DeviousMe

((Haha, I KNEW you couldn't resist a DRAMA thread, Ess. Though I'm surprised Doc West doesn't work here.

Rockwell...hehehe...does this mean we'll be seeing Cryptosporidium? ))

Howard Tharomar's footsteps echoed coldly through the hallway as he stepped from the elevator. He was focused, driven. Nothing was going to stop them now - not Crey, not Portal Corp, nobody.

He wasn't quite sure which of the two powerhouses he should watch more closely. Crey had a bad reputation, and their Revenant and Tank programs were not something to be taken lighly.

Portal Corp. seemed more docile, but was much more ambiguous, and always seemed to stay on top of the market somehow! Every time something that could threaten them sprung up, it was either bought out or had a way of vanishing into obscurity because Portal Corp. brought out a better product the very next day.

Which is why Tharomar took security so seriously around here. Nothing was getting out of Rockwell that thy didn't know about, and the flow of information was very highly coded. Often, the company and its business partners used only single letters to identify themselves, and communication was kept brief.

As he walked on, Tharomar opened his pocket planner. He was a freind of old-fashioned things, partially because no one could hack a piece of paper.

Who was his first meeting today...?

Howard Tharomar sneered as the snow crunched beneath his boot, stepping out of his car. He hated the snow. Snow slowed things down, and less speed meant less profits.

But he smiled again as he looked up at the building - his building. The bastion of power of Tharomar Enterprises. The place that would soon make history.

The tall, thin man slammed the car door shut forcefully, then proceeded to the main entrance, hanging his jacket inside to reveal a smug, jet-black business suit. It had a sharp cut, and together with Taromar's deep-gray eyes and hair, practically radiated cold, unrelenting authority and drive.

As he stepped in the elevator, he pressed the intercom button, calling up his secretary to see if everything was proceeding smoothly.

The doors closed, and he was already thinking again.

Thinking about money...

And power...

Kaos' men might have heard the broadcast, but to Allen and his troopers, the whole thing just blew over the ocean's surface.

In the almost total blackness of the abyssal plain, the black powersuits melded into the environment completely as three figures trudged on.

"Coming into range, Sir. There's a platisc flow over there we can use to climb up." one of the troopers reported to Allen. Their sonic visors gave them all the visual data they could ever need, even in the stark darkess of the sea.

The flow ascended along the seamount like a ramp, and thouh, steep was readily traversable.

The jagged rock coast at the upper end was another story entirely. Then again, the erosion here had crated the flow in the first place so that wasn't really a surprise.

"Stealth on, hooks up." Allen commanded, and his form vanished into thin air. The dark matter cloak didn't protect from every sort of detection, but it was perfectly effective against the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

The three power-suited figures took the heavy rifles from their backs and switched them over with a click, then fired grappling hooks up the rock face.

"I still say we should just waste this place and get it over with." one of the trooper murmured as they started their climb. No sound leaked out of the helmets, "One villain can't be that important."

"We're not the judge of that." Allen reminded him, "All we're here for is to destroy anything relatiing to the dropship's discovery. XANV gav us a good amoun to work with, but we still need to find the mainframe or whatever he keeps it in."

"And if he keps it in his head?" the second trooper wanted to know.

"Simple," Allen replied sternly, "then we cut off his head..."

((Yeah, I'm trying to time Allen's arrival on the island with everyone else. For now, it's just 'filler' so he doesn't have to poof out of thin air later on. ))

The raft hopped over the surf and literally smacked into the beach at speed, skidding along and over the sand quite a distance before the engines realized they weren't going anywhere anymore and decided to deactivate.

It had managed to avoid the lethal barrier by projecting a defensive barrier of its own nature, but this was gone now and if any defenses were currently around, they would surely vaporize the boat.

Due to the 'smoke' still billowing from it, nothing short of an X-ray scope would be able to tell there was no one inside...

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

"Oh, that was a great idea to ditch the boat."

"How the heck was I supposed to know nothing would happen? I thought he had a turret aimed at us that would blow us out of the water."

"True. That's what we would have done."

"Mengmengmeng...lousy excuse."

"Oh, just shut up and keep walking..."

"Fleetingly." Allen replied with the same nonchalant smile, his troopers readying themselves so covertly only the most expert of tacticians could even hint at what they were doing, "Okay, so you want to off your arachnemesis goody-two-shoes, and that means..."

You-know-who's feed suddenly went black as a huge bkacl cloud seemed to simply leap out of the raft and onto the drone, completely severing the line.

