Elizabeth observed as the alien walked in. It was odd, although after the clear presence of aliens prior she was expecting something more...alien. It was humanoid, for one. And shared a fair few features physically. Trying to remember the things her son read, she remembered an odd form of evolutionary progress being mentioned as a reason for such things, unless something weirder was going on, although she doubted that.
Of her considerable surprise and further contemplation, very little was actually visible in her facial expression and body language. She merely stood in the room next to the door and observed the strange being's actions, not really being able to do anything about them.
—Without a second thought, and with urgent swiftness, Guy walked to a point directly between the alien creature and Elena, planting his feet. Though a part of him decried this course of action as nigh-suicidal, and his knees shook, the man would not budge from his spot. He crossed his arms in a defensive 'X' formation, his heart hammering in his chest. —
"Stop."
—Though he barely noticed it, a strange tingling was spreading throughout his muscles, almost anticipatory in nature.—
If that thing was going to kill one person, it was sure as hell going to kill every person, Chester reckoned. He had no idea what he could do, but he couldn't just stand there gazing at it if it started to maul the young woman and her current guardians.
He let his right hand out until it was dangling a foot out of place, and used his left hand to pinch the cable near the wrist. He worked his separated hand into a spin, rotating it vertically around the stump as he faced the area where the alien creature was, ready to throw his hand - just in case - though he wasn't sure what he'd be able to do beside slapping the creature if things went to shit.
The entity came to a halt as Guy stepped into its path, those purple whorls and patterns which decorated its scales growing more elaborate and more complex once more as it fixed its gaze on the muscular young man. Those phosphorescent green orbs roamed across his frame, and Madeline noticed that it seemed particularly interested in the patches of translucent skin which dotted his body; part of her noted that it had stared at her hands—or rather, what passed for her hands now—in much the same fashion just a moment ago.
Something was different this time, however; as the creature studied the changes made to Guy's body, its posture gradually became tense, and those eerie, star-shaped pupils narrowed into three-ligned slits. Those violet patterns began to fade, and in their place blotches of angry red formed the scales on the giant's fingers, feet and around its mouth; to the red-haired single mother, these looked disturbingly like bloodstains, and that its claws and talons were still the same jet black they had always been did little to dispel that illusion. One eye rolled in its socket to look at Chester as he began to twirl one of his hands like a lariat, while the other turned away from Guy to stare at Typhoid; as it did so, a low, rumbling sound began to build within the alien's chest, a growl so deep that Madeline could feel her very bones resonating uncomfortably in tune to it.
Just then, a loud chime came from the doorway, and despite the clearly-agitated alien reptile in the center of the room Madeline could not help but turn towards this new sound to see what had caused it. One of the two remaining red circles on the portal's frame had suddenly turned a dull shade of green.
The creature took note of this as well, all tension bleeding from its immense frame in the time it took to blink; those bloody patterns faded away, leaving only a few smatterings of yellow and orange to break up the monochromatic monotony of its form, and its growl trailed off into nothing. It strode to the membrane in the center of the floor, paying no further heed to Elena, Guy or any of the other abductees, and once it reached the translucent blue gel it held out its right arm; chevron-shaped bands ran along its underside from the wrist to the elbow, and with a series of soft metallic clicks these bands began to split down the middle, revealing a small compartment that was clearly mechanical in nature.
From this, the alien retrieved an oblong object* made of the same dark blue material as the suits which it and the abductees wore; a broad strip of iridescent material ran along one side of this fatty device, and it let out a soft, rising hum as the creature ran one of its two thumbs along this surface. The blue membrane turned green in response to this sound, and the alien soon began to sink through it; in a matter of seconds it had vanished from sight, passing into the egg-shaped chamber below.
Shanna's efforts to find a seam would prove unsuccessful; as far as she would be able to tell, there were no breaks in the chamber wall to speak of. She might also notice that there was one pod which remained unopened, though its surface was completely opaque and as such its contents could not be seen.
Suddenly, a shaft of green light lanced down from the chamber's distant ceiling, casting an eerie viridian radiance over that peculiar symbol on the floor and everything else which this room contained; this shaft of light began to twist and warp in ways that seemed frankly impossible, eventually forming into a narrow spiral which turned gently in place. Faint sounds not unlike the rustling of leaves in a gentle breeze seemed to emanate from this strange helix, and it shone brightest where it met the roof far above, gleaming in the dark like some strange emerald star.
Were she to look up, Shanna would notice a shadow gradually emerging from that distant point of light; something—or someone—was entering the chamber from above, and as it slowly descended on that viridian spiral she would quickly notice that her visitor was not human by any stretch of the imagination...
