Shroom's Shorts 2: An Audience With Death
Posted: 2005-11-27 08:18pm
Note. This ultraviolent romp is told in the POV of a lizard-alien.
____________________________________
- November 23, 2567 -
- Kellson City, Sovereignty fringe world Kellson Prime -
____________________________________
I was in a bar, sitting on a stool by the counter, with my tail tucked in so that no one could trip on it, drinking a moderately priced drink, Aurigan UberLager, I think. It wasn’t bad, far from it in fact, but I drank it only because the impoverished establishment, ran by humans whose underdeveloped sense of taste couldn’t tell the difference between Ssh’ksslaksaleshkish and rotten Aduk eggs, didn’t have any of the fine liquor distributed by the monasteries back at Zigonia.
I was alone. Well, not really. There was a bartender, a slim purple-haired human female, and there were at least a dozen other patrons. I couldn’t really count how many there were, I was too busy with my UberLager. It was that much better than the mildly corrosive Tarsonian Ale everyone else was guzzling.
Humans were odd in that way. But what was about to transpire, I really wasn’t expecting. I pray to the entire Pantheon for it to never happen again in my vicinity. I’m supposed to be a holyman, for star’s sake!
Anyway, back to the thing that was going to happen…
As I ran my fingers over my mohawk of blue feathers, the saloon doors slammed open and this man, a human far larger and far more dangerous-looking than anyone I’ve ever seen, entered the establishment.
He was clad in a leather jacket and had black sunglasses (it was at night, why would anyone wear shades?), but what I immediately noticed was the piece of bloody cloth that bandaged his left arm. That, and the nasty cuts that covered his face. As he walked, I detected a barely perceptible limp that no human could have discerned.
Nevertheless, he looked very dangerous. His body language, blood-soaked clothing and holstered sidearm told me that much.
A handful of patrons also noticed the big man’s entrance and they stood up, abandoning their bottles of Tarsonian Ale.
The big man went to the nearest one, a skinny fellow in a suit, and said: “Here’s your money back. Tell the Baron I quit.”
With a flick of his wrist, the cred card sliced through the air and bounced off the skinny suit man’s chest. It cluttered on the floor.
The man looked down at the card and slowly shook his head disappointedly.
“Bob, Bob, Bob…” the man said menacingly as the rest of his gang surrounded the big man named Bob (that name sounded familiar…). Each member of the posse was obviously a goon, hired muscle nearly as big and as brawny as Bob, probably just as heavily armed. “Is this gonna be how it is, ‘mate? Are you mental? Nobody quits on the Baron. Not the Duke of Death, not no one-”
“Wrong,” Bob, the Duke of Death (I knew his name sounded familiar!), said coldly, and I was amazed at the lightning fast speed which he brought his injured arm up to bear on the goon right beside him. The goon was just as surprised, as was everyone else, when something on the Duke’s forearm erupted with a double-shotgun blast that sent the goon flying backwards with two massive holes on his chest.
Before anyone, including I, knew what was going on, the Duke drew his sidearm, a Colt pistol, and pointed it at the skinny suited man’s forehead. The man opened his mouth to gape just as his brains started flying out the back of his head, then he fell on the ground. He was rather dead.
Finally, the rest of the thugs realized what was going on (the first goon and the skinny man were killed in under a second) and they began upholstering their own sidearms. But they were too late, the Duke of Death was already blasting away. A muscleman fell to the ground with a bullet in his eye while the Duke pistol-whipped the shotgun off another’s hands. The shotgun fell to the ground and discharged a round, a depleted uranium slug that went between the Duke’s legs and amputated the foot off another goon, who fell just as the Duke shot the shotgunner in the throat.
The shotgunner collapsed and the Duke grabbed his dead corpse (was it dead? Perhaps it was still gurgling) to shield himself from a multi-laser wielding gunman just three feet in front of him. As the shotgunner’s beer gut was vaporized into high-cholesterol steam, the Duke stepped back and stomped the hand of the writhing amputee, breaking his gun-hand’s fingers, while he fired three shots at the las-gunner in front of him. They missed, despite the firefight’s extremely close range, and one of the shots ricocheted and smashed my bottle of UberLager into glassy shards.
As I got another bottle of UberLager, the Duke lifted the shotgunner’s still-gurgling corpse to block the laser beams bound for his head, only to have the shotgunner’s cranium blown outwards by a steam explosion. Not bothered by the sizzling brain-matter smearing his raybans, the Duke stuck his gun through the shotgunner’s armpits (he was holding the shotgunner with his wounded arm) and fired blindly. The laser-gunman dropped to the floor, and with that, the Duke finally released the shotgunner’s faceless corpse.
Then, with a chilling calm, the Duke walked over to the laser-gunman, who only had his abdomen perforated, and emptied a round into his head. Then he walked over to the amputee (the one whose fingers he stomped on) who was struggling to grab a nearby pistol. The Duke shot his good hand, shot it twice, and said: “Tell your boss to leave me alone, or else the next fat fuck I’ll use as a human shield will be him.”
He said this calmly, as if telling the bleeding, crying amputee what to buy from the grocery store. But then, he looked at his left leg, which was the source of his limp, and noticed that it was bleeding rather profusely. He frowned, looked back at the amputee and emptied his pistol at him. “Fuck that.”
