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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 31 2014, 09:53 PM (1,481 Views) | |||||
| ♠ The Unspeakable | Feb 19 2014, 08:21 PM Post #16 | ||||
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As far as Nessus could tell, the man before him had been genuinely un-surprised at the sight of his sheer unicornitude. Redwood then went on to admit, in his own words, that he acknowledged the doctor's mythical beast status. Open mouths were the usual response, and when the observers did find their words eventually, their typical first spoken ones were "No way!" It was difficult for the doctor to decide if the change of pace was welcome or not. Unusual reactions were usually the first sign that he was knee-deep in another plot against his sanity. Before he could make sense of the casual reaction to his own transformation, the carpenter offered to share his secret. A moment later, just as the doctor had become a magnificent unicorn, Redwood had replaced himself with a furry little fox. He even managed to keep his bandana about him, which Nessus was more than a little impressed with; try as he might, he could never get any of his clothes to remain with him in his full unicorn transformation. He'd written it off as a simple law of nature that no human clothing would bar his true form's majesty from the world. "A fox," said the doctor, looking down at the tiny animal. While Redwood went on to explain more about his animal abilities - including a full show of tooth and nail, along with his hybrid nature - Nessus was busy trying to figure out how he should feel about this development. Foxes were known in many cultures to be devious, tricky animals. In a world filled with made schemers spending every waking moment of their life dreaming up new ways to unravel his mind, the company of a mischevious nature spirit was the last thing that he needed. Even after he had finished sharing his secret and had returned to human form, Redwood wore an odd, small, lopsided smile. It was a worrying kind of smile, the sort people wore when they felt like they knew something that the other person didn't or had some other kind of edge that only they were fully aware of. Nessus could feel his nerves tingling with that warning sensation, the hair on his neck rising slightly. What sort of demon had the universe yolked him to this time? "A fox," Nessus repeated, hoping to buy another moment to marshal his thoughts. He hid his apprehension, but his brow was crossed and he generally wore an expression of deep thought. "What kind of fox are you, though?" the doctor asked, after a short pause. "I cannot abide the company of the sort of fox that would misplace my keychain, lead me astray of the path when I'm travelling at night, or sneak into my bedroom and try to seduce me." Pausing for a moment, Nessus held up a finger. "If you're just the sort that likes to chase down rabbits in their warrens and bedevil hunters and the like, though," he continued, stopping once more. "That, I would not terribly mind." |
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| Nero | Feb 22 2014, 11:38 PM Post #17 | ||||
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"Well Doc, keychains don't really interest me, and I'm not much of a thief anyways. I don't have any intention of telling you lies or leading you astray, and you can rest assured that I'll never try to seduce you." He responded after a short while. His eyes were closed and brow knit together as if he was in deep in thought, "And…I can't say I've ever given hunting down a rabbit a chance, and while I don't really know what bedevil means, I feel confident that I don't do that either. " He opened his eyes slowly and shrugged, letting out a small, though not really upset, sigh, "I'm just the kind of fox who sails around and sees the world." He then nodded at the bar behind Nessus and added, "And I guess does some good where he can. That's not much of a fox though. I suppose I'm more of a man than anything else." "Well, before we get into a long discussion, let's get back inside before our drinks get warm." He said so quickly, before Nessus could have a chance to continue the conversation. He stepped over to the door and pushed it forwards. However, instead of being an empty doorway, there was a mayor. At first Redwood figured he had been caught sneaking out and the mayor was here to chastise him, but the way the mayor was tugging on his moustache and violently rolling -- not bouncing -- on his feet, suggested something much more dire than that. "Oh! Mr. Redwood, D-Doctor Ausfaller! This is awful! This is p-p-p-pirates!" The mayor cried before Redwood had a chance to even ask what the problem was. "'This is pirates'? What?" Redwood's tone was still mostly calm, only having a slight twinge of concern -- very real concern, of course. He shot a glance over his shoulder at Nessus to see the doctor's reaction. "There are pirates here? Attacking?" "Well no, not yet." The mayor said, having apparently calmed down enough to collect his thoughts, though he still looked rather worried, "But my office received a call, which was only just relayed to me, that pirates have been spotted and are sailing this way! By the time the other islands or the marines can send support…" His lips began to quiver and his voice became but a whisper, "It may be too late." Redwood gulped and took a step back from the door, putting a hand to his chin as tried to think of a plan. He had a history thick with racketeering and thus violence, and the first thought that came to his head was to just take a club to the pirates and send them packing. But as far as he knew, the island had no militia or police force, and a fight with an unknown amount of pirates sounded pretty risky. He looked towards Nessus, wondering if he knew how to use that horn for making wounds instead of healing them, and noticed the mayor had fell to his knees before the doctor. "Oh, Doctor Ausfaller! We stand no chance against a gang of pirates as we are now! Everyone is still sick or injured, and we're missing over half of our armory! So please, tell me doctor, can your unicorn magic heal punctured lungs, severed limbs, decapitation, or any other horrible wounds that these thugs might inflict upon the poor townspeople?!" His moustache had quickly become soggy with tears, having already assumed a defeat at the pirate's hands. |
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| ♠ The Unspeakable | Feb 23 2014, 12:28 AM Post #18 | ||||
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The fox insisted that it was neither the bad kind of fox nor the good kind of fox, but the sort that wasn't really a fox so much as a human. Given that he wasn't all human nor all fox, Nessus didn't find this explanation too hard to swallow. He, in fact, wasn't entirely unicorn himself. Sometimes, life required him to do very human things. As a doctor, he wasn't very proud of some of them. It seemed, for whatever reason, that Redwood had decided their conversation had ended, or at least the part of it that continued on out behind the bar had ended and was about to segue into the part that happens back inside of it. That wasn't a problem for Nessus, either. He needed more time to figure out what kind of person the carpenter was, in any case. True, the man might not be the wrong sort of fox, but that was no guarantee that the fox was not the wrong sort of man. Until he knew for certain whether or not his new 'companion' was a major player in The Grand Scheme of things (everybody had some role in it, but he'd come to terms with the minor players) he'd have to keep a close eye. Before they could so much as set foot (or hoof or paw) inside, though, the Mayor was once more upon them. He was full of that sort of contagious, nervous energy, the kind that makes other people anxious in hopes that either it or it's carrier will go away soon. The man launched into some doomsay about pirates on the horizon and the inability of marines to respond in time. The last part seemed uneccessary; the marines were as useless a bunch as they came, second only to pirates and tied even with that pesky lot that hunted those. Though he had no doubt that they would arrive late, Nessus also knew they'd be no help even if they didn't. "I can't heal decapitations, sadly. Should it be brought to me in time, I can in fact re-stitch a lost limb. Punctured lungs, however, are something of a specialty of mine. I could cure one of those in my sleep." Snickering a bit, raising his nose into the direction the wind came an inch or two, Nessus looked into the distance. They'd probably ride straight in with the wind for the fastest final approach, which made their landing site extremely predictable. Given the size of the island, he estimated that he could reach the shore in a matter of minutes, and be waiting and ready to deal with whatever manner of useless rabble the mad conspirators or the world had dredged up to throw against him. Nessus glanced down at the panicked Mayor. Even though the villagers had rewarded his medical aid with the same tricks and cruelty that he suffered everywhere he went, they were outwardly honest people. He was bound by his very nature, like it or not, to heal them. As a doctor, he knew that the most important duty of a healer was preventative care. The pirates would not be let to reach their town; they'd suffered one storm already, and that was enough for this season. "As it happens, I expect that I'll be treating quite a few patients for punctured lung tonight." Putting a hand on the Mayor's shoulder, the doctor gave him that firm "it's going to be OK champ, you hang in there" pat that all doctors must master before being awarded their PhD. A moment later, he'd turned aside and begun sprinting towards the coast. He'd only taken a couple of steps - clearing nearly 20 yards, having been a horse since the second one - when he remembered about Redwood. Cantering back towards the woodworker, Nessus lowered his head. "If you're going