Chapter VI - Asunder

Completed chapters of the serial storyline are stored here after completion.
Locked
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Herbert shot the other two one last look before dropping his shield and taking off. He'd almost made it into position that one of the Fiends managed a leap and grasped his ankles. It took some work and the lawyer climbing much higher to ensure the fall would kill his attacker, then climbing back down. In the meantime, Neasa and Allocer would be brought close to being overwhelmed, as shimmering talons of pure darkness ripped away at their clothes, drew blood and made every attempt to land killing blows imaginable. Guns were out of the question by that point, with the roane being forced to call on her superhuman strength to augment their chances of survival.

"READY!" came Wormsworth's voice, harrowed and frayed. Neasa wouldn't have much time to process things as the city's strangely-devoted usurping leader gripped her by the waistline, swung her back as if she were a log about to be thrown in a strongman contest, and then hurled her forwards and upwards with a loud grunt, immediately turning his head to the side to belch fire at an oncoming pod of shadow demons. Herbert loudly grunted as he gripped the roane by the forearms, his elongated features evoking strain as his wings fought to work against the added mass by beating furiously for a few seconds. Once he was stabilized, all he could manage was a frayed peal of laughter.

"We... We lead a charmed life, don't we?" he joked, as he moved in position to let her go. Panting, he managed to give her another Machiavellian smile after a second or two.

"Let's see how they like it when they're robbed of a fight!"

The last look he gave her was a bit odd, coming from him. Stress had probably eroded his affectations, the supernaturally wealthy socialite having given way to someone who seriously hoped this would work - and that she'd pull through safely.

He then parted his arms and legs, letting the roane drop straight down - the perfect setup for a superhero landing, right on top of the portal. Its expanse was in monochrome black and white, like an oil slick hovering just an inch above the floor. Removing its tether to the bridge would only take one or two superhuman punches, and the momentum from the fall would obviously help her.

Off in the back, Allocer screamed in equal parts pain and lasting challenge, doing his best to shake his attackers off.

* * *

The elevator soon opened to the helipad's whistling winds and to the occasional sight of a volley of machine gun fire or missiles impacting Herbert's shield. With the Goat having access to the full strength of the US military and having liberally created squads of zealots using allied demons ensconced in the flesh of dead pilots, the tower had routinely been forced to keep up with harassing bands of F-18s and drone planes, along with the occasional Black Hawk bomber that usually required the best of Tom's abilities at hexing technology. He usually did his best and tried to redirect those planes he could take control of far up north, where they'd safely crash in Vermont's countryside or New York State's Westchester area; but one lasting fear was always present: that of the Black Goat losing patience and lobbing a nuclear payload on Hope. It obviously hadn't happened so far, largely thanks to Tom, Herbert and Aristide all combining tools and power sets to form an effective deterrent.

Obviously, someone in the Pentagon had taken the initiative of trying to deprive one of the last remaining rebel groups in the country of their resources. Samigina's Dutchman had never been equipped for combat against nimble and agile fighter pilots, with a few passes making it clear that the demonic admiral was personally manning his mortar cannon, using all of his supernatural keenness to make parabolic arcs of flaming black powder count against craft that had about one-fifth of his galleon's mass. The cannons that were left had switched to grape shot, in the hopes that effectively shooting roided-up shotguns at the tiny fleas of fighter planes would ensure that some pellets impacted their target. The Garvey seemed to fare better, the old Tobolensky Freighters craft being far more agile, if not quite as agile as a jet-engine plane. This was a craft designed for interplanetary cruising, and its course-correction jets couldn't perfectly account for the pilot's need to preserve speed while avoiding hazards.

Both aircraft shyly poked their noses through Herbert's shield and tried to negotiate an approach for the pad, only for two more planes to goad them into resuming their evasive pattern. Upon seeing this, George lightly grunted and adjusted his spectacles. "I'll be right back," he said - and simply vanished. Alphonse was about to object when a seventeen-hundred feet-tall George Murray Gammell seemingly popped into existence next to the tower, the displaced air resulting in an explosion of sound and heated air that knocked a few planes out of the sky. His increased mass being what it was, George wasn't exactly nimble, and could only slowly and awkwardly swat at the F-18s, dinging one or two as he did so. One managed to recover and flew off evasively, the other's main engine being effectively shredded by two passing massive fingers and knuckles resulted in the plane - and its pilot - screaming their way into Herbert's shield. Flaming and charred debris soon littered the West end's parking lot. The remaining fighters soon focused on George, repeated wincing gestures forcing the now-gigantic toymaker to carefully step away. If he lost his balance in this state, he'd more than likely level the next block over, under his weight.

Added mass made Gammell's voice feel deeper. "I am suddenly reminded of how irksome summertime fly swarms can be..."

One fighter made for his open mouth, which made the Animate gag briefly. His peristaltic reflex soon took over, dooming the overly-ambitious maverick to being crushed down to size once George would return to his normal dimensions, and to potentially end up as a sand grain-sized mote of iron to be passed by Gammell's digestive system.

"Well," said Gammell, "I've at least gained their attention! The rest is on you two, I believe!"

Alphonse looked about with a bit of a frustrated moue. "Grand. It ain't like I'd trust myself to fly just yet... Now what do we do?"

The Dutchman banked hard, listing portside as it offered its flank to the helipad. From it jumped two figures, one a seemingly human middle-aged woman, clad in jeans, a jewellery-festooned tank top of sorts and a loose black blouse. Bangles and charms clinked and clattered together against her breastbone as she rushed forward, raising her hands to receive a shimmering claymore from mid-air. The gesture turned into a cry of challenge no mortal throat could've managed, large wings made of what looked to be masses of fused mélée weapons shimmering into view at her back. She jumped and soared upwards, her wings tearing two more fighters to shreds as she left the bubble. The other figure looked like a well-dressed lich, if liches could sprout horns and grew fangs. Its eye sockets narrowed in challenge as its own wings shimmered into view, their being constituted of hundreds of firearms of various types somehow moving in coordination, managing their own weight with the sheer wingspan the figure affected. He joined the blades-sporting woman in the air, the pinion feathers of his wings effectively being rocket launchers and what looked like a Thunderbolt II's machine guns.

After one passage, the one who could only be Nergal swooped down and landed in front of the duo. "The Portal Corps. are coming," he said, his voice slightly nasal, but about as stern as commanding as Gabriel's. "They'll abandon all attempts at aerial superiority and try and take the ground directly. If you can lay down interdiction wards to prevent some portals from opening, do it now. You won't stop them all, so you'll have a brawl all your own in a few moments. If you can spare some lightning, you could help us - fry their crafts' systems."

He took off again after a few running steps. "We'll talk more once the coast is cleared!"

* * *

"We'll see," was the ghost's hard reply, which had Ephesian lift a placating hand. "You'll have to forgive her," he told Miranda, "I think it's obvious that most of the spirits who have me on retainer are... strained, to put it gently. "Besides, if anything goes sideways, Allocer's staff is going to see exactly what it is they've forced me into becoming.
- That would jeopardize our plans," noted Rendell, to which Leonard replied by tilting his head upwards, perhaps in challenge. "So would announcing to Aspasia that we have her daughter to break out of the HPD's holding cells, mister Rendell," he said. "Being what I am, I find myself less concerned with your greater goals than with Hope's eventual return to stability. That's if our failure doesn't simply result in Miranda being summarily executed by some violence-craving horned idiot in a cheap suit. Considering, you'll forgive me for wanting to take steps to ensure that doesn't happen."

He stood up and fixed his jacket. "I'm bringing Miss Robertson back alive," he said to Gregory, "with or without City Hall's current roster. If that helps you tackle Allocer, then I'm satisfied."

Rendell blinked a few times. "How amazing is it that someone so previously helpless now is ready to throw themselves down into the lion's den!" he observed. "I wouldn't have thought that of you, mister Ephesian, bravo!"

The goat rolled his amber-colored eyes. "If you had my baggage," he said, "you'd think nothing of doing what it is the girl and I are about to do. It's right. It's the only just thing to do, taking steps to loosen the demonic yoke around the locals' throat. I say that knowing you don't know the first thing about justice - and I've been brought beyond my own petty fears by knowledge and sacrifice you couldn't even begin to comprehend. Shield might have failed to free me from the Black Goat, I'm lucid enough to understand that they gave me something that's much more important than base considerations of personal freedom.
- And what might that be?"

Leonard took his plate and glass to the kitchen area. "Purpose, mister Rendell. The Goat has none, you clearly exist only to further your own self-satisfaction, and I worked to cover a mounting pile of shame and sins that I should have confronted, as a mortal. Now, I know exactly what I have to do with my abilities and knowledge - as well as my clients' pain, which now and forever demands an outlet. It's also why I know you'll go back to pontificating and projecting yourself fifteen steps ahead of us as soon as the girl and I will have left."

He approached the door again. "Miranda - let's go. Archibald, Shamus - keep our guest occupied, will you? If I hear that he's been using this time to network with Biggs' men or corrupt our security force, we'll have words."

* * *

"We'll have to act quickly," quietly sighed the Augur. "I won't let your family suffer if I can help it, Meris," he said. "I understand that Lucian can't be everywhere at once, for all of his power, and our resources are limited."

He paused, thinking things over. "I think I remember enough of the Black Speech to key into bodies of water and connect them. Let me see if I can't just-"

Nereus narrowed his eyes, his eyelids lowering themselves, and quiet grunts of intense mental strain left him, murmurs in the Black Speech following along for a few seconds, until his eyes snapped back open.

"Yes," he said, "I've got it! I linked Jubal's bathtub to Sophia's - I know it's strange, but bear with me, here - and managed to plant a seed of desire in the old boy... He's going to want to take a bath once he comes home for dinner in a few hours, and he'll end up in Sophia's bathroom after a brief, if nauseating trip. As for his ordnance and clothes, that's unfortunately up to you. I've lost the ability to trans-locate objects about a month ago, the required phrasal structures just - stopped making sense in their nonsense, if that makes any sort of, well, sense."

He smiled, briefly chuckled, and then grew somber again. "I wish I'd been able to tackle more of the Gentlemen's offered lessons, but space is cramped in the bunker. I'm trying to study fast enough to push past my diminishing returns in the Black Speech, but I'm short on time..."

Then came a moue. "Time is a premium when you have to act as a weird cross between a doomsday prepper and a wellness guru for a throng of thirty B-listers that hog most of the attention I'd like to give to the civilians and survivors that we have onboard, one floor up. At least, it helps that I've been feeling better. Empathy ends up being less of a strain."

More silence followed, long enough for the Darkhallow's simulated sunlight to slightly dip, then followed by a thoughtful sigh. "I think you're tackling too many issues at once," he then confided. "First of all, the Goat is an erroneous process in the Artisan's grand simulation. Viral payloads do the one thing they're programmed to do when placed in a system, worms mindlessly replicate, and the Goat receives his instructions from a flawed Principle of Order that Creation seems to barely need in the first place. Destabilizing the mortal plane would buy him time enough to free Akoman, and his roadmap is filled with self-indulgent half-steps that make it clear the end-goal doesn't matter that much to him."

He looked to Meris and shrugged lightly. "Let's say I'm the Goat. I've stolen legislative and executive power away from mortals. Billions of lives are now under my quasi-direct command. With demons in the fray, I might as well sign executive orders banning sunshine or puppies if they personally offend me. More importantly, I'm of Pride. I can choose to bask in this, or I can flatly go along with my bore of a boss' plans. I'd have dangled the prospect of following along in front of you, to keep Akoman in the picture, and then swiftly dismissed him."

