Ineffable

Karl thought very carefully.

He could resist torture. What he did to his own body daily, he did WITHOUT pain killers by now.

And while they claimed they could just kill him and get what they needed from his corpse? A brilliant plan. Except Karl wouldn't be leaving a corpse behind. Plenty of concealed concentrated acid capsules would make sure of that.

He wouldn't tell them anything. Let them do as they pleased. Let the world burn...

-----

No.

Obey.

Comply.

Speak.

Issue.

Goal.

-----

On the other hand, Karl suddenly thought, he could accomplish MUCH MORE in this world if he were still alive and had an intact body.

-----

"The Council have her." Karl said sourly.

"You know..." Ineffable remarked, still from behind the door, leering at the group through it, (through the comm now though) "I can both teleport allies and plain just melt the door to slag if you really want through so badly."

Of course, Poe hadn't teleported out of the elevator, so Darkvapor could hardly have teleported above empty space to tackle him in the first place.

Poe had tried his little static trick again, and this time, it HAD failed.

He drifted out into the shard, beyond DJ Zero's influence, and beyond most realms of help.

It could be millions of years before he reformed, but of course, time within the D and time in the outside world were not always on the same track with each other, and sometimes, one track could drift ahead of or behind the other.

Thus, Poe managed to escape. After rotting within an infinitely large prison spread out across uncountable bits of matter. NOT the most pleasent of experiences. If Poe had been pissed before, now he was a mushroom cloud laying waste to everything.

-----

If Power Breaker went up the elevator, he would have seen a trail of trickled black ooze heading in the direction of the Sharkhead isle door. Little did he know it was essentially impossible for Poe to have pulled that trick off unless he could exist in two places at once...

-----

And finally, Kip's efforts succeeded.

The hero-side bar shattered into trillions of glowing blue ones and zeroes, but most important, Kip and Khelly were free. The open space seemed to act as Zero Gravity, so it was easy enough to move about...

The various anti-virus programs backed away uncertainly from the new gaping hole blasted in the wall of the system.

Of course, Poe was already in the elevator by now, so the man just landed solidly on the floor.

That didn't change the fact that there was a rocket heading his way.

Poe quickly pressed the close door button, and in the process of turning around, saw the rocket.

"Shi-"

The explosion rocked the D.

When the smoke cleared, most of the elevator had been blown away, revealing the elevator shaft. Poe was nowhere to be seen, although he had left behind a fine pair of cracked blast goggles hanging from some sparking wires. They were coated with what looked like black ooze.

Karl scowled as he hung by one leg, completely helpless and immobile.

"Don't panic. Just ride it out..."

There was a faint popping noise followed by a splitting headache.

Karl's eyes widened.

The serum he used to boost his power had worn off...

And WHY did he suddenly feel so happy?

And WHY was he suspended in a black abyss?

The Sorcerer's spell slowly rekindled and sparked back to life as Karl's defenses went down.

Karl raised an eyebrow at the Sorcerer.

"You would have had better luck with just letting that fool try his method. Not that it would have worked, but..."

He shook his head sadly.

The sorcerer's spell fizzled, failed, and vanished.

"Now if this is just going to be a game of 'force him to tell us without needing to lift a finger...'"

Karl suddenly leapt for his coffin (the hinges of which were still open) and it was about then that everyone noticed the coffin in itself had no bottom.

"Then I'll be leaving to find another way into the Council base."

He was three thirds of the way through his leap (or rather, his dive) into the coffin, with only his legs extending from the darkness within it.

Darkvapor's spheres could search for as long and thouroughly as they wanted. They would never find Moreira.

-----

"I'm not telling you." Karl said flatly.

"You barge into my camp, wreck it, attack my minions, kill a few of them, make the rest run away to be killed by Clockwork, and NOW you want me to tell you where she is? World be damned, I don't care. You can torture me for years, as if you had that much time, and I'd never tell you. Now if you were willing to do something for me that would make me feel more compliant..."

Flaming made a BIG mistake.

He thre fire at Poe.

FIRE.

The arsonist merely grinned as the wave of fire washed over him harmlessly, leaving not a hair out of place.

"If you're going to breathe something, throw something, and explode in storms of it, you'd better be pretty damn resistant if not entirely IMMUNE to it..." He muttered under his breath.

Then came the conundrum with Fraenir and the new man.

If the man hadn't leapt for Poe, Fraenir would have actually scored a direct hit, but as it were, Poe did not like being tackled, and made a minor course-adjustment to his flight path. The new figure completely missed Poe.

