BLOC The billboard read. The shadowy figure paused and looked up at the white glowing word, then spat on it and moved on.
Jason Walker strolled down the street. Dressed in jeans, (with the word BLOC printed on the fringes, no less) a plain T-shirt, (also with the word Bloc printed on the left sleeve) and a tan leather vest. (You guessed it. The word Bloc was printed on the lower half of the left side.)
The normal passerby would have found his selection of clothing odd.
Then again, this was not the normal world.
This was an alternate dimension. Rules were a tad differant here.
Long ago, a small-time chain store franchise called Bloc had slowly eradicated all competition. Starting small, with office supplies, it moved up a rank with each competitor put out of buisness. From office supplies to clothing, to appliances, to to entire buildings, to military hardware...
*BOOM.* Before you know it, Bloc is the sole buisness left on the planet.
And when everyone has to go to the store...
And when there is only one store around...
You get the picture. Bloc literally ruled the world.
So really, it wasn't like Walker even had a choice when he had picked his clothing. EVERYTHING had the word Bloc printed SOMEWHERE on it, from Walker's vest to toilet seats.
Walker strolled down the street, ignoring the ten zillion ads and proclamations of Bloc everywhere, and sat down at a bus stop.
A few moments later, another man, dressed in atire mostly the same as Walker, came and sat down beside him.
"I love our boss." He said.
Walker turned and looked at him. He then said, "He is a good boss."
"Really? I think so too." The man said.
Yep. That was the sign.
Walker took a pen and a pad of stick-it notes from his pocket, scrawled a quick message on it, and passed it to the man.
*Is everything in place, Tribal?* It read.
The man looked at the message, scrawled a new one beneath that, and handed the stick-it pad back to Walker.
*Yes. Our target is also exactly on schedule, as is the norm. In exactly five minutes, he will go down this street. The moment you see the headlights, start the ooperation.*
The man, Jascon Tribal, Walker's brother, got up and left the bus stop.
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Mr. Nelson, C.P.O. of Bloc, was drinking a glass of wine in his limo as it drove down the street. He was a very important man. He was currently driving to Bloc H.Q. for a general meeting about profit increase over the course of the year.
He would never make it through the next two blocks alive.
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Walker saw the headlights. He got up, and took a carrot from his pocket. He began to eat it.
He then slowly crossed the street...
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"What the...?" The driver in the limo suddenly said.
"HIT THE BRAKES!" Mr. Nelson's bodygaurd beside the driver screamed.
They hit the breaks just in time to avoid the civilian who had been crossing the street. He looked absolutely shocked, and he stumbled back a few paces...
Then he fell. There was a very mishappen carrot in his hand. When he fell, he let go of the carrot...
Which flew...
Straight into the windshield of the limo. It splattered upon impact, completely grimming up the entire thing, obscuring the driver's view, and so forth. Normal carrots couldn't have done that. This carrot had had an ampole filled with extra pulped carrot inside of it, and a package of carrot soup inside of it as well, hence why the carrot had been so mishappen.
Nobody paid attention to that though.
The bodygaurd rolled down his window.
"Clean that up. NOW." He snarled. The citizen trembled, slowly got up, and started wiping away at the windshield with his hand until the carrot muck was all gone.
"Now come here." The bodygaurd said. The citizen approached the window.
"ALWAYS LOOK RIGHT AND LEFT BEFORE CROSSING THE STREET." The bodygaurd said in a monotone.
"Yes sir, I will sir..." The citizen said. "This'll never happen again s-oops..." The citizen's J-Pod, which had been hanging around his neck, fell through the open window. He swore, and bent through to grab it from beneath the body gaurd's seat. The body gaurd leaned back slightly.
Unseen to the all in the limo, the citizen took a refridgerator magnet, and attached it to automatic window controller. He then retrieved his J-Pod, and ducked back out the window.
"Clumsy idiot..." The body gaurd muttered. The citizen ran off into a nearby alley.
The bodygaurd then tried to roll up the window via the automatic switch, but it wouldn't roll up. He frowned. "I think the windows are broken..." He said.
"No matter. We all need fresh air." Mr. Nelson said absent mindedly from the back of the limo. They continued down the street, the entire incident forgotten in a few short seconds...
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Tribal walked from around the corner, wearing a BLOC police uniform, and carrying a stop sign. He walked out into the street in front of the limo, and waved the sign around. The limo immediately stopped.
