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WHO| Wyatt and Wesker and You, oh my!
WHAT| Doin' what they do best.
WHERE| Frontierland, Tomorrowland, and all parts inbetween.
WHEN| Late Week 3
WARNINGS/NOTES| Permi-warning for Wesker's general ego and dickishnes; also Maximus is expected to stop by to show Wesker his new axe, so violence is a go! (But no death, you're good there.) Note-wise: Wyatt's available anywhere inbetween Frontierland and Tomorrowland; Wesker's only up for grabs in the latter 'cause he's an ass like that.

Wyatt couldn't say that he was completely sold on the idea of dead men up and walkin' around, but for what it was... he was actually kind of glad to have R around. With the extra set of eyes, he felt safer leaving Howard while he went out to check the traps. He could even risk crossing the park to the fruit trees Callista had shown him what felt a lifetime ago. (Maybe he'd stop by the planet building on his way, see if she was still there and how she was doin'....)

He stuck to the main, wide paths, figurin' if anybody came at him, he'd have more room to move and more time to react.

~.~

Wesker was systematically working his way through Tomorrowland, slowly transforming it into his own personal fiefdom. He used everything at his disposal: every lesson he'd been taught, every dirty trick he'd ever played, every one of his many talents and skills to make sure nothing happened that he didn't know about.

Who came, who went, who killed and who died. Who might be a threat, and who certainly wasn't.

He was always watching. Always listening. Always waiting.

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He'd almost stumbled over the pickaxe.

Taking shelter in a crumbling building in Frontierland one night he'd awoken and nearly tripped over the thing on the way out. He didn't recognize it, of course - not exactly. Such tools were more primitive in his time and he'd never been a miner. But a sharp edge was a sharp edge, and Maximus took it and kept it to his side.

He didn't wander. To anyone else, it might have seemed like wandering - constantly moving, never staying in the same place. But it wasn't wandering. He was moving slowly and systematically through the entire park, as silently as possible.

It simply happened that today was the first day he stepped foot in Tomorrowland.

And almost as if he had been waiting for this day, this moment, it didn't take long for Wesker to appear. He watched Maximus pass by through the haunted eye-like windows of the restaurant he'd claimed as his own, and then slipped out behind. A tail. A shadow. Dogging the man's footsteps.

His killer. His attacker. His old nemesis.

In a way, Wesker had been waiting for this. Had in a way, even looked forward to it. The rematch. Had Maximus previous success merely been luck? Or was he truly that skilled - was he truly an occupant to be respected?

They would find out.

"Maximus." He finally called out as if addressing an old friend, his hands clasped behind his back, his head slightly tipped, his mouth curled. "How nice to see you again."

The fact that he didn't hear his shadow until it spoke was almost appropriate - given that it had been he who had taken (and eaten) his ear.

He turned, slowly, his face a grim mask, the pickaxe at his side.

"Wesker." The S slightly elongated. The R unnaturally enunciated. The tone is completely flat, emotionless. Dangerous. His ear throbbed with a ghostly pain, and he swung the axe almost casually in his grip. Of course, nothing about his relaxed stance was truly casual. Underneath, every muscle was taut and ready.

"I can't say the same."

Behind the dark lenses the red and gold serpentine eyes followed the path of the axe. The odds of it being the instrument of his death were slim, but he was careful to keep an eye on its sharp edges, just the same.

Wesker was a man who pulled the strings, who moved behind the curtain. As such, he prepared for everything, no matter how unlikely.

"Oh? That's too bad," he purred, a patronizing bite clipping the words just so. "I've been worried about you - wondering how that ear of yours was holding up." He shifted, leaning as if to check, and his teeth flashed, white and strong and predatory. "Not well, I take it?"

Edited 2013-04-08 14:33 (UTC)

Maximus smiled with absolutely no warmth, taking a step forward.

"Well enough," he said lowly as he lessened the distance between them. Nothing but cold confidence was apparent in his step. There was no fear. It had been a long time since Maximus had fully allowed himself to feel fear, even in the face of monsters.

Even facing the monster.

"It won't keep me from bringing your death."

Wesker snorted. His hands unlocked from behind his back and he held them out at his sides, palms facing Maximus.

An invitation - his eyes flashed, rubies beneath black glass - if Maximus dared.

There was a breath of wind that gusted down the empty street - just enough to fill the pause as it grew between them. Two men in a stand off, poised and ready, as if about to draw their pistols.

He didn't wait long, and he didn't bother to speak again.

