Crimson Hawk Hotel | 21st Floor - 7:23pm
Jakob Azur wasnt a brave man persay, he was just a creature of routine. He imagined himself something like a lion tamer who saw the lion every day, got used to the lion and then looked really brave when he walked confidently into the enclosure and the lion ignored him. If you do something enough time it becomes ordinary, fear comes from the unknown and the unexpected. But way up here there was nothing unexpected anymore, just the sound of the wind, the squeak of the glass, footprints.
No. No that last one was not ordinary at all. So unordinary infact that it filled him with a spike of fear. There were footprints on the glass, bootprints to be exact. Bootprints outside the glass. Jakob moved his cart over and then followed them down until he saw a man in a black jacket crouching while looking through the glass and inside of someones room. It might have just been creepy, if the man crouching on a vertical pane of glass making it impossible and creepy.
Thats when Jakob heard the music, and immediately frowned.
"Jack, it's like they're caught in some sort of ritual all moving in unison." Said the man in black to a small device in his hand. Something in the dying sunlight glinted off his hair and made it look blue sort of like raven feathers caught in just the right lighting.
"It reproduced?!" The device clicked, and then clicked again. The voice on the other end was almost shrill with panic.
"What? No. It's these people! I think this song has some sort of mind altering power over them, they're just moving against each other." There was a small pause.
"Goddamnit! Assshole your supposed to be looking for the crea....Is -is that Despacito? Where even are you right now?!" The voice snapped back. Jakob saw someone approach the window where the man was crouching, point upwards at him then slip off their sandal? Slipper? And then slap it on the floor. The man in black immediately hopped to his feet and looked shaken.
"They've spotted me!" Afraid the man was going to suddenly run off and trail footprints on his nice freshly cleaned windows, Jakob decided speak up.
"Uh...sir. I dont think your supposed to be up here..." He said, somewhat nervously. Uncertainty and a large unknown staring directly.
"Oh! Apologies, I'm looking for a friend."
"On the outside of the building?" The man shrugged in reply.
"He gets around."
"...did you, or your friend dance all over the windows?"
"I...didnt dance on any windows."
"Sir, I can see your all over the -" Something in the strange man's face went sour, he suddenly looked very serious, and very dangerous all at once and Jakob found his words drifting away into the sunset.
"Dont. Move." Said the man. Jakob didnt dare. "Are they the same footprints?"
"What?"
"Are the prints connected or are they in the same pattern all around like it's been copied." The device in the man's hand clicked.
"Max, did you find anything?"
"Busy, Jack." The man said back into the device curtly. Jakob looked around him, indeed the footprints didnt seem to go anywhere. He had been so caught up in the fact they were there he didnt bother to try and follow them. They were spotted around like stamps in the same pattern on three different.
"Well how about -" He didnt have the chance to finish. For lack of a better term the window came at him. He heard a sound like the creak and crack of a thousand panes of glass and then saw a mess of reflective surfaces bowl into him. Jakob tried to simultaneously follow his safety instructions and lay flat on his cart while at the same time moving away from the sudden movement and instead banged his head against a railing fell limp in his little cleaning podium.
His assailant braced itself on seven needle thin reflective legs stitched together by cloudy strands of black. It looked like someone melted electrical tape and rolled it in a pile of broken glass and made the finished product into a vaguely arachnid shape. Something near it's front resembling twelve to fifteen mandibles oscillated and chittered.
"You know I'm going to have to pay for his medical bills." Max said, the creature replied with a roar the drowned out the music, cracked the panes directly around it, and reverberated for several feet and then it dove at him. It's sheer bulk struck Max squarely and carried him and clean off the side of the Crimson Hawk and into a freefall. Meanwhile it's limbs slashed wildly like razor sharp slices of amber, yellow, and silver, against the sunset. It was fast, but each strike was met with either the whistle of empty air the blunt smack of flesh against a flat surface of glass moving the bladed edge harmlessly away. Max plunged his hand into the gooey black mess that held the bulk of the creature feeling for something - the creature immediately slammed four of it's limbs into the surface off the wall in panic, to stop itself. Unlike an actual arachnid it could not simply attach and so each of it's limbs made a sharp whine as they burst through the glass to find purchase. Max did the same slapping both his hands and feet onto the vertical surface of the Crimson Hawk in a sort of gravity defying four point stop.
