A sickly sweet stench of sweat and sugar saturated the night air, filling Xuan's senses and disarming her, allowing a rising tide of memories to push her along the darkness. Hundreds of people pushed and shoved and wandered and meandered and dissolved into countless others, groups and social circles disintegrating and re-integrating around others, becoming larger, pushing, swelling like a tide of flesh and bone and collective consciousness, all aiming for satisfaction, endorphin release, and all the good things.
Xuan remembered it as if it were just yesterday that she had walked and laughed with her parents along the parade there, and there, where she had gotten a bit drunk that one time and found a boy who turned out to be pretty good for a few weeks before he moved on.
When Archard had asked if she had ever been to this place she hadn't said anything. She hadn't known, hadn't been sure. But the second they stepped from a shadow into the artificial lights and flinched back as one she knew that not only had she been and knew of this marvellous attraction, she had also loved it.
It was just a pity that now she was unable to appreciate her memories. Unable to pin down exactly why she had liked and enjoyed being in this place that was so dirty and seedy and held all the dark corners and was obviously just a pen for the dumb animals that humans easily became the second they saw something flashy and new. She was unsure of how she felt about it, and weather she was capable of feeling anything from her memories at all that wasn't a twisted alteration caused by the emotion numbing aspect of her new life.
Still, time enough to think about that after this jaunt though the foetid realms of human satisfaction.
She and Archard had made reasonable time out of the sewers and crossing the city, twisting and stepping through the shadows, keeping low and silent to deter any unwelcome visitors. And Xuan hadn't wanted to talk with the corporate shade anyway. The way he conversed with her was not something she enjoyed. Association with prey was not something that the wild instinctual part of her could grasp. It was only her remaining humanity that kept her from leaping as far away from him as possible. Maintains distance, keep safe, look for weakness. That was how a hunter took down prey that it deemed stronger or more of a challenge than the rest.
That's not to say she was afraid of him.
The others she could kill without trouble. He was clever though, a type of smarts that gave him a great advantage over not only her but the rest of the shades she had met thus far.
But he couldn't fight like her. One-on-one, close combat, she knew she could take him. With weapons? probably not. Claws and talons and augers and spines and biological weaponry was her forte, from the very moment of her conception. The weaponry at the hideout was wasted on her. She killed her prey with her bare hands or not at all.
And speaking of prey...
Archard directed her attention to a shadowy corner, away from the people and away from their own hiding place. She grinned, her milk-white eyes and teeth splitting her face into a rictus smile of inhuman proportions.
Xuan glanced at Archard, and then resumed staring at the ceiling, obstinately ignoring the tone of his voice. "Untrained, undisciplined hunters would find somewhere with a lot of food," she said, springing off her hands and meeting Archard's eyes, landing within inches of his body as her biologically-warped mind gathered information and instinct to form her answer.
"Look for gatherings in the dark places, where the prey will be distracted, busy with other things, chasing mates and pleasure. 'Feral' or not, these things will know when and where to strike. Instinct, hunters; predators."
She inhaled heavily, her hands, now slim and feminine beneath the inky darkness,ran down her bloody clothes and body, and she suddenly decided that the fabric did nothing for her, and that'd she'd have to get rid of them soon enough. The phone that Archad had given her had been stashed down her bra, and was safe enough there for the time being.
Xuan wasn't even listening to Archard, or the other two. The very idea that someone could be foolish enough to paste their location around the city along with an indicator of what they were was just asking for trouble. A small part of her hoped that Kurt and Mark died getting to this supposedly intelligent shade, at least then she wouldn't have to share territory with them. Archard she could live with, but those two? It was something she couldn't remember, something bad, or unpleasant, she just couldn't... quite... recall...
Xuan was knocked from her internalization when the taller man spoke her name. "Miss Zu. If you would consent to accompany me, we will search for a feral shade." Mmm, she liked the sound of that. Her and Archard. It almost gave her chills.
"Once we locate one, we can gather our two esteemed young companions and capture it."
She glanced at the other two, and then back at Archard. "Don't need them. We can take it ourselves. Let them run for the apparently 'intelligent' shade."
