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GoldenEyessss poster - art by Neiru, scene by Ame
by Amethystine
Writer of Wrongs
5 years ago
Original artwork by 
NEIRU, check out her post of this fabulous piece, here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/29597706/
This is based upon this poster: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1o47vqsx9.....neye4.jpg?dl=0
~
This one means a lot to me.
25 years ago tonight, on November 13th, 1995, GoldenEye had its gala premiere at Radio City Music Hall, in New York City.
~
Admittedly, I personally had no idea about all this and actually would not see GoldenEye until the summer of 1997, on home video. I rented it (or my mother did, at my request, I suppose!) thanks to my interest in the Nintendo 64 game of the same name.
In any case, this movie was the first Bond film that I saw. For that reason alone, it is very important to me, and the fact that it's such a good movie doesn't hurt, either. It remains in the quantum super-position of 'basically my favourite Bond film' alongside Casino Royale and Skyfall. There is no definitive favourite for me, of course. Like electrons, the top three shift about, the swapping of positions impossible to discern.
I'm sure, if I hadn't played the GoldenEye game or if I hadn't bothered to watch GE or Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997 and then encountered Bond later in life - perhaps when Casino Royale came out in 2006, I would still be a fan. But not the same level of fan. No, it was the perfect confluence of factors, in '97 to cause me to have such affection for the series.
It's not as though fate or the universe requires me to be a huge Bond devotee or anything. If things had happened another way and I was only mildly interested in the adventures of the agent known as 007, I'm sure I would be just fine.
But I'm happy I'm here, and I'm happy to have the series in my life for as long as I have.
It's entirely possible that some ripple-effect of idolizing Bond is what caused me to eventually create the persona of 'Amethystine' (long before Ames Sond, of course), or at least write him the way that I do, with witty repartee in mind.
Or, perhaps without me having grown attached to 007 when I did, I would not have had the confidence to explore certain online communities that would contribute/lead to me being here, on FA.
~
All that aside, I present to you both the GoldenEyessss poster, above.. and part of the prologue, below.
Enjoy! :}===<
(Sidenote: On the poster,
Amaranth's character, Sheba Windstorm is in the role of Xenia Onatopp, on the right.
And, in the scene below,
Python_yuanty's Kalisster Ssin is in the role of 'Kalicster Sevelyan'
A big thanks to both of them for lending me their characters.)
~~~~~~~~~~~
GoldenEyessss - Overture - transcribed by Amethystine
~
~~
~
It all begins, as it has sixteen times previously:
A white circle moves from the left side of the screen to the right, leaving fading, disappearing circles behind it in its unwavering path across the field of view. After it passes out of sight, it returns, expanded, granting us a view into its world.
A world seen through the spiral-rifled barrel of a gun.
Through it, you see a serpent in a suit - or at least in the upper half of said outfit. He is slithering toward the left. Our circular view of the tall, handsome figure, follows him on his path. Therefore, so too does the gun through which we look.
Without warning, the naga - now in the very middle of the screen - whips his upper body to face us, readying and firing a gun he was certainly not holding a moment beforehand. A familiar musical theme plays as blood trickles down over all that we perceive.
Whoever aimed to kill this snake is as good as dead.
Our circular view wavers and sinks downward to one side, before the red haze fades and we see fully through the circular view, into this world of secrets and spies.
~~~
A small single-prop plane flies over an immense dam.
Judging by the nature of the trees in the surrounding forested mountainous land, this is somewhere remote, and considerably northern, perhaps nearing the arctic circle.
The sputtering whine of the plane's engine is the only noise for miles - the sound of it echoes between the steep landscape on either side of the vast gorge, and is lost within the abyssal depths that exist on either side of the gargantuan curving wall that constitutes the dam.
Although the plane moves quickly by its very nature, it seems to move achingly slowly in passing over the dam - which is a testament to the mega-structure's size.
But once the patroling flyer is past, and its sound fades into the distance, there is another noise, faint in the grand space: The soft jangle of a wire-link fence gate trundling open upon a simple track, atop one side the dam.
Bursting through the opened gate, a serpentine figure clad snout-to-tailtip in black tactical gear rushes with all possible side-winding speed, toward the centre of the dam. His clothing makes its own noises, that of rattling metal clasps and the soft thuds of rope jostled against itself.
Owning to the specialized serpentine suit, the gloves and even a snout-form-fitting balaclava with built-in goggles, not a single scale is shown upon the naga.
Who else, but 00S, Ames Sond?
The fast fluid flow of his legless form carries him swiftly to the single break in the railing on the waterless side of the dam. There is a small outlook platform here, the naga's apparent destination.
Only slightly slowing, the snake snaps a carabiner into place around the last metal pole within the railing as he passes it. Trailing the rope he's anchored, he surges to the end of the railing on the other side of the platorm and does the same there, then recoils to snap backwards, centering himself in front of the slightly elevated central platform.
Twisting around, the python tosses the thick bundle of rope over the front of the platform. The dual-anchored length unravels, revealing that it is a unique double-barrelled cord, only forked apart at the end to reach the two railing-edges the naga secured it to.
As the dozens of feet of rope unfurl with gravity's pull below him, the naga mounts the platform and turns to his tail. A series of thick belt-like structures are built into the last three meters his black suit, with heavy-duty protruding loops aligned over the middle of his belly.
The beginning of the forked rope is already threaded through these seven rigid hasps, which are large enough to allow the double-rope pass loosely and freely through them. He tests it, pulling hard to make the rope zip flawlessly through the hard plastic-rubber polymer.
He takes only a moment to ready himself, standing his torso up at the edge of the platform, extending his arms.
The naga needs to disappear before the shift change places a fresh pair of guards atop the dam. Luckily they didn't seem to care about the predictable minute of guard absense that happened at this time, each day.
With that need in mind, the serpent flexes down slightly before launching his upper body skyward, creating a long flowing arc of snake body in the air, the rest of his form pushing upward and diving down, to avoid being wrenched down by the departure and descent of his torso.
In an instant, he is gone, the only sign of his being here are the two carabiners anchoring the forked ends of the dual-rope, and the crux of the fork itself hanging off the front of the platform itself.
Below, the serpentine spy, his body pointing straight as an arrow earthward, plummets toward the rocky death that awaits him at the bottom of the dry riverbed.
A slightly sooner demise lies above the bottom: There is a just as lethally solid rooftop for the operative to crash into. It speeds toward his masked snout while the rope screams its way through the seven hasps, rattling the reptile's ribs and making his heart race. Has he fallen for long enough to have reached terminal velocity yet, he wonders, keeping his unblinking eyes locked downward, gauging the vibrating image of his target as it shoots up at him like an oncoming bullet.
Suddenly, the snake tenses, flexing his final three meters of length firmly into a tight-and-further-tightening zig-zag.
As the angles of the zigzag become deeper, no longer is the double-barreled rope free to flow through the hasps whatsoever, the seven hasps acting as a low-tech braking system of sorts.
He begins to slow down, but is it too little, too late?
Control is the watch-word here. - Finesse, not force.
The urge would be to tighten as hard as he could, but then he might rip his own tail off with the deceleration. The suit is also hiding a network of interlocking bands of fabric that spread out the load of the hasp-belts across as much of the agent's body as possible.
Coming to a stop, the naga is pleased to see he timed it perfectly. He could stretch out and calmly kiss the small roof he was aiming to reach, were it not for his balaclava. Easily, he flows from the rope, onto the roof.
Out from a zippered pocket, he produces a remote control with a small antenna atop it. There is one red button on the face of the plastic device.
With only roughly a minute where the top of the dam was unmanned, there was no time for a slow, careful descent. The guards are surely already coming up the steps. Soon they will be within visual range of the ropes clinging to the railings, and the midst of them dangling off the lip of the platform.
This is why the day when the less visually acute guards had this particular shift had been chosen. Not the day with the pair of hawks.
The snake's press of the button causes the carabiners to pop apart, releasing and falling from the railings about 30 seconds after they were first clasped there. All evidence of the ophidian operative's momentary presense is now totally gone.
As the untethered rope tumbles out of the air to pile messily on the roof behind him, the naga produces a cutting laser and sets to work on a patch of metal. Access to the ventillation system will soon be his.
Sparks fly as he works, the thick goggles of his mask reflecting the bright cascading embers of metal.
-
Soon, he is inside.
Just what he has entered is the Arkangel chemical weapons facility, secreted in the depths of the Soviet Union's vast Russian back-country, in the Arkhangelsk Oblast.
Slithering through the darkness of ducts, guided by his flickering tongue and heat-sensing organs within the scales of his lips, the serpent has left his mask and the whole of the suit below the jacket-portion.
The relative silence of scales is preferable to the clunking of his serpentine fast-repelling gear.
The odor he seeks is not exactly a pleasant one, though.
-
Within one stall of the four that line the north wall of the bathroom, a badger sits upon a porcelain throne, partially in uniform. A newspaper covered in Cyrillic script is held up before his beady eyes.
Outside, a large moose in a green tanktop and fatigues-trousers finishes his business and shuffles out. The sound of flushing, hand-washing and the movement of the large mammal is enough to cover the covert removal of a vent's grate by a clawed, scaly hand, overhead.
After the door swings itself shut and the familiar clatter of it fades, there is peaceful silence for the badger's reading.
There is no sound, but...
Much as one tries not to inhale through the nose while in the bathroom, our scholarly badger guard's olfactry awareness alerts him to... something.
The smell of the outdoors?
And--
Somehow, the scent of death.
Slowly, he lowers the newspaper.
Widening mammal eyes take in a most shocking and peculiar sight, causing him to freeze in place, unbelieving. Upside down, a smiling serpentman dangles, thick body disappearing upward into a vent. The legless male seems perfectly at home in such an odd position.
The python, brown of scale and green of eye - a green that seems to bleed out into his hide beyond - is absolutely not Ames Sond.
"Sso ssorry to drop in on you like this!" he cheerily, even cheekily, remarks, before rearing back both his arm and his spine to strike forward with both in service of a potent punch.
