Canon Battle Post
The room was silent, save for the breathing of the other Gifted. Kane wasted no time, relaxing his legs and drawing his knives as he dropped from the chandelier with an ominous jingling sound.
Both knives dug into the shoulders of the soldier in the back of the group and Kane stood up immediately. Kane smiled like a snake as he used the knives to both disable the agent's arms and shield himself from the other agents.
"Aggh!" David screamed, his arms locked in place by the blades. The three other soldiers circled around Kane.
"
YOLO!" whooped the lunatic. But his wide-eyed, toothy grin soon melted into a snarl as the three agents' smirked at him.
"Bet you fuckers think you're pretty funny," said Kane as David disappeared into a smear of various colors.
"Funnier than you," said a second soldier, Harry.
Harry held out his hand, palm open, and snatched something from Kane's direction. Suddenly, a bright blue flame erupted from within Kane, lighting up the whole room. The third agent, Tyler, choked audibly. The room was covered in a pool of blood deep enough to crawl up the soldier's boots. There were innumerable corpses littering the floor and tables; some were slashed up like a Friday the 13th extra, others were unblemished but lifeless.
Reeling from the pain, Kane dropped his knives and fell to the ground. The flames seared him, but they weren't life-threatening in the least. He turned back, skin crawling back across his face, and tackled Henry, the squad's apparent leader, through a wall. Pure blackness crawled out of his veins as a vortex burst from his arm and grabbed hold of Henry. Standing back up as the flames died around him and spread to the carpet below, he grabbed the man by the throat. The vortex emerging from Kane seemed to be tearing Henry apart; the soldier's eyes began to darken and his gaze lost focus.
Henry struggled and squirmed, took a deep breath, and slashed his hand through the air. Kane's arm was gone! The beastly man's vortex swirled to a stop and Harry fell to the floor, coughing and heaving.
Kane stared at the arm, feeling the pain, feeling that his arm truly was gone. He seemed curious as to why it wasn't regrowing. He turned to look at Henry and growled.
"
You don't amuse me," he said, snarling like a rabid dog. "
How about I kill you first, so your brother can watch you die as he bleeds out?"
Henry stumbled back in horror, and Kane's arm returned in full. He grinned.
"
Gotcha!" The Vortex lunged out from his body and wrapped the agent in its embrace. In the few seconds he had before the life was torn from his friend, Tyler used his super-speed to take aim and throw a dozen kunai at Kane. Kane stumbled back, even howling in pain as one a knife pierced his spinal column, but he just would not fall! After about ten seconds, Henry Duvet crashed to the floor, cold and dead.
Kane briefly admired the "beautiful" sight of his own handiwork, then observed the remaining agents exchanging hand signals.
"Ooh, I've got one for ya'!" said Kane, knocking on his own head and then flipping off the trio.
Harry pushed his hands together, facing great invisible resistance, then flung them apart several times. Immediately afterward, Kane's limbs, one by one, erupted into flames. The impossibly hot flames licked off the killer's skin and tore open the muscles and sinew beneath it.
"Raarrrgggh!" Kane's face, which barely rose above the thick cloud of smoke engulfing his body, warped itself into a smile and he giggled with sadistic joy.
Is that your only trick?"
Tyler dove up into the air, sailing only inches above the back of Kane's head. Kane felt a crack, and suddenly, his neck was turned 180 degrees. He dropped, unable to move.
"
Ahh! Ow, owww! What the hell, man? Kane's neck clicked back into position, taking several tries to do it properly. He stood, massaging it. "
Dick move, Tyler. Dick move."
He looked at the remainder of the squad. All three of them were standing between Kane and the bleeding lump on the floor. He slapped his hand to his face and shook his head while trying to hold back a laugh.
"
Fireworks and speed will hardly help you at this point, boys."
The trio drew machine pistols.
"
Oh, well those might," he admits. Kane steps aside, disappearing and simultaneously creating a replica of him where he stood. A storm of bullets began to rip through the illusion, turning it's upper torso and head into mush.
Stepping around them while Harry torched the "corpse" with twin jets of flame, Kane walked up between Harry and David and tapped them both on the shoulders.
