Fiction: The Evil Possum/ Beer War Battle Demo!

 I've ended up on a break from this blog that I was going to let go a bit longer, but I decided to come back with a repost of something I already tried and hilariously failed to plug on my beautiful, useless Wattpad page, a battle demo for a new adventure of the Evil Possum! This is, in fact, for the Beer War story line I already posted one demo for. If you read it, this might make slightly more sense. Maybe. And yeah, this is what No-Hands' enemies were always like...

The machine gun emplacement looked like an exploded egg. Its concrete shell was caved in and bowed out. Within was carnage, so blackened and charred that the organic could not be distinguished from the inorganic. The most misshapen form of all was what finally sat up. It was a possum, species Didelphis sapiens, by name Heinrich Hilfiger, 40 centimeters tall. Bloodshot eyes came wide open as he sat up and hissed. He shook off the soot and dust that covered him, revealing a gray and black pelt only somewhat charred. In a moment, his eyes fixed on a machine gun, miraculously intact. He looked at the end of a belt still in his hand, then he began to wind it around himself. Momentarily, he had a doubled bandoleer over his chest, a belt wrapped twice around his waist and a loose end thrown over his shoulder. He threw three drums into a shoulder bag, one as large as the other two together, and slammed another large drum into the gun. It was a total of 600 rounds, enough for 30 whole seconds of fire. For good measure, he stowed two spare barrels. He examined the gun, and found half the bipod missing. He hissed and knocked the remainder off with a sharp blow. Only then did he emerge, the gun at his hip. He saw a figure even taller than himself, already receding. He all but strangled his own words as he snarled, “Nicht est Konig!!!” Then he opened fire.

No-Hands turned his head before he heard the cry. There was just time enough to choose whether to run left or right. For better or worse, he ran right, toward a basement loading dock for the warehouse. He stayed just ahead as the adversary behind him fired a barely controlled stream of fire. A final volley knocked his prosthetic leg out from under him, and he tumbled and rolled where the ramp dropped below the level of the pavement. Hilfiger loaded and emptied another drum blindly, while No-Hands slid down the ramp toward the open loading door. Directly behind him, a half-second volley disintegrated one of the barrels lined up just inside, spilling beer across the floor. Hilfiger loaded a second drum. He finally leaned into view, peering over the rail. No-Hands returned fire with a rifle longer than he was tall. With both eyes, he might have felled his foe then and there, but his snapped shot merely tore through the railing. Heinrich dropped out of sight, while No-Hands retreated to what cover there was among the barrels.

At least two more gunmen added their own fire, driving him further down the ramp. However, only Hilfiger ventured to approach, firing a score of bullets at a time. He gave a snarl as he paused to replace not only the drum but the visibly glowing barrel. The latter ejected from an opening in the side of the perforated housing with a hard metallic clang. He allowed it to clatter to the pavement. Already, he had the replacement in hand and sliding in. No-Hands fired his revolver twice as the foe once again revealed himself. This time, Hilfiger confidently let fly, without slowing or hastening his descent down the ramp. Three more barrels burst apart on the loading dock floor. Behind them, two whole stacks came tumbling down as another volley cut through the middle tiers.  No-Hands retreated from the cascade, into a warehouse floor lined with racks of beer barrels three and four high.

An appreciable fraction of a centimeter of beer splashed underfoot as Heinrich Hilfiger stepped onto the warehouse floor. A leaking keg came rolling toward him, spilling beer behind it. He stopped it with his foot. Another came flying from the right. He blew it apart in mid-air. He leaned around the nearest rack of barrels and emptied the rest of his final drum in the direction from which the barrel had come. A dozen barrels and more trickled and poured, adding to the fluid. Hilfiger calmly pressed his back against the rack. He played out one end of the belt that wrapped his body before he loaded it into the machine gun with an audible “chunk” of the cocking handle. His ear twitched at a second metallic sound. He dropped to the floor just as No-Hands fired his rifle point-blank into the other end of the line of barrels behind him.

The first barrel burst in the center and at both ends, rupturing another barrel in the other half of the rack beside it. No-Hands gagged and coughed at the resulting spray of suds and splinters, so he could not have seen if there had been time the resulting trail of destruction. Another ruptured catastrophically. A third had one or both ends blown out. A fourth was left intact by a fluke as the bullet dropped below it and ricocheted off the metal frame of the rack. The projectile went on through three more barrels before it burst out the far end, straight over the foe’s head. Hilfiger spat out beer as he rose up on hands and knees, then squalled as more poured down on his head. He whirled and fired around the rack. Another barrel disintegrated on the far end of the next rack. Over his head, the leaking barrel burst, spilling what remained of its contents on Hilfiger’s head.

