Art of the Hunt

EDIT:In trying to fix some formatting issues some of the text may have been deleted :( if anything doesnt make sense just assume theres a sentence missing. And awesome sentence. --- So today I figured I'd give you a taste of what I've been working on. It's the first two scenes from my Nanowrimo entry, Art of the Hunt, a James Hunter Casefile.

I hope you enjoy this obvious lack of a blog post

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The Art of the Hunt
A tale of the Hunter

Sat. 11/10/2011 01:54
Xelaren National Gallery

Timothy Crayne was a normal man. By most standards; a very normal man. he was average height, not fat, nor thin. He wasn't scrawny, but nor was he particularly muscular. he had brown hair, cut to a crop reminiscent of a poorly educated military barber. His face was mostly clean shaven except for the stubble that he had grown since he shaved that morning. The features underneath were not ugly, but nor were they attractive. She supposed that 'unremarkable' was the word.
To help his wife support their family and pay off their mortgage he worked as a security guard in the Xelaren national gallery. It wasn't a great job, it didn't pay well and it had terrible hours - assuming he enjoyed spending time with his wife - but until something better came along he knew he had no choice. He knew that even with his and his wife's combined pay, they were in trouble. If they didn't figure something out soon they'd default and lose everything, but he didn't talk about it- he tried not to think about it - it was a very common concern. Very normal.
He acted normal, he appeared normal, he even walked normal. It's not something you can particularly describe until you see it, but when you see someone who 'walks normal' you know it. Everything about him was bland and normal. The most excitement Timothy got was when one of his children forgot to flush the toilet.
Timothy had a bland and normal life. Or he had until a few moments earlier.
Now Timothy Crayne, security guard for some of the nicest exhibits in the world, was dead. A single, high caliber gunshot wound to the chest in front of the Tendali painting - on loan from the national gallery in Rissan for the week - that she had been here to re-appropriate. She crouched down beside him and watched him as he spilled his normal blood, and the normal light vanished from his normal eyes.
This was not how the job was supposed to go. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. She was supposed to get in, take the painting and get out. Now she literally had blood on her hands.
She didn't consider herself a bad person, though she supposed that few bad people ever did. She didn't mind committing crimes when the need arrived, but art theft was a far cry from murder. Murder was messy. Murder left loose ends. Murder made the art theft and sale far more difficult.
And it was wrong she supposed.
She also supposed that 'Murder is wrong' should have been one of if not the first reason on her list not to do it. Maybe she was more of a bad person than she thought. However right now the 'murder made things harder' reason was the most pressing.
Sirens sounded all around the outside of the building. The buildings alarms were going off. Cage doors barred every exit and every doorway. She'd still be able to get out of course, but whether she'd get away clean was very hard to gauge.
Even if she did there was still the small matter of the painting. She had taken three months to case this museum. She'd spent a sizable amount of her funds to get to this point. She wasn't walking away with nothing. If this job went south then her backers wouldn't be best pleased.
She sighed and stood up, wiping the blood off onto the guard's dark blue, short-sleeved shirt and picked up the long plastic tube she used to transport paintings, slinging it over her shoulder before returning the way she had come, a single thought buzzing through her mind; things would definitely get worse for her before they got better.




One

Fri. 10/10/2011 20:54
Saint Ambrose High

I struggled across the school gymnasium, kicking aside the detritus of the senior prom, fire extinguisher in my right hand and detective Daniel Seed slung over my shoulder, held in place by my left. We’d arrived there separately - we both went stag if you will - looking for a a group who we believed had killed several members of the senior class, but like many of the guys and girls at prom; we met some people, sparks flew and now we were leaving together, the fires of passion in our eyes and at our backs.
Sadly the fires that were behind us were literal.
It made my forehead sweat and the back of my neck burn. I could only imagine what it was doing to Seed's unconscious face lolling up and down behind me. I’d have liked to go faster, if only to protect myself from the flames licking at my heels, but with the weight of Seed draped over my shoulder I couldn’t do any better than a fast walk.
More of a shuffle really.
the decorations rent up in flame around us as I dragged him through the gym towards the exit. There was a loud creak that rumbled through the whole room and the Gymnasium’s main support beam dropped down from the ceiling, alight with flame. It landed with a ground trembling thud in front of us and exploded out in every direction.
I dropped to the floor - partly to avoid being hit by too many flaming splinters and partly due to sheer surprise. I was hit by a handful of razor sharp barbs of flaming wood, but they all stuck in my leg and my ass.
Cursing, I pulled the bigger ones from me before I checked on Daniel. He was miraculously un-scathed. I hauled myself to my feet - audibly cursing as I put weight on the splinter studded leg - and dragged Daniel backup.
I steadied myself before hoisting him back over my shoulder. Pain stabbed through me as I struggled around the beam. I could have put it out with the fire extinguisher, of course, but I couldn’t climb over it and there was every chance I’d need to put out another fire.
I felt like I was melting, sweat poured down my face as I dragged him around the flaming remains of the pillar. The walls creaked and rumbled, just barely standing. I couldn’t hang around too much longer or else the whole area might have come down around me.
He felt so heavy, my leg burned and stung with exertion. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to make it out, then a searing agony of pain caught hold of my leg and pulled me off balance. I fell to the floor, dropping Daniel and landing hard on my side. The agony vanished after a moment, leaving a hot pain in it’s place. I looked down to find a coil of burn marks winding up my splintered leg.
“Where do you think you’re going?” The voice broke as he called after me. I looked back the way I’d fled to find the fire covered senior walking down the corridor after me. He was a Burner, one of the Elementals that inhabited the world. He had control over fire. He couldn’t create it, but he could manipulate it, he could expand upon it and he couldn’t be harmed by it.
Centuries ago, back before the reign of King Alduain Chustice, the Elementals were all noblemen. Now though? Now it could be anyone. Anyone at all. Rich or poor, noble or common born. Anyone was a suspect, and I’d trained my whole life to fight them.
I’m not an elemental. Oddly, no, I’m not a moron either.
“You ruined my plan, I’m not done with you!”
I watched him for a moment and then climbed to me feet - or more accurately, I tried to, then fell back down to my knee. I raised the fire extinguisher, but at that point it was practically useless for a fight. I had to do something else. I had to play for time. The fire station would have been called and I know Daniel called his boss - my ex-something - Lieutenant Diane Allers. There’s no way that she wasn’t on her way.
“Kid, I get why you did all of this.” I said, trying to stumble to my feet again and again, failing. “You were bullied by all of these guys. I get it. I do, but this isn’t the way to deal with it.”
He stepped forward, his angry sneer exaggerated by the literal flames that covered his face, engulfed his hair. “You know nothing!” The boy said.
“Yes I do.” It was true. I was bullied as a child, a lot. By his age perhaps not so badly, but before then? he had no idea what bullying was. He’d never been the but of repeated elemental attacks. He’d never been beaten to within an inch of his life by a magically enhanced augmentor and then healed by a healer only to have it done all over again.
I didn’t say that, of course, if he wanted to he could have killed me. His juvenile need for attention was holding his hand at bay. Angering him would only have killed me quicker.
"It doesn't have to be this way." I told him. "We can all get out of this alive."
He ignored me and stepped closer, creating great whips of fire in his hands. He cracked one whip, lighting several tables with flame and throwing them aside.
They slammed into the wall and the building creaked. It screamed with the tearing of metal. My eyes looked around with concern, not just for our lives anymore. The building was coming down. "Please, let me help you. It's not safe in here!"
"Not safe?" The boy asked, his words crackling like fire. "This is my domain! I am a burner of noble blood! No flame can hurt me!"
"It's not just-"
"Enough!" He demanded. The fire around the room, all of it, roared. It twisted and coiled into shapes. Animals, monsters, people. He was a powerful burner. If he'd had friends or family to help him he could have done great things with his power. He could have saved lives, instead he'd taken them.
"You ruined everything, and for that-" I don't know if he actually finished his sentence. His words were drowned out by the roar of the building. The groan of the supports. The scream of metal.
Metal tore, concrete exploded, plaster crumbled and glass shattered as a huge portion of the roof of the gymnasium fell. A chunk landed beside him and made him jump, yelping as he stumbled back and the larger section of brick, concrete and metal landed on top of him.
He was gone. The only indication that he had died rather than been hidden behind it was the fire. It all returned to normal, un-animated, lethal fire.
The kid - I didn’t even know his name - was dead, but I was still in terrible danger, and so was Seed. I sat there, staring at the flaming pile of wrecked ceiling for a moment, then another, longer than I wanted to. I tried to move but I couldn't. I'd just watched the kid die. It had happened in an instant and it was over.
I'd let a child die.

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I hope you enjoyed that :)

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- James