He moved like the breath of a demon with a terrifying speed that felt unnatural.
It
was unnatural, Stitch knew. In a place like this that belonged to Experiments, he, himself being an Experiment created by an absolute mad lad of a scientist in the fuck-off nether regions of outer space an entire universe away; there was no such thing as impossible. What he saw was real.
A blind wraith-like assassin with butt crushing speed, where
he was meant to be the butt crusher, wielding two swords so decked out in gore that they could sell as a modern art exhibit.
Flickering through the strobe light nightmare of dying emergency lights in a hallway that could become their tomb, it moved. That was the chaotic reality they faced.
Luckily, Stitch fucking loved chaos. He felt a shudder run up his spine and shivered.
Darkness meant nothing to their enemy and everything to the wan group of six; when the lights died, the stench of fear seeped out of the sextuple like a miasma.
Stitch and Wunya knew that stench was a lure, like doe urine for a buck, drawing their specter of death ever closer. Though they’d known each other for a short time, Wunya and Stitch could
feel each other. He clung to her armor, her tense muscles a balustrade against which he might mount his front. Her movements were intuitive. He felt them in his bones.
Stitch launched from Wunya’s back. He soared towards the nearest wall, wailing like a banshee.
The punch of the emergency light tapped in, ready to project its influence.
The trajectory of their silver haired enemy had shifted. When last he’d been seen, Subject R was far away. It was as if he’d warped from a safe place and into their zone. The group tensed as a unit. Something had shifted; things were worse than they’d realized.
Their foe was fast, and their foe was clever. He recognized their movements. It was not a creature they fought. It was a being of intelligence.
Stitch caught a glimpse of the clothing.
Oh, the clothing! Tattered though it was, spattered with fluid from slain foes; the wearer was pristine, like a murderous gentleman fresh out of the shower. His skin practically shone, and Stitch realized at a glance that he was not damaged.
He was master of this domain. They weren’t taking a detour. They were making themselves an entree.
What kind of beast - no, what kind of
terror could carve such a swathe of destruction as the one they’d slummed through to get here, and emerge without so much as a scratch? Was this thing sentient? Was this thing following an instinct, or was it following an order? Clinging to the wall, thinking with his entire brain, Stitch wondered what Chief Emmy had known and what the Mastermind in Engineering knew. That goal felt far away. It felt like a brick wall had been established between them and the Doctor on the other side.
He also felt that things could not end here. His teeth ground.
“Fan out!” Wunya barked.
Darkness hit. Abject terror for them, hunting ground for Subject R. A shark in the kiddie pool.
“And BEGIN!”
A low hum buzzed through the air, bouncing off of the metal walls, echoing back to answer its emitter. The deep voice of a female contralto.
A higher utterance answered from a space further down the hallway, this one pirouetting off of the ceiling, lingering after each note. It plucked up and down a range of tones, the vocals like the picked lilt of a string instrument; Stitch’s ears pricked up, while his blue fur stood on end. It was a beautiful, haunting sound. Was that Leo? Who would’ve known that someone so base in their wants and desires could produce a sound so pure, so harmonic?
The emergency lights stabbed through the darkness. The clarity of the scene ebbed in a quick flash, nearly black and white for how quickly the illumination came and went.
Wunya, towering closest to Subject R. Beyond her, and beyond the subject, Nancy had taken post, of course the contralto. She was behind the Subject himself. Behind Wunya, closer to Stitch, stood Ned. He was rooted to the ground, and the snapshot of his face, a mask of terror, would stay with Stitch long afterward.
Cecil was bolting further down the hallway, away from them. He began to wail, somewhat off-key, doing his best, but falling further from the apex of the situation. He stopped and whirled around, pointing a gun into the dark. He didn’t fire. He couldn’t fire, lest he harm a companion he’d grown to care about in the dark. What kind of fuckery was this Subject throwing them into?
Before the lights went out, Stitch saw Subject R and Wunya lurch toward one another.
“HOLD THE LINE!” bellowed Wunya.
Stitch watched Wunya buck forward and throw her entire substantial back into a motion of parrying
two, count ‘em.
two fucking swords an instant. How wonderful, how practiced, was that motion? Stitch felt a stab of appreciation for the stoic coach that he hadn’t felt before. Her athleticism was something out of a storybook.
Then the lights failed in unison. The sound of the Carnivale employees singing in unison did not deter Subject R. A resounding clang of metal on metal alerted Stitch to the fact that Wunya’s shotgun must’ve come up once more to parry the twin blades. Alarm bells rang in his wide head.
A percussion section? That wasn’t part of their noise pollution.
He, the swordsman, was supposed to
take the bait! The carrot, then the stick! The whole plan fell apart if the acapella disruption did not deter the blind swordsman.
Wunya and Stitch had spent a long time in the darkness, talking out the strategy,
It was time to shift to phase two of their plan. Stitch gulped audibly.
“Smell,” realized Stitch, croaking aloud. “SMELL!” he yelled out. “KEEP SINGING! I WILL MAKE SMELL!”
Ned, whose terror had rendered him immobile, seemed to find something in himself at the rallying call.
“Wooaaaahhh-oh, oh, oh! For the longest time! Woah-oh, oh! For the longest-”
The deafening clang of metal drowned out Ned’s quavering voice. Stitch knew what was needed of him. It was the thing he was best at.
He flipped his body, unzipped his jumper, and began to piss on the wall. Not a lot, mind, just enough to lick the metal with his stream. It splattered, and it stunk. He was, after all, an animal.
And like an animal, he would overwhelm this guy with stench.
In this task, he could not rely on Wunya’s strength or leadership to assist. He needed to rely on his senses. In the darkness, with the cacophony of his squad’s voices bouncing off the chambers, he felt out his surroundings which touch and memory.
The sharp ring of metal on metal slapped out a tune he hadn’t prepared for, but marked his next spot. Stitch scurried across the flooring. He felt rivets and lines with his bare paws. The closer he grew, the more the scurrying of footwork introduced itself into his image of the fight in the darkness. He could hear Wunya’s deft steps as fast as a boxer’s feinting then falling back. She wasn’t winning.
Stitch felt a frantic insistence in the back of his mind.
Crack!
A gunshot went off.
There was no thud, no sound to indicate impact. A set of twin clangs then the
whoosh of the fan in the distance, and Stitch felt the flutter of something by his enormous bat ears. He stopped, reached out, and seized it. The fabric was nearly vinyl. It was Wunya’s. In the perfect dark, it was impossible to tell if the fabric belonged to her joggers or her jacket. With renewed haste, Stitch attached himself to the fray.
Flash of light. He saw Wunya inches away thrust the butt of her rifle at the lithe form of Subject R who rotated gently, so graceful that he was almost a leaf in the wind. He smacked her in the chin with the tattered hilt of one of his swords. The strobing effect made it impossible not to notice his skin, so pale that it seemed alabaster, and Stitch was reminded of a doll; yet, the impossible swiftness of his movements and the precision with which he struck Wunya was so uniform that the stilted movements of a doll were far from Stitch’s mind.
This was a killing machine. They were on their heels. He could almost hear Wunya’s gruff voice, firm in its conviction, declaring that they must not underestimate this thing.
He moved faster, dashing now, no longer seeing, but
feeling his surroundings.
A glint of something round and smooth caught his eye on the ground near the combatants before the light waned once more. Stitch scurried to it, gripped it, then bolted towards the sounds of Nancy’s contralto.
He thumbed down the button on the communicator he’d lifted.
“Engaged Subject R,” he croaked.
The pattering of piss on the ground punctuated the communication.
“All in. Taking engineering,” he said, grinning.
Stitch zipped up his jumper. Once more, the emergency lights pushed their influence over the hallway, and Experiment 626 gasped when he noticed what they revealed.
Wunya was not in sight. Subject R, instead, was surging towards them so fast that he was almost a picture in frames per second.
Stitch sprung into the air like a jumping spider, saw Subject R’s elbow move from his left hip to his collarbone, and then observed Nancy and Ned, side by side, singing.
“If you say-”
A wet sound happened. Ned crumpled. Stitch could hear his body fold, and a spatter of something hot and wet surged across the Expierment’s brow.
The blade flicked to the side. He could hear it. Stitch thought back on the frayed mustache, the waxen complexion of the Carnivale employee he’d watched outfit himself, and for a moment he was frozen with the idea of human mortality. He thought of Lilo.
“Goodbye, to me,” Ned gasped, eyes wide. “...tonight…”
Nancy reached over, grabbing Subject R’s wrist, screeching.
The plan had fallen apart. Sounds and smells couldn’t stop this thing. Only a tremendous force could stop it.
Stitch leapt, attaching himself to Subject R’s occipital bone, and shrieked. Dangling above him was a chain, hanging from the ceiling. What had happened in this hall, where a chain might hang in the darkness? He felt a surge of confidence in his own luck. Despite all odds, there was a pick at his back, and a chain dangling from the ceiling.
He stabbed his icepick through the lowest loop of the chain even while Subject R elbowed backwards, but the Subject was staggered by Nancy’s double handed grip on his arm. Stitch swung the chain around Subject R’s neck and
pulled, hard.
From the furthest wall, Wunya leapt with the fury of a lioness, butt of her rifle cocked back, and moved to smash the Subject full on in the temple.
Could not all things perish? With his hands on either end of the icepick, yanking for all he was worth, Stitch felt an awakening. He had loved and lost, he had felt loved, and he had become something other in the time since. There was nothing left within him but
want, and
hunger. If it was the Subject’s death that would bring him to his means, then it was the subject’s death he would cause.
Ned reached up a weak hand, fingers desperately grasping, and gripped Subject R’s blindfold.
“There. Would. Still. Be. Music,” he gasped, staring. Ned’s eyes grew glassy, far away. “Left to write.”
The lights rocked the world around Stitch. Wunya flooded his vision, while his peripherals caught Ned’s blood spilling across the metal floor.
Party Members - Stitch, Wunya, 4 CR Employees (Ned, Leo, Nancy, and Cecil)
Currently - Stitch, Wunya, and the Carnivale Employees are throwing their all at Subject R
Action - Stitch and Wunya are using one application of Focus each to attempt to bring down Subject R.
Focus - 2/3
Stats - Reason 11, Stamina 12
Inventory - Survival Gear (Both), Body Armor (Both), Battered Shotgun (Wunya), Stun Baton (Wunya), Communicator (Stitch), R-99 Submachine Gun (Stitch), Bowie Knife (Stitch), Ice Pick (Stitch), Access Card (Stitch)