The bewildered badger did not understand the English words, of course. He had not yet overcome his fright and now that he is unconscious, it's entirely possible the whole thing will seem akin to a nightmare when he awakens.
Then again, he will awaken in tightly knotted bonds, leaving no doubt as to the reality of the naga from the 'nightmare.'
-
With silenced Walther PPK in hand, the unknown British operative moves deeper into the facility. Down the stairs from the bathroom, checking with unblinking eye and flickering tongue for the sight or smell of any other guards.
Breakfast is being served, he can smell that. At the end of the hall, a siberian musk deer - clearly kitchen staff - loads slabs of meat onto a cart.
The serpent flows his form into a nearby door as the deer turns back into the frigid forest of hanging foodstuffs.
The naga finds himself in a darkened supply room. He flicks his tongue, and there is a familiar scent. He smiles.
Ducking low and moving with utmost care, the infiltrator creeps forward, pulling out a flashlight from his black tac-jacket, but not turning it on.
There is another figure there, at the other end of the space. A similar shape. The other looks through a dusty plexiglass panel, into a lit area, where much shuffling and chatter is heard.
The python needs to only pause against a side wall and wait a moment before the other male moves. As soon as the shape in the dark shifts, turning away, moving away from the window into the mess hall, the naga strikes. Launching out from the wall, the click of the flashlight comes amid the rustle of scales, as well as the cocking of the PPK.
The other man might be blinded, his pupils constricting to thin slits within his red eyes, and he may have a gun in his face, and the naga might be yelling at him in flawless Russian, but this other man is unflinching, unwavering. He weathers the accusations and the demands for information. Who is he? What is he doing here? These questions and more come from the green and brown serpent that has found him skulking in the dark.
"Same as you, I expect," the other casually remarks, in a tone of bored indifference. He is Ames Sond, and he is not fooled. He finishes speaking by adding, "--Kalic." In that uttered name, there is a touch of warmth from the cold reptile, as the identically dressed agents re-convene.
Kalicster Sevelyan drops the act and his sidearm, moving the flashlight to illuminate both python snouts from below. "Double-Oh-S, where've you been? When you're not peeping on mealtime, that iss."
The sound of a limb slapping on a rattling metal surface makes Kalic flip his light downward, illuminating the floor and Sond's tail, where he just indicated a loose panel leading into an air duct. Clearly the other operative had been within. "Laying low, waiting for you," Sond says.
"Tight tunnel traversal, is that all that M thinks snakes are good for?" sighs Sevelyan.
"Apparently so. This one is our ticket into the labs, 50 meters east," Sond states, matter-of-factly. Kalic imagines that Ames already scouted ahead - always the over-achiever. "Ready to save the world again, S?" he asks, with a touch more colour, slinking down to lift the floor panel up.
A wry grin spreads across Kalic's snout as he lowers smoothly on his flexible body, on the other side of the square opening. "If we really musst," he jokes. He pauses, looking into the ducts. "For England, Ames?" he whispers, catching Sond's attention before they embark on the next segment of their shared mission.
"For England, Kalic."
~
They met while coming up at Cambridge.
Unaware they were both being groomed for a life of clandestine civil service, they nevertheless gravitated to one another. The pair of pythons ended up aware of one another for the similar traits that caused people to conflate them with each other. Not only were they both large serpents, primarily brown in colour - but they acted alike.
They shared the same disdain for their surroundings, both cavalier and lacking in pomposity. These same aspects that made the snakes interchangeable in the eyes of their supposed peers and educators also made them outcasts in the midst of wealthy spawn of bankers, ministry officials or other upper class scaffolding, affixed to the edifice of Cambridge. Both were there, sponsored by the state, though neither knew this of the other at the time.
Not fast friends in school, fate had them meet again in the military. It was there that the shared detail of their expired parentage came to light, and therefore also the nature of their government-backed education. It is hard to ignore the kinship of such similar backgrounds. One could say the backdrop of one snake was so akin to the other, that they were, in fact, within the same picture all along.
A mutual respect grew, and something neither python would have labelled with the name of 'friendship', though others might have. Carrying out missions together was easier with a fellow naga, at the very least.
Youthful competition between the constrictors carved both into finely tuned soldiers, their efficiency and effectiveness carving a path into a special forces division.
When MI6 came calling, they answered.
It was their honour to meet the agent known as 00S. A cunning cobra, kind and quiet.
Something lurked within his eyes. A presence both lethal, and tired. He described his predecessor, the original 00S, a common adder of extraordinary violence. There was little he would say of himself - which was quite a recurring theme for personnel of 'the 26.'
Still, other men told tales of the aged but still active agent emptying his venom glands into the magazine of his pistol before missions. And how he never flared his hood, seemingly never angry.
When the nature of how someone (emphasis on one) became a new 00, Ames and Kalic had their latest competition. If anything were to happen to the cobra, it was clear to the whole ministry that one of 'those two pythons' would become the new 00S.
Before that happened, both of them were happy to be un-officially called 'S' by their colleagues. Either could easily be given the '00', as soon as the inevitable happened.
Retirement for the cobra, in one manner of speaking, or the other.
~
Wearing a labcoat overtop of his uniform, an argali carrying a long rack of vials walks down a hallway, toward a laboratory.
Almost as soon as his cloven hoof has passed a rectangular panel in the middle of the hallway, said panel begins to lift.
With a silencer hovering near to them, green eyes peer out from a brown-scaled visage, seeing the white-clad back of the mountain sheep retreating. On the other side of the 'levitating' panel, a mirror image is there. Reddish brown eyes and an identical suppressor, scanning for threats.
In unison, the serpents rise, back to back, one hand from each male lifting the floor-panel off their heads, their other hands holding their PPKs at the ready.
With all haste and quiet carefulness in balance, what seems like endless meters of two smooth scaled forms issue up from the four-sided hole in the hallway floor. They are an upwelling of oil, silently bubbling from the ground, defended by the black-clothed upper bodies above. Kalic smoothly replaces the panel while Ames keeps very momentary watch.
Both pythons pour forward, following where the argali went, pressed tight to one side wall and down to the floor in their legless flow, to minimize the chances of the unaware scientist taking note of them through the thick glass of the lab's window onto the hall.
Kalic glides ahead, easily below the window itself, rising up smoothly into the doorway of the chemically inclined space. He briefly takes note of the wide variety of beakers and flasks, burners and tubes, before shooting the argali in the back. He is careful to do it when the hoofed one won't tip over onto any tables.
As the target slumps to the floor, Kalic turns to Ames, who is already unlocking a door. It is heavy, metal, and more of a bulkhead hatch than anything. It belongs on a submarine, but one can imagine the air-tight aspect is convenient for lockdown in a place such as this. Sond monitors the auto-card machine he already inserted into a pass-card slot, while Kalic had removed that key piece of personnel. The unassuming man with the curved horns had been the key to a Soviet engine of destruction that had been running for long enough.
The lights on the Q-branch issued device flash green, a heavy thud - which both pythons can feel in their scutes - is heard. The massive bolt is disengaged.
They're in.
Beyond the door is a vast room, the main storage for the weapons the facility produces. Sizable silver tanks stand on one side of the huge square floor which stretches away below the nagas, while they enter onto a rough grate platform overlooking the room. The enclosed vats on the right reach from floor to ceiling, three atop one another in a stack - four rows and three columns of stacks. Thirty-six silver containers, marked with Cyrillic printing in red, every one of the uniform cylinders large enough to contain the whole of a serpent's lengthy bulk, but each capable of killing millions.
Depending on population density and wind conditions, of course.
On the left are countless more smaller containers, more portable portions of mass death, arranged on racks. Others still of the smaller silver cylinders are loaded onto carts, seemingly in mid-transfer when work had stopped at the end of the previous day.
An eerie silence holds the room in its clutches, which was only broken by the softly sibilant breathing of the pythonic pair.
"Sso far, sso good, hm?" Kalic muses.
"It's too easy," Sond says, somewhat suspicious of the simplicity, the lack of guards to deal with, knowing no shift-change would leave such a key area unwatched. "Breakfast is important, but not to this degree."
"Everything iss eassy when you're as good as we are," the green-flecked fellow chuckles, turning back to the heavy door to lock it and scramble its codes with the Q-device.
Soon after hitting the scramble button, a klaxon blares, red lights above all the doors and along walls flashing on and off.
"What was that about being good, _S_?" Sond asks, pointedly emphasizing the nickname as he springs up to glide down the open air stairs that descend from the balcony. He flows up and over the railing of the first landing to slither-stream down, forward, not bothering with the lower half of the stairs that would only take him backward a handful of feet.
"Stick it in.. your report, ssir," jokes Kalic, unphazed by the ribbing. The fact that the more highly-ranked officer on a mission had to do the bulk of the paperwork is a go-to response to such jibes from Sond. He doesn't bother to mention that any number of other things could have caused the alarm to be raised. He too rushes into the room, alongside Ames. "Set timers for six minutes?"
"Six minutes, check," Ames answers, sweeping into the midst of the small forest of silver 'tree trunks' to set to work.
Another thick bulkhead-style door bursts open at the top of a staircase, opposite from where the two snakes entered. Two guards rush in, but are put down by Kalic's nimble trigger finger, the sharp sound of his two suppressed shots eaten up by the large chamber. The guards' momentum carries them forward and their bodies topple over the railing of the stairs. Their AK47s clatter out of their now loose grips, onto the floor below.
Kalic calls to his counterpart, "Two rotten potatoes that didn't make it to breakfast. Happy now? They've made a mess of the floor."
Meanwhile, magnetized explosives are drawn out from Ames' black gear bag, the plastic charges harmless until set. Once affixed to a metal surface, armed and counting down, there would be no way for anyone to disarm them. The only change even Sond himself could then make would be to shorten the fuse. A bit of humour from the old kobold titled Q, for anyone who might try randomly hitting buttons, only to have the angry red numbers rapidly dwindling.
