sekmet

And here's part 2 where we meet another member of the family


It must have come as quite a surprise when he attempted to plunge a sword into my back and it plunged but didn't go into my back but somewhere else instead

Ryu performed the distraction perfectly, making the woman turn exposing her back to Kayju's heart thrust. Then things just went wrong, the thrust was made but nothing happened, only a strange static electric feeling, the hairs on his arms raising, then the hair on his head and then there was an all-enveloping explosion of sound, light, pain.. then nothing.

They were good, they actually surprised me, I knew that they were there, I knew they would try to kill me but they still surprised me. However my natural energy field shifted the sword's strike into the other space and then that portion of the Dragon that resides within our family got angry.

Being hit by lightning is quite enervating, it clears negative chi and opens the sinuses. Of course I'm used to it, the three would be assassins however weren't and their smoking' slumped still jerking bodies were evidence to this. At least they were still alive sometimes the Dragon is not as careful as I would like.

My immediate thoughts were twofold, the safety of my mother and grandfather and what to do with the three unconscious men who would soon be starting to come around. I needn't have worried, already approaching were a group of our neighbours and friends led by the redoubtable Madame Li, five foot of insulted Chinese dignity and irascibility, shouting " Miss Vanille, Miss Vanille you ok ,what these bad men do?". The men even as they woke found themselves being harangued and cuffed around their heads, in that way only small elderly women seem to be able to do and cowed into submission. I knew that I could return later to find them still being browbeaten by women not unlike their mothers and grandmothers. I did not envy them.

Of course I really did not need to worry about my mother or grandfather, they are two of the scariest people on this or any other planet. What can I say my mother is the current residence of the full power of the Jade dragon, protector of the Imperial line of China, of course there is no Imperial line left, so he protects us, I think because he actually rather likes us and we amuse him. Now grandfather is old , really really old, he won't even admit to how old he is, though things the Dragon has said, especially when he told me stories as a child suggest hundreds of years old, maybe even more. Grandfather is also a true master of chi, he has taught me things that would make your hair curl. He can manipulate not only his own chi but also that of those around him as well, to the uninitiated he might as well as be some sort of magician, oh and did I mention he can use any style of kung fu and any weapon. He scares me at times but of course he is my granddad and I love him to bits.

I centred myself to feel where they were, where their chi was, ah granddad was at his teahouse, interestingly it took a wider search to find Mother, she was in Japan, so she must be visiting the source of this current trouble.

Which sent me back to look at the would be assassins, a quick rummage through their kit, revealed that they were Black Lotus clan ninjas, expensive to hire, with a good reputation. This made me glad that they had not been reduced to smoking greasy spots, this might seem a strange attitude towards people who only a few minutes previously had been trying to kill me but these were only hired guns, their attempt would have fulfilled their obligations under their contract and they did not deserve to die for the stupidity of their oyabun.

I left them to their fates with my neighbours and headed towards my Grandfathers teahouse, my curiosity piqued at what my mother would find out.

Here's the first part of a longer story, it's been written a while but I write long hand and it's a pain transcribing stuff into the computer, so we'll have to see about the other parts The story itself could be in the CoX universe..or maybe in another... the characters however are in CoX.


A Tiger by the Tail part1

They had been following, observing the target for two weeks now and this morning finally they had been given the order from their oyabun to kill him.

They did not reflect on why their oyabun wanted, an apparently harmless, rather doddery old man dead, so their lord decreed , so it would be done.

They had decided that, after reviewing their information, their two weeks of close observation of his routine, that they would kill him after he had had his early morning walk, after he had completed what business he did and while he was enjoying his morning tea at the quiet teahouse near his home. This teahouse was sufficiently secluded to ensure no interruptions, while offering them enough avenues of egress, a seemingly perfect place to do what they needed to do.

They had covered every angle, done their research, down to what tea he drank, in the morning it was a delicate dawn-picked silvertip white tea from Fujian province in China. The one tasked to find this out had pronounced it the finest tea he had ever tasted. The old man followed only a loose routine, he seemed to enjoy wandering and talking to the people in the area round his house, invariably however after at most a couple of hours he would retire to the teahouse for an hour or so before resuming.

