Loa Blood

[Maka]

Entropy

“Sometimes, you think ‘This is it’, you think ‘This is the perfect moment’ and you want to freeze time forever, so you can just stay there”.

“Shut up, Michael”

Michael Carleton paced up and down the small flat, a lit cigarette he wasn’t smoking burning in his hands.

“Or maybe, or maybe, you look back and think ‘This was the perfect year for me’, or maybe ‘This was the perfect girl’… then you think… so why didn’t it stay? Why didn’t I stay there?”

There was a pause. Michael’s cigarette burned down to his fingers and he dropped it with a muffled curse, treading it underfoot into the carpet.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Andrew sighed, didn’t look up from the computer screen.

“No, I’m not listening to you, Michael. I’m not listening, because you’re just going on about the same bullshit you’ve been on about all week. Ash, Michael. You used to be interesting”

Michael felt a dull pain, and lashed out reflexively.

“Well, you used to do something more interesting than sitting there pretending to shoot things on that stupid fucking machine”

“I used to”, snapped Andrew. “In case you didn’t notice, I’m in a fucking wheelchair now. No more mountain climbing for Andy”

Michael looked away.

“Sorry”, he muttered.

Andrew shrugged. “Hey”.

He laughed. “You know something funny? You know what they told me, after they pulled me off the slope I ended up splattered on? They told me that all my gear was in perfect condition and strapped on perfectly. They said the chances of one rope failing like that were one in a million. I’m the recipient of a small, personal, very very nasty miracle. Isn’t that funny, Michael?”

He turned back to the screen, and frowned.

“The thing’s crashed again. Would you believe it, Michael? Hey… Michael!?”

Michael was already gone.


He used to like the streets of Bay City. They used to be places for dreaming, small, shady alcoves, stupid little cobbled roads that he’d spend hours exploring.

The streets were where all his troubles began, really. All those choices, all those directions. He couldn’t face one way without turning his back on another. He couldn’t choose one path without denying himself a thousand others. His fascination with the city grew to be too much, so that he couldn’t travel anywhere without losing himself in the hive of dreams, losing his name and his destination and his business in the sheer urge to explore every single part of the city.

They’d find him, hours later, wandering in circles in distant suburbs and slums, with no memory of where he’d been. Sometimes, it got so bad that all he could do was hide from all the choices, inside his flat.

They’d known about his problems. He was sure of that now. Coda did their research. They’d known how to bait their hook, though it sounded so simple and natural when they addressed his department. They were doing experiments, legitimate but hush-hush, in total sensory deprivation. Office drones like him didn’t usually get involved with it, but everyone knew Coda did do work like that; shadowy, strange business behind the scenes.

They were offering money. They were offering promotions. But most of all, they were offering a chance to simply stay, in a dark, comfortable, womblike place with no choices to make, for three weeks. Okay, he’d said. Sign me up, he’d said. Like they’d known he would.

Total sensory deprivation was not like being in the womb. It was not comforting or safe. It was a lightless, terrible vacuum and worst of all was the sense that he wasn’t alone, that things crawled in his bloodstream, and down his spine. He could feel his most treasured memories slowly being ripped from him in the darkness. He could feel his mind beginning to give way.

And once he’d emerged from TSD, once he’d crawled back into the light, he found nothing the same. The little lanes and streets were cold grey concrete now, haunted by prostitutes and serial killers. Things were broken. None of his friends were as he recalled them; Andrew, the cheerful, exuberant mountain-climber was now a bitter cripple. Kathy, who used to so brilliant and full of life had dropped out of college and gotten addicted to cocaine. And his girlfriend, Niamh…

They were watching him. He could always tell. Two men in sober grey suits, standing with hands folded across their chests, standing on the other side of the street. They were never far. They never made any particular effort to conceal their presence. After all, what could he do?

Michael had given up trying to hide from them. He even made it easier, changing from his office clothes to a punk look; a black leather duster, spiked purple hair, an earring. Everything and everyone was changing, why shouldn’t he?

There was a line of TVs blaring in the window of the shop opposite him. Michael stared at them for a while. It was a gameshow host, his cheeks oddly red, laughing too hard. Michael had watched these shows for hours at a time. He didn’t understand the jokes, or why everyone laughed at them with such frenzy, almost as if they were afraid of something. Almost as if they didn’t laugh hard enough, the hosts would take away the light and leave them in darkness.

