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Synth and Bullets (Vignette)
🕑 Added 2018-12-18 16:41:44 +0000 UTC This is another vignette from Tumblr. This time it's got two inspirations: The first is Hotline Miami, with it's techno soundtrack and visceral violence, the second is Changeling: The Lost, a roleplaying game about people kidnapped by faeries who managed to escape, but come back to the real world changed in ways that normal mortals can't even see. The animal mask aesthetic of Hotline Miami fits well with the way Changelings become warped by their time in Arcadia, many taking on animal features.
The red lights of the motorcycle zipped through the light rain, riding the curves like a lecher’s hands. From the bike itself came the blaring synthetic pop music, intense and rising over the motor. In the distance, a storm was rolling in, and the low rumble of distant thunder could be heard. The rider wore a green and white varsity jacket, the back and breast blazoned not with a high school letter but something half corporate logo, half medieval crest. A stylized gryphon struggling against thorns on a shield. His helmet was pure black, reflecting the lights of the mansion as he pulled up to the gate.
A black man held up a hand at the guard station, and looked at a clipboard. He was in his thirties, and the man still seated in the station was about twenty years his senior. The rider slowed, and the blaring synth-pop died.
“Woah, now, need you to take that helmet off,” he said, looking over his list.
He was a mortal. Nothing special, just a rent-a-cop.
Two quick shots coughed out of the silenced 1911M1A1 pulled from the side pouch of the gym bag slung over the Rider’s shoulder. The man died in confusion, but he died quick. His partner barely had time to draw his piece, and went down the same way, bullets coughed out by the weapon slamming into his chest, painting the back wall with red, then lazily tearing through the cheap drywall.
The Rider got off, slipped into the guard station and flicked the gates open. Then the music was back on, and he put the hammer down and drove towards the mansion.
Inside, a party was going on. Drugs and booze, a hazy room with beautiful people. Most of them were stoned out of their mind, and all of them were overtaken by the music and the lusts and emotions. It was nearly orgiastic.
And then a green Kawasaki slammed through the French doors, sending wood and door handles flying. For a moment, the dancing stopped, and then it was replaced by screaming as the Rider lept off the bike, sending it spinning into the crowd. One was silenced, the other wasn’t. With a cough-BLAM two shots went out and everything was chaos.
Two black suited men, skin grey and stony, their bulk inhuman, stumbled. Two more, looking like growling wolves, reached for shotguns and fired at the rider.
The party-goers, some mortal, some gorgeous creatures of wet dreams and nightmares, panicked. One went down to a shotgun blast meant for the rider, who ducked behind a stairway. The bike spun in loud, roaring circles in the center of the hallway. More men were coming, all monstrous and terrifying. A man with skin like glassy ice took two hits to the chest and kept coming, but the third to his temple shattered half his face and dropped him to the ground. His blood was red and cold.
The Rider tossed his spent pistols aside, and rolled to the iceman’s corpse, grabbing his machine gun and keeping his helmeted head down as more gunfire tore through the air. With a rapid drumbeat, he took down one of the ogres, and winged the second. He hadn’t been hit. And then the motorcycle slammed right into him, flying through the air after thrown by the grey skinned man. As he flew backwards into a decorative indoor fountain he took out the stoneskin, pouring the rest of the machine gun into him.
He slammed into the fountain’s wall, and water and foot long golden fish came flowing out. Pulling the keys from the bike and pocketing them, the Rider pushed the Kawasaki between himself and the bullets roaring from the wolf-man’s gun. He grabbed the plastic molding, and in a second he was up on his feet, supernatural strength pressing him forward. The bike slammed into the wolf man as if it were on the road. Muted by the heavy synth still pumping from the walls, his spine snapped.
The floor was painted with blood. Some red, some not. Some mortal, some not. Four dancers were dead. Others, still staring out from behind furniture and art fixtures looked on in shock as the rider picked up his bag. The figure shot a glance around the room, and they all got the message, fleeing from the hole in the doors.
