12-01-2017, 06:32 PM
“I don't want to hurt you. Please, just stand down.” the Battle Rabbit begged the two women as they slowly closed in.
Beth could have fired at him from this range easily, had her hands not been shaking so much, and Liz was breathing in harsh gasps, the hit she'd taken to her ribs clearly affecting her; he didn't want to hurt people he viewed as being closer to innocent bystanders, or even hostages, than actual enemies... but what choice did he have?
His eyes briefly flicked down to the silver ring on his right hand. Back on Earth, that item had been an extremely advanced piece of technology, with all sorts of impressive powers, including the ability to hypnotise people. Alas, since arriving in the Omniverse, the ring had been reduced to a mere bauble...
It sure would have been great if the ring still functioned. Mind control, like so, so many other things, was an easily abused tool which could often seem pure evil when utilised by those with some dark purpose... though obviously it was actually totally fine when the Battle Rabbits did it.
As he was continuing to agonise over how to get past them without harming either woman, Steve decided to speed things along.
“Hey! Bunny-Guy! You'd better get your ass over here right now, or I'm gonna start pulling the wings off a' some flies!” looking over, he saw that the Claw had tossed aside his unloaded guns and now had one foot planted on Jallus' back, the dark-skinned man having been forced to the ground face-down, with Steve pulling one of his arms up behind him and into the air in a painful-looking hold; the expression Jallus wore confirmed that he was indeed in extreme pain...
Although that wasn't saying a whole lot, considering one of his knees had been blown off by a shotgun slug just a minute ago. 'Extreme pain' would be the expected state after something like that, with or without the twisted arm.
“Dammit! Damn you!” Hijiri spat, his temper rising once more. He ground his teeth together, hesitating just a moment longer.
He had always been rough on his subordinates during their training, both in the Omniverse and his own world... but these two weren't trained soldiers, just ordinary civilians, being forced to fight by a cruel taskmaster... apparently just for the pleasure of seeing them beaten, since even a totally impartial observer could have easily concluded that the Rabbit would wipe the floor with these two... much less some kind of Prime-supremacist lunatic like the Claw, who would be prone to underestimating Secondaries even when they did have decent odds of victory.
Steve twisted harder, and Jallus screamed.
The Battle Rabbit dashed forwards, flipping acrobatically into the air and spinning to land a solid kick in Liz's side, just inches from where he suspected her broken rib(s?) to be.
She cried out and collapsed immediately, gasping in pain and clutching her injured side, as tears welled up in her eyes.
And then Beth fired...
…
And fell over, missing the Rabbit completely despite being so close she could almost have used the firearm as a melee weapon. Steve sighed.
Rushing past the pair before either could get back to her feet, Hijiri was almost upon his foe when the (self-proclaimed) Strongest of the Wolfpack's Four Claws decided to rearm himself.
In fairness, what Steve did then certainly leant weight to his claim of enormous strength.
He literally ripped Jallus' arm from its socket. The bookworm gave a shriek of pure, undiluted agony, before mercifully passing out. Given the rate at which blood was gushing from the ruin that had been his shoulder, though, it would be a pretty safe bet to assume he'd be lucky to last five minutes.
With an enraged roar, the Rabbit attacked... only for his first blow to be met by his friend's disembodied limb.
They fought a surprisingly even battle, considering one of the combatants wasn't even armed with a proper weapon, but slowly the Battle Rabbit began to push back his foe. Steve was still blocking all the most serious of his blows, and taking the occasional swing of his own, yet small grazes now littered the old geezer's arms and legs.
It actually seemed like Hijiri might even be on the point of winning...
... when his transformation ended.
The sudden flash of light shocked both the Rabbit and the Claw... but when he realised what had happened, Steve grinned wolfishly. Hijiri's long, black coat and white boots had vanished, along with his rabbit-ears... his 'Power-Up' had run out of time and he had been forced back into the form which had originally been just a disguise used to fit in on Earth; that of an ordinary human in a black formal trousers and shoes... there should have been a shirt and suit jacket as well, but as those had earlier been replaced with bandages whilst he slept, now all that he wore on his chest was a vest of blood-drenched gauze...
