Friday, September 14, 2007

Fit to be Tied

He woke up with his hands and feet so cold they were burning.

He was standing, or rather hanging upright, with his arms stretched over his head, held in place with massive steel rings generating a crippling amount of raw cold. Heat baffles whirred at his wrists and ankles, draining all heat from the air around his limbs, literally freezing him in place. Everything else was darkness.

"Neat, huh? Like the accommodations, Duck?"

That was Lethane's voice but in the chill of the pitch black room, he could not make out where it was coming from. The air was so frigid it was amplifying sound, making the madman's vicious tones emanate from all around him.

"Quit c-c-calling me Duck!"

He knew why Lethane did it. It always got under his skin, ever since the day the blue-skinned monster started saying it. Duck was a reference to a silly cartoon character who used to say "evil-doer". Once, Ravyn had called Lethane an evil-doer and ever since, the son of a bitch would not stop calling him Duck. Duck or DW. Either way, it was infuriating.

"Awww, I'm sorry, Darkwing. Does it hurt your little duckie feelings?"

Without waiting for Bloodravyn to respond, Lethane continued. "You should be more grateful, you know. Those restraints are top of the line. They were designed for Inferus. You remember ol' Fernie, don't you?"

It was a cruel question. Of course Ravyn remembered the fiery mutant. Inferus was the first villain the Vigilants as a newly established heroic group ever fought against. They'd had several clashes since that initial encounter, each one more brutal than the last. But that wasn't the source of the painful memories brought up by the name.

Infernus was the first person Bloodravyn, then Nightravyn, ever killed.

---------------

There hadn't been any choice, not that such a thing made what he'd done any easier. The villain had both superhuman strength and the ability to vent solar heat from his pores, igniting the air around any part of his body he desired. Infernus was one of the toughest foes Vigilance had ever faced; every time they clashed with him, his powers took a heavy toll.

That last battle had been no different. Bulwark was trapped under a mass of molten tar, all that was left of a city intersection. Tesla hadn't fared any better; he was twitching and screaming around a super-conductive rod of molecular carbon, impaled through his shoulder and being drained of all his energy. Between grounding and blood loss, he wasn't long for consciousness, much less life.

But of them all, Anthem was the worse. Infernus had her by the throat, his fingers cutting off her airs and crippling her ability to make any sound at all. Choking, she was moments from blacking out under his crushing grip. But her real peril was the wave of white fire moving slowly down the villain's arm. It had already passed his elbow and was creeping ever closer to her all-too-fragile flesh.

He was doing it slow, forcing her to watch her own impending demise. She wasn't the only victim he was torturing this way. Ravyn was also on the ground nearby, pinned to the ground by a suit of armor too heavy for him to move now that its power packs were completely shorted out. Infernus had used a current rerouter to funnel one of Tesla's blasts into his armor's batteries, shutting him down instantly. Ravyn didn't actually have any measurable super powers; he was a mutant but all of his abilities were latent. The armor was his only way to tap his genetic potential. Without it, he was completely, helplessly normal.

"Watch me, worm, while I roast this little songbird. But don't weep too much. You'll join her soon enough!" Infernus had loved to gloat, thinking himself poetic in his murderous moments. He was unconcerned that Ravyn had managed to get the suit off one of his arms and still had one tool with a charge in it - a grapple gun.

Even as Ravyn hefted the climbing pistol into the air, Infernus was unimpressed. The mutant's fires were nearly halfway down his forearm. Anthem, Ravyn's asphyxiating wife, had only moments to live. "What are you going to do with that? Tie me up? It won't save your woman, you know! It won't save any of you!"

Ravyn fired the grapple gun but not at him. The cord lashed out, crossing the distance between them in the blink of an eye. It sailed past Infernus' head, coming within a scant inch of hitting him in the face.

The villainous firestarter laughed viciously. "You missed! One last shot and you missed!"

Ravyn forced himself to yank the cord back with all the strength he had left. "Did I?"

"Wha---"

Wha was Infernus' last word, cut short by the end of the conducting rod still stuck in Tesla's shoulder smashing into the back of his head. The grapple gun had adhered to the side of the pole, yanking down to collide with Infernus' skull, cutting his scalp painfully.

The result was... messy. Nearly 200,000 volts of raw electricity slammed into the mutant's brain through the small wound caused by the rod. With nowhere else to go, the energy did the only thing it could do - it boiled the man's cerebral fluids instantaneously. The sheer pressure caused his head to detonate like a small bomb, throwing Anthem clear. She had also been shocked by the electrical discharge but better that than strangled or incinerated.

She would be fine, as would Tesla and... once he crawled his way up out of the oozing mire of 5th and Main... Bulwark. As for Nightravyn, there would be weeks of therapy and terrible dreams. Theirs was violent work at times but, as with lovemaking, you can never really forget the first time.

-------------

A sharp, harsh laugh brought Bloodravyn back to the freezing present. "Trip down memory lane? Yeah, I heard about how Fernie checked out. Hope you brought a mop."

Ravyn struggled but his body betrayed him. Half frozen to death, he could barely move, much less try to escape these arctic restraints. "You bastard! You have no idea what it was like? How could you? You... you...!"

Ravyn could feel breath on his cheek, warmth after so many long moments in the cold. "Go on. Say it, big man. I wanna hear it."

With every bit of effort left in him, Ravyn smashed his head the direction of the breath, impacting his forehead of something slightly softer than hard concrete. The pain was excruciating but the attack hit its mark. The unseen Lethane reeled back with a cry of raw shock and what very much sounded like a tooth cracking.

The roar of anger gave way quickly to the sound of malicious laughter.

"That... was... awesome! Oh FUCK yes!"

The restraints came open a moment later, sending Ravyn crashing to a steel covered floor. Slow heating jets kicked on in the darkness all around him. He huddled, realizing now that he was completely naked, covered only by the shadows of the unlit room.

"Hurry up and thaw. I have GOT to kick your ass again!"

The laughter continued for more than a minute, getting fainter all the time. A door opened. A door closed. The sound was muffled and then faded away completely. He was alone now, still shivering but slowly warming back up. Sensation was returning to his arms and legs, something he almost immediately regretted as the pain of waking nerves began.

"In-s-s-s-ane," Ravyn stammered under his ragged breath.

"The man is c-c-completely insane."

3 comments:

Zay B. Eve said...

Oi, I know how that blinding cold feels. I don't envy him one little bit!

erisraven said...

Yep, in my professional opinion, that's nuts. Roaring bug-f*ck nuts. And that's my professional opinion, evil-doer.

(wanders off singing "Darkwing Duck! When there's trouble you call D.W. Darkwing duck! Let's get Dangerous..." )

August said...

*chuckles*

You're both right.

Cold sucks and Leth r nutses.