Culwych1

The Green Death: Chapter 7 - UNALIVE!!! Continued from: Part 1: Killer Croc vs King Shark Part 2: Zombie Spider-Man vs Vampire Batman Part 3: Brainiac vs Iron Man Part 4: The Tenth Doctor vs John Constantine Part 5: Interlude – Chaos vs Discord Part 6: Mordius vs Sabretooth --------------------------------------------------- When the apocalypse came, it came not from the skies or with a ranging fire as was prophesied. It came instead invisibly, transmitting from person to person, without any symptoms and without any pain until it was too late. The Green Death they called it; after the gentle hue of the skin of the infected, and our greatest minds could do nothing to stop or even slow it. Every mammal was infected, even the aliens. Human, Kryptonian, Amazonian, Asgardian or Mutant; they nearly all fell. It spread quicker that we could have anticipated, seeming to transmit as quickly by water as it could by air or touch. Our leaders and heroes were gone before we even knew there was a danger, and the world seemed to turn on itself. Countries blamed each other, or pointed the finger at outsiders and what the virus had not ravaged, we destroyed ourselves. Nukes, lasers, and energy blasts levelled cities, and the skies burned red with the fires of destruction. And just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. The Green Death wasn't finished with us yet. From the mass graveyards and condemned houses, the dead rose once again. They shuffled, walked and ran, driven by a primordial need to consume flesh. Mindlessly they hunted us down and dragged us kicking and screaming out of our hiding places and ripped us to shreds. About one in a one thousand of us was immune, and we banded together in small groups to see out this apocalypse. In the ruined husks of our great cities, we run, hide, forage, and die. This is our life now. --------------------------------------------------- When the apocalypse came, Frankenstein’s monster felt almost relieved. Not happy. Never happy. Happiness seemed to be something men were born with, but not him. Relieved, yes. Because at last the world had fallen and seen the true ugliness that it has always thought was him. The world had always hated him. Now it hated everything. The cities were burned bones. The roads were black veins across a dead land. The sky hung low and grey, swollen with smoke from fires that had never properly gone out. In the ruins of civilisation, the dead wandered and the living hid, and the great Creature moved between both worlds as something neither side truly understood. Beside him walked the Bride. Tall, pale, silent, beautiful in the way lightning is beautiful when it strikes a church. Her black hair rose in wild streaks from her head, white lightning frozen inside it. Her eyes were bright and terrible. She walked with dignity through the filth of the world, stepping over corpses as though crossing a ballroom floor. The Green Death had not taken them. How could it? They were not alive enough to die. Nor dead enough to rise. They were something else. Unalive. The Creature liked that word. He had found it painted on the side of an overturned army truck months ago, sprayed there by some survivor with a sense of humour and no future. UNALIVE!!! Three exclamation marks. He had stared at it for a long time. Then he had laughed until the Bride placed one long hand on his arm and told him, without words, that enough was enough. Now they lived in the wasteland beyond Las Vegas, where the desert had swallowed the roads and the dead shuffled beneath a sun that looked diseased. They had made a home in an old roadside chapel. The roof was half gone, the pews smashed for firewood, and the crucifix above the altar hung sideways as though even God had lost interest. But the walls were thick, and the dead rarely came this far in numbers. The Creature had built a gate from car doors, fencing, and the ribcage of a tour bus. The Bride had planted flowers in rusted tins. Nothing grew. Still, every morning she watered them. That was love, he thought. Was it? Not the success of the growing flowers, or the beauty they held, but the attempt. That attempt, whether beauty was captured or not, was love. On the day everything changed, the Creature was dragging a dead deer back from the highway. It was thin and rotten, but not yet spoiled beyond use. They did not need food in the way humans had, but hunger still lived in them like an old memory. He could eat. She sometimes did. More often she watched him with faint amusement, as though he were a dog worrying at a boot. He was halfway to the chapel when the desert went quiet. That was the first warning. The dead made noise. Always. Even alone, they groaned and clicked and dragged themselves across stone. The wind made noise too, scratching sand against metal, whispering through broken signs. Now there was nothing. The Creature dropped the deer. He turned slowly. Far out across the cracked highway, figures were walking toward him. Not shuffling. Walking. That was wrong. The ordinary dead had no grace. They lurched and stumbled, puppets pulled by hunger. These moved with purpose. The first figure who approached was huge, broad-shouldered, grey-skinned, and powerful. His body was marked with scars and old wounds, yet he carried himself like a king crossing his own hall. Beside him walked a woman. The Creature felt the Bride appear behind him before he heard her. She had come from the chapel silently, drawn by the same unnatural stillness. The woman approaching them was dead, but not broken. She wore the remnants of a life that had once been savage and regal. Her eyes were bright with intelligence, and something like cruelty. Her mouth curled faintly as she saw the Bride, as if recognising a rival before a word had been spoken. The Creature rumbled deep in his chest. The Bride placed a hand against him. Wait. So he waited. The dead king stopped twenty feet away. For a moment no one moved. Four impossible beings stood beneath the poisoned sky. Two made by science, stitched together from corpses and lightning. Two made by infection, raised from death into something stronger and stranger than the mindless hordes. The king looked at the chapel. Then at the gate. Then at the Bride. Finally he looked at the Creature and smiled. It was not a friendly smile. It was the smile of one predator finding another in his territory. The Creature spoke first. “Go.” His voice was thick, heavy, rusted by disuse. The dead king tilted his head. The woman beside him made a sound low in her throat, almost laughter. The Creature stepped forward. “Go,” he said again. The king answered with a RROOOAAAARR that rolled across the desert like thunder. The Creature hesitated, but the Bride moved then. Not back. Forward. Her pale dress dragged through the dust as she came to stand beside the Creature. She looked at the dead queen, and the dead queen looked back. There was no more doubt that there would be no negotiation nor diplomacy here today. In the remnants of a broken world plagued with unspeakable horrors, four unalive beings launched themselves at each other with nothing but death on their minds.

