What do you do when you have a giant crocodile afrit on your tail?
Run.
What do you do if having the crocodile afrit follow you means the discovery of your base?
Fight.
What do you do if you can't do either?
Flip your shit.
I let out a defiant scream as I whipped out my can of silver spray paint and sprayed that scaly bastard right in its stupid reptile eyes.
The silver paint hissed and bubbled on the afrit's face, and the thing let out a screech like tearing metal on steroids. It fell back, smashing into the ground with a solid thump, and clawed madly at its eyes with its sickle-like claws. Heh. That would keep him occupied- enough to give me a head start.
"Suck on THAT, Tick-Tock!" I shouted as I stowed away the can and tossed down an Illusion Orb. The delicate glass orb shattered at my feet and exploded into grey mist, and it quickly enveloped me as I sprinted away. Inside of my little mist cloud, I could see, walk, run, etc. as well as I normally could, with the exception of my vision being rather hazy. From the outside, I was effectively invisible to all but the cleverest djinn. The stuff even muffled my footsteps- following me would be like trying to track down a colored grain of sand on a beach.
I sprinted down the street, breathing heavily, adrenaline pumping through my veins as I rounded the street corner and left the roaring, thrashing afrit behind. I gave a swift glance at my watch- fifteen minutes until the guard djinn were given permission to vaporize anything and everything.
Alright, take a left, then a right, stop at Bart's Ice Cream and go into the basement, the portal and the portal guard should be there, I thought furiously as I ran past decrepit storefronts and broken down cars. I couldn't hear the frenzied roaring of the lizard afrit anymore, but that was no comfort to me- almost all demons could outrun a human, no matter how fit.
As I rounded another corner, I spotted the abandoned ice cream shop that housed the portal back to base. There were around three djinn assigned to each portal with one human portal guard to control them. We knew that the djinn would sell us out for a penny, so they were given a strict code of silence and obedience. It worked, but since the goat-legged succubus djinn had been using Hamen's form, I had no high hopes for his well-being. I glanced at my watch- five minutes. Five minutes until the djinn were given permission to blast me to smithereens. After all, they can't take the chance that I was caught, and am really just a djinn in disguise, I thought wryly as I skidded in front of the door of the shop and rammed the rusted lock open, bursting inside onto the cracked tiles-
Something smashed to the ground outside of the store, followed by a gargantuan roar. "HUMAN!" a massive voice bellowed. "I WILL FEAST ON YOUR BONES, AND SEND THE ENTRAILS TO THE CROWS!"
"And you can go fuck yourself!" I shouted back, flipping off the scaly demon as I sprinted around the counter and lifted up the trapdoor to the basement where the portal was at. Damn, forgot that the Illusion orbs don't hide your smell-
A feral snarl and the sounding of breaking glass and metal echoed after me as I skidded down into the basement. The portal was disguised as a particularly mildewed patch of wall on the far side and always gave a mild impulse to walk away from that area to anyone nearby, so that people who didn't specifically know about the portal had a weird feeling that the portal should be avoided. But slumped right next to the wall was-
"Hamen!" I yelped. The man was crumpled next to the portal, a sheet of red pouring from his neck. His eyes were glassy and clouded- he was most definitely, by all possible accounts, dead. That goat-legged asshole-
The sound of breaking glass and frenzied roaring heralded the entry of the afrit, and the wooden trapdoor burst into splinters, a massive, scaly head poking through. The slit-pupiled eye swiveled towards me, and a screeching roar echoed throughout the enclosed cement block. I heard some rather nervously shuffling and clicks coming from around the seemingly empty basement- the portal djinn, probably. I spared a split second to glance at my watch- roughly thirty seconds until everything in this room was vaporized by bored, nervous, and overzealous djinn.
Maybe I could use that to my advantage.
"OI!" I howled, crouched into a leaping position outside of the concealed portal. "THE VULTURES TEAR FLESH FROM THE CORPSES OF YOUR BRETHREN, AND THE JACKALS MAKE DIRT ON THE BLOODIED SAND!" Old timey curses pissed off guys like this the worst (sadly, from personal experience).
The afrit's eye bulged, and it abruptly shifted form into a slender, lithe, three-headed serpent, all three mouths gaping as they lunged towards me, preparing to rip apart the noble Darris Hemmingway.
A microglance at my watch as I hurled myself backwards into the portal. It was 8:05. Right on time.
The world distorted around me, and right before I felt myself leaving behind the brief taste of the Other Place, I saw the triple-headed snake shredded by the volley of spells from the security djinn. One on one, he would've whooped them, but three on one, when the afrit wasn't expecting it- no contest.
I flew out the other side of the portal with the same speed with which I had flown in- that is, like I had made a massive, adrenaline fueled death jump to escape the jaws of an angry afrit. As such, I smashed into a wall with considerable force, and the contents of my backpack rattled as I crashed to the ground, dazed and with agonizing pain setting in to my skull.
"Darris!" cried someone, and massive hands roughly lifted me to my feet. "You're back- we thought- Hamen was supposed to have been back through the portal five minutes ago- Where's Hamen?"
"Aueuaergh," I gargled weakly as Thompson Kaine, my best friend, picked me up and slung him over his shoulder like a sack of flower. Thompson was 6' 2", and built like an ox. However, he was only mildly more intelligent than said ox, but made up for this with steadfast reliability and honesty that could be brutal at times. "He's… deauugh."
"What?" said Thompson, and as his rather confused craggy features stopped spinning around in my head, I ground out, "He's dead."
Thompson let out a deep groan. "Goddammit," he muttered, and as we left the portal room, he yelled, in a voice loud enough to crack glass, "HEY! GET DARRIS TO THE INFIRMARY! HE'S INJURED!"
Some other people rushed over. "What happened?" one of them asked as Thompson handed my rag-doll body over to them. "Why- I thought the djinn guards had already opened up."
"Knocked his head diving through the portal," growled Thompson. "Bloody idiot, don't know what he was-"
And right before everything turned black, I felt a finger tap my shoulder. "We've got you, Darris," said a voice, though it sounded like it was coming from the other end of a dark train tunnel. "We've got you."
Then I passed out.