Miscellaneous bad things
Aug. 26th, 2018 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shinonFrom a meme I did a while back on Plurk, here's... people getting beaten up?
FE9:
“I’m sorry! He got past me!” Gatrie was wheezing as he pulled the lance back out of the man he had just killed. “The sword guys, they’re just! So *nimble!*”
“Never mind.” Shinon nocked another arrow. “Just watch my back.”
“Did he get you?”
“It’s shallow.”
“Your shirt -”
“I said it’s shallow, quit gawking.” And release. The arrow thudded home, into the back of one of the bandits surrounding Commander Greil. But the elevation was wrong. Still a solid hit, but lower than intended. He looked down at his hands and grimaced. They were shaking with exhaustion. As if he had time for that shit. Another arrow. Draw. Compensate for the drop. Let go. Good, that one should be mortal. His chest felt damp, more than sweat would account for, but - he’d stepped back. The sword had only clipped him. These assholes were more persistent than expected, more organized than they had any right to be, and on one of his first jobs with the company he was not gonna let the commander get overwhelmed -
“You’re kinda bleeding a lot.”
“If I’m hurt so bad” - got that one in the throat - “why are you the one doing nothing?” Running low on arrows. Make this one count. “Why am I dragging your dead weight around?” The shot sailed over Greil’s shoulder and took a bandit just about to swing for his neck. “Fight now. Worry later.”
EO2U:
After the nightmare of the past day, it should be good to have a concrete goal. They are facing a monster. They must defeat the monster. They've gotten pretty good at that, and no, Flavio's not the heaviest hitter, but he has a role and he knows how to perform it. It's simple and straightforward. It doesn't even take conscious thought to find his mark, draw, and release, as many times as he has to, until someone falls.
It should be simple. But there's no winning this one.
The best-case scenario is, they kill the old man, Ginnungagap's systems still have enough power to create a new Guardian, and the world is safe for another hundred years. But even then, his best friend will be locked underground alone, forever. What the hell kind of proposition is that? Kill someone you were just warming up to, for the privilege of losing the only one who ever cared about you!
No. The *best* case would have been, when the temple chose the wrong Fafnir, to grab the right one and run. But it's too late now. The others wouldn't have stood for it. Flavio is a weak person for having the thought. You can't love someone for their generosity and then ask them to be selfish. You can't make anyone put down their burdens. It's the Fafnir Knight's choice. And he's chosen this.
Last night at the inn Flavio passed Bertrand on the stairs and without a moment's thought slugged him in the mouth.
Bertrand's head snapped to the side. He blinked a few times, turned his gaze on Flavio again, and said, "Rookie mistake. The jawbone's pretty dense. You can really fuck up your hand that way." In that light, his eyes were colorless. "You wanna take this outside?"
Why wasn't it you, Flavio wanted to scream, but they were indoors and people were sleeping. Bertrand jerked his thumb toward the exit and they went downstairs, and in the rear courtyard Flavio shoved him over the retaining wall. "Why didn't you stop him?" He jumped down beside him and punched him again before he could get up. "How could you let him do that? We *needed* him! I need him!"
He doesn't remember many particulars, after that. He remembers a rage that he doesn't like to think of as belonging to him. He remembers that eventually he stopped, sweaty and breathless and crying, and thought, Oh crap, what now, am I supposed to help him up? And he's pretty sure - this is the sickening part - that Bertrand never fought back once.
"Right." The old man wiped blood from his face and gave Flavio a clap on the shoulder. "Got that out of your system?"
And now here they all are, and Flavio is faltering. Even though last night he could have happily beaten this man senseless, even though last night nothing in the world had seemed to justify his survivall. I don't want him to die, he realizes. I don't want to kill him. But I want him to already be dead. I want my friend back. I'm a hypocrite.
Shaking, he takes aim.
Lovecraft:
“The reagent, please.” The detective placed the muzzle of his pistol against West’s pale brow. “I want all your stock, and all the laboratory notebooks that led to its present formulation.”
West’s eyes were huge and wild. He had lost altogether the power of speech, and of volitional movement. His shoulders rose and fell rapidly, his fingers twitched as if seeking some implement by which to fight back, but like a rabbit in the shadow of a hawk, he was powerless for anything else.
I said, in the most peaceful and placating tone my strained nerves permitted, “It will take some time to assemble these materials.”
