Paradigm_Shift

Or at least that was Target Lad's plan.

Cynic, like Target Lad, was blasted back by the small explosion of energies, recovering with a small acrobatic flip on his way back to the floor. He was immediately hit by an electrical net, which had more or less little impact on him. The charge wasn't really strong enough to deal any dangerous levels of damage, and it couldn't immobilize the man.

And in the meantime, Target Lad had just turned his back to the Commander. Time did not slow or stop for Target Lad.

*Pok* went a little energy bolt as it embedded in Target Lad's shoulder. It was a glowing brown spike the size of a finger, had the thickness of something solid, and it BURNED. With his back turned to the Commander, and focusing on somebody else no less, there was no way anyone would have been able to dodge that shot when facing an opponent with above competent aim. He was just lucky Cynic had only fired off a quick snap bolt and not something that could have taken his head off.

The next shot was something that could have taken his head off, but Target Lad had thankfully only fired 1 shot at Pestilence before returning his attention to the active combatant behind him, and the blazing thermal shot barely grazed his cheek when he turned to begin firing his stunning barrage. Before he could even unleash his first shot though, he caught sight of the Commander's trench coat weaving around the corner leading OUT of the room at high speed, virtually unimpeded by the immobilizing electrical net from earlier.

"Sorry, was just running away. Guy with the spines and the archer just started attacking me." Cynic said hurriedly as he rushed past the newcomer in her radiant white armor.

Right as the Arbiter landed and performed one of his kinetic blasts, he heard his warning.

"There will come soft rains."

Silver Meniscus' powerful stealth techniques were suppressed just as she performed an Eclipse-An extremely powerful assassination move from behind the Arbiter, aiming for the base of his spine. The Knife of Artemis was intent on blasting him with a built up amount of dark power that would not only blow him away, body and soul, but would also conduct itself into his body and cloud his senses.

The Hands of Artemis employed their stun grenades, lobbing them at and through Jake's force bubble to land right in the midst of him and his drones. His dispersion bubble alone was enough to prevent the stunning effects of one or even 2 of them, but could he cope with 4? The weaker minions and Lieutenants of the female group retreated to the same cover Malta was using, and began taking opportunistic shots at Jake with poisonous darts and shurikan.

Cynic, having the advantage of higher ground on the entrance platform to the portal room, just leapt backwards to watch the enflamed gas melt through the guardrail and most of the floor.

No, leapt was the wrong word. He had begun to take the leap back, but then he'd been hit by a stunning arrow to the head. With Precognitive targeting, there was no way possible Target Lad could have missed. Cynic was able to stand the shock of the stunning blow due to his acrobatic training, and avoided being stunned. The rest of Target Lad's arrows flew too high, impacting the reinforced ceiling/wall.

Of course, Target Lad himself was not an arrow. A minor change in position on Cynic's part wasn't going to stop the other blaster from hitting him with his electrical assault.

Target Lad caught sight of the Demented man holding his Night staff like a baseball bat.

"Anticipation." He grunted, swinging at the blaster right as he came into melee range, overloading the energy charge in his staff to create a total focus of pure energy that would conduct itself into Target Lad's body if it hit. Nataan's immobilizing weeds took a stranglehold on Cynic's combat boots, but the Commander was too safe from the spreading ammonia at his current position.

Congrats to Krazy and Yosef on the first segment of their story! Keep going!

As I always will, I will encourage everyone who frequents this place to chip in. Let's make this thing a hit!

"Woa there," Cynic grunted, backflipping with acrobatic grace away from the vines and onto the top of the entrance platform above. "Looks like we'll need some industrial strength weed-killer."

Aiming his Night Staff at the thickest clump of vines, Cynic shot a thermal blast of energy at it, trying to set the stuff aflame and causing a mini forest fire. Or, at least, just trying to blow that clump into purgatory.

Sister Hecate of the Knives of Artemis was at her station, attending to important matters that needed to be dealt with, when a klaxon suddenly went off.

The Knives were being called to arms.

***

Suddenly, NINJAS, hundreds of them! That was the way of the Knives of Artemis. An entire group was ready in moments, prepped to leave and reinforce Malta's position. Sister Hecate was moments away from initiating the deployment beacon, when a hand caught hers from out of nowhere.

Silver Meniscus 0-3-3 nodded at Sister Hecate once, and snapped her fingers. 3 extra members joined the ranks of the groups. The Hands of Artemis. Silver Meniscus nodded again, and Sister Hecate initiated the call.

***

The operator felt a gush of wind blow by his face as several unseen somethings rushed past him.

"Received." Said a soft voice.

Anyone with tactical vision would have seen an entire insertion group of Knives had just arrived, including not 2, not 3, but 4 Hands of Artemis in the mix. Mercenaries and Blades rushed forward, the group splitting and rushing at Jake's bots and the silver-clad Arbiter. The Hands stayed behind cover and drew their most powerful weapons.

Their ungodly stun grenades.

Cynic, who had moved to the side to dodge an incoming spine, also dodged the incoming arrow completely by coincidence.

"Good news. I'm off duty." He said coldly, raising his Night staff. What was the idiot planning to do? Without a faith crystal, the weapon was useless.

"Bad news. I'm off duty."

Target Lad suddenly got an explosive bolt in the face as Cynic fired it from his Night staff at nearly point-blank range. One had to remember that faith crystals and the drones Cynic usually employed were property of the S.A.D.A.S.S.E.S. When not working for them, Cynic fit most neatly into the 'blaster' category of people, and the PRIMARY functions of his nightstaff mimicked that of an archer's weapon of choice well when not using its secondary faith crystal based attributes.

Whether the explosive bolt hit Target Lad or not, he'd still have to be careful of the portal behind him-It wasn't set for any destination, it was just a chaotic twirl of nether. Anything that went into it would be ripped to shreds instantly.