Congrats @JohnnyChany!

Brilliant to see this continuing. Yamcha definitely doesn't get enough praise as a character. He should take this.

Ah darn, that 4.2 hit me hard @Twogunkid - was looking forward to possibly facing you in the final! Still, no grumbling as @JohnnyChany, that was a fantastic entry! Well played and good luck both; looking forward to reading your next entries.

Nice one and thanks! It's always good to see cryptids and folklore creatures in the database. Like @Boratz says, they are fun to see used.

It's always surprising when obvious matchups haven't been done before! A good setup, and I think Bullseye takes this.

Came for the matchup, stayed for the cooking 😆. Hannibal all the way.

Darn, I may be away when the next round comes up (if by some miracle I got through). Here's my entry anyway - CRYPTID AND FOLKLORIC MAYHEM! Enjoy.

Incident Repot 003-A Location: Classified Designation: Alpha Base 003 Interview with: [Classified – Alias: Dave] Date: [Classified] Interviewer: So tell us how this first started? Dave: I nearly jumped out of my skin when the alarm started blaring. It was so loud. The hot coffee I held in my right hand sloshed over my fingers, and I jumped again because of that, which only made me spill more. “What the f…” I started, but [Classified – Alias: Melanie] immediately shushed me. She was my supervisor and had worked at [Classified] far longer than the three days I had. Interviewer: Go on. Dave: Right. So. Three days in. I still didn’t know where the proper toilets were, I’d signed a bunch of documents, was being shown around and then the alarm went off. Not the ordinary test one. This was different somehow. Everything turned red. Red lights. Red shutters. Red emergency signs flashing messages like RUN HIDE BARRICADE and DO NOT ENGAGE. Which was comforting, because I had absolutely no intention of engaging with anything. Melanie grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the kitchenette into Corridor Epsilon. People were already running. Scientists, guards, handlers, one bloke carrying a printer for some reason. Everyone had that same look on their face. The one that says, I know exactly how I’m going to die and I’m furious about it. I asked Melanie what was happening. She said, “Containment breach.” I said, “Containment of what?” She gave me a look and says “All the things in the manual!” That was the moment I realised I did not work for a normal organisation, and that I should dhave read the manual. We reached a security station where Raj from security was fumbling with a console, Ellis the accountant had blood on her sleeve, and Donna, the veterinary specialist, was loading shells into a shotgun. I asked why the vet had a shotgun. Donna said, “Because the tranquiliser guns don’t work on these things.” Then the ceiling came down. A huge white arm punched through the concrete, grabbed a fleeing guard, and yanked him up so fast his shoes stayed behind. He had time to shout, “Wha..” before the word ended in a wet crunch and blood sprayed out of the hole. That was my first sight of the Yeti. It dropped into the corridor in a storm of dust and sparks. Massive. Fur like a polar bear’s coat, but stained red. Teeth like broken paving slabs. It smelled like frozen meat left to die twice. One guard fired at it. The bullets went into its chest. The Yeti looked down, annoyed, then slapped him hard enough to turn his head completely round the other way with a sickening ‘crack’. Donna fired the shotgun into its eye. The eye burst and it blinked angrily. A fresh eye pushed out of the ruined socket like the thing had simply misplaced the first one. That was when I understood what “unkillable” meant. Melanie shoved us through a side door into the stairwell. The Yeti hit the door so hard the metal bowed inwards. We ran down three levels, nearly slipping over bits of [Classified – Alias: Unknown], who had apparently met something worse on the landing. We found out what when we hit Sublevel Five. The lights died. Emergency strips came on. Wet footsteps echoed in the dark. The Draug emerged from the flood tunnel like a drowned king. It was a huge figure of a man, bloated with black water, skin hanging in strips, barnacles embedded in its flesh. Its beard dripped. Its eyes shone blue. In one hand it carried a rusted sword the size of a door. Three guards were facing it. One already had no arm. Another was praying while trying to reload. The third charged. The Draug removed