MAGIC KINGDOM
Chapter 9 – Dropped Dead Gorgeous
Disclaimer: Raziel, Kain, Nosgoth: belong to Crystal Dynamics, Eidos, Silicon Knights. Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler) and his image inducer: belong to Marvel Comics. Lupa and Vladimir: mine. All mine.
Thank you for reviewing, and for bearing with this rather rambling story all this time! This is the final chapter in the Magic Kingdom era for Lupa & Raziel. ;) GoT: I'm glad little Donovan got back home OK....*patpats scared Donny*
Raziel took advantage of Kain's momentary distraction to punch him very hard in the face. The master vampire fell back a pace or two. Raziel tore the smoking image inducer from his wrist and dropped it to the ground, as it had been burning into his already ravaged blue skin.
Raziel.
The voice in his head was very sudden, but very weak. He spun on his heel, dodging a swipe from Kain. The Elder God again?
Raz, please.
Not the God then, thought Raziel, he never, ever calls me Raz.
Can you hear me? It's me, Lupa.
Raziel glanced across to the wounded wolf, who was still lying on her side but looking over at him with bright golden eyes. Then he dropped as Kain, swearing, tried to shoulder him into a wall.
If you can hear me, spread your wings.
Flat to the ground, rolling, crouching, Raziel flared his ruined wings in reply.
So you're not as psychic-void as you look. Good, said Lupa, with a weak trace of humour. Kain can't stay here. We have to put him back through the gate.
Raziel tried to broadcast his thought of "Well, duh" as best he could, but Kain's claws came within an inch of grasping his throat and he skittered away into the candy shop a few doors down.
I'll see what I can do to help…
No, Lupa! Raziel mind-screamed at her. Stay still! You're injured. He will kill you.
He backed up too far and dislodged a display of chocolate bunnies, which proceeded to spill out in a heap around his hooves. Kain snarled.
"I'll teach you to try and deceive me, ungrateful child."
He crunched forward over the bunnies and made a further grab for Raziel, who dodged and shoved Kain's claws into the candy-floss maker behind him. Mittened in pink spun sugar, Kain roared angrily.
"Hasn't sweetened your temper, then?" Raziel taunted from the doorway, before running off across the plaza, trying to scrape crushed jelly-babies from his hooves as he went. To his relief, the wolf was still lying where she had fallen and was making no move to assist him in his battle. Her eyes were closed.
Raziel took up a defensive stance in front of her, only too aware that Kain was likely to try any means to defeat him, including threatening those he cared about. Lupa stirred a little at his feet, and he realised that her shape was changing again, back to the wolf-girl he was used to. Her red halter-top was ripped and bloody where Kain had caught her, and her thunderstorm flares hung low across her hips, torn through the waistband.
Kain was striding rapidly toward them once again, trailing chocolate bunnies and the remains of the candy-floss, and looking as dark an approaching storm. Lupa opened her eyes and blinked up at Raziel, who was bracing himself for Kain's charge and firing the occasional glyph to try and slow his opponent down.
"You, stay down," he ordered, feeling her gaze upon him. "Much as I would love your help right now, you're in no state to give it."
"Silly boy," said Lupa, in a dreamy tone, "there's more than one way to help…"
Kain's head flicked from side to side in confusion as a cloud of purple smoke exploded around him, enveloping him. A sudden weight was on his shoulders: a blue, spade-tipped tail as strong as steel cable wrapped around his throat. A devilish face with yellow, glowing eyes peered down into Kain's with a happy, fang-toothed grin.
"Surprise," said Nightcrawler, cheerfully, and teleported.
Raziel gently put his right claw under Lupa's arm and helped her as, with a wince of pain, she gained her feet.
"You called him," said Raziel. It wasn't really a question. The wolf-girl nodded. "In your head, like you spoke to me?"
"Wolves don't have vocal chords that make words, and the telepathy's harder when people are at a distance," said Lupa, fiddling with her torn halter-strap ruefully, "but he heard me, all the same. He's used to people speaking to him telepathically, apparently."
