<strong>Somewhere<br/>The Pits</strong><br/><br/>“Guh.”<br/><br/>Her mouth tasted like shit. Or what she imagined shit might taste like, if somebody dropped it in swamp water. Tamis spat a mouthful of fouled saliva, and dragged herself to what passed for solid ground. God knew what chemicals had just entered her body; she resisted the urge to vomit and tried to focus on what the hell she was supposed to do now.<br/><br/>The pain was intense, but lessening with each passing moment. It was a few minutes, though, before she’d attempt an experimental flex of toes. Her subsequent  scream rang out through the wetlands. Tam decided she wouldn’t be doing that again, in a hurry. But what was the damage, exactly? Her nerves were intact, obviously, and tendons.. no open wounds aside from one deep scratch down her thigh, where shrapnel had ripped a long rent in her functional khaki pants. Lower back. Spinal damage. Perhaps a severely herniated disc?<br/><br/>The Doctor was still pondering over this, her mind in that strangely clear but also very skewed state often caused by shock, when a loud rustle sounded from the sickly brown reeds to her left. Tam froze, flattened down into the mud, as if that’d help her to hide from whatever caused the sound.<br/><br/>Time passed in the resumed and relative silence in which she heard only the hush of wind through the grasses and other ‘natural’ noises. By then the agony in her lower body had abated some, and she risked an attempt to roll over and prop herself up, maybe get a bead on where she might have ended up.<em>In a swamp somewhere, dumbass</em>, she chided herself, wryly. It must have been the wind, blowing the reeds. Though that seemed to make little sense. It didn't matter. Of more concern to her now was the pain. Or, rather, its lack. More precisely, the lack of feeling that had followed it.<br/><br/>Fuck.<em>Paralysis? </em>She was sticking, for the sake of keeping herself calm, to the blown-out disc theory. Temporary damage. Nothing to freak about it. Nossiree.<br/><br/>Then, another rustle; Tam glanced up and a second scream echoed across the boggy terrain. The thing that had poked it snout out of the reeds (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/rcburner/MutantCrocodile.jpg), and was steadily advancing on her now on stubby, armoured legs— wasn’t exactly an alligator. But ‘alligator’ was obviously a large portion of the ingredients that’d gone into its making.<br/><br/>There was nothing for her to do but freeze and pray it went away. Tam held her breath, not daring to even allow her ribs that motion when the vile creature crawled sinuously closer, lifted its head, swaying as if to catch her scent. It was close enough for her to discern that it had no eyes to speak of, only two rudimentary pits where eyes should have been on a head that seemed to extend from a larger replica of itself, giving the impression of an alligator not yet completely devoured, tail-first, by another.<br/><br/><em>Fuck. Fuckfuck. </em>The beast slithered nearer still, it maw hanging open to catch whiff of an easy meal. To Tam’s unending relief it turned away suddenly, drawn to the pilot’s dismembered body.<em>What. The fuck. </em>Her scientist’s mind immediately started unravel the mystery of how this…<em> thing</em>… happened to exist at all. It was like nothing produced at the Labs. Not since….<br/><br/>“Steinman.” The word was a hiss on her lips, involuntary, which unfortunately caught the monstrous creature’s attention again.<em>Oh, shit. Oshitoshitoshito... </em><br/><br/>Tam scrambled back, knowing even as she did so there was no hope for escape. The 'gator-thing was too quick, too well-adapted to the swamp and anyway… her fucking legs weren’t working. Everything slowed down, in a sort of temporal fugue. Tam had actually researched that phenomenon several years ago; it was caused by a neural…<br/><br/>Her panicked mental ramblings were interrupted by another loud crash, this time from beyond a small hillock that rose from the morass to the west, the bank of which she lay on now. Followed by another.. and another. The alligator-thing clearly had a heightened sensitivity to sound, letting out a reptilian hiss of warning to the apparent intruder on its leisurely meal.<br/><br/>Over the soft rise of the earthen mound appeared a head so deformed it hardly resembled as a head so much as a rotting pumpkin slashed or gouged in a design that only loosely resembled a face. A second creature… (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/rcburner/RosePetalGluttonDemon.jpg) Huge, and freakish, it lumbered over the hill in apelike manner, knuckles planting to squelchy earth as it hoisted itself up and over the top, making its descent toward Tam and the mutant ‘gator at a speed belied by its sheer bulk.<br/><br/>The ‘gator had time for one more hiss, its unfeasibly wide maw stretching to its fullest, revealing rows of teeth more suited to the mouth of a shark; and one last lash of its powerful tail that sent up a spray of mud and sour water, before the giant… whatever-it-was… was upon it.<br/><br/>The second monster didn’t seem affected by those jaws crunching down on its forearm. It merely lifted its limb, ‘gator and all, and shook the lot downward in a single, brutal motion.