Damien clawed his way out of the rubble. His hands rose out of the ground like demented snakes,clawing their way to the surface. Damien blasted anything that landed on him. He then started to lift the heavier pieces of concrete off everyone. "Is anyone hurt?" He called, after the third half-ton slab of concrete.
Wow, everyone totally ignored what happened to Garth. *shakes his head*. Damien is suddenly above ground?
Reggie was crouched on the ground. chunks of concrete suspended in mid-air above and around him. He stood up slowly. The rubble around him dropped to the ground. The rubble above him toppled to either side of him and landed on the ground with a crunch. He then brushed some dust off his suit as he turned to face the others. He responded to Nathan's question with a mix of questionable glee and frustration.
"Yeah, i'm fine. God, Pain just never knows when to quit. Can we get moving yet?" He brushed his trouser legs frantically. He then noticed Damien.
"How'd you get up here? I sent Garth down to find you. Wasn't there a third did you sat Nathan?" On this thought he strode over to the manhole and peered down at the metal figure of Garth. "Garth, you can come up, they're here." He called down to his metallic comrade.
A few splashes soon followed and a constant ***** noise as Garth placed a metal foot on each rung of the ladder. He emerged moments later.
"What happened?" He said instantly. The blast had evidently shaken to sewer but the cascade of rubble around them also a big hint.
"Bomb." Said Reggie, remarkably calmly for what he was saying.
"Pain?" Asked Garth. His body began to slowly lose it's metallic shine as he turned back to his fleshy pink and his suit to it's mellow cream.
"But of course" Replied Reggie.
Something isn't right with him, something probably snapped when Pain escaped
Garth pondered this for a second as he watched the now slightly eccentric Reggie pace up and down in front of him, evidently devising a counter-attack against Pain. He soon stopped. He obviously realised that the chances of it ,whatever he was planning, working was slim to none.
Reggie then let out a small sigh confirming this.
Wow, my writing has improved overnight. Probably as I was reading "A Tale of Two Cities" by dickens today and yesterday
"It's always Pain." Said Reggie massaging his forehead. "Plus that was an explosion not a collapse. Thirdly that building wasn't affected by the battle." He motioned down the street to the block sunk by Pain.
"In conclusion, Pain is such a pain" He said shaking his head.
Catholic boarding schools tucked away in quaint little corners of the countryside thirty miles away from any form of civilization were not considered the most likely location for a gruesome tale of horror to unfold. These places were beacons of decency and happiness, bastions of good up-bringing and respectable people, places that could never be darkened.
The mountain of burnt tress that blocked the only road and the torn, naked form of a dead nun splayed atop the church steeple proved otherwise. The long, noble stone pinnacle that once declared itself as a symbol of hope, fortitude, and religious nobility now sported the defiled body of one of it's most trusted admirers, it's unbreakable length piercing it's servant between the legs and then continuing up through her body, eventually erupting from her throat and into the sky, glistening in the paling sun with a lovely red skin of fresh blood. Crows had yet to gather for the feast, leaving the newfound seas of bodies in utter silence.
Hell is indeed at the gates.
------------------------
"Time to go." said Pain, emerging abruptly from the stone behind Mike and pulling him backwards into the goo. Then they were off, moving swiftly through the ground in some direction that Mike couldn't determine. He was enveloped in blackness for what seemed like forever, as Pain pulled him along through the earth towards their destination.
"You seem like a very dark man." Pain's leering head commented, appearing over Mike's shoulder as they shifted courses slightly and began to rise. "You seem like the kind of person who could stomach a great deal of rather silly, whimsical things, like child pornography or the slow and painful acid death of twenty thousand drafted soldiers. I bet you would even make their families watch." He chuckled, smacking noise that splattered black stickiness all over the side of Mike's face.
"Let's find out."
Suddenly their upward velocity stopped, and Mike was standing in the old stone sanctuary of some kind of church. It was dark, utterly dark, save for a row of candles along each side. The windows were covered in swirling blackness, and the large doors behind him were replaced by a mass of oozing darkness, it's surface covered in the ever changing faces of tortured souls, their pitiful skeleton arms reaching out and grasping for him, brushing the his back and hair with their withered fingers. Instead of church pews running along both halves of the immense room, there stood rows and rows of beds. In each bed, lay a sleeping child.