And as it were, he collided into Fraenir, who WOULD have gotton Poe had the othe rman not interfered.

Worse yet, Energon X had fired off his bolt before Poe had peroformed the course correction, (which in itself had taken less than a second) so now it was aiming to collide with both Fraenir and the stranger. Poe, in the meantime, was a few scant yards away from the villain-side elevator doors, which were conveniently open at the moment...

To try and deter anyone should they choose to follow, Poe dropped two acid motars onto the ground as he passed by. They both swiveled about on their stumpy leg struts and aimed at the nearest enemies-Fraenir and the strange man.

They both shot acid grenades at the pair.

Murphy would have been proud.

"I admit that a while ago I, completely by chance, came upon Cohen here and ended his life, shortly followed with a standard reanimation procedure used to make cadavers that I have slightly modified for my own purposes. However, I was never at any time in contact with the lost, and I didn't even know the body was missing until I saw the news. I checked the coffin immediately and the body was not in storage as I had left it. Two days after Statesman fell, one of my assisstans found the body back inside the coffin. But that is not the point." He said slowly and cautiously. "The POINT is that you still have no idea when or where to look. I do. Because I saw the City Representative, talked to her, not twenty four hours ago."

-----

The Clockwork battered down the elevator door and rushed into the rooms beyond, dismantling anything they found into base scrap.

Dax was wrong in his assumptions. Had he checked carefully, Cohen's soul was still anchored to his body, and it was clearly his and his alone. While it was obvious bringing the hero back to life at this point would be impossible, it would be more than easy to view the soul residue for memories. Communication would have been impossible, mainly because what was left of Cohen's soul was like a glass that had been thrown off the roof of a sky-scraper.

-----

Martin saw.

He didn't really like Cohen's memories very much. The scrapper was just way too STUPID. He rewound past the obviously non-related stuff.

Let's see...

Boomtown. It was easy to find this particular memory, mainly because Cohen had only ever been to Boomtown ONCE. He had not come back.

Mostly he had wandered around looking for Clockwork Princes. He had even seen Babbage. (but the monstrous machine had ignored him, and he had wisely chickened out from fighting it.)

Cohen had spent a few days in Boomtown when he met Karl in the Powderkeg.

Who had proceeded to stick a cleaver through his skull.

And that was the end of Cohen the level 47 scrapper's career, but not his memories. If Martin sifted through carefully enough, there was more.

Darkness. And the Cohen was free! Light!

Cohen shambled out of Karl's coffin and followed the Mortificator around for about a day, doing various menial tasks. Fetching him medical tools, beating up trolls and outcasts who got too close...It was obvious Karl had re-worked Cohen as an Eidolon or a particularly strong abomination.

About two weeks past that, the memories promptly ended again when Cohen was stuffed back into the coffin, which was opened exactly two hours later. But it hadn't been Karl who had opened it, because Karl was not a member of the Lost...

Then everything faded to darkness, and Martin found nothing more of interest within Cohen's double-dead body.

-----

Karl coughed politely.

"If I can have my hero corpse back, I would be very grateful. A new layer of skin, perhaps a few extra ribs, some Formaldehyde..."

((Hence me slowing down a bit.))

"Well I would think I could make everything much easier for myself if I just did this." Karl said.

He unstrapped his coffin, and flipped the lid, spilling its contents onto the ground.

Laying at Bladewing's feet was the mangled, dark, blood-stained, and quite obviously dead as a doornail body of Cohen the level 47 scrapper. The Soul Hound, however, tracked the City Representative to the body, where it halted. So either Cohen was really the City Rep, (HIGHLY unlikely) or something else was going on here.

Poe did something unexpected. Mid-rush through flight, he reversed, still facing forward.

Energon X heard a *clink* followed by a *pluff* noise as the web grenade exploded at his feet.

Fraenir's red lightning bolt hit Poe dead-on.

And was absorbed by his charged shield. In addition to giving Poe excelent protection against physical attacks, it gave him down-right amazing resistance to energy based attacks. It wasn't long after that when Fraenir found a shower of caltrops surrounding him.

Due to Breaker's little outrage, it was now likely Energon would be imprisoned with one of Breaker's cages as well as stuck in place by Poe's web grenade. Additionally, Breaker couldn't catch Poe if Poe was moving in the opposite direction.

"Screw you Breaker! Don't think I'll make the mistake of coming IN HERE again once I get out!" Poe shouted as he zipped for the exit on the opposite side of the club.

