Impossible Odds: Arthur & Spiral | The Game Has Changed

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Spiral finds Arthur in Nevada, but the situation quickly spins out of control.

Arthur had a lot of faith in this motel.

True, it was a seedy two-story affair off a forgotten highway near Markleeville, but the place had character. And aspirations. And fire doors. The charming, curmudgeonly receptionist had not even batted an eye at Arthur showing up half-caked in mud and with a missing boot, and that kind of service was surely sign of good things to come. Plus, they accepted pets and the weather was beginning to get too bad to travel by foot.

True, it sat dangerously close to the highway. The faux-cheerful flower images on the walls vibrated every time a truck passed. The faucet dripped and the interior boasted a design aesthetic not updated since the 70s.

The television star had vainly hoped that this sort of affair would serve an excellent camouflage against LA-Types or other people with higher standards. Alas.

"I had a lot of faith in this motel," Arthur readily admitted to icy blonde woman standing in the doorway.

"Put not your faith in princes, lover," Spiral purred from where she stood. "Nor even in small nonsequential portraits of dead presidents." She strolled languidly toward Arthur and smiled. It was the assured smile of someone who knew that everything was under control — her control. "No matter what the advertisements try to tell you, money can buy anything if there are enough zeroes on the end."

Three rather large men stepped into the room behind her, closing the door with a soft snick before forming a semi-circle around Spiral as she approached Arthur. Two of them wore bored expressions. The third, on the other hand, smiled almost gleefully.

Arthur had, by this point, graduated into an anxiety attack. There were two twin beds between him and the intruders, but this gave the now visibly trembling actor little consolation. The man held out a utility blade hesitantly, feet set back into a kickboxing position.

"I didn't leave a trail. How did you find me?"

A sympathetic bark came from the bathroom.

"You should know better by now," Spiral said, a bit more sternly, but still with that undertone of sensuality that seemed to pervade everything she did. "Mojo always gets what he wants." She tapped her manicured nails against her thigh. "As fun as this little chase has been, it's time for you to come back to your duties," she told Arthur.

"You're on contract, after all."

"No, no more. I remember everything you've done to me," he lied poorly, but the edge to his words was no act. "I just haven't figured out the why."

Spiral's reply was a full-throated laugh. "Why?" If he actually remembered half of the things that had been done, he wouldn't have asked why. Curled up in a corner weeping, perhaps. "Because we -could-. Because you asked for it. Because Mojo is an alien who wishes to dominate the television industry. Because you killed a man. Because you turned me down." She snorted derisively. "Asking 'why' is for children."

Arthur had no direct comeback for that, especially since his ears chose that moment to start ringing in advance of an oncoming migraine. He puts his fingers to temples instead in an effort to stem the building pressure. A vein twitched above his left eye. It took a few strained breaths for him to compose himself.

"I guess it doesn't matter why, just let me buy out my contract. You cannot force me to do anything," he pleaded.

Arthur's television set erupted in a burst of static, then sharpened to show an image of a very familiar man behind a desk. "And what kind of businessman would I be if I let people buy their way out of a contract?" Mojo asked, making a tsk sound of disappointment. "That's just bad business, my boy." He leaned over the desk, his jovial expression disappearing. "I -own- you, son."

The star jumped when the television switched on, but fear was soon replaced with confusion as he switched focus between Spiral and Mojo in disbelief. He pointed at the television incredulously, "Oh come on. That's just ridiculous."

"Closed circuit television. Greatest invention since the Coliseum," Mojo quipped before waving a hand at someone off-screen and the feed going black.

"As amusing as watching you flail about has been, it's time to go," Spiral said, with a nod toward the goons.

The men stepped forward as unit, two closing in on Arthur's right, one on his left. "You heard the lady," one grunted, reaching for the reality star's arm. "Best make this as easy as — "

Arthur's eye flared, star-bright, and the unseen tumblers of reality began to click into place one by...

One. There was a sharp squeal of metal as pipes burst across the exterior walls of the motel.

By one. And a snap as the new spray of water sparked against exposed electrical wire hidden behind the television.

By one. Yet none of these sounds were as loud as the sound of metal on cement as a mack truck careened off the highway overpass and into the side of the motel, its driver asleep at the wheel.

Spiral flinched at the loud screech of metal sliding across asphalt, and the flinch turned into her disappearing from the room.

The flunkies, on the other hand, weren't so lucky, and they were batted across the room like ragdolls by the truck's chassis. They hit the far wall with a trio of thuds followed by the crackle of bones breaking. The truck kept sliding toward Arthur, coming to a halt a foot away.

