While Alex was fully occupied dealing with the unexpected problem of the Deepground members who had barged in — who had decided that a squad of fifty people was not enough to eliminate him and had therefore sent a second wave of the same size — Dean, together with the rest of the group, was already on the 59th floor, in the spacious observation hall. During the elevator ride Dean had to put in considerable effort to restrain the worried girls who were itching to go back and help Alex. Tifa and Yuffie in particular were the most agitated — and the latter was perhaps more anxious than all the others combined.
Fortunately, Dean still managed to get across to them the simple idea that Alex would handle absolutely any problem with ease. However, Dean's main concern was not worry for his friend at all — he understood perfectly well what was actually happening right now in the elevator lobby on the third floor. And the last thing in the world he wanted was for their entire group to see that scene. Dean knew Alex's signature style all too well: wherever the latter dealt with enemies, there always remained only mountains of torn bodies and rivers of blood.
After arriving on the 59th floor, Dean, along with everyone else, had time to admire the impressive views from the huge panoramic window that looked straight out onto majestic Midgar, and at the same time listen to yet another fiery tirade from Barrett about how Shinra shamelessly squandered ordinary people's money on such completely unnecessary luxury. Fortunately, Alex's prediction was fully confirmed: on the 59th floor there really was a reception desk where they managed without any particular difficulty to update their visitor keycard, gaining access all the way up to the 63rd floor.
Having overcome these bureaucratic complications, Dean together with the entire group began climbing ever higher until they found themselves in the memorial museum on the 60th floor. Standing among the exhibits, Dean with a stone face examined the life-sized golden statue of President Shinra. Beside him stood Barrett, whose face was filled with pure disgust — and not so much because the statue had been cast from pure gold as from the awareness of just how gigantic an ego this old man possessed, a man who was systematically destroying the planet.
"And why do idiots like this always erect statues in their own honour? And from pure gold at that…" Dean asked, rubbing his tired eyes with his fingers and not taking his gaze off the gleaming golden statue.
"How the hell should I know what goes on in the brains of bastards like that? All I know is that this statue is simply disgusting. And I'd take the greatest pleasure in smashing it to hell right now," Barrett snorted irritably, slightly flexing the massive wrist of his cybernetic arm and clearly tempted by the idea of reducing the golden President to pieces.
"Don't even think about it. And stop standing still — we need to walk through this hall exactly the way the visitor tour route indicates," Tifa said sternly, peering out from behind a carved marble stand.
"Fine, to hell with all of it. But when this is all over, I'm definitely going to collect my percentages from Shinra!" Barrett replied with a predatory grin, not forgetting to spit juicily right at the base of the golden statue before striding after the others.
"Listen, if you really need percentages… How about we just swipe this golden statue and fence it on the black market?" Dean added in a cheerful tone, unhurriedly following Barrett deeper into the museum hall.
Hearing such a proposal, Barrett once more measured the golden statue of President Shinra with his gaze and once again spat juicily right onto its golden head, making it clear with his entire demeanour that he would prefer to smash this abomination to smithereens rather than sell it on the black market. Looking at Barrett's reaction, Dean only quietly laughed and continued walking unhurriedly forward so they could finally leave this strange museum. He was not particularly bothered by the golden statue itself or by what could be done with it.
After all, back in the Bunker they already had a gigantic golden pillar lying around that had once served as the staff of Anubis's statue — at one time GIR, MIMI and Stitch had successfully stolen it from an underground tomb beneath an ancient pyramid, after which that insane trio had adapted the solid precious artefact into their own lounging bed.
Quietly chuckling at these memories, Dean was sacredly certain: if that chaotic trio were with them right now, they would already be stealing everything that came to hand, and the golden statue of President Shinra would be the first thing they carried out — solely because it glittered so amusingly and brightly under the museum spotlights.
Having passed with Barrett through the museum hall dedicated to President Shinra, Dean quickly caught up with the rest of the group at the exact moment they were entering the special corridor where the official tour was supposed to continue. Only, as he stepped across the threshold of that corridor, Dean still had no idea that the most deadly boring part of their journey was about to begin, where for a full ten minutes he would have to listen to a tedious lecture about each of Shinra's directors and exactly what they did in their high positions.
