Gods and Monsters [cs: torture and murder and scary stuff]

[beetlebutt]

Jaime Reyes was standing on a street in El Paso, looking very confused, and talking to himself. Well, at least it looked like he was talking to himself. Really, he was talking to the scarab, because the two of them were trying to figure out what the heck had just happened. The world had blurred, Jaime had passed out and now...

"This is so not El Paso."

Now he was in a place that was home and yet not home.

|T L[][]KS \|/E|RD. \|/HERE'S THE PUTT-PUTT?

"Exactly. And that - what is that? That building wasn't there yesterday. Neither was that bank building. And where's the El Diablo?"

/-\LTERN/-\TE D|/|\ENS|[]N?

"Are your sensors picking up anything weird?"

...SENS[]RS /-\RE |N[]PER/-\T|[]N/-\L.

After doing a systems check, the scarab trilled a little wordless cry of alarm.

"What's wrong?"

/|\UTIPLE SYSTEMS |N[]PER/-\T|[]N/-\L. []NLY B/-\S|C L|FE SUPP[]RT, B/-\SIC TR/-\NSF[]O/|\/-\T|[]N /-\B|L|T|ES, /-\ND C[]/|\/|\S /-\V/-\|L/-\BLE. D|/-\GN[]ST|CS UN/-\BLE TO DETER/|\INE WHY.

"Whoa, whoa, okay, calm down, you're kinda panicking. Stop with the brain klaxons, okay?"

|'/|\ RUNN|NG BL|ND. Y[]U C/-\LM D[]WN!

"I know this is freaky, and you're not used to being blind like this, but you're still conscious and I'm still conscious, and we're not fighting an evil death satellite or, I don't know, being shot at by aliens. We'll figure this out, okay? Just keep a cool head."

The response was a very surly, | D[]N'T H/-\VE /-\ HE/-\D.

Jaime rolled his eyes. "You know what I meant, Mr. Literal. Look, we'll figure this out, okay?"

In fact, maybe he could just talk to someone and get some answers. Some teenagers ran down the street towards him.

"Hey! Very, very lost superhero here," he said, waving them down. "Any chance you could -"

They didn't notice. In fact, with a feeling like cold mist, they ran right through him. Jaime froze up after they did, expression stricken.

"Okay, we're a ghost or something and no one can see, hear, or touch us. Time to panic."

| T[]LD Y[]U!

Comments

[beetlebutt]

The scarab had gotten comms up and he'd gotten a message out and a quick exchange only moments before she came rampaging out after him. So much for sneaking out without being seen. He couldn't move fast enough to really escape her, which meant that despite his best efforts to run through the forest and stay away from her, she eventually found him. "She found me!" he called into the comms and then he turned to face her because if he kept trying to run, she'd just cut him down. He had to try to injure her again, buy himself some time to get lost in the woods.

[putyouinstitches]

"George George, George of the jungle lives a life that's free!"

She continued singing but the trees stopped falling. She had vanished between them and her singing and the roar of the chainsaw seemed to echo all around the area bouncing off the woods.

"WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!"

The tree in question was a mighty redwood. It normally took several professionals to take down such a legendary tree. For Harley and her power enhanced chainsaw it took seconds.

[beetlebutt]

Jaime dove out of the way just in time but rolling like that pretty much devastated his injured leg. Which left him on all fours on the forest floor, crying out in pain, totally at her mercy. He was not going to win this fight, he knew. They'd told him they were coming for him, but he was pretty sure they wouldn't come fast enough. That changed things, the idea that he was going to die. Accepting it. That changed things. So, he was probably going to die. Fine. He had to see if he could take her out with him. Not kill her, as much as he wanted to, but at least knock her out so whoever was coming for him could keep her from hurting anyone else. That was why, as she approached, he dove at her legs with a loud cry, since he was already on the ground. He tried to knock her over, knowing that the thick back of the suit would be harder to cut through than the other parts of the armor. He was probably going to be fatally injured anyway, but maybe he'd at least get a few hits in. "Murderer!" he cried out shrilly. "You want to kill me, fine, but I'm stopping you from killing anyone else!

[putyouinstitches]

"Wha?!" She let out a startled cry as he put up more of a fight then she'd expected.

Her chainsaw came down hard on his back and shoulder sending sparks flying as metal hit metal and the engine roared and strained to slice through something with more will to live then a tree.

Thrown off balance she wobbled and flopped backwards dropping her chainsaw which bounced off his back and spun out of control through the grass and bushes scattering dirt and branches over them in the process.

