Lance vs. Gwharr: The Tunnels

This is disgusting Lance thought as he used a peace of paper to wipe the rat droppings from his boots. He had gotten a lead that there was some creature living under the streets in a complex of tunnels, not to far from his present location. The hobos near the entrance of the tunnel warned Lance not to enter, they explained that their buddies had gone missing and a few days later there bones would show up in the darkest part of the complex. This didn't stop him, he wasn't too worried about it and figured it was just some big crocodile or something. So he continued into the dark.

He held his hand mid level to his body and created a flame in the middle of his palm. This created enough light to see a few yards in front of him.

Gwharr was in a rather foul mood. Once again his kingdom had been invaded by the thrice-damned topsiders! He had put up warnings, he had scared the harmless once out, and he had killed anyone armed that invaded the place, so why wouldn't they just get the hint and leave his little part of the city alone! His eyes narrowed as he climbed the pipes above the man, almost invisible in the dusk. "To not be wellcome in caves of Gwharr, outsider." He said, swinging closer to the man, dropping noisily from the pipes, landing just outside the reach of the light, letting the man see his outline, but not his exact feature. Because of his thick coat, his exact shape would be hard to discern, but what was obvious was that even though he was seven and a half feet tall and built somewhat like a gorilla.

The caveman gave a bestial snarl and smashed his fist into the wall with such force that the wall itself cracked, causing a rumbling sound throughout the complex. "Run, puny man-thing. Gwharr hungry! Eat all sweet-meats that wander into kingdom!" he continued, his booming voice echoing through the tunnels, followed by a rather vicious, almost cruel yet hearty cackle, as if he was dreaming of some forbidden pleasure yet ahead of him.

Despite his big speech, Gwharr would rather not kill the interloper, but hoped he would see sense and run back out like the homeless that had entered his lair earlier. The ones that ran would be spared, but the others would be hurt, and some of the more defiant ones would end up dead, before Our heroic hunter dragged them into his lair and cooked them in his big cauldron, or over a big fire.

Gwharr roared viciously, beating his chest to further intimidate the interloper. Although, this was not only intimidation, it also served the dual purpose of constituting a formal challenge to combat, enough of a formality to let him attack the interloper without any more threats or words "Last chance, Man-thing! Run or Gwharr hunt it down! Hungry! Kill! EAT!" he roared, a voice filled with primal fury! The caveman readied himself to leap at the interloper. This had been the final warning

A voice echoed through the darkness behind him. Not welcome? he thought as he looked back. The flame in his hand grew a little brighter, but he could still only make out a gorilla like figure swinging toward him, then hitting the ground. His hand pounded against the wall of the tunnel. The threats didn't scare Lance. He dealt with bigger and badder things before while a part of the CIA.

"I'm here as an exterminator fella... Just leave and we wont have any problems." He said in a stern voice. He knew all of the pounding was just his ape like attempts to intimidate him. I believe its my turn" He thought, then held both of his hands at mid level to his body. He quickly lifted his hands and a pillar of fire burst from the ground, spinning with tremendous heat and power. It was a thick tornado of fire, burning hot with red and blue flames mixed together. "Leave this city and we wont have a prob." He said, almost attempting to sound younger then he actually was. Tho it wouldn't have much of a purpose, except bring back memories... most of them he wanted to forget normally, but while in a combat situation, Lance could use all of the anger he could get.

Ghwarr backed away slightly whimpering from fear and surprised as the man summoned the horrible pillar of flames. He did not like fire. Fire hurt, and hurting was bad. But when the man spoke, Gwharr felt the anger rising within him again. How dared this little thinling come down here to his kingdom and tell him to leave? Had he not carved his dwellings out himself, claiming ownership over the place, and fought for it with tooth and nail? And now, he, a firewielding evil sorcerer has the audacity to come down here and try to force him out!? Gwharr howled in range, spittle flying from his mouth. He would not let the man talk to him like that!

The man may be a sorcerer of fire, but he had waded through the red-hot lava of a volcano and survived. He had faced plenty worse and survive. He realized he might lose his favourite coat, but he had others safely tucked away in his lair. And who knew, maybe this man would be an exciting challenge. Gwharr cackled viciously, his voice filled with bloodlust and primal fury. There where two ways of fighting this man. Either he had to get close and hit him untill he broke. It was usually the best way of getting rid of the thinlings, but that tactic would force him to leap through the fire, wich would be incredibly painfull. His only other alternative was to finnish the man off at long range, something that might not be as easy, but would probably be less painfull if he did it quickly. He might aswell try that tactic before braving the fire. He might be resistant to pain, but the fire brought back some rather. . . Uncomfortable memories too. . .