to help protect this island, you may along come with me. Just mind not to hold on by my mane." Nessus whinnied a tiny bit and stamped the ground twice. "It's not very dignified for a unicorn to bear passengers in the first place, and having handfuls of my hair torn out only tends to compound that." As soon as the carpenter had gotten on, Nessus parted at full speed. The world flashed by them, all smeared greys and blobs of green, the wind tearing at them as the unicorn charged head-on into it. It wasn't a great deal faster than a well-bred racehorse would run, all given, but it was a mad gallop ran at full-tilt and with reckless abandon. Houses, trees, carts; everything raced towards them only to veer aside at the last moment. Every now and then, he'd leap into the air to pass a log or small stream, often clearing half a dozen yards at a go. The ocean had come in view, and the world slowly seemed to solidify. Soon, Nessus had slowed to a simple trot, and was winding his way down a small bluff towards the beach. In the distance, a pirate ship had already moored. Dancing with the pinpoint light of burning torches, a small fleet of landing craft were just setting out towards the island. There were at least eight boats, and counting torches alone, three times that many occupants. "If nothing else," said Nessus, shrugging in a manner suggesting he wished that his shoulders would be cleared of all passengers, "they at least had the courtesy to bring so much viable lumber, in exchange for all the trouble." |
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| Nero | Feb 26 2014, 03:16 AM Post #19 | ||||
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Redwood had been wondering if Nessus was a fighter, but he didn't actually expect that whiny, paranoid man actually was. What was even more surprising to Redwood was the speed at which Nessus made up his mind to go into battle. In fact, before he could even say an astounded word of praise for his courage, Nessus had gone charging off into battle. Thankfully, the doc remembered his new companion. Redwood was still a bit stunned by the time Nessus had come back and offered him a ride, but the gravity of the situation quickly pulled him back down to Earth. He nodded and hopped up onto Nessus' back, wrapping his arms around his neck since Nessus specifically asked that he didn't hold onto his mane, and then once he was safely on board, he gave a very definitive, "Let's go!" And go they did, much faster than Redwood had been expecting. Nessus would find that the grip around his neck would tighten considerably each time he would veer or leap into the air. But not once did the carpenter resort to tugging on the doctor's mane. It was all a blur, and then it was over. A long, shuddering sigh came from behind Nessus once the ride had come to a stop, and Redwood took a moment to let himself catch up with the world before hopping down. And when his feet landed upon the ground, they weren't really feet anymore as much as they were paws. Redwood always found that he was a better fighter when he was half fox. He slipped a sturdy looking log out of his satchel and began to carve away at the wood with his claws while watching the torchlight come close along with the doctor. He couldn’t help but snicker at the lumber comment. "I think I said it already, Doc, but you turned out alright." By the time the first ships had reached shore, Redwood was already weighing a whittled club in his hand -- and just a few minutes earlier it had been a regular log! Satisfied with the balance of his handmade weapon, he took an aggressive stance as the pirates began to unload onto the island. The marauders approached the duo, and Redwood's ears flicked and his body tensed as he heard the familiar clicking sound of gun being cocked. "Ssssshho, you're the army that'sssh gonna sssshtop us, eh?!" A man's voice came from somewhere in the dark group of pirates. For some reason, there was a whistle along with every 's'. "Pretty much. You might just want to turn around now, pal." Redwood replied, sounding entirely confident, even if he was worried about that cocked gun that he was sure was pointed at either Nessus or him. One of the pirates carrying torches made his way off the boat, illuminating the face of the man holding the gun. The very wrinkled, gray, ancient looking face. "Hehehea! Shhhtand down, ssshhonny!" You don't know who you're messing with!" Redwood, a bit perplexed and not so afraid now of the rifle in the old man's shaking hands, turned to Nessus and whispered, "Do you think these are actually the pirates? I don't really know if I'd feel right cracking these guys skulls. I mean, I could probably actually crack them." Techniques Used
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| ♠ The Unspeakable | Feb 28 2014, 10:38 AM Post #20 | ||||
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Though he heard Redwood's praise, given shortly after finding their way to the beach, Nessus hardly had any time or desire to spare processing it. The doctor could feel his daily allotted tolerance for such pranks and tricks as pirates would visit on him was already running to near exhaustion, and he hadn't even engaged them yet. He wanted to be done with them as soon as possible, both for his own sake and that of the islanders. Redwood was shortly off his back, and a moment later the doctor's labcoat was whipping out around him, that and his pants being the only articles of restored clothing. Much like the carpenter had earlier, Nessus stopped his transformation mid-way, becoming a hybrid of unicorn and man, top-heavy and muscular, with fingers that looked like they were made of the same hard stuff as his horn, and hooves of the same nature. His horn was still elongated, too, and his face was the long, drawn face of a horse with his usual collegiate scowl worn at the end. When at last the pirates came ashore, Nessus could almost hear the sound of his shoulders slumping. These were not men he could freely rampage amongst, safe in the knowledge that he would fix them up afterwards. They were shaking, fragile, dottering old men and women. That they could even disembark from a landing craft without suffering fatal wounds was itself a mystery. The notion that they had come to threaten the island, guns or no guns, was even more absurd. Feeling a familiar pang, his mane rising on end, Nessus gave Redwood a sidelong glance. This all stunk of a set-up! Just as he'd begun to trust this man, once more he'd bared his devious fox fangs. Staging a pirate attack on the island - one perpetrated by harmless seniors, no less! - was beyond low. It was, in fact, one of the most elaborate tricks he'd run across since departing Krickfalusia. He could feel his blood boiling. Continuing his ruse even now, Redwood turned to the doctor and asked if it would be alright to beat up these old pirates. The entire scheme crystalized in Nessus' mind right then and there: he would be lead to attack these delirious retirees, and then held accountable before the court. The carpenter and the Mayor would deny that there had ever even been pirates on the island. They would instead tell a story of how the doctor had simply snapped, how he had gone around massacring innocent senior citizens, out for a simple moonlight cruise... Snorting with barely-restrained rage, Nessus' hoof-fingers balled into fists. Why, he agonized, was everyone in this world so hell-bent on driving him as mad as the people of his homeland? Why couldn't he find one trustworthy, half-reliable friend in the whole world? It was a sick madness that afflicted everyone ever in the whole of everywhere except for him. Disgusting! What kind of sinister illness had gripped the rest of the world's minds, to make them delight in tormenting him so? Before he could deliver a warning "I'm on to you and your mad schemes!" punch to the wood worker's head, he heard the sound of one of the senior's guns firing. A small burst of sand kicked up near Redwood's feet. For a second, Nessus froze up. Would they really go so far as to use live ammunition for such a scheme? These seniors were already putting their lives on the line just by putting themselves in his line of ire, but the carpenter would be at risk, too. "We ain't got all night, shonney! Shun went down an hour go, sho we gotsh to finish our lootin' an' pillagin' before the buffet closhes, eeheheheheee!" A couple more shots were fired in their direction; one even came so close that Nessus had felt it necessary to actively dodge it. Redwood hadn't leapt into the fray yet, either. He seemed genuinely nervous, and the doctor began to doubt his own misgivings. It seemed, more than anything, that his companion wanted just as little as he did to resort to physical force against the slowly growing landing party of fragile old coots, and was waiting for some sort of lead. Of course, if he was in cahoots (always the cahoots!) with these seniors, he'd be waiting for Nessus to act first in order to claim innocence on his part. Either way, inaction was not a viable course of action. If this all was a ploy to drive him mad, they might get careless with their shooting and eventually wound one of them, or even suffer a misfire and hurt themselves. If it wasn't, the two of them would be living target practice for the pirates; however bad their accuracy, if they shot enough bullets some were bound to land somewhere painful, eventually. Holding his hands up infront of him, Nessus shook them out the way a doctor usually does right after he's scrubbed up and is waiting for somebody to help him into his gloves, his fingers drooping down towards the ground. Suddenly, as if he really had washed them, the surface of those hardened, silvery digits rippled in the moonlight as if wet. The pearlescent coating seemed to melt and dribble down to the doctor's fingertips, gathering into viscous globs that seemed to almost glow with an iridescent quality in the starlight. "Not that you'll appreciate them anyway," Nessus muttered to himself. As he spoke those