Superpowers In A World Gone Mad
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The Beast Inside, Issue #005

July 8, 2013 in The Beast Inside Tags:

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Issue #005 – – – – – controlled by Frank Devocht – – – – – Credits 11

If Nelson had needed to secure the use of a warehouse himself it would have taxed his limited budget.  Luckily, Wild Thing did not suffer from the same sort of financial constraints.  Barely batting an eyelid, he had rented a fifteen thousand square foot industrial space with a high roof out near the city center.  The heroes had spent some time, at Nelson’s instruction, blocking doors, windows and other exits.  “I don’t get it,” Wild Thing said.  “Death, Esquires minions just appear and disappear in clouds of smoke.  How is blocking the ways in and out going to help us?”
“We don’t know their method of movement yet.  Is that magic, teleportation, some other strange ability?  We may not be able to stop them escaping but we need to try.  That way, if something surprising happens we may have countered it already.”
Wild Thing shrugged: “Fair enough.  Whatever.”

“I could set up some explosive mines,”  Wild Thing said.  “I don’t use gizmos and traps much, its not really my thing, but we get a lot of neat toys from the City Board and they may come in handy.”
“First of all,” Nelson told him, “I very much doubt that anything that is harmless enough to leave this rented warehouse intact is going to bother the supernatural minions we are expecting.   Secondly, these things need to be done up close and personal.  If you want it done right, anyway.”

Wild Thing placed the tracking device – the business card Death, Esquire had given him – onto the floor in the middle of the empty warehouse.  Then the two heroes withdrew to a dark alcove and waited.  “This is how it goes,” Beast Nelson said in a hushed voice.  “When one of these fellas appears, I am going to club it into submission.  As soon as its down you are going to hog tie it and drag it into the back office.”
“It’s a very simple plan,” Wild Thing pointed out.
“The best ones always are,” Nelson agreed.

The first creature appeared at close to midnight.  A shimmering yellow cloud swirled near where the tracking device lay and a form began to appear.  “Ready?” Wild Thing asked.  In response, Beast Nelson grew to his full size – nearly twelve feet – and hefted the steel girder he had prepared for these encounters.  Wild Thing was impressed: “I didn’t know you could get that big!  No wonder you wanted a warehouse with a high roof.”
“Local people aren’t in love with property damage,” Nelson grinned, “So I don’t often get to really cut loose.”
Nelson strode across the warehouse as the form coalesced into a solid shape.  What stood there appeared to be a woman dressed in a grey cloak with a deep hood.  He knew it was a woman from the curve of her body but that was where her humanity appeared to end.  Deep inside the hood Nelson could just made out the blackened empty eye sockets of some supernatural entity.  Good.  It wasn’t alive.  No need to hold back.

Nelson swung the girder very, very hard indeed.  It swooshed through the air and should probably have clubbed the Eyeless Hag into oblivion, except that she was rather more swift than the hero had expected.  Spinning backwards, the woman avoided the steel beam and, raising her withered old hands like claws, she came in fast.  Nelson noticed two things.  The first was that her hooked fingers didn’t seem particularly dangerous weapons.  The second was that the air around the Eyeless Hag was chilly, like the inside of a meat locker.  As her hands touched his tough furry skin, Nelson had a good idea what was coming.  Back in his brief days as a hero he’d fought Northern Light, a villain with an ice-based energy attack, and he’d had this same cold aura.

Wild Thing knew he was supposed to hold back, but as Beast Nelson’s left arm and shoulder iced-up and froze he knew he had to act.  Flipping and somersaulting across the room he finished his athletic charge with a two-footed kick straight into Eyeless Hag’s chest.  The attack worked, sending her sprawling backwards, but Wild Thing also paid a price.  Where he had struck her, the hero’s feet and lower legs were chilled to the bone.  As he tried to land from the kick the numbness caused him to stumble and fall to his side.  “Ouch,” He muttered.  “This gives a new meaning to the word frigid.”
“No,” Nelson corrected him, “That’s the original meaning.”  With a roar the huge hero flexed his arms and the ice shattered, spraying cold crystals in every direction.  His arm felt okay, though he had a feeling it might be a little sore once the adrenaline rush was gone.  For the moment, he hefted the girder like a quarterstaff.  This way, he could use it with shorter, faster movements.

The Eyeless Hag shrieked.  It wasn’t a human shriek and Beast Nelson felt the hackles down his spine rise.  Eery.  “I’m not a big fan of that noise,” He told her, honestly.  The woman didn’t seem interested in communicating.  Or perhaps she wasn’t able to?  Either way, her response was to rush at Nelson with those freezing hands raised again.  This time, the hero was ready.  He clubbed her in the face with the left hand side of the girder, then again up under the chin with the right.  The power of the second blow was such that it sent the Hag flipping backwards in a complete somersault to land on her chest.  For a moment she lay still and Nelson closed in to finish the fight when she emitted that same horrible shriek again.

Wild Thing came out of nowhere, the numbness in his legs receding so that he felt able to pitch into the fight once more.  He kicked the woman in the face as she tried to rise and the monster once again tumbled across the floor – though not with anything like the same urgency.  “Yaaaarrghh,” She shrieked hauntingly, setting Beast Nelson’s teeth on edge.  The two heroes watched as – impossibly – the monster began to rise once more.  Her movements were twitchy and strange, like some refugee from a Japanese horror movie.  The hood had fallen back to reveal the whole hideous visage beneath.  Her sunken and withered skin was like a dried apricot.  Purple veins etched every inch of her face, pulsing weirdly.  She had no eyes at all, just huge blackened holes where they should be.

“We can’t stop her,” Wild Thing said.  “She just keeps coming.  We need to get out of here.”
The woman shrieked again – and there was something triumphant in that terrible, terrible sound.
“I don’t think so,” Beast Nelson was resolute.  “I didn’t come here to run away from some oriental monster cliche.”
The Hag shrieked again, a sound so awful that it caused the heroes’ stomachs to roll and clench.
“I told you to stop shrieking like that,” Beast Nelson said.
The hero strode across the intervening space, holding the girder by one end and raising it vertically into the air so that the other end was near the ceiling.  With a roar, Beast Nelson swung the steel beam down, using his full strength and height to accelerate the heavy bar.  It smashed into the back of the Hag with a colossal impact, pulping her head, crushing her chest and near-flattening her into the floor.

The two heroes waited with baited breath.  She didn’t try to rise.  She didn’t move at all.  “I thought you wanted to interrogate it?” Wild Thing asked.
“Changed my mind,” Beast Nelson growled.  “Let’s interrogate the next one.”
Almost as though it were a reply to his comment, the center of the warehouse began to glow again.  But this time there was not one, but six shimmering yellow lights.
“Incoming,” Wild Thing said, nervously.  Beast Nelson laughed.  Truth was, though this situation placed him in deadly peril, he felt good.  He felt better than he had in some time.  It was as though he had been sleeping through his life and something had abruptly awakened him.  He clapped Wild Thing on the shoulder.  “We’ll be fine,” he said.  “Just get ready to kick some ass.”
“We’ll be fine?  How can you possibly know that?” Wild Thing asked, watching the yellow glows begin to solidify.
“I don’t,” Nelson acknowledge with a grin.  “But it sounded good, right?”

 

 


3 Responses to “The Beast Inside, Issue #005”

  1. Frank Says:

    BOOM…Beast Nelson is back. And this how one deals with old (possibly dead) hags!

  2. False Bill Says:

    The Beast is in the Warehouse and also in the zone.

  3. Keith Nixon Says:

    When confronted with a problem hit it with an RSJ and if that doesn’t sort things out – hit it again! Brilliant!

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