#83

Below The House, there's a stampede taking place. Looks like all the stupid shit from Hell has been set free. Jacob isn't the mood for this.

Beneath him he sees what appears to be an endless army of zombies. They're nude people, at least, with raggedy grey skin and long zombie-ish claws. If they're not zombies, he's pretty sure they're mutants. Probably of the hideous variety. Amos always warned him of hideous mutants. Though he thinks he probably was referring to the ones with, say, six eyes and tentacles and whatnot. Jacob hates things with tentacles. At least, he does now. He knows that he saw some such thing flailing around in the air before he ended up here from that...cosmic billboard or whatever. It looked just like that virus-image. It looked like any of the ones he's gotten recently, actually. Except all fused into one.

This is just not a good day.

Which makes it much worse when suddenly, there is some aggressive cyborg fucker now on the front steps of McGee Manor, slowly approaching him. It jumped off of a rooftop onto The House because The House was too close. Doctor Kai doesn't have time to react. Suddenly, its knuckles on its left fist have spikes emerging—small, thin spikes—and it punches the Doctor in the back. He cries out as a burst of electricity goes through this body; then he collapses.

“Beginning process of...”

Jacob doesn't care what process is going on. He's already at the cyborg's throat, strangling it. It doesn't do much good, though, because whoever made this poor chap into a cyborg appears to have decapitated him and fused his severed head onto his body with a machine neck. Up close, he notices something peculiar—though the clothing this thing is wearing isn't particularly interesting, it does have a red cross on it. As if it were a goddamn doctor or something.

Well, the only doctor Jacob cares about right now (and that's a marginal amount of caring, mind you) is this crumpled piece of shit with the trench coat and hat, which he intends to prevent from being victimized by some sort of Imperial robot crud.

He's so fucking pissed off that he just breaks the cyborg's neck, which removes its head a second time. But he doesn't kick it off The House; not yet. After checking to make sure Kai or Kay or whatever is alright (which he is) Jacob looks over the now-defeated machine-man. The gloves with electrical spikes on them are actually some sort of brass-knuckles setup; quite literally so, actually. One has spikes, the other doesn't. But they look tough. Maybe it's not so much brass in so much as it's steel. Which is even better.

Now he kicks it off the steps.

The House is still drifting, much to Jacob's displeasure; he can't get it to stop. Still, if he's going to have to wait for the Doctor to wake back up, he might as well do some things.

Oh, look. There's a pair of those red guard guys, on that other rooftop.

Jacob lunges off.

The guards aren't unprepared. They saw him coming, and they have their spears ready. Jacob doesn't care. He knows what these guys did. And even though they probably weren't the ones who directly triggered the thing that blew up Maurice, or who impaled Lex, he can at least pretend for a little bit that they are.

A spear comes forward. A quick hit at just the right spot, and that guard's stuck using his fists too.

Jacob doesn't know what's underneath all that armor, but he figures that it's worth a shot to try to zap him. His fist moves faster than the guard's, and the metal in whatever he's wearing channels the shock. It gives a cry—more like a gross, vomiting moan—and then it falls over. It's not dead, but it slips off the roof in its paralysis...so it'll be gone soon.

That wasn't so hard.

The other, however, gets an easy chop off at him. He tries to deflect it with his hand, which he realizes is stupid. The spear stabs into his spike gauntlet, and there's a flash of sparks—he suddenly considers that it just short-circuited. Still, now he has time to strike, and he drives the spikes into the armor of the guard's chest. And...nothing. So yes. The zapper-thing or whatever is now broken.

The spear swings again, this time at his feet, and he jumps aside to dodge it, not understanding his own agility. The issue with these spears is that they leave the wielders wide open; so this time, it's a chunk of metal right to the fucking red helmet.

The blow knocks the guard back, and suddenly a rush kicks in inside Jacob's system. It's not excitement, it's just...a sensation. But it's not satisfaction; it's not vengeance or even anger. He just feel something in the air, and it gets stronger when he gets in another punch. And then another, and another. And when he strikes again, feeling this weird passion rise up, he keeps feeling the drive to keep hitting and hitting and hitting, until suddenly there's a clang as the metal dents, and he's suddenly jumping in the air...

His legs wrap around the thing's idiot neck and he's slamming blow after blow into it, not remembering or caring that grenades and bombers couldn't breach this faceplate, until finally it staggers backward and there's a great big SMASH as the metal of the helmet shatters.

Jacob gets a brief glimpse of a skull as he rams his fist through its face. Crushed bone flies everywhere, and that's the final bit of...yes. Catharsis.

The guard crumples down, completely destroyed. The young man climbs off of it and sighs heavily.

What else will ever feel good again after that?

Well, maybe dangling his feet off the edge of this skyscraper.

A few hours ago he was a little scared of heights.

Probably scared, at least on a small level, of living video games too.