“I am content to stand here until then.” He studied West. “But your accomplice might prefer expediency.”
Canny as this sleuth had proven, he had still that misapprehension. He knew that we two were connected with the disappearances in the immigrant quarter, with the glare-eyed revenants in the woods, with the beast of Sefton - he knew all this had been effected by an injection of our devising - but, perhaps from West’s youthful appearance, had assumed I was the mastermind. He thought to force me into the open by imperiling my junior associate. Whatever was to become of me or my work, given the choice, must I not spare my friend? I had been discovered; my ship was sinking; would I not sacrifice all that remained to me to save him?
Had this man understood us rightly - had he taken me hostage and spoken so to West - my friend would have smiled and let me be shot. But I lacked his resolve.
West’s life and the reagent were one. I stared into his face, silently entreating him to give some sign of the best course, but we both knew the paradox in which we found ourselves. He would not suffer me to part him from his work. But the very nature of that work derived from this more primal fact: he was afraid to die. Stare as I might, I got no instruction from that bloodless face, the terror in his eyes mingled with a deep and futile rage.
I gave the man all that he asked for. West remained speechless, but the balance in his expression shifted toward contempt. The detective took us out to his waiting car, never taking the gun off of West, and instructed me to store everything securely. This done, he passed the gun meaningfully over both of us, instructed us not to leave the state, and drove away.
West stood shuddering in the gravel. The first words he managed to me all day were a hoarse injunction: “Kill him.”
“West, are you -”
“You have bought us a very little time, at a very high cost. If you were ever my friend, then kill him. Bring back my reagent, and bring me his corpse.” He turned and walked unsteadily back to his offices. In former days I would have called out to him again, laid a hand on his shoulder - but human comforts had lost any purchase on that barren soul.
West returned from the Amazon a stranger to me and to good laboratory practice alike. The basement had once been lined with cages of sacrificial animals, humanely if disinterestedly kept; each implement for compounding the reagent had been sterilized before returning to its proper place every morning; the records immaculately kept; all surfaces smelling mildly of bleach. But here confronted me, instead, row on row of body parts in jars - an arm, an eye, a sagittal section of human brain - residue on the floor deep enough to register my footprints, and a sweet smell of rot.
"Is this a doctor's workplace, or a museum of the macabre?" I asked, repelled.
"It's progress."
"Progress toward what, West?"
"Progress."
"When you brought me into your confidences, you told me you intended to be the liberator of humanity. Freed from death, we would be able for the first time to make real decisions. Freed from grief and fear, we would be more rational than ever. Does a disembodied foot serve that end? Does it serve it well enough to be worth collecting the specimen? West -"
"Amputees, or something."
"What?"
He rolled his eyes. "Horrible human toll of the war, rehabilitation of casualties, et cetera. There, now we look charitable on paper. Now if you will accompany me to the bench, I need you to stir this intermediate -"
I accompanied him to the bench, but did not listen to his instruction. His callousness appalled me. He had gotten too far afield, and his research was too costly - his course must be corrected.
A knife, none too clean, lay at the edge of the bench. With my right hand I seized it, and with my left pinned West's wrist to the bench.
His little finger gave less resistance than some carrots I have chopped. While he screamed and jerked back, adding his own blood to the general mess, I dropped the severed digit into a jar.
"If the process works so well," I said in his ear, pulling him close to me, "then heal thyself."
I am forced to admit, finally, that I have omitted some particulars in my account of the death of Dr. Herbert West. I believed at the time that I did so to spare his pride, but he was already dead. On sober reflection I must own that it was my own pride I regarded. I wished to present a more favorable picture of the man I so respected, in order to portray myself as a man of sense. But West was a fiend, and I cooperated with him. He does not deserve my sentimentality, nor I your respect.
I have before written that the tomb-legion came for him, tore his body to shreds, and carried the fragments off without a sound. That is true, up until the point when Dean Halsey's revenant pinioned him. And then it was only one who spoke. The wax-headed creature in the Canadian uniform set down the box it carried, and opened it, revealing the crazed dead face of Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee. This face stared at West with a manic intensity my friend could never have seen before without use of a mirror. Somehow, without the benefit of lungs, the head produced the words: "Dr. West, do you wish to live?"
Some seconds elapsed. "Yes," said West, as if he could manage no more.
"How much?"
