thearena | So what if you can see the darkest side of me?

Entry tags:

So what if you can see the darkest side of me?

WHO| The Hulk and YOU
WHAT| Bruce has lost his temper. Now there's a green monster running around.
WHEN| Late Christmas day
WHERE| Anywhere you want him
WARNINGS| Violence, death, and more violence

[OOC: If you want a Hulk encounter that doesn't end in death and haven't talked to me about it yet, just send me a quick PM to tell me you want your character to escape/hide/whatever when you tag. Otherwise, I'm assuming that most threads will end in death.]

A, only for people who've made OOC arrangements with me

He had tried to be as quiet about leaving his group as possible. Just a few muttered "I think I have to go now"s before wandering away and into the underground rooms. Normally he'd be worried about the aliens down there. One bit him. It died from radiation poisoning, but not before writhing and screaming on the ground. Its acid ate through his skin, but then what was left bubbled and knit itself together until the only evidence of any wound is the toxic blood on his clothes. The other aliens have been leaving him alone since then.

He sits in the dark, wrapping his arms around his legs and resting his forehead on his knees. Heavy breathing. Sweating. Groaning in pain while the roaring in his head begins to overtake everything, and even now he struggles, even though he knows he's just prolonging the agony and avoiding the inevitable. He has to prove he can still struggle. He has to prove that this doesn't command him.

Even if it does.

B, OTA!

An ominous roar shakes the station from deep in its bowels. Then a green fist punches through the floor before a massive green beast climbs through the hole, its lips curled back in a furious scowl.

Everything. Everything around him will hurt him. He must destroy it all.

He starts at a full-on gallop on all fours, tearing through walls and doors like they're nothing, ready to kill.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Bucky had been following Bruce despite the mans warning, checking on him from time to time and keeping track of the doctor since he'd left the group. It was for good reason,practical reason (or so he told himself), Bruce was an ally even if he professed himself too dangerous to be around and it was better that the Soldier know where he was, just in case he needed him.

Or in the case the beast he'd described himself turning into was as dangerous as he said, then it would be better to know where to avoid should Bruce be triggered.

Unfortunately it's when a pack of xenomutts attack him that the change occurs. The laser gun he took from a turret makes short work of the creatures but is a sufficient hazard that Bucky is distracted from the approaching danger too long to avoid it. When he kills the last mutt he looks and see's the beast he was warned about moving down the corridor ahead of him.

No words could prepare him for the Hulk. The size, speed, strength and sheer rage on those familiar features sends a bolt of ~~fear~~ uncertainty through the Soldier's enforced calm. For a moment all he can do is stare.

Bad move, Barnes.

The Hulk is just a beast of green, churning muscle. Bruce's features are somewhat visible on his face--the cheekbones, the curve of the jaw, the nose, and even scraps of Bruce's clothes hanging off its shoulders--but they're all twisted up, and its eyes are bright green, now focusing on the man just standing there in the hall. Had Bruce been a little more in tune with the Hulk, had he not been trying so hard to suppress it, had he not been feeling so isolated and paranoid--the beast would stop and recognize the man as unlikely to threaten it. Instead, it just snarls and gives a earth-shattering roar as it gallops forward, murder in its eyes, and reaches to try smashing Bucky into the wall like a bug.

Run. Now.

He runs.

It only takes the Hulk turning towards him for Bucky to make his decision. He turns and puts every ounce of the serum they forced into his veins to use, feet pounding on the floor with all thoughts of stealth flying out the window in an instant. The only thing that matters is he escapes this creature and soon.

A rolling dive forwards is the only thing that saves him from becoming a smear on the metal walls and he springs up out of it to continue sprinting. He knows better than to look backwards with the sound of ally-turned-enemy so close behind him, and it's the fact that underneath the monster is Bruce that puts hesitation in him doing something so foolish as attacking. Being warned about the Hulk is not the same as experiencing him, after all.

His mind races ahead of his body, picking out a route thanks to his extensive exploration of the base in the previous weeks. Bucky hurtles forward down the corridor, leaping through a doorway that starts to shut behind him him and onwards down the next hallway.

