Info:Las Vegas, Nevada. Home of casinos where you can gamble your life away, top-drawing shows and fights of every kind, hedonism, self-indulgence, and enough lights to blind anyone. Over the course of the last 8 years, an industry of Gifted individuals displaying their powers in magnificent, carefully choreographed shows has sprung up. Almost needless to say, this has been a dream come true for those Gifted whose dreams told them to seek fame and fortune. Since Vegas is the only city permitted to put "destructive superhuman abilities" on display, it has also been a dream come true for the city's tourism board.

However, Sin City's new industry is not without its problems. Rivalries between the various Gifted performers abound, and many fear that a belligerent performer or drunken accident could spark the entire state's destruction. Still, the shows go on and on and tourists keep pouring in.

So, have you ever wanted to be famous? Or did you just come to see the Gifted individuals and the world-changing powers they're showing off for the audience?

Arthur hopped off the back of the pick up truck he'd been hitching on and waved a warm goodbye to the truck driver who'd been kind enough to bring him here. Turning round his head tilted back as he viewed the towering array of neon lined monuments and giant plasma screens that lit up the strip before him. He let out a low whistle, as thoughts about not being in Scotland no more drifted across his mind. He'd wanted to see this place for so long, a city where others like him could display their powers without fear of reproach or condemnation, it really was somewhere to cross off his bucket list.

A low growl from his stomach though reminded him of more immediate concerns. Gosh he was hungry, as it turned out hitching across the states with barely a dime in his pockets was above all else a really hunger inducing affair. Had to get some grub. With this mission in mind Arthur started making his way around looking for something like an affordable cafe or diner.

An hour later Arthur was as hungry as ever and had managed to do little more than stare forlornly at the prices on offer that were way outside his meager budget. Wandering rather dejectedly now, his self pity was suddenly cut through by what sounded like a racking cough of pain followed by a few wheezing breaths from a nearby alleyway. Worried that someone might be in distress, Arthur quickly made his way to the mouth of the dark alley, instinctively raising an invisible barrier around himself.

Dimly illuminated by a flickering wall light someways overhead was a sight that shocked Arthur. Two heavy set men in suits were standing over a much smaller and badly bloodied fellow, who was the source of the pained intakes of breath, as he lay crouched up on his knees and elbows. As the bloodied man tried to get up one of the heavy set ones kicked him right in the side sending him crashing onto the floor, causing a fresh cough of blood from the man. This seemed to amuse the two heavyset fellows as they both chuckled callously at the injured man's reaction.

"Hey! Stop that, leave him alone." The words were out of Arthur's mouth before he really had time to think as he took a few steps forwards. The chuckles stopped from the pair of thugs as they turned their attention to the comparatively scrawny Arthur. The one closer to him turned to face Arthur fully. "Better leave now boy, while you're still walking." To underline the threat, the thug very deliberately brought the back of his right fist into Arthur's vision, showing off a rather intricate looking tattoo. Also what Arthur had thought was a set rings lining the man's fingers turned out actually to be a rather wicked looking knuckleduster.

"Sure thing. Just let me take that guy with me, he really looks like he needs a doctor." Arthur continued his approach, only stopping when he was right in front of the knuckleduster wielding thug. As Arthur leaned around to try and get a better look at the injured guy, the thug struck, swinging a meaty, metal lined fist right at Arthur's face where it came to an abrupt halt an inch or so from his right eye with a sickening crunch as at least two of his fingers broke from slamming right into Arthur's psionic barrier. The thug cried out in pain cradling his now wrecked hand as he backed away dropping to one knee from the sudden shock.

"Oh jeez, you ok? Your hand, look maybe we could all go to some hospital together?" As Arthur leaned over the stunned man he wasn't paying any attention to the guy's partner and so didn't notice the baseball bat that now came swinging at the back of his head. Again though the effect wasn't really what the man intended as rather than splattering Arthur's brains all over the alley floor, the bat instead ricocheted right off his psionic barrier back into the assailants own forehead knocking him out cold. "You guys really need to be more careful you know. Um... look maybe you can help out your friend and I'll get the guy you were both wailing on some help, deal?"

Taking the somewhat incredulous and stunned look from the still conscious bruiser as a tentative yes, Arthur made his way over to the still groaning man covered in blood. "Hi there, looks like you could do with a hand. Come on lets get you up and to a doctor, easy does it." As Arthur carefully helped lift the man up to his feet, giving him a shoulder to rest on, the first gunshot went off, striking his barrier near his left rib cage before deflecting off into the brickwork of the alleyway wall. Looking back Arthur saw the thug with a broken hand, was standing now, a revolver in his left hand. He squeezed off two more shots, both still bouncing harmlessly off Arthur's barrier which he'd extended now to also shield the injured man. One bullet though ricocheted upwards smashing through the upper quadrant of an overlooking window.

"That's just too dangerous." Arthur raised his hand as he spoke creating a field around the gun and dragging it forcefully to one side, intending to disarm the thug. What Arthur hadn't figured on though was the man clinging for all he was worth to the weapon, so that he too was suddenly jerked bodily to one side crashing face first into the metal ladder of a partially lowered fire escape walkway.

Oh dear. Arthur thought to himself as he surveyed the now pair of unconscious men strewn about the alley. Go on, who are you kidding? Admit it, hurting them was fun...

"No! I was just trying to help, they hurt themselves." Arthur retorted out loud against the whispers in his mind. There followed a rather derisive and cruel laugh that seemed to only gradually fade away from his thoughts. Only after a considerable pause did Arthur realise that the man he was holding was speaking also.

"Hey I ain't disagreeing with you. We got to get out of here, it ain't safe. My car its just round the corner."" The man had a certain confused look in his eye, like he was wondering if Arthur had all his marbles, and Arthur could hardly blame him.

"Yes ofcourse, lets go." Arthur helped the bloodied stranger make his way out of the alleyway and to a beat up old sedan. Easing him into the back, Arthur fished his keys out of some blood spattered jeans and soon they were pulling away, just as the sound of police sirens could begin to be made out in the distance. "Um so I am not really from around here. Is there some hospital I can take you to?"

"No. No hospitals, too risky, bound to check there. I have a friend who can patch me up, just follow my directions." The man sounded serious so Arthur just nodded and drove as he was directed, but curiosity quickly got the better of him.

"So you in some kind of trouble?"

"Hah! What gave it away? Just about always, but this time I am not so sure I'll see the other side of it."

"Those guys back there, they were enjoying beating on you. With enemies like that maybe you need to lay low for a while."

"Not built for that I am afraid. Anyways its my job to not lay low round people like that."

"You a cop or some such?"

"Reporter. Clinton Rice of the Nevada Bulletin, at your service. Although you aren't really catching me on my best day. So you'll forgive me if I can't quite manage to lean forward to shake the hand of my savior. Clinton let out a pained groan as they made their way over a rather nasty pot hole.

"Sorry about that. Arthur Coin, and I ain't no savior, just doing what anybody else would've." Arthur tried his best to not hide his face a little from Clinton as it went a slight shade of pink at the embarrassment from being dubbed a savior.

"Don't sell yourself short man, barely a soul in this city would've put themselves out there to help me like you did, makes you a hero in my book. So let me say this before I drift off into some pain induced coma. Thank you Arthur, not sure I'd seen another sunrise without you. Here we are, pull over to that building on the left, my friend's number 21B."

"Glad to help Clinton." Was all Arthur could think to say, lame as it was. A hero huh? Arthur liked the sound of that.

While helping Clinton up into the apartment building neither man noticed the black jeep parked a little further down the road, or the man behind the wheel who pulled out a phone after they'd entered the building. "Found him. He has someone helping him, don't recognize him." There was a slight pause as he listened to the answer. "Understood." As he pocketed the phone, lit up momentarily by its light was a tattoo on the back of his hand, the same tattoo as was on the thug's hand that Arthur had broken earlier that night.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:35, Tue 05 May 2015.

The Lambroghini Veneno Roadster screamed down the main strip in Vegas. Though the law enforcement had seen the bright red sportscar was weaving in and out of traffic with maddening ease, they knew that they had little chance of keeping up with the vehicle. All they did was keep track of where it was going. Hopefully, the driver would either stop at some point, or have a very unfortunate accident.

While the car was quiet a spectacle, everyone missed the real surprise. The roadster's shadow flickered across multiple marquees and glass fronts...first ahead of it the behind, always moving with the Italian Import, matching it's ease...even surpassing it at some points. As the loud Lambo, drifts around a tight turn, it's shadow seems to flicker and separate from it for a brief second. Lost among all the lights, a shadowy figure flows up out of the shadow as it wall runs along a sign advertising Monolith's Challenge to all Gifted: Beat the Man Mountain at any feat of strength and win a Million Dollars!

At the end of the sign, the dark figure leaps off the neon message and swan dives down towards the tarmac some yards below. Just when it looks like the figure will abruptly smack into the pavement, it seems to flow down into a brief pool of shadow cast by a speeding Semi-Trailer. In an instant, the figure is gone, and the shadow of the Semi begins it's new flickering dance among the lights.

...N 36.194168 by W 115.222060...Las Vegas...Viva Las Vegas! Now...where is that drop off point...yes...along about here?...Again the shadow peels off from the Semi, coalescing into a three dimensional form. Like before, the form runs along signs and slides down a wall as it reaches a corner. Staying in the shadows, Anton peers around the corner, down the alley. After a brief inspection, Anton retreats back into the shadows as he pulls out a pad. With a quick scroll, the Umbral Ukraine pulls up the address and the picture of the party he is to deliver to...Clinton Rice...get him the Thumb Drive...payment upon proof of delivery...article in the Nevada Bulletin...Not exactly a normal delivery, though the promised pay had been enough to warrant interest. Plus, he had never been to Nevada. Maybe the stone was to go here...who knows. For now, though, there had been no feeling of completion..no sense of rightness...at least not yet. Still, delivery is a delivery. With his eye on the supposed point of delivery, Anton settled back into the shadow.

A few hours later, just when he thought he would fall asleep, Anton hears a car rumbling and sputtering as it comes down the alley. Alertness flooding back in, Anton watches as the car stops at the curb coughing and knocking after it is shut off. At first, the wrong man steps out from the car. With a grimace, Anton almost turns away when he notices the man reach into the back seat of the car and start to pull another man up and out. Quickly, Anton pulls his pad back out and compares the photo to the man being assisted...Battered...bruised...shit...The two enter the building with the coordinates...Dammit...

Anton drops the pad back into his courier bag and starts to round the corner when he notices new movement. Another figure steps out another car, one that he had missed. As the dark man begins to saunter up to the building the other two entered, his hands reach forward and one begins a twisting motion. Shadowjak's heartbeat skipped a beat. He recognized the motion...the man was screwing on a silencer. With a narrowing of his eyes, Anton flowed out and towards the assassin. With the speed and grace equal to any nighttime predator, Shadowjak closed the distance and melted down into the man's shadow, becoming one with the blackness there.

The assassin calmly walked up the two flights of stairs. His steps were sure, he did not need to follow the trail of blood. He knew where he was going. He knew what was to be done and he knew no one could stop him. Clinton Rice had poked his nose in where it did not belong. And tonight it would be the last mistake he ever made.

21B. With a deep breath, the man centered himself...exhaled once and kicked the door in. As the cheap wood exploded from the perfect kick, the hitman scanned all three targets in the room, finally locking upon the one in the worst shape as his gun went to the one holding him up. One heartbeat...Two Heartbeat...finger starting to squeeze...and the darkness explodes up around the man. A single limb kicks into the gun as another seems to connect with the killer's jaw. The silenced bullet spacks into the ceiling. Suddenly there are two figures in the ruined doorway. Both are moving in short, quick bursts. Another round creases the damaged door frame and yet a third pops into the floor. Then...just as quick as they appeared, the fall through a pool of darkness.

Only to appear rising out of the shadows behind the couch. One figure is gracefully pivoting while holding on to the other as it trips across the couch. Continuing the momentum, the falling figure stumbles towards the window while the other once agin melts into the shadow behind the couch...then flows up under the stumbling man, catapulting him through the window and down a couple of stories. All the while, there are three more shots fired, one into the edge of the couch and two more marking either edged of the widow frame.

The three figures are still there. The one that had helped Clinton in seems to take a defiant stand, putting himself between Anton and the battered Rice. “Chill Moi Druuk...just a delivery,” reaching into his bag, Anton pulls out the thumb drive and flips it towards Clinton,” Someone doesn't like you...someone else doesn't like them, I assume. I'm betting that is what the one I was dancing with doesn't want you to have. Publish. Tomorrow's byline...all good?”

Dieter sat in his chair and tapped his fingers together as the man across from him trembled. Monolith, what an idiotic psudonym. Dieter had never understood the penchant for the Gifted to give themselves idiotic names. The man he had killed first in his life, choked the life from with his own hands, had called himself Atomic. Dieter expected the man had thought himself clever since his name had been Atom and his Gift had been the ability to produce localized explosions that he was immune to. Hard to explode when Dieter was shutting down your Gift with his own. Explosions were all kinetic energy and his gifts had seemed tailored for taking out just such a man. Hard to explode when any kinetics you tried to muster simply defused harmlessly. Still, this man looked brutish and dim-witted enough to probably think his alias was clever.

Cleverness, that was another thing Dieter had no time for. Clever was just another word for inefficient. Cleverness tended to be all flash and pomp with little actual product. Dieter was a man of pure, brutal production. He knew the goal he meant to achieve and his put all efforts into achieving that goal. Of course, that did not mean he was inflexible. To the contrary, he was flexible in the extreme as only the goal mattered and not how it was achieved. He could adapt, change course mid stream, or whatever other euphemism you wished and take a different course to achieve the goal.

Mostly, his goals were given to him these days as his own goals were simply to remain in the shadows and move the pieces instead of be the one moved. He looked at the man whose show had been slowly going down and shook his head, "Listen... Monolith... It is a simple fact that you were bested. It had to happen eventually. Someone was going to come along who had the right tricks to beat you. Your show billed you as invincible. That was hardly ever true. Still, when you came to us and asked for the funds to produce your show, we saw the benefits and backed you. You paid back our investment and then some. We were quite happy. But this nonsense of increasing advertisement or setting up a rematch is... inadvisable."

The Man Mountain frowned as he was not used to being told no. He stepped forward aggressively, probably on instinct, but then took another step. He was used to getting his way with intimidation over brains. Dieter frowned, "Mr. Miller... that is not advisable." The man chopped the air, "I ain't Murphy Miller anymore, I's Monolith now and you's gonna give me the money.. maybe this time I don't have to pay it back, yeah?" Dieter sighed heavily and motioned the guards entering behind the Gifted giant. No reason for that. "No. Mr. Miller. Now, get out."

The hulk roared and approached, his hand turning into the stone which had made him convincingly invincible for so long and swung at Dieter. Dieter watched the hand inch toward him with passionless attention and sighed. As soon as it was close enough he focused on the shield which surrounded him always and slowed the hand until it all but stopped. He couldn't stop it, he couldn't dissipate the kinetics but he removed so much the arm was all but immobile. He then moved calmly out of the path of the fist. Of course, to his mind it took hours to do so, but he used it to mull over the problems facing the organization in Vegas.

They had moved in and taken over several of the local street level gangs and hav even taken over the organized crime syndicates. They owned several casinos via subsidiaries, shell companies, and through patsies. A serious amount of money was flowing into Schwartze Augen via Vegas, but that was just a cherry on the sundae. The real benefit was finding prospective Gifteds like Monolith here and recruiting them into the organization. Some were just tier 2 thug material like this idiot but a few had more potential. It was best, though, that the organization's presence here not be known. They did not need ITSDA snooping around Vegas. Dieter was a man who preferred anonymity and the shadow. He liked to move in the shadows an the freedom that operating there allowed. When no one was looking, magic was that much easier to accomplish. He focused back on the slow motion brute before him. This one did not have the right qualities to be useful to the Schwartze Augen.

He reached out and touched the arm causing it to speed up wildly and pull the man through the punch badly. He landed on the chair and it collapsed under his weight as his whole body turned to living stone. Dieter frowned darkly and reached down to touched the man again, a punch aimed at him stopping a foot away from his face. He stooped below it and touched a finger lightly to the man's forehead.

Dieter stood as the beast of a man shook and convulsed on the floor, suffering a fatal cardiac arrest. A stone hide did not stop the insides from being vulnerable. His guards came in to clean up the mess and one handed him a tablet with information on it. It was a day which caused him to frown much. Clinton had gotten away. He sighed. He reached into his desk and retrieved a phone with one button then pressed it, "Log #23, Clinton Rice situation update. John Lau's gang assigned the job. Failed. Organization's role in Las Vegas potentially to leak. Course of action; Augen intercession recommended. Consent? Log #125; Monolith Account closed." He then spoke a code phrase, listened to his messages, and hung up.

He was going to need a specialist for this.

As the door was kicked in Arthur instinctively raised a protective shield around himself and Clinton. The intervention of the mysterious shadow like Gifted though was a great relief to Arthur, as he'd temporarily lost track of their host, Marston or was it Matson and had been a little slow to extend his field so far. Introductions had been brief as the trained medic had been issuing orders to Arthur ever since in an attempt to save Clinton from his injuries. The relief turned to dismay though when Shadowjak vaulted the would be assassin right through the window. The body was out of sight so fast and with Arthur busy trying to shield the others from stray bullets he'd only finished thinking about perhaps trying to save the man after there was a nasty crunch from at least four or so stories down.

"You didn't have to kill him, why did you do that?" Arthur's voice trembled noticeably with the shock from seeing someone being killed right in front of him for the first time. Really? Playing shocked at the sight of some blood. You think those two you left in the alley are likely to ever walk straight again? Echoes of maniacal laughter rang through the insides of Arthur's skull, so much so that he only managed to focus again in time to see Shadowjak flinging a small object at where Clinton lay on the sofa. Unsure of what it might be Arthur's hand shot up at the object a small invisible field trapping the usb drive in mid-flight about a foot or so away from Clinton.

"What is that?"

"I think... *cough* its ok Arthur. I was expecting a package, although it looks like the delivery service comes with a pretty impressive benefits package." Clinton reached out a hand for the usb and so Arthur dropped it into his palm. "Thanks, to both of you. Twice now that my hide's been saved tonight."

"Twice? Hell you patch a guy up and have another fella put through your window and no thanks from nobody." Their host Marston complained, sidestepping round Shadowjak to stick his face out the broken window. "Well he won't be needin ma services. Guess I get to go back to the thankless task of saving you Clint."

A small smile tweaked at the corner of Clinton's mouth but was quickly replaced by a grimace of pain as he tried shifting up a little. He clutched the usb drive almost desperately like it was the most important thing to him.
"Need a PC. This could be the break that opens up the whole case."

"What you need is rest! But knowing you a if its a story oh hell, you two just keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't open up his wounds again." Marston disappeared for a short while, before returning with an ipad a few moments later.

As Clinton plugged in the usb and began pouring over the contents, Marston went back to stitching up a wound that was still bleeding from Clinton's shoulder. "Well at least that stuff is keeping you more still than before."

Somewhat warily Arthur used this small break to approach Shadowjak. "You're a Gifted right, like me. I've never met another in person at least. Is this Gifted go about doing? Delivering packages and tossing people out of buildings." There was a clear note of accusation in Arthur's voice. He knew the man had come to kill them, but taking another life, it wasn't something he believed was ever really right.

Anton stood there breathing heavy for a few seconds...a score of heartbeats at least, before the rest of the room caught up with his motions. Sometimes the shadows  made things seem like they were in slow motion. Thankfully, the shadows receded as the rest of the light began to bleed through the gloom that surrounded Anton.

The interaction between the battered destination and his caregiver was familiar and easy between the two. Rice was no stranger to pain...that was obvious. The third man turned towards Anton. The anger and defiance written upon the very young face was bathed in a shimmer that had noting to do with displeasure. Anton could almost feel ripples in the small room...eddies of something that pushed at the very edge of Anton's senses.

At the mention of killing, the Umbral Ukraine cocks his head for a moment, letting Arthur fling his insults like so many punches," Dead? You think he is dead? Heh...if only we was lucky my friend."

With a weary sigh, Anton slid around Arthur, avoiding the force he could feel, if not see. "That man...that man was here to make someone else's issues disappear," Anton takes a quick glance out the window, confirming what he feared. A spatter of fluid on the ground, no body. "That would be the mess of bandages on the couch over there...Mr. Rice and anyone near him...ie YOU. Besides...he shot twice while falling."

Straightening back up, Anton cracks his neck and moves back over to the door, "Body's gone by the way...he is not a pancake on the pavement...so dead? No...he is not dead. What he is, is pissed off...very pissed off. By my best guess, we have five minutes tops before he either comes back or brings some friends to help him clean up his mess." Anton peaks out the shattered doorway, looking up and down the hallway both ways, then turns to look at Clinton," So...where to now? I don't get paid till you publish...so, Mr. Reporter, got another bolt hole?" Then with a dip of his head a quiet whisper, "And yes...it pays the bills and keeps things...interesting." The grin that accompanies the quiet reply is one of embarrassment and excitement combined.

Vincent Lee grunted, dropped to a knee, and bit back the curse as one of his ribs reset itself beneath his skin with an audible cracking sound. As bad as it sounded, it felt worse. Vincent had been stabbed a few times and he would have honestly preferred that to his own increased healing factor. Of course, he preferred the healing factor to having just died. Who could have expected his own shadow to rebel against his murderous intent and throw him out a window. It was all blurry in his memory but he recalled a shape in the shadow and assumed it was some unknown Gifted. He grunted and looked down at his other injuries. Most of the scrapes, cuts, and bruises were already fading but he had three more broken ribs and a broken arm. The arm was going to hurt... a lot.

He stumbled up to his car and grunted as he used cut fingers to open the door and slide in. He pulled a phone out of the center console and dialed up John Lau, his boss. A short conversation in Mandarin occurred and then he frowned at the receiver. This job was going sideways as hell, but whatever had his boss spooked was worse. It took a hell of a lot to frighten a Triad boss, but his boss was beyond terrified of failing at this job. He popped the trunk and pulled out an Ak-74 carbine and a double clip which he loaded then reloaded his pistol. He grunted and bit clean through his lip as his left arm set itself. Fuck that shit hurt, then he slammed the trunk and made for the apartment again. Reinforcements were also on the way and the Golden Dragon Triad had put out a "public" bounty on Clinton Rice as well as circulating an image of Arthur Coin without a name. The bounty was not small and Vincent intended to collect.

---

In Boulder City just outside of Las Vegas proper, a man sat across from the editor of the Nevada Bulletin and smiled as he handed him a manilla envelope and a burner cellphone.

---

In his office, Dieter sat considering a set of data on the latest earnings and grunted. He swept it aside with a flick of his fingers and pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned on his new desk. It was not the heavy oaken thing he had preferred, since Monolith had seen fit to crash through it, but a temporary metal thing until he could get a replacement made. A man stepped in and coughed. Once Dieter looked at him and waved, he stepped forward and spoke, "Monolith's corpse is prepped sir, It will be transported to the Ohio facility in the morning. John Lau is downstairs requesting an meeting."

Dieter paused and his face was a marble slate, but then he nodded and stood. The man stepped aside and muttered as he passed, "The Regency Room, sir." Dieter only replied, "Ship the corpse tonight. Also, get Mr. Green in Pennsylvania on the line for me." The man nodded.

The trip downstairs was short since the elevator was for his and his staff's private use. He stepped out into a short hallway with six doors and an elevator at the opposite end. He moved to the third door on the right and entered. John Lau sat at the table and looked worried, as he should be. Dieter moved to the bar and poured found a pot of hot water waiting. He made himself a cup of green tea and added honey. He tasted it and grimaced then added more honey before coming to the table and sitting down. The man spoke rapidly about how he would fix the situation and made several profuse apologies but Dieter held up a hand, "The matter is sensitive, Lau xiansheng. It needs to be handled soon and quietly. That article cannot be published. I have taken steps to prevent Mr. Rice from sending the files electronically... nevermind how, but he could still reach the offices physically. See that this does not happen. Oh, and I will be supporting your bounty, reckless as it may be. I am contacting a specialist to deal with the matter and I want you to support and accommodate him to the best of your ability. Do this and I will overlook the... misstep tonight." Lau looked suitably frightened and accepted the offer then left with an escort of Dieter's personal guards, all former GSG-9. Dieter got up and returned to his office, his tea was untouched.

As he arrived back at his floor, the assistant fell into step with a tray of phones. Dieter picked up the first and spoke, "Mr. Green, the last reports put the Gifted known as The Commander in your vicinity. Contact him with the job offer I am sending to your office." He set the phone down and picked up the second as he turned into his office again, "Mr. Skaar, editor of the Nevada Bulletin, Philip Skaar? Hello, the man who handed you this phone has also given you a photograph of one of your employees as well as photos of your wife and children, parents living in Florida, your brother in New Mexico, and sister in Massachusetts. Do as the man says, or the people in the other photographs will die. Have a nice night." He picked up the last phone and hit the single button in the center, "Update Log #125, product en route. Delivery in 3 days. Dermal analysis requested. Update Log #23, Specialist approached. Situation chaotic."

---

Philip Skaar hung up the phone and looked at the man as a wet patch grew on his crotch. The man raised an eyebrow, "Do you understand, Mr. Skaar?" The editor nodded and the man smiled as he reached inside his coat. Philip flinched then visibly relaxed as he saw the fat roll of bills. The man peeled off 1,000 dollars and set it on the table then motioned for Philip to return the phone and pictures. "For your troubles, Mr. Skaar. Do as we say and there is plenty of compensation for you. When Mr. Rice turns in his story, you will tell him that you will run it and bury it. Make sure he does not take it to another paper. Pass any files he gives you along to us."

Undisclosed location:

The intense and driven man known as 'The Commander' had returned from his sortie into Boura and the moment that his vehicle had stopped he found himself dismissing his men and striding alone into the heart of his fortress; his eagerness to analyse his war spoils eclipsing any of his other needs.
The air in the structure was cool and still, suggesting that it was either underground or heavily fortified and as Brett travelled further into the facility he became aware of the ambient hum from computer displays and air filtration systems that indicated he'd reached the nerve centre of his operation.

The cavernous ceiling rebounded Brett's voice throughout the rest of the warehouse like structure as he roared out a set of commands to his communication team. The four men manning the multi-purpose communication terminals that centred the room scrambled to accommodate his orders and a wall sized array of screens flickered on to show various informative displays.
"Bottom screens, news channels. Main screen, Namidian Darknet. Aux screens, bring up tonight's reports..." he sighed wearily and tried to shrug off the fact that he hadn't had a full nights rest in almost a month; his self-declared war against the world posed new challenges every day and he'd been burning the candle at both ends to keep ahead of the game.

He took a moment to appreciate the information on the screen as he glanced his eyes past each monitor before something caught his eye and caught his interest: "Our black market contact's sent us a file. Bring it up on all screens."
The split screens all cleared to show the same image; a stream of encrypted data being resolved into a single efficient string of text: Job available. Clinton Rice must be silenced. Intel to follow and payment upon completion.
He resisted the urge to close the offer immediately but only by a thin margin; to his mind assassination and contract missions was work more suited to thugs or other low level criminals that Brett liked to think himself above, but the reward for the seemingly simple task was more than substantial... and The Commander found himself reconsidering the idea. Running a small army wasn't cheap after all, and successfully completing the contract would take the edge off the setback he'd suffered at Boura.
"Contact the assets we have in Vegas and tell them drop their mission, I want them to handle this instead. Give them the Intel package and warn their evacuation driver to standby."
The commander strode to the back of the room and sat himself on the edge of a leather swivel chair that'd obviously been set aside for his own use. He perched forward and stared intently at the bank of monitors as they switched to an overhead map of Vegas and the surrounding Mojave desert, coloured blips flashed onscreen to show the location of his own men and he quickly programmed in the address where his target had been last seen and the news building that the Intel suggested would be his destination. Even if he couldn't be there in person he'd be following the mission closely; micromanaging his assets and studying every new development with undivided attention.


Las Vegas, Luxor hotel & casino:

Three tourists elbowed their way through the overpacked crowd of the hotel lobby and laughed in good humour as they talked loudly among themselves:
"I'm telling you, the fruit machines are a fools game. They're programmed to pay out less than they take in- we should find a blackjack table and play other tourists." Said the first man, a large mound of a man with a lumberjacks beard, who's thuggish appearance often caused others underestimate his quick perception and surprising intellect. He was a high ranking officer of The Commanders rebel forces, and for this mission he had assumed the identity of 'Orwell'.
"-OR!-" Interrupted a unhealthily thin and gaunt woman who seemed to permanently exude a sense of cool professionalism and uppity snideness. "-Or, we could do literally anything else. There's more to Vegas than just gambling, drinking, and Elvis impersonators, you know." For this mission she had assumed the name of 'Boye', and acted as the groups espionage expert. Her main duties thus far had been ensuring that the other two soldiers she accompanied managed to stay in character as anonymous sightseers.
"Yeah! We should catch a show! Ah' wonder if we can still get tickets to see the Man Mountain?!" The third member of the group enthused with a very slight southern drawl. At 20 years old he was the youngest of the trio by a considerable degree, and his naive enthusiasm only served to highlight his inexperience. This mission he'd chosen to go by the name 'Huxley', and had been assigned to the mission as a wildcard; despite his inexperience he was one of the very few henchmen within The Commanders organisation who'd fought a superhuman in single combat and won, a fact that unnerved his peers to no end.

The grouped continued arguing among themselves, and given their conversation and casual attire there was very little to distinguish them from the thousands of other tourists that fueled sin city.
Suddenly their chatter snapped silent; the phone in the first man's pocket had begun to ring  and the three stood silently for a moment as their light-hearted attitude suddenly tapered off. Deliberately and carefully the big man fished the phone from his pocket and held it up to his ear.
"Uh huh... Uh huh... Understood. We'll get it done." he said, as the voice on the other end of the line talked without pause for a solid minute, once the one sided conversation had concluded the large man turned to face the others.
He spoke differently this time; whereas before he'd talked to the others in the tone of a good friend he spoke this time in a sincere monotone that would brook no disagreements:
"Holiday's over. Our boss has a new mission for us, and we're already behind schedule. Get to the car and gear up."


On the road to Apt 21B, the last known location of the target:

A unassuming white 4x4 pulled out of the Las Vegas strip and into a quieter branching road where it immediately accelerated into high gear. Orwell gripped the wheel with white knuckles as followed the urgent instructions coming from the earpiece hooked around his ear, on the other end of the earpiece one of The Commanders communication officers was using the main tactical map to guide the car through the worst of the nights traffic. Orwell was already kitted out in his bulletproof vest and his helmet and weapons lay seatbelted in the next to him waiting to be used, Boye and Huxley were sprawled in the back of the car, struggling to ready their equipment as the mobile vehicle threw their weight from side to side.
"So! Let me get this straight: The mission is just to find th' reporter, kill him, and get gone. That's all?" Huxley asked, as he screwed a fresh filter onto his gasmask.
"That's all." Orwell confirmed. "Although he DID say to take him alive if at all possible, but the implication is that he'll be dead by the end of the day whatever we do. After that we're being recalled to Headquarters. Commander made it clear that we're not continuing any further with the Heist mission."
"Bullshit!" Boye spat out venomously in a rare show of emotion "We've been here for weeks, and he want's to call off the mission just like that?! What about all the work I put in?!"
Orwell sighed, their mission in Vegas had been going poorly and he was secretly glad that he'd been given an opportunity to abandon it. They had been originally sent to Vegas to probe the defences of the vastly wealthy Vegas Casinos but had failed to find any weaknesses whatsoever: The casinos were well defended as it was, but with all the superhuman muscle that the city had attracted he doubted it'd even be possible to rob a convenience store without being dogpiled by a mob of showmen in spandex. "Cool it, our orders are clear. I'm sure Commandr'll have a new mission waiting for you to sink your teeth into when we get back."

The car reached it's destination and the moment that the car had stopped all three passengers swung open their car doors and stood to examine the apartment. The information that had changed hands from Vincent, to Dieter, to Mister Green, to The Commander and finally to the trio had placed Clinton Rices last known position here: at Apartment 21B.
Orwell muttered a confirmation code into his earpiece before turning to the others. "This is it, the plan is to go in hard and we go in fast. We're at risk of supers showing up and getting in our way so it's more important that we do this quickly than we do it cleanly. One last thing; watch your fire. You know that the boss has a 'thing'about civilian casualties, so try not to spray bullets everywhere." With that said Orwell spun on his heel, pulled on his gasmask, shouldered his weapon, and advanced on the apartment.
Huxley grinned ear to ear as he pulled his own mask down as well, although he was muffled it was impossible to mistake the inflection in his tone for anything other than excitement. "It's time to nut up or shut up!"
"Ugh." Boye said with a simple disgusted tone as she followed behind. "Let's just finish this quickly."

OOC: Combat post is next.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:44, Sat 09 May 2015.

This message was deleted by the player at 12:50, Sat 09 May 2015.

Arthur was genuinely surprised at hearing the man had survived and made his way over to the window to confirm that the body was indeed gone.

"Huh, well what do you know. I guess I owe you an apology... um what was your name again? I am Arthur." He cautiously offered a hand to the shadow like man. Admittedly his frightening visage was gradually fading and that was helping Arthur not get too creeped out by the whole business.

"This is bad." A note of genuine fear seemed to color Clinton's voice, something Arthur hadn't heard from the reporter yet, even when he was being beaten to a pulp earlier.

"Oh I don't know, thugs kicking your head in, gun wielding assassins kicking down the door only to be thrown out the window by some odd half shadow half man, seems like things are going just dandy. Will you hold still! I am trying to sow up your wounds here..." It was clear Marston's sarcasm was familiar to Clinton as it almost seemed to pierce the worrying gloom that had descended on him, almost.

"Fraid it gets worse. These are records of financial transactions, lot of names are coded but for convenience rather than as a form of encryption. So I recognize a bunch of these and it looks like whatever this organisation is, its got hooks in everything. Casinos, drug cartels, the Triads who I am pretty sure were the ones targeting me tonight and maybe worse of all. Here see these numbers, they're police precincts and its a lot of them, including the one for this neighborhood."

"Ha! Was wondering why there haven't been any sirens about, despite someone taking a dive out my window. That I guess or my neighbors really are all scumbags."

"Problem is I can't just print this, without names, faces to put to these codes, it could all be dismissed as speculation, hearsay. Need to get to this guy, Gregory Slyme. One of the few real names, here. Seems like he is the accountant handling all these books. Get him to talk and we can blow open this whole story and here is his address, not 20 min from here." Clinton shoved himself into a sitting position, a grimace of pain etched across his face and eliciting a curse from Marston.

"Easy man, you really can't be pulling anything with the state you're in."

Clinton looked his friend squarely in the eye, and managed to smile.

"Don't worry old friend. Got a feeling either way that this is going to be the last story I write for a long time. Promise I'll get some rest afterwards, a real vacation. Going to need to borrow your ipad though." Marston rolled his eyes at the last part, nodding a little resignedly. Turning his attention to Anton and Arthur, Clinton looked at each of them squarely in the eye. "Real sorry to ask this after all you've both done for me tonight. But I am going to need help getting to Slyme and then the Bulletin after. Its going to be dangerous and you'll both be making enemies that don't forgive or forget. I got no one else I can ask though."

Arthur was feeling more concerned the more Clinton talked and it was an uncomfortable feeling for the young man, one he tended to want to avoid. He nervously reached for the silver coin hung round his neck, beneath his shirt, rubbing it absentmindedly, an old habit to calm his nerves. Still Clinton seemed like a good man and he was taking on some very dangerous people, most importantly he needed help.

"I'll do what I can to help Clinton. People shouldn't have the right to do what they've been trying to do to you. We've got to stop them." Even if it means killing them? With the police in their pocket, you really think a few words in some hick paper will make a blind bit of difference? Brow furrowing even further Arthur turned to the smashed open window intending to take a few deep breaths of the cool night air to calm himself, only to see a trio of well armed soldier types spilling out of a car that had just pulled up opposite the apartment. Arthur instinctively backed off a step raising a barrier around himself and the smashed window in case they took any potshots through the exposed space.

"I think our five minutes is up. Two guys and a woman, all of them look armed and soldiery I guess. We really need to go." Arthur looked between the others hoping someone had a plan, he really didn't want to have to fight and hurt even more people tonight and also trying to protect everyone from such a dangerous looking trio was going to be tricky.

"Well I never liked this dump anyway. I got a car parked round back, there's a fire escape on the roof we could use. I need a hand though to move him. Having hastily thrown on a coat and dragged what medical supplies he had into a small shoulder bag, Marston was helping Clint get up, offering him a shoulder to lean on. The pair made their way slowly to the door, but there was no way they were going to outrun the hit squad like this.

OOC: NON-CANNON BATTLE POST

Vincent had acted quickly in escaping the apartment (if you could call being thrown from a fourth story window 'escaping'), and his masters had been equally quick in relaying the information to the proper parties, however despite the best and combined efforts of the Namidian Villains it still took The Commanders Hitmen half an hour to arrive on site.

As they rushed towards the building at a half run Orwell spotted the apartment easily; even in a bad neighbourhood a freshly smashed window and partially kicked down door would be conspicuous. A head glanced out from the damaged window for a mere moment and was gone almost too quickly to notice, none of the soldiers were able to tell if the head belonged to their target but it at least told them that they weren't going to be storming an empty building.
Orwell chopped his hands in the direction of the back of the apartment.
"Huxley! Go around the back and check for a fire exit, I don't want this to become a chase."

As the youngest of the trio double-timed around the corner of the building and vanished out of sight Orwell and Boye pounded their way up the flights of stairs and the physical conditioning that all of the Commanders Soldiers performed paid off as they reached the fourth floor without any evidence of shortened breath.
Orwell slung his rifle around his shoulders by it's strap and drew his pistol, his secondary weapon was loaded with an orange-striped magazine that indicated it was loaded with 'less lethal' rubber bullets; until he had eyes on the target he wanted to exercise what little caution he had time for. "Boye, teargas through the window. Now!"
Anticipating the order Boye had a cylindrical grenade already in her hand, and the moment the order was given she pulled the pin, released the safety lever, and threw the weapon hard enough to bounce off the edge of the windowsill and sail into the apartment. Moments later there was a violent hiss as the weapon detonated and sprayed the interior of the apartment with painful irritant gas. She ran her hand under her chin to check her masks seal before calling out her confirmation.
"Tear gas away. Ready to breach!"
With everything in place Orwell didn't waste another moment. "Breach!" he commanded, he closed the distance from the broken window to the apartments doorstep in moments and easily forced his way inside through the remains of the shattered door.

Inside the apartment the group didn't have long to act, only seconds after Arthur Coin  warned the others they could already heard feet pounding the hard steps outside their building. As they approached the door and considered how they could escape with the injured Reporter they were suddenly interrupted by the metallic clink of a grenade bouncing off the wall, onto the carpeted floor and releasing it's striker pin.
The two civilians, Clinton and Marston, had taken the days rough events well in their stride thus far- but without any formal battle experience they're reactions weren't quick enough to do anything besides stare in mounting horror at the device as it flooded the room with toxic irritant. Likewise, Arthur's instincts raised his protective shield wide enough to envelop the group but with the immediate threat of the men outside he was taken off guard for a second.
As it was, it was Anton who was the fastest to respond. Having a strong sense of self-preservation as well as being used to dangerous situations he quickly decided on the best course of action. He pulled the group backwards into the apartment and away from the door mere seconds before a steel-capped boot kicked it down for the second time that day, he pushed them behind the slight cover that Marston's furniture offered and took cover himself as he waited for an opportunity to strike back against the intruders.

Orwell envisioned his assault to be a simple short task; walk in, disable anyone inside as they struggled to breath in the suddenly toxic air, check for the reporter and force him back to the car if they found him.
What he HADN'T expected to find was the reporter taking cover behind one of the apartment couches alongside three other men, worse still was the fact that the gas wasn't affecting them: none of the group seemed to been writhing in pain on the ground, vomiting, or fleeing the building as he'd expected. The gas seemed to be falling short of the group by a few feet as the four crowded around a protective sphere of clear air, with a horrified realization Orwell back peddled his way out of the building and took cover on one side of the doorway. He hand-signalled for Boye to do the same and tapped his earpiece to broadcast a message back to The Commander.
"Target sighted! He's with a number of civilians and at least one super- gas ineffective! Advise!" he said as he tried to keep his voice even.

As it stood, the situation was that two soldiers were positioned outside the front door to the apartment, with another rushing around the back to attack the building from a different angle. Shadowjack, Orthos, The reporter, and his unfortunate friend were trapped in the building but had managed to endure the sudden breach and were still in a good position to fight back. With both sides making sudden alterations to their plans the situation had developed into a very temporary stalemate.

...

Further down the street another car pulled up in the middle of the road. With the white 4x4 and Beat up sedan both having been parked hurriedly and thoughtlessly. The car was a spluttering old thing, and if any had been paying any notice they might recognise it as the same car that the first assassin had used during his first attempt on Rice's life. Vincent stood out and snarled angrily as he saw the Commanders men raiding the apartment, behind him the rest of the car doors opened to disperse another four men who bore similar triad tattoos to Vincent's own.
"Looks like someone else want's my bounty, boys." he flexed his fingers and his thunderous expression somehow became even more furious. "The reporter, and everyone protecting him are DEAD!"
Dieter had given the triads, to commanders men, and the other forces after Rice's bounty a codeword to prevent friendly fire, but Vincent had no intention of using it. Even more than the reward money he wanted revenge against the humiliation he'd suffered not long ago.
"No one makes a fool out of Vincent Lee!" He cocked his carbine and heard the distant screech of tires as more triad cars homed in on the apartment.

OOC Non-canon battle post

The hit squad out front split up under their leader's command, with two of them heading for the front entrance and Huxley scooting down an alleyway to cover the rear of the building.

Inside the apartment Arthur saw that they might end up having to move carefully given Clint's condition, with time they didn't have. Not if they wanted to avoid a fight that is. Looking between the trio quickly as the started heading out the doorway he came to a decision and rather than head up the stairs with them turned downwards instead.

"You guys get out of here, I'll buy us some time and catch up somehow. Be safe ok?"

Anton nodded in agreement. "I will scout ahead to ensure that the path is clear." Without another word he stepped into the shadows of the stairwell and disappeared from view.

"Try to make it in one piece my friend!" Clinton managed to shout down the stairs as he headed slowly upwards mostly resting on Marston's shoulder, which caused a smile from Arthur. My friend huh? He liked the sound of that even more than hero.

The pair that came crashing through the front and pounding up the stairs with some rapidity but covering each other as they went, which slowed them down just enough for Arthur to fully extend a protective field all the way across the narrow stairwell from one wall to another.

"Hi there I guess? I don't know what your intentions are but I would recommend you both go home and um... well try to eat right?"

Both Orwell and Boye had their assault weapons trained on squarely on Arthur as he came into view at the top of one of the flights of stairs. Stand down and get out of our way. I won't ask twice. Orwell was less than impressed by Arthur's attempt to shoo them away like a 19th century nanny, but years of ingrained combat instincts told him something was off. Normal people didn't calmly stare down a pair of assault weapons, but they didn't have time to be messing around with someone who was obviously stalling either.

"Now I'd really strongly recommend you don't fire those things..." It wasn't a signal exactly from Orwell, just a slight shift in his manner and the experience of working together that might as well of been to Boye. Two short bursts of silenced gunfire came from each of their guns. Both aiming to rip a trio of holes through Arthur's chest. The bullets never made it nearly that far though ricocheting wildly off of the barrier Arthur had erected between them. Bullets were suddenly bouncing haphazardly off concrete stairs and walls, one catching Boye right in the side causing her to stumble a few steps into a wall.

"Boye you ok!" Damned gifted, no mention of him in the intel either. Orwell quickly did a mental sitrep. Things were getting complicated but this guy being here indicated that most likely Clinton Rice was heading to the roof, probably looking to escape down a fire escape or some such.

Getting back to her feet Boye grimaced a little. Luckily for her the body armour had done its job, although it felt lie at least one of her ribs was likely cracked. Its nothing sir, I am good to go. She trained her gun on Arthur once again, this time with a withering glare in her expression.

"Alright, hold down this position. I am going to go check for new orders." As Orwell passed Boye, the brief look that was exchanged between them was enough for her to read the real meaning behind his words. As long as one of them was here, it would tie down the Gifted. Orwell was actually heading down to back up Huxley so they could intercept Clinton Rice. Calmly though she just nodded and went back to focusing all her attention on Arthur.

As Orwell raced down the stairs he was on the comm to Huxley the moment he thought it likely he was out of earshot of the Gifted they'd run into. Never could be sure with their likes but you had to take some chances in this business. Huxley, encountered a Gifted, average looking, appears to generate a forcefield. Boye is distracting him. Target is likely enroute to the roof, I am on my way.

Outside in the alleyway Huxley had just made it there when Orwell's message came in over his headset. Roger that sir. Standing by, covering the fire escape. No sign of target yet. His voice was calm, collected, but on the inside though his heart was thumping just a beat or two faster. He liked Gifted, liked taking down their smug, arrogant faces, showing them that they weren't so special once their guts were spread out all over the floor in front of them. He'd done it once before and now he'd get another chance.

So thrilled by the idea of facing down a Gifted, he was almost taken down by the first blow Anton threw. Having shadow walked to the top of the building Anton had been carefully tracking Huxley from above, maneuvering himself so he could finally slip out right behind the man from his own shadow to deliver a quick knockout blow to the base of the his skull while he was distracted with his own comms. Whether it was some sixth sense or just a trained awareness, Huxley shifted his stance at the last moment, the blow glancing off his shoulder rather than taking him down outright and boy was he fast. Confronted with a foe that had somehow snuck up on him, Huxley used the momentum from the strike to tuck into a forwards roll, firing as he did so to lace his attacker full of bullets. Only Anton's own quickness saved him as he dived into the fast disappearing streak of Huxley's shadow to emerge above him in the shadows cast by the fire escape. Rolling to his feet Huxley scanned the area for his suddenly vanished foe, two Gifted! He could barely believe his luck. Standard tactics would've suggested he wait for backup, but Huxley had no intention of Orwell stealing away a kill from him. His mind raced, but from what he'd seen it seemed likely that the Gifted could teleport, although it appeared limited somehow from the way he'd moved. Ah yes he'd jumped after Huxley almost, like he was chasing his shadow.

Smiling the psychopathic mercenary concocted a plan quickly in his mind, reaching a hand into his belt he started flinging out small flare sticks which quickly caught alight, bathing most of the alleyway in an unnatural green glow. Importantly now there were only two possible areas of shadow that his foe could hide in and almost without warning Huxley started firing indiscriminately into the shadows of the fire escape.

Anton had been watching his opponent's actions carefully but the sudden attack surprised him and he was forced to dive into the shadows, emerging in the small darkness in the gap behind a dumpster, that wasn't fully illuminated by the flares. As his own darker shadow peeled out of those cast by the metal container though he heard amidst the incessant gunfire a sudden clatter of metal on metal as the grenade Huxley had flung with his off hand, while he still fired relentlessly at the fire escape one handed, bounced off the lid of the dumpster and right into the gap behind it. Huxley smiled as the trap he'd planned was sprung.

For a brief moment Anton almost hesitated and that would've cost him his life. There was no time to escape, having just emerged as his momentum was carrying him the wrong way, there was still one spot of shadow he could use though, it was too small for himself. For a grenade though, a small well of darkness leapt up almost to embrace the falling explosive. Disappearing into it just as it exploded, right in the shadow cast beneath Huxley's left foot. The mercenary never really knew what hit him as the concussion grenade literally flung him off his feet and through the air in a neat parabolic arc right into the alleyway wall, he didn't get up after his body slumped to the floor. Anton wasn't entirely unscathed though as he didn't manage to fully close the shadow portal and so some of the force of the grenade stunned his body to some extent, throwing off his balance as he stumbled around from the back of the dumpster, his ears ringing horribly. A few moments passed before he realised that someone was calling out to him from above. "Hey kid, you alright down there." Maston's voice came floating down as a pair of heads peeked nervously over the edge of the building. Looking to the car they'd been headed for and the pair above, Anton slipped easily through the shadow behind the dumpster to appear right behind Clinton and Marston. "I've been better." Before either had a chance to be alarmed by his sudden appearance he grabbed both of them dragging them backwards into their own shadows so as to emerge out of the underside of the car's roof. Marston landed neatly in the driver's seat, Anton in the passenger's and Clinton laid out across the rear. "Now I suggest we get out of here, so I can shake off this headache."

"Alrighty then." Gunning the engine Marston pulled out of the back of the alleyway in a hurry, just as Orwell came running into it the other way. The squad leader cursed as their target slipped away, approaching Huxley's limp form, he sighed a little to find him still alive. "Commander sir, target has escaped. I repeat target has escaped, agent is down, request evac. Awaiting instructions." He then flicked over to contact Boye just as there was a sizeable explosion from inside the building he'd just left, a few of the windows blowing out scattering glass everywhere. "Jesus! Boye are you alright in there, report." There was a long pause before Boye's familiar sharp voice came across the radio. "I am ok sir. Managed to find a creative solution sir for the Gifted. Should I subdue or..." There was a sudden silence over the comms. "Boye? Boye report. What on earth is going on up there?" Caught between an injured agent and Boye's sudden radio silence Orwell was totally unsure of how to proceed.

Meanwhile a few minutes earlier Arthur had begun slowly making his way up the stairs, hoping to perhaps rejoin Clinton, Marston and the odd Gifted deliver man, he wasn't moving too quickly though as he was climbing backwards wanting to make sure not to drop the barrier between himself and the female soldier. She looked like a soldier to Arthur anyway, but perhaps she was really an assassin, if she meant to kill Clinton after all. As Boye followed Arthur pace for pace she noticed that the barrier wasn't entirely complete. As he rounded a flight of stairs it occasionally scraped away a little concrete dust from the stairwell, meaning that the stairs underneath Arthur right now weren't shielded. Smiling inwardly Boye gave nothing away until Arthur had just turned around another flight, momentarily lowering her weapon she flung a sticky grenade at the stairs underneath Arthur. Not waiting to see if it found its mark she dived to the right shouldering through a cheap wooden door as the high explosive detonated behind her, demolishing the section of staircase and rocking the whole building.

Getting up off the apartment floor, Boye cautiously peered through the doorway, rifle first. Concrete dust filled the air and the section on which the Gifted had been standing had collapsed entirely. Looking down she noted a somewhat bloodied body amidst the collapsed rubble below. Orwell called in at just that moment, to which she replied, "I am ok sir. Managed to find a creative solution sir for the Gifted. Should I subdue or..." She meant to say more, wanted to but couldn't somehow, in fact she couldn't move her tongue, hell she could barely move at all. Her muscles still reacted, but it was like she was gripped in an invisible vice, tailored to her body.

"Subdue or what exactly?" The voice emanated from below her, it was that Gifted boy's or so it seemed. But it was off, different somehow, more sure of itself, more sinister. "Kill I am guessing. Haha, now I'll admit you almost had poor little Arthur there. Still boy has a knack for protecting himself, wouldn't you agree?" Unable to move her head Boye wasn't sure how he managed it but Arthur or whoever he was, suddenly rose up in front of her like he'd flown up. "Can't answer though can you? Can't even move. You see Arthur's a wuss, plays nice with all ye little people when he could just crush you like ants." Boye screamed suddenly or tried to against the field Arthur had trapped her in as part of that field applied sudden pressure on the spot where she'd been struck earlier with a stray bullet. "Ah yes, I guess I should make it a bit easier for you to scream shouldn't I? Else where will the fun be in slowly taking the wings off this little butterfly." Arthur walked calmly past Boye, into the apartment, just as the field around her mouth and tongue loosened enough to allow her to scream as she too disappeared into the apartment after him.

Anton's head rang with the painful echoes of the explosion and gunfire he had just waded through. On top of that, his left shoulder was aching. With a quick glance, the Shadow Runner saw a smattering of blood and what looked like small pieces of something peppered in his shoulder...Dammit...shrapnel...dammit, dammit, dammit...shouldn't have gotten involved you idiot..not worth the risk...not...

Vincent Lee anger had almost blinded him to the twist in karma coming right at him. As his own Triad brothers pulled up in various vehicles, he felt, more than heard the two separate explosions go off...one right after another. Vincent's rush to seek revenge slowed a step before his righteous anger fueled his fires of vengeance. With a quick jog, the Golden Dragon Triad started to pass the alley and flow into the building. Vincent, aware of the dangers in the building, slowed slightly, letting his brothers take the lead...How many shadows can you fight Dirty Shadow...can you fight them all?....Can you...

In slow motion, both men lock eyes with each other as they pass mere yards away. The look of oh shit passed between them as they both tried to react first...one on foot, the other in the back of a moving car. Then with a snap, time returned to normal.

“Martson...DUCK!” Anton screamed as he kicked the back of Marston's seat forward and  slipped down into the shadow between the two seats.

“Nǐ huì sǐ yīqiān cì āng zāng de yǐngzi!!!!” screams Vincent Lee with his finger squeezing the trigger on the AK. Bullets start to spray just as Vincent's shadow erupts from the ground before his feet.

Even though he knew it was coming, the move still jolted the Asian Assassin. However, the blows rising up did miss Vincent, just not the gun. Kicked from his hand, the AK-47 goes spinning off behind Vincent. But, not before the stream of rounds found there mark. The bullets sprayed across the back of the retreating car, exploding two of the tires and sending the car careening into Vincent's own car that he had arrived in.

The shadow never slowed down, never hesitated as it spun low across the ground, legs sweeping around and up as hands pushed up into a cartwheel kick. This time, though, Vincent knew he was fighting a shadow...knew it would be close...and knew he could answer . With a grim line, Vincent Lee double stepped out of the swirling leg sweep and ducked under the rising cartwheel...following up with a vicious four knuckle jab and short kick to the back of the leading knee as it spun by. Unable to control his forward motion, Anton had to abandon his transition and simply roll awkwardly to avoid pair of double stomps.

"Hēi bào gōngfū Dirty Shadow...Black Leopard Kung Fu!” The anger is palpable as Vincent flows into a low stance that widens his center of gravity. “No more easy fight for you...No more bullshit tricks...no more...SHADOW!” There was no warning as Vincent Lee sprung forward, hands and feet moving low and in blurs as they came rapid fire at Anton. This time though, the Leopard's paws found no mark. In a series of backflips, cartwheels, and rolls, Anton seemed to always flow with the strikes...always just be out of reach...right up until he spun towards a parked box truck. Not slowing down, Anton simply ran up the wall of the truck and flipped over Vincent as he struck with double leopard paws.

With a twist and half pike, Anton landed in a three point stance ten feet behind Vincent. Even at that distance, Anton heard the power of the strikes and could feel the bones break in Vincent's hands and forearms from where he was. Vincent scream of fury and pain was visceral...almost a strike in and of itself, as Anton flinched from it.  Standing there in disbelief, Anton flinched again when Vincent turned around. The mangled hand were realigning themselves, bones popping and cracking as Vincent grimaced in extreme pain. “I will rip your arms off and feed them to you! I will beat your face to the back of your head...I will KILL YOU!” The screams give Anton enough tie to glance over at the Car. Marston was getting out and staggering over to another car, as Rice pulled himself up from the other side....Time, they need time...and I get to face a killer who won't die...should have said no...With that thought Anton flowed into the charging Vincent.

What happened next was caught on no less than thirty different cellphones all across Vegas. A flickering shadow thing fighting what looked like some sort of zombie. All up and down the strip, the two fought, both moving like shadows that flowed across the walls. Many thought it was some sort of new horror movie being filmed. Others thought it was just another Gifted stunt that was being pulled to get an audience. And Vegas? Vegas did what it always did...it ran the odds. In seconds, someone had already started a book and profits were starting to develop. All of this for a battle that last three minutes.