[beetlebutt]

The chainsaw did manage to cut through his armor and bite into his shoulder. As he screamed, he felt blood run under the armor and saw it flow out overtop. He wasn't sure if it was fatal or not. That was a lot of blood but he remembered Mrs. Stutterbee from his 9th grade biology class, who was a former forensics examiner, saying one time that human beings had an awful lot of blood to lose and that there'd been times she'd been on site somewhere and the scene had been covered with it even though the person survived. Regardless of whether it was fatal or not, his struggling meant the chainsaw fell away. He managed to straddle Harley and Captain Kirk it a a bit, hitting her with both of his handcuffed hands clasped together in hard two-handed strikes, trying to knock her out. But he was way weaker than usual and he was losing feeling in the arm that was on the same side as the shoulder she cut. The two-handed punches would hurt but it'd take quite a few of them to knock her out.

[putyouinstitches]

Each slam of his fists on her soft skin sounded thick and heavy like a steak slapping on a cutting board. It wasn't the same sound you heard in movies, but of course Beetle had been around enough to know the sound well enough.

Just like he probably knew right away what the sound of a broken nose was. Blood gushed from her smashed snout as she groaned and her eyes rolled up in her head exposing the whites in a bloodshot creepy way.

Her body went limp, and other then a very faint breathing she seemed for all intents and purposes to have been taken out.

White makeup and blood smeared on his hands from where he had struck her again and again.

[beetlebutt]

He didn't like it. The blood, the bruising. He'd never really hurt someone this much before. But he wanted to make sure she went down and stayed down. Jaime stopped when he thought it was going too far. He didn't want to kill her. Even after what she did to him, even after what she did to those people, he couldn't kill her, wouldn't kill her. It would've felt too good and that was when you knew it was wrong. So he finally stopped punching her and rolled away from her and dragged himself away, sitting against a tree, trying to catch his breath. It was hard to catch it when every single breath hurt. It was over. Now all he had to do was wait for help to come. And hope all the blue-tinged blood running over his armor from his shoulder didn't mean she'd hit an artery or something. He couldn't even try to hold pressure on it when his hands were still cuffed and tied together. With the suit's strength so shot, the only thing he'd managed to break free of was the stupid Chinese finger trap. |T'S []K/-\Y. |T's []OK/-\Y. Y[]U'RE []K/-\Y. He'd managed to keep his emotions under control but when the scarab tried his best to reassure him, Jaime's lip started to tremble and his eyes started to well up.

[putyouinstitches]

She was on him in a flash.

Playing possum was a talent, one she had perfected over the years and springing from a prone position onto her feet? Easy. Flinging herself forward impossibly fast? that was all from the powers that fueled her. The dark nightmarish wicked cruelty that she inspired.

Her boot connected with his face knocking the back of his head into the tree.

"YOU. BROKE. MY. TOY!" She roared kicking at his head again and again before springing back and drawing out a rusty looking hammer and screw driver. One for each hand. Who knows where she was keeping them in that outfit.

"I'm gonna crack you open!" She roared swinging the claw end of the hammer for his face. "And make the soft squishy parts of you my new toy and little brother!"

[beetlebutt]

"AAAH! Not okay! Not okay!" Jaime cried out to the scarab in a panic, but then she was on him and it was the second concussion of the day as his head slammed back against the tree. Which meant he was too out of it to dodge. The hammer caught his face and chipped off a chunk of the armor, gouging his face underneath. Nothing important got gouged like his nose or lips but unless the scarab got the armor running enough to heal him with those healing enzymes it had that was probably gonna scar. He managed to roll away and onto his feet and started running again - or at least limping really, really fast. He was too tired to fight anymore, too scared and hurt. Help was coming, had to be only seconds out, he just had to buy some time, had to - There. Through the trees. A sudden drop and beyond it, crystal blue water. It was a small cliff and there was a lake beyond it. A lake that looked like it might not be very deep. "Please let it be shallow, please let it be shallow -" He was desperate now and she might be able to get that chainsaw running again if she thought to go back for it. He was pretty sure it hadn't actually broken so much as gotten a little clogged up with dirt. And even the hammer and screwdriver might cause more damage with how much structural integrity the armor had lost. His face was now clear evidence of that. If it was shallow, if the water was shallow, he actually had a chance. It was light blue rather than dark blue, it looked like the bottom was almost visible... So he ran and in a moment of absolute balls out daring and desperation, he jumped off the edge, legs down, and held his breath. Please be shallow. After plunging through the surface, he hit the bottom almost immediately. And not because the suit weighed a frickin' ton, but because the water was only just a bit over his head. His butt hurt like crazy as it slammed against the sand and silt but internally, he crowed. HA! It was shallow. The suit was damaged, it was broken, but it still offered him protection he wouldn't have had otherwise. If he'd jumped into water that shallow and hit the bottom that hard without the armor, he'd almost certainly have snapped his legs or spine. Which meant if she jumped in after, she'd likely snap her legs and drown. Now he just had to make sure he didn't drown. The suit's life support was down so it had no oxygen supply and it was too heavy for him to float. Even if his hands had been free it would've been too heavy to swim, but he still had some of the suit's agility. So he kicked off from the bottom, hard, trying to make his good leg do all the work, breathing out as he did, and - yes! He breached the surface just long enough to draw a breath. He exhaled slowly on the way back down, controlling his breathing. It was already exhausting but the lake seemed to be this shallow all the way across and it wasn't that wide. He just had to keep kicking himself up for gulps of air and walking along the bottom until he reached the shore. And if she tried to follow she'd likely snap a leg or break her neck since she didn't have the same kind of protection against injury the suit offered him. We're in the clear! Help was coming and they were in the clear!