With that thought, the entire line of screens suddenly went dark. A power-cut, or something. Michael wondered what the odds of that were.

“Give me your fucking money!”

The man standing next to him was small, and smelt of alchohol and despair. All his strength was in the shiny black gun in his hands.

Michael shrugged.

“Go ahead”

The mugger blinked. “What?”

“Go ahead. Shoot me”. Michael brushed back his coat and tore his shirt open, exposing the heart. “Shoot me. Please. You can take my money afterwards.”

“You’re fuckin’ crazy, man!”

The mugger’s finger tightened on the trigger, and slowly squeezed it back. There was a click.

Michael relaxed.

“Your gun seems to have jammed”.

His assailant stared at the gun. “The fuck? The odds of that are…”

“… about a million to one?”, asked Michael wearily.

“What the fuck is this?”

Michael shrugged. “It’s just me. It’s only me”.

He walked away from the mugger without a backwards glance. As he passed under them, each streetlight spluttered, flared and went out, as though he carried darkness with him.

 

[SwampThing]

Nia stands in the rain waiting for the police. Two squad cars pull up nearby, the slick cobblestones flashing back blue and red.

"Freeze! Drop your weapons and put your hands up."

The dark-skinned, Argon cops advance towards her.

"Look at the way her clothes are torn up, looks like she was the victim."

"These green blades are Cold Blood gang. And this other guy's got a Killer Bee tatoo. Looks like our girl got mixed up in a turf war."

The officers take Nia to police headquarters. In the Special Crimes unit, she is given a clean police sweatsuit, a cup of hot coffee and a donut. On the other side of the crowded office, a social worker and a humanoid cactus are shouting at each other. An officer on the telephone is saying something about a monster called the Crusher.

The officer sitting across from Nia looks like a bald thug. He rests his huge boots on the table, and cracks his neck.

"I'm Judd. So, tell me your story from the beginning."
__________________________________________

From a safe distance, Nikki sees the police on the scene, and the strange woman in rags they are taking in. She recalls the last time the police took her in, and the offers to work with them, or Coda, or the Argon government, or with GAIA. Somewhere, she still has the beer-stained card from Bobby Dugan, GAIA's lead scientist.
__________________________________________

The police helicopters pursuing the Crusher crash into the street in great balls of flame. The monster has escaped into the cloud cover. In the street, people scream "It's starting again!".
___________________________________________

The two men in grey suits following Micheal just look at each other. Their earpieces are dead, and their hand computers unresponsive.

"Go find a pay phone and call in." Says one man, "I'll continue to trail him, but this guy's going critical. We need to bring him in."
____________________________________________

Beneath the streets, a small band of tough-looking young Argon men pause at the bottom of the manhole ladder. They'd sent the new guy up first, and he came back down with a bullet between his eyes.

"Looks like we aint hittin' that store tonight after all, Motley."

"Looks like." Replies a long-haired older man with a black doctor's bag. "This routes bein' haunted by that Ghost, boys. Don' sweat it. S'a big city. Take th' night off, and we'll hit th' hillside tomorrer night."

"But boss, what about . . ." The man with the shotgun motioned up the ladder.

"The Ghost? Leave him to th' big boys, I say. Let th' Bees or th' Blood han'le that mess. Way I hear it, they're both none too pleased with the situation."
___________________________________________

Faith is walked out by the greasy asylum director. "You understand we're under a lot of pressure from the Ministry of Justice, Faith. It's bad enough that the voters want to see the Cuckoo caught, but those kids parents are all major movers. You're not coming in here to be friendly with that psychopath and listen to her reminisce about the good old days. If you can't get her tell us where to find the Cuckoo, then she'll be taken out of our hands."

 

[DarkThoughts01]

Symphony

dull foosteps echo down the street as a tall,lean figure wanders past.Bright green eyes stare out from underneath a head of silverish hair.The eyes seem a bit vague,looking constantly from side to side and up and down and in every direction.It stops at a small building and long,deft fingers tap in a code as the door slides open slowly,revealing an interior littered wiht small pieces of metal and strange fabrics and plastics and woods.along three long tables that dominate the room lay parts,most in dissaray except for the 2nd table,which contains a fewvehicle stereos(dont know if people stilld rive cars or what they woudl refer to them as) labeled with symbols,some obviously from a number of gangs.It was alright for Symphony though,as he knew some of the right peopel to know that the authorities would not trouble him and his work.He ignored the three tabels and there work for now,seeing that the closest due-date for the stereo was in a bit,and it was already finished.He went to the another,smaller table almost hidden from view behind the other,where a hooked up laptop rested connected to 3 or 4 diskshaped objects.

