Atrophy

Amongst the Lonesome- A return to Santa Somabra [Fantasy Noir]

As much as I would like to keep a super bad ass bounty killer in my back pocket, unless someone is against it I believe there is a Vigilance-sized spot on the bench that needs to be filled by her elf ass.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

@Lord WraithWell, as long as none of our big bad evil guys are Aquani-dudes, we should be fine.

...wait, wait, fuck, don't get any ideas from that.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

@TylerHmm, good question. I'd imagine Grace would be forgiving if a little sanctimonious and she'd probably try to convince him clean up his act. I picture her as a bit too idealistic. I mean, come on, anybody who really wants to be a superhero isn't the savviest of people. Plus, with the ideas of original sin and all that absolution via baptism jazz that was drilled in her head through years of church would likely leave her to believe that anybody could be redeemed. Course, if Em doesn't try to change his ways then she'd just think of him as a big old jerk until she sees a bit more of the reality of how Hypes are treated.

Now if Thumper caught him committing a crime before they ever met, well, let's just say there will probably be a terrible line where she claims that she is going to go "Old Testament on his sinning butt" and then tries to drop the Wrath of God (aka her botched version of the People's Elbow; again, only knows how to fight from shitty TV) on his slimy, gelatinous ass.

...and although it'd never happen, I now just keep picturing a scene in my mind where Grace is trying to baptize Em and both of them are freaking the fuck out for being around water.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

| NAME: |

Grace Bethany Kennison​

| NICKNAME(S): |

Thumper. It started as a tongue-in-cheek joke by the media, but then it stuck.

| D.O.B.: |

08/10/1996

| AGE: |

19​

| SEX: |

Female​

| SEXUALITY: |

Heterosexual

| APPEARANCE: |

Grace is around five and a half feet tall and appears to be of a healthy weight, although it’s a little hard for her to say what her exact weight is now. We’ll touch on that a bit later. She has a pretty straight build and lacks any real tone or definition. She would classify herself as “skinny fat” and always gets nervous when it’s swimsuit season. Her dark brown hair falls around the top of her shoulders with bangs that sweep across the tops of her eyes. She finds her ears a bit too big, so she rarely wears her hair up. Her eyes are a dull blue. Her skin is tanned by the sun, forcing a slight outburst of dark freckles all over her bared skin. She finds using a lot of makeup to be a hassle, and tends to stick with just a little touch up here and there. Grace stands with a slouch and has a tendency to keep her head down. When she speaks a slight Cajun accent that she absolutely hates betrays her heritage. She tends to dress casually in graphic tees and jeans or shorts, giving her that nice, normal, unassuming American teen look. Grace always wears a necklace with a cross on it.

She used to fight crime in street clothes and a mask, but since assuming the identity of Thumper she made her own costume. The outfit is just a tight blue tracksuit with an uppercase T made out of masking tape on the front and back and a black paintball helmet with a tinted visor. Grace has read enough dark comic books to know the dangers of wearing a cape. It’s absolutely tacky looking and completely horrible, but it does the job of protecting her identity. ​

| GENUS: |

​Homo-Virium

| CLASSIFICATION: |

Atlas

| ABILITIES/SKILLS: |

Remember how it was hard for Grace to say what her true weight is? That’s because Grace is slowly but continuously growing denser. As time goes on Grace gets heavier and heavier and heavier. The last scale she purchased went up to 700 pounds; she broke it about a month ago. However, Grace doesn’t fight crime by just sitting on ne’er-do-wells until they scream uncle. She has those classic tough guy powers, too. The more dense she gets the stronger and tougher she gets. Grace can lift one and a half to two tons over her head with relative ease, meaning she can toss a medium-sized sedan towards someone like it was a medicine ball. Grace isn’t going to pretend like she understands the laws of motion or anything like that, but she does know that when she is moving and hits someone they generally stay down--and she pulls most of her punches. The girl’s also pretty tough, and unless you’re strong enough to sling vans around like paper planes trying to best her physically is a real dumb idea. Bats and knives tend to just break on her, normal bullets leave nasty welts and can knock the wind out of her, and fancy high-grade military shit could feasibly do some damage but still see her breathing. She doesn’t have much experience fighting Hyperhumans, but she could probably take a better licking than most.

Unfortunately for Grace, her powers are mostly limited by her otherwise subpar physique. She’s hardly an athlete. A reasonably fit person could outrun Grace, and her added strength does little to change the fact that she’d never be able to dunk a basketball. The only knowledge of fighting she has comes from video games and kung fu flicks, so she’s prone to attempt ridiculous moves that are just impossible to actually do in. She’s generally just uncoordinated and even clumsy when in action. Most of the times that she throws a punch she misses with her fist and accidentally connects with her shoulder, which is typically enough to knock someone off of their ass, send them flying a few yards, and fracture a few ribs. Outside of combat, her weight is a general problem. She tends to avoid elevators and has to stick to cargo vans and truck beds to travel due to her weight causing cars to drag on one side. Grace has broken enough chairs in her life to resign herself to sitting on the ground forever. Her power is “always on” so she has to interact with most of the world as if was a model ship she was building inside of a glass bottle. She also has this absolutely asinine idea that she’s going to be a proper superhero, which means NO KILLING.

Grace’s density has done little to strengthen her mind. Her biggest weakness would probably be either MINERVA- or CUPID-Class Hyperhumans. She may be thick skinned and denser than a rock, but apparently she’s soft in the heart and head. As well, she has frequent nightmares about drowning since she knows from first hand experience that she sinks faster than an anchor strapped to several hundred other anchors. Being over or near bodies of water generally fills her with dread, and she lives a mile from the beach in a damn state full of bayous and swamps.

| BACKSTORY: |

Grace was born on the absolute hottest day of the year in Pointe Bordeaux, Louisiana to her less than thrilled bible-thumping parents who now had another damned mouth to feed. She was the fifth child of Mr. and Mrs. Kennison. She was also their fifth favorite after her big brother Peter in first, her older sisters Harmony and Prudence bouncing around second and third, and the family dog Samson taking fourth. She was sixth until her brother Joseph came out of the closet a few years back. A little something about Grace’s father: Dad was a true Southern gentleman and a good Catholic who’d give you the shirt off of his back and some from his wardrobe as well unless you were a Muslim, a homosexual, or a Falcons fan. Dad always said that he was just trying to protect Mom from being ridiculed by the neighbors for having a gay son, but we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to when Grace was not in the honorable position of being the second-most-hated.

Grace’s first slight against her parents came on the day she was baptised and happened to relieve herself on Father Forrest. Nobody else really paid it much mind--Grace was, after all, a baby--but her parents were absolutely mortified. They had friends in that Church. Friends who laughed. At them. It was SUCH a big deal. Their daughter continued to be just an utter, absolute embarrassment. She screwed up her first communion. She fell asleep in Sunday School. She was constantly in trouble with the Sisters at her Catholic school for making rude noises during nap time. She inappropriately displayed affection towards others. “Bless that Grace,” her parents’ friends would say. “She’s so soft-hearted,” they would say. Her parents knew what they meant. They meant to say that she was soft-headed, that their daughter was an idiot. Why couldn’t she be better behaved like her sisters? At the very least, she could show some shame.

