Fast 89

The Fastest Man Alive

Fast 89

By: BigToFu

Blade

 On the island known as Pandora, the afternoon sun flooded across the interior of the apartment; casting an array of colors across the reflective surfaces of the floor and crystal decorations. The only shadow cast with all this sunlight came from the lone figure sitting on the couch.  His partner was sleeping inside of his room, the shades pulled so that the sun would not disturb her sleep. Leaning back into the couch cushions, a hand picked up the lone bottle that was red with blue markings and drank deeply of the drink, once, twice, then thrice before it was all finished.

Sitting with his back pressed into the couch, the gentleman released a sigh as he looked down upon the label of the drink. The name of the drink was called True Blood and the one he was drinking contained 25% donated AB blood type with the other 75% being artificial. It was a novel experience to know that someone out there was working on the needs of not only vampires but also the half-bloods like himself. It still amazed him some days how things had taken a turn after a team-up with a strange couple in the land of Russia. An entire kingdom at his fingertips with just a call with all their research, scientists, and doctors working out problems and creating solutions within just moments of informing them.

The same kingdom that had taken a live and let live approach to vampires could only take in those who didn’t prey on the people. The same kingdom had set agreements in place with werewolves and other vampire covens to set up hunt agreements. Looking at his wrist, Blade still didn’t know where his feelings stood on the matter because he really didn’t think that being hunted by a vampire to be fed on could even be considered an industry service. Then again, people did strange things, and he was really trying hard not to judge them for what they did. It really would take some time for him to put his feelings on that matter aside.

Blade had read those contracts and had seen how things were not only set up but also supervised. And honestly, he could only blame this situation on that abomination called Twilight. There was no hiding his grimace at the thought of not only vampires paying to drink blood from the source but also people paying for the chance to be paired up with their pick of vampires. Releasing a sigh, Blade shook his head because he had seen the monitoring station and knew that all these interactions and those that decided to become couples were all monitored in case anyone gave into their baser instincts. Blade wanted things to last, he truly did, but he was also a realist, and the real fact of the matter was that vampires and even werewolves were all predators at the end of the day.

Even now, he could feel the edge of his hunger being lifted but it was still there in the back of his mind, asking for more, hoping for more. It was true that he had only drunk half of the bottle. Even if there was a little voice that said he should be ashamed of giving into the instinct, it had been so long since he had satiated the hunger. With this being risk-free along with being free of addiction, Blade had to make sure he was in the best of the best shape before tonight’s operations.

A soft click came from the door as it was pushed inwards with not even a care in the world and Whistler strolled into the room, the limp in his leg gone. Blade waited as Whistler made his way into the kitchen and got himself the bottle of  Jack Daniels before seating himself in the other chair that was available. Whistler poured himself a drink and took a nice long sip before putting the bottle down.

With a satisfied ahh, Whistler turned towards Blade and made a motion towards the drink in Blade’s hand, “That what I think it is?”

With a grunt, Blade took another long pull before putting it on the coffee table between them before he started to speak, “25% donated blood, 75% artificial.”

“Sounds like horse shit if you ask me,” Whistler groused, “But it’s still a hell of a lot better than the shit you can find outside.”

Blade knew exactly what he meant by outside since they were now currently inside one of the most technological nations on the planet. Instead of making mention of that though, he asked the real question that was on his mind. “Are you going to be ready for tonight?”

Whistler took another swig, grunted like an old grumpy bear, “Don’t worry bout me none kid, the real question is are you up to this? Playing bait is all fun and games until ole fangs learn you’re sticking it to his little pretty princess.”

“I’m always ready,” Blade replied, then he was cut off as noise came from his bedroom.

[Six hours later…]

Standing inside of the armory, Blade gave himself one last check as he made sure that not only was his utility belt set properly, but that also all of his ammunition and knives were set correctly. It would really suck to go walking around in a dragon hide trench coat only to stab himself by mistake. This was not a night for mistakes to be made at all, so once Blade was finished with his own gear. He turned around and checked over Nyssa’s gear and made sure that she was also properly protected.

A quick check around the armory found that no one was paying attention which allowed Blade to slip an extra dagger into the small of Nyssa’s back. Then he made a show of giving her one of the spare energy blades that he had already prepared beforehand. His well-minded thoughts and actions were returned with a kiss. With them both prepped and loaded for bear, Blade and Nyssa left the armory and stepped into the Pelican and into the cargo bay where the rest of the team were also settling into their own gear.

