ArchivedLogs:Maximum Carnage

Maximum Carnage
Dramatis Personae Carnage, Tatters, Nox
In Absentia	2013-03-14 Nox and Tatters confront Carnage in his lair. Occurs after Belly of the Beast. WARNING: Blood, violence, death.
Location Sewers
Somewhere beneath East Village, there's an abandoned platform -- you can catch a brief glimpse of it when you're passing by on the subway car, but if you walk the rails, you'll get a bit more. The majority of it is bricked off -- but once you slip in through a hole... It's actually very elegant looking; multi-colored bricks that form into pleasant archways; columns that reach to the ceiling -- wrought iron formed into false ivory work framing the (now dark) windows on the ceiling. Plaques that sing the praises of the men who built them. It's here that the trail ends. Occasionally, a strand of webbing glued to the wall -- a splat of blood, a deep, blade-like /carving/ gouging out through concrete and stone, on the walls, floor, or ceiling. The smell of stale blood -- and other things -- is strong through the crevice that leads into the platform proper. The lights are dim, but not extinguished. Occasionally, something can be heard scuttling. Rats, probably. Also, footsteps, coming quickly. A stocky figure /sprints/ along the trail, her eyes large and shining in the light, flicking from trail-marker to trail-marker as she pursues. Her hood falls down as she skids to a halt by the crevice, revealing short shaggy hair just starting to grow in, and only slightly displaced by the crown of headspikes she's grown in response to the crisis, eyes positioned froglike on the sides of her heads, swiveling independently as she raises her weight-bar and slips inside, making sure to keep at least one eye on the ceiling. Because jeeze, the monster-on-the-ceiling trick is practically the oldest one in the book. And keeping an eye open is probably the next best thing to slowing down, and she can't afford to slow down. It's easy to keep pace with Tatters--even when she does the high-twitch muscle fiber thing--when you can become one with darkness. Nox flows along the walls half a pace behind the other Morlock, an immensity of shadow that bulges in several places with the gear she's hauling along. Down here where it's dark, she can do that too and it's useful. It does mean she's somewhat slower in flowing through the crevice, making sure everything is pulled in without snagging, but the amorphous blob of black is not dawdling. The smears and splashes of blood are too worrisome. Once within this newest chamber, she grows even more, pulling from the cobwebbed shadows on the periphery. Larger and larger, senses extended into those new parts of herself, Nox also checks the ceiling--and the perimeter, the columns, the corners where those soft skittering sounds are heard. Leave no stone unturned, that's her motto. There are signs of occupation. Blood -- so much blood -- the smell is /rippling/ through here. A table, half-crushed. Dozens of empty bottles, cans -- still wet with moisture. The smell of beer. And... mmmn. A body, in the far left corner. A wrinkled man -- boy? -- it's impossible to tell, at this point. He's been dead for a day, it looks like -- although decomposition has been arrested by the complete lack of blood. Deeper in the platform, there is a small 'depot' -- where a set of stairs once rose up to the surface. As the shadows -- and Tatters -- approach, the stench grows as strong as a wall. And it's there -- in this rounded room, nearly 30 yards in diameter -- that they see where their prey has been roosting. The walls are high, and arched into a dome with colored glass wreathed in iron ivy overhead; along them are fastened /people/ -- some of them wriggling, some of them gasping, some still -- and all /bound/. Some are young, some are old -- some dressed in pajamas, some in winter jackets and hats, others in scarcely anything at all. There are... just under a dozen, in all. On the floor there is a small metal briefcase. It's been cracked open -- inside of it are dozens of syringes filled with a black syrup-like substance. The label on them reads 'VENOM'. And lurking directly above this briefcase -- on the domed room's ceiling -- is something red. And horrible. And peering, with two luminous, gleaming eyes, at the two new pieces of MEAT that have just wandered into its lair. Carnage has gotten... a bit bigger since Nox last saw him. As big as a semi, in fact. He is *plastered* on the ceiling, dangling like half a spider; his mouths peel open and /hiss/ at the sight of her. And Tatters. A number of the syringes from the briefcase are projecting out of his body, his appendages -- as if he intended to do something with them. To the people plastered to the walls. As if he intended to /inject/ them. One of Tatters' eyes blinks blurrily up at the ceiling, bringing her head up with it as they both swivel around back to the front. The right is slightly larger than the