Apparently, his many gunshot wounds had begun bleeding copiously at some point during the fight. Luckily, their 'sergeant''s painkiller had kept him from feeling the worst of it.
Hijiri tried to continue applying pressure, but whilst he was still lightened by the effects of his gravity manipulation ability – and could therefore still move pretty quickly – he had lost much of his strength, so Shotgun Steve was able to easily bat aside his weakened attacks, leaving him off-balance and vulnerable.
Needless to say, the old man lost no time in taking advantage of this. After swatting aside one more desperate blow, Steve stepped in close and socked him in the jaw with a right hook more than powerful enough to shatter concrete.
Lacking the enhanced resilience of his True Form, this affected the Rabbit exactly as severely as one would expect a blow such as that to affect a normal human face. Bones shattered, flesh was shredded, and shattered teeth fell from torn gums as the lightweight Rabbit was sent flying. He crashed to the ground, bounced, and rolled across the floor.
None of the cuts or bruises he'd received so far – nor even the multitude of gunshot wounds – came anywhere close to the agony that now seared his mutilated face like a acid. He couldn't even scream, so intense was the pain... his vision started to darken around the edges as his body approached its limits and his mind sought to protect itself from the shock and pain by shutting down...
He wouldn't- no, couldn't let it end like this, though.
He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, but the Battle Rabbit slammed down an arm on the ground and gave an agonised cry as he forced his body to roll over, before pushing himself up onto all fours. His vision blurring and fading, he paused then to struggle to marshal his thoughts, trying to beat his subconscious into submission, battling to keep from passing out.
So much for that painkiller Kroll had given him. Hell, if this was what the injury felt like whilst under the effects of medication, he wasn't looking forward to the point when that finally wore off.
He heard something... mumbling?
It was only now that he noticed his hearing didn't seem to be operating any more effectively than his sense of sight. Hijiri looked up, noticing Shotgun Steve striding casually towards him, having retrieved both his empty shotguns and discarded Jallus' severed arm.
He smirked sadistically at the injured corporal as he spoke... Hijiri couldn't make out a single word of his bragging speech, though. Everything sounded strangely quiet and fuzzy.
Behind the old bastard, Brandon was struggling back to his feet, blaster in hand... all the other members of the squad too severely injured or dead to follow suit.
Off to one side, back the way he'd come before attacking the Claw, Liz and Beth were picking themselves back up as well.
The Rabbit painstakingly forced himself upright, dizzily staggering and almost falling again the moment he made it, waves of pain racking his head. Blinking rapidly, he tried – unsuccessfully – to restore his blurred vision to normal.
Steve wasn't rushing... he still had quite a few metres to cross before he would be upon the Battle Rabbit when the double doors leading into the barracks' indoor training area burst open.
No...
Not simply open... the metal was torn and twisted as the two thin panels were torn right off the wall.
They had been bent and broken by the immense force of a nine-foot-high, seventeen-foot-long black wolf charging straight through them. Steve turned, first confused, then surprised... and finally, afraid.
Riding on the back of the enormous wolf – Sarah Watt – were Kroll and Kevin. Whereas the ex-noble stormtrooper clutched Sarah's fur tightly with both hands, hanging on for dear life as she charged, the smiling skinhead never even bothered to hold on at all... apparently completely at ease in such a position.
Instead, he scanned the room until he found Brandon, then tossed him something. Hijiri couldn't make out what, and nor could he tell what exactly the suited man had yelled as he threw the object. He did notice, however, the enormous grin which spread across the elf's face as he pulled a fist-sized object from whatever he'd been given... presumably it was a container of some kind.
Steve was now entirely focused on the enormous beast charging his way, fangs bared... but he was not the only one. Both of his Secondaries had begun rushing to protect him the moment they realised what was happening. Liz was still unarmed – and what she hoped to accomplish in such a state was anyone's guess – but Beth had one shell remaining in her shotgun... and with Sarah's Wolf Form being as huge as it was, even a person like her – with terrible aim and so little muscle on her bones that the recoil would knock her flat on her back – could surely manage to land a shot if she got close enough.
Sarah was paying no attention to them, perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly, assuming that the two bikini girls posed her no threat... the moment Brandon glanced across at them, though, Hijiri knew what he was thinking.
