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A Glimpssse Of A Kill - main poster, art: K-R, text: Ame
by Amethystine
Writer of Wrongs
5 years ago
ARTWORK BY 
karolynerocha! 8D [I'll link to her post of this piece, once she uploads it here on FA] - it's on Instagram, though: https://www.instagram.com/p/CP_oRX0rYEp/
~
36 years ago tonight, on June 12th, 1985, 'A View To A Kill' had its gala premiere in London, England.
And so, I present to you the poster for the Sond version: 'A Glimpssse Of A Kill'
~
Alternate poster designs:
1: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/42500902/
2: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43117929/
~
After the stunning job she did with the poster for the previous Sond adventure, Octopusssy, the marketing team at MWM studios re-hired Karolyne Rocha to do the one you see above, as well!
There are a handful of examples of this, in the series. A poster artist was hired three times in a row, for Tomorrow Never Diessss, The World Issss Not Enough and Sssspy Another Day. - And in the 60s, the same artist was kept on for Thundersssquall, He Only Livessss Twice, and O.O.S.S.S.
Meanwhile, one artist named Luci Wilde somehow ended up as a recurring hire, with large gaps in her time with the franchise. She created the posters for From Russsia With Love, Live & Let Sssspy, and For Your Eyessss Only.
Of course, only one artist has surpassed all of these trifecta-holders: one person is responsible for all FIVE of the posters starting with 2006's Casssino Royale, leading all the way up to 2021's No Time To Die.
-
Anyway, on with the show! Enjoy. :}===<
~~~
You Can't Light City Hall - an excerpt from A Glimpssse of a Kill, transcribed by Amethystine
~
1985, San Francisco City Hall, 11pm:
Clad in a gray suit with white shirt and blood red tie, a tall, slender wolf waltzes into the office of one W.G. Howe, wearing a manic grin.
Casually, the lupine clutches a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson in his paw, gripping around the whole of the gun, rather than having the grip in his palm or his index finger's leathery pad on the trigger.
Mister Howe, a short and bespectacled mole, stands up in silent shock at the late-night intrusion, the wolf interrupting the pile of paperwork the rotund black-furred man has been pushing through all evening. For his job, the mole often burned the midnight oil; he was the director for Oil and Mines for the region, after all.
Looking on in growing alarm, Howe watches as a male naga wearing a leather jacket and a white dove damsel in a matching white dress are ushered into his office by a raven-woman of amazonian proportions, at gunpoint. Though Howe doesn't know it, the Walther PPK that the black-plumed bird wields belongs to the serpent, in truth.
The burrowing mammal believes the snake to be Ames Block of the London Financial Times, a reporter who had interviewed him the day before. The white-feathered woman is much better known to him: she had been in his employ until he fired her earlier that very day. Stacey Sutton, a geologist from a prominent family of miners.
The raven he only barely knows, merely as an 'assistant' to the wolf.
It is the lanky lupine that Howe addresses in anger. "Mr Zorin! What is the meaning of this?"
Max Zorin, who is a leading French industrialist of German descent, possesses somewhat pale fur and a curious, ever-present glint of malice in his eyes. The strange but affable charm he typically exudes is currently twisted into a warped aura of threat. The way he waves his revolver around as if it were a toy and not a lethal weapon goes a long way toward that perversion of his usual more palatable personality.
"Ah, Mister Howe. It's funny. I was on my way to see you, when I - heh - happened to stumble across.." he tosses his gun from one hand to the other, the other hand now holding it as if it were to be used, and gestured at the python and the dove, continuing "..these two! In the midst of trespassing and, hmm, pilfering official city records."
Almost like punctuation on the wolf's statement, the raven firmly shuts the office door behind the tail end of the long-bodied reptile.
Tension mounts as the sealed room grows quiet. Deep in the mostly stone city hall, the wood-panelled office had the aural bearing of a fresh tomb. All it needed was a body.
With two guns, brandished by the wolf and his raven partner, one has to imagine a body would not be long in appearing.
And yet, Howe is oddly calm. At Zorin's assertion, he peers at the dove, meekly clutching to the naga's dark brown leather jacket, huddled near to him as if the snake would and could stop bullets, were they to start flying. "Miss Sutton, is this true?"
Speaking out of turn, Ames announces, "Zorin is playing you for a fool. If he's promised you money, reject it. If he's already paid you, burn it. He's a madman, a psychopath, you're helping him in something terrible, even if you don't know it yet."
Even if he had spoken for her, Stacey squeezed the snake in thanks, while also nodding her agreement with what had been said, looking back at Howe. "It's true! I know you think you can ignore what he's doing, but there must be more to it!" the dove's high voice wavered as she spoke. Her fright due to being held at gunpoint by the corvid called MayDay kept her silent no longer. She hoped that, now, her former boss would listen to reason.
"And what _am_ I doing, hmm?" Max asks, spreading his arms, smiling around the room with his vicious, toothy grin. "What evidence do you have.. of anything?" he demands, of the reptile and the timid dove, before adding, "You two - are jumping - at shadows!"