Gwharr quickly reached into the air, ripping loose two of the smaller, rusty and decrepit pipes, hurling them towards the sorcerer as if they where spears, hopefully managing to skewering him. After that he leapt forward through the flames, towards him, in case he managed to dodge his initial attack.

He could feel the hair on his head burst into flames for a few seconds before dissapearing, and he could feel his skin crack and peel, and the dull ache that came with such an experience, and yet he perseveered. He knew that the pain would not last long. It never did last long for him. He raised his fists into the air, as he leapt and brought them down with enough force to flatten a car, hopefully being dead on target.

Suddenly pipes came flying at him through the flames. Lance was actually surprised that the pipes didn't melt before they made it all the way through the tornado. The thought didn't last long, he had to move now. He was not the fastest person alive but the training he experienced put his body in its peak condition. His speed was just enough to dodge the spear like projectile. Then the beast rushed toward him. His figure was fully revealed, showing his monstrous body.

He jumped, and was about to slam his fists on Lance's body. But Lance rolled back, allowing the beast's fist to slam into the ground. Then the Professor raised his arms in a twirling motion causing another tornado of fire to appear. This time it rose around the beast and slowly started to close in. "This is your last chance fella!" he yelled, trying to give the large beast a chance of survival. The walls of fire where thick like the last ones, but Lance made them hotter, more blue flames rose rapidly. This guy can heal like crazy, I don't know if I can win this one the thought sent horror though his body.

Gwharr was not all that surprised when the man avoided his spears. Most of the supehumans seemed to be able to do that. but he snarled in anger as the man avoided his fists as they slammed into the ground, creating a whole bunch of hairline cracks running over the floor, the man managing to roll out of the way barely managing to dodge beeing smashed into a wet spot on the ground with barely half-a-second marginal. Gwharr roared lowly, cursing his bad luck in the tounge of his ancestors. Gwharr rarely spoke in the language of his old tribe, but tended to return to it whenever his temper got the best of him. Partly because it was his original tounge. It was the language he thought in and dreamt in, and partly because the cuss-words of the modern tounge paled in comparison.

He was about to follow the man, when suddenly, another wall of fire arose beneath him. He could feel the heat, even though the fire didn't reach him. It was hot. Literally as hot as hell. The man once again offered him clemency in exchange for leaving, but Gwharr just whined and snarled angrily in response. He was not going to give up like that, and definately not against some worthles thinling! He quickly glanced d own to his hands and noticed they where pretty much healed up. His coat was still smoldering, but its destruction would fall within the frame of "expendable losses", but he would still give the man who had burned it hell because of it. After all, he could get a new coat, but the man probably couldn't buy himself a pair of new arms.

He quickly leapt upwards, once again grabbing ahold of the pipes. He could hear the hissing of his palms as the heat burnt them, but he paid the dull ache no heed. After all swinging through the flames would be less painfull than to walk through them on ground-level. He knew flames was always the hottest at the base. He could feel the sole of his feet get blistered and the few hares that had been spared the last time he swung through the flames would probably turn into ash, but he perseveered. Pain was only temporary. As he landed on the other side, he gave a slight, yet ferocious growl, and the big pustules that were forming on his hands and face was testament to the injury the fire had wrought him, but as soon as he landed, the damages seemed to start to dissapear, as if watching a burn-victim get burned in reverse. He quickly leapt towards the man, his hands long arms outstretched, trying to get ahold of him, He knew that if he could grab ahold of him, he had won. He would fry the little fucker over his own flames and laugh whilst he was doing it!

Gwharr chortled heartily as the interloper asked him to stop. He had seen what Gwharr could do, and he still thought he could convince the rightfull king of the caves below the world-of-lights to just stop and forfeit his kingdom? The kingdom he had worked so hard to build up from nothing. To lose everything he held dear in this hated world. This place of lonelyness and despair! No, he would not give up, he would crush the man and all like him, rather than be driven from his rightfull kingdom like some mongrel dog!"To stop? Why? Gwharr no stop, Little man! You stop!!" The caveman roared a he leapt towards the firestarter, trying to close the distance. He could feel his hair starting to grow back, although it took quite a bit longer for it to grow than his flesh. It would take more than a few seconds for it to reach the length it had been before it was burnt off.

However, he stopped dead in his tracks when a thin blue line of fire hit him square in th echest, slowly burning a hole through him. The caveman shrieked with pain and fury! Nobody had done this to him, since. . . Since. . . He roared, this time more with rage than with pain, quickly bent down and ripped out a handfull of concrete from the wall. Sundering it into pebbles inside his enormous hand. This man might be good at dodging, but he wouldn't have any room too dodge these little babies. Gwharr had long ago learned that being superstrong did not only give you hell of a punch, but also allowed you to throw things VERY hard. almost as hard as the bullets from what he called death-sticks, and the beauty of this was that the fire couldn't protect him from this. Even if it melted, the blobs would still hit him with enough force to poke a hole in him, and the spread of the pellets would be more than enough to leave him with very little space to dodge in the corridor.