For a long time she only knew darkness and pain. Thoughts filtered though her mind, often times concerning Archard, moreso her prey, humanity, and those with the special hearts and vibrant blood. The shadows of her hideaway were the only respite, her only sanctuary from the brutal killing light, but the offered little in the way's of sustenance.
She remembered waiting in a half-daze for all of the noise to stop. Far down below the noise of fire, weaponry, military and clean-up crews had stayed for a while, but had grown less and, finally, been replaced with the roar of engines, the bubble of chatter and the shuffle of hundreds of thousands of feet.
She hungered.
It took her a long time to realize that she had lost almost all form. She lay in the duct, merely a amorphous blob of sentience and leaking ichor. Soon enough she heard people moving within the building, talking in worried voices about mundane things. She took some. Digested them fully, bodies and all. She had no real mouth at the time, she just took them within her, and they died.
Hunger was not yet sated.
She took more.
Finally they left, and there was none to take. She still struggled. Pain lanced at every strenuous movement. Her leg felt like lead, immobile; poison. She left the empty building at night, when the pain receded slightly, enough to allow her out and around.
She didn't bother to look down the building. There would be nothing left of the skirmish of what must have been at least two days earlier. Feeling more refreshed, now that her human form was returned to her, she inspected her leg.
No damage from the knee down, but the thigh was home to a large hole, obviously mending, but slowly. The sides were molted, darker than black, shadow on shadow, and felt almost rubber-like. Xuan sat on the lip of reasonably tall apartment complex somewhere south of where the fight had occurred.
Her hair bobbed in the moonlight, glistening wetly. She'd broken into a recreation center for a wash, and a small feed, and now, drying herself at the edge of a building, she dug one elongated and talon like finger into the hole of her leg.
The resulting pain was immense, threatening blackout. She gritted her teeth. Her other hand crushed the bricks it lay upon. No other movement. She could feel something metal, something that burned to touch. She probed deeper, letting a gasp of pain escape. the tip of her finger wound around the object, looping and securing itself. It still burned. She closed her eyes and arched her back as she dug out the ultraviolet round.
She screamed then, pulling the skin on her back tight, breaking the rubber-like seal of her true skin and the healing mass. Her eyes felt like watering, her body spasmed and she felt hot blood drip down her side.
Then it was free and she fell back, clutching the offending bullet tightly in her fist. It was burning a sigil into her palm, but the pain of her back and leg eclipsed it.
Xuan tentatively tested her leg, extending it to it's natural limit and then even further. Bearable pain, nothing to severe. She wondered how much it would hurt if she were to rearrange her body into a different form. She decided not to find out. The experience of purely physical pain was not something she enjoyed.
For the next few days she hunted, regaining her strength and speed, reclaiming her hunt and beginning a new project of tracking the man Archard. Why? Because he was an escaped foe, a lucky break in her streak of unblemished killings. He, she would savour; every moment of the hunt, every second of the stalk, the trail, the pounce. She was preparing for it all.
Eventually she followed him to the underground hideout of the shades. She declined to show herself in her weakened state, but left a message in blood to alert them of her knowledge of the place all the same. For the rest of her time alone Xuan roamed the city, acquainting herself with the rooftops and the sewers, hunting and relishing in her fully functional back once more. Her leg however was still an issue, but one that was being dealt with.
She arrived back at the underground tunnel of the shades by way of a sewer access port that cut into the decades old grid. Her tongue was warm with blood from a fresh kill, and her claw-hands dragged along the ground behind her, uncaring about the noise or returning them to their natural form, Xuan let them hang there, scratching and wailing their way towards the group of shades.
"I arrive." She uttered, directly following Archard's question. Her mandible-claws clicked disjointedly as they dug into the ground and grew to support her small feet. There she sat, cross-legged, on a platform of her hands, looking for all intents and purposes as attentive as a schoolgirl, save for the splashes of blood that criss-crossed her torn and stained clothes.
@Dinh AaronMk. I can't let this go by but I absolutely love your sig. Entirely off topic and all that, but it is wonderful. Props to you my good sir/madam.
OT: Cyberpunk. Always cyberpunk. No one does it.(well).
I really, really, really, like this idea. I think the concept of the periodic table of elements as power is wonderfully inspired.
Alas, knowing what I do of the others who have expressed their interest (through stalking and just general attentiveness) I probably won't be joining unless more experience/capable players join. Sorry.
