Even Outlaws have their Honor (Narrative)
Name(s): Mal, an NPC
Location: 98 Riverside Drive
Time: Middle of the day
Rating: PG-13 for violence against crabs and captains
Content Mal goes out for a routine supply run. It is anything but routine.
Standing in the middle of a room as the world shattered around him, empty gun in one hand, and a little girl tucked under the other, dead crabs all around him, Mal reflected that the day had started off so well.
That should have been his first warning.
He’d gone out looking for some supplies for Kaylee’s latest project, trying to forget the whole mess in the bar, well, what little he could remember of it anyway. After a couple hours of looking he’d had no luck and was about to turn back when he heard a cry for help coming from a rickety looking structure on the side of the street. As he had countless times before, Mal debated just turning around and walking away, and as he had countless times before he turned and instead headed right into the fray.
Rushing to the front of the building, Mal found the entrance blocked by rubble. Cursing violently, he twisted and jumped the railing of the steps to the ground below.
One of the basement windows was broken, and his foot took only moments to clear out the rest of the glass. Slipping through the opening, glittering shards sticking to his coat, Mal was moving as soon as his feet hit the floor, stagnant water sloshing around his boots and the smell of decay all present. Navigating through the rubble of the room, Mal tore the apartment door open, only to come face to face with one of the smaller crabs that had been clinging to the other side of the door. The thing hissed at him, its alien jaws an inch from his face.
Flipping his revolver in his hand, Mal swung it around and cracked the creature’s jaw, knocking it clean off the door. The thing seemed dazed for a moment, before Mal slammed the gun down again and crushed its skull. “I do hate it when someone tries to force an outdated model on me.”
Moving through the halls, he followed the cries for help, jumping over debris. He was getting close, his breath sharp and controlled, when suddenly the screaming stopped. Hitting the third floor at a run, Mal hauled it down the hallway and found to door leading to the room he thought he’d been hearing the screams from. It looked like it had been clawed open.
Feeling a surge of an emotion he had long hoped was dead and gone inside him; Mal shoved through the remains of the door and readied his weapon. His eyes took in the apartment, a fairly large affair with a long hallway leading to a cluster of rooms at the back, and doors off to either side. One door just by the entrance had also been torn into, and he could hear faint whimpers coming from inside, along with the hissing and snapping jaws of several crabs. Pausing for a second, Mal listened to roughly where the sounds were coming from, then bending low he hurled himself through the remains of the door, his revolver sweeping what turned out to be a kitchen. There were two massive crabs gathered around the refrigerator, and another hiding under the table, roughly where he predicted them to be.
In five seconds there were three gun shots, each one finding a crab. The first had been standing on its hind legs, claws almost reaching the top of the appliance, and the bullet splattered its brains over the white doors. The second had been lower, the bullet digging into its side and causing it to collapse thrashing to the ground. The third crab had an extra second to react, and was already in mid-leap when Mal’s shot went straight down its throat. Unfortunately the bullet wasn’t enough to offset the creature’s momentum, and suddenly Mal has several hundred pounds of super crab slamming into him, knocking the captain off his feet.
Hitting the wall opposite the kitchen, Mal felt sparks erupt behind his eyeballs, pain flaring up from where skull had met drywall. His body meanwhile reacted on pure instinct, twisting to hurl the massive creature off of him. Luckily it had been dead before it had even hit him, so aside from the nasty lump he was fine.
Rubbing his skull, Mal waited for the ringing in his ears to clear. It was a second or two before he realized that the fourth inhabitant of the kitchen was now wailing, having seemingly recovered from the shock of the crabs attack and the deafening sound of Mal’s own gunshots. Climbing to his feet, Mal finally saw the small child; she couldn’t be older than eight, who had wedged herself in between the top of the fridge and the ceiling. She was small and filthy, with the look of someone who hadn’t had a proper meal in a while. Tears smeared the dirt that had caked itself onto her face, her face twisted and red as the reality of what had just happened came home to her. Or maybe it was just relief that her nightmare was over, although Mal would have contested that possibility, do to the fact that they were far from safe just yet.
Moving over to the still twitching crab, Mal glanced over at the girl, at a loss for how to comfort her. “Hey,” he said, voice uncertain, “Hey now, no time for tears. Look, if you could just…SHUT UP!” The girl was silent in an instant, wide eyes locked on Mal. Feeling suddenly guilty in the awkward silence of the room, the captain scratched the back of his head and said, “Uh, sorry about that Mei-mei, but I need you to listen to me, okay? I’m gonna get ya out of here, but I need your help. You wanna get out of here, right?”
The girl stared at him another moment, before offering up a miserable nod.