((Errr...Diov is not Poe. I think if Diov himself was here, this would be a somewhat different situation entirely. >.&gt)

((It may be god-moding, but it is all within the limits and boundaries of the game. Poe cannot do anything not possible in the game, and he cannot use any powers outside of what he has in-game. While what I do may easily be interpreted as such, I do follow a set of basic rules.

Plus, I'm not in this to win. Judge me as you will.

As far as you going with DJ Zero Grey, I did not see your actions as god moding in any way shape or form, and I whole-heartedly agree with you when you say that nothing short of another dimensional entity greater or equal to in power to DJ Zero would be able to do anything to him. I don’t even think he’d even blink in response to the Malleus Mundi or the Tears of the Spirit.

But seeing as I am being thrown a bone here, and since I have never been one to turn down free bones…))

[ QUOTE ]
"Would you like a drink? Just say what you want and it'll be here... No poisons, though. I don't care if you enjoy a nice strichnyne mixed into your sparkling water, I'm not risking you keeling over in my club and having to deal with your boss. He's unpleasant, even if he is a professional."

[/ QUOTE ]

“You have nothing that I could ingest with satisfaction.” Poe spat at the DJ.

[ QUOTE ]
"Don't worry about them, they can't get to you, hurt you, or whatever. I'd say they can't see or hear us, but, well... I've never been that good a liar. Now... Tell me... Why is it every time you come here, you have to try to give me a headache? There are plenty of other things you could be doing, why must you bring havoc on my establishment?"

[/ QUOTE ]

“I will remind you that when I first walked in here today, it was EVERYONE ELSE who started the trouble. I will further remind you that it was others who also started the fight when I walked in here not a few minutes ago. So the reason as to WHY I bring havoc to your establishment? People don’t like me. However, as YOU have stated CLEARLY multiple times, differences are supposed to be moot here. If it is ANYONE’S fault as to why there was a fight between me and your other patrons…” Poe grinned lightly. “It’s YOURS. After all, is it not YOUR responsibility to make sure that a fight can’t even BEGIN to start here?”

Then the others showed up.

The moment DJ Zero got stuck, it was all over. Poe was gone in a flash. Literally. A series of seeker drones, gas mines, stealth generator, and being able to fly away at high speed being a great advantage here. With DJ Zero gone, all bets were off. Any power or ability could be used, anything could happen. Fraenir didn’t even get as far as grabbing Poe by the neck.

((Mind you, this is merely me assuming that with DJ Zero gone, the various rules and operations of the D are suspended during his absence. After all, I understand he literally keeps the place afloat through sheer force of will. Taking him away from the D is like dunking a tooth-pick into a lava stream. If I’m wrong in my assumption, however, I’d be happy to edit.))

-----

The false DJ frowned.

“What are you two doing? Stop that…”

Nothing got past their shield, but that hardly stopped the two heroes.

They were breaking things faster than they repaired themselves, and there was really nothing the Anti-Virus manifestations could do to stop them.

Now all it would take from here on out was clever thinking. If every object in the room was a manifestation of the program/application they were currently in, that meant that the room itself was the actual boundary of the application. Which meant to escape, the application needed to be ‘deleted.’

There was obviously a recovery program which kept delving into the system and bringing back programs that were deleted, but at the rate Khelly and Kip were smashing things…

An application’s size is determined by its content. What would happen to it if everything inside of it was deleted?

The Anti-Virus programs almost looked worried, even without their faces.

Karl gawked at Bladewing.

"I'd feel a bit better about all of this if I had a few dozen or so Eidolons standing behind me...But I get the impression I don't have an actual choice here, no?"

Poe had zero intentions of staying put.

"Cheerio." He said.

Energon X saw him visibly wince as he operated some control on his right gauntlet.

Poe had developed his charged armor and power sink abilities via crafting devices that could mimic the powers of a friend of his named Zabu, a powerful energy manipulator, the "Patron" like ways in which he used the abilities granting him some affinity with them.

He had checked his sync-scanner before-hand, so he knew trying to rift away right now was futile. So what he was attempting was suicidal, but if there was a time to get experimental, it was now.

Xabu usually got around by being very damn fast, but sometimes, no matter HOW fast you ran, it wasn't fast enough. When prompted, the villain could transmute himself into pure energy and 'conduct' himself along matter to travel from place to place. Poe had, admitedly, begun working on a device that could allow him to do the same...

But he had never really gotten around to getting beyond the prototype. He had rifting, which seemed to be infinitely more useful, and initiate tests were a let-down. (The test subjects usually coming out of their conducted state inside out, IF they came back at all.)

