The Snake-Charmers (IC)

[Ari]

GM

Its reaction to the leg probing into its core was fierce.

It became a mass of motion, swinging itself around in a tangle of obsidian scales while a low howl built from its inhuman lungs into a ear-piercing shriek of pain "Wretch! Speck! I will break from your grasp, and tear holes into your very soul! The Endless Night, will be your ETERNAL resting place!" It seemed quite serious about this threat, as it had found new bowels of strength such that its hide was slightly torn in several places just from the tensing and tugging of its mad thrashes and slams!

[Aoiroo]

Grabbing the side of the snake she grabbed in the wound as it tried to shake her off, she needed to dig in, but she kept her grip,

"Stop gabbing and just die already. We don't need another monster in this city."

She dug into the wound trying to push into it's core and cause more pain to shut this monster down. She needed a way to break this creature, and it was not getting easier to hold it. Well if this didn't work, well she was certainly delaying it. Hopefully Suits was getting everyone out. Though she couldn't of bought them much time, it certainly felt like forever to her.

[Ari]

GM

The oily stuff inside tore open under her knife-like fingers, but just abrely. Its innards were a roiling mass by now, chaotically attemping to solidify itself everywhere at once, desperate as it struggled in another mighty cascade of shadowy flesh and bone, savagely trying to worm its way out from under her penetrating grasp!

The cultists had by then reached the ladder, and needed no persuasion to ascend.

[Aoiroo]

Sil fell back but rolled with the fall expecting it much earlier, still she ran at the snake determined,

"You talk a lot of smack for a certified errand boy, and you underestimate us. Your nothing, I mean nothing compared to what this city has faced in the past. Creatures of space looking to freeze us in time were repelled, gods of unspeakable horror tried to ransack us through one of the best and brightest, and we've fought the king of Oblivion, don't mess with Earth, especially Freedom City, cause we will find you and mess you up."

She flipped forward, using her momentum and hitting the snake dead on with her bladed foot in the wound.

[Ari]

GM

The limb tore into the now bubbling mass of its tenuously-bound core, a black jet of liquid spraying out of the wound and covering most of the right side of the heroine's costume. She could feel something rip and stretch underneath her flattened foot, something crucial to the monster that caused it to all but collapse in a shivering heap of pain and leaking fluids, its eyes now colored with a thin shading of red, and its jaws open a dribbling on the floor. Clearly there wasn't much of a fight left in the arrogant thing.

[Aoiroo]

Silhouette jumped back in digust at the liquid stuff sprayed her. She was half thankful it was black and half worried it do something like alien mutant horrible transformation too her. Given, none of it was like in her mouth or anything so she was probably fine. Though after this she was definitely showing until the hot water ran out.

Walking forward she looked at the snake, it was hanging on, but just barely. Sympathy was lacking to her, and mercy even more. It looked in pain, but it was going to eat those people, because it could. It couldn't stay there, so she pushed up the wall and repeated her earlier manuever this time landing her attack right where the neck connected to the head, and that was that.

[Ari]

GM

Its head tore from its body with a sound like cutting through wet paper, a flood of the black blood pouring into the circular hallway as a distant, dying shriek echoed thinly around the temple, a faint shudder passing through the place as it collapsed into itself, the thing vanishing in a swirl of shadow that hurt to look at, like a flare of light. A faint, ugly smell began to rise from the knotted, decaying core of the abyssal fiend that lay on the stone.

The last of the cultists had scrambled out of the pit, and were huddled around the manhole cover, looking fearfully down into it.

[Aoiroo]

This was lost on Silhouette who had already turned and left. She really just didn't want to look at it anymore. It was gross.

Climbing up the ladder she looked up at the cultists looking all scared and had a little evil tug in her mind to yell that she was dieing and that she should run. It passed as common sense took over and she emerged from the hole acting how she felt, tired, sore, and sticky to the extent she tried not to touch too many things. She looked at the cultists then around over to King of Suits and sighed before holding out her hand,

"So anybody want to help me with the dry cleaning bill?"

[Ari]

After hearing the shouts, screams and explosions, the caped crime-fighter had been filled with the notion that something horrible had happened down in the temple, and, having 'cuffed the cultists was about to descend when Silhouette reappeared from the escape hatch. Marceau looked at her impassively for all of ten seconds before grasping her by the outstretched hand and shaking it with incredible vigor, his visible face lit up from ear to ear by a grin. "Magnefique! Madame Silhouette, I and these others I am certain," he glared out of the corner of a blue eye at the cultists "would pay whatever price Deb-the local cleaners would ask" he said, quickly eliding over the name of the Fen's most-frequented cleaner's proprietor, Debbie Spencer. Still shaking her hand he went on "I get the idea my weaponry wasn't precisely effective against the beast? Bah, it is no matter. The diabolical thing is dead!" beaming at her he suddenly looked down at his now-slick arm, realized that he was still clenching her hand, and quickly released it with hurried apologies.