Symphony cracked his fingers out loudly and started typng and adjsuting controls from the laptop as the disks hummed and lifted from the table from small air-jets hidden in it surface.A clear,crystalline melody drifts from them,breaking the silence.the disks shook a bit in the air,vibrating to create their melodies.
Thus,Symphony spent his time until worldly distractions called him away.....

 

[Morgoth]

Dan Williams is halfway there. Concealed by clouds, he knows he won't be caught. Then, it strikes. He screams, clutching at his face as blood gushes through his fingers, pouring down. He lets out a mad roar and falls. A moment later, he slams into the street, tearing a crater in the asphalt and throwing up debris all around. He rests there for a minute, breathing shallowly as people gather around. He lifts his head, dark eyes opening. The Crusher leaps from the crater and the slaughter begins.

 

[cats]

Nia

IC: The cars arrived and they looked at me. They said I was the victim, poor logic since I'm the best off one here. I decided to say something but then couldn't choose what to say and in this way I remained silent.

One officer looked at my arm just hanging there. The bleeding had stopped but he treated it with basic first aid just the same. I was then silent on my way to the station choosing what to say and what not to say and in it all I felt I could not say anything. I didn't wish to think of the way I conducted a murder, and because of that reason alone I couldn't say anything.

When I was at the station my arm was close to healed, the hour was enough to mend the slight fracture in the bone and muscle and skin healed even faster on me. The officer across the table was still faceless to me despite his question. I didn't make eye contact feeling that I had little control of my actions, reflex has become a way to survive and in my nonviolent decision I performed violence.

The silence had to be broken. "I don't really eat or drink." I looked at the objects they gave me. "My arm will also be fine." The quiet returned and I felt less comfortable. "I killed a man and destroyed the face of the other." Was it in self defense? I acted to quickly to know. "I can only give excuses as to why. You have my confession is that enough?"

OOC: I threw in the first aid because it seemed like something that would of been done.

 

[SwampThing]

Judd stared at Nia. "Don't eat or drink, huh? And your arm is healed already? Then you're Gifted, aren't you? Mind telling me how that happened? Also, where do you live? How did you enter the country? Do you have a valid tourist Visa or Argon ID?

"Maybe it was self-defense, but that seems unlikely from what we saw at the crime scene, and we'll have to see what that Sejealan kid says when he's able to give a statement. Maybe you're a new super-powered enforcer for one of the gangs. Even if you're telling me the truth, then you just got yourself in the middle of a bloody gang war, and both of those gangs are going to be looking for you for vengeance.

"You'll be released into the social work system, which means they'll try and find a job for you. If you don't need to eat, money may be less of an issue for you, but the law still requires you to have an address and an ID number. Anyway, don't leave town, we'll be keeping an eye on you."

A femal social worker takes Nia to a halfway-house near the station, where she is given a bed in a dorm crowded with women. "Get some sleep. We'll sort out your Visa in the morning."

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

Faith

Faith left the Asylum after talking to a few orderlies and was glad to see that the rain had cleared. Price would give her hell if she got in a wreck on her new bike.

She glanced at her watch. He'd be at work now. She'd better go and give him the location Kate had given her. It'd been so long since the kids were snatched, where they even still alive?

Funny, she mused as she drove the glittering streets, she called a phyro by her first name and her boyfriend by his last. Boyfriend. Wasn't that a silly term?

Of course, he wasn't in when she got there. Off on a crime scene. She left one of her cards with "Call me BIG TIP! ASAP" on it. While she was writing a social worker in one of those hideous mustard colored jackets they wore hustled a battered looking girl past them.

"What's with that?" She asked the desk Sargent.

"Just another stray, no story for you there, Scoop."

"OK, I've got some work to do anyway. If he comes in and has a break, tell him I'll be at the café where we ate that one day." She said. He grunted and wrote "Café" on a slip of paper and attached her card to it.