left, and the left twitches and blinks a little erratically. The people plastered up on the walls are ignored...they'll keep. The briefcase is ignored, 'cause it's probably not a briefcase monster. But Carnage...Tatters' eyes fix on it and she raises her weapon in challenge, her brow furrowed in something halfway between anger and a /headache./ "HOY. GET DOWN HERE SO I PUNCH YOU A FEW TIMEs--noxgetthepeopleoutigotthis." Whumph. Tatters' backpack is ejected from the shadow mass before Nox promptly makes for the walls. It's dark enough in here that when she flattens against them, she all but disappears--but it's safe to say that her opinion of Carnage is shared since the room itself thrums with a matching hiss. She can be big too. It takes all of half a second before the two people nearest to the floor just...disappear as the darkness folds over them and Nox begins to work away at the rusty blood that keeps them pinned in place. She /knows/ this stuff, freeing them shouldn't take long. "NO! /MINE/!" Carnage /roars/, multiple mouths splitting apart with a shrill, inhuman shriek -- and then he's descending, RUSHING down to the floor on what must be a dozen or more spider legs, each long and hooked and bladed, scraping and scuttling toward Tatters -- it can't see Nox, it only sees /Tatters/ and it somehow knows /she/ must be to blame for two of its meal-tickets suddenly vanishing. Pincer-like blades emerge from his mouth -- attempting to /bowl/ Tatters over onto the floor, to just pin her and start STABBING with its feet. STAB STAB STAB STAB MINE MINE MINE MINE. "That's NOT--" Tatters leaps towards Carnage, meeting his charge with her own, holding her pole overhead and aiming it at him like a spear, hoping to stick him and use it as a level to launch herself up and onto his back. "--HOW THAT WORKS." Nox can't afford to focus on the battle, much as she might like to. Almost a dozen people? That is a lot to free. Fortunately, she capable of spreading out. Another two people disappear under her wings, each of those four asked the same question: "Can you walk? Are you whole? I will be lowering you to the floor and keeping you in shadow, move quickly to the door. Help those who can't." And then onto the next two, her edges fraying as she extends herself further and further... The people respond to Nox's query in a variety of ways. Some stumble, some stutter, some shiver and whimper, barely able to move -- a few are still active and wriggling and fully capable of moving on their own power. When the first two reach the floor -- one of them can walk, the other can't -- the first immediately scoops up the second, helping them toward the exit. Meanwhile, Carnage /snarls/ with rage as the pole-arm *SLAMS* into his shoulder -- catapulting Tatters upon his back. At once, he twists up over himself -- head snaking up toward his back, upside down -- to meet Tatters with a maw filled with edged, glistening teeth. SNAPPING, attempting to chomp on her and catch her with a mouth that's easily half her size -- intent on gripping her by the torso and tearing into her flesh with a greedy snarl. Across the length of his back, barbs, hooks, and knives bristle -- but they're clumsy and malformed. Not at all comparable to the fine-tuned control he used against Nox previously. Tatters twists on Carnage's back, ignoring as his back-bristle catches and tears at her jeans and her sweatshirt, sprouting bony barbs of her own to help her maneuver, to give her traction as she yanks her pole free and turns it to fending off that gnashing maw, content to poke at it and bat it about if she can but fully prepared to shove it down his throat if he presses the issue, somehow finding time to croak out a continuation of her previous thought. "MY SEWERS. LEAVE OR DIE." Not every eloquent, but she's multitasking. Another pair are lowered to the ground and covered, kept in gloom as they scurry towards the hole in the wall. Those incapable of movement on their own are cradled in pouches of shadow as Nox moves higher and higher. Five, six, seven...she's coming to the edge of her endurance but continues, all the same. "Hello, we are here to help, can you move? Are you whole...?" A surprising number of them /are/ whole, and able to walk -- as Nox continues to move, she finds many of them struggling to /help/ her pry them free. Many of them do not even seem to be suffering from blood-loss -- Carnage had them here, pasted to the wall, and had yet to drink from them... for what purpose? "Thankyouthankyou," a little boy with a tail says, briefly stumbling among that darkness and /darting/ for the exit. Carnage, meanwhile, is not giving Tatters much to work with conversation-wise. The "LEAVE OR DIE" gets a 'HSSS' followed by a '*YOU*!'