Tseng_Eclipse vs finalfight (No One Will Hear You Scream)

finalfight's Ged Tenshi vs. Tseng_Eclipse's Ion

Setting: A battleship orbiting Ion's Earth.

Structure: 1 intro, 2-3 battle posts, 1 victory post.

Special Rules: 2 day time limit on posts.

Judges:
1. Tiger of Wu
2. Bale Fire
3. Aulis Vaara

This message was edited on 2012-01-11T12:40:49-08:00.

Ion was a man who had become infinitely familiar with nightmares. From the waking one that had been his time in St. Leon’s, to more conventional ones as he had plotted against the Tower, to the ones that came to him almost constantly now, to remind him of what he had done, what he had become and, most sobering of all, what he yet had the potential to turn into.

That was why, when all that woke him was the screeching of his parrot along with the soft tones of an alarm clock that was lucky to see any use at all, he was both surprised and unsettled.

He had no time for fate and destiny, but equally he did not believe in anything being easy. It had been clear, from the first memory that he could clearly recall, that no force in the universe was going to make his path through life a simple one to walk down.

He realised, when going through the simple, everyday motions of the morning made him feel uneasy, that he was letting paranoia get the better of him. It had its hooks in tight.

“Murderer,” squawked his parrot, in between cracking through the hard shell of a nut with its beak. Ion repressed a twitch of irritation and walked up to the bridge.

---

“I was about to send for you,” Connor greeted, getting straight to the point as usual. Ion didn’t bother to comment on the unusual nature of him being there in person, nor the unprecedented appearance of one of his lab workers, who was stood just behind him. Martin, perhaps. Ion didn’t quite care enough to find out. “We’ve got a problem.”

“When have we not?” Ion returned tiredly. He had expected little less, after such a distressingly easy night. He wondered if there was actually a connection, or if it was just ascertainment bias fuelling his paranoid nature. Connor grimaced, glancing over at Roshea.

“Distress signal from Station 3,” he informed him, taking control of the conversation with a gesture at the viewscreen. What normally showed a wall-wide view of earth now showed a schematic detailing the location of all the space stations surrounding it. The circle for Station 3 was pulsing red, with a little white ring outlining one of the ships next to it. A battleship, one used for defending earth against outward threats instead of dealing with internal strife. Of course. Of course it would be a military station, one with the greatest potential for disaster if something went wrong.

Memories of the destruction of the Vindictus, of looking at photographs of the wreckage in abject disbelief, played out uncomfortably in his mind.

“I suppose a rescue team has already been deployed?” he asked. Roshea nodded.

“The Station itself hasn’t been breached yet, but they sent the whole crew of the Dolorosa to help the stricken ship and have received no contact since,” he responded. Ion raised an eyebrow.

“An entire ship? Entirely out of contact?” he repeated. Roshea’s face was grim, which was confirmation enough.

“They lost contact with the Immortalis at 0514 hours,” he informed him. “The only messages to get through were strings of incomprehensible static punctuated with screaming.” Ion winced at the thought. “The Dolorosa was dispatched at 0600, and summarily went off-grid at 0607, with no messages received from either ship after that point.”

“Seven minutes to work through an entire ship,” Ion murmured, feeling more and more uncomfortable as the conversation progressed. This couldn’t be his fault. He was nowhere near Station 3, it was practically on the other side of the earth. He wasn’t sure if that would make it better or worse.

“The message went out at 0630 to all stations to be on full alert,” Roshea added. “Dr. Connor came up shortly after.”

“Request of the Tower,” Connor remarked. “They want me to help find out what’s causing this.” He met Ion’s gaze frankly. “You, too, since you have such a track record when it comes to aliens.”

“I don’t work for the Tower any more,” Ion replied with a raised eyebrow, which got a snort of amusement from Connor. The poor man by his side looked a harrying mixture of incredibly confused and frightened.

“Right now, we have no idea what’s on the ship, if it’s living in the standard sense of the word, or how many of the crew are still alive,” Connor informed him, bypassing over Ion’s response as if he hadn’t even spoken.

