[Round One] The Giant

[Altamira]

OoC: I'm using Hunter Merridale for this.

IC:
The stained glass twinkled with the morning's glow, casting soft purples and reds into the small suite of the inn. In a bed nestled neatly in a corner beside a lamp and end table, Prince Hunter Merridale awoke to the warmth of the light gently bathing his features with its luminance, yawning and wiping the sleep from his eyes. He had a refreshing night's sleep and all and all, was feeling quite at home at this inn; after weeks-long battles in the Chorastrian wars prior, the peace of the establishment was a pleasant, almost overwhelmingly different change of pace.

Looking at his polished spear resting on the hooks by the door now, the warfare of before seemed just a distant, shrill cry; an old dream of a tired solider, like one of those stories the brittle-boned, gray-haired veterans would tell in Bartholomew Square to any willing to sit and listen. And at the current moment, he couldn't help but think he'd rather have a fork in his hand, enjoying a hot, fresh breakfast from the inn's skilled cook, than he would a spear, piercing through a fellow man's chest.

With that thought in mind, he dressed quickly, still taking care to securely lock all of the clasps of his armor in place, and then gave a ring to the silvery bell by the door to call for his morning meal. Generally, service was prompt--but even after numerous rings, there was no answer. Confusion giving way to concern, the noble commander hurried for his spear and shield to fend off whomever or whatever could be detaining the help. It was when he turned around for his shield by the bed that he noticed something--the light wasn't coming from outside. He had left his lamp on.

According to the clock, it was well into the morning hours, but there was no daylight. In fact, a tall shadow, like a tree-sized leg of some beast, seemed to darken the panes of the window, hinting at some formidable but unknown threat. Hunter stood, staring in awe at the outline of the bulky form for countless minutes; his body felt numb, and his grasp on his spear and shield weak.

As he stood watching, the very roof of the entire inn was rended from the building by a great, strong hand with fat red fingers and black nails, and he was left gaping up at a hideous, smiling face. Drool fell from the creature's open mouth like plump raindrops, and his brows, as long and as dark as the tails of two, giant mountain panthers, was knitted into an expression of malicious amusement. The monstrous beast reached into the tiny room, bringing the walls down along with the movement, and with two fleshy fingers he plucked Hunter from the floor like one might pick up a speck of dust.

Once he was raised to eye-level with the giant, peering into the creature's deep-set, coal black eyes, he heard the hoarse voice of a crow issue forth from a pocket on the giant's vest.

"You're the last one, the last one, yes. Master will have a fun time watching the fight."

Before the prince could question the bird's words, his consciousness was squeezed away by the vice-grip the beast had on his body. And after he had plucked a few more of the inn's guests from the building, the giant lumbered away with them all to his home in the mountains, giddy at the idea of having his own personal fighters to watch for as long as those fighters lived.

[I)ragon11]

J awoke groggily. Probably the groggiest he had felt... most likely in his whole life. Every fiber in his being was telling him to go back to sleep, except for the very small portion of his consciousness that noticed that he was wet. His mind struggled to think coherent thoughts as he began slipping back to sleep. I’m wet... this is awkwardly not good... they boy thought to himself. He groaned a little and struggled to open his eyes. He was now awake enough to find that he was a little too wet to be what he had at first thought. That was a giant relief to him, but at the same time, perplexed him even more. It felt like he was waist deep in water. The teen furrowed his brow and thought about this for a second. He was not lying down, he was sitting with his back up against a hard smooth surface. ...I’m not in my bed... he frowned and struggled again to open his eyes. They didn’t want to open. They felt caked shut by a year’s sleep worth of eye buggers. This little observation was actually truer then he had yet to realize.

Slowly, he lifted his hands out of the water to rub at his eyes. His hands felt odd to him, he couldn’t quite figure out how though. It was as if they where being weighed down by something, and they where also very stiff, and hard to bend at the elbows. His hands found his eyes and rubbed at them, trying to rip apart whatever it was that was keeping them closed. Again he noted something odd about his hands, and of his face, or to be more exact, his skin. It felt oddly soft and smooth, almost like the peddles of a flower...Ok, that’s a weird simile...

