City, that he would have all the reporters trampling each other to get to his cart. Like the self-proclaimed genius he thought himself to be, he devised that he would feed this one man for free all day, in exchange for him keeping silent about any Intel he may have possessed.
And the cost for an interview with the hungry man demanded a purchase from his stand!
"Je suis un génie!" The Frenchman proclaimed quietly.
Fast as lightning, the Frenchman practically blinked in front of the fence, and in doing so nearly made Arthur, who was merely three feet from the fence at this point, flinch and stumble backwards.
"Bon après-midi monsieur!" came the thick accent, cracking ever-so-slightly at the end, "Prendre soin d'une aquafina? Bratwurst et souerkraut?"
While relieved at the sight of food and drink, Arthur couldn't help but arc a brow at the vendor, whose demoniacal grin nearly rivaled Philippe's smell in its disturbing nature. The way his cheeks were raised to make the bags on his eyes rest upwards, his teeth glinting like they had just been brushed with white polish... For a moment, he wondered if he didn't remember the man standing in line before King Minos... I'm not still in Hell am I? With help from the delectable scent of sauerkraut, he snapped his mind out the delirium, shoved the thought out of his conscience, and stepped forward to grab the fence in a prying position.
Tearing the wires apart like poorly sewn sheet fabric, Arthur stepped forward, causing the Frenchman as well as the rest of the crowd of onlookers to leap back, but not too far back for Frenchy. "Oh mon! Un client affamé en effet!"
Gleeful as all hell, the man quickly overcame his fear, stepping forward again to present the man his meal. A brief delay in service occurred when the Frenchman noticed just how much farther the crowd had leaped away from Arthur than he had, to which his neck head seemed to unrealistically twist and stretch around, a scowl marking his expression whilst taking a very deep breath.
"Si vulgaire!" The Frenchman shouted scornfully, "Est-ce ainsi que vous traitez un homme qui a toutes les informations dont vous rêvez?"
Though the majority of the crowd remained stiff with terror, a few particularly parasitic reporters did step forth and brave the hungry customer alongside the Frenchman, emboldened by the tongue-lashing he had given them.
Nodding like a satisfied parent, the Frenchman turned his head back to its normal position, emitting a string of pops along the way.
"Mes excuses les plus sincères, monsieur," he said with a humble bow, extending his arms out serve his customer, ignoring the massive explosion sounding in the background not fifty feet away in favor of his ticket to riches... "Amusez-vous."
"Vielen Dank." Arthur replied gratefully, almost thankful for the delay in service as it enabled him to catch finally catch his breath.
Reaching out to take his hard-earned drink, the Cannibal also ignored the loud creaking sound which only seemed to get louder and louder, until he was reluctantly forced to look up with the bottle held between his lips. His face darkened with dread, shoulders dropping to a sag as a colossal shadow cast over the crowd and the French savior before him. Realizing what was about to happen within a matter of nanoseconds, Arthur began to scream frantically, realizing one drink wasn't enough. "NEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!" All the while the Frenchman also screamed frantically, not because he was about to lose his life to a falling skyscraper, shaken loose from its foundation and was so tall that, in its descent it fell over the border separating France from Allure City.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!"
Ignoring the two men's pleas of denial, Arthur who was standing few inches out of the skyscraper's path of descent, instead had his bottle of aquafina sliced in half by a splinter of support beam, depriving him of half his drink that went spilling onto his sweater and pants. A pico-second later, and the onlookers, reporters, the Frenchman, and his vending stand were all crushed, creating an explosion of blood, gore, shards of bone, bratwurst, sauerkrat, aquafina, twirly mustache hair, mic and camera lens, blowing against his face with a fine helping of dust.
"AHAGH!"
"SCHEISSE!" The Cannibal bitched with vocally strained fury. "SCHEISSE, SCHEISSE, SCHEISSE!"
This was the worst day of his life. The absolute worst. He hadn't gotten enough fucking water. He didn't even get to savor a single bite of the goddamn hot dog before Frenchy went splat. The only way he was going to get water now as if he walked back over to that tent where Stinky sat stuffing his fatass.
