ArchivedLogs:Finger Food
| Finger Food | |
|---|---|
And Masque goes digital | |
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
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2013-06-01 The Morlocks find the neighborhood is going to hell. (Part of Them! TP) |
| Location
<MOR> Welcome to the Freakshow | |
Wider and more spacious than many of the surrounding nooks and niches, this chill cavern is the central hub of the Morlock's underground network. With tunnels branching off in many directions, it takes a while to learn to /navigate/ from here to where you want to go, but there's generally plenty of more experienced people around to teach newcomers the ins and outs of the pathways. Here, though, is a safe place to come and relax, for what value of relaxation can be found among moss-covered walls and the occasional stagnant puddles on the floor. There's been furniture brought in, a mismatched assortment of crates, mattresses with busted springs, a few broken and subsequently repaired chairs, a folding table in a corner. Shelves along a wall hold entertainment; books, a smattering of board and card games, sometimes snacks. There's even electricity, wiring none too safe and visible in places where the wall has been broken open; the naked light bulbs flicker often and the lone outlet has had so many power strips attached it is undoubtedly a fire hazard. Crazy Jerry, they call him. Everyone knows Crazy Jerry. He even doesn't mind the nickname. 'Hey Jerry, you craycray.' 'Heh, yeah, I know...' His mutation of absorbing other people's memories sent him around the bend years ago, and he barely remembers who he is on the best days. He's a white guy in his 50's, waist-length, filthy dreadlocks, and dirty, ruined office clothes. He's even got a pocket protector, but all he's got is a weak, old pen light in it. Except, this morning, the pen light is gone. As is half his clothing. Ripped, or maybe slashed is a better description. He can be heard coming a long way down the tunnel, screaming interchangeably between incoherence, and the word '/monsters/!'. It looks like he's been running a long time, but then he's been in bad shape for a while. He bursts into the Morlock 'headquarters', trips, and skids on his front for about 5 feet before crashing into a couple of chairs which topple onto him. Jerry is panting and trying to extricate himself from the chair, wide-eyed, pure panic in his eyes. Anyone with an eye for the medical may notice the beginning of his trip down cardiac lane. It doesn't seem like anything is chasing him though. No obvious sounds, but then crazy as he is, Jerry has never had a 'panic attack' at this level before. Definitely cause for concern. Nox's presence in the tunnels has only been a recent thing. Time spent healing elsewhere means that she's only been making forays underground in the past few days. But it was time away well spent--the deep white streaks that lace her body have faded to a sickly grey. Her mood has been rather more somber than is typical but the warmth remains--she has spent this afternoon conferring with Annalee, with Callisto and with bouncing a boy of about two years of age--his body covered in gleaming black scales--on one knee while his mother looks fondly on. When Jerry's alarm goes up, her reaction to it comes faster than is usual--twitchy, she's been. Understandably so. The boy is pushed into his mother's arms and the woman likewise pushed to scurry off towards safe haven. While others scatter, Nox throws herself forward...and grows. Her strength has also been returning and the light in here is dim enough that it takes only seconds before woman has become shadowy scorpion-spider. A spider who /whisperhisses/: "...Knights!" It's not often Masque spends extended periods of time down here, and when he does, it's most often to avoid running into trouble. It should come as no surprise, then, when the hooded pile of red coat that is Masque's form sitting in one of the tunnels just adjacent to the central hub is less than eager to get up and go help whatever poor soul has gotten himself into a mess this time. But he does come. Dragging himself around a corner in something awful of a limp, just in time to see Nox take on the form of-- a scorpion. Great. Masque seems unimpressed, standing there wil hunched back and scrubbing a palm over his face as he eyes it, the eyebrow on the better side of his face raised to grate lowly, "What now." Anole has been in the tunnels pretty constantly since his release, hiding out. Reading books. Teaching some of the younger Morlocks to read books. But last night he vanished for the first time and only /now/ is he slinking back in -- a little /guiltily/ like he's been out past his nonexistant curfew. He's not dressed like he belongs in the tunnels, in a neat grey-black suit with faint sheen to it, green bowtie, black wingtip shoes -- though he's removed this last to leave his feet bare and rolled up the hems of his pants a good few inches to keep them clean for his trek home. The shoes are dangling from his fingers, and he is starting to creep his way up the wall towards his room when Jerry makes his appearance. His scuttling reverses direction, back towards the floor. "... what kind of monsters?" Regrowing a new foot is one of the few excuses a sewer knight can use for a little time off. Which is why Marrow has been in her room for a little R&R, if you can call chain smoking and listing to a 'Best of Metallica' CD on repeat R&R. She swaggers out from her room blinking at the light accompanied by a lingering stink of cheap tobacco. "This better be an honest to god monster," she snaps. "Or I'm breaking someones fingers." She's scrounged up another dirty leather jacket to replace the one she'd lost and some ragged jeans & t-shirts to go with it. And best of all? She's got both her feet! "B-b-BIG..." Is all Jerry manages to stammer out for the questions about his behavior. "Oh god, I touched one... /TOUCHED/" Jerry doesn't touch anyone because skin-contact triggers his mutation. "Get it OUT!" It would be a scream, except his strength as left him. It turns out Cardiac Lane isn't a through street. It's more of a cul-de-sac. Jerry's light snuffs out while he's clawing at his own scalp, trying to scoop out the horrible memories he absorbed today. Long bloody rakes show this wasn't his first try, but that's not what killed him. He has no visible grievous wounds, just some long scrapes and scratches, but nothing worse than that. It would seem he died of pure fright. It's suddenly very still in the room. This is broken by anyone with young scurrying away, or just anyone with sense enough to run away from sewer monsters. Then, bit by bit, the noise of the sewers returns, drip, DRIP, distant clang and rattle. The every day sounds of living underground. With no monsters immediately evident, Noxspider lifts segmented legs neatly to carry herself to Jerry. She's cautious of touching him as he writhes but more limbs are sprouted--each horrifyingly tipped with a human hand--in an attempt to soothe him, to clutch at sleeved arms, to calm. It doesn't work and he dies in her arms--all of them--without being able to help. Ambulances, sadly, do not come this far below, nor are any of them in the habit of calling for them. "Maybe real, maybe not," she whispers as she pats the deceased man's body down, searching for nonexistent wounds. Finding none, multiple eyes turn towards the tunnel he'd come through. She beckons, the last action of her hands before they disappear, and then skitters forward towards the tunnel's mouth. Masque moves, slowly, toward the mess of chairs, Nox and Jerry. As he passes them in dragging steps under that red coat, what can be seen of his face under the red hood screws into an expression of dismay when the last of the other man's life leaves him. No witty retorts in response to that, though Marrow is somewhat belatedly thrown a glare. "Nox." He calls then, not loud, but utterly demanding to make up for it. Sound down here travels easily, anyway. Nothing other than that. Like calling back a /dog/. "Oh!" It's a soft exclamation from Anole, when Jerry's clawing stops. He darts back down the wall, but stops short of the dead man, just eying the body with a growing frown. His head turns, looking away towards the passageway. Marrow's snapping makes him tuck his own hands into his pockets. Just in case. "... is it one of us?" He bites his lip, edging towards the tunnel after Noxspider but stopping abruptly at Masque's call. "I mean, he doesn't look /hurt/." Marrow yawns. "Hurt? Seems like he tried claw his head open... And now he's pretty dead looking," she says helpfully. "Some other fucker is cleaning that up.." She ducks back into her room and grabs a few things, slipping on a bone chest plate and hefting a vicious looking bone machete. "Looking well Masque, found someone to put your face back together for you it seems." The spider's forward momentum comes to a halt when her name is called. Nox turns, mandibles clicking with agitation. One of her people, /dead/. Right there! But she stops. She studies the others. "He could not have run far," she murmurs, "he is an old man and stayed close to home. If there is a threat, it is too near." "Well enough." Masque replies to Marrow, a bit of stray annoyance causing a shoulder to twitch under his coat. But this is not the time for petty quibble. There's no telling how many injuries he still has under there, but it does not appear to be his focus at the moment. Anole, however, is. His mismatched eyes snap to and lock onto the boy's face like harpoons in the back flesh of an unfortunate whale, meaning to sink in and draw attention right /back/, while Nox speaks. Then... he inhales sharply