Well, by alien tech are you wanting things literally mechanical or more biological tech? As the good Doctor said, selective breeding, genetic manipulation and a spot of luck concerning the home world would be a good basis for a race of techno-organisms. Think the Zerg, or Tyranids, (if you're a WH40K fan.) Perhaps not the hive mind aspect, but the general idea of using matter, bio-organic and gene manipulation to create homes, weapons, power (not necessarily electricity, everything could run on body heat, or heat in general. You mentioned a desert, so unless it's just a single biome planet (Tattooine, Mustafar, Geonosis, in fact, almost every planet in Star Wars) one would assume that the planet has a stable atmosphere and varying seasons, giving wider diversity of life and therefore perhaps even different ways of living, (different animals providing different things depending on surrounding ecosystem and habitat, or altered biology/physiology, depending on the aforementioned) which leads to different sub-cultures and the such.
[[Mmmmm. Ratiza, I think you may have gotten powers and skills mixed up. Also, your personality is pathetically short. It tells us nothing other than that your character is a homicidal maniac. Also, making him depressed isn't a viable weakness. Firstly, for anyone to utilize it the person would have to know your character's past, which I assume he would be unwilling to divulge given the obviously painful nature of it, therefore they would then be meta-gaming. Secondly, an emotional weakness such as that is not exactly what we were asking for. I'm no mod, but I suggest that you fix that and make it something that is actually exploitable. I could say more, but it would probably piss you off, and we need more Harbingers anyway. Keep calm and try again!]]
If you want any help on the whole societal/cultural aspect (religion, population, physiology, psychology,) or just anything ot thicken out the world, I'd be glad to help. In fact, that kind of thing is my forte, filling in all the little gaps of a big damn idea.
Aching sunlight burned Xuan, all but blinding her. She blinked hazily and tried to settle into a comfortable stance, something reactionary, primal, and unforgiving. But she couldn't hold it. The sunlight broke her form. Her hastily created warping all but abandoned her in the sunlight. She no longer stood at eye lever with her fearsome-toothed foe, but instead stared up at him. (it stank of male, of testosterone, of pride that only a pack leader had, or thought he had).
The bloody spectacle of his feeding left something to be desired in Xuan. She wasn't horrified by the brutality, (she couldn't be) she herself had perpetrated harsher sentences on her own prey. It was the utter casualness, the blasé form in which he just took a bite out of the head of someone when he was in the middle of a fight that could mean the death of either of them. That was what gave her pause.
This shade was not intelligent like Archard, nor was he an idiot like the boy with the strings, or the invisible one. He was not a complete animal, feral to all, seeking only the satiation of hunger with mindless abandon. He was a predator, not unlike Xuan.
But one without any restraint. Xuan was hungry, the fight and the change and the sunlight were wearing on her. But she couldn't just stop to kill and regain her strength. She felt it would be wrong somehow to do so in the middle of the sunlight. Her consumption of heart-flesh was something more personal than just the need for hunger. It was time of silence and contemplation. As the vestiges of life fled from the ichor she would arrange the remnants of the corpse if she had time. Make it presentable in whatever way she might think worked, and then leave.
The dead may not care, but the living did, and Xuan, though she was of the unlife now, still felt more alive (was she really feeling it? Or perhaps it was just the shadows of memories?) after consuming and giving some semblance of peace to her prey.
This one however, had no such qualms, casually throwing away the decapitated corpse like it hadn't just given it's life for the extension of his own. Xuan considered striking out at him in her now throughly weakened state, but decided that his strength would be too much after just feeding, especially without her shadow-reliant body-warping ability.
Then the police came. Surrounded, outnumbered and out-gunned, Xuan shot a look at the male she had previously been fighting, then back at the circumference of approaching police officers. Not that they were getting close. She could hear booted feet, heavy with body armor, coming from far down the road, behind the wreckage of crashed cars and screaming people. And from the other side came more shouts, and the crackle of a PA and the message that overrode all other superfluous noises.
Xuan knew when the odds were against her. She had failed in the fight, in fetching some of the sweet-hearts that had fled the diner after she saved them from the flying vehicle, and in getting away from the animal that was within her and now stood opposite her, teeth bloody and gaze uncompromising.