Three very long minutes to the two fighting. No quarter was given...and none were taken. Anton knew that Marston needed time. He also knew that Vincent needed to be occupied...just in case he had any other gifts. So...instead of just pulling the Lethal Leopard through a shadow and leaving him stranded somewhere. Shadowjak kept pulling him along as they flowed into buildings, along walls, and even down the strip. Every third pull, Anton would bring them back to the alley, to see what Marston had accomplished...first time he was smashing a window, the second time he was under the dash...the third time, Anton heard an engine rev.

With a grim nod, Anton pulled Vincent Lee into another portal with him. Throughout the fight, Lee was hammer away at full strength, regardless the out come. He would heal...nothing was permanent. Not so for Anton. Already, the Umbral Ukraine knew that he had strained his wounded shoulder, his left eye and cheekbone were swollen almost shut...might be a fracture there...and he was limping with his right knee. Which is why when Anton flowed up out of the umbral portal with lee, he flung him directly into the path of a speeding semi on the highway out of town. Lee would survive...so would Anton, for now.

Flowing up out of a shadow by the newly acquired car, Anton slumps down in a new backseat, broken and weary. “Where's Arthur?”

(OOC: Canon Battle Post)

Vincent had acted quickly in escaping the apartment (if you could call being thrown from a fourth story window "escaping"), and his masters had been equally quick in relaying the information to the proper parties. However, despite the best and combined efforts of the Namidian Villains, it still took The Commanders Hitmen half an hour to arrive on site.

As they rushed towards the building at a half run Orwell spotted the apartment easily; even in a bad neighborhood, a freshly smashed window and partially kicked down door would be conspicuous. A head glanced out from the damaged window for a mere moment and was gone almost too quickly to notice, none of the soldiers were able to tell if the head belonged to their target but it at least told them that they weren't going to be storming an empty building.

Orwell chopped his hands in the direction of the back of the apartment.

"Huxley! Go around the back and check for a fire exit, I don't want this to become a chase."

As the youngest of the trio double-timed around the corner of the building and vanished out of sight, Orwell and Boye pounded their way up the flights of stairs and the physical conditioning that all of the Commanders Soldiers performed paid off as they reached the fourth floor without any evidence of shortened breath.

Orwell slung his rifle around his shoulders by it's strap and drew his pistol; his secondary weapon was loaded with an orange-striped magazine that indicated it was loaded with "less lethal" rubber bullets. Until he had eyes on the target, he wanted to exercise what little caution he had time for.

"Boye, teargas through the window. Now!"

Anticipating the order, Boye had a cylindrical grenade already in her hand, and the moment the order was given she pulled the pin, released the safety lever, and threw the weapon hard enough to bounce off the edge of the windowsill and sail into the apartment. Moments later, there was a violent hiss as the weapon detonated and sprayed the interior of the apartment with painful irritant gas. She ran her hand under her chin to check her masks seal before calling out her confirmation.

"Tear gas away. Ready to breach!" With everything in place, Orwell didn't waste another moment.

"Breach!" he commanded. He closed the distance from the broken window to the apartment's doorstep in moments and easily forced his way inside through the remains of the shattered door.

Inside the apartment, the group didn't have long to act; only seconds after Arthur Coin  warned the others they could already hear feet pounding the hard steps outside their building. As they approached the door and considered how they could escape with the injured reporter, they were suddenly interrupted by the metallic clink of a grenade bouncing off the wall, onto the carpeted floor, and releasing it's striker pin.

The two civilians, Clinton and Marston, had taken the days rough events in stride thus far- but without any formal battle experience their reactions weren't quick enough to do anything besides stare in mounting horror at the device as it flooded the room with toxic irritant. Likewise, Arthur's instincts raised his protective shield wide enough to envelop the group, but with the immediate threat of the men outside he was taken off guard for a second.

As it was, it was Anton who was the fastest to respond. Having a strong sense of self-preservation as well as being used to dangerous situations, he quickly decided on the best course of action. He pulled the group backwards into the apartment and away from the door mere seconds before a steel-capped boot kicked it down for the second time that day. He pushed them behind the slight cover that Marston's furniture offered and took cover himself as he waited for an opportunity to strike back against the intruders.

Orwell envisioned his assault to be a simple short task; walk in, disable anyone inside as they struggled to breathe in the suddenly toxic air, check for the reporter, and force him back to the car if they found him. He hadn't expected to find the reporter taking cover behind one of the apartment couches alongside three other men. Worse, the gas wasn't affecting them: none of the group seemed to been writhing in pain on the ground, vomiting, or fleeing the building as he'd expected. The gas seemed to be falling short of the group by a few feet as the four crowded around a protective sphere of clear air. With a horrified realization, Orwell back peddled his way out of the building and took cover on one side of the doorway. He hand-signalled for Boye to do the same and tapped his earpiece to broadcast a message back to The Commander.

"Target sighted! He's with a number of civilians and at least one super- gas ineffective! Advise!" he said as he tried to keep his voice even.

As it stood, the situation was that two soldiers were positioned outside the front door to the apartment, with another rushing around the back to attack the building from a different angle. Shadowjack, Orthos, the reporter, and his unfortunate friend were trapped in the building but had managed to endure the sudden breach and were still in a good position to fight back. With both sides making sudden alterations to their plans, the situation had developed into a very temporary stalemate.

...

Further down the street, another car pulled up in the middle of the road. A white 4x4 and beat-up sedan had both been parked hurriedly and thoughtlessly nearby. This car, though, was a spluttering old thing, and if any had been paying any notice they might recognise it as the same car that the first assassin had used during his first attempt on Rice's life. Vincent stood out and snarled angrily as he saw the Commanders men raiding the apartment, behind him the rest of the car doors opened to disperse another four men who bore similar Triad tattoos to Vincent's own.

"Looks like someone else wants my bounty, boys." he flexed his fingers and his thunderous expression somehow became even more furious. "The reporter, and everyone protecting him are DEAD!"

Dieter had given the Triads, The Commander's men, and the other forces after Rice's bounty a codeword to prevent friendly fire, but Vincent had no intention of using it. Even more than the reward money, he wanted revenge against the humiliation he'd suffered not long ago.

"No one makes a fool out of Vincent Lee!" He cocked his carbine and heard the distant screech of tires as more triad cars homed in on the apartment.

Inside the apartment, Arthur saw a crowd of Triads gathering outside. Given Clint's condition, they might need to move carefully, but they didn't have time! The crowd was getting closer. Looking between the trio that first showed up and the gang of Triads rapidly as the others prepared to leave, he came to a decision. Rather than head up the stairs with them, he turned downwards.

"You guys get out of here, I'll buy us some time and catch up somehow. Be safe ok?"

Anton nodded in agreement. "I will scout ahead to ensure that the path is clear." Without another word, he stepped into the shadows of the stairwell and disappeared from view.

"Try to make it in one piece my friend!" Clinton managed to shout down the stairs as he headed slowly upwards mostly resting on Marston's shoulder, which caused a smile from Arthur. My friend huh? He liked the sound of that even more than hero.

Arthur bounded down the stairs, extending his protective bubble further and further out as he went. In the span of about a minute, he had reached the ground floor. He stood in the doorway as the Triads and hit men shouted loudly at each other outside.

"Hi there, everyone. I don't know what your intentions are but I would recommend you all go home and um... well try to eat right?" shouted the Gifted guardian.

Orwell was less than impressed by Arthur's attempt to shoo them away like a 19th century nanny, but years of ingrained combat instincts told him something was off. Normal people didn't calmly stare down a pair of assault weapons, but they didn't have time to be messing around with someone who was obviously stalling either. The Triads had no such reservations.

A river of Triad bullets crashed against Arthur's force field as Orwell and Boye leapt out of the way. The bullets ricocheted off the barrier Arthur created, bouncing off cars, buildings, body armor, and thrusting into the bodies of a few Triads. The lead Triad, in particular, had his neck sliced open by a bullet... but the wound shrank and healed itself shut in the span of five seconds.

Simultaneously, Boye grunted loudly as a bullet pounded into her body armor.

"Boye you ok?" asked Orwell. She nodded.

Its nothing sir, I am good to go.

"No! I'm sorry. Don't fire!" said Arthur, fearing for the lives of the very men who were here to kill him. Arthur backed up into the building and carefully, slowly strode back up the stairs. After giving her a few seconds to recover, Orwell shot Boye a signal. Though the signal was nothing more than a look and a point of his fingers, Boye knew that she was to follow the target while her captain moved around the building.

Orwell raced around the building in order to help Huxley catch their real target. He was on to the comm to Huxley the moment he thought he was out of the Gifted's earshot. You never could be sure with their kind, but you had to take risks in this business.

Huxley, encountered a Gifted, average looking, appears to generate a forcefield. Boye is distracting him. Target is likely en route to the roof, I am on my way.

Outside in the alleyway, Huxley had just made it there when Orwell's message came in over his headset.

Roger that sir. Standing by, covering the fire escape. No sign of target yet. His voice was calm, collected, but on the inside his heart was thumping just a beat or two faster. He liked Gifted, liked taking down their smug, arrogant faces, showing them that they weren't so special once their guts were spread out all over the floor in front of them. He'd done it once before and now he'd get another chance.

So thrilled by the idea of facing down a Gifted, he was almost taken down by the first blow Anton threw. Having "shadow walked" to the top of the building, Anton had been carefully tracking Huxley from above, maneuvering himself so he could finally slip out right behind the man from his own shadow and deliver a quick knockout blow to the base of the his skull while he was distracted. Whether it was some sixth sense or just a trained awareness, Huxley shifted his stance at the last moment and the blow glanced off his shoulder instead of taking him down outright. Confronted with a foe that had somehow snuck up on him, Huxley used the momentum from the strike to tuck into a forwards roll, firing as he did so to lace his attacker with bullets. Only Anton's own quickness saved him as he dived into the fast disappearing streak of Huxley's shadow to emerge above him in the shadows cast by the fire escape. Rolling to his feet, Huxley scanned the area for his suddenly vanished foes. Two Gifted; he could barely believe his luck. Standard tactics would've suggested he wait for backup, but Huxley had no intention of letting Orwell steal two kills away from him. His mind raced, and he quickly determined that it was more likely that he was fighting one Gifted who could teleport. One Gifted who could teleport... in a limited way. That's right, he'd jumped after Huxley almost like he was chasing his shadow!

Smiling, the psychopathic mercenary instantly concocted a plan. He reached a hand into his belt and started flinging out small flare sticks which quickly caught alight, bathing most of the alleyway in an unnatural green glow. Now there were only two possible areas of shadow that his foe could hide in and almost without warning, Huxley started firing indiscriminately into the shadows of the fire escape.

Anton had been watching his opponent's actions carefully, but the sudden attack surprised him. He was forced to dive into the shadows, emerging in the small darkness in the gap behind a dumpster that wasn't fully illuminated by the flares. As his own darker shadow peeled out of those cast by the metal container, he heard amidst the incessant gunfire a sudden clatter of metal on metal. The grenade Huxley had flung with his off hand, while he still fired relentlessly at the fire escape one handed, bounced off the lid of the dumpster and landed right in the gap behind it. Huxley smiled as the trap he'd planned was sprung.

For a brief moment, Anton almost hesitated and that would've cost him his life. There was no time to escape, having just emerged as his momentum was carrying him the wrong way. There was still one spot of shadow he could use, but it was too small for himself. For a grenade, though, it could work. A small well of darkness leapt up almost to embrace the falling explosive. Disappearing into it just as it exploded, it immediately appeared right in the shadow cast beneath Huxley's left foot. The mercenary never really knew what hit him as the concussion grenade literally flung him off his feet and through the air in a neat parabolic arc right into the alleyway wall. He didn't get up after his body slumped to the floor. Anton wasn't entirely unscathed, though, as he didn't manage to fully close the shadow portal and so some of the force of the grenade stunned his body to some extent, throwing off his balance as he stumbled around from the back of the dumpster, his ears ringing horribly. A few moments passed before he realised that someone was calling out to him from above.

"Hey kid, you alright down there." Maston's voice came floating down as a pair of heads peeked nervously over the edge of the building. Looking to the carefully hidden car they'd been headed for and the pair above, Anton slipped easily through the shadow behind the dumpster to appear right behind Clinton and Marston.

"I've been better." Before either had a chance to be alarmed by his sudden appearance, he grabbed both of them dragging them backwards into their own shadows so as to emerge out of the underside of the car's roof. Marston landed neatly in the driver's seat, Anton in the passenger's and Clinton laid out across the rear. "Now I suggest we get out of here, so I can shake off this headache."

"Alrightey then," Gunning the engine, Marston pulled out of the back of the alleyway in a hurry, just as Orwell came running into it the other way. The squad leader cursed as their target slipped away. Approaching Huxley's limp form, he sighed a little to find him still alive.

"Commander sir, target has escaped. I repeat target has escaped, agent is down, request evac. Awaiting instructions." He then flicked over to contact Boye just as there was a sizeable explosion from inside the building he'd just left, a few of the windows blowing out scattering glass everywhere. "Jesus! Boye are you alright in there? Report." There was a long pause before Boye's familiar sharp voice came across the radio.

"I am okay, sir. Managed to find a creative solution for the Gifted. Should I subdue or..." There was a sudden silence over the comms.

"Boye? Boye report. What on earth is going on up there?" Caught between an injured agent and Boye's sudden radio silence, Orwell was totally unsure of how to proceed.

Meanwhile, a few minutes earlier, Arthur had begun slowly making his way up the stairs, hoping to perhaps rejoin Clinton, Marston and the odd Gifted delivery man. He wasn't moving too quickly, though, as he was climbing backwards and working to make sure not to drop the barrier between himself and the female soldier. She looked like a soldier to Arthur anyway, but perhaps she was really an assassin, if she meant to kill Clinton after all. As Boye followed Arthur pace for pace she noticed that the barrier wasn't entirely complete. As he rounded a flight of stairs, it occasionally scraped away a little concrete dust from the stairwell, meaning that the stairs underneath Arthur right now weren't shielded. Smiling inwardly, Boye gave nothing away until Arthur had just turned around another flight. Momentarily lowering her weapon, she flung a sticky grenade at the stairs underneath Arthur. Not waiting to wait and see if it found its mark, she dived to the right, shouldering through a cheap wooden door as the high explosive detonated behind her. The explosion demolished a section of staircase and rocked the whole building; that had to have been enough. That had to have killed him.

Getting up off the apartment floor, Boye cautiously peered through the doorway rifle first. Concrete dust filled the air and the section on which the Gifted had been standing had collapsed entirely. Looking down, she noted a somewhat bloodied body amongst the collapsed rubble below. Orwell called in at just that moment, to which she replied,

"I am ok sir. Managed to find a creative solution sir for the Gifted. Should I subdue or..." She meant to say more, wanted to, but couldn't somehow. In fact, she couldn't move her tongue. Hell, she could barely move at all! Her muscles still reacted, but it was like she was gripped in an invisible vice, tailored to her body.

"Subdue or what exactly?" The voice emanated from below her, it was that Gifted boy's or so it seemed. But it was off, different somehow, more sure of itself, more sinister. "Kill I am guessing. Haha, now I'll admit you almost had poor little Arthur there. Still, boy has a knack for protecting himself, wouldn't you agree?"

Unable to move her head, Boye wasn't sure how he managed it but Arthur (or whoever he was) suddenly rose up in front of her like he'd flown up.

"Can't answer though can you? Can't even move. You see Arthur's a wuss, plays nice with all ya little people when he could just crush you like ants." Boye suddenly tried to scream as part of the field Arthur had trapped her in applied sudden pressure to the spot where she'd been struck by a stray bullet. "Ah yes, I guess I should make it a bit easier for you to scream shouldn't I? Else where will the fun be in slowly taking the wings off this little butterfly."

Arthur walked calmly past Boye, into the apartment, just as the field around her mouth and tongue loosened enough to allow her to scream as she too disappeared into the apartment after him.

-------------------

Outside, on the street, the Triads spotted their target's car leaving the area. The thugs dashed after it. Vincent Lee pointed his AK at the front seat. Both his mind and his face smoldered with the insane rage of a scorned criminal.

“Martson...DUCK!” Anton screamed as he kicked the back of Marston's seat forward and slipped down into the shadow between the two seats.

“Nǐ huì sǐ yīqiān cì āng zāng de yǐngzi!!!!” screams Vincent Lee with his finger squeezing the trigger on the AK. Bullets start to spray just as Vincent's shadow erupts from the ground before his feet.

Even though he knew it was coming, the move still jolted the Asian Assassin. The shadow's rising blows missed Vincent, but not the gun. Kicked from his hand, the AK-47 spun off behind Vincent. The bullets sprayed across the back of the retreating car, exploding two of the tires and sending the car careening into Vincent's own car that he had arrived in.

The shadow never slowed down, never hesitated as it spun low across the ground, legs sweeping around and up as hands pushed up into a cartwheel kick. This time, though, Vincent knew he was fighting a shadow...knew it would be close...and knew he could answer. With a grim look on his face, Vincent Lee hopped out of the swirling leg sweep and ducked under the rising cartwheel. He countered the shadow's assault with a vicious four knuckle jab and short kick to the back of the leading knee as the shadow flew past. Unable to control his forward motion, Anton had to abandon his transition and simply roll awkwardly to avoid a pair of double stomps.

"Hēi bào gōngfū Dirty Shadow...Black Leopard Kung Fu!” The anger is palpable as Vincent flows into a low stance that widens his center of gravity.

“No more easy fight for you...No more bullshit tricks...no more...SHADOW!” There was no warning as Vincent Lee sprung forward, hands and feet moving low and in blurs as they came rapid fire at Anton. This time though, the Leopard's paws found no mark. In a series of backflips, cartwheels, and rolls, Anton seemed to always flow with the strikes. He was always just be out of reach...right up until he spun towards a parked box truck. Not slowing down, Anton simply ran up the wall of the truck and flipped over Vincent as he struck with double leopard paws.

With a twist and half pike, Anton landed in a three point stance ten feet behind Vincent. Even at that distance, Anton heard the power of the strikes and could feel the bones break in Vincent's hands and forearms from where he was. Vincent's scream of fury and pain was visceral. It was almost a strike in and of itself, thought Anton as he flinched away from it. Standing there in disbelief, Anton flinched again when Vincent turned around. The mangled hands were realigning themselves, bones popping and cracking as Vincent grimaced in extreme pain.

“I will rip your arms off and feed them to you! I will beat your face to the back of your head...I will KILL YOU!” The screams give Anton enough time to glance over at the car. Marston was getting out and staggering over to another car, as Rice pulled himself up from the other side.

Time, they need time...and I get to face a killer who won't die...should have said no. With that thought, Anton flowed into the charging Vincent.

What happened next was caught on no less than thirty different cellphones all across Vegas. A flickering shadow thing fighting what looked like some sort of zombie. All up and down the strip, the two fought, both moving like shadows that flowed across the walls. Many thought it was some sort of new horror movie being filmed. Others thought it was just another Gifted stunt that was being pulled to get an audience. And Vegas? Vegas did what it always did. It ran the odds. In seconds, someone had already started a book and profits were starting to develop. All of this for a battle that lasted three minutes.

Three very long minutes to the two fighting. No quarter was given, and none was taken. Anton knew that Marston needed time. He also knew that Vincent needed to be occupied, especially if he had some other gifts. So instead of just pulling the Lethal Leopard through a shadow and leaving him stranded somewhere, Shadowjak kept pulling him along as they flowed into buildings, along walls, and even down the strip. Every third pull, Anton would bring them back to the alley, to see what Marston had accomplished. The first time, he was smashing a window, the second time he was under the dash. When he appeared in the alley for the third time, Anton heard an engine rev.

With a grim nod, Anton pulled Vincent Lee into another portal with him. Throughout the fight, Lee was hammering away at full strength, not caring about where his blows went or how much he was hurting. He would heal; nothing was permanent. Not so for Anton. Already, the Umbral Ukraine knew that he had strained his wounded shoulder, his left eye and cheekbone were swollen almost shut (might be a fracture there), and he was limping with his right knee. In desperation, when Anton finally flowed up out of the Umbral Portal with Lee, he flung him directly into the path of a speeding semi on the highway out of town. Lee would survive. And so would Anton, for now.

Flowing up out of a shadow by the newly acquired car, Anton slumps down in a new backseat, broken and weary. “Where's Arthur?”

Normally, even someone with Dieter's vast information resources would have taken several minutes to find out what had occurred at the apartment building. And, even though he did not have all the details, this time it was Dieter's finger in the gambling world that had him alerted first. An aid poked his head in to utter a quick message, then Dieter brought up the various footages of the fight in progress. On additional screens, he brought up the past footage and watched it all simultaneously.

Before the fight was done he instructed his aid to get Lau on the line, find the assassin's number, and locate the other site. Dieter recognized a delaying action when he saw one. The shadow porter was fighting back but he was obviously loosing. With that mobility, there was no reason not to escape, but he kept on fighting the potent assassin. The footage was hard to track and not all of it was in the right order, but it became apparent that injuries were manifesting themselves between every some jumps. There was a second location, where the delay was necessary. Dieter's dissatisfaction was shown by only a slight twitching of his lips down when Vincent was thrown into the semi-tractor. Dieter had tried to recruit the man twice before, but his loyalty to the triads had prevented it and since the triads were "loyal" to Dieter, he had left it alone. That time was passed.

His aid handed him a cellphone, "Lau, Schwartze Auge is recruiting Vincent Lee. If he contacts you, send him here immediately." He then dismissed the man and set the second cellphone on his desk. An update was needed soon, but he still needed more information here. He would also need to contact the men he had just contracted to aid in the situation. He frowned, there was Gifted set against him and he needed countermeasures. Luckily, this was Vegas and countermeasures were in ready supply for the right price.

---

About a mile into the desert around a minute after the group were making good their escape, Vincent's body fell from the grill of the semi and meaty noises were heard. The driver just drove but the next car skidded to a halt by the roadkill, for surely it was dead? Still, a coroner's van and ambulance were there in short order, but didn't it look less mangled the poor man who had found it uttered as he gave his statement. Whatever it was was declared dead and taken to the LVPD crime lab for analysis. They got to it an hour later. So, imagine their surprise when the man who was supposed to be road pancake was sitting up on the table as the skin on his face was growing back and some bones were resetting themselves. The man was in extreme pain and he "got" some drugs from the staff before locating his belongings. Outside the lab, he stopped and made a call; he then made a second call, "I said I didn't want to work fo..."

"That doesn't matter anymore, Vincent. I can give you what John Lau cannot, the means for revenge. A car will come for you. This is not a request." Vincent clicked his teeth and looked at the stars, vengeance was consuming him right now and if Lau had willingly given him over, then why be loyal? He waited and when a black Lincoln pulled up, he opened the door and stepped inside to see a large white man staring at him with cold, cold eyes.

---

In the hour before that call, Dieter had made a flurry of calls. First, he had used the prearranged voicemail drop box he had established to communicate with the Commander and left a coded message that the target's had escaped and that their next likely target was the Bulletin presses. He then called the printing house where the newspaper was printed and had the presses shut down cold. Dieter knew that those machines, once cold, took hours to reactivate and prep for work. It was expensive to pay for a day's missed paper, but worth it. He also received a call from his agent's in the field that the editor was being "cooperative."

Lastly, he had his own vehicle prepared and departed for the printing house himself. He received Vincent's call on the way there and altered the course to pick the man up. As Vincent sat and almost asked a question, he held a finger up. His perceptions were already slowed to 1/5th as they always were when someone was this close to him. "You have a lot of talent Vincent, and potential, let us help you to realize it as John Lau never could have. That said, we need to help you realize it, so what do you feel that you need?" He smiled as he saw the man mulling over what was essentially a wish granted. Namidian resources were vast and potent after all. He smiled when the man made his request and phoned it in just before they arrived at the printing house. He gave Vincent a device with a single button, "Hit this if you seen them. I will be in the offices."

They exited the car and Dieter moved in his deliberate way to the factory offices and sat down at the computers there. He hacked into, well his personal hacking expert at his behest hacked into, the security systems and he began to monitor the building with his perceptions at 1/20th normal. The signal he had given Vincent's twin was set where he could see it easily. He was expecting a call about the apartment situation as well.

OOC: NON-CANNON BATTLE POST

OOC: CANNON BATTLE POST

"Orwell. ORWELL! Report in! Do you read me?!" One of the commanders operators called tensely as he tried to draw the shocked soldiers attention back on task. The command room back at The Commanders hidden lair was a flurry of confusion as they struggled to regain control of the situation. The evac driver had already been ordered into position and The Commander himself simply sat on the edge of his chair glowering darkly at the tactical map that remained on screen.
"Or- Orwell reporting in." Orwells voice resounded through the speakers surrounding the command desks and The Commander noted that he stammered slightly as he spoke, no doubt the mercenary was out of his depth and had begun to feel a metaphorical noose tightening around his neck; as well trained as he was conventional tactics flew out the window the moment superpowers came into play, and losing your entire unit in a matter of seconds would shred anyone's resolve.
"No injuries sustained, but Huxley's down. Target has fled."
"Orwell maintain position and await orders." the communicator said as he switched his comms channels to Boyes own headset.
"Boye! Report in. Do you r-" "Ee-gahhhhhh!!"
Without warning a screech of pain that could only have belonged to Boye blasted out of every speaker in the room loud enough to cause feedback. Some of the technicians shielded their ears and the communications expert scrambled to switch channels back to Orwell, the immediate silence that followed left ringing in their ears. Despite himself The Commander found himself standing on his feet, every face in the room turned to look at him but he hesitated for a long moment before he issued the orders they were all awaiting.
"Forget the damn bounty. Orwell; recover Boye and Huxley and find a safe area for the getaway van- you will be evacuated in approximately 8 minutes."
"Yessir." Orwell responded, automatically before continuing in a more cautious tone. "She was last seen with a Super, sir. I'm going to have to get creative."
The Commander slid lightly back into his seat and considered Orwells situation over steepled fingers, he'd promoted the man because he'd proven himself a quick thinker- but failure now could easily cost his entire team their lives, was it worth the risk?... "Do what you must. Don't die."

---

Back inside the apartment the limited interest that Arthurs dark self had in it's captive was rapidly running out. Like the monster out of a jumpscare horror movie he hovered half a foot off the ground with his feet dangling freely, his arm was extended carelessly towards the twisted marionette figure of Boyle. Boyle herself was in poor shape, the bulletwound by her side was bleeding profusely from where Arthur had sadistically crushed it and her right leg was twisted at a painful angle where he'd broken her ankle just to see if she was still concious. "Are ye' still with me, hen?" he said, in a mockingly patronising tone. "If ye' dinnea' scream I won't know when te' stop." She didn't give out much more than a shortbreathed whimper and his smile cooled by a degree into something more dangerous than simple maliciousness as he realised that she was going to bleed out before he'd had his fun.
Still, there were always other people to hurt. He could chase down her companions and kill them as well- it would be easy.
With an effortless gesture he twisted his hand and Boyle felt the telekinetic pressure imprisoning her redouble and her chest began to cave in and force the air out of her lungs, he kept going and as Boyles vision began to dapple between red and black she wondered what would kill her first, suffocation or a collapsed ribcage? She tried to spit out a final sarcastic retort, some sharp tongued jab that'd at least let her die with some satisfaction, but nothing came out of her throat but a hollow whining rattle.