His house was decided as being too difficult a place to carry out the killing, as people were forever coming and going during the day, and at night it's position, at the end of a cul de sac would mean that with only one real way of egress they would be more likely to be noticed. So it was decided that the quiet teahouse was the obvious place to do what they needed to do. They did know that others of their clan were in Hong Kong to carry out other killings, which seemed to be linked with their task, this morning they had received the order to carry out the killing and they presumed the others too had received the order to complete their business this day.

The old man sat, as he usually did in the courtyard of the tea house, at a small table slightly out from the intricately overhanging roof, in a small patch of sunshine sipping his tea apparently enjoying the moment. Slowly, silently they manoeuvred themselves into position, the three members of the clan positioned themselves correctly, following their training immaculately, Tetsu was now above the target, Tanto ready to drop on the target, plunging the sword through his chest from above piercing his heart. Kyo was ready if needed to provide a distraction and he, Miko, was the supposedly unneeded fallback, he closely observed the old man, readying himself to give the signal to Tetsu.

He gently inhaled ready to give the signal, when he saw it, he was studying the old man intently, looking for that relaxation, instead he saw it there in his eye, behind the battered, twisted glasses was a glint, a seeming fire, a flash that said all too much. They thought they had come to slaughter cattle, now he knew everything they thought they knew was wrong. This seemingly frail old man, was not the prey, he was a tiger and they were in its lair. That glint, a faint distant sound of thunder from the perfectly clear blue sky and the old man seemed to change, all sign of dodderiness fell away, he was centred, contained within himself and even as Tetsu dropped, the old man looked directly into Miko's eyes, wagged a long nailed finger at him and moved.

He only seemed to shift slightly but that meant Tetsu was struggling to land his blow, Kyo reacting quickly through his kunai, the old man was like lightning, reaching out plucking them from the air and in one smooth movement, he span turning and plunged them into the dropping Tetsu's eyes. He crashed to the ground, lifeless and in a blink of an eye the old man was on Kyo, there was a blur of movement, a hint of an inky blackness and Kyo in turn slumped, bonelessly to the ground.

Before Miko could draw his sword fully, the old man was on him, striking him with hardened fingers, once, his right arm was dead, twice, his left leg collapsed under him, third, pain exploded over him and blackness took him.

He came to, to see the old man crouched next to him, sipping from a gently steaming cup of tea, he could smell the delicate fragrance over the flinty smell of the courtyards floor. He found he could not move, it was if his body was dead to him, he couldn't even blink.

"Ah so you return to the land of the living young man, I think your oyabun has failed you, let me see you are from the Black Lotus clan, hmm your training was good, you prepared properly, your plan was good, even well executed, unfortunately however your initial information was woefully inadequate. I take it that you do not know who I am?....Aaah that was not meant to be rhetorical..."

Miko felt a sharp pain and he gasped, he could feel his mouth again.

"Well young man did your oyabun tell you who your target was?"

Carefully Miko answered "no Sir ", he felt that given his position a degree of respect was in order.

" Ah I thought so, though I suppose he may not truly have known himself if his client did not properly disclose it, eh!...I still do think he should have checked not just taken the money" he chuckled.

" No sir I do know we were hired by someone else but we only received an address and pictures to identify you, I am only second rank in the clan I am not privy to more information than that."

" Well I will show you some respect, possibly more than you deserve and then depending on how well you answer my questions I will decide your fate. I am Master Tan Xi, number one in the Jade Dragon Triad, the only true triad left in this sorry world."


Oh by the way you can see Master Tan Xi over on my deviant page look in the gallery @sekmet-CoH

Dark Cheetah's point is a very good one,in reality I think only a minority of the playerbase bothers with the forums. I'll try to illustrate this with what happened when I logged into the game after reading Posi's post.

On Union villains, through Bugsy Mac Moo's sterling efforts, I'm the member of a very busy friendly VG, The 7 Sins, when I asked what people thought of Positron's comments none of the nearly 20 people online in the VG had heard of them, simply put I'm the only person who actually bothers to read the forums.

The introduction of CoH to Steam seems to have brought an influx of new players, who were enjoying the friendly atmosphere and who inevitably were using(abusing) the MA.If these new players dont bother with the forum how are they going to learn what they're doing is wrong as far as the devs are concerned, the first they might know about it is when they can't log into their characters.

On this basis I feel it is imperative that the Devs lay out a clearer description of what they intend to do and that it is put where players will see it.

oh pooh
hopefully we can still follow the doc's adventures on deviant

Sad to see you go
All the best in whatever you do next

From Sek and Silver

Happy Birthday Psy from Sek and Silver
Hope you have a lovely day!

Ok trying something a bit different BombGirl is on twitter and she's in a story that will hopefully unfold 140 characters at a time,feel free to take a look and maybe comment. No surprise it's not easy reducing everything down so much so we'll just have t see if it's doable

It should be findable @ www.twitter.com/BombGirl

I've never bothered posting in one of these threads before , partly because I feel that the reasons against server merging are self-evident and have been explained repeatedly before.

However I felt that given the compaints of not seeing anyone around is one of the arguements used, along with difficulty in teaming I would let people know what it is like in some other, supposedly better populated MMOs.

Along with CoX in the past 4 years I have played both LotRO and more recently WaR, in both of these games teaming was seemingly non-existant, they only formed on an ad-hoc basis and as soon as whatever quest was done they fell apart. WAR is a very good example of what people have been talking about, I spent "days" in that game seeing only maybe 3 other players, this was on a heavily populated server, once you got beyond the start area the split was so extreme that even using the auto join team tool there were no teams to join. This game is now allowing server transfers to players to try to counter this, this is transferring from servers with many more players than Union let alone Defiant.

Now over the past week or so I haven't failed to find a team on either of our 2 lower populated servers every time I've been on. We have a completely different ethos on CoX, it's fun to team, a good team will help you advance not steal your xp.

Oh and by the way since the server transfers WAR is now deemed to be in trouble Because you don't offer that sort of thing if your game isn't in difficulties.

Happy Birthday Sweetie have a lovely day

all our love Sek and Silver

He picked one of mine to show as wallpaper...MWAHAHAHA!

Thanks DrD that is very cool and is now gracing my lappie

Here's another story, a warning here it is not a pleasant one it covers an adut theme, it loosely conects with the mythos within which other characters live. It features a character who is mentioned in FYEO and who will be expanded upon at a later date.


Her body lay battered, broken and bloody amongst the filth in the dumpster, half in' half out, where he'd discarded her like some used and broken toy. She couldn't feel her legs, a relief given the pain that wracked her body. She lay face up all she could see were the walls of the alley and the full moon as it edged across the space between. She could feel her lifeblood dripping out of her, in fact she could hear it dripping from what remained of her fingers, to the floor below. She now lay in a pool of light moonlight, it shined in her almost unseeing eyes, it seemed to call to her, filling what remained of her senses.

She didn't hear the soft footfall of the cat as it entered the alley, one of its favourite places for catching juicy rats, it stopped scenting something strange, different. Its hackles raised reflexively, its tail bottled but slowly, cautiously, it crept deeper into the alley. It could scent blood and something else, the floral perfume of the woman who sometimes left him treats overlaid with a stink of blood and worse a reek of corruption and long dead things. It slunk towards what remained of the hand of the woman, as it hung there in front him, dripping blood into an ever increasing pool on the floor of the alley. It sniffed, smelling the imminent death there and throw back its head and yowled, calling out its distress, within moments other small thin bodies could be seen appearing out of the dark from over the roofs and the ends of the alley. A chorus of yowling then started.

The noise was sufficient to break through the woman's pain and disassociation, dragging her back from the brink of death. Something had changed there was an energy in the air, the woman became aware of a sweet perfume, as of night flowering jasmine and honeysuckle, a perfume that seemed to calm her pain and clear her mind. She heard a gentle voice say “oh my daughter what has happened to you, no don't try to speak". She felt hands, warm, soft, gentle, sweet smelling hands cradle and lift her head where it hung over the edge of the dumpster. She remembered.