With the exception of Aerith, the others also had absolutely no inkling that this was only the very beginning of the tour programme, on which they would have to waste about half an hour solely in order to update the cursed keycard. Knowing perfectly well what soporific hell awaited them ahead, Aerith comfortably settled herself on a small leather visitor sofa, preparing to calmly wait out the end of this drawn-out presentation.
"Now I understand why he preferred to stay downstairs… What a cunning trick," Aerith muttered under her breath, slightly narrowing her eyes and considering that she had finally figured out Alex's true plan.
"What trick?" Yuffie suddenly asked with curiosity, leaping onto the leather sofa with a sharp jump and sitting down right next to Aerith.
"No trick at all. Better make yourself comfortable — this is going to take a very long time," Aerith answered with a sly and mysterious smile, relaxing her back against the wall.
"What do you mean — a long time?!" Yuffie asked loudly, staring at Aerith with an absolutely shocked expression.
The moment Yuffie let out her loud emotional cry, every single gaze in the corridor instantly fixed on her. Noticing her incredibly surprised face, her companions immediately shifted their eyes to Aerith, who was sitting carelessly on the soft leather sofa as if nothing had happened.
Encountering this wave of bewildered looks, Aerith only smiled innocently and meekly — as though she had simply misspoken a little and herself had no idea how long exactly all of this would last. Only in the next instant the heavy doors sealed shut with a hermetic hiss, leaving no one the slightest possibility of bolting outside.
At that same second a huge screen flared to life in the hall that had plunged into semi-darkness, and from the speakers built into the ceiling rang out a measured, calm female voice that solemnly opened the presentation. Staring at the gigantic screen, Dean mentally swore with every last word, cursing Alex for that bastard having advised them this exact route while knowing perfectly well in advance what tedious nonsense would start happening here.
Looking at the opened presentation slide, Dean once again spat out a juicy curse: he simply could not help thinking how much better it would have been to stay downstairs and cut down a couple of brainwashed goons rather than stand here listening to such deadly boring rubbish. Doomed, he sank onto the leather sofa, resettled Tonberry Steve onto his lap and snorted irritably again, calling Alex a complete idiot for the tenth time in his head.
At that very same time Alex was still on the third floor, in the elevator lobby. The entire lobby was now piled even higher with an impressive mountain of torn and mutilated corpses stacked in a neat heap against the far wall. Some of the Deepground assault troopers' corpses had been nailed dead to the concrete wall by their own gunblade bayonets.
The remains of certain Liquidators had literally been smeared in a thin layer across the surfaces of the walls, while from the wrecked elevator panels stuck out the stumps of Heavies — or rather, the little that had been fortunate enough to survive this horrific slaughter.
The blood of the slain Deepground members was absolutely everywhere, including the ceiling. There was so much of the scarlet liquid in the room that it already reached Alex's ankles, only barely seeping through the narrow cracks of the closed elevator doors and the glass panels leading into the main lobby.
Seated on the beheaded torso of a Heavy that was additionally missing all its limbs, Alex unhurriedly scratched his ear, bringing the thin cigar to his lips with a habitual motion. Directly in front of him on its knees froze a barely living Heavy whose torso was pierced by dozens of long gunblade bayonets, turning the fighter into a gruesome likeness of a pincushion.
"This is exactly why I always say that using microchips to suppress will and reason is a damned lousy idea… Especially applying a special programme for issuing direct orders! Because any programme simply doesn't take the human factor into account… Or enemies who sincerely don't give a damn how many opponents are standing in front of them. Like me. You do understand what I'm getting at, buddy number seventeen… Or are you the eighteenth? Hmm…" Alex reasoned in the most scholarly and academic tone, actively gesturing with the hand that held the thin cigar and not taking his narrowed gaze off the dying Heavy.
"Kh-h-h… Gh-l-u-u…" the Heavy only rasped in reply, spewing a whole fountain of thick blood from his mouth and futilely trying to reach Alex with a bloodied paw.
"I already asked you in human language: stop reaching for me with those mitts of yours! I haven't finished my lecture yet! Why are you so hopelessly stupid? Just look at your friends — they're listening to me with enormous pleasure… Although no. Better not look at them. They're already dead," Alex said, rolling his eyes and with a careless flick batting away the Heavy's reaching arm before beginning to point actively with his finger at the mountains of corpses lying all around.
Despite Alex's words, the half-dead Heavy still stubbornly reached toward him with his bloodied hands, passionately wanting to seize the enemy. The programme embedded in the microchip in his head was still functioning and uncompromisingly demanded full execution of the combat directive.
Observing this desperate spectacle, Alex only wearily rolled his eyes, experiencing deep irritation that one could not even have a normal conversation with these mindless dummies in order to somehow while away the time. Clenching the thin cigar between his teeth, Alex raised his hand, preparing with a simple snap of his fingers to finally destroy the wounded body of the Heavy.
However, at the very second when Alex had already raised his wrist above the opponent's face, an repulsive, sticky sound rang out right above his head — as though something heavy had with a squelch peeled away from the ceiling. Raising his gaze upward, Alex saw the corpse of a Deepground assault trooper that had previously been pinned by a gunblade bayonet to the concrete ceilings and was now slowly sliding downward under its own weight.
A moment later the beheaded corpse of the assault trooper finally slipped off the point and plunged downward. The corpse fell with apothecary precision straight onto the kneeling Heavy, neatly impaling itself on the gunblade blades sticking out of his back. From the dull impact of the falling body the bayonets sank even deeper into the Heavy's flesh, finally toppling the giant face-down onto the blood-drenched floor. This wild coincidence was the last thing the unfortunate fighter could endure before finally giving up the ghost.
Looking at the resulting "kebab" of two Deepground members skewered one on top of the other, Alex involuntarily whistled at such a pleasant surprise. For once luck had turned its face toward him — because usually either smoking entrails or decomposing corpses fell straight onto his head! Stubbing the thin cigar out on the disfigured stump of the Heavy's torso on which he had just been sitting, Alex slowly rose to his feet and stretched with pleasure, sweetly cracking his stiffened joints.
"Mmh… Am I really going to have to start wearing all red like that talkative idiot Wade? No thanks! If I started dressing like that, that chatterbox Deadpool would definitely start stalking me and inviting himself as my best friend. The last thing I need is a buddy who manages to ruin life for himself and everyone around him… His luck is even shittier than mine," Alex muttered with annoyance, critically examining his black T-shirt and jeans covered in foreign blood and pieces of guts.
Even though Alex had never personally met Deadpool, he was absolutely certain: that talkative mercenary would guaranteed start inviting himself as a friend, like a hyperactive child who had found a new bright toy. Shuddering at the mere thought of having to deal with someone like Wade, Alex disgustedly shook his hands, brushing the remnants of scarlet blood from his white gloves. In Alex's strictly personal opinion, friends like Deadpool were good exclusively when they were at a respectful distance — and one should see them as rarely as possible, simply in order to preserve at least some remnants of one's own sanity.
Having finished thinking about all sorts of unnecessary nonsense, Alex once more surveyed the elevator lobby and slightly pressed his lips together at the picturesque picture of the bloody slaughter that he himself had arranged here. The best thing was to get rid of the evidence in the long-proven and habitual way so that no one would see it.
After all, Alex understood perfectly well that their future escape from the Shinra headquarters would inevitably pass through the main entrance — and such a nightmarish spectacle with a mountain of shredded corpses would clearly not go unnoticed. And the last thing Alex wanted was for someone from his companions to see this horror, especially Aerith.
Lowering his gaze to his own shadow, Alex smiled tenderly and quietly asked Zhang Ya for help. At that same instant a barely audible, languid female sigh sounded from the depths of his shadow, after which impenetrable gloom began rapidly spreading in every direction. Within seconds the shadow completely enveloped the entire lobby space — from the marble floor to the very ceiling.
