Future Imperfect - Cat O' Nine Lives
By
Carnifax,
Posted on: 2008-11-11 14:14 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
Wow.
I don't what else to say. Great writing.
*Goes off to read Ravens piece*
Great story, but I've no idea what happened at the end.
How did Ellie survive / reform and who / what is Voyd.
Excellent writing though, slightly angsty but you can blame Ravens for that 
Did you come up with all that this afternoon? 
Voyd was the Nictus that inhabited Ellie at one point I think?
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Great story, but I've no idea what happened at the end.
How did Ellie survive / reform and who / what is Voyd.
Excellent writing though, slightly angsty but you can blame Ravens for that
Did you come up with all that this afternoon?
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She reformed due to Reform Essence. Khelds are a SOD to kill permanently. 
Voyd is the one responsible for Ellie being a catgirl in the first place. A thoroughly nasty metaphysical entity who's been after her since her arrival in Paragon.
And yeah, wrote it today.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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And yeah, wrote it today.
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I reiterate my
Fair play!
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Voyd was the Nictus that inhabited Ellie at one point I think?
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Not quite. He implanted a Nictus shard in Ellie which drove her batbleep crazy (kind of like how Galaxy Troopers are made), and eventually resulted in Eloise, her duplicate (who's since become a Warshade).
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Ahhh, wondered where Tiger Dark came from
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This is set in a possible future.
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I'd just like to point out that, of all the potential snippets of future in my story, the least likely one to actually ever happen was the Ellie one. 
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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This is set in a possible future.
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I'd just like to point out that, of all the potential snippets of future in my story, the least likely one to actually ever happen was the Ellie one.
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Oh absolutely, I completely agree. But remember, if you pay lip service to the multiverse theory (and in CoH, we do!), then every eventuality happens SOMEwhere...
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
KIndly avoid using the royal 'we' under these kinds of circumstances. I remember getting really tired of the 'aternative X' plots after about the third one...
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
(( Inspired by Ravenswing's story here, and because I wanted some revenge, please enjoy! This is set in a possible future. ))
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Future Imperfect - Cat O' Nine Lives
Ellie crouched behind the crumbling wall, watching the entrance to the building up ahead carefully. Her once beautiful face was now marred by a dead expression, and her eyes; once bright and vibrant, were filled with a cold blue light. Gone was the fun loving woman of so many years ago; too much had happened to her, too much pain and loss.
A small duffel bag lay at her side, and within, one last hint of a humanity she'd all but left behind. A small framed picture of her family; Jess, Hannah, Yoko and Josie, her little girl. Her last treasured possession, her last keepsake of that which had been so cruelly taken from her.
Pushing the duffel under a pile of rubble to hide it from view, her mind flashed back over the last 30 years. Yoko had been the first, killed one night whilst out on patrol. They'd never found who did it, just her body lying in a dark alley, a single puncture wound in her lower back, travelling straight up and in to her heart. A poisoned blade, the sign of a coward.
Next had come Hannah and Ryan; an apparent overload in his mutant abilities whilst training some New Vigilants had overwhelmed and killed both of them, along with the entire team; frying them all to a crisp.
Not long after, Zori, Tessa, the twins, they'd all gone, along with the island itself. Nothing but a radioactive crater had been left. An accident, they'd said. An overload in the power core of the Unity Vigil headquaters hidden beneath the island, but Ellie knew better.
Then it had been Josie; her dear sweet Josie; taken from school one day by someone claiming to be from social services. They'd never seen or heard from her again. No ransom note, not even a body to mourn; she'd just... disappeared.
Finally, Jess. 5 years ago now, though it seemed an eternity. They'd been following a lead, a hint that Josie'd been seen in New Zealand.
Ellie closed her eyes and pushed the memories away. There was a wealth of pain there that she'd walled off many years ago, and now was not the time to dwell upon it. Not when she was so close to the one who'd taken everything away from her.
Every time she'd lost someone, a little of herself had died with them, and when Jess had gone... Her lovely, beautiful Jess; the last bit of humanity left in Ellie had also died. She'd become cold and brutal, little more now than a killing machine filled with a burning need for revenge. She'd lost count of the number of scumbags she'd ripped to shreds in her hunt; had even become the FBI's number one most wanted after her attack on their archives in Quantico; but she didn't care. All she'd wanted was the information they'd held, and if they'd given it too her, she'd have left peacefully.
Her armoured foot scraped on the rubble as she shifted position, getting ready to pounce, and the two guards looked up as the sophisticated sensors in their own armour picked up the sound.
The warning didn't help. With a tigers' roar, and a blur of light, Ellie leapt over the ruined wall, her claws fully extended, and ripped in to the guards. Three seconds later it was over and the two bodies crumbled to the ground, ripped nearly apart by the brutal attack. Not even sparing them a second glance, Ellie moved to the door and punched in the keycode her source had given her.
With a faint hum, the door slid open and Ellie slipped inside.
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Several hundred meters away, Annette lounged back in her leather chair, watching Ellie's entry on the security monitors with a small smile on her face.
"You've become so ruthless over the years, Ellie." She mused to herself. "It's almost a pity to have to put you down after all this time."
Sitting up, she tapped a button on the console in front of her, activating the silent alarm to notify the guards of an intruder. "Sorry boys, but she needs to think this is real, or she'll never go for the final bait."
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Ellie moved silently down the dimly lit corridor, moving on all fours as had become her habit in recent years. Her feline nature had grown stronger recently, as the last of her humanity had slipped away, and instinct had taken over much of her technique. Her body, once small and slender, had bulked up considerably, with bulging musculature barely contained by her worn and stained armour.
Pausing at a junction, she tilted her head as she heard the sounds of a squad ahead. Her eyes seemed to pulse slightly as she shifted her vision, moving from night sight to aura sight. The ability to see bioelectrical energy granted by her Kheldian symbiont revealed the shapes of 12 soldiers through the intervening wall, apparently lying in wait for her.
Ellie smiled, her greatly enlarged canines showing through her lips, and her body seemed to ripple as it faded from sight. Invisible and silent, Ellie slipped around the corner.
Ahead, the 12 guards she'd seen were crouched behind a heavily barrelled weapon, a crimson glow emanating from its stock. Slowly, Ellie crept past the quantum array cannon, keeping to all fours, until she was behind her prey.
Rising to her full height, she let her energy claws slide from her fingertips once more, and her body rippled as she reappeared.
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Annette winced at the carnage being wrought in the corridor, even her own hard sensibilities wounded by what Ellie had become. "It's no wonder you've survived so long, Ellie." She muttered. "And those were some of the best troopers we had, too."
Rising from her seat, Annette moved towards the door of her control centre, activating the masking systems of her armour. "Time to finish this."
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Deep in the base, Ellie crept forward, upright now as she moved closer to her goal; a room which, her sources said, held the information she sought. The identity of the one responsible for destroying her life.
The base was quiet now, Ellie's senses showing that, what guards still survived in this place were doing their best to get as far away from her as possible; all but one. She couldn't tell who or where, but she was sure there was another presence down here, somewhere near.
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In a hidden space within the wall, Annette watched through a concealed peephole as Ellie crept by; hardly daring to breathe, aware of Ellie's heightened senses. She frowned a little as she noted the splashes of red marring Ellie's battered armour, and a thought flitted through her mind. "She's not even human anymore. It'll be almost a kindness to put her down..."
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Ellie stopped as she approached what appeared to be the door to a vault, locked obviously. Checking the area carefully, she moved to the door and examined it, peering briefly through the viewing aperture set in the centre. A security panel sat to one side, and pulling a slip of paper from her belt, she tapped out the long security code written there. A series of clicks followed, and slowly, the large vault door swung open. Inside was a bare metal room, and at its centre, a single file cabinet lay.
Wary of a trap, Ellie looked around again, her senses stretched to the max. She still felt... SOMEthing, nearby... But unable to get a fix on what it could be, she turned back to the door. The filing cabinet almost taunted her with its closeness, it's promise of revealing who was responsible, but still Ellie hesitated as her hackles rose.
Finally, unable to resist any more, Ellie stepped in to the vault and tore open the cabinet. Inside, a single white envelope lay.