his head with one lazy swing. No effort. No pause. Just off. The head hit the wall like a dropped melon, and rolled slowly towards us. The arm-less guard slipped in his own blood. The Draug stepped on his chest, and the ribcage gave way with a crack like furniture collapsing. Raj whispered, “Can it be stopped?” Ellis said, “Not traditionally.” Donna said, “I’m sick of tradition.” We ran. Something skittered over our heads, moving across the ceiling with horrible speed. It dropped onto a researcher behind us and went at his throat, spraying blood all over the wall like some manic painter. The Chupacabra. Grey skin stretched too tight. Spines down its back. Red eyes. A mouth that opened in the wrong number of directions. It latched on and drank him like a kid drinking his first capri-sun. Donna shouted, “Don’t let it get your neck!” Useful advice, that. Up there with avoid dying. Melanie rammed a trolley into it, tangling its limbs. Ellis smashed a fire extinguisher over its skull. Foam exploded everywhere, making it look briefly like a demonic trifle. Then it shrieked and came for us again. We bolted into the old chapel. Interviewer: The base had a chapel? Dave: Of course it had a chapel. People who build underground prisons for immortal monsters like to hedge their bets. We barred the door with whatever we could find, and then something knocked from the other side. Softly. A woman’s voice said, “Please. Let me in.” Nobody moved. Then it said, in Melanie’s exact voice, “Dave, open the door.” Melanie was standing next to me. Ellis whispered, “Aswang.” It came in through the stained glass window as we were looking the other way. Female-shaped, sort of. Thin as a rake and with a face almost human, which somehow made it worse. Its jaw opened to the chest. A long black tongue slid out first, tasting the air. Raj fired at it, but nothing happened Donna hurled blessed salt from an emergency canister, which of course every workplace has, and the thing hissed as the grains burned its flesh. Melanie drove an iron candle stand through its ribs and pinned it to a pew. It laughed while it burned. First in Melanie’s voice, then mine, then in a child’s. We ran again. By now the whole base was falling apart. Smoke in the corridors. Sprinklers going. Distant screams. Near screams. Overhead, something large moved in the vents. Then came the smell. Rot. Pine. Winter. Hunger. The Wendigo unfolded itself into the canteen from above the serving hatch. Too tall, even bent over. Antlers scraping the ceiling. Limbs like stripped branches. Chest sunken around an ember-red glow. Mouth full of too many teeth and all of them interested. It landed on one of the cooks and fed so messily that I won’t describe it because it still makes me feel sick. Raj hurled a propane canister. Donna shot it. The explosion engulfed the Wendigo in flame. It came out still burning and was still smiling horribly, with bits of chef stuck in its teeth. Ellis started crying. Properly crying now, not the brave kind. The doomed kind. Melanie slapped her and said, “We are getting to the surface lift.” So that became the plan. We nearly made it. Then we met the Rougarou. At first I thought it was a man. Big, naked, covered in blood, crouched over a body in the corridor. Then it looked up. Yellow eyes. Wolf teeth. Skin rippling as if it couldn’t settle on one shape. One hand human, the other clawed. It smiled at us like a friendly bloke in a pub and then bit the corpse’s face off. “Run,” Ellis said. The Rougarou came after us on all fours, laughing as it moved. That was the worst thing about it. Not rage. Joy. It was having a marvellous time. It sprang off the walls, caught a guard, and opened him from throat to groin in one movement. Then it paused to sniff the mess as if deciding whether it wanted seconds. We scrambled through a blast door. Raj and Donna hauled it shut while Ellis worked the crank. The Rougarou’s claw shot through the narrowing gap and slashed my forearm. It felt like acid under my skin. Donna bandaged it and said, “If you start craving raw liver, tell me.” I thought she was joking. She was not. We reached the surface lift with the sort of luck usually reserved for lottery winners and people who should definitely not have driven home. The cage took six. We had five. Melanie hit the controls. As the lift rose, every single thing we’d fled came after us. The Yeti climbed the shaft below us. The Wendigo bounded after it. The Chupacabra ran along