Nereus parted with a bitter chuckle. "I've met other Prelates like him, before. All they want is an audience. Oh, they'll always say there's more waiting around the bend - but that requires effort. I'm sure the Goat's efforts only stretch to a point. Once he gets there, he'll bask in his hollow victories the same way I'm basking in your warmth, and shift his focus towards maintaining the status quo. You have to not only defeat him, but also find a way to make him complacent in his new position. He won't take to a diminished stature otherwise. The downgrade needs to come with an incentive, and I'd make sure it fits with his M.O. before presenting it."

His tentacles made a slight popping sound. "Then there's the matter of his incarceration. If Pride is no longer Pride, then you've got two choices. You can either wait for someone to fill the vacuum, or use your connections to have someone appointed. Someone who could apply nuance to Pride as a Vice, or maybe flip the script entirely and focus on the good points of having a healthily-developed Ego. You won't be able to prevent someone in the Pit from laying claim to one of Humanity's flaws, but I'm told you're starting to see more granular interpretations of the Vices and Virtues, out in Hope."

He shrugged lightly. "I mean, I'm doing my best, but I can't deny that I'd make a good poster boy for Gluttony. Harrogath or no, you know very well how much I love a good table."

* * *

Nickar winced lightly at that. "The Scapegoat? Yeah, that's all the more reason to cap off Goatsie's access to Hope. He wouldn't just plop that kind of weapon in Allocer's hands, the man's principles are too dead-set against wanton slaughter. Nah, if anyone's going to deploy the saddest and meanest of your ancestors, it'll be the Black Goat himself - and Asshole-in-Chief hasn't shown any sign of wanting to deal with us directly yet. His pride hasn't been bruised enough yet. Mark my words, though - Azazel is in the cards. If I were the Goat or Valefor, I'd be crazy not to have an eye on him."

He scoffed lightly. "If he does show up, you won't need a gun so much as a boombox and a tape crammed with positive affirmations read soothingly."

* * *

Winters' old neighborhood hadn't been too banged up, all things considered. With one block cut off by Hellfauna and the next six streets between Fourth and Pike pitted and cracked, that made for a wide expanse of terrain. A wide expanse the Pitspawn had encircled and, strangely enough, left to its devices. Crystal had been forced to veer through there upon fleeing Renton with Andrea, only for spikes of Brimstone to impale the next six vehicles ahead, immediately sprouting thick and seemingly impenetrable brambles. Some had tried to cut their way through. In the early nights, you could still hear some of them scream, their flesh pierced in a thousand places. Slow pain and agony gave way to death, and in some cases, it gave way to possession. Now, the core of the city's old bar-hopping scene was cut off from the rest of the world, the survivors erecting skybridges between rooftops to so much as have a chance to leave. The Moaners spotted them, in most cases. Going out to scavenge in Allocer's slowly-reconstructed Downtown area was a risky business - almost suicide during daytime. It made procuring the essentials difficult, seeing as the Freaks couldn't consistently afford to send care packages out to the Harp & Blackthorn's basement.

For all intents and purposes, Winters was gone. He'd left in the early days, to extricate a few of his boys from a demonic raiding party. He'd come back, only to leave with more rounds and more guns the next day.

He hadn't returned.

Roles had shifted. Being Deputy Chief mattered less here than being a werewolf, someone who could manage some kind of basic rooftop parkour well enough with a set of saddlebags on their flanks, to make it to Whole Foods or Walgreens after dark. Staying in the straight-and-narrow had gotten tricky. Mouths needed to be fed and the procurement center covered most of Rhode Island. Hope wasn't alone, and stealing enough for ten people meant someone in Allocer's enclave would go hungry. It increased pressure on outlying groups, and it made Lowell's appeals to her companions of misfortune increasingly difficult to maintain. Allocer's tracts and televised appeals were tempting - enough to make some doubt. Only one of them, apart from Crystal and Andrea, seemed to have enough spine left to keep surviving.

His name was John Belliard. A tall anthro pig, he still wore the once-crisp three-piece that had been his during one of the Commission's triannual trans-Atlantic meetups. A Birmingham native with no way to make it to the spaceport and no plastic left to con his way to a freight shuttle, he'd been living with them since the beginning. His clothes had gone from having the dull sheen of new linen and silk to the sagging creases of old garments worn again and again, and some stains now looked like they wouldn't ever come off. Still, he somehow made it work fairly well, perhaps thanks to his fairly visible tattoos along his arms. In another life, he'd been someone Crystal would've seen as having a record. Now, his unorthodox ways were more of a boon than a nuisance. For one thing, he helped her keep the scared and the hungry in line, and he did so with a kind of coarse, slightly sticky kind of kindness, all in Cockney Rhyming Slang and the vaguest airs of someone who was accustomed to violence. He also was a natural with a butcher's tools, which helped when Crystal, Andrea or someone else managed to source a particularly demanding cut.

It also helped when nothing came for days on end, starvation came closer, and the need for other sources of protein came up. They'd eaten of dog and cat, pigeon and seagull - and occasionally of the odd tainted animal or two when all other choices seemed to be absent. John managed to carefully flay the animal, isolated the contaminated parts and always taste-tested those that looked edible himself - and he looked none the worse for wear. Thanks to John, they could at least eat three or four days a week. Everyone looked fine, but there sometimes was an odd whisper of fear in the back of some people's minds, even as John would turn from the Harp's re-jiggered stir-fry and grill and pass someone a juicy chicken thigh or a surprisingly scrumptious-looking steak.

Still, it was thanks to him that the Harp's lights were back on and that between sunrise and sundown, as long as guards were posted at the door, you could plop yourself on one of the old stools and pretend that things were alright for an hour or two. Belliard made easy conversation, he managed to make the group forget its own woes for a a little over a half-hour per day, and was someone who'd liberally shake hands or bend down to comfort the little ones who couldn't escape their daily nightmares.

Some people still swore up and down that he wasn't to be trusted. When egged on, he himself opined. Of course he wasn't to be trusted, he was a successful thug with an ad-hoc B.A. in management and a way with people, he said to those who doubted him. You'd be crazy to trust him implicitly, he usually added, nodding reassuringly. He had a lucky break, however, in that he believed actions spoke louder than words. To anyone who doubted him, he made a friendly wager: if you didn't trust him after a week, you'd get a second beer with your meal of the day, no questions asked.

The morning was growing late, and Andrea was usually the first one to return. She hadn't quite mastered her mother's packing and carrying logistics, but it meant she usually was the first one to come back with a decent picture of the day. John grunted thoughtfully as he wiped down the bar's counter. Would today be a Yesterday's eggs day, a Stolen sirloin day or a Gossip magazines and a prayer day? He didn't really much care as to whether or not the Lowells trusted him - he liked them on his own terms. Just in case, though, he'd always maintained a bit of distance. 
User avatar
TennyoCeres84
Site Admin
 

Posts: 2929
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:59 am

Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

Neasa offered Herbert a hopeful and determined smile as he dropped her. The descent felt both slow and fast to the roane, the whipping air making the few cuts she had sting. She used the mild pain as fuel for the crushing blow she would deliver, the appropriate kindling to stoke her strength.

Her mass hit the floor with more force than one would expect from someone who didn't weigh more than 150 pounds, if that. Her feet landed first, which followed into a suitably superheroic crouch. Her fists also added to the destruction of the portal's tether. Asphalt and cement crumbled underneath her touch, reduced to pebbles and other debris.

***

The momentary shock of Nergal and the woman's entrance wore off quickly as she got to work on the wards and lightning. Blue and white arcs were blasted toward the remaining fighter planes with deadly precision. It lit up the late morning sky with an amazing ray of colors as they'd hit their mark. At the same time, she used her telekinesis to jot down the requested interdiction sigils. They would effectively block external forces by placing an arcane brick wall in front of them. Additionally, those walls would send an electrical charge toward their enemies, as a means to off their numbers.

***

Miranda finished her fruit salad and the rest of meal, downing the last of her juice and milk. Bringing her utensils and plate to the kitchen, she sent the T-rex another annoyed gaze. "Just try not being an asshole for a few hours, okay? We'd all appreciate it, thanks," she muttered to him.

The young fauness than hurried along with the attorney and followed him to their mission.

***

"That's true, but frankly, dear, I'm not exactly keen on your campaigning to take Gluttony's place. Though, with life the way it is, you never know," Meris conceded.

As for the conjecture for the Goat's replacement, she hummed thoughtfully. "I think I might know of a potential candidate for the head of Pride, but I imagine he would be reluctant to do so. He probably doesn't even realize he can fill the Goat's stead, but he has the foundation for it."

***

"I'm counting on him to show up. During the conference, Valefor said he would, but the fact he mentioned it at all means he could care less about the element of surprise. He made it seem like it might be a cinch to dispatch him, especially with what you just suggested, Nickar," Aspasia mused.

Abdiel cut in, "Yes and no, I'm afraid. The cure to Azazel's curse is something relatively easy to give in action, but there's a reason the Scapegoat is associated with Wrath. Between Mab's curse and his own experiences with Hell, he's essentially a victim of abuse with no escape in sight. He radiates the sense to feel pity for him, but when you get close to him, you'd be filled with the sense of wanting to place your blame on him, hence the title."

The fauness quirked a pale brow. ""And continue the cycle of abuse, which riles him up with rage," she deduced.

"Precisely," the angel confirmed.

"Valefor was just acting all cordial during that meeting, including telling me about Azazel to get us to let our guard down around, but I've seen his type before. Play nice until it comes down to slitting your throat," she commented with a sigh. "That or he somehow retains whatever good he had as an angel, and it's completely twisted."

"Perhaps, but what you'll need to focus on is your own strengths you've developed through your life, Mrs. Robertson. That and your empathy will be your sword and shield in that particular battlefield," Abdiel replied.

***

As was typical, the anthro pig would detect the younger werewolf showing up through the front door. A quadrapedal form appeared in the doorway and then shifted to a young woman in her early twenties. "Hey," Andrea called out to him, hauling her own set of saddlebags against her back.

Over the past three weeks, Crystal's daughter had been in a partially distant state from trauma. During the incursion, she had lost her girlfriend Nico and currently did what she had to survive. She existed in a half-there mindset, still cognizant enough to work through life's daily struggles. She greeted the gangster with a light wave and a mostly blasé expression.

"I managed to collect a package of chicken breasts, some steak, a carton of eggs, luckily," she said with a sigh and ran her hand through her dark bob.
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Ethereal gore followed behind Neasa in a brief and violent spurt, all those unlucky to have partially emerged by the time of her landing being thrown forward by the impact's force - and messily bisected or otherwise torn apart. Blood like previously-lit gasoline splattered the tarmac, adding a low haze to the preternaturally warm air. One or two tried to put up a fight as nothing except snarling torsos, but the roane wouldn't need to do much more than sidestep them a few times. Blood loss worked fine on its own.

On Allocer's side, this sudden change was enough to give his attackers pause, which was enough for him to shatter the shadowy dogpile he'd been covered in, flaming wings and a blazing sword briefly visible as he craned his head back in a roar of pure fury. Knowing they'd been outgunned, the Fiends rushed back for the bridge's support structures and vanished in the faint gloom below.

"RUN!" screamed Allocer, "RUN AND TELL VALEFOR WE OF HOPE WON'T STAND FOR THIS INSOLENCE! WE'LL COME FOR HIM IN TIME, DO YOU HEAR ME?! WE'LL COME FOR HIM - AND I'LL TEAR HIS FEEBLE HEART FROM HIS CHEST!"

Then panting, he looked down on himself and grunted in disappointment at the state of his clothes. He half-lidded his eyes, channeled Pride for a moment, and fixed his appearance with equal parts Eldritch focus, a composure-restituting neck crack and carefully adjusting his necktie.

Herbert carefully alighted, timing his descent so he'd be standing next to Neasa, once she'd come forward. "Still thinking we couldn't possibly work together, mister Mayor?" he asked, adding the barest hints of a smirk.

