DeviousMe

"I..." Sage let off Nikolai again, clenching a gloved fistbefore his chest as he stated without pause and with somewhat psychotic confidence, "...am an archeologist."

While this probably wasn't the answer Horowitz expected (if he expected a vocal answer at all, and didn't just rely on his nose there), it was probably as good as any, for telling the Jaeger he was a Khevrakht likely would've told the green-skinned construct precisely squat.

Sage's scent, however, spoke volumes. Though unfamiliar, Horowitz could probably identify an amalgamation of creatures within, but so expertly grafted together as to make a being just as whole as anything nature could've brought forth. Moreover, it held an undertone of brutality, but also of free and vibrant creativity, and all this information was probably more than enough to bring the Jaeger to the very correct conclusion that a Khevrakht was a creature constructed by some great, yet decidedly demented (and probably evil) mind.

"And no." he added in a more casual tone, "Othar Trygvassen I am not. But enough about me - who are you, you magnificent example of Jaegerkin...?"

"Really now?" Sage remarked to Nikolai, a malicious undertone in his voice. His eyes narrowed at the man as he gave him a once-over, trying to figure out why the dark beings weren't going after the guy.

He turned a sideways glance toward the shady thing closest to him, "I don't suppose I can actually order you boys around? No, didn't think so."

"As for you..." his gaze locked Kamarov's eyes in a wicked glare, "What am I going to do with you? Oh...I know..."

Reaching an arm around Nikolai's back faster than greased lightning, Sage's voice had taken on a madly excitable tone, the cloaked man sweeping the gloved fingers of his other hand encompassingly through the air, "You can be my spunky sidekick! Join me, we'll blow the world, escape by the skin of our teeth, and then it's cocoa and schnapps all around! Whaddaya say? It'll be fun..."

((I think it's implied that stuff like that will cause them to explode. ))

While the amalgamation of attackers struck and otherwise engaged the dark creatures, Sage dealt with them in his own way - nice and simple, and with no effort whatsoever. His method of dealing with them?

He didn't.

He just walked right through them.

"Evenin', boys." he gave them a curt salute of two fingers as he proceeded through the narrow passage they formed for him, leaving the cloaked figure alone and unbothered - just like the last eleven times...

((Actually, I think everyone's headed more or less towards it...of course, I imagine our resident Jaegermonster might just be perpetually turned in the direction of greatest troop density, but then that's just my guess. ))

Sage just kept walking casually, his pace one of unhurried leisure. He didn't much seem to care about the darkness that had gotten between him and the pyramid, and to be perfectly honest, he very much didn't. Writing something down in a little notebook he'd produced from his cloak seemed a good deal more important.

Note to self: remind 'Abdul' to hire more qualified soldiers.

PS: pick up flashlight.

He really had to figure out a way to remember that last one. It had been there since the second time...

((Sage doesn't think Jack is crazy. 'Madboy' is reference to having the Spark, or being a genius with a lack of common sense - with he initially thought when he saw Jack laughing delightfully at Horowitz' fighting.))

"Thank ye, Jack." the veiled figure couldn't help but respond in the manner of a demented pirate, and with a slight bow no less, his broad smile almost visible beneath the cloth that hid his mouth, "And if ye care, call me Sage."

With that, he felt he had nothing more to say for now, turning about-face and starting to walk toward the pyramid in the wake of the destruction ahead, whiling a downright Lucifer-ish tune. By now, there was probably no question that this guy was insane - especially to Yosef - and dangerously so.

Moreover, some sort of malevolent aura seemed to have its clutches about him, and though it did its best to hide, it probably couldn't do so fully with Kamarov so relatively close. If the man really could sense the dark presence of the Necronomicon, chances were good said aura about Sage felt just about like a dozen of the things...

((Not behind. Walked out of the gate. Not the gatehouse, though.))

"Maybe." the cloaked figure gave a shrug, the whole of his robes moving ever so slightly, "Before I decide though, I'd like to know my madboy's name."

