The distant setting sun bowed in worship to the Discorporate Tower. An edifice, whose heights pierced the cloud cover with ferocious defiance. The building was a testament to man’s ingenuity, might, and resourcefulness. Most specifically, it glorified one man: Apollo Amon, chairman of the United Council, and leader of Earth. A lofty title deserved lofty engineering, and the Discorporate building was the culmination of the planet’s architecture. This building stood tall and strong, and the people took confidence and comfort in its presence--it was indelible, and withstanding the bombing strengthened this claim. It was also a symbol of the affluent, the famous, and the influential. Not everyone was allowed through the ground floor’s golden gates. For entry required august personage. Odis Lyndon Gallagher had likely worked weeks, months, or even years to gain free entry into the building. It probably took him much longer to get an audience with the Apollo Amon. However, the man who bursted from the bathroom and into the president’s grand lobby was not suitable to meet with the president--it was questionable if Odis would ever be worthy to meet with Amon. The antechamber leading to Apollo’s office was nearly as grandiose. A massive set of double doors depicting Auguste Rodin’s most famous work, was parted ever-so-slightly. A beam of light lined down the marble floor of the lobby, shining with heavenly radiance. Though the door depicted the inferno could be construed as a barrier, its insurmountability was maximized by a woman of much smaller stature. The woman instantly sidestepped in front of Odis exuding an aire of nonconfrontational professionalism. Her perfect smile revealed perfect teeth on the perfect face of a perfect woman. “I’m sorry,” she interjected, her voice stern, but soft and pleasing to the ear. “You must be Mr. Gallagher.” She regarded him as if they had known each other forever, with courtesy that belied her professional detachment from a man who had a million collars popped. “It seems you did not receive our notice,” she said with faux-contrition,” unfortunately due to extenuating international circumstances, all of Mr. Amon’s appointments have been postponed.” It was as if the door, itself, agreed to her rejection of Fearis, as it silently shifted to a close, and with it, the light of Odis’s life’s work. “His earliest convenience would be two months from this Thursday. If that won't work with your schedule then you can go down the 90th floor for scheduling. Again, we apologize.” She said, with one arm extended towards the elevators. [center]***[/center] A cool spasm rippled across his skin and numbed his limbs with icy dread. The silence of space aided his attempts to contemplate. His head throbbed with every word Apollo said to him, he couldn’t handle the information that was conveyed to him, there were just too many things that didn’t make sense. [i]Nothing[/i] made sense, and yet, it all happened. He felt different. He wanted to escape and it was almost instinctive how he flew through the atmosphere. Even from so far above, he could still see every detail of the planet below. The untouched forests, and the vast cities, the rebuilding in South America, and the chaos in Europe. He turned his attention to the Discorporate Tower and could hear Apollo’s secretary talking to someone. He comprehended everything, every crooked drug deal outside of Apollo’s safe zone in South America felt like it was happening in front of him, every business deal of the Zaibatsus that ruled over much of asia he was a fly on the wall for, and every bullet fired and civilian killed he was a witness to in Spain. He could feel Gennosuke urging him to go to Spain; save those people and stop the bloodshed. He could also feel Forge tugging him in a different direction: why do you care about these people, just leave them to their fate. Allying with Forge, not out of apathy, but out of a numb sensation that followed over processing. He couldn’t bring himself to care about Apollo’s mission, Spain, or anything occurring down on the planet, far, far below him. Not when he saw what he saw. Max was anything but human to begin with--now, more than ever. The military conditioned him, special forces tempered his nerves, and his promotion to the Mobius Operatives had reinforced his temperament. Nothing prepared him for what he saw in that room. Nothing would ever prepare him for it. There were no words to describe what he experienced. It had driven him here, to the brink of insanity, and all these voices were nudging him towards the vast metaphorical chasm before him. [center]***[/center] New Roswell. The white coated technician sat at his desk--the core of his duties covered in automation. His eyes jerk as they change focus between matrices and variates. Electron levels remained normal, a minimal influence of tachyon emissions in and around Discorporate towers, abberant quantum particle functions were non existent. Then, suddenly nearly every one of his screens exploded in a series of warnings, ecstatic data, and errors. It certainly surprised the technician, but the real emergency responder was automated. Apollo was already in New Roswell. He tapped at his headset and addressed the rest of the emergency-warp team. “We have a Class A at the Discorporate Tower and…” He glossed over the intercontinental displays, “Hemisphere Alpha, Region: Delta, Sigma, Omega, Alpha. All locations are under aberrant influence.” The fingers of this particular technician and thousands of others just like him fanned over the interface. “Emergency protocols are enacted, portals closed, recommend dispatching multiple teams throughout Hemisphere Alpha for those that slipped through the cracks.” [center]***[/center] “Have a--” Before the secretary could finish her sentence, the hinges of the office doors flung open, and the otherworldly howls rang through the foyer like screams in a torture chamber. It was proven that she was too perfect, as a multi-limbed demon with awkward sacroiliac locomotion contorted through, gripping her by the torso and sundered her in half spilling violet nanofluid on the spotless marble floors. Its face flowered out as it shrieked at Odis, and soon he too was overswept with a high tide of demons. The demon’s blackened bodies scrawled and squirmed over the ceiling, walls, and floor encroaching upon the businessmen more like a virulent fungus than a collective army. Their arms and tendrils were appendages all to a conglomerate being of lust, gluttony, anger, and violence. As the secretaries body was dismembered and fed the gorging flesh-blob, it did not sate their appetite or slow their advance by any stretch of the meaning. They sought to devour Panident’s new host. This phenomenon was perpetrated by one most heinous, certainly a criminal of caliber of Merse Granstrum. Apollo was immediately transported to safety with emergency teleportation technologies and in the wake of its effects the gift was immediately shunted by a sudden tachyon emission into the atmosphere. The temperamental teleportation aftershock of New Roswell’s powerful reactors causing a malign reaction with the overwhelming magic of the weapon. [center]***[/center] There was no one there to receive the sheathed silver sword, or the disclaimer that came with it. No one except semi sentient demons who were far more interested in ripping Fearis, and everyone else in the building, to pieces. Instead, the weapon was shunted by a tachyon disruption that whisked Apollo to safety. Though powerful enough to survive the temporal anomaly, its destination sent it shooting like a railgun through the atmosphere and into earthen orbit, where its velocity would surely break the planet's gravitational hold and send it into its everlasting peregrination. After blinking through the building, it shunted upwards, screaming like a subsonic jet. This weapon sheathed became flying death—a ricocheted bullet. As it tore through the planet’s atmosphere, it glowed red, like an inverse comet, but the friction didn’t even begin to mar its surface. It cut through the atmosphere, and its trajectory intersected with a brooding humanoid. It was moving impossibly fast—faster than Max’s canister rifle rounds. He didn’t even know it was coming, but without knowing or even understanding the threat something else guided his hand and without looking at the Sword of Sal’chazzar, his arm snapped out gripping around the burning-hot scabbard. Thought it retained the heat of molten metal, its scorching surface did not burn his flesh. A silvery liquid coated his skin, wrapping around the sheath of the blade. He turned his head to regard the weapon looking upon it with only minimal interest. [center]***[/center] The slime-coat protected the prehensile appendage from Merse’s corrosive fog. Anathema had fought enough creatures with this kind of capability in his lifetime to anticipate this. Just like that, the fight was over. In the back of Jacknathema’s head Anathema salivated for the kill, the mantis shrimp punches would puncture Merse’s body, sundering him, but someone else interfered. A reverberated crack signified the tension snapping between his crustacean appendages, and his tongue sundered from unforeseen projectiles. Jacknathema’s eyes darted around wildly and unsynchronized as they scanned for the source they soon found rocketing from debris. Jack’s weakness got the better of the compartmentalized creature, and recognition flickered through his face as, for a moment, he took his attention off Merse and looked upon Thomas. He could not even manage a breathless gasp as he watched the Operative fly towards him. A single thought was all he could manage: [i]Seriously…?[/i] This blast from the past packed a punch that split his ribcage and tore apart the front of his body. His face, instinctively began to reknit, even as agron’s mineral-melding particulate attempted to impede him. The flow of progress continued, in every imaginable venue that could be considered. If it meant that he had to resort to a cartilage based super-compact fatty structure in place of a skeletal system, that would be what it was. Blades of bones pierced into Jacknathema’s exposed core, fusing together with his own skeletal mass, even as cartilage began to block their efficacy. For an instant, Jack was actively defenseless--even as most of his words were drowned out, a few managed to pierce the veil of fury. “THOMAS” The first hit came breaking three sets of lower ribs and puncturing his diaphragm to the point where he could barely speak. “WHAT ARE YOU” The second hit one of his arms meagerly flickered in the way, deflecting the punch to his chest as opposed to his face, it shattered his ribcage open like a cooked clam, exposing layers of musculature that pulsed