Arben Taravari’s samurai man bun glistened as the hair below it made a fizz over his shoulders, and the divide between the right and left sides of the hair became apparent.
He wore a black and red uniform, similar to the colors of old Albania, and were allowed to do so as the Ballisti, under the Fourth Reich, now known as the leadership’s personal guard, unparalleled for their brutality. His leggings stuck tightly to his long, slender, yet muscular legs. There was a sort of bird like pattern, almost that of an eagle, spreading throughout his tunic that adorned his Fernando-esque chest.
The tunic was designed to contain his muscular Fernando-esque chest, resembling Fabio of the world before the nuclear holocaust, and his chest was visible thanks to the open cut nature exposing his cleavage to the Erection of the World. There he bore a flawless obsidian necklace that was in the shape of the Albanian eagle.
Byorn continously kept twisting around, trying to turn and escape his fast opponent, lunged at Ronald and grabbed him, who was frozen with amazement at the situation unfolding, as Arben Taravari was desperately trying to get between them. He attempted to lash out another roundhouse kick but before delivering the strike had to stop himself half way, his veins popping out on his head from frustration of missing Byorn. The failed kick threw him off balance, and Sandra used the opportunity to tackle the back of Arben’s legs. Arben fell over violently, and Sandra jumped to deliver a knee stomp his chest.
Byorn knew from his own battle in the past with her, that despite her female physique, Sandra had a very powerful thrust with her knees as she had trained Muay Thai for some time.
Ronald attempted to wiggle out of Byorn’s strong, Viking arms, fervently moving around like a worm who had just lost half of it’s body. Byorn attempted to match the direction of Ronald’s movement in order to control him, attempting to lock his grip over Ronald by clenching his own arm with his other arm. Ronald could feel the soul leaving his body from the excrutiating pain of being crushed by Byorn’s gigantic arms. His long, creepy salad fingers twitched as he dropped the floppy disks.
Byorn reached out with his one hand and managed to quickly gather them mid air before they dropped to the floor. As he wrestled with Ronald, he crushed him down, forcing him to kneel to the floor, holding his mangled torso with his strong hand. “Keep down, messiah”, he exclaimed mockingly. To prove his willingness to further torture Ronald, he struck him down again with his knee, kicking him in the chin and splitting it in half, collapsing Ronald into a pile of itself onto the shiny yet sturdy reinforced marble floor.
He began to quickly sprint towards one of the computer banks, realizing that as he was doing this, there was a fight to the death being ferociously carried out between Sandra and Arben Taravari. He was scanning the machines with his eyes and felt relief in the fact that they were all wired to each other, meaning they were in the same network. He was fast to insert the cards where they needed to go, and hoped they weren’t damaged during the struggle.
In a few moments, which felt like millennia to Byorn, there was flashes of light and glyphs that confirmed the disks were in fact being read by the computer banks and had been uploaded into the network.
Byorn then began to input the spatiotemporal data on the keyboards at the designated coordinates. Even he had surprised himself by the bursts in speed he had achieved, with the sense of urgency and mission that he moved in achieving this and managed to do it so with great accuracy on top of everything. “Sandra!” He exclaimed. “I need you here beside me.”
Byorn could suddenly feel a hand rubbing onto his shoulder. The fingers were long and cold, their tips felt sharp, and he could feel them violently penetrating into his flesh, tearing through his muscles as they hit the bone.
The pain sent him into shock so much so that he was too mesmerized to it to be able to scream. Suddenly he was hurled backwards away from the console and sent flying into the air.
As he feel several feet behind, he staggered up and was disoriented. He was swaying left and right, barely able to hold his composure as he wobbled about the walkway on the terrace.
He was able to see Sandra lying face down with terror on her face, breathing heavily as she tried to get her composure from the intensity and pain of the battle, as well as Arben Taravari whimpering as he staggered back and forth as well. And then he saw Ronald, floating towards him with the missing arrogance of when Byorn had him in a tight grasp, looking like an eagle about to come swooping down on top of a goat.
“The level of idiocy you have displayed here today is unworthy of my forgiveness”, he contemptuously told Byorn, “I could’ve saved you from yourself and from those hunting you down, but you decided to dispose of it like you don’t care about any of it”. His head creaked as he grotesquely smiled and swayed his head left to right, mockingly smirking “Every bit of redemption you could’ve had, gone”.
