Mercenaries

tahuu9 wrote:

>Move towards conductor.

Throwing open the door in the opposite direction as your fellow passengers, you at first cannot see the man anywhere. The windshield has a small hole in it, with numerous cracks spewing outwards. A brief look-around of the room reveals the conductor huddled in a corner. He clutches a bleeding arm in pain.

You haul the man to his feet and with a few ambiguous words of encouragement drag him back through the train to the cargo room. The rumbling continues. You hear shouting ahead of you.

The back door has been thrown open. Not so far off, a few human-shaped forms lie in the snow. Wasting no time, the conductor jumps to safety. You are about to follow suit when the terrain underneath you suddenly changes.

The train is now on a complex-looking wooden bridge, spanning a gap that plummets down to a winding river like some sort of clicheic adventure movie. As you watch, the snowline gets farther and farther away from you. A figure is running from the whiteness, across the bridge, towards you.

Well, this is it. You can either break your bones on the wood and metal rails or fall to your death.

>jump on rails and break leg bone and a rib. Perhaps several others, but survive.

tahuu9 wrote:

>jump on rails and break leg bone and a rib. Perhaps several others, but survive.

Good thinking, self. Survival sounds pretty good right about now.

You throw yourself out of the train, and not a moment too soon.

Behind you, the train drops from a sizeable gap in the bridge that you're almost certain wasn't designed to be there. You make contact with the harsh wood and slide backwards - thump thump thump - until your legs catch in a rut, halting you with a jarring impact. You hear a resounding crash behind you as the train makes contact with the other side of the destroyed bridge.

The wood beneath you must have been weakened by the explosion. It cracks, and for an instant you have that horrible feeling of freefall as your body swings forward to dangle vertically. Your hands were so wise as to grab hold of one of the metal rails. You only hope they can last.

You hang from that rail for eighteen thousand years. In retrospect, the actual time was probably a bit shorter than what it felt like to you.

>pull self up.

tahuu9 wrote:

>pull self up.

Painstakingly, you are able to haul yourself up on top of the rail. The white-handed woman is running towards you, shouting something. Your ears have not quite recovered from the explosion, however, and you can't quite seem to...

A searing hiss punctuates the air, not unlike that of an enraged snake.

A jarring, meaty thunk.

The woman stops, stepping back just a bit. Her outstretched hand lingers in midair. A finger twitches.

Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out. She appears focused on a far-away object. Her eyes slowly roll upwards, observing some unseen thing in the sky.

She begins to lean to the side. Going limp, she falls off of the wooden platform... You instinctively reach out a hand and quickly grab her arm before her body plummets.

>Attempt to pull woman up.

tahuu9 wrote:

>Attempt to pull woman up.

She is surprisingly light, and you easily hoist her up onto the wooden beams.

...should all that blood be there?

It plasters her face like a second skin, flowing down her torso to coat her arms as well as your own. Red tendrils snake up from below her white eyes like vines. Her mouth hangs open, emitting wordless exclamations of surprise.

Some unexplainable instinct forces you to duck your head. Another snake hisses by directly above you, singing off a number of your hairs. Very few coherent thoughts pass through your head as you jump to your feet, turn, and run.

>escape area close to her.

tahuu9 wrote:

>escape area close to her.

You have taken fifteen steps when a hiss shears off some of your right shoulder. Wincing, you drop down to the wooden beams and grasp the affected area.

The snake appears to have only grazed you. That does not stop the pain, the terrible paaaaaaain oh god make it stop.

Seeing as the snakecharmer didn't shoot you when you were dangling from the rail, you feel you can assume that his view is impeded. You should be safe so long as you keep close to the ground.

After a minute or two, it appears your assumption was correct. The whiteness above you is completely silent, except for the wind...

Your shoulder still hurts like the dickens, though.

>Move along the ground

tahuu9 wrote:

>Move along the ground

The wooden beam is too thin to shimmy along, but perhaps if you get creative you might survive this day.

You begin to make your way along the length of the bridge by swinging along on the crossbeams. You're reminded of the monkey bars at the park your parents used to take you and your brother to when you were six or seven. It takes a few seconds for you to remember exactly how often you fell off of those monkey bars. Your gaze is drawn downwards.

To your left and right, the great cross-stitching beams extend as far as you can see in any direction. Directly below you, perhaps twenty-five hundred feet away, the chasm floor beckons eagerly.

Your sight begins to spin. You relax your grip.

A gunshot permeates the air. A clear, honest, unmistakable gunshot. This is no snake.

The sheer unexpectedness of the interjection sends an impulse throughout your body. You regain your hold just as your fingers begin to slide, and your mind forces you against your will to swing forward to the next beam.

More ferociously sudden blasts ricochet off of your ear drums, hammering a rhythm that fuels this sudden burst of energy. Adrenaline pumps through your arms as you advance along the wooden rails, each noise seemingly directed solely at you. You are terrified. Snakes hiss and cannons roar across the sky, in your head, all throughout the universe. A lethal symphony is being conducted, and you are a helpless marionette, dancing and dancing and dancing to the music until your strings break and you are discarded and forgotten.

You lose all thoughts except those of escape. Upon reaching the cliff face, death no longer worries you. You swing yourself up onto the snow and consider running for cover. The deadly orchestra has grown louder and more violent...

>Dash into cover.

tahuu9 wrote:

>Dash into cover.