For what must have been the third or fourth time that day the much-abused door to Marston's apartment was kicked in, which was entirely unnecessary given that the lock was long gone but the slam served to draw Arthur's attention for a moment. Standing in the doorway was Orwell, he was covered in dusty debris from the awkward half-climb half-sprint that he'd taken to reach the fourth floor and he'd discarded his rifle, gasmask and vest along the way; he knew they'd do no good in this fight and even after ditching the extra weight the rush to the apartment had left him redfaced and exhausted. He took a final gasp of air, didn't bother with any one-liners, and snapped his arm up with his pistol and pumped five bullets at Arthur.
Arthur didn't even bother to raise his arm as the bullets pinged harmlessly away in wild directions; tearing chunks out of the apartments wallpaper and denting the walls as they went. "I thought you'd run away! You've some guts after all, big man." Arthur smiled unpleasantly, and the attitude difference between 'Dark Arthur' and the version he'd fought just minutes ago would have shaken the last of the fight out of Orwell if he hadn't already committed himself to an all-or-nothing gamble. "Not much brains, though. Don't worry, I'll let you see each of them before I finish yeh' off."

Arthur and Orwell acted simultaneously, Arthur lifted his spare arm with a slow expression of patient boredom and locked Orwell in a vicelike telekinetic prison as he'd done with Boye just as Orwell used his last second of freedom to sling an object underarm towards Arthurs head- Arthur saw the palmsized dark object leap at his vision and stopped it two feet away from his face with a thought.
"Another grenade? Fool me once shame on you- but that trick's getting old."
Arthur concentrated on the object, he could stop the explosion easily and he wondered whether he might toss the object at Boyle before it detonated as a final humiliation to them both, but as his eyes focused on it he realised that it wasn't a grenade at all... Orwell had thrown his cellphone.
"STOP THAT." The Commanders voice snapped through the phones tinny but maximised speakers, even through an electronic medium and a sub-par connection The Commanders power of absolute authority carried enough weight to force Arthur's mental powers into a defensive flinch, the last syllables of the two words were cut off as his shields obfuscated the voice enough to leave Arthur unaffected but the damage had already been done. With his concentration divided Arthur, Orwell and Boye all dropped bodily to the ground as the telekinesis field wavered and in that brief moment Boye took a lifesaving gasp of air, propelled herself towards the apartments door with a lunge of her one remaining good leg, and was caught by Orwell who fired off the remaining bullets in his pistol and dived them both outside of Arthur's field of vision.
Arthur could hear their footsteps pounding away as fast as they could. The sound of fleeing prey was only on the edge of his senses however, and he gave the phone by his feet a moment of consideration before breaking into a gleefully maniacal laugh.

---

Seconds later Orwell had used the last reserve of adrenalin fuelled energy to half-carry Boye and drag Huxley out and across the street into a neighbouring alleyway. In Two minutes thirty seconds a plain white van would pull up, load them, and drive away three battered, mentally scarred, half-dead, but ultimately very fortunate, mercenaries.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:53, Mon 18 May 2015.

A wave of delighted excitement flooded over Dark Arthur as he laughed maniacally at the unexpected intervention. He'd been rather bored in truth, torturing the female merc had done little to alleviate that, but this intervention was intriguing. With a small gesture of his hand, the phone floated up before him to head height.

"So you're the fella behind the trio of combat dolls then? I'd say I am sorry for breaking one of your wee toys, but I wouldn't really mean it. Tell me, that voice trick of yours, is that the best you've got? Its kinda lame really for a Gifted. Guessing that's why you like hanging back, have your stooges do the dirty while you watch? You like watching is that it?"

The phonecall that Orwell had used in his brilliant but desperate plan was still open and The Commander let the insults that the Scotsman threw over the rooms speakers wash over him. Orthos wasn't going to get a rise from him that easily, and he had a few choice words of his own to share.

"It's not the strength of your powers that matters, it's how you use them." Commander grit his teeth as he spoke, putting a severe edge on his next words. "-but rest assured that if I happen to develop the ability to make people explode by frowning at them, or shoot deathrays out of my eyes, or any other such nonsense, I'll let you be the very first to know."

"You've cost me a fair chunk of money this afternoon. What do you care what happens to the reporter?"

"Ocular death rays would be quite the sight to see, or is that to gaze with? Alas the queen's English was never my strongest suit." Arthur slowly meandered towards a window that had been blown out by Boye's grenade as he spoke, stepping straight through it and into the night air. Where he should have fallen however he simply kept going, his field forming an invisible staircase that allowed him to easily cross the street onto a neighboring roof top. When the Commander mentioned Clinton, a rather wicked smile crept across Arthur's features, followed by a low echoing laugh.

"Oh our poor beleaguered defender of the truth? Right now I am almost inclined to pay him a little visit, I ended up bleeding over his bleeding heart after all. Wonder how hard you have to squeeze a reporter's heart before it pops?" No, you can't! He's a good man, just trying to tell the truth... Dark Arthur growled at the night air almost stumbling from his invisible staircase, as Arthur's consciousness rose up inside trying to wrest back control. "Put a sock in it and go back to sleep. You're the reason we're in this mess." Dark Arthur's psionic field fluctuated wildly as for a brief moment Arthur almost awoke, a nearby bit of brickwork paying the price as the field dislodged it over the edge of the building. Luckily only a few car windows were smashed below as the streets were so deserted. A moment later though Dark Arthur was fully in command again, Arthur's consciousness subsiding away once again and his eyes drifted to the phone which had fallen to his feet during his brief inner struggle.

"Well I'd say its been fun, but you're a bit of a stiff really. Try to send out some more fun toys next time will you? I promise I'll return them in no more than a dozen or so pieces." With that Dark Arthur made a casual flick of his wrist and the small device sailed off, disappearing into the night. It was rare that he got to play and whatever else the call had helped him decide on a destination. Setting off over the, rooftops at a fair pace, his field filling in the gaps so he could easily cross, he made his way as the crow flew towards the business district of the city. It was time to make some news.

Commander tutted in annoyance and disconnected the call as Arthur threw the device away. Something about the call had troubled him; towards the end it sounded as though Arthur had been in an argument with someone else, but he was sure he'd accounted for everyone in the building.
"Odd. 'Wonder what that was about- Save a copy of that call, I'll go over it again after I've talked to the away team." he said idly as he got off his chair and moved to pace around the room, as he walked he shot off orders to the men surrounding him.

"You! Send off a report to Mr Green, we're pulling out of the race for now. You! Wait for the driver and away team to return, make sure that they're patched up and ready for an after-action report." He interrupted himself as instinct stifled a yawn, his weight lurched forward and as he took a stabilizing step and remembered the exhaustion that he'd wilfully forgotten the moment he'd been sucked back into his work.
"The rest of you, at ease and stand down. There's nothing else we can do for now..." The automatic doors leading out of the Control Room hissed open as The Commander strode towards his Barracks for some much needed rest, before they slammed shut again he called out a final order: "...the war resumes in four hours. Be ready."

Phillip Skaar had not been having a good day. Threats on his life and family, preparing to betray every ideal he'd ever held about journalism and ruining his best pair of pants after pissing down them. Coming out of the bathroom after having finally changed into a clean pair his secretary Denise had been loathe to help him fetch, he did feel at least a slight sense of dignity returning with his stride. That sense of security disappeared swiftly though as he entered his office to find someone lounging in his editor's chair, a pair of somewhat worn trainers planted atop his desk.

"Who the hell are you?" Being a little shaken from his earlier encounter, the statement came out a little less forcefully than Phillip would've liked.

"Ever the ultimate question." Arthur jibed back, a sinister grin on his face as he looked Phillip up and down, rather like how a cat might look at a trapped mouse. Sneaking into such a building would normally be difficult, but late at night it had been easy to simply walk in the third storey window. "Still I think likely the wrong one for this situation. A better question would be what am I to you? Sit down and lets have that conversation."

Phillip was getting more nervous by the moment. It was late, most of the staff had gone home. He glanced nervously over his shoulder, but his wretched excuse of a secretary Denise was still away from her desk, most likely on another cigarette break. No way was she getting a Christmas bonus this year. "Look just leave right now, else I'll have to have security escort you..." Phillip reached for the phone on his desk as he spoke but suddenly it slid along the desk out of his reach. At the same time the door behind him slammed shut. If he wasn't a trapped mouse before well he certainly felt like it now.

"Where exactly would they escort me? Now like I said before sit down." Before Phillip even had a chance to respond he felt himself being shunted down hard into the seat in front of his desk a small cry escaping from his lips from the surprise of it all.

"Please I am sorry. I didn't know you were with them. I haven't heard anything from Clint yet I swear. You'd have been the first to hear of it, I swear on my family. Please." For the second time that night Skaar pissed his pants again.

A slight furrow creased Dark Arthur's brow at the editor's rambling pleas. Then it dawned on him, someone had got to Skaar, the same someone who'd been sending assassins after the reporter all night.

"Well that is interesting. I'd like you Mr. Skaar to tell me everything and how about I swear on your family that if you leave out even the smallest wee detail, I'll pop your eyes right out of that skull of yours." Already broken twice, Phillip spilled the beans on everything that had happened that night to him.

A short whiles later Phillip was calling the one number that had been left on the burner phone Dieter's man had left him earlier. A sultry voice picked up on the other side.

"Speak."

"Uh its Phillip Skaar here from the Bulletin. Um you wanted to know if there was any stuff from Clinton Rice."

"Continue."

"Um yeah, some odd looking fellow showed up with a package from Clinton not ten minutes ago. Dropped off some printouts and such. A lot of numbers and some kind of key code, don't know what to make of it but the guy said Clinton wanted to leave it for insurance in case things didn't go well. Said it was key to the case he was working on. I've got them here now in the office."

There was a slight pause on the other side before the curt and sultry man continued.

"Wait where you are, we'll send someone. Don't show anyone else the files."

With that the call cut off, and Phillip turned to look at a rather remarkably grinning Arthur. "Now what?"

"We wait, aren't you curious about who's sitting at the center of this little web of intrigue? I certainly am and I think I'd like to meet him."

Dieter was sitting in the printing house offices going over his handy work when his phone rang and he pulled it out. He frowned at the number but picked up the line and coded phrase then listened to a man speak for ten long seconds in silence before hanging up the phone. Dieter's face was grim and blank.

He stood and strode back out to where Vincent stood and the former triad grimaced at the expression; whoever had made this man mad was about to realize the deep, deep error of that fact. "Vincent, you are now a Lieutenant, provisionally, in my organization. The newspaper man is your first task. This location is... finalized. Get back to the offices and use what resources I have just allocated to you to do your work, then kill him Vincent..." Dieter stared in silence until the man swallowed and nodded. The large man then moved past him and toward the car. Vincent went about his business.

---

It was almost twenty minutes before the Lincoln pulled up in front of the Bulletin offices and Dieter stepped out of it. He sized the building up like a man eying an annoying gnat. He could not recall the last time he had been so personally involved in a job. It irked him deeply. Others in his organization were a more hands on sort, but he had always been a very remote type. He pulled out a phone and hit the button then spoke a coded phrase, "Log #198, Vincent Lee Asset acquired. Log #23, Confronting a major player. 36 hour protocol activated."

Dieter then put the phone away and shrugged off his jacket. He tossed the black cloth back on the seat then his purple tie followed as well s his vest. He rolled up his black cotton shirtsleeves revealing thick, powerfully muscled arms. He removed his watch and then shifted his sunglasses on his nose before striding toward the door.

It had not been overly difficult sniffing out the trap; no one was trying to hide it. Dieter smirked as he guessed it wasn't really a trap then. You didn't take on an organization like his that casually. He moved through the offices like a train. Dieter had never been a subtle man, physically. He was a wrecking ball. As he moved, he slowed his perceptions down to combat levels and considered the reports he had from Vincent on the possible antagonists here: the teleporter of the shield generator? When eh arrived at the editor's door, he pressed his palm against in the slowest of slow motions. He watched his hand raise idly, analyzing the movement, his possible courses of action, and the ramifications. He wouldn't be able to move the door without some force first, he could amplify or dull kinetics not produce them when not there. There was a lot of wiggle room in that definition but he had explored it thoroughly and the power and focus necessary to manipulate at the atomic level was currently beyond him, so he watched as his palm slapped against the door frame by frame. A normal perception probably would have missed the subtle vibrations, but his perceptions caught them, amplified them, and then shoved them in toward the office.

Dieter stepped in behind the explosion and watched the trajectory of each shard closely as he did so. His eyes couldn't move any faster than his body, so he was more or less stuck to the one frame. It was like examining a picture of the world in minute detail for minutes at a time. He didn't bother moving his arm but let gravity slowly affect it, a curious thing to feel in slowmo, and watched as a splinters of glass flew toward the editor on one side of the door and the other man behind the desk.

As soon as the salvo was over, he brought his perceptions up to 1/5th so he could speak normally, "You have my attention... I hope you do not regret this."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 20:00, Sun 31 May 2015.

Dark Arthur was idly whistling a little ditty when the doorway literally disintegrated into a hail of wooden shrapnel. A little smile of twisted delight caught the corner of Arthur's mouth at the carnage unleashed before him by the man standing in the shredded hole of a doorway. Whoever this was, he was going to be fun.

There was a scream of pain as dozens of small bits of the door tore into the editor Phillp's arms and side, the blast also knocking him to the floor, where he lay whimpering in a dazed anguish. Arthur's own field easily deflected the bits of the doorway coming towards himself though.

"Bravo! Bravo! A truly excellent entrance there, you Americans really do display an abundance of subtlety." Arthur gave Dieter a slow mocking clap as he congratulated him. "I was beginning to wonder if the Spider was going to send anyone to entertain me at all this night, before I turned into a pumpkin that is."

Swinging his feet off the editor's desk, Arthur casually got up onto his feet, arcing his back out with an exaggerated stretch, yawning a little as he did so. He strode round to the side of the desk, the slumped figure of the editor being shunted unceremoniously out of his path by a small application his field, just to save him having to step over the bloodied man. Approaching Dieter, Arthur eyed him up and down, taking in the expensive suit and bulky physique.

"You don't look like a grunt though, I'll give you that. So... what game shall we play?"

Dieter frowned deeply at the boy across from him and shifted his bulk a bit as the words poured into his ear like pudding. Even at this low rate of senses, deciphering words was a bit tricky. Still, he heaved a sigh as he saw something in the boy that wasn't predatory. Predators were natural; they hunted and killed for survival. This boy was something that only humans could produce; he was a monster. The situation seemed fitting; Dieter was also a monster.

The difference seemed to be that Dieter had control of himself and this boy did not.

He noted the editor's body moving without any seeming reason and made some calculations about the effect. Vincent had reported some kind of shield user, so this must be the kid.

He kept his gaze steady as he checked out the editor writhing on the ground and idly calculated the man's remaining seconds. Then he shifted his vision back to the boy, "Spiders, eh? I have no idea of spiders, kind, but I an not an American. What I am is of no importance to the current situation and there is no game to be played. You have seen what I can do so you know what I will do. You will give me the files." Dieter prepared himself for what was coming, this kid either would play his "games" or see the error of those games.

There was something disdainful and empty in Arthur's gaze, like an abyss existed just on the other side of those childish features of his. Dieter had met a lot of twisted minds in the circles he ran in, but it had been obvious from a just few moments of studying the boy that he'd found a real monster lurking here. Still that just meant he was more predictable in Dieter's eyes.

Dieter knew that the monster would not pass up the chance to play whatever game he craved. Monsters had their addictions; Dieter understood this. His own addiction was control and power. Thus, he immediately slowed his perceptions down and just in time, too, as he felt the molasses like flow of something into his aura of control. At his normal sense speeds, the field's growth would have been lightning fast and invisible. He grunted as he pushed it away with his own will and saw the boy's eyes widen just slightly as something, maybe the first thing ever, resisted his power.

Dark Arthur watched as the man stood there with his hands at his side and returned his gaze. Something was odd about the way his body and power seemed out of sync, almost like his mind and form operated at two separate speeds. Still, a contest of might appealed to his mentality. He resolved to push his field in around the man and render him immobile. As hard as he pushed though, the field around Dieter stayed locked in place. It was like trying to push his ability through peat moss. Whatever held it back flexed but did not budge. Still, the man was sweating and looked a bit red in the face from exertion even as Arthur was just getting warmed up.

"Whatever you are, old man, this is a young man's game. Why don't you just give in and let me have my way?" said Dark Arthur with a laugh.

You don't really want him to quit, sicko. You want him to struggle and resist as long as possible. You get off on it. Dark Arthur grinned as his inner self told the truth but the grin turned into a frown as something fluttered up then slid along his field. It was a scrap of cloth. His eyes searched for where it had come from and found the old man's shoes in tatters even as the old man did a weird stutter jump thing to step off the soles of his once very fancy leather shoes. The scraps of leather, two rubber soles, and the cotton cloth of his socks now fluttered around inside the small cage Arthur had the man in. But they didn't flutter aimlessly, like leaves on the wind. They moved with purpose, speed, and precision. They were circumventing the "globe" of his shield. No! He had already shut out everything from getting through the shield, even air! What was this old man doing?

Dieter's experiment determined that nothing was crossing the barrier and that it was not composed of matter or energy. Matter he could deal with, energy he could find familiar ways around. No, this shield was something else entirely as substances went. Dieter did not like that as it forced him to reevaluate what he knew of physics. Air was not flowing inside the cage he found himself in, or at least not flowing into the small area his ability kept for him. Air was only entering the through the several small holes in the floor Dieter drilled with the buttons on his shirt sleeves. He was exerting himself; doing so many things in so little time took considerable concentration from even him. He had almost enough information now, he just needed one final piece. He slowly raised a foot and brought it down hard on the floor.

Arthur watched as the old man stomped on the floor. Was he having a tantrum or something? The sound was wrong, it didn't sound like a stomp. His mind caught up to his ears a second later. It wasn't a stomp, it was more like an earthquake! Suddenly, the floor tore itself to pieces. It went from solid wood and concrete to suddenly rippling like stirred pudding and breaking up like scrambled eggs. Then the whole bit of floor dropped along with the man. Arthur had not thought to shield below the floor, who could have gotten through it? He chided himself even as he clapped the shield over the top of the hole to keep the man from popping back up through it and approached him. He looked down through it into the eyes of his adversary, which were glaring up at him.

Dieter had caught the broken ends of two pipes as he fell through the hole and was hanging there. His senses had felt the shield clap down over the hole and he applauded the kid for having some acumen. The wait for the kid's face to appear over the hole felt like an eternity. But as he waited, he devised another test: he believed that the kid's field was only as strong as his mind. It wasn't like steel or electricity which had its own strength independent of what generated it, but was dependent upon the boy for its potency. That was his hypothesis, anyway.

As the kid looked down, Dieter inhaled sharply which caused the buttons on his shirt to move toward the hole. Dieter accelerated so that three of the small, plastic discs shot up at the boy's face as fast as a bullet. Dieter knew that they were not enough, so he slowed his perceptions down to 1/100th normal and watched even these projectiles move something like regular speed. They ricocheted off the field and Dieter redirected them at it again, accelerating them to incredible speed and drilling them into the orb again and again and again. As they struck the exact same place over and over again, they slowly deformed and warped the spots they hit. The force they were exerting, however, was warping them and liquifying them. Dieter had to hold them together with his will as they battered the shield.

Arthur had fast reactions for anyone, that was given, but as he looked down something began to pound at his shield like nothing ever had before. The force was incredible, but his shield held for a second, two seconds, and then he growled in pain as it broke. It was like having a freight train batter against his mind! He reeled back and staggered, a trickle of blood coming out his ear. While his head was pounding away, he looked up at his opponent who wasn't grinning, smiling, or reacting at all. His face was just a calm pool of milk with two flecks of ice for eyes.

"Neat trick, old man." His opponent still didn't speak. Arthur had never had his field resisted in this way and the experience excited him. He couldn't help the devilish grin that cracked across his face. This is going to be oh so fascinating."

Dieter found words to be futile, useless, meaningless thing in a fight anyway; so even if he had been able to talk with his perceptions so skewed from reality, he wouldn't have. He could see through that this kid had never fought another monster like him. His silence and calmness frustrated the kid, who was used to rage and panic in the face of his power. Dieter noted the weakness as he took a glacier slow step toward the boy and felt the shield slam back into place. Dieter smiled and threw two bits of concrete he had pulled from the hole at the shield and repeated his trick from before. When the shield broke, though, only one piece could be redirected at the boy and the other shot off into a wall, slicing a hole through it like a laser. The other piece winged Arthur's shoulder and left a trail of blood oozing down his skin. Dieter noticed that the kid was not liking a real match as much as he might have though he would. None of the fun or control of winning and torturing your opponent existed yet, just the desperate, animalistic desire to win.

Not so much fun now, eh? Not so much fun when you're the one fighting for your life! This is what you put people through, my friend. This is what you do... It must stop. Arthur tamped down his good half and put a hand to the wound. True, this was not what he had expected/ His blood was pumping and his vision getting red at the edges. He stood straight and sent a wave like shield out from him.

Dieter felt it coming and braced, setting his palms against the pulse like shield and letting it push him back. He slowed it as best he could and felt the part pushing him bulge in even as he was shoved back against the room's wall. He grunted and raised a foot to place it against the wall and sent his aura into the sheetrock, wood, and metal, tearing it apart and sending chunks of it spiraling off into the newsroom. The fight was desperate and dangerous now, but only for everyone around them. Arthur had become more aggressive, trying to flatten and crush Dieter against the wall, knowing that he could not stop him from using whatever trick that let him pummel through the shield.

Few of the old man's attacks were well aimed after they broke his shield, but each attack that came through was a kill shot waiting to happen. Conversely, Dieter had to work harder and harder to keep the shield away from him. He, too, was growing more and more tired as the amount of concentration his abilities required from him was mammoth and exhausting. Desks flew like 500 lb torpedoes, sheets of paper sliced through the air like shuriken, pencils and pens were more dangerous than bullets as the two men used their environment, tore it apart, and flung it at one another. The Nevada Bulletin building was slowly turned inside out almost literally and civilian casualties rose with each moment as the two titans collided again and again.

A clod of dust, glass, and office debris shot out of a window and rocketed toward the ground only to seem to slow and then alight, feather soft, on the street. Dieter grunted and stood, letting his perceptions speed up a bit as he dusted himself off and watched the kid ride one of his shields down to the street. He mentally inventoried his body's damage and found cracked ribs, several lacerations, copious hematomas, and what he suspected to be severe exhaustion setting in. The kid was in no better shape. An arm hung at his side after a lucky strike with a flung computer monitor had broken the shoulder joint, he limped on his left leg due to a massive laceration across the calf, and one side of his face was swollen shut from where a seat cushion had struck it at 100mph. Dieter reached over his shoulder and felt around until her grasped something soft and pulled the straw from the flesh of his shoulder. He regarded it curiously, then looked at the kid and spoke for the first time in the fight.

"You're good kid... but, you are 50 years too early to beat me."

Arthur grinned and shook his head. It had been a hard lesson, but he had Dieter's ranges figured out now. The man was potently dangerous at about five feet but beyond that, whatever trick he used to break Arthur's shield was piss-poor inaccurate. He grinned as he felt the feeling of triumph and the anticipation of the aftermath rising.

"Whatever, old man, don't cry when I wear your face like a hat." Suddenly, the street itself rumbled and buckled and Arthur glanced down at it, then up at Dieter as his eyes went wide as saucers. Between the violent storm of chaos and the blood that soaked his skin, he had forgotten the old man's trick!

Dieter had been building the vibrations the second he had impacted the street. In the office building, the floors had been piecemeal; each made up of hundred of separate pieces which his ability had difficulties with. The road was one solid piece for the most part. Finally, the vibrations were mounting to something noticeable, but noticeable to others was minutes too slow against Dieter. The road under the kid erupted like a geyser of shrapnel. To his credit, Dieter saw maybe 80% of the rubble bouncing off of the kid's instinctual defenses but that 20% that got through spun around the inside of the boy's battered shield like a tornado, exploded against the kid's body, and threw his limbs into unnatural poses that must've snapped his bones into piles of calcium-rich debris.

A coughing Dieter moved toward the kid, but stopped and stared as the boy rose. His mouth was agape with curiosity, amusement, and (though he'd never admit it) a miniscule amount of fear as Arthur stood, looking like a puppet barely being held together. Suddenly, Dieter found himself gasping. His eyes scanned the space around his body as he hunted around for breathable air. Nothing, nothing, nothing! He slowed his breath as best he could, but he was drowning in exhaustion.

"Didn't see that one coming did you old man? Finding it a bit hard to breathe? Seems like your range is about only a foot or so from your body." A few moments ago, when a barely conscious Arthur had realized Dieter was approaching him, he'd generated a special bubble field around his enemy. It wasn't kinetic in nature, but designed to prevent any oxygen entering it while allowing oxygen inside the bubble to filter out as the bubble moved. Dieter fell to his knees.

Stop. Please stop, let him go. Isn't this enough? asked Arthur's good side.

"Shut up you whiny little pissant. He almost killed us, would've gotten your lousy weak self for sure."

You've won though, you're killing him now. That isn't right.

"I defended us, just like always. Now go back into whatever hole you crawled out of and I'll..."

WHAM! One last column of road beneath Arthur punched itself through the bottom of his weakened shield, tossing him up into the air. He fell to the ground with a massive THUD that was only somewhat quieted by the remains of his shield.

Unbeknownst to Arthur, Dieter had noticed the boy's shield weakening while his two halves were arguing away. Dieter cracked his neck and took a deep, contented breath of fresh air as he sized up the unconscious Arthur.

"First lesson of combat, boy. When given an opportunity, take it. You won't get another chance.

Dieter frowned when he heard the distinct sound of approaching sirens. The battle had seemed like hours to him, but it had to have been only minutes long in reality. Enough time for terrified 911 calls to summon the LVPD. He looked to the form of his defeated foe and shrugged as he brought his perceptions up to speed. He regarded the office building and sighed as he considered the files. He would need to gamble. He approached it and used his hands to strike it and begin the process. A few seconds later, the whole building began to shake, then tremble, and finally collapsed.

Dieter waited a second to examine the smoke coming up from the rubble. He continued staring until he saw a flame peeking out from under the rubble and then made for his car and home. In his rear view mirror, he noted the still supine body of his defeated opponent as a silhouette against the inferno that had been the Nevada Bulletin. He finally allowed his face to crack a smile as he reached up to the visor and took a pair of sunglasses down and slippe onto his face. That kid was interesting, no need for him to die just yet...
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:48, Mon 08 June 2015.

There was something disdainful and empty in Arthur's gaze, like an abyss existed just on the other side of those childish features of his. Dieter had met a lot of twisted minds in the circles he ran in, but it had been obvious from a just few moments of studying the boy that he'd found a real monster lurking here. Still that just meant he was more predictable in Dieter's eyes.

For a brief moment, Dark Arthur and Dieter stood eye to eye across about half the office neither really moving. The moment stretched out rather lengthily in Dieter's mind as he slowed down the rate of perception so the world ran agonizingly slowly for him. It wasn't a moment too soon either as otherwise Dieter might of missed the sudden shift in lighting from the corner of his eye. Turning just in time he held out a hand towards the metal filing cabinet that Arthur had flung at him from his blind-spot. As the cabinet, came within a foot or so of Dieter's outstretched arm, the field Arthur had surrounded it in crashed right into Dieter's sphere of influence over kinetics. Caught right in the middle of these two inexorable forces the metal cabinet promptly crumpled into an initially mangled and then compressed flat mess of metal and bits of filed papers.

"My oh my old man. This is going to be oh so fascinating." Arthur had never had his field resisted in this way and the experience excited him. He couldn't help a devilish grin cracking across his face. The manic smirk quickly disappeared though as Dieter finished the preparations he'd been making. Suddenly loosening his countering force to Arthur's field Dieter redirected the now suddenly accelerated mangled disk of nearly solid steel that was the cabinet right past him and straight at Arthur. The whirling disc of metal clanged right off the field that Arthur instinctively strengthened in front of him, ricocheting back towards the old man. This had all been in Dieter's calculations though as he knew one blow wouldn't be anywhere near enough to break this field. It wasn't entirely kinetic in nature, that much Dieter had discerned from the brief manner in which it had interacted with his own powers, but it also wasn't immovable. The slight shifts his slowed down senses had noted when the cabinet had been crushed between them told him that and so he just needed to apply repeated pressure. The ricocheting metal disk suddenly reversed direction as it came within Dieter's influence and lashed back bouncing off Arthur's field again at exactly the same spot and again and again the whirling metal disk struck, each time a little closer as Dieter closed the distance between them with each rebound. Arthur didn't quite realize Dieter's intent until his field almost buckled under the penultimate strike. The next one was at a tremendous speed smashing Arthur's field the metal disc landing a glancing blow on his shoulder as the field's remnants managed to divert its path away from splitting Arthur in two. Such was the kinetic energy though that Arthur screamed out in anguish as his shoulder shattered under the impact.

