ArchivedLogs:Thriller Night

Thriller Night
Dramatis Personae Alison, Scott, Hank
In Absentia	2013-04-24 Alison and Scott try out Dr. McCoy's new DR session.
Location <XS> Danger Room
Welcome. To the Thunderdome. The metal dome-like 'cage' is approximately 75 yards in diameter; on its outside - sitting along metal slats, clinging in some places, reclining in others - are the fashionably post-apocalyptic clad audience for tonight's entertainment. The moon is out; torch-light illuminates the cage's interior. And at the center of it all stands - the extraordinarily charismatic, hunchbacked, carnivalesque Dr. Dealgood - grinning crookedly as he lifts his robe-lined shoulders up into a shrug, cane in hand - playing the role of ring-leader for this bizarre circus. And to Alison and Scott, both of whom have just placed their feet firmly upon the dusty, rust-colored earth: "Listen on! This is the truth of it: Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring. And that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now! Busted up, and everyone talking about hard rain! But we've learned, by the dust of them all... Bartertown learned. Now, when men get to fighting, it happens here! And it finishes -- here! Two X-Men enter... BUT NEITHER OF THEM LEAVES!" He reaches up over his head - where a long length of hemp awaits him, attached to a metal disk on the floor. He squats atop of it - and it reels him up, out of the two combatants' range... as his voice booms somewhere over their heads: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, it brings me nothing but pleasure to introduce tonight's special guest. A /grave/ opponent indeed. You could say he's just /dying/ to meet tonight's entertainment...!" The ground beneath Alison and Scott gives a dull rumble. Alison is ready for a good Danger Room session, dressed in her stylized field uniform. She's just lucky that Scott was around and also in the mood for dangering. When the simulation begins, though, she groans, and slaps a hand to her face. "Oh, gosh. I remember this scenario," she says, dropping her hand and stretching lightly. "And here I thought I was done with bad movies." She offers Scott a bright smile, and drops into a dancer's stretch, pushing one leg out in front of her. When the ground rumbles, she frowns. "I don't remember /that/, though." "Hank re-wrote the program after listening to you complain about it for hours," Scott says, turning his head and giving Alison a tiny little smile in return. He's already limbered up and ready to go, and he neglects to even drop into a stance - besides his rather iconic fingers-to-the-visor that are so common with him. Click-click-click. Setting adjusted. Forward opens it less, backward more. He clicked it forward, so obviously today is about /precision/. His hands drop - his muscles are taut. He's wearing his own uniform without the jacket, so his arms are exposed after the shoulder thanks to skin-tight Body Armour clingyshirt. Has he gotten beefier? "He was thinking about you when he put this part in." What does /that/ mean? "LADIES! GENTLEMEN! Those among you with weaker constitutions may wish to take this moment to avert your eyes from what is about to transpire. But for those of you who are made of sterner stuff -- may I introduce you to -- the master of graveyard disasters -- the /inventor/ of the monster mash -- the sultan of revoltin' -- he who do that voodoo -- the one, the only... well, my friends -- I think I'll let him announce /himself/!" The ground splits near the center -- a fissure forming. At once, a deep red light swells from the crack, spilling upward -- accompanied by heat. Heat, and the stench of burning peat. Like a swamp that's just been thrown on fire. And then... there's a voice. Deep. As if it were emerging from the depths of some sunken valley -- rumbling so low that one could imagine it being sufficient to bring an avalanche down upon the heads of the unwary. A voice that begins to speak, slowly, feeling each syllable out as if they were somehow unfamiliar... "SOOOOOooooooloooomoooon Gruuuuuundyyyy... BOOOOOORN ooooon a MOOOOON-DAY..." A massive bleach white fist -- easily the size of either Alison or Scott's torso -- swings up from the fissure, grabbing the edge. Something /very/ large pulls itself out of the depths of hell. Six more human-sized zombies climb up around him, three to either side. All of them are dressed in red leather outfits -- the infamous Michael Jackson THRILLER costumes. Alison wrinkles her nose as she stands up and folds her arms across her chest. "I didn't /complain/," she says, her tone lofty. "I suggested that this might not be the most appropriate sort of training session. Because he gave me this instead of -- oh, here we go." Whatever Alison had suggested is forgone as the announcer begins speaking again, and the blonde moves away from Scott. She extends her arms, slightly, letting the noise of the crowd roll over her. In a moment, she begins to glow softly. When the ground splits, she frowns, and pulls back into a fighting stance, her hands closing into finger-guns. "Solomon Grundy?" she asks, frowning and glancing at Scott. "Like the nursery rhyme?" When the thriller zombies appear, her face turns grim. "Oh, I am /so/ getting Henry back for those." "It's his way of saying he's proud," Scott says meekly, playing devil's advocate for the good doctor with a cavalier shrug. He starts to fan out from Dazzler too, walking at a steady clip to the left. "I think a standard pincer and keeping Solomon just out of arm's reach is just what the doctor ordered, what do you think?" he asks, keeping his fists clenched at his side. There was a servo control that allowed him to use his visor without touching the master switch at the side wired into his gloves, which sent a pretty darn decent radio signal to his headset. "He has a twisted sense of humor, Alison. I think he knows gauche is one of your buttons." All seven zombies - that includes Solomon Grundy - rise up to their feet, the fissure closing behind them. And all seven zombies proceed to freeze in space - feet slightly apart - hands out at their sides - staring at the two X-Men. And that's when the music kicks in. Synth, followed by a set of tshking drums - and then the big crescendo. Yep. The zombies are singing: "It's close to miii~dnight something evil's lurking from the dark Under the moooo~nlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart You try to scream But terror takes the sound before you make it..." The zombies start snapping in perfect sync; three on one side fan out to surround Alison - the other three fan out to surround Scott -- as Solomon Grundy slowly shimmies, massive fingers snapping, toward the space between them. "You start to freeze As horror looks you right between the eyes You're paralyzed... 'CUZ THIS IS THRIIIIIII~LLER Thriller night And no one's gonna save you From the beast about to strike You know it's thriller Thriller night!" "It's twisted, all right," Alison says, wrinkling her nose as the zombies freeze. "And it's not that they're gauche it's that I know he's programmed them to -- " she breaks off as the music starts, and her glow gets a little brighter. "Do that," she finishes, and her eyes narrow as the group breaks into song. "Oh, /hell/ no," she says, her jaw setting as the three advance on her. "I am /not/ going to be upstaged by a bunch of zombies." She raises her right hand, aiming at the head of the nearest zombie. *ZAKT* A beam of light bursts from her extended fingertips to sizzle through the air at her target. "He is /so/ going to pay for this." Then she pivots on one foot, driving a kick towards the next nearest target. The unholy sound of Scott's laser being released and scorching the air sounds out alongside Alison's lightshow in rapid succession. Focused, fanned red beams strike out one, two, three, four, five, six - directly at the knees of the zombie shufflers, as he advances slowly for a better shot. "They are pretty gauche, though," Scott insists in that mild tone of his as he walk forward idly, with complete and utter confidence. "I don't think you have any danger of being upstaged, besides." Take one zombie down and another zombie immediately picks up the song where the previous left off - so fluidly that the music never breaks. The fanning stroke of Scott's visor knocks all three of his approaching zombies down in a sweep of blistering light; it catches Grundy, who drops to a knee - along with nicking one of Alison's zombies. The zombie Alison happens to be firing on right now - her light-blast strikes it head-on - its skull glows a brilliant pearl-white, pulsing outward from the inside a moment before it makes a loud 'POP', smoking tendrils extending out from the smoldering stump where the back-half of its cranium used to exist. Her second zombie gets a kick - and takes it with a dull 'whuff' - but the third uses the opportunity to swoop in close, attempting to seize Alison under her arms and /reel/ her back into its grip - the second soon recovering from the blow, snapping one hand as it produces a butterfly knife, unfolding and assembling it in a brief, dazzling show of undead ledgerdemain. "You're fightin' for your life Inside a killer Thriller tonight, yeah You hear the door slam And realize there's nowhere left to run You feel the cold hand And wonder if you'll ever seen the sun You close your eyes And hope that this is just imagination But all the while You hear a creature creepin' up behind You're outta time..." Solomon Grundy's massive hand descends between Scott and Alison, aiming to prevent him from interfering - also attempting to scoop/SWAT Scott toward the far end of the cage, the kneeling zombie's massive arm /easily/ able to reach the mutant. Meanwhile, the three zombies Scott took down are shambling up to their feet -- shins and knees broken, but still intent on dancin' the night