| |
[Oct. 24th, 2010|10:58 pm] |
He'd only been back in the States for a week when Dukes knew that he wasn't fitting in really. He was finding that he really didn't like being a normal person anymore. He'd been a soldier, part of an elite team, for so long, and with so much given in return, that this so called private life, this so called being normal, this was so much bullshit.
How normal people even managed it was beyond him. He was a mutant warrior, and being a normal man, or pretending to be, really sucked.
Dukes spent most of the last week moving about, lucking into the celebration of Mardi Gras, and into the craziness of it. He'd almost turned north to New York, but something had called him down here, and good thing, too! Besides the dreariness back home, he'd probably have started to eat a lot again, like he had when he was a kid. Maybe he'd even have ended up fat! His mom sure did like to cook up some potatoes, and ham, and steak, and chicken, mmmm-mm. he did love her cooking, but, well, he liked being as slim and hard as he was. Seemed like it was important, even if nothing else felt that way. Instead, here he was, partying, and having fun, and not feeling a minute of it.
It sucked.
The swirling of the crowds around him made him a little nervous, even with chicks flashing their tits everywhere. the costumes were kinda cool, but to Dukes, it felt kind of like he was walking inside a hollow shell. Everything and everyone was a little distant, a little unreal. Why was that? He hadn't a clue. He walked along, thinking, watching, drinking a beer. he knew most people might stop an average man with a stein of beer as big as his, in the street, but most people took one look at the size of his arms and decided to look the other way.
That, at least, made him smile.
Dukes found himself, after awhile, watching a show that was being put on, up on a balcony, along with a good fifty others. It was naked women acting out Romeo and Juliet. It was weird, but interesting enough to keep him watching. Or maybe it was just the beer. Either way, he was still there when a bunch of yahoos ran out of a pawn shop at the end of the courtyard where the play was happening. There were ten of them, yelling and howling, with masks of different kinds on, and screeching as they swooped with money and jewels in their fists.
His eyes narrowed, since he thought thieves were highly annoying... and they were interrupting the show! He likely wouldn't have done anything through, since it wasn't his business, but when one of them passed him, the punk slammed his beer stein to the ground. Where it promptly shattered.
Dukes took one look at the stein and growled and raised his arm. It was a causal move, but the punk went flying, and slammed into the close by fire hydrant. And then Dukes was moving. He didn't like thieves, and he didn't like punks, and he really had liked that beer and the stein he had gotten. And nobody, but nobody, took anything that was Dukes'. Ever. He hit the first two of them like a tidal wave, before they knew he was coming, and sent them hurling to the floor, their money fluttering down after them.
Several of them of them tried to launch a series of attacks all at the same time. Some kind of martial arts bullshit, no doubt. he shrugged and slammed into one, catching a leg and bringing it down on his own leg, snapping it in two. the second one he hurled into the third, then lifted him and used him like a two by four to hit the third man again, dropping him as they both slumped together. Someone shouted, "Look out!" and he turned, and two of them had drawn guns at him.
Guns. he laughed, a low rumbling thing that sent the crowd to silence, and advanced on the two. they looked a little uncertain as they threatened him in some foreign language, but looked even more terrified when he insulted them back in the same one. They started firing and he kept coming, letting the bullets bounce. he would have done that all the way, but he heard a cry, and saw Romeo, breasts red with blood, sag over the balcony. "Dammit, I was watching that show!"
He charged, eyed flinty and when he hit them, his internal black hole was working, and he lifted them without raising a sweat and slammed their heads together. they slumped in his hands and he saw their compatriots running now. With a grunt and twp steps, he hurled them along, over the crowds' heads. They slammed into the last two and sent them sprawling, where they were promptly sat on by four men, as the crowd slowly came alive of itself.
The crowd stared at him, and he stared back, and then there was clapping. He blinked. They were clapping, for him? What?
Men clapped his back, women kissed his cheek, and the store owner pressed upon him a metal stein at least as big as the last one he had owned. Two families actually took pictures of their kids with him. He stood there open mouthed as the crowd slowly dispersed.
They liked him.
Huhn. |
|
|