Deeper in the mansion, a man with the face of a weasel hides, six guards with him. He wears a blue track suit, and snorts cocaine. A woman in an artfully torn shirt and pink spandex lies chained on the chaisse, her shoulders bared and her lips parted in a stupor.
One of the men goes to investigate, all of them drawing their guns. With the roar of a lion–the *actual* roar of a lion–the door shatters, and the inhuman creature is knocked backwards, baring fangs in anger. As stolen blood reheals shredded skin, another blast from the shotgun turns the monster to ash.
The five remaining guards let loose on the doorway, shredding the frame with machinegun and shotgun fire. The weasel does what he always does, and hides. Magazines are reloaded, and a creature of the night takes a bullet to the temple, sending the lifeless corpse into stillness. The Rider comes in with a rifle this time, lever action, a classic Winchester repeater.
His foes move with blinding speed, and the walls and bookshelves are torn by bullets. He ducks behind a mahogany desk, and the wap wap wap of a machine pistol blows through it. He lays back, one leg on either side, pressed against drawers. The rider looks between his legs, at the feet in the room, advancing on him and putting holes in the wood.
Twelve inches up, on the left. He pulls the trigger and recocks as the body hits the floor, crumbling into ashes. Three down. Three left.
The coffee table comes flying over the desk, and nearly crushes the Rider. He interposes the stock of the Winchester, and ice and chill spread out around him. The table freezes in the Winter wind, and a strong blow from the butt of the gun splits it in half. The assassin gets in a low crouch, and pushes against the heavy wooden desk with both hands. It lifts three feet off the ground as he heaves it away, and the count is two and one. A vampire lies on the ground, panic in his dead eyes, legs torn off by the force of the desk. Wounds knit, there’s no way to restore that much damage.
The other two fire off shots, and the bullets catch on snowflakes and ice, missing the Rider. Fire, cock, and the teams are one on one. A bullet sends the Driver pirouetting, green jacket stained with blood. He pulls the rifle up one handed, and pulls the trigger, only for the hammer to click uselessly.
The vampire smirks on the other side of the carnage, and levels a heavy Beretta at the rider’s black helmet.
The slide is pulled back and the chamber is empty. His smirk goes away.
The Rider tosses the Winchester, grabs it from the stock, and in one smooth motion heaves the weapon barrel first into the undead bastard’s chest. He falls to his knees, then drops. The rifle clatters to the floor in a vaguely human shaped pile of ash.
The weasel has the girl in his arms. Her head droops, and she’s still chained to the chaisse. There’s a .38 special at her temple.
“D-don’t come any closer!” he stammers, hands trembling.
“You sold us out, Weasel.”
“N-no, man, no, I didn’t, I’d never do that,” the coward lies.
He takes a bullet from an M1A1 in the thigh and drops the girl, clutching his leg, eyes wide. “To leeches.”
“C-come on, man!” the weasel whimpers, crying like a dog. “Th-they were gonna kill me, man! T-tell the king it’s done! N-no more, no more deals!”
Another bullet slams into his same thigh, this one going through the back of his hand first. He pulls it away, clutching at it and staring in shock at the hole straight through.
“O-okay, okay! L-look, man, they paid me in Krugerrands! All yours!” the coward pleads, “You ever seen one? F-fuckin’ gold coins, man!”
The next bullet tears through his foot. “You’d bribe a knight with apartheid money,” he says simply. “You are a rat-faced bastard.”
Two more bullets knock the girl free, taking care of the silvery chain around her ankle that keeps her in place. The knight says nothing as he picks the girl up, ignoring the pleas of the Weasel. He carries her in his arms, and walks out of the room.
“W-wait, man! You can’t leave me like this! Th-they’re gonna come back for me! I-I ain’t useful no more, man!”
The gym bag lands in a heap in front of the Weasel, and he winces, crawling towards it and opening it up.
“Fuck…” he murmurs, seeing the plastique and the green LCD counting down.
The Rider ignores his obscenities and begging, rights his bike, and peels out with the girl on the back, both hands at the Rider’s waist, one of his over top for security. Nothing is left behind but carnage and a streak of black rubber on the bloodstained marble floors. The music still blares.
The mansion becomes kindling.