Outside the air smelled so clean and fresh. Of course, it was a lie, nothing was ever really clean and fresh. But one did what one could to stop it from festering. She left her bike in the lot and jogged over to the café. Several cops waved, and she waved back before opening her comp and beginning.

 

[SwampThing]

The early morning light gleams off the wet streets. The rain has cleared, and glowing white fog brings in the clean smell of the ocean. The shops are just begining to open when the man from Coda stops at a pay-phone in front of a furniture store.

A city bus, half-full of club-kids returning home from a night of oblivion, and shop drones heading to work, rolls out-of control and burning through the display window. The bus topples over and explodes, sending shards of glass and the burning man in the grey suit flying into the road.

The shining, metal Crusher walks the streets, tossing cars, burning buildings, slaughtering everyone he can find.

 

[Maka]

It was so cold on the streets these days. Michael shivered, drawing his coat tighter around him. The thin leather didn't bring him any warmth. Stupid fucking thing to wear.

It seemed like he'd been walking for hours. Now only one suited man followed him. Michael wasn't sure what this change heralded for him. Instinctively, he quickened his pace. His follower did too. They moved like shadows through the early morning fog.

The buildings around him looked suddenly gaunt and skeletal, the barred doors and windows jagged ribcages. It was as though the world around him had been returned to pure, cold, bony mathematics, hard equations of loss and entropy, and the only living things that moved through it were himself and his pursuer. Hunter and hunted.

Michael drew a breath of sharp, cold air and tried to calm himself. he was becoming hysterical. He had to think.

From distant streets, muffled by fog, came the screech of metal on metal. Michael frowned. He'd seen a helicopter crash into the city skyline earlier. Had he? He was beginning to lose his grip. He was beginning to fall apart. He needed someone to talk to.

On an impulse, glancing around to make sure of his follower (who'd become oddly comforting, in a way, the only other living being in the world), he walked over to a line of payphones. The first two he tried simply went dead as soon as he picked them up. The third gave a live hum, but choked to death on the coins he fed it. The fourth worked long enough to dial a number, although it still crackled ominously.

There was a pause of eight heartbeats, then Niamh's answering machine caught the call:

"Hey. This is me. I'm not here right now. Please leave a message after the beep noise, and then we can have a proper conversation some day. Unless you're my ex-boyfriend Michael, in which case I believe I can make it simpler:
Awkward politeness. Uncomfortable silence. Poorly-thought-out attempt to appeal to nostalgia. Uncomfortable silence. Forced cheerfulness. Snide comment. Abrupt exit.
How am I doing, Mike?"

The reciever went dead before Michael could leave a message, if he'd intended to. He walked a little way down the street, and saw the bright light of a cafe through the fog. He needed hot coffee inside him.

Tinny music, the fashionable, discordant white-noise rock, blared from a wall-radio. Michael took a step inside, and the musc abruptly cut off.

 

[DarkThoughts01]

Symphony


sighs,glancing at a clock wall and seeing his customer was late and walks outside for some air.He steps out halfway then freezes,hearing a screech of tortued metal.e turns,trying to get the sound into an easier angle for him to hear,one foot still placed in hsi doorway.He thinks to himself for a moment,then curses and rushes inside again...


A moment or two later he bursts out the door,letting them auto-lock(hopefully) as he hurries towards the noise.In either of his trenchcoat's pockets rests small 2by4" boxes,around 3 or 4 of them.

cursing and breathign deeply of the cold air he turns the corner of the block and stares with large eyes at the destroyed street and the..the thing moving along the street...

 

[cats]

Nai

IC: I was will beyond what I had did now. The consequences of my actions seemed to be even greater then I first thought. I don't have a passport to be here. It was a fluke they found my on that island any how, I was on a separate near by island at the time of the accident. There simply was a team there investigating the so called monsters.

I layed down in the bed. I wanted to call home and end this but I couldn't. My family couldn't bare the dishonor again. My brother was unable to finish his training and neither can I now. We have both failed my parents. I will die here for what I've done. I will bare the shame alone in this place rather then place any of it on them. I will disappear from there eyes. I can't even preserve the honor by taking my own life. I had tried shortly after I realized the temple was gone. The pain hurt greatly and yet completely healed.

I had closed my eyes. Was it self defense? I turned starting the long night of tossing and turning that was yet to come. Can I atone and can I live here? I do not have a passport so will I be punished to a greater level. Will they contact home?