Allocer hung his head for an instant, his lips parting in an easy smile. He chuckled as he came closer. "I have to admire that kind of bravura," he said, "the way you kept your wits about you while Wrath's scouts tried to egg you on. You made a better show than I did, I can admit that much. If anything, I hope it makes it clear to you that my refusal to collaborate isn't personal. We have the same goals, I just happen to have an extra demographic to consider. If we could pack our bags and leave you be, I'm certain most of us would do so without question. Pride's orders are, however, clear - and I and the rest of America's new administrators can't go against them."

Wormsworth quietly expelled his exasperation through his nose. "And what if the orders changed?
- That would involve a changing of the guard," said the demonic mayor, "and Pride has been the Black Goat's since the earliest days of mortal civilization. Theoretically, if the orders did change, however, I'd be happy to abide by them.
- Up to and including destitution?" questioned the lawyer. That left the Knight to draw his head back and sigh, to further steel himself.

"If... the people made it clear to me that their wish is for me to step down, and if Pride somehow didn't countermand them, I would oblige them. My only hope in this case would be for the locals to understand that I did everything I could to appease their suffering.
- Grand," noted the lawyer. "Because this isn't helping," he noted, hooking a thumb back to one of Allocer's self-aggrandizing posters.

The demon looked at it and sighed. "I know. We'd gone from open warfare to capitulation almost overnight, and unrest needed to be quelled quickly, to appease mortal and demon alike. Imposing myself came at a heavy cost, but at least the civilians now understand that our orders are beneficial. We have thieves from Pike Street robbing our grocery stores mere weeks after their re-opening and your own insurgents sending rifle-wielding goons to scare up supplies! Does Tom Magnus know some of his mobster friends instituted a protection racket in Renton, for instance? I'm a Fiend and I'm well aware of it, but your own people aren't exempt from Pride, much less hubris."

That added bit of info was troubling. Allocer could see the hesitation in Wormsworth's features. "There aren't any good guys, here," said the Knight. "We're representing opposed ideological groups that are both focused on survival. Human or Fiend, we both have limitations as to how much we can put our weapons down. You're just lucky I'll forget to mention this encounter in my reports to Regional Command, out of respect for the both of you."

* * *

For a while, it looked like they'd be offered an easy victory. Nergal and Ereshkigal covered the skies, George kept the fighter planes occupied, and a fair few conventional air-dropping aircraft circled overhead for a few moments, noticing Aislinn's interdiction wards and quickly doubling back. A third mass of aircraft followed, air-dropping what looked like ward-covered shards of Brimstone that seemed to home in on the tiered ceilings below, where the added square feet of Archie and Herbert's penthouses allowed for a slight outcropping. This was technically Wormsworth and Archie's divided balcony - a landing that would allow for a handful of demons to clamber up to the helipad and attempt to push past the young Warlock's efforts.

Nergal swooped down again. "Envy's thralls!" he shouted. "They'll overwhelm your barrier at a single point, then manage to push through! The dead are going to keep the gap open long enough for others to cross over!"

The creatures looked vaguely humanoid, like a malnourished human rendered in hedgehog spines and ebony-black shades, and they were only three. They threw themselves at Aislinn's wall with shrieks, and seemingly fell apart as though they'd been made out of equal parts Balsa wood and jelly. Then, each fragment began to quiver, quickly spawning another Envy thrall. The same process was repeated until the balcony below was teeming with them, and the outermost ledge was packed with quivering remains. Most fell below, to land on the floor in front of Magnus Tower's ground team - but their efforts didn't help much, either. The tiny black spots down below soon multiplied, the guards retreating and laying down the tower's defenses. Instead of trying to assault the front entrance, the thralls climbed the side of the tower, spider-like in their eerie grace, to reach their brothers on the balcony.

"HOW DO WE FIGHT 'EM?!" shouted Alphonse to the aerial support, only for Samigina to jump down from the Dutchman's main deck and pull out two pistols. "Ye push 'em back with us," he said, snarling as he took potshots at two thralls, "an' wait 'till Nasir's done preparin' her spell!"

The gargoyle narrowed his eyes. "Who?!
- This is why I hates workin' with the recently reincarnated!" vented the pirate commander, dropping his spent flintlocks long enough to slash at one thrall with his cutlass and pull out another firearm from his brace with his other hand.

"Okay, so how long do we gotta last?!
- Ten minutes to an hour, bloody well beats me!" replied Sam, "I don't understand this Space Magic malarkey!"

* * *

If Herbert wallowed in luxury, Leonard stuck to the more practical ends of what you'd expect out of a Prosecution attorney. In clearer terms, he'd barely managed to recover his old Lexus from the early twenty-tens. It might've been a hydrogen-electric hybrid, it still looked flatly conservative and very much like any other milquetoast sedan you would've found out there. Moreover, it still carried a few dents from the few pieces of rubble that had fallen onto it from the Hall's destruction. The conflict hadn't created anything close to a DMZ, but there still was a barren zone stretching out from Renton's southern end to north of the now-ransacked Biggs Tower that was now largely unoccupied. The ungulate wisely sped through it, in a way that made it difficult to believe the same man would've been crippled with supernatural distress, a few months ago. The old Southern charm was reduced to a mere twang in his vowels, as he kept to businesslike topics while on the road.

"Let's work on your alibi," he told her, after a few minutes of pointed silence. "Wearing Kelsey's Veil, you're a wounded and desperate girl from the exclusion zone we've just passed through. I'm already supposed to have headed out; I have clients to meet in Allocer's territory. It's not much of a stretch to say I found you on the sidewalk and opted to bring you in the rest of the way. Demons or no, the mayor's focus on social order would guarantee you'd be whisked through the relief system. With me around, they'll be more cautious. They're likely to ensure everything is done by the book. I hear the Goat tried to disband FEMA and the American Red Cross, but some of Allocer's peers made it clear he wouldn't have stability if some token form of pity wasn't included, alongside the loss of our fundamental freedoms as mortals. For now, some Fiends are under supernatural and Federal obligation to assist survivors in areas claimed by Infernal regents."

He lightly narrowed his eyes. "They might be supernatural, administrative machines plod along no matter how subject you are to the vagaries of Time. Even so much as checking to see if you have a file ready for processing would be enough to give us a few minutes in the clear. If we're lucky, our targets are going to walk right past us. If not, then we'll reach the point where I hope a few of your mother's skills have been passed along. We might need to spoof thumb prints, inch our way past a few guards or find an unguarded desktop to hack into."

He paused. "Neither of us are computer analysts, but I'm a lawyer and your mother was a field commander in her heyday. If all else fails, you drop your Veil and I slip one on, and we get to chatting up a secretary on the second floor. A little chin-wag should get us access to Allocer's terminal, or at least his secretary's. You're likely more tech-savvy than I am, so I'll need you to load anything that looks like a City Council session brief onto a USB stick I'll pass on. Briefs come with abstracts, names and position titles. Just one PDF should get us what we need."

* * *

Nereus grew silent for a moment as he sifted through the Chamberlain's reports mentally, trying to intuit who his wife was referring to. "It can't be Magnus, can it? Chambers reads him as prideful and it does feel like a fair assessment, but Drake's letters left me feeling like he was more composed, less likely to let his occasionally-bloviating Warlock Ego get in the way; especially after his bond with Aislinn was finalized. Melmoth reads as an utter sweetheart who's still under the endearing delusion that he could hurt a fly if pressed and, well, your Paimon's Ego feels like an almost fish-out-of-water type of situation. He sees everything as being a challenge to his honor - including the most mundane tasks. Chambers thinks Paimon is convinced being mortal means having your pride trampled on a dozen times per day, and that he keeps pushing through it because he sees it as a challenge, some kind of long-standing dare..."

The Void Weaver couldn't repress a snicker, his big frame lightly shaking his lithe companion. "I'm reminded of how clumsy I first was, when I tried to pass for human. I was so focused on the idea of not appearing threatening that I spent my first years as the last Thanos to live and die in Greece being obsessively friendly."

He looked down at his wife with a smirk. "You know me, right? Imagine me, only a good five or six times cuddlier. It was embarrassing, honestly - but it made Chambers fantasize about ripping his own tendrils off, and that's a win in my book. The postman, the milkman, Father Markos from the little Orthodox church in Akrotiri, Grigori the olive and orange farmer, his wife and daughter - I think I bear-hugged them all about six times a week."

* * *

"Welp, empathy doesn't trump style," politely opposed Nickar. "In any case, you'll need some major arcane support; something or someone to slice through both that aura of pity and that, um, Please Bully Me Intrinsic Field, or however you'd call it."

 He paused and canted his head. "Either that or Martin Loren's support, if he's still around Hope. Maybe he could jigger up some kind of barrier to protect your emotional independence and rationality; his kind just don't read like the sort of people who'd fall prey to Azazel's influence quickly."

The demon lightly grimaced. "I'm glad most Grayskins have their own pantheon, they sort of creep me out. They act like Vulcans and look a bit like Discovery's Klingons. Ew."

Three smirked at that. "Watch your mouth, P'tach. Some of us think Captain Burnham rocked."

Nickar scoffed at that. "Anyone who doesn't recognize Jean-Luc Picard's superiority as a Starfleet captain has no place in my workshop."

* * *

John smiled at the girl. "Bad work, love - that'll keep the rascals fed for a day awer two. We've got some bread what ain't all stale, some margarine - enough for a few eggies in a basket, I'd say. We'll divvy up the chicken for dinner later."

He paused as he stashed the goods aside in Winters' now banged-up and rattling bar fridge. "Want to help me set things up? First breakfast call's passed, but now I gotta feed the night watch's boys... Coat n' badge a shower up those stairs," he said, hooking a thumb towards the back-store, "then swipe an apron off the hook, on the way back down."

They might've only been passing along leftovers or stolen goods, John seemed to take pride in making sure the Harp still felt like something close to a pub. Or close to home, at least. That meant swabbing the counter, jury-rigging the old beer taps to connect to jugs of carbonated water or soda - and occasionally sourcing Heaven in a glass as presented by the rare sight of an IPA or Guiness keg - as well as taking the down-on-her-luck teenage werewolf in as a fry cook. Belliard had gone as far as to sit aside with Andrea when Crystal hadn't been around to console her, and had been as much of a pillar as he could've been.

Something made him pause, concern replacing his breezy tone. "So, um, what's the word, out there? Any news from Nico's blood? Do they know?"

John's subtext was obvious. The parents of the girl's love interest deserved to know. He'd been egging her on to try and slip into Allocer's little slice of urban bliss, citing the need for the girl to be reassured as to what she'd done or had at least attempted to do.

He stopped his work and laid his knuckles on the bar. "Not to beat a dead 'orse, but... I fink you did good, kid. You and yer mom - you did what you could. It's all anyone could've done, innit?"
User avatar
TennyoCeres84
Site Admin
 

Posts: 2929
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:59 am

Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

"We still need to ensure what we came to do, Herbert. We need to help the Freaks, if we can," Neasa reminded him to cut through his inner turmoil.

"We also didn't come here for a morality lesson, Allocer. There's never an entirely good side anywhere, whether it's during war or not," she noted frankly. "Most people get by as they can and sometimes hopefully do the right thing. That's all we can do. And then demon and mortal lord it over each other, some more than others. If we could deal with the hypocrisy on both sides, we might get somewhere constructive, hm?"

***

"Fuck!" Aislinn spat as she headed back to the wards she had placed. Early on, she knew that sometimes you couldn't predict what an enemy's physical characteristics would be like, and that occasionally called for an editing job on one's arcane work. The creatures obviously were like the broomsticks from the Sorcerer's Apprentice or a hydra-destroy one and more would pop up. Perhaps if there was a agent to pause the process, such as cauterization or petrification...

The young Warlock began adapting her wards' written incantations to modify the electricity's effects. Not only would they now block and kill the threats, the transition from a singular entity into many would be immobilized, becoming like rock-hard statues. Given the previous ritual of the golem body, the irony wasn't lost on her as she cracked a smile. Hopefully, this would at least slow them down...