She had succeeded, however, in distracting herself, which was always nice.
But now the distraction had become a pain, and Xuan was not a fan of pain. She never had been, even as a mortal. (For a second she wondered if she could feel pain as she remembered it. Pain was an emotion like any other, and she no longer felt them. The only difference with pain was that it was accompanied by a physical sensation along with the emotional tumult that came with other feelings.)
She asserted that the only way that danger wasn't rearing it ugly and helmeted head was directly in front of her, right in the path of the monstrous shade. She grimaced like she remembered doing in this kind of situation. Cannon tot he right of her, cannon to the left of her, big, ugly teeth in front of her, and only destruction behind her.
Running back was weak, and her primal mind volleyed against it, only forward was the right way. On, into the breach, and the valley of death
So she ran. Slid around her erstwhile foe, catapulted over the barricade of broken cars and shot off up the side of the building, her hands and feet digging into the brickwork with spider-like dexterity. She could hear gunshots and felt the whistles of bullets pass around her, but her adrenaline was up, and nothing was going to stop her from escaping.
Then she was hit. Her back set alight with pain, uncompromisingly brutal and without mercy. Flashed of red lanced before her eyes and deep down in her unfeeling heart she tasted the flicker of a rage so potent and fearsome that she turned her eyes away so as to keep her mind focused. But she clung on, literally. The wall crumbled beneath her grip and her upward climb halted for a moment, long enough for another bullet of some kind to hit her in the left thigh.
That time she howled. Like the great hounds she mimicked on the hunt, or the crunch of the spiders mandibles as it devoured a foolish fly. Her voice cracked partway through, becoming nothing more than a chocking gurgle of pain and animal force.
But she could not stay. She had to move, and she did. Death was no option. Her unlife was precious now. She made it to the lip of the building with trouble from her wounds, but no more bullet holes. She scrambled across the roof, avoiding light as much as possible and trailing purple-black shadow blood, but finding little solace from the morning sun. Finally, a ventilation duct, industrial in size, big enough to fit her thin, weakened form. She hid within it, curled up like a wounded pup, and nursed her wounds.
'That should do it,' Haigian thought, folding up the parchment and placing it in the folds of his robes. The letter had been reasonably brief, but it got the point across. He only hoped that what he's written never had to come to fruition.
Just as the Lord looked up from his letter he saw the motley group of his fellow travellers all traipsing back into the shop, apparently all having exited, forgetting him, and then remembered that they did in fact have another person in the party (even if all the managed to do was be old and injured most of the time).
"Ah, I see you've all been having fun without me." Haigian said, running a hand over his grizzled chin and eyeing the lot of them. Allacus' hard footfalls and obvious anger, Croteus' expression that made him look older than he was, and, in the shadows of his eyes the retreating form of something best left forgotten. And then there was Myrna who waltzed in looking thoroughly pleased with herself.
"I don't blame you though, I'm old, and I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy you and your idea of fun, it looks pretty depressing if you ask me." He grinned at them, and then sauntered over to the door. "I have a letter to post, so I'll meet you all in the square at noon? I'm sure there are things we all need to stock up on, yes? Good."
And with that the robed man stepped out of the cloying atmosphere, (heavy with emotions barely disguised) and ran smack dab into a rather familiar looking woman, and a large number of large muscled men, farmers, or unskilled labourers, most likely.
For a second Haigian was taken aback and he stumbled into the door frame, grabbing at his knee as it banged on the wood. "You do realise it's impolite to stand in doorways like that don't you?" He said, addressing the woman, who's face he was internally cross-checking with the list of women he'd slept with over the years. There was always the possibility of him having any number of ******* sons and daughters, and this could be one of them.
[[Fooooor the record, I am in no way implying that Telara could be one of Haigian's children, he just worries about that, because he was pretty much a pimp when he was younger.]]
[[Graghh. Well, Ithought I'd actually be able to do something like this. I was interested, but I work to much for me to actually get anything done. I am hereby resigning from this roleplay. The pace is much too fast for someone such as myself, and I don't like my character anyway. Cheers all.]]
[[In all honesty, I'm rather apathetic to the outcome of this fight. I did it because I was bored and needed to post something. Xuan could die, and I'd roll another character, one perhaps not as hard to understand and write for. Of course it would be preferable if she didn't, but as I said, apathetic, really.
[[I'll take your word for it Pro, I can't actually remember. My memory concerning almost anything not happening right now is pretty atrocious.]]
The eating establishment was full of broken glass, bleeding and screaming people, and random violence. Outside wasn't much better. The shade Xuan had battered out the window got up, seemingly not caring about the sunlight that would inhibit its actions, and hurled a car at the cafe.
People fled from the scene, their cries intermingling with the whimpering of others and the sobbing and steady drip and ooze of blood from wounds. Xuan vision was filled with the oncoming aerial vehicle, and, noticing once more the presence of the sweet-hearts, the good-blood, those that could fight back and tasted all the better for it, she changed her initial decision.
Had her prey not been standing around her she would have dived beneath the car, through the window and tackled the other shade, beating it to the ground and leaving the sweet-hearts to fend for themselves. As it was, she wasn't fond of carrion, the warmth of the blood was what made it so delicious, along with that untouchable aroma and taste that truly made it different from the mundane ichor of the normal mortals.
Xuan had mere moments to act, save her prey and finish it later, or take the fight straight to the shade?
She decided both.
Intensely coiled double jointed legs stretched, vibrated, and catapulted Xuan forward. She slid under the vehicular projectile, her hands coming up and grabbing the bumper. The result of her momentum clashing with the momentum of the car, and her own strength, could only be described as destructive. Xuan slid through the double-brick wall of the building, breaking the lower skirting board with her thick limbs. The car above her pivoted where she held it and tore up the roof with it's rear end. It's momentum cancelled by her superior speed and strength, the car came down with an almighty crash where Xuan had been standing seconds before, upside-down and looking very worse for wear.
But Xuan saw none of this, she had dropped the car the second she felt it's force cease. Her mind was very much focused on her opponent, and how her leg was going to connect with it's gaping maw.
[[I'm not sure how coherent this is. For those who have no idea what actually happened. (I"m one of them) Here was my intention.
Car gets thrown, Xuan grabs bumper and slides beneath it. Car flips forward, breaks roof of building, lands broken in middle of room. Xuan breaks through the bottom of the wall beneath the window, still sliding, and uses her momentum to leap up and kick Eater in the face.
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Xuan remembered it as if it were just yesterday that she had walked and laughed with her parents along the parade there, and there, where she had gotten a bit drunk that one time and found a boy who turned out to be pretty good for a few weeks before he moved on.
When Archard had asked if she had ever been to this place she hadn't said anything. She hadn't known, hadn't been sure. But the second they stepped from a shadow into the artificial lights and flinched back as one she knew that not only had she been and knew of this marvellous attraction, she had also loved it.
It was just a pity that now she was unable to appreciate her memories. Unable to pin down exactly why she had liked and enjoyed being in this place that was so dirty and seedy and held all the dark corners and was obviously just a pen for the dumb animals that humans easily became the second they saw something flashy and new. She was unsure of how she felt about it, and weather she was capable of feeling anything from her memories at all that wasn't a twisted alteration caused by the emotion numbing aspect of her new life.
Still, time enough to think about that after this jaunt though the foetid realms of human satisfaction.
She and Archard had made reasonable time out of the sewers and crossing the city, twisting and stepping through the shadows, keeping low and silent to deter any unwelcome visitors. And Xuan hadn't wanted to talk with the corporate shade anyway. The way he conversed with her was not something she enjoyed. Association with prey was not something that the wild instinctual part of her could grasp. It was only her remaining humanity that kept her from leaping as far away from him as possible. Maintains distance, keep safe, look for weakness. That was how a hunter took down prey that it deemed stronger or more of a challenge than the rest.
That's not to say she was afraid of him.
The others she could kill without trouble. He was clever though, a type of smarts that gave him a great advantage over not only her but the rest of the shades she had met thus far.
But he couldn't fight like her. One-on-one, close combat, she knew she could take him. With weapons? probably not. Claws and talons and augers and spines and biological weaponry was her forte, from the very moment of her conception. The weaponry at the hideout was wasted on her. She killed her prey with her bare hands or not at all.
And speaking of prey...