 

[Morgoth]

The Chrusher was enjoying himself. At the moment, he was totally irrational, tearing everything he saw apart. At the back of his mind, Dan Williams was trying desperately to achieve control. The joy he was feeling didn't help, however.
The Crusher picked up a car, tearing it apart like it was butter and throwing it through a building. Then, he saw something worthy of his attention. The Crusher walked to the large truck, door open, its former owner running down the street, looking back at the Crusher in terror. The beast laughed loudly and sent a ball of fire forth which enveloped the man, leaving nothing, not even ash. Then, he turned to the truck brimming with liquid nitrogen once heading for Coda labs. He lifted the truck above his head, watching in bemusement as the cab fell from the rest, slamming heavily into the street. He flexed and hurled the rest of the truck down the street, watching in earnest as it impacted a large building, sending forth its contents all over the surface of both the building and the street. Dozens, attempting to escape, were caught in the freezing liquid. Seconds later, frozen statues were all that remained as the liquid nitrogen vaporized. The Crusher laughed loudly once more. Then, his laugh turned into a manic grin as he started down the street once more.

 

[SwampThing]

Armoured police trucks move in, surrounding the Crusher's area, trying to contain the destruction to a few small blocks this time. Officers are trying to evacuate civilians. From out of the trucks come the Special Crimes assault teams, suited up with kevlar and ceramic plating, armour-piercing shotguns, fully automatic rifles, and grenade launchers.

As soon as the streets seem clear enough, the assault teams flood the area with tear gas, and open fire on the creature.

Miles away, above the desert, a squadron of jet fighters takes off, and heads for the heart of the city.

 

[Morgoth]

As the armor piercing bullets begin to tear into him, the Crusher's will becomes weakened by the pain. Mentally laughing, Dan Williams takes control. The pain is light and his will is strong, so he ignores it. He stops for a moment, thinking, ignoring the bullets flying at him, his instincts taking over to destroy the grenades. Dan Willaims asserts himself, crushing the other two. A grenade lands near his feet, but he blasts it away. He laughs. "Not today, humans! I am invincible!" he roars, throwing out intense heat in all directions, incinerating all around him, pushing the armored trucks back, those behind them thrown flat. "I will destroy all of you! After all, what can such pathetic creatures as yourselves do to the epitome of perfection! But worry not! Your children will have the honor of becoming perfect as well!" he roars and rushes towards the largest remaining group of police, slamming into them like a tidal wave. One, he lifts above his head and tears him in half, enjoying the looks on the others' faces. Two can't stop themselves and retch. Meanwhile, the beast impales another with his horns and snaps the vomtting two's necks with his powerful wings. "Die!" he chuckles, turning with manic eyes towards the next. They stumble backwards, desperately trying to get away, and he incinerates them. "No armor can withstand my purifying heat! Take it and come away clean!" he screams, and finishes the last of the fleeing groups. He laughs loudly as he begins to walk down the street, catching all he can. Purification and perfection can come later. Now was the time for slaughter!

 

[DarkThoughts01]

Symphony
Shit Shit SHit SHIT!

was all he could think,managing to stumble away from the carnage,his left leg half-burnt,the skin partly black and the pant's leg and his trenchtcoat destroyed.Jumping into a stairway into an underground celler he had smashed into and through the door,narrowly missing the intense heat that had come from..whatever the fuck that was!
he went out to the doorway and hid there,watching the monster before slipping back down.He cursed himself mentally but try as he might he couldnt get the image of those people being killed.

god dam me for a foolhe though and growled at himself as he started fumbling through the remains off his trenchcoats, grabbing the surviving 2 boxes,the other few slagged or lost.
He tottered over to the stairway and looked up at the monster carefully,raising one of the small box and pressing a depression on it.a small cap popsopen and a small little coered speaker slides out the front.He turns the dial up and takes a deep breath,aiming at the monster.He pressed on the button and a horrible,ear-splitting shriek blasted forth clearly,then warbled suddenly as he tensed and concentrated..

The air literally rippled,a wave of pure NOISE!!! rocketing towards the beast.his body shaking in pain,a scream,drowned out by the Noise,was ripped from his lips before Symphony blessfully passed out,tumbling a bit down the stairs and landing hidden from view

 

[Morgoth]

Dan Williams shook off the noise like it wasn't there. Blood leaked from his ears, but he blissfully turned towards the source building and vaporized it, turning back to his former path as his destroyed eardrums reformed.