Byorn returned a jumping kick toward’s Ronald’s face, throwing his entire weight against this tall, noodle like abomination of a man, but much to Byorn’s dismay, Ronald only slumped a single step back as Byorn was propelled backwards and fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes, making a heavy, radiating sound in the process.
Before Byorn was able to catch his composure, Ronald quickly swooped in and grabbed the back of Byorn’s head with his salad fingers, squeezing them into his flesh in the process. Byorn let out a screeching moan as a result of the anguish caused by the pain. The pain that Byorn felt could be described something similar to having searing hot needles slowly inserted into his flesh, a sort of numbing pressure mixed with very well defined and pulsating pain. As Ronald lifted up Byorn with his hagraven claws, Byorn attempted to drill his enormous fist into where Ronald’s heart was supposed to be as Ronald lifted him up with near paranormal strength, choking him in the process, but his fist bounced off as it was impenetrable rubber.
“Are you curious to find out why you received the SPIDER implant?” Ronald asked delightfully.
Ronald’s eyes began to shift colors and suddenly his pupils split into two.
Byorn was overwhelmed with anguish and despair. He began to scream in a terrifying, powerless manner.
He no longer seemed to care about Sandra’s well being, or that of where Arben Taravari was relative to his position, he could only concentrate on the searing, mind bending and soul ripping pain that was pulsating from his neck down, seemingly getting exponentially worse with every passing second. The pain was so overwhelming he could not collect himself to mutter a single articulate sound, nor even think of anything but the pain.
When Ronald unclenched him, Byorn fell to the floor limp and frail, jerking morbidly as if his soul had left his body and the only thing left was simple post-mortem muscle spasms.
The Gruppenfuhrer used his long noodle arms to lift Byorn’s weak and sickly body up and stand him up right, then reached toward his own head to remove his crusher and revealed the top part of his head was exposed, a brain wired with circuits and lights, such a delicate clump of mass yet so intricate and godlike.
In a motherly, calm voice he told Byorn: “This is why you have that SPIDER implant, Byorn. One day I will be able to unify and control everyone this way, a hive king, we will all be interconnected and not a single person on this planet will ever feel lonely and isolated as I once was. We will be the same, of Aryan smegma. Every single human brain on the face of the Earth will be under my control, my total control. Resistance will be futile.”
The agonizing pain in Byorn’s head receded for a split second enough to muster a single thought, saying “Keep dreaming as others have before you.”
“Indeed” Ronald arrogantly replied. “There were many before me who had this dream, but were either incapable of realizing it or constrained by the burdens of their time. I have without a doubt managed to achieve a level closer to full realization of this than any man has before. And to a realistic degree. The ways of the Aryans will dominate the universe.”
As Byorn was able to pick himself up off the ground for a second, going on all fours, Ronald struck him with his sharp knee in the face.
He felt and heard a slight crack, meaning his nose cartilage had been shattered by the blow, and he automatically slumped back to the ground in an involuntary prone position. The pain that he felt from his broken nose was miniscule in comparison to the SPIDER implant device which acted as a superconductor to stimulate his pain receptors in an inhumanly evil way.
“Being able to harness the fabric of time itself will allow me to draw upon the accomplishments of those that came before me, to bring things to a sort of cosmic equilibrium.” Ronald exclaimed.
“Those that came before you?”, Byorn grunted as he attempted to muster the strength to get back on on all fours again.
Ronald let out a large grin which creaked, it’s skull like features exhibiting macabre undertones as his brain matter pulsated with purple veins as he smiled, as if to illustrate a sudden surge of serotonin and dopamine was released into his system from hearing Byorn’s question as he struggled to get up.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t been able to connect the dots by now, Byorn. Think back on a different time and place in the past when I gave you a hint.”
Byorn slurped the blood squirting out of his face clean with his arm as he drunkedly stumbled back to standing up. He could confirm now the Gruppenfuhrer’s identity through this encounter. He had suspected for so long but wasn’t sure and dare not ask when had the chance to do so.
“Oh I recollect it very well.” Byorn replied diligently. “You mentioned something about being a piece of software, not an individual or sentient being.” He replied in a manner suggesting that he was stating this, and not asking for confirmation.
Ronald began to neurotically nod his head up and down in quick succession, and was about to let out a seemingly robotic yet maniacal laugh when Sandra dropkicked him in the spine with her heel which brandished a blade, as he shrieked in a more abundant level of surprise than pain, she began to pounce on him with the club she had acquired from the dead guard. Sandra had to do several summersaults in mid air to be able to propel her sufficiently enough forward to penetrate this abomination’s thick hide, and as she bashed his head in with the club, you could see sparks fly from the circuitry holding together the clump of mass.