words, he snapped both of his wrists at once. The action itself was completed in a fraction of a second; it was the exact sort of motion that you would take when flicking the last drops of water from your hands after washing them. Each of his ten pearly fingers was left pointing at a different pirate. At least seven of them seemed to be missing their guns. There was just a short moment of stunned silence as the pirates tried to figure out what had just happened. Nessus had hoped for more time, but apparently this batch of old timers - real or fake - were more ill-tempered than they were impressed. It was too soon they were returning fire. Taking cover behind a palm, the unicorn man flicked out a couple more salvos of pearl-bullets, disarming a handy few more pirates. Still, those who had lost their guns were already drawing swords as old and in ill-repair as they themselves and shuffling purposefully up the beach. "If we can just get their weapons away, we'll be able to subdue them without causing any real harm afterwards," said Nessus, putting his back to the palm and giving his fingers a rest. "Given their accuracy, you should be able to draw off their fire without getting hurt as a fox. Once they're focused on you, I should be able to clear the distance safely and disarm them myself." For what he was about to say, Nessus hated himself. His hands trembled at the thought that was forcing it's way down his considerably long face, fighting every inch towards the nerves in his mouth. He'd never trusted anyone before, and that had never let him down. What he was doing now flew in the face of all reason. "I'm trusting you here," he said sternly, the odd gravity in the tone of his voice seeming very odd to anyone who wasn't actively plotting against him. And there it was. One way or another, he'd sealed his fate. If this was all a ploy, he'd be giving Redwood carte blanche to screw him over. If not, he'd be as good as helping the man win his trust for a long-con. There were a lot of uncertainties in the world, and he was relying on enough of them coming up in his favour all at once that he could, in his own mind, already brand himself a madman. The only certain outcome Nessus could see, in the end, was that the world will have succeeded in drawing one step closer to stealing his sanity. Ten Quiches Used
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| Nero | Mar 2 2014, 04:17 AM Post #21 | ||||
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Nessus's period of silence made Redwood uneasy. The doctor's sudden, unexplained show of anger made his own red hair stand on end. He wondered -- no, feared -- what was going through his head. He had only known the man for a short while, perhaps even less than an hour, but he already felt safe in assuming that the Doc's mind was capable of very impressive and unfortunate leaps of logic. Before he could dare to ask what had upset the doctor so, the sudden gunshot made his body stiffen, and all hairs, on his neck or otherwise, sprang up. His attention snapped back to the pirates, and he cursed himself for getting distracted with Nessus. As the next round of bullets whizzed past, and whether they were warning shots or actual attempts on their lives, Redwood didn't know and didn't believe he could trust their accuracy anyways. He took the hint and leapt to the side, hastily putting his back up against some cover. He looked back towards Nessus, and to his surprise saw him still standing there in the face of the pirates. It seemed that the doctor was either stupid, or more courageous than himself, which Redwood found both impressive and kind of upsetting. "Wow, what a move." Redwood thought to himself, somewhat enviously, as he watched Nessus's display of power and finesse. In fact, there was a sort of bitter thought forming in Redwood's head: could Nessus actually take out all these pirates by himself? Granted, they were a bunch of geezers, but he couldn't help but feel severely outclassed by this point. And then Nessus called out to him, and the jealous frown turned into a toothy grin as his form shrunk and changed to that of a fox. Not wanting to let his club go to waste, he scooped it up into his mouth, his fangs sinking into the wood. "Don't wory, Doc; I won't let you outdo me." He said, his tone almost a complete opposite of Nessus's overly serious one; there was a bit of playfulness to it, yet at the same time, ferocity. Unfortunately for that ferocity, Redwood had found that foxes didn't really make the sort of savage snarls or howls that other dogs did. Instead, they just made uncomfortably high-pitched screams, and the first time Redwood had made a fox's cry years ago, he actually found it embarrassing and vowed to never do it again. So, when he jumped out from cover and lunged at the pirates, he couldn't make an appropriately ferocious snarl. Still, a man's vocal cords could make do here. "Oooaarraaaaagghh!!" He aimed for the ones with swords first, figuring that if he could take them out as they charged in, then Nessus would be able to focus on disarming the ones still holding onto their guns. Already some were advancing upon Nessus's palm tree, and Redwood took them out one by one. First he jumped at a man who was wearing his pants nearly up to his chest. Twisting his body around in mid-air, he used his hind legs to kick the man in his sternum. The old man toppled backwards, clutching his chest and crying about his hip, but Redwood paid his complaints no mind as he sailed through the air onto another pirate, taking the elder and himself down to Earth. Bullets had been whizzing past all throughout his display of acrobatics, but none had struck him. As he was still standing over the old man, his ears flicked to attention as he heard footsteps directly behind him. He spun around to see a fat woman in a polka-dotted dress holding a cutlass high above her frizzled hair. "Bad doggy! This is why I prefer cats! Yaaa!" The woman cried as she sliced downwards with her blade. But before he could react to her attack, she was suddenly struck in the leg and fell to the ground, clutching her wound. "Oh, shit!" Someone in the crowd of marksmen cried out. He didn't really consider himself lucky, he could have easily countered her attack, but at the same time he took it as a reminder to keep moving; the pirates were aiming at him after all. As if to reaffirm that fact, another bullet whizzed by, nearly taking his nose with it. Not needing another reminder, he leapt off the man he was still standing on and reentered the fray. "How are you holding up, Doc?" He called out to his ally, his words somewhat distorted by the piece of wood still between his teeth, as he darted between the legs of another pirate, flipping him forwards and onto his face in the process. |
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| ♠ The Unspeakable | Mar 4 2014, 04:04 PM Post #22 | ||||
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It was, quite possibly, the least inspiring battle-cry Nessus had ever heard. Still, the fox's enthusiasm was nothing to question. No matter how pathetic his roar of courage had been, Redwood was showing all the energy and ambition one might expect of somebody genuinely trying to draw enemy fire with their own life and limb on the line. Dancing on his light pays between the feet of the half-blind, half-dead pirates, he took down one man almost instantly. A second later, a would-be assailant fell to friendly fire, screaming about her hatred for dogs and immediately being torn to shreds by her own "loyal" herd of cats, who had followed her onto the beach waiting for just such an opportunity. With Redwood taking on those who had spearheaded the charge, Nessus was free to advance on his own. Ducking out from behind the palm tree, he made a sprint down the beach towards where the last of the pirates were disembarking. He flung another ten pearly missiles towards the landing crafts, destroying a few more guns and breaking a hip or two. Unfortunately, the doctor could feel it in his blood, in his muscles, and in his hooves; he was running low on calcium. However much he had left would have to be used extremely judiciously. Closing with the gunners, who had just turned their attention to the fox, still further up-beach, to the doctor, Nessus began to swing out with his oversized hoof-like fists to punch the pirates square in their weapons. Sword and gun alike went flying from numb, arthritic old fingers as the doctor made his way down the line, his fists leaving pearlescent trails in air, small clouds of silvery moondust sparkling in the starlight as his nacre-coated fingers impacted with metal. Every here and there a blade made it as far as his palm and nicked the skin, or a bullet managed to miss close enough to leave a grazing wound, but soon the job was done. "Don't waste time worrying about me," Nessus answered a short while after Redwood has asked about his wellbeing. "Just keep moving." Though he had told the carpenter that he'd be trusting him, Nessus was still uncertain. Trust felt unnatural, dangerous, and even slightly decadent. The notion of being able to expect somebody not to betray you and then having them actually do just that had an intoxicating, addictive quality to it. Once you'd gotten used to it, you'd want to give up on believing that people were traitorous opportunists forever. Of all the perils he was braving this night, the doctor told himself, this issue of trust was by far the greatest. Still, in moderation, trust had proven a useful tool. The woodworker had so far defied expectations and participated in earnest, going to far as to physically assault some of them in order to prove his compliance. While the ever-haunting spectre of doubt still crowded into his mind from it's brightest corners, Nessus would have to (based on visible evidence) admit (academically speaking) that (for now) he had not been (greatly) betrayed (yet) by the fox (or con man) Redwood. Once the weapons had fallen from the pirates' hands, Nessus had ignored them completely