Gima The Beginning : Gima: Jacknel Goes Berserk by barkingdog |
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Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence. Dear Reader: This is listed as Sci-Fi Horror, actually it is Fantasy-Adventure-Horror, but there is no category for it on FanStory. If you do not like this genre, please do not continue reading. I do not intend to offend anyone, but language and behaviors used are essential to the characters and storyline contrasts. Scenes are meant to arouse a range of emotions. I hope that they do. Thank you for reading. Enjoy.:) barking dog Previously: Trell thinks Gima is dead and mourns her loss. Hunter and Asmel are healing from their injuries. Blathen, Zee and Beh are growing. Gima was captured by a bounty hunter, Pike, and his men. He hopes she will be useful as 'bait' to bring Trell to Bellow City. It's life threatening for the Vermel to stay top-side long enough to find Trell. We open in Bellow City. CHAPTER 30 Several weeks after capturing Gima, Pike has healed her snakebite and wants his bounty for the intact merchandise. Several of his men have died from exposure to the sun, and he's, continually, sweating from Top Side Fever. Still, he feels that it's time to attend to business. Pike has deposited Gima in a holding pen behind Jacknel’s Arena and stands on the arena stage. To add to his feverish discomfort, he's heard that Jacknel's had a bad day. “Wait here. I’ll report your business to the boss.” Teleck, Jacknel’s efficient assistant, charges through the office door, slamming it behind him. The silence is broken only by the scampering of rats and their cousins fluttering in the rafters. Pike's hump feels a twinge, a sudden premonition to leave, but he pushes it aside sure that it's just the fever's dehydration, not his usual sixth-sense. ****** It had not been a good day for Jacknel. The crowd that usually packed the Arena's stands for the opening-day event of the Seasonal Warrior Games had been smaller than expected. Jacknel had invested a great deal of time and money organizing the afternoon warm-up to the evening’s extravaganza. He’d scheduled a pair of equally matched, top rated Vertant fighters, knowing that the two Vertant giants’ reputations for brutality would fill his coffers with critons, as blood thirsty vermel would travel far and pay highly to see them destroy one another. He’d advertised for months. But, just two hours ago, it all went wrong, and Jacknel ended up losing at both the box office and in the Arena. Jacknel's Vertant Warrior, whom he had brutally molested the night before, had succumbed to the well-oiled, fierce champion from his rival promoter, Warik of Upperton. Recently, Warik's small warrior training facility had been drawing attention away from Jacknel’s shows, and Jacknel had hoped that this contest would end Warik’s growing reputation for undefeatable vertant warriors, and original flamboyant choreography and costumes. To counteract the latter, he’d even seen fit to pay his trainer Trum five hundred critons to design unique weaponry and lighting. Jacknel, excited about improving the shows, offered Trum suggestions such as pointing several audience-control lasers at the stage. Trum looked away and rolled his eye. He turned back, smiled and said he'd think about it, knowing that he had no intention of resetting the entire system to stun; such a reset would render all the lasers ineffective for crowd-control. Very bad idea. Besides, he wasn't about to waste a warrior to a laser. Too fast, too clean, too silent. Where was the fun in that? Where was the entertainment without spurting fluids, growls and disembowelment? Earlier in the day, around noon, Warik, dressed like a peacock in high season, had marched in through the front gates past the crowd at the box office with a replacement fighter for his agreed upon champion warrior. Jacknel was aghast at the brazen entrance—through the front gates— and astonished that a switch had been made without consulting him. Warik, being Warik, merely reached his designer rat-skin jacketed arm around Jacknel’s shoulder and, jostling Jacknel closer, jokingly explained that he’d had to ‘discipline’ the previously scheduled fighter. Which probably meant that he’d killed him during another of his sudden rages. Warik, standing straighter, taller, than the scoliotic Jacknel and peering through his pince-nez monocle, had assured the livid, older vermel that his recently captured dissident had been expertly trained. He guaranteed Jacknel an excellent match. However, it was too late; hundreds of patrons left their seats in a rage when they saw the unknown fighter, and the word rapidly spread that the event had been altered. A green faced warty female, dragging her pale, gray offspring, chorted, “Jacknel’s cheating us again.” “Not me, I’m demanding my money back.” An elderly man with a bent hump beat his way through the crowd with his cane. “And, me … I’m no sucker.” Disposal Officer Fifty grabbed his buddy, Disposal Office Forty-five, by the arm. “Let’s go.” Officer Forty-five stumbled, spilling his pig chips and fitzel on a primping, curly blonde female. “Dragon fodder ... cobra fart." the blonde yelled brushing herself off as Officer Forty-five ran for the exit bent over with laughter. The rush of the exiting crowd met those in the street, waiting for tickets. It was like a great wave. It washed prospects clean. With the Arena only a quarter full, the pig sickle and fitzel peddlers did their best to make a living. They chanted competitive specials and tripped each other, sabotaging products whenever they had a chance. Wasted food and drink laid in seats and up and down the aisles. Jacknel was livid, pacing on the side lines, arms crossed, cursing Warick who sat gloating in the first row with his harlequin-suede derby slightly askew and his over the knee, sewer-rat skin boots crossed, cavalierly, at the ankles. Warik leaned back in his seat while his entourage of ‘devoted’ vertant females cooed and fondled him. Warik’s sleek, tall warrior stepped easily onto the Arena's high stage. He wore only Warik’s brand, a circled horizontal triple bar on his right cheek and a black pig’s skin loin cloth. Seeing that the youth was only minimally scarred -- a three pronged tear across his shoulder, another running from his buttock onto this thigh and a strange, smooth welt on his left cheek, Jacknel hoped that his experienced champion would win. But in only eight rounds of the promised twenty, his weakened fighter was pummeled to death by the swift, exceedingly strong, light haired newcomer, Picar, son of Betta, first cousin of Trell. Right now, it's late afternoon, and Jacknel needs some good news. He pushes open the filthy, office door, letting the flies out or in, depending … and stomps onto the stage, chomping a deep-fried pig chop. The two Vermel, one anxious for his bounty money, the other anxious for a prize captive to boost his ticket sales, meet on the bloodied Arena stage beneath its rust red, domed ceiling. Hungry for the notorious, valued commodity, Trell, Jacknel licks the chop bone and tosses it at Pike. “Well …?” Beady eyes sway in the dome's arches. Small gray tongues lick in anticipation of their turns at the pools of blood and the savory bugs that trace thin paths around the floor’s red lakes. The minimal light from flickering gas lamps around the edge of the stage give a strange upward shadow effect to the two eerie figures and cast long thin wavering forms behind them as the pompous business sharks take center stage. Behind them the audience risers wait to echo any argument in empty darkness. On with the show. Jacknel paces in his purple cape and black pig suede, hip-high boots. His favorite antique, a gold handled saber, sways at his side. Prior to Pike’s entering the Arena Complex though its front gates, Jacknel had seen the new merchandise, Gima, in the back alley’s pen area. He’s not pleased. With his hands clasped behind him, Jacknel turns to Pike and, red faced, begins. “I sent you for Trell and only Trell … and you bring me a common, vertant female. Do you expect a reward? Have your processes begun to falter? ” “No, sir. But, but she’s… she’s …” “She’s a useless, dark-haired bitch. That’s what she is.” Jacknel bloats with anger and, darkening to magenta, shows his Prime One collector. Pike, being only a level three with no spewing ability, backs off. “I invested in your crew because you are … or were the best." In one oft' practiced move, Jacknel unsheathes his saber and Swish! Pike’s right forearm flies through the air, bouncing twice before landing – Thud—on the arena floor. Pike watches in disbelief, as his blood sprays everywhere— in Jacknel ‘s face, on the office door, up to the eyes in the rafters—where ever his arm points. He slips at Jacknel’s feet and groveling, pleads, “But sir … Trell ...” A diamond-studded tongue, panting through a pointed toothy grin, sends intermittent reflections into the rafters as Jackel gives his cape a triumphant swirl. He slurps Pike’s warm blood from his face and sheathes his saber. Jacknel is joyous, like a child at play on the Subby Side tracks with pigs' heads, when he kicks Pike's head with a spiked boot. Blood flows as Pike slides across the arena floor through the day’s red pools, adding his blood to the mix. Jacknel sneers at Pike's shocked expression and continues. “Trell … you dare mention his name without his hairless vertant ass suffering in one of my pens. His life should be mine. But yours will do.” A minimal acidic spew to Pike’s leg, and Jacknel glares with satisfaction as leather chaps, flesh, sinue and bone sizzle and melt away. “You are slowly diminishing to meet my lowered expectations of you,“ he laughs maniacally. “Stop, Jacknel. She … that one out there. She knows …” Pike attempts to point toward the alley with his remaining hand and explain Gima's importance in capturing Trell. “She knows what all vertant know … that they are useless chattel. I’ll take her off your hands,” Jacknel laughs spritzing Pike’s other arm, “now that you have none.” Pike, a mere one-legged body, kicking itself in slippery circles, screams in agony. “No more, let me live, no more, Jacknel, please.” “Only if you remain silent, my cousin … I only let you live because you are family.” To remain silent meant only one thing— Pike takes a deep breath and protrudes his tongue. Jacknel calmly walks over, takes the bulb-tipped tongue in his hand and kneeling down bites it off, chews and swallows. He wipes his mouth with a black suede handkerchief, folds it neatly and puts it back in his vest pocket. Picking his teeth with a gold-tipped claw, the master of his arena saunters to stand stage-left, out of the light. As Pike slowly spins in torment in the twilight of the dome, Jacknel from the darkened off-stage area, matter-of-factly, chorts, “Teleck.” Where are you? “ Teleck.” Obedient and ever present, Teleck darts out from another shadowed corner. “Yes, sir.” “Oh, there you are … Teleck, take my poor cousin to the surgeon. He’s had an accident.” Jacknel smiles. “Then, cage him for the freak show.” Pike’s eye, washed with blood from his head wound, widens with horror. He’d rather be dead, but all he can do is rumble muffled throat sounds. With no hands to sign or a tongue to speak, he’s trapped, forever at Jacknel’s mercy. Gima’s value as ‘bait’ churns in Pike’s head; it’s useless information to a circus freak. Whereas, to a bounty hunter, it might have been worth a cartoom of critons. "Finally, my day improves." Jacknel with a little pep in his step throws the exit door open and walks outside to the alley. Now, to the verdant female. “Let’s have a look at you.” Gima, sitting naked on pelt tatters, shivers in holding pen number thirty-three which reeks of a former female. It’s larger than the one next to it, where Trell was held four years ago. Ready for a different kind of fun, Jacknel's eye roves up and down the huddling, wide-eyed 'split-tail.' Orange drool and remnants of Pike's tongue accumulate on Jacknel's chin as he pokes Gima with a nearby prod used for such merchandise. Zap— the prod speaks, repeatedly, with each of Jacknel’s searching glares. Zap!
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