Summon, or She Dies.

[Gildarts]

To Christa’s surprise, the snake smiled. It was a challenge. A rebellion that promised anarchy. All in the faint flicker of the fire which touched on his dark eyes but never plunged. His declared smile was one that dared.

Well, unless she was standing on a trap-door or something else, probably nothing would stop her from pulling the trigger, if only, that she got to punch him before she killed him. Yet… The silence, the challenge, held onto the moment, dripping away as though from a melting icicle warming up for spring. He did not seem to fear her weapons, so precisely aimed at his skull, not even the blade in her teeth, ready to be spit out and used to fillet him alive. Christa had been to war, she’d witnessed acts of torture that had made her numb to them, and she had endured many, many more.

“What’s your game?” she angled her head to a tilt, part curious, part threatening. It came off as though she were wagering or bartering. If she’d be interested, she just might spare him. But they both knew this was a lie. The line had been crossed. Blood drawn.

“Game? Oh you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so uh…. Why don’t you just pull the trigger and get it over with then, eh?” His eyes, the pupils were like diamonds, narrow slits, just like a snake or cat, a natural predator. In his natural habitat, darkness.

“Itching to die, secondary?” Christa growled, her tone low and powerful, her eyes narrowed while her lip turned into an upward snarl.

“I’d like to see you try, Prime,” he spat back to her, dishing out as she did, yet somehow he delivered his lines in a way that were filled with the essence of deceit.

Christa’s snarl turned into a smile, one that had accepted his challenge, “Deal, motherfucker.”

Her finger calmly traced the trigger, it was so delicate a line between life and death. Now it was hers to cross. This man had killed her sister. Now he would die. End of story, sorry readers.

Pressure was applied as simply as your finger would curve to scratch an itch, one flex, one motion, and the world as this gentleman’s brain knew it would be over and new one, with his brain splattered all over his floral printed chair, would be forged.

She inhaled. Then, across the slow exhale from her lungs, her ribs releasing inward, the itch was no longer there, a shockwave of sound echoed throughout the black cave, and a splattering of blood pooled on the velvet fabric of the chair. The moment had ended. It had taken one bullet.

“Kind of a disappointment, to be honest,” she mused as her robo-companion walked up behind the dead man’s chair. “I thought he’d put up more of a fight…”

There was, however, still a smile perched on his lips, despite the gaping bullet hole in his forehead. It should’ve rendered spasms through his body’s entire muscles. His hands should’ve shaken. His body should’ve flinched. It was all too easy. He had just sat there and taken it.

Christa’s eyes widened. “Shit, get back bot, he’s not dead.”

The robot remained where he was. Looking at her with the same glowing eyes. But something was off. The darkness of the room had changed to an inseparable shadow. Shit. Something was really off. Christa had no idea where to begin, she demanded this time, feeling powerless, “Did you hear me, bot?”

“And just how do you know he’s not dead?” the same man’s voice came from the robot’s voice piece, within a blink, and Behemoth’s face, snakelike and pale, had covered any trace of the bot’s faceplate. “How can you be so sure?”

The smile grew on his thin, slithery lips. Behemoth’s face was now in two places, one attached to the dead man in the chair of this dark room. The other placed so precisely above the robot’s silver, equipped shoulders. Christa’s jaw dropped, “CHRIST!”

Her stance took the defensive as he legs widened, ready for the girth of power she was about to exhale. Within a breath, her firearm had been completely unloaded on what used to be her companion, the blaster, rather like Abner’s in his storm trooper days, had shredded the bot’s steel skeleton and melted some of his metal flesh into the rock of the ground at its feet.

“Fuck, what the Hell are you?” she yelled, exchanging a clip, most anything could be killed with a gun, anything else, the blazing heat of a blaster. Her next shot would be a grenade however the creature-man hadn’t made any aggressive passes, and the Prime wasn’t quite ready to blow the roof out from over her head.

“Well, keep your promise, I can’t wait to die forever, can I? Unless of course, you mean to let me live with what I’ve done to your sister?” The same looming, menacing, shrinking voice, however tainted just slightly by an echo of the robot’s so as to not confuse where the real source of his voice was coming from.

Her finger pressed down on both triggers again, spraying upward both that of the corpse, and the robot which wouldn’t seem to die.

“Fight me yourself, stop being a coward,” she said after her blaster had overheated and she tossed it aside before it could burn her palm anymore than the current bubbling blister was progressing. In her hand, she moved the knife from her teeth and clutched it, classic combat style as it paired with her machine gun.

“And here I thought you were going to kill me. What a pity. I thought I was going to have to pay for my sins. Looks like I’ll live to die another day.” The robot’s neck curved, while Behemoth’s head on top of it grinned again, and took a seat in the vacant chair, as though everything had been planned out to a tee, and the man was getting tired of the game he’d initiated.
“I’ll make you pay in blood,” the prime spat, “You -------- ---------- --------”

“My my, I don’t know what’s worse on you, your mouth or your temper. Good thing I muted those words now, don’t you think?” Behemoth smirked and his smile was engulfed by the grease of his voice, “You could’ve hurt someone’s feelings.”

