The Grand Opening

How many bullets did she have? It seemed that every time Constantine tried to inflict a grievous blow, she was somehow able to save herself by using her weapons to some form of utilitarian advantage. The girl lay in the broken rubble of the second floor of the adjacent apartment building. She had attempted to reinstate his loss of balance with a shot to his feet, but she did little more than cause more collateral damage to the city streets. Constantine could tell that Elaine was desperate. He knew that she knew that if she didn't do something quick, that he was going to break her legs and make her completely helpless; just like he wanted.

Constantine steadily doubled the pressure of the grip on her left leg. At this point, he was sure that there would have been some form of crippling damage done to her leg; after all, the pressure on her appendage was enough to crush a car. Constantine rose his left hand from out of the wall of tendrils, a single mechanical worm extending from his palm. The tentacle slithered through the air towards Elaine, ready to drill right through her rib cage. The tentacle rose above her chest like a rattlesnake preparing to strike. Just as Constantine was prepared to deal the killing blow, he heard the sound of screeching tires and blaring sirens.

Looking to his left and right, he saw two sets of three police cars, forming a perimeter around the "crime scene". The idiotic cops stumbled out of their vehicles, their pathetic handguns prone to shoot Constantine. He noticed the subtle trembling in their hands. They're afraid...good, he thought. "Re-release the hostage and drop your weapons," said one of the blabbering idiot cops to his left, his voice cracking and shaking like a little girl. Constantine smiled at their demands from beneath his emotionless mask. He pulled Elaine out of the building, tossing her like a rag doll right at the line of police cars where the man had made his demands. As he did so, he was half tempted to say something cheesy like "catch" but resisted the urge to keep up the aura of fear he had on the police officers. Fear is a powerful weapon, one that should not be given up when one has it. As the girl flew through the air, the Coil sent a swarm of tentacles, beneath the cover of earth and concrete, to deal with the police line to his right. They thought they were coming to help, but all they did was make his day a lot more interesting.

Immediate crisis averted, but her pain intensified through her legs. As pressure brought the tendrils closer to each other Elaine found her legs crushing in the vice this monster created. Nothing could help pry these tendrils off, and as Elaine contemplated using her explosive rounds in close proximity, she saw a tendril snake towards her. Surely it took its time to make sure that he could immobilize Elaine properly. This gave her an opportunity to bring her left pistol up and fire three explosive rounds towards the drill bit.

Motion ripped through her legs with force that deeply bruised her down to the tendons. She heard the police announce her as a hostage, adding insult to injury. Coil flung her towards the police line; she could feel that her left leg collapsed under the pressure. Cruel tendrils crushed the ligaments in her left leg with their exerting force.

Elaine borrowed motion from Coil throwing her to the ground to propel her shadow jump to take her towards the hole that Coil initially crawled up from. To fully garner the motion she needed to let one of her legs absorb the damage first. She stepped her right leg out take the impact. Bruised muscles took on the shock from the brutal landing, but Elaine sat her foot down upon the heel of her foot and moved the motion towards the toe in a normal fashion. The hole Coil burst from should give her some clarity and insight into the type of man see dealt with. Above all she wanted to know about the man behind the suit.

Elaine still had one good leg on her, and planned on using it to the best of her ability. The tunnel opened up before her like a perfect circle. She put her hands against the wall to compensate for her damaged left leg while focusing on moving down the long tunnel. This cut down on her usual quick speed, but still gave her some speed. Putting her focus on the mission at hand, Elaine forgot to reload her pistols as she moved down the tunnel.

He didn't react in time. She already retaliated, and the shockwave from the bullets impaling the mouth of his palm-tendril shivered up his arm. The damaged tendril retreated to the port in his hand, and Constantine gave a sigh of irritation. As the girl flew through the air, his eyes slowly followed her descent. But rather than the satisfying crunch of her breaking upon the hood of the police car, she vanished once again. This didn't make any sense. If she was capable of teleportation, why had she given him so much time to do damage to her legs? Perhaps freedom to move was essential to her use of this ability?

Constantine's quick detective work was interrupted by a hail of gunfire from the left and right side. As soon as he felt the first shot echo off his breastplate, he wrapped himself in a cocoon of tendrils. Each officer unloaded their entire clip into the writhing metal form, but when the dust had cleared, Constantine had little more than some scratch marks on the tentacles of his otherwise undamaged suit. Revealing himself from the squirming cocoon, he turned his attention to the police barricade to his left. Cocking his head to one side like a bird of prey, the swarm of tentacles he had so stealthily deployed earlier shot up through the bottom of the cop cars on his right. The first car went flying through the air crashing into the apartment building as the second flipped over, crushing two of the officers under its weight. The third car was engulfed by a group of tendrils that gripped it like a toy. Constantine used it as a weapon, slamming it down on the left police barricade; crushing both police vehicle and officer alike.