Ronald fell down like a bundle of bricks, landing right on Byorn’s enormous popeye fist. Byorn saw in his bloodied peripheral vision Arben Taravari splurt out like an eagle and grab Sandra by the legs, and start dragging her monstrously away from the fight. Byorn felt a murderous anger overwhelm him. He violently lunged into the Gruppenfuhrer’s face, slamming him with punch after punch with his enormous Viking arms, attempting to turn it into a creme brulee of tomato marinade. This was unsuccessful as no blood could be seen anywhere in sight of the Gruppenfuhrer’s being, and it made sense with all the circuitry embedded in him, although Byorn’s strong viking arms managed to disfigure and mold parts of Ronald’s cheeks inwards with every blow like he was made out of hard plasticine. Several teeth also flew out of the Gruppenfuhrer’s mouth.
Byorn continued with exponential speed and strength to repeatedly pound a flurry of hooks, jabs, crosses and uppercuts not only on the Gruppenfuhrer’s head, but also his chest, neck and stomach. The fact that the neuronic energy had been cut off from the SPIDER and was not causing Byorn excruciating pain, thanks to Sandra’s dropkick, something came loose and was no longer transmitting the painful signals. Byorn refused to allow Ronald to put him in the position of someone who stood by and do nothing as this slenderman freak took the time to repair his circuitry and re-initiate the flow of neuronic energy.
Ronald unexpectedly swung his long, slender but hard arm into Byorn’s ribcage, striking a hard blow, so hard a crack of bone could be heard, and thunderous bolts of unbearable pain could be felt radiating through Byorn’s trunk.
This immediately forced him to bend forward and began to slump as he fell to the ground, coughing up a nasty liquid filled with blood and phlegm.
The punch had been terrifyingly accurate and precise, as if a computer dictated the exact anatomical location of where Ronald was to deliver his punch. An equally terrifying thought followed Byorn – he realized that while he had been piledriving his arms into Ronald’s body, Ronald had been learning and analyzing Byorn in return. Through his analysis, he was able to utilize machine learning to learn all the important points of hand to hand combat and martial arts, and as a result turn this knowledge against Byorn in an efficient, cold and calculating manner.
Byorn’s eyes were tearing up from the pain as he lay on the ground, twisting, jerking and bending from the pain Ronald’s blow had caused him. He was breathing heavily and rapidly as he tasted the blood that lined his teeth, wheezing in the process. He was anticipating that Ronald kick him to death or crush his larynx with a swift blow to the throat. Yet neither of these occurred.
The Gruppenfuhrer mysteriously just walked past Byorn and held onto the rail with his hands, Byorn attempting to grab Ronald’s leg but was too uncoordinated to do so, in a shrieking, high pitched voice began to scream, “Arben, I cannot see. I’m blind”, waving his arms around cluelessly, trying to grab stuff in front.
Byorn almost burst out with laughter but could not due to the pain. The repeated bashing of Ronald’s head by Sandra’s club managed to damage a microchip that cut off the connection between the SPIDER network and it’s feed to Ronald’s optic nerve. The Gruppenfuhrer was blind. Arben Taravari began to shriek like a panicked eagle having it’s feathers plucked out and attempted to throw Sandra away from him, but Sandra managed to lock onto him with her legs between his legs.
Byorn managed to push himself so he could stand up, trying not to think about the broken bone grazing the inside of his skin.
He snapped a front kick into Ronald’s back. His vertebrae could be heard crunching at the impact of the blow, but Ronald neither screamed nor fell over the railing as was intended. Instead of this his mouth opened slightly but no sound could be heard coming out of it. He collapsed like a string of spaghetti on the ground, twitching his slender noodle like limbs, as if he was a marionette whose strings had been cut by a scissor.
Byorn had to assume that the neuronic energy being fed into the SPIDER network was somehow disrupted, although he had a grim feeling this was only temporary. He leaned over with one arm on the railing in order to even out the broken ribcage so it wasn’t poking him painfully enough and shivering, quietly said “Let him go Sandra, we need to complete the final solution of our own great plan.”