"I'm going to have to pay for that too. Could you stop?" As if in spite it barrelled after Max, racing down the surface of the building leaving a trail of vicious fractures in it's wake. Max kicked off his feet and ran up the building at it, the two met in the middle in a flurry of blows before it managed to get two limbs tucked beneath Max's arms and then flip and send him soaring backwards and off the building into another free fall.
-||-
Crimson Hawk Hotel | 14th Floor
Jack was terrified, his link with Max was filled with a bunch of garbled sounds and he was - to his knowledge - the only person actually looking for a terrifying interdimensional monstrosity capable of destroying Gaia. By himself. He had something on his face that looked like the mult-lensed thing the eye doctor uses when trying to figure out your prescription. Only it was attached to a complicated wire frame that fit his head awkwardly and made him look ridiculous. The hotel was spotted with all different hues and he had no idea what any of them meant, but Max said that this was the only way they could see the creature. And that Jack was the only one that could wear it.
Jack assumed Max just didnt want to look ridiculous, and he sighed to himself.
And then he saw a blur of black topped with a streak of blue race by the window falling helplessly downwards.
"MAX!" He shouted into the small black box.
And then what looked like a storm of black and silver raced down after Max.
-||-
Crimson Hawk Hotel | 10th Floor
"JACK! BUSY!" Max shouted back.
"Stop that! Your becoming more expensive than your worth!" The glass beast was on him in a moment. It was something like being caught in a cage, if the cage didnt want you inside of it and so it was trying to stab you with the bars. He managed a defensive by trying to grab at what was left of it's core which caused it to panic and reassemble itself in a different way. He felt more lashes than he count and then...
Crimson Hawk Hotel | 3rd Floor
...nothing. The entire creature exploded into a puff of so much black dust as it transformed into a single sheet of white paper and drifted gently in the wind leaving Max to gravity.
"Oh, that's just cheating!" Max cried out. He wanted to shout more and worse but had had other more pressing issues. His boots could create footholds, but they werent meant for this kind of speed. He had to focus on the enchantment, engage it. Have it break. Focus again. Re-engage it. Break. It was like trying to use a rapid shot shudder on a camera except he had to track each click of the lens. Max squeezed his eyes shut, one break in concentration and...
Crimson Hawk Hotel | 2rd Floor
He could feel the seems of the enchant burning up and feel gravity like at tight ball in his stomach. He became vaguely aware of a sound like glass breaking, and breaking again, and breaking again hundreds of times very quickly. He wondered off hand why he hadnt just made it so his boots could fly. And with that little moment of distraction, his boots gave out entirely.
Crimson Hawk Hotel | 1st Floor
Max's feet touched the floor with a tap landing outside the service exit to the Crimson Hawk kitchen facility out back, away from the prying eyes of customers. Through nothing short of luck, black dress boots kissed the pavement easily if he had just floated down, and seams of midnight colored thread were already beginning to stitch shut the slices and tears in his jacket. If anyone was not watching, they would have missed it entirely. There wasnt even any fallen glass from their struggle because it had absorbed whatever glass had broken free and carried it with itself. A brush with death, passed off as being some sort of eccentric.
As Maximos opened his eyes, a lone young woman stood outside with her back to the door, she looked exhausted with a cigarette held limply in her hand and her hair pulled into a messy bun which had started out neat but now sported several loose strands. She stared at Max, Max stared at her and there was an awkward silence that seemed to last an eternity until she finally broke it.
"Did you just fall off the building?"
"No. No ma'am I did not."
She looked at Max like he was the stupidest thing on two legs and opened her mouth to reply when the door behind her opened.
"Toni! Get in here we need extra hands with this. It's a big order for 7, Jaejae. says its Glacier." Said a large man wearing an apron smattered with various food stuffs, sweat stained his armpits and breasts a different color than the rest of his shirt.
"Of course it ******** is." Said the woman. She offered Max once more glance before she followed the man inside.
As the door closed Max watched a single sheet of white paper slip inside. Before he could reach it, the door clicked shut and locked with a beep.
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Lady Sierra Wrote:
> Nighthunter Wrote: > > Nighthunter Wrote:
