The Grand Opening

Tiny rays of pale sunlight crept into the room from between the broken, rusted, metal roof. Cockroaches and rats scurried to get into the dark crevices of the layers of detritus and trash that littered the abandoned warehouse. Who would have thought that a former astronaut would be living in such horrible living conditions? But then, Constantine hadn't predicted a lot of the unfortunate events in his life would happen. He slowly rose from his stained mattress, steadily panning around the the dank, dirty room. The grays and browns of the mess and decay were tinted red by his third, and only, eye. What he wouldn't give to see with his own eyes again; to breathe the air like a normal person once more. Ever since the accident, he'd felt significantly less human; both inside and out. He felt hollow as if, beneath this suit that was his new skin, there was nothing that was truly alive anymore.

Getting up on his feet, he decided to have a bit of a lazy day of cleaning up the old warehouse to make it slightly less bearable to live in. After all, it was likely he'd be here for a while, so he'd might as well make the best of it. He glanced over to the old radio he'd picked up at a pawn shop last week. The owner was more than willing to hand it over, especially considering he wasn't breathing by the time Constantine left the shop. Turning it on he heard nothing but static; it was just his luck that the radio he steal be one that doesn't work properly. After a few moments of turning the dial he finally found a station that had little enough static that he could make out what the people were saying. Local News, of course. Constantine had never really cared for the troubles of the local populace, but it was some nice background noise to listen to while he worked; since none of the music stations seemed to work with the damnable radio.

A large metal frame, easily a few thousand pounds lay in the middle of the room. With a drawn out sigh, Constantine released several tendrils from his upper torso, wrapping around the steel. Using his arm tendrils to balance the awkwardly shaped piece of metal, he steadily moved the frame to the other side of the room. As he dropped the detritus, something caught his ear. "We're hear at the Aerospace museum in downtown Manhattan where Jackson McCoy, the museum's curator, is introducing the museums newest exhibit. Jackson?" Constantine stopped what he was doing and slowly approached the radio in order to hear the words more clearly; his tendrils slowly returned to the ports on his body, clanking metal sounds echoing in the warehouse as they returned to their places. "Well, this new exhibit is by far the most intricate and well-done exhibit in the museum! It's entirely dedicated to the history of NASA's Apollo Program!" With the word "NASA", a tiny flicker of rage in Constantine's mind began to grow. "Yes, this exhibit tells the museums attendees the entire history of the Apollo program, how all the technology works, and has detailed information about the individual flights." Constantine slowly felt his fist begin to clench, as if by reflex. "But the real prize is the landing shuttle! Yes, that's right, we have the actual shuttle from the Apollo 18 mission on display in this exhibit, being presented by none other than the crew who piloted it! Dylan Navarro, Corey Benson, and the man who really defined the mission, Ralph Sexton."

Rage engulfed Constantine as three tendrils burst from his chest and threw the radio across the room. Impacting on the wall, it shattered into an irreparable mess. How dare they act as if he had never existed? Constantine roared in anger as his body was engulfed in a mass of writhing, mechanical tentacles. "I WILL NOT BE IGNORED!", the Coil yelled in fury, bursting through the concrete floor. The room was in ruins, the massive hole in the ground accented only by the detritus that was already there, and the concrete and dirt that had been cast from the hole. There would be a lot of cleaning to do. But that would wait until later. Constantine had blood on his mind and revenge in his heart.

A funny thing happened on the way to the future, Elaine got lost. Black Knight gave her time off to recover from her last adventure that left her with several broken bones and a few damaged organs; nothing the girl never dealt with before, and definitively something that she would encounter again in her life. She walked the concrete streets of New York with her hands in the pockets of her shorts. Surgery repaired what Black Knight's healing gel did not, and Elaine never stopped to take a look at the city. She never remembered how she came to New York, only that agents of Shade gave her no option in the matter, but she wanted to see the city before going back to Chicago.

All her life she never cared much for cities; it all towered over her and blocked the skies, and when she bumped into people they always responded so uptight. This place seemed so unnatural and confined. Black Knight gave her several scoldings and words of advise to try and mold the young, reckless pupil into a more disciplined force. Instead of wearing a holster with her pistols in plain sight, she now carried a bag around her shoulder that contained ammunition and a few grenades. He wanted her to use non lethal rounds, but they compromised.