“And I’m supposed to go and find out?” Ion supposed. Connor inclined his head, despite Roshea’s expression of surprise indicating that he hadn’t been informed of that. “And, I suppose, miraculously survive whatever is capable of taking down an entire ship?” he continued. Connor just looked amused.

“You do cling rather tenaciously to life,” he responded. “Martin here’s got both a teleportation locking wristband and access codes to get into the ship’s computers. If there’s nobody alive on the ship, find out what’s caused it, get out and Station 3 will destroy the battleship.”

“Because destroying the aliens with firepower went so well last time,” Ion replied, his tone hard and full of acid. Most of the crew on the Bridge winced, but it didn’t faze Connor in the slightest.

“I’ll leave it up to your judgement,” he responded with a shrug. “Martin, if it gets hot, give him the codes and get out. I’m sure he’ll work out the consoles eventually.” Martin, at this point practically white with fear, nodded without a sound.

Ion only scowled.

---

Teleporting onto the ship was the easy part. A locking to the ship’s hold, a flick of a button, a flash of light, and there they were. The rest looked to be harder.

The ship looked like the setting from a horror movie. Even with everything he’d seen in his life, the sight of walls painted in blood and gore was enough to turn his stomach a little. Martin, who had clearly had the upbringing of a normal person, staggered to the side and retched.

“You can go now, if you wish,” Ion informed him. It wasn’t a particularly malicious statement. It didn’t yet have all the hallmarks of one of the aliens that always seemed to harass him, but if it was – and so far it was looking likely, at the least – Martin would only be a hindrance. He glanced down at his wristband, just to be sure, but it was still locking on to Station 9 like it was supposed to.

Martin shook his head, his grip tightening around the interfacing unit in his hands. It was, for all intents and purposes, a small, flat screen, and would probably provide no protection for him whatsoever if he did have to use it in defence. Ion repressed the flicker of irritation. Even Johnson, his protégé apparent who was now scared of shadows, would have been more useful than one of Connor’s lackeys.

He began to walk down the corridor. The lights were flickering on and off, and each footstep was accompanied with a faint splashing noise instead of the customary clank of soles on metal. He tried not to look at what he was he walking in, or think about what it was doing to his shoes.

“Wh-what could have done this?” Martin asked, still looking shell-shocked. Ion hoped the Tower was going to pay for the PTSD treatment he was inevitably going to require.

“That is what we are here to find out,” Ion reminded him, his tone clipped. The sounds of screaming, and the faint echoes of gunfire, filtered down the corridors towards them.

Martin almost screamed when the first creature ran at them. Ion saw the lack of a web around it and reacted immediately, raising a hand and slamming it against the wall at the far end of the corridor with his telekinesis before he had even realised that it used to be human.

He left Martin, a look of terror on his ashen face, and walked down the corridor to where the thing that had once been human now lay. It was still twitching, but even if the lack of web hadn’t confirmed it as dead, the mess of bullet holes where it had once had a face would have done the same. Ion hazarded a guess that it had once been human, then picked the rifle up from its twitching torso and emptied the magazine into it until it stopped twitching.

“An even more unpleasant variation on zombies,” he muttered, glancing back at Martin. He was fairly certain that it wasn’t Amadeth – it wasn’t exactly her style – but he was left at a loss to what it might actually be.

“Th-that was a m-member of the c-c-crew,” Martin stammered from where he was stood. “Y-you just sh-shot-”

“He was already dead,” Ion dismissed, although he did drop the bloodstained rifle and wipe the blood from his hands in disgust. “I would highly suggest you leave before it gets worse.” Martin glanced from the object in his hands to the slumped corpse of something that had once been human, then slowly shook his head. “They are not paying you enough money,” Ion informed him, before continuing on his walk down into the corridors. Finding the source of the problem wouldn’t be so hard, he would just have to follow the screaming.

And survive long enough to get to the progenitor, but right now that was secondary on his ‘things to think about’ list.

Ion would have allowed himself a quick moment to congratulate himself for being right, but he wasn’t all that sure that it was a good thing this time. And besides, he had other things to worry about.

Like, for example, incoming magical fire.

To be honest, Ion was becoming sick of fire.