The Danse Macabre Codex
The Man in Black
Looks like my kidnapper(s?) have finally come to visit me. Shanna thought. She quickly looked around for anything she could use to gain a tactical advantage if this encounter went south, such as a long pole, but came up empty. She tensed, readying herself to fight or flee, whichever was necessary. It appeared that the column of light was the only way in and out of here—she'd have to make reaching it a priority.
Why not take the initiative? She told herself. After all, the closer I am when I make contact, the easier it will be to reach that...elevator, I guess?
With that, she strode forward, stopping at the base of the column of light, waiting for the alien to emerge.
"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir
The Wordnomnom
Typhoid blinked twice after the impossibly tense moment and stood fully upright, taking a moment to steady himself. He reached down and offered Elena his hand in the universal gesture of "I can help you up" while turning his head to face Guy.
"Hey, Muscles, brave thing you did."
It wasnt exactly the bequeathment of a golden trophy but it was all the praise Typhoid, who was feeling oddly lightweight and numb, could muster at the moment.
While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.
Chester stopped swirling his hand and shoved it back into place. "I don't know about you guys, but when that thing comes back, standing around like we did isn't going to cut it a second time. We need to be ready for it. We're all in the same boat, after all. I may not know you, but by God, I know that I'm not going to die on a fuckin' spaceship as a lab rat for some assholes from Jupiter."
The Wordnomnom
"We have our strengths. But that thing might as well be god. I could MAYBE blind it with my cloak. You could MAYBE restrain it with your cables. Muscles, Miss Hentai, and Elena could all wail on it. But if that doesnt kill it what do we do then?
Come to think of it...how strong ARE you Muscles?"
While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.
"Good idea, Typhoon," Chester said. "Now you're thinking. That thing's no god, so if it comes back and tries to play mad scientist, we will have to take action. And if we can't kill it - hey, at least we showed them we wouldn't be their bitches."
Leonard got back on his feet, breathing heavily. A real alien. He had just seen a real extraterrestrial lifeform. If his mind wasn't so preoccupied with the fact that he was clearly one of their labrats, he might have found this exciting. As things were, it was madness.
The others were talking about fighting the alien, he noted. Perhaps that was their only way to escape this place. However, Leonard was far from the fighting type and his eyesight certainly did not help.
"I...I'm sorry. I don't think I can be of much help with fighting. But, uhm, I can help with...with my special eyesight. I think they've given me x-ray and thermal vision."
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"Oh, is that all?" said Chester. "I wonder how we can use a guy who can track targets through walls and in the dark to our advantage. Hell, these jackasses probably turn invisible, too."
He thought of something and looked around quickly, then added, "You, uhh... you don't see any of them now, do you?"
edited 18th Jul '12 10:22:47 PM by nman
"Not with the thermal one, no. I'll try to switch..."
Leonard squinted, and tried to make his eyes regain their previous properties. The change was a bit slow, but finally his sclera turned black and the hazy outlines returned. He looked around, trying to see if he could spot any aliens.
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"I don't know."
—For whatever reason, Guy's voice went raspy as he turned to regard first the pod-chamber in the floor, and then the assorted abductees. His body felt oddly stretched and light as it moved, and he was distinctly aware of how each muscle responded to him.—
"Don't call me that, either."
—He looked down at the incoherent Elena, and offered his own hand.—
"It's gone for right now, Miss. We'll be alright."
Leonard would find that his x-ray vision proved no more enlightening than his thermal vision had a moment ago; apart from his fellow abductees, the chamber they presently stood in was void of life. That said, with this vision mode he might be able to get a vague impression of what lay beyond that circular doorway; outside of this room, there appeared to be a wide corridor of some description, whose ends were too far away to see clearly and which seemed to gradually curve away from the door. There were no aliens in his field of vision, as far as he would be able to tell.
Madeline, for her part, was staring at the now-green membrane in the center of the floor, her brow creased in thought. Something about the reptilian giant's behaviour just now did not sit well with her; while admittedly the single mother was no expert on these sort of things, it seemed to her that the creature hadn't become aggressive until Guy, Chester and that unpleasant fellow with the spiky hair moved to oppose it...and then as soon as that light on the doorframe turned green, it had lost all interest in them.
"But why?" she muttered under her breath. "What does it want?"
Her frown deepened at that moment as something else occurred to her; just before it had passed through the membrane into the room below, the alien had done something with its arm. Madeline had not been able to get a good look at it, for she had been behind the creature at the time, but now she had to wonder...
"Did anyone get a good look at its arm?" she asked of no one in particular.
In a matter of seconds the alien had reached the floor of the darkened chamber, and a soft thump-clack rang out as it set down in front of Shanna. The black-scaled, bow-legged reptile immediately took one step to get out of that viridian spiral, straightening up to its full height of ten feet as it did so, then rolled one of those enormous, phosphorescent green orbs towards the blue-eyed blonde and fixed her with a penetrating stare. Faint whorls and patterns of violet and purple formed across its body as it studied the young woman, and after a few moments it turned to face her directly; its eyes roamed independently of one another, each focusing on a different object, and it seemed to take a great interest in the slits which adorned Shanna's arms, legs and face.