Moments later, the automaton was gone, the raft now covered in a thick black fog. It started moving again, splashes echoing as it hopped over the waves and on course for the island...

((Actually, you answered the wrong question. I was asking about Kaos' deductive reasoning:

Step 1: he gets a letter from Experiment, asking him to come help with...something unusual.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: he goes to the island to kill Experiment.

As you may notice, there's a step missing there. I wanted to know what that step was.))

Allen raised an eyebow, then burst out laughing. When he and his troopers finally got a hold of themselves again, he continued, leaning closely to the drone, and almost whispered, "Okay, you're really calling your doomsday plan Doomsday 2.0 here? Not that it's unoriginal or anything..."

The two troopers chuckled amongst themselves, one whispering to the other, "Why do I suddenly get the feeling we're dealing with a video-game obsessed nerd here?"

"Not sure." the other hushed back, "Sounds like this guy doesn't have all his teeth where they should be."

"...but I guess that's not why we're here." Allen went on, "Now I'm asking you nicely - please stop evading the question and gimme something to work with. If it's none of our busines, we'll just be on our way..."

((Hey, dark...how does Kaos even know about the island? ))

Allen and his troopers snickered amongst themselves. This was going well.

So there was someone there after all, and the island wasn;t just run by an automaton. This was good to know, but bad for their situation - if that 'someone' had noticed his cloaked fly-a-ma-bob colliding with the even-more-so hidden dropship, they'd need to step into the next phase of the plan.

"That just means you're slow." Allen chuckled as he replied, "Which might be a good thing. 'Cause if we got no business here, we'd like to go home. Now, I'm assuming you're your general island-sitting-villain with the plans of Doomsday 2.0. All fine and good, we just need to know if anything unusual has popped up recently..."

((And no, that's not a relation to Experiment 2.0 - but if you-know-who doesn't know any better, he could probably take it that way. ))

Allen smiled devilishly as the drone approached, demanding an explanation. His troopers kept their weapons primed, but concealed for now as they stopped the 'raft'.

"Yeah, I got a reason." he retorted, "Does your boss have insurance or is he gonna pay in cash...?"

((Argh, I cannot resist. Curse you, compulsiveness! ))

Gadzul Oil - Platform PCCW-5
International Waters
0926 Hours ROMEO

Allen Fang stared out to seat at the far shoreline of Paragon City, letting the icy morning wint rush through his matted gray fur. The Necrian bore the appreanrance of a werewolf, but whout the bulk genrally associated with the creatures.

Heavy boots echoed clearly on the rig's metal grating as a Captain stepped up beside him, clad in the same simple back uniform as him. Though technically an officer, Allen had never seen the need for placing any distinguishing marks from his troopers. They were his team. They were his freinds. And they were his equals.

"We're back on schedule, Sir. The supply disruption caused a few delays, but I think we can fix it if we increase the hollow-conductor's capacity by fifteen percent."

"Good. Any word on what hit the dropship yet?"

The Captain shook his head, "SENECA thinks it must've collided with another cloaked ship. The odds of that are ridiculously small, but if that's the only thing she can come up with..."

"...then it's most likely it really happened." Allen finished, pushing off the railing, and started walking back to the door in the hub. He didn;t say a word as he thought about th incident - something had knocked one of their cloaked resupply dropships right out of the air. It hadn't been damaged, but the delay it caused had been extremely annoying. If they were going to keep their timetable, they had to drill a lot faster now.

As Allen stepped into the control hub, he was handed a black stick that projected a hologram.

"Hm." he commented, handing the thing back, then turned to the Captain again, "SENECA's idea just became a whole lot more. Gotta love the US government."

The Captain looked at the hologram, labeled 'OmniSat 5 Feed', which showed a patterned effect moving through the dropship's path at the time in question.

"That measn we gotta make sure whoever owns said ship didn't get wind of what this rig's really up to."

"Right." Allen nodded, "Today's mankind can't know about First Humanity - not yet."

"On it, Sir." the Captain saluted, "I'll get a team together right away."

"Thanks, but I'll be taking care of this one personally..."

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

Undisclosed Location
International Waters
1044 Hours ROMEO

The night-black combat assault raft sped along its course, easily hopping waves that should have toppled it. Stealthy and almost silently, not propelled by something so noisy as propeller, the craft almost slid along the water's surface.

The boat was on course for a certain unidentified island, carrying three unassuming gray figures...

Us? Mean? Join the conspiracy nuts...

*superglues tin foil hat to Essex's head*

Yeah, I'm not sure how it happens in Final Fight, but in GoCC, I set it up this way:

A 'piece' can be picked from any place or time in our local multiverse. When they are defeated 3 times, they return to the exact point in space, time, level, whatever, from where they left in the first place.