No! Don't do it! He tried to yell... managing to stumble a few feet closer to the elf. Unfortunately, there were over a dozen metres between them, and his cry had come out as a loud yet utterly unintelligible moan, which achieved nothing other than to send even sharper, more intense waves of pain through his face as he attempted to use his ruined mouth. There was no way he could possibly stop what was about to happen.
And then, it happened.
By the time the elf had tossed the small, metal orb, and it had covered the distance between the 'trooper and his targets, the werewolf was already upon her own opponent and though he tried his best to beat her down with his spent shotguns, Steve was already wounded from his unexpectedly trying fight against the Battle Rabbit and his squad; his reactions were growing sluggish as his many wounds finally began to take their toll on him. He batted at Sarah's head ineffectually with his twin shotguns, the blows made ineffective by the awkward angle from which he was hitting her... and the awkward angle being a direct result of him having just been snatched up in the jaws of an enormous wolf and shook around violently, like some oversized chew toy.
He was still screaming and roaring in pain – and Sarah was still roughly shaking her head from side to side, maw clamped tightly around his right shoulder, upper arm and much of his chest – when the grenade went off with a tremendous cracking noise.
Hijiri's eyes had been locked on the spectacle to begin with, but when the orb detonated he was left aghast by the result. The ensuing conflagration swallowed up not only the two women, but some of the outermost flames even reached Sarah and Steve, several metres away.
That said, the inferno lasted barely a couple seconds before vanishing almost entirely. Fire needed fuel to continue to burn, and with nothing but metal in this bare room, their surroundings weren't going to be going up any time soon. What was more, the two 'battling' – if such a word could be used to describe such a one-sided beatdown – Primes barely seemed to suffer more than a few singed hairs... clearly, their superhuman resilience was more than enough to resist this heat.
Unfortunately, not everyone present had such great durability... in fact, given the abilities they'd displayed thus far, it might be a pretty safe bet to assume that Steve's women were even weaker than the average Secondary.
And it seemed that the trend held true in this case as well; whilst the Wolf and the Claw had been scarcely touched by the flames, this pair were engulfed entirely. The Rabbit stared on in horror as they collapsed, flailing wildly, shrieking in agony.
Tearing his gaze from the horrific spectacle, he looked over at the elf instead. Brandon simply looked relieved. Not smug, not sadistic, not at all like pure, unadulterated evil... just glad to have survived another fight.
As Hijiri watched in a daze, the technophile pulled something else from the bag he had been tossed and immediately headed over to Jallus and began wrapping him in what must have been bandages. Going straight from cold-blooded killer one moment to concerned friend the next...
The Rabbit ought to have been able to do the same, he knew. He had been able to, when they were simply dealing with the normal NSW goons... his eyes were drawn back to the writhing women, their screams resonating and rebounding inside his skull, until he felt as though they were the only sounds that even existed... those three had lived their lives as slaves, and then died horribly...
They hadn't deserved what had happened to them.
They hadn't.
Yet they were being treated just like all the others. They were the enemy, so they had to die. Nice. Easy. Simple.
This was the Empire's way... right?
That should be enough for him, shouldn't it?
He stumbled, barely managing to remain standing. The flames seemed to blur and grow, as darkness closed in around him, narrowing his vision to just what was directly in front.
He hadn't done this before, though.
Back home, on Earth, they had killed Ogres, yes, but never humans... much less innocent ones...
Someone shook him by the shoulder, and he truly lost his balance this time, falling down to his knees. He cried out involuntarily, sharp, rending pains tearing through his face as his shattered mess of a jaw was jostled slightly by the impact.
Kevin's face was in front of his suddenly. The man smiled awkwardly, apparently embarrassed to have knocked him down. He said something which Hijiri couldn't hear over the screams.
But... wait? Weren't those two dead already?
Why were they still wailing like this?
Hijiri shook his head, eyes darting from side-to-side as his breaths grew faster and shallower.
Why could he still hear them!?
The suited man turned back and shouted something indistinct across at the elf.
Whatever it was, or what Brandon's response might have been, the Battle Rabbit never found out.
At long last, the blissfully numbing darkness washed over him...