He lunged forward, fully aware of how fast Wesker could move - keeping the lunge quick and tight, only swinging the axe testingly. He couldn't afford to lose his balance again, not so soon, so even in the attack he was completely on the defensive.

Edited (woops wrong icon) 2013-04-08 16:49 (UTC)

Maximus moved and Wesker's chin dropped - and suddenly he was three feet to the left, suddenly striking out with a high side-kick as Maximus lunged forward, aiming at the man's back.

He hoped to knock Maximus off-balance, to get him down... undoubtedly, beneath his heel, the man's skull would pop just easily as any other.

But Maximus was well ready for it. Though he took the blow, his feet barely moved, and he put all his weight into his axe arm as he swung around - low but sweeping - to try to land a blow on Wesker.

Time was not on his side, in this fight. He knew that. Wesker could fight faster, and longer, than he could. But if he could just get one good blow...

He saw the curved blade of the axe swinging toward him, but he didn't have the balance or the positioning to dodge it, so he let it take him instead. It caught beneath his calve, cutting across the fabric of his pants and the flesh beneath and dragging his foot out from beneath him.

He ignored the pain and braced for the impact of hitting the dirt, preparing to spring up in acrobatic flip as soon as his back was against the pavement.

The axe shuddered in his hands as it caught flesh, but he immediately pulled it back and put his whole weight into another swing, unwilling to give Wesker any quarter that he could gain the advantage in.

His legs were swinging up, preparing to propel himself up onto his feet, his back was arching...

And the axe came down, slamming into his chest, slender blade piercing flesh and cracking off bone, slipping between his ribs and ripping through the lungs beneath. His mouth came open and he might have screamed in pain, but there was no sound but a gasping rush.

Blood, bright and foaming, bubbled around the blade of the axe, up from his throat as he twitched, fingers grasping at the weapon, head thrashing against the ground.

The sound that the axe made as it crashed down was somehow incredibly satisfying. Maximus had never really revelled in death - it wasn't a joy for him, but a necessity - not pleasure, just work. But there was something about crashing through the chest of a ~~man~~ creature that just refused to die most of the time that was incredibly, incredibly satisfying.

He tore the pickaxe free, away from Wesker's fingers, stumbling back a few steps. Surely that had to kill him?

Surely, now, that would be the end of it?

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Whether R was a threat was up in the air.

He knows he's dangerous (he wishes he wasn't, but that's life now) but he's fed and that makes a big difference in his world view. It's not like suddenly everything's hi-def and saturated with colors and pulses; what it is is a tiny bit less gray, the hunger more of a hum in the background than something screaming in his ear. He's okay. Ish. Okay-ish. R takes what he can get.

R makes no attempt to be a ninja, slip in unnoticed - instead he blunders right through Tomorrowland, a tall figuring swaying his way past Finding Nemo's submarines with his arms flopping at his sides, a long bloody splotch running down his District 4 shirt. The teal's no longer teal. An hour into his trip and R busies himself watching the ducks with their funky little teeth and beady eyes. One hour turns into four and it looks like he'll be making duck-watching a full day Thing. Maybe a multi-day Thing.

(Zombies are stupidly easy to entertain. It's one of the very, very few perks of being a corpse).

Edited 2013-04-10 09:48 (UTC)

Dangerous to some perhaps, but not to Wesker. The threat of infection meant nothing to him. He was, after all, already a child of the virus.

One of her chosen.

Catching the sweet scent of death and decay on a seasonably warm breeze, Wesker followed to the water and was not particularly surprised to find the remarkable R at the other end of the trail. The undead might not have any of Wesker or Alice's super-human abilities, but he was, in his own way, chosen.

Wesker hadn't been lying when he'd said he'd never encountered another like R.

Folding his hands behind his back - long fingers of one hand wrapped about the wrist of the other - he approached casually, almost strolling up to the zombie's side. There was blood, still wet, soaked through the front of his shirt and the wound beneath was still open, the flesh not quite closed from where Maximus had put an axe through it, but he was still somehow a man unconcerned. Untroubled.

"Fascinating, aren't they?" he mused, in that smooth drawl of his. "Nothing on the creations of Umbrella," his head tipped as he studied the ducks as they paddled back and forth before them, the judgment sounding almost amused, "but impressive nevertheless."

R doesn't hear Wesker coming. He's too busy watching one of the baby ducks paddling around in the murky water like it's his first time seeing a working TV, his mouth hanging open. He hasn't seen many ducks - actually make that zero - back home and it's almost hypnotic watching a living thing swimming. They do it with purpose, instead of bobbing around like a bloated zombie with nowhere to go.

