I've had a rework for my chars and Nehushtan in the works for awhile. I've turned into a vaguely Christmasy story. This is just the story that justifies the changes I'm making in canon, and I'll probably end up editing it more before adding it to The Book of Nehushtan. For the time being, however, this is the gist of what I'm planning.
Expect the rework for my char page (both chars) as well as a Comprehensive Nehushtan Post/Thread before the 9th.
Spoiler (Click to Show)
He pinched his eyes shut against the onslaught. His head felt like it was going to explode. Time seemed to slow to a standstill as he felt part of himself being destroyed.
He snapped back into consciousness with his face against the cold floor. Trying to lift himself up, he found that his body almost refused to move. With a grunt he forced himself up onto his knees, his muscles shaking violently.
There was little question what had happened. He could feel…different. Mentally beating his body into submission, he reached out and grabbed one of the larger pieces of the broken dishes. Dragging the edge along his forearm, he grimaced.
The cut drew blood.
He was human. Again.
His chest felt tight as he tried to stand. As soon as he was upright his body began to tingle again as his blood failed to oxygenate his muscles. He hit the floor heavily as he sat back down. Taking his phone out of his back pocket, he hit the speedial.
“Hey, Doc. It’s Al…”
_______________________________
David looked up from a sheet of paper shot Al a grin. “Your numbers are great. Great, of course, for a human.”
Al shifted irritatedly in the Clinic bed. “Well shit. Shit shit shit.”
David laughed. “Miss being a god, do we?”
Al rolled his eyes. “Hell, I don’t mind that much. I’m just pissed that I was stupid enough to think The Great One was going to let me rival him. I mean, being a god wasn’t exactly bad, you know. Coulda stood to have enjoyed it at least a little while longer.”
Dr. MacBeth stretched as he stood from the stool beside Altaer’s bed, moving over to straighten one of the Van Goghs that hung on the opposite wall. “Hey, look on the bright side. Not everyone can say they’ve been killed twice.”
Altaer stared fired at David’s back. “Ha freakin’ ha, Davie. If I wasn’t so sore, I’d smack you.”
David glanced over his shoulder and winked. “Welcome to humanness. Or should I say, welcome back. I remember you from before The Incident, you know.”
Altaer huffed and straightened his hospital gown. “Good for you. I don’t remember all that much.”
His friend leaned against the doorframe. “I know. Alcohol does that to you. Don’t forget you won’t be immune to it anymore.”
“Aww fuuuuuuu---------”
___________________________________
David could not help but laugh silently as he shut the door to Altaer’s room behind him. It had been three days since Altaer had become human again, and this was the first one David had been willing to take him off drugs enough to let him regain consciousness.
Altaer had literally been killed. The only thing that saved him was that his consciousness was located in his physical body at the time instead of his chaos one. Otherwise, things probably would have been much different. Still, either way, one of his bodies had been destroyed, and his other one had responded accordingly. It was going to be awhile before David let him loose again. Altaer was as foolhardy as they came, and he knew full well that The Fixer would be testing out his limits as soon as he could. It was only a matter of time. Quite frankly, Altaer’s numbers were just a bit too good – while he might have been human again, David suspected that his stint as a god has left him a bit better off than it had found him.
Lily spun around in her desk chair as he stepped into the main floor break room. She leaned over so she could see in and smiled. “Doctor, there was a group of men here to see you. The lead guy was SOOOOOOOOO huge. Like, he was literally a giant! Well, ALMOST literally. Anyway, they said that you would know them. The big guy said his name was Vi. I sent them up to your office.”
David raised his eyebrows. “Vi? Well, that’s a bit of a surprise. I didn’t expect him here so soon.” He set down the teacup he had been getting ready to fill. “I’ll go ahead and see him now. I shouldn’t be too long, but tell Val about this too so that she knows to take over.”
“Will do, Doc!”
He decided to take the elevator upstairs. Vi lead the business arm of Nehushtan – essentially handling all of the organizations and corporations that David acquired. He had been of immense help, especially as of late.
He stepped out of the elevator and crossed the foyer of his business office on the top floor, heading for the side doors that lead to the meeting room.
He shot Vi a huge smile as he stepped through the pair of gilded double doors. “Viktor! How pleasant to see you, I –”
He paused mid-sentence, his eyes narrowing quickly. Vi was not in his business suit. He was wearing his nanotube tactical suit underneath his military garb. The enormous man’s tinted diamond goggles stared at him as lifelessly as the soldiers that flanked him. One look told him that these men had been drafted from The Empire of Sin’s elite forces. David had trusted him to handle everything – everything that made Nehushtan powerful. It suddenly occurred to him that Vi had never stayed close to David, but always chose to live a long distance away.
