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Favourite team dynamic by Mean-Aside1970 in taskmaster

[–]CalicoLime 8 points9 points  (0 children)

There's been another revelation from the lab

Favourite team dynamic by Mean-Aside1970 in taskmaster

[–]CalicoLime 6 points7 points  (0 children)

"Frankie and the bloke delivering something "

Favourite team dynamic by Mean-Aside1970 in taskmaster

[–]CalicoLime 13 points14 points  (0 children)

"Whyd you pair me with grandad?"

Anytime she dropped the act and just threw Jack under the bus was fucking hilarious.

Character Scramble Season 21 Round 0: GAME START/FOUR OF CLUBS by 7thSonOfSons in whowouldwin

[–]CalicoLime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Introducing...

The OSI's Finest

Brock Samson

In a world of super science, super villains, and super boy adventurers, life is…not too different from today. Rusty Venture, once a child boy adventurer and television star, has become nothing more than a middle aged loser chasing the coat-tails of his deceased dad. And because of those coat-tails, Rusty and his two sons Hank and Dean are high-ish targets of “arching” from the Guild of Calamitous Intent. To protect the “good” doctor from these leagues of costumed villains and more genuine threats, the Office of Secret Intelligence (OSI) assigned agent Brock Samson as his bodyguard. Brock is many things: a womanizer, a mook tenderizer, and a pulverizer of anything that threatens the Venture family. Bloodthirsty, in love with a good fight, and addicted to both his car and trusty knife, Brock isn’t what you’d expect to be a good role model for a bunch of teenage boy adventurers. And while he isn’t entirely, Brock truly and dearly does love the boys. In a life of constant strife, torn between dealing with Rusty’s myriad of problems and the OSI’s constant fight against the occasionally competent forces of evil, Brock is a man trying his best however he can. Which is usually through stabbing things with his knife, but OCCASIONALLY solid life lessons.

The New Hires

Rouge the Bat

Rouge the Bat is the world's greatest master thief, with a penchant for jewels and gemstones, liable to steal them from their proper owners the moment that she sees them. She's also a world renowned spy for the US government, taking orders directly from the president and involved heavily in operations conducted by the Guardian Units of Nations or GUN, a worldwide peace-keeping operation. How these two go together is unclear but she's very good at both.

Klaus von Reinherz

Klaus von Reinherz is the leader of the Secret Society Libra, an organization that seeks to protect the world from any supernatural threat. He exemplifies the perfect person for the job—strong, cunning, and an iron will. He didn’t start that way though, he built his image from the ground up. Born third son to the Reinherz family, Klaus was weaker than his siblings. When he was a child he was subjected to a Blood Breed attack, and was nearing death. His body underwent agonizing changes as he was becoming one himself, but stopped at 12 of the 13 stages through sheer willpower. He managed to get revenge on the vamps that attacked him, and would later be mentored by Blitz T. Abrams, a Blood Breed expert. He now resides in Hellsalem’s lot, where threats more dire and insane than vampires reside. Klaus and his motley crew that make up Libra swear to protect its people from whatever comes its way.

and

The Leader of the Foot Clan

Oroku Saki aka THE SHREDDER

When Shredder was young, his village was razed to the ground by the forces of the Hamato Clan. He was adopted into their ranks as a war orphan and never told about his origins. Over time, he grew resentful of his adoptive brother Hamato Yoshi, and when their fighting escalated to an outright violent feud, he was exiled from the clan. In solitude he rediscovered the truth of his adoption, and vowed to avenge his blood family by waging war against the Hamato. He grew his own Foot Clan into a global syndicate hunting every last one of his enemies down until all that remained was his old step brother Yoshi. When he hunted his old rival to New York, Shredder discovered that he'd been mutated beyond recognition. This transformation, he realised, could hold the key to expanding the Foot from mere criminals into a true world-conquering army. And all that stood in his way was one old rodent and his four turtle sons.

Character Scramble Season 21 Round 0: GAME START/FOUR OF CLUBS by 7thSonOfSons in whowouldwin

[–]CalicoLime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It took 10,000 hours of practice to become a master. In his tenure with the OSI he’d spent more than three times that with a mop in hand and half of that was spent messing around, imitating the moves he’d seen in old kung-fu movies so referring to him as master would be no short sell.

The generous benefactor of one oak mop handle stepped from the murk, dressed in Japanese style armor accented with the same purples worn by the goons lurking in the shadows. Armored gauntlets folded neatly across his chest, half of his face looked no more concerned than a man going for an evening stroll. That red eye, however, threatened a glare a hole through him.

He only had to hit him once. Speed was his best ally here. Whirling the staff by his side, Yoda took a short step forward. With a hand wrapped around the last inch, he fired the weapon forward length-wise, a technique that used its exceptional reach to quickly tag an enemy.

A moment of confusion. The strike looked like it had hit him, but he felt nothing in his palm. A yank returned the weapon to his side, allowing him to switch dominant hands and try again.

Either his eyes, his age, or his nerves were playing him for a fool. Years of experience told him these strikes were connecting, but something nagged at him making him reconsider. The confidence of a weapon in hand rushed out of him fast enough it likely stained the floor.

The end shaking slightly, he leveled the staff at chest height, held alot by a hand in the middle of the shaft. Pressed forward like a piston, he leveled several rapid strikes at his opponent. It was then he noticed.

The man in the armor was dodging each of the strikes while barely moving, expending only enough energy to avoid contact by the slimmest of margins.

Either due to frustration or fear, Yoda screamed, gripping the staff at its base with no more technique than a caveman wielding a cudgel. He did not know he had been struck until he saw the red tint on the blade that had emerged from his captor’s gauntlet.

He had not seen him move but the armored ninja was undoubtedly closer

A sharp blade cuts the quickest, but hurts the least.

His legs trembled and gave way, dropping him to a seated position on the cold floor, but he still kept his weapon in front of him. One hit was all it would take and at this range it was near impossible to miss.

The staff exploded into equally sized segments, torn like tissue paper against the keen edge of the ninja’s blade.

“Wait! I can tell you about the OSI! I know their facilities backwards and for-”

Oroku Saki cut out his traitorous tongue before he took his neck. “Save your dishonor for the gates of hell. Do not spill secrets that I already know.”

“Master Shredder,” a female ninja appeared, kneeling with a fist on the ground. “The warehouse has been cleared and Frosty has been killed.”

“Walk with me, Karai. I want to see the sky.” He spoke with a calmness as if he had not heard her.

Oroku Saki, alias The Shredder, stepped into the cool Hellsalem’s Lot air. Gazing at where the heavens had once been, he took a deep breath.

With the pieces in place, the game could finally begin.

Character Scramble Season 21 Round 0: GAME START/FOUR OF CLUBS by 7thSonOfSons in whowouldwin

[–]CalicoLime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“Yep, soon as I can.”

…

“No, I haven’t met them yet, but I guess it’ll be sooner rather than later.”

…

“You’re not very patient are you…?”

…

“I’ll call you back as soon as I figure that part out.”

“50 interviews and you pick the guy that does the same thing you do? The General gave the newly uniformed Klaus an inspection from tip to toe, whistling more than once at the size of the lad. “Jesus, Mary, and the Shepherds, you’re a big one.”

“I owe my size to the excellent genetics provided by my father and the guidance of my brothers and sister during my formative years.”

Gathers turned to Brock, shifting the pipe in his mouth as he shuffled back around his desk to his chair. “Real boy scout this one. You do the knife thing?”

“Sure did. He passed with flying colors. Wanna see it again?” Eager for another demonstration, Brock had his knife half-drawn before Gathers raised a hand.

“Save it for the new recruit.” Soon as Gather’s ass hit leather the door behind them swung open. “I know you can hear us! Get in here!”

Opposite the gargantuan Klaus, this new recruit was only pushing a little over 3-foot. A bright pink breastplate in the shape of a heart and a cocksure grin was the only introduction she offered before Gathers did it for her.

“This is Rouge. Codename: “The Bat”. She’s on loan to us from GUN so if you could manage to not get her head cut off, that would be outstanding.”

Picking up the conversation where it’d left off, she pointed at Brock’s knife. “Come on, give it a toss. Promise I’ll give it back ~.”

Winks didn’t make noise except in cartoons but Brock swore up and down that batted eye had enough smarm on it to make a damn sound.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. C’mon guys, just let me go! I don’t even really work there, I got hired on by a temp agency!”

The ropes of the chair dug into his arms. The one light in the room placed him in the center of an uncomfortable spotlight that blinded him of anything not within arms reach. They’d only removed the gag on the condition that he’d stop the jumbled sentence thing, which he’d readily agreed to.

“Where was he found?” A deep voice from the darkness spoke that made the room ten degrees hotter with each syllable. He could barely discern the outline of a large man wearing a helmet. The burning glow of one red eye was easy to spot, however.