“Good, me to, now for starters, I can’t do a proper rescue without knowing your name. I’m Cap’n Reynolds, but you can call me Mal. That’s what all my friends call me. What’s your name?”
Another pause, then a small voice, thick from disuse, replied, “S-Sally.”
“That there’s a good name Sally. Now, what I want you to do is to squeeze your eyes real tight, and cover your ears. Can you do that for me?”
With another hesitant nod, Sally squeezed her bloodshot eyes shut and covered her ears. Once she did, Mal moved over to the twitching crab and slammed his boot down onto its head. Drawing his knife, he leaned in and slammed it into the creature’s head, twisting it until the thing stopped moving. Quickly cleaning and putting away the weapon, Mal stood and tapped the little girl on the shoulder, making sure to stand between her and the dead crab. “Okay Sally, here’s the deal. I’m gonna need your help getting out of here, which means your part of my crew, and that means I’m your captain. That means you gotta follow my orders, okay?” He barely waited for her nod this time before going on. “Alright then, now, my first order is for you to keep your eyes squeezed nice and tight, so hop to it.”
Once Sally’s eyes were closed again, Mal reached up and managed to slowly pry her out of the spot she’d managed to wedge herself into. The second she was free the little girl launched forward and threw her arms around Mal’s neck, almost knocking him over. Stumbling, Mal brought up one arm to hold onto the wriggling bundle that had latched herself to him, barely avoiding tripping over dead crab.
“Good job Sally, now, I got two more orders for ya that you gotta follow no matter what. First is don’t let got, and second is don’t open your eyes till I say so. You got all that?”
“Y-yes captain,” replied a small voice, muffled by the front of his coat.
“Good girl.” Turning, Mal made his way to the kitchen’s entrance, and stepped out to find five massive crabs exiting the bedroom, their jaws stained with dried blood. Swearing rather loudly in Chinese, not bothering to make sure the girl wasn’t bilingual; Mal raised his gun and fired three shots into the first two crabs, the gun’s roar covering Sally’s screams of terror. The monsters went down in a thrashing heap, blocking their comrades from advancing any further for the moment. Then Mal heard the worst possible sound in the world; the sound of his gun clicking empty.
Mal’s swears became, if possible, more colorful as he turned and tore down the hall, the crabs in hot pursuit. Sliding out the doorway, he hit wall outside the apartment, bounced off, and kept running. The first crab out slammed in head first and flailed backwards, the second jumping over it and running along the wall, while the third took a sharp turn and tore after the two humans.
His attention divided between the crabs behind him, the girl clinging to him, and dodging the debris in front of him, Mal could be forgiven for failing to notice just how decayed this section of the hallway was. Well, failing to notice it right up until he felt the floorboards beneath sag dangerously, and a second after that give out entirely. His foot finding nothing but air, Mal tried to stop, only for the crabs to catch up to him. The weight of a full grown man and three massive crabs proved too much for the battered building to take, and suddenly the entire floor gave way.
Spinning in midair, Mal hit the floor hard, absorbing the impact and holding tight to Sally. He didn’t even have a moment to recover before the three crabs and what was left of the floor slammed down around him. All he could do was twist to impose himself between the child and everything falling on him, rotting wood, wire, and drywall raining down on him.
It turned out the floor under them was about as stable as the one they had just been standing on, and there was a almost comical pause as the floor creaked, man and crab exchanging looks that could almost be described as disbelieving. Then the floor gave out again.
Suddenly Mal found himself back in the basement, his head spinning, and the girl in his arms disturbingly quiet. He tried to shake her, but his body didn’t seem to want to move, so Mal did what he did every time part of his crew refused to listen, he shouted it into doing what he damn well told it to do in the first place!
Moving slowly, he felt Sally shift in his arms, her body shivering from the shock she had just experienced. A sudden surge of euphoric relief flooded through Mal, and it was at that exact moment one of the crabs chose to strike. Massive jaws slammed down on Mal’s leg, piercing so deeply into it that if felt like they would sever his leg in two. He had to let go of Sally as his hand flailed for anything to defend himself. Finally his fingers closed on a piece of sharp metal, and with a roar he brought it down on the thing’s head. There was a moment where it kept grinding its jaws, sending agony through Mal, before suddenly the pressure on his leg was released.
The next few seconds were a jumble of pain, and sound, and motion. He heard a distant rumbling as the building shook around him, pieces of the ceiling falling towards him. He heard the other crabs shrieking their rage, thrashing about. Most of all, however, he felt tiny hands close around his, tugging him towards a metal door. They made it inside just as the building came down around them, slamming the door shut against the monsters steps behind them. There was a deafening roar, one that rivaled the monster, and then the single light bulb in the room flickered and died, plunging it into darkness.
Of course, Mal didn’t know this, having already surrendered to his pain, and the bliss of unconsciousness.