Despite being an absolute fumbling fuck-up in the eyes of her parent’s and being forced to attend the horrendous doldrums that is the Sunday Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, Grace actually took a shining towards religion. Not to the extent where that when she started attending public schools in third grade (once her family could no longer afford the private Catholic school) she was that one kid always talked about Jesus and God and quoting the Bible and having that fucking creepy purity towards them, but she was religious. Despite all the jokes about altar boys, she was proud to be Catholic. Besides, as a girl she didn’t have to worry about that sort of scene. She read the Bible regularly. She could spit some mean Hail Marys, and we aren’t talking about football because she could not do sports if life depended on it. She wore a cross every day for every second to this god damn day. Shit, while other kids were running around doing little kid shit and the annoying Jesus girls were telling them they’d go to Hell for it, Grace was spending her time volunteering for food drives and helping out with charities.

And somehow she was still the least favorite kid because her Dad caught her reading comic books. What the hell, they weren’t even hers--she had borrowed them from Joseph.

Grace’s powers came about around the time she started puberty. Always a little bit on the heavy side and hurt by her schoolmates because all children are bastards regardless of whether they knew their dad or not, Grace started dieting. Which, when all her Mom served was cornbread and whatever proteins she could find on sell and cook in a pan full of butter, meant she just didn’t eat. The girl was always hungry, and she was always miserable, and she always felt weak, and she never lost weight. Even as the fat disappeared from her body and her skin turned yellow and dry she was somehow gaining weight. Grace was absolutely baffled, but the scale did not lie. All skin and bones and she was fat, fat, fucking fat. Completely disgusting; a skeletal cow.

And then she went swimming with her brother Joseph in the river one summer when she was thirteen. Swimming was probably the one activity she was any good at, and the girl sunk like that boat in that one movie. If Joseph didn’t help drag her out she would’ve drowned. If she hadn’t almost drowned she would’ve probably starved herself to death. Listen, Grace isn’t going to go around and tell anybody that it was a miracle, but she thought it was a miracle. At the very least a wake up call. She started eating right after that and blossomed back towards a healthy shape.

Joseph and her decided not to tell anybody about that drowning incident on account of the fact that neither of them wanted to get in trouble. It kind of solidified them as each other's favorites in the family. Neither of them knew what the hell was happening to Grace’s body, but both of them worked together to make sure her parents or the other siblings didn’t find out. They joked that their Dad would call an exorcist if he found out, while both secretly believed that wasn’t actually far from the truth. As a sign of good faith, Joseph told Grace about his homosexuality. As a sign of good faith, Grace decided to not be like their Dad...except when it came to fan of the Falcons; those people were just godless heathens and assholes to boot.

The problems with her strength started to arise by the time she with fifteen, and unlike her weight this grew exponentially. What started as her accidentally tearing books in half turned into her breaking door handles and faucets. Eventually inevitably it became clear that she couldn’t hide these changes from her parents. Besides, it was getting exceptionally weird at dinner when she refused to sit out of fear of breaking her already rickety chair. So...she told her parents. The reaction she got from at first was, well, confusing to say the least, until she remembered that these were the same people who were mortified for years after she had used a priest as a porta-potty when she was less than one year old. Her parents told her that she would not tell anybody about this and pulled her out of school. Mom would teach her and she’d get her GED once this whole damn thing passed.

The reaction was so mild that when she told Joseph about it he figured that maybe he should tell them about himself. It still took him time to work up courage, and only when a nearly seventeen year old Grace talked him up did he finally do it. The whole ordeal went less than ideal. Apparently, Dad was fine with having a freak for a daughter, but having a son be a sinner was absolutely unforgivable. Why, what would the neighbors say? The whole part in the Bible about forgiving those who sin seemed to be something that must have been newly added in versions that came out after her father had read the good book, because he threw Joseph out of the house. So Grace, in her final act of defiance against her parents, followed Joseph out. The two pariahs rented a studio apartment in the bad side of town. Joseph worked, Grace couldn’t land a job. Her refusal to sit or shake hands always threw people off, and being a high school dropout didn’t help.

This was all around the time that terrorist exposed the existence of Hyperhumans to the world. Everything around Grace sort of blew up after that--apologies for the pun. It was a nice reassurance to know that she wasn’t the only weirdo on the planet, but the warm fuzzy feeling of not being alone quickly subsided as people reacted the typical way they did around things they didn’t understand by trying to get rid off it as fast as possible. Grace felt that good old Catholic guilt swelling up inside of her. Somebody, somewhere had to do something to prove that Hyperhumans weren’t a bunch of monsters. She expressed these feelings to Joseph, and he sat her down and gave her the most important talk of her life. She’d become a superhero. Like, a real life superhero running around and helping people in need. How wasn’t that a good idea? The Mavericks made it work.

She started her superhero (vigilante is such a negative word) career a year ago. Grace and Joseph would sit in their apartment listening to a local police scanner for any crimes. Grace would then take to the streets where Joseph read her directions over the phone via Mapquest. She was relatively unknown (and both not thanked and not hated) for the longest of time until a few months ago when she stopped a thief in a public area. The socially awkward girl wearing all black with a Halloween mask over her head realized that she was being recorded by people with their phones, and in a moment of brilliance decided now would be the time to go viral and spread awareness that Hyperhumans were doing good in other places besides Larissa. She just had to say something cool, something awesome for the headlines. The only thing that came out of her stupid dumb mouth was something she had read dozens of times. The girl, posed like an action figure, turned slowly to the camera’s as her cheeks grew hotter and hotter and said in the shakiest voice ever: “Thou Shalt Not Steal.”

The video that showed on the news ends with her immediately running away.

Grace bore witness to the most embarrassing moment in her life for weeks as the video spread across local new stations and onto the Internet. Joseph played it for a week on loop straight, rolling with laughter. The media did not let it die, and as she continued her work as a “superhero” news stories and head lines reading “The Bible-Thumping Vigilante Smites Another Sinner”, “Hyper Religious Hyperhuman Halts Crime”, and “The Hand of God Crushes a Getaway”. One pundit referred to the girl as “Thumper” for the way she beats criminals like a fiery preacher beats a bible. The name stuck. Eventually, Grace rolled with it. If it rose awareness of Hypes trying to do some good, then so be it. She’d be the crusading weirdo the media wanted, even if it meant sitting and sweating through Sunday sermons while hearing her priest condemn “Thumper” for giving Catholics a bad name.

| MOTIVATION/OBJECTIVE: |

A pep talk from her brother was all she needed. ”You got superpowers, you gotta be a superhero! It’s, like, Superpowers 101. It’s in Genesis. God made Adam and Eve and was like, eh, I can do better. Then God made Hyperhumans and was like, hell yeah, I nailed it, way to go God. Now go out there, fight some crime, give a few photo ops, and get rich and famous. This was before Greed was a Deadly Sin, mind you, and that jazz isn’t even in the Bible anyway. And I always give to my Church every Sunday, anyway, okay?”

| REFERENCE POST(S): |

The One Where We Remember to Tip the Waitress - Amongst the Lonesome
The One Where an Old Man Meets the President - No Masters or Kings
The One Where a Politician Grills a Drunk - The Origin

| NOTES: |

■ Grace’s brother, Joseph, is about three years older than her and serves as her dispatcher and radio back up, as well as runs (and filters most of the hate from) her Facebook and Twitter pages through a Tor proxy to prevent people from tracking down their IP address.
■ Grace has managed to keep her paper thin disguise so far. Her parents know about her powers, and the only reason she can imagine why they haven’t gone to the authorities about her yet is that either they a) don’t care or, more likely, that b) they wouldn’t want the neighbors to know that it was their daughter.
■ Thumper, despite her efforts to do good, is generally disliked. She has miraculously yet to hurt any innocents while taking down a criminal, but the same cannot be said for the amount of money in tax dollars she is bleeding the city for via accidental property damage. She gets a healthy amount of hate on the Internet for being a Hype and for, thanks to the media’s portrayal and her own act of leaning into it, being a religious zealot.
■Sausage and mushrooms are an eternal classic, but pineapples are my fucking jam.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

@Lord WraithGreat! Very excited to get this started. I'll go ahead and move my character over.

