Post by Loner。 on Jul 16, 2017 15:59:51 GMT
❖ SEM
A pale boy on a hovering skateboard rode under the bridge, intending to use the space for a little creative experiment. He stopped in the shadow attention quickly drawn to a person deeper in the shadow. It wasn't the normal homeless oaf either. The clothes the stranger wore high quality enough, and clean despite the fact that they were totally unconventional.
The boy shook a spray can, and thinking himself tough, made a simple commanding question. "Hey you! What're ya looking at?" The boy swaggered over, clearly acting superior, as he made his way over to the skinny teen under the bridge.
The stranger just smiled, his grin unnaturally large. "How about you?" He asked with a cheekiness the other found easily infuriating. The boy with the spraypaint's hands clenched tight. Stepping forward, he threw a blow which would have left any other kid black and blue in the face.
Instead the target was gone. The momentum of the punch almost placed him nose first into the concrete. The child stumbled and caught himself before he fell.
There was a slight scraping sound against the ground. The graffitist whirled around to see the exact same kid as before, curiously picking up his hoverboard from its resting place. "Whats this" the stranger asked with seemingly innocent curiosity.
The pale kid trotted over, his gaze grim. "Its mine." He explained, wanting the thing back, but the stranger seemed reluctant. As soon as he lunged forward to grab the board, the long haired male snapped the thing in two, exposing the hovering mechanics and wires, and seeming to exert no effort on the process.
"You are so, paying for that. The graffitist yelled taking another swing at the boy, but the stranger seemed always a few steps ahead, avoiding each punch until the angry skater ended up tripping and falling down towards the river which the bridge they were under spanned.
The speed of the fall should have been too fast for anyone to catch him, but the stranger was somehow faster, reaching out one long arm, to grasp the wrist of the falling punk of a kid. The force pulling him down seemed to lessen for a moment, and soon he was back on solid ground, rescued from what might have become a deadly fall.
While still getting steady on his feet, the two pieces of board were thrown on the ground with a clatter of plastic and wooden parts. "Sorry about that. It was too tempting you know?" The skinny, shirtless somewhat dark skinned male had a completely unapologetic grin on his face, but by now the skater saw that getting payback might be futile. This boy who looked human enough to pass as one, but weird enough to never fit in sanctuary, with floating beads around his neck, what sort of thing was he?
Sem held out his hand to the shorter kid. "I can't fix the hoverboard, and I can't get a new one, but how about I make myself useful for a bit. I'll even let you order me around sometimes." His yellow eyes sparkled with mischief and excitement. This was a game to him, an interesting way to pass the time until he got too bored to too hungry to hang around. Fortunately he hadn't been very hungry lately so he had lots of time on his hands to waste.
There was a chance. The skater smiled, at his thoughts. Maybe he could get his revenge on this kid after all if he came up with a mean enough prank to break even. Maybe he could work the kid, and earn back the cost of the board and then some, not telling the guy that he was rich enough to buy a new one on a whim. He took the offered hand, willing to accept the deal.
The following week was extremely unusual.
Aside from some rules which Sem laid out about how he would not operate certain requests in the presence of others, long haired boy proved a perfect servant about half the time. No matter what feat he was ordered to do, somehow the kid either managed to get it done, or misunderstand the request so egregiously that the results were hilarious. (Like there was a time when Sem had filled the pool in his father's hotel to overflowing with dandelions and other wild weeds) The rich kid who liked to act skater punk was forced to wonder if English was the long haired kid's first language at all due to the blunders, while the scope of the requests became more and more elaborate, quickly verging into the illegal.
Just as baffling was how Sem never got caught in the process of these requests. Some of the setups to get Sem in trouble seemed flawless, but somehow the boy always came back unfazed by the potential consequences of his actions.
His posse of influential friends quickly learned to not ask about how things were done, especially after an off handed and not entirely serious request ended in the permanent disappearance of a neighbor's annoying dog. There were some things which it was wiser not to know.