A moment later hundreds of scarlet, hunger-filled eyes opened across the entire shadowy cover, beneath which appeared bloodied, continuously champing maws with rows of razor-sharp teeth. From the pitch darkness thin pale arms began emerging that chaotically scooped up the stumps of bodies and dragged them toward the greedily clacking maws. Soon throughout the elevator lobby there echoed the repulsive sound of chewed flesh and the loud, juicy crunch of breaking bones.
Watching the last corpses and pools of blood vanish without a trace into the ravenous maws of the monsters commanded by his wife, Alex casually snapped his fingers. At that same instant his soiled clothing changed into a clean shirt with neatly rolled-up sleeves, fresh black jeans and comfortable black sneakers.
By this moment absolutely all traces of the bloody massacre in the elevator lobby had finally evaporated. All that remained to remind one of the past battle were the numerous signs of destruction on the marble floor, the walls pitted with gouges and the ceiling, yet nowhere was there even the slightest drop of blood or the tiniest scrap of foreign flesh.
"Thank you, darling. I'm sure the new residents of the Red City will have a fun time at your amusing resort for the guilty," Alex said with a cheerful and sincere smile, carelessly raking his hair back and looking at his shadow.
"…" Zhang Ya gave no answer, only unhurriedly extending a thin pale hand from the receding darkness and tenderly stroking Alex's cheek with cool fingers.
Tenderly pressing his cheek against his wife's cool palm, Alex tried to locate with his gaze the remains of his black coat, hoping to fully restore it with magic. However, where the torn rags of fabric had been lying only recently, there was now nothing. Slowly pressing his lips together, Alex realised: the scraps of his coat had accidentally gone straight into the maw of one of the creatures responsible for absorbing the corpses. Heaving a heavy sigh at the final and irreversible loss of a valuable element of his wardrobe, Alex approached the elevator and pressed the call button, intending at last to rise to the others.
Rocking on his heels while waiting for the cabin, Alex reflected on the information he had managed to extract from the Deepground members during the improvised "group therapy." The order for his immediate destruction had come not from Shinra's top brass at all, but from someone who had brazenly interfered with the very system of transmitting directives to the fighters.
And the only beings capable of pulling off such manipulations were the Gray or Black Whisperers, who by every means desired to eliminate him solely so that he would not finally alter the predetermined course of the canon. And even though right now inside the Lifestream a brutal three-sided war was raging between the Gray, Black and White Whisperers, these creatures still managed to find opportunities to ruin his life. Quietly smirking at this idiotic situation, Alex sincerely hoped that his White Whisperers would not perish before the moment when the bowstring finally snapped at the schism of fate.
Listening to the distant dull hum of the Lifestream in order to assess by the vibrations the course of the factions' confrontation and make sure that everything was fine with the White Whisperers, Alex completely missed the moment when the elevator with a quiet clank descended to the floor and its doors began sliding apart. The instant the panels opened, Alex was already preparing to take a step inside, but suddenly noticed that the cabin was not empty at all. Raising an astonished eyebrow, Alex unhurriedly shifted his gaze upward — and saw a tall, incredibly muscular man whose gigantic bulk occupied literally the entire interior space of the elevator.
"What kind of mongrel are you?" Alex asked with sincere disgust in his voice, bestowing an icy and contemptuous look upon the stranger.
"I'm the one who's going to break every single bone in your scrawny body, you pathetic weakling! And trust me, I'll enjoy every second while I crush your bones to pulp!" the giant answered with a wide, predatory grin, slightly cracking his massive neck and looking down on Alex from above.
Hearing such loud words, Alex only snorted contemptuously in reply. After all, this was far from the first idiotic bruiser who had tried to threaten him in such a manner. Slightly narrowing his eyes and frantically trying to recall who this character was, Alex suddenly saw right in front of his face a massive army boot with a spiked metal sole flying straight at him. Having only managed to cross his arms in front of himself, Alex felt a most powerful shove and the way his body was thrown backward with a wrenching impulse.
Crashing with a crack back-first into the warped elevator doors, Alex flew inside and fell onto the metal floor of the cabin, thoughtfully staring at the ceiling. He felt absolutely no pain whatsoever — neither from the ramming blow itself nor from the subsequent collision with the panels.