In a faltering voice, his eyes darting around the room, West responded, "Whatever you want of me -"
Clapham-Lee's hand made a sign. Halsey - dare I call that creature Halsey? - dropped West to his knees. Another of the dead automata restrained me, but to my shame it was unnecessary; I had no thought of intervening. The head in the box said, "I want to see you beg."
"Please -"
The headless body made another sign. His blue-faced minion forced West down still further, pinning him prone to the floor. "Grovel," said the bodiless head.
West raised his head. "Take your legions and go. I'll never trouble you more. I - I'll stop my experiments to review the data - I won't resume until -"
"You'll stop your experiments, without condition."
"I can't!"
"Then you will die."
"I'll stop! I'll stop! On my word, as a doctor and a gentleman, please, *please* - I won't compete -"
The severed head smiled cruelly. "Compete? You have already lost. Look at my servants. I have a greater understanding of your craft than you ever attained. You are in the presence of a master."
West rallied, struggling against the inhuman strength of Halsey to rise to his knees. "And you have me to thank for it. I created you. Had you not experienced the transformation firsthand -"
"Should I thank you," the head roared, "for consigning me to this?"
"The spinal column can be reattached," said West, uncertainly.
"Should Dean Halsey thank you?" At the sound of its former name, the creature hooked a lumpen fist in West's hair and jerked up.
West conceded, through a grimace of pain, "That was regrettable."
"You'll have no gratitude from this quarter." The tomb-legion as one stepped closer to its quarry. "You will apologize."
"I - I'm - it should never have come to this - I am sensible of some, moderate, wrongdoing on my account -"
"You are an idiot." Another step closer. The dead crowded around me. "Say it. Say that you're an idiot."
"I'm an idiot! I'm an idiot! Call them off, *please,* in the name of -"
"Hold that expression, would you?" said Clapham-Lee. The tomb-legion advanced. The front rank laid hands on West's coat. "I shall cherish it for years to come."
West was sobbing now. "The world can't lose me! I could have done so much! I can still fix you, only spare me - please - mercy -"
"You have already been sentenced, Dr. West. I cannot stop what is now in motion - but I thank you. Your petition has been satisfactory. Now I can be assured that, in freeing the world of an evil man, I am also freeing it of a coward."
I lost consciousness as they tore West's arm from his shoulder. But I think that for some time afterward he was still awake.
FE9:
“I’m sorry! He got past me!” Gatrie was wheezing as he pulled the lance back out of the man he had just killed. “The sword guys, they’re just! So *nimble!*”
“Never mind.” Shinon nocked another arrow. “Just watch my back.”
“Did he get you?”
“It’s shallow.”
“Your shirt -”
“I said it’s shallow, quit gawking.” And release. The arrow thudded home, into the back of one of the bandits surrounding Commander Greil. But the elevation was wrong. Still a solid hit, but lower than intended. He looked down at his hands and grimaced. They were shaking with exhaustion. As if he had time for that shit. Another arrow. Draw. Compensate for the drop. Let go. Good, that one should be mortal. His chest felt damp, more than sweat would account for, but - he’d stepped back. The sword had only clipped him. These assholes were more persistent than expected, more organized than they had any right to be, and on one of his first jobs with the company he was not gonna let the commander get overwhelmed -
“You’re kinda bleeding a lot.”
“If I’m hurt so bad” - got that one in the throat - “why are you the one doing nothing?” Running low on arrows. Make this one count. “Why am I dragging your dead weight around?” The shot sailed over Greil’s shoulder and took a bandit just about to swing for his neck. “Fight now. Worry later.”
EO2U:
After the nightmare of the past day, it should be good to have a concrete goal. They are facing a monster. They must defeat the monster. They've gotten pretty good at that, and no, Flavio's not the heaviest hitter, but he has a role and he knows how to perform it. It's simple and straightforward. It doesn't even take conscious thought to find his mark, draw, and release, as many times as he has to, until someone falls.
It should be simple. But there's no winning this one.
The best-case scenario is, they kill the old man, Ginnungagap's systems still have enough power to create a new Guardian, and the world is safe for another hundred years. But even then, his best friend will be locked underground alone, forever. What the hell kind of proposition is that? Kill someone you were just warming up to, for the privilege of losing the only one who ever cared about you!
No. The *best* case would have been, when the temple chose the wrong Fafnir, to grab the right one and run. But it's too late now. The others wouldn't have stood for it. Flavio is a weak person for having the thought. You can't love someone for their generosity and then ask them to be selfish. You can't make anyone put down their burdens. It's the Fafnir Knight's choice. And he's chosen this.
