| From: | Yagathai@***.com Yagathai@***.com |
|---|---|
| Subject: | (Non-RA:S Short Story) Arnold Weisseman Character Intro-Fic |
| Date: | Mon, 2 Aug 1999 16:11:11 EDT |
creating. Commentary would be appreciated.
Arnold paused on the outskirts of the small city and took a deep breath
in through his nose. He smelled the reek of petrol fumes, the slightly sweet
odor of rotting meat and masses of fat, complacent humans with a clarity that
even a dog would envy. He wiped his machete clean of plant fragments and
juices on his pants before carefully sheathing it at his right hip. The ogre
took one last look at the jungle behind him before wiping the sweat off his
mottled green face and continuing on.
His destination was a ratty, run-down old bar in the slums of the city, a
dangerous place in a dangerous part of town. It was just past sunset as he
reached it and the predators were just beginning to stir. Eyes, glowing and
otherwise, watched the massive metahuman from doorways and windows, but no
one molested him in any way. It might have been that they had heard of him,
the strange metahuman that lived in the jungle. More likely it was a
combination of Arnold's truly massive size, unbelievable musculature and
conspicuous lack of firearms that scared them off. Anyone who looked liked
that and didn't carry a gun was no one to mess with.
Heads turned as Arnold squeezed his massive frame in through the bar's
narrow doorway, but after a brief pause the low-level chatter quickly
resumed. In a place like this it never paid to ask questions or stare too
long at anything. Arnold stopped at the door for only a moment, letting his
eyes quickly adjust to the new light level. He stepped in and headed for the
corner booth, where he knew his man would be.
So far as Arnold knew, Roberto was always here in this bar, in the same
seat at the same booth, with his back to the door and the rest of the bar.
The ogre had never seen him anyplace else. Currently Roberto was talking
with another man, a thin, seedy looking type with a sparse mustache and a
lazy eye. As the thin man stood up to leave, Arnold also saw that he carried
two very badly concealed handguns under his jacket. Local muscle, evidently.
Probably another one of Roberto's "talents". The thin man gave Arnold a
wide berth as he made his way to the bar.
Roberto raised his hand in greeting even before Arnold got to him. How
the little man always knew what was going on was still a mystery, though most
people believed that he had a small monitor hidden in the mirrored shades
that he always wore. Or it might have been that he was in communication with
the troll bodyguard that was always sitting in the booth next to him.
"Good evening, my friend," he said warmly as Arnold maneuvered his bulk
into the opposite seat. Roberto put down his margarita, wiped his chin with
a pristine white napkin and offered Arnold a well-manicured hand.
"Good evening," Arnold replied in passable, Austrian-accented Spanish as
he (ever so gently) accepted Roberto's handshake. Without preamble, he
placed his worn backpack on the table and from it withdrew a sheet of much
folded paper. He unfolded it and passed it over the table to Roberto.
The fixer studied the list for a few moments. "This is not your usual
order," he said with concern.
"We have had three new ones born since my last visit. They need
inoculations," Arnold replied in his deep voice. "And our old radio broke,
so we need a new one. We need writing supplies as well. We have almost run
out." He leaned forward in his seat and placed a giant tattooed green hand
on the table. "Also, the schoolteacher says that the books that you gave me
last time were old and useless. We will need new ones, so the children can
learn. Do not seek to cheat me." The low-grade menace in his voice was
unmistakable. The troll bodyguard shifted in his booth, his hand going under
the table. With his enhanced hearing, Arnold could easily hear the sound of
metal sliding on leather.
Roberto waved the bodyguard off. "My friend," he said with a concerned
look, "I apologize deeply and truly for this. I had no idea. My contact
told me that they were good books, fine books. I will speak to him and see
that you get new ones immediately. You have my word."
Satisfied, Arnold grunted and leaned back.
"But my friend, there is one small matter," Roberto said. Arnold sat
still and said nothing. The small matter was always the same.
