THE BLACK EYE OF SHAREF: FINALE

[crux_npcs]

Who: Big Bee'eef Slabthrust, Eye of Sharef Defenders
Where: The Eye of Sharef
When: Late afternoon, Februaro 30th
Warnings: Language, violence, metal

"My, you're in a bit of a pickle."

Bee'eef Slabthrust whirled. It was bad enough that the turkeys aboard the station had managed to humiliate his gang, now some bint was sneaking up on him? He narrowed his eyes at her. At twelve feet tall, she managed to look him in the eyes. An impressive feat for a female, but what pissed him off was that she managed to get past his guards and slip up behind him.

Didn't look bad, though. Impressive tusks.

Still, he narrowed his eyes. "What's it to you, scant?"

He was answered with a breezy laugh, her face covered by a fan that was there one minute, gone the next. He didn't have the time to ponder this, however, as she stepped forward and slid an arm around his shoulder. "Your poor gang. Humiliated." Suddenly, she was just on his opposite side, causing him to jerk. "Decimated. You would have had the run of this place too, if it weren't for... Well." She gestured in front of them, towards the direction of the station's survivors.

"Dem. They wrecked my gang!" He clenched his hands into fists, grinding his teeth together.

"Yesss." She chuckled softly into his ear. "Them. The 43rd Scutum-Crux Fleet. The Confederacy of Inhabited Systems. CIS scum. Tiny people with tiny souls who think they can run everything. What do they know of Big Bee'eef Slabthrust and the Jagtooth Clan? How can they know the hard life of the space roads? Look at them. They're like..." All of a sudden, she was on his other side again, hissing in his ear. He heard her voice on his opposite side, and when he tore his gaze from her to look at where she might be, there she was again. "Ants. Don't you think so? Little tiny bugs. Pinch, pinch, pinching at your pride?" She made pinching gestures with one hand, then snapped her teeth audibly.

Bee'eef started breathing hard and heavy, seeming to swell a bit. "Yeah. Ants! Dey're ants and dey hurt my boyz!"

"You should make them hurt."

"Yeah. YEAH! I'm gonna fuck them pinkskins up! Gonna get dem for my boyz!" The clan leader took a step and the ground shook. The merchant stalls (when had they gotten so small?) shuttered and some collapsed. He could feel heat licking from between his lips, and his reflection revealed flames roaring in his mouth. How long had he been able to do that?

Didn't matter. What mattered was smashing some puny ants, making them pay for fucking with his gang.

The scant was laughing, he could hear it echoing in his ears, but it didn't matter. After he'd gotten some payback, he'd teach her a thing or two

* * *

The heavy stomping would be the first clue that something was wrong. The very floor vibrated under their feet. Then, from around the corner, near the ceiling, was the tip of a pompadour. Almost thirty feet of hair preceded the giant, fury-filled face of a now-gigantic Big Bee'eef Slabthrust. Flames streamed from his nose and mouth as he roared, and then fixated his gaze on a hastily-thrown together barricade, designed to keep the bikers from flying low enough to snag anyone. "FUCK YOUR SPEED BUMPS!"

He jabbed a finger at the barricade and barrels popped into existence around his wrist, circling around it until they fully encompassed it, like a deadly bracelet. And then they started spinning and spitting hot metal, despite having no visible ammunition feed. "I'M BIG BEE'EEF SLABTHRUST! I'M DE WRONG TUSKER TO FUCK WITH, SCANTS!" The shots tore through the deck plating with frightening ease, leaving gaping holes ripped through the floor, the walls, the stalls...

Somehow, somewhere, something went a little wrong.

Comments

[crux_npcs]

Bee'eef misses Break making a break for it, and he continues to clumsily try to nab the Bike reaching out long chain-weighted hands to try to snatch tron and his jetbike off the ground. GRAB.

[ja307020]

Grabby hands were bad. Tron kicked the bike back into motion, ducking the swinging chains and feeling one clock into his helmet hard... now he was grateful he thought to buy it, even as he blinked the sensory-dazzle of a very minor skip out of his vision.

He had to keep the creature distracted...

"Too slow again!" he called. All right, he wasn't the best at trash-talking.

[maddeninghatter]

He makes it to the control room, and no one is more surprised by that than him. He dashes inside and turns, in time to see Tron hit...

Controlling Mad Hatter requires so much energy, that he'd drawn his Chain in when his arm shattered, but now his impulse is to unfurl it again, or dash back outside himself to distract the creature. But that would be throwing his life away, in his present state. He is dizzy already from bleeding, and he can already feel that familiar, coppery tickle starting at the back of his throat. He has a job to do here.

That job, too, seems impossible. What does someone like him know about technology in this century? Except he recalls from Exsilium, the more advanced technology is, the easier it is to use. He ignores the keypads covered with inscrutable alien lettering, and calls out, "Open the hangar bay doors!"

