Cowman

Slate's eyes raised to look at the woman asking him a question. But it was not Davis Slate who responded to her. The combination of the drug, bullet wounds, and the beating had weakened him enough that the Rikti brain graphs welded to his brain stem were starting to take over. Eyes that had an alien quality to them regarded the woman.

"Stupid human," the voice croaked, clicking like noises coming randomly from Slate's throat. "Humans are nothing. Will kill you all. All humans dead. Rikti will KILL YOU ALL!!!" Slate suddenly lurched forward. The woman held up her arm to fend him off, only to have him sink his teeth into her forearm. Bashing him in the head several times, she managed to throw him off, backing up to a safe distance.

Slate went back to hanging limply from the chains, but his eyes stayed fixed on the woman, daring her to come close again.

"Kill you all," the voice croaked.

((Davis Slate, Science/Scrapper, Melee/Regen. Large metal gauntlets slightly enhance strength. Gray T-shirt, brown cargo pants. Pale skin, almost white, head shaved. Dark rimmed, sunken in, eyes.))


Davis Slate had no luck whatsoever. His hands and forearms were bound in chains that hung from the ceiling of the small room he was in. The chains were short enough to keep his arms firmly pulled above his head, leaving him to dangle from them like a piece of meat while large 5th Column soldiers took turns pounding him in the abdomen and head.

Blood ran from his mouth, nose, and several gashes on his face. Normally they would heal almost instantly, but something was suppressing his body's healing abilities. "Haven't taken a beating THIS bad since I left the army," Slate thought to himself between blows. The thing that really ticked him off was that he had no idea what any of this was even about.

A contact of his had given him a lead on a Vahzilok base in an abandoned warehouse. The building had been empty, but while searching, he had suddenly been hit with a dart in the back of the neck. He shook his head as he felt powerful drugs flood his system, but his accelerated healing kept him standing. He had turned, rushing the group of 5th Column that had appeared behind him.

Even hanging in the small room, bleeding all over himself, Slate couldn't help but grin in satisfaction as he thought about the broken soldiers he had left on the warehouse floor. One of the others had gotten the jump on him though, letting loose with an assault rifle into Slate's torso at point blank range. The powerful drugs were already taxing his healing abilities, and having his guts blown out by gunfire was enough to put him down.

He woke up in this very room, hanging from the ceiling. He could have pulled the chains free, but they had taken the large metal gauntlets that fed him strength, leaving him no stronger than any other ex-military vigilante. The soldiers finally ceased their beating, turning and filing out of the room. Slate hung limply from the chains as the heavy door slammed behind them and he was left in the dark room, his shirt soaked in red, the only sound being the random drip of his blood hitting the concrete floor. He knew it wasn't over. They'd be back eventually. Heck, maybe this time they'd actually ASK him something.

Well the girl had been wrong. Deth WAS still alive. Of course, it didn't make much difference to her, nothing did, but it still registered. The girl continued to perch on the seat of the chair, oblivious to the blood that was staining the carpet as it dripped from the hole in her head.

Her arm was almost back to normal, now merely looking sickeningly boney. The others seemed to be arguing over bits of paper. She didn't bother looking at them, she knew she wouldn't understand any of it. She wasn't there to learn anything anyway. She was just tagging along to see what might happen.

Lyle was sorely tempted to simply let loose the string of curses that was festering in his gut and let Lobe crush his head like an egg. This whole situation just seemed to be reaching new lows every half hour. What seemed like a problem with the Circle of Thorns had turned into a skirmish between the Tsoo and the Hellions and Trolls. Then it seemed like a 5th column plot to take out one of their group, but now it was a full scale assault on Paragon City itself.

"I need a drink," he muttered, fidgeting with an unlit cigar.

The girl sat to the side, slightly irritated at the man for moving her without her permission. Her anger was forgotten, however, as she watched, curiously, as he cleaned Deth's face of her blood. Almost everyone seemed to have this reaction to blood and she couldn't quite understand it. After all, blood was all over everyone, flowing through every inch of their bodies.