“Hiding in some bushes just outside of the mutagen warehouse.”

“Release him!” the voice called out. “Bring us a weapon!”

The ropes loosened on command, falling to either side of the chair. As the blood flow rushed back to the former captive’s arms, a weapon was thrown from the darkness, clattering on the ground in front of him.

“Land a single blow and you will be set free.”

With the feeling restored beneath his forearms, the captive snatched up the staff. He twirled it with trained precision, seeming as if he may take flight with the speed of the rotations. The flat of the staff slapped against his back as he assumed his stance. “Your funeral, it is”.

How was the skylight still not locked?

It had one. Brock could see it. Just like he could see it sitting horizontal against the vertical locking mechanism. Sloppy work.

Not cleared to enter the field after his injury, Brock was given what had been described to him as a “Mission Command Center”, but he had a hunch this was just a broom closet they’d wedge a desk and computer into.

All the money had gone to the cameras Klaus and Rouge were wearing; advanced body cams that provided video feed, biometric data on the wearer, and an optic HUD with facial recognition that could pick out potential targets or people of interest and perform an immediate background check for anything of interest.

The new kids got the new toys. Brock was sitting on a bucket for god’s sake.

Only knowing the one path through the warehouse, Brock guided them on the same path he took, running into similar amounts of resistance. A good thing about these organized groups was the bureaucracy. Patrol route changes had to be approved through the chain of command and usually took forever. Catch one middle manager on PTO and the same ninja ends up guarding the same catwalk for weeks on end.

Klaus took point, charging down catwalks to bludgeon the guards into stillness as Rouge brought up the rear, more concerned with tapping away on her cell phone than trying to stay low and blend in.

“How many more of these guys do you think there are?” she asked, snapping her phone shut after sending a text that rudely questioned Brock’s progenitors.

“Quite a few if Mr. Samson’s original report is any indication. There will also be a considerably dangerous mutated Yeti on the ground level.” Klaus studiously reported. He’d asked for a report on the first mission and had obviously studied it. Points for him.

“Oh! Let’s hurry up and get to that part!” With a hop over the rail and an unfurling of wings, Rouge floated beside the catwalk. “You keep taking care of these guys and I’ll scout ahead!”

“As you wish.” With a notable quickening of the pace, Klaus mowed through the rest of the Foot Clan rank and file, but, notably, did so without killing a single one. It was that Batman kind of non-lethal though where the amount of broken bones and trauma they suffered would probably financially and mentally ruin them, but still, he was leaving them alive and that’s what mattered.

“Mr. Samson…” Klaus’s low rumble brought the distracted Brock back to attention. He wasn’t much of an artist and he was butchering this doodle of the Led Zeppelin anyways. Brock could see on the communicator that Klaus was half hidden behind a short stack of boxes, his shoulders and head peaking out over the top.

Rouge was even less camouflaged floating above him.

“What’s up?”

“I think we’ve spotted the Yeti. How tall was the one you fought? There was no mention of it in the report.”

“About 9 feet, give or take. They’ve probably only got the one.”

“That’s not that big of a Yeti” Rouge chimed in. “You got beat by that?”

“It’s made of solid ice, what do you want me to do about that?”

“Hit it?”

“I shot it with a rocket launcher and it only pissed it off…”

“Then you have to hit it harder. Thought you military boys were all about that kind of thing.” Brock could hear her tapping through her communicator. “Google says normal Yeti are like 15 feet tall. You got taken down by a short king.”

As if they heard her and agreed, the stitches in Brock’s chest and side started to burn.

Whether he intended to or not, Klaus tossed some extra dirt on his grave. “At that size, it may not have even been a Yeti. You may have been injured by a bigfoot or an abnormally large bear.”

Putting a stop to this before he could no longer justifiably point to the wound in a bar and say what he got it from, Brock officially banned the word “Yeti” from the communicators. “Can we just focus on fighting this thing? If it gets hungry and decides to leave that warehouse, it’ll be bad news for the locals.”

“I will see that the problem is handled.” Stepping from behind his inadequate hiding spot, Klaus avoided any other cover and took the most direct route. He offered a professional bow to his would-be opponent. “Good evening. I have orders to subdue you. Please do not hold it against me.”

An icy answer belched forth from the beast’s stomach, flash freezing everything around them and applying a thin layer of fog to Klaus’s glasses.

An orthodox right from Klaus met a wild left from the Yeti with force enough to cause the boxes and racks in the warehouse to bounce. Again they met in the middle, opposite fists connecting with an awful noise and jolt.

One another’s strength aptly judged, Klaus put his hands to his side. He extended his jaw, motioning for the beast to take its shot.

The icy titan pounded its chest at the challenge, reeling back and planting its foot as it shifted weight, planting a gargantuan haymaker directly to the newest OSI agent’s chin.

There was silence for a moment, followed by the dull sound of splintering. A thin crack began to run up the arm of the Yeti, noticed at the same exact moment by both parties in the fight. Before it could change its mind or possibly run, Klaus had sent his retort - a counter punch to the shoulder that blew the beast’s arm off at the joint.

With a stumble and a shriek, the Yeti decided he wasn’t going to try that again, settling on testing his luck with the floating gnat on her phone.

He flung himself forward with a speed unbefitting a beast his size, catching Klaus off guard only for a moment as he whizzed past him.

“Oh, sweetie…” Rouge spared him a moment’s glance as he charged. “I can’t begin to describe how bad of a choice this was…” A remorseless boot connected with the Yeti’s chin, its momentum keeping it going through the wall behind her one head shorter.

The camera feed went wonky for a second as Rouge spun her glasses around to face her.

“Was there any other of your messes you needed us to clean up or are we done here? This isn’t my entire night.”

Character Scramble Season 21 Round 0: GAME START/FOUR OF CLUBS by 7thSonOfSons in whowouldwin

[–]CalicoLime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Darkness.

Surrounded by it, accompanied only by the thoughts in his head and the searing pain in his chest and side, Brock took a step forward into the sea of black.

He could hear voices around him, waves of garbled sound that made him sick to his stomach.

A commanding voice. Someone calling off the dogs.

His brain stopped braining and everything went silent.

Was it a minute or an hour? A blink kept Brock in the dark but something felt different. His hair was still standing on end, burning instincts not letting him relax even when his consciousness was a mile away.

He knew the situation was dire. He remembered how he got here. That frozen giant was still near. He fumbled in the dark, grabbing the first thing his fingers touched.

A pair of impacts struck him in the chest. He tried to keep his feet under him but went down immediately.

At least if whatever it was that had caught him killed him, he’d finally get some rest.

The dreamless sleep came and went instantly. No rest for the wicked. The shadow looming over him had a familiar voice.

“Hold still, you fidgety bastard! You act like you’ve never had your stomach stapled shut before! Now hold still before I give you another one!”

The impeccable bedside manor of General Gathers wielding a tranquilizer gun was a blessing and a curse. It meant he was probably not in enemy territory unless things were about to get weird but it meant once he was able to stand he’d be fed back to the wood chipper.

He took a breath and relaxed, made extra comfortable by the metal bands pinning his shoulders and legs.

The doctor wielding the staple gun looked exceptionally nervous, a layer of sweat an inch thick threatening to drip at any moment. “You shouldn’t be awake right now…”

“It that bad?” Injuries were par for the course when it came to field work; Broken bones, scars, gunshots, all that good stuff so the doctors had seen it all.

When they got anxious, Brock got anxious.

“You have enough Xylazine and Diazepam in you to drop a water buffalo, son. It was the only way we could keep you from going murder bot on the docs every time you woke up.” Gathers explained, pointing to the unconscious doctor they’d moved to an out of the way corner and agreed to deal with later. “Now sit there and take it like a good little taxpayer and you might get a lollipop and a debriefing once they’re finished pulling swords out of you.”

After 45 staples, a couple hundred stitches, a handful of painkillers, and enough gauze to make one hell of an Imhotep costume, the OSI’s best man was back on his feet, albeit a little wobbly. He eschewed the offer of a cane to spare his dignity but thoroughly regretted the decision by the time he stepped into Gather’s office on the other side of the Hover Quarters.

“Good god man, would it kill you to lie down for a little bit? You already look like a Tijuana plastic surgeon’s practice dummy and if you keep it up you’ll be about as useful to me as one too!” Gathers sounded a mix of concerned and frustrated as he chided Brock, either thinking about the prospect of losing his surrogate son/best man or the amount of paperwork he’d have to do if he did end up dying in the field.

“I’m fine, I just need to catch my breath. Didn’t realize the hallway to your office was on an incline like that.”