The giant took a few steps back then and slowly settled into an odd sort of sitting crouch; it continued to stare at Shanna, those purple patterns growing ever more complex as it did so. Her observer was completely silent, save for the for tapping of its sickle-shaped talons on the floor, and apart from this and the infrequent rising and falling of its chest the giant was almost completely motionless; were it not for its breathing, it could have been some extravagant sculpture or a movie prop.
The Danse Macabre Codex
"You mean you didn't see him open it up and pull the garage-door opener out of there?" said Chester.
The Wordnomnom
I find the mental image of Typhoid and Guy both offering a hand to Elena an amusing one. A drug dealer and a hot-blooded heroic type.
"I'm afraid I was looking more at its face and overall stance than what it was doing with the arm. Sorry."
edited 20th Jul '12 6:09:56 PM by Stormthorn
While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.
The Man in Black
Shanna met the alien's gaze, inspecting it as it inspected her. She couldn't shake the feeling of discomfort, acutely aware of the alterations that this being—and its friends—had made to her body. She found herself matching its gaze and stillness, while her mind processed what she saw.
Reptilian. Reptiloid-world-control conspiracy theories, coincidence? Unlikely—still not accurate, though. Her mind refused to countenance the idea that these aliens ran the world, via a complex conspiracy with too many working parts, no less. Regardless, they likely influenced that idea—sauroid aliens a common theme in fiction, likely all derived from dinosaurs, not actual contact. Survivors of KT Event? She filed the theory away, there wasn't enough evidence one way or another. For now, she had to wait and observe.
"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir
The Maid
As soon as the alien left the room Elena felt as if a giant hand that had been hold tight to her heart was suddenly released. She closes her eyes and brought one hand to her racing heart, her new legs awkwardly bending towards her as she obviously tried to make herself as little as possible. She took deep breaths... or as deep as she could take them in her current agitation as her mind was finally free from the claws of fear.
And how afraid had she been... she could barely believe how much her fear had paralyzed her when the... the thing moved towards her. She shivered at the memory... if possible she didn't want to be the center of attention for such a thing ever again. Why, her in the first place? All of them had been abducted, why did she had to be the damn lucky one of catching the monster's eye? If it was by the noise she made when falling in terror she would need to slap herself.
Still... the thing was away. They were alone. She heard those words as if they came from far away and yet they reassured her. Being this afraid was unlike her... so she fought against it... opening her eyes slowly and looking up at the two men offering their hands to help her up. Gods, this was beyond embarrassing... how could she had been reduced to such a nervous wreck?
Taking a deep breath she whispered a soft "Thank you" that barely left her throat before reaching over to hold both of their hands. She just hoped none of them would notice how much her hands were shaking. With a bit of effort she got back into her feet... the myriad of thoughts going around her head helped her subconscious somehow make use of her new extremities better than her conscious mind had to date "I-I'm alright... R-Really... I'm good now..."
If I'm sure of something it's that I'm not sure of anything.
The Wordnomnom
As he helped her up Typhoid let out a small bitter laugh. It wasn't mocking or hostile, but it wasn't a happy laugh.
"None of us are OK right now. Some of us, like Guy here, are lucky enough to be able to use all of our limbs. None of us are OK, though. We could all do with a Valium right now, and some water, and a clear exit."
While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.
“I was behind it, Chester,” the young woman replied somewhat testily. “I don’t have the power to see through people.”
Despite the harshness of her words, Madeline was nonetheless intrigued by what Chester had revealed; if the creature had been storing that device inside its own arm, was it also altered like she and her fellow abductees were? It seemed like a reasonable guess; the twenty-nine year old couldn’t imagine what sort of circumstances would lead to an animal developing some sort of pouch on its arm and not somewhere else, especially one deep enough to hold something like that. And it had been wearing something very much like the organic-looking blue garments that they all wore…
Madeline shook her head then. This kind of speculation could wait; the alien could still be dangerous even if it wasn’t hostile right at the moment, and she had no intention of dying here on some freaky alien spaceship millions of miles from home. They had to get out of there; her son needed her, and Madeline was not going to keep him waiting.
“This exit’s as clear as any,” she said, pointing to the circular hatch through which their reptilian visitor had first entered; the membrane stretching between her fingers made a soft noise like folding leather as her digits curled up, but she did her best to ignore it. “It might not be the best exit, but what choice do we have? We can’t go back; it’s still down there, and even if it wasn’t there’s still no other way out of that room. I say we move forward and take our chances.”