"What do ya mean? I'm just here for a ride home." Commander Cynic said, stepping over *and on* unconcious Longbow soldiers on the ground, ignoring the lush interior. "Really, I'd hate to have to actually go through any official proceedings to use these portals. Mind if I just nip on through while you're wrecking the place?"

The Commander didn't have any drones behind him, and the crystal that was normally set at the head of his staff was missing. He had probably just finished a job for whoever it was he worked for and was trying to get back to wherever he lived.

For me, it's actually my current main, Commander Cynic. My plan was just to have him working as some non-descript badass working for the S.A.D.A.S.S.E.S. *PUN! HATE! KILL!* I remember designing what at the time I had deemed as an 'officer' uniform for the whole organization, took a break, and I picked up a diskworld book.

4 minutes later, I realized that the Ankh-Morpork City Watch uniform sounded a lot like the one I had designed. Dull, dreary, lots of grey. Then, of course, there was Commander Vimes, being his old cynical [censored] self, and it just clicked.

So the non-descript 'officers' transformed into Commander Cynic, and aside from his duties of hunting down certain individuals when hired for it, most of the S.A.D.A.S.S.E.S. has been left behind in the dust. Hyperbole was supposed to be my main character, I remember, but I've mentioned him...let's see...6 times *lollers*, not including the Contact thread we had up earlier.

Nemesis making Nemesis Automatons of villains is a Nemesis plot. But everything is a Nemesis plot, but since this was already a Nemesis plot to begin with, it is a Double Secret Nemesis Plot.

Both me and Grey are usually available during the weekends, and throughout most of the week. I can't speak for Grey much there, but he is very punctual.

I'm still in high school, so I'm only available in the afternoons during the week and durings weekends. My part-time job is online, so I'm usually available around the clock then.

Now that Mr_Grey and I are done with our first story, we are both looking for new partners to begin something new. Any volunteers?

Both White Masque and Psycho13 stepped into the elevator, Psycho pressing the button for the vault. Classical “easy listening muzak” was playing from the speaker above them.

“That’s horrible,” White Masque said disgustedly, “How can people STAND that, and who is tasteless enough to make it?”

“Illusion or empathy controllers make this kind of stuff in their free time when the villains are kickin’ the tar out of them in Siren’s call,” Psycho joked.

Masque treated him to an unusually hostile eyeless glare, as if he had been offended by the remark. Before Psycho or the whitewash tanker could continue their conversation, however, the elevator doors opened. Scrapper and Tanker rushed into the scene, expecting more agents as the elevator doors closed behind them.

What they found was a huge man who literally defined the word, with blue skin, and black triangles on his eyes. He was bald, but jutting black spikes erupted from his skull where his hair should have been, and his outfit, a tank-top and pants with curving colored slashes, matched the “black-and-blue” motif of his body. The only alternate trace of color was the set of demonic tattoos on his upper arms.

Whoever he was, he had lifted the wrecked vault door up above his head with monstrous strength, about to hurl it at them. Both heroes looked at him, at each other, and then split apart just in time for the vault door to whoosh past them as it hurtled like lightning through the space they had just occupied, missing them completely, to slam slam into the wall.

“Hahaha! You missed, you [frig]ing loser!” Psycho13 burst out laughing, his face scrunched up in a horrid mask of mirth while both White Masque and Shadowshock looked at him like he was crazy.

Whatever goes around comes around, however, and the vault door was tilted at just the right angle to roll over from its position against the wall to collide with Psycho and pin him helplessly against the floor by his shoulder. He screamed a lot, but there were only three people in the room, and he was a regenerator, so nobody cared.

“That was nothing,” the scrapper grunted, “Just gimme a sec.”

Several loud thuds and a curse later, and Psycho gave up. He wasn’t strong enough to lift the weight off himself and he was at a bad angle for leverage, besides. His only real benefit was that most of the stress was being taken up by the wall and floor.

“Ok. I give up. This thing’s got me pinned for a three-count.”

“I’ll get you out there, after finishing up here,” White Masque called to him, repressing a laugh as he turned to face the villain, “Who do I have the pleasure of ki-…Arresting today?”

He summoned his ice sword and held it steady in front of him with both hands. The pose was almost smooth enough to make up for his tattered and ragged appearance, with the top-half of his radiant white costume blown away to leave his sky-blue whitewash body to clash with his white pants and blindingly brilliant blank face. “Almost” was never enough, and he wound up looking really silly instead.

“I’m called Shadowshock,” the brute replied gruffly, his spiked gloves suddenly crackling with electricity, “I figure you should know who’s about to put you in the hospital, cape!”

“Oh hey!” Psycho suddenly shouted, “I remember you! You’re that loser who couldn’t keep up with that bartender chick last year! I hope you make a better fighter than a tracker, ‘cause this guy’s gonna [frig] your world up!”

The brute extended one of his hands and a red bolt of lightning zapped into the vault door. The current shocked through the metal and zapped the pinned scrapper, causing him to scream again. For good measure, Shadowshock did it one more time and smoke started to trail out of the young man’s ears, nose and mouth.

“Now,” he chuckled back at Masque, “where were we?”

"I believe I was about to [frig] your world up," White Masque chuckled right back at him. "Come-come, let's dance! Dibs on Comedy!"

White Masque leapt, eliminating the distance between the two almost instantly, his icy blade crashing down.

"Because Comedy always wins!" the tanker hissed in a surprisingly dark tone.

Holding the edge of the ice blade with his forearm, Shadowshock grinned. It was the grin of a bully who had found himself an entertaining surprise in the pipsqueak he was about to pummel into the dirt. Flexing his fingers in and out, there was an audible popping sound that accompanied the electric sparks.

“Sounds like somebody hasn’t had themselves a healthy heaping of Tragedy!” he growled before charging forward and slamming his fist into the tanker’s chest.

White Masque just laughed. It had been a long enough day of dealing with enemies that just didn’t realize what they were up against. The fact that he didn’t know either was irrelevant, considering he was still standing and they weren’t. Judging from how perplexed Shadowshock looked, there was about to be a repeat performance.

“What the Hell?” the brute slurred, “That was harder than the vault door… What are you?”

“I’m funny,” Masque replied as he twisted around and rapped his ice blade on the side of Shadow’s head, “Laugh.”

Shadowshock snarled and shot another red bolt of lightning from his raised fist, which curved as if it were alive to direct itself into White Masque’s face. The tanker completely ignored the attack and nicked Shadowshock in the chest, cutting through his tank top and drawing a faint trail of blood.

“Seriously, what is it with you people and aiming for the face?” White Masque conversed with the brute casually as he deflected yet another punch that had, naturally, been aimed at his face. “If I were pretty I might become enraged whenever that happens. It’s not like I’m even asking for it.” He tried to stab Shadowshock through the neck, but his blade was blocked by the villain’s forearm again. “See the obvious impenetrable white radiance that can’t be seen through?” This time, the tanker allowed himself to be grabbed by the throat and electrocuted. He rewarded the brute with a stab to the arm, causing him to withdraw it. “That should tip everyone off right from the start. ‘Nothing to see here, move along.’” He lunged with his blade suddenly, trying to catch Shadowshock off-guard, but the villain saw through it and dodged just in the nick of time, bashing the whitewash tanker over the head as he shot forward. The hero didn’t seem to notice. “”But, NOOOOOO, everybody INSISTS on trying to either rip or flay or tear my face off. Or all three. I don’t even HAVE a face!” White Masque complained, twirling around and jabbing Shadowshock in the side, cutting deep.

The brute suddenly roared, and his body surged with power, electricity crackling and sparking off of him like a storm. He charged, tackling White Masque with enormous fury and conducting over 50,000 volts through him. He actually managed to ram the radiant tanker against the wall, cracking it and causing small eruptions of static to bounce and bound across the floor. Before the hero could recover, the brute had assaulted him with rapid electrical punches all over his body, smashing him in places with enough force that he would have outright killed or at least maimed even scrappers or other tankers. He finished his onslaught with a two-fisted punch that screamed of havoc and destruction, right in the face.

“Ok, NOW you’ve just pissed me off.” White Masque snarled, stabbing Shadowshock right through the gut, before kicking him away. The attacks hadn’t even broken his concentration. “Were you EVER listening to what I said?” He sliced the brute across the face, and he just barely turned his head in time to have his right ear and cheek take most of the damage. He could have sworn the strike had gone right down to the bone. “Let’s see how much YOU like it.”

Shadowshock was knocked straight off his feet and across the room as White Masque slammed him straight in the face with a fist covered in a thick and nasty layer of ice. He smashed against the opposite wall, barely keeping on his feet.

“What…the…[censored]…are…you…?” He breathed heavily.

“Better than you.” White Masque said coldly, approaching and readying for the finishing blow. Right as he got into range, Shadowshock made his move. He still didn’t know too much about his full potential, and his dark powers were still under development. That didn’t change the effectiveness of what he did. A broiling, living mass of seething darkness covered his body, and the very air in the room darkened as Shadowshock filled the place with a greedy, sucking force that absorbed life in order to strengthen his own. Psycho13 felt something intangible slip away from him, and he felt strangely weak pinned beneath the massive vault door. His life force was taken in by Shadowshock and used to heal many of his wounds.

White Masque was also affected by this. Or at least hit by it. The power behind Shadowshock’s dark regeneration rummaged around his persona for something to steal, and didn’t find anything, so it moved on.

To the other person in the room aside from White Masque and Psycho13. The dark power latched onto him and pulled away a chunk of life force to fuel Shadowshock with, and the hidden figure was revealed. The man was tall, brooding and cloaked, little more than a shadow imposed upon the air, Shadowshock had a brief glimpse of an ivory mask, with murderous red eyes glaring at him. Then it was gone again, vanishing.

Shadowshock had been entirely healed by his move, but even now, back at full power, he knew something was incredibly funny here, and it wasn’t a ‘hahaha’ kinda funny, it was the ‘gee, that’s interesting,’ kinda funny. White Masqu-No, this thing before Shadowshock couldn’t be given a name. It was just a decoy. A diversion disguised as a main attack.-The decoy looked to the space the figure had been in the brief moments it had been revealed, then it turned back to look at Shadowshock.

“Huh. Looks like Comedy loses. Let’s do things your way, let’s have some TRAGEDY.”

Shadowshock literally exploded in a shower of blood and gore as a million, million wounds all over his body simultaneously decided to open up for no logical reason. White Masque hadn’t even touched him or moved.

From Psycho13’s point of view, Shadowshock simply slumped where he was standing, crashing to the floor without putting up any more fight. He snorted and shrugged as best he could.

“Hey Psycho, you ok?” White Masque called out, turning and approaching the trapped Scrapper.

“My shoulder’s pinched pretty bad. I think it might bruise!”

“Here, let me get you out from underneath there…” the specter sighed and started lifting the vault door.

“What the Hell happened to him? His eyes just widened, then it looked like he fainted. And I could have sworn I saw someone in the corner, there, but that could’ve been a symptom of a flash fever… Lord knows I felt woozy…”

“I didn’t see anything,” White Masque replied as the vault was levered up by his surprisingly durable ice blade, “Now, come on out of there…”

Psycho13 didn’t have to be told twice. He slid out and looked to the mangled mess that was his shoulder. Almost instantly, the skin started to heal, and the blood dried and flaked away. He had to pull some of the threads of his hoodie out of the wound however. Gazing at the wreck, he sighed.

“I have to go to the Salvation Army to find good hoodies like this. Icon doesn’t keep them in stock.”

“Come on, Psycho,” Masque sighed, “We have to catch the escape vehicle these gentlemen came from.”

“What about him?” the scrapper indicated Shadowshock, who was now shivering on the steel floor.

“What about him?” was the ambivalent response.

The scrapper reached down to his belt and pulled something out of his communicator. It was a small black dot that emitted a beeping sound. He placed it on the fallen brute’s forehead and gave the tanker a thumbs-up.

“Okay, we’re good to go. A police drone will be by shortly to pick him up."

----------

When they reached a couple floors higher (Psycho was sure it was the tenth floor they had to get to), a breeze hit them. With a cheer and a whoop, the scrapper charged down the hallway at a dizzying speed. Just around the corner, he found it, a blasted out room with a black vehicle hovering outside.

It looked like a car without wheels. The paint job was a mirror-black finish, and it had tinted windows, which gave it the appearance of a flying oil-slick.

“Okay, I gotta do this right,” he took a couple deep breaths, “Wanna bet I can leap on that thing and take the driver out?”

“If we want to find out what’s going on,” Masque intoned, “Try to make sure you take him alive.”

The scrapper was off like a shot. Yelling, he erupted from the hole in the wall, leaping with his arms outstretched, the knives angled downward like hooks and his tongue was lolling out like a hungry animal. The car, however, pulled just out of the way and he fell ten stories to the pavement below.

“Ungh…” he grunted as his bones started knitting back to their proper places, “Ah-haow…”

“Idiot,” White Masque’s summoner sighed, “But an excellent potential candidate, nonetheless.”

The car swiveled in place until the grill faced the hole of the building. As White Masque regarded it, a set of machine guns emerged from panels flanking the grill. Bullets filled the hallway and tore into the walls. Some impacted the supposed tanker, but others whizzed past to the stealthy figure guiding him. It was a little close for comfort, so he ducked behind a wall that wasn’t currently being turned into Swiss cheese. The image of White Masque wavered slightly before a rocket hit it.

The pilot of the vehicle must have felt this was enough, because the machine started to float away. Before Masque could recover, it disappeared. Perceptive individuals could have noticed a slight distortion in the air, but it was faint and hard to keep track of. The heroes couldn’t keep their eyes on it, and the flying limousine was gone.

----------

“Well, that was an adventure,” White Masque muttered to the scrapper scraping himself off the pavement, “You sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” Psycho13 dragged himself to a nearby bench and sagged into the seat, “I just need another lunch. Damn, now I won’t be able to get those funds transferred like I was supposed to.”

“There’s always tomorrow. I think I see the reconstruction crew headed this way.”

A group of light blue-uniformed men with the word “Sinclair” emblazoned on their backs filed into the building as the police drones filed out. The scrapper smiled and shook his head.

“Sometimes I wonder if anything we do really makes any difference.”

“It’s a city in turmoil without a police force to adequately support it,” Masque patted him on the shoulder, “Couple that with great power irresponsibly portioned out among the world, regardless of worthiness, and the large number of economic and political forces centralized here, and it’s a situation that’s bound to seem nigh-insurmountable. However, with such a formidable task set before us and those like us, perhaps we should consider that each day this city hasn’t turned into an orange ball of fire is a step in the right direction.”

“Good point,” Baker’s eyes widened noticeably, “Wow. When I consider some of the weird things I’ve heard about…”

“Perhaps we should keep in touch. This threat we faced today… It’s unusual. It would possibly be a wise idea to pool our resources when researching and dealing with it.”

“Good idea. What’s your number?”

The white-wash tanker shifted in a manner that could only be described as uncomfortable. Finally, he extended his hand.

“Perhaps you should give me your number. I… I currently lack… a proper residence…”

“Cool…” Psycho tapped a number into his communicator and a business card printed out, “Man, I love these things!”

He handed the card over and White Masque accepted it. He nodded as he recognized that it was a super group card, not a personal one.

“Just ask for me and they’ll listen to ya.”

“Thank you,” White Masque said loftily, “Well, I must be off now. So much to see and do, you know? Do enjoy yourself. Now I have to go off and get some fresh clothes, if it wasn’t for that half naked defender that just ran past my appearance might even be considered indecent!”

The tanker waved a hand at Psycho13 in a friendly manner, turned, and walked off down the street. He turned around the corner of a building, and then fell down dead, his body vaporizing before it hit the ground.

“Yes, do enjoy yourself,” hissed a voice higher up, on the roof of the bank almost twelve stories up, “But don’t go spoiling that wonderful body of yours before I’ve had a chance to use it.”

An invisible hand held up the business card that Psycho13 had handed White Masque. Before the invisible being could mutter or chuckle, however, a bird flew by overhead and covered an invisible space above the roof with guano.

“FOUL!” shrieked a furious voice.

The patch of dung, suspended in the air, leapt from the building and flew off into the distance, spitting and cursing.

***

End of Story 1

I can't help but thinking 'Ow' when I look at those spikes and the shadow on the ground.

Seriously, that would HURT.

Expect the third section of our story soon.™

After shaking his new partner's hand, Psycho reached down and pulled the sharp bit of the wall out of his rear.

“How the Hell did that get there?” he muttered.

White Masque shrugged. Before he could think of something to say, or even properly explain their current situation or hammer out a decent plan of attack, the scrapper was bounding down the hall, the wound in his rear apparently closing at a rapid rate. The apparent energy being nodded at that, realizing that someone like that wouldn’t be too keen on the idea of slowing down for a brief spell just to rest, especially not when they could heal and reinvigorate themselves much faster than their peers.

When Masque next found his compatriot, Psycho13 was tumbling out of the hallway that led to the vault. Bounding to his feet, the scrapper drew his blades, now tarnished heavily by soot and dust, and shouted.

“Yeah! Big men! Takes two of ya to beat on little ol’ me, huh?”

A shot rang out and the scrapper fell to the floor. He groaned for a second before popping right back up and hurling his smaller knife at one of the assailants. The blade tore through the Agent’s finger, and, more importantly, it stuck inside the trigger guard at an angle that made it impossible to fire another round without removing the impeding weapon. Psycho drew another knife from his pant leg and waved it menacingly.

“Allow me,” White Masque interrupted and glided toward the approaching agents. The one who was still able to fire did so, emptying an entire clip of hollow rounds into White Masque. They all hit his body, split open, and fell to the ground without penetrating.

“Won’t work, Realer-than-thou.” White Masque said easily, conjuring his icy blade and using it to knock the pistol out of the offending agent’s hand, severing a few fingers in the process. He followed up by curving the blade and set a new horizontal cutting path aimed at the agent’s neck. The agent caught the blade with his injured appendage, and punched White Masque in the face with his free hand.

“NOT THE FA-Bwerp…That was uncomfortably familiar.” White Masque’s muffled voice blurted. He appeared to have learned from his last encounter with one of the dark suited men though, because he grabbed the agent’s punching arm by the shoulder joint before it could be pulled away, and blasted it with an icy missile at range zero, severing the appendage easily. Sparks flew as a metallic endoskeleton revealed itself, acting as bones for whatever creature the suited businessman really was. White Masque’s icy blast had hit upon a weak point though-The joints appeared to be made of weaker and less resilient polymers and ceramics.

White Masque didn’t notice this though. He caught the falling limb before it hit the ground, froze it over, and then started to beat the poor agent to death with his own severed arm! The first blow knocked the agent into a corner, and White Masque fell upon him instantly, going to town with both frozen limb and icy blade. This left only one agent, facing Psycho13. As the small fight between White Masque and the other agent had gone down, he’d wrenched the scrapper’s knife out, and emptied an entire clip of hollow bullets at Psycho13.

“Ow,” the scrapper grunted as he tensed up and the malformed bullets popped back out of his wounds, “I think you hit my pancreas. Good thing it gets better. I’d hate to have to keep giving myself insulin injections every day.”

The young hero closed with his opponent and sliced his knife cleanly through the agent’s pistol. When he went to follow up with a cut to the extended forearm, the dark-haired man swung the targeted limb down, around in a circle, and back down to swat the scrapper’s weapon hand, causing Psycho13 to drop it. The agent then followed up with a kick to the chest that sent the hero flying through the air and into the wall. With a scattering of plaster and dust, the burnt, battered and repeatedly shot young man collapsed on the floor.

The agent stepped over his fallen comrade, the one White Masque had beaten upon his arrival, and lifted his target in the air.

“Threat level: small,” the agent corrected its predecessor’s earlier assessment, “Subject seems tenacious. Execute-“

There was a beeping sound and an explosion behind the agent that slammed him into the scrapper and the wall. The skinny young man was thrown into the office on the other side where he rolled over a couple times, covered in plaster dust and finally sprawled out on the debris. Gasping for breath, Psycho13 looked up at the android and saw that there were a lot of open wounds that revealed metal underneath, but very little blood. There was also a beeping sound as the cyborg looked up at the scrapper.

“Epidermal layer damaged,” he rasped out, “Limbs: Unresponsive. Initiating self-“

Psycho13 forced his muscles to move and dove over a nearby desk for cover. The agent’s last word was drowned out in the massive explosion that erupted from him in the same manner as one had from its predecessors. Fire filled the room and the concussive force shattered the mahogany desk. The scrapper was thrown against the corner of the room, hurt, but still alive.

White Masque presently turned his head towards the source of the explosive noise. “Hungary?” He said in a perplexed and slightly wounded voice.

The agent he had been mauling with his own severed arm was not in good shape. He had enormous bruises the size of eggs all over his body, lumps rising on his head, and cuts that should have severed critical veins and arteries, but there was no blood anywhere. There was some stale-looking brown liquid that seemed stagnant, and refused to move from the wounds the agent had sustained. Despite missing an entire arm and lacking several otherwise important flaps and folds of skin, the black-suited man was still in commission, and went on the offensive. His good arm came around like a missile, causing the air to pop as it made contact with White Masque’s chest. He followed up by kicking the tanker in the groin, and then recovering with his one arm and yanked his severed and frozen appendage away from White Masque, to start beating the strange man over the head with it, causing the ground beneath his feet to crack and split from the buckling amounts of force being driven into it through White Masque, who didn’t seem to plan on flinching anytime soon. He turned back to the agent and, with a flick of what seemed more like annoyance than anger, severed his left and only remaining hand with his ice blade, brushing aside the assault as if it hadn’t happened.

The agent recovered instantly and drove his elbow into White Masque’s gut.

“Bwerp, you people are resilient.” White Masque said almost in an approving tone, shoving agent and elbow away with his left hand.

“-reat l-lev-vel, high.” The agent stuttered, sparks emitting from one of its ears.

“Better, but not enough.” White Masque said flatly, driving his blade through the agent’s skull.

The explosion shook the building as the agent detonated.

“Oh, FOUL!” White Masque cried from the smoke. “This was my only formal-wear!” He emerged from the wreckage of his fight, walking in Psycho’s direction. “Seriously, they don’t sell this anywhere! I made this by hand, I did!” He was having a hissy-fit over his suit, the top half of which had been blown away. White Masque’s body was odd. It was completely smooth, lacking any defining features, and was whitewash blue as opposed to radiant white like the rest of his costume/body? He helped Psycho13 out from his corner, who was freaking out.

"Why did they explode!? What if they all explode!? Masque! MASQUE! They EXPLODE!" He screamed.

“Yes yes, they explode. Just like mages and Positron and Statesman whenever one of his slaves puts a toe out of line.” He said soothingly, patting Psycho13 on the head. “Calm down, [censored] happens.”

Psycho13 suddenly felt much calmer, as if his mind had been cleared of all uncertainties. The world seemed neater and much more organized now, easier to view in full. He also felt completely unstoppable, as if nothing could hold him down.

“Slaves? Of Statesman?” the scrapper asked as he quirked an eyebrow, “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind,” White Masque replied, “We should start moving.”

“I just… I just need a quick breather,” Psycho13 replied as he took a couple cautionary breaths and steadied himself, “How’d you do that? My mind feels… Clear…”

“Oh, I’m just slightly more complex than the average Tanker.”

Once Psycho13 was ready, they proceeded down the corridor. The scrapper was able to retrieve his larger blade from the rubble on the floor. It was tarnished and nicked in a couple places, but it was in otherwise good condition. He couldn’t recover a smaller knife, so he had to reach into the main pocket of his hoodie for another knife. A street-wise butterfly knife became his secondary and Levi cursed. He’d never been able to get that “twirling open” trick to work right.

“How is it that your outfit can’t handle pistol shots, but it’s relatively undamaged by explosions?”

Psycho13 shrugged and replied, “I’m not a tailor. I’ve seen people with road rash and had their pants be perfectly fine. All I can say is that clothes act funny sometimes.”

The corridor, despite the sirens, was eerily silent. Bank clerks huddled up under desks in neighboring offices, waiting for the near-habit bank robbery to be over. However, there’d been far more explosions than expected. There was far more to this than the normal Lost or Outcast thugs that usually conducted this sort of business.

At the elevator to the vault, there was a group of four of the agents standing in their way. Masque pulled Psycho13 back around the corner as pistol fire slammed into the wall.

“Four,” the tanker sighed, “This will prove far more difficult than we first figured.”

“Makes me wish we had a healer,” the scrapper chuckled, “Or someone that could buff one of us up, you know? I’d have put a call to my friends, but they’d never have gotten here in time.”

“We should be fine,” Masque replied calmly, “I’ll take right, you take left… Follow my lead.”

The odd man charged around the corner suddenly. The agents reacted instantly, filling the hallway with bullets. The tanker lived up to his designation and walked right through the hail of lead, not even changing pace. Psycho13 followed behind him, taking heed of White Masque’s words. There were times for fighting, and there were times for fighting foes that outnumbered and outclassed you, where you took every advantage you could get. The duo got within 3 feet before the agents figured out that their pea-shooters were about as useful as tinfoil and dropped the weapons, opting to simply charge the 2 heroes before them.

“Aw Bwerp, they're aiming for the face.” White Masque complained, conjuring his ice blade and stabbing the first incoming agent in the fist as it came around, stopping it from hitting Masque in the face. Wrapping his other fist in a thick sheet of ice, the whitewash man clobbered the dark-suited man with a solid blow to the chest, knocking him into the wall and freeing up room in the hallway. Then he charged, taking the initiative and slamming the remaining agent to the right against the wall along with his partner before he could attack.

“Always with the face…”

Psycho13 found nothing between himself and the last 2 agents, who had apparently taken up the same strategy as the unusual pair: two for the hero. He gripped the two weapons a little more tightly and closed with the enemies.

“Hero identified.” One said coldly, “Psycho13. Levi Baker. Regenerator.”

“Threat level: Mostly harmless,” the other one said, charging and throwing a punch at Psycho’s head, while his partner charged around and prepared to follow up.

“Mostly harmless,” the scrapper replied, growling, “You know what, I’m tired of everybody underestimating me!”

He felt his pulse quicken and his skin tingle. The fist approaching his head was stopped by a stab from his heavy blade. He followed this bastardized parry with a slice across the throat. Kicking the closer agent aside, he turned to the other and stabbed the blades deep into the area where there should have been a diaphragm. Having seen three of these guys explode already, Psycho wasn’t surprised when his blades ground against metal.

He backed away and shoulder tackled the other agent. The ram drove the tough minion (lieutenant?) off his balance and the red-haired man was flat on his back. Psycho13 whirled back around and kicked the butterfly knife deeper into the stabbed agent. In the same motion, he yanked the thicker, heavier blade out and brought it back to stab into his enemy’s eye.

Normally, he exercised more restraint and his attacks were resigned to light lacerations and disabling strikes. When he had to, he used the flats of his blades or punches and kicks for the finishing blows. However, these guys were obviously not normal, and it seemed as if nothing short of their detonations was going to stop them.

However, as he jabbed at his target’s eye, a pale hand shot up and caught the point through the palm. Psycho13 felt his arm get wrenched to the side and the agent head-butted him. It felt like a hammer to the forehead, but the scrapper was happy for his tough skull and shook the disorientation off fast.

The agent wrenched the butterfly knife from his abdomen, dropped it and started pulling the other weapon out of his hand. As the other agent stood back up, the scrapper between them drew another pair of knives from his hoodie pocket. His last pair, he had to make them count.

While Psycho’s fight raged on, White Masque was having trouble dealing with his pair of agents. White Masque kept trying to deal fatal blows, aiming for the heart, head, and necks of his opponents. The agents had a disturbing habit of catching his blade-made all the harder now that there were 2 of them and they worked together to prevent incoming damage. After trading blows, it was obvious the 3 were all on equal ground. White Masque was completely indestructible, but the agents were too coordinated for any of his attacks to do anything. That was when the agents started cheating.

“Stop doing that.” White Masque spat, yanking his sword away from the grasp of an agent for the 4th time. He reared back again, thinking he would try to catch the agent to the left off-guard and impale him through the spleen. White Masque had no idea what the spleen did, but it sounded important. The agent wasn’t surprised though, and caught the blade yet again. The agent to the right suddenly leapt, and White Masque, in his ignorance, did nothing to stop him. Why should he? He couldn’t be harmed by these two klutzes.

The agent wrapped both of his massive hands around Masque’s sword arm, and yanked. White Masque couldn’t be harmed by these two, but he wasn’t as strong as them. He stumbled, surprised, and the second agent took the opportunity to bend down and ram into the tanker’s legs. This knocked the whitewashed man over, sending his head crashing into the wall. Before he could do anything to recover, both agents picked him up by the shoulders and slammed him into the wall, completely breaking it and driving White Masque deep into it. Then they simply started beating upon the man’s face and arms, letting the sheer power behind their blows keep the otherwise invincible man pinned between a rock and a hard place.