At the far end of the sanctuary, in front of the altar, stood a massive humanoid shape. It's ugly black body curved and rippled in grotesque ways, settling in awful forms and then changing again, looping in and out of believability. It's huge, goat-like head bore a pair of towering horns, adorned with weeping skulls and laughing stars. Fangs hung down like the crul scythes of the Reaper from the Beast's dripping mouth.
"Be careful, Clapping Man..." Pain said, his deep voice crawling through the sanctuary in a mere whisper, so as not to wake the sleeping treasures. "...this isn't The Asylum anymore. You stepped near the edge of The Pit, you cast your eyes down, and to your filthy little rotting mind it looked like fun. It looked like a party. You cast your lot with a hidden bidder, trying for a prize you didn't understand. Never trust the showman."
The walls turned to writhing, festering ghoulishness as black creepers and vines spread through them. The Showman spread his arms wide, indicating the ranks of beds. Forty children slept there, from kindergarten to mid-grade school, soundly unconscious from the gas. Tucked into their sheets by the creeping hands of Pain while they were unknowingly sealed into the place of their final rest. On the edge of wakefulness they tossed and turned, rolling about now and then, hugging their pillows in innocent contentment, knowing that they were safe.
"Now we see what the dice reveals. What the cards hold. Whether the chamber is empty." His features seemed to grow, exaggerating like some kind of freakish cartoon. "These innocent children are the angels of your mind, the ones that would keep you from the Showman's Prize. You have but one task before you, one mere accomplishment that is well within your power to complete." The red light that flooded behind his large eyes grew brighter, shining out into the darkness like spotlights seeking a fugitive.
"You have no reason to harm them, no reason to cause them any kind of pain. They have never done anything against you, they have never committed a sin or deserved any form of punishment. The only reason that you would possibly do anything to them, is because I told you to." Pain grinned.
"Now, to the best of your abilities, hurt them."
Sorry it took me so long to post. I was having trouble getting into the mood.
Trying to get me with a moral dilemma? Imaginary morality has no bearing on me. So it's stabby stabby time.
Mike smiled. "Gladly, not because you tell me too but because I want to." He said, his talking woke one of the children a girl she couldn't have been older then 8. "Who are you, where's Sister Catherine?" She asked groggily not fully awake and unaware of the grim reality surrounding her.
"Me? I am fear taken form, welcome to hell." Mike answered Malice envenomed his voice, she was now fully awake and seeing the back hands and silently screaming faces she herself screamed jolting awake others sending them into panic and fear. It created a tortured symphony Mike relished in it he waited till they stopped, waiting for their voices to leave them letting them shudder in fear sobbing at what hellish reality they faced.
"Why are you afraid we haven't even begun playing yet." He took the two nails from his pocket and presented them much in the way a magician would before he did some whimsical trick. The small figures sat petrified in morbid anticipation of what would happen.
The sadistic smile crept across Mike's face again he rested the tip of one of the nails on one of his thighs and drove it in slowly, then yanked it out and continued his assault. Slowly increasing the speed with each attack. Agony welled in his victim's eyes fear burned brightly, what was happening to them, how could it be happening, there's no way it could be real no way. "Know true fear and the fullest extent of suffering." Mike screamed.
Well Yorg I'll let you go ahead do the ending and aftermath in your post because I can't be arsed to do it myself
Shaking his head, Nathan could only sigh at Reggie's reasoning. The guy was seriously paranoid about this 'Pain' fellow...perhaps overly so.
"Well, if you guys are just going to hang out and lick your wounds, I'm going to head out towards the airport and get out of this place...as soon as I find some bandages of course"
He explained, looking at his wounded shoulder
"Does anyone know the way to the hospital? Point me in the right direction perhaps?"
"If you don't care about us, why should we care about you?" Asked Garth as Reggie raised his arms behind him. The humvee that had brought them this far levitated into the air and rushed towards them. It hovered above the ground next to them. Reggie dropped his arms and the Humvee fell to the ground. It's suspension rocked with with force of the impact. The doors of the vehicle then all flew open. Garth lept into the drivers seat, Reggie in the passenger's.
Reggie turned to the others.
"If you care for this city, come with us. If you don't then flee, we won't stop you" He then slammed the door and set his eyes on the road in front of him.
Harsh, booming laughter filled the inside of the church as the Beast watched it's accomplices work with glee. Bug-like eyes continued to form over the long, animal-like head, covering it in tiny pores that spewed red light. The grotesque maw of the Monster spread wide, dropping across it's chest and opening up like one of the great chasms of the deep, as all of Pains features exaggerated and spread, enveloping the room with black wickedness.