"Your bank account, my friend Arnold. It is almost empty." Roberto licked
his lips and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "I can extend
you some credit, of course, for this order, but after that you will have
nothing. Perhaps if you brought me another one of those artifacts, I could
sell it and…" his voice trailed off.
Arnold shook his head. Those artifacts were the wealth of the tribe, and
he would not sell another one unless he absolutely had to. Besides, there
was always another way.
"There is another way, my friend," Roberto said. "I know this man that
needs something done. He pays well. It is a job well suited to your
talents. The money is very good as well." He stopped and looked hopefully
at the ogre sitting before him.
Arnold sighed. "Show me."
From the seat next to him, Roberto picked up a small laptop and a
holographic projector. He glanced at his bodyguard before drawing the
privacy curtain on the booth shut. Arnold watched in silence as Roberto
booted up the laptop and the holo-projector. A three-dimensional map of
Amazonia sprang to life in the space above the table. The picture quickly
zoomed in to a small valley nestled between two hills.
Roberto began to narrate. "In this valley is located a processing
facility." Arnold didn't need to ask what kind of processing. In this part
of the world, it could only be one thing. "We know that there are around
forty or fifty workers there. Uneducated peasants. Then there are around
twenty guards. A supply truck comes once a month along this road to pick up
the product and drop off supplies." A red line traced its way across the
map. "The facility is around six or seven hours drive from Sancristo, here."
A small graphic of a city lit up in yellow.
Arnold broke in. "So you want the place destroyed, eh?"
Roberto shook his head. "Yes, but not exactly. We don't want it to be
just destroyed, because then the owner will just start it up again. We want
a clear message to be sent. They are not welcome there."
Arnold paused and thought, rubbing his massive chin thoughtfully.
Roberto let him think for a while, and then interrupted. "Can you do this,
my friend?"
Arnold nodded. "If I do it, I will need some things from you. How much
will I be paid?" Roberto named a very generous figure, and Arnold nodded
again. He knew that whatever anonymous drug lord had hired Roberto to get
this job done had paid the fixer enough money to hire an entire team of
military operatives, probably seven or eight good quality men. He also knew
that Roberto would pocket the difference between what he was paid and what he
would be paying Arnold. But it didn't matter. Just so long as he got the
supplies that the village needed Roberto could skim off the top as much as he
wanted. Arnold borrowed a pencil from the fixer and wrote down a few items
on the back of his scrap of paper.
"I will need these," he said, pushing the scrap over to Roberto. "And
transportation to Sancristo."
Roberto smiled eagerly. "When do you leave?"
Arnold turned the sheet over and tapped the paper. "When you have gotten
me those things, and I have brought them back. Then I will return here and I
will go."
The next night Arnold was once more leaving the city, carrying his
backpack, now bulging and full, across his shoulders. He held a duffel in
his left hand. The half-moon was out, casting some light on the dirt roads
of the slums.
A trio of orks, common sense and survival instinct burned away by bad
booze and worse drugs, watched with slitted eyes from behind a broken window
as Arnold walked boldly down the street. He was big, they whispered among
themselves, but so were they. And he didn't have a gun. And there were
three of them, and he was only one, and they all had knives or clubs. So why
not? Their drug-hazed mind made up, the trio settled in to wait for the
strange green man to walk past.
He approached and all three jumped out, weapons ready.
Claws flashed diamond bright, then bright red in the moonlight.
Arnold picked up his duffel and strode calmly on. Hidden eyes watched three
ork's worth of blood soak into the road.