Seeing an opening Dieter leaped forwards aiming to close the gap between them. If he could put a hand on the young man's body in his moment of pain then this would all be over. Arthur didn't see Dieter coming but rather felt some remnants of his shattered field being easily pushed aside and it was just enough warning for him to shunt himself with his field agonizingly outside of Dieter's grasp. Into the space he vacated though Arthur flung every object in the office he could focus his field around. Dieter managed to easily stop most of the small items his slowed down senses allowed him to see but a few rusty nails did manage to pierce his left calf muscle causing the big man to stumble a step or two before recovering his balance and restarting his relentless assault on Arthur's field.

Soon the building became a whirling mess of debris and furniture as everything became weapons for the two. The entire floor of the Nevada Bulletin's office was quickly reduced to nothing more than a messy ruin of rubble and dust as the kinetic forces unleashed by Dieter and Arthur tore everything around them into shreds as they were used as weapons against one another. A short few minutes after fight began the entire front half of the building folded in on itself like a collapsing house of giant concrete cards as one too many of building's main support pillars was torn through.

A small dust spewing figure manages to hurl itself out of a hole in the wall as the collapse happens landing just outside the collapsing rubble on the now dust engulfed street. Dragging himself to his feet Dieter assesses that he's taken at least a dozen or so injuries in the few short minutes of the fight and that he'd likely have bled out already if he wasn't carefully holding the  blood around his wounds inside of himself with his kinetic mastery. Looking up he sees an equally battered Arthur floating about 30ft off the ground. "Not bad kid but this fight is over. You're still too young to play with adults."

Arthur drifts in a little closer an almost disappointed look of confusion on his fight. His arm was useless and his left leg was broken in at least two places but he was still holding himself upright just about, even though the pain was immensely distracting. "Really old man, you giving up already?" The confusion in Arthur's eyes turned into a horrid realization though as he only now noticed the way the earth around Dieter was shaking. Having started working on it as soon as Dieter had landed outside the collapsed Bulletin offices the ground around them now erupted into a mass of rubble and concrete slabs flying around in all directions tearing up everything within about a hundred meters of the pair. Even reinforcing his field as quickly as he could Arthur found himself being buffeted around like a pinball by the detonation, until amidst the dust and rubble he suddenly found Dieter just a few feet away from him in the air.

Dieter had known that the sudden explosion of the street wasn't likely enough to completely take down Arthur, but it had provided him the cover he'd needed to ride one particularly large slab that had been detonated upwards right towards the kid. Now that he'd finally closed the distance between them Dieter could finish this. Hands gripping the slab he was riding he jerked round the large concrete block aiming right at Arthur's side from near point blank range. With his own kinetic manipulation accelerating the slab and largely cancelling out Arthur's field the slab connected with Arthur hard. The slab broke apart as it collided with Arthur and some few bits of his shield that weren't being nullified shattering apart as Arthur's now limp body went flying through the air, bouncing off the cracked and broken road a good half dozen times before finally coming to a rest on the ground. Now unsupported himself and exhausted from his exertions Dieter also fell to the ground somewhat harder than he intended. For a few moments he just lay there on his hands and knees trying to recover his breath before climbing to his feet and slowly limping towards Arthur's body. Dieter noted that at least two of Arthur's limbs were bent at really unnatural angles although he did still seem to breathing and remarkably as their eyes met Dieter realized the kid was still somehow conscious and smiling at him...

Dieter fell to his knees suddenly more exhausted than he thought possible. His vision was blurry now, dark around the edges. His slowed down senses made it all excruciating as his body slipped quickly into unconsciousness, Dark Arthur's pained but delighted laughter ringing in his years for what must of seemed like hours before he finally blacked out from oxygen deprivation.

Like a puppet barely being held together, Arthur's body was lifted by his fielld into a somewhat unnatural standing position over Dieter's collapsed form, leaning forwards on to the thin field he'd erected around the old man a good ten feet or so around him in all directions. "Didn't see that one coming did you old man? Finding it a bit hard to breathe? Seems like your range is about only a foot or so from your body." Earlier, the moment Arthur had realized Dieter was beside him and more than 20ft in the air he'd generated a special bubble field around them both. Not kinetic in nature, but designed to prevent any oxygen entering it while allowing oxygen inside the bubble to filter out as the bubble moved. Dieter's strike had easily sent him well outside the bubble's range but as Dieter had fallen back to earth Arthur had kept the field with the old man. It had taken a little while but the human body needed oxygen and by now Arthur guessed the air inside the bubble field was less than 10% oxygen, more than enough to render him unconscious. In fact Arthur reckoned the old man would likely die in a few minutes.

Stop. Please stop, let him go. Isn't this enough? "Shut up you whiny little piss ant. He almost killed us, would've gotten your lousy weak self for sure." You've won though, you're killing him now. That isn't right. "I defended us, just like always. Now go back into whatever hole you crawled out of and I'll..." No! You can't just kill people. It isn't right, I am taking over. "Oh you think you can just..." ... get rid of me that easily? No! Wait, this was so much fun...

With a tortured cry Arthur collapsed to the floor, his eyes screwed shut in anguish and torment as the two sides of him struggled for control. When they opened, the pain from his wounds lingered terribly but the emptiness in his gaze was gone, replaced by a profound sadness as he examined the carnage around him. In the distance he vaguely heard sirens wailing as he stumbled painfully towards Dieter's body, the oxygen prison his darker self had erected long dissipated. Leaning over the old man Arthur breathed a deep exhausted sigh of relief to find him still alive if only barely. Carefully he extended his field over Dieter's body pressing it in around the numerous wounds he could see to prevent them from bleeding out. It was like this that a pair of rather confounded looking paramedics found Arthur and Dieter a few minutes later.

There was something disdainful and empty in Arthur's gaze, like an abyss existed just on the other side of those childish features of his. Dieter had met a lot of twisted minds in the circles he ran in, but it had been obvious from a just few moments of studying the boy that he'd found a real monster lurking here. Still that just meant he was more predictable in Dieter's eyes.

Dieter knew that the monster would not pass up the chance to play whatever game he craved. Monsters had their addictions; Dieter understood this. His own addiction was control and power. Thus, he immediately slowed his perceptions down and just in time, too, as he felt the molasses like flow of something into his aura of control. At his normal sense speeds, the field's growth would have been lightning fast and invisible. He grunted as he pushed it away with his own will and saw the boy's eyes widen just slightly as something, maybe the first thing ever, resisted his power.

Dark Arthur watched as the man stood there with his hands at his side and returned his gaze. Something was odd about the way his body and power seemed out of sync, almost like his mind and form operated at two separate speeds. Still, a contest of might appealed to his mentality. He resolved to push his field in around the man and render him immobile. As hard as he pushed though, the field around Dieter stayed locked in place. It was like trying to push his ability through peat moss. Whatever held it back flexed but did not budge. Still, the man was sweating and looked a bit red in the face from exertion even as Arthur was just getting warmed up.

"Whatever you are, old man, this is a young man's game. Why don't you just give in and let me have my way?" said Dark Arthur with a laugh.

You don't really want him to quit, sicko. You want him to struggle and resist as long as possible. You get off on it. Dark Arthur grinned as his inner self told the truth but the grin turned into a frown as something fluttered up then slid along his field. It was a scrap of cloth. His eyes searched for where it had come from and found the old man's shoes in tatters even as the old man did a weird stutter jump thing to step off the soles of his once very fancy leather shoes. The scraps of leather, two rubber soles, and the cotton cloth of his socks now fluttered around inside the small cage Arthur had the man in. But they didn't flutter aimlessly, like leaves on the wind. They moved with purpose, speed, and precision. They were circumventing the "globe" of his shield. No! He had already shut out everything from getting through the shield, even air! What was this old man doing?

Dieter's experiment determined that nothing was crossing the barrier and that it was not composed of matter or energy. Matter he could deal with, energy he could find familiar ways around. No, this shield was something else entirely as substances went. Dieter did not like that as it forced him to reevaluate what he knew of physics. Air was not flowing inside the cage he found himself in, or at least not flowing into the small area his ability kept for him. Air was only entering the through the several small holes in the floor Dieter drilled with the buttons on his shirt sleeves. He was exerting himself; doing so many things in so little time took considerable concentration from even him. He had almost enough information now, he just needed one final piece. He slowly raised a foot and brought it down hard on the floor.

Arthur watched as the old man stomped on the floor. Was he having a tantrum or something? The sound was wrong, it didn't sound like a stomp. His mind caught up to his ears a second later. It wasn't a stomp, it was more like an earthquake! Suddenly, the floor tore itself to pieces. It went from solid wood and concrete to suddenly rippling like stirred pudding and breaking up like scrambled eggs. Then the whole bit of floor dropped along with the man. Arthur had not thought to shield below the floor, who could have gotten through it? He chided himself even as he clapped the shield over the top of the hole to keep the man from popping back up through it and approached him. He looked down through it into the eyes of his adversary, which were glaring up at him.

Dieter had caught the broken ends of two pipes as he fell through the hole and was hanging there. His senses had felt the shield clap down over the hole and he applauded the kid for having some acumen. The wait for the kid's face to appear over the hole felt like an eternity. But as he waited, he devised another test: he believed that the kid's field was only as strong as his mind. It wasn't like steel or electricity which had its own strength independent of what generated it, but was dependent upon the boy for its potency. That was his hypothesis, anyway.

As the kid looked down, Dieter inhaled sharply which caused the buttons on his shirt to move toward the hole. Dieter accelerated so that three of the small, plastic discs shot up at the boy's face as fast as a bullet. Dieter knew that they were not enough, so he slowed his perceptions down to 1/100th normal and watched even these projectiles move something like regular speed. They ricocheted off the field and Dieter redirected them at it again, accelerating them to incredible speed and drilling them into the orb again and again and again. As they struck the exact same place over and over again, they slowly deformed and warped the spots they hit. The force they were exerting, however, was warping them and liquifying them. Dieter had to hold them together with his will as they battered the shield.

Arthur had fast reactions for anyone, that was given, but as he looked down something began to pound at his shield like nothing ever had before. The force was incredible, but his shield held for a second, two seconds, and then he growled in pain as it broke. It was like having a freight train batter against his mind! He reeled back and staggered, a trickle of blood coming out his ear. While his head was pounding away, he looked up at his opponent who wasn't grinning, smiling, or reacting at all. His face was just a calm pool of milk with two flecks of ice for eyes.

"Neat trick, old man." His opponent still didn't speak. Arthur had never had his field resisted in this way and the experience excited him. He couldn't help the devilish grin that cracked across his face. This is going to be oh so fascinating."

Dieter found words to be futile, useless, meaningless thing in a fight anyway; so even if he had been able to talk with his perceptions so skewed from reality, he wouldn't have. He could see through that this kid had never fought another monster like him. His silence and calmness frustrated the kid, who was used to rage and panic in the face of his power. Dieter noted the weakness as he took a glacier slow step toward the boy and felt the shield slam back into place. Dieter smiled and threw two bits of concrete he had pulled from the hole at the shield and repeated his trick from before. When the shield broke, though, only one piece could be redirected at the boy and the other shot off into a wall, slicing a hole through it like a laser. The other piece winged Arthur's shoulder and left a trail of blood oozing down his skin. Dieter noticed that the kid was not liking a real match as much as he might have though he would. None of the fun or control of winning and torturing your opponent existed yet, just the desperate, animalistic desire to win.

Not so much fun now, eh? Not so much fun when you're the one fighting for your life! This is what you put people through, my friend. This is what you do... It must stop. Arthur tamped down his good half and put a hand to the wound. True, this was not what he had expected/ His blood was pumping and his vision getting red at the edges. He stood straight and sent a wave like shield out from him.

Dieter felt it coming and braced, setting his palms against the pulse like shield and letting it push him back. He slowed it as best he could and felt the part pushing him bulge in even as he was shoved back against the room's wall. He grunted and raised a foot to place it against the wall and sent his aura into the sheetrock, wood, and metal, tearing it apart and sending chunks of it spiraling off into the newsroom. The fight was desperate and dangerous now, but only for everyone around them. Arthur had become more aggressive, trying to flatten and crush Dieter against the wall, knowing that he could not stop him from using whatever trick that let him pummel through the shield.

Few of the old man's attacks were well aimed after they broke his shield, but each attack that came through was a kill shot waiting to happen. Conversely, Dieter had to work harder and harder to keep the shield away from him. He, too, was growing more and more tired as the amount of concentration his abilities required from him was mammoth and exhausting. Desks flew like 500 lb torpedoes, sheets of paper sliced through the air like shuriken, pencils and pens were more dangerous than bullets as the two men used their environment, tore it apart, and flung it at one another. The Nevada Bulletin building was slowly turned inside out almost literally and civilian casualties rose with each moment as the two titans collided again and again.

A clod of dust, glass, and office debris shot out of a window and rocketed toward the ground only to seem to slow and then alight, feather soft, on the street. Dieter grunted and stood, letting his perceptions speed up a bit as he dusted himself off and watched the kid ride one of his shields down to the street. He mentally inventoried his body's damage and found cracked ribs, several lacerations, copious hematomas, and what he suspected to be severe exhaustion setting in. The kid was in no better shape. An arm hung at his side after a lucky strike with a flung computer monitor had broken the shoulder joint, he limped on his left leg due to a massive laceration across the calf, and one side of his face was swollen shut from where a seat cushion had struck it at 100mph. Dieter reached over his shoulder and felt around until her grasped something soft and pulled the straw from the flesh of his shoulder. He regarded it curiously, then looked at the kid and spoke for the first time in the fight.

"You're good kid... but, you are 50 years too early to beat me."

Arthur grinned and shook his head. It had been a hard lesson, but he had Dieter's ranges figured out now. The man was potently dangerous at about five feet but beyond that, whatever trick he used to break Arthur's shield was piss-poor inaccurate. He grinned as he felt the feeling of triumph and the anticipation of the aftermath rising.

"Whatever, old man, don't cry when I wear your face like a hat." Suddenly, the street itself rumbled and buckled and Arthur glanced down at it, then up at Dieter as his eyes went wide as saucers. Between the violent storm of chaos and the blood that soaked his skin, he had forgotten the old man's trick!

Dieter had been building the vibrations the second he had impacted the street. In the office building, the floors had been piecemeal; each made up of hundred of separate pieces which his ability had difficulties with. The road was one solid piece for the most part. Finally, the vibrations were mounting to something noticeable, but noticeable to others was minutes too slow against Dieter. The road under the kid erupted like a geyser of shrapnel. To his credit, Dieter saw maybe 80% of the rubble bouncing off of the kid's instinctual defenses but that 20% that got through spun around the inside of the boy's battered shield like a tornado, exploded against the kid's body, and threw his limbs into unnatural poses that must've snapped his bones into piles of calcium-rich debris.

A coughing Dieter moved toward the kid, but stopped and stared as the boy rose. His mouth was agape with curiosity, amusement, and (though he'd never admit it) a miniscule amount of fear as Arthur stood, looking like a puppet barely being held together. Suddenly, Dieter found himself gasping. His eyes scanned the space around his body as he hunted around for breathable air. Nothing, nothing, nothing! He slowed his breath as best he could, but he was drowning in exhaustion.

"Didn't see that one coming did you old man? Finding it a bit hard to breathe? Seems like your range is about only a foot or so from your body." A few moments ago, when a barely conscious Arthur had realized Dieter was approaching him, he'd generated a special bubble field around his enemy. It wasn't kinetic in nature, but designed to prevent any oxygen entering it while allowing oxygen inside the bubble to filter out as the bubble moved. Dieter fell to his knees.

Stop. Please stop, let him go. Isn't this enough? asked Arthur's good side.

"Shut up you whiny little pissant. He almost killed us, would've gotten your lousy weak self for sure."

You've won though, you're killing him now. That isn't right.

"I defended us, just like always. Now go back into whatever hole you crawled out of and I'll..."

WHAM! One last column of road beneath Arthur punched itself through the bottom of his weakened shield, tossing him up into the air.

The boy fell to the ground with a massive THUD that was only somewhat quieted by the remains of his shield.

Unbeknownst to Arthur, Dieter had noticed the boy's shield weakening while his two halves were arguing away. Dieter cracked his neck and took a deep, contented breath of fresh air as he sized up the unconscious Arthur.

"First lesson of combat, boy. When given an opportunity, take it. You won't get another chance.

Dieter frowned when he heard the distinct sound of approaching sirens. The battle had seemed like hours to him, but it had to have been only minutes long in reality. Enough time for terrified 911 calls to summon the LVPD. He looked to the form of his defeated foe and shrugged as he brought his perceptions up to speed. He regarded the office building and sighed as he considered the files. He would need to gamble. He approached it and used his hands to strike it and begin the process. A few seconds later, the whole building began to shake, then tremble, and finally collapsed.

Dieter waited a second to examine the smoke coming up from the rubble. He continued staring until he saw a flame peeking out from under the rubble and then made for his car and home. In his rear view mirror, he noted the still supine body of his defeated opponent as a silhouette against the inferno that had been the Nevada Bulletin. He finally allowed his face to crack a smile as he reached up to the visor and took a pair of sunglasses down and slippe onto his face. That kid was interesting, no need for him to die just yet...
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:50, Mon 08 June 2015.

Dieter turned the wheel and the car rolled smoothly onto Las Vegas Boulevard and toward his building even as he reached into the seat next to him and grabbed his one button phone and put it to his ear. He spoke a coded phrase or two and then listened to some messages about the Chicago operations before finally speaking, "Update, Log# 23; situation limbo status, monitoring. 36 hour protocol suspended. Major player on hold, not closed. Recommendation: Hyde Protocol." He then hung the phone up even as he pulled into his private garage at the casino and stepped from his car. His aide met him with a briefcase and a clothing bag. His own current outfit was torn to shreds. The man glanced at where his expensive shoes were missing and Dieter clucked his tongue. The shoes had been comfortable and expensive.

"No worries, Alvin, not a complete loss. Bring me a standard material investment plan. I want one of our contractors on the cleanup for the Bulletin building and the man found unconscious outside it diverted University Medical Center and given the absolute best care. Hmm, also, leak some footage of the brawl to the media but only images of the boy. Oh, and call my personal physician." The mans curried off and Dieter moved into his office, then his personal bathroom where he stripped and stepped into a very, very hot shower. He let his senses move at normal speed and relished the relaxation of it.

When he emerged into his office again, there was a sheaf of papers on his desk and he smiled as he reviewed the plan. He logged onto the internet and watched a half dozen youtube videos all featuring Arthur's fight against an unknown and unseeable opponent. Dieter grinned as he read a few of the comments, some of them seeded by his organization, about the boy being "badass." Dieter agreed. He had rarely been so personally taxed in a fight.

He felt his injuries twinge and put stress on his ability to stabilize them and sighed as he stood and moved to his personal suite where his personal doctor waited to treat him.

---

Arthur would awaken in a bed in a private room hooked up to the best medicine money could buy. On the little table in front of him would be a business envelope and a letter. On the table by the bed were several elaborate flower arrangement from various Las Vegas agents and promoters. The letter read very simply:

Dear Arthur,

I saw your fight on the internet. Quite impressive. I used to represent Monolith, but he has lost his contract recently. I was wondering if you mgiht want to take his place in the theater? Five shows a week for $20,000 a show? The details are in the package.

Sincerely,
Alvin Meadows

The envelope contained a contract for the proposed show, the blue prints for a stage, and the details of the theater to perform in. The details of the show were left vague and dependent upon what Arthur would want to do. Based on his injuries thoguh, he has some serious time to consider the matter. Alvin Meadows was a show promoter and talent agent of some repute in Vegas. He had represented the popular show staring Monolith the Undefeatable, who had lost last week finally.

Janice was determined. No more settling for sh#tty grimy strip clubs. She was coming to Vegas to make it big. Of course she would have to start small, but she knew she could wow any crowd. Her looks alone made it easy for her to get starting gigs. Parts in topless reviews or in skimpy Vegas show girl outfits.  The hard part was getting something where she could stand out from the cast. No uses making an audience feel amazing during a show where she would not get the credit.  But she could influence casting directors too..  It was not long before she had her first leading role and she made the most of it.

Every performance, every night, she left the crowd exhausted and amazed. She was playing down the lust aspect this time, going instead for awe and wonder, trying to attract a larger, more mainstream crowd. As her reputation grew she got offers and started to play the strip, always refusing the very large venues where her abilities might not reach everyone in attendance and always refusing to sign anything long term.  She knew her star was rising and she was not going to stop till she reached the top.

Much to her surprise, Syndie had been offered a guest spot in Zumanity for a week's productions. A nice paycheck, no commitment, and a spot in a high profile production without being in the limelight herself. The theater was perfect proportions for her tricks and the show matched her current tastes, oozing sexuality but not raw sex. It was exhausting work and the Cirque performers were exacting perfectionists.

On the fist day, she was made aware that the theater and Cirque had been in trouble once the Gifted shows started to take over Vegas, but some mysterious investor and his organization had bought in and revamped the show. They even had a few gifted performers of their own now, in the main Cirque act on the Strip and here. Each night she performed, she noted the darkened box that was always reserved for this patron but never occupied. She was told that, occasionally, a guest would sit there, but the true patron had never been seen. Never-the-less, each night, a large arrangement of flowers arrived for the performers congratulating them on their work. The second to last night of her run, an additional arrangement of tiger lilies arrived just for Syndie with a card in a distinct, angular cursive handwriting, Your talents are quite noteworthy.

The small stage was now doing quite well and the manager of the production was ecstatic with the uptick in attendance that came with Syndie's addition for the limited run. Thus, it was with some bemusement when Sandy came into her dressing room before the last show of her run with a strange, worried look on his face. Syndie could feel his nerves and worry spiking violently as he passed her a note written on Casino stationary. One of the big casinos on the strip; the note simply said I am watching; impress me in the same cursive script and was signed with a black eye of Ra. "Dear, the lights are on in the patron's box! He's here!"

Out of curiosity, would you like to treat her performance as a battle post? Write what she performs, I will counter; we'll see how thoroughly affected Dieter is by her "spells."

Yes! This was her chance... Raw nerves, giddy excitement, finally she was feeling something! something her own. Before going on Janice tried to  reached the tongue of her mind  out to the black box. Trying to lick the emotions of the soul within...

Nothing!

She tried again, but again could read absolutely nothing of the dark occupant. Fear slowly crept up her spine.. She had never failed to read someone before. And now the music was playing... her cue! She had almost missed her cue! Janice leapt to the stage, nearly a half beat off her routine, but her training took over and her body did what her confused mind momentarily could not do.. it moved.

As she swam though her routine Janice's nervousness infected her motion, her grinds where filled with unsureness, her every sexy revelation of skin betrayed vulnerability.  This was not the act... She was no longer stripping her body for the crowd, she was stripping her soul for the dark box.

As her routine waxed her act changed from a strip tease to an offering. The crowd was no longer witnessing a hardened professional displaying her her toned and sexy body, they were seeing a young girl slowly showing herself for the first time to her first lover, shy and fragile. Janice took and slowly amplified the glimmering emotions of sympathy towards her, the recognition from men and women in the crowd old enough to be her parents of how young she was, how lost and alone she seemed.  From those in the audience who remembered how desperate it was to be nineteen years old, offering oneself for the first time to another just for the hope of acceptance, a thin chance to be loved in return.

Joyous crying; the kind of crying one does when witnessing the greatest of romantic scenes touches every face as Janice finishes her last step. The applause slowly builds as people belatedly realized the act is over. Everyone rises; but for some a mere standing ovation is not enough, men and women cry out, professing their adoration towards her, some take to the aisles and try to rush the stage as momentarily dazed security guards hold them back. Couples kiss and exchange love vows in the seats, no less than 3 marriage proposals are made and accepted on the spot, dozens of new relationships are forged some of which will last a life time.


Yet naked and alone, Janice stands on the stage, breathing deeply, sweating from her exertion. She is perfectly still amidst the madding crowd, not sparing a moment's notice for anything but the black box directly before and above her. Presenting herself... as an offering... just for the hope of acceptance, a thin chance to be loved.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:28, Sat 20 June 2015.

Dieter sat in his box and kept his senses at a slightly slowed pace. Even as the performance began, he felt his emotions ripple and flux. But, as with all of his mental functionality, his mind would be moving out of sync with the world, and this often caused severe issues for those who tried to affect it. It was possible, if they altered their tactic or were prepared for his nature, but not for this woman.

From Janice's perspective, it would be as if people were normally like glasses of water that she could control: empty, fill, manipulate. But this person was like jello, thick and hard to move.

Dieter watched as she spiraled into some kind of needy, visceral display and noted with amusement how utterly like putty the audience was to her. The show was nothing short of a strip tease, which was not what Zumanity was known for, but no one watching cared. Everyone in the room might as well as had cupid's literal arrow through their hearts. Dieter was quite impressed, the talent was far more potent than he had been led to believe by the analyses. He had, of course, sent readings and recording of her shows to Ohio for analysis. But this was truly spectacular.

Dieter mused and concluded that he must also be affected by her abilities at a much reduced level.

After the show was done, Syndie received a summons to the private box. As she entered, Dieter was reclined in a chair wearing his normal black suit with a lime green tie. His emotions were still like jello to her as he watched her with eyes unaffected by her manipulations, "So, when was the last time your fate was in the hands of someone you could not manipulate?" His voice was sluggish and warped as he kept his senses out of sync from reality as far as he could and still interact somewhat normally. It would not be good for her to get a grip on him.

[Non Cannon Battle Post]


Janice entered the room slowly. Timidly, like a fawn, she approached the seated man. Slowly she extended her 'tongue' to lick at Dieters soul. Now that he could see him in the flesh Janice had more success than when trying to read his resistant self through a one way mirror.  At first all she could taste were tiny bursts of flavor... caution being the most predominant. But still, even beneath his twin shells of gifted shielding and his mental resolve their was more. Something so powerful, so elemental to his being that noting could mask it...

A hard core of molten emotion spins within him, like the center of the earth beneath a cold crust of rock. Something he carries with him every single day of his life, a feeling that would crush a lesser man, send him to drink or to suicide. Yet this dark core drives him and defines him. A loss...  a hole so huge in his heart that it threatens to take his very humanity with it.

Dieter spends so much of this life trying to hide his pain, from others lest he been seen as weak, so much of his energy repressing his pain from himself lest it consume him that it has grown into a cancer. His calm is all show, his rationality and his logic merely the thin cool crust of his being, beneath it all lies a seething volcano of rage.

It was the most delicious soul she had ever tasted. Better than sex, better than coke, better than Jack Daniels, this seething, terrifying man pushed all her buttons at the same time. Janice's addictive personality was instantly hooked on him right from the very first hit.

She dared not try to move him with gross manipulations, his gift and his caution were far to strong for that, but she could try, slowly try, if she could only stay in his presence long enough to ever so subtly place herself at the core of his loss, the eye of his hurricane of anger. If she could just stay with him long enough he would come to care for her, eventually to love her. And they could be together for ever....


"I have been this way since I was sixteen... I've never.. ever meet anyone like you."

Janice made a feint for Dieters emotions because she knew that would be expected, a pull on his lust as she opened her robe to reveal her body to him...

[OOC] Basically I see Dieter as being a bit to confidant in his 'Jello' defense as far as masking his core emotions. The emotions Dieter have are HUGE and repressed to the boiling point. Like all people who refuse to process loss Dieter spends enormous energy trying to hid his feelings from himself  and thus he thinks he has much more control over them than he actually has. (this is common for A type personalities). So is my OOC battle post... To see if she can penetrate his defenses and convince him that her 'lust attack' is her genuine attempt to manipulate him when in fact she is placing a far more subtle, slow and long term attachment to him based on his unprocessed and metastasized feelings over the loss of his family.[OOC]
This message was last edited by the player at 19:08, Sun 21 June 2015.