And the children cried, screaming and wailing their agony on deaf ears. They writhed in their beds, tears streaming down their faces, muscles wrenched into terrible convulsions of suffering as Mike discovered more and more perverse ways to enact his power. Darkness crept up the sides of their beds, hung from the ceiling, slithered through the air and crawled along their flesh. Darkness slunk from the shadows, smothered the light, replaced their soft cushions with beds of piercing malevolence.
Pain continued to laugh, his voice permeating everything even though his form was lost to the swirling blackness. It was soon joined by other sounds, those of tearing skin and sundering muscle. Horrified screams of agony and blood-freezing wails of tearful fear and pain hollowed out the echoing spaces around the sickening crunches and grindings of breaking bone and rending cartilage. Red chunks of nameless things flew through the air, squelching sloshes followed by the gentle yet crisp spattering of thick blood.
Screams and tears. Writhing and blood. Horrified eyes that beheld only what the red lights of watchful hate granted them. Terror and horror and pain. Death was too much fun. The Clapping Man understood. It's impossible to die in hell.
The largest hospital in the city, Urbis Central, located just a few minutes from uptown, was in chaos. The Bomber's threat had been more than enough for them to get thrown into the red zone, but now supers were duking it out all across the city. Every single patient had to be evacuated, as fast as possible, and that included the ones that were currently being brought in by the truckload. Choppers constantly landing and taking off, flying critical patients to safety. Buses and ambulances coming and going, shipping people off to other hospitals and piling them into gigantic convoys to get them out of the city.
Thousands of men, women, and children occupied the sprawling complex, and now with the ensuing violence, even more were coming in. Emergency clinics were set up all around the place, but now even those were having to turn down incoming people. Hospitals nearby were filling too, struggling to maintain order and keep the patients flowing. Several more bombs had gone off that day, the biggest one in Archer Heights, the largest and most expensive apartment complexes in the city. There just wasn't enough room for all the people.
Needless to say, Urbis Central was busy. Very busy. Too busy to notice the infiltration of their sewer system by an unknown enigma. Too busy to notice the crazy-looking, blood-splattered man walking casually through the service halls beneath the main building, and eventually climbing the steps to the first floor. Too busy to notice the door, which was usually locked with a security code, open seemingly of it's own accord.
Mike was armed this time, not only with his power, but with the multitude of small weapons Pain had given him and cleverly hid about his person. Mostly knives and blades, although a few very small handguns were also present. And of course, there was the ever-watchful eye of Pain, always nearby but never within reach.
Basically, Pain has set Mike loose in the biggest hospital in the city, with some weapons, and of course his power, to do as he wishes. I'll let you decide where the weapons are hidden. Pain would probably hide them inside the fabric of his clothing or something, be creative. As you probably guessed, Pain is also nearby, in the walls and such.
Seeing that nothing useful would be gained by hanging around the naive fools any longer, Nathan set out down the street, leaving the others behind. He had no time for people who couldn't make up there minds, which is something he begrudgingly respected about Garth and Reggie is that they did hold to there beliefs...even if they were wrong.
But still, despite the rejection there was a spring in Nathan's step as he made his way into the city. Now he could go back to using his ability without the constant whine of how it wasn't proper or that it should be used for good.
Hopefully a SWAT van would come by, those were always fun...
"hmmm no answer, have you gone into sleep mode or something because that`s just rude" terrible fired another bolt of lightning into the pile of rubble 1w was currently residing in.
"is that it?...wow they just don`t make'em like they used to" terrible sighed as he turned around and began making his way to the man street he walked through an alley nearby where him and 1W were fighting before setting foot onto the sidewalk, almost immediately afterward some random bumped into terrible knocking him back a few paces.
"watch where your fucking going" terrible grunted pushing the stranger back, sending him off his feet and back half a block, landing flat on his ass.
"okay, now what to do?" terrible said to himself as he walked towards the person he pushed over quickly passing him and starting to walk off.
terrible looked over his shoulder at Nathan before slowly turning around to face him a blank spread across his face.
"okay two things, one why the fuck should I calm down and two if I had any idea where the hospital was I`d be there smashing the place up and making life support systems fuck up" terrible said in an annoyed tone before turning around to walk off again.
"but if you follow the direction the people are running you might find it...or you might find a rocket launcher pointed at your head" terrible said over his shoulder before letting out a deep laugh as he started walking away again.