***

"I can do that," Miranda responded with some confidence. To demonstrate, she let her shoulders and overall posture go slack, while her facial expression looked uncertain and pained, along with a dash of eye contact avoidance.

"I'm no John Connor, but she did teach me some useful stuff from Paradise, which should come in handy," she stated.

***

Meris chuckled heartily at the thought of that, which eventually left her with a sober smile. "No, it's none of the figures you've mentioned. I think the candidate for Pride's leader could be Herbert Wormsworth," she explained. "The defector from Pride who aided Leonard Ephesian during the IsoTech trial."

***

The former commander smirked. "I might have to side with Nickar on this one, Drake, only for having seen Picard. Miranda might side with you more, given her age," she ribbed.

Aspasia recalled the uploading process and how well it had managed to block Black Speech and even some Infernal runes. "I'm not entirely sure, but I wonder if Dr. Loren could tweak the nanites a bit more with something like you're describing," she speculated.

***

"I managed to slip through Allocer's territory and get the news to them by way of a computer at an abandoned library. I sent them an email letting them know," Andrea said with some dismay.

The young twentysomething grimaced. "Though, it still feels like we should be doing more, you know? We're so isolated, and it feels like we should be getting over to Magnus Tower, where Shield is. I know Mama would appreciate seeing Archie again, and we could better help the Resistance."
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

"You'll find no arguments from me," noted the mayor, who looked back to Abyzou's now utterly ruined corpse with a sigh. "I told the regional conference what to expect out of her," he told no-one in particular, "they just dismissed my claims and moved on. Now I'm the one stuck with reporting back to Homeland Security about their loss of an agent. I hope there's one or two high-ranking mortals left, I'm not in the mood to get chewed out by a self-important paper pusher..."

Still, he straightened himself. "I hope you've been satisfied, at least. I'd let you back down there, but the bridge's undercarriage is now a cumbersome crime scene... I've contracted Wyvern in hopes of their trackers having more luck in finding Valefor's den, and I've had amnesty sigils placed on a few Red Chimeras, to have them survive the exclusion zones and the remaining conflict zones outside of city limits. That leaves our restructured HPD to take care of local business.
- Neasa and I barely inspected the structure," opposed Herbert. "If you yourself happen to have reservations as to the Goat's plans, wouldn't you want to know if your liege's projections don't involve detonating a suspension bridge crammed with innocents in motorized vehicles?"

Allocer hesitated, then narrowed his eyes. "You were sent here to look for something, weren't you?"

Instead of following along, his instincts took him elsewhere and made him pout gamely. "Alright - fine. We'll go back down, I'll let you traipse about what's left of the walkways for as long as you need; and then you'll tell the Freaks I had no intention of ordering their supply lines to be cut. I told you before, I have my honor. You took out the Pit's monsters in the first few days, now all that's left is us administrators and the occasional career sociopath. If the surviving grunts think we'll let them butcher civilians needlessly - even those illegally sending and receiving supplies - they're sorely mistaken."

Wormsworth was obviously surprised, which made Allocer smirk. "Arthur Holden's a paranoid cockroach who took to inducting unprepared civilians into his bloodline to bolster his numbers, and who all but goaded Horatio Grimley into having his family butchered. We'll stamp out his insurrection and then sedately bring him out to trial on charges of terrorism, as per your country's laws. Sophia herself will be better off without him, no matter how much his addled mind thinks I'm after the Nexus to fulfill some sort of grandiose personal ambition. He's projecting, and badly at that. If he keeps this up, his psyche will restructure around his perceived obligations towards the Dryad. I've seen how his kind work; their minds are surprisingly malleable, but they can turn brittle and inflexible if pushed."

* * *

The thralls soon transitioned to what looked like living patches of coral reef growing in a time-lapse, forming bodies and feral minds straining against the young Warlock's efforts, would-be shrieks reduced to rattling moans. Only their hateful gaze and darting eyes hadn't been affected, and it was fairly obvious the brunt of the slowly swelling horde was now squarely focused on Aislinn. Luckily for her, both Sam and Alphonse were on her side, with one of them distributing punches and even ripping a few limbs away, while the other offered the slightly more surgical route of going for cutlass slashes and short-range lead balls lodged in their craniums with the puff of a flintlock's striking hammer.

Still, they kept coming. It didn't take long for the pirate captain to glance upwards with a look of settling concern. "Ahoy, up there! Blame my antiquated means, but I be runnin' low on ammunition!"

No sooner had he said that that Nergal swooped atop him, wordlessly dropping one of his many feathers of a sort - what looked to be an M16 rifle. "Tell me there's more to you than pirate gimmicks," he said, "or Meris is going to be picking you back together amid thrall corpses in a few minutes!"

Features set in a hard mask, Sam grunted as he checked the rifle's magazine and slide. "I've got my tastes, aye, but beggars cannae be choosers...
- Then make these shots count," demanded Nergal, "we still have a few minutes left to go."

He then looked back up in the skies above the helipad. "Erin!" he shouted. "Arm the girl, would you? I'm afraid she'll be out of the chance to stick to her corner to sling spells!"

The woman landed next to Aislinn, one of her wings folding in front of her. She picked out one of its long, core feathers of pure steel - ostensibly a bastard sword close to Drake's in its flexibility, and spun her wrist to offer it to the roane by the pommel. She looked to be a burnished Caucasian with easy expression and age marks that didn't quite seem to impact her energetic demeanor. A little Lynne Collins, a dash of Annette Bening, with the lithe and almost hungry build of a lifelong combatant. Her smile somehow managed to look both a little hard and a little sweet, sarcastic wit intentionally dulled by a good dose of hard-earned empathy.

"I hope you kept up with Percival's fencing drills," she said, "we're a bit of a ways past Bowie knives and telekinesis!"

He steel-hewn wings folded and disappeared behind her back. "Erin Galbraith," she  said, offering her hand. "I've been forging weapons from Babylon's early days all the way through to Game of Thrones' last season. Stick close, I'll cover you."

* * *

Leonard paused as he parked the car and gave the girl a slightly forlorn look. "A year ago," he said, "I'd have thought this to be more sad than anything else. I used to assume teenagers had their right to a fair share of lasting innocence. I would've thought your mother robbed you of a handful of friendship-building outings with friends. Now, I see her wisdom - and I wish I didn't."

He stepped out of the car, his eyes briefly glazing over as he looked past her and into the Shadowlands, checking to see if Kelsey was in position. Satisfied, he blinked that odd mile-wide glint out of his eyes and cocked his head to the side, beckoning Miranda to follow along. Still, he met her halfway there, in keeping with her supposedly being wounded. What Kelsey was projecting wasn't entirely clear, but it seemed to work. Passerby and visitor alike flashed looks of pointed concern and empathetic worry towards the girl, one power-suited woman even setting her coffee down to help Leonard compensate for their uncomfortable size difference.

"I found her two blocks down south," grunted the ungulate, "I need to see if she's part of the registered beneficiaries, see if we can't fast-track her to the hospital..."

The woman nodded. "Someone hold the door open for these two, please - alert the staff!"

As Leonard had expected, Miranda soon served as the object of a flurry of activity that involved previously deadened service point tellers giving the girl looks of either empathy or annoyance, as they delayed their service lines and put her on what looked to be the fast track for the enclave's medical triaging system. If she'd been truly injured, one good fracture would've been enough to have her clear City Hall with pointed instructions for the ER staff to disregard the masses of wounded Pitspawn in borrowed bodies and focus on her.

A woman who looked African-American from a distance, only to display skin of an impossibly deep shade of black walked forward, a tee-shirt hidden behind an auxiliary nurse's seafoam-green shirt. Her eyes betrayed her annoyance, but her bedside manners were precise, as if carefully rehearsed.

"We have to elevate her right leg," she said, her voice colored by what had to be a uniquely Infernal accent, springing into action even as she spoke. From the look of things, most of everyone wasn't seeing Miranda's caprine legs, but rather a forward-bending human right leg, the nurse's gestures suggesting Kelsey had affected a neat internal break along her calf, possibly with one heck of a generous hematoma.

An icy breath impossibly touched the girl's nape. "They won't believe you if you aren't in pain," she said. "This is what it feels like-"

She was interrupted by Leonard's voice coming in silently on the same ethereal bandwidth. "Kelsey, no. Miranda doesn't need to feel the full extent of your pain; she needs to be mobile. Tone it down, make it a suggestion, rather than an imposed source of pain. Here's how..."

Strangely enough, Miranda's right leg would suddenly start to feel mildly uncomfortable, exactly where the suggested break would've been. It felt like a sharp sore spot, enough to make her limp but not enough to be unbearable. She might recall something similar if she'd ever pulled a leg muscle before. The suggested discomfort winked out of perception for an instant, and then returned - something about that suggesting Leonard had shown Kelsey how to free Miranda from the hoaxed pain.

Based on his gestures, Leonard looked like he was trying to comfort a harrowed teenage girl. His voice didn't quite match his soothing rubbing motions along her shoulder and his loose sideways hug, however. "They'll let us be as soon as you look stabilized enough to make an ambulance trip. Nurse Exxon Valdez over here is going to keep checking your vitals, and we'll see the locals' attention waver as soon as it looks like they've sorted you out. That's when we'll switch Veils and try and see what we can see. Until then, keep looking like you're in pain and keep an eye out for anyone that looks important. You cover the waiting area, I'll keep an eye on the stairs up ahead and the offices across the hall."

He kissed her forehead to seal the deal, added a temperature-checking gentle swipe of his fingers across her brow, and the quiet coos of admiration of what had to be a few mothers or caregivers told him they were in the clear. It helped that he still had mountains to climb, in terms of how much his previous reputation as an attorney needed to be rebuilt. They'd figure out Allocer's close collaborators and maybe fill in Ephesian's docket for the month's less life-deprived clients.

* * *

"Him?" asked Nereus with a raised eyebrow. "I mean, I guess it's possible, but his affectations are much too amusing for Chambers for me to be completely at ease with them. I know a Venal Sin hasn't ever switched hosts or ever been expressed differently before, but he looks too much the type that could lose the plot, if graced with that amount of power. Even have to agree with Chambers for once and state I don't really imagine Herbert J. Wormsworth acting out of sincere humility. The most I see is him genuinely wanting to help because it keeps some sort of sense of Pride active. Pride in your accomplishments, maybe, or just his pride of being part of the winning team-"

He paused, stopping at the sound of a banging noise coming from the front corridor's broom closet. They were alone in their pocket of the Darkhallow, their laid-out labyrinths hadn't been bested by anyone before...

Nereus remained immobile, his fingers having stopped mid-stroke in Meris' hair, his eyes set on the closet's door.

"Nobody could've found their way here," he whispered, "I've kept our paths and tunnels secret for centuries!"

More banging noises followed, then followed by what sounded like one solid racket, as if someone had accidentally knocked down something like a portable vaccuum cleaner and taken it upside the head. "Oof - Amaxi's Beard, are all surface-dweller closets so cramped with stuff?!" irritatingly demanded a voice the Augur recognized, but couldn't rationally place. The Curator had always been a creature of the Black Library, how could he have known which passages to take to come here?! Understandably, pointed concern shifted to worry and curiosity. He cautiously sat up, helping Meris to do the same.

"Are you okay in there?" he called out, which caused the closet door's handle to rattle furiously. "Black Suns and Stars, who's bright idea was it to put a door here with no handle on the inside?!" demanded the voice. "Nereus, is that you?"

The Augur hesitated, but relented with a faint smirk. "Er, yes - I'm with Meris, you'll understand why I haven't just rushed to free you..."

The rattling noises ceased, the Curator scoffing and sighing. "I know, I know - I could be Chambers wearing my appearance and voice; but I wouldn't be stupid enough to just stew in here with a growing bruise on my forehead, if I were the guy!"