with his pumping heart. “DOING” The third strike was delivered directly to his face he could feel his cheekbone break and part of the jagged shards that would compose the rest of his skull puncture into his brain, but that wouldn’t stop Anathema’s regeneration and reactive adaptation. “ITS ME” This punch struck against his shoulder, only marginally grazing him. His body’s natural defenses began to overcome the assault. How he could still speak after the fourth hit was miraculous. But the bones reknit, layers of cartilage covered over his rib cage structure and enforced his chest cavity, the musculature swelled and hardened, closing, and Agron’s minute essence-driven particles began to crystalize on the outside of his flesh as a blocked-off carapace, barred from entry. “JACK” The fifth hit was like a strike against solid stone. Thomas’s enhanced knuckles cracked against the aegis that was Jacknathema’s body. Anathema’s hatred poured into the quasi-Val’garan monstrosity, and with one of his once-broken arms he reached up, clasping around Thomas’s jaw, his arm flexing with herculean strength, as his hulking hands gripped around half of the operative’s skull. “GET OFF.” He said, and with that his counter attack came. He pushed off the ground with his own tide of rage, spiking Thomas into the ground, skull first. Anathema insidiously began to supplant memories of Jessica Lynn into Jack’s mind--specifically her last moments as a living human. Thomas murdered her. That was all that was needed. With a shadowed face, Jacknathema shattered his teeth into jagged shards, his eyes bulging and bloodshot, and the muscles of his shoulders and back growing instantaneously, at a rate that began a cycle of shredded flesh and renewed hide. Thomas was still mobile enough to avoid Jack’s first strike--and luckily so. A wrecking ball fist that was the size of the human’s torso impacted the ground, fissuring the pavement underneath. The shockwaves sent by the strike shook loose the foundations of some of the nearby structures, and deeper in the ground sundered a gas line that belched for noxious aerosol into the area around them, once again clouding the two in a hazy cloud of extremely flammable material. Jacknathema had already been burned once in this encounter--he would be fine surviving an explosion, but Thomas might not be so lucky if someone were to capitalize on the opportunity. “YOU KILLED HER.” He roared thick, viscous spittle showering down as he raised his arms, the mapwork chords of veins surfacing as he let go of the operative’s face and raised his arms in furious protest to the sky. Then he delivered a series of thunderous hammerfists down atop the human that would likely rearrange his anatomy. [center]***[/center] The smell of manure wafted alongside the lazy trot of Phillipe Duboi le Bougeouis’s donkey. The decrescendo of clopping hooves against cracked asphalt announced his arrival to the military perimeter. He licked his dry, chapped lips as he looked upon a buffet. He smelled gourmet appetizers in little scents none other could pick up. The grainy, dry aroma of some of the soldier’s rations didn’t escape his senses. The fact that he made the journey from el Castillo Gordo without devouring his ride spoke to his determination. This clearly manifested in beads of sweat that trickled down his temples. He pulled a kerchief from his pocket, dabbed his upper lip, wiped his brow, and then consumed the cloth. As he swung off the mule, who huffed what almost sounded like a sigh of relief. He trekked his way into camp like he was supposed to be there. This ruse was ill-played. Security was tight around the perimeter camp, the roads had been blocked off and soldiers stood, armed and vigilant. As he approached one such officer thrust his palm out in warning when the count was within earshot. “Stop,” the guard commanded, “this area is restricted.” Phillipe chewed his upper lip and driveled a weak response: “But I’m hungry.” “I said leave. NOW.” The soldier said as he slashed at the air with his extended arm. The soldier’s compatriot leveled his fully automatic on the slobbering count, who was still slowly advancing. “Final warning,” the guard shouted, “do not advance any further or you will be shot!” Loathe as they were to put down a civilian, the strangely dressed simpleton continued towards them, with no heed to their warnings. The large man’s hands were outstretched to either side of him, palms facing the guards, like two open shooting targets. The two began to frantically yell at him to stop, until their guns railed off drowning out all conversation, and peppering the man with slugs. Banana clips emptied on their rifles, and much to their dismay and surprise, the rotund individual still stood, unmarred by the high caliber fire. Before the smoke even cleared from their muzzles, but not before their hearts skipped a beat, a wide gleam split across Count Bougeouis’ face. A beaming smile that peeled his lips back like some sort of mummified corpse, and pulled the fat of his jowls tightly around the frame of his face. He was all reddened gums and yellowed teeth in a mirthless grin that was more threatening than it was anything else. The two quickly ejected their clips, and jammed another into the bottom of the guns, just as the count lurched forward into a wolf like lunge, jaw unhinged, and cackling madly to the tune of their screams.