He was forced to roll again, his powers no use against flames, and when he got to his feet he was covered in other people’s blood, not to mention a little bruised. He wanted to take hold of the staff with his powers and rip it from his opponent’s hands, but even as he began the movement the lights of the Web around it blazed in defence. Ion hissed through his teeth as the backlash made him stagger.

“Trying to take another’s treasured possessions is incredibly rude,” the necromancer chastised. Another horrible, crushing sound of flesh on steel reminded Ion that he did not have the time to be thinking of rejoinders. He had to find a way of defending himself and, ideally, Martin, at least until the young man had finished his job. He also had to find a way of getting rid of the necromancer in charge, at the very least. He would have tried to kill him, especially in the wake of all the slowly reanimating bodies, but he had given up on considering that the minute he saw the bright, red Web around him.

He took a step backwards, away from the staff, and glanced towards the door. In his head, he counted down, and as he hit zero the creature slammed a fist into the door again. Nearly through. That was inevitable, and not something Ion was concerning himself with. What he was more interested in was how intelligent the creatures Ged had at his command were. It seemed that the answer, at least when the necromancer was otherwise occupied, was ‘not very’.

“I must say, I was expecting a little more than this,” Ged remarked, sounding disappointed. Ion didn’t respond immediately, one hand curling into a fist. “Perhaps if I kill your friend first you’ll put up a little more of a fight?” On the other side of the door, Ion estimated that the beast the necromancer had created was raising its fist.

Three.

“Or set you aflame?” Ged suggested.

Two.

“S-sir Ion,” Martin started, understandably terrified. Ion ignored him too.

One.

Before the fist came down on the door for what would almost certainly have been the final time, Ion grabbed it with his powers and, with a burst of white light, ripped it from its frame. The beast couldn’t stop its momentum, however, and staggered forwards, the blow it eventually landed making a sizable dent in the floor. Ion, his teeth gritted, slammed the door down hard onto its prone form, the sound of breaking bones and breaking flesh enough to make Marvin scream. He lifted it again, the bruising already beginning to show on his left arm, and slammed it into the floor between himself and Martin. He didn’t for a moment think it would stop the necromancer if he decided to go after the young lab tech, but it would at least impede the zombies.

Ged gave him a round of applause, each clap driving the staff’s thorns deep into his flesh. The skull began to glow black again, and at the edges of his vision Ion saw the mess of blood and gore that was all that remained of the creature begin to twitch slightly. He wasn’t surprised. At this point, it was hard to call between pessimism and realism.

He stepped backwards smartly to avoid another line of fire from the staff, but this one had not been aimed at him. Instead, the black flame caught on the blood that ran in tiny rivers through the floor, spawning a lake of fire that crawled along the blood as though it were oil. Ion spared the briefest of seconds to glance over at Martin, assured that he was out of range of the fire for the moment, and backed up against the wall. As the flames leapt upwards, increasing in intensity as Ged raised his staff, Ion pressed himself against the wall to avoid the surge of heat.

Sprinklers, Martin, he suggested, unhappy with his current position. He was, to be blunt, a sitting duck. He saw the necromancer frown, his eyes flickering between a dark blue and pure black as he looked from Ion to a point just above his head. Ion didn’t have much in the way of weapons, and the necromancer had him in a bad position.

With a click, little openings on the ceiling slid apart and water poured down upon the two combatants. It did nothing for the fire, which had begun to singe Ion’s clothes, but as the water mixed with the blood it began to wash towards the edges of the corridor, like a moving wall of fire. Ion stepped around it as Ged narrowed his eyes, looking no less frightening even when soaked.

“Fair enough,” he allowed, before raising the staff. The skull glowed for a while and nothing happened, then a flash of dark light set the blood soaked into Ion’s clothing alight. Behind the impromptu metal wall, Martin screamed as though hell itself had visited its horrors on him. And, looking at the damage the necromancer had wrought, it probably wasn’t all that far off for the poor young man.