Standing at the far back of the Pelican’s cargo bay was Frank also known as the Punisher, in his armor which was a cross between what Blake had called Doom guy crossed with his own Spartan suits. Chupa and Reinhardt looked around and Blade could tell they were displeased at not being able to locate Blake. What they did next only confirmed his suspicions of the two as they zeroed in on Frank. It was clear that the two would never learn and Frank was honestly happy that they were going to be part of the betrayal team because he really didn’t know if he would be able to work with the two for much longer.

Snowman was just like his namesake and was pretty relaxed in his seat across from Frank but on the last seat to the cargo bay. The two that came as a pair were a seat away from their comrade and already the big man was showing signs of being infected. He couldn’t understand how no one noticed the discolored veins or the cold sweat going down the man’s back. It was clear that something was wrong but the excuse was a bug and his healing factor would solve the problem.

The mission was going to be rough enough and now here he was already down critical members of his team because of bullshit. Yet, from what he had seen Frank would be able to plug the holes. Blade did not like working with one arm tied behind his back, he did not like that shit at all. These thoughts weren’t allowed to plague him for long as the sixty-second warning went out around the cargo bay of the spaceship, the illumination shifting to red light.

There was a shift in the air along with the gravity clueing Blade into the fact that they had arrived. Shifting his stance, Blade waited for the subtle rocking of the Pelican to pass before walking down to the cargo lift of the bay. There was a tap on his left shoulder and Blade glanced over and noticed that Nyssa was stacked on that side and was ready with her weapons set to safe.

They shared a look, then it was back to all business as Blade stepped out of the Pelican and into the night air. From there it was a little walk to the end of the alley and to the sewer lid made by public workers. A hard stomp had the lid to the sewer pop from its location due to the shockwave and then a kick sent it to the side.

Taking a step to the side, Blade waited for the Punisher to pop three drone lights and watched as they all flew downwards. Once it was known that down below was all clear, the lights went out and the drones transitioned into scanning modes. With another all-clear, everyone jumped down into the sewers and formed a perimeter before moving out.

Nyssa was at his back along with her assistant and Punisher was at his right leading another smaller group. Instead of talking, Blade defaulted to military hand motions to get his thoughts across. Things rapidly progressed from there and Blade honestly wished that it had not, because after they had gotten into the main sewer chambers, it took them less than ten minutes to get attacked by a horde of the mutated vampires. And this was after Chupa and Reinhardt tried to take out Punisher in a separate tunnel system. Chupa did not survive that situation at all, Frank had updated him on the situation while they were getting swarmed.

Granted, Blade was not happy to learn about that but that was the farthest thing from his mind as he set off the main blue light ultra-bomb for the sewer catacomb systems.

The TruBlood had helped him recover rapidly and it took a lot of will-power not to fight back when they swept into the chambers and recovered everyone along with capturing him. With a grimace, he shifted then stilled at the feel of steel clamps holding his limbs down to a metal surface. He knew that the surface was metal because of how it felt on his skin along with the cold feeling that sent a shiver up his spine.

“Ahh, well would you look at that, he’s awake,” A voice stated, and Blade could hear the interest dripping from each word.

Another person he couldn’t see from his position but could feel with his powers spoke up, “What are his vitals?”

“Hmm, they are slowly rising, it would seem that he fed recently.” The doctor with glasses replied.

“Good to know,” The first voice stated, then Blade heard some shuffling in the background before someone spoke up in surprise.

“Wait, what are you doing, stay away from that, no, nooo.” Someone screamed just outside of his field of view before that was followed up with a series of shots. Then even more shots rang out around the room along with the metal straps that were holding him down snapping open.

Things went silent for a second before Blade started to hear more movement taking place around him, then the next thing he knew. The bald guy was standing next to him and pressing buttons on the computer and medical monitoring system.

“Come on Eric, you got to get up,” The bald man wearing one of the medical suits spoke rapidly.

That alone put Blade on high alert, he didn’t know who this was that was helping him. And he was damn certain that he had kept his actual name hidden over all these years. Sitting up on the table and eyeing the man across from him, Blade looked around and swiped one of the knives on what was clearly a medical tray. Looking around the room, he found that he was in what was clearly an examination room. The room was also clearly meant for medical purposes which meant nothing good for him.

Slowly Blade got back onto his own two feet underneath his own power, a hand held up to stall the man from helping. What he also noticed was the name tag of Lucas Cross. Before he could get far, Lucas made a motion, and Blade’s off-hand snapped out and caught something, ohh shit, it was his trench coat and weapons.

With his back against the wall, Blade threw on the trench coat and checked his weapons. “So who are you?”