He gave a short glance to Jake and Nathaniel in the process, "Paperwork to fill out, you know. Have to make sure I don't kill the wrong people. Hm, what? Oh...no wrong people, you say?"

As for the man in the suit, he didn't even seem to be paying enough mind to the guy to actually ignore him...

((Mmmmaaaayyybe. ))

((Not a name, more of a...brand of monster? His name is Horowitz.))

"Aren't you the happy little madboy?" Jack heard the deceptively normal-sounding voice of the cloaked man, the veiled figure unhurriedly making his way in his general direction.

He had begun his stride toward the man when Jack had uttered his maniacal laughter, getting his attention, and by now had closed the distance enough to allow for conversation at casual volume.

"Are you the one who built him then?" the robed figure wanted to know, thumbing a black-gloved hand in the general direction of Horowitz, "If so, nice work. What parts did you use...?"

"Cool."

He spoke this word as a lax, confident remark. He, of course, being the veiled man who'd just appeared before the pyramid. Not stepped from a portal, not materialized out of teleport; just appeared from a shadow, the gloom cast by some inanimate object of appropriate size.

And the remark very much mirrored his thoughts. Normally, the only thing that happened when he appeared here was a squad of guards wanting to arrest him for trespassing...and then the slaughter began. This time, however, it seemed the latter had come first. How interesting. Maybe there really was something to the number 13. In any case, the present situation enthralled him to no end.

Not a dozen meters from the wall he stood, right on the main road, less than two meters tall and garbed in a ragged cloak of rusty brown, the crimson eyes that followed a certain Jaegermonster's motion up on the wall the only visible parts of his body beneath the hijab-like hood of his cloak. Well, not exactly, but from this distance the few strands of equal-hued hair that hung from his forehead and into the slight bit of orange hide between eye sockets and the thickly bundled cloth that hid the lower half of his face were details somewhat hard to see.

And indeed, he did just that: he stood there. He had no worry for anything going on about him. The Guardian would take care of what might mean him harm. It always did. Thus nothing existed for him now save Horowitz, the veiled stranger fascinated by the Jaeger's swiftness, smiling broadly beneath his mask.

This was a sight to see - and therefore, he'd take the chance to see it...

((Not a question of bright/dumb. In the words of Xykon: "Don't confuse my not caring with not knowing." ))

((Gott's little feesh in trousers! That is not a smart thing to say to a Jaeger! ))

[ QUOTE ]
"Sheer overwhelming force against him in a surprise attack might work..." she nodded to Nathaniel, " only if you could find him. The man is not our foe, the book that powers him is. Take that and you have in your hand godhood and the reins to his empire. The Necronomicon cares little for who uses it, just as long as its used."

[/ QUOTE ]
Wrong.

Dead wrong.

And Ceus had no idea just how wrong she was...

Elsewhere

The land burned. The seas boiled. All across the ruins of the once-great city, tall towers of flame licked greedily at the skeletons of ravaged buildings. Smoke billowed in great, thick trails toward the orange sky, and death and destruction truly reigned supreme, far as the eye could see. Even the massive black pyramid at city's center did not stand exempt, a gaping hole in its obsidian facade. And in that hole stood the man beneath the unseeming cloak of rusty brown, over the remains of another, and it was his hand that now took possession of a book, its ownver casting eye across the devastation etched below.

Not that he cared.

He turned about, leaving the remains behind, and descended once more into the depths of the pyramid, stairs and corridors the very same that he'd traversed in the opposite direction not so long ago. Only now they stood dark, dead, devoid of all that might have given comfort, breathless and lifeless as everything else about. It didn't take him long to reach the library, dark and gloomy as all other chambers, naught but the weak luminance of emergency lighting to cast light on what would take place now. The man sought out a table, and with a mighty sweep cast what it had held down upon the floor, loose pages flying through the air as pens and backs of books alike clattered down dejectedly. Then he thrust the book upon said table and pulled from the folds of his cloak a smaller sort; a mere notebook, bound in light, black leather. Casting this upon the table just as well, he produced a pen as his hand flung both books open wide.