Gwharr doubled back and threw the pebbles with as much force as he was able, using his other arm to protect the newly burned hole in his chest, his natural toughness made it hard to burn through him, but the continual fire made it hard for his regeneration to heal him, and at the expense of the flesh on his arm, he would give the chest-wounds a few moments to at least begin to seal.

Gwharr cackled to himself as the interloper started shooting those little beams of his into the roof instead of into him, and while he much preffered to have the roof take the blunt of his blasts he couldn't wonder what in the name of Bozo the Clown was the fellow trying to acomplish by that rather pointless manouver? Soon enough he found out, and as he hurled his handfull of gravel the man had taken cover, and the small pebbles bounced against the rocks, flying in all directions. Gwharr still wasn't dejected, as he noticed that one of his little projectile seemed to be dead on target, hitting the man in the leg. Apparantly he had managed to come up with a quite an effective tactic to beat this vicious flame-throwing intruder. Even though the man had a powerfull blast, he was but a brittle man-thing just like most of the other citizen in what he called the world-of-lights, and just like the other man-things, he would break eventually. His flesh was easily ripped and his bones would snap like match sticks if he just managed to get close enough to grab him.

Despite the fact that the man managed to avoid his little barrage of gravel, Gwharr thanked his lucky star for the brief respite in the battle. His focus on the roof had given Gwharrs own regenerative abilities enough time to do something about the holes that the man had burnt into his very flesh. The arm did not take too long to heal, since ha had been moving, the beam hadn't focused enough in any one place to actually burn into his flesh, but his the damage on his chest had been extensive. The bleedin' bastard had almost burnt all the way into Gwharrs sternum. However, the pause in action allowed most of the flesh time to regrow, although not completely. However, the healing-factor was not the only thing that worked is magic during the pause, Gwharrs tiny excuse for a mind also worked as fast as it was able.

The man was fast, probably faster than he was, but a few more handfulls of gravel would probably be more than enough to slow the little blighter down enough for Gwharr to grab ahold of him. After all, his ability to recover had always been his main advantage in all of the many fights he had ended up in since he took possession of these tunnels. Most of the other creatures that invaded did not have his this sort of abilities, and if they chipped away at eachother, causing scrape after scrape, he would eventually come up victorious since his scrapes dissapeared after a few seconds, even if the enemy scraped slightly harder.

However, it seemed his opponent renewed his blast, seemingly aiming for the same place as earlier, but since Gwharrs recouperation, he was not half as worried as he had been earlier, but kept rushing forwards, using one arm to move quicker, similarly to a gorilla, and the other to protect his chest against the laser-beam. Gwharr roared viciously as he rushed forward, and this time it wasn't a roar of pain, but a roar of bloodlust and triumph, since our primitive hero thought he was about to win this after all, his opponent was injured, struggling to get on his feet, and he, himself was once again all but unharmed, and raring to go, but then something happened that let the air out of Gwharrs inflated Ego.

A massive wave of the superhot, ouchy fire washed over him, burning the small tufts of hair off of him immediately, as well as blistering most of his skin, and burning his clothes right of of him. However, the comic-style laws of censorship allowed him to keep part of his pants unhurt so that the mother of the kiddies wouldn't be offended by the sight of his dingleberries. However, all of this Gwharr could live with, but what hurt our neanderthal-hero the most was that he had been stupid enough to leave his eyes wide open, letting the cornea burn. . . Even though the damage wasn't serious, and his eyesight was already returning a few seconds later, it was enough to stop the caveman dead in his tracks and roar, and this time it WAS a roar of pain!

Lance watched as the creature roared in pain. The large burst of fire got the best of him. His eyes where useless for a second or two. Lance almost felt bad for the guy, he didn't want to be cruel, but at this point he had no choice.

When the beast roared Lance found out what worked. Just as the beast screamed, the Professor let him have another burst, about the same strength as the last one. Hoping that eventually the creature would give up and submit. He didn't want to cause him pain.

While he stat there shooting off the torch like blast he could feel the blood gushing out of his leg. He knew what he had to do, but hated the thought. After his last burst he dropped one hand from the blast, this caused the blast to weaken. Not because he needed both hands, but because his focus was diverted. He reached down as fast as he could and wormed his hand to the point of soldering his wound. He yelled in pain. The burst stopped for an instant, just long enough for him to cope with the wound, but then he continued, knowing that it was the only chance he had to survive. He hoped the creature didn't regenerate to much, the last blast would have made up for that second I think the thought rushed through his head.