Nereus rolled his eyes as he walked closer. "Pain's in the mind, in here," he reminded. "You don't have to have a Dyson-sized welt on your forehead if you don't want to."

An awkward pause. "Oh. Right."

That made Nereus slide his glance towards his lover. "It certainly sounds like our protean helper..."

* * *

Isaacs inspected the remainder of the displayed prototypes. "He'd need to sample the arcane wavelengths, which would imply exposure, which more than likely means he'd have been savaged or mauled or tossed about like a rubber doll before collecting so much as a workable sample to code into a filter of some persuasion."

He rolled his eyes. "I know it won't be a popular suggestion, but we'd be better off seeing if Holden's remote armature survived the blast, and then using that to approach Azazel. If Self-Loathing-for-Brains smushes it flat, then it won't result in anything like a loss of manpower. Plus, the exertion might reduce the fellow's field radius, let us fleshly types walk in and maybe think about defusing this threat - hopefully with decent ordnance instead of syrupy displays of forgiveness or compassion."

Nickar clicked his tongue. "Oookay, and they called me a heartless Fiend, back when... I know there's some element of risk, but I can see why Aspasia might want her roots to kinda-sorta come full circle, even if this is less about recovering her lost tether to the World's Breath and more about freeing her ancestors and proving a point."

Three seemingly knew where the sartorialist was headed. "The Chimeras can tackle their own supernatural origins, they don't necessarily need to lean on the rest of us. Plus - screw cynicism, but giving Azazel some support would seriously cripple the Goat's martial agenda.
- A few rocket-powered grenades would do the same," noted Rupert, which incited glares from Drake and Melmoth. Even Amduscias had enough displeasure to make his lanky and rubbery self feel glacial for a second or two.

* * *

"It isn't all that bad," patiently opposed the pig. "We've got relief packages, walkways over the rooftops to get past Moaners and the brambles and whatnot; we've got working Internet access so long as we stick to Lorca's laptop and his VPN..."

He then shifted to a grimace and a grudging nod of acquiescence. "...and Allocer's Sanitation team, which won't so much as get within a hundred feet of the neighborhood, and his lovey-dovey guards all sayin' we'll be shot on sight if we cross the spikes. Contamination, or so goes the official word," he said, grimacing on the word official. That left him sighing. "Yeah, things could definitely be better..."

Again, it felt as though Belliard's somber mood was something to pocket away out of necessity. "Tell you what," he said. "You clean yourself up, help me fix today's meals, and then we'll see about giving the satellite dish up top another go; see if we can't hook your own hardware on some public DNS server long enough for yer Mum or yourself to beam something out to Casa Magnus. We got close enough last time, maybe we'll land on the one local ISP's address ranges that isn't been checked on by demons, eh? You'd send off a quick email, see if anyone responds - or at least toss the proverbial message in a bottle."
User avatar
TennyoCeres84
Site Admin
 

Posts: 2929
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:59 am

Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

"You mentioned securing the Nexus before...what does that mean for Sophia? I sincerely doubt she's happy about how the invasion has changed everything," Neasa noted with concern. "She may not react favorably to being forced to do anything that goes against her original protocols."

***

Aislinn quickly shook her hand. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Galbraith," she responded, then looking to the offered sword. "I thankfully did keep up with Sir Percival's fencing drills, so hopefully it's going to pay off with this! And thanks for showing up!:

She re-positioned herself and raised the bastard sword for the oncoming fight.

***

Miranda fluidly transitioned her demeanor of a patient in pain. Her facial features scrunched up into a grimace, while she occasionally groaned and hissed at her discomfort. She cast a grateful look at the goat anthro. "T-thanks for your help, sir..." she said to him.

***

Meris used her abilities to remove the remnants of their intimacy and dressed herself. She nodded. "It definitely does, love," she said, placing a hand on the doorknob as though she thought about opening it.

"How did you find your way here, Curator? Nereus is right that we spent quite some time designing our portion of the Darkhallow to avoid being found, so why come here? Do you have some news for us?" she asked.

***

Andrea's face lit up slightly at his suggestion and nodded quickly in response. "I'll be right back!" she told him as she hurried to the backroom to clean up.

John would be met with the sight of the other werewolf he was looking after enter through the door, carrying her own load of procured food. Crystal shifted over to her human form and walked up to the bar. "Hello, John. I was able to scrounge up some porkchops, bacon, and canned goods," she said, hefting her pack onto a barstool.

She sniffed the air. "I see Andrea's returned before me. What did she get?" she inquired, her lips pursed together as though she still didn't like the idea of stealing food from others.

***

Aspasia sent her own glare at Issacs, along with a coldness the others would likely find chilling. "Issacs, the point is to diffuse the situation. Having even standard ordinance might provoke Azazel. He's affiliated with Wrath for a reason. Even sending Holden's remote armature to an encounter might not bode well. We're essentially dealing with a walking Infernal grenade, which would outclass those grenades you're talking about. The point is to avoid a massacre, as that's likely what Valefor and the Goat want if they send him onto the battlefield."

"Fuel for the flame," she summarized. "Neither of them really want to broker a truce, after all. Allocer's order is a fleeting thing. We have to resort to peaceful and unorthodox means of stopping Azazel."

An idea dawned on her. "What about music? It could reach him on a deeper level," she mused, then sighing. '

She cast a look at Nickar and Amduscias. "Could I speak with Nybbas, please? Meris mentioned him before, and I think he might at least have better insight than him," she requested, jutting a thumb at Issacs.
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

"My point exactly," noted Allocer. "My goal, in regards to the Nexus, is to keep it secure. That means actively avoiding all forms of tampering, as well as ensuring that the Dryad is free to keep to her duties towards the Centennial Tree. The country's high command now tends to overlook the virtues of stability, but the municipal level can't ignore it. There's still a fair few zealots who would like nothing more than to further Earth's planar absorption into the Pit by detonating key ley lines charged with negative energy. I can't let that happen."

They started back towards the stairs leading to the bridge's underside. "Which is why Holden needs containment. He perceives us as a threat and forces us to exclude Centennial Park almost entirely. There isn't an inch of green that isn't some battleground, most of the other trees have either died or burned, and Holden's coterie is now embroiled in a desperate attempt at resistance. I don't know how much Sophia knows about what we of City Hall have been doing, but I at least suspect she knows that my predecessor was compromised."

He drew in a breath. "My fear is that Arthur might come to try and impose his will on Sophia, so focused as he is on her protection. Brittle minds lack what's needed for sound tactical decisions. I may have dipped a toe in authoritarianism, but is part of a series of self-conscious measures designed to inspire obedience in the face of understandable hatred and fear. Holden won't be so lucid about things, and Dryads have obvious genetic limitations in regards to the Freaks' pathogen. Her own immune system is a mixture of floral and human antibodies, but no Dryad has ever been fed on to the point of contamination."

Allocer gave the pair a steady look. "If Arthur Holden drains Sophia sufficiently, he'll kill her - well before a human woman of a similar height and build would've succumbed. There's a reason why you don't see unfettered and undead Dryads traipsing around without a clearing or grove to call home - it simply can't happen."

Herbert raised an eyebrow. "Hasn't the Pit maintained records of a Dryad called Circe? She'd been contaminated by the Black Speech and seemed to be doing fine without a host tree to call her own...
- That was the Black Speech," dismissively replied the mayor. "The abominations from the depths twist the natural order more efficiently than my own commander's admittedly short-sighted directives; the fact that Thanos and his cronies reduced a sylvan tutelary spirit to some twisted half-life doesn't surprise me in the least."

Wormsworth nodded as he re-assessed the Freaks' supply lines, now that he and Neasa were freed of all suspicion. "I suppose you'll tell me your unit had no plans to subjugate the local Nexus, even whilst in the thick of it..."

Allocer sighed. "Either we take the Tree and life goes on for everyone, or Valefor takes the Tree and we all die. I didn't lead thirty thousand Damned through to the mortal plane simply to have them perish at the hands of an ambitious fool."

He rested a hand on the iron banister beside them. "There's that, and the fact that I want to do right by your people. The civilians, I mean."

* * *

More aerial drops followed, this time delivering more deliberate-looking devices; small silver discs that adhered to the helipad and the rooftop thanks to a simple cantrip, and that served as the basis for a series of portals appearing inside the borders of Aislinn's circumscribed zone. The Envy thralls might've been mostly dispatched, they'd obviously served as a means to work in and exhaust the resistance below. What stepped forth from the twelve small gates to appear looked like cloned crosses between Hellraiser's Pinhead and a linebacker, hard red chitin covering dark musculature in a way that looked almost like an organic attempt at replicating plate mail armor. They had no visible eyes, but also no lips to speak of, stepping forth with coiled rage pushing through exposed teeth in silent, low hisses. Some produced wrist blades the Predator would've found fetching, others pulled out glistening swords from what looked like built-in leg-length holsters, flecks of bone and the occasional snaking vein shooting through the rust-colored steel.

"VALEFOR'S LADS!" screamed Samigina. "MAKE READY, FRIENDS!"

They were on them in an instant, thirty masses of glistening chitin and muscle all roaring and screaming, putting every single ounce of their impossible hatred and devotion in their sword strikes. A kind of downwards mortar strike cleared enough space for Nergal to land, light shimmering as Erin threw her husband of almost three millennia one of her swords. Both screamed right back at the invaders, not out of fear, but out of pure challenge. Somewhere in the back, Captain Sam's roaring laughter occasionally poked through the surrounding din. He was less savage in his strikes than the other two and largely played with his reputation as a drunken louse, swinging wildly one moment to force a handful of Wrath Knights to drop their guard, only to switch to surgical strikes the next. Whenever a sword's tip or edge came too close, his features turned blurry and transparent, like an image of his own self seen through troubled waters. He then kicked and seemingly swam out of harm's way, almost eel-like for an instant, and then chose his reinsertion point. There, his cutlass' edge became solid again, with the smell of black powder, dappled blood and the glint of steel soon following him.

Still, he was nothing compared to Nergal and Ereshkigal. The two seemed to almost move together even when apart, their strikes measured and timed to a dance Aislinn couldn't so much as hope to keep up with. They looked both utterly savage and completely composed, ferocious and tactically precise all at once, eyes darting around and keeping track of their marks. At best, the roane would soon realize the couple was dispatching the more immediately troublesome numbers, while "tagging"' others with more minor, if visually recognizable injuries. There had to be some sort of system at work, a flow chart of battlefield priorities the two had agreed upon ages ago. Chest slashes seemed to denote unit commanders, eye gouges marked spotters and potential snipers, with other strikes being seemingly designed to pass the enemy onto the other, or to the one of the two that had a more fitting style or skill set. Surprisingly, Erin seemed to consistently pick at the bruisers in the throng, while Lionel's fencing skills were more reserved, less showy than his gunplay. It would also become clear that Erin was carefully choosing which ones to leave for Aislinn to face. Condescension didn't factor into it, so much as optimization. She was a practitioner, and fine motor control was probably more her speed than close to ten minutes of pure effort. As far as swordplay was concerned, the roane's job involved covering the others and dealing with the latecomers. Some among Wrath apparently had more of Valefor's cold patience, or perhaps had dressed cowardice as patience...

As for Alphonse, he did what his new and foreign limbs allowed for. Still, he wasn't used to his own power and relied less on what would've been obvious haymakers, instead choosing to close the distance and forcing his opponents to go mêlée. Then, tentative hooks were landed: they first came with the wincing hesitation of someone who'd never thrown a punch before and who balked at their knuckles' protesting, and then fell back into what had to be a kind of old back-alley brawl flow as the old Irish-Italian mobster found his rhythm and fell in line with his own power. He wasn't as effective as the demons, but he also didn't look like he'd be quite as exhausted afterwards, having a decidedly conservative approach to combat. If Bucky ever became worried that the reincarnated Biggs Senior would supplant his own battlefield ferocity, Aislinn would be the first one to be able to reassure him in that regard. Al might've been poured out of concrete, his style still wasn't as brutish as his appearance would've suggested. His initial preference for guns might've made sense, then: stories in the mob depicted Al as a gun nut of sorts, but it seemed likely that he was actually more of a tactician, more comfortable with stop-and-pop engagements or well-placed fists than with hails of bullets.