The sound of the burning wreckage was accented by the sound of more sirens. The Coil knew he could take on as many cops as he wanted, but suddenly it hit him. Where the hell was the girl? Constantine panned around the city streets, trying to find where his prey had gone off to.

Opening up before her the tunnel stretched out. Who ever created the tunnel took the most direct route possible, giving no real twists or turns. After about twelve minutes of limp running Elaine found an opening that led to a lighted room. She stepped back and then took a step, leaping into the room through a shadow jump.

Elaine moved through the poorly kept living room. Stained furniture lined the hollow walls. Elaine stumbled through the warehouse office looking for any clues as to what kind of man lived here. She pulled the bandanna off and wrapped it around her knee to brace the knee from damage to the ligaments. It gave her some light relief from walking, but could hardly hold her weight in a more stressful situation. Newspapers littered the dust ridden floor, recent newspapers. Whoever lived here used this as a living space.

Elaine noticed papers on the desk. These articles all pertained to the technology. Seemed likely that a tech-head would take an interest in these pages. Behind those articles Elaine noticed the society sections of the papers. This guy did not care a whole lot for weather or sports, he wanted to know where people flocked to. It seemed he wanted to make a mapping of human patterns within the city, but why?

Elaine threw her bag on the desk and walked over to try and find something more personal that he brought into the warehouse himself. She walked into a loading bay and examined the run down machinery. A few conveyor belts looked like they stopped seeing work decades ago. Elaine took the stairs down to the garage section of the loading bay. She walked past the two repair pits dug into the ground for under the chasis maintenance, and opened the door into the office.

A pair of chairs sat in front of the desk, flanked on both sides by filing cabinets. This room looked like someone tried cleaning it up. The low hum of a radio sounded from beneath the desk. Slowly Elaine leaned down to pick it up; it seemed destroyed by some breaking force. She sat it down on the desk, not giving it attention, as a folder caught her eye. Elaine picked it up and flipped through it. Confidential files on the three astronauts and a fourth file on another astronaut filled the dossier. The first three looked normal for someone receiving an award, but the fourth seemed far darker. She wondered as to why the museum failed to notice him, until see read through the file.

This man, Constantine Ramislov, looked like everything you would expect from an astronaut, until the truth about the details of his mission came to light. An accident and a disobedience from orders lead to a tragic dismal from detail. Banishment from mankind hidden behind a cruel reminder of his failure. Elaine tapped her pistol to her head and could only think of times that she disobeyed orders and paid no attention to the safety of herself or others. Would this happen to her?

Constantine slowly descended the rusted metal steps of the warehouse he called home. The sun was slowly setting, and the dimming light of the sun mocked him as he saw the destruction he had wrought in his anger. Like a lot of days in his life, today was a disappointment. He had accomplished nothing in his anger except break two of the most valuable tentacles in his suit and cause a few families to lose loved ones. Closure had once again slipped through his grasp; the hole left by his hunger for revenge against those who wronged him, robbed. Taken from him like the dreams he once held dear. As he reached the hole where he had first started his rampage, he felt frustration take hold as he kicked an dingy metal can across the room. It made a crashing sound against the concrete walls before noisily settling in a pile of trash and detritus.

What really pissed Constantine off was the fact that the girl got away and he had absolutely no way to track her down and make her pay for interfering in his business. The two broken tentacles slowly extended from their ports and the Coil stared at the twisted metal where their mouths used to be as if they were injured pets. He gave a sigh as the tendrils slowly returned to their ports. Slowly walking across the room, he felt uneasy. Frustration and anger broke into uncontrollable sorrow. He broke down, collapsing to his knees steady tears swelling up in his eyes. He wept for the loss he had.

Constantine would never be able to live a normal life; there was no going back. He could never feel the thrill of participating in the space program. He would never feel the warm touch of a woman that loved him. He would never get to wave good by to his children on their first day of school. Everything had been taken from him; he had nothing left. Nothing left but limitless rage and unending sorrow. Water steadily flowed from his mask as the suits emergency draining systems in his face detected his tears. He sat in the center of the room, wallowing in his own misery.

