ArchivedLogs:Vignette - High Noon

Vignette - High Noon
Dramatis Personae Tatters
In Absentia	2013-11-18 Tatters briefly emerges into the light of day to punch some things. A three-way showdown occurs.
Location NYC Streets
It was noon. The street was mostly deserted. A scattered bundle of newspaper bounced and floated past, like a tumbleweed. Tatters' eyes narrowed, and within her, something shifted; a flex of some ad-hoc muscle manipulated a scavenged iPod until an appropriately mournful horn began to sound off in her submerged ears. It's not good to talk to people, in a place like this. But that doesn't mean you can't keep your ears busy. A hundred paces down the street, the Hound's maw worked, noxious drool burning a small cigarette mark in the pavement. It was huge, but so was Tatters. They were the last two left in the city, by anyone's reckoning: with food scarce, the only creatures who could eat Hound-flesh safely had made due with what they could. Tatters was the better hunter, but the Hound was more willing to munch the occasional zombie, or survivor. At the third corner of the intersection, the Humvee's engine rumbled as it sat idle. It's gunner narrowed his eyes as he swept his binoculars from one behemoth to the other, leaning on his machine gun as he muttered into his radio. His driver's fingers tapped nervously at the wheel. Tatter's sunken head swiveled to glance at the soldiers, overbuilt arms shifting to balance her current, top-heavy form, heavy, leathery mass grown up across her neck and shoulders like fleshy football pads. The Hound's slavering maw followed; there, those are people it can eat. But they've got that big noisy thing that hurts when they point it at you. Tatters and the Hound look back at each other. The soldier lowers his binoculars. Tatters' song ends. She flexes again and it restarts, a muffled melody emitting from little white earbuds just barely visible in her calloused armor. The Hound coils back on its haunches; the gunner's turret swivels. The sun bakes down on the pavement. The wind howls through the urban canyon. The Hound growls, Tatters flexes her fingers, the machine gun's gun...bit clacks back. Then the guitar bit comes in on Tatters song and everyone starts moving. Tatters lunges to the side and yanks a stop sign from the sidewalk with a metal-twisting wail, sliding behind a gutted sedan with surprising grace just as thunderous roar of machine-gun fine sprays in her direction. The Hound seizes the opportunity and leaps towards the Humvee, which lurches forwards into a noisy, tire-squealing skid across the abandoned intersection as the gunner brings his weapon back around. The Humvee powerslides by Tatters' hiding place with the Hound hot on its tail, spitting fire back along its path until Tatters sprints into the open and shoulder-checks its pursuer. The Hound roars and vomits a bucketful of acid into her face; she brains it with the stop sign. Things...continue in that vein for a little bit, as the Humvee parks itself a safe distance away, holding fire for the moment as its operators watch the two oversized mutants duke it out. There's a lot of punching and roaring and flailing, until eventually a rather burned and torn-up Tatters finishes beating the Hound about the head and shoulders with the bent, bitten-in-half remnants of her sign until it stops moving. Well, it twitches, and then she punches it again. There. Her burned, misshapen head looks up and catches the gaze of the gunner. She shrugs her oversized shoulders, and straightens into a hunched crouch, pointing at the tentacled carcass at her feet and jabbing a thumb over her shoulder. She's just gonna, like, head off, okay? The soldier shrugs back, weapon still aimed steady. Zombies don't usually do that, do they? Tatters gives him a thumbs up, then sets wearily off, dragging the tentacled carcass behind with her least mangled arm. Half a block down the road she's found a manhole, and spends the next few minutes trying to stuff the behemoth down it, having to stomp a few times to get its squamous, misshapen form through the opening. Eventually, she disappears after it. With a rumble, the Humvee drives off, the gunner giving a rather odd report over the radio. But whatever, it's not the weirdest thing that's happened in this city in the past week.