[center][h2]Three Hours Earlier[/h2][/center]
[center][h3]Passenger Cabin of ShinRa Private Jet  [/h3][/center]
[center]En Route to Teterboro Airport, NYC from Melbourne Airport, Melbourne AUS[/center]
[hr]
The sun looms high in the sky at just a quarter of an hour shy of 2 O'clock in the afternoon; bathing a sleek private jet in rays of sunlight, which the matte finish of its black paint job ate up greedily as it tore high above the countryside of Northeast Mexico. On the tail of the plane there was a simple stencil tag that read 'ShinRa' in dark red paint; a private military corporation operating from undisclosed locations across the world. The people need only call-out to them with the right amount of cash on hand and the forces would swarm to their aid. Beyond that; their planes and helicopters can be seen picking up and dropping off seemingly random personnel for unknown reasons. It's a mystery as to where the planes or helicopters come from; but they always seem to have the proper clearance to come and go as they please with little warning. Today the jet had appear almost spontaneously in the airspace south of Melbourne Australia; giving air traffic control a brief scare before their clearance was called through immediately after their appearance. They had come to pick up one of their operatives who had been away on vacation for quite some time. 

The man within the passenger cabin of the plane was Leo Maxim; his head hanging back in his seat while his light blue hair jostled gently in the circulating air. With arms crossed over his naked and chiseled chest he slumbered on as he rocketed towards his destination; electing to rest his feet and black denim covered legs upon the table in front of him rather than getting up and moving to the sofa in the back. Already he had been bothered to show up at all; why should he bother with anything else til arriving? 
Then, as though sensing his general outlook upon the entire operation, his right front pocket gave off two quick and hard vibrations before going silent; Leo’s arms flinched and visibly loosened their grip upon each other as was startled into awareness. When his pocket sounded off with two more vibrations after just two seconds his arms lost their hold all together and slumped to his side. While sounding off an exasperated sigh Leo fished into his pocket and pulled out a black Samsung S7 (awesome phone) and proceeded to chuck it into the area behind him without even glancing at it. 

“I’m not here!” he grumbled angrily whilst flipping the bird to the still airborne phone. Crossing his arms over his chest with a huff Leo proceeded to listen to the phone vibrate again and again and again. At some point the phone stopped vibrating and he managed to doze off once again, unsure of which had happened first.

“M-mister Maxim..?” a gentle, feminine voice awoke him this time around; causing his eyes to dart open and his head to spring to attention.

Glistening light blue eyes seemed to peer into the soul of the young, blonde haired stewardess that stood no more than 6 feet from him in the onboard kitchen. The sight of his eyes caught her off guard and the woman could feel a bit of heat rising in her soft cheeks; bring about a small smile to Leo’s.

“The Company just radioed ” she began quickly, staring deeply into his eyes as she did. In her hands was a vanilla folder sealed shut at the folds with red tape that read ‘Classified’. “They said that I should give you the hard copy of the files they had given the Captain Incase they were unable to reach you.”

Leo never lost his smile, but sounded off with a soft sigh as he began to shift his weight; taking his feet off the table so that he could stand upright in front of his seat. At attention, Leo was an impressive 6ft 1 and had the muscular definition of a heavyweight fighter. The sight would have struck the woman dead in her tracks; if she was not first drawn to the multitude of scars which dotted, lined and zig zagged along his upper body. Eiher one on their own would have constitutes a freakout of their own variety, but together they helped to create a kind of normalizing effect; though she could not shake the blush from her cheeks as he walked over and stood before her. With a shaky hand she handed the folder over to Leo and left without waiting for a reaction from him and it only made the smile on his face that much bigger.

“Some women fluster so easily.” He said aloud to himself as he watched her walk away; swatting his hand gently with the folder absentmindedly. As soon as she was out of sight Leo pivoted upon his foot and fell backwards into the seat across the aisle of where he had been sleeping. A quick glance at the front of the file shows that it reads '[b]THE FIFTH[/b]. With a shrug and a quick flick and pull of the wrist, Leo removed the Teflon exterior of the security tape; leaving a streaky red and white mess in its wake to show it had been opened. Leo is a man who had almost seen it all; but when the file fell open so did his jaw.