Location: 98 Riverside Drive
Time: Middle of the day
Rating: PG-13 for violence against crabs and captains
Content Mal goes out for a routine supply run. It is anything but routine.
Standing in the middle of a room as the world shattered around him, empty gun in one hand, and a little girl tucked under the other, dead crabs all around him, Mal reflected that the day had started off so well.
That should have been his first warning.
He’d gone out looking for some supplies for Kaylee’s latest project, trying to forget the whole mess in the bar, well, what little he could remember of it anyway. After a couple hours of looking he’d had no luck and was about to turn back when he heard a cry for help coming from a rickety looking structure on the side of the street. As he had countless times before, Mal debated just turning around and walking away, and as he had countless times before he turned and instead headed right into the fray.
Rushing to the front of the building, Mal found the entrance blocked by rubble. Cursing violently, he twisted and jumped the railing of the steps to the ground below.
One of the basement windows was broken, and his foot took only moments to clear out the rest of the glass. Slipping through the opening, glittering shards sticking to his coat, Mal was moving as soon as his feet hit the floor, stagnant water sloshing around his boots and the smell of decay all present. Navigating through the rubble of the room, Mal tore the apartment door open, only to come face to face with one of the smaller crabs that had been clinging to the other side of the door. The thing hissed at him, its alien jaws an inch from his face.
Flipping his revolver in his hand, Mal swung it around and cracked the creature’s jaw, knocking it clean off the door. The thing seemed dazed for a moment, before Mal slammed the gun down again and crushed its skull. “I do hate it when someone tries to force an outdated model on me.”
Moving through the halls, he followed the cries for help, jumping over debris. He was getting close, his breath sharp and controlled, when suddenly the screaming stopped. Hitting the third floor at a run, Mal hauled it down the hallway and found to door leading to the room he thought he’d been hearing the screams from. It looked like it had been clawed open.
Feeling a surge of an emotion he had long hoped was dead and gone inside him; Mal shoved through the remains of the door and readied his weapon. His eyes took in the apartment, a fairly large affair with a long hallway leading to a cluster of rooms at the back, and doors off to either side. One door just by the entrance had also been torn into, and he could hear faint whimpers coming from inside, along with the hissing and snapping jaws of several crabs. Pausing for a second, Mal listened to roughly where the sounds were coming from, then bending low he hurled himself through the remains of the door, his revolver sweeping what turned out to be a kitchen. There were two massive crabs gathered around the refrigerator, and another hiding under the table, roughly where he predicted them to be.
In five seconds there were three gun shots, each one finding a crab. The first had been standing on its hind legs, claws almost reaching the top of the appliance, and the bullet splattered its brains over the white doors. The second had been lower, the bullet digging into its side and causing it to collapse thrashing to the ground. The third crab had an extra second to react, and was already in mid-leap when Mal’s shot went straight down its throat. Unfortunately the bullet wasn’t enough to offset the creature’s momentum, and suddenly Mal has several hundred pounds of super crab slamming into him, knocking the captain off his feet.
Hitting the wall opposite the kitchen, Mal felt sparks erupt behind his eyeballs, pain flaring up from where skull had met drywall. His body meanwhile reacted on pure instinct, twisting to hurl the massive creature off of him. Luckily it had been dead before it had even hit him, so aside from the nasty lump he was fine.
Rubbing his skull, Mal waited for the ringing in his ears to clear. It was a second or two before he realized that the fourth inhabitant of the kitchen was now wailing, having seemingly recovered from the shock of the crabs attack and the deafening sound of Mal’s own gunshots. Climbing to his feet, Mal finally saw the small child; she couldn’t be older than eight, who had wedged herself in between the top of the fridge and the ceiling. She was small and filthy, with the look of someone who hadn’t had a proper meal in a while. Tears smeared the dirt that had caked itself onto her face, her face twisted and red as the reality of what had just happened came home to her. Or maybe it was just relief that her nightmare was over, although Mal would have contested that possibility, do to the fact that they were far from safe just yet.
Moving over to the still twitching crab, Mal glanced over at the girl, at a loss for how to comfort her. “Hey,” he said, voice uncertain, “Hey now, no time for tears. Look, if you could just…SHUT UP!” The girl was silent in an instant, wide eyes locked on Mal. Feeling suddenly guilty in the awkward silence of the room, the captain scratched the back of his head and said, “Uh, sorry about that Mei-mei, but I need you to listen to me, okay? I’m gonna get ya out of here, but I need your help. You wanna get out of here, right?”
The girl stared at him another moment, before offering up a miserable nod.
“Good, me to, now for starters, I can’t do a proper rescue without knowing your name. I’m Cap’n Reynolds, but you can call me Mal. That’s what all my friends call me. What’s your name?”
