veekie said:
What if the vote is tied except for your vote?
Then I get to cast his vote however I want. MWA HA HA HA HAAAAA!
Ahem.
-------------------
PAST YUG-NUG INTERLUDE TIME NOW
It wasn't turning out to be a particularly good day.
On the way to pick up some milk, a portal opened up in the street, a vacuum cleaner came to life, mutated itself, and started trying to murder people.
No, he wasn't on drugs. No, he hadn't been drinking. No, the CCTV couldn't back him up, because it had been 'mysteriously' wiped, but that was fine. There were plenty of eye-witnesses and his bosses were as far from sceptical as it was possible to get without becoming a paranoid maniac.
Frankly, they'd probably reached that point by now, anyway.
So when John paused dialling a containment team for the portal because he'd spotted the
vacuum cleaner that was growing extra 'limbs' (admittedly odd even for him)... he assessed the situation, decided the entity was a bigger threat at the moment, and moved to intercept.
John suspected that he wasn't going to end up getting the milk after all.
Situation: inanimate object somehow being controlled by something that likely wasn't friendly, and judging from the portal, wasn't local - idiotic civvies standing around being useless sacks of squishy organs - no back-up.
Assets: One pistol, fully loaded - one functioning brain - charming and somewhat violent personality.
Hopefully bullets would damage it, or he'd have to attack with nothing but sparkling wit and -
It swung one of its limbs at the woman backing away from it, leaving him nothing to do (it was so much
easier without civilians around) but hurl himself forwards, gun now out and aimed as best he could with one hand, which was against every part of training he'd ever had.
This was being downgraded to 'shitty' day.
He shoved the woman hard, not bothering to listen to her shriek of pain as the apparently razor-sharp limb sliced through her leg instead of her stomach, focusing more on his aim - a lucky shot hit the vacuum's base, and it flinched back slightly, limbs whirling faster - hopefully that meant it was hurt and not just pissed off.
He'd shot at a vacuum cleaner. He was never going to live this down.
And then the tentacles came at
him, and John stopped thinking about what everyone at the office was going to say, or how half the people in the street were yelling or running, and dealt with
shooting the fucking thing.
-
He wasn't getting his arse kicked when the insult-spewing, pink-clad witch girl threw herself into the fight.
Really.
It was only two fractured ribs. He'd had worse.
Fuck.
The girl - who
dressed like that? - moved to separate the... enemy... from himself and the woman he'd half-saved, which was somewhat relieving; at least it meant she was unlikely to be an enemy as well. He'd never seen a magic-user like this one before, though.
... Considering all that pink, John hoped he wouldn't see any more like her. Although, as he pushed himself to his feet (
owfuckribs) and saw her pull another of those metal balls out of thin air, sending it to carve a hole straight through her target, he wondered if he might be seeing this one quite a lot. The bosses were going to want to recruit this one, weren't they?
Or strap her to a table and have a look at her insides. One of the two.
Gun at the ready, he edged slightly to the side, trying to get a decent aim - it wasn't working. Pinky the Witch-Girl kept getting in the way, and he wasn't all that inclined to try to get a shot off when it might hit
her. Shooting potential allies or future co-workers wasn't really the way to start things off on the right foot.
Raising an eyebrow as Pinky jubilantly created another crater in the road, John revised his thoughts - shooting someone who'd probably shrug the bullet off and also appeared to be in a battle-frenzy was
also a really,
really dumb idea.
The girl trashed it. Literally.
John stood there, useless. And his ribs hurt. A lot.
"Love and justice, fuckers!" Pinky declared, whirling her staff like she was in a Final Fantasy post-battle victory scene
and why did he even think that, ugh. "Love and justice!"
Watching as she then fled down the road, yelling like... well, like a teenage girl celebrating winning a magical battle, John briefly wondered whether he should stop her.
Nah. He holstered the gun, already planning. Time to call in the clean-up team - and an ambulance for that injured woman - and a containment team for the port-
Wait.
Over by the mangled enemy, there
hand on his shoulder, policeman asking questions he didn't even listen to. Unimportant. What just happened? There was something - Pinky had run off down the street, no point in stopping her, and-
"Sir? Sir, are you all right?"
"Fine." Stepping away from the light touch in one easy movement (shut up, ribs), John reached into his jacket, flicking open the fake I.D. he withdrew. "I'm with the Security Service. This is what I need you to do."
---
Three hours later, when the street was fully contained, John realised.
He'd forgotten the bloody milk.