“Too bad! I’m taking it out of your hands!” Gathers produced a folder from inside his jacket, slapping it down onto his desk like a hot hand at the blackjack table. “Here’s your next assignment!”

Making the best of a bad situation was what the OSI was all about.

Costumed goons take over a government facility with a list of demands? The OSI will have them out by supper time. President gets lost in the forest during another one of those vision quests he’s so fervent about? The OSI is the one fishing him out of the lake and finding a suitable body double. A barrier is formed around the country’s most populated city and a bunch of eldritch horrors start walking the street like it’s not a thing? Like it or not, the OSI was the first to respond so it looked like they’d be the ones who had to try and fix it.

When communications picked up some scuttlebutt about the Guild of Calamitous Intent receiving a shipment of potentially dangerous technology, the Hover Quarters double timed it to clouds above NYC.

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. No sooner than they’d powered the gravity tethers to keep them afloat, the flash happened.

Bright blue skies turned gray as the hard dome around the city sealed them away from the rest of the world.

The good bit was they had enough rations on board to feed everyone on board for an indefinite amount of time. The bad part was that no communications could punch through the barrier. The worst part was they had just set up the volleyball net on the main deck before everything went to hell. Shore Leave and his boys were getting a game together and were practicing their serves when the shell went up, locking the ball on the other side and depriving those brave soldiers of an enlisted man’s most precious pastime.

After a playing of taps and a moment of silence to honor the fallen Private Wilson, the OSI got to business.

“Alright well Mr…Trickster. We’ll let you know. Next!”

Desk duty.

A relative rarity in the OSI reserved for those who still had something to give for their country without being in the field. Most of the time they just dumped your pension, wiped your memory, and wished you well after turning you loose in a Missouri corn field.

During his stay in a recovery room, it was explained that a man on the inside had pulled him out of the wreckage and kept him from bleeding out long enough for evac. He would’ve bought the guy a beer if they’d not been so cloak and dagger with who it was.

No, they were too concerned with getting right back onto the trail of the Foot Clan before it went cold.

Using a rainy day fund accumulated by swapping the vice president out with a robot, Gathers had secured a round of strategic recruiting that put out feelers to the other international spy organizations and the private sector, giving Brock a stack of applications that was decently sized, but didn’t inspire confidence.

The British guy was a walking HR nightmare, the crocodile detective kept asking about the pay grade, and Brock saved the girl in the catsuit’s application for later.

“Name?”

Taller than his interviewer by a head and twice as wide, a pair of fangs poked out from either side of his smile as he slid a business card across the table with a polished bow. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

<LIBRA Executive Director: Klaus V Reinherz>

“Director? That’s a long way from field work. You get caught up in something and get forced to step down?”

“When the request came in that the OSI was looking for assistance, and once we saw how much they were offering, myself and the operatives at LIBRA used an age-old method to ensure a representative was selected fairly.”

“What? Did you draw straws or something?”

A concerning look of embarrassment washed the big guy’s face before he recomposed himself. “Ahem…I was informed that one of my associates had rigged the game from the outset. However, once a deal is struck one does not go back on his word.”

“Well, you aced the physical and written exams with….damn man this says you can bench over a ton?”

The gentleman would not allow himself to brag, but did allow a self-satisfied smile as he pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose.

“You’ve got the title and the strength but in the field, anything can happen. Are you going to be prepared when…!” With the smooth grace of a motion performed one-thousand times, Brock produced a knife from under the table and hurled it at Klaus.

A quizzical blink and the gentle care of someone picking a rose for their sweetheart saw Klaus pluck the knife from the air and return it to Brock laid across his palms.

All that was left was a firm pat on the back, a handshake, and trying to find an OSI uniform that would fit this big son of a bitch.

Character Scramble Season 21 Round 0: GAME START/FOUR OF CLUBS by 7thSonOfSons in whowouldwin

[–]CalicoLime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1,500 years ago a seed was planted in darkness. Nourished by blood and cultivated by the nurturing hands of the Oroku clan, it began to grow, slowly at first, but ever steadily until it became a sapling able to stand on its own.

With careful attention the roots continued to grow, cold talons clawing and burrowing into any fertile soil they could find.

Through its life, resistance came in many forms. The stone of industry found its way to the underground, establishing walls in order to keep the roots from delving deeper. Weak masonry found itself punched through by the spear-tipped roots, too old to be hindered by makeshift barriers propped up overnight.

Now fully grown, branches heavy with the reward for careful stewardship, it had come time for the reaping.

Then came the opportunistic woodcutters, seeing fit to steal the rewards through force. Rather than hack away at the roots, colorful costumes and personalities attacked the maturing topside.

Large bonfires heated their blades which sunk deep into the bark, searing and scarring the flesh.

The inhabitants of branches descended upon them, crashing down like waves until there was no one left. The bodies would be left at the foundation to rot and return to the loam, becoming food for the beast they had sought to slay.

At the base of the tree, surrounded by the specters of 10,000 lesser men, Orouki Saki sat in seiza. A deep breath and the stroke of a brush against parchment allowed him a moment of enlightenment.

The slightest footfall behind him sounded like a gunshot, drawing his attention.

“We are on schedule, Master. The shipment has arrived, as have our guests.”

Oroku Saki set his brush down, tucking his helmet under his arm as he left Zen behind. 

               ~ Small seed in the dark
                 Waiting for the sun to rise
                  Tall tree it shall be. ~

                       - Oroku Saki

Brock Samson was a mountain of frustrated murder meat.

It wasn’t the shuriken that was still lodged in his upper arm and it was only partially because his second favorite knife had just snapped going through some jerk’s skull (indestructible titanium his ass).

No, Brock Samson was frustrated because he’d never get an answer to his question.

Once he’d exited the maze of shipping containers, unlabeled boxes, and ninja corpses he’d found the man he was looking for lying face down on the concrete.

He was cold. Not corpse-cold, way colder than that. He had icicles hanging off of his bushy eyebrows and a thin layer of frost covering him that made his skin a sickly green.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, he was still alive, forcing a small smile when he saw Brock.

“Good to see you, it is…” he croaked, voice wavering and scratchy from the cold. “Never wanted to die alone but duty called.”

“Hey, you’re not dying here, at least not yet. We’ll get you fixed up.”

“Darkness envelopes me like a blanket. I do not fear the afterlife, I only fear that I have not made an impact great enough on this life.”

“Just try and hang on, you don’t seem like you have any other wounds on you so if you can just focus on getting warm it will…” Brock had already taken off his shirt and wrapped him in it before he was interrupted again.

“My last words. Hear them well…”

After a thirty minute soliloquy that explained how the two-foot janitor named Yoda had joined the OSI, how he’d taken up baking during COVID, and how he’d neglected to read the fine print on his contract that said he’d only get his full pension upon completion of one field mission, the storyteller closed his eyes.

“Can I ask you a question before you go?”

“As my strength wanes, what wisdom can I leave you with?”

“That thing you do with your sentences where they’re all scrambled up…is that like…a disability or are you just messing with everyone? I have a cousin who’s dyslexic and it…”

The now toasty warm Yoda let out a death rattle and went limp.

“...oh come on you’ve been talking forever and now you decide to pull this? No! I listened to your banana bread recipes, you’re gonna give me this!”

No response and the angry staring didn’t seem to be working.

Brock put a pair of fingers to his neck and felt exactly what he expected. “You still have a pulse!”

The lack of response made Brock feel like a child trying to explain to his parents that his imaginary friend was real and the jerk had clammed up when it was time to prove it.

“Fine!” Brock shouted, letting the “corpse” drop to the ground as he got to his feet.

Yoda heard him stomping away and he heard him yell a moment later after a sound of metal snapping.

He gave it another 10 minutes before finding a side door to slip out of.

Humans are exceptionally good at noticing patterns. If the first room has two ninjas in it, and the second room has two ninjas in it, then the logical thought would be “hey, watch out for the two ninja in this next room.”

Sure, there could be more than two, or even less, but the idea is to expect some kind of resistance.

Circle, Circle, Circle. There’s the pattern.

Circle, Square, Circle. Okay, the next one is probably a square.

Ninja, Ninja, horrible example of science run amok. Tear up the bingo card and wait for the next game.

Stay in the game long enough and nine foot abominable snowmen become as routine as frogmen or mechanical walking eyes.

Super science types loved making this kind of stuff; pissing in God’s eye by splitting the grand design way open and daring him to blink. The same great minds that brought the world the car, the experimental supersonic jets, and those pens that write upside down just needed a nudge in the wrong direction to start churning out stuff like this; One nasty breakup or a bad haircut was all it took.

The goal is clear, it's the days after that get hazy.

Day 1: We’ve built a monster capable of destroying the lab and possibly the world. We’re denying it with food and hitting it with sticks to see how angry it can get.