and turned in his tracks, kicking up a great deal of sand as he broke his own momentum and changed course, and gone back up the beach collecting weapons. Old they might be, but the doctor had seen grabbers hanging from some of their walkers and wrists. It would do no good to just leave the weapons here in reach of the seniors; they'd be fully armed again as soon as they picked them back up from the sand at their feat, which could even be as soon as a week from now. The racing horseman had just finished swiping up the last of the fallen arms when he saw his own shadow, dark as it was at noon against the glowing sand around it, race off ahead of him for nearly ten meters. The same happened all around him; every shadow in the world before him had stretched off towards the oddly well-lit horizon, as if a miniature sun had just appeared behind him. Acting on pure humanimal instinct, tossing the armful of arms into the surf to his left and using the counter-force to propel himself onto the sand at his right, Nessus narrowly avoided a pair of silvery, searing-hot beams of light. In the distance, there was a small explosion where the surprise lasers had impacted with a sand dune. Nessus never saw it, though; his eyes (now re-adapting to the darkness) were turned towards the laser's source. A frail old pirate, whom the doctor himself had disarmed only a minute ago, was adjusting a pair of thick-framed glasses that were almost larger than his head, each lense magnifying the ancient eye behind it until the pupil and iris alone occupied the whole visible 25 square inch surface of each lens. "Looks like oi missed with that first one oi did," the old man said, sounding just as old but far less confused and lispy than the others, and maybe even a bit British, if that were a thing. "Oi'll 'ave to get 'im in the next shot." "They'sh probably a bit too weak, shee, 'cause we gotsh nothin' but shtar light," lamented one of the nearby, similarly disarmed pirates. "That damn horshee didn't take away our torchesh, though," said another, a sneaky grin audible in the tone of his voice. "Oi you guys, stop mucking around!" the presumed leader (as it was hard to imagine that the man with the deadly laser-glasses would not be the leader of such a lot) shouted, waving his dried old prune-fists in the air. "Get over 'ere and give me some light so as oi can fry up this ornery 'orse right quick!" As he found his feet, Nessus cursed his doctorly oaths. He'd left the old men with their torches out of necessity. They were still weapons, granted, but far less dangerous ones than either swords or guns. If he'd taken them all, the doctor had reasoned, the pirates might all kill themselves trying to escape in the dim of night. They were all half blind in full daylight; the doctor had not wanted their drownings, concussions, or toe-stubbings on his conscience. In his mercy, he had left them one last weapon. It was not to be said, though, that paranoia did not have it's occasional benefit. Before Nessus had even managed to realize what was happening around him and damn himself for it, his hind-brain had already been three steps ahead, anticipating such an impossibility and already figuring out what to do when it happened. The doctor himself could hardly believe that some secret part of him had been dreading an attack by lasers and working out how to deal with one, but that was only because he himself could hardly believe anything. "Redwood," Nessus called, hoping the Fox had sorted out his own issues and hadn't been too stunned by the laser to react. "Again!" And with his instructions given, the unicorn snapped off his horn and ground it to dust betwixt his hands. |
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| Nero | Mar 5 2014, 08:18 PM Post #23 | ||||
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The shore was technically a battlefield, but for the moment it looked more like a comedy. Of the pirates who had drawn swords and come up onto the beach, Redwood had managed to draw most of their attention, and with Nessus relieving the rest of the geezers (and geezettes?) of their rifles, the volleys of bullets had come to halt. So, no longer having to fear being shot at, Redwood was able to maintain a brisk trot around in a circle, a train of ornery old folk "chasing" him down while Nessus did his thing. Occasionally he'd have to break out of the circle pattern and go corral a stray pirate back into the herd -- or face-down onto the sand if he had to -- but even taking that into consideration, this was almost pathetically too easy. Cue laser beam! It seemed like the attack was aimed at Nessus, but Redwood could still feel the heat from the attack on his fur. He had to make sure his new companion wasn't just obliterated by that fearsome attack, and broke away from his herd of oldbies to get a better view across the sand; hoping to see the doctor in one piece. Seeing him lying there on the ground was a bit worrying, but before Redwood could worry too much and perhaps have to get emotional, the doctor began to stir. Relief washed over him, and he quickly shifted his focus from the doctor's well being to the source of the laser. Following Nessus's gaze, his eyes came to rest upon an old man wearing a pair of unnecessarily large glasses. Or perhaps they were quite necessarily large, considering that they were made to fire lasers, apparently. "Don't worry, Doc; I've got this!" Redwood called out. He had transformed into his hybrid self and was wielding his club overhead, keeping one eye on his herd of pirates. They seemed to be confused though, and were bickering amongst themselves: "Where'd the fox go?!" "He's right there!" "No you old coot, that's just some kid!" "I think I saw it go to the left!" He didn't expect much from these pirates, but he didn't see it coming when most of them started to shuffle off to the left, straight for town. He figured the townsfolk, injured as they were, would probably be fine, and the herd's absence gave him plenty of time to aim, so he made no effort to bring them back to the battlefield. He may not have understood how such glasses could be made, nor why, nor the means by which this random old fart had gotten such a piece of technology, but at the end of the day, they were just glasses. If he could shatter the lenses or at least knock them off his liver-spotted face, then that would be the end of the lasers. After taking a moment to aim, he flung his club at the glasses-wearing captain. The club spun around vertically, looking quite vicious as it soared towards the captain's nose. Redwood was sure it would find its mark, but then, out of nowhere a hand shot out from the crowd of torch-bearers and snatched the club out of the air! "What the?! They shouldn't be capable of that!" Redwood was taken aback by the sudden display of physical prowess, and then the torch light shone upon the one who had caught the club. He had a few wrinkles and all, but to Redwood's surprise, there was still hair upon his head! And it hadn't even completely grayed yet! "Oi nicely done, Junior!" The captain smirked behind the thick rims of his glasses. Junior stared across the battlefield at Redwood and then held the man's club up high for him to see. Tossing his torch into the water, he gripped the club at the other end with his free hand and, with a mighty grunt of effort tried to snap the weapon in two! And then he tried again. And again. His face started to go a bit red from the strain before the captain called out to him again, this time sounding less pleased, "Forget about that! Go get the bloody fox!" With his face red for a different reason, Junior, still gripping the club but by its proper end now, ran up the beach towards Redwood. Literally, he ran, and then even had enough strength left to swing at the fox man. Redwood was still shocked that this crew contained someone who could probably still chew his own food, but managed to side-step out of the way of Junior's attack -- he had come here to fight real pirates, after all. "Uh, Sorry, Doc! I think you're going to be on your own!" Redwood shouted to his comrade, hoping that Nessus could handle himself. Junior swung again with the club, forcing Redwood to block the attack with the back of his forearm. He winced from the pain, but was quick to throw a punch of his own at Junior's nose. Catching Redwood's fist in his palm, Junior let out a laugh and smirked at his opponent. "You're gonna have to do better than that kid. I fought in the war!" "What war?" Redwood asked, breaking away from the man with a hop backwards. "You're too young to remember!" Junior roared back, as if it was a battle cry, and the two men charged each other once more. |
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| ♠ The Unspeakable | Mar 7 2014, 08:25 PM Post #24 | ||||
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As unlikely as it had seemed, among the lot of old men there was a man fit to be called a pirate. Only barely, though, did he meet the criteria: he could swing a weapon, apparently, and was giving the carpenter a bit of a scuffle. The young lad of some mere sixty-ish years took a swing at the foxman, who stepped deftly aside. For a moment, the familiar spark flared up. Was that a coreographed move? After all this, still, could this be a set up? Just how elaborate a scheme did these islanders mean to trap him in? Again Nessus beat these thoughts aside. Trust, intoxicating and dangerous and situationally convenient trust, was the course he had set himself on. Whether he was fighting or dancing, Redwood had drawn the pirates attention back to himself for a while, giving the doctor time to finish grinding his own precious horn into tiny bits between his hands. That was enough. A large crowd of trembling, hungry seniors up far past their bed times (it being almost an entire thirty minutes since the sun had set) held their torches aloft in the empty space behind their bespectacled leader. The glow in those dinner-plate lenses continued to build, until they were so bright that the whole beach was lit like day. The captain tilted his head back slightly, a grin coming to his bloodless, spotty old lips. "Noighty-noight, li'l 'orsee!" This slight movement caused the inky shadows that the alien glow had cast over the beach to race off into this distance, and Nessus recognized this as meaning that the blast was mere seconds away. Having already braced himself to run, he took towards the old man. The horse's sprinting had been well anticipated by all of the pirates. That he would do so towards them, however, rather than away, had been predicted by not a one. A sudden silent awe gripped the mob of geriatric torch-bearers, their leader's mouth forming a gaping "O" as well. In that single last moment, having crossed nearly half the distance to the leader, Nessus flung the contents of his hand straight towards the old man's face, all while digging his hooves into the sand to break his charge. Not a split-second later the silvery beam of doom fired from the giant glasses. Rather than searing a pair of holes through the doctor, though, they stopped just a few feet from the lenses. Having found a sizeable cloud of glittery, reflective dust to play around in, the beams dance and jumped and split up and scattered in pretty much every direction. A dazzling flash of iridescent light swept over the beach, and pretty much everybody that wasn't shielding their face lost their eyebrows. The captain, being much closer to the whole thing, would have lost his whole face if not for the pair of great, round shields hiding all of it. Instead, his lips just sort of singed back, giving him an angry, toothy, permanent scowl. "Oi you bloody 'orse buggerer!" the aged captain cried, pointing a trembling and blackened finger at Nessus accusingly. "You ruined 'em, you damn poxy git! I'll 'ave you 'anged by your conkers! 'Ere'll be blood, make no mistake!" While the ex-wielder of the dreaded laser glasses (they were now so much slag seeping into the sandy beach) ran down the list of every peculiar, foreign-sounding insult he could think up, Nessus took a quick assessment of the beach. He'd been the only person at his end of the beach to prepare for the light show, and so had been the first to recover use of his eyes. At a glance it seemed that nobody had been hurt. The doctor let his breath out. Dashing forward one final time, the doctor balled up his iron-hard fingers into a fist. Restraining all but a fraction of his strength, skidding again to a stop just feet before the wildly swearing captain of the elderly rabble, Nessus gave him a firm bop on the nose. It was just enough to put the man out, and he collapses back towards a few of his crewmates. They had since dropped their torches, and continued to stare at him in the same stunned silence that they'd taken up earlier, when he'd begun his first charge. "Gather him up, and any of the rest of your crewmates that may have fallen. All of you will come with me for medical treatment." The pirates began to gather their wits. Some of them looked grateful, but mostly they looked suspicious. They might not be much for fighting, but they'd all been around the block two or three or ninety times, and knew more or less what the horse man would be saying next. "After that, you'll be given over to Marine custody. I'll recommend to them that you all be treated with leniency, given your current-" Nessus froze. Something inside him told the doctor that if there was one thing that would rally these pirates morale, it would be a comment about their age. After a moment's consideration, he raised a finger and continued. "-weakened physical condition. Any of you who may object to this, of course," he continued, "will receive the exact same treatment." Nessus cracked his pearly knuckles, which were illuminated in a silvery rainbow by the stars above, the only remaining light. "You will also, of course, be sedated beforehand." The threat might help, but somehow the doctor's nature would not let him accept that things had been resolved yet. He'd have to keep the pressure on or risk having the whole crowd turn belligerent, in which case he'd certainly have to harm some more of them. In which case, things would be going exactly as they had planned from the beginning... "Redwood," Nessus said, recalling that his friend (or foe) was (or wasn't) still busy fighting Junior. He fought with that thought for a second, and then asked a question with thousands of possible meanings, though it held only two by the doctor's intent: "Is it done?" |
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| Nero | Mar 8 2014, 03:42 AM Post #25 | ||||
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Fists and occasionally feet soared through the air. The two men had locked themselves into close combat, neither giving his opponent the chance to retreat for a moment's breath. Redwood would duck and weave out of the way of attacks, but would sometimes be caught out off guard by a surprise swing and would have to draw his arms up to block. Junior knew what he was doing, and was taking every opportunity he could to pound of Redwood with the fox's own club, likely hoping to eventually break his guard down. Redwood grimaced; not from the pain in his arms from the repeated clubbing, but because he hadn't managed to win yet. But he was not about to lose to an old man three times his age! The club came down again all the way from over Junior's head, and Redwood twisted himself to the right just in time to avoid it, and then swung wildly with his right hand, sharp claws out and ready. His black nails caught on Junior's flesh and tore a series of three red, diagonal lines across Junior's shoulder, a splatter of blood hitting the sand. To his credit, Junior merely flinched instead of clutching his shoulder and crying out, but it was enough of a opportunity for Redwood to follow up his swipe with a hard fist into the pirate's belly. Junior fell to his knees and dropped the makeshift club, leaving Redwood standing over him, seemingly victorious. Victorious maybe, but not yet satisfied. "The Doc doesn't want to rough you old men up too bad," He began, sounding a bit winded as he bent down to take his club off the ground, "but I think I'll need to make an exception for you." Then, as he began to rise, he heard a click and a shiver went up his spine, freezing him in place. From his back pocket or boot or somewhere, Junior had pulled out a pistol -- apparently he was much better prepared than the rest of his crew in addition to being in better physical condition. Truly, he was a pirate. The pistol was, as anyone would expect, aimed at Redwood, and Redwood gulped as he stared into the barrel of the gun. "You've…haah…got a good punch, kid." Junior grinned behind his gun, showing off a pair of perfectly arranged and white teeth (though they could have been dentures). Despite the fact that he was on his knees and sounded completely out of breath from the punch to his gut, he now had the mocking, victorious tone. The captain's glasses had just begun to fire, but Junior paid the intense light no mind; it's not like the lasers would start to scatter all over the beach in a blinding, destructive, disco ball-esque manner. "If you weren't still a brat…haa…you could join th -- Buwwaah!!" To his surprise, lasers began to scatter all over the beach in a blinding, destructive, disco ball-esque manner! Junior clamped his eyes shut as they burned and watered, and fired his pistol blindly; hoping Redwood was still in front of him. "UAaaghh!!" A cry came from somewhere on the beach, and though Junior couldn't see, it definitely sounded like it was Redwood. He lowered his pistol and waited. A moment later, he slowly opened one eye, and seeing that he could, well, see, opened the other. Only to find that Redwood was not lying in a pool of his own blood before him! That's when he felt something hard tap against his skull. "Fooled you, huh?" Redwood could be heard smirking behind Junior. He had one hand placed triumphantly on his hip, and the other hand gripping his club, which he tapped again onto Junior's skull. "Thanks to that light, looks like I…dodged the bullet." "You brat! I fought for your freedom! I almost lost an arm, half an arm, and half a leg for you!" Junior roared as he began to scramble to his feet; mad as al hell that his shot had missed. "Heh, I thought maybe that pun would be enough to kill you. Looks like we'll have to things to hard way. Hope the Doc doesn't mind." Paying Junior's enraged comments no mind, Redwood brought his club up overhead and then brought it down hard against Junior's skull, twisting his body into the motion and swinging with all his might! The wooden club struck Junior's head and then snapped in two from the force of the swing. Needless to say, the old pirate was knocked out, falling sideways onto the beach. A bit of blood began to trickle out of his wound, staining his hair and the sand, but Redwood was sure he didn't crack his skull open or anything too terrible like that. He sighed, looking over his victim for a moment and shifted back to his human form now that the fighting was over. Hearing Nessus call out to him, he looked up from the unconscious Junior while tossing the broken club to the side. "It's done, Doc." He said with a small grin. In his hybrid form, nothing would have seemed amiss, but now that he was human once more, his face was nearly as pale as Nessuss's. He pulled the victorious hand off his hip to reveal a dark red stain on his shirt and a bullet hole. "That said…I could use a hand…or hoof…or paw, whatever it is you got." After saying that, his body refused to cooperate with his stubborn desire to stand up and talk cool, and he collapsed onto his knees, and then backwards onto his rear end. He placed his hand back over his shirt and clutched the wound to stop as much of the bleeding as he could, though he had already lost plenty of blood while he was finishing off Junior. The pain had him shuddering with every breath, but he did his best to save face and remain conscious through it all.
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| ♠ The Unspeakable | Mar 9 2014, 02:45 PM Post #26 | ||||
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Those who had remained defiant to Nessus' offer of medical assistance and it's promise of subsequent incarceration lost their remaining fight when Junior went down. Their captain was out cold and his glasses, the main source of all the crew's might, were now so much beach glass. The silver-years scrapper had been their last hope, and watching the upstart little fox brat lay him low had broken their will. "Can we at least get some dinner?" asked one of the old men, falling into a shuffling procession with the others. "We thought we'd be done with all the looting and pillaging by now," he explained. "The Island Kitchen Buffet closes in twenty minutes!" wailed another, who's fat old wife patted his hand and consoled him with a meaningless there-there. "I will see that you are fed once you've been given your bill of health," answered Nessus. He turned his back and lead them up the beach, resuming his fully human form. Never in a million years would Nessus willingly show his back to an enemy. In this case, though, it was impossible to consider the downtrodden, hapless old pirates trudging along after him as actual foes. They were dispirited, saggy old sacks of fat or trembling, twig-like mummies. It seemed that the act of piracy itself had been the source of all their vigour and that, without it, they would lose whatever power was keeping their wretched forms animate. As a doctor, he knew how much of a physical impact mental state could have on the elderly. Making it up to where Redwood was waiting, giving the pirates time to collect their fallen comrades, Nessus took a quick look at the carpenter's wound. In a flash he had taken out a bag from somewhere beneath his lab coat, the sort that look like an oversized clip-top purse and just scream 'old-timey house-call doctor.' Opening it, he pulled out and spread a medium-sized sheet of fabric down over the ground. "Lay down on his, so that your wound is roughly at the center of the linen," Nessus instructed. As he waited for Redwood to comply, he fetched a few more things out of his bag: a bottle of water, a bottle of something that wasn't water, and a small pouch of white powder. Oddly, he tore this last thing open and poured it's contents into his own mouth, making a slightly sour face and then coughing a bit as he swallowed, letting out a small, hanging cloud of whatever it had been. It had the odour of chalk. A moment later, the flat, silver-dollar sized mark on the doctor's forehead where his horn had been began to shimmer, as if it had become wet. Nessus lowered his head, the silvery mark began to flow downwards, as if made from some kind of dull, pearly mercury. As it fell towards the sand the liquid pearl began to twist and redouble back upon itself. A moment later the doctor flung his head back upright, horn once again jutting oddly out into the night. Wasting not even a moment, the doctor immediately snapped an inch off the tip of it. "I can't remove the bullet here," explained Nessus, grinding the bit of horn between his index finger and thumb. As he spoke, his horn dripped nacre from it's broken tip and regrew all on it's own. He gestured out around them. "They've already admitted their defeat, and they'll be distracted gathering themselves together for the mark back, but we've only a handful of minutes before they're waiting on us to lead the way. My performing emergency surgery on you may, at least to their eyes, be viewed as a sign that we might not have been quite so triumphant as they had previously suspected." Nessus poured the non-water over the entrance wound. It stung the raw flesh and had an antiseptic smell to it. A moment later he washed that away, along with most of the blood, with the bottle of water. Finally, the doctor got to the most important part: unicorn magic. Sprinkling the crushed bits of his horn around the edges of the bullet hole, the doctor pinched the wound shut with his fingers. When he released his fingers, the hole remained closed. "It'll hold until we get back. Try not to move around too wildly until then. On the other hand, if possible, do your best to disguise the fact that you are wounded. See, here they come." The duo's ancient prisoners were shambling up the beach towards them, all ready to go, just as Nessus had finished up packing away his medical supplies. The doctor clapped his hands, the sound of that single clap loud as a horse kicking a wooden barn door, prompting immediate silence. A few of them, likely ex-military, even jumped to attention. "There is a tavern not quite a full half-mile from here. It is this building that I am taking you to, and it will serve as my office for the purpose of tending your wounds. As sooner we arrive, as sooner I can heal you." From their faces, the shambling mob didn't seem all that inspired. Indulging in a deeb but silent sigh, Nessus turned from them and began walking. Over his shoulder, he added: "If you walk briskly, we will be there well in time for your supper." Nessus could hear a sudden briskness in the shuffling behind him. Some of them had already begun wondering aloud if they would be able to have any mashed turnips. He felt a sudden pang of guilt at deceiving them. While they would be fed, it would be no more than some simple oatmeal or whatever the villagers could spare. It'd be a sorry lot that could call the meal that lay in their immediate future a true supper. Deception was meant for the others, he thought. It was meant for those that conspired endlessly to unravel him. Glancing over at Redwood, the Unicorn felt his guilt clearing way to make room for an icy surge of fear. Deception indeed. Soon, he would learn whether or not the carpenter had made a fool of him. He could already taste the bitter double-cross that was in store for him on his tongue, could feel the outrage that would follow it readying itself on every nerve. The terrors of imminent betrayal never lost their edge, no matter how many times Nessus had suffered them. Even more terrifying, though, was the thought that he might not be turned upon. Nessus was faced with a future in which somebody had proven themselves trustworthy. Could he cope with such a thing? He knew it to be impossible, yet at the same time he could feel the primal desire to trust others, the same terrible instinct that made others so easy to deceive. The man could easily be working a long-con; in the doctor's experience, the best way to make somebody believe you was often to be trustworthy, up until that last moment when - weeks, months, or even years down the road - the blade was buried in your back. Driving himself insane with such circuitous, bendy logic would only be doing their work for them, Nessus decided. Pushing the issue out of his mind, he tried to focus on simply leading his captives back to town and sorting things out there. For the time being, at least, all he could do was to watch and wait. |
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| Nero | Mar 12 2014, 09:08 PM Post #27 | ||||
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How long had it been since someone had put a bullet in him? Growing up in Osula and joining a criminal gang was a good way to get shot at, but it had actually been years since his last bullet hole, and sometime during that long stretch of time he had forgotten how much they hurt. At least Junior hadn't managed to hit him anything too important, or so he hoped. Though, as he saw Nessus approach, as he stared at the silvery horn on his head, he was reminded that his friend was a magical unicorn with miraculous healing powers. He couldn't really think of a better surgeon; for if he could reattach limbs and patch up a punctured lung, then a gunshot was probably trivial. Being trivial wasn't making the wound hurt any less though, and it was with what looked like great effort that Redwood laid himself down on the sheet. He could have just collapsed onto the linen, but he really didn't want to risk kick up the sand and getting his wound filled with potentially harmful grit, and Nessus had also ordered that he aimed his wound somewhere around the center of the linen. His old gang's Sawbones's orders were absolute and everybody knew to respect to them, and that guy didn't even have a medical license as he was sure Nessus did. Watching the spectacle of Nessus preparing for treatment took the pain off Redwood's mind for a moment -- he was seeing real unicorn magic happening right in front of his eyes. It sure sounded dumb and childish when he repeated the words 'unicorn magic' back to himself in his mind, but what else could it be called? His amusement with the reforming of the horn was dampened when Nessus revealed that he'd have to make a trip