Beth could have fired at him from this range easily, had her hands not been shaking so much, and Liz was breathing in harsh gasps, the hit she'd taken to her ribs clearly affecting her; he didn't want to hurt people he viewed as being closer to innocent bystanders, or even hostages, than actual enemies... but what choice did he have?
His eyes briefly flicked down to the silver ring on his right hand. Back on Earth, that item had been an extremely advanced piece of technology, with all sorts of impressive powers, including the ability to hypnotise people. Alas, since arriving in the Omniverse, the ring had been reduced to a mere bauble...
It sure would have been great if the ring still functioned. Mind control, like so, so many other things, was an easily abused tool which could often seem pure evil when utilised by those with some dark purpose... though obviously it was actually totally fine when the Battle Rabbits did it.
As he was continuing to agonise over how to get past them without harming either woman, Steve decided to speed things along.
“Hey! Bunny-Guy! You'd better get your ass over here right now, or I'm gonna start pulling the wings off a' some flies!” looking over, he saw that the Claw had tossed aside his unloaded guns and now had one foot planted on Jallus' back, the dark-skinned man having been forced to the ground face-down, with Steve pulling one of his arms up behind him and into the air in a painful-looking hold; the expression Jallus wore confirmed that he was indeed in extreme pain...
Although that wasn't saying a whole lot, considering one of his knees had been blown off by a shotgun slug just a minute ago. 'Extreme pain' would be the expected state after something like that, with or without the twisted arm.
“Dammit! Damn you!” Hijiri spat, his temper rising once more. He ground his teeth together, hesitating just a moment longer.
He had always been rough on his subordinates during their training, both in the Omniverse and his own world... but these two weren't trained soldiers, just ordinary civilians, being forced to fight by a cruel taskmaster... apparently just for the pleasure of seeing them beaten, since even a totally impartial observer could have easily concluded that the Rabbit would wipe the floor with these two... much less some kind of Prime-supremacist lunatic like the Claw, who would be prone to underestimating Secondaries even when they did have decent odds of victory.
Steve twisted harder, and Jallus screamed.
The Battle Rabbit dashed forwards, flipping acrobatically into the air and spinning to land a solid kick in Liz's side, just inches from where he suspected her broken rib(s?) to be.
She cried out and collapsed immediately, gasping in pain and clutching her injured side, as tears welled up in her eyes.
And then Beth fired...
…
And fell over, missing the Rabbit completely despite being so close she could almost have used the firearm as a melee weapon. Steve sighed.
Rushing past the pair before either could get back to her feet, Hijiri was almost upon his foe when the (self-proclaimed) Strongest of the Wolfpack's Four Claws decided to rearm himself.
In fairness, what Steve did then certainly leant weight to his claim of enormous strength.
He literally ripped Jallus' arm from its socket. The bookworm gave a shriek of pure, undiluted agony, before mercifully passing out. Given the rate at which blood was gushing from the ruin that had been his shoulder, though, it would be a pretty safe bet to assume he'd be lucky to last five minutes.
With an enraged roar, the Rabbit attacked... only for his first blow to be met by his friend's disembodied limb.
They fought a surprisingly even battle, considering one of the combatants wasn't even armed with a proper weapon, but slowly the Battle Rabbit began to push back his foe. Steve was still blocking all the most serious of his blows, and taking the occasional swing of his own, yet small grazes now littered the old geezer's arms and legs.
It actually seemed like Hijiri might even be on the point of winning...
... when his transformation ended.
The sudden flash of light shocked both the Rabbit and the Claw... but when he realised what had happened, Steve grinned wolfishly. Hijiri's long, black coat and white boots had vanished, along with his rabbit-ears... his 'Power-Up' had run out of time and he had been forced back into the form which had originally been just a disguise used to fit in on Earth; that of an ordinary human in a black formal trousers and shoes... there should have been a shirt and suit jacket as well, but as those had earlier been replaced with bandages whilst he slept, now all that he wore on his chest was a vest of blood-drenched gauze...
Apparently, his many gunshot wounds had begun bleeding copiously at some point during the fight. Luckily, their 'sergeant''s painkiller had kept him from feeling the worst of it.