All of Alex's thoughts at that moment were occupied exclusively with attempts to sift through the database in his memory and recall the name of this over-muscled imbecile. Lowering his gaze, Alex critically examined the big man. Pale-violet dishevelled hair, a ferocious physiognomy with orcish features, a bulky inhuman torso, predatory yellow eyes and a gigantic single-barrel machine gun as his primary weapon…
Gradually clear memories finally surfaced in Alex's head of this psychopath obsessed with physical power, whose name was Azul the Cerulean. Looking at this idiot, consumed by an unhealthy desire to prove his own absolute superiority over everything living — to such an extent that for this purpose he carried around a modified aircraft machine gun that had once been torn straight off a helicopter — Alex only grimaced with the deepest contempt.
Meanwhile Azul stepped out of the elevator doorway with a heavy tread, literally tearing chunks of concrete from the walls with his shoulders because of his colossal bulk. And the moment Azul fully left the cabin, the taut steel cable above snapped with a terrible clang, and the elevator with a roar plunged somewhere downward into the darkness of the shaft. This caused a wave of sincere irritation in Alex — for this had been the only surviving elevator in the lobby that was supposed to spare him the deadly boring climb on foot up the endless stairs all the way to the 59th floor!
"Is that all? And here I was expecting something more from a weakling who managed to take out all those rejects sent after his head!" Azul rumbled with deep contempt in his voice, looking down from above at Alex lying in the crashed cabin.
"Really? Only I'm forced to disappoint you… Tell me, buddy, do you see around you even a single corpse or even the slightest drop of blood? Where do you think they all went?" Alex began asking questions with a sarcastic grin, unhurriedly rolling onto his side and sprawling languidly on the cabin floor, propping his cheek on his fist.
"I couldn't care less what happened to those worthless weaklings! I came here only to break your bones and turn your torso into juicy mince!" Azul bared his teeth predatorily, shifting his grip on the heavy machine gun and aiming its massive barrel straight at the elevator cabin where Alex continued to lie carelessly.
"Oh my God! You really came to kill me?!.. Please don't, don't kill me! I'm such a little and harmless thing…" Alex began wailing with exaggerated, hyperbolic fright, sitting up in the cabin and covering his face with his hands, pretending to tremble with horror.
"Heh-heh-heh! There it is — the true face of all weaklings! If it were up to me, I'd exterminate every last one of you. This world has absolutely no need for such useless scum… Only the strong have a legitimate right to life!" Azul declared with boundless arrogance, bestowing upon Alex an even more disgusted and triumphant look.
"So go on then… try to kill me," rang out Alex's searingly icy whisper right next to Azul's ear.
The moment that searingly icy whisper sounded beside his ear, Azul's hypertrophied instincts literally screamed of danger, demanding that the opponent be destroyed immediately. Trusting his inner sense, Azul, thanks to his multiply enhanced reflexes, reacted instantly and delivered a crushing backhanded punch. His strike proved so reactive that a ringing shockwave of air cut through the lobby, accompanied by the juicy sound of an exploding head. Having crushed his opponent's skull into a bloody pulp, Azul slowly unclenched his bloodied fist and looked down from above at the beheaded body that had collapsed limply at his feet.
A contemptuous grin once more spread across the giant's lips at the thought that he had so stupidly given in to the false alarm of his own instincts. Carelessly shaking the blood from his fingers, Azul could not understand at all why the higher-ups had even given the order to liquidate such a worthless weakling. Already preparing to turn and leave so as not to waste his precious time in this ruined place, he suddenly heard the dry, distinct click of a lighter. Lowering his head, Azul saw with astonishment Alex, who was calmly squatting right at his feet, carefully bringing a flame to a thin cigar.
"What are you staring at?.. Ah, right! You just killed me for good. Exactly-exactly! Listen, wait a second: I'll just have a quick smoke, and then carefully pretend to be dead so you can return to your hole with a clear conscience and continue using your machine gun as a dildo," Alex said with a sarcastic grin, lighting the thin cigar and exhaling a thick stream of smoke straight into Azul's face.
