by GoozX, Grimm, Captain Sammitch and T5
A cry of pain shook the caves as the Beast howled when Fenris' teeth closed on its jugular. The cry was cut off short as an acid-like substance oozed from the Beast. Fenris followed by clawing at the creature's eyes. The giant wolf was able to push the creature back, causing it to topple over its bad leg. Using the momentum, Fenris dug his right claw into the Beast's chest. It would have screamed if it were able to.
Fenris froze as a spear dug into his lower back. Swiftly turning, he was able to catch a just-arrived pureblood vampire off-guard. The vampire rolled with the blow and was able to keep his balance. Fenris advanced toward the distinctly smaller creature but stopped and screamed in pain as spears hit him from all around. Three other pureblood vampires had come out of hiding.
In the caves, Daniela of the PSI-Unit stood before the assembled MBL Consulting members. She looked into the cave wall and saw everything that was occurring, the Beast, Fenris, and the vampires. Her vision clouded and darkened. She could see every detail through the darkness of the storm. Fenris would have no hope of fighting them alone.
"I see them!"
Behind Daniela stood Danny Hearn; at his side were Mick Harrison and Tayden, who worked his hardest to keep the young lady calm under the pressure. She had already been touched by the darkness; her fragile mind needed all the help it could get.
"Okay, Daniela, I need you to connect the team with what you see." Danny was soft-spoken and very careful not to put the girl more on edge.
"I'll try."
Outside, Priest ran through the darkness of the storm. All light had finally been eaten. Moving blind, he trusted his instincts and Grissom Montag, the man with night-vision goggles who was holding onto the hulking man's back.
"Fifteen feet northeast," Grissom spoke, then got into the position of a cannonball.
A moment later, Priest threw the man through the air exactly fifteen feet, where his now-drawn guns blazed down the back of a pureblood vampire. "Tag, you're it."
Grissom rolled away, giving Priest room to follow through by tackling the vampire to the ground. Priest tightened his fists and pounded away at the vampire.
The vampire looked up and saw only Stein, his master, hitting him. "Sir, what is the reason for this?" The vampire didn't fight back as Priest literally pounded him into the ground. In the back of his mind, Priest thanked Daniela for whatever she was doing.
Ameristar and Chance jumped a second pureblood. The storm all but stopped around the two within their minds. The pureblood vampire saw his own heaven within his mind. He didn't even realize Ameristar was blasting him with futuristic weapons given to her by Priest. Chance's powers kept them both safe from the very real storm outside their minds.
The most unlikely of teams, Dirk Bell and Edulcore Cicciotto, the Raptor, approached another vampire. Dirk tried his best to keep his footing as the storm pounded the two men. Finally, the two men saw everything, as if Daniela's mind had become theirs. The Raptor drew Ladnikia and charged the vampire, not giving Daniela the proper time to warp its mind.
"No, wait for the signal!" Dirk yelled two seconds too late, as they would be in clear view of the enemy.
Grimm continued to struggle under the waves as the sharks, excited by all the blood and offal dumped in the water earlier, continued to snap at anything that moved. Some turned on others and began devouring their own. None, however, moved toward the bald, tattooed, muscular man with the large filed teeth.
Gnaw smiled his carnivorous grin and watched with dark, beady eyes as his target struggled to avoid being eaten.
Grimm pounded away at one shark's head while the animals swam around him in a frenzy. He had dropped his axe and watched it sink to the murky depths, but there was no time to worry about that. He grabbed one of the beasts around the head and began to pry at one of its eyes, attempting to pull it out of the socket.
Another moved forward, and Grimm lashed out, smashing it directly in the mouth and knocking out several sharp teeth. He quickly grabbed a larger tooth and jabbed it directly into the eye of the shark that he had been holding onto. The animal lashed around in pain as Grimm jabbed out its eye, leaving a trail of blood flowing through the water. The remaining sharks immediately turned on their fellow and began to devour it.
Grimm turned to look in Gnaw's direction. Gnaw's smile quickly faded. He swam for the shore, Grimm close behind.
On land, the Beast attempted to close in on the wounded Fenris, while the heroes attempted to keep the vampires busy. Fenris howled in pain and anger and looked for something to kill. The Beast approached, shaky, wounded, struggling, all the signs of good prey for a wolf.
The Great Devourer of Legend leaped forward, catching the Beast's jugular within its mighty jaws and clamped down, pulled its head back, and ripped the demon's throat out. The Beast fell backward and lay still. Its throat made gurgling noises.
