Staring up at the creature before him, Danny was scared.
Probably more scared than he’d ever been. Ktl was a creature of immense power. Ktl had magic on the same scale as Mxy. Ktl could kill them all just by thinking it.
Ktl could destroy the world if he really wanted to.
“Shit,” Danny said. Kristogar just nodded.
”BOO!” Ktl said, his booming voice echoing on the stone walls of the crypt they all now stood in (well, Ktl wasn’t technically standing, he was hovering… I just kinda, you know, tried to save some time. Time I’ve now lost with this little tangent in parenthesis… shit…). He then laughed, a laugh that was as terrifying as it’s possible for a laugh to be.
Growing himself a tail and claws, Danny scaled up the wall and onto the ceiling, seeing if there was any way he could make contact with the being. Ktl may be fifth dimensional energy, but he relied on a three
dimensional form. Maybe he was vulnerable…
Kristogar ducked into a corner and pulled out his mobile phone. Perhaps the wisest one there, he knew that they wouldn’t have a chance if they didn’t call for help.
Tobias ran. At Ktl. As fast as he could.
All this happened at once.
Ktl looked upwards, straight at at Danny. Before he could jump out of the way, Ktl directed a blast of explosive energy upwards, tearing the ceiling to rubble and sending Danny flying. Chunks of concrete showered all across the cemetery, and Danny was thrown into a grass clearing outside the crypt. A concrete chunk struck him in the leg, tearing a piece of flesh off and ruining his pants. Tree branches cracked and gravestones were chipped and shattered as the remains of the ceiling fell back to earth.
Tobias took two steps. He took them faster than the human eye could see him taking them. But Ktl saw him. And stopped him in his tracks. The speedster tried desperately to move, and found that he was frozen in place. He panicked. He thought something he’d never thought before. He thought he was about to die.
Kristogar threw his phone to the ground in anger as he realised he couldn’t get a signal. Ktl had interfered with any possible method of communication. He threw up and electrical field around the cemetery. There was no way to call for help. Kristogar knew they were fucked.
All this happened at once.
Across the road, a concerned citizen looked out her front lounge room window. She saw the ceiling fly off one of the buildings in the cemetery. She then did what any conscientious citizen would do… she called the police.
Danny pulled himself up onto his arms, and tried to stand. He collapsed again as he realised his leg was really in quite a bit of pain. Looking down, he noticed blood pouring from a gash in his thigh. He lowered a hand and clamped it down over the wound, trying to stop the blood flow.
“You know… I’ve really gotta stop getting injured on these missions…” Danny said.
<You’re like the anti-Chance.> Hal replied.
Inside the now-roofless crypt, Kristogar stood. He raised a fluffy bunny towards his magic opponent. He knew this really wouldn’t achieve anything, but he’d be damned if he was going down without a fight.
Ktl saw him, and laughed.
Kristogar threw the fluffy bunny. The fluffy bunny, in a rather strange but not altogether uncharateristic magical act by Ktl, turned into a hornet in mid-air, and turned back towards him.
“Well, fuck,” He said, and dodged the insect. Behind him, it grew to the size of a man. Kristogar spun around, and found himself face to face with an unnaturally large hornet. He thought it smiled at him, but it was hard to be sure.
Ducking to the side, all he could hear above all other noise was the sound of Ktl laughing.
One hand clamped over his thigh, Danny limped back towards the building, hurrying as fast as he could towards the entrance. He stumbled up the steps, and reached out to open the doors. He had to leap quickly to the side as the great wooden doors were thrown off their hinges, and clattered to the concrete steps below. Danny was startled to see Kristogar come crashing through the doorway, grappling with a man-sized hornet. They tumbled down the steps and and landed on the grassy patch below. Kristogar raised another fluffy bunny and threw it at the creature, throwing it off him onto the ground and sending a chunk of flesh flying. Danny was about to run down and help when Kristogar grabbed a large concrete piece from the ground next to him, and brought it down on the creature’s head. He kicked it once to make sure it was dead.
<That was really fucking strange,.> Hal said.
“Or at least… it would be… for normal people,” Danny replied.
Inside, Tobias was trying hard to break free from the hold Ktl had on him. He looked up at the creature, his eyes straining. Ktl hovered there, watching him. Grinning. But then a noise from outside caught his attention, and he turned to the doorway. Ktl, as unbelievable as it may seem, was startled at something.
”Alive?! No stingy hornet-doom?!” He yelled.
Tobias took this momentary lapse of concentration and used it to his advantage. While he still couldn’t run- Ktl wasn’t stupid enough to take his attention off him entirely- He could still vibrate. And vibrate he did. He turned his speed back in on himself, moving his every molecule until he was practically intangible (you know… like the Flash does). He then fell through the floor below him, into one of the basement levels.