His hand flew up to snatch his rifle as the soldiers rushed him. He lunged backwards, rolling off the wall like a springboard before going airborne again. He fired off a trio of shots, taking out several of his attackers before landing on the other side of the table. He flicked the Winchester towards Vi and fired. The man grunted, and looked down to where the bullet had bored a hole straight through his clothes, but had been stopped dead by his tactical suit. David began to move, but Vi’s voice filtered through his voice-masking mouthpiece robotically.
“I would not do that. You cannot harm me without changing your ammo type. You cannot do that without buying time. You cannot buy time when I have seven machine pistols pointed right at you.”
David cast a disdainful look slowly around the room, then sheathed his rifle and straightened himself. Even with his tall frame his head only came to Vi’s chest, but somehow he managed to still look down upon his former Serpent.
“Filth. The power got to you, didn’t it? I should have known…you were always too eager, always too distant, also too flattering. You admired me, yes…but you envied me more.”
He spun around one of the chairs on the conference table and crossed his legs casually. “So, what is it precisely you plan to do, hmm?”
He noticed Vi’s chest shake slightly, indicating he was laughing behind that mask of his. The same mechanically monotone voice drifted out as he responded. “Oh I still admire you David. I will always admire you. I had wanted to avoid combat here, but you seemed otherwise inclined, as I supposed you would be. So…”
Vi paused, seeming to mull over his choice of words before continuing with a slight nod of his head. “So, I am taking over control of Nehushtan. I noticed the other day that your little watch-dog’s computer system was not running through my data, and decided that my chance had come. You’ve had so much at your fingertips, David. You literally have had the power to rule the world, if you wanted to. But, no…you wanted to play Christ. Well, you can keep doing that all you like now. I’m taking things over. Period. No, my friend, I am not filth. I am --”
“TO HELLLL WITH THE NO!!!!!!”
All of the men in the room jerked their heads towards the door in unison as Altaer burst through the doors. He did not pause to take in what lay before him. He merely grabbed the first chair he reached and smashed it into the skull of the nearest soldier. He then repeated this process a second time before they recovered from their shock and began firing. Altaer hit the ground and rolled out of their fire, snatching up the machine pistols from the two guards he had felled. He kicked off the ground, popping back up to his feet as he swept the room with two quick bursts, drilling neat holes in the faces of each soldier, and bouncing several rounds off of Vi’s mask.
Vi’s hefted his own massive revolver only to have it blasted in two by a shot from David. The enraged Altaer took his chance and ripped a fresh pair of pistols from the closest dead soldiers, then leapt across the table, both guns blazing has he hurled bodily into the giant of a man.
The pair of them flipped backwards, crashing through the window and falling to the sidewalk below.
Vi landed heavily, his suit stiffening as the precise hydraulics turned the malleable nanotubes into a ultra-hard shell. It quickly softened as the pressure was released and he rolled to his feet, reaching for the steel club he carried. Altaer landed catlike on his feet, instantly charging the larger combatant while alternately firing each pistol. The diamond-glass goggles over Vi’s eyes began to crack, and now half blinded, he growled angrily as he turned to flee.
_______________________________
SP City Police Major O’Malley was eating a nice hamburger when he heard the commotion. He stared in shock as the two fighters ran down the opposite side of the street. His fingers lifted his radio to his lips.
“Uh, Chief…”
“O’Mally, how many times do I have to tell –“
“Sir, we’ve got an issue here.”
The Chief went silent. “Alright, what is it then?”
“Well, sir…a giant in military clothes and a black body suit is being chased by a guy in a night-shirt with two machine pistols and a catheter bag.”
“Major, would you repeat that please. And if you have been nipping on your whiskey while on duty again, I swear…”
“Sir, a giant in military clothes and a black body suit is being chased by a guy in a night-shirt with two machine pistols and a catheter bag. Actually, the catheter bag has fallen off now and is just flapping behind him as he is running.”
“And where exactly is this happening?”
“They fell out of a third story window of The Healing Hands Clinic and are heading towards the business side of up-town.”
“The Healing Hands? That Doctor is an RHG member…we’ll have to get them on this. Thanks for the tip, O’Malley.”
O’Malley quietly hung his radio back on its hook on the dashboard of his police car, and absent mindedly picked up a French fry. His girlfriend had been asking him to transfer to a safer city. Maybe he should consider that.