Kurt Wagner reappeared, dropping out of thin air and looking slightly battered.
"Friend of yours?" he queried, giving Raziel a stern look. "He put up a good fight, even though I 'ported him about like I was playing hopscotch."
"Did you do it, though?" Lupa demanded. The mutant gave her the thumbs-up.
"I made several jumps until he was dazed, then booted him through the gate, just like you said. He's a strong one, though…I doubt he'll stay disorientated for long over there. Vladimir closed the gate down but he can't seal it."
Raziel pushed Lupa's arm off onto Kurt's shoulder. "I have to go after him."
"So soon?" said Lupa, weakly. "I was hoping we'd have time for a cup of tea and a bun."
Raziel looked at her carefully. "Will you be all right?" he said.
"Feh," dismissed Lupa with a wave of her uninjured arm, "a mere scrape. I took worse when I was a cub in my old pack. You run along now and make with the patricide."
Raziel and Kurt exchanged brief glances: then the Reaver of Souls turned on his heel and headed out of the Nexus Mall at a run. He did not look back.
"Ah, well," said Lupa, philosophically, "that's that over with, I guess."
Kurt frowned at her.
"You didn't tell him, did you?" he said.
"What? Tell him what? OW!" He had poked her in the arm. "You're cruel and heartless, Kurt Wagner. I'm hurt here."
"You didn't tell him how you feel, and now he's run off into a situation where he may get killed?!"
Lupa looked stricken.
"You don't think about these things carefully enough, liebchen," said Kurt, gently.
Raziel ran along the corridor, his head lifted, the Soul Reaver curling into life around his arm. He was close to Kain, so close he could practically feel him. The ground in front of the gate had been empty when Raziel had run through it, but a tell-tale trail of decapitated chocolate bunnies had led off towards the ice-caves and towards a large cauldron Raziel had puzzled over earlier: then, a short constriction later, towards the time-streamer's clock and beyond, through rabbit-warren-like tunnels and corridors until he reached and passed, not without confusion, the star-windows that seemed to baffle time…
And then, standing outside a newly opened warp-gate room, Raziel knew that Kain was very close.
"Okay, how would you have done it?" Lupa demanded, jogging at Kurt's side as they headed back to the gate that had carried Kain through to the Nexus. Vladimir was standing by the gate, his hand on the stone arch of it, brow furrowed in concentration. His tail lashed angrily.
"I don't know! How about, "Raziel, I like you, and despite your corpse-like visage I would like to see how a non-sexual relationship between us could develop?""
"Because that makes it sound soooo attractive," Lupa groused. "Vladimir! Let go of the gate! I want it open!"
"What? Again?" Vladimir lowered his hand and the gate exploded into life. "I wish you lot would make up your minds. A blue fellow with wings ran through here a minute ago shouting and waving what looked like a light-sabre around…"
Lupa paused on the edge of the gate and looked back. Kurt gave her an encouraging grin and a push on the shoulder.
"Go to work, wolf," he said. Lupa dived through the gap and was gone. Vladimir sighed and stuck his hands into his pockets.
"She's mad, that girl," he said. "Mad."
"Ja, I know," Kurt agreed, an evil smile on his face. "She's just gone to tell that blue guy she loves him. How could anyone love a blue guy anyway?"
Raziel stood in the centre of the chamber, twisting to try and keep Kain in view.
Messing with time…was the man mad?
Kain reappeared, another level up, and fired. Raziel took the blow without flinching. Somehow, he seemed shielded if he stayed in the exact centre of the room…strange but true.
Still, this climbing to try and hit Kain was a real bastard of a job. Especially as Kain got wary and lingered higher and higher up.
Raziel, attempting a further assault on the walls, got hit by another blast and fell back to the safe area, scowling. He could hear Kain taunting him from unseen ledges high above.
"Tag…you're it, Raziel."
Then, unexpectedly, he added: "Ow!"
Then again: "Ow! Stop that!"