You think that doors will stop him? That's cute.

The beast runs through the closing door like it's tissue paper. The sharp edges of the tearing metal do nothing to his skin. He just keeps running, rising up from all fours as he gets closer, baring his teeth in another roar. It's like an animal chasing a creature that stole from its nest--relentless, and utterly furious. There's no direction to his rage besides forwards, break smash destroy

Bruce wouldn't mind if someone tried to kill him when he was like this, if only it were possible.

There is some wariness in Thor's mind knowing powers have returned again and that Banner is in the Arena with them this time. A spaceport of all places is just a little too reminiscent of the helicarrier and as days pass by it seems as if the Hulk's return is less a possibility and more like an inevitability. Thor tries to keep watch of the group, specifically Bruce, but he needs to remain by Carlos for the most part. There is business he'd rather not involve all of his allies in, but the roar of the Hulk is one he knows all too well.

He departs from Carlos quickly, woefully disadvantaged without Mjolnir but unwilling to allow the Hulk a free tour of the spaceport. When Thor finds the Hulk, he's already almost unhinged a metal door and is making his way away. With no other weapons, Thor chooses to wrench the door off it's hinges entirely and hurl it toward the green figure with a battle cry that requests attention.

Bucky is quickly starting to get an idea of how very wrong his initial estimates might be.

Very strong, very fast. It's taking all he has to stay a step ahead of the beast behind him. He needs to escape but to do that he first needs to escape the Hulk's sight long enough to disappear. There is a place he knows that might enable him to do just that.

Abruptly he changes direction, twisting and rebounding off a wall with reflexes that would make a cat envious to take a right turn. Bucky digs into the Soldier's reserves of apathetic calm to remain calm and makes his plan with death at his heels.

Ahead there is a room that should contain a number of robotic sentry turrets before a pool of electrified water. On the other side of the water is a door leading into a short corridor ending in a t-junction. The Soldier's aim is that the turrets will distract the Hulk and slow him down enough for him to reach that junction, take a direction and disappear before the Hulk can see where he went.

With luck it'll be enough.

Pelting down the corridor the Soldier slaps open the door to the turret room and hurtles past them, fast enough that the small spray of bolts they manage to fire at him miss wildly, then leaps over the pool of water to the door beyond.

Someone is yelling and throwing things at Hulk. That makes Hulk angry. (Everything makes Hulk angry.) He spins to face the new threat, digging his fingers into the ground for torque (the metal bends and tears in his hand), and gives a loud roar when he recognizes the blond man. Blond man!

He ducks his head down, his eyes burning, and charges with another roar.

Once again, Bucky underestimates the Hulk. There is a reason Bruce removed himself from company.

The Hulk doesn't have trouble changing direction. It drives its fingers into the ground, tearing through the metal for an anchor, and uses that as torque to spin mid-motion so it could keep up with the slippery man with a metal arm. Possibly the worst part of the Hulk was that it is utterly without Bruce's self-control, but retains all of the doctor's knowledge of applied physics. The Hulk applies it liberally.

The Hulk once again tears through the door. There's no door left. When the turrets turn and start shooting at it, the bolts just bounce off its skin like they're Styrofoam, but that doesn't stop them from pissing off the beast. With one sweep of the hand, the turrets are all sent flying in different directions. Some are crushed, splat, like soft cheese, their metal carcasses lying with imprints of the beast's fingers. It just barrels through the pool of water--when it feels the electricity, it roars and punches a whole through the bottom of the pool. Exposed wires spark. The water starts to drain to the floor below, possibly on some unlucky aliens. The Hulk is not damaged. The Hulk is not slowed. The Hulk runs after the man with the metal arm, even angrier than before.

Edited 2014-12-31 01:02 (UTC)

The undeniably human fear spikes up through the Soldier again, undeniable this time. He is in trouble, if he can't lose the Hulk in the next few minutes he calculates that he will likely die and, while that in itself is not against his goal for the arena, he finds he very much does not want to die to the Hulk.

He thinks Bruce would be upset if he did.