And wrote.

His fingers wrote upon the pages of the notebook, line after line, not what he saw, but what he stood commanded to see. Without sparing the larger tome a single glance, he turned page after page of feverishly written words, yet so steady was his hand that the divine itself could not have caused a waver. Letter by letter, word by word, glyph by glyph he transcribed from one book to the other with no need for his eyes, certain that each stroke of the pen stood correct beyond measure, possessed by the absolute knowledge that what his hand now placed upon that paper for the twelfth time could be nothing other than what had stood written upon the pages of the larger work. Had stood written - for as the pen's strokes left their marks, with the same speed they disappeared from the other time. In naught but a few minutes, the work had been completed.

The larger book stood blank.

Nothing remained upon the pages that had so long held tight their contents vile, nothing but blank space upon blank slates. Useless now, the man swept the tome from the surface of the table and gathered his belongings, paying no more heed as the forlorn book tumbled through the air. Its blank pages unfurled as it spun, backing that held so long a time an unspeakable blight unto the world all but erased from existence, leaving nothing but a sad, sorry mass of seemingly ordinary paper to tumble beneath the relentless whim of gravity, mercilessly dragging void remains down to the floor. So the veiled man left it all behind.

As what had once been a tome so terrible shattered to dust upon the floor...

[ QUOTE ]
I have a good deal of plans for this, but it just... Takes so bloody much out of me to write it. It seems focus and concentration are the critical resources for an endeavour such as this.

[/ QUOTE ]
Uh, yeah. What'd ya think it took? Flowers and fairy dust? That's why a good work is called a good work. It does take work. Sometimes a bloody great amount.

And nah, was referring to something a friend of mine wrote recently. No worries though - after all, at least as far as I've seen, it's true what they say: great minds think alike.

Whoa, that was pretty gripping. Also eerily familiar. Nice. Oh, and...

[ QUOTE ]
I apologise for the length, but this is who I am and how I do things. I can't say things in a few words, not even when I'm speaking with people (be afraid, be very afraid), so the length is what it is. It's just one chapter, though it probably should have been at least two. It's a prologue, though, so it didn't feel right to break it down.

[/ QUOTE ]
Do not. Quality > quantity yes, but sometimes the latter is demanded by the former. Put into words what your mind's eye sees, and forget about 'size concerns'. When reading a well-written piece such as this, words become so much more than letters on a background, so don't ever let me hear you apologizing for the count of them again, savvy?

Very, very nice. So then, dare we expect more?

The latter. I've had the Warmaster as a character for well over a year now, but never got around to giving her an actual backstory, not to mention explain her change from disbelieving the 'human lies' about the Rikti War to actually coming to terms with them. This is the first piece to that puzzle, and will be explained in further detail once I finally get around to finishing Anomalous AAR.

Aye, awesome work. Can't wait to see the rest.

"Well then...I can't say we've ever done anything quite like this, and it's probably a new experience for you too. So...how about we get started...and just see where it goes?"

"Acceptable."

"Okay. Well, first of all, could you tell us your name please?"

"..."

"I understand. Would you mind if we called you 'K' for the time being, then?"

"Acceptable."

"I can see you're uncomfortable with this. Tell you what: just...start wherever you feel like. Don't bother trying to sound nice or not offend anyone, we're not doing this for publicity. Well, we are, but...nevermind. In your own words, could you tell us where you were in the first...um..."

"Rikti invasion."

"Yes...that...I..."

"I understand. I harbor no animosity. I will recount: on May 23, 2002, 1925 hours, I had been attached to a forward unit also serving as a potential-threat response team. No one could be certain of just what might come through the portals, and as we had received reports of a strange machines emerging from other gateway sites, including a surprisingly large example not far away, we had decided to err on the side of caution."

"So you were...basically on standby until it happened?"