"Hmm… You've turned out to be a rather durable weakling. I'm starting to like this… Breaking your bones is going to be much more interesting," Azul chuckled slightly, with a loud crack flexing his gigantic shoulders and not taking his predatory gaze off Alex.
"Hey, cut it out already with that broken record about 'I'm going to break you.' You're not even close to being the Hulk… You're more like a standard orc — just as pathetic, over-muscled and stupid," Alex replied with a venomous smile, with particular cynicism flicking hot ash straight onto Azul's massive boot.
At such words Azul clenched his teeth until they gave a dull crunch, completely losing control of himself from the flare of rage. Raising his massive leg high, he prepared with one precise movement to finally crush Alex in order to graphically demonstrate who here was truly the strongest. Seeing the approaching massive army boot, Alex only unhurriedly exhaled a dense stream of grey smoke that instantly engulfed Azul's leg.
And at the very second when the heavy sole was supposed to smash Alex's head, there rang out the disgusting sound of pierced flesh. Feeling a sharp flash of pain in his leg, Azul still did not stop the strike, yet his boot whistled past Alex's face the moment the latter languidly tilted his head to the side.
Scratching his cheek with a finger, Alex with a light chuckle poked his index finger into the giant's suspended leg. At that same instant Azul felt his torso shoved with such inhuman power, as though a weightless force had seized him and yanked him aside. Having not the slightest possibility of resisting this wild impulse, Azul flew into the opposite wall with such force that he sank halfway into the marble-faced concrete.
Somehow extricating himself from the breached niche, Azul shook his head, rid of the after-effects of such an unnatural blow. With a crack of joints shifting his gaze back to Alex, he noticed that the latter was still calmly squatting in his previous place.
Boiling over with another wave of blind fury, Azul took a wide step forward, but immediately froze from the most savage piercing pain emanating from the damaged leg. Lowering his gaze, he saw with astonishment that rusty metal rods were protruding from his shin, which seemed to have grown straight from within, embedding themselves dead into the very bones.
Frowning hard at this spectacle, Azul narrowed his eyes and resolved to tear the foreign objects out of his body by the roots. Seizing a rusty rod with his paw, Azul pulled it toward himself with all his might — and with horror felt that this old metal had fused with his flesh into a single whole.
"Oh, you can even stop trying! You'll never pull it out… Let's just say: this is a little personal curse delivered straight from Silent Hill," Alex began speaking in a cheerful tone, unhurriedly straightening to his full height with the thin cigar in his teeth and bestowing upon Azul a wide toothy smile.
"What kind of nonsense is that?.. What is that supposed to mean?" Azul asked, frowning hard and reluctantly releasing the rusty rod protruding from his own shin.
"All right, I'll share the information with you since you asked so politely… You see, these rods will now freely grow through your body like weeds from the earth. And very soon you'll die an incredibly agonising death… Unless, of course, I get completely bored and finish you off earlier," Alex said, happily clapping his hands, and began casually pacing from side to side in front of Azul with his hands clasped behind his back.
"I'll crush you long before that happens!" Azul snarled, completely ignoring the growing pain in his leg and turning the massive barrel of his gigantic machine gun straight at Alex's chest.
Stopping his pacing from side to side, Alex stared at Azul as at the very last, complete idiot. After all, literally a moment ago he had with one simple poke sent this gorilla with muscles instead of brains into a prolonged flight, and the latter was still sacredly convinced that he could kill him.
Shaking his head, Alex carefully flicked ash from his thin cigar, involuntarily wondering: what the hell was Professor Hojo still stamping out such mentally retarded dummies completely incapable of realising the limits of their own capabilities? Alex could not help thinking, were Sephira and Genesis really the only ones of his test subjects who had at least a drop of brains in their heads? Looking at the giant, Alex only became more convinced of his own correctness: Hojo produced exclusively either absolute cretins or repulsive, uncontrollable monsters.
Seeing that he was being looked at with undisguised pity, Azul roared deafeningly and opened fire from his large-calibre aircraft machine gun. With all his heart he hated it when anyone dared to bestow such looks upon him — as though he were some pathetic weakling who had no place in this world at all.