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: andale mono;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;"><em>---crack!---</em></span></span><br/><br/>The great lizard writhed, its back broken, jaws snapping insanely. But it wasn’t going anywhere; much like Tam herself, who had watched the whole event with a vague sense of disbelief as though this was all just a very bad dream from which she might - hopefully - awaken soon. The 'gator's incapacity made it easy for her colossal and apparent saviour to crush the other monster's ugly skull in, with a single swing of its gigantic, balled fist.<br/><br/>The 'giant' turned to the Doctor then, its ruin of a face gaping stupidly. Somehow, it was both more and less terrifying than the thing it had just killed, its plantlike physiology now more apparent to Tam.<em>Plantlike. </em>Steinman.<br/><br/>The GenMod – some of the matter from which it sprang had once owned a human name, one she might have recognised— stumped closer, bending awkwardly to peer at the wounded woman. A sappy dribble of saliva drooled from its twisted lips and, as the Doctor was making her peace with any passing deity that’d listen for the second time that day, it lowered a limb better suited to a tree than an animal and scooped her up.<br/><br/>Pressed to the disgustingly fibrous-textured torso of the creature, a very scared and half-insensate Tam was taken with it as it strode off with an air of determination despite the oncoming boom of missiles, across The Pits.<br/><br/><br/><div align="center"><strong>___________________________</strong></div><br/><br/><br/><strong>Pickler’s House of Pleasure<br/>New Olympus</strong><br/><br/>Bambi’s eyes were huge, dark mirrors filled with fear; her nostrils distended widely. The Fat Man was gone – thud! –  the cages were all open— and there was nobody to tell them what to do. There was a moment when panic overtook the dim-witted faun, where it seemed best just to stand still and not-breathe, maybe then the fear would go away….<br/><br/>She was hooked by a feline hand and, before she could register who’d grabbed her,  tugged along a dim-lit corridor, out into the street. So much light… the dazzled creature stopped again, blinking. Where was Dionys? But before she could locate her friend, it dawned on her that she was out in the open, with two beings who smelled a lot like danger.<br/><br/>A rifle-crack shattered the air. Bambi opened her mouth in another silent scream, and ran… even after years of being cramped in a cage, her faun’s legs were swift, and at times she grazed her humanoid palms on concrete paving when she dropped to all fours to take a corner that was soon pocked with bullet-holes in their wake.<br/><br/>Cats or no, Bambi took care to keep the little group close as they bolted through New Olympus’ recreation district. She was a herd beast, after all. Instinct was a powerful thing, and where Dionys went, so did she.<br/><br/>While the voices had faded off entirely for the others, there was still a soft murmuring in the back of Bambi’s damaged brain, a desperate sound, a call that unravelled her animal mind and pulsed with the soft cooing of a doe to her little ones, then an alarm— predators! None of which was any help to the halting and terrified faun, or to her friends, in the immediacy of trying to escape from a city where everyone wanted them dead.<br/><br/><br/><div align="center"><strong>___________________________</strong></div><br/><br/><strong>Officer's AirPad<br/>SecCom Building<br/>New Olympus</strong><br/><br/>The hoverjet whined, its engines firing. Beside the pilot, Gordon Frank shouted a final round of orders through the open hatch. His features may as well have been chiselled from stone for all the grimness they wore.<br/><br/>“Clear.” The pilot flipped a switch, glanced to Gordon, whom he wasn’t keen to speak to.<br/><br/>The SecCom chief gave him a curt nod for reply. Things had truly gone pear-shaped in Olympus in the past couple of hours, but all the reports coming from Greentown and The Pits indicated it was a whole lot worse out there. And out there… that was where Tamis Dunsany was. Her phone was not showing up on scanners. Gordon had no choice but to order the strike, containment was of the highest priority. But Tam..<br/><br/>If he’d killed her…The plug in his ear buzzed faintly.<br/><br/>“What.”<br/><br/><em>“Garrick Five, Commander…. you read me?”</em><br/><br/>“For fuck’s sake, Henry, cut out the army shit. Any sign of her yet?”<br/><br/><em>“None, sir. Tracer says…. a bar The Pits, then over … swamp. But the signals … too much interf… see the things walking around out… blow it all to hell, sir.”</em><br/><br/>The crackling stopped, along with the voice.<br/><br/>“Fuck.”<br/><br/>They were already at the city limits, just a contrail streak in the sky by the time anyone thought to glance up at the thin whine the jet made as it passed overhead. He’d be in The Pits in ten minutes. About the time they estimated the strike to end. Tam was no idiot. She’d have found somewhere to hide.<br/><br/>And even if it was the hell-broken-loose they said it was, he was damned well going to find her. Gordon had a lot of time to make up for, with Doctor Tamis Dunsany. A lot of time, and a lot of other things, as well.<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>