* * *

Leonard kept up the charade, offering up more soothing platitudes as they waited for the right opening. It came five minutes later, as Ephesian noticed a shift change at the wickets and the prolonged absence of both the nurse and rent-a-cop that had gone looking for the materials needed to immobilize Miranda's supposedly injured leg. With the city's ambulance service being spotty at best, the local help had to do what it could in the absence of EMTs. At the end of those five minutes, the last of the goat's quiet shushing noises ended and the light tension of directed action could be sensed along his back.

"When I count to five," he sent to the young Fauness, "squeeze my hand for a second, then get up. Drop all pretenses, let the new Veil I'll have put on you do the work, and head straight across the lobby. Put a tiny bit of a skip in your step, if you can. I'll yell after you with another name," he said, "ignore it. I'll look different by the time you'll be free to turn back around - don't worry. I'll always be recognizable for you. I need you to turn right at the end of the lobby and make for the women's bathroom for just a second. There's a magnetic push-door next to it that guards access to the staff members' stairwell. I'll have swiped that janitor's card while coming after you."

Miranda's mind would briefly see a flash of a middling and lightly heavyset anthro koala janitor that had been standing off to the side while mopping the floor. He'd slowly been inching his way towards them, Leonard having obviously timed things so they'd slip through a blind spot in the staff shift change and the near-emptying of the waiting area.

Ephesian's lips lightly moved, etching numbers. On five, he pressed his hand into Miranda's. One squeeze and sit-up gesture later, the Robertson girl would see that the Veil he'd stuck on her didn't quite fit, unlike Kelsey's appearance... He'd stamped the likeness of a eight year-old human girl on her, the Veil's affected head poking through her chest like a badly-assigned model trying to conform to the wrong animation set. Obviously, the distracted onlookers didn't see her or the previously injured girl, but only a lightly snot-nosed scamp that looked both bored and a tad irritated. Obviously, Kelsey's leg pain was also removed from the equation, restoring her overall freedom of movement.

* * *

The Curator had stuck to the likeness of the Black Library's technician he'd previously impersonated, Ike the Squid's usually dour features here turned borderline cartoony as his eyes glistened and his tentacles curled in sheepishness. "I can't be the only one who gets bored out there, can I?" he rhetorically asked. "I started poking through the Library's low-resolution depths, found someone's passage like I usually do and I, well..."

He made a light noncommittal puffing sound and shrugged. "I putzed around your labyrinth not knowing it was yours. Nereus knows about it; it's kind of my schtick: I poke around other Squids' sanctuaries and learn what I can. A lot of them, you just can't consciously crack. You just have to go touchy-feely, sort of mentally wiggle your way around..."

He stepped out of the broom closet, absent-mindedly brushing one of his robe's shoulders with the off-hand, and frowned pointedly at the living room's sight. "Speaking of wiggling, you didn't make me do much of it, honestly. This feels almost familiar, somehow..."

Without thinking about it, he raised both hands at his throat, his robes seemingly morphing into a marine blue three-piece and bowtie that complemented his borrowed appearance's dark skin. "There," he said, looking back to the duo. "Now I fit your theme, at least."

He stepped closer to the couch, cast a glance around the space and quirked an eyebrow. His tentacles bobbed, his eyes glinting both impishly and interrogatively - but Nereus stopped him with a raised index finger. "Tut!" he said. "What we do here is our business, Curator, no matter how savvy it seems your eavesdropping around's left you..."

The dark-skinned Squid made a bit of a show out of picking the chair opposite the couch, coughing lightly. "What can I say," he said, shrugging, "it's not my fault if hope tends to stick out  like a sore thumb in a place like the Darkhallow. The usual go-to for serene nooks is private studies with the sensibilities of an Ivy League library funded by plutocrats crossed with a funeral home. Conjugal Bliss via Scandinavian Design isn't exactly a Dalarath go-to!" he said, grinning as he conjured himself what looked to be a glass of Scotch.

Nereus looked briefly self-conscious. "I was actually thinking about something more along the lines of an eco-conscious Frank Lloyd Wright-esque design, to be honest...
- Bah," dismissively replied the false Ikanath, adding a hand-wave to it, "Meris here probably just unconsciously slapped on a metric ton of Hygge vibes as soon as you cheated your way to 21st Century design trends centuries ahead of the curve. You're honestly making me want to slip on some bunny slippers and dose off contentedly in front of an ethanol-powered fireplace. That said, I think noisily snoring in front of dancing flames while swaddled in the downy goodness of hard-earned peace is more your intended M.O., boss," he said, winking at the Augur.

He then clicked his tentacles. "So! Before you kick me out, here's the actual kicker: I saw Chambers hobnob with a few Dalarath pseudo-luminaries, yesterday. His body's in shambles thanks to that number the demonic surgeon guy did to him, but his residual self-image while in here makes the beefiest of Arbiters look like roided-out chumps. He's actually gotten more resolve out of the ordeal, and it looks like someone from Heaven caved in to some pressuring of his, or from pressuring someone he's allied to provided. He's looking to use our Abomination-creation processes to reinsert a loaner soul back into the mortal plane. I don't know who she was in life, and from the look of things, my guess is they don't want her to know too much either, when she does pop up."

The Curator had since dug into his jacket's breast pocket and pulled out a folded photograph. The scenery looked decidedly Middle-Eastern and fairly on the rocky side, the woman's burnished features partially veiled by a combat helmet and thick Oakley tactical sunglasses.

Nereus frowned at her sight. "Who's she?
- Beats me," shrugged the Curator, "I was hoping one of you would tell me!"

* * *

"Chicken breasts, steak an' eggs," replied Belliard. "Yer three basic food groups, love," he said, grinning. "Add yours, and we've got ourselves enough for a right shindig: no squirrels or scraps tonight or tomorrow."

He rounded the counter to help her unload her goods. "Kid's upstairs for a shower, I figured she could use the scrub-down. Not that she weren't clean, it's her mind that needs cleanin'. With our being due for another go at the radio up top, we don't need no Mopin' Mollies in case we do manage to swap a few words with Magnus and Biggs' folks. She's on the grill like always, and then it's off to see if my Bosnian fellas up in Paradise managed to crack the work of Hornface's newly-minted IT department..."

He shook his head in amusement. "Milos keeps textin' me, saying he wished yer HPD had stuck to Windows or some rot. Your buddies left the demons with some top-notch hardware and software when it got so rough even the coppers in Central hadda get scarce, and story goes John Smith's had Goliath renew these demon fucks' software licenses, post-occupation... Security benefits everyone, or so the sayin' goes online. Bollocks to that, I say."

* * *

"One protocol officer, coming up," drawled Amduscias with a smirk, who snapped his fingers and opened a portal. He stuck his hand in the closet-sized glowing aperture in the fabric of Reality, his arm jerking as it was seemingly slapped away. "Not now, you mong," echoed Nybbas' voice, "I'm in the middle of important undercover work, here!"

The demon of inspiration inched a look in the portal and leered slightly. "Feckin' right, you are, I see that... I think you mean under the covers, though."

A woman shrieked. "What the Hell is that?!
- An annoyance," replied Nybbas irately. "Don't worry, my sweet," he said, seemingly redirecting his attention towards the woman he'd been bedding with, "for I'll soon be back to free you from the tyranny of Eligor's grip over Urban Planning and Development! You'll have French Roast in the coffee machine again, I swear on my life!"

Amduscias pulled, Nybbas resisting and trying to steal a kiss as he was forcefully directed through the portal. His companion looked to be an anthro fawn in her early thirties, her disturbed clothing briefly visible as she held onto Nybbas' distressed jacket for a second or two. "Call me!" she shouted, before giving the group an awkward look and leaning away, the portal closing in front of her.

And there was one of Aspasia's fabled ancestors, quite visibly past his prime as he picked himself off the ground and cinched his pants closed. Rendell might've made a ruckus about the Fauns of old being Grecian models of athleticism, Nybbas looked like his favorite exercise involved flexing his biceps to pinch a wine glass or a cigar, or maybe a bag of chips. His clothes briefly looked strangely milquetoast, almost worthy of an entry-level office position, so perhaps there was some truth to his having gone undercover, at least initially... Still, a bit of a self-conscious look had him gripping his jacket's lapels, arcane and Infernal willpower willing the cheap gabardine into a fine red suit jacket, with a black vest and red buttons over a white shirt, a yellow tie resting at his throat with a ruby-lined tie pin. Large rings shimmered into being at his fingers, and he rather conspicuously did not conjure pants for himself... Judging by the thick and dark mane that covered them, he didn't have much need for some, anyway, his modesty being covered by enough dark scruff to be entirely hidden. Notably, his legs' bow was far more pronounced than Aspasia's, suggesting he clearly relied on his supernatural origins to stand upright. Even if he looked like his weight distribution should've confined him to a wheelchair, his hooves only affected a few nervous stamps and didn't seem taxed in the least.

As previously, he focused on Meris. "Just - don't tell Naberius about Erica or the coffee machine, alright? I really wanted to have a foot in with Allocer's plans for Hope's redevelopment; I just sort of got, erm, romantically and ideologically side-tracked.
- Happens to the best of us, man," added Amduscias, his sarcasm kept obviously friendly.

That said, only then did he seem to notice Aspasia, which made him shift from rhetorical self-defense to honest shock.

"Oh, balls," he lightly swore, "and here come the questions..."
User avatar
TennyoCeres84
Site Admin
 

Posts: 2929
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:59 am

Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

Neasa pursed her lips with uncertainty. "I don't think you'll be able to remove Arthur from the picture entirely. If he's anything like his brother, they're both stubborn and cling to their purpose with all their might," she observed.

"I know you're still not keen on working with us, but you may have to, at least indirectly. Sophia's purposefully selected Ciaran as her protector, I can see that much. If it's possible, you might be able to have him function as a wedge between Arthur and Sophia. Sophia may not feel threatened by Arthur now, but she did boost Ciaran's powers for a reason. I suggest you use my brother's position to your advantage to keep the Nexus unharmed."

***

Aislinn recalled her training under Sir Percival and orientated her stance to best fight Valefor's minions. She did her best to carve through the latecomers and watch the backs of Ereshkigal and Nergal and Alphonse. The young warlock drove her blade with ferocity and powerful battle cries. She moved with her own precision as she followed Ereshkigal's guidance.

***
Miranda partially skipped through the lobby and veered toward the right for the women's restroom. She inwardly marveled at how the veil of the young girl disguised her real form and followed through with Ephesian's plans.

***

Meris took a closer look at the photo and pried it from the Curator's fingers. She looked closely at the woman's face and the environment behind her and frowned grimly at her husband and their friend. "I think I know who this woman is. She was-is-Carrie Silva, Aidan Drake's superior and lover back during his days in the military, who also died mysteriously. He was blamed for her disappearance, since Void Weavers were involved. Before he knew about Azardad and all of this," she explained.

"It seems Chambers want to use her to get to him and harm Shield. And I'd like to know who the idiotic angel is that allowed for her soul to be incarnated again. I mean, is it Uriel? Is this his attempt to thwart our goals?" she wondered aloud.

***

Crystal shrugged. "That's John Smith for you. He and Goliath Corp. go where the money is, so I'm not surprised. It is what it is," she mused.