 

[DarkThoughts01]

Symphony

In the black pit of unconsciousness he cna almost hear the building just above him vaporize,a light sprinkling of dust and left-over ash dusting him and the stairs,which he had dropped into.Luckily the stairs were undergound and had sem-survived the blast,his body cradled between it and the floor.

 

[cats]

Nia

IC: I had gotten little sleep in the halfway house so far. I simply can not stop worrying about what is going to happen now. "Oh fuck it, I'm tired of worrying." I flipped on a radio looking for a sports game.

'And the menace previously dubbed as the crusher continues on it's rampage unaffected by what's placed against him.'

"The crusher? Must be Rugby." 'The crusher? Again? Thats a monster that was spotted some time ago.' "Monster?" It took no effort to picture the creatures that were once men on the island. I wonder if I stop it, they might reduce my sentence, or would they increase it for being a vigilante? "Crap there are some many tough decisions in life."

I began to walk out the front door. 'Miss!' I turned and looked at one of the employees. 'You have to tell us wear your going before I can let you leave.' "I'm going for a walk to clear my mind. I'll be back." The lady then let me continue on my way.

"Taxi!" I stuck out my hand, I had walked far enough to go unnoticed by those at the halfway house, and more then long enough to decide to be reckless and face this creature head on. 'Where to Mac' Crap were was the crusher again? "Um as close to the crusher as you can get me too!" I smiled faintly, he looked back at me obviously sure I was nuts. 'Today is a good day to die.' My eyes opened why in shock. "Really!?" 'No, you can go to the crazy house and be committed some other time. Besides the police have been evacuating the area so people like you stay away.'

"Well can you at least point me in the right direction to get there." The cabby paused. He wasn't going to do it, he simply was to good of a person. "Please, I know what I'm doing." 'That way. But your on your own.' I smiled and thanked him before heading the direction he pointed.

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

Mary

With the flurry of moving and the up-coming show, Mary didn't notice the subtle shift going on between Kell and Amy. She did notice that Kell was becoming more secretive, but she assumed it was part of his job and training with Coda.

He would stay away for days, sometime a week, at a time and when he came back he'd be more quiet than when he left, although not sullen, just quiet.

One day he ran his hand through his hair and sat down with Mary on the couch. "Mary...I..I've been thinking. I've been spending more time out at the facility than here, and...they have houseing..and it takes a lot to keep..You know, going back and forth. I think I'm gonna get a place out there. To stay. But I'll always come back if you need me, and to visit and stuff. It's just easier."

"Oh." She said. "O.K."

"Your the best!" He grinned at how well she'd taken it.

They talked a while more and then he went to finish packing. She sat stunned and covered herself with the quilt she'd had thrown over the back of the couch.

It was alright, really. People always left, eventually. They had no choice. They died, or tidal waves washed them away, or ships wrecked, or govenments fell....

Lots of things. It was for the best. Really. For everyone.

 

[SwampThing]

The Special Crimes SWAT teams fall back into the burning rubble. Many of the terrified men break ranks and run off into the city. A few others remain, finding strategic cover to jeep up suppressing fire at the Crusher. The armour-piercing rounds richochet uselessly off his metallic, scaled hide.

The Crusher is surronded by a field of fire, ruins, and bodies. Beyond the ring of destruction stands the Maddox Mall, and the Jackson Street Bridge. The streets are filled with civilians running for safety, but the early morning commuters on the bridge are trapped, unable to get off.

As Nia runs towards the center of the destruction, she passes crowds of frightened people, many of them scorched or bleeding, all running the other way.

She remembers Dracon Island, the ruined buildings jutting up at mad angles like jagged teeth. Streets and bridges laying in twisted, broken coils like spilled guts. Towering clouds flash lightning in all the wrong colours. High above, a huge shaggy blue ape flaps leathery wings and roars, lifting a monorail train into the air, and hurling it down into the city.

Nia dodges the flying wreckage, glad that the ape-thing was not aiming for her. In a nearby alley, a ragged bearded man conjures a cloud of sickly brown bacteria. He gestures towards the great ape, and his brown swarm cloud flies skyward, viral organisms evolving wings, claws, stinger tentacles and millions of green eyes. The shifting, mutating cloud is almost as large as the ape, when the ape creates a black warp in space, summons a shining gold plasma cannon the size of a tank, and vaporizes the biomorphic cloud. The blue ape roars again.

