Tek's writing challenge: Lazarus

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"Jack, Jack!" Ann rushed up to him breathlessly, clutching a piece of paper in her hands.
"Hey, watch it!" Jack pulled his coffee away protectively. "What's going on?"

She thrust the paper into his hands.
"Read this! Oh man, this is terrible!"
"What the heck is this?" Jack muttered, sipping his coffee.

"I was checking out the Halo 3 forum's latest threads - you know, on the site."
"Uh-huh, uh-huh." he said impatiently. "What about it?"
"I found a post by some guy that had the entire Halo 3 plotline written down - in it!"
"WHAT?!" Jack shouted, spitting coffee across the hallway.
"I printed out the post for you to read." she said, pointing at the paper.

Jack quickly read it.
"Oh man - I don't believe this! You deleted that post, I hope?"
"Yeah - I just hope I caught it before anyone else read it." she groaned.

"Well, pre-emptive strike time." Jack ran to his cubicle and sat down at the desk, Ann on his heels.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.

Jack fired off an email to the top brass at Bungie and then loaded several special "programs".
"This punk might post in other places too - we have to cut him off at the pass."
He rubbed his palms and started typing.

"Ahh... IP address is 56.34.21.192... now let's just hack into the customer records for that ISP..."
Ann watched anxiously.

"Got it!" Jack announced. He printed out the name and address and blew on the ink to dry it.
"Now, I'm just gonna send this to some of our boys and they'll take "care" of it for us." he chuckled dryly.
"What do you mean?" Ann asked nervously.

Jack swung around in his chair and stared at her.
"Sweetie, I'm one of the guys Microsoft pays to keep a tight lid around this game studio. I'm pulling out all the stops for this one."
Ann gulped.

...

Chicken Soup put his empty bowl in the sink, then froze, glancing out the front window. A black helicopter was settling down on the lawn.
"What the - " he said aloud.

A group of men jumped out of the chopper and hustled toward his house. One of them crouched suddenly, shouldering a rocket launcher.

"What's going on?" C$'s mom shouted, hearing the explosion.
"Uhm - nothing, Mom!" C$ called back. He stared at the fragments of the front door lying at his feet.
"Yeah, nothing at all!"

C$ ran for the back door as ski-masked gunmen stormed into the house.
He tore through it and froze.

"You're coming with us, kid."
A gag was jerked over his mouth, cuffs put on his arms and legs, and C$ was dragged into the helicopter. Seconds later it took off into the sky.

C$'s Mom came into the kitchen several minutes later and screamed.
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(TBC)
 
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"All right, kid." Jack stared down at C$, folding his arms imposingly. He paced back and forth in front of the table.

"How did you find out?"
"Find out what?" Chicken Soup asked innnocently. He wriggled slightly, then growled inwardly. No chance of getting free of the cuffs.

"ABOUT HALO 3!" Jack banged his fist on the table. "Where'd you get all the information on the plot, dang it!"

At the far end of the room the elevator doors hissed open.
"What now?" Jack growled, turning.
Bill Gates and several bodyguards stepped out, walking toward them.
C$ watched silently.

"Is this the one?" Gates asked.
"Yes uh - yes sir." Jack nodded.
"So, Billy, what's hangin'?" C$ asked casually.

Jack turned toward him, murder in his eyes. Gates waved him back.
"No, not that."
He looked directly at C$. "Give him the sodium pentothal."
Jack opened a small silver box sitting on the table and pulled out a syringe.
A huge syringe.

"Will this hurt?" Chicken Soup asked nervously as he approached.
"Nah, you won't even notice." Jack promised. He swabbed a spot on C$'s arm and jabbed the needle in.
"YEOWW!"

Jack chuckled sadistically. "I love that."
"Fiends." C$ muttered.

"That does it, sir." Jack said, stepping away.
Gates bent over the table, looking directly into C$'s face.

"Do you have any friends working at Microsoft?" he demanded.
"Uh - no. Definitely not." C$ answered immediately.
"What about at Bungie Studios?"
"Bungie... they developed Halo, didn't they?" C$ mused.

"Oh yes, right. I'm sorry, what was the question?" he asked.
"DO YOU HAVE ANY FRIENDS WORKING AT BUNGIE STUDIOS?!" Gates screamed.
"There was a brand of soup called Bungie... didn't taste as good as Campbell though..." C$ trailed off.