back to town while apparently appearing perfectly healthy, and a quiet groan denoted his displeasure with that plan, but he knew he was strong enough to make the trip if he tried, so he held back anymore complaints. "If you say so, Doc. I'll be f-fff--! The sudden sting of the anti-septic on his open wound made him hiss and wince, his hands clutching at the sand. He had been worried that one of the bottles was anti-septic, but had been hoping it was pretty much anything else. He didn't know why, but somehow, when one wasn't in the heat of battle, everything just seemed hurt worse. Another, less pained hiss escaped him as Nessus pinched his wound shut, and then, sensing that that would be the end of his treatment for now, he finished his thought from earlier, "I'll be fine, Doc." With a wince and a groan, he helped himself back up to his feet and brushed the sand out of his hair and off his trousers. He pulled off his bloodied shirt and non-bloodied-yet-in-the-way-of-his shirt vest, figuring that with the blood washed off his body and the wound sealed up, the shirt would be suspicious if he was trying to hide the fact that he was wounded, and maybe the site of a well-toned torso would keep rebellious thoughts out of the geezers' heads. "Don't forget about this guy." Redwood called out to the pirates, pointing to Junior's unconscious body, and then turned himself and began to walk towards town. And as the briskly shuffling herd of old-timers passed over Junior's body, at least seven of the healthier members of the crew stooped down to lift him up off the beach. "What's with that look, Doc?" Redwood asked, approaching the doctor and noticing an expression that seemed to be going through guilt and then fear and then perhaps anger. He couldn't understand why the doctor was upset, which was more or less par for the course for the night, but he did know the doctor was upset and if he could, in any way, allay his worries, then he might as well, "You're not the one who got shot, and I'll admit you pretty much saved the island by yourself without getting so much as a scratch. Now you're heading back to town where I'm sure they'll call you a hero or something, so just why would you have such a long face now? Other than the obvious reason." |
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| ♠ The Unspeakable | Mar 20 2014, 02:30 PM Post #28 | ||||
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Nessus had grown so used to "long face" remarks that, by this point in his life, he had not only grown an immunity to them, but had adopted them as his own at times. As such, Redwood's last few words didn't really rouse his ire. What did rile him up, however, was the fact that the fox was still keeping up his innocent act. "I guess we'll soon see," he answered after a time, still brooding. The doctor spent the rest of the trip back to town in relative silence. Needing a distraction, he passed some of the time checking out their "prisoners" as they walked, figuring out which would need care and how urgently it should be given. Besides Junior and the Captain, three of the crew had been hit with friendly fire. The rest had suffered nothing more than scrapes and bruises, though many complained of arthritis pain. When they arrived back at the Tavern Clinic Hotel Workshop, the Mayor was waiting for them. With him were most of the adult inhabitants of the island, too. There was a proliferation of torches amongst the mob, and Nessus was certain he'd seen a pitchfork somewhere, though it may have been a rake hoe. In their own earnest way, they'd readied themselves to defend what little they had left. To the doctor, angry mobs were nothing more than a sign that his own misgivings had been verified. "How long until they get here?" the mayor asked, all nerves, but doing his best not to break down infront of his townsfolk. "None; they're right before you." Nessus gestured to the crestfallen, shuffling old mob. The dispirited crowd of elderly folk looked nothing like pirates. Their weapons all having been taken away, they in fact looked like nothing more than a senior tour group wearing kitsch pirate costumes, the sort you might find at a gift shop on a resort island. Between the lot of them, no one did anything more ferocious than wheeze a bit. The mayor gave Nessus a suspect look, and the unicorn man could feel his hair rising. "These...are the pirates?" the statesman asked, peering around and trying to find a threatening mug in the crowd. He inevitably failed the task. "The ones that were coming to loot and pillage our island?" "The very same," Nessus droned, his voice edging towards cold. "Only, they don't look very dangerous, you see." "They may appear just a touch less intimidating now that I've relieved them of all their swords, guns, and torches." The mayor nodded dumbly, and the crowd began to murmur. Not a one of them had any reason to doubt the doctor's word. They knew pirates had been coming, and now those pirates had been defeated. It was clear to anyone watching the scene that the townsfolk were simply confused and shocked to see that their assailants had been so far off from what they had been imagining. Anyone watching, perhaps, that was a raving mad paranoid asshole. To Nessus, the crowd was a sea of peering, accusing eyes. He knew in that instant that he had fallen into their trap. The doctor's fingers tightened again into fists as outrage and despair swelled within him, fighting for control of his actions. That he'd been right all along was no great consolation to him. The sting of this most recent betrayal was too much. He could taste metal in his mouth. As always, Nessus thought, he'd committed the greatest crime of all: performing a good deed, expecting no reward. The universe had drilled the lesson into him over and over again that he could expect only punishment if he persisted in the folly of helping others out of his own sense of duty. The cruel cosmic machinery had him born a unicorn, compelled to heal and help others, into a world where such selflessness was mortal taboo. It had blessed him with perfect, crystalline sanity, in a world where madness reigned supreme. There was a moment of silence, Nessus finding himself at a loss for words. He knew that argument would bear no fruit, as it never had in the past. He briefly considered simply reverting to his natural form and sprinting away at full speed. That would be wrong, though; there were too many left to be treated. Maybe, if he pleaded and promised to go crazy later, like they wanted him to, he'd be allowed a day's reprieve to just go about finishing up his work. As much as he loathed the idea of just handing them a victory, he was cornered, and no other options seemed readily available. The look on his face was still calm, but a keen eye would see the rage building just beneath. He had that kind of look about him that you see on somebody's face when you've just given them horrible news, and you're very much expecting that they're about to give you even worse news as payment. Nessus took a deep breath, getting ready to say something, but not even sure whether it would be a shrieking condemnation of the gathered ungrateful savages or an impassioned but ultimately futile appeal to their long-forsaken reason. Instead, not even knowing why, Nessus turned to look at Redwood. |
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Democracy Incoming
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| Nero | Mar 22 2014, 08:43 AM Post #29 | ||||
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Best Husband