Then he walked to the counter, sat right next to me, and said to the purple-haired bartender: “Tarsonian Ale. In a clean glass, please.”
____________________________________
- November 23, 2567 -
- Kellson City, Sovereignty fringe world Kellson Prime -
____________________________________
I was in a bar, sitting on a stool by the counter, with my tail tucked in so that no one could trip on it, drinking a moderately priced drink, Aurigan UberLager, I think. It wasn’t bad, far from it in fact, but I drank it only because the impoverished establishment, ran by humans whose underdeveloped sense of taste couldn’t tell the difference between Ssh’ksslaksaleshkish and rotten Aduk eggs, didn’t have any of the fine liquor distributed by the monasteries back at Zigonia.
I was alone. Well, not really. There was a bartender, a slim purple-haired human female, and there were at least a dozen other patrons. I couldn’t really count how many there were, I was too busy with my UberLager. It was that much better than the mildly corrosive Tarsonian Ale everyone else was guzzling.
Humans were odd in that way. But what was about to transpire, I really wasn’t expecting. I pray to the entire Pantheon for it to never happen again in my vicinity. I’m supposed to be a holyman, for star’s sake!
Anyway, back to the thing that was going to happen…
As I ran my fingers over my mohawk of blue feathers, the saloon doors slammed open and this man, a human far larger and far more dangerous-looking than anyone I’ve ever seen, entered the establishment.
He was clad in a leather jacket and had black sunglasses (it was at night, why would anyone wear shades?), but what I immediately noticed was the piece of bloody cloth that bandaged his left arm. That, and the nasty cuts that covered his face. As he walked, I detected a barely perceptible limp that no human could have discerned.
Nevertheless, he looked very dangerous. His body language, blood-soaked clothing and holstered sidearm told me that much.
A handful of patrons also noticed the big man’s entrance and they stood up, abandoning their bottles of Tarsonian Ale.
The big man went to the nearest one, a skinny fellow in a suit, and said: “Here’s your money back. Tell the Baron I quit.”
With a flick of his wrist, the cred card sliced through the air and bounced off the skinny suit man’s chest. It cluttered on the floor.
The man looked down at the card and slowly shook his head disappointedly.
“Bob, Bob, Bob…” the man said menacingly as the rest of his gang surrounded the big man named Bob (that name sounded familiar…). Each member of the posse was obviously a goon, hired muscle nearly as big and as brawny as Bob, probably just as heavily armed. “Is this gonna be how it is, ‘mate? Are you mental? Nobody quits on the Baron. Not the Duke of Death, not no one-”
“Wrong,” Bob, the Duke of Death (I knew his name sounded familiar!), said coldly, and I was amazed at the lightning fast speed which he brought his injured arm up to bear on the goon right beside him. The goon was just as surprised, as was everyone else, when something on the Duke’s forearm erupted with a double-shotgun blast that sent the goon flying backwards with two massive holes on his chest.
Before anyone, including I, knew what was going on, the Duke drew his sidearm, a Colt pistol, and pointed it at the skinny suited man’s forehead. The man opened his mouth to gape just as his brains started flying out the back of his head, then he fell on the ground. He was rather dead.
Finally, the rest of the thugs realized what was going on (the first goon and the skinny man were killed in under a second) and they began upholstering their own sidearms. But they were too late, the Duke of Death was already blasting away. A muscleman fell to the ground with a bullet in his eye while the Duke pistol-whipped the shotgun off another’s hands. The shotgun fell to the ground and discharged a round, a depleted uranium slug that went between the Duke’s legs and amputated the foot off another goon, who fell just as the Duke shot the shotgunner in the throat.
The shotgunner collapsed and the Duke grabbed his dead corpse (was it dead? Perhaps it was still gurgling) to shield himself from a multi-laser wielding gunman just three feet in front of him. As the shotgunner’s beer gut was vaporized into high-cholesterol steam, the Duke stepped back and stomped the hand of the writhing amputee, breaking his gun-hand’s fingers, while he fired three shots at the las-gunner in front of him. They missed, despite the firefight’s extremely close range, and one of the shots ricocheted and smashed my bottle of UberLager into glassy shards.
As I got another bottle of UberLager, the Duke lifted the shotgunner’s still-gurgling corpse to block the laser beams bound for his head, only to have the shotgunner’s cranium blown outwards by a steam explosion. Not bothered by the sizzling brain-matter smearing his raybans, the Duke stuck his gun through the shotgunner’s armpits (he was holding the shotgunner with his wounded arm) and fired blindly. The laser-gunman dropped to the floor, and with that, the Duke finally released the shotgunner’s faceless corpse.
Then, with a chilling calm, the Duke walked over to the laser-gunman, who only had his abdomen perforated, and emptied a round into his head. Then he walked over to the amputee (the one whose fingers he stomped on) who was struggling to grab a nearby pistol. The Duke shot his good hand, shot it twice, and said: “Tell your boss to leave me alone, or else the next fat fuck I’ll use as a human shield will be him.”
He said this calmly, as if telling the bleeding, crying amputee what to buy from the grocery store. But then, he looked at his left leg, which was the source of his limp, and noticed that it was bleeding rather profusely. He frowned, looked back at the amputee and emptied his pistol at him. “Fuck that.”
Then he walked to the counter, sat right next to me, and said to the purple-haired bartender: “Tarsonian Ale. In a clean glass, please.”