Sun beams creeped around the edge of her hat. She pulled her hat down closer to her eyes to give her a view of the street. Some sort of ruckus shot out from a museum in front of her. She looked over to the post modern designed sign in front of the large futuristic looking museum complex. People flooded the walkway; it looked formal. No way a cowgirl would get in there the way she looked.

Oh well, talent over status. Elaine walked over to the side wall of the complex and took her shadow jump through the wall. The hallway looked empty. Elaine could live with that. She walked the halls of the museum and saw many exhibits detailing the history of the Apollo Program. Her eyes ran across the models of the old lunar landers that NASA left on the moon. Museums reminded Elaine of the past, and that made her feel like she belonged to something.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway, and Elaine deduced that the Curator closed this wing for a reason. Two security guards walked into the hall and examined the exhibits. "No one should be back here until after the ceremony."

"I swore I heard something back here." The two men came closer to where Elaine stood examining one of the lunar landers that NASA either brought back or never sent to the moon. Black Knight instilled Elaine with a new sense that she should avoid authorities. Almost all of Elaine's adventures ended with negative press attention and her beating two guards unconscious for no real reason probably would get her another stern talking to. Elaine stepped forward and shadow jumped into the lunar lander. "I heard something." The guard quickly moved to examine the placard. The only thing he learned was that man first walked on the moon in 1969.

"I don't see anything." The guards continued their walk and left Elaine. The inside of the lander fascinated her. Elaine began to toy around with the levers and buttons. A few moments passed and Elaine looked out the window. The guards left and she never knew; the lowest bidder who made this sealed those hatches up tight. Elaine shadow jumped out and went back to her own personalized tour of the historical exhibit.

It was dark underground, but it didn't matter, the Coil could see just fine. That was one of the advantage of this "enhanced" vision was the ability to see things that no other person could or would be able to see. There was nothing in Constantine's mind but an incredibly blood lust. He wanted to hear their dying breaths as he squeezed the life from them. All he ever wanted was to be a credit to his cause. To go where no man has gone before to help people all around the world understand better what they were looking at when they looked into the night sky. But his "superiors" couldn't see that. All they saw was rules and regulations. They had no vision, and instead of them, it was he that suffered for it. He suffered for their lack of vision; but not this time. This time they would know the pain of loss. And anyone who gets in his way will suffer the same fate.

The 3D map of the ground above him shone clear as day, despite being beneath almost twenty feet of earth and concrete. He was right under the main street in front of the museum when he decided it was time to crash the party. A black Camaro drove just overhead. Like the mythical kraken of legend, Constantine's tentacles burst from the ground, wrapping around the car and steadily raising it off the ground. The driver's children screamed as he frantically tried to open the doors to no avail; the mechanisms had been crushed by the mechanical tendrils. "Unfortunate," Constantine thought as a second mass of tendrils exploded from under a taxi that was panicky in trying to escape the scene . The driver, in a fit of fear, scrambled to get out of his car. He opened the door and jumped out, only to be caught with malice by the Coil's tendrils and thrown through the third floor window of an adjacent apartment. With a slight flicker of bloodthirsty delight Constantine tossed the vehicles across the street, right at the museum. He didn't just want blood anymore. He wanted destruction.

Metal gave way under the weight of the crushed car that plummeted to the floor of he exhibit. Elaine darted out of the way of the shattering glass. Anyone who threw a car through a window needed to possess some kind of extraordinary powers and a bad attitude. Feeling the danger from the shouts of the crowd, Elaine threw her bad on open and grabbed her holster belt and slapped it on. She slid the five rounds into the six chambers and spun them in her traditional manner, stopping to bring them to her chin and pull the trigger; both shots blanks. She slid her remote detonation bullets into the final chamber of each pistol and prepared for her entrance by pulling her pink and blue bandanna up around her nose.

Scaling the fallen pillar to the new opening, Elaine kept her bag around her back even thought the large civilian population would cause her to need to rethink that tactic. Regardless of the calamity, she needed to take her place as the guardian of these people. Elaine surveyed the street to see a mess of tentacles shooting out of the ground at innocent people. The scene gave Elaine a perplexed feeling that faded into anticipation at what sort of man would attack from below.

She swung her bag around a pole that ran to the ground and repelled herself to the street level. Once she could muster a good sighting on how she should handle the situation, she went to action.

"You're going to shoot everyone aren't you..." Her tiny familiar appeared. "Please remember the children growing up without parents will be forever in toil, so why don't you just shoot them to." The short legged corgi sat beside Elaine as he spoke his words of wisdom to her.