the cable. The Aswang crawled upside down across the supports. Black water surged below with the Draug. And somewhere in it all came the Rougarou’s delighted howling. Raj fired until the pistol clicked empty. Donna threw the last of the blessed salt. Ellis muttered from her notes in some dead language that made the lights burst. Melanie stood at the gate with a fire axe and hacked at anything that got close. The Chupacabra got into the cage first. It fastened onto Raj’s throat. Donna jammed her hand into its mouth to save him and lost two fingers for the effort. Melanie buried the axe in its back and kicked it into the shaft. Raj died in less than half a minute as he was pulled horribly through the bars by his throat. Then the Aswang’s tongue whipped through the bars and dragged Ellis halfway out. Melanie hacked through the tongue, and Ellis fell back into the cage minus most of her calf. Then the Yeti’s hand clamped round the floor grate and the lift stopped with a shuddering screech. Nobody said anything for a second. Then Donna looked up at the maintenance hatch and said, “We climb.” So we did. Melanie first. Then me. Then Ellis, half dead and crying. Donna last, covering us with Raj’s empty pistol out of what I can only describe as professional habit. We got onto the roof of the lift as the Wendigo tore through beneath us. Donna kicked off its antlers and hauled herself up. We scrambled through the hatch into the snowfield access tunnel near the surface. Yes, there was a snowfield. No, I don’t know why. Ask the maniacs who built the place. We burst outside into whiteout conditions, floodlights, helicopters, actual rescue. Melanie got Ellis into the evac crawler and Donna shoved me after them. Then the Yeti exploded up through the hatch behind us. Melanie turned with the axe in her hand. Donna shouted, “No heroic nonsense!” Melanie looked at us and I remember her saying with a sad smile, “Dave, if you survive this, get a better job.” Then she ran at it. A second later the Wendigo came up beside it, and behind them, in the smoke and snow, the others gathered too. The Chupacabra. The Aswang. The Draug. The Rougarou. The helicopters opened fire. The snow went red, but somehow the monsters kept coming. Donna shoved me into the crawler and slammed the hatch. Through the little reinforced window I saw Melanie disappear beneath white fur, antlers, claws, and black wings, and then the creatures turning on each other. I passed out at this point. Interviewer: How many survivors made it out? Dave: From our group? Me and Donna. Base-wide? I don’t know. Hundreds dead sounds about right. Interviewer: And your wound? Dave: It’s fine. Interviewer: Medical staff reported unusual healing. Dave: It itches. Interviewer: Have you experienced aggression, blackouts, heightened senses, cravings for raw meat, or compulsions during the full moon? Dave: That’s a suspiciously specific list. Interviewer: Answer the question. Dave: …I bit a nurse. Interviewer: Under what circumstances? Dave: She startled me. Interviewer: And before that? Dave: I could smell her pulse. I could hear it. I kept thinking how thin the bones in her wrist would be. Interviewer: Security, remain ready. Stay there Dave. Dave: Funny thing. I thought the first sign would be dramatic. Glowing eyes. Sudden transformation. Something theatrical. Instead it’s mostly the smell. You all smell amazing. [Pause in transcript: 3.8 seconds] Interviewer: Security…! Dave: Also, my teeth hurt. [End of formal transcript] Addendum - Incident Report 003-A At 21:14, interview subject [Classified – Alias: Dave] suffered rapid skeletal distortion, mandibular dislocation, dermal rupture and full behavioural collapse. Two security officers were killed immediately. One was disembowelled. One sustained catastrophic facial loss. Interviewer [Classified] also dead following cervical trauma. Observation glass was breached from the inside. Subject escaped into Ventilation Artery 6 while undergoing transformation consistent with Rougarou contamination. Pursuit team deployed. Pursuit team did not return. Recommendation remains unchanged: Alpha Base 003 is to be considered lost. Status of surviving folklore assets is unknown. Under no circumstances are staff to respond to crying voices, familiar voices, requests for help, or laughter in unlit corridors. Additional note from Director of Operations: For the avoidance of doubt, the staff pizza party scheduled for Friday has been cancelled.

