The rains had come. But they could not cleanse. That was the task of fire.
[00:02]
[00:01]
[00:00]
North Gate
The immaculately polished logo of Crey Biotech burst apart in a hail of fire and shrapnel, white-hot metal rending the heavy blast door apart like the fists of a titan.
South Gate
The thick metal came undone by force and flame, violence unchecked unleashed upon those it had meant to protect, leaving its efforts but naught and slag.
East Gate
The detonation tore through the door like the wrath of hell itself, spewing forth a synthetic malevolence that matched any fire and brimstone had concocted in all the ages of Man.
West Gate
The blaze shredded metal, flesh, and bone alike, and still the great tongue of the churning inferno licked upon all within its reach, expunging every life and every soul that felt its rage.
All Gates
The power failed. Darkness assaulted the flickering flames' light.
And then they came.
They came seeking. They came marching. Their heavy boots crushed what cinders remained to ash, flattening crumbling chunks of shattered armor, grinding apart smoldering fragments of flayed flesh, and crushing charred bits of bone into the ground.
They came wanting. They came hunting. Their weapons found their marks. Blazes of bright blue pierced the veil of darkness, their visors glinting coldly in the hue of each and every plasma bolt that burned through those brave enough to show them face.
But just like the blast doors, each failed and fell, one after another, and they kept on the advance, undeterred. Round after round bounded from the smooth plates of their armorsuits, ringing helplessly against the floor in concert with their jackets raining from the speaking guns. Fire blazed against them, darkness of the nether worked its vileness, and spines of bone and claws of steel came with viciousness untold. Power of the body and the mind, force of science large as life and smaller than the atom, all roared its might and fury 'twainst their marching numbers, and their weapons spoke in kind.
They fell in ones. Too slow. They pressed their hold. The tide would not be stemmed. Losses were acceptable. Defeat was not. In their helmets sound was silence, in their eyes purpose penned, in their hearts conquest nigh. They would not be denied.
And he watched.
He watched them march, he watched them take. He watched them fight, and he watched them fall. It hurt. It hurt them all. But it was necessary. Things were different now. The pain of the fight fought he could lock away, could give to the cold. The pain of the fight not fought he could not bear, he could not face. It was better to fight than to hurt, better to take one in place of the other.
For the Empire.
He stepped forth. His weapon awoke. Gloved fingers grasped the hilt of the plasma pistol and brought it forth from beneath the billows of his cape. The iridescence of neon blue danced across his visor. He would face them. Like the others, he would face them. Face them all. Face them now.
"For the Empire!"
And his weapon spoke...
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
Is anyone else going to add to this?
While I sure hope so, I have to admit it's not likely. The people I usually RP with seem to have their fill of threads currently (or aren't posting at all for reasons I don't know), and the Europeans are notoriously gun-shy when it comes to threads they didn't start themselves. They're kind of a clique that way. So yeah, I'm afraid this isn't gonna go anywhere. 
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
Thanks for the heads up
Quote:
((Well, let's see what I can do to get things going here.))|
Originally Posted by Whardel
Thanks for the heads up
|
Galaxy City is a lot quieter than Atlas Park. That might have been why the Main Branch of the Paragon Public Library was built there more than 40 years ago. Librarians and scholars, amateur or professional, like quiet.
Or maybe it was because Freedom Court was nearby. For a lot of reasons, the PPL had a very extensive and valuable group of rare and old books and manuscripts in its Special Collection. Paragon City being the place that it is, it was not uncommon in decades past for criminals to try to steal these books. Maybe it passed through mind of the City Librarian 40 years ago that it would be a good idea to have some superpowered help nearby in case of any unusual robberies.
That was less the case now. In these modern times of modern, high speed document imaging, supervillians rarely stole ancient books containing forbidden secrets anymore. Now, with a hidden camera, one could just riffle through all the pages of an old book causually, not even opening it fully and then reconstruct it all for proper viewing and reading later on a computer with image processing and modeling software.
This brings up Alquist One.
Alquist One, a super and a new member of the Iron Immortals, had been given intellectual scut work for the past two days. Alquist was to copy the entire Special Collection of the Paragon Public Library for the Immortals Central Union databases. This was made less arduous for the reasons above and also because Alquist was a robot.
Well, a cyborg in truth but, that was only a temporary condition. Never mind, this is not really that important to the story at hand but will be explained in more detail as the narrative progresses.
What is important to the story at hand, was that during Al's work of pulling and flipping through books, his augmented medium term memory recorded images of all the pages of three Italian folios on architecture and engineering dating from the Fifteenth Century CE.
Not that Al was paying attention to this of course. He rarely paid attention to routine tasks he'd set his medium term memory to record.
But, as any historian or librarian, will tell, most important events start over something small and trivial.
In this case, the three folios contained extensive marginal annotations by a master carpenter that, when pieced together and studied for a bit by someone who actually knew what they were doing, would reveal the location of a hitherto unknown workshop and residence of the famed genius and polymath, Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci.