“FUHOWL!” White Masque cried, his voice muffled by the stone, struggling to pry himself from the hole in the wall, but helplessly immobilized by the two.

“Unable to identify hero.” One of his restrainers/attackers said, a touch of smugness in his voice. “Threat level: Negligible.”

White Masque stopped struggling to free himself for one moment, not flinching or reacting as the blows continued to rain down. He muffled something in a disbelieving tone.

“EKSCUTH ME?”

There was an explosion of blinding light from the wreckage of the wall, the entire area bathed in a milky white that no vision could penetrate. When it faded, White Masque was back in action, dicing a writhing agent on the floor into tiny pieces while shouting, “TEACH YOU TO JUDGE ME! YOU ARROGANT LITTLE FREAK!” With a series of unrelenting, heavy chops, he made extremely short work of the agent, which then exploded, fragmenting the pieces of the agent even further.

“Oh, poo. I lost track of how many pieces.”

White Masque pouted as black suit flambé rained down around him, the explosion apparently having no effect. The second agent was rolling around, writhing and clawing at his skull, pulling hair out by its roots and screaming like a maniac.

“Oh shut up,” White Masque muttered, “You have it lucky. You won’t know it when you’re dead.” He summoned a dagger of ice in his left hand, and threw it at the agent, skewering his head and causing him to detonate in the far corner.

Psycho13 suddenly barreled into the explosion. As the flames rapidly dissipated, he came racing back out of the corner, his blades held out like the point of an arrow. Masque followed his recent partner’s path and watched it end with one agent getting his head sliced off just under the jaw. The scrapper followed up the double slice with an elbow to the jaw, the agent’s head snapped backward violently and Baker shoulder-tackled his enemy into the remaining agent.

This time, however, there was no explosion. The remaining agent shrugged off his partner and stepped over the disabled body. White Masque moved to intercept, but Psycho13 held up his blade to stop him.

“I’ve got this,” he rasped.

“Threat level: High,” the red-haired agent finally admitted, “Engaging target.”

As the pale-skinned man came in with a one-armed overhead smash, Psycho13 stabbed into his enemy’s armpit. The arm stuck in the air as the blade ground into the joints and stopped it. Psycho then drove his remaining knife into his enemy’s right eye, finishing him off before he exploded.

When the smoke cleared, Masque turned to find Psycho13 coughing in the corner on the other side of the hallway. Looking down on the broken form, the tanker extended a hand to help the scrapper up.

“How do you feel?” Masque asked.

“I feel good!”

“Ready to finish this?”

“Let’s kick it!” Psycho13 chortled as he kicked the call button on the side of the elevator, “Ope! I didn’t mean to make that literal…”

***

To be Continued

"I don't trust him." Daos said flatly. "We don't know who he is, where he came from, hell, we still don't even know the color of his eyes. We are Arachnos. It is part of our job to know everything about everyone. ESPECIALLY those under our employ. It makes me uncomfortable with somebody like him around. Which brings me to why you are here."

He set a slightly charred piece of crumpled black metal on his desk.

"That used to be rogue hardware in our mainframe. It kept creating firewalls and filters that blocked access to the Commander's profile. When it was removed, it activated a dead-man's switch and erased everything the mainframe had on him. What we got from it was its manufacturer. Brass Track Industries, a well-known Nemesis front that was shut down years ago. This is a custom-made device, and Brass Track did keep actual records to make it look more legit."

He tossed the device to Tamesis.

"Since we have no digital information on the Commander, we're going to have to dig up some dirt on him the old fashioned way. By looking through the physical records. They're kept in Cap Au Diable, in an office buildings in New Haven. I want you to go there and find out whoever ordered this device. Once you do that, find THEM, and get some intel on the Commander."

Daos rose from his chair, and crossed over to the door leading to his private chambers. Right before leaving, he said:

"Really, do try your best on this one. We need something we can hold over his head. Dismissed." Daos left, leaving Tamesis with the charred device.

"Sit down and listen." Arbiter Daos' muffled voice came from beneath his desk as he hid Agent Deathstalker's hat before Jake could see it.

"Ok! Now why did I call you here? Oh yes." Daos said, getting back into his chair normally and locking Tamesis with a gaze that could have drilled through a mountain. "This is about our, by this time, now mutual companion Commander Cynic. In the 10 seconds you've known him, what's your opinion?"

OOC:

No, the link works fine.

BIC:

"Of course sir, I shall have a fresh and newly polished suit of armor ready for one once you are back from the meeting." Laquatus/Erik? said confidently. "Just come back here once you're done." The Mu Magus walked away, and through one of the nearby circular Arachnos-styled doors.

***

Arbiter Daos, in the meantime, was having another staring contest with Agent Deathstalker's hat. For once though, he had another pressing issue that was nagging him:

'Who the devil is he?'

OOC:

Uh...When I said 'almost' I was referring to the link. But since we're talking,

I REFUSE TO THINK ON MY DAY OFF. Damn you for trying. And don't deny it, I have your CONFESSION!

[ QUOTE ]
need to read between the lines and figure things out for yourself

[/ QUOTE ]

BLARGHHARHARHARLANANAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

BIC:

Tamesis’ medi-porter was different from a normal Arachnos operative’s. As an Arbiter, he had exclusive rights to his own private medical station, ready to receive him at any time. It was this that he now appeared in, completely revitalized.

“Ah, welcome Arbiter Tamesis.” Said a distant voice. A Mu Mystic walked over to the reclaimer from the shadows. WALKED. He had also forgotten to wear a helmet, revealing dark hair bunched into a ponytail to hang down the back of his cloak, and the bindings that generally kept a Mu Mystic bound were also missing. The only real similarity this mystic had with the normal ones was his long, flowing blood red cloak, which fell around his entire body, except where it parted in an inverted V starting at about chest-height, revealing standard regulation Arachnos techno-armor. The man’s face was very hollow. His eyes were blue, but they were sunk so deep into his skull as to look horribly deformed. Perhaps he was, at that. His face was normal enough until it reached the areas where his eyes should have normally been level, then the folds of flesh just suddenly turned in a completely different direction and headed inward. Blood red mystical power tattoos surrounded these eyes in an intricate ornate pattern.

