520w, kinda area 52 inspired ig??. (also: leggies)
The monster’s lair stinks of fuel and rust. Cody adjusts his breathing mask hand and shoulders his rifle before going any further, the light that comes through the mouth of the cave drawing long black shadows on the rocky ground. It’s damp, full of puddles, water and oil and old, rotting blood.
There is an old animal carcass by the door. It’s more bone than flesh, and what’s left is surrounded by a cloud of fat black flies.
Cody can hear the creature. It likes talking to itself; sometimes it sings, long, desperate lullabies, wordless and wrenching. Not now: today it’s ranting, the words individually clear but lacking sense.
It’s a sad, little thing. It built himself, and now Cody’s been asked to destroy it forever.
He starts walking, his boots quiet on the puddles and the rocks. He watches the shadows, the walls: they’re scored with deep, ragged lines, and when he brushes them with his fingers the edges are sharp and oily.
It steals fuel from the depot on the other side of the road. Fuel and farm animals, sometimes people. Some nights it crawls from its cave in the mountains and makes its way to the town, where people live, and gorges itself, clickety clacking all over the tarmac of the main street of the town next to the depot and pushing its face against windows, leering and snarling with a mouth full of dirty yellow teeth.
Everyone knows what it is, everyone knows where it came from—and now everyone wants it gone. Gone, forever. They even flew Cody from the mainland, bought his air ticket, and if he pulls this off he won’t have to work for a long while.
Cody stops. The monster has shut its mouth. He scowls, squints at the dark. Pulls down his night vision goggles and gets ready to shoot or to engage his jetpack.
The cave is very quiet and very noisy, all at once: Cody can hear dripping water, his own breathing, the scrape of the leather of his jacket against the straps of the ‘pack.
The thing came from the no man’s land beyond the mountains, from the badlands and the army base.
It must have been human once, but now it is a monster, a thing that kills things and guzzles gas and prowls the night.
Something creaks. Cody turns on his heel, rifle at the ready, and pauses.
The thing is looking at him. It’s made itself small, and its yellow eyes are wide and curious and—clever. Cody swallows. The thing tilts its head, takes a step in Cody’s direction, and then it opens its mouth, rumbles something at Cody he doesn’t understand.
It looks like a man, but wrong. The marks on its skin, the crowns on its head, its mouthful of fangs and its body, spider-like and too big and made of scrap metal and slivers of bone.
It stinks of rotting raw meat and gas. Cody swallows. His hands want to shake, and he’s soaked in sweat.
Ok, shitty screens aside... MAYBE the lineup of the characters Is done... but there’s still all of their character pages to do which will be my TRUE test of faith
