The Hunter of Ozine

Dance was an understatement. Ball was more like it. Dorothy wasn’t entirely sure where they were; some grand building with huge windows instead of proper walls, tinted black so that people inside could see out, but those outside could not see in, for privacy. It was huge; there was some sort of mural of naked cherubs (very disturbing) on the ceiling, and tables of various sizes littering the floor with gold cloth-covered chairs around them, except for in the middle of the room; the large marble dance floor had been cleared of tables rather early in the evening and a few people lingered on it while a band struck up a slow tune. The clicking of their sharp dance shoes on the marble made Dorothy flinch; as a child, she had been almost completely cut off, if not shielded, from the fancy world of art and dancing, and as such had struggled to become more involved with it. After three lessons of dance she had grown bored with the fox trot and the blisters and had left. Other then that, Dorothy only knew the basic instincts of dancing.
Off from the dance floor was a bar, where Zachary was lingering, looking spiffed up in his navy blue tux and fancy polished shoes and his black bow tie, hanging over the bar and clasping a drink lightly. The last Dorothy had seen of Quincy, clad in a white tuxedo and black tie, he had swaggered off to the buffet and a lovely group of rather handsome men hanging around there.
Dorothy sighed, sipping at her Shirley Temple aimlessly as she cast a gloomy eye around the room. Zachary had never told her why she was here, why she was even required to come here, and she had been looking for an opportunity where he wouldn’t be too distracted by his drink to answer a few questions for her. She had some idea it was to set a good name for Ozine, if some of the turn-nosed citizens saw one of the prime defenses of Ozine lingering at a cocktail party, as if it were normal.
She looked up as she heard a sharp clicking of shoes on the marble, only to see Alan stalking toward the table Dorothy was slumped over. He looked perhaps the most normal of them all, with his hair drawn back neatly instead of spiked, wearing a rather presidential looking dark red tuxedo with flashy buttons on the front. He was an eye-turner like that, though Dorothy regarded him impassively as he drew out a chair across from her and sat down stiffly.
“God,” he cursed, setting his martini down onto the tabletop. “These pants are killing me! I don’t think I’ve ever had to wear such tight clothes.” He hissed under his breath, looking irritated as he shifted in his seat, casting a glance around warily. Dorothy snorted into her drink and he shot her a harsh look. “What, shoes not killing you, dress not too itchy, bra not too tight?” He snorted with a roll of his eyes. Dorothy stopped.
“Alan!” She scolded, smacking his hand lightly. Alan rolled his eyes again.
“Change of subject; having fun?” He inquired, before taking a swig of his drink. Dorothy shrugged her shoulders, looking down at her lap. Quincy had suggested it; a slightly off-set blue, not actually dark blue but not that light either. He said light blue would make her look like a walking baby shower and too dark of blue would make her stand out. This dress, without shoulder straps, suited her just fine, and it was plenty flexible, too.
“I’ve never been to a dance before.” Dorothy said. “Hardly ever proms; they were all too crowded and sweaty and just screamed disease! You know?”
Alan looked confused. “What in the name of Ozine is a prom?” He wondered absently.
“Never mind,” Dorothy waved the subject away.
“Oh. Well, you know what?” Alan said suddenly, grinning like a giddy school boy.
“Oh boy. What?”
“Someone called me sir!” Alan exclaimed excitedly. “Isn’t that neat? I mean, the outfit makes me look a bit regal, yeah, but sir! Ha!”
“You mean that waiter that gave you the martini?” Dorothy nodded down toward the martini Alan was holding. His grip tightened on it some.
“Okay, yeah, maybe,” he sighed, hope gone now as he gazed sadly at Dorothy’s drink. “But it still counts, right?”
“Hellooo ladies,” Quincy wheedled, nearly right in Alan’s ear as Quincy hovered above him. Alan screamed abruptly and slid off his seat, grabbing onto the table for support.
“You bastard!” He swore shakily, pulling himself upright. Alan ran a hand over his jacket to straighten it out and let out a breath as Quincy chuckled to himself and pulling up a chair from another table and sat down next to Dorothy. He looked like a bad prom date more then anything, versus the elegant, regal-looking Alan and the official-looking Zachary.