In reply, Ames yells to Kalic, his eyes locked on what he's doing. "Smells like mash, yeah. Grab me a side, would you, waiter?"
"Already on it, boss," the green-eyed one mutters, having already scooped up the guards' weapons on his way back from locking and scrambling the code on the bulkhead door the guards just used. "Order up!"
Quickly curving outside of the stacks of vats to move on to a new row, Sond catches the AK that Sevelyan tosses to him in passing while Kalic keeps the other.
"Deliciousss," Sond hisses, adding more sibilance as he cocks the rifle and slings its strap over his shoulder. "You're in for a hefty gratuity, my good man," he calls to his partner, neither python pausing in their preparations. Sond is back to setting explosives, as Kalic moves to cover the way they entered.
There is a window next to the door they used, which allows one in the lab where the mountain sheep was killed, to look into the large storage room. With the thick metal doors locked, that window is the weakest link. "Gee, thankss, ssir!" Kalic replied, with a touch of sarcasm.
Silence fell as one python set the charges and the other watched as the adjoining laboratory filled with soldiers, headed by a marten officer with striking blue fur.
Wasting no time, the officer issues the order: "Fire!"
The watching naga recoils slightly as dozens of bullets begin to strike the thick, supposedly bulletproof glass. It might have been immune to the efforts of one shooter, but not twelve or more. The clear material becomes marred by growing webs of cracks, the epicentres thereof protruding outward with the force of the continued hail of heavy impacts.
"Dinner rush is upon us, Ames! Busload of hungry punks want to be seated, now!"
Arming another charge and checking that it begins to count down properly, Sond smirks to himself at how the little game has shifted. "I'm sure you can handle them, my little sous chef."
While watching the soldiers begin to beat on the flexing and fractured pane of reinforced glass with the butts of their guns, watching it warp and push inward, Kalic knew they would be through in a matter of 10 to 20 seconds. With how one particularly burly bear is slamming the glass with powerful rams of his meaty shoulder, it will be closer to 10. He calls back, "Iss that proof you know I'm better after all, Ssond?"
"You're more of a people person, Kalic."
The glass crashes out of its frame, and the Soviet soldiers begin hopping over the short wall - while the green-eyed snake opens fire, a sneer on his snout. He chooses his shots carefully, at first.
Calmly but hurriedly, Sond continues to work on placing enough charges to ensure total destruction of the compounds within the vats. None of it, not even trace amounts, can be allowed to survive the fire that is sure to ensue.
Kalic goes on firing more and more frequently, felling many enemies, but more and more push forward toward his position. He is tucked behind one of the tanks nearest the balcony-platform's stairs, so it seems the opposition is disinclined to fire upon him.
The shooting stops as 00S rushes through the midst of the rows of silvery tanks. From what sounds like the platform above, in accented English, a voice calls out, "This is Colonel Ourumov, come out with your hands above your heads!"
"There's an easier way to say that," mutters Sond, to himself, setting another charge. The demand for more than one person to come out is heartening, though. It must mean Kalic had pulled back into the stacks of tanks. Sond had been worried when his shooting stopped.
A sudden thunderous blast breaks the double-0 agent's concentration. He peeks out just in time to see the bulkhead door hitting the floor in the middle of the room, skidding and clattering loudly to the wall opposite from where it had been blown open. Sond returns to setting the last charge he has time for, the sounds of boots on the grate-constructed platform as more soldiers enter the room echoing through the relative quiet that follows the explosion.
"We're all out of food, Kalic, time to close the kitchen!"
There's no answer.
"Kalic?"
Sond shifts his position within the vats of chemical weapons to one as far as possible from where the throng of soldiers would surely be, and lifts the Kalashnikov. He holds it up as he peeks around the rounded edge of silver metal. As soon as he sees the state of things, he pulls back into cover.
The view out there is not encouraging, to put it mildly.
In the split second he had to assess the state of play, Sond saw something approaching a worst-case scenario. Kalic has his wrists bound behind his back, but more importantly, his tail is clamped to a mid-point of his length, hobbling him almost entirely. The naga is low on his stomach, a gun to his head, while a dozen more automatic rifles in the hands of soldiers are covering the folded and bound length of his coils.
The rest of the green-uniformed men are aiming squarely at Sond.
Even if Ames slipped back into cover, the Colonel had seen him, knows he's aware of the situation. In a commanding tone, he gives Sond the only option. "Move out, throw down your weapons and move toward me, slowly. I'm happy to take two Western prisoners instead of two useless corpses."
As the blue-furred pine marten spoke, Sond inched out once more, glaring at him.
Ourumov didn't need to threaten Kalic's life with his words, the way he flexed his gloved fingers upon the pistol - Kalic's own gun, pointed at his head - was enough.
If Sond does not comply, the other python's life is forfeit. Maybe they can get out of this another way, if he surrenders. But the end goal, the destruction of the facility, it's so close - and it can't even be stopped now. Where will they keep prisoners with a demolished base? The Colonel will surely no longer be in the mood to keep them alive, when faced with explosives that cannot be disarmed.
"I wouldn't mind a little time off, Ames!" Kalic quips, suddenly. "What's say we take a little Russian holiday?"
For once in his life, Kalic advocated for his life. For once, the steadfast serpent seems to be blowing off a mission. Ames considers that things change, when you're finally tied down.. and 13 guns, including your own, are pointed at you.
Ourumov ignored the python at his booted feet and announced: "You have ten seconds. Ten, nine..."
Sond's head spins, slitted eyes darting from Kalic to the marten, to the innumerable soldiers with their gazes fixed upon him. Had Kalic really had a change of heart? 'A little time off' sparks something in the serpent spy's skull. Perhaps his uncharacteristic words are a front, after all.
Ducking back into the stacks of vats, Ames hits a button on a nearby charge, reducing the countdown. It snaps from the actively running one of somewhere in the middle of five and a half minutes, to three minutes, which immediately begins ticking away. The others remain unaltered, still counting down from the original six minutes. When the shorter timer runs out, one tank will be destroyed, and others simply ruptured. There will be no way for anyone to get near to the rest of the tanks.
"Seven, six..." Ourumov's voice goes on, as Sond lets his AK drop, and begins to slide out. If they were taken prisoner and escorted out of this room soon enough, then during the chaos of the single smaller and sooner explosion to come, before the unchanged rest of them bringing biblical destruction, the snakes might manage to escape before said untold devastation.
Such was the serpent's scheme, in any case.
"Alright, you've got us," spits Sond, acting disgruntled. "I wonder what they're serving in the gulag tonight."
"Quiet," barked Ourumov, lifting Kalic's pistol to aim it at Sond. "You will disarm your bombs, while I watch." He orders, beginning to take a step toward 00S.
"Ah, was hoping you'd let someone else handle that. Don't you have any bomb experts in your staff?"
The blue-furred marten stops and raises the pistol fully, to aim at the python's chest. "You are expert enough, snake."
"I'm afraid not. I can't deactivate them," states Sond simply, with a touch of regret and a mere shrug.
At this, Kalic's head turns from where it's been hanging, dejected.
Ourumov turns to look back at the captured constrictor for a moment, then glares at Sond. "You would choose your bombs over your friend?"
Ames casually shifts position, still with hands raised. He inches away from the deathtrap that the vats represent. "It's hardly a choice. My hands are as tied as his are."
Once again, Ourumov looks between the two snakes, while Kalic remains quiet, watching Sond. The Soviet Colonel seems to not understand the phrasing, or the spy's refusal to comply, after he has surrendered. Meanwhile, Sond spreads his length out, ever-so-slowly. His tail just about reaches back to the chemical tanks, while his upper body creeps toward nearer to the middle of the room. To the soldiers focused on the pythons upper body, he seems even more exposed.
Having had enough, the marten crosses his arms. "Enough of this." He turns and nods to the impromptu firing squad.
Both Ames and Kalic shout, "No!" in unison, just before the soldiers open fire, peppering the python's long body with bullets, causing it to jerk and spasm in place.
Recoiling in horror at the grisly sight, Sond pulls himself backwards - as was his plan if something went bad, anyway. The soldiers watching him begin to shoot, but are unable to track his swift backward movement into the tanks, yanked hard by his tail. Their expectation was for their prey to move forward, of course.
Snatching up the AK47 he had discarded moments ago, Sond hears Ourumov shouting for control of his men, in Russian. "CEASE! You fools! You'll blow the gas tanks!" Turning back toward where the surviving serpent had vanished to, the somewhat short, but commanding marten shouts, in English once more, "This is your last chance. Come out with your hands above you.."
He trailed off, seeing movement.
Quickly, knowing that there is only roughly one minute left on the shortened timer, Sond rushes to align his body behind a wide cart, full of the smaller silver cannisters, ducking down behind it and beginning to move it.
Seeing the python so plainly hidden behind the cart, all at once, the soldiers raise their guns to aim at the cart full of deadly, compressed gases.
"WAIT!" Ourumov orders, for clearly the same reason as the cease-fire just called. The danger is just as present with the small cylinders loaded onto that cart.
Silence falls upon the room once more as Sond shifts the cart, his long form flowing back and forth to provide enough traction to shift the heavy load sideways. It's difficult, but pushing normally - from the side - would be absolutely deadly to consider, currently.
The quiet is broken by a single squeaky wheel whining on and off as the cart trundles slowly from right to left, in front of the assembled troops. Dozens of rifles shift in unison, following him.
One young equine man observes how the naga's tail is just barely visible for a moment, over and over, as it repeats the same motion in the effort to drag the cart across the room. If he can just time.. it.. right..!
The horse fires, the sound of it ripping the silence in two, the gun's report seemingly augmented in volume, thanks to the tense quietude that had prevailed beforehand. But he's missed, his shot ricocheting dangerously off of the metal frame of the cart. Sond tightens up behind the cart in reaction.
The young soldier, for his disobedience, earns a bullet from the PPK in Ourumov's hand. Perhaps he'll blame the now dead naga, given what weapon killed the foolish horse.