The door to the stairwell swung open and Martin O'Donnel walked into the room.
"Hey Jack, have you seen - oh, C$!" he exclaimed.
"Marty!"
"You look marvelous!" Martin commented.
"Not as good as you look." C$ returned.

"Flattery will get you everywhere." Martin chuckled. He turned.
"Oh, I'm... sorry, Mr. Gates."

Gates glared at him. "Can't you see we're in the middle of something?" he hissed.
"Oh - uh, yeah."
Martin stared at C$, tied to a chair with hands and legs cuffed together.
"Hey, what's going on here?!" he demanded.

A cosh thudded down on his neck. Martin crumpled to the ground, out cold.
"Get that oaf out of here." Gates said coldly.
"Hey!" C$ exclaimed. "You can't do that to him!"

Jack plugged the cord from the tool in his woodburning kit into an outlet.
"This'll take about five minutes to warm up." he informed them.
"While we're waiting, get his shoes off." Gates ordered.

"Hey - hey, what're you doing?!" C$ shouted. They ripped his shoes and socks off and strapped his ankles into a small machine so he couldn't move them.
"It's hot." Jack reported.
"Give it to me."
Bill Gates knelt down and held the wood-burning tool over C$'s bare foot.
"Tell me how you discovered Halo 3's plotline." he whispered.
"Aliens?" C$ offered.
Gates jabbed the end of the tool into the sole of his foot.
"OWW!"
"Tell me!" he ordered.
"Steve Ballmer gave me the information!" C$ yelled.
"OWW!" he screamed a moment later.
"TELL ME!" Gates shouted.

Behind them the elevator doors hissed open silently. A vampire stepped out and advanced upon the unsuspecting villains.

C$ saw it approach.
"Dang - sure wish I had my silver soup bowl." he muttered.
"What bowl?" Gates asked suspiciously.

Xian jerked an arm around the former CEO's neck.
"Nobody move." he ordered.
"What the heck." Jack muttered, leaping back.

On the other side of C$, SigInt quickly removed his cuffs.
"Now get out, fast." she ordered.
"Yes, ma'am!" C$ answered, heading for the exit.
"Wait - what are you going to do?" he asked, stepping into the elevator.

"We're vampires. Dude..." Xian rolled his eyes.
"Uh - I'm outta here."
The doors hissed shut and C$ dropped toward the bottom floor.

Xian regarded Bill Gates.
"Ho-hum..."

"Wha - what're you going to do?" one of the bodyguards asked fearfully.
"Don't worry about a thing." SigInt told him very uncomfortingly.

The vampires lunged forward.
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(Not TBC due to graphic violence. :eek: )
 
Hey, what the - I thought I posted one yesterday... *facepalm*
Ah well...
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The cat's tail twitched as he eyed the mouse. The mouse was frozen in one corner of the room, looking around for an escape route.

The cat lunged, claws scraping on the hard wooden floor. Squeaking in terror, the mouse ran sideways and dodged under a dresser.

Rising up on his hind legs, the cat meowed fiercely and charged the dresser, pushing it over. The mouse ran again while the dresser slammed into the floor.

Leaping up onto the dresser, the cat made a dive into the air and grabbed the rope switch for the ceiling fan. The impact turned the fan on.

The mouse looked around and saw no cat, then heard the noise from the fan.
His tiny mouth dropped open in astonishment and fear.

The cat meowed again and let go, flying through the air.
"MEOOOW!"
"SQUEAK!"

CRASH!

The mouse turned and watched the cat pull himself out of the laundry basket, laughing.
The cat growled, picking up a shirt with its paw, then tossed it over the mouse.
"Gotcha." he thought to himself, stalking toward it.

The mouse quickly hopped into one of the shirt pockets and curled up in a ball.
Jerking the shirt away, the cat pounced - and looked around in bewilderment.
"Where the heck did it go?" he wondered.

The mouse slid out of the pocket and started tiptoeing away behind the cat. It looked back cautiously and walked over a little girl's foot.
"AAAAAH!" she screamed.

The cat swung around.
"AH-HAH!" he growled, making a dive for the mouse.
It slipped between the girl's legs and ran under the door.