Centino, however, had fallen on his knees. The world was ringing in his ears, and all he could do was hold his head and repeat "Stay away. Stay away. Stay away."

The rest of the motel began to disintegrate slowly from one unfortunate event or another as if in answer. Any flaw in construction or missed inspection or overdue repair rebounded and redoubled, spreading fire and flood as the once peaceful Nevada establishment morphed into a disaster area.

The goons managed to pick themselves up off the floor in varying stages of 'ow, fuck, that hurt like hell' before nodding to one another and heading for Arthur to bag and tag him. They didn't know what was going on, but they had a job to do — and you didn't fail when Mojo gave you a job. You just didn't.

However, none of them could seem to get close enough to Arthur to get a hand on him despite the fact that he wasn't actually moving. One man placed his hand on the wall to brace himself only to have the sheetrock crumble beneath it, tumbling him into the unoccupied room next door. Another reached for a lamp, miraculously unscathed, to conk Arthur over the head only to have the wiring short out and the bulb shatter, sending hundreds of tiny fragments of glass raining over his hands and arms. When he tried to brush them off, he left tiny gouges in his flesh that quickly began to seep blood. The third took a step forward, carefully skirting debris, only to have his efforts at avoiding disaster foiled when he put his weight on his left foot and the floor gave way beneath him.

Spiral reappeared in the room, looking around herself at the carnage Arthur's power had wrought. She frowned. "Arthur—" she began sternly, only to be cut off as she had to teleport away from a tire that picked that exact time to burst and send heated rubber spraying at the place where she had stood. "You need to-" she began again from a spot on the other side of the room, and then cut off and teleported away again as exposed wiring whipsawed out of the drywall. "Dammit, you little prick-" she snarled, her perfect composure finally rattled.

And had to disappear a final time as the liquid nitrogen the truck was carrying cut loose and froze over a third of the room.

This was punctuated with a sharp whine from the bath that finally snapped Arthur's attention back to the scene at hand. The tableau seemed to freeze in bated breath as the man took a deep breath, the chaos slowing to sync with the pulsing star in the man's eye.

Then he moved.

A tuck and roll easily cleared the freezing carpet as Arthur utilized the space created by the third thug's fall. He landed in a crouching position in the room below, perched the hood of the truck to face the miraculously preserved cab and, consequently, the sleepy driver.

Arthur smiled and waved. The driver, who had been desperately trying to remove himself from the suspended cab, hesitantly waved back as water and liquid nitrogen dripped through the ceiling and the smell of burning carpet and upholstery filled the air.

A shot rang as the third goon recovered enough to take in the exchange on unsteady feet. The bullet, however, was ill aimed.

Several things happened very, very quickly.

The lanky, blond man dove into the cab, scooping the trucker into the best fireman's hold he could manage while kicking open the passenger's side door. The momentum of the blast helped tremendously, spiraling the two men into the bathroom.

The other door struck the third goon hard, barreling both him in the opposite direction through what had been, once, a fire door.

Then the world roared as flames engulfed the truck and motel and the blast brought down the highway-facing side of the building in a reign of debris.

Underneath the shelter provided by a tub that had done a one-eighty due to a water main burst, Arthur took a second to shrug at the now terrified, truck driver. Felix, who had fallen from above into what had become their improbable refuge, gave the man a sympathetic lick.

Spiral's lips were curled in a snarl. She was quick enough to react to the chaos that surrounded Arthur, and keep it from hurting her. But conversely, Arthur's power made it such that she couldn't get close enough to lay a hand on him. And if she couldn't touch him, she couldn't take him back to Mojo. And if she couldn't take him back to Mojo...things would be very ugly for her.

The three under the tub could hear her scattered teleports, but it was hard to discern where exactly the blonde women was over the sound of fire and collapsing building.

The truck driver was falling apart in his own way. He sat, eyes closed, and mumbled about how they were all going to die and how he didn't deserve to die and how his wife would kill him if he died. Arthur, however, was never one to turn down a moment to help. He grabbed the trucker's shoulders to make the distraught man face him, and then the television star smiled his trademark grin. "Don't worry. Stay here. I'll distract her. Help is on the way."

The driver, wide-eyed, wasn't really listening. "Why is your eye glowing?"

Arthur winked and rolled out from under the tub, right into Spiral's vision. He yelled, frantically, "I'm not going back!"

As if on cue, a puppy dashed in front of her and Arthur made a wild lunge after it. The lunge took him just out of Spiral's reach and out the motel's one remaining exit.