This post is not nearly as awesome as it should be... Unless one of you happen to implode upon reading this, it isn't good enough.
Two robots stood, perfectly still, in a battlefield of falling debris. For what could have been hours they had stood, the female with her hands laid on top of the male's, and any onlooker could easily mistake them for statues.
Outcry's positronic brain was in a confusing state. There was a fortress of encryptions, data blocks, firewalls and a cubic buttload of things that were designed to destroy the unknown, all guarding Outcry from attack by viruses. Theoretically, nothing could get in, and things seldom got out. But, like every 'impenetrable' mind that Carter had built, it had a weakness.
1W could be beaten by taking advantage of his priorities. He would always protect Carter, and this could always prove his downfall.
2W had been beaten by the combined efforts of many supers, all tearing his armour to pieces and manually shutting down the core. His weakness was inferiority to his prey.
3W had been beaten by his own morality, allowing Catherine to upload a program that overwrote the Laws to suit their needs.
And 4W? Her weakness is her consciousness. All of the other robots in the 'Carter' series were just that. Robots. They were beings of metal, hydraulics and wiring. But Outcry was a person before her time as 4W. There had been 29 years of consciousness that Carter had needed to suppress when the time came to make Outcry operational. And that was were she had slipped up.
One cannot contain the entropic mess that is the human mind using segments of code. It is comparable to using a small brick wall to hold back a flood. By using more code, you would hold it for longer... but it will not last forever. As such, Catherine's mind was now a potential rampage of feeling and thought that was held back by Outcry's consciousness. ThreeWords was about to change all that. He was going to break that consciousness for just long enough to unleash the one within. How?
****
"When I promised you power, your brain will have told you to attack me. But you grabbed my hands instead. Why was that?"
Outcry looked down, as though thinking of an answer, though keeping her hands firmly upon his.
He answered. "Because you are not a machine. You have a positronic brain to make decisions, as all of Carter's robots do, but then you have a real one that makes you act otherwise. You can override your programs."
She looked into his eyes, "You are wrong. I am kept under the influence of the Laws at all times. They limit what I can do so that my actions cause no harm to innocents."
"And has your inaction not cause the deaths of several more so far? If you were truly constrained by the Laws you would have left long ago to protect innocents. But instead you stayed here among the debris of a theatre."
"My actions could not have saved any of them. The possibility that my presence at the scenes of many of these deaths are so low that we can deduce them to all to be negligible. I stayed because..." She paused. She had, at no point, received a command to attack ThreeWords. Carter had failed to mention him. "I stayed because you were a threat to me... I had to destroy you."
"And not because of a program telling you so. Because of your own intent."
They both stayed quiet for a moment, ThreeWords was letting the magnitude of what he had just said sink in.
"If what you say is true... That I am able to bypass the Laws, what makes you think that I shall not break my programming again to attack you right now?"
He chuckled. "Because of your past. You aren't a six month old robot at all, though this wouldn't be shocking to you. You have been alive for 29 years and 8 months, and have spent the last 6 months returning to life."
"Returning to life...?"
"This is not uncommon knowledge. Your death, I mean. Newscasters went on a spree. It was the first reportable death of a confirmed super. You were the beginning of a purge of supers from cities across the world. Carter made sure you never found out."
"My creator wouldn't do that... Even if she did, she will have had the best of intentions."
"...I believe that you were wondering why she would hide something from you. The file..."
"How did... you know that?" It dawned on her just a moment too late as her vision began to fade and her muscles began to relax. "You..."
"Maybe a robot would have been able to see that coming... But not you Catherine. There's too much at stake to let you keep trying to gain powers."
The Urbis skyline turned to blackness as ThreeWords caught Outcry from her fall and laid her down. There was a lot of work to be done if Outcry was to be made useful to him once more.
This post is not nearly as awesome as it should be... Unless one of you happen to implode upon reading this, it isn't good enough.
Two robots stood, perfectly still, in a battlefield of falling debris. For what could have been hours they had stood, the female with her hands laid on top of the male's, and any onlooker could easily mistake them for statues.
Outcry's positronic brain was in a confusing state. There was a fortress of encryptions, data blocks, firewalls and a cubic buttload of things that were designed to destroy the unknown, all guarding Outcry from attack by viruses. Theoretically, nothing could get in, and things seldom got out. But, like every 'impenetrable' mind that Carter had built, it had a weakness.
1W could be beaten by taking advantage of his priorities. He would always protect Carter, and this could always prove his downfall.