She tilted her head back as she recalled something and sighed. "I hope we can get a hold somebody and just be able find a way out of here. For all of his hold on Hope, I don't think he has malevolent intent like the Goat and Valefor do. It'd be great if we could reason with him..."

***

Despite the scientifically created bow of her legs, the former commander probably appeared closer to the original Fauns and their legendary physiques. Alert, amber eyes eyed him neutrally, and a long white fishtail braid hung over a shoulder. Given that her new armor hadn't been completed yet, she still wore the Blue Chimera standard issue armor. Comparatively, she was covered more than he was, and he would be able to see that she fell decidedly closer to the warrior versions of his brethren.

Aspasia crossed her arms and shook her head. "Relax, Nybbas. I didn't request your presence to harangue you with questions to make you feel bad."

She approached him and dropped her hands to her sides. "I need your input on Faun music. Life seems determined on a fateful encounter between me and Azazel. I think music could break through his "punish me" aura or whatever you want to call it. I want the encounter to turn out for the better, rather than a bloodbath," she explained.
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Allocer nodded briefly and looked on as Herbert spent a few minutes jotting down notes as he inspected the bridge's undercarriage, but a particular glint in his eyes betrayed his skepticism.

"That would be a sound approach, except for the fact that my entreaties to Sophia have gone unanswered. Like it or not, I'm the enemy to her. In her position, I'd consider any attempt at parley as a trap waiting to be sprung - as this is what the Goat expects of me. Little does he know that I know I have a city to run; Hope isn't too dissimilar from the last barracks I commanded. The one difference is instead of counting my constituents in the hundreds of thousands, I now have to count in millions. If what he wanted was raw oppression, he shouldn't have sprung for the Fifth Column's Rangers."

Herbert smirked as he kept his eyes on his smartphone. "Yes, Pride does have issues, when it comes to selecting doers for crucial tasks. It doesn't help that we either produce sycophants or individuals like you or I, both of us infatuated with our own capabilities and accomplishments... Before I'll cast you as a bleeding heart in the occupation, however, mister Mayor, I'll consider the fact that some calls for help have reached us from City Hall, over the past month. You might have honorable goals, you also cannot abide dissent or failure."

That left Allocer looking shocked, his expression turning to a low, seething glare. "I assume the resistance does better? You, whom Valefor's cronies just called out for being a new candidate for Pride's crown?"

Wormsworth's eyes slid over to Neasa, for a moment. That spark of empathy from earlier burned bright for an instant, making the smile that followed feel less gooey and more earnest. "I know we do better, Your Honor. I look at you and I see the same old diseased Pride, locked away behind a politician's lucidity and a tactician's eye for detail. That makes you more palatable, yes, but no less concerning. I'm still learning, mind you, but I won't harangue Leonard and I's secretaries if briefs get incorrectly filed. I won't spend my days looking over my back, searching for signs of insubordination or treachery. People will come to us of their own free will, as opposed to your need to foster obedience, to quote yourself."

He sighed. "Reach out to Sophia, and see what happens. Leave Ciaran to us, news of Arthur's instability won't be taken as true if they come from one of yours.
- He'll have every reason to lie to the Dryad," replied the mayor, "to tell her he means her no harm, to try and reassure Ciaran. He'll then turn around and induct more innocents into Lilith's tainted blood!"

That left Herbert to raise a finger as he turned away. "Ah-ah-ah, mister Mayor! To paraphrase a meme - congratulations, sir. You've played yourself."

Allocer could only blink in incredulity. "What in the Pit's black depths does that mean?!
- It means I've too much time on my hands and not enough cases," sighed Wormsworth. "Paradise having mirrored the entire Internet as of a few weeks before the incursion and unloaded it at Magnus Tower in data cubes does have its drawbacks - or advantages, depending on who you ask. I've read more and watched more of Humanity's works in the past two weeks than in the last five hundred."

He looked back to Neasa. "If what Valefor's scout said was true, I'm impatient to know of Pride's new form. Imagine how different things would be if the Princes could acknowledge the human element at the heart of each Vice, and wrest it clean of all associated guilt," he said, as he started back towards the stairs leading to the bridge's surface. "Gabriel is allowed no shortage of pride towards the mortals' achievements, and yet nobody stands for positive Pride."

In the back, Allocer shouted at him. "What you're suggesting is heretical, Wormsworth! Mortals have no need of half-measures! They can be assuaged or persuaded - they can't be seen as our equals!"

Herbert laughed easily at that. "Fortune favors the bold, Your Honor!
- That's not bold, it's hubris!"

Still walking away, Wormsworth shook his head. "No, hubris is the Goat's territory!"

* * *

For a time, concrete punches, supernatural ordnance and sword slashes worked as intended. Someone else might've seen the increasing pressure from the surviving Wrath Knights and Envy thralls as a sign of impending defeat, but Samigina hadn't been smiling this wildly or laughing this raucously since Meris' apparent defeat at the hands of the Chamberlain's usurped East India Trading Company vessel. Soon, just as Erin was beginning to feel the pressure and increasingly relying on Aislinn, the gleam of his yellow eyes turned almost joyfully insane.

"Ahahahaha, yer done for, ye blighters! Nasir's got yer number!" he screamed, leaning into one or two last slashes and flintlock discharges as an odd purplish haze soon began to bloom into view around the enemy soldiers. As it did, a spot of the late morning sky seemed to warp and twist, the clouds buckling and then collapsing on themselves as what looked like an orb of pure darkness enshrouded in the red and purple flares of blue-shifted light silently bloomed into view. The enemies seemed to be pulled at by the strangely choosy singularity, the first victims being some of the remaining fighter planes. Steel soon impacted Pit-borne bodies as Knights and thralls alike helplessly thrashed and flailed in a desperate attempt to return to solid ground. Still, they floated away with slow, steady and ever-increasing speed. Astronomy might not have been Aislinn's forte, but it stood to reason the singularity was much further above than it actually looked to be, thanks to the way light seemed to bend around it. Still gigantic, George tentatively extended a hand towards the black hole, his hand briefly flashing in purples and reds as it seemingly touched some sort of barrier. Elena Nasir's voice was impossibly strong and yet light as a feather as it sprang out of the air itself, with the low tones of a martial leader and the relaxed poise of someone who had the situation well in hand. She had a hint of an accent; not quite Russian or Middle-Eastern, but somewhere in between.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, mister Gammell. I assume you prefer to have your hands attached to your body."

The shuttle's rear hatch opened, the craft banked into position at a precarious nose-diving angle as it pitched its stern to the heavens, and a large bolt of blue energy shot out of it, heading for the black hole. It seemingly disappeared within the sphere's infinite pressure, only for a single white dot to appear in its center. From there, it was an easy bet to assume Nasir had done something to the upper atmosphere's canopy to protect the Eastern seaboard from both the ear-crushing pressure wave of the black hole-turned-miniature sun and what would've probably been lethal amounts of sudden radiation. Again, perhaps out of some conditional arguments in her spellwork, only the surviving Hellspawn on the rooftop and in the surrounding campus were affected, with their bodies seemingly flash-burning and then being blown away like so much ash. It looked like a fast-forward version of Sarah Connor's dream in Terminator 2, with only the skeleton of one of the Envy thralls briefly living on as a black impression in Aislinn's sight. She might've been shielded from the blast's intended effect, what light had passed through had still been enough to briefly blind her.

Then, as unobstructed vision returned, an armored figure simply stepped out of the shuttle's cargo-loading area, from several thousand feet in the air. She simply hovered down, a coruscation of blue-shifted light dancing around her as she used her magic to alter the Earth's gravitational pull on herself. What should've been a brutal and lethal fall turned into a graceful downwards arc, her feet alighting almost daintily on the helipad.

If Mary Jameson had been around, chances are she would've been a tad jealous. The woman's unnatural silver hair was light, something to it suggesting it was made from sterner stuff than your typical follicles. Her bluish-lilac skin looked delicate and blemish-free, if not for the faint ghosts of old scars along her cheeks. Her irises looked like twin galaxies, purple and brown clouds enmeshed with fatty golden deposits. She was curvaceous and muscular, something to her features putting her in the late forties, her dark blue bodysuit bearing the thinnest armor pads Paradise's tech could produce. She seemed as though her display had been effortless, but Aislinn wouldn't need much to recognize the ghost of a practitioner's exertion in Nasir's eyes. In the rear, George did his best to reassume his normal size while landing on the rooftop. He briefly looked about to lose his footing and plummet over the edge, but Helena extended an arm behind her. A reddish and blue haze enveloped him, shock and terror turning to confusion as controlled gravitational forces gently guided him forwards and back onto his feet.

Sighing happily, Captain Sam doffed his hat. "Queenie; may I present some of yer allies 'gainst the Pit's exactions... Nergal and Ereshkigal o' Walpurgis, an' Aislinn McConmara an' Al Biggs, both from Hope.
- She's a queen?" asked Alphonse, who looked a bit surprised to hear of another arcane aristocrat after Meris.

Helena smiled. The gesture was sweet, but contained the tiniest hint of steel. She approached the gargoyle, panther-like, and paced around him. "I know how it sounds," she said, "a stranger in a land growing further removed from the hands of the Balance... Any of my daughters could make this claim. All apart from two of your arcane luminaries have grown distant, and only one of them claimed her mantle's birthright. It must seem arrogant to you."

The gargoyle blinked. "I, uh, just never was in the business of bowing down in life, if you catch my drift. Didn't do it much when dead, either."

Nasir chuckled, the sound sounding neither pleased or particularly inviting. "Men," she said, adding a bit of contemptuous amusement to the word. "Every once in a while, you find one that happens to be worth the distraction. Don't worry, I know you're up against the worst of your kind - I've felt him as soon as my frigate dropped out of Supercruise near Sol. I briefly entertained the notion of seeking out enlightened daughters of the Pit and Pandemonium, but in sensing him..."

She turned to Aislinn, her frost and contempt seemingly evaporating. "I knew he'd been placed there for the brightest of Earth's stars to shine, for our removed daughters and the enlightened few to claim their glory."

Helena placed a hand on Aislinn's shoulder. "I greet you, Blood-kin of Meris. Your sisters removed greet you through me."

* * *

As expected, Leonard started after her. "Abigail," he called, "come back here!"

In looking back, Miranda would see a shorter and stockier anthro ram pacing after her, the Veil selling the idea of an irate parent reasonably well. He lightly bumped into the janitor, mumbled excuses and moved on - with his keycard palmed in one hand. As expected, he came for her with the gestures of a father about to yank his daughter away, but instead slipped past her. and flicked the keycard over the sensor next to the push-door. He waited one moment, long enough for Miranda to duck inside the women's bathroom for a moment. As soon as one of her feet poked back out, he leaned his back on the push-bar and held it open just long enough for the young Chimera to duck in.

Once they were alone in the staircase, Ephesian touched the girl again. "Veil number three," he murmured, swapping out the infantile features for what looked like Miranda's now healthy human twin, with perhaps an extra decade on her shoulders, a B.A. in Communications and the flexible Business Casual attire that fit with it. With a few extra inches, a fuller chest, longer hair and what looked like a pair of capris and low-cut marine-blue sneakers to go along with a light blouse and beige sweater, all that was missing was a misspelled Starbucks cup and a smartphone. Leonard had gone for a variant on his old self, with more frizzy fur and horns that seemed more prone to curling, along with a purposefully drab beige suit and dark-rimmed glasses. An up-and-coming PR geek with her older and slightly frumpier colleague, then.

"Argue with me," he then demanded, his voice shifting to something a tad more nasal, more Midwestern and less self-assured, his feet slapping the stairs as they made their way up. "You belong here, your coffee sucked, and you think I'm wrong while knowing I'm still your superior."