The Green Death – Part 6 Savagery Continued from: Part 1: Killer Croc vs King Shark Part 2: Zombie Spider-Man vs Vampire Batman Part 3: Brainiac vs Iron Man Part 4: The Tenth Doctor vs John Constantine Part 5: Interlude – Chaos vs Discord (Note: no prior reading required) --------------------------------------------------- When the apocalypse came, it came not from the skies or with a ranging fire as was prophesied. It came instead invisibly, transmitting from person to person, without any symptoms and without any pain until it was too late. The Green Death they called it; after the gentle hue of the skin of the infected, and our greatest minds could do nothing to stop or even slow it. Every mammal was infected, even the aliens. Human, Kryptonian, Amazonian, Asgardian or Mutant; they nearly all fell. It spread quicker that we could have anticipated, seeming to transmit as quickly by water as it could by air or touch. Our leaders and heroes were gone before we even knew there was a danger, and the world seemed to turn on itself. Countries blamed each other, or pointed the finger at outsiders and what the virus had not ravaged, we destroyed ourselves. Nukes, lasers, and energy blasts levelled cities, and the skies burned red with the fires of destruction. And just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. The Green Death wasn't finished with us yet. From the mass graveyards and condemned houses, the dead rose once again. They shuffled, walked and ran, driven by a primordial need to consume flesh. Mindlessly they hunted us down and dragged us kicking and screaming out of our hiding places and ripped us to shreds. About one in a one thousand of us was immune, and we banded together in small groups to see out this apocalypse. In the ruined husks of our great cities, we run, hide, forage, and die. This is our life now. --------------------------------------------------- God I’m so hungry, thought the man as he walked down the abandoned Manhattan street. The city was a graveyard of glass and concrete. Wind pushed through the empty avenues, carrying with it the stale smell of rot and burnt metal. Old billboards still flickered occasionally, powered by forgotten generators somewhere beneath the streets, bathing the ruins in ghostly blue light that made the empty towers look like gravestones for a civilisation that had died screaming. Paper and ash skittered along the pavement in front of him. Somewhere in the distance a loose sign banged rhythmically against a wall, the hollow clang echoing through the canyon of buildings. He looked up at the sky, as he tended to do automatically now. It was the flying ones that caught you if you weren’t paying attention. He’d seen it too many times. One second someone would be talking, walking beside you, maybe even laughing at some desperate joke meant to keep the fear away. The next second something would scream down out of the clouds like a missile. Claws. Talons. Wings beating the air like thunder. Or simple strong hands, and a flash of a cape. Friends would be snatched off the street before anyone even realised what had happened. He’d watched one of his companions, a big guy named Luis who used to be a mechanic, lifted thirty feet into the air while the rest of them stood frozen in horror. The creature had torn him open before it even reached the rooftops. His blood had rained down on them. Maybe that was a fate better than this one, he thought to himself. Quick. Violent. Over before you had time to think. An existence of hiding and scavenging wasn’t much of a life. It was just hunger and fear stretched out day after day like some kind of cruel punishment. Searching abandoned stores that had been stripped clean months ago. Drinking rainwater that tasted faintly of rust and chemicals. Sleeping in stairwells with one eye open because sometimes the dead learned how to open doors. He sighed heavily. It just wasn’t in him to give up though. He had tried, once. Sat down in the middle of a street and waited for the end, staring up at the empty sky and daring the world to take him. Nothing had come. Eventually