Another pause, then a small voice, thick from disuse, replied, “S-Sally.”
“That there’s a good name Sally. Now, what I want you to do is to squeeze your eyes real tight, and cover your ears. Can you do that for me?”
With another hesitant nod, Sally squeezed her bloodshot eyes shut and covered her ears. Once she did, Mal moved over to the twitching crab and slammed his boot down onto its head. Drawing his knife, he leaned in and slammed it into the creature’s head, twisting it until the thing stopped moving. Quickly cleaning and putting away the weapon, Mal stood and tapped the little girl on the shoulder, making sure to stand between her and the dead crab. “Okay Sally, here’s the deal. I’m gonna need your help getting out of here, which means your part of my crew, and that means I’m your captain. That means you gotta follow my orders, okay?” He barely waited for her nod this time before going on. “Alright then, now, my first order is for you to keep your eyes squeezed nice and tight, so hop to it.”
Once Sally’s eyes were closed again, Mal reached up and managed to slowly pry her out of the spot she’d managed to wedge herself into. The second she was free the little girl launched forward and threw her arms around Mal’s neck, almost knocking him over. Stumbling, Mal brought up one arm to hold onto the wriggling bundle that had latched herself to him, barely avoiding tripping over dead crab.
“Good job Sally, now, I got two more orders for ya that you gotta follow no matter what. First is don’t let got, and second is don’t open your eyes till I say so. You got all that?”
“Y-yes captain,” replied a small voice, muffled by the front of his coat.
“Good girl.” Turning, Mal made his way to the kitchen’s entrance, and stepped out to find five massive crabs exiting the bedroom, their jaws stained with dried blood. Swearing rather loudly in Chinese, not bothering to make sure the girl wasn’t bilingual; Mal raised his gun and fired three shots into the first two crabs, the gun’s roar covering Sally’s screams of terror. The monsters went down in a thrashing heap, blocking their comrades from advancing any further for the moment. Then Mal heard the worst possible sound in the world; the sound of his gun clicking empty.
Mal’s swears became, if possible, more colorful as he turned and tore down the hall, the crabs in hot pursuit. Sliding out the doorway, he hit wall outside the apartment, bounced off, and kept running. The first crab out slammed in head first and flailed backwards, the second jumping over it and running along the wall, while the third took a sharp turn and tore after the two humans.
His attention divided between the crabs behind him, the girl clinging to him, and dodging the debris in front of him, Mal could be forgiven for failing to notice just how decayed this section of the hallway was. Well, failing to notice it right up until he felt the floorboards beneath sag dangerously, and a second after that give out entirely. His foot finding nothing but air, Mal tried to stop, only for the crabs to catch up to him. The weight of a full grown man and three massive crabs proved too much for the battered building to take, and suddenly the entire floor gave way.
Spinning in midair, Mal hit the floor hard, absorbing the impact and holding tight to Sally. He didn’t even have a moment to recover before the three crabs and what was left of the floor slammed down around him. All he could do was twist to impose himself between the child and everything falling on him, rotting wood, wire, and drywall raining down on him.
It turned out the floor under them was about as stable as the one they had just been standing on, and there was a almost comical pause as the floor creaked, man and crab exchanging looks that could almost be described as disbelieving. Then the floor gave out again.
Suddenly Mal found himself back in the basement, his head spinning, and the girl in his arms disturbingly quiet. He tried to shake her, but his body didn’t seem to want to move, so Mal did what he did every time part of his crew refused to listen, he shouted it into doing what he damn well told it to do in the first place!
Moving slowly, he felt Sally shift in his arms, her body shivering from the shock she had just experienced. A sudden surge of euphoric relief flooded through Mal, and it was at that exact moment one of the crabs chose to strike. Massive jaws slammed down on Mal’s leg, piercing so deeply into it that if felt like they would sever his leg in two. He had to let go of Sally as his hand flailed for anything to defend himself. Finally his fingers closed on a piece of sharp metal, and with a roar he brought it down on the thing’s head. There was a moment where it kept grinding its jaws, sending agony through Mal, before suddenly the pressure on his leg was released.
The next few seconds were a jumble of pain, and sound, and motion. He heard a distant rumbling as the building shook around him, pieces of the ceiling falling towards him. He heard the other crabs shrieking their rage, thrashing about. Most of all, however, he felt tiny hands close around his, tugging him towards a metal door. They made it inside just as the building came down around them, slamming the door shut against the monsters steps behind them. There was a deafening roar, one that rivaled the monster, and then the single light bulb in the room flickered and died, plunging it into darkness.
Of course, Mal didn’t know this, having already surrendered to his pain, and the bliss of unconsciousness.