"Ah! I must beg your pardon, Silhouette, but this is so exciting! We got these people out, you slew a monster the likes of which I certainly have never encountered,(Besides that one time...)and we rescued the hostages!" looking down at his blood-smeared arm he went on avidly "If you will permit me, I will cleanse your armor myself, removing every trace of this..fluid from it" rubbing his fingers together he went on thoughtfully "Indeed, it would probably be well if I did that, I could gather quite a bit of this stuff" he glanced at her spattered costume, twitching his nose a bit at the smell he only just noticed "and perhaps discover some of its qualities. Not saying it does, mind you, just that it might, and they could be useful" he smiled like the Sun rising

"What do you say? It should hardly take any time, if my competence holds."

[Aoiroo]

Sil was kind of dimmed to the enthusiam. Her fingers were sore from hanging onto the snake and the clasp did not help. She would of tried a weak smile if anybody could even bother to see it, but she tried to keep her voice steady in response,

"Umm, no, I'll just go,"

She wasn't trying to dismiss him, it was quite the accomplishment sure, but it was, done, and so was she for tonight. She wanted to leave but she looked at the crowd,

"Just umm, get them to the police, I mean, they need to get this all sorted. No ones hurt, so I guess charges can be dropped if they understand what a collossal screw up this entire mess was."

She piped up this time,

"You hear that, please don't do this again, I might not be around to kill the messenger. Lord knows he likely wasn't going to stop with the hostages, he was a nasty piece of work, and now a nasty piece of meat."

Scratching her head absently she went down to normal tired tone,

"Yeah, someone needs to clean that up, the Freedom League maybe, some of the magic folk might be interested that this you know happened. So can I trust you to do that, I don't really have a phone, so I can't."

[Ari]

With a slight look of disappointment the King of Suits bowed slightly "As you will, Silhouette. I...ah...I don't..actually have a phone either, so..I will use a payphone. If the one near this block has not been broken yet, that is" he added with a note of irritation. He regretted missing the chance to get more of the strange fluid, but what he had accidentally gotten over his glove would work "But I'll definitely let everyone I can know about this matter. A being like that striking into the city unnoticed is...unsettling" he shrugged, the red and black cape settling over his shoulders and arms. He began unlocking the handcuffs on the cultists, saying to them(Andrews especially) "Stay exactly here, I will be waiting for the police to arrive, and will make sure none of you get far if you try to run" collecting the metal 'cuffs he suddenly recalled something, snapping the forefingers of his left hand as he turned quickly back to Silhouette. Rustling in the pockets on the back of his breastplate he retrieved a narrow black wallet, and after quickly rifling through it handed over a roll of bills in a plastic bag to her. "This is really the least I can do, I've had outfits soiled, damaged and outright ruined in this line of work before."

He smiled at the hostages, who had clustered together far from the cultists, watching with suspicious eyes. "Be at ease! If they have any sense, they'll do as Silhouette here said or suffer the consequences. Now," he said crisply as he fired his grapple gun and soared out of the dirty alley the eclectic band of shadow-cultists, Freedonians and superheroes had emerged in, calling down happily "bonne nuit, le Silhouette puissante!! Good night, citizens! I will call the officers of the law, and this sorry matter will be at and end!" waving he departed in a soft noise of of booted feet on the roof.

None of the cultists moved a single muscle they could help, staring nervously around as if they expected a gigantic snake monster to emerge from the darkness.

[Ari]

GM

Two days afterwards...

In their own ways, both heroes happened to turn to page 21 of that morning's Freedom Ledger, beholding a column bearing the headline

SNAKE-CULT DEFANGED: Hero breaks up secret cult of Apep hidden below the Fens district

Mary Stewart

"An anonymous call from a phone booth in the upper Fens earlier this week brought the local police

to an alleyway, where they found two dozen Freedonians in black robes, including Egyptology Prof.

Achilles Andrews of Freedom City University, who claimed to have formerly belonged to the cult of

the Egyptian snake god of darkness Apep. In the same alley were the three missing persons

(Xerxes Pentora 31, Serena Andrews, 40, Guan Li, 24), who claimed that a black-clad vigilante known

as "Silhouette" had rescued them and killed a gigantic snake-monster sent by Apep to prevent their

escape. Investigation of the open manhole nearby revealed a vast temple apparently carved and built

without detection by citizens above ground. After confiscating the cult's hoard of foodstuffs, weapons

and the corpse of an unusually large snake that was in an extreme stage of decomposition, mystical

former Next Gen member Seven purified the temple. Speaking to the press she described what happened

in the Fens as a "near-miss" attack, and extends her congratulations to the hero who prevented it. "Thanks

to people like that a potential invasion has been decisively thwarted". After exorcizing the area of the city

that the temple was situated in, Dr. Metropolis amalgamated the underground center into the rest of the city.

Tunnels leading to a hardware store elsewhere in the Fens led to the break-up of a small smuggling ring."

END.