Sond resumes his path across the room - until the cart comes to a sudden stop. Sond's gaze, which was focused forward, on the dozens of soldiers and their commander, has seemingly missed that there is a conveyor belt in his way. All that he's done is go from being in front of and slightly on the right of a squard of Soviet soldiers to being in front of and slightly on the left of the same group.
With a smile, Ourumov shakes his head. "There's no escape."
Sond's tail darts back along the conveyor belt nearly 20 feet behind himself and the cart, and manages to hit something before pulling back into safety, in a flash of brown and golden scales.
What he hit was the activation button, the conveyor humming softly as it turns on, beginning to flow... backwards. Ames knows, it's how they ferry their weapons out to the loading area, the airstrip.
From behind the cart, Sond throws a small black device high in the air, over the heads of the soldiers. As they all look up, he unleashes a burst of full-auto firing from the AK. His aim is a release latch for the huge racks of the smaller containers, and he destroys it utterly. Meanwhile, what he threw hits the back wall and does nothing. It is merely his infiltration balaclava mask, which he had balled up tightly.
The normal slow opening of the racks turns into a total drop of the panels holding back hundreds of empty silver cannisters. Their light weight and slanted racks were meant to allow for easy retrieval, for they would roll out in a controlled fashion. Now there is no control, and they flood out in shimmering streams of hurtling cylinders, the nearly torso-sized containers raining down on the soldiers. Some bursts of fire from the men as they are knocked down hits others, sowing enough chaos for Sond to seize his chance.
The snake flips himself up onto the conveyor belt, resuming fire while also twisting himself tightly. His belly slithers with the motion of the belt, making him move unexpectedly quickly, retreating rapidly away, into the conveyor belt tunnel, while firing indiscriminately at anyone who had the fortune to be still standing during the gleaming barrage of chrome-plated barrels.
-
Within seconds, Ames is driving a Soviet jeep out of the back of the base.
But there is nowhere to drive. This is a cliffside airstrip.
Luckily, there IS a plane.
Unluckily, it's already leaving, speeding along the snow-strewn runway.
The snake guns it after the single prop plane, and clamps the wheel with his tail, a coil on the accelerator. He lifts and twists his torso to face the back, extended up like a mounted gun on a truck, AK in hand. He fires a volley at the cluster of soldiers already pouring out of the storage room, after him.
A blast sounds within the facility. The one shortened timer, finally! That should keep things from becoming too crowded out here, he thinks.
A few more long pulls of the trigger and a few more enemies downed with even more suppressed, Sond turns back to face the plane he's chasing, steering nearer, sliding over onto the hood of the jeep, stretching out to reach the door, without hitting the precious wing he needs to fly out of here.
Suddenly, the hawk pilot has a lot to worry about as foot after foot of python piles into the cockpit with him.
The avian is not without recourse for hijackers, though: A fierce crackling buzz sounds as a stungun is activated. The snake's muscles help and hinder him all at once as the convulsions caused by the shock pull the hawk into his crushing grip. Unfortunately, it also flexes his tail in a way to make Sond tug his own fore-portions out of the plane, spilling back out onto the runway with the pilot. Their flailing limbs also rip a cockpit door off its hinges as they both try to grab onto it while fully falling out of the vehicle.
Landing hard on the cold tarmac, they break apart, the shock finally letting up. Sond can only hope he crushed the unit delivering the painful voltage - along with the hawk's hollow-boned hand. The two roll apart, and Ames' only concern is getting into the plane that continues to taxi steadily away, unslowed, unswayed, and heading straight for the sheer precipice at the end of the runway. A deep gorge exists there, part of the same ravine that sits in front of the dam.
The reptile rushes over the snow, ignoring the cold that assaults his belly's scales. There are many more things here that will kill him quicker, now. He's heading for the jeep he left behind, which has rolled to a stop on the uneven rocky ground that exists on either side of the long strip of flatness necessary for aircraft.
Colonel Ourumov rides his own jeep while an underling drives it, the pine marten aiming his pistol around the windscreen, attempting to line up a shot on the naga as they speed toward him.
With luck, Sond is able to merely correct course in the jeep, simply slamming back on the gas to bounce back over some rocks and onto the airstrip. He ducks as shots ring out from the jeep behind.
But after five seconds or so, they stop. Ames glances back, and sees that the good colonel has given up the chase. The naga looks forward at the cliff he and his ticket out of Russia are speeding toward and smirks. "Haven't they ever tried to catch a last minute plane before?"
Shoving down on the gas with his tail, Sond knows he can't catch the plane while it's still on the ground.
Ourumov knew too, and he squints at the seemingly insane snake's jeep as it shoots away from his own slowing transport. A smile of interest and disbelief plays at his lips. Surely the spy will not..?
The plane sails over the end of the runway, and soon, so does the jeep.
Launching himself forward from the light utility vehicle and forming his body into a long smooth curve that straightens into a downward pointing arrow, Sond skydives without a parachute, after his exit plan.
Faster and faster he falls, hoping that something about the plane's design or the lack of someone at the controls - the lack of forward thrust - or its larger form, will somehow mean he reaches terminal velocity first. Twisting slightly in the air, he approaches the plane, lining himself up to be near to the missing cockpit door.
The ground rushes upward to meet them at an alarming pace, while the rocky confines of the gorge scream past, part of the cliff wall at Sond's underside.
Though the temptation is great to reach out the plane as he nears it, 00S keeps his arms steady, stabilizing himself with them and his tail as best he can.
Then it's there, next to him, and he grabs, the shift of his airflow slamming him against the fuselage as he claws his way inside.
At least, partially. Just enough of his body is present in the pilot's seat to grasp the controls and attempt to pull up.
The stick rattles in his hands as he pulls back, trying to gain control of the dive. The floor of the gorge looms larger and larger in the cockpit's windscreen. His back half still dangles out of the door, alongside the plane.
Finally, it responds, it noses up slightly, then more.. but it seems to be too little too late. Come on, damn you!
At least, he realizes..! Sond twists his lower body - still shoved against the length of the plane by the airstreams surrounding it. He winds his tail around the rear of the fuselage and against the tailfin, shoving his tailtip up under the rear stabilizers for just a bit more lift.
With a plaintive, struggling and sputtering whine of its prop engine, the plane recovers in the nick of time. After a careful ascension, Sond soars up and out of the hellish gorge, in time to pass over the Arkangel facility as it begins to explode, courtesy of the rest of the unaltered charges.
~
~
Amethystine/Ames Sond 00S and related IP © to his owner.
ShebaWindstorm © to her owner/creator, WhiteMantis.
Kalisster Ssin © to his owner, Python_Yuanty
James Bond 007 and related IP © to Ian Fleming, Albert R Broccoli's EON Productions and MGM.
.
NEIRU, check out her post of this fabulous piece, here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/29597706/This is based upon this poster: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1o47vqsx9.....neye4.jpg?dl=0
~
This one means a lot to me.
25 years ago tonight, on November 13th, 1995, GoldenEye had its gala premiere at Radio City Music Hall, in New York City.
~
Admittedly, I personally had no idea about all this and actually would not see GoldenEye until the summer of 1997, on home video. I rented it (or my mother did, at my request, I suppose!) thanks to my interest in the Nintendo 64 game of the same name.
In any case, this movie was the first Bond film that I saw. For that reason alone, it is very important to me, and the fact that it's such a good movie doesn't hurt, either. It remains in the quantum super-position of 'basically my favourite Bond film' alongside Casino Royale and Skyfall. There is no definitive favourite for me, of course. Like electrons, the top three shift about, the swapping of positions impossible to discern.
I'm sure, if I hadn't played the GoldenEye game or if I hadn't bothered to watch GE or Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997 and then encountered Bond later in life - perhaps when Casino Royale came out in 2006, I would still be a fan. But not the same level of fan. No, it was the perfect confluence of factors, in '97 to cause me to have such affection for the series.
It's not as though fate or the universe requires me to be a huge Bond devotee or anything. If things had happened another way and I was only mildly interested in the adventures of the agent known as 007, I'm sure I would be just fine.
But I'm happy I'm here, and I'm happy to have the series in my life for as long as I have.
It's entirely possible that some ripple-effect of idolizing Bond is what caused me to eventually create the persona of 'Amethystine' (long before Ames Sond, of course), or at least write him the way that I do, with witty repartee in mind.
Or, perhaps without me having grown attached to 007 when I did, I would not have had the confidence to explore certain online communities that would contribute/lead to me being here, on FA.
~
All that aside, I present to you both the GoldenEyessss poster, above.. and part of the prologue, below.
Enjoy! :}===<
(Sidenote: On the poster,
Amaranth's character, Sheba Windstorm is in the role of Xenia Onatopp, on the right.And, in the scene below,
Python_yuanty's Kalisster Ssin is in the role of 'Kalicster Sevelyan'A big thanks to both of them for lending me their characters.)
~~~~~~~~~~~
GoldenEyessss - Overture - transcribed by Amethystine
~
~~
~
It all begins, as it has sixteen times previously:
A white circle moves from the left side of the screen to the right, leaving fading, disappearing circles behind it in its unwavering path across the field of view. After it passes out of sight, it returns, expanded, granting us a view into its world.
A world seen through the spiral-rifled barrel of a gun.
Through it, you see a serpent in a suit - or at least in the upper half of said outfit. He is slithering toward the left. Our circular view of the tall, handsome figure, follows him on his path. Therefore, so too does the gun through which we look.
Without warning, the naga - now in the very middle of the screen - whips his upper body to face us, readying and firing a gun he was certainly not holding a moment beforehand. A familiar musical theme plays as blood trickles down over all that we perceive.
Whoever aimed to kill this snake is as good as dead.
Our circular view wavers and sinks downward to one side, before the red haze fades and we see fully through the circular view, into this world of secrets and spies.
~~~
A small single-prop plane flies over an immense dam.
Judging by the nature of the trees in the surrounding forested mountainous land, this is somewhere remote, and considerably northern, perhaps nearing the arctic circle.