Unfortunately, it's true. The snake who had posed as a journalist named Block to speak to Howe was agent 00S, Ames Sond, and he really did have only shadows so far, after his solid week of investigating the tycoon.
There had been fixed horse-racing, a murdered French detective, a stockpile of microchips when there's a world-wide surplus, and finally, the pumping of sea-water through oil pipelines in the Bay Area. The python has yet to come up with a clear bigger picture for all that he has found. Moreover, the killing of Sond's countryman some days back, an equine nobleman who had been aiding the naga with the case, was what had stung most of all.
But none of it can be conclusively proven, none of it adds up to anything cohesive. The grand plot: the serpentine spy still does not know its concrete contours, does not know the inky heart of it all.
"These two, heh, are attempting to slander me, and they have broken - the law - a number of times, to try to do it," Zorin asserts, in his unique mode of speaking, adding emphasis on certain words, often pausing for extra effect.
Changing tone altogether, he directs the mole, with a sudden point of his revolver's barrel at the broad desk before the squat, standing director. "Pick up the phone. Call the police. Tell them you've had a break-in, which you have. Tell them to come at once."
The mole does as he was told, calling the police station with the touch of just one of the many speed-dial buttons on the shiny black touch-tone phone. "Yes, police? I'm calling from city hall. 3rd floor offices, east wing. We've had a break-in. Get here right away."
"Mm, yes, good," Zorin rumbles, smiling and wagging a finger from his free hand approvingly at Howe. "I like you! A director who takes direction - well!"
"Mr Zorin.. Max. Would you please explain what's going on?" Howe pleads.
With that wide, wild-eyed smile and a nod, the wolf replies, "Oh, sure. You've been very patient," while also gesturing the raven, MayDay, over to himself.
Using his gun to point at the python and his petite, pale-plumaged companion, the predator spun a tale. "You had dismissed her from her position here today, yes? And tonight, she returns - with her lover for muscle - to find evidence of wrong-doing involving me. You saw them and called the police before they realized you were here."
The wolf barely pauses the on-going anecdote while he trades the Smith & Wesson he wields for the gun that the raven had been pointing at the captive constrictor and his dove friend. After the quick swap between wolf and raven, the revolver keeps the reptile at bay, while the snake's own pistol is being waved around in the wolf's paw, as he narrates his little story.
"But then they found you here in your office, and tried to use you against me. The snake even brandished this very gun at you, like this!" Zorin, ever the dramatist, raises the semi-automatic to fit with his flight of fancy.
Howe swallows, but still he nods, and asks. "And what.. do I do?"
"You, so brave, defy the evil serpent, to the last. And so, he SHOOTS you!" Zorin pulls the trigger - but the gun is not cocked, a round not chambered. There is still a meaty *click* of the firing mechanism attempting to engage, in the quiet of the large room.
After his halted heart resumed beating, a weak chuckle comes from the mole. He stammers, as if to ask further after the narrative, but Zorin is already going onward, without prompting.
"To conceal their crimes, botched and otherwise, they set fire to this room, where - your body! - wasn't even cold yet. Then they flee into the elevator - but the fire - it spread more quickly than they anticipated - and they are trapped within it, and it is there - that they perish, cooked alive in the dangling cage-turned-oven. Tragic, foolish criminals, undone by their own malicious acts of - violence! - and attempted deceit. The police, and the fire department, will put this all together, and papers will love it. I'm sure of it."
"And you are..?" Howe ventured, curiously.
"Oh!" Max scoffs, "Phht, you silly little man, I--" he pauses, patting the python's pistol against his tie and his chest beneath it, "--I was never even here!"
"Ah, right. Right." Mr Howe's eyes darted from the wolf to the raven, to the snake and the dove. He tried to smile, as Zorin was smiling at him so much, as if it was all so terribly amusing. He seemed to want to go along with the doublespeak, but...
The mole shakes his head in disbelief, thinking there must be some joke in all this, somewhere. Silently, Max grins and nods along with the mole's few hesitant words: "But then, if that's all to be true, I would have to be.."
"Dead!" proclaims the wolf, with a concrete certainty, punctuating it with the sort of finality that only a gunshot can provide.
Stacey gasps and hides herself moreso against Sond, who stands still and witnesses the evil act unflinchingly. His gaze fills with hatred old and renewed.
With a punctured heart and strength rapidly draining from his form, Howe collapses into his chair, dying without delay.
Before the poor civil servant has even fully settled, the wolf turns to the python. "That's quite neat, don't you think?"
"Oh, marvellous. You're a modern-day Shakessspeare," hisses Sond, forked tongue dripping with sarcasm and contempt for the cruel canine. The amount of loathing he felt for the other male causing the python to lose some of the total control he normally had over his sibilance.
"Ah, so you know I'm a genius, much like he," he holds the PPK near his head before gesturing outward with the barrel, as if illustrating thoughts leaping out from his mind, into the world, to be made real. "Intuitive improvisation is the key to all things."
Sond sneers, glaring daggers at the megalomaniac mammal, "That mad doctor you treat like a father would be ever-so proud to see you now. His finest creation."
