Saints without sparks (Ch. 2: Day 7, pt. II)

Diluss · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 1:04 pm

Coop appeared to be brought back out of his head by the appearance of the dog tags in front of his face. Conscious thought swam up into his eyes as he focused on the swinging pieces of metal. He blinked, and swallowed, and stared up at Rock's face as the monkey informed him of his failure.

Abruptly, his breath sped up. The eagle took one, two heavy breaths, and then swept his arm up across his chest, meeting the point where Rock's ankle was at the same that his other hand shot out at the monkey's other foot to sweep his feet out from under him. Following this movement, Coop grabbed again for the monkey's leg, at the knee, and—following the expected success of the grab, he lurched up, rolling onto his shoulder as he threw the monkey like a caber, over the fence and into the industrial swamp.

psikeout · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 1:49 pm

Pang.

Some hefty part of the monkey tagged the rail as he went over—quite possibly his head or shoulder—before he splashed down in the hideous mess of chemicals just below.

He had been a little too pleased with himself, and paid for it. With no desire to open his eyes in the noxious chemicals, he had the very unpleasant experience of sitting still in them for a moment to get his equilibrium, before swimming in the direction his inner ear told him was up.

When his (once white) head broke the surface a few seconds later, he was... none too happy looking, spitting and snorting corrosive-smelling, sour chemicals, dogtags still balled in his fist. He paddled quickly toward the nearest safe thing he could grab to pull himself out.

Diluss · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 2:43 pm

Coop, after a few moments of lying back down on the ground, sat up, unsteadily. There was a very definite problem somewhere; his peripheral vision swam with black and purple fog, and little beige squares exploded overhead in the sky.

He looked around, delicately, trying to track his environment through the storm of mental static, and heard distant splashing.

"Hggnhngnhn," he gurgled a faint laugh.

As he sat there, he drooped his head, and closed his eyes, and waited for the static to go away.

The splashing got nearer, and gradually Coop's vision returned to him. He looked up to see the monkey paddling towards a section of low walkway, some distance away.

Eyes still fixed on Rock, Coop grabbed around until his hand found the railing beside him. He pulled himself up, carefully.

"Beb," he called. He stopped, and cleared his throat.

"Bet it'll coss-ya to get that dry-cleaned," he said, meticulously announcing the words to make them clear through the evident slurring in his voice.

"Ackshully you be'er not," he went on, "all'm chemicals in your fur, you'd prolaly blow up."

He laughed again: "Hgngnhnhn."

psikeout · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 4:33 pm

As displeased as Rock was to be dragging himself out of a mysterious chemical bath, wearing a new pastel purple coat, he must have known deep down that he'd asked for it, because he didn't seem too incensed about it. Just... perturbed that it had happened at all.

While hanging onto the crossbeam of a metal framework surrounding some large chemical storage tank, he stuffed his tags into his pocket and started climbing and swinging his way across pipes and beams until he found a level platform to stop on not too far away.

Wait, no—the soggy monkey wasn't taking any pause to try to dry off or wring himself out. It looked like he was seeking then running the most direct path back to Coop. This involved some drippy slipping and sliding and a couple near falls on the slick metal (and some cussing as a result), but he was far from deterred.

Diluss · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 4:45 pm

The smile drained off of Coop's face.

"Hnghm," he said, "so. Congratulations. S—" he paused, and blinked, heavily "—sorry," he went on, "you won't be around for the party, but—" he stopped, and looked down.

"Hm," he said. He looked behind him, swaying slightly, casting about for something on the floor.

"Right," he said, and picked it up—leaning against the railing for support as he did so. It was the grenade launcher. It was the work of six or seven seconds—slow as Coop was—to change the shell out, but then he bore around and pointed the grenade launcher at Rock.

"Right," he said again, "don't move."

psikeout · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 6:33 pm

With how long it took Coop to get hs bearings and got the launcher loaded and leveled, Rock managed to get... uncomfortably close. But not so close that he could make a leap and count on not getting them both blown up. Ultimately, he skidded to a stop fifteen feet away.

Fifteen feet. Grenade launcher. But it did succeed in making him stop, whatever the case.

Rock lulled his head to the side; "Pretty close shot," he observed casually. "You still feelin' froggy, or you just lookin' for a way out?"

Diluss · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 9:45 pm

"I'll kill you," Coop said, flatly.

"You move and I'll pull this trigger."

He directed the barrel of the grenade launcher towards the ground just under Rock's feet. A thin, utterly humourless grin pulled at the sides of his mouth.

psikeout · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 10:32 pm

Rock gave Coop a sort of raised-browed, half-lidded, through-the-tops-of-his-eyes look that could only be described as saying homeboy, please.

"I been hit with grenades," said Rock, grinning. "Been in plane crashes, extravehicular atmospheric reentry, shot with a vulcan cannon, and I was ground zero in a nuclear explosion a couple months ago," he stated coolly. "I heal up sooner or later."

He lifted his foot and made a big, deliberate exhibition of stepping forward, essentially spitting into the winds of fate.

Diluss · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 10:43 pm

Coop brought the barrel up, and pulled the trigger. The grenade launcher hiccuped a blast of flames, and the grenade shot out of the muzzle with a pow. Deep inside the grenade, a very tiny, tiny safe-guard timer began to unwind, counting off the number of seconds before the grenade would explode. Ideally to prevent soldiers blowing their own arms off, it could make close-quarters combat tricky when your grenade bounced off the opposite wall with a harmless thud.