They'd had a great night, it had been Becca's birthday, a lovely meal at that Italian on 4th street, a few drinks then on to the night club, it wasn't that late when they'd headed for home all giggles and good humour. She’d only been a block from her apartment block, when the old man had approached her asking for directions. She'd not suspected anything, he was just an old man, maybe in his 60s in a slightly shabby suit, he'd looked a bit like that nice scientist, you know the one who sticks his tongue out in that famous picture. She'd turned to point out the direction where he'd needed to go to get to place which he'd said he'd been trying to find. When she'd turned back he was flanked by things, dead things and the look on his face, a look of lust and disgust was horrifying. She'd broken and run, fear lending her desperate speed. She'd thought she'd got away but he'd just been toying with her, she heard him shout behind her, suddenly out of the shadows around her came chittering whirring sounds and things with wings and too many legs poured towards her, catching her, dragging her down, biting her, eating her alive, the pain indescribable. They pulled her into the dark of the alley and through the pain of the hundreds of bites, she could hear footsteps approaching. The smart click of heels and the shuffling slap of bare feet. Rough hands pulled her up, hands whose touch burned her skin through the rips in her clothing. A hand grabbed her jaw and forced her head up, she was looking into the old mans face, his eyes were dead, she could see things deep within his pupils, horrible terrifying things, but he wouldn't let her turn away. Then he laughed and commanded the dead things to hold her, she felt the burning hands force her legs apart and rip away her pants...

"No my poor one you don't need to remember that," the voice enfolded her bathing away the pain, "unfortunately I know that one only too well, lets see what he has done to you". She felt her body being raised, floating from where it had been discarded after being used, gently lowered into the circle of cats. She slipped gently in unconsciousness and so didn't hear what was subsequently said.

“Sisters Schwarzhartzen has struck again, another life destroyed and he broke the veil again, he summoned them yet again, sooner or later they will find their own way through. Worse he has somehow left this one with child, I can feel its innocent presence already within her, I cannot in all that is good cause its destruction." There was a pause, as if this was only half the conversation, "if you feel that is right and appropriate I will grant her life enough that the child maybe born, The circumstances are so strange, that maybe this girl child is meant to be born, we will have to watch, maybe she has a Destiny, we will have to consult the Fates to see what they know."

Officer Keeble found the young woman's body at 2:42 am, he didn’t put in his report that a thin, scruffy alley cat lead him to it, he just put that a noise lead him to investigate the alley where he found the young woman. Initially He thought her dead, so badly battered was her body but he found a pulse and called for the paramedics. They arrived within minutes and she was taken to Crowne's emergency department. Doctor's who examined her was amazed that she was still alive, given the shattered spine, broken ribs and arms, missing fingers and toes and the multiple bites she had suffered. She was transferred to ICU but she never regained consciousness. The police called in specialists from DATA and MAGI but they never found who had done this, yes they knew that some superpowered villain had perpetrated the act and it bore similarities to other unsolved [censored] murders on file.

The young woman was identified as Susannah Dawson, a 19 year freshman old student at Paragon University, her parents were informed and came to sit at her bedside but they knew they had lost their daughter that night and grieved their loss. After 2 months with no change and seemingly no hope moves were set afoot to turn off the machines that kept her alive. It was while preparing to do this that one of the nurses noticed the gently swelling belly and the pregnancy was discovered. Susannah's parents were horrified but it was deemed that a termination would not be legal as the origin of the child could not be confirmed, Susannah had had a steady boyfriend with whom she had been intimate in the preceding days. The decision was taken to allow the pregnancy to go to term and 7 months later a beautiful baby girl was born. One of the delivering midwives would later swear that Susannah smiled after the baby was delivered, within minutes of her baby's birth, Susannah Dawson slipped deeper into coma and passed away.

There was of course a mass of press speculation, the tabloids tried desperately to find out who was the father but the law descended and guarded the baby's privacy. Of course there was no way that the various agencies who studied the child would announce that to all intents and purposes there was no father, only a mother, which Susannah Dawson appeared to have given birth to ...Susannan Dawson.