A mechanical voice, a smooth contralto, so mellifluous it could almost be sexy answers, "I can't do that, sir."

[crux_npcs]

Slabthrust rears back, spreading his fingers as his vulcan guns unleash another hellish wall of metal at Tron. The floor around him seems to explode when each shot hits, but Bee'eef's fields of fire are still rather limited.

[ja307020]

The shrapnel from the floor exploding was bad enough, the engine on the 'cycle making distressed noises and a few shards lodging in his already scraped-up leg. Break really needed to hurry up before the 'cycle was damaged even worse... he didn't have a sealed suit to work in an airless environment, and if the 'cycle's life support system went...

He could run fairly fast, but not on an injured leg.

"Glitch it for gridbugs.." Tron hissed to himself, sliding the 'cycle in for cover behind one of the parked ships before the engine had a chance to completely give out. The 'cycle's sub-systems were still operational, but he wasn't likely to get any speed from it now. His opponent, too was still between himself and the door back into the body of the station, though maybe...

Tron hauled the damaged cycle around. Maybe he could set it to fire at something a little more explosive, to draw the giant off and give him a chance to slip out before the hangar's door opened...

[maddeninghatter]

Artificial intelligence. He understands why they fought a war. He contemplates arguing with the machine and pointing out the enormous fire-breathing giant destroying the space station, but rightly dismisses this as pointless. He wishes fervently he had been able to devote more of his time to studying modern science, but not being able to see had proven to be too great an impediment: he could not do advanced mathematics in his head, and had no exposure to Braille.

Gazing outside the control room window, he can see Bee'eef still firing at Tron. That battle will be over soon, and then the station will be destroyed. Everyone is going to die. And if he's going to die anyway, it might as we'll be for something. He musters up what's remaining of his strength to use Mad Hatter again, to blow out a hole in the hangar bay door.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs. "In the end, I couldn't — hang on!"

To the side of the control room door, he notices an enormous lever. Deciding he has nothing to lose, he yanks it down. The hangar bay doors begin to groan open, amid the warning klaxons. Apparently the aliens of this world had little faith in AIs as well, and built in a hard override.

[crux_npcs]

The Hangar bay doors open up in front of Bee'eef, who raises a fist, prepared to bring it thundering down upon Tron. THe moment seems to freeze in time as a trickle of air and various boxes begin to start moving towards the now-opened bay doors, into the vacuum of space. How does tron compensate?

[ja307020]

The warning klaxon was almost music to Tron's ears, especially considering it meant that he wasn't going to get flattened today after all. Be'ef officially had other problems to deal with.

He wasn't too worried. The engine might be shot, but whoever had built this thing at least had the sense to give life support multiple redundancies. If he did get swept out-- and given the maximum speed the bike could attain now, it was a possibility-- he had his own air. Unlike Be'ef. It wasn't jumping under the bus if you came prepared.

Puttering back slowly wasn't really his idea of a good time, though, so he did nudge the bike back into motion (even if that motion was barely the speed of a decent jog) to try and compensate for the ever-more-insistent tug of the air leaving the rest of the hangar.

[maddeninghatter]

That trickle of air rapidly becomes a torrent as the hangar bay doors open completely. Force fields to prevent the atmosphere from venting should have kicked in by now, but haven't. That critical system has been damaged by Bee'eef's indiscriminate rampaging.

Break is safe behind the doors of the control room. Some foresighted alien thought to make it air-tight and reinforced. All he can do is watch, now, as storage containers (their moorings made loose by shrapnel fire) begin to slide, becoming steadily accelerating flotsam and jetsam, sailing outside the doors and into the blackness of space.

All he can do, what he must do is stay in the control room and stay conscious, long enough for the monster to be swept outside, so he can close the doors once more in the station, before all the air in it expires. All he can do is stare after Tron, and watch the man be inevitably swept out into space, along with the monster.

He is unaware of Tron's bike's life support capabilities; he is only aware that, in opening the bay doors, he has murdered the man, just as surely as if he had plunged a sword in his heart. Unless...

...

Well, at this point, it would take a miracle.

[ja307020]

Miracle of science, anyway. Getting swept out was a moment of process-skipping chaos, but by some form of luck he was out of reach of the big guy. It left him to putter back into the hangar before anyone could think to close the doors.. or else, well, he'd just have to knock when he got there. It wasn't exactly fast going, but maybe he could prevail on Sam Flynn to help fix the damaged vehicle. It was no baton, but he didn't like relying just on public transit if he could help it.

It did give him time to take in the view. There was something calming about the stars, which was a good thing considering it helped him not think about the warm trickle of what was very probably blood leaking from his injuries, and all that the presence of the liquid might imply.