Raziel turned around, in time to catch, out the corner of his eye, a small projectile fly across the roof-space and hit Kain in the head.
"Don't you like playing marbles, Mister Kain?" said a familiar voice.
"Lupa?" called Raziel in complete disbelief. "Are you up there?"
A blue-veined marble dropped down between his hooves. There was a note tied to it. Raziel unravelled the grubby paper carefully and read the following in Lupa's untidy, looping scrawl:
Hey, babe. Couldn't see you go waltzing off into certain death without saying goodbye properly. So when you see the big red marble hit him in the balls, you go get him.
Love you,
Lupa
Raziel, as if transfixed, looked up at Kain, who was still going "Ow!" periodically as Lupa peppered him with marbles from her slingshot. There was a brief pause in the barrage: then a large marble, gleaming with ugly red light, flew straight and true and struck Kain, hard.
"Got him! Right in the family jewels!" Lupa's voice crowed from almost directly above Raziel, as Kain sank to his knees. "Run, Raz! Run!"
Raziel ran. He scaled the three ledges, strode up to Kain, who was scrabbling away towards the gate behind him, and swiped at him with his claws. Kain, mercifully still unable to speak, wheezed out a laugh and hobbled through the time-gate…
…and was gone.
Raziel, his sense of purpose draining, turned away. From this new height he could clearly see Lupa on the opposite ledge, tucking her slingshot into her belt and grinning triumphantly.
"Did you get him? Huh?"
"Yes and no," said Raziel, wearily, sitting down on the stone ledge and hanging his legs over the drop. "Yes, I drove him out of Nosgoth in this century, and I doubt he'll be back. He doesn't have to come back. He's out there wreaking havoc in the time zone of his choice."
"Trust me," Lupa called over as she scrambled down into the main chamber, "he won't be wreaking anything much with bruises on his –"
"Yes, yes."
The wolf-girl, with some effort, climbed up to sit on the ledge with him.
"Raz, are you okay?"
He shrugged.
"It just seems as if all this killing I've done…has been for nothing. Kain still lives. He's still out there."
Lupa leaned her head against his shoulder and said, "Never mind, love. You'll get him."
"I'm sick of it, Lupa. And I'm tired."
"I know you are."
They sat like that, on the shelf, for some minutes in silence.
"That note," Raziel began, sounding slightly uncomfortable, "and what you said just now…"
Lupa chuckled. "I can't think why it's been so hard to say all this time," she said. "Okay, you're not exactly a poster-child. Okay, you're dead. But you're a lot of fun. And – now I want you to be very clear about this – I will never, ever, sleep with you – but I just thought…we work well together, don't we?"
"We seem to."
"And you hug well for someone so bony."
"Thank you."
"Plus you were really very good-looking, when you were younger and not a soul-eating thing."
"Age ruins the beauty of us all," said Raziel, dryly. They looked at each other, amused, and Raziel's claws tucked in against Lupa's bloodstained waist-band.
"But I guess it's a bit too late, isn't it," said Lupa, sadly, running her fingers over the smooth length of his claws, "because you're going after him. After Kain."
"Oh, I don't know," said Raziel, lazily, "it's all temporal, isn't it? If I go through that portal, I'm not bound by time anymore, and in that case it doesn't really matter when I start…"
He stood up, grasping her about the waist, and glided them both across to the door.
"So we're going back to the Nexus, then?" said Lupa as they walked out, heading for the warp-gate.
"Why not. I think I need a holiday."
Their voices echoed as they turned the corner.
"Just one thing though," Raziel's voice said, sternly. "I know we're friends and everything –"
"Best of friends." A pause. "More than friends? That sounds slightly dubious."
"But seriously," Raziel's voice cut in again. "Don't call me 'babe'."
And so it ends…*sob, sob* I hope you enjoyed Lupa & Raz's little adventure. I'm sure they'll be back at some stage. ^_^ Thanks for reading! Any ideas as to what they should get up to next gratefully received by email.