Amongst the Lonesome- A return to Santa Somabra [Fantasy Noir]

Collab featuring @RedDusk and @Drinky

Valorie gritted her teeth; the phone in her hand shook with in anger. What the fuck is he thinking? she thought, slamming the expensive phone down on the table hard enough to shake the glass of water and rattle her silverware. A plate of half-eaten plum chicken sat steaming in front of her. The waitress had kept harassing her, so Valorie had ordered a plate to just to shut her up. It turned out to be a good move, for when the sweet and tangy smell of the sauce had hit her nostrils it reminded her that her last meal had been the other morning. It was nothing special, really, but after having gone without food for more than a day and then some it seemed like the greatest meal ever made--until her handler in the police, Rich, had texted her back. The food soured. She regretted passing the bottle off to that bitch. She picked back up her phone. Miraculously, the screen was intact. She looked at the text log again--maybe that malt liquor had hit her harder than it felt. Certainly she was mistaken.

Rich: Don’t do anything stupid.
I’m sending someone to help.

“Tch, like I’m listening to you,” muttered Valorie, stuffing the phone into her jacket. Her plan would work. She would sneak Gish out of the front and then let the Rats in through the back. They would wreck some of his toys, feel better about themselves, and then they would all get stoned. Valorie smiled. Good karma to put the mind in a good state often led to the best trips. She could not wait to spend the night curled up on her couch with Sammy on her lap and an empty baggie of Fairy Dust next to her catatonic body. It had been days, weeks since she had some dust. But first she’d--What is this idiot doing!? Valorie’s jaw dropped. She bolted up from her chair, knocking it to the floor with a clatter as she stormed out of the building.

“I’m just having a cigarette,” she said dismissively back as the waitress shouted after her, knowing fully well that she was not setting a foot back in that restaurant. Her feet pounded against the street. One of the Rats had wandered out of hiding, ducking behind a streetlight in a failed attempt to act like a secret agent stalking across a road. “The fuck are you doing,” said Valorie, her voice registering at a note only a few steps below a dog whistle. “Get back, you idiot, get back.”

“Someone went in,” said the Rat, dimly.

“No shit somebody went in, it’s an apartment building.” Valorie kicked him in the leg. “Go, back, get back. Before anybody sees you. Nooooooow.”

“Nobody’s here,” said the Rat.

He was wrong. Vigilance watched the scene from the roof as the young woman in a red jacket grabbed the man in a black sweatshirt by the hood and dragged him towards a side alley. Her radio crackled to life once again; one of Nyxvira’s watch dogs calling to check up. She ignored it. The radio beeped again. Grabbing it, her voice dragged out from behind her mask: “All clear here.” She’d wait until the entire group revealed itself. Then, she would take them all out in one fell swoop. She could see the man talking to the goblin through the window. He wasn’t with the Rats; he didn’t have the air of filth radiating from him.

Valorie huffed as she turned the corner from where she had deposited the stray Rat. Casting obvious, suspicious glances around to make sure that none of the other Rats could see her the woman ducked into the apartment building. If one Rat would wander than the others would, too. It was amazing how the same people who could sit on a couch all day and watch the wallpaper couldn’t wait twenty fucking minutes for a more apt time to commit a crime. I can’t stand impatience people, thought Valorie as she bumped against some spinster as she pounded down the hallway towards Gish’s apartment. Coming upon the door the woman did not knock; she did not even slow down. It dawned on her as she pushed through the miraculously unlocked door that she never did think of how she’d convince the goblin to trust her.

Might as well try everything.

The goblin’s generosity surprised Sander, but his information on Nichole even more so. It could be a joke; Gish was pulling his leg here. Goblins weren’t really known for their hospitality. Or he just didn’t think Sander was a worthwhile customer and decided to get rid of him.

“Are you sur-“-He began, then cut himself off suddenly, turning to the closed door.

Black smoke coiled and spread, engulfing the wooden panel. A split second later, Valorie barged in. It dispersed.

As Gish simmered back down from his quick laugh he heard an unfamiliar sound. His front door had swung open. 'Who in the fuck uses the front' he quickly uttered. He hopped off his stool in an instant and wrapped around into the the doorway that connected his kitchen to the front door via a short hallway.

There stood a young woman, thin as a rail with rather pale skin. Gish took a breath with mouth agape ready to lay into her for just bursting through his front door of all places, but she beat him to the punch. That's twice in one night he felt a little piece of himself die inside.

“Whatever you do don’t fucking shoot me, okay, look I may not look it but I’m actually here to help trust me I actually work for some good dudes okay well I wouldn’t say they’re good actually they’re kind of dicks but they’re good for you, uh, I don’t even know what that means but listen you gotta trust me I’m here to help you out okay so there are a bunch of angry dudes waiting out back ready to come in and beat the living shit out of all of your scary, scary guns--please, seriously, do not shoot me I’d be so pissed off if you did--and then they’re going to beat the living shit out of you but if you come with me I can get you out of here okay even though I’m kind of just winging this--Sander!?”

She spoke so quickly that Gish stared in awe for a few moments, mouth still half open. Hands and fingers pointing and whizzing around as she spoke of friends, bosses, guns, beatings, shooting, and Sander. Gish did a quick double take between the two as they obviously knew each other.

The sight of her corpse supplier stopped her just long enough to catch her breath, lowerer her flailing arms, and gave the light bulb in her head time to actually flicker on. She turned to the goblin. It wasn’t her first time seeing one ever. There were plenty of pictures of goblins on the Internet, including some that she would very much like to forget ever seeing from her days of perusing the Deep Web. Yet this was her first time ever seeing one in real life. It was strange, but the first thing she noticed was his teeth. How the hell did a goblin have a brighter smile than her? Even if she was a few inches taller, that was still a kick in her ego’s gut. She pointed to Sander and gave a half-smile.

“We’re business partners. Sander and Pierce Protection Agency,” said Valorie, realizing that she didn’t know or didn’t remember Sander’s last name. She stomped her foot down. “Listen, a bunch of Rats are posted up right outside. It’s clear out front, but we gotta go now. We’ll keep you safe.” She shot Sander a pleading look and spoke through gritted teeth. “Right, partner?”

When she finally re-iterated and gave him the brass tax that people were coming to fuck him up, Gish's mind raced and he stared off for a moment. Sander was stunned. For the longest of time, Sander just stood there like an idiot, eyes widened and mouth barely closed. Only when he heard his name did he manage to regain some resemblance of intelligence and stutter out a few words.