[putyouinstitches]

Then...ominously a shadow fell over the water and Jaimie.

Having watched the boy throw himself off the drop and plunge out of sight Harley felt cheated. Playtime was over it seemed. But at least she could say her goodbyes like the classy dame that she was.

It turned out the chainsaw wasn't broken after all, it just needed a little loving and it sprang to life as noisy and powerful as ever.

And as luck would have it, there was still an abundance of trees near the drop. Picking the largest one she carved a chunk out of it's trunk to aim it and then cut it free.

"TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMBER!"

The tree itself was a mighty and ancient thing that had grown for so many years it had seen the land before any humans settled there. Now in it's final moments it was sent tumbling over the drop and plunging into the water with enough force that the shallow pool shot water all the way back up to shower down on Harley who seemed less then amused by it.

Still it would be hard to walk away from something like that. If he really was dead that snooty princess might be upset...but Harley could care less.

Summoning up a tunnel of darkness and shadows she killed the engine on her chainsaw and swaggered away feeling ultimately satisfied.

Today had been a wonderfully fun day.

[beetlebutt]

The shadow and cry of "timber" had him looking up just in time to see he was under the tree's shadow. He tried to throw himself sideways in the water, kicking to try to get out from under it but that only served to keep him from getting hit directly on the head. The tree hit him in the torso, causing him to scream in pain because of his broken ribs right before he went under. He only stopped screaming just in time as he sunk under the water, so that he didn't breathe it in. It meant, however, that he hadn't had time to take a breath. The tree trunk weighed him down, causing him to sink under its weight all the way to the bottom where it pinned him by the waist. He tried to dig his good leg into the mud and silt of the lake bottom to kick to squirm out from under it, tried to push it off him or push himself out from under it with his handcuffed hands but it was no use. As his lungs burned, the rising panic made him thrash wildly, trying to twist his body out from where he was pinned. Finally, his lungs gave out and he couldn't stop himself from inhaling, couldn't stop himself from gulping down lake water, couldn't stop the water coming in and burning his lungs. Then the panic gave way to something else, a sort of shocked calm. As he watched particles of silt float in front of his eyes, there came a strange thought: But I was supposed to go play mini-golf with Paco and Brenda on Thursday. His mind started to drift, as he looked up at the light shining through the water. Tell my family, tell them - you know what to tell them, he thought at the scarab fuzzily. J/-\|ME! the scarab cried out in anguish, desperately trying to get the oxygen supply up but failing to because of the device attacked to the armor. The water wouldn't hurt it. Jaime dying wouldn't hurt it. It was largely immortal. It would live on. Humans were fleeting, passing things in comparison. But this human was important. As far as Khaji Da was concerned, he was the most important human in the world. It's okay. Help is coming. They'll find you. And you'll find someone else. You'll still be able to do good. It's okay, Jaime thought, comfortingly, at the scarab. You're the Blue Beetle. Just as much as Jaime was, at any rate. Then as Jaime's mind went fluttering away, as the peace and quiet settled in, the only thing that broke the calmness in Jaime's mind was the scarab screaming over and over: J/-\|ME! J/-\|ME! J/-\|ME, ST/-\Y W|TH ME! J/-\|ME! But as loud as it was, it didn't stop the darkness from taking him.