2W had been beaten by the combined efforts of many supers, all tearing his armour to pieces and manually shutting down the core. His weakness was inferiority to his prey.
3W had been beaten by his own morality, allowing Catherine to upload a program that overwrote the Laws to suit their needs.
And 4W? Her weakness is her consciousness. All of the other robots in the 'Carter' series were just that. Robots. They were beings of metal, hydraulics and wiring. But Outcry was a person before her time as 4W. There had been 29 years of consciousness that Carter had needed to suppress when the time came to make Outcry operational. And that was were she had slipped up.
One cannot contain the entropic mess that is the human mind using segments of code. It is comparable to using a small brick wall to hold back a flood. By using more code, you would hold it for longer... but it will not last forever. As such, Catherine's mind was now a potential rampage of feeling and thought that was held back by Outcry's consciousness. ThreeWords was about to change all that. He was going to break that consciousness for just long enough to unleash the one within. How?
****
"When I promised you power, your brain will have told you to attack me. But you grabbed my hands instead. Why was that?"
Outcry looked down, as though thinking of an answer, though keeping her hands firmly upon his.
He answered. "Because you are not a machine. You have a positronic brain to make decisions, as all of Carter's robots do, but then you have a real one that makes you act otherwise. You can override your programs."
She looked into his eyes, "You are wrong. I am kept under the influence of the Laws at all times. They limit what I can do so that my actions cause no harm to innocents."
"And has your inaction not cause the deaths of several more so far? If you were truly constrained by the Laws you would have left long ago to protect innocents. But instead you stayed here among the debris of a theatre."
"My actions could not have saved any of them. The possibility that my presence at the scenes of many of these deaths are so low that we can deduce them to all to be negligible. I stayed because..." She paused. She had, at no point, received a command to attack ThreeWords. Carter had failed to mention him. "I stayed because you were a threat to me... I had to destroy you."
"And not because of a program telling you so. Because of your own intent."
They both stayed quiet for a moment, ThreeWords was letting the magnitude of what he had just said sink in.
"If what you say is true... That I am able to bypass the Laws, what makes you think that I shall not break my programming again to attack you right now?"
He chuckled. "Because of your past. You aren't a six month old robot at all, though this wouldn't be shocking to you. You have been alive for 29 years and 8 months, and have spent the last 6 months returning to life."
"Returning to life...?"
"This is not uncommon knowledge. Your death, I mean. Newscasters went on a spree. It was the first reportable death of a confirmed super. You were the beginning of a purge of supers from cities across the world. Carter made sure you never found out."
"My creator wouldn't do that... Even if she did, she will have had the best of intentions."
"...I believe that you were wondering why she would hide something from you. The file..."
"How did... you know that?" It dawned on her just a moment too late as her vision began to fade and her muscles began to relax. "You..."
"Maybe a robot would have been able to see that coming... But not you Catherine. There's too much at stake to let you keep trying to gain powers."
The Urbis skyline turned to blackness as ThreeWords caught Outcry from her fall and laid her down. There was a lot of work to be done if Outcry was to be made useful to him once more.
That was pretty much as intended, if not slightly better. You win a metaphysical cookie =D
"Catherine"
The words echoed around her head. Light returns, and a face appears, familiar, concerned.
Memory returns, and Catherine/Outcry recognises the robot, and at the same time takes in the surroundings; she is lying in a bed in a small but confortable appartment. She is also not wearing anything, and unsure whether that is embarressing or an unnecesary factor
The first thing she noticed as her vision returned was the large blob in the middle of her range. Slowly it refined, the blob becoming something more human until...
"ThreeWords...?" she said softly. She looked around before sitting up and covering herself as best she could. It wasn't a great place to be, sitting naked in a shabby room, but it was better than were she though she should have been.
The last time Catherine could remember, her organs had been collecting in a puddle of her blood on the ground. Everything had gone black... She thought she was dead for sure. And yet here she was, alive.
Really she wanted an explanation. She deserved that much. "...Where are we? And how did I... how am I still alive?"
"yes...yes I do plan on smashing shit up, making people scream and causing general havoc, oh and murdering you can`t forget the murdering, why it`s one of my favorite hobbies actually" terrible responded starting to walk with Nathan instead of away from him.
"so for conversation's sake,why are you still in this city, you breaking stuff like me or are you just here to do some sightseeing?" terrible asked, immediately wondering why he chose to continue talking to Nathan instead of just murdering him like he normally would have.
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