Ion gritted his teeth, trying to repress both a growl of frustration and the pain cutting into his skin. There was heat, but it didn’t burn like fire, more like magical acid, eating through his flesh. He threw his jacket to the floor as quickly as he could tear it from his body, but there was still fire on his trousers, on his shoes, flickering weakly on his skin. Water kept pouring from the sprinklers, easing some of the pain, but the blood that washed away only crawled towards the staff, sucked up by hungry thorns that had burrowed into the floor itself.

Ion’s eyes swept over the corridor. There were clear lines between the different sections of floor, and although they were securely bolted, he had little other option with Martin still screaming to himself a short way away. With a grimace, the lights on both arms shining brightly enough to be seen through the black light of the fire, he wrenched the floor from beneath the necromancer and tried to crush him. He bled like any other man, even if he could take mortal wounds and live. Perhaps if he destroyed him, the ship would be free from his influence.

There was more blood, although Ion couldn’t see the results of his assault immediately. Above him, the sprinklers stuttered to a halt, leaving the crackling fire to eat at Ion’s skin. It was weak, after the relentless barrage had greatly diluted the quantity on his clothes, but some of it was still there, stubbornly soaked in. It always took so long to get blood from clothes.

For a second, the corridor had bright, white walls instead of steel grey, and as Ged got to what was left of his feet, clutching on the thorned staff for support, Ion thought he saw the face of a man he had made very certain was dead.

Gunfire broke the trance. Close to their location, too. The ‘troops’ that Ged had summoned were getting closer, no doubt led by another of the disgusting quasi-human things like the one that still twitched on the floor. Martin was still screaming.

Get out of here, Ion told him, eyes locking with the necromancer. There was something in them, an uneasiness, a brokenness, that came not from Ged but from Ion himself. It didn’t move him, though. He knew exactly what kind of man he was. Many people had shown him, and he saw it every time he slept.

Martin was still screaming. Gibbering, perhaps. The fear wasn’t a natural one, and there was pain in his voice, too.

Get out of here! Ion insisted, lacing the command with power this time. He heard the boy wail, heard the gunfire abruptly stop. Heard the low, guttural moaning echo down the corridor.

He saw the thing he was sure he’d killed begin to move more coherently.

Press the button and go! Ion repeated. Press the damn button! Ged offered him a slight smile, clearly not fooled by the silence. Ion suspected that if the bloodstained man had worn a hat, it would have been doffed.

Hands shaking, Martin pressed his fingers to the device on his wrist, and vanished. Ignoring the fire that still flickered on his skin, he walked over and picked up the young man’s gun from where it had fallen, taking the empty clip from the holder and picking up another, bloodstained though it was, from the side and loading it. Bullets perhaps did nothing worth doing against the necromancer, but they had certainly managed to stop his zombies.

And from the sounds of it, he was going to have to stop rather a lot of them.

Blood.

There was blood everywhere.

Blood pumped weakly from the stump that was all that was left of the headless soldier’s neck, it hit the floor, half-congealed, from the bullet holes the soldiers put into the zombified corpses of their former comrades, it ran in rivers across the floor and down his skin. Ged’s laughter, barely more than a chuckle regardless, echoed in his ears, and for a second, Ion choked.

The beast struck at him with sharp nails, and the Sergeant tugged him back so that what would have clawed his face clean off only left four fine lines of blood on its right side. the chatter of bullets was far too loud in the confined space, but that was not what bothered Ion.

What bothered him was the blood.

His blood.

Again the corridor became that bright, white room, the floor and the walls stained dark red. Blood, his blood. Over and over again.

They had mocked him, for screaming at the pain.

“Get back and get down,” Ion growled at the soldiers behind him. Blood was running into his right eye, and he hoped it was that and not the thing’s claws that had obscured his vision on that side. he would let himself be concerned with that later, though, when his mind had cleared and he had room for concern.

“Sir, this is a-” the sergeant tried.

“Get back,” Ion repeated, voice accompanied by a psychic command, “and get down.” They moved backwards as a unit, half of them with guns trained on the approaching horde and half of them aiming at the thing on the roof. More than one of them looked a little pale. Ion counted nine of them still alive, nine of twelve. That only made him angrier.