. Witty repartee, that one. But he couples up by -- after a few attempts to swipe at Tatters with those clumsy hooks and barbs, and a few snaps of its jaw (staying back from the pole arm warily, its luminous eyes gleaming) -- proceeding to *snap* multiple spider-like 'webs' up to the ceiling above it, in a 'net' that surrounds Tatters on all sides... and then JUMP. *SMASHING* into the roof top with a thunderous *CRUMCH*. Fortunately -- or unfortunately -- the thing Tatters is on is not incredibly hard. It's possible she might, if hit, sink a bit into that blood red flesh. At which point, it would try to suck her in and /suffocate/ her. "NO U." Tatterhood: knight, hero, basically five years old. And then a garbled swear as she and her ride crunches into the ceiling (AGAIN. WHAT IS IT WITH CEILINGS), the impact sinking her half a foot back into the hungry flesh -- and as it begins to pull her in she grins, sucks in a lungful and a half of air, and lets it, squeezing her eyes closed and doing her best to keep ahold of her weapon as it swallows her. Nox, who has seen Tatters fight before, knows that it is about to become very, very messy. She redoubles her efforts. "You're welcome, dear," she whispers to the boy before he darts off, ever polite. Then the last handful of victims are reached and unfortunately, they are furthest from the floor. She settles over them, hiding them from view and trying, /trying/, to focus on breaking the bonds that hold them to the wall. "Hello? If you cannot move, please tell me now. Is everyone conscious? We are here to help you, please, if you can hear me do not be afraid of the dark..." *CRNCH*. Carnage is HELPING. Specifically, by slamming what is not-sunken by Tatters into its shape by hammering, again and again, up into that ceiling. *CRNCH*, *CRNCH*, *SCHLP*... in Tatters goes. And Carnage, at once, is /constricting/ -- its bloody form attempting to envelope and squeeze and /hold/ Tatters as it gurgles... squeezing down like a vice. Attempting to suffocate AND crush her. "/MINE/," it barks, and then its eyes lift up... and go wide. "NO!" it roars -- and blades, wild and random and full of hate, /stab/ out for Nox as she extends that shadow to the last few pods -- viciously attempting to pierce, rip, *tear* with as many limbs as it can. "NO! MINE! /MINE/!" it shrieks, just as the last few struggle to help Nox, pushing and kicking against their bindings, coming loose... an old man babbling about blood, a girl with a shaved head gasping, crying, /hugging/ the shadows in her desperation to get away... "MMMph. MMNM!" The rejoinder is muffled by Carnages...everything, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it? And once she's been sufficiently swallowed, Tatters becomes /spikes./ Well, she becomes tentacles and spikes, bone-tipped appendages gripping and twisting and burrowing, blades growing from her body proper to perforate and tear the membranes attempting to constrict her. They are now playing Tatters' third favorite game: 'Are There Any Organs In Here?' Lets find out together! Unfortunately Nox is not as capable of spikiness as Tatters, especially when she's stretched out as she is. The slashing and tearing are felt, causing whole sheets of shadow to become separated from the main body. The pain has other effects too--the pods separate from the wall, held only with the most slender of tentacles to begin rapidly lowering the people within towards the floor. The exterior of the pods is as solid as Nox can make them, which also unfortunately makes the other blows raining against her strike that much harder. She is pummeled, torn, pulled at and then finally falls to the distant ground, curling around her rescuees to pillow the impact. "NO! NO NO NO NO--" Carnage /shrieks/ at Nox, trying to rip, to tear -- the girl tumbles into the shadow's grasp, cushioned with a yelping squeak; the old man lands hard, but not hard enough to do much more than bruise, thanks to the softening blow -- and just as Carnage's blades are descending to /dissect/ the shadow, to spear and scissor and tear apart everything in it -- Tatters finds something. Something thumping. Something throbbing. Something -- *SPRKT*. Carnage shudders and spasms; the blades snap up with sudden surprise -- his jaws snap open, then shut, then open -- those pale, luminous eyes widening, staring at the ceiling over his head. Tatters just skewered what feels like... it's hard to describe. A heart? Something massive, and thumping, and it /resembles/ a heart. Or maybe a brain. Its insides are... spread out. /Wrong/. Half-dissolved. Its internal geography makes no sense. But... whatever Tatters just speared, it's clearly important. And it's clearly causing Carnage to sag... sinking to the ground, claws and blades /writhing/ in anguish as it gurgles... GOT 'EM. With a grim smile nobody sees, Tatters retracts her burrowing bonewormlimbs and reattaches her muscles to her skeleton, reconstructing a clumsy but serviceable set of limbs and focusing on spearing through the side of his bulk, by turns sawing and clawing a way out of the monster through whichever side seems closest. 