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| Suspension of Disbelief; [Moon Knight] | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 24 2010, 07:41 PM (240 Views) | |
| Jara | Feb 24 2010, 07:41 PM Post #1 |
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Unregistered
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Date: sometime in July 2004 Time: late evening Location: Província Mato Grosso, Brazil The bonfire crackled in the center of the encampment, brilliant embers leaping into the night air to dance with the moths fluttering inches from the flames. Lights danced around the thick cluster of trees and shrubs and bramble, el matojo that was cleared out and pushed back for the little settlement of huts that stood so isolated in the middle of the jungle. The air was already hot and humid, with the fire moreso, but the smell of wet earth and burning green wood, the soft mist of white smoke and burning herbs, it filled the camp with its rich, heady aroma. It was relaxing, perhaps even almost intoxicating, though that might have been the fermented chicha talking. Sitting on one of the many logs surrounding the communal fire pit, she took another swig from the gourd of manioc-based liquor and passed it to her compatriot seated to her left, her eyes fixated on the figures around the fire as they leapt and danced and shouted fierce cries into the night. The scene would have been an anthropologists dream, watching one of the many rites and traditions of true Amazonian Indians so deep in the Mato Grosso, untouched by the modern world in both culture and their gene pool. The men’s faces were smooth and beardless, painted in a bright red that shone like blood on their naked bodies in the firelight, chins peppered with little black dots, nostrils and upper lips pierced with dozens of little black reed-like whiskers, all modeled after their revered warrior of the jungle, the jaguar. These natives had garnered a fierce and frightening reputation amongst the other Guarani as cannibals and war-mongers. Why they hadn’t devoured the pale people assembled around their camp was nothing short of unbelievable, a show of divine intervention defying logic. A group of little children, chubby-cheeked and round-bellied tittered and tiptoed towards the group of outsiders, all focused on the female, their leader, and giggled as they stood at the far end of the tree trunk she sat upon. She pretended not to notice them until the most daring crept closer, eyeing the spotted tail that flicked and snaked behind her seated figure, holding a little hand out to touch it. At the last moment, it twitched out of his reach and bopped him on the face. The woman turned on the group with her hands held up and claws extended, baring her teeth in a rumbling growl. Her jade eyes reflected the firelight and glowed. The children shrieked and ran off, laughing in good fun at the fright. The woman smirked, amused by the antics of children. “Bothersome little brats. Why do you permit that behavior, comandante? It is a lack of respect,” one of the men huffed in Spanish, obviously not endeared. “Why would I want them to fear me when I already have their respect? Their allegiance? Their devotion? We have what we need.” she responded. There was no point in harvesting fear when these people already revered her. She came in a time of great turmoil, when the jungles were full of fighting and conflict, when the strangers, the unwanted ones, began pushing into their lands. And she came with the face of their old gods, pandering to their spiritual beliefs and lore, a living incarnation of the animal spirits that inhabited the wilds around them. They called her the Balam, the messenger of the gods, protector of the weak, the walker of both worlds. It helped that Siete had studied their culture as much as she could, taking a cue from the Conquistadores before here. Except that she was not there to conquer, but preserve. She allowed the mythical allusions to take place, propagate and expand through out the Amazons, the Andes. Among the natives, she was a force of Nature, something revered and respected. They saw her as a herald of the old gods of their pantheon, to the way things were before the demons began invading their lands again. Siete was really there to restore government and order, fight the tide of the Culling, and prevent as much damage as she could. But a little supernatural PR wouldn’t hurt. The children had drifted off to another part of the little village, leaving Balam and her group to watch the dances. They had witnessed these rituals dozens of times, each one a retelling of an ancient story, their history. These natives had no written language of their own, depending on oral tradition to keep the memory of their ancestors alive. It was interesting to watch, and for a moment Siete forgot about the wars being fought down the river, the ambush last week that claimed the lives of two her men that she still mourned. Their fight was a bleak one, their existence constantly in peril of being