JiveHonky posted:

A deserted playground. Monkey bars bent, twisted and covered in grey ash. A lone rusty swing, empty, swaying slightly in the hot afternoon breeze. Nearby an abandoned ice cream truck is frozen in time, skeletons of the driver and three children picked clean, their bones white and still. Signs on the side of the truck once advertised a colorful array of frozen treats, now are worn away and sunbleached. A cockroach the size of a dog waits patiently in the shadows beneath the truck for night to come, that is when it searches the ruins for food.

Suddenly the wind kicks up. A gigantic sandstorm approaches. A rusted droid collapses in on itself, forming a sand-proof egg. BEEp ZOOP ZZZZZZZ. A wall of sand hits the tall downtown buildings of a once bustling metropolis. Many of the buildings are damaged badly, missing large five story sized holes in their sides, once important financial documents streamed down from them to the streets below but no longer.

The sandstorm is fierce and eats away at the city for nearly two hours before subsiding. Stunted beings emerge from sewer sanctums via manholes and tunnels. They are slim and scaled, a product of three thousand years of interbreeding between humans and alligators. They carry crude weapons and wear DIY armor made from pipes and bats and hubcaps. But the lizardmen are cautious. They stay close to their dwellings. a lizardman wielding a hockey stick wrapped in razor wire raises his head and shrieks. The cry is long and loud and is instantly repeated throughout the city by his fellow lizardmen. They beat a hasty retreat back into the sewers, there is a CroMage about.

Hockey Stick shudders in fear as he cowers in the rubble, hoping the CroMage does not sense him or indeed any of his fellow lizardfolk who may be hiding nearby. Peering through a slat of a broken window the lizardman watches the CroMage float leisurely down the empty street, levitating five feet off the ground and emitting an audible hum of powerful energy. Blessed with the power of telekinesis and mind control and almost infinite need to kill, CroMages had wiped out entire communities of survivors. They never spoke and hardly ever displayed any kind of emotion. They were also usually completely naked, the CroMage has no need of clothes because nothing can harm it and it can regulate its own temperature. Hockey Stick hears something. Something big is approaching from down the street!

Festerboars are huge, pissed off and inedible. Long ago the lizardmen had ancestors who hunted the Festerboar and died from the infected meat. In these times it is best to run from them, they are slightly bigger than a fullsize SUV and almost impossible to kill. They are not smart however and this one was no exception. It saw the CroMage and instantly charged. Surprised by the Festerboar's lightning fast attack, the CroMage had no time to go on offense and simply levitated out of range. Hockey Stick's eyes went wide as the boar skidded to a stop and turned to face the CroMage again. By this time the CroMage had recovered and it raised a hand, pointing it towards a broken off light pole. The pole rose up and slammed down into the Festerboar, piercing it's back and bursting from the gigantic animal's belly along with a torrent of blood. The Festerboar roared in pain and confusion as it tried to walk forward and stumbled. The wounded beast thrashed it's tusks about in the dust and ash of the roadway as it struggled to regain it's footing. Once again the CroMage struck, this time a jagged boulder of concrete with rebar sticking out of it smashed with a mighty thud into the top of the boar's head. CRUNCH! The skull must be shattered into pieces. The animal now lay twitching in the dust, clinging to life by a hanging thread.

The CroMage hovered over the Festerboar and watched impassionately as the great beast gasped and rattled it's last breaths. The CroMage then lowered himself to the ground, walked casually over to the Festerboar, ripped out a sizable chunk of boarflesh and began to eat. Hockey Stick couldn't believe what he was seeing. This was madness! Was this CroMage immune? Hockey Stick continued to watch as the CroMage chewed away at the raw, bloody meat. The CroMage suddenly took a seat cross-legged and stopped chewing. The pale naked figure then vomited explosively. It looked confused. It looked to the boar and then back at his vomit. The CroMage's eyes rolled back in its head and it keeled over onto its side, a trickle of blood ran out of its nose.

Hockey Stick then cautiously moves from his hiding place into the light of the street. He cautiously approaches the carcasses. Hockey Stick uses the bottom end of his stick to prod at the two, first the CroMage (definitely dead) and then the Festerboar (also very dead). He then raises his head to the sky and releases a different cry than before, the "all-clear" sign. It is temporarily safe for his people to venture forth again, but who knows what danger lurks around the next corner?

At the edge of the city a dust drift blows away revealing a bullet-riddled sign that reads:

YOUR TOWN, USA

The Protagonist posted: