also, could someone please explain to me what 'mary-sueism' means? has nooooo idea. is brit. is dumb.
i actually did my homework! woo! got me a map of NY and listened to the news. that is some intense research by my standards. fneep.
Part Two- Awakening
"…And finally, reports are coming in of an attempted burglary at the New York Museum of Science on 21st and 7th, Manhattan. Police have confirmed that the perpertrator was the dangerous criminal Dr. Otto Octavius, otherwise known as Doctor Octopus, who has been missing presumed dead since late June.
Six people have been hospitalized with minor injuries after the incident, during which the front of the museum and several nearby buildings received extensive damage. The burglary itself appears to have been thwarted by the intervention of New York's masked vigilante superhero, Spiderman, but eyewitness accounts state that the offender escaped after taking a young girl hostage, forcing the police to withdraw.
Despite a continuing police search of the enitire area, the identity of the girl is still not known. If you think you may have any information, ring our hotline, on 1800-531-5900. This is NYNewz, all news, all the time."
Slowly, Escher woke up. Awareness seeped back, bringing with it a confused bundle of recent memories, some of which were a bit...unlikely. The amazing battle…that had been real...but the green ponies and twinkly stars probably had more to do with the dull pounding in her skull than with reality.
And something, something about flying…
Where was she?
The surface beneath her cheek was hard and gritty. She felt cold, the fine hairs rising on her arms. A thick smell assailed her, the musty clogging scent of rotting wood. It reminded her of the ancient P.E shed at her school, though without the rubber stink of old trainers. Remembering a book she had once read about toxic spores, she tried to breath lightly though her nose.
So; old, wooden, stinky, and unless her ears decieved her, somewhere very near water. Escher felt pretty proud of her evidence-gathering - not bad at all considering she hadn't quite worked up the courage to open her eyes. Considering she'd recently been knocked unconscious by a deranged eight-limbed supervillian who everyone in the city had thought was dead, she felt she was to be congratulated on her calmness.
Her head ached, with a repetitive throb that suggested it intended to keep it up all day. She swallowed, and tasted the sour tang of blood from her lip. And there was an odd sensation in her left wrist, too…not exactly hurting, just…constricted. Like she was wearing a bracelet.
Her eyelids fluttering cautiously open, ready to feign sleep at any second, Escher found herself staring up into distant, gloom-shrouded rafters, long wooden beams that rose over her periphery to support a hole-studded, cobwebby ceiling. Cautiously, she shifted over onto her side, and immediately made her second nasty discovery.
She was wearing a 'bracelet', albiet a very ungainly one. It was made from thick, rusted iron, and it was attached to a bulky string of chain links some four feet in length, which looped across the bare floorboards from her wrist to the heavy wooden pillar nearest to her, wound three times around with enough force to splinter the wood. She was chained fast.
She stared, her disoriented brain lurching along a nasty little chain of reasoning.
…scary tentacle thing POW this place is not bookstore/hospital now chained to wall = in biiiiig trouble.
This seemed the perfect occasion to have the panic attack she'd had no time for earlier. It wasn't as if she had any other options. She was utterly trapped, in this shadow-haunted space that smelt like gym bags and mould. What if she'd been left here to die?
Mentally, she slapped herself in the face. Calm down, drama queen. Freaking out makes you vunerable, and this place looks like it EATS vunerable.
She sat up and drew herself back against the wall, shivering as the damp chilled her through her T-shirt.
The place was huge, a high-roofed rectangular shape like a warehouse or some other kind of storage space. Pillars rose at uneven intervals into the rafters, and others lay in pieces where they had fallen, rotted through or smashed. Where the walls met the roof a row of narrow windows ran around the entire length of the structure, though most were either boarded over or jagged holes. The few panes that were still intact were so filthy that they let in marginally less light than the wall.
Escher pressed her hand against the greying plaster, only to snatch it back in revulsion as the soggy material fell away, revealing crumbling brick shot through with metal rivets that had long since corroded into nothing. The corner where she had been chained was one of the only places she could see where any plaster remained, and elsewhere the rivets ran across the brickwork like veins, weeping rust. It was a graveyard of a building, a giant decomposing carcass of wood and metal. It was…
…starting to shake.
Bits of dust and grit rattled on the floor, jumping in time with a series muffled rhythmic thumps that got louder and nearer. Staring in the direction of the sound, Escher just managed to locate a gaping hollow space in the far wall before it was filled with the unmistakable shape of her captor.