"...that's not what I'm saying, Christine!" he began. "We're one-third past the beginning of the trimester, we need to spike the mayor's approval ratings, I do understand that, but going Orwellian on the general populace is only ever going to sate the new immigrants and the old hardliners who used to trumpet Conservative immigration policies! I know the mayor's practically lowered himself to kissing babies in public, but you can't pair his kind of earnestness with his agenda - it just doesn't work! I'm telling you - in the end, he's going to drag us down kicking and screaming, and he won't even realize he's betraying the two inches of common sense he had!"

Having thrown the second floor's stairwell access door open, the effect was immediate: demon or otherwise, people looked away. It looked like Allocer's handpicked followers were just as likely to be embarrassed by the sight of an argument as anyone else - which was an adequate form of social stealth. Using photocopiers and file drawers as cover points, they soon began canvassing the floor, a bit of apparent sullen or thoughtful silence serving as enough of an opening for sights to be passed on telepathically.

Naturally, the police's new heads couldn't be found here. Their names could, however. Word was that Alderan had flown out to meet with Sterling Starr and discuss of a grand reunion of the Silver Age's superheroes, other reports suggested demons performing air control had shot him down north of Providence. Crystal Lowell's whereabouts were unknown, with a few sightings suggesting she was trapped in Winters' old neighborhood. Seamus Mac Loch had  retreated in the inlet's waters along with a smattering of selkies and Finmen. Hearsay suggested he'd left with an angel of some persuasion, along with a vial of Tom Magnus' blood... For what purpose, Hell's forces had no idea. The Coast Guard had lost sight of the pod in extraterritorial waters, Leviathan's jealous hold over the sea foolishly allowing the group to vanish. Considering the vial, some theories suggested Magnus had asked someone to pay tribute to the Fomor in his name - if the Fomor even existed.

Unsurprisingly, Feargus O'Sullivan was now a registered agitator and terrorist, in the HPD's books. His small size and massive strength made him a target to be feared by many, horns or no horns. With the Elves having always shown an uncanny ability in sowing chaos, the smallest and most decorated of the city's policemen had more than likely settled with flipping the proverbial book. He now did exactly what he'd spent two hundred years trying to dissuade his more raucous constituents from doing. Files suggested he now directed the Kilkenny boys' energy personally and did what he could to marshal a band of Svartalves into laying some good old-fashioned Old Country wrath upon the invaders.

Doherty was, of course, gone. The Chief of Police was now called Jacob Myers, a bespectacled Orc who wasn't ever seen without his sunglasses, perhaps all the better to hide Belial's final parting gift. Whoever the Orc had once been was unknown, the spirit that had once merely burdened him had consumed him entirely. With a careful circlet's worth of a beard at his jaw's rim, he looked like a green-skinned and pointy-eared Hugo Strange, menace practically radiating past his attempt at making the HPD's ceremonial marine blues look good. Below him waited a possessed Bugbear, along with one of Valefor's more obvious cohorts, and a formerly notorious woman, now reincarnated. Orson Griff, Terrence Lord and Elisabeth Bathory.

Seeing this, Leonard had to fight now to roll his eyes. It made far too much sense: the Goat would've wanted to find a twisted, darker alternative to Lowell. Who better than the Blood Countess reborn, to desecrate the seat of a woman who'd applied justice with equal parts determination and compassion? Griff had Renton, Lord had Downtown and Sandhill, and Bathory had Central. The Veiled goat's attempts to look absorbed in their discussion briefly wavered as he saw this as they rummaged, his sickened look being briefly and painfully obvious.

* * *

The Curator's eyes briefly widened as he shrugged, non-verbally going for Well, duh.

"We're as far from hunky-dory as could be imagined, and Gabriel's gone against the Lightbringer's orders and the angels' vow of non-interference, and he's established a foothold in Hope. The status is pretty well far from quo, I'd say. I know the birdie I saw wasn't Uriel, though - he was lacking that special kind of oblivious self-righteousness, the sense that he was refraining from beseeching God to format us out of existence only to avoid peeving off Daddy Dearest. My guess is someone told Uriel they had a shoo-in for a fix, and Diet Lightbringer opted to send an emissary along, seeing as he had two brain cells left to realize that attending a meeting with the Chamberlain in our pocket reality couldn't possibly be the best idea since sliced bread."

He took a sip from his Scotch glass. "Anyway, I'd keep an eye out for amnesiac Latinas with weird Light-based powers or something, unless they stuff her full of new memory engrams to avoid her going nuts as soon as she hits Downtown Apocalypse Central."

Nereus nodded, looking a tad annoyed as he sat back down. "Duly noted - what about that emissary? Did you see them?
- Nope, they'd been clever," the Curator said, popping his tentacles diffidently. "They stole a page from Diablo, I think; went for the ball-of-light-for-a-head-in-a-cowl look. Full armor, so I couldn't see skin or gender features. Even if, we're talking angels, here. Genderfluid Central."

The Augur grunted lightly. "I know; that complicates things... They have far too many means to eliminate obvious ways to identify them. It could've been Uriel himself, for all we know, he could've simply lied and claimed to be his own emissary.
- And risk a shot with Chambers' Head-Scramble-o-Tron?" replied the Curator incredulously. "I mean, I could recreate what I saw, but you'd have to have been there. I had no experience with angels, and what I felt didn't grip me with the kind of holy terror you figure the Lightbringers can dredge up. I was looking at a toady with wings and enough power to look imposing, and that's it."

* * *

"Hornface ain't the issue, love," replied John, "he's a lordling sticking to someone else's orders. I don't doubt he's got ideas about us locals collaboratin', but it'll always be under his terms."

A few regulars started pouring in, nodding their heads at Crystal or sparing a greeting or two. For most of them, it seemed, she still was Central's Deputy Chief - at least as far as their apparent respect for her went. Even one or two old jailbirds had turned out to be amenable types who actually lent a hand; almost as though they couldn't handle the norm but could function as long as the new standard involved guard duty and free food on regular shifts. It ate up a few minutes, at least.

One of them eyed Belliard as he took a seat. "Hey boss - you'll never guess who we saw push past the perimeter a few hours ago," he said. "Gregory Fucking Rendell, with a bunch of Reds that didn't look like the Wyvern corporate crew. They looked kind of out of it, like they spotted our scents and didn't know what to make of 'em. Fresh Paradise stock, maybe?"

The pig grunted. "Hrmph. World's a shambles, so it ain't like someone's bankrollin' him. Caliban Smith had the last decanters destroyed, at least on paper, but you know Paradise don't give a toss about rules, eh? I doubt they'd be so brazen, seems more like he picked some lot that hadn't left the station 'fore. Where were they headed? Did they engage you or somethin'?
- Nope, drove right through here on their way to Magnus Tower. We followed them to see if they'd opened some sort of way forward. The short of it the sewers on Pike are condemned until further notice."

The pig raised an eyebrow. "That bad, huh?
- Yep. Fancy-pants automated sentries, lasers, mines... I threw a brick right past the ladder leading down; some kinda slow-motion disintegration mine chewed through it like acid in three seconds. We can't crawl past the Moaners no more, so it's the skybridges into Downtown or bust. At least, until things get back to normal enough for a bomb squad to sort through this mess."

Another man sniffed. "Yeah, but why lock us in here? Wouldn't Rendell technically want to screw with the Goat's plans too?"

That made John sniff. "Ah, but there's the kicker, Boyle: we're safe, in here. Look out to Magnus Tower, you'll find a whole nest's worth of wasps circlin' over it.  Head the other way and you've got Allocer's demonic filth. We can't reach Celestial Command en masse, so our best bet is to stay here. That mine field works both ways - the winged shits massin' near the Hillard can't snoop in from below. I'll see about lookin' at that mine field meself, but the way I see it, Rendell's done us a solid. We control these streets, and they'll be ours until this blows over."

He looked back to Crystal and the others. "First things first. Food, then rest, then the airwaves. We party if we get a signal. If not, we hunker down, keep scanning, and hope to God someone in Magnus Tower is doing the same."

* * *

Nybbas shook his head. "With all due respect, you're not the first one to suggest that," he said. "Hey Amduscias, remember back when the Goat let Azazel loose in Limbo for a trial run? How many angels did our contacts say he killed?"

The Prince of Pleasure sniffed. "Damn near killed a whole choir," he said, "along with half the retrieval team the Goat sent to restrain him once the test phase had passed. Not like Oh no, me physical form! Oh crud, I guess I'll just mosey on to the Big Guy and reload meself into his grand old project  - think more in terms of straight extinction. Poof, angels go bye-bye. File's gone, Recycle Bin's been emptied, the whole lot."

Melmoth grunted thoughtfully. "Yeah, the former head honcho wouldn't shut up about that one for a few mortal generations," he said, grimacing in disgust. "The thing is, the choir's big mistake was getting in close right from the get-go."

He looked back to Amduscias. "Hey, Alice Cooper - you got some kinda Guitar Amp from H-E-double hockey sticks back at your quarters?"

The Infernal musician grimaced lightly. "What, and grind this place to a halt because my guitar solos start wrenching tears from everybody? Sod off, the last thing the Queen here needs is for me to showboat at a time like this!"

A few seconds passed, after which Nickar shrugged. "Speaking of queens, you could always drop by Titania's, see how the Fae are faring, and maybe recover that drum Quint used to use to try and lure people in."

Morose thoughtfulness turned into silent realization, a shy smile dawning on the Broker's features. Nickar looked like Amduscias and the Infernal stock trader were idiots for not having thought of this.

"What? I mean, she's Orcadian, isn't she?" he rhetorically asked, pointing at Meris with one of Aspasia's future armor pads. "You leave Robertson here to act as the lead voice, while Meris beats the drum and provides backing vocals, seeing as the main singer isn't magically gifted."
User avatar
TennyoCeres84
Site Admin
 

Posts: 2929
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:59 am

Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

Having put her sword down at her side, Aislinn smiled awkwardly at the Queen. "I'm honored to meet you, Lady Nasir," she greeted, hoping the added title suited the woman's rank. She then frowned thoughfully. "Excuse me for being a bit literal-minded, but I assume you're talking about other female practitioners, other than my blood-sister Neasa?"

***

Neasa followed along with Herbert, her expression turning thoughtful. "This might seem an odd question, but what was Lucifer's original intent for the Princes? I somehow doubt it was anything like this..." she asked him softly.

***

Miranda, under her Veil, followed with the disguised attorney and offered her own banter to the argument. She scoffed and countered, "I think you're wrong, sir! I think Allocer might find some way to make it work and improve his numbers. Allocer's clever enough for that!"

The sight of the new deputy chiefs caused the teenager to huff a little, the gesture easily being mistaken as frustration from their argument.

***

Meris frowned concernedly. "Try to replicate it anyway, Curator. I've been around enough angels I might be able place what Choir they belong to," she noted. "We need every bit of insight into this situation we can get," she urged.

***

Crystal nodded a bit glumly. "Alright, we'll do those things in that order and hopefully reach through to someone," she agreed.

After a few minutes, Andrea bounded down the stairs and immediately made for her mother. "Great, Mama, you're back!" she said as she hugged her. "I was just washing up so I can help join cook up the food we came back with!"

The former deputy chief's weariness waned slightly as she gave her daughter a warm smile. "Wonderful, sweetheart. I'm sure it'll be delicious."

***

Aspasia's tail flicked thoughtfully. "I think that could potentially work," she mused to them, then crossing her arms again."The one time I channeled being a Wyldfae, I remember singing an unknown song, with actual lyrics, to heal a friend's wounds. It might just need some adjustment, since I'm trying soothe someone's rage and not a mortal wound; maybe Meris could help with that," she speculated with an affirmative nod to herself.

She frowned pensively. "Azazel needs compassion as much as he needs forgiveness and absolution from his burden. Keeping our distance might not be an option, but if we can get him to lower his anger some, we might be able to approach him to maybe speak with him."

Abdiel nodded. "I think this works as a prospective plan. We'll run it by Meris once she wakes up from her rest and visit with Nereus."
Locked