The lights of his web blazed to full brightness all around him, an angelic mockery, covered in blood and gore, as he grabbed hold of the thing that had formerly been Biggs and wrenched it to the floor, ceiling and all. It hit the floor and began to pull its legs free of the mangled metal it had been using for purchase, the first that it freed attempting to embed itself in Ion’s stomach. He stepped to the side, the light reflecting in his eyes, and let the sharp bone embed itself in the floor, then physically took hold of it and wrenched it free from the creature’s body with a pulse of lights and power.

The creature roared in a mixture of anger and pain, twisting around so it was what passed for the right way up and lunging for him as it pulled the rest of its legs free. Its teeth snapped shut mere millimetres from Ion’s wrist, and a bullet grazed his arm as one of the more easily horrified of the soldiers opened fire on the monstrosity. As the creature’s momentum brought it to a halt next to Ion, he raised the leg and, with an incoherent cry of rage, brought it down on the creature. The leg was not sharp, force more than anything having anchored it to the ceiling, but the lights shone and trembled, giving Ion more than enough force to drive the spike of bone clear through its body. He didn’t even wait for confirmation that the creature was still alive, grabbing the next leg that came towards him and repeating the motion with a cold, set look in his eyes. More blood added itself to the pile on the floor as the thing that had once been Biggs writhed and snapped and tore gashes open on Ion’s legs with its fingers. With all eight ‘legs’ impaled in its dripping, broken torso, Ion brought the backs of his hands together and then quickly pulled them apart.

With a brief halo of lights around the legs, the force that Ion was channelling pulled the thing apart.

There was a quiet but coordinated movement of the soldiers away from him as he looked up at Ged, now covered in gore and little bits of bone as well as blood.

“How cruel,” the necromancer remarked, turning the sword in his hand idly. “Murdering poor, defenceless Rrrrr like that.” Ion’s only open eye narrowed.

Murderer.

Over and over again. All he was good for was getting people killed.
He picked up one of the blood-spattered legs from where it had come to rest on the floor, twisted around to avoid Ged’s swing of the sword, and threw it hard enough to impale an unfortunate zombie against the wall. The female soldier emptied what was left of her magazine into Ged as the necromancer turned, but it had about as much effect as all the other bullets had. Ion watched the blood trickle down the hole in Ged’s forehead and picked up another of the bone legs as Diaz pulled Rico back, out of range of Ged’s next attack. Ion didn’t see them, didn’t register them. All he could see was Ged, but in his place was a brown-haired man with a mocking smile, and instead of the sword, he held a razor-sharp scalpel.

Ged was faster and cleverer than the zombies he had created, and dodged Ion’s throw with ease and grace, the bone clattering to the floor and making the nearest soldier shy away from it. Ion ducked back away from Ged’s return strike, a little less graceful than the necromancer but achieving the same goal nonetheless. Unlike the zombie he’d so brutally taken apart, he couldn’t see Ged’s every move laid out in his head, but by watching him carefully, never taking his eyes from him, he could at the very least get out of the way.

Murderer.

There was still something left of the dead soldier’s face, and his eyes seemed to be mocking Ion, accusing him with every step he took. Ged wasn’t going to give him the option to repeat his previous trick.

He remembered screaming as that blade had cut into his flesh, relentless, unforgiving, remembered watching the light reflect from the blood as he waited for the Institute’s doctors to come and put him under while they fixed the damage. Over and over again.

Put him out of his misery, they’d thought. Put him out of his misery.

Ged darted forward, blade raised, and as Ion moved backwards his foot caught on a slick of half-destroyed entrails, and he fell.

He didn’t have time to think. He pulled the nearest dead thing to him up in front of him, holding there with the lights shining around it even as Ged impaled it with the sword. It was the headless soldier’s body, and despite Ion’s efforts the point of the sword was still only centimetres from his face, blood dripping down the blade to land on his skin.

Something in that brought him back to the corridor, to the gunfire and the wordless screaming of zombies. He was bleeding quite badly from the cuts on his leg, despite their superficial nature. There were more zombies than there were surviving crew and, at a guess, the number of bullets they had left in their weapons.

Ged slid the blade back out of the body, and rather than try and roll out of the way, Ion grabbed hold of the ceiling with his powers, and pulled.

Judging Time.