Still, if this failed, being force-time-sheared back to the tower was an ample beat over the head to point out that he needed to invest more in auxililary gadgets.

If even one tiny thing went wrong now, Poe would essentially scatter his matter along uncountable streams, essentially 'killing' him. However, since he would TECHNICALLY still be 'alive' he wouldn't be time sheared to safety until his boss noticed he hadn't come back after his vacation time was up. (Which could have been over several million years at that point.)

Poe vanished from the elevator in a shower of red sparks, and they conducted themselves out of the elevator, heading for the exit lobby...

"I'm afraid that I cannot exist in two places at once, sadly." Grey heard Ineffable's bland voice. "I am only Omnipresent while immaterial."

He was standing behind the door, completely oblivious to the strange creature right behind him. Either he didn't know it was there or he just didn't care currently.

"But is there anything else you'd like me to do...?"

Neither Grey nor whatever thre thing probing the Rikti Gunner was had sensed his arrival. That probably meant he had teleported in, or used some other method.

((Just for clarification. Karl is heading in the same direction at the same speed as the City Rep, and is also in the same general area. I thought I had made that clear, but there you have it.))

The door to the elevator closed, cutting Fraenir and Power Breaker off from Energon X and Poe. Poe and Energon had both been inside of it, after all before the DJ had sealed it shut. Perhaps he just wanted to make SURE Poe left and didn't come back?

Energon's punch hit Poe dead-on, but perhaps didn't achieve the desired results. True, it blasted Poe against the wall, (and there was a very PAINFUL sounding crunching noise) but it didn't look like Poe had taken direct damage from the punch. As if he had blocked it. He had still received a beating from the shock of being blasted into the wall and from the kinetic rebound, but if not for that...

A strange redish shield of energy flickered like static across his form. An energy shield...

"Nice punch. How much juice did you put into that?" Poe asked in a slightly pained voice, trying to relay mock awe and failing due to the pain. "Because I'd like to know how many more of those you can do before you're nothing more than a drained capacitor."

And suddenly, Energon X felt almost a quarter of his strength and endurance being leeched away as one of Poe's many technomantic gadgets activated and a power sink initiated. The power sink completely leeched all forms of energy automatically and instantaneously from its surroundings and transferred it all to the user in a converted and healthy form. It had a very short range, naturally, but in the elevator where there wasn't enough room to throw a rock, it was impossible for Energon to get out of range. If Poe kept the power sink going, Energon would be an empty corpse in a matter of moments, as the power sink also prevented him from recovering energy or restoring it naturally.

Poe wasn't through by a long shot though. A hand whipped into his vest at lightning speed, and almost faster than Energon could follow, the corrupter had thrown a seeker drone at his face like a shurikan, its whirling blades being only a prelude to the detonation of stunning and disorienting chrono-light.

-----

Or at least Kip tried to fire off laser eyes.

Nothing happened.

Just like Khelly, Kip had been drained of most of his "supernatural" powers when he had become an application of the system. Since a good deal of his powers WERE natural though, (such as his immense strength) he still maintained them. However, powers not normally usuable by non-natural supers most likely wouldn't work here.

"You can't escape unless you've suddenly become a virus..." Poe's words came back to haunt Kip.

"Crash and Burn." Poe stated simply.

There was a suddenly poof as he set off another of his specially modified gas-traps. If it didn't knock the two out on the spot for several hours, it would at least give him ample cover to escape the D.

After all, he had been waiting for the elevator to come back DOWN when they had suddenly surrounded him. It was a simple matter of entering and hitting the 'close door' button.

-----

The manifestations of the anti-virus programs all raised their hands, Matrix style.

Right before Kip strode over the boundary between the dance floor and the hero bar, he crashed into what felt like an invisible wall.

The short fight between Ghoul, Darkvapor, (and his snipers, who had forgotten they could not shoot through solid walls) and the Eidolons quickly dispersed after the majority of the group started erupting with power and sueing for peace.

The Eidolons had cautiously drawn back after most of the Reapers and Mortificators had been blown away, knocked unconcious, or flown the coup. There were thirty five of them total, but they were no match for a full team of heroes and villains, even though they matched them in level.

"Karl was in charge." The Eidolon Martin had addressed spoke in a surprisingly civilized and polite voice. Eidolon's kept all of their memories and functions even after being transformed. Some of them had even been heroes once. "But he has probably fled by now, thanks to you. Before you arrived, he was talking about trying to bargain with you, saying he knew where somebody important was. I do not know whether or not if it was the City Represenative he spoke of or not, but the chances are he's halfway to Atlas Park by now."