"That is correct. However, my unit encountered no emergence phenomena. We did not enter combat until 1935 hours local time."

"Go on."

"In as few words as possible: it was madness. The improbable had become manifest, and seeing my fellow soldiers slain with terrible efficiency before my very eyes paled in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of negative thought patterns that attempted to break through into my mind, never ceasing their assault against my mental barriers. Before I had even come to realize this fact, rage had overtaken me, and I began to fight."

"To fight?"

"I leveled my primary weapon at the nearest human and incinerated him."

"Did...did you feel any satisfaction at this?"

"I did not. Though I had attempted to capsule my emotions, I could not stem the tides - neither those of my own heart, nor those of my soldiers. We wanted revenge. We wanted retribution. But most of all, we wanted to rid ourselves of the great fear."

"The great fear?"

"That you would return. Return to finish what you had begun...what we thought you had begun."

"Please, don't. We know...and in a way, we are responsible. But this is not the time, nor the place. Please continue."

"Affirmative. I directed my unit to establish a perimeter, the one created by the first group smashed apart by a human with strength that rivaled that of the Great Destroyer. Fortunately, he did not share his resilience, and our weapons soon ended his life. I still see before me my fellows snapping like twigs between his fingers, their broken bodies littering the area. We had not believed so many humans held such power."

"Neither do I, sometimes."

"I called for aerial bombardment in response, and made my way to a ground support vehicle, believing I could better coordinate the assault from there. As I ran, however, I spied in the sky none other than the Great Destroyer himself, on a collision course with the discus ship I had requested cover us."

"What happened?"

"Catastrophe. The Great Destroyer not only withstood the cannon fire directed at him, but cleaved through the vessel as if its armor had been softest fabric. The ship came down not far from us in a matter of mere seconds. I stood frozen in shock."

"What did you do then?"

"For some time...nothing. I found myself unable to move, both awed and horrified at the sight of such power. I was afraid. Terrified. But then I remembered why we were here: and that was why. I had seen him before, in the hospital, amidst debris and corpses. No one had been able to stop him."

"Stop? From doing what?"

"Destroying the incubation chambers. I thought I might be able to, but I was not."

"I...don't entirely understand...I think you're in the middle of something else right now. Could you start from the beginning?"

"Affirmative. I had been with child for several months. The day had come to remove my offspring from her incubation pod. I could not wait to hold her in my arms. Unfortunately, my duty delayed me, and my mate went ahead alone. In retrospect...no, I cannot connect anything fortunate with what took place. I found him there, the fingers of the Great Destroyer clasped about his throat, slowly crushing the life from his body. He had tried to fight, but against such power..."

"..."

"I came at him with all my might. It was a pitiful attempt. He crushed my armor as if it were a mere beverage container, leaving me broken and immobile on the floor as he forced me to watch...forced me to watch the life fade from the eyes of my mate."

"Your mate...that's a little strange for me. Would the term 'husband' be okay with you?"

"The designation is inaccurate, but acceptable."

"Thank you. Please go on."

"He dropped my...husband to the ground beside me. His lifeless eyes still pled for aid. I had never felt so helpless. There I was, a proud soldier of the Lineage of War, a Warmaster even...merely lying on the ground, my body shattered, unable to move. Unable to stop, or even delay the monster as it tore through the incubation ward, snuffing out all life within...including that of my daughter."

"That's...that's quite the story. But you survived. You held on."

"I did."

"So...what did you do once you had healed? Once you cold move again?"

"I put my blade to my throat."

"You were going to commit suicide?!"

"I was. I had lost my mate, my child...my honor. Everything."

"What stopped you?"

"Guilt. Rage. Anger. Fear. Duty. But fear and duty most of all. Fear that you would return to finish us. As a member of the Lineage of War, it is my duty to safeaguard my people. I had failed. But I was alive. That meant my duty was not over."

"Oh wow...so...so how did you feel when you found out...how did you even find out?"