That thought spurs him on, though the brutal pace is now starting to be felt even in his enhanced body. Up ahead is the junction where the one corridor joins another, offering two choices in direction and a chance to make it out of this situation alive. Stopping to assess the safety of either option is unthinkable with the Hulk a rush of noise and pounding footsteps at his back, so Bucky chooses a direction on impulse.

He slides, stabbing metal fingers into the floor to slow himself down enough to not impact with the wall before springing back up to run down the left-leading corridor without even a moments glance at the right and the man standing there. The only thought in Bucky's mind is to run.

Generally one doesn't want to run towards loud crashing, snarling, and gunfire noises but after two losses he should have been able to stop, Albert both has nothing to lose and a goal in mind. He recognizes the sound of Bucky's specific running gait with his enhanced hearing, even under the sounds of whatever beast is tailing the other cyborg, and the German wastes no time in making for the scene.

"Buc-" The syllable barely gets past his lips and the rest of the name is cut as the assassin goes careening past him, followed by a veritable force of nature. Albert's never read any of Jet's comics starring the Hulk, but the name comes to mind regardless simply by pure gargantuan stature. And it's fast. He doesn't have time to sort the situation properly, instead acting on protective instinct and raising his right arm to aim at the charging beast and firing a burst of appropriated bullets at its green hide, hoping at the very, very least to get its attention.

For most people, the instinctual reaction to a giant, green rage-monster charging at them would be to run like they've ever run before. Thor is not most people. He spares a moment to smile, just a quick and brief one before his expression becomes more severe. Maybe part of why he's facing Hulk is because the challenge excites him, but truthfully he knows he ought to distract him to protect everyone, especially Bruce. He doesn't need the weight of a hundred deaths on his shoulders, so Thor decides he ought to distract him.

Flashback to the present, Hulk running at him. He's unarmed. Not good. He doesn't waste much time before he's reaching for the piping on the wall and wrenching it off with ease. He brandishes it at his assailant, quite pointedly aiming for his head.

"Banner! Calm yourself." Says Thor, while waving piping in his face.

Haruto's first instinct when he heard the ruckus and the roaring was not to run away, but run towards it. Too much time spent as a Kamen Rider had done bad things to his natural survival instincts. But he'd been conserving his mana. He'd been fighting off the xenomutts without too much trouble. And if the gamemakers had unleashed a creature that big and that enraged, it was his responsibility to fight it.

Though from the sounds of things, it was more likely to catch up with him first than he was likely to catch up with it. So he took a few moments to stop in the middle of the hallway to fumble with his rings, slipping a yellow and silver one onto his left hand with as much grace as he could manage. It hurt too much to flex the fingers on his right. It wasn't healing properly. But he didn't really need that hand for anything but turning on the WizarDriver. Which, speaking of....

He held his right hand in front of the hand-shaped belt buckle that he wore, and it shifted and grew into a an actual proper piece of wizardly equipment, attached to the belt around his waist. "Driver On, please!" The device gave its activation call, and flashed briefly. A flick of Haruto's good hand shifted the open palm on its front to the opposite side, and it gave off another flash and a resonating chime. And then... it sang. "Shabadoobie, touch to henshin... Shabadoobie, touch to henshin..." It was kind of comforting that his Driver could still speak some Japanese, even if he couldn't manage it anymore. He flicked the ring into position against his leg, struck a pose, and set it before the flashing hand. "Land, please!"

All of this singing and flashing and chiming is no doubt enough to get that big thing's attention. And Haruto is fine with that.

The bullets only bounce off of the beast's hide, but it still rears back with a furious yell before planting its fists on the ground again and turning its eyes towards Albert, its lips curling back to bare teeth before it decides to chase a new target.

Run, Albert. It's charging.

Thor is a good friend. Unfortunately, Bruce is too busy being a frothing rage beast to really notice.

The Hulk goes to tackle the man, not at all acknowledging that it hears Thor's pleas (though it does), and fully intends to throw him against the wall and smash his bones. Things can't throw stuff at him when they don't have any bones left.

Lots of noise and flashing lights do indeed get the beast's attention. That's something Haruto may regret soon.

The beast runs towards the noise, roaring, its fists leaving dents in the floor as it gallops, charging at the noise that it hears.

A good friend takes all sides of a friend. A good friend holds your hair back if you have a hangover and a long morning, a good friend distracts you with themselves as bait when you're a rage monster.

The hulk is faster than a beast his size ought to be, but Thor has the advantage of knowing this. He swings under the massive, green arms as you would a limbo stick and takes the advantage of having more space to run in.

He doesn't say anything to him this time, he just braces and twirls his piping as if he were a matador with a plumbing job on the side.

Edited 2015-01-08 12:38 (UTC)

Bucky's gone. He did not see or hear Albert's call, too hellbent on making his own escape and preserving his life for another day in the arena.

He runs, keeps running even when he hears gunfire and the sound of the Hulk's anger drawing in another direction. He runs until he's surrounded by silence and certain he is safe before he lets himself collapse down into an exhausted heap to recuperate. One encounter with the Hulk is enough for a lifetime.

For something so huge, it seems to be astonishingly fast. Haruto snaps his left arm out to the side, generating a yellow ring of magical runes etched in light. He then takes a breath, flicks his eyes quickly around the hallway to get a feel for the area that he's working with, and then lets the ring wash back over him. There's a flash of light and some percussive chanting from the Driver, and when it all clears he's in an armored suit with a head that resembles the ring he used to set this whole thing off.

"...it's showtime." It is a quick muttering under his breath, not the cocky declaration that he usually opens fights with. This isn't going to be easy. He usually has more at his disposal when he's fighting something this big. He'll just have to make it work. And so he kicks off and charges forward to meet this big green hulking thing, veering off towards the wall and kicking off of it with superhuman speed and force. His plan is to greet the monster with a kick to the face that hits with the impact of a speeding truck.

Thor is definitely a good friend. Unfortunately, Bruce won't be able to show his appreciation for a very long time.

The piping hits harder than it should. The blond one always hits harder than he should. He looks just as puny as any other human, but he is not human. Hulk knows that much.

Blinded as he is by rage, the Hulk plays along at first, trying to grab at the blond man before he twirls away, but then the Hulk catches on and instead just tries to rip the floor open under the infuriating man with his bare hands.

His fellow cyborg may not have heard him, but the attention of the beast is certainly grabbed, and Albert's no fool. As soon as he sees a hint of those teeth - at least one as big as his palm - he does a quick about-face and goes striding down the corridor at top speed, metal feet hitting the floor so hard in his haste that they leave small variations in the floor of his wake.

His mind races as he runs, heading through areas that he knows, quickly computing the likelihood of losing the behemoth versus defeating it. Outrunning it at length means there's more of a chance to run across others and that's not acceptable so a long chase is out, moreover because it's gaining fast. So that leaves fighting, but his ammunition is severely limited and the bullets did little but bounce off putting a 'last stand' out of the question. He would die and the monster would still be around to kill others. Which leaves...

Albert darts suddenly to his right, seemingly without looking, and down a darkened hallway towards the outer ring of the space station. He doesn't need to see if the Hulk is still behind him, he can feel the rumbles in the deck plating with each heavy stomp.

There's something thrilling about this, even if it's a terrible situation. Thor has great levels of respect for Bruce, but the nostalgia of hunting and fighting the beasts of Asgard makes this at least a little enjoyable. Thor, of course, likes his enjoyment with a little terror.

He stumbles backward when the floor shifts under him and he guffaws in both surprise and adrenaline fueled amusement. He jumps backward, attempting to make a long moment of challenging eye contact before he steps forward and jumps through the hole he's created. He just hopes he's proved challenging enough to be chased, so he calls out to be sure.

"Have you made it so simple for me, Banner?"

Haruto hits the monster square on... and it does nothing. The beast has been able to meet a speeding space whale face-on before--trucks are nothing. But it still pisses it off.

So it's going to try clapping its hand onto the annoying yellow thing, intending to crush Haruto flat.

Maybe tackling the thing wasn't the best idea.