One Month Later
Arnold dug the claws of his left hand deeper into the thick tree branch
that he was laying on. With his other hand he slowly played out and reeled
back in the noose of fishing wire he had earlier constructed, making certain
that there was enough slack in the line for what he had planned. Satisfied,
he followed the line up to where it was looped over a sturdy tree fork and
then back down as far as he could towards the other end, which was tied to a
sturdy leather thong he held in his teeth. The ogre watched idly as a train
of leaf cutter ants ran across his left hand, carrying bits of greenery in
their jaws. He took a deep breath through his nose and savored the odors of
the jungle. There was the spicy smell that the tree bark released when it
was shredded by his claws, and the oddly piquant odor of the bat colony,
dormant by day, living in the tree to his right. He could almost hear their
fast-paced breathing with his cybernetic senses. He glanced up at the leafy
canopy and the green-tinged sunlight that dappled the surface of the jungle
floor. Arnold sighed again, content.
As he inhaled, he detected something amiss on the breeze. Glancing down the
game trail that his tree branch overlooked, Arnold took another sniff. Yes,
there it was again. It was the distinctive reek of unwashed men and tobacco
smoke. He took another breath. They were coming. It wasn't long before he
could hear them, hear their clumsy footsteps and loud breathing. There were
three of them, just like there had been for the past three days. The drug
soldiers may have been inept and lazy, but they did keep a fairly even
schedule.
Arnold waited. The footsteps, voices and occasional laughter drew
closer, and then closer still. He turned his head ever so slowly, knowing
that their chances of spotting his camouflage-tattooed form against the
jungle canopy were slim, but taking no chances nevertheless. There they
were, the three of them. They all carried rifles or submachineguns, and two
had handguns holstered at their hips. But only one had his weapon ready in
his hands. The other two had slung them across their back. Sloppy, but good
for him. There were two walking abreast along the narrow trail and one a few
feet behind them. The two in front were fairly skinny, but the one in back
was chubby and sweating profusely. As Arnold watched, Chubby wiped his brow
with a dirty red handkerchief. Arnold readied the noose on the far side of
the tree branch.
The two soldiers in front passed directly under him. The noose dangled
in the air. The third one passed. The noose dropped. Arnold jerked, hard,
on the fishing line. Chubby couldn't even choke out a gurgle before the line
closed like a steel trap around his neck. Then Arnold, clutching the leather
thong in his hand, leaped off the branch and dropped four meters straight
down. Around half a meter before he landed the line jerked taut and Arnold's
fall slowed abruptly. A corner of his mind processed the gurgling, wheezing
noise behind him, but the ogre had already released the thong and leaped for
one of the two in front of him. They still hadn't noticed anything amiss.
Claws unsheathed, Arnold grabbed one man across the mouth from behind with
one hand, the other hand already ripping out the unfortunate soldier's throat
with diamond-sharp talons. The last soldier's eyes widened and he tried to
unsling his gun. Arnold dropped the dying man and leaped at the remaining
enemy.
It was over within a second.
Arnold dropped the torn and crumpled body at his feet and shook stray
gobbets of flesh from his hands. He turned around to examine poor Chubby's
body, now lying on the jungle floor. The man's head lolled obscenely and the
light of life was fading from his eyes. Arnold stepped around the arterial
spray and knelt down just outside the rapidly spreading pool of blood. His
fishing line noose had nearly decapitated the man, but had been caught up in
his upper spine. Arnold sighed, reached down and snapped the head clean off
of the body, freeing his line. The ogre then pried the red handkerchief from
the man's still-clenched hand. As he wiped off his fingers he contemplated
how much work it was going to be to dispose of the bodies.
Three Days Later
Arnold smiled a grim smile as he switched off his radio. After that
first patrol, he had taken three more like it. The one with four men had
been trickier. He had sent all of the bodies floating (sometimes in various
pieces) down the river that the drug compound used for drinking and
sanitation. For some reason the remaining dozen or so guards hadn't liked
that very much. Because of the claw marks that they had found on most of the
bodies they had assumed that some strange paranormal animal was the culprit.
The compound commander had sent for reinforcements, but a few well-placed
lengths of monofilament wire across the road had taken care of that. Arnold
thought that the troop transport had made a particularly nice roadblock, even
cut up into several segments. There were now less than a dozen drug soldiers
left in the compound and they were all terrified. They no longer made
patrols or ventured outside of the rough wooden palisade at all. Tonight was
the night that the job needed to be finished.