snuffed, much like the native Indians of these jungles. The struggle to maintain their identity, to keep the foreigners out, to hold onto lands that were theirs for centuries before the explorers came with their missionaries to convert an entire continent and pillage their lands of treasures and space. History was cyclical, and Siete was lucky her mutant condition mimicked the lore of these people’s past. As she listened to the song and watched the main storyteller weave his take, however, the shapeshifter frowned, gradually leaning in and listening with her keen ears to his words in their native tongue. “He came… from the trees, from the ground, from the heavens, everywhere and no where. The huecuvus, the demons, they saw this, and faced by the spirit howled their evil cries and sent forth a shower of stones that bit deep into the trunks of trees and spat fire from their jaws.” The storyteller leapt and danced and snatched a flaming branch from the bonfire, taking a mouthful of chicha and spraying it into the flames; his audience gasped and shrieked at the display of pyrotechnics and listened more raptly, Balam as well. She hadn’t heard this story before. “And then… I saw the Cloud Warrior fall, but it was not he! He vanished, but his mantle hung in the air. It shuddered, like a bird, like a ghost, the spirit of the Vengeful One, and sprung at the demons with a howl of its own. Like the anaconda, it wrapped around the baleful group, snagged them one by one and wrapped itself around them until they moved no more, a boa, a flying serpent!” The audience gasped, and there were cries of concurrence. They had seen it too, the Chachapoya, the Warrior Man of the Clouds. He appeared deep in the forests, when the moon was its fullest and descended from the canopy in silver light, lurked in the trees and descended on the invaders. In groups, in their growling beasts of metal ore, the numbers did not matter to the Chachapoya. It was a god, invincible and mighty. Much like their Balam, except he had an encyclopedia of epithets under his name already. “It devoured them while the Chachapoya reappeared and grabbed the demons with his hands, and with a cry ripped them in half!” Balam did not look as excited as the crowd, nor did her guerilleros. Around her, they looked at one another, stunned. What were these natives describing? Why was it in this jungle… and how long would it be until these natives sang about their own demise? “Have you seen it, Lady Balam?” one of the tribesmen asked, looking at Siete in curious awe, seeking confirmation of this second god stalking their holy ground, this vengeful spirit. But a spirit who held them in their good graces. It had not attacked any of the tribespeople and preyed only on trespassers. “I have not,” Siete responded in his language, looking at the young warrior with a steeled expression. She certainly didn’t look thrilled to hear about another divine contemporary. “Have you?” “Yes, Abaangui’s Messenger appeared to me at the river, descending from the clouds—” Balam held up a hand. She was not about to sit through another lyrical epic, not when there was another mutante impersonating a god. She stood up, tree bark clinging to her olive fatigues. She patted it off with her black beret before placing it back atop her head. Her contingent of soldiers looked up at her in unison, Siete pointing out two to stand with her. Nodding, they did as motioned, and Balam looked back at the young tribesman. “Show me.” |
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| Jara | Feb 24 2010, 07:42 PM Post #2 |
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Unregistered
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For days, Siete and her current group of militants combed the area for any signs of this Cloud Warrior, tracking alongside the nearby river and forest trails for sign of the oh so vengeful spirit. The natives were more than willing to point out the spots where he had attacked the mutant patrols they called evil spirits, now regarding the sites of the skirmishes as holy ground. There was plenty of evidence to be found, discarded and broken weapons, jeeps rendered in gnarled glorified two-ton paperweights… oh, and body parts. Plenty of body parts. It was enough to spook her soldiers, and Balam wished she had taken a few more of her old division from the Academia with her. The graduates of her generation were scattered across the globe, in Cuba’s allied nations and spheres of influence, all combating the growing tide of the Culling. The prognosis of this war looked bleak for them, and as is, Balam and the other black ops units were at a disadvantage. They were mutants fighting mutants on the behalf of humans, labeled blood traitors on one side and murderous abominations by the other. Malas lenguas even said that the UN Security council was beginning to cave in, that the Assembly was thinking of granting the rebelling mutants their own territory somewhere. In her camp, Balam immediately and ruthlessly quashed this sort of talk right at the