Hilfiger held his fire. The sound of leaking barrels and sloshing beer came from all around. Then there was a louder splash as No-Hands loped deeper into the warehouse, past one line of racks to a third and final one. Hilfiger ran after him, through beer that had reached his ankles. No-Hands’ own saucer-like ears swiveled, triangulating the path of his pursuer. For a moment, he leaned around the rack he had just reached, his rifle at ready. Then he hissed and retreated yet again, just before two scores of bullets chewed into the rack. Hilfiger continued firing as he made his way down the line. No-Hands managed to fire one shot. The barrel it struck burst. Hilfiger jerked his head back just as the far end of the one beside it blew out still intact. Yet again, he took a spray of suds to the face. The bullet ricocheted off the next rack. Hilfiger dropped to a crouch as the unseen projectile went winging through the warehouse, finally bursting a keg on the far side of the floor.

Heinrich Hilfiger reached the far end of the floor, wading through beer halfway to his knees. By then, half the belt at his waist and the bandoleer over his left shoulder had disappeared. His tail swished behind him, stirring up a trail of ripples. He squalled in triumph at the sight of the door to a loading dock, closed and securely locked. He took a position directly in front of the door, next to a column of stacked barrels. He looked one way and then the other, but there was no sight nor sound of his opponent. He hissed and gripped the shroud of the gun. He squalled and drew back his hand. He cursed as he hastily ejected the overheated barrel, tossing it behind him. He turned, befuddled, at a splash and simultaneous metallic clang. No-Hands stood at point-blank range, holding the barrel in the pincer that served as his right hand.

Both possums dropped their jaws as they roared. No-Hands swung the glowing barrel. Hilfiger staggered from the blow, his face scalded by the heat. He countered with the replacement barrel in his hand, catching No-Hands on the tufted flanges of his chin. The only known specimen of Archididelphis invicta took a step back as he raised the revolver already in his hand. Hilfiger’s tail wrapped around his massive wrist like a whip, deflecting two shots into a barrel. Hilfiger slammed the barrel into his gun as No-Hands rushed to close the distance, with a third again the mass of his wiry frame. Another round from the revolver destroyed the padlock on the loading gate. Hilfiger’s tail lashed for No-Hands’ throat. Then Hilfiger screeched in triumph as the barrel went home with a ching. He promptly fired a volley into a barrel behind him. Three more came tumbling down. No-Hands’ raised arm somewhat reduced the force of a barrel that bounced off his high brow. With his pincer, he flung open the gate… revealing a trailer full of barrels backed up to the gate. That was when Hilfiger opened fire.

A veritable avalanche of barrels rained down on both combatants. No-Hands managed to retreat while Hilfiger took the brunt of the downpour. He paused to open his revolver for reloading. A wild volley blew the weapon out of his mechanical hand. He turned to see Hilfiger scramble out from under the barrels, even as more came tumbling down. He ran once more, and Hilfiger finally held his fire as he pursued, instead playing out more of the belt. The pursuer fired a short volley before No-Hands disappeared between two racks. He zagged left and then right, just ahead of a score and half a score of bullets. Directly ahead lay a third gate, a counterpart to the one through which he had entered. A volley from behind was cut short. A single shot from the rifle blew it halfway open. A swing of the rifle butt backed by No-Hands’ momentum knocked the left door off its hinges. “Linkshander!” Hilfiger called out. No-Hands turned back, to see his foe load the other end of a broken belt into his weapon. Simultaneously, he loaded another round into his rifle and fired.

It was an incendiary round.

No-Hands grabbed the bottom rung of a guard rail to haul himself up, ahead of the wall of blue flame that erupted through the loading gate. He vaulted over and dropped to the pavement as the barrels that had not been destroyed burst or burned, prolonging what would otherwise have been a short and relatively cool blaze. Only then did something else rush up the loading dock. It was a nearly unrecognizable form awash in flame, racing blindly forward. As it ran, it cast aside a weapon and a belt of ammo that already popped like a chain of fire crackers. No-Hands only shook his head as he tracked the figure toward its clear objective, a polluted sluice pond. It became all too clear how ill-considered it was when Heinrich Hilfiger dived straight into the deepest part. The surface of the pond itself lit up in a sheet of admittedly short-lived flame.

“You were never my equal, Hilfiger,” No-Hands said, “only my opposite. You still came closer than most.” Then he picked up the machine gun and slung it over his back.