Yet people seemed to want to distance themselves from it, as if they were trying to forget it was there. It was like how people were so afraid of skeletons. Yet another thing that was as close to them as something could get, yet they push it's image away in horror.

Utterly baffled, the girl scurryed over, stealing Sly Fox's chair. There she perched, crouching on the seat as she watched. Frowning under her mask, she decided she would never understand people.

The girl watched as the others entered a building, making her way around the side she climbed the outside wall, pulling herself up by window sills and cracks in the brick. On the roof she sought out the ventilater shaft, slipping inside. She crawled through the vents, mindless of the various intruder sensors she tripped.

Finally, pushing open a grate, she fond herself in the room were Deth lay sleeping on the bed and Sly Fox slept in a chair. The others seemed to still be in the other room. Crawling down from the vent, the girl perched on the headboard of the bed, looking down at the sleeping woman.

Leaning down, she peered carefully at her face, blood from her still open head wound dripping onto the pillow and Deth's face. The dark woman DID seem a little better looking, though she still looked pretty dead to the girl. It didn't really matter to her, but there was nothing else to do.

Lyle scowled slightly at Sly Fox's request. Making an obvious point of taking one more big drag on the cigar, he crushed it into an ashtray, letting a cloud of smoke billow into the air as he exhaled.

In his mind, he cursed at himself. That had been childish and stupid, but as always, he had done it without thinking. It was that dam nasty streak again. The one that made him snap at questions and mock people trying to help him. He didn't know what caused it; he was no shrink.

He suddenly shook himself from his thoughts, noticing he had absent-mindedly been reaching for another smoke. Folding his arms in front of him, Lyle leaned back against the wall again. He didn't worry much more about his rude actions to the younger hero's request, the kid probably deserved it for something anyway. Lyle didn't worry about anything for very long.

Lyle entered the house, watching Sly Fox rush Deth to a bed. The muttering and fidgeting had stopped which would indicate that if she wasn't already semi-concious, she was at least sleeping normally. Lyle leaned against the wall, lighting a cigar, not bothering to check on her with the others.

He often seemed to have some sort of disdain for heroines, policewomen, and any female soldier; and others seemed to view this as some old-fashioned view that women weren't cut out for "man's work". This was, of course, not true. To be truthful, Lyle actually felt much the opposite. Women were often TOO good at this kind of work. He winced as a certain memory flashed across his mind.

Lyle followed the others as they entered the house, pausing briefly at the door to glance over his shoulder. How had he gotten himself stuck in the middle of a gang war between the Tsoo, the Trolls, and the Hellions; all while the 5th Column were going out of their way to kill them all?

Sighing, he turned back towards the house. He had thought the jungles in Asia were bad, they were nothing compared to this "city". He used the word loosely, since lately it had seemed more like a warzone.

For awhile, the girl simply lay motionless in the street. The only movement being the slow loss of blood from her head. Then the blood stopped and everything stood still. After about a minute there was the faint twitch of a finger, so slight that no one not looking at it would have noticed. Then the flexing of a hand, blinking eyes, and finally one arm dragging itself forward to push her face off the ground.

The girl slowly pushed herself off the street, her own blood dripping from the side of her face. She stood a little wobbly at first, finally regaining her balance. Apart from the blood on her clothes and the hole in her mask and head, she seemed totally unaffected by what had happened. Her burnt arm was still mangled and slightly skeletal, but the muscle and skin had started growing back over it, and in an hour or so it would be back to normal.

Squinting into the distance, she once again picked out the others and began following them again, as if nothing had happened.

Lyle ran alongside the others, his eyes flitting warily around. He didn't like being out in the open like this, especially after the ambush in the building. This whole plot was getting way too complicated, but that was only to be expected in Paragon City. It seemed every gang had some connection to the others.