“What the hell are we going to do?” Danny asked Kristogar as they stood together just outside the building.
“No idea. But we can’t just run.”
“No… if we don’t at least try to keep him here, innocent people could get hurt…”
They looked at each other, then back at the crypt. Resigned to their fate… walking into a battle they knew they couldn’t win… they headed back up the steps.
“FREEZE!” Came a voice from behind them.
They turned, and noticed a police car on the road that stretched through the middle of the cemetery. Another sat on the road just outside the entrance.
“The police…” Danny said.
“Why are they speaking English?” Velo asked.
“I dunno. Must have just been easier to write…” Danny replied.
Ktl came floating out through the now permanently open entrance, and looked across at the police cars.
The closer one, the one inside the cemetery, began to float. It lifted off the ground, a few inches at first and then climbing to above head height. The police officer standing next to it looked confused. The one inside the car looked terrified.
“No! Ktl! Put it down!” Danny yelled.
The car was thrown backwards, hurtling through the sky over the cemetery. The man inside it let out a scream that echoed in all their ears.
Danny and Kristogar ran to help, but found themselves suddenly on fire. They threw themselves to the ground, rolling around frantically trying to put themselves out.
Outside the cemetery, two police officers sat in the other car, surveying the scene and waiting to provide back-up if needed. Looking up, they noticed the other police car flying through the air towards them. The two cars collided, the one Ktl had thrown smashing into the other one and crushing the men inside.
The mangled mess of steel suddenly exploded in a huge fireball, lighting the night sky around it.
“NO!” Kristogar shouted. He found himself grabbed by the ground, being pulled downwards until only his head remained visible.
This kinda sucked, but had the desirable side effect of putting out the fire.
Danny and Kristogar struggled to free themselves as the ground tore and grabbed at them, dirt surounding their entire bodies. Ktl just stared at them and laughed.
”Ground-ground sucking you like a three dollar whore!” The fifth dimensional being shouted.
Tobias suddenly leaped out of what remained of the crypt and threw himself at Ktl, catching him momentarily off guard. The two were brought to the ground. Tobias picked himself up and yanked Danny and Kristogar from the ground before Ktl resumed his hovering position.
Meanwhile, outside the cemetery, a man named Tom walked straight up the middle of the road. He was clad only in sunglasses, a bathing suit, and slippers. His way lit by the huge fireball, he made his way to the cemetery entrance.
Ktl rose a hand, and the three heroes were picked up from the ground and levitated in mid air. Danny looked down and noticed his feet dangling a dozen feet above the earth. Taking them over the outside wall and through the empty space where there was once a roof, Ktl brought them back inside the crypt.
He threw them at the floor. They expected to stop when they hit it, in a rather hard and violent fashion.
But the floor gave way, crumbling in a storm of concrete chunks. It collapsed down to the level beneath, the floor of which also gave way before them and collapsing in on itself.
Danny, Kristogar and Tobias were thrown down through all four levels of the structure, and landed hard amidst a pile of broken concrete. Around them, set into deep recesses in the walls, were various caskets and memorial stones. They guessed that one of them must be Netzel’s.
“…ow…” Danny said, picking himself and clutching one hand to his injured ribs.
“That was… painful,” Kristogar said.
“Why are we not dead?” Tobias asked, springing to his feet.
“He’s playing with us… wants to take his time watching us suffer…” Danny said, stumbling against the stone wall. Looking up, he noticed Ktl descending towards them.
Ktl lowered himself slowly, keeping his gaze locked on his three trapped foes. The faint dark light that once spilled from his eyes had intensified, and an aura of purplish light surrounded the being. It shone out in every direction, providing the only illumination in the dark space. Lightning bolts crackled around him. And Ktl just smiled.
Outside, the man named Tom stumbled across the now decimated crypt. He stepped through the doorway, and looked through the floor at the lower levels. Now fully exposed, the stairway caught his attention.
”Checkmate,” Ktl said, as the stone walls began to shift and metamorphose. Giant stone hands reached out and grabbed the three heroes, keeping them held firmly in place.
”No more games. Quick death now.”
The attention of all four of them was drawn to the bottom of the staircase when Tom, clad only in his bathing suit and sunglasses with tattered slippers on his feet, stepped into the basement. He stumbled to his knees, then struggled to right himself.
“Who the hell…?” Tobias said, still stuck in a stone grip.
A yellow light shone faintly from Tom’s eyes.
“It… it’s Mxy,” Danny answered.
[ 03-07-2003, 07:33 AM: Message edited by: Danny ]