Archard directed her attention to a shadowy corner, away from the people and away from their own hiding place. She grinned, her milk-white eyes and teeth splitting her face into a rictus smile of inhuman proportions.
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"Look for gatherings in the dark places, where the prey will be distracted, busy with other things, chasing mates and pleasure. 'Feral' or not, these things will know when and where to strike. Instinct, hunters; predators."
She inhaled heavily, her hands, now slim and feminine beneath the inky darkness,ran down her bloody clothes and body, and she suddenly decided that the fabric did nothing for her, and that'd she'd have to get rid of them soon enough. The phone that Archad had given her had been stashed down her bra, and was safe enough there for the time being.
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Xuan was knocked from her internalization when the taller man spoke her name. "Miss Zu. If you would consent to accompany me, we will search for a feral shade." Mmm, she liked the sound of that. Her and Archard. It almost gave her chills.
"Once we locate one, we can gather our two esteemed young companions and capture it."
She glanced at the other two, and then back at Archard. "Don't need them. We can take it ourselves. Let them run for the apparently 'intelligent' shade."
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She remembered waiting in a half-daze for all of the noise to stop. Far down below the noise of fire, weaponry, military and clean-up crews had stayed for a while, but had grown less and, finally, been replaced with the roar of engines, the bubble of chatter and the shuffle of hundreds of thousands of feet.
She hungered.
It took her a long time to realize that she had lost almost all form. She lay in the duct, merely a amorphous blob of sentience and leaking ichor. Soon enough she heard people moving within the building, talking in worried voices about mundane things. She took some. Digested them fully, bodies and all. She had no real mouth at the time, she just took them within her, and they died.
Hunger was not yet sated.
She took more.
Finally they left, and there was none to take. She still struggled. Pain lanced at every strenuous movement. Her leg felt like lead, immobile; poison. She left the empty building at night, when the pain receded slightly, enough to allow her out and around.
She didn't bother to look down the building. There would be nothing left of the skirmish of what must have been at least two days earlier. Feeling more refreshed, now that her human form was returned to her, she inspected her leg.
No damage from the knee down, but the thigh was home to a large hole, obviously mending, but slowly. The sides were molted, darker than black, shadow on shadow, and felt almost rubber-like. Xuan sat on the lip of reasonably tall apartment complex somewhere south of where the fight had occurred.
Her hair bobbed in the moonlight, glistening wetly. She'd broken into a recreation center for a wash, and a small feed, and now, drying herself at the edge of a building, she dug one elongated and talon like finger into the hole of her leg.
The resulting pain was immense, threatening blackout. She gritted her teeth. Her other hand crushed the bricks it lay upon. No other movement. She could feel something metal, something that burned to touch. She probed deeper, letting a gasp of pain escape. the tip of her finger wound around the object, looping and securing itself. It still burned. She closed her eyes and arched her back as she dug out the ultraviolet round.
She screamed then, pulling the skin on her back tight, breaking the rubber-like seal of her true skin and the healing mass. Her eyes felt like watering, her body spasmed and she felt hot blood drip down her side.
Then it was free and she fell back, clutching the offending bullet tightly in her fist. It was burning a sigil into her palm, but the pain of her back and leg eclipsed it.
Xuan tentatively tested her leg, extending it to it's natural limit and then even further. Bearable pain, nothing to severe. She wondered how much it would hurt if she were to rearrange her body into a different form. She decided not to find out. The experience of purely physical pain was not something she enjoyed.
For the next few days she hunted, regaining her strength and speed, reclaiming her hunt and beginning a new project of tracking the man Archard. Why? Because he was an escaped foe, a lucky break in her streak of unblemished killings. He, she would savour; every moment of the hunt, every second of the stalk, the trail, the pounce. She was preparing for it all.
Eventually she followed him to the underground hideout of the shades. She declined to show herself in her weakened state, but left a message in blood to alert them of her knowledge of the place all the same. For the rest of her time alone Xuan roamed the city, acquainting herself with the rooftops and the sewers, hunting and relishing in her fully functional back once more. Her leg however was still an issue, but one that was being dealt with.
She arrived back at the underground tunnel of the shades by way of a sewer access port that cut into the decades old grid. Her tongue was warm with blood from a fresh kill, and her claw-hands dragged along the ground behind her, uncaring about the noise or returning them to their natural form, Xuan let them hang there, scratching and wailing their way towards the group of shades.