The sputtering whine of the plane's engine is the only noise for miles - the sound of it echoes between the steep landscape on either side of the vast gorge, and is lost within the abyssal depths that exist on either side of the gargantuan curving wall that constitutes the dam.
Although the plane moves quickly by its very nature, it seems to move achingly slowly in passing over the dam - which is a testament to the mega-structure's size.
But once the patroling flyer is past, and its sound fades into the distance, there is another noise, faint in the grand space: The soft jangle of a wire-link fence gate trundling open upon a simple track, atop one side the dam.
Bursting through the opened gate, a serpentine figure clad snout-to-tailtip in black tactical gear rushes with all possible side-winding speed, toward the centre of the dam. His clothing makes its own noises, that of rattling metal clasps and the soft thuds of rope jostled against itself.
Owning to the specialized serpentine suit, the gloves and even a snout-form-fitting balaclava with built-in goggles, not a single scale is shown upon the naga.
Who else, but 00S, Ames Sond?
The fast fluid flow of his legless form carries him swiftly to the single break in the railing on the waterless side of the dam. There is a small outlook platform here, the naga's apparent destination.
Only slightly slowing, the snake snaps a carabiner into place around the last metal pole within the railing as he passes it. Trailing the rope he's anchored, he surges to the end of the railing on the other side of the platorm and does the same there, then recoils to snap backwards, centering himself in front of the slightly elevated central platform.
Twisting around, the python tosses the thick bundle of rope over the front of the platform. The dual-anchored length unravels, revealing that it is a unique double-barrelled cord, only forked apart at the end to reach the two railing-edges the naga secured it to.
As the dozens of feet of rope unfurl with gravity's pull below him, the naga mounts the platform and turns to his tail. A series of thick belt-like structures are built into the last three meters his black suit, with heavy-duty protruding loops aligned over the middle of his belly.
The beginning of the forked rope is already threaded through these seven rigid hasps, which are large enough to allow the double-rope pass loosely and freely through them. He tests it, pulling hard to make the rope zip flawlessly through the hard plastic-rubber polymer.
He takes only a moment to ready himself, standing his torso up at the edge of the platform, extending his arms.
The naga needs to disappear before the shift change places a fresh pair of guards atop the dam. Luckily they didn't seem to care about the predictable minute of guard absense that happened at this time, each day.
With that need in mind, the serpent flexes down slightly before launching his upper body skyward, creating a long flowing arc of snake body in the air, the rest of his form pushing upward and diving down, to avoid being wrenched down by the departure and descent of his torso.
In an instant, he is gone, the only sign of his being here are the two carabiners anchoring the forked ends of the dual-rope, and the crux of the fork itself hanging off the front of the platform itself.
Below, the serpentine spy, his body pointing straight as an arrow earthward, plummets toward the rocky death that awaits him at the bottom of the dry riverbed.
A slightly sooner demise lies above the bottom: There is a just as lethally solid rooftop for the operative to crash into. It speeds toward his masked snout while the rope screams its way through the seven hasps, rattling the reptile's ribs and making his heart race. Has he fallen for long enough to have reached terminal velocity yet, he wonders, keeping his unblinking eyes locked downward, gauging the vibrating image of his target as it shoots up at him like an oncoming bullet.
Suddenly, the snake tenses, flexing his final three meters of length firmly into a tight-and-further-tightening zig-zag.
As the angles of the zigzag become deeper, no longer is the double-barreled rope free to flow through the hasps whatsoever, the seven hasps acting as a low-tech braking system of sorts.
He begins to slow down, but is it too little, too late?
Control is the watch-word here. - Finesse, not force.
The urge would be to tighten as hard as he could, but then he might rip his own tail off with the deceleration. The suit is also hiding a network of interlocking bands of fabric that spread out the load of the hasp-belts across as much of the agent's body as possible.
Coming to a stop, the naga is pleased to see he timed it perfectly. He could stretch out and calmly kiss the small roof he was aiming to reach, were it not for his balaclava. Easily, he flows from the rope, onto the roof.
Out from a zippered pocket, he produces a remote control with a small antenna atop it. There is one red button on the face of the plastic device.
With only roughly a minute where the top of the dam was unmanned, there was no time for a slow, careful descent. The guards are surely already coming up the steps. Soon they will be within visual range of the ropes clinging to the railings, and the midst of them dangling off the lip of the platform.
This is why the day when the less visually acute guards had this particular shift had been chosen. Not the day with the pair of hawks.
The snake's press of the button causes the carabiners to pop apart, releasing and falling from the railings about 30 seconds after they were first clasped there. All evidence of the ophidian operative's momentary presense is now totally gone.
As the untethered rope tumbles out of the air to pile messily on the roof behind him, the naga produces a cutting laser and sets to work on a patch of metal. Access to the ventillation system will soon be his.
Sparks fly as he works, the thick goggles of his mask reflecting the bright cascading embers of metal.
-
Soon, he is inside.
Just what he has entered is the Arkangel chemical weapons facility, secreted in the depths of the Soviet Union's vast Russian back-country, in the Arkhangelsk Oblast.
Slithering through the darkness of ducts, guided by his flickering tongue and heat-sensing organs within the scales of his lips, the serpent has left his mask and the whole of the suit below the jacket-portion.
The relative silence of scales is preferable to the clunking of his serpentine fast-repelling gear.
The odor he seeks is not exactly a pleasant one, though.
-
Within one stall of the four that line the north wall of the bathroom, a badger sits upon a porcelain throne, partially in uniform. A newspaper covered in Cyrillic script is held up before his beady eyes.
Outside, a large moose in a green tanktop and fatigues-trousers finishes his business and shuffles out. The sound of flushing, hand-washing and the movement of the large mammal is enough to cover the covert removal of a vent's grate by a clawed, scaly hand, overhead.
After the door swings itself shut and the familiar clatter of it fades, there is peaceful silence for the badger's reading.
There is no sound, but...
Much as one tries not to inhale through the nose while in the bathroom, our scholarly badger guard's olfactry awareness alerts him to... something.
The smell of the outdoors?
And--
Somehow, the scent of death.
Slowly, he lowers the newspaper.
Widening mammal eyes take in a most shocking and peculiar sight, causing him to freeze in place, unbelieving. Upside down, a smiling serpentman dangles, thick body disappearing upward into a vent. The legless male seems perfectly at home in such an odd position.
The python, brown of scale and green of eye - a green that seems to bleed out into his hide beyond - is absolutely not Ames Sond.
"Sso ssorry to drop in on you like this!" he cheerily, even cheekily, remarks, before rearing back both his arm and his spine to strike forward with both in service of a potent punch.
The bewildered badger did not understand the English words, of course. He had not yet overcome his fright and now that he is unconscious, it's entirely possible the whole thing will seem akin to a nightmare when he awakens.
Then again, he will awaken in tightly knotted bonds, leaving no doubt as to the reality of the naga from the 'nightmare.'
-
With silenced Walther PPK in hand, the unknown British operative moves deeper into the facility. Down the stairs from the bathroom, checking with unblinking eye and flickering tongue for the sight or smell of any other guards.
Breakfast is being served, he can smell that. At the end of the hall, a siberian musk deer - clearly kitchen staff - loads slabs of meat onto a cart.
The serpent flows his form into a nearby door as the deer turns back into the frigid forest of hanging foodstuffs.
The naga finds himself in a darkened supply room. He flicks his tongue, and there is a familiar scent. He smiles.
Ducking low and moving with utmost care, the infiltrator creeps forward, pulling out a flashlight from his black tac-jacket, but not turning it on.
There is another figure there, at the other end of the space. A similar shape. The other looks through a dusty plexiglass panel, into a lit area, where much shuffling and chatter is heard.
The python needs to only pause against a side wall and wait a moment before the other male moves. As soon as the shape in the dark shifts, turning away, moving away from the window into the mess hall, the naga strikes. Launching out from the wall, the click of the flashlight comes amid the rustle of scales, as well as the cocking of the PPK.
The other man might be blinded, his pupils constricting to thin slits within his red eyes, and he may have a gun in his face, and the naga might be yelling at him in flawless Russian, but this other man is unflinching, unwavering. He weathers the accusations and the demands for information. Who is he? What is he doing here? These questions and more come from the green and brown serpent that has found him skulking in the dark.
"Same as you, I expect," the other casually remarks, in a tone of bored indifference. He is Ames Sond, and he is not fooled. He finishes speaking by adding, "--Kalic." In that uttered name, there is a touch of warmth from the cold reptile, as the identically dressed agents re-convene.
Kalicster Sevelyan drops the act and his sidearm, moving the flashlight to illuminate both python snouts from below. "Double-Oh-S, where've you been? When you're not peeping on mealtime, that iss."
The sound of a limb slapping on a rattling metal surface makes Kalic flip his light downward, illuminating the floor and Sond's tail, where he just indicated a loose panel leading into an air duct. Clearly the other operative had been within. "Laying low, waiting for you," Sond says.
"Tight tunnel traversal, is that all that M thinks snakes are good for?" sighs Sevelyan.
"Apparently so. This one is our ticket into the labs, 50 meters east," Sond states, matter-of-factly. Kalic imagines that Ames already scouted ahead - always the over-achiever. "Ready to save the world again, S?" he asks, with a touch more colour, slinking down to lift the floor panel up.
A wry grin spreads across Kalic's snout as he lowers smoothly on his flexible body, on the other side of the square opening. "If we really musst," he jokes. He pauses, looking into the ducts. "For England, Ames?" he whispers, catching Sond's attention before they embark on the next segment of their shared mission.
"For England, Kalic."
~
They met while coming up at Cambridge.
Unaware they were both being groomed for a life of clandestine civil service, they nevertheless gravitated to one another. The pair of pythons ended up aware of one another for the similar traits that caused people to conflate them with each other. Not only were they both large serpents, primarily brown in colour - but they acted alike.
They shared the same disdain for their surroundings, both cavalier and lacking in pomposity. These same aspects that made the snakes interchangeable in the eyes of their supposed peers and educators also made them outcasts in the midst of wealthy spawn of bankers, ministry officials or other upper class scaffolding, affixed to the edifice of Cambridge. Both were there, sponsored by the state, though neither knew this of the other at the time.