Lyle glanced over at the unconcious Deth. The palid state of her features suggested she was slipping into shock. After his years in the army he had come to recognize the symptoms. In the field, treatment usually consisted of a swallow of alcohol and a sharp slap across the face, but those types of remedies weren't appreciated in "civilized" society.

Lyle silently wished that they would reach their destination soon. His side was starting to ache from all the running.

The girl paused as she watched the others head towards King's Row. Why did they insist on carrying Deth around? She looked dead to her, and they could go a lot faster if they weren't carting a dead person around. Still, she shrugged, she could be wrong. They had been carrying the Nathan one too, but he had got up and started walking again.

As she pondered this, the dull sound of a silenced gunshot drifted through the air. A hole tore through the girl's head, splattering blood and brain-matter on the street. Falling like a stone, she lay face down on the street, eyes still wide open, as a 5th Column sniper team emerged from their hiding place and approached.

"Here it is," one of them said in German as he searched the girl, finding the red gem.

"Well, that's something at least," the other one replied. "After that dissaster of an ambush."

"I don't know," the first continued, "I think we wounded a couple of them."

"Wounded isn't dead," his partner spat back. "Hey," he continued, his tone changing to curiousity, "what happened over at 5B?"

"Don't know," the sniper replied as they turned and headed away, "Something about a malfunctioning train or something. The higher-ups aren't telling us anything."

"So what else is new," his partner chuckled. The two soldiers departed, leaving the girl laying brokenly on the ground in an ever-growing pool of blood.

"Only ever saw him in Knight Rider," Lyle grumbled under his breath, following Ivory into the monotone realm.

Name: Nevur
Magic Controller, Earth Control/Radiation
Team: n/a
Server: Pinnacle (may switch to Virtue)
Bio: Nevur is the typical "nice" hero, always ready to help out. Not much is known about him, since he shrugs off any questions about his origins, saying it's just not that interesting of a story. Nevur DOES have one secret, however. Nevur doesn't really exist. He began as an imaginary friend to a 3 year-old girl named Carly. As Carly grew older, Nevur became more and more real, his appearance and powers manifesting from Carly's desire to be a super hero. When Carly turned 5, Nevur was indistinguishable from a real person. He is always in contact with Carly, often talking to her out loud without thinking about who might be around to hear.

Name: Frankie
Magic Blaster, Fire Control/Fire Manipulation
Team: n/a
Associates: Milla Roh
Server: Virtue
Bio: A renegade group of Circle of Thorns monks attempted to take control of the order. Kidnapping a young girl, Julie Patterson, they sacrificed her, trying to summon an entity that would give them the power they needed. The ceremony worked, bringing forth a creature of living flame. But as soon as it appeared, it dove straight into Julie's corpse. The girl suddenly got up, incinerating the monks around her. Later she showed up at the City Hall, registering to be a hero. The other heroes welcomed her with open arms, seeing someone who wished to exact justice on those who had wronged her. However, they were wrong. Julie Patterson was still quite dead. The entity calling itself Frankie was the sole inhabitant of her body, joining the heroes simply to have access to evil. You see, like all fire, Frankie has an insatiable hunger, and since the evil monks were her first "meal", she has developed a taste for it.

Name: Milla Roh
Mutant Blaster, Ice Control/Ice Manipulation
Team: n/a
Associates: Frankie
Server: Virtue
Bio: Milla Roh was the "nice kid". Incredibly shy, but friendly and kind. She was never popular in school, but things got worse when she started to change. Her skin turned an albino white, and her hair bleached to an almost icy blue color. This brought down all the teasing and cruelty that the school had to offer on her. Milla tried not to let it bother her, eventually making it to her first year of college. Then in the lunchroom, another student physically attacked Milla. Panicking, Milla screamed, and the student stopped. She stood rooted to the spot, dead. Frozen solid from the inside out. Milla was arrested and convicted of involuntary man-slaughter. The judge, not wanting to put an almost innocent girl into a correctional facility, sentenced her to train and fight alongside the city's heroes. She would learn to control her powers and provide community service at the same time. Milla accepted her sentence gladly, hoping to eliviate the guilt she felt from killing the other girl.