The child was put up for adoption, her grandparents too traumatised by the circumstances to take on the little girl. She disappeared into the system, her identity protected by law and masses of bureaucracy, of course some "people" have other ways of keeping track, the little girl always had cats as friends whether her adoptive parents wanted or not.

Sixteen years pass...


Ok this is a story that just grew, I was looking at making a character, initially maybe as a sister to Moondance but something happened and it went off at a tangent. I was looking at guns and dark healing but Artemis tapped me on the shoulder and it looks like Dark/archery now, that is by the way who the cats call onin the story.
Sred hopefully enjoy and feel ree to comment

I'm fairly sure you wouldn't be allowed your name over on US Grinning Spade, when I played over there I started an MM and I wanted to use PIs names as names for my thugs, I decided to start with Dashiell Hammet's Sam Spade....only to find it wouldn't allow it, I renamed him as Marlow. Within 2 minutes of this there was a GM police drone watching me in Breakout. We had a nice conversation but I can only think he turned up because of the name. Spade in the States has racist overtones I'm afraid.
BTW I,m ok for global as i got Sekmet over there

As Bomb would say BOOYAAAAAAH!!!!
Awesome Thanks That is great

Well as you're offering

I'd love to see your take on Bombgirl...I do feel she'd be pulling a face and sticking out her tongue though in any picture

screenie: http://i430.photobucket.com/albums/q...t/Bombgirl.jpg

OOOOO just found this dont know how I missed it Thankyou thats LOVELY

Honestly I'd buy this comic. I love the sort of Question type vibe of the Dr.

But aren't futures always nasty...otherwise they're Happy Ever Afters

Well at least that's what the movies would say

Have to say I enjoyed that, even if I don't know who all the characters are

Given how few merits you accumulate as you lvl I forsee the problem being that even getting to 50 wouldn't ensure you a top merit recipe.Silver and I have been running our test shield scrappers in a lvling pact duo we're up to lvl 18 and have only 11 merits. At that rate a casual type player who doesn't have time to do TFs may never accumulate enough merits for that 250 merit recipe.

Point Taken..you're not the first person to say this
All the characters here have appeared in previous stories-
Silver Spirit and his father William are in New Years Resolution.Silver is also in The Best Job in the World.
Sekmet is in The Woman and the Lions and F.Y.E.O.
And of course Moondance made his first appearance in Choices and Decisions.
Essentially these are all origin stories interlinked by the characters relationships to each other.As such the above story is an excerpt from the continuing narrative, obviously it looks like I might have to rework it, though the next part of the story will start to explain those relationships and as such may make things clearer .Also to an extent this was a sort of experiment to see if I could write something like this dialogue rather than narrative lead, thats why I asked for comments.

Ok this is a work in progress it just felt a nice place to let people have a read..a nice little cliffhanger. Yes this is a continuation of Choices and Decisions and yes there is more to come though other chars may get their stories first



"Well my first question is how the hell did he get here? How did he get past the security and even more, how did he get past the Guardian AI?

"Um Dad, simply put he walked in...he walked in 'cos it let him, it recognised him" this was said with a disbelieving shake of the head.

They looked across at the boy, who was in the kitchen/diner, rooting through the cupboards and the refrigerator. Every now and again they could hear a small gasp or coo of delight. There were by now a whole series of opened jars, dirty spoons, spills and bowls of half eaten food and puddles of gently melting ice-cream littering the table and work surfaces.

"What do you mean recognised him, I've never seen him before in my life!"

"Well Dad neither have I, but according to the Guardian AI...he's Family and ...family..."

"How!?!"

