Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2013 9:22:22 GMT -5
Primal Forces #4
Blood Red Blues Pt.4
Previously in Primal Forces: Buddy Baker, Chandi Gupta, and Jefferson Pierce are agents of a government agency tasked with controlling out of control natural elements. After investigating leads on an incident within the town, the trio release a known elemental killer into their custody to find the source of the incident...
Buddy Baker sat down heavily in the drivers seat of his car. Jeff pulled himself into the passenger seat of the blue Prius, his huge frame preventing any proper movement. Chandi slid herself behind Buddy, shoving an arm load of toys and papers out of the way to clear some space.
“You car is still a state,” Jeff said calmly. He hunched himself over in the chair, putting his palms flat against the airbag, bracing himself for an awkward ride.
“Reminds me of your face,” Buddy said quietly. He ran a thumb under his eyelid, smearing some more blood across his cheek.
“Here,” Jeff said. He handed Buddy a napkin from the floor. Buddy took it quietly and dabbed at the blood.
“Won't do your chest, though. Need a damn towel for that,” Jeff said. Buddy smirked and started the car.
“Why does that happen?” Chandi asked from the back. Both Jeff and Buddy ignored her. Finally, very quietly with the only sound being the creak of the other passenger door, Pamela slid through into the back seat. She smelt of mulch, Chandi thought. Nobody said anything for a moment, until Jeff reached into his inside jacket pocket. The tension started to build. Their unspoken history driving a wedge in the air between all the occupants of the car.
Jeff produced a packet of boiled sweets. The tension was still there, but Jeff didn’t see fit to share the reasons for it with her.
“Jennifer got them for me,” he said quietly, “And she's worried I've got diabetes.”
“Oh, the irony of that, Jeff,” Buddy said, “You won't live long enough to get it.”
“Tst. Says the guy who just spurted half his blood on the ground,” Jeff replied.
“It wasn't half,” Buddy said, “It was more like a third.”
“Yes,” Pamela said. Her voice dripped with an icy tone, “Can we please continue.”
Buddy nodded and car pulled forward. Chandi sniffed the air, which was already smelling of flower petals and wet greenery.
“Also, Jefferson,” Pamela said. Buddy immediately tensed, as if some revelation would loose itself. Chandi braced herself. “I would like a sweet please.”
Jeff leaned around in the front seat, offering a pear drop to Pamela, whose root like fingers plucked one from the white bag. He offered one to Chandi. She balled her fists and slammed them into the top of Buddy's seat.
“What the hell is WRONG with you people? How can you be so casual about this? Why won't you tell me ANYTHING.”
Jefferson withdrew his bag from Chandi and offered one to Buddy. He refused politely. Jeff pulled one out and put the bag away.
“You never did like sweets,” Jeff said.
“SERIOUSLY?!” Chandi yelled, “You're just going to ignore everything I say?”
Buddy sighed heavily and looked at Chandi in the rear view.
“What do you want to know? I mean, you’re the scientist, surely YOU of all people know this? The elements of nature went to war. The War broke them. In Siegelville. In India. In Greenland. In England, Australia and Japan. Nature herself is unstable and she’s constantly trying to kill us and herself, with these bloody Parliaments.”
“Why do you bleed all the time, Buddy?” Chandi asked. She stared at him through the intensifying atmosphere.
“That,” Buddy said, his eyes flicking away. “I'll tell you another time.”
“You will bloody well tell me now! I'm sick of being in the dark and trying to piece everything together. I've studied this phenomenon. You’re right, I am the scientist and I have spent the last two years studying it – There is no science to it, it makes NO sense. Elements invading peoples bodies and using them as tools? Everyone speaks of these Parliaments as though they are some kind of Anthropomorphic deity.”
“They are,” Pamela added. Her voice was a hushed tone. “They speak to us. To you, as well.”
Chandi swallowed, though it pained her, she had her own secrets to keep, and answering that particularly statement would lead to all kinds of problems raising their heads.
“There are some who live with purple, fungal skin in the Amazon. They make war with the Fungal people wearing white. There are grasses and vines that make love, secretly, and quietly. Their voices carrying to nobody. There is a world out there most humans will never speak of or understand. They will never see...”
“But you do, do you?” Chandi said, slamming her fists into her knees. She jolted at the pain and in frustration, “What do you know, Pamela? What did you do?”
Pamela began to answer, but Jeff put his hand in the air to stop her.
“Buddy,” he said, “Answer the girl and take us to my house. I need to check on the girls.”