Behind the snake, two more of Zorin's female thugs come through the door, carrying gas-cans, while the wolf ponders his response to the reptile. "Seems like - someone - didn't have an abundance of parental guidance or love, when he was young. Hmm?" With that, Zorin tosses Sond's gun down on Howe's desk, before turning to wave at the captive pair. "Out, OUT!"
Reinforcing her boss's orders, the raven gestures with the revolver, pointing for them to exit back into the hall. Zorin, meanwhile, snaps his fingers at the mink maiden and the human woman with the gasoline. They set about sloshing the pungent accelerant around on the carpet and the wood-panelled walls.
Sond and Sutton are made to move straight across the stony and cool corridor, into the nearest elevator. As the snake piles his coils into the tiny vertically mobile room, Zorin puts voice to his thoughts once more. "I've always liked elevators. Now I like them - even more! - seeing how perfect they are to contain your abundant coils, Mr Sond." As the wolf speaks, he steps up and leans with crossed arms on the side of the sliding metal door that is nearest the button panel. Behind him, the raven keeps the Smith & Wesson trained on the soon-to-be-trapped duo.
"Going.. down!" chuckles the wolf, leaning in to hit the button for the lobby below, turning his back to Sond.
Even before the python could fantasize about what he would like to do to the momentarily unaware Zorin, a sharp croak sounds in the stone hall. "Stay back!" warns MayDay, raising the revolver to aim at the reptile's throat.
Although 00S has a plethora of pouncing power packed into the back of the elevator, given how he had made sure to bunch his coils up tight like a spring under pressure, he knows it's too risky.. especially with Stacey so assuredly in the crossfire.
Pushing himself backward out of the elevator, back onto his paws, Zorin grins and waves good-bye to his two annoying adversaries.
The carriage begins to descend.
Suddenly, it shudders to a halt, a disturbing bounce shaking the pair of occupants.
At the same time, in the lobby, the Zorin-employed stooge named Scarpine smirks, seeing the floor indicating needle wobbling to a stop along with the elevator he had shut off, only seconds ago. He takes pride in having stopped it cleanly in between the '3' and the '2'.
A vodka bottle filled with gasoline and with its neck stuffed with an oily rag is handed to the wolf. Zorin's lips twitch toward another manic grin as he lights the Molotov cocktail, while MayDay finishes prying the elevator doors open. Below, they can see the top of the carriage holding Sond and Sutton.
With a laugh, Max throws the rudimentary firebomb down to have it break upon the elevator's roof, blanketing it in an instant inferno.
Quickly, Zorin and his trio of hench-women cross to the stairwell, where another Molotov is lit. This one, the wolf hurls against the doorway of Howe's office, igniting the thick pool of petrol that exists both within the office and the ample amount his goon-girls left just outside of it as well.
Sparing a moment of giddy glee at watching the fire spread so beautifully, the wolf tears himself away from it, waving his women down the stairs. "Go, go!"
-
Within the elevator, Sond easily extends his body upward, to carefully test-touch the trap door that exists in the ceiling of the carriage. The last minute was already spent ripping down the light fixtures that blocked access to said maintenance hatch.
Even with his claws protecting his fingers from touching the scalding surface, the snake pulls back. He whips off his jacket. "Night in San Fran isn't as chilly as I was told," he quips.
In another moment, he is crashing upward with the bunched-up wad of leather aiding him in bashing the hatch open. Intense heat engulfs him on all sides, and he hurries to stretch further upward, to escape the dizzying effect. The higher reaches bring with them greater densities of smoke. The elevator shaft is hot enough to leave the heat-sensing organs along the sides of his snout in disarray. Fire exists way above what they're meant to detect, and part of his mind feels blinded by the white-out of thermal energy all around him.
A harsh groaning and creaking of metal between loud snaps tells the serpent that the cables holding onto the top of the elevator carriage are failing. The intense heat might not melt the metal strands, but it's weakening them while they try to hold all of his serpentine bulk.
As carefully as he can, Sond feels for a cross-bar of metal that won't scald or melt his scales, burning himself a few times in his search. The poor dove, trapped below with his tail end in the elevator, doesn't need her saviour's hide painfully fused to the internal structure of her former workplace. Higher and higher, he needs to extend, his body's balance being put to the test. His form wobbles where it reaches out through the elevator's maintenance hatch, and he nearly gives in as his instincts tell him to - they plead with him to find a solid surface to lean his scutes on, to better climb. The square through which he's threaded is white-hot.
Further wailing of the elevator's cables announce just how tenuous their grip is becoming.
Finally, he hooks his torso overtop a beam somewhere near the fourth or fifth floor. There is no time, no extra slack to be more secure. He has to get out, has to get Stacey out, before the smoke inhalation makes him succumb to unconsciousness. He shouts down, "Grab my ta--"
A deafening clang drowns out anything more from Sond's snout - a scream of metal on metal fills the narrow space, almost totally covering the screech of the dove trapped within the falling, burning tomb.