“Ugh… Ich mochte zuruck in die Holle gehen….” Came the words of a defeated man dragging himself back to the tent, following the scent of blood, horrifying body odor, and… food!?
Hesitating whilst looking dreadfully at the plume, Arthur knew, deep down in his putrefying lungs, gut, and stomach, deep down he knew that his journey was not over yet, that he had but one more trial to endure. He could practically see the darkness of Philippe’s stench swirling around the tent like an evil vortex of doom, threatening to swallow him whole if he got too close, just like those poor soldiers had been ravenously consumed minutes earlier.
Poor bastards, Arthur thought, they had to smell his insides.
Coughing his way through dust and stench, blood and cracked pavement, Arthur somehow made it back inside the tent, where an unfazed Philippe sat gorging on treats from General Heinzmann’s personal mini-fridge. The Cannibal nearly gagged when he took in the mixed scent of food and hellish body odor, falling forward only to catch himself on the Count’s shoulder, where he unleashed yet another violent fit, saliva churning about in his throat as he struggled onward. Pushing off the French fuck, Arthur slammed against a shelf housing a Mobius Corp gas mask, almost toppling the thing over as he struggled to grab the thing and pull it over his face.
Turning around, Arthur gave Philippe a heaving sideways glance, wondering how the overweight Count couldn’t smell his own hazardous odor. It seemed he was too busy chowing down to really care, let alone notice the Cannibal’s bewildering gaze. Deciding it was best to wave it off, Arthur moved over to the refrigerator, acquiring a carton of milk along with some of Heinzmann’s favorite gourmet chocolate chip cookies and sat down directly across from Philippe.
Lifting the mask very carefully so as only to expose his mouth, Arthur bit into his cookie, staring cautiously at Philippe and back down at his snack protectively.
“Guten Tag.”
Allure City
Eddie’s reply came rather short. “It is an attack on my business, Samurai!” The hulking alien backhanded a skyscraper behind him on the vampire’s mental command, shattering the glass and crushing the inhabitants inside. “Are you going to reimburse me for my losses?” The Allure citizens whose bodies had been transformed to servants of the dead growled with a dreadful hunger that could not be abated.
Unwilling to await his response, as he knew the Warrior was just hurling veiled threats at him, and not quite expecting either him or Merse to pay him what they owed, Eddie commenced his assault on the army below. It began with the roots he had spawned earlier, drinking up sewer water which was toxified by the spreading of tainted energy throughout them, spraying the metallic soldiers in a deluge of highly corrosive water that crackled with blightful energy. Meanwhile, the much larger roots rose like a great thousand-digit hand and slammed itself down atop the warriors, crushing some whilst smearing itself across the streets, crashing through the beams of yet more buildings, and causing just that much more destruction.
Throughout his wretched act of wanton carnage, Eddie kept his vampiric gaze fixed on Claine, and an eerie aura began to emanate from them, one capable of bringing even the strongest of men and women under his control.
***
The Golden boy was very close to Granstrum now. His golden body could feel the electricity in the air, his fist slamming into a support beam of the building Merse was standing on, and whom he so conveniently decided to ignore running straight at him. Goldman went on a rampage, golden knuckles caving in the skulls of every employee who got in his way, or just so happened to be in his line of sight, splattering the walls with blood and bone fragments as the roof collapsed ontop of him. This was all fine and good for Goldman though, for he just powered through the destruction as he always did, exploding out through one of the windows.
Landing in the streets, Goldman drove his fingers through the pavement, curling them around a manhole cover and tearing it free, meanwhile using a strong electromagnetic current to uproot another manhole cover at the opposite end of the street. Without a moment’s pause or hesitation Goldman spun the covers in both hands, charging them with lining whilst sharpening their edges. Then he flung the two destructo discs up through the building at curving angles, one threatening to cut Merse off at the point right above his knees, while the other was aimed at his torso, both attacks aimed to chop the Catman down to size.