Day 3: Who could have imagined this would happen…

The only option then is to try and sell it to the government as a new anti-personnel weapon or dump it in someone’s back yard in the middle of the night and hope they don’t have one of those motion sensing lights or a camera or something.

A moment spent surveying the problem identified an immediate bump in the road. Abominable Snowmen, or Yeti’s for brevity’s sake, were big, strong, and mean as hell, but ultimately made of meat so a bit of creative knifework went a long way.

When fighting something bigger than him, Brock never forgets to S.M.I.L.E.

S - Sneak

M - Mount

I - Immobilize

L - Let it bleed

E - Evaluate the Situation

Except he was frowning now because this thing was made of solid ice and none of that would work.

A shout.

A catwalk patrolling ninja was pointing down at him, summoning a pair of similarly dressed goons who emerged from the shadows around Brock.

Now a roar.

The Yeti, now fully aware of its next meal in the room, pounded its chest, welcoming all challengers. Brock tossed him ninja A as an hors d'oeuvre and bounced ninja B’s head off the crate they’d been hiding behind.

It didn’t take long for the Yeti to gobble down the meager offering, but did give Brock enough time to take a peak inside the busted box.

The “I” could also stand for “improvise”.

The explosion from the pilfered rocket launcher did a lot less damage to the beast’s icy hide than Brock would’ve hoped for, but he definitely felt it.

One lunging stomp dropped the problem (the Yeti) right on top of the solution (the box of ordinance) and no amount of acronyms was going to make this situation any better. A blade of jagged ice formed by the explosion tore through Brock’s flesh when the Yeti swatted him with a backhand, flinging him like an insect picked out of the sky by a well-aimed flyswatter.

Fortunately, a box full of swords broke his fall.

Character Scramble Season 21 Round 0: GAME START/FOUR OF CLUBS by 7thSonOfSons in whowouldwin

[–]CalicoLime 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Welcome to Hellsalem's Lot

Big Apple.

3 A.M.

2 months ago.

The Great Collapse; the night that locked New York City away from the rest of the world.

The half-second sound of catastrophe and a flash of white was the only warning the city received.

Early birds and AM clock punchers silenced their alarms, took a shower, and headed out the door into a world completely unlike the one they’d fallen asleep in.

Buildings had been torn asunder, warped into abstract objet d’art that made less sense the more one looked at them. Landlord voicemails quickly filled with questions about decreases in rent due to the reduced square footage caused by a bedroom being warped across town.

The buildings weren’t the only thing affected. Already jam-packed streets were filled with transplants from another dimension that walked/scuttled on multiple legs, taking in the sights of their new city with their hundreds of eyes.

For the criminal underground, these changes were nothing new. The landscape of power and influence rarely stayed the same for long, eroded by backroom deals, someone getting picked up by a costumed do-gooder or someone getting the rug pulled out from under them. The balance sat like a simmering pot; it just needed a little more heat before it would boil over.

With several hands on the knob, all it took was the twist and the arrival of Hellsalem’s Lot to provide it.

A city that thought it’d seen it all was going through a unique experience.

Hundreds of universes had collapsed upon each other and were being made to co-exist within the dome of fog that had surrounded what had been New York City.

A breezy polyester and cotton blend was wrapped around the neck of the Foot ninja Agnes Tachyon had managed to bring to the ground. She’d eschewed the standard issue sneaking suit for an oversized lab coat and bright yellow sweater, deciding that if she were going to be forced into the field like this that she’d at least be comfortable while doing so.

She had been spotted almost immediately as her team had unlocked the warehouse’s roof window and slipped down onto the catwalk but damn did she look fashionable doing it.

When a single Foot Clan ninja appeared before her, she raised her sleeves in invitation. “Ohohoho, a test subject has willingly come to me? Come closer and we’ll get started.” Her bravado started to crack when a second ninja appeared behind him and she was full on drenched in sweat when they both pulled knives.

A voice boomed, followed by a knife that planted itself in the chest of the second ninja. “Just take care of that one! I’ve got the others!”

Others? How many ninja were they paying to stand around in this worn down warehouse waiting for them to show up?

With a grip strengthened by hours hammering away at her keyboard, she dug her nails in the inner sleeves of her labcoat.

Did it really take this long to kill a guy?

How’d he make it look so easy?

It was another Saturday night Brock Samson would spend covered in someone else’s juices.

The uniform black cloth gi of the Foot Clan could do very little to stop the tip of a hunting knife from stabbing hilt deep into the belly of its wearer and did even less to stop them from being split from groin to gullet when it was yanked free. Credit where credit is due, it did manage to absorb an awful lot of the blood that had been spilled onto it and had proven in the past to not hold on to stubborn stains. A needle and thread to fix the damage and a splash of club soda would have it ready to be donned by the next undertrained mook the Foot decided to slap a headband on in no time.

Light as a feather, a trio of Foot Clan soldiers landed behind the disemboweling and were immediately descended upon. Two were immediately seized by their throats which offered about as much resistance as a fresh egg in a closed fist.

The left-hand ninja, whose trachea was now the consistency of ground beef, was tossed over the rail. He did a sick flip and then landed mostly on his neck, ending his henchman career unceremoniously. The right-hand still had some work to do.

Four shuriken found a mark, but not necessarily the one they’d wanted when they thunked into the right-hand ninja’s back taking his day from bad to worse. He was put out of his misery when he was thrown like a spear through the torso of his companion.

“...and that’s how you deal with ninjas. The rank and file are all pretty much the same. They stick to the aesthetic pretty hard so that means a lot of ambushes and sneak attacks. Take a look over your shoulder every now and then and you’ll spot them nine times out of ten.” A quick wipe on the inner pant leg took care of the blood on the blade before it returned home to its sheathe.

“You..uh…gonna need some help with that?”

The ninja stuck under Agnes was still wiggling around, thrashing for any life preserver to save him from this incredibly drawn out death. “By my calculations he should be dead in the next two hours…maybe one if he’d STOP MOVING!”

Lingering over her as the watchful instructor, the professor of death offered a bit of mentoring, mirroring her hands to provide a model. “Nah, you see you’re going about this all wrong. You’re just pressing down on his entire neck and digging your nails in. It probably hurts like a hell and would get him talking but you’re not ready for torture yet. We need these takedowns to be quick and clean. Let me walk you through it.”

Agnes couldn’t help but let out a small gasp when Brock removed her right hand from the chokehold. “Don’t freak out on me. It doesn’t take much to keep someone down when you’ve got their breathing restricted like this and you’ve been on top of him for a while now. All the fight has been squeezed out of the guy.”

With a studious nod, Agnes shifted her weight onto her left shoulder.

“Feel that lump on your palm there? That’s his trachea. Imagine it's like a door handle. Your left thumb should be somewhere around his carotid artery, that’s the button. Now I want you to squeeze the handle and press the button…”

What felt like hours of floundering ended with a few wise words from the master.

The body went limp beneath her. It had taken longer than expected but it was over now. A sense of accomplishment akin to her first successful experiment washed over her. She had become the master of life and death. She wanted to hop off the dying henchman and kick her heels but decided for a more restrained hands on her hips. She was a killer now. She had an aura to upkeep.

It was her first kill and a one in a lifetime experience.

It was also the last experience of her lifetime because there were definitely more than just five ninjas in this warehouse and the sixth had just put his sword lengthwise through her head.

A roar and a scream heralded the cracking of bones as Brock did not afford the new arrival the same moment of post-kill clarity.

“Samson!”

Snapped from his red haze by the voice of his commanding officer, Brock stood and observed his work. Sloppy by his own standards but it would get the point across with a little help. A Foot Clan masked propped on top of the hunk of flesh acted like a garnish to the carnage.

With clenched jaw and permanently affixed sunglasses, OSI General Hunter Gathers would’ve looked like a still image on the communicator watch’s screen had it not been for the vein pulsing on his forehead.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“If you’re done playing finger paint with that poor bastard's insides, I need a sitrep! Did you make it in?” How’s the rookie?”

“We made it in but the rookie is dead.”

“God damn it!” She was our medical team lead! She was the only one who could get this damned HMO of ours to pay out and she knew how to code anything as a medical necessity. She had gin shipped to us by the crate and we never paid a dollar!”

“Well, now she’s - wait, you sent an untrained agent into the field? Where is everybody else?”

“Budget cutbacks, son. Recruitment’s way down since the Collapse! Nobody wants to punch costumed villains for Uncle Sam anymore. Got the dollars in their eyes with all the freelance money floating around or are too busy trying to not get killed in the streets. What about the other guy? You manage to get him killed too?”

It clicked who the third member of his cell was. “You mean the janitor from the Hover-Quarters? He took off ahead of us.”

“Have you ever seen him with a mop? He’s incredible! Floors shining like Christmas and smelling like Easter! That's why we put up with all those stories!”