All at once she's grabbing his tail and her fingers are slipping, claws scratching his scales.
Perhaps she'll pull him down with her, if things are misaligned. Or she'll take just his tail with her to hell..!
But no! Out through the eye of the needle that the scalding hatch represents, the woman is threaded! The dove dangles from Sond's upward hooked tailtip, hanging and crying and laughing in terror and relief, all at once.
Ames wants to say something about his good fortune that she's a hollow-boned bird, but he hasn't the energy even for that. Grunting, he lifts his heavy body with only the meagerest of anchorings. Slowly, he gets more of a hold of his beam, more body wound around it, to then keep lifting Stacey through the still flaming lower environs of the shaft. Things have only slightly improved with the descent of the fire-consumed carriage.
"Oh Ames, thank you, thank you!" she cries amid soft, smoke-caused coughing, as Sond swings her onto a relatively safe perch, between the two vertical channels that exist within the shaft's space.
"We're not out yet, my dear," Sond mutters, looking up to the backside of the sliding dual doors of the 5th floor. His head spins and his arms ache from so recently supporting so much of his hanging heft, but he shoves himself up from the beam, venturing upward once more. His form winds and unwinds around his perch, both letting out length to go up and taking up length which still hung below.
Miss Sutton begins to feel as though her bare taloned toes were beginning to sizzle on the metal beam she occupies. "Hurry, Ames, please! My feet!"
Grunting, Sond digs his claws between the sliding doors, willing his arms to function just enough - to be able to exert just enough force, just one more time.
Slowly, the doors part, and the python gets his first breath of proper oxygen in some time. His mind clears and he slings his tailtip around the dove's dress-clad waist, and hoists her up. With another deep breath, he shoves his back against the door and wedges a thick section of his body against the other half of the metal aperture that is rather insistent about closing.
Up to and through the portal defined by snake-body comes the white-feathered female, Sond pressing her through, releasing her as he feet find the cool tile floor. A rapid series of steps from the avian carries her away from the oven-like shaft. Right behind her, Sond sloughs himself out of the elevator doorway in one great sighing roll of his muscles.
The metal doors slide shut, blocking the blazing heat within, at long last.
Both of them breathe a sigh of relief before Stacey leans on Ames' shoulder once more, in silent gratitude. Although, she coughs lightly.
Part joke and part warning about relaxing, Sond softly says, "You realize the building is still on fire?"
A halfhearted chuckle comes from the bird before she coughs further, leaning more heavily upon him. The coughing worsens, and the severity of her smoke inhalation slowly becomes clear.
Sond lifts the light lady into his arms and slithers into the nearby stairwell.
A glance downward reveals that either Zorin set a fire in the bottom of the stairs, or the fire has spread naturally to do so for him.
The serpent slithers up, toward the roof.
He thinks he can hear sirens outside.
About bloody time!
~
The story continues, here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/42488437/
~~~
Amethystine/Ames Sond 00S and related IP © to his owner.
James Bond 007 and related IP © to Ian Fleming & Albert R Broccoli's DanJaq LLC & EON Productions
.
karolynerocha! 8D [I'll link to her post of this piece, once she uploads it here on FA] - it's on Instagram, though: https://www.instagram.com/p/CP_oRX0rYEp/~
36 years ago tonight, on June 12th, 1985, 'A View To A Kill' had its gala premiere in London, England.
And so, I present to you the poster for the Sond version: 'A Glimpssse Of A Kill'
~
Alternate poster designs:
1: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/42500902/
2: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43117929/
~
After the stunning job she did with the poster for the previous Sond adventure, Octopusssy, the marketing team at MWM studios re-hired Karolyne Rocha to do the one you see above, as well!
There are a handful of examples of this, in the series. A poster artist was hired three times in a row, for Tomorrow Never Diessss, The World Issss Not Enough and Sssspy Another Day. - And in the 60s, the same artist was kept on for Thundersssquall, He Only Livessss Twice, and O.O.S.S.S.
Meanwhile, one artist named Luci Wilde somehow ended up as a recurring hire, with large gaps in her time with the franchise. She created the posters for From Russsia With Love, Live & Let Sssspy, and For Your Eyessss Only.
Of course, only one artist has surpassed all of these trifecta-holders: one person is responsible for all FIVE of the posters starting with 2006's Casssino Royale, leading all the way up to 2021's No Time To Die.
-
Anyway, on with the show! Enjoy. :}===<
~~~
You Can't Light City Hall - an excerpt from A Glimpssse of a Kill, transcribed by Amethystine
~
1985, San Francisco City Hall, 11pm:
Clad in a gray suit with white shirt and blood red tie, a tall, slender wolf waltzes into the office of one W.G. Howe, wearing a manic grin.
Casually, the lupine clutches a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson in his paw, gripping around the whole of the gun, rather than having the grip in his palm or his index finger's leathery pad on the trigger.
Mister Howe, a short and bespectacled mole, stands up in silent shock at the late-night intrusion, the wolf interrupting the pile of paperwork the rotund black-furred man has been pushing through all evening. For his job, the mole often burned the midnight oil; he was the director for Oil and Mines for the region, after all.
