Category : Stories

Sub Category : Adventure

Chapter Eight: There Goes The Neighborhood

Two Days Later...

Marsellus awoke with foggy vision, his headache returning with a vengeance. There was a moment of recollection that he was not originally where he was now. Then thoughts swarmed him once again: He was on a helicoptor, and Carlisle had some sort of giant gun pointed at them. Ready to fire. He held his breath as pain lacerated through his skull, causing him to wince in agony. He managed to shut out a scream and was alarmed even more when he saw a female approach him from outside of the sterile white hospital room he was in. Tall and full of charm, the woman looked to be in her element, long red hair put up onto a bun with a single strand coming betwixt steely blue eyes. The nurse uniform on her body accented her slender body, making her almost look like a supermodel with the poise she presented as she walked up to the bed.

'Great, now I get to be poked and prodded.' He attempted to shake off the woman, but it was of no use when he felt her hand lay upon his lower leg. A warmth shot through his being, gentle and soothing. He felt the urge to fight her off leave his person, which almost immediately made him frightened of this person. Eyes wide open in shock, he looked at the female dressed in a white nurse's uniform and backed up as far as he could in his bed. 

Seeming to sense his distress, The woman spoke. "Nothing to fear, Mr. Gustov. You are in no danger. No one here is wanting to hurt you. Just checking in on one of our celebrity patients." She pulled out a stethoscope and mobed his outstretched arm aside chidely, placing the cold hearing instrument to his chest. After a few moments though she pulled back and checked a piece of paper on a clipboard at the foot of his bed. 

"Where am I?" He asked. "How did I get here?"

She simply gave him a warm smile and motioned around them. "Mr. Gustov, welcome to Halo Headquarters. We call it Codename: Heaven." So he did die. Great. Pushing the thought aside he moved his legs off of the bed and tried to get up, only with a little shake to his limbs. The nurse was almost immediately at his side, holding her hand out to him, motioning him to sit down. After a second or so, he obliged. 

"You really need to be careful, Mr. Gustov. It isn't everyday that someone blocks a psychic cannon like you did and live to tell the tale, much less walk away from it." He turned to look at her with an expression that must have said he had no idea what she was talking about. And she very much got the hint: "The weapon you deflected a blast from is called a Psychic Cannon, it sends a rush of waves to the target im attempts to literally make them explode through the vibrations. Kinda like what happens with glass when a soprano sings to a certain note." 





She paused for a moment and pulled up his arm again, wrapping a heartbeat pump cuff around it before pumping it to tighten the grip. "Commander Saturn told us what happened when she rushed you into the medical wing. And I must admit, even I was quite shaky on your odds of surviving a blast like that from that close a range." A whirring sounds was heard from the machine behind him and he looked back for a moment out of instinct. He hardly knew what could be making such things nowadays. For all he knew, it could have been some kind of weapon of mass incineration or a nuke. 

After a beep it showed normal pulse and heart rates, after which she wrote a few more items down on the clipboard and held a hand out again to get him up and walking to the door. "Now, Commander Saturn wanted me to let her know immediately when you came to, so she'll have a bit of good news today." 

"How long was I out?" The look he got in response caused his heart to drop. She looked as if there was bad news behind such an answer, but then it mercurially shifted to a smile. "Two days." 'Psych!' At least it wasn't like a decade or something. Just to be on the safe side though he ran his forearm across his chin. 'No beard at least.'

"That is indeed true, Marsellus. No beard yet." And the cheerful voice Marsellus heard on his left made him turn his head, finally happy to see just one familiar face. Saturn came down the hallway in a pair of black leather pants and a red button up blouse. Her hair bounced around her shoulders and waved even a bit behind her in a rather odd pattern. It was not until she got closer that he noticed it was due to a rubber band being used to put her hair up into a ponytail. She walked past him without skipping a beat, motioning him to follow her. 

"You sir are either the luckiest man alive, or perhaps the biggest blessing we have ever received to grace these halls, Mars. You mind if I call you Mars? It just seems so cool. Plus fits with our planet sorta theme here." 





'And as random as ever,' he thought to himself when making stride right behind her. "Um, yeah. Mars works. And what do you mean by that whole lucky or blessing thing?" When he did not receive a response right away, alarm set in just as they entered a large dome-like area. Above them about thirty feet was a skylight that brought sun to the direct center of the room where a book lie upon a pedestal. 

"I mean that you could perhaps have been fated to come to these halls. Every person that makes their way into this organization have contributed amazingly to make it the anti-terroristic powerhouse it is today. From diagnostics of systems to medical practice, and all inbetween, we come closer and closer to taking down Dr. Calico and his tyrannical plots with Caliber Industries." 

The room lit up with twinkling lights before the images of war he had seen previously flooded the space on the walls. Marsellus felt almost sick looking at a few of them in a bigger size and in very high definition. This was a lot to still take in. But as he looked at Saturn, hands waving to move away image after image, she looked like a woman that was on an unstoppable mission. Perhaps if he stood near her in the battles to come, he would perhaps survive.

"Then I suppose if we are going to get to plotting a revolution, we might need to get to figuring out what makes my powers work, huh?" And then she turned to him, just as from the images on the walls sprung forth two large lions. 





"Welcome to The Danger Zone. Here, your powers can manifest some of the elements on the images that scroll by. All it takes is the visualization and willpower I told you about earlier. It is set to personify the images that human brainwaves give off in concentrated doses. So you must remain focused on the task at hand. Make sure to keep that focus. But not to worry, these things won't hurt you-" she was interrupted as one of the lions ran a claw across the metal floor, echoing in the room, "Much..." 

Marsellus' eyes widened in panic as he backed up slowly. The two beasts looking to surround him on both sides. The definition of these animals truly made it life-like. He could see every defining features. See their individual hair as they shook their manes. He could feel the vibrations of their approach, closer and closer to his location. And when they got close enough to see the whites of their eyes, he could smell the animosity before they ran at him. 

Maraellus went into survival instinct mode, narrowly dodging one of the lions with a tumble to the side. The second ran right for him in his new location, with the first already recovering from the failed pounce. He looked around for a moment and saw a quick image of a man with a gun in the safari, battling air it would seem as he aimed at the sky above. 

'That has to be where they came from...' He thought as he backpedaled and escaped their clutches in time to see the two animals collide with one another. He looked back at the picture then and took in the weapon, looking quickly upon every definition of the weapon. Practically imagining how it would feel in his hands. 

And almost as if it were magic, he felt the sensation of metal in his hands. Looking down at the rifle he held in his grasp, he felt a renewed vigor before taking the weapon with but a single hand and aimed. The lions were just recovering when he pulled the trigger. 

There was no traditional sound to the gunshot, simply a rumble as the walls began to fade to a deep blue. The lions got up to their back legs, pawing at the skies before disappearing from sight. 

Up until this point, Saturn had been silently watching. But it was finally broke with a slow clap. "You solved it, Marsellus. Seeing the pictures and finding the relative weakness they could possess proclaimed the program of this room in checkmate. That was the blue that you saw sweep through the pictures." She twirled around to motion the entirety of the room in her observation. "This shall be your closest friend when it comes to situational combat. We will have you mastering countless scenarios that will prepare you for some of the most practical, as well as most unlikely, scenarios you can come across in your time on the field." 

Marsellus was just glad that he didn't have to deal with any more of those lions. Breathing out a sigh of relief as the lions vanished, he looked around as the room reset to its original metallic hue and then at the retreating Saturn whom was walking to the other entrace to the room. "Come now, Marsellus," She said, calling him forward with a finger. "We have so much more of the tour to go through."