At the top of the envelope was the mission header “Gather Intel on 5th Apocalypse”
The first image he was greeted by was the above the waist profile of a woman living in NYC who’d been bound to a chair in what appeared to be a living room. The woman’s head was visibly being held up for the photo by a pair of blue latex gloves; the fingers having to grip around the nail hammer which had it’s claw embedded in the top of her skull. Upon the woman’s forehead and face there were innumerable scratches and gouges of varying lengths and depths that stemmed from the empty sockets where her eyes should have been. Her jaw hung limp at her neck in the photo as the lower portion of the jaw was visibly dislocated and the flesh binding it to the upper portion had been torn apart; creating a horrific sight that churned Leo’s stomach just abit.

This was simply the first photo of the case, the pictures would go on to reveal that the woman was surrounded by 3 other bodies that would be identified in the report as being her children and they were all maimed in similarly gruesome fashions. Leo flipped as quickly as he could through these but still could not shake the sight of the bloodied children from his mind. Finally, he would arrive at the police report itself, where the story was finally put together.

The husband had recently started seeing a psychiatrist after a trip he had made to the Wisconsin area to see his dying father. Therapists notes say that the man mentioned seeing a 'flash of red light’ while flying back from the Wisconsin area and that the plane suddenly suffered electrical problems that caused it to plummet momentarily. During the plummet the man claimed that his life flashed very vividly before his eyes and even went beyond that point to show him that he would not die on this plane. But that he would instead be killed at the hands of a large, barbarian looking man who wanted to break his bones and eat his face off. When he was finished with that, he would tear him limb from limb and throw them to the demonic forms of his friends and family while their voices screamed ‘Beware the Fifth Apocalypse. The Fifth is now! THE FIFTH IS NOW!'

When the ordeal was over, the man remained visibly shaken and is reported to have spent the remainder of his flight muttering “Beware the fifth…” over and over; even tearing the nails from his fingers trying to engrave those words into the seat rest infront from him. No one else on the flight could verify the red flash the man claimed had started the entire thing; there wasn’t even anyone that could testify that the plane had suffered any problems at all and the man was left to deal with the problem on his own, to the aforementioned end.

The therapist reported a lessening hold on reality on the man and was leaning towards institutionalizing him for his own safety and the safety of his family. It was that very night that the man would home and brutally murder his wife and children before scuttling away to the basement where he would scratch and claw at his own ears and eyes until they were nothing more than scraps of destroyed flesh. Using the blood from these wound’s the man painted the phrase ‘Beware the Fifth!” all over the walls before he succumbed to blood loss – the final blood smear being only two letters 'XB'.

“Wow…” Leo said softly, turning his body to face the table before throwing the file onto it. “What the [I]fuck[/I] is going on here.”


With a heavy sigh Leo shut the file and shoved it to the end of the opposite end of the table. Upon peaking at the next attached police report he saw only that the woman in the next picture was the therapist the man had been seeing. When he could stomach to continue reading later in the flight, he would find that she had reportedly stumbled into a children’s hospital soaked in gasoline and holding a flip-open zippo lighter; the night after the murder suicide. That terrible story could practically tell itself. In the woman’s home police would find tons of carving on the walls, floors and ceilings that said “The Fifth is now”.

But for now, Leo would let the file fester at the end of the table while he wrapped his mind around what he had just seen and read as he leaned backed against the planes enterior wall; rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers. 

“So, I guess I’m to investigate these death scenes and figure out if there’s anything stranger than the deaths themselves at play.” He let his head roll back against the wall of the plane and shut his eyes; taking in and releasing a deep breath. “Should be fun.”

 Mentally Leo was constantly reciting the words and phrases that had been written and carved in numerous ways in the report. “The Fifth Apocalypse…” 
[hr]

 “How long is this damned bridge?!”

Leo had only landed in the city an hour ago; but already this was proving to be one of the [I]worst[/I] places he had been to in a long time. It wasn’t even the city itself that irked him, but the bitter, stingy slap of winter air that hit him square in the face when the plane door opened earlier. They had brought him all the way from his Australian summer to a Manhattan Winter?! 