The Beast was dead.
Fenris looked down at his prey and began to salivate; the Devourer was still hungry. Fenris began to bite and claw at the Beast's chest, working his way through muscle tissue toward the heart.
The heroes struggled valiantly, attempting to eliminate the remaining vampires as the last bits of the storm raged about and then moved on. The hurricane had passed the island and left behind its mark in more ways than one. One storm had ended, but another continued to go on.
In the cavern, Leslie Kline shouted "Move!" and squeezed the trigger; the LAWS launcher bucked, rocking the Hummer as a rocket was ejected from its canister, igniting ten feet in the air. Phil Smith floored the gas, and the tires spun before digging into the pavement and launching the hulking vehicle forward.
Phil fought to keep the Hummer pointed toward the distant door as the LAWS rocket slammed into the cavern ceiling and detonated. He heard a loud BOOM over his shoulder, but other than Leslie's fingernails digging into his right arm, nothing else distracted him from aiming for the door. "Get that thing set back up!" Phil shouted.
Leslie stood up in her seat, steadying herself as the Hummer rocked and swayed and bounced over the cavern floor. She rotated a fresh canister into place atop the LAWS launcher and armed the rocket. Leslie looked down at Phil. "You sure about this?"
Phil didn't answer. Chunks of the cavern ceiling were tumbling to the floor, bouncing off walls and smashing into the ground in pieces easily as big as the Hummer. He swerved to the left around a boulder and swung the Hummer back on course, almost throwing Leslie from her perch. Leslie glared at him. "Watch it!"
Phil looked up. "Sorry!" He looked at the large door, which was now only about two hundred yards away. "You about ready with that thing?"
Leslie brushed her hair out of her face. A stiff wind had started up as the air in the cave was being vented through the newly formed hole in the ceiling. She aimed the LAWS launcher carefully. "I got it!" she called.
The door drew closer. A house-sized chunk of rock crashed to the cavern floor right behind them.
"SHOOT IT!" Phil shouted.
Leslie squeezed the trigger a second time. The Hummer rocked again as the LAWS rocket flew out in front of Phil and Leslie and ignited just twenty feet in front of the windshield. Phil ducked behind the glass, and Leslie dropped into her seat to avoid the rocket exhaust. The rocket smashed into the top of the aluminum door and exploded, obliterating the pulleys and rails that held the door in place. The door leaned backward but didn't fall.
"Cover your head!" Phil ordered as he ducked down in his seat and floored the gas.
The Hummer plowed into the aluminum door, knocking it flat and soaring over it down a dark tunnel of indeterminate length. Phil switched the high beams on. "You okay?" he asked Leslie.
"Been better," Leslie replied. She looked out the windshield. "Where are we going?"
"No idea," Phil answered. The Hummer's regular engine cut in. "But there's good air here, so you won't need your oxygen mask -- at least, not right now."
Leslie removed her mask, reached over, and pulled Phil's mask off for him. She leaned back in her seat and breathed deeply. "I really hope this works," she muttered to herself.
In the tunnel, Leslie looked over her shoulder and wished she hadn't. Behind them was what looked like a boiling gray wall, coming down the tunnel after them. Leslie looked closer and realized that it was a cloud of dust and debris forced down the tunnel by the escaping carbon dioxide and the wave of rushing air displaced from the cavern by falling rocks. And it was gaining on them.
Leslie tapped Phil's shoulder. "Umm... You might wanna hurry it up a bit," she advised.
Phil checked his rear-view mirror and scowled. "Figures." He shifted up another gear and coaxed the Hummer forward a bit quicker. As the tunnel took another long, gradual bend to the left, Phil began to make out a speck of light in the distance ahead. "It's bright out," he noted. "Maybe the storm's over."
"Yeah," Leslie replied. "And we just might see the pretty blue sky if you get the lead out and move it!"
"You don't have to tell me twice." Phil had the pedal on the floor now, and the Hummer was doing about eighty over the artifically smoothed rock floor of the tunnel. The wall of debris was still closing on them, but not by as much as it was a moment earlier. That was a good sign.
But the wave was still gaining. Phil had been tossed around by enough waves over the past day or so, and he didn't much care to be treated to another. He focused on the growing spot of daylight ahead of him and pushed the Hummer forward.
The wave grew closer. Leslie ducked down in her seat. The wave grew closer. Phil gripped the wheel tighter and gritted his teeth. The wave grew closer.