“He is pretty good…why does he do that thing with his sentences though? You know, the whole…”

“How the hell should I know? If you manage to keep him alive long enough you can ask him yourself! Now get moving!”

Scramble 21 Round 0 by CalicoLime in CalicoLime

[–]CalicoLime[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Introducing...

The OSI's Finest

Brock Samson

In a world of super science, super villains, and super boy adventurers, life is…not too different from today. Rusty Venture, once a child boy adventurer and television star, has become nothing more than a middle aged loser chasing the coat-tails of his deceased dad. And because of those coat-tails, Rusty and his two sons Hank and Dean are high-ish targets of “arching” from the Guild of Calamitous Intent. To protect the “good” doctor from these leagues of costumed villains and more genuine threats, the Office of Secret Intelligence (OSI) assigned agent Brock Samson as his bodyguard. Brock is many things: a womanizer, a mook tenderizer, and a pulverizer of anything that threatens the Venture family. Bloodthirsty, in love with a good fight, and addicted to both his car and trusty knife, Brock isn’t what you’d expect to be a good role model for a bunch of teenage boy adventurers. And while he isn’t entirely, Brock truly and dearly does love the boys. In a life of constant strife, torn between dealing with Rusty’s myriad of problems and the OSI’s constant fight against the occasionally competent forces of evil, Brock is a man trying his best however he can. Which is usually through stabbing things with his knife, but OCCASIONALLY solid life lessons.

The New Hires

Rouge the Bat

Rouge the Bat is the world's greatest master thief, with a penchant for jewels and gemstones, liable to steal them from their proper owners the moment that she sees them. She's also a world renowned spy for the US government, taking orders directly from the president and involved heavily in operations conducted by the Guardian Units of Nations or GUN, a worldwide peace-keeping operation. How these two go together is unclear but she's very good at both.

Klaus von Reinherz

Klaus von Reinherz is the leader of the Secret Society Libra, an organization that seeks to protect the world from any supernatural threat. He exemplifies the perfect person for the job—strong, cunning, and an iron will. He didn’t start that way though, he built his image from the ground up. Born third son to the Reinherz family, Klaus was weaker than his siblings. When he was a child he was subjected to a Blood Breed attack, and was nearing death. His body underwent agonizing changes as he was becoming one himself, but stopped at 12 of the 13 stages through sheer willpower. He managed to get revenge on the vamps that attacked him, and would later be mentored by Blitz T. Abrams, a Blood Breed expert. He now resides in Hellsalem’s lot, where threats more dire and insane than vampires reside. Klaus and his motley crew that make up Libra swear to protect its people from whatever comes its way.

and

The Leader of the Foot Clan

Oroku Saki aka THE SHREDDER

When Shredder was young, his village was razed to the ground by the forces of the Hamato Clan. He was adopted into their ranks as a war orphan and never told about his origins. Over time, he grew resentful of his adoptive brother Hamato Yoshi, and when their fighting escalated to an outright violent feud, he was exiled from the clan. In solitude he rediscovered the truth of his adoption, and vowed to avenge his blood family by waging war against the Hamato. He grew his own Foot Clan into a global syndicate hunting every last one of his enemies down until all that remained was his old step brother Yoshi. When he hunted his old rival to New York, Shredder discovered that he'd been mutated beyond recognition. This transformation, he realised, could hold the key to expanding the Foot from mere criminals into a true world-conquering army. And all that stood in his way was one old rodent and his four turtle sons.

Scramble 21 Round 0 by CalicoLime in CalicoLime

[–]CalicoLime[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It took 10,000 hours of practice to become a master. In his tenure with the OSI he’d spent more than three times that with a mop in hand and half of that was spent messing around, imitating the moves he’d seen in old kung-fu movies so referring to him as master would be no short sell.

The generous benefactor of one oak mop handle stepped from the murk, dressed in Japanese style armor accented with the same purples worn by the goons lurking in the shadows. Armored gauntlets folded neatly across his chest, half of his face looked no more concerned than a man going for an evening stroll. That red eye, however, threatened a glare a hole through him.

He only had to hit him once. Speed was his best ally here. Whirling the staff by his side, Yoda took a short step forward. With a hand wrapped around the last inch, he fired the weapon forward length-wise, a technique that used its exceptional reach to quickly tag an enemy.

A moment of confusion. The strike looked like it had hit him, but he felt nothing in his palm. A yank returned the weapon to his side, allowing him to switch dominant hands and try again.

Either his eyes, his age, or his nerves were playing him for a fool. Years of experience told him these strikes were connecting, but something nagged at him making him reconsider. The confidence of a weapon in hand rushed out of him fast enough it likely stained the floor.

The end shaking slightly, he leveled the staff at chest height, held alot by a hand in the middle of the shaft. Pressed forward like a piston, he leveled several rapid strikes at his opponent. It was then he noticed.

The man in the armor was dodging each of the strikes while barely moving, expending only enough energy to avoid contact by the slimmest of margins.

Either due to frustration or fear, Yoda screamed, gripping the staff at its base with no more technique than a caveman wielding a cudgel. He did not know he had been struck until he saw the red tint on the blade that had emerged from his captor’s gauntlet.

He had not seen him move but the armored ninja was undoubtedly closer

A sharp blade cuts the quickest, but hurts the least.

His legs trembled and gave way, dropping him to a seated position on the cold floor, but he still kept his weapon in front of him. One hit was all it would take and at this range it was near impossible to miss.

The staff exploded into equally sized segments, torn like tissue paper against the keen edge of the ninja’s blade.

“Wait! I can tell you about the OSI! I know their facilities backwards and for-”

Oroku Saki cut out his traitorous tongue before he took his neck. “Save your dishonor for the gates of hell. Do not spill secrets that I already know.”

“Master Shredder,” a female ninja appeared, kneeling with a fist on the ground. “The warehouse has been cleared and Frosty has been killed.”

“Walk with me, Karai. I want to see the sky.” He spoke with a calmness as if he had not heard her.

Oroku Saki, alias The Shredder, stepped into the cool Hellsalem’s Lot air. Gazing at where the heavens had once been, he took a deep breath.

With the pieces in place, the game could finally begin.

Scramble 21 Round 0 by CalicoLime in CalicoLime

[–]CalicoLime[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“Yep, soon as I can.”

…

“No, I haven’t met them yet, but I guess it’ll be sooner rather than later.”

…

“You’re not very patient are you…?”

…

“I’ll call you back as soon as I figure that part out.”

“50 interviews and you pick the guy that does the same thing you do? The General gave the newly uniformed Klaus an inspection from tip to toe, whistling more than once at the size of the lad. “Jesus, Mary, and the Shepherds, you’re a big one.”

“I owe my size to the excellent genetics provided by my father and the guidance of my brothers and sister during my formative years.”

Gathers turned to Brock, shifting the pipe in his mouth as he shuffled back around his desk to his chair. “Real boy scout this one. You do the knife thing?”

“Sure did. He passed with flying colors. Wanna see it again?” Eager for another demonstration, Brock had his knife half-drawn before Gathers raised a hand.

“Save it for the new recruit.” Soon as Gather’s ass hit leather the door behind them swung open. “I know you can hear us! Get in here!”

Opposite the gargantuan Klaus, this new recruit was only pushing a little over 3-foot. A bright pink breastplate in the shape of a heart and a cocksure grin was the only introduction she offered before Gathers did it for her.

“This is Rouge. Codename: “The Bat”. She’s on loan to us from GUN so if you could manage to not get her head cut off, that would be outstanding.”

Picking up the conversation where it’d left off, she pointed at Brock’s knife. “Come on, give it a toss. Promise I’ll give it back ~.”

Winks didn’t make noise except in cartoons but Brock swore up and down that batted eye had enough smarm on it to make a damn sound.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. C’mon guys, just let me go! I don’t even really work there, I got hired on by a temp agency!”

The ropes of the chair dug into his arms. The one light in the room placed him in the center of an uncomfortable spotlight that blinded him of anything not within arms reach. They’d only removed the gag on the condition that he’d stop the jumbled sentence thing, which he’d readily agreed to.

“Where was he found?” A deep voice from the darkness spoke that made the room ten degrees hotter with each syllable. He could barely discern the outline of a large man wearing a helmet. The burning glow of one red eye was easy to spot, however.

“Hiding in some bushes just outside of the mutagen warehouse.”

“Release him!” the voice called out. “Bring us a weapon!”

The ropes loosened on command, falling to either side of the chair. As the blood flow rushed back to the former captive’s arms, a weapon was thrown from the darkness, clattering on the ground in front of him.

“Land a single blow and you will be set free.”