Growling, Sandra delivered an open palm strike to the side of Arben Taravari’s coconut head as she untwisted her legs from his own. She attempted to quickly spring herself up and wobble over to Byron. “Did you upload the virus into the
mainframe?”
Byorn nodded. “So you managed to figure out that was my plan, eh?”
Sandra shrugged her shoulders, then squinted as she touched the cracked and bloody skin on the side of her face.
“Well, it wasn’t that hard to figure out, honestly. I tried doing everything I could to get Ronald so mad he wouldn’t be able to think straight and let his guard down.”
“You did an excellent job.”
“You could say I was born to piss people off, Mr. Byorn.”
“Oh I’m very familiar with your calling in life.” Attempting to force a smile to is now disfigured face. He slowly but swiftly reached into the pocket of his bodysuit, pulling out a memory stick and handing it to Sandra.
“Here it is, the first crucial piece of evidence the people are going to want to see.”
“In that case I’m the second piece of crucial evidence, if we manage to help each other out of this tower and where we need to get to.”
Sandra slowly dragged herself forward as she kept her balance with the help of the railing, going towards the computer consoles, and throwing a look every now and then into the pool of dark energy. “How do you plan on sending me into the past?”
“The easiest way would be to-“
Byorn’s words were suddenly muffled as a hail of gunfire erupted from the Sturmgewehr 57. Arben Taravari managed to sneak over to the dead guard’s body, pry it out of his cold, dead hands and began spraying bullets towards Byron and Sandra, the recoil too strong to hold down for accurate fire. It made his upper body shake relentlessly as he was barely able to hold it down from the weakness of the battle. Lead could be seen ejaculating from the ejector port and making high pitched, sharp clinking sounds as it fell to the floor beside his feet. It shone from the sunlight as each bullet casing twirled in the air. Sandra let out a panicked scream as her eyes widened.
Byorn propelled himself forward, kicking himself off the floor of the terrace, the loud, sharp noises of the Sturmgewehr 57 thumping in his ear drums could be sensed on their surface. Bullets flew into the computer consoles, making holes in the metal and ripping the plastic keyboards connected to them to shreds of geometrically imperfect, sharp, tiny pieces. Two hard blows of the bullets that felt like a sledgehammer had hit him penetrated Byorn’s back, sending him flying forward into Sandra, which in turn sent her over the railing, but he caught her hand before she could completely fall off the terrace. The moment was filled with agony.
A mechanical sound was heard in the background after the gunfire abruptly stopped, as something had jammed the chamber. Sandra stared at Byorn with a terrified yet confused look on her face. Byorn opened his mouth to say something but blood drizzled out and onto Sandra’s face, much to her dismay. In a last attempt to draw breath, he mustered the little bit of energy in his body as he was falling asleep and said to Sandra: “When you get there, tell him – tell me – who the Gruppenfuhrer actually is. It’s Major B.J. Brush –“
Arben Taravari let out a grueling, eerie war cry as he thrusted himself at Byorn like an eagle. He began striking Byorn’s back neurotically with the Sturmgewehr 57’s butt.
Byorn opened his hand and Sandra fell into the sphincter that was this cosmic blob. When she hit the surface of this microcosm, an explosion of stellar orbs, sparks, beams of color, flashing lights and warped reality flew out and wobbled from it. Sandra had disappeared.
Byorn turned around and hurled a kick into Arben Taravari’s face and send him flying like a wingless eagle about 10 meters or so. He got up, crawled over to Ronald’s body which was now like a string, and began to hold his weird head with both of his hands. He attempted to ask questions of him to see if he was conscious, but as the noodle man’s body jerked around and about, nothing would come out of his blank, expressionless face.
Arben Taravari began to screech as he cried for his fallen Gruppenfuhrer, as if he had witnessed the most terrible tragedy in human history first hand. Byorn was hoping that this is what Arben was really feeling inside his heart. Byorn grinded his teeth together in an attempt to to elicit some familiar sensation that would give him comfort for at least a second, but then came to the sullen realization this could not be done.
He examined the gaping, obscene exit wounds on his chest. They were at this point gushing blood with every breath he exhaled, instead of trickling as they were before.
He saw what he thought were pink bits of his lung tissue eventually being ejaculated from his wounds, and thought to himself it would all be okay, he would recover, this would not be his last battle. Then he began to lightly chuckle at his own thought patterns. They didn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of the situation even when it was staring him in the face. His vision began to blur and his consciousness begin to slip away. He thought to himself for how long he would remain dead before waking up again.