Gwharr was blinking into the light with his pair of newly regenerated eyes, but his sight was not yet fully restored, so that he did not see the next superhot pulse once again put them out of comission, blistering his skin even more, causing blisters and pustules to appear all over his face as well as his chest. This time the primtive sub-human did not roar, he shrieked. A high-pitched wailing shriek of pain as well as a shriek of anger! He was not going to let the man get away with hurting him so! But right now it simply hurt. It hurt too much to do anything!

Gwharr covered his eyes, whimpering slightly as they regenerated, fully restoring his currently disabled eyesight. He turned away from the man, showing him his back whilst it happen, mostly to give his blistered skin a chance to recover, and recover it did. Luckily, whilst the burst was powerfull, it was not enough to burn him in a focused way like the beam had done, but rather just caused a little damage to alot of places. The whimpering caveman blinked into the dusky light, his blurry vision soon becoming as clear as crystal, just as it had been before his the lenses of his eyes had been cruelly vaporized by the heartless individual in front of him. This time he did not waste any time blinking towards his opponent.

He once again turned around, his teeth bared, and what looked like tears streaming from his eyes, only it was not tears, it was the milky remains of the eyes that had been melted by the last attack, but he had new eyes now. Eyes wich saw what he wanted to kill. His face was a mask of untempered fury, and his breathing was heavy, almost hyperventilating, partly from pain and partly from unbridled fury. He roared in anger as he lumbered forward towards the man, digging up two smallish slabs of concrete straight out o the ground, one with each hand, with, crushing them into pebbles as he ran towards his opponent. The man had hurt him, and he would hurt him in return!

Gwharr roared with rage as he charged towards the other man. His wounds where all but recovered by now, and he was going to show the bloody bugger that nobody got away with doing this to him! Not even a son of the sun! Gwharrs fury knew no bounds. He expected the newcommer to start running away at any minute now, but it would be no matter. He would catch up to him eventually. He was a born tracker, and everyone grew tired eventually, and he was certain than this man would be no different. Especially considerng the injury in his leg. However, Gwharrs analysis of his situation seemed to have been somewhat wrong. Well, Either that or one of the little pebbleds had hit his head earlier. The man was running towards him rather than away, at first Gwharr thought his sense of direction had been taken out of working order completely, but when he saw the glowing ball of extreme hotness in his hand he revised his opinion. This man was going to try some sort of trick.

Gwharr did not hesitate. He had been burned before, but it didn't take. Sure, some things might burn him, cause him pain and even remove bodyparts or organs, but they never lasted. The man leaped up, towards him,seemingly doing his best to press the orb against his face. And the orb was indeed hot. Gwharr could feel his skin shrivel up and slough off as it collided with his cheek. He could feel his flesh melt and start to dribble away like a cheap wax candle, but he was not about to let him get away with such a measly trick! The man was faster than him. As his felt started to melt away completely the pain became unbearable and our primitive hero's thoughts themselves become muddled and rather difficult to actually comprehend. However, his "flight or flight" reflexes where still in working order. Our hero leapt back, using too much force and thus slamming into the roof, causing it too crack before falling down onto hte earth.

He quickly rolled back and hurled one of his hands of gravel, but the throw was somewhat innacurate and lacked the vitality of his earlier actions, and it was not hard to see why. The entire left side of Gwharrs face had been badly burnt, part of it was even burnt to his gleaming white, and partially scorched black bone. His eyes where unfocused and somewhat muddled, but this was becomming slowly better. as newly grown flesh and skin once more started to recreate his none-too-pleasing features, the man stared at the man, seemingly like a somambulist, not quite able to awaken from a rather psychadelic nightmare.

Even if things where becomming clearer Gwharr just felt so confused. He knew he needed to stay away from the man, but he could not quite remember why, yet. It was comming back to him, but it was all scrambled. Bits and pieces that had yet to organize themselves into coherent memories. He hated him because. . . because. . . Gwharr whimpered pathetically, why did it suddenly hurt so much to think?

This was the chance Lance was waiting for, the creature was out of his wits and badly hurt. It was time for The professor to continue his torch like blast. Hoping to push more fear into the monster, and make him run. I wonder if he will ever give up The thought went through his head. Looking at the poor giant he almost felt pity, but then remembered the harsh blows to the concrete, This thing wont stop unless I stop him , he thought with a sigh. He didn't want to hurt him. He almost felt sorry for entering his 'kingdom' but he didn't have a choice. People going missing is a problem, hobos or not.

Lance first lifted his right hand, filling it with a bright blue ball fire, and throwing it at Gwharrs wounds. Hoping that they would get sever enough that the best would lose consciousness. Then he lifted his left hand and did the same. Throwing it with as much force he could muster.