Buddy shifted in his seat.
“For every element there is a Parliament. Some, weird little break down,” Buddy shook his head, “Or whatever the hell it is. A group of former Elementals, like us, who have died and commited themselves to the world of Nature. If I want, when I die, I can go into the Parliament of Limbs and become an Elemental.”
“Those Parliaments give us a connection to their power source, again, where-ever the hell that comes from. I'm connected to the Red, the world of Animals and of Blood, right? Presumably, you're connected to something. I guess at some point you'll deign it necessary to tell me what one you belong to. Until then, I'll pass all this on in good faith.”
Chandi nodded, feeling her cheeks blush.
“When I fought for my Parliament, my powers were great. I was connected to every element of animal life on the planet and I could channel any of them through me. You know what that's like? That's like being alive in everything, like mainlining joy. It’s like having sex every moment you’re awake.”
Chandi flushed and looked away awkwardly. Buddy tried to hold her eyes in the rear-view.
“Then I found out what was really going on. This war between the Parliaments, I don’t know how it started, but it was clear to me what was going to happen. They were going to kill everything to make the world like themselves. The Red wins? There is no water, no grass, no air or ground. It’s a planet made from flesh, with an atmosphere of blood, pus and god knows what else.I’ve got two kids, Chandi, what do you think about that vision made me switch sides? To fight against the Red, against nature.”
“That doesn't explain anything.” Chandi said
Buddy stiffened.
“Look, I didn't ask you for your life story...”
“No, you didn't seem to care. I also don't bleed constantly.”
“Rrrr,” Buddy gripped the steering wheel tighter, “Look. My connection to the Red is broken, but that doesn’t mean the Red doesn’t like to mess with me. The way the Sparks messes with Jeff. Flesh was never supposed to hold onto this power, especially not for extended periods of time. I can’t grab hold of animal abilities anymore, all I can do is see the connections in things. Paths and trophic levels of ecology. Makes me a bit stronger, yeah, a bit faster but I can’t do anything I used to be able to do. I could fly? You understand that. I could fly and now all I do is bleed out of every damn hole.”
The car sunk into silence again. Chandi scratched at her forearms and made sure that her sleeves were pulled down.
“The connections?” Chandi asked.
“Yeah, I can tell if someone is connected to another Parliament, for example. I'm best with Red, and worst with Lights, but I can do most things in between. So, I can see when someone is using their abilities, or repressing them, but...well, it isn't an exact science.”
“No,” Chandi said, “I can see that.”
Buddy pulled up outside Jeff's house. From where it was located, it had a nice view of the Stone Zone. Great monoliths of rock and slate stretched into the sky, in a variety of shapes. Some appeared to be almost humanoid.
“It's annoying at night,” Jeff said, “You can hear them sliding against each other. Sounds like continental sex.”
Buddy grunted, and got out of the car. He slammed the door closed, padding towards the house. Jeff exited and opened the door for Pamela, with Chandi waiting for Buddy to go inside before she exited the car.
“Don't mind him,” Jeff said, opening the door for her, “He'll get over it fairly quickly.”
“I don't mind him, Jefferson. I mind all this,” Chandi sat in the car, her arms folded over her lap.
“This War. I've studied it, at length, I don't understand what caused it. What the outcomes are. How...nature can rebel against itself so very thoroughly, and break itself down into this component parts. I don’t understand the Zones, or what i’ve heard about these Giants or why people aren’t flocking to see these Zones? Why they don’t seem to even know they’re here! Surely they can see...”
Jeff shrugged.
“Who the hell knows what it is? Water doesn't like fire, we know this. So they fight. Rocks don't like Wind, for some reason. Green and Red do like each other, but hate the Rot. Sparks hate the Lights, and the Lights...hate everything.”
Chandi nodded quietly.
“Not everything,” she touched her forearms softly.
“Chandi, this is just a thing. It's all just a thing. This War...I'll take you through it. God, if you want I’ll draw you a damn map, but first...we've got to get a game plan for whatever it is Pamela thinks she knows, and I've got smooth this over with my...”
The front door of the house exploded into splinters, a huge jolt of electrical power, radiating yellow flashing lights crackled out. Pamela shot backwards, a swirling mass of smoke twisting from her chest. The root network that made up her clothing quietly smouldered.
“Well, there we are,” Jeff said, “Kids know Pamela is back.”
“DAD!? Did you know about this?” Jennifer yelled. Jefferson threw his hand in the air.