Looking on in growing alarm, Howe watches as a male naga wearing a leather jacket and a white dove damsel in a matching white dress are ushered into his office by a raven-woman of amazonian proportions, at gunpoint. Though Howe doesn't know it, the Walther PPK that the black-plumed bird wields belongs to the serpent, in truth.
The burrowing mammal believes the snake to be Ames Block of the London Financial Times, a reporter who had interviewed him the day before. The white-feathered woman is much better known to him: she had been in his employ until he fired her earlier that very day. Stacey Sutton, a geologist from a prominent family of miners.
The raven he only barely knows, merely as an 'assistant' to the wolf.
It is the lanky lupine that Howe addresses in anger. "Mr Zorin! What is the meaning of this?"
Max Zorin, who is a leading French industrialist of German descent, possesses somewhat pale fur and a curious, ever-present glint of malice in his eyes. The strange but affable charm he typically exudes is currently twisted into a warped aura of threat. The way he waves his revolver around as if it were a toy and not a lethal weapon goes a long way toward that perversion of his usual more palatable personality.
"Ah, Mister Howe. It's funny. I was on my way to see you, when I - heh - happened to stumble across.." he tosses his gun from one hand to the other, the other hand now holding it as if it were to be used, and gestured at the python and the dove, continuing "..these two! In the midst of trespassing and, hmm, pilfering official city records."
Almost like punctuation on the wolf's statement, the raven firmly shuts the office door behind the tail end of the long-bodied reptile.
Tension mounts as the sealed room grows quiet. Deep in the mostly stone city hall, the wood-panelled office had the aural bearing of a fresh tomb. All it needed was a body.
With two guns, brandished by the wolf and his raven partner, one has to imagine a body would not be long in appearing.
And yet, Howe is oddly calm. At Zorin's assertion, he peers at the dove, meekly clutching to the naga's dark brown leather jacket, huddled near to him as if the snake would and could stop bullets, were they to start flying. "Miss Sutton, is this true?"
Speaking out of turn, Ames announces, "Zorin is playing you for a fool. If he's promised you money, reject it. If he's already paid you, burn it. He's a madman, a psychopath, you're helping him in something terrible, even if you don't know it yet."
Even if he had spoken for her, Stacey squeezed the snake in thanks, while also nodding her agreement with what had been said, looking back at Howe. "It's true! I know you think you can ignore what he's doing, but there must be more to it!" the dove's high voice wavered as she spoke. Her fright due to being held at gunpoint by the corvid called MayDay kept her silent no longer. She hoped that, now, her former boss would listen to reason.
"And what _am_ I doing, hmm?" Max asks, spreading his arms, smiling around the room with his vicious, toothy grin. "What evidence do you have.. of anything?" he demands, of the reptile and the timid dove, before adding, "You two - are jumping - at shadows!"
Unfortunately, it's true. The snake who had posed as a journalist named Block to speak to Howe was agent 00S, Ames Sond, and he really did have only shadows so far, after his solid week of investigating the tycoon.
There had been fixed horse-racing, a murdered French detective, a stockpile of microchips when there's a world-wide surplus, and finally, the pumping of sea-water through oil pipelines in the Bay Area. The python has yet to come up with a clear bigger picture for all that he has found. Moreover, the killing of Sond's countryman some days back, an equine nobleman who had been aiding the naga with the case, was what had stung most of all.
But none of it can be conclusively proven, none of it adds up to anything cohesive. The grand plot: the serpentine spy still does not know its concrete contours, does not know the inky heart of it all.
"These two, heh, are attempting to slander me, and they have broken - the law - a number of times, to try to do it," Zorin asserts, in his unique mode of speaking, adding emphasis on certain words, often pausing for extra effect.
Changing tone altogether, he directs the mole, with a sudden point of his revolver's barrel at the broad desk before the squat, standing director. "Pick up the phone. Call the police. Tell them you've had a break-in, which you have. Tell them to come at once."
The mole does as he was told, calling the police station with the touch of just one of the many speed-dial buttons on the shiny black touch-tone phone. "Yes, police? I'm calling from city hall. 3rd floor offices, east wing. We've had a break-in. Get here right away."
"Mm, yes, good," Zorin rumbles, smiling and wagging a finger from his free hand approvingly at Howe. "I like you! A director who takes direction - well!"
"Mr Zorin.. Max. Would you please explain what's going on?" Howe pleads.
With that wide, wild-eyed smile and a nod, the wolf replies, "Oh, sure. You've been very patient," while also gesturing the raven, MayDay, over to himself.
Using his gun to point at the python and his petite, pale-plumaged companion, the predator spun a tale. "You had dismissed her from her position here today, yes? And tonight, she returns - with her lover for muscle - to find evidence of wrong-doing involving me. You saw them and called the police before they realized you were here."
The wolf barely pauses the on-going anecdote while he trades the Smith & Wesson he wields for the gun that the raven had been pointing at the captive constrictor and his dove friend. After the quick swap between wolf and raven, the revolver keeps the reptile at bay, while the snake's own pistol is being waved around in the wolf's paw, as he narrates his little story.