through his nose, before a scowl pulls his lips away around teeth and gaps where more should be alike, and he motions with his head rather than his hands into Nox's direction. Oh, alright, then. "Go." Anole is mostly just wide-eyed, looking at the body still with a frown. He skitters aside, picking up a tattered old blanket from where someone has discarded it on a crate that they have been using as seating, and then crouching to lay it carefully over the dead man's body like a -- dirty pink shroud crocheted with little also-dirty yellow ducks. Only after this does he quietly slink his way over to Nox, green skin and sheeny suit both fading into the muddled dirty colours of the sewer around them. He tucks himself in a short ways behind Noxspider -- admittedly clinging to the wall rather than standing on the floor -- like he Totally Belongs Here. The Morlocks know their tunnels like nobody's business. And between their familiarity, and Jerry's total lack of subterfuge in his mad-dash for home, its not hard to follow his back trail. As the Sewer Knights and Sewer Squire head off, other denizens begin to reemerge, to collect Jerry and tend to his remains with respect. It's about half a mile of travel, admittedly not in straight lines, but then, who travels in straight lines down here? The discovery? Whilst hiking down an abandoned, first generation subway tunnel, watching it as it slowly curves to the right, a gap in wall eventually becomes visible. The subway tunnel in general is littered with detritus - crates, boxes, shopping carts and other bits. Plenty of hidey-holes if one were so inclined. However, as they group approaches it becomes clear that someone or something has dug a tunnel trnasverse to this one, and sliced right through the heavy concrete of the original, to connect things. The right, the tunnel extends off into darkness. To the left is also dark, but Noises can be heard. Terrible Noises. Chittering, clacking, ratcheting Noises. Also, scraping. Like claws on stone or concrete. -scray-scracracrsa-SCRAAAAAYTCH- More chittering, and then it becomes clear, some of the horrible gutteral noises are words - /english/ words. They just sound like someone speaking with a throat full of glass marbles, clacking and high pitched. "Ahh fuck," Marrow mutters, having taken point while following the trail. "Why'd Jerry have to /stop/ being crazy for once in his life? Because unless someone has started building a new branch for the subway we have a /serious/ problem." She begins creeping further into the tunnel with the practised ease of a hunter. Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet, she's huntin' wabbits. Once Masque has given the signal--and why in the world is she waiting for his go ahead?--Nox slides into the tunnel. She takes a position directly behind Marrow, but only because she can leave an actual shape behind and become simply shadow. This provides some small measure of cover for the others. Their passage forward will be silent and invisible, as she prefers. At least until the break in the trail is found. "...rather large and serious," she whispers, almost inaudibly. Then she adjusts course to follow the Knight, keeping her wings spread to enfold Masque and Anole in gloom. Masque is slow in following, occasionally lifting an arm in an attempt to bat that annoying gloom away with slightly... broken-looking fingers on one hand. He knows these tunnels, and barely looks up as he moves, lumbering forward at his own pace. His head remain down until-- those weird voices. Even then, he only lifts his head /just/ enough to scowl ahead of him in disapproval, like that in itself may make the annoying thing /go away/. Anole has been quiet, slipping along the walls with not much past an occasional soft rustle of suit fabric muffled in the cover of Noxdark. He skirts the edge of the new-made tunnel, crawling up over top of its entrance to peek his spiky head down and peer off into the dark. His head tilts, listening to the sounds. "-- It's chittering," he says slowly, "are -- what if it is just one of us? M-maybe it's looking for help." Though he doesn't sound /entirely/ convinced. Once eyes adjust to the flickering dimness of the old tunnel, another slightly less dim light can be seen down the new tunnel to the left. Interestingly, where one would expect to see the crumbled remains of the subway tunnel's walls, is only a tiny amount of concrete crumbs. Its like the wall dissolved, as opposed to being knocked down or hacked through. Now some of the words are becoming intelligible after a few tries, straining one's ears. "C'mon. /Faster/." Its so clipped, and harsh, it practically sounds like another language. It's understood almost at a subliminal level, with the hind brain. That is, when one's hind brain is not busy screaming to run, RUN from that voice. "She eat your brain. I tell her you /slow/." "No, I /fast/, see?" The scrabbling noises pick up in intensity and volume. Marrow slowly but surely approaches the strange new tunnel despite her better judgement. Then with extreme caution she pokes her head around, a few bone plates starting to sprout protecting the vulnerable body parts not covered by the chest armour. "It is possible," Nox whispers, but only into Anole's ear--no one else is likely to be able to hear it. She means only to reassure the boy, but falls silent when voices are heard ahead. Silent, and inclined to cluster more thickly around the youngest member of their party while Marrow creeps forward to get a peek at the intruders. Out of consideration for Masque's /swatting/, she does not cloak him in similar fashion...but she does hover. Near. In case. Masque trudges forward like he's /already/ regretting coming along, shooting glances this way and that when Nox's cloaking lifts, like they're his little herd of sheep insisting to graze where they should not. Unfortunately, he does not seem quite so eager to obey his hindbrain; As though to rush the process along for his benefit alone, he raises his scratchy excuse for a voice to call for the tunnel still out of his line of sight, "Who the /fuck/ is back there?!" No beating around the bush with this one. Anole skitters down into the mouth of the tunnel, clinging to its ceiling and tipping his head to catch those voices. What he hears makes him tense, makes him cautiously scoot backwards further into the cloak of shadow Nox provides. "See it's -- he's -- they're -- I think they're -- talking," he ventures, but now he sounds /less/ reassured than before. And then: "... I like my brain." But he's creeping forward again. Tentatively. Clinging to the ceiling as he goes. The scene in the new tunnel is out of nightmare. Maybe not the nightmares of the badass Morlocks, but /somebody's/ nightmare, for certain. In a stage somewhere between that of preying mantis and man, mostly mantis in this case, is a seven foot tall, looking quite fast, and skeletal-skinny. It's legs are spread to be half gripping the wall and half on the floor, while its ridiculously long forearms hover in front of its body. It doesn't take a genius to notice what happened to those, either. They're no less than swords, each forearms a long straght-edged weapon of hardened carapace. Accompanying the mantis is the unmistakeable profile of a termite soldier, with the enormous mandibles of its species. In fact it can hardly hold its head up. Its sitting, leaning back against the curved wall, apparently drowsing. It too however shares many disturbingly similar characteristics of the human form, probably only six feet tall if it stood up, but bound in thick bunches of muscle. And digging hard in the tunnel are two specimens of the worker termite species. They're only four feet tall or so, and appear to be ingesting the substance upon which New York City rests, and in turn extrude it to paste against the wall, where it can be seen to quickly harden in the air. The mantis has his back to the tunnel opening as it berates the workers, but if the soldier /isn't/ actually asleep, it would have peripheral on the opening. It has not reacted to anyone peeking around the corner though. And then Masque happens. The soldier hops to all four lower legs, but without any real hurry, clacking its huge mandibles loudly. The mantis spins in a blur, but doesn't approach the opening. It ducks its head to peer, sways slightly as it looks, and then says in a voice that would send any normal man screaming, "Go away." And then it rises up to its full height, arms up and out, because thats what you do to scare off something annoying. Marrow did not expect to see /that/. "What the fuck're you doing in our home?" she shouts, making a handsignal for danger. This seems to involve growing another sword and all the bone plates beginning to grow in earnest. It doesn't even take the handsignal for Nox to spring into action. Like a well-oiled machine, this ragtag lot is. Except maybe for Masque, who receives a low /hiss/ before she is curling herself around Anole. Bamf, just like that he picks up a set of shadow armor, cool on the inside and tough as leather on the outside. Masque may be blunt, but he's not stupid. He doesn't urge forward, leaving that particular job to others as he listens, quite carefully, and stays right where he is. "What." He replies to Nox. "Ain't gonna tell me to be gentle with the things that just killed one of ours, are you?" "What no /you/ go away," Anole is kind of startled by this, scooting back yet again when the mantis waves his arms -- though it seems more out of reflex than actual /fear/. Bizarrely, upon seeing the insect-creatures he calms, staying on the ceiling and peering at them, just offering a cautious: "... wait no don't go away, sorry, um, do you need help?"