The boy a few select of his posse and Sem along sat in a loose circle on the beds and couches in a large hotel room. Sem crouched on a chair facing the 'leader' the kid who's hoverboard he'd broken. The others were scattered in-between, sitting or lounging as they liked. They were sharing pizza. Four large boxes were split between the five boys. By now, three were just about empty, and the contents of the last would soon be gone as well.
The leader clapped his hands together once to catch everybody's attention. "Great job with the prep guys. Tonight's gonna be big. Everyone who's anyone is going to be here, so make sure you're here tonight at nine."
The pool was decked out with decor to add an edgy 'adultish' atmosphere, the lights turned on were chosen for ambiance and were not the boring florescent things rooted in the ceiling. The deck was stocked with snacks, and even drinks that shouldn't be had by a bunch of 16-18 year olds. Music blared loudly and the noise of kids goofing off around the pool, and just being stupid was near deafening.
Sem didn't mind the social chaos. He enjoyed it, even getting lost in some of the fun. He teased girls. He tried the foods. He even got pushed into the deep end as a prank. (Naturally he sunk, being too dense to swim until he adjusted his relationship to gravity enough to give the semblance of buoyancy.)
Going out to the deck to rest a bit, he ended up chatting a bit with a few girls. A certain type seemed drawn to him. He didn't see any similarity between them, nor even understand why they came, but it was fun to talk and joke around at least for a while.
Unknown to the humans, Sem had been extremely conservative about food during the week and a half of his presence among them. He hadn't placed first in the pizza eating earlier, some other kid had. Even tonight any snacking he did was actually to explore the assortment of flavors and textures human food had to offer. The near insatiable hunger of before had faded a long time ago, not even vaguely on his radar as he acted like an ordinary kid, wearing swim trunks, and laughing at some joke, with a drink in his hand.
It turned on like the flip of a switch.
Though not a new sensation, he doubled over at the sheer force of the sudden emptiness he felt. The glass dropped, shattering on the wooden floor. One thought began to invade his mind, pushing out the memory of what he'd been doing before. It had been a very long time since he'd felt this desperate, his emptiness roaring at him to fill it right now.
Vaguely he could see someone bending over. Vaguely, like through water, he could hear someone asking if he was alright. He reached at her, pulling her close enough to swallow.
His back arched. His chest swelled. His face lengthened growing into a snout, while his hair darkened to an ashen grey and spread across his neck and back in a spiky mane. He grew in size. Long feeler like growths extending from his back, as his hind legs became a powerful mix of human-like and froggish again with heavily clawed toes. A tail formed, skinny and furless with a bright yellow bulb adorning the end. His beads swelled in size to match, spinning about his neck as they always did. Even before the morphing was complete, he was reaching forward with lengthening arms, grabbing with long fingered clawed hands, and throwing those nearby into his changing maw. Four tentacle tongues stretched out, snaking across the deck and the pool. They grabbed anything they could, pulling people and objects to him to be swallowed instantly. By the time anyone realized what was going on, it was already too late to escape.
The tongues shot through the windows near the ceiling, wrapping around the hotel and lifting it off it's foundation. Glass broke. People screamed. Sem's maw was already expanding to encompass the base of the building. Letting the suction of the void act as a force of gravity to pull it in, the building vanished within seconds, only a part of the first floor remained.
It was nowhere near enough. The hunger was shot through with a terrible pain, related to the amount he had just consumed. It slowed him for a moment, but in this state the hunger was too demanding to ignore even in the face of the internal agony.
He leaped out into the street, leaving a portal in his wake to act as a mouth consuming the remains of anything near, while he was already sweeping his tongues across the street, collecting cars, and the next skyscraper to drop down into his bottomless pit.
Even in this form the buildings dwarfed Sem, but nothing was too big to be spared by his maw as he staggered forward cutting a swath through the city as he went.
The other agony didn't go away, growing worse with every bit of matter he consumed. It was like it was trying to make him throw up, causing sharp contractions within his storage stomach, confusing the relationship between it and his core until it really felt like he was going to implode.
Yet the precarious balance between his exterior and his core refused to break.
The hunger was just as bad. It seemed to have no end, blinding him to any other action. Even when the pain peaked he was still pulling something new into his mouth, still had the energy to swallow dooming it to destruction, and dooming himself to another wave of peer induced agony. Whether it reached his core or not.
That other singularity was the cause of this, using a power Sem's bonds ensured he lacked to alter the rules Sem was already obligated to follow. If he were not so blinded by hunger right now that he could think of nothing else, he'd be connecting the dots, cursing the guy, ready to hunt him down to the ends of the multiverse.
Instead he was forced to consume everything within reach.
A report went out into the night. Attackers came from the air, buzzing around like flies, and being similarly difficult to catch. They shot things at him, crackling blue spheres of energy with the hope of subduing him before this became any worse.
He shrugged off attacks. Anti-magic didn't work on him very well, yet those that got too close to his neck caused his floating beads to crackle and spark inciting a different kind of pain to his exterior.
Interference with the beads had skewed the balance. He tipped further towards implosion. It felt like more than just his storage stomach was being pulled in now. A weak force on every atom of his being threatened to pull his body towards his core.
Ancient Magic held that fate back for the moment, for him but not for everything around him.
Both the hunger and pain grew exponentially worse. The gravity he happened to exhibit began to exceed the earth's. The landscape buckled and bent towards him. Objects that got too close, fell to him from any angle including straight up off the ground. Those anti-magic flies that got caught too close could not escape the pull. Things ended up plastered and flattened like pancakes against his hide, and ever so slowly ended up pulled through, particle by particle ending up merged with his hyper dense flesh or working its way towards the center.
He came across a giant skyscraper, taller than the ones he had consumed before. Even before he got close enough to grab it with his tongues, it was beginning to fall. Those flies which remained seemed to increase their attacks, but the energy bullets to his hide simply were absorbed. Those that passed too close his necklace only worsened the effects.
As the radius of gravity grew, more things careened towards him. The troops deployed, both human and robot didn't stand a chance. Many were dead or malfunctioned before they even got close c
The building's structure broke and buckled. It fell, and the debris was easily consumed.
Before sem managed to take another step, a counter, reaching an ideal number clicked.
Sem let out a terrible warbled cry, the likes of which no human or animal here had ever heard, clutching at his neck as the beads sparked with blue electric-like magical energy. He reared up on two legs, stumbling into the remains of the falling state building. His gravity still forcing bits to be absorbed even as he thrashed around for a while.
Soon this was suppressed. The monster fell, dust rising up around the point of attack, and all was still.
The sun rose over Sanctuary, revealing the damage, to helicopter and news crews. A large roughly teardrop shape, running from where the Myers hotel used to stand, at the narrow tip, and running all the way to where sanctuary's tallest building used to be. The swath was several miles long, pockmarked with large holes where portals had been placed, as well as a large absence of debris. The buildings were simply gone, as were cars and people and everything else that had been too close that night. Not a tree remained standing, and no stone seemed to have been left on another. After a large absence of rubble, debris increased closer to the large circular end of the mess, running in roughly spiral like arcs across the ground.
Authorities and enforcers, and artificial beings made for the hunt of supernatural beings or survivors scoured the area, looking for information about what had happened in the night.
In the center of the large end of the teardrop shaped crater of destruction slept a small white haired boy, curled tightly into a fetal position due to pain he could not consciously feel for the time being, a chain of floating beads around his neck. A bomb going off wouldn't have awoken him at this moment, though even if it was on top of him it wouldn't have killed him either.
Sensors which picked up magic as if it were a form of radiation crackled, leading authorities to the sleeping boy's location. Hopefully they could tell that the magic was keeping him asleep. Hopefully they could see or find out that interference with this particular magic could end up destroying them all. The intense magics held by the beads had been the only thing which had stood between them and the end of the world that night.
Fast asleep he was harmless. They could capture him, throw him in some kind of containment, try and keep him from escaping when he awoke, or a supernatural Taskforce could come and take him if they were swift enough to be on the scene.
He wouldn't be able to do anything about whatever they tried to do to him until he slept for a time relative to the damage he'd caused the night before, or if some anti-magic compromised the seal induced sleep.
XARXU (OOC) Kagekami, Arikado