Not fast friends in school, fate had them meet again in the military. It was there that the shared detail of their expired parentage came to light, and therefore also the nature of their government-backed education. It is hard to ignore the kinship of such similar backgrounds. One could say the backdrop of one snake was so akin to the other, that they were, in fact, within the same picture all along.
A mutual respect grew, and something neither python would have labelled with the name of 'friendship', though others might have. Carrying out missions together was easier with a fellow naga, at the very least.
Youthful competition between the constrictors carved both into finely tuned soldiers, their efficiency and effectiveness carving a path into a special forces division.
When MI6 came calling, they answered.
It was their honour to meet the agent known as 00S. A cunning cobra, kind and quiet.
Something lurked within his eyes. A presence both lethal, and tired. He described his predecessor, the original 00S, a common adder of extraordinary violence. There was little he would say of himself - which was quite a recurring theme for personnel of 'the 26.'
Still, other men told tales of the aged but still active agent emptying his venom glands into the magazine of his pistol before missions. And how he never flared his hood, seemingly never angry.
When the nature of how someone (emphasis on one) became a new 00, Ames and Kalic had their latest competition. If anything were to happen to the cobra, it was clear to the whole ministry that one of 'those two pythons' would become the new 00S.
Before that happened, both of them were happy to be un-officially called 'S' by their colleagues. Either could easily be given the '00', as soon as the inevitable happened.
Retirement for the cobra, in one manner of speaking, or the other.
~
Wearing a labcoat overtop of his uniform, an argali carrying a long rack of vials walks down a hallway, toward a laboratory.
Almost as soon as his cloven hoof has passed a rectangular panel in the middle of the hallway, said panel begins to lift.
With a silencer hovering near to them, green eyes peer out from a brown-scaled visage, seeing the white-clad back of the mountain sheep retreating. On the other side of the 'levitating' panel, a mirror image is there. Reddish brown eyes and an identical suppressor, scanning for threats.
In unison, the serpents rise, back to back, one hand from each male lifting the floor-panel off their heads, their other hands holding their PPKs at the ready.
With all haste and quiet carefulness in balance, what seems like endless meters of two smooth scaled forms issue up from the four-sided hole in the hallway floor. They are an upwelling of oil, silently bubbling from the ground, defended by the black-clothed upper bodies above. Kalic smoothly replaces the panel while Ames keeps very momentary watch.
Both pythons pour forward, following where the argali went, pressed tight to one side wall and down to the floor in their legless flow, to minimize the chances of the unaware scientist taking note of them through the thick glass of the lab's window onto the hall.
Kalic glides ahead, easily below the window itself, rising up smoothly into the doorway of the chemically inclined space. He briefly takes note of the wide variety of beakers and flasks, burners and tubes, before shooting the argali in the back. He is careful to do it when the hoofed one won't tip over onto any tables.
As the target slumps to the floor, Kalic turns to Ames, who is already unlocking a door. It is heavy, metal, and more of a bulkhead hatch than anything. It belongs on a submarine, but one can imagine the air-tight aspect is convenient for lockdown in a place such as this. Sond monitors the auto-card machine he already inserted into a pass-card slot, while Kalic had removed that key piece of personnel. The unassuming man with the curved horns had been the key to a Soviet engine of destruction that had been running for long enough.
The lights on the Q-branch issued device flash green, a heavy thud - which both pythons can feel in their scutes - is heard. The massive bolt is disengaged.
They're in.
Beyond the door is a vast room, the main storage for the weapons the facility produces. Sizable silver tanks stand on one side of the huge square floor which stretches away below the nagas, while they enter onto a rough grate platform overlooking the room. The enclosed vats on the right reach from floor to ceiling, three atop one another in a stack - four rows and three columns of stacks. Thirty-six silver containers, marked with Cyrillic printing in red, every one of the uniform cylinders large enough to contain the whole of a serpent's lengthy bulk, but each capable of killing millions.
Depending on population density and wind conditions, of course.
On the left are countless more smaller containers, more portable portions of mass death, arranged on racks. Others still of the smaller silver cylinders are loaded onto carts, seemingly in mid-transfer when work had stopped at the end of the previous day.
An eerie silence holds the room in its clutches, which was only broken by the softly sibilant breathing of the pythonic pair.
"Sso far, sso good, hm?" Kalic muses.
"It's too easy," Sond says, somewhat suspicious of the simplicity, the lack of guards to deal with, knowing no shift-change would leave such a key area unwatched. "Breakfast is important, but not to this degree."
"Everything iss eassy when you're as good as we are," the green-flecked fellow chuckles, turning back to the heavy door to lock it and scramble its codes with the Q-device.
Soon after hitting the scramble button, a klaxon blares, red lights above all the doors and along walls flashing on and off.
"What was that about being good, _S_?" Sond asks, pointedly emphasizing the nickname as he springs up to glide down the open air stairs that descend from the balcony. He flows up and over the railing of the first landing to slither-stream down, forward, not bothering with the lower half of the stairs that would only take him backward a handful of feet.
"Stick it in.. your report, ssir," jokes Kalic, unphazed by the ribbing. The fact that the more highly-ranked officer on a mission had to do the bulk of the paperwork is a go-to response to such jibes from Sond. He doesn't bother to mention that any number of other things could have caused the alarm to be raised. He too rushes into the room, alongside Ames. "Set timers for six minutes?"
"Six minutes, check," Ames answers, sweeping into the midst of the small forest of silver 'tree trunks' to set to work.
Another thick bulkhead-style door bursts open at the top of a staircase, opposite from where the two snakes entered. Two guards rush in, but are put down by Kalic's nimble trigger finger, the sharp sound of his two suppressed shots eaten up by the large chamber. The guards' momentum carries them forward and their bodies topple over the railing of the stairs. Their AK47s clatter out of their now loose grips, onto the floor below.
Kalic calls to his counterpart, "Two rotten potatoes that didn't make it to breakfast. Happy now? They've made a mess of the floor."
Meanwhile, magnetized explosives are drawn out from Ames' black gear bag, the plastic charges harmless until set. Once affixed to a metal surface, armed and counting down, there would be no way for anyone to disarm them. The only change even Sond himself could then make would be to shorten the fuse. A bit of humour from the old kobold titled Q, for anyone who might try randomly hitting buttons, only to have the angry red numbers rapidly dwindling.
In reply, Ames yells to Kalic, his eyes locked on what he's doing. "Smells like mash, yeah. Grab me a side, would you, waiter?"
"Already on it, boss," the green-eyed one mutters, having already scooped up the guards' weapons on his way back from locking and scrambling the code on the bulkhead door the guards just used. "Order up!"
Quickly curving outside of the stacks of vats to move on to a new row, Sond catches the AK that Sevelyan tosses to him in passing while Kalic keeps the other.
"Deliciousss," Sond hisses, adding more sibilance as he cocks the rifle and slings its strap over his shoulder. "You're in for a hefty gratuity, my good man," he calls to his partner, neither python pausing in their preparations. Sond is back to setting explosives, as Kalic moves to cover the way they entered.
There is a window next to the door they used, which allows one in the lab where the mountain sheep was killed, to look into the large storage room. With the thick metal doors locked, that window is the weakest link. "Gee, thankss, ssir!" Kalic replied, with a touch of sarcasm.
Silence fell as one python set the charges and the other watched as the adjoining laboratory filled with soldiers, headed by a marten officer with striking blue fur.
Wasting no time, the officer issues the order: "Fire!"
The watching naga recoils slightly as dozens of bullets begin to strike the thick, supposedly bulletproof glass. It might have been immune to the efforts of one shooter, but not twelve or more. The clear material becomes marred by growing webs of cracks, the epicentres thereof protruding outward with the force of the continued hail of heavy impacts.
"Dinner rush is upon us, Ames! Busload of hungry punks want to be seated, now!"
Arming another charge and checking that it begins to count down properly, Sond smirks to himself at how the little game has shifted. "I'm sure you can handle them, my little sous chef."
While watching the soldiers begin to beat on the flexing and fractured pane of reinforced glass with the butts of their guns, watching it warp and push inward, Kalic knew they would be through in a matter of 10 to 20 seconds. With how one particularly burly bear is slamming the glass with powerful rams of his meaty shoulder, it will be closer to 10. He calls back, "Iss that proof you know I'm better after all, Ssond?"
"You're more of a people person, Kalic."
The glass crashes out of its frame, and the Soviet soldiers begin hopping over the short wall - while the green-eyed snake opens fire, a sneer on his snout. He chooses his shots carefully, at first.
Calmly but hurriedly, Sond continues to work on placing enough charges to ensure total destruction of the compounds within the vats. None of it, not even trace amounts, can be allowed to survive the fire that is sure to ensue.
Kalic goes on firing more and more frequently, felling many enemies, but more and more push forward toward his position. He is tucked behind one of the tanks nearest the balcony-platform's stairs, so it seems the opposition is disinclined to fire upon him.
The shooting stops as 00S rushes through the midst of the rows of silvery tanks. From what sounds like the platform above, in accented English, a voice calls out, "This is Colonel Ourumov, come out with your hands above your heads!"
"There's an easier way to say that," mutters Sond, to himself, setting another charge. The demand for more than one person to come out is heartening, though. It must mean Kalic had pulled back into the stacks of tanks. Sond had been worried when his shooting stopped.
A sudden thunderous blast breaks the double-0 agent's concentration. He peeks out just in time to see the bulkhead door hitting the floor in the middle of the room, skidding and clattering loudly to the wall opposite from where it had been blown open. Sond returns to setting the last charge he has time for, the sounds of boots on the grate-constructed platform as more soldiers enter the room echoing through the relative quiet that follows the explosion.
"We're all out of food, Kalic, time to close the kitchen!"
There's no answer.
"Kalic?"