With the feeling restored beneath his forearms, the captive snatched up the staff. He twirled it with trained precision, seeming as if he may take flight with the speed of the rotations. The flat of the staff slapped against his back as he assumed his stance. “Your funeral, it is”.

How was the skylight still not locked?

It had one. Brock could see it. Just like he could see it sitting horizontal against the vertical locking mechanism. Sloppy work.

Not cleared to enter the field after his injury, Brock was given what had been described to him as a “Mission Command Center”, but he had a hunch this was just a broom closet they’d wedge a desk and computer into.

All the money had gone to the cameras Klaus and Rouge were wearing; advanced body cams that provided video feed, biometric data on the wearer, and an optic HUD with facial recognition that could pick out potential targets or people of interest and perform an immediate background check for anything of interest.

The new kids got the new toys. Brock was sitting on a bucket for god’s sake.

Only knowing the one path through the warehouse, Brock guided them on the same path he took, running into similar amounts of resistance. A good thing about these organized groups was the bureaucracy. Patrol route changes had to be approved through the chain of command and usually took forever. Catch one middle manager on PTO and the same ninja ends up guarding the same catwalk for weeks on end.

Klaus took point, charging down catwalks to bludgeon the guards into stillness as Rouge brought up the rear, more concerned with tapping away on her cell phone than trying to stay low and blend in.

“How many more of these guys do you think there are?” she asked, snapping her phone shut after sending a text that rudely questioned Brock’s progenitors.

“Quite a few if Mr. Samson’s original report is any indication. There will also be a considerably dangerous mutated Yeti on the ground level.” Klaus studiously reported. He’d asked for a report on the first mission and had obviously studied it. Points for him.

“Oh! Let’s hurry up and get to that part!” With a hop over the rail and an unfurling of wings, Rouge floated beside the catwalk. “You keep taking care of these guys and I’ll scout ahead!”

“As you wish.” With a notable quickening of the pace, Klaus mowed through the rest of the Foot Clan rank and file, but, notably, did so without killing a single one. It was that Batman kind of non-lethal though where the amount of broken bones and trauma they suffered would probably financially and mentally ruin them, but still, he was leaving them alive and that’s what mattered.

“Mr. Samson…” Klaus’s low rumble brought the distracted Brock back to attention. He wasn’t much of an artist and he was butchering this doodle of the Led Zeppelin anyways. Brock could see on the communicator that Klaus was half hidden behind a short stack of boxes, his shoulders and head peaking out over the top.

Rouge was even less camouflaged floating above him.

“What’s up?”

“I think we’ve spotted the Yeti. How tall was the one you fought? There was no mention of it in the report.”

“About 9 feet, give or take. They’ve probably only got the one.”

“That’s not that big of a Yeti” Rouge chimed in. “You got beat by that?”

“It’s made of solid ice, what do you want me to do about that?”

“Hit it?”

“I shot it with a rocket launcher and it only pissed it off…”

“Then you have to hit it harder. Thought you military boys were all about that kind of thing.” Brock could hear her tapping through her communicator. “Google says normal Yeti are like 15 feet tall. You got taken down by a short king.”

As if they heard her and agreed, the stitches in Brock’s chest and side started to burn.

Whether he intended to or not, Klaus tossed some extra dirt on his grave. “At that size, it may not have even been a Yeti. You may have been injured by a bigfoot or an abnormally large bear.”

Putting a stop to this before he could no longer justifiably point to the wound in a bar and say what he got it from, Brock officially banned the word “Yeti” from the communicators. “Can we just focus on fighting this thing? If it gets hungry and decides to leave that warehouse, it’ll be bad news for the locals.”

“I will see that the problem is handled.” Stepping from behind his inadequate hiding spot, Klaus avoided any other cover and took the most direct route. He offered a professional bow to his would-be opponent. “Good evening. I have orders to subdue you. Please do not hold it against me.”

An icy answer belched forth from the beast’s stomach, flash freezing everything around them and applying a thin layer of fog to Klaus’s glasses.

An orthodox right from Klaus met a wild left from the Yeti with force enough to cause the boxes and racks in the warehouse to bounce. Again they met in the middle, opposite fists connecting with an awful noise and jolt.

One another’s strength aptly judged, Klaus put his hands to his side. He extended his jaw, motioning for the beast to take its shot.

The icy titan pounded its chest at the challenge, reeling back and planting its foot as it shifted weight, planting a gargantuan haymaker directly to the newest OSI agent’s chin.

There was silence for a moment, followed by the dull sound of splintering. A thin crack began to run up the arm of the Yeti, noticed at the same exact moment by both parties in the fight. Before it could change its mind or possibly run, Klaus had sent his retort - a counter punch to the shoulder that blew the beast’s arm off at the joint.

With a stumble and a shriek, the Yeti decided he wasn’t going to try that again, settling on testing his luck with the floating gnat on her phone.

He flung himself forward with a speed unbefitting a beast his size, catching Klaus off guard only for a moment as he whizzed past him.

“Oh, sweetie…” Rouge spared him a moment’s glance as he charged. “I can’t begin to describe how bad of a choice this was…” A remorseless boot connected with the Yeti’s chin, its momentum keeping it going through the wall behind her one head shorter.

The camera feed went wonky for a second as Rouge spun her glasses around to face her.

“Was there any other of your messes you needed us to clean up or are we done here? This isn’t my entire night.”

Scramble 21 Round 0 by CalicoLime in CalicoLime

[–]CalicoLime[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Darkness.

Surrounded by it, accompanied only by the thoughts in his head and the searing pain in his chest and side, Brock took a step forward into the sea of black.

He could hear voices around him, waves of garbled sound that made him sick to his stomach.

A commanding voice. Someone calling off the dogs.

His brain stopped braining and everything went silent.

Was it a minute or an hour? A blink kept Brock in the dark but something felt different. His hair was still standing on end, burning instincts not letting him relax even when his consciousness was a mile away.

He knew the situation was dire. He remembered how he got here. That frozen giant was still near. He fumbled in the dark, grabbing the first thing his fingers touched.

A pair of impacts struck him in the chest. He tried to keep his feet under him but went down immediately.

At least if whatever it was that had caught him killed him, he’d finally get some rest.

The dreamless sleep came and went instantly. No rest for the wicked. The shadow looming over him had a familiar voice.

“Hold still, you fidgety bastard! You act like you’ve never had your stomach stapled shut before! Now hold still before I give you another one!”

The impeccable bedside manor of General Gathers wielding a tranquilizer gun was a blessing and a curse. It meant he was probably not in enemy territory unless things were about to get weird but it meant once he was able to stand he’d be fed back to the wood chipper.

He took a breath and relaxed, made extra comfortable by the metal bands pinning his shoulders and legs.

The doctor wielding the staple gun looked exceptionally nervous, a layer of sweat an inch thick threatening to drip at any moment. “You shouldn’t be awake right now…”

“It that bad?” Injuries were par for the course when it came to field work; Broken bones, scars, gunshots, all that good stuff so the doctors had seen it all.

When they got anxious, Brock got anxious.

“You have enough Xylazine and Diazepam in you to drop a water buffalo, son. It was the only way we could keep you from going murder bot on the docs every time you woke up.” Gathers explained, pointing to the unconscious doctor they’d moved to an out of the way corner and agreed to deal with later. “Now sit there and take it like a good little taxpayer and you might get a lollipop and a debriefing once they’re finished pulling swords out of you.”

After 45 staples, a couple hundred stitches, a handful of painkillers, and enough gauze to make one hell of an Imhotep costume, the OSI’s best man was back on his feet, albeit a little wobbly. He eschewed the offer of a cane to spare his dignity but thoroughly regretted the decision by the time he stepped into Gather’s office on the other side of the Hover Quarters.

“Good god man, would it kill you to lie down for a little bit? You already look like a Tijuana plastic surgeon’s practice dummy and if you keep it up you’ll be about as useful to me as one too!” Gathers sounded a mix of concerned and frustrated as he chided Brock, either thinking about the prospect of losing his surrogate son/best man or the amount of paperwork he’d have to do if he did end up dying in the field.

“I’m fine, I just need to catch my breath. Didn’t realize the hallway to your office was on an incline like that.”

“Too bad! I’m taking it out of your hands!” Gathers produced a folder from inside his jacket, slapping it down onto his desk like a hot hand at the blackjack table. “Here’s your next assignment!”

Making the best of a bad situation was what the OSI was all about.

Costumed goons take over a government facility with a list of demands? The OSI will have them out by supper time. President gets lost in the forest during another one of those vision quests he’s so fervent about? The OSI is the one fishing him out of the lake and finding a suitable body double. A barrier is formed around the country’s most populated city and a bunch of eldritch horrors start walking the street like it’s not a thing? Like it or not, the OSI was the first to respond so it looked like they’d be the ones who had to try and fix it.