"I arrive." She uttered, directly following Archard's question. Her mandible-claws clicked disjointedly as they dug into the ground and grew to support her small feet. There she sat, cross-legged, on a platform of her hands, looking for all intents and purposes as attentive as a schoolgirl, save for the splashes of blood that criss-crossed her torn and stained clothes.
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OT: Cyberpunk. Always cyberpunk. No one does it.(well).
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Alas, knowing what I do of the others who have expressed their interest (through stalking and just general attentiveness) I probably won't be joining unless more experience/capable players join. Sorry.
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The bloody spectacle of his feeding left something to be desired in Xuan. She wasn't horrified by the brutality, (she couldn't be) she herself had perpetrated harsher sentences on her own prey. It was the utter casualness, the blasé form in which he just took a bite out of the head of someone when he was in the middle of a fight that could mean the death of either of them. That was what gave her pause.
This shade was not intelligent like Archard, nor was he an idiot like the boy with the strings, or the invisible one. He was not a complete animal, feral to all, seeking only the satiation of hunger with mindless abandon. He was a predator, not unlike Xuan.
But one without any restraint. Xuan was hungry, the fight and the change and the sunlight were wearing on her. But she couldn't just stop to kill and regain her strength. She felt it would be wrong somehow to do so in the middle of the sunlight. Her consumption of heart-flesh was something more personal than just the need for hunger. It was time of silence and contemplation. As the vestiges of life fled from the ichor she would arrange the remnants of the corpse if she had time. Make it presentable in whatever way she might think worked, and then leave.
The dead may not care, but the living did, and Xuan, though she was of the unlife now, still felt more alive (was she really feeling it? Or perhaps it was just the shadows of memories?) after consuming and giving some semblance of peace to her prey.
This one however, had no such qualms, casually throwing away the decapitated corpse like it hadn't just given it's life for the extension of his own. Xuan considered striking out at him in her now throughly weakened state, but decided that his strength would be too much after just feeding, especially without her shadow-reliant body-warping ability.
Then the police came. Surrounded, outnumbered and out-gunned, Xuan shot a look at the male she had previously been fighting, then back at the circumference of approaching police officers. Not that they were getting close. She could hear booted feet, heavy with body armor, coming from far down the road, behind the wreckage of crashed cars and screaming people. And from the other side came more shouts, and the crackle of a PA and the message that overrode all other superfluous noises.
Xuan knew when the odds were against her. She had failed in the fight, in fetching some of the sweet-hearts that had fled the diner after she saved them from the flying vehicle, and in getting away from the animal that was within her and now stood opposite her, teeth bloody and gaze uncompromising.
She had succeeded, however, in distracting herself, which was always nice.
But now the distraction had become a pain, and Xuan was not a fan of pain. She never had been, even as a mortal. (For a second she wondered if she could feel pain as she remembered it. Pain was an emotion like any other, and she no longer felt them. The only difference with pain was that it was accompanied by a physical sensation along with the emotional tumult that came with other feelings.)
She asserted that the only way that danger wasn't rearing it ugly and helmeted head was directly in front of her, right in the path of the monstrous shade. She grimaced like she remembered doing in this kind of situation. Cannon tot he right of her, cannon to the left of her, big, ugly teeth in front of her, and only destruction behind her.
Running back was weak, and her primal mind volleyed against it, only forward was the right way. On, into the breach, and the valley of death
So she ran. Slid around her erstwhile foe, catapulted over the barricade of broken cars and shot off up the side of the building, her hands and feet digging into the brickwork with spider-like dexterity. She could hear gunshots and felt the whistles of bullets pass around her, but her adrenaline was up, and nothing was going to stop her from escaping.
Then she was hit. Her back set alight with pain, uncompromisingly brutal and without mercy. Flashed of red lanced before her eyes and deep down in her unfeeling heart she tasted the flicker of a rage so potent and fearsome that she turned her eyes away so as to keep her mind focused. But she clung on, literally. The wall crumbled beneath her grip and her upward climb halted for a moment, long enough for another bullet of some kind to hit her in the left thigh.