Name: Oz (Rosalyn Takanashi)
Mutant Tanker, Super Strength/Invulnerability
Team: n/a
Server: Virtue
Bio: Rosalyn Takanashi weighed 15 pounds when she was born. By the age of 14 she was 6 feet tall. It was obvious that the girl wasn't normal. Her muscles were packed a lot thicker than normal people's, making her strong. Very, very strong. It also made her more resilant, taking and healing from just about anything thrown at her. By the time she was 17, Oz, as she preferred to be called, had already been in trouble with the police several times due to street fighting. Eventually she joined the other heroes of the city. She reasoned that if she became a hero, villians would be trying extra hard to kill her, and that is Oz's idea of fun.

Name: Davis Slate
Science Scrapper. Dark Melee/Regen
Team: n/a
Server: Virtue
Bio: An ex-mercenary vigilante, Davis Slate was arrested and sentenced to life in prison for the murders of several criminals. During the Rikti invasion, the prison was bombed, it's inmates kidnapped by the aliens. In an attempt to create a "double-agent", Davis was infused with Rikti DNA and had Rikti brain graphs attached to his brain and brain stem. However, Davis retained his memory and personality, and was so deemed a failure. Escaping when the ship was attacked by the city's heroes, Davis went back to his "hobby" of crime fighting. Though he was forced to tone down his tatics or face the wrath of the city's heroes. Davis is careful to keep the Rikti brain graphs a secret, especially since he can still "hear" them talking to him.

Name: Thomas Lyle
Natural Blaster, Assault Rifle/Devices
Team: n/a
Server: Virtue
Bio: Lyle has been in the army since he was 16. Never rising in rank, Lyle was the typical army grunt, doing whatever dirty jobs he was ordered to. He lost many friends and one of his eyes to his job. After decades of service, Lyle finally was permitted to resign, settling down in Kings Row, wanting nothing more than to spend what time he had left in peace. As crime in Paragon City rose, Lyle was called back into service, ordered to aid the other heroes. Reluctantly Lyle agreed, partly because he had to and partly because Kings Row had become a cess pool. Grumpy and mean, Lyle only wants to pull Kings Row out of the gutter and leave fighting behind him for good.

Heinrich Stuben stood on the loading platform of 5th Column base #5B. He had joined the Column at an early age, but had never risen above the rank of foot soldier. Not that he minded, Stuben wasn't very ambitious. Right now he was in charge of guarding and meeting the incoming and outgoing trains, so when he heard the alarm of an emergency exit arrival, he immediatly pulled a pair of binoculars, and focused on the track ahead.

The train was traveling at tremendous speed, and Stuben wondered worriedly if it should be slowing down yet. Trying to make out what might be wrong, he looked over the train, suddenly making out figures on top of the roof. Two appeared to be people while the other two looked like their standard battle robots.

He watched, puzzled, as the two men jumped onto the backs of the robots, and the machines jumped from the train, sparks flying from their metal feet as they landed and skidded along the concrete.

The switchboard operater called to Stuben, yelling that the train wasn't answering his radio hails. Refocusing on the control room window, Stuben's eyes widened as he made out the top of the trains control console, wires pulled loose and sparking. By now the train was close enough that the rumble from it's speed shook the platform. Stuben turned, feeling like he was moving underwater as he ran the opposite direction, yelling at everyone to get away from the platform. The train plowed forward, it's sabotaged brakes never activating as it plowed into the wall, exploding in a huge ball of flame.

As the girl crawled over the wreckage, she suddenly came upon the small ring that the heroes had been looking at before entering the building. It lay on the concrete, presumably dropped by one of them during the escape.