Arnold reached down under the surface of the water and picked a leech off
of his leg. He probably had several more sticking to him somewhere, but if
they were small enough that he couldn't feel them, they weren't big enough to
do him any harm. He continued to wade downstream, taking large careful
strides in the riverbed. The stream would bring him right up to the
compound, if he followed it that far, and in fact last night it had. But
tonight he wouldn't follow it all the way down.
The ogre's keen night vision spotted the blaze he had carved into a tree
the other night. Gracefully, he grabbed the tree-trunk with one hand and
lifted himself out of the water. As water ran off in sheets from his
massive, near-naked frame, Arnold took a moment to feel around and pick off
the half-dozen or so other bloodsuckers that had gotten a free ride (and
meal) from his body. This done, he unslung the waterproof case from his back
and moved deeper into the brush.
Just ahead of him was a small ridge, and on the other side of that was
the drug compound. Dropping to his belly, Arnold crawled the twenty meters
or so to the top of the ridge, where he stopped and unzipped his case. He
removed from it his binoculars, rifle and radio transmitter from the thin
plastic container and set them all down in front of him. First, he used his
binoculars to scan the wooden palisade. There they were: A guard along each
wall and one on each corner. They never used to be so vigilant, but Arnold's
depredations had sent the armed thugs into an unusual state of paranoia. But
with so few of them left Arnold knew that they had to be sleep-deprived and
jumpy.
Arnold set down his binoculars and picked up the rifle. He carefully
chambered a round and made sure that the grenade launcher was ready to fire.
Then he set the rifle to his shoulder, took careful aim and squeezed off a
shot. The distinctive dull thwack that the AK-98 made split the jungle
night, and sent a local family of parrots winging off into the sky. The
guard on the far right corner spun around and fell without a sound. Rapidly,
Arnold ducked down below the ridge and lay completely unmoving. If that was
a kill shot, there were only twelve left.
The expected commotion rapidly followed. There was the sound of running
feet, yelling and loud cursing. They hadn't discovered the body yet. They
didn't know what was going on. And then they did discover the body. Bright
floodlights lit up, illuminating the area. Arnold popped his head up briefly
to risk a peek. There were now seven men along the wall he was facing, all
scanning the jungle where he lay intently, looking for him. Arnold smiled as
he lifted his radio transmitter. He clicked a button.
Though he couldn't see it, Arnold could feel the shockwave as the plastique
he had planted earlier at the base of the palisade blew the wooden wall sky
high. He had used the last of his C-12 rigging that wall the last night, but
it was worth it. As soon as blast passed over his head, Arnold popped up
back over the ridge and shouldered his rifle. Where there was once a high
wooden wall now lay a large, smoking series of small craters. Bits of
burning wood and drug soldier littered the ground. Arnold counted five
visible bodies (or what was left of them) on the ground. One twitched, so he
emptied a three round burst into it. No one else moved. There were just
seven targets now.
Suddenly, part of a leg attached to a lower torso fell out of the sky and
thudded down directly in front of him. Six targets. Someone screamed in the
darkness, a protracted death rattle that made even Arnold's teeth grit.
Five. Arnold stood and sprinted for the compound. He could hear frightened
breathing from just around the corner of what was left of the wall.
He reduced it to four, and then three, with two well-placed bursts from his
rifle. A bullet zinged past his ear. Arnold calmly turned and squeezed his
trigger and a bloodstained baseball cap went flying backwards through the
air. Just two now. The noise of a gun clicking of an empty chamber warned
him to dive for cover. There was still one alive on the wall on the other
side of the compound, an idiot who had forgotten to chamber a round before
attempting to fire his gun. Arnold hunkered down beneath the thick wood as
the soldier finally opened fire. The man, obviously panicked and
ill-trained, emptied his whole magazine into the air around Arnold. The
man's aim was so bad that even if he hadn't been under cover Arnold probably
wouldn't have been hit. As soon as he heard the man's rifle once more click
on an empty chamber Arnold popped up and fired. Now there was just one
target left.