The mantis squints, and then headtilts when Masque mentions Jerry. It hunches over into what it probably a more comfortable position, and almost certainly indicates a cessation of hostilities. "Human killed? We no hurt it." The bizarre mix of human physical gestures is very strange from this thing. Like it learned to mimic humans from watching TV. Well, when in Rome...! "Chase, only. Run, run. Go hi- eh home. You... live here?" "No want home. Give pay." With this bizarre introduction, the mantis backhands the soldier, who nods, leans over with his hands on the ground, and vomits a disgusting yellow mass of goo onto the floor, out of which the mantis plucks a plastic ziploc baggy. Through the sludge smeared surface can be seen a bound stack of cash, real money, fresh as if it just came from a bank. "You take. We dig." Marrow eyes the bag of money, then shrugs. "Slice-n-dice has a point," she admits, lowering her bone swords slightly. "If they'd attacked Jerry he wouldn't have had all his arms and legs intact. How about you kick that over so we can check it's real?" "...sss." Nox does not like this and makes that fact known through vocalization. She tenses around Anole, inadvertently giving the boy a hug. "It is worth no amount of money. To have our tunnels breached," she whispers to him, having to trust on him to relay her words over the sound of the workers' chewing. "Nox says it's not worth the money to have our tunnels breached," Anole relays to Marrow, though he eyes the bag uncertainly. "-- But what if they don't want anything to do with our tunnels? I mean, they're -- just kind of freaks like us. Don't they also need a --" He shrugs one shadow-cloaked shoulder. "Where are you guys going?" he asks the bugpeople, louder. chomp-chomp--GLUE "You make?" the mantis asks, gesturing with one sword arm at the subway tunnel. It makes a sound like grinding marbles, and shakes its head. Apparently it takes issue with the 'our tunnels' statement. It tosses the bag of money gently over to land with a plop at Marrow's feet. The goo is smelly, but its not acidic, or particularly sticky. A quick glance shows a 20 on the top, and a paper band around the stack that reads $2000. "You take. We dig. No fight." It also doesn't seem to be interested in answering the question about where its going. Marrow keeps her bone swords at the ready, but lowers one further to wipe some goo off of the bag with the blade before snatching the whole thing off the ground to inspect it, despite Nox's objections. Masque sneers at this, pushing further forward and toward the buggy intruders, in steps equal parts confidence and pained movements. "Been /ours/ as long as it's been dark." He sounds suspiciously possessive of the place for having claimed to not even belong here not too long ago. He straightens up, far as his hunched back and slightly unstable gait will allow him, and walks /right up/ to the mantis. To look that thing straight in the-- face? Or as close as he can GET to it. Nox might be displeased with Marrow but in the thick of things is hardly the time to argue. She gives Anole a little squeeze--worry, perhaps, or warning--and pops a pair of stalks up over his head to observe Masque. "The child asked a question. You cross our territory," she whispers, straining to be heard over the continued concrete chewing noises, "and so you owe us answers." "We don't want to fight you." Anole is kind of quiet but he edges forward regardless -- just a little bit, to be better heard. "We just want to know why you're here." He glances downward from his position on the ceiling, and then tentatively skitters closer still, in parallel to Masque's approach. The soldier termite squats on four legs to one side of the mantis, but the mantis cocks its head at Masque's approach, and puts out a restraining sword-arm to the soldier. The workers have stopped their crunching for the moment, and seem to be cowering in terror behind their larger cousin, carefully keeping him between them and Masque. Also Anole, because he's super scary too. The mantis chatters its marble-grinding voice in non-sense before it shakes its head, perhaps struggling for the words. "No fight," it begins, nodding at Anole, although its tone could imply something else, if such a thing can be derived from alien intonations. But it sort of sounds like the mantis would /rather/ fight, and is disappointed, but is maybe following orders. It's also possible, with its broken english, that it might not /understand/ everything being said. "Dig. No walk, up there." The mantis points his other arm up at the ceiling. "Old tunnels - wrong way. New tunnel, right way." It blinks, and ponders another moment. "Go to vault." There's little sign that Marrow minds Nox's displeasure, and when the money proves real enough to pocket, she answers Anole's claim of not wanting to fight them, "Speak for your fucking self, I could use some practise." Masque stands, hands restless beneath his sleeves with the fingers of his not-broken hand curling in and outward, peering out at the mantis with his still broken-looking nose wrinkling, muscles around the marred side of his mouth pulling his lips into an ugly snarl. "/Vault/." He repeats in a voice about as smooth as his the left side of his mangled face, as if to get the mantis' attention to settle on that word. "You're connecting this place... with a fucking vault?" He squares back his shoulders (albeit with a wince) and scoffs at the workers in disgust. "Marrow, please. Masque." What is a woman to do, surrounded as she is by those who seem intent on escalation? Nox hesitates briefly and then disengages from Anole, leaving him to his patch of wall in relative safely. Masque is now the one nearer to danger and she slides down to the floor--where shadows begin to clump and flex, stretching and attenuating until a second darker mantis stands just behind the snarling man. Another female mantis. She's bigger, so there. "What vault? A bank vault?" she murmurs. "What need have insects with money?" "Probably none," Anole says quietly, from his kind of mottled-muddy perch on the ceiling, "they're giving it away. Do /you/ have a safe place to live?" He doesn't seem /overly/ disturbed by the mantis's maybe-hostility. Kind of cautious. Kind of concerned.
Some of the open hostility went out at the sight of the bigger, shadow mantis, but not for the termite soldier. He seemed emboldened by this. He finally speaks as well, nodding at Nox. "No need. /Thea/ need," he says it slowly, like when you have to explain something really obvious to a child. Then he nods at Anole, "Safe with Thea." The-ah. Masque's gaze tears away from the workers only to glance to Anole, upwards and past stray grey strands of hair, missing the manifestation of Nox's new form behind him. He's just spent a few weeks amongst strangers elsewhere and he doesn't look too pleased with having more strangers /here/. In his god damned home. "You can tell 'Thea'," He starts, voice and words pulled from out of his throat as though pulling meat from off a rotting corpse, "you ain't connecting a fucking /vault/ to our /tunnels/." With that, he lunges forward and reaches both his hands - less-than-completely-healed-fingers and all - to clamp them down on the mantis' face- eyes- /whatever/ will melt and bubble and deform. Itching for a fight ever since they found the creatures, Marrow follows Masque's lead, bone-swords in hand. "Yeah, kick his ass, Sea Bass!" Masque... is Sea Bass now? She lunges in a flurry, a whirling dervish of white and pink, slashing her bone swords to find some weak spot in the soldier's armor. The clattering sound of bone on exoskeleton is loud in this enclosed space. "Who--" Aaand this is the sort of thing that Nox despairs over--there's no chance anyone will hear her whispering over the sound of combat. There's not even a chance to /finish/ her question before Masque lunges and Marrow escalates. With Marrow confronting the soldier, she hisses a sharp, "/Stay/!" at Anole before launching herself at the mantis. Masque is the squishier target, by far, which leaves her to try to protect him /somehow/. Somehow translates to flattening herself into a sturdy ribbon of darkness and wrapping herself multiple times around the mantis' edged forelimbs, to prevent it catching and tearing at the man. "Masque! Stop!" "Who is Thea?" Anole is echoing this even without Nox finishing the question, his body shading itself back to its natural green and sheeny-black-suit. At least until Masque charges and immediately he is once again blending in with the ceiling. "/Stop/ it," his voice sounds sharp, abruptly, stronger more than panicked. "This is not /helping/."
It looks like her next move would be to decapitate the man attached to her right arm, but her arms are suddenly wrapped in shadow and it looks like she's hesitating. This was not in the manual. The soldier accepts Marrow's charge with glee, clacking loudly. He fends off a flurry of blows before Marrow finally lands a blow in the gap of exoskeleton at his elbow. With a roar he traps her in his enormous mandibles, and /squeezes/. When it becomes clear he won't be able to crush through her armor, he shakes his head like a dog, and flings her against the wall with a sickening crunch. She slumps down, out of the fight. In the madness, the smaller workers squeal their fear, and dart around the combatants, running on the tunnel sides, bolting for the tunnel entrance. Though it's not clear if the shouts would have stopped Masque, the hack past his hand does the trick with a few seconds' delay; He looks like he's about to grab for the mantis' face again, halfway through arching his arm upward before the pain of his missing fingers finally hits him. He growls, spasms up his shoulders and staggers backwards in a mess of red coat and furious, incoherent hissing. Fuck you, /bug/. His right hand, now two half-broken fingers lighter, is wrapped tightly into his left, his head dipping enough for his face to be obscured under the hood. Nox had forgotten about the mandibles. Big mistake. She doesn't repeat it. When Masque goes staggering back, and while the huge bug pauses, the shadow-restraints grow again! This time she curls up and around the insect's neck, just beneath the seam where head joins throat. There, she constricts. Tighter and tighter, twisting herself in like a garrote in an attempt to send mantis-head popping off of its moorings. Nox didn't move fast enough. Big mistake. She doesn't repeat it. When Masque goes staggering back, and while the huge bug pauses, the shadow-restraints grow again! This time she curls up and around the insect's neck, just beneath the seam where head joins throat. There, she constricts. Tighter and tighter, twisting herself in like a garrote in an attempt to send mantis-head popping off of its moorings. Apparently the termite soldier never liked that