The girl crawled over to it, picking it up to examine it. Extending her index finger, she let the ring drop onto the tip where it hung loosely around the bloodied finger. The voice inside the ring flared into life at being in contact with a living host. It screamed dark things into her mind, promising, lecturing, demanding.

However, the girl just continued to look curiously at the small object. The voice poured all it's dark thoughts into her mind, only to have them swallowed up by the multitude of voices already there; the evil anarchy lost in the sea of utter madness that was the young girl's mind.

Shrugging, she plucked the ring from her finger, tossing it carelessly away. She watched the others from a distance, deciding to follow them for awhile longer. She, along with everyone else, had long ago given up questioning her whims. They seemed to run on rules that only they knew. Though, it probably had something to do with all the trouble the group had attracted so far. And she loved trouble.

Well, he had escaped a building full of 5th Column, only to end up on a train headed for another building filled with 5th Column. Yes, his renowned luck was still very much intact. Lyle lit a cigar, pondering why it seemed the universe was intent on screwing him over at every turn.

The girl walked aimlessly through the deserted hallways of the building. Suddenly the whole structure began to shake and buckle. Dust and debris fell from the ceiling and walls and floors began to fall in. The girl looked around curiously. Looked like the building was going to collapse.

Good, she thought. 'Now I don't have to bother finding my way out'. Sitting down calmly, she watched as the walls, floors, and ceilings collapsed around her.

The building toppled in on itself, brittle support beams finally giving away to gravity. A cloud of dust billowed out yards from the wreckage. The rumbling lasted for almost 15 minutes until finally subsiding, the dust slowly settling around the mounds of wreckage.

The girl clawed her way through the debris, finally pushing her way into the open air, ignoring the gashes and cuts that littered her body. Looking around at the wood, metal, and occasional 5th Column body laying amidst the destruction, a slight grin crossed her face.
That had been pretty fun. Hopefully this was a sign of things to come.

Lyle looked at the array of buttons and levers on the console.
"Well," he said, "one thing I DO know about machines. The large red button usually does something." He reached out and pressed a large red button on the left of the controls.

"Der Notausgang, aktiviert," the voice stated. The train suddenly lurched forward, accelerating as fast as it could. Alarms sounded along the lenth of the cars and the lights switched to red-stained bulbs.

"At least we're moving," Lyle shrugged as the building shook and broke around them.

(OOC - I tried an on-line German dictionary, and that phrase is supposed to mean, "Emergency exit, activated". Who knows if I got it right.)

The girl suddenly heard a burst of energy behind her, turning around to find Flame gone. If this bothered her she didn't show it. After all, what did it matter to her. The smell, meanwhile was getting stronger by the second. Then, from around the corner behind her, burst a large wolf like creature, seemingly very upset about something.

Catching her still facing the other way, the thing leaped forward, sinking it's teeth over her collar bone and left shoulder. Lifting her into the air in it's mouth, the creature shook her back and forth like a rag doll, finally flinging her into the wall which broke around her, sounds of her bones mixing with the cracking of the wood.

The creature watched its prey laying on the floor, tensing slightly when it began to move again. The girl pulled herself from the ground, her left arm twisted around and her neck at an odd angle. She stood for a second, her head lulling on her snapped neck as she stared at the wolf-thing.

Then, with the sound of grating stones, she pulled her head up, her neck snapping back into place. Her still skeletal right arm grabbed her left, twisting back to it's original position. Now THIS would be fun, she thought.

Jumping at the creature, she grabbed onto it, pulling herself up by its hair. The wolf monster swiped and clawed at her, trying to get it's jaws on her again. The girl jumped on its back, pulling up her mask once more, and biting down onto the monsters neck. The creature snarled in pain, finally managing to get her ankle in it's mouth. It pulled her off, swinging her around. However, using the momentum of the swing, the girl reached around, grabbing onto the monster's head, pulling off a piece of broken wood from the wall behind them and shoving it into the creature's eye.