"Well as you know, the Guardian AI scans everything. We’ve always posited that we'll meet a shapeshifter at some point, so I included as a failsafe a DNA scan, married into the hand scanner. You put your hand on it and it checks your fingerprints, body temperature, levels of radiation and finally scans your DNA. Quite simply it scanned him, it recognised his DNA, he's family, just not family we've ever met. The Guardian AI let him in, it was intrigued I think, it alerted me and I headed over here. I found him asleep on the sofa there. He was curled up in whatever is wrapped up in that cloth, I tried to touch it and was left wishing I hadn’t, I got quite a shock and was left wishing I'd armoured up before coming here. Oh and Dad you know only about 8 people know this place even exists, it has a whole series of traps and deadfalls before you even get to the door, he knew them all, how could he, this is our most secure base' our emergency bolthole."

"Look I'll show you the security camera footage..."

A holo-display started up and began to play.

A young man, no a boy, scruffy, dirty, wearing ragged clothes, a battered black leather jacket, torn AC/DC t-shirt, ripped black combats approaching the camera. Something slung over his back, something circular, straps over his shoulders like a backpack, covered by a cloth, a dull gleam can be seen where whatever was underneath showed through the rips in the cloth.

It was very apparent that the boy was approaching the door very carefully, circumspectly, checking the area around him so that when he reached the door he slipped through with no-one noticing. He then walked down the corridor, avoiding the traps, switching off others but resetting them as he passed. After a few minutes he reached the main door and glancing quickly over his shoulder, he placed his hand on the scanner pad and the relief on his face could be seen as the door responded.

The holo-display paused.

"See Dad, he knew the scanner was there, he didn't search for it, it's hidden, it was reflexive as if he's used many times before. Here this is Guardian AI's decision tree calculations, I've set them to run alongside. You can see it run facial recognition, power scanning, fingerprints, sidebar physics scanning and finally the DNA matching.
You can see its decision is based on three things. That spike there is a tachyon particle presence, indicating intradimensional chrono travel, that object well it really, really spikes as magic in some way, apart from being truly ancient in origin and well look at the DNA matches...I've already called Sek. I do think she's gonna get a real surprise."

William was dumbfounded, he sat back and glanced over at the boy in the kitchen area. He studied the boy, he reckoned he was, what 12-14 years old, but he looked older as if life had been hard. He was on the skinny side but you could see it was whipcord thin, all muscle, not a scrap of puppy fat. When he moved it was with an economy, no wasted movements as if he had complete control. He had coffee coloured skin, that looked like it hadn't seen the sun much, and blonde hair, it was dirty, matted worn with a longish fringe that hung down over his left eye. As he moved, William glimpsed what might have been a burn or a scar running across his left eye, down his forehead and over the top of his cheekbone. Green-gold eyes caught him looking as a tentative smile played across his lips.

William stood up, walked across the room to the sofa, where the circular object lay in its ragged cloth cover.
"Oh I wouldn't do that if I were you, it doesn't know you yet."

"Yeah Dad I told you it gave me a hell of a shock earlier."

"Don’t worry it's not dangerous or anything, that's my shield and it does get rather protective at times.” This said through a mouthful of Ben&Jerry's Phish Food ice-cream and a wide smile. "God' this is gorgeous no wonder so many of the people I saw on the way here are sooo fat."

A bleeping cut through the silence, all three turned to face a disturbance, as the teleport pad activated. The air shimmered, they all felt the displacement pressure of the air in the room as a tall blonde-haired woman appeared on the pad.

Hardly before the figure had solidified in the teleport they heard...

"Silver what the hell do you mean...?"

"Ah Sek I think you should meet your nephew."

"Hello Auntie, long time no seen before."


Ok I have tried to tell a story in dialogue here so feel free to comment and I hope you enjoyed it.

yup Dan's right No More Music 2 is lush

loely lovely lovely

Thankyou!!!!

Seeing how gorgeously you draw females I would be soo grateful if you could do a sketch of Sekmet, the screenies show her as she'd look in the FYEO story posted here


http://i402.photobucket.com/albums/p...ekmetBiker.jpg

I'd love you to do my character Moondance, the hero introduced in the Choices and Decisions story.


http://i402.photobucket.com/albums/p.../MoonDance.jpg

and Silver Spirit would love you to do his thug MM Da Big Boss..

http://i402.photobucket.com/albums/p.../DaBigBoss.jpg