Hijiri tried to continue applying pressure, but whilst he was still lightened by the effects of his gravity manipulation ability – and could therefore still move pretty quickly – he had lost much of his strength, so Shotgun Steve was able to easily bat aside his weakened attacks, leaving him off-balance and vulnerable.
Needless to say, the old man lost no time in taking advantage of this. After swatting aside one more desperate blow, Steve stepped in close and socked him in the jaw with a right hook more than powerful enough to shatter concrete.
Lacking the enhanced resilience of his True Form, this affected the Rabbit exactly as severely as one would expect a blow such as that to affect a normal human face. Bones shattered, flesh was shredded, and shattered teeth fell from torn gums as the lightweight Rabbit was sent flying. He crashed to the ground, bounced, and rolled across the floor.
None of the cuts or bruises he'd received so far – nor even the multitude of gunshot wounds – came anywhere close to the agony that now seared his mutilated face like a acid. He couldn't even scream, so intense was the pain... his vision started to darken around the edges as his body approached its limits and his mind sought to protect itself from the shock and pain by shutting down...
He wouldn't- no, couldn't let it end like this, though.
He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, but the Battle Rabbit slammed down an arm on the ground and gave an agonised cry as he forced his body to roll over, before pushing himself up onto all fours. His vision blurring and fading, he paused then to struggle to marshal his thoughts, trying to beat his subconscious into submission, battling to keep from passing out.
So much for that painkiller Kroll had given him. Hell, if this was what the injury felt like whilst under the effects of medication, he wasn't looking forward to the point when that finally wore off.
He heard something... mumbling?
It was only now that he noticed his hearing didn't seem to be operating any more effectively than his sense of sight. Hijiri looked up, noticing Shotgun Steve striding casually towards him, having retrieved both his empty shotguns and discarded Jallus' severed arm.
He smirked sadistically at the injured corporal as he spoke... Hijiri couldn't make out a single word of his bragging speech, though. Everything sounded strangely quiet and fuzzy.
Behind the old bastard, Brandon was struggling back to his feet, blaster in hand... all the other members of the squad too severely injured or dead to follow suit.
Off to one side, back the way he'd come before attacking the Claw, Liz and Beth were picking themselves back up as well.
The Rabbit painstakingly forced himself upright, dizzily staggering and almost falling again the moment he made it, waves of pain racking his head. Blinking rapidly, he tried – unsuccessfully – to restore his blurred vision to normal.
Steve wasn't rushing... he still had quite a few metres to cross before he would be upon the Battle Rabbit when the double doors leading into the barracks' indoor training area burst open.
No...
Not simply open... the metal was torn and twisted as the two thin panels were torn right off the wall.
They had been bent and broken by the immense force of a nine-foot-high, seventeen-foot-long black wolf charging straight through them. Steve turned, first confused, then surprised... and finally, afraid.
Riding on the back of the enormous wolf – Sarah Watt – were Kroll and Kevin. Whereas the ex-noble stormtrooper clutched Sarah's fur tightly with both hands, hanging on for dear life as she charged, the smiling skinhead never even bothered to hold on at all... apparently completely at ease in such a position.
Instead, he scanned the room until he found Brandon, then tossed him something. Hijiri couldn't make out what, and nor could he tell what exactly the suited man had yelled as he threw the object. He did notice, however, the enormous grin which spread across the elf's face as he pulled a fist-sized object from whatever he'd been given... presumably it was a container of some kind.
Steve was now entirely focused on the enormous beast charging his way, fangs bared... but he was not the only one. Both of his Secondaries had begun rushing to protect him the moment they realised what was happening. Liz was still unarmed – and what she hoped to accomplish in such a state was anyone's guess – but Beth had one shell remaining in her shotgun... and with Sarah's Wolf Form being as huge as it was, even a person like her – with terrible aim and so little muscle on her bones that the recoil would knock her flat on her back – could surely manage to land a shot if she got close enough.
Sarah was paying no attention to them, perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly, assuming that the two bikini girls posed her no threat... the moment Brandon glanced across at them, though, Hijiri knew what he was thinking.