Cautiously, Arnold sprinted deeper into the compound, gun at the ready.
Where was the last man? Could he have been caught in the explosion? More
importantly, where were the fifty or so workers that were supposed to be
here? A small building to his right, the soldiers' bunk house by the smell
of it, showed no signs of life. There was a broken-down wreck of a truck to
his right. No life there. But what was that, to his right? It looked like
a large metal plate set into the ground. Arnold approached. As he came
nearer he could hear the sounds of terrified breathing inside. There were
many people there. Obviously the laborers. But was there a guard inside
with them, or was he...
Something large, hard and heavy slammed into Arnold's left side, sending his
AK-98 flying off into the night. Arnold stumbled nearly fell. He turned and
just barely ducked in time to dodge the tree trunk aimed at his head. It was
obviously the last guard. Arnold narrowed his eyes as both he and his
opponent sized each other up. Was it a troll? No, too big. Comprehension
dawned. Somehow, somewhere, the drug lord had found himself a giant.
The bearded behemoth looked down at Arnold from his full eleven feet. He was
carrying a massive timber from the palisade in his hands as if it was a
toothpick, and he looked angry.
Arnold thought about pulling his machete from his belt, but decided against
it. The blade wouldn't be any help against that massive timber. The giant
bared his teeth menacingly and swung.
With both arms, Arnold deflected the blow so that it passed harmlessly over
his head. The giant grunted, obviously not expecting such strength. Before
his opponent could recover, Arnold charged inside the swing of the tree trunk
and tackled the larger metahuman to the ground. The giant dropped the timber
and grabbed Arnold. Arnold grabbed back.
For what seemed like hours the two grappled on the ground, both trying
nothing fancier than to crush the life out of the other. Arnold could feel
the blood being squeezed out of him and rushing to his head. He heard it
roaring in his ears. The giant was squeezing him like an iron vise, not
letting any air back in his lungs. His ribs and back creaked in protest. It
was all he could do to just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze...
Something cracked with the sound of a dry chicken bone snapping. There was a
loud gurgle, fading down to nothing.
Arnold got up slowly, breathing heavily and holding his left arm close in to
his side. He walked painfully over to where his rifle lay, and he picked it
up. Taking aim at the nearest building, he started in with his grenade
launcher.
When the last structure was no more than matchsticks and rubble, Arnold
strode over to the padlocked metal door in the ground. With one massive hand
he reached down, grabbed the chain locking it shut and yanked, hard. The
chain snapped. Then he turned and walked away, back into the jungle.
Three Weeks Later
A blowdart bounced off of the tree trunk, startling but not hurting the
brightly colored frog sitting on a nearby leaf. With a frantic hop, the frog
disappeared into the tree's greenery. A small Amazon Indian boy cursed a
small Amazon Indian curse. He brought the blowpipe down from his lips and
wiped the back of his mouth in disgust. Then a giant shadow blotted out the
light coming from above, and the boy froze. Then he turned, ever so slowly,
to see what was behind him. The boy looked up, up, up, into over six and a
half feet of solid green-tattooed muscle. Arnold stood and stared,
impassive. The boy stared back. Then the child's face broke out into a huge
grin as he jumped up onto the Ogre.
"You need more practice," said Arnold in the boy's native tongue.
"Unless you were aiming at the tree," he teased. The boy, who was clambering
up Arnold's back like a monkey, stuck out his tongue knowing full well that
Arnold couldn't see him..
"The light was bad," the boy replied with a grin as he seated himself on
Arnold's shoulders. "What did you bring us this time?"
Arnold patted his two full duffel backs. "Many things. Come, you can
tell me what has happened since I last left while I bring these to show
everyone."