Al was completely unaware of this even though his memory was recording it. He was too busy re-writing LISP 20 code at the time.
((So, how's this?))
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
A pair of heroes stood at the end of a long corridor, staring down the cement passage. One of them was wondering what brought them to this particular junction, while the other was more concerned with the complete lack of tactical cover.
It was hard to tell which one was thinking which, as they looked exactly alike.
Alice Springs, known to most as the Omega Source, frowned at the poor lighting and crouched low, her faint energy shield shimmering as she moved. Her heavily armored red and blue uniform creaked as she settled into position. Annoyed, she glanced at her partner, who was looking almost everywhich way but forward.
"Eyes front, would you?"
Alice Springs, known more widely as the Alpha Source, looked down the dark hallway, three nimbuses of energy slowly swirling about her body. Glancing at her partner, the blonde tilted her head, "Ever since you told me about those ceiling zombies, I just have to check."
Omega Source sighed and pulled her Primal Earth counterpart behind her. "There aren't any ghouls here. Just generic goons if we're lucky. Now stay behind me."
People go missing everyday all over the world. In Paragon City however, the citizen to hero ratio is so high, that almost every single one gets a hero on the case within the hour. Such was the case here.
Omega Source moved forward slowly, always keeping an eye out for signs of guards. So far, they'd been steps behind the kidnappers and two hours ago, Omega Source had written the hapless citizen off. And yet...here she was, searching for a corpse because a certain hero who seemed more like a conscious than a partner refused to give up.
Omega Source held up her hand in a closed fist, and thankfully Alpha Source stopped before running into her. Omega pointed at the doorway. An honest to goodness dungeon. How quaint. Reminded her of home.
She peered her head around the doorway, hoping to catch a glimpse of the room's layout, and if any guards even remained.
Infinity
Sam Varden 50 MA/Reg Scrap
Doomtastic 50 SS/Inv Brute
Ceus 50 Eng/Kin Corr
Cinderstorm 50 Fire/Fire Blaster
Wanted to try this, anyone can chip in. You can switch from character to character or add new ones and talk in their point of view.
The sound of heels hitting the cement could be heard comming down the long corridor leading to an abandoned dungeon. She was running out of time. Crey needed the files and soon, and they did not tolerate failure well. All the leads were lost causes. This one however seemed to be going somewhere....
She approached a wooden door with two women guarding it. Both of them, like her, had jet black hair and had chalk white skin. They had the look of fear in their eyes as she approached.
"Well? How goes the interrogation?"
"H-h-he hasn't t-talked yet Mistress Romani. But I assure you, he will give us the information w-we seek s-soon." One of the guard pleaded stuttering.
"You fools, he won't talk because he obviously knows what is inside! Let me in and i will... convince him." Mistress Romani replied angrily.
The two guards opened the door revealing a completely empty room with a man sitting in the center. He black chains all over him. His face was tired and bloodied, like he lost a fight with a wolf. He did not move when she entered. If it weren't for the fact that his chest moved every few seconds, she would have pronounced him dead on the spot. There was another chair sitting on the wall far enough so he could not reach it.
She went over him and picked up his head by his chin. Her black nails shining in the moonlight pouring into the room from the only window.
"Have you come to interrogate me like the others have? Or have you come to be merciful and put me out of my misery?" The man asked, looking at her with two bruised, bloody eyes.
"That question can be answered by giving me the information I seek. Now-" She pulled over a chair "- you know the question already. So do you know where it is?"
"I told you, my father left me nothing when he died. He never loved me!"
She paused as she looked at his facial expressions for any signs of disception. Then she pulled out a large piece of parchment. She rolled it out and put it on his lap.
"Do you know who I am?" She asked.
"Your the theif on the news. Your Isabella Ink." The man replied.
"And do you know what I can do?"
"No one has ever witnessed your abilities and lived, so how could I?"
She touched finger on the piece of paper. Ink flowed from her black nail and began to fill the paper up. The ink twisted and turned, formed Italian names and numbers. In seconds, there was a perfect map of Italy on his lap.
"Now, where is it?" She asked impatiently.
"Unless your could see something that I can't, I still have know idea where it is." The man let go a small cough which covered the map with spit and blood.
She lunged at him grabbing him by the throat. Her face was two inches away from his. She raised her right hand while her left still had him by the neck.
"I will ask you one more time before I use other means of finding the information in your mind. Where is the Workshop of Leonardo Da Vinci!?" She asked yelling at him.
The man remained limp in her arm. Her black lips turned into an sinister grin. She motioned her right hand toward his face. The man's eyes widened. She pressed her hand right onto his face.
The guards outside winced and cringed at the sounds comming from inside of the room. The screams echoed through the corridors creating a symphony of screams that pierced the night like a knife. Then everything went silent. Isabella emerged from the chamber, small ink tendrils slowly receeded back into her nails.
"We have a lead."
************************************************** *****
So there is no real protagonist yet, so if anyone wants to make one, feel free to introduce him/her. Obviously we have an antagonist so try and keep her in mind when making the next couple of chapters.