“Language, Jennifer! Keep it quiet.”
Barrelling past Jennifer, came her older sister, Anissa. Her footsteps like thunder, rocking the ground slightly and filling the air with noise and charged atmosphere. It worked particularly well with the crackling lightning form of Jennifer, whose flesh had given way to pure energy.
“Oh,” Chandi said, watching the two daughters.
“Anissa, don't you...GIRL, I'M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU TWICE.”
With his words completely ignored, Jefferson's eldest ploughed into Pamela on the ground. A furrow was immediately created where their bodies met, the ground splitting underneath the strength of Anissa.
“Dad, after what she did? No way,” Anissa said. Her voice was thunderous, filling the air completely around her, making her voice almost inaudible. Jennifer stood on the porch, her body slowly transforming the flesh. Buddy made his way back through the ruptured door, eating a chicken leg and putting a calming hand on Jennifers shoulder.
“Anissa Pierce, godamnit. I told you no, we got history with her, sure, but she ain't the same as she was then!”
“Isn't the same? Dad. How does that even make sense?”
Jefferson slammed his crackling hands into Anissa's shoulders, lifting the girl from her position.
“You the same as you was a year ago?”
Anissa seemed to pause at that thought, whatever energy that was coursing through her dissipated. Her Fathers strength lifted her off Pamela. The green covered woman lay in the furrow, watching, patiently, for the situation to resolve itself. The grass around her had sucked itself down, to create a cushion for her chest. It slowly wove itself to repair any damages.
“What in...”
“Jefferson's Daughters,” Buddy said. Chandi hadn't realised he'd left Jennifers side and walked calmly through the fight to her side.
“Want some Chicken?”
Chandi shook her head in disbelief.
“No, thank you.”
“Pamela killed their Mother,” Buddy said quietly. “Girls know and hate Pamela. Of course, she wasn't in her right mind at the time.”
Chandi's jaw dropped. She couldn't help it.
“Jefferson's on some kind of Mother Teresa kick at the moment. Think's if he turns the other cheek or something Pamela will come back to him, his best friend before she got sucked into the Green and spat out.”
“...How could he bring her here?”
“Hey, it's a bold move. Not one I would have made, but, I guess my kids haven't manifest any abilities yet, so...I could probably get away with it.” Buddy nodded slowly. “Except I wouldn't. I'd have torn out her throat years ago.”
Buddy bit into the chicken, his teeth crunching right through the bone.
“Bernhard?” Pamela said, sitting up out of the furrow.
“Pammie?” he said, tossing the bone over his shoulder.
“Behind you, please.” She turned to face him, her eyes focusing past his elbow. He turned, too slowly. A fist, attached to a stretched piece of pale flesh span through the air. It clocked Buddy in the side of the head. It snapped back. A second fist, on a similarly elongated forearm whipped up underneath his jaw and knocked him backwards. He fell immediately, out cold.
Chandi barely had time to recognise what was happening before it all built around her. Buddy, already on the floor, out of the fight. The creature that had attacked him, wasn't a “creature” at all. It was a woman, an Asian woman, whose limbs had stretched to such a point that it looked as though she were walking on noodles, rather than legs. Her flesh, all over, twisted and spiralled, as though it were thousand of ants reclaiming and restructuring her body every second. Her neck, long like a Giraffe, but twisted and spiralled, spun her face almost level with Chandi’s.
“Hello,” she said quietly, “You have something of mine.”
Chandi could feel the unnatural heat from her body. The heat of a metabolism completely out of control, careening towards an end point. Or what might have been an endpoint in any normal human being.
“We've got nothing, bitch,” Jefferson said. His fingers exploded in a spray of sparks, a jolt of bright blue lightning reaching across the gap and striking the woman in the chest. She spun backwards, her limbs completely out of control. Her arms thrashed upwards, smashing the back window of Buddy's car in.
“Oh, but you have and you don't know it,” she said, pulling herself from the wreckage of the car. Her arms slipped underneath, lifting it up with deft ease.
“Give it to me, or I will give you this,” the woman said.
“I don't even know what you want,” Jefferson said. He lunged forward, calling on a much higher voltage. The woman's legs extended again, lifting her above the range of the attack. She spun on her hips, her body seemingly immune to physics and biology, winding herself up like a cartoon pitcher.
Chandi recognised immediately what she was trying to do, and threw herself between her long, impossibly thin legs. She thrashed out with her boot, cracking into the extended knee. The woman listed slightly, but had no ill effects from the attack.