“Muted… My voice?” Christa’s own ears hadn’t heard, the cusses she’d yelled. What the Hell was she dealing with here? And, could she stop it?

A flash of insight overwhelmed her. He was provoking her, trying albeit successfully, to make her feel helpless. The ultimate torture for this commandeering prime who based her confidence on power and ability. He was demeaning both of those. It was in this moment, Christa acted a little out of character, perhaps she even grew. She tossed her weapons to the ground, yet kept her knife in the holster at her waist. Sheathed.

She sat with her back to the fire and perched her ass right down on the warm stone in front. Her back warmed up and dried quite quickly, of the icy sweat that had accumulated and the chill her skin had felt against the wind. The Prime just sat there and waited. Waited for the creature to reveal its secrets that had entitled it to brag in the first place. The secrets that had let him prevail at this game all too long, and with her sister as his trophy and prize.

The robot, and the dead corpse now began speaking in the same, snickering synchronized tone, “So, you’re done playing too? I’m glad, your game wasn’t nearly as intelligent as I’d hoped. Your sister was far more of a... Catch.” the monster smirked.

“What do you even want?” Christa sighed, he was kind of a petty man, though very, very capable, “I mean, that is if you even killed my sister in the first place.”

She subtly called his bluff, but he was in no place to reveal his cards. He was winning the game, she was merely a chess piece in his five-thousand foot mansion, “Hm? What do I want? Well, sure, there’s a list, but I think more specifically, there are a few things that you can give me that I have been lacking.”

“Why would I ever give a self-righteous bastard like you what you want? You killed my sister and said so, you sent me off on some petty mission probably to keep me distracted while you kept my sister locked up here. You’re fucked up, and the girl in the picture wasn’t even on the island we fell on. But I’m sure you already knew that.” Christa was seething, yet, kept it cool just enough by containing all the anger to her white-knuckled fist.

“Yes, I couldn’t have predicted that future, Karl is quite the dude, and that was a crazy place you ended up, but well, anyway, to the point,” his heads slanted while he thought, leaning closer to the Prime who sat a block from the ground, “I’m gonna need her made and I’ll let you leave here with your life. You may be a Prime, but there are worse things than death, as I can see from your eyes, you know very well to be true.”

“Do you really think I’m the type to be controlled so easily with such a baseless threat?” Christa spoke, exasperated, “Fuck off.”

“No,” his smile coiled on both his faces, in sync, “But I think you’ll respond if I have something to offer.”

“And just what is it? My life? You already offered that, I told you it wasn’t good enough of a deal,” Christa spoke, and realized it was rather a sick statement, still, she held true to it. She wasn’t selling out herself for herself. There had to be a better way to kick this guy’s fucking ass.

“Your sssssister’s.” his tongue slithered like a snake and held too long on the ‘s’ consonant.

“You just told me she’s dead. You’re not credible anymore. I won’t make a deal with someone I don’t trust, nor believe that they can honor their word,” she said matter-of-factly. But he held the cards.

The monstrous man shrugged, “Alright, we’ll just sit here all eternity then, and you’ll never know what you could’ve done for her.”

“I’ll hear you out,” Christa rolled her eyes grumpily.

“So, I’ll return your sister to you safe and sound, if you summon the girl in the picture for me. It is as simple as that,” the Behemoth faces spoke clearly, negotiating his terms.

“That’s even if she’s alive, if she isn’t, and you merely “let” me walk out of here with my life, I’ll dedicate my life to coming back and getting my revenge. I don’t serve people like you, this is utterly fucking senseless,” Christa half raised her head, curious, they’d breached a stalemate, how would the king piece react?

“Well, you could always do it for me as a favor then, rather than feeling as though you’re serving me,” Behemoths spoke.

Her eye twitched A FUCKING FAVOR? He’s lucky I don’t slit his fucking throat...Throats, whatever. “Not a chance, do you even know what happens when you summon someone with just a rough idea of their person? They come out all wrong. Their favorite color was blue? Well now it’s bile yellow and their favorite food is a rock. They’re dumb, or when they aren’t, they’re plainly not the same person.”

“You speak as though from experience, Prime,” he spoke the word as though it was a distasteful sour in his mouth, “Yet, let me assure you, I can give you a lot more than a rough estimate, how do you think I have two heads right now?”

“This is going no-where, I told you I’m not doing it. And so what, you can project your face onto shit? Fuck, you’re the next Karl Jak!” she shouted, “Or maybe the next Ron Burgundy, why don’t they make you fucking famous? But hey, I just want my sister back.”