“Lucas Cross, and you may not know me, but I have been following your career very closely ever since I found you,” Lucas answered, with that Blade paused for half a second.

Silence fell over the room as Blade double-checked his gear and stared down at the man named Cross. “And why is that?”

“Because I’m your father and have been in search of you for 28 years,” Lucas stated with a shrug, then made a hand motion towards the door. “Now let’s get out of here and down to the security room before someone comes to check on the procedure.”

Before the man could react, Blade was already in his personal space, super speed along with strength already back to full power. Grabbing Luca’s by the collar, Blade slammed him against the wall, fangs along with his eyes flashing. “You lie.”

“No, I’m actually your real biological father, but now is not the time for us to get into this, I have to get you out of here before Dracula gets back,” Lucas stated, then his hand came up, and with surprising strength started to pull Blade hands from his collar.

“You’re a vampire.” Blade stated with a sharp glare at the man.

The man known by the name Lucas Cross scoffed, “Of course, I’m a vampire, where do you think you got it from.”

Now, that information was a lot for Blade to take in and he was silently contemplating the matter. As he thought about the implications of that statement, they silently glided down the hallway before coming to a stop in front of what was clearly a security door.

Standing on the other side of the door, Blade gave Lucas a flat look, “We’ll talk about this later.”

Then faster than the man could respond, Blade was already through the door, weapons hot. Between heartbeats, Blade was already tearing through the vampires inside of the security room. With each flash of his silver sword, multiple vampires fell as they ashed. With one last swing, the head of a male vampire flew off and hit the far wall as Lucas walked up to the security computers.

With a flick of the wrist, Blade cleared his sword of the vampire’s ash. With his weapon cleaned and put away, he went about locating Frank and Nyssa. While he was doing that, Lucas spoke up with surprise and when he looked, even Blade himself could say he was surprised. Shifting over and looking at the monitor, Blade found vampires standing in a long dark hall against a massive figure. Smoke wafted about and then suddenly the massive axe in the man’s hand started to glow a bright cherry red. Then it got worse: there was a revving sound that blatantly reminded Blade of a chainsaw. It went once, then twice, and then all hell broke loose

The vampires screamed, “Shoot!” and cast all types of magic but it was all to no avail. The man, who had on an impressive suit of armor, strolled forward with pure malice and violence. Every cast of magic was sliced apart and every round fired was stopped with telekinetic force. Then things got crazier as a lone vampire magician didn’t get the memo to run, he was held against the roof as the man in armor strolled past. Then with an overhead swipe, the vampire was torn to shreds by the super hot chainsaw axe.

The weapon was roaring the entire time and that act of ultra-violence finally broke the vampires’ resistance. Some turned and ran while others were far too late. They weren’t even cut down where they stood, no they were brutalized, and it was then that Blade realized the man in armor wasn’t using silver so the vampires didn’t ash.

For a moment, Blade and Lucas watched as the men in menacing armor mowed down any and all vampires that stood in his way. Behind the large man flowed troops all with devastating weapons. There was a buzz at his wrist pulling Blade from watching the security feeds. Looking at the message, he wanted to growl in frustration because he had almost lost the importance of the mission. The message was from Frank letting Blade know that he was not only currently free but had also linked up with Nyssa and was on the way to meet Blake.

The same Blake who was wearing the armor mowing down all of the spare vampires like they were weeds.

[ Three Hours Prior…]

Benjamin Blake

Vampire Hunter

With a shake of my head, I turned around as I watched Blade leave with his team on one of the Pelicans, a fire in his eyes. With a wave of my hands, the holo-display closed itself allowing me an unobstructed view of Whistler as he paced back and forth in the little open area of the lounge. To my left, Emma was stretched out like a lazy cat along with Felicia as they both took everything in with enjoyment tinging their auras.

Sage sat at the bar with a single malt whiskey near the computer she was working on. Other than that, the only other person inside my personal quarters was Hela, and I could tell from her grumbling, that she was not happy that I didn’t allow her to leave with Blade. It was true that I had promised her a good fight, but I never told her that it would be now. Anyway, I would at least like to wait to spring the trap. Might as well release her then, when they try their little betrayal bullshite so I didn’t have any lingering guilt complex later.

Just that mental thought alone almost had me facepalm my teeth into the back of my throat, emo thoughts were not how I roll. Pushing that into the deep dark abyss that was my mind, I released a sigh before leaning back into my chair and pressing the tips of my fingers together and forming a triangle as if I was a James Bond villain.

“Whistler, stop pacing,” I called out to stop the old man from working himself up into a health condition.

“And why should I?” Whistler asked, his old man grump on full display. “The kids walking straight into an ambush, and we all know it.”