he’d stood up again. People like him just kept going. “I am so fucking hungry!” he said out loud, his voice carrying along the empty street. For a moment the only answer was the wind. And then, “So am I…” The voice was deep. Close. Right behind him. A shadow detached itself from the side of a building and fell upon the man with terrifying speed. Fangs bit deep into his neck, drawing blood. The man barely had time to grunt before his strength drained away like water through cracked glass. His legs folded beneath him and his hands clawed weakly at the air as the world tilted sideways. Morbius drank as much as he could without killing the man and let him fall gently to the floor to lie unconscious. He wiped a smear of blood from his mouth and inhaled slowly. The hunger was worse tonight. It was always there now, a gnawing emptiness that never truly faded. It lived somewhere deep in his bones, scratching at the inside of his mind like an animal trapped in a cage. The few remaining humans were scattered across continents now, hiding in holes like frightened animals. Weeks could pass between the scent of living blood, sometimes longer. His hunger was satisfied now, but barely. Already he could feel it rising again, the cruel cycle beginning anew. The taste of blood never lasted. It only reminded the body of what it wanted more of. Morbius closed his eyes for a moment. Once he had been a man of science. A doctor. A researcher who believed that knowledge and discipline could solve any problem. But that man was gone now. The world had burned away everything except the monsters. Morbius opened his eyes again and froze. Something else was here. The smell hit him like a hammer. Not human. Not undead. Something older. Something feral. He could smell old blood and savagery clinging to the air like a storm waiting to break. Morbius turned slowly. Across the street a line of abandoned taxis sat rusting where they had collided during the final evacuations. Their broken windows stared out like empty eyes. From the darkness behind them came a low chuckle. “Well now,” a voice growled. “That’s interesting.” The shape that stepped out from behind the taxis was enormous. Six and a half feet of muscle and violence, wrapped in the ragged remains of a combat harness. Long blond hair hung wild around a face that looked as though it had been carved from granite with a knife. Victor Creed rolled his shoulders slowly, the joints cracking like gunshots in the silence. He looked around the dead street with casual interest before his yellow eyes settled on Morbius. “Been a while since I saw something alive that wasn’t trying to eat my face off,” he said with a grin. “You smell… different.” Morbius regarded him calmly. “You are not infected.” Sabretooth laughed. “Virus tried. Didn’t take.” He tapped his chest with a claw, the curved blade making a faint metallic sound as it scraped against his harness. “Turns out this healing factor of mine doesn’t like competition.” Morbius tilted his head slightly, studying him. Sabretooth was already studying him back. The grin never left Sabretooth’s face. “You know what I really miss?” he said conversationally. Morbius waited. “What?” “Hunting.” The word hung between them for a fraction of a second, and then Sabretooth moved. The street exploded into motion as the massive mutant lunged forward, claws flashing in the dead blue light of the flickering billboards, the grin on his face widening as he launched himself toward the pale figure standing in the middle of the empty Manhattan avenue. Morbius didn’t retreat; instead, he simply smiled, baring his fangs as he stepped forward to meet the charge.

I ain't got much time to dedicate but it feels rude to leave this with odd number of contestants...

Happy New Year guys! Hope 2026 is a good one.

You get a few episodes of "surviving random alien planet" most seasons of Dr Who - he's definitely got this. Easy win for him even though, for a human, Clara is surprisingly good at this.

Love how that's all that you really needed to contribute to this one 😆😆😆. A perfect pick to terrain combo.