Tearing it open, Ellie's eyes widened as she read the document within. The orders to someone she knew, someone she'd called a friend. The orders that led to destroying everything she'd held dear.
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Annette slipped quietly out of her hiding place, through the hologram of the wall, and crept slowly up to the vault. Reaching the door, she passed her hand through another hologram, and pressed the emergency close control.
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The sound of the heavy metal door closing behind Ellie rang in her ears and she spun around in time to hear the latches lock shut. A familiar face looked at her through the viewing aperture. Annette smiled. "Hey, Ellie."
"A-Annette, it was you?" Ellie ran to the door, clawing at it. Her Kheldian energy claws ripped into the metal, but it was going to take time and Ellie did not think she had any.
"Yeah, yeah it was me. I killed all of them. Ryan, Zorielle, Dinah. Even Jessica," she paused and thought about it, "both of them."
"Why? What the hell reason did you have?" Ellie yanked a panel of metal off the door and began attacking the struts that held the latches in place.
"You didn't figure it out? Always said you were about as bright as a bag of spanners. I've been working for the Shadow Council for years." She reached out and slapped her hand onto a button beside the door. The chamber filled with quantum resonance energy. Ellie barely had time to scream.
Annette watched the energy blasts slam in to Ellie's body, literally ripping her body apart as the quantum resonance disrupted the Kheldian energy matrix that held her together. Finally, when it was over, she smiled and shut down the blasters.
"A pity, and here's me thinking cats had nine lives."
Turning, she walked down the corridor to clean up the mess Ellie had made.
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In the vault, a single wisp of smoke rose from the charred ashes; all that remained of Ellie. Ever so slowly, that wisp began to grow thicker, changing from a dark colour to pale blue. Several seconds later a brighter glow appeared around the ashes and they faded from view. Brighter and brighter the light grew until a form appeared inside the light; growing more and more distinct as the energy matrix grew rapidly stronger, reforming itself.
Finally, the light winked out, and Ellie rose from the ground. Naked, and once again as slender as she used to be; whole again, alive again. Almost calmly, she reached out for the struts holding the door in place, and with a tortured shriek of metal, she ripped it from it's frame and threw it down the corridor, straight at Annette.
The door slammed into the traitor, smashing her to the ground as its weight landed on top of her, crushing her under its weight.
Slowly, Ellie stepped out of the vault, her entire body glowing brightly with energy, and she floated down the corridor. Barely visible beneath the door, Annette lay pinned, a trickle of blood running from her mouth as she stared up at Ellie in shock.
"A cat DOES have nine lives, Annette." Ellie whispered, her voice oddly resonant.
Reaching down, Ellie lifted the door from Annette and cast it aside, then grasped the front of her tunic and lifted her half crushed body up, so that they were face to face. Green healing energy erupted from Ellie's hands, healing Annette's injuries as Ellie almost spat in her face. "I'm going to make you pay, Annette. Pay for everything you've done, pay for all the pain you've caused me. You're going to BEG to die, Annette. You hear me? BEG! But you never will... Ever."
Turning her head to the wall, energy erupted from her eyes; a torrent of raw power pouring forth and tearing in to the wall. But instead of melting, a rip in the very fabric of space began to open, growing wider and wider, until it was large enough to step through.
The energy stopped, and Ellie called out. "It's time, Voyd. Time to come claim what you've always wanted."
The rip wavered and flickered, and then what looked like a shadow stepped through, formless and cold, with tendrils of even darker blackness twisting around it.
Ellie turned back to Annette, who's eyes were wide with fear at this apparition. "Welcome to my nightmare, Annette."
Ellie bent her head and kissed the woman, and as she did her whole body became indistinct. Energy erupted around them both and slowly, Ellie began to melt into Annette, merging her essence with the womans. A piercing scream echoed through the corridor as Ellie invaded every cell of Annette, and all of the memories and pain Ellie had suffered these past 30 years flooded into her mind.
The dark shape watched quietly for several minutes as the bonding process continued, then with an echoing laugh, rushed forward and enveloped them both.
A moment later, the corridor was empty.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.