"Be quiet Aggro, I got it this time." She spoke from behind her mask. Dust clouded the street from the impact of the taxi into the apartment building.

"What about last time?" The dust failed to give her the full cover of a smoke grenade, but still would serve it's purpose in giving her an element of surprise.

"No idea what you're talking about."

"I mean..." Elaine spun her pistols out of her holsters and took aim at the tentacles firing explosive rounds at the tendrils that shot away from the main body. "...Oh lord..." If Elaine could get her bullets in the right places, she could corral his tendrils away from the civilians and make this a fair fight.

It seemed he'd gotten some attention from the civilians at the ceremony. Now it was just a matter of picking his main targets out of the chaotic crowd of people running through the streets and around the museum. Suddenly, Constantine heard the muffled sounds of gunshots above ground. The police? he thought, with a chuckle. Then he felt a shiver go up his spine as several of his tendrils took hits from what seemed to be explosive shells. The reinforced, heat-resistant titanium was enough to take the hit, but the impact was substantial enough to get his attention. He retracted his tentacles beneath ground in order to assess the situation without coming under more fire; if his enemy had explosive shells, who knew what else they were packing? He was angry, but that didn't mean he was going to fight stupid. Constantine knew it was always good to get your bearings before rushing headlong into anything. Whoever was attacking him obviously didn't get that memo.

The Coil scanned the area above to try and locate the source of the attack, the 3D mapping eliminating anything that might obstruct his view of the playing field. Finally, something curious caught his eye. A girl dressed like she was in an old western movie holding a gun. Constantine resisted the urge to chuckle. He slowly burrowed towards her like a shark stalking a swimmer from below the surface of the deep blue sea, relishing in how helpless she must feel.

The tendrils retreated under the ground. Surprise came to her that none of her rounds destroyed them. Whoever crafted those tendrils put some strength into them. Civilians continued to clear the streets, giving Elaine some relief for saving lives from the confusion and calamity of the attack. Elaine rushed forward towards the epicenter of the attack to investigate further. Senses in any sane person would go against this action, but Elaine needed to know what this creature wanted.

She spun the chamber of her guns to the remote detonated bullets and fired the two rounds into the ground where the creature disappeared. She ran her finger up the grip of her pistol and pressed the small red button causing the explosives inside the bullet to burst with the power of a stick of dynomite. Hopefully that would let the onlookers know that they should avoid this situation and leave it all to Elaine to follow through in her duty.

Feeling the danger not yet subsided, Elaine placed her pistols into the holsters and filled the chambers back with a remote detonated bullet in each gun and the rest of the chambers with the explosive rounds. Whether the tendrils broke or not, they did not care for the treatment that the bullets came packed with.

It seemed, whoever she was, she was persistent. He would deal with those NASA morons later. Right now, this girl had his attention. Constantine had decided he was done with the theatrics and should stop hiding. With that thought, he burrowed up through the city street, about ten feet from where the girl stand. With an explosion of dirt and concrete, Constantine slowly rose out of his hole. At this moment, he appeared to be nothing more than a writhing mass of mechanical worms, coiling and slithering around his emergence whole. Constantine wanted to keep it that way. If this girl was going to persist with the assault, a good defense was needed, and protecting his body with the mass of tentacles was essential to that defense. A car, turned over from his grand entrance, was in his way. Grabbing it by the bumper, he threw it over his shoulder, not flinching as it exploded behind him. "Don't interfere," he hissed. His voice was the only sound distinguishable from the loud clanking of the writhing mass of tubular metal that engulfed his body.

"This is going to get far worse before it gets better..." With a feint sense of annoyance the corgi walked into Elaine's view and sat down beside her.

Elaine placed her hands on the grip of her pistols as she watched the creature emerge from the ground. Squirming, writhing machine worms crawled and slithered about in a clouded gaze. In a display of power, the worm grabbed a car and explained his power to Elaine. She watched in anticipation to see if the he meant to attack her with it. The longer she could keep her powers secret the better. When the car exploded behind the cloud of worm-like tendrils, Elaine took a step to the side to brace her stance. The worms seemed unaffected by her rounds earlier, but she devised a plan as she examined their faces. Her eyes narrowed under in between the gap between her hat and bandanna; brown orbs shining with the intensity of the liquid suns.