A sudden sound burst into the warehouse. Sound carried through the rickety warehouse and into the small office. Elaine pressed the dossier under her arm and went to investigate the source of the abrupt intrusion. Walking through the dust illuminated warehouse she could hear noises that let her know that she was not alone. Deep within the floor of the warehouse an echoing cry rang out. The sobs vibrated against the metal of Coil, making it sound as though the cries came from every direction. These cries echoed a sadness that reaffirmed the feeling Elaine put together that her idea of coming her looked fruitful.

Elaine walked onto the floor of the warehouse and viewed the man. For the first time she took a real look at the man, finally not covered by his writhing tentacles. "Constantine Ramislov..." She spoke towards the man. She failed to come up with any words to mutter in his presence. A few weeks ago she would shoot a person without warning for committing such acts.

Now, she needed to stick with a more refined code. "...I'm going to need for you to come with me." She wanted to ask him to remove the suit, but remembered that he could not. "If you want to make this hard, then I'm not sure if you'll survive." She put her hand on her pistols and dropped the dossier. She felt the chambers of the gun and remembered she forgot to reload. She kept spare bullets in her bag, but left it in the office. Seven bullets needed to last her in case of trouble.

Deleted.

((Sono, this is a private thread between Elaine and I. You need permission from either of us to join the thread. Not to mention, your character hasn't been approved yet.))







He heard his name. For the first time in almost two years, Constantine actually heard his name. He didn't even have to turn around, Constantine already knew who it was. A feeling washed over him that could be described as a tiny flash of joy. With the simple action of being called by his name, he felt human for the first time in a very long time. "People hurting..." he whispered, composing himself from his crying but still not turning to face the intruder. "People suffering...." he hissed, before bursting into a fit of maniacal laughter that started out quiet but slowly ascended in volume. "People dying...." he said, standing and turning in one quick motion to face Elaine.

"It's all so fucking hysterical!" he yelled, still laughing uncontrollably.

"Laugh..." Constantine demanded, his tentacles sprouting from their ports and rising him off the ground. His face was positioned in such a way that, were his eyes visible, they would be looking right into Elaine's. "LAUGH WITH ME!" he bellowed, losing control of his maniacal laughter. The warehouse echoed with the sounds of a man maddened by rage and sorrow.

Elaine did not reach for her pistols. She could fire at the drill bits, but that would only cause this situation to get worse. Her knee would not let her move in the way that she needed to in order to fight to her full potential, and her ammunition looked a little short. "Some jokes don't get laughs." Her eyes peered across the room to the metallic face. She kept her arms locked across her chest in the face of this man's adversity. No reason to put stress on a building that could barely hold any weight to begin with.

The tentacles retook their sentry position and then thrust into the ground. The larger Constantine gained more of an elevation over the smaller girl. Any sound the man produced sounded exacerbated itself within the metallic chamber, and then played out in resonance along the metal structure. Elaine held strong during the stand off and returned the gaze to the red eye of the suit. "Sometimes the joke makes you so it can have a laugh." Any moment now the former astronaut would decide everyone's fate.

The Coil rose up, cocking his head to the left. With a slight jerking movement, half a dozen tentacles shot up towards the ceiling, crashing through the windows above, causing a rain of glass to descend upon the pair of them. The glass shards bounced playfully off his writhing metallic form, and he continued to laugh manically as he did a backward corkscrew motion that ended with him burrowing under the ground. Using the tentacles on his lower body, he was sure to cover up his entrance hole so that Elaine would not be able to follow him. But Constantine wasn't done yet. No, he wouldn't be done until one of them was dead.

The 3D mapping showed the girl overhead. Constantine set up directly under her, guiding his tentacles underneath the ground so that they could burst from practically anywhere in the room. All he had to do was wait for the moment to strike. Madness consumed his mind and soul and he became little more than a monster with an insatiable thirst for blood.

This was a battle between beauty and the beast; a battle where only one would survive.

Glass showered the area around Elaine. The largest shards broke against Coil's tentacles, but the aftershock still rained down near Elaine. She moved to avoid the shards. Not thinking of the injury she sustained, she pivoted on her left knee to move towards the office. Coil dove under ground, as Elaine stumbled towards the side office she left her bad in. After a few feet of pain she realized that she would need to make the best of her shadow jump and get into that office faster. The pain caused her to loose some of the demeanor she kept in her stare down, but she grabbed the case that she kept her spare ammunition in, and began to feed it into her holster.

