The Usurper

"This is everything?" Detective King slumped down in his seat to not remain hidden the blue light from his cellphone, the only light in the pitch-black vehicle. "Yes. She didn't give us much, and what she did give us consisted of incoherent sobbing and questions about the nature of her disappearance." To the sound of the garbled voice, King's ravenous eyes roamed over the file in his hands.

A sheet of white paper with the credentials and criminal history of a woman named Angela Price. "Two unpaid parking tickets and a shoplifting charge. Not the most upstanding citizen, but that doesn't concern me." King leaned forward and glanced out the driver-side window. Nothing. His eyes scanned the empty parking lot before him. Nothing. He checked the back window and saw nothing but the barren lot of a long-abandoned K-Mart.

"You said she was with Kai Ken? The hero?" King ducked back down into the seat, satisfied with his search. "Yes. He's the one." The garbled voice replied. "SON OF A BITCH!!" The detective slammed his hands on the steering wheel, blaring a loud honk through the silent night. His heart railing against his chest, King looked through the empty lot again, watching for movement in the endless shadows. Nothing.

"That's on me. Nearly lost my cool." King sighed as he shrunk back into his chair. "Yes, because you definitely keep a tight lid on it." The voice garbled. "Seeing as YOUR the idea man what's my angle?" "Your mission is simple: find out what her ability is and direct her to me. If we're quick, we can pass up Maven before he even has a chance to-" The call cut to static in an instant the, connection seemingly severed.

"Tity fuck!" His key was already in the ignition, so it was barely a second before Detective King revved up the car and blasted out of the lot, his bumper taking the full brunt of the handicapped sign he rammed through. "Good thing it's a rental!" He chuckled to himself, trying to ease himself of the tension.

"Thatsss fortunate, detective! When I splatter you all over the car, I'll be sure to pay the clean-up bill..." The woman's voice was predatory and even seductive but, none of that mattered now. Whatever this thing was had managed to slither onto the roof without him noticing but now that it was known...it was finished.

BANG! BANG! BANG! Three shots of Kings Bayonetta ripped through the ceiling, the metal bending to reveal nothing by a dark night's sky. "So that's where you are..." BANG! BANG! BANG! Three more shots rang out into the night, their course set and linear until something shining and white blocked the bullet's path.

SHRRIIIINNNGGGG!!

The sound was beautiful and mosaic as a god singing to its children. Everywhere the sound went, golden sparks collided against an invisible reflective surface as though the air itself were redirecting the bullets. SPLOOSH!! "HIIISSSSISSISS!!" A wave of relief washed over Detective King like a hot shower in winter. He hit his mark and now knew they were under the car.

Did she just...hiss at me? What's with Maven and his weird-ass lackeys!? King's silver eyes grew brighter and brighter, taking in all the light around them until the world itself reflected in his vision. Where are you, you wily bitch? The man bounced his vision off the side view mirror and then off the rims on his tires until his eyes had a visual of the creature below the car.

Or at least he should have.

"Did my bullet take her out? It couldn't have! I would have noticed if she had fallen off the car." There was a fork in the road at the bottom of the hill King found himself racing down. He pressed the brakes to slow his descent however the car ignored him.

"Oh, you have gotten to be kidding me! Seriously who is this crazy chick, and how do I get her number!?" The man quickly shoved his pistol into his trench coat as he shifted toward the driver's side door. "If you wanted my number, you could have just asssked." The womanly figure seemed to flick her tongue as she uttered that sentence, her voice having gone down to a mere whisper.

King was pulled into his seat unable to move because of the slithering substance binding his arm together. "What...are these!?!" Slithering slime, scaly skin, and a green complexion. "These...they're snakes! Slithering serpents and their binding me to the seat!!" The writhing serpents pulled King further into the seat, his throat constricted and his eyes losing light with each moment.

"I dislike that word, 'ssserpent.' A serpent is what betrayed Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden." The bottom of the hill rapidly approached, and the speeding vehicle only gained momentum as it rocketed down the road. "That is where me and the ssserpent differ. I can be trusted where he could not. I always do what I say I will, and I won't plot behind your back to boot!" The woman poked her head from behind the seat, her ruby eyes boring into King.

Green scaly flesh and razor-sharp fangs but more than that, she had thousands of ravenous snakes for hair and a predatory gaze that told King the only thing he needed. Was it that she'd kill him? That she was a freak of nature and something he needed to defeat? No. It was nothing that mundane.

"My God, your the hottest thing I've ever seen in my life." It feels like all of the detective's potential lovers want his head on a platter. But then again, that list was pretty long to start with. "You know...If I'm gonna die I don't mind it that much if it's going to be someone like you." King grimaced as the snakes around his throat tightened their poison-dipped fangs primed to rip his throat from his neck.

"Is what I'd say if I were a lovestruck fool!" King proclaimed as his foot slammed on the seat's reclining lever. The seat pushed back immediately until the man had his back to the floor, the snakes wrapping around his body yanked along with him. "Chivlary's never been my thing." King blasted his foot into the monster's chest her reptilian body colliding with the steering wheel just as the car reached the fork in the road.

The car spun to the left and away from the railing just as the serpent-like figure righted herself. "I've sent plenty of girls to the nightosphere!" The detective drew his pistol ready to his foe with a quick pull of the trigger. "DIE! Enjoy the relief that death will-" His hand wouldn't move. In fact, he couldn't feel his hand at all!

"What now..." King looked at his hand and froze at what he saw. Grey and unmoving, his hand encased in stone was free from his control as the concrete substance traveled up his body like a plague. "Now I see! I know what you are!" King winced as the woman pressed his throat against the floor, her grip strength inhuman as he struggled to move under her weight. "Your ability...somehow you've been turned into that curr from Greek myths! Medusa!!"

"These inhuman abilities of ours are getting out of hand! Now they're reaching into the depths of Greek mythology to come up with wicked machinations like this. Damn it! Just how many people has Maven gotten to!? "

Arthur king cursed himself into the night as his jaw and soon the rest of his skull turned to marble his, train of thought falling off the tracks as his brain slowed to a halt. His fate was left to this slithering curr and her monster-like capabilities.