Yeah, pretty much the only reason I built an army in Final Fight was to counter Blightlord. I was planning to lose it all in the big battle for the pocket dimension of infinite zombification, but then BL went ahead and created another...so now I'm kinda back to square one over there.

As for critiques on any of yalls...yeah, I got squat. I'll have to figure that all out sometime...

"Is it me," Acid started, tapping the table with a claw after Kreigg had walked out the door, "or does anyone else think there's something up with that guy?"

"Metabio-scanner suggests so." 2247-U answered, "Problems seem of an emotional nature. Hard for me to understand..."

Heh, that's actually pretty easy. If my characters carried around a soundtrack...

Acid Zero would be, hands down, Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Movement 1.

Gunslinger Pete would of course have to be "Ring of Fire". You know the one.

And since my other characters are really embodiments of my RL friends and co-workers, I've got no idea about them.

((Aiight, I'll bite. ))

"Mail call!"

The prisoner raised his head. He smiled a most fiendish smile, exposing a mouth full of predatory teeth.

Today was the day.

The plan was simple, smooth, and foolproof. After all, Commander Firenze had thought of it.

And as the contruct looked at his watch, he knew Phase 1 would soon turn into Phase 2. The infiltration of Arachnos would begin.

It was truly amazing - how did Firenze know all this? He almost seemed like the puppetmaster, carefully pulling the strings on everyone and everything.

The operative didn't much care. He'd been created for a purpose, and was going to carry out that purpose.

A contact had been secured on the outside. Why said contact would EVER work with them was beyond him, but a hidden starship with teleport capability was nothing to be sneezed at.

Maybe he could even boost some tech on the way.

No, Firenze wouldn't like that. Those were the kinds of things that made 'business relationships' go sour.

He'd just keep it strictly business then. Yeah, that was a good idea. Strictly business.

Find your fellow operative. Mix into the crowd. Our contact has given us valuable information with which you should have no problem getting the trust of Arachnos. Start Phase 2 as you and your partner see fit.

Oh, Phase 2 would be starting VERY soon indeed.

Then the first explosion echoed down the hallway. It was time.

He lashed at a section of his call wall, pulling out a compact MG, and slapped a clip into it. He then proceeded to peel back the skin from the back of his hands - the engineers had done an excellent job making the fake skin look just like the real thing - to reveal the micro-circuitry implanted in his hide.

Artificially contructed or not, he was an operative, and that made him equal. He would not betray that trust!

"For Malta." he wispered...

And the door exploded...

"The good kind." Acid answered Cafea, "And that's all that matters, wouldn't you agree?"

"Pardon." 2247-U piped up, "But that style is synonymou with the experiences of..."

"Would you put a lid on it?" Acid merely sighed, "You can't break everything down into a calculation. You just can't. Takes all the fun out of life."

"An abstract concept, just as the opinion 'good'. If one were to..."

Acid wasn't even listening anymore, just having the 'why me?' look on his face as the Posbi jabbered on about logical calculations and comparing them to illogical abstracts...

Yes.

[ QUOTE ]
"Nice to see another reptile on this mammal filled planet," Aurak said in way of greetings.

[/ QUOTE ]
"Your eyes can deceive you." Acid smiled to Aurak as he approached the bar, "But I'll admit it's nice to come to a place on this rock where someone doesn't yall 'kill the monster' right away."

He eyed Rulaag suspiciously for a moment. How rude to just point a weapon at him right away.

He decided not to say anything to the frog-like being and - not quite sure why Frosch had hidden - instead turned to the Posbi, "Sorry I'm late, I had a little run-in with SVE units off Sector Morning Red. Seems the bounty on my head's been tripled and everyone wants a piece of me."

"Understandeable." 2247-U responded, scootching over a barstool for Acid to sit on, "You were not followed?"

Acid just grinned, "You kiddin' me? Of course I was. But Alan was nice enough to take some heat off me."

"Ah, the Igniter. How are his functions these days?"

"Oh, the usual. Still calls himself the Red Dragon, though. I'll never quite understand why. And he's still mad that the movie people here stole his name."

The Posbi seemed to blink all 'eyes' at once, "Why? He is blue! And what...?"

Acid held up a finger, "I find it better to file that under the 'does not compute' category. I suggest you do the same."

"Very well."

And then the music stopped.

"Hm?" Acid commented as he turned to the table where Kreigg and Leeni, "Say, why'd you stop? I was enjoying that..."