The beast gallops, letting out a long, lingering roar in the air, looking more like an animal than anything else with the way it runs on all fours. It snaps its teeth and tries to reach out to catch the tail-end of its new prey, fully intending to just smash Albert like a bug on the ground.

Bruce would be glad that at least someone was enjoying this.

The Hulk thrust its head into the hole, letting out a low growl and a huffed snarl before throwing himself down to the next floor. Yes, Thor has made himself interesting enough to chase, but that also means he's interesting enough to smash. Which the Hulk will be attempting to do with a giant fist coming right for Thor.

If they pass anyone, Albert isn't aware of it, running like an Olympian towards the outer bulkheads, towards an airlock, and most importantly away from the rest of the station and the rest of the Tributes. He's not sure he can get out of this, and he's not sure if he minds so much with Jet being dead already, but if it means someone who actually deserves to get out of this nightmare has a better chance of winning through his keeping this latest monstrosity of the Gamemakers' creation from a murder spree, then his death will at least have some kind of meaning.

He rounds another corner and sees his goal at the end of the hall, and the big red button that operates it.

The beast snaps its jaws, leaping on all fours, singlemindedly following the metal man who shot at him. He must be destroyed. Anyone who could hurt the Hulk must be destroyed. This whole world must be destroyed.

It jumps an impressive length, aiming to crash on the metal man and pin him to the ground.

Wow. That was not at all how he expected that kick to go. He can feel the jolt of the impact painfully all the way up his leg, and he's briefly worried that he might've somehow done something major to his hip. Only briefly, because then he is being swatted at like a bug. And bam, down he goes, the impact of it hard enough that the floor dents and the walls ring.

That... that was really unpleasant. He's already planting his hands and pushing himself upwards, but is too stunned to immediately move into the roll-out-of-the-way that is probably most immediately advisable.

He's inches from the button, he could taste it, but suddenly the world keens and there's a sharp pain across his back and legs. Alarms go off in his sight, red blips on his internal HUD proclaiming several breaks and crushed parts and it's enough to unrattle Albert's head to realize that he's been caught, pinned, all too far from his goal. So he does the only thing he can in this case.

He tries to turn and face death head on.

It's less difficult than it should be to twist 'round in the beast's grip. He must have cut something vital enough that the pain sensors screaming at him through his visuals about everything else cut off the actual sensation from his waist down. Still, the realization is met through a momentary haze as his spine bends over massive fingers, only affording Albert a look over his shoulder.

Even then, he sees something. Something familiar in the beast's face. It's the eyes, he thinks. Maybe the general structure of the Hulk's face, but it's someone he knows. Someone he considers a friend.

His voice comes out as a raspy choke, in organic fluids bubbling inside where they ought not from ruptured hydraulic lines and propellant tubes. Still it's audible in the silence that reigns after the Hulk had smashed him into the metal-plated flooring.

"Bruce...?"

There's a twitch at the monster's mouth. It recognizes the name.

It doesn't stop the beast from crushing the metal man's head.

The Hulk takes a moment to look down at the annoying man with a sneer. Recover quickly, annoying man, because the Hulk isn't going to waste much more time than that before he raises his hand and tries to crush it.

Given a few seconds of reprieve, Haruto goes into that roll to the side and manages to get into a low crouch. His head snaps up, he stares at the big green thing before him, and he feels his stomach drop. Air, he needs air, he needs to move faster than this thing, because there's no way he can overpower it. He's still faster than a regular human like this, though, so he's springing back and running fast as he can, even as he fumbles at his hip for a new ring. If he can be fast, if he can fly, then that'll get him out of this, he's sure.

He's running through an archway that looks to be to another section of the station, into a wider and more open common area. That, too, maybe he can use to his advantage. But he's going to need to get one of those rings first, damn it, with just one hand to manipulate it with. He is praying that the big green guy needs time to build momentum and is not directly on his tail.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

So what if you can see the darkest side of me?

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Finally found this beneath the lost notifications. Okay with continuing?

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Yeah, if you don't mind slowness

No problem at all!