Regardless of how he felt about the entire situation, Leo still knew that there was a job to be done and a specific reason he had been chosen to do it. So the moment that door opened; Leo was strapped and ready for bear. From shoulders to boots Leo had equipped, latched and fastened every piece of painted armor that was brought with him.  None of the paint was gaudy, one would be hard-pressed to notice the paint job at all, but rather subtle and resembling the colors of a natural suit of armor. (There’s a lot of pieces to describe… so I will leave it at he’s wearing them all lol)

For an hour Leo walked and walked and walked around this freezing city; visiting first the office of the therapist and the various places she habited in her life as she was the closer of the two specimens. At every point of interest there was at least one mention of 'The Fifth' to be found around the areas or blocks away from them. The further south he traveled through Manhattan and the closer he got to the main point of investigation, the more frequently he began to see The Fifth Apocalypse being mentioned; even taking note of a large, graphic mural depicting several dead bodies contorted into the letters 'XB' that was being painted over in an alleyway.

At the present moment it was around 4:45 and Leo was halfway finished crossing the Williamsburg Bridge and for the first time since he arrived in this city it seemed he would have a moment with his thoughts; and he was aimed to use this glorious moment curse this town and it’s damned bridge 

“It’s cold as tits out here and you want me to walk over a mile in these unholy windchills?!” he screamed practically at the top of his lungs while shaking his fist into the air. “Beware the Fifth?! Beware my foot in your ass, more like!”

Practically stomping along the cement walkway, Leo reached up to his left shoulder where the large metallic piece of armor know as the Guardians Pauldron was located and he began to fish underneath the metallic lip. Rummaging for but a moment, he pulled a glowing orange orb from a strap located on his upper bicep and moved it quickly to the buckle of his belt. With a high pitched [I]clink[/I] of metal on glass this glowing orb sank into the depression on his belt buckle before it was grabbed hold of by 4 thin metallic arms to hold it in place. An orange glow rippled outwards from the belt buckle to spread across the armor plating he wore and the skin beneath it; leaving the orange hue in its wake. When the flow reached Leo’s neck, both the armor and his skin began to produce gentle plumes of steam and he quivered visibly in his step.

“Oooooh yea-ah” he sighed out in relief as the warmth passed over him, his now unnaturally warm breath creating a thick plume of steam with his sounds.  “Next time; I’m demanding a helicopter for cross city travel. This is some bullshit.” 

Despite his angry words, the force of Leo’s steps began to lessen and the natural little smile that his face adorned began to return as his body was warmed. Perhaps this trip could turn out to be – who the hell is that scary little girl in the middle of the walkway? 

Leo was still a quarter mile away from her, but even from that distance his eyesight was impeccable and he could visually pick apart the child that he saw before him. The hair, the face, the mouth, the eyes- [I]those eyes![/I] No matter how young she may have appeared to be; Leo knew what it looked like when it someone has already endured a lifetimes worth of torment. Joining her rough demeanor, out of place clothing style and the strange long barreled pistol she held forward; Leo surmised that she would have to know something of the elusive Fifth. If she wasn’t the Fifth Apocalypse herself!

Reaching up this back, Leo grabbed hold of the blade attached to his back by the holy; releasing it’s clasps and freeing the blade into the frigid air. Upon contact with the holy, Leo’s already glistening eyes picked up in lumens as the energy coursing through his body practically tripled; his hair taking on a light glow that accented the blue strands and their red tip highlights. With but a thought this time, a glowing brown orb fell from the strap upon his bicep and dropped freely through the air for a moment before Leo swung his blade around to catch this orb in the slot on its handguard with expert grace and precision. There was no way he was going to take the chance that she would be friendly; she sure didn’t look like the hugging type.

As he drew within 60 feet of Rakhana he called out to her, deciding to test the waters of her hospitality with a snarky remark.

“Hey you!” he yelled, pointing his free right hand at her. “Come over here little girl! You shouldn’t be out here all by yourself! Besides, I have a couple of questions I’d like you to answer for me!” Leo would not stop walking as he spoke and it probably wouldn’t be to long before he was within touching distance; with every two seconds bringing about another 2foot stride.