Nia finds cover beyond a fallen skyscraper wall. The blood spilled on the rubble by her feet is already mutating, sprouting little purple fluted fungi. Around the corner of the building, Nia sees a group of figures approaching her, scuttling over the nightmare landscape. Some walk on two legs, others crawl on five or six. Multi-segmented arms wave cruel, curved pincers. Some have antenae, mandibles, a few bulging red eyes. The worst are the ones with almost-human faces. Nia has faced hordes of antmen already since reaching the island, and now braces to face them again. But this is just a memory.

"Hey, girl, you're crazy! Get out of here!"

Nia has broken through the edge of the fleeing crowd, and is alone in the wreckage. Not Dracon Island, but Bay City. A city full of people who still stand a chance. Ahead of her, beneath a black tower of smoke and ash, surrounded by swirling sparks, stands the Crusher. Metalic wings flex in the air, his bestial, black-horned snout searching the area for further prey.
___________________________________________

Symphony lays in the darkness, the sounds of fear and deastruction now far away above him, buried by tons of fallen steel and concrete. She rubble shifts as someone cuts their way in with a laser cutter.

The figure is dressed in white protective gear, with a green GAIA insignia on his shoulder. His face is covered by a bulky gas mask and elaborate goggles. He returns the laser cutter to his heavy equipment belt, and removes a silver flask. The man in white removes his mask to take a swig from the flask, and looks at the fallen body of the young man before him.

"Don't know how you did what you did up there, my friend, but you seem like you trying to stop that thing, which means you're just the sort of guy I've been looking for."

Dr. Bobby Dugan takes another drink from his flask and examines Symphony's wounds.

"Now, how to get you out of here without both of us getting killed."

 

[cats]

Nia

IC: I took a deep breath and focused my chi into my body, I would need speed and power to defeat this foe. I died that day, back then. I didn't stand a chance against so many unknown foes. This time I face only one monster, and I have experience in this area. "I can do this."

I took a few steps forward moving into a defensive stance I learned many years ago from my brother. I looked at my opponent and watched how the bullets bounced off him. He has armor plating meaning he is only vulnerable at the joints and the eyes. If he is blind it should be much easier to drive him away if not defeat him.

At this point the crusher was looking at me. I switched to the Marza style with two quick step forward fallowed by a full charge. The crusher moved forward knowing full well that a light bodied girl like me couldn't knock him off his feet.

I was rapidly approaching him, and no more then 4 feet away. His eyes were unguarded and he remained blissfully unaware that behind my back was to the tool that would rob him of light. I reached back and grabbed for my sai. My feet dragged across the ground slowing my advance. "The police took my sai." I had become so used to having the weapon with me that I assumed I had it with me, and now I had to come up with a new plan and quickly.

 

[Morgoth]

He saw the hand speeding towards him at an incredible rate. He laughed, putting a wing up to cover his frontside. Her hand hit the hard metal shell and bounced off. He punched this newcomer in the stomach, doubling her over. He stood her up straight, lifting her by the throat with one metal-sheathed hand. "Will you humans never learn?! I am perfection! Who was the most feared of creatures on Dracon Island? I! I was the Incinerator then; I am the Crusher now! Know me, girl! Know also that I will institute perfection for this world and bring it into a new era of others like me. And I will be their terror, to keep them in line and in hand!" he roared into her face, throwing her back. He was surprised when he didn't hear her break on the street. He moved to her quickly, staring down as he tried to decide how he would kill her.

 

[Maka]

Michael ordered coffee at the counter and drank it still standing. The hot liquid burned his throat, but made him feel briefly alive. He could feel his mind beginning to give way, slowly loosening and falling apart.

He remembered a time, fifteen years ago. He’d been a kid, living with the newest foster-parents. He was bundled from one family to the next, was Michael. It wasn’t that he was trouble. Michael was a good boy. And it wasn’t that he told lies, though he did; strange, dreamy lies about things he’d seen or done each evening. It was the eerie, unsettling nature of the boy. They all thought they’d wanted to keep him, first time they saw him. He looked so cute and waifish, with his big dark eyes and unusually pale skin. They just wanted to feed him up, get him plump and sundark, with roses in his cheeks and a curl to his hair. But though Michael ate and ate, and always said thank you, he remained wasted, almost as though he wasn’t feeding himself, but some consuming, dreaming parasite inside him. They always asked the agency to take him back after a few weeks, a few months, always with the same puzzled, apologetic, ashamed note to their voices.

