Entry Post!

[dead_comrade]

His entrance was painful even by sudden teleportation standards. One moment, there was a cool post-apocalyptic evening. The next, there was a flare of heat and fire, and a man flying backwards from about a story off the street. He landed heavily on his back, where he stayed, his arm a white-orange spray of chitin and bone lying over the ground

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[harth_fray]

"You've lost your way," a voice says, "But not 'it', I assure you."

Or so says the boy perched on htat building over there, wearing a leather jacket and a necklace of fingerbones. A strange looking zapgun on his hip.

Hee springs-- and lands after the two-story drop on his feet. He rises from his crouch, and then begins to walk over. "You're a strapping rutter, aren't you? You'll do."

[dead_comrade]

There's a barely imperceptible twitch. It's not the fingers, although he recognises those as probably not animal. It's not the maltreatment of physics. He's just as bad on a usual day. It's the fact that he's just deduced he's facing a very young bioweapon.

His face isn't usually expressive, largely because the scarring has his lip twisted into a permanent sneer. On average, it shows boredom, hatred, bloodlust, sneering, pain, and the occasional thousand-yard stare. Right now, he mostly looks confused. The accent's unfamiliar. "Rutting" is. . . an odd word choice.

"Think you're doing a remake of 'Deliverance?'" He's in bad shape, and he knows it. He's not healing fast, his plaga's sending messages that it wants to stay where it is, and his chest and arm is still hurting him. Not to mention the extensive second-degree burns. But he can handle a lone juvenile BOW. He circles a bit to keep his distance. "Who altered you? Umbrella?"

[harth_fray]

"Umb-- What toy are you spinning?" Harth rolls his eyes. "Clue: You're not in Kansas, anymore, Dorothy."

He stands there, smiling -- all of 100 pounds soaking wet, maybe, and skinny limbs and big blue eyes behind broken, cokebottle glasses. If they engineered him, they certainly picked the least suspicous subject ever to make into a bioweapon.

[dead_comrade]

That's kind of how they do things. They have this really odd sense of humor. They go, "man-eating newts! Good idea!" Anyway, Krauser's not seeing what most people see; he's seeing a small, armed human with very high structural integrity. The smile's lost on him. The big blue eyes just don't register. Red or yellow would, mind.

That tip of his head at the eyeroll was in no way comprehension. It was more to try to shake off the sudden ringing in his ears as hearing came completely back.

"Oh, this isn't where I started out." He's only wearing one glove, on his burned right hand, and that's the hand that flexes now, testing his range of motion. He's going to have a bad grip on the knife. "Same language, though. Same movies." He wanders a little closer, because the juvenile's standing near a broken wall he might want to get behind soon. He does not like the look of that gun. "So you tell me. What do the natives want?"

[harth_fray]

"Depends on which set of natives you're dealing with. IE: There aren't any. At least that I've found," the vampire says, smirking. "THere's us -- and we hunt and we kill. And there's them, and they cower and they cry. I suppose this is when I ask you what you are: Are you a predator, sir, or are you prey?"

He's giving you an option, Krauser. In the immortal words of the Grail Knight: Choose wisely.

[dead_comrade]

Not many people go about asking highly scarred men in cameo and war paint if they're prey. Krauser notes that, looking for what the question really is here.

Weeks ago, he kidnapped an inoffensive young woman off a college campus and pitched her into the arms of a terrorist cult group intent on using her to assassinate her father. Six minutes ago, he was exuberantly trying to gut the man sent to rescue her.

But right now he's listening to a rogue bioweapon talk about killing a harried group. There's really only one aspect that matters to him.

"You kill for what ultimate purpose?"

[harth_fray]

Not many little boys have the strength to possibly remove hat man's heda from his shoulders, either. But as it stands Krauser is being asked by said child, and said child certainly possesses that strength and then some.

"To live. I must eat. The magog must breed and feed. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it, if that's what you're asking," Harth says. "Why does it matter? You come here stinking of blood not your own."

[dead_comrade]

In keeping with the Very Bad Day theme going on for Krauser just now, he's not aware there's quite that much strength hidden in that frail-looking body. He wouldn't be surprised to hear that the juvenile could, say, bench his own weight--bioweapons can be really annoying--but usually smaller creatures are designed for speed.

"So I do." He's amused at that, in his own fashion, the more mobile corner of his mouth lifted. Leon will heal, but he'll always be marked. Krauser knows all about scars.

"I don't care if you enjoy it." Hypocrisy is not one of his faults. "I'm a soldier, not an an animal." Well, not completely animal. Maybe twenty percent? "I don't kill mindlessly."

He's also half-dead on his feet, and he's arguing with a healthy, armed bioweapon. Anyone who didn't have some convictions really would have capitulated by now. He's got the knife in one hand, spinning it idly. He probably thinks he's going to get bullets sent his way shortly, and has it out to throw for a disarm.

[harth_fray]

"We... I assure you... are more kin to animals then soldiers. We don' do this for commands, or for pay. We do i to fill our bellies and watch the young grow. But since you're arguging this... I seee a disturbing thread of humanity there, sir."

He smiles, before he blurs; he disdains the gun and goes right for the open hand SLAP -- a slap that could break bone, dent cars.

"I suppose that tells me you're prey."

[dead_comrade]

Blurred is not new to Krauser. He does it himself. . . ah, when he hasn't been beaten up, suffered a major coronary incident, and then been seen out the door by a tower-levelling explosion. Just now he is unlikely to blur.

What saves him is that he's never once seen the juvenile as anything but a weapon. Most people with disturbing threads of humanity would wait until they knew they were being attacked to harm a fellow being. But as soon as he registers an approach, he falls into a crouch, drops his burned side back a bit, and starts the knife up from below in a gutting sweep.

It's the duck that keeps the side of his head from cracking, that and his heightened ability to take damage. His ear's ringing again, and he staggers, but he's not been rendered helpless. And if the BOW's close enough to slap him, where's the knife ended up?

[harth_fray]

Probably in the boy's guts.

Which is actually less slowing them you think. He does have to grunt once, and he twists-- to try and use the fact that his belly is now it's sheath to take it from the man's hands. This may just end up cutting him open a bit, but -- really, his organs atrophied years ago. Not like they're going to spill out everywhere.

But his hands are busy, too; he brins them up to grab at his face, hook under the jaw, try and force the throat open. He wants to taste to see just how human you are.

Won't HE be surprised.

[dead_comrade]

The twist is helpful, oh yes. Because as soon as he felt the impact, Krauser twisted hard and ripped the knife the other way. The lack of spilling is noted, and with pure disappointment.

It's overridden by every single warning wired into Krauser's brain going off. Two hands at his throat and teeth at noon, as fast as he can register--

He drops straight into "last-ditch survival" mode. His fist comes back in for the ribs, his knee comes up into the wound. The combined force appears to knock the BOW a little off of where he was aiming. There's a hot piercing pain. Those teeth barely missed where the long muscle running from the jaw to the collarbone crossed the carotid artery. Bitten. He's been bitchslapped and bitten.The plaga's his last-ditch defense. It just explodes out along his arm, birthing bony spikes and edges into the night air. He brings it hard across his body like a protective wing. He's probably going to get his neck torn open as he pushes the freak away--unless the BOW didn't like the taste and already's

[harth_fray]

Whateever Harth is, BOW or Vampire or lunatic -- he DOESN'T like the taste. A bite, a suck, and then he is hacking and spiting and gagging. AGFAFNJAKJFNAFD!!!

He springs back, only half-caught on the spikes and blades now jutting from the man's arms, leaving him a little scraped on the side. But he spits and coughs, looking as if he mitht vomit. "You're no demon, but I've never known a a man to taste as bad as you, no matter what he was doing! What sort of pump are you on?"

Hee seems a little cranky now; you didn't taste good. It just spoils his whole vibe.

[dead_comrade]

Krauser flicks the arm closed a little more and back open with a sound like a very sharp pair of shears working. It's a substitute for the speech that's totally deserted him. It's his first good look at Harth, and those yellow eyes and fangs and the mention of demons--

He actually died and now he's in hell.

Harth seems cranky. Good for him. Krauser's enraged.

Leon sent him to hell.Las Plagas is doing its strained best to patch up the bite, which at least wasn't made worse by having to drag those flattened fangs out, but there's still orange blood flowing over his collarbone. His head's aching. His heart's pounding--he thought sending the plaga out was going to kill him. Considering his strength, Harth could probably finish him off with a well-slung pillow

[harth_fray]

That sound Harth makes as he realizes oh god he's trying to blow me up is a gasp. He backpeddals abruptly, leaping with skill at a building-- and then the FLASH happens and his eyes are OPEN.

And hen's trying to keep ahold of his purchae on the roof, scrambling up to throw his glasses away, howling with the agony of burned retinas. "You rutting pump, I'll kill you!"

When he can SEE YOU.

"Rutting-- you've taken my eyes, you toy-eating bastard!"

[dead_comrade]

He thinks he can make the jump onto the roof after him. He would just love to try to get up there and take a shot at spitting the demon.

It's not sanity that intervenes. It's logistics. He's simply too hurt to swing the arm many more times before his heart does something very final. And he wants to hurt the demon much, much more than just a few stabs.

He takes a parting shot with a thrown piece of rubble, but the plaga's curled in his chest cavity again and he's moving away as fast as he can, one hand clapped over his heart.

It's not like he doesn't have one last flashbang grenade. There will be a better time.

. . . unless he meets those 'magog' creatures.

This is just not a good day.