Roaring in pain and anger, the thing tossed her away, flailing around blindly. Grabbing a chain that lay on the floor, the girl dashed up behind the monster, throwing the chain around it's neck and slamming into it's back, sending it falling over the edge of the hole she had come through.

As it fell she grabbed the chains other end, leaping up and hooking it through the broken boards of the ceiling. The wolf fell forward, stopping when the chain drew taut. It's back feet still fought to keep balance on the floor, as the rest of it dangled over the hole.

Backing up a little, the girl ran forward, jumping and coming down with all her weight onto the thing's back, pushing it's torso forward, causing the chain to jerk back on it's head, snapping the things neck. It's feet still held it leaning over the hole, but it's arms now dangled limply below it.

The girl crouched on its back for a minute, batting lazily at it's snout, watching it's head jiggle sickeningly against the chain. Finally she jumped back to the floor and continued to walk down the hall, looking for something new to do.

Lyle clicked the communicator off. Looked like he wouldn't be leaving just yet. Inching around the corner, he looked over at the train. there were a few guards posted, but not that many. He didn't see Ivory yet. Lyle rolled two web grenades towards the guards. The devices exploded, coating two of them in the sticky substance.

The Column soldiers strained against the web, trying to lift their guns, as Lyle moved from behind the corner, taking out their three teammates with two quick bursts of automatic fire. He finished off the last two with a couple slugs and then looked around again for Ivory.

The girl watched as Flame tried to reach the others on her comm.
'Boring', she thought. "This way," she said aloud, clammering up to the floor above. She remembered where the others had been when last she had seen them through the ceiling. Maybe if she took Flame there they could get on to something else.

As she continued down the hall she suddenly began to smell something that was uncannily like wet dog.

(OOC - Go for it Immortal. It's been happening through the entire thread.)

"Meet at the train in 5 minutes," Lyle growled, sarcastically as another burst of gun fire burst through the hole, "nothing simpler." Waiting until the gun fire subsided, he glanced quickly into the hole, tossing a web grenade at the first robot that came into view. The sticky substance exploded over the machines sensors.

Lyle jumped down behind the blinded robot, it's body providing protection from the other's weapon. Lyle armed a grenade, shoving it between some metal plates on the machine's back. Then, ramming the barrel of his rifle up against the robot's back, fired a heavy slug round.

The robot stumbled forward from the force of the shot, knocking into it's partner. The grenade exploded, taking out most of the lower extremities of the first robot, and damaging the other. Rising quickly from the floor, Lyle fired one of his remaining grenades, finishing off the damaged machine.

Pausing for a moment to catch his breath, Lyle climbed through the wreckage and headed toward the train.
"I am getting way too old for this job."

The girl had watched the others fighting the soldiers from within the ceiling. She had descended at one point, decided there were just too many people there, she turned and scurried back the other way, but not before grabbing a small canister from a fallen soldier. She had seen them use the canisters before and as she crawled through the ceiling she tried to think of something to do with it.

She soon began to hear the sounds of fire and followed it. Peering out of the cracks in the ceiling she watched the lady from before sending fire at the group of trolls.

Here was something for her to do. The lady didn't look powerful enough to take out all the trolls with one shot or anything. That would give her time to have a little fun. Kicking through the boards, she dropped down behind the fire-user.

Jumping over the lady, she tore open the valve on the flamethrower canister. Landing in front of the flaming trolls, she threw out her right arm, shoving the metal cylinder into the flames. A ball of flame flashed in the air, throwing those near it head over heels.

As the explosion settled, the girl pulled herself up from the floor. Small flames still licked at her now-tattered clothing and her right arm smoked heavily. The girl looked briefly at her right hand, burnt down to skeletal remains, flexing it once and then scurrying over to the fire lady. This one seemed to be able to find fun stuff to do, maybe she'd hang around her for awhile.