Dieter had waited for her to make her move as he slowly let his emotions play out. Many often misunderstood Dieter; many thought he was an emotionless icy man, but to think that was to misunderstand what emotions were. Instinctive reactions to external stimuli. Emotions were the vestiges of human instinct evolved over millions of years. Dieter never fooled himself into thinking that he was in control of them, but he was in control of what they could make him do. This was the source of his indomitable willpower. This was what made him a monster.

As Janice's sense connected with Dieter's outer most layer of emotions, she was struck y how different he was immediately. Most men and women at her shows were emotionally simple if not the least because they had come to see a burlesque show. Lust was dominant, forward, and easily controlled.

Dieter watched in slow motion as her robe shrugged off. Long before any of her flesh exposed itself to him, he knew what was coming. This was the beginning of Syndie's play for control of him. Rather that try and convince himself that she was not a beautiful creature or that he did not possess physical lust for her, her let it play out. He slowed himself down even further, 1/20th speed, and let the lust weave in to the symphony that was his emotional surface.

Syndie's senses were on edge, this man was not her usual mark, and she had to be ready to catch and expand those notes of lust she expected. But they flew past. Either he was not that attracted to her or something else was a factor, for his lust for her was a constant note in his emotional song but it was so fast she could barely taste it before it was past. And though with each pass she touched it for a second and expanded it, the process was slow.

Dieter felt his lust for her growing and assumed it was her doing, not that he minded. IF this all ended with them rutting like animals, he was not opposed. Still, his icy calm surface was in fact the illusion that Syndie expected, but Dieter also knew this. His calm was not a product of lack of emotion but of it remaining at a constant simmer. It was like a lake boiling just below the surface. Beneath that, Dieter's core lay like a writhing, ravenous wyrm hungry for everything it could reach. Dieter's rage was magnificent to behold; like witnessing a dragon of old. It coiled and writhed and snarled and beheld her with deep, black eyes. It would consume her as well if she let it; but she also knew that this was just a manifestation of his true self.

Dieter was aware that some men were born monsters like him: sociopaths. Dieter was very frank about being no such thing. Dieter had been a very normal person before if a little overly analytical. He had love his wife and children deeply and truly. Their being taken from him had been the first blow; the impotency of the world to make him feel better about it struck many more blows, and the final blow had been awakening to his own powers. Dieter had not become a monster until that very night he had killed the Gifted who had killed his family. Dieter had chosen to emotionally wound and scar himself deeply and terribly. The only way to make yourself never feel such loss again was to make yourself incapable of it. But, that had been his folly. At his deepest core, Syndie encoutered such a towering complex emotion that she at first could not recognize. It was bitter and acrid against her tongue but sweet and soothing as well.

There, swimming beneath the rage that seemed to whip around her at light speed, Syndie saw that Dieter hated himself only as much as he loved himself. This man loved to hate himself; he reveled in emotionally abusing himself. There was no being he hated more than himself and he truly enjoyed making himself suffer deeply.

Still, all this information was gained by weathering a storm; Dieter's soul, if that word applied, was a rotten, black hurricane where emotions flew by her at the mental equivalent of the speed of sound. It was like withstanding a F5 storm that battered at her. The symphony was a riotous cacophony and it was hard for her to single out anything consistently except hate and rage and love in some twisted dance.

Dieter felt his lust for this woman rising but where most men had just a few seconds to think about this fact and respond, Dieter had minutes to feel what was happening and react to that itself. He was being manipulated, but he wasn't certain that mattered; he didn't know what this woman wanted, but that mattered only a little; and he knew what potential she had. He felt something more potent than lust curling deep inside him now and that was not welcome. That was an emotion he constantly flogged himself for; the one thing he detested in himself most and wished to excise: the ability to love someone. It was vulnerability and he hated it, but he also knew he could not stop it.

Slowly, like moving through molasses, Dieter stood from his chair. The new position revealed the strident affect Syndie was having on him as he crossed the room. His dark eyes were locked on her eyes, not her form. Slowly, he raised a hand and gripped her chin, "You have potential. Yes, great potential. Allow me to reveal a secret to you. I always kill the things I love. I make it a policy. It is ironclad, immutable, and even you will not stop it from happening. If you make me love you; you will die by my hands. However, if you wanted something less than that... a deal could be made." Dieter leaned in and pressed his mouth over hers in a moment of fiery passion.

Janice was, though, currently in the violent throws of her own emotional storm as this man stoked fires in her that none had or could. Surely, she could make him change his mind about killing her? Wasn't that the ultimate goal of her ability; wasn't it her destiny to find someone to grip to; didn't all strippers have issues with male rolemodels? "You say that now, but could you kill what you love?"

She could feel his emotions were less chaotic, less speedy, and more controllable now. Whatever ability he had that resisted her influence was slackening. Dieter looked her in the eye and shook his head, "I wouldn't have a choice in the matter. I would make the choice and even if I could not make myself do it, it would happen. I will repeat myself. Choose now and accept the consequences. You can have my love for a time and die or you can accept what I can offer and be content." Syndie didn't even hesitate to pull the strings which focused this man's towering love focus on her.

Dieter smiled at her beatifically and gathered her to him even as his mind, somewhere deep inside, knew that it was doomed. A hour later, Syndie was left on the floor of the room panting as Dieter dressed and left. She could feel the love she had created in him no longer the inferno but a smoldering bed of coals to warm her as she desired. He had given her a keycard for a room at his casino and had warned her once again to leave him if she knew what was good for herself. His emotions were still complicated and dense, his willpower was absolute, and his core was still that self-flagellating hate/love, but he was hers on some level as long as she kept him. Of course, he would never be under her spell completely and maybe that was the source of the attraction for her as well; a man who loved her at some level not because of waht she did but who she was.

Janice entered the room timidly, like a fawn. She approached the seated man, slowly extending her mind's 'tongue' to lick at Dieters soul. Now that she could see him in the flesh, Janice had more success than when trying to read his resistant self through a one way mirror.  At first all she could taste were tiny bursts of flavor... caution being the most predominant. But still, even beneath his twin shells of gifted shielding and his mental resolve their was more. Something so powerful, so elemental to his being that nothing could mask it...

Dieter was aware that some men were born monsters like him: sociopaths. Dieter was very frank about being no such thing. Dieter had been a very normal person before if a little overly analytical. He had love his wife and children deeply and truly. Their being taken from him had been the first blow; the impotency of the world to make him feel better about it struck many more blows, and the final blow had been awakening to his own powers. Dieter had not become a monster until that very night he had killed the Gifted who had killed his family. Dieter had chosen to emotionally wound and scar himself deeply and terribly. The only way to make yourself never feel such loss again was to make yourself incapable of it. But, that had been his folly. At his deepest core, Syndie encountered such a towering complex emotion that she at first could not recognize. It was bitter and acrid against her tongue but sweet and soothing as well.

There, swimming beneath the rage that seemed to whip around her at light speed, Syndie saw that Dieter hated himself only as much as he loved himself. This man loved to hate himself; he reveled in emotionally abusing himself. There was no being he hated more than himself, and he truly enjoyed making himself suffer deeply.

Still, all this information was gained by weathering a storm; Dieter's soul, if that word applied, was a rotten, black hurricane where emotions flew by her at the mental equivalent of the speed of sound. It was like withstanding a F5 storm that battered at her. The symphony was a riotous cacophony and it was hard for her to single out anything consistently except hate and rage and love in some twisted dance.

Dieter spent so much of this life trying to hide his true nature from others lest he been seen as weak, so much of his energy lashing pain onto himself in self perceived deserved torment. His icy calm surface was in fact the illusion that Syndie expected, but Dieter also knew this. His calm was not a product of lack of emotion, but of it remaining at a constant simmer. It was like a lake boiling just below the surface. Beneath that, Dieter's core lay like a writhing, ravenous wyrm hungry for everything it could reach. Dieter's rage was magnificent to behold; like witnessing a dragon of old. It coiled and writhed and snarled and beheld her with deep, black eyes. It would consume her as well if she let it; but she also knew that this was just a manifestation of his real self.

It was the most delicious soul she had ever tasted. Better than sex, better than coke, better than Jack Daniels, this seething, terrifying man pushed all her buttons at the same time. Janice's addictive personality was instantly hooked on him right from the very first hit.

She dared not try to move him with gross manipulations, his gift and his caution were far to strong for that; but she could try, slowly try, if she could only stay in his presence long enough to ever so subtly place herself at the eye of his hurricane of anger. If she could just stay with him long enough he would come to care for her, eventually to love her. And they could be together for ever....

Janice made a pull on Dieter's lust as she opened her robe to present herself... as an offering... just for the hope of acceptance, a thin chance to be loved.

He felt something more potent than lust curling deep inside him now and that was not welcome. That was an emotion he constantly flogged himself for; the one thing he detested in himself most and wished to excise: the ability to love someone. It was vulnerability and he hated it, but he also knew he could not stop it. Slowly, like moving through molasses, Dieter stood from his chair. The new position revealed the strident affect Syndie was having on him as he crossed the room. His dark eyes were locked on her eyes, not her form. Slowly, he raised a hand and gripped her chin;

""You have potential. Yes, great potential. Allow me to reveal a secret to you. I always kill the things I love. I make it a policy. It is ironclad, immutable, and even you will not stop it from happening. If you make me love you; you will die by my hands. However, if you wanted something less than that... a deal could be made."

Dieter leaned in and pressed his mouth over hers in a moment of fiery passion. Janice was, though, currently in the violent throws of her own emotional storm as this man stoked fires in her that none had or could. Surely, she could make him change his mind about killing her? Wasn't that the ultimate goal of her ability; wasn't it her destiny to find someone to grip to; didn't all strippers have issues with male role models?

"You say that now, but could you kill what you love? I have been this way since I was sixteen... I've never.. ever meet anyone like you. Your heart or my life, it's a gamble I'm willing to risk..."

She could feel his emotions were less chaotic, less speedy, and more controllable now. Whatever ability he had that resisted her influence was slackening. Dieter looked her in the eye and shook his head;

"It wouldn't be up to you, or even chance. I would make the choice and even if I could not make myself do it, it would happen. I will repeat myself; choose now and accept the consequences. You can have my love for a time and die, or you can accept what I can offer and be content."

Syndie didn't even hesitate to pull the strings which focused this man's towering love focus on her. Dieter smiled at her beatifically and gathered her to him even as his mind, somewhere deep inside, knew that it was doomed. A hour later, Syndie was left on the floor of the room panting as Dieter dressed and left. She could feel the love she had created in him, no longer the inferno it had started as but a smoldering bed of coals to warm her as she desired. He had given her a keycard for a room at his casino, and had warned her once again to leave him if she knew what was good for herself. His emotions were still complicated and dense, his willpower was absolute, and his core was still that self-flagellating hate/love, but he was hers on some level as long as she kept him. Of course, he would never be under her spell completely, and maybe that was the source of the attraction for her as well; a man who loved her at some level not because of what she did, but who she was.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:05, Fri 26 June 2015.

As Dieter thrust himself into her, Janice thrust her self into his soul, planting herself deep within him. After recovering from their love making on the floor of the viewing room Janice gathered up her robe and Dieters Key card. She went to her changing room and showered, rudely turning  any inquisitive emotions from her fellow performers and stage managers into trepidation, no one dared ask her any questions, not right now.

Janice threw on a flowing robe searched though her change room and found a razor blade.

Now Dieter was a part of her and she a part of him. It was time for Dieter to learn what that meant...

Janice threw out the tongue of her mind and tasted her paramours soul waiting, no doubt plotting, in his apartment.  With one swift stroke she slashed her arm from elbow to wrist, cutting deeply into her veins, making sure Dieter felt every single moment just as vividly as she did.

As her blood rushed out on the floor she put Dieters soul into the mouth of her mind and started to suck. Dieters life force into her, her life force bleeding out onto the floor the two of them locked in a mutual death spiral as she refused to let his life force heal her arm, only sustain her from loosing consciousness altogether. As the two of them neared death both clinging to the last sparks of life she finally allowed her arm to heal and fumbled for the house phone...

Her voice a cracked whisper as she slumped to the floor.

"Hello front desk, please get put me through to room 3231...

Dieter, my love... I'm sorry but you were the one who needed to see... to feel.. to know.. we are one now my love, my life is yours and yours is mine... Hurting me hurts you and hurting you hurts me and when one of us ends so will the other... Tell me what you want me to do my sweet, I am yours now and forever just as you are mine."

As Janice spoke she reached out to the souls all around her and started to draw life force fractionally from the thousands of people in the hotel within 100 yards of her. Making her stronger, faster more durable, hundreds of times stronger than a normal person, just in case Dieter decided to act rashly....

[OOC] Dieter let me know if you want this to be another non cannon battle post. Janice does not need los for her powers, and she has exceptional range with souls she knows intimately. She is indeed lying to Dieter that her death will cause his, but the illusion should be near perfect as she can perfectly protect her suicide attempt and tie it to her bio drain of him. [/OOC]
This message was last edited by the player at 13:59, Fri 26 June 2015.

Dieter had made it back to his study and was siting in his office when a call was transferred in from his private quarters. He listened as she spoke and let the wave of nausea and pain flow over him. His arm was afire and it felt like something was scrabbling at his spine from within his gut. The pain was excruciating, it was terrifying, and it was exquisite. It was nothing compared to the emotional and psychological torment that washed over him as he set the phone down. He had felt a surge of something just at the end as well.

He wallowed in the sensations for a while, enjoying the luxury of allowing his emotions a bit of free reign. Eventually, that freedom would end. Janice was gravely, gravely mistaken if she thought his death would stop hers. His eyes moved slowly, almost preciently to his more secure phone as it did the impossible. The phone was set up to send calls only; it could only receive calls if it was acivated by his boss. So, that it rang meant his boss was calling and that mant only one thing could be true. The organization was threatened directly somehow. He hesitated for a few moments then answered, "Sir? Yes, sir. Confirmed: Update log #1, Lillith has landed in Las Vegas. Yes. Yes. Yes. I understand. It is not a threat yet. No. Yes. No. Weekly, sir. No. Affirmative. Eros protocols confimed. Opening Log #1980, codename Syndie."

Dieter hung up the phone and sighed and got up. He walked slowly toward yhe alartment he had set up for their shared use and left the waves of anguish and pain roll over him. Her range was impressive and if she was mo itlring him, she would sense that he felt he had betrayed her. His love for her was as potent as any emotion Dieter could feel, but it had not stopped him of course. The part of him that hated and loved himself was still his core and his love for her wrestled with that but found only eaual footing, which many his habits and he protocols the organization had put in place overrules the love. Besides, what more exquisite torture existed than betraying a loved one?

He puttered around the apartment enjoying a high ball and telaxing as he considered the situation. Her range was large and her a ility to control him potent now that she had access. He kept his perceptions fialed way down to interfere az much as possible with her meddling and sent off several itreversible orders. Eros protocols were rare but iron lad from on high.

Janice was panicked.

"He did not care! I led him the edge of death, made him believe my life was tied to his, made him LOVE ME, and still he did not care! I'm dead, I'm going to die! Dieter is going to kill me!"

Janice threw on her clothes and used her enhanced physical abilities to race out of the hotel, out of the strip and out of town, desperately trying to feel all the emotions of everyone around her trying to discern if anyone was trying to kill her (What does an assassin feel just before a kill? How could she be sure? Maybe a lack of emotion or hatred, or arousal for all she knew..)

Hitching a ride (she dare not take even a bus) was easy with her powers, as was mooching hand outs and meals from strangers. Begging and few dollars for some cheap hair dye. The news was full of events in Chicago. Mayor kidnapped, hundreds killed. Maybe if she could meet another gifted, someone with real power who could protect her. It was all she could think of doing. That and trying every day not to reach out and taste him, like a junky refusing a fix. Dieter on her mind, every second of every hour like a syringe of purist heroin, just at her finger tips. She held out, she did not reach out to him again during the long road trip to Chicago. Yet she knew she would not last forever, she was hooked on him and one day soon she would not be able to resist.


------------------->

A small casino in Vegas. At one of the tables inside, a big-shot daddy's boy is boasting about his skills in Poker. No-one can beat me, I'm the champion, yadda yadda ya. Then a younger man steps out of the folks around the table. He's tall, at 6 clear feet, dressed in a black Armani suit, black shirt, black tie, even a black beret on his head. He looks like a Borderlands 2 character, tall, bony, and wrapped in muscle. Like a chicken leg. Weird analogy, sure, but it was scary to the men and hot to the women. He sits down across from him and sets down a tray of chips, totaling at about ten thousand dollars. It's easy to see he's been watching, waiting for a moment. He looks up, and the casino lights seem dull compared to the pale flash of white that is his hair. His face is scarred all over, looking like he'd tortured with a belt sander. And tried to eat it. And succeeded. And then, gone back for seconds with the gears! His eyes look like the irises are full of blood, a vibrant red.

"You would not BELIEVE the week I've had." He says to a young lady in a sparkly blue dress, standing beside him. "Everywhere I go, people are in a hurry. Except Vegas. It's nice. People enjoying the moment." He smiles at her, flirtatiously. "You know what I mean?"

A cough from the man across the table makes him turn his head. While he was talking, the dealer had given them their hands. The younger man rolled his eyes. "How rude." He picked up his pocket cards and gave them a glance. His expression was actually bored. The man across from him said, just to make small talk as he put down the little blind, "So, who would you be?"

"Kane. Who wants to know?" His tone implied that he didn't actually have the shits to give, regarding his name. He tosses in the big blind.

The man frowns. "Alan, and my father owns this casino, so watch the mouth."

"Right." He says dully. "Can we get on with this? I have better people to steal from than you." He jokes, eliciting a laugh from the folks watching.

The dealer lays down a Jack, a 10, and an 8. Alan looks at his hand. A Jack and a 2. Looking good. "Call." He adds another $200.

Without checking his cards, Kane says. "Raise." and throws in $400. The players checked. The dealer lays out another Jack.

Alan's poker face was strained. He wanted to laugh right now. He had three of a kind. This was in the bag. "Call."

"Raise." Kane says again, doubling the bet again.

Alan could barely contain his smile. This idiot was trying to bluff him out. Not happening. "Check."

Kane nods. "Check." He sits back in his seat, his face devoid of any interest.

The final card dropped. It's a 9. Alan turns over his cards. "Three of a kind." He declares. "How about that?" The smug grin on his face is almost sickening.

Kane looks up and grins like a wolf, turning over a 7 and a 9.
"Straight. You lose, asshole." Kane remarks, scraping the chips over to his side.

Alan was dumbfounded. How did he START with a flush? "Nice trick," He says, recovering his arrogance. "But it won't happen again."

"How much you gonna bet on that?" Kane asked, tossing in the chips for the little blind.

"We'll see." Alan scoffs.

The dealer threw down the cards. Two aces. One 4. Alan looked at his cards. Two fours. That's a full house. "Raise."

Kane doesn't miss a beat. "Call." The fourth card hits. An Ace. Dear god.

Alan calls. Kane says slowly,
"ALL IN."

Alan's eyes widen. Why would he go all in unless...? No. He had the last ace? That would destroy him. He couldn't.

"Fold." He says. "Not dealing with that."

Kane smiles and turns his cards over and begins scraping the chips over. His hand had a two and a six.

The crowd bursts into laughter and mild applause.
"Oh my god!"
"Classic!"
"Nigga whut?"
"Bruh!"
Etc.

"You wanna keep going?" Kane teased. His face was lit with pleasure.

Alan gritted his teeth. "Yes." The cards were dealt. A Queen, nine and ten. Alan had a 6 and a 7. He relaxed.
The next card hit once they'd each checked. A king. He tensed again.
"All in."
"All in." Alan replied. It had to be another bluff.
Kane's head hung when he saw the last card. Alan's brain exploded into fireworks.
The last card that hit was a Jack.
Kane places his cards down. An ace and a Jack. They matched the suit of the king, queen and ten. Royal Flush of Spades.

Everyone started laughing, cheering, and screaming all at once.

"Alright, I'm going to get that in cash and go to my suite to plow the redhead."

The brunette girl in the blue dress widened her eyes. "How did you--?"

"Honey," Kane says, standing up with his chips, "I'm a foot taller than you and your roots are showing. Meet me at the Presidential, I'm going to go wash my hands."

The man stood and left the table. Alan fumed. He leaned over towards his disguised security men and gestured for them to follow.

***

In the bathroom, Alan and his bodyguards found him doing exactly what he said, washing his hands.

"Sorry kiddo." Alan said as he and his guards drew silenced guns. "but you're not walking off with my fifty grand. so you can hand the money to--"

Kane whirled around and a storm of silent bullets shredded his jacket. He stumbled back, about to fall.

But he didn't. He shifted his weight and stopped his collapse. "Whoa! Goddamn!" He shook his head and undid his jacket.

"What in the goddam--" Alan began.

Suddenly, Kane's eyes turned into colorless marbles and the room around them grew dark and cold, like a vacuum had formed around Kane. The veins that crawled up his neck and acros his hands darkened to pitch-black, and the three men felt a tug, as though a fishing line had yanked at their hearts. they fell to the floor, clawing at their bodies to find the source of it and remove the pain.

"it's over." Kane said, his voice echoing in their very souls as he dragged them from their bodies. "YOU. ARE. MINE!!" He crowed, and with that, the vortex stopped and the men dropped dead.

Kane smiled like a snake at the dead men. Suddenly, he sneezed, barely catching it in his hands.

"ACHOO! Oh, Goddammit, now I've got to wash these again!" He says. Funnily, he seemed to prioritize that over his destroyed blazer. Once he'd washed up, he stole the jacket off a bodyguard and left the washroom as it was, taking the elevator up to the Presidential suite.

He had better things to screw than a couple of lives.

In the Presidential Suite, Kane stepped out of the shower, drying his hair and bothering with nothing else. Every scar he had was polished like a knife, even reflecting a little of the light. Which was a surprise, considering he could see the dead girl in his shower. He felt a little giddy at the sight of it. He was pleased that he'd been able to mask the devouring of her soul with the rough, destructive sex they'd been having for the past 3 straight hours. She'd been dead for the last hour or so. He combed his hair around until it was its usual messy swirl, like a white version of his vortex. He flexed at himself and smiled at what he saw. Then he walked over to the giant, heart-shaped bed in the bedroom, the same size as the shower he was just in. He took the roughed up Kevlar jumpsuit he'd been wearing lately and slipped into it, slapping his fancier clothes on top of it. He'd had his break, it was time to start killing shit.

He made way for the elevator, leaving his beret on the girl's head.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:51, Wed 09 Sept 2015.

"This is not what I was expecting you guys to do." Kane admitted to the sixteen employees pointing guns at him. Around him, a set of hidden, steel security doors had dropped, everyone in the room except for the people who worked at the casino had moved to the opposite side of the enclosed space as him.

"I was legitimately expecting screaming and running." He twirled one of the kunai-like knives in his hands. "You think you're prepared for me," His arm comes up and she scratches the side of his head with the edge of one knife. It's so casual that they never see the other hand throw until one of the men drops his gun to clutch at the gaping slash in his jugular. That moment of distraction is all he needs.

Flipping a roulette table onto the one next to him, Kane lunged for the nearest other ones, slashing through one's chest and spinning a full 180 to shatter the other one's nose before finishing him with a stab through the eye. Taking his gun from him, Kane fired with expert aim at the next six of his enemies, nailing a skull or throat every time.

That's when the other 7 men started firing.

Bullets essentially rained on him, tearing through his jacket and pants repeatedly. One bullet hits directly in the side of his head, and blood sprays across the wall beside him as he drops like an anvil.

There's a few moments of silence. Then one of the men pulls out his phone and dials a number. "Hello?" He says, turning away. "Yes I'd like to report a..."

At that moment, Kane stood up, his spine convulsing wildly as, to the horror of the onlookers, every synapse in his brain rewove itself, every splinter of bone branched into more, repairing his skull in a moment, and the flesh bubbled like it was rotting, settling into a layer of fresh scar tissue. He turned to the and smiled, dropping his knife.

"You really. REALLY AREN'T." He says, reaching out to the remaining men and grabbing the nearest one. Every visible vein swelled and turned black on Kane's body, and black smoke began to swirl around him like a vortex, the man screaming as his body was separated from something incredibly vital, as though his heart was being torn from his chest in slow motion. His eyes rolled back and he hung limply from the end of Kane's arm, lifeless.

The man with the phone turned. His eyes widened. "Oh shit. Never mind, Call the ITSDA now, we have a--"

BANG!

The man's last gasp sounds like a maraca. He drops his phone and crumples to the floor like a puppet with it's strings cut. Kane's grin could split concrete as he throws the gun he took off of the man he was holding over his shoulder.

"You see, these walls didn't trap me in here with you..." He drops the man and the ground under his feet begins to smoke as he tore and shook the remainder of his blazer and shirt from his chest, the Kevlar suit becoming visible, which in turn revealed the prominent assortment of functional muscle he possessed.

"You're trapped here with me."

(OOC: How the ITSDA reacts, if at all, is up to y'all. Going dark.)
This message was last edited by the player at 17:13, Wed 16 Sept 2015.

In reply to Kane Isaiah Armani (msg # 41):

In a seedy motel on the outskirts of Southern Las Vegas, a small van pulled up and deposited 4 men and a woman, who promptly went into room 15 and shut and lucked the door. The blinds were closed, the curtains were drawn, and moments later, it looked exactly as it had before the van had pulled up. Inside the room, Squad 11 was sitting around looking uncomfortable. The Central Conditioning didn't seem to be working properly, and the temperature in their room was barely hovering around 85.

"Alright, what we've got so far." Said Squad Leader Harry Jung, who glanced around at his team. "Kane is here, in the South Point Hotel and Casino. He's been sealed in, and we've shut off all the amenities to the building. No power, water, heat, or conditioning. We don't know how long he'll be stuck, so this briefing is going to be short." He glanced at the lone woman, who was the only one not dressed in the ITSDA uniform, and nodded his head at her. She nodded back and stood up. "My name is Mary Cowan. I'm an attache to your Squad for this mission, in direct response to Kane's dangerous power. I do not work for ITSDA, but they have contracted me out for this mission. I have a personal vendetta against this man, and I'm more than happy to assist in either the capture, or the... neutralization of Kane." She sat back down and continued speaking. "My power is referred to as 'The Dollhouse.' Everyone in this room will remain here for the entirety of the mission. I, however, will create, in essence, dolls of yourself that you will control manually. The process can be complicated, but it's the only safe way allow you all to physically manifest anywhere near that man and survive the experience."

"These dolls are imperfect replicas, however. They have no thoughts or abilities of their own. Your Gifts will be copied over, but they won't always manifest in the same fashion. I don't understand the reasoning, but sometimes they're more powerful, and sometimes they're weaker. Sometimes they don't copy over at all. Sometimes you get Gifts that you didn't have before. The process seems to be random, even when repeated on the same individual multiple times. If these Dolls die, you will feel the pain. Kane's gift will be greatly weakened because only a small fragment of your... soul will be in the dolls, but he can still drain them. There is, however, no link between these dolls and your full soul. If the dolls die, or have their souls drained, you will lose some of your capabilities for a short time. The more powerful the original gift, the longer it will take for those parts of you to heal." She stopped talking, and stared around the room coldly. "Am I clear?"

The Squad echoed out "Yes Ma'am," and she stood up and walked around the lot of them, telling them to lie down and make themselves comfortable. A few minutes later, Squad 11 walked out of the Motel Room and the door was again closed and sealed. Another van pulled up and drove them to the Hotel and Casino that Kane was in. They arranged themselves in front of the front door after forcing all the other personnell that had shown up to leave the premises. After a moment passed, and some silent signals went between the Squad Leader and the local enforcement, the security sealing on the front door lifted, and the 4 men stood at the ready.