The reptilian giant continued to watch Shanna for a good minute, and as the seconds ticked by it seemed to lose interest; those purple whorls which decorated its body gradually faded away, leaving the creature’s scaly hide a glossy black once more. Nictating membranes slid over those phosphorescent green eyes as the alien let out what was unmistakably a yawn, its jaws opening wide to expose a cavernous mouth with a flat, forked blue tongue and several interlocking rows of serrated teeth; were it so inclined, this creature could probably bite the young woman’s head clean off and be able to swallow it in one go.
With a deep, rumbling grunt not unlike that of an irritated crocodile it extended its right arm towards Shanna, moving with deliberate slowness as if to show her that it meant no harm. As it did so, the creature turned its arm so that the palm was facing upward, allowing the young woman to see that a series of chevron-shaped, gunmetal grey bands ran along the underside of its arm from the wrist to the elbow; each band was about as thick as Shanna’s thumb, and they gleamed dully in the light of the viridian spiral. These chevrons began to split down the middle with a series of metallic clicks, their halves rising several millimetres from the surface of its arm and sliding apart to reveal a shallow compartment that was clearly mechanical in nature; three tiny mechanical arms with clamplike appendages rose up from this compartment as it waiting to accept something, and though the odd lighting conditions of the room made it hard to be sure, it seemed deep enough to hold a soda can or a water bottle at the very least.
The grasping claws retracted into this compartment as the chevrons began to close up a moment later, locking together and sinking back into the creature’s flesh in a complete reversal of how they had opened; once the compartment was shut, the creature waited a few seconds and then repeated the entire procedure. As it did so, Shanna might notice that doing this seemed to have an unpleasant effect on her reptilian visitor; its six fingers trembled and clenched spasmodically whenever the mechanisms of this strange cybernetic augmentation became active, and a rattling growl escaped its pebbly lips once it was done.
The giant lowered its arm once this demonstration was finished, letting out deep, audible breaths as though it was winded from heavy exertion. After taking a few seconds to calm down, it slowly brought its left arm up to its torso and tapped what would have been the index and middle fingers on a human hand against the strange garment which clung tightly to its chest; more specifically, it was tapping at a geometric symbol emblazoned there, a deep purple hexagon containing a yellow, upwards-pointing triangle.
“Aknoss,” the alien rumbled, this word like a sharp inhalation followed by a dwindling, drawn-out hiss. “Aaaaaaaknosssssssssss…”
The Danse Macabre Codex
"You're on my wavelength now," Chester said, ignoring the woman's attitude as she mentioned the way out. "'Best' or not, it beats cowering like animals."
The Man in Black
Shanna watched the alien's movements carefully, her surprise hidden beneath a mask of impassiveness. She hadn't actually expected her little staring contest to pay off. As the thing spoke, she wondered whether "Aknoss" was a personal name or a species name. It took a few awkward moments for her to concoct a test to find out the answer.
She pointed at the symbol on the creature's body, saying "Aknoss," to show that she understood. Then, she lifted her finger to point gently at the alien's face, hoping that such wasn't an offensive act to it. "Aknoss?" She asked.
"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir
The Wordnomnom
Typhoid spent some time looking about the room at his fellow abductees.
"Might as well. I saw we let Mus-...Guy lead the way, since he has the beef-suit upgrade. If that lizard predator shows up again we give it one firm warning and then jump it like the twitchy band of desperate freaks we are. Go post-apocalyptic on it."
Much softer, to himself, he added.
"For our heads are bloody, but unbowed."
While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.
"Cat got your tongue, big fella?" Chester asked Guy. "If you're too scared to go first, what the hell, I'll go." He patted his right hand with his left, "I've got the ball of twine, I might as well get the credit for finding the minotaur. I might not be able to punch it, but by God, I'm not going to stand around here much longer. So you going, or what?"
For as long as the creature kept his gaze focused entirely on Elena the young woman could not move, could not think and could not breath out of her own volition... indeed, her breathing came in incredibly quick and short inhalations and exhalations. Her heart raced like never before as the young woman was assailed by an incredibly primal fear... something that went beyond who she was as a person, something hardwired into her origins as a living being. Under the scrutiny of that gaze, of that alien being, the young woman was no different from a deer caught in the headlights, of a mouse in front of a snake.
She sat frozen as she was too afraid that any movement would bring... would bring...she didn't know what it might bring, but the fear for her life was there anyway.
There was a slight respire from her terror induced trance when Madeline stepped into the path of the monster. She was still gripped by fear, but it was a more rational one... and thus she babbled a series of no, over and over again, as she crawled backwards again, her legs shaking too much for her to be able to stand... but serving well enough to help her retreat until a wall stopped her retreat.
If I'm sure of something it's that I'm not sure of anything.