Michael had been eight. The family, on a routine shopping expedition downtown, were travelling the subway. His foster-mother, shy and unsure around this small, darkeyed stranger, had told him to hold on to her hand, but somehow, something in the depths of the subway systems had called to Michael, and he’d slipped away from his foster parents in the crowds.

He went down, down, down. Ducking below the ticket-stalls, carefully avoiding the inquiries of adults. Down esculators, and flights of concrete stairs. Through service tunnels forbidden to the public, and across empty platforms. He travelled on the inner-city trains, getting off and on at random destinations. He studied the defaced signs and litter of ticket-stubs and rubbish like trail-blazes, as though they spelled out some secret message for his eyes alone. Wide-eyed and frightened, he slowly read the endless graffiti scrawled on walls. Even more menacing to him than the incoherent, obscene boasts and threats were simple, enigmatic messages that somehow seemed ominous and filled with dark meaning: Peleps Talion Adaon mourns for his sister Tarela, who was alive and is now dead, written all in sloping, elegant red handwriting; the silent ones will come for me at the dawning of the new day, spray-painted in shaking, barely legible letters; The Razor God eats his young; sprayed all over a sign in thick black.

He’d lived for three days down in the subways; living on cheap candy and instant coffee from the vending machines. Even now, the taste of coffee still brought him back there, to the darkness and steam and noise. He’d hated the taste back then, but it had kept him awake, and Michael had feared sleeping in those dark places more than anything in the world. Someone had found him at last, sleeping huddled in a stall on the cold floor of a station toilet, eyes closed tightly against the fluorescent blue of the light. They’d taken and brought him back up to the city, to the cold harsh light of day, and when his foster-family had found him and asked him why, Michael couldn’t explain. Michael hadn’t read or heard of Dante’s Inferno at that age, or perhaps it would have occurred to him to give as an analogy.

Instead, he’d given them one of his Michael-stories, filled with exciting, silly lies, about hearing the cries of a kidnapped child his age below the esculator, and narrow escapes from gangsters and friendly policemen. They’d eventually stopped asking him for the truth. Michael realised, many years later, that they thought he’d been sexually abused, and this was what he couldn’t tell them. Perhaps it was the guilt from this that made them put up with Michael for two years. The closest Michael had ever had to a permanent family.

Michael suddenly stirred from his reverie. While he’d been standing, the café had filled up. There were no free tables left. Selecting the nearest table, he walked over. A slim, dark-haired young woman was bent over a portable comp.

It crashed.

“I hope you saved”, said Michael. “Is this place taken?”

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

With a peeved frown on her face Faith didn't even look up. "Ummm, no, sit." She stabbed buttons for a few moments, checked the connections, and then just shut it with a sigh and opened her scribbled in notebook. In fact, it really did look scribbled in, since the shorthand wasn't something most people had bothered to learn in the age of tech.

"I have it on auto save for my work, but I was just doing some research anyway." She said, scribbling a few more notes before closing that too and finally glancing up. "Can't trust memory, it fails and tech isn't trustworthy either, it just crashes."

She grinned at him and waved over the waitress to fill her own cup. "I'm waiting for someone, and when he comes we'll probably leave, so then you can have the table to yourself, until then I don't mind the company."

 

[SwampThing]

"Here you go dear." The aging Argon waitress refills Faith's coffee. Her gaze wanders to the window, and a column of black smoke rising from midtown. "Loa preserve us," she mutters, "What now?"

Distracted as she is by the distant fires, the waitress spills hot coffee across the table and into Michael's lap. "Oh, look what I've done now. Let me just get you a cloth."

Across the crowded cafe, no one seems to notice the column of smoke. Everyone is distracted by their own problems.

" . . . heartburn all of a sudden . . ."

" . . . Miss? I think these eggs are off . . ."

" . . . When did this plant die? . . ."

" . . . seam just split on me . . ."

A tall man in a grey suit perches at the counter, cautiously watching Michael's reflection in his sunglasses.