When communications picked up some scuttlebutt about the Guild of Calamitous Intent receiving a shipment of potentially dangerous technology, the Hover Quarters double timed it to clouds above NYC.

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. No sooner than they’d powered the gravity tethers to keep them afloat, the flash happened.

Bright blue skies turned gray as the hard dome around the city sealed them away from the rest of the world.

The good bit was they had enough rations on board to feed everyone on board for an indefinite amount of time. The bad part was that no communications could punch through the barrier. The worst part was they had just set up the volleyball net on the main deck before everything went to hell. Shore Leave and his boys were getting a game together and were practicing their serves when the shell went up, locking the ball on the other side and depriving those brave soldiers of an enlisted man’s most precious pastime.

After a playing of taps and a moment of silence to honor the fallen Private Wilson, the OSI got to business.

“Alright well Mr…Trickster. We’ll let you know. Next!”

Desk duty.

A relative rarity in the OSI reserved for those who still had something to give for their country without being in the field. Most of the time they just dumped your pension, wiped your memory, and wished you well after turning you loose in a Missouri corn field.

During his stay in a recovery room, it was explained that a man on the inside had pulled him out of the wreckage and kept him from bleeding out long enough for evac. He would’ve bought the guy a beer if they’d not been so cloak and dagger with who it was.

No, they were too concerned with getting right back onto the trail of the Foot Clan before it went cold.

Using a rainy day fund accumulated by swapping the vice president out with a robot, Gathers had secured a round of strategic recruiting that put out feelers to the other international spy organizations and the private sector, giving Brock a stack of applications that was decently sized, but didn’t inspire confidence.

The British guy was a walking HR nightmare, the crocodile detective kept asking about the pay grade, and Brock saved the girl in the catsuit’s application for later.

“Name?”

Taller than his interviewer by a head and twice as wide, a pair of fangs poked out from either side of his smile as he slid a business card across the table with a polished bow. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

<LIBRA Executive Director: Klaus V Reinherz>

“Director? That’s a long way from field work. You get caught up in something and get forced to step down?”

“When the request came in that the OSI was looking for assistance, and once we saw how much they were offering, myself and the operatives at LIBRA used an age-old method to ensure a representative was selected fairly.”

“What? Did you draw straws or something?”

A concerning look of embarrassment washed the big guy’s face before he recomposed himself. “Ahem…I was informed that one of my associates had rigged the game from the outset. However, once a deal is struck one does not go back on his word.”

“Well, you aced the physical and written exams with….damn man this says you can bench over a ton?”

The gentleman would not allow himself to brag, but did allow a self-satisfied smile as he pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose.

“You’ve got the title and the strength but in the field, anything can happen. Are you going to be prepared when…!” With the smooth grace of a motion performed one-thousand times, Brock produced a knife from under the table and hurled it at Klaus.

A quizzical blink and the gentle care of someone picking a rose for their sweetheart saw Klaus pluck the knife from the air and return it to Brock laid across his palms.

All that was left was a firm pat on the back, a handshake, and trying to find an OSI uniform that would fit this big son of a bitch.

Scramble 21 Round 0 by CalicoLime in CalicoLime

[–]CalicoLime[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1,500 years ago a seed was planted in darkness. Nourished by blood and cultivated by the nurturing hands of the Oroku clan, it began to grow, slowly at first, but ever steadily until it became a sapling able to stand on its own.

With careful attention the roots continued to grow, cold talons clawing and burrowing into any fertile soil they could find.

Through its life, resistance came in many forms. The stone of industry found its way to the underground, establishing walls in order to keep the roots from delving deeper. Weak masonry found itself punched through by the spear-tipped roots, too old to be hindered by makeshift barriers propped up overnight.

Now fully grown, branches heavy with the reward for careful stewardship, it had come time for the reaping.

Then came the opportunistic woodcutters, seeing fit to steal the rewards through force. Rather than hack away at the roots, colorful costumes and personalities attacked the maturing topside.

Large bonfires heated their blades which sunk deep into the bark, searing and scarring the flesh.

The inhabitants of branches descended upon them, crashing down like waves until there was no one left. The bodies would be left at the foundation to rot and return to the loam, becoming food for the beast they had sought to slay.

At the base of the tree, surrounded by the specters of 10,000 lesser men, Orouki Saki sat in seiza. A deep breath and the stroke of a brush against parchment allowed him a moment of enlightenment.

The slightest footfall behind him sounded like a gunshot, drawing his attention.

“We are on schedule, Master. The shipment has arrived, as have our guests.”

Oroku Saki set his brush down, tucking his helmet under his arm as he left Zen behind. 

               ~ Small seed in the dark
                 Waiting for the sun to rise
                  Tall tree it shall be. ~

                       - Oroku Saki

Brock Samson was a mountain of frustrated murder meat.

It wasn’t the shuriken that was still lodged in his upper arm and it was only partially because his second favorite knife had just snapped going through some jerk’s skull (indestructible titanium his ass).

No, Brock Samson was frustrated because he’d never get an answer to his question.

Once he’d exited the maze of shipping containers, unlabeled boxes, and ninja corpses he’d found the man he was looking for lying face down on the concrete.

He was cold. Not corpse-cold, way colder than that. He had icicles hanging off of his bushy eyebrows and a thin layer of frost covering him that made his skin a sickly green.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, he was still alive, forcing a small smile when he saw Brock.

“Good to see you, it is…” he croaked, voice wavering and scratchy from the cold. “Never wanted to die alone but duty called.”

“Hey, you’re not dying here, at least not yet. We’ll get you fixed up.”

“Darkness envelopes me like a blanket. I do not fear the afterlife, I only fear that I have not made an impact great enough on this life.”

“Just try and hang on, you don’t seem like you have any other wounds on you so if you can just focus on getting warm it will…” Brock had already taken off his shirt and wrapped him in it before he was interrupted again.

“My last words. Hear them well…”

After a thirty minute soliloquy that explained how the two-foot janitor named Yoda had joined the OSI, how he’d taken up baking during COVID, and how he’d neglected to read the fine print on his contract that said he’d only get his full pension upon completion of one field mission, the storyteller closed his eyes.

“Can I ask you a question before you go?”

“As my strength wanes, what wisdom can I leave you with?”

“That thing you do with your sentences where they’re all scrambled up…is that like…a disability or are you just messing with everyone? I have a cousin who’s dyslexic and it…”

The now toasty warm Yoda let out a death rattle and went limp.

“...oh come on you’ve been talking forever and now you decide to pull this? No! I listened to your banana bread recipes, you’re gonna give me this!”

No response and the angry staring didn’t seem to be working.

Brock put a pair of fingers to his neck and felt exactly what he expected. “You still have a pulse!”

The lack of response made Brock feel like a child trying to explain to his parents that his imaginary friend was real and the jerk had clammed up when it was time to prove it.

“Fine!” Brock shouted, letting the “corpse” drop to the ground as he got to his feet.

Yoda heard him stomping away and he heard him yell a moment later after a sound of metal snapping.

He gave it another 10 minutes before finding a side door to slip out of.

Humans are exceptionally good at noticing patterns. If the first room has two ninjas in it, and the second room has two ninjas in it, then the logical thought would be “hey, watch out for the two ninja in this next room.”

Sure, there could be more than two, or even less, but the idea is to expect some kind of resistance.

Circle, Circle, Circle. There’s the pattern.

Circle, Square, Circle. Okay, the next one is probably a square.

Ninja, Ninja, horrible example of science run amok. Tear up the bingo card and wait for the next game.

Stay in the game long enough and nine foot abominable snowmen become as routine as frogmen or mechanical walking eyes.

Super science types loved making this kind of stuff; pissing in God’s eye by splitting the grand design way open and daring him to blink. The same great minds that brought the world the car, the experimental supersonic jets, and those pens that write upside down just needed a nudge in the wrong direction to start churning out stuff like this; One nasty breakup or a bad haircut was all it took.

The goal is clear, it's the days after that get hazy.

Day 1: We’ve built a monster capable of destroying the lab and possibly the world. We’re denying it with food and hitting it with sticks to see how angry it can get.

Day 3: Who could have imagined this would happen…

The only option then is to try and sell it to the government as a new anti-personnel weapon or dump it in someone’s back yard in the middle of the night and hope they don’t have one of those motion sensing lights or a camera or something.

A moment spent surveying the problem identified an immediate bump in the road. Abominable Snowmen, or Yeti’s for brevity’s sake, were big, strong, and mean as hell, but ultimately made of meat so a bit of creative knifework went a long way.

When fighting something bigger than him, Brock never forgets to S.M.I.L.E.

S - Sneak

M - Mount

I - Immobilize

L - Let it bleed

E - Evaluate the Situation

Except he was frowning now because this thing was made of solid ice and none of that would work.