Dorothy looked around briefly to make sure no one had noticed Alan’s outburst. They all seemed too occupied by the dance floor and the bar as the band struck up another tune.
“You li’l couple having fun?” Quincy mused, one eyebrow raised.
“Oh, just loads, Quin, loads.” Alan replied sarcastically, slumping over the table again. “I haven’t been asked by anyone to dance.”
“That’s because that’s your job, Ally, to ask the ladies to dance. Didn’t you take lessons once?” Quincy’s eyebrow remained raised and Alan shrugged modestly.
“A while ago,” he replied airily.
“Uh-huh…” Quincy murmured absently, staring at a few people that had just come in. “Well, you two kids have fun, I’m off to go charm the new-comers…” He muttered, rising from his seat and slipping away like he had never even been there in the first place, save for the extra seat that had been brought over.
Alan watched him leave. “He’s part magician, you know, the way he just disappears all the time.” He told Dorothy, smiling to himself.
Dorothy smiled. “Is Quincy hard to live with?” She inquired, leaning forward. Alan blinked.
“Not really. He’s a pretty simple guy. He loves the ladies, and sometimes men mind you, and they love him back. So long as he’s happy we’re all happy, frankly.” Alan said simply. “But he’s a valuable member of Star Ship Exterminators, great at fighting, hand-to-hand combat, and he really knows the back streets of Ozine.”
The two lapsed into silence after that, and Dorothy sipped quietly at her drink, until she noticed Alan appeared to be staring with fascination at the ground. She leaned over for a better look, and indeed, the man in question was gazing at the ground blankly. His mouth hung open a little bit.
Dorothy snapped her fingers and Alan gave a start. “Whu-what?” He stuttered, looking up quickly.
“What’re you looking at, Pen-Head?” Dorothy asked. Alan blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes.
“There’s a crack by your feet.”
Dorothy looked down at the tiny crack in the tile. “So there is.” She observed.
“It’s growing.”
“What?” She looked back down at the crack. It was growing, now that she studied the thing. The tiny little crack in the tiles was growing at a steady pace across the fancy floor; not very fast, but still growing, and its size was increasing slowly as well, as though there were some sort of creature beneath it causing it. Dorothy pushed her chair back and scooted away from the crack. “What the-“
Her cry of surprise was broken off by a tremor that came from the crack, making the glasses on the tables vibrate. The chandeliers swung dangerously above their heads as people gave cries of surprise. The band stopped playing abruptly as their larger instruments fell over and a chandelier shattered on the ground, sending broken glass everywhere. Alan gave a small scream of surprise and shielded his face, even though the glass had shattered on the other side of the room. The tremor continued, growing in size right under their feet, and Dorothy stood up suddenly as the tiles beneath her feet began to crack. This wasn’t a normal earthquake, with the way the floor was shattering. Something was under them, forcing its way up. People were screaming and running around like frantic animals, trying to get to the exits to safety but blocked by their own stupidity as they crowded around the doors. Someone grabbed Dorothy around the waist and hauled her back suddenly as the ground beneath her gave away, exposing a vast dirt tunnel, and she and Zachary stumbled back into the wall.
“What the hell is going on?” Dorothy demanded.
“No time to explain,” Zachary shouted over the tremors. “Quincy, the ship is parked in the alley. Go get the big guns and for God’s sake hurry!”
Dorothy grabbed Zack by the shoulders and shook him roughly. “Zack, what’s going on? What’s down there?” She yelled in his face, as the tremors continued to grow.
“If it’s what I think it is,” Zachary replied, face blank, “then we’ve got a problem on our hands. Of all the daft-ended, unlikely places, it has to happen here!”
“What? What’s happening here?”
Dorothy’s voice was drowned out by a huge, terrible bass roar as something burst forth from the dirt tunnel. The roar made the panels of glass, the ones that were still standing in the windows, shutter and a few shattered, and Dorothy clapped her hands over her ears. What had burst forth from the ground was what appeared to be a huge worm. It was about as wide as three of the tables pushed together side-by-side, and if Zachary stood on Quincy’s shoulders they still wouldn’t meet the sheer height of the creature. It’s pink skin, the texture of leather, stretched taught over it’s bulk as it reared back and opened it’s mouth, displaying the deadly set of large, razor-sharp teeth it had, and emitted another deep echoing roar.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?” Dorothy shouted over the roar, looking at a panicked Zack, who was watching the exits intently.
Zaaaap! A ray of what felt like pure heat, white-hot, came out of nowhere and struck the creature right next to its beady black eyes. The thing bellowed, and as the smell of burning flesh reached Dorothy’s nose she nearly gagged.
“Guten tag, doll face,” Quincy’s cheerful voice rung out in her ear; the crowd had thinned out dramatically, save for a few people trapped in the bowels of the building, which gave them a wide birth in which to avoid the huge death worm. “Welcome to our day job.”
Quincy shoved a large gun into Dorothy’s hands. It looked like some sort of modified machine gun, since it was extremely bigger then the typical one a person would imagine. The barrel of the gun was considerably wider as well, though surprisingly the entire thing was amazingly light. “Modified XK-2 Prorotype Machine Gun; enhanced ammo, extended bullet capacity and extra fire power, not to mention a muffled kickback. You can thank Al for that,” Quincy twittered on, adjusting a belt he had put on.
Zack dived out of the way as the worm tried to take a chunk out of his leg, and the creature slammed its massive head into the wall, instead taking a large chunk out of wood and plaster. “Quincy,” Zack grunted. “Stop talking and give me a gun!”
Quincy unhooked a big gun from his belt and tossed it in Zack’s direction. The gun he gave Zack looked a lot like the one he had himself, except when Zack shot it, it gave a twseeee! noise and emitted a ray of green light instead of red. It left a just-as-burnt hole in the worm’s side and it bellowed painfully again.
“Fire the gun!” Someone was shouting in Dorothy’s ear. Fire the gun? Dorothy had never handled any sort of gun before, let alone any type of projectile weapon. But it couldn’t be that hard; just aim for the giant worm of doom and pull the trigger. And it wasn’t hard to miss that mass of fat as it slithered out of its hole, heading now for Quincy instead, who was backing up rapidly and shooting the thing between its black eyes. Dorothy winced, but heaved the gun up, the back of it resting at the crook of her hip, and pulled the trigger. She expected she’d get a mind-blowing-ly single shot, one that would pierce the worm’s skin, but what she got instead was rapid automatic fire. The kickback was, like Quincy had said, muffled, but still sent her vibrating across the floor as she continued to fire. Each shot made her blink quickly, but after a second she stopped shooting to see what the damage was. The thing was still intent on taking Quincy out as he stood his ground and continued burning away the monster’s thick skin, but its side was bleeding from Dorothy’s gun. Thick, foul-smelling purple blood was dripping onto the floor.
It was at that moment that Dorothy noticed they were absent one person; Alan was missing. Her mind reeled as Zachary joined in Quincy’s battle and she searched around the ballroom desperately, looking for a sign of…what? Blood? Bones? Alan’s decapitated head rolling across the dance floor? But she found none of them as she searched, and as Alan’s voice replayed in her head, she had an idea of where he might be; I’m afraid of several things, you know…What about Ozian Dirt Worms...?...You let your guard down for one second and snap! They’ve got your head in their mouths…
Alan was afraid of Dirt Worms, of course! Which meant he had either fled with everyone else, or he was hiding; the logical thing for him to do was hide, of course, considering how packed the exits had been earlier.
Dorothy side-stepped across the dirt-strewn dance floor, pulling and holding the trigger on her gun again with a startled cry as it sent her back several feet. She was shooting the thing on it’s side again, as Quincy dove out of the way of it’s gaping jaws and attempted a shot at one of it’s eyes, but missed, which only pissed the creature off further as it decided to express it’s anger toward Zachary now. It didn’t seem to have much interest in Dorothy as she stopped firing.
“Look at her, she’s a natural!” Quincy cried happily as the worm flung a table at him.
Dorothy ripped back the tablecloth on the table she had been sitting at and found Alan cowering under it, huddled up in a little ball and quivering.
“Close that!” He hissed. “It’ll see me!” Alan attempted at an escape by army-crawling out from under the table, but before he could, Dorothy had hold of his back pockets, and pulled him out mercilessly. Alan clawed at the floor under him, but to no avail as he was hauled out.
“You coward!” Dorothy shouted at him. “Zack and Quincy are fighting for their lives and you’re…hiding under a table!”
“Yup, that’s me!” Alan shouted over the noise, ducking as Zack gave a cry as he was knocked over their heads and into a wall. “Hey, don’t look at me like that! I made the guns!” Alan defended. Dorothy opened her mouth to reply, only to have the wind knocked out of her as the worm pummeled into her, sending her and her dialoged gun across the floor and into the wall. With a thud! she hit the wall and then the floor, pain working its way through her system as she lay there, stunned. The worm, with a clear path to unarmed pray, snatched Alan up in its massive jaws and shook him around. Clearly it preferred to eat dead pray, because it seemed intent on shaking the life out of him first. Alan gave a painful scream as he was tossed around roughly like a limp rag doll and slammed against the ground. Like before, he clawed at the floor desperately, terror in his dark eyes. Quincy and Zachary were shooting franticly at the worm’s sides; the creature was moving too fast to get a shot at its head without hitting Alan as well, as the poor man kept at his fruitless scrambling at the ground. Dorothy was beginning to get the feeling back in her chest when she realized what Alan was trying to do; he was trying to get her disposed gun. Dorothy extended her aching foot and kicked at the gun, pushing it across the floor as the Dirt Worm slammed Alan against the ground again, furious that its meal wouldn’t die. The length that Dorothy had kicked the gun was just enough for Alan, who grabbed it greedily. Dorothy imagined he’d have no problem using it; he had built it after all, as the man struggled to turn around in the worm’s grip. It seemed he was trapped by more gum than anything, as he shot into the thing’s mouth, dangerously close to his own legs. Bullets rained down its throat and the worm grunted nosily, refusing to release Alan. He pulled the gun out, covered in goop and what Dorothy realized with a sickening feeling was Alan’s own blood, and pressed the gun against the worm’s eye. The jab was enough to stun the creature; the shots fired into its eye made it holler in pain as it shook its huge head rapidly, and Alan was partially dislodged from its grip.
“C’mon, Al! Get a better shot!” Quincy cheered him on, still working on killing the thing by burning its side away. The worm was so confused; it had one man burning its flesh, and another shooting out its eye. Stunned and blinded, it slithered around stupidly but still dangerously and Dorothy managed to pull herself out of the way just in time. She leapt across the floor numbly, her chest aching as she drew in heaving breathes, and landed next to a body; Zack’s body. She muffled a cry of sheer horror at his bloodied body, but before she assumed anything, pressed her two fingers against his neck. He still had a steady pulse, which meant he was still alive.
With a sigh of relief Dorothy turned her back on the battle and grabbed Zachary’s collar, tugging him to the side and under the pathetic shelter of a rare up-turned table. It was the least she could do, since she doubted she would be able to carry him safely out of there in her state.
The noise of gunfire drew her back from her numb reality and the relief of Zack’s life, and she looked around hopefully, only to discover that Zack’s gun was nowhere in sight, and she had no way of stopping the creature trying to kill then eat Alan.
Alan gave another cry of pain and nearly dropped the gun, catching it mid-air.
“Sick, twisted, demonic piece of crap!” He shouted at the worm, whether or not it could hear him, or even understand him. With one last desperate effort, Alan yanked his body over with a wince, shifting in the worm’s mouth, and placed the gun firmly against its temple. He pulled the trigger.
Dorothy had hoped the worm would drop dead instantly; it didn’t. The continuous gunfire splattered leathery skin and purple blood everywhere, slapping wetly against the ground, as the damaged worm writhed around franticly, but Alan’s grip on the gun didn’t lessen, nor did the fire and damage he was inflicting on the worm. Finally, it gave one last monstrous bellow, its mouth stretching out wide and dropping Alan, and dropped to the ground, sending out a small tremor as its body hit the floor.
It was dead.