No! Don't do it! He tried to yell... managing to stumble a few feet closer to the elf. Unfortunately, there were over a dozen metres between them, and his cry had come out as a loud yet utterly unintelligible moan, which achieved nothing other than to send even sharper, more intense waves of pain through his face as he attempted to use his ruined mouth. There was no way he could possibly stop what was about to happen.
And then, it happened.
By the time the elf had tossed the small, metal orb, and it had covered the distance between the 'trooper and his targets, the werewolf was already upon her own opponent and though he tried his best to beat her down with his spent shotguns, Steve was already wounded from his unexpectedly trying fight against the Battle Rabbit and his squad; his reactions were growing sluggish as his many wounds finally began to take their toll on him. He batted at Sarah's head ineffectually with his twin shotguns, the blows made ineffective by the awkward angle from which he was hitting her... and the awkward angle being a direct result of him having just been snatched up in the jaws of an enormous wolf and shook around violently, like some oversized chew toy.
He was still screaming and roaring in pain – and Sarah was still roughly shaking her head from side to side, maw clamped tightly around his right shoulder, upper arm and much of his chest – when the grenade went off with a tremendous cracking noise.
Hijiri's eyes had been locked on the spectacle to begin with, but when the orb detonated he was left aghast by the result. The ensuing conflagration swallowed up not only the two women, but some of the outermost flames even reached Sarah and Steve, several metres away.
That said, the inferno lasted barely a couple seconds before vanishing almost entirely. Fire needed fuel to continue to burn, and with nothing but metal in this bare room, their surroundings weren't going to be going up any time soon. What was more, the two 'battling' – if such a word could be used to describe such a one-sided beatdown – Primes barely seemed to suffer more than a few singed hairs... clearly, their superhuman resilience was more than enough to resist this heat.
Unfortunately, not everyone present had such great durability... in fact, given the abilities they'd displayed thus far, it might be a pretty safe bet to assume that Steve's women were even weaker than the average Secondary.
And it seemed that the trend held true in this case as well; whilst the Wolf and the Claw had been scarcely touched by the flames, this pair were engulfed entirely. The Rabbit stared on in horror as they collapsed, flailing wildly, shrieking in agony.
Tearing his gaze from the horrific spectacle, he looked over at the elf instead. Brandon simply looked relieved. Not smug, not sadistic, not at all like pure, unadulterated evil... just glad to have survived another fight.
As Hijiri watched in a daze, the technophile pulled something else from the bag he had been tossed and immediately headed over to Jallus and began wrapping him in what must have been bandages. Going straight from cold-blooded killer one moment to concerned friend the next...
The Rabbit ought to have been able to do the same, he knew. He had been able to, when they were simply dealing with the normal NSW goons... his eyes were drawn back to the writhing women, their screams resonating and rebounding inside his skull, until he felt as though they were the only sounds that even existed... those three had lived their lives as slaves, and then died horribly...
They hadn't deserved what had happened to them.
They hadn't.
Yet they were being treated just like all the others. They were the enemy, so they had to die. Nice. Easy. Simple.
This was the Empire's way... right?
That should be enough for him, shouldn't it?
He stumbled, barely managing to remain standing. The flames seemed to blur and grow, as darkness closed in around him, narrowing his vision to just what was directly in front.
He hadn't done this before, though.
Back home, on Earth, they had killed Ogres, yes, but never humans... much less innocent ones...
Someone shook him by the shoulder, and he truly lost his balance this time, falling down to his knees. He cried out involuntarily, sharp, rending pains tearing through his face as his shattered mess of a jaw was jostled slightly by the impact.
Kevin's face was in front of his suddenly. The man smiled awkwardly, apparently embarrassed to have knocked him down. He said something which Hijiri couldn't hear over the screams.
But... wait? Weren't those two dead already?
Why were they still wailing like this?
Hijiri shook his head, eyes darting from side-to-side as his breaths grew faster and shallower.
Why could he still hear them!?
The suited man turned back and shouted something indistinct across at the elf.
Whatever it was, or what Brandon's response might have been, the Battle Rabbit never found out.
At long last, the blissfully numbing darkness washed over him...
![[Image: Hijiri_Name_Sig.png]](https://image.ibb.co/k1H7Hd/Hijiri_Name_Sig.png)