"But then they found you here in your office, and tried to use you against me. The snake even brandished this very gun at you, like this!" Zorin, ever the dramatist, raises the semi-automatic to fit with his flight of fancy.
Howe swallows, but still he nods, and asks. "And what.. do I do?"
"You, so brave, defy the evil serpent, to the last. And so, he SHOOTS you!" Zorin pulls the trigger - but the gun is not cocked, a round not chambered. There is still a meaty *click* of the firing mechanism attempting to engage, in the quiet of the large room.
After his halted heart resumed beating, a weak chuckle comes from the mole. He stammers, as if to ask further after the narrative, but Zorin is already going onward, without prompting.
"To conceal their crimes, botched and otherwise, they set fire to this room, where - your body! - wasn't even cold yet. Then they flee into the elevator - but the fire - it spread more quickly than they anticipated - and they are trapped within it, and it is there - that they perish, cooked alive in the dangling cage-turned-oven. Tragic, foolish criminals, undone by their own malicious acts of - violence! - and attempted deceit. The police, and the fire department, will put this all together, and papers will love it. I'm sure of it."
"And you are..?" Howe ventured, curiously.
"Oh!" Max scoffs, "Phht, you silly little man, I--" he pauses, patting the python's pistol against his tie and his chest beneath it, "--I was never even here!"
"Ah, right. Right." Mr Howe's eyes darted from the wolf to the raven, to the snake and the dove. He tried to smile, as Zorin was smiling at him so much, as if it was all so terribly amusing. He seemed to want to go along with the doublespeak, but...
The mole shakes his head in disbelief, thinking there must be some joke in all this, somewhere. Silently, Max grins and nods along with the mole's few hesitant words: "But then, if that's all to be true, I would have to be.."
"Dead!" proclaims the wolf, with a concrete certainty, punctuating it with the sort of finality that only a gunshot can provide.
Stacey gasps and hides herself moreso against Sond, who stands still and witnesses the evil act unflinchingly. His gaze fills with hatred old and renewed.
With a punctured heart and strength rapidly draining from his form, Howe collapses into his chair, dying without delay.
Before the poor civil servant has even fully settled, the wolf turns to the python. "That's quite neat, don't you think?"
"Oh, marvellous. You're a modern-day Shakessspeare," hisses Sond, forked tongue dripping with sarcasm and contempt for the cruel canine. The amount of loathing he felt for the other male causing the python to lose some of the total control he normally had over his sibilance.
"Ah, so you know I'm a genius, much like he," he holds the PPK near his head before gesturing outward with the barrel, as if illustrating thoughts leaping out from his mind, into the world, to be made real. "Intuitive improvisation is the key to all things."
Sond sneers, glaring daggers at the megalomaniac mammal, "That mad doctor you treat like a father would be ever-so proud to see you now. His finest creation."
Behind the snake, two more of Zorin's female thugs come through the door, carrying gas-cans, while the wolf ponders his response to the reptile. "Seems like - someone - didn't have an abundance of parental guidance or love, when he was young. Hmm?" With that, Zorin tosses Sond's gun down on Howe's desk, before turning to wave at the captive pair. "Out, OUT!"
Reinforcing her boss's orders, the raven gestures with the revolver, pointing for them to exit back into the hall. Zorin, meanwhile, snaps his fingers at the mink maiden and the human woman with the gasoline. They set about sloshing the pungent accelerant around on the carpet and the wood-panelled walls.
Sond and Sutton are made to move straight across the stony and cool corridor, into the nearest elevator. As the snake piles his coils into the tiny vertically mobile room, Zorin puts voice to his thoughts once more. "I've always liked elevators. Now I like them - even more! - seeing how perfect they are to contain your abundant coils, Mr Sond." As the wolf speaks, he steps up and leans with crossed arms on the side of the sliding metal door that is nearest the button panel. Behind him, the raven keeps the Smith & Wesson trained on the soon-to-be-trapped duo.
"Going.. down!" chuckles the wolf, leaning in to hit the button for the lobby below, turning his back to Sond.
Even before the python could fantasize about what he would like to do to the momentarily unaware Zorin, a sharp croak sounds in the stone hall. "Stay back!" warns MayDay, raising the revolver to aim at the reptile's throat.
Although 00S has a plethora of pouncing power packed into the back of the elevator, given how he had made sure to bunch his coils up tight like a spring under pressure, he knows it's too risky.. especially with Stacey so assuredly in the crossfire.
Pushing himself backward out of the elevator, back onto his paws, Zorin grins and waves good-bye to his two annoying adversaries.
The carriage begins to descend.
Suddenly, it shudders to a halt, a disturbing bounce shaking the pair of occupants.
At the same time, in the lobby, the Zorin-employed stooge named Scarpine smirks, seeing the floor indicating needle wobbling to a stop along with the elevator he had shut off, only seconds ago. He takes pride in having stopped it cleanly in between the '3' and the '2'.