“Magus Laquatus at your service, although there are some who call me…Erik? I have apparently been assigned as your personal assistant by order of Arbiter Daos, who would like to inform you your appointment with him in his office is in 5 minutes.”

OOC:

Almost.

OOC:

I had thought Cynic requested a DEVICE that blocked the recall? And wouldn't that mean Jake would have it, and not one of the Arachnos fliers?

Plus, aren't spells non-operational in Weaver airfield right now?

If these were in the game, the people doing them would develope the urge to go frequent the PWNZ forums and go /e wrists rather than do these missions. In case you haven't noticed, they are all completely suicidal.

Now ask yourself if I meant the people or the missions.

"Oh for the love of-Fine. That's it." Cynic turned disgustedly and went back through the Ouroboros portal. His drones followed shortly, and the Arachnos troops who were still alive were probably dead within a few moments.

***

"So now I just need to 'catch back up' with my previous flow of time, right?" Cynic asked the mender gloomily.

"Yes, when you only go back in time for anything under a day, you tend to 'fluctuate' in your temporal phasing unless you sync up with your potenti-" The Mender blathered on, unaware that Cynic had tuned him out after the first word.

He was fairly pissed off. They had KNOWN he would be coming. They had set up precautions ahead of time. They had outmaneuvered him when he had a 19:1 advantage in the numbers department-At least that had been what it seemed like.

[censored] aliens from another plane or whatever who were infinitely more advanced than everything and its cousin. Aside from being a Nemesis plot, their motives and goals were entirely unknown, and they could pretty much come and go as they pleased, take or drop what they wanted, and kill anyone they wanted without any fear of consequence a all.

And what had the Blue Army been doing there?

Moving aside from Cynic's thoughts for a moment, a brief explanation is in order: Cynic, being only vaguely familiar with Earth's history, having only frequented the place twice now, does not known much about the Malta group. Having encountered them in plenty of alternate planes, he knew they pretty much attacked on sight, were a highly advanced military group, and wore blue. So Cynic attacked them on sight, called them the Blue Army, and really didn't even bother asking the questions concerning them at all. Thus why he had decimated the group at Weaver airfield.

Going back to Cynic's train of thought:

There was nothing he could do except think while he caught up with his time flow, so that's what Cynic did. He THOUGHT.

OOC: Gates are fine, it's only the *pop* kinda teleports that are being blocked right now. On-site gates and portals should still work.

Deus Ex Machinas. They were very funny things. Cynic was a very adaptable person. He had set limits that he always obeyed. Sometimes though, he had to put up with people who went far above and beyond their rights, and so Cynic didn't mind doing it from time to time himself, in order to level the playing field.

He had ordered 4 portals. Not 2.

Both of the escapees were immediately jumped by the other 2 completely untouched Arachnos groups, both of whom had gotten their bearings straight before their prey had broken loose from the encirclement, and both of which had come right out of Ouroboros portals LITERALLY the second the 2 had made their moves and started running. They were attacked mercilessly from all sides, blasted from above by dozens of arcs and bolts of vicious Mu magicks, accompanied by a huge assault by Bane spiders striking from every direction, maces flashing through the air, and aimed at with precise blows from the deadly Night Widows who had moved literally like shadows that greedily devoured retreating light, and who did not appear to be perturbed in the slightest by the sudden cut in their mental powers. Night Widows were famed for their physical prowess, after all, not just their psionic capabilities. The various magical attacks from the Mu Mystics channeled around their allies almost as if the attacks themselves were alive, making it impossible for friendly fire to occur.

That wasn't all though.

Who else should decide to emerge from a brand new Ouroboros portal except Commander Cynic, his drones *minus the assault bot*, and the pissed off survivors of the Antis attack? Well, them, obviously. That was the thing about Ouroboros portals. They stuck around, ready to be used at a moment's notice. When everything had gone to hell, Cynic and his crew had just slipped back through the portals, spent a good 10 minutes patching up back at Ouroboros, and come out the other side completely refreshed and ready to step right back in front of their targets. The drones all immediately opened fire, their odd friendly fire feature allowing them to assault the two freaks of nature without harming their compatriots. Cynic even tossed in an energy burst from his Night staff.

This time, with intent to kill, or at least sufficiently maim. And THIS time, the Antis would NOT be coming to the aid of the Sky Commander unless they were as fast as light-Cynic had trapped one in a normal detention field that wouldn't cease to expire and ran a normal life of about 15 seconds, more then enough time for the prompt mauling-and the other two had to put up with the assault bot he had left behind who had started shooting off missiles and oblivion beams at the attackers the moment they had made their moves and made themselves known. In an absolute worst-case scenario, there was nothing stopping Cynic from placing anything that wasn't larger than an Ultra inside a detention field and just letting it stew.

Cynic was getting completely fed up with the entire thing-Giant monsters, THINGS that couldn’t be dodged, aliens that were completely impossible to kill-He felt like he was stuck in a rut. And he hated it. There wasn’t any reason he needed to chase these 2 this far, if only to try and prove that there were consequences for everything. But he was there, so Cynic was going to put absolutely EVERYTHING he had into this last assault, using every last available resource to kill off his opponents-hopefully even permanently. He couldn’t go any further then this. This was the final limit to the resourcefulness and power that could be unleashed by the outclassed Commander. He merely hoped it was enough.

He also vaguely wondered if Tamesis was ok and whether or not Jake's battle with the Ultra was going well. He had a feeling that any of them would be lucky to get out of this damned rigged situation in one piece.