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"You figure it out yet, Doc?" Redwood grinned wide, his teeth sharp and pointed like the very knives he and the rest of the crowd had drove into Nessus's back. He felt there was little point in keeping up this charade any further, and placed a hand on his forehead. Gripping the skin, he tore off his own flesh to reveal not blood and muscles and bones, but the pitch black head of a horned, three-faced demon. Two of his heads were stuck with a permanent, mad, open mouthed smile, their forked tongues dancing as they let out a screeching, mocking cackle. The third face, located where Redwood's old face had once been, bore a grin of its own, and maddening, bleeding, bright red eyeballs. Why were they bleeding? For the sole purpose of being terrifying, of course! As Redwood opened his mouth again, one could see trapped souls in the back of his throat, clinging desperately to his flesh 'less they fall into the eternal prison of his twenty stomachs, "Indeed, as you feared, this has all been a ruse! Now, my minions: Let us have a round of mocking laughter at this foolish sap, and then we shall consume his very essence!" By all logical reasoning, that is what should have happened. Surely, this was some sort of cruel prank as Nessus feared. But in reality, when Redwood met Nessus's gaze, the fox-man merely smirked, turned to the mayor, and shrugged, "It sounds pretty bizarre, I know, but it's the truth; may as well be thankful for it." The mayor was silent for a moment. There were clear signs of violent struggle (though not too violent) among the crowd of pirates as well as on Redwood and Nessus. He also had no reason to doubt the testimonies of the island's heroes of the day. As strange as a band of elderly buccaneers was, it wasn't much stranger than a unicorn doctor visiting his town. Finding no real reasons to doubt that the day -- or night, as it were -- had been saved, his lips curled into a small, somewhat unsure smile, and he removed the flower pot from his head that he had been using as a helmet, "Well then…good job! E-Everyone! The pirate threat has passed! Let's give a hand to Mr. Redwood and Dr. Ausfaller, and then…I guess let's go back inside and have drinks!" The mayor led the crowd in a round of polite applause. Everyone seemed pleased that their homes wouldn't be pillaged, though no one was really beside themselves with gratitude or anything like that. After a few claps, most people began to file back into the tavern at their own pace, still murmuring to each other about the last half-hour or so. "Heh, I don't think they need to know about the laser beam glasses, do you?" Redwood whispered to Nessus, chuckling a bit. Had one of those laser beams shot through the town, they would have no doubt received a hero's welcome. But Redwood wasn't too interested in glory right now. He was more concerned with the bullet in his gut. He made his way into the tavern, leaving the corralling of the pirates to Nessus, and found his old chair at the bar. Sighing, he sat himself down, wincing a bit at the sharp pain in his gut. He found his mug in front of him, right where he had left it in fact, though the drink had no doubt gone a bit warm. He started to drink it anyways, and found it still had some coolness to it. Those pirates really weren't much more than a quick detour. Though for Nessus, he figured it was probably an unwelcome, sudden burden of patients. Speaking of Nessus, he turned to the doctor, wherever he was, and called out to him. "Anytime you're ready to operate, Doc, I'll just be here." He said, patting his wound, or where his wound had been at least, in case it wasn't obvious what he was talking about, "Though I'd prefer it be sooner rather than later. Still hurts, and all." He did have to admit though, that it didn't hurt that bad. Not as bad as it should of, anyway. That unicorn magic really was something special, as was the unicorn himself. Redwood couldn't help but think, "Someone like that would be nice to keep around." |
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| ♠ The Unspeakable | Mar 28 2014, 11:26 AM Post #30 | ||||
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Not Responsible
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For a moment, Nessus felt a chill. He wasn't certain why. Though his own paranoid delusions tended towards a more internalized, less hallucinatory vibe, it seemed as if a brief flash of some alternate reality in which the Madness of Kricfalusia had caught up with him at last. Then, Redwood was talking. An odd and unsettling sense of peace followed. The mayor, beyond all reasoning, somehow bought their farfetched yarn. They'd heaped tall tales one atop another, and told the man of the impossible thing that had happened. They'd returned from a pirate invasion with harmless old men and women in tow, and called them the very same criminals they had set out to stop. Nobody should believe such an outrageous story! The fact that it was entirely true didn't excuse it, either. "I hadn't thought of telling them about all that, in any case," the doctor responded when Redwood (very sensibly) advised against sharing the bit about the impossible laser glasses. That was pure Kricfalusian fancy, a bit of fantasy that he himself still wasn't sure he believed. If he didn't have the burn marks on his lab coat to prove that it had happened he wouldn't believe it either, even having been there. Nessus spoke through a haze of numb disbelief. To those outside he seemed to be calm, and his tone was professional if a bit soft. Still, he couldn't quite assign the reality he was experiencing to the one he had predicted. It was something entirely outside the boundaries of his expectations. Soon, everyone had been shuffled inside for their promised meal, and Redwood was getting ready for the tough bit of work that lay ahead of them. At that point, the doctor let his autopilot take over. His front and back brains swapped places, and he prepped the store room of the tavern for surgery. With mechanical precision, he went about the room, cleaning every surface exposed to air with a mix of soap and some highly diluted cleaning compound from his medical bag. Just as the oats and jelly were hitting the tables outside, Nessus was leading Redwood into his make-shift operating room. "I'm going to be administering a very large dose of magic," Nessus warned his patient, snapping off nearly a full inch of his horn and dropping it, along with some other ingredients from his bag, into a mortar. "You will fall asleep for some time as a result. By the time you awake, you should feel as if you'd never been shot at all." In place of a pestle, he ground the mixture his own iron-hard fingertips. He could be heard reciting the formula for this specific dose of unicorn healing magic under his breath: 20mg extract of rainbow, 35mg dehydrated sunshine, and 4g pure unicorn mojo, all suspended in an aqueous solution of 100ml distilled mother's love. Nodding to himself, he poured the finished mixture into a small vial. It was the purest white, dancing with flecks of every colour imaginable and maybe some besides. The medicine looked like molten pearl. "Drink this," Nessus instructed. "I've added some unnecessary filler to ensure that the taste will be agreeable." Nessus did not explain that this was a measure he normally only took for children and the terminally infirm. Even in his current state, he knew that it would be seen as an insult. The fact was that adults could handle bitter medicine, and most adults understood this too. His patients were lucky enough to be receiving unicorn magic, the best healing to be found in all of nature or science. In spite of that, he had gone out of his way to flavour the compound. For reasons that largely eluded him, he wanted to impress his new companion. As the doctor had promised, the medicine had a pleasant flavour, something like angel's food cake. Almost as soon as Redwood had emptied the vial, he passed out. Taking up his scalpel, Nessus carefully made the first incision. When it was over, there was nothing more than a thin, silver line to prove that Redwood had even been shot. From most angles, it would look as if there had never been a wound at all. Nessus cleaned everything up, throwing the bloodied linens into a small wooden drum. Before long, the room was exactly as it had been before, except for the unconscious carpenter laying across a table with a small bandage on his side. By his calculations, Redwood should be waking up soon. He had hit him with enough whimsical whammy to keep him from feeling any pain, but not so much that his senses would be dulled. Dropping the drum outside, careful to mark it with a silvery biohazard sign, Nessus joined the good townsfolk and the pirates back inside the newly rebuilt, oddly spacious, and suddenly almost welcoming tavern. Less than an hour had passed. The seniors were gumming down seconds or thirds of their mush, looking as happy as can be. The townsfolk were treating them kindly, and Nessus couldn't blame them: they had accepted that the old-timers were criminals, but they'd never seen the weapons, never looked at the cruel, hungry look in their eyes as they'd invaded the shore. He made a mental note to remind the mayor that these /were/ in fact degenerate scum who had but a short while ago attempted to pillage their storm-worn island, lest he forget and they be left to return to their piratical ways. In the meantime, though, Nessus still had quite a bit on his mind. Taking a seat apart from all the revelry, he waited to snap back to the reality in which he had been betrayed, from which he had retreated into this current delusion. Each second that passed made the doctor both more and less certain that the curse of his homeland had come upon him. Soon, he would be as mad as his parents had been, as his childhood friends, as all of his people. That, or he wouldn't. Just as they had planned all along. Or, as they hadn't. |
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Democracy Incoming
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1:40 AM Jul 11