With a burst of speed unbelievable for something so heavy-looking, the lower tentacles 'walked' their owner from the doorway over to the centre of the floor. Escher could see that the man in the centre of the tentacles was bare-chested, his upper body supported by the curled embrace of the upper two claws, and from what little expression she could make out at this distance he seemed to be in great pain. His left arm hung uselessly, at an odd angle to his shoulder. Escher remembered the horrible noise she'd heard as she'd watched from her window, and winced despite herself.
The lower tentacles retracted, bunching up into themselves until each was a mere six foot long, curving outwards so that the man's feet landed on the ground. Now unsupported, he walked a few shaky steps to the nearest upright pillar, pressing his forehead against the surface as he hugged it with his uninjured arm. Then he spoke, apparently into the wood. From her far corner, Escher just made out the words, low and taut with pain.
'Do it.'
Instantly, the upper pair of tentacles snapped to attention, one reaching down to brace itself against the man's left shoulder, the other encircling his upper arm in a firm and precise grip. Suddenly realising what was about to happen, Escher closed her eyes, but she still heard the pop, heard the scream echo off the mouldering walls. Bad guy or not, she couldn't help a teeth-sucking hiss of sympathy.
By the time she opened her eyes again, the man was kneeling on the floor, held up by one extended claw as another pair applied a pad of bandage to his shoulder, which was now at least the right sort of shape. The fourth arched over his head, holding the strap of a grey canvas bag. As the working arms finished bandaging, they swung up and dipped into the bag in a way which reminded Escher of feeding swans, resurfacing with various first aid supplies. Passing these things from one to the other like a well-practised juggling routine, they started to patch up their host's injuries.
The arms worked swiftly and with incredible accuracy for things with such clumsy-looking pincers, carefully handling a glass bottle of antiseptic, unscrewing the top (though apparently having a little trouble with the child-safety cap) peeling the backs off of Band-Aids and even, as she could just make out, unfastening a safety pin to secure the bandage. Escher, who was always sceptically annoyed by things like magicians and puppeteers on TV, found herself watching for the trick.
Finally, when the floorboards around them were littered with crumpled plaster backs and bits of gauze, the arms stopped. The lower claws planted themselves on the ground again, the metal segments extending until they lifted their owner gently off the ground.
Escher pulled herself back into the shadows as far as she could go, holding her breath as her captor walked across the warehouse floor on his metal limbs. For a moment, she thought he was heading for her corner, but to her relief the regular, jarring steps continued past her to an alcove nearby.
This area, she noticed for the first time, had been set up like some kind of haphazard study, with an old desk, a couple of packing crates full of books, and other ill-matched items. Looking extremely out of place in the midst of these makeshift furnishings, an incredibly expensive-looking laptop was wired up on the desk, surrounded by a clutter of other sleek, next-generation devices the function of which Escher could only guess at.
Arriving at the desk, the arms lowered the man into a chair in front of the laptop. Watching him, Escher suffered from a moment of acute chair envy - the thing was a ergonomically designed artwork in grey chrome and leather, the sort of high-backed rotating masterpiece that would make a Bond villain weep. It had also been cleverly modified to make room for the tentacles.
The man started to type. Even one-handed, with his recently-dislocated arm in a sling by his side, the rate of rapid clicking sounds from behind the chair's high back was fast enough to really impress Escher, whose own hunt-and-peck method left a lot to be desired.
Three of the arms now trailed lazily near the floor, coiling back and forth. The fourth, however, remained extended into the air, the closed head swinging in a long, restless figure-of-eight.
A sentry, Escher realised with a chill.
On its sixth scan of the warehouse, the head stopped, angled directly at her. She gasped as it snapped open, the red light at its centre flaring. The clicking sounds stopped.
Escher thought her heart might have stopped as well. In the sudden silence she could hear every slight noise the arm made, a series of agitated rattling whines as the claws angled towards the figure in the chair. There was a long pause, and then the typing began again.
'Don't worry.' said the man, but his voice was flat, dead. He's not talking to me, thought Escher, as the sentry arm closed and moved back towards the desk.
'…We'll take care of that later.'
thanks again to everyone who reviewded last time. next part things shall kick off, i'm hoping. specially as i think i'm getting the hang of writing Escher properly now. smoot.