A vodka bottle filled with gasoline and with its neck stuffed with an oily rag is handed to the wolf. Zorin's lips twitch toward another manic grin as he lights the Molotov cocktail, while MayDay finishes prying the elevator doors open. Below, they can see the top of the carriage holding Sond and Sutton.
With a laugh, Max throws the rudimentary firebomb down to have it break upon the elevator's roof, blanketing it in an instant inferno.
Quickly, Zorin and his trio of hench-women cross to the stairwell, where another Molotov is lit. This one, the wolf hurls against the doorway of Howe's office, igniting the thick pool of petrol that exists both within the office and the ample amount his goon-girls left just outside of it as well.
Sparing a moment of giddy glee at watching the fire spread so beautifully, the wolf tears himself away from it, waving his women down the stairs. "Go, go!"
-
Within the elevator, Sond easily extends his body upward, to carefully test-touch the trap door that exists in the ceiling of the carriage. The last minute was already spent ripping down the light fixtures that blocked access to said maintenance hatch.
Even with his claws protecting his fingers from touching the scalding surface, the snake pulls back. He whips off his jacket. "Night in San Fran isn't as chilly as I was told," he quips.
In another moment, he is crashing upward with the bunched-up wad of leather aiding him in bashing the hatch open. Intense heat engulfs him on all sides, and he hurries to stretch further upward, to escape the dizzying effect. The higher reaches bring with them greater densities of smoke. The elevator shaft is hot enough to leave the heat-sensing organs along the sides of his snout in disarray. Fire exists way above what they're meant to detect, and part of his mind feels blinded by the white-out of thermal energy all around him.
A harsh groaning and creaking of metal between loud snaps tells the serpent that the cables holding onto the top of the elevator carriage are failing. The intense heat might not melt the metal strands, but it's weakening them while they try to hold all of his serpentine bulk.
As carefully as he can, Sond feels for a cross-bar of metal that won't scald or melt his scales, burning himself a few times in his search. The poor dove, trapped below with his tail end in the elevator, doesn't need her saviour's hide painfully fused to the internal structure of her former workplace. Higher and higher, he needs to extend, his body's balance being put to the test. His form wobbles where it reaches out through the elevator's maintenance hatch, and he nearly gives in as his instincts tell him to - they plead with him to find a solid surface to lean his scutes on, to better climb. The square through which he's threaded is white-hot.
Further wailing of the elevator's cables announce just how tenuous their grip is becoming.
Finally, he hooks his torso overtop a beam somewhere near the fourth or fifth floor. There is no time, no extra slack to be more secure. He has to get out, has to get Stacey out, before the smoke inhalation makes him succumb to unconsciousness. He shouts down, "Grab my ta--"
A deafening clang drowns out anything more from Sond's snout - a scream of metal on metal fills the narrow space, almost totally covering the screech of the dove trapped within the falling, burning tomb.
All at once she's grabbing his tail and her fingers are slipping, claws scratching his scales.
Perhaps she'll pull him down with her, if things are misaligned. Or she'll take just his tail with her to hell..!
But no! Out through the eye of the needle that the scalding hatch represents, the woman is threaded! The dove dangles from Sond's upward hooked tailtip, hanging and crying and laughing in terror and relief, all at once.
Ames wants to say something about his good fortune that she's a hollow-boned bird, but he hasn't the energy even for that. Grunting, he lifts his heavy body with only the meagerest of anchorings. Slowly, he gets more of a hold of his beam, more body wound around it, to then keep lifting Stacey through the still flaming lower environs of the shaft. Things have only slightly improved with the descent of the fire-consumed carriage.
"Oh Ames, thank you, thank you!" she cries amid soft, smoke-caused coughing, as Sond swings her onto a relatively safe perch, between the two vertical channels that exist within the shaft's space.
"We're not out yet, my dear," Sond mutters, looking up to the backside of the sliding dual doors of the 5th floor. His head spins and his arms ache from so recently supporting so much of his hanging heft, but he shoves himself up from the beam, venturing upward once more. His form winds and unwinds around his perch, both letting out length to go up and taking up length which still hung below.
Miss Sutton begins to feel as though her bare taloned toes were beginning to sizzle on the metal beam she occupies. "Hurry, Ames, please! My feet!"
Grunting, Sond digs his claws between the sliding doors, willing his arms to function just enough - to be able to exert just enough force, just one more time.
Slowly, the doors part, and the python gets his first breath of proper oxygen in some time. His mind clears and he slings his tailtip around the dove's dress-clad waist, and hoists her up. With another deep breath, he shoves his back against the door and wedges a thick section of his body against the other half of the metal aperture that is rather insistent about closing.
Up to and through the portal defined by snake-body comes the white-feathered female, Sond pressing her through, releasing her as he feet find the cool tile floor. A rapid series of steps from the avian carries her away from the oven-like shaft. Right behind her, Sond sloughs himself out of the elevator doorway in one great sighing roll of his muscles.
The metal doors slide shut, blocking the blazing heat within, at long last.