"An old friend. I had believed him a traitor when he began to work with Vanguard, and for several months thereafter. However, one day, much like any other, a doubt suddenly stood within my mind. I know not why. Or rather, I recall not. There is a...gap within my memory. In the memory of all my people. It is not long - but none of us can remember what events took place within that time."

"I...wow, I don't know what to say to that. Please, tell me more."

"There is not much more to tell that is relevant. Apart from the apparently unrecoverable nature of the lost memories - specialists have told me the case is not amnesia, but that the memories have truly been purged, as if...how did he say...'converted into another form'...I am unsure of the meaning - many of us have experienced a sense of repetition upon coming into contact with a select few humans. You call it 'deja bu', I believe."

"Deja vu. But go on. What sort of humans?"

"Some heroes...some villains...but also Vanguard personnel, especially the Lady Grey. Regrettably, we are unsure of what meaning can be gained from these happenings at this time."

"I see...oh, not now. We're just about out of time. Well, I would very much appreciate if you contacted us when you have more information. Not to sound...um...insensitive, but it's truly fascinating, and we'd all very much like to know more."

"I shall consider it."

"One last question before we have to stop: now that you know the truth, how are you coming to terms with it?"

"One step at a time..."

((I thinks Sovs meant Danny managing to catch the 'wildly swinging' swords in such a way as to not get cut. ))

Acid growlingly peeled himself from the wall a second time, murder in his eyes. He was not happy - part of his shirt had been shredded, the scattershot mace beam had blackened several patches of his deep-green hide, and worst of all there gaped a sizeable tear in his left side, the characteristic rib plates of the Khelari skeleton visible beneath shredded and energy-assailed remains of hide.

A skeleton of metal.

"I hate when that happens!" the reptilian exclaimed with a caustic snarl, the robotic body's vocal functions damaged in the blast, as he thrust a hand at Brushstalker, trying to rip the man's helmet clean off...

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

The Khelari with Hotaka may well have been able to grab Death's right wrist to wrench and lock the man's arm behind his back, but with Acid's other arm occupied with holding the sniper's throat, he had no remaining hand to stop the knife. Death's blade stabbed at his abdomen with force.

The expected reaction, however, did not take place.

Again the Horseman stabbed, and again he felt that the toxin-laden edge struck something relatively rubbery - and that it decidedly did not penetrate.

"Oh. Ouch." Acid remarked in a rather bored, monotonous manner as Death kept knifing the reptilian, more out of a 'What the hell?!' moment than anything else, "Help-me. Help-me. Okay seriously, cut that out now, or I really will cut off your air..."

Masterful.

Normally, Acid would've followed the impromptu force bolt up immediately upon recognizing that Brushstalker wasn't staying down, but the sudden wash of cold against his hide from a certain overhead sprinkler caused him to startle just long enough for the Bane Spider operative to get this shot off.

However, this didn't mean things went as the former hunter had planned. He still dealt with an immediate adaptor here, and the reptilian took a deft step forward to make himself steadfast against the beam's impact.

And stepped right into the path of Death's bullet.

The impact caught him in the side, just above where a human's ribs would have begun, and carried him speedily into the radio room's rear wall with a thunderous crash - with or without Alyssa, depending if she'd manage to evade him or not...

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

Far down the corridor, Death most likely didn't even see it coming. Unless he had taken precaution against someone jumping right on top of him, the materialization of Acid and Hotaka would have remained completely unnoticed, as the reptilian's method of teleportation made barely a sound upon arrival.

The sniper's presence, however, stood clear as day, the rhythm of his heartbeat, bioelectric field, and familiar scent giving his identity away without a doubt. The very next instant the Khelari already attempted to wrap his arm around Death's throat, placing the man in a choke hold from which there would be no escape...

((Computers do many things. Also, he didn't kill it, just reset it to use the sprinklers immediately and use a silent alarm instead on the normal, very noisy one. Few pages back and stuff.))

((Aye, that stuff's blood gas, I think. Also remember, Acid sabotaged the fire alarm a while back. ))