The flames stopped as the two soldiers looked at each other, thinking the other had tapped them. Kane's fists crashed into each of them, breaking Tyler's jaw like a twig. He stepped on Henry's fallen pistol and knocked it up high enough for him to grab it by the handle. Barely aiming, he fired off the whole clip at Tyler, who was too dazed to dodge properly and fell back into a table.
Just then, an immense pillar of flame ripped through Kane's guts, pinning him to the floor and painting the room with even more gore. In his mind, the pain that washed over him was exquisite. Lashing out, the power he'd stolen from Henry triggered. The flames appeared to reverse, drowning their user in their embrace. Kane's blackened body began to repair itself as Harry was crushed by his own flames, his screams no louder than the whoosh of the inferno eating him alive.
"Harry! Hold fast, it's an--!" David called out to his comrade, made himself a target. That was a mistake. David soon saw the room fill with copies of Kane. The mob of maniacs approached him slowly, savoring the fear in the eyes of their plaything.
"No!" screamed David defiantly.
"I know Henry's power. You're not real!"
The mob of Kanes encircled David, taunting and breathing heavily all at once.
"But I am!" said a voice behind the soldier. Kane shoved his fingers into David's eyes, trying to gouge them out and shrieking with brutal fury. David cried out in pain as his fingers glowed with energy that quickly changed color from yellow to red. Before Kane knew what hit him, a dozen copies of David tackled him to the ground. They slammed his head onto the sharp edge of a table, broke his ribs with a stanchion pole, and bit and clawed at every bit of his exposed flesh... but not for long.
Kane rose in an eerie, inhuman fashion. His flesh strung itself back onto his body as he stood. The illusions standing beside him exploded into wispy clouds of air. He was bleeding from dozens of holes on his body, and David could tell he was enjoying it. In horror, David took several careful steps back, keeping his terrified eyes trained on the monster. He knew from experience that if a soldier like himself panicked in front of an enemy like this for even a second, he was as good as dead.
Harry stood behind David, counting down from 5 and staring at Kane's arms...
As soon as Harry finished mouthing the number 1 to himself, Kane snatched David up. The flames that instantly enveloped Kane's face, arms, and torso swallowed David whole, burning him down to the bone in the span of about five seconds. A satisfied Kane then used his vortex to drain David's soul, burped, and chuckled lightly.
Brushing off the flames on his arms as if they were bits of dust, he turned to the last man alive, Harry. He jumped over to him before he could react, grabbing him by the head. The very skin of Kane's burnt fingers peeled off, revealing fresh scales underneath that swelled with blood and muscle as his body repaired itself.
"Get off me, you monster!" Harry shouted, properly terrified, yet enraged. The whole squad had been dispatched in mere minutes before him, and all Kane did was smile as the darkness began to deepen and the flames that killed David died out.
"
Guess what?" Kane asked, his grin excessively wide, as his cheeks were gone.
"What?" Harry asked, breathing heavy.
As the cold claw of Kane's vortex wrapped itself around him and tore the life from the ITSDA agent, he said, almost too eager to answer...
"
Chicken butt."
Kane looked pleased with himself, until he pieced together the little fragments of knowledge he'd acquired from his kills. The Dollhouse. These were fragments; those wormy little bastards survived!
"
Oh, you sonsabitches. You can't flim-flam the zim-zam!"
Summoning up all the willpower his psychosis would allow him, Kane created an illusory bomb and guided it using David's ability. He reversed the power of The Dollhouse to project the bomb into the motel room, where it flooded everyone there with the pain of every injury Kane could remember.
The bodies of the agents vanished as he felt it go off. Knowing that while he couldn't find or kill them, he'd reduced a squad of agents optimized to try and kill him to screaming lunatics, Kane was satisfied. He picked his wallet out of his wrecked suit, put on one of the staff's spare tuxedos, and walked straight out of the building.
He found, much to his surprise, that there were no agents ready to prevent his escape outside. He scoffed.
"
Smooth, operators." He proceeded to hail a taxi and snake his way back off the world's radar.
For now, The ITSDA was defeated and Kane Isiah Armani, one of the world's most prolific terrorists, remained at large.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:51, Sat 24 Oct 2015.