Last night at the inn Flavio passed Bertrand on the stairs and without a moment's thought slugged him in the mouth.
Bertrand's head snapped to the side. He blinked a few times, turned his gaze on Flavio again, and said, "Rookie mistake. The jawbone's pretty dense. You can really fuck up your hand that way." In that light, his eyes were colorless. "You wanna take this outside?"
Why wasn't it you, Flavio wanted to scream, but they were indoors and people were sleeping. Bertrand jerked his thumb toward the exit and they went downstairs, and in the rear courtyard Flavio shoved him over the retaining wall. "Why didn't you stop him?" He jumped down beside him and punched him again before he could get up. "How could you let him do that? We *needed* him! I need him!"
He doesn't remember many particulars, after that. He remembers a rage that he doesn't like to think of as belonging to him. He remembers that eventually he stopped, sweaty and breathless and crying, and thought, Oh crap, what now, am I supposed to help him up? And he's pretty sure - this is the sickening part - that Bertrand never fought back once.
"Right." The old man wiped blood from his face and gave Flavio a clap on the shoulder. "Got that out of your system?"
And now here they all are, and Flavio is faltering. Even though last night he could have happily beaten this man senseless, even though last night nothing in the world had seemed to justify his survivall. I don't want him to die, he realizes. I don't want to kill him. But I want him to already be dead. I want my friend back. I'm a hypocrite.
Shaking, he takes aim.
Lovecraft:
“The reagent, please.” The detective placed the muzzle of his pistol against West’s pale brow. “I want all your stock, and all the laboratory notebooks that led to its present formulation.”
West’s eyes were huge and wild. He had lost altogether the power of speech, and of volitional movement. His shoulders rose and fell rapidly, his fingers twitched as if seeking some implement by which to fight back, but like a rabbit in the shadow of a hawk, he was powerless for anything else.
I said, in the most peaceful and placating tone my strained nerves permitted, “It will take some time to assemble these materials.”
“I am content to stand here until then.” He studied West. “But your accomplice might prefer expediency.”
Canny as this sleuth had proven, he had still that misapprehension. He knew that we two were connected with the disappearances in the immigrant quarter, with the glare-eyed revenants in the woods, with the beast of Sefton - he knew all this had been effected by an injection of our devising - but, perhaps from West’s youthful appearance, had assumed I was the mastermind. He thought to force me into the open by imperiling my junior associate. Whatever was to become of me or my work, given the choice, must I not spare my friend? I had been discovered; my ship was sinking; would I not sacrifice all that remained to me to save him?
Had this man understood us rightly - had he taken me hostage and spoken so to West - my friend would have smiled and let me be shot. But I lacked his resolve.
West’s life and the reagent were one. I stared into his face, silently entreating him to give some sign of the best course, but we both knew the paradox in which we found ourselves. He would not suffer me to part him from his work. But the very nature of that work derived from this more primal fact: he was afraid to die. Stare as I might, I got no instruction from that bloodless face, the terror in his eyes mingled with a deep and futile rage.
I gave the man all that he asked for. West remained speechless, but the balance in his expression shifted toward contempt. The detective took us out to his waiting car, never taking the gun off of West, and instructed me to store everything securely. This done, he passed the gun meaningfully over both of us, instructed us not to leave the state, and drove away.
West stood shuddering in the gravel. The first words he managed to me all day were a hoarse injunction: “Kill him.”
“West, are you -”
“You have bought us a very little time, at a very high cost. If you were ever my friend, then kill him. Bring back my reagent, and bring me his corpse.” He turned and walked unsteadily back to his offices. In former days I would have called out to him again, laid a hand on his shoulder - but human comforts had lost any purchase on that barren soul.
West returned from the Amazon a stranger to me and to good laboratory practice alike. The basement had once been lined with cages of sacrificial animals, humanely if disinterestedly kept; each implement for compounding the reagent had been sterilized before returning to its proper place every morning; the records immaculately kept; all surfaces smelling mildly of bleach. But here confronted me, instead, row on row of body parts in jars - an arm, an eye, a sagittal section of human brain - residue on the floor deep enough to register my footprints, and a sweet smell of rot.
"Is this a doctor's workplace, or a museum of the macabre?" I asked, repelled.