skinny-bitch mantis either. This leads him using Nox's stationary status to chomp at her with his oversized mandibles. Unfortunately for Mantis, eyes bulging, who is still struggling to get free of the shadow bindings, Nox is stationary status is snugged around the thing's neck. /CLAMP/ Between Nox's pressure and the vice grip of the termite, the mantis head pops right off, bounces off the ceiling, and rolls along to floor, coming to a halt between Marrow's feet. Shadow is slashed as well, as the soldier tries to rip at the strange material. At the same time, /the mantis fights on/. It probably won't last long, but they are sort of famous for this trick. Ma, look! No head! Though he may have suffered a blow - or a cut - Masque is far from out. After what can't possibly be enough time to do more than simply ascertain that two of his fingers are, indeed, missing, he's already walking again. Unsteady but brisk, over to Marrow, his remaining teeth gritted. To check up on her? No. To grab that head, his remaining three fingers sinking into it as if it were a a freakin' bowling ball. Red drips out from where his other fingers once were, onto that severed head. Next thing he does is march right up to that stupid soldierbug, intending to clock it right in its /stupid face/ with its friend's /head/ as his own face twists into a deep expression of hateful malice. Each slash lands, and where shadow is cut, darkness spills out. But Nox is stronger here and there is so much more of her. They effect her as much as a papercut would a normal human--or perhaps a mild accident while chopping lettuce--and so she carries on. The creature's head is gone and when it continues flail dangerously around, she draws the bonds she has looped around it tight, and adds fresh coils to its lower legs. All with the intent of sending it toppling over. But that isn't all. Separate tentacles of shadow lash out from the wall, the floor, the ceiling, to entangle the man seemingly intent on bashing the soldier to death with a /head/. She seeks to yank Masque backwards with one clump of tentacles, while a second wraps around the soldier to /throw/ it at a wall. "Get Marrow out of here! Anole! Masque!" Anole is quick to dart down the wall and do his part to help drag Marrow to safety. He's a little guy, but he does his part. The soldier would have gladly met Masque's challenge. He spreads his disturbingly human arms, as well as his mandibles in response, and was about to close with the man, when they're being pulled apart. He twists, slashing at shadow tentacles, severing a couple, but more just keep coming. The soldier is lifted into the air and slammed against the hardened tunnel wall. The cracking sound is like a peal of thunder in this small space. It hits the wall going backward, and a trail of yellow goo marks where it slides down the wall, utterly still. The mantis struggles for another moment, but gradually it slows, and then slumps as well, supported by the shadow bindings that killed it. The tunnel is suddenly silent again, only the sounds of a close, yet far away city up above drone down through the earth and pavement. With the distraction of what's happening in front of him, Masque is easily entrapped and pulled back. In response he attempts to YANK himself forwards again, only to have his own sudden movements and pull at his limbs remind him of his yet unhealed injuries below the coat and his hood. A noise of simultaneous pain and irritation escapes him, though the latter by far more clear. The mantis' head, dented eyes and covered in dripping trails of Masque's own blood, tumbles to the floor. For a moment, after he watches the soldier meet its end, the man aims his fury on Nox. He /looks/ like he's about to say something, BARK something, bared teeth and murder in his eyes. Then, simply, not. He grabs for whatever tendrils of darkness may still be on him, meaning to use his remaining fingers to sink /through/ them in a tearing motion so he can start walking back the way he came. Hunched over once more, head low and his face out of sight, bleeding hand left to sprinkle a trail of red dots beside him. As soon as the mantis goes still, Nox extricates herself from it. The bonds that held Masque dissipate with the soldier's death. And then there were none. Weeping darkness, the shadow lady gathers herself to flow after Masque--and then to overtake him, to assist Anole with the burden that is Marrow. But some darkness lingers on the off chance the ragged man might need support on the way back to their haven. Down here, she really /can/ be almost everywhere at once. | |