Sond shifts his position within the vats of chemical weapons to one as far as possible from where the throng of soldiers would surely be, and lifts the Kalashnikov. He holds it up as he peeks around the rounded edge of silver metal. As soon as he sees the state of things, he pulls back into cover.
The view out there is not encouraging, to put it mildly.
In the split second he had to assess the state of play, Sond saw something approaching a worst-case scenario. Kalic has his wrists bound behind his back, but more importantly, his tail is clamped to a mid-point of his length, hobbling him almost entirely. The naga is low on his stomach, a gun to his head, while a dozen more automatic rifles in the hands of soldiers are covering the folded and bound length of his coils.
The rest of the green-uniformed men are aiming squarely at Sond.
Even if Ames slipped back into cover, the Colonel had seen him, knows he's aware of the situation. In a commanding tone, he gives Sond the only option. "Move out, throw down your weapons and move toward me, slowly. I'm happy to take two Western prisoners instead of two useless corpses."
As the blue-furred pine marten spoke, Sond inched out once more, glaring at him.
Ourumov didn't need to threaten Kalic's life with his words, the way he flexed his gloved fingers upon the pistol - Kalic's own gun, pointed at his head - was enough.
If Sond does not comply, the other python's life is forfeit. Maybe they can get out of this another way, if he surrenders. But the end goal, the destruction of the facility, it's so close - and it can't even be stopped now. Where will they keep prisoners with a demolished base? The Colonel will surely no longer be in the mood to keep them alive, when faced with explosives that cannot be disarmed.
"I wouldn't mind a little time off, Ames!" Kalic quips, suddenly. "What's say we take a little Russian holiday?"
For once in his life, Kalic advocated for his life. For once, the steadfast serpent seems to be blowing off a mission. Ames considers that things change, when you're finally tied down.. and 13 guns, including your own, are pointed at you.
Ourumov ignored the python at his booted feet and announced: "You have ten seconds. Ten, nine..."
Sond's head spins, slitted eyes darting from Kalic to the marten, to the innumerable soldiers with their gazes fixed upon him. Had Kalic really had a change of heart? 'A little time off' sparks something in the serpent spy's skull. Perhaps his uncharacteristic words are a front, after all.
Ducking back into the stacks of vats, Ames hits a button on a nearby charge, reducing the countdown. It snaps from the actively running one of somewhere in the middle of five and a half minutes, to three minutes, which immediately begins ticking away. The others remain unaltered, still counting down from the original six minutes. When the shorter timer runs out, one tank will be destroyed, and others simply ruptured. There will be no way for anyone to get near to the rest of the tanks.
"Seven, six..." Ourumov's voice goes on, as Sond lets his AK drop, and begins to slide out. If they were taken prisoner and escorted out of this room soon enough, then during the chaos of the single smaller and sooner explosion to come, before the unchanged rest of them bringing biblical destruction, the snakes might manage to escape before said untold devastation.
Such was the serpent's scheme, in any case.
"Alright, you've got us," spits Sond, acting disgruntled. "I wonder what they're serving in the gulag tonight."
"Quiet," barked Ourumov, lifting Kalic's pistol to aim it at Sond. "You will disarm your bombs, while I watch." He orders, beginning to take a step toward 00S.
"Ah, was hoping you'd let someone else handle that. Don't you have any bomb experts in your staff?"
The blue-furred marten stops and raises the pistol fully, to aim at the python's chest. "You are expert enough, snake."
"I'm afraid not. I can't deactivate them," states Sond simply, with a touch of regret and a mere shrug.
At this, Kalic's head turns from where it's been hanging, dejected.
Ourumov turns to look back at the captured constrictor for a moment, then glares at Sond. "You would choose your bombs over your friend?"
Ames casually shifts position, still with hands raised. He inches away from the deathtrap that the vats represent. "It's hardly a choice. My hands are as tied as his are."
Once again, Ourumov looks between the two snakes, while Kalic remains quiet, watching Sond. The Soviet Colonel seems to not understand the phrasing, or the spy's refusal to comply, after he has surrendered. Meanwhile, Sond spreads his length out, ever-so-slowly. His tail just about reaches back to the chemical tanks, while his upper body creeps toward nearer to the middle of the room. To the soldiers focused on the pythons upper body, he seems even more exposed.
Having had enough, the marten crosses his arms. "Enough of this." He turns and nods to the impromptu firing squad.
Both Ames and Kalic shout, "No!" in unison, just before the soldiers open fire, peppering the python's long body with bullets, causing it to jerk and spasm in place.
Recoiling in horror at the grisly sight, Sond pulls himself backwards - as was his plan if something went bad, anyway. The soldiers watching him begin to shoot, but are unable to track his swift backward movement into the tanks, yanked hard by his tail. Their expectation was for their prey to move forward, of course.
Snatching up the AK47 he had discarded moments ago, Sond hears Ourumov shouting for control of his men, in Russian. "CEASE! You fools! You'll blow the gas tanks!" Turning back toward where the surviving serpent had vanished to, the somewhat short, but commanding marten shouts, in English once more, "This is your last chance. Come out with your hands above you.."
He trailed off, seeing movement.
Quickly, knowing that there is only roughly one minute left on the shortened timer, Sond rushes to align his body behind a wide cart, full of the smaller silver cannisters, ducking down behind it and beginning to move it.
Seeing the python so plainly hidden behind the cart, all at once, the soldiers raise their guns to aim at the cart full of deadly, compressed gases.
"WAIT!" Ourumov orders, for clearly the same reason as the cease-fire just called. The danger is just as present with the small cylinders loaded onto that cart.
Silence falls upon the room once more as Sond shifts the cart, his long form flowing back and forth to provide enough traction to shift the heavy load sideways. It's difficult, but pushing normally - from the side - would be absolutely deadly to consider, currently.
The quiet is broken by a single squeaky wheel whining on and off as the cart trundles slowly from right to left, in front of the assembled troops. Dozens of rifles shift in unison, following him.
One young equine man observes how the naga's tail is just barely visible for a moment, over and over, as it repeats the same motion in the effort to drag the cart across the room. If he can just time.. it.. right..!
The horse fires, the sound of it ripping the silence in two, the gun's report seemingly augmented in volume, thanks to the tense quietude that had prevailed beforehand. But he's missed, his shot ricocheting dangerously off of the metal frame of the cart. Sond tightens up behind the cart in reaction.
The young soldier, for his disobedience, earns a bullet from the PPK in Ourumov's hand. Perhaps he'll blame the now dead naga, given what weapon killed the foolish horse.
Sond resumes his path across the room - until the cart comes to a sudden stop. Sond's gaze, which was focused forward, on the dozens of soldiers and their commander, has seemingly missed that there is a conveyor belt in his way. All that he's done is go from being in front of and slightly on the right of a squard of Soviet soldiers to being in front of and slightly on the left of the same group.
With a smile, Ourumov shakes his head. "There's no escape."
Sond's tail darts back along the conveyor belt nearly 20 feet behind himself and the cart, and manages to hit something before pulling back into safety, in a flash of brown and golden scales.
What he hit was the activation button, the conveyor humming softly as it turns on, beginning to flow... backwards. Ames knows, it's how they ferry their weapons out to the loading area, the airstrip.
From behind the cart, Sond throws a small black device high in the air, over the heads of the soldiers. As they all look up, he unleashes a burst of full-auto firing from the AK. His aim is a release latch for the huge racks of the smaller containers, and he destroys it utterly. Meanwhile, what he threw hits the back wall and does nothing. It is merely his infiltration balaclava mask, which he had balled up tightly.
The normal slow opening of the racks turns into a total drop of the panels holding back hundreds of empty silver cannisters. Their light weight and slanted racks were meant to allow for easy retrieval, for they would roll out in a controlled fashion. Now there is no control, and they flood out in shimmering streams of hurtling cylinders, the nearly torso-sized containers raining down on the soldiers. Some bursts of fire from the men as they are knocked down hits others, sowing enough chaos for Sond to seize his chance.
The snake flips himself up onto the conveyor belt, resuming fire while also twisting himself tightly. His belly slithers with the motion of the belt, making him move unexpectedly quickly, retreating rapidly away, into the conveyor belt tunnel, while firing indiscriminately at anyone who had the fortune to be still standing during the gleaming barrage of chrome-plated barrels.
-
Within seconds, Ames is driving a Soviet jeep out of the back of the base.
But there is nowhere to drive. This is a cliffside airstrip.
Luckily, there IS a plane.
Unluckily, it's already leaving, speeding along the snow-strewn runway.
The snake guns it after the single prop plane, and clamps the wheel with his tail, a coil on the accelerator. He lifts and twists his torso to face the back, extended up like a mounted gun on a truck, AK in hand. He fires a volley at the cluster of soldiers already pouring out of the storage room, after him.
A blast sounds within the facility. The one shortened timer, finally! That should keep things from becoming too crowded out here, he thinks.
A few more long pulls of the trigger and a few more enemies downed with even more suppressed, Sond turns back to face the plane he's chasing, steering nearer, sliding over onto the hood of the jeep, stretching out to reach the door, without hitting the precious wing he needs to fly out of here.
Suddenly, the hawk pilot has a lot to worry about as foot after foot of python piles into the cockpit with him.
The avian is not without recourse for hijackers, though: A fierce crackling buzz sounds as a stungun is activated. The snake's muscles help and hinder him all at once as the convulsions caused by the shock pull the hawk into his crushing grip. Unfortunately, it also flexes his tail in a way to make Sond tug his own fore-portions out of the plane, spilling back out onto the runway with the pilot. Their flailing limbs also rip a cockpit door off its hinges as they both try to grab onto it while fully falling out of the vehicle.
Landing hard on the cold tarmac, they break apart, the shock finally letting up. Sond can only hope he crushed the unit delivering the painful voltage - along with the hawk's hollow-boned hand. The two roll apart, and Ames' only concern is getting into the plane that continues to taxi steadily away, unslowed, unswayed, and heading straight for the sheer precipice at the end of the runway. A deep gorge exists there, part of the same ravine that sits in front of the dam.