Finally he was able to pry his eyes open and he took in his odd surroundings: Stinging white pain. “Arh...” He shut his eyes tight and rub at them again. After another minuet or two went by, he finally managed to open his eyes without the unbearable pain forcing them shut again. But there still stood the problem that he could barely see a thing. His vision was severely blurry; he could hardly make out the shape of his hand in front of his face. The tall boy frowned and rubbed his eyes again. He was starting to get agitated, and he still had no clue where he was. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times, straining his vision to make out his surroundings. Finally, shapes started to come into focus. He was sitting in a glass tube, filled a foot high with transparent, green water. He also took note that the only thing he had on was skin tight, black shorts. That probably unnerved him the most. He had no memory at all of how he had gotten himself into this mess, and he had never seen anything like this place before in his life. Maybe in a TV show or movie, but nothing even remotely close to this in real life. The very last night before, he had gone to bed in his own house. Yesterday he had gone to school, spent some time at his friends house, and reluctantly done his homework before going to bed.

The brown haired boy furrowed his brow and look out from his glass confinement, moving his legs around to make it easier to get to his feet, and found that his knees were horribly stiff too. Beyond the large tube, he couldn’t make out very much. There was a smooth, gray floor that went out a few yards and a white wall that stretched up to the ceiling and to the left and right sides for as far as he could see: basically, a very boring hallway.

Slowly and achingly J made it to his feet. He couldn’t believe how hard it was to such a simple act. He stood up tall, and immediately became extremely light headed. He leaned back against the glass tube and felt something brush against his hair. He looked up; vision still slightly blurred, and could make out a half a dozen or so skinny wires hanging from the top of the cell. They all ended in small, flat, gray circles. They appeared to be those hart monitoring patches. He looked to his side as something caught his eye. It looked to be a skinny mechanical arm hanging from the ceiling in the same manner as the wires. It also had a six-inch mechanical looking device at the end, with a large needle protruding out from it. J looked at it curiously. As utterly perplexed and disoriented by the situation he was in, he could still guess that the medical patches had been attached to him before. But he couldn’t make out what the giant needle was for.

J turned his attention back to the glass cell he was in. there was a crack at the bottom of it, and where the crack stopped, a foot or so above the ground, was where the water had been apparently been drained to. Other then the relatively small crack, there didn’t appear to be any other seams in the glass, and no real way out. J hit the glass with the palm of his fist, not really expecting anything to happen. He kicked the glass where the crack was, and decided that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, as he’d most likely cut himself badly. He looked around the glass tube again, trying to find anything that would help bust him out of his confinement. His eyes landed on the giant needle. The tall boy shrugged and gripped the metal arm, and, trying to make sure he didn’t get cut, smashed it into the glass. The tube shattered completely, scattering glass all over the place. J frowned and took a careful step forward out into the hallway, careful not to step on any shards. He then looked to his left: the end of the hallway. And to his right: something very unexpected. Another glass tube, filled with the same green liquid, and also the same as his; it had someone inside it as well. Beyond that was the what looked like the remains of a ceiling collapsing in on itself. Giant boulders of concrete and beams of wood and steel scattered the ground and piled on top of each other, reaching all the way to the ceiling. It looked like he was blocked off completely from the rest of the hallway. Only the two cells and the end of the corridor stood at his side of the wreckage.

J turned his attention to the second glass cell, and carefully, and slowly, made his way over to it. There was a girl inside it, asleep. She had rather long, blond hair that swam around and obscured her face. She looked slightly pale, but it was hard to tell through the green haze of the liquid that she was floating in. She wore clothes similar to what J was wearing; black leotard type shorts and a tube top, which reviled her body slightly, but no more then an any average swimsuit would.

J looked around at his surroundings once more. The blocked off corridor was quite small, and the air was deafly quiet. The only thing that broke the silence was the soft padding of his own feet, and the occasional bubble that would float up from the blond haired oxygen mask that was strapped over her mouth and nose.