If the Soulhound was still tracking the City Rep, it could plainly sense she was moving North now, heading for the corner of the zone.

-----

Karl sped hastilly down the streets. In the corner of the zone, there was a run-down building that had basement access to the sewer network. In five minutes time he'd be halfway to Atlas Park...

Or not. Longbow was carefully guarding the exits of the Boomtown Sewer Network. But at the very least, he would probably meet up with other Vahzilok before they caught him.

He reached the door for the small tiny building, but the door was jammed. He unstrapped his coffin from his back, and started rummaging through his black medical case for something...

Mistake.

A big one.

Darkvapor got as far as rematerializing before fifteen Eidolons had surrounded him. Normally, that wouldn't have mattered. His Blackstar could have sufficiently blown them away.

Except that these were Murk Eidolons, who matched his threat level.

The dark energy washed over them harmlessly, and at the same time, they all brought their arms up and down in the motion of a drainage move, usually used to drain etheral energy and strengthen them. Here though, it served well in absorbing Darkvapor's attack effortlessly in addition to their normal effects.

Darkvapor felt himself subject to fifteen soul drains simultaneously. That wasn't healthy for anyone.

And then he saw himself being subjected to fifteen Eidolons leaping at him like ravenous Piranhas who had found a tasty morsel. Many of them had oppressive stunning auras on, and unless Darkvapor had managed to somehow negate or dodge fifteen soul drains all at once, he would find his vision dampening shadow falls next to useless against the Eidolons' now heightened senses and reflexes.

-----

Karl strapped his coffin onto his back, picked up his black medical case, and hi-tailed it out the camoflaged back door.

-----

Everywhere, the Mortificators went absolutely bat-[censored]. They all started running. Many of them dived for various cracks and holes in the wall, seeking to escape the improvised camp quickly. Many of the Reapers ran after them. Those even more desperate to escape even went right out the new hole in the wall, streaming past members of the task force. (Hopefully anyway.) Those too confused to know better began to draw their weapons. The Abominations and Cadavers were all milling about in a confused daze, still on the dumber side even after their power-boost. It was probably only a matter of moments before they went crazy and started to mount an offensive.

Worst though were the Eidolons. They were all homing in on Darkvapor and performing literal dive-bombs to assault him.

-----

The Soul Hound sensed something.

The space in which it sensed the City Representative was moving...!

((That ALMOST sounded like an insult, Devious. ALMOST.))

Karl, standing unseen right behind one of the improvised cubicle walls, swore inwardly. He REALLY did not want to have to resort to violence with these people. He could probably bring down one of them, maybe two, before being force to flee.

Fortunately, he was prepared. His skill with poisons, non-lethal and otherwise, gave his acess to a wide variety of tricks.

-----

That's when Ghoul ran right over the Poison Trap and sprung it.

It was specifically designed to spread and infect victims with the Vahzilok wasting disease, while at the same time, healing those with the proper surgical implants. (In other words, Vahzilok.) Most metas were completely immune to the nasty virus.

But it still packed a potent punch in the form of sapping energy right out of its target.

Ghoul suddenly became EXTREMELY tired, as though he had run ten marathons. He felt his immense strength begin to falter dramatically as well as his endurance was drained dry in a matter of moments. While his Murky aura would have normally protected him from such effects, the sheer amount of application and re-application of the poison as it soaked into his skin and was absorbed into his body was staggering, and could even floor his seemingly boundless energy.

The Vahzilok, regardless of whether or not Ghoul had been halted by the trap or not, all scrambled away from him as fast as possible.

To make way for the Eidolons.

Ten of them towered above their undead compatriots elsewhere, their arms crossed, looking just as emotionless and creepy as ever, and they were all glaring rather murderously at Ghoul now, although they still did not attack.

"Stop!" One of the Mortificators amongst the crowd cried out to Ghoul, almost pleadingly. Most if not all of the human members of the Vahzilok camp had hands on either crossbows or butcher knives now, but were making a point of not drawing them or aiming them.

Everyone seemed to be completely ignoring Darkvapor.

If the Sword Sorcerers had their scanning abilities still, they would have read something odd. Around two thirds of the Vahzilok group appeared be of an unusually high threat level. Equal to them in such terms, while the rest were of a normal threat scale. Mostly it appeared that the Mortificators, Reapers, and all the Eidolons were currently much more powerful than they should have been, with a good deal of the abominations being a match as well.

((Teeny edit to my previous post after a quick compromise with Khell.))

((DOH! >.<

What to do what to do...))