She flipped the chambers in her gun to allow her two explosive rounds from each gun before a remote detonated bullet would fire. She quickly drew out her pistols and fired the four explosive rounds from her pistols, hoping to draw out the worms face. Once she could get a shot at two of the faces she would unload the remote detonated bullets from each pistol and hope they found home. Her finger would run up the pistol shaft and find the small red button to detonate the rounds once they came into range of Coil. With any luck to her one of the rounds would penetrate the tendril's face.

And to think he was going to give her a chance to run away. The girl barely gave him a chance to talk before she started shooting him. Constantine was prepared to take the hits though, guns weren't going to do much against his armor. He blocked the first shot with a coil of smaller tendrils, the bullet exploded harmlessly on the blunt side of the tentacles, doing little to no damage. However, the Coil's defenses proved to be little proof against his lack of attention. With the speed at which she had fired her guns, he hadn't noticed her fire off a second shot, and the second bullet hit home. The bullet penetrated the drilling mouth of one of his large, primary tendrils, its head exploding in a shower of metal and fire.

The tentacle, now without its drilling head, retracted to the port on his left bicep. The Coil scowled; this bitch was starting to piss him off now. In a fit of anger, he retracted some of his tentacles so as to reveal his upper torso, the tentacles on his legs still concealing the rest of his body. "I'm going to paint this street with your blood." He slowly rose his left arm. With a quick jerk, a swarm of tentacles shot out of his palm and forearm, bounding through the air towards her like hungry animals ready to rip the girl to pieces.

Finally the visage of a man appeared for a split second. Elaine looked over his form; he did not seem to move mechanically, but in an organic fashion. This man acted with fluid motions that a machine would fail to mimic. He flinched in pain at her attack. It seemed after all that the creature could feel pain. The creature lacked immortality.

It however still possessed resolve and retaliation. For the first few moments Elaine capitalized on the classic villain monologue and gave herself an upper hand in the fight. Now the table turned as the momentum of the tendrils shot out towards her. They squealed in the air and roared at the emptiness of the air. Elaine pushed herself forward in a charge towards the tendrils.

Behind closed eyes she disappeared and reappeared behind the wall of tendrils and within close range of Coil. She stood just to his left, hoping that would play to his less dominant side, and fired two shots from each pistol at the base of the tendrils in his chest and shoulders. She knew her time in this danger zone required her to make her shot and move quickly, less his tendrils come back around and restrain her arms, but she needed to land those shots first, before firing her last two shots at the red light gleaming at her from his head.

As soon as he saw she wasn't getting in a position to dodge the tendrils, Constantine knew she had something up her sleeve. Slowly, out of sight, he burrowed a number of tendrils around himself in order to form a defensive perimeter should she try anything funny. Just as he was about to impale her thin form with a wall of tentacles, she vanished. For a split second, Constantine was surprised; he had foreseen a trick, but that was quite the trick.

Almost instantaneously the girl stood directly to his left, guns at the ready. The tentacles he set underground emerged from under her feet in an attempt to grapple her from below. Just as soon as the tentacles burst, seemingly unaware to her, she fired off four rounds, this time closer to his body. Instinctively, the tentacles from his lower body shot up to take the impact of the shots, but one lucky shot got through. The direct impact to the side of his face sent him off-balance, but the tentacles formed a temporary cocoon around his torso to make sure she didn't capitalize on his fumble while he tried to regain his balance. His 3D mapping was struggling to regain clarity. She hadn't damaged his eye, but she had effectively blinded him for the moment. However, he couldn't let her know that, and hopefully the little trap he'd set up would keep her busy while his sight returned.

Concrete burst from below her. Tendrils ran their metallic limbs along her legs, holding them fast together. Whether or not he knew the blow he scored against Elaine seemed uncertain, but as he disappeared behind his wall of tendrils Elaine knew she needed to get ready for a desperate flurry. She retreated her pistols to the holsters to usher in more ammunition into the chambers.

Coil fell back from the blast that Elaine scored on his head. She pressed her fingers against the dispenser and loaded six explosive rounds into her left pistol, and then pressed three explosive rounds, two remote detonator rounds, and a smoke screen round into her right pistol. The mechanic beast would only know vertigo for a few minutes, and his tendrils exerted too much force on her legs for her to escape from them.