away. All three are now producing butterfly knives, fingers snappin' to the beat. Alison grunts as her foot makes the connection. "That's sweet of you to say," she says to Scott, raising her voice over the music. "And they're not /gauche/. They're retro." Then she's being hauled backwards, and she uses a bit of dirty fighting, wrapping her hands around the decaying leather on its arms and slamming her head backwards into the zombie's skull. As she does this, she uses his grip to attempt to /walk/ up the torso of the knife-wielder and kick him in the face. Scott is pushed back, but on his own terms. He rolls into the edge of the cage underneath Solomon's wide swing, his teeth gritted as he finally gets to /moving/. He's back up into a crouch, and he steadies his head as he surpresses the zombie knife array by firing at their elbows, pumping forward just like a track runner. Like a horse, he starts to trample the zombies with their weaker constitutions, the soles of his stomping on their legs so he can crush them down. Alison is rewarded by the dull *KRKT* of half-rotted flesh and bone giving against the back of her own skull; the zombie behind her leans back - giving her the leverage she needs to step up the torso of the approaching zombie and deliver a harsh *SNAP* kick to his face and jaw; there's another sickening *CRKT* as his head snaps back - nose crunching inward - his neck now dangling at an unusual angle, left stumbling backward. The zombie behind Alison, still reeling, attempts to haul her /back/ -- toward Solomon Grundy -- even as the knife-wielder tries to recover. "'Cause this is THRIIIIIII~LLER Thriller night There ain't no second chance Against the thing with forty eyes, girl THRIIIIIIIII~LLER Thriller night You're fightin' for your life Inside a killer Thriller tonight..." Scott makes short work of his own three zombies; with wobbly, half-broken knees, they're slow movers -- and the beams aimed at their arms and elbows soon have them stumbling back, arms torn free of ligaments, flesh rended with a dull *RRRRRRPT*. The rest of them are soon being stomped beneath Scott's charging feet - crushing one zombie's skull into the soil with a gruesome *SKLRPT!*, the next collapsing to the ground and continuing to sing - the third barely managing to limply crawl its way toward Scott. Meanwhile, Solomon... ...is turning his attention down upon Alison, rising back to his feet, bringing a /massive/ fist downward - intent, apparently, on smashing both his zombie backup singer /and/ Alison in one single swoop. Alison makes a pleased sort of noise when her foot connects with the knife-wielder's head, although it turns to a surprised grunt as she's hauled backwards. She rolls up, into a ball, and attempts to use her weight to bring her captor down. Her eyes are glowing as she rolls up and sees that massive fist coming /down/. "Oh, shoot," she mutters, and comes even further up, attempting essentially to somersault over her zombie's head, and out of the danger zone. Scott quickly darts forward and reaches up to twist the adjuster on his visor backward, pausing only to get a bead on Grundy's far Achilles tendon without catching Alison up in the blast. "Hang on!" he shouts, and takes his shot, the beam's strength and size scaled up for his tough-looking opponent. Down Alison's captor goes - perhaps a bit faster than she expected. Somersaulting over him becomes a bit trickier when he's collapsing to the ground, just underneath that fist - but said fist promptly falls short as a blast of concussive ruby-red /slams/ into Grundy's ankle, tearing the foot out from under him - neatly /flipping/ the massive zombie to his side with a thunderous crash. The zombie beneath Alison makes a dull *CKRT* as she drops atop of it - the skull collapsing the remainder of the way. The remaining zombie - the one Alison only face-kicked - regains its barings... looks up. And suddenly, the song - while still remaining fluid and cohesive - skips ahead to the solo monologue. Except it's done with Hank McCoy's voice, doing his best Vincent Price. And actually, it ain't half bad: "Darkness falls across the land The midnight hour is close at hand Creatures crawl in search of blood To terrorize y'alls neighborhood And whosoever shall be found Without the soul for getting down Must stand and face the hounds of hell And rot inside a corpse's shell..." The ground on the far end of the ring erupts open with yet another fissuring crack; from the depths emerge... familiar creatures. THE KILLER THAT CREEPS. DRACULA. And, of course, the MAN-WOLF. "The foulest stench is in the air The funk of forty thousand years And grizzly ghouls from every tomb Are closing in to seal your doom And though you fight to stay alive Your body starts to shiver For no mere mortal can resist The evil of the thriller..." Hank McCoy's sinister laughter echoes out over both the X-Men's heads as the three movie villains slink forward, eyes gleaming red.