The pink bandanna could not hold up her knee in this severe of a situation, but the explosives she packed her in bag would do wonderfully in this situation. Elaine tried to remember whether or not Coil could target from underground; she remembered him launching an attack at her when he launched an attack at her from above ground, but his fighting style relied on whether or not she could get a shot in those drill bits. She needed to start mixing up her attacks and movements. Becoming too predictable in battle lead to her capture twice before, but those days of youth lay in the previous months.

In any case, she needed to make sure that she could count on those remote detonation rounds in this situation. She finished loading explosive rounds into the holster and began listening for any sound that would give her premonition into where any kind of attack would come from. She took aim with her pistols at the ground, she knew that if nothing else he would come at her from below. Unless he did not, she thought to herself, looking up.

An opportunity presented itself. As Elaine cast her vision to the broken and battered roof, eight tentacles burst out of the ground in a circle, surrounding Elaine. Encircling her in a whirlwind of snaking metal, they attempted to wrap her entire body in a cold, steely embrace. This embrace would completely restrict the use of her arms and legs, and would put him in the perfect position to squeeze the life from her. Constantine was fairly confident that she wouldn't use any of her explosive rounds against something of that close proximity, and even if she did, there was only so many she could shoot. One of his thicker tendrils simultaneously pulled down a large metal girder that stood vertically along one of the walls. He had hoped that the more immediate danger of the falling girder would distract her from the tentacles that sought to bind her.

Her over thinking did her in. She thought that the tentacles would sneak through the walls and attack from behind, but his attack defied her thought process and shot out from the bottom. The most anticipated attack surprised Elaine. Now, she needed to take advantage of the machine showing it's face all at once. A circle surrounded her with an evil red glow. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a larger tendril pull down a girder. She would not fall for that trick; a villain would attack from behind if he wanted to crush her, not come from the side.

Elaine pulled out one of her grenades and threw it in the air directly above her. She turned and fired two explosive rounds from her pistols at two of the drill bits. She then pointed her pistol towards the grenade and fired a remote detonation round into the grenade. She thrust herself forward with her right leg and shadow jumped out of the office and back into the floor of the warehouse. As she rematerialized she brought her finger up to push the button detonating the round and the grenade in the room behind her.

She had slipped through his grasp again. The bedlam of the numerous explosions caused three of his tendrils to short-circuit from overheating in the inferno of Elaine's attack. The tendrils returned to the ground, the overheated ones returning to the ports on Constantine's body. He saw where she teleported. He felt his fists begin to clench. He grit his teeth as a rush of anger forced him to spring into action. His entire, writhing form forced its out of the ground, crashing through the wall and into the room she was in.

Coiling around the room, he reached his right arm out of the snaking metallic cocoon that enveloped his body in an attempt to grapple the bitch my the neck. As he did so, several other tendrils followed suit in attempting to restrain the woman's hands and feet. Constantine decided that he wanted to be up close and personal. He wanted to feel the subtle wind of her last breath against his mask as she gasped for air.

Elaine swung around to see more tentacles erupt from the ground. She faced off against a seemingly unending barrage of these creatures. She fired a remote detonation bullet at the hand that came at her. She spun around and jumped away, pushing the button on her handle to detonate the bullet. She then turned and emptied the remaining bullets into the tendrils of the invading force. One smoke screen bullet and six exploding rounds fired into the mass of tentacles.

Despite her best efforts she heard the clicking sound from her pistols. She dropped her hands and reached down to grab her spare pistol when the tendrils wrapped around her arms, while the bits held her hands behind her back. She looked around the room as she felt herself struggle against a much stronger force of nature than she.

The explosive shells echoed off the titanium tentacles. Fire and smoke engulfed the Coil as a sharp pain reverberated up his extended arm. The explosive shell that Elaine fired in desperation hit him square in the palm, the concussion of the tiny detonator cracking his wrist. Despite the pain that overwhelmed his arm, he grasped her throat, the anger in his heart numbing the pain in his wrist. His visual acuity had once again been scrambled by the most recent assault, and his HUD was telling him that the several other tentacles had sustained damage. Constantine still had plenty at his disposal, but the suit was getting more and more damaged as the fight wore on.

The girl dangled in front of him; held up by a swathe of tentacles and his own, black, armored gauntlet. "Laugh..." Constantine hissed, slowly, and jerkily leaning in closer to the helpless girl. Elaine denied him, giving a look that said she was desperate in her refusal to submit. A flash of fury washed over him. "LAUGH!" he demanded, tightening his grip on the girl's fragile neck.