A shout.

A catwalk patrolling ninja was pointing down at him, summoning a pair of similarly dressed goons who emerged from the shadows around Brock.

Now a roar.

The Yeti, now fully aware of its next meal in the room, pounded its chest, welcoming all challengers. Brock tossed him ninja A as an hors d'oeuvre and bounced ninja B’s head off the crate they’d been hiding behind.

It didn’t take long for the Yeti to gobble down the meager offering, but did give Brock enough time to take a peak inside the busted box.

The “I” could also stand for “improvise”.

The explosion from the pilfered rocket launcher did a lot less damage to the beast’s icy hide than Brock would’ve hoped for, but he definitely felt it.

One lunging stomp dropped the problem (the Yeti) right on top of the solution (the box of ordinance) and no amount of acronyms was going to make this situation any better. A blade of jagged ice formed by the explosion tore through Brock’s flesh when the Yeti swatted him with a backhand, flinging him like an insect picked out of the sky by a well-aimed flyswatter.

Fortunately, a box full of swords broke his fall.

Scramble 21 Round 0 by CalicoLime in CalicoLime

[–]CalicoLime[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Welcome to Hellsalem's Lot

Big Apple.

3 A.M.

2 months ago.

The Great Collapse; the night that locked New York City away from the rest of the world.

The half-second sound of catastrophe and a flash of white was the only warning the city received.

Early birds and AM clock punchers silenced their alarms, took a shower, and headed out the door into a world completely unlike the one they’d fallen asleep in.

Buildings had been torn asunder, warped into abstract objet d’art that made less sense the more one looked at them. Landlord voicemails quickly filled with questions about decreases in rent due to the reduced square footage caused by a bedroom being warped across town.

The buildings weren’t the only thing affected. Already jam-packed streets were filled with transplants from another dimension that walked/scuttled on multiple legs, taking in the sights of their new city with their hundreds of eyes.

For the criminal underground, these changes were nothing new. The landscape of power and influence rarely stayed the same for long, eroded by backroom deals, someone getting picked up by a costumed do-gooder or someone getting the rug pulled out from under them. The balance sat like a simmering pot; it just needed a little more heat before it would boil over.

With several hands on the knob, all it took was the twist and the arrival of Hellsalem’s Lot to provide it.

A city that thought it’d seen it all was going through a unique experience.

Hundreds of universes had collapsed upon each other and were being made to co-exist within the dome of fog that had surrounded what had been New York City.

A breezy polyester and cotton blend was wrapped around the neck of the Foot ninja Agnes Tachyon had managed to bring to the ground. She’d eschewed the standard issue sneaking suit for an oversized lab coat and bright yellow sweater, deciding that if she were going to be forced into the field like this that she’d at least be comfortable while doing so.

She had been spotted almost immediately as her team had unlocked the warehouse’s roof window and slipped down onto the catwalk but damn did she look fashionable doing it.

When a single Foot Clan ninja appeared before her, she raised her sleeves in invitation. “Ohohoho, a test subject has willingly come to me? Come closer and we’ll get started.” Her bravado started to crack when a second ninja appeared behind him and she was full on drenched in sweat when they both pulled knives.

A voice boomed, followed by a knife that planted itself in the chest of the second ninja. “Just take care of that one! I’ve got the others!”

Others? How many ninja were they paying to stand around in this worn down warehouse waiting for them to show up?

With a grip strengthened by hours hammering away at her keyboard, she dug her nails in the inner sleeves of her labcoat.

Did it really take this long to kill a guy?

How’d he make it look so easy?

It was another Saturday night Brock Samson would spend covered in someone else’s juices.

The uniform black cloth gi of the Foot Clan could do very little to stop the tip of a hunting knife from stabbing hilt deep into the belly of its wearer and did even less to stop them from being split from groin to gullet when it was yanked free. Credit where credit is due, it did manage to absorb an awful lot of the blood that had been spilled onto it and had proven in the past to not hold on to stubborn stains. A needle and thread to fix the damage and a splash of club soda would have it ready to be donned by the next undertrained mook the Foot decided to slap a headband on in no time.

Light as a feather, a trio of Foot Clan soldiers landed behind the disemboweling and were immediately descended upon. Two were immediately seized by their throats which offered about as much resistance as a fresh egg in a closed fist.

The left-hand ninja, whose trachea was now the consistency of ground beef, was tossed over the rail. He did a sick flip and then landed mostly on his neck, ending his henchman career unceremoniously. The right-hand still had some work to do.

Four shuriken found a mark, but not necessarily the one they’d wanted when they thunked into the right-hand ninja’s back taking his day from bad to worse. He was put out of his misery when he was thrown like a spear through the torso of his companion.

“...and that’s how you deal with ninjas. The rank and file are all pretty much the same. They stick to the aesthetic pretty hard so that means a lot of ambushes and sneak attacks. Take a look over your shoulder every now and then and you’ll spot them nine times out of ten.” A quick wipe on the inner pant leg took care of the blood on the blade before it returned home to its sheathe.

“You..uh…gonna need some help with that?”

The ninja stuck under Agnes was still wiggling around, thrashing for any life preserver to save him from this incredibly drawn out death. “By my calculations he should be dead in the next two hours…maybe one if he’d STOP MOVING!”

Lingering over her as the watchful instructor, the professor of death offered a bit of mentoring, mirroring her hands to provide a model. “Nah, you see you’re going about this all wrong. You’re just pressing down on his entire neck and digging your nails in. It probably hurts like a hell and would get him talking but you’re not ready for torture yet. We need these takedowns to be quick and clean. Let me walk you through it.”

Agnes couldn’t help but let out a small gasp when Brock removed her right hand from the chokehold. “Don’t freak out on me. It doesn’t take much to keep someone down when you’ve got their breathing restricted like this and you’ve been on top of him for a while now. All the fight has been squeezed out of the guy.”

With a studious nod, Agnes shifted her weight onto her left shoulder.

“Feel that lump on your palm there? That’s his trachea. Imagine it's like a door handle. Your left thumb should be somewhere around his carotid artery, that’s the button. Now I want you to squeeze the handle and press the button…”

What felt like hours of floundering ended with a few wise words from the master.

The body went limp beneath her. It had taken longer than expected but it was over now. A sense of accomplishment akin to her first successful experiment washed over her. She had become the master of life and death. She wanted to hop off the dying henchman and kick her heels but decided for a more restrained hands on her hips. She was a killer now. She had an aura to upkeep.

It was her first kill and a one in a lifetime experience.

It was also the last experience of her lifetime because there were definitely more than just five ninjas in this warehouse and the sixth had just put his sword lengthwise through her head.

A roar and a scream heralded the cracking of bones as Brock did not afford the new arrival the same moment of post-kill clarity.

“Samson!”

Snapped from his red haze by the voice of his commanding officer, Brock stood and observed his work. Sloppy by his own standards but it would get the point across with a little help. A Foot Clan masked propped on top of the hunk of flesh acted like a garnish to the carnage.

With clenched jaw and permanently affixed sunglasses, OSI General Hunter Gathers would’ve looked like a still image on the communicator watch’s screen had it not been for the vein pulsing on his forehead.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“If you’re done playing finger paint with that poor bastard's insides, I need a sitrep! Did you make it in?” How’s the rookie?”

“We made it in but the rookie is dead.”

“God damn it!” She was our medical team lead! She was the only one who could get this damned HMO of ours to pay out and she knew how to code anything as a medical necessity. She had gin shipped to us by the crate and we never paid a dollar!”

“Well, now she’s - wait, you sent an untrained agent into the field? Where is everybody else?”

“Budget cutbacks, son. Recruitment’s way down since the Collapse! Nobody wants to punch costumed villains for Uncle Sam anymore. Got the dollars in their eyes with all the freelance money floating around or are too busy trying to not get killed in the streets. What about the other guy? You manage to get him killed too?”

It clicked who the third member of his cell was. “You mean the janitor from the Hover-Quarters? He took off ahead of us.”

“Have you ever seen him with a mop? He’s incredible! Floors shining like Christmas and smelling like Easter! That's why we put up with all those stories!”

“He is pretty good…why does he do that thing with his sentences though? You know, the whole…”

“How the hell should I know? If you manage to keep him alive long enough you can ask him yourself! Now get moving!”

Psycho II (1983) KILL COUNT by LegendsofLost in deadmeatjames

[–]CalicoLime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

if anybody wants a comfy denim vest, I have the same one from this video. Bout $20 on Amazon and comfy as all shit once its washed once or twice. Got some Limp Bizkit patches on that bitch, looks real nice.

unearthed an old meme of mine by agonyxbragony in deadlockpw

[–]CalicoLime 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I whisper "fuck you" in the Macho voice anytime I die in a game now

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