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Walker, using the time Tribal had given him with the stop sign, dashed down the street.
In front of him loomed the Bloc tower, the official H.Q. for Bloc. The entire towering structure was surrounded by a thirty foot tall stone wall, with the only entrance being through an industrial steel door, which could only be opened via a command from the security booth on the street.
Walker ducked underneath the security window, took an ordinary carrot from his pocket, and placed it in front of the glass. Then he ducked around the booth.
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The security gaurd frowned as he spotted what looked like a carrot in front of the window. He leaned forward to get a better look at it.
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Walker quietly slipped into the booth while the gaurd was distracted. He pulled out his J-Pod...
And slowly put the ends of both ear-phones into the gaurd's ears.
*BZZZZZZZT* A jolt of electricity was channeled down the cords, and into the gaurd's head. He was knocked unconcious immediately.
Walker quickly changed, then dragged the body out into the street, and tossed it into a dumpster. He walked back into the booth and waited.
-----
Tribal moved out of the street with his Stop Sign, and seemingly vanished. The limo continued down the block, until it reached the security booth into b]Bloc[/b] tower.
Thr bodygaurd flashed an I.D. to the security gaurd. However, the gaurd shook his head.
"New security protocall. Tell Mr. Nelson to roll down the windows in the back. I need to scan him to make sure it really is him."
Mr. Nelson rolled down the windows. The gaurd held up a device which looked suspiciously like a J-Pod up to the screen, and appeared to fiddle with it for a moment before putting it back down.
"Ok then Mr. Nelson. You are clear for entry." The gaurd pressed a button, and the door opened.
Mr. Nelson tried to close the windows, but apparently, just like the front ones, they were also broken. He shrugged, thinking little of it...
-----
Tribal, who had slipped through the door while it was open, crouched from across the courtyard with a compactable sniper rifle out. He did the strangest thing.
He pulled out a slinkey. An EXTRA-EXTRA-EXTRA-LONG FUN-FUN TIME SLINKEY, bought directly from Bloc, no less. He then held one end over the barrel of the sniper rifle, and slotted the other end to a bullet via a short string. The bullet was slid down the barrel manually, side from slotting it into a compartment on the side.
He waited until Mr. Nelson's rolled down windows came into view...
Then he fired.
-----
Mr. Nelson was quite surprised when what looked like a slinkey shot through his left-side open window, stretched in front of his face, then shot out the open windom to his right, where it sank into a lighting hook.
Slinkeys were not know for their deadliness. You couldn't kill a fly with one. However, in certain situations...
The car was moving at roughly 20 M.P.H. The slinkey was at eye-level with Mr. Nelson's head.
What happened was simple and bloody. The strands of the slinkey tore into Mr. Nelson's eyes, carved a huge swath from his face, creating an opening for the remaining strands to break through and carve his entire head into a bloody pulp.
-----
Tribal and Walker were both brothers. They were "Odd Job" people. Mercenaries. They did a wide variety of work, and a few days ago, they had been hired by a group known as the resistance-a group focused on bringing down Bloc, to assassinate Mr. Nelson. However, Tribal and Walker had no access to the actual weaponry they would have normally needed to pull off an assassination. Tribal; had a sniper rifle, but only one bullet, and Mr. Nelson's car not only had bullet proof windows, but Mr. Nelon himself sat behind a solid wall of metal behind the windows, meaning even if the windows were down, a sniper bullet would not have been able to hit him from any angle.
Meaning Tribal and Walker had improvised.
Using the comically mishappen carrot, Tribal had created a distraction to get an opprotunity to plant the first step. An ordinary refreidgerator magnet. All cars produced by Bloc had polarerized automatic window controls. When Walker had planted the magnet, it had negated one of the polarities. So when the windows were rolled down, they couldn't be rolled back off. That took care of the bullet proof glass.
To get Mr. Nelson to roll down his own windows, however, the only plan that could have worked was getting an actual official to command him to do so, hence the entire scenario with Walker, the booth security gaurd, and the modified J-Pod.
As a last problem, Tribal would have to perform the sniping from ground level, and within the Bloc complex. The thrity foot wall, and the limo's proximety to the door prevented all other forms of sniping.
To get around the paradox of Mr. Nelson not being at the correct angle to be shot, they used the slinkey. Combined with the car's speed, and the perfect position at which Mr. Nelson had been located, it was the perfect plan.
However...
-----
"FREEZE!" Here was the problem with the plan. Tribal had just killed a high Bloc official, out in the open, in a courtyard filled with dozens of gaurds. Still, he had expected this, which was why he had purposely positioned himself so close to the door. He made a dash, and got outside...
*THWACK!*
The security gaurd Walker had knocked out eariler, (wearing only boxers and an under-shirt) smashed Tribal on the head with a baton as he rounded the corner. Walker had met a similar fate. The gaurd had not stayed knocked out as long as they had planned.
-----
A dark figure had been watching everything from a nearby office window. He seemed to flick his hand, and vanish into thin air.
-----
"So. What do we do with these jokers?" One of the gaurds surrounding the lumped together and unconcious Walker and Tribal growled.
"I say we wait until they wake up. Then we kill them. Slowly." Another said menacingly.
The large group of gaurds all thought this was a good idea, and a few of them even decided they should go ahead and try to wake the two assassins up, when suddenly, a voice cut through.
"No...That will not be neccessary." A tall figure loomed from as if nowhere. Dressed in black cargo pants with red tribal runes running along them, Chaos lether for a shirt, covered by a large coat with multiple pockets along it. A reaper styled cloth hung across the man's face, descending into two tattered scarves. Red tinted monocles and a black duster hat completed the look, and completely hid his face. Strangely enough, the standard Bloc logo was present on his clothes.
"I am Mr. Idov, and I have a certain vested interest in these two men. How does...Oh...Ten million...In cash...to each of you to forget these two even existed sound?"
The ring of gaurds froze.
"You don't have that kind of cash." One of them said.
Mr. Idov seemed to pull a silver suitcase from seemingly nowhere, and tossed it to the ground. With a slight *click* it opened, to reveal neat row upon row of thousand dollar bills.
"Nevermind." The gaurd said, grinning from ear to ear. Idov pulled a few dozen more suitcases from nowhere, (the gaurds decided to ignore this. Their minds were filled with the thoughts of ten story mansions) and handed them to each gaurd.
"I must be off then. Remember, all of you...These two never existed." Idov grabbed both the unconcious men by their collars, and dragged them around a corner.
There was a slight *pop* noise. One of the gaurds peeked around the corner. It led to a dead end.
But Mr. Idov, Tribal, and Walker were gone.
((I'm going to branch off a little from the book-worthy ultra post I've been working on to post a quickie here. It's a nice bit about the Husk Lords.))
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Lord Walker & Tribal
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Lord Walker and Lord Tribal come from an alternate dimension. They are brothers, and they often work together. The dimension they were raised in had a slight tweak in history where a small-time chain sotre franchise called BLOC grew until it covered the entire planet, stomping out all other competion until BLOC was the ONLY buisness left. BLOC essentially controlled the entire planet.
There was a radical resistance movement, of course, and Walker and Tribal were "Odd Job" livers. So they occasionally took mercenary work from the resistance. Due to years of narrowly escaping BLOC, they have perfected they're team-work tactics, and are excelent fighters.
Lord Diov was visiting the dimension for buisness reasons, (he wanted his greedy hands in every major buisness in existance) when he observed the two brothers assassinate a high BLOC official via an interesting and unorthadox, (and still not entirely known and understood) plan involving slinkies, a refridgerator magnet, a J-Pod, and a comically mishappen carrot. They got caught by BLOC gaurds however, and would have been executed, if Lord Diov hadn't stepped in and smoothed things over with a few well placed bribes. Ever since then, Walker and Tribal have worked for Lord Diov.
Walker is a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. He is armed with combat knives, dual .50 modified magnums, and knows boxing. He also has minor skills in just about everything, although these skills are very limited.
Tribal is a sniper, pure and simple. He relied on his brother to create a distraction while he did the real dirty work. He is armed with a compact sniper pistol, complete with micro-focusing view finder. He also has a combat knife, but he prefers a nice good deal of distance between him and his foes at all times.
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Lord Poe
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Lord Poe comes from a drastically differant time line then ours. In his world, wars were as common as pebbles on a beach, and even THINKING about the word "peace" was a valid enough reason to get shot.
Poe was the son of a World War 932 veteran, who taught Poe from early child hood how to use explosives and pyrotechnic devices. He wanted Poe to be able to plant traps around their home, so they could be safe from the chaos while the father enjoyed his veteran's benifits.
The plan backfired drastically when enemy cyborg zombie ninjas found all the traps using scrying spells, and disarmed them. Then an entire army of 10,000 troops, knowing fully well that it was an unnecessary use of force, marched on the mansion.
Poe's father was killed in the attack, but using a stealth generator that his father had given him, he devised a plan.
Lord Diov was in the dimension at the time, locating a fluxuating rift in space, when he observed the young Poe eradicate the entire army using only 3 well placed land mines. He immediately took the boy under his wing, and Poe has worked for Lord Diov ever since.
Lord Poe is a skilled domolitionist, and has a variety of explosive devices and knowledge on how to use them. Due to his extensive training in the fields of Pryotechnics, he is a bit of a Pyromaniac, and so usually carries a flamethrower, petrol bombs, and a few lighters around at all times. He is equiped with a stealth generator. After all, people don't take kindly to you if they see you planting explosives...
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Lord White
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Lord White comes from an alternate dimension where during World War Two, Germany and Italy still fell, but Japan actually won the World War single handedly thanks to a freak hurricane which intercepted and way-layed, and eventually destroyed the three secret U.S. bombers with the first Atom Bombs. Japan then apparently conquered the world via mind controling exports. (Such as the J-Pod and "American made" cars.) White grew up in Japan, and since it was the capital of the Japanese world empire, he was a very privileged child who was taught martial arts and combat techniques at an early age.
Lord Diov came to the dimension when he grew interested in the potential stock market of a world-wide empire. While there, he snuck into White's house. (His parents were important politicians) to steal some files he needed. White caught him in the act, and proceeded to kick him in the face after dodging all the attacks from Diov's scyth.
Lord Diov was impressed that White had managed to see through his dimensional cloaking, (This was due to an inherant mutagenic gene, which had some minor benifits on White's body) and that he had been able to weave past his scyth strikes to kick him in the face. So he kidnapped White, brainwashed him, and the rest is history.
Lord White is skilled in martial arts, and has additional long range training. He wields dual .33 modified Uzis, and is armed with a combat knife, although he rarely uses either, and opts mainly for close combat.
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Lord Nomed
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Lord Nomed was born in an alternate dimension where the Ludites were actually poweful, and had managed to subvert most if not all of the world back into the medival ages. Nomed was not exactly fond of the system, so one day he snapped after being told he would have to wear tights again. A dorment mutant gene within him awakened, and gave him increased strength and durability. He beat the sorry [censored] out of an entire conclave of Ludites, and ran into the wilderness. He spent the rest of his time studying the remains of the ancient society of technology, and became smart enough to actually INVENT his own inter-dimensional portal using notes found in the ruined remains of one of Dr. Aeon's labs.
Of course, at that time, Lord Diov had a monopoly on inter-dimensional travel, since the ludites were stupid enough to not have ANY form of magical or technological defenses to stop him. So Nomed was immediately redirected to Husk Corporation. Lord Diov, after reviewing Nomed's journey, decided that he would be a valuable asset, and hired him.
Lord Nomed is a beast at close combat, his mutant strength is tremendous. He hits as hard as a meteor, and can probably take a few meteors in the face without flinching. Despite his bulky appearance and violent tendancies, (and his habit to foam at the mouth) he is often mistaken to be stupid and clumsy. In reality, his I.Q. is over 300. He remains silent at most times, however, since it gives him a slgith edge in combat if the enemy thinks him dim-witted.
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Lord Kuro
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Lord Kuro is the only Husk Lord to come from OUR dimension. He is a direct descendant of Frederick the Great of Prussia, (arguably the greatest military mind and tactician to ever live, even having Napoleon remark so when he visited his grave in Prussia) and there is some speculation Nemesis might be a relative, but this is unlikely. Lord Kuro's life is a mystery, and how he came to work for Lord Diov even more so of one. The only reason we even know his heritage is due to his last remaining, (and incomplete at that) birth cirtificate. It shortly vanished after being discovered, but not before scientists determined Kuro's ancestral roots.
Kuro is armed with dual .33 modified uzis and a combat knife. He is also the host for an experiment known only as "Project: DARKFORM. This appears to give him a wide away of various dark powers.