'Cause it's pretty gross in here and she'd like to breathe eventually. Less pleased is the shadow but Nox remains determined. Unaware of just how close she came to being dissected, she begins to unfold herself into a shape better suited to the ground. Many legs, a heavy body and...tentacles. Octospider? Tentacles are used to lift the young woman and the old man to their feet, to steady them as she ushers the pair towards the escape hatch. Streams of darkness trail after her from the cuts and abrasions suffered but she ignores this. "Go go go go," she urges, sprouting antennae with eyes that are turned back towards the mass of blood and ooze squirming on the floor. Gelatinous-like goop is slithering off of Carnage in massive clumps. He's gasping -- /hurking/ -- as more of it /spews/ out of his fanged mouth. Rapidly dwindling in size. Tatters doesn't have to struggle hard to tear her way free of him; she's popping out with a moist *SCHLP*, his 'flesh' giving beneath her talons. He scarcely has control of it any more -- and what's left of him is slopping down on the floor, one goopy *splurt* at a time. Over a week's worth of prey, vomitted up in some sort of horrible half-digested sludge that's rapidly detaching from him and hitting the bricks. "Noooo..." he rasps, the sound weak and slithering. "No... no... n... nunngh..." The luminous eyes losing their gleam. He's about... as big as a ford truck, now. "Nnaarrgh..." *HURK*. A small van, now. Getting smaller. Tatters stands amid the goop, covered in red-brown bloodsludge, her clothing in, well, tatters. Protective growths retreat from over her eyes and she looks up, eyes shining yellow in the gloom. With a flick of her eyes to the side, she holds out her hand and catches her polearm out of the air as it too follows her out of his mass. For a brief moment, Tatters achieves Badass Nirvana, the sloppy monster equivalent of walking slowly away from an explosion. And then she coughs and makes a face and wobbles on her feet, squinting and clutching her head as she gingerly steps out of the rapidly growing puddle of Carnage, trying to wind her way around any particularly solid bits. "Ugh. Ow. Also ugh. Nox, are you there? And, like, okay?" If only someone had a camera to capture the triumphant pose! Before it's broken! Alas, Nox is otherwise occupied. She gives the old fella a boost through the crevice before she comes scuttling back--losing mass along the way, so that by the time she arrives back in the abattoir, she's almost as much a puddle as Carnage. But she is dragging Tatters' pack behind her and doesn't /look/ injured. Puddles generally don't, especially when they're pitch black. "I live," she tells her compatriot as the pack is taken over. "You? And him?" BLEEERRGCSCH *splrsh*. Carnage is... he's getting /smaller/ still. Humanoid-shape, now. Almost... almost /recognizable/. He drops to the ground -- on all fours -- two arms, two hands, two... that's about it. A bloody mess. Convulsing. Long, lurid tentacles snapping out from his back, rolling up, trying to harden into knives, blades... but then... *splurt*. To the ground, face first. Twitching. He looks... like a human made out of red jello. /Solid/ jello. Or a horrible burn victim. Muscle, and meat, and bloody paste, left suspended in a pool of red. He does not move. "Uh," Tatters leans on her pole and turns back, watching her foe's disintegration dispassionately, raising an eyebrow as the tentacles make one final halfhearted lash in her general direction. "I don't...know? Maybe?" She takes a step forwards and glances upwards, a smile flickering across her face as she sees a distinct lack of /victims/ along the ceiling, then glances back to Nox and shrugs. "We should, like, 911 or something, if the victims need, like -- they're okay, right? I didn't have, like, time to look. Also I don't have a phone, do any of them have a phone?" "I am not certain," the puddle confesses, "they may have already left. I shall go and see...if they scattered they might become lost. But not all were steady on their feet. He was...the syringes. We will want to hide those. First." Then Nox is collecting herself to flow back towards the exit, oozing through the crevice to see if any of their rescuees remain. "Cool, thanks. I'd, uh...I think I look too terrifying to talk to people." Tatters blinks, then turns back to her fallen foe and pokes him gently with the end of her pole. "Hoy. You dead?" They do. A few are cowering, confused and hidden in the corners, huddled in the dark; a few are near the door, scavenging for weapons to defend themselves -- one or two are desperately searching for the exit. Some are helping those who are unable to move -- by the looks of it, three or four of them have been down here for nearly a week, kept barely alive by Carnage, who was using them as batteries. At Nox's approach, a few recoil -- most tense -- but no one runs. Carnage is... well, by all appearances, thoroughly dead. No heart-beat. No pulse. No movement.