“Stupid,” she said, “Deal with you after the Sparks.”
She unwound and hurled the car towards Jefferson. He threw as much electrical energy as he could into it, but it didn't halt the oncoming attack. He threw his hands over his face to protect himself, but the impact never came. A thunderclap that made the fillings in Chandi's teeth rattle intercepted the car, Anissa tore through the vehicle in a plume of fire and smoke, her fist hurtling towards the womans face.
The connection spun the elongated neck a full one eighty, knocking the odd Red woman from her stance. Anissa hit the ground, her knees digging into the asphalt of the pavement, skidding a few feet.
“Who the fuck're you?” she asked. The woman pulled herself to her feet again, swaying in some imaginary breeze.
“She is the Red's Avatar,” Pamela said, “Or at least one of them.”
“Oh, NOW you get involved,” Anissa said, “One time we want you to kill a bitch...”
“Yes,” Pamela said, “Nature does not tend to work on your schedule, unfortunately, Anissa. It works to mine, and hers.”
Pamela bowed slightly.
“I have taken the name Poison Ivy, after the plant.”
“Coincidence, I have taken the name Blood Orchid. After a plant as well.”
The pair stare at each other for a moment.
“Perhaps you should have taken a more appropriate name, Blood Orchid,” Pamela said. Her fingers seemed to double in size immediately, the mass and colour of the lawn fading from thick, lush, Green grass, into dull, thin brown mulch.
“Where is my other, Green whore?”
“Other?” Chandi asked.
“The Red Avatars, Chandi. They are not one, such as myself. Plants can be male or female, and reproduce without the need for sharing DNA in such a wasteful manner as Animals, but Animals? Animals are built on sex.”
“Oh,” Chandi said, “Oh. So there are two Red Avatars.”
“Correct,” Pamela said, “I hold an artifact on my person, a Leaf of Power. Blood Orchid? She possesses an artifact in her Blood.”
Chandi's eyes widen.
“A virus?”
“Correct!” Blood Orchid said. Her fist slammed into Chandi's stomach, hoisting her into the air. Her other fist, splayed out into daggers of bone and flesh, careened towards Ivy. Pamela's skin flushed brown, transforming itself from leaf cover to bark. She moved, violently, her feet moored to the ground in a network of ever thickening roots, but a whole chunk of her body was removed with the speeding fist. Sap leaked from her side, leaving her visibly flagging.
“You've been a pet for too long, Pamela,” Orchid said, “The rest of you...elementalings, you know not how to control yourselves.”
“You, don't really know what we are,” Chandi said. Orchids fist had snaked itself around her waist, banding over one shoulder.
“I know enough to say that you are not a threat, Indian.”
Chandi grimaced. Buddy was unconscious, Jefferson laying on the grass, nursed by his Daughter, and Anissa, clearly washed out by an over liberal use of her abilities. Pamela, dripping with sap from the wound on her side, listed violently. This battle was not one to be won.
“We do not know where your other is,” Chandi said quietly. The grip around her chest grew tighter. “Please, release me, Let me go. I do not have your answers and I wouldn't like you to let me down.”
“If you have no answers, then are of no use to me.” The grip of the twisting flesh vine grew so tight Chandi could barely breath. The tattoo's on her arms glowing brighter and brighter.
“Jefferson had it wrong earlier,” Chandi said quietly, talking as much to Blood Orchid as she was to herself.
Orchid's head swivelled, sniffing and moving closer to Chandi.
“You are not what you pretend to be...Where do you fall? Waves? Flames? Stone?”
Chandi pulled an arm back, balling a fist. The other she pushed forwards, as though she were stretching out an arrow on a bow.
“Neither. None. Both.”
Chandi struggled for breath now. She felt one of her ribs give in, staving slightly with an audible crack against the muscular constriction. The onslaught continued, until Chandi's hands began to glow.
“I cannot...”
“I think,” she said quietly, “I think I might be something new.”
The eruption of boiling water, and freezing flame washed over Blood Orchids face. The woman screamed, immediately releasing Chandi. She dropped to her feet, stumbling and falling onto her knees.
Orchids body contracted, pulling itself down into a normal, human shape. She stumbled, took a good long stare at the collection of heroes before her, spat blood in front of Chandi and loped off up the street. Nobody bothered to try and follow her.
“What...was that?” Pamela asked. She appeared to be puzzled. “You...are not of a Parliament?”
Chandi shrugged gently.
“I guess we'll find out?”
Next Issue: Finale of Blood Red Blues