Elaine viewed the tendrils as they curved around her upper thighs. The material gleamed off of the sun, making it hard for Elaine to see the metal man. "This is top notch stuff. Where did a guy like you get this kind of hardware?" The fact that they stood in front of an Aeronautics Museum kicked in. "I'm guessing you're not here to show this off, but here to steal something. How original." Elaine squirmed her legs, but found the pull of the tendrils bring her knees almost on top of each other. Her pistols sat at her waist ready for action, and she just remembered the bag that she kept on her back.

Constantine wasn't worried so much as he was frustrated. His vision was like getting bad reception on an old cable television. It was at moments like this he really wished he had his sight again. But now wasn't the time for dwelling on the past, now was the time for action. Despite the fact that he was practically blind, he knew he had the upper hand. He had the bitch bound and tied, and there wasn't a thing she could do about it.

"I warned you not to interfere," he said, coughing. Constantine tasted blood in his mouth, but most people come away with worse after taking an explosive bullet to the face. He could only make out her outline, which constantly jumped around his vision. Realizing he wasn't going to be able to get the money shot he so desperately wanted without clear vision, and knowing he couldn't give her time to respond with firepower, he decided the best thing to do was act now. The Coil knew he could kill her right now, but he wanted to have some fun with his new toy. He constricted the tendrils all up her left leg with enough pressure to bend a crowbar. He wanted the satisfactory crack of her bones breaking. "It won't be quick," he hissed as he tossed her into the side of the apartment building.

Motion pulled her forward; the tendrils wrapped around her leg kept her from falling from the lack of balance. Coil lifted her off her feet and reiterated his threat to her. "Usually the villain gives away his plot here." She slid her finger down towards her pistol and brought it up. "You all talk so much, but you never say anything important." With her predicament reloading seemed out of the question, so she would need to make her bullets count. The creature that stood before her exhibited human qualities, but she could not read any emotion from his face. The shot to the red spot hurt his balance; that might come in handy later. Any kind of scattering shot to that point would turn the momentum back in her favor, but she would need to get by the writhing tendrils that wrapped around him like a shield.

Forward momentum thrust her towards the side of an apartment building. The impact would more than likely break her legs. Thinking quickly Elaine fired one of her two remote detonation rounds at the feet of Coil and the other at the building that came closer and closer to her. She slid her finger back to the handle to push the red button to implode the side of the building, giving her an opening to fly through. With both of her detonation rounds spent, Elaine took out her left pistol and kept it trained on the tendril, hoping to gain a look at the drill bit. She needed to look for two opportunities to present itself: to escape the grasp on her legs, and to try and destroy the tendril by attacking the drill bit.

How many bullets did she have? It seemed that every time Constantine tried to inflict a grievous blow, she was somehow able to save herself by using her weapons to some form of utilitarian advantage. The girl lay in the broken rubble of the second floor of the adjacent apartment building. She had attempted to reinstate his loss of balance with a shot to his feet, but she did little more than cause more collateral damage to the city streets. Constantine could tell that Elaine was desperate. He knew that she knew that if she didn't do something quick, that he was going to break her legs and make her completely helpless; just like he wanted.

Constantine steadily doubled the pressure of the grip on her left leg. At this point, he was sure that there would have been some form of crippling damage done to her leg; after all, the pressure on her appendage was enough to crush a car. Constantine rose his left hand from out of the wall of tendrils, a single mechanical worm extending from his palm. The tentacle slithered through the air towards Elaine, ready to drill right through her rib cage. The tentacle rose above her chest like a rattlesnake preparing to strike. Just as Constantine was prepared to deal the killing blow, he heard the sound of screeching tires and blaring sirens.

Looking to his left and right, he saw two sets of three police cars, forming a perimeter around the "crime scene". The idiotic cops stumbled out of their vehicles, their pathetic handguns prone to shoot Constantine. He noticed the subtle trembling in their hands. They're afraid...good, he thought. "Re-release the hostage and drop your weapons," said one of the blabbering idiot cops to his left, his voice cracking and shaking like a little girl. Constantine smiled at their demands from beneath his emotionless mask. He pulled Elaine out of the building, tossing her like a rag doll right at the line of police cars where the man had made his demands. As he did so, he was half tempted to say something cheesy like "catch" but resisted the urge to keep up the aura of fear he had on the police officers. Fear is a powerful weapon, one that should not be given up when one has it. As the girl flew through the air, the Coil sent a swarm of tentacles, beneath the cover of earth and concrete, to deal with the police line to his right. They thought they were coming to help, but all they did was make his day a lot more interesting.