Then they stood in silence for a good thirty seconds. "FINE!!" they both shouted simultaneously, turning their backs on each other. Kondraki held out his hand and Clef shook it, both of them squeezing hard enough that it would have probably kick-started nuclear fusion, if they weren't so damned cool. "You're on! Last one to the Croctopus has to spring for gas on the ride home!" Kondraki gritted his teeth, but then turned it into a grin. Five minutes? You think this will take that long? I'll find that bastard, WITHOUT your help, and have it Contained within three minutes!"Ĭlef's jaw briefly clenched, but then his expression quickly morphed into a smirk. "You won't last five minutes in the field without me." "W-what!?" Kondraki's face registered shock, but then his features quickly hardened into a frown. "Well if that's the way you feel about it, maybe we should split up!" "Oh yeah!?" Clef stopped hacking away at the brush, licked his fingers, and used them to extinguish his blade.
"Me!? I was the wheels on this operation! YOU were the ordinance! You had one job to pacify the target! Now SCP-88888888 is still out there, and it's all because YOU decided to use the wrong kind of ammunition!" "I can't believe you let him get away," Clef grunted as he rapidly hacked a path through the forest with his 1000 degree nanoblade chainsaw-katana. The sports car exploded in midair just as Clef and Kondraki leapt away from it in opposite directions. "OCTOPUSSES DON'T HAVE BOOOOOOOOOOOOOONES!!!" "Octopusses don't have bones," he gasped in horrified realization as the sports car careened off a cliff. The surviving seven tentacles roared and gnashed their toothy maws as the monster's body disappeared around the rapidly receding bend.Īnd it was at this moment that Clef suddenly saw the fatal flaw in his plan. Its giant, beady eyes watched their car go with a knowing alien intellect, even as it rolled end-over-end in a fleshy, uncontrolled tumble. Then the Croctotpus's bulbous, round head struck the pavement… and seemed to bounce. The Crocotpus's remaining seven arms bellowed in reptilian agony as the massive creature toppled backwards off of the vehicle, the flaming crocodile head that had tried to take a bite out of Kondraki letting out one final shriek of rage as the chain reaction reached its bone marrow, and the crocodile skeleton of that entire tentacle was momentarily visible through its flesh, glowing white hot in the center of the red and black conflagration. As one scaly, green tentacle reached in through the driver's side window and opened its massive jaws to swallow Kondraki whole, the soft metal fragments tore through the dripping wet maw of the creature, donating electrons like Bill Gates on December 31st. Clef saw the whole thing playing out in slow motion. The Croctotpus, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky. It's not that the combination of sodium and water would be explosive, so much, it's more that the water would be too busy being on fire to explode. The white-hot sodium pellets ripped through the air, narrowly missing a single drop of sweat that released from Kondraki's head. "WHAT?" Kondraki yelled back, cupping one hand around his ear after ducking under the shotgun blast.
"GET DOWN!" Clef shouted, spinning towards the driver's seat and firing the octuple-barreled shotgun at point blank range. The car power-slid around a hairpin turn, gravel and skree from the road tumbling down the sheer cliff face.
"IT'S GAINING ON US," Kondraki shouted, jumping on the brake and the gas at the same time while spinning the wheel. The bright red corvette blasted down the mountain trail, the roar of its heavily modified engine followed closely by the monstrous cacophony of more than half a dozen snarling crocodiles moving at over 240 miles per hour.