Shouting incoherent curses, Azul continued continuously dousing with lead the entire space in front of him until the wall behind Alex turned into a mess. From the impacts of the heavy large-calibre bullets the load-bearing structures were completely destroyed, including the elevator shaft, causing a dense impenetrable cloud of construction dust to rise in the lobby.
Azul ceased firing only when he felt another sharp, piercing stab in his leg — the rusty steel rods with a crack burst through the dense flesh of his thigh. Snorting from the unbearable pain, Azul lowered the machine gun, gripping it in one hand, and convulsively reached for the damaged thigh. The moment his fingers touched the rusty metal, he felt a wild flash of pain: as though an icy storm wind had struck directly against his exposed nerves. The wave of pain that engulfed him passed through his entire body and struck right into his head, causing a sharp clouding of his vision; it seemed to him that this cursed rusty metal had grown so deeply that it had become part of his own nervous system.
"Damn… I'll have to go back to that crazy bastard Hojo so he can patch me up… That damned pathetic weakling still managed to do something to me. But the second time this number won't work for him. I'll become even stronger!" Azul spat with dull irritation, sharply jerking his hand away from the rusty stakes protruding from his thigh.
"There won't be a second time for you. And you won't become stronger either. Because corpses don't become stronger… That's what makes them corpses," rang out Alex's calm and indifferent voice right above Azul's head.
Hearing the voice directly above him, Azul threw his head back and met the gaze of Alex's iridescent rainbow eyes as the latter stood completely horizontally on the smooth wall right above him. Baring his sharp teeth in a predatory smile, Alex gave Azul not a single chance to react and instantly drove the smouldering thin cigar straight into the giant's eye socket.
Feeling a wild, searing pain in the injured eye, Azul screamed deafeningly and instinctively dropped his massive machine gun from weakened fingers. Convulsively clutching his burned face, Azul began chaotically swinging his free arm in every direction, blindly smashing everything around him.
Alex, meanwhile, unhurriedly jumped down from the wall and easily dodged Azul's clumsy lunges, gradually approaching the machine gun lying on the marble floor. Seizing the heavy weapon by the barrel, Alex with a light pushing motion of his finger knocked aside another approaching fist of Azul's, forcing the latter to lose his balance and collapse flat onto the floor.
Planting a foot on Azul's stomach so as not to let him rise, Alex raised the heavy machine gun overhead, not ceasing to smile for a second. Roaring with inhuman rage and piercing pain, Azul clutched at Alex's leg, trying to break the enemy's limb or at least throw him aside. Yet no matter how much he thrashed and strained his gigantic muscles, it seemed to him as though the irresistible force of gravity itself were pressing down on him from above.
Bestowing upon Azul one final brightest and maddest smile, Alex immediately brought the machine gun down with a swing straight onto his face. The very first crushing blow landed precisely on Azul's bridge of the nose, answering with a repulsive bone crunch and an entire fan of knocked-out teeth. Gripping the barrel of the machine gun even tighter, Alex began mercilessly delivering blow after blow to the enemy's face.
With every new impact the giant's head turned ever more into a solid mess of torn flesh, blood and crushed bones. Having completely smashed Azul's skull, Alex with a predatory snarl drove the massive machine gun with all his strength straight into the latter's ribcage, nailing the body dead to the marble slabs. Wiping a solitary drop of foreign blood from his cheek with a finger, Alex casually jumped off Azul's remains and headed toward the stairwell, cheerfully singing along to the rhythmic melody that continued to play in his earphones.
To be continued...
(Phew, I didn't think killing off some idiot would drag on like this. I had planned for two such idiots—members of the Tsviets—to die today, but as it turns out, that didn't happen. Oh well, we'll leave the second idiot's death for later and breeze past it in the next chapter, when Alex is making his way up the stairs to the others; along the way, he'll stop to exchange a few words with certain characters and shake them down for some Gil—just enough for pocket money. That's all for now. I'll also briefly touch upon Dean suffering through a tour he never signed up for, and then we'll quickly reach the main location where the group splits up again to protect Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge. Now, time to eat. Peace, love, and stairs are evil.)
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