“Eh…Um… I…Ah”- He blinked owlishly, gaze dancing back and forth between his ‘partner’ and the goblin. His mind roared, urging him to calm down and take in the situation before anyone got shot. Because from he managed to salvage from Valorie’s ramblings, someone might get shot very, very soon.-“Of course.”- He finally managed, narrowing his eyes at the necromancer slightly, before turning to Gish-“I’m sure my partner here will give us a very detailed explanation once we’re in the clear.”

Valorie gave an affirmative nod, the smile on her face widening in a devious way. She turned to Gish.

He'd always planned for the case of when a person would turn on him, but he only ever expected to have trouble from a single individual, never a whole crew. He never thought he would draw that kind of attention. For a moment he didn't even know if he could trust this girl.

Though, as was practice in his business, one has to come to trust strangers often with not selling you out to the cops or other riff raff. He knew he didn't stand a chance against a crew of people, he knew he was looking at death on one hand, and only probable death on the other.

He reached under his workbench and revealed a fresh, brand new cigar. It was one he had been saving for an occasion like this, his death. Given to him a long time ago, he knew little about it other than it was expensive and fancy. He pinched it between his lips and snapped his fingers hard at the end of it. The cigar lit effortlessly, he remembered something about a sort of dragon extract coated in the tip.

"Alright bird, lead the way. And elp' yourself to a piece if you think we'll need it." he said sternly, motioning to the weapons he had lining the hallway walls.

He didn’t really understand what Valorie was trying to pull here. It could be a ruse from the Rats; luring the owner away with cheap tricks before another group came charging in and robbed the place. He wouldn’t put it pass them. The Rats were a gang of hedonist; they would do anything for the next high. Valorie could certainly do better, but then again, it was her choice.

Fortunately, the goblin decided to go along without much fuss. Which was quite odd, considering the whole situation. Then again, it was the goblin’s shop. His choice to throw it away. He even offered them some items from his shop. Sander glanced briefly through the display, before stopping on an old hunting rifle at the back. Fingers of shadow wrapped around the trigger. He swallowed drily, turning back to the door with a brisk snap of his head.

“We probably won’t.”Hopefully. Still, Sander reached into his leather coat and undo a strap on his shoulder holster. Just in case.

“Aha, I think I’ll pass, thanks,” said Valorie, the gun she already had weighing heavy in her purse. “Look, we should--S-S-SHIT, GO!”

The back door flew open with a bang. They hadn’t waited for her signal. Of course they hadn’t waited for her signal. Stupid fucking junkies, thought Valorie as she grabbed Gish by his hand and dragged him out the front.

Sander was turned away from the back door when it happened. He didn’t see anything, but the telltale sound of wooden door being kicked open was hard to miss. Beside him, Valorie had already begun to drag the goblin to the front door, so he followed suit while one hand creeping into his jacket, wrapping around the gun. He found himself surprisingly calm as he flicked the safety off. From then on, it was easy. He just followed Valorie’s lead, occasionally glancing behind them to check for pursuers. They were followed, predictably. There were figures in black hoodies just around the corner. The thugs weren’t content with just the shop. So it turned out Valorie was sincere all along. That, or this was a very, very elaborated ruse. But such thing felt rather far beyond the capabilities of an average Rat.

“Valorie.”- He used her full name this time, his voice a low grumbling, full of uncharacteristic irritation.-“Your friends.” Deal with them before I do, but that was left unsaid.

One.

“They aren’t my,” she turned on her heels just in time to see three Rats turn around the corner, “my...friends. Uh, hey guys, I mean, what the fuck are you doing?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” yelled one of the Rats. It was the girl whose parade Valorie had rained on earlier. From the sound of her voice, she had been hitting the bottle pretty hard while they had been waiting. She was backed by the boy Gish had insulted earlier and the Rat that had wandered out stupidly into the middle of the street earlier. In the distance, something sounding like metal sparking against metal rang out. “I knew we couldn’t trust you!”

Two.

“Wait, wait, wait, I can explain. This isn’t what it looks like,” said Valorie. A loud noise went off in the background from Gish’s workshop. She heard a yell forward by two more loud bangs.

Three.

“Looks like you’re a fucking gobo-lover,” said one of the guys. The one who had visited Gish earlier. Valorie quickly let go of Gish’s hands. She gave a sideways glance to Sander that was supposed to communicate something along the lines of “Trust me, I got this.” Instead, all it said was that she was way in over her head and drowning fast.

Something caught her eye. Shaking, she rose her hand and pointed behind the girl.

“B-b-b-behind,” was all that Valorie could meekly mutter.

“I’m not drunk enough to fall for that, you fucking sl--”

A bloodcurdling scream tore through the air. That sound. Valorie had never heard that sound before. It was the sound of someone dying. She knew she should take this time to just run. She knew she should just turn and run and get the fuck away from here as quick as possible. She knew she was just a little kid playing the role of a tough ganger. She knew she was in over her head. She knew she was going to get herself killed. Yet, Valorie had to see death. It could be a breakthrough, it could be the thing she needed. She had to see it, she had to see it. As if in a trance, the woman pushed the goblin towards Sander. She did not know if her partner took the hint to grab him and go or not; she didn’t care. She had to know what death looked like.

For a second, time stood still. Valorie’s eyes wavered as she focused on the figure: a tall, slender in dark form fitting armor with the face of a skull. The masked figure was clutching the girl Rat Valorie had hassled earlier as the two male Rats slowly turned to face the reaper. She was still screaming as the nasty, serrated edge of the being’s blade that was shoved through her back was ripped out through her side, viscous splattering across the street as the screaming subsided. The light in the girl’s eyes disappeared; the corners of Valorie’s lips twitched. Her heart thudded against her chest in a mix of fear and excitement. The dead girl’s grip on the bottle still in her hand faded; as it shattered against the street time resumed its normal pace.

Four.

One of the boys turned to run towards Valorie. His head popped in a spray of pink mist as a bullet entered his drugged brain and ricocheted around the polluted mass before erupting out the front of his skull. Valorie could feel the warmth of his blood as it splattered against her face. She could taste the cooper flavor on her lips. Five. The other boy had tried to swing at the masked bounty killer with his steel pipe. Vigiliance sheared through the blade and then sheared through the boy. Six. Valorie’s mind raced. Her eyes danced trying to not miss a second of the massacre. She could smell the sickening sweet scent of death. She could hear the dying moans of the last boy. All of this. She needed to remember all of this. This would be the breakthrough that she needed, all thanks to--

“Oh F-” started Valorie, her better senses finally kicking in.

“Seven,” said the masked woman, leveling her gun at Valorie.