The reptile rushes over the snow, ignoring the cold that assaults his belly's scales. There are many more things here that will kill him quicker, now. He's heading for the jeep he left behind, which has rolled to a stop on the uneven rocky ground that exists on either side of the long strip of flatness necessary for aircraft.
Colonel Ourumov rides his own jeep while an underling drives it, the pine marten aiming his pistol around the windscreen, attempting to line up a shot on the naga as they speed toward him.
With luck, Sond is able to merely correct course in the jeep, simply slamming back on the gas to bounce back over some rocks and onto the airstrip. He ducks as shots ring out from the jeep behind.
But after five seconds or so, they stop. Ames glances back, and sees that the good colonel has given up the chase. The naga looks forward at the cliff he and his ticket out of Russia are speeding toward and smirks. "Haven't they ever tried to catch a last minute plane before?"
Shoving down on the gas with his tail, Sond knows he can't catch the plane while it's still on the ground.
Ourumov knew too, and he squints at the seemingly insane snake's jeep as it shoots away from his own slowing transport. A smile of interest and disbelief plays at his lips. Surely the spy will not..?
The plane sails over the end of the runway, and soon, so does the jeep.
Launching himself forward from the light utility vehicle and forming his body into a long smooth curve that straightens into a downward pointing arrow, Sond skydives without a parachute, after his exit plan.
Faster and faster he falls, hoping that something about the plane's design or the lack of someone at the controls - the lack of forward thrust - or its larger form, will somehow mean he reaches terminal velocity first. Twisting slightly in the air, he approaches the plane, lining himself up to be near to the missing cockpit door.
The ground rushes upward to meet them at an alarming pace, while the rocky confines of the gorge scream past, part of the cliff wall at Sond's underside.
Though the temptation is great to reach out the plane as he nears it, 00S keeps his arms steady, stabilizing himself with them and his tail as best he can.
Then it's there, next to him, and he grabs, the shift of his airflow slamming him against the fuselage as he claws his way inside.
At least, partially. Just enough of his body is present in the pilot's seat to grasp the controls and attempt to pull up.
The stick rattles in his hands as he pulls back, trying to gain control of the dive. The floor of the gorge looms larger and larger in the cockpit's windscreen. His back half still dangles out of the door, alongside the plane.
Finally, it responds, it noses up slightly, then more.. but it seems to be too little too late. Come on, damn you!
At least, he realizes..! Sond twists his lower body - still shoved against the length of the plane by the airstreams surrounding it. He winds his tail around the rear of the fuselage and against the tailfin, shoving his tailtip up under the rear stabilizers for just a bit more lift.
With a plaintive, struggling and sputtering whine of its prop engine, the plane recovers in the nick of time. After a careful ascension, Sond soars up and out of the hellish gorge, in time to pass over the Arkangel facility as it begins to explode, courtesy of the rest of the unaltered charges.
~
~See reflections on the water~
~More than darkness in the depths~
~See him surface in every shadow~
~On the wind, I feel his breath...~~
Amethystine/Ames Sond 00S and related IP © to his owner.
ShebaWindstorm © to her owner/creator, WhiteMantis.
Kalisster Ssin © to his owner, Python_Yuanty
James Bond 007 and related IP © to Ian Fleming, Albert R Broccoli's EON Productions and MGM.
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Oh and Sond is great too! hahahaGASHGKDGH
Reading what you said about how important this movie is to you.. I LOVE THIS ONE TOO, thanks for letting me be a part of it. I need to do something with Sheba-Xenia. Xhebia!
I'd have you make girl for all the Sond movies, if that was feasible, and.. if it wouldn't drive you insane, haha! But yeah, I'm glad we have Sheba-as-Xenia here, she was basically the first thing we thought when it came to one of your OCs in a Bondian role years and years ago.
Anyway, great scene too! Interesting changes.
Glad you liked the scene. I realized how little sense that scene made when you know the rest of the movie, so I tweaked it a bit, hopefully so it still holds up once I do 'the reveal' later. :}
But the only Bond title I can think of with a prominent '-er' at the end is 'Moonraker', but I already posted the 'Moonrakerssss' poster months ago, so.. *shrugs*
You're going to have to help me out on this one. :}===<
I will say that you fill the role of James bond Very well, even if, the joke about you filling his shoes is a slippery slope...but I'll let that slide. *hugs handsome gentleman snek.*
I'm glad you think I fit the role of James Bond, given that Ames Sond has become 'A Whole Thing' at this point, with me. :}
Nice puns there. I went to your gallery to inspire myself for a response, but instead of draconic-pussy galore, the most swiftly spotted thing is a surfeit of soup! A real chowder crowd, er.. I mean, a serious study in stews. Were you going stir crazy during lockdown? O:
Maybe now that winter is almost here, do you think it's going to get a bit more chilli where you live, maybe?
/me shrugs, and Hugs the handsome, well educated serpent. mixes him a Bloody mary, cause that's a far more interesting drink than the "james bond classic"
Might be a bit off topic, but I hope the game of '97 gets a remake some day, that'd be super amazing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golde.....10_video_game)
Goldeneye is also one of the few Bond movies I still have on DVD at home... that's how much I liked it XD
This intro scene you've done is all great! You'e got a deer on the poster and some deer grunts in the text. How can I complain? :P And you've even included lyrics to the best Bond theme in the text, too. But, I just love Tina.
That game was my gateway into all things Bond, too, so it has a super special place in my heart. And I played the multiplayer endlessly with my friends, too.
Thanks for the fave and the kind words. I knew the ungulate elements would win you over. :P
But, any thoughts on how it's NOT Sond at the very beginning, the old switcheroo I pulled with the snake in the opening moments?
You also had to do a bit extra shaking up for your labeling convention for 00's to be adhered to, and I liked the back-'splanation of learning about former 00S agents and what that meant for Sond/Sevelyan. And them playing around with calling each other S so that it seems that neither was technically 00S at the time of the mission where Sevelyan falls.
But then again, this was still the time when the films where on a stretching, rolling timeline - as if we were meant to think Bond had really been an agent since the 60s or 70s. The idea was that he had always just become a 00 in the last ten years or so, I guess..! And then you also have the introduction of Dench-M.. where she calls Bond a dinosaur of the cold war, saying that the 00 section is outdated.
Anyway, I'm glad you appreciated the whole thing I was saddled with, being unable to have Sond and Sevelyan be 00 agents, once I had chosen Kalisster as the actor for the role. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, using it as something to have him bitter about.
I think that might be why Goldeneye is one of the better remembered Bond films, because the odds for an agent vs. agent seem so matched. They're both highly skilled and are likely to know one another's habits and such. On top of that, since Trevelyan was a traitor, I feel like people typically feel that betrayers are the most vile of antagonists.
But yeah, the metaphorical brother vs brother thing really sets up a nice set of parameters. Evenly matched, very close before the betrayal, making it sting all the more, and have the villain know all the hero's weak points and strategies.
I think GE also stands out a lot for people because it was a return to Bond after a 6 year gap.
Similarly, CR stands out, as it was a return after a 4 year gap.
Right now, we're standing near the end of another 6 year gap, too. Spectre in 2015, to NTTD in 2021 [hopefully! It could always be pushed again. :S]
Still, I agree, Connery-Bond was more charismatic.
Also, thanks for the fave on this. :}
Who is your favorite Bond?
This is a picture that Fleming had done, of Bond. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe.....impression.jpg
Fleming also always said the Bond looked similar to the actor Hoagy Carmichael: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoagy_Carmichael
I've never heard of Hoagy Carmichael, but I've once read that Fleming loved Connery as Bond and that he actually included some attributes of Connery in the last Bond novels. I can however say if that's true or not. It might be mere hogwash.
Before that, the character's ancestry was unknown.
But, many other authors have been authorized by the holders of the Fleming estate, to write further 'official' Bond novels. Any of them may have taken inspiration for their works from any of the movies or actors [but generally, they try to keep their work more similar to the old books, which were a little more gritty, while the movies became more fanciful.]
I've never read any of the non-Fleming Bond books, but apparently "Die Another Day" was based on one. Which is your favorite of the non-Fleming Bond books and why do you like it the most?
I'm somewhat of a purist, I mostly prefer the original works of the author/creator over things which were made later, since these things are technically little more than well-written fanfiction. It's one of the reasons why I never cared about the "Dune" prequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson (aside from them being awful, hehe) or the non-Lucas Star Wars movies. I'm a big admirer of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and CS Lewis and both had indirect sequels by other people which I didn't like. Another good example is the Cthulhu mythos and its non-Lovecraft sequels. I'm sure that HP Lovecraft wouldn't have liked these stories.
I agree, the official / real works in any series by the original creator(s) are always the best.
I personally prefer the Fleming books over all others, but the author of "Die Another Die" supposedly did a good job (I can't really tell, since I've only ever read a few pages of his book).
"Die Another Day was novelised by the then-official James Bond writer, Raymond Benson, based on the screenplay by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. An effort is made to depict some of the film's more outlandish elements with more believability, in the style of Fleming's original novels' use of cutting-edge technology. So for example, the non-bodywork elements of the Aston Martin with its 'cloaking' function – the glass windows and rubber tyres – are described as having retractable covers to achieve the invisibility effect. Fan reaction to it was above average."
I haven't read either of them, myself.
I didn't know this! Gustav Graves is based on Colonel Sun? Weird, I see little to no similarities, to be honest (aside from both having to do with Asia).
I've never read one of the newer James Bond books which I've liked. That's why I generally recommend Fleming's books. Hey Amethystine, did you know that Christopher Lee was Ian Fleming's cousin?
Gustav Graves' real name, the person he was before his transformation, was 'Colonel Tan-Sun Moon'
I've only ever seen "Die Another Day" once. I would call myself more of an old-school Bond fan, I never warmed up to the never movies (after GoldenEye).
And, of course, it was the game that led me to this film, beginning my relationship with Bond -- I mean.. Sond. :}===<
Thanks for the fave on this and on all those other Sond pieces! :D