savetheearth | [closed]

Who: Ax/Alex and Arthur/Aquaman
Where: Locke City's park
When: July 24
What: All the cool kids are getting attacked by weird animals!

Alex had noticed a lot more posts on the secret network lately about weird animals, some of them attacking people, so he was on his guard as he walked through the park.

What he wasn't looking out for was something coming from the direction of the stream that meandered through the grounds.

It ran into him from behind, just below knee-height; his legs buckled and he hit the sidewalk hard, scraping up his palms. Scrambled back to his feet (silently grateful that being startled this time hadn't made his tail decide to show up--no way to keep people from seeing it here), and when he got a good look at the thing, all he could do was stare as he backed out of range.

The thing looked like it was wearing weirdly-fitted armor at first, or maybe the plates of what sure looked like metal were just part of it. It was like a mutated fish that had struggled onto land, and now seemed to be having a hard time getting its too-many-limbs under control.

Awkwardness of the way it moved aside, it was definitely stalking him, advancing as he backed up, and he was going to be trapped up against the support for the pedestrian bridge across the stream if he didn't figure something out quick.

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"No...no, it doesn't!" That was new. "It's like whenever I try to reach it, I hit some kind of wall...or if it has a mind, I can't connect with it!" There was a definite note of unease in Arthur's voice. That was still a fish, wasn't it? Somewhere in there was a perfectly normal fish!

He couldn't let it get at Alex, either, and he rushed over in an attempt to put himself in between the monster and the boy. "Hey, you! Yeah, you! I'm talking to you--don't you know it's RUDE to ignore people who are trying to talk to you?"

That was just great.

The fish-thing apparently didn't speak English, either, and it took a snap in their general direction. Alex didn't want to give it time to adjust its aim to account for its unsteadiness.

He'd backed up as far as he could, and he basically only had one option.

"Can you cover me? I'm going-ing to, um. Grow my wep, weapon."

"Grow a weapon?" Arthur moved into a position from which he thought he'd be able to provide cover. "By golly, if you have anything on you that would be able to be of use, now would be the time to do it!"

He waved his arms around a bit in a bid to draw more of the fish's attention. "Hey! You! Rude fish-thing--I KNOW there's still some fish left in there! Look here! Listen here! Hey! Look! Listen!"

"I have--" Alex began, thinking a warning was in order, but cut himself off. No point wasting time.

The fish-thing cocked its misshapen head at Arthur in a way that would be funny, if it weren't so unnatural.

Alex took advantage of its distraction to focus on the tail. It sure seemed to be getting easier to make it appear with practice. He felt the by-now-familiar sense of his spine stretching almost right away, then, last (it never seemed to grow the same way twice), the weight of the blade at the end.

"This. I have this." He swept the tail around as well as he could trust himself to without hitting Arthur, barely stumbling this time, and the fish-thing made a watery hiss and skittered back a half-step.

"OUTRAGEOUS!" Arthur clearly approved of this new weapon, and he stepped aside to let Alex have a clearer shot at the creature. "He's still not listening to me, but he has to respect THAT!"

He decided to help encourage it to back off, and he hurled a rock at it. "Go on, then, leave us alone!"

The rock winged the thing, disorienting it enough for Alex to take aim. He adjusted his stance and whipped the tail forward, but he caught the edge of the weird armor-plating or whatever that was, and ow that hurt. He made a strangled, pained noise and pulled the tail back, and the fish-thing grabbed for it with its weird spindly arms, digging scratches into it.

His second strike was truer, and took the fish-thing's head mostly off its body. It was enough to take it down, and it flopped to the sidewalk, making an awful wheezing noise.

"Thanks, man. Ugh, I guess I ought, ough-tuh, to finish it off."

He wasn't in a hurry to touch it again.

"Are you sure you want to?" Arthur was searching the area now. He'd heard that cry of pain, and he didn't want Alex to hurt himself any more. "I can always try to find a bigger rock and finish the thing off!" Only he didn't see any bigger rocks.

"No. But I don't see any other choice, choy-suh!"

The blood welling from the scratches on the tail didn't look right; it was too dark, almost blue-black, and Alex fought off a wave of nausea. The armor-stuff was ill-fitting. He could find a gap.

So he took another swing as the thing started to try to struggle to its feet, hoping he'd aim decently.

He did, and finished decapitating it. The body clunked back to the concrete, lifeless.

"Oh, thank god." Now that it was over, he thought he might throw up.

"GOOD SHOT!" Arthur clapped Alex on the shoulder. Really, the whole thing had been pretty disgusting and he was glad he hadn't needed to do it, but showing that in front of Alex wouldn't do much good. "Are you all right?"

He looked back at the corpse. That was a nasty piece of work, and it wasn't something that needed to be lying around. "You did the hard part; I'll handle taking care of the body."

"Thanks, thank-suh."

Alex made the mistake of taking a closer look at the thing, and yeah, that was too much. He stumbled over to the nearest trash can and lost his lunch in it as quietly as he could manage.

Then he went back over to Arthur, sheepishly wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Sorry. That was gross. But I'm OK, oh-kay. You?"

The scratches on his tail stung--and oh yeah, he probably shouldn't be walking around with it, huh? As soon as he made it vanish, the pain was gone, too. Weird.

Fortunately, Arthur had worked long enough on a cruise ship to be relatively immune to someone suddenly losing their lunch in the area...not that this was that sudden. "Ah, I'm fine! OUTRAGEOUS, even! Glad to see you made it out in one piece! Now, I'll just take care of this..."

He turned his full attention to the monster's corpse. "My word, this thing is disgusting..." He looked around the area, making sure no one else was watching--and if they were, he had the BEST story about filming a pilot for a new TV show called Arthur's Amazing Adventures--and then shoved it off the bridge. It wasn't the best way to dispose of a corpse, but it was either this or bury it in a shallow grave somewhere, and he didn't have a shovel. The stream would hopefully wash the thing away.

"What on earth was that thing?"

It hadn't really been a fish, or Arthur would've been able to talk to it. But it had sure acted like it wasn't used to walking on land.

Now that the adrenalin rush had dissipated and left him shaky, most of Alex wanted to go home and try to pretend he'd never heard of the secret numbers club. But there was a part of him that wanted to find the people who'd created this thing and sicced it on him, and kick their butts.

"My boy, I haven't got a clue what that was, other than some kind of abomination against nature!" Arthur also would have liked to go beat the evil out of whoever or whatever had caused that. "The important thing is that it's gone now, I suppose. Those SCOUNDRELS, doing that to a poor defenseless fish!"

"Hey, how about siccing that thing-ing on a poor, defense, fenn-- Okay, I guess I'm not really defenseless." He laughed, shakily.

"Thanks for helping-ing."

"Still, siccing that thing on ANYONE isn't exactly a noble move, the fiends." Arthur shook his head but gave Alex a grin. "Glad to do it! If you ever run into another creature like that, just give old Arthur a call!"

"You don't think there's enn, any more of them around, do you?"

Alex took a wary look around. He didn't see anything weird.

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