The tunnel took a slightly steeper incline than it had previously, but Phil didn't notice the rate of climb until the Hummer rocketed out of an opening in a low hillside and flew through the air about twenty feet before crashing to Earth, skidding wildly. Phil fought the wheel mightily before straightening the wheel out and muscling the Hummer onto a road, a road he recognized as the main road from Puerta Mibela to the west beaches.
Phil slowed the Hummer down to a reasonable speed and looked around. The sky was lightening gradually as the grey wall of Hurricane Jason receded off into the distance. Behind them, the dust cloud poured out of the opening in the hillside and was carried away by a stiff breeze. Sea birds were flying around overhead again, and people had begun making their way out of whatever shelters they had hidden in.
La Perdita looked like a post-Apocalyptic wasteland. Buildings had been flattened, cars were crushed and piled in heaps, and the ground itself was strewn with debris of every kind imaginable.
But the storm was over. And Phil was home. He smiled. "Looks like we're all right now," he told Leslie.
"So what should we do?" she asked.
"Right now," Phil said, "I'm gonna head back over to the caves. There's a lot of people there who are gonna need our help."
"You're really into this whole hero thing, aren't you?" Leslie said, smiling at him.
"I'm getting the hang of it," Phil replied as he looked ahead and saw some of the MBL Consulting members gathered on the beach.
Chance and Ameristar, having finished their opponent, looked around for another of the vamps. They saw the tumult in the water, as if something were going on beneath the waves.
"Look!" Ameristar pointed. "Didn't Ed say that Grimm fell into the water?"
"Yes, he did. I won--" The Swedish scientist-turned-adventurer was cut short as a pale, muscular, tattooed form came flying out of the water as if launched from some device. The form landed a few feet down the beach from them. It lay quite still.
They heard a splash and looked back out toward the water. Grimm had surfaced and was holding something over his head. It was a large sea turtle. He made his way out of the surf and over toward where Gnaw lay motionless. He quickly and savagely brought the large turtle down on top of Gnaw's chest, cracking his sternum. He tossed the frightened amphibian aside, and it slowly began making its way back toward its home.
As Gnaw lay on the ground, holding his now-injured chest, Grimm reached out toward the ocean with one hand. The approaching Chance and Ameristar watched as a bluish light seemed to begin to radiate from Grimm's eye sockets. Another splash from the shore, and Grimm's axe came hurtling toward him, to land effortlessly within the grasp of his outstretched hand. He walked over toward Gnaw and raised the axe upward.
"NO!" shouted Chance, breaking into a run and heading toward the scene of impending doom.
Ameristar teleported the axe out of Grimm's hands in the nick of time, and he turned his infuriated eyes on her and roared in anger.
Chance quickly stopped himself before he came too close to the enraged being in front of him. A musky scent of death lingered in the air. Gnaw was fighting for his breath.
Suddenly, the axe jerked in the hands of Ameristar, and she was carried toward Grimm, who had his hands stretched out and looked as if he was smiling.
Grimm's axe flew into his hands, stopping only to turn in mid-air, flinging Ameristar onto the ground. Grimm began to turn back toward his foe, when a voice from behind caught his attention.
"Stop! Grimm, stop it."
Grimm turned back to look at Chance. Kristofer Schanz gazed directly into the now-blue-lit eye sockets of Grimm. Gnaw, for his part, held his chest with his arms while blood and bile poured out of his mouth.
"Grimm," the Swede began, "when I first crossed over to this world, I briefly touched minds with the Kristofer Schanz of your world. Occasionally, I get brief glimpses of his life, his memories. I've seen inside your mind. I know there's a man under all the horror, some trace of who you once were. Whatever this man has done, he is not like these creatures we've been fighting. I've seen criminal reports on him in the computer. He is a meta. Let the law deal with him. After all, he is still human. Are you?"
For a few moments, the two stood and stared at each other, neither speaking. Then, slowly, the blue light in Grimm's eyes began to dim down. He placed his axe in its scabbard and lowered his arm.
"Okay. We play it your way, for now. But if this comes back to bite us in the--" he said, interrupted by a laser blast passing between the two and landing directly in front of Gnaw, who was attempting to crawl off.
"Going somewhere, handsome?" Ameristar said, floating in the air, lasers pointed at a particularly vulnerable spot for males. Gnaw moaned and lay back down on the beach.
Just then, a large Hummer drove over one of the sand dunes, and Phil Smith's head popped out of the driver-side window. "Hey, look what I found!"