_________________________________
The RHG officers dropped Altaer off at the Clinic. A pair of them came in to speak with Dr. MacBeth. The Doctor had politely but firmly canceled the rest of his appointments for the day, and was now sitting in the waiting room, staring at the opposite wall. Altaer, however, was not nearly as calm. As they opened the door he could hear The Fixer was locked into a non-stop tirade.
“If I had caught that guy I would have shoved his face so far up his ass that it popped out of his neck again, and then I would shove it up his ass a second time, and then I would shove his balls down his own throat and tie his nipples to a horse’s butthole piercings and then throw the horse off a cliff and then bulldoze the cliff and then bury all my explosives where he had landed and blow THAT all the way to the fucking moon, and then I would get NASA to send me up to the moon so I could ---“
He only stopped when the lead RHG officer interrupted him. “Excuse, Dr. MacBeth. We picked up your patient on top of the Prince Industries building. He was hurling people at the helicopter of the other combatant. Unfortunately that man escaped before we could apprehend him.”
Altaer stood there seething for a moment, staring at the floor like it was somehow involved in this whole affair. He noticed the catheter bag that was dangling between his legs, grabbed it, and flung it to the side angrily. The rest of the catheter followed, of course, and he doubled over.
“GAH FUCKING LITTLE SHIT DAMMIT!”
David heaved a sigh and shifted his gaze to the officers. “Thank you. Send my office any paperwork that needs to be done. I won’t need any more help today.”
The lead officer, a short man with the build of a gorilla, cocked his head. “Are you sure, Doctor? Because I –“
David waved him off, and something about his detached manner made the fellow realize that he was only being more trouble. He shrugged and left with his companion. The door jingled merrily as they left.
When they were gone, Altaer swore a blue streak covering everything from concrete to catheters to cats. David noted disinterestedly that he did not really want to know what involvement cats had in the affairs of the day. Altaer finally seemed to have emptied his vocabulary of curses and foul epithets – which was quite an extensive vocabularly – and let out a long, frustrated growl. “If I had only had my pistols…I always keep them loaded with my own high-velocity ammo. That would have solved that! Of course, if I hadn’t been negligent and let my chaos body be destroyed, I could have just wiped him out of existence! But noooooooooooooooo. I’ve got to be stupid. Every single fucking time some major incident comes up in life, I’ve got to go and make the wrong fucking decision.”
He rubbed his face and flopped into a chair. “I’m sorry Doc. So damn sorry. All I do is fail when I’m needed.” He paused for a moment before adding off-handedly, “Damn I could use a shot of whiskey.”
David heaved another sigh. A long, ragged sigh. He, for once, did not seem to glow with his unnerving aura of self-possessed power. His eyes did not catch the light of the streetlamps that filtered through the front window. He was not sitting in his regal, cultured posture.
He was sitting just like any other person. Altaer watched him silently for a moment, contemplating what he should say, if anything. He scratched his neck. “Davie, I swear to you I will hunt down that bastard and kill him. I don’t care how many soldiers he wants to recruit or how many organizations he wants to puppet to protect him. Me, I don’t have much to lose anymore. But when someone takes everything from a person I care about…I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that happen.”
David gave him a half-hearted smile. “I know you will, Al. But…all my work. It’s gone, Al. I spent decades fighting to make this work. I poured my heart and soul into it. I’ve…”
He choked slightly and hung his head. He opened his large, lithe hands and stared at them. “These hands have healed thousands. They’ve mended countless lives. I’ve made changes no one else could dream about achieving! I’ve had the whole world right at my fingertips! I thought that I – that Nehushtan – was totally immune, totally invulnerable, to any and all threats. In a way, it was…except in my own arrogance I let it be destroyed from the inside out. Everything is…lost. Everything I lived for. Lost.”
He buried his face in his hands as if he could shut out the reality of the outside world. Altaer stared at him silently before turning to leave. He stopped in mid step and looked back over his shoulder at David, his brow furrowed, his voice subdued. “You’ve still got me, Doc. You’ll always have me. Yeah, you lost all your precious Nehushtan. But did it ever occur to you that maybe you aren’t meant to lead some new world order and set your name at the pinnacle of history? That maybe you weren’t meant to be important at all? That just maybe you were to live a life that quietly touched another? Me and Val and Dracustos and Dante and Zoe…we love you Doc. Most of us would be dead by now if it wasn’t for you. I’m no wizened philosopher like you, but the way I see things you have changed the world if you have warmed a single heart. So, maybe things aren’t as lost as you’re thinking they are.”
David l