That time she howled. Like the great hounds she mimicked on the hunt, or the crunch of the spiders mandibles as it devoured a foolish fly. Her voice cracked partway through, becoming nothing more than a chocking gurgle of pain and animal force.
But she could not stay. She had to move, and she did. Death was no option. Her unlife was precious now. She made it to the lip of the building with trouble from her wounds, but no more bullet holes. She scrambled across the roof, avoiding light as much as possible and trailing purple-black shadow blood, but finding little solace from the morning sun. Finally, a ventilation duct, industrial in size, big enough to fit her thin, weakened form. She hid within it, curled up like a wounded pup, and nursed her wounds.
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Just as the Lord looked up from his letter he saw the motley group of his fellow travellers all traipsing back into the shop, apparently all having exited, forgetting him, and then remembered that they did in fact have another person in the party (even if all the managed to do was be old and injured most of the time).
"Ah, I see you've all been having fun without me." Haigian said, running a hand over his grizzled chin and eyeing the lot of them. Allacus' hard footfalls and obvious anger, Croteus' expression that made him look older than he was, and, in the shadows of his eyes the retreating form of something best left forgotten. And then there was Myrna who waltzed in looking thoroughly pleased with herself.
"I don't blame you though, I'm old, and I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy you and your idea of fun, it looks pretty depressing if you ask me." He grinned at them, and then sauntered over to the door. "I have a letter to post, so I'll meet you all in the square at noon? I'm sure there are things we all need to stock up on, yes? Good."
And with that the robed man stepped out of the cloying atmosphere, (heavy with emotions barely disguised) and ran smack dab into a rather familiar looking woman, and a large number of large muscled men, farmers, or unskilled labourers, most likely.
For a second Haigian was taken aback and he stumbled into the door frame, grabbing at his knee as it banged on the wood. "You do realise it's impolite to stand in doorways like that don't you?" He said, addressing the woman, who's face he was internally cross-checking with the list of women he'd slept with over the years. There was always the possibility of him having any number of ******* sons and daughters, and this could be one of them.
[[Fooooor the record, I am in no way implying that Telara could be one of Haigian's children, he just worries about that, because he was pretty much a pimp when he was younger.]]
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Really.
Oh, and good to see you again
]]
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The eating establishment was full of broken glass, bleeding and screaming people, and random violence. Outside wasn't much better. The shade Xuan had battered out the window got up, seemingly not caring about the sunlight that would inhibit its actions, and hurled a car at the cafe.
People fled from the scene, their cries intermingling with the whimpering of others and the sobbing and steady drip and ooze of blood from wounds. Xuan vision was filled with the oncoming aerial vehicle, and, noticing once more the presence of the sweet-hearts, the good-blood, those that could fight back and tasted all the better for it, she changed her initial decision.
Had her prey not been standing around her she would have dived beneath the car, through the window and tackled the other shade, beating it to the ground and leaving the sweet-hearts to fend for themselves. As it was, she wasn't fond of carrion, the warmth of the blood was what made it so delicious, along with that untouchable aroma and taste that truly made it different from the mundane ichor of the normal mortals.
Xuan had mere moments to act, save her prey and finish it later, or take the fight straight to the shade?
She decided both.
Intensely coiled double jointed legs stretched, vibrated, and catapulted Xuan forward. She slid under the vehicular projectile, her hands coming up and grabbing the bumper. The result of her momentum clashing with the momentum of the car, and her own strength, could only be described as destructive. Xuan slid through the double-brick wall of the building, breaking the lower skirting board with her thick limbs. The car above her pivoted where she held it and tore up the roof with it's rear end. It's momentum cancelled by her superior speed and strength, the car came down with an almighty crash where Xuan had been standing seconds before, upside-down and looking very worse for wear.
But Xuan saw none of this, she had dropped the car the second she felt it's force cease. Her mind was very much focused on her opponent, and how her leg was going to connect with it's gaping maw.
[[I'm not sure how coherent this is. For those who have no idea what actually happened. (I"m one of them) Here was my intention.
Car gets thrown, Xuan grabs bumper and slides beneath it. Car flips forward, breaks roof of building, lands broken in middle of room. Xuan breaks through the bottom of the wall beneath the window, still sliding, and uses her momentum to leap up and kick Eater in the face.
Guh, writing is hard sometimes]]