Lastly, if that attack didn’t work, well let’s just say Goldman’s body could hold a massive charge, and right now he was being pulled via magnetic attraction, set on a crash course Merse at an angle that would set him to emerge through the building directly below his feet, the whole of his body compacted tightly to give him the striking force of a golden cannon ball.
***
Thomas watched in a combination of shock and adrenaline-suppressed horror as Jacknathema survived both the heat and concussive force behind the colossal pipe-bomb explosion. This thing was proving itself to be one helluva monster, but just like the Dreadnaught that had attacked Monterrey, this mutant abomination would also perish. Remembering his time inside the whale, and recalling the devastating aftermath that left the entire Sahara Desert a radioactive wasteland, Thomas contacted Alice through his psi-emitter.
“Summerson!” Came the first contact. The lieutenant and Agron’s minds were in perfect synchronization with each other, so when Merse activated his magical matter-deletion spell, the purple energy powering the circle rushed directly into the earth spirit’s runes, a surge of ethereal blue flames representing its will to live flared out from within, shielding them both from the threat of annihilation while containing the energy powering that threat. “I need you to call in an anti-matter strike on my exact location!” Without the slightest degree of hesitation, Thomas separated his right hand from his USP and reached for his riot baton, firing the gun with at Jacknathema several times on direct subconscious orders from Agron, trusting the golem not to lead him astray. Thus when the Val’gara belched fire at Thomas, so too did he unleash a concentrated barrage of Merse’s magic, eradicating the flames in his path whilst slinging the baton he had just grabbed down toward the planet’s core.
“What, are you cra--!” Alice screamed, flabbergasted, only to be cut off by Thomas.
“Just shut the fuck up and do it!” He snapped angrily he felt the core temperature around him suddenly sky-rocket, only to suddenly, and seemingly inexplicably plummet back down to survivable levels. When Thomas flung his baton, containing Agron’s essence, the Earthen shape-shifter not only expanded the area around the Operative, lessening his exposure to the deadly heat, but it slowed the movement of molecules to such a degree that it induced a chill. Like a swollen vein losing its supply of oxygen, the tunnel leading to Earth’s core paled to an icy blue as the vaporized moisture contained within the earth condensed and precipitated along the walls, forming a crystalline outline.
“Lastly,” He was cut off by his own roar of pain as Jacknathema impaled him through the rib-cages, their bones fusing together as he listened to the ex-Herald’s wrathful shouting, rage starting to overwhelm his own mind. “USE THE PSI-EMITTER SATELLITES TO REINFORCE BOTH MINE” the Red Aura, Agron’s offensive spiritual essence flooded the entirety of his exoskeleton, invading Jacknathema’s body where it held him in a vice-grip, taking advantage of the gravity well to ensure its grip remained solid, “AND THIS MOTHERFUCKER’S SOULS!” He was practically frothing at the mouth, eyes rolling into the back of his skull as the strain of Agron’s runes containing Merse’s magic and the physical pain of being skewered melted into a volatile cocktail of agony, the Operative slamming his head furiously against Jacknathema’s own, cracking both their reinforced skulls wide open. The blow he delivered was not just a physical one though, not by a longshot, given that this was a spiritually based attack, it very much served to give the monster an extreme migraine, whilst the vice-grip Agron held on Jacknathema’s body tightened as it spread its essence farther out, increasing the strength of its Red Aura. This had a secondary effect of straining Jacknathema’s q-cells, or at least restricting their ability to adapt to the follow-up headbutt containing Merse’s matter-destroying magic, literally oversaturating them by way of an overbearing assault. Without realizing it, Thomas Balvice was pushing the boundaries of Anathema’s reactive adaptation, but it came at a cost, for he was also pushing the boundaries of Agron’s ability to withstand a power made to destroy matter by tightly syncing their minds together.
The satellites hovering over Allure City aligned together in a triangular formation. “Alice I want you to get out of Allure City now CALL IN A BEACON, DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO, BUT GET OUT!”
“YOU’RE RIGHT!” Thomas roared back, frothy spit hurling against Jacknathema’s face. “WE ARE GOING TO ATONE FOR OUR SINS! BOTH OF US!”