The whole situation was starting to freak J out of his mind. He had at first been so shocked by the whole thing, and at the same time, there was such a strange subtle ness to it all, that the circumstances left him emotionless. He had never experienced anything like this, and he had no clue how to react to it at all. The two things that stood out in his mind the most were; he was more flabbergasted then he had ever before been, and how in the world did he get there. Everything about it was eerie, from the calm, yet resent and hazardous looking runes that made up one wall, to the shattered glass of his own tube and the medical wires, to the comatose state of the girl... just floating there. It was now almost more then he could bare. He looked around the room one last time, and elected to do the only thing that seemed even remotely rational, and he soon found a means of doing this thing. He walked back across the room, careful to avoid the broken glass, and picked up a good sized rock. He then hesitated for a second, thinking that maybe what he was doing might be a little rash, but really, there was no other foreseeable option. He pulled back his arm and swung away, instantly smashing the glass of the cell the girl was in. There was a loud shatter, and a giant wave of water that spilled out from the tube, and the girl sank to the ground, sprawled out and leaning awkwardly against what was left of the shattered glass.

J watched her for a second, waiting to see what she would do. When nothing happened immediately, he started his careful steps over to the still unconscious girl. He looked up at her as he heard the faint sound of her coughing. He then winced in pain as a piece of glass sliced into his foot. He looked back down and made his way as fast and carefully as he could to the girl’s shattered cell. He soon reached her and kneeled down beside her. The blond coughed again and struggled to mover her hand to her face. She appeared to be having the same overbearing grogginess that he had experienced when he had woken up, just a few minuets ago.

“H-hey...” his voice cracked. He coughed and tried again. “Hey... you alright?” he asked, his voice still sounding strange to him. The girl rubbed at her eyes and looked up at the tall boy crouched beside her. again, just like he had been, she looked completely confused about the whole situation as she squinted around at her surroundings. She looked down at her strange clothes, then back up at J.

“What-” she coughed and started again. “What happened...? Where am I? What did you do to me?” J raised his eyebrows and leaned back slightly, a little take aback from her accusing words.

“I didn’t do anything.” He said, slightly panicked. “I just woke up a few seconds ago right there and thought I’d wake you up too.”

The female teen furrowed her brow and looked again at her surrounding, slowly propping herself up into a sitting position. The tall boy stood and reached down, offering her his hand to help her up “I’m... J... What’s your name?” he asked with a slight, uneasy smile. She seemed to consider his hand for a second, and finally took it.

“Roery.”

J awoke abruptly, snapping his eyes open and turning his head towards the ceiling.

...It had been a dream. A dream of the first time he had awoken into the 41st century, the first day of the rest of his life in a forever changed planet, the first day that he would never see anyone from his past life again... The first time he had met Roery.

“Gaaahhh” he moaned, throwing a pillow over his face. He had been away from Roery for such a long time now, that it hurt him to be able to remember her face so clearly. It only brought more painful memories of the cherished friend that he would probably never see again. It only brought a false hope to fill the emptiness inside him. And yet, despite his failing faith that he would ever see her again, something that was eaten away more and more with each passing day, still, he continued his relentless search for her.

Without warning, a low, yet load thud rang out into the air, followed by what felt like a small earthquake. J threw the pillow off his head and sat up in bed as another thud came. He then jumped out of bed and nearly ran to the window to see what could possibly be making such an enormous disturbance. He gazed out the hotel room window but could not make out anything out of the ordinary. The small quakes seemed to cease. J gazed around the room and decided to get dressed and head outside as soon as he could to see if anyone knew what had happened... but the answer decided to come to him instead.

There was a deafening crash, along with sporadic yelling and screaming. Then came the sound of a large amount of metal and wood being ripped apart, and the whole hotel began to shake worse then before. J glanced around the room and looked out the window again, but soon learned that neither was the place he should have had his attention on. With a great rumble, the roof right over his head was ripped clean off. The tall mans eyes boggled as he looked up at the blue and slightly cloudy sky, and the giant figure that blocked out most of it. That... is a giant... was all J could think as the behemoth looked down stupidly and happily at his own personal play house. He reached down with his immense arm and plucked a person right out of their hotel room, then another. J was so dumbstruck; he hadn’t even noticed when his armor subconsciously activated itself in a glow of red light. He also couldn’t figure out why the giants’ attention was suddenly drawn to the now armored man. A bulging hand reached down to grasp at J, and he instinctively raised his left arm and shot off a plasma bolt at the tree trunk sized fingers. The giant made a rumbling noise of pain and quickly swiped J up into his massive fist. J cursed himself for being so overcome that he hadn’t even bothered to dodge. Perhaps it’s too early. That was the last thought the armored man had before the consciousness was squeezed out of him.