(OOC: Just a note, I'm changing Kane's text color.)

Non-Canon Battle Post

The room was silent, except 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 fell into a standing position immediately, using the knives to both disable his arms and hold him between himself and the other agents.
"Aggh!" David screamed, his arms locked in place by the blades. The three other soldiers whirled around to see Kane smile like a snake. "YOLO!" He whoops.

There's a brief period of silence at that, except for David's grunts of pain as the white-haired Gifted dragged him into a better position.

Flames swirled up from around Harry, lighting up the room better. Tyler choked audibly.
Every inch of the floor was soaked. And from the way red stains crawled up the soldiers shoes, it was obviously blood. There were innumerable corpses littering the floor and tables, some slashed up like a Friday the 13th extra, others mysteriously lifeless.

"You see that? That's exactly what I'm going to be doing to each of you in a moment."

Tyler suddenly blurred, appearing behind Kane, putting a gun to his head. "Alright, you sick bastard. Playtime's over."

Kane's knives tore through flesh and bone in one pull, shattering David's shoulder blades with ease as he jumped and kicked Tyler in the face. Both men fell, but the force of the kick sent Kane a few feet forward, where he landed and threw one of the knives backwards. It missed Tyler, based on the lack of death noises, but he was fine with that. He stepped forward and was immediately assaulted by a brief jet of flame from Harry.

Reeling from the pain, Kane dropped the other knife and fell to the ground. The flames seared him, but it wasn't life-threatening, not in the least. He turned back, skin crawling back across his face, and reached out, pure blackness crawling out of his veins as a vortex burst from his arm, grabbing hold of the squad's leader. The flames began to flicker and spread randomly across the carpet, creating a noxious smell as blood and fire and carpet melded. Standing back up, He grabbed the man by his throat and began to suck the life from him with relish.

Henry took a deep breath, slashing his hand through the air, and Kane's arm was gone. His vortex swirled to a stop and Harry fell to the floor, coughing and dry heaving.

Kane stared at the arm, feeling the pain, feeling that his arm truly was gone. and he seemed curious as to why it wasn't regrowing. He turned to look at Henry and growled. "You don't amuse me." He decided. "How about I kill you first, so your brother can watch as he bleeds?"

The illusion faded, 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 shifted over and tried to grab him, to pull Kane off, but it was no use. Henry Duvet crashed to the floor, cold and dead.

Kane felt a crack, and suddenly, his neck was in the wrong position. He dropped, unable to move.
"Ahh! Ow, owowow! What the hell, man? Kane's neck clicked back into position, taking several tries to do it properly, and he stood, massaging it. "Dick move, Tyler. Dick move." He looked at the remainder of the squad Both of them were standing between Kane and the bleeding lump on the floor. He grinned. "Fire and speed will hardly help you at this point. He points out to them.

Both men drew machine pistols.

"Oh, well that might." He admits, just before stepping aside, where he disappeared, seamlessly 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 placed his hand on the dying brother of Henry and reappeared as he sucked the last of David's life force away in a few moments. Then he walked up next to them 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 and get a hold of the handle. Without half looking, he fired off the whole clip at Tyler, who was too dazed to dodge properly, and ended up ramming into a table.

Suddenly, an immense pillar of flame tore through Kane, pinning him to the floor. The pain that washed over him was exquisite, in his mind. lashing out, the power he'd stolen from David triggered, and the flames stopped and reversed, drowning their user in their embrace. Kane's blackened body began to repair itself as the man was crushed by his own flames, his screams no louder than the whoosh of fire as he tried to force it away.

Sitting up, he turned to the last man alive, Tyler, and crawled over, grabbing him by the head as the very skin of his fingers peeled off, revealing fresh scales underneath that swelled with blood and muscle as his body refilled itself.

"Get off me, you monster!" Tyler screamed, properly terrified. the whoel 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 tortured their leader died out.

"Guess what?" Kane asked, his grin excessively wide, as his cheeks were gone.

"What?" Tyler asked, breathing heavy.

As the cold claw of Kane's vortex wrapped itself around him and tore the life from him, 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. And survive the experience. Fragments.

"Oh, you sonsabitches. You can't flim-flam the zim-zam!" Screwing up the willpower, Kane created an illusory bomb and guided it using David's ability, reversing the power of the Dollhouse to project the ability into the motel room, where it flooded everyone there with the pain of every injury Kane could remember, enough to make anyone go insane at the briefest feeling.
The bodies of the agents vanished as he felt it go off.

Then, knowing that while he couldn't find or kill them, he'd reduced a squad of agents optimized to try and kill him to madness, he was satisfied. He  picked his wallet ou of his wrecked suit and put on one of the staff's  spare suits, walking straight out of the building, where he found nobody to oppose him. He scoffed. "Smooth." He proceeded to hail a taxi and make his way where he was best.

Off the radar.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:09, Sun 20 Sept 2015.

In reply to Kane Isaiah Armani (msg # 43):

The room was silent, except 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.

The man he'd positioned himself over burst into a fireball the instant his blades cut through cloth and hit the flesh, and he was thrown against the wall with a sharp crack that resounded throughout the room. When he shook off the dizziness and the minor burns faded from the skin visible through the scraps of clothing, the other three individuals who had walked in had shifted into giant and strangely morbid Cheshire cat smiles. Except these weren't the mysterious smiles of a fading riddler, but the blood soaked teeth of a predator.

For a moment, there was nothing, but then Kane laughed and the smiles popped into a multicolored smear of light. "I didn't realize you ITSDA folks had a sense of humor!" He said, hopping to his feet. "I'll kill you quickly, since I think I like you." Three kunai came out of the smeared light, which was spreading rapidly to form an opaque wall between Kane and the Squad sent to capture him. He giggled madly as the holes ripped in his shoulder by the high force metal projectiles filled in, and then charged straight for the wall, stretching out his gift.

Strangely enough, a small section of the room ahead seemed to be... diffusing his gift. He could feel little sparks of life soaking out and being pulled towards him, but it was like sucking a soda threw a ripped straw, and extremely unsatisfying. On the other side of the wall, the Squad had grouped together around David as loosely as possible, but minus Tyler, who had thrown the kunai, they seemed to be doing nothing but watching as Kane slammed into the wall and burst through.

Kane had expected the wall to be fake, so when it provided a small amount of resistance before shattering inwards with the sound of tinkling glass, he tripped. He turned the fall into a fancy roll that impressed even the stoic squad, but when he came back to his feet, he stepped back in surprise as a squad of at least 20 soldiers stared him down with the barrels of his gun. His gift didn't seem to be doing anything to them though, so he immediately turned his attention towards the section of the room that was resisting the pull of his void.

As soon as Kane's gaze fell on his squad, Harry pointed his finger and launched a thin stream of fire which splashed against Kane and the floor around him, catching several of the already dead bodies alight but doing nothing to the illusions, which opened fire. The bullets, although barely having the hardness of glass, were being shot quickly enough to still tear into Kane, where they promptly exploded into shards. Within seconds, Kane looked like shredded beef. 15 of the fake shoulders melted into a small iron maiden.

Kane healed as best he could around the spikes that were shoved into places no sane man wanted spikes shoved, but the pain was very nearly debilitating, and he lost all grasp of his surroundings as he tried to maneuver around enough to keep any of the spikes from being lodged into his brain or spine.

The Squad approached quickly, readying a special sedative that had been found to have worked especially well on Frank Jackson. The giant hammer was unwieldy, but it was a little difficult to keep consciousness when ones brain was splattered across a 10 foot radius. The front of the maiden melted away to reveal a grinning Kane, positioned awkwardly. It was obvious, however, that Kane had something up his sleeve and although Harry shouted for everyone to run, the massive explosion that exploded out of the iron maiden knocked David and Tyler unconscious and killed Henry. You could still drink out of a broken straw, after all, and as soon as Kane had discovered that Harry was the pyrokinetic, he'd sucked as much out of him as he could. The memories were fractured and basically useless, but the fire...

A few moments later as Kane stood up and brushed off his now completely disintegrated clothes, Harry laughed. Kane glanced over, lazily reaching his void out for Harry's soul before it... disappeared. He frowned, but a word pooped into his head immediately that made him grin.

"Dollhouse. Yes, that will be fun."

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.

Mary Cowan sighed as she stood up from the last of the Squad, her eyes full of disappointment. She'd known from the beginning that they would lose, of course. Tge ITSDA may have thought themselves prepared, but she'd known Kane for far too long. She'd followed him since the beginning, since he murdered her family right in front of her. But he didn't see her. Or he did and he'd left her for the fun.It was hard to tell with that man. Her carefully detailed story with the Squad had given him just the right amount of information. Every time she'd gone after this man, she was different. A Different name, different personality. Different everything. That was the gift of her dollhouse that no one but her knew. She'd lost herself so often, changed herself into someone else so much, that the only thing remaining of her personality was the burning rage and the desire to kill Kane. Somewhere on the shelves of her dollhouse, there was a little girl named Bridget who had died 3 years ago. The woman here now, standing over four men with snapped necks, was Dollhouse. With a wicked smile, the woman who had once been Mary Cowan lit a match and tossed it at one of the beds, the life fleeing her eyes long before the quickly spreading fire enveloped her body.

The video Dieter watched was pieced together from several cameras from all over the hotel. The man's rampage warranted his attentions, but not his direct intervention. Kane was a know quantity. He liked to think he was random and chaotic, but his was as quantifiable as any other natural disaster or terrorist act. Dieter watched the video twice slowly and also had technical analysts working to quantify and add to the database on the man.

He was also tracking the taxi that the man had entered. It hadn't been hard to manipulate that situation at all. While the battle royale was going on inside like some slasher flick come to life, Dieter had made it so that the only taxis outside the casino were from the three companies owned by Schwartze Augen or allies of his. Thus, the lowjack on the taxi the man was in was blinking on on of his monitors. The man in the cab was unaware of this all, of course. Placing any knowledge near Kane was a risk to be managed, so the driver knew only that he had been rerouted to that hotel. He didn't even know that the man in the back seat was dangerous beyond the vibes he gave off.

No, Dieter had little interest in a juggernaut like Kane. Let the storm rage and blow, let the madman have his fun, then clean up afterwards and move on with the plans. Schwartze Augen was still meant to be low profile in Las Vegas, not taking down international terrorists. Still, if they could get a bead on where he might appear next, that would be for the best. What interested him more was the disappearing corpses of the ITSDA agents as the word 'Dollhouse.' He set his resources to backtracking the van that had delivered them immediately. It wasn't hard as Las Vegas' cameras were everywhere and SA had long ago tapped into most of them through legal or illicit means. This was a new quantity and one much more interesting to him.

He soon had the hotel and the room number.

A black van pulled up to the inferno of a room and four Ghouls poured out. They watched it burn but saw no one appear. They reported in, which caused the fire department to be notified the hotel fire was a hoax, then approached the room. Using small devices shaped like fire extinguishers, they made short work of the inferno. SA technology was quite advanced after all. Three then began their investigation even as the fourth approached and bribed the clerk. Inside five minutes, samples were taken, all video footage was secured, and the team was gone.

Sin city's foot traffic moved like a tide, lines of excited tourists flooded over areal walkways to bypass the strips heavy traffic, barged past the persistent ticket-pushers who seemed to hawk their wares at every hour of the day, and through the endless showrooms and stores that gave Las Vegas it's reputation as a commercial hub.
Among such a crowded and unregulated backdrop it should have been impossible for the wealthy Nevada casinos to guarantee their security, but an array of networked security cameras, automated facial recognition systems, and several private armies of security guards all served to keep a light handed but firm grip of order over the city.

The casinos weren't the only one with eyes on Sin City. Presently, several thousand glowing red pupils watched every movement from afar; someone was arguing with a craps dealer over weighted dice, a couple were talking loudly over not-coffees at Starbucks, a squad of policemen were standing outside a seedy motel room and scratching their heads over a recent fire, someone was trying to sell canceled tickets to see the 'Man Mountain' at an exhibition match... and someone with an obscuring pair of sunglasses was climbing up a rusted fire escape and into the administration floor of one of the deserts many supercasinos.

---

A security guard strolled back to his terminal, having left mere moments ago to refill his mug of joe. With a practiced and inattentive action that'd been honed through years of routine he pulled out his well worn office chair, collapsed heavily into it, swigged a mouthful of caffeine, and turned his eyes to the numerous display screens encircling his desk.
Over a long career the security guard had learnt to look out for the obvious signs of trouble that demanded his attention, and with news filtering in about various acts of violence happening around the city he was even watching with an especially wary eye, but tonight his cameras didn't seem to offer him anything out of the ordinary; drinking tourists, gambling tourists, tourists watching shows and tourists shopping.

In fact the only thing that even pricked his attention in the slightest wasn't on his monitors at all, but on his desk. A small metal sphere sat innocently in his desk tidy, with a dull grey 'pupil' set into it's front face. A desk toy, probably. Left behind from the last guards shift.

"Hello there!" He spoke to the toy in the paradoxical tone of excited indifference that bored people reserved for inanimate objects and distractions. "What do you do?"
As if in answer the sphere's eye flickered to a glowing blue, and emitted a growing warning tone, before bursting into a shower of sparks and arcing electricity. The guard spilt heavily sugared coffee over his desk and collapsed face first over his keyboard.
'ghfytyr555555555555555555555555555-'

An anarchic figure detached herself from the dark corner behind the monitor rooms door and was joined by several dozen cycloptic familiars who winked themselves out from their hiding places with flashes of red light. She pushed the guard onto the floor and off his seat, which she took for herself.

"Sorry about that."
She told the unconscious guard brusquely. She wouldn't normally bother, but a recent brush with electricity on her own part convinced her to show some sympathy.
"Okay... show me what you've got."

The intruders fingers danced over the guards terminal as she accessed the casinos systems.
Like most casinos her target subscribed to a system of Biometric databases that allowed them to identify habitual gamblers, high rollers, V.I.P's, cheats, and criminals. Entry onto the database was usually done by hand, although being flagged by it was automatic.
Since the guard had remained logged into his account it was childishly easy for Oculus to find her own entry and delete it. It was so straightforward that it hardly even qualified as 'hacking'.
Before she quit the office she ran several more names and faces through the system, and over CCTV records for the past six months; knowing which Gifted were coming and going from the city would be invaluable information- particularly if the sames faces that appeared weren't registered with any of the 'Powered exhibitions' within the city.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:56, Sat 19 Dec 2015.

Blue Horizon Security was an office located on the eleventh floor of a gleaming steel and glass building. The offices were unassuming and plain but hummed with activity. Few suspected from a glance that the firm contracted and coordinated security for several of the cities armored car services, banks, hotels, and casinos.

In an office at the back, a man with a shaved head, heavy-set figure, and strong Ethiopian accent took a phone call, listened silently for a few seconds, then nodded. The plaque on his desk declared him to be Simon Smith, CEO.

A phone rang and the man looked at the blocky black thing on his desk sitting silently, then pulled out his personal cellphone and glared at it, then opened a locked drawer and pulled out another cellphone. He sighed as he answered it, "Ya?"

He listened for a long time and nodded silently. He hung the phone up and, after a second's hesitation, placed it in his breast pocket. He then stood and went to open his door, "Up and at 'em boys. Orders from home office." The various bits of busywork stopped as the man stepped out of his office and began to bark orders. Feet hit the pavement and within thirty minutes, a small convoy pulled out of the garage downstairs and onto the route for Berkley. It consisted of 3 humvees nominally road legal for the united states and a large truck. In each humvee was a unit of four men who would have been familiar except they lacked the characteristic SA armor and gear. The truck had the gear necessary for the mission as Dieter had ordered it to follow Meta directives. The convoy would rendezvous with no one associated with the transport team. Instead, it would be working along the route in various places to be ready for worst-case-scenarios.

---

In his office in the casino, Dieter hung up a phone with only a single button and grunted. He chose to stare for a long time at a portrait of a woman and let himself choke out a single, solitary sob. He then began to make calls. He needed to know which of his fellow Namidians were targeting this convoy. The list of Namidians wasn't too short, but there was a very short list of those he would not cross. He had plans and plans and plans in place for such contingencies though.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:00, Wed 22 June 2016.

Orleans Arena. PCC Presents: Gifted Exhibition Matches.

“Feel the sting of El Macho Malo!"

“Phoenix, PU- URK!”

A half naked and offensively sweaty man in a luchadors mask sprang from the elastic robes bordering the two Gifted's battlefield, and used the momentum from his lunge to clothesline Phoenix with his bicep. Crimson went down clutching at his neck with a choke, the floor of the wrestling ring beneath him shook violently as he crashed off it, and then found himself trapped in a painful headlock as Macho took advantage of his successful strike to pin Crimson to the ground!

“I'm getting worked up mi amigo! Is that all you have for me?!”

The watching crowd cheered wildly, cameras flashed, and the referred started slapping the floor by Crimsons imprisoned face as he counted backwards from ten. The massive LED screens above and surrounding the brawl zoomed into the action and started counting down as well.

"Ma' gawd! It’s a bloodbath out there!” an announcer cried out, with only -just- too much enthusiasm to sound plausible.

The giant displays rendered Phoenixes struggling face in enough detail so that even the back rows could see the effort etched into his features. Suddenly Crimson managed to get both feet back under him , and a flash of two small explosions sent the referee and Macho both staggering exaggeratedly backwards as the ITSDA's assault specialist was propelled seven feet into the air by the force of his own escape, somersaulted gracefully in the air at the arc of his jump, and landed on his feet with both fists already raised. Combat ready! The crowd went ballistic again.

“There it is! I knew that Crimson was holding out on us!” A second commentator enthused!

“Not bad for his first time in the ring!” The first comment or returned, before delivering some hasty exposition. “Remember, Macho has the ability to dampen the powers of whoever he touches, and they've already lasted four rounds! If Crimson's Gift hadn't run dry before, it has now!”

“That might be! Let’s find out!”

Back in the ring both fighters were trading blows. Macho had both size and reach, but Phoenix knew how to counter those advantages with speed and footwork. He lunged forward beneath one of Malo's arm swipes and delivered a heavy punch into the luchadors chest, which was received and returned by a powerful shin kick that took both of Crimsons forearms to block. Phoenix scarcely has time to shake the numbness from his arms as Macho recovered his feet, and grab the competing wrestler by the shoulders. The grapple was returned, and both men tried to throw the other to the mat by sheer strength alone. The crowd started to chant the names of both combatants, the fans of each trying to drown out the other, as both Gifted sumo'd it out for superiority.

A klaxon blared to signal the end of the match, the crowd groaned their disappointment but applauded the fight nonetheless. Both fighters broke apart from their grapple, only to return and shake hands sportingly a moment later. Crimson was grinning ear to ear, The jaguar sequined onto Macho's mask didn’t betray any particular expression but his body language seemed to agree that the exhibition fight had been a good one.

---

Ten minutes later. Crimson had cleaned up from his bout, and some helpful venue orderlys had even cleaned the ring of the damage it had sustained during the fight. He had a break before his next match, but rather than sit and rest he eagerly found a space to watch the next match and appreciate the excited vibe that'd permeated the entire showroom with undisguised delight. The whole things was, after all, organised on his request.

Dozens of fighters and thousands of spectators had turned out for his event. It was the first time that Phoenix had attempted to engage with the world of Gifted sport fighting- but even so he had been very careful not to upstage the entire show. A third party recruiter had been used to find the fighters, and there seemed to be a healthy mixture of professional 'sportsmen' and armature newcomers. The night was just now starting with a series of 'show' matches that followed the same choreographed style as professional wrestling or other legitimate Vegas Gifted shows, and towards the end of the night there was to be a small tournament which followed a less scripted MMA format- but would still hopefully end without anyone sustaining serious injury or going 'too' wild with their Gifts. The matches themselves were being televised live on a few select channels, as well as streamed online, and guests had the option to see the entire spectacle in person from either the bleachers or from a limited number of V.I.P boxes.

Hosting the event had been a stroke of genius, in Crimsons opinion. Besides being beneficial for the public’s perception of Gifted, and buying himself a little more time in the media limelight, Crimson had also been adamant that his own profits from the show go to a charity he had established for the rebuilding of Chicago. Everything from the entry tickets, to donations, to in-house bets, and even merchandising was meant to play a part in undoing some of the damage that Namidias had done to the windy city all those months ago. He had been endorsing his charity relentlessly over the last few weeks; but he couldn't shake the feeling that there was always more to do, and more ways for him to try and achieve the 'heroic image' that he so desperately sought...

Later that evening, two figures stood a few feet apart within the MMA cage. A svelte, young "pretty boy" boxer with a mop of yellow hair stared upward into the eyes of a towering wrestler. While the larger man moved in tactically, leaning in slightly to better protect his core, the pretty boy cockily licked his lips and stepped back. It was a challenge, the wrestler knew. But he wouldn't take the bait! Lunging forward without leaving his feet, the thoughtful brawler feigned a grab and easily blocked the kid's tremendous uppercut!

When glove met skin, the wrestler's right arm began to glow a deep, dull red color. In an instant, the boy jumped back as his boxing glove burst into flame! Hoots and hollers from the crowd turned the boxer's face sour as he whipped his glove aside in a single, smooth motion. The boxer strafed out of his enemy's reach and side-stepped a pair of dramatic clutches. The kid frowned; he hated being baited.

The crowd bathed the arena in boos and jeers, drowning the patient fighters in petty hatred. The boxer didn't give a fuck about the crowd; he'd wait for a real damned opening and take it! Another strafe and the beast-man slammed him against the cage wall.

CLANG! The back of his skull bounced off the steel bar and landed right back in the wrestler's grip. The grease in his hair turned to little flakes of snow and the boy's features literally began to freeze in place. His dark eyes glowed with hatred as they focused on the Gifted wrestler. With a few swings of his arms, he freed them from the freeze. And then he took a couple swings. He fired off a simple, nearly-pointless pair of "back off" jabs to the stomach. The wrestler scoffed, then the boxer struck again. And then he struck again and again and again until what were harmless jabs became an endless stream of insect bites tearing away at the man's flesh!

The wrestler hopped back, gripping his stomach. It was already too late! The boxer fired off a couple light-speed jabs to the head, then repeated the same motion endlessly. He moved not with inhuman speed, but impossible repetitiveness. He was a machine, tirelessly cranking out copies of the exact move that he wanted to hit. And hit he did. Three hundred blows to the dome cracked the wall of ice the wrestler had formed around his own head in desperation. Two hundred more put him down for good. At two minutes and twenty seconds, the referee called for a knockout.

Medics swarmed around the wrestler. The Gifted boxer didn't even glance at his battered opponent. He just slicked his hair back with one hand as the referee raised the other.

"Your winner, by knockout, of this first round Gifted Warfare Tournament matchup: Remy 'Combo' Ramirez!"

After soaking in the glory for a few moments and raising his fists to the sky, Combo snatched the microphone from the referee's hands.

"Bet you never saw fight like this outta Phoenix and his flunkies!

The crowd oohed. Some booed, others cheered.

"Yeah, you got it. Phoenix, buddy, these people ain't rubes anymore. They know their money's gonna get wired right to the dirtiest players in the game; they just don't see any alternatives. But there is one. How about we change the rules a little? To the victor go the spoils. That is to say, when I win this tournament, I'll take home more than the gold. I'll take the money he's stealing from you and rebuild Chicago myself! What do you say, huh?"

With the help of some rhetorical trickery, the little bastard got the crowd to roar at the suggestion of him taking the money meant for a trusted non-profit foundation. Perhaps some thought it was all part of some act. Still, in a bit of twisted irony, many people trusted the word of a thug over the men and women who had given up everything, even their reputation, in service to them.

The public demanded a response. The only question was: what kind of response was Phoenix going to give them?
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:25, Sun 15 Jan 2017.

As the fight between 'Combo' and his opponent carried on Crimson had watched from the 'Contestants Box'- a V.I.P area that had been set aside to let the Gifted charity fighters mingle and socialise before their bouts, hold press statements, refresh themselves, and take a privileged view of the completions currently in progress.

"That one's pretty good. I bet the media would love to see more of him... do you think that I should do my agent a favour and pass him her number?"

While keeping warm between matches Phoenix was dressed in a boxers robe, which he wore over his kevlar under-suit. He had forgone his ceramic armour for these fights to make himself appear more 'heroic'. The robe had a golden Phoenix sequined onto it's back, and the robe itself was inevitably crimson in colour. Daniel lowered his robes hood and offered a hopeful grin to the man he'd talked to, as he awaited an answer.

"You only like him because he reminds you of you, Mi Amego."
Macho Malo replied with a smirk. With his mask still affixed to Macho's face the expression was almost missed. The luchador had received a rising bruise on his temple from his bout with the ITSDA agent, although he didn't seem to hold it against the other man.
"...Cocky. Young. Blonde. Stupid. Prettyboy..."
Well. Maybe Macho held onto his grudge little.

Crimson snorted in self-derisive laughter. He could take a joke, so long as it was delivered by a friend. He shot one back and extended his tongue mockingly.
"Hah! All that I got from that is that you think I'm pretty."

They watched the match play out it's final moments. The ice-based abilities of 'Combo's' opponent were formidable, but the kid seemed to have a few tricks up his sleeve as well. At a glance Phoenix guessed that he was some kind of speedster, although one that seemed to be at their most powerful when taking the same action multiple times. For a boxer that kind of ability could be devastating.

The referee called an end to the battle and raised the victors hand ceremoniously to announce his victory. The battles end also signalled the end of Crimsons interest, and he turned his back on the arena to go and review who was slated for the next event-



-Phoenix Crimson froze in place. He kept his back turned on the arena, but his entire attention had rushed to his suddenly burning ears! Combo's voice rung out from the venue's telecom and filled the hall completely, drowning out even the intense cheering and boo-ing from the crowd.



Phoenix didn't move for a long moment. The relaxed air of the Contestants Box had suddenly solidified into cold laser-focused attention that was fixed firmly onto Crimson himself. Some of the other fighters waited to see how he would respond whilst refusing to meet his eye, whilst the media reporters sharing the V.I.P area watched with far less disguised interest. A journalists pen clicked softly as it's owner primed it over his notepad.

Phoenix shivered slightly. Macho Malo looked at the ex-vigilante's expression expecting to find anger, but instead only found a look of incredible excitement that Daniel was trying very hard to suppress.

"Crimson... You owe that man nothing. Don't let him get under your skin..."
The Luchador spoke softly. Almost pleadingly. The man knew how easily Phoenix's sense of pride was provoked.

"I owe him a fat lip!"
Crimson muttered harshly, though not loud enough for anyone but Macho to overhear. The Lucador shot him a concerned look.
"Relax. Malo. I won't do anything brash- I promise."
The sound of the excited crowd surrounding the stage intensified.
"...but I can't let him keep ranting on. I'd better put a stop to this before he works up the crowd any further."

With that, Phoenix shrugged his shoulders and let his robe fall to the floor. He stretched his arms and got a feel for his Kevlar suit, and felt satisfied that the strains and pains he had taken from his last battle were superficial enough to be simply ignored. If he ended up getting badly hurt he had already planned to go and whine to Sherry, or Brianna, after all. He turned on his heel back to the viewing balcony, uncoiled the crimson scarf from around his neck and flicked it over his shoulder, and took a running leap from it into the open air above the spectator stands!

A cacophony of flashy explosions followed Phoenix's arc from the viewing stands to the combat area! When the Agent finally touched down, just infront of 'Combo', it was with a blast of hot energy and a fireworks display of mid-air adjustments that he finally confronted the loudmouthed Boxer who had called him out. 'Combo' had chosen not to handle this from behind closed doors, and so Phoenix felt no shame in making a spectacle of his response.

"That money isn't mine to give- although I doubt you'd be able to take it from me!"
Crimson over-dramatically snatched the microphone from Combo's hand, playing up the showmanship that was expected of any Gifted in the ring. The trash talking felt a little overdone even as he said it, but he also knew that modesty wasn't a trait that tested well with the Media. The tone of Crimsons voice had also changed in timbre from his conversation with Malo; it was as if Phoenix put on a new, more idealistic, persona whenever the public at large was watching.
"Why should I take your bet? The rest of us are fighting for honour, and justice, and for those affected by the barbarians at our gates!- what right do you have to claim the spoils of their efforts? What have you put at stake?!"

