Britz-Hey y'all, lets all hope that I can write this S.O.B faster than the last one eh?
Disclaimer-You know the deal, though should pop in the name 'Tak' is also from Desperation by Stephen King, although anyone that has read the book will think I'm b.s.ing I swear I came up with The One/Tak's abilities BEFORE I thought of the name Tak and then realised I how similar the abilities were, really, I swear on this Bible, okay so it's really a 'The Sims' instruction booklet, so sue me.
~The Continuing Continued~
(I've really, really got to stop saying that)
Chapter Eighteen: Tobias
"Oh sh.." The One said and the enormous beam of red light blasted across the room, I was fully hawk now and despite being far away from the laser path I felt the roll of heat from it's wake, it was so hot I think it singed my feathers from across the room.
The beam hit The One right in his washboard abs and engulfed him; it looked like something from a bad Japanese cartoon
There was a roaring explosion and I was blinded by the light, once I could see again there was still the explosion image super-imposed over everything I saw, a blinding ball of red light with a vague Andalite shape in the middle.
I saw where the laser must have eventually hit, it was a small room, looking like a office in any normal office building that had been hit by a tornado, then a flash fire and finally a nuclear explosion, it was nothing more than a burned-out shell of a room coated fairly liberally with what could only be accurately described as goop.
[Holy hell] I heard myself say [is that Ax?]
[No, that's Tak] said a very creaky thought-speak voice, I turned to the source of it was a battered burned and still unmistakable Andalite [this is Ax] he said needlessly, pointing to himself.
[Ax!] Jake nearly screamed [are you alright?]
Ax sounded like a teenager whose voice is still breaking, [so...So] and he collapsed, we all rushed over, I noticed that Menderash had joined us once more, he was bleeding from the nose but seemed otherwise okay.
[Ax, that really you?] [Are you okay?] [Get up!] We yelled at different intervals
[Can't...Dead] He replied.
[Then how are you talking?] Marco asked with a roll of his gorilla eyes.
[Point...Well.... Taken...]
[Are you okay Ax?] I asked.
[Hurt like...Hell...Can't...Stand up.... Or....Talk at normal....Pace...] He looked up at me and smiled with his eyes [it's the...Greatest feeling..In the world.]
[He's alive!] I yelled to the rest of the room, I think I expected a resounding cheer but all I got was a few mumbles wondering what in Hell's name was going on, well after all how could they know this was the real Ax, not the evil Ax, or rather not the evil Ax cause it was really the real Ax infected by, uhh, what was I saying, I didn't know what the Hell was going on myself.
[Laser burned away Tak...Left me alive....What a rush] Ax said.
[Well there you have, case closed, Ax is alive and Tak or whoever is dead] Marco piped up.
[Tak is..Gone, alright...But I doubt he's....Dead...] Ax stuttered.
There were several beats of silence and Jake, Marco, Jeanne, Santorelli and I collectively said [eh?]
[He's a real..Survivor that Tak.] Ax said.
Several more beats of silence came and went, civilisations rose and fell in those beats, suns formed and died in them and it was only broken when a rasping voice said.
"Gee Aximili, guess you know me better than I thought."
Chapter Nineteen: Marco
The voice torn through the silence and we all turned in perfect unison, with the burnt out office behind him was the creature we now all knew as Tak in what I guess was his true form.
At first I thought he was floating but then I saw he had a set of wings, similar to those of a dragonfly on his back, beating so fast they were nothing but a blur.
He wasn't very big, I guess fighting the Yeerks for years should have taught me that evil things aren't always big but still it came as sort of a surprise that Tak was actually no bigger than Tobias in hawk form. He looked lizard-like, the arm I'd seen pop out of Ax's chest was his own physical one, they looked like raptor arms only smaller, although not quite small enough to fit the body correctly, they seemed to move alright but were too long judging from human standards, of course I was in gorilla morph with my knuckles dragging on the ground, who was I to talk?
Tak had no legs, just a short tail. The face was the weirdest thing, It looked vaguely like a clawed hand, not something that could evolve in true nature but I could swear I'd seen it before somewhere...Of course! He looked like those spider things in 'Abe's Odyssey'! I'd played endless hours of that game while we were braving new frontiers and all that looking for Ax
"Yes, as you can see I am indeed very hard to kill, many better than you have tried before and I'm always I'm the one left standing, all you've done now" he narrowed his blood-red eyes "is piss me off." It suddenly occurred to me that his evil rasping voice sounded very familiar.
It clicked and I spoke up [Hey Tak, anyone ever tell you, you sound like Clint Eastwood?] His eyes narrowed even more and I doubted anyone ever had.
"My voice has more has more often described as that of pure hatred, of absolute evil, of the voice of anything that has ever spawned from the shadows so as to create pain and destruction where ever it went"
I considered this [No, I still say more like an evil Clint Eastwood.]
Tak hissed, high and raspy, like a cat, "I will take great pleasure in your death, it will be slow and exquisitely painful"
[Quit pissing him off!] Jake yelled at me in private thought-speak.
[Big talk for an overgrown bug] I shot back at Tak; lets just say I couldn't help it.
Tak sneered, at least I think that's what he did, it was kind of hard to tell with all those finger things coming out of his face "Why don't we see how funny you are when I break your mind in half."
And rather than wait for me to come up with a no doubt painfully witty comeback Tak shot through the air. Straight. At. Me.
I acted purely on instinct, I tried to swat him. I grabbed him only to realise that was exactly what he wanted. His strange hand-like mouthpiece dug into the skin of my gorilla palm and he was suddenly sinking into my arm. The pain was incredibly intense and cantered on that one spot.
Underneath my skin I felt his hand-like face moving, then the strangest feeling, it was like he was shrinking, but as he did he was spreading out, does that make sense? I guess not and then I realised what was happening, he was melting, he was melting into the flesh of my arm, becoming part of me.
[Get him out!] I screamed [get the sonofabitch outta me!] I swung madly towards the others, holding my arm out straight; with my lack of rational thought I think I was just trying to get as far away from the Tak-infected limb as possible.
He was moving up the arm, moving fast, my muscles contracted and then bulged cartoonishly large, railroad spike claws had now unsheathed from my gorilla fingers, this is what he did to Ax, I thought, made his body stronger, meaner, tough as nails, his fixing it up so he can move in permanently.
I stared in horror as I could feel Tak moving through my arm, almost to the shoulder when suddenly the offending limb was no longer there, Tak's influence was gone, before I had a chance to wonder why a haemorrhaging spurt of blood answered it for me, I turned away from where my arm used to be, everything felt like it was in slow motion, yes, there was Ax, standing up, tail poised at the ready, he'd cut off my arm and saved me.
[Marco demorph!]
Chapter Twenty: Jake
[Marco demorph!] I yelled, as I stared at the still wriggling gorilla arm, muscles bunched and contracted, Tak was still moving in there, wondering what was going on, Marco had stumbled away from the arm and collapsed, but he was still moving, now demorphing.
Then arm stopped wiggling, I could swear I heard a hiss of annoyance, muffled by the flesh and the arm began to swell.
Well all backed away, the arm swelled larger, now looking like a misshaped arm balloon inflated to far, the hand clenched so hard rivulets of blood ran from the fist, then the arm exploded.
Gore flew through the air, blood, fur and heavier, wetter things. Tak was once again in physical form, he held an arm bone in his claws and screeched, a high and terrible scream like fingernails on a chalkboard magnified a hundredfold.
But then we've stood through the sounds that gave the Howlers their infamous name, we stood our ground and Tak took to the air again, zipping past Ax then coming back, he flew past Menderash, tripping him, and attacked Jeanne, flying around her to fast for the eye to follow, toppling her with her own blind panic.
The he disappeared, well not literally but he flew around so fast it was a spiral of complete confusion and then buzzed off to fast for us to react.
"Where did he go?" Menderash wondered out loud.
"He's over here" croaked a Kelbrid voice, I turned to it just in time to see the last nub of Tak's tail disappear into a Kelbrid's stomach, "He's inside me" And the Kelbrid went into what looked like a fit of dry heaving.
"Grab him!" Yelled Entragian to several Kelbrids, they looked hesitant but two went over and held the unfortunate Kelbrid to the ground, he was now writhing with pain.