Both of them breathe a sigh of relief before Stacey leans on Ames' shoulder once more, in silent gratitude. Although, she coughs lightly.
Part joke and part warning about relaxing, Sond softly says, "You realize the building is still on fire?"
A halfhearted chuckle comes from the bird before she coughs further, leaning more heavily upon him. The coughing worsens, and the severity of her smoke inhalation slowly becomes clear.
Sond lifts the light lady into his arms and slithers into the nearby stairwell.
A glance downward reveals that either Zorin set a fire in the bottom of the stairs, or the fire has spread naturally to do so for him.
The serpent slithers up, toward the roof.
He thinks he can hear sirens outside.
About bloody time!
~
The story continues, here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/42488437/
~~~
Amethystine/Ames Sond 00S and related IP © to his owner.
James Bond 007 and related IP © to Ian Fleming & Albert R Broccoli's DanJaq LLC & EON Productions
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KAROLYNE DID SO WELL ON THIS ONE, OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
IT'S SUCH A PERFECT RECREATION OF THE ORIGINAL
And that raven is so good. Those legs! :3
The poster directly after this one is still not done, after all. :>
Also, yesss, MayDay looks so perfectly badass, as she should.
Of course, I assume you mean the furry world where you get to watch Ames Sond movies, not the world where the movies take place. The world in which they take place has super-villains with evil world domination plots and other dangerous stuff like that! O: [haha]
Anyway, thanks for the fave! :}===<
All the detail in the 'background poster'!!
Good read, too! I always think it's great how you accent the scenes, like: "punctuating it with the sort of finality that only a gunshot can provide.". It's very, very cool!
Also, I can get the feel of how Max Zorin is talking, but it might just come with already knowing how awkwardly Walken delivers his lines. I really like it, though I feel I have to read it at 'speaking' pace while I imagine Walken's voice/pacing in order not to get confused as I read.
Thanks for the fave, and yessss, the poster is primo in the extreme.
I was happy with that line about a gunshot shooting a period into the metaphorical page of the scene. Of course, once I hit that point, I felt like I didn't want to go further. BUT the Sond-ness of it all hadn't been fulfilled. I feel like I need to have SOMETHING in each scene that has a 'what can he do (or not do) as a snake, here' element in it.
The elevator escape was probably much easier, but I added in more realism about how hot it would be, and the dangers of smoke that were perhaps glossed over in the movie. Also, they don't have shoes!
~
Glad you - enjoyed! - the Walken / Walven style. I thought I'd try to really go - all in! - on that. I was worried he might seem a bit like Jeff Goldblum in text, though, at first.
The problem is when someone has an axe and wants to hit.. any part of your long body. D:
Anyway, thanks for the fave!
Thanks for the fave!
Grace Jones looked pretty fierce, as I remember, but now I'm kind of interested how the raven lady here would look in it. :D
I don't know if it was a typo or slip of the tongue, but I appreciate you saying it was the first SOND film you saw in cinema, for its initial release. :}c
And, thanks for the fave!
I found it ironic that Sond's fellow agent was an equine in this version... in the middle of all the horse-riding, you know... 😅
The beginning of the plot of this movie was about horse-RACING. You know, professional equine anthro sprint runner athletes? Sir Godfrey Tibbett was a former competitor himself, that's why he was a valuable asset to have on the mission.
Anyway, thanks for the fave! :}===<
Right now is very late here and my mind is tired, but I wanted to read your story so bad because I already had to postpone this moment too much due to me being busy in the past days 😅
But yeah, I know of professional equine anthro sprint runner athletes, eheh...
(I can't help but feel like this is some sort of recurring "problem" cursing any story that prominently features anthros... what food do they eat? do ordinary animals even exist? Would horse riding be socially acceptable? But then again I guess one is not supposed to think too hard about it in order to avoid breaking the suspension of disbelief... XD)
There are some actual animals, of course, yes. There's also lots of protein to be had from labs or proper insects, as well as plant-based protein. But yes, I'm mostly glossing over a lot of this. :P
Stacey was on a beam that was being heated by the fire in the elevator shaft, but I know what you mean.
I'm glad to see you liked the other entry from 'A Glimpssse of a Kill' enough to venture onto another, here.
Dominus tecum
Of course, if I were to say anything about it, I would say that in the Sondverse, wolf/raven friendships are somehow more likely than other cross-kingdom kinships. Ie: a raven is very likely to be friends with another raven or certain other birds, like other corvids. They would then have an average likelihood of growing attached to any other species in general, but then 'strangely', they would be more likely to befriend wolves, but not other canids moreso than normal.
Of course, this doesn't mean a raven couldn't grow close to anyone, I just mean overall, looking at the population as a whole, there's a trend for this pairing to happen, for some unexplained reason. :P
Anyway, thanks for the fave on this! :}
The whole series of scenes in City Hall are perhaps the best of the movie, in my opinion.
Dominus tecum
In this pairing in Sond, the raven is the larger, stronger, tougher one, but Zorin is the more conniving.
Dominus tecum
This one was drawn by
Thanks for the fave, in any case. :>