The sensible part of your mind finally kicks in and finds you running across open ground in full view of any 'Familiar rivals.' It tells you that your actions have beached you on the radar of the snakecharmer. It reminds you of the fate of the white-handed woman. And as you dive behind a boulder and consider yourself safe, it informs you that that painful numbness in your right shoulder is a very serious bite, indeed, but not quite as serious as the new bite in your abdomen. Unconsciousness takes you.

>Sleep for hours.

((>Possibly be taken by snake man?))

tahuu9 wrote:

>Sleep for hours.

((>Possibly be taken by snake man?))

You awake to find beauty. Snow is falling lightly, already having buried you up to the knees. Crisp air stimulates your skin. Among it all, the sense of timelessness creates another world for you; you don't know how long you were asleep. You don't know if you're even alive any more.

You attempt to rise and discover that working one's knees out of a foot of snow is nothing to scoff at. After a few minutes, you have managed an unsteady bipedal posture, and take a drunken step forward.

The snowy ground embraces your face. You bring yourself up once again, and discover that you are, in fact, incredibly weak. For the first time, you notice a light pain in your stomach.

>Eat clean white snow.

>Stand up again and stumble forward.

tahuu9 wrote:

>Eat clean white snow.

Whilst murder to your throat, the snow does wake you up quite a bit.

tahuu9 wrote:

>Stand up again and stumble forward.

Taking more careful steps this time, you blaze a senseless trail across the white. Your mind has ceased to ponder anything other than what you are now experiencing; subtle flakes of white that blunder lazily through the air, an omnipotent cold that embraces your skin affectionately, and the fog weighing down your shoulders that you just can't seem to dispel. A ribbon of bright red trails behind you, forming unseen patterns and shapes.

This otherworldly realm has been your home for as long as you can remember. Not too far in the future, or maybe it was several minutes ago, or perhaps even right at this moment, your limbs betray you and you finally succumb to the cold, welcoming ground. You lay there, the redness pooling, staining the white sheets of the most comfortable bed you have ever rested on. You cannot recall a time when you've been happier.

~~~

An unwelcome interjection throws you to one side. It pokes and prods at you and simply will not go away, no matter how much you say please (you believe that even in the face of such rudeness it is always necessary to retain manners).

The intrusion thrusts you from your place of happiness. You sit here, in the cold, hating it. Suddenly, you feel horribly uncomfortable; the whiteness stings at your eyes and punctures your skin and your shoulder is bleeding because you got shot and-

…you got SHOT. Oh my GOD you got SHOT.

After the appropriate amount of panicking, your brain (always the logical one) kindly makes it known that your shoulder does not, in fact, hurt. No, not a bit. You move your arm cautiously; it behaves as usual. Upon closer inspection, it is entirely unharmed. Although there does appear to be a hand resting on it.

A white hand with unusually long fingers.

>Scramble away if possible.

tahuu9 wrote:

>Scramble away if possible.

Your brain reconstructs the events of the last few minutes/hours/days. After reviewing your memories, you arrive at the conclusion that this woman standing right next to you had, in fact, died of what was most likely a bullet wound to the head. Therefore, she cannot possibly be here. You must be hallucinating you delirious little idiot.

The woman stands over you, a curious look in her eyes. Her arms and part of her face are coated in blood and snow. A mark on her forehead serves to confuse your brain even more.

She removes her hand from your shoulder, which unexpectedly begins to throb. Shrugging aside the pain, you scramble backwards as fast as possible. She tilts her head expectantly, silent.

>Ask who she is and what is going on.

tahuu9 wrote:

>Ask who she is and what is going on.

You recognize her as the white-handed woman, though the fact that she should be rightfully dead is still confusing you just a bit.

Despite the overwhelming urge to ask comprehensive questions such as How? and Whaaa-aaaat?, you jump right to the point and speak your first words to her since the two of you met.

"How...? What...?"

Genius. Utter genius. A real marvel you are.

She smiles, unwilling to answer your questions, and closes her eyes before turning away and retracing her footsteps, which are quickly disappearing in the falling snow.

>Follow white-handed woman.

tahuu9 wrote:

>Follow white-handed woman.

A scene of peculiar destruction awaits the pair of you as you trod along through the hill. Several bodies lie as nothing more than mounds of snow upon which crosses fashioned from sticks and twine serve as crude tombstones. A circle of men rests a comfortable distance away; some stand, most lay flat on the snow, heads resting on spare jackets and arms twitching. As you near, a guard looks up and mutters something that was clearly not intended as a compliment.

The man in the business suit, holding a carrying case for what could only be a large rifle, advances towards you. He stops to stare intently into your eyes.

"I cannot decide if you are an imbecile or a genius."

>Tell him "I'd rather think myself a genius."

tahuu9 wrote:

>Tell him "I'd rather think myself a genius."

"I'd rather think myself a genius." Oh god what are you doing he's going to kill you or something.

You do your best to remain intact under the gaze of so many silent eyes. The white-handed woman shuffles her feet nervously.

The man glares at you for a moment longer before turning to her. "See to the wounded." She does so; the man turns to walk away. An impulse seizes you.

"The sniper."

He stops, turning his head over so slightly.

"What?"

"The sniper. What happened to the sniper?"

He looks at you again, smiling without humor.

"Maybe you should have stuck around and found out. Instead of wandering off like a lunatic."

You meet his stare. How best to fight this man…