Suddenly, 2247-U moved again. he hadn't done so in quite some time, and what he was doing while standing there motionlessly was anyone's guess.

Indeed, he quite liked the fact that the plasma-eating being hadn't discovered the fusion reactor deep within his chassis. His mechanical 'heart' operated on a plasma basis, and the Posbi really preferred not to have to fight for it.

But as the door swung open with a crack of thunder, coenciding with a streak of lightning across te dark sky outside, 2247-U had something to warrant moving again.

Cold wind and a ton of rain rushed in as a tall, gray-robed figure slowly walked into the inn, muttering something about the Council staying home.

A deep-green reptilian hand reached out from underneath the cloak and closed the door once again, and then the figure flung back the gray hood, revealing the rough shape of what humans theorized a raptor's head may have looked like.

"I hate Mondays." Acid stated as he headed for the bar...

((He didn't warp in. Just a really massive ship went overhead.))

"Acceptable." 2247-U responded, stalking closer to the bar. his looked extremely clumsy, and the others could swear the mechanical beaing would fall over at any moment.

But he seemed very sure of himself as the stopped right at the bar and produced a tentacle-arm from a sudenly-opening slit in the discus-like torso. The arm wiggled about in a niche, then found what it was looking for and came back out, laying a very large large diamond on the bar that the Posbi thought perhaps valuable enough to trade.

"Carbon - unprocessed." he explained. To a Posbi, carbon was carbon, no matter in what form, a generally very useful and abundant natural resource, "Query: of any value here?"

"Thank you for the input." 2247-U cracked, still a little staticy, "Translator module is now fully functioning."

Then he turned to Cafea, "Response to question one: BOX unit self is composed of cybernetic and organic componets in proportion of mass 98.762 to 1."

The next in line was Rulaag, "Response to question two: correct. You are assuming this. Addition: your assumption is correct."

2247-U then spoek to the entire crowd, "Query: this unit has come to seek contact with identified being 'Mister Zero'. Have unidentified beings experienced any contact with him at or before this point in time?"

A slight shudder suddenly started going around, and glasses and bottles began clinging against one another. It wasn't much, but it was definetely noticeable. A small storm had been brewing all evening now, but that coun't be the cause...

And then as quckly as it had come, the suddering waned again, leaving only peace and quiet once more...

Until the front doors opened once more - and in stepped something that almost looked like the Eiffel Tower scaled down to human proportions.

The main body of the gray, and obviously metallic creature, looked like a large, thich saucer, wout of which four segmented tentacle legs reached to the floor, each about a mater in length and ending in three equally spaced toes.

Above the 'saucer' rose a tower that was a little taller, more than one meter, but less than 1.5. The odd nestled construction ended in a gleaming-blue ring of lights that seemed to be some sort of eyes. Whatever this thing was, it was a safe bet that it could clearly see in all directions at once.

Its surface wasn't smooth. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. Bumps and grooves, odd patters and niches, antennae and what-not adorned the metallic being all over in a fashion so random it would have blown any mathematician's mind if he tried to calculate it.

No one at the bar likely recognized this being. BOX-2247-U was a positroic-biological being from the Thousand-Sun-World, an artificial planet hidden deep in the vast space of emptiness between the Mily Way and Andromeda.

Those that did, however, were likely gripped with fear. Less than a thousand years ago, these beings had attempted to wipe out all organic life in the known galaxy. Why had never been discovered. Why they had so suddenly stopped and vanished from the galactic playing field was even more of a mystery. But the galaxy did not forget these things so easily.

"Kracksworg!" a loudspeaker on its front spat out as the Posbi attempted to communicate in something other than Intra, the artificial language of the Traders...before the Concile wiped them out, anyway (your general-evil-megalomaniac-empire goons didn't look favorably on free trade). It had long been adopted as the general means of communication among most species in the galaxy - after all, things were hard enough to talk about already; they would have been much more difficult if everyone spoke a different tongue.

But 2247-U had been instructed to communicate in English here. Sadly, its mission-giver had not taken into account that the Posbi didn't speak a single English syllable...

*Takes his hat off 'cause he's from Texas and that's what we do*

I'm sure this has been said countles times now, but I'd like to thank ya for everything as well. You will be missed...a lot.

But we give you best wishes and hope you only see success.

I salute the One and Only Queen of Ceffeine: CuppaJo!

((Well, I do have something completely alien in my book, though I need to find a good reason WHY it would come to Earth in the first place. Acid and crew certainly wouldn't show themselves in public unless absolutely necessary, what with being a secret organization and all. ))