For a second I thought to myself that the infected Kelbrid was morphing, I guess in a way he was, the same way Ax had or Marco's arm had when Tak had got to them, before I could yell a warning Tak in his newest form was holding both his attempted guards by their necks, he slammed them together, holding them like life-size rag dolls, their heads cracked together and he released them, they just slumped to the ground.
The Kelbrid turned Tak now stood around nine foot tall, I don't think the muscles had changed all that much, still proportionality the same, hard to say because all the Kelbrids we'd seen seemed fighting fit.
Another Kelbrid rushed him and a blade unsheathed itself from Tak's arm, growing out of the back of his hand like a huge machete-shaped claw, Tak slashed faster than the eye could follow and the unfortunate Kelbrids head came cleanly off, his body kept attacking, going in to tackle Tak around the waist before realising it was dead and collapsing.
Okay so maybe there had been some other changes than just proportion, I certainly hadn't seen any other Kelbrids do that, wouldn't have wanted to either, I'd be having nightmares for months over just that one.
A barrage of laser-fire came at Tak, he ducked and weaved but even those shots that did hit him seemed to have no ill affects, he defiantly was the perfect survivor, constantly adapting. That was a real bitch for us.
[What are we going to do Sir?] Asked Santorelli, panic seeping into his voice.
Inspiration struck, [Get away from him, take cover behind that tank-thing] I called to all of them. We pulled ourselves together and ran for the relative shelter of the minitank.
A Kelbrid had just jumped back behind the controls again as we got there, he gripped the aiming joystick and aimed directly at Tak, Tak saw this just in time, laser fire blasted from the end of the barrel but Tak hit the deck and the sizzling bolt of energy passed harmlessly overhead only to explode a large portion of wall at the other end of the room.
Tak leapt to his feet and punched out the Kelbrid behind the controls before he could fire off another shot and then went about crushing the control. [We are so screwed] Jeanne announced.
"Not entirely, there's always the option left for the bravest of the brave who fight for the side of good" Entragian said with an air of royalty.
"What's that?" Asked Menderash.
"Strategic retreat, let's get the fuck outta here" Said Entragian with a toothy Kelbrid smile.
And so, it being the wisest suggestion at the time, we ran.
~To Be Continued~
Britz: See how fast was that? Pretty damn fast if you ask me, review and applaud me for my effort.
Disclaimer-You know the deal, though should pop in the name 'Tak' is also from Desperation by Stephen King, although anyone that has read the book will think I'm b.s.ing I swear I came up with The One/Tak's abilities BEFORE I thought of the name Tak and then realised I how similar the abilities were, really, I swear on this Bible, okay so it's really a 'The Sims' instruction booklet, so sue me.
~The Continuing Continued~
(I've really, really got to stop saying that)
Chapter Eighteen: Tobias
"Oh sh.." The One said and the enormous beam of red light blasted across the room, I was fully hawk now and despite being far away from the laser path I felt the roll of heat from it's wake, it was so hot I think it singed my feathers from across the room.
The beam hit The One right in his washboard abs and engulfed him; it looked like something from a bad Japanese cartoon
There was a roaring explosion and I was blinded by the light, once I could see again there was still the explosion image super-imposed over everything I saw, a blinding ball of red light with a vague Andalite shape in the middle.
I saw where the laser must have eventually hit, it was a small room, looking like a office in any normal office building that had been hit by a tornado, then a flash fire and finally a nuclear explosion, it was nothing more than a burned-out shell of a room coated fairly liberally with what could only be accurately described as goop.
[Holy hell] I heard myself say [is that Ax?]
[No, that's Tak] said a very creaky thought-speak voice, I turned to the source of it was a battered burned and still unmistakable Andalite [this is Ax] he said needlessly, pointing to himself.
[Ax!] Jake nearly screamed [are you alright?]
Ax sounded like a teenager whose voice is still breaking, [so...So] and he collapsed, we all rushed over, I noticed that Menderash had joined us once more, he was bleeding from the nose but seemed otherwise okay.
[Ax, that really you?] [Are you okay?] [Get up!] We yelled at different intervals
[Can't...Dead] He replied.
[Then how are you talking?] Marco asked with a roll of his gorilla eyes.
[Point...Well.... Taken...]
[Are you okay Ax?] I asked.
[Hurt like...Hell...Can't...Stand up.... Or....Talk at normal....Pace...] He looked up at me and smiled with his eyes [it's the...Greatest feeling..In the world.]