I gave the old man a nod of my head, “True, and because we all know it, we are going to be there to get him out of the trap. Then I released a sigh, “Blade is as protected as he could be, he will be fine.”

Whistler grunted at my statement, “Yeah, well I called in a little bit of help.”

Instead of saying anything, I raised a brow at the grumpy old man.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t gimmie that look,” Grumbled the old man, and it would seem that the help he had called was punctual because Felicia got a notification on her omni-tool from her security forces. Instead of saying anything, I let her and the security handle it while I waited for whoever the old man had called for backup to come to our little lounge area. Idly, I was wondering if he had called his daughter and her team in to come help out with the extraordinary vampire situation that we were about to get into.

The scent hit me before the elevator doors had even opened, and I got to admit I was not expecting this person at all. I could smell a hint of holy ash, oak, weed, and garlic, but what really surprised me was when he flicked off the end of his blunt. Instead of normal ash falling, there was a hint of holy energy as the end of his blunt just sparkled with light at the end before even that vanished.

Unfortunately, it was not his daughter, that fine bombshell of a vampire hunter, but fortunately it was someone far better and even had me cracking a smile because marvel pulled her bullshite again and gave me a pleasant surprise this time. With a raised brow at Whistler, I pushed up from my chair and walked over as the old man was shaking hands with his so-called backup.

Standing at six-four, a cowboy hat, boots, a blunt in his mouth, and wearing a pastor’s vestments was none other than Snoop D O’double G. And I really didn’t know if I should call him the holy Dogg father or not because damn this was a mighty interesting surprise.

Giving the man a moment to chat with Whistler, I then held out a hand as he turned towards me.

“What it do baby boy,” Snoop spoke in that slow yet smooth cadence of his, the spurs on the back of his cowboy boots jingling as he shifted around.

“Aren’t you doing a concert at Madison square?” I asked even as we shared a dab of respect.

“Come on young buck, a man’s got to have his day job,” Snoop replied with a smirk. “Plus, he might not be my El Jefe, but no way I’m going to turn this down.”

Smirking at the man, I gave him a nod, “So what’s with the get-up?” I asked with a hand motion towards his clothes.   

Snoop ashes the end of his blunt with a little holy light, then made a motion towards his clothes, “When I’m dressed like this call me Big John, and I come in the good Lord’s name.”

“Really, you came in the name of Stan Lee, the big G, well alright then Big John,” I quipped at him as I gave him another once over. “Never met a black cowboy before, those six shooters spitting anything good?”

Snoop smirked at me, “Blessed the silver myself.” 

“Ohh, then come with me, I got something for those skills of yours.” Then I turned around, gave my ladies a kiss, then took Snoop and Whistler to the armory so he could bless the weapons. The elevator ride was quick, smooth, and to the point. When the elevator doors opened I was greeted by the sight of not only my Spartans gearing up but also a quad of Primarch’s.

The room parted like the red sea for me, and I walked Snoop over to where the weapons were racked up. “Alright Big John, bless these and you can use anything that catches your fancy.”

Snoop stood there, then gave me a look before looking at the rows upon rows of weapons. Bolters, sabers, shotguns, and heavy flamers. With a shake of his head, the man took the blunt from his mouth and then held his hands up as a short prayer left his lips. Once he was finished with the short prayer, he breathed out. The smoke smoothly left his lips to hover and then settled over the weapons glowing an ethereal holy light as everything was blessed.

With that done, I gave Snoop his space and had a few Spartan’s go help Whistler also get geared up. For myself, I went to the massive locker with my name on it. As I walked up to the locker, the locker doors opened up and unfolded before me. Sitting in the armor locker was my power armor modeled after the ODST Spartan armor and UltraMarine Primarch power armor.

As I got closer to my armor, panels around the locker shifted as mechanical arms came out to pull the armor panels apart to only leave the exoskeleton. A few quick motions and the exoskeleton of my power armor locked into place over my vibranium synthetic bodysuit. Stepping up onto the platform, the mechanical arms came down with solid slabs of adamantine plating along with other various superalloys.

With a little flex of my powers, I stood at an impressive seven feet two inches in height, and I was all imposing in my armor. The exterior of my armor was painted in camo green with a few dashes of navy blue and greys thrown in for night-time operations. Tonight though, I was going to go with the gold when I faced off against Dracula. Or not, it was a lot of flashy gold and there wasn’t anyone watching the showdown. As that thought traveled through my mind, I got a text on my omni-tool about how the family would like to watch the replay of my combat footage, so put on a good show.