"Me? I've put my life at stake by publicly challenging the world's largest terrorist group."


The crowd murmured and grumbled in response to his wild accusation. Couples argued, friends shushed each other, and everyone watched the tension build in front of their very eyes.

Combo leaned right in to Phoenix's face, splashing the agent with saliva as the boxer hissed his venomous words and locked eyes with the enemy.

"No, let me finish! That gang of yours tore Gaultown, Chicago, and New York apart with no thought as to who'd die because of your little war! And you're doubtin' my ethics? Nah. I'll take the prize and actually use it."

The young man took a few steps back while sections of the crowd began to cheer, lightly at first, then grow louder and louder until they drowned out the voices of dissent. Finally, he held up one hand and blocked his view of Phoenix's face.


"Okay, I take that back. Ya probably didn't ignore all the deaths you'd cause. Ya wanted 'em. The bleaker it gets, the more people need protection. Your protection. Ain't that right, son?"

As if to dismiss the genuine hero, the low-level Gifted turned his back on Phoenix and began to walk away. Turning to the audience after he marched a few feet off the stage, he waved his gloved hand over the crowd.


"Just remember who you trust more when I nab the trophy and everything will be okay."

He beamed at the crowd before turning his head back on Phoenix Crimson one more time...

Pheonix grit his teeth and bit back a spiteful reply as Combo threw insane accusations at him and his fellow agents. The excited crowd wasn't helping to settle his temper, but Crimson forcefully reminded himself that Combo wasn't his enemy... Not quite, at any rate. The man was one of his guest fighters and deserved a modicum of respect just for that, and if his claims about risking his life in the name of heroism were true then Dan knew that he would never be able to bring himself to see the boxer as his enemy- no matter how wrong he was. The agents black-and-white morality faltered, but ultimately held.

"That's a damn lie! If you think that I profit from the Namidian wave then you really don't have a clue what me and 'my gang' stand for!"

Crimson stopped just shy of directly aligning himself with the ITSDA. Phoenix had avoided doing so in the past, but from Combo's accusations it seemed to already be an open secret. He hadn't exactly been subtle about standing up for his organisation or teammates, and certainly Namidias knew of his association... by now the only person who seemed to be unwilling to admit that Phoenix Crimson was a part of the ITSDA peacekeepers was Phoenix himself. It was more for the ITSDA's benefit than for his own, since he didn't want his teammates to be held accountable for his virtuous but less-than legal past life.

Combo didn't seem to care to hear Crimsons retort, and turned away to leave his final accusation hanging heavily in the air. The crowd didn't care to hear it either, and the boo's and jeers they had directed at him intensified as Phoenix was left standing alone in the ring, exposing him to malice from all sides.
Daniel just didn't get it... how could they possibly be supporting the boxer with the clearly corrupted interests over himself?! The great and mighty Phoenix Crimson!
...sure, his own and the ITSDA's reputation had taken a hit in recent months, but that's what tonight was supposed to address! He was actively trying to show that the good guys cared about those left in the aftermath of their battles, and everyone in the crowd had rallied to support that cause, but now they had turned on him with bared fangs! Why?!

In any case, Crimson at least knew that the charity money was secure. When he'd said that the money wasn't his to give he'd meant that both idealistically and literally; like all charities Crimson and his fellow trustees were legally obliged to follow out the terms of their statement- which most certainly did not include betting millions of dollars of donors money on a profitless pride-bet. The crowd wouldn't like it, but Combo was going to have to settle for the same tournament money as everyone else- though somehow Crimson suspected that the Boxer had already gotten what he'd wanted.

"I just... don't understand."
He said softly, to himself. Beneath his mask his eyebrows knit themselves together in confusion. He'd been in the public eye as a vigilante for almost half his life- and he'd seen his fair share of crowds turning ugly, but usually he could guess why. Tonight the audience simply seemed to be out for blood. He forced himself to conclude that they were simply getting swept away by the venues atmosphere, but even that explanation didn't feel quite right.

He needed to act. He needed to quell the crowds dissatisfaction before it spiralled out of his control. There was only two thing that could be done to master an escalating situation like this... and that was to either fold and accept defeat, or to push the stakes even higher!
"Combo!" Crimson called out in challenge. "-I won't give you Chicago's money, but I'll stake the most valuable thing I have instead!"
Phoenix's hand pointed dramatically at his new enemy, and then slowly touched the mask on his face.
"My identity! Every SINGLE day I put my life and everything I am on the line for what I believe in, and today's no different!"
The crowd was furious, and for a situation like this Crimson had to reach for the highest stakes possible to recapture their attention and respect. Putting everything at stake was a difficult move to make, but it was one that Daniel had made a thousand times before- every time that he'd ever dove into battle.
"Prove to me that you're the hero you claim to be, win the tournament, and I'll remove this... and end Phoenix Crimson. Forever."
His fingers stopped brushing his mask, and returned to pointing a threat to Combo.
"-on the other hand, when I win this tournament I expect you to put your Gift to good use and enlist with my charities repair team- and actually follow through on your promise!"
This message was last edited by the player at 20:46, Wed 25 Jan 2017.

Combo bounced around a luxurious backstage gym, artfully dodging baseballs a pitching machine gunned at him. As he groaned and grunted away, he screamed at himself.

"Get it right, motherfucker!"

The huge, 7K television affixed to the roof showed off Asher's grand proposition, but the young boxer's eyes never left his target. In his mind's eye, the entire world slowed to a crawl; the baseballs weren't sailing through the air, they were sliding up a river of wind. Combo barely limboed under a ball. Then, while leaping back up, he swung his fists across each other in an "X" formation, slamming two baseballs out of the sky and into the room's padded walls.

"WHAM! One move, you're done!"

The narcissistic pugilist replayed this duck-and-punch cycle a hundred times without breaking a sweat. Other boxers were great actors, managing to give similarly great performances each and every night they step into the ring. He, however, was an endlessly replayable recording of that one perfect, star-making performance. He was reliable, yet endlessly exciting. That's why those men chose him. He was their up-and-comer. They figured they'd give him all this equipment, line up the matches, and he'd rake in the dough for them. And he would. But once he won the tournament and became an international symbol of Sadim Talent's success, he'd be irreplaceable. Then he could work on his own terms and be, for once in his life, his own boss.

The boy grinned wildly and smacked his fists together. Dozens of crushed baseballs lay all across the gym and the craters they left pock-marked the walls. Suddenly, the man heard his name angrily repeated on the closed-circuit television he so foolishly ignored.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:25, Sat 15 July 2017.

The Mighty nodded to the show tech who was standing nearby, waiting on him.  The man immediately spoke into his headset, and the Mighty’s chosen theme music for the night boomed across the sound system.^*

I’ll have you know
That I’ve become
Indestructible

Bounding down the entrance ramp, the Might’s bare feet thudded heavily on impact, his greater than normal mass making the structure vibrate under his passage.  He waved the crowd, a smile on his face, and effortlessly hopped into the ring as the classic metal rumbled through the arena.

Determination that is incorruptible
From the other side
A terror to behold
Annihilation will be unavoidable

He enjoyed playing up to the crowd, who now knew him a little better than they had during his first appearance earlier in the event, an exhibition match that had slated him against a tiny blonde girl who went by Hop, Skip, and Jump.  He shook his head slightly in amusement as he recalled their scripted encounter – his own, massive self versus the girl who could split herself into a short-ranged teleporting trio of opponents.  Each one three times as strong as a normal person, and when they worked together could exert nine, or twenty-seven times as much force as they should – squares and cubes, combined with their high mobility, it made her a fairly effective fighter.

He was pretty sure in a straight-up fight he could have taken her regardless, but the script had called for her to win, and he hadn’t had any objection.  It made for good theatre, and he could certainly appreciate that.

Every broken enemy will know
That their opponent had to be invincible
Take a last look around while you're alive
I'm an indestructible master of war….

The music faded out as he mugged for the crowd, working to build back up a positive vibe that had been thoroughly disrupted by the antics of the prior occupants of the ring.  He was wearing a modified version of his usual public outfit – the same stylized ‘M’ shirt as always, and a pair of loose black pants that swirled about his ankles.

He had, as most boys had, grown up watching WWE wrestling and the then-rising star of UFC, and his formative years had been shaped by the influence of such personalities as Stone Cold, and the Rock.  As the arena’s directional microphones focused on him, it was the latter the Mighty consciously channeled as he addressed the crowd.

”Good evening, Las Vegas!” he boomed, his voice rolling out across the crowd, easily reaching to the high seats.  ”In case any of you missed my introduction earlier, I am the Mighty, and yes, I Am Canadian.”  That little joke was a legacy from his youth, and he didn’t particularly care if anyone else got it or not.

“I know that some of you are saying, but Mighty, you’re not a fighter – aren’t you just that guy who gets cats out of trees and pulls people out of burning buildings?” he went on, warming to the task and enjoying himself immensely as he turned to face another section of stands.

He shrugged eloquently.  ”I can’t argue with you, I don’t make a habit of getting into fights with people,” he admitted.  ”That’s a good way to get a lot of other people hurt, in my opinion.  There’s usually a better way.”

He smiled.

”I know that some of you are saying, but Mighty, you just said that you’re Canadian!  Doesn’t that mean you’re all nice, and kind, and polite?”  His voice on those particular adjectives turned snide and dismissive.

Looking about, he nodded knowingly, his lips pressed together and eyes wide in classic Johnson.

”And I have to say…you’re right.  I am a nice guy, and I am going to be polite,” he told the crowd, sweeping his arms apart expansively.  ”I will say please, when I invite my opponent into the ring,” he stated simply, gesturing towards the edge of the ring.  ”I will say thank you, for the opportunity to kick some American ass,” he went on, his voice growing strident.  ”And I will say sorry, after beating your pathetic self into the mat, as I offer you my hand to get you back on your feet!” he bellowed, pantomiming just that as the crowd erupted into a mixed roar of approval and outrage, hands waving and signs being shaken in enthusiasm.

Pulling himself to his full, not inconsiderable height, the Mighty pointed dramatically up the entrance ramp, eyes shining with enjoyment and anticipation.

”I’m calling you out – get down here, and let’s get this party started!”  Hooking the fingers of one big hand into the neck of his shirt, he tore it from his body like it had been made of wet tissue, revealing a torso that could have been sculpted using an anatomy textbook as a guide, all smooth muscle and perfect tone.

Dropping briefly into a most muscular pose that made his body swell and ripple in a very impressive manner, he whirled his shredded shirt above his head and tossed it into the crowd before turning his outstretched hands palms up and gestured for more enthusiasm from the obliging crowd.



^*https://youtu.be/aWxBrI0g1kE?t=1m
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:43, Sat 15 July 2017.

Stageside:

Phoenix strode his way into the main hall. He pushed past press and security orderlies, and shrugged his shoulders and neck in an effort to recoup a little of his abandoned warmup exercises.

The claustrophobic and tight hallways of the backstage and muffled bass of distant action suddenly gave way to open air, flashing lights, and the booming sound of cheers as Mighty's blaring introduction instantly surged the crowds adrenalin!
Daniels mood swelled as well, and his troubled thoughts were put aside for a moment as the Agent actually found himself grinning when the Gifted Canadian threatened to kick some American asses, all whilst hamming up his own stereotypes. Canada was a long way to travel, and Crim was glad to see that The Toronto Titan had been able to make it... the man might be upstaging all the other competitors, but the crowd were into it, and that's all that mattered for the moment.

The man then tore off his shirt and threw it into the crowd... Okay. That was gratuitous.

The runway beneath the stage was littered with waiting combatants. There were a few dozen Gifted who had gotten this far into the night, and like any league-style event there was an element of unpredictability and randomness in who would be matched against who. Crimson had arrived slightly late on account of his earlier poor decisions, but he felt confident that he hadn't arrived -too- late to make an embarrassing scene. He looked across from Mighty and the central fighting ring, to lay eyes onto the master tournament board to see who he'd be facing off against, and when.
He reminded himself that all he -needed- to do was to prevent either Combo or Metal Wraith from winning the night, and that every other fight afterwards was just for the sake of charity- but seeing the Canadian in the middle of his ring mouthing off so cockily re-ignited a spark of competition in Phoenix. The former vigilante suddenly felt as though he may as well go all out- it was all for a good cause, right?
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:49, Sat 15 July 2017.

Oblivious to the event’s host’s disapproval of his amateur antics, the Mighty mugged for the crowd for a moment more before the shattering, frenetic beat of grime ripped out through the arena’s sound system.  The assault against his augmented hearing drawing a slight wince from the Mighty as Wayz Above’s hit single ‘Götterdämmed’ heralded the arrival of the next opponent, and he turned to face the access ramp with his formidable arms crossed across his chest.

The man that appeared in the suddenly-descended spotlights was a fair bit younger than the Mighty - perhaps two full decades – and of average height and build at best.  He raised a clenched fist into the air in a salute to the crowd, his buzz-cut head looking from side to side as he gaze swept the arena.  Dressed in urban ‘NBA chic’, shiny black shorts hung past his knees and the billowing black tank top had a fiery red and orange ring on the chest.

This was Eclipse, and as he strode barefoot down the ramp each stride became longer, the top of his head descending less than it should have based on the angle of the ramp.  By the time he was halfway down the shorts had bared his knees, and his shirt had stopped flapping.  When he arrived at ringside shorts and shirt both clung to a muscled torso, and the twelve foot tall Gifted stepped over the ropes like they were the edge of a kiddie pool.

Now towering over the Mighty, he stretched out his arms and turned in a slow circle, the crowd roaring its approval of this response to their northern neighbour’s inflammatory challenge.  As for the Mighty, he had backed off to one corner of the ring to give his opponent room and simply watched, arms still folded.

"You can be polite all you want, old man," Eclipse boomed, his expanded vocal cords producing a rumble worthy of the greats like James Earl Jones, Barry White, and Ving Rhames.  "That sort of thing might fly in the land of moose and syrup, but you’re in Vegas now, you got it?"  He turned to look down at the Mighty, who stood watching him with a faintly amused smile on his face.

Eclipse didn’t seem all that entertained by his opponent’s lack of a concerned reaction,  however, and as they both advanced toward the centre of the ring the much taller youth blocked out several of the venue lights leaving the Mighty in shadow – oh yes, it was pretty obvious where he’d coined his name from.

"Get ready for an ass-kicking, Canadian," He rumbled, leaning in with a sneer on his face.  "Pathetic peace-keeper – no peace for you in this ring." Straightening, he addressed the crowd with the confident ease of one uttering a familiar catchphrase.

"That’s right – when you’re this big, you can’t help throwing shade!" he boomed.  This time, upon looking down he caught a much more satisfying look on the Mighty face – that had gotten under his skin.

"Look, kid," he growled menacingly.  "Stupid puns are my schtick.  Get your own."  The nerve of these young punks these days!  He stepped into a ready stance, right food dropped back and hands raised, open and loose.

The round buzzer shattered the air, and the time for posturing gave way to the fight proper.  Eclipse started, perhaps predictably, with a lunging grab with his long arms and massive hands.  Predictable enough that the Mighty simply ducked under it as he moved forward as well, hunching and stepping left, then right and connecting with a jabbed elbow that caught his opponent on the meat of his right thigh.  The crowd roared at this landing of the first blow, although whether in approval or protest was difficult to sort out.

Spinning around to face Eclipse again, the Mighty took a couple steps back to open the distance between them again.  Eclipse stumbled forward an additional lurching step before catching himself and whirling back around – the blow had obviously pained him.

The Mighty smirked and gestured – an age-old ‘come at me, bro’.  His opponent scowled darkly and launched a looping one-two combo, a right and a left, each of which the Mighty batted away with a two-handed redirect that left the bigger man a little off balance and backing off slightly.

The kid was clearly getting upset at the lack of success his assault was having, and he stepped up his game.  Eclipse gave a sharp, barking yell and stomped his left foot against the mat in an abrupt boom of sound and motion. Shifting his weight immediately, he lashed out with the inside of his right foot, almost like one would kick a soccer ball, and caught the Mighty squarely in the chest.

The – for once - smaller man collapsed a bit around the impact and was thrown back perhaps fifteen feet to land with a rattling thud onto the mat. The crowd roared at this reversal, clearly much preferring the spectacle of massive attacks rather than a simple exchange of blows, and camera flashes flickered across the surface of the mob.

The Mighty shook his head, apparently dazed, and started to roll back to his feet, but wasn’t swift enough as Eclipse took two long strides and slammed him back to the mat with a brutal curb stomp.  Leaning in with one large foot planted firmly in the centre of the Mighty chest, Eclipse smirked down at him.

"Shoulda stayed home, old man," he told him with mock sorrow. Reaching down he grabbed the Mighty by the upper arm and hauled him up, stepping back with the other man dangling like an abused preschooler.  Balling up his other fist, he almost off-handedly punched the Mighty full in the face before slamming him back down to the mat again.

The next minute or so of the bout was quite clearly in Eclipse’s favour.  He landed kicks that sent the Mighty tumbling.  He threw the smaller man with jarring force into the corners, and his looping punches caused his opponent to block with his arms as best he could.  This was not the epic beatdown that the Mighty has suggested was coming – at least, not at his hands.

Finally, Eclipse left the Mighty slowly rising to one knee and turned to the crowd, throwing his head back in laughter.

"This is the best that Canada has to offer?" he boomed, the scorn clear in his voice.  "No wonder this sad sack doesn't fight if he can help it – look at him!"  He levelled a sausage-sized finger at the Mighty, who had made it all the way to his feet now, but was swaying slightly.

"Big, soft, and dumb, just like that frozen wasteland you come from," Eclipse sneered, and with a pair of steps slammed his knee hard into the Mighty's chest.

The impact was a startlingly sharp 'crack', and the Mighty didn't even rock back in place, let alone catapult into the wall.  Eclipse howled in pain, and hobbled around in a circle while profanity spewed from his mouth.

"You bastard!" the huge man spat, and swung another one of his looping punches at the Mighty.  This time, however, the Canadian hero caught the blow in both hands, wrapping his fingers partway around the thick wrist.

"There's a difference between 'doesn't' fight and 'can't' fight," he replied clearly.  "Bub," he added distinctly.  "Something my people have known for decades.  Let me enlighten you."  The muscles in his back and arms flexed, and this time it was Eclipse's impressive bulk that went flying through the air to smash into the reinforced wall of the ring.  The crowd roared in surprise at the reversal, people coming to their feet in an explosion of reaction.

Eclipse came up snarling as the Mighty advanced on him at a walk, and threw himself at the smart-mouthed pipsqueak.  Over half a ton of Gifted flesh came hurtling down, but the Toronto Titan caught handfuls of his opponent's shirt and rolled with the impact, sending him crashing into the opposite wall.  The shirt, unsurprisingly, didn't survive the stresses involved in this maneuver, and flapped torn and loose as Eclipse got to his feet again.

The next exchange of blows was more cautious on the younger man's part, but even though he landed a couple of solid punches they didn't seem to slow the other man down any longer, and it didn't take very long for the crowd to realize that while the earlier portion of the bout had indeed been uneven, it hadn't been so in the direction they'd thought it had been.

Not to say that the blows weren't having any effect – after separating from an exchange, the Mighty wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.  Unfortunately, the impacts seemed to be causing at least as much damage to Eclipse's hands as well, and he was still favouring the knee he had injured earlier.

The Mighty darted a glance at the round clock as it counted down, then advanced in a smooth, loping stride.  Eclipse grabbed at him, but the Mighty took advantage of his smaller stature to slide between the bigger man's legs and roll to his feet behind him.  Eclipse whirled about, and the Mighty caught one of his hands in both of his own.

The huge man slammed to the mat, arm twisted behind him, and the Mighty placed one foot on the small of his back.  It became clear that he had the smallest finger of that big hand locked in his grip, and had it twisted to the point of genuine pain.

"Say uncle," the Mighty suggested in a reasonable tone of voice as the crowd roared, which seemed to infuriate Eclipse.  The big man heaved, and despite the fact that he massed perhaps three times that of the other man and had a significant leverage advantage, he got absolutely nowhere except close to dislocating his own pinky.  It was a bizarre tableau, and likely something one would only see when the Gifted were involved.

"Ah ah ah," the Mighty cautioned, and Eclipse's resultant howl of outrage and pain caused his lips to tighten for a moment.  The prone man abruptly slammed his free hand to the mat repeatedly, tapping out, and the Mighty immediately released his hold and stepped back.  Eclipse seemed to deflate, shrinking back to his original size, anger and humiliation writ large in his posture and expression as he clambered to his feet.  Not a professional fighter, he seemed to have had a lot of personal pride tied up in this match, which had…not gone to his liking.

The match buzzer rang, the referee awarding the bout to the Mighty, and the crowd went…ballistic.  It was hard to tell who was a fan and who was disappointed at the outcome, but there were clearly plenty of both in the arena seating that evening and they were all willing to make lots of noise.  The Mighty lofted one clenched fist into the air in triumph, then lowered it and offered an opened hand to his defeated opponent.

Eclipse stared at the offered hand for a long moment, mouth twitching slightly, then took it for a perfunctory handshake before turning and stalking out of the ring.  One corner of the Mighty's mouth curled up and he raised a hand to the crowd, turning to face all four corners of the auditorium before dropping into a quick, florid bow and bounding out of the ring as well and up the ramp.

All in all…a fun little fight.  It's all about the show, right?

Combo leaned his back on the wall at the top of the entrance ramp. His arms were folded and a sharp, pointed smirk was painted across his half-shadowed face. When the time came and The Mighty marched his way past the waiting crowd of Gifted spectators, Remy didn't join in the cheering. Nor did he fire off a pissed off taunt like a few of the shadier characters did. Instead, the normally mouthy boy simply trailed The Mighty with his eyes as the incredible Canadian strode past him. His fight was up next; even he knew that now was not the time to rile things up.

Just one more fight, thought the renegade pugilist as he sighed softly to himself, And it's go time.

The gaudy, well-lit bracket chart promised all of Vegas an amazing dream match. If he and Phoenix Crimson both won their next fight, they'd face off in the night's semi-finals. And then, oh then, he'd have a surprise for the ITSDA's little doggy. The young man stood at attention and ran his tongue down to a false tooth near the back of his mouth. That little rubber capsule would be his savior. He wouldn't really need it, of course. He could beat the little red bastard on his own. Nevertheless, his agents were right: it paid to have a little insurance.

At last, the booming bass of Remy's rap entrance theme kicked in, rocking the very walls of the ramp and cuing his entrance. The firebrand street tough lazily raised one fist to the sky while yawning with his other hand and casually strolling to the ring. Of course he was pitted against the tourney's biggest tomato can; Crimson wouldn't want him showing off or nothin'!

A wiry, dark-skinned wrestler who called himself "Channel" stood across from him, wearily eyeing the boxer and holding his arms at the ready. Remy shrugged, turned his back on his opponent, and happily waved at both the fans cheering him on and those giving him hell.

"Thank you, thank you," said Combo, taking the time to emphasize each syllable. "It's an honor to kick his ass!"

Combo didn't even bother to turn around as the bell rang and Channel began inching toward him. But as soon as Channel reeled back and prepared to strike, the talented brawler back-flipped over him and launched into his usual routine. An endless stream of haymakers erupted out of the dams that were his two hands.

WHAM! WHAM! Channel stumbled. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! The amazingly fit man had his head knocked back into the cage. His back slid down its wall and the referee began to move in.

Then, just as the referee bolted inside the cage, Channel's clawed hand tore into the very fist flying at his head. Instantly, its momentum was halted completely. Combo gasped and growled, silently cursing himself for failing to give this sucker's fighter file more than a cursory glance. Channel's other hand launched forward. Somehow, a simple palm strike to the leg hurled Combo back. Flat on his back, with his leg feeling like it was gonna crack in two, he snarled at Channel as the man casually strolled up to him.

"Don't you read?" asked the wrestler, chuckling to himself. "For every action, there is--"

Combo immediately leapt to his feet and into the air, nearly uppercutting the head off of that arrogant asshole! Remy's leg buckled and he fell to one knee the instant he planted his foot down. Fuck! He got one shot in; hopefully that was enough!

Channel took the hit like a champ. Quickly forcing himself back up to his feet, the Gifted Greco-Roman fighter brushed the blood off of his jaw as if it were a handful of crumbs.

"I like you, kid. You've got spunk," said Channel while Remy's gloved fist knocked his bone back into place. "But you won't get far with no skill to back it up!"

"Fuck you," spat the injured Remy at both his opponent and the referee he stared at as he unleashed those words. Spinning around on only one leg, the pugilist rammed his enemy, pulled Channel's head down, and kneed him in the face. Firing off knee strikes as if they were jabs, the wrestler's face was nearly mashed into paste in seconds flat! And still, the man didn't resist. Combo snarled, then smiled as the demon's face was caked in a thick, red ooze. When his enemy's eyes eventually began to glaze over, Combo finally let Channel go.

"There's your skill," shouted Combo. While his guard was down, Channel coiled himself around the boxer like a Boa Constrictor, grappling Remy's arm with inhuman strength and nearly snapping it off. Sickeningly loud crunching, snapping sounds filled the arena.

"EEEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The crowd stared in horror and began to shriek as the wrestler began choking Combo with his own displaced arm. Yet even as his vision was flooded by shadow, Combo developed a plan. He drug himself and his opponent toward the cage, kicked off of it, and reversed the chokehold into a grapple of his own in mid-air!

"It's over, fucker. Time to die!"

Standing behind the imposing titan who had so crippled him, Combo used every last bit of his strength to slip his one good arm under Channel's. With a leap, the athlete locked both of his knees into the wrestler's back, rolled back, and slammed Channel on the mat head-first. It was a good move, but not enough to break anyone's head.

But one good move was all he needed! Combo kept on rolling back over and over again, dragging Channel across the ring and hurling his head to the ground a dozen times. Only once the wrestler's cracked against the cage's steel bars did Combo halt his assault. A dizzy, bleeding Channel saw but one thing as Combo put him down for the count: a heavy boot stomping down on his face.

As the referee declared his victory, the yelping firebrand brawler stared down at the ground. With his arm shattered and his leg splintered, things just got a lot more complicated for him.

And yet, there was hope... he hated relying on it, but the ITSDA cheaters weren't going to steal this from him! Not now, not after he had come so close. In fact, after they put him in this match, it was only fair for him to even the odds a little.

He nodded when he spotted Phoenix Crimson's name on the bracket. His time had come.

From a private box high in the arena registered to a name that would take rooms of forensic accountants days to attribute to Dieter's organization, a large man watched the matches carefully. Dieter operated within another associates domain due to the strategic importance of Las Vegas as a recruitment center. Long ago, Schwartz Augen had learend that trying to attract Gifted men and women to its cause directly exposed it to dangerous levels of attention, but operating behind the scenes in this mecca of degenerate gambling and Gifted exhibition managed the task quite nicely. It was his job to monitor the various bouts and showes, illicit and legal, for potential. Already, SA had several Gifted performers on retainers or signed to their perfectly legal agency. Well, it was legal as long as no one looked too closely at their accounting.

Dieter grinned as he watched the exhibition. Phoenix Crimson was, by all reports, a worthy adversary. The man had bested Lady Scarlet and Mr. Green. It was a pity about the last.

A sudden chiming had him taking a small nokia phone from his coat and frowning at the message: Mind/Body protocols regarding associate Three. Epistemological delivery iminant. Dieter frowned at the message, shrugged, and returned his attention to the ring. The matches progressing currently were interesting, but a certain match had been arranged and he was eager to see how it resolved itself. Dieter glanced to the tournament board and spotted the name of the ringer he had entered into the tournament: Babae Pula. Not overly creative but it had worked so far as a disguise.

Not sure how this thread is progressing, but let's get it some life!