In that instance, a beam of invisible psionic energy penetrated the atmosphere at the speed of light, the electromagnetic phenomenon causing the clouds in the sky to briefly darken as a faint outline of transparent cobalt breached the earth. With both Thomas and Jacknathema nearing their physical limitations, and with the latter so hellbent on consuming the Operative in its fiery wrath, it seemed only natural albeit eerily so that his resolve would seem to multiply tenfold. Such was the consequences of the psi-emitter reinforcing the Val’gara’s willpower, the same effect occurring within Thomas’ head, infecting their very souls with the raw, unbridled desire to dominate each other, and so it would be that the sui generis of what made the two combatants was preserved.
Twenty years ago, the Red Technocracy dropped anti-matter bombs on Dreadnaught in a desperate attempt at wiping the beast out, and most of North Africa now paid the price; living in a hideous state of genetic mutation spurred by both cancer as well as the Vesuvian Virus. Tribal warfare was fueled, using weapons man was never meant to possess, let alone by bushmen of all people. To drop a bomb yielding this amount of destructive force was not just to invite a radioactive fallout, it was to invite a political one, but goddamnit if Thomas wasn’t willing to be placed in prison or potentially even executed if it meant he could take out the Val’gara scum. Fortunately, Mobius Corps had developed irradiation technology that could clean scrub away the radioactive fallout in a matter of hours, possibly even minutes if they reacted quickly enough. Now that weapon was to be used again, called in by the ex-cop turned black ops agent and international criminal investigator.
Despite his hatred of the creature before him, something in the back of his mind told him to listen to its words, to do what he was best at, and that was to investigate and uncover the truth behind them. Thus when the anti-matter capsule was launched from an orbital rail-gun via satellite, exploded through the atmosphere in a storm of fire, breached the electro-psionically charged clouds, and powered through the noxious plume of smoke, dust, ash, and soot that Thomas failed to fear for his life.
Thomas was going to a better place.
Jack and Anathema were both going to go to a better place.
They were all going to a better place of closure.
The capsule opened as entered several miles into the planet’s core, catching up with the Thomas and Jacknathema, triggering a chain reaction of protons, neutrons, electrons, positrons, neutrinos, atoms, molecules, cells, and more matter that was considered to be more tangible like the dirt sitting atop Allure City’s bedrock. The grass which grew from that dirt and the skyscrapers which sat atop the pavement that had been laid over all of it. Everything erupted in an explosion which annihilated everything in its path, Thomas made sure that the Val’garan would be unable to resist it, at least on a physical scale, not by overpowering him, but by narrowing his the adaptive range of his q-cells, forcing them to divide their attention. Using the psi-emitters to empower Jacknathema’s will served hyper-focus his aggression on Thomas and Thomas only, distracting him from the threat looming above.
Goldman got flung for miles by the resulting shock-wave, Eddie who was farther out felt the fabric of matter itself disintegrating and annihilating from a distance. Who knew what would possibly happen to Merse who was right before the blast.
In the meantime however, Thomas, Agron, Jack, and Anathema, whose bodies were completely obliterated now dwelt in a plane beyond the physical. Gradually an ocean of light coalesced around the four souls, the light bending and refracting until a room with a one-way mirror framed by the bones of a human skeleton sat behind Thomas who was now seated in a chair across from Jacknathema, his hands cuffed to the underside of a table made of the very same material. The whole room was like one big skeletal interrogation room with two clocks on the walls above each person's head, the clock itself having metacarpals in place of standard hour and minute hands.
Presently, the clock showed 11:55pm, and Thomas knew that he was short on time. This stunt he had just pulled would not hold up for long. Somehow, without seeing how he had resisted the process of creation and destruction, he knew this beast would break free, for its anger, its rage, was not all that dissimilar from Thomas’ own, thus making him an insurmountable threat.
“It’s time you and I have ourselves a talk.” Thomas said bluntly and directly.
“Who the hell are you, and WHY do you keep calling me a murderer!?”
Truthfully, Thomas didn’t fully understand why he was even asking these questions, but he was determined to uncover the answer.All he knew that was this thing knew something about him, something very secret, something only he should know.