source, punishing naysayers with intense physical training and physical labor, until they were too tired to gossip like old women. Meanwhile, she could only deny the inevitable. Among the scattered remains of the Birthright troops, Balam poked and sniffed and studied, hours spent investigating the places were this supposed vengeful spirit had descended. Despite her propaganda and manipulations, she did not believe in anything of the arcane, of religion or myth or faith. Religion was, after all, the opium of the masses, and it blinded people of the truth. The truth was, this Chachapoya was a man. His scent remained consistent at each site visited, and at one village, she was even able to obtain a small ragged fragment of this so-called Luison’s mantle. Leaving her closest aides directions to hold the location back at camp and continue tracking enemy movement, but not engage, Balam set out on her own to track this usurper. The troops thought she was a bit obsessed with this mysterious figure. But Siete feared the worst. Whoever this man was, his movements were always one step ahead Balam and her scouting parties. Why was he fighting mutants? Why did he appear only to the natives on full moons? And why hadn’t he attacked one of her people yet? It begged the question of who this man was working for, his objective, his motivation. Balam sought answers, yet every step on the trail, she felt something was amiss. Could it have been a clever ruse employed by her enemies? Had they grown wise to her true identity, who she worked for, from where she commanded the guerillas? Certainly, it was a good way to isolate the black ops agent from her unit, cut the proverbial head of the beast. However, she could not ignore the issue. There was a mutant of significant power running around the jungle, her territory, and she was going to find out his intentions. She followed his scent, the trail taking her to the edges of a shanty town. Shacks made of scrap metal and plywood ran right up into the green tropical mountains, the transition between man-made and Nature-made lost somewhere along the way. Balam entered the impoverished settlement with not so much as a second glance or suspicious eye her way. After spending a few days tracking through the jungle, she looked as weathered and ragged as any of the locals. Exhaustion was certainly a possibility, but Balam continued wandering the dirt-packed streets, sniffing around dwellings and asking a few locals if they had seen a white-cloaked man pass through the area. Their leads led her in circles, deeper into the shanty town, and the Cloud Warrior’s scent was growing no newer. He was somewhere; she was sure of it. The rumble of a truck approached, Balam looking in the direction of the sound and immediately pressing close to the side of a shack and around the corner, peering out to watch the vehicle drive down the road. It stopped, the engine idling as a group of armed men hopped out of the back of the bed, taking point and shouting about a guerilla. Were they kidding her? Balam leaned back and smacked the back of her head against the stone-walled building a few times, but quickly regained composure as she tried to walk down the road as casually as possible. Just another local woman… don’t mind me… “She was asking about the Man in White, el Fantasma, she may be working with him,” she heard one say, trying not to show any outer signs of worry beyond quickening her pace. She would have blended into the crowd, except that the locals had all somehow managed to disappear by that time, slipping into their homes or where ever they could when these militants showed up. “Hey, woman!” Balam didn’t suppose they meant another woman wandering the streets alone… and she had no chance to as a beam of crackling light shot past her head. She jumped at the display, throwing herself into the nearest alley as another blast streaked where she’d been previously standing. “Stop right there!” And get shot at? She didn’t think so. Balam made a run for it, calling on her few last ounces of energy to dash through the maze of shacks and walls, her mutant pursuers not far behind. After another sharp turn, she vaulted herself over a cinderblock wall and onto a pile of rubber tires on the other side, finding herself in what passed to be a courtyard. She laid low in the pile of junk and weeds, listening as the armed men rushed toward and away from her location. From her duffle, Balam pulled out a small Taurus pistol, hastily attaching a silencer. It didn’t stand much of a chance against the M4’s she saw those men toting. A good number of them passed, but as luck would have it one stayed behind, opting to search the area. Of course. Balam stood and strafed along the wall, waiting at the end as she listened to movement on the other side. She exhaled a breath of air slowly, whipping around the corner and aiming her pistol at where she assumed would be the militant’s heart… except that no one was there. What the hell? |
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1:01 AM Jul 11