Valorie’s ears were ringing as she dove through a door on her side into an old warehouse. She didn’t have time to look and see if Sander or Gish had run away. She didn’t have time to look at the dull, burning sensation that was aching through her shoulder where the bullet had grazed her. She didn’t have time to look as she ran through the warehouse, stumbling behind cover as another gunshot rang out. She didn’t have time to think as her hand grabbed the syringe of Demon’s Blood in her pocket, pushed up her sleeve, and jammed the needle into her arm. The effect was almost instant. She no longer needed time to think or look; she’d have all the time in the world after she killed this bitch. Grinning devilishly with unbridled confidence, Valorie pulled the gun out of her purse and flipped the safety off. She crouched down low and then, hearing Vigilance’s boots crack against broken glass on the warehouse floor, sprung into action. Jumping higher than she ever had in her life, Valorie’s finger squeezed. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Vigilance knew right away that the Rat had jammed herself full of Demon’s Blood. No human could hop like that. She twisted into cover as the bullets rang out throughout the warehouse. Two of the shots went completely wide, burrowing themselves into the far wall of the warehouse. The other bullet hit the ground by her feet. Vigilance returned fire, moving from cover to cover as the two progressed through the warehouse. The Rat slid underneath a table, firing twice at the she-elf. Bang. Bang. Another bullet whizzed by Vigilance. One struck her in her armor. It hurt like a bitch, but she shook it off and returned fire. The Rat had already vanished. Vigilance looked around. The warehouse was dark, lit only by the street lights coming in through the cracked industrial windows. Vigilance stilled her breath. She listened. She could pick up the Rat’s rapid heartbeat almost instantly--it was too close.

Valorie leapt down from the rafters above on top of Vigilance, bending the barrel of one of her pistols and ripping the other from her hand. The she-elf tried to flip the Rat over her back, but Valorie grip was too strong. She had never killed anyone before, but the Demon’s Blood coursing through her veins told her it would feel amazing. She drove her gun underneath Vigilance’s mask, promising herself that she’d resurrect the bastard again just to watch them die once more after this. A shudder went through her body as she pulled the trigger.

Click.

Click click.

Clickclickclickclickclickclickclick.

Vigilance flipped onto her back. Valorie was more surprised than hurt by the hit, but it gave Vigilance enough time to slip free and draw her blades, but not enough time to block a flying knee from the Rat. Vigilance felt her armor cave a bit as the force of the strike knocked the wind out of her. Valorie felt blood drip from her leg. Another flesh wound, or the Demon’s Blood didn’t let her notice it as anything else. Vigilance recovered in time to bat a crate out of the air with her sword; the follow up knocked one of the swords from her hands. Another fucking crate flew through the air, Vigilance leapt out of the way...and right into a shoulder check from Valorie. She heard something crack as she hit a wall and knew from the pain that it wasn’t her armor. There was no fucking way she was going to let herself get beaten by some junkie bitch. She reached down to grab her sword, her body shaking with anger.

“Looking for this?” growled Valorie, waving the iron sword around like a toy. An unlit cigarette was pursed between her lips as she sat on her haunches on top of a table. “I heard about you. You think you’re some tough scary bitch because you dress like a fucking goth and murder some stupid little fucking druggies. Well, I’ll have you know that I’m not your normal stupid little fucking druggy.”

She hopped down from the table, put the point of the sword in towards the ground, and stepped on the blade until it snapped under foot. That was a gift, thought Vigilance, bristling as her temper rose. She began struggling to her feet. Valorie laughed sharply.

“Just give up!” yelled the Rat. “Don’t worry, you won’t be dead for long.” Valorie clasped her hands together, bouncing with excitement. “The things I could do with your body. Oh, the things I will do with your body.”

Vigilance watched as the girl reached into her pocket, producing a lighter. Valorie couldn’t see it, but the she-elf was smiling beneath her mask. Striking the lighter with her thumb, Valorie began to raise it up towards her mouth. As it was halfway up her chest, the flame turned blue and leapt onto her flannel jacket. The jacket went up like a christmas tree. Valorie howled something incomprehensible, throwing the jacket off of her body. The flaming cloth landed on a pile of crates, and they caught ablaze as if they had been soaked in gasoline. As Valorie spun back around, Vigilance was already on her feet.

“Are you done playing around, little girl?” said Vigilance, the teal-flame of warmblood wreathing her body as smoke began to fill the warehouse.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

@Lord WraithHere we go.

Grace

| NAME: |

Grace Bethany Kennison​

| NICKNAME(S): |

Thumper. It started as a tongue-in-cheek joke by the media, but then it stuck.

| D.O.B.: |

08/10/1996

| AGE: |

19​

| SEX: |

Female​

| SEXUALITY: |

Heterosexual

| APPEARANCE: |

Grace is around five and a half feet tall and appears to be of a healthy weight, although it’s a little hard for her to say what her exact weight is now. We’ll touch on that a bit later. She has a pretty straight build and lacks any real tone or definition. She would classify herself as “skinny fat” and always gets nervous when it’s swimsuit season. Her dark brown hair falls around the top of her shoulders with bangs that sweep across the tops of her eyes. She finds her ears a bit too big, so she rarely wears her hair up. Her eyes are a dull blue. Her skin is tanned by the sun, forcing a slight outburst of dark freckles all over her bared skin. She finds using a lot of makeup to be a hassle, and tends to stick with just a little touch up here and there. Grace stands with a slouch and has a tendency to keep her head down. When she speaks a slight Cajun accent that she absolutely hates betrays her heritage. She tends to dress casually in graphic tees and jeans or shorts, giving her that nice, normal, unassuming American teen look. Grace always wears a necklace with a cross on it.

She used to fight crime in street clothes and a mask, but since assuming the identity of Thumper she made her own costume. The outfit is just a tight blue tracksuit with an uppercase T made out of masking tape on the front and back and a black paintball helmet with a tinted visor. Grace has read enough dark comic books to know the dangers of wearing a cape. It’s absolutely tacky looking and completely horrible, but it does the job of protecting her identity. ​

| GENUS: |

​Homo-Virium

| CLASSIFICATION: |

Atlas

| ABILITIES/SKILLS: |

Remember how it was hard for Grace to say what her true weight is? That’s because Grace is slowly but continuously growing denser. As time goes on Grace gets heavier and heavier and heavier. The last scale she purchased went up to 700 pounds; she broke it about a month ago. However, Grace doesn’t fight crime by just sitting on ne’er-do-wells until they scream uncle. She has those classic tough guy powers, too. The more dense she gets the stronger and tougher she gets. Grace can lift one and a half to two tons over her head with relative ease, meaning she can toss a medium-sized sedan towards someone like it was a medicine ball. Grace isn’t going to pretend like she understands the laws of motion or anything like that, but she does know that when she is moving and hits someone they generally stay down--and she pulls most of her punches. The girl’s also pretty tough, and unless you’re strong enough to sling vans around like paper planes trying to best her physically is a real dumb idea. Bats and knives tend to just break on her, normal bullets leave nasty welts and can knock the wind out of her, and fancy high-grade military shit could feasibly do some damage but still see her breathing. She doesn’t have much experience fighting Hyperhumans, but she could probably take a better licking than most.

Unfortunately for Grace, her powers are mostly limited by her otherwise subpar physique. She’s hardly an athlete. A reasonably fit person could outrun Grace, and her added strength does little to change the fact that she’d never be able to dunk a basketball. The only knowledge of fighting she has comes from video games and kung fu flicks, so she’s prone to attempt ridiculous moves that are just impossible to actually do in. She’s generally just uncoordinated and even clumsy when in action. Most of the times that she throws a punch she misses with her fist and accidentally connects with her shoulder, which is typically enough to knock someone off of their ass, send them flying a few yards, and fracture a few ribs. Outside of combat, her weight is a general problem. She tends to avoid elevators and has to stick to cargo vans and truck beds to travel due to her weight causing cars to drag on one side. Grace has broken enough chairs in her life to resign herself to sitting on the ground forever. Her power is “always on” so she has to interact with most of the world as if was a model ship she was building inside of a glass bottle. She also has this absolutely asinine idea that she’s going to be a proper superhero, which means NO KILLING.

Grace’s density has done little to strengthen her mind. Her biggest weakness would probably be either MINERVA- or CUPID-Class Hyperhumans. She may be thick skinned and denser than a rock, but apparently she’s soft in the heart and head. As well, she has frequent nightmares about drowning since she knows from first hand experience that she sinks faster than an anchor strapped to several hundred other anchors. Being over or near bodies of water generally fills her with dread, and she lives a mile from the beach in a damn state full of bayous and swamps.

| BACKSTORY: |

Grace was born on the absolute hottest day of the year in Pointe Bordeaux, Louisiana to her less than thrilled bible-thumping parents who now had another damned mouth to feed. She was the fifth child of Mr. and Mrs. Kennison. She was also their fifth favorite after her big brother Peter in first, her older sisters Harmony and Prudence bouncing around second and third, and the family dog Samson taking fourth. She was sixth until her brother Joseph came out of the closet a few years back. A little something about Grace’s father: Dad was a true Southern gentleman and a good Catholic who’d give you the shirt off of his back and some from his wardrobe as well unless you were a Muslim, a homosexual, or a Falcons fan. Dad always said that he was just trying to protect Mom from being ridiculed by the neighbors for having a gay son, but we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to when Grace was not in the honorable position of being the second-most-hated.

Grace’s first slight against her parents came on the day she was baptised and happened to relieve herself on Father Forrest. Nobody else really paid it much mind--Grace was, after all, a baby--but her parents were absolutely mortified. They had friends in that Church. Friends who laughed. At them. It was SUCH a big deal. Their daughter continued to be just an utter, absolute embarrassment. She screwed up her first communion. She fell asleep in Sunday School. She was constantly in trouble with the Sisters at her Catholic school for making rude noises during nap time. She inappropriately displayed affection towards others. “Bless that Grace,” her parents’ friends would say. “She’s so soft-hearted,” they would say. Her parents knew what they meant. They meant to say that she was soft-headed, that their daughter was an idiot. Why couldn’t she be better behaved like her sisters? At the very least, she could show some shame.

Despite being an absolute fumbling fuck-up in the eyes of her parent’s and being forced to attend the horrendous doldrums that is the Sunday Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, Grace actually took a shining towards religion. Not to the extent where that when she started attending public schools in third grade (once her family could no longer afford the private Catholic school) she was that one kid always talked about Jesus and God and quoting the Bible and having that fucking creepy purity towards them, but she was religious. Despite all the jokes about altar boys, she was proud to be Catholic. Besides, as a girl she didn’t have to worry about that sort of scene. She read the Bible regularly. She could spit some mean Hail Marys, and we aren’t talking about football because she could not do sports if life depended on it. She wore a cross every day for every second to this god damn day. Shit, while other kids were running around doing little kid shit and the annoying Jesus girls were telling them they’d go to Hell for it, Grace was spending her time volunteering for food drives and helping out with charities.

And somehow she was still the least favorite kid because her Dad caught her reading comic books. What the hell, they weren’t even hers--she had borrowed them from Joseph.

Grace’s powers came about around the time she started puberty. Always a little bit on the heavy side and hurt by her schoolmates because all children are bastards regardless of whether they knew their dad or not, Grace started dieting. Which, when all her Mom served was cornbread and whatever proteins she could find on sell and cook in a pan full of butter, meant she just didn’t eat. The girl was always hungry, and she was always miserable, and she always felt weak, and she never lost weight. Even as the fat disappeared from her body and her skin turned yellow and dry she was somehow gaining weight. Grace was absolutely baffled, but the scale did not lie. All skin and bones and she was fat, fat, fucking fat. Completely disgusting; a skeletal cow.

And then she went swimming with her brother Joseph in the river one summer when she was thirteen. Swimming was probably the one activity she was any good at, and the girl sunk like that boat in that one movie. If Joseph didn’t help drag her out she would’ve drowned. If she hadn’t almost drowned she would’ve probably starved herself to death. Listen, Grace isn’t going to go around and tell anybody that it was a miracle, but she thought it was a miracle. At the very least a wake up call. She started eating right after that and blossomed back towards a healthy shape.

Joseph and her decided not to tell anybody about that drowning incident on account of the fact that neither of them wanted to get in trouble. It kind of solidified them as each other's favorites in the family. Neither of them knew what the hell was happening to Grace’s body, but both of them worked together to make sure her parents or the other siblings didn’t find out. They joked that their Dad would call an exorcist if he found out, while both secretly believed that wasn’t actually far from the truth. As a sign of good faith, Joseph told Grace about his homosexuality. As a sign of good faith, Grace decided to not be like their Dad...except when it came to fan of the Falcons; those people were just godless heathens and assholes to boot.

The problems with her strength started to arise by the time she with fifteen, and unlike her weight this grew exponentially. What started as her accidentally tearing books in half turned into her breaking door handles and faucets. Eventually inevitably it became clear that she couldn’t hide these changes from her parents. Besides, it was getting exceptionally weird at dinner when she refused to sit out of fear of breaking her already rickety chair. So...she told her parents. The reaction she got from at first was, well, confusing to say the least, until she remembered that these were the same people who were mortified for years after she had used a priest as a porta-potty when she was less than one year old. Her parents told her that she would not tell anybody about this and pulled her out of school. Mom would teach her and she’d get her GED once this whole damn thing passed.

The reaction was so mild that when she told Joseph about it he figured that maybe he should tell them about himself. It still took him time to work up courage, and only when a nearly seventeen year old Grace talked him up did he finally do it. The whole ordeal went less than ideal. Apparently, Dad was fine with having a freak for a daughter, but having a son be a sinner was absolutely unforgivable. Why, what would the neighbors say? The whole part in the Bible about forgiving those who sin seemed to be something that must have been newly added in versions that came out after her father had read the good book, because he threw Joseph out of the house. So Grace, in her final act of defiance against her parents, followed Joseph out. The two pariahs rented a studio apartment in the bad side of town. Joseph worked, Grace couldn’t land a job. Her refusal to sit or shake hands always threw people off, and being a high school dropout didn’t help.

This was all around the time that terrorist exposed the existence of Hyperhumans to the world. Everything around Grace sort of blew up after that--apologies for the pun. It was a nice reassurance to know that she wasn’t the only weirdo on the planet, but the warm fuzzy feeling of not being alone quickly subsided as people reacted the typical way they did around things they didn’t understand by trying to get rid off it as fast as possible. Grace felt that good old Catholic guilt swelling up inside of her. Somebody, somewhere had to do something to prove that Hyperhumans weren’t a bunch of monsters. She expressed these feelings to Joseph, and he sat her down and gave her the most important talk of her life. She’d become a superhero. Like, a real life superhero running around and helping people in need. How wasn’t that a good idea? The Mavericks made it work.

She started her superhero (vigilante is such a negative word) career a year ago. Grace and Joseph would sit in their apartment listening to a local police scanner for any crimes. Grace would then take to the streets where Joseph read her directions over the phone via Mapquest. She was relatively unknown (and both not thanked and not hated) for the longest of time until a few months ago when she stopped a thief in a public area. The socially awkward girl wearing all black with a halloween mask over her head realized that she was being record by people with their phones, and in a moment of brilliance decided now would be the time to go viral and spread awareness that Hyperhumans were doing good in other places besides Larissa. She just had to say something cool, something awesome for the headlines. The only thing that came out of her stupid dumb mouth was something she had read dozens of times. The girl, posed like an action figure, turned slowly to the camera’s as her cheeks grew hotter and hotter and said in the shakiest voice ever: “Thou Shalt Not Steal.”

The video that showed on the news ends with her immediately running away.

Grace bore witness to the most embarrassing moment in her life for weeks as the video spread across local new stations and onto the Internet. Joseph played it for a week on loop straight, rolling with laughter. The media did not let it die, and as she continued her work as a “superhero” news stories and head lines reading “The Bible-Thumping Vigilante Smites Another Sinner”, “Hyper Religious Hyperhuman Halts Crime”, and “The Hand of God Crushes a Getaway”. One pundit referred to the girl as “Thumper” for the way she beats criminals like a fiery preacher beats a bible. The name stuck. Eventually, Grace rolled with it. If it rose awareness of Hypes trying to do some good, then so be it. She’d be the crusading weirdo the media wanted, even if it meant sitting and sweating through Sunday sermons while hearing her priest condemn “Thumper” for giving Catholics a bad name.

| MOTIVATION/OBJECTIVE: |

A pep talk from her brother was all she needed. ”You got superpowers, you gotta be a superhero! It’s, like, Superpowers 101. It’s in Genesis. God made Adam and Eve and was like, eh, I can do better. Then God made Hyperhumans and was like, hell yeah, I nailed it, way to go God. Now go out there, fight some crime, give a few photo ops, and get rich and famous. This was before Greed was a Deadly Sin, mind you, and that jazz isn’t even in the Bible anyway. And I always give to my Church every Sunday, anyway, okay?”

| REFERENCE POST(S): |

The One Where We Remember to Tip the Waitress - Amongst the Lonesome
The One an Old Man Meets the President - No Masters or Kings
The One Where a Politician Grills a Drunk - The Origin

| NOTES: |

■ Grace’s brother, Joseph, is about three years older than her and serves as her dispatcher and radio back up, as well as runs (and filters most of the hate from) her Facebook and Twitter pages through a Tor proxy to prevent people from tracking down their IP address.
■ Grace has managed to keep her paper thin disguise so far. Her parents know about her powers, and the only reason she can imagine why they haven’t gone to the authorities about her yet is that either they a) don’t care or, more likely, that b) they wouldn’t want the neighbors to know that it was their daughter.
■ Thumper, despite her efforts to do good, is generally disliked. She has miraculously yet to hurt any innocents while taking down a criminal, but the same cannot be said for the amount of money in tax dollars she is bleeding the city for via accidental property damage. She gets a healthy amount of hate on the Internet for being a Hype and for, thanks to the media’s portrayal and her own act of leaning into it, being a religious zealot.
■Sausage and mushrooms are an eternal classic, but pineapples are my fucking jam.

Lemme know what I broke.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

Hey dudes, just stopping by to let you folks know I'm working on a CS for those bread and butter Atlas types, because we got a bunch of Glass Joes hanging around now.

So, uh, if anyone drops an Atlas Hyperhuman in the meantime then I just want you to know that we're gonna fight be pals.

Amongst the Lonesome- A return to Santa Somabra [Fantasy Noir]

I wish I could pretend to be hip and mature and cool by grabbing one of the many fantastically dope lines from @Rockette's intro, but I have to go with this because it made me smile:

Hider

"Listen son, I don't show up at your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth while you're working, so pipe down eh?"

@Drinky

I fear the day when I grow up.

Amongst the Lonesome- A return to Santa Somabra [Fantasy Noir]

The subway train to Chinatown rocked unsteadily against the tracks as it tore around a bend in the underground. The dingy lights of the car flickered and buzzed as the wheels clicked against the rails. Graffiti fought with garbage for turf inside of the subway while rodents and other beasts scurried to get out of the light of the passing train in the dark, dank tunnel that loomed around the train like a coffin. Valorie buried her nose in her phone and bobbed to the beat of the music running through her headphones, pretending to be involved in a ferocious text message exchange despite having no service in the tunnels. She was the one person wearing any color in a gaggle of black hoodie wearing thugs. To an outside observer it would seem like she was being targeted for some brutal boxcar beatdown or for some other form of harassment, the way the hoodlums had closed in a circle around the sitting woman. Their voices were low and hushed; some were visibly carrying pipes and other makeshift weapons. One of them was clutching a brown bag in their hand with god knows what inside and pushed it with a certain amount of force towards the young woman. Drink it or we’ll gut you, Bitch, this outsider would imagine as they pretended that they hadn’t seen anything, knowing it’d be best not to get involved with those thugs.

Of course, Valorie was not actually getting harassed. Although she was nothing like them in appearance (asides from hygiene: she still wore her clothes from yesterday despite the Sun already being down), she was most certainly with them. The man forcing the brown bag and, to our non-existing observer urging her to drink, had forced it to the woman in frustration more than anything else. He had bought the drink for himself, and she had been railing him to share the love since they had gotten on the subway train. Valorie tore the bottled bag from his hand and took a swig of the beverage. She wrinkled her nose and grimaced. Malt liquor, gross. But alcohol was alcohol, and when all of the places around there knew she was using a fake ID it meant she had little choice in what to drink--and a drink was something she certainly needed.

“Any questions?” asked the only other girl in the group and the apparent leader of this branch of Rats.

Valorie hadn’t taken her name to memory yet; she doubted she’d need to. The girl was part of the Fifth Street Rats. If the Bloodblooms and the Nyctaris looked down on the other gangs, and the other gangs looked down on the Rats, then the Rats looked down on the Fifth Street Rats. Even newbies like Valorie knew the Fifth Street Rats were a joke. They dressed tough, they acted tough, and they talked tough, but like a person holding a pair of deuces in a high stake game of poker they folded every time when things got rough. The Fifth Street Rats were the kind of gang who would gladly try to steal candy from a baby and yet still somehow manage to come out with just a shitty diaper and a black eye. They were losers. And since Valorie was tagging along with them, that too meant she was now a loser...if only for the job.

That was the first reason she needed a drink. The second reason she needed a drink was because she had pissed off Quinn--ultimately the reason why she was now on a subway train with the Cleveland Browns of street gangs. Quinn had told her that the Fifth Street Rats might be getting some Fairy Dust. This had come, naturally, after they had a ten minute screaming match over the phone during Valorie’s cab ride (and then she had stiffed the poor bastard on the tip, too). In hindsight, Valorie realized this was a kind of penance. Yes, yes, she would probably score some drugs, but no high was worth dealing with these assholes. Especially when they had such great ideas like the one this chick had just shitted out of her mouth.

Which was the third reason Valorie needed a drink.

“Yeah, I have one,” said Valorie, resting the bagged bottle between her thighs. The odds of the man getting it back during this train ride were exceptionally slim. Putting away her phone, she elbowed the two Rats sitting beside her to slid over so that she could have some room to lounge.

“Didn’t even think you were listening, uh…” It seemed the other girl hadn’t taken her name to memory either. Valorie narrowed her eyes.

“I wish I hadn’t,” said Valorie. “So, my question?”

“Whatever. Go ahead.”

“Okay. Thanks. Great!” Valorie gave a smile that was clearly fake. “Do you think I’m fucking stupid?”

“What?”

“I’m going to pretend you said no. So, are you fucking stupid then?” said Valorie. Some of the other Rats bristled; the girl blinked, confused and caught off guard. She had been surrounded by the Fifth Street Nobodies for so long that she wasn’t used to be challenged by another Rat. Valorie rose her hand. “It’s a rhetorical question. I already knew the answer when I heard your fucking plan.”

“Who do you think--”

“Shut. Up.”

Valorie stood up very quickly, the bottle gripped in her hand, as she stared down the other woman. Despite being larger than Valorie, the other Rat backed up. Perhaps because she thought the woman was going to club her with the bottle of Cobra. Perhaps because she saw the anger still lingering in Valorie’s eyes from today’s earlier failure. Maybe it’s because she knew Valorie had gotten a vial of Demon’s Blood (although Valorie was saving that baby for a rainy day) from one of the other Rats. Valorie took another chug from the bottle, focusing hard to make sure she didn’t wince. She had learned through Quinn that the best way to deal with any Rats she did not know was to establish an early dominance. Like it’s the first day of prison, only it’s generally best to avoid shanking any of your fellow Rats. That kind of bothers them. Truth be told, most Rats were junkie cowards and quickly kowtowed whenever somebody took command.

Although occasionally you’d just get socked. The punch did not come, however, so Valorie continued, talking more to the other Rats than to the girl:

“Look, while I am all for smashing some gobo-bitch’s shop apart because he hurt fuck boy’s feelings,” said Valorie, gesturing towards the man who had tried to buy his piece from Gish with drugs; the same man who had given her a vial of Demon’s Blood in return for a false favor she would never deliver upon. “But if you think running blindly into a gun shop swinging a bat around is good idea then I can just shoot you myself and save you some time. Unlike some of you, I would rather spend tonight getting high from some Fairy Dust instead of through a morphine drip while recuperating in a hospital or dead from a gunshot wound through my,” she jabbed a finger against the woman’s head, “empty.” Jab. “Fucking.” Jab. “Skull.” Shove. The girl fell onto the seat across from.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Valorie, looking around at the group. “When we get to Chinatown you guys are going to find some place close to this prick’s shop to hole up in. Don’t all stick together; seriously, a group of six people with bats and bars all wearing black is suspicious as fuck. I’m very surprised you even made it to the subway without getting picked up. But don’t get far enough apart that you can’t see one another neither. I’ll go inside, make sure there isn’t a whole bunch of dudes in there, and distract whatshisname. I’ll send you,” she pointed to the same guy from before. He had given her his number so that they could meet up later for that never-happening favor that she had agreed to, “a text. That’d be the signal for you guys to come in while he’s distracted.”

The subway stopped and the doors slid open with a woosh. Valorie tossed the other woman her bottle. She wanted to get wasted, but she’d have time for that later. A clear mind would be necessary for her part of the plan.

“No time for questions. Let’s go.”

She disappeared through the sliding door, a train of Rats following after her. The station was emptier than usual. It was late enough in the day that the office crowd were already home safe, and too early in the night for drunken degenerates to be out of the bars. The few individuals in the station were still cautious enough of the throng of gangsters spearheaded by a young woman to give them a wide berth. Valorie walked with a cool confidence as she led her troop up the stairs, a lit cigarette already in her mouth as she exited out onto the streets of Santa Somabra’s Chinatown.

Somewhere, a radio came to life: “Spotted seven suspicious looking types coming out of the subway. Five male, two female, all wearing black except for the woman in a red jacket leading them. A few of them are armed. Orders?”

From her vantage point the Ijosalfr could see both the entrance to the goblin’s apartment and the fire exit leading by his window. She had caught flashes of his green skin through her binoculars, working on guns and chatting on the phone, but nobody had yet to enter his apartment. She could have gone and warn him herself; an enforcer for the Bloodbloom carried a certain bit of authority. Yet any movement before the Rats struck could possibly send them scurrying back to their holes, and the she-elf was not going to miss an opportunity to redeem so many corrupt souls.

And she certainly wasn’t going to let any of Nyxie’s men take her marks. She pulled the walkie-talkie up to her lips: “Just follow them for now. We don’t want to chase after the wrong rodents.”

Valorie had never been to Gish’s before, but one of the Rats fed her directions. Closed down markets lined the streets. If the sun was up the markets would have been open and thriving with energy, but the folks in Chinatown were smart enough to head indoors when the moon came out. The sky was a light mixture of purple and orange, and strings of paper lanterns cast an eerie red glow throughout the streets. Darkened doorways led into massage parlors with lovely young girls supplied by the Nyctari and laundromats that stowed away drugs for the Nyte Kings. She passed by a restaurant that she had gone to before with Quinn and the Chinese Theater that they had been thrown out of an hour later for start a fight. When they were a block away she stopped and turned to the gang.

“I’ll keep an eye on the front to make sure that bastard doesn’t leave. You three, head back behind his apartment and keep an eye on the back door. The rest of you, hide out by the fire escape. Once it gets darker I’ll go in and then give you the signal.”

She watched as the Rats scurried to follow her orders, a cool smile on her face as the other girl walked by her. Valorie could read the girl’s mind: Bitch, it said, echoing the thoughts in Valorie’s mind.

Meanwhile, the radio crackled back to life: “They’ve split up.”

“I have an eye on their leader,” said the she-elf. “Return to your post in case others show up. I’ll radio if I see anything.”

Valorie continued down the street as the pack of dark hoods disappeared into sideroads and alleys, pulling her own hood up from beneath her red flannel jacket. Flicking the cigarette out into the street, Valorie ducked into a small restaurant and found herself a table by the window. Pulling out her phone, she hammered out a quick text message and hit send. Then she pulled out a fashion magazine and pretended to be reading it as she formed her part of the plan.

She knew she had to get rid of the goblin--though not in the typical mafioso euphemism sense where she tied some cement shoes to his tiny green feet or give him a necktie from Colombia. Vandalism, break and entering, stealing, drug dealing, arms trafficking, necromancy? Fine. Valorie still had enough teenage rebellion in here to find something romantic and thrilling about defacing property. She had enough greed and desperation inside of her to be okay with taking from somebody else if it meant bettering her life. She could lie to herself and say that selling drugs and guns was mostly a victimless crime. She didn’t force the junkie to overdose or the killer to pull the trigger. Necromancy? She only saw it as bad when she failed, and even then it was hard to say if there was any victim but herself. She started with a dead body, she ended with a dead body and her own crushed spirit.

But leading a bunch of Rats to bash the green out of a goblin? Even if she didn’t harm him herself, she’d still be directly responsible for his wounding or possible death. She couldn’t deal with that. Valorie didn’t believe that she was a good person; that part of her was shattered, scattered across Santa Somabra by her own hedonism. Yet, even if she didn’t fully buy it, she could still lie to herself. Fuck it, even if she knew she was rotten to the core at least she could fool others into thinking there was an ounce of decency in there somewhere. She’d even be okay with that. So she’d help him escape.

But she had to find some way to make him trust her.

“Just a water,” she said to the waitress. “I’m waiting for a friend.”

As Valorie waited for her imaginary friend and the right time to make a move, Vigilance watched her from the shadows of a nearby roof, her fair skin disappearing behind her death mask. Seven more souls. She would claim seven more souls tonight.