"It's progress."
"Progress toward what, West?"
"Progress."
"When you brought me into your confidences, you told me you intended to be the liberator of humanity. Freed from death, we would be able for the first time to make real decisions. Freed from grief and fear, we would be more rational than ever. Does a disembodied foot serve that end? Does it serve it well enough to be worth collecting the specimen? West -"
"Amputees, or something."
"What?"
He rolled his eyes. "Horrible human toll of the war, rehabilitation of casualties, et cetera. There, now we look charitable on paper. Now if you will accompany me to the bench, I need you to stir this intermediate -"
I accompanied him to the bench, but did not listen to his instruction. His callousness appalled me. He had gotten too far afield, and his research was too costly - his course must be corrected.
A knife, none too clean, lay at the edge of the bench. With my right hand I seized it, and with my left pinned West's wrist to the bench.
His little finger gave less resistance than some carrots I have chopped. While he screamed and jerked back, adding his own blood to the general mess, I dropped the severed digit into a jar.
"If the process works so well," I said in his ear, pulling him close to me, "then heal thyself."
I am forced to admit, finally, that I have omitted some particulars in my account of the death of Dr. Herbert West. I believed at the time that I did so to spare his pride, but he was already dead. On sober reflection I must own that it was my own pride I regarded. I wished to present a more favorable picture of the man I so respected, in order to portray myself as a man of sense. But West was a fiend, and I cooperated with him. He does not deserve my sentimentality, nor I your respect.
I have before written that the tomb-legion came for him, tore his body to shreds, and carried the fragments off without a sound. That is true, up until the point when Dean Halsey's revenant pinioned him. And then it was only one who spoke. The wax-headed creature in the Canadian uniform set down the box it carried, and opened it, revealing the crazed dead face of Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee. This face stared at West with a manic intensity my friend could never have seen before without use of a mirror. Somehow, without the benefit of lungs, the head produced the words: "Dr. West, do you wish to live?"
Some seconds elapsed. "Yes," said West, as if he could manage no more.
"How much?"
In a faltering voice, his eyes darting around the room, West responded, "Whatever you want of me -"
Clapham-Lee's hand made a sign. Halsey - dare I call that creature Halsey? - dropped West to his knees. Another of the dead automata restrained me, but to my shame it was unnecessary; I had no thought of intervening. The head in the box said, "I want to see you beg."
"Please -"
The headless body made another sign. His blue-faced minion forced West down still further, pinning him prone to the floor. "Grovel," said the bodiless head.
West raised his head. "Take your legions and go. I'll never trouble you more. I - I'll stop my experiments to review the data - I won't resume until -"
"You'll stop your experiments, without condition."
"I can't!"
"Then you will die."
"I'll stop! I'll stop! On my word, as a doctor and a gentleman, please, *please* - I won't compete -"
The severed head smiled cruelly. "Compete? You have already lost. Look at my servants. I have a greater understanding of your craft than you ever attained. You are in the presence of a master."
West rallied, struggling against the inhuman strength of Halsey to rise to his knees. "And you have me to thank for it. I created you. Had you not experienced the transformation firsthand -"
"Should I thank you," the head roared, "for consigning me to this?"
"The spinal column can be reattached," said West, uncertainly.
"Should Dean Halsey thank you?" At the sound of its former name, the creature hooked a lumpen fist in West's hair and jerked up.
West conceded, through a grimace of pain, "That was regrettable."
"You'll have no gratitude from this quarter." The tomb-legion as one stepped closer to its quarry. "You will apologize."
"I - I'm - it should never have come to this - I am sensible of some, moderate, wrongdoing on my account -"
"You are an idiot." Another step closer. The dead crowded around me. "Say it. Say that you're an idiot."
"I'm an idiot! I'm an idiot! Call them off, *please,* in the name of -"
"Hold that expression, would you?" said Clapham-Lee. The tomb-legion advanced. The front rank laid hands on West's coat. "I shall cherish it for years to come."
West was sobbing now. "The world can't lose me! I could have done so much! I can still fix you, only spare me - please - mercy -"
"You have already been sentenced, Dr. West. I cannot stop what is now in motion - but I thank you. Your petition has been satisfactory. Now I can be assured that, in freeing the world of an evil man, I am also freeing it of a coward."
I lost consciousness as they tore West's arm from his shoulder. But I think that for some time afterward he was still awake.