The girl screamed again as the cat's paw raked across her foot. He darted around her and charged at the door with blistering speed, smashing a cat-sized hole right through it.

The mouse ran up the curtains and perched at the top, shaking its paws mockingly at the cat.
Curling his paws around a small blue marble he'd found on the ground, the cat stood up on his hind-legs again and hurled the marble with all the force of a major-league pitcher.

WHAM!
The marble hit the mouse in the forehead, knocking it out. It slipped off the curtain rod and plunged to the floor.
"Gotcha!" the cat growled, grabbing it.

"Daddy, it was a mouse!" the girl shrieked.
"Keep calm, honey!" her father replied, dashing into the room with his shotgun. He spotted the cat carrying the unconscious mouse away.

"Drop that mouse, Whiskers!"
The cat took one look and dived for the exit, the mouse flying up into the air.
Raising his shotgun, the father fired.
BOOM!

The mouse landed on the ground, unhurt. Behind him the front window shattered into a million pieces.

BOOM!
Buckshot threw up spurts of dust around the mouse as it ran for its life.
"Hey!" the cat growled, charging after it.

BOOM!
"MEOWW!" he howled in pain.
"Daddy, you shot Whiskers!" the little girl screamed.

The mouse ran up one of the legs of a small table and pushed the vase of water on it over the edge. The contents splashed down on the cat, soaking him.

With a growl, he lunged onto the table and confronted the mouse.
"Uh-oh..." the mouse squeaked.
"AAARGH!"
As cat and mouse leaped off the table, it exploded in a shower of wood particles.
"Hiram, put that shotgun down!" his wife ordered.

The mouse and cat ran over Hiram's foot as they went past.
"OW!" he bellowed, dropping the shotgun and grabbing his toe.

The shotgun went flying, landing on both cat and mouse.
WHAM!
The mouse regained consciousness first and ran over to the cat with a tiny pair of scissors.
"Now then, my beauty.." it squeaked merrily. "You certainly need a haircut..."

The cat awoke several minutes later and looked around, still dazed. The mouse approached with a large mirror.
The cat growled threateningly, then saw his reflection in the mirror.
Holding up a pair of scissors, the mouse squeaked with laughter.

The cat let out a terrible snarl of rage and charged, crashing into the mirror. Dropping it, the mouse ran for its life.
"Whiskers! You broke my mirror!" the little girl scolded angrily.

Pausing to rip her dress with a claw for that false assumption, the cat charge d off after the mouse.
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Lazarus said:
Ah. Thank you for the critique, TJ. :) *edits quickly*

Yeah, I've noticed I use "as" way too much in my stories - and also leave out background most of the time. *edits again*
Click to expand...

As do I. Never really thought of it as improper, but if it's what the readers want, then I suppose I should take note of it.
 
Hey! Shadow! Didn't expect to see you posting here(at least, not since the Earthquake...).

Yeah, "as" can be put into a story so many times in so many places - I really struggle to avoid it.

As you can see, I'm still working on it. :)
 
Hey! This was only supposed to go for seven days... I apparently went seven days too long.

*is unsure of what to do next*
 
a_sigint_ninja said:
Didn't you get something extra if you went for a month?:confused:
Click to expand...

I did say before that anyone who continues the writing challenge for a month will be automatically eligible to participate in group writing contests. I also mentioned in Dale's writing thread that I'm not going to be picky about exact duration of the thread or how many days are missed or anything like that. If I see a consistent, ongoing effort on the part of any aspiring writer on this forum, that is enough to convince me that that person could work with the group on collaborative writing. The best way to demonstrate that effort is simply to maintain a writing thread - I'm hoping they will become permanent, sort of an online writer's portfolio or writing diary.

Paul
 
Lazarus said:
The last few weeks I've been writing a pretty steady flow of chapters for a story on CCGR.

Today I wrote another chapter, so...
79th chapter of fan-fic, 2524 words. Not posted due to length.

(here's a link though: http://ccgr.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2481&start=1665 )
Click to expand...

[/ABBA SOUNDTRACK]
SEE THAT GUY,
DIG THAT SCENE,
HE IS THE WRITING FIEND! :cool:

Great work Laz, and thanks for entering the writing contest! I can always count on you to enter, which I greatly appreciate!

Paul
 
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