[He's alive!] I yelled to the rest of the room, I think I expected a resounding cheer but all I got was a few mumbles wondering what in Hell's name was going on, well after all how could they know this was the real Ax, not the evil Ax, or rather not the evil Ax cause it was really the real Ax infected by, uhh, what was I saying, I didn't know what the Hell was going on myself.
[Laser burned away Tak...Left me alive....What a rush] Ax said.
[Well there you have, case closed, Ax is alive and Tak or whoever is dead] Marco piped up.
[Tak is..Gone, alright...But I doubt he's....Dead...] Ax stuttered.
There were several beats of silence and Jake, Marco, Jeanne, Santorelli and I collectively said [eh?]
[He's a real..Survivor that Tak.] Ax said.
Several more beats of silence came and went, civilisations rose and fell in those beats, suns formed and died in them and it was only broken when a rasping voice said.
"Gee Aximili, guess you know me better than I thought."
Chapter Nineteen: Marco
The voice torn through the silence and we all turned in perfect unison, with the burnt out office behind him was the creature we now all knew as Tak in what I guess was his true form.
At first I thought he was floating but then I saw he had a set of wings, similar to those of a dragonfly on his back, beating so fast they were nothing but a blur.
He wasn't very big, I guess fighting the Yeerks for years should have taught me that evil things aren't always big but still it came as sort of a surprise that Tak was actually no bigger than Tobias in hawk form. He looked lizard-like, the arm I'd seen pop out of Ax's chest was his own physical one, they looked like raptor arms only smaller, although not quite small enough to fit the body correctly, they seemed to move alright but were too long judging from human standards, of course I was in gorilla morph with my knuckles dragging on the ground, who was I to talk?
Tak had no legs, just a short tail. The face was the weirdest thing, It looked vaguely like a clawed hand, not something that could evolve in true nature but I could swear I'd seen it before somewhere...Of course! He looked like those spider things in 'Abe's Odyssey'! I'd played endless hours of that game while we were braving new frontiers and all that looking for Ax
"Yes, as you can see I am indeed very hard to kill, many better than you have tried before and I'm always I'm the one left standing, all you've done now" he narrowed his blood-red eyes "is piss me off." It suddenly occurred to me that his evil rasping voice sounded very familiar.
It clicked and I spoke up [Hey Tak, anyone ever tell you, you sound like Clint Eastwood?] His eyes narrowed even more and I doubted anyone ever had.
"My voice has more has more often described as that of pure hatred, of absolute evil, of the voice of anything that has ever spawned from the shadows so as to create pain and destruction where ever it went"
I considered this [No, I still say more like an evil Clint Eastwood.]
Tak hissed, high and raspy, like a cat, "I will take great pleasure in your death, it will be slow and exquisitely painful"
[Quit pissing him off!] Jake yelled at me in private thought-speak.
[Big talk for an overgrown bug] I shot back at Tak; lets just say I couldn't help it.
Tak sneered, at least I think that's what he did, it was kind of hard to tell with all those finger things coming out of his face "Why don't we see how funny you are when I break your mind in half."
And rather than wait for me to come up with a no doubt painfully witty comeback Tak shot through the air. Straight. At. Me.
I acted purely on instinct, I tried to swat him. I grabbed him only to realise that was exactly what he wanted. His strange hand-like mouthpiece dug into the skin of my gorilla palm and he was suddenly sinking into my arm. The pain was incredibly intense and cantered on that one spot.
Underneath my skin I felt his hand-like face moving, then the strangest feeling, it was like he was shrinking, but as he did he was spreading out, does that make sense? I guess not and then I realised what was happening, he was melting, he was melting into the flesh of my arm, becoming part of me.
[Get him out!] I screamed [get the sonofabitch outta me!] I swung madly towards the others, holding my arm out straight; with my lack of rational thought I think I was just trying to get as far away from the Tak-infected limb as possible.
He was moving up the arm, moving fast, my muscles contracted and then bulged cartoonishly large, railroad spike claws had now unsheathed from my gorilla fingers, this is what he did to Ax, I thought, made his body stronger, meaner, tough as nails, his fixing it up so he can move in permanently.
I stared in horror as I could feel Tak moving through my arm, almost to the shoulder when suddenly the offending limb was no longer there, Tak's influence was gone, before I had a chance to wonder why a haemorrhaging spurt of blood answered it for me, I turned away from where my arm used to be, everything felt like it was in slow motion, yes, there was Ax, standing up, tail poised at the ready, he'd cut off my arm and saved me.
[Marco demorph!]
Chapter Twenty: Jake
[Marco demorph!] I yelled, as I stared at the still wriggling gorilla arm, muscles bunched and contracted, Tak was still moving in there, wondering what was going on, Marco had stumbled away from the arm and collapsed, but he was still moving, now demorphing.
Then arm stopped wiggling, I could swear I heard a hiss of annoyance, muffled by the flesh and the arm began to swell.
Well all backed away, the arm swelled larger, now looking like a misshaped arm balloon inflated to far, the hand clenched so hard rivulets of blood ran from the fist, then the arm exploded.
Gore flew through the air, blood, fur and heavier, wetter things. Tak was once again in physical form, he held an arm bone in his claws and screeched, a high and terrible scream like fingernails on a chalkboard magnified a hundredfold.
But then we've stood through the sounds that gave the Howlers their infamous name, we stood our ground and Tak took to the air again, zipping past Ax then coming back, he flew past Menderash, tripping him, and attacked Jeanne, flying around her to fast for the eye to follow, toppling her with her own blind panic.
The he disappeared, well not literally but he flew around so fast it was a spiral of complete confusion and then buzzed off to fast for us to react.
"Where did he go?" Menderash wondered out loud.
"He's over here" croaked a Kelbrid voice, I turned to it just in time to see the last nub of Tak's tail disappear into a Kelbrid's stomach, "He's inside me" And the Kelbrid went into what looked like a fit of dry heaving.
"Grab him!" Yelled Entragian to several Kelbrids, they looked hesitant but two went over and held the unfortunate Kelbrid to the ground, he was now writhing with pain.
For a second I thought to myself that the infected Kelbrid was morphing, I guess in a way he was, the same way Ax had or Marco's arm had when Tak had got to them, before I could yell a warning Tak in his newest form was holding both his attempted guards by their necks, he slammed them together, holding them like life-size rag dolls, their heads cracked together and he released them, they just slumped to the ground.
The Kelbrid turned Tak now stood around nine foot tall, I don't think the muscles had changed all that much, still proportionality the same, hard to say because all the Kelbrids we'd seen seemed fighting fit.
Another Kelbrid rushed him and a blade unsheathed itself from Tak's arm, growing out of the back of his hand like a huge machete-shaped claw, Tak slashed faster than the eye could follow and the unfortunate Kelbrids head came cleanly off, his body kept attacking, going in to tackle Tak around the waist before realising it was dead and collapsing.
Okay so maybe there had been some other changes than just proportion, I certainly hadn't seen any other Kelbrids do that, wouldn't have wanted to either, I'd be having nightmares for months over just that one.
A barrage of laser-fire came at Tak, he ducked and weaved but even those shots that did hit him seemed to have no ill affects, he defiantly was the perfect survivor, constantly adapting. That was a real bitch for us.
[What are we going to do Sir?] Asked Santorelli, panic seeping into his voice.
Inspiration struck, [Get away from him, take cover behind that tank-thing] I called to all of them. We pulled ourselves together and ran for the relative shelter of the minitank.
A Kelbrid had just jumped back behind the controls again as we got there, he gripped the aiming joystick and aimed directly at Tak, Tak saw this just in time, laser fire blasted from the end of the barrel but Tak hit the deck and the sizzling bolt of energy passed harmlessly overhead only to explode a large portion of wall at the other end of the room.
Tak leapt to his feet and punched out the Kelbrid behind the controls before he could fire off another shot and then went about crushing the control. [We are so screwed] Jeanne announced.
"Not entirely, there's always the option left for the bravest of the brave who fight for the side of good" Entragian said with an air of royalty.
"What's that?" Asked Menderash.
"Strategic retreat, let's get the fuck outta here" Said Entragian with a toothy Kelbrid smile.
And so, it being the wisest suggestion at the time, we ran.
~To Be Continued~
Britz: See how fast was that? Pretty damn fast if you ask me, review and applaud me for my effort.