As the grenade sailed through the air, it counted off, roughly, in hundredths of a second: 9, 8, 7, 6, 5… it was this point that the grenade reached the distance of Rock's stomach.

psikeout · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 11:08 pm

*TUMP.*

Rock, struck by tremendous force, yet instinctually unyielding, slid backwards on the soles of his boots about a foot with the impact as the grenade hit. It actually bounced off in a warped and deformed shape and clattered audibly against the floor in a strained moment of silence after the impact.

The primate's face was dark with pain, his eyes wide, but shadowed by the stark artificial light as his head slowly lowered and his torso graaadually bended. His teeth were gritted, fists were balled, arms out from his hips, stance tensely wide. The singular hack of a hideously wet-sounding cough belatedly came out with a blast of spit onto the walkway, followed by a ragged, rattly inhalation, and an exhalation that sounded like nothing but the letter F.

In a raspy voice that sounded like he'd been smoking the last 80 years, he whispered:

"That's... a safety feature. ... Isn't it."

Diluss · Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:13 am

Coop's face was rock hard. He took out another grenade, popped open the back of the gun and reloaded it.

"I'm probably going to fall over by the end of the day," he said, his voice still laboured, and a little thick from the concussion of before, "and I'm probably going spend most of tomorrow throwing up, but right now I'm angry enough to keep standing, and don't think for a moment that I won't kill you. I will twist your head off if you don't stop messing around with me but not before I shoot you in the crotch so hard your teeth fall out so keep still!"

The eagle was incensed.

"Re-entry?" he went on, "Extravehicular—w—are you on the same crap your friend's on? Do they feed you stupid juice at whatever mental hospital they pulled you out of? What—what are you, some kind of cultist maniacs that GUN's hired to get back their bomb? You know," he said, abruptly, "exactly where we're hiding right now, and—right now—more people knowing where we are is exactly what I don't need. What I really, really want to do right now is spray-paint the wall with your head, but I need to know something, so, if you tell me, I'll stop hassling you. If you don't, I will keep on hassling you. You may be a better fighter than me, you may have a whole army of insane ninja robots on your side, you may be crazy, but I am just as crazy as you and I will follow you until one of us dies."

He paused, and took a breath.

"What," he said, "is that guy planning on doing, and how did a human learn to run like that?"

psikeout · Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 1:06 am

Rock had a history of not listening to and/or interrupting bad guy dialogue, but Coop's frankness must have struck an amiable chord, as, pained but attentive, he actually stood still and listened.

"Hoh. Wow. Where do I even start with this...?" asked Rock metaphorically, a little grunt still in his voice. (The muscly, veiny indentation where the grenade had hit was starting to refill itself, albeit with a lot of shades of inflamed redness, so he was still feeling pretty bad.)

"Okay, y'know, I don't normally explain myself to the crazies who go around blowin' stuff up, but." He paused and straightened up a little, but clenched one of his sides with his hand. "This needs clearin' up. First, before you go tinfoil-hat on me, know that I found you 'cause I was look-ing for you," he said, enunciating the two syllables of that key word as if it was something complicated.

He tugged his wet (but thank goodness mostly waterproof) shoulder-worn duffel bag a little forward under his arm and patted it illustratively. "Emerald popped on radar. Bam. I'm here. I'm on top'a %#*@ like that."

He pushed it back where it was, and shifted its weight for comfort once more. "Second," he continued, "I don't know that guy, and I damn well don't work for GUN, either. Nobody's got me on payroll; I just have contacts."

Mie · Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 7:12 pm

Entirely unaware of what she was walking into, Jam trudged back toward the point of divergence in she and Rock's two-pronged pursuit, looking decidedly worse in condition and demeanor than she had prior to leaving it. Her left cheek sported a lopsided, indigo blush and both her knees were scuffed and scraped; it was by far nothing more than a rambunctious child could come home with on any given day, and for all the attention she gave it, it might as well have been Halloween make-up, but it was still a different look for her.

As she mounted the urban summit of a utility tower, she was greeted with a lovely view of grated metal catwalks suspended over ominous vats of dubiously purposed super-villain-origin-caliber chemicals. The monkey she sought was conveniently on the walkway nearest to her accompanied by their terrorist eagle friend, whose known hobbies included stealing from the military, kidnapping little girls and carrying them around in duffel bags, and pointing grenade launchers at her boyfriend.

With absolutely no tactical analysis, but rubber-soled stealth, the pinker primate took a running leap off the tower's ledge, flying swiftly and silently at Coop's head, elbows first.

Diluss · Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 11:16 pm

"Contacts," repeated Coop, frowning darkly. "Those are some pretty close contacts you have. I don't care if they don't pay you," he went on with a scowl, "you've been right on their heels twice, now, and seeing as you're such nrk gnk."

He fell over.

psikeout · Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 11:30 pm

"Unexpected turn of events," conceded Rock gruntingly, albeit with an approving nod as he stepped toward the fallen bird. He pulled his phone out and started dialing, meanwhile adding, with genuine concern, "You look like $*^#. You okay?"

Saints without sparks (Ch. 2: Day 7, pt. II)

Who is online