A mosquito buzzes around R's mouth, decides he's not worth it because even a mosquito has better standards, and flies away.

The voice purring practically in his ear makes R give the slowest start known to man, the zombie turning on his shattered heel and realizing he has a visitor. Wesker. The strange, infected-but-not-Dead man from before. R gives a tentative sniff. He can smell the man, but that scent isn't pinging him in all the right places like every other human he's run into. It does make having a conversation easier.

"Could watch...all day," R says. He means it too. "Are you...okay?"

He twitches a hand at the glistening blood drying on Wesker's shirt.

White teeth flashed; a brief smile, or perhaps a sneer, it was hard to say.

"Oh yes," he replied, with that same not quite amused, not quite bored inflection. "Just a scratch."

He was breathing regularly again, the damaged lung having already reformed and re-inflated, and the pain had dulled into a vague itch as torn muscle and skin knit and closed.

He glanced at R from the corner of his eyes, red and gold peeking around the dark lenses of his sunglasses. "And yourself?"

He was marginally surprised that none of their fellow tributes had taken the easy kill the slow, shuffling zombie would have presented. Either R had talents Wesker had yet to discover, or the others saw him as no more a threat than Wesker did.

Yeah, that looked like way more blood than just a little scratch in R's opinion. He stared at the splotches, his eye slowly traveling back up to Wesker's face. The guy had a smile even a zombie might pause at. It was white teeth, almost too perfect to be human, and R couldn't tell if it was a smile or something else. Maybe he'd been dead too long to know the difference.

"Still...kick...ing," R's mouth twitched like he wanted get it up in a dry smile, but all he got was a spasm along his jaw. The zombie gave up (too much work, not enough willpower today). "Sorta."

He wouldn't do much kicking with his broken ankle, but he thought Wesker got the point. R turned to watch one of the ducklings, his hand coming up as if he thought about trying to wade in there after them. After a moment his hand drooped back to his side.

"How did you...get...scratched?" R suddenly asked.

Watching R with the ducks, Wesker wondered idly if the Capitol had taken precautions against their pets contracting the virus. Capable of leaping across the species-barrier, T had mutated everything from dogs to crows, and all it had taken was the animals feeding on infected flesh.

Perhaps an experiment might be in order....

It took a moment for him to realize R was speaking again, asking him a question. Still turning the possibility of infected, flesh-eating ducks around in his mind, his answer was distracted.

"A fellow tribute," he replied idly, as if it were nothing. "He mistakenly believed he was capable of killing me."

Oh, okay. R reacted like any zombie would at a murder attempt - groan, nod and go on with unlife. It was kinda part of the whole package, Living people trying to re-kill you. It was what it was.

"Did you...eat him?" R asked. He thought he liked Wesker, freaky eyes or not, and if someone was gunning for him, then R was all for forming up a hunting party of two. Besides, free lunch thrown in. Hard to say no.

It was hard to get a good read on Wesker. Living were so squishy and mobile in the face, Dead it was a lot of guesswork and...yeah, he didn't really know what Wesker was, if he was one or the other or both or something new. All he knew was he couldn't pick up anything on the guy unless he flat-out told him. R peered at him, openly staring.

Genuinely surprised, legitimately amused, Wesker turned, smirking at the undead creature standing beside him.

He never paid much attention to the judgments of others, all that gasping condemnation for his body's needs - it was what it was - but it was still pleasant to find someone who understood, as it were.

And of course who better than someone who felt the same needs, the same urges.

"No," he replied. "Not yet."

R was startled by that one. Wesker struck him as an overachiever, so finding out that he got injured and didn't take some chunks out in return surprised him. "How...come?"

He blurted it out before he was ready, the zombie fixing Wesker with one of his quietly confused looks.

Wesker had killed for less, but from R - for the moment - he found it humorous.

"He escaped," he said simply. "He realized how pathetically ineffective his attack was and fled."

Yes, an axe to the chest would slow even Wesker down for a moment or two.

(Attitude like that and it was possible Wesker would get a kick from Karis).

R thought that sounded like it was for the best: okay, so maybe it wasn't a peaceful solution, but in the long term, Wesker looked like he'd be okay and hi attacker didn't get his skull cracked open, so it was kinda peaceful. Big emphasis on "kinda".

"Glad you're...okay," R said. "Maybe...better this way?"

He hadn't lost, but neither had he won, which unfortunately mean the same could be said for Maximus